Tom Waits' playlist of his lyrical ballads (part 2) if you like to drink whiskey and cry

 

Part 2 of my groundbreaking investigation/slash drunken notes on the 40-song play list of Tom Waits' "lyrical ballads" released via his official social media pages comes as Sydney's Covid-related lockdown extend into its 578237th week. And I gotta say, Hollywood has really lied to us about just how exciting an Apocalypse would be.

After all it's not just Covid and the related unleashing of polce and army on Western Sydney, home to large migrant working class communities that are both among the greatest victims of this pandemic and the ones keep society going through their essential work, yet who are blamed for supposed misbhehaviour while their bosses refuse to implement proper safety measures. 

There's no shortage of other horrors, from escalating climate change-related extreme weather to the fact the Taliban are now running both Afghanistan and Texas -- with the Australian government refusing refugees from either. 

The point is, as Tom Waits and his people no doubt know, the world needs this "A Little Rain" 40-song playlist. Now this is part 2 of my in-depth investigation into it (songs 21-40) so you should really read part 1 or you'll be very confused. 

Also, drinking while listening is not mandatory as such (I prefer to focus on community education to get alcohol-while-listening-to-Tom-Waits ballads levels up), it is recommended. If not an actual necessity to get through it all (play list and world alike).

You can get the entire playlist on multiple platforms.

21) Invitation to the Blues

She said 'How you gonna like 'em, over medium or scrambled?'
You say 'anyway's the only way', be careful not to gamble
On a guy with a suitcase and a ticket getting out of here
It's a tired bus station and an old pair of shoes
This ain't nothing but an invitation to the blues...

 

Well, Tom Waits has sure started the second half of this playlist strongly. From his epic 1976 Small Change album, this is his heartfelt storytelling at its best. 

It is quite a skill to make this song not creepy, seeing as it is actually about some guy going into the diner and becoming obsessed with the waitress, but it's the way Waits humanises her that makes the difference:

 

But you can't take your eyes off her, get another cup of java
It's just the way she pours it for you, joking with the customers
Mercy mercy, Mr. Percy, there ain't nothing back in Jersey
But a broken-down jalopy of a man I left behind
And the dream that I was chasing, and a battle with booze
And an open invitation to the blues 

But she used to have a sugar daddy and a candy-apple Caddy
And a bank account and everything, accustomed to the finer things
He probably left her for a socialite and he didn't love her 'cept at night
And then he's drunk and never even told her that her cared
So they took the registration, and the car-keys and her shoes
And left her with an invitation to the blues

It makes the song's open-ended conclusion actually affecting..

 

Cause there's a Continental Trailways leaving local bus tonight, good evening
You can have my seat, I'm sticking round here for a while
Get me a room at the Squire, the filling station's hiring
And I can eat here every night, what the hell have I got to lose?
Got a crazy sensation, go or stay? now I gotta choose
And I'll accept your invitation to the blues

 

22) Barcolle

A cloud lets go of the moon
Her ribbons are all out of tune
She is skating on the ice
In a glass in the hands of a man
That she kissed on the train...

This one isfrom his 2002 album Alice, which mostly features songs for "an avant garde opera" of the same name directed by Robert Wilson. It's centred on the obsession of Lewis Carroll for the young Alice Liddell (immortalised as Alice in Wonderland). 

That Waits manages to write beautiful songs on this unsettling and even disturbing theme says all you need to know about his quality as a songwriter, but then again my whisky glass keeps getting refilled so what would I know?

 

I'm lost in the blond summer grass
And the train whistle blows
And the carnival goes
'Til there's only the tickets and crows here
And the grass will all grow back

23) Lucky Day

The prettiest girl
in all the world
is in a little Spanish town
but I left her for a Bonnie lass
and I told her
I'd see her around...

This is another one based on songs Waits wrote for a play directed by Robert Wilson -- this one 1992's Black Rider. This is filled with nostalgia and longing, which is of course very rare territory for Waits. It's certainly a long way from his usual happy go lucky, cheerful persona the world has come to know and love. 

 

Why there's Miss Kelsey
She taught dance at our school
And old Johnny O 'Toole
I'll still beat you at pool
So don't cry for me
For I'm goin' away
And I'll be back some lucky day

 

24) Whistle Down the Wind

Whistle down the wind
Let your voices carry
Drown out all the rain
Light a patch of darkness
Treacherous and scary...

Tom, for fuck's sake. I've explained VERY CLEARLY how much whiskey I'm consuming right now and before that it was whisky and you throw this one at me? 

This song's tl;dr is shit's bad, it's dark, it's horrible but there's hope in friendship and love. If I'd known he was going to this shit on me I'd have not poured a double measure.

 

So whistle down the wind
For I have always been
Right there

 

25) The House Where Nobody Lives

There's a house on my block that's abandoned and cold
The folks moved out of it a long time ago...

TOM! Come on. You follow up "Whistle Down The Wind" with THIS??? This is more of that fucking "heartbreak, nostaligia but still a light that shines" stuff he loves to do as if he doesn't know the average blood alcohol level of his listeners is already far higher than medically recommended limits.

Anyway, it's about an abandoned house. Of course it is. Why is it abandoned? Waits can only speculate:

 

...and once it held laughter
Once it held dreams, did they throw it away, did they know what it means?
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong?

Waits doesn't know, but he does know a few other things he's learned the hard way:

 

So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold, don't trade it for silver
Oh, don't trade it for gold
'Cause I have all of life's treasures and they're fine and they're good
They remind me that houses are just made of wood
What makes a house grand, oh, it ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house, it's a palace for sure...

Come on Tom, I don't need this shit right now. 

 

But without love
It ain't nothin' but a house, a house where nobody lives

26) That Feel 

But there's one thing you can't lose
And it's that feel
You can pawn your watch and chain
But not that feel...

Well this is just what we need isn't it. Now that I've switched to back from whiskry from whisky. We need Tom Waits teaming up with Keith Richards.

This one sounds like what you'd expect if Tom Waits teamed up to write and perform a song with Keith Richards. A staggering, bluesey duet about an indescribable feeling that follows you everywhere, that's "harder to get rid of than tattoos".

This one is fron 1992's appropriately Apocalyptic Bone Machine, with Richards previously playing guitar on a bunch of tracks on Waits' 1985 classic Rain Dogs. They teamed up again for 2011's Bad as Me (Waits most recent album! A decade ago!) for "Last Leaf", which sort of continues the theme.

Waits and Richards is a match made in a drunken Hell, and Waits commented on writing with Richards: "You'll always finish SOMETHING. You might finish the bottle, you might not finish the song." Well luckily they finished this one as it's pretty good, especially with whisky.

 

You can fall down in the street
You can leave it in the lurch
Well you say that it's gospel
But I know that it's only church....

27) Fish and Bird

They bought a round for the sailor
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we'd never heard
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale

Jesus fuck this is all I need at this stage. A love story between a fucking little bird and a goddamn whale. It sounds absurd, but this is Tom Waits and this is his thing, taking something seemingly absurd and turning it into a song to destroy fools who listen while drunk.

I mean get this shit:

 

He said, 'You cannot live in the ocean'
And she said to him
'You never can live in the sky'
But the ocean is filled with tears
And the sea turns into a mirror
There's a whale in the moon when it's clear
And a bird on the tide

 It's a fairytale without a happy ending. 

 

So tell me that you will wait for me
Hold me in your arms
I promise we never will part
I'll never sail back to the time
But I'll always pretend you're mine
Though I know that we both must part
You can live in my heart

I mean just fuck off. My whisky's empty again.

 

Please don't cry
Let me dry your eyes

 

28) Bottom of the World

My Daddy told me, lookin back
The best friend you'll have is a railroad track
So when I was 13 I said, I'm rollin' my own,
And I'm leaving Missouri and I'm never coming home

Yeah Ok Tom, but how is this going to work out? Do you think it will go well?  No, of course not. It's a Tom Waits song.

Of course, being a Tom Waits song there is still beauty to be found:

 

Well God's green hair is where I slept last
He balanced a diamond on a blade of grass
Now I woke me up with a cardinal bird
And when I wanna talk he
Hangs on every word

29) San Diego Serenade

I never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine 'til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

Tom. For god's sake. I'm in lockdown here. I'm not just drunk and a bit sad in some general sense.  I'm drunk in fucking lockdown. I got loved ones I can;t see in Queensland and Western Australia. And you offer up this? Goddamn it.

 

I never saw the white line, 'til I was leaving you behind
I never knew I needed you 'til I was caught up in a bind
I never spoke 'I love you' 'til I cursed you in vain,
I never felt my heartstrings until I nearly went insane

 

30) In The Neighbourhood

Friday's a funeral
And Saturday's a bride...

Yeah alright Tom. Give it a rest.

 

There's a couple Filipino girls
Gigglin' by the church
And the window is busted
And the landlord ain't home
And Butch joined the army
Yea that's where he's been
And the jackhammer's diggin'
Up the sidewalks again
In the neighborhood

 

31) Kentucky Avenue

Eddie Grace's buick
Got four bullet holes in the side
Charley Delisle is sittin' at the top
Of an avocado tree
Mrs Storm will stab you with a steak knife
If you step on her lawn
I got a half a pack of lucky strikes man
So come along with me

Just another Tom Waits song of the dark side of suburbia with strong lashings of surrealism and an overriding sense of bittersweet nostalgia. Bastard is just lucky he knows how to write a song.

 

I'll get a dollar from my mama's purse
Buy that skull and crossbones ring
And you can wear it round your neck
On an old piece of string

32) I Wish I was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward)

Well, I wish I was in New Orleans, I can see it in my dreams,
Arm-in-arm down Burgundy, a bottle and my friends and me

Well yeah. I've been to New Orleans, or anywhere in North America for that matter. But I get the point. This is one where Waits referrences his friend, the songwriter Chuck E Weiss who died recently, because of course he did. Everyone decent is dying these days.

 

Hoist up a few tall cool ones, play some pool and listen
To that tenor saxophone calling me home

 

33) Day After Tomorrow

I got your letter today
And I miss you all so much here
I can't wait to see you all
And I'm counting the days here

Waits' whole career is telling stories of society's underdogs and the victims, but he is rarely explicitely political. And this anti-war song about a soldier who misses home, empathises with his supposed "enemy" and has contempt for his superiors, could be set in any war in modern history.

Yet coming out on 2004's album Real Gone, just one year after the Iraq War started and two after the Afghan War got under way (how well they went!), the song is unmistakably pointed. The genius of this song -- about a soldier far from home fighitng a futile war -- is it is both eternal and still a specific protest against the wars of his time.

At the time, Waits commented that writing songs against war was "like throwing penuts at a gorrilla", and it is true no song he or anyone else could write can be stop these bloody wars for oil, profit and geopolitical domination. But we can still admire his aim, so I'll just quote every other fucking line in this song:

 

It is so hard and it's cold here
And I'm tired of taking orders
And I miss old Rockford town
Up by the Wisconsin border
What I miss, you won't believe
Shovelling snow and raking leaves
And my plane will touch down
On the day after tomorrow

 

I close my eyes every night
And I dream that I can hold you
They fill us full of lies, everyone buys
'Bout what it means to be a soldier
I still don't know how I'm supposed to feel
'Bout all the blood that's been spilled
Will God on this throne
Get me back home
On the day after tomorrow

You can't deny, the other side
Don't want to die anymore then we do
What I'm trying to say is don't they pray
To the same God that we do?
Tell me how does God choose?
Whose prayers does He refuse?
Who turns the wheel?
Who throws the dice?
On the day after tomorrow

I am not fighting for justice
I am not fighting for freedom
I am fighting for my life
And another day in the world here
I just do what I've been told
We're just the gravel on the road
And only the lucky ones come home
On the day after tomorrow

And the summer, it too will fade
And with it brings the winter's frost dear
And I know we too are made
Of all the things that we have lost here
I'll be 21 today
I been saving all my pay
And my plane will touch down
On the day after tomorrow...

34) Pony

I've seen it all boys, I've been all over
Been everywhere in the whole wide world

Oh just another melacholic Tom Waits song filled with nostalgia as the song's weary narrator wishes he 
"was home, in Evelyn's kitchen with old Gyp curled around my feet". My whiskey glass (I'm back on whiskey) needs refilling.

 

I hope my pony
I hope my pony
I hope my pony knows the way back home

 

35) A Little Rain

She was fifteen years old
And never seen the ocean
She climbed into a van
With a vagabond
And the last thing she said
was "I love you mom"

Jesus christ Tom. I only just refilled my whiskey glass. What the fuck are you doing to me? This one is aptly the title of the whole playlist.

 

And a little rain
Never hurt noone

36) You Can Never Hold Back Spring

You can never hold back spring
You can be sure that I will never
Stop believing...

Ah, the old Waits trick of hope amid the gloom. The old "you can't break the human spirit" shtick. It won't work on me, Tom. I'm not crying and if I am that's just a well-known side effect of whiskey consumption. 

 

You can never hold back spring
Even though you've lost your way
The world keeps dreaming of spring

37) Yesterday Is Here 

If you want to go
Where rainbows end
You'll have to say goodbye
All our dreams come true, baby up ahead
And it's out where your memories lie...

More bittersweet nostalgia. I'll get another drink then.

 

Well, today's grey skies
Tomorrow's tears
You'll have to wait til yesterday is here

38) Martha

Operator, number, please:
It's been so many years
Will she remember my old voice
While I fight the tears?

Possibly the most amazing thing about this song is it was released when Waits was just 23, on his debut album Closing Time. It's remarkably mature and finished song filled with almost unbreable pathos. Like so many Waits songs, it skirts the edges of OTT, but the quality of the writing and performance keeps it on the right side of absolutely heartbreaking.

 

And those were the days of roses
Poetry and prose and Martha
All I had was you and all you had was me.
There was no tomorrows
We'd packed away our sorrows
And we saved them for a rainy day.
And I remember quiet evenings
Trembling close to you...

 

39) Lullaby

Sun is red, moon is cracked
Daddy's never coming back
Nothing's ever yours to keep

God, this bottle's almost finished.

 

Nothing's ever as it seems
Climb the ladder to your dreams
If I die before you wake
Don't you cry, don't you weep
Nothing's ever yours to keep
Close your eyes, go to sleep

 

40) A Sight For Sore Eyes

A sight for sore eyes it's a long time no see
Workin' hard hardly workin
Hey man, you know me...

 Oh it's a drunk in a bar reminiscing about the old times. I wonder how this one will go? Well...

 

I guess you heard about Nash he was killed in a crash
Oh that must of been two or three years ago now
Yea he spun out and he rolled he hit a telephone pole
And he died with the radio on
Oh she's married and with a kid finally split up with Syd
He's up north for a nickle's worth for armed robbery
Hey I'll play you some pin ball

Hell you ain't got a chance
Well then go on over and ask her to dance
And hey barkeeper what's keepin you keep pourin' drinks...

Yeah sure, Tom. I'll keep pouring drinks. You can really see why the bastard had to quit drinking three decades ago. Listening to this stuff makes you thirsty enough, imagine having to sing it.

Whiskey, Duels To The Death, Abs And Bushranging: The Carlo And Leslie ASIO File Dialogues Pt 4

Well, I finally got my fourth installment of my ASIO files today. Once more it appears to me sitting in a pub with Leslie. This is getting ridiculous, I swear I’ve done other things in recent years.

Anyway, you probably need to read the first three installments coz otherwise you'll be totally lost as this series is a really complex, with many characters whose stories intertwine as the tale unfolds and features lots of plot twists and you wouldn't want to be lost because then what would you have to talk about tomorrow at work? HUH? Enjoy it because there is only one more to come.

***

A glass of whiskey. In a pub.

[10.47AM, THURSDAY [REDACTED], CARLO AT [REDACTED] HOTEL LOOKING MORE DISHEVELED THAN USUAL AFTER THE REVELRY OF PART THREE. LESLIE JOINS HIM 15 MINUTES LATER.]

LESLIE: [chewing] Hmmm … You know, croissants are awesome. They're basically made of butter, but then you put more butter on them! And you can't put too much on! No matter how much you put on, you can keep adding more! They're like a bardis.

CARLO: That’s nice. I bought you a whiskey. Here, drink this lovely glass of the “water of life” as it translates from Irish!

LESLIE: You… bought me a drink?

CARLO: Yes! I have a stiff whiskey for you right here! Christ man, you don't drink it I will, poison or no... ah... or NO poison as there ISN'T any poison in it! HAHAHA! Just drink the fucking whiskey.

LESLIE: You’re still bitter about this whole “me winning the duel to the death” thing aren’t you?

CARLO: No! Of course not! Jesus! Hell, OK ... thank fuck I’ve accumulated a tolerance to all major poisons over the years … [skulls the whiskey]. That hit the spot.

LESLIE: Where did you even get the money for that whiskey?

CARLO: Oh, I ... borrowed it. By the way you might want to avoid the gents for a bit, it’s a little ... bloody in there.

LESLIE: You know, I’ve put up with a lot over many millennia, but trying to poison a friend is a bit rough.

CARLO: FRIEND? YOU FUCKING BEAT ME IN A DUEL TO THE DEATH!

LESLIE: You know, I’ve actually had people question whether you’re truly dead. It's quite insulting, because it is very poor form to claim victory in a duel on a questionable outcome. If there’s one thing that we both agree on, it’s the need to maintain the fundamental dignity of a duel.

CARLO: And that all duels must be carried out without pants. The two essentials.

LESLIE: Absolutely. What are you doing?

CARLO: What? Just admiring my abs.

LESLIE: You have abs?

CARLO: Of course I do! They’re as hard as a bag of marshmallows! I’ve spent a heaps of other people's money on beer to get them this way. This stomach is a work of art! I’m going into business to sell my secrets to the perfect belly.

LESLIE: You’re advertising now? Implausible testimonials and claims that “you too can achieve these amazing results” by following Dr Sands' exclusive program? No one can possibly believe you can achieve your impressive results without some serious hard work.

CARLO: I don’t offer instant overnight success! I always tell people, you gotta work at it, you gotta constantly be drinking beer, eating crap food, sitting down seven-days-a-week, 52-weeks-a-year, 10-years-a-decade, 10-decades-a-century-or-until-the-liver-fails. Don't expect that you can do it a couple of days and the rest of the week be out there at the gym, eating fucking tofu and necking mineral water! I say “THIS IS SERIOUS! SO GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING MONEY!”

LESLIE: Speaking of daylight robbery, I was just reading an article about old Moondyne Joe. You remember, the bushranger? I’m surprised nobody's made the connection between you and Moondyne. Like, they think he just ended up that insane on his own?

CARLO: Moondyne Joe? Western Australia's best known bushranger?

LESLIE: Yeah.

CARLO: Born poor in Cornwall, became a petty criminal who was transported to Australia in 1852 where he took up bushranging and became famous for his many escapes from jail?

LESLIE: Yeah. Ol' Joey.

CARLO: Never heard of him. [hissing] FOR FUCK’S SAKE THIS IS A PUBLIC PLACE!

LESLIE: Oh, yeah sorry.

CARLO: Anyway, I was on a surfing holiday in Hawaii at the time. [hissing] FUCK man… SHUT UP!

LESLIE: Yes… [starts humming a random tune in a bid to nochalantly change the topic] Hey, have you ever been singing to yourself, and then you get so irritated you call the cops on you to shut yourself up?


CARLO: You’re not drunk enough. Otherwise you'd be pushing yourself shouting “come on you bastard, you know the words COME ON! [singing badly]‘I MET MY LOVE BY THE GASWORKS WALL, DREAMED A DREAM BY THE OLD...’” then you’d pass out. That’s how I do it. Here, I'll show you...


[REST OF FILE REDACTED.]





‘I’ll chop you down, like an old dead tree...’ Fucking poetry! Stay tuned for the final, fifth installment!

Two songs: Sheryl Crow versus The Jesus and Mary Chain -- a case study in responses to late monoply capitalism

So I pretty much wrote this yesterday evening. It should be clear early on why I failed to complete it then. So today, fresh from another trip to the bottlo, I have tidied it up and I post this discussion on two responses to the horror of late monopoly capitalism for your consideration. *TRIGGER WARNING* Features Sheryl Crow.

* * *

For reasons I'm not sure I can explain rationally, I listened to the two songs discussed below one after the other. I *should* point out that I did leave my home in the mid-afternoon to go for a walk -- because anyone who knows me will tell you straight up how seriously I take exercise. And, strangely enough, I ended in the local pub where I drank a couple of beers with a whiskey chaser, all the while reading the new Rebus (YES! HE IS BACK! AND HE IS AS "DRINKING-TO-FORGET-HOW-HE-FUCKS-UP-ALL-HUMAN-RELATIONSHIPS" AS EVER!!!).

"Whiskey Make Crazy", so sung those Celtic punk legends The Tossers, which helps explain why, floating through a lovely whiskey-and-beer-haze, I ended up, while in the supermarket afterward shopping for dinner, seeing a cut-price pre-prepared-for-roasting chicken all tied up with string with some sort of horrible sauce/gravy type thing already so unkindly added, and concluded WHAT A GREAT IDEA!

And then I get the fucking thing home, more booze at hand, and think how fucking LONG does it ACTUALLY TAKE to roast a fucking chicken??? And the answer is TOO FUCKING LONG!

And then, after some more waiting-and-drinking, there was an "incident" with the oven during the attempt to cook the fucking chook, of which my lawyer has instructed me to make no further comment, and the fucking chicken ended up in the frying pan. So, I guess it was really no longer roasted exactly. Or two thirds roasted, one third fried, or something -- LET THE PHILOSOPHERS DEBATE IT, ALL I KNOW IS I JUST I *ATE* THAT GODDAMN "FROASTED" CHOOK! (you see what I did there?)

My point is, I was feeling a bit odd. By which I mean, pretty fucking happy, thanks to that beer-and-whiskey buzz. And yet... with this underlying sense that the word remains extremely messed up. I mean... we are racing towards a climate catastrophe of a scale it is hard to comprehend... and like, how do you DEAL WITH THAT SHIT, you know?

And I felt a strange compulsion to listen to the one song that I know of that perfectly captures the desire for hedonistic escape, just to lose yourself in the NOTHINGNESS of intoxication while the outside world goes about its pointless, ritualistic... well FUCKING RITUALS... YES you know what I am talking about... Sheryl Crow's 1994 hit "All I Wanna Do is Have Some Fun"!!!



Yeah. See, Sheryl meets Billy in a bar and it is midday on a Tuesday and they decide to *just drink*, while sitting opposite a, and I quote, "giant car wash". I know right? (or, as the kids say, "IKR?" -- see, I am down with them).

It is actually, surprisingly, for a song with such a fucking irritating chorus and hook, quite ... poetic. Which it should be, seeing as the verse were taken, almost entirely wholesale,  from a 1987 poem called "Fun" by American poet Wyn Cooper. Here are the words to Sheryl's hit:

Hit it!
This ain't no disco
And it ain't no country club either,
This is L.A.

All I want to do is have a little fun before I die
Says the man next to me out of nowhere
It's apropos of nothing he says his name is William
But I'm sure he's Bill or Billy or Mac or buddy

And he's plain ugly to me, and I wonder if he's ever
Had a day of fun in his whole life

We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday
In the bar that faces the giant car wash
And the good people of the world
Are washing their cars on their lunch breaks
Hosing and scrubbing as best they can
In skirts and suits

And they drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record stores, too
Well, they're nothing like Billy and me

'Cause

[Chorus]
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over
Santa Monica Boulevard

I like a good beer buzz, early in the morning
Billy likes to peal the labels from his bottles of bud
He shreds them on the bar then he lights up every match
In an over-sized pack letting each one burn
Down to his thick fingers before blowing and
Cursing them out, he's watching
The bottles of bud as they spin on the floor

And a happy couple enters the bar
Dangerously, close to one another
The bartender looks up from his want ads

But all I wanna do is have some fun etc etc etc

Otherwise the bar is ours, the day and the night
And the car wash, too, the matches and the
Buds, and the clean and dirty cars,
The sun and the moon ,

But, all I wanna do is have some fun etc etc etc


Yeah, IKR? Fucking poetry. The full poem, unabridged and without a chorus written to for radio with the sole purpose of INFECTING OUR BRAINS, is actually marked by its contradiction between an outsider wanting to sneer at the world around them, while also feeling below the  world around, drowning that tension with beer and hiding behind an aggressive declaration that the "city is ours" (ie the drunks)

Hell, if it wasn't for the fact that Sheryl Crow chose to weld those words to what surely must be a strong contender for the MOST ANNOYING CHORUS EVER in the history of popular music...then we would have ourselves a FUCKING GODDAMN *SONG*, yeah?

But no, Sheryl had to go and add a dull, repetitive and, worse, SMUG AND SELF-SATISFIED chorus, and add in a film clip where she does nothing but look SMUG AND SELF-SATISFIED ... and all despite the fact that runs DIRECTLY COUNTER to the goddamn WORDS she is singing from a poem she nicked!

Sometimes, a chorus or the general tone of a song is deliberately in contradiction to the bleak nature of the words. Say, of many examples, The Gin Blossom's Hey Jealousy, or famously Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. That is a possibility here, except for the seemingly straight-faced way she delivers lines about "the party has just begun."

If you ignore the chorus, the actual verses impart actual desperation, of a desire to use intoxication deliberately to block out the world, to pretend it doesn't exist, to "have a little fun before I die", a comment made poignant by the fact the character who utters it "out of nowhere" makes Sheryl "wonder if he has ever had a day's fun in his whole life".

Yeah. Profound. JUST IGNORE SHERYL'S STUPID GRIN. (Like seriously, does she EVEN LISTEN to the words she is singing?)

So that is one response to the horrors we face. In the face of society's horrors, a retreat to the bar, to the sweet lullaby that Sheryl describes as a "good beer buzz, early in the morning".

And WHY? Because "all I wanna do is have some fun" while the "good people of the world" are "washing their cars on their lunch breaks"... FLAUNTING THEIR MIDDLE-CLASS EMPTY LIVES JUST ACROSS THE ROAD FROM WHERE SHERYL AND BILLY ARE DRINKING!!!

The imagery could not be starker. Hedonism is counter-posed to the grinding life of the average pleb "in skirts and suits" under late monopoly capitalism, with its "giant car washes"!

NONE OF THAT FOR BILLY AND SHERYL!!! ALL THEY WANNA DO IS HAVE "SOME FUN"!!!

Sure, a "happy couple enters the bar" who are "dangerously close to one another", threatening the sanctuary of the bar with all their "happiness" and "closeness"... but fear not! For "Otherwise the bar is ours..."

Sheryl and Billy are alienated from that outside world of happy couples and suit and skirt wearing folk with their "shiny Datsuns and Buicks" who are "hosing and scrubbing as best they can", before the suckers go "back to the phone company..." (oh, OUCH! Probably one of those call centre jobs too... you know, where you not just deal with arseholes constantly the entire shift wanting to know how to plug in a fucking phone extension cord or blaming you personally for how the privatised company has cut every conceivable corner, including the corner that used to be marked "MAKE THINGS FUCKING WORK" in the pursuit of the greatest profit for the cheapest outlay imaginable, but all while the bastards monitor your fucking toilet breaks and sack anyone who even *mentions* the phrase "union" on company premises... )

FUCKING SUCKERS! Billy and Sheryl are right across the road, in that darkened dive bar, getting pissed and it is only 12pm on TUESDAY! What MOTHERFUCKING REBELS!

The song depicts a desire for a somewhat extreme binge that lasts from a "morning beer buzz" right through to when the "sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard". (Interesting side point here, until I had to google the fucking words for this blog post, I had no idea what Crow was singing there, like I thought it was something to do "sitting on a couple of bars", but that never made any sense.)

And yet the ultimate tragedy, of which the story's narrator (if not the actual singer) is all-too-aware, is that the only outlet they have found to express their rebellion is alcohol abuse.

And, what is more, the actual "fun" activities, despite the presumably constant drinking, that are mentioned involve peeling labels off bottles of beer and shredding them (admittedly, this is one of my favourite pastimes), then lighting matches from an "oversized pack", letting them burn right down to Billy's "thick fingers" before "blowing and cursing them out."

Then, when that gets boring, Billy watches the empty beer bottles as they spin on the floor. Wow! No wonder Sheryl notes in the chorus that she's "got a feeling the party has just begun".

Perhaps sensing the one-sided inadequacies of Sheryl Crow's 1994 chart-topper, YouTube offered in its right-hand side bar of suggested related songs, for no other explicable reason, Jesus and Mary Chain's "Darklands".



In this song, the miserable Scottish bastards that are the brothers Reid actually *embrace* wholesale the misery that surrounds them. Far from hiding in some dodgy pub for a whole day or two, they CALL FOR THE HORROR TO COME AND FUCKING MEET THEM!

I'm going to the darklands
To talk in rhyme
With my chaotic soul
As sure as life means nothing
And all things end in nothing
And heaven i think
Is too close to hell
I want to move i want to go
I want to go
Oh something won't let me
Go to the place
Where the darklands are
And i awake from dreams
To a scary world of screams
And heaven i think
Is too close to hell
I want to move i want to go
I want to go
Take me to the dark
Oh god I get down on my knees
And i feel like i could die
By the river of disease
And i feel that i'm dying
And i'm dying
I'm down on my knees
Oh i'm down
I want to go i want to stay
I want to stay

Yeah that is RIGHT motherfuckers! William Reid takes on vocal duties ahead of his brother Jim on this one to sing that life MEANS NOTHING! And all things END IN NOTHING!

Listen to that Glaswegian prick! You wanna escape? You wanna seek "refuge" in drink? Well, just you remember, good friend, that William Reid teaches us that "heaven, I think, is too close to hell"!

But even the path of embracing the horror is not easy. William pleads, over a melancholic but nonetheless enchantingly catchy tune: "Take me to the dark".

But "something won't let me go to the place where the darklands are". OH NO! What? What won't let you, William? It is never spelled out. But the poor bastard is "down on my knees, oh I'm down".

All he wants to do is "talk to my chaotic soul". But "I awake from dreams, to a scary world of screams". Oh the poetry of the chaotic soul!

That 1987 classic came from the album of the same name -- a follow up the much-lauded feedback-laden 1985 debut Psychocandy that largely (but not entirely) eschews the feedback noise for a greater focus on the melodies. Dark melodies, OF COURSE.

Now, if you don't believe me, you can listen to the entire 36.09 minute-long masterpiece on Youtube, but let me assure you, the defining characteristic of the album is pointed to in its title. It is dark. Really dark.

It is dark from start to finish. Like, listening to it right now, as I type I am hearing these lines: "As far as I can tell, I'm being dragged from here to hell. And all my time in hell is spent with YOU!"

And that could be any song.

At its absolute brightest, the album manages a kind of melancholic wistfulness. Its happiest point comes in the final song when young Jimmy Reid finally concedes that perhaps "there's something warm about the rain".

I mean, it also makes a point of noting that "people die in their living rooms, but they do not need this god almighty gloom", but, nonetheless, that is as cheery as the fucking thing gets.

And such lines are, as often-as-not, put to truly great pop tunes. I mean, take the sublime April Skies ("As I stand here don't you walk away, and the world comes tumbling down...") or the equally great pop tune and lyrically self-explanatory Happy When it Rains.

I still remember when I first bought that album. It was out at Curtin University in Perth back in say 1998 or early 1999. I was "studying" at Curtin, as in technically enrolled in some first year courses. As was my want when enrolled in first year courses, I did anything except turn up to any classes. In this case, I looked over a second-hand CD stall set up on campus and found Darklands for ten bucks.

I was hung over. I was hung over a lot in those days. Much like *these days* really. A year or so past my first real broken heart, I was a mess of heavy drinking and messed up nerves caused by working too many graveyard shift at McDonald's every week. Too much sleep-deprivation, caffeine and alcohol.

I was an angry, confused, emotional wreck. The album was perfect. I was instantly hooked. I listened to it obsessively for about a year.

And I get what YouTube was trying to tell me, yeah? "STOP RUNNING FROM THE HORROR! DON'T JUST HIDE IN A HAZE OF ANOTHER DRINKING BINGE! STARE THE HORROR IN THE FUCKING FACE! LOOK AT IT! AND MAYBE TRY AND PUT IT TO THREE CHORDS!"

Yeah, I get it. But, you know, I am not 19 any more. And I can’t play guitar. And black was never my colour, not with my complexion.

Yeah, I used to go the Goth clubs in Perth, the least Gothiest citizen of that city imaginable. But I'd go, coz in Perth in the 90s, you had a lot of places for rednecks, endless places for yuppies and maybe one or two for Goths. And that was it.

And the key thing was, of them all, the Goths were the least likely to punch you if you nicked their drink when their back was turned. They'd just glare at you, but they did that anyway. It was hard to tell what was a greater crime for a Goth -- nicking their beer when their back was turned or being the sort of pond scum who just didn't look very Gothy.

And, of course, you always got to dance to Love Will Tear Us Apart. But it was mainly the drink thing. And you could score cheap dexies. But that goes without saying.

And in other news....


'I put my shoes on backward on the way out to a dance. Then I had to go back home cause I forgot my pants'