Author: passage2truth

Loudon Wainwright III’s “I’ll Be Killing You This Christmas”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Loudon Wainwright III’s “I’ll Be Killing You This Christmas”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Loudon has long had an affinity for holiday songs that take slightly unusual perspectives. Family dinners (“Tnanksgiving“), the 1st day of April (“April Fools Day Morn“), and of course throwing out the old christmas tree at year’s end (“Suddenly It’s Christmas“), I was seriously considering the latter song as a possible topic for a slideshow when I ran into this one, again (like “Brand New Dance“) from Loudon’s 2014 studio album, Haven’t Got the Blues (Yet). It takes a rather different approach to the holiday, and is in fact the darkest Christmas song I can think of off hand (I suppose “Granda Got Run Over By a Reindeer” might be sort of in the same ballpark).  Rather unusually for Loudon, it seems to come close to taking a stand on a controversial social issue, albeit an ironic stand. Apparently, at least in the U.S., Christmas day is among the most violent of the year, although less so than New Year’s (the safest day, strangely, is January 5th, presumably everybody is either too pooped from assaulting people on New Year’s, or just too hung over to commit any more crimes). The murders directly referenced in the slideshow are the Lawson Family murders (Germantown, North Carolina, 1929), the Covina Massacre (2009), and, with the stills at the end largely being of people who had the misfortune to be murdered around Christmas (including JonBenet Ramsey, who actually did not die from a gunshot).  A number are from holdiay themed horror films (the Covina Massacre, which included a murderer in a Santa Suit and a home-made flame thrower, was for instance is referenced in the 2012 film, Silent Night, where a number of the stills come from). Most of the other photos are from advertisements or Christmas cards people have posted on the web, and are probably in no way intended the be ironic.  While I admit to a certain curiousity about what comments I’ll get (if any), it’s a curiousity tempered by sadness in that I have pretty good idea about what a number of them will probably be. But hey, it wouldn’t be a family holiday without a few death threats.

 

Slideshows about Cats and Babies: Things to be thankful for (sort of)

Slideshows about Cats and Babies: Things to be thankful for (sort of)

This one is pretty self-explanatory (it originally appeared on my Unofficial Joe Walsh Cat Video page).  It’s just one of those costs that comes from being a cat guardian, and it still seems like we humans are getting the better deal. The song is from Joe Walsh’s Analog Man album. Hope you enjoy. (and make sure your kitties know you are thankful for them this week).

While on the subject of adorable creatures who sometimes drive us crazy, here’s a charming song by The Wainwright Sisters (Martha and Lucy Wainwright Roche) that appears on their Watching the Dark album (the song was originally composed by Rosalie Sorrels). “Baby Rocking Medley” (aka “Hostile Baby Rocking Medley” and “Hostile Baby Rocking Song) is great fun, but you probably shouldn’t take it too seriously. Let’s face it, the original lullaby has some rather dark undertones (what’s that baby doing up in the tree anyway?) Hope you enjoy it.

Elbow’s “My Sad Captains” (live) and “The Night Will Always Win” (Unofficial Slideshow)

Elbow’s “My Sad Captains” (live) and “The Night Will Always Win” (Unofficial Slideshow)

Ever since I first saw and heard Elbow on an episode of Live from Abbey Road, I felt an immediate connection with the band. Not because we were from similar backgrounds or anything, because I recognized the beauty in what they were doing, and I’m pretty sure they recognized it too, although they were modest about it. They are a top ten band in the UK, filling stadiums and large halls, but tending to play small halls and large clubs in the U.S. Last week, I had the good fortune to see them first in a large club (The Observatory in Santa Ana) and then in a large hall (The Wiltern in Hollywood).  Here’s a nice version of “The Bones of You” from  their performance in Orange County Tuesday night.

And here’s a lovely version of “One Day Like This” from The Wiltern on Thursday:

Here’s the one Elbow slideshow I haven’t yet posted here, and its probably the least interesting in that it doesn’t really evolve or develop as much as it needs to.  Still it’s a lovely song from the band, taken from a sensitive performance of it in 2015 on YouTube. I don’t think it’s terrible, but coming after “Scattered Black and Whites,” which I really think of as my best slideshow to date, it was a bit of a let down.

Elbow’s “Newborn”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Elbow’s “Newborn”: An Unofficial Slideshow

As you might have guessed, I’m a big fan of this band, although they aren’t especially well known in the U.S.  I believe I first became aware of them when they appeared on an episode of Live from Abbey Road. I was impressed enough to buy their new album at the time, The Seldom Seen Kid, and was even more impressed by their i-tusnes concert. After Build a Rocket Boys, I was a fan, and after seeing them in oncert at The Wiltern on The Takeoff and Landing of Everything tour, I became a devoted follower of this Manchester band.  Guy Garvey’s voice–rather like Rufus Wainwright’s although their voices aren’t that similar–just connects with me on some deep level.  Their arrangements are intriguing, varied, and not really like anbody else, while their lyrics are deeply evocative of  memories and emotions I had thought were private. I’ll be seeing them twice this week–once tonight in Santa Ana at The Observatory, and then on Thursday at The Wiltern. Their fans seem like genuinely nice and friendly people, an attitude the band seems to consciously foster by, for example, encouraging fans to post band-related material to their Facebook group..  This slideshow consciously recalls some of my other Elbow slideshows, including “Lost Worker Bee,” “Kindling (Fickle Flame),” “Scattered Black and Whites” (which frankly I consider my best slideshow to date), and “The Night Will Always Win.” The audio for Newborn is an extended version of the song from a Kendall Calling performance in 2015 (the song originally appeared on Asleep in the Back [2001]).

Donovan’s “Poorman’s Sunshine”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Donovan’s “Poorman’s Sunshine”: An Unofficial Slideshow

“Poorman’s Sunshine” is a track from Donovan’s Beat Cafe album (2004). A very intriguing album that revisits Donovan’s  early experiences with beat culture, this is a standout track, with some terrific upright bass playing and some simple yet fascinating lyrics, delivered with conviction by the Glaswegian bard. The slideshow was great fun to do, with the last section kind of deliberately recalling the Atlantis/1983 slideshow/video from a couple of months ago. Certainly part of the meaning of the song is that music can be a “poorman’s sunshine,” although I sort of expanded the meaning to suggest that sunshine–or happiness-exists wherever you find it, which is probably true for everyone, but it is probably more true for those living on the margins. Anyway, I hope you like it (I’m really quite proud of myself for this one), but even if you don’t, just close your eyes and groove on this fantastic, little-heard song.

Death Cab for Cutie’s “The Ice is Growing Thinner”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Death Cab for Cutie’s “The Ice is Growing Thinner”: An Unofficial Slideshow

This is my second DCC slideshow in a week, although I don’t really have plans for creating a page (although I suppose I could let one of my current ones life fallow for awhile, and work on DCC instead).  Like “Long Division,” this is another song from Narrow Stairs, which probably remains my favorite Death Cab album. I’m actually I’m a little surprised I am making this, just because I expected there to be an official video out by now that explored the song’s dual frame of reference. I remember when I first heard it that I admired the way it cleverly used romantic distress as a way of also commenting on ecology, particularly the issue of global warming. However, I seem to be the only person who noticed this, which makes me wonder if the lyrics’ ambiguity is simply a product of my over active imagination. It would certainly be comforting to think so. Perhaps global warming is simply a mass delusion on the part of climate scientists. Again, it would certainly be comforting to so. Unfortunately, things that give us comfort also have great potential to mislead us, all the more so because we want to believe them. Oh well, here’s the slideshow:

Sammy Walker’s “Catcher in the Rye”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Sammy Walker’s “Catcher in the Rye”: An Unofficial Slideshow

This was a byproduct of my Phil Ochs’ play project.  Sammy Walker is a Georgia born folksinger who knew Phil during his last year or so in New York. Phil helped the young singer with contacts, and produced his first album, Songs for Patty, singing background vocals on a couple of the tracks. With a voice poised somewhere between Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, Sammy probably suffered from sounding a bit too much like these near mythic figures. He is also an excellent songwriter in his own right, recording several albums in the late 1970s and 1980s, as well as one in 2008.  While it has a number of excellent songs,  his first album includes this standout track, which is I think vaguely based on Salinger’s book. I have to admit my own memories of A Catcher in the Rye are pretty sketchy; it was one of those youth classics that I didn’t get around to reading until I was really too old to appreciate it (as I remember, I found Holden a bit pretentious and annoying).  This slideshow makes a major motif out of the sea, although I frankly don’t remember that in the book at all, and I think I probably make a bit too much out of the reference to the shoreline in the song’s chorus.  That’s Sammy and Phil in the picture above, circa 1975. His music is worth checking out, by the way, if you’re interested in folk music with an occasionally topical edge.

Death Cab for Cutie’s “Long Division”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Death Cab for Cutie’s “Long Division”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Like The Divine Comedy’s “Gin-Soaked Boy,” Death Cab for Cutie’s  “Long Division” is a remarkable song that inspired a slide show I am not really sure what to do with. I don’t really want to start up another Facebook fan page (six is enough), although I think Benjamin Gibbard is a very good songwriter, and occasionally brilliant. “Long Division” takes probably the most unpromsing subject possible–the mathematical technique of the title (which I’m not even sure if they still teach)–and uses it as a metaphorical foundation for a probing song about romance and basic human needs and anxieties. After all, who wants to be a remainder of one? Hope someone enjoys it:

Elbow’s “Scattered Black and Whites”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Elbow’s “Scattered Black and Whites”: An Unofficial Slideshow

I always loved the piano on Elbow’s “Scattered Black and Whites.” As Guy Garvey says somewhere (I think it is in the i-tunes interview), the song has a fairly simple melody and a rather monotonic vocal line that the keyboards sort of dip and weave around to remarkable effect. I had originally conceived of this slideshow as being almost entirely about abstract art, but as I listened to and looked up the lyrics, I realized that it was basically a memory song, with the speaker going into a reverie caused by smelling his sister’s perfume. The “scattered black and whites” are actually old photographs, and the song is to some extent about the claims the past (as embodied in old photographs, but also childhood memories) makes on us, calling out to us that they once existed, and that we need to visit and revisit them once in awhile. It’s like a seven minute version of Proust, and kind of breathtaking in how successful it is. I chose this version from Manchester Cathedral simply because the song seems rooted in Manchester, where several of the band members grew up. It was a really interesting exercise for me (kind of like Kathleen), in that I tried to keep to a very limited palette, except for the modern performance pictures of the band. I’m actually quite proud of it, possibly even more than for “Kindling (Fickle Flame).”. Hope you like it.

Here are the lyrics, by the way, which aren’t always that easy to make out:

Been climbing trees, I’ve skinned my knees
My hands are black, the sun is going down
She scruffs my hair in the kitchen steam
She’s listening to the dream I weaved today
Crosswords through the bathroom door
While someone sings the theme-tune to the news
And my sister buzzes through the room leaving perfume in the air
And that’s what triggered this
I come back here from time to time
I shelter here some days
A high-back chair, he sits and stares
A thousand yards and whistles
Marching-band (Boom-ching)
Kneeling by and speaking up
He reaches out and I take a
Massive hand.
Disjointed tales
That flit between short trousers
And a full dress uniform
And he talks of people ten years gone
like I’ve known them all my life
Like scattered black ‘n’ whites. (Elbow)

 

Loudon Wainwright III’s “Brand New Dance”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Cross-posted at my Unoffical: Loudon Wainwright III fan page. This is fairly dark song and slideshow, although leavened by a good deal of humor and a blast of rock and roll energy Although Loudon has written rock songs before (“At Both Ends,” “Watch Me Rock, I’m Over Thirty”), they don’t tend to be his signature songs. This rockabilly number is from Loudon’s 2014 album, Haven’t Got the Blues (Yet). It works remarkably well, and fuses nicely with Loudon’s tongue-in-cheek celebration of the “joys” of aging. Hope you enjoy the slideshow, although–like the song–it does raise some serious points.