were all blended by Webb's arrangement into one fairly extraordinary track called 'Three Songs' which is not, I'm glad to say in this instance, sung by Webb himself, whose voice is an acquired taste. I'd post a video or sound file if I could find a postable or linkable one, but I can't; you'll just have to imagine it.
Jimmy Webb being the clever clogs that he is not just with music but also with words, even at the age of 24 when this album was released, the counterpoint extends if only metaphorically to the lyrics, which weave ironically around each other in their varying preoccupations with love ties and freedom.
So anyway, there I was a week or two ago, mucking around with iTunes as you do, and came up with this lovely Christmas song from the Indigo Girls. (Ignore the visuals.)
One of the reasons I liked this song so much was that it sounded very familiar. This familiarity nagged at me. And then last night as I was bringing in the washing before dark, wooden clothespeg in one hand and knickers in the other, it hit me with the proverbial blinding flash:
I think you could get an astonishing effect if you gave these two songs the Jimmy Webb treatment and glued them together. Not least because of the way the refrains both open up into an affirmation of possibility: of surviving some terrible loss.
Fascinating!
ReplyDeleteOne of my strongest childhood memories is hearing Wichita Linesman on my parents' portable radiogram during a family holiday. Glen Campbell followed us from town to town as we caravanned through Victoria and southern NSW: I recall listening closely whenever the radio was playing, hoping to satisfy my urge to hear it again.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds dated now, but after all these years Webb's unforgettable lyrics and that stacatto evocation of humming wires have it on high rotation on my mental playlist. Still gives me a little shiver...
TFA
TFA, agreed. I also feel like that about 'Galveston' except even more so. Have you listened to Ten Easy Pieces? The extended piano intros on both of those songs (I think -- and also on 'Macarthur Park') are absolutely spine-tingling.
ReplyDeleteKerryn, I admire Galveston for its song-craft, but it doesn't induce the visceral response that I have to Wichita Linesman. Don't know why I identified so strongly with the song as a child: its imagery of single-mindedness and isolation seem unlikely preoccupations for a 9 year old.
ReplyDeleteI'll be following up on Jimmy Webb's recordings: they had passed me by unnoticed until now.
TFA
"Galveston" used to terrify me as a kid in the early 70s. My father, his friends, and all my uncles, in fact all the men in my family, were Navy men and Marines, and the idea of military life was culturally normalized in me from the earliest time, which really scared the shit out of me. My Dad was fond of "Galveston" and played it a lot, but I think he liked it for its musical quality and not the content. (He also played a lot of Johnny Cash and Broadway musicals; my Mom loved Caruso, Mario Lanza, and opera.)
ReplyDeleteBut at the time there was a whole cultural assumption, from movies to songs to comic books, that the horrors of war were just a fact of life you had to get used to. "Galveston" still freaks me out, much as I like Jimmy Webb.
-- j_p_z
I adore 'Ten Easy Pieces', very good on a quiet rainy day in the studio. What you're suggesting could be a lovely mash-up... where is Arty Fufkin when we need him?
ReplyDeleteYou know, Duck, the idea of a mash-up qua mash-up hadn't occurred to me till now but I suppose that's what it would be, really -- does a straight laying one song over the top of another all the way through qualify? I think I'd always thought of a mashup as the juxtaposition of elements which would rather not have been forcibly put in the same room given the choice thank you very much.
ReplyDeleteTFA and JPZ -- just thinking about what those two songs have in common -- a vision of unhappy masculine solitariness in the landscape, and the absent woman. It's like whatsisname's epiphany in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And the plangency of Campbell's voice makes it worse. TFA, maybe you were driving past endless humming wires in the middle of nowhere and thinking about what it would be like to be out there.
Come on, now - would you still have your current regard for S. Stills if he'd become one of The Monkees?
ReplyDeletecheers
B Smith
Oh, absolutely not. Apart from anything else he was far too talented a musician with far too much potential to get caught in a trap like that. But that is my point, in a way - the stupid values in play in the commercial world that put the Monkees together, including the sort of imagination that sees Davy Jones as some sort of ideal of good looks. CSNY was/is an organic musical growth, as it were, and allowed each of them to make the music they wanted to make, separately and together.
ReplyDeleteI just think it's hilarious that anyone would think Stills wasn't smoking hot, apart from the silly sidies, until he did all those drugs and wrecked himself.
I mean, look.
ReplyDelete"...the stupid values in play in the commercial world that put the Monkees together"
ReplyDeleteNo stupider than any other values in the wacky world of commercial music...and as for "organic musical growth"...sheesh, sounds like a cyst.
cheers
B Smith
'No stupider than any other values in the wacky world of commercial music...'
ReplyDeleteWell, that was sort of my point.
'and as for "organic musical growth"...sheesh, sounds like a cyst.'
No, no. Heart.
"the lyrics, which weave ironically around each other in their varying preoccupations with love ties and freedom." & "a vision of unhappy masculine solitariness in the landscape, and the absent woman."
ReplyDelete...which both recall TVZ's I'll be here in the Morning, with it's extended melodic line so reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel's The Boxer.
And that brings me to my next question: is this a peculiarly Texan obsession? (with both Webb & van Zandt having strong TX connections). Brit pop lyrics of the era don't seem to be dominated by quite the same concerns.
Re The Monkees, let's not overlook Mike Nesmith's talents.
TFA