Wednesday, August 7, 2013
"Sex Lives of Sonic Youth."
It's laughable that anybody would ever end up talking about the sex life of the members of the defunct gallery-going yoga-mat collective Sonic Youth. There was nonetheless a keen debate going on at Brooklyn Vegan for a while a few months back, when the news broke about' Thirstin's thrustin' around behind his erstwhile missus's back.
"All in all I quite enjoyed the ruckus," as Donald Rumsfeld would say, because there had been such a pious overrating afforded to this band, woefully inappropriate. I should say, in the interests of journalistic integrity, that when I was sixteen I had Bad Moon Rising and Sister and EVOL on vinyl, and I once knew a man who purported to have bought a copy of Washing Machine on CD. He was a Frenchman.
I also have a copy of the Death Valley '69 Blast First twelve-inch for sale if anybody wants it. Scarcely ever been played.
Imagine though, is there a more sexless band than this tenacious crew of cranial pillocks? (Kraftwerk perhaps, but aren't even they rather raunchy, in comparison with SY, with their long-distance cycling outfits?) They had a record, Confusion Is Sex, which is actually known generally throughout the world as Sex Is Confusing For Sonic Youth. Subtitled: We Can't Get Laid Backstage at Our Own Show at Budokan.
You'd have to look at Lee and Steev especially and laugh out loud at the thought. These pilgrim fathers couldn't get felt up in a knocking shop! These are the men who eventually got dumped by their Japanese groupies for being "possessive" and "needy" and "weird"! These are the only septuagenarians who still "dig" the Beat writers!
Anyway you should all for a laugh look up the page
[ http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2013/04/kim_gordon_tell.html ] if only because it really cracks the institutionalized mass-delusions about this group. Do you recall that one good record they had, the Master-Dik twelve-inch, which the inner sleeve reprinted a letter to Maximum RocknRoll from Ben Weasel about how bad the group was? Well Thurston should put this whole Brooklyn Vegan debate on his next shitty album as a deluxe screen-printed signed HC booklet.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
"Thurston Hearts the One Per Cent."
No old fool quite like an old tool.
No old fool quite like Thurston.
No decrepit old farm tool quite as gnarled and befuddled as Thurston the singer from Sonic Youth!
No decrepit old farm tool quite as gnarled and befuddled as Thurston the singer from Sonic Youth!
I fucking hate David Bowie and I fucking hate Sonic Youth—they always struck me as art-wank bullshit, just so complacent. I think [Thurston Moore] is a cunt and I told him so. He was like, “Get this guy away from me…” And that remix he did [Moore remixed the Blur song Essex Dogs] …God…
Alex James
ROLLING STONE LICKSPITTLE: What inspired the Occupy theme in the "Lip" video?
THRUSTON [sic]: It was the idea of the director, Eva Prinz. She's a cracker of a girl. A really splendid dynamite firecracker. She's my protege. Ha... I’m fucking her, you see. But I don't want to talk about that. Wanna talk about politics. It's a protest song I wrote for all the Occupy people I know, and she's very involved with Occupy in a very activist way. Activistical. Activistic... She’s married to a member of the Dutch royalty so it’s only natural that she is interested in the plight of poor Americans. Kind of benevolent. She's married to him but he lets her run around as she will and lucky me, she runs straight into my loving arms! She's a really terrific go-getter. Anyway, when I went down there, there was so much celebration and theater going on, lots of minor foreign royalty, and I really responded to that. I felt like the new Allen Ginsberg. I felt benevolent. You know, getting all clammy-handed with my finger-cymbals and trying to fuck everything within gnawing distance. All in the name of free love. You know I split with my old lady right? Right. I’m fucking a new lay and she’s young and rich and loaded and she thinks I’m a fucking poet and we love to go down Wall Street and, you know, empathize with the so-called dirt-poor. By which I mean the filthy rich. You know, those One Per Centers who sympathize terribly with the Unwashed 99. I mean I guess we think it’s an awful shame that people are unable to afford Record Day reissues of vintage HC seven inches on eBay man. You'd go down and there was poetry being read and a library being built and an ad hoc parade would go around. So I wrote a song somewhat based on that with the chorus, "Get fucking mad/Too fucking bad." Or, something like, “Don’t be a clown/Get down.” “Don’t get mad/Get even.” You know the drill man. I'm not very articulate. I mean, I’m a lousy fucking writer but I’ve spun out this mindless goo-goo NY pop-art sludge for lo thirty years now and look what it’s got me, it’s got me fucking minor Dutch royalty. I mean where’s Gibby Haynes now? Anyway as far as the Occupy movement, I really don’t know much about what the complaints are, but... Eva wanted to show aspects of it as a filmmaker. Does that last sentence mean anything? Or is it empty verbiage from my mouth? The image of the burning bus in London is a very loaded image. You can quote me on that. How is it loaded, why is it loaded, don’t ask me. I went to a liberal arts college upstate somewhere. We just say images are “loaded” and move respectfully on. Making a video of a song with a chorus of "Fuck fuck fuck" is a little ridiculous. Even I admit that. You can't show the thing. You can’t listen to the thing if I’m honest. But it was a creative moment. I learnt to say that at college too. “It was a creative moment.”
Sunday, March 24, 2013
"Elisions in the Republic." Or, "Self-Censorship in the Rock Arts."
I was trudging ("jogging") through Berkeley, up towards the botanical gardens, that tough incline near where the young football jocks come spontaneously bounding out of thickets, high on steroids and coke, sprinting downhill like young fools yet to get burnt, as I have, by running repeatedly too close to the fire.
I've spoken elsewhere on the subject of these blunderers and that (as Dick Cheney would say) "with not inconsiderable eloquence." Today in mentioning the scene again I am merely providing background colour for some woolgathering, if not some shadow-catching.
Three songs Christianized, bowdlerized; self-censored:
1. Sebadoh. "Calling Yog Soggoth."
As I came along Stadium Rim Way I was listening to Sebadoh on my i-Pod. The record was Sebadoh III, the two-disc reissue with the excellent songs from the Gimme Indie Rock seven inch on it. When I got to the track "Calling Yog Soggoth," a real rip-roaring classic which I have always loved ("Why does everything look sideways? / Wish I had eyes in the back of my head...") I noticed at its play-out a curious elision in the republic.
The version I knew, from the original, well-beloved, clear-vinyl seven-inch, played out with a slowed-down piece of "spoken word" - presumably Eric Gaffney reading from some black tome:
Magic can be white or black, that is, it can be used for either good or bad purposes yet it is all magic. There is no distinction between magic healing, prayer or blessing and destructive magic such as cursing, ill-wishing and actual magic killing. The difference is only in the mind of the practitioner.
This slows to a halt & a fuzzy guitar loop plays out the single on a lock-groove.
The reissued version on the Sebadoh III double CD skips the lines after "yet it is all magic."
As I pounded away uphill from the murky streets of Berkeley, with its wood shingle buildings and its weird old-school leftism (-- how you could emerge from a fire trail out of the dense woods and stumble upon a lone native maid smoking a spliff--- ) (I was reminded of Oxford's Cowley Road in the late Eighties -- the leftist bookshop -- in there with ihajlovic -- picking up books of prophecies --a hoax copy of the Necronomicon -- ) the lack was particularly odd to me.
The only clue to this elision is in the fact that Eric Gaffney, the excellent author of, and sole participant in that song, is now a committed self-proclaimed Christian. Even so, describing the possible uses of black magic hardly seems to me a mortal sin. However there are faint bursts of backwards-masking behind the omitted lines, also, which contain who knows what Hell-defying incantations.
I can understand the impulse, in this instance, done by a good God-fearing and Christly good upstanding young male man ashamed of his youthful excesses and rash profanities and blasphemies and keen not to repackage then and renew them for the new generations of indie-rockers who come to these tracks through double-disc deluxe reissues. Still the original line makes for a better close & better listening.
"Case closed."
2. Various. "Desperados Waiting For a Train."
It reminded me however of another run and another meditation on this subject of self-censorship in music. How peculiar it is -- how unusual. How rich and "pleasant and delightful" and full of raw subjectry for good talk methinks!
And the larks they sang melodious
At the dawn of the day!
I was running another time in Nashville of all places, in the blocks around the park with the Parthenon there. I'd weave into the park, round the Parthenon, down by the duckpond, round back, and then outward, exploring the while. At one stage I was listening to the original version of "Desperados Waiting for a Train,"by Guy Clark. I was north-west of the Parthenon, struggling again up an incline, and thinking about one line in particular.
This song was written by Guy Clark, but was first a release for Jerry Jeff Walker on his Viva Terlingua LP in 1973. David Allan Coe recorded a version for The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy in 1974. Guy Clark himself released a version in 1975 on Old No. 1. It was revived as a second single for the Highwaymen in 1985.
On a version performing it on "The Texas Connection" (it's on Youtube), Walker introduces it thus: "Guy wrote this song, one of the first ones I ever did, and it's a song about his Grandma's boyfriend, how he described it to me." In this song the singer pays tribute to an older "mentor" of sorts, albeit something of a disreputable, defeated barfly waster bastard bum asshole ("Well he's a drifter and a driller of oil wells"), who is considered by the town wags the "sidekick" of the younger man:
And I was just a kid, but they all called him sidekick...
This line seems essential to give the listener a sense of the man's limitations. It is one of the lines censored in the inferior cover versions of the song, but not the most noteworthy. In the version by Jerry Jeff Walker, the line is
Good old Dave Coe alike flubs the point of the line but good:
And I was just a kid that they all called a sidekick...
Jerry -- Dave -- lads, lads, the whole point of the line is that the younger man is nevertheless considered the dominant partner by the droll domino-players of the Green Frog Cafe. The howler is set in concrete by those so-called "outlaws" in the Highwaymen. The line is sung by Willie Nelson:
And I was just a kid that they called his sidekick...
What is so awkward for these "badlanders of C&W" that they cannot concede that an old man might be considered a figure of fun in barroom society and still be sang of fondly? Is it too rough for these aging gentlemen to bear? Do they fear that as the years creep by they too shall become figures for rough cruel mockery in the taverns of our good cities?
The other line that is changed by both the Highwaymen and Dave is the one where the old man is on the verge of death, when the singer and he trill the song one last time in defiance of the closing-in darkness. In Guy Clark's take the singer rouses the old man thus:
Come on Jack, the son of a bitch is comin'...
In other words, the personification of death is said to be advancing, and the two defiantly consider him a mere son-of-a-bitch. Jerry Jeff Walker likewise growls (although with less animosity than Clark):
Hey Jack you know that sumbitch is comin'...
Dave Coe was the one who changes the line first:
Don't cry Jack, it's only Jesus comin'...
Dave is like Eric Gaffney, nicifying the bad words and repenting for the unChristianly rock excesses of others or himself. This terrible little nod to the Christians in the C&W shit-kicker hinterland badlands was mercifully not repeated by the Highwaymen, who nevertheless bowdlerized their version too:
Come on Jack, the son-of-a-gun is comin'...
Death is many things. It is not, by my reckoning, a "son-of-a-gun." Nor is it a "rascal" or a "nincompoop."
You wonder which was the worse sin of omission.
3. Various. "Greenland Whale Fisheries."
This my third song has no nostalgic connection for me, at least (and mercifully) not one that I can recall. When I used to make compilation tapes for my brother it'd irritate him when I would describe in tedious detail the various recollections each song evoked for me. How fortunate that I too realise that such dull talk steals precious moments from our times and lives!
This my third is the folk song entitled "Greenland Whale Fishery," performed variously by the thousands including Pete Seeger and his fakeloric cohorts the Weavers, and also by the incomparable Paul Clayton (the real deal).
Sometimes I like Pete Seeger, other times I want to scale the upstate mountain where he lives and wring his pencil-neck for his overly precious liberal pedantry. Especially when he rides roughshod over the original point of a folk song because it don't meet his own pacific vision.
In "Greenland Whale Fisheries," the version on Whaling and Sailing Songs From the Days of Moby Dick (incidentally, one of the greatest albums ever recorded) Paul Clayton sings the line as it comes to us from der volk:
To lose the men, the captain cried,
It grieves my heart full sore,
But oh! to lose a hundred-barrel whale,
It grieves me ten times more,
Brave boys,
It grieves me ten times more.
In the wishy-washy skipjack-tuna chicken-of-the-sea version by Pete Seeger's Weavers the line is changed to one of hand-wringing Christianly right goodliness in which the loss of the men is regretted more than the loss of the oil. We can imagine Eric Gaffney and Dave Coe joining hands to croon about how the captain grieved over the loss.
(Idea for a supergroup.)
Hunting about for a copy of the Seeger/Weavers version to listen to online, and finding none, I had recourse to the Wikipedia entry on the song. This entry rather scotches my point by insisting that the humanistic Seeger-Weavers fakelore version of the song is the original, and that the cynical one is a later revision, crafted in more materialistic times.
I have to doubt this shit!
Next they'll be saying that the version of "Calling Yog Soggoth" on Sebadoh III is the original and the version on the transparent vinyl is a hoax faked much later by enemies of Eric Gaffney to make him look bad.
It is said that Jesus Christ was a Christly right good man, if not exactly a "merry old soul," and I do not dispute it. It is only to be wished that his adherents did not mess about with the lyrics of perfectly decent, if secular, songs.
I've spoken elsewhere on the subject of these blunderers and that (as Dick Cheney would say) "with not inconsiderable eloquence." Today in mentioning the scene again I am merely providing background colour for some woolgathering, if not some shadow-catching.
Three songs Christianized, bowdlerized; self-censored:
1. Sebadoh. "Calling Yog Soggoth."
As I came along Stadium Rim Way I was listening to Sebadoh on my i-Pod. The record was Sebadoh III, the two-disc reissue with the excellent songs from the Gimme Indie Rock seven inch on it. When I got to the track "Calling Yog Soggoth," a real rip-roaring classic which I have always loved ("Why does everything look sideways? / Wish I had eyes in the back of my head...") I noticed at its play-out a curious elision in the republic.
The version I knew, from the original, well-beloved, clear-vinyl seven-inch, played out with a slowed-down piece of "spoken word" - presumably Eric Gaffney reading from some black tome:
Magic can be white or black, that is, it can be used for either good or bad purposes yet it is all magic. There is no distinction between magic healing, prayer or blessing and destructive magic such as cursing, ill-wishing and actual magic killing. The difference is only in the mind of the practitioner.
This slows to a halt & a fuzzy guitar loop plays out the single on a lock-groove.
The reissued version on the Sebadoh III double CD skips the lines after "yet it is all magic."
As I pounded away uphill from the murky streets of Berkeley, with its wood shingle buildings and its weird old-school leftism (-- how you could emerge from a fire trail out of the dense woods and stumble upon a lone native maid smoking a spliff--- ) (I was reminded of Oxford's Cowley Road in the late Eighties -- the leftist bookshop -- in there with ihajlovic -- picking up books of prophecies --a hoax copy of the Necronomicon -- ) the lack was particularly odd to me.
The only clue to this elision is in the fact that Eric Gaffney, the excellent author of, and sole participant in that song, is now a committed self-proclaimed Christian. Even so, describing the possible uses of black magic hardly seems to me a mortal sin. However there are faint bursts of backwards-masking behind the omitted lines, also, which contain who knows what Hell-defying incantations.
I can understand the impulse, in this instance, done by a good God-fearing and Christly good upstanding young male man ashamed of his youthful excesses and rash profanities and blasphemies and keen not to repackage then and renew them for the new generations of indie-rockers who come to these tracks through double-disc deluxe reissues. Still the original line makes for a better close & better listening.
"Case closed."
2. Various. "Desperados Waiting For a Train."
It reminded me however of another run and another meditation on this subject of self-censorship in music. How peculiar it is -- how unusual. How rich and "pleasant and delightful" and full of raw subjectry for good talk methinks!
And the larks they sang melodious
At the dawn of the day!
I was running another time in Nashville of all places, in the blocks around the park with the Parthenon there. I'd weave into the park, round the Parthenon, down by the duckpond, round back, and then outward, exploring the while. At one stage I was listening to the original version of "Desperados Waiting for a Train,"by Guy Clark. I was north-west of the Parthenon, struggling again up an incline, and thinking about one line in particular.
This song was written by Guy Clark, but was first a release for Jerry Jeff Walker on his Viva Terlingua LP in 1973. David Allan Coe recorded a version for The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy in 1974. Guy Clark himself released a version in 1975 on Old No. 1. It was revived as a second single for the Highwaymen in 1985.
On a version performing it on "The Texas Connection" (it's on Youtube), Walker introduces it thus: "Guy wrote this song, one of the first ones I ever did, and it's a song about his Grandma's boyfriend, how he described it to me." In this song the singer pays tribute to an older "mentor" of sorts, albeit something of a disreputable, defeated barfly waster bastard bum asshole ("Well he's a drifter and a driller of oil wells"), who is considered by the town wags the "sidekick" of the younger man:
And I was just a kid, but they all called him sidekick...
This line seems essential to give the listener a sense of the man's limitations. It is one of the lines censored in the inferior cover versions of the song, but not the most noteworthy. In the version by Jerry Jeff Walker, the line is
And I was just a kid, they all called me "Sidekick"...
Good old Dave Coe alike flubs the point of the line but good:
And I was just a kid that they all called a sidekick...
Jerry -- Dave -- lads, lads, the whole point of the line is that the younger man is nevertheless considered the dominant partner by the droll domino-players of the Green Frog Cafe. The howler is set in concrete by those so-called "outlaws" in the Highwaymen. The line is sung by Willie Nelson:
And I was just a kid that they called his sidekick...
What is so awkward for these "badlanders of C&W" that they cannot concede that an old man might be considered a figure of fun in barroom society and still be sang of fondly? Is it too rough for these aging gentlemen to bear? Do they fear that as the years creep by they too shall become figures for rough cruel mockery in the taverns of our good cities?
The other line that is changed by both the Highwaymen and Dave is the one where the old man is on the verge of death, when the singer and he trill the song one last time in defiance of the closing-in darkness. In Guy Clark's take the singer rouses the old man thus:
Come on Jack, the son of a bitch is comin'...
In other words, the personification of death is said to be advancing, and the two defiantly consider him a mere son-of-a-bitch. Jerry Jeff Walker likewise growls (although with less animosity than Clark):
Hey Jack you know that sumbitch is comin'...
Dave Coe was the one who changes the line first:
Don't cry Jack, it's only Jesus comin'...
Dave is like Eric Gaffney, nicifying the bad words and repenting for the unChristianly rock excesses of others or himself. This terrible little nod to the Christians in the C&W shit-kicker hinterland badlands was mercifully not repeated by the Highwaymen, who nevertheless bowdlerized their version too:
Come on Jack, the son-of-a-gun is comin'...
Death is many things. It is not, by my reckoning, a "son-of-a-gun." Nor is it a "rascal" or a "nincompoop."
You wonder which was the worse sin of omission.
3. Various. "Greenland Whale Fisheries."
This my third song has no nostalgic connection for me, at least (and mercifully) not one that I can recall. When I used to make compilation tapes for my brother it'd irritate him when I would describe in tedious detail the various recollections each song evoked for me. How fortunate that I too realise that such dull talk steals precious moments from our times and lives!
This my third is the folk song entitled "Greenland Whale Fishery," performed variously by the thousands including Pete Seeger and his fakeloric cohorts the Weavers, and also by the incomparable Paul Clayton (the real deal).
Sometimes I like Pete Seeger, other times I want to scale the upstate mountain where he lives and wring his pencil-neck for his overly precious liberal pedantry. Especially when he rides roughshod over the original point of a folk song because it don't meet his own pacific vision.
In "Greenland Whale Fisheries," the version on Whaling and Sailing Songs From the Days of Moby Dick (incidentally, one of the greatest albums ever recorded) Paul Clayton sings the line as it comes to us from der volk:
To lose the men, the captain cried,
It grieves my heart full sore,
But oh! to lose a hundred-barrel whale,
It grieves me ten times more,
Brave boys,
It grieves me ten times more.
In the wishy-washy skipjack-tuna chicken-of-the-sea version by Pete Seeger's Weavers the line is changed to one of hand-wringing Christianly right goodliness in which the loss of the men is regretted more than the loss of the oil. We can imagine Eric Gaffney and Dave Coe joining hands to croon about how the captain grieved over the loss.
(Idea for a supergroup.)
Hunting about for a copy of the Seeger/Weavers version to listen to online, and finding none, I had recourse to the Wikipedia entry on the song. This entry rather scotches my point by insisting that the humanistic Seeger-Weavers fakelore version of the song is the original, and that the cynical one is a later revision, crafted in more materialistic times.
I have to doubt this shit!
Next they'll be saying that the version of "Calling Yog Soggoth" on Sebadoh III is the original and the version on the transparent vinyl is a hoax faked much later by enemies of Eric Gaffney to make him look bad.
It is said that Jesus Christ was a Christly right good man, if not exactly a "merry old soul," and I do not dispute it. It is only to be wished that his adherents did not mess about with the lyrics of perfectly decent, if secular, songs.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
"Confusing Mystery of the Red-Haired Butcher."
I was out running, at the tail-end of my routine, pounding up Meserole, passing the notorious 94th Precinct Station, and listening to "Working For My Sally" by the usually excellent Wilmer Watts. (See: "Fightin' In The War With Spain" and "Been On the Job Too Long"). It is on the "Gastonia Gallop" compilation on Old Hat Records out of Raleigh, NC.
I had actually already listened to the song once, and had started it over because the story recounted over the course of the song was really confusing me. I had drifted off listening to the rambling, tedious story recounted over the top of a prickly banjo riff, and I went back to the beginning to try and follow the story this time.
(I had this same scenario with an "old-timey" song only this morning, running in Hollywood. I was listening to "The Lady Gay" by Buell Kazee. This supremely inaptly-titled song had started out being a rather mundane song about children being sent away to "the North Country," there to study "grammary," after which my attention drifted to other matters, an internal monologue.
When I returned to the song it was now about the dead returning to life by God's right divine good Grace and mercy, and those same dead yet craving now only the divine solace and transcendent light that only the grave can give.
What had happened in that mysterious interim when I drifted off? Divine intervention is what.)
Letting Wilmer Watts's doleful drone wash over me unfiltered, I had been jolted back to attention by this peculiar line:
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
It seemed as far as I could tell a complete non-sequitur. So I went back to the beginning of the song and made a concerted effort to follow the story without becoming distracted.
Let us reason this out, you and I, together.
It starts out:
My name it is Joe Bowers, I have a brother Ike.
Came from old Missour-o, yes all the way from Pike.
(i.e., Pike County, Missouri. Got it. Next: )
I had a pretty girl there, her name was Sally Black,
Asked her to marry, she said it was [unintelligible -- "the wine"?]
(What did Sally Black say? This missing detail is fairly crucial to my understanding of this saga.)
She said to me, Joe Bowers, before we hitch for life [?],
Better get your little home, to keep your little wife.
I said to her, Miss Sally, [unintelligible] for your sake
I'll go to California, and try to raise a stake.
(Pedantically writing this out like this is a good comprehension exercise. I am starting to discern a rude narrative here.)
And so I went to mining, and on the Vegas scene [??!!],
[Unintelligible; "Put"?] on down to Boulder, just like a thousand [unintelligible].
(I don't think he said that, about "the Vegas scene," but let's just keep going with this.)
(It could be he said "and on to vagrancy" but that seems almost as unlikely.)
(Bear with me the while.)
I work late and early through rain sun or snow
I was working for Miss Sally, and all the same for Joe.
(Who is Joe now? Did I miss a line?)
(Oh yes -- he's Joe. The guy singing. Joe Bowers. Got it. He's referring to himself in the third person.)
(Why is that.)
BANJO BREAK
(During which o let's try to find our wits and our resolve our doubts and endeavor to recover our poise and dignity.)
Well soon I got a letter from my dear brother Ike,
Came from old Missour-o, yes all the way from Pike,
It brought me some the darndest news ever you did hear,
My heart is almost bursting, fresh to the tear [?].
("Fresh to the tear." Must be a phrase from the 1930s no longer in use. Keep going.)
BANJO BREAK
It says that Sally is false to me... [peculiarly long pause]
Her love to me I'd bled [?]... [peculiarly long pause]
She had married a butcher, the butcher's hair was red.
And that isn't ham.[?!]
Enough to make me swear.
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
Not a boy, a girllllll-child ... [peculiarly long pause]
The letter never said... [peculiarly long pause]
But Sal has got a baby, this baby's hair is red.
(These long pauses after tentative fragments suggest to me that he's fallen to improvising -- and badly -- and then he gets wholly confused and repeats a line from the previous verse.)
I'll tell you why I left there [?] ... [peculiarly long pause]
Why I did run, to leave her good old mama [?],
Far away from home.
(Need it be said that he never does "tell us" why he "left there"?)
(And why suddenly does "Mama" enter the scene.)
Well I have written it out and it is no more coherent to me now than it was then. You might wonder why I care, and why I am so surprised and disappointed by the failure of this narrative, the mystery of this song. I care because this was a song from an era when stories were still expected to be coherent and structured. This one flops and collapses under its own minimal weight. It's like a poor short story from the McSweeney's stable.
The odd epilogue to this story is that as I was running up Meserole Avenue, frowning and trying to elicit a trace of logic from this halfarsed song, as the last daylight was failing and faintly throbbing blue, a bicycle emerged from Lorimer Street with a man riding atop the shoulders of the man who was cycling. They rode right in front of the ("justly acclaimed") 94th Precinct and wobbled out into the fading Greenpoint evening.
And I thought:
"Mystery solved."
I had actually already listened to the song once, and had started it over because the story recounted over the course of the song was really confusing me. I had drifted off listening to the rambling, tedious story recounted over the top of a prickly banjo riff, and I went back to the beginning to try and follow the story this time.
(I had this same scenario with an "old-timey" song only this morning, running in Hollywood. I was listening to "The Lady Gay" by Buell Kazee. This supremely inaptly-titled song had started out being a rather mundane song about children being sent away to "the North Country," there to study "grammary," after which my attention drifted to other matters, an internal monologue.
When I returned to the song it was now about the dead returning to life by God's right divine good Grace and mercy, and those same dead yet craving now only the divine solace and transcendent light that only the grave can give.
What had happened in that mysterious interim when I drifted off? Divine intervention is what.)
Letting Wilmer Watts's doleful drone wash over me unfiltered, I had been jolted back to attention by this peculiar line:
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
It seemed as far as I could tell a complete non-sequitur. So I went back to the beginning of the song and made a concerted effort to follow the story without becoming distracted.
Let us reason this out, you and I, together.
It starts out:
My name it is Joe Bowers, I have a brother Ike.
Came from old Missour-o, yes all the way from Pike.
(i.e., Pike County, Missouri. Got it. Next: )
I had a pretty girl there, her name was Sally Black,
Asked her to marry, she said it was [unintelligible -- "the wine"?]
(What did Sally Black say? This missing detail is fairly crucial to my understanding of this saga.)
She said to me, Joe Bowers, before we hitch for life [?],
Better get your little home, to keep your little wife.
I said to her, Miss Sally, [unintelligible] for your sake
I'll go to California, and try to raise a stake.
(Pedantically writing this out like this is a good comprehension exercise. I am starting to discern a rude narrative here.)
And so I went to mining, and on the Vegas scene [??!!],
[Unintelligible; "Put"?] on down to Boulder, just like a thousand [unintelligible].
(I don't think he said that, about "the Vegas scene," but let's just keep going with this.)
(It could be he said "and on to vagrancy" but that seems almost as unlikely.)
(Bear with me the while.)
I work late and early through rain sun or snow
I was working for Miss Sally, and all the same for Joe.
(Who is Joe now? Did I miss a line?)
(Oh yes -- he's Joe. The guy singing. Joe Bowers. Got it. He's referring to himself in the third person.)
(Why is that.)
BANJO BREAK
(During which o let's try to find our wits and our resolve our doubts and endeavor to recover our poise and dignity.)
Well soon I got a letter from my dear brother Ike,
Came from old Missour-o, yes all the way from Pike,
It brought me some the darndest news ever you did hear,
My heart is almost bursting, fresh to the tear [?].
("Fresh to the tear." Must be a phrase from the 1930s no longer in use. Keep going.)
BANJO BREAK
It says that Sally is false to me... [peculiarly long pause]
Her love to me I'd bled [?]... [peculiarly long pause]
She had married a butcher, the butcher's hair was red.
And that isn't ham.[?!]
Enough to make me swear.
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
Not a boy, a girllllll-child ... [peculiarly long pause]
The letter never said... [peculiarly long pause]
But Sal has got a baby, this baby's hair is red.
(These long pauses after tentative fragments suggest to me that he's fallen to improvising -- and badly -- and then he gets wholly confused and repeats a line from the previous verse.)
I'll tell you why I left there [?] ... [peculiarly long pause]
Why I did run, to leave her good old mama [?],
Far away from home.
(Need it be said that he never does "tell us" why he "left there"?)
(And why suddenly does "Mama" enter the scene.)
Well I have written it out and it is no more coherent to me now than it was then. You might wonder why I care, and why I am so surprised and disappointed by the failure of this narrative, the mystery of this song. I care because this was a song from an era when stories were still expected to be coherent and structured. This one flops and collapses under its own minimal weight. It's like a poor short story from the McSweeney's stable.
The odd epilogue to this story is that as I was running up Meserole Avenue, frowning and trying to elicit a trace of logic from this halfarsed song, as the last daylight was failing and faintly throbbing blue, a bicycle emerged from Lorimer Street with a man riding atop the shoulders of the man who was cycling. They rode right in front of the ("justly acclaimed") 94th Precinct and wobbled out into the fading Greenpoint evening.
And I thought:
She had married a butcher, the butcher's hair was red.
And that isn't ham.
Enough to make me swear.
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
"Mystery solved."
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