.:Colter:.

Springtime

Nifty.

I had known about Jeff Buckley since 1997 when I met him at my college’s annual spring concert. The weather was unseasonably cold and Jeff had been prevailed upon by some friends of mine to come to Conway from Memphis where he was working on the followup to his now-classic album, Grace. I wish I could remember the occasion better, but at the time I was busy working as stage crew. I remember the guy had a unique voice, but that’s about it. A few months later I read that he had drowned.

It wasn’t until a few years later that I even picked up a copy of Grace, and then everything else. I won’t go on about the talent we lost in Jeff, or the incredible influence he’s had on just about every rock vocalist since about 1999. I’ll just say that while I very much enjoyed his work, it wasn’t until the two-disc Live At Sin-é legacy edition was released in 2003 that I realized just what we had in Jeff. His a cappella version of Nina Simone’s “Be My Husband,” in which he naturally adjusts the possessive adjectives to “Be Your Husband,” sets the tone: you hear the patrons of the cafe chattering and clinking their glasses as Jeff sets up and starts stomping and clapping. By two minutes in, the place is dead quiet as Jeff calls forth the ghosts of Parchman Farm, conjuring spirits to be his backing vocalists. What he did, I was not previously aware humans could do.

His chops as a soul vocalist established, he opens disc two with a verbatim rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s “Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor Hai” and immediately you’re hit with the realization that this is not merely some white boy who knows his Memphis R&B. This is a musical traveler with bigger ears than anyone his age has any right to have. In between songs, he reveals himself further to be a complete dork, talking about the radio, Nusrat, beverages, poking fun at CBGBs, and whatever else pops into his head. In doing so, he shows his allegiance to the ranks of The Uncool by admitting to a variety of enthusiasms, thus shearing him of any facade of Cool (because cool people, as everyone knows, are perpetually bored). He becomes no longer the packaged product of a record label, hair perfectly mussed and guitar slung low[1]. He’s just Jeff, the guy for whom Nusrat is Elvis, a guy with boundless potential whose artistic voice is still under construction. It’s one of the only times on a record that I’ve ever felt like I was getting to know a real person.

>> Download Be Your Husband (Live) or Live At Sin-é (Legacy Edition) at amazon.com.

As a small tribute to Jeff and to this song, I hastily assembled this video a few years ago using public domain footage from archive.org. I hadn’t looked at it in awhile; it’s got 44,000 views. Neato.

1.) 10 years passed between the EP version and the two-disc legacy edition, which makes me wonder if this sort of thing could only have been released posthumously, when Columbia Records had less of an investment in the persona of “Jeff Buckley.”

Sometimes a song arrives in your life at an important moment and is forever elevated in your mind by the association. These are the soundtrack songs, playing underneath the movies we like to pretend our lives are. Very often we come back to those songs years later and realize they’re as immature and embarrassing as we were at the time. Only rarely does a song live up to its moment in time and still withstand scrutiny years on as something that not only witnessed our growth but perhaps even contributed to it.

This is one of those songs.

Somewhere I heard the story that Deb Talan and Steve Tannen were each singer-songwriters who were fans of each other’s before they met. When they did meet, they began playing together and eventually married. It’s the story every musician would die to have come true. So it’s an impressive feat, then, that The Weepies can still write some deeply sad songs.

“World Spins Madly On” was my soundtrack song for the first few months of my New York residency. I had just started a job at an ad agency that had provided me with more stress than I’ve ever experienced. Adapting to life in a large ad agency in a massive city, living in a shoebox apartment, working from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on an impossible project…I just felt empty inside. I felt the hope of something new, the anxiety of the unknown, and the fear of failure. This song regularly accompanied me from the subway at 14th street to Union Square to the office and back again. It functioned as a constant reminder that I was not alone in my particular suffering, and it hinted that my loneliness might even be so commonplace as to be unremarkable. The song never quite despairs; it sits suspended in judgment and in time, as the whole world keeps moving while I’m standing still. It remains a song that never wears out its welcome. It’s so good it doesn’t even need my emotional attachment to it to give it weight.

>> Download the song World Spins Madly On (Album Version) or the album Say I Am You at amazon.com.

In our first installment I talked about bands versus singer-songwriters. Here’s what a band brings to the table that I’ve rarely heard a singer-songwriter accomplish: every part of the song represents a uniquely creative musical idea. When I heard this drum part, I immediately wanted to sit down and learn it. Then I wanted to learn the intertwined guitar parts, which are in the band’s own idiosyncratic tuning. And then the bassline. And the vocals. Everything about this song is f*cking magical.

In particular I enjoy the parts of the song where the lyrics are stretched so far apart in time that they’re hard to parse as a full sentence and are processed primarily as just chunks of words. At the end they add up to the very conversational, almost stammering statement, “Not to be, overly dramatic, I just think it’s best. Because you can’t miss what you forget. So let’s just pretend everything and anything between you and me was never meant.”

Alas, Chicago’s finest one-album wonder, America Football, is long gone. Its chief songwriter, Mike Kinsella makes his living as indie rock singer-songwriter Owen. More on him in another installment. The whole record is full of creatively composed arrangements and beautifully sad lyrics. I’ve read that they were mainly a studio project and not really a band, but man, when the tunes are this good, why make something this good only once?

For the musicians, the song is a great puzzle to learn, for the non-musicians it’s a warmly sad breakup song. In my case, given the person who introduced me to the song and the relationship we had, it’s both.

>> Download Never Meant or the album
American Football from amazon.com.

Over the years I’ve noticed that I have a pool of songs that I always want people to hear when I make a mix disc. This continuing series will highlight these songs, provide me an excuse to write about music, and hopefully do what I love most: turn people on to new music.

This is the saddest song ever written. Not because of what has been done to the singer, but because of what the singer has done.

Sorry that
I could never love you back
I could never care enough
in these last days

I’ve spent an unfortunate portion of my life not dating people for fear of causing them pain. Certainly I’ve been dumped and it sucks, however it never sucks as much as breaking up with someone you like but with whom you know you are not in love. You feel like a monster. It is the worst emotion. The only thing that has made me feel worse is the time I shut a car door on an old lady’s arm at the grocery store where I worked in high school. This song captures hurt from the point of view of the inflicter – the pain, the sad resignation, the lingering affection…everything but the regret.

Sun Kil Moon is, of course, just Mark Kozelek. Whether he calls his group Red House Painters or Sun Kil Moon, he remains the master of melancholy. He makes Morrissey look like Norman Vincent Peale. Unlike Morrissey or Robert Smith, there’s no elaborate mask for him to hide behind. He’s just a regular guy, strong but quiet, not crotchety like Neil Young nor self-destructive like Kurt Cobain. Nor does he suffer from any of the requisite machismo of nearly every other rock musician. He’s actually kind of a blank canvas onto which those of us listeners who don’t identify with whiny English gits, emo screamers, whiskey-drunk balladeers or melodramatic dramaturgists can project ourselves. He vaunteth not himself, he is not puffed up.

>> Download the song Carry Me Ohio or the album Ghosts Of The Great Highway at amazon.com.

Over the years I’ve noticed that I have a pool of songs that I always want people to hear when I make a mix disc. This continuing series will highlight these songs, provide me an excuse to write about music, and hopefully do what I love most: turn people on to new music.

Otis Redding cannot be kept down. This is known. The man who Jon Cryer in Pretty in Pink introduced to the 80′s generation as That Guy Who Sings “Try a Little Tenderness” will not be restrained. And this song is Otis at his most unhinged. The man who made “got ta” an interjection can be found on this cut attacking the microphone with the kind of relentless joyous fervor usually reserved for Viking berserkers or lumberjack competitions. If you’re wearing headphones you can actually hear him moving his head back and forth from the mic. You can hear the spit.

At the 1:00 mark comes the trademark Otis scat. From the “dom dom” of Otis’s “Happy Song” to the “fa fa” of “Sad Song,” Otis loved to go off book. “Changed Man” gives us a series of “ya ya’s” to which Otis is so thoroughly committed you wonder if he’s speaking in tongues or transmitting a code.

I couldn’t find this song on YouTube, so at grave personal risk from the lawyers at Atlantic Records, I’m giving you a free mp3 of this song. Please consider buying I’m A Changed Man from Amazon.com.

Over the years I’ve noticed that I have a pool of songs that I always want people to hear when I make a mix disc. This continuing series will highlight these songs, provide me an excuse to write about music, and hopefully do what I love most: turn people on to new music.

Let’s get this out of the way: Django Reinhardt was the greatest guitarist of the 20th century. Done.

I’ll admit that as a young firebreathing guitar monkey I was not impressed by 1.) jazz and 2.) old recordings. So my slow immersion into the hot tub de France that is Django took a few years. I could hear the guitar gymnastics, but the rhythms were always so…polite. There’s not even a drummer! Just that same boring quarter note rhythm. Ugh.

Then I heard this song. For those not impressed by guitar histrionics, wait out the intro guitar solo. Skip ahead to 1:05 when vocalist Freddy Taylor comes in. Her sweet, possibly drunken voice glides over everything, smoothing out the sharp edges of the martial guitar beat. When she starts scatting, either for fun or because she doesn’t know the words, the landing gear goes up.

Having listened to this song hundreds of times, I still never tire of it, and it helps me approach the rest of Django’s catalog from a better point of reference. It’s not one of his better-known tunes, but I have heard it pop up in a couple of movies, so at least I know my tastes in gypsy jazz align with those of Hollywood sound editors.

Over the years I’ve noticed that I have a pool of songs that I always want people to hear when I make a mix disc. This continuing series will highlight these songs, provide me an excuse to write about music, and hopefully do what I love most: turn people on to new music.

I’ll admit it. I’m not generally a fan of singer-songwriters. A friend of mine once complained that a boyfriend of hers once entirely dismissed Aimee Mann as “just a singer-songwriter,” as though writing and singing songs is never quite enough. Honestly, for most guys into hard-rocking music, there are some limitations of timbre when it comes to singer-songwriters compared to full bands. As band leaders, singer-songwriters are less inclined to let their employees in the band contribute creatively with a wicked drum fill or guitar part.

Furthermore, far too many singer-songwriters take words that aren’t quite poetry and marry them to generic chord progressions, the combination of which often makes for an okay song. A kind melody forgives a poor lyric. Despite my degree in English, I listen to words last. My primary interest is music that is compositionally intelligent, melodic, and rhythmically interesting. This formula doesn’t leave much room for the Bob Dylans of the world[1].

So when I tell you that David Mead is my favorite singer-songwriter, I hope you understand what that means.

I’m not even sure what it is exactly. It’s some mystical combination of a great voice – sweet but tired, terrific chords, timbres, melodies and yes, lyrics. The inaugural song of this feature is his “Wherever You Are” from his 2005 album of the same name. My favorite line leads into the chorus: “fairy princess / feathers and dried up tar / come back, wherever you are / accidents will happen.”

Take away the lyrics and you’ve still got a beautiful composition that stands on its own as an instrumental. That’s all I ask of a song.

>> Download the song Wherever You Are or the album Wherever You Are at Amazon.com.

1.) Of course I like Bob. How can you not? But I think of him more as a great writer who plays harmonica.