a place a-z: my i-tunes library (written for a class)

This Place - A-Z

For this exercise I had a hard time coming up with something that I could index alphabetically and avoid the pitfalls of doing so…the errant “zebra” or “xylophone” that creeps into such lists. While deciding what to listen to while drafting the list, I realized I should do my iTunes library. Music travels with me every place I go, many times helping or completely defining the space I am in. Therefore, by artist, song, album, or lyric here is my musical place A-Z:

A – While studying in Cuba during the winter of 1999, I needed to find some music. I went from record shop to record shop gathering some names of people that I should hear. I did not have much money, so list had to be short. Nearly every shop recommended a disc called “Aquellas Lindas Melodias” by Guillermo Portables. The disc is as haunting as it is beautiful. Everything about the music represents the experiences I had interacting with the Cuban people; it is confident, powerful, and honest delivered in a matter-of-fact, understated way.

B – “The Black Keys” is a Branford Marsalis disc that turned me onto a world of jazz far removed from the Big Band and traditional groups my step-father played in, photographed, and played on the stereo on a daily basis. In this music there was anger, and echoes of the wordless political statements I would later discover in Coltrane. At the time I started listening to Branford, I was the only person I knew that did. He played with the Dead in the 90’s (and Sting) but his trio’s music was something completely different. I truly saw new possibilities of what music even was from this disc.

C – Canadee-I-O I have long been enamored with the whole genre of songs that are stories of young girls dressing in sailor’s clothes in order to gain passage to America - or in this case Canada. This love started with this song when I was about 15. Similar to the Branford situation, I was the only person I knew at that time that was like me. I knew Dylan’s music through the covers and radio songs that most people are familiar with. Being broke, I spend a lot of time browsing the town library’s collection. The town library was a special place as it was more my mother’s, grandmother’s, step-father’s town library than it was mine – having moved to Cliffside Park right before my sophomore year of high school. The shelves and rack I browsed were paid for by my grandmother’s tax money.

Regardless it was there that I first encountered a Dylan disc. He was ugly, wearing a black vest with no shirt, rubbery striped pants and fingerless gloves and I was intrigued. That discs freakin’ rocked. The songs are all traditional, which is funny because that is the disc, after releasing forty records of songs that I now recognize and consider as most important American musical and cultural artifacts of the last century, that got me “into Dylan”.

D – So my name is Jim Morrison and that is not usually discussed by me. It is worth mentioning that from the beginning of my life there have been polar opposite forces working on my psyche. My father, person routed in the place of Hudson County, New Jersey, tough times living in the 1950’s, independence, respect for authority, 25 year service as a police officer combined with my mother, who was assigned the nursing career by her mother at the age of 16 as an option other than convent where she could develop her nun-liness.

The point here is that I was brought to parties in the early 1980’s by teenagers as the party mascot. A blond kid named Jim Morrison; I remember my jacket in kindergarten had Doors pins on it. That is a recipe of a life of trouble!

Interlude – A trip to the bar….

E – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere – Down by the River. Guitar.

F – There are some bands that are so good they weave in and out of your life, taking on varied forms of significance depending on the company you keep and the mood you are in. Fugazi has been that band. For me, it started as it did for many “grunge” teens. Pearl Jam covered part of “Suggestion” – which is a captivating song about the subjugation of women, in both cases presented/performed by a super-testosterone laden band.

So many different types of people find joy in Fugazi. They bring together radical punk movements, experimental and improvisational elements. At a show in New York once I hung out with Mike D from the Beastie Boys who was there just as a fan. The previous show to that was a nightmare, hole in the wall in Trenton. I think the opening band was called the Flaming Pussies or something. It was terrifying.

G – “Ghosts of the Great Highway” is an album by Sun Kil Moon. The lead singer Mark Kozelek sued to be in the San Francisco-based band Red House Painters. This album is completely beautiful and can be listened to a daily basis without chance of boredom or lack of transcendence. Great albums create place. The imagery, mood and patience captured on this disc make Kozelek’s experiences universal - his dad becomes everyone’s dad, his first lover becomes everyone’s first lover, once renowned now obscure boxers become heroes and pillars of achievement.

H – A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

I – There is a song by Bonnie Prince Billy, Will Oldham, called “I See a Darkness”. Johnny Cash recorded the song on one of his American albums. The song profiles this seemingly tortured but for-the-most-part normally operating person:

Well I hope that

Someday soon
We'll find peace in our lives
Together or apart
Alone or with our wives
And we can stop our whoring
And draw the smiles inside
And light it up forever
And never go to sleep
My best unbeaten brother
That isn't all I see

J – Because sailor songs were covered by Canadee-I-O, I will not choose Jack-A-Roe, one of the better sailor girl/boy tragedy tunes. So, the choice is Jack Straw for multiple reasons.

Before traveling west, the song provided for an imaginary west to compliment the traditional ideas of western life – namely, sagebrush, cowboys and Indians. The song is steeped in that imaginary place.

"Leaving Texas
Fourth day of July
Sun so hot, clouds so low
The eagles filled the sky"

I chose the tune because the lyrics are representative of the imagined west. They are full of imagery tied to travel, escape, chase, train rides. The theme of the song though is that despite our best efforts to escape the mistakes we have made:

Ain't no place a man can hide, Shannon
Keep him from the sun
Ain't no bed will give us rest, man,
You keep us on the run

In addition to the songs direct mention and themes of place, there is the fact that I have listened to this song in probably 20 states, and an infinite amount of settings.

Specific train lines and towns:
Detroit Lightning
Sante Fe
Great Northern
Cheyenne
Wichita
Tucson

K - King of Carrots Flowers - Part I

Neutral Milk Hotel's record "In an Aeroplane Over the Sea" is probably one of the best records ever made, easily in the 20 years. The beauty of the record is that Jeff Mangum's lyrics are haunting, full of pain, connected to history and dreamscapes. He basically was haunted by dreams of Anne Frank after reading her diary in his early twenties. Her imagined family began living in his subconscious and the results of this are documented on the record. Therefore, in addition to being one of the albums that enjoyed daily listening in the past, causing it to tied to a huge amount of memories and experiences - I fell in love with my wife during the height of my obsession with the album, it is a transcendent experience nearly every time you listen. It's imagery forces you to be uncomfortable:

When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers
And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees
In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder
And your dad would throw the garbage all across the floor
As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for

And this is the room one afternoon I knew I could love you
And from above you how I sank into your soul
Into that secret place where no one dares to go

And your mom would sink until she was no longer speaking
And dad would dream of all the different ways to die
Each one a little more than he could dare to try

L - Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts

I once read that this songs is best unwritten screenplay out there. The bar that song takes play in is a fascinating study of place. Issues of wealth, entertainment, privilege, love, vanity, power, murder, theft and deception (and tons more) run through the song's narrative. Who we are and who we pretend to be as well as our motivations are all included in the song, the place itself serves as respite from life for some but the summation of it for others. People's past collide with their present continuously.

The acoustic demo of the song does the best job of stripping the song down to it elemental level of storytelling

It also speaks to the power of the individual in transforming space... in this case the Jack of Hearts, who comes into town and disrupts everyone's life in a profound way ranging from heartbreak to hanging.



M - My Brother Esau - When I was really drunk last night I thought this would be my "M". It is a song that Bob Weir said he stopped playing because he did not understand what it was saying. A look at it ties together biblical stories of the hunter Esau, tied to the idea that loss in Vietnam was a killing of self, perhaps national unity. There are also references to the stabbing death at Altamont at the end of the sixties. I don't really know.

N - Not on Top - This is a song by Herman Dune. I think it captures the sentiments of the nearly every person my age that I know and love/tolerate/like/relate with. It is amazing what we become, where we come from, what we imagined and continue to imagine for ourselves and the people we know.

Here are the lyrics:

I feel a little strange
Feels like I'll never get my shit together
27 and I'm fucked
Well, it's 10 years from teenage
and that's a freaking lot
I think I'm getting old
and I thought I'd never say
that I bought Nevermind
and it changed my life
some fifteen years ago (background: Nevermind was thirteen years ago)
I thought my little sister
would never ever make it out of high school
and go looking for jobs (yeah right)

Not on top
Baby, I'm not on top

and your love is like a diamond
with a sadistic sick crowd of bastards
peeping in the bleachers
and there's two men and no team
one is pitching cannonballs
the other is hitting wind
and I've done a lot of training
to try to stick to my positions
locked up in the attic
now I'm falling in love with her
and there's 67 better ways
to make some sense (yeah whatever)

Not on top
Baby, I'm not on top


O - On the Bus Mall is a very depressing song by the Decemberists. What makes their songs beautiful (perhaps tolerable) is that they are often set in a distant imaginary era of chimney sweeps, pirates, and village whores. This song is the exception its characters are very real and multifaceted. They are the street kids of Portland, who are either forced or driven to a life a selling themselves on the street, taking aloof comfort in each other and the drugs they consume. It a wrenching tune that manages to be simultaneously beautiful which is what makes it significant (the imagery is worthy of great novels).

lyrics:
In matching blue raincoats,
our shoes were our show boats
we kicked around.
From stairway to station
we made a sensation
with the get-about crowd.
And oh, what a bargain,
we’re two easy targets
for the old men at the off-tracks,
who’ve paid in palaver
and crumpled old dollars,
which we squirreled away
in our rat trap hotel by the freeway.
And we slept in Sundays.

Your parents were anxious;
your cool was contagious
at the old school.
You left without leaving
a note for your grieving
sweet mother, while
your brother was so cruel.
And here in the alleys
your spirits were rallied
as you learned quick to make a fast buck.
In bathrooms and barrooms,
on dumpsters and heirlooms,
we bit our tongues.
Sucked our lips into our lungs
'til we were falling.
Such was our calling.

And here in our hovel we fuse like a family,
but I will not mourn for you.
So take off your makeup
and pocket your pills away.
We’re kings among runaways
on the bus mall.
We’re down
on the bus mall.

Among all the urchins and old Chinese merchants
stood the old town,
we reigned at the pool hall
with one iron cue ball
and we never let the bastards get us down.
And we laughed off the quick tricks--
the old men with limp dicks--
on the colonnades of the waterfront park.
As 4 in the morning came on, cold and boring,
we huddled close
in the bus stop enclosure enfolding.
Our hands tightly holding.

But here in our hovel we fuse like a family,
but I will not mourn for you.
So take off your makeup
and pocket your pills away.
We’re kings among runaways
on the bus mall.
We’re down
on the bus mall.

P - Peacocks (the obligatory Mountain Goats tune for which, like Dylan, there could have been an entry for every letter...I should have and might actually do that!)

I think this song speaks to the surreal moments of life when you ask, like David Byrne did, how did I get here? Who are these people all around me? In this case, "How come there's peacocks in the front yard?"

He also alludes to the paranoia that can creep into relationships when they become obsessive, about how we often trash about looking for satisfaction, comfort and contact and will settle for wherever we can find it.

Q - Quetzalcoatl Eats Plums

as evidence of how easy it would be to do this all with the Mountain Goats I offer this immediate example:

i meant to leave the house this morning
and begin making my way toward where you are
i meant to leave the house this morning
i made it halfway across the front yard

but the plum tree hung heavy in my head
and the plum tree hung heavy in my heart
and the plum tree hung heavy over me

so i tore off to the phone
to call you and tell you something, but i couldn't remember what
because through the clean, clean windows
saw the plum tree's leaves, as red as fresh blood

and the plum tree hung heavy in my head
and the plum tree hung heavy in my heart
and the plum tree hung heavy over me

we can be completely distracted and knocked off of our plans by place. Plans fall away in the face of something new or newly noticed.

here is anther Quetzalcoatl tune:

Quetzalcoatl in Born

it's a cold night in sonora
and the stars are out in full force
it's a moment the world has been waiting for
when you set the world back on course
into the fire you go (2x)

it's a strange gathering around you
and the lord of the snails is born
five minutes before you take on divinity
you hear the crackling, well you hear the snapping corn
into the fire you go (4x)

R - Red House Painters

I always omitted Los Angeles from my list of places that mattered. I had visited it when I was young and nothing other than the sunshine stuck with me. Notions of celebrity, violence, poverty, and a racist police force all converged on my dismissal of the city as place I wanted to return to, vacate, or perhaps live. Then I heard this song by the Red House Painters that describes taking off from Las Angeles, looking out the window and seeing it sparkle in the night. The image, combined with other images of lost or fleeting beauty throughout the song made me want to go back and experience the city again.
I have and I love it but fear that I would become a celebrity stalker or something. I found Jeff Bridges' house and took a picture of it. Recognizing he is not in fact "the Dude" or "the Duder", he is still pretty cool. See http://www.jeffbridges.com/


S - Sufjan Stevens is an artist that at one point had plans to release an album for all fifty states. He studies old newspapers and histories to create a musical representation of states that range from songs about laid-off auto-workers to John Wayne Gacy. On his last tour for the album called, "Come On and Feel the Illinois" he toured with a few scary cheerleaders that did interpretive dances based on his Illinois-themed songs.

T - This Land is Your Land

I use Dylan's sad low key version of this song to transition from early folk music to Dylan's original work in my Dylan class. Everyone knows something about this song. I have been used by people of all political persuasions to rally their cause - patriotism, skepticism, anger, pride.

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me

One of the talking points that is central to most of my lessons at school is how a people, place, document can be everthing and nothing simultaneously - How vast and wonderful is our country! What might keep you from ever seeing it?

U - Up to My Neck in You

Another thing that Mark Kozelek is known for is reworking cover songs into something completely new. The best known example of this are his stripped down acoustic covers of AC/DC songs released on an album titled “What’s Next to the Moon?”. While I am not nor ever was huge AC/DC, I have read that the experience for fans listening to this album is wild because the imagery - long bound to heavy, perhaps, angry emotions - is emoted peacefully.

V – Visions of Johanna

Arguably one of the better songs ever written, this is one song that get mentioned again and again as people’s favorite Dylan songs. Like “Lily”, the songs captures moments and then examines every person present and indexes their reality/experiences off of everyone else in the scene. For example:

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane

Having listened to this countless times, it never fails to get my attention and forced me to confront, at least once during the song, the lives, meaning and experiences of the people mentioned. Really it is a homage to that which is indescribable and unforgettable in life – whatever those things may be.

W – “We Become Silhouettes” is a tune by the Postal Service. I taught history of rock at Hunt and I wanted to spend time talking about modern rock music and some trends in music. The Postal Service is interesting because most of the writing and recording for their album was done (or at least could have been done) in different locations. The music is nearly entirely composed on a laptop using sampling software. Those tracks were sent to the vocalist, Ben Gibbard to record over.

There are probably, right now, some collaborations happening between people

that have and will never meet.

X – X-mas in February is on Lou Reed’s classic album “New York”. It tells the story of veteran that returns to a life that will never be the same as before he enlisted. It’s action takes place during then before and then after the war. While the place changes the person remains constant in theory, yet he is transformed – quite literally – through the narrative.

Y – “You Were Always on my Mind”

Willie Nelson is as engrained in my psyche as Abe Lincoln or something. He was playing daily in my house growing up despite being the drug abusing, tax evading, communist my father always warned me about never becoming. I love Willie Nelson though this particular song is mediocre. I still know all the words without even trying to recall them – they are just there. People follow you every where you go – a common theme in Willie tunes.

Z – Zakir Hussein is a table player that I first found through listening to Indian Classical music. He is an incredible player that I have seen play in a variety of settings. The first time I saw him was in 1997, some friends and I borrowed some kid’s red, classic Firebird roadster and went down to Boston to see Shakti with Zakir and John McGlaughlin. That was incredible. The next time I saw him was at a church in Portland with what must have been an eighty year old sitar player that was basically immobile with the exception of his lightning fast hands. The last show I saw him play, also in Portland, was one of the worst shows I ever saw. The culprit - an unnecessary collision of place. This terrible shiny suited guy with a mullet on terrible cheese-jazz saxophone using Zakir’s name to sell tickets to his uninspired, talent-less exposition of composition.