Thursday, March 28, 2013

Keep Those Records Playing: Another Spring

One cool thing about having had this blog for over a year: I can now start to see patterns in the way I listen to and enjoy music, which is really interesting because usually when I am in a Phase I pretty much feel like that Phase is the alpha and omega, the way things have always been and the way they always will be.

 But I suppose that's not true, although I do sometimes feel like I am nothing more than a walking collection of Phases. And one thing I've begun to see is, in the early spring when the sap begins to rise, all I want is songs with an intense focus on FUN. (Perhaps even more so this year because of my newfound dedication to simplicity, beauty, and truth.)

Previous songs in this category:

Elvis Costello, "Sneaky Feelings"

Daryl Hall and John Oates, "Camellia"

The Beatles, "Got To Get You Into My Life (demo)"

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And now, this, which is slower than many of the "Seriously guys let's DANCE!" songs from this period but is just so relaxed and confident and just swingin'.

Some songs are to get the party started, but this one is to keep the party going. Let's do it.


The song: Sam Cooke, "Having a Party"; 1962

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com

Saturday, March 23, 2013

So Tell Me Now And I Won't Ask Again: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Girl groups: I recently mentioned them!

This song is notable for being the first song by an all-girl group to reach #1 in the United States. (Just think of the many all-girl groups that have come along since then! And what we would do without them! Our worlds would be so much darker.)

It was also written by Carole King when she was about eighteen years old, which if that doesn't make you love her I just don't know what will.

(Previous Carole King: (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman)

It's also one of my personal favorite songs, now and forever, and like all such things I find it has a new meaning when I return to it each time.

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As I get older I find myself thinking more and more about how people (taken in general) tend to make life so much more complicated than it really has to be. Perhaps because as I get older I find myself facing more and more of the emotionally complicated moments of life.

These experiences have led me to believe that, when I do occasionally get a break from complicated concerns, I should spend that time experiencing things I find to be simple, beautiful, and good. With people I find to be beautiful and good. (But never simple.)

When I was younger and I loved this song, I assumed the question of the title referred to sex. As in, if we do it, will you throw me away afterwards? Which is a natural thing to assume of this song considering the sexual politics of the time when it was released, but I now think it's much more about love.

I don't want to spend my time wondering whether or not someone loves me. There are just better things in this life to wonder about. Like that baby walruses need to be snuggled to grow up into healthy adult walruses, or that Stephen Hawking seems to 100% think there is intelligent alien life out there.

That's why I love that line, "tell me now and I won't ask again," because it says to me something that I really do believe to be true about loving relationships: that they can sustain an honest question and an honest answer, and that that is the foundation on which the rest of it is built. Trust,  I guess you could call it. But a trust in constancy. A trust that not too much will be different when you wake up in the morning.

As someone who has done my time in dysfunctional relationships of all sorts, I know that the food of dysfunction is inconstancy. Push me-pull you, you never know which side of them you're getting, etc etc etc. And this is supposed to be exciting and interesting but as everyone who has experienced it knows all too well, it stops being exciting and interesting and starts being incredibly painful pretty much as soon as you are totally hooked by it.

That's why I love the confidence of the (very) young woman represented by this song. That mixture of toughness and vulnerability, I think, gets access to some of the innermost truths of the human soul.

Plus, it's catchy! And that combination -- true and fun -- is why I consider myself to be a forevermore devotee of the Universal Life Church of Popular Music.

Come let us worship together.

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The song: The Shirelles, "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"; 1960

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The Sounds of the City, Baby, Seem To Disappear: Roots

It makes me respect somebody to learn they love the music of what we call "girl groups".

In fact it is truly one of my favorite things about The Beatles that they loved girl groups and covered many of their songs in their early career. Many well-regarded (male) artists owe a lot to the girl group sound and I like it when they acknowledge that. The subject of these songs is nearly always love and marriage, fluffy and sweet, but they also nearly always have a yearning quality that makes for just a devastating combination.

And when a male group brings their own full force to bear on one of these songs, the result is also magical!

This is a great example of that alchemy:


The song: The Beach Boys, "I Can Hear Music"; 1969 (originally recorded by The Ronettes, 1966)

In fact I'd even say The Beach Boys made it a better song. Either way it's just a pure slice of sweetness, and the extra light in the day is making me long for things like this.

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com

Monday, March 11, 2013

The Past Is My Shadow, My Shadow Is You: Home Invasion

Last Friday night an unknown person kicked down the door to my apartment, rifled through my possessions, and stole some of them.

(The possessions that were rifled-through included my media, and the two items that were most obviously displaced were my Beatles '65 record and Walk Under Ladders by Joan Armatrading. So, this unknown burglar had obviously no taste or discernment.

I could maybe even respect a burglar who stole Beatles '65.)

Evidently, this experience has been traumatic. I live alone, and I am introverted, and my apartment is very much an extension of my self. It is my kingdom and I am its modern monarch, a politically inert yet benevolent steward. (This attitude makes changing lightbulbs and wiping down counters less a chore than an outgrowth of noblesse oblige.)

I feel a lot of things about this development. Angry is chief among them. Also sad, also stressed, also a little kicking-myself.

But I am a creature of habit, and habit is hard to disrupt. Once I've made a commitment to something I'm very unlikely to dislodge it. (If you believe in horoscopes, I'm a Capricorn, the symbol of which is a goat. I always used to hate this as a child, who wouldn't rather be a CENTAUR or a FISH than a goat, but I've stopped fighting and learned to accept my goat-y nature. Baaaa.)

A kingdom is a kingdom, even if the door can be kicked in. The borders should be made of stronger stuff than that.

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Even under the best of circumstances I'm a bit of an abuser of the repeat-one-song function, but under stress I find it extremely comforting to listen to the same song over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

The past few days it's been this one.


The song: Dusty Springfield, "What Do You Do When Love Dies"; recorded 1968, released 1971

It was on my iPod already, which is important because one of the casualties of the burglary was my laptop and music library. (But don't worry, I should be able to recover most of it.)

I love its mixture of snazzy, upbeat, going-about-your-day sort of things (waking up, making coffee, running for the bus), with the yearning of the question posed in the chorus. That particular question is not my question at the moment, but I can get past that. The song is about disruption in your life, and how it feels to go from one thing to the other.

(If you want to know how awesome Dusty Springfield is, or if you want to know it again, check out the original version of this song. It's 100% toothless. Needed Dusty to bring it to life.

You can also check out the other Dusty Springfield songs featured here: "What Have I Done To Deserve This"; "Make It With You".)

I said the question in the song is not my question, which is true. "What do you do when you come home to find your door hanging off its hinges?" doesn't scan. But what DO you do?

What do you do?

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Just Because You're In It: Connections

Hi everybody.

I've been thinking a lot recently about country music.

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I keep thinking I'll write one post where I just break it all down, country music and why I love it and what's unique and special about it, and these ideas always seem within my grasp when they're inside my head but completely ineffective when I try to put them outside.

Ain't that always the way though? Seriously.

Yes, it is always the way. It's something I feel very acutely in my life, which involves a fair amount of talking and even more writing. I've compared writing to shrink-wrapping a toy package, which is something I have way too much experience with. What I mean to express there is -- and anyone who has shrink-wrapped a toy package will feel me on this one -- the constant quest to get as close in and clean as possible and the ever-present knowledge that you'll never get it like you want it. (In fact it's usually when you start obsessing about the quality that you find a massive hole on the other side of the package or a tear in the seam of the shrink-wrap. I told you I've done this way too much in my life.)

I bring up writing in connection with country music because it's a genre and a culture that truly values the songwriter. And what's more, a good country song IS good writing, because it's clean, to-the-point, simple, and universal.

It's easy to mistake simple for simplistic. Similarly, it's easy to mistake good performance (which carries an element of ease) with not trying. When in fact most good performances of any variety are the result of a lot of trying.

But the trying has to be concealed, because it's not the most important part, because the audience's focus should be on the art, not the artist. This concept is summed up in the wonderful word sprezzatura, which I understand basically to mean "making it look easy". And if you can do that, that's how you know you're any good.

In writing I think the greatest example of this is John Steinbeck. In performance there are many masters, but I will always love Aretha Franklin for it.

Making it look easy is undervalued. But in fact I think it is one of the hardest things there is.

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At the beginning of my latest country music phase, I fell in love with this performance.

It's interesting for multiple reasons:  for one, it's Kelly Clarkson (as a former American Idol winner, one of the most pop-y pop singers around) trying to establish herself in the somewhat insular world of country music. That her partner in crime is Vince Gill, one of the most respected people in the biz, doesn't hurt. But for all else you can say about country music, it truly respects talent even if it comes from an unexpected source. (That Darius Rucker, aka Hootie, has managed to build a second career in country music is the purest example of this I know.)

And this is just such a confident performance! There is no anxiety here at all, either from Kelly or from the song itself. (Which if I may just point out is truly, very romantic.) It's just smooth and rich and great.

And SLY, too.


The song: Kelly Clarkson and Vince Gill, "Don't Rush"; 2012
The moment: 2:53

The moment: the audience thinks the song has wound down, and they loved it, Kelly's won them over. And you can tell by the looks on their faces that Kelly and Vince know this. So when they launch into that second ending, and the crowd goes wild, it just feels SO GOOD.

There is the pleasure of novelty, and then there's the pleasure of old territory covered well. Country music tends toward the latter. Most of the songs are about love, or loss. But clearly we can never say enough about either of those things.

It's very hard to translate the feelings that live inside a person into something another person can understand, which is why we all walk around thinking nobody else in the world has feelings as complex as we do.

Country music, like all good writing, begins to show us that's not true. And makes it look easy.

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com