Furies Of The Guillotine

Hey, I bow to no one in my love for Richard Thompson's music, and I won't deny that this song, which received its live debut the other night, has his fingerprints all over it. If you're gonna steal, steal from the best, right? But I do like the lyric, as dour and portentous as it is: the title phrase had been rattling around in my head for a good ten years before I did anything with it, and I ended up using the metaphor (the twinned metaphors, really, of the execution and the end of the love affair) as a way to work out some of my anger and disbelief over the We Saw The Wolf debacle...

Minor key: verse stays pretty close to the tonic, dropping down to the VII for the tagline, while the refrain goes from the VI to the minor IV, with the release ("didn't have the time to cry") a III-VII resolving to the I on "down." There's a little partial-chord riff after verse 3 and the first chorus.

This is a song about that feeling that you get when you wake up on a hot night and turn your pillow over to get the cool spot, and when you lay your head down down you get this shiver because you feel like there's this cold clammy hand REACHING OUT TO GRAB YOU BY THE NECK...

...it's just me, isn't it...

After The Axe Has Fallen

when the axe bites into the chopping block
there's the sigh of relief and the state of shock
after the axe has fallen

it's all over but the shouting now
the church bells ring and the crowd thins out
after the axe has fallen

no Christian burial no funeral Mass
just a message in lipstick on the mirror glass
after the axe has fallen

any trace will wash away with the next good rain
get some sawdust now to cover those stains
after the axe has fallen

I had my face to the ground
wrong way around
thinking that I had it made
then I felt the cold touch
on the back of my neck
of the edge of a heavy blade
and I didn't have time to cry before it all came down

hands up behind the back
fall to your knees and the sky turns black
after the axe has fallen

an unkindness of ravens is a-drawing near
looking for something for a souvenir
after the axe has fallen

I had my face to the ground
wrong way around
and they forced me to the killing floor
then I felt the cold touch
on the back of my neck
like I'd felt it my dreams before
and I didn't have time to cry before it all came down

As originally conceived in the full-band arrangement, there's an epic guitar solo at the coda that builds from a few scattered notes to a full-on string-bending frenzy. It's virtuosic and emotionally devastating and allows me to throw all kinds of heroic shapes and poses and make all my best guitar faces. It'd be very cool—you'll just have to trust me on that.

Elvis Autopsy (Post-Mortem, continued)

The second set: Now I know this is a real rock'n'roll gig, because it's at this point that the cops walk in.

Not to answer a noise complaint, mind you, but simply for a cup of joe. After the close of the first set, the lovely child and her parents left, taking the good vibes with them—and now the funk of bacon. Cops at a corner table, sipping Americanos and talking into their radios, doesn't do much for the mood, I'll tell you; it's tough to rock out when The Man is all up in your grille. Sucked the air right outta the room.

So it was downhill from there. That said, it felt good to sing "Behind Blue Eyes" again. I'm not usually one to carp about crappy cover versions, but I saw the video for Limp Bizkit's version of this, and was just appalled; der Durst and Co. have omitted the bridge section, a.k.a. "the prayer"—that is, the emotional core of the song—and have added an impossibly self-pitying new verse in its place. I mean, really—why sing us a song about wearing a mask if you're not going to give us a glimpse behind it, and tell us why it's so important t in the first place? So there was a little extra venom in my voice when I started singing When my fist clenches, crack it open...

"Every Little Kiss" into "Earn Enough": same concept as the Billie Holiday / U2 segue in the first set, but didn't come off quite as well—I think because I started "Kiss" too fast. It's a gorgeous chord progression, but a dense one, so it needs a little room to breathe. I may slow the groove down radically next time. And there will be a next time: the results were promising enough to warrant that. "Earn Enough" was great fun, as always. They're the same song, essentially, just written from different angles, one by a band with massive street cred and one by a band with none. That's instructive, I think.

Funnily enough, I found myself running short of material in this set—mostly because I'd dispensed with between-songs patter entirely, and was just banging through the songs bam-bam-bam, too fast, too nervous. To fill time, I did both "Let It Out" and "Tangled Up," as well as two instrumentals: Scott Skinner's pibroch tune "Dargai" (which I learned from the playing of Richard Thompson), and a fingerstyle piece that Dan and I cobbled together that I call "The Nunnery Rag."

Add to that "Purple Jesus" and "After the Axe" and it's the most of my own songs I've ever played in a single night. "Purple Jesus" has been a barn-burner lately, and did not disappoint on Saturday. "Axe" is much more somber, but I had reason to be pleased, as this was the first time I'd played it live, and, even with its complex arrangement (it was conceived as a band song, with multiple guitar parts), it hung together nicely.

A note on "John Barleycorn." Most people are familiar with Traffic's version, which Chris Wood learned from the singing of the Watersons (by way of Ralph Vaughan-Williams); but, this being a true folk song, it's a polymorphous beast. Researcher Peter Kennedy recorded dozens of variants—even Robert Burns turned his hand to the theme, and the story remains a source of inspiration. My version is a composite, stitched together from bits of many versions. It's the same basic tune as the familiar Traffic version, but with a bluesy, bottleneck guitar accompaniment; the idea is to bridge the gap between Blind Willie Johnson-style gospel and English folksong, but listening to myself playing it the other night, it just sounded drony and dull. And slightly forced. And, at six verses, too goddamned long. It sounded like a surefire room-clearer, to be honest.

I've got more to say about the song and my take on it in a future post, but for now, suffice to say that its inclusion in the set requires a rethink, at the least.

Finally: There are times, playing Aimee Mann's astonishing pop-rock nugget "Maybe Monday" (drop D) when the progression just sweeps me away and I feel myself leaving my body, levitating, speaking in tongues. This wasn't one of those nights, but dammit, the song is just that good.

What I Learned
Sometimes, like it or not, you're going to be wallpaper.
You can fight that, or you can learn to embrace it.

Elvis has left the building.

Post-Mortem

Date: Saturday 25 October 2003
Venue: Jitters Café, 4357 Buffalo Road, Chili, NY
Duration: two-and-a-half hours (two sets, one ten-minute break)
Proceeds: $16.75 (tips)

Wore
black jeans (with cuffs)
white socks
black lace-up shoes
black leather belt
cranberry-red button-down shirt over navy blue T-shirt
"wolf cross" pendant on black thong (borrowed from D)

Instrument: Ovation CC67
Amplification: Crate PA 4 (60 watts) with two 12" speaker cabs

The Crowd
Nearly nonexistent, again. The combination of heavy rain, the final World Series game, and zero promotion by the venue meant the room was mostly empty—just as when I played it last time. I figured on this going in, really—this was primarily for me, to keep myself limber and work out some new material.

The Rundown
Pretty much as originally listed: moved "Werewolves Of London" up to the first set to accommodate a request, shuffled second set slightly so as not to play "Purple Jesus" and "After the Axe" back-to-back.

Highlights

When Dan and I worked as a duo, "Couldn't Have Come" was our opener for about five years. It's a comfortable old shoe of a song. I'll admit, I do miss the vocal harmonies, but I'm very pleased with myself for working out a solo arrangement that allows me to play the refrain's mandolin melody in the bass strings while keeping the driving strum going on top. It really needs that countermelody to make it skip along.

Truncated "These Days" (F major, capo 3) from four verses to three when I realized there was no way I was going to make it through verse 3.

"Wish I Were In Love" was better than it had ever been: all the woodshedding's been paying off. I stumbled where I always stumble, though—coming out of the first refrain. This is one of Hart's funniest lyrics, and it's a struggle to keep from breaking up as I sing it; I can get through the bit about "the faint aroma of performing seals," but there's something about the word "ga-ga" that always causes me to snort.

"Spoonful" (drop D, slide) still needs some work. Oddly enough, I think part of the problem is that I sit when I practice at home, but stand when I play out; the change in the angle of the instrument throws my fingering and articulation out of whack, especially when I'm playing bottleneck. I'm shooting for something between the swagger of the classic Howlin' Wolf version and the spooked angularity of Chris Whitley's, but it's just not there yet.

"It's nearly Hallowe'en, and it wouldn't be Hallowe'en if I didn't play a sixteen-bar blues about vampires..." A friend of mine, upon hearing I was to play "Bloodletting," begged me not to. I couldn't imagine why—until I remembered that during the time of its original release he'd been going through a college Goth phase of his own. The song is probably tainted for him by horrible memories of dorm rooms full of clove smoke, and skinny kids in black all nodding earnestly; "So true, man. You were a vampire, and now I am the walking dead. . ."

After "Bloodletting," I'd announced offhandedly that I'd be singing one about werewolves later in the night. At the front table a little girl, no more'n a year or two older than Claire, sat with her parents: she begged me to play "the werewolf song" right away. Hell, I was cool with that. This one's always great fun to tear through, and it's even better when there's an eight-year-old bopping in her chair and singing Ahhh-wooooo along with you. She asked for it again about twenty minutes later, and again I was happy to oblige: I like to mess with the words, sometimes interpolating bits of the Black Velvet Band's version (especially the bit about Oscar Wilde), and enjoyed the opportunity.

"God Bless' The Child" into "Angel Of Harlem" looks unlikely on paper, but it worked really well—played them in the same key, fingerplucked swingin' it lightly into the last chord of the former, and with that Cma7 still ringing grab the plectrum and start a-stomping my foot: gone from cool to hot inside of ten seconds.

"Ring Of Fire" killed. It always does, through sheer force—I play in an open G, with a heavy strum, and it's a big, big, BIG sound.

Details of second set tomorrow. Stay close.

After

A grisly morning. Sleepdrunk and blear-eyed, with a marathon runner’s full-body ache and hands that felt flayed—I swear, even rolled in FBI ink I would have left no fingerprints. I hear D calling from downstairs, stagger to the window, and look out on the backyard.

There’s a thin, miserable light, and fog so thick I cannot see St. Christopher’s steeple fifty yards away; but three sleek deer, antlerless and smoky gray, are feeding at the bushes by the property-line, clustered around the sprays of tiny red berries, jostling each other. The largest shoots an occasional dirty look at the house, but mostly they just go about their business, ignoring us. Their velvety flanks steam in the fine morning rain, and I can imagine their warm breath, smelling of green, and the sound of their grinding teeth.

I watch them for a long time, then turn away and go back to bed.

Nightclub Jitters

Heading out the door right now to set up for a 7:00 PM start. Those of you reading this between now and 9:30 PM EST—wish me luck.

Gig Diary: Gearing Up for the Fallowe’en Spectacular

At length, knocked together a final set-list for tomorrow night’s gig. Two sets, two-and-a-half-hours, mostly covers, all performed with acoustic guitar and voice.

(Apologies for tiny pic: my image-hosting service are dicks about filesize.)

Intro Music
“Colossus,” performed by the Afro-Celt Sound System

SET I

You Couldn’t Have Come At A Better Time (Luka Bloom)
Lovers In A Dangerous Time (Bruce Cockburn)
These Days (Jackson Browne, who wrote it for Nico)
There She Goes (The La’s)
I Wish I Were In Love Again (Rodgers & Hart)
High & Dry (Radiohead)
Bloodletting (The Vampire Song) (Concrete Blonde)
Spoonful (Willie Dixon wrote it for Howlin’ Wolf)
She Caught The Katy (Taj Mahal)
Purple Jesus (one of mine)
Tracks Of My Tears (Smokey Robinson)
God Bless’ The Child (Billie Holiday)
Angel Of Harlem (U2)
Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
Lullaby Of London (The Pogues)
Ring Of Fire (June Carter wrote it for Johnny Cash)

Interstitial Music (ten-minute break)
“Hipalong Hop,” performed by Luke Vibert & BJ Cole
into “The Egg And I,” from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack

SET II

Sweet Thing (Van Morrison)—may segue into This Is The Sea
Suspicious Minds (Elvis Presley)
This Time (INXS)
Downtown (Petula Clark)
Night & Day (Cole Porter)
Behind Blue Eyes (The Who)
Werewolves Of London (Warren Zevon)
After The Axe Has Fallen (another one of mine)
Every Little Kiss (Bruce Hornsby & the Range)
Earn Enough For Us (XTC)
Let It All Hang Out (The Hombres)
John Barleycorn (traditional) with an option for Dylan’s Tangled Up In Blue
Autumn Leaves (English version written by Johnny Mercer)
Maybe Monday (‘til Tuesday)
Peace, Love, & Understanding (Nick Lowe for Elvis Costello)
Walking The Long Miles Home (Richard Thompson)

Outro Music
“Yo Pumpkin Head,” Cowboy Bebop, into “Whirl-Y Reel,” Afro Celts

The greatest challenge to constructing a set list, for me, is trying to make sense of the multifarious nature of it: of putting together these different musics I so love in a way that’s not just a dog’s breakfast, but in a coherent—even a narrative—fashion. Of maintaining a flow, a build—ebbing and rising, each time to greater peaks. This one’s not perfect, but I think it’s not bad.

I realize, by the way, that providing and specifying the recorded music for my into, set break, and outro reveals a certain . . . neurotic desire to control the proceedings. Please note, however, that I am getting better: for my first Rochester gig, in early September, I actually wrote out my between-songs patter—which I then was left to speak to an empty house, if I was going to speak it at all.

If that happens again tomorrow night, I’ll at least be able to listen to some music I enjoy.

Notes on the songs and the performance over the coming days, after it all goes down.

Today's Creepy Search Referrals

andrew sullivan shirtless

suicide from liquid morphine

norman conquest scorch & burn

Nedstat continues to amaze.

We Are Living, We Are Dwelling

We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awful time,
In an age on ages telling; to be living is sublime.
Hark! the waking up of nations, hosts advancing to the fray;
Hark! what soundeth is creation’s groaning for the latter day.

Will ye play, then? will ye dally far behind the battle line?
Up! it is Jehovah’s rally; God’s own arm hath need of thine.
Worlds are charging, heaven beholding; thou hast but an hour to fight;
Now, the blazoned cross unfolding, on, right onward for the right!

Sworn to yield, to waver, never; consecrated, born again;
Sworn to be Christ’s soldiers ever, O for Christ at least be men!
O let all the soul within you for the truth’s sake go abroad!
Strike! let every nerve and sinew tell on ages, tell for God.

Some days you can muster the will: some days you can't.
Here's the tune.

The Greatest Record Ever Made

This is adapted from something I posted on the Underground ages ago. I’m thinking about it again because I’ve got a gig coming up, and have decided to play this song.

Petula Clark singing "Downtown," that is, and for the last eight months I have been unable to listen to it without weeping. Tears of worry, tears of joy at the promise of hope renewed, that life is good and love is real and all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
I mean, it's fundamentally an optimistic song, but it's a hard-won optimism—reaching for the light while never denying the dark, saying Yes, there is hope, but it is fragile and must be nurtured.
There's this struggle even in the music—you've got these brassy builds, and then the reassurances come—"How can you lose?"—but the music decresendos and Petula's voice drops down, husky, almost breaking, as it shifts to the minor key, belying the blithe sentiment... and then from almost nothing the music fights its way back up, as Petula ascends the melody back up the high point.
"Downtown"'s promise of happiness is meaningless without the fear of loneliness to drive it. That it manages to suggest both (and the happiness it promises isn't specifically sexual—it's the promise of a kindred spirit: "You may find somebody kind to help and understand you, someone who is just like you and needs a helping hand to guide them along...") is what makes this the Greatest Record Ever Made (no disrespect to "River Deep, Mountain High").
When we consider that Petula Clark first became a star in 1943, a plucky eleven-year-old with her own radio show (Pet's Parlor), singing songs of hope and glory for British audiences deep in the daily terror of the Blitz, the arc that led her to "Downtown" seems clear.
See, I've long thought that the popular songs of WWII represented a remarkable exercise in creative visualization, or NLP, or "fake it 'til you make it"—put simply, of magick. Remember, when these songs were first written and sung, there was no guarantee that the lights ever would go on again all over the world, no certainty that there ever would be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover. These songs visualized victory, and peace, and a return to the status quo—and singers like Vera Lynn and Vaughn Monroe and, yes, Petula Clark sang this world into being: the secret heroes of the second World War.

This has been Art's purpose since caveman days. Those paintings of the bison hunt at Lascaux—once thought to have been commemorative in nature—are now believed to have been painted before the hunt, as a magickal act to ensure its success.

Having played her part (consciously or not) in assuring Allied victory in WWII, Petula Clark turned her attention to the great postwar crisis, a disaster no less damaging, in its way, than any war, and developing out of postwar alienation and the breakdown of traditional communities—what Harold Kushner calls "the plague of loneliness."
From the lump-in-the-throat reassurances of "We'll Meet Again" to the gentle nudge of "You're gonna be all right now," only the battleground has changed—from the smoking ruins of a world at war to an inner wasteland of teenage angst. Trench optimism. Hope in hell. There's nothing as joyous or as heartbreaking as someone putting on a brave face, reaching for love in a cruel world. And it's still Petula you want on your side.

B _ Z _ ?

Still weirdly fascinated by the Nedstat counter. Its cryptic little infobites are like Zen koans: the more you look at them, the deeper and more confusing the question becomes—namely, the question "Why the hell would anyone be looking for that?"

Today's most bizarre search referrals:

jon bon jovi house

and

a four letter word with two of the letter o in it

I am large, I contain multitudes: who knew?

Known

Walking out of the grocery store ‘tother day, a guy sidles up to me and murmurs, “...and you’re the fellow that plays at those coffeehouses.”

“Uh, yes,” I reply, quite frankly flabbergasted.

“I seen you over at Jitters, and then at the Leaf & Bean,” he says. “You do a nice job.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Thanks a lot. Um, I’ve got a another show at Leaf & Bean in November. Keep an eye out—I’ll get a poster up...”

“I’ll do that,” he says, and walks off.

Now, here’s the thing: to date, since moving to the Heart of Empire, I have played out exactly twice.

Freakish coincidence. I mean, this isn’t a huge city—but I played in a much smaller town’s most heavily-attended church very Sunday for four years before a stranger greeted me (also in a supermarket), rounding the corner with his grocery cart and letting out a cartoon-mafiosi drawl of “He-e-e-e-ey—Gui-tar Guy!”

But here I’ve got two shows under my belt, and this guy was at both of ‘em.

Including the disastrous first show, where I spent 70% of the evening literally playing to an empty room.

Strangely validating, that, but also a bit bracing: I’ve got a fan base now. The next show had better be really good. I can’t let Tha Kidz down, after all.

Dear Administration

Found in this morning's e-mail inbox, weird syntax and all (I've omitted the contact info and site address, for reasons that will soon become apparent)...

Dear Portal Administration!

I have recently come across your site and liked it very much.

I suppose that the visitors of our resources belong to the same social group and my site could be useful for your audience so I suggest to exchange our links.

This will help both of us to increase Link-Popularity and accordingly get top positions in many searching system, Google for instance.

My site is dedicated to guns.

I hope that our subject as well as your site info will evoke mutual interest of our visitors. ...

...what the fuck?

I mean, the oddness factor for this one is right through the roof: the website he's linking to is US-based, but the e-mail reads like it was translated from the original Serbo-Croat through Babelfish: and what on God's green Earth would make anybody, even and Internet spider AI, think this was some kind of gun-related...

...oh.

It's all that "death and war," isn't it? I shoulda known that was gonna come back to bite me on the ass.

A Moment of Interblog Upsucking of the Kind I Usually Abhor

So, in a fit of weakness and vanity, I went and got myself one of those blog counter thingees: if you click on the little icon at the bottom of my sidebar (where it says "Blog Me Link Me Love Me"), you can see how many page views I've had, and how they got here, and all that stuff.

The counter's been active for less than 24 hours, but already my worst suspicions are confirmed: it's mostly just me looking at this thing. Not that surprising, really, given that I use my sidebar in lieu of a favorites folder in my browser, and so visit this page about a million times a day. Still.

It cracks me up, though, that my top three search engine keywords today are flyboy, death, and war. Ain't that always the way?

---

Speaking of Joe, he has begun to feel upon his shoulder the soft, creeping hand of domesticity, and he's both pleased and a little freaked out. Ain't that always the way?

---

That little feeling that you get, when you link to someone in your sidebar and they don't (for whatever reason) reciprocate—that little twinge of irritation, mingled with anxiety that maybe you're not as cool as you thought you were—is that an unworthy emotion for an intelligent, evolved person to have? Especially for someone who's made it a point to stay as aloof as possible from the incestuous, clubby nature of blogging (it's no go the comment feature, it's no go the LiveJournal, it's no go the RSS forever and eternal)?

Thought so.

Let me just point out, then, that Loz has got the coolest sidebar in all of blogdom. And I say that not out of any irrational desire to be, y'know, The Jack Of All Fears or The Duke Of Earl or The Queen Of Fucking Sheba or anything, but just because it's true.

Love you, babes.

Godspeed You, Little Taikonaut

The balloon is up, the Chinese have launched, and all of a sudden low-orbital manned spaceflight is sexy again.

It's exciting, it's rough, it's relatively crude and it's dangerous as hell—and for that very reason it should make us remember what first drove this species beyond the clutches of sullen gravity; when the space program was a human adventure, and not a bottomless trough for US aerospace contractors; when we dared to dream of colonizing Mars, not of training ants to sort tiny screws in zero gravity.

Some of the rage and shame I felt in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster in February has resurfaced, tempered by a glimmer of hope. Back in February, I wrote on the 'lith:

Exploration works like this: you pick a goal, then design a tool or a vehicle with which to reach it. NASA has spent years working backwards—designing goals (i.e., experiments) to fit the tool it already has (the shuttle)—mostly top justify the shuttle program's horrific cost and inefficiency—because nobody had the guts to say, "This thing is no longer useful—time to scrap it and start over."

And now somebody is doing goal-oriented space exploration—doing it with whatever technology they can get their hands on, and inventing some along the way. The Chinese are out there Doing The Work. They have made the choice, as John F. Kennedy said, "not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

On one level, I'm pissed that we're back to low orbits in the headlines—been there done that forty years ago and shouldn't we really have space arks on Titan by now?—but on a higher level, I am proud to be a human being. To hell with ideologies, to hell with nationalities: Mankind is serious about space exploration again—and it is with Mankind that I throw my fate.

Godspeed ye, Yang Lewei. Tonight you're up there for all of us.

Spamming For The War

Oops. I don't think anybody was supposed to notice that...

Brain Voice Read / Write Machine Murder Hong Kong People

100% true story.

Pictures don't lie.

(found thirdhand via Die Puny Humans)

Man Bites Dog

...or something...?

(By which, of course, I mean that if "the media" is really controlled by "the liberal elite"—and, despite the inroads into the news field of corporate whoring "fair and balanced" coverage, conservatives still hold that the entertainment media, presumably including general-interest publishing, is still largely in the hands of dirty homosexuals political lefties—why is this news?)