Billy’s Music Without Borders is all about music including reviews of albums, interviews of composers, songwriters, and musicians, and discussions about music.
Perhaps the Welch church organist John Cale might have written an album of prayers to God for HOPE. God can perform miracles when things are bad. Things are bad.
Anger has been a staple of John Cale's creative life. He has made friends with it, and smiles when he says it gives him the freedom to create. The man is 80 and he was at the core of the proto-punk hip art street scene.
He was a Classically trained budding composer who hit the streets hard with an avant garde La Monte Young drone and fire … FIRE in his belly.
"I think anger is a very good point to start and if the
anger runs out the sarcasm will work and then
downright rudeness and then straight on to brutality."
But this current hatred in the news this decade isn’t that energetic anger and the fire in the belly. This culture has slipped into the darkness of a climate of murder as a means to find acceptance. There is a climate of doubt and fear pervading in this world. A “party” of people has adopted ignorance and hatred as a source of fuel. Mass murder has become a commonplace. We need a new voice to cut through the fog in this War of Hate. We need a new vision, because people are perishing. Without a dream, people get killed in shopping markets, schools, theaters, churches, synagogues and amateur baseball games.
Cale stopped making sense long ago as a defiant act of art in the face of a rigid, frigid, and f?#”ked up proto-fascist hate-based divided culture. These Mercy songs reflect his deeper understanding of the deeper message contained in contradiction as perhaps the only possible response to this level of collective pain.
Sometimes I wish I wrote more songs, I don't write anywhere outside the studio. That's where it always gets done – going blindly into something. To me that's always been important. To go blindly into it.
—John Cale
We are killing ourselves at a higher rate than war in the United States and United Kingdom and the European Union and the whole damn world. Each mass shooting, every murder, is a domestic dispute in our family, "The Family of Mankind." John Cale, the former Welch church organist, has chosen to provoke hearts with the shock therapy of images, contradictions, nonsense, and the articulate 80-year-old sweet tenor howl of a human animal who has had enough, and felt too much to be silent any longer. His is a cry to the collective hatred and that is a humanist prayer to the enemies among us, and the enmity within us.
John Cale and all of us post-punk hipsters taught the world how to live without a God, so now when we pray, we pray to the forces of evil in the eyes of our neighbors who have pointed their M-16s or AK-47s at children to kill the future before it can grow. We pray for mercy. We pray for mercy for our brothers and sisters. We pray for mercy. Please. No more. Give us back a future, right now!
Lift me up! Lift me up!
Mercy. Mercy once again.
John Cale’s high tenor voice chimes in big several times in this album. His voice is a bell. He sings “Lift me up!” He sings, “Have mercy on me.” You don’t have to ask for whom that bell tolls. I sing the body eclectic. We chime together or we hang separately. Join together to sing with Cale like a bell of warning, or a bell of mourning. When John Cale’s voice soars above the meaning of the song a little louder than everything else, we all join in and become that bell.
Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale
I'm looking for mercy, more and more
Colder, colder, colder, cold
Lives do matter
Lives don't matter
Nothing, nothing at all
John Cale sings, "Please have mercy." Images come to mind of shootings, hateful protest, times we live in, but not okay, not okay. It hurts. "Days and days were spent in anger." The words build a dark collage. Slow and dark. Echoing like the subconscious does in movies. It gets sad, but at the bottom there is a plaintive cry: "Lift me up, lift me up."Those words ring out like the cry is coming from inside. It is a chorus of a plea. That plea might as well have come from me. I needed it too. The fitting end: "Mercy, mercy one more time."
Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Noises – John Cale
I never did see, never did see, much Always, always Beauty, elsewhere Elsewhere, elsewhere Seven times seven and forty-nine The cube of nine seven three Seven times seven and forty-nine The cube of nine seven three
The most famous legs on earth. By actual count. Whatever that can mean after her untimely death. I don’t know what the numbers in this song mean. But when I was a small boy the first measurements I ever learned were 36 24 36: Marilyn Monroe’s measurements. She was not a commodity. She was beautiful. But I was a young boy in a Pentecostal family in California going to church three times a week and I knew those numbers. Go figure. Her legs were famous and beautiful. She was lonely, but I didn’t know that as a boy.
Synth [Synths], Vocals, Keyboards [Vintage Keys], Drums – John Cale
Viola – Caroline Buckman, Leah Katz, Rodney Wirtz
Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*
Noise of you. Yup, it's a love song.
When I started sketching this song, it was all about the atmosphere.
It made me recall wintertime in Prague.
Once the instrumentation came together,
it felt like something I wanted to hear on a 1960s A.M. radio
About a guy trying to get the love of his life back.
Yup, it's a love song.
When does love start, and when does love END?
The words above are spoken on the video, and not included in the lyrics to the song. The video is above, and you will see it features pictures of Cale over the decades. The song is as stated a love song, but the video makes it more. It is about making a song as well, as the narration begins with that statement about the creation of the song. The words of the narration are printed to the screen in the video. The song takes two roads and the music fits both. The reverberated Cale is one voice in this song, and just like "Mercy" a clarion call of a doubled voice blasts like a chorus of trumpets. The song does all those things, and it would diminish the song and video to reduce the meaning of the song to one thing. Sometimes the closer you look the less you see. If I sit back and blur my eyes a bit, this song and video are about the love song of John Cale's career in music. The lyrics of the song (not written here but linked above) could be taken as the longing for a missing lover, much like Janis Ian's song "Jesse" ("there's a hole in the bed," etc.). The narration picks up again at the end of the video, and here I feel Cale is telling me (and all of us) that he is passing the baton out of love to US to move into the future. A song means what it means to me. And it will mean what it means to you. But I believe John Cale wants "to be the one to hand you the future starting now."
When does love start? Even when you are thousands of miles away, you can hear their heart beat.
I want to hear your footsteps
in the dark
This is all a love affair.
Don't forget
I want to be the one to make you dance
Even if I make you cry
I want to be the one to fill your heart with joy
I want to be the one to hand you the future starting now
Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*
Vocals, Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale
It's the color of midnight where we lie
Sinking in the sand
Watching the rain come pouring down
On the other side of life
Swing your soul, swing your soul
It moves all around
It moves all around, brings you down
It moves all around, wakes you in the morning
This is the story, the story of blood
Is that a spooky video or what? There sure is a lot of red on that screen, and skulls, and baptisms. I believe these songs are stories meant to include the images of the video, much like Bowie's last album cannot be understood without the videos. I think Cale is making art here, but that doesn't mean making sense. Whatever Cale is up to, the part on the video when he does a cracked version of scratching with the record, well, that is just inspired including his delighted half smile at the end of it. Just great! Swing your soul! I don't see that catching on. But it is cool!
Synthesizer [Swarmatron], Vocals, Keyboards [Vintage], Drums, Bass – John Cale
Vocals – Amelia Meath
The Grandeur that was Europe
Is sinking in the mud
The savagery that was the Church of God
Has already joined the club
The melody that was language
Was the hook that caught the fish
Did you realize how late it was
Later than you think
I have set out nearly the entire lyric, because this verse contrasts quite different statements and the meaning can be found in the contrast. In my own experience, I have felt a depressing downward tug at my heart while watching the news, and the best antidote is always something in nature. Cale's two-lines following sum that up nicely.
The roses in the garden are growing in the rain
Competing with the poppy for the sun
Then returning to the state of society, things look bleak.
I don't want to hear about heartache or dancing in the snow We've all been there, so many times before
I guess I'm rather self-destructive, and I like to give
other people who are self-destructive a song to sing.
Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*
Vocals, Keyboards [Keys], Bass – John Cale
Quote
Nico is beautiful. Nico takes heroine. John Cale produced some albums she did and they were disturbing and good.
You’re a moonstruck junkie lady staring at your feet breathing words into an envelope to be opened on your death.
He must know her very well. He must be the kind of friend who can say these things and not get sued. Still it is shocking, isn’t it?
So afraid of your own shadow following close behind.
This isn’t a Taylor Swift kiss off song. This is maybe more of an intervention. I don’t know. John Cale has done Nico a lot of good, and they are close, so I will let her respond to this song as she chooses. Christa Päffgen was born on October 16, 1938. She died on July 18, 1988. Nobody told me. Ah well. Christa’s stage name was Nico. So. I’m not gonna say what John Cale should say about his dead friend Nico or Christa. Christa died. Maybe Nico is still with us. You know how that goes. Memories and such. She was a moonstruck junkie lady. I think John loved her.
7. EVERLASTING DAYS feat. Animal Collective [Lyrics]
Cello – Matt Fish (2)
Double Bass – Ian Walker
Drums [Acoustic & Electronic] – Deantoni Parks
Featuring – Animal Collective
Mixed By – Justin Raisen
Noises – Dustin Boyer
Synth [Synths] – Brian Weitz
Viola – Caroline Buckman, Leah Katz, Rodney Wirtz
Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*
Vocals – Dave Portner, Noah Lennox
Vocals, Keyboards [Keys], Piano, Bass, Drums – John Cale
Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale
I can't even tell when you're putting me on
We've played that game before (We've played that game)
I can't even tell when you're putting me on (I can't even tell)
We've played that game before (We've played that game)
Sounds so very cool. This is an opportunity, it seems, to go out dive hopping with David Bowie and John Cale. Ah yeah! There sure is a sense of repetition in this song. Like we have done this before. By the end of the video, we HAVE done this before. The animation repeats exactly. Been there. Done this. Been there again. Done this before.
Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale
With the camels standing senseless
From driving through the night
Not so strong and not so fearless
It's not the end of the world tonight
“Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining,” writes Samuel Beckett. And yet I think about the night and the raining throughout chapter. Is it a sunny day? Can’t rule that out. Same here.
John sings that it is not the end of the world. But isn’t it? How does he know. There is a river traveling by carrying the hopes of many. River of hope flowing by. That doesn’t sound good. Gloomy. That is what the critics will say. So I am thinking that if I visit my buddy John, and we get to talking, and he breaks out with “It’s not the end of the wold tonight.” I think I might get tired all of a sudden and make an early exit. First make sure our buddy John isn’t contemplating anything.
That conversation isn’t going anywhere, but just shuffling off to the edge of Eternity.
10. THE LEGAL STATUS OF ICE feat. Fat White Family [Lyrics]
Backing Vocals, Drum Programming [Additional] – Nita Scott
Drums [Acoustic], Backing Vocals – Jack Everett
Featuring – Fat White Family*
Guitar, Backing Vocals – Adam J. Harmer*, Dustin Boyer
Keyboards [Juno], Backing Vocals – Nathan Saoudi
Mixed By – Justin Raisen
Vocals – Lias Saoudi
Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards [Keys], Bass, Drums – John Cale
What is the legal status of ice
Floats on the bottom very nice
Liquor in the bottom
I don't know
Pour that liquor, pour it out
Floating to the North Pole leaving tonight
Swimming in the North Sea under the ice
Floats on top with vanilla
What is the legal status of ice
What is the legal status of ice
I cheated on this one. John played this one live, and he introduced the song by saying that he wondered if a block of iceberg cut loose and moved below the equator, would that still be the property of Iceland? Best song I know about Maritime Law, to be honest. What does it mean for a block of ice to be the legal territory of one country and not another. Sounds like a hint at Stoic Cosmopolitanism, but that it probably just something I read about recently.
Vocals, Synth [Synths], Acoustic Guitar, Drums, Bass – John Cale
Oh boy! I know this one! Theodore Roethke cleverly said that whenever he was down the dumps, he simply looked at his contemporaries and he was forever encouraged. It is comforting when other “friends” falter, and when you have not. So that may be why John Cale sings about this “zero sum game” thing that we may not admit to, but might be participating in when we do a little charity, or give a little advice, or lend a hand in certain underhanded way. Ah well. Some of the joys of being human are darker than other joys.
Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*
Vocals, Piano, Strings [Additional] – John Cale
Quote
The closer! A piano number. Time is somewhat suspended for bad behavior. The benediction. Please stay in the cathedral as long as you like. Listen to the album again, if you want to. But when you leave, please please don’t go. Don’t go gentle into that good night. Don’t go out the window. Don’t check out. Don’t leave your body behind. Stick with the program. Just stay with me. Don’t die. You don’t know what may come next, and I will hold your hand. John Cale has always be the punk Vicar in my book. He is the punk father you can count on. He keeps it real, but he doesn’t choose death, and he sang about it, and he write a Classical score about it. So have a huge sarcastic angry attitude all you want, and God bless you for it, but stay. That close to the core makes you worth something. You can’t do all that attitude dancing when you are dead. We would miss your bad self.
If you jump out your window, I will break your fall.
I will hold you close and keep you calm wherever you decide to go.
Artwork – Abby Portner Graphic Design – Rob Carmichael (2) Mastered By – Mike Bozzi Producer – John Cale, Nita Scott Recorded By – Dustin Boyer Written-By, Arranged By [String Arrangements] – John Cale
Email:billymwb@gmail.com
Submissions accepted. Send a link, not a CD. Lyrics and artwork plus any information is appreciated. Access to artists for interviews encouraged.
alpenglow noun al·pen·glow ˈal-pən-ˌglō : a reddish glow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains
A WINTER DEPRESSION
CONCEPT ALBUM
When is Blue Monday 2023?
Blue Monday usually falls on the third Monday of January every year. The purported day of gloom this year is Monday, January 16. This is when, according to the formula, people will be most affected by the bleak winter weather, the post-Christmas comedown, and being filled with guilt over failed New Year's resolutions and therefore most likely to feel sad or 0depressed. —Sam Webb & Amelia Beltrao (The Sun)
Juan Cosby, Wonky Tonk & FAROUT chose this day of all days to release Alpenglowas a concept album in contrast to all the "summertime" albums and happy talk music from groups like "Up With People." I say that's a good thing. On the most depressing day of the year, the last thing I want to hear is "Up With People" or "Feelin' Groovy" I want to hear some music that won't make me feel more alone. I want to hear something sad from somebody who feels sad. Last thing I want to hear on a depressing day is happy song about "Happy Shining People." That shit might just push me over the edge.
I'm not saying that I want to hear some kinda Lana del Rey wallowing in the downward spiral and slobbering her lyrics like she is some kind of human Tuinal, no, buh uh, that wouldn't help just make me worse. I need something honest and sad like this with a little glow on the horizon like the sun just went down maybe remind me it comes back up again wait long enough. Alpenglowis a cool word. This album is a cool album. I used to drink red wine and wallow in the melancholy and secretly love that shit, but I don't drink no more. Sometimes though, I don't just wanta shock myself out the down and buck up and face the world, no sir!, I don't want to do that right away. I want to feel it, but not so as it becomes a habit. Just long enough.
Because I am not afraid of the dark.
JUAN COSBY
I approached each of them [Wonky Tonk & FAROUT] with the concept of making a “winter depression”album. Everyone else makes “summertime” music,so I wanted to try something different.
—Juan Cosby
Juan Cosby isn't out to make things worse. He has family. I know him to be a hopeful sort of guy. And he loves to make music that does something and that I can feel. So when he puts two polar opposites and good friends together like FAROUT and Wonky Tonk to do a concept album about "Winter Depression," I know he's up to something good for people, and better by far than those happy albums out there that might just push a guy over the edge wrong time of year. I am talking about SAD here, and that stands for "Seasonal Affective Disorder." If you look up "Winter Depression" you get "Seasonal Affective Disorder" on Google. That's why the links I just provided to you for those two things both go to the Mayo Clinic for a checklist of symptoms if you maybe want to check.
But it really isn't just the season, is it? No, there is some serious crap goin' on and it ain't right and seems like nobody likes anybody anymore. Old folks are tryin' hang onto power they never really had, but sure do get told they had it once all those Mexicans coming over the border and young people educated in college want to take it away. I am talking about old white people, just like me, but I don't feel that way. Load a crap, you ask me. Everybody divided like a cake we want to eat all by ourself or throw half of it away rather than share. Selfish.
Things suck right now. Only thing seems to help is finding that little glow around the edge of things like this Alpenglowthing when I turn off the TV and go outside and look at how things grow that don't watch TV and they seem to believe there is a reason to live and life is everywhere and it is beautiful and has nothing at all to do with whatever is getting everybody so goddam upset and ready to give up on each other and just take power by force and shit.
I don't want to go back to any damn time when things were "better" cause I lived through those times and they weren't better at all, but only worse for most everybody, women couldn't vote, children worked in factories, and go back a little further people were forced to live as slaves. NO! I don't want to go back there.
"There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed."
—Robert Kennedy
I want to thank Wonky Tonk for all her deep crazy mystic feelings shot through this whole album hear it in her voice! I want to thank Mr. FAROUT for keeping it real like he says half the time Icarus flyin' too high and I did that too, and also Sisyphus cause I sure did that day after day working get things done come back next day looks like worse than the day before. Now Juan Cosby put this whole Shebang! together, and did all the music took the time away from work and family to do it, so he gets extra special thanks for making something I can listen to doesn't make me feel worse and let's me know I am NOT the only one.
FAROUT
"According to the Greek myth, Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock up to the top of a mountain, only to have the rock roll back down to the bottom every time he reaches the top. The gods were wise, Camus suggests, in perceiving that an eternity of futile labor is a hideous punishment."
According to the story, Daedalus, a mythical inventor, created wings made of feathers and wax to escape from Crete where he and his son, Icarus, were held captive by King Minos. Icarus, however, ignored his father's warnings and flew too close to the sun. His wings melted and he fell into the sea where he met his end.
I got to spend a longtime yacking with FAROUT on the telephone, because my WiFi wasn't good enough for a video chat. He really gets it! He actually told me that on this Alpenglowalbum, he alternates between characters Icarus and Sisyphus. We talked about that, and I think I have alternated between those characters in my life. Icarusis when on my own in my head I fly like Icarus ascending on my beautiful foolish arms, but it usually actually always winds up being a false alarm. Sisyphusis when I wake up the next day and go to work.
When I got sent songs from Juan Cosbythat already featured Wonky Tonk, I got a vibe immediately. This wouldn't be acelebratory recordbut one where we recognize our issues and flaws and meet them head on.
—FAROUT
How messed up must it be for this guy who has a fan base and found himself as a touring successful vocalist and rap artist then BOOM!!!!! COVID!!!!!! So he does something working at night and I didn't ask what and he didn't mention it. Who cares? In a better world, musicians wouldn't have to do so much crap work like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill, then while we sleep, work just appears again like nothing was ever accomplished the day before.
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
I will cut this short on FAROUT, since I have his lyrics and there will be more to say in the Song-By-Song review herein below. He is Earth to Wonky Tonk's Faerie Fire Storm.
WONKY TONK
From my perspective, and this isn't canon, I represent the corporeal protagonist going thru struggles in life up the mountain everyday, like Sisyphus, while Wonky Tonk embodies the voice that faintly demands I keep going, which is the Alpenglow.
—FAROUT
WONKY TONK WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT
OR INTERVIEW AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING
There is just something about Wonky Tonk that can't every be ignored. I haven't talked or chatted with her, but only listened to one other album and seen the video and pictures like anybody else. She has a website that talks about the "Wonky Tonk Movement" and that is just on the Merch page! Her voice is intimate, sexy, private, compelling and heartbreakingly vulnerable like a combination Shirley Temple, Judy Holiday, and Melanie Safka. Yes, those are links if you want to laugh your ass off at the videos, but if you melt them together you would get something like Wonky Tonk only a little stitched at the seams maybe like a Frankenstein Wonky Tonk.
Cuter than that, she has an accent of some sort, and a way of chewing the lyrics that I have never heard before that I could listen to all day. Anyway, once in a while I can't understand what she is singing at all, but trust me on this, I don't care. Wonky Tonk brings the achingly vulnerable star-quality vocal that seems to come right from a private moment deep in the subconscious of a drop dead gorgeous Shirley Temple slash NICO femme fatale on the absolute verge of a nervous breakdown. She is the spitting image of a Siren singing her song to seduce sailors to their ruin in Homer's Odyssey and/or maybe an artist rendering crafted and created by a phalanx of marketing consultants to create the perfect picture of vulnerable real-life Betty Boopat the edge of a beautiful disaster.
Whatever you may think of my description, there is no doubt that Wonky Tonk will storm the barrades of your psyche and get the hell inside your head with that voice and you will believe in whatever she sings whether you understand it or not. Every picture tells a story, and Wonky Tonk could fill a coffee table book full of images that seem crafted by an artist to perfect display of some compelling, vulnerable, creature of unique and irresistible beauty and always, always, always just about five minutes from a Frances Farmer rant like to get her lobotomized by the Fascists who fear her power or the Wolves and Coyotes that pursue her like prey. Girl just has something, I don't know exactly what.
Listen for yourself.
THEALPENGLOWSINGERS
01. Blue Monday 4:20
[New Order 1983 — Songwriters: Stephen Paul David Morris / Bernard / Gilbert / Peter / Morris / Sumner / Hook / Gillian Lesley]
"Blue Monday" is an inspired opener for this album. Wonky Tonk brings here special sauce to this heartfelt lament of victimhood and love gone seriously no bueno! love/fear/hate and hurt.
FAROUT's LYRICS ARE ALWAYS IN LIGHT BLUE IN THIS REVIEW
FAROUT brings these words to the song (Rap!):
how does it feel to be locked up in a booth
how does it feel when you're not shown the truth
how many times do you gotta wrap you mind
around the fact that youre back in this bitch in a fancy suit
how do you treat somebody when you're in a bad mood
how do you treat somebody when you're in a good one
is there a difference i'm missing, or are you just too fucking cool for these fools its understood uh.
we're just having a bad day, collectively
we're just masking up our face, allegedly
call us masters of our fate
but we're gonna sing the song anyways
____________
FAROUT tells me he took in the mood of the New Order song Wonky Tonk had sung while he was in the "booth" of the recording studio, and just took it all in. He didn't take the victim route, but took it ALL in both the lovers. We are both. So he spits a take on the other side of the pain and puts us listeners in the uncomfortable position of exploring the feelings of the one Wonky Tonk is asking, "How does it feel / When you treat me like you do?"
That was the right thing to do, FAROUT. I don't have anything to say about it. I am still processing it. Am I like that? Do I do that? What do I feel? Okay, that stuff is private. Maybe I know, maybe I don't. But it takes the easy wallowing in self pity thing right the hell out the picture, doesn't it?
02. Insomniac 2:53
he thought its time to hang it up
it was an admirable run
the promises that he interwoven were unspun
so he's weaving thru the masses he swore he would overshadow
but that is the kinda narcissism's got him feelin rattled
magically he used to drop his life and hit the road
he never thought he'd see the series final episode
and its pretty, bittersweet, whatever you wanna call it
the subtle kisses from the wind when you know that you're free falling
so you shut your eyes and smile, the plans were the joke
this entertainment industry finishing what you wrote
i'll never write again, offended to send in an end quote
been broke, feels defeated when he sees the rent though
he thought it was the start of it, he thought it was a marathon
he thought he had a good enough leg for him to stand upon
but now hes facing a mirror he couldn't stare beyond
now hes by himself an insomniac when the beer is gone
FAROUT works nights. That may help to understand this song. He told me he was touring regularly and when that started happening his identity started to form around being a professional musician. But the then BOOM!!! COVID!!!! Had a meeting with the band. It would be irresponsible to tour get people sick. Can't do that and keep cred and plain can't do that it's wrong. So wait. Wait. Months go by. Soon. Coming, right? Years. It has been six years since a new album by FAROUT. This one marks the RETURN. Insomnia. "It was an admirable run." Damn, that shit hurts bad.
I feel a little better not alone hear this from FAROUT. My Covid stuff is just being sick, but I got well, and went back to work. My identity didn't change. Damn! He could have been somebody! Like Marlon Brando in "On The Waterfront."
You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charlie.
03. Nothing At All 4:31
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Looking for some meaning when everything is meaningless. Looking for a means to dream. To me it means nothing at all. Why are we so mad at each other? Why are we so mad at each other?
FAROUT is a double threat! The lyric above is sung by FAROUT throughout the song. But the rap comes on spitting fire at an obsurd world.
i dont wanna sleep for nothing i dont wanna dream about the past i rather like a nightmare. quite fair cause when i wake up i can relax
you can say i'm not optimistic and i can say i don't have a reason and you can say what you want about that but the fact is there's not a lot to believe in
why were we born to a world that we can't save how can we fake another smile and wave while we drive to the job for the money its funny 9 to 5 means we just gotta be brave
so much meaning is lost between the feelings and thoughts that we keep to ourselves undercovers its like the oxygen dropped, and now i'm feeling the plot is that you gotta help yourself before others
when i wake up i just say fuck like howd the job go and rope me back in brush my teeth while i pee tell myself that i gotta get up that i gotta try again
and when we stand there the customer is always right and then we contemplate about whats going on that night and then we calculate whether or not we'll have time for some fun and if they're gonna play that song we like
and then we stay out way too late as our drunk avatar says fuck us in the day we dont even like working, why not do it hungover, and we think thats the play
but the truth is, we're doing okay you can think about the lives that are wasted away and try to smile while you follow the plan just as long as you're giving it all that you can
There is a lot going on here! FAROUT is a practical dude. Wonky Tonk always brings it in every song like a Sprite or a Faerie or Psyche or something that is real in the mind when you are alone, but never ever get to speak out loud. She is a voice in the center of your head when you are so exhausted or flying on something or just out of the body for a minute. I can't say so much every song what she contributes, but it is ethereal, and FAROUT always brings it right back down to earth. The the sweet distance between then forms a web of tension between who we think we are deep inside and what happens when we get out in the world and do stuff. We are what we do, but there is someone living inside that has something else to say.
But these lyrics are a kind of prayer, which is great news with this FAROUT guy. The song is just better when he sings it and raps it both. Of course, Wonky Tonk adds the special sauce. Just assume that is true every one. If I don't say it, well shoot me, but it is there.
04. Upside Down 3:12
Wonky Tonk excels at this psychedelic or surrealistic song style. "Today my face turned upside down. .... On the other side..." They used to call that "topsy turvy." She just has that voice so connected to the part inside that quivvers and vibrates like a bubble about to burse, you can't can't turn away!
FAROUT takes this straight to the practical, physical turf on the street where he UDF or 7/11 gets robbed too often and the grass feels spikey if you wake up on it.
05. Do you 4:27
do you do you love me love me like i love you
if i reached out would you still hold my hand
do you do you hate me hate me like i love you
i will hurt myself to make you understand
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars and cars, sidewalks, everywhere. I'm God's lonely man."
—Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver
The lyric here is one of the Icarus characters from FAROUT. Isolation can freeze a man deep. Lost in late night thoughts can get mixed up with reality. FAROUT told me this character is talking to a girl he never met before but he saw her and thought things. He says, "if I reach out to you would you still hold my hand." But he never held here hand. She never met him, so saying that would not go well. He thinks she will notice him if he hurts himself. Maybe he is a cutter. Sounds like that to me. Borderline personality. Driven their by loneliness.
But then the voice of Wonky Tonk just makes a noise, but it is enough like a blue jay or a cardinal bird so alive and vulnerable he repeats himself, but this time he believes a little she might hold his hand. A sigh from a beautiful voice like that can soften things up a little. God's lonely man has a little hope. He won't hurt himself today. He won't hurt anybody. He just hurts inside this time.
06. Kiss Me On My Ego 2:52
Who but Wonky Tonk could sing "Kiss Me On My Ego" and make it sound absolutely natural. That voice can sing right to the Freud in my Superego and just open me up to the hurt I forgot since I was about three years old. 'Nuff said.
07. Pitch Black 3:40
This feels absolutely like a missing Joy Division song gone a little spooky behind some hallucinagenic fasting or some substance. Wonky Tonk exits that beautiful body and floats around the room as pure voice and nothing else at all. "Pitch Black in the dark and I'm not getting out of here." No bueno!
"O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I know it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer. "
—Albert Camus from "Return to Tipasa" (1954)
I had to move that quote here. It was at the top of the review, but things were getting a little dark. I thought we needed some sweet Camus to bring a little glow around the horizon. One version of the letter that includes this quote ends "Very truly yours." You can find another version typed in Courier type face and that one ends "Falsely yours." I don't know which one to believe. But "there was in me an invincible summer." Reflect on that.
08. Reflecting Back to Me 3:51
"I honor you. I respect you. You're a part of myself. ... Reflecting back to me."
"All accounts say that I am currently engaged in a nightmare, but I don't really know know."
Just spin out those two ideas Wonky Tonk bringing the respect and reflections and FAROUT bringing the nightmare. I could say more, but I have been writing all night and this song is that sweet spot between psychedelic and surreal that Juan Cosby (remember him?) does so well. All the music has been brought to this party by Juan and without that, nothing would be happening. Nod to Mr. Cosby. Say "Thank you!"
Go ahead. I'll wait. Do it! You will feel better when you do.
09. Float 3:02
Now this one is genuinely about Floating.
"I made a wrong turn about 50 miles back and I don't know where I'm going. .... I'm just gonna float."
Wonky Tonk runs with that in a sweet ethereal voice that just makes the whole idea soar and removes its underpinnings to set the song loose.
10. Stranger 3:28
"And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness."
― Albert Camus, The Stranger
Now this song nails something in the character of Wonky Tonk that won't go away. There seems to be a theme on this album and her own previous album of the uncertainty of SELF that takes me to the despair of Søren Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death."
"Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self and is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short it is a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two factors. So regarded, man is not yet a self."
—from "The Sickness Unto Death" by Søren Kierkegaard
I think that should clear things up. Are we clear?
Wonky Tonk sings: "I am a stranger to mice elf." I need a little Sly & the Family Stone break, how about YOU?
Sly & The Family Stone — Thank you (Falettin Me Be Mice Elf)
11. Your Daddy 3:09
FAROUT was given the music to this song without a vocal from Wonky Tonk, and so he let the music create the scene for him. He felt a confrontation in the music, so Daddy was born as a struggle between the father of the girlfriend and FAROUT's Icarus protagonist.
Now here is the meat on the bone of this album to me. There is a story here that sprung straight from some deeper place to sum up a generational struggle and the times we live in on this particular Blue Monday.
So this is first meeting of our guy with the family of his girlfriend, and he is nervous. The father looks menacing and he asked, "How much time did you work today?" and he doesn't like the answer. The Old Man is carrying a piece — a revolver — and our guy has to ACT! He wrestles with Pops and wrests the gun from his hands. Old Man wants the gun back, but "I don't care what your Daddy say, he ain't gonna get this gun."
Now this is where the album explodes with meaning to me.
Old Man is the old ways trying to hold on past his prime by FORCE. You have to conform and become like the Old Man or he'll wreck democracy just to hang onto power and keep the young punks from taking over. I lived through this once, I am thinking. And it happened at Sprowl Plaza when I was young and living near Berkeley. The old generation demands to make people into products, or they will HURT YOU! But we say NO! we are going to be ourselves, and live our lives and "We are human beings!"
And that's what we have here. We have an autocracy which -- which runs this university. It's managed. We were told the following: If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received -- from a well-meaning liberal -- was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?" That's the answer.
Well I ask you to consider -- if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something -- the faculty are a bunch of employees and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be -- have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean -- Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!
And that -- that brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!
That doesn't mean -- I know it will be interpreted to mean, unfortunately, by the bigots who run The Examiner, for example -- That doesn't mean that you have to break anything. One thousand people sitting down some place, not letting anybody by, not [letting] anything happen, can stop any machine, including this machine! And it will stop!!
MarioSavio
Sit-in Address on the Steps of Sproul Hall
delivered 2 December 1964, The University of California at Berkeley
