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.
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