Interior World of Music

I expect a lot out of the music I listen to. I want emotional honesty balanced by a smart or funny or poetic (or all three) sensibility; I want a commitment to excellence (in whatever particular way an album is trying to be excellent), and I want there to be something I can fall for in the voice of whoever’s singing - I want their voice to be as unique as a fingerprint.

There are many songs I know that have achieved all my requirements for greatness, but fewer entire albums. The albums that have done it are those I’ve had pretty intense relationships with (listening binges, total memorization, something new every time I listen, etc.) It’s hard to describe without falling into melodrama, but these are the albums that bring up the big poetic emotions: elation, grief, reverence, acute awareness of love and beauty, etc., etc. You know the ones. That a bunch of people playing instruments and singing stuff they’ve written and doing it unbelievably well can produce this kind of a reaction in even one person is just more evidence of the magical and mystical power and gift that is music.

Anyway, I’ve wanted to think about the albums that are a big part of my little interior universe for a long time, and I finally got a chance to do it. Here is my constellation of albums in no particular order. It didn’t really seem like enough to just write the list, so I’ve included a line or two of lyrics to give a sense of why I think they’re so special.


Car Wheels on a Gravel Road/Lucinda Williams
“Give me some love to fill me up/Give me some time give me some stuff/Give me a sign/Give me some kind of reason…” (I Lost It)

Whereabouts/Ron Sexsmith
“And the more I see/the more I feel/the more I need/to know for sure what is real…” (Every Passing Day)

Wrecking Ball/Emmylou Harris
“I remember your leather boots, pointing up into the sky…” (Blackhawk - written by Daniel Lanois)

Summerteeth/Wilco
“You know it's all beginning/to feel like pretending/No love's as random/as my love/I can't stand it/I can't stand it…” (Can’t Stand It)

Achtung Baby/U2
“I disappeared in you/You disappeared from me/I gave you everything you ever wanted/It wasn't what you wanted…” (So Cruel)

Is This Desire?/P.J. Harvey
“There was trouble/taking place…” (The Garden)

Scar/Joe Henry
“As if I don’t remember/How we passed the time/As if I don’t remember how/your face fell into mine/Oh, you’re the meanest flower…” (Mean Flower)

Satellite Rides/Old 97s
“Rollerskate skinny and the terrible twos, how can you have everything and nothing to lose?” (Roller Skate Skinny)

Man Under the Influence/Alejandro Escovedo
“She plays castanets/she works without a net/I like her better when she walks away…” (Castanets)

Bob Dylan Live 1975 - The Rolling Thunder Revue
“I was thinkin' about turquoise, I was thinkin' about gold/I was thinkin' about diamonds and the world's biggest necklace/As we rode through the canyons, through the devilish cold/I was thinkin' about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless…” (Isis)

Love & Theft/Bob Dylan
“Walking through the leaves/falling from the trees/Feeling like a stranger nobody sees/So many things that we never will undo/I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too…” (Mississippi)

Time Out of Mind/Bob Dylan
“Well the winds in Chicago have torn me to shreds/Reality has always had too many heads/Some things last longer than you think they will/Some kind of things you can never kill…” (Cold Irons Bound)

Look Into the Eyeball/David Byrne
“He's drunk and he's insistent/Shy but he's persistent/Boisterous and jumpy/Disorganized and funky/Every day he wonders/what the hell she sees in him…” (Great Intoxication)

Graceland/Paul Simon
“And I see losing love/is like a window in your heart/Everybody sees you're blown apart/everybody sees the wind blow…” (Graceland)

And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out/Yo La Tengo
“Maybe I'm out of my mind, maybe I'm blocking out the truth/But it seems like just a little thing/like you don't want to listen/and I can't shut up…” (The Crying of Lot G )

Carbon Glacier/Laura Veirs
“Watch/I can flash across the sky/a lightning bolt from up on high/and I can crash into myself…” (Icebound Stream)

Mule Variations/Tom Waits
“Well the moon is broken/and the sky is cracked/come on up to the house/the only thing that you can see/is all that you lack/come on up to the house…” (Come On Up to the House)

Wildflowers/Tom Petty
“Broken skyline/which way to love land/Which way to something better/Which way to forgiveness/Which way do I go…” (Time to Move On)

Befriended/Innocence Mission
“Nobody knows, darling/nobody knows how they are loved…” (When Mac Was Swimming)

Up/R.E.M.
“I cried the other night/I can't even say why/Fluorescent flat caffeine lights/it’s furious balancing…” (Daysleeper)

Gone Just Like a Train/Bill Frisell
Instrumental, but Bill does speak to you with his guitar. (The album cover didn’t make it into the mosaic - this is number 21, and you can’t make 7 rows. Sorry about that.)

There's Been A Lot of Singing At Our House

I’ve always really enjoyed singing, but have always felt pretty self-conscious about it. My dad is a performing, solo-quality singer, and I don’t have that kind of voice. I spent six years in a best-in-our-division-in-the-state jr. high/high school choir being directed by a man who demanded you use the best-sounding voice you could produce. As a result, I spent a lot of years using a cultivated, performance-quality voice. Singing for fun, or in church, or even just along with the radio by myself became a conflicting experience: How good do I have to try to sound, here?

So along came Sophie, and all of a sudden I became a singing machine. All of the parenting books told me to talk to her nonstop to acclimate her to the world of words, but I just couldn’t do it. Somehow it felt more comfortable to sing, so I sang. But I would only sing when it was just Sophie and I. When we were alone, it was like Umbrellas of Cherbourg in our house.

Slowly, over the last year and a half - thanks to daily use - I’ve been finding my own singing voice, my singing confidence, and an enormous, new, pressure-free enjoyment from singing. Sure, I still try to watch my pitch and smooth things out, but I’m not going to melt into the ground if I hit a note that’s not quite right. I’m more than willing to sing in front of Ben now - and frankly in front of just about anyone else if the need arises. My voice is perfectly adequate for the things I want to do with it, and sometimes I can even achieve moments of beauty with it.

In the last couple of weeks Sophie has started singing too. Her very first song was Wheels on the Bus; her lyrics consisted of the phrase “rou an rou” repeated over and over again. Last week, Ben happened to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and it has enraptured her. (See video above.) She’s also started requesting her favorite CD, You Are My Little Bird, and even tries to get it off of the shelf by herself. She likes to turn in a circle and clap hands to her favorite song, “Little Bird, Little Bird.” When we sing just about any song, she loves it. Even if we’re just stopping to take a breath mid-verse she wants to hear more: “Again!”

I’m so excited that Sophie is singing - I love hearing her talking/singing/whispering performance style, and the crazy, meandering tunes she makes up.

Talking, laughing, praying, singing: I’m hoping we can make them all feel like the most natural and important things to do with the voices in our house.

Why I Love The Internet

Sometimes Music..., originally uploaded by Poundstone.

From: Stephen Lamb
To: jpoundstone
Date: Apr 6, 2007 6:21 PM
Subject: Jeffrey Overstreet / Bill Frisell

Jessica,

I found your website after reading Jeffrey Overstreet's book where he
quotes you about music healing "a million little broken things you didn't even know needed attention." I wanted to tell you that I love that quote and agree with it 100%.

I work in the music industry in Nashville, and this week I got to do some work for a concert Bill Frisell played with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra's String Quartet. After the concert last night, I told him about your quote, and he loved it. He said he wanted to see the quote and drawing, so I just sent him the link to it on Flickr.

Here's my blog post where I wrote about it after reading that chapter in Jeffrey's book: http://www.jslweb.com/blog/?p=112.

Thanks,
Stephen Lamb
www.jslweb.com

“Breathing rarified air, special and pure, like on Mount Everest.”

Clouds 4, originally uploaded by Poundstone.

I read an interview with Lucinda Williams a few years ago and remember her saying that oftentimes, the take of a song that ends up making it onto an album is the take she does when she’s dog tired; the last take.

About a year ago, my friend Craig Laurie (who has just put out a new album) said he had experienced the same thing during his recording process.

A few nights ago, I watched Au Hasard Balthazar, and afterwards a documentary that featured the director of the film, Robert Bresson, saying he sometimes had the non-actors he cast rehearse their lines up to fifty times before he shot a scene.

And this afternoon on NPR’s “This I Believe,” dancer and choreographer Judith Jamison said:

“Once, I had a dancer who was a beautiful dancer with a gorgeous body. But I couldn't get him to express himself. He had to go further. He had to tell me his journey, his emotional center, but he wouldn't. One time we were in rehearsal. He had a five-minute solo. He did it once. He was breathing hard. I said, ‘Do it again.’ The second time he was so exhausted he had no choice: He had to go deeper. He was honest. He arrived. It was exquisite.”

I don’t really know what to make of this idea, which seems to have been following me around for several years. It's counter-intuitive that work produced in some state of fatigue or exhaustion (as opposed to zeal or frenzy) would turn out to be the most excellent work produced, but apparently it happens. And, going by the products in the examples above, work produced in a depleted state of body may have a more intense spiritual resonance than would be possible otherwise. Or, to borrow the phrase Judith Jamison used to describe a rehearsal studio space, the work could make us feel we are “breathing rarified air, special and pure, like on Mount Everest.”

You Are My Little Bird & Other Children's Music Gems

Let me start off by saying that "children's music" no longer means what it once did (apparently): an endless, insanity-inducing loop of "The Wheels on the Bus" and "I Love You, You Love Me." In fact, I find myself listening to the "children's music" we have for Sophie even when she's not around.

Most recently, I got my hands on Elizabeth Mitchell's "You Are My Little Bird," which I'd seen recommended all over the place. Her web site has clips of a few songs from this album and others. Just about all of the songs made me cry on account of their magic and sweetness. They're made by Elizabeth, her husband and their daughter, Storey. I purchased "Bird" (favorite songs: "Little Bird, Little Bird" and Mitchell's version of the Velvet Underground's "What Goes On,") and another children's album Mitchell made, "You Are My Sunshine" (favorite song:"So Glad I'm Here").

(By the way, the magical cover art for "You Are My Little Bird" was created by Ida Pearle. Strangely enough, "Ida" is also the name of Elizabeth Mitchell's regular band. Must've been fate.)

Other favorite "children's" albums at our house include They Might Be Giants' "No!," and Dan Zane's "Family Dance." We're also currently working our way (via the library) through the kids' albums put out by Smithsonian Folkways, including gems from Ella Jenkins, Woody Guthrie and Elizabeth Cotten.

Searching for information on an Andrew Bird song, I came across RealFake, a blog that quoted this other blog, which the RealFake guy found via yet another blog. Entry is here. The quote, from blogger Paul Graham, is this:

"I find every ambitious town sends you a message. New York tells you 'you should make more money.' LA tells you 'you should be better looking.' Rome tells you 'you should dress better.' London tells you 'you should be hipper.' The Bay Area tells you 'you should live better.' And Cambridge tells you 'you should read some of those books you've been meaning to.'"

Assuming Portland qualifies as an "ambitious" town (though certainly not ambitious in the way NYC is ambitious) I think this city says something like, "you should drink more coffee." Or maybe it says, "hey, no need to try so hard." Or perhaps "you should get a dog." (Other suggestions welcome.)

It's strange having Portland be such a destination point for so many. I'm certainly not getting a big head about it, it's just strange having grown up here that anyone thinks it's "cool." However its coolness was recently highlighted by my sister-in-law and her husband who have moved back from Des Moines, Iowa. No good restaurants there, culture is tough to come by and - egads - no Trader Joe's.

Anyhoo, I like the idea of imagining what cities are saying. I think I'll add it on the to-do list anytime I go on vacation. Hey, wouldn't it be fun to have a whole web site where people say what they think their city says? (Um, did I just type a tongue twister?) I wonder what your city says?

Sometimes Music...

Sometimes Music...
Originally uploaded by Poundstone.

A picture I drew at the wonderful Bill Frisell concert last night, alongside a thought I had. For more pictures I drew at the concert (and elsewhere) check www.fotolog.net/jpoundstone...

I can't tell if you would have to like Bob Dylan or not to enjoy his book. (Personally, I adore the guy.) But what I can tell you is that I'm only about 60 pages in, and I've already got about 12 little passages I've fallen in love with. Including: "I began cramming my brain with all kinds of deep poems. It seemed like I'd been pulling an empty wagon for a long time and now I was beginning to fill it up and would have to pull harder."

Sometimes I cry at concerts. Tears just start streaming down my face. It happened again tonight at the Ron Sexsmith concert. Any reason I give for the tears sounds hokey: the music has a direct connection to my heart; a singer’s voice vibrates in some part of my soul; some kind of overwhelmingly beautiful truth is present in the music, which I physically react to… The truth is I don’t know why the tears start piling up. It’s usually a combination of things, a layering of conditions – from my state of mind to the venue to the order of songs - that makes me vulnerable. Other concerts I’ve lost it at: Richard Thompson, Jeff Tweedy solo, Wilco, Bill Frisell, Lucinda Williams, Daniel Lanois. I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of.

Back to Ron’s show tonight:, it was without a doubt the best concert of his that I’ve been to. I love his new album, Retriever. What? You’ve never heard of him? That’s okay. If you trust me at all, just go out and buy Retriever or Whereabouts. Preferably both. I dare you not to fall in love with them.

According to an interview I recently read, Jeff Tweedy, singer, songwriter, poet and frontman for Wilco, has done a whole lot of listening to a CD called "The Conet Project," recordings of so-called "Numbers Stations." The title of one of the band’s albums (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), and a good deal of its sonic landscape were inspired by the recordings. Take a look at www.irdial.com/conet.htm for more information about Numbers Stations and the CDs. (Below is some of the text off their site.) However, given that the CD set sells for $244.88 on Amazon, you might also just want to listen to a few MP3s from it at http://mirror33.archive.org/2/ird059/. Spooky and fascinating.

"For more than 30 years the Shortwave radio spectrum has been used by the worlds intelligence agencies to transmit secret messages. These messages are transmitted by hundreds of ‘Numbers Stations’….Shortwave Numbers Stations are a perfect method of anonymous, one way communication. Spies located anywhere in the world can be communicated to by their masters via small, locally available, and unmodified Shortwave receivers. The encryption system used by Numbers Stations, known as a ‘one time pad’ is unbreakable."

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