Testing the Waters - CMC Volume 7 - March 2006

So much pressure: self-inflicted, but after 6 months, the co-op has matured. My first offering was not entirely indicative of my musical proclivities, at least not my current ones. All were songs I truly like, but as I stated clearly in the liner notes and discussion of that collection, it was a kick-off, a kick-ass kick-off for the kick-off. But this is not that. This is far more representative of what has been tripping my trigger as of late.

To get to this I have spent a fair amount of time assembling other collections, of all shapes and sizes, enough to see this endeavor through to 2012 at least. It’s hard to decide what to expose people to, what might make an impact, but then again not to spend too much time wondering whether anyone else will like it. These collections are about the maker, not about the listener, not exactly anyway. We shouldn’t pander, that’s for sure. We all share a great deal musically, so while we will certainly experience some leaps of faith, for the most part the ground we travel will be reasonably beaten down.

There are a number of things about this collection that tie it to those that went before, although for the most part, those things are completely coincidental; more a matter of our shared sensibilities than anything else.

From DanPR – the music featured here comes from artists that I heard featured on NPR (not exactly Dan’s take, but you know what I mean).

From Minnesota Connections – multiple songs from the same artist, although in this case it is from 3 artists and 3 albums by those artists, rather than various incarnations of the artists.

From The Poignant Santa – much poignancy.

From C-Songs – songs from albums that really got to me, that get me jazzed.

From Themeless – songs that have been in heavy rotation for me over the last 12 months or so.

In the months since my last collection I spent time assembling multiple collections based on a number of themes. The collections ranged the breadth and depth of my musical taste, and most will likely see the light of day, but as the time drew near to actually decide on the final collection, and fresh off of Volumes 5 and 6, I decided to stick to music that has really affected me recently, and share that with the group. I assembled 10 song collections of 10 artists but couldn’t quite make sense out of them. They just never seemed to gel. So as I whittled I decided that showing off more from fewer artists might be a better way to give a taste to the group, to test the waters so to speak. 3 albums from 3 artists: one to dip a toe in, one to wade, and another to get fully submerged.

Sam Phillips (oooh)

I first heard Sam and this album (A Boot and a Shoe) featured on All Things Considered on a drive back from a job site. (actually, I had heard another song from her on my subscription to CMJ several years earlier, but had not been as struck by it) I was struck immediately this time by her voice and the clarity of the recording. They played parts of 4 or 5 songs, including the two featured on this collection. I was transfixed, and although I can’t remember for sure, I may have stopped and bought the album even before I went home. (I may have bought it on a subsequent evening on my way home from work)

I love her voice, clear but earthy, without any need for cartoonish vocalizations. The voice of someone who seems to have seen a fair amount, but is not too jaded or worn. The production is excellent, to my ears anyway, with a simplicity that’s probably only possible with a great deal of care and effort. The lyrics are excellently crafted, with a sort of classic pop economy, but hardly bubble gum.

1. How to Quit

I was broken when you got me
With holes that would let the light through
Red smoke and sequins an invisible floor
Faith is running toward the sound of water
Blind dancing in the footlights
Torn curtain talent, sparks from a lucky guess
Camera can't find me I'm officially astray
When no one's listening I have so much to say
I thought I knew how to quit
Drunk on memory we start up
Stockings on the rooftop, exotic innocence
Living on air, desire and reverie,
gravity pulls our lives down
Holding on to change, I want to walk the deep
Can't get free from freedom
when I refuse to choose
Walls go with me as I leave my fate to lose

This song strikes me as sung by a woman recently immersed in a passionate affair after some time alone, having suffered through relationships passed. She’s having trouble giving in to the moment, still wary, and at risk of missing a particularly momentous opportunity.

2. Red Silk Five

Stolen ring, and old hat, a boot and a shoe
A satin dress at your feet
Every day trace, code name, no bullets
Red silk five

Disconnection and heat, the lines are down
Pulled into a corner with you
Lips and fingers, slow secret weapons
Red silk five

I'm bleeding, didn't notice, heart doesn't mind
I took your book, I have no words for you
You wanted me excited without contact,
broken frame
Red silk five

Everything I wanted, nothing I needed
Red silk five

This one is tough to nail down. Is Red Silk Five the name of some sort of covert agency, or an alias? Either way it’s sultry.

The Decemberists (ahhhh)

Another trip back from the jobsite, another exposure to a new musical artist courtesy of NPR but pretty different from Sam Phillips, appealing to another part of my musical sensibility. The Decemberists, and this album particularly, appeal to that very verbal side of me. These aren’t songs that find their way into your soul because you can really relate to them, instead their more like escapist fictions. You don’t really sense that these experiences were had by the singer, just that he’s clever enough to fill out the details and transport you to that place and time.

Colin Malloy, the lead singer and song-writer, has a voice that may annoy some, and I am conscious of it, but for the most part I find the quality of the songs transcend any concerns about that, much like Elvis Costello.

The three songs that I chose from the album Picaresque are more cohesive than the album is. They all seem to be about a long time ago and a place far away, whereas some of the other songs on the album are more about a world we all may inhabit. Even still, all of the songs on the album are infused with a clever and witty use of language and a quirky irreverent view of the world.

3. We Both Go Down Together

Here on these cliffs of Dover
So high you can't see over
And while your head is spinning
Hold tight, it's just beginning

You come from parents wanton
A childhood rough and rotten
I come from wealth and beauty
Untouched by work or duty

And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together

I found you, a tattooed tramp
A dirty daugher from the labour camps
I laid you down on the grass of a clearing
You wept but your soul was willing

And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together

And my parents will never consent to this love
But I hold your hand

Meet me on my vast veranda
My sweet, untouched Miranda
And while the seagulls are crying
We fall but our souls are flying

And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, oh my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together

It’s an old story, two worlds collide, and despite the obstacles, refuse to live by society’s rules. Much joy and great sadness ensues. Great Expectations?

4. Eli, The Barrow Boy

Eli, the barrow boy, in the old town
Sells coal and marigolds and he cries out all down the day
Below the tamarack she is crying
Corn cobs and candle wax for the buying, all down the day

Would I could afford to buy my love a fine robe
Made of gold and silk Arabian thread
She is dead and gone and lying in a pine grove
And I must push my barrow all the day
And I must push my barrow all the day

Eli, the barrow boy, when they found him
Dressed all in corduroy, he had drowned in the river down the way
They laid his body down in a churchyard
But still when the moon is out, with his pushcart, he calls down the day

Would I could afford to buy my love a fine gown
Made of gold and silk Arabian thread
But I am dead and gone and lying in a church ground
But still I push my barrow all the day
Still I push my barrow all the day

Again Dickens, Charles that is. I could imagine poor Eli wandering around the background of any number of Dickens classics. Such a sad character.

5. The Mariner’s Revenge Song

We are two mariners
Our ships' sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
Its ribs our ceiling beams
Its guts our carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill
You may not remember me
I was a child of three
And you, a lad of eighteen
But I remember you
And I will relate to you
How our histories interweave
At the time you were
A rake and a roustabout
Spending all your money
On the whores and hounds
Oh Ohhhhh
You had a charming air
All cheap and debonair
My widowed mother found so sweet
And so she took you in
Her sheets still warm with him
Now filled with filth and foul disease
As time wore on you proved
A debt-ridden drunken mess
Leaving my mother
A poor consumptive wretch
Oh Ohhhhh
And then you disappeared
Your gambling arrears
The only thing you left behind
And then the magistrate
Reclaimed our small estate
And my poor mother lost her mind
Then one day in spring
My dear sweet mother died
But before she did
I took her hand as she, dying, cried:
Oh Ohhhhh

"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave
*sigh*"

It took me fifteen years
To swallow all my tears
Among the urchins in the street
Until a priory
Took pity and hired me
To keep their vestry nice and neat
But never once in the employ
Of these holy men
Did I ever once turn my mind
From the thought of revenge
Oh Ohhhhh
One night I overheard
The Prior exchanging words
With a penitent whaler from the sea
The captain of his ship
Who matched you toe to tip
Was known for wanton cruelty
The following day
I shipped to sea
With a privateer
And in the whistle
Of the wind
I could almost hear...
Oh Ohhhhh

"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave
"There is one thing I must say to you
As you sail across the sea
Always, your mother will watch over you
As you avenge this wicked deed"

And then that fateful night
We had you in eye sight
After twenty months at sea
Your starboard flank abeam
I was getting my muskets clean
When came this rumbling from beneath
The ocean shook
The sky went black
And the captain quailed
And before us grew
The angry jaws
Of a giant whale

[instrumental noise]
Oh Ohhhhhhhhhh
[screaming]
Ohhhhh
[screaming]

Don't know how I survived
The crew all was chewed alive
I must have slipped between his teeth
But, O! What providence!
What divine intelligence!
That you should survive
As well as me
It gives my heart
Great joy
To see your eyes fill with fear
So lean in close
And I will whisper
The last words you'll hear
Ohh Ohhhhh

A classic tale of the sea and revenge; it’s no Song of the Juggernaut, but what could be? Enormously clever use of language and the instrumentation puts you in the just right mood.

Sufjan Stevens (splash)

More NPR, but this time via the most up to date technology. Marconi can get bent. This is from the weekly podcast (a technology that owes a lot to Adam Curry – he of big-haired MTV VJ fame) of All Songs Considered, a half-hour sampling of what’s new in music, across the musical spectrum, but most at home in the alt-pop world.

The album from which these selections are from, Come On Feel the Illinoise, is the second in what is envisioned as a 50 state and album tribute. It has a bit of the feel of a modern musical, being fairly rigidly thematic, and that has dangers, but almost universally I find it myself absorbed from beginning to end with nary a hiccup. I chose songs from across the track list, attempting to gives as complete a feel of the album as possible. You may see (or hear) some other selections from this album on future collections.

The beauty and quality of these songs really went straight to my soul. I’ve been listening to this very frequently since I picked up the album just after Christmas.

6. Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois

When the revenant came down
We couldn't imagine what it was
In the spirit of three stars
The alien thing that took its form
Then to Lebanon
Oh, God
The flashing at night, the sirens grow and grow
Oh, history involved itself
Mysterious shade that took its form
Or what it was, incarnation
Three stars
Delivering signs and dusting from their eyes

A slightly haunting story of a close encounter.

7. John Wayne Gacy Jr.

His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's T-shirts
When the swing set hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things
Rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

Are you one of them?

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed he kissed them all
He'd kill ten thousand people
With a sleight of his hand
Running far, running fast to the dead
He took off all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips
Quiet hands, quiet kiss
On the mouth

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid

Not too many songs out there about serial killers. Very chilling, but lovely at the same time.

8. Decatur, Or, Round of Applause For Your Stepmother!

Our step mom we did everything to hate her
She took us down to the edge of Decatur
We saw the lion and the kangeroo take her
Down to the river where they caught a wild alligator

Sangamon River it overflowed
It caused a mudslide on the banks of the operator
civil war skeletons in their graves,
They came up clapping in the spirit of the aviator

The sound of the engines and the smell of the grain,
We go riding on the abolition grain train
Steven A. Douglas was a great debater,
But Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator

Chickenmobile with your rooster tail
I had my fill and I know how bad it feels
Stay awake and watch for the data
No small caterpillar, go congratulate her

Denominator, go Decatur, go Decatur,
It's the great I Am
abominate her, go Decatur, why did we hate her?
It's the great I Am

Denominator, go Decatur, anticipate her
It's the great I Am
Appreciate her, appreciate her,
Stand up and thank her,

Stand up and thank her,
It's the great I Am.
Stand up and thank her,
It's the great I Am.
Stand up and thank her,
It's the great I Am.
Stand up and thank her

Fun, clever, hearkening back to a song on the Minnesota Connection, with a very rigid rhyme scheme. Feels like it could almost be a School House Rocks song, with all of its historical references.

9. The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!

Thinking outrageously I write in cursive
I hide in my bed with the lights on the floor
Wearing three layers of coats and leg warmers
I see my own breath on the face of the door

Oh I am not quite sleeping
Oh I am fast in bed
There on the wall in the bedroom creeping
I see a wasp with her wings outstretched

North of Savanna we swim in the palisades
I come out wearing my brother's red hat
There on his shoulder my best friend is bit seven times
He runs washing his face in his hands

Oh how I meant to tease him
Oh how I meant no harm
Touching his back with my hand I kiss him
I see the wasp on the length of my arm

Oh great sights upon this state! Hallelu-
Wonders bright, and rivers, lake. Hallelu-
Trail of Tears and Horseshoe Lake. Hallelu-
trusting things beyond mistake. Hallelu-

We were in love. We were in love.
Palisades! Palisades! Palisades
I can wait. I can wait.

Lamb of God, we soudn the horn.
Hallelujah!
To us your ghost is born.
Hallelu-

I can't explain the state that I'm in
The state of my heart, he was my best friend
Into the car, from the back seat
Oh admiration in falling asleep
All of my powers, day after day
I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed
Deep in the tower, the prairies below
I can tell you, the telling gets old
Terrible sting and terrible storm
I can tell you the day we were born
My friend is gone, he ran away
I can tell you, I love him each day
Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged
I can tell you I love him each day
Terrible sting, terrible storm
I can tell you...

This song captures the scope of what many songs on this album convey. Musically, they feel epic, but their themes are often very intimate, about friends and very personal experiences.

10. The Seer’s Tower

In the tower above the earth,
There is a view that reaches far
Where we see the universe,
I see the fire, I see the end.

Seven miles above the earth,
There is Emmanuel of mothers.
With his sword, with his robe,
He comes dividing man from brothers.

In the tower above the earth, we built it for Emmanuel.
In the powers of the earth, we wait until it rips and rips.
In the tower above the earth, we built it for Emmanuel.
Oh my mother, she betrayed us, but my father loved and bathed us.

Still I go to the deepest grave,
Where I go to sleep alone

There is a great deal of religious language throughout this album, but perhaps nowhere more than in this song. With many songs to choose from, this one felt like a final song, though that is not quite the place it holds on the album.

Haunting.

His next state may be Minnesota, so watch out. His home state of Michigan was the first offering.


Wrapping up

Rather than hitting you with as many choices as possible, I decided to try to give you enough so that you might feel better about purchasing these albums (or not). It probably makes for a somewhat less cohesive collection overall, but by choosing this format, that is one of the consequences. The other one being that if you don’t like Sufjan Stevens, listening to this may be torture. Not Alberto Gonzales torture, but torture nonetheless.

Enjoy.