Random babblings: On corvids and connections

On a very November day, I wandered through a cemetery full of crows, thinking, thinking, thinking...

Greenmount Cemetery's located in one of the sketchier neighborhoods of Baltimore, but it's well worth venturing through the nearby streets for because it's one of the vastest, most gorgeous cemeteries I've ever visited.  I discovered it through the work of A. Aubrey Bodine, who photographed Baltimore and Maryland for 50 years for the Baltimore Sun.  Sounds completely trite to describe it this way, but really, the place is an oasis of rolling hills, lovely trees, and beautiful monuments in the middle of some serious urban decay.  Historically important, too, and not just for its notoriety as the final resting place of John Wilkes Booth.

 A fellow blogger, J., recently posted about a cemetery visit of her own.  I refer to her as a "fellow blogger", but is there more to it than that?  We first "met" through the blogosphere portion of the internet when she discovered my own blog and posted a comment asking me to get in touch with her via e-mail so that we could talk more in-depth.  I did and we began a correspondence about what the music we love means to us.  She shared very private details of her personal life with me and it felt like a bond was beginning to form.  Then we lost touch for a bit (my fault, through distraction and laziness).  Recently, we finally had the opportunity to meet "IRL", as the internet parlance goes.  It took place in a fair-sized group, though, and once we'd said hello and shared a hug, we each ended up talking to other people.  So what does that make us?  Fellow bloggers, acquaintances, friends...?  I'd like to be able to refer to her as the latter because I very much like what I know of her, but developing a deeper connection has eluded us.  But that doesn't mean the potential isn't there.  I think that, in this age of internet connection with folks who share interests but are strewn around the world, someone needs to come up with a new term for people who would likely be friends if only proximity allowed.  It's not like long-distance friendships with people one has barely, if ever, met are anything new.  Bookstores are full of collections of letters between literary and historical figures who shared ideas and emotional resonance through the written word because they were nations apart.  How is what happens all the time on Facebook and message boards any different?  Ok, yes, the communication you find on the internet these days is certainly probably much shallower than that of folks in those olden days (at least the ones whose letters made it into published books).  But are the relationships formed through such communication any less valid?

Posts like this in which I pose so many questions make me feel like that character from Sex and the City, the writer chick.  Someone please tell me it doesn't really come across that way...

Annoying that the crow photos didn't come out as well as I would've liked.  They were everywhere.  Couldn't get near them on foot, but was pleasantly surprised as I was leaving by the way that several of them perched on headstones right next to the lane seemed completely undisturbed when I brought the car to a stop and rolled down the window to capture some shots.  Huge buggers.  Hard not to think of Poe's raven, even though it's not likely that piece was inspired by Baltimore's birds.

In other news, I still cannot get this song out of my head. Not sure why, but it somehow seemed especially fitting today.


 

Shaken limbs

It's happened again. I cannot figure out how he does it, and I hope I never, ever will.  But the shaking up that Jack gave me earlier this year has come back around. I started to say it'd come full circle, but that implies closure and finality, and I don't see any end to this particular phenomenon.  The release of Blunderbuss back in April and the newly released b-side to the fourth single from the album (Jack's version of I'm Shakin', which was what got me out of bed at 2:00am all those months ago) are just two smacks in the head from debris circling madly in the crazy, ever-spiraling cyclone that is his continuously growing musical catalog.

I wrote back then of Blunderbuss that "My one overriding thought after one listen to this record is that there's nothing he can't do.  No instrument he couldn't work with, no genre or style he couldn't dabble in, no musical mood he'd leave untouched."  The new b-side, Blues on Two Trees, proves that that statement wasn't such hyperbole after all.  I'm at a loss to find appropriate adjectives for this song, or to figure out what genre it could possibly fit into.  Some reviews on the 'net have referred to it as "goth blues".  Others latched onto the idea that Jack "raps" the lyrics and extrapolated that into this tune being an extension of his work with hip-hop artists such as Jay-Z and Black Milk.  A friend from the Little Room message board probably came closest to the truth when she described it as "Beefheartian".  Jack's reverence for Captain Beefheart should be well-known to anyone who's spent any time exploring his music (that reverence was beautifully and obscurely expressed in the epitaph Jack wrote on the Captain's death, which was published in Mojo Magazine), and it was only a matter of time before he'd come out with a seemingly overt homage to the Captain.  Whether that's what this song really is or not, it's by far one of the most out-there things Jack's done yet.

This time, I managed to hold out from checking out previews of the song on the web, and was able to wait until I had the vinyl in my hand. After dropping the needle and cranking the volume, I laid back on the floor to take it in.  My first listen to Blunderbuss brought me to tears.  My first listen to Blues on Two Trees left me rolling on the floor giggling like a little kid.  By the third listen, I'd quieted down and laid still, staring up at the ceiling fan turning above me.  That's when the trippiness began--  I found that if I let my eyes go just a bit out of focus, the lights and shadows created by the rotating fan began to flash in synch with Carla Azar's tribal drumbeats... and it crossed my mind to wonder what Jack might've been on when he birthed this particular baby.

The song begins with Native American-sounding drumming and humming that's abruptly interrupted with a squeal of theremin and Jack chanting about love and fallen trees--

Trees stand still they don't move you see
That's more commitment than you'll get from me
So quit pretending you got love for thee and leave me

Three trees lying on the side of the road
One tree barks "where the hell do we go?"
Another tree falls down dead in the snow
The third tree knocks the other two in a row and says

Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave!

Quit pretending that you got love for me
Why don't you leave your home and love a tree
There's plenty out there giving love away for free
So why don't you go and love a tree?

It's good for you

Three trees lying on the side of the road
One tree barks "where the hell do we go?"
Another tree falls

"Where the hell..."?  How about, "What the hell??"  When asked this afternoon in the Vault chatroom what inspired the song, Jack replied "inanimate objects that are also "alive" was the inspiration".  This is exactly the sort of thing I love most about him-- the things he does so often make me go "What the fuck??!!" and leave me with so much to wonder about.  What do his lyrics mean?  How does he create those incredible sounds?  How the hell does that gyroscope of a brain of his keep spitting out such far-ranging and far-fetched ideas?  

As I said, I have no adjectives for this song.  The ones I could throw out (beautiful, bizarre, jarring, astounding) just don't seem to sum it up.  From the use of theremin and mandolin in place of the more predictable guitar, to a vocal performance that changes in tone and style practically from one line to the next, it's a song that comes at you more as a rush of surprising moments than a complete and comprehensive stream. 

While I don't foresee ever considering Blues on Two Trees a favorite, the one thing I will definitively say about it is that it's a gem.  So many of Jack's b-sides and non-single releases are--  such as Hand Springs, Cash Grab Complications, Party of Special Things to Do (technically, this would be his overt homage to Beefheart), Baby Brother.  They're treasures tucked away for those of us who dig deeper than the more casual-listening public who think Jack's greatest accomplishment is the sports arena anthem, Seven Nation Army.  Some of us know better, though.  Songs like this one, when listened to in the context of his catalog as a whole, are the sparkly baubles of his genius.

Those of you who've bought and listened to it will obviously form your own conclusions.  For those of you who haven't, either search out a leak on the web or just fucking buy it. You have to hear it to believe it.  
 

Euphoric times in West Va and Oklahoma

Drove to Shaharazade's in Shepherdstown, West Va, for an early dinner with tea and a book.  Wandered through town, looking at the old houses and the way the autumn leaves glowed against the pale dusk sky. Scored big at the consignment shop.  Hit the dark, curvy backroads for the drive home with a bootleg of one of the best shows I've ever attended blaring from the stereo.  Stopped at Sheetz for a Pepsi-flavored Slurpee, then some more backroads before ending up lying on my back in the dark in the middle of the old cemetery at historic St. Mark's church, smoking a cigar under a third of the moon and a sprinkling of stars that were still unfortunately faint even so far away from the city.  

St. Mark's cemetery in the daytime

Do experiences like this balance the crap of work, bills, commuting?  In the moment, yes, they do.  It feels a shame, of course, that the moment is so brief and fades so fast.  But if they were more frequent and lasted longer, perhaps it'd be an even greater shame if we became jaded to them.

But then again, some of those experiences are worth trying to hold onto.  Which brings me back to that bootleg I was listening to as I drove along those dark roads, a euphoric moment of its own that contributed so much to tonight's euphoria.  It's from a show that I recently traveled half-way across the U.S. to attend (the most recent of a dozen times I've done that for the same performer over the course of this year), in an old oil boom-times city full of gorgeous Art Deco architecture and American music history.  I went there to see-- yes, you guessed it-- Jack White.  I'd heard that at his previous show there back in March, Jack had talked about how beautiful and mysterious Tulsa, Oklahoma is.  More recently, in a chat at the Vault website, he'd described the city as "a campfire in the desert of [his] brain".  I couldn't not go.  And in the weeks leading up to it, as work, bills, and commuting turned my own brain into a bleak desert, I built up tremendous expectations for this show, to the point that I worried about being disappointed.  But Jack was apparently looking forward to it as much as I was.  Not only did he not let me down, he went so far beyond my bloated expectations that I still can't get over it.

Wish I could share the whole experience with everyone, but folks in the audience at Cain's Ballroom that night apparently complied for the most part with Jack's no-filming/no-recording edict.  Personally, I've got very mixed feelings about his prohibition--  His reasoning seems to be that he wants people to not be distracted from the experience by cameras, cel phones, or any other sort of black gadget with a little screen on it.  I understand and respect this.  You wouldn't catch me with any of those gadgets in my hand at a show because I very much want to be fully immersed in what my senses are taking in.  So I appreciate him laying down the law and nudging other people to immerse themselves in the same way, while also sparing those behind the first few rows from having to watch the show through a sea of other folks' gadgets being held up.  But, on the flipside, full immersion into such an overload of sight and sound and visceral feeling can cause these shows to become a massive blur.  I try my damnedest to cement individual moments in my brain, pulling out pen and paper as soon as the show's over to scribble down highlights.  But even with notes, my memory just ain't what it used to be.  So the recordings that the rule-breakers capture are invaluable to me.  I realize the contradiction here--  I would never diminish my experience by filming or recording anything myself, and I resent anyone who blocks my view by holding up a camera.  And yet, I'm thrilled by the photos and videos I find on the internet in the days after shows because they help to prevent the memories from dissipating. And I treasure any full-length audio recordings that I come across.  Being able to listen repeatedly whenever I want to some of the many shows I've attended is priceless. 

Tonight was one of those times--  Hearing certain moments again made me smile and laugh and cry as I drove along, just the way I did that night a bit over a week ago when I was hugging the rail at the show, staring up at the stage while I sang along and grinned until my face ached.  Based on things I've read in interviews and been told, my impression is that Jack White feels there's a romance in having experiences such as I had at that show and then not being able to have them again.  He's said flat out that one of the things that makes him happy is "creating and moving on from it, creating and pushing forward, creating and forgetting" (direct quote from an interview at the White Swirl message board).  So it's not a stretch to assume that he would feel similarly about euphoric experiences.  I can understand such a feeling, how he would see the romance in such letting go, in not trying to re-create or re-live.  But being able to understand does not mean that I agree. I do, to a degree.  But, at the same time, I don't.  Those moments don't come along often enough for me.  I'm too much of an addict, perhaps, too needy of them.   Whatever the reason, I want to be able to hold on and re-live.  It's one of the things that makes me happy.  I would like to think that Jack could understand and respect that, but, of course, I'll never know whether he can or not.  And I can live with that, as well as with my own contradictory views.

Here's all that can be shared with any shred of good conscience from that insanely magical show in Tulsa...

    
 

Photos--

jackwhiteiii.com

Steven Anthony Hammock

tulsaworld.com

Reviews of the show at the Little Room message board-- http://littleroom.whitestripes.net/index.php?showtopic=70318

Early in the morning time, late in the middle of the night...

So I woke up at 2:30a.m. this morning with the song above going through my head.  It's a fun little ditty by a guy I'd never heard of until recently, Little Willie John, that I've been listening to over and over for days.  The tune came to my attention via, you guessed it, Jack White.  News of Jack's first solo album hit the 'net back at the end of January and the fact that he'd chosen this song as the only cover for his debut was, along with the two singles so far released (Love Interruption and Sixteen Saltines), one of the few clues of what was in store on Blunderbuss.  The record itself, which I ordered as soon as was humanly possible, isn't due out until next week and I've been counting down the days in anticipation since the beginning of this month.  So I had it firmly in mind that I would listen for the first time when my order arrived and I had that vinyl platter in my hand, with the record sleeve and the liner notes and the lyrics.  Of course, this being the 21st century (Hah! You'll get that joke when you hear a certain song), the album leaked a week early and then was made available as an official webstream via iTunes.  Nope, said I, gonna wait for my record, I've been too well indoctrinated into Jack's culture of tangible vinyl to do otherwise.  Plus, there's that countdown of mine, like a kid waiting for Christmas and being too good to poke around in all the closets, preferring to wait for the big presentation and all the surprises.  But then I woke up with Little Willie in my head and the urge to find out just what Jack did with Willie's tune overwhelmed me.

This is not a track-by-track review, I've nothing yet but middle-of-the-night, first-listen impressions, and vague, half-formed, need-the-damned-lyrics ones at that.  The one thing I'll say for sure is that when the last song ended, there were tears running down my face.  One of the reviews of Blunderbuss that I've read over the last few days said it best--  Something along the lines of "It's not that Jack White couldn't write complex songs, he just didn't, and now that he is the whole world's open before him."  My one overriding thought after one listen to this record is that there's nothing he can't do.  No instrument he couldn't work with, no genre or style he couldn't dabble in, no musical mood he'd leave untouched.  Sure, upon reflection that's probably hyperbole but, like I said, this is just first impressions in the middle of the night.  There's so much to digest on this record, it's so completely unexpected despite what I know of his catalog and all of the detailed reviews I've read over the past weeks, that I can't even decide yet if I like it or which songs stand out for me.  But one thing I'm damned certain of is that once I do have that record in my hand, I won't be listening to anything else for a long, long while.  

Lightning from the gyroscope

From a fellow Jack White fan whose way with words I admire mightily (and whom I've quoted before)--

jack is so slick and hip. he is totally arrived rock royalty now with the responsibilities of pushing the art to new heights. he has money now so the scuffed black shoes and k-mart white tee and salvation army red golf pants have shifted the mighty bulge into the emperor's new clothes. the moire stripes. he still has the old woody tesla eleck-ah-tris-ah-tee though. it was good to see him free from the constraints of all the recent corporate music he has been marching to since the stripes. i always think of him as a one man band with a great drum partner and the closer he can get to that primal sweep the better. his energy cannot be contained in a bottle. it is lightning and needs to be free. welcome home jack.

I have nothing to add to that, except the performances on Saturday Night Live the night of March 3rd, 2012, that inspired it--

And the exhortation that if you have the opportunity to see this man on tour in support of his upcoming solo album, Blunderbuss, then fucking do it.

"Who doesn't want violence from love?"

On Monday, January 30th, one of the top-trending search terms on the web was "Love Interruption", which is the title of the first single from Jack White's upcoming debut solo album.  The song was released to the internet that morning via a brand new site, jackwhiteiii.com, with no previous announcement, though there had been whispers of hints of rumors for a few weeks of something maybe, just possibly, coming up.  Of course, the reaction in the fan community was pretty explosive, especially when the song was followed with the announcement of the new album and an accompanying world tour. For anyone who's into his music, that's a helluva lot of excitement to absorb at once, so it took a day or two for the single itself to sink into my head.  After some extended listening, though, I quickly realized that it's quintessential Jack-- Deceptive in its simplicity, leaving one caught up in comparisons, contrasts, and contradictions.   

The first contradiction is between the music and the lyrics.  Musically, Love Interruption is hauntingly sweet, reminiscent of the White Stripes tune I'm Bound To Pack It Up, from the album De Stijl, released back in 2000.  The two songs share a fairly simple arrangement of acoustic guitar which is layered with electric violin in the earlier song, clarinet and Wurlitzer organ in the more recent.  The themes of both are expressed through plaintive vocals, with Love Interruption enriched by backup from the gorgeous voice of Ruby Amanfu (who Jack had previously enlisted for two other Third Man Records projects-- As a live backup singer for Wanda Jackson and again on the Blue Series single from Seasick Steve).   



But the comparison of those two songs ends there and the next that sprang into my mind was Jack's recent cover of U2's Love Is Blindness, as much for the contrast as for the similarity.  Both depict love as an overwhelming force, but the dramatically passionate vocal delivery of Love Is Blindness is an antithesis to the gentleness of Love Interruption.  



A more apt comparison, though, one that gets to the heart of Love Interruption, might actually be with the old bluesman Mississippi John Hurt, who played and sang with a delicacy that belied the violent lyrics of some of the songs he performed.



That's the crux, the element that makes Love Interruption something insidious-- This simple and tender sounding song contains some of the most starkly dark imagery Jack's written yet.  The very first two lines reflect this intense contradiction of tenderness and violence:

I want love to roll me over slowly 

Stick a knife inside me and twist it all around 

I want love to grab my fingers gently 

Slam them in a doorway, put my face into the ground

The lyrics go on to list metaphorical ways in which he wants love to destroy him and overwhelm other relationships.  In seeming contrast to this, though, the chorus repeats an unconditional refrain of "I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me anymore".  To me, this was the primary contradiction of the song and it left me baffled. 


 
The next evening, though, I had the chance to ask Jack about this when he unexpectedly popped into the chatroom of the Third Man Records Vault while I was there.  My comment apparently left him baffled in return, as he countered with "what contradiction?".  I pointed out the seeming inconsistency between wanting such violence from love, but not allowing it to disrupt or corrupt.  He again came back at me with a question-- "who doesn't want violence from love?" (Which prompted someone else to ask "so you like it rough?", to which he replied "no, I like it real".  Again, quintessential Jack.)  I would have gone on to ask how he feels it's possible to prevent something so powerful and intense from being an interruption, but the chatroom was filling up and he's usually there with an agenda, so I let it drop.  But his reply made me re-think the relationship between the verses and chorus.  I began to consider that perhaps the song was about how he (or the character he'd created) wants love to be hard and challenging, to push him to a breaking point, while at the same time learning to rise above that difficulty and not succumb to it.  At one of the two Jack-related message boards, I found someone who felt similarly, but who expressed it with a thoroughness I hadn't considered--

I think I would have to agree on Jack's point of "who doesn't want violence in love" and flattop and Kali's interpretation of finding a way to have intensity without being thrown off track. Love (and relationships) is something that is, and should be, forceful, extreme, intense, and (sometimes) painful. there are definitely highs and lows and extremes on both ends of the spectrum, otherwise it's just kind of bland and uninvolving. It's not like you're always going to agree with someone you love, and I personally don't buy that "we never fight or disagree", lovey-dovey crap that you see in some relationships. who wants to be completely subservient and complacent in a relationship?

I think people are going to get hung up on the imagery of the song and stuck in the typical idea of violence because of the imagery, while forgetting that some words have more than one definition. something that is violent isn't necessarily hurtful as the song's imagery conjures, but love is something violent (even if it doesn't come with the usual idea of what violence is)... forgive the dictionary post, but:

Violence:
3 a : intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force (the violence of the storm)
   b : vehement feeling or expression : fervor; also : an instance of such action or feeling
   c : a clashing or jarring quality : discordance

Violent:
1 : marked by extreme force or sudden intense activity (a violent attack)
2 a : notably furious or vehement (a violent denunciation)
   b : extreme, intense (violent pain) (violent colors)
3 : caused by force : not natural (a violent death)
4 a : emotionally agitated to the point of loss of self-control (became violent after an insult)

Of course, though, not everyone will draw the same conclusions that I and a few others have.  That's the magic of truly effective lyrics, when metaphors are obscure enough that the words can inspire a personal meaning for the listener that might be quite different from what the songwriter had in mind.  Jack's a master of that sort of poetic ambiguity and it continuously puzzles me that his talent as a lyricist is still so often overlooked in favor of the frontman charisma and insane guitar skill he's universally known for.  It seems he might feel this way himself, as he mentioned in an interview the day after the single's release that he wanted the first single to be "a lyrical taste", that he "wanted the words to resonate", before getting to the sort of songs that people expect from him.  Personally, I think that's a mistake that people too often make with Jack--  having expectations.  The only thing I've come to expect from him is to always be surprised.  This song most definitely accomplished that, though I would have been equally astonished if it hadn't.  And knowing that there are more surprises coming up has got me violently excited.

The gyroscope just keeps on spinning...

Jack White's been busy being brilliant again.  Actually, though, that's a misnomer, as the man seems to never stop being brilliant.  If you haven't been paying attention, it'd be easy to think he's not done anything since the end of last year's Dead Weather tour or this year's handful of shows with the Raconteurs but, in actuality, he's turned out a tremendous amount of music and records over the course of this year.  It just hasn't all been the sort to put him in the spotlight.

As far as newness in his own music goes, 2011 was a year of collaborations.  First released was the spaghetti western-inspired Rome, a five-year-in-the-making labor of love by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi, on which Jack contributed lyrics and vocals to three songs.  The lyrics are not a huge a stretch from what a dedicated White Stripes fans might be familiar with, but his vocals and the music they're paired with are quite a departure.



Next was the long-awaited release of The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, a project begun by Bob Dylan roughly a decade ago.  In a turnaround from Rome, the musicians involved in this project were asked to write music for unfinished Williams lyrics and then perform on the album.  I've not yet listened to the entire record, but from what I have heard it doesn't seem that any of the other artists involved created anything as authentic as Jack did.




Most recent was a startling cover of U2's Love Is Blindness on the AHK-toong BAY-bi covers compilation, which I babbled about a couple months ago, but will post here again for the sake of comparison.



I'm struck every time I listen to these songs by the contrast between the delivery of them-- Not so much in the difference in style, but in how Jack chose to approach them.  In You Know That I Know, the "quiver and twang" in his voice and the distinctive pedal steel guitar in the music he wrote are a touchingly faithful recreation of Hank's style. He's done this sort of thing before, notably with the White Stripes' covers of Blind Willie McTell's Your Southern Can Is Mine and Lord Send Me An Angel, and Bob Dylan's One More Cup of Coffee and Isis, but not to quite this fine a degree.  In comparison, he took Love Is Blindness and ran miles away from U2's original to create something so much more extreme and intense, which, again, he also did with the Stripes on Dolly Parton's Jolene, Son House's Death Letter, and Robert Johnson's Stop Breaking Down (though he and Meg also did a slightly more faithful rendition of that one, as well).  And there's pretty much no way to compare the songs on Rome to anything he's done before.  When news leaks of things like this year's cover tunes and collaborations, the most exciting part of waiting to hear them is that there's just no telling what direction Jack will have taken.  It's fascinating to contemplate-- How does he make the decision each time?  Is it pure gut instinct based on a visceral reaction to the music?  Or does he actually thoughtfully consider the song and make conscious decisions? He spoke in a recent interview (that I now can't find) about problem-solving in relation to the business at his label, Third Man Records, of how he prefers to vary his own style from problem to problem rather than tackling every challenge that comes up from the same perspective, and that seems to also speak directly to how he approaches music.  

This same diversified approach is reflected in the output of the Blue and Green Series singles from Third Man, on which Jack steps into the background as producer.  This is where he's really been busy.  What's notable about these records aside from his astute production is that he personally searches out and contacts individuals with whom he feels he can create something new and inspiring.  With 33 releases in less than three years, these two series run a gamut that defines the word "eclectic"--  From relative unknowns like JEFF the Brotherhood, the Secret Sisters, and Chris Thiles, to actor John C. Reilly and 70's icon BP Fallon, Conan O'Brien and auctioneer Jerry King, Japanese girl group the 5.6.7.8.s and rapper Black Milk, to Carl Sagan and, controversially, Insane Clown Posse, the catalog of these two series is a blatant indication of just how wide-ranging Jack's interests and imagination run.  

The most recent of the Green Series singles has totally blown me away.  It features poet/actor/playwright, Edgar Oliver, whom Jack apparently noticed in an episode of the Discovery Channel's Oddities program. For his Third Man single, Oliver wrote and read a pair of poems-- In The Park and Hunger and Light.  While his voice, delivery, and poetry are certainly not necessarily everyone's cup of tea, they're right up my own eerie little alley.  A clip of the a-side, In The Park, can be heard at the Third Man Records on-line shop.  It's a gruesome yet lovely contemplation on the approach of death, read in a manner that summons up a delightfully daft combination of Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.  But the b-side, Hunger And Light, is the kicker.   

Recorded in Triple Reverse Cryptophonica™, it left me initially nonplussed at what sounded like nothing but gibberish.  I thought it would be great to listen to at Halloween, but it had no meaning for me beyond that.  
 



But then Third Man announced a contest promising a gold record of the single to the first person who could correctly interpret and transcribe the poem.  I had no clue of how to accomplish this, but there were plenty of other technologically-inclined audiophiles who took up the challenge.  When the results hit the internet, it left me giddy.  Whether Oliver's dark themes and creepy tone are appealing or not, the production of this piece is still a wonderment.  First, the single was pressed to physically play in reverse, from the inside run-out groove to the outer edge of the record  (which produces the sounds heard above). But by flipping the head of the turntable tonearm, it can be played in the normal direction of outer-to-inner edge, which creates the second reverse-- the direction of the sound.  But instead of hearing "Paul is dead" or some Satan-worshipping mumbo-jumbo like you'd hear if you played your records in reverse in the old days, you get this--




The final fantastic element is that Jack recorded Edgar reading the words in reverse order (as heard above).  Reversing things for a third and last time through transcription reveals the original poem—

”Hunger and Light. I’m going in my sleep to the Galaxy Deli for a bacon and egg sandwich. I must cross daylight to get it. I went to the Galaxy Deli in my sleep. I crossed the Egyptian daylight on 3rd Avenue, fearing death at every step, but exalting in the sun on the mud in the street. This was not dreaming. I really crossed that Styx, and came back with two bacon and egg sandwiches, both for me and some for my cats, who are driven mad by the smell, as am I, of bacon and sunlight. The day, like a beautifully fried egg, sits coolly on a blue plate. Today is a blue plate special. I’ll go swimming around the rim and drown in my hunger. Sun sets a gold eye on a fly, hungry for everything glinting in the mud. It’s today in my dream. Cruelly today. Today I will eat the last bite.”

Now that I'm able to comprehend it, I find it beautiful in every direction.  What leaves me most excited about it, though, is wondering how on earth Jack came up with the Triple Reverse idea.  How many people's minds work like that?  It's obvious that his brain is on a different plane than those of average individuals.  I've joked at one of the message boards dedicated to him that if you opened up his head, instead of a mass of grey matter like the rest of us have, you'd find a gyroscope spinning at breakneck speed, spitting out ideas like lightning.  Though the lightning image makes it more appropriate, probably, to compare Jack's brain to a Tesla coil like the one displayed on the roof of Third Man Records, or the one he showed off in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee And Cigarettes--



Clearly, the spark gaps of the Tesla coil inside Jack's head have always been adjusted for overdrive performance and that's something for which we should all be thankful.  The music world would be a damned dull place without him in it.


Note: Bearing in mind how he seems to feel about his tangible creations being turned into internet ephemera, I debated for several days whether to post the videos and translation of Hunger And Light.  In the end, I decided it was worth risking Jack's displeasure in order to demonstrate to the few people who read this just how insanely creative he is.  If anyone affiliated with Third Man Records should happen to stumble across this and feel that it should be removed, by all means please let me know.

I'm gonna sing this song, An I ain't goin' to sing no mo'

Finally made the pilgrimage to Skip James' gravesite at the Merion Memorial Park outside of Philadelphia.  

Merion's a fairly small cemetery but it sprawls down a hillside, so I decided to make things easy on myself by asking in the office where to find Nehemiah James.  The two older white folks working the office couldn't seem to find him in their register, but when I mentioned he had been a musician also known as Skip James, a lightbulb went off.  They sent me back outside to ask one of the groundskeepers, a young, dreadlocked black guy who knew right away who I was talking about and who was very happy to walk down the hill with me, chatting along the way about blues music and what it's like to work in a cemetery full of Canada geese (and their droppings).  Then he left me alone to sit in front of Skip's headstone and smoke and think about the man, the music he made, and how he came to be buried in Pennsylvania rather than in some cypress grove in the Delta. 





Here's hoping you've been resting in more peace than you had in life, Skip.

Welcome to the "Middle of Everywhere"

Take a step back with me, would you please?  Back to a time several decades ago, a time that was both simple and yet, in many ways, every bit as complex as those we live in now.  It's a very easy time to romanticize.  The music of that era is very different from what's produced these days-- It's one of the simpler elements of those years and contributes mightily to that sheen of romance, but it's pretty well overlooked by a majority of today's contemporary music listeners.  There are a handful of artists out there, though, who not only appreciate this music but do everything they can to keep it alive and vital.  One of those groups is Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three, and I'd like to introduce you to 'em.

I first heard of these fellas via the 7" single they cut for Third Man Records earlier this year--  A tune with the tongue-twisting title "Chitlin' Cookin' Time In Cheatham County", backed with the just as terrific "Pack It Up".  Their vintage look and traditional roots sound got me curious, but one particular recommendation from a conversation at a message board I frequent intrigued me even more-- "[Pokey] inhabits the authentic essence of the old music but carries it on with original lyrics and tunes. imagine alan lomax combining all the dna of american music and injecting it into this slight lad from south st louis..."  That's a kicker, folks.  Few people have done more to preserve and promote true American music than Alan Lomax did throughout his career, so the idea that this group could possibly distill the spirit of Lomax's work within their songs was compelling.  Think of the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" embodied by four very young men from St. Louis, Missouri, and you begin, just begin, to get the picture.

So I began reading about them and watching videos here and there (NPR, especially, has a terrific archive of Pokey and SC3 material).  I loved the idea of the group, but didn't quite connect.  Until, that is, I found out that they would be opening for the Raconteurs' first performance in three years at Third Man Records in Nashville in September--  I wanted badly to attend that show just to see the Racs, but had missed the tickets that sold out immediately.  Hemmed and hawed about spending a couple hundred dollars via eBay, plus the price of a plane ticket, and then heard that these guys would be the opening act.  They were the deciding factor, as my gut told me that this was a combination not to be missed.

Well, I'm happy to tell you, my gut was dead right.  Seeing this band live made all the difference in the world.  Their sound is one thing, but their performances are quite another.  They are consummately professional and meticulously talented, both smoothly polished and raucously fun at the same time.  Not to mention, endearing to a fault.  Pokey is a little guy with a huge voice, who plays rhythm on a beautiful old parlor guitar and occasionally hangs an amplified kazoo from his neck to add a snazzy accompaniment to various tunes.

Photo from bothell-reporter.com

Ryan Koenig gives Pokey some serious competition for the spotlight on just about every tune, alternating entertainingly delivered accompanying vocals with some of the most intense harmonica going, then putting down his harp and strapping on his homemade washboard, complete with dishes and a bell, which is fascinating to watch.

Photo from arianecdesign.com

Photo from beforetheblink.com

The self-effacingly self-described "rhythm kings" of the band are Adam Hoskins on guitar and Joey Glynn on standup bass.  I'd never seen anyone play standup bass before this band and really looked forward to the experience. Checking out Joey's bass on the stage before the show began at Third Man, I wondered how the heck you got sound out of string like that-- The lower strings looked practically like twine.  When he started slapping away, I was spellbound by the thumping beat he created.

Photo by Corey Warner

But some of my favorite moments came from Adam Hoskins and his gorgeous vintage acoustic guitar.  When he jokingly referred to himself as one of the "rhythm kings" of the band, he was actually way off base.  He plays some of the most beautifully articulate guitar I've yet heard, with perfectly clean technique whether he's finger-picking notes or sliding a bottle-neck along the frets.  (And talk about endearing-- When I saw the band again, as described below, it was mentioned during the show that Adam had just bought himself a $3,000 vintage Gibson.  When I asked him about it afterward, I was struck by not only how eager he was to get it set up and be able to play it live, but also by his comment that it was the first guitar he'd bought himself with money that he'd earned by playing guitar. It was sweet to see just how gratifying this was for him.) 

Photo by Ryan Leith

So I came home from Nashville and immediately ordered a copy of their most recent record, Middle of Everywhere.  The album is terrific.  But, as fun and fantastic as the music is, the attitude behind it is what makes it real and significant, not just a campy bit of fluffy entertainment.  In the liner notes, Pokey talks about just what this style of music means to him--

...When jazz, blues and country took off early on, where the artists came from was as much of the music as the music itself,  that framework giving deep meaning and relevance to what they were saying and playing.  While the old music may have origins in regions and communities, it's been grabbed hold of and evolved as it's spread across America.  For me, the point is to find my place in this changing landscape and continue to express myself speaking the language of the old music while holding on to the roots.

It's that compulsion to keep this music alive rather than just to recreate it that makes it essential listening for anyone who cares about the history of American music.  Even if it's not your bag, it's hard to deny that maintaining that "language of the old music" is a worthwhile undertaking for young contemporary artists like Pokey and the South City fellas.  Like losing any other historic language, for this music that's so rich in history and culture to go extinct would be a sad and unnecessary loss

I followed the show in Nashville a few weeks later with a, get this, free show at Hill Country BBQ in Washington, DC, where I danced, talked to a couple of the boys in the band, and picked up a cd of their earlier record, Riverboat Soul.  The crowd at Hill Country packed the downstairs bar/performance area and was apparently full of friends and long-time fans of the band, and the atmosphere of the over-two-hour long show was joyous.  These boys work hard and seem to enjoy every drop of sweat they put into their performance as much as their audiences do.  If you get the chance to go see 'em, do yourself a favor and do so.  I intend to every chance I get.


Pack It Up at the Watermelon Park Festival in Berryville, VA, a show I would have attended if it hadn't been an hour and a half away and pouring down rain when I left work that night.  Comments from the audience at Hill Country BBQ made me very sorry I'd missed it--

So, now that we've stepped back, let's follow Pokey and the boys and step forward to keep the wonderful traditions of this music alive.  As Pokey says, "We'll see you down the road..."  Let's just hope it's a long one.

Back to Mississippi: Exploring the Delta, part II

Freaking hell, it was cold in Clarksdale when I woke up on this day.  And still grey as a tomb, though the sun ended up breaking through the clouds after I got on the road and headed along the very scenic way towards Tennessee and Nashville.

After the same breakfast as yesterday again at the Rest Haven, I steered the Shark up route 6 to route 55 with the plan to stop in Como on the way to Senatobia in order to find the gravesite of Mississippi Fred McDowell.  Como's so small it didn't even have a stoplight, but it did have Blues Trail markers for both Fred and fife master Otha Turner.  Fred's mentioned that he was buried north of town at Hammond Hill Missionary Baptist Church on Hammond Hill Road, but the young guy at the gas station where I asked didn't know where it was.  Just for shits'n'giggles, I decided to head up route 51, which parallels the larger, four lane route 55 up to Senatobia.  Went a little ways looking for Hammond Hill Road, but when I crossed into the next county it seemed that I was on the wrong side of the north end of Como.  So I decided to turn around and head back to check out the other side of town.  Picked a random side road in which to pull a u-turn and, lo and behold, there was a sign for Hammond Hill M.B. Church that wasn't visible from the direction I'd been headed.  

 
That road ended at a T intersection, but there were no more signs specifying a direction to the church.  Made another random decision and headed right (The first sign said "keep right", right?).  About a mile down, tucked next to a crossroad between pine and sweetgum woods on one side and empty fields on the other, was Hammond Hill M.B., with the cemetery on the hill across the street.  I always get a hell of a kick out of such serendipitous discoveries.

Hammond Hill cemetery had many of the same style of home-made headstones I'd seen yesterday at Charley Patton's gravesite, in addition to newer ones on which much more money has obviously been spent.

 

From Como, the Shark and I headed up to Senatobia, then juked east toward Holly Springs to see if I could find a record shop listed on the Mississippi Music Tourist Sites map-- Aikei Pro's (Pronounced "ecky", as in "ecky thump". Some of you will catch the White Stripes connection...)  Stopped first to choke down the worst fried green tomato po'boy in the history of southern cooking (fried green tomatoes should be breaded, not battered), then asked at the lunch counter if they could direct me to the street where the shop was located.  The woman who worked there didn't have any idea, and when she asked a local who'd come in to pick up carryout, we were told that the record store had closed.  I went back out and drove around anyway, and within five minutes had found both the old town cemetery (of course, I have a built-in radar for these things) and Aikei Pro's.  Wondered whether perhaps the woman at the lunch counter was correct, because when I peeked in the door it appeared that there were piles of records and magazines and Lord knows what other sorts of junk leaning up against each other just inside.

Photo from thefrontlinemusic.com

It was hard to tell if there were any signs of life inside, though.  Started to head back to the car, where a down'n'out local started to pester me for a ride to somewhere, when the door of the shop opened and out squeezed a college-aged white girl and a grizzled little old black man.  After she thanked him and wandered off, I squeezed as far in as I could get (which was about one foot), said hello to the grizzled guy and told him I'd heard this was the place to come for good records.  He laughed and started talking, and it was an hour before I got myself back into the car.  Mr. Caldwell talked to me about how there's no such thing as hill country blues-- That's something created by the white folk because they came along and wanted to be a part of things.  All blues are delta blues, no matter whether the musician playing them came from Mississippi or Texas. He went on to describe his experience of coming to Mississippi from Kentucky after serving a handful of years in the army in Europe-- After being called a nigger for the first time in his life and being told to go back where he'd come from, he decided that, no sir, he was going to stay put.  In his time in Holly Springs, he's since seen them desegregate the local schools and elect a black mayor. I can't help but think that he had at least a little to do with that.  But he also told me that if we went back to the lunch counter that very afternoon and ordered coffee, that he wouldn't be served.  I'd like to think that's not true, but we didn't put it to the test.  In hindsight, perhaps I should have offered to buy him a cup.  He's apparently also pretty famous amongst blues aficionados (he showed me a couple of magazine articles he's been interviewed for), as well as a good friend of Junior Kimbrough.  The one thing I could actually see in the shop that I wanted to buy was a record of Junior's up on the wall, but Mr. Caldwell told me that album wasn't for sale for any price. I'm unable to embed the video from this link, but you have to go and watch it in order get a feel for the place and the man-- Portrait of a Record Dealer: Holly Springs, MS - Aikei Pro's. (If the video there doesn't work, go here. Or check the one below that I found when updating/editing this post on 3/13/2017)



Back on the way towards Tennessee, the empty roads I'd become used to began to fill up with more and more traffic.  By the time I got to Nashville, it was well after dark, I was hungry, tired, and pissed off at being challenged on the highway by assholes in SUVs.  Much as I was looking forward to the plans I had for N'ville, couldn't help but wish I was back down in the Delta at the Shack Up Inn, listening to that cold wind blow outside the windows.




Complete set of photos from this trip, here.