Saturday Songs

When I'm not watching shows or sitting int eh library, I'm often out walking somewhere around the city of Coquille and walking of course means listening to music. Well, I guess it doesn't of course mean listening to music, but in my case it does mean that my iPod is either blasting or gently playing into my ears something off a playlist I've created. Generally, I listen to the same playlist day in and day out - Great Fucking Music, it's called, and as you might expect it is comprised of some, er, great fucking music. I walk for an hour to two hours at a time, but the playlist is around 40 hours long. I've never made it all the way through the list, and indeed it would be impossible to do without recharging, or you know, sleeping. I listen to it on random play, which actually do with all of the playlists (Head Full of Radios - my Radiohead, Thom Yorke playlist, and Modest Mouse - my Modest Mouse / Ugly Cassanova playlist; both of these are the complete works as I have them of the artists).
Last week, I completely gutted the GFM list and rebuilt it from the ground up which took me about 10 hours, since I actually wanted to look in every one of the 500+ albums I have and pick the greatest music I had since it was this playlist is all about. Grunge when down, singer/songwriters went up along with some more funky and up-tempo stuff.
All of this is by way of setting up how I got to listen to the particular songs, in the particular order that I did this morning.

KLF - What Time Is Love
I don't know how long it had been since I had heard this song, a while I suspect. Originally released in 1991 and finding it's way into my collection that same year, "The White Room" by the KLF was very much the embodiment of the Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. My sophomore and junior years of college that book was everything to me. It was certainly not the best book I read (I had the 3-in-1 omnibus edition), not the most groundbreaking book, either. But it was very evocative and my first foray in the counter-culture of the late 60s and early 70s. And I do mean counter-culture - not Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors, because no matter how different they were from what came before they were also what defined the youth culture (along with others of couse). This was a humorous look at the counter-culture while being part of it. It was the first book I read where the fourth wall was broken. I listened to this album over and over, partly because of the above, but partly because it was one of the few albums I owned at the time that had a great dance beat. And when you're in college, that is often important.
I was hoping to get some great revelation out of the lyrics with this relisten, but I didn't. Just a bunch of nostalgia.

The Beatles - For No One
This song is off of Revolver which is my favorite album, at least right now. This such a great song, and I realize today, and just today for the first time that it so incredibly sad. Maybe I took it too personally.

The Shins - Girl Sailor
Speaking of sad songs that are also beautiful, James Mercer delivered a wonderful and thought-provoking song that was really one of the sleeper hits on The Shins 2007 alsbum "Wincing the Night Away". I've listened to the full album many times, but the singles were Australia, Phantom Limb and Sealegs - by which I mean what had made it into the playlist on my computer and iPod, I have no idea what were released as singles. While this song is sad, it's also hopeful. The girl of the song's name has really fucked up her life, but not beyond all repair, and the narrator seems to be saying that he's by no means perfect but that he'll be there for her if he can be. I guess that's about as hopeful as it gets while remaining completely honest.

Eddie Vedder - Hard Sun
This isn't a sad song, but it's from a sad movie, "Into the Wild", which is number two on my top three all-time saddest movies list (one is Dancer in the Dark and three is the Wrestler). It's the perfect follow-up to the previous song, offering the other voice in response - the one from the person who is messed up, yet still realizes that they have something special in the other person. Plus, it's pretty easy to sing along with, and I can only imagine what the people driving down Highway 42 around 8 a.m. this morning thought I was doing.

Modest Mouse - Black Cadillacs
The third of the middle three songs of this short list that focuses on being fucked up. The first was about someone else, the second about valuing someone who stood by you while you fucked up, and now finally the third argument that things we thought were fine were really fucked up all along. I guess that pretty much sums up life. I'm not interested in pursuing the other logical options, as they are either unrealistic (nobody is fucked up after all) or incredibly depressing (we are all fucked up and nobody cares).

Bob Dylan - All Along the Watchtower
I first heard this song as performed by Jimi Hendrix and instantly fell in love with it. A few years later when I discovered the Bob Dylan version (I had known all along that he had written it, just not that he had recorded a version of it), I fell in love with it all over again. There is something about this song that reminds me of both The Times They Are A-Changin' and Masters of War (both by Dylan of course). It's really a cautionary tale, and as anti-big business / big government as it gets. Perhaps because of the term 'watchtower' it always evokes something medieval for me, and I like to imagine Dylan as the bard in some small, flee-ridden pub in 13th century London singing it while playing a funny lute.

The Beatles - All You Need Is Love
What do you need when you are feeling down and all the endorphines released by walking as fast as you can for as long as you can are not enough to bring you back up? You need John and boys to come along and remind you of the truth of things. When I was a kid, I always preferred the songs that Paul sang, not so much because of content, but because of his voice. When I was at the university, I really appreciated George's voice and began to look more critically at the Beatles work in terms of lyrics and what they actually meant along with teh context both of the gulture-at-large and with the music scene. Since then, I've developed a real appreciation for John's songs. Certainly if we expand into their post-Beatles solo work, it's John and George that I like and still listen to, Paul is okay, but it's so poppy, and well, unsophisticated. I have no comment about George.

The music didn't end after these seven songs, nor did it start with them. I could be all stupid and say something like, "the music has no beginning and no end", but I really I just mean that there were other songs that I listened to first, and after All You Need Is Love, a song came up at that I skipped and thus broke the spell. OK, maybe I want a little bit to say that the music has no beginning and no end and that the trick is just to listen and if you are so inclined to sing or play along.