Posts tagged death

Yesterday, Bert Jansch skipped off into oblivion. The below was originally posted on April 12th, 2009. Re-posted as, well, you’re not going to find a better Bert Jansch song, and it seems appropriate. “That death itself is freedom for evermore.” RIP.

Bert Jansch - Needle of Death

Bert Jansch was a 60’s Scottish strum’n’croon type whose early adult life was pretty action-packed.  In his early twenties, he married a 16-year old acquaintance in order to allow her to travel with him, as her age prevented her from travelling alone.  They soon split, and Bert was forced to return to Glasgow after contracting dystentery in Tangiers, a small bit of foreshadowing of how shit-soaked the band Tangiers would become 40 years later.  If you ask me, dystentery could be what caused the breakup.  Dystentery is apparently a bit of a turn-off for the ladies.  Although it’s likely quite an uncomfortable condition that could be described to firing liquid through the eye of a needle and then dying, this song is not about dysentery, but rather about smack.  You know, junk.  Horse.  For my dollar twenty-five, this jerks a tear a lot more effectively than Neil Young’s ‘Needle and the Damage Done’. The picture below isn’t the cover of the album this song appeared on, but look at the puppy.  Cute right?  That puppy died tragically of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.

Claudine Longet - Jealous Guy / Don’t Let Me Down

Now, I’ve romanced one or two firecrackers in my time, but none of them hold a candle (yet) to Claudine Longet. French chanteuse, actress, and high-profile socialite, Longet charted many a Beatles cover, starred in the 60’s classic The Party, hobnobbed with Bobby Kennedy, and married Andy Williams, who she met by the side of the road after having car trouble. I saw a movie that started that way incidentally. It was a shocking, bare-all documentary about love called Runaway Tush 4.

This cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy becomes eerily ironic when you factor in that on March 21st, 1976, in Aspen, her boyfriend, skier Vladimir ‘Spider’ Sabich was fatally shot in his chalet. Being named ‘Spider’ is generally a good clue that you’re going to meet a bad end, but that’s neither here nor there. Longet’s story was that Spider was showing her the gun when it went off, which would make a lot more sense were he not half naked in the bathroom, having just returned from a ski. Beyond the fact that the physics of the gunshot didn’t make sense, Longet was found to have cocaine in her system, suspect entries in her diary, and a song in her heart ample motive for the murder. In the end, it appeared that  her relationship with Sabich was dissolving, and this final argument was likely fueled by his plans to leave her. I hate it when chicks wave a gun in my face just because things aren’t working out. You know I love you baby, but there’s a whole world out there.

Due to a few key police mistakes, she ultimately got off with 30 days in jail. She then married her defense attorney, never performed again, and to this day still lives in Aspen, the scene of the crime as it were. The moral of the story? Don’t cross French chicks / bitches be crazy.

Claudine Longet - French; pensive; slightly smug.

Al Stewart - Turn Into Earth

Water and dying are a delicious dijonaisse on our life sandwich. Death and the surf have been embroiled in a wonderfully symbiotic cross-marketed circlejerk for time immemorial; well before we wrested ourselves from their sodden grip and shuffled ashore to build boats, submarines and diving bells, to be swallowed yet again.

Nothing good has ever happened underwater.

That’s *cough* what your problem is. Expending energy considering, bemoaning, naming blogs after death and drowning. All that effort, spilled in the name of this bedraggled terrorist. You die dying; after spending a year carefully feeding the maw that ultimately snapped you up; liquefied you. Later, the gnarled sinew; the useless and indigestible parts of you are barfed ashore, collected by enterprising truants and ultimately sold as fertilizer to a co-op run by tattooed lesbians. Time passes. You are sprinkled over someone’s basil garden on the 5th floor balcony of some charmingly appointed factory loft; a timid salvo in their battle to beat back the encroaching half-built edifices with their bent rib cages of re-bar, decaying even as they are being born, indiscernible from the burnt shells they replace. Take that, progress! I grew herbs! But -

You live and sway in sunlight and concrete dust. For a while. Then, you are clipped in your prime; shredded; prepared and arranged painstakingly alongside heirloom tomatoes and the clotted secretions of buffalo for a visit from Benjamin and Rebecca who are in an open relationship and want to discuss Baudrillard and Old Montreal. The indignity is ceaseless. Is that what you want? Can’t you just die proper-like? Turn into dirt, as we’re meant to?

Anyhow, this song is a Yardbirds cover by Al Stewart.

Fig 1.1: Seriously.

Ohio Players - Funky Worm

I assumed Funky Worm was some sort of post-coital condition but as it turns out, the Ohio Players were referring to a literal worm that plays guitar ‘without any hands (pretty good I might add!)’. That’s not a misprint. ‘Funky Worm’ is a song about a worm that lives underground, is a musician, and is managed by an old woman only identified as ‘Granny’ who provides backing vocals on the song to boot. Finally, this story has been told! I can only imagine how much fucking blow was going around the studio while this idea was being cooked up. This song is notable for its use of the squiggly synthesizer lead that has resurfaced in both the many, many songs that have sampled it directly (N.W.A.’s ‘Dopeman’, Xzibit’s ‘Pussy Pop’ (!), Dr. Dre’s intro to ‘The Chronic’, to name a few)  but also the many that have emulated its sound - it’s hard not to picture a caddy bouncing on hydraulics when that first synth lead kicks in, and I just poured out a sip of coffee for my dead homies.

Speaking of death, there was a popular rumour floating around about the Ohio Players that their song ‘Love Rollercoaster’, which uses rollercoasters as a metaphor for love - love has a long lineup, seats 20, makes you barf - contained the scream of a woman as she was being murdered. The band themselves willfully did not deny the rumour as it helped them sell records. It says a lot about the confusion of 1975 America that the idea of a song about how exciting love is that possibly contained a hidden recording of a woman’s murder was appealing to the masses. Again, blow. Lots of it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with Dr. Dre to get some sort of ointment for my chronic case of funky worm.

Joe & Eddie - There’s A Meetin’ Here Tonight

Joe and Eddie, two brothers (not literally) from the South, plied their trade singing some pretty energetic, hand-fuckin-clappy gospel music in the early 60’s, and they are determined to make you aware on this Bob Gibson-penned standard that there’s a meeting, and it’s happening here, and it’s tonight. Oddly, other than telling us that there’s a meetin’ here tonight, which they tell you close to a hundred times in this song, some of the only other information Joe and Eddie impart is that they travelled down in the valley, that the devil told them to turn back, and they didn’t listen. And wouldn’t you know it, after a 1966 show in Los Angeles, Joe was killed in car accident, thereby reducing Joe and Eddie to just Eddie. Oddly, Jan Berry of Jan & Dean was also in a very serious car crash, in Los Angeles, in 1966 on ‘Dead Man’s Curve’, a stretch of road they had written about two years eariler - however as best I can tell, he did not collide with Joe of Joe and Eddie, but suffice it to say that if you are to find yourself in 1966 Los Angeles, take the fucking bus. Also, definitely don’t start a band with a name that requires all the members to be alive to remain accurate, because that sort of shit really pisses fate off.

Springwater - I Will Return

Your funeral will be a dull affair of varnished mahogany and finger sandwiches, forced tears and awkward prayer, ill-fitting dress shoes and worn platitudes from half-drunk strangers who can only guess at the darkness you truly harboured in your still, cold heart. Mine, on the other hand, will involve a children’s choir marching in the colours of twenty different countries, waving flags from across the world high as the first cherry blossoms of spring rain down, and finally culminating with my casket being fired from a cannon toward the sun, igniting into shimmering stardust as the last strains of Springwater’s ‘I Will Return’ ring out. You’ll be there, and afterwards there will be a clam bake on the shores of the Chesapeake as friends and foes alike laugh until tears fill their eyes at stories of my many exploits. Hopefully there is a freakishly tall and gaunt man there, standing back from the throng of wellwishers. He says nothing, but hat in hand, silently weeps as he looks out across the horizon, cradling his memories of the past and of things left undone. It’d be great if somebody could BBQ some ribs also.

Springwater was essentially a one-man band, with Phil Cordell at the helm, and ‘I Will Return’ is from the 1971 album ‘Springwater’. Even if this song isn’t about death, it’s about death. Even when you’re writing a song about how nice of a fucking day it is outside, you’re writing about death, pal. You’re writing about the magic of a fleeting, pleasant moment, memorable only for its brevity and ultimately, the end of these and all moments. I only bring this up because it’s pretty fun to listen to, say, Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’ and consider that it’s really a song about solitude, failure, and ultimately death. Fuck Beyonce, you so heavy!

Greenland’s coat of arms. Make what you will of that.