Music

slip inside the eye of your mind…

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

This is not what I usually write about, but this article caught my attention: “13 musical acts we wish we could’ve seen live” — mostly because I actually have seen a few of them live. 🙂

Queen: Saw them right after they did “Bohemian Rhapsody.” They were really good, but obviously they couldn’t play that thing live, so they chopped it up and stuck bits of it (the bits they could play, which turned out to be most of them) into other songs. Very clever solution, I thought.

Talking Heads: I didn’t see them on the tour that was filmed for the movie Stop Making Sense but I saw the Remain in Light tour (the one before — and arguably better because the band included Adrian Belew and Nona Hendryx). I had been a fan for a long time (I saw them 35-40 times when they were just a trio, including many times before they were signed), so I was excited for Remain in Light. I liked it, but my girlfriend at the time hated it (I think she wanted them to be the old band forever), so she refused to go after I had bought the tickets. So, I went with an ex-g/f instead, and we had a great time. Which also pissed off the current g/f, of course, but then most things pissed her off.

The Ramones: Didn’t see them before their first album, but saw them right after and many times after that. The first time was at a club called the Bottom Line, and I think they were the opening act, and I’m pretty sure Andy Warhol was there (but that could have been a different night). They were awesome, though.

The Cramps: Saw them quite a few times. Met them at a party once, too — for all their super-creepiness on stage they were really nice. One of the great things about seeing them open for the Ramones was that all the Ramones fans hung back by the bar, complaining that the Cramps couldn’t play their instruments and all their songs sounded alike. Which was, of course, what the rest of the world said about the Ramones.

 
Continuing the musical theme, I do enjoy this, by Haim (with Lorde).

Then I found this, which is pretty awesome. If I’d heard that Haim was covering Fleetwood Mac, I’d have figured maybe something by Stevie Nicks, but instead they went really old-school Mac, from back when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were in rompers.

I’ve heard a few other songs by Haim, but none that I like as much as these two — which is probably a bad sign, since both of these are covers.

Oh, yes, I found this to be moving: “You’re one of us now, Ariana Grande – a Mancunian“

So, I’ll end with this.

the return of lorde

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

There’s a very good piece on Lorde and her new album in this week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine: www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/magazine/the-return-of-lorde.html

Two things that particularly struck me.

One is personal — Lorde talks about how much she likes a New York diner called the Flame, where she ate many meals while staying in the city for most of a year to work on her second album.

I have a very positive association for that place, though I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten there myself.

A writer and an artist who I knew met there many times (decades ago) when they were collaborating on a comic book project. They found it to be — as Lorde did, much more recently — a very congenial place to work, and to observe people.

Funny coincidence, given how many diners there are in New York City.

(I was the ostensible editor of the comic book project in question, but when the artist and writer are your mother and your ex-wife, and they are in complete agreement about ignoring whatever editorial suggestions you might come up with, then you might as well not bother.)

 
The other thing that struck me particularly was how Lorde “sought an audience” with songwriter Max Martin (“probably the greatest pop craftsman alive,” according to the Times).

Martin said that “Green Light” was “incorrect songwriting” (there’s a key change in the “wrong” place, and one part is the “wrong” length).

Lorde thought about this, decided that the assessment was correct, and then didn’t change a thing.

Lorde: “I have a strong awareness of the rules — 60 percent of the time I follow them; 40 percent, I don’t.”

That seems to me to be the correct approach to the “rules,” in any form or genre.

You have to know the rules, you have to respect the rules (as she says elsewhere in the article, about pop music: “I have such reverence for the form. A lot of musicians think they can do pop, and the ones who don’t succeed are the ones who don’t have the reverence — who think it’s just a dumb version of other music. You need to be awe-struck.”), but you don’t always have to follow the rules.

I’ve included the official “Green Light” video before, so, for a change of pace, there’s this…

(I removed the video because apparently it was taken down for some reason. My favorite part of the song is when everything starts to come together around “But I hear sounds in my mind. Brand new sounds in my mind.” Because that’s what can help the most when things are really bad– the work. Stories to write, songs to sing, paintings to paint.)

i’ve never had a bucket list

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

I’ve never had any desire to have a “bucket list,”, but this article caught my eye: “The 99-year-old who threw herself in prison – and other strange bucket list requests.”

But this is the part that really intrigued me:

Last month, a teenage girl from Ohio with terminal leukemia got her wish to shoot someone with a Taser. Alyssa Elkins fired the electrified barbs into the back of Sgt Doug Bline of the Newark police department. “I don’t like inflicting pain on people, I didn’t know it was going to be that painful,” she said as the officer collapsed in a contorted heap. She then shot her uncle before calling it a day.

Wait a minute. She got her wish to fire a Taser at somebody, found out that it was apparently more painful than she’d expected, and then, after discovering how painful it really was, she shot her uncle.

That makes me wonder…

 
And, on a completely different subject, there’s this:

there’s more than one “hallelujah”?

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned before how I’m sick of the Leonard Cohen song “Halellujah.”

I’ve always had a fondness for John Cale’s version, though, but I never realized until now that he’s actually singing different lyrics in places. I learned that from this article.

They’re still Leonard Cohen’s lyrics, but John Cale drew from fifteen pages of discarded lyrics that Leonard Cohen (a songwriter noted for editing and editing and editing his work) gave him in order to put together his own version of the song.

Cale’s version is, as the New Yorker puts it, “bloodier, less celestial.” I guess you can draw your own conclusions from the fact that this is my preferred version of the song.

i’m really kind of sick of ‘hallelujah’

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

When I think about the late Leonard Cohen, there are many songs that come to mind, quite a few of which I listen to on a regular basis, but “Hallelujah,” mentioned in every article I’ve read about his death as if it was his crowning achievement, isn’t one of them. But that’s fine. He wrote a lot of songs, and quite a few were great.

Three which I don’t listen to that often, though they are great, are the three which were used in McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

As I wrote in my review:

The soundtrack consists of three songs from Leonard Cohen’s first album (“The Stranger Song,” “Winter Lady,” and “Sisters of Mercy”), and they weave through the action of the film so beautifully that if I hear even a fragment of any of them I immediately begin seeing the movie in my head. I don’t think it’s possible to use music more effectively in a movie.

Sometimes, like when I’m at work, it’s inconvenient to have my favorite movie start to play before my eyes, blocking my view of my monitor. That’s why I don’t listen to those three as often as some of the others.

But it is nice that others have noticed: “Leonard Cohen’s Folk Ballads Defined The Great ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’“

 
Sean O’Neal, senior editor of the AV Club (more generally known for articles with headlines like “Lindsay Lohan to let world decide what the hell to call her new accent” and “Bono to finally be recognized as a Woman of the Year” and “Mel Gibson has never discriminated against anyone, says Mel Gibson”) decided to get serious about heroin addiction (his), urges toward suicide (his), and Leonard Cohen: “Dancing to the end with Leonard Cohen“.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever linked to an article that I couldn’t make myself read all the way through. So, be warned. Your mileage may vary.

But I guess the question is, in reading it, however much of it you can bear to read, is there any other songwriter, other than Cohen, about whom this could have been written?

divorce

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking about divorce. Not for myself, since I’m not married. I’ve been thinking about how it’s something that I don’t think anybody can completely “get” (or convey) unless they’ve actually been through it.

It’s not just a particularly intense romantic breakup, any more than a marriage is a particularly intense romance. It’s a difference in kind, not just in amount.

My favorite divorce songs, as it happens, were all written by people who had actually been divorced.

The first is “Till Death Do We Part” by Madonna — one of the few songs of hers that I’ve ever really liked. (I’m just linking so as not to have too many embedded videos.)

(From a songwriting point of view, I especially like how it goes into third person for the bridges, but obviously can’t stay there for long — we can achieve objectivity at times like that, but only for a while. The third person lines may also be an echo of the tabloid stories about her marriage to Sean Penn. A weakness is that she obviously figured out how effective it is when she speaks the line (with a complete lack of affect), “He’s not in love with her anymore.” And it is effective — very powerful, in fact — but she tries to go back to that well too many times. Less is more.)

Then, pretty much without flaw, there’s Sinéad O’Connor’s “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance.”

“I’ll meet you later in somebody’s office,” indeed.

But then there’s this, which was briefly hijacked as a political song, but which is actually a divorce song, written by Christine McVie about her divorce from John McVie, who has been playing bass a few feet away from her for the last 40+ years, as he is in this clip.

What a great reminder that divorce can inspire not only negative feelings, that we can wish for the best for somebody, even when we’re meeting later in somebody’s office.

 
So, this leads to another thought about divorce: Why don’t I write about it more, or at all? I’ve been divorced — I should use that…