Terrible Analogies

Our neighborhood held a picnic during this past Memorial Day weekend.  As we were enjoying our hamburgers and hotdogs a young couple new to the neighborhood strolls up.  The wife appeared to be in her second/third trimester.  I introduced myself and asked if I could get either of them something to eat from the grill. The wife quickly replied, “No, thanks.  I have to carefully watch this life force I’m creating.  Would you have anything organic instead?”

Uhhh, okay.  I guess that means more nitrate dogs for the rest of us.

In all honesty, I don’t believe all pregnant women are smug. But I do think that it’s a demographic that doesn’t get made fun of that often.

With both Karin and Tyler gone for the evening I decided to crack open a beer and settle down to a viewing of Funky Monks.

Long before MTV and VH1 started shelling out big money to produce vapid documentaries about music “artists” and their homes/pets/addictions, an independent team of filmmakers came up with the idea to follow the Red Hot Chili Peppers around a rented home they were using as a studio to record their landmark album Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik, and in so doing humanized a group of talented musicians, stripping away the mystique and “star” status, and giving us a view into the very heart of their creative process.

You won’t see any high-production lighting or pre-scripted scenes here.  But what you will see is a band at their peak pouring all they have into what remains as their most important achievement, and is still considered today to be a capstone in the rock/funk music genre.

Immediately absent are full musical performances in this 48-minute film.  Instead you’re given a first-hand view into a world rarely seen.  Exposed are the highs of a band at its zenith, the friendships and camaraderie of a group of people who intensely love what they do, and hints of demons still yet to fully manifest themselves as they scratch at the thin shell of human control (I’m looking squarely at you, John Frusciante).  Snippets of insights and stories are told between shots of how the band managed to record Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik, with the highlight being the story told by Anthony Kiedes detailing the sad inspiration to their song Under The Bridge.

This is one of the best music documentaries ever produced, and serves as a perfect example of how driven indie producers can make something singularly special with nothing more than a love for the subject material.  If you’re a fan of the RHCP, or just have a passing interest in them, you’d be well rewarded to give this film a viewing.

Lifted from a heavily influential graphics design book I own entitled Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte.

Here’s a musical streams-of-story, an appealing history of “marketing trends and stylistic patterns in the development of pop/rock music.”  Topping the chart is a time-series that tracks sales of popular and rock music as a share of total record sales, although the names are not scaled in proportion to their contributions to the grand total.  Bold letters indicate some 24 stylistic categories, fountains flowing into musical streams.

Also the illustration presents a somewhat divergent perspective on popular music: songs are not merely singles – unique, one-time, de novo happenings – rather, music and music-makers share a pattern, a context, a history.

Please click to embiggen:

What I find most interesting is that rock-n-roll doesn’t manifest itself with the advent of Elvis, but rather this chart rightfully gives credit to rockabilly acts such as Bill Haley, Bill Flagg, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins.

This graphic has always held a sort of fascination for me.  It’s nice (and surprising) to know where styles of music originated and what they eventually evolved into.

While driving Tyler to the parents yesterday morning before work (love the parents for looking after Tyler during the week!) the song “Always The Sun” by The Stranglers randomly popped up on my iTouch and I couldn’t help but turn the volume a bit as it played. It had been a year, perhaps two, when I last heard a Stranglers song, and upon hearing “Always The Sun” I was instantly transported back to my high school days when music was new and truly exciting.

Those were the days when “alternative music” was actually that and not just a term dreamed up to target a demographic to jolt the baser instincts of the lowest common denominator. Music from that era was slowly emerging from the pungent pool of 80′s synth pop and had evolved into a more mature and self-aware form of expression.

This was a time of The Clash, REM, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Yello, Depeche Mode, New Order, Tears For Fears, Talking Heads and Bauhaus (just to name a few notables). There were so many fantastic bands that made a name for themselves during those fleeting moments of time that quite often a true gem was overlooked due to either poor timing or poor management (bastards!).

One of these bands that suffered the slings and arrows of incompetent management was The Stranglers, and one of the greatest tragedies of the decade was how their album Dreamtime (stream it here) was overlooked.

Dreamtime was the smoothed-out offering from a band formerly known for jagged tones of dubious quality. It’s the natural progression and culmination of a band whose time should have come with the release of this album which sounds suspiciously like Kraftwerk and early Talking Heads got into a car accident and both groups happened to be  insured by a very laid back Jacques Cousteau.

It’s one of those albums that simply grows on you as time goes on, never becoming boring or stale. You can go months between listenings, and each time it’ll sound amazingly new and refreshing. It’s not challenging music, but rather music for your old soul.  My physical copy of this album sits proudly amongst a clutch of albums that helped to define me as a person growing up, and it will eventually be passed down to my son who I hope will enjoy it just as much as I have.

This is one of the albums that I’ll be rocking out to someday in the old folk’s home.

I was home ill today and found myself with quite a bit of time to kill, which meant that I could relax a bit and listen to some music. I wanted to catch up on the latest by The Cave Singers, Cage The Elephant, Nortec Collective and finally get around to spinning Yeasayer’s live album in full.

With that completed I flipped iTunes over to shuffle mode and picked up where I left off on The Samaritan by Fred Venurini when Country Death Song by the Violent Femmes began playing.  ”Wow, that’s depressing,” I thought before burying my nose back in my book.

A few minutes later Johnny Cash’s disembodied voice was belting out NIN’s Hurt though my speakers.  What are the odds that two depressing songs such as these would randomly play back to back?  It was then that I put down my book and began digging though my music collection in search of even more darker and depressing songs (’cause I’m weird like that).

With hours yet to kill before Karin got home from work I cobbled together what I consider to be 10 of the most disturbing and/or depressing songs ever recorded.  They are, in no discernible order:

• Ballad of Hollis Brown by Bob Dylan

A haunting ballad detailing the poor, wretched existence of Hollis Brown.  A man so broken down by life that he eventually shoots his family then himself.

Your grass it is turning black
Theres no water in your well
Your grass is turning black
Theres no water in your well
You spent your last alone Dollar
On seven shotgun shells

• Country Death Song by Violent Femmes

The subject of this song must have been a big Dylan fan.  Not being a firearms aficionado, the antagonist in this little ditty finds himself emotionally destroyed by the recent death of his wife and daughters.  Crazed by his loss he decides to throw his remaining daughter down a well, then hangs himself.

Gather round boys to this tale that I tell.
You wanna know how to take a short trip to hell?
It’s guarenteed to get your own place in hell.
Just take your lovely daughter and push her in the well.
Take your lovely daughter and throw her in the well.

Don’t speak to me of lovers, with a broken heart.
You wanna know what can really tear you apart?
I’m going out to the barn, with a never stopping pain.
I’m going out to the barn, to hang myself in shame.

•  The Rake’s Song by The Decemberists

In keeping with the progeny killing motif I’ve stumbled upon, The Rake’s Song plays like a demented soap opera:  Single man gets married, his wife dies giving birth to their fourth child, man wishes he could pick up the shattered remains of his single life but is weighed down by his bothersome children.  Of course the only logical course of action he can think of is to murder said children.  Yeah, seems reasonable to me….

What can one do when one is a widower?
Shamefully saddled with three little pests
All that I wanted was the freedom of a new life
So my burden I began to divest
Alright, alright, alright
Alright, alright, alright

Charlotte, I buried after feeding her foxglove
Dawn was easy, she was drowned in the bath
Eziah fought but was easily bested
Burned his body for incurring my wrath
Alright, alright, alright

And that’s how I came your humble narrator
To be living so easy and free
Expect you think that I should be haunted
But it never really bothers me
Alright, alright, alright
Alright, alright, alright

• Where The Wild Roses Grow by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Where The Wild Roses Grow is a conversation between two people, telling us the story of a courtship out on a date by the river where the beautiful woman is killed by her be-smitten beau who can’t stand the idea of her beauty fading with age.  You know, a traditional love story…

On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he knelt (stood smiling) above me with a rock in his fist

On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
And I kissed her goodbye, said, “All beauty must die”
And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth

• Possum Kingdom by The Toadies

It’s that old chestnut of a story:  Boy loves girl.  Boy takes girl for a walk under the stars.  Boy kills girl and hides her body in the bog to preserve her beauty forever.  Classic Disney, that.

Don’t be afraid
I didn’t mean to scare you
So help me, Jesus

I can promise you
You’ll stay as beautiful
With dark hair
And soft skin…forever
Forever

• My Name Is Mud by Primus

Mud is proud of his shoes.  So proud is he of his shoes that he keeps them meticulously spotless and shiny.  That is until his friend accidentally steps on them.  Mud has a serious problem with this, and so he does what any of us would do in this situation.  He kills his friend with a baseball bat.

I’ve got my pride, I drink my wine
I’d drink the finest except I haven’t earned a dime in several months
Or were it years
The breath on that fat bastard could bring any man to tears
We had our words, a common spat
So I kissed him upside the cranium with an aluminum baseball bat
My name is Mud

• Streets Of Laredo by Johnny Cash

Sure, I could have gone with his cover of Hurt, but Streets Of Laredo is a much more sombre tune.  It’s a conversation between a corpse and cowboy.  The corpse relates his sad tale to the cowboy and asks that he tells his mother of his death, then gives instructions for his funeral.  With Cash’s quivering delivery this dirge of a song is hauntingly beautiful.

I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.
These words he did say as I boldly walked by.
Come an’ sit down beside me an’ hear my sad story.
I’m shot in the breast an’ I know I must die.

It was once in the saddle, I used to go dashing.
Once in the saddle, I used to go gay.
First to the card-house and then down to Rose’s.
But I’m shot in the breast and I’m dying today.

• Brick by Ben Folds Five

In this autobiographical song Ben Folds sings about his high school girlfriend having an abortion.  Once you understand what the song is about it takes on a much more serious tone.

They call her name at 7:30
I pace around the parking lot
Then I walk down to buy her flowers
And sell some gifts that I got
Can’t you see
It’s not me you’re dying for
Now she’s feeling more alone
Than she ever has before

• Polly by Nirvana

Polly is based on the true story of a female rape and torture victim from Tacoma, Washington.  When this song was release I had no idea what it was about.  Sometimes I wish I had never found out…

Polly wants a cracker
I think I should get off her first
I think she wants some water
To put out the blow torch

• Georgia Lee by Tom Waits

Written by Tom Waits and his wife, this is the true story of 12 year old Georgia Lee Moses, whose body was found off of Highway 101 just north of San Francisco in 1997.  Her murderer was never caught.  This song can be found on the album Mule Variations, which I firmly believe to be Tom’s finest album to date.

Cold was the night, hard was the ground
They found her in a small grove of trees
Lonesome was the place where Georgia was found
She’s too young to be out
On the street.

Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for
Georgia Lee?