Live Suicide Watch Songs!

This Thursday night, July 25th, 2013, I will be performing a set of songs from this blog at The Berkley Front, in Berkley, Michigan. This is a free show and I am opening the night for two other great performers, Remnose and Greg Aubry. Doors are at 9 and I'll be on circa 10.

Come relive the sadness!

The Berkley Front is located at 3087 12 Mile Rd., in Berkley, MI, 48072

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