This week a video by Wire:
Like many post-punk (or alt-rock, or whatever you may call them) bands that I grew up with, Wire could easily be written off as a “legacy” band. Their remaining members aren’t too keen on that, though. They could perform their fans’ favorites, but seem much more interested in evolving their sound and seeing who among their fans will stick around. This was my favorite song from Red Barked Tree. They have released new stuff since. I can’t stop growing older, but it is comforting to grow older with some recording artists who continue to adapt and create.
I’ll see you next week with another video or two, and perhaps a story as well.
Tips and recs appreciated. Can’t pull too many pints or mix that many drinks without some currency.
Sent you a FB friend request.
Got it and accepted. Welcome to my non-blogging world. 🙂
More Wire:
“I started burning bridges, when I gave up counting sheep.”
Another:
“One of us will live to rue the day we met each other.”
And from an earlier seemingly more innocent time:
“TV doesn’t understand a word that matters”
And performing “Drill” – a bit of a hit from the mid-to-late 1980s – on the Tonight Show.
“How’s your skull? Does it fit? Is your mind free, empty, or split?”
All Excellent!
Punkish.
Now we’re talking! I loved Gang of Four!
Didn’t get down to the LA area til a couple years after that. By then, the punk scene was a shadow of its former self. The Minutemen and Black Flag were still playing, although not for much longer. Agent Orange was still around if memory serves. Social Distortion was sometimes together sometimes not. Had friends in bands – nothing anyone would remember. Fun going out to the clubs. Good times while they lasted.
The 1980s gets a lot of flak when it comes to music, but that decade had more than its share of talented artists – some veterans who got their due at last – and some who were young upstarts at the time. Good find. Hated that he passed away too. This has indeed been an awful year.
Strange
“There’s something going down that wasn’t here before
Keep your eyes so screwed to the floor
No one’s gonna save your life
There’s something going on that’s not quite right, uh-huh”
“I’m YouTubing hope”
“The chances smaller, the odds are slimmer”
As much as I loved the studio version, there is something very raw in this 1979 live performance that I find appealing.
“Renewed, it fought
As if it had a cause to live for”
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She had one hell of a voice. So did her dad. My parents made sure I was well aware of that. 🙂
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Heard my share of Frank Sinatra songs as a small kid. More my dad’s jam than mom’s. Hoping he’s kept those LPs in good condition. Anyhoo, this track gets it right. Thanks for that.
The generous, somewhat goofy enthusiasm Jennifer Warnes gave here is one of my favorite performances:
Jennifer was 29 when she had this first pop hit; it made the top 10 in the middle of 1977, seemingly out of left field. We can observe her surprised happiness in this unusual performance, broadcast on national TV.
Having gone through psychological and spiritual crises, this song is extremely resonant to me. Jenny knows the strangeness of what she’s singing about here, and the music is evocative as well:
“…I don’t wanna bore you with how I feel,
But when the walls came down,
The shit got real
I never thought I would ever be here,
Looking out on my life
As if there was no there
I messed around with something I always hated
I took a blanket into the bath
Opened my eyes and hallucinated,
I took a nap and woke up in the grass
…
My own mortality, I contemplated
Down in the valley I got hypnotized
It left a mark that hasn’t faded
That’s when I realized
There’s a little bit of magic,
Everybody has it
There’s a little bit of sand left in the hourglass…”
Thanks for this. I’ll tell you, this has been a year. For personal reasons I’ve only barely referenced here, I’ve been through hell and back. That has certainly left a mark that I will bear for whatever years I have left in me. I ended up re-reading some Vonnegut books during one of those nadir moments, and I had a few epiphany moments in the process. I realized that as I was re-reading Breakfast of Champions, that Vonnegut and I were at the same basic stage in our lifespans. That book was meant for him to provide some closure to the previous five decades, and I’ve been inspired to put some closure on some significant portions of my own life that simply stopped making sense years ago, and mortality awareness had finally placed into sharp relief. It’s been freeing. No worries, I still have some fight remaining. It’ll just take a different form. Thinking of retiring this particular pseudonym as it no longer really fits either – it’s part of a past that I jettisoned this year. No concrete plans yet for when (if I could just do so without having to abandon the account, I’d have already done so!).
You may have seen this thought from Vonnegut:
“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'”
This is valuable.
Very valuable indeed. Thanks for the reminder.
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