a coherent collection of random statements regarding God, words and tunes

Getting rid of the albatross….

  

           “Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence" — Flannery O’Connor 

              I’m not sure that the great Catholic writer Ms. O’Connor could’ve pictured that great lapsed-Catholic songwriter John Lydon in her wildest nightmares, but boy, does our next selection embody the quote above.

            But a little background first about its creator. Even those who haven’t actually heard the work of John Lydon are at least familiar with his brief but glorious period as Johnny Rotten, which gave us that most classic of punk albums (and their one and only), Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, which also introduced the world to the meteoric life of the worst bass player on the planet (and proud of it) in Sid Vicious.

Thirty years and scads of much uglier music later, a lot of Bollocks sounds more like a cartoon than the angry, brilliant clarion call it was in 1976. That said, it’s still a great cartoon—and little did we realize back then, just a plain old great rock-and-roll album. Still, stuff like “Holidays in the Sun” and especially “Bodies” can still raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

The Pistols, of course, quickly collapsed under the weight of their own reputation (and a whoooole lot of hype that betrayed the music itself). Sid Vicious—you know what little story was left after that. Johnny Rotten, a few less of you know, went back to being John Lydon, and started another band with Keith Levine (of the early Clash) and the wonderfully renamed friend and bass player Jah Wobble — the aptly named Public Image Ltd. (or PiL, as they were just as often known, down to their pill-like logo). One of the oddest 20-year runs in the history of rock and roll, but we won’t go into all that.

The first, eponymous album (sometimes known as First Issue) was largely a conscious reaction against the Pistols’ legend, starting with the title song (“You never listened to a word that I said/You only see me for the clothes that I wear/Or did the interest go so much deeper/It must have been the color of my hair"), and culminating in that great room-clearer, “Fodderstomph” — nine minutes of Mssr. Lydon chanting repeatedly “We only wanted to be loved,” in the most gleefully annoying tones imaginable. It’s one of those albums you have to play to death once in every while, then put back away for a long, long time.

Think of it as a transitional album. The real first album was the next one—where, if there ever was a real John Lydon to be seen behind the Public Image (his own, or anyone else’s), this was where you’d find him.

 

#9. Public Image Ltd. — Metal Box/Second Edition

                (It’s worth mentioning that the original British release DID in fact come in a metal box—more like a 35mm canister with 3-4 vinyl EPs in it, pretty much guaranteeing that the contents would be scratched and possibly gouged before it ever hit a turntable. No-one quite annoys like the Rotten one. Thankfully, it was re-released as the latter-named double album, although the sequence varies some.)
              From the start to just before the surprise finish, it’s an alienated, angry, claustrophobic, sometimes downright frightening album. The fact that it’s both instrumentally sparse yet eminently danceable (lots of dub influence here—this was 1979, after all) only adds to the idea that you’ve stumbled into a oddly beautiful world that you hope no-one actually lives in but you know they do anyway.
              Which is not to say that ditching the Pistols’ image isn’t still on the creator’s mind, as the two songs that make up Side 1 give ample proof. Lydon sounds sick of his own whining here at time, but it only somehow serves to fuel the anger here. 
              “Albatross” is an eery, scratchy, soft-funky 10-minute howling rumination on leaving it all behind (“Getting rid of the albatross / I know you very well / You are unbearable / I see you far too close / If I wanted to…. I ran away.”). And that really isn't saying enough about it. Let's just say that it’s no mistake that I used it as the password at the last job I was at for nine years before finally coming out here to Colorado.
              “Memories” continues in the same lyrical vein, only the funk (both musically and emotionally) has become more frantic:    

 

 

“This person’s had enough of useless memories…

Whatever past

Could never last

All in your mind

Where it all began

You’re doing wrong

It’s not the movies

And you’re old.” 

 

              Side two deals with a whole ‘nother set of memories, and if you’re not strapped in with your seat in the upright position, you’ll need to be.

              The “single,” “Swan Lake,” was also known as “Death Disco,” and that’s exactly what the song is. The subject matter is Lydon’s mother dying of cancer, and as Levine and Wobble do their groove thang, Lydon’s vocals grow from a wail to a shriek, “Words can never say the way / Told me in your eyes… Never no more hope away / Final in a fade / Watch her slowly die / Saw it in her eyes… WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS / WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS / WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS / WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS / …”

              Even as the cry continues, the song is abruptly cut off, and we’re in the middle of “Poptones,” a song arguably scarier than “Swan Lake” but nowhere near as specific in its subject matter. The memories we’re allowed into here are all things around the scene: “Drive to the forest in a Japanese car / The smell of rubber on country tar… the cassette played / POPtonesss-suh….” Lydon spits and hisses his way through the words.

              Theories abound: Is it about a murder? A rape? A rape of another man (Lydon himself?)? A rape of another man AND a murder? The bottom line is:  

 

I can’t forget the impression you made

You left a hole in the back on my head

I don’t like hiding in this foliage and peat

It’s wet, and I’m losing my body heat….

This bleeding heart, looking for bodies

Nearly injured my pride

Praise picnicking, in a British countryside

POPtonesssssssss-SUH….

  Just when the album and the listener threaten to collapse under the weight here, things lighten up (in a very relative sense, of course). Side two closes with “Careering,” an escalating dubfest about the troubles in Ireland and military life in general: “A face is raining / Across the border / The pride of history / The same as murder…. Trigger machinery / Mangle the military / No one should be there / Is this living?”

Side three starts with, all of things, two instrumentals, “Socialist” and “Graveyard” — time to reflect on what’s already passed, I guess, and you can dance to it too — and ends with one of the more deliberately annoying songs in the Lydon pantheon (and you already know that’s a big old pantheon), “The Suit.” Predictable yet exceptionally snotty. “Romance and replace / the lack in yourself / It is yawww nayyyyyyyyyy-chaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh…. / everyone loves you / until they know you… / The ladder is long / It is yawww nayyyyyyyyyy-chaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh….”

On to side four and closer to everyday life, but no less depressing in that. Possibly more so. Is the tragedy in “Bad Baby” more in the abandonment of the child or the fact that no one seems to care?  

 

Nearly 10:30

I’m rising early

I’ve got to buy the best

Before the rush

Someone left a baby

In the car park

Never any reason

Don’t you listen

One more sob story…

Ignore it and it will go away… 

 

The middle-class bashing picks back up in “No Birds”: “I like the illusion… of privacy… / Well-intentioned rules / To dignify a daily code / Lawful order, standard views / This could be heaven.”

The band gears up for one more charge into the breach, and it’s a good one. “Chant” is like quite nothing else you’ve ever heard. Over a song-long chant of “love-war-fear-hate” (or is it “love war, feel hate”?), and with a vocal constantly teetering between jaded indifference and manic urgency, Lydon rails, “All you ever get, is all you steal… / Don’t know why I bother / There’s nothing in it for me / The more I see, the less I get / The likes of you and me are / An embarrassment.”

Finally, the lyrics part and Lydon gives way to a frantic cry of “CHANT- CHANT- CHANT- CHANT- CHANT- CHANT- CHANT- CHANT- CHANT- CHANT….”

Which after another minute of caterwauling, at last disintegrates into “Radio 4,” a lovely, peaceful, almost majestic keyboard instrumental that’s everything the last hour wasn’t. A simple minute-long melody repeats itself over four-plus minutes. Although, near the end of the last go-round, a few dissonant notes are thrown in, just to remind us of where we’ve been.

              By the way, I used to regularly play this album back-to-back with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Yeah, it’s that good. Would I put it at #9 if it wasn’t?

Posted by: burninglight at 20:39 | link | comments (4)

Starting the Countdown….

  

            No, sillies, not to New Year’s…. I mean, my Top 10 albums of all time….

            I’m sure there’ll be interruptions to the flow—life does happen, after all, and maybe byrnes’ll finally get that album out within the next 10 weeks, you know?—but at least this way I’ve got a good default mode going for the next three months, after which maybe I’ll know exactly why I’m doing this thing (or not)….

            Anyway, let’s kick it, shall we? And in true self-contradictory fashion, I’m going to name TWO albums my #10. Although at least they’re by the same band, and in fact make up that band’s entire “official” output (sanctified live bootlegs, and reunion albums to pay the bass player’s bills, not included of course). And heck, it’s even especially good winter music (I kid you not—some artists just feel like one season more than another…).

            So, without further ado, I give you….

         

  

          #10. Television—Marquee Moon and Adventure

           How do you describe Television to a generation that doesn’t have a clue about them (let alone a generation that should’ve but still didn’t)? 

           True be told, byrnes’ last column unwittingly gives the best possible example I could think of: Take Neil Young’s moody, string-strangling “Cortez the Killer,” and make that the rule for someone’s artistic oeuvre rather than the notable exception. No knock on Neil, mind you, but “Cortez” came from somewhere other even for Neil, whereas you can usually find three or four songs on any given Television album (or on most of Verlaine’s solo albums) where it sounds as if small animals are being methodically yet passionately choked to death. I mean, if you ever saw the guy live, it’s no accident the guy’s got freakin’ Popeye arms. Taking one note and strangling the heck out of it a couple hours a night’ll build those forearms up in a hurry.

 

 

             And lest we forget the rock-solid Billy Ficca (probably better known for his work with The Waitresses, who put out the way cool but overkilled “Christmas Rapping,” which y’r probably yet again sick of hearing right about now) and Fred Smith (he of the greasy hair and financial problems, who nonetheless consistently had a few great bass riffs on every Television/Verlaine album), and Richard Lloyd, who went on to become part of an arguably even more dangerous guitar duo with Robert Quine while backing up Matthew Sweet on the more popular Girlfriend but especially Altered Beast (which ain’t too far from my Top 10, BTW).

Anyway, I’d bought Marquee Moon pretty much when it came out, in my senior year of high school (1977-78)—I figured, hey, if I was right about the Pistols and Talking Heads without ever hearing them, and these guys were being mentioned in the same breath…. But alas, it did nothing for me. “See No Evil” had a pretty good riff but the rest kind of bored. I’m pretty sure I gave it away, in fact.

It wasn’t until a couple years later, in a stoned-and/or-drunken stupor at byrnes’ place (where all things rock-and-roll happened, you see), that I locked into the title song and THAT SOLO and asked, “Who IS that?”

“It’s Television.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Really? What album?”

“Marquee Moon.”

“No, it’s not, because I owned that and it sucked…”

I was very useful when I was stoned and/or drunk. Which back then was pretty often.

But good news: It sounded even better straight. I probably had some growing up to do in between. The romanticism and (yes) spirituality of stuff like “Guiding Light” and “Torn Curtain” was stuff I had no clue for when I was 16, although how still managed to miss the absolute shredding going on in “Friction” and (ESPECIALLY) the title song…. I dunno. I was young and stupid. Now I’m old and stupid. But a lot more conscious of it.

Maybe it was the indirectness of the lyrics. Because like his namesake, Verlaine’s lyrics were images. No stories here, although you could put it together if you found yourself in the middle of it. (I remember one time a few years later when byrnes dared me to try to explain what the heck “Glory” (from Adventure) was about. Which I, in midst of another failed romance, therefore had no difficulty whatsoever doing. At which point, he reared back and nodded approvingly. J).

I’m not talking much about the music, am I? Things you need to know about both of these albums that I haven’t already alluded to: 

 

Marquee Moon is the refined, cool-but-edgy, tight little package that hits you in one way or another from start to finish. Even a stupid 16-year-old could hear a great opener in “See No Evil,” but it takes a few heartbreaks and a lot of trips to NYC to appreciate a song like “Venus,” despite some great guitar work that should’ve helped. Another great riff in “Friction” (thus justifying its place among the standard Envelopes covers — “I don’t wanna grow up / It’s too much contradiction / And too much friction / But you know, I’m crazy ‘bout friction / F--R--I--C--T-I-O-N” Absolute coolishness. (And how the 16-year-old didn’t latch onto “I start to spin the tale / You complain of my dic----tion” the first time around is beyond me. :D)

Then comes the title song. Again, how’d I miss this faithin’ riff, let alone the counter-riff that drives this thing for 10 whole minutes without a hitch? A journey deep into the edge of night that’s smart enough to know exactly when it’s time to get off:  

 

Well, the Cadillac, it pulled out of the graveyard

It pulled up to me; all he said was “Get in. GET in.”

Well, the Cadillac, it puttered back into that graveyard

Me? I got out again.

Which immediately is followed by probably the definitive solo of the entire “punk” era. I didn’t know anything about Coltrane back then, but I get the comparisons now. Dissonant, glorious, building back into this incredible climax that disappears into a gentle rain of harmonics. At which point the song starts completely over, then disappears. Which maybe is the real point of it. (Seeing Verlaine do it live was a great experience in and of itself. Never the same on any two given nights, usually twice as long as the as-you’ll-recall-10-minute original, and never a dull moment in the lot.)

Side two kicks back and lets the moodier stuff take over, interspersing between the cooler, ‘tudy-er “Elevation” (am I the only one that hears the repeat of the chorus as “Television—don’t go to my head”?) and “Prove It” (“this case is cloooosed”), and the real gems here, “Guiding Light” and “Torn Curtain,” two stellar combinations of quiet romanticism and the harsh reality that kills it almost every time…. 

 

Torn curtain, reveals another play

Torn curtain, such an exposé!

I’m uncertain, when beauty meets abuse

Torn curtain, love’s all ridicule

Tears, tears, rolling back the years… 

 

Torn curtain, feels more like a rake

Torn curtain, how much does it take?

BURN IT DOWN 

 

…and, of course, those danged guitar solos out of the stratosphere that keep the hairs on the back of your neck standing until the thing finally fades out. Every bit the masterpiece I heard it was in the first place, when I was that dumb high-school student. 

 

No-one will mistake Adventure for anything but a Television album, but unlike its predecessor, the second album wasn’t polished down to a fine finish before hitting vinyl. In some ways poppier, in other ways more ragged and edgy, in yet other ways drenched in near-impenetrable imagery, in still other ways more direct in its attacks—in all ways Television at its finest.

“Glory,” is a kinder, gentler “See No Evil,” the kind of stuff you could picture R.E.M. doing in a more rambunctious time. A tongue-in-cheek tribute to true-love-at-that-moment-anyway: 

 

She said, “There’s a halo on that truck. Won’t you please get it for me?”

I said, “Of course, my little swan — if ever and ever you adore me.”

She got mad, she said “You’re too steep.”

Puts on her boxing gloves and went to sleep

When I see the glory

I ain’t got a worry…. 

 

“Days” may not be quite as good as the Kinks song of the same name, but it’s a sweet, longing, and entirely unironic love song (that would musically go one to have R.E.M. written all over it, or of course vice versa — think: “Talk About the Passion”). The poetry of the lyrics aside, it’s about as gorgeously simple a moment as a Verlaine (& Lloyd, in this case) creation is ever going to have.

Which is promptly countered by the anti-war diatribe “Foxhole” (Verlaine’s quite good at these, actually; the title song from his album Words from the Front is arguably the best thing from his  seriously impressive solo career.) The guitar, of course, matches the lyrical venom note-for-note and then some.

Which, in turn, is answered by the goofy, catchy “Careful,” which doesn’t entirely forget the theme of the song before it — “I jump out of bed / I pull down the shade / I used to have such sweet dreams / Now it’s more like an air raid.”

Which, of course, leads into “Carried Away,” a quiet, majestically painful song that would have fit perfectly on side two of Marquee Moon:  

 

Those rooms were freezing

And always dark

But where we were never mattered

Your head was golden

There was lightning in your arms

And then the glass shattered 

 

With “The Fire,” side two picks up where “Carried Away” leaves off, only the exquisite feeling of loss has given way to pain and bitterness and all the guitar chops Tom Verlaine can muster. And brother, that’s a lot. After an emotion-dripping, guitar-strangling solo that arguably leaves “Marquee Moon” in the dust, Tom the lyricist comes back in to deliver the relationship’s epitaph: 

 

Praise emptiness

Her rose-colored dress

Her circling motions

Praise emptiness

 

Everything scattered.

Nothing was missed.

We took our house

In the fire. 

 

How do you follow that one? With the single, of course. And “Ain’t That Nothin’” is a good one. Great riffs, the requisite sense of cool, and a lyric that’s pure Television-era Verlaine: “Discover dishonor, and its thousand commands / It ain’t worth a shot — that target is sand / Oh but I love disaster — and I love what comes after / Ain’t that nothin’?… / I just wish that you’d tell me something.”

The album (and arguably the band’s real career) closes with “The Dream’s Dream” — quirky, impressionistic, haunting, confusing as all get-out, more an atmosphere than a song. The lyrics — repeatedly only once about halfway through the near-seven minute song — are no more and no less than: 

 

The elevator called me up — she said, “You’d better start making sense.” (Good luck. J)

The stone was bleeding, whirling in the waltz.

I went to see her majesty. The court had no suspense.

She said, “Dream dreams the dreamer.”

I said, “It’s not my fault.” 

 

                And like that, they were gone.

Posted by: burninglight at 19:57 | link | comments (4)

“All you need is love and a bulletproof vest….”

         Hard to believe it’s been 25 years. We all have our indelible moments, and like many of the other ones in my life I was more or less the last to know it, and at a most ironic time. (Case in point: I found out about the Towers, 15 miles away, via an intercom message from the CEO of the company I was at then, excusing us to go home “due to the events in New York City…” I got the full story from the guy in the urinal next to me a few minutes later…. “WHAT??? Are you SERIOUS???”)  

             On Monday evening, December 8, 1980, unlike much of the country, I was not watching Monday Night Football. I didn’t have the TV on at all, in fact, although I was at home. It was “the winter of Tension Envelopes” (not quite the Summer of Love, but as meaningful to me, anyway). Mike Hegger, our drummer, and Richie Puetz, our all-purpose sound man and whipping boy, were over, as were a half-dozen or so teenage girls from Bloomingdale, NJ — noticeably younger than us. Don’t worry… mostly nothing happened.

              But here’s the thing there: My musical horizons — and what I thought a great album looked like — were expanding exponentially at the time. A lot of it was byrnes’ fault, but I had also made enough discoveries on my own. Plastic Ono Band was one of those discoveries. To-the-bone, heart-wrenching stuff. My parental situation wasn’t as bad as John Lennon’s – my mother was (and is) still alive, as was (and is) my father — but they did divorce when I was seven and I was already moved out from my mother and her abusive pill-addict 2^nd husband pretty much the minute I turned 18 (and I was 19 at this point), so I had more than enough hubris to help me scream along with “Mother” or “Well Well Well.” And Lennon’s description of God at that point worked as well for me as anything else back then.  

            All of which leads up to the fact that on this evening, of all the possible evenings I could’ve chosen, I abandoned my undying allegiance to The Who’s Quadrophenia (which almost singlehandedly carried me through my 18^th summer for reasons you can well imagine) and declared Plastic Ono Band the best album I’d ever heard. (And I still put it in my top 3, by the way.) 

            So when I got up the next morning, picked up the paper in my front yard, and began to read, it was a damn good thing the side of the house was there to catch me. 

            I’m pretty sure the first person I called was our guitar player, Rick Neblung. Heck, I’m pretty sure Rick was the first person everyone we knew called. Rick was a Beatlemaniac to the core; even had one of Lennon’s drawings on his wall (let’s just say Yoko was enjoying the moment being depicted), long before he could’ve become independently wealthy by selling it. Rick wasn’t having the easiest year either, as his parents were in the middle of a divorce (and as he worked for his dad — and for that matter, their industrial-sculpture studio was where we practiced every night — it was that much more difficult to avoid thinking about it constantly). Actually, maybe that’s why Rick was handling it far better than any of us expected. It was probably almost a welcome distraction. Like the rest of us, he was numb, but not in pieces.

            Today was an even better excuse than normal to skip college, so we spent the day cruising around, talking. Needless to say, the airwaves were filled with nothing but Beatles/Lennon music, so in a way it was also a celebration of a life and a body of work that only a handful of people could touch. The first real snap back to the reality of the moment was when “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” came on. I’m pretty sure Rick was groaning audibly even before the line came across…. simply in anticipation of it…. “Don’t need a gun to blow your mind…. oh no, oh no….” (I suspect even the DJ didn’t realize it until it was too late. Since this was still only 1980, at least no-one had the bad taste/insensitivity to play “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” that day.)

            We got through our day, and decided to rendezvous at tim’s basement apartment in Mahwah that evening. I’m thinking Mike wasn’t there, but the other three of us were, as well as our manager Roger Waters, and our number-one fan whose real name I forget because we always called him Hoja (John?)Higgins — kind of a jolly lumberjack. There may have been someone else there; I forget now (Richie?). I seem to remember it snowing lightly that evening. I don’t remember for sure, but it would have fit perfectly if it had.  

           Again, just left the radio on, passed around the chemicals, and remembered and soaked in the music. It was a fairly calm night. We all felt it, but none of us quite expressed it. You know, typical man behavior, even in the face of the brutal and wasteful death of a less-than-typical man. 

          And then it came on. 

         “And so this is Christmas…. And what have yooooooou done….” 

          Suddenly, the room was transformed into five or six guys looking despairingly at each other, trying their damnedest not to cry. I think we more or less succeeded. No-one wept openly, in any case, but the misery was palpable.

          It was probably our loss that we did succeed in keeping it in. It was certainly our loss that day, no matter what. All of our losses.

Posted by: burninglight at 15:19 | link | comments (1)

Shameless Plug #1

     My first book as an editor here in my new place will be out tomorrow. For the curious among you, here goes:

    More details are available at group.com. But suffice to say, I feel happy and productive today.

     As you were....

 

Posted by: burninglight at 20:53 | link | comments (1)

I've made a lot of mistakes...
I've made a lot of mistakes...
I've made a lot of mistakes...
I've made a lot of mistakes...

     ...but not this time.

     As promised this time last week, I'm gonna get into a (mostly) song-by-song analysis of my (and probably several others') pick for album of the year: Sufjan Stevens' Come On Feel the ILLINOISe. If you haven't heard it yet, yr loss. Heck, everyone's loss.

     Reading over last week's entry, I realized I threw the term "Christian music" around with wild abandon, so before anyone's unnecessarily alienated (and/or simply doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about) I think I'd better define my terms a little better. What it USUALLY means — but doesn't in this case — is that subgenre of "music" that sounds like bad copies of bad bands from 15 years earlier, and put forth as "hip" music for the (largely) evangelical set. Example: Take a bad imitation of R.E.M., do a bad imitation of the bad imitation, add the J-word in several strategic places, and voila! Jars of Clay! The kids will eat it up! (Until they finally something with an actual taste, anyway.)

     That's not what I'm after here. Back in the '90s when I was doing my little journal, Burning Light, my come-on to writers was, "We're looking for Christians who write, not 'Christian writing'." To unpack that a little: I was looking for writers whose Christianity informed and was woven into their being and writing, not ones who were trying to hit you in the face with THE MESSAGE. Everyone's got a worldview of some sort, whether or not they really understand and can articulate what it is in their own lives. Therefore, as Christians, if we believe that Jesus is real (and danged well oughta know that life is real), shouldn't that just come out in one's art as a Christian, rather than meeting some fabricated standard that talks some phony Christianese but turns a blind eye toward that real life we've supposedly been left here to transform?

    End soapbox, for now. Anyway, the problem I've seen over and over with the real "Christian" writers I've worked with and the musicians who really to me is that they're caught between worlds — they speak too much to real life to ever be sold by a Christian retailer (try finding, say, Pedro the Lion's Control in one of those stores — I dare you), and the palpability of their faith turns off the "secular" retailer/buyer. Thus, in the words of the late Mark Heard (arguably the greatest songwriter you've never, um, heard), those who are really producing viable art from a this perspective are in the "Christian ghetto." If they survive, it's for the love of what they're doing and for no other reason. (Which isn't a bad reason at all, mind you, but when the "secular" pop charts are dominated by Christine Aguilera, Britney, et al., and the "Christian" charts consider Rebecca St.  James or Michael W. Smith to be significant "artists".... I mean, 'cmon...)

     End soapbox for sure, this time. There's a few artists who have managed to keep both their artistic integrity and a permeating sense of faith, and still have some deserved success in the process. I can understand if that doesn't mean a lot to you, but it does mean a lot to me. And maybe, just maybe, Sufjan Stevens is about to pull off the same trick. So maybe I oughta just start talking about Illinois, huh?

    The thing really is a quite magical, 70-plus-minute song suite/transportational device, concerning the state of Illinois of all things/places, pulling from all sorts of state folklore well-known and obscure. The amazing thing is that it sounds truly absorbed rather than simply contrived, especially considering the very indie hey-look-I'm-doing-it-all-myself nature of this project. Which is to say, it's pretty quirky in places but always disarmingly effective. And when the songs get closer to the bone, the disarmingness is even more effective, and affecting.

     It all starts off with "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois," a sweetly quiet thing that God help me, reminds me of the intro to a certain other Illinois epic, Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie... (Am I the only one hearing this?). The rather imagistic lyrics leave just enough to anyone's imagination: "Mysterious shade that took its form (or what it was!) / incarnation, three stars / delivering signs and dusting from their eyes."

    After the instrumental, "THE BLACK HAWK WAR, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I have fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them until they are off our lands!'" (yes, there's a lot of long titles here), we enter the two-part title song. "Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition" has been known to annoy my family to no end, but I like it.  But the album really kicks into gear with "Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream," which starts with a great, danged near prog-rock, instrumental break, and closes with the appropriate question, "Are you writing from the heart? Are you writing from the heart?"

    A question which is promptly answered by the next song, "John Wayne Gacy Jr." If you've heard anything from the album, it's probably this, although I question whether you'll ever hear it piped into your local Lifeway or Bible Superstore. (Although I actually heard this played during the after-service music last Sunday — how cool was that? Then again, I go to one of them "emerging" churches these days. ) Truly gorgeous, yet terrifying, yet real. Over a lovely acoustic, practically Simon-and-Garfunkelish arrangement come the details that slowly bring you into a world you'd've just as soon avoided:

 "His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's T-shirts
When the swing set hit his head

The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his coversation
Look underneath the house there,
Find the few living things rotting fast
in their sleep, oh the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys, with their cars,
summer jobs, oh my God
Are you one of them?

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room, on the bed, he kissed them all
He'd kill ten thousand people
With the slight of his hand, running far,
running fast to the dead
He took off all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips, quiet hands,
quiet kiss on the mouth"

     And just when you think you've heard it all, here comes the real punchline, a thought so "there but for the grace..." that you'll never hear it repeated by any of the financial gracemongers on TV:

"And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid."

    Thankfully, the album comes back up for air with the cool production number, "Jacksonville." I oughta say a lot more about it, but cool will have to suffice. (I need to come up for air too, you know.) 

    After "A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, but for Very Good Reasons," (a brief instrumental revisit to "Jacksonville" which takes almost as long to read) comes "Decatur," a sweetly goofy train song the theme of which is captured in its subtitle, "...or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!" Complete with cheers at the end (entitled, "One last "Whoo-hoo!" for the Pullman").

   Things kick back into serious mode with "Chicago," easily the greatest song Jeff Lynne never wrote. (And c'mon, all late-period ELO fluff aside, Jeff did write some good stuff.) It's as big and chugging and string-driven as you might imagine, as well as both celebratory and sad all at the same time, as the transitoriness of life passes on by: "You came to take us / All things go, all things go / To re-create us / All things grow, all things grow.... I was in love with a place / In my mind, in my mind.... If I was crying/ In the van, with my friend / From myself, and from the land / I made a lot of mistakes /I made a lot of mistakes/ I made a lot of mistakes/ I made a lot of mistakes...."

   The album peaks with the best song on it, "Casimir Pulaski Day," an incredibly sad song that captures the moment and gives me goosebumps just writing about it. Think Van Morrison's "T.B. Sheets" taking place at a prayer meeting, with none of the terrifying caterwauling and a bit more physical contact between the author and the protagonist. I'm quite serious, and it works:

"Goldenrod and the 4-H stone
The things I brought you
when I found out you had cancer of the bone...

In the morning, through the window shade
when the light pressed up
against your shoulder blade
I could see what you were reading
All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth

Tuesday night at the Bible study
We lift our hands and pray over your body
But nothing ever happens...."

   And when that "nothing" finally comes to fruition, not a berating of God but a profoundly hard, " I just — don't — GET this..." that has brought me to tears on more than a few occasions:

"Sunday night when I clean the house
I find the card where you wrote it out
with the pictures of your mother
On the floor, at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom

In the morning when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low
And the cardinal hits the window...
All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see His face
In the morning in the window

All the glory when He took our place
But He took my shoulders, and He shook my face,
and He takes and He takes and He takes."

     Think it might be time to lighten up again? Yeah, Sufjan did too. After another instrumental, "To The Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament," comes "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts," which alternates between the stompin'est moments of the album on behalf of the Man of Steel and quiet intervals that accentuate the writer's own weaknesses (which also turn out to be strengths) in comparison  — again, the whole celebration/sadness thing in tandem: "Only a steel man can be a lover / If he had hands to tremble all over / We celebrate our sense of each other /We have a lot to give one another."

     With "Prairie Fire That Wanders All About," Illinois wanders into the more experiemental territory that it stakes out for the most of the rest of the album. A Laurie Anderson-like arrangement and chorus chant-sings: "Peoria! Destroyia! / Infinity! Divinity! / For Lydia! Octavia! / And Jack-of-Trades! / The Cubs! Hooray!"

     Which gives way to one more sweet/sad and by the end literally glorious one, "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us!," an ode to lost friendship that right in the middle bursts into near-Whitmanic praise:

"Oh great sights upon this state! Hallelu--
Wonders bright, and rivers, lake. Hallelu--
Trail of Tears and Horsehoe Lake. Hallelu--
trusting things beyond mistake. Hallelu--

We were in love. We were in love.
Palisades! Palisades! I can wait. I can wait.

Lamb of God, we sound the horn. Hallelujah!
To us your ghost is born. Hallelu--

I can't explain the state that I'm in
The state of my heart
he was my best friend...
My friend is gone,
he ran away. I can tell you,
I love him each day
Though we have sparred,
wrestled and raged
I can tell you,
I love him each day.
Terrible sting, terrible storm
I can tell you. "

    Which, of course, is followed by another song/chant, "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!" A couple more instrumentals and we're up to "The Seer's Tower," which gets me flashing on Rush's "Temple of Syrinx" for reasons I can kinda understand lyrically but not musically, given its somber, dirgelike chorus, "In this tower / above the earth / We built it for / Emanuel / In the Powers of the earth, / we wait until it rails and rails.... Still I go to the deepest grave / where I go to sleep alone." Not quite sure what to make of it, though I have my theories.

     The last set of lyrics come with the two-part "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders," yet another combination of celebrating the glory of Illnois and the waste that has come in the wake of much of that glory, leading into the closing incantation, and the ray of hope that goes with it:

"Oh Great Fire of Great Disaster
Oh Great Heaven, oh Great Master
Oh Great Goat, the curse you gave us
Oh Great Ghost, protect and save us
Oh Great River, green with envy
Oh Jane Addams, spirit send thee
Oh Great Trumpet and the singers
Oh Great Goodman, King of Swingers
Oh Great Bears and Bulls, Joe Jackson
Oh Great Illinois

Given what you lost, are you better off?
Given what you had, has it made you mad?
Celebrate the few. Celebrate the new.
It can only start with you."

    The album closes with two more instrumentals, "Riffs and Variations on a Single Note for Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstron, Baby Dodds, and the King of Swing, to Name a Few," and the positively Steve Reich-ian "Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I shake the dirt from my sandals as I run."

 

     Well, that's what I've got. Buy it or don't. But I'm sure glad I've got it.

     There'll probably a couple short entries during the week, to commemorate a couple different occasions. One you can figure out. Maybe the other one too (at least it'll make sense once you see it). Until then...

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: burninglight at 19:05 | link | comments