Friday, January 14, 2022

• Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron (Georg Solti) (disc 1)
• Harry Bertoia, Here and Now (Sonambient 1032)
• Merzbow, Sha Mo 3000
• Merzbow, Magnesia Nova
• Jim O’Rourke & Mats Gustafsson, Xylophonen Virtuosen
• Bill Cosby, Badfoot Brown and The Bunions Bradford Funeral Marching Band (1972)
• Grateful Dead, Europe ’72 (disc 2)
• Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
• Compilation 2 (No Funeral)
• Compilation 1 (No Funeral)
• Full Up: More Hits from Studio One (Heartbeat)
• The Verlaines, Bird Dog
• The Verlaines, Juvenilia
• Technicolor Paradise: Rhum Rhapsodies & Other Exotic Delights (Numero Group) (disc 3)

I did not like the Smiths in high school. I did not want to hear this weepy, miserable music, did not want to hear from Morrissey about how lonely he is.

Listening to a lot of Jandek changed that; after that, nothing was too depressive for me. Or I just got older and, perhaps, sadder-but-wiser. Either way, I could better appreciate “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” or such a pointedly mopey dirge as “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”.

I did not like the Verlaines in high school, either. A friend raved about Bird Dog. I tried it and though I don’t think I paid attention to what Graeme Downes was singing about, the anguished note in the vocals and music came across and put me off.

I shouldn’t have waited so long (30+ years) to try again. Bird Dog is even more painful if you listen to the words, but it’s also magnificent, and I’ve been missing out. The bitter complexity of emotion in these songs is a world away from one-dimensional self pity.

The first song that opened the record up for me was “Makes No Difference”:

And you’ll wipe it good and you’ll wipe it clean
And say, “I’ll see you in the death machine tomorrow
Unless somebody's god intervenes”
And I’ll see you there but you sure won't see me

And the second was “Bird Dog”:

But the bird that sang love in your ear
Has swallowed a fatal dose
If there’s poison in your cup
Well you picked your tree: Now bark it up
 
And if I live to seventy
And all of my bones begin to seize
Oh Lord don’t leave, don’t leave to me
A one and only way to dream
 
The bloodshot eye sees paradise
And knows just where it lies
Dissolves into grief
That this crazy machine does not go there
 
There wasn’t a hell of a lot to tell
He wrecked whatever he’d undertake
He got old, he got slow
And every death was on his face
 
Once the bird has stopped its mouth,
Once you’re in this dream you don't get out

And from there it turns into a cheery barroom ode to the pleasures of swilling beer, but if you’ve been paying attention, the effect is akin to Brecht’s “The Swamp”:

And a drowning was not over in a single morning.
Often it took
many weeks; this made it more terrible.
And the memory of our long
agreeing talks about the swamp, which already
Held so many.
Powerless now I saw him leaning back.
covered with leeches
in the shimmering
softly moving slime. Upon the sinking
Face the ghastly
blissful smile.