Jukeboxing
Mar. 7th, 2005 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldOne day, I decided to take note of the next five songs that randomly cropped up on my mp3 player. I was able to write pretty voluminously on all of them, which tells me one of two things: (1) Every song, or at least every song I like, speaks to me in a very specific and explicable way, or (2) I am a loudmouthed blowhard. You make the call.
End of the Line The Traveling Wilburys
I have a hazy recollection of watching VH1 -- back in the late 80s or early 90s, when it was still MTV Lite and I didn't know Beatles from beetles -- and seeing a video with a bunch of dramatically aged, vaguely furry musicians strumming their guitars and singing along in what was supposed to be the vacant bed of a cargo train. They were singing "End of the Line," which is a sort of rollicking but unremarkable song about living each moment to the fullest. 'Cause everything is "alllllll-right," they tell us.
What makes the song interesting, and what I couldn't have appreciated at the time, is that it was performed by the Traveling Wilburys, which was the supergroup to end all supergroups. People can talk all about bands like The Thorns (made up of three blonde dudes whose solo careers have gone cultish or tepid) or Velvet Revolver (made up of Slash and several very gaunt gentlemen on furlough from rehab). But no one can ever top the Wilburys lineup:
Bob Dylan. Tom Petty. George Harrison. Roy Orbison. Jeff Lynne. (Okay, so most of you don't know who Jeff Lynne is. He was the lead force behind the Electric Light Orchestra, which sounds like it might be some kind of Muzak factory. But he is also a fairly well-respected producer, responsible for both re-released Beatles singles in the mid-90s, and has a totally kick-ass afro for a white british guy.)
Harrison, Petty, Lynne and Orbison share the lead vocals on this particular track, leaving Dylan to gargle with salt water. I think it's interesting that while these gentlemen are obviously rock legends, and easily some of the best songwriters and performers of the last 50 years, of these five, only Orbison has a voice that would not double as a duck call.
There is one couplet toward the end of the song that I always found to be curiously direct and ultimately sort of creepy. Jeff Lynne sings:
Well it's allllll-right
If you've got someone to lay
Well it's allllll-right
Every day is judgment day
Um, okay.
End of the Movie Cake
From their latest album "Pressure Chief," this song is a bit of an oddity. At just under two minutes and sparsely accompanied by a finger-plucked guitar and tinny melodica, it represents a departure from Cake's typical stridently ambitious sound. But the standard unblinking honesty of John McRea's lyrics soon shatters any illusion that this is feel-good folk.
People you love will turn their backs on you
You'll lose your hair, your teeth
Your knife will fall out of its sheath
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie.
People you hate will get their hooks into you
They'll pull you down, you'll frown
They'll tar you and drag you through town
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie.
No, you still don't like to leave before the end of the show.
[repeat second verse]
I once told my friend C.C. that this song reminded me of her, and she became indignant. " 'People you love will turn their backs on you?' " She said. "What the fuck? Is that what you think of me?" But she missed my point. This isn't a song about how everything sucks. Well, okay, maybe it is about that a little bit. But more importantly, it's about knowing that everything sucks, and not giving up anyway.
But what separates it from other songs about "not giving up," like REM's "Everybody Hurts" or even the Wilbury's "End of the Line," is that it doesn't suggest that things are really okay, or that they're going to be okay. Because let's face it. Some people hurt more than others. And everything is not going to be "allll-right."
This song isn't really even encouraging the audience one way or the other. It is merely making an observation about human nature and why we don't give up. It's not really because we have faith or because we feel someone else's empathy or because we really like deep dish pizza. It's because more than anything we just want to know what's going to happen next.
It's that curious perseverance that links human existence together, and more profoundly, me to my friend C.C., who by the way would never turn her back on me, not that I'd ever notice, because she lives all the way out in Wisconsin and hasn't visited me yet.
Gone House Jacks
When young people go away to college, away from the sheltering influences of parents and small towns, they are inevitably exposed to a variety of nefarious influences. Drugs. Alcohol. Sexuality. And a capella music.
For some reason, it's okay to like a capella music in college. In high school, it's geeky. In real life, it's gay. But during those four years of higher education, individuals who can harmonize and simulate snare drum sounds get to live like rock stars.
I admit it, I too fell under its spell. I tried out for the men's a capella group three times without success. I was even desperate enough to try out for the comparitively retarded barbershop quartet, losing out on the final callback and therefore barely dodging a nerd-shaped bullet.
Ultimately, I did find an outlet for my vocalizations. My fraternity happened to be populated with a few musically-inclined brothers, and together we comprised the Gentleman Callers, charged with serenading sororities before socials and mixers. It was actually the perfect setup for me, since it involved a very high girls-to-practice ratio.
Not all our gigs were so romantic, though. In the spring of my freshman year, an undergraduate woman was accidentally killed in a medical center experiment gone awry. She happened to be a close friend of the Callers' musical director, who volunteered us to sing at the campus wake. The song we sang was "Gone" by House Jacks, a slightly badder version of Rockapella (Which, incidentally, is like saying Air Supply was a badder version of Christopher Cross).
We only sang the song once, and I think it was the best song we ever sang together. Not only did we sound really good, but it's also a really good song. A capella music is not known for poetic insight or thoughtful language, but I think it's genuinely beautiful, like when they sing
I passed the blame;
it's past the time
to cross my heart
and walk across that line
whose will is this?
which poet's lines pull at you?
The next year, the Gentleman Callers got lazy and stopped performing. Or at least I thought they had stopped performing. It turns out that a few members of the group started recruiting outside singers and practicing behind everyone else's back. Soon they announced themselves as a new campus all-men's a capella group. I was not provided an honorary membership, but they were kind enough to offer me an audition, which I politely suggested they suck on, along with my dick. That was pretty much the end of my a capella phase.
But sometimes, when I hear "Gone," I still sing my part.
Vienna Billy Joel
This is my favorite song from my favorite Billy Joel album. I think "The Stranger" still receives critical acclaim as his greatest work, although it doesn't seem to have attained the cult cred of "Turnstiles" or "Glass Houses." Anyway, "Vienna" is one of the few songs on "The Stranger" that never became a radio hit, which perhaps only amplifies its mystique for me.
This song, for me, is the perfect song for mix CDs, because nobody has ever heard it and everybody ought to. Especially young women. I've never met a woman, aged 18 to 29, who didn't need to hear this song and memorize it. It would probably work for guys, too, although the music is probably a little too wussy to hold their attention.
Mostly this song is just about relaxing. If Billy Joel had been Limp Bizkit, the song would be called "Chill the Fuck Out." The first lines are:
Slow down, you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart
Tell me why are you still so afraid?
What I think he's saying is that too many people are so wrapped up in where they're going that they never realize where they are. They're too afraid to stop and look around because they're afraid – of what, I'm not quite sure. Getting separated from the leader? Getting caught from behind? Realizing that they're actually in New Jersey?
The song sort of seems like a backhanded slap at ambition, which may be a key reason why it resonates with me personally. I've never had much use for the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I've always been a lot more interested in the journey – the process – than the destination. You can call it laziness if you want. I'll call it something else when I get around to it.
Anyway, Joel ends one of his verses with this flourish:
You got your passion, you got your pride,
But don't you know that only fools are satisfied
Dream on but don't imagine they'll all come true, ooh,
When will you realize,
Vienna waits for you.
I haven't the foggiest idea what the title means. What does an Austrian city have to do with anything? It must be some kind of symbol; a representation of something like a state of grace or peace that may be different for each of us. For some people, maybe Vienna is wealth. For some people, maybe Vienna is true love. That's for each of us to decide. For me, Vienna can only mean one thing: The International House of Pancakes.
Separately, this song does have sentimental value. In ninth grade, the National Junior Honor Society took its class trip to Washington D.C. via bus. It was a wild and wooly time that none of us will soon forget. It meant long bus rides down and back, with little more for entertainment than people taking pictures of other people making out.
On the ride home in Bus #1, we obnoxious geeks whiled away some of those transit hours by singing songs into the bus's P.A. system. I vaguely recall three cheerleaders taking 40 mintues to complete the entire Tone Loc catalog. At one point, someone – maybe 'Spec – convinced me and my friend Sir G. to give it a go. Vienna was one of the few songs we knew all the words to, and as we sang it into that stupid walkie-talkie-looking microphone, everyone on the bus started to shut up. By the time we were done the bus was silent. And if you've never heard a bus full of 15 year olds completely silent, it's like walking into a pet shop and not smelling anything.
For the right price, Sir G. and I are available for classrooms, doctors' offices and babysitting gigs.
Mr. Brightside The Killers
This song is relatively new, so I don't have much to say about it. I first heard it on an early season episode of "The O.C.," – when Seth buys tickets for Summer and her new boyfriend in what is designed to be a demonstration of goodwill and generosity but is actually a pretty transparent attempt to get her back, which doesn't work, at least not immediately, which is too bad because they're really ridiculously cute together – and I remember thinking that the song sucked.
One thing did stand out, as I was listening to it, though. This verse:
Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest
Now, he takes off her dress
Now, let me go
I thought it was pretty clever how the author uses the lyrics and the rhyme scheme to fool the listener into thinking that he's going to say
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his dick
Anyway, then E-Train put the song on one of his annual music samplers, and I got around to listening to it again, and I realized, hey! I like this song after all. And I mentioned this to E., as well as my admiration for the nifty lyricist, and he didn't know what I was talking about. He didn't think the author or the singer were going for "dick" at all. Then he made some ungentlemanly suggestions about my state of mind.
So now I wonder, is it just me? This is a pretty popular song right now, so hopefully many of you have heard it. If you hear what I hear, send E. a message by entering a comment below.
Thank you.
End of the Line The Traveling Wilburys
I have a hazy recollection of watching VH1 -- back in the late 80s or early 90s, when it was still MTV Lite and I didn't know Beatles from beetles -- and seeing a video with a bunch of dramatically aged, vaguely furry musicians strumming their guitars and singing along in what was supposed to be the vacant bed of a cargo train. They were singing "End of the Line," which is a sort of rollicking but unremarkable song about living each moment to the fullest. 'Cause everything is "alllllll-right," they tell us.
What makes the song interesting, and what I couldn't have appreciated at the time, is that it was performed by the Traveling Wilburys, which was the supergroup to end all supergroups. People can talk all about bands like The Thorns (made up of three blonde dudes whose solo careers have gone cultish or tepid) or Velvet Revolver (made up of Slash and several very gaunt gentlemen on furlough from rehab). But no one can ever top the Wilburys lineup:
Bob Dylan. Tom Petty. George Harrison. Roy Orbison. Jeff Lynne. (Okay, so most of you don't know who Jeff Lynne is. He was the lead force behind the Electric Light Orchestra, which sounds like it might be some kind of Muzak factory. But he is also a fairly well-respected producer, responsible for both re-released Beatles singles in the mid-90s, and has a totally kick-ass afro for a white british guy.)
Harrison, Petty, Lynne and Orbison share the lead vocals on this particular track, leaving Dylan to gargle with salt water. I think it's interesting that while these gentlemen are obviously rock legends, and easily some of the best songwriters and performers of the last 50 years, of these five, only Orbison has a voice that would not double as a duck call.
There is one couplet toward the end of the song that I always found to be curiously direct and ultimately sort of creepy. Jeff Lynne sings:
Well it's allllll-right
If you've got someone to lay
Well it's allllll-right
Every day is judgment day
Um, okay.
End of the Movie Cake
From their latest album "Pressure Chief," this song is a bit of an oddity. At just under two minutes and sparsely accompanied by a finger-plucked guitar and tinny melodica, it represents a departure from Cake's typical stridently ambitious sound. But the standard unblinking honesty of John McRea's lyrics soon shatters any illusion that this is feel-good folk.
People you love will turn their backs on you
You'll lose your hair, your teeth
Your knife will fall out of its sheath
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie.
People you hate will get their hooks into you
They'll pull you down, you'll frown
They'll tar you and drag you through town
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie.
No, you still don't like to leave before the end of the show.
[repeat second verse]
I once told my friend C.C. that this song reminded me of her, and she became indignant. " 'People you love will turn their backs on you?' " She said. "What the fuck? Is that what you think of me?" But she missed my point. This isn't a song about how everything sucks. Well, okay, maybe it is about that a little bit. But more importantly, it's about knowing that everything sucks, and not giving up anyway.
But what separates it from other songs about "not giving up," like REM's "Everybody Hurts" or even the Wilbury's "End of the Line," is that it doesn't suggest that things are really okay, or that they're going to be okay. Because let's face it. Some people hurt more than others. And everything is not going to be "allll-right."
This song isn't really even encouraging the audience one way or the other. It is merely making an observation about human nature and why we don't give up. It's not really because we have faith or because we feel someone else's empathy or because we really like deep dish pizza. It's because more than anything we just want to know what's going to happen next.
It's that curious perseverance that links human existence together, and more profoundly, me to my friend C.C., who by the way would never turn her back on me, not that I'd ever notice, because she lives all the way out in Wisconsin and hasn't visited me yet.
Gone House Jacks
When young people go away to college, away from the sheltering influences of parents and small towns, they are inevitably exposed to a variety of nefarious influences. Drugs. Alcohol. Sexuality. And a capella music.
For some reason, it's okay to like a capella music in college. In high school, it's geeky. In real life, it's gay. But during those four years of higher education, individuals who can harmonize and simulate snare drum sounds get to live like rock stars.
I admit it, I too fell under its spell. I tried out for the men's a capella group three times without success. I was even desperate enough to try out for the comparitively retarded barbershop quartet, losing out on the final callback and therefore barely dodging a nerd-shaped bullet.
Ultimately, I did find an outlet for my vocalizations. My fraternity happened to be populated with a few musically-inclined brothers, and together we comprised the Gentleman Callers, charged with serenading sororities before socials and mixers. It was actually the perfect setup for me, since it involved a very high girls-to-practice ratio.
Not all our gigs were so romantic, though. In the spring of my freshman year, an undergraduate woman was accidentally killed in a medical center experiment gone awry. She happened to be a close friend of the Callers' musical director, who volunteered us to sing at the campus wake. The song we sang was "Gone" by House Jacks, a slightly badder version of Rockapella (Which, incidentally, is like saying Air Supply was a badder version of Christopher Cross).
We only sang the song once, and I think it was the best song we ever sang together. Not only did we sound really good, but it's also a really good song. A capella music is not known for poetic insight or thoughtful language, but I think it's genuinely beautiful, like when they sing
I passed the blame;
it's past the time
to cross my heart
and walk across that line
whose will is this?
which poet's lines pull at you?
The next year, the Gentleman Callers got lazy and stopped performing. Or at least I thought they had stopped performing. It turns out that a few members of the group started recruiting outside singers and practicing behind everyone else's back. Soon they announced themselves as a new campus all-men's a capella group. I was not provided an honorary membership, but they were kind enough to offer me an audition, which I politely suggested they suck on, along with my dick. That was pretty much the end of my a capella phase.
But sometimes, when I hear "Gone," I still sing my part.
Vienna Billy Joel
This is my favorite song from my favorite Billy Joel album. I think "The Stranger" still receives critical acclaim as his greatest work, although it doesn't seem to have attained the cult cred of "Turnstiles" or "Glass Houses." Anyway, "Vienna" is one of the few songs on "The Stranger" that never became a radio hit, which perhaps only amplifies its mystique for me.
This song, for me, is the perfect song for mix CDs, because nobody has ever heard it and everybody ought to. Especially young women. I've never met a woman, aged 18 to 29, who didn't need to hear this song and memorize it. It would probably work for guys, too, although the music is probably a little too wussy to hold their attention.
Mostly this song is just about relaxing. If Billy Joel had been Limp Bizkit, the song would be called "Chill the Fuck Out." The first lines are:
Slow down, you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart
Tell me why are you still so afraid?
What I think he's saying is that too many people are so wrapped up in where they're going that they never realize where they are. They're too afraid to stop and look around because they're afraid – of what, I'm not quite sure. Getting separated from the leader? Getting caught from behind? Realizing that they're actually in New Jersey?
The song sort of seems like a backhanded slap at ambition, which may be a key reason why it resonates with me personally. I've never had much use for the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I've always been a lot more interested in the journey – the process – than the destination. You can call it laziness if you want. I'll call it something else when I get around to it.
Anyway, Joel ends one of his verses with this flourish:
You got your passion, you got your pride,
But don't you know that only fools are satisfied
Dream on but don't imagine they'll all come true, ooh,
When will you realize,
Vienna waits for you.
I haven't the foggiest idea what the title means. What does an Austrian city have to do with anything? It must be some kind of symbol; a representation of something like a state of grace or peace that may be different for each of us. For some people, maybe Vienna is wealth. For some people, maybe Vienna is true love. That's for each of us to decide. For me, Vienna can only mean one thing: The International House of Pancakes.
Separately, this song does have sentimental value. In ninth grade, the National Junior Honor Society took its class trip to Washington D.C. via bus. It was a wild and wooly time that none of us will soon forget. It meant long bus rides down and back, with little more for entertainment than people taking pictures of other people making out.
On the ride home in Bus #1, we obnoxious geeks whiled away some of those transit hours by singing songs into the bus's P.A. system. I vaguely recall three cheerleaders taking 40 mintues to complete the entire Tone Loc catalog. At one point, someone – maybe 'Spec – convinced me and my friend Sir G. to give it a go. Vienna was one of the few songs we knew all the words to, and as we sang it into that stupid walkie-talkie-looking microphone, everyone on the bus started to shut up. By the time we were done the bus was silent. And if you've never heard a bus full of 15 year olds completely silent, it's like walking into a pet shop and not smelling anything.
For the right price, Sir G. and I are available for classrooms, doctors' offices and babysitting gigs.
Mr. Brightside The Killers
This song is relatively new, so I don't have much to say about it. I first heard it on an early season episode of "The O.C.," – when Seth buys tickets for Summer and her new boyfriend in what is designed to be a demonstration of goodwill and generosity but is actually a pretty transparent attempt to get her back, which doesn't work, at least not immediately, which is too bad because they're really ridiculously cute together – and I remember thinking that the song sucked.
One thing did stand out, as I was listening to it, though. This verse:
Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest
Now, he takes off her dress
Now, let me go
I thought it was pretty clever how the author uses the lyrics and the rhyme scheme to fool the listener into thinking that he's going to say
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his dick
Anyway, then E-Train put the song on one of his annual music samplers, and I got around to listening to it again, and I realized, hey! I like this song after all. And I mentioned this to E., as well as my admiration for the nifty lyricist, and he didn't know what I was talking about. He didn't think the author or the singer were going for "dick" at all. Then he made some ungentlemanly suggestions about my state of mind.
So now I wonder, is it just me? This is a pretty popular song right now, so hopefully many of you have heard it. If you hear what I hear, send E. a message by entering a comment below.
Thank you.
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Gone
Date: 2005-03-29 04:06 pm (UTC)