“Motel Matches” / Elvis Costello & the Attractions
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
Well, I know Elvis Costello is a rock 'n' roll animal, honest I do. It's just that once I get going on these emotive showstoppers of his, it's real hard to quit. So I might as well wind up the week with one of his first, and still one of his finest.
Get Happy! is one of the Big Albums of My Life, for all sorts of personal reasons, but also because it just IS a superlative record, no matter what the critics said in 1980. Elvis’ songwriting was simply on fire, his band was tight as a coiled spring, and he was just beginning to channel his inner torch singer. Just hear him on the "Riot Act," lacing into his wife/girlfriend for accusing him of infidelity. Somehow I don't pity him, though -- probably because just a couple tracks earlier, we learned all about his own tawdry, tormented affair in the heart-wrenching "Motel Matches."
At the song's heart is a great little film noir detail, the packet of motel matches spilling out of a guilty woman's purse. (I can just see the zooming close-up, the zinging strings on the soundtrack.) We're in "Watching the Detectives" territory all over again. The song begins "Somewhere in the distance I can hear 'Who shot Sam?' / This is my conviction: I am an innocent man." Innocent of what, exactly? because it's pretty clear he's embroiled with this woman; desperately entangled, in fact. "Falling for you without a second look / Falling out of your open pocketbook / Giving you away like motel matches." She owns him right now.
There's a whole line of motel allusions -- the intruder "Boys everywhere, fumbling with the catches," the fire alarm going off as "I wake with the siren in an emergency" ("siren" also meaning the temptress beside him in that hotel bed), the flickering neon as "the light outside changes from red to blue" (e.g., from passion's heat to morose despair). And my favorite motel pun of them all, "Though your mind is full of love / In your eyes there is a vacancy." Of course it's sophomorically clever, but still, I love it.
The chief thing, though, is the way Elvis's voice writhes and caresses and yelps and groans throughout the song. The way he flips skittishly through those rapid-fire lyrics (it took me ages to figure out what he was saying on some lines). The big-gesture drum smashes, the holy-roller organ chords -- there's absolutely no holding back on the histrionics here. It is not a reflective song at all; it's pure angst. Which is exactly what an affair feels like, isn't it? (Or so I've been told.)
I know there are other sides to Elvis Costello. I love those other sides of him. But sometimes, I just need to get out my handkerchief, pour a stiff drink, and wallow in Elvis the Torch Singer. Satisfaction guaranteed, every time.
Motel Matches sample
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
“Long Honeymoon” / Elvis Costello
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
Elvis Costello is a wonderful short story writer; he just happens to do it in song. We can't always assume he's being autobiographical -- sometimes he just has a set of characters in mind and wants to tell their story (I call this "the Randy Newman defense"). And if along the way, a little of Elvis' personal experience works its way in, well that's just an occupational hazard.
"Long Honeymoon," from 1982's Imperial Bedroom, shows Elvis straining at the boundaries of the rock 'n roll genre. (A boundary that the Rolling Stones, for example, never seem to find constricting -- which is why I listen to so much more of Elvis Costello than the Rolling Stones.) At the time, he says, he was listening to Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra records, not rock music; he also had recently begun composing on piano instead of guitar, which just may account for the blossoming of his melodic gift.
The story's almost soap opera -- a young wife waiting anxiously for her new husband to come home. But given the cabaret-style arrangement, with Steve Nieve's cocktail-lounge piano and movie-music accordion (Elvis's suspenseful guitar line is pure Twilight Zone), we're clearly going for character development over plot. The phone rings, jangling her nerves; her imagination runs riot, picturing him out on a date, recalling lurid news stories about break-in murders. Doubt and paranoia set in, and even though it's in third person from the woman's point of view, Elvis doesn't just play the narrator -- he apes a female wail of hysteria pretty convincingly. His voice trembles, oozing sympathy for the poor thing.
"Little things just seem to undermine her / Confidence in him" -- we've all been there. But who knew that Elvis Costello, of all people, would understand how fear mushrooms in a woman's mind when she's alone late at night? "Who can she turn to / When the chance of coincidence is slim? / 'Cause the baby isn't old enough to speak . . . " Oh, jeez, there's a baby now too -- how shrewd of him to let that detail wander into the picture only now. I can't help but think of Elvis's own young wife, waiting home with their baby boy while he was out leading the life of a newly discovered rock star. I'm dying to know if Elvis was thinking of that when he wrote this.
When I say it's a short story, it's more Raymond Carver than John Updike -- a single epiphanal scene, rather than a laid-out plot. The phrase "long honeymoon" should sound happy, like extended bliss, but this is really about the sickening moment of realization that The Honeymoon Is Over. When the song ends, the husband still hasn't come home, but we know everything about their marriage -- more than we want to know, actually ("he was late this time last week..." -- and by the way, why ISN'T her best friend answering her phone either?). Those melodramatic instrumental accents, the serpentine melodic lines, Elvis's woeful vocal stylings, all make me dread the worst. Somehow, I don't want to know how this story ends.
The Long Honeymoon sample
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
Elvis Costello is a wonderful short story writer; he just happens to do it in song. We can't always assume he's being autobiographical -- sometimes he just has a set of characters in mind and wants to tell their story (I call this "the Randy Newman defense"). And if along the way, a little of Elvis' personal experience works its way in, well that's just an occupational hazard.
"Long Honeymoon," from 1982's Imperial Bedroom, shows Elvis straining at the boundaries of the rock 'n roll genre. (A boundary that the Rolling Stones, for example, never seem to find constricting -- which is why I listen to so much more of Elvis Costello than the Rolling Stones.) At the time, he says, he was listening to Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra records, not rock music; he also had recently begun composing on piano instead of guitar, which just may account for the blossoming of his melodic gift.
The story's almost soap opera -- a young wife waiting anxiously for her new husband to come home. But given the cabaret-style arrangement, with Steve Nieve's cocktail-lounge piano and movie-music accordion (Elvis's suspenseful guitar line is pure Twilight Zone), we're clearly going for character development over plot. The phone rings, jangling her nerves; her imagination runs riot, picturing him out on a date, recalling lurid news stories about break-in murders. Doubt and paranoia set in, and even though it's in third person from the woman's point of view, Elvis doesn't just play the narrator -- he apes a female wail of hysteria pretty convincingly. His voice trembles, oozing sympathy for the poor thing.
"Little things just seem to undermine her / Confidence in him" -- we've all been there. But who knew that Elvis Costello, of all people, would understand how fear mushrooms in a woman's mind when she's alone late at night? "Who can she turn to / When the chance of coincidence is slim? / 'Cause the baby isn't old enough to speak . . . " Oh, jeez, there's a baby now too -- how shrewd of him to let that detail wander into the picture only now. I can't help but think of Elvis's own young wife, waiting home with their baby boy while he was out leading the life of a newly discovered rock star. I'm dying to know if Elvis was thinking of that when he wrote this.
When I say it's a short story, it's more Raymond Carver than John Updike -- a single epiphanal scene, rather than a laid-out plot. The phrase "long honeymoon" should sound happy, like extended bliss, but this is really about the sickening moment of realization that The Honeymoon Is Over. When the song ends, the husband still hasn't come home, but we know everything about their marriage -- more than we want to know, actually ("he was late this time last week..." -- and by the way, why ISN'T her best friend answering her phone either?). Those melodramatic instrumental accents, the serpentine melodic lines, Elvis's woeful vocal stylings, all make me dread the worst. Somehow, I don't want to know how this story ends.
The Long Honeymoon sample
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
“Indoor Fireworks” / Elvis Costello
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
A lot of us were stumped by King of America, the 1986 album where Elvis jettisoned the Attractions, producer Nick Lowe, and his English cultural references all at once. He even seemed to shed his stage name -- Elvis Costello no longer, but Declan Patrick Aloysius Macmanus, or else Little Hands of Concrete (a nickname Nick Lowe had bestowed upon him for his tendency to break guitar strings). What was he up to?
The excellent liner notes (practically a novel) Elvis wrote for the Rhino reissue explain it all; suffice it to say that he was "going through a phase." All the same, King of America became one of my favorite EC albums -- how could I resist songs like "Brilliant Mistake" ("She said that she was working for the ABC News / It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use") or "Little Palaces" ("So you knock the kids about a bit / Because they've got your name")? And from the very first play-through, I knew "Indoor Fireworks" was going to be one of my favorite Elvis songs ever.
To say that it's about a relationship falling apart doesn't even begin to touch it. Apparently this couple's explosive quarrels have always been part of their dynamic, but now things are going downhill and they just can't stop. "Indoor fireworks / Can still burn your fingers / Indoor fireworks / We swore we were safe as houses" (those domestic "houses" -- I love how Elvis turns cliches on their head). "They're not so spectacular, they don't / Burn up in the sky / They can dazzle or delight / Or bring a tear / When the smoke gets in your eyes." (Another upended cliche -- zing!)
The verses keep dancing around this notion -- how their "parlour games" always flirted with breaking up. "Everybody loves a happy ending," he remarks, "but we don't even try / We go straight past pretending / To the part where everybody loves to cry." It was fiction, play-acting, at first, and their passions fed on it: ""Sometimes we would fight in public / With very little cause / But different kinds of sparks would fly / When we got on our own behind closed doors." (Oh, how his voice sizzles on that hot line.) I've known couples like this, who had no qualms about laying into each other in front of friends -- I used to wonder why they stayed together. But none of us really knows what glue holds another couple together. The public and private faces of a relationship are so different – another life truth picked up from Elvis Costello.
Their outcome's still uncertain, of course. The narrator says wearily, "My fuse is running out," but he also recalls tenderly, "You were the spice of life / The gin in my vermouth. " (I love that couplet; I wish someone would write a lyric like that about me.) "Don't think for a moment, dear, that / We'll ever be through," he declares in the last verse, but then relationships never really end, do they? -- we carry the scars forever. "I'll build a bonfire of my dreams and / Burn a broken effigy of me and you." Elvis can work a line of imagery harder than any other songwriter I know, but somehow every new meaning makes sense. I love that effigy on the bonfire, even if is more Guy Fawkes than Fourth of July.
The arrangement's dead simple -- mostly just Elvis's vocal and an acoustic guitar, with a soft string bass and organ in the background for texture. But it's a beautiful melody, with lots of uplifted line endings for Elvis' voice to tremble upon. I love Nick Lowe's cover too (on his Rose of England album) but it's pretty damn hard to improve on Elvis' rendition. Or rather, Declan Patrick Aloysius Macmanus' rendition, because the Irish crooner is out in full force on this number -- sublimely so.
Indoor Fireworks sample
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
A lot of us were stumped by King of America, the 1986 album where Elvis jettisoned the Attractions, producer Nick Lowe, and his English cultural references all at once. He even seemed to shed his stage name -- Elvis Costello no longer, but Declan Patrick Aloysius Macmanus, or else Little Hands of Concrete (a nickname Nick Lowe had bestowed upon him for his tendency to break guitar strings). What was he up to?
The excellent liner notes (practically a novel) Elvis wrote for the Rhino reissue explain it all; suffice it to say that he was "going through a phase." All the same, King of America became one of my favorite EC albums -- how could I resist songs like "Brilliant Mistake" ("She said that she was working for the ABC News / It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use") or "Little Palaces" ("So you knock the kids about a bit / Because they've got your name")? And from the very first play-through, I knew "Indoor Fireworks" was going to be one of my favorite Elvis songs ever.
To say that it's about a relationship falling apart doesn't even begin to touch it. Apparently this couple's explosive quarrels have always been part of their dynamic, but now things are going downhill and they just can't stop. "Indoor fireworks / Can still burn your fingers / Indoor fireworks / We swore we were safe as houses" (those domestic "houses" -- I love how Elvis turns cliches on their head). "They're not so spectacular, they don't / Burn up in the sky / They can dazzle or delight / Or bring a tear / When the smoke gets in your eyes." (Another upended cliche -- zing!)
The verses keep dancing around this notion -- how their "parlour games" always flirted with breaking up. "Everybody loves a happy ending," he remarks, "but we don't even try / We go straight past pretending / To the part where everybody loves to cry." It was fiction, play-acting, at first, and their passions fed on it: ""Sometimes we would fight in public / With very little cause / But different kinds of sparks would fly / When we got on our own behind closed doors." (Oh, how his voice sizzles on that hot line.) I've known couples like this, who had no qualms about laying into each other in front of friends -- I used to wonder why they stayed together. But none of us really knows what glue holds another couple together. The public and private faces of a relationship are so different – another life truth picked up from Elvis Costello.
Their outcome's still uncertain, of course. The narrator says wearily, "My fuse is running out," but he also recalls tenderly, "You were the spice of life / The gin in my vermouth. " (I love that couplet; I wish someone would write a lyric like that about me.) "Don't think for a moment, dear, that / We'll ever be through," he declares in the last verse, but then relationships never really end, do they? -- we carry the scars forever. "I'll build a bonfire of my dreams and / Burn a broken effigy of me and you." Elvis can work a line of imagery harder than any other songwriter I know, but somehow every new meaning makes sense. I love that effigy on the bonfire, even if is more Guy Fawkes than Fourth of July.
The arrangement's dead simple -- mostly just Elvis's vocal and an acoustic guitar, with a soft string bass and organ in the background for texture. But it's a beautiful melody, with lots of uplifted line endings for Elvis' voice to tremble upon. I love Nick Lowe's cover too (on his Rose of England album) but it's pretty damn hard to improve on Elvis' rendition. Or rather, Declan Patrick Aloysius Macmanus' rendition, because the Irish crooner is out in full force on this number -- sublimely so.
Indoor Fireworks sample
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
“Favourite Hour” / Elvis Costello
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
One thing I've only recently realized about Elvis Costello -- what a powerful singer he is. I don't just mean his ability to put across a song; he's always had that. I mean what an amazing set of pipes the guy's got -- volume, range, tone, control, the whole bit. Now I go back and listen to his great torch songs, like "Alison" and "Almost Blue" and "Shipbuilding" and the entire album North, and it simply floors me that I didn't home in on this before.
"Favourite Hour" is the last track on EC's disgracefully underrated 1994 album Brutal Youth, but it's anything but an afterthought. (It does contain the album's title phrase, in the poignant line "Now there's a tragic waste of brutal youth.") Elvis himself writes in the liner notes "I believe it is among the very best songs that I have been fortunate enough to write" -- and I'd have to agree. It's telling that he wrote this after recording The Juliet Letters, his foray into classical music with the Brodsky Quartet. Even in the relatively spare arrangement here -- just hushed piano and vocals -- "Favourite Hour" has a romantic sweep and grandeur we hardly ever get in rock music.
The image-crammed verses are dark indeed, with lines like "Pray for the boy who makes his bed in cold earth and quicklime" and "The tricky door that gapes beneath the ragged noose" and "Put out my eyes so I may never spy," but he counteracts that effect by singing them with calm, stately authority, in his tenderest low voice (how far Elvis has come from the days when he used to spit out acerbic puns at breakneck pace!). I love how the melody proceeds delicately downward on each line, like the day winding gently to a close.
That's just the set-up, though, for the glorious chorus, where Elvis surges into his upper register, letting his vibrato go full throttle, overwhelming us with passion: "So stay the hands, arrest the time / Till I am captured by your touch." With a breathless gasp he pushes his voice even higher -- "Blessings I don't count" -- then pulls back, as if trembling, to add "small mercies and such." Elvis plays the dynamics skillfully, managing the cracks and wavers in his voice just right. He's got such superb technique -- but technique means nothing if it doesn't serve the song's meaning.
For a long time I thought this was a love song; commenters on this blog corrected me, telling me that it's about an execution. Boy, did I feel dumb. Of course it is.
As the melody winds back down the scale, he solemnly announces "The flags may lower as we approach the favourite hour." Elvis never tells us what time of day the "favourite hour" is, but I always imagine it as twilight -- a velvety, crepuscular twilight pregnant with possibility. He leaves us hanging on a diminished note at the end, wondering, waiting . . .
Favourite Hour sample
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
One thing I've only recently realized about Elvis Costello -- what a powerful singer he is. I don't just mean his ability to put across a song; he's always had that. I mean what an amazing set of pipes the guy's got -- volume, range, tone, control, the whole bit. Now I go back and listen to his great torch songs, like "Alison" and "Almost Blue" and "Shipbuilding" and the entire album North, and it simply floors me that I didn't home in on this before.
"Favourite Hour" is the last track on EC's disgracefully underrated 1994 album Brutal Youth, but it's anything but an afterthought. (It does contain the album's title phrase, in the poignant line "Now there's a tragic waste of brutal youth.") Elvis himself writes in the liner notes "I believe it is among the very best songs that I have been fortunate enough to write" -- and I'd have to agree. It's telling that he wrote this after recording The Juliet Letters, his foray into classical music with the Brodsky Quartet. Even in the relatively spare arrangement here -- just hushed piano and vocals -- "Favourite Hour" has a romantic sweep and grandeur we hardly ever get in rock music.
The image-crammed verses are dark indeed, with lines like "Pray for the boy who makes his bed in cold earth and quicklime" and "The tricky door that gapes beneath the ragged noose" and "Put out my eyes so I may never spy," but he counteracts that effect by singing them with calm, stately authority, in his tenderest low voice (how far Elvis has come from the days when he used to spit out acerbic puns at breakneck pace!). I love how the melody proceeds delicately downward on each line, like the day winding gently to a close.
That's just the set-up, though, for the glorious chorus, where Elvis surges into his upper register, letting his vibrato go full throttle, overwhelming us with passion: "So stay the hands, arrest the time / Till I am captured by your touch." With a breathless gasp he pushes his voice even higher -- "Blessings I don't count" -- then pulls back, as if trembling, to add "small mercies and such." Elvis plays the dynamics skillfully, managing the cracks and wavers in his voice just right. He's got such superb technique -- but technique means nothing if it doesn't serve the song's meaning.
For a long time I thought this was a love song; commenters on this blog corrected me, telling me that it's about an execution. Boy, did I feel dumb. Of course it is.
As the melody winds back down the scale, he solemnly announces "The flags may lower as we approach the favourite hour." Elvis never tells us what time of day the "favourite hour" is, but I always imagine it as twilight -- a velvety, crepuscular twilight pregnant with possibility. He leaves us hanging on a diminished note at the end, wondering, waiting . . .
Favourite Hour sample
Monday, August 27, 2007
“…Dust” / Elvis Costello
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
In honor of Elvis Costello's 53rd birthday this past Saturday, I head eagerly into a week of Elvis Costello listening -- but I've got a bit of a dilemma here. Elvis has an enormous back catalogue, simply ENORMOUS, and I'm afraid I love all of it. So which songs to choose?
It's arbitrary, I know, but "...Dust" is always a happy surprise when it comes up on my shuffle -- and then haunts me for the rest of the day. It comes from his 2002 album, When I Was Cruel, an album that felt like a homecoming for me. Elvis returned to his stripped-down rock & roll sound for this CD, but what mattered more to me was that, as the name implies, it brought him back to the snarky mindset that first won my heart in 1978.
Actually, there are TWO versions of "Dust" on this CD, with somewhat different lyrics and an entirely different rhythm and sound. I still haven't totally figured out the differences between them, or why Elvis would include both (neither is a bonus track; in fact "Dust 2 . . . " comes a couple tracks earlier than ". . . Dust"). All I can say is that I prefer the second one, with its insinuating drumbeat, taunting guitar reverb, and accusatory horns. The lyrics of both versions seem to deal with the general human condition, but this one simmers with subtext, as if he's also settling some nasty personal score.
ELVIS COSTELLO WEEK
In honor of Elvis Costello's 53rd birthday this past Saturday, I head eagerly into a week of Elvis Costello listening -- but I've got a bit of a dilemma here. Elvis has an enormous back catalogue, simply ENORMOUS, and I'm afraid I love all of it. So which songs to choose?
It's arbitrary, I know, but "...Dust" is always a happy surprise when it comes up on my shuffle -- and then haunts me for the rest of the day. It comes from his 2002 album, When I Was Cruel, an album that felt like a homecoming for me. Elvis returned to his stripped-down rock & roll sound for this CD, but what mattered more to me was that, as the name implies, it brought him back to the snarky mindset that first won my heart in 1978.
Actually, there are TWO versions of "Dust" on this CD, with somewhat different lyrics and an entirely different rhythm and sound. I still haven't totally figured out the differences between them, or why Elvis would include both (neither is a bonus track; in fact "Dust 2 . . . " comes a couple tracks earlier than ". . . Dust"). All I can say is that I prefer the second one, with its insinuating drumbeat, taunting guitar reverb, and accusatory horns. The lyrics of both versions seem to deal with the general human condition, but this one simmers with subtext, as if he's also settling some nasty personal score.
As always with Elvis, he's playing with plural meanings of the word "dust." First off, it stands for mortality (ashes to ashes, dust to dust), but it also suggest something musty and old that's being ignored at our peril. And in the third verse, it becomes forensic matter: "If only dust could gather into lines of chalk / Around a silhouette detective fiction walks / For it's the only witness that can testify." (Shades of "Watching the Detectives.") With those film noir horns pitching in, I'm feeling distinctly uneasy by now -- there's been a crime, and Elvis is clearly ready to turn state's evidence. "Can I spit out the truth / Or would you rather just swallow a lie?" -- his falsetto yelp at the end of that line almost hurts. In the bridge, his snarly vocal keeps jabbing an accusing finger: "You kept your mouth well shut / Appeared to turn your coat / Now there's a name for you but it's stuck in my throat."
Once Elvis gets going with the imagery, he's like a tent-revival preacher on a roll -- "Here comes the juggernaut / Here come the Poisoners / They choke the life and land / And rob the joy from us / Why do they taste of sugar / When they are made of money? / Here come the Lamb of God / And the butcher's boy, Sonny." Who knows what it means? It just feels apocalyptic and savage and scary. And in the last verse, he goes after the music biz, too: "If dust could gather in a needle track / Then it would skip a beat and it would jump right back." It's vinyl-era imagery, but still vivid; "needle track" makes me think of heroin addicts too. Why not? The more allusive imagery he can blast us with, the better.
And coiling through the whole thing is that serpentine rhythm, seducing us into thinking that this must all mean something, if we were only clever enough to get Elvis's references. Me, I've stopped trying to interpret it; I'm just snuggling into the moody arrangement and the dangerous rasp of Elvis's voice. And feeling quite at home here.
Friday, August 24, 2007
“What Do We Do Now” / John Hiatt
JOHN HIATT WEEK
John Hiatt can rock out on an electric guitar with the best of them, but he doesn’t need to switch on the amps to satisfy me. Case in point: his 2000 album Crossing Muddy Waters, which is basically an acoustic album, with all the other stuff stripped away to let his songwriting shine. Since this is John Hiatt, of course, don’t expect “acoustic” to translate into “soft and folky” – no, Crossing Muddy Waters simply vibrates with passion. The title song alone will break your heart, and if you forced me to pick my favorite John Hiatt song of all time, it probably would be “What Do We Do Now” – this one slays me every time.
Hiatt sings wonderfully about love and commitment and family, but he also knows the flip side of those things. “What Do We Do Now” is an anguished cry from the heart, as two partners face each other, seething, realizing that this just may the The Fight That Ends It All. “When it’s lying there with a busted heart / Like a piece of glass – where do you start? / Do we pick it up, or say goodbye? / Is there one tear left for us to cry?” This hasn’t been the first knock-down-drag-out argument between these two, clearly, but maybe this time they’ve crossed the line. And it’s SCARY.
“What if I can’t stay?” he wonders, voice scraping in pain, “What if you can’t stay? / What if I can’t leave? / What if you can’t leave?” All the songwriting courses in the world can’t teach this kind of poetry – it doesn’t rhyme, the language is so plain, but I can just feel these two people slamming back and forth between these wretched choices. They’re hurting too bad for fancy poetry.
The melody is deliberately circular and descending, with a weary thudding rhythm that perfectly captures this couple’s private hell. The pitch rises, though, for this heart-breaking verse: “Do we call the kids / Or call the cops / Can you hold me ‘til / This howling stops?” It comes down to these choices: that numb civilized “family meeting” or a window-smashing screamfest. And in the middle of all his rage and pain, she’s still the place he instinctively turns for comfort – that’s the wrenching irony of the whole damn thing.
There’s other great lines here – “Gimme back my steel / Gimme me back my nerve / Gimme back my youth / For the dead man’s curve”; or “Cause we rode it long / And we rode it hard / And we wrecked it in / Our own back yard.” Those dogged repetitions, how perfectly they summon up the mindset of someone who can’t see his way forward. There’s no answer here; these people can’t find an answer right now. Will they finally split? Will they get back together? Will they ever be happy?
I don’t know, and they sure as hell don’t know. Which is the point of this song – to capture this edge-of-the-knife emotion. Anybody who’s ever tried to make a relationship work can recognize this moment, whether it’s ever gone quite that far or not. The pain, the raw passion, the horrible honesty – it’s not easy stuff. But then life isn't all easy, is it? That's why we need truth-tellers like John Hiatt, to light our way through the valley of the shadow of death. Amen.
What Do We Do Now sample
PS. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOMORROW, ELVIS COSTELLO – NEXT WEEK IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU!
JOHN HIATT WEEK
John Hiatt can rock out on an electric guitar with the best of them, but he doesn’t need to switch on the amps to satisfy me. Case in point: his 2000 album Crossing Muddy Waters, which is basically an acoustic album, with all the other stuff stripped away to let his songwriting shine. Since this is John Hiatt, of course, don’t expect “acoustic” to translate into “soft and folky” – no, Crossing Muddy Waters simply vibrates with passion. The title song alone will break your heart, and if you forced me to pick my favorite John Hiatt song of all time, it probably would be “What Do We Do Now” – this one slays me every time.
Hiatt sings wonderfully about love and commitment and family, but he also knows the flip side of those things. “What Do We Do Now” is an anguished cry from the heart, as two partners face each other, seething, realizing that this just may the The Fight That Ends It All. “When it’s lying there with a busted heart / Like a piece of glass – where do you start? / Do we pick it up, or say goodbye? / Is there one tear left for us to cry?” This hasn’t been the first knock-down-drag-out argument between these two, clearly, but maybe this time they’ve crossed the line. And it’s SCARY.
“What if I can’t stay?” he wonders, voice scraping in pain, “What if you can’t stay? / What if I can’t leave? / What if you can’t leave?” All the songwriting courses in the world can’t teach this kind of poetry – it doesn’t rhyme, the language is so plain, but I can just feel these two people slamming back and forth between these wretched choices. They’re hurting too bad for fancy poetry.
The melody is deliberately circular and descending, with a weary thudding rhythm that perfectly captures this couple’s private hell. The pitch rises, though, for this heart-breaking verse: “Do we call the kids / Or call the cops / Can you hold me ‘til / This howling stops?” It comes down to these choices: that numb civilized “family meeting” or a window-smashing screamfest. And in the middle of all his rage and pain, she’s still the place he instinctively turns for comfort – that’s the wrenching irony of the whole damn thing.
There’s other great lines here – “Gimme back my steel / Gimme me back my nerve / Gimme back my youth / For the dead man’s curve”; or “Cause we rode it long / And we rode it hard / And we wrecked it in / Our own back yard.” Those dogged repetitions, how perfectly they summon up the mindset of someone who can’t see his way forward. There’s no answer here; these people can’t find an answer right now. Will they finally split? Will they get back together? Will they ever be happy?
I don’t know, and they sure as hell don’t know. Which is the point of this song – to capture this edge-of-the-knife emotion. Anybody who’s ever tried to make a relationship work can recognize this moment, whether it’s ever gone quite that far or not. The pain, the raw passion, the horrible honesty – it’s not easy stuff. But then life isn't all easy, is it? That's why we need truth-tellers like John Hiatt, to light our way through the valley of the shadow of death. Amen.
What Do We Do Now sample
PS. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOMORROW, ELVIS COSTELLO – NEXT WEEK IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
“The Tiki Bar Is Open” / John Hiatt
JOHN HIATT WEEK
There was a time when John Hiatt’s career nearly ran down the drain in a stream of alcohol. It’s no coincidence, I think, that his breakthrough album Bring the Family happened after he got sober -- one of its most moving songs, “Stood Up,” offers this poignant verse:
Now they give last call for alcohol
And no one has to carry me home
You see I only work here now, man
My drinking days are long gone
I couldn’t stand up after one, no,
‘Til twenty had me down on the floor
Now the first one doesn’t get me
Even though I’m still the last one out the door.
Like the AAers say, you take sobriety one day at a time. These things aren’t easy; anybody who tells you different is lying. Several years down the pike, the title song on Hiatt’s marvelous 2001 album The Tiki Bar Is Open updates us on his progress, with a characteristically Hiatt blend of irony, flint-eyed honesty, and courage.
Tiki bars – any American kid born in the early 1950s remembers the tiki bar craze of the early 60s, Polynesian knock-offs of Trader Vic’s sprouting along commercial strips in every sprawling suburb. Most likely the Hiatt family went to the same hokey mai-tai palace in Indianapolis that my family did. And the exotic flavor of the arrangement works into the metaphor too, its slouchy jump-blues rhythm sparked up with a slide guitar (god bless Sonny Landreth) and minor-key honky-tonk piano (ditto David Bianco). Its howling, passionate spirit is perfect for the grit and wail of John’s vocals. “Thank god the tiki bar is open,” John growls for dear life in the chorus, “Thank god the tiki torch still shines.” I can see that fake torch flaring by the heavy carved teak doors, smell its lighter-fluid aroma, even now.
The song’s set in Daytona Beach, but I’m not fooled -- Daytona, Indianapolis, switch one car town for another. But Daytona’s a little tawdrier than Indy, and that tawdriness works here – “My suntan dream is out of reach / And the strip malls are robbing me blind.” Life has a way of letting you down; nothing’s ever like what we hoped. He's a lost soul -- "I was out on a leave of absence / From any resemblance to reality" -- and even when redemption is offered, he can't recognize it ("I was driving by His Majesty's Court Hotel / Where the sign said 'praise his name' / I was tired and alone, I couldn't see too well").
A spirit of disappointment and loss dogs this song from start to finish, embodied in verse four’s vanished hero: “Well his name was Mr. Dale Earnhardt / And he drove the black number three / Now the King is gone but he’ll not be forgotten / Nor his like will we ever see.” Just like Elvis in “Riding With the King,” Earnhardt stands for a dream, a lost grace, that’s missing in our pallid modern life.
It’s verse five, though, that gets to the heart of things: “Well, I know a drink ain’t no solution / I ain’t had one in seventeen years / But if that tiki bar was closed tonight ./ Well I might just disappear.” And just like that, in a flash, the metaphor makes sense – the tiki bar is one of those ubiquitous church basement AA meetings, on tap any night of the week. Even seventeen years down the road (Hiatt sings it as “twenty-three years” on the current tour), you never know when you might need to stop in and get your ass redeemed all over again.
Let’s be honest – we all have a pit of some kind yawning under our feet. We all need to find a tiki bar that stays opens 24/7. This is why John Hiatt’s one of my absolute favorite artists: he grapples with those Meaty Questions, but never gets preachy – and never forgets that the song still has to rock your soul.
The Tiki Bar Is Open sample
JOHN HIATT WEEK
There was a time when John Hiatt’s career nearly ran down the drain in a stream of alcohol. It’s no coincidence, I think, that his breakthrough album Bring the Family happened after he got sober -- one of its most moving songs, “Stood Up,” offers this poignant verse:
Now they give last call for alcohol
And no one has to carry me home
You see I only work here now, man
My drinking days are long gone
I couldn’t stand up after one, no,
‘Til twenty had me down on the floor
Now the first one doesn’t get me
Even though I’m still the last one out the door.
Like the AAers say, you take sobriety one day at a time. These things aren’t easy; anybody who tells you different is lying. Several years down the pike, the title song on Hiatt’s marvelous 2001 album The Tiki Bar Is Open updates us on his progress, with a characteristically Hiatt blend of irony, flint-eyed honesty, and courage.
Tiki bars – any American kid born in the early 1950s remembers the tiki bar craze of the early 60s, Polynesian knock-offs of Trader Vic’s sprouting along commercial strips in every sprawling suburb. Most likely the Hiatt family went to the same hokey mai-tai palace in Indianapolis that my family did. And the exotic flavor of the arrangement works into the metaphor too, its slouchy jump-blues rhythm sparked up with a slide guitar (god bless Sonny Landreth) and minor-key honky-tonk piano (ditto David Bianco). Its howling, passionate spirit is perfect for the grit and wail of John’s vocals. “Thank god the tiki bar is open,” John growls for dear life in the chorus, “Thank god the tiki torch still shines.” I can see that fake torch flaring by the heavy carved teak doors, smell its lighter-fluid aroma, even now.
The song’s set in Daytona Beach, but I’m not fooled -- Daytona, Indianapolis, switch one car town for another. But Daytona’s a little tawdrier than Indy, and that tawdriness works here – “My suntan dream is out of reach / And the strip malls are robbing me blind.” Life has a way of letting you down; nothing’s ever like what we hoped. He's a lost soul -- "I was out on a leave of absence / From any resemblance to reality" -- and even when redemption is offered, he can't recognize it ("I was driving by His Majesty's Court Hotel / Where the sign said 'praise his name' / I was tired and alone, I couldn't see too well").
A spirit of disappointment and loss dogs this song from start to finish, embodied in verse four’s vanished hero: “Well his name was Mr. Dale Earnhardt / And he drove the black number three / Now the King is gone but he’ll not be forgotten / Nor his like will we ever see.” Just like Elvis in “Riding With the King,” Earnhardt stands for a dream, a lost grace, that’s missing in our pallid modern life.
It’s verse five, though, that gets to the heart of things: “Well, I know a drink ain’t no solution / I ain’t had one in seventeen years / But if that tiki bar was closed tonight ./ Well I might just disappear.” And just like that, in a flash, the metaphor makes sense – the tiki bar is one of those ubiquitous church basement AA meetings, on tap any night of the week. Even seventeen years down the road (Hiatt sings it as “twenty-three years” on the current tour), you never know when you might need to stop in and get your ass redeemed all over again.
Let’s be honest – we all have a pit of some kind yawning under our feet. We all need to find a tiki bar that stays opens 24/7. This is why John Hiatt’s one of my absolute favorite artists: he grapples with those Meaty Questions, but never gets preachy – and never forgets that the song still has to rock your soul.
The Tiki Bar Is Open sample
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