Just because

I love Gnarls Barkley videos.

Should be mandatory viewing for all young lovers.

D.

Dead souls

I’ve rediscovered Joy Division. Probably like many folks, it was through their song Love Will Tear Us Apart. But while listening to their greatest hits album, I heard the oh-so familiar Dead Souls . . . and remembered it from The Crow. Nine Inch Nails did a cover of it for the movie.

Here’s Joy Division’s original:

And here’s Reznor’s cover:

Whole lot of sadness and pain in those lyrics. Joy Division’s lead singer, Ian Curtis, killed himself not long after recording this song. He was troubled with major depression and poorly controlled epilepsy, and his wife Deborah (whom he had married as a teenager) had recently asked him for a divorce. He hung himself in their kitchen and was discovered by Deborah the next day.

As for Reznor’s cover, The Crow is, I think, one of the best comic book-to-movie adaptations out there. Intense, creepy, and poignant — too poignant, really, since it was Brandon Lee’s last movie. Lee died for stupid reasons:

Because the movie’s second unit was running behind schedule, they decided to make dummy cartridges (cartridges that outwardly appear to be functional but contain no propellant or primers) from real cartridges by pulling out the bullets, dumping out the propellant and reinserting the bullets. However, the team neglected to remove the primers, which, if fired, could still produce just enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel (a squib load). At some point prior to the fatal scene, the live primer in one of the improperly constructed dummy rounds was discharged by an unknown person while in the pistol, leaving the bullet stuck in the barrel.

This malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was later reloaded with blank cartridges and used in the scene in which Lee was shot. When the first blank cartridge was fired, the stuck bullet was propelled out of the barrel and struck Lee in the abdomen, lodging in his spine.

. . . putting a halt to what might have been a brilliant career. (Watch the movie. He has talent and screen presence to burn.)

The Wikipedia article on Lee goes on a bit about a quote Lee used, just a few days prior to his death, from Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky. That quote is now inscribed on Lee’s tombstone:

Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless…

Getting back to Dead Souls, the name derives from the novel of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. Gogol’s protagonist hatches a scheme requiring him to “purchase” dead serfs from the local citizenry. The citizens are freed of a tax burden, and the protagonist acquires a stable of “dead souls” whom he intends to exploit in a get-rich-quick scheme.

The lyrics to Joy Division’s Dead Souls are by no means clear, but they do hint at a historical sensibility. I think the song is about not just the dead, but the victims of history, those who were abused by power. And the fact that souls keep on calling me suggests the restlessness we attribute to the ghosts of the unsettled dead.

D.

Excuse me while I kiss this guy

Two very different music videos. What I want to know is, if you were stoned, would you be able to tell the difference?

And my favorite cover . . .

Better on the CD . . . but still good.

D.

Back when I still liked Fleetwood Mac

Great stuff.

D.

Wherein I relent

Yes, there were awesome songs crafted in the 70s.

Of the various versions on YouTube (with Clapton, of course), I chose the one with the best sound. From Wikipedia,

“Layla” is a song by blues-rock band Derek and the Dominos and the thirteenth track from their album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, released in December 1970. It is considered one of rock music’s definitive love songs, featuring an unmistakable guitar figure, played by Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, and a piano coda that comprises the second half of the song. Its famously contrasting movements were composed separately by Clapton and Jim Gordon.

Inspired by Clapton’s then unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend and fellow musician George Harrison, “Layla” was unsuccessful on its initial release. The song has since experienced great critical and popular acclaim. It is often hailed as being among the greatest rock songs of all time. Two versions have achieved chart success, first in 1972 and again twenty years later as an acoustic abomination. In 2004, it was ranked #27 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”, and the acoustic version won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Rock Song.

Okay, okay, I added “abomination”. In my opinion.

D.

Good heavens, music sucked back then*

I can’t figure out what I like more: the performers’ big hair or the $1.99 Walmart Special lighting effects in the background. Does everyone here remember what music was like in the 70s, or would you prefer to forget?

Thing is, I’m not sure what sucks so royally here. It’s a catchy tune. Maybe I just hate pop.

D.

*My wife, and it seems more than a few women before her, have criticized me for saying things like “Eminem is crap” or “OMFG Ordinary People is worthless.” Seems I should be saying, “Eminem is crap, in my opinion,” and “OMFG Ordinary People is worthless, in my opinion.” So: Good heavens, music sucked back then, in my opinion.

Sonic Youth

Been listening to Daydream Nation lately. It’s one of those CDs I picked up in the mid-90s (when CDs were still kind of a new thing) that I still listen to, still come back to. Got turned on to them about the same time as I started listening to Swans, another off-kilter punk band of that same era. But while Swans is a defunct band, Sonic Youth is still turning out new albums more than thirty years after getting together.

If there’s one song you’ve heard by Sonic Youth, it’s probably “Bull in the Heather,” from Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star. Here’s Kathleen Hanna and Kim Gordon both looking absolutely adorable.

Punk’s still got legs.

D.