Seasons: Seasons, By Chris Cornell

Purchase Chris Cornell's "Seasons"

It's hard to believe that with all that happened in 2017, Chris Cornell hasn't been gone for even a year.  Such is the nature of consequential events in the blast-off news cycle where nearly everything is of some kind of consequence - it's hard to remember all that happened.

So, what to make of senseless loss, or to say? It seems words are a pale annotation to the volume of grief Cornell's suicide created for the musical world.

Our heroes will always let us down in the end, I suppose, whether they mean to or not, whether our feelings about them make any difference. Coming to grips with mortality - and the fact that sometimes, the ones we worship are just as flawed as we are - is as much a disappointment as it is a tragedy.

It's been a heartbreaking year. So many voices have gone silent. I'd like to think artists never really die, not if we keep listening. I'm still pretending Chris Cornell--and so many others-- isn't gone, and I'm still listening.

Written as a bit of a "joke, the song "Seasons" was originally found on the soundtrack for the film Singles, Cameron Crowe's love letter to the city of Seattle and the still evolving grunge scene. Cornell wrote and recorded five songs and gave them to Crowe on cassette, under the moniker Poncier. The title is actually the last name of Single's protagonist, Cliff Poncier, played by Matt Dillon. Cornell was originally offered the part of Poncier, but opted instead to do a dialogue-less cameo during one of the movie's funnier scenes. Poncier's character is clueless, hapless, a spot on representation of hipster, poseur silliness. Eventually, his band (the equally-not-real-but-still-famous, Citizen Dick), implodes and Poncier perseveres  as a solo artist, despite any lack of talent. The cassette tape makes its appearance here, as his solo demo.

And, here's where we get a little meta: the cassette itself was real, even though it was meant to be a prop. The song titles and the artwork were created by Eddie Vedder, Jeff Amet and Stone Gossard (they played the members of Citizen Dick). But Cornell took it one step further, as a thank you to Crowe for putting him in the movie and actually recorded five real songs.

Here's the scene, cut from the original film, where the cassette makes its appearance:

That's quite a wink wink in-joke, given how great the songs are--timeless pieces of early 90s grunge, minor chords and static, crunching rhythms. You can hear them all on the rereleased and expanded Single's soundtrack, and in various versions on some of Cornell's later solo releases. Go on the hunt--it's a fun bit of grunge treasure hunting.

The standout is "Seasons", a funeral dirge that winds glorious and hymn-like. It's a mediation on loss and voicelessness, on the fleeting nature of both life and the (lack of) control we have over what happens, despite our best attempts. It's a beautiful song, a sad song, and a strangely accurate at pinning down and defining the feelings of those of us left behind when so many beautiful voices have gone silent, with so much still to say.

Seasons: Must Be Santa

 purchase [Christmas in the Heart]

For the last few themes, J David has been the brains, me: the brawn.
When I put up the Seasons theme, my imagination was that this would lead towards "seasonal music", but I intentionally left it fluid. Interesting to see that posts so far (looking back) have focused on the word <Season>.

I've spent the past week looking at un-conventional Xmas songs. I considered many. But then ... I finally came across one I couldn't pass up.

If you were to ask "Which musician best embodies "The Grinch", I bet you'd get a large number of votes in favor of my choice. Who, in their right mind, makes an issue [himself] of a Nobel Prize? Who appears to grump about every PR opportunity?

And who on earth would have thought that this musician would come up with a Christmas themed album!? The story has it that Columbia records and Dylan talked about the idea for some time before actually doing it. You can delve into Dylan's religious leanings, but ... the surprise isn't so much in his choice of "formal" religion as in his choice to make this an album theme: ever heard of  his 34th album called <Christmas in the Heart>? If you've bought it or even listened to it knowingly, you're one up on me.

Dylan is just about the last man I would expect to produce something along these lines. [then again .... maybe I'm wrong]

Heck ... he doesn't hardly even allow covers. The Grinch. At any rate ...
[ this link could go <poof> at any minute]

SEASONS/OUT OF SEASON: SOFT MACHINE

Well, he came, he emptied his sack and he's gone again. Shh, don't say his name but, if I am not mistaken, perhaps a first for SMM, this is the first time we have got this far with nary a mention of, you know. Is that good, is that bad? I don't know but certainly hope you had a good one, whatever that entailed. Today my aim is simple, a simple sonic blast of palate cleanser, to wash any lingering acid from your over-stimulated digestive tract. With Soft Machine...... Yes that Soft Machine, that impenetrable jazz-noodle-rock on your big brothers record shelf, beloved of mathematicians and men with moustaches. But dispel that bad memory. It is true, from whimsical and exasperating twiddly rock to complex geometric abstracts and jazzy atonals, the Softs are generally remembered in these two ways, yet, after sole original member, Mike Ratledge, left in 1976, they embarked upon a gentler last period. Although he appears on 2 tracks in the album from which this track appears, 'Softs', it is very much now the baby of Karl Jenkins, switching from saxophones to keyboards and writing most of the material. Guitar duties had been passed from Allan Holdsworth (R.I.P.) to John Etheridge, bass and drums accommodated efficiently by Roy Babbington and John Marshall respectively. On reeds, albeit only for a brief 6 month tenureship, was Alan, cousin of Rick, Wakeman.

It is no surprise that Jenkins, on the eventual demise of the band, moved into film and soundtrack work and is now one of UK's premier new classical composers, at least as far as the classical music "charts" would say. You may know him better, as they say on the Simpsons, as the author of this:

Adiemus. And that is Jenkins with the baton and extravagant 'tache.

At the time of writing Etheridge, Babbington and Marshall have revived the Soft Machine name and tour extensively, along with reeds and keys man Theo Travis.

It's boxing day and nothings loading. I'm sure you can source it should you so choose. And anyhow. But do.

SEASONS: SEASON OF THE WITCH

Donovan Leitch has the reputation for famously inventing everything in popular music, every genre, every tuning, every style. OK, I jest, that may be slight hyperbole but let us just say, suggest even, that modesty may not be his greatest card. It is, of course, entirely unfair as, for a window at the arse end of the 60s he was huge, hobnobbing with all the movers and shakers of the day, from Bob to the Beatles, leaving no Stones unturned. And, as the first famous pop musician of his day to be arrested for possession of cannabis, who can fault him for possibly hazy recall. Because he most definitely was there, showing John Lennon how to fingerpick, bringing together the later members of Led Zeppelin as he "trademarked" Celtic Rock and tailgating Dylan in Don't Look Now. Add that to a huge legacy of best selling singles and albums and you may feel history has been a little unkind.

'Season of the Witch' was a psychedelic rock song at a time, 1966, when few people had even heard the word. Co-written with Shawn Phillips, a contemporary of his, who never quite managed to get equal billing, despite a later acknowledgement that it was mainly his responsibility. It was never a single, at least by Donovan, appearing on his US breakthrough album, 'Sunshine Superman', which hit number 11 in the Billboard rankings. However, it's popularity ensured it was a song he has possibly performed live more than any other, perhaps buoyed by the legion of cover versions, more of which anon. It may come as a surprise that the electric guitarist is none other than a fresh faced young session-man, already famous on the sessions scene, one Jimmy Page, see above. What is the song about? Who can tell, being more a stoned sounding tone poem than any intelligible verse, (but no less far out for all that......Man.)

You got to pick up every stitch

You got to pick up every stitch, yeah
Beatniks are out to make it rich
Oh no, must be the season of the witch
Must be the season of the witch, yeah
Must be the season of the witch.

There have been, according to my bible of covers, the database Second Hand Songs , 40 released versions over the years, 10 of which I can find on my i-pod, which may mean I have a bit of crate-digging to do yet. The diversity of artists is extraordinary, encompassing Lou Rawls to Hole, the Vanilla Fudge to Luna and Joan Jett to the Dream Syndicate, lat alone many not available on youtube. The simplicity of the song is such it can be embraced in many styles, the lyric sufficiently vague as for any and every different resonance to not sound dissonant. Of course I have to show my favourites:

Richard Thompson

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity

Dr. John

So, are you going to be looking out your window?

You might look here.

Seasons: A Hazy Shade of Winter

Simon & Garfunkel: A Hazy Shade of Winter
[purchase]

I know we can write about any season, but it would seem strange to be writing about summer now, since it is cold, and we are in the middle of the winter holidays. Of course, south of the Equator, it is summer, but I don’t think we have any writers from that part of the world. Parenthetically, it is a little strange—and maybe one of the most obvious examples of how world culture is so dominated by the American/Northern European tradition—that even in those places where Christmas is celebrated in the warm weather, there seems to be no lack of pine trees (usually fake), snow (fake), stocking caps (unnecessary) and other wintery symbols in the iconography of the holiday.

So, winter it is, but not a holiday related song. Instead, we will discuss “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” a relatively early masterpiece written by Paul Simon, and performed by him with his erstwhile partner, Art Garfunkel, two nice Jewish boys from Queens.  It is hard to read Paul Simon lyrics without realizing how great they are. And he has been able to write music in so many styles, that it is sort of mind-boggling. Unlike many of his peers (and even those younger), he never rested on his laurels—famously experimenting with world music, before going all in on Graceland, and even collaborating with Brian Eno in his mid-60s (Eno is only a few years younger than Simon, but you have to admit that the pairing seemed a bit surprising—likely part of the reason that their album together is called Surprise).

“A Hazy Shade of Winter,” though, goes back to Simon’s days in England, in 1965, where he had gone to perform as a solo act when the first Simon & Garfunkel album flopped. But a remix of “Sounds of Silence” from that album, became a hit, and Simon returned to New York and Garfunkel, for their amazing run. “Hazy” was recorded for the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album in 1966, but failed to make the final cut.  It was released later that year as a successful single, and was included on 1968’s Bookends album.

By the standards of that period’s Simon & Garfunkel songs, it is almost Ramones-esque in its tempo and how it rocks, but the song's lyrics are really what stand out. You can almost see the young Paul Simon, who as a teenager had written and recorded hit songs, feeling exiled and failing in chilly mid-1960s London, writing a song about an unfulfilled artist—still in the “springtime of my life,” but drinking while thinking of his “manuscripts of unpublished rhyme.” Meanwhile, it is metaphorically, and maybe even actually, the time when autumn is turning to an uncertain winter:

Leaves are brown, now 
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter 

The narrator continues:

Hang on to your hopes, my friend 
That's an easy thing to say 
But if your hopes should pass away 
Simply pretend that you can build them again 

Oh, that is bleak, isn’t it? (Which makes me think of one of my favorite actual Christmas songs that would fit this theme, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” also mournful, but religiously so.)

Some of you slightly younger folks might know the song better from the excellent cover by The Bangles, which they had long performed live before recording it for the soundtrack to the pretty bleak 1987 movie Less Than Zero, scenes from which can be seen in this video: