“The Mountain Low” – Palace Music (download here)
from Viva Last Blues (1995)
released by Drag City (buy)
(file expires on May 9th.)
I’m a sucker for a good first line anywhere, be it a novel or a newspaper or a song, and — holy “Bob” — does Will Oldham’s “The Mountain Low” have one. “If I could fuck a mountain,” Oldham sings, “Lord, I would fuck a mountain.”
“There are so many ways you can go at something in a song,” Bob Dylan told Robert Hillburn last year. “One thing is to give life to inanimate objects. Johnny Cash is good at that. He’s got the line goes, ‘A freighter said, “She’s been here, but she’s gone, boy, she’s gone.”‘ That’s great. ‘A freighter says, “She’s been here.”‘ That’s high art. If you do that once in a song, you usually turn it on its head right then and there.”
Oldham twists it from the start. After that, the song settles down into lyrics and a fantastic melody that are basically folk music (or anti-folk or whatever you wanna call a boho duder with an acoustic guitar these days). But that first line just hangs over the song, and informs what’s essentially just a lovely strum with a general sense of dirty, surreal unease.
I love the democracy of YouTube. Search for “Wilco,” and the first results (for now, anyway), include unofficial music videos, what appears to be a Dutch school play (whose keywords include “robot,” “funny,” “hardcore,” and “zelfgemaakt”), and some kids partying in the basement of a dude named Wilco. Then comes footage of the band, but first shaky audience-shot bootlegs, before finally getting to the TV appearances and music videos, and Wilco covers by random people who thought it’d be a swell idea to cover Wilco and put it on YouTube.
Anyway, some of my favorite (non-Wilco) YouTube discoveries:
o Yo La Tengo attend Mr. Show’s rock academy in the “Sugarcube” video.
o Brian Wilson performs “Surf’s Up” solo on a Leonard Bernstein television special in 1966. (Bonus: 1992’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” in which the Boys cram bikini babes, old ladies, children, and John Stamos into three-and-a-half minutes of glorious, uh, hot fun.)
o Wes Anderson shills pleasantly for American Express.
o Jerry Garcia rubs elbows with Hugh Hefner during the Grateful Dead’s 1969 appearance on Playboy After Dark. (Hef was later dosed by the band.)
o Jeff Mangum sings “Engine.”
I made my Associated Press debut today, with a story about last week’s circuit bending festival. It’s been picked up by the websites of (at least) 42 news organizations, including the Washington Post, Canada.com, the Chicago Tribune, and the Local News Leader in Olberlin, Kansas. Whee. I’m not sure if that means it’ll be the treeware editions, too, but maybe? For some reason, the San Jose Mercury News has filed it as “gossip.” If you haven’t looked at ’em yet, I posted some pictures, too.
MLB.com’s Gameday interface is a pretty ginchy way to follow a ballgame without the TV or radio interrupting work. The window automatically updates with a striking amount of information about the game as it happens (albeit with a 10-or-so second delay), all of which can be perceived in quick glances. Once one picks up the rhythm of the page reloads and toggling between other projects, the pace creates its own drama, and unfolds as such. Key transmissions, such as when runs score, come in bold. Today, I resisted the urge to turn on the radio as the Mets blew a lead in the bottom of the ninth, and beat the Giants in extra innings. It felt even more old-fashioned than radio, like reconstructing a game via telegraph.
Not sure if it’s still available, but XM Radio posted the first episode of the Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan (username: press1, password: xmr0ck5!). About a million miles from contemporary radio, it is exactly the type of show I would’ve loved to discover late at night in high school when I was supposed to be asleep. Where Dylan to come on, and were he just a random announcer and not actually Bob Dylan, I would’ve likely thought “who talks like this?” His phrases are occasionally awkward, his spoken recitations of songs’ lyrics kind of hilarious, and his attempt at introducing Stevie Wonder in Italian is endearing.
But I’m equally sure that I would’ve kept listening, because the DJ sounds like he’s from another planet. In a good way, too. “If you think the sun is too hot, at least you don’t have to shovel it,” he says near the end of the weather-themed episode. (“Spoken like a true Minnesotan,” a friend commented.)
The music is great, mostly drawn from that ancient period before, well, Dylan was Dylan. There’s Muddy Waters and the Carter Family, of course. But there’s also Frank Sinatra and Martin, Joe Jones’ proto-surf-rock (“California Sun”) and cinematic Judy Garland (Come Rain or Shine”). There’s calypso (Lord Beginner’s “Jamaica Hurricane”) and tremolo-kissed gospel (The Staples Singers’ “Uncloudy Day”). I can’t say I’m going to subscribe to XM just to get Dylan’s show, but I’ll certainly make an effort to track it down (and would probably even purchase it on a per-episode basis, were that option to be reasonably offered).
I interviewed Mike Love recently for the Middletown Times Herald-Record. They called it “Beach Boy Mike Love at West Point.” I like my headline better: “Unleash the Love.”
And a “hullo” to Times Herald-Record readers.
Please to be enjoying some other Beach Boys-related writing I’ve done.
o I Know There’s An Answer: Passing the Turing Test With Brian Wilson — Brian Wilson interview, circa December 2005.
o Endless Summer — Contemplating Endless Summer as a concept album on a snowy day.
o One Final Smile, part I, part II — Thoughts on Tim Smolen’s reconstructed Smile.
o Wouldn’t It Have Been Nice — My February 2004 Smile feature for Salon.com.
The following Brian Wilson interview (the most frustrating I’ve ever done) was supposed to have been published in December 2005, around the time of the release of Brian’s What I Really Want For Christmas holiday LP. It didn’t, and — as soon as the New Year rolled around and the album’s press cycle ended — it became instantly unsellable. Here ’tis.
I Know There’s An Answer: Passing the Turing Test With Brian Wilson
by Jesse Jarnow
Brian Wilson has a mindblowing deadpan. At least, that’s the most reassuring explanation.
Having unexpectedly returned to the critical and popular limelight last year with his resurrected 1966 masterwork Smile, the 63 year-old Wilson and his associates seemingly achieved the impossible. As if to affirm that assessment, Wilson has followed the final realization of his greatest accomplishment with its polar opposite: an infinitely unassuming, shinily packaged holiday CD titled What I Really Want For Christmas.
While it’s hyperbole to say (as Wilson’s website does) “that it’s not hyperbole to say that [Wilson’s new songs] are destined to become instant Christmas standards,” What I Really Want For Christmas — which includes a title collaboration with Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin — is a must-have for anyone who thinks that both Christmas albums and the Beach Boys are pretty nifty ideas. (Others might need more convincing.)
When Wilson led the Beach Boys through the 1964 recording of the #6 charting Beach Boys’ Christmas, it was totally natural. For starters, they were family. Wilson co-founded the band with brothers Dennis and Carl, first cousin Mike Love, and neighbor Al Jardine. What’s more, they were an American family.
“We used to Christmas carol to our neighbors,” Wilson says simply.
What songs did they sing?
“I just remember singing Christmas carols.”
And who was there?
“My family.”
Any particular memories?
“No, we just had a lot of fun doing it.”
“The relationship between the Wilsons and the Loves was very similar to the Hatfields and McCoys,” Love reflected in 2000’s Endless Summer documentary, recalling the legendary Southern families who’d feuded so long that they’d forgotten the origins.
“But there was one time of year [our] families would get together and there was sort of a truce,” Love continued, “and that was Christmastime, when we would do all our Christmas carols and get together musically. After the carols were done, we’d segregate into age groups and do music that was of our time.”
Nowadays, remembering the causes of the Wilson/Love feud isn’t so tough. The Beach Boys’ decades of hits gave way to — like Wes Anderson’s Royal Tenenbaums — “decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.”
The tension has never been far from the surface. During the ’60s, the two went face-to-face over the contents of the original Smile, and by the mid-’70s Wilson abandoned his band amid drug abuse and depression.
There was late brother Dennis’s marraige to (and child by) alleged Love daughter Shawn Marie Love, and the remaining Beach Boys’ 1991 battle to remove Brian from the care of svenghali psychiatrist Eugene Landy. And there was Love’s late ’90s squabble with Wilson over “Good Vibrations” royalties. Just in time for the holidays is Love’s latest lawsuit, this one over Smile (with some nasty words about Brian’s management on the side).
It’s no wonder that Wilson doesn’t want to speak of Christmases past. Is he going to revive the tradition for Christmases future with his family, which — in addition to grown daughters Carnie and Wendy — now includes three adopted daughters with wife, Melinda?
“No.”
Any reason?
“No, no reason, we’re just not going to.”
At its best, What I Really Want For Christmas evokes Christmas in southern California, plastic reindeer strung afront low-slung bungalows, tinsel wrapped about the drive-through at the burger shack. As he has the since ’60s, Wilson faces down pain with elaborately layered harmonies and bouncy organs.
Christmas — his third album in under two years — is the latest in Wilson’s most productive period since his prime. Besides constant touring, Wilson recently offered to personally telephone any fan that donated $100 or more to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Did he have funny conversations?
“No.”
How many people did he talk to, anyway?
“About 10,” Wilson replies earnestly, with what one strongly hopes is extremely dry wit. (According to Wilson’s office, the pledge drive raised $210,000 in donations via over 500 phone calls by Wilson.)
Those tempted to apply British mathematician Alan Turing’s famed test to determine the difference between human and artificial intelligence would be frustrated. Publicly, anyway, Wilson has long championed harmony over intellect. But who needs to answer questions over the holidays when he can just sing, anyway? Surf’s up, mmmhmmhmm.
“Every Grain of Sand” (demo) – Bob Dylan (download here)
recorded in 1980
from Bootleg Series box set (1991)
released by Columbia Records (buy)
(file expires April 26th)
Given the quality of the work, it might not say a lot that “Every Grain of Sand” is easily my favorite Bob Dylan tune from the ’80s. Shot of Love, from 1981, is called Dylan’s first post-Christian album. But “Every Grain of Sand,” is still very much a religious song, albeit in a more nuanced, less evangelical way than his previous three records. “I hear the ancient footsteps, like the motion of the sea,” Dylan sings, “sometimes I turn, there’s someone there; other times, it’s only me.”
With its reverb-heavy guitars, the official Shot of Love version sounds a bit like a prom ballad, or maybe one of David Lynch’s attempts at noir pop. The demo, released on the inaugural Bootleg Series box set, is more palatable (and a bit faster). The sparse arrangement of Dylan’s piano and Fred Tackett’s guitar is just right. For reasons both topical and musical, I can easily imagine Sufjan Stevens covering this rendition of “Every Grain of Sand,” whispering the lyrics over Kermit-style banjo.
