Oh my love, oh my Antonia

20 09 2009

How could I have left Emmylou Harris off my initial list of duets? Especially since she’s collaborated with so many different singers?

My Antonia is a song she did with Dave Matthews, from her album Red Dirt Girl. I’m not a big Dave Matthews fan, but his gritty tenor binds beautifully with Emmylou’s high alto.

Hm. I wonder what Emmylou would sound like with Eddie Vedder.

Or Emmylou and Bill Withers.

For a completely different sound, would Jello Biafra have deigned to sing with the Violent Femmes?

(Ohp, another thought: Emmylou and Sammy Llanas of the BoDeans. Sorry: Milwaukee on my mind.)

And, of course: Courtney Love and the Sex Pistols. Absolutely—if they didn’t kill each other.

Nick Drake and Hem. Could be really good, or really awful.

Beth Orton and DJ Spooky. Please please please somebody produce this cd.

Lisa Gerrard and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Tricky and Robbie Robertson.

Tricky and Jane Birkin.

Exene Cervenka and John Doe. Oh, wait. . . .

EmilyH suggested Rick Astley and Nirvana. Dunno ’bout that one, Em. (May I call you Em?)

Then again, it would be hard to top Miss Piggy and Peaches, the profane Canadian artist—definitely NSFW, but totally worth any nasty looks from scandalized coworkers.


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Anything you can do, I can do better

12 09 2009

Who would you like to see together?

Don’t be perverted—not like that! No, more along the lines of Here are two people who I’d love to see do whatever it is they do, together.

I was watching  clip of k.d. lang singing a Leonard Cohen song, and thought, Man, I wonder what she’d sound like with Cassandra Wilson?

Two amazing vocalists and interpreters, together.

So, my first duet: k.d. lang and Cassandra Wilson

Then again, I’d long thought that it would be great to listen in as Hannah Arendt and Edward Said argued.

Thus, the first duel (albeit a friendly one): Arendt and Said.

Who else?

  • Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg
  • Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X
  • Arendt and Malcolm X
  • Malcolm X and Bernard Lazare
  • Janis Joplin and Cass Elliot
  • PJ Harvey and Patti Smith (definitely a duel)
  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Dawn Upshaw (Really. Have you heard her on Golijov’s Ayre? The woman can sing anything.)
  • Eddie Cochran and The Clash
  • Brett Favre (back in the day. . .) and Randy Moss
  • Martina Navratilova (back in the day. . .) and Serena Williams
  • k.d. lang and Lizz Wright
  • Kate Bush and Leonard Cohen (just for the hell of it)
  • Marvin Gaye and Joni Mitchell (hot and cool, together)

Who else?

I can’t be the only one who wastes her time thinking about this kind of thing. . . .


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Cat lady rocks!

13 04 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY


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She’s got a new spell

11 02 2009

It happened again. Again on the train (tho’ not at midnight): time-warp backwards.

This time it was a Sundays song, ‘Here’s where the story ends,’ and I flew back to high school, not college.

I didn’t listen to the Sundays in high school. I doubt I knew who the Sundays were. So the question is not Why was I pulled back, but why too far back?

Maybe because that song reminds me of a type of song, (post) new-wave (ish) Euro alterna-pop (got that?) that was a fixture of early MTV. The Sundays. Cocteau Twins. Berlin (mebbe). Nena (definitely). Kinda synth, kinda sad, kinda odd.

And then I remembered: the AFS students! AFS was the local student foreign exchange program, and SmallTown was very active—a center for the region—so AFS students stationed elsewhere would occasionally gather in SmallTown. I remember meeting one Danish girl, and was so impressed with her. She seemed very confident in herself and what she wanted, and while somewhat detached, was not unkind in her observations of the US in general or the state in particular. She seemed. . . sophisticated, mebbe? Worldly—definitely.

I wanted that worldliness. It was my last year of high school, and amidst all the general partying, what I wanted more than anything was to Get. Out. I wanted what was beyond, whatever was beyond. There had to be something more, right? Weren’t these students, with their different names and different languages and different lines of sight evidence that there was something Out There?

I’m sensing a theme. . . .


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Sing! Sing! Sing!

11 01 2009

I got sucked  into the speakers yesterday.

I don’t remember the song (something about heartbreak) and was surprised when Jonathan Schwartz credited Betty Buckley as the singer (it didn’t sound like her). But I was caught by all that she gave to the song—that’s what caught me. Yes, she has a lovely voice, but it was the. . . I don’t know, that sense that she scraped away herself and in so doing scraped away the skin of that sad and pretty melody to lay bare nerve and bone.

How could she do that? Where does that come from? When I was (way) younger I wanted nothing more than to sing, to be a singer. That didn’t happen. I have a competent voice—a ‘chorus’ voice—but my lack comes less from technical faults than the inability to inhabit the song with my voice. Oh, I might feel moved, but that feeling doesn’t come through. It’s posing.

Was Buckley posing? I’ll never know, but man, it doesn’t sound like it. Does Patti Smith sound like she’s posing? I remember when I first listened, really listened to Patti Smith—it wasn’t until grad school. Where the fuck was she when I was in high school?! Of course, I had Janis Joplin back then, but Janis was already dead, and Patti was, is, blazingly alive.

Neither Janis nor Patti has classically trained ‘great’ voices, but man, can they sing! Dive into that song and pull off all their clothes and dare us to dive in with them. This is it, they’re telling us. this is all a song can be. Can you follow? Are you brave enough to care?

In my responses to Ainadamar I noted my marvel at Dawn Upshaw and Kelley O’Connor’s passion. Did I mention it was almost as hard to witness as it was wondrous? I was embarrassed, fearful for them. Oh no, I thought, what are you doing? You’re so naked on that stage; you’ll be caught out, alone and exposed!

What could compel them to take such risks?

Perhaps it is because I ask such questions that I get in my own way. Do they see what they do as risky? Perhaps the danger is in not singing, in not throwing oneself into the music; perhaps it is only the embrace of the music which carries them. Perhaps the question is How could they not?

I don’t have it in me—the singing, I mean. Perhaps had I had the Voice (be it Joplin’s or Upshaw’s), I would have lain all other concerns aside to tend to that gift.

Or not. What do I do now with my modest talents? Tend to them, fitfully. Take them seriously, kind of; treat them warily. I protect them. I do not risk them. I do not risk              anything.


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Sing a song

4 12 2008

So I’ve used the same Poi Dog Pondering song for THREE posts. Yeesh. And I discovered this while checking to see if I used another title previously—which I had (neither post was published).

It’s not as if I don’t have enough song titles and lyrics to choose from. Yeah, ‘Sandra at the beach’ is explicitly about same sex love (‘no kinds of love are better than others’), but it’s not as if I require my posts and the titles or lyric bits to line up exactly. If I like a line, I use it—in this case, three times.

Gotta keep on top of things.

Shees.


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More songs (for an American girl)

16 10 2008

I was going to write about the debate or money or politics or Bedlam Farm but the mojo just whistled right out of me.

How ’bout some songs, instead? (Again, from a few years ago.)

SFAAG: Squinting out the window
Talking Heads: Once In A Lifetime
Gang of Four: We Live As We Dream Alone
PJ Harvey: A Place Called Home
Beck: Where It’s At
B-52s: 52 Girls
Kate Bush: Wow
Paul Simon: The Boy in the Bubble
Waterboys: The Whole of the Moon
John Cougar Mellencamp: Pink Houses
U2: New Year’s Day
X: 4th of July
Nancy Griffith: Time of Inconvenience
Emmylou Harris: Red Dirt Girl
Hem: leave me here
Giant Sand: The Beat Goes On
Peter Gabriel: We Do What We’re Told
Laurie Anderson: O Superman

SFAAG: Handcuffed to arms
Sinéad O’Connor: drink before the war
Elvis Costello: I’m Not Angry
Clash: London Calling
Gang of Four: At Home He’s a Tourist
Beck: Devil’s Haircut
B-52s: Private Idaho
Dead Kennedys: Holiday in Cambodia
Police: Miss Gradenko
Butthole Surfers: Pepper
Midnight Oil: Put Down that Weapon
PJ Harvey: This Mess We’re In
Belly: Full Moon, Empty Heart
Ani DiFranco: not a pretty girl
T-Bone Burnett: Humans From Earth
REM: Welcome to the Occupation
David Bowie: Young Americans
Sam Roberts: brother down
Aretha Franklin: Why I Sing the Blues
Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris: Falling Down
U2: Bullet the Blue Sky

Sleep tight.


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Young Americans

2 10 2008

I can’t stand it—having fleas headline my blog. So even tho’ it’s late and I don’t really have anything to say, I thought I’d offer the music list for some cds I made some years ago for my niece. (No, I don’t know if she ever actually listened to them.)

Anyway.

Songs For An American Girl:
Know Yer Pop! (I)
Marvin Gaye: I Heard It Through the Grapevine
John Lennon: Instant Karma
Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run
U2: Seconds
Talking Heads: Burning Down the House
Romeo Void: A Girl in Trouble
Lou Reed: Walk on the Wild Side
Police: Invisible Sun
Pretenders: Brass in Pocket
Midnight Oil: Beds Are Burning
Gang of Four: Call Me Up
Elvis Costello: (The Angels Wanna Wear My)
Red Shoes
David Bowie: Under Pressure
Beatles: With a Little Help from My Friends
John Cougar Mellencamp: Jack and Diane
Violent Femmes: blister in the sun
Sly & the Family Stone: Everyday People
Diana Ross & the Supremes: Reflections
10,000 Maniacs: Peace Train

Songs For An American Girl:
Know Yer Pop! (II)
Clash: This Is Radio Clash
BoDeans: Fadeaway
Eddie Cochran: Somethin’ Else
Jam: Town Called Malice
Belly: Feed the Tree
CCR: Bad Moon Rising
Patsy Cline: Walkin’ After Midnight
Five Stairsteps: Ooh Child
Pretenders: Stop Your Sobbing
REM: It’s the End of the World As We Know It
World Party: Way Down Now
Police: When the World is Running Down
Primitives: sick of it
Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
Kate Bush: Running Up That Hill
Blondie: Call Me
Replacements: Achin’ To Be
Garbage: Only Happy When It Rains
Joni Mitchell: Chelsea Morning
Nick Drake: Pink Moon
Bob Dylan: The Times They Are A-Changing

Songs for An American Girl:
Know Yer Pop! (III)
B-52’s: Love Shack
Van Morrison: Moondance
Temptations: Treat Here Like A Lady
Roy Orbison: Oh Pretty Woman
Sinéad O’Connor: nothing compares 2U
Elton John: Tiny Dancer
Cranberrries: Linger
Earth Wind & Fire: Got To Get You Into My
Life
Elvis Costello: Sneaky Feelings
Terence Trent D’Arby: Wishing Well
CCR: Susie Q
Macy Gray: Why Didn’t You Call Me?
Janis Joplin: Me and Bobby McGee
Wilson Pickett: Mustang Sally
Bruce Springsteen: Hungry Heart
Clash: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Patty Smith: because the night
Violent Femmes: add it up

Songs For An American Girl:
Know Yer Pop! (IV)
Feelies: Time For A Witness
Clash: Rock the Casbah
Dead Kennedys: California Über Alles
U2: The Refugee
Police: Message In A Bottle
REM: Radio Free Europe
Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On
Gang of Four: I Love A Man In A Uniform
Beck: Loser
Chambers Brothers: Time Has Come Today
Peter Gabriel: games without frontiers
David Bowie: Space Oddity
Otis Redding: (Sittin’ On)The Dock of the Bay
Pogues: Thousands Are Sailing
Michelle Shocked: (Making the Run to)
Gladewater
Mamas & the Papas: California Dreaming
B-52’s: Roam
Three Dog Night: Joy To The World

There are other cds for other family members; I guess I’ll post them when I need another palate cleanser.

And yeah, these lists are limited, because I drew from my own cd collection (as opposed to pulling songs off Napster or iTunes or wherever); I’m old-fashioned like that. Oh, and I think the idea was to create ‘historical’ discs. Whatever.

Off to read Bedlam Farm. A fine way to close out the evening.


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