No Morrissey-inspired political rants today. He hasn’t said any nasty things in weeks. Just gonna point a few inoffensive, non-political reasons why he’s a hero. Because he’s one of the few men alive whose northbound hairline actually flatters him. And he looks good in a priest suit. Mostly because he made such an outstanding late-life comeback in the 2000′s, not just coasting on formula, but putting out a series of albums that fans hailed as new classics. First of the Gang to Die certainly has been embraced, both by hardcore fans and the wider world, being one of Morrissey’s biggest selling singles. It’s thought to be either a commentary on the rise of criminality or a tribute to his inexplicable popularity among greasers and cholos. Moz is beloved by modern psychobillys, probably thanks to his mid-nineties teddy boy phase, which I thought was thoroughly campy, but evidently the hardcore teds have taken him to heart for it. Interesting. Anyway, if you never thought of Morrissey as a fun guy, then here’s this song – fun, rocking, and all awash in black humor.
There’s no song that has more of a personal meaning to me than this one. It’s a long story and I can’t tell it all, but I first heard this sung a cappella by a dirty boy in a knitted cap, in front of a fire, in the middle of the woods. The same night I met and fell in love with someone. It breaks my heart to hear it now and try to remember that it was a beautiful moment, when I really did think my life had finally begun, except that it was the opposite. It wasn’t the beginning of anything happy and every moment that was good is irrevocably tainted and there aren’t any good memories left. All I got was four years of abuse and a hard lesson about love at first sight – don’t fall for it. I’m crying now.
This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed
They’re spreading blankets on the beach
Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go
And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realize that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home
Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you’d just woke up
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy”
So if you want to be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you like me
Sinead O’Connor’s voice is bone chilling. It’s always something unearthly about it, but here the context makes it even eerier. O’Connor has spoken often about her abusive childhood and subsequent troubled relationships with both parents. (She also suffered further trauma living in a Catholic asylum as a teenager.) While first two albums focused on the singer’s love life, Universal Mother is about motherhood and mending the scars of her early life. It is the most personal in an intensely personal oeuvre. There are several loving songs about her first child, and throughout the life-changing struggle of motherhood is a theme. Though the general mood is contemplative, there are two terrifyingly angry songs. In Red Football she channels her rage towards her father, and Fire On Babylon is about her mother. O’Connor isn’t one to hold back her feelings, and force of her anger makes those songs scarily real, almost uncomfortably personal. By the time Universal Mother came out O’Connor’s star was fading and the singles didn’t receive much attention. Unjustly, because this O’Connor at the height of her powers. She’s everything that made her a star in the first place – brutally honest, angry, thoughtful, and full of love.
Isaac Brock is, along with Colin Meloy and Ben Gibbard, one of those singers I truly wish were better-looking. Coming right down to it, I wish most people were better looking. Those three, though, I desperately wish were at least more interesting-looking, because of the discord between the way they look (average) and how much I like their voices and the way their music makes me feel. It’s the ongoing problem I have with stars who don’t play the part. I think being visually dramatic should be a job requirement for entertainers, but not everyone is down with that notion. And you can be cheesy and say something about the value of inner qualities, and that these guys are so talented why should it matter what they look like, but I still think what I think – rock stars should be good looking and if they can’t be good looking they should be interesting looking or at least well-dressed. Though I’ll rationally admit that Isaac Brock is a brilliant man who doesn’t deserve to get ribbed about the averageness of his appearance, I still want to imagine someone glamorous when I hear music I like.
The godfather of punk here. From his 80′s pop moment, or course. I always liked polished-as-he-gets Iggy better than screamy, rolling-in-glass Iggy. Guess the godfather of punk nickname is fair enough – the punkers learned plenty from Iggy Pop’s self-debasing stunts. But I’ve never had much use for the punkers, so I have to think more about what did Bowie see in him and vice versa. Because I’m more interested in the artistic aspects of the persona – the theatrical side of the hysteria, if you will. I like the flair for drama that Iggy has. He always had a bit of a split personality, by all accounts. Would he be the outlandish Iggy person or would he be his normal Jim Osterberg self? It’s a balancing act, having two selves. If you’re a student in the school of camp, you know. Both selves are real selves. It’s just that one you’re born with, and one you build. That’s true for everybody, to a point, but it’s a crazy few who live that two-sided-ness to its outer limits. Iggy is an example, Bowie is probably the example, La Gaga is today’s example, and looking further back we can add non-rock star characters who created identities in a similar way. Don’t say Marilyn Monroe doesn’t fit into the real self/fake real self school of living. She lived her life teetering between the Marilyn she created and the Norma Jeane she was born as. It seems a lot of icons were just to big to contain themselves in just one self.
Cheers to Jethro Tull for writing a love song that’s rustic and real. I don’t know anything about Ian Anderson’s personal life, but I want to think he wrote this song as a celebration of the habitual pleasures of married life. It’s the way of love songs to make grand statements, and it’s the tendency of reminiscences to focus on dramatic events. It’s more interesting, of course, and it’s easy. What’s hard is to articulate the pleasures of the mundane and familiar. The big drama, the first kiss, the exciting adventure, those are easy to tell, and those people want to hear about. But really, what we cherish inside, that people don’t want to hear about, that you tell to yourself, is little moment, like feeding the dogs and folding laundry. And those are things songs don’t oft get written about. I love this, as a reminder to stop sometimes and appreciate who you’re with and where you are, and what your life is. Stop and savor and commit to memory days that aren’t important or eventful, because someday you’re going to miss them.
Favorite Jimi Hendrix song here. Gotta admit that I’m not a huge Hendrix fan. I really love a few of his songs, mostly Are You Experienced, but never quite got into the other albums. I found them maybe too jammy and experimental. Though I’m usually in favor of experimental, I guess the last two just kind of bored me. I suppose I need to bone up on the psychedelic guitar heroism. Anyhow. I’ve got two videos here, both very nice. I notice that in the black and white one Hendrix displays a marked lack of enthusiasm, so I’m guessing it’s from a little bit later in his career, when he’d had the chance to get thoroughly sick of playing the same hits over and over. Because even then all anyone wanted to hear was the same five songs.
Here is another obscure Rolling Stones album deep cut notable for being not your typical Rolling Stones. It’s been one of critics’ favorite laments that the Stones lean too heavily on the same formula, churning out an endless supply of generic ‘Stones rockers’ without branching out or experimenting. While it’s true that they do churn out the rockers (because they’re smart fellows and they know what sells) it’s also true that a listen to any of their album beyond the hit singles reveals a voracious appetite for branching. It’s the ongoing teeter-totter of Mick Jagger’s polyglot restlessness against Keith Richards’ traditionalism.
In the case of Fingerprint File, it’s one of their earlier forays into dance music, incorporating wah-wahs, phase effects and a slinky funk groove. For me, it’s always brought to mind Thriller-era Michael Jackson. It’s in the insistent groove with roots on the disco floor and Motown, a combination that was Jackson’s calling card. Also, the they’re-out-to-get-me sense of paranoia is Jacksonesque – a boy who lived 44 of his fifty years with a microphone and/or camera shoved in his face can’t help but feel persecuted. But particularly the high pitched YOWs Jagger unleashes at the end sound just like Michael Jackson. Jackson, of course, was fourteen when It’s Only Rock’N'Roll came out and had not yet developed the sound he’d become known for later in life, so it’s a prescient coincidence. Listen to the studio recording to get the full effect. Jagger is in upper-register throughout, alternating yelpy with breathy in an eerily close approximation of what Michael Jackson’s vocal style would evolve into. The more subdued concert outing sticks closer to classic Stonesiness.
As far as the paraniod theme of the song, it’s not so outlandish. Today the famous and infamous can expect to be imprisoned in a glass bubble of constant scrutiny, but that’s not what Jagger is talking about here. He’s talking about government persecution and he’s not far off. At the height of their ‘bad boy’ notoriety in the sixties, The Rolling Stones (and other rock stars) were subject to surveillance and wiretapping by Scotland Yard, which in the end resulted in the famed Redlands bust. In that event it is believed the police had tapped Keith’s phone line and the phones of his friends. Clearly, illegal phone intrusion has a proud and storied history. (In that event also, the now scandalized and defunct News Of the World played a significant role.) It was partly to get away from that hostile environment that the Stones fled to France at the close of the sixties. In the seventies things weren’t much better for rock stars. It’s well known that the FBI conducted a long-running investigation of John Lennon before finally granting him a greencard. Mick Jagger was absolutely right to feel edgy and paranoid – he was being monitored, followed and eavesdropped upon.
UPDATE: If anyone noticed some layout problems in the last few days, I’ve fixed it now. Turns out one of the pictures I posted had some wonky html attached to it that was wreaking havoc. Carry on!
A Fine Romance is a song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, written in 1936 for Swing Time, a Fred Astaire picture. It’s become one of the great standards since then, covered by a roster of greats, who all put their own spin on it. In Swing Time it does what movie songs do, being less of a standalone song than a means of propelling the story along. In the film it’s a comical duet between quarreling lovers Fred and Ginger. It really doesn’t sound like something that would blossom into a life of its own. But later the same year, in Billie Holiday’s hands it became a lovelorn lament. In 1957 Ella Fitzgerald cut an upbeat cover, trading lines with Louis Armstrong’s rascally growl. Frank Sinatra brought to it his signature swagger, Marilyn Monroe her breathy tics, Lena Horne her smoothness. It’s the mark of rock-steady songwriting that a song that started out as a comical number with references to jello and fin flapping seals would absorb so many different meanings, being mournful or happy depending on who was bringing it to life.
Does this page look funny to you? If the layout seems all wrong, I don’t know why that is and I’ve contacted tech support. All I can see is everything being wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s like someone came in and rearranged the furniture. If you can’t see it, then disregard.
I found this rare video of Billie Holiday performing with Lester Young and Ben Webster. I’ve never seen a Billie video before. Her face is fascinating to watch. Her eyes are so full of feeling and she expresses every word as though she were talking. The whole performance is amazing. Fine and mellow are good words to describe the groove these cats are riding. This performance was filmed for television in 1957, almost 20 years after Holiday first recorded the song.
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