uTopianTurtleTop

UNFINISHED BEESWAX

(Whatever happened to the word “beeswax” as in “mind your own”? I haven’t heard that word since junior high school. Do you junior high students still use it? I have no idea.)

(And is any business ever really finished? People can experience a satisfying feeling of closure, and rest assured that it’s temporary, and an opening will appear soon.)


FURTHER THOUGHTS ON RAINY POETRY (DRIVING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN WITH ELLA AND FRIENDS, PART 2 AND A HALF)

My friend Mickle Maher wrote a lovely e-note to me today to tell me that yesterday’s post about the weather and lyric poetry reminded him of a favorite anonymous 15th century English poem:

“Westron wind, when will thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.”


I’ve always loved that poem, and I never understood it until Mickle wrote to me today. (Thanks, Mickle!) My head had always been full of the “rain-equals-trouble-or-sorrow” metaphor. This poem isn’t about that. At least, I don’t think so now. The small rain is a good thing. Is the speaker of the poem a sailor waiting for favorable winds to go home? A struggling farmer or shepherd? Or someone just on a long journey?

In another version, it sounds more certain that the speaker wants the “small rain” to come, but the meter doesn’t please me quite as much in the first version (it’s less abrupt):

“O western wind, when wilt thou blow,
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!”


SECOND THOUGHTS ON THE RESURGENCE OF THE OLD STANDARD TUNES

Last Friday I heard Boz Scaggs’s version of “What’s New” again. On Wednesday, Feb. 4 (“Sexual Initiative, Part 3”), I had written that “Boz doesn’t sound either heartbroken or stoic or self-deprecating, and since it’s a stoicly self-deprecating heartbroken song that means he misses the point.” That wasn’t fair. He does sound self-deprecating. The words almost won’t allow a singer to sound anything but self-deprecating. After a couple quatrains of small-talk, each quatrain prefaced with the conversational “What’s new?,” the bridge goes:

“What’s new?
Probably I’m boring you,
But seeing you is grand,
And you were sweet to offer your hand.
I understand.”;

which leads straight into the pay-off quatrain:

“Adieu!
Pardon me asking, ‘What’s new?’
Of course, you couldn’t know
I haven’t changed, I still love you so.”

Boz sounds bitterly self-deprecating. On most recordings I’ve heard of the song, the singers do. The first time I heard the song, however, 18 or 19 years ago on a jazz show on my hometown college station, the singer was jauntier and sounded humorously, charmingly self-deprecating. Which charmed me, and still seems to better fit the song. I have no idea who that singer was. Not Sinatra (who sings it sour and bitter), not Linda Ronstadt (distraught), not Boz (toughly bitter). I like Ronstadt and Boz’s versions fine, but I miss that jaunty charming one -- the one you can actually imagine someone saying to his (or her) non-reciprocating beloved, with a smile and a sheepish, embarrassed bow and no accusation. (Well, I can imagine a bitter accusatory confession in real life too.)


SECOND THOUGHTS ON THE MARRIAGE OF WORDS AND MUSIC IN SONG

A few days ago (Monday, Feb. 9), in the postscript to “Beatlemania Anniversary,” I made a rash and sloppy generalization about how popular songs of the rock era swayed the balance away from words and gave more weight to music. My friend Jake London wrote to inquire about what the hell I was trying to say, and shared pertinent insight as to how post-Dylan rock songs often have a grittier, more realist edge to their words than pre-rock songs in general. I amended my initial generalization to say that the shift, while not universal but significant, came with REM, who on their early albums put Michael Stipe’s distinctive voice in the middle of the muddle of the mix, making it hard to understand the words. (I’ve heard people refer to their first album, “Murmur,” as “Mumble.”) Jake and I had an interesting e-discussion about the influence of recording technology on REM’s ability and decision to bury the vocals as compared to earlier rock and pop music. (And I like REM a lot.) I stand by part of what I said the other day: the marriage of words and music in song is complicated; and my general preference is for a marriage of equal partners.