The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: music

  • One Safe Place (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 9)

    “One Safe Place”
    Live 04/05

    This is a gentle song, far from the usual brash rock that marks his other guitar songs.  It’s also one Marc seems to strum in concert himself, rather than leaving it to Shane Fontayne.  As in many other of Marc’s song, there is a palpable sense of longing in this one, but it’s not for a lover or a lost relative.  It’s a yearning for a place, but more than a place — a state of being, a state of grace.

    How many roads you’ve traveled
    How many dreams you’ve chased
    Across sand and sky and gravel
    Looking for one safe place
    One safe place

    This is an ode from one weary traveler to another.  Or maybe from one weary traveler to himself.  Is it a song of admonishment and chiding?  Or of grudging admiration and hope?  Are those roads paths of despair or of homecoming?

    Will you make a smoother landing
    When you break your fall from grace
    Into the arms of understanding
    Looking for one safe place
    One safe place

    It’s “when”, not “if”, you break your fall from grace.  The fall is inevitable; the destination is not.  And it’s not just a fall, or a fall from grace — it’s a fall into the arms of understanding… it’s a leap of faith ending in a catch.

    Oh life is trial by fire
    And love’s the sweetest taste
    And I pray it lifts us higher
    To one safe place
    One safe place
    One safe place

    This is quintessential Cohn:  Life is trial by fire.  It’s never easy and it’s never smooth.  But there’s always hope for love, hope from love.  And hope is all he offers — just a prayer, not a surety, that we can end higher than we began — higher than our fall into the arms of understanding, lifte up by those same arms.

    How many roads we’ve traveled
    How many dreams we’ve chased
    Across sand and sky and gravel
    Looking for one safe place
    One safe place
    One safe place

    (As an aside, I thought I remembered him saying once that this song was commissioned as, or even purchased as, the theme song to a tv show.  But I can’t find anything about that anywhere so I might be making it up.)

     

  • Saving the Best for Last (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 8)

    “Saving the Best for Last”
    Marc Cohn
    I missed a day, so this will be quick.  The second song in my list from the incomparable debut album.  I like this song because it is so unconventional.  Not a bit about love, unless you count the line, “When I finally take this journey, I’m going to wave goodbye to her”.  It’s just a story about a guy who met a guy in a cab and heard his unusual philosophy.

     

  • If I Were an Angel (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 7)

    “If I Were an Angel”
    Join the Parade

    Yet one more in Marc Cohn’s intermittent series of relationships that are just bad news.  (Others include “Giving Up the Ghost” and “Shadow“.)  At least this time he takes some responsibility.

    Well you probably think I’m foolin’ myself
    That I just want to have my fun
    But leavin’ you believe me
    Is the first good deed I’ve done
    I’m only tryin’ to save us from more heartache if I stay

    Not that this action is entirely selfless, or even volitional:

    I didn’t get a message
    From anyone on high
    And I dont get instructions
    On who to save and why
    No heavenly connections sent me down this way

    It all ends up somewhat hopeful, though, in a bit of a surprise:

    So look up in the sky tonight
    Thats where I may be
    High over the hillsides
    Far across the sea
    And if you hear the churchbells ring
    Everything’s okay

    In addition to the oblique California reference (maybe) in the hillsides, the singer asserts that it all works out, or at least, that it will. Here’s one bad relationship he is able to escape. The idea of rescuing someone by staying away from them is intriguing and counter to our usual expectation.

    As a totally unimportant note, I’m happy he got the grammar correct in the title.  😀

     

  • 29 Ways (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 6)

    “29 Ways”
    Marc Cohn
    This is the first song on my list drawn from Marc Cohn’s self-titled debut album, but it won’t be the last: Every one makes it eventually. To be honest, it didn’t nearly make it. The album version isn’t much to talk about. But in concert, this is one of the most fun songs I know.

  • Shadow (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 5)

    “Shadow” Marc Cohn Live 04-05 This is a slow sultry jazz-y tune that seems like it’d be fun to sing.  In keeping with a developing theme, it’s an anthem for a dysfunctional and probably unhealthy relationship.  After all, lines like

    You’re a shadow Over my soul You’re the heart of darkness An unfillable hole

    do not exactly sing of happiness and warmth.  And though the singer claims he’s beyond the relationship

    Some have a lifetime of memories They say it feels like a curse Me, I can’t remember a thing about you And I don’t know which is worse

    it sounds like he protests too much, because clearly he’s still in the grip of whatever possessed him in the first place:

    I can’t remember your laughter I can’t remember your smell I can’t remember your body But I’m still under your spell The sound of your footsteps The touch of your fingers I don’t remember a thing about you Still, a part of you lingers

    And while one could, with squinted eyes and determined brow, find a way to make this sound moving and attractive, it doesn’t take long to learn that things are less than they seem:

    Now I don’t mean to hurt you Or forsake you I’ll admit there was a minute there I was hoping I could shake you

    That is not exactly an expression of undying love, though it is something that won’t let go. One of the things I like about Marc Cohn’s songs is their nuance.  There aren’t usually heros or villains, just people struggling to make sense of the world they live in and the people they know.  And though the whole song has been an unrelenting denunciation, it end with a signature recognition that each of us is complicit in our own addictions:

    I thought I was finished With all of this jive Is it you or me baby That keeps this thing alive

    (Aside: In iTunes, this song is called “Shadow”.  On MarcCohn.net, it’s listed as “You’re a Shadow”.)

  • Turn on Your Radio (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 4)

    “Turn on Your Radio”
    Burning the Daze

    This is a very gentle song you might expect to hear winding down an evening. It’s got a catchy refrain which I find myself humming.  It also ends with a somewhat-strange coda:

    Everybody had a hard year
    And everybody had a good time
    Everybody had a wet dream
    And everybody saw the sunshine

    Everybody had a good year
    And everybody let their hair down
    Everybody put their socks up
    And everybody put their foot down

    I don’t know what it means that “everybody put their socks up”…

    (Aside: It was pretty apparent from the first listen that this is a cover of someone else’s earlier song.  It turns out that someone else was Harry Nillson, whom Wikipedia tells us was  an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s”.  I have my doubts about how high the peak of his success actually was, as I had never heard even a mention of him.  So I checked out his discography and realized that, no, I really haven’t heard anything by this guy.)

    (Second aside:  I feel like I’m on the very edge of cheating. posting this at 11:57 PM.  I suppose technically it’s still “Day 4″…)

     

  • The Calling (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 3)

    “The Calling (The Ghost of Charlie Christian”)
    Join the Parade

    This is a song that sort of snuck up on me.  I first heard it in concert (in at least 2007, though I think it was earlier), and it initially underwhelmed me.  The guitar is amazing, but that’s Shayne Fontane and to be expected.  It was haunting enough (being part of the Ghost Quartet) but didn’t grab me.

    Or so I thought.  Because within a few days of receiving Join the Parade, I found myself humming the refrain at odd moments.  Apparently it worked its way deep into my hind brain, because I continue to return to it.  I can’t say that the lyrics speak to me much but the melody really does.  It probably doesn’t help that crossed circuits in my brain map “Charlie Christian” into “Charlie Wilson“.  Though I have always felt that Marc Cohn has a place in an Aaron Sorkin soundtrack.  🙂

    Oh, by the way, Charlie Christian was apparently a swing guitarist credited with helping transition the guitar from a part of the rhythm section into a solo instrument in its own right.

  • Giving Up the Ghost (30 Days of Marc Cohn — Day 2)

    “Giving Up the Ghost”
    Join the Parada

    Appropriately, this is a very haunting melody.  It’s a ghost story, of course.  As is usual for Marc Cohn, it’s also an extended metaphor for a relationship in trouble.

    She gave me something I needed but now the feeling is gone
    And it’s high time I told her she’s gonna have to move on

    This is someone whose life has intertwined with his over the years.  They’ve gotten together, broken up, and fallen back together again.  She probably enters his life at the low points, when he’s looking for something familiar from his past, and even though he knows it’s going to end badly, he finds himself drawn over and over into her orbit.  This can wear hard on a person.  (There’s a nice and very subtle nod to superstitions that ghostly visitors can drain your vital energies away, using up your life trying to regain theirs.)

    From the eerie lake to the hills that shake
    I’ve been haunted on every coast

    This can be seen as brillant, once you recognize that Marc Cohn grew up in Cleveland (on Lake Erie) and spent formative time in California (the hills that shake).

    Last night she came in at the usual time
    Twelve is the number that the church bells did chime

    This couplet, on the other hand, is a real clunker.  It just falls flat.  It’s probably the reason this song  is so low on my top-30 list.

    Now I’m feeling much better
    But I’m still on the brink
    I just got a letter in vanishing ink

    It’s a really strong finish, lyrically, even though the song “fades to black” without a climax.  This is just impressive.  Clearly, even though he’s let her go, she isn’t letting go of him:  The resolution implied in the refrain is far from final.  And of course, associating letters from ghosts of your past with vanishing ink is tremendous.  It’s even better if you assume the letter was full of “I love you forever” and other endearments meant to win him back… because the vanishing ink makes clear that such sentiments are, despite the protestations, doomed to fade.

     

  • Tron: Legacy — soundtrack

    Being a geek of a certain age, I of course went out to see Tron: Legacy as soon as it opened in the theaters. And being a geek of a certain type, and having listened to Wendy Carlos‘ ethereal soundtrack to the original Tron, I also purchased the soundtrack to this one as soon as it was available. This was my first introduction to Daft Punk, whom (I must admit) I first even heard of when their role was announced to much rejoicing. On receipt of the CD (yes, I still buy physical goods from time to time), I learned that they had worked on the orchestration with Hans Zimmer, a composer whose other cinematic work I do know and enjoy.

    I say all this to make clear that I cannot evaluate the album as to its “Daft Punkness”. On my first listen through, I was underwhelmed. Wendy Carlos notwithstanding, I am not much of a fan of techno, and this album is certainly that. But having spent the cash I gave it a few good listens, and then I noticed that I was replaying the music in my head throughout the day. That’s just about the best recommendation you can give an album: it’s something you want to keep listening to. It evokes the movie (which I very much enjoyed) without being dogmatically tied to it. I’ve played these tracks for more than anything I’ve purchased in the past year or so.

    (more…)

  • Marc Cohn at the Town Hall NYC : 2011 0108

    Last night, Annie and I attended a show by Marc Cohn with Suzanna Vega at the Town Hall NYC.

    Playlist

    • Ghost Train
    • Perfect Love
    • The Calling (Charlie Christian’s Tune)
    • Dance Back From the Grave
    • 29 Ways
    • Listening to Levon
    • My Sanctuary
    • Walking in Memphis
    • Into the Mystic
    • Only Living Boy in New York

    We stayed for most of Suzanne Vega’s act.  I don’t really know Ms. Vega’s work so I didn’t capture an accurate playlist and I can’t really comment on her performance.  I was reminded that for me (and I’ll apologize to any Vega fans out there), I like her songs on occasion but couldn’t really listen to a whole album of them.

    Marc Cohn’s portion of the show was everything I’d hoped for, though.  (It was a little short for him, but that’s the result of the double-billing.)  I was a bit taken aback by the realization that this month marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Marc Cohn, his debut.  He’s probably getting a little tired of reciting the story about Muriel at the Hollywood.  🙂  His band was excellent, including as always the amazing Shane Fontayne on guitar.  I found the playlist interesting, as there were some rarer bits (“My Santuary”, for example) and some missing favorites (such as my personal one, “Dig Down Deep”).  He played surprisingly few from what he jokingly calls his “Greatest Hits album, released first”.

    He did two from Listening Booth: 1970.  While I like the album well enough, I am less excited to hear other people’s songs than Cohn’s.  But he put a really nice spin on “Into the Mystic”.

    It’s been too long since I’d been to a Marc Cohn show — this past summer, it seemed like he would play a city only after I’d left it 🙂 — and it was a nice refresher.