Friday Morning Playlist - 10/1/2010
I don’t listen to music enough anymore. I fill my commutes with podcasts, phone calls, and meditations about things I should have gotten done at work. So I’m trying to listed to more music. Partly because my wife has challenged me, partly because I attribute loss of musical interest as a leading sign of middle age. I am not, nor shall I ever be, middle aged. So I put away the podcasts and set my iPod on shuffle, just to see what happens, to see what sticks. Here is what I listened to today. And here is what it made me think about.
Powderfinger, Neil Young - I’ve listened to this song easily several hundred times. Live Rust was the first CD I bought when I got my first CD player at 18. (Purchased simultaneously with Metallica’s Black album, no less) So really I have no excuse for never really analyzing the lyrics. On the surface, the song is about a young man left to defend his home against outsiders and is killed in the process. But today, I undertood the song to be an anti-war statement. The young man has been abandoned by guiding influence (dead father, adsent older brother) and is left to defend his houshold the best he can. And that he does, falling back on the words of his father to fight without question. And he dies. It’s a parable for young men taken under the guiding wing of the Army and shipped off to Vietnam to fight without question. This makes me sad, but at least I still have Neil’s heavy distortion solo.
The Man Who Loved Life, The Jayhawks - My copy of this CD is stamped “Promotional Copy - Not for Resale”. I bought it at a used CD store when I was 21. Funny that someone else’s freebie cast-off would find itself in such heavy rotation for me a few years later. The Sound of Lies is a much darker Jayhawks album, recorded following the breakup of the Olsen-Louris duo who formed the band. It was a departure from the jangly country guitar that dominated heir earlier efforts, moving into darker territory. The album sat on my shelf for a year before I picked it up in the summer of 1997. Then I played it nonstop for eleven months. The hole album is dark and mournful, much like my mood during that time. But I like the scrappy hope in the chorus of this tune. “A thousand to one, a thousand to one” makes it sound like we cannot possibly win, but “We got the guns” says we have something up our sleeve. When you are forced into an untenable situation, you may as well have a little hope.
Manhattan, Kings of Leon - I know this album is a little more produced that earlier Kings of Leon ventures, but there is still something raw, something uncertain. In the land of marketing bands and auto-tuning, I find it reassuring here are still some bands out there.
Poor, Poor LA, Tim Easton - Tim Easton should be a major rock star. I love the chord change halfway through the chorus. It’s unexpected and reminds me that things should be unexpected.
Wayfaring Stranger, Neko Case - I prefer the version of this song from the Live in Austin album. The deliberately picked banjo solo is more hesitant in the live version, building some tension. It sounds odd to say that a solo becomes more exciting not by technical perfection, but by wondering if the player is actually going to pull it off. It reminds me of David Rawlings’s solo from Black Star. This also reminds me of a time in college when a good friend and I were watching a bluegrass band in a very crowded bar. The place was packed, so we had to sit right up front, the guitar player just a few feet away. At one point in the show, he played a solo that he didn’t quite pull off. And he was so close, it was as if playing he solo for us. He ran his fingers way up the fretboard and it just kind of fell apart, the sweat and muscle fatigue conspiring against him. He looked at us and we all started laughing. Sometimes things don’t work out like you plan. And that’s okay. I am definitely going to build a playlist of best solos someday.
That Year, Uncle Tupelo - I discovered Uncle Tupelo like this: Son Volt > Wilco > Uncle Tupelo. As such, I didn’t start listening to them until long after they broke up, so was spared the inevitable disappointment when you find a band you love who never lives up to your idealized form from that first album. For me, each album back I found in the catalog was a new treat, as if revealing a sort of original text. There is a lot of jangly country guitar in here, but I still like jangly country guitar from time to time.
Hummingbird, Wilco - Previous thoughts on Uncle Tupelo notwithstanding, each new Wilco album blows me away. But not at first. I need a few listens, a few weeks to let the music stew in my head. But then I’m addicted. Hummingbird is simultaneously melancholoy and hopeful, so I guess I have a thing about hope this Friday. And there is always the dance Jeff Tweedy busts out when playing this song live. That’s enough to make anyone smile on a Friday morning.
