thirty-six. [THEME: all about the words]

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

The Fat Lady of Limbourg
Artist: Shivaree
Album: Who's Got Trouble
Year: 2005
♥: All about the words.
Above all else, I'm a word person. Music is a close second, artistically speaking, but if I was going to go deaf or blind first, it'd be deaf. I'd kill myself after 4.2 seconds, but those 4.2 seconds would be spent reading.

I love instrumental music, but differently, I think, than I love music with lyrics. To bring together music and words in a way that breaks or builds a heart is something only the very best literature or most intense instrumental music can do -- the intensity with which I feel a perfect moment in a song isn't quite as powerful as when I read something of similar perfection, but oh it comes pretty damn close ------- and it happens more often.

ALLLLLL about the words.
I first encountered Shivaree on Mix96, in 1999, believe it or not -- when they had a "new music hour" every Thursday at 10. I'd stay up past my bedtime (I was 12) and tape songs whose intros I especially loved. It's how I discovered the Tea Party, and it's where I first heard "Goodnight Moon". Fast forward six years: one of my favourite parts of Paris 2005 was the secondhand CD shops. I picked up this album, vaguely remembering how much I'd loved that "Goodnight Moon" song, but didn't really listen to it until that fall.

My heart stopped the first time I heard "The Fat Lady of Limbourg." For a long time, I put it among my Top 5 Songs of All Time -- it's still in the Top 20. So imagine my surprise when I realized it was a cover of a Brian Eno song. "Well gosh, I love Brian Eno!" I exclaimed to myself, and hurriedly downloaded it.
AND HATED IT.
My skin crawled in a way I'd never felt before.
Shivaree's cover: so raw, vital, vibrant, alive, beautiful, stunningly structured with harmonies and violences and liberties and. and. I really thought! ---- all of it ------- ALL OF IT!!! was the lyrics!
"for it was only a candle, a Roman scandal."
i died at that line: you're kidding. could we be wittier.
I wanted to name everything after the "jellyfish kiss,"
but that wasn't Shivaree's ---------------
that wasn't the music;
that wasn't the arrangement;
that was entirely Brian Eno's.



The original's slightly more palatable now, with another six years of musical education under my belt, but listening to it again for the first time since then -- my lip still curled in disgust. A rare case of a cover being infinitely, infinitely better than an original.

So is this song really, technically, all about the words? No, but that's kind of my point. Sometimes, despite all my posturing about how I am a ~word person~ ------- the music, the vibe, the ambience, matters just as much as the words. I can love a song primarily for its lyrical content -- and oh, for this one, I do -- but if you fuck up one component of the song, you fuck up the gesamtkunstwerk.

"I assume you understand that we have options on your time
We'll ditch you in the harbour if we must."
&
"But her sense of taste is such that she'll distinguish with her tongue
the subtleties a spectrograph would miss
and then announce her decision
while demanding her reward: a jellyfish kiss."


My heart will always stop.
For this,
for words,
(for words that I have to feel,
words I have to INTERPRET;
this song is a little bit of Dada, really.).
But when it all goes together, in a way that breaks you:
!!!!
there are no words.

post thirty-six (theme: all about the words)

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Ghost World
Aimee Mann
Bachelor No. 2 (or the last remains of the dodo)
2000

I think this is among my favourite themes because:

1) I AM all about the words.
2) It was a challenge. 

I wanted a to choose a song that was important to me.  I wanted a song that had the kind of lyrics I want to tattoo to my body.  I wanted a song that I can sing from beginning to end--a song that I can't help but mouth the words to. 

When I first started working at Indigo, they had an employee lending program...you could borrow books and CDs for two weeks and then return them (they do not do this anymore, OBVIOUSLY).  I didn't really like borrowing books because it was too stressful--what if something bad happened?!  Books from the store didn't have the safety net of plastic covering that a library book had.  So, as a result, I mostly borrowed CDs.  Burned them.  Returned them. 

This was the first Aimee Mann CD that I really listened to (five albums later, she is a favourite).  I liked the songs she had recorded for the Magnolia soundtrack and loved the look of this CD.  It was so slim and the cover was such a pretty shade of green.  I loved this CD after the first listen.  Even before my two weeks were up, I shelled out 18.99 and bought it (CD prices at Indigo were ridiculous).  I needed to own it.  That copy.  The one that I had spent time with.

I associate this song with graduating from high school, but even more so with graduating from McGill.  In the months leading up to that graduation, I was filled with palpable anxiety.  I felt like finishing school (forever) was like walking off the edge of a cliff into emptiness.  I had no plan.  No job prospects.  Worst of all was that my depression made me apathetic and disinterested.  I decided that I was going to go to Europe.  For six months.  There.  Now I had something to tell people when they asked me what I would be doing after graduation.  I procrastinated planning that trip.  I had a vague itinerary in mind and had bought my plane ticket and some Eurail passes.  The thought of flipping through my weighty copy of Let's Go Europe 2005 made me queasy.  But I was going to do it.  I was going to tough it out.  I was going to leave all of my insecurities and disorders and vices behind and just be.

That summer after graduation...and then on airplanes and trains in Europe...I subsisted on this song.  These words were my words.

"So, I'm bailing this town-or
Tearing it down-or
Probably more like
Hanging around,
Hanging around

Everyone I know is acting weird
Or way too cool
They hang out by the pool
So I just read a lot and ride my bike
Around the school

And all that I need now
Is someone with the brains
And the know-how
To tell me what I want anyhow"