(Of course, that entire lost-pop-gem phenomenon has been slaughtered by the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-selling iTunes, which (among other things) sees/knows/sells that it’s called “More Today Than Yesterday,” and is by Spiral Starecase. Cue one less magical radio-only moment; ninety-nice more cents spent.)
music
Nothing Left to Win; Nothing Else to Lose
(There is a high probability that you are reading this post because you searched for the lyrics in its title. They slightly misquoted from the song “With or Without You” by U2, released in 1987 on their album The Joshua Tree. (The actual lyric is “nothing left to lose”).
Purchasing that album, which also includes “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” was one of the major reasons i wrote this post.
I’d love it if you would stick around to check out my writing and my original music. I’ve embedded an MP3 of the original “With or Without You” elsewhere on this site – you might bump into it if you do enough browsing. You can read the full lyrics here.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled post.)
There are some songs I’ve only ever heard on the radio. Those magical hits, disembodied from albums, never seemed meant to be played at my command. I might not hear one for years, but one day be bestowed with it in a restaurant, or in someone else’s car. All a matter of chance.
These songs are different for everyone. Certainly some are more universal than others. They are each quicksilver, resolving in your aural canal as quickly as they will trickle away. You may not even remember them from one listen to the next, maybe not even if you see their names.
When people come to my house sometimes the marvel at how many of these songs – otherwise lost to them – exist in my record collection. Can they listen to this one, or borrow that one? It’s a wonderful role of fantasy fulfillment, being able to render the songs more real for my friends by offering them in the context of albums, cases, and liner notes.
I can’t possibly own each possible slippery tune, mine or anyone else’s. Not without buying all of the “Best of DooWop” and “The Big Eighties” collections there are to be had. Yet, sometimes you are in Tower Records, and there is an inexplicable $7.99 sale, and your fingers are dancing across the tops of plastic cases, and suddenly you see it – one song easily worth a penny under eight dollars just so you can capture it, like lightning in a jar.
Will you listen to it once a day? Will it hold up? Or, will you content in knowing that the next time you catch a snippet of it you can return to your home and release those notes into the air to light up the room, if just for three brief minutes?
Rock and Roll Fun
Ever since they left my ears ringing last Friday I have been living, breathing, and listening nothing but Sleater-Kinney. Their crackling new effort “The Woods” could be their worst album yet, and given the nearly universal critical praise it has garnered that ought to tell you something.
Sleater-Kinney is one of those bands that everyone will try to scare you away from. Boy rock fans will paint them as hopelessly impenetrable grrls – Ani DiFranco as a power trio. Even their fans might portray them to you as scary hard-to-like feminists, and some of the more possessive might imply that the girl fans will mock you if you get up close at their shows. (Nothing could have been farther from the truth: the show staff were reduced to asking people who were sitting and dancing politely to move for want of any bad behavior to break up.)
Personally, I think you should give All Hands on the Bad One a listen and decide for yourself (at this point, it’s a good mid-career snapshot). My feeling is that they’re like Veruca Salt, only not just haplessly wandering from one pop song to the next. While you’re listening, get some much needed background info at the The Sleater-Kinney Archive, including this Janet Weiss interview (probably the best interview with a drummer i’ve ever read), and a great oldie article by Terri Sutton, whose writing is fairly entrancing. Or, check out probably the best tab page ever at Tk’s – tabs are written on paper with measures and note durations and then scanned in!
More Screaming
What a beautiful day!
Okay, enough positivity, now for more introspection. This weekend reminded me of two things that I know and say all the time, but don’t put into practice nearly enough.
First, not coincidentally, is practice makes perfect – whether it’s practicing your singing or practicing what you preach. After a lengthy runs on some of my lesser played songs this weekend, my voice is warm and limber. The only way to keep it that way is to use it every day.
Second, the only reason to be afraid of an honest critique is if you deny its veracity (on some level, at least). This was evoked by two things specifically – a rather comedic exchange between a book-reviewer and a nasty Christian-publishing-house rep, and a reviews of an Off the Beat CD.
In the case of the former, the publisher just can’t take a negative review, and rather being constructive and trying to build a relationship with the reviewer, the rep lashes out. Repeatedly. In the case of the latter, former OTB music director Ethan Fixell took the lament that Off the Beat’s 2002 CD entailed too much “screaming” as a compliment – he and the group half-jokingly titled the next disc “More Screaming.”
How much truth existed in either review? Was the book truly that terrible? Who knows. I don’t think Off The Beat does all that much screaming – they just like to produce records that sound as authentically rock as the songs they cover. To a trained a cappella reviewer, though, that might come off an awful lot like screaming. I am sure that in each critique there was some element of truth, but for the artist it was how that truth was handled that was most important.
I can’t be afraid to record songs just because my voice is imperfect. It won’t get any better unless I sing, and hear myself singing; it’s unreasonable to expect perfection. Maybe I’m going to be flat, or scoop a lot, or use too many diphthongs – but, maybe I’ll convey exactly what the song means to say. And, once I do that, I have to be willing to hear all about those flat, scooped diphthongs, and to either own up to them or proudly say, “I meant it that way.”
Then, only then, will I get better.
(to find love is to know love)
My ability to be complimentary has been faltering, fading fast. After it, all that will be left is to analyze, to criticize, but not to enjoy.
Ask me about the last good record i bought. I’m not sure, but i can tell you about the last bad record i bought. The last five bad ones, actually.
This is just a small example. Actually, I am unconvinced that i will be able to like anything anymore in the very near future. As for my example, I’ve all but given up on buying records (one of the few true pleasures of my life; ask anyone) because all i seem to be able to do is dislike them. Going to a cappella concerts has become a sort of critical duty, as i am almost assured to whisper nasty things about them the entire time to whoever deigns to sit next to me. Riding elevators inevitably leads to a lengthy internal monologue about ugly hair styles, lamentable posture, and why some people even bother to get out of bed in the morning
My newfound inability to enjoy much of anything is infecting my free time. Why see a movie? Why eat at a new restaurant? So insidious is it that it has crept into my own art. Why record a song if it won’t be perfect? Why write at all if your words are not fully-realized and crystalline?
From there it is only a few steps to complete self-imposed isolation. Why talk to your friends if you have nothing nice to say? Why care what i’m wearing if i’ll be ugly anyway?
Have i spent all of my compliments already, along with my self-esteem? You’ve met me, so surely you’re familiar with both – at some point i’ve probably told you how wonderful, or fabulous, or beautiful you are, and you’ve surely witness me in some act of supreme confidence and hubris. Have i spent that all before my quarter-life crisis? Splurged, even, so that there is nothing left but scant ‘decents’ and ‘it was okays’?
After last month’s a cappella concert at Drexel i spent an hour or two mercilessly outlining the indelible failures that each group displayed during their performance. In the middle of this assured diatribe Maggie or Ed (i forget which; perhaps both) looked right at me (through the back of the seat or from the corner of his eye on the road, respectively) and said, “I enjoyed it because we saw a bunch of people doing what they love to do. It doesn’t matter how good they were.”
I spent some time thinking about that tonight. We saw a fun, decent mixed acappella group whose guest performer was a local singer-songwriter. Leah Kauffman. In the program she described her influences as “Laura Nyro, Fiona Apple, Joni Mitchell, and Elliott Smith.” I was first excited to hear her, and then almost immediately afterwards hostile and skeptical – how could she do anything but let me down.
She was pretty, shy but not slight, and told us she would start with a cover from Blue. Her “A Case of You” stuttered, as she plucked chords rather than strumming, and faltered slightly on that riff that traverses the length of the guitar neck. She allowed the song to taper off after the last chorus, muttering that she messed it up. After three more songs (two at the piano, and another on guitar) she slipped off stage, and the lights came up for intermission.
I am known for my ferocious reviews of singer-songwriters, but after the performance i could say nothing bad about Leah. She is 19, and she is not perfect, and she meant every word she sang to us.
She made me think of Maggie/Ed’s comment, and how i have lately lost that wonder in my life, and about something i used to say to explain why i liked singer-songwriters rather than big-voiced artists like Whitney or Mariah. “The art is in the imperfection.”
It is strangely-shaped in my mind as i mull it, unfamiliar in my mouth as i tongue its shape. If it wasn’t for Leah, i fear i might have never remembered it at all.
Leah told me that her website was broken, but took my email address she so could send me some songs.
I am glad still have the capacity to like something.