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.