When you are subjected to a lockdown, as Sydney is now, what you want, if you are like me, is entertainment that takes the ennui, anxiety, alienation from others and just general all-persuasive sense of melancholy and massively amplifies it. That's what I call living.
That is why it was a tragic irony that COVID-19 killed the great US country singer-songwriter John Prine, coz his whole output seems designed to be a humanist, compassionate and empathetic summing up the strange emptiness and background sense of unease that comes with very limited options.
So here are the 6 songs that seem to capture all that and SURE these songs are generally about other things, whatever the similarities, but that's coz a lockdown is just the reality for many people in the "rich world" under late monopoly capitalism just exaggerated a bit.
Anyway, and I'm sure I don't have to say this but just in case, this is "whiskey-drinking" music. By all means substitute with your intoxicant of choice (as per the final song on this list) but for god's sake do not attempt sobriety at a time like this. Just don't.
You can listen to all 6 as a playlist or I lst them below coz that's the kinda shit I do. I'm thoughtful.
Clocks and spoons and empty roomsIt's raining out tonight
What a way to end a day
By turnin' out the light...
Shoot the moon right between the eyes
I'm screaming
Take me back to sunny countryside
I can hear 'em there buzzin'
And I ain't done nothing
Since I woke up today
She sits and stares through the back door screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what could I say if he asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? Nothing much to do"
Things got tough
Things got harder than hard
We were just trying to make a livin'
In our back yard
We were born too late died to soon
Anxiety's a terrible crime
If you don't come now don't come at all
'Cause it's a crooked piece of time.
Blew your picture
Right out of the picture frame
Even blew the candle out
From underneath the flame
Yesterday morning an ill wind came.
And I know who I'll invite
There's a strange and lonely person
With whom I'll spend this night
There'll be no old sad memories
To haunt me till I die
In that room there'll be a bottle
And me, myself and I...
When I woke up this morning, things were lookin' bad
Seem like total silence was the only friend I had
Bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down, and won
And it was twelve o'clock before I realized
I was havin' no fun
Ah, but fortunately I have the key to escape reality...