"Peaches" The Stranglers

A good buddy of mine has been recommending the movie "Sexy Beast" for the past six months and like the ten movies per day that are usually mentioned to me I got it on Netflix, ripped it and it sat on my hard drive probably never to be viewed. I don't know why though because this particular friend is spot on with his suggestions most of the time and is a well versed man of letters. I guess I was just busy, rarely do I set aside the two hours to lay down and watch something on the boob tube, for the most part it just seems like a waste of time regardless of the redeeming values of the film. The other day I was bored and figured I'd throw it on in the background while I gambled online and was pleasantly surprised.

I was surprised to say the least because the film is nothing like I pictured it to be, there is really very little in the movie that would lead one to entitle it as it was named. As good as the film is and even if British-violent-cursing-crime flicks aren't your speed it must be watched for the opening scene, in which this song "Peaches" is played.

The Stranglers originated in the UK punk scene of the mid to late 70's but I would be hesitant to classify them as the same type of punk as the Sex Pistols, lacking the pure nihilistic venom spit out by the boys from London. I remember listening (well if you can call it that) to the Stranglers in eighth grade in a neighborhood back yard with Vision shoes, Tony Hawk board, breaking bones on a half pipe waiting for the late summer swells to roll into the east coast. I never really grasped them after that period of my young life, I liked being part of the scene and what it represented more than I like the scene itself and went back to the Stones.

But I am glad I rediscovered them through this movie and its hysterical opening scene. The song is access able for a punk song in the fact that it isn't terribly hard nor difficult to make out the words. It (like the scene in the movie) is comprised of a man's internal thoughts in the sunshine and checking out the trim walking along the beach. It has a typical but catchy baseline, the word play is light and laughable consisting of a basic talking of the lyrics with the remainder of the band cutting in and out of the verse. A particularly notable verse which has drawn controversy:

Will you take a look over there?
Where?
There
Is she trying to get out of that clitares
Liberation for women
That's what I preach
Preacher man (shouted by all)
Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches.

The word clitares often being mistaken for clitoris, the former being a French bathing suit but of course it was meant to be mistaken as such.

All in all a fantastically fun song to get stuck in one's head and a fantastic opening to a great movie. Many times on these pages I begin to rant about what I am thinking about when listening to these songs but in this instance I can't think of a better visual than the opening of "Sexy Beast" to coincide with the music. Check both it and the song out sometime soon, it'll be worth the two hours.

"Adagio from Concerto Grosso Op 6 No 8 in G Minor Christmas Concerto" Arcangelo Corelli

In this post there will be mention of heroin, sex, deserts, cars and any other pseudo idiom I revert to in bringing my point across about a certain song or artist. Because right now I am two bottles of an especially deep, tobacco-flavored red deep, am losing more money than I care to admit in the Asian markets and yet while listening to this particular piece I am not really thinking of it in any way. In fact, I have to remind myself to actually look at the screen every once in a while even if my fear of margin calls are vanquished by this beautifully hypnotic example of tonality.

Right now I am down three thousand, in two minutes I could be up ten grand. However just as markets can swing in minutes, even seconds; one's mood can be transformed by the one minute and fifty seven second Adagio. It will probably sound familiar to some, it was used in the film, an excellent film "Master and Commander" and since then has been used in a few others. The initial feel is that of sitting in church waiting for the Marriage Ceremony to begin (since I am a single, male, thirty one years old I have no idea what the name of that particular piece is but you know of which one I am referring), it sounds like that song. But in its entirety it is not that or any other wedding song. This song, especially the beautiful run that begins at 1:21, makes the song and to me it makes Corelli.

In those last thirty five seconds Corelli transitions from every other classical composer in their banality, standardization and general malaise then brings forward the reason why music was invented: To capture an emotion so complex that words would never suffice. Thirty five seconds to harness the horror of a battlefield hours after the fight, thirty five seconds to lower as casket into the grave in some shady grove in the rolling hills of West Virginia. Thirty five to describe a baby exiting the womb and taking its first breath, a graduation ceremony, two people strolling by the reservoir in Central Park, a craftsman in Shanghai constructing hand made shoes and waves breaking through the lighthouse of the Normandy Coast. Listen to this song and make your own images, I guarantee you they will all fit, all of them. And think about that for a second, how universal such an idea is....that is the definition of great classical music.

It is all there, and the most judicious course of action I could ever grant one is to cease with the hyperbole and let the reader draw his own conclusions. As stated before words are quite inadequate to explain such precision and pulchritude.

"Angel Eyes" Frank Sinatra-80th Live in Concert

There's a famously funny SNL sketch with Phil Hartman playing Sinatra hosting a parody of John Mclaughlin's The Mclaughlin Group. Anyone who has ever watched the show knows that John bluntly lays out about four issues each show and asks the panel of their opinions. On the SNL skit Frank is the moderator and proposes issues not of the political realm but those of which would concern him and his attitude on life. The third issue brought to the panel by Frank on this particular show is: "Rita Hayworth or Eva Gardner, Who would you rather nail?" to which Frank then qualifies by saying he would have to "excuse himself because he done 'em both". While funny and keeping within the lines of what the majority of the world thought and knew of Frank, the question and idea is in no way true to life.

What people do not know about Sinatra and his life is that Eva Gardner both ruined and made him the man he was famous for being. Sinatra left his first wife for Eva and from the start their relationship was tumultuous and rocky at best, his career began to falter and he found himself in a state of depression and alcoholism. While his wife was in Spain romancing a bullfighter Sinatra began to drink heavily and smoke over three packs of cigarettes a day, he was broke, living off his wife, his career was in total shambles. He made three attempts at suicide during this time.

With a lucky break in a role that was tailor made for him as Maggio (the story of how he landed it was immortalized in "The Godfather") in From Here to Eternity which lead to an Oscar, Sinatra clawed his way back to stardom. His singing changed from the teen idol he was before to a more introspective, forceful yet fragile persona and the rest is history, all because of Eva. Critics at the time said that his actual voice had literally changed from the drinking and smoking, that it possessed a gravitas and stoicism never seen before.

Though they would eventually divorce, later in his years Sinatra was known to say that Eva was the love of his life, every year he bought her flowers for her birthday and after her death delivered them to her grave until his own demise. "Angel Eyes" was Eva's song and the reason why he sounded so Goddamn soulful and depressed while singing it no matter how many times he had.

Written by Earl Brent and Matt Dennis this standard has been covered by all the great names in music at the time, Bill Henderson, Chet Baker, Don Ellis, Kenny Burrell, Pat Metheny, Sonny Stitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Hank Crawford, Earl Grant, Jim Hall, Wayne Shorter and Duke Ellington. Sinatra made it his own and filled those three minutes with years of pain, loss, rage and redemption. His phrasing is spot on, his voice a whisper on the verge of failing (it is said that without the invention of the microphone he would never have become a singer since he sung so quietly) while the piano comes in heavy drunkenness just as the mood calls for.

I'd like to think I'd walk into P.J. Clarke's one day and all the tourist would be gone, the smoking laws reversed after Bloomberg succumbed to lung cancer. It'd be late and raining, I'd sit down at that old bar, loosen my tie, order a scotch and light up a Camel nonfilter. I'd look to my right and Frank would be sitting down head in hands, elbows on the bar, not Frank the persona but the man, unknown and faceless. We'd have a nice long talk about the world and women. Possibly such an intervention would have inoculated me from the pain and suffering I would eventually experience in life. More likely than not his advice would have been not to avoid such crucibles but to embrace them with the hope that my own Angel Eyes was on the horizon and almost within reach. And if lost at least I'd have a song of my own to revert to for the remainder of my years.

"One Too Many Mornings" Jerry Jeff Walker-A Man Must Carry On

Written by Bob Dylan this song is the toned down, more reflective brother of "Sunday Morning Coming Down". Supposedly written for Dylan's ex girl Suze Rotolo I never thought it captured any feeling of solitude and loneliness until I heard this cover, Walker's raspy fragility exponentially more poignant than in its original form. I may listen to this song on a regular basis but it has been a long time since I heard it in the proper context:

I had just returned home after being away for about a month, before I left I was toeing the line of alcoholism with various slips into full bore destructive mode. For the month I was gone I wagoned up and felt pretty clean, when I came back I was determined not to toe it all again. However, the first night began with eight martinis followed by a twelve of Rolling Rock and two packs of reds. I woke up the next day, made a few phone calls to the enablers I hung with and popped open a bottle of scotch, one glass neat never hurt anyone. We took a ride to the store for some more sauce and after being in the car for not two minutes I rear ended someone. Solved the problem with some sweet talking and continued, on the way home I was pulled over in front of my house as I was about to pull into the driveway, with a stern warning I was released and saved once again from a DUI.

With the adrenaline of the event and the bulletproof ego building we headed back for some more of the brown and continued to rage. Ended up at a party and wandered off for a drive and a pack of cigarettes with my boss's wife. On the way home found a way to drive my other car through a few trees and shrubbery, bending two of the rims; pushed the car down the street back to the party. I had a flatbed come and pick the car up as well as give me and a buddy a ride home, we finished three glasses of scotch a piece with the driver while listening to David Allan Coe.

The next morning I arose in a foggy state, looked out the window and saw both of my modes of transportation wrecked, empty bottles in the kitchen and blood all over my sheets as well as crusted on the side of my body from the broken wine glass I spent the night with, the sun was cresting over the horizon as I looked out over the river and saw the southern haze begin to form for another Sunday of oppressive humidity. In my robe I sat on the balcony, sweating already at six in the morning, thick saliva forming in my mouth while the anxiety set in. This song was a friend patting me on the back saying not to worry about it all.

I know Jerry Jeff had more mornings like these than not and as much as we all hate them it is something to revel in, to appreciate, because in the end without them there would never be songs like this. And in the end we would never know just how far that line is and the dangers of crossing over.

The stripped down guitar, the lonely echoing harmonica, Jerry's voice struggling "Up the streets start barking, the day's getting light, I just spent another lonely lonely restless night" the hesitant, subdued cheering after the solo (yea the crowd knows those mornings), it all comes together in an anthem dedicated to the times when you can't figure out just where you've been and where you'll be heading. It doesn't necessarily take bouts of depressive alcoholism to listen to this song, and if you are in one it doesn't really help to pull you from its grasp but it does make it much more enjoyable.

"J'ai Deux Amours" Madeleine Peyroux-Careless Love

From seventh grade to senior year of college I took French classes and one of the most disappointing things I can say about my life is that I still have very little idea of just how the hell to speak it. Two years ago in Rio I managed to converse a bit with a beauty on the beach since she spoke only Portuguese and French but in retrospect I think she liked me and I could have spoken English and achieved the same result. There was a time in Curacao when I embarrassed myself with two French stewardesses, another in St. Maarten with a cab driver, once in Montreal with a waiter until I finally ceased my attempts of conversing in any tongue other than my native one.

In America speaking poorly about the French is a national pastime, below football and baseball but above most else. There are a few banal reasons of why we embrace such a pastime but in the end I must say that I love the French. And what is not to like? They are rude, speak their minds, smoke, drink, live forever, care little of what others speak, stunning women with delicate accents, are stylish with ease, and for those who love to bring up the fact that they are pussies there is always Légion Etrangère who has been kicking ass since their inception in 1831. In addition, while much of their music is terribly kitsch the fraction of it that is not flows into the veins and warms one's soul.

Translated literally as "Two Loves Have I" this French masterpiece written by Vincent Scotto in the early twentieth century is my favorite song sung in the French language. The singer is lamenting over her two loves, her country and Paris. Madeleine's voice is a fairytale, the orchestration sublime, the stroking brushes, fluttering piano, accompanying guitar all embrace with a kiss on each cheek and introduce one to three hour work days and five hour lunches.

I am in a bathtub in L'Hôtel Raphaël smoking a cigarette with a glass of Bordeaux, the only thing illuminating the room a candle that has melted across the black and white hexagonal tiled floor with my Citroën DS parked on the street below. Apres I will return to the streets for more coffee and Steak Frites in a grey perfectly tailored short suit, black square sunglasses, red cashmere scarf with the fallen leaves crunching under my Berlutis, a fabulous blond avec wavy blond hair and blood red lipstick hanging onto my arm. Or on the streets of New York at Le Bilboquet with the owner and a few of his friends who for this day are some of my own drinking red wine by the case with not a minute gone by sans cigarette smoke wafting through the air as horns blast and suits stumble out of the Post House across the street. Until I am back again in my Citroën driving on the D1098 along the coast eastbound with Hélène sitting shotgun, the sun shinning on her Hermès scarf protecting her hair from the warm southern wind blowing in through the window until we stop at an overlook and swim naked in the Med as we watch the ferry barely visible on the horizon make way for Corsica.

When I picture these scenes I suddenly don't care that I can't decipher every word in this song nor the fact that I wasted nine years of schooling for a language I still can't quite grasp. Because even without the linguistic skills I know what Madeleine is crooning about, and I know that the education I have received over the years in such scenes is terribly more important than what the present perfect form of the verb être is. One of these days I will finish off my education of the French language in the proper classroom, one filled with the proper romance such a beautiful language demands. When I do I will return to my college professor who constantly gave me D minuses (even though he found a case of Champagne outside his office every semester) and cry: Vous ne savez pas la signification de la France! But I'll leave you to your own Francophile dreams and draw up your own personal translations, if you are looking for THE Rosetta Stone I suggest the '98 Chateau Ausone.

On dit qu'au dela des mers
La-bas sous le ciel clair
Il existe une cite
Au sejour enchante
Et sous les grands arbres noirs
Chaque soir
Vers elle s'en va tout mon espoir

J'ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris
Par eux toujours
Mon coeur est ravi
Manhattan est belle
Mais a quoi bon le nier
Ce qui m'ensorcelle
C'est Paris, c'est Paris tout entier

Le voir un jour
C'est mon reve joli
J'ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris

Manhattan est belle
Mais a quoi bon le nier
Ce qui m'ensorcelle
C'est Paris, c'est Paris tout entier

Le voir un jour
C'est mon reve joli
J'ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris

"Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" Warren Zevon-Excitable Boy

In Sitges, Spain there is a drinking hole called The Dubliner Bar owned by an ex mercenary named David Lindell. One of the regular acts at The Dubliner Bar in the mid-seventies was an expatriated American who fled the states for a lack of money and a career on the road to nowhere. That young man was Warren Zevon and with Lindell they wrote an improbable song that typifies Zevon's surreal approach to songwriting.

I adore the imagery in this song, and Zevon's singing style gives the feel of proclamation to every verse uttered. The locations: Mombasa, Biafra, Johnnesburg, hints of a life encompassed by sweaty, unsavory men engaging in the dirty acts of killing for money. It is no coincidence that all three locations at one time where British principalities and this song has a definite British feel to it. The background singers "Time, time, time, for another peaceful war" would be just as comfortable singing a Schweppes advertisement.

The story itself is something out of Old World legends. It speaks of Roland leaving Denmark for Africa:

"Through '66 and 7, they fought the Congo war
With their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore"

Because of his adept skill with the Thompson Gun Roland was a marked man by the CIA who contracted one of his mates to execute Roland and his head was blown off. For the remainder of the song Roland searches the world headless looking to avenge his murder.

"Roland searched the continent for the man who'd done him in
He found him in Mombassa, in a barroom drinking gin
Roland aimed his Thompson gun, he didn't say a word
But he blew Van Owen's body from there to Johannesburg"

Imagine what that scene was like! "Mombassa, in a barroom drinking gin" Must have been the bar scene from Star Wars. Every time I hear that verse it brings chills to my spine, there have been a few places I've frequented in the Middle East and Asia in which I was the only person who was even close to white drinking at the bar. As scary as it could be, at times it was terribly intoxicating and exciting. One time in a bad section of Singapore alone I stumbled into an actual opium den, another incident in the land of Al Khalifa where I was padded down before I could gain entrance. Hearing this song always makes me want to go back and leave the banality of Manhattan behind.

Some say that Roland is the personification of the United States of America, some say Zevon simply copped the story from "The Headless Horseman". Possibly it is a reference to the 18th century Chief of the Paladins named Roland under Charlemagne and maybe still Roland is the spirit that rolls through the IRA, PLO, SLA (since Parry Hearst is mentioned), Venceremos, Red River Rebellion, Air Tigers and thousands more who have created anarchy and chaos around the world.

Regardless of the meanings and references I think it is such a fun song to sing in the shower, like a military anthem it leads to sticking out one's chest and swinging a bent arm across the stomach while yelling the verse in staccato phrasing. You don't need range or any vocal talent just a little imagination and those tight cymbals rolling through your veins. I'd be willing to put money when Executive Outcomes tore through Angola at least half of those men had this song in their heads.

"Someone To Watch Over Me" Keith Jarrett-The Melody at Night, With You

There was a time in my life when I would come home from work and put this album on, then sit around and wait for someone to come home. I did it everyday for a few years and it never got old, always exciting as if it was the first time; a blind date. Eventually, like most everything else, I came home and put the same music on but knew that she wasn't coming home ever again. I knew of this Gershwin tune for some time but never heard it in earnest until one night at The Big Four in San Francisco, it was raining, it was midnight, and she was perfect; for some reason the Gods decided to give me something I would never forget both in the music and in her.

That was over five years ago and if it was fifty it would still be something I will never forget for the rest of my life. It doesn't belittle any relationships I've had since then, nor the one I have now. What it does mean is that there are points in one's life which are almost perfect until music completes them perfectly. And if you think back about all those nights in your life of which you will never forget it isn't the main attraction that is remembered. It is the tilt of a head, the crook of the mouth, the arch of a back and the hands in yours; the texture, dampness and fragility so unlike anything you've ever know.

Keith Jarrett's music personified retains such magnificent traits. He began with Art Blakey and Miles Davis until he found his own chops and walked out into the world in full. Since then his music has been both focused and intense as well as sporadic and rambling. He is a terrible performer, he'll cease playing for any disruption, walk off the stage if the piano falls out of tune and refuse to record if the setting is not perfect. But when one possesses such skill they cannot be faulted for their idiosyncrasies, like an old Italian sports car and fiery women you put up with all the bullshit for just as taste of their perfection, overjoyed to be in their light and prescience.

I have never heard anyone so conscious of each and every note, without just one flat this song would lose its appeal, take out Keith's moaning, ever so audible in the background and it would lose all its soul. Whether or not you know the words to this ballad is of no consequence, you need not have them committed to memory. But what you can commit to memory are those casual glances, tilts of the heads and arching of backs because every one of them is what you live for, the smells of the street after the rain, and how she looked at you when it was all over.

The other night I had such an experience, one which overwrote all those that came before it, erasing that night in San Francisco and leaving its own scar in my mind. Whatever becomes of that night, if one day I put the music on without her or in her presence is the nature of humanity. Thankfully such humans have the ability to record its musical parallels for posterity and when such memories fade I will always have this song in its clarity on vinyl to joggle my mind of such beautiful events.