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I have already written about INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” – truly, I daresay, one of the great pop songs of the last 25 years – so let me just add that this recent reinterpretation rocks my socks, it’s so gorgeous:
See? Gorgeous. I’m almost surprised I like it, since anything approaching the twinkly or girly or precious turns me right off, but this strikes me as a genuinely magical musical moment.
Annie Clark records as St. Vincent, and since seeing this I’ve been half tempted to go look up her other stuff, but I’ve gotta say: There’s some special chemistry to this single thing, and I don’t know that AC/SV on her own will necessarily do it for me. She may well be great — but I find this such a gem that I almost don’t want to know or hear anything else about her.
Oh my goodness, I don’t know what else to say, I just love this so much. May accomplish nothing today other than hitting replay on that clip.
PS: It’s worth knowing, if you didn’t already (and I didn’t), that Beck has this fun Record Club thing going, wherein he and other musicians reinterpret classic albums. Awesome.
In the house where I grew up –
Hang on. I started to write “In my house,” but it’s no longer my house, and hasn’t been for fourteen years (eighteen if you count college). My parents left it for another state twelve years ago, so it’s not even attached to anyone in our family. But it’s still my house … isn’t it?
The fella always refers to his family’s house, in which he grew up and his parents still live, as “my house.” I tut-tut and feel put-upon and ask him if the house we share isn’t his house. But suddenly I get it.
Anyhow. In my house, the one where I grew up, there was a room we called the parlor, as I’ve mentioned before. We lived in a Colonial dating to the late 1700s, a true New England original with wide pine floorboards and fireplaces big enough to cook a pig in and wooden doors with metal latches that never quite hung straight.
The parlor was one of two front rooms that flanked the front door — a door we almost never used. This door must have been frequently used at some point, because it had a hitching post next to it when I was very little. The hitching post rotted away, taking with it centuries of visits remembered and forgotten.
If you had come in the front door, you’d have found yourself in a small entryway with a coat closet and a staircase. To your left was the room my parents used as a (very messy) study; I’m not sure how it was originally used. To your right was the parlor, presumably the sitting area where 18th and 19th Century guests were received and scandals were whispered about and consumption played out on the delicate, rosy cheeks of farmers’ daughters.
Or something like that. My mother honored tradition by making this a formal room of sorts. It featured some of the finest relics of her own upbringing: an imposing grandfather clock that had long ago stopped working (although one year at Thanksgiving, my father’s physicist cousin spent the whole time trying to repair it), two wing chairs with a table between them, a floral rug, an upright piano, and a wall (painted Colonial blue) that had a built-in bookcase and a fireplace.
It also featured a conglomeration of two or three shelving units that staggered with the weight of hundreds of records, dozens of cassettes, a silver-fronted, wood-paneled stereo receiver, a record player, a tape player (with auto-reverse!), and eventually a CD player and CDs.
For me, the piano and the stereo were the real draws. Although I don’t think of the parlor as a favorite room, I do know that I spent hours in there torturing the ivories, sifting through records and tapes, and choreographing elaborate dance routines.
This last presented a challenge, as there were one or two places on the soft pine floors that would make the record skip if you stepped on them too heavily. We were forever warning people — guests, friends, babysitters — about this structural flaw. “Careful! You’ll make the record skip!” Boggles the 21st Century mind, doesn’t it.
Anyhow, I heard two songs this morning that put me right back in the parlor. “The One I Love” recalled an awesomely awkward junior-high moment of dancing along to that song on the radio, making up passionate dance moves on the spot. And “Just What I Needed” brought to mind a more sedate moment, in high school or college, when I snuck in to put a Cars cassette on because I knew my visiting future-brother-in-law couldn’t stand the group. Sadly, my hilarious prank went largely unnoticed.
Since I’m rambling, I’ll also add that I discovered this morning that Michael Stipe has described his song as “brutal” and “violent.” Although I was not among the ranks of people who apparently thought it was a sappy love song, I must admit I never thought of it quite that way, either. I might have to rechoreograph my routine.
I was introduced to Depeche Mode in my sophomore year of high school by a couple of cool girls I met on a service trip to Biloxi, Mississippi. And ever since then, it seems I have been mishearing the lyrics to “Personal Jesus.”
I dug the song when I first heard it, and not just because I wanted to like everything these girls — sisters from a town a couple of hours away from mine — thought was cool. I liked the sexy, vaguely sinister groove; I smirked at the could-be-taken-as-sacrilegious lyrics.
And when, years later, I heard Johnny Cash’s take on the tune, I shook my head at the way he changed those lyrics around to give the whole thing a more sacred, Christian reading.
EXCEPT FOR THE PART WHERE HE DIDN’T DO THIS AT ALL.
Yeah, I’d always thought those crazy Depeche Modes were singing “reach out and touch me,” which just (in my head) made the whole thing even more wonderfully sketchy. And I smiled at the Johnny Cash version, thinking oh, the sweet old icon, with his Christianizing edit of “reach out and touch faith.”
Except … no. This is the original lyric. The internet swears it is so, and when I have heard the song recently, I have heard it this way (aka correctly).
And I’ve gotta say, I’m kind of disappointed. I think “reach out and touch me” works a lot better for the swampy, sessy, skeevily blasphemous Depeche Mode version.*
Mr. Cash, of course, can sing whatever he likes.
*No, I still do not know why I like the swampy, sessy, and skeevy so very much, but I do. And pondering that affinity whilst drafting this post has made me think the kings of SSS, my beloved Aerosmith, could probably do a pretty flocking great cover of “Personal Jesus.” STEVEN TYLER: CALL ME.
Friends, there is this:
… and there’s this:
… and there is even this:
But for my money, the rendition of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” that matters is the one can only be downloaded from the shared YouTube in my brain and MamaKitt’s.
It was performed, early and often, throughout our high school years by several of our male classmates, spearheaded by one who I/we secretly loved found particularly hilarious. I think I/we have mentioned him before in these pages — a goofy, clowny, sweet and sharp boy who was one of those dozen or so with whom MK and I had all our classes.
The Top Gun-inspired performances happened fairly often, but when I hear this song (I got Hall & Oates today, sadly, and not the Righteous Brothers) I think of sitting on a school bus, watching our doofy friend singing passionately to the back of the bus from a few seats ahead, a couple other of our male classmates standing behind him in a dorky, pimpled chorus.
I remember laughing until I cried. I LOVED it when the “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” happened, and not just when I was the chosen object of the serenade. And I tell you what: I remember a lot of unpleasantness from high school, but memories of moments like these make my heart sing.
It’s been a while since we touched the Rod. I don’t want to spend long on it, so I’ll just say this: Is there a worse song on the airwaves than “Have I Told You Lately”? I mean, seriously.
As is my wont, I forced myself to listen to the entire thing this morning. At one point, I literally pictured myself locked into restraints against my car seat to keep from changing the station. Torture.
I recall quite clearly hating this song in the ’90s, and then a tiny redemptive moment when my sister informed me that it was actually a Van Morrison song. At that time, Van could do no wrong in my book, so I tried to ease up on my hatred.
I’m surprised to see now that Van’s original preceded Rod’s cover by only four years. Released in 1989, it was called “one of the finest love songs of the century” and seems to regularly make the list of Top 10 First Dance Wedding Songs.
For real? I’d be hard pressed to make my married-couple debut to a song that can’t decide if it’s a love song, a godsong, or a love song to god. Frankly, I find the whole thing a little creepy. And in Rod’s husky hands, it gets creepier yet.
On this topic I have nothing more to say. Except: Shud-der.
A cold, gray early-spring day. A newly opened Italian restaurant, not yet drawing crowds. A spontaneous decision to drop in for lunch.
As we begin to eat, the door opens. A family walks in — neighbors of ours, on their way home from a baseball practice, one son in uniform. With only one other table occupied in the long, narrow space, which is divided into two parallel rows of booths, it feels like we own the joint.
The fella and I are happy to encounter real food in our little town. Hot bread just from the oven! Fresh seafood! Juicy tomatoes! I bet they don’t even serve iceberg lettuce. It is some kind of culinary miracle.
With no particular place to go, we eat slowly, talk a little, make sure Junior doesn’t spatter spaghetti sauce on the walls. Toward the end of the meal, the little one gets restless, so he and the fella wander back to talk with the neighbors.
After a few minutes of blissful solitary stillness, I go on duty. Junior, enamored of his ability to walk without stumbling, makes his way to the front of the restaurant, near the podium where the college-aged host waits for imaginary crowds. After climbing up on a bench, investigating it, and getting down, he begins to dance. Bob Marley fills the air.
“Let’s get together, and feel all right …” Jr. is feeling the music and the message. So is the young host, who looks as if he’d consumed his share of Bob Marley in more than a few dorm rooms. He cheers my son on and bounces along with him.
We are all warm, full, happy, and relaxed. Outside, it has begun to snow. The lights inside seem to glow a little brighter.
As the fella continues begin neighborly and Jr. keeps dancing, I go back to our table and order dessert, just to keep from having to leave. Eventually, we detach ourselves and head out into the storm.
We’ve been back since, but it hasn’t been the same. Never can be. Still, I’ve got Bob and bread and my dancing boy tucked away in here, and next winter they’ll still be keeping me warm.
You know, I like to think I’ve left high school in the distant past. I am in my MID TO LATE THIRTIES, after all.
(Okay, have to pause and take a deep breath after confronting that fact.)
High school was a long time ago, and I have lived a rich and full and mostly happy life since then. So WHY OH WHY OH WHY does my heart flutter like I’m a girl with a spiral perm and pegged jeans standing in the high school gym when I hear Bryan Adams start singing “Heaven”?
Sweartogod, this song came on the radio today and I had that high school slow dance feeling — all nerves about whether anyone would ask me to dance, about where the boy who did had his hands, about who everyone else was dancing/making out with, about whether making out was going to feature in my own dance (hoped for or against, depending on the boy).
I literally got the flutters. And if you’d asked me beforehand, I wouldn’t even have been able to identify “Heaven” as one of the slow-dance songs in heavy rotation when I was in high school. Based on my physical reaction I’m guessing it must have been. I can’t recall dancing to it with any particular Boy of Interest, but I may well have done so.
“Heaven” certainly makes sense as a high school slow dance standard. Drippy lyrics, lightly pulsing and crescendo-ing chorus, raspily earnest vocals. Oh my oh my oh my. Sing it, Bryan. We WERE young and wild and free. (Or, you know, young at least.)
Again with the magic of the pop song, the strange way these tunes have of flinging you back in time to some specific moment, notable or not, and of making you feel as you once felt, back in the day. Giving you the flutters.
If someone could figure out how to bottle that feeling, by the way, I’d buy buckets of their potion. Til then, I guess, I’ve got pop radio.
Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you another episode of … Inside MamaKitt’s Brain.
1. Ooh, “Sex On Fire.” I should write about how I heard a funny interview with The Hold Steady on NPR last night.
2. Oh right. Not The Hold Steady. Kings of Leon. What a poser I am. But, but … they’re both groups now hitting it big that I knew way back when. Well, “knew” might be an overstatement. But, but … I’ve always really liked what I hear when the fella plays their stuff.
3. Now that I know which group I’m talking about, I’m reminded of the evening not so long ago when fella’s younger sister told us (during a bout of Rock Band, but you didn’t hear it here) that she didn’t like Kings of Leon because “that ‘Sex On Fire’ song is so bad.” The fella reacted in the way that only a longstanding and loyal fan of a group-hitting-it-big can do.
4. Which reminds me of the time when she was in college, ten years ago now, and we were browsing in a music store. We came across something by Enrique Iglesias, and I made some comment about Julio, and she had never heard of him. I honored her experience and embraced our generational differences by squawking, “What?! You’ve never heard of Julio Iglesias? Oh my god, you’re so young.”
5. This was clear and obvious payback for the one million times that my older siblings had said similar things to me: “What?! You’ve never heard ['Brown-Eyed Girl,' 'Beast of Burden,' the original of 'I'll Be There']? Oh my god, you’re so young.”
Which is easy to misinterpret. Because what it really means is, ‘Oh my god, I’m so old.’
6. Old or young, I have always tut-tutted over the grammar in songs. This one is no exception, as the first line is “Lay where you’re laying.” Siiiiiigh. On the other hand, given the topic in question, perhaps that is a coy joke by the Kings. I mean, there’s brain power somewhere behind that song, since someone also penned the line I used as a headline.
7. I choose to believe that’s true. If not, I’ll always have clever lyrics from The Hold Steady.
Kids, when I was in college, there was no such thing as an iPod. If you wanted to listen to music while you exercised or walked across campus or rode your bike to the grocery store downtown, you had to use a Walkman or a Discman.
Also, kids, for most of the time that I was in college, neither I nor any of my friends had cars, so walking and biking were the ways we got around. And for most of my college career, there was only one little supermarket in town, and little else, so most everything we needed we got there at the More4.*
Hearing Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” this morning, I was sent back to a moment in college, probably the year I lived semi-off-campus, riding my bike back to my room after a trip to More4. “Red Rain” was in my headphones as I pedaled past the fancy house where my college’s president lived.
And — that’s about it. There was nothing remarkable about the moment, at least not that I can recall; all I know is that that song registered for me in that instant, that I was thinking about it, and thinking about my surroundings, and can recall that brief flash of time all these years later.
Funny how that happens.
*Yes, that was the name of our local grocery, but it seems the More4 is no more! Alas, a larger chain swallowed it, and based on the Google Maps street view, it’s now a rather cleaner and flashier place than it was a decade and a half ago. Bummer.
**YES YES I also heard the Proclaimers “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” this morning, which now makes me think of How I Met Your Mother, which uses it as a running gag. HENCE the style of this entry.
Today, the bounciest song in the world made me think about death.
The song is “I Love You Always Forever” by Donna Lewis. It littered the airwaves in the late ’90s, but I haven’t heard it in quite a while.
The first time I heard it, I was squished in the back seat of a car on the back roads of Vermont or New Hampshire. There were four or five of us in the car, but I can only cite with confidence two of my fellow passengers: my friend Sam and her former college roommate Kysa.
It was Kysa who shushed us all and made us listen to the song, which we agreed was adorable and fresh and fun.
It was Sam who had cancer, and would eventually succumb.
I don’t know when that car ride happened, where we were going that night, or where it fell on the timeline of Sam’s in-and-out-of-remission roller coaster.
I do know that she was the most amazingly upbeat person around us, almost all the time, and didn’t want to be worried or fawned over, even during her last stay in the hospital, when it was clear that things were not going the right direction.
A year or so before that, she and I had gone to Memphis together. She was a huge Elvis fan — kiiiiind of in the semi-ironic way that some of our circle of friends were fans, and kind of just flat-out in love with him — and we had ourselves a time. Thorough Graceland oohing and aahing, a bit of Beale Street barbecue, a solemn visit to the Civil Rights Museum. It was an amazing trip.
And it didn’t seem right, or logical, that a year later the cancer that had teased her for years had the final say.
My clearest memory of the funeral, which was in a classically New England white-steepled church, is my own self-consciousness as I shook our pew with heaving, gut-wracking sobs. No matter what I did, I could not control my tears — which were for Sam, but also for the unfathomable unfairness of the universe.
So Donna Lewis took me down a dark path today with her light and bouncy song. On the other hand, I love that I have this snapshot in my Sam album. A country road, a night with friends, windows down and love songs on the radio.
