...a music recommendation blog run by d where she and her friends can recommend a song, album or artist regardless of genre or newness. some of our contributors are musicians, some write about music on their own excellent sites (see links above) and some just like to recommend, grammar be damned!
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9.25.2007
Shine so very dimly
Dear friends,
About an hour ago, ???? many years ago, after a poker game and the sound of gunfire coming off the street* that made my mother jump from one twin bed to another, I was born. They say it's my birthday and it is. I plan on having dinner with my honey and my momz. Life is grand.
Thanks to the largesse of an internet friend with WAY better sleuthing skills than I, I finally have the fabulous album that this song is on. Yipeee! I LOVE EMPEEETHREEEES!
One day you catch a train/never leaves the station
(Nice readers that wrote to me today while I was out and about, thank you for the heads up. I have fixed the mp3 links, so they all should work now. I am a dingbat and a half who can't spell.)
Dear friends,
The first 49 seconds of this song are simple. Tambourine, rattling away like a warning, organ hum and a single guitar. The guitar is paradoxically, both sure of itself and wobbly. It sounds intoxicated and dangerous. A beautiful woman that you know is bad news, smiling at you crookedly and sliding onto your lap. Like a classic film noir patsy, you won't be able to resist her and she will be the end of you. Then it stops.
Thompson didn't always rock a beret.
Calvary Cross first appears on I Wanna See the Bright Lights Tonight. Despite the genuine menace of the intro, the rest of the song finds the then 24 year-old sounding a bit muted, removed somehow. It's almost like he can't believe what happened to him so he'd prefer to think the story is about someone else. When he hits the chorus and sings what the woman of the song assures him, "Everything you do/EVERYTHING you do/you do for me" his voice raises slightly, the enormity of the situation is apparent. But it's like he's in a dream and he's opening his mouth to scream and finds that he can't. The song fades out. The promise-threat hangs in the air.
"The woman in Calvary Cross was music; a view of music as something that can posses you - in that you're looking for it, rather than the other way around...I used to feel very enslaved by music." - Richard Thompson
I've seen Richard Thompson live more than any other act. He is either, according to the Rock Snob's Dictionary, "Wry, bearded singer-songwriter-guitarist...unaccountably deified by rock critics for his intelligent yet never transcendentally great albums" or simply, a brilliant guitar player whose songs reveal both a dark sensibility and sometimes, a big dollop of corn-pone humor; all sung in his distinctive, wolf-y voice. His guitar solos* are ridiculous. He is incapable of freeze-dried musicianship, he tries to re-invent his solos ever time he plays live and it isn't always pretty. He makes a righteous mess of things at times, he's tearing out floorboards, shit is flying everywhere, and then, quite suddenly, you realize that what he's doing, right at this moment, is a million times better than what you always heard on your headphones. I'm not into the jam bands, that ain't my thing. But I'm into RT and his freak-outs; I can follow his solos-as-conversation. He isn't in it to hear himself talk.
RT making the gas face.
Thompson has re-visited Calvary Cross live. Give this ferocious take, performed some ten years after the original was recorded, a listen.
He sounds like he's staring the song DOWN. The intro sidesteps the gipsy mysticism and goes for delicacy. But, god forbid you're volume is up, 'cause those first proper chords are gonna bust your ears. At 3:08, around the time the original stars fading out, he brings back that slither guitar of the original and goes off. Pay attention to how it mutates. The guitar goes, improbably, from the unmistakable sound of bagpipes to something like a whirlpool with you as the ship at the center, disappearing from view.
If you ain't tired yet of hearing this lighthearted ditty about how creativity will crush you with her cold, pale hands, then here's a couple of covers! The first is a disappointment. I usually love Will Oldham's vocals, their crack and quaver, but his vocal on this is just painfully misguided. It sounds like he's going for an objective narrator/tour guide interpretation, "Here on the left is where the muse steals your soul! And here is where the black cat crosses your path!" etc... It's bloodless and I don't buy it. For completist cover-hounds only.
The second is something else entirely. Peter Laughner sounds like a desperate, ragged man. A million years old and begging to die. But it's not the vocal that convinces, it's the fact that he, and I have to quote myself here from this past Laughner post, doesn't try to do it like the Hebridian pagan hallucination original. Instead he gives us his own uniquely American translation. An extraordinary rendition.
1. It is June 1st 2006 which means I must prattle on about bittersweet good news via someone else's train
When Contributor Bryan informed his public that Rocket From the Tombs was reuniting and playing shows, I was simultaneously excited and saddened because my favorite of the RFTT boys, Peter Laughner, is no more and him not singing Ain't it Fun well...just ain't fun. Even when The Dead Boys do it (and I like their version - see last post below) it lacks the nihilistic quality that Laughner brought to the song. The Dead Boys not nihilistic enough? Yeah, yeah, I know. But those boys...they're trying, you see. And Laughner...he doesn't try, he just does. Which is why his boozy, foggy ferociousness has nothing to do with looking bad ass (which is admittedly important in ye olde rock 'n' roll) and everything to do with this is the only thing I can do without failing and yet, I still fail. Watch me fail. Splat.
As for recorded output, good freakin' luck. I've been trying to get this for years. The only person I know who owns it is Contributor Jared and his copy is covered in tzatziki sauce or something. The standout for me on the album is definitely Laughner's gorgeously ragged, saxophoned?/violined? (honestly, I can't even tell, it sounds like it was recorded into tin cans) version of Richard Thompson's Cavalry Cross. Laughner doesn't try to do it like the hebridian pagan hallucination original. Instead he gives us his own unique American translation. Cavalry Cross is like Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes in song form in that it explores what happens when creativity makes everything in your life take second place to what you need to fuel your art, namely DRAAAMA! Either in emotional or pharmaceutical form. Laughner wants to make this painfully clear in his rendition. You can almost picture him pirouetting onto the train tracks as he unfurls the great winding solo that closes the song.
I should clarify that this is not about being a ghoulish admirer of self-destruction - if it were I would be able to listen to the copy of Down in Albion I got for X-mas. It's about admiring an honesty that's not pretty but demands your attention.
2. It is June 1st 2006 which means there are zombies
Draculazombieusa, East Coast Annex is gonna jog in place and croon at a zombie movie fundraiser TONIGHT at The Delancey. Tickets are $8. We go on at 11PM and it will be like a gym workout only with more ladies in short black skirts doing the robot.
3. It is June 1st 2006 which means we tried but there was nothing we could do
Several years ago today, myself & The Monkey (previously known as the Bat*) agreed to be "more than friends" and did the most absurd, awesome, sweet romantic comedy stumble into coupledom that I've ever witnessed, let alone participated in. For that we have several things to blame, some of which are: Radiohead tickets we didn't get (which is a theme as it turns out), a look right in the eye over eggs, ContributorsTina & Alex for their silent witnessing, Teenage Snake** rehearsal and a solid guarantee. In the time I've been with him, I have discovered that my boy is made of crackers, (to paraphrase another) someone who encourages the eating of ice cream, quite the closet comedian (SHARK!), an excellent traveling partner in music dorkitude (Day trip to Liverpool? Why not!?!) and owner of quite an impressive power move. In the time he's spent with me he's discovered that I meow when hungry, sing along to everything, lose my metrocard, keys and brain daily, harbor not so secret fantasies of chloroforming him and taking him to Paris and enjoy making out like a teenager to the song below just like every other enamored fool.
I'm so glad we threw caution to the wind, mon ami. I could go on and on about how you're so great and I love you. I reserve a weekend of your time in the near future for proper celebration. Pick the city and I promise, no chloroform.
Love, D
* A high school nickname. No, I don't get it either. Bats suck noisily at fruit, hang upside down, have frantic two second coupling and emit high pitched squeaks. Luckily, there's none of that at my house. Okay, fine. Sometimes there's squeaking but usually that's me, in response to cute baby animal programming.
** Teenage Snake is the make believe band I sing with when trashed. Hey! My friends are musicians. Don't front, you'd do the same if you were surrounded by talent.
