Posted on by Matt Thomas

Craig Finn on Nightlife and Adult Relationships II: Killer Parties

Note: This is the second part of our series on songs of The Hold Steady which take up the dual themes of nightlife and the complexities of adult relationships. Part I is available. This piece will deal with the song “Killer Parties.”

“Killer Parties” written by Craig Finn, is track ten, the final track, on the Hold Steady’s debut, Almost Killed Me from 2003, however this piece will take up the live version from 2008’s A Positive Rage. The song contains the title line for their debut album, and is one of their most indelible songs.

The live version is over 10 minutes long, and opens with a classic Finn spoken piece. The song features swirling guitars and a propulsive, if simmering, bass line. If “Most People are DJs” is a banger, “Killer Parties” is more of a slow burn. The A Positive Rage version has a long musical intro before Finn speaks:

“Alright, alright, alright, alright, Halloween 2007 metro (?) what’s up? I’m looking out at you now and I’m pretty sure I’ve met over half of you (laughs). And so, if we’ve spent all this time together and maybe you know, it’s maybe, sometimes I might happen to tend to talk too much. Everyone has their faults. I’m in a 12 step program as we speak for it. It’s called shutting up. But I am gonna say one more thing. And then, I say the same thing almost every night. I don’t, I don’t, I’m not fooling anyone. But I only say it cause it’s true. The thing is it’s just well, it’s just that, I don’t, well, well, it’s there is so much joy in what we do up here. I want to thank you for sharing that joy with us. Chicago Illinois we’re The Hold Steady, thanks for being here.”

Here we see Finn’s conception of his band. The Hold Steady is a community (“I think I’ve met more than half of you,” with Finn as the leader. I have been to see The Hold Steady live and wrote about it here (Austin is a music fan I connected with at the Steady shows at the Brooklyn Bowl in 2018):

Hold Steady fans are pretty much fanatics, and along with Austin and I there were a handful of serious Steadyheads who were there early to grab their slice of territory right in front of the stage. They were super possessive about the space they had claimed, and they all seemed to know each other. This crew was welcoming enough to me as a newcomer to their little universe, but they were also a little cliquey. At that time I was in my extraverted mode and I was rapping with all and sundry. There was this one guy I specifically remember who sized me up and said “I want to not like you, but there’s some kind of aura around you man.” Thanks buddy.

All big bands have their version of the Steadyheads of course, but there is no mystery about why people love this band and return again and again. Finn and company are open and inviting–I believe they genuinely love their audience and Finn’s gratitude for his fans is one of his most appealing traits.

The song opens with a verse about Charlemagne, a recurring character in Hold Steady songs whom I believe to be a drug dealer:

If they ask about Charlemagne
Be polite and say something vague
Like another lover lost to the restaurant raids

Finn loves this conceit whereby a song opens with the report of “something happening,” and that something is unsaid. He uses it to great effect on “A Bathtub in a Kitchen,” which opens thusly:

Francis, I was lying when I said I hadn’t heard what happened
I probably heard later on the very same day it went down
That’s the funny thing about people moving into big cities
Spend so much time trying to turn it into their tiny town

Francis, our guess is, suffered an overdose. Did the same thing happen to Charlemagne? It’s possible, but whatever it was we needn’t talk about it. Finn demonstrates right away his trademark compassion. Charlemagne’s life is his own, and it’s personal. Best not to ask; best to keep it vague.

If we have lived long enough we all have people from our lives like this, people to whom something happened and they just kind of fell off the map. Drugs, bad relationships, mental crises, or just the cutting off of ties as someone moves on, shit does happen. I don’t know what the restaurant raids are, but apparently somewhere where people go to get lost. When and if we do find them again we sometimes find the same person, and sometimes someone different.

Verses two and three open into the chorus:

And if they ask why we left in the first place
Say we were young and we were so in love
And I guess we just needed space
We heard about this place they called the United States

And we found out Virginia really is for the lovers
Philly is full of friendly friends that will love you like a brother
Pensacola parties hard with poppers, pills and Pepsi
Ybor City is tres speedy, but they throw such killer parties

Killer parties almost killed me
Killer parties almost killed me

Finn is from the (relatively) small town of Minneapolis, and moved to New York City, I believe in the late 90s. When we leave, we inevitably leave people behind, and sometimes this hurts, both the leaver and the leavee. I know this first hand as a long-term expat I have left my family and friends behind in large part for a life in Asia. While I still keep up relationships, it is never quite the same as staying in your hometown around those with whom you grew up. I don’t regret leaving, but there are pangs of sorrow when I think of all I have missed. Like Finn, and maybe for similar reasons, I just needed some space.

When Finn sings “we heard about this place called The United States,” I think he is talking about New York and the real big city, a mythical place where the lights are brighter, the parties bigger, and opportunity abounds. This is also an oddly patriotic statement–the U.S. here comes across as the promised land in its most classical conception.

In addition to New York, Finn and crew have been around, Virginia (the landing place of Europeans in America), Philadelphia, the first capital, Pensacola, and of course Ybor City, the party capital of Florida which Finn references repeatedly in his songs. Ybor City serves as the ultimate destination for killer parties, the last place you end up on the back end of an epic bender.

And then the payoff, “killer parties almost killed me.” Finn is pretty open about his early carousing, and it is easy to believe that some of these nights led to near-death scenarios. While I myself have sampled pretty liberally of the nightlife in my own time, this was nothing like Finn. However, I would say, I’ve been around, and there are times and situations that “almost killed me” as well. I know where Finn is coming from. He is here looking back on an earlier era–his partying days may not be over but now he is in an up and coming band and has other responsibilities to take care of. Nonetheless, he can still live vicariously through his earlier incarnation, as well as the youth of today.

Verses four, five and six are repeated and the song is over:

And if she says we partied then I’m pretty sure we partied
I really don’t remember
I remember we departed from our bodies
We woke up in Ybor City

And if she says we partied then I’m pretty sure we partied
I really don’t remember
I remember we departed from our bodies
We woke up in Ybor City

If she says we partied then I’m pretty sure we partied
I really don’t remember
I remember we departed from our bodies
And we woke up in Ybor City

The nights are a blur–Finn partied but he gets the details second hand. He does remember transcending, and the long hangover of a killer run, in good old Ybor City. I feel like Ybor City, which Finn may or may not have actually been to, serves sort of like El Dorado here, the lost city of gold in South America. Is Ybor City even real? Can you get there from here, or do you have to run the gauntlet of long days and longer nights to get there? I’m not sure, and am not sure Ybor City would be good for me.

I am an ex-introvert reinvented as an extravert, a topic I have spoken about this at length with several friends. While I am a little long in the tooth for a lot of clubbing these days, I do love the nightlife and love running around, meeting people, and seeing where the night takes me. And it takes you to some strange places. I think this is the real theme of the song–the appeal of the night, of the road, and the need to leave and get out in the great wide world. I love this song, and return to it regularly in all manner of personal circumstances. It’s a relatively simple song–Finn conceals nothing up his sleeve except the exact nature of Charlemagne’s fate, but in my opinion a great one.

to be continued…

Posted on by Matt Thomas

Craig Finn on Nightlife and Adult Relationships I: Most People are DJs

Note: This series will take up several songs from Craig Finn of The Hold Steady. All of the songs deal with one or both of Finn’s two major themes, nightlife and the complexities of adult relationships. This first piece will deal with the song “Most People are DJs” from The Hold Steady’s first record, Almost Killed Me.

“Most People are DJs” is track three from the Hold Steady’s debut, Almost Killed Me. It’s actually kind of the second song, as the first song is more of a spoken introduction. The song covers some different territory and fits a little awkwardly into our main theme, however it’s a good starting point. Here is what Finn says it is about:

“Just a reaction to life in NYC in the 2000s. The part I don’t get is when I get emails that start with, ‘Come see me DJ’ and end with, ‘Here is what I’m going to play….’ I think that DJing, like rock criticism, tends to be a way for people to participate in the ‘scene’ without taking the risks to the ego that go along with producing music or any other art. ‘Look at me! I’m playing records!” Of course, I don’t apply this to all DJs.'”

Despite Finn’s somewhat cynical take on his own song, I find the song joyous and life affirming. It is very upbeat–a banger in the parlance.

“Most People are DJs” opens in Ybor City, which is part of Tampa, Florida and is apparently infamous for being a party town. Finn loves the sound of Ybor City and references it several times on various Hold Steady songs. Here are the first three verses:

Well, hold steady Ybor City
You’re up to your neck in the sweat and wet confetti
If you want to get a little bit light in the heady
It’s gonna have to get a little bit heavy

They’re jamming jet skis into the jetty now
With some guy who looks like Rocco Siffredi
And I’ve heard he’s been dead once already

It’s going down right now in Lowertown
They’re skipping off the good ship U.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S. Sexuality
Searching for the merchant with the five second delivery

Almost Killed Me is an announcement record. Finn had an earlier band called Lifter Puller, which also wrote extensively, almost obsessively, about nightlife, and Finn through this record makes it clear that The Hold Steady is here, and here to stay. Thus, the band title in the first line. The first line is also a statement of purpose–parties such as those held in Ybor City and New York almost killed him, but he will hold fast in the face of the danger and temptations.

Right away we also see Finn’s penchant for alliteration and in-line rhymes. Lifter Puller songs are so full of alliteration as to be almost distracting, and Finn starts where he left off with “jamming jet skies into the jetty,” skipping off the good ship…” and “searching for the merchant.” Over time, Finn will back off from the up-frontness of this conceit, but it is still in full force on Almost Killed Me.

We are also firmly in the nightlife milieu with wet confetti and a five second merchant, presumably a drug dealer. Drugs and drinking are a persistent aspect of Finn’s songs, from the very earliest to today. Rocco Siffredi is an Italian male adult actor, and someone looks just like him.

The next two verses change the frame a little:

They’re slipping soft rock into their setlist now
They got some new guy that looks just like Phil Lynott
We’re stumbling but I think we’re still in it

It’s a big world, girl, and I can’t understand it
We’re tiny white specks in a bright blue planet

Soft rock here does not refer to Steely Dan, but rather to Lifter Puller’s 2002 compilation album. Finn is letting us know he has been in a band and that the band did OK. This is a theme of the song–Finn self-identifies as an artist and is sort of calling out those that aren’t, or just sit on the sidelines. Phil Lynott was the lead singer of the band Thin Lizzy–presumably Finn is talking about a band with the “they” in line two here. Finn and his crew are wobbly, but still on their feet.

Verse five zooms out from a close-up view of New York City nightlife, suggesting that in the long run our concerns and running around are pretty minor with “we’re tiny white specks in a bright blue planet.” I feel like Finn is also saying, in a sense, you only live once. Our concerns may be minor but we have to make the best of what we are given. I like this line, but the next three verses are where, in my opinion, the song really hits its stride:

I was a teenage ice machine
I kept it cool in coolers and I drank until I dreamed
And when I dream, I always dream about the scene
All these kids they look like little lambs looking up at me

I was a Twin Cities trash bin
I did everything they’d give me
I’d jam it into my system

She got me cornered by the kitchen
And I said I’ll do anything but listen
To some weird-talking chick who just can’t understand
That we’re hot soft spots on a hard rock planet

Finn is pretty directly referencing heavy drug use in his earlier days. It is well known that Finn grew up in Minneapolis, and came up in the hardcore scene. He details this time in the epic “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” which I have written about elsewhere. It is clear that a younger Finn was looking for all the action he could handle.

I feel that Finn’s use of alliteration pays off here with “kept it cool in coolers,” “Twin Cities trash bin,” and “hot soft spots on a hard rock planet.” Whereas now the kids are looking up to Finn as a veteran of the scene, he clearly understands the kids in all of their glory and all of their self-destructive urges. Also, the lines “she got me cornered in the kitchen/ And I said I’ll do anything but listen” is really funny and once again indexes Finn’s need for speed, so to speak. Finally, “we’re hot soft spots on a hard rock planet” refers back to the earlier line but changes the context–tiny white sparks we may be, but we still have a beating heart.

Verse nine takes up the title of the song and contains its thesis:

Baby, take off your beret
Everyone’s a critic and most people are DJs
And everything gets played

As we have seen, Finn himself says the song is about how most people don’t take the risk to make art themselves, and instead criticize or play other people’s songs. His fairly straightforward criticism of DJs, with only the most unconvincing hedge at the end, is interesting. Finn’s overt self-identification as an artist is again a statement of purpose, however are critics not artists? I think they are, or can be, but I also understand the sometimes antipathy of a working artist to those who simply opine. I can see it both ways. As for DJs, this is not a job I fully understand as I have never DJd, but like most people I DJ my own life, with a little help from Spotify. I mean, when I dial up a little Daddy Issues on my commute, or Happyness when writing, I feel pretty in control and pretty good about matters. Before taking a close look at the song, I thought Finn was kind of celebrating the fact that people DJ their own lives–that is make their own calls and run their own decks. But apparently not. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t fully agree with Finn here–but his point of view is his point of view. I think he is also writing quite specifically about the early 2000s in New York and I wasn’t there, so there’s that.

The final verse brings us full circle deep into the nightlife, and here Finn celebrates the mess and adrenaline that comes with going out, especially when you are young:

Working backwards from the doctor to the drugs
From the packie to the taxi, to the cabbie, to the club
A thousand kids will fall in love in all these clubs tonight
A thousand other kids will end up gushing blood tonight
Two thousand kids won’t get all that much sleep tonight
Two thousand kids they still feel pretty sweet tonight
Yeah, and I still feel pretty sweet

Falling in love, gushing blood, losing sleep, and still feeling pretty sweet, that’s the gamble one takes with the night.

Overall, “Most People are DJs” is far from Finn’s best song in my opinion, but the sound and the energy holds up. It’s a good entry point into Finn’s post-Lifter Puller songs on nightlife and has an interesting, if somewhat controversial message. I also really like his snapshot of his mis-spent youth as a Twin Cities trash bin, and that’s the best line of the song.

to be continued…

Posted on by Matt Thomas · 2 Comments

Scenes from Hamilton College III: Sophomore Year I (with cameos from Sonic the Hedgehog, Ani DiFranco, and Candle Time)

Note: In Part I and Part II of this series I wrote about my freshman year at Hamilton. Part III will take up sophomore year where I lived down the hill in Bundy Dorm.

All you ladies and gentlemen
Who made this all so probable

Big Star

After freshman year I returned back to Washington State for the summer. I have written glancingly about this period, suffice it to say I was not up to much. Still broke, I did have a short lived girlfriend but she dumped me mid-summer. I spent a few days moping around playing nerf golf at my parents’ house, then got over it. I don’t remember much else from that summer except that I got back in good running shape, and when I got back to campus in the fall I turned out, once again, for the running team.

One thing I neglected to mention in my pieces on freshman year is that I actually competed on the JV running team at Hamilton for a time and ran a few races. I was not in great shape that year, and JV was not that exciting. As I have written, I had other pursuits. Sophomore year, however, I was in better shape and had a shot at making the top five. The only other runner I recall was called Harry. I thought Harry lived in Sig, but Jake tells me he was in a frat called THX, about which I remember nothing. In any case, Jake knew him. Harry was a hardcore runner and scolded me about my lifestyle, wanting me to devote myself to the team. I was not going to do this, but I was able to run with Harry and the first team for a number of practices. In the long run though it didn’t work out–they ran mornings and afternoons, and my summer shape wasn’t going to carry me through a hyper-competitive season. I was a good runner, but I just didn’t have the drive. Sooner or later I left the team, this time for good. I look back fondly on Harry however–he was right; I was lazy and needed a kick in the rear.

As a sophomore I roomed in a double with John Innes (there were two John’s in my friend group, John Innes and John Slack), in a dorm halfway down the hill to Clinton called Bundy. Marc Campbell was also on our floor. Ian was living in his frat, but spent a lot of time in Bundy as he was dating Ann, someone who I became close with over the year as well. Jake was over at Sig and I didn’t see much of him, mostly for geographic reasons.

Bundy was a way different story than North. First, I spent a lot more time in my dorm room with John Innes. Innes would watch the soap opera Days of Our Lives and insist I watched it too. I could have cared less, but watched it to be a good friend. We also played Sega, almost exclusively Sonic the Hedgehog and Sega Hockey, at which John usually beat me (however not in the biggest matches, as I’ll get to later). Innes liked rap music and had a pretty good collection. I could get into some of the rap; I liked Public Enemy, KRS One, De La Soul, and a minor band called Basehead which wasn’t really rap. However I was by then deep into what would today be described as alternative or indie music, so Innes’ taste and mine mostly diverged. We were both good about sharing airtime though, so he got to know my music and I his.

The record I listened to the most, by far, that year was Big Star Third: Sister Lovers from the then mostly forgotten American band Big Star. I loved this record (which was on Rykodisc), and played it endlessly while trying to advance in Sonic the Hedgehog. I stuck my mattress in the closet and hung a tapestry over the door area so I had a little cubby to sleep in. Overall, the whole scene was much more domestic than the pretty chaotic North.

Other than Marc and John Innes, I don’t remember exactly who the other guys who were on our floor, but I’ve been reminded that John Slack was one of them. Ian and Jake were living in frats, and over the year I got to know a new crew of people, including several girls. These included firstly Jenny and Jen, who lived in the female area on our same floor (maybe the second floor? Innes will remember). Innes and I became very close to Jenny and Jen, and spent almost every evening hanging out in their room doing something called “Candle Time.” Candle Time was pretty much exactly what it sounds like–we would turn down the lights, light candles (which was probably against school rules) and talk for hours. We would talk about our days, people and goings on in the dorm, and just life in general. It was really wholesome and again, a major change from North.

Candle Time lasted, in my recollection, for a number of months, but not all through the year. Despite spending so much time together, there was no romantic involvement, although I believe Innes and Jen did get together later, and briefly; I’m not really sure. I think it was supposed by some that I myself had a crush on Jen; however although I liked her a lot this was not the case. I did have a little bit of a crush on Jenny, but she had other people who were interested in her and we all hung out so nothing ever happened. That was fine–it was actually really nice to just have close female friends with no expectations.

Jenny and Jen were both from the upstate New York area, broader Rochester as I recall. My guess is they came from relatively less money than many of our classmates, who came from preppier areas, and schools. I actually visited Jenny’s house once or twice, and I think a bunch of us slept over once and watched the film Glengarry Glen Ross. These included Amy Holland, who was one of the coolest chicks around. She was called “Red,” on account of her red hair, and was totally my speed. Everyone else fell asleep during the movie except Amy and I and as I recall she loved what is, to be fair, a pretty stereotypically male film.

Jenny’s house was nice, but seemed pretty middle-class and maybe that’s part of why we all bonded–the richer kids, although I obviously hung around with them a lot, had their own life ways to some extent. I remember one evening Jenny and I went to see the band The New Dylans on campus. I thought they were a good band, and had found their cassette at the campus radio station where John Innes and I had a sports talk show. Their record has a song I liked called “The Prodigal Son Returns Today.” They sounded kind of like a minor league Big Head Todd and the Monsters or something, and are kind of dated today if I’m honest, but I was excited for the show. At first it was pretty full, but people left little by little and by the end it was just me and Jenny. The band played their hearts out for the two of us, including encores! After the show, I joined them for a cigarette outside and chatted. I told them that I really liked the show and they said thanks and all with no mention of the fact that the venue was totally empty. That’s professionalism, I thought, and I imagined that as a band trying to break through playing small colleges and sending cassettes to radio stations they’d had their share of ups and downs. I doubt they are still around, but if so I’m rooting for you guys!

A bigger star that played Hamilton was Ani DiFranco. I saw Ani several times, both on campus and off, as she was pretty huge in New York State at the time. She had not yet released “Dilate,” which came in 1996 and was her mainstream breakthrough to the extent she ever had one, but she was a star on campus, mostly with the women but with a lot of the guys too. Ani put on a great show, and I totally got the appeal. She was kind of the Jeff Rosenstock of the day I suppose.

Shawn Colvin also came, and I knew some of the people who were assigned to take care of her backstage. They reported that she was a total asshole, asked for coke, and generally threw her weight around big time. Shawn Colvin was OK, but no so great that she could act like a diva I don’t think. Full on divas are acceptable-like Joni Mitchell might be a diva and what are you going to do–but minor league divas pretty much suck.

Anyway, like I say over the year although we still saw each other, I saw less of Jenny and Jen, and more of other people like Ann, Amy, and Matt Thornton. I’m not sure where Matt lived, maybe Bundy and maybe not, and I don’t recall either how or when I met him, but we soon became fast friends. Matt was full speed ahead, and argumentative, but I can handle my own in an argument, and I really liked him. Matt ran with an interesting group of friends, including several Asian-Americans who I believe lived on the Kirkland side of campus. Hamilton used to be a guys’ school and Kirkland was the attached girls’ school. Then at some point they merged, but the Kirkland side and the old Hamilton side always felt distinct to me and were separated by a bridge.

One time we were talking about going to New York and Matt told me about some clubs for Asians that he was interested in. Matt’s friends told him that he (or I) could not go to these clubs because we would get the shit kicked out of us. Had to be at least half-Asian apparently. But I think Matt went to these kinds of clubs anyway and did not get beat up, because he just sort of rolled that way.

Matt and I and Ian did go to New York eventually, and spent a few days uptown at some person’s apartment where I commandeered a prime sleeping space and we ordered pizza three times a day. I believe this was actually after graduation, as Matt transferred before graduating from Hamilton.

As I mentioned in an earlier piece, this was also the year Ian and I went to Boston to see music shows. We went with a fellow called Cale who was a freshman. Cale was cool, and also we liked him because of his name, reminiscent of John Cale, violist for the Velvet Underground who Ian and I were both fans of. With Ian and Cale I felt like I was in good company–we were all very simpatico.

My academic performance sophomore year was just OK. I took more English classes, and also started to take some History classes including some Asian History with Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson was a good professor, but I think he was one of those guys who really saw himself at U. Chicago or Yale or something. A lot of academics are like that. Nevertheless, Tom was good–tough but fair–and pushed me to really deepen my research abilities. Outside of Tom’s class, my effort was a little mixed, and during the dead of winter I skipped some morning classes because the climb up the hill was just too tough. The winters in upstate New York are pretty brutal, and I preferred to stay local down in Bundy a lot of the time.

One more thing I remember from this year is starting, and then dropping, photography class. I had an old camera that barely worked, and was interested in learning how to develop film in a darkroom. However, photography class was really expensive because we had to regularly buy these huge rolls of film which cost like $50 at the school store. A classmate I’ll call C. to protect his identity told me, “just tuck your pants into your socks and drop the film down your pants and walk out. That’s what I do.” But I wasn’t going to steal film all year and there was no way I could pay the outrageous costs. On top of that, I wasn’t all that good–certainly my classmates outclassed me, crappy camera or not. So I dropped it after six weeks or so; however now that I think about it I may well have met Matt Thornton in that exact class. It’s a possibility.

Note: That will do it for Part III. In Part IV I’ll write more about my friendship with Ann as well as the Sports Talk Show we did on the Hamilton radio station.

Dedication: For the whole Bundy dorm, actually. It was a pretty chill year.

to be continued…

Posted on by Matt Thomas · 4 Comments

Scenes from Hamilton College I: Meeting Ian and Jake

And I recall the moment
More distant than it seems
When 5 green queens
On a black bin bag
Meant all the world to me

The Pogues

I attended Hamilton College, and managed to graduate–possibly in linen. At Hamilton I was an English major, and intended to be from when I enrolled. This was a decent choice; however both Hamilton and English were kind of my father’s choices. I also managed to cobble together an Asian Studies minor through the good auspices of my advisor who checked out my credits and told me I could put that together. This was a good call on his part, and even though I kind of stumbled into it, the Asian Studies minor was my choice.

I was pretty unprepared for college. Before going I was asked to fill out a kind of questionnaire to help the college place me with roommates. One of the questions was, are you clean, messy, or in the middle. I chose in the middle, which was sort of a mistake because it turns out men are pigs, and I was cleaner than most. At the same time though it wasn’t a mistake because if I had selected clean I may not have met Ian and Jake. Jake was my roommate, and we lived in a quad. The other two roommates were B. and G. and although I had a relationship of a sort with both of them freshman year, we were not really on the same page. Jake and I were. Ian was our next door neighbor, and he roomed with Marc Campbell, and two other people. Ian, Jake, and Marc are still in my life.

My parents came with me to upstate New York, and before I moved into the dorm we stayed for a few days in a hotel near campus. I was kind of apprehensive, and spent the days listening to The Pogues and quietly stressing. But when I moved into the quad things were fine. This was mostly because of Jake.

Jake was a bit of a wild character. He was from either New York or Connecticut as I recall, and I think he came from decent money. When I visited his house later that year it was very patrician, for lack of a better word. His father seemed like a super old-school WASP patriarch, and his mother didn’t work I don’t believe. His younger brother held right-wing political views at the time, while Jake was a lefty. This was a point of serious disagreement between the brothers, but other than that the family seemed pretty solid. I believe that his brother has since switched his political views.

I didn’t meet Jake’s family until Thanksgiving however, and got to know him first in the context of the quad. We lived in a dorm called North, on the first floor right by the door. (My buddy John Innes, who joined me at Hamilton from our high school lived in the neighboring dorm Kirkland, and next to that was South.) The door to North would be locked at night, and other dorm folks would regularly misplace their key and crawl through our always open window. Jake and I rarely slept, and I got in the habit of staying up until about five AM. After that I would get a little sleep before first period English class. Then I would attend Geology class, which satisfied some kind of Science graduation credit. For English class I was alert and on top of it, although I was still hand-writing my papers, which changed once I got in the habit of using the computers in the library. English class was small, maybe 12-15 people, whereas Geology was huge and held in a lecture hall. I would go lay down in the back in the aisle and try and sleep. I ended up getting As in almost all my English classes, and a C- in Geology, which was deserved to an extent because of the sleeping. However, the main question on the final was brutal and pretty unfair, which was to draw a seismograph. Literally, draw one, which we had never studied and I did cram for the final. Brutal action. Somehow I still made the honor roll that year, and every year, because of my performance in humanities.

Jake was an English major as well as far as I recall, I kind of forget but he knew a lot of the teachers I knew. In any case, we did not bond primarily in the classroom, but in the dorm and then at “Sig,” the frat he was associated with and later pledged. Sig was the alternative frat. I hung out there a bit, but when pledge season started they kind of cracked down on non-pledges attending parties. For Halloween, Jake snuck me in early, and although that night I got a few looks I was good with Jake’s blessing. That night I wore all black with a turtleneck and a paper sign on my back saying “No future for you.” As in the Sex Pistols. I was talking with an older guy, an alum (there were always some alums that hung at the frat parties at Sig) at the party and he said something to the effect of “I like you, but I don’t like your shirt.” OK dude.

That was the same night I believe that inspired the following little ditty I later shared with Jake:

I pissed in the toilet

He pissed in the sink

He said I haven’t got a god above

I haven’t got a drink

Jake took umbrage with the lines, not the sink part, which was and remains credible, but the god part. I think he is, or was, a believer. In any case, he’s my friend and won’t sue.

I appreciated Jake showing me the ropes at Sig and elsewhere. In the dorm we would play his music–he was into the classics, Beatles and Stones, Kinks, Bowie. We would sing “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and “Come Together,” mostly the former over and over, no doubt to the annoyance of our roommates. Jake also liked The Pogues, and this made me think even more highly of him.

Jake smoked, Marlboro Reds, and I soon started smoking too, the same brand. This was not out of a desire to be a smoker, but rather as a way to keep my hands occupied and look busy at parties, where I had some difficulty mixing. I picked up, or invented, a little trick where I would fold up the flaps of a cigarette pack so they looked like a paper airplane, and then lob the cigs around the room, usually to any girl that wanted one. This got me some attention and some affection, and I kind of became known for the move. It didn’t get me laid, but at least it was something. Jake and I were fast friends, and hung out a lot in the early part of the year, before he began to branch out. Once he started pledging Sig though I saw less of him, naturally enough I guess.

By the time Jake started pledging, and even before, I was spending more time with Ian. Ian was from Boston and his father was a medical doctor. He lived in a nice house in the suburbs–both Jake and Ian had quite a bit more money than I, a common feature at Hamilton where pretty much everyone had money expect me. I was on a pretty decent scholarship, despite my not so impressive high school record, and could not have afforded the school without the scholarship. I visited Ian once or twice I believe in college, and then stayed with his family for a few months in the fall after college, but that’s a story for a future post.

Ian had a massive record collection in his quad, next door to mine as I have said. I liked Jake’s music, especially “Rebel Rebel,” “Come Dancing,” and The Stones, however his selection was somewhat limited. Ian’s was capacious. He was into bands like The Stone Roses, The Charlatans, Ride, and a bunch of other British bands I didn’t know at the time. But he was really into everything. I spent hours in Ian’s room soaking up his music, and my association with him kind of took over where Dyche Alsaker’s left off. I think it was Ian who also introduced me to Luna, who was coming up at the time and is still one of my favorite bands to this day. Later, in senior year I think, Ian and I had a radio show together and one night we got to play records all night long when a few other people canceled suddenly. I would play The Replacements and the Pogues, and Ian would play his music, but I was also getting deep into the 4AD label and bands like Big Star, This Mortal Coil, and a little known band called The Binsey Poplars (who I’m not sure were even on 4AD), named after a Hopkins poem. But my favorite around that time was Nick Drake, who was on Rykodisc.

Drake is now pretty well known, mostly on the back of his song “Pink Moon,” which was featured on a Volkswagen commercial, but back then he was not well known outside serious music circles. I loved his song “Rider on the Wheel,” and was an evangelist for him, telling all and sundry to listen. Most people didn’t, of course, but the whole move was just odd enough to get a little attention, which I was definitely seeking. (Another friend from that time John mentioned to me a few years ago that I would sit on the front steps of his frat in my trench coat and read a book. I don’t really remember this, but if it’s true it was for sure for attention.) I remember one evening Ian had a kind of band that was playing and I “opened” for them. My act was simply talking about Nick Drake, painting him as a forgotten genius, which he was, and pleading with the crowd to listen. It went over pretty well, like I said probably just because it was different.

Later on, mostly the next year I think, Ian and I went to a few shows in Boston, including The Red House Painters, The Fall, and Love Spit Love. Ian would drive, and blast The Pogues with the window down to stay awake on the way home. Before one of these shows we managed to source a little green, which was enjoyable. We would park, illegally, in some lot Ian knew. In the lot, there were rats.

Jake and I were sort of on the same level–both semi-degenerate English majors–but Ian I looked up to. He was definitely the leader in the friendship, although he must have seen something in me because we hung out a fair bit. Ian was also friends with Marc, but he was perhaps closer to another group of guys who lived in two adjacent quads on the third floor. This included John and a guy called Will. I would go up there too, and Will would ask “what Dead do you want to listen to?” I always went with Reckoning because I liked the country-folk sound and the song “It Must Have Been the Roses.” I liked the third floor guys too, especially John.

Next door to Jake and my quad was Adam and Basmo. Adam and Basmo (a nickname) were seniors who for some reason decided to stay in what was basically a freshman dorm. Adam was cool, but pretty grown up. Basmo was still a kid, and loved to get high. Loved to get high. Early on in the year he would come over and ask “anyone want to get stoned and session?” A session, it turned out, was you would smoke, put on The Beatles, and watch Bugs Bunny or something with the sound down. The idea was the music would synch up with the cartoon and it would be hysterical. It totally worked, although I just liked to listen to music and bullshit rather than session. Real heads will remember the session. (Jake told me that sadly Basmo later took his own life as a result of the worsening effects of epilepsy. That was really too bad because Basmo was just a pure open-hearted soul.) So basically we would get stoned when we could, smoke Reds, and stay up all night and listen to music, which was a pretty decent life all in all. Jake and Ian took me in, and made the first part of freshman year so much better in all ways than it would have been if I hadn’t known them.

Dedication: For Ian and Jake, for seeing something in me, and helping make me a little somebody.

to be continued…

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On Craig Finn’s “A Bathtub in a Kitchen”

Note: This is the third piece on the kibbitzer to deal with the songwriter Craig Finn. I wrote at length about his song “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” and a little bit more in my piece on Katie Park and The Bad Moves. Although my primary allegiance will always be to Dylan, if I am totally honest Finn is my favorite songwriter. Dylan is a transcendent force, world-historical, and therefore also sort of unapproachable. Finn is a little more down-to-earth–I can imagine having a drink or three with Finn whereas Dylan, I don’t know, he’d probably have his hoodie up. So for the record, my favorite band is Luna, my favorite songwriter is Craig Finn, and the greatest is Dylan. My three favorite Finn songs are “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” “A Bathtub in a Kitchen,” and “Killer Parties,” which I hope to write about soon. This post will take a close look at “A Bathtub in a Kitchen,” with the aim of explicating both the song and making some notes on Finn’s delivery.

“A Bathtub in a Kitchen” is track three on Craig Finn’s 2019 album I Need a New War. For my money, it is not only the standout track on the record, but also one of the three greatest songs of my all time favorite songwriter. The song is ostensibly about an old friend of the narrator (I will refer to him as C. for convenience) called Francis, but it’s also about trying to make it in the big city, and about moving on from the past. Making it, or not making it, in the big city is a classic Finn theme.

The song opens with the report of an accident of some kind. The nature of the event is unspecified, but my best guess is an overdose.

Francis, I was lying when I said I hadn’t heard what happened
I probably heard later on the very same day it went down
That’s the funny thing about people moving into big cities
Spend so much time trying to turn it into their tiny town

As with all of Finn’s work, he manages here to pack a huge amount into four short lines. We learn that the C’s relationship with Francis includes deception, that C. and Francis still have acquaintances in common, and that presumably both C. and Francis are originally from out of town. The last line is a somewhat sharp commentary on how big city transplants may retain a small town mindset as well as a suggestion that this is the very thing that C. is trying to get away from. Regardless of the C.’s desire to break free, he too, thought to a lesser degree than Francis, is stuck in the past, and with an old crowd.

By the second part of the verse it seems that Francis has recovered to some extent from whatever befell him, and C. has met with him.

Francis, is there someway to help that’s not just handing you money?
There’s something unsaid in the way that you say it’s your health
Whatever happened to the elegant guy you used to always bring to the Parkside?
Seems like he’d be in a better position to help

Again, I am simply in awe of Finn’s concision. In just eight lines, we already have a very good idea of who these two characters are and what they are about. We can assume that C. has some money to spare, and wants to help Francis, but he knows he’s just throwing money down the drain, or into Francis’ veins. Francis is most probably an addict, however that’s left unsaid by both C. and Francis. Here we also get a glimpse of Francis in his better days (the Parkside is apparently a bar in NYC)–he had elegant friends, and, as we will realize, C. at one point sort of looked up to Francis and wanted to run in his circle. However, it is clear that C. has no idea if the elegant friend is in any position to help, or even if he is still in Francis’ life. I think that this line intentionally, and not for the last time, sketches C. as somewhat selfish. He knows Francis is in trouble, know he needs help, and is trying to pass the buck to someone, anyone, else.

Selfish as he may be, we can relate to C. here as well. We have all had the experience of having someone in our life asking for too much, pushing our boundaries, or just simply being beyond helping. And maybe we have put others in a similar position. I know I have. So I can see it both ways. C. may be trying to pawn Francis off, but Francis is clearly not helping himself.

After verse two comes the chorus, and I challenge anyone to find a more moving and beautiful chorus anywhere. Finn’s voice here rises to a higher pitch on the line “I was drinking, I was dancing” as he packs his delivery with maximum emotion.


I was waiting for a package
I was hoping something happens
I was desperate for New York to ask me out
I was trying to find my footing
I was drinking, I was dancing
Francis let me crash out on his couch

The chorus is a flashback to C.’s early days in New York, when he was new in town, broke, and crashing with Francis. We have a portrait of young C. as a yearning, but passive character, very much trying to find his way. Perhaps at this point Francis was in a better economic position than C. Finn underlines C.’s passivity and naivety three times “waiting for a package,” “hoping something happens,” “desperate for New York to ask me out.”

Again, the nostalgic sentiments outlined here are universally relatable. All big cities can be exciting, and overwhelming, but New York is, in my experience singular in these respects. I remember the first time I visited New York; I was a junior in college and went there as part of a trip for my Art History class at the university I was attending upstate. We arrived at the train station, took a subway uptown, and emerged onto the street. I was instantly flooded with sensation and nerves–it was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Here was New York. I have since been to the city many times, and I love it, and every time I go I feel a similar feeling when arriving. I have had the good fortune to visit many great cities, Tokyo, London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and they all have their own feel, but there is nowhere like New York.

But precisely because there is so much going on in a city like New York, it can be really hard to get something going. Everyone there seems to have their own purpose, their own deal, and how do you penetrate the shell of the city? Finn is writing about the classic American theme of “making it”; C. is desperate for it, but for now he’s carousing, waiting, and sleeping on the couch.

The second verse takes place back in the present, and sees C. reflecting on Francis’ living situation. Here too we have the title of the song.


23 years is a while in a place with a bathtub in the kitchen
Up on the roof for cigarettes and better reception
Yeah, it’s a whole other scene but how can anyone blame ’em?
You get a new number when the old one gets disconnected

So Francis has been in New York for 23 years, and C. maybe nearly as long because he is able to be precise about Francis’ history. Francis lives in a prototypically small New York apartment “bathtub in the kitchen,” and has to go to the roof for wifi. Here we get confirmation that C. has moved on, both personally and economically, as Francis is in “a whole other scene,” one where his phone gets periodically disconnected, presumably for non-payment. C. is not judging Francis, at least not yet–he just feels something along the lines of “there but for the grace of god go I.”

With the return of the chorus, we have a slight addition and a slight change that sheds more light on C.’s early days in the city as well as underlining his gratefulness to Francis.


I was waiting for a package
I was hoping something happens
I was desperate for New York to take me out
I was trying to find my footing
I was doing things I shouldn’t
Francis let me crash out on his couch
Francis let me crash out on his couch

The repetition of the last line serves to literally double down on the importance at the time of the couch offer–C. was clearly grateful and remains so. I think the song overall is a sort of confession in that C. is writing as much out of guilt as a wish to distance himself from his old friend. I showed my “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” piece to my father during the writing stage, and he commented, without knowing anything about Craig Finn, that he detected a strong vein of midwestern Catholicism in Finn’s lyrics. And he was exactly right; Finn did grow up Catholic in Minnesota, and writes about the classic Catholic themes of guilt, forgiveness, and redemption regularly. In the chorus C is saying, I think, that he too has made mistakes, has crossed lines, and that Francis took him in when he needed it most. However, in the post-chorus the song pivots back to C. distancing himself from Francis, and here is where the confessional aspect really comes into its own. There is a You Tube video of Finn doing “Bathtub in a Kitchen” live, and when he sings the post-chorus the performance takes on a seriously spiritual component.


But I can’t keep saying thank you, Francis
I can’t keep saying thank you
I can’t keep saying thank you, Francis
I can’t keep saying thank you

These lines cut two ways–on the one hand C. is saying that the couch surfing was a long time ago, and he’s done his part to pay Francis back. As I said above, Francis seems like he might be beyond help, and C. has kind of had it with reaching out. On the other hand, C. is confessing that, although he clearly cares about Francis, he doesn’t have the depth of compassion needed to be there for him on an ongoing way. I don’t know, I just think the lyrics are every bit as much directed at himself as his friend.

Verse three sees C. reminiscing again about the early days of their friendship, before indicating that he has in fact given Francis some money. However, it is the end of the verse, again in a repeated line, that underlines C.’s feeling that Francis is just not pulling himself together, and he looks down on him for it.


Francis always said, “You gotta befriend the bartenders”
He told me to tip really big on the opening round
Francis did me a favor I’ll always remember
He let me stay at his place when I first came to town
Francis said the guy at his job’s got a thing for the new girl
His landlord’s a dick and he’s sure that he won’t understand
The 200 bucks will help him breathe a bit easy
Francis, do you even have a plan?
Francis, do you even have a plan?

So the first four lines here are back in the past, and we learn that Francis, more than just letting C. stay at his place, really showed him the ropes. C., drinking, dancing, and desperate, learned how to navigate New York and its nightlife with Francis, learned that bartenders are the key to the city. Here too C. confesses that he “will always remember” the favor Francis did him, so while he can’t keep saying thank you, he also can’t forget.

The next four lines (five with the repetition) are set in the present, where we learn that Francis manages to hold down a job (I am curious but Finn of course omits what kind–Finn is a master of both concision and omission. One of the best examples of this is the song “Jessamine” from A Legacy of Rentals, which maybe I’ll write about some time). We get a glimpse of Francis’ domestic life in the apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen–predictably his landlord is a dick. And, as above, C. has given Francis money, but not a lot. Like I said, I’ve been to New York and 200 dollars isn’t going to get you very far. C. had handed over the money that he resisted in the first verse, but he is also content to let Francis sink or swim to some extent.

Finally, we have an outro, where again it is worth checking out the You Tube video of his performance at the Murmrr Theatre in Brooklyn to better understand the real nature of what Finn is getting at with the song.


I can’t keep saying thank you, Francis
I can’t keep saying thank you
I can’t keep saying thank you, Francis
I can’t keep saying thank you
I can’t keep saying thank you

Overall, A Bathtub in the Kitchen is a great song about youth and aging, about friendship and how it both lasts over time and changes with time and experience, about guilt, and about human selfishness is the face of the needs of others. Most of all, it is an incredibly rich and resonant sketch of what it is like to try and get by in New York. As Finn gets older, his earlier rave-up Hold Steady songs, which he can still write, have somewhat given way to more reflective and somber pieces such as Bathtub.

The reason I think this song, like “It’ Never Been a Fair Fight,” is more personal and even autobiographical than some of his other songs which are clearly about characters, is that the narrator here has clearly “made it”–he’s doing well. Finn himself is an immigrant to New York, having moved there from Minnesota, and has sampled deeply of the night life he writes about. Indeed, nightlife, in all its glory and sordidness, is one of Finn’s favorite themes, and I can’t think of anyone who has written more consistently or more interestingly about it. But that’s a topic for another piece. I would just say that even if C. can’t keep saying thank you, I am thankful for this song, which touches me in ways I have tried to express here but can’t fully get my arms around.

Posted on by Matt Thomas · 1 Comment

On Music Fans, or I Have a Crush on Katie Park From Bad Moves

I love live music. More than that, I love live music fans, and music fans in general. This piece is basically about being a music fan, and was inspired when I saw the band Bad Moves open for The Hold Steady in 2018 at the Brooklyn Bowl. They were touring on the back of their first full length, Tell No One. While at the Bad Moves/ Hold Steady show a music geek introduced me to a band called Swearin’. Swearin’ has been around a little longer than Bad Moves, and in 2018 had released Fall Into the Sun. The two bands don’t really sound all that much alike (Bad Moves is basically “Power Pop” and Swearin’ is basically “Indie”) but they write somewhat similarly about matters of love and friendship.

Let’s play a game that we live in a world where a record by a band like Bad Moves or Swearin’ would produce radio hits. I want to live in that world. Or maybe I don’t; maybe it’s better for everyone that bands like these stay a little more on the DL. Let’s first take a look at Fall Into the Sun. (Swearin’s frontwoman is Allison Crutchfield, and the band is mostly her baby.) My pick for the single would be the lead off track, “Big Change.” It starts with a simple, slightly scratchy guitar line over which Crutchfield softly speak-sings:

The best years of our lives/ were spent in some stranger’s basement/ medley made of empty cans and ex’s/ and that radical romantic conversation/ about how we are like mutants/ who found each other by chance through rock ‘n roll music

clenched fist, eyes wild/ scream over the records, you artfully complied/ while I put my bad faith into practice/ sit at home on Saturday night/ ease into my false sense of superiority/ no art degree, no conservatory/ just Katie and me

I really like what Crutchfield does here. She is basically writing about a friendship solidified over a shared love of music. Now, I know a lot of people. I also have some friends. When you ask an adult, “How many real friends do you have?” the number will vary widely. A lot of people will say “four or five,” something like that. People in general have surprisingly few real friends. I have ten or fifteen, maybe more, but am only in regular contact with about half that number. A good friendship, in my opinion, is one where no matter how long you and your friend have not hung out, if you see them it’s as if not a day has passed. With this sort of friend, I’ve found, there is between yourself and them something fundamental shared. It can be anything really. For example, I first met my good buddy when we were both in graduate school in Arizona, and at first I thought he was a total dick. He was loud, interrupted people constantly, and loved being the center of attention. One night we were drinking as a department and he started razzing me there on the street, just casually insulting me left and right. Suddenly I got where he was coming from. This was, in fact, his way of offering to be friends. Once I understood this, I began to give it right back to him. Called him every name in the book. And he ate it up. By the end of the night we were fast friends and have been ever since, because we share an understanding that our friendship is based, in part, on ripping on each other. Music, obviously, is another great basis for a friendship.

When Crutchfield sings “no art degree, no conservatory/ just Katie and me,” I’m reminded of the refrain from Don DiLillo’s Underworld: “who’s better than us.” If they can do it, why not us? Fuck ’em. That’s what attitude looks like kids–take notes.

So “Big Change” is my single from Fall Into the Sun. (“My single” here just means the song I would choose as the single. For some records, the single is super obvious, while for other records it’s debatable. Bands and producers, in my opinion, do not always get this right.) A good record will tend to have at least two singles; three is a bonus.

For Fall Into the Sun’s second single I’ll go with “Grow into a Ghost.” It opens with a chugging guitar riff with an almost Krautrock drum line. The song is a perfect 3:10–in and out. Do you know anything about lost love? Swearin’ does–here’s verse II:

I write you ceaselessly and abstracted/ I hang out with old friends/ and they unknowingly remind me/ of who I was before we met/ you were somewhere out in the desert/ you frame the natural light perfectly/ will you come back soon and/ let me love you completely

and the chorus: “I watch you/ I watch you grow into a ghost.”

Swearin’ is good, but Bad Moves is better. And the star of Bad Moves is the exquisite Katie Park. (I know they are a collective, but my world is my world baby.) Before their show Katie was at the merch table selling…magic eye! That she made by hand. And what did it say? The magic eye said “Bad Moves.” Obviously. I checked it out and chatted for a few minutes with Katie, trying to play it cool. It was the highlight of my year. 20 minutes later she and the band were on stage, crushing it.

The single here is pretty easy. It’s “Crushed Out.” The band released “Crushed Out,” “Spirit FM” and “Cool Generator” as the singles, all of which are excellent. Maybe “Spirit FM” is catchier than “Crushed Out”? Possible. But “Crushed Out” has more lasting power in my opinion. “Crushed Out” is about exactly what it sounds like. It has a basically perfect power pop structure with a killer hook, a classic bridge, and a theme at once super obvious and super deep–the power of a crush.

It was a strange infatuation/ I couldn’t place it at the time/ but now it seems as if my mind/ was all stopped up with you/ I had no sense of aspiration/ I didn’t know, I guess it’s fine/ but now it seems so obvious/ did it seem so obvious?

through all my fits of desperation/ sharing looks and passing notes/ what did you make of what I wrote?/ what could I ask of you?/ the weeks of strained communication/ could you read between the lines/ or was it just so obvious?

Baby, if you are crush-prone that power never goes away. Bad Moves knows this–it’s kind of what the record is about. Crushing out that way can be pretty obvious–do you think I’m crushing out on Katie at all? Nah, this is just a piece of music appreciation.

Cool Generator is my second favorite song on the album, but my “sneaky favorite” is “Missing You.” A sneaky favorite is just what it sounds like: it’s that song that may fly under most people’s radar but that you have a special soft spot for. My all time sneaky favorite song is “Three Drinks” by Craig Finn of the aforementioned Hold Steady. “Three Drinks” shows up on Finn’s 2016 EP Newmyer’s Roof. It’s nearly acoustic, unlike most Hold Steady songs, and sounds just a little bit country. Three Drinks is about a woman (most great songs are) who may have been a child star once upon a time, and is now a drinker. It is an example of a certain type of song that Finn is amazing at, the deeply empathetic look at adult relationships in all of their gloriously flawed complexity. In this sense, Three Drinks fits in with “Spinners” from The Hold Steady’s 2014’s Teeth Dreams, “Tangletown” from Finn’s 2017 solo record We All Want the Same Things, and “Esther” a Hold Steady single from 2018. Finn’s writing on Three Drinks and Tangletown is at its absolute apex. Here’s the opening to verse two of Three Drinks:

There was bloodsucker blues in the lobby at dusk/ she blew smoke in my face and it felt like a bus/ the chef cut his finger off the waiter got fired/ I only took notes to try to come off inspired

Come on man. The refrain focuses on that magic hour between drinks 3 and 4, when matters begin to move from the slightly anxious first stage of the evening to something entirely other:

It takes 1 2 3 drinks/ and now she’s not so frightened/ it takes 4 and 5 and 6/ and then she’s sick/ but in the hour in between/ she feels holy and redeemed/ blessed and blissful/ painless and serene

And then Finn delivers this killer quatrain:

She left the room to put on her face/ I went through her purse/ it was all pills and mace/ she said its so hard to choose between space and time/ she mostly just smoked and drank wine

It was all pills and mace, baby. Man Craig Finn can write.

So anyway, my sneaky favorite on Tell No One is “Missing You.” The song starts like the others, high-speed power pop, and after two verses switches to a near-spoken word breakdown of the tug-of-war between a crush and the expectations of the world around. Guess which wins?

Something inside told me I shouldn’t do/ things that set my heart racing, the dreams I held to/ so I wrapped them up tight and hid them from view/ and gave them a name I called “Missing You”/

every cop in the city and the family I knew/ the church and the pastor all said I shouldn’t do/ but their pleas for contrition just couldn’t break through/ not one of them stronger than missing you

I officially support these sentiments. And look what the band does with the simplest rhyming possible: “knew,” “do,” “through,” and “you.” High level.

So that’s my sneaky favorite –doesn’t mean it’s better than “Crushed Out” (it isn’t) it’s just a little sneaky. I’m all about sneaky favorites, on all levels.

In addition to the Magic Eye, Bad Moves also engage in a little publishing. A little literature. Specifically they publish a pamphlet called “The Virtues of Wearing White.” Check this out:

Chatting with Katie, she acknowledged more than a passing familiarity with the literature of the Jehovah Witnesses. I love Witness literature. Both Witness and Bad Moves publications have a real “it’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day” vibe. If you know me this is not a secret, but I’m a hardcore closet New Ager. There, secret’s out. I’ve messed around with all kinds of New Age action. Once I attended a Kabbala meetup in Manhattan. There were some hardcore New Agers there too, seriously. Those folks were not in the closet at all. Shining eyes, whatever color they are wearing. Me, I like black because it’s easier to launder, but Bad Moves have me thinking. (One other publication you should take a look at if you are into this kind of thing is the Christian Science Monitor. It’s a serious piece of literature. God is great baby, god is great.)

When I was younger my parents had a friend called Tom Hutchinson, who, predictably, went by “Hutch.” Hutch owned a boutique coffee shop there in town and I drove a delivery van for him for a bit. But that’s another story. Anyway, Hutch was a weird guy and he hated the Witnesses. It was one of his favorite topics. He’d call them the “Witlesses,” and say: “When they come to my house I turn the hose on ’em.” People thought this was pretty funny, but I was not that into Hutch’s attitude to the Witnesses. I mean, he didn’t want anyone trying to convert him on his property, which is fair; however, I felt, and still feel, that if someone wants to come to my door, give me a little literature, and talk about how god loves me I’m gonna let them. I genuinely like the Witnesses. They seem like lovely people. Read more

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On Subcultures and Scenes in Craig Finn’s “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight”

This piece is about an absolutely amazing song by Craig Finn called “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight.” We will also expand on the song’s theme, which is how subcultures (and “scenes”) operate. Finn is, in my opinion, the greatest lyricist working today (not the greatest living lyricist, that’s still Dylan). I’ve written about about Finn before here, and here.

Finn himself says that “It’s Never Been A Fair Fight”:

“is about the extreme difficulty of staying true to the rigid rules of a subculture as you get older. The character in the song revisits an old peer and finds struggle and disappointment in the place he left behind.”

In this case, the narrator had been part of the punk/hardcore scene in the 1980’s and 1990’s, has left the scene, and reflects on his time there and what it meant as he meets his old friend, and we suppose former lover, Vanessa. I’m not sure I understand the entire chronology of the song, as it engages in some apparent time jumps that can be little hard to follow. Overall however, it is pretty clear what the song is about. The opening verse sees the narrator (let’s call him C., because while we will grant Finn the understanding as an artist that his characters are characters, in this case the song feels pretty autobiographical) checking in with Vanessa. The song opens in the present day.

I met Vanessa right in front of her building/ she was vague in taste and drowning/ she says she’s got a new man and he’s in a new band/ and they’ve got a new sound

I said hardcore’s in the eye of the beholder/ I’ve got a broken heart from 1989/ I was holding me head in my hands from the heat/ there were elbows in my eyes.

While we get the impression that C. has been out of the scene for a while, Vanessa is very much still in it, new man, new band, new sound, same old place. Vanessa’s man, we assume, is in a hardcore band, and I believe it is the case that Finn came up through the hardcore scene before forming his first band Lifter Puller. Lifter Puller is not a hardcore band, and I don’t know if Finn was actually in a hardcore band or just in the scene.

“Hardcore’s in the eye of the beholder” is a funny line for a number of reasons (it also reminds me of the classic David Berman line “punk rock died when the first kid said/ punk’s not dead/ punk’s not dead”). In any case, after C. recalls his broken heart from 1989, the song shifts back in time, back to when C. was attending hardcore shows, hot and sweaty, elbows in his eyes.

Vanessa said that there’s threads that connect us/ flags and wars we should never accept/ Angelo said that there’s snakes in the smoke/ from the cigarettes

Ivan isn’t all that concerned/ he said it’s mostly about what you wear to the show/ I think the scene’s gonna fall apart pretty soon/ heard a song that I liked on the radio

Finn is an absolute master of sketching characters in just a line or two. Here, he uses a sort of pointillistic approach to introduce us to two additional members of the scene, Angelo and Ivan. With just a few short verses we already understand a great deal about “the scene.” Here is what we can deduce:

i) All four members of the scene have very differently valenced loyalties. Put another way, they want different things from it. Vanessa is a purist; for her being part of the scene is like being part of an tribe, an army, and we take her to be a fierce protector of the in-group/ out-group aspects that tend to arise in subcultures. Angelo, it seems, is a little out there; he’s seeing snakes in the cigarette smoke and probably not all that interested in the ultimate nature or meaning of the scene. Ivan likes the t-shirts and jeans, likes the look. He’s not a purist either. And C., well he likes a little pop music, an inclination we assume is strictly verboten for folks like Vanessa.

ii) Probably because of the differences in ideas and ideologies between the scene members, C. sees things coming to an end, both with the scene and between he and Vanessa. Here we are reminded of the difficulty of keeping any kind of group together, whether a scene, a band, or just a group of friends. Everyone knows the feeling of having a group of friends who tell each other they will be tight forever, however life doesn’t usually work that way. The best film about this dynamic is Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which depicts a young group of friends in Manhattan who come together and then slowly, but inevitably, come apart over the course of a winter. There is a great moment in Metropolitan where the main character, Tom, looks around and realizes the scene is dead. Where did it go? It was here one day, gone the next. Scenes are like that, and this is what Finn is writing about.

iii) The inherent differences between people which make keeping the scene together are also something that Finn celebrates to a certain extent I think. One of the most salient features of Finn’s writing is his compassion. Finn has compassion for Angelo and his snakes, Ivan and his jeans, and for Vanessa, in all of her rigidity. As of the time of the song we know for sure that Vanessa is still in the scene and C. is not. I guess that neither Angelo or Ivan is still around, however if only one of them is my money’s on Angelo, if he’s still alive.

Through the course of my own life, I have been involved, for a shorter or longer time, with a variety of subcultures. One category of subculture that I have frequented is what we could broadly call “new age.” My explorations of this category have been reasonably extensive. Back in my early 20s, I was involved for about 4-5 months with a Tibetan Buddhist group back in Washington State. I would get up at 4 AM, drive an hour across town to a beautiful old house on the hill, and meditate with the folks there. This group also organized some outings, such as mountain hiking.

I enjoyed the group and the meditation. The group leader, a slightly older woman who was lovely, asked me to pay like 6 dollars for a little book with chants in it, which I did. There was a total cross-section of people in the group of different ages and backgrounds, and all in all I liked it there. However, I peeled off from the group after a time for reasons very similar to those discussed by Finn. There were two specific things that led to me leaving. The second I’ll discuss a little later. The first was one day I was chatting with one of the members on the street outside after meditation. He was telling me how his daughter used to play chess, however he would no longer allow her to do so because it was interfering with her studies of Tibetan Buddhism. “There’s just not enough time,” he told me.

I had talked with this guy before and he was a perfectly nice guy, but I didn’t agree with his approach. I felt, in fact, that it was bad action. Now, I understood that people joined the group for different reasons and had different levels of investment. I was not looking to become a Tibetan Buddhist or anything—I was just “checking it out.” To circle back to Finn, the valence gap between this fellow’s take on the subculture and my own was vast, and his entire approach turned me off. This was the first step in my deciding to leave.

The next three verses of “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” see C. trying to keep the door open to Vanessa even as he edges out of the scene. He wants to meet her and if she agrees he will know that she like him feels that “punk is not a fair fight.” Finn doesn’t say, but I’m guessing Vanessa doesn’t show.

If things change quickly/ just remember I still love you/ and I’ll circle ’round the block tonight/ between 9 and 10 o’clock tonight

If you’re still standing here, I’ll take that as a sign/ that you agree it was a sucker punch/ punk is not a fair fight/ it’s never been a fair fight

We said there weren’t any rules/ but there were so many goddamn rules/ we said that they’d be cool/ but then there were so many goddamn rules

Verse VII is the hinge-point of the song and basically its thesis. Finn’s point is straightforward: the appeal of the scene was the potential for freedom, exploration, rebellion, however once inside the subculture C. finds himself increasingly hemmed in by the strictures of that culture and the requirements necessary to remain within it. The very thing that drew C. to the subculture (flight from an over-determined social reality) is that thing that ultimately drives him away. “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” appears in two versions on the 2021 record All These Perfect Crosses; the main version is horn driven and upbeat, and there is also an acoustic version. On the main version, Finn, realizing perhaps that the repeated line is a bit poetically unorthodox, spits out a laugh on the “then” in “but then there were so many goddamn rules,” and in the process underlines the centrality of the sentiment to the song as a whole. It’s a great verse, and one which tells us something fundamental about C.’s nature: he likes the action, and as such needs to be free to pursue it wherever it may be. Action is not limited to the Minneapolis hardcore scene, after all.

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On the Stage Banter of Matthew Houck and Dean Wareham

Introduction:

This post takes up the subject of stage banter with the hopes of gaining a window into what makes a great artist great. Before we get to stage banter, however, I want to look at Howe Gelb’s spoken introduction to Giant Sand’s cover of “The Pilgrim (Chapter 33).” Stage banter and spoken introductions are, clearly, related animals.

Gelb is the lead singer of the band Giant Sand, and the cover in question first appeared on Nothing Left to Lose, a Kris Kristofferson tribute album. The song was later collected on Giant Sand’s album Cover Magazine. You may know the song–it goes:

he’s a poet/ he’s a picker/ he’s a prophet/ he’s a pusher/ he’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned/ he’s a walking contradiction/ partly fact and partly fiction/ taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.

It’s a good song, and Gelb turns in a sound version. But it’s his spoken introduction that really peaks my interest. On Kristofferson’s original he name-checks a number of folks who “had something to do with” the genesis of the song. Gelb repeats the original name-checks, slightly out of order, before listing a set of artists that he, Gelb, learned the song for:

Well, I guess when Kris wrote this song he wrote it for Chris Gantry-he started out doing it though by-ended up writing it for Dennis Hopper, Johnny Cash, Norman Norbert, Funky Donny Fritts, Billy Swan, Paul Seibel, Bobby Neuwirth, Jerry Jeff Walker. Ramblin’ Jack Eliot had a lot to do with it. Me I ended up learning this song for Vic Chesnutt, Jason Lytle, Evan Dando, Polly Jean, Paula Jean, Patsy Jean, Juliana, Victoria, Bobby Neuwirth, Bobby Plant. Curtis John Tucker had a lot to do with it.

The alliterative Bobbys and the matching of Ramblin’ Jack Eliot and Curtis John Tucker make this speech into a mini-poem of sorts, and we know many of the protagonists. Hopper and Cash of course; Jerry Jeff Walker and Ramblin’ Jack Eliot are folk singers, older than Kristofferson; Bobby Neuwirth is a folk singer, multimedia artist, and Dylan confidant in Don’t Look Back. Funky Donny Fritts is a session keyboardist, and I believe Norman Norbert and Billy Swan were session musicians as well. Paul Seibel was also a folksinger-I don’t know him; maybe you do. Kris’ meaning is pretty clear-a song like The Pilgrim doesn’t come from nowhere, and the folksingers he learned from are portals back in time to an earlier tradition to which he generously pays tribute.

Not being myself a 70’s session musician completist I did have to look up a few of the names. The Gelb names are more familiar, expect one. Vic Chesnutt, Jason Lytle and Victoria (Williams) are folk singers (or were, as sadly Chesnutt has passed). Evan Dando, Juliana Hatfield, and P.J. Harvey are/were alt-rock superstars. Bobby Plant would be Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame, Bobby Neuwirth is Bobby Neuwirth.

But here’s the point, after listening to Kristofferson and Gelb name-check Funky Donny and Curtis John, I feel an affinity for them-were I to bump into Funky Donny in an airport bar or lounge his presence would resonate with an essential familiarity. Even if I didn’t know precisely that it was he, I would recognize immediately that he was indeed funky, not to mention a serious problem when he’s stoned. And Curtis John Tucker, well, his role is still opaque to me, but he clearly had a lot to do with it.

What both singers hint at in their evocation of the circumstances surrounding the creation of a song is the presence of community behind the music. Behind or beside every Kristofferson is a Norman Norbert, behind every an a Bobby Neuwirth, every Gelb a Curtis John Tucker.

The humanity and camaraderie inherent in the spoken introductions to The Pilgrim remind us that artistic communities are vital in the creation of lasting artistic production–Neuwirth may not have been essential to Dylan’s art in the mid-60’s, but he was instrumental to its vitality; Kristofferson wrote “The Pilgrim” but it wouldn’t have been as good without Paul Seibel. And as for Curtis John Tucker, well he had a lot to do with it.

On the Spoken Introduction of the Band Members of Phosphorescent by Matthew Houck on Live at the Music Hall

On side two of Phosphorescent’s majestic 2015 live album Live from the Music Hall, the band plays a song from their 2005 album Aw Come Aw Wry, called “Joe Tex, These Taming Blues.” Houck’s early Phosphorescent albums are interesting–they are more ambient and keening than his mature work and some of the songs are really long.  Joe Tex is one of the better early songs, and Houck puts a little something special into the first couple lines on the live version: 

Is it ever gonna not be so hard to see you around/ or am I really really really really gonna have to really gonna have to really have to leave town

Houck is a master at harnessing the power of repetition—here each “really” takes on its own character and valance.  The band gives an excellent performance, which goes for about 4 minutes. It is apparently the second last song of the night, because at the end of the song Houck moves to introduce the band. Here he goes, as the band chugs on behind him:

Brooklyn, that’s Scott Stapleton playing that piano right there…

The first “Brooklyn” is loaded with import–Houck is going to drop some wisdom on the folks tonight. Stapleton plays a few understatedly beautiful lilting keys and…

Brooklyn, that’s David Torch playing that percussion right there…

Torch gives a little maracas shake, right on time, as Houck establishes the rhythm and flow of the introductions. The basic elements include a “Brooklyn,” which shifts in valance a little each time, and the band member playing “that (instrument),” “right there.”

Brooklyn, this is Rustin Bragaw playing that bass guitar right there…

A slight shift in the pattern–probably Rustin is standing next to Houck. Bragaw drops a couple of notes on his funky bass and on we go–naturally, the bassist gets the lowest key introduction.

Brooklyn, Christopher Showtime Marine playing those drums right there…

Houck reaches for a higher register here, both on the slightly more breathless and rushed “Brooklyn” and an uptone delivery of Marine’s nickname. Another shift in the pattern–Marine has a moniker. Showtime delivers a healthy drum piece and…

Brooklyn, the trigger finger Ricky…Ray…Jackson playing that guitar and that pedal steel right there, come on…

We’re getting there. The crowd is excited for this one; the pedal steel player is clearly a star. Houck pauses a beat on each name, “Ricky…Ray…Jackson, come on,” and the come on is both an entreaty to the crowd and also a general “come on can you believe this guy!” from the lead singer. Pedal steel is no joke. Also, Ricky Ray’s nickname comes before the name–he is in fact the trigger finger here tonight, his birth name is just data.

The trigger finger plays a couple of high notes and…

Brooklyn, last but certainly not least, the best looking one in the group, Joe Help, playing those keyboards right there, come on.

No fuss around the two-syllable “Joe Help,” which Houck delivers as if it was one word. Joe Help and Joe Tex, good looking guys that’s all.

I can’t tell you what a pleasure this has been y’all. Thank you for being here. Hope you come back again.  We’re going to play one more song; thank you guys so much again.  This is a song called Los Angeles; this is how it goes.

And the band plays a stunning closer.

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On the Between-Song Patter on the Bob Dylan Bootleg Record “Peco’s Blues”

Introduction

Behind any work of art, pretty much, there is some kind of “process.” The scope and complexity of this process differs across art forms, of course. The writer’s process is rather different than that of, let’s say, the magician David Copperfield. I find all artistic processes fascinating, and am drawn specifically to what happens “backstage.” Backstage is a world unto itself.

In the early 1970’s, the film director Sam Peckinpah was making a film called Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and he asked Bob Dylan to do the soundtrack. He also offered him a small role in the movie, a character called Alias. Dylan hadn’t really done a soundtrack before, nonetheless he headed down to Mexico to work on the film with Peckinpah. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid the film is ok; it’s not my favorite Peckinpah by any means. (That is reserved for Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, with the one and only Warren Oates in the lead role. Oates around this time also starred in the film Cockfighter, which features the greatest rejected tagline of any film even “he came into town with his cock in his hands and what he did with it was illegal in 48 states.”) The Pat Garrett soundtrack in many ways transcends the film, mostly because this is where we are first introduced to “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which would go on to become one of Dylan’s best known songs, and is a really good soundtrack overall, however I am more interested in an extended set of outtakes from the sessions which are collected on a bootleg record called Peco’s Blues. Peco’s Blues features a number of alternate versions of the best known songs on the soundtrack, including Heaven’s Door and “Billy,” however the most interesting part of Peco’s Blues for me is the black and forth patter between Dylan, his sound engineer Chuck, and his band. This patter, I suggest, opens a fascinating and unique window into Dylan’s working methods and general approach to art. In what follows we will look at each incident of patter or conversation in the order they occur. All of the instances occur within the first 20 minutes of the nearly 70 minute recording as Dylan, his band, and the engineer endeavor to get on the same musical page.

Patter at the End of “Billy 2,” around the 7:34 Mark:

Dylan (D) wraps up a lengthy take of Billy 2 and asks his engineer Chuck (C):

D: Was that any good?

C: Pretty good Bob. What happened was was you hit the mic twice when you were moving around out there and we had a couple of clunks on it.

D: That’s too bad (…) Shit, I wish Sam was here. He’d know what to do.

C: That mic’s just a little more sensitive than the Sennheiser’s and I’m getting a little…

D: That’s too, uh…that’s…

C: And I’m getting a little puff of wind sometimes when you get real close to it when you sing.

D: That’s too sensitive.

C: Let me move it back a little for you Bob.

D: I think we must have got it though Chuck.

C: (with what sounds like a pencil in his mouth) Oh I recorded it, darn tootin’. I had a little puff from your voice once and you knocked the mic twice.

D: Well that might have been alls that we need.

C: You wanna, you wanna hear a playback on it?

D: Yeah, I would.

Comment:

We see right away here that Dylan is the boss and that the engineer is walking on eggshells a little bit. This is made clear by Dylan’s reference to “Sam,” who he obviously thinks is a better engineer than Chuck. We have more than a little sympathy for Chuck, as it wasn’t he that knocked the mic and he is trying his best to give Dylan the relevant information.

I love how Dylan here, while implicitly criticizing Chuck, also picks up on Chuck’s framing of the microphone situation and agrees that “that’s too sensitive.” However, the relative sensitivity of the mic is not Dylan’s main concern. Dylan, famously, likes to work fast. For some of his records that has been a positive, on these the sound and performances come across as organic and coordinated, like all of the players grasped their roles and just ran with them. On other records, Dylan’s preference for speed let’s him down, and songs, and especially the production, can feel rushed, even a little sloppy. Dylan famously warred with Uber-producer Daniel Lanois, who had produced U2 and Peter Gabriel among others before Dylan asked him to produce 1989’s Oh Mercy. Oh Mercy sounds great and was Dylan’s “comeback” album after a mixed, to say the least, mid 80’s period, however Lanois’ sonic fingerprints are all over it. Too much so for Dylan, who wanted a faster, looser approach. Lanois is no pushover, and held his own with Dylan. We get the sense that Chuck is no Lanois.

So, despite the knocks on the mic and the puff of wind, Dylan is going to be fine with using this version on the record. Chuck, of course, is going to want Dylan to play it again. Chuck, or someone, would win this one because the extended take of Billy 2 here is not the one used on the final album. The little tussle between Dylan and Chuck ends in a draw as they agree to listen to the playback.

Patter at the Beginning of “Turkey,” around the 8:40 Mark:

D: Hey Roger, when I stop, when I stop, you stop. I’ll do something else and you figure it out. So it might go like this (Dylan starts playing and the band fills in a little hesitantly behind him).

D: Say Chuck, Chuck?

C: Yeah

D: Let’s take this down and mark it under, uh, Turkey…We got a buzz in the amp.

C: I’m not picking it up.

D: OK come on now.

The band plays on the instrumental Turkey for about a minute before Dylan stops.

D: OK, this is under Turkey.

Dylan begins again, and this time the band fills in much better, the song sounding fuller and tighter in all ways.

Comment:

This is in my opinion the most illuminating of Dylan’s comments and gives us a window into his way of working throughout his career. As mentioned above, Dylan works fast and expects his musicians to do the same. Thus he instructs Roger that when he Dylan stops, Roger is to stop, Dylan will “do something else” and Roger needs to “figure it out.” Dylan’s instructions may not sound very fair to poor Roger, but I think they actually are. A musical team is in this case not unlike a sports team, say a basketball team, where even if an offense is running a designed play or “set,” players need to figure out what’s going on and adjust their own position and movements constantly and on the fly. There is no playbook, not set of absolute rules about how to accomplish this any more than there is a set of rules about how to follow Dylan musically. The musician, like the athlete, just has to work by feel, take in all the information around him or her, and figure it out. If they can, they will keep their job; if not, not.

Patter at the Beginning of “Billy Surrenders,” around the 18:10 Mark:

D: Let’s see now. You know, you know what we want when Billy starts (laughs) this guy Jerry Fielding’s gonna go nuts man when he hears this (laughs). You know what we want when like Pat Garrett comes down from the hills right, and all these guys come out like one by one. And Billy comes out, he’s almost standing in a circle you know, so like (indistinct) one by one and then there’s like a big pause and he stops and there’s silence. You know those big organ notes, those scary things (hums organ notes) (laughs). Can you get behind that? (Dylan and the band laughing.)

Comment:

The recording of the Pat Garrett soundtrack was pretty complicated, in large part because Jerry Fielding, Peckinpah’s usual composer, was relegated to a supporting role and apparently resented it. Accounts differ as to whether Fielding quit, walked off set (and maybe came back), actually did try to advise Dylan as requested, or some combination of the above, however the history of the film makes clear that there was friction. Dylan is clearly aware of the tension with Fielding, and makes a joke about it in a place where it doesn’t even seem relevant. Dylan seems to almost revel in the conflict, setting up Fielding to his band as a “suit” who is not in the field so to speak, and who Dylan enjoys winding up with his musical choices. Whatever the exact situation with Fielding was, the issue is clearly a live one at the time of recording.

My sense is that Dylan is mostly talking to his band here, as there are a number of people in the background laughing along with Dylan through this monologue. Despite his reputation for playing fast and loose most of the time, Dylan shows a pretty good grasp of particular scenes in the film and clearly knows what he wants. The “big organ notes” he mentions do indeed feature on the soundtrack, however maybe not to the extent Dylan wanted. I have to laugh at the very 1970’s question “can you get behind that?”

Conclusion

Overall, Peco’s Blues provides a fascinating window into Dylan’s working methods and expectations for his crew. Of course not every musician works this way; many will give much more precise instructions I am sure, and in the era of computer aided music Dylan’s approach on Pat Garrett is certainly a old-fashioned one. But I like it. It is absolutely worth listening to the entirety of Peco’s Blues to get a sense of Dylan’s working methods as well as how a band, here playing together live and recorded live, “figures itself out” and gets from sketch to finished product. I am myself not a musician but a writer, and the writing process, although never exactly easy, is perhaps a little less complex, mostly because most writers write by themselves, with an editor or editing team looking over the work at a later date. There is nothing in writing quite like “I’ll do something else and you figure it out,” and it is the shifting, quicksilver like nature of Dylan’s approach to music making here that continues to interest me and draw me in.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On the Song “Dylan Thomas” and Comments on Ryhme

This post is about the song “Dylan Thomas” from the first Better Oblivion Community Center record. For the uninitiated (which is probably everyone reading this–recently a friend texted me a funny article from The Onion entitled “Study: No Two People Have Listened To Same Band Since 2003”), Better Oblivion Community Center is Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers. “Dylan Thomas” is the single, if singles still existed. You still won’t know them.

I want to write about the song because it has a killer structure and is awesome. The structure is based around a neat rhyme scheme with fabulous use of “near rhymes” and also around a see-saw in the verses between fairly pointed political commentary and apolitical hedonism. As with all interpretation, I can’t be sure that what I hear was intended, but what the hell–communication is what the listener does after all.

Now, a lot of songs, most, rhyme. That’s obvious. But not too many songs really hold up on the page as well, as poetry. I think “Dylan Thomas” does and I’d like to explore why.

Verse I:

It was quite early one morning/ hit me without warning/ I went to hear the general speak/ I was standing for the anthem/ banners all around him/ confetti made it hard to see

So the first verse clearly alludes to our political moment–it appears politically engaged to some extent. The reference to “the general” is redolent of South American politics (I am reminded of the fabulous Drugstore song “El President”). The rhyme scheme is tricky–it’s AABCC(D), where (d) “see” almost rhymes with “speak” in the delivery although the words don’t actually rhyme, instead being only vaguely alliterative.

Verse II:

Put my footsteps on the pavement/ starved for entertainment/ four seasons of revolving doors/ so sick of being honest/ I’ll die like Dylan Thomas/ a seizure on the bathroom floor

Verse II sees a clear shift from the political to the personal, the hedonistic, the depraved. While Thomas is famous for his “rage against the dying of the light,” Better Oblivion taps the seedier side of Thomas’ legacy–the singers (most of the songs on the album including “Dylan Thomas” are duets) in verse II are seeking pleasure and there is no hint of the macro picture here. So, verse I=macro, verse II=micro.

The rhyme scheme shifts to AABCCB, with a definite rhyme between “doors” and “floor.” “Entertainment” and “pavement” I would consider near-rhymes, and the slightly off-kilter near-rhymes are for me what really make this song stand out as a piece of writing.

Chorus:

I’m getting greedy with this private hell/ I’ll go it alone, but that’s just as well

Hard to say exactly what “this private hell” refers to, however we get a sense of doubling down on the dissolute–in for a penny in for a pound as they say.

Verse III:

These cats are scared and feral/ the flag pins on their lapels/ the truth is anybody’s guess/ these talking heads are saying/ “The king is only playing/ a game of four dimensional chess”

Verse III is clearly political again, setting up a 1 for 1 see-saw (so far). “Cats” here cuts both ways–on the one hand “people” with flag pins in the era of truthiness, on the other, well real cats are feral. It’s a very clever, subtle move. Is the general from verse I the king from verse III? Probably. We live in an era where world leaders are not in the business of leading, but rather of playing elaborate, endless games.

The rhyme scheme here is a AABCCB where the second C and the second B are part of a single quote. Very nicely done.

Verse IV:

There’s flowers in the rubble/ the weeds are gonna tumble/ I’m lucid but I still can’t think/ I’m strapped into a corset/ climbed into your corvette/ I’m thirsty for another drink

This is where the song really comes into its own as a mini-masterpiece. On its own, this verse is nakedly apolitical and local–I am reminded of one of my favorite lines of all time from the final Replacements album. The song is “Someone Take the Wheel” and the line goes: “they’re fighting again in some fuckin’ land/ ah throw in another tape man.”

In 1990, Paul Westerberg didn’t give a shit about the Iraq War and wanted nothing more than to listen to music on the road. That’s an understandable point of view on the level of the human individual. What I love about what Oberst and Bridgers do with this song is how they alternate verses between the macro and the micro, the engaged and the depraved. The same conceit is used on the first song of the record, “Didn’t Know What I Was In For”:

I didn’t know what I was in for/ when they took my belt and strings/ they told me I’d gone crazy/ my arms are strapped in a straight jacket/ so I couldn’t save those TV refugees

I get this sentiment. Seriously I do. If we zoom out a bit on our world situation these days, we could easily say that every person with even a patina of ethical conscience ought to be on the front lines in one way or another. And then I look at myself and…well, I chose Medicine Sans Frontiers as the charity that gets some small percentage of my Amazon purchases. Will the future see me as a head in the sand hedonist? Probably, and with some justification.

The rhyme scheme in verse IV is again a clear AABCCB with near-rhymes (probably the first time in history “corset” has been rhymed with “corvette”), in fact the same scheme as limericks. I f***ing love AABCCB. God bless it. Also, the line “I’m lucid but I still can’t think” pretty much summarizes my entire life to date.

Verse V:

If advertised, we’ll try it/ and buy some peace and quiet/ and shut up at the silent retreat/ they say you’ve gotta fake it/ at least until you make it/ that ghost is just a kid in a sheet

AABCCB again, the scheme which carries the song with the striking exception on verse I. Verse V alludes to the theme of the record–Better Oblivion Community Center is some kind of partially defined wellness retreat–and kind of splits the difference between the political and the personal, the macro and the micro. It also serves as a commentary on the commercialization of “wellness” and is a cheeky meta-comment on the cover of Bridgers 2017 debut:

Is this a shot at some critics? A self-aware reference to a DIY cover? I don’t know, and I love the line.

Following the logic of this piece, we have a kind of scheme of the verses as well. Let’s call is ABABC where A=political, B=apolitical, and C splits the difference.

Verse VI/ Outro:

I’m getting used to these dizzy spells/ I’m taking a shower at the Bates Motel/ I’m getting greedy with this private hell/ I’ll go it alone, but that’s just as well

It’s a simple AABB with the outro calling back the chorus from mid-song. The see-saw between the personal the political sort of resolves itself in the killer couplet. “I’m getting used to these dizzy spells” suggests acclimatization to the altitude–metabolization of the fear. “I’m taking a shower at the Bates Motel” is an amazingly effective counterpoint line–we are living at the knife point of maniacs. Ah well, let’s hit the bar. I’m thirsty for another drink.

Seriously, check out “Dylan Thomas” and the whole record. I know no one listens to anything I listen to, but still.

Postscript: So Mr. Spotify seems to have decided that “Dylan Thomas” is my very favorite song, and cues it up time after time after I’ve finished listening to whatever I have selected. I do love this song, by Mr. Spotify there is almost making me tired of it. Change it up there Mr. Spotify please.