Ohrenschmaus

One of the first songs by The Smiths, the b-side or actually c-side of the 12“ of their second single This Charming Man from October 1983 is a grave and slow ballad in minor. Besides the wonderful line

But when she calls me, I do not walk, I run

I absolutely adore how Morrissey bathes in sentiment in this song. He sing-sighs for most of the second half, a vocal style which will become one of his trademarks later on. He literally sighs the tune and it sounds more melodic and of course more melancholic and more emotional than if he had sung just the words. He surrenders himself completely. Something especially young men love(d) so much about Morrissey. Apparently the lyrics are about Linder Sterling, one of his best friends who sang in the post-punk group Ludus. Could it be that he sighs as he realises that they will never be a couple as he is not able to live with another person? Whatever this is definitely a love song from a man to a woman.

This song totally rules my world right now. I must have listened to it at least twenty times in the past week. It goes well with my current minimalistic obsession which I already tried to express in the haiku about hiking with my father on El Hierro. There is only Chan Marshall’s raspy & at the same time fragile voice and her piano play on her version of this classic, simple song (from George Cukor’s 1957 movie with the same name starring Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani which tells the story of a rancher who marries his Italian sister-in-law after the passing of his wife, but she falls in love with his son). Cat Power drops some lines of the original lyrics and makes them even more concise. She inhales life in this song and makes it totally her own. Forget Johnny Mathis, Nina Simone or David Bowie, instead at getting at the heart of this song they made it an unbearable Schnulze (tearjerker). But Chan Marshall manages to marry the deep sadness inherent in this tune to an irresistible groove when she evokes the „you“ seven times in a row and clicks her fingers. This playfulness, this joy when she just utters „you“ is a miracle. As if she had just discovered that there is a „you“, that she is not alone in the world. I had four live versions and the album version from the Covers Record which is even more stripped down to the bone to choose from but the performance from La Route du Rock 2006 was the one I preferred, one reason being the length, the other the easiness of the cascades of „you’s“. A while ago Jordan from one of my favourite mp3 blogs Said the Gramophone already analysed this song and came to similar conclusions. Concerning the lines about the leaf and the tree I find the lyrics rather revealing as the singer is the tree and the other beloved person the leaf. It is the leaf which will one day be blown away by the wild wind, the tree will stay.

Here are the lyrics she uses:

Love me, love me, say you do
Let me fly away with you
Give me one more caress
Satisfy this hungriness
We are creatures of the wind
Wild is the wind

You, you, you, you, you, you, you
You touch me
When you touch I hear the sound of mandolines
You, you, you, you, you, you, you
You kiss me
With your kiss my life begins

Like a leaf clings to a tree
Please cling to me
We are creatures of the wind
Wild is the wind

Revolution take 20. An 11 minute version of this Beatles track has surfaced. I haven’t listened to it yet but it seems to be a precursor to Revolution #9 from The White Album.

P.S. The RIAA has been faster than me, merde!

There will be a new Sonic Youth album out on June, 9th. The 16th. I would really like to forget about Joy Division for a while but you are doing a great memorial job out there.

My first thought when I heard the title was that it is atheist or at least non-Christian. The soul cannot die according to the Christian belief. And even if it was mortal it would not be the soul as we imagine it. A dead soul is a contradictio in adiecto. Later I realized that Dead Souls is a book by Gogol which Ian Curtis has read. Apparently it is about some sort of macabre financial scheme. The main person travels around in rural Russia to buy the registration papers of dead serfs from the landowners. A classic win-win situation, the landowners would save the taxes they have to pay on the „dead souls“ and the main character would get loans from big farms on behalf of them. Earning money from nothing. Somehow all that sounds like a precursor of the financial crisis to me.

Anyways let’s get back to the song. It was first released as the second track of the Licht und Blindheit double single on the French label Sordide Sentimentale in March 1980. Together with an essay on romanticism by Jean-Pierre Tumel. The other a-side Atmosphere is probably the Joy Divison song I am most allergic to. I absolutely can’t stand Ian Curtis grave disguised voice on it and the synthesizer which sounds like an angel suffused with light landing in a heavy procession doesn’t do anything for me. Pretentious bullshit artistry, if you ask me. Later on Corbijn made a video of it with men in black hooded cloaks walking along. CRAP.

I have deviated again. Dead Souls is a song which has no introduction. On record it starts immediately as if the record button had been switched on in the middle of rehearsing. First we hear Sumner’s guitar looking for a fierce riff and finding it after a while and some fine tom drumming by Morris. Hook’s bass joins in and rumbles and mumbles more or less in the background. Occasionally when it gets melodic it comes to the fore. Suddenly there is more distortion in the guitar, there is raw power, punk. And after a minute or so a groove has set in, it is all hanging there beautifully, moving up and down for another minute, do we really need a singer here?

Someone take these dreams away
That point me to another day
A duel of personalities
That stretch all true realities

Yes we do. The song suddenly gains in stature, it has a soul in form of a voice now. And somehow I don’t care that Curtis sings with that solemn habitus again as his voice sounds haunted now. He really is captured by something. In hindsight the first two lines could be interpreted as an announcement of suicide. Curtis does not want to think about another day, he has made his decision and everything which acts against is a bad dream. But there are still two personalities fighting in his breast. And then he shouts in a terrified way

They keep calling me
Keep on calling me
They keep calling me

He heard voices which he didn’t get out of his head. They always came back. They didn’t stop until May, 18th 1980.

P.S. The version from 18 January 1980 in Eindhoven which is on Les Bains Douches is awesome. The bass is much more prominent in the beginning. The whole song is amazingly rough and powerful. Another proof that they were the best live band ever.

Lloyd Cole & the Commotions: You Will Never Be No Good from the 2nd disc of the 20th anniversary edition of Rattlesnakes (originally from the Perfect Skin single)

Isn’t that what we all need these days? Some nice, happy tune caressing our eardrum? For some reason Lloyd Cole keeps popping up on my jukebox when it is in shuffle mode. And I have only about 30 songs by him on the player which should be just about 1 per cent of all tracks. It must have to do with the fact that micro processors are still not able to produce real random numbers. There will always be a recurring pattern in series of numbers generated by a computer algorithm. In any case due to this systematic, non-random behaviour of my mp3 player tonight I put a song by Lloyd Cole online which is already 25 years old – the Orwell year was a quarter of a century ago, there is something unbelievable – but which still sounds fresh and yummy. It is one of the songs I have to whistle to which is always a good sign. The melody is simple and straightforward, light and peppy. And the lyrics seem rather fitting these days if one imagines Lloyd is singing about the people who have led us into the crisis:

D’you know what I’d do if I could
Chop you up into firewood

That’s what I’d call positive thinking. How to turn them into something useful. It’s a cold winter in Germany, it’d make a lot of sense you know. I hope my humour has been more subtle in the past but in rough times jokes tend to be coarse too.

Cut. Lloyd Cole turned 48 on Saturday and he just released a four cd compilation called Cleaning out the Ashtrays comprising 59 b-sides & rarities. I guess you will hear some more of them here in the near future if you don’t mind.

A couple of years ago I would have supposed that most readers of my blog know Loveless, the album by My Bloody Valentine. But by now I am not so sure anymore as I am uncertain if the plural readers still applies. Whatever Loveless is one of the last innovative rock albums which was great at the same time. It came out in 1991. One groundbreaking album in 18 years? Yes, I think that very well describes the state of rock music. Whatever. Let’s get back to today’s song. Japancakes covered it and the whole Loveless album a while ago. And they covered it well. Stayed close to the original and changed it at the same time. Whereas in the original What You Want like the whole album sounds misty, muddy, nebulous, you name it, Japancakes‘ version is stripped down to the sweet tune. You could call it muzak if you were malicious. Japancakes are from Athens, Georgia. Like R.E.M. And their version is not only purely instrumental but it also uses a lot of pedal steel and therefore sounds a little like country. Not exactly what anybody would associate with MBV. It is like moving the album from foggy, unfriendly London to sunny, easygoing Athens in the South of the USA. And somehow it works. Like classical theatre classical music can be transposed in time and space.

Listen

I found the song I had been looking for. A live version is on the second CD of the digibook limited edition of Gee Whiz but this Is a Lonesome Town. As I said before it is slow and sad. And majestic. Especially Arthur’s small dobro solo is phantastic. Here is what I think the lyrics are:

The first time we met in a poolroom bar
We were dressed both the same
We looked like twins
You knelt down and invited me to dance

We started to walk in the dark
And we danced in the night
We danced on the beach
We danced on the sand
We danced in the moonlight

Up to the North I was walking in the street
When a queer feeling started grabbing me
When I saw you coming up to me
Like a serendipity

And we danced on the street
We danced by the river
We danced on the bridge
We danced on the harbour

The last time I saw you
You were sitting on your suitcase
Waiting for the train
I was about to take

When we realized
We had the closest seats
We decided to dance on the train

Moriarty: Cottonflower from Gee Whiz But This Is a Lonesome Town

The first time I heard the name of this band I thought of Dean Moriarty, the hero of On the Road, Jack Kerouac’s travelling buddy who was called Neal Cassady in real life. At the same time I was pretty sure that it wasn’t him who inspired the band name. Apparently I was wrong.

I like the song almost as much as the other one about a man with a suitcase and a woman dancing with him in the train which they also played but which is not on the album. Cottonflower is a slow affair. I can see the American prairie or is it the Mississippi delta? It’s a view of the plains which bend down at the horizon. There is a lot of dust on the fields, there are people working in the evening sun there. And there is a sad voice of a woman singing about someone she is in love with who doesn’t turn off the tv, or something like that. It’s a song which feels like home, in a way. That’s how I felt at the concert on Thursday. In a familiar place, cosy. The Moriartys emanate a warmth and devotion like few other bands. When they all – they are five without the drummer – stood close to each other in front of the one and only microphone on Thursday I had the impression of seeing a family who had found itself.

Red House Painters: Mistress from „Rollercoaster“

The thread which made me relisten to this song. It’s a pretty great song with the hazy guitar and stuff. I never paid a lot attention to it as one of my all-time favourites is the song before. I wrote a little bit on the thread about all that. The discussion will continue there, hopefully.