Life’s Riches

I love a surprise.

Especially musical surprises.

Last Wednesday was warm. The night before I had unexpectedly been offered a ticket to see Lucinda Williams (thank you B—).  It was still warm on the night of her concert at Hamer Hall in Melbourne.   J—- and the girls took me out to pizza and then dropped me off in town.  I walked a few streets and met a friend.  We trammed it to the Arts Centre  among a middle aged crowd of concert goers. We waited for other friends and family while sipping cold beers.

Lucinda’s songs, in that venue, with her band Buick 6, and her voice, all evidence of life’s riches,  lifted me into a couple of hours of  enjoyable and distractionless fun.

I’ve always been familiar with Lucinda’s songs but wouldn’t call myself a huge fan.  That fact isn’t really out of  informed choice, just the lucky-dip of what hits your turntable when you can only discover so much. Or maybe I thought she was a contrived Nashville cowgirl.   I wish I’d followed through on the search for Townes Van Zandt’s and Gram Parsons’ contemporary lineage.  I would have uncovered her body of work earlier, especially her earlier songs.

The gig was a surprise on so many levels.  I have hardly ever listened to lyrics.  J—- and many of my friends can retell song lyrics with the most extraordinary precision.  The words, for them, make the song.  I have always been hit harder by the the way a song ‘feels’: its music, its arrangement, and the tone of the singing.  In short, the way a song makes me feel viscerally through its sound.  At this concert, I listened to the lyrics, even those of  some of the earlier country-folky songs I’d heard many times before, and it made a difference.  Hard to explain.

I also loved how far removed the whole experience was from my daily existence as a mother immersed in pre-school life.  Hard to explain this too. Perhaps it was the way Lucinda’s voice acted like a shape-shifter for each song. Perhaps it was Lucinda’s banter with references to all sorts of musical connections I don’t hear much about anymore.  Perhaps it was the songwriting, almost coming from another time and place.  Yeah, it was definitely the singing and songwriting.

I learned that Drunken Angel was about her friend and poet Blaze Foley.  I learned of Lucinda’s own favourite songs (or at least ones that she liked to perform in her own way at encore): Disgusted by Lil’ Son Jackson, I lived my Life by Fats Domino, Things I Used To Do by Guitar Slim, Every Picture Tells a Story by Faces, and Long Way to The Top by ACDC.  It’s not a collection I’d think to put on my playlist everyday but it was fun.  It was cool and foot-tapping without being intense. Confused anecdotes about EmmyLou Harris might have been due to jet-lag but I loved the overly-familiar referencing of Harris and the likes of Willie Nelson.

My only (small) criticism would be that the band was somewhat over-polished at times.  Guitar solos aren’t my thing.  Neither are drum solos (did I clap?).  No matter; it was still alot of fun.

Intuition

Coldplay are a really huge band, aren’t they?  I don’t know any of their songs.  Perhaps I’m a hermit when it comes to popular music.  On the other hand, I like to think I have an inbuilt radar about the sort of bands I might like and I get the feeling this band would make my eyes glaze over.

This ‘feeling’ is most certainly confirmed by the headline I’ve just read:

Coldplay’s Chris Martin could team up with Farnham: Wheatley

Cute things they say #5

Ginger, 4 years, 6 months old:

Ginger: Yuk.  (About her sister.)

Me:  Stop saying that to her.  It upsets her because she thinks you are calling her yuk.

Ginger: It’s only an expression mum.  It actually means “Yum, nice”.

Nice try!!

Ginger  when seeing the water sprinklers across the road : Why are there water sprouts on the oval?

Ginger playing with Peta in the shower: This drink is poison. It kills people who drink it.  It’s for people who want to be dead.  If other people say they are ugly or yucky then they can drink the poison and be dead.

Ginger: Mummy, I just did a burp and it tasted like salad.  I think I eat too much salad.

Peta, 2 years, 10 Months:

Peta: I like babbo.  He is nicer than crocodiles.  Crocodiles bite with their sharp teeth.

Ginger, 4 years, 7 months old:

Mum, look, I’m painting just like Jackson Pollock.

Ginger was playing at the local playground with her cousins.  The big slide is a complicated bit of machinery with climbing frames, portholes and viewing platforms, lots of steps.  She was instructing all the two-year olds on how to navigate this ‘rocket ship’ but got sidetracked  and commented as follows:  I’ve got to go on the swing now.  I’ve just paused the rocketship and I’ll be back later.

Peta, 2 years, 11 Months:

Peta, at three o’clock in the morning with eyes wide open: If the Beatles have a song called daddy, daddy, daddy then I could sing daddy, daddy, daddy but the Beatles don’t have a song called daddy, daddy, daddy, so I can’t sing daddy, daddy, daddy.

I’m glad that’s all sorted.  Can it wait until the morning next time?

Captain Beefheart was playing on the stereo.   Peta was very excited and shouted out of the blue:  He’s just like Captain Feathersword.  Is he a pirate?

Oh, he’s definitely a pirate, darling.

The girls also heard The Slits on the radio this morning.  Their punk reggae version of Marvin Gaye’s”I Heard it on the Grapevine” (Bassline according to the lovely Slits) really got their attention.  Peta cried when I turned off the stereo and got us out of the car.  She implored me to pause the song for when she returned.

She’s crazy. Well yes, she is.

Ginger and Peta heard two very different guitarists play their stuff on the radio yesterday afternoon.  (Thank you Dave Graney and Elizabeth McCarthy.)  They asked me to turn it up loud.

The first was the frenetic Marnie Stern.

Ok, once I found her stuff on youtube, I thought it mostly noise (not that I mind nosiy guitar in principle) , but I do like the song we initially heard on the radio, Ruler.  The rest might take a while to get used to and that’s ok. I’m not sure if she fits in the metal or punk straitjacket but, either way, her fingers are fast and she has piqued the interest of this kinder mum.  I look forward to hearing more.

Ruler is from an album called This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That.   Ginger and Peta’s critical review of the song was this constant summation over and over:  She’s crazeeeeee!

Marnie’s interview technique, as a respondent obviously, is pretty interesting too.  A very excitable person as evident in a Pitchfork interview.

The other guitar virtuoso that impressed me is Kaki King.  Ginger and Peta, those fine rock connoisseurs, giggled at the sound of her name and repeated it over and over for tongue-twisting effect.  That in itself gains immediate stars on our praise chart. She was raised in Atlanta, Georgia; she is in town this week and she played some music live to air and handled Mr Graney’s questions with finesse.   I like the following number.