going back home
Davis Sisters, “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home”
TV Gospel Time (introduced by Brother Joe May), early 1960s
**********
lagniappe
Here’s a secular take.
John Lee Hooker, “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home” (That’s My Story: John Lee Hooker Sings The Blues, 1960)
*****
reading table
Home is never what you think it is.
Meaning lies in meaning’s absence. The mist
Is always just about to lift.—J. Allyn Rosser, “Sugar Dada” (excerpt)
only rock ’n’ roll
Elvis Presley (with Scotty Moore, guitar), TV shows, 1956
“Money Honey”
***
“Heartbreak Hotel”
***
“I Got A Woman”
only rock ’n’ roll
flashback, n. 1. An unexpected recurrence of the effects of a hallucinogenic drug long after its original use. 2. A vivid memory that arises spontaneously or is provoked by an experience. 3. An experience that has characteristics of an earlier experience.
Rubble, live, Austin (Room 710), c. 2005
old stuff
Jimmie Lunceford and his Dance Orchestra, “Rhythm Coming to Life Again,” “Rhythm Is Our Business,” “You Can’t Pull the Wool Over My Eyes,” “Moonlight on the Ganges,” “Nagasaki,” “Jazznochracy,” 1936
More? Here.
Blues is a big tent. Over here is Slim Harpo (“I’m A King Bee,” 2:18-). And over there are the Stooges (“I Wanna Be Your Dog,” 4:48-).
Alejandro Escovedo, live, Austin (Continental Club), 11/29/11
With guests Marc Ribot & David Hidalgo (guitars)
More Alejandro Escovedo? Here. And here.
Marc Ribot? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
David Hidalgo? Here.
two takes
“La-La (Means I Love You)” (T. Bell & W. Hart)
Bill Frisell (guitar) with Tony Scherr (bass) & Kenny Wollesen (drums)
Live, Rochester (NY), 2007
***
The Delfonics, 1968
(First clip originally posted 5/28/10.)
**********
lagniappe
reading table
And this disease which was Swann’s love had so proliferated, was so closely entangled with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he wanted after his death, it was now so much a part of him, that it could not have been torn from him without destroying him almost entirely: as they say in surgery, his love was no longer operable.
—Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (translated from French by Lydia Davis)
There are all kinds of love songs.
Sonny Boy Williamson II (AKA Aleck [or Alex] “Rice” Miller), “Your Funeral and My Trial,” live, Europe, 1960s
More? Here.
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of God.
—Anne Carson, “God’s Work” (excerpt)
two takes
“I’m Your Puppet” (D. Penn & S. Oldham)
James & Bobby Purify, TV show, 1966
***
Dan Penn (guitar, vocals) & Spooner Oldham (keyboards), TV show, 1999
***
This is one of the sadder, and stranger, love songs I know. “I’ll do funny things if you want me to”: someone who’ll “do funny things” on command but isn’t, as far as we can tell, otherwise funny is someone who’s desperate to please. And that, to me, is what this song’s about more than anything else—desperation. This is a guy who’ll “do anything.” He’s “hanging on a string.”
only rock ’n roll
Terry Malts (Phil Benson, vocals, bass; Corey Cunningham, guitar; Nathan Sweatt, drums), “Nauseous,” “Something About You,” 2012
Vodpod videos no longer available.
not for the faint of heart
Weasel Walter (drums), Peter Evans (trumpet), Mary Halvorson (guitar), live, Toronto (Placebo Space), 2011
**********
lagniappe
reading table
We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.
It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it, it is no different from falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has finished falling
or that it is falling still.The window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn’t view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly.
Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows.A second passes.
A second second.
A third.
But they’re three seconds only for us.Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.
But that’s just our simile.
The character is invented, his haste is make-believe,
his news inhuman.—Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012), “View with a Grain of Sand” (translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)
