"She Came and She Touched Me" Townes Van Zandt-A Gentle Evening With Townes Van Zandt

It is such a fun song to play, it flows so easily, the lyrics spill out (if you know them well) like some type of musical iambic pentameter. His voice is the truest you could ever hope to hear recorded, frank with clarity, sans hindsight.

About two years ago I wrote a post about "Marie", another Townes song. I stated that it might well be the most depressing song I have ever heard. This song is the exact opposite. It is an acid trip of love and beauty melting into the pores with Polaroid SpecrtaVision behind rainbows, children holding hands dancing while you watch yourself dance naked in a field of tan skin.

I can't think of a more honest and pure song that has ever been written. I listen to it frequently and it touches me every time. The first time I heard it was in the heat of the south sweating booze on a friend's front porch fending off the impending hangover drinking Bud heavies and smoking Marlboro Reds while his mutt sat at my feet and he told me of his idea for a song he composed while flying up north to a wedding staring at the empty seat next to him days after she was supposed to be there, days after she left him.

My friend has since moved onto another love, actually weeks after that session he met the woman he would marry which put an end to such sessions, another man stepped out of my life and into the life of someone else. I have since went from his current life to the one he was in when we sat on that porch, but the song has never blurred or strayed. It has remained as true as it was when it first came from Townes' mouth, uttered purely.

So I'll just post the lyrics and let you look up the song on YouTube or something, you have to be a little proactive to be rewarded with this level of sincere beauty. It makes you wonder how a man who can write such a song could aggressively kill himself with poison leaving his loved ones behind.

She came and she touched me
With hands made of heaven
Reflections sent spinnin’
Through a face laced in mist
Now I stand where she left me
Buried deep ’neath her shadow
And the mirror plead sadly
Does it all come to this
And I wonder: will she call my name?

The wind careens madly
Through wide windows paneless
Fragrances mingle
In a room full of shade
The peons pick partners
And waltz cross the ceilings
But the violins whisper
That I’ve been betrayed
Tryin not to look ashamed

The drunkards drink deeply
From cups full of nothingness
Ghost lovers laugh
At the games that they play
The moments do somersaults
Into eternity
Cling to their coattails
And beg them to stay
Saying I got nothing to hide

Illusions projected
On walls made of tiffany
Mad minuetts to
A sad satin song
A harlequin mandolins
Harmonize helplessly
Hoping that endlessly
Won’t last for long
Praying that their God ain’t dying

Then I turn and I see her
In a dress made of moonlight
Teardrops like diamonds
Run slow down her face
Her arms surround me
Like chains made of velvet
And the demons fall faithfully
Into their place
And the rivers run with jewels

Now the morning lies open
The night went quite quickly
Memory harmlessly
Fractures and fades
All the poets do push-ups
On carpets of rubber foam
Loudly they laugh
At some joke that’s been made
And the wise men speak like fools

"Bad Kids" Black Lips-Good Bad Not Evil

One of the only things I find redeeming on television isn't even on TV, I watch it on my computer through the Internet. I guess that is just the way of the world these days but it is refreshing to find some truth in the media. It is usually there outside of the mainstream, on the fringe hidden between the beastiality porn through a thousand pop ups asking me to send a ring tone to my phone or that I have won an Ipad.

Vice Magazine is where I'm finding it and where I spend a great deal of my internet time. There's the epic "Do and Don'ts" which could keep you busy for weeks, the weekly reporting from a man doing time for drugs and of course the pulp-skin-snuff variety of articles that leave you looking over your shoulder a bit while you are reading it. When I think of Vice I think New York in the 80s, back when it was dirty, seedy...and back when it was cool, had character. When in high school I would walk out of a bar in the now posh Meatpacking district, a bar that had puke on the floor, porn on all the TVs and Merle Haggard in the jukebox. A bar that had a 70 year old man sitting in the corner drinking PBR before they were served in Brooklyn (at that time the Jews and Blacks were kicking the shit out of each other over there) by biting into the can and chugging it. Usually we were too drunk to even find the PATH stop and would take a cab back into Jersey, but that wasn't before one of us would be propositioned by a tranny looking to give head in the alley and of course since we were loaded and 16 we said yes until some good Samaritan would step in and tell us it was a dude. The trannies weren't puffs though, they'd pull a blade on you if you fucked with them, something out of the cult classing "Cruising". And you know what? It was fun as hell, even when we woke up in the morning at my buddy's father's bar and he gave us a shot of Tully and a pint of Guinness while we tried to hold back the puke in front of the thick off the boat Irishman.

To me that is what Vice is and what its pages constantly remind me of when I'm flipping through. There are some very serious topics though, their reporting is insane, taking one to parts of the world where only the somewhat crazy would tread. Liberia, North Korea, Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan and where the whole idea for this post came from: Northern Ireland.

They put themselves in the middle of a parade in which the Protestants are marching through a Catholic part of town and of course what you would expect ensues and this soundtrack plays. Hahaha, I'm laughing thinking of it right now, 14 year old drunk and high turkeys throwing bricks at police tanks, lighting molotov cocktails in between shots of whiskey...it is actually pretty cool.

What ever happened to Rock and Roll? To the punk that I used to listen to skating on my buddy's small half pipe in his backyard, pissed off at the world and just hating to hate? Questioning every type of authority. What happened to CBGB and people who knew (though I never liked that genre) GG Allin was? I'll be honest and say that I never fit into that world, even though I kinda wanted to be someplace inside while watching GG beat himself up on stage.

Thankfully we can still listen to such a quirky song that is Goddamn fun to play on a Strat as loud as fucking possible much to the chagrin of my Park Avenue neighbors. Easy as shit to play (C-Am-F-G with a pre chorus of F-F-F#-G-F#), just hammer it away man, sweat it out and in between chords take a swig of some swill and spill it down your open shirt and all over your hands onto the strings, it don't matter much anyway 'cause all your making is noise.

It is in all of us somewhere, I think and hope one of these nights I'll be hammering it out and there'll be a knock on the door, a white haired old man with a J Press jacket, khaki pants with lobsters all over them will be there in the threshold and instead of complaining will grab the bottle from my hand, pick up the spare ax in the corner and plug in, he has to, shit like that is the only thing that keeps us alive.

"Through the Morning, Through the Night" Robert Plant & Alison Krauss-Raising Sand

"Experience, though noon auctoritee, Were in this world, is right ynogh for me To speke of wo that is in mariage"

The first line from the Wife of Bath's Prologue in "The Canterbury Tales". I studied this text for over a year in college in Middle English and was tasked with memorizing the entire prologue and then stand up to recite it in class. Being an English Literature class in New England there were few men in the class, actually I was the only one. It was a tupperware party wrapped up in a bachlorette limo and I was always on the fringe. At the same time it wasn't a terrible way to spend an afternoon as a college sophmore especially because the reputation of English Literature girls (nymphos and overtly romantic) held true and was at times an easy score.

Like the woman in the Wife of Bath's story there was a woman in my class named Alison. She was dark haired and a notch above average looking with mannerisms that sent her over the 60th percentile into the hot realm. She sat across from me and we'd read lines to each other with a tense sexual subtext. But never to be fulfilled.

Between her and Costello's song the name has haunted me at times and has been put into the category of names that if possessed by a woman grants her significantly more wiggle room than the average. In short when I meet a woman named Alison (and three other names) they can almost do no wrong.

Krauss is no different although she has little to make up for, many a car ride I have spent listening to her voice serenading me through the long nights and roads. In an album widely heralded by critics this song of Gene Clark's stands out like the gapped front teeth of the Wife of Bath. The menacing subtle quality of the lyrics sung in such an unassumingly pacifist voice hinting at violence, the fade out of the outtro only to come back in to finish it off, all done in 3/4 Waltz time is magical in its terse, thinned out composition.

All of which would be lacking if it wasn't for Plant's versitility, dropping the leather pants and overt sexual pathos, trading them for a pair of overalls and an engineer cap in a rocking chair overlooking the Appalachians. His background singing adds a finishing draw of light smoke to Alison's strong tobacco aftertastes leading to the full bodied finish that begs for another glass.

This song reminds me of the much overplayed "Long Black Veil" in some aspects, there's a sense of dread in the narriative arc that will eventually lead to a judgement. In my own mind I don't believe a second of the line:

Believe me when I tell you
I will try to understand.
Believe me when I tell you
I could never kill a man.

That man will be dead, the overt emphaisis of "Believe me..." is much like the phrases: "It isn't about the money..." or "With all due respect..." We know damn well it is about the money and there is not respect involved. Just as we know there will be a dead man, shot down in bed with his lover. The lover surely will have the same fate.

This song is much like a suicide note, a manifesto, an explination written alone in a room with a mind fully intact and cognizant before the mayhem ensues. At face value it is beautiful and serene but when delved into deeper becomes even more beautiful and right. For some reason that five letter word will not escape my mind. It makes sense for it all to transpire and one would be disappointed if it did not. If there is one thing the studies of 14th century literature combined with modern day sexual tension has taught me is that these forces, while fluid and constantly moving through us are not only instinctual but inherent and timeless.

"Louis Collins" Jerry Garcia-Grateful Dead Hour Show #362

I've been on the run a lot lately and then when I finally came home just felt even more unsettled and wanting to ramble. Mentally I haven't been there, in one sense the creeping depression and misanthropy started creeping in while on the other side on the coin I discovered a treasure trove of Springsteen's finest years live (late 70's) that had me dreaming about Emerson-Thoreauian spouts of self reliance and self preservation through music. Since most everything comes back to Springsteen I couldn't stand to hear myself spout posts of saying the same thing over and over again. I mean this is supposed to be about music are likely to have not heard and I felt as though my message was getting somewhat redundant.

At the same time when I started this blog it was about the music and then something I never expected to happen emerged. I don't know why it wouldn't have but it became mostly about me, about women and I used the songs as a springboard to rant about whatever was in my head at that particular time. I think this last part is a good one and one that I not only like to write about but something insightful. Everyone hears a song in a different way and possibly my personal experiences bring to light a different side one has never thought of in regards to music.

For some reason right now I feel at peace with whatever mental muck I was sloshing though for the past month or two and finally clear enough to write about something with a clarity people would want to hear.

Jerry died only a year or so after I had gotten into his music. The Grateful Dead hour that week was an amazing example of a man's work constrained into a one hour program. A tough task indeed for a man who defied being stuck into a genre and had a working catalogue of over five hundred songs played not only on guitar but banjo, pedal steel and while never played himself, trumpet-jazz tunes played though midi machines.

Episode 362 began with this song. You can hear versions of it on "The Pizza Tapes" and "Shady Grove" but this particular version, an outtake from a Grisman Acoustic Disc Sampler shines in ways the others could never touch. Jerry plays a fingerpicked progression used by Elizabeth Cotten (famous for "Oh Babe it Ain't No Lie" and "Freight Train") of terrible simplicity and stark beauty. Such a simple song about a man being laid down under the clay. It encompasses a view of death that must have been the norm over one hundred years ago before advances in modern science staved off the reaper as they now do until we are wearing diapers, hooked up to machines under the ultraviolet, clinical light of the death factories we call hospitals.

Recently I was in one for a little while and while my affliction was not life threatening it dug in deep and possibly produced the malaise I've been feeling for the past month or so. I wasn't faced with my own mortality but rather faced with how I want my own life to end. It certainly was not like the person in the bed next to me in a building on 69th and York. Not to belittle that man's demise for possibly that was the correct choice for him personally but I can only pray that it is not the way in which I depart. I say this knowing full well that man had no intention of departing in that fashion when he was thirty three years old.

Maybe that is what Jerry was feeling, for no one really knows how he died, not that it is that important. Rather, the way he lived is the heart of the matter and Goddamn if I could just leave one piece of music this concise and beautiful, this honest and truthful with a somewhat shaky voice uttered over a simple chord progression finger picked on a utensil crafted by hand of wood and steel...well then that would be saying something.

It is a marvelous song and tonight after I arrived home, after the gym, after a few drinks and dealing with shitheads at the bar engaged with each other in miscellaneous ramblings it came to me. It had been years, possibly a decade since I had last played it both through speakers and myself taking my own utensil into my lap and trying to keep up with the old grey bearded man. She came back to me as when you go through your old drawers in your parent's home and find a note, a t shirt you once wore until the threads had worn beyond serviceability. When you take that shirt up to your skin it all comes flooding back and a blanket of good vibes comes over you with a striking clarity.

This song does all that and more. It floods the senses like walking into a neon electric steam room flooded with the scent of fresh cut grass and a shower of lemon ice water in the corner ready with a pull of the precisely cut stainless ring that is hot to the touch and it is something to immerse one's self in until drowned to death only if your mind hadn't short circuited and gave out well before the waters actually rose.