You can be anywhere, watching any bird take flight, and "Magpie to the Morning" is what it sounds like. The song arrives and departs with a glide, always soaring, because it can.
Come on sorrow, take your own advice/ Hide under the bed, turn out the lights
Neko Case's voice is gorgeous. After the first instrumental interlude, the recording engineer picks up her voice saying Here I go and then Neko belts out the lyrics. I'm glad they kept this in the mix. It fires me up.
Mockingbird sings, in the middle of the night/ All his songs are stolen, so he hides
Neko Case "Magpie to the Morning"
"Graceland" opens with one of the English language's greatest similes.
The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar
Yet somehow, this makes perfect sense to me. "Graceland" is a song about heartache (She comes back to tell me she's gone/ As if I didn't know that, as if I didn't know my own bed) that also manages to uplift (I have reason to believe we all will be received).
It is a traveling song with the versatility to make it apropos to most pilgrimages. And the album track has the Everly Brothers singing back-up.
Paul Simon "Graceland"
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The sky above, a blaze that only lovers see
R.I.P. Amy Winehouse. An extraordinarily talented singer and performer. What a voice!
Here she is, live from the iTunes festival in London, 2007...
Amy Winehouse "Tears Dry on Their Own"
...and here are the Arctic Monkeys covering Ms. Winehouse on French (or Belgian) television. This cover is truly a tribute, nails it.
Arctic Monkeys "You Know I'm No Good"
Here she is, live from the iTunes festival in London, 2007...
Amy Winehouse "Tears Dry on Their Own"
...and here are the Arctic Monkeys covering Ms. Winehouse on French (or Belgian) television. This cover is truly a tribute, nails it.
Arctic Monkeys "You Know I'm No Good"
Monday, July 18, 2011
I am a Mormon, and a Mormon just believes.
My faith journey is a complicated one. If it wasn't complicated, it wouldn't be much of a journey.
I am not a practicing Mormon -- or a practicing Catholic, as I was raised -- but I do believe in God, and I do believe that Jesus was his son, and that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected after three days. I also believe he was able to feed a crowd of thousands with only a few loaves and fishes. I don't believe these things to be metaphorical. I believe they actually happened.
Religious beliefs are wacky. In order to believe these things (which I do), I have to accept that Mary became pregnant without having sex with Joseph, and I also have to accept that a man (even a holy man) came back from the dead, visited his old friends, shared some wisdom, and then ascended into heaven as everyone watched.
I believe God has a plan for all of us/ I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet
The South Park guys -- Trey Parker and Matt Stone -- produce some of the most thoughtful and insightful works of art about the quirky nature of religious belief. When cynicism is called for, they are cynical, but The Book of Mormon isn't a cynical musical, and it isn't about taking shots at Mormonism. At times, it is incredibly filthy and profane, but it is also a consistently sweet story about the challenges of maintaining one's faith, even when the sadness and senselessness of the world conspire to shatter it, and the affection that Parker and Stone have for their subject is really kind of beautiful in a way.
The Book of Mormon, the musical, really inspires me. I don't think this was its intent -- foremost, I think its intent is to entertain and to be a good musical -- but such is the outcome. Even atheists can find inspiration in The Book of Mormon.
Andrew Rannells "I Believe (from The Book of Mormon)"
I am not a practicing Mormon -- or a practicing Catholic, as I was raised -- but I do believe in God, and I do believe that Jesus was his son, and that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected after three days. I also believe he was able to feed a crowd of thousands with only a few loaves and fishes. I don't believe these things to be metaphorical. I believe they actually happened.
Religious beliefs are wacky. In order to believe these things (which I do), I have to accept that Mary became pregnant without having sex with Joseph, and I also have to accept that a man (even a holy man) came back from the dead, visited his old friends, shared some wisdom, and then ascended into heaven as everyone watched.
I believe God has a plan for all of us/ I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet
The South Park guys -- Trey Parker and Matt Stone -- produce some of the most thoughtful and insightful works of art about the quirky nature of religious belief. When cynicism is called for, they are cynical, but The Book of Mormon isn't a cynical musical, and it isn't about taking shots at Mormonism. At times, it is incredibly filthy and profane, but it is also a consistently sweet story about the challenges of maintaining one's faith, even when the sadness and senselessness of the world conspire to shatter it, and the affection that Parker and Stone have for their subject is really kind of beautiful in a way.
The Book of Mormon, the musical, really inspires me. I don't think this was its intent -- foremost, I think its intent is to entertain and to be a good musical -- but such is the outcome. Even atheists can find inspiration in The Book of Mormon.
Andrew Rannells "I Believe (from The Book of Mormon)"
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
I don't have to think, I only have to do it
The original TV broadcast of Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York had room for two Meat Puppets covers -- "Plateau" and "Lake of Fire" -- both of which I remember hearing on FM radio quite a lot in the 1990's. The third, "Oh Me," was cut for commercials in the original airing of Unplugged, but it is my favorite song in the whole set, equaled in loveliness only by "All Apologies."
As I write this, I'm wondering if there is a connection between my affection for "Oh Me" and its status as a relatively obscure track, compared to Unplugged's other covers (Meat Puppets, David Bowie, Vaselines, Leadbelly), which make Unplugged such an amazing collection of influences and interpretations. I wonder if I am proprietary about "Oh Me" because I want it to belong to me in a way that other Nirvana songs cannot, simply because the band continues to be so popular and has so few songs to choose from as your favorite.
It reminds me of when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became a massive success, and I resented no longer feeling like the only 14-year-old kid to have discovered them. Nirvana no longer belonged to me, in other words. Probably every kid felt this way. Adolescence is a very self-centered time.
I love this song. The way it arrives, the way it departs, the unresolved chords, the understated guitar solo in the middle that remains the only guitar solo I can play by heart.
If I had to lose a mile, if I had to touch feelings/ I would lose my soul, the way I do/ I don't have to think, I only have to do it/ The results are always perfect, but that's old news
Watching "Oh Me" on YouTube, I am surprised at how sad it makes me to see Kurt Cobain so emotionally invested in his performance. It is possible -- probable, even -- that I am projecting emotions onto Cobain that aren't there. In so doing, I will hardly be unique, but watching him, I feel that he really wants to get this one right, that he wants his performance to match up to his love for the material, and he does it.
"Oh Me" is a beautiful, soulful, sincere performance. This is a song of yearning, of infinity stored deep inside.
Would you like to hear my voice/ Sprinkled with emotion/ Invented at your birth?
Yes.
Nirvana "Oh Me"
As I write this, I'm wondering if there is a connection between my affection for "Oh Me" and its status as a relatively obscure track, compared to Unplugged's other covers (Meat Puppets, David Bowie, Vaselines, Leadbelly), which make Unplugged such an amazing collection of influences and interpretations. I wonder if I am proprietary about "Oh Me" because I want it to belong to me in a way that other Nirvana songs cannot, simply because the band continues to be so popular and has so few songs to choose from as your favorite.
It reminds me of when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became a massive success, and I resented no longer feeling like the only 14-year-old kid to have discovered them. Nirvana no longer belonged to me, in other words. Probably every kid felt this way. Adolescence is a very self-centered time.
I love this song. The way it arrives, the way it departs, the unresolved chords, the understated guitar solo in the middle that remains the only guitar solo I can play by heart.
If I had to lose a mile, if I had to touch feelings/ I would lose my soul, the way I do/ I don't have to think, I only have to do it/ The results are always perfect, but that's old news
Watching "Oh Me" on YouTube, I am surprised at how sad it makes me to see Kurt Cobain so emotionally invested in his performance. It is possible -- probable, even -- that I am projecting emotions onto Cobain that aren't there. In so doing, I will hardly be unique, but watching him, I feel that he really wants to get this one right, that he wants his performance to match up to his love for the material, and he does it.
"Oh Me" is a beautiful, soulful, sincere performance. This is a song of yearning, of infinity stored deep inside.
Would you like to hear my voice/ Sprinkled with emotion/ Invented at your birth?
Yes.
Nirvana "Oh Me"
Miles of Light Explode
"Golden" revisits my mind often, lyrically as well as melodically.
Watching a stretch of road/ Miles of light explode/ Drifting off a thing I'd never done before
It is gorgeous, the way the main riff climbs the fretboard, and returns again to ascend after each chorus. For a song with such urgency -- the rhythm of brush sticks is ceaseless -- this is a song that somehow manages to drift along insistently, like the way the wind lifts a leaf -- and the pedal steel is perfect.
I heard this song for the first time in Taos, New Mexico, where I was living for the summer with a guy named Chris from South Carolina. We were working for the Forest Service on a backcountry trails crew in the Santa Fe National Forest. Chris and I hadn't met before, but we got along very well. He had a great beard. Musically, Chris bestowed on me lots of Woody Guthrie, never enough Vic Chesnutt, a smattering of Bonnie "Prince" Billy, a modicum of Modest Mouse, and my first introduction to My Morning Jacket.
Favorite lyrics...
People always told me that bars were dark and lonely/ And talk is often cheating filled with air
Be right here forever, go through this thing together/ And on heaven's golden shores, we'll lay our heads
How many times I have prayed this last idea, thinking of people I know who have already left this earth, or who are still alive, but lost to circumstance, belonging now to the past, and here I am wondering where the present went? "Golden" is a beautiful song for ruminating, or for just drifting along.
My Morning Jacket "Golden"
Watching a stretch of road/ Miles of light explode/ Drifting off a thing I'd never done before
It is gorgeous, the way the main riff climbs the fretboard, and returns again to ascend after each chorus. For a song with such urgency -- the rhythm of brush sticks is ceaseless -- this is a song that somehow manages to drift along insistently, like the way the wind lifts a leaf -- and the pedal steel is perfect.
I heard this song for the first time in Taos, New Mexico, where I was living for the summer with a guy named Chris from South Carolina. We were working for the Forest Service on a backcountry trails crew in the Santa Fe National Forest. Chris and I hadn't met before, but we got along very well. He had a great beard. Musically, Chris bestowed on me lots of Woody Guthrie, never enough Vic Chesnutt, a smattering of Bonnie "Prince" Billy, a modicum of Modest Mouse, and my first introduction to My Morning Jacket.
Favorite lyrics...
People always told me that bars were dark and lonely/ And talk is often cheating filled with air
Be right here forever, go through this thing together/ And on heaven's golden shores, we'll lay our heads
How many times I have prayed this last idea, thinking of people I know who have already left this earth, or who are still alive, but lost to circumstance, belonging now to the past, and here I am wondering where the present went? "Golden" is a beautiful song for ruminating, or for just drifting along.
My Morning Jacket "Golden"
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