Have you ever realised how many Jones's there are in music. And I don't mean performers, I mean in the material. Is it the commonest surname in song? (Answer: Possibly. Unless Mr and Mrs Postman of Poughkeepsie beg to differ.) So why is that, do you think? Is it because of the pervasive influence of the Welsh, creeping into all our genepools? Extensive research (wikipedia) tells me that, after Smith, Jones is one of the seven commonest names in the US and, again after Smith, the second commonest name in the UK. Plus it's short, it's anonymous by virtue of its ubiquity and it rhymes with bones. (I made that bit up. I mean, sure, it does rhyme with bones, but that may not be the reason for the popularity. But consider the possibility.)
Let's agree the above is the best Jones, a song I have adored these long 18 years since it became a staple on any mixtape song selection I have ever made. A glorious riot of teenage dreams for stardom, it is a true story. Or, at any rate, Mr Jones, singer Adam Duritz's buddy Marty Jones, and he did spend a night at the New Amsterdam, getting drunk and imagining how, if they were famous, they would get the girls they could only ogle. Funny thing fate, as, courtesy the song, Mr Duritz did become a big big star. As for Marty Jones, did he ever become someone just a little more funky? Sadly, that much I don't know.
So, back to Adam Duritz, and his wanting to be Bob Dylan. The Bob Dylan, above, I'm assuming, at peak mystique. As a boy I was, obviously, familiar with all the early hit singles, and bought Greatest Hits, an early step in my obsession with recorded music, and I remember two songs standing out in particular. Firstly, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, because it was such utter shite, beyond the hey man, he said stoned schtick, and Ballad of a Thin Man, because it was just so damned cool. My views haven't changed, and the chunk out the vinyl just around track side 2 track 5 confirms that, it being the UK version, trainspotters, as well as revealing that Ballad of a Thin Man wasn't actually on the record. But you catch my drift.
When Mr Jones recovers from the shock of seeing his paramour in flagrante, he realises it was time to get him some cool. So off he shuffles, tail between his legs, possibly to the New Amsterdam, with the aim of smartening up his act. And, boy, can he shake his stuff. David Byrne could have been an archetypical Mr Jones, himself, almost the antithesis of hip, all nerdy shirts and mannerisms, yet somehow transcending all that and being just that figure he lampoons, but, hey, after all, "he is not so square". And that feisty arrangement, years before it became the thing, something to relish and wonder.
Mind you, it hadn't always been like that. Little did all those hipsters and hepcats know, but Mr Jones had a further backstory, the stuff of tragedy. Tragedy was, of course, de rigeur for the early Bee Gees, as their stage wear above demonstrates. (Nope, I'm not going to make a joke or insert a glib clip to any of their later work.) No wonder he had developed a little problem.....
That's right, too clever by half, here the neat insertion of a 'Jones' meaning a habit. OK, the lyrics aren't so subtle, but the song is OK in a non-threatening way, but it at least enable me to share my learning. So, if you have a 'jones' for something, we all know it is lifted from junkie slang for their fix, but, similarly, having a 'yen' for something comes from the exact same territory, 'yen' being a corruption of yan, meaning a craving, usually for opium. Well, I didn't know that.
So it's about time something turned good for our titular friend. So what better than a night out with the delightful Ms Winehouse. And before you smart alecs tell me she actually had quite a yen for a jones, it apparently refers to her, um, alleged friendship with the rapper Nas. (Actually me neither.) It isn't a bad song, even if it leads you into expecting something a bit more like this.
Finally, and to draw to a close the long and sorry saga of Jones esquire, and it's a rum old do, suggesting all sorts of shenanigans. I'm not too sure quite what Richard Butler, the lead Fur was thinking about here, but it seems, as fiction becomes fact and facts become fun, it refers to a real life Mr Jones. Sad, but true, my little scenario thus far is based upon little more than my fevered imagination. But Butler's Mr Jones, and possibly even Mrs Jones, refers to one David Jones. This one. I like to imagine all the Mr Jones' might also be. Try it.
A dual threat here: A warning that you can't count on me, by a band that has named itself by one half after the action of counting. Not by numbers, though but more the collective images of wishing and dreaming. The band has made a wonderful song referring to the children's fairy tale of its own collective, being a murder (that's a gathering of crows). We could throw in a song about murder by numbers, as well, and still be revolving in the same metaphorical and imagistic theatre (that's a song by the Police).
"You Can't Count On Me" was the second single release from the Counting Crows mid-career reflection on transformation, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. Here was an album that featured an A side that was a blistering collection of rare, fired up rockers, about fame, about success and excess. The B side was the comedown from the party, softer, more reflective, somber tunes, cottony and easier, as if to sooth the lingering hangover from Saturday night, and the overabundance that often leads to a the guilt of over-indulgence.
"You Can't Count On Me" serves as a bit of a warning, as well as a break up song. Adam Duritz, famous for his dating life (which is a bit criminal, given his talent for crafting poetry that triumphs as song, but is at its heart poetry, nonetheless), writes a lot about love, and the ease at which it fails, disappoints and breaks apart an otherwise resilient soul and psyche. This song is Duritz's final word, so to speak, about the disappointments of love and his acceptance at his own failures. When you listen to the work he's done since 2008, which sadly there hasn't been nearly enough of, Duritz seems more accepting of his losses, and has moved in a direction of his work that isn't as self-introspective. But at the time, "You Can't Count On Me" seemed to serve as the final word on his private life.
And while the song seems to fit into the Saturday Nights side of the album, it's actually part of Sunday Mornings. Duritz said in an interview that he wanted to write a song about breakups that captured both the sadness of ending a relationship, but also showed the honest truth about the damages he felt he'd caused by coping to his culpability. It's a self-flagellating song, and Duritz pulls no punches on the sadness he knows he has caused. A brave sentiment, but one that fits with his ethos as a writer, to tell truths, no matter how hard, in a beautiful way. He said, "I wanted to write a song about leaving someone that alternated between honest sad feelings about the loss and brutally honest admissions about the damage done. However honest my regrets have been and however much I ‘did the right thing.’"*
The power of Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings comes from its relatability and realness. One need not be a rock star to regret excesses or the choices we've made. We hurt people, even when we don't intend to; we are self-serving creatures, even if we have the ability to recognize what we've done wrong and how we should have been better. We don't alway achieve redemption despite how hard we might work for it; even after we give up the habits that cause problems, after the initial lightness of freedom, we still feel the sorrow and the grief. Life can't always be a Saturday night; eventually the morning comes and we wake to a clarity, no matter how muddied or sad.
The quote from the Adam Duritz interview comes from the always phenomenal and long lasting music blog, "Ryan's Smashing Life" http://www.rslblog.com/
Counting Crows is a band that grew out of a music scene in the bay area in California. Omaha is from their first album, 1993’s August and Everything After, so I think it’s safe to say that the band had not traveled much by the time the song was written. Omaha, then, is not a reference to a place, but to an idea of a place. I read an article online that suggested the choice of location for the song was random, but I don’t think that is entirely true. Omaha is, as the song says, “somewhere in Middle America”, and that idea is vital to what the song is about. There are two Midwests in the US: the industrial Midwest, as represented by cities like Chicago and Detroit; and the agricultural Midwest, which is where Omaha fits in. Cities here are smaller, and they grew out of market towns where farmers would bring their grains and livestock for transport to the rest of the country. In Adam Duritz’ mind, places like Omaha are tied to the life cycle of agriculture, from the spring growing season to the fallow time of winter. Rain here is life, because it means a good harvest later. Full disclosure: I too have never lived in the Midwest, so I am responding to my knowledge of the region from afar as I hear it expressed in the song. The song Omaha starts in winter, and tells of a place where life boils down to its most essential elements. Duritz begins with an old man and ends with a young one, telling us that endings are also the origins of fresh starts. The lines about walking on water that close each verse are a brilliant metaphor, at once referencing the importance of Christianity in this part of the country, while at the same time echoing the rain references that are such an important part of the song. Other cities around the country have associations that would have detracted from the essentials of the song, but the agricultural Midwest is where this song needs to be.
Bonus track: I couldn’t resist closing this post with this live version of the song from 2012. Counting Crows have been influenced by the jam bands, in that they allow their songs to change over time. By 2012, Duritz is arguably a better singer that he was early in his career. He has retained his love of making music, and he welcomes the audience in to this performance, even asking their help on the chorus.
Just a quick note this month, as the Christmas season revs
up, the weather gets chill and my students save their very worst writing for
their final exams…thanks guys.
I live overseas, so I get to watch the Christmas wars a safe
distance from the fire zone. I don’t quite have my finger on the pulse of home
in the way I’d like, but from all the reading I’ve been doing, I would venture
that the whole who can say what and to whom and when has gone a bit out of
control—I’m looking at you, Yale University… Seems a little silly to be afraid
to say “Merry Christmas” to someone because you’re afraid of causing offense.
Seems a little silly to be worried about almost anything that comes out of your
mouth that’s not outright hostile or explicitly directed to cause harm or
hurt—I’m talking about ‘micro-aggressions,' you guys. Seems like this year, 2015,
has been the year of hurt feelings, where the retort of “you can’t say that!”
is enough to ruin someone for speaking their minds—I’d never defend abusive or
offensive intentions. Mean people can go spin, no matter what they look like,
as far as I’m concerned. But, from my vantage, which is safely out of range of
the people I most fear, the state of the free world appears to be
pretty…unfree.
Where I dwell, they
celebrate New Years in the same way we Christians celebrate Christmas—lights,
trees, gifts, parties and booze. They celebrate Ramazan here (Ramadan to you),
and I get the ‘iyi bayram lar’ all time, which is Turkish for have a holly,
jolly…holiday. It’s nice—being included in another culture’s religious
celebrations. It proves modern holiday and merry making has very little to do
with religion for most of us. It’s about family, its about celebrating the
things that make us happy—despite which god we choose to open our wallets to…I
mean, pray to. Sorry.This insistence on
removing the offense from the season is so counter to what the season is really
about, and that is finding the value in fellowship and remembering the
outstanding benefit one gets from being overtly and studiously kind to his—or
her, or it’s—fellow man, woman or other.
Reveling in the better parts of our nature should be what we
most celebrate at this time of year—worrying about offending others as we do
so…seems a little silly/stupid, don’t it?
Anywho…let’s get back to the music, the real reason we’re
all here.
Music is always part of that merry making at Christmas time,
and that, at least, should be reserved from judgment and above the realm of
offense. Here’s the thing you need to remember: when you think about it, most
of the tunes we hum along to really aren’t about Christmas at all…funny. “Let
it Snow”, “Walking in a Winter Wonder Land”, “Jingle Bells”, just to name a
few, have nothing at all to do with the reason for the season.Seems to me, if people were willing to let go
of the angst that makes them so comfortable in their misery, the ‘holiday’
season might actually be able to accomplish its most important objective: to
make you happy.
And, then there’s this: To eat too much. To forget about the
past year and look forward to the next. To reset goals, to forgive yourself for
failing in the goals you set exactly one year before. To be nicer to other
people. To realize this spinning bit of rock and water and air we call home is
a miraculous place and could be even better if we all took just a little bit of
responsibility for each other’s happiness. Christmas wishes, I suppose…let’s
get to the music.
The tune I’ve chosen this month is a winter-themed song, not
a holiday. The Counting Crows, a band I’ve written about before, do downcast as
well as they do upbeat, and one of their most popular songs (for all the right
reasons), is the winter ballad, “A Long December”—a rather dark look back on a
year gone awry.
You know the song—I don’t need to try to find the words to
describe the traditional piano figures and crescendo choruses that work so well
to draw out a sense of sadness and belief in something better to come. I love
this track for its barroom sorrow and its rousing encouragement to ‘na na na”
along to. The melody speaks for itself, striding but still shadow and sadness.
It’s a unhappy song, about endings, about failings, but it rises to a hopeful continuance, knowing that maybe “this year will be better than the last.” That’s a
good enough Christmas gift for me, this year, and all the ones to come.
This is video I shot of The Counting Crows doing "A Long December" this past August in Pittsburgh, Pa. It was my third show on their glorious "Somewhere Under Wonderland" Tour...talk about things to be thankful for...and speaking of thankful...here's a shot of the best moment I've ever had at a Counting Crows show, aside from getting to meet them...
What is most
elemental about summer? For me, it’s getting out on the road and being gone
gone gone.
Like one of our other bloggers, I make my life as an expat teacher, so travel is a pretty...well, elemental part of life. and I'm gone as much as can be.
Which doesn’t leave a
lot of time for writing—at least for me. I’m a creature of habit when it comes
to getting the words down, and I often lament that I’m not taking advantage of
new environments to inspire my work into new directions. Great writers would scoff at that notion--that it's hard to write when you're on the road. Maybe I spend too much time seeking out and imbibing the local booze...
When I do travel,
though, I love listening to music, especially music inspired by the places I
am. When I went to Philadelphia a few years back for a ball game and a night of
boozing it up at one of my favorite bars, 12 Steps Down I listened
to Marah’s brilliant rock epic Kids In Philly the entire weekend, and the music made more sense when backed up by
the visual vibe of the streets it spoke about.
(an aside: Marah? One of the greatest f@#king bands you've never heard--The LAST Rock 'n Roll band!)
Meeting your music
this way—viscerally, tactically, by-hand—is the best way to hear what it means.
Same goes for this
batch of tunes I’ve picked out for our theme this month: elements. Each of
these are songs I’ve dug into deeply in their proper places, by inspiration, by
the fact that the song was written in or is about the place I heard it, or…just
because it made sense to associate the place with the song. And speaking of,
that is another great way to connect to a tune: loving it because of the time
and place you first heard it, and forever associating it with the place. For
example, I can not hear OutKast’s “Hey Ya!”
without going back to Spoleto, Italy 2003, when I was falling in love with the
Umbrian hills and “Hey Ya!” was coming out of every radio I passed. It was the
soundtrack to a great time. Always will be. And even if I don't particualrly like the song, the association has the magical, unnameable resonance forever attached to it, so, I will always listen when it comes on the radio.
That being said, here is a small
selection, culled from a much longer list, from the strange soundtrack of my life
with a brief explanation of how each song came to achieve its own unique
significance. (Making sure I could
satisfy the ‘elements’ requirement made this all the more interesting…)
There was a pawnshop
right next to the Music and Arts Center where I first took guitar lessons. I
was in 7th grade at the time, and while the guitar lessons were
great, the pawn shop was it’s own wonderful treasure chest. Among the usual
pawnshop fare—guns, jewelry, power tools—the place had a huge section of vinyl
for sale. This is where I bought AC/DC’sBackin BlackandDirty Deeds; LedZeppelin Four; and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, which featured Iron Man, a strange little exercise in sci-fi
headbanging. And the main riff , the one everyone knows, was pretty much the
first thing any nascent guitar student learned. When I hear Iron Man, I always think back to rushing
headlong across Rt.1 with my pocket full of saved up quarters, wondering
musical gem I was about to find.
This gem from Recovering the Satellitesis a ghost
walking in a blues funeral suit. Recovering
the Satellites was my constant soundtrack after graduating from college.
Released in October of 1996, this disc was a perfect accompaniment to a quiet
winter of near-total solitude when I lived in Nag’s Head, North Carolina,
trying to figure out what to do with my life. The album, soaring and
contemplative, full of affirmation and dark, whispery sadness, was the perfect
turbulent collection of songs I needed to get from one ending to a new
beginning. It was also a different, sometimes harder and much more complex
sound than their debut, August And
Everything After. And where that album spun gold out a feeling of nostalgia
for American solitude and Van Morrison-esque lyricism, Recovering nearly roared to life at moments, and for this listener,
cemented Counting Crows’ reputation as one of America’s finest bands. Mercury , one of the quieter tracks on Recovering, is a song about a girl who
is unstable, and whose changes of mind and heart put the speaker through that
special hell known as ‘love’, and though she changes like mercury, ‘she’s alright
with me…’ Multilayered slide and whisper guitars and a rhythm like a creaking
ship on the water, Mercury showed the band was capable of brilliant musical
chameleonism, and they made a brilliant career out of exploring and expanding
rock n roll soundscapes. And Mercury will forever remind me of sitting on a
cold, windy beach at night, with my guitar, trying to capture not only that
sound, but also a clue.
Another bluesy stomp,
with the politically charged lyrics that are now almost an afterthought when it
comes to the definition of U2’s sound and themes. Originally released on a
compilation called Artists United Against Apartheid,
with Keith Richards and Ron Wood, the better-known version appeared on Rattle and Hum. Both versions smoke—but
it is Bono’s lyrical reaction to apartheid politics, the boom drop drums and
the Edge’s lightning sweep guitars make this a loud and strident statement.
When I was in South Africa, I kept hearing Bono’s famous refrain, “Am I bugging
you? I don’t mean to bug you—OK, Edge, play the blues!” After listing a
imagistic litany of grievances and abuses that dwelled in black and white on
subjects like rich versus poor and freedom versus slavery, Bono’s question to
the listener is hard to ignore. The song is literally on fire, taking about
fevers burning white hot, and doing its best to explain to those who might not
understand, why it is the oppressed is ready to take up arms against an
oppressor.
One doesn’t need to study too long to
know that sad tale that is modern South African history. The sense of wrong
doing is palpable when you go there and
It’s hard not to shake your head in
terrible wonder at what happened in South Africa for so long. Ghost stories
about troubled times that seem like they might never really go away—but Bono’s
take—that money and greed will always trump good will and morality—rings
particularly true and rang in my head the entire trip.
Honestly, I never
paid attention to Marley until I went to Jamaica and stayed off-reservation, so to speak. Bob
Marley’s Legend was a prerequisite
requirement for college admissions and honestly, every tool I knew that wore
frat letters could sing Redemption Song
by heart, and thought Get Up, Stand Up
was all they needed to know to get a poli-sci degree. Marley was realpolitik to
most of the kids I partied with and I thought I might crack if I had to dance
another slow groove with some girl to Waiting
In Vain. So, I never listened. Ever. Unless I was at…oh, any party ever. Fast forward a few years later, my misspent
college days far behind me, I got the opportunity to in a private seaside
mansion in a pretty remote part of Jamaica, on the shore in Saint Anne’s
Parish, where Marley was born. It was a pretty amazing trip—far away from the
resorts and the pale, never- smoked-a-jay-tourists lounging it up in Montego
Bay and really, just kind of out there. No Internet, no phone—just the vibe of
solitude and the sound of the surf. Honestly, with what I know about the place
now, I probably would never stay that far away from any kind of security, but
at the time, it was pretty cool just to be in the middle of the island, walking
to the villages, snorkeling in the open water and fishing for our dinner every
night. Someone in our group was a big Marley fan, well beyond the greatest hits,
and when I said I didn’t dig the music, he told me to put Rastaman Vibration, “dig into the stuff that doesn’t get played all
the time.” By the end of the week, I’d gone deep, devoured all the LPs, and
heard the songs that never got played on the college radio station. By pure stroke of luck, he’d brought all his
CDs with him—this was pre-ipod and mp3 days. So, in fitting with our theme, I
pick Iron, Lion Zion as my representation
of this time and the amazing memories I have of Jamaica. The track comes from the
Songs of Freedom box set, which is
where anyone not interested in hearing Legend
for the billionth time needs to start. And the song itself is a good primer for
the complicated political and religious belief system that mark so much of
Marley’s music. Rastaman Vibration
remains my favorite album by Marley, and even though, I don’t listen to Legend on principal no matter what song
happens to come up by the man, I will always be reminded of good times on a
strange, quiet part of the island of Jamaica.
...As I write this, I am
waiting to get on a plane to head back to America. While I’m excited to see
home, see my family, drink amazing IPAs and eat Mexican, I wonder excitedly at
what new music I will discover on this trip and hope to find yet another
perfect song that will define this summer and all the strange places I will be…
(Hint—I’ve been
digging hard on the Dead this summer, so….and the new Wilco…hmmm….? What's next?)
C'mon, quick, quick, very little time left this theme, courtesy the inclement we have been receiving this side of the ocean, seemingly blowing away bits of the inter web. Already delayed by my sinuses being struck by the gravity* of a distant planet, sucking my brain down between my shoulder blades and mulching my synapses, great gaps in blogger dashboard (tech speak!) appeared, denying my ability to put the words and pictures together. And may still. So before it is the tomorrow that is already today in UK, grab your anti-gravity broom and we're off…….
*Gravity (SWIDT), time/space continuum, weather, all the same stuff, really, so quite apt for the given. I know the idea is to studiously avoid the too recent, but seeing as we have largely jettisoned pressing the DL button, I hope I can get away with this fairly recent.
Who's heard of Kasey Anderson? Yeah, me too, but I have heard of Counting Crows, and a year or so back they put out the now near inevitable covers LP, some might say as a way of filling some hiatus in creativity. Actually, that's probably unfair, as they are a band who have always celebrated the songs of others live, and can do it rather well, extracting even more pained pathos than many a songwriter may have realised was possible. Consummate instrumentalists, of a generally organic and Band like feel, with hammond, mandolins and accordions topping up standard guitar, bass, drums, yet topped with the exquisite angsty yelps of Adam Duritz, rendering even Michael Stipes more melodramatic moments to monotone. Yes, I'm a fan.
Kasey Anderson sounds to have had his share of, um, issues, with a stability of mental health and well-being failing to be granted him. I had never heard of him ahead of the Crows. (The Countings?) But, with the wonder of wiki, the earnestness of AMG and the yikes of youtube, I was able to build a picture. He seems to have started as a plaid shirt troubadour, in that Steve Earle/John Mellencamp meeting place, as they each traversed their opposite routes between rock and country, garnishing some good reviews, before beginning to, critically at least, unravel. What Teenage Gravity is, and hence what it is like, remains resolutely unclear from the song, in either version, so I am neither the wiser, nor, at my distance from my teens, able to begin to guess. But it sounds good as a conceptual vagary. The 2 versions are considerably different, and I am uncertain which I prefer. However, what I have to note is the impeccable intro on the cover version, lulling me into a reverie akin to early Fairport and Richard Thompson, just a roll on the drum and all that. Wonderful.
The calendar turns to December, and you suddenly realize that the year is almost over. New Years is coming, and with it, a chance for a fresh start. But first, you have all of December to think about what you would wish you had done differently. And December is one of the ones with thirty-one days, so there’s that much more time before you can start again. That is what A Long December expresses so perfectly. There is regret, but also far off hope.
Most of the best-known Grateful Dead originals sprung from the collaborative songwriting of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, which dominated 1970 studio masterpiece American Beauty; this is one of my favorites, and -- judging from the number of great covers out there -- I'm not the only one. Something about the way the song manages to capture the trope and narrative structure of the best old appalachian blues songs from half a century earlier, I think. I wouldn't have posted so many, but I had a special request for this one, both the original and covers -- and I should point out that these are just a few of the many versions of this song I have, though many of the rest are mostly live recordings with dubious quality.
The slow, mournful Lyle Lovett is a particular favorite; so is Chris Smither's live version, which is posted elsewhere, lest the week's theme become overwhelmed by the amazing folkblues guitarist's wail. I don't usually like Counting Crows, but this song fits their fratrock anthem style pretty well, I think. The "new American roots" sound of Last Fair Deal and classic blue/newgrass from supergroup Rice, Rice, Hillman and Pedersen at the end of the list are pretty sweet, too. And you can't knock the live Dylan, straight from the soundboard, ragged and torn, with full band behind him -- I got it from friend Ray when he did his own set of devilsongs, way back in December.
The lyrics of this song always struck me as kind of garbled, though the fragments of narrative we do get work well when you take them as the frantic ramblings of a haunted narrator on the run, his mind tumbling over the deadly sins (lust, greed), bad decisions and poorly managed urges that got him there in the first place. Near as I can tell, our particular devil here is a fickle friend with exquisite timing: he might loan you twenty in your time of need, but he's just as apt to track you down, pluck the twenty out of your desperate hands, and leave you stranded in a levee, laughing as the sheriff's hounds close in on your trail.
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