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Posts Tagged ‘altie / alternative’

May Feeling, Maybe?

Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , , , , on June 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Early May in recent years has been subject to the feeling in one of my posts, namely this one and this one. That sadness is coupled with another, more invigorating feeling, in mid- to late May. As I sit in early June listening to a lovely piano concerto by Saint-Saëns, I thought I’d turn to it for a moment, if I may.

I’ve long had a vague notion that back in 2008, a certain love was developing rapidly in late spring, so since then my music-playing in May has been Bic Runga and The Go-Betweens—music from Down Under. I’d already listened to the Go-Betweens and their catalogue full of associations, so this year it turned into a season of Crowded House, with some Split Enz thrown in at the end—more music from Down Under.

May 11. Little did I suspect that May would be a month of my own shadows, a subject that seldom shows up in my pictures.

Long-neglected World Party also crept in as did The Red Hot Chili Peppers. These two groups, and the tones of regret and nostalgia and loneliness they strike at favorite moments, fit into the general spell. For, not only was it May 2008 that I was in this mood, but I’ve come to realize it was also this way in 1997: both are years that love really struck me.

I wasn’t listening to some of this music back in those days, in media res, but gradually this music came to sum up everything—the feeling then as well as the place the romance holds in my psyche now.

May 26. The month really did seem to last a long while, and its Wonderland was indeed full of trees and grass for me as well as these feelings and songs.

So, what exactly is this feeling, and where are the songs? The songs first. I listened to most of my Crowded House music, with “Sacred Cow,” “I Love You Dawn,” “World Where You Live,” and “People Are Like Suns,” bringing back a lot of that 2008 feeling. World Party chimed in: “I Fell Back Alone,” “She’s The One,” “Is It Like Today?” bridging back to the ’90s more so than the ’00s.

Love was growing in those Mays, and two songs really do capture what came of it all. For 2008, it’s “Poor Boy” by Split Enz. That year, the impetus to give it a go gathered serious steam with someone I’d known for years when she re-appeared in my life. Back when we had first met, it was she pursuing me from about as “afar” as you can get on this planet:

My love is alien, I picked her up by chance
She speaks to me with ultra-high frequency
A radio band of gold
Gonna listen ’til I grow old

For 1997, it’s “Dosed” by the RHCPs. I had just met her in 1997, but this song speaks to how it all turned out in the short and long term:

I got dosed by you and
Closer than most to you and
What am I supposed to do?
Take it away I never had it anyway
Take it away and everything will be okay

Rather than provide the details, I’ll let the lyrics hint at them. The impact of those times will never change, I suspect. For all the pain and sadness, there’s deep pleasure in those loves and what they brought me.

It’s amazing what a few words and bits of music can do. And there you have it, along with one more shadow photo.

May 31. But is any of it art? Actually, that’s about as “Who cares?!” a question as you can pose.

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The Cure and The Gut

Posted in Music, tagged , , , on May 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I exchanged Top 10 Songs by The Cure lists. He’s an exact contemporary of mine, age-wise, with the fundamental difference here being he discovered the group several years after I did, my awakening coming around 1988, his 1991. Perhaps that has made all the difference, but in reality his tastes are quite different than mine, his seeming stubbornly obscure even to me, not to mention terrible. And then there’s my possibly extreme belief that The Cure really dropped off after Disintegration, much as my R.E.M. experience.

Neither of our lists is in any particular order. Here’s his:

1. A Letter to Elise 2. Pictures of You 3. There Is No If 4. Pirate Ships 5. Strange Attraction

6. The Caterpillar 7. Burn 8. Wrong Number 9. In Between Days 10. The Lovecats

I’d never heard of half of his. Here’s mine:

1. Three Imaginary Boys 2. Do The Hansa 3. Just Like Heaven 4. Catch 5. A Forest 

6. The Caterpillar 7. A Night Like This 8. Close To Me (horns version)

9. The Perfect Girl  10. Grinding Halt 

And there is a “secret” order to mine. It’s the order I built the list, mostly in my head, by the gut, with a bit of quickly moving through the albums chronologically to be sure I didn’t miss something obvious.

As he pointed out, it’s pretty cool that our overlap is “The Caterpillar,” which makes it fitting that this is the link I provide. We have some near overlap in his numbers nine and ten, which I’d put on a greatest hits of a decent length. He mentioned personal stories (unknown to me) attached to many of his picks; one or two of mine are here partly because of an incident behind them.

There’s so much more that could be said and done with this. For now, I’ll listen to his list sometime soon. The Cure figured pretty greatly in my early life and there’s a lot that reflection upon that, their albums, their songs, their continued existence could bring forth.

For now, I’ll recommend this to those who’d like to explore the breadth of their work over the decades: Cureation: From There to Here From Here to There. A song from each album, starting with the oldest, then back again. A kindred soul in music pointed their efforts like these to me a few years ago and for that I am forever grateful. I know this person hated by #2 song. Maybe we’ll meet again one day.

Meanwhile, what are your favorite Cure songs?

p.s. This is most amusing too! Man of a thousand faces Long live Mad Bob.

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Desert Island Discs (finally)

Posted in Music, Non-Music, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »

As much as I’d like to use a Greek “k” when spelling disc, I’ll go with a standard that’s been around for decades. This British staple is not so well-known here, but it seems about time for me to appear on this radio show where eight tracks are selected, plus a book and luxury item to have at one’s disposal while stranded on a desert island. What are yours?

I came up with my selections off the top of my head after only briefest musing. I wonder how they’ll hold up.

Eight Discs
1 “Swan Lake Suite” by Tchaikovsky. I figured I could be granted this if not the entire opera. Drama, beauty, melody, atmosphere, birds, ballet.

2 “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. I love Big Band vocals, but the beauty of the sound, mood, and feel of my grandparents’ generation makes this the one.

3 “The Rain, The Park & Other Things” by The Cowsills. My favorite of a certain 60s genre and subject matter.

4 “Everybody Is A Star” by Sly & The Family Stone. Captures so much in its brief stay.

5 “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)” by Talking Heads. For certain moods.

6 “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths.

7 “Streets Of Your Town” by The Go-Betweens. Everything comes together perfectly for a band’s music that is full of associations with many of my favorite people on this planet.

8 “Hurricane” by Natalie Imbruglia. One in my quests for the best of the female voice. A song I didn’t know until recently, so good to have something fresh to get to know on this island. And it might be quite à propos for a desert island regardless.

Many important figures in my life are left out. I did an exercise in picking five songs with some friends years ago, with different tunes, but this is how this one turned out. I’ll share those sometime too.

Book
Contestants are granted a copy of the complete Shakespeare (thank you) and The Bible or other religious tome that suits them (not so keen). I apparently echo Eleanor Bron and others in my selection of Homer’s Iliad in dual language (original and the Richmond Lattimore English translation). Could I put this in the place of The Bible and pick another one?

Luxury Item
Pending. Any suggestions?

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Remembering

Posted in My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , on May 8, 2022| 1 Comment »

Just over a year ago, he was sick and just lying around; finding food he’d want to eat was not easy. He kept going, though, and we even thought he might recover and keep living in his senior state for a good while longer. It didn’t happen, though, and I came home a year and a day ago for his final moments.

This is one of the songs I was listening to yesterday, one that I was listening to a year ago. It’s all out of context from their original intention, but the lyrics here still make me think of him lying there, and thinking he might turn around. I hadn’t said goodbye, but the pain and doubt and wondering if this was the end or if he’d recover made me feel these words:

Don’t even say you’re turning around again
Don’t try to walk back into my life
I fall for it every time, I fall for it every time

I lose my will
I turn toward you still
It’s a bad dream where I
Can’t raise my hand to wave goodbye

Don’t even say you’re turning around again
Don’t try to walk back into my life
I fall for it every time, I fall for it every time

Springtime Carnivore, “Bad Dream Baby”

Yes, it makes little sense, but what really does?

Beamheart

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I may never see your face again

Posted in My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , , , on May 5, 2021| 6 Comments »

Caroline Crawley, Beamheart

“Crawley recalls how during recording of the plaintive ‘I May Never,’ she burst into tears during one take, while during the second one the studio engineer did exactly the same.” A quote from an affectionate article in The Guardian on Shelleyan Orphan, the undertones (overtones? both?) of my musical back and forths between the city and suburbs, each of their four albums accompanying me for their assigned seasonal three-month span each year. My sister and I both played reed instruments, and the oboe and bassoon add the right touches to Shelleyan Orphan songs, especially here.

The song perfectly encapsulates the heaven-sent and now to-heaven-returned voice of Caroline Crawley.

I may never see your face again
Rabbit’s down a hole, he’s already gone
Life came between us and just for a day
You’re the one who was standing in the door
I will love you, no matter even what you say or do
I will call your name out loud
I will love you, no matter even what you say or do
I will call your name.

So, this morning is the last I might see him. Yesterday I knelt by his big bed as he half-dozed, luxuriating in a head and ear rub while I cradled his tiny, scraggled head in my palm. This morning he was cleaning his paws sputtering a little as he did so, cheeks puffing out, then walking a little, went out and made the perfect poop, even ate half a carrot stick. Every snort and snore from him reminds me of all his little ways, many so lost now.

“I May Never” followed by “Beamheart,” the perfect finish to a career, perfect tones for a finish to a life that I can keep in my head while I think over the seventeen years of wonderful memories.

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with a Hip

Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , on January 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Arrowhead

Bits of Echo & The Bunnymen’s “My Kingdom” looping in my mind while a sequence of overbearing buzzes, alarms, whirrs, and beeps, reminiscent of 1980s Atari games—the Combat cartridge springs to mind—take their turn. It ends with mighty, stabbed organ chords that are really impressive and appealing. It’s my right hip MRI, the quest for diagnosis making headway.

Afterwards, I played the rest of the Cure tape my sister had given me long ago by way of introduction to the group, over 30 years ago, driving down Ogden past vacant stores now torn down replaced by vacant lots bringing who knows what. It’s much-changed, even Ogden Avenue. Other than the familiar looping of the street, parts are becoming unrecognizable even though I traverse it often. At least I know where I am going even if there’s few places I want to stop along the way.

I head directly to the snowscape of Arrowhead Park, home to park district soccer games as a kid. I park with windows all down slightly to hear any birds. No sound, just the empty snowy field and hill and creek, with what looks like a raft of flood ice in the distance. Now I see it’s traversed by two sleek, bundled up figures. No sound, but my head pictures my sister and her best friend as those two out on the icy snowfield. The latter lived a block away from this park, and she’s the reason my sister can’t return here when I want to walk it for bird and nostalgia. How has 30 years passed? The breeze blows into the rolled-down window, I view the field through a snag of hair the color of the gray sky and think of that time, their friendship, what they might have been talking about. I drive home to “The Perfect Girl.”

A week later, back for the left hip MRI, this time spent singing the guitar lines of Will Sergeant and insistent, urgent, defiant choruses of Ian McCulloch in my head—”Over The Wall,” “Show of Strength”—thinking of just re-viewed Donnie Darko and a more than pleasant dream I had of a friend. And back to Arrowhead, with one finch sweetly singing somewhere in the trees behind where I parked, the ones you see below.

But this blog is called Music and More, so I will get back to music soon. More music, less more: A Promise.

Arrowhead: A Week Later

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Pain’s embrace

Posted in My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , on January 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »

This past year, for me, has been a year defined by pain: physical pain that has nothing to do with the pandemic. 

I had become used to mental pain, emotional pain, heart pain, and I had like anyone suffered bouts of malady- and injury-induced pain. The pandemic did, with my life compressed in one place, bring concern for scratches and other tiny injuries to occasional hypochondriacal levels, but this year’s claim is seven months of chronic physical pain only speculatively diagnosed, one that would heal some and then lapse, would be treated to no effect, with inconclusive tests, irresolute specialists, and still no resolution—if any resolution is to come.

The mental and emotional pain I feel have been mellowing, numbing maybe, fading, and they are always there, just usually suppressed beyond registering, infrequent in rearing of head. Lost loves, friends, places, times, ambitions. My expectations mostly dashed in that realm as layers of life situations go unchanged. But, as I declared last year at this time, this has only led me to embrace myself and original activities, not dependent on others, and there is much delight in that.

Snowy February
Golden December

And this past year has added the layer of physical pain; I don’t heal like I used to and maybe some of this will never heal. I’ve come to realize that this physical pain is also just part of things, always somewhere. But it can be alleviated and its limiting influences embraced. As my athletic endeavors (such as they were) and ability to lift things for gardening and other household activities have been curtailed, and even walks now have become something I pay for afterwards, I am fortunate when I can push past the pain, look at it, embrace it.

Wisdom in pain.— There is as much wisdom in pain as there is in pleasure: both belong among the factors that contribute the most to the preservation of the species. If pain did not, it would have perished long ago; that it hurts is no argument against it but its essence. (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 318)

I think of Christina Rossetti in torment, screaming through nights in cancer’s throes, the agony of intense pain and the accompanying mental unhinging caused by its treatment with opium. I am thankful mine is not so acute, more one to wear me down, force me—if I am to accomplish anything—to overlook it when I can, or look at it with toleration and a Charlie Brown, scraggle smile when it won’t go unnoticed. Not to worry that no one seems to be able to define or remedy it, not worry what’s causing it, not worry if it will ever go away. Just accept it and keep going. Sometimes I can do this.

Eye-catching…
at any time of year.

One of my favorite groups put out a new song not long ago, “Ways,” and it happens to ring with as fitting a lyric as any for my year: “Aren’t you afraid of eternal Hell? Well, it’s not the end of the world” … “I can’t find any ways to change the pain to something else,” Frank sings. I admit that one of my primary goals for this year is to get rid of this pain. But if it can’t be diagnosed, or can be diagnosed, but simply won’t go away, I am creeping towards an acceptance of that, layered atop the other pains I’ve managed to set aside.

To Consider
Double pain is easier to bear
Than single pain: Will you so dare?
(Niet., Prelude to The Gay Science, 20)

Concluding ridiculous postscript.
Distraction has been one of any alleviations of this year’s pain. The sweeter pain of nostalgia. I got into an exchange with my sister and others about old favorite lost or utterly changed businesses of our hometown: Sports Bowl, Graham Crackers, Cee Bee’s, The Mole Hole, The Chocolate Key, Alton Drugs, Cock Robin, Tong Inn, Someplace Else, Old Peking, that old sports card shop run by Ernie.

Stark March
Mellow December, featuring 2020’s thematic “bleary sun.”

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Place Beside Me

Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , , , , , on October 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

As a kid I played the standard football, baseball, and basketball with my friends on the block, and was in the local soccer league through the park district, complete with reversible shirt, allowing us to be the yellow or blue team as needed. Gym class, a tiny bit of track, tennis lessons, and then softball and misc in college and after. Most of what I played in did not attract a crowd.

My parents I am sure did a great job cheering me on, and my dad certainly ran to my rescue when I was kicked in the jaw by my own teammate, but I can only think of two occasions when I noticed being cheered for while playing.

The first was in junior high, a day when for some reason we had to run laps around the school—state fitness standards or track tryouts? A certain tall, curly-haired KJ made a point of yelling my name and encouraging me, something immensely more inspiring than the binomial equation she wrote when she signed my yearbook. It must have been our Project Idea ties and general camaraderie in sharing a bunch of classes throughout our careers. I hope I cheered her on when she was similary forced to lap the school.

The second, still more treasured, a certain blonde-haired and blue-eyed BD in college cheering me on by name from the sidelines in an intramural basketball game. (Not the greatest basketball player, but I had my strengths.) We were most likely playing the fraternity whose members she hung around with, so her mentioning me from the sidelines was especially exciting and inspiring for me. Thank you, B.

What effect it can have when someone on the sidelines is there for you, especially unexpectedly. BD also majored in English, but, not surprisingly, we didn’t see much of each other as I seldom saw much of English majors and there was no apparatus tying such majors together.

Such tiny slices of memory taking on such a relatively large shape. The mind and heart are amazing. I could catalogue moments like these.

* Musical Interlude *

Two trios of songs joined me yesterday.

The first started with me listeining to Document after ages away from it. R.E.M.’s “Central America Triptych” has some of their best music and more intriguing lyrics and concepts, all seemingly inspired by Noam Chomsky’s Turning The Tide and the general 1980s anti-Reagan vibe I remember fondly.

Document offered “Welcome To The Occupation,” with “The Flowers of Guatemala” and “Green Grow The Rushes” from their previous two albums. The third has quite possibly my favorite R.E.M. guitar hook, the second a rousing solo, and the “Welcome…” just an all-around vibe and melody that easily lands it on my best of R.E.M. which should one day exist. Until yesterday I’d barely connected any of them to 1980s U.S. intervention in Central America. Oh well. Layers of meaning?

In the evening I played Dionne Warwick and pleasantly remembered she had recorded the Bacharach-David “This Empty Place.” Is it somehow only my third favorite version of this excellent song? I think so. I first heard it by The Searchers as an extremely catchy album track, backed up with their smoothly great instrumentation. Then, it came again later as a highlight album track for Swingin’ Cilla Black who has a way with the drama and nearly veering out of control, and this song is no exception. Her version’s modeled on Dionne’s and I can only say, woo-weee!

Think pink cover from Cilla’s 1965 U.S. album. (from Discogs.com)

Some old Sandie Shaw stuff is next.
We’ll see how that goes!
Long long live love.

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Cooler than ice cream, warmer than the sun

Posted in Music, tagged , on September 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I got a lot done yesterday, accompanied by the music of three 80s gals.

Starting out with Annie Lennox’s Eurythmics, the 1985 album Touch. Who’s That Girl?

Then Suzanne Vega’s Retrospective, with this awesome 1986 single. Left of Center.

And winding things up with Tina Weymouth’s Tom Tom Club, eponymous first album from 1981. She just so happens to have some French-Breton heritage. L’Elephant.

In the outskirts and
In the fringes
In the corner
Out of the grip

 

 

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The Sun and the Rainfall

Posted in Music, tagged , , , on August 26, 2020| 1 Comment »

This brings me back to when I wanted to take a special course on prosody: the metrics of poetry, the rhyme schemes, the rhythms, and all the technical stuff that went into this subject, captured best by reliable textbooks of the 19th century I used to own and peruse. A professor, uninterested, dissuaded me saying I could learn it on my own, implictly hinting as well that it likely wasn’t worthwhile. As a writer of poetry and student of older poetry especially, I was a bit disappointed, but did teach myself a thing or two.

How strange to think about that time and this topic after such a long time away from “home,” but the simple, deliberate poetic choices of “The Sun and the Rainfall” of our parallel post brings me back. 

Someone will call
Something will fall
And smash on the floor
Without reading the text
Know what comes next
Seen it before
And it’s painful
 
[The rhyme scheme is straightforward AABCCBD. The “someone” and “something” is a nice touch too.]
 
Things must change
We must rearrange them
Or we’ll have to estrange them
All that I’m saying
A game’s not worth playing
Over and over again
 
[ABBCC and A (almost). Two “feminine” rhymes, that is two-syllable rhymes, “-ange them,” for example. I like how the two “-ange them” rhymes are tied to the first line’s “change.” Assonance throughout, with the “ay” sounds, viz. -ange, -aying, -ain.]
 
You’re the one I like best
You retain my interest
You’re the only one
If it wasn’t for you
Don’t know what I’d do
Unpredictable like the sun
And the rainfall.
 
[Return to the first verse, AABCCBD, with the D here nearly the same as the first verse’s: “painful” and “rainfall” with the plangent consonance and variation of the vowel sounds, slant rhyme. Nice, harmonious touch as in the first verse, leading with “you’re” and “you retain,” which is even an eye rhyme: “you’re” and “you re”.]
 
Not only is this craft of this poetry charming and beautiful, the song is part of one of the great “hat tricks” (three great songs in a row): “Photograph of You,” “Shouldn’t Have Done That,” and the cap, “The Sun and the Rainfall.”
 
What better song, with it’s soft, slightly muffled production, complex layering, tiny tinges of sound, music in no hurry, subtly poetic lyrics, and highest of compliments? It brings to mind an A. E. Housman poem in style and atmosphere.
 
And what better album to listen to on one of those hottest summer days of the year with blearing sun and wistful memories and, as so often, rainfall on my mind?

 

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