Diary of a Former Record Store Clerk

The Transformative Power of Live Music

2012-01-31T22:28:00.003-05:00

Cracker: the cure for the common chest cold.

You know when you go to a rock show and you can feel the music reverberating in your body? When you can actually feel the bass line buzzing and throbbing in your bones? I love that. It can transport me into a kind of trance state, where I’m acutely focused on sound. I’m not just hearing it -- it feels like it’s surrounding me and somehow urging me into some kind of transformation.

I took a long break from going out to hear live music. It just wasn’t been a part of my life for the past decade or so. But this summer, it came back.

I went to see Tim Kasher (Cursive, The Good Life) at Great Scott in Allston. His latest album, The Game of Monogamy, chronicles the arc – and end -- of a romantic relationship. It’s not pretty. At times, it’s brutal -- and so, so vivid and true.

I’d listened to the album plenty of times in the months leading up to the show, and I thought I’d absorbed it for the most part. Plodding through the end of my own marriage, I could certainly relate to it. I wasn’t expecting any surprises. But then, standing there in the crowd in that tiny city club, I found myself clutching my hand to my mouth to hold back the sobs.

No you can’t come back.
I hate myself when you’re around.

The song is The Prodigal Husband and with its yellow nightgown and “our old queen bed,” and “your cheeks drained white like you’d seen a ghost,” it’s emotional enough. Dark, tricky, all hope gone but for the faintest glimmer that you know will flicker and go out.

I didn’t realize that’s what I’d been feeling for so long. Hating myself. I didn’t see it til I started to come out of it.

--

On the flip side, on New Year’s Day, I joined some friends at Club Passim in Cambridge for a show by Love Canon, a fine bluegrass band that specializes in covers of 80s pop songs. The ones I loved when I was in middle school – Africa (Toto), Take On Me (A-ha), Don’t Stop Believin’ (Journey, duh). Pop confection elevated to artform by a simple change of context (and instrumentation). The delivery was so fun and upbeat – it didn’t matter that the songs were fairly meaningless. I just couldn’t stop smiling – even laughing at times. I felt gleeful. Even for the end-of-show sing-a—long of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (I hate sing-a-longs).

--

And then there was the Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven show at The Middle East – their annual appearance on MLK weekend. David Lowery fronts both bands. I knew (and loved) some of Cracker’s stuff but had heard a total of just one song by CvB. No matter. Those guys really know what they’re doing.

The Middle East is a much larger club, and they have plenty of speakers to fill the room with sound. I went in with a lingering chest cold and was grateful to find a spot at the railing, with a great view and something to lean on when I got tired. As usual, I could feel the bass resonating in my breastbone. Thump, thump, thump, thump – a steady throb that escalated to a buzz when the guitars got really loud. I just stood there, basking in the sensation . . . the music present not just in my ears, but throughout my body.

It was the coldest night of the year, and leaving the club after midnight, I could feel my muscles clenching in a misguided attempt to ward off the chill. I didn’t want to breathe deeply til I was back in the warmth of the car. I didn’t even realize it til I awoke the next morning. All that thumping and throbbing had beaten the congestion right out of my chest. My cold was gone.

--

Coming up next, the Cowboy Junkies at the Somerville Theater in March. (Margo magic. OMG, I’m such a dork. But Margo! How can you not love her?)

My Parents' Record Collection

2011-02-25T23:37:00.000-05:00

My parents had this trunk in their living room, made of wood and stamped tin. It was huge -- big enough that my sister and I could both hide in it easily, if it was empty, but it never was. It was filled with records. You know, LPs.

Oh, how I used to love to flip through those records and look at the covers. They were in no particular order (except when I was older and alphabetized them for fun), and there were so many that there always seemed to be a surprise to be found. In the early days, the most outrageous album covers caught my eye – the octagonal Through The Past Darkly, the fake Kodachrome of Richard Harris’s Slides, the woman on the Herb Alpert record wearing nothing but whipped cream . . .

As I grew older, I began to appreciate my parents’ collection. They had most of the Beatles catalog (but strangely, no Revolver). The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan. The Mamas and the Papas, James Taylor, Sinatra. Easy Rider, The Beach Boys, Hair. (My dad and I do a mean rendition of “Frank Mills.”

They had lots of popular stuff, of course. But their collection also included more eclectic things like whale songs, sound effects, random soundtracks like “Grand Prix,” reggae, The Tubes. I had some fun reminding them of some of their more faddish choices. Who needs three albums by the Fifth Dimension? (Hey, the covers were really cool.) Remember that track by 10cc about “I’m at the bottom of the pool?” Or Pablo Cruise’s “I Go To Rio?”

My folks put records on every single day. Arlo Guthrie was a favorite for a while, and later Carly Simon. Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” used to crack me up, as did Wings’ “Let ‘Em In.” Every so often I come across a song that is maddeningly familiar, but at the same time haunting because I have no specific recollection of it. Pretty much always, it turns out to be something my parents played incessantly when I was two, or three, or four. Isaac Hayes’ “Chocolate Chip” album always reminds me of the dark green linoleum of my parents’ kitchen floor. With Guthrie’s “Deportees,” it’s the living room carpet. These, most likely, are the places I used to play in the months while those LPs were in steady rotation.

As I got older, I was permitted the occasional record purchase of my own. Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall.” “Beauty and the Beat” by the GoGos. REO Speedwagon’s “High Fidelity.” My folks and I even had some overlap – we could all get excited about a Billy Joel record, or Hall & Oates, or the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

And they indulged us too. Marnie got the Annie soundtrack, even though it made my parents cringe. They were very kind to buy me things like K-Tel’s Night Flight (featuring Air Supply, Juice Newton, and my favorite, Joey Scarbury’s “Theme From the Greatest American Hero.”) They let us pick out 45s too – Pac Man Fever, You Light Up My Life, Axel F.

It comes as no surprise that pretty much all of the albums mentioned above have made it into my own collection. When a song plays at least a small role in your childhood, you may need to hear it every so often, just to take you back to that place and time. I’m grateful that my folks turned me on to so many great records.

Over the years, I’ve been able to return the favor. They missed Leonard Cohen the first time around, but I shared “I’m Your Man” with them, and now they’re rabid fans (we got to see him together at Berklee in the 90s). My interest in Mary-Chapin Carpenter opened a door to Cajun and Zydeco for them, when Beausoleil backed her up at a show. But they have yet to appreciate the finer points of the Violent Femmes.

Nick Hornby + Ben Folds = ♥ ♥ ♥

2011-01-17T21:42:00.001-05:00

Nick Hornby is one of my favorite writers. Actually, he is one of my Top Five Favorite Writers (if you’re a fan too, you’ll appreciate that reference). I devour his novels – High Fidelity, About a Boy, Juliet Naked, et al. I enjoy his non-fiction too, especially when he writes about music. So I was thrilled in 2002 when Hornby published Songbook, a collection of essays on 31 songs that have been meaningful to him over the years. That book kept me happy for months – I was only familiar with about a third of the tracks Hornby wrote about. So I set out to find, listen to, and digest the rest of them. I have a hard time resisting an assignment like that.

Ben Folds’ “Smoke” – from the excellent 1995 album Whatever and Ever Amen was profiled in Songbook. I have to admit, I haven’t followed Folds very closely in the past decade and a half, but thanks to my friend Derek, I’ve gotten to know several of his subsequent songs – “All U Can Eat,” “Rockin’ The Suburbs,” “Landed.” I like Ben Folds – he’s clever, he’s literate, and he makes great pop songs. I should listen to him more.

Imagine my delight when I learned that Nick Hornby and Ben Folds had collaborated on an album, Lonely Avenue. Hornby wrote the lyrics and Folds composed and performed the music.

Critical response was mixed when the album debuted in September 2010, so I didn’t rush right out to purchase it. I didn’t want to be disappointed. But Lonely Avenue made it into my Christmas stocking, and finally last week, on a long drive, I had a chance to give it a listen.

When it comes to music, I am not quick on the uptake. The sounds may grab me right away, but I generally don’t begin to absorb the lyrics until Listen #3 or so. Still, after I’d heard all of Lonely Avenue once through, I wanted to hear it again immediately. It was catchy – and Hornby’s words already had started to trickle in.

The world according to Levi Johnston (Bristol Palin’s baby daddy).

The awkward relationship between a “live and let live guy” and his neighbor with the barking pit bulls and loud Metallica.

The notion that we all have soul mates who we’ve encountered but never actually met . . . yet we’re happy enough in the lives we’re living that maybe it doesn’t matter.

The one-hit-wonder who has to sing that old love song about his ex-wife at every concert.

The mother with her sick child in the hospital on New Year’s Eve. Man, that song just kills me. Thank god it has the tiniest bit of uplift at the end.

It’s one thing to write good lyrics. It’s another thing to match them up with appropriate and equally good music. Hornby and Folds have done this masterfully. With each listen, I catch more and more of the subtle layers – a word, a melodic nuance. I highly recommend this album.

The Babysitter’s Here by Dar Williams

2010-07-21T13:56:00.000-04:00

The first song I ever heard from Dar Williams was “The Babysitter’s Here.” It was all over folk radio back in 1993. I immediately loved the song because it reminded me of someone I knew well – myself.

Not myself as a babysitter, though. Like most teenage girls, I did babysit, but I never made a career of it. To me, the ideal babysitting job was arriving after the kids had gone to sleep, and being able to watch TV and scavenge snacks from the family’s cupboards until the parents came home – the later the better. I was actually good with kids – willing to play board games and read books – but the nighttime jobs I tended to get didn’t permit me much time to spend with the kids. By the time I hit high school, people rarely asked me to sit anymore. Between homework and my social life, I didn’t have much time for it anyway.

No, the self I saw in the lyrics of “The Babysitter’s Here” was the child, the one being cared for. My parents went out one or two nights a week -- to work, or classes, or school conferences, or on dates. So having a babysitter was pretty common in our house, especially after my mom went back to work part-time.

We lived in a big neighborhood with lots of families, so there were quite a few teenage girls nearby who were available to watch my sister and me. Marnie and I certainly had our favorites, the ones who were willing to play the games we liked (Monopoly, of course, and Clue); the ones who would talk to us, take an interest in our lives, and treat us, in small ways, like equals.

In “The Babysitter’s Here,” we learn about the babysitter from a young child’s perspective. She wins the kids’ admiration right away. She teaches her charges the peace sign and makes popcorn, then lets them watch what I assume is “Fantastic Voyage” with the lights turned off.

I don’t understand and she tries to explain
How a spaceship is riding through somebody’s brain

My babysitters were cool like that too. They might let me stay up past my bedtime to watch The Love Boat or even Fantasy Island!

We had quite an array of babysitters over the years. I think my mother hired pretty much every girl in the neighborhood at least once. Some were rejected for various reasons, and others became “regulars.” There was Cecilia, or “Chi” as we called her, for whom my father played the eponymous Simon & Garfunkel track every time she walked in the door. Hearing the song now as an adult, I see this was a most inappropriate choice, but I don’t think my father meant any harm. He’s not the type to prey on babysitters. But Chi went off to college before Marnie and I were old enough to really get to know her.

The next great one was Cori, who was in the drama club at Marshfield High School. This verse from the Dar Williams’ song always reminds me of her.

And we all went to see her go dance at the high school
We made her a big card
And she told us that she'd be the unicorn wearing the
Pink leotard and
There she was leaping up just like she said
With a sparkling horn coming out of her head
And she's oh, oh
I can't wait to give her the card! I can't wait to give her the card!
She's the best one

{Spoken} Ok, so, the play was called "The Unicorn"
And she was the Unicorn
So, that means that the star was
My babysitter!

I distinctly remember telling people that the star of the Marshfield High School production of Pure As The Driven Snow was my very own babysitter!

The last two favorites were Brenda and Beth. Brenda lived next door and was only three years older than me. She walked the fine line between friend and caregiver, and by the time I was ten, my mother would have to assure me that Brenda was coming over just for Marnie, so my feelings wouldn’t be hurt.

Beth, the same age, lived next door to Brenda. When either of them would watch us, inevitably the other neighborhood girls would come too, and the group of us – maybe five total – would get hairbrushes and tennis racquets and pretend to be the GoGos or Joan Jett and her band. We’d put our 45s on the stereo and sing and play air guitar and dance.

She's the best one that we've ever had
She sits on her hair and she's tall as my dad
And she tie-dyed my shirt, and she pierced her own ear
And it's peace man, cool yah, the babysitter's here

Because Beth and Brenda were older, but not so old that we had nothing in common, I wanted to do a lot of the things they did. Beth was a majorette, so I signed up for baton twirling lessons. Brenda wore Izod shirts and had a Bermuda bag, so I got one too. And I was always fascinated to hear about the boys they were interested in, or maybe even dating.

Williams’ song focuses just as much on a child’s view of her babysitter as it does the tension between a 17-year old girl and her boyfriend, during the summer after high school ends. In “The Babysitter’s Here,” set in the late sixties/early seventies, we hear second-hand about the choice the babysitter must make: college or young love.

Her boyfriend is Tom
But we call him "the king of romance"
He wears an American flag on the butt of his
Ripped up pants and
Will they get married with kids of their own
He says not if she's going to college we won't and he
Kisses her, oh,
someday I'll have a boyfriend just like that

I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, so I’ll stop here. “The Babysitter’s Here” is a wonderful glimpse both of the adoration a little girl feels for her teenage babysitter, and the choices that babysitter makes as she becomes an adult. Fine writing here on Williams’ part. It’s on the album, “The Honesty Room.”

Check it out here.

What Do I Do With My Mix Tapes?

2010-02-07T18:50:00.000-05:00

I have way too much stuff, much of it sentimental. Photo albums, scrapbooks, letters, journals, even my retainer from second grade . . . and mix tapes. I’m constantly trying to get rid of things I don’t need anymore, and constantly arguing with myself about what really needs to be kept. The good news: I grow more and more detached with each round of deep cleaning, and am able to part with increasing amounts of junk. The bad news: there’s still plenty left.

Like my mix tapes.

I actually still have a cassette deck, but I only use it for work – copying instructional tapes I make for my yoga students. I never actually listen to music on it. I suppose I’ve kept my mix tapes this long because there’s always a chance I might listen to them again . . . but I probably won’t. For me, mix tapes are primarily for the car, where I haven’t had a tape deck for years.

So I’ve decided to get rid of them.

I’ve already tried ridding myself of cassettes in general. In my gigantic music collection, there remain about 175 cassettes, mostly mix tapes, since I’ve replaced all the albums that were on cassette with CDs. Last week I sorted through the 200, and found about 75 that I could part with fairly easily. They went to Freecycle, and -- surprise, surprise – no one was interested. So they’ll end up in the Take It Or Leave It shed at the dump.

The 100 that remain . . . here’s my plan. Now that I have my entire CD collection uploaded to a hard drive, I have digital access to all those songs. I’m going to make playlists in my iTunes for them. I’ll go through the tapes one by one, replace them with playlists. Certainly there won’t be 100 playlists worth keeping, but there will be a few. And I’m sure to rediscover some lost “gems” as well.

Once I’ve replicated them in iTunes, I can deliver the remaining 100 to the shed at the dump as well. Maybe someone else will enjoy them. (Probably not). But my house – and my conscience -- will be at least ten pounds lighter!

My Favorite Christmas Record

2010-01-09T22:26:00.001-05:00

I know Christmas has come and gone already, but I don't want to let another year pass before discussing my favorite Christmas record. And anyway, since this one is out of print, if it sounds like something you'd like to add to your collection, it may take some time to track it down.

Right after Thanksgiving, one of my friends posted the following question as her status on Facebook: What is your favorite Christmas song? I was quick to answer, "Dexter Gordon's version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," but then remembered, with regret, that I hadn't actually heard the song in at least a decade, since I only had it on a mix-tape. Immediately I felt sentimental, and HAD TO find the CD and purchase it. It's on an album called "God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen."

Lucky for me, there were a few sellers in the Amazon Marketplace peddling "Like New" copies of the CD for a reasonable price. Twenty-five dollars plus shipping is a reasonable price to pay for your favorite Christmas song, right? That's debatable. But in this case, the answer was "Of course."

The CD arrived a few days later, in beautiful condition.

Hearing Dexter Gordon's "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" always puts me in the mood for Christmas. It transports me to a time -- high school -- when Christmas was still relatively stress-free and utterly enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, I still LOVE Christmas, but as an adult, a spouse, a homeowner and a parent, I certainly experience the stress that goes along with the winter holidays. Still, hearing DG launch relaxedly into "Have Yourself . . . " mellows me right out.

I first heard this record on vinyl -- my uncle and aunt bought a copy in the early 80s. Back then I would borrow their LPs and make tapes of the songs -- or albums -- that I liked. My uncle was into jazz mostly, and my aunt liked new wave, so I was exposed to a wider array of music than I could find in my parents' ample but folk and rock-heavy collection. I was a curious listener -- eager to find out what John Klemmer or Lena Lovich sounded like.

God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen was a keeper (back in the days when "a keeper" was something I copied onto a blank Maxell XL-II-S because I didn't have the cash to actually go out and buy myself a copy). In addition to Dex, there's McCoy Tyner playing "I'll Be Home For Christmas," The Arthur Blythe Quartet doing "The Christmas Song," The Heath Brothers' "Our Little Town," Paquito D'Rivera's "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and The Wynton Marsalis Quintet's "We Three Kings of Orient Are." It's not a long album, but the six tracks are so low-key and satisfying, it doesn't matter that it's only a half hour long. You can play it again and again.

Ain't Life a Brook

2009-11-29T21:26:00.000-05:00

(Song written by Ferron, performed by Bill Morrissey and Greg Brown, from the album Friend of Mine.)

Now that I have my entire CD library digitized, I've been listening to it alphabetically while at the gym. I don't listen to every song -- It's more that I'm browsing, finding something to fit a particular mood.

The other day I came across "Ain't Life a Brook." The album that it's on came out in 1993, and I probably haven't listened to it for at least 10 years.

But on this particular day at the gym I was trolling for love songs. I am compiling the best of them in an iTunes playlist.

I didn't remember this song at all when it came on, and the first two lines piqued my interest.

I watch you reading a book
I get to thinking our love's a polished stone

Ah, this could be good. But then it continues . . .

You give me a long, drawn look
I know pretty soon you're gonna leave our home

Oh, never mind. It's not a love song. It's a breakup song. Maybe I need to have a file for those in my ITunes as well.

You say you hope I'm not the kind
To make you feel obliged
To go ticking through your time
With a pained look in your eyes
You give me the furniture, we'll
divide the photographs
Go out to dinner one more time
Have ourselves a bottle of wine
And a couple of laughs

This is an exquisitely drawn breakup song. Simply written, but the words convey the emotions so well, the stages of recovering from a breakup, moving on from a failed romance.

When first you left
I stayed so sad I couldn't sleep
I know that love's a gift, I thought yours was mine
And something that I could keep

We follow the fate of the furniture and the photographs as the narrator copes with the breakup, which he or she did not choose, and eventually becomes at peace with it.

I won't spoil it for you. Listen for yourself. Hear how it ends.

The refrain contains a truth one we all need to be reminded of every so often.

But life don't clickety clack
down a straight line track
It comes together and it comes apart.

Listen here:

1320 Days of Music (and growing)

2009-11-13T22:34:00.000-05:00

Well I've finally done it. I've imported all of my CDs to iTunes, storing the 263 GB archive on an external hard drive, with plenty of room to grow. I have attained my goal -- being able to have ALL my music on Shuffle Play. And I have to say, it's pretty darn cool.

I began this project in January (it is now mid-November). It went quickly enough, especially when I got my new super-fast iMac. But it slowed down tremendously at the end, when all I had left to import was burned CDs like mixes from friends and homemade compilations culled from the library and from the days when I worked at Sound Chaser and could borrow used CDs whenever I liked. In most cases, for those, I had to type in all the song names, artists, etc. Slow going.

But now it's done! Hooray, hooray! As of today, I have 38,229 songs in my archive, representing 1320+ days (that's 3.5 years) of music.

I expected that putting it all of shuffle play (now the iTunes DJ) would make for some diverse listening, digging up some long-forgotten gems. But so far, it's been more mundane. I suppose when you digitize every song from every album, you hear a lot of music that never made an impression on you in the first place -- filler tracks from less-than-classics albums, for example.

But on the other hand . . . what fun to hear, in "random" order (I know there's some kind of science to how iTunes creates its randomness) selections from the music I've enjoyed enough to collect thus far.

Here's what iTunes Dj came up with today.

Water - Dionne Farris
I Don't Want to Wait - Paula Cole
Here I Am - Lyle Lovett
B-Boy Bouillabaisse - Beastie Boys
Shelter - Sarah McLachlan
Blue Skies - Harry Connick Jr.
Cold Hands (Warm Heart) - Brendan Benson
Full of Life - John Gorka
Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan
Honey Bee - Stevie Ray Vauhan
Beethoven: Symphony # in D Minor, Op. 1 . . .
Ol' Man Rossi - Franco Godi
Mother _ Tori Amos
Tell Her Tonight - Franz Ferdinand
Beatnik Fly - Johnny & the Hurricans
River We Run - Louise Taylor
Farewell My Summer Love - Michael Jackson
Y.M.C.A. - The Village People
Funny How Time Flies - Stanley Clarke
The Worst - The Rolling Stones
Let's Do It - Billie Holiday

To me, that just doesn't seem very random, nor very representative. But still, I like it. I can't wait to hear what tomorrow will bring!

Sweet Soul Dream by World Party

2009-11-01T22:55:00.001-05:00

Back in my high school and college days, I had a bad habit of buying a CD, not quite loving it, then selling it used so I’d have more money in my pocket to buy new CDs. My motivation was lack of funding more than anything else (well, occasionally it was embarrassment). If I hadn’t “needed” the money so badly, I would have just let the CD get dusty on a shelf until perhaps I was ready to appreciate it more.

The unfortunate thing is that in many cases, I ended up buying the CD again, years later, when I realized how good it was. Here’s a sampling of some of the discs I have purchased twice.

Leonard Cohen – Greatest Hits
Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey – Mavericks
The Cumberland Three – Songs of the Civil War
Lindsey Buckingham - Out of the Cradle
The Eagles – Greatest Hits Volumes 1 & 2
Billy Joel – The Stranger, Glass Houses, An Innocent Man, The Nylon Curtain
Bob Dylan – Under the Red Sky
Joni Mitchell – Blue (Yes, really.)

World Party’s “Goodbye Jumbo” is another one on the list. When I worked at Strawberries, the record store chain, each month we were given two 90-minute cassette tapes called The Playlist. On them were songs from the new releases featured in the store that month, along with deejay-like banter introducing each track. These tapes were the only music allowed on the store’s sound system during operating hours. As you can imagine, my fellow employees and I learned every melody and every word, and by the end of the month generally hated – or sometimes loved – those songs.

The two tracks off Goodbye Jumbo were “Put the Message in a Box” and “Way Down Now.” I still enjoyed them at the end of the month, and used my better-than-nothing, 15% employee discount to purchase the disc. But after putting those tracks onto a mix tape (I didn’t have a CD player in my car until at least a decade later), I let the disc languish on my steadily-growing CD rack. Eventually it got sold back.

I rediscovered “Goodbye Jumbo” in 2002, twelve years after my initial purchase. Despite plenty of “real” work in my weekly schedule, I had taken a clerk’s position two nights a week in a local, independent CD store called Sound Chaser. Dave, one of the store’s owners, put “Goodbye Jumbo” on one night while we were shelving the latest batch of used CDs.

For the first “side” of the album, I was enjoying the flashback to my days at Strawberries (and thankful that Sound Chaser didn’t require me to wear a hideous red vest and name tag). For the second half, I listened more closely. I wasn’t as familiar with these songs. When “Sweet Soul Dream” came on, I knew I had to buy the CD all over again. (This time at an inflated, out-of-print price – but at least I got an employee discount).

The melody caught me first, as is often the case. But it was the lyrics that sold me. As a student of yoga and meditation, my interest is generally piqued when a rock star starts singing about his quest for enlightenment.

I don't need a body
A body's nobody to me
It's just a cell
And I'm leaving well
When I get you to give me the key
You can take all my postcards and letters
My loves and my good memories
Well I'd lose them all
Burn them all
Go without all of it
Give up the chances I see
If you'd raise me up
Take me up
Let me know the heart of it
Give me your sweet soul dream

It’s a sweet little gem of a song. Nothing mind-blowing, but a good track that stands the test of time.

Somehow I managed to forget about the song all over again, though. Life gets in the way, I guess. But at least this time “Sweet Soul Dream” had made it into my iTunes. The other night, it came up on random play. I marked it as a favorite, so it’ll keep reminding me of its presence.

For the record, I never, ever sell off my CDs anymore. It's just not worth the risk.

p.s. Some CDs I sold off that ‘d really like back again, please.
Del Fuegos – Smoking in the Fields
Traveling Wilburys – Volume 3

p.p.s. Hooray! Just found them both for 80 cents each on amazon.com.

Greg Brown - Two Little Feet

2009-10-11T21:28:00.000-04:00

This song, from Brown's 1996 album Further In, seems to pop into my head every fall. This year it was Ken Burns's National Parks series on PBS that triggered it, profiling John Muir, and making me sing to myself

John Muir
Walked away into the mountains
In his old overcoat
A crust of bread in his pocket

"Two Little Feet" pops into my head a lot when I'm walking too. It has the steady but relaxed rhythm of an outdoor stroll.

Two little feet
To get me 'cross the mountain
Two little feet
To carry me away into the woods

It's a song about freedom -- the freedom of leaving your stuff behind, and walking away into the mountains, perhaps, or into the woods. Maybe you're leaving for an hour. But maybe you're leaving for good.

It's the lines about "stuff" that really resonate for me. Such an apt critique of American culture these days -- how we go shopping to entertain ourselves, an empty exercise that soothes our longing temporarily, but doesn't do much for us in the long run.

We have no knowledge
And so we have stuff
And stuff with no knowledge is never enough
To get you there

And sometimes, even when we do go outside and go for a walk or climb a mountain, we're in danger of acquiring more useless stuff. Especially if it's a National Park, with ever-present gift shops.

A culture exploded into
Knicknacks and memories
Eagle and Bear trinkets
I don't think it's good

I love how Brown can make such a blunt pronouncement, but then immediately lighten it up with an "it's not such a big deal" type of comment.

It's a messed up world
But I love it anyway

Being outdoors can bring us freedom, but so can the thrill of a big new love.

Tumble us like scree
Let us holler out our freedom
Like a like a wolf across a valley
Like a kid lost in a game
No time no name
Gonna miss that plane again
I'm gonna stay here with you baby
And kiss you to a good dream

Further In seems to be an album that's all about leaving a marriage and starting a new relationship. Actually, even more so, it seems to be about the overlap of the two -- one love affair starting before another, earlier, one has ended. In general, it's about longing, sex, and freedom. Eloquent songs, but sometimes they are done so well that it makes you squeamish.

When Brown is not fantasizing about how "someday when we're both alone we'll get together," or explaining how "if you don't get it at home you're gonna go looking," he makes some spot-on observations of American culture. In a way, with all the love and sex in the songs, you don't see it coming. But then, almost off-handedly, he sneaks in a little nugget of wisdom. A pearl.

That's why I like his music.

Listen here.

John Stewart's "Runaway Train"

2009-09-22T20:31:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. I try to write something every Friday night, but over the past few weeks, I've felt overwhelmed by all the choices available -- to the point of not being able to write anything at all. There are too many noteworthy songs out there.

This one popped into my head while I was folding laundry. My son's favorite toys are his Thomas trains, and with trains on the brain, I found myself humming.

John Stewart is one of those great songwriters that few have even heard of. My high school English teacher turned me on to his music, and while in college, I became a tad obsessed. With more than 40 albums in his discography, there's a lot to digest. I've never been able to select a single one as my favorite, let alone a particular song.

Twenty years old now, this song certainly stands the test of time. It's basically an extended metaphor about a relationship on the skids.

I'm worried about you
And I'm worried about me
The curves around midnight
Aren't easy to see
The flashing red warnings
Unseen in the rain
This thing has turned into
A runaway train.

Rosanne Cash famously covered "Runaway Train" not long after Stewart recorded it on his own album, "Punch the Big Guy." While Stewart's relationship with his wife, Buffy Ford, may have endured ups and downs, we the audience weren't really privy to any drama (and they remained married for decades, until his death last year). But around the same time she recorded this song, Cash suffered a very public break-up with her then husband (and fellow musician) Rodney Crowell. So when you hear Cash sing this next verse, you really get how hard it can be to be married to someone whose job is to be on the road (and for Cash and Crowell, it was both of their jobs).

Long distance phone calls
There's a voice on the line
Electrical miles that soften the time
And dynamite too is hooked on the wire
So are the rails of American flyers

I love the instrumentation on this song. On both recordings, there's a subtle chugging quality -- nothing overwhelming, but more like the steady rhythm of a train on a wide open track. It really drives the metaphor home.

Steel rails and heart lines
They are always in twos
I have been here before, yeah
And now it's with you

Really, it's a sad song. "This relationship is out-of-control and ending, and it's not the first time I've been through this." But it's so expertly written that it doesn't bum out the listener as much as make him/her think "Yes, that sums up a derailed relationship quite succinctly."

Listen here.

Or Rosanne Cash's version here.

Cowboy Junkies - Ring on the Sill

2009-08-28T21:19:00.000-04:00

This song is from one of my favorite Cowboy Junkies albums, Pale Sun Crescent Moon, which was released in 1993. So I've been listening to the song for more than 15 years, and I'm still not quite sure what it's about.

This is a moody, intense album, dark and brooding. It was a departure from the CJ's first four, softer-sounding, more countrified albums. The songwriting is stellar.

Here's what I know. The song is about a married couple, settled into domestic life. The first snow of winter is imminent.

Here's what I think I get from the song: The passion the couple felt when their relationship was new has now cooled. What's unclear is if they're okay with this, because it seems to happen with every relationship, and it by no means signals the end of the affair, only a change in its chemistry -- Or if they are preparing themselves for their union to dissolve. I tend to think it's the former.

But this verse could be taken either way.

Do you remember when you'd pray
To never see the day
When someone would make you feel this way
'Cause you knew
They would cut right through you
And once inside, you were afraid they'd find
Nothing to hold on to

What I think that means is that when we fall in love, it can be a frightening time, because we want that love to be reciprocated. And we worry that our partner's feelings might not be as deep or as long-lasting as ours. It takes time for our feelings to mature and take their full shape.

There's more:

They're thinking of the long road ahead
And the strength that they will need
Just to reach the end

What is the "long road ahead?" Are they breaking up? Does one of them have cancer? Are they expecting their first child? Or is it simply the prospect of spending the rest of their lives together? As much as you love someone, it's is not always easy. You never know what life is going to throw at you and even if you have a strong, loving marriage, there are still plenty of challenges you're likely to encounter -- health, finances, loss. But to describe your life together as a "long road ahead" -- well, I suppose, it depends on how you feel about the road in general . . .

But then there's this:

There in the silence they search for
The balance between this fear that they feel
And a love that has graced their lives

To me, this is a happy ending, especially when you hear it in the context of the music, which seems to lift up at this point, to indicate that all is well. (The song concludes with an instrumental verse.) But it's always driven me a little crazy because I want to KNOW what this song is about. And I think it's purposely vague.

Hey, nothing is guaranteed, right?

If You Leave by OMD

2009-08-22T21:36:00.000-04:00

Movie writer/director John Hughes died a couple weeks ago, and thus there's been a flood of tributes and remembrances on the internet and elsewhere. Although not "of" my generation, John Hughes certainly spoke "for" my generation -- or more specifically, he did so when I was in junior high and high school, in the 1980s.

I'm talking about his teen movies here -- Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful -- and not the grown-up ones like Mr. Mom, or the kiddie ones like Home Alone. Those movies spoke to me, made me feel understood and less alone. They also cracked me up and gave me endless hours of entertainment, either from repeated watchings or relentless quoting (my sister claims to have once had the entire screenplay of Sixteen Candles memorized). Better still, my parents didn't see the appeal. It feels good to have something of one's own, especially at, say, age 13.

I don't have a favorite John Hughes movie. They each suit different moods and needs. But the one that I identified the most with at the time of its theatrical release is Pretty in Pink. Ninth grade. What a hellish year. Dumped by my boyfriend and dropped inexplicably by the popular crowd over the summer -- and amidst a surge of insecurity that made me quit band and choose to take classes that weren't challenging enough academically -- I started high school gaining weight, wearing braces that pulled my front teeth apart, and otherwise feeling crappy about myself. Enter Molly Ringwald, back for her third John Hughes incarnation, this time as Andie Walsh, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with a flair for secondhand fashion and a mad crush on a cute preppy boy.

Andie's family life wasn't like mine -- her mom had abandoned her and her depressed, unemployed dad (Harry Dean Stanton) -- but I identified with her, even idolized her. She worked in a new wave record shop and her closest friends were Duckie Dale (a male version of Andie, socially) and Iona, the kooky, thirty-something owner of the record shop. She got harassed by the "richies" the same way some sophomore girls made fun of me for my wardrobe choices. But she was cool. Even when she was falling apart, she seemed cool to me.

Andie and the preppy boy, Blaine, start dating, and they seem to like each other a lot despite their social and economic differences, but then he dumps her, right before the prom. He can't handle the opinions of his friends and family. Andie goes to the prom alone. Duckie meets her there, and then Blaine comes back with his ail between his legs. Cue "If You Leave." The producers of Pretty in Pink got the band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) to write it especially for the end of the movie. And it fits, sonically, even if the lyrics sometimes leave me scratching my head.

If you leave
Don't leave now
Please don't take my heart away
Promise me
Just one more night
Then we'll go
Our separate ways

We've always had
Time on our sides
But now it's fading fast
Every second
Every moment
We've got to
We've got to make it last

Add in some synthesizers and a drum machine and pow! You've captured the drama and urgency of teen romance.

I touched you once
I touched you twice
I won’t let go
At any price
I need you now
Like I needed you then
You always said
We'd still be friends
Someday . . .

I don't know why, but despite the desperation in the lyrics, and the fact that Blaine comes back for Andie at the end of the movie (but we still think he's a dink), the song made me feel good; hopeful.

Pretty much all of my romantic relationships in junior high and high school lasted exactly one and a half months. By then, either I would have tired of my boyfriend or he would have tired of me. But the one who dumped me over the summer between eighth and ninth grade was different -- we had dated for months. It felt serious and real, so when he broke up with me I was surprised and devastated. (In fact, the immediate result was that I got mononucleosis). But I had my Duckie Dale too, my quirky male friend who made me laugh . . .

The soundtrack albums to the John Hughes movies were disjointed and flawed, but each contained at least one gem. Sixteen Candles had "If You Were Here" by the Thompson Twins, The Breakfast Club had "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds (originally intended for Billy Idol), Ferris Bueller had "Oh Yeah" by Yello, and Pretty In Pink had "If You Leave." To this day, hearing the opening chords of that song brings me right back to freshman year. Despite the angst and sadness I felt back then, the song still makes me feel good.

Listen here.

From Elvis in Memphis

2009-08-14T21:45:00.000-04:00

In honor of the 32nd anniversary of Elvis Presley's death (August 16) I offer this tribute.

Elvis wasn't really known for his albums -- rather for his singles. And he released so many excellent singles.

But this is an excellent album. It came out in 1969, after he was done with the "Elvis" movies, and before he succumbed to Las Vegas schlock.

The song choices (as usual, Elvis didn't write them) are very good, and varied enough in style to keep your interest piqued. The backing musicians are a skilled, tight unit. Even the cover art, featuring a still-slim, quite handsome Elvis on stage, is captivating.

And the performance. I think it's Elvis's most relaxed. He embodies the songs without overpowering them. He sounds engaged -- never bored. Here we find him at his polished best -- comfortable-sounding country, pop and soul songs. Yes, there are hints of the schmaltz to come, but also finesse, style, grace.

I like the first track, "Wearin' That Loved On Look," and Elvis's rendition of "Gentle on My Mind." Critics like "Long Black Limousine" and "I'll Hold You in My Heart." "In the Ghetto" was a big hit. And there are seven more on top of that. Check it out.

Listen here.

Why I Love Leonard Cohen, Part 1

2009-08-07T21:05:00.000-04:00

I like it when someone tells it like it is. As long as I agree with them, of course. This week I noticed some new bumper stickers around town, jeering at the "socialist" republic in which we are living, and counting the days until President Obama leaves office. That kind of posturing pisses me off. Let's give the new regime a chance to make the changes it intends to make, okay? This kind of change doesn't happen overnight.

Still, this week on the news, I heard about record losses of US troops in Afghanistan, and I felt a complicated mass of emotions. Sadness, disbelief, impatience, and ignorance -- surely this Middle East mess is more complicated than it seems.

I was driving home from work at lunchtime and ended up at a red light behind a car that most likely belonged to a college kid -- a decade-old Honda Civic, plastered with bumper stickers. I had time to read them all. One in particular made me smile with a fond recognition.

"There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in."

Ah, Leonard Cohen . . . now appearing on a bumper near you. And he's right. If we didn't encounter any problems, we'd never make any progress or learn anything new.

Do you know this song? It's called "Anthem," and it's on the 1992 album, "The Future." If you've heard it, you might remember it better as "Ring the Bells," as those are the first words of the oft-repeated refrain.

"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack, in everything.
That's how the light gets in."

"Anthem" is a song about war -- and peace. It's a song about corrupt government -- and revolution. It's a song about love -- and loss.

And hope.

"The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what it yet to be"

Cohen practices Buddhism, and one of the things you learn when you study the teachings of the Buddha is that being present is what it's all about. Don't worry about the past or fret about the future -- just focus on what's going on right now. It's not about denial, and it isn't easy to do -- letting go of anxieties about what might happen or what should have been done.

I like this song because it reminds me that things can -- and will -- get bad. And then better. And then bad. And then better. And so on. Perhaps the best thing to do is accept the inherent flux in life, and ride the wave.

At the end of the song, Cohen sings:

"Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee."

I've pondered these words, trying to prize out his exact meaning. LC can be bleak at times. But surely it's not desperation that drives us to love. Do we love because it provides shelter from the scary world out there? It's got to be more than that. But love does provide a safe haven from the craziness we encounter when we leave the house (or turn on the TV) each day. Tonight, curled up on the couch with my sweeties within reach, I am grateful.

Listen here.

Paul Anka - You're Having My Baby

2009-07-31T20:37:00.000-04:00

That's Anka on the right.

Last week my son declared this to be his favorite song, despite the fact that my husband said it was "corny" and I said it was "cheesy." These things apparently don't matter to a three year old. We were driving in the truck, listening to a mix CD that I made for Chris when I was pregnant with Abel. It should be noted here that Cheech & Chong's "Basketball Jones" is also on the mix, because at the time, my belly resembled a basketball.

When your three year old declares a song his favorite, you end up listening to it much more than you probably would otherwise. There are many downsides to this, even when it's a song you like, but one of the few upsides is that you really get to know the lyrics.

Somehow, repeated listens got me past the corn and the cheese to discover a rather remarkable nugget. Obscured within this hackneyed, Elvis-in-Vegas-y, easy listening track to which you can't help but sing along -- "what a lovely way of sayin' how much you love me" -- is a bright, shining sign of the changing times. The record was released in 1974, less than a year after the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion.

After hearing such gems as

The need inside you
I see it showing

and

The seed inside ya
Baby do you feel it growin'

and

I'm a woman in love
And I love what it's doin' to me (the song is a duet with Odia Coates)

(I know, I know . . .)

is this:

Didn't have to keep it
Wouldn't put ya through it
You could have swept it from your life
But you wouldn't do it

OMG! They actually played this on AM radio? Better still, it was a Number One Hit. (And then in later years, voted the #1 Worst Song of All Time on cnn.com. But still . . .)

Ostensibly, the song was written for Anka's wife and four kids. My first interpretation of the lyric was "I'm progressive enough to respect your right to choose." But then I realized, it could also be interpreted as "I was ambivalent about this pregnancy, and would have endorsed termination, but I'm glad you decided to keep the child." Considering the historic context, they both makes sense. The latter, of course, is tad more on the icky side.

The tone of the song is rather sexist and at times, crass. But still, to blithely sing a verse that essentially says "You could have had an abortion but you didn't" is significant -- . . . okay, and utterly bizarre.

But it was the seventies, baby!

Listen here:

The Book of Love - The Magnetic Fields

2009-07-24T21:25:00.000-04:00

I'm a sucker for a good love song, especially one that begins with the blunt statement, "The book of love is long and boring."

It's true, right? The book of love, whatever it may be, is likely filled with all sorts of wonderful stories that are, in essence, pretty much the same. Compelling to the storytellers and (hopefully) their family and friends, but in the greater scheme, rather ordinary. But love is ordinary. Essential, but ordinary. On this album, the Magnetic Fields manage to perform 69 different songs about it.

But this love song isn't going to be all-blunt -- because that too would be boring. It continues:

"I love it when you read to me and
You can read me anything."

Aw . . . that's sweet.

Speaking of love, I love this song because it's so simply stated, yet it also acknowledges how hard it can be to speak accurately of this complex emotion. On the subject of love songs, for example, we hear

"Some of it is transcendental
Some of it's just really dumb."

Blunt.

"But I love it when you sing to me and
You can sing me anything."

Sweet.

Peter Gabriel did a cover of "The Book of Love" for the Shall We Dance (Jennifer Lopez, Richard Gere) soundtrack. I'm a longtime Gabriel fan, but having known and, . . . er, loved this song's original version, I find his cover a tad too, shall I say, Gabrielesque. The production is a little too grand for so delicate a song.

But that's a matter of taste. Hear it out to the end and you discover that "The Book of Love" is essentially a proposal of marriage. Do you want your proposal grand, or do you want it delicate? Your answer reveals which version you should add to your iTunes.

Click here for The Magnetic Fields.

Click here for Peter Gabriel.

Joe Henry "Our Song"

2009-07-16T20:41:00.000-04:00

I've been a Joe Henry fan since "Murder of Crows." I didn't know that his latest album, "Civilians," had come out until I heard "God Only Knows" (not the Beach Boys song) on Turner Classic Movies' annual tribute reel. Typical of me, I fell in love with the sound of the song before I managed to digest the lyrics completely (I still haven't).

But my affection for "God Only Knows" has been eclipsed by "Our Song," another track on the same album. It begins:

I saw Willie Mays
In a Scottsdale Home Depot
Looking at garage door springs
At the end of the 14th row

How could you not pause to listen after hearing that?

What follows is the refrain, a meditation on where our country has been -- and where it's headed.

This was my country
This was my song
Somewhere in the middle there
Though it started badly and it's ending wrong

With a refrain like that, you know the song is going to veer sharply from the warm fuzzies you get from catching a glimpse of one of our country's best and most famous centerfielders in a chain store. And it does.

I don't want to spoil it, so I will stop quoting, and just offer a few tidbits. Squandered goodwill, parole, a home shaded by a factory . . .

And once you've gotten lost in imagining who this narrator is and what his or her life must be like, once again you're back to Willie Mays and door springs, and a unifying, even uplifting conclusion.

He's just like us I want to tell him
And our needs are small enough
Something to slow our heavy door
Something to raise one up

It goes on from there. Give it a listen.

Click here.