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

Better Late Than Never -- Way Better

Boy, this blog sure got busy in a hurry....

First, a flashback: I forget who the critic was now (we’re probably talking 20-25 years ago, after all), but I remember him going on at length about this game he played called Waiting for Echo and the Bunnymen. Basically, it was about a band with all the potential in the world showing flashes of greatness and yet fizzling out album after album. (They’re still putting out albums, so the guy’s probably still waiting, although 2005’s Siberia was actually pretty consistent.) I also remember said critic employing the baseball analogy that he was tired of long foul balls from a group capable of hitting home runs. (Said critic was especially frustrated that U2 had stolen what he believed was Echo’s rightful thunder, but that’s another story, I suppose. Speaking of U2 usurping all Island’s promotional money that could have gone to more worthy artists, have I mentioned Mike Roe and the 77s lately? ).

We stared at the sun, too long
until the shapes before our eyes
turned into the sun, in our eyes...
We made up our minds
to lose and never once looked back...
We stared at the road ahead
Closed our eyes and then
sped up to the turn, around the bend
With nothing to lose, we lost
Suffered every cost...

And we tried, we tried, we tried with all our might
we tore the playhouse down
We ran headlong, headlong in our way...
we tried so hard...
we tried so hard...

 

 

And with this album, Yo La Tengo have finally succeeded. Hopefully more than just a bunch of critics will get to discover that.

 

Starting with you.

Posted by: burninglight at 19:52 | link | comments (6)

Transformation of Waste
A Patti Smith Primer

(I think this entry is actually bigger than the Zoom Daddy entry from nearly this time last year. By quite a bit, in fact. Of course, it does cover nine albums, so there's some degree of justification. Anyway....)

Part I: Strange Messengers

In the midst of the book of Judges, where Israel spends a whole lot more time forsaking God than following him, God raises up a prophetess named Deborah. Despite her gender in a supposedly male-dominated society, Deborah rules wisely and in spite of the men wimping out all about her. She even gets her own song (well, a duet with the guy who's supposed to be ruling, anyway) in Judges 5, and as a result of her leadership the land enjoys 40 years of peace.

Deborah reminds me a lot of Patti Smith.

Read on if you don't believe me. Or even if you do. But it should make more sense as we go along, either way.

In a shocking turn of events, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame actually gets one right, and on March 12 Patti Smith gets her night to join dozens of far less deserving members. I've seen some whining online to effect of "She only had one big hit, and Springsteen wrote it." Anyone who's listened to her body of work should know that's a nonsense argument. Besides, she helped write it with Springsteen. (And for the above complainers who apparently want a lot of hits but no significant contribution to rock and roll, relax, you're getting Van Halen this year too.)

It's about influence, baby. The Velvet Underground didn't sell a heck of a lot of records either, but the thousand or so people who bought them and started their own bands sure did (idea courtesy of vicarious Patti protégé Michael Stipe). Heck, the bittersweet tribute songs written about her alone would make a good album -- The Waterboys' "A Girl Called Johnny," Tori Amos' "Space Dog," Jim Carroll's "Crow," etc. (Interesting to note that almost all of said songs - written from the perspective of "Where have you gone, Patti DiMaggio?" -- spoke WAY too soon. But they can be forgiven; 17 years of virtual silence is a long time.) Fellow 2007 inductees R.E.M., whom you can make a good argument both for and against but at least are worth considering, are among those who readily acknowledge that influence. And seeing Stipe perform with the woman who "tore my limbs off and put them back on in a whole different order" is probably going to be a moment worth watching.

But back to our heroine. One of the most gratifying benefits of working through this 30-plus-year history (again, including a 17-year stretch in the middle which only saw the release of one album) is observing the excesses disappearing, and the failures being learned from (sometimes even revisited the right way years later), while the passion, poetry, prophetic voice and brutal honesty of her earliest music continues to survive with a vengeance 30-plus-years later through Trampin' (and, one confidently assumes, beyond).

It's not often you get to observe life as a progression rather than as an exercise in futility. Or, as is a lot more common, entropy.

When she had nothing to say, she shut up. When she had something to say again, she came back with a vengeance. And anyone who's heard her output of the last 10 years is the better for it. And if I may speak heresy -- I would dare say that her music has actually become consistently better over that time. (The progression thing again.) To my ears, she found her true voice pretty far into her career, and it's gone a long way toward filtering out the self-indulgence that plagued her early albums. Does it also filter out the poetic heights sometimes reached on those early albums as well? Maybe, maybe not. Buy these puppies and be yr OWN judge.

It's also interesting to note that the subject matter of her songs has become increasingly history-based, but somehow for that hasn't become any less personal. She takes the subject, wraps herself in the context and character, and makes it her own. Only later do you realize that she's been singing about Native Americans, the Dalai Lama, John the Baptist, Custer's wife, Ho Chi Minh, and the Hale Bopp guys (you know, the ones with the sneakers).

Anyway, long story slightly shorter: In this ongoing transitional time we've been experiencing as a family -- some of which has been detailed here, some not -- Patti Smith has been our one very prominent musical constant. Marion uses the term "adult angst" to describe it, and that works pretty well for me. In any case, it's fun hearing this stuff blasting out of her art room. With the possible exception of Mike Roe & the 77s, nobody has mined that particular vein better over the last 10 years (and boy, would THAT be a fantasy tour -- for me, anyway). It's probably also no coincidence that both have become immeasurably better singers over the course of their careers - what once was attitude is straight-up emotion that connects the singer directly to us, and reminds us we're not alone.

And with what sounds like at least like a welcome break from the relentless catharsis of the past decade: This April will also see the release of Twelve, a collection of covers including (more or less in order of escalating incredulity) "Helpless" by Neil Young, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Pastime Paradise" by Stevie Wonder, and Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" (???). With lots of guest performers, including children Jackson and Jesse. Sounds like fun, anyway; and again, given THAT VOICE, possibly even better than that. (Hmmm, Mike & the 7s have an album of blues covers due out sometime this year, too. Coincidence? Again, I think not. :))

Anyway, let's get to the music, shall we?

Part II: Jesus Died for Someone's Sins.... Why Not Mine?

 Horses (1976) -- Patti shakes a fist at God, says, "OK Big Boy, let's get it on," and thus launches a still-evolving career wherein the divine questioning and divine interaction (if no longer the divine battle, necessarily) never lets up. Horses drives a stake in the ground that I'm pretty sure even its creator didn't fully understand the ramifications of -- but that, of course, explains a lot of its appeal as well. Real art is usually about the artist pointing beyond his or her own grasp, anyway. Anyway, anyone not mortally offended within the first 30 seconds has a lot to absorb and enjoy here.

If "enjoy" is the right word for an album that opens by knocking the Van Morrison classic "Gloria" on its ear from its very first line, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"; takes us through a lesbian suicide, an extraterrestrial reunion with one's father, and climaxes in more than one sense of the word with a teenage locker-room homosexual rape and murder mutating into a chant of "HORSES, HORSES, HORSES, HORSES" before breaking into "Land of a Thousand Dances." Yes, I said all of that right. As far as I know, anyway. It's not like you get it all on a silver platter.

Thirty-plus years later, the excesses still sound... well, excessive. That said, it's an artistic statement and a raw nerve that yields more than its share of moments. For me, that includes the driving "Free Money," the Jersey-shore-poppy-despite-their-subject-matter "Kimberly" and "Redondo Beach"; the absolutely great would-be-Television song (written with then-lover Tom Verlaine) "Break It Up" (you can actually hear Patti pounding her own chest for effect in the final verse)....

....and the absolutely transcendent "Birdland." Everything comes together on this one -- the poetry, the otherworldly narrative, the equally unearthly Verlaine guitar that accompanies it. "We are not human," indeed. Not for the nine-plus minutes this song goes on, anyway. (Curious aside: As bizarre a character as Wilhelm Reich clearly was -- and we're talking a guy who made Freud seem like a mentally balanced prude -- he also inspired two musical highpoints for arguably the two finest women artists of our era. See, or better yet hear, also Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting," for further support of said thesis.)

Anyway, this is not an album you will shrug your shoulders and say "feh" to -- you'll either love it, hate it, or both. Unlike...

 Radio Ethiopia (1977) -- I'd have to call this my least favorite Patti album. We can at least also call this her "punkiest" album, in the conventional sense of the word (although Horses is way closer in the true meaning of the term). When it's not slipping into Rickie-Lee-Jones-with-a-chest-cold mode, anyway (i.e., "Poppies"). It sounds underdeveloped as a whole, which is also to say the artsy b.s. is far more easily exposed for what it is on this one. At least it's got "Pissing in a River," a small epic which bears repeated listening. (Mind you, you can get this and the song mentioned further below on the 2002 two-disk retrospective/rarities collection Land, so is it really worth tracking down in this form unless y'r a completist? Well, if you really WANT to. It's not a bad album, just "feh.") And while "Radio Ethiopia" doesn't really work here, it'll sound way better when Patti revisits the idea in another 27 years. But that's getting ahead of our story.

In other news, the fist-shaking continues. See "Ain't It Strange?", one of the better songs here, for evidence. In further news: While singing said song, featuring the lyrics, "I spin, I spiral, and I splatter / Hand of God, I feel the finger, / Hand of God, and I start to whirl / And I whirl, and I whirl, / Don't get dizzy, do not fall now," Patti spins off the stage in Tampa, Florida, breaking two vertebrae in her neck. One is free to draw his or her own conclusions.

 Easter (1978) -- The one album everyone has, if you have any of them. Me, of course, being the exception until a few weeks ago, although I'd heard a lot of it previously. And yes, it has her only major hit, and yes, it took advantage of the fact that the Bruce Juice bandwagon was in full throttle. So what? One of the things you notice about "Because the Night" in retrospect is that the deep, mournful voice that will really be at the forefront of everything Patti Smith does after this begins to emerge here ("Birdland" and "Pissing in a River" notwithstanding). That, and that it's still a powerful song nearly 30 years later. Not to mention that this voice carries directly into the haunting, eery, and flat-out riveting "Ghost Dance," especially in the chorus/mantra/chant/invocation "We shall live again." And, by the way, even given its historical context of the Native American Ghost Dance of the late 19th century, it's still an awful long way from "Gloria" to:

Here we are, Father, Lord, Holy Ghost,
Bread of your bread, ghost of your host,
We are the tears that fall from your eyes,
Word of your word, cry of your cry.

Likewise, the dialogue with God takes a noticeable turn on "Privilege (Set Me Free)," which takes the text of Psalm 23 and winds around it the cry, "Oh, God, give me something: a reason to live... Come on, set me free, set me free / I'm so young, so goddamn young" -- before clubbing you like a baby seal with that last line.

(Likewiser, reports during this time of being incapable of singing her original lyrics to "Gloria" without breaking down, and more recent reports of changing the "but not mine" to "why NOT mine?," not to mention certain elements of the album that follows Easter, not to mention this album's title, suggests SOMETHING took place. But as with Van, not to mention her hero and mentor Bob Dylan, we can only guess exactly what, and take the latter's words to heart: "The only reason people want to know where I'm at is because they don't know where they're at." Perhaps so, but it's still fascinating trying to pull the threads together. On the poem/rant "Babelogue" here, she declares "in heart I am a Moslem," and given some of the repeatedly concerns of her later albums there's worse guesses out there. Of course, she also concludes said diatribe, "I have not sold myself to God." So again, interpret as you will. I like to look at her through a William Blake filter, personally, and thus get chills hearing her live recitation of "The Lamb" on Land). In any case, the imagery she once shook a fist at is instead being grabbed with both fists, here and so-far-evermore.)

Anyway: Immediately after "Babelogue," Populist Patti also kicks off her coming-out party. The deliberate shock value of "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger" sounds pretty comical today: "Jimi Hendrix was a nigger / Jesus Christ, and Grandma, too / Jackson Pollock was a nigger / Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger." Yes, we get the point. And yet the real point of the song still holds: "Do you like the world around you? / Are you ready to behave? / Outside of society, they're waitin' for me / Outside of society, that's where I want to be." It's still Rebellious (capital R intentional), but starting to consciously look for solutions outside the camp, or at least a longer-term stand against the current that's more than just in-your-face (which, come to think of it, is reinforced pretty nicely in the opening salvo, "'Til Victory") -- another theme that will become way far expansive as her career goes on.

 Wave (1979) -- Patti in Love. While not as urgent as past (or most future) albums, and featuring way too many keyboards for my taste, it still contains some great material, including "Frederick," a bald-faced love song for her husband-to-be, Fred "Sonic" Smith (formerly of the MC5), that manages to take the otherwise trite "up above, to the land of love" and give it meaning; a great cover of the Byrds classic, "(So You Want to Be a) Rock 'n' Roll Star"; the stirring, anthemic "Broken Flag," about Civil War heroine Barbara Fritchie; and arguably the quintessential Patti Smith song, "Dancing Barefoot." Poetry, spirituality, intriguing love lyrics, and a killer chorus that still leaves you wondering to this day if she's saying "heroine" or "heroin," because they both work perfectly. It's all there.

Of course, there's also stuff that one doesn't know quite what to do with (and you'd think I would), including "Hymn," a brief psalm that probably would've worked if the arrangement weren't so freakin' loopy (damn you Todd Rundgren), and the title song, which is essentially a rambling conversation with the recently deceased Pope John Paul I. And much of side two, while ominous and featuring some good guitar work (i.e., "Revenge" and "Citizen Ship"), lacks the passion that carried some of her earlier work singlehandedly. "Seven Ways of Going" is all over the map, but at least has an interesting clarinet solo by Patti (who had recently been taught by Fred).

So it's kind of half and half. But the half that works, WORKS.

And with that, the female poet laureate of rock married Fred in 1980, had two children, and moved to St. Clair Shores, Michigan to become a mom (not necessarily in that order). Like that, she was gone. For quite awhile, at least.

 Dream of Life (1988) -- In the midst of her hiatus, Patti puts out this mini-comeback album. I'm pretty sure it's the only one I've never read the phrase "This is Patti's best" in connection with. But you know what? This album has dated way better than I thought it would. And it's arguably her most commercially accessible album from start to finish. You could do far worse than to start with this one. (Of course you could better, too. Point being....) It starts and ends with two sublime songs -- the minor hit rally-cry-cum-"Pretty in Pink"-ish "People Have the Power," and the lovely song for her firstborn son, "The Jackson Song." (BTW, there's a great moment on the bootleg Divine Intervention where Patti's introducing the song, and her now-16-year-old "too cool" (her words) son is in the audience, audibly bitching. Patti stops dead in her tracks, and you can practically hear the eyebrow arching as she says, "You know, I could take back that computer I just bought you." Classic "mom" moment.) And what's in between is never worse than decent: "Paths That Cross" is movingly sentimental without being soppy; and the straightforward rocker "Looking for You (I Was)" probably also could have been a hit in an alternate universe.

"Where Duty Calls" is the one musical stretch here. Written about the suicide bombing of the barracks in Beirut in 1983 that took nearly 300 lives, most of them American, it incorporates musical influences from the region and goes from hit to miss and back again every time you listen to it. Simultaneously condemning and sympathetic toward both sides, she concludes, rather appropriately: "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do  / From the vast portals of their consciousness, they're calling to you."

(Interesting aside here: For those too young or oblivious to notice, "People Have the Power" later became the theme song for Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. I actually caught Patti singing it at their convention on CSPAN at the time, with Ralph on stage, purely by accident; talk about stumbling into an alternate universe.... Anyway, if you consider the events of late 2000, and put it all together, one has no choice but to conclude that Patti Smith is actually indirectly responsible for the Bush II presidency.  This has no doubt caused many a sleepless night. She could at least take comfort in the fact that it would provide plenty of song fodder in the future.  In any case, both history and general principle suggest that she should just avoid Florida altogether in the future.)

And that would be it for yet another eight years, although she continued to write. But it would take a series of deaths to get her recording (and certainly to some degree, continuing to record) again. And the first cuts were, by far, the deepest.

In 1994, after 14 years of marriage, Fred Smith died of a heart attack at age 45. A month later, Patti's brother Todd died unexpectedly. The result was an understandable tailspin of depression. But some good friends, notably John Cale and Allen Ginsberg, urged her to get the help she needed. And then came the catharsis -- or rather, the catharses -- that have represented the albums since her comeback.

Part III: Memento Mori
(English translation [pronounced in a South Jersey accent]: "We remembawwwwwwwwwwwww....")

 Gone Again (1996) -- And so she is back -- with a life-wish. You hear it from the first words of the ferocious title song -- the third verse, by the way, featuring the decade's Best Use of a Jew's Harp on a Rock and Roll Song (first and last awarded 1970, The Who, "Join Together."). Obviously, death and finding the strength beyond it is all over this thing -- including a song about another casualty of the era, Kurt Cobain ("About a Boy"); suffice to say, despite her admiration of his music, she didn't have nearly as much patience at this time in her life for a gifted songwriter voluntarily blowing out his brains in his prime.

Without me going for the long-winded dissection (I'm saving that for later ), this album runs the gamut from raging to peaceful to playful to mournful to just plain weird and still visceral (i.e., "Summer Cannibals" -- THIS was the single?). Plus, she stomps the crap out of Dylan's "Wicked Messenger." It's also nice to hear Tom Verlaine's presence on a Patti album again. We have yet to get to my favorite album, but suffice to say you need to have this one.

One song does warrant its own paragraph, though -- the last one, "Farewell Reel." Introduced "This little song is for Fred," it's just her and a guitar (which Fred had taught her how to play shortly before his death). It's simple, and as profoundly hopeful as it is profoundly sad. I'm basically human rubble every time I hear it. Heck, I can hardly get through typing this. The lyrics are presented in their entirety, because dammit, they deserve it:

It's been a hard time, and when it rains, it rains on me
The sky just opens, and when it rains it pours
I walk alone, assaulted it seems, by tears from heaven
And darling, I can't help thinking those tears are yours.

Our wild love came from above, and wilder still
is the wind that howls like a voice that knows it's gone.
'Cause darling you died, and well I cried, but I'll get by
Salute our love, and send you a smile and move on.

So darling farewell, all will be well, and all will be fine
Our children will rise, strong and happy, be sure
'Cause your love flows, and the corn still grows, and God only knows
We're only given as much as the heart can endure

But I don't know why, but when it rains it rains on me
The sky just opens, and when it rains it pours
But I look up and a rainbow appears, like a smile from heaven,
and darling, I can't help thinking that smile is yours.

Moving on...

 Peace and Noise (1997) -- The casualties this time are a bit less personal, but certainly profound enough: Friends and influences William S. Burroughs and the aforementioned Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg, in particular, is featured prominently here in "Don't Say Nothing" and "Spell," the latter being "Footnote to Howl" put to music. Decidedly not a PG-13 moment (and R could be debated as well), but point made.

Elsewhere: "Waiting Underground" is a great opener (she's kind of got that down pat, come to think of it); and while I don't understand why "1959" was singled out for a Best Female Vocal Grammy nomination, it IS a cool song -- and how many songwriters can juxtapose American sportscars with the Chinese invasion of Tibet? ("Listen to my story, got two tales to tell / One of fallen glory, one of vanity / The world's roof was raging, but we were looking fine / 'Cause we built that thing and it grew wings, in 1959"). Choose your fingers wisely.

But wait, there's more. "Blue Poles" is an understated and effective (and affective?) ballad about the Dust Bowl; "Dead City" is a suitably Ginsbergian ball of rage thrown straight down the plate at Detroit; while the closer "Last Call" is a downright creepy and cautionary look at the Heaven's Gate tragedy: "Accept no false teachers / False preachers, good deeders / With their hands outstretched / To be filled with your money / Your mind, your heart, your imagination / Sympathy, empathy / Acknowledge all man as fellow creation / But don't follow him / Don't be led away."

And what would a Patti album be without a stream-of consciousness epic? Not this one. This time, we get "Memento Mori," a live-improv song about a Vietnam War helicopter mishap, featuring some guitar and cartloads of attitude.

Perhaps apropos to the Beat writers it memorializes, Peace and Noise is arguably the "coolest"-sounding of Patti's albums. Kind of what Radio Ethiopia might have been like with the benefit of a heck a lot more forethought and personal experience. But the important thing is, she got there.

 Gung Ho (2000) -- This time it's Patti's father Grant (featured on the cover, and most prominently in the closing title song). This one took a while to grow on me -- at first listen, it sounded too slick somehow. But then the songs began to pop, and pop, and pop. Take, for example, the opening tribute to Mother Teresa "One Voice" ("All action great and small / Received joyfully / Heaven abounds / Let love resound / If he be mute, give him a bell / If he be blind, an eye / If he be down, a hand / Lift up your voice.... Give of your mind, one mind / Give of your heart, one heart / Give of your voice, one voice")...

...flip-flopping to the slightly hip-hoppy Middle-East-flavored "Lo and Beholden," told from the perspective of Salome, which sneaks up behind you then wallops you (or Herod, as it were) with the line, "The dove calls and God notes it all / The naked truth / Here is my veil, the seventh and last / It will cost -- YOU."...

...or the forlorn, bluegrassy "Libbie's Song," which you roll along with nicely until it dawns on you that the love object is General Custer and he's not coming back: "You marched proudly for the Horn / I prayed for your swift return... I longed for you, I longed to die / I was so belonely / The pillow's bare by my side / And yet I shall abide."

...or simply taking an old-fashioned and still effective punk two-by-four to celebrity, consumerism, and corporate greed with "Glitter in Their Eyes."

Not everything works -- bear in mind that this came out during the heart of said Nader campaign, and the funky but slightly off "New Party" makes more sense (especially the charming inquiry, "Why don't you fertilize my lawn / with what's coming from your mouth?"); likewise, it's not quite enough to propel "Upright Come" past the three chords used purely to justify its rhetoric as "song." And "China Bird," while decidedly in that smoldering-ballad Patti vein that she does quite well, never quite gets past the smoldering stage here.

This round's epic (aside from the moody closing title song, set in Vietnam) is "Strange Messengers," which hits you one side up the head and down the next -- first, by railing at the indifference of those who prospered even indirectly from the system of slavery ("Chains of leather chains of gold / We knew it was wrong but we looked away... Messengers swinging from twisted rope / As they turned their necks to a bitter landscape"), then uses the song's persona to come back from the grave to rant and hiss, "My people, I speak to you... / I burned / I swung / I toiled, for you and your children... And your burn out your life on crack and sorrowful stories.... THAT's how you repay your ancestors???" Eight minutes of being pinned to the wall is what this is.

 Trampin' (2004) -- And, last time around for now, her mother Beverley, the subject of the lovely, soaring "Mother Rose" and the launchpad for an album where motherhood is engaged in any number of different ways, both tenderly and brutally. And underscored with the metaphorical subtitle (ripoff from Steve Earle entirely intentional) "Just an American Girl."

I (and she) have literally saved the best for last here. It's an album of rage, vision, and hope, sung by someone who knows who she is and with the full weight of those convictions and experiences. Frankly: If there's been an album this decade that qualifies for the moniker of "life-changing," this is it. There's not a weak spot here, and any number of high points.

The rocking and winsome "Jubilee" invokes the Old Testament concept on a personal level: "Come on, boy, come on, girl, be a jubilee... / We stand in the midst of fury and weariness / Who dreams of joy and radiance? Who dreams of war and sacrifice? / Our sacred realms are being squeezed / Curtailing civil liberties / Recruit the dreams that sing to thee / Let freedom ring." It's also rather difficult to not have a goofy smile upon hearing the delivery of the line, "Come on people, oh my land... What be troubling, what be troubling, what be troubling you?"

There's actually more of a sense of humor on this album in general. The delightfully retro and bouncy "Stride of the Mind" (which actually makes St. Simon Stylites, who spent 37 years on top of a 60-foot column, sound like he's having fun -- and is that a Farfisa I hear?) playfully throws away the line, "I'm no Sufi, but I'll give it a whirl."

After the "My Favorite Things"-as-meditative-dirge "Cartwheels" (written for her daughter Jesse) comes the first of this album's two epics, "Gandhi." Starting quietly and unassumedly, right down to the prosaic yet revealing lines "When he was a boy, he was afraid of the dark / His mother would fast, and pray at his feet," the song slowly builds up over nine-plus minutes, culminating in the cry, "Awake from your slumber! Awake from your slumber! And get 'em with the numbers!" People have the power, indeed. As does this song.

"Trespasses" (a word used frequently in "Gandhi," BTW) is a sweetly quiet song that reminds us, "Life is designed with unfinished lines / That another sings / Each story unfolds, like it was gold / Upon a ragged wing." "My Blakean Year," a song about determination and choosing wisely, would have been a hit in a better world:

Brace yourself for bitter flack
For a life sublime
A labyrinth of riches
Never shall unwind
The threads that bind the pilgrim's sack
Are stitched into the Blakean back

So throw off your stupid cloak
Embrace all that you fear
For joy shall conquer all despair
In my Blakean year.

Not to mention the great catchline that runs throughout the song (and graces the cover of this album):

One road is paved in gold;
One road is just a road.

"Cash" is arguably the least of the songs here, but it's nonetheless tough-minded and with the right message: "In the white noise of desire / We can't hear a single thing ... Take that vow, take a stand / Grab that ring; it's not a whim.... It's only time that you're cashing in / It's only life that you're cashing in." And it leads well into the gorgeous "Peaceable Kingdom," written for Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist who cashed in her life being killed by Israeli security forces while protecting a Palestinian village in 2004. Rather than mourning her death, the song reminds us of her purpose: "And I wanted to tell you that your tears were not in vain... Why must we hide all these feelings inside? / Lions and lambs shall abide / Maybe one day we'll be strong enough, to build it back again / Build the peaceable kingdom back again."...

...before literally fading back into the reality of the present day, and the other epic of this album, "Radio Baghdad." As opposed to its sister song of nearly 30 years earlier, this thing is focused from moment one. It begins and ends with the quiet invocation: "Suffer not your neighbor's paralysis / but extend your hand." In the 10 minutes between, we (and particularly our current administration) are treated to any number of choice epithets...

You wanna come and rob the cradle of civilization
And yet you read Genesis; you read of the tree...
The face of Eve turning, what sky did she see?
What garden beneath her feet? The one you drill
Pulling the blood of the earth
Little droplets of oil for bracelets, little jewels...
We are just your Arabian nightmare
We invented the zero. But we mean nothing to you.

...culiminating in the portrait of an Iraqi mother, "Go to sleep my child / Go to sleep, and I'll sing you a lullaby, a lullaby for our city... Go to sleep, sleep my child, sleep, sleep... run... Run... sleep.... sleep... run.... Run... RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN!" Into the midst of this terror she screams in stark fury, "YOU SENT YOUR LIGHTS, YOUR BOMBS! YOU SENT THEM DOWN ON OUR CITY! SHOCK AND AWE, LIKE SOME CRAZY T.V. SHOW!"

To say it's a powerful moment doesn't begin to cut it.

There almost can't be a follow-up to "Radio Baghdad," and yet there is. Patti treats us to one of her mother's favorite songs (accompanied only by daughter Jesse on piano). The title song, a Negro spiritual made popular by gospel singer Marian Anderson, is simple, effective, and gets out of the way once it's made its point: "I'm trampin', trampin', try'n-a make heaven my home..." There really is nothing else left to say. 

Posted by: burninglight at 19:14 | link | comments

Another space-filling February post

Really. Not much to say right now. The really big honkin' Patti Smith column is in the works but nowhere near ready. Probably first thing March, and in any case before the 12th. The situation in the last post is regressing if anything, but I'm gonna try not to roll with my emotions. As are other domestic situations (which probably doesn't mean what you think).

On the other hand, it could worse -- it could be last February. I'm thinking of this more as the lull before anything of significance occurs; now it's just a matter of how long....

That's about it. To quote my good friend Nails (whose newly born blog, "Church and State of Mind," has been added to the list on the left, incidentally), "posting through...."

Posted by: burninglight at 20:07 | link | comments