Time and chance happen to us all, and the progress of both can change what music means and does to us. "And those songs about lost love, damned love, good love, and better love that I had admired and more or less set aside now reached me more than they had when I first heard them." As so many things do. And will.
One of the things I have discovered as I grow old is how impossible it is to convey to younger folks just what life is and how your perspectives change in subtle yet dramatic ways. Music comes closest to being able to do that--"Life seems mighty precious when there's less of it to waste," as Bonnie Rait sang--but it's just not possible to make a 20-year-old understand what a 60-year-old knows.
Ah, the frisson of live... whether the performer is at least as good live as in the studio... the roar of the crowd (maybe)...
Last show we saw (Robert Randolph, sans Family Band), I got severely dehydrated, fell once, went outside and whilst leaning against a pole, blacked and fell; fought the ground and the ground won. This happened early in the show, but I had heard enough songs to know that we were getting a show similar to the one we saw in Denver in June, which was fucking good -- so good that standing in the rain for the whole show (outdoors, no stopping for rain) was absolutely no problem. That good.
Lovely review. Welcome back, live music! Cello continuo can make anything sound better, even banjo, I promise. Speaking of Merritt, where the hell is Merrick Garland? Sorry, hard to pivot to music appreciation from deploring creeping fascism.
I just went to my first show, too, since late 2019. My wife took me to see the Drive-by Truckers at the Majestic Theater in Detroit for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and it was exhilarating. We really needed some live music!
I've heard about the Magnetic Fields for years now but I've never given them a proper listen. Is 69 Love Songs a good place to start?
It’s the best collection of songs they have (my friend plays guitar and banjo on it, so I’m biased) but I’d like to know what you think. For me, and what I think Roy’s piece alluded to, the context of it and when it came out kind of helped define a certain moment for a lot of people. For me, I was 29, just moved to New York and a treasure chest of heady, sly, improbably catchy love songs filled my head. It was a genius concept, perfectly executed and managed to help define that particularly rich segment in my life. So it’s freighted with more than just music, but lasting memory too.
I love your description of this moment. It's hearkens back to last week's movie post here, but for me music is that pole of experience. 69 Love Songs allowed me to be every one of the people I am for about 2 1/2 minutes at a time: a lovelorn woman (I Can't Help Loving You), a gay man embittered in his open relationship (Fido Your Leash is Too Long), a nerdy, sexually-inert teenager (The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side), a partner thunder-struck by the sudden reality of a failed marriage (Busby Berkeley Dreams) -- I'm all that & more, every time I waddle through the collection.
I'd say so -- "Charm of the Highway Strip" is a lovely tribute to/deformation of Americana. More synth-heavy, but "Two Characters in Search of a Country Song" and "Sunset City" are lovely. "Born on a Train" -- yeesh.
"The Dreaming Moon" might the out & out prettiest song they ever did tho...
OT but I meant to ask last time: the band performing "Why did you kill me mommy?" wasn't doing Lil' Markie's "Diary of an Unborn Child" was it? ("Why did you kill me mommy?" was, for want of a better word, the chorus.) Because that would be blasphemy. The late Markie's talent was so magnificently twisted that he not only created the character but he actually -became- that sorry fetus.
"It wasn’t as if Merritt’s sedentary, phlegmatic style did anything to woo me, either — the Fields are great players but they don’t sell a song so much as place it carefully in the shop window and then go back to doing the crossword."
MagFields spoke a secret whisper of queer to me before I could articuate it -- and 69 Love Songs was my re-invitation to alt music. Merritt is always four times more clever than is helpful & the songs don't have a lot of range (even the Jesus & Mary Chain-esque fuzz-rock of Distortion). But I will go to the mat for "The NIght You Can't Remember," "A Pretty Girl is Like," "I Don't Believe in the Sun," or "Busby Berkeley Dreams." Love "'69: Judy Garland" too.
Here's me finally getting my video of "Papa was a Rodeo" down:
But I wonder about the charge of over-cleverness. Christgau sort of says the same thing about Merritt -- seems to think it means he's insincere. Can't understand it. Even slovenly-seeming lyrics are hard work to make land!
Oh I don't really say it as a critique. For every cringeworthy rhyme, there are a dozen gloriously warped or queered metaphors or images or wordplay. Merritt's strength is that his prosody always strikes me as a sly parody of the couplet form or the pop song's need for predictable rhymes.
I've been back to gigging for about 3 months (outside or large well ventilated indoor spaces) and I've got to say, things have changed for the better. Audiences for the most part are actually paying attention to the music, and the tip jars usually have a way better larger-bills-to-singles ratio than back in the before times. Also, people are expressing their appreciation verbally more and doing so less superficially. I feel different about the whole thing too--I'm playing with a kind of commitment different from anything I've previously experienced. Like Ms. Mitchell said, "You don't know what you're got 'til it's gone"--but in this case, luckily, paradise got unpaved.
Nice!
"place it carefully in the shop window and then go back to doing the crossword."
Money Quote!( as in "Why, this line alone is easily worth the 7 bucks!")
My sentiments exactly. Should've scrolled down first.
Time and chance happen to us all, and the progress of both can change what music means and does to us. "And those songs about lost love, damned love, good love, and better love that I had admired and more or less set aside now reached me more than they had when I first heard them." As so many things do. And will.
One of the things I have discovered as I grow old is how impossible it is to convey to younger folks just what life is and how your perspectives change in subtle yet dramatic ways. Music comes closest to being able to do that--"Life seems mighty precious when there's less of it to waste," as Bonnie Rait sang--but it's just not possible to make a 20-year-old understand what a 60-year-old knows.
Try telling a 16 yo son that his 73 yo dad has some wisdom to impart about life, love and music.
Ah, the frisson of live... whether the performer is at least as good live as in the studio... the roar of the crowd (maybe)...
Last show we saw (Robert Randolph, sans Family Band), I got severely dehydrated, fell once, went outside and whilst leaning against a pole, blacked and fell; fought the ground and the ground won. This happened early in the show, but I had heard enough songs to know that we were getting a show similar to the one we saw in Denver in June, which was fucking good -- so good that standing in the rain for the whole show (outdoors, no stopping for rain) was absolutely no problem. That good.
Lovely review. Welcome back, live music! Cello continuo can make anything sound better, even banjo, I promise. Speaking of Merritt, where the hell is Merrick Garland? Sorry, hard to pivot to music appreciation from deploring creeping fascism.
I just went to my first show, too, since late 2019. My wife took me to see the Drive-by Truckers at the Majestic Theater in Detroit for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and it was exhilarating. We really needed some live music!
I've heard about the Magnetic Fields for years now but I've never given them a proper listen. Is 69 Love Songs a good place to start?
It’s the best collection of songs they have (my friend plays guitar and banjo on it, so I’m biased) but I’d like to know what you think. For me, and what I think Roy’s piece alluded to, the context of it and when it came out kind of helped define a certain moment for a lot of people. For me, I was 29, just moved to New York and a treasure chest of heady, sly, improbably catchy love songs filled my head. It was a genius concept, perfectly executed and managed to help define that particularly rich segment in my life. So it’s freighted with more than just music, but lasting memory too.
I love your description of this moment. It's hearkens back to last week's movie post here, but for me music is that pole of experience. 69 Love Songs allowed me to be every one of the people I am for about 2 1/2 minutes at a time: a lovelorn woman (I Can't Help Loving You), a gay man embittered in his open relationship (Fido Your Leash is Too Long), a nerdy, sexually-inert teenager (The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side), a partner thunder-struck by the sudden reality of a failed marriage (Busby Berkeley Dreams) -- I'm all that & more, every time I waddle through the collection.
I'd say so -- "Charm of the Highway Strip" is a lovely tribute to/deformation of Americana. More synth-heavy, but "Two Characters in Search of a Country Song" and "Sunset City" are lovely. "Born on a Train" -- yeesh.
"The Dreaming Moon" might the out & out prettiest song they ever did tho...
OT but I meant to ask last time: the band performing "Why did you kill me mommy?" wasn't doing Lil' Markie's "Diary of an Unborn Child" was it? ("Why did you kill me mommy?" was, for want of a better word, the chorus.) Because that would be blasphemy. The late Markie's talent was so magnificently twisted that he not only created the character but he actually -became- that sorry fetus.
For those who love greatness:
https://youtu.be/7hSK8GmGooM
No. I've been looking for the song, but it's definitely not this one.
"It wasn’t as if Merritt’s sedentary, phlegmatic style did anything to woo me, either — the Fields are great players but they don’t sell a song so much as place it carefully in the shop window and then go back to doing the crossword."
What a terrific sentence, amidst a slew of them.
MagFields spoke a secret whisper of queer to me before I could articuate it -- and 69 Love Songs was my re-invitation to alt music. Merritt is always four times more clever than is helpful & the songs don't have a lot of range (even the Jesus & Mary Chain-esque fuzz-rock of Distortion). But I will go to the mat for "The NIght You Can't Remember," "A Pretty Girl is Like," "I Don't Believe in the Sun," or "Busby Berkeley Dreams." Love "'69: Judy Garland" too.
Here's me finally getting my video of "Papa was a Rodeo" down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvCskldts78
How brave of you!
But I wonder about the charge of over-cleverness. Christgau sort of says the same thing about Merritt -- seems to think it means he's insincere. Can't understand it. Even slovenly-seeming lyrics are hard work to make land!
Oh I don't really say it as a critique. For every cringeworthy rhyme, there are a dozen gloriously warped or queered metaphors or images or wordplay. Merritt's strength is that his prosody always strikes me as a sly parody of the couplet form or the pop song's need for predictable rhymes.
And then he writes something like this:
I met Ferdinand de Saussure
On a night like this
On love he said
"I'm not so sure
I even know what it is
No understanding
No closure
It is a nemesis
You can't use a bulldozer
To study orchids"
I'm totally gooped by this, children. Gooped.
I've been back to gigging for about 3 months (outside or large well ventilated indoor spaces) and I've got to say, things have changed for the better. Audiences for the most part are actually paying attention to the music, and the tip jars usually have a way better larger-bills-to-singles ratio than back in the before times. Also, people are expressing their appreciation verbally more and doing so less superficially. I feel different about the whole thing too--I'm playing with a kind of commitment different from anything I've previously experienced. Like Ms. Mitchell said, "You don't know what you're got 'til it's gone"--but in this case, luckily, paradise got unpaved.
Live Music Are Better!
What about the bumper stickers? When will they be issued?
I'm so glad someone got that!
Fuck that -- I WANT MY BUMPER STICKER!!!!
:)