Another Shuffle for Holt

Because that playlist just has too many great tunes not to go for another round.

1. "American Tune" / Paul Simon (1973)
"I don't know a soul who's not been battered / I don't have a friend who feels at ease / Don't know a dream that's not been shattered / Or driven to its knees" -- yep, that's life, and Paul Simon's never been afraid of facing that down. My brother the minister got that, too. Best part of this song -- where he dreams that he's dying, and he flies, freed from his mortal bonds, over the Statue of Liberty. The song breaks free of its gentle melodic patterns (stolen from Bach, I feel compelled to note) and soars into another realm of consciousness.

2. "The Weight" / The Band (1968)
Surely I'm not the only one who finds something Christlike about the singer of this song, wandering into town to "take a load off Fanny / And put the load right on me." And after meeting all the characters in town, he takes his wistful fare-thee-well -- "My bag is sinking low and I do believe it's time." Holt had this album, Music From Big Pink, though it took me years to figure out why these guys were worth listening to. They may have been a Canadian band, but they took their cue from Appalachian folk music, and from thence all the great Scots-Irish folk songs, in which the spectre of death is ever-present.

3. "Drive South" / John Hiatt (1988)
I've bragged here about how I knew Johnny Hiatt, growing up in Indianapolis, but my brother knew him better than I did, and was just as astonished as I was when we discovered he'd become not just a rock star but a genuine artist. I took Holt to see JH for his birthday a few years go, and he saw him a few more times after that. So you know there had to be at least one Hiatt tune on the playlist. I love this one for three reasons: 1) It's about driving, and Holt loved driving (Indy, natch); 2) It's a sexy seduction song ("Don't bother to pack your nylons / Just keep those pretty legs showing / It gets hot down where we're going")  and my brother, he loved the ladies; and 3) "drive south" may be a metaphor for going to hell. My brother worked a powerful lot of good in his life, but he was no saint, and who knows how tough the grading system is at the pearly gates?  But if he's headed to hell, then hell's a reasonable option for us all.

4. "The Cape" / Guy Clark (1995)
The first time I heard Guy Clark sing this song, all I could think of was my brother, and how much he loved to dress up in costumes as a kid. And yes, like the hero of this song, even when he was old and grey, people still thought he acted like a kid. But as Guy puts it, "he's one of those who knows / That life is just a leap of faith / Spread your arms and hold your breath / And always trust your cape." Brilliant song that never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

5. "Don't Forget Me" / Marshall Crenshaw (1995)
Here's a two-fer: Marshall Crenshaw AND Harry Nilsson, who wrote this tender wry song. I don't know if Holt shared my Nilsson obsession, but I know he loved Nilsson's oddball animated movie The Point when it first came out; in hospice, Holt smiled when I played him my Nilsson playlist. Although this is basically a song to an ex-wife, we can extrapolate the sentiments to any loves from the past. Even the spookily apposite verse three: "And when we're older / Full of cancer / It doesn't matter now / Come on, get happy / Cause nothing lasts forever / But I will always love you." Amen.

6. "Miles From Nowhere" / Cat Stevens (1970)
Tea for the Tillerman was an inescapable album that year, full of folky riffs and mordant black humor. Perfect soundtrack for Harold and Maude, a movie Holt loved for its warped fascination with death. Many songs on this album are about fathers and sons (I watched that battle from a front row seat) and taking journeys. But the line that really resonates here? "Lord my body has been a good friend / I won't need it when I reach the end." And so we told Holt in the hospice -- time to turn in the loaner car, it's reached the end of its usefulness.

7. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
For a Methodist minister, having "Losing My Religion" as your ringtone was a pretty gutsy move, doncha think?

8. "Don't Forget About Me" / John Mellencamp (2010)
Our other homegrown Indiana talent, Johnny Cougar nee Mellencamp always held a special place in our hearts. From his stellar back-to-basics album No Better Than This, another ex-wife song that can, if you squinch your eyes just so, be re-interpreted to apply to an old beloved friend who's moved to another plane of being.  

9. "Over the Rainbow / Wonderful World" / Israel Kamakawiwo Ole (1993)
One song we all agreed had to be played at Holt's memorial. Because, no matter how often it's played, this lilting ukelele rendition of the old standards transforms them into something new and hopeful and uplifting.

10. "Warmth of the Sun" / The Beach Boys (1964)
It was Holt, not me, who owned all our Beach Boys albums. (Note that possessive "our," because I listened to them just as avidly as he did.) In the face of the British Invasion, he never gave up on their American counterparts. In 1966, our family took a cross-country train trip to California that gave us our one taste of golden SoCal surf summer, before the Monkees and the Summer of Love happened. In my mind, this glorious Beach Boys ballad sums it all up -- how we keep the warmth of the sun inside us, to survive grief and loss. Interesting to note that Brian Wilson and Mike Love began to write this song on November 22, 1963, but didn't finish it until the tragic events of that day -- the Kennedy assassination, for those of you too young to have been permanently scarred by this event -- had happened. So the elegiac tone of this song was no accident. Those exquisite chord changes, the vocal counterpoints, and above all Brian's heart-melting falsetto -- they make me weep, make me smile, make my heart swell in my chest. Magic.

Cleaning out my brother's apartment, I found his iPod and put it in the dock to play on shuffle while I folded clothes and emptied drawers. How lovely it was to hear his own curated inventory of music! It was as if he were in the room with me. Expect to hear more from that source....

The Weight / The Band

Obvious, I know. Levon Helm dies, and every blogger has to pipe up. But this death did get to me, a real sock to the gut, more than I ever would have expected. 

It's not because I was a longtime fan of The Band or anything.  Count me in the legion of music fans who only discovered The Band when The Last Waltz came out in 1978. (Hey, at least I'll admit it.) I explained it all when I wrote last year about "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
   
In that film, watching Levon, with his gingery beard, open grin, and twangy drawl, I immediately sensed he was the authentic heart of The Band. The guy from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was real country, as opposed to those Canadian wannabes. If the Band invented Americana -- and we might as well give them credit for that -- Levon was their pipeline to the real stuff. Okay, okay, so that's a gross simplification. The music we now label Ameericana has always been a fabrication of sorts, a self-conscious blending of folk rock and bluegrass and Delta blues, There's no reason why a talented bunch of Canadians couldn't do it as well as anybody. If Nick Lowe can pass himself off as a country crooner, anything is possible.

But accidents of geography aside, Levon's joyous passion for music seemed to me to be the energy feeding The Last Waltz's performances. I saw that same passion still alive a year and a half ago, when Levon joined Nick Lowe, Richard Thompson, and Allen Toussaint at a taping of Elvis Costello's Spectacle. Even though Levon couldn't sing -- he claimed it had nothing to do with his bouts of throat cancer; now I wonder -- just watching him bash those drums was a joy. There was no disguising the evident affection those other musicians felt for Levon, either. I went to that taping to watch Nick and Elvis, but in the end it was Levon's night all around.

So here, in tribute to one of the music greats, is another Band classic:

In many ways this is the quintessential Band song: the traded harmonies, the rustic setting, the Biblical overtones, the old-timey storytelling.  From the very first line -- "Rolled into Nazareth, I was feeling 'bout half-past dead" -- we seem to be dwelling on the border between gospel and folk song. Never mind that it's most likely Nazareth, PA, he's rolling into, home of the Martin Guitar factory -- you can't tell me that Robbie Robertson didn't assume listeners would think he was writing about Jesus.

The ambiguous clues keep on coming. The traveller can't find a place to sleep, just like Mary and Joseph stranded in Bethlehem. He runs into the Devil, walking down the street. There's a Luke (like the Gospel writer) waiting for the Judgment Day. There's a Miss Moses, who he tells to "go down" (like in the spirtual "Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land, / Tell old pharoah, / Let my people go").  Come on, Robbie!

And what is this "weight" that the singer/s is going to take off of Anny and "put right on me"?  Is it really just a simple obligation, to say hello to an old friend?  Or is it Christ taking on the sins of the world?

Of course, Robbie Robertson wasn't writing a Christian parable. All of the people the traveler encounters -- a song structure that he totally ripped off of their mentor Bob Dylan -- are supposedly real people they knew, all the way down to Crazy Chester and his dog Jack. (Do we not love Rick Danko's strangulated singing on the Crazy Chester verse?) But if Robbie could rip off Dylan, why not borrow a little flavor from the Bible, too? All smoke and mirrors, my friends.

And yet, the lyrics of the song aren't why it's great.  It's those stately, momentous piano chord progressions, the glorious wailing harmonies on the chorus, and, yes, that loping whack of the drums, courtesy of Mr. Levon Helm.  It's definitely more than the sum of its parts.  How perfect to have the Staples Singers join in on this number in The Last Waltz, testifying their hearts out.

I'm sorry now that I wasn't more clued in in 1968 when Music From Big Pink came out. This music may have sounded old-fashioned, but at the time it was in fact something original indeed. In a world full of Beatle-esque pop and psychedelia, someone was finally coming out with a new sound.  (Not that it didn't have its own psychedelic buzz...).

And at the heart of it all was Levon Helm, one of the music greats. Lay your head down in peace, brother.

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" / The Band

I'm getting psyched -- tomorrow night I'm going to the taping of a segment of Elvis Costello's interview show Spectacle. The guest line-up is pretty amazing (more on that tomorrow), but just for starters, I'm eager to see Levon Helm.

I'll admit, I was only a casual fan of The Band. I ignored them for years -- the Dylan connection, the country-tinged American sound, the fact that my older brother loved them -- all worked against them for me. But while I was living in England, I became obsessed with the movie Mean Streets, so naturally I went to see The Last Waltz when it came out in 1978 (I'd just moved back to the States and was living in Washington DC). I was captivated by The Band, especially Rick Danko, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Robert DeNiro in Mean Streets. Seeing Levon Helm's poignant performance in Coal Miner's Daughter a year or so later sealed the deal for me. My DC roommate had a couple of The Band's LPs, and I borrowed them so often, she eventually gave them to me.

This video link from The Last Waltz brings it back all over again. Unfortunately, I'd fallen for a band that had already broken up -- story of my life -- and my attraction never grew into full-fledged fangirl-dom. These days, I rarely think of listening on purpose to a Band track. But like a lot of familiar songs that you half-listen to, floating around you in the background soundtrack, every once in awhile I find myself paying attention to one of their songs, and I remember all over again what a great band this was.

My favorite Band songs tend to be the ones where Levon Helms sings lead; I just love his honey-edged crooning wail. True, the Americana quality of this song is a little trumped-up -- it's a fake Civil War ballad, and practically a history term paper, studded with general's names and battle places. Still, there's something momentous about that first line as Levon announces, "Virgil Caine is my name" -- even if the name was probably chosen just for the closing pun, "You can't raise a Caine back up when he's in defeat."

For years I assumed that the event this song celebrates -- the "night" of the title -- was some pivotal battle, a turning point of the war, "the night the South was lost." But recently it hit me that it's really set just after the war, when Virgil, our Confederate veteran, is watching the funeral cortege of Robert E. Lee, the embodiment of Old Dixie. Somehow that makes it more wistful and less woeful; it's an outsider's song, sung by a rebel who's been forced underground (the South will rise again!).

It should be a downer, yet you can't beat that singalong chorus, erupting into full harmonies: "The night they drove Old Dixie down, and the bells were ringing, / The night they drove Old Dixie down, and the people were singin'. / They went, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La..." The old-timey piano flourishes, Levon's military-style snare-drum rolls, make it feel authentic, like one of those old Matthew Brady phtographs. Its loping rhythms lurch along like a ragtag soldier limping home. The funny thing is, Levon was the only true son of the south in this band; the rest are all Canadians. But they sure fooled me with this song.