Thank You

For the last few months it has become harder and harder to put out material that I believe is up to the standards I originally set out to fulfill. The analysis has slowly become shorter and less in depth. I feel as though I am saying the same thing over and over again. Of course this can't be completely avoided when dealing with such specific subject matter, but this does not mitigate the fact that I do not feel like I can keep up and give this blog the attention it deserves. So it is with this in mind that I must rest and regroup before I  continue. I need some time to determine what I want to write about and how to go about it. It may come that I will continue with this blog a few months down the road, or it may be that I start a new one. I will let you know as soon as I do.

Thank you to everyone that has enjoyed this blog. Even in the age where publishing one's self is so simple that it renders the weight of being published meaningless, it has still been an immense privilege to write for you twice a month for the last year and a quarter. Thanks mostly to my friends that are readers. You were often the reason I kept going, pushing myself become a better writer and find more music to analyze. Just knowing that there were real people out there reading and having opinions about work that I put out has been amazing. It would have been a much shorter run without you.

I will return.

Thank you,
Jeremy

Like A Friend

I forgot about this week's song for a long time. I first heard it in the 1998 movie Great Expectations in the background of the most arousing scene my seventeen year old brain had ever seen. You'll see the scene inter-spliced in the video below, but essentially it goes like this: "Hello Ethan Hawk, childhood friend with which sexual tension was shared, here I am, the grown up Gweneth Paltrow. I hear you're an artist, please draw me. Oh yeah, to your surprise I'm gonna get nude first." Actually, I think the scene earlier in the movie, with Chris Cornell's "Sunshower" in the background is a little more, let's say exciting, but they're both good.

"Like A Friend" by Pulp from Great Expectations Soundtrack

http://youtu.be/snouZdW2IWg 

This song recently came back onto my radar due to it's use in the TV show The Venture Bros. Season 4 finale "Operation P.R.O.M." Check it out here: http://youtu.be/9E4yrqGGLPo. Forget for a moment that the song's material perfectly matches the content of the episode and just watch how brilliantly the action and music escalate with each other. It is one small piece of evidence that this show is pure brilliance. If you're not watching Venture Bros. you're really missing out on something special.

The song opens with windchimes, clean open guitar chords in a large reverbed space, and the lyric "Don't bother to say you're sorry. Why don't you come in, smoke all my cigarettes again?" We automatically get the feeling that we are in this person's head. These are the things he can't bear to say out loud. Come in and use me. "Every time I get no further. How long has it been?" When was it? When did that door open? When did you close it? How many times did you open it again just because you knew you could, just because you knew I'd be there? "Go on in now, wipe your feet on my dreams."

"You take up my time like some cheap magazine when I could have been learning something. Oh well, you know what I mean." I do it, it's my choice. I suppose I must like to, but in the end I'm just wasting time. "I've done this before," a million times, "and I'll do it again," a million more. "C'mon and kill me baby while you smile like a friend." You know you do it too, though. You'll never stop, and I know why, because "...I'll come running just to do it again."

The song kicks hard. Drums, Bass, and Keys join in. The guitar distorts and chunks away at power chords. A biting three note guitar lead emerges as a simple and heart wrenching ostinato. What follows lyrically has to be a collection of some of the best and most simply effective metaphors since "Juliet is the sun."

"You are the last drink I never should have drunk." - but my judgment is impaired by then. You intoxicate me and I can't help myself.

"You are the body hidden in the trunk." - you're a dark secret, something I can't take back. I really need to face it but all I can do now is hide it.

"You are the habit I can't seem to kick." - I've tried a million times, but there you are again.

"You are my secrets on the front page every week." -It's obvious. Everyone can see, everyone knows, and I just wish I could hold it in.

"You are the car I never should have bought." - A waste from the beginning. I never should have done this and now I spend all my time working on it and if I can ever fix one thing then another goes wrong immediately.

"You are the train I never should have caught." - It takes me the wrong way.

"You are the cut that makes me hide my face." - I don't want to be seen. I am such a failure that it makes me ashamed.

"You are the party that makes me feel my age." - You're in a different world and I feel so out of place. When I'm around you I become an odd spectacle, an exercise in juxtaposition, something to be gawked at.

"You're like a car crash I can see but I just can't avoid." - In slow, chest tightening, adrenaline pumping anxiety.

"Like a film that's so bad, but I've just got to stay 'till the end." - because, somehow, I've become emotionally invested.

"Let me tell you know it's lucky for you that we're friends."

Yeah, ... 'I'm so lucky to have a friend like you.' Maybe. Maybe you are. I wish I had someone who ..., well, it's not important.

The song falls into an ambient lull, an emotional purgatory, to mull over our catharsis, and then kicks back in one more time. It's a vicious cycle, a perfect circle. There is no beginning, no end. It just is. It will always be.

As always feel free to comment, complain, or suggest here or at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net. Also comment or email if you want to talk about the use of this song in The Venture Bros, or anything Venture Bros. related at all. 

Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues

Today is tax day, and as promised we will take a look into the burden of the working man. Here is one of my favorite old blues tunes, Skip James' "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues"

"Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" by Skip James
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Rv-_mzVBSF8?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>iframe>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv-_mzVBSF8

 Like many of you I was first introduced to this song through the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?, in which it was performed by Chris Thomas King. Check that version out here. The movie came out at a time in my life that I was really into movies, and I saw it on the night it opened. The soundtrack was so impressive to me that I went out the next day and bought it. I must not have been the only one because despite rumors that the soundtrack tested bad because it was "too twangy," the album has been certified 7x Platinum. T-Bone Burnett, the album's producer has since won many awards, been the mastermind behind many excellent soundtracks and collaborative releases featuring American roots music.

Skip James wasn't quite as successful. He was a blues musician active mostly in the nineteen-thirties. He recorded a handful of songs for Paramount, and while his songs were depression era appropriate, they did not sell well. This was most likely due to the fact there was a depression going on. James' work would probably have been lost if it were not for the British interest in the 1960's of early American blues music. The resurgence into this American art form brought Skip James into relative popularity for the last few years of his life.

The haunting style and dark honesty of "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" is what drew me to it, and it is from this song that I gained my love of old time country blues. The song starts with James' iconic fingerpicking. We hear only a few seconds of guitar before James' high, aching call comes in. "Hard times are here an' everywhere you go times are harder than ever been before." If you are hurtin', and many are these days, this statement feels as prominent today as it did in 1931. "Now people are driftin' from door to door, can't find no heaven don't care where they go." James wails because he knows what it is like to drift like the wind, thin and empty, from door to door.

"Let me tell you people just before I go these hard times'll kill you just dry long slow." It's here to stay. If it hasn't hit you yet, it's coming and there's no preparing for it. There's no real way to survive it. It's all about enduring with the faint hope that you can deal with it.

"If I ever get off of this killin' floor I'll never get down this low no more." A killing floor is the area in a slaughterhouse where the animals are killed. Today this is automated, but in the thirties this was mostly done by individuals. It was a physically hard and brutal on the psyche, but work is work. In this context one wonders if James is working on the killing floor, or waiting there. Does he want out of the only dead-end job he can find, or does he hoping to escape the hammer?

"And if you say you had money, you'd better be sure. These hard times will drive you from door to door." So no one is immune, it gets us all eventually. That sense of self protection, that light at the end  of the tunnel, the hope of escape itself is essentially futile. 

"Sing this song and I ain't gonna song no more. These hard times will drive you from door to door." So I'll leave you with this, dear reader, things are bad right now and they are going to get worse. The common man's definition states that a recession is when your neighbor loses their job, a depression is when you lose yours too. There is a good possibility there will be a lot of us going door to door in the next few years, so make sure you're kind no matter which side of the door you are on.

As always feel free to comment here or at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net

Another Delay

Greetings Dear Readers,

For a second time I am going to have to delay a release of Suicide Watch Songs. It has been an incredibly trying couple of months for me and there just are not enough hours in the day nor enough mental capacity in my head to accomplish everything I need to get done. Please do not think that I take this lightly. I understand that delays hurt readership and create mistrust within a small but faithful group of readers. Believe me when I say that I hate having to do this. Thank you once again for your patience.

jeremy

On Any Other Day

For this April fool's we'll take a look on the lighter side, because, as you know, the rest are complete bullshit. You want something corny? You got it.

"On Any Other Day" by The Police from Regatta de Blanc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXsXZ_FNRzo

Some of you may not know that members of The Police other than Sting actually wrote songs for the band. In fact, Stewart Copeland, the writer of this song, has been noted as stating that all three members contributed the same amount of songs, "Sting just wrote all the hits." Copland's tunes have a tongue-in-cheek irony to them. The characters aren't exactly self-centered, but they are self-oriented that they don't quite understand the universe around them.

In this case our protagonist sees his world as something that happens to him, not something that he can interact with or change in any way. He has a high opinion of himself. "There's a house on my street and it looks real neat. I'm the chap who lives in it. There's a tree on the sidewalk. There's a car by the door." It is all very self assuring. He is giving us a setting and placing himself squarely in it. The following line has been described by Copeland himself as being nonsensical. "And when the wombat comes he will find me gone. He'll look for a place to sit."

The chorus kicks in "My wife has burnt the scrambled eggs, my dog just bit my leg, my teenage daughter ran away, my fine young son has turned out gay ..."  His life is starting to fall apart. Things aren't supposed to work out this way. 

The verse structure now moves to a call and response. It's a series of horrible events and painful reactions to them. "Cut up my fingers in the door of my car. (How could I do it?) My wife is proud to tell me of her love affairs (How could she do this to me?)"  Uggh, life is soooooo hard.

"My wife has burnt the scrambled eggs, my dog just bit my leg, my teenage daughter ran away, my fine young son has turned out gay, AND IT WOULD BE OK ON ANY OTHER DAY!" Is it just that everything is seeming to go wrong on this one day, or does this day hold some kind of significance that compound the horribleness of these events?

Our protagonist continues "Throw down the morning papers and spill my tea (I don't know what's wrong with me)." He's coming apart. "The cups and plates are in a conspiracy (I'm covered in misery)." He's gone nuts.  As we head into the final chorus and fade we hear an odd set of vocal overdubs. Turns out that these are a weird truncation of 'happy birthday,'  changed from original to avoid paying copyright royalties. A quick side note is that the tune 'happy birthday' is not owned by two little old ladies and their family, but rather by the publishing house Warner Chapel itself. The exorbitant fees that are people always attribute to not being able to use the actual song? That's the result of a greedy corporate decision. 

Anywho, there's our answer. It's this guy's birthday and all this crap is going bad for him. All this would be fine, cup and plate conspiracy and all, on any other day. 

Have a good April fools everyone. Feel free to comment or complain here or drop me a line at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net. Also, I have not yet decided on this year's working man tax day song, so if you have a suggestion let me know.

Losing My Religion

Last year I wrote about Jason Lytle's "Rollin' Home Alone." I went through my entire review with my own opinion and then disclosed that Lytle had a completely different intent with the motive of the song. Today I want to look at a song that fooled not only me, but an entire nation. From an album now twenty years old, let's look at R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion."


"Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. from Out Of Time


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-UzXIQ5vw
Note: Embedding the Grammy Award winning music video was disabled. This link goes to it.

"Ohhhh life," Two words in and we already feel the weight of what we are about to undertake. They are more sighed than sung. "It's bigger. It's bigger than you, and you are not me, the lengths that I will go to, the distance in your eyes." Who is 'you?' Whoever they are, we have drawn a distinct wall between two parties. There is an established opposition between the tenacity of our protagonist and the distance of our antagonist. "Oh no, I've said too much. I set it up." Somewhat covertly, I might add. The issue is being brought to light by our protagonist, but under the guise of motivation by the antagonist.

"That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight losing my religion." Losing faith by definition is world changing. When one rejects something they previously regarded as an altruism it is different than changing your mind about a fact. There remains the issue that that person's basic understanding of the universe is now different, and was incorrect until recently. One could say that that person is now living in a different world with different rules. Any questions, especially those dealing with self-importance, self-worth, and placement in this world, were based on a separate set of rules, and have to be answered again. It's so much easier to hold on, but once one heads down that path there is no turning back. "Trying to keep up with you and I don't know if I can do it. Oh no I've said too much." This time, "I haven't said enough," in the past. "I thought that I heard you laughing. I thought that I heard you sing. I think I thought I saw you try," but I can't be sure about these things, or anything anymore.

"Every whisper of every waking hour I'm choosing my confessions." Our protagonist is consumed by guilt, not only from having many sins to confess, but also from picking and choosing them, a dichotomous situation to be in as a divine entity would know all of the sins anyway. "Trying to keep an eye on you like a hurt, lost, and blinded fool." Will betraying a character you deem to be fictitious come back to haunt one? If one is hurt in this situation, then by their own admission were they not hurt by themselves? Has our protagonist really lost their faith? Are they really a non-believer of God or have they just turned their back?

"Consider this, the hint of the century. Consider this, the slip that brought me to my knees failed. What if all these fantasies com flailing around. Now I've said too much." Our protagonist is worried about the repercussions of an angry God, yet at the same time condemns God. What if that slip that brought me to my knees failed? What if you failed me, God?

We get another taste of the chorus tag, "I thought that I heard you laughing," before entering a musical interlude. The acoustic mix with the mandolin is a great sound, and certainly it's beauty and unexpectedness is what propelled the success of this song and the album it was on. However, the real drive in this song, the real hook, is the bassline. Listen right after the lyric "I thought that I heard you sing." Right there, that bass climb is the money moment for this song.

We return, "But that was just a dream. That was just a dream." Then another chorus and another "That was just a dream, dream." Giving up, giving in, moving forward no matter the cost. The punishment doesn't matter when the world is so bleak.

At least that's what we all thought. We thought we got a dark insight into a man losing his last morsel of faith and with it his last shred of hope. However, R.E.M.'s singer and lyricist Michael Stipe has a very different view of the song. The term 'losing my religion' is a southern expression for losing their temper, for being at the end of one's rope. Stipe is noted as conceiving the song about unrequited love. But switch all those references to God to being about a person, does it really change all that much? We are still left with a person who believed one thing fully and has had to accept the fact that it is not there. We are still looking at a man at the end of his rope. Isn't that how we interpreted it anyway?

Feel free to comment, suggest, or complain here on the blog, or at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net 

There Is A Light

Oh sounding board for off topic subjects, where would I be without you?

There is a separation between popular music and art music. However, it is important to see that the art music of today evolved from the popular music of yesterday. At one point, people would take in classical music in the same way that they take in hip-hop today. A little over a hundred years ago, when we saw the invention of jazz, it started as the music of delinquents, something that 'legit' musicians would play in after-hours clubs. Now one would be hard to find a school that doesn't have a jazz band program (that is, where music programs haven't been cut), and the genre is known commonly as "America's Classical Music," a statement that is wholly insulting in it's own right, but it does show the change in the way we view jazz.

I propose that we are at the beginning of the movement of rock and roll music into the realm of art music. My first evidence is actually rock's declining popularity. While rock and roll held the top spot in popular music for many years, as of recent times it has been more and more overshadowed by the hip-hop movement. This can be looked to as akin to the way that the jazz movement was overshadowed by rock and roll. A new musical style evolves, develops over a few generations and then a new style evolves as it the first style gets elevated to being art music. Popular rock is moving closer and drawing more influence from the hip-hop genre. If it's heavy rock then we're getting more rap intertwined. If it's more song based, we are getting much more computer composition and synthesized tones. Rock is obviously changing, evolving.  I propose that the movement to art music is driven by a subgenre coincidentally known as 'Post-Rock.'

Post-Rock tends to have longer, more thematic songs, wherein the melodic ideas develop over a longer period of time than standard song driven rock. There is a heavy emphasis on tonecraft. Instruments are used more to blend into the texture than to stand out of the texture. To do this we often find instruments not usually found in a rock band mixed in with the standard rock set up. Don't confuse this with Progressive Rock. What progressive rock did was to take elements from classical and bring it to rock. I have to iterate that what is emerging is a new genre, not a retooling of another. Classical and jazz sound different from each other, don't they? Today we are going to look at one of the current front-runners of post-rock.

"There Is A Light" by Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra from Kollaps Tradixionales
Part I


Part II


Part I: http://www.youtube.com/embed/dVa8J6hS3Fg?rel=0
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/embed/wuR10jyxYp4?rel=0

Note: The song is not supposed to be broken into two separate parts, but is too long to post as a whole on youtube. Kollaps Tradixionales comes as a two 10" vinyl album, and this as the lead off track takes up all of side one.

I've said it before, but as we open I feel as though we are in a church. We're not, but it oozes that kind of sacredness. The guitar speaks like a sermon, it's tremolo pulsing around it's message. Very quietly an organ listens in the background. "Hang on darling. Chant aloud. This boys lost his thunder in the dirty clouds." On 'clouds' enters Silver Mt. Zion's two violinists intertwining beautiful call and response counterpoint into the tapestry of the song.

"Dull white starlight, pale as the morning falls away. The devil each dawn, and flat greys upon. We're torn asunder neath his gaze. So, c'mon ye children, if there's one thing we know, it's that them gathering clouds are swinging low." We are a tired but proud people, oppressed and destitute. We have a secret though, and that is that we are stronger than those mounted against us. At the second half of this stanza a trumpet along with alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones sneaks into the mix. Our group is growing in numbers.

"So don't you be precious. Man, don't you be meek. There ain't no damn glory in the long retreat. So go call the fuzz. They'll shine their lights on us. We've been building in the dark. There's so many of us. Illuminated and proud, there's so many of us."  Shine those lights, we will no longer hide in the dark, and let the battle ensue. "There ain't no truth but the no truth but the no truth, yeah! Ain't no thing but the nothing, but the nothing, yeah! Ain't no fall but the long fall but the long fall, yeah! And there ain't no light but the true light is a dim light, yeah! But I've been waiting and longing for that light to fall all over me."

The song breaks at that moment of realization, and it's like we are in that battle scene in the movie when everything slows down because the hero needs to find someone, or something, or they are about to be killed.

"Six and six parsons and he doth proclaim that the best little bits of us misfits and strays make a light in the night that needs to be shamed." Wait, but that means, "all for some, none for all, and all fallen the same," that we lost. "And we surrender the stage to those pale horse riders."

But I won't end my quest so easily. What was this you say, a light that must be shamed? Shamed!?  "Go forth and get down with a mighty fist and retarded crown. Do the one-step, the two-step sweet jubilee and show me the light goddamn and lay me down in a bed full of rain."

And it's over. Broken and spiritless we retreat home and back to routine. Nothing ever changes. Anything I have done hasn't made a difference. Yet those words echo in my head "There is a light."

"Yeah shit is bleak. We've seen it and worried. Our timid leaps get knee deep and buried. Entire weeks where I swear I can barely rise. Electrical fits, tantrums and prayers. Pride undoes what mercy repairs. The pits of this toss a match to it and start again."

We spiral deeper into the philosophy of the dark. "The absence of light is its own stubborn light. No light is the true light, and there is no light so there is a light so there is no light so there is a light."

"Though we've been denied too much hope in our lives let tonight be the night when it ends." We've all got to find a place for ourselves in this world. We've all got to believe that we can claw our way there. We all need hope. In this blog I've always tried to find music that is hopeless. This piece is not. "Tell me there is a light" This song is not about suicide. "There is a light." It's about a suicide mission.

As always feel free to comment here or drop me an email at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net. I didn't really lay out my whole argument about the elevation of rock to the level of art music, so I'd love to talk about that or anything else related to this blog if you so desire.

Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)

The first time I heard Grandaddy, someone lent me a copy of The Sophtware Slump. That's the album that today's song is on, though I'm not sure I had heard the song then. You see, I hated it. I thought the music was boring and uninspired. I wrote the band off and didn't listen to them for quite a while. A few years later I was listening to an NPR and heard a review of the band's new album, Sumday. The reviewer made a simile that intrigued me enough to give the band another chance. He said that the way that Grandaddy used electronics and synthesizers to make music about the attempt to be human in an inhuman world was in a way like the junk man who also sculpts and sells beautiful works of art made out of the junk he also sells. Today's entry is a song about a poem written by a robot that killed itself by drinking Grandaddy's "Jed's Other Poem" 
 
Jed's Other Poem (Beatuiful Ground)
by Grandaddy from The Sophtware Slump

Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) from Stewdio on Vimeo.


Note: This video started as a fan project and was to appear on a Grandaddy DVD release, but the band broke up before that could happen. Now it holds the title of "official video."

Here's the backstory if you are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBR1G550m64

The opening exposition: "Apparently before Jed had left us he wrote some poems, wrote them for no one. I guess I'll show them. Here's one of Jed's poems ..." The vocal is so frail and present. It accurately feels of the stark void of shock before the wrenching depths of grief set in.

The sound envelops us like a mudslide made up of a full organ, maybe two, and chords of dirty midrange heavy over-driven guitar. It's thick, and dark, and each note sticks to the next. Intelligent voice-leading makes the chord progression move beautifully and elegantly like a Bach chorale. The stage is set, what does Jed have to say?

"You said I'd wake up dead drunk alone in the park. I called you a liar, but how right you were." The character knew their accuser was right before he ended up in the park. The fact that they were right, that the accuser knows them so well and can use it against our character, hurts more than the accusation itself. With this verse is the addition of tight drums, another layer of keys, and a deep reverb on the voice.

"Air conditioned TV land, twenty grand. Walk to the bank with the shakes from the night before, staring at the tiki floor." The poem of a robot attempting to be human. A snapshot of cold calculations approximation of expression. Can't sleep, cold, the TV is on but I'm not watching it. Stare at the ceiling, stare at the floor, sick to my stomach with anxiety. Wait for morning.

"High school wedding ring. Keys are under the mats of all of the houses here, but not the motels." Never went anywhere. Never did nothin' worth doing. Never followed my dreams. What do I got to show for it? I never had to carry a key until now. It was under the mat, now it's a card in my wallet.

"I try to sing it funny like Beck, but it's bringing me down lower than ground, beautiful ground." Memories, experience, life, it all brings me down, it's killing me, putting me below ground, welcoming, warm ground, comforting, silent ground, "Beautiful ground."

On that lyric the music breaks and the mood changes. Our texture thins and becomes two or three quietly blended synths with running piano arpeggios that sound like they are echoing up from the bottom of a well. "Test tones and failed clones and odd parts made you." Did Jed write this line, repeating what he was told, unable to escape the fact that he was not human? Or did our narrator say it holding this up in tribute, as an honor not a detriment?

There we have it, a song about a robot that wanted to be human. A being trying as hard as they can to be something that they cannot be. A being that for that fact was used as a novelty and forgotten until that being, not able to fit in, caused it's own demise.

Thanks for bearing with me and waiting patiently for this post. The last couple of weeks have been quite trying in my personal life and I was unable to complete it. I have some extra time this week and am hoping to get a leg up on the next couple of installments. Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to comment, complain, or suggest here or at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net.

SWS Delayed this week, Sorry.

I'm sorry to inform you that for the first time in it's history, Suicide Watch Songs must be delayed. I will try to have the post up by this weekend. I am sorry for any inconvenience and have only done this to ensure that the blog stays at high quality. Thank you for your understanding.

King's Crossing

The way that I cope with the hard parts of my life is by keeping so busy that I don't have time to deal with them. When the work load subsides, I fill the space with new projects. Suicide Watch Songs itself is one of those projects. During the hardest period of my life, having sixteen hours between the time I left the house and when I got back was standard fare. The hardest part of the day was my drive, which was a half hour either to work or school. It was the one hour of the day that I had nothing to do but deal with my own thoughts, the only time where I had no work to find refuge in. The radio in my vehicle didn't work very well and I would listen to my iPod with headphones. It was during this time that I really solidified my love of dark music. Listening to such desperate music helped me deal with everything that was going on in my life. This song was my favorite during that time, and when I started writing Suicide Watch Songs I told myself that I would write about it only if I could keep the article going for a year. Without further ado, here is Elliott Smith's "King's Crossing"

 "King's Crossing" by Elliott Smith from From A Basement On The Hill


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezerLW5jPwI

Elliott Smith was a Portland, Oregon based singer/songwriter that, if you are not in the know, would most likely know from the use of his songs in the move Good Will Hunting. The filmmaker and Portland resident, Gus Van Sant, was a fan of Smith's music, and used multiple songs from Smith's third album Either/Or for the film, as well as using a re-lyriced, previously unreleased song, "Miss Misery." This song was given an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song that year, to be beaten by Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic.

Good Will Hunting and it's notoriety launched Smith's career, who after putting out three albums on smaller independent labels, signed with Dreamworks. Smith had previously put out low fidelity, mostly cassette-tape four-tack master recordings. You can even hear the tape record click at the beginning of the first song on Either/Or. Dreamworks would not allow the low level recording style that Smith had started his career with and demanded a higher fidelity product. The following albums, XO and Figure 8, showed off not only Smith's ever growing songwriting prowess, but his intricate arranging skills as well. It turns out that Smith was more than an impeccable songwriter, but a brilliant mind in the studio as well.

On October 23, 2003, Smith died in his home, of two stab wounds to the chest. It was an apparent suicide, though his autopsy did not rule out foul play. The person that first introduced me to Smith's work was also the first person I called when I heard that Smith had died. That man's mother happens to be a nurse stated that stabbing one's self in the chest was extremely rare, not only due to the immense pain, but also because it is extremely hard to do, and was only done by people that were high on PCP. While Smith had long battled substance abuse and alcoholism, his autopsy confirmed that he was clean at the time of his death.

In the year following Smith's death his final album, From A Basement On The Hill, was finished by the musicians and friends that were helping Smith with it and released. The album relies on a different tonal backdrop, and reflects Smith's new interest in noise music. There is an increased attention to background, ambiance, and found sounds. One can hear that throughout the intro to "King's Crossing" and at one particular point it raises an interesting question later in the song.

An abyss of guitars, bouncing piano and wall-of-lost-souls background vocals starts the song, eventually dropping out leaving a sonic gap that Smith walks into with his guitar and the lyrics. "The king's crossing was the main attraction, dominoes falling in a chain reaction. The scraping subject ruled by fear told me whiskey works better than beer."  Already we are unsettled, but we are not sure why. Which dominoes are falling, and why go straight to the hard stuff? "The judge is on vinyl, decisions aren't final and nobody gets a reprieve, and every wave is tidal. If you hang around you're going to get wet." We're going to find out. Even if we don't, it's coming and it's going to spill over.

The wall of lost souls pulls us into what I find as the most poignant line of the song. "I can't prepare for death any more than I already have." The last word heralds the entrance of the drums and organ and the line finishes. "All you can do now is watch the shells. The game looks easy, that's why it sells." Smith is the best songwriter I know at writing simply and making you feel like you've figured out the deepest meaning of some ancient philosopher. For a minute you feel smart, when we really should understand that what's really going on is that Smith 'gets it.' He understands life better than the rest of us and doesn't need to mince words about it. Life is a rigged game. There's only winners and losers and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line.

The next downbeat opens the flood gates for the full orchestration. "Frustrated fireworks inside your head are gonna stand and deliver dark instead." The lyrics and music match so beautifully here. Our character is fighting his own thought process, grasping at ideas, motivation, but instead, in defiance they 'stand and deliver' nothing. "The method acting that pays my bills keeps a fat man feeding in Beverly Hills." Doing that thing that I do, the thing I do best, is worthless to me and is only of value to those who exploit it of me. "I' got a heavy metal mouth. It hurls obscenity, and I get my check from the trash treasury because I took my own insides out." Took my own. Our character destroyed himself, and for something he doesn't really want.

The music makes way for the next verse. "It don't matter 'cause I have no sex life and all I want to do now is inject my ex-wife." A well placed double entendre. Does he want sex, to kill her, or to fuck her to death? Maybe all three. "I've seen the movie and I know what happens. It's Christmas time and the needles on the tree. A skinny Santa is bringing something to me." An obvious fraud, an impostor. "His voice is overwhelming. His speech is slurred, and I only understand every other word." We break wide open again here "Open your parachute and grab your gun, float down like an omen, a setting sun." Head into battle, fall to Earth, same difference. "Read the part and return at five. It's a hell of a role if you can keep it alive." Method act, fall to Earth, same difference. "But I don't care if I fuck up, I'm going on a date with a rich white lady. Ain't life great? Just give me one good reason not to do it..."

I'm not sure about what happens next. It doesn't feel right to me. A lady's voice enters with "because I love you," and Smith answers, "So do it." To me it really feels edited and out of place, unnecessary. Here is live solo version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX6etUAIbRU , (lyric at 2:20). The lyrical silence says enough. Speak now or forever hold your peace, and no one speaks. I am not certain of the age of this recording, but it may be as old as 1999. (It sounds quite familiar to a high quality audio recording also available on youtube, but I wanted to let you guys see Smith's sullen demeanor in performance.) Now check out this one, from January of 2003, a few months before Smith's suicide. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmXf3-iSKhg (lyric at 2:19). Did you hear it? In the crowd, the lady yelling "Because I love you." That is so much more real to me than the studio recording. How does she know? Is she the inspiration for the line? Is she Smith's girlfriend yelling it, an audience plant? Does the mystery girl have a bootleg copy of the track? Or, my favorite scenario; Is she the inspiration? No matter what, the studio version really bothers me. It takes me out of the song, and I want to believe that it's the mixing without Smith's presence that caused the line to stick out like a sore thumb. "So do it ..."

As the interlude fades the lyrics enter for the last time. "This is the place where time reverses. Dead men talk to all the pretty nurses." Time reverses, we count down instead of up. "Instruments shine on a silver tray, don't let me get carried away." Here's where I put on my over analytical cap and look  too deeply at a lyric. Of all the beautifully upfront Elliott Smith lyrics, this is the one I'm going to dissect, and I'm probably going to be wrong. The image is one of a sterile, cold, surgical environment. It gives me a mental flash of a nursing home, or luny bin, a prison where they tell you you're at home. The use of the word instruments keeps gnawing at my brain. Is he talking about musical instruments, not doctors tools? Is he in the sterile, big studio environment? All of the previous lyrics about trading himself for what he thought he wanted? Smith did have to trade in his four-track recorder when he signed a big label contract. Does he wish he was in his basement again, just this time he's on the hill and not in the valley? The oldest recordings of this song I've found with these lyrics came from around the time he signed with Dreamworks. (Just for fun here's an older, alternate lyric version of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsvR3ekAfUM) Is this Smith pleading, don't swallow me whole, don't make me be who I don't want to be. "Don't let me get carried away."

*Steps up onto soapbox.* A final thought about Elliott Smith; All of us have to stop talking about how "Beatlesque" Smith is. I understand what you're saying, but this man is not in the image of Lennon/McCartney, he is on par, a colleague of Lennon/McCartney, and he deserves the same respect and reverence. If you don't believe me, wait ten years for the current electro-pop phase of music to die down, and read all the upcoming band's interviews where they tell you their influences and I guarantee that Elliott Smith will be on the top of their lists. *Steps down off of soapbox.*

Once again I have to thank all of you for hanging with me through this first year. It's been a lot of fun and I look forward to listening and writing more. Please, if you have suggestions, let me know. I'm very interested in new music and often feel like I'm pigeonholing myself into music that I already like. Send those along, or just comment here on the page, on this Forum, or send me an email directly at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net

Everything I Say

Vic Chesnutt was a prolific American songwriter. In nineteen years the man put out seventeen albums. His lyrics are brilliant and haunting. His style is brutally frank and beautifully poetic at the same time. Often a solo act, Chesnutt recorded two albums near the end of his life in collaboration with Guy Picciotto of Fugazi fame, and the band Silver Mt. Zion. At The Cut was Chesnutt's final release, save for the posthumously released Skitter on Take-Off, thus it is currently the one that popularly people are examining for any clues to the mystery that was Vic Chesnutt. I suggest we look a little deeper into what I view as the darker of the two collaborations. Here is  "Everything I Say" from 2007's North Star Deserter.

"Everything I Say" by Vic Chesnutt from North Star Deserter



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rPyQFmGmb4

The album version is great, but after seeing the above video I decided I would be doing you all a great disservice if I did not use it instead. It is a high definition, fidelity, and quality video of Chesnutt with his full backup band at a house show, shot for an internet show that shows house shows, 'The Neighbors Dog'. In this video you learn that Chesnutt was a consummate entertainer. He is warm and inviting, funny, and delivers one of the most emotionally wrought performances I have ever seen.

From the outset it is obvious what a struggle it must be for Chesnutt to play, yet at the same time somehow it seems effortless. It seems so hard physically for him to play, but it does not come out in the music. I'm making a judgment that really doesn't matter aren't I? If I were to have had the chance to ask Chesnutt about it, my guess is that his answer would be something along the lines of "It's irrelevant because I don't know any other way," or "I can't change it."

The song starts with Chesnutt solo and these lyrics "The barn fell down since I saw it last." The use of the word "fell" is interesting to me. As a standard I expected "burnt," either for it's alliterative or dramatic quality. "Fell" implies something simple. It wasn't missed because of an act of God, it was time for it to happen. Our character had forgotten the barn, and when he came back it was too late. There is no blame but directly themselves for missing the barn. We continue "It's rubble now. Well, so much for the past." Nothing to show for it. Oh well. The band enters on the chorus with an incredibly thick, dark tone that just boils with torment. "Everything I say does me this way. Every little thing I say does me this way." Everything. Every little thing. I can't catch a break, but that's par for the course.

"Some call her a thief, and some call her a prophet." Who is Chesnutt talking about? Is this a person, an idea? Is it life or death? Chesnutt is known for treating such things as characters. He doesn't really give us many clues, but I'm not so sure it matters if we know the specifics of what he is speaking about. In the end we are using this simile to speak about our main character's life. "But her courage is brief. Brief as little, little Miss Muffet." This character is looked upon with either great admiration, or with petty betrayal. Either way this character has a strong edifice within the public eye, but underneath the facade is a person unable to actually be strong, someone more likely to run than stand up to a challenge.

"Everything, every little thing that I say does me this way." I talk big. I talk strong. I am uncompromising and sure, and I am betrayed by this. I might as well not say anything, because it will be torn down. The following solo interlude is big and overwhelming. Everyone is playing furiously and the solo can barely be heard. It's like shouting into the wind, it's a lost cause. And then, calm.

The final verse kicks in, but feels like a dirge, like a death march. Moving forward dismally with no hope. "She wanted to be an inventor, but nothing new was all she could muster." Complete failure. Antithesis of success. The one thing set out to do yielded absolutely no result. I can not do one thing right, but "Everything I say does me this way." I cannot win. The final chorus kicks in and somehow the group manages to make it bigger and more enveloping each time. At the end Chesnutt's voice carries out past the band strong, but frail. Like little Miss Muffet it cracks and fails as it ends and brings the song to such a sacred end that to break the silence Chesnutt cracks a joke.

I mentioned that the last two Chesnutt albums have been released posthumously. That is because Chesnutt committed suicide roughly a month after this video was filmed. Chesnutt took an overdose of muscle relaxants and, after being in a coma for a few days, passed away on December 25th, 2009. For those of you playing along at home, that brings the tally of artists on Suicide Watch Songs that have committed suicide to three. There is a song on At The Cut titled "Flirted with you all my life," in which Chesnutt is speaking about death and his history with attempting suicide. Certainly it is a good song and deserves it's place in the Chesnutt canon, but because of Chesnutt's suicide, it now has become his most popular song, as though his actions changed the meaning of the song. It worries me that people will latch on to that song and not go any deeper. I've seen it happen before. When Elliott Smith committed suicide he was in the middle of recording an album. After he died, some collaborators of his came together to finish the album. One of the songs on the album was titled "A Fond Farewell." It was the only song of Elliott Smith's that I ever heard on the radio. I heard countless "It's so sad that this guy died" remarks from DJ's that never played his music before. The fact that a great artist wrote a song about death before they died doesn't make that artist any better or any worse and it is insulting to judge them by that factor. Vic Chesnutt was an amazing dark, and deep songwriter. He had a great ability to be stark and honest without being cheap, and to link a song of his by an event that on one end of the spectrum can be called coincidence and the other inevitability cheapens the man and his work. I beg you, if you are one who came to Chesnutt through that song in particular, you owe it to him to dig a little deeper.

Well, that does it. One year of Suicide Watch Songs down, hopefully many more to come. Next time for our one year anniversary we'll take a look at the song that inspired Suicide Watch Songs. It just happens to be an Elliott Smith song, and it just happens to come from the same album as "A Fond Farewell." As always, feel free to comment here, or on the forums at Communist Day Care Center, or send me an email directly at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net

Passover

Greetings to you dear reader on this first day of the new year. While it is yet one more day in a string of days, I will take the opportunity to exploit the occasion and wish each and every one of you peace in your determination to change. In terms of this weblog, I resolve to diversify. Longtime readers know that my tendencies, at least for this forum, lean towards the singer/songwriter modern folk ilk. Like all New Year's Resolutions I give no guarantee on the longevity of this one, but in the spirit of the new year lets take a look at reader suggested "Passover" from Joy Division's Closer

"Passover" by Joy Division from Closer


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_NggH3O90o

The suggestion came from a friend, and came in the form of him handing me a vinyl copy of Closer and saying "Here, you should do something from this," or something close to that effect. That being said, I am certain I will be corrected if I am incorrect on any of the following biographical information.

Joy Division formed in the late 70's in the burgeoning post-punk scene of Manchester, England. The band would often perform at a local club called The Factory. The manager of said club, Tony Wilson, started Factory Records and signed many of the acts that played at there. Joy Division was the most successful band to come from the label, save one, but more about that later. Joy Division's singer and frontman Ian Curtis was an epileptic. In early to mid 1980 the band was finishing their second full length album and preparing for their first United States tour. The stress was causing Curtis' epilepsy to fall out of control. Curtis was known at this time to have seizures on stage. All of this led to deepen his already apparent depression, and on May 18, 1980, the day the band was to start that first U.S. Tour Ian Curtis hanged himself. The brilliantly dark and extremely influential album Closer was released posthumously the next month.

I need to take a moment to step on this other soapbox that's to the left of the one I am on. There has been a rash of band reunitings lately that has gotten on my nerves. It seems that the economically sound movement these days is to put aside all those differences you had and get the band back together. These groups always perform horribly and are nothing but a disappointment. The reason is that these groups have no option but to become caricatures of themselves. They are working from a back catalog that at one time was culturally relevant, but is no longer. The band inevitably ends up performing music that they played many years prior, pretending that they are that many years younger, imagining that their music was going to have some kind of impact in the same way it did before. Art of all forms is as much about it's cultural context as it is of it's content. What good is expression without reason to express? Why must people try to fix their own art? At this point I must draw us back to Joy Division. After Curtis' suicide, the band formed as a separate entity, New Order. They did not continue on as Joy Division. While one could say that Joy Division has become the more culturally important and influential band, it should be noted that New Order went on to be much more successful than Joy Division ever was. New Order made the decision to move forward, not live in the past.

"Passover" opens with drums soaked in the cave reverb that is quintessential to the genre. After a few bars the bass and guitar come in. As a melodical whole, the song recycles the same content continuously. The background as a whole could be looked at essentially as an ostinato that thickens and gets nastier as the lyrical theme unfurls. The guitar enters with a simple descending line from which it will build most of it's other material. The bass is key, yet very much in the background, sometimes playing root notes, sometimes a melodic lick, and sometimes nothing at all.

All falls away as Curtis enters with his deep voice for the song's first verse. "This is a crisis I knew had to come, destroying the balance I kept, Doubting, unsettling and turning around, wondering what will come next." Our protagonist has been waiting for this. At some point a decision was made, a situation entered, or a fact ignored that set this timeline into motion. All of this could have been avoided, but our storyteller decided to move forward anyway. Curtis continues "Is this the role that you wanted to live? I was foolish to ask for so much. Without the protection and infancy's guard, it all falls apart at first touch." It was a chance to live better. Our protagonist was striving to survive at a higher level than afforded him. Infancy's guard was when he could straddle both worlds, return if need be. Maybe this was something he did many times, but one must make the plunge eventually. Whatever protection he had must have been eaten up while protecting him, and now his situation is as precarious as a house of cards. He is just waiting for it to topple.

We are interluded by the familiar descending guitar lick, though it is a little more dissonant than before. Once again it falls by the wayside as Curtis enters. "Watching the reel as it comes to a close, brutally taking it's time." We see it coming. "People who change for no reason at all, it's happening all of the time." Our protagonist feels betrayed, but not by one person, not the person that set this in motion. Our protagonist knows in his heart that the whole situation is his fault. The protagonist feels betrayed by everyone, the entire world. He trusts no one and expects everyone to change on him. "Can I go on with this chain of events disturbing and purging my mind? Back out of my duties when all's said and done? I know that I'll lose every time." There is no good answer. If I act, I lose. If I don't, I lose.

The interlude between verses is a little thicker and holds more tension than before. "Moving along in our God given ways, safety is sat by the fire." The gears are turning and there is no way out but straight on. "Sanctuary from these feverish smiles left with a mark on the door." Things are bad and they will get worse, but for the moment I am protected. "Is this the gift that I wanted to give? Forgive and forget's what they teach, or pass through the deserts once more, and watch as they drop by the beach." Our protagonists world has fallen down around him, but by some good grace he has been spared. He wonders however, if perishing would have been better. The gift he wanted to give was that of a better life, what he was able to give was an idea of what that kind of life was just in time to make life worse than it was before. Our protagonists life is now an endless trip through the desert instead of an endless vacation.

The song ends with a recap of the first verse, ending this time with "Turning around to the next set of lives, wondering what will come next." We are left as stark and empty as our protagonist, left with nothing, with no expectations, and waiting for the next wave to wash over him.

Passover as a religious holiday commemorates the Exodus of the Israelite from Egypt, and the passing over of their households during the plagues. It was the start of a long and hard journey to find one's place in the world. Our protagonist in this song thought they had found it, but they have been turned back into the desert. They don't have a place in this world. Where as in the Jewish history, passover means the protection of God, in our story it means to be looked at and told you're not good enough, to be passed over.

As always feel free to comment or suggest, comment, criticize, or berate in the comments below, the forum at Communistdaycarecenter.net/Forum or by email at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net