Everything I Tell You is Hearsay

Don’t let your silly dreams, fall in between, the crack of the bed and the wall… ~My Morning Jacket

The beautiful simplicity of this song is it’s finest quality. One acoustic guitar, one gentle voice. Not every song can stand with its bare bones showing, and still be lovely. This one is best in its spare and unvarnished state.

I am notoriously hard to buy presents for. And I can’t fake enthusiasm for a gift I do not like. One year, for my birthday my good friend Rob managed to get me not just one good present, but THREE! It was a never to be repeated perfect present storm. And one of the things he gave me was the Acoustic Citsuoca album by My Morning Jacket. It is a fantastic EP and charmingly, it was recorded on Halloween. This displayed a level of planning and sentiment I have still not entirely gotten over being touched by.

so soon will burn. Without a noise, without my pride. I reach out from the inside~ Peter Gabriel

In Your Eyes

Every part of my body feels this song. And not just because Lloyd Dobbler stood outside Diane Court’s window boombox aloft in what might have been the singlemost romantic gesture in modern cinematic history (though it didn’t hurt). It is the heartbeat tempo, the echoing voices, the abandon in Peter’s voice, his willing submission to the passion he feels for this woman. This is a song I want to make love to, to sing at the top of my lungs, to inspire someone to think about me when they hear it. It is utterly romantic and hear-rendingly lovely.

The first sentiment expressed in the song is about his profound loneliness; and I can relate. Somehow there is an experience of peace and contentedness that I only seem to find when I’m in the presence of someone who has totally consumed my attention. It can be easier to find myself when there is someone else to help me look…

What’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become~ Toto

Remember when I suggested there might be room for an embarrassing admission in my list of five? Yeah, this’d be it.

This one is all about the rhythm and the melody. The drums and marimba echo through my head. When I was a teenager I loved this song so much that whenever my parents would leave the house, I would crank the cassette player to full volume and listen to Toto IV over and over again. I remember one night being totally overwhelmed and lying around on the floor in the dark sobbing while I listened to Africa repeatedly for about an hour. God knows why.

Because really, though melody is crucial, it is usually the lyrics that reel me in. And the lyrics to this song are variously silly, strange, and nonsensical. That being said, it still causes something to rise up in me and grab me by the base of the throat when I hear it, and even more so when I sing along.

And that gets at the very core of how a song becomes a “favorite” of mine. It’s ability to grip me, consistently, every time I hear it, all the way down through the years and changes and time.

I thought you were wild. caught you returning, from the house you caught fire. But I knew that I was your favorite… And I said Amen~ Neko Case

It does not fail to dawn on me how amusing it might seem that one of my favorite songs is actually called “Favorite” but I sort of dig it.

Neko says this is the first song she ever wrote. It is very simple in it’s chord progression, and is probably one of the only songs I can play with complete confidence on the guitar. Like many of her songs, there is a haunting and ineffable danger implied in every line. She skirts the edges of risk and convention when she describes the object of her love. They are crashing their cars, and taking strange drugs, and setting things alight. Something or someone often dies…

This song has deep resonance for me. I assign great significance to certain silly things, and this was the first song I sang to my last great love. And though he never set anything on fire (at least not that I caught him at) there are things that she says that are so very true of us it seems the strangest synchronicity I would have chosen that song to sing to him when I did not know him at all.

I adore Neko Case, and there are a multitude of songs of hers that move me, delight me, and are an utter joy to sing, but in this instance, it’s easy to pick which is my favorite.

“I turned off the light switch and I,

I came down to meet you in the

half-light the moon left… “Bernie Taupin*

It can be difficult, with our glut of choices, to speak in terms of “favorite” things. When people ask, we are tempted betimes, to answer things that will explain us to that person more completely than time and more explicit verbiage might. I have adopted a policy of copping out: you ask my favorite, you get a list of five. There is room, in a list of five, for a breadth of answers, including the one that makes me look smart and cultured, the one that makes me laugh and cry, and the one that would elsewise be embarrassing if it weren’t insulated by being in the midst of other, worthier representatives.

And, oh, songs. How for me, to answer this. The funny part is how very easy indeed it is to do so. Because there are just some songs. For lack of other inspiration, I’m going to talk about them, one at a time…

Come Down In Time By Bernie Taupin and Elton John

I suppose that’s a harp in the beginning. And then there are the other strings. The melody is both spare and fully-realized. I like the understated way Elton sings this song. He can be prone to bombast, but there is no trace of it here; his voice is lucid and gentle, full of an understated passion and yearning.

This is a love song of simplicity and uncertainty. It is not strident or demanding. It has poise and poetry. It is quiet and communicates such longing, such anticipation.  It is unresolved, it is a song in the midst of the fall.

i went into the studio today and recorded this song. i don’t think it’s my best work. i had a bit of a sore throat and a scatterbrain. my playing, which isn’t my strong point anyway, was a little less accurate than average, and my singing, which is usually my saving grace, wasn’t.

which is too bad because i think the song itself IS some of my best work, and getting to the studio is tough. hopefully next time i’ll feel a bit better about the outcome.

How You Don’t

(if you click on the song title, it should play for you)