Another great Patrice set.

Beck and my love life, part 1

I've always enjoyed how Beck's stream-of-consciousness lyrics can allow his songs to be open to different interpretations at various points in my life. A song that was happy years ago can now be bittersweet, sad, angry...you name it.

But invariably, the only songs that have stayed static in their meaning for me have been the ones I've associated with specific relationships. It's always been kind of funny to me, because many times the girls don't "get" why I associate a song with such strange lyrics with them. Sometimes it's just the mood of the music, and sometimes it's just a couple lines from the song. It's hard to say. So let's start at the beginning.

My first love, Jennifer, got a B-side song that I didn't even hear until well over a year into our relationship. She never understood it, but I'll give a shot at explaining it.



The music itself is perfect teen romance. It sounds youthful from the standpoint that it's not trying to put up the facade of "passion" or "sexiness," it's just sweet and happy to be there. Much as Jennifer and I were at times.

I think lyrically the first verse is the most fitting. "Tonight the city is turned off" is to me a really creative way of saying that you're alone with this person, away from the nonsense going on out there.

"Look at me, I'm wearing your shirt, and it's burnt" was just hilariously "us." We were teenagers, we didn't know what the hell we were doing, and those lines just kind of fit that, for me.

"These sensuous morons are dissing you, dissing me, keeping the friendship in massive supply" kind of described our attempts to get out of the dramatic nonsense that tends to follow around groups of teenagers. And at first, our every trial and tribulation only brought us closer together.

Even the chorus, "That's why I got no mind," was perfect because we weren't thinking about the future, didn't give consideration to a lot of things that maybe we should've...we were just in the moment, and happy to be with each other.

"And where there's smoke and there's grease and an unperfect peace, the free and easy letdown will make it all come alive" was just...Hobart, and the steel mills, and all that adult stuff we didn't want to consider at the time.

"The makeshift scene, mildly insulting...you really said it when you said I was just a scavenger" was the kind of vaguely hippie/alternative group of friends we ran with. Jen and I shopped our asses off at resale shops, and some of our more well-to-do friends got really nice designer clothes and fucked them up to look "grunge."

So yeah. It never made sense to her, per se, but it made perfect sense to me. -grin-

I guess I'll say my next relationship was Kristel, though I may have allegedly had a "thing" with Rebecca before that. Can't really call it a relationship when the girl's engaged to your best friend, though, can you?

Anyways...the song that always reminded me of Kristel is "Feather in Your Cap."



The song is, of course, sad. Fitting. lol

"Make a move with what you can / dead waters rise higher than your mind" was just how Kristel was a pathological liar, and seemed to have nothing but darkness inside her head.

"Disappointment is a feather in your cap / you want the truth so you can brush it in your lap" reminds me of how she would always completely fuck me over just to see the sadness on my face that let her know how much she meant to me. And brushing the truth in her lap was how she treated reality like a pet to amuse and comfort her...not really "real," just there to keep her company when she needed it.

"There's no map that can tell you where you are / You're in between things that only go halfway / Your tangled brain, your tired old refrain / You'll be singing it in your tired old asylum" was just how Kristel was completely lost as a person both because she didn't know what was real (literally, in a nearly psychotic way), and because she stuck by her lies to the bitter end.

"You want the best, you want contests / My eyes are filled with prizes you've been showing / Your disappointment is a card up your sleeve / Place your bets at the door before you leave" reminds me of how she felt like she was this amazing prize much of the time, and she strung me along competing against people who either didn't exist or shouldn't've mattered if she could give a fuck about me.

Um, yes. A rather fucked-up person. That song fits her perfectly. I hope the best for her, but have suspicions it probably isn't going well. Sad, really.

I'm tired, and so I think I'll finish this post tomorrow or the next day. I need to relax for a bit.

A word on classical music

This is an area I've exploring a bit when I'm not yelling "FFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-" over some new blues piece. I'm still not over knowledgeable, I'll admit, but here's a few things I've found that aren't entirely "obvious" or "famous."

I love the seemingly infinite variations on the same theme Paganini used on this one:



I honestly don't much care for Mozart, I'm finding. He does these amazing quiet parts, then covers it in grandiose horns and strings. I just can't do it. Calm down, Sparky.

This is very famous, but it's still just amazing.



Fur Elise hasn't aged well for me, by the way.

The real point of this is to play this, though. Read up on Shostakovich here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich

And listen to this amazing piece. It was meant to be his musical suicide note.

Blues History: Robert Johnson

There's nothing I can write that hasn't been written, so just a link to a wikipedia page, and five songs. But take into account that these songs were written and performed in the mid- to late-30s, and we still haven't really figured out how to play them. Seriously.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson

Blues History: Charlie Patton

This is someone who's kinda new to me, as I try to expand on my knowledge of the blues. I will probably choose to keep this short, since I'm still learning about him. If you're interested in more, just read this. Frankly, I'm not going to be able to expand on it much anyhow. Not without going into mythology, anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Patton

The song that really did it for me initially was "Spoonful Blues." Check out the amazing slide guitar.



What I'm discovering as I get further into his recordings is the gravelly scream he used on most of his songs. "Spoonful" is rather subdued compared with some of the other songs.

This seems to be a rare recording where he actually had a proper microphone and recording equipment. So many of his other recordings are scratchy and in poor condition. Actually, it may just be the condition of the source tapes/albums.



I try to be better informed before I start a post, but I was excited to hear a new blues musician I wasn't too acquainted with.

Fuck my horseshit. Just check the man out. I gotta listen to "Spoonful Blues" again.