Tuesday, October 13, 2009

"I Live On A Battlefield" / Nick Lowe

As I close in on 500 posts from nearly 2 years of blogging, there are occasional days when the song haunting my brain is something I've already written about. The problem's even worse in Nick Lowe Season. I'm seeing Nick tonight at the City Winery, and I'm sorry, I just can't think about anything else.

I don't know what tonight's set will include, but there's a good chance he'll haul out this song, as he often does lately. When I saw him a couple weeks ago at the Apollo, taping a segment of Elvis Costello's TV show Spectacle, Nick himself made a winking comment about how many of his best-loved songs are so "dreary." But though "Battlefield" is all about heartbreak and misery, it's hardly a mournful dirge; Nick rescues it with wit and spunk and verve. It's simply a fabulous number, and I could hear it every day of my life.

So pardon me for raiding my own back pages, but here's what I wrote a year and a half ago, on yet another day when the only tune in my head was "I Live On A Battlefield...."

...On 1994’s brilliant Impossible Bird, “I Live On A Battlefield” doesn't seem like a downer at first; it has a brisk tempo, with drums and a chugging electric guitar. But that's just because this soul survivor needs adrenaline to deal with life’s onslaught. “I live on a battlefield,” he says ruefully, “surrounded by the ruins of the love withheld,” and Nick keeps up the battle metaphor, verse after verse. For all the rollicking country-western sound, I picture a smoke-hung line of trenches straight out of World War I, and mud-spattered Nick staggering through barbed wire -- “I stumble through the rubble / I’m dazed, seeing double.” (Note the vowel echoes, the alliteration. The man is a POET.)

With a wail, he declares, “My new home / Is a shellhole filled / With tears and muddy water / And bits of broken heart.” He even translates the metaphor for us: “Though one way not one single drop of blood has spilled / It’s no less horrifying / Sweet memories of a bygone situation / Now shattered, lord, and battered / Lie scattered all around,” lobbing extra rhymes at us like hand grenades (similarly, later, he gives us “my new home is one of desolation / And scenes of a devastation / There is no consolation”).

That perky tempo, those call-and-response back-up vocals, keep it just humorous enough. He’s got no time for self-pity; THIS IS WAR. I grin, and then I wince, because, yeah, it sure looks familiar. Sigh.


Couldn't have said it better myself.....


I Live On A Battlefield sample

6 comments:

J-Money said...

Oh my, I cannot WAIT to hear about his show tonight...

Sunday--SUNDAY!!!--I'll be seeing him for the first time ever and I've already reached a level of excitement that most people rarely see without amphetamines...

wwolfe said...

I followed up on what I said in an earlier post - that is, I hauled out his three mid 1990s albums, each of which passed me by with little effect at the time, so I could give them new hearings. So far, I've been stuck on "The Impossible Bird," simply because it's so very good. I recall that "The Beast in Me" floored me at the time, but nothing else made much of an impression. This time, though, it all sounds whole and strong. I suspect it's a simple matter of age: I was 35 when the album came out, and I'm 50 now. It was too soon for me to get it back then, but I can now. I can't wait to hear the subsequent two albums.

Holly A Hughes said...

There are worse things in life than getting stuck on The Impossible Bird. But oh, what you have waiting in store for you...that Dig My Mood is just about the most perfect album ever.

And J, I'm looking forward to your report on Sunday's concert. You're going to Wolf Trap? I was so tempted to get down there for that. Believe me, if I hit the lottery, I'm quitting the day job and just following Nick Lowe on tour around the world...

MarjorieM said...

I listened to "Quiet Please: The New Best of Nick Lowe" driving all the way to Mt. Hood and back last Sunday. "I Live on a Battlefield", of course, is part of that compilation. This collection is so reasonably priced and even includes a DVD that has videos from years gone by and a 2007 performance in Belgium, I don't think it can be surpassed as a wonderful introduction to the magnificent Mr. Lowe. Everyone who isn't already the owner of every Nick CD, LP and video should get it! "I Live On a Battlefield" is one of his best, and delivered in that crisp diction, just wonderful. If you listen to it in your car, make sure your cruise control is set or you'll be over the speed limit in no time.

Holly A Hughes said...

Oh, Marj, I'm so happy to know that you've fallen down the Nick Lowe rabbit hole with me. I do think that Quiet Please is one of the most tasteful "greatest hits" packages ever. I AM already to owner of every Nick CD, LP, and video and I still had to buy it. (But hey, I even bought the new box set of the Brentford Trilogy, which is basically just Impossible Bird, Dig My Mood, and The Convincer with a new set of liner notes.) I love the image of you peeling along the highway with Nick on full blast. Rock on, girl!

MarjorieM said...

Yes, I was lucky I didn't get a speeding ticket! And often I leave the office for my afternoon break to drive a mile or so to get a Starbucks. The music I listen to on the way there and back is always as reviving as the coffee, and lately it's actually more about the Nick Lowe fix than the caffeine!