The millennium is not very old, it’s true, and yet today is the day on which I feel obliged to anoint a best song of the millennium, and to risk open debate on the subject, even though I recognize that these kinds of assertions are rash, and, in the main, unwarranted. But here it is, nonetheless. The best song of the millennium is “Mexican Blue,” by Jolie Holland, and it appears on her album Springtime Can Kill You, which was released on Anti Records in 2006. This would be the songwriter’s third album, after Catalpa (2003), which was sort of a demo-ish affair, and Escondida (2004), a more arranged effort. Prior to those albums, she was a member of the Be Good Tanyas, the folk revivalist band, in which she sang, on the first album, “Lakes of Pontchartrain” to startling effect, and a couple of other songs, before moving on to record on her own. The Be Good Tanyas’s first album, though very good, hinted at none of the genre-hopping of Jolie Holland’s solo work, which has roots not only in folk and Old Time, but also in New Orleans jazz, cabaret, soul, rock and roll, and experimental music. Her voice is almost unnaturally elastic, featuring a lonesome vibrato that seems to come out of the 1920s more than the twenty-first century. There is a mysteriousness to her point of view. Her compositions and her presence are slippery, hard to put your finger on. As if her songs are utterly resistant to the confessional mood, despite their sometimes straightforward lyrics—or as if the confessional mood is so buried in resistance and complication as to be impossible to apprehend in any unalloyed way for the lay person, who is otherwise used to a popular song whose job it is to be purgative or to describe the vicissitudes of the heart.
I bought Escondida because I liked Jolie Holland on “Lakes of Pontchartrain” and “The Littlest Birds,” from Blue Horse, the Be Good Tanyas album, and because I had read rapturous reviews of Holland’s solo work. And, indeed, I liked certain songs on Escondida, especially “Darlin’ Ukulele,” and “Amen,” although I found some of the genre exercises that filled out the album a little specialized. Since Escondida was not something that I put on the stereo relentlessly, I kind of dawdled on the next album, Springtime Can Kill You. Didn’t buy it immediately. Until a friend with particularly excellent taste (the friend who also turned me on to The Lemon of Pink, by the Books, another spectacularly good album), sent me “Mexican Blue.” I can’t even remember why she sent it to me, and I can’t remember why because no one remembers what’s happening on the day before they learn of the hurricane, that’s just some ordinary day, with trips to the dry cleaners, or to get the muffler is repaired; I confess I didn’t know if I was going to love “Mexican Blue,” that first time I played it, because I didn’t know if there was more to Jolie Holland than my admiration for her talent and for her caginess, her refusal to pander to the audience or to play up her spot in front of the lights. These are good things—talent, smarts—but these things had not yet enlightened me. And what I want, in the end, is that my heart should be compelled in some way, because like most people I am in the condition of almost routine absence from life, unable to see it as it is, and unable to have the requisite gratitude, and I am almost always noticing my own failures where my relationships are concerned, letting them pass me by until something dire comes along, until the hurricane comes along again, hovers briefly before alighting on the coast of me with a vengeance, whereupon I am watching shit blow out to sea, and it’s then that I see how loss is about the only feeling that I am absolutely certain I understand, and it’s only when I feel the loss is stirred up like the bilge in a basement that I start to feel again, and such was my experience of “Mexican Blue,” that it called up to me from the land of failure, the land of people who do nothing but fuck up with the ones they love, and who can’t seem to participate in the tiered Jell-O dessert of ordinary life, and almost instantly, upon hearing its unfurling of verses, I was reduced to some torrential downpour of loss, or a recognition of loss, and this has been my experience of the song since, which is, I suppose, four years of experience now, except for the times when I won’t allow myself to listen to it, because it is too painful to listen to, or because I just love it too much, and I don’t want to be made insulated, and don’t want to think that this much compassion (Jolie Holland’s kind of compassion, as evinced in the song) can somehow be expended by overuse. So I have had possession of this song four years or so, I have possessed the file as well as the album, and I have played it intermittently, because masterpieces should stay masterpieces, though as the song itself says: Everything is so much better when you are around.
You will be asking, what is so good about this song? You have described the effect upon yourself of the song, and you have described it in terms of an Atlantic storm (category four or category five), but you have not elucidated what is so good about the song itself, and now I mean to do just that, and first I will attempt to detail the musical portion of the composition, and then I will move on to touch upon the words. (Read the lyrics here.)
It’s a piano ballad, primarily, which means that it begins at the piano, played with utmost simplicity (I’ll try to sing it pure and easily), and I suppose this is Holland herself, because she is credited with piano on the album, and we get a couple of verses of just voice and piano, and the piano part is some modification of the “Let It Be” chord progression, the one banged out by the pianistically challenged Paul McCartney, and never once does the song deviate from this repetition of four chords, and I suspect, as with Holland’s guitar playing, that this repetition is owing to rudimentary skills, but that is fine; and yet if you are never once going to vary the progression of chords, you had better have some tricks up your sleeve as regards arrangements, some tricks in the area of dynamics, and one such example we have here, in “Mexican Blue,” is the glockenspiel, or maybe it’s a celeste, some bells at any rate, and they come in after the line They said they’d started to get worried about me, they were happy we had finally met, we had finally met. Also some drums, and some very tasteful electric guitar (a sort of twangy, Byrds-ish guitar part), and bass, these just blocking out the chord progression, really, the accompaniment is somewhere to go, in the same way that the drums come in on “Tangled Up In Blue.” And perhaps “Tangled Up In Blue” is one model for “Mexican Blue,” Dylan’s song being an epic about a relationship, one that, he once said, took him ten years to write. Similarly, here, the drums are just somewhere to go, but the glockenspiel is an adornment both austere and playful, in exactly the way that Holland’s Texan accent, with its ludicrous vowels, is both playful, and, somehow, ancient. In the end, since the music performs here in an admirably restrained way, there is mainly that voice, and the question, this time, is: is the voice going to put aside its performances, its Billie Holidayisms, which are a way to push back against the vulnerability of musical performance, in order to let us in? Yes, the reason why the storm comes to shore, and dashes to bits every hectare of resistance, is because she lets us in (I will try to sing it pure and easily), because she has a job with this composition, and the job is remedial repair of human apartness, and so she while she cannot go further than she goes, because there are limitations with this voice (she has make do with the vibrato, and with the little crevices and cracks in her instrument, because she will never be a gospel singer), and so it becomes a system of avowels, a system of proofs, of reparations, because of the singing, and that’s why the thing slays the listener, wracks his coast, and so let us now go back to the beginning again, and talk about the words.
You’re like a saint’s song to me, I’ll try to sing it pure and easily. You’re like a Mexican blue, so bright and clear and pale in the afternoon. Which means what? What is a saint’s song, and is it necessarily something both pure and easy? Let’s say that a saint’s song is one that has suffering as one of its features, one of its uppermost features; let’s say that a saint’s song, the one that Holland must sing now, the one involving reparations, has suffering as one of its features, and that in a saint’s song, the saint welcomes suffering, and welcomes the overcoming of suffering, and that is involved with reparations. And what then of that blue? The Mexican blue? I’m thinking of that pale blue of Mexican tiles, and what is so spectacular about that particular blue is that is has no aqua. The anodyne, self-loving, narcissistic American blue always has that aqua in it, but the Mexicans with their more restrained blue, know what suffering is, and know what loss is, and so before Holland is even to get into the specifics of the addressee in this love letter, we have the suffering of saints, and the heartache of our neighbor to the south, without any of that Club Med Caribbean blue, which is always about Margaritas and SPF15.
After which the addressee comes riding into the lyric on her bicycle. It’s no longer afternoon, now, night has fallen, and night when all the best love songs come to fruition, and here is the lover at night, and there are hydrangeas blooming, in moonlight, let’s imagine, which means that it is summer, and they are probably blue hydrangeas, not pink or white, because we are concerned here with the modalities of blue, and that means that there is a certain Ph balance to the alley in which Holland sees the addressee, because Ph determines the color of the hydrangea blossoms. What we further know is that the song “Mexican Blue” is dedicated to Samantha Parton, one of the members of the Be Good Tanyas, if in fact the Be Good Tanyas still exist, and that if the song is about friendship and love lost, love that the lyricist is attempting to repair, then it is natural that we might read into this dedication, and imagine that the song is about Sam Parton, though there is no real reason to go down this road, except for the sheer invention of interpretation, and because it is good to people a lyric with imagoes, phantastes, as the song itself does itself (There’s a mockingbird behind my house who is a magician of the highest degree), and who knows if they were lovers, and if Sam Parton is the lover invoked in this song, it doesn’t matter in the end, but it matters just that there is a lover, and that the lover, at least in the second half of the song is a woman, because what makes this song better than all the other love songs, is how comprehensive its apology, and how particular is its addressee; it’s not a general love song, a long song that means to describe all love, or to stand in for a love for the divine, as in the Gospel song, it’s about a particular person, and it lodges a particular apology, and so Sam Parton stands in for that person, until we know otherwise, and this addressee is wearing a corduroy jacket and riding a bike, and it’s probably one of those shitty three-speed bikes that no one will ever steal, and there’s a galloping dog beside the addressee, a mutt with a bandana, and that is enough to begin what is to come, this ballad of love and loss and a wish for reconciliation in the shape of a circle, an annular system (to use the David Foster Wallace formulation), and from the dog we go straight to a rhetorical approach that characterizes the middle of the song, which is to say the throwaway lines flanked by the heart-wrenching lines, and so we have When I was hungry you fed me/I don’t mean to suggest that I’m like Jesus Christ/Your light overwhelmed me/When I lay beside you sleepless in the night. If the second line of this quatrain were not here, the verse would not stick, even though I don’t mean to suggest that I’m like Jesus Christ is a classic Holland trope, the don’t-take-it-all-too-seriously-thing, though in fact all is serious here, all is as serious as it could possibly be, which is to say as serious as high art, as serious, to me, as Shelley, or Keats, and thus, the quatrain that follows, to which I alluded, the moment in which the piano ballad gives way to the band: And when you dreamed my guardian spirits appeared/And the moon stretched out across your little bed/They said they’d started to get worried about me/They were happy we had finally met/We had finally met. Which in turn suggests that Holland believes that she was a figment in the addressee’s dream, or that love itself is a figment of the dreamer’s dream, made even more poignant by the fact of Holland’s insomnia, and the smallness of the bed, and the smallness of the bed insures, for this exegete, the idea that the addressee is a woman throughout the song, because it is only women who will content themselves with the small bed, with the foam twin lofted high up on telephone books, with every possible possession mounded around the bed, and three more pillows than are humanly necessary, this is where love and sleeplessness take place and this is where the drums and the electric guitar come in.
The middle section of the song, which I will now quote in its entirety because to do less would be disservice (A mysterious bird flies away/Seemed to be calling your name/And bounced off the top of a towering pine/And vanished in the drizzling rain/
There’s a mockingbird behind my house/Who is a magician of the highest degree
And I swear I heard him rip the world apart/And sew it back again with his fiery melody, melody), is the most symbolically potent portion of the composition, is perhaps the content of the dream of the semi-sleep of Holland, the insomniac lover, as she dozes in the little bed, or is perhaps her idea of the dreams of her lover, and the birds here are classical birds, birds as auguries, the future foretold in the flight of birds, and initially this bird is mysterious, and because I have already used mysterious to describe Holland herself, perhaps this bird is Holland, as indeed all figments in dreams are the self, lets say that this is Holland, Holland falling out of the bed of her lover, Holland falling out of the Be Good Tanyas, falling away from her friendship with Parton, who is then herself the mockingbird of the second half, the magician of the highest degree, and what does it mean to be so accomplished in the black arts; well, one thing we confidently assert in the context of song is that the highest of all arts, in the dream of “Mexican Blue,” is that music itself is the highest of arts, and so the mockingbird, with its thousand voices, is a musician of the highest degree, who can rip the world apart, as Jesus Christ (to use the thrown away invocation of the first verse), is said to have done at the moment of his ascension, sewing it back together with his fiery melody, I can’t put into words how beautiful I think this section of the song is, especially the performance, the vocal, it’s just as beautiful as anything I have ever heard, and it is right before Holland gets into the meat of her apology, but before she does so, she offers this dream, and says, in effect, that the dream of music is the one thing that can sew up our disaffiliations, this song, and when she says and what she’s saying is that the best songs are the night songs, the love songs of the night, and whereas she runs out of breath at the end of the prior verse, when she sings we had finally met, it’s out of sadness, perhaps, but on this verse she seems to understand how she is saying the thing that needs to be said in the richest way, the most artful way, so that when she says I swear I heard him rip the world apart and sew it back again with his fiery melody, and the drummer does one of his very few rolls, it is because this is the first true way to say what has to be said, which is also what comes next, in it’s most direct form: When you were mad at me I didn’t care/And I just loved you all the same/And I waited for the wind to push the hurricane/Out to sea, and the sun could shine again.
What was the crime committed? Oh come on, you have done so many horrible things, and I have done so many horrible things. Sometimes it’s amazing to me that I can get up and walk to the door, face the day, there is so much to be remorseful for, and I would argue, in the context of “Mexican Blue,” that one can only continue to perform in a daily way because one is so good at forgetting, because humankind is the forgetting animal, because otherwise it would all be impossible, just even going to buy a bag of pretzels at the corner market would be impossible, because of all the horrors committed in this life, just the horrors of recent weeks are enough to put one to bed for months, and yet there is something we can do for one another, we can forgive one another, and we can lodge our apologies in the hope of this forgiveness, and when Holland says I waited for the wind to push the hurricane out to sea, she is doing just this, she is apologizing and living in the hope of forgiveness, and what more loving thing can one broken and underperforming individual do for another but offer this gift of forgiveness? In the subsequent lines she twice repeats the line Everything is so much better when you’re around, and it could be a specific person of course, the specific addressee, but it could also be a reiteration of the importance of community, and in this verse Holland departs from the melody and moves up some in her range, a third or a fourth, in order to sing the lines Just don’t float so high you drift away/Stand tall, with your feet on the ground/I love your songs, I love your sound/Everything is so much better when you’re around. And this is usually the spot in hearing “Mexican Blue” when I am helpless before it, and it’s because I can’t believe how generous the song is, and how loving, and how clearly it is attempting to say things in the context of the song that Holland could not say to the addressee before, in plain, unvarnished words, and you can imagine that perhaps it took weeks to sing these lines, and to sing them with the right emphasis, which is to say the selflessness required, in order to say This is my gift, I’m giving you this song, at which point the song goes back into the symbolic realm of opals and amethysts, and back into the bed: I’ll remember all your dreams and the mysteries/You have borne in your crystalline soul/That you sing from your golden throat/That you shine from your sparkling eyes/That you feel from the goddess in your thighs.
Was it just an argument, or a series of disagreements between people who cared about one another? Or was it something else that failed between them? Were they lovers once, who found themselves in some intimate engagement that they weren’t ready for? What we know for certain is that the lovers of the past carry away a hunk of us, some gristle or sinew, when they depart in their misery and disconsolation, and if we can repair the loss we are restored, somehow, to a somewhat more perfect wholeness otherwise unrecaptured, and so there’s a reason to do it, to go through the extremely demanding reunion, the slightly shameful and humbling reunion, with all the pain attendant thereupon, and “Mexican Blue” does this, it carries us back to the lost person and brings about the uncomfortable repair, and when it returns to its beginning, when it repeats the first verse at the end, it is, as I’ve said circular, feminine, annular, and in the process it asserts the necessity of returning to this place of apology, because the job is never done, and the addressee is always in danger of running off again, or there is some other addressee, and we are ever readying ourselves to speak anew the truth of love and loss, even if we don’t want to, and recoil from it, and this is why “Mexican Blue” is the best song of the millennium, because it speaks this unpalatable truth, and in this unpalatable truth the individual is not larger than life, the performer is just another fuckup, the individual is more modest than we would prefer for our heroes to be, and so the truth is unpalatable and involves deflation, so it seems to this exegete, and I admire this kind of truth a great deal, and I admire the kind of artist who collects these notions (and it looks like she did it again, by the way, on “Mexico City,” from The Living and the Dead), and all the cultural flotsam in the world is opposed to this kind of thing, and that’s part of why this kind of thing is so important.
Here’s a more direct way of saying it: I wish someone cared enough about me to write a song like this about me. A song with this much thoughtfulness and generosity. It really is the rarest of things.
29 responses
Nobody writes about music better than Rick Moody. For reals.
Seconded. Thirded. Seventhed. Majored and minored.
You might be surprised to discover that song about you has already been written, just as others might be surprised to discover you have written about them. And it doesn’t even need to always be an apology. Sometimes we write just to honor the memory of how things were before we messed them all up. . . but I agree that writers can’t hold a candle to musicians. Shelley knew that too, and how.
Ten years to write, and how many to live?
Also think that visual art shares some of the intensity and purity of music as expression…the physicality, maybe
I think it’s a measure of how little intuitive feeling I have for the Internet, generally speaking, that I really thought this would be the piece I have written that would generate the most comments, because people would want, on the most basic level, to offer other possibilities for best song of the millennium. I think I am just really stupid about this sort of thing. I am glad, however, that people are liking the piece. I suppose I think it is among the best of the series so far, whatever that means.
What’s even more compelling than choosing the best song are the other questions you raise: how and why we fail the people we love, or even the strangers we see on the street or at the grocery store. How we live with our own failures or those of the people we love the most. The longing for redemption, forgiveness, comfort. The yearning to be loved. Humans are woefully adept at forgetting, but even more tragic is our ability to rationalize or deny our own darkness.
Well, but I always raise questions like that. And I am used to those questions largely unremarked upon.
Hello! Overwhelming and lovely and amazing, your article about my song. I’m here with my piano and my AC unit and my collections of feathers in Brooklyn, NY. It is hot as a mf, and I’ve decided I’m not going out again till it cools off. I just wanted to say thank you, and I wanted to justify myself by saying I am a better guitarist than the way I play publicly, because I have been too shy to play more guitar on stage. That is, until I fell in love with Michael Hurley, whose playing is making me feel slightly braver. And the 4 repeating chords (there is one spot where they deviate slightly in the song) were truly a pain in the ass for my ego, because musicians must struggle constantly to overthrow the burden of complexity versus feeling. I don’t normally write songs like that. I thought Mexican Blue was such a simply constructed song that I would never record it, but I did on the urging of many friends, and you like it, which justifies the expense and trouble and heartache of putting it out.
It is really unbelievable, the level of expertise expected of musicians these days–in the old days one would be respected just as a songwriter, or a singer, now you’re expected to be all those things, and an instrumentalist and to not mind having your picture taken, and to be able to suffer the fools of the press and the music business in general.
There were a lot of private jokes in the song that don’t relate to Samantha–the bird calling the name is a story from an alcoholic friend of ours, Matt, who, in certain stupors, would think that the crows were calling out his name. The mockingbird reverie long pre-dated meeting Sam. And that was an honest vision. And then the line about ‘when I was hungry, you fed me’ was, maybe you don’t know, a biblical reference. (I was raised with a Bible half-way down my throat, and the dark, Southern-gothic reminder that in the old testament days, parents had the right to kill their disobedient children.) There was nothing romantic between Sam and I, by the way. The voice of the song is just broadly hallucinatory.
And as Alice Miller would say, we all get our deepest need to prove things to ourselves or our dear ones that we’re projecting on, from, you know, the depths of childhood. In my case, being raised by violent, hurt, nutty Christians with addiction problems and no empathy gave me a real basic sense of needing to apologize to the world for various reasons, the most compelling of which was simply being alive. I know its a real visceral pain, the need to atone, but I think its ephemeral, and can be uprooted and pulled out of the depths of one’s soul by awareness, by Love (which was missing in my 1st experience of people.) Timothy Freeman, “my fake dad,” as I like to call him, who has much more positively effected my life than has my biological father, is a Dr. of Divinity from Harvard, and his mother was a Christian mystic. In my mind’s ear I can hear him say, with his thick Texas accent “Jesus Christ didn’t die for your sins, that’s a crock of shit!”
Very Best Wishes to You
Jolie
Jolie–both in song and in comment–reminds me of the late, great Mark Linkous, plagued as in a Flannery O’Connor story by a swarm of painbirds.
On a different planet, “Imagine Dead John Lennon” by Times New Viking has ruled the airwaves for some time. Nothing against your selection, though this kind of folkrock blends together into taupe aural wallpaper in which Jolie Holland is indistinguishable from Sam Phillips from Kelly Willis and Patty Griffin. Pleasant and decorative. I guess if you have a crush on the singer the rhymes may seem profound.
The great danger of rock criticism has always been that it’s so much easier to dwell on the lyrics at the expense of the kinaesthetic power of the repetitive beat and attendant noise. The discordant power of “I Heard Her Call My Name,” “Sister Ray,” Joy Division, Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, Sonic Youth or even the most powerful songs of such a band as REM — it’s reductive to try to explain any of this, which represents the form as its exemplar, in rational terms. The power of such music is irrational, even when we are presented with a ballad such as “Here She Comes Now” or “Can’t Get Next to You Babe” by Al Green. The lyrics may be great. At the same time they don’t matter.
I waited a little to reply to Jolie Holland’s note, because I am so honored by it, and because I wanted to think about it–the letter is so complex, as Alex rightly points out above. I guess I will say that I am chastened by my remark about “rudimentary” guitar skills, because I did listen to ESCONDIDA yesterday, in that way that one will double back on an essay and start to rethink it almost immediately upon its being published, and the guitar parts, it’s true, are really great more than occasionally. There’s a sort of Rev. Gary Davis blues weirdness quality to some of them. So I apologize for that, and it’s probably the pot calling the kettle black, because actually my own guitar skills are especially rudimentary, and often mixed down on recordings to conceal their rudiments. Though I would also add that coming from a punk rock place, which was the place my own teenage years, rudimentary guitar skills can sometimes be astonishingly persuasive (and I’m thinking for example of Lou Reed on THE BLUE MASK, when he solo’d for the first time in ten years, with great grace and confidence), so even though I am apologetic, it doesn’t mean that “rudimentary” was pejorative in my essay. Rudimentary is often extremely good, as on “Let It Be,” by the pianistically challenged McCartney, or on “Imagine,” by the at-the-height-of-his-powers John Lennon. Rudimentary gives us easy access to the virtues of some songs, and I imagine that is the case here.
The Holland letter gets profound, sort of the in the way the song does, too, as it moves on, into the theological meaning of apology, and roots apology in trauma (thus the Alice Miller reference, and for those who don’t know her work, the important book is THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD), rather than in an urgent need for reparation and union, which seems to me really human. Maybe I am the one finding more theology in the song than is there, although it is Holland in her letter who invokes the scriptural roots of “When I was hungry you fed me,” which has a carnal level in the song, admixed with its more eucharistic manifest content.
All of this is to say that I loved the letter, as I love the song, and the letter is slippery, like the song is slippery, especially when the letter says “The voice of the song is just broadly hallucinatory.” I really like the way “just” and “broadly” are both affirmational and somewhat contradictory, which I guess is what a more informed (now) reading of the song will bring you–how many layers there are here. That Holland took the time (in the middle of the heat, which is likewise afflicting me) to clarify and, in the midst of clarifying, to invoke some primal obsessions, and to murkify the lyrics even a little more, moves me a great deal, and I am grateful.
I. Fontana, on the other hand, didn’t bother to read into the archive and learn that I have devoted lines upon lines upon lines upon lines to repetitive instrumental music. The note s/he includes smacks of genre prejudice to me, or contempt prior to investigation, and I am always most chagrined with myself when I indulge in that sweet-tasting beverage. It’s sort of the Kahlua and milk of criticism. Which is why I intend to listen to the new Arcade Fire album all the way through, so that I will have a lot of ammunition should I need it. What makes good criticism (assuming I am capable of it, which is not necessarily a valid assumption) good criticism is that it tries to move the form forward. Doing less, writing abbreviated takedowns of genres without thinking through the broadbrush approach, maybe newsworthy or beguiling, but it doesn’t really do anyone any good.
That should be “may be newsworthy,” among other egregious typos above, and apologies for the fact that I can’t get the reply box to paragraph properly.
Music is like acupuncture–the exact same treatment, the exact same songs, even the exact same recording will move people, even the same people at different times, in very different ways. If someone is unmoved, its none of my business–I don’t mind, I don’t care.
‘Genre’ is an incredibly uninteresting concept to me. I like thinking about where rhythms come from, the real roots of where things generate. I like thinking about how some rhythms in Haitian Voudoun are African, and some are American. The gods that smoke tobacco like to dance to their own, native beats. The gods that like yams want to know that the people they visit remember their own dances from the motherland. I like thinking about how the Texas 2-step has its roots in Africa, and how the shuffle comes out of Native American round dance beats, how the drum kit is an amalgam of Middle Eastern, Asian, African and American elements. Talking about how something is ‘jazz’ or ‘folk’ is such a literally superficial, uncentered, sloppy angle of analysis. Ellington didn’t use the word ‘jazz’ after 1928.
On another note, I’m listening to a lot of 70s and early 80s Jamaican music right now. I really like the way they handle Biblical references. It even gets sleazy in a fabulous way–talking about “the stone that the builder refused” turns into “baby, don’t refuse me”–its fucking hot, really.
Jolie, what seventies Jamaican stuff, exactly? That was a period when I heard a lot that music, because it was around, and both hippies and punks liked it, so first I heard the obvious stuff (Marley, Tosh, Toots and Maytals), and then the much more intense stuff (LKJ, and Lee “Scratch” Perry), but maybe you are listening to stuff BEFORE all that. I like the argument about genre, and it has been a theme for me when discussing literature (that language precedes genre, and genre is only a useful discussion in the context of bookstores–because you need some way to shelve the books), but I suppose I have not taken it as far in music. It is worth taking it further in music.
True about Ellington? Very interesting. A lot of Ellington gets played at this address. All my daughter’s seminal early music experiences (she’s 16 months now) were Ellingtonian, along with a little Aretha, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Herb Alpert, Sonny Rollings, etc.
holy shit, i just read the first two sentences, and i have to comment. Mexican Blue is the most amazing song ever written, Paul Simon’s Graceland album notwithstanding. i love Jolie. Mexico City is also pretty great, and Stubborn Beast. . . okay, i could go on and on, but yeah. Mexican Blue can definitely stand the test of the next 990 years. gonna go actually read the article now.
aaand, i’m done. boy, you weren’t kidding. nice explication, professor. and how amazing to read jolie’s responses. gorgeous, just like her songs. such an incredible conversation! so excited i got to listen in.
Rick! Thanking you for the sweet mending job you did! I am very grateful! The whole story is very funny, but not for public forum–I’d love to tell you someday.
Jamaica! Dub, Rock Steady, Roots, etc. I’ve been having so much fun listening to this music with my bandmate Grey Gersten lately. GG spent a lot of time in Jamaica as a young person, and he’s got a pretty deep understanding of it, not to mention an excellent collection of vinyl. King Tubby, Lee Scratch Perry, Joe Gibbs– incredibly creative producers. Perry’s own record “Roast Fish, Collie Weed and Cornbread,” and the two he produced of other bands–Junior Mervin with “Police and Theives” and the Congos’ “Heart of the Congos.” Beautiful work. The Heart of the Congos might have taken over the world, its such a great album, but it was long unreleased due to Island Records being unable to work with Lee Perry, whose sanity had been in question for a long time. Incredible instrumentalists Jackie Mitoo (organ), Augustus Pablo (melodica) and Ernest Ranglin (guitarist.) Mr. Ranglin is one of the sweetest guitar players I have ever heard. GG and I have an ongoing job trying to educate a friend of ours about feeling in music. Grey presented Ernest Ranglin to him as part of a definition of ‘flow’ in music. Desmond Dekker–mind-blowing singer. Studio One, a powerhouse of production, and amazing players. Keith Hudson–great songs. Alton Ellis, his sister Hortense Ellis. Jackie Opel is great. His drummer and horn players are completely amazing–check out his track “Sometimes I Wonder.” Ken Boothe. The Love Joys–“I know that Jah light is shining over me.” The Mellotones are pretty mind-blowing–“fat girl in red, I’m going crazy for you, fat girl in red–you are so sturdy, and what a personality–lalalalalalalalalala” Pat Kelly rocks. Prince Buster. And a bunch of other great stuff Grey’s played from people whose names I can’t remember.
Desmond Dekker is totally sublime, and I really loved that period of his work on Stiff Records in the seventies, when he went from sounding totally Jamaican to sounding totally punk for a brief moment. In fact, for me that was the way into a lot of that earlier reggae. I guess “Police and Thieves” is the same for me: I came to it through the Clash cover. But it sure is an amazing song. I like the lyrics a lot too. I don’t know the Congos, tho, and shall look into it. The Lee Scratch Perry remixes of Linton Kwesi Johnson are really great too.
You probably know Tony Maimone b/c I know you recorded at Studio G (where we once made a record too), and so you have probably heard him extoll the virtues of Dancehall stuff too. My wife got really into it about the time Tony was telling me about it. I find the overreliance of contemporary Jamaican dance music on drum machines depressing, and the suppression of melody, but I also find the overall sound and mood of those records surprising and kind of unique. I don’t know how they got from 2s and 4s and dub to synth and drum machines, but I guess that is true of the rest of the musical world too. How did we get from Nirvana and Soundgarden and Mudhoney to Ke$$ha, et al? Or how did we get from Sugarhill Gang to Fifty Cent?
Sugarhill Gang to 50Cent…the horns and other dance-ables (i.e. Chic samples) went away.
Bring back the Crown Heights Affair!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urIj5e99RzM
Rick, you’re right, I was talking without knowing who you really are and I was — it’s hard to admit I was a fool — but I was certainly in some respects foolish. The conversation about “Metal Machine Music” casts you in a different light. Of course my advocacy of “Imagine Dead John Lennon” is partly a joke, no matter how much I’ve actually enjoyed it again and again.
Lou Reed’s version of MMM, by the way, may be best enjoyed as vinyl, played at 16.
Happy fireworks,
IF
The following gives some idea of where my aesthetic may leap in: http://sporkpress.com/weeklies/prose/archives/00000066.htm
Rick,
You should also check out Nancy McCallion’s work, both with The Mollys and on her own. Hers is a unique, often mesmerizing, blend of country, Norteno (Northern Mexican) and Irish folk music. As for the best song of the new millenium, I wouldn’t even want to guess. Which genre? What criteria?
Regards,
John
P. S. I strongly endorse Stephen Elliott’s opening comments to this thread.
P. P. S. One of the most devoted local disciples of Duke Ellington’s music is none other than an old high school friend, swing jazz band leader George Gee. Unfortunately I don’t have time to hear him or his great bands perform as often as I should, but I strongly recommend anyone who is interested to look at his website, http://www.georgegee.com, to see when his next gig is (though will note that he has a residency each week at Swing 46, where, I believe, he is still its music director).
Rick,
I’d have to be made of stone not to be moved by your amazing response to the Jolie Holland track, then by the wonderful back-and-forth communication between you. What generosity of spirit, really on both sides. And in Holland’s messages I’m astonished yet again by the depth of knowledge, of musical experience, had by thoughtful musicians — it’s always breathtaking, all that knowledge. On the strength of your piece I bought and/or downloaded a bunch of Holland’s CDs, and the music is really satisfying, rewarding, lovely. I wonder if you know Sally Ellyson and Hem: Ellyson’s voice has some thing in common with Holland’s, I think. But you are almost certainly already familiar with Rabbit Songs.
Peter, it’s true, I know and admire Hem a great deal, especially that first album. The arrangements are so spectacular. It’s probably not a surprise to people who have been reading these posts that I would like music that’s arranged as lucidly as those Hem songs are, but that’s not all there is to be said on that subject. I too really like Ellyson’s voice. It takes me somewhere.
Thanks so much for reading all this, and, more, for listening to Holland’s work. I assume you are the Peter S. I already know, and so: it’s good to hear your voice. I hope all is going well. If not, then now we do know each other.
I love the essay, Rick. The song has gotten me through some dark times – as you say, knowing that someone ‘cares enough’ about you to write a song is a very rare kind of balm to the spirit. I don’t take it lightly.
I read the essay, and I read Jolie’s comment (hi Jolie), and I found myself wishing there had been no explanation on Jolie’s part – the mystery of the song’s meaning is one of the things that keeps me enraptured – it’s remained open to various impressions and interpretations, depending on what’s going on in my life – like any good medicine, it works its magic in a sort of healing partnership with one’s own subtle, shifting, mysterious vibrations…
That said – the dream about Jolie’s guardian spirits – they really did appear, and they really did tell me they were happy we had finally met.
I love you, Jolie –
Thanks for the great essay, Rick.
Sam
Well, I would be regretful ten years from now if I didn’t say what an amazing and gratifying note this is from Sam, and I thank her for it. I think the comments on this post have been the very best comments I’ve had on The Rumpus, and I am grateful for them, and very, very humbled.
I kind of want to answer the line in which Samantha says “I found myself wishing there had been no explanation.”
I suppose, in a way, I know exactly what she means. In general, with books, movies, music, these days, I find that my interaction with the product (for lack of a better word) is sometimes inhibited by biographical material, or by the author’s explanation of her intention. Leonard Cohen is a good example of this. I really worship the first three Leonard Cohen albums (less so later on), and I know someone who was at an ashram with Cohen, etc. etc. We all know where this story goes. I confess I don’t want to know this about Leonard Cohen (whatever it is), and I don’t want Leonard Cohen messing with my understanding of Leonard Cohen, or with the fiction of Leonard Cohen. I am glad that it is impossible, really, to know anything about Bob Dylan. And my interview with a certain important songwriter of the early seventies, a couple of years ago, ruined my teenage love of the songwriter. He seems like an asshole to me now, even in some of those great compositions.
Sam knows a lot more about this song, and has a lot more at stake in this song, than I do, and therefore for her there’s a lot more to be skewed by hearing Jolie talk about it. All I have is my interpretation. I will say for myself that I found Jolie’s letters here as mystifying (in the excellent sense of the word) as they were explicatory, as sad and illuminated but as resistant to total straightforwardness as the song, and, for me, this is a quality I much admire. I like that her letters do not proceed with total linear clarity, but have a more poetical intent. So while I totally agree with the spirit of Sam’s note, I suppose I didn’t experience this sudden rogue appearance of the of the auteur as a downer, but as some parallel artifact that somehow moved me nearly as powerfully as the song has so often done.
Meanwhile, I must say: I sort of envy Samantha Parton, still, that she gets to have part ownership of this piece of art, and even more now that she owns up to her partial ownership.
I am the Peter S. you know, Rick, and it’s nice to know that you care for that first Hem CD, too. (Of course, I’m also truly pleased by the title of this ongoing blob, which refers to a nice old Shelley Manne record on Contemporary: though Shelley Manne could call a record Swinging Modern Sounds without a hint of irony.) This series of comments and your responses has sort of amplified the original essay, and itb was already one of most striking and beautiful meditations on music I’ve ever read. Oh!: and all is going pretty well, yes.
SAM and JOLIE.On the subject of song of the millenium,for me its The Be Good Tanyas take on The Lakes of Pontchartrain. It simply fits me like a glove,like no other song i’ve heard.The way 4 lots of strings and 3 voices work so busily together yet creating something so soft and perfect. I always crave the outdoors and nature and to me this song sounds like mother nature,going about her day with apparent effortless complexity producing something so perfect,so intricate, or is it so simple.I’d love to know how it felt for you to be playing it or to listen to it afterwards.
The Blue Horse felt like an album i’d waited 10 years to hear-i tend to find what i’m looking for-at least musically, a little quicker these days! I think discovering music is an ongoing journey.Growing up in England in the 80’s The Smiths and indie music pretty much started my journey and got me through the difficult teenage years but by the time i left school i craved something else,something more organic but with parents disinterested in music and my smiths contempories heading in more predictable musical directions i found myself at veterinary school in Glasgow having made the difficult decision to dedicate the largest chunk of my time to science rather than music and taking a very convoluted and not always pretty route indeed to the Be Good Tanyas and in particular Blue Horse. I went via the 10,000 maniacs to Dolly Parton! to nanci Griffiths,god knows how many Cowboy Junkies albums- so near yet so far. I finally stumbled across The BGTs on tv playing The Cambridge Folk Festival and immediately bought Blue Horse. I wasn’t far into that disc before i knew i’d found my pot of gold.
And so 10years of further musical journeying later-far less convoluted these days and i would still say its the album and in particular the song that fits my soul more snugly than any other.
How interesting to hear Jolie referencing all those fantastic Jamaican artists.I’ve been lucky enough to see Ernest Ranglin and Lee ‘scratch’ Perry a couple of times. Ernest Ranglin arrives through your ears,misses your brain and heads straight for the soul and then lets your soul move your body. Music thats easier to dance to than not to dance to.
I don’t know if the WOMAD festival makes it across the pond but its an annual world music festival in the UK that plays periodically round the world. Its just an excellent place to hear the best music the planet has to offer,a lot of African stuff.There may be a chinese nose flute being played on one stage and a flamenco guitar on another. You can be sure it will be the best nose flute player in china and one of the best flamenco guitarists in spain! Its a wonderful way to continue the musical journey. Ernest Ranglin and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry have both played there as have toots and the maytalls,Jimmy Cliff to name but a few.
The journeying always takes me back at times to Blue Horse by the Be Good Tanyas. It would be wonderful to think i could get the chance to thank Sam and Jolie for that. You are extraordinary women i’m sure.
Seeing the BGTs at Bristol Colston Hall a few years ago was a real life highlight. I didn’t quite realise the details of the history of the personnel of the band so feel like a bit of an idiot now shouting for The Lakes of Pontchartrain on more than one occasion. Sam you were wonderful and mentioned something about Jolie not being around which was when i did a little bit of internet snoopery and came across Jolie’s albums and was also particularly drawn to Mexican Blue. It was curiosity about that and its dedication to Sam that brought me to your site Rick and how fantastic to see Sam and Jolie’s footprints here too and perhaps to have the chance to thank them for the song of- i wont say millenium because i’m not even sure which side of the turn of the millenium The Lakes of Pontchartrain was recorded,so i’ll call it the song of my life. Thank You.
What a magical record. It doesn’t matter how log does it take to make it…coz the final “art” is the most important
…and that is a masterpiece:)
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