Bootleg Country: Norah Jones – San Francisco, CA (12/02/02)

Originally posted on July 8, 2006.

The difference between listening to a studio album and attending a live concert can be enormous. While listening to an album you can control the setting – turn the lights down low for a sensual beat; or turn them completely off while wrapping the headphones around your head to feel every moment of the music pulsing through your neurons and tendons, or wire speakers through your whole house to blast the neighborhood pretty much away for a block party.

You can be as distracted by other things as you want, or completely absorbed in the music. You can play the same track over and over, memorizing every moment until your ears bleed.

But live you only control the immediate environment around you, and sometimes not even that. The band or the venue sets up the speakers, mixes the instruments, and controls the overall sound. An outdoor amphitheater creates a completely different vibe than a small, indoor club, or a giant stadium. Crowds can be utterly hushed, plugged into the vibe of the band, or they can be wild crazy beasts hardly noticing that a band is on stage.

I’ve been to too many shows where the audience spent more time shouting and chatting with each other rather than actually listening to the music on stage. But when the audience is in tune, a live concert can be so much more than a studio album. There is a connection the audience can make not only with the musicians but with each other.

There are moments during those concerts when every member of the audience is singing along, washed away in a spiritual convalescence, a musical wave that sweeps us all away into bliss – those moments are perfect, without flaw.

Listening to a recording of a concert can obtain the best and worst of both worlds. You can choose the setting in which to listen, and if the recording is right, be swept away into that blissful moment. OR, you can hear all the flaws in the instrumentation and be utterly distracted by crowd noise.

Norah Jones
12/02/02
San Francisco, California

Norah Jones has a voice so sultry she could turn an albino chicken on. I remember when she first hit it big and everyone was telling me how sexy she was. I wasn’t much for radio in those days (and I’m still not) and it was during a cheap stretch when I wasn’t buying much music, so I didn’t hear her voice until well into her major stardom. My wife eventually bought Come Away With Me and I eventually gave it a listen.

My lord, they were right…

When I first heard that voice I stopped dead in my tracks and melted into a bed of puddin’. Chocolate puddin’, the best kind. I laid down, turned off the lights, and drifted off into an ecstasy filled …well let’s just say never leave me alone with Norah Jones and a bed full of puddin’.

On this particular night, Norah seems to be in good form. Her voice has retained that sultry siren feel. The backup band plays it nice and smooth. Still, there is something missing, While I enjoy the music, I’m not taken away by the soft lighting.

Part of this is the recording. This is an audience recording and though it sounds quite crisp for an audience mike (the instruments come in clear and crisp, the audience isn’t audible except in the appropriate places) there is something distant and cold in the recording.

Where on her studio albums, Norah feels like she’s sitting next to you on the couch, here she sounds like she’s playing at the bar next door. It really removes me from the recording and makes the bootleg something I enjoy having in my collection, and something I periodically take out to impress my wife, but not really something I search out to find that special secret feeling again.

It’s not just the audience recording that removes me, but also the performance. Again Norah sounds in fine form and there isn’t anything tangible that I can complain about in the band, it’s just that it feels a little…well, clinky.

To go back to the studio again, Norah’s albums have that soft, lush feel to them. The production brings out the music like crushed roses. It makes my knees quiver. It is extremely intimate. This live recording just doesn’t have that. In the live setting, on CD, that intimacy is lost. I’m sure for those who were there in Davies Hall it was all intimate and beautiful, but that’s the thing with bootleg recordings, the experience of listening to it is often much different than actually being there.

On some songs, she is able to create an intimate, lush space for which to listen. On “Something Is Calling You” I feel Norah sneak up on me and lay my head on her shoulder as she coos me to sleep. But then again on the opening song, “Turn Me On” she fails too, something I would never expect from Norah.

While listening I found myself continuously wishing I had the studio counterparts instead. It’s either that or having Norah live in the flesh singing to me whilst I sleep in a bed of puddin’. Chocolate puddin’, the best kind.

Random Shuffle (06/27/06) – Elvis Costello, Lyle Lovett, The Rolling Stones, Ben Folds & Bob Dylan

“Allison” – Elvis Costello
From My Aim is True

I’ve never really got Elvis Costello. Most of his songs don’t really translate well into my brain waves. I don’t really have anything against him, I don’t dislike his songs, but I don’t find a whole lot in them to really like either. Which is weird to me, because I rather dig his nerdy schtick and I know folks who totally dig him, and those folks are folks I can generally groove with. I do, however, dig his wife, Diana Krall.

This is one of the few songs I really, truly dig. It’s got that romantic groove going and the close-out line “my aim is true” that cuts deep.

“What’d I Say” – Lyle Lovett
From Smile

Now Lyle Lovett is an artist I can fully and wholly dig. He’s a darn fine musician, a wonderful songwriter, and seemingly an all-around good guy – or at least a wry, funny one.

This is from an album full of songs he has performed for various movies. Lyle is quite a movie man, having performed songs for all kinds of films, and even acted in a number of Robert Altman flicks. None of the songs here are original, it is a bunch of covers, generally really slow covers – which means it’s an album I’m not all that fond of – with a few exceptions, notably this Ray Charles cover.

No doubt this is a great song, and Lyle gives it his best go, but it is a song I’ve long since grown tired of; which is no fault of its own. It’s just one of those songs I’ve heard so many times I can’t listen to it anymore.

The Lyle version is a fine rendition, but nobody beats Ray Charles, especially on the orgasmic moans toward the end. Lyle just can’t get into the sex of it.

“You Got the Silver” – The Rolling Stones
From Let It Bleed

My favorite incarnation of the Stones is the country honk version. I’m an old-school country man anyway, and the way the Stones can cut country music with a raunchy rock n roll edge slays me.

This is a slow-paced, fast song. It’s a simple love song sung plain by Keith Richards. The organ solo in the middle of this two-minute ditty nails everything a good song should. When it’s followed up by a jaunty, rollickin’ piano-based rave it’s pure joy.

“Brick” – Ben Folds Five
From Whatever and Amen

A song about abortion that never mentions it. It weighs like a ton of blocks named in the title. If you let it, it will make you see the misery and loneliness of life.

In but a few verses Ben Folds tells a story so completely, and with such heartbreak it’s hard to believe it is just a pop song. It is a song I both love and hate. I love it for its perfectness, for its ability to transcend pop and convey real, raw emotions. I hate it for the same reasons, it’s just not something easily listened to, for it is too real. How this became something of a hit is beyond me.

“I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” – Bob Dylan
From Biograph

It’s hard to choose a favorite Dylan. There is the political spokesman, the prophet and preacher, there is the storyteller and poet, and then there is the lover, whose words penetrate the heart and soul – ok, yeah, I gotta go for the lover. His words are so heart-achingly beautiful, that it’s hard not to fall in love all over again.

This is a perfect love song. The melody is simple and sweet the lyrics are the whisper of a lover who promises nothing more than a wonderful tonight, but he doesn’t have to promise more. Tonight’s enough.

Bootleg Country: Nirvana – Seattle, WA (10/31/91)

Originally posted on June 23, 2006.

Back about 12 years or so I was a counselor at a summer camp. It was a great couple of weeks spent playing games in the sunshine, hanging out with old friends, and mentoring young people. At the time I thought there would be nothing better than being a teacher, a molder of young minds.

The decade since either brought me to my senses or slipped right by me.

During one of the weeks at camp, I had to go to a concert that I had no interest in. While there I bumped into a girl with whom I had met a few months prior. We began chatting it up and digging each other.

I noticed some scratches on her arm and listened, fascinated, as she told me how she had etched “Kurt Forever” into her skin with a knife. This was not long after Kurt Cobain’s suicide and like a million other young people who are perpetually affected by such things; she took this selfish act to heart.

This was long before I understood terms like “scarring” or that thousands of young people do such things to themselves every day. I didn’t understand the pain, or the crying out such things often represent. I simply thought it was a pretty cool thing to do, if rather weird. While I was saddened, and angered by Cobain’s act, the thought of carving up my own skin because of it was something of incompressibility.

Around the same time I heard “Come As You Are” on the radio which was followed by some smart-alecked DJ making sarcastic comments about Cobain lying when he sang, “And I swear that I don’t have a gun.”

My friend who happened to be a girl who later became something of a girlfriend, became very upset at this comment. She couldn’t understand how someone could joke about the death of an artist, and certainly not the suicide of a genius.

These days when I think about Nirvana, I think about those two girls and their incredibly strong reactions towards the band, its singer, and the songs they produced. In my full-on grunge days I dug the crap out of Nirvana (though truth be told I was always a Pearl Jam man) but these days they barely garner a ‘meh.’

I dig the influential nature of the scene. Rock certainly needed a good swift kick from hair metal and Arena Rock. And when listening to the MTV Unplugged album, you can really get a feel for how great a songwriter Cobain, et al. was. But these days, my musical tastes swing the long shot away from the amped-up new punk that is the bulk of their releases.

Nirvana
10/31/91
Seattle, WA

A Halloween show just after Nirvana became the saviors of rock music. It is loud, full of angst and anger, and some pretty stinkin’ good melodies underneath it all.

From my 30-year-old head, which prefers Donna the Buffalo to Soundgarden, Norah Jones to L7, this guitar-heavy neo-punk music takes a while to warm up to. After the first listen I was bored. So I turned it up a few notches, this is rock ‘n freaking roll after all, and it needs to be cranked.

That helped, the rhythmic pounding blasting from my little Saturn’s speakers got me head banging, all the way down to my pancreas.

But it still wasn’t enough; I kept wishing I had a copy of Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions, or maybe a Bruce Hornsby bootleg, circa 1997.

By the third listen my nerves had calmed down, my mind accepted the distortion, the noise, the grunge of it all and I began to digest the music.

For the love of grunge, this is some great rockin’ shite.

For a band with only two albums under their belt they mix it up pretty well. They cover a good portion of Bleach and Nevermind, throw in a couple of new songs, and even manage to cover the Vaseline’s “Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam.”

The band seems to be in good spirits. Besides a rockin’, they make some cracks about the audience not being dressed up for Halloween, white boy funk, and John Jacobs and the POWER team. But mostly they just rock out.

Listening to these guys throw down the heavy stuff for a fourth time didn’t make me join the cult of Nirvana once more, but it reminded me why I was once part of the faithful.

Marathon Man by William Goldman

marathon man book cover

“Is it safe?”

Who can forget that immortal line coming out of the late Laurence Olivier’s mouth in the movie based on William Goldman’s book, the Marathon Man

Olivier’s psychotic Nazi dentist is one of the great villains of the screen. If ever a character epitomizes the secret fears we hold for a profession, this is it. Olivier tearing at the nerves inside Dustin Hoffman’s mouth served to scare thousands out of the dentist’s chair for years.

The book, on which the movie is based, is an easy-to-read, page-turning thriller. Goldman knows how to write sparingly, and judiciously. He writes like a master craftsman, knowing the story he wants to tell and how to get there in the most straightforward manner.

This is marvelous if you’re looking for an easy-to-read page-turner to lie beside your bedside table, less so if you want something meatier to chew on.

The story is about a young college student and marathon runner, Babe, who gets caught up with international assassins, and one Nazi on the lamb. There’s lots of cool killer-for-hire, secret spy stuff going on, a little romancing, and one gruesome anti-dentite scene.

The problem there is that I kept thinking about the movie and not paying attention to the book. It’s a well-crafted book, for sure, but it’s really hard to beat Sir Laurence as a psycho Nazi dentist looking for diamonds.

I have a habit of reading books that later become movies, or reading books after watching the movie it’s based on, or reading a book just before I see a movie. I’m not really sure why. I guess I like books that are good matches for the silver screen, and I really like movies to the point of wanting to read more about them, and get more in depth. It kind of spoils the surprise of a book or a movie when I have consumed its counterpart, but for whatever reason I do it a lot.

People say books are usually better than the movie because they supply more detail, but I have to disagree. There are plenty of movies that are better than their books. Take Marathon Man as an example. Neither the book nor the movie is a perfect masterpiece. They are both well-crafted throw-aways. But for my money, I’ll walk away with the movie. The thrills are tighter, the big scene is absolutely classic, and well it’s got Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier playing against each other.

It could also be that I saw the movie first and it’s hard to get thrilled about a thriller when you know how it ends. It could also be my reading habits where I tend to read one novel for 15 minutes and then pick up another one, and sometimes even another one. I have been known to read 4 or 5 books at a time and some of the details (especially important in a thriller) tend to get lost in the shuffle.

It’s a fine book, a well-crafted, well-oiled machine of a novel. It is a page-turner, and a killer thriller. It’s a good weekend beach read. Something to hold onto until every page is read then toss away when you’re finished. Heck, for creating one last terrifying scene for Sir Laurence Olivier to chew on, William Goldman deserves a knighthood himself.

Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

bruce springsteen - seeger sessions When I first heard that Bruce Springsteen was releasing a Pete Seeger tribute, I was intrigued. Not for anything Springsteen – whom I’ve never managed to get, he’s just too earnest for my ears – but for Seeger whom I adore.

Upon the continual praise lauded upon this new disk from Sirs Saleski and DJRadiohead I finally went out and bought the disk.

Sweet jeebus! Holy mother of folk! What a great freaking record.

If I was an explorer and I came across some lonely tribe in the deepest, darkest African jungles that didn’t know what music was – had never heard a note – I would play this disk for them. I would introduce music into their world with these songs

It’s that good.

If the big one dropped tonight, destroying this sad world we’ve created; years later when the few survivors crawled out of their holes, I would play them the Seeger Sessions to remind them that this world can still hold beauty.

It’s that amazing.

Years ago, when I was but a lad, I attended a Christmas celebration at my grandmother’s Southern Baptist Church. It was a spirited, holy-roller affair. There was shouting, and praising, and the raising of hands, the talking in tongues, undulating palpations and laying on upon hands. My little eyes didn’t know what to think.

My uncle was there. He is an old-school man. He is big and tough and sometimes mean. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t feel. He can rib a man to death with venomous jokes. He’s a good man, but made from a mold of man they just don’t make anymore. He was at this church. He was on the stage. He was crying, shouting out for Lord Jesus, weeping in that emotion.

This album is a lot like that.

It is both holy and profane. It has the hushed tones of the haughtiest church and the wild secularism of the Saturday night brothel.

Springsteen is the preacher, the poet, the sinner, and the shaman. He stands on the altar giving salvation to the listener.

It is a big tent revival, a barn burner. The band is full of the holy spirit of rock music and it’s the judgment day.

There isn’t a song to highlight; there is nothing that stands out above the rest. As I listened for the first time, I kept thinking it couldn’t get any better than the song playing. I was proven wrong 14 times until the CD stopped playing. Every song is perfect, every note spot on.

Take “Shenandoah,” it is one of the few songs that can make me weep every time. No matter where I am when the first longing notes begin to play I must pause and feel the weight of life sweep away. Bruce simply nails it.

He stares into the deep darkness, like the cold Missouri waters he sings about and sees the mysteries, and finds truth.

This album, this collection of songs, pushes aside all that is wrong with music and the industry it supports. It cracks the hard, crusty casing of pop music and finds something new, something mysterious. If you look hard enough, if you stare into its cold dark waters you might just find a little sliver of truth yourself.

Random Shuffle – KC and the Sunshine Band, Arrested Development, John Prine, Elton John, & Donna The Buffalo

“(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” – KC and the Sunshine Band From The Best of KC and the Sunshine Band

Truth be told, if the story comes out, I’m really not a fan of dance music. Disco, hip hop, techno, and rave music all get a collective ‘meh’ from my bones. Maybe it’s that I’m a middle-aged white boy with a Church of Christ background (where dancing is a sin) but the appeal of the dance club is completely lost on me. The loud music, the smoke, and the embarrassment of having to shake my hips in rhythm just turn me off from the whole scene. This being true, the music involved has never really done anything for me, either.

There are a few exceptions. “Shake Your Booty” is one of them. It has enough infectious pop grooves in it to make a grandma shake. It also reminds me of a Simpsons clip show where they play this song along with a montage of all the Simpsons’ nudity from previous episodes. Hilarious stuff.

The booty shake of the music isn’t enough to get me out on the dance floor mind you. If played in public, I might jiggle my buns for the laugh effect, but then I’d keep myself firmly rooted in standing-ness, or sit-down-ness and just sing along. If the mood struck me, and I was feeling particularly frisky, I might get down a little in the privacy of my own home. The problem then comes back to my non dancing background and any attempt at hip movements from this old body usually results in laughter from my wife.

“Tennessee” – Arrested Development
From 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of…

I grew up in the 80’s. My musical sensibilities were developed in the early 90’s. I don’t like dance music. Rap and hip hop mean MC Hammer, Young MC, and Vanilla Ice to me. I came of age musically at a time when radio wasn’t dominated by hip-hop acts. This isn’t really to diss the genre of music, I just don’t get it. I see guys I work with, a good 5-10 years younger than me completely engaged with rap artists. I suspect if I had been born a few years later, I too would have at least some existence with this culture. As it is, what I know of it comes from a period of time when it was marginalized as a novelty. Hammer and Vanilla were not real artists, they were mocking the true performers. They were circus performers, acceptable to the mainstream audience at a time when they didn’t know what to do with hardcore artists.

Even so, I think Arrested Development put out some dang good music for the time. “Tennessee” along with “People Everyday” stands up to the best music in my collection. They have just as much in common with what is now termed “Americana” as they do with rap. They threw in fat beats along with a folksy, country twang.

I know I’m no longer hip. My musical universe is so outside the popular or even hip world it would make me sad if I cared. I don’t know where Arrested Development fares amongst the kids today and their Eminems and Tupacs. What I do know is “Tennessee” is a great freaking song, no matter what genre you put it in.

“Fish and Whistle” – John Prine
From Souvenirs

Souvenirs is Prine’s album full of cover songs, except that he’s covering himself. Essentially he wrote a whole bunch of beautiful songs as a young man, but as an older man, he felt he could do better. Sometimes he’s right, other times he sounds pretty much like he did when he was younger.

For “Fish and Whistle” I can’t make any proclamation, for I’ve never heard the original. But I must say this version is a treasure. Prine’s voice has aged gracefully over the years. It is never something you would call beautiful, but now the ruggedness has been toned down by something sounding suspiciously like wisdom. His lyrics have always been beyond his years, and now his voice has caught up to that.

The music here is lilting, catchy, and sunny. Honestly, I have no idea what the lyrics mean. They sound like Prine is making some kind of joke that I just don’t get, or being cynical about religion without being too hateful about it. Either way, it’s fun to sing along even if I don’t know what I’m saying.

“Candle in the Wind (acoustic version)” – Elton John
From Yellow Brick Road

Elton John completely ruined this song for me with his Princess Diana tribute. I was never mesmerized by the Princess in life or death. I didn’t wish her any harm, and she seemed to have done some good in this world, but she lived in a world I just wasn’t particularly interested in. John changing his lyrics to lionize her, however honest and heartfelt, always seemed like a cheap way to make a buck.

This version begins to sway my feelings back. It is an acoustic version with a guitar playing the piano parts. It seems more stripped down, more honest. Like it has torn the exuberant, Liberace Elton away from the honest songwriter.

It is a beautiful, heart-tearing version of a song I’m happy to relive again.

“Conscious Evolution” – Donna the Buffalo
From Live from the American Ballroom

I must say the time I caught this band live here in Bloomington it was a much better show than what I hear from this live album. Maybe it was that I was but ten feet from the band, or maybe it was the pretty girls dancing around me, but that show was so sweeeet, where this disk is a good deal of fun, but nothing mind-blowing.

This song has a good deal of verve to it. They get out there a little bit with a revolution groove that jiggles my innards. There is a curviness to the guitar that completely melts my inner sanctum.

Halfway through it morphs into “Working on a Building” an old spiritual that fits perfectly into their root’s musical background and their own spiritual lyrics.

Editor’s Note: I couldn’t find a Youtube clip of the live version of the song I’m writing about here, so I found a different one.

Bootleg Country: U2 – Dublin, Ireland (08/28/93)

Originally posted on June 12, 2006.

When asked what season I love the most, autumn is the usual reply. What with the cool, crisp air, the turned leaves that resemble Joseph’s magic Technicolor coat. But when spring comes, I always reconsider.

The sun returns from its slumber. Flowers burst forth and the weather warms my toes – for it is barefoot season again. Spring also makes me fall in love all over again. And when I say love, I mean lust. What with the acres of exposed skin, seething flesh, long luxurious legs, and bountiful boobies.

Yeah, boobies. I love spring for the boobies.

My first true love, the one I’ll always remember is a little Irish rock band called U2.

The year was 1987 I was 11 years old, puberty was in the air, and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” was in heavy rotation. What a great, f-ing song. Seriously, it’s one of the greatest rock songs ever. Put me on a desert island and that song, nay, the whole bloody album will be coming with me.

That year, and for many to come, I ensconced myself in U2. I went back and bought their old albums, I practically lived with Wide Awake in America in my car. They went live with Rattle and Hum, I memorized every line from Bono’s mouth. They became electronic and ironic, and I came along for the ride.

They were my band.

Over the years U2 and I have parted ways. The dance beats of Pop didn’t move me. They repented their ways and returned to their roots, but I moved on. I discovered jazz and the jam. But no matter how far apart we’ve grown, I’ll always remember my first true love.

U2
08/28/93
Dublin, Ireland

This was the final stop of the European leg of their Pop Mart tour. What better place to finish up than back home? It is some year and a half after they unveiled the ironic sensibilities of their Zoo TV stage presence. Bono has now become The Fly an enigmatic caricature of a rock star – part Jim Morrison, part Lou Reed – donning leather pants, slicked hair, and wrap-around bubble sunglasses.

This is a far cry from the black-and-white earnestness of Rattle and Hum era U2.

The boys start out breaking one of my rules for a successful concert. That being, don’t play every song from your new album right off the bat. It is seven songs into the show before we get a song that isn’t off of Achtung Baby. Sure, it’s freaking “New Year’s Day” and it stinking rocks, but shouldn’t you treat your home audience to more than just your new songs?

It’s true that Achtung Baby is over a year old by that point, and certainly, most of the Dublin audience would have digested it already, but it still seems a little rude, to me anyway. However, since this is a bootleg, and it’s now 2006 those songs are old and now classic.

The new music is still played with ecstasy. You wouldn’t know that this is the end of a long tour for the band. It is energetic and fantastic.

From everything I had heard about this tour, I suspected the music to take a second seat to all the postulating and cheeky visuals. Maybe there were loads of cheeky visuals that I just can’t see through the music, but the songs don’t suffer for it. There are a few moments when Bono rattles on and flips through the channels on that enormous TV, but mostly he keeps quiet, allowing the songs to say it all.

The band is still clearly clued into its audience. Even with the newer songs you can hear everyone in the audience sing along. They mix in some old classics into the new songs – The Righteous Brothers “Unchained Melody” is perfectly tagged into the end of “One.” The Beatles classic “Help” helps begin “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” and the show ends with a lovely sing-a-long version of Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling In Love.”

My favorite moment, in fact, is sans band. Bono sings an a capella version of “Help” with the audience singing at the top of their lungs. It is a perfect moment where the audience becomes an intimate member of the production, and where I can’t help but sing along too. It is a testament to the powerful Beatles song, the power of music, and why U2 remains the biggest rock band in the universe.

Another wonderful moment is “Where the Streets Have No Name.” It follows a super version of “Running to Stand Still,” where that song closes, “Streets” opens with a quiet meditative organ. You can feel the audience realizing what they are about to hear with an explosion of cheers just as the guitar erupts and the crowd goes completely bonkers. The song spreads into the cosmos and everything is just alright.

In the last issue of “Bootleg Country” I talked about the ability of the Grateful Dead to change a simple song into something different, something exploratory. U2 is not a psychedelic jam band. The songs here are treated pretty much as they are on their perspective albums. What they create in this live setting is an energy, a connection with the listener that is just as transformative.

This was a great concert from one of the world’s biggest bands in the middle of a transformation that would lead them to something further and grander.

Murderous Maids (2000)

murderous maids movie poster

Two sisters, chambermaids for a wealthy French family, brutally murdered their employer, Mrs. Ancelin, and her daughter Geneviève, one February evening in 1933, in the small French town of Le Mans. This incident rocked French society for weeks.

Well, I say it rocked French society, but really, I have no idea if it had any effect whatsoever. It would be some 40 years after the murder that I would be born, and I’ve seen no information about its effect on France other than the publicity material associated with the film based upon the events, The Murderous Maids, and other reviews of said movie.

If it is true that this incident did rock French society at the time, and I’ll accept them as such, it is ponderous that it is so. Though certainly brutal, and laced with the peculiarity of having been committed by insane and incestuous sisters, it still seems strange that such an event would be anything more than curious to a culture whose history is laced with violence and brutality.

I wonder similar things when I watch the national news in America. Certain events, for whatever reason, capture the news and become so saturated that they permeate our whole culture. Millions of people have had to make the decision to “pull the plug” on a loved one, so why did Terry Schiavo’s case get national attention?

Countless murders are committed in this country every year, yet for months in 2004, the only one that mattered was that of Laci Peterson, at least if the news had anything to say about it.

It is an amazingly strange and unanswerable thing to me why some stories capture the attention of the media, and thus my nation, while so many others slip away into obscurity.

In the case of the murderous maids, Christine and Léa Papin, the media hype seems to surround the horror (Oh, the horror!) of two lower-class maids striking out against their upper-class masters. As if it might start another revolution.

The film is a slow-burning affair. It tries to get into the heads of these sisters and give us a glimpse into why two seemingly meek and mild maids could explode and commit such atrocities.

Honestly, I spent the first 20 minutes of the film, confused as to who was what, and what exactly was happening. The opening scene involves the sisters at a young age. Christine wants to become a nun, like her older sister but is forced into servitude by her mother. We fast forward several years without warning and see the older sister only once more, and that briefly. Maybe I was a bit sleepy, or maybe I was too busy trying to remember my rusty French to compare it to the subtitles but with the changes in time and the disappearance of characters I spent a good bit of the first half utterly confused.

Once the film settles into the lives of the two sisters it begins introducing moments that ultimately contribute to their murderous madness. Their mother is shown as greedy and selfish, taking Léa’s money and manipulating her through emotional blackmail. The masters of the homes are cruel and unforgiving.

The only kindness and semblance of love the two can find is from themselves. This love turns incestuous and further turns their situation into an “us” versus “them” scenario. Christine is clearly the leader of the two, while Léa is shy, quiet, and easily lead.

After numerous jobs, they finally land one where the two of them can serve. They seem happy at first, finding some praise from their strict master while at the same time, she puts on white gloves for perpetual inspection of their cleanliness.

It is when Léa burns out a fuse for the second time that things go haywire. Fearing severe scolding from their masters, they instead beat them to a bloody pulp.

In jail, Christine begins receiving visions, goes into holy fits, writes crosses on the walls with her tongue, and continuously wails out for her sister. Despite this, the incestuous relationship, the troubled family life, and the extreme violence of the crime fitted with lack of a clear motive, the French court decides to allow none of this in as evidence and their psychiatrists find both mentally stable.

Though its English title and even plot description reads as a B-movie exploitation flick, the film unravels in a slow, methodical method. The sex and violence are both graphically photographed, but in between such titillating moments, the scenes are tediously paced. It is all artfully made, professional to a tee, and really rather dull.

It makes no decisions as to why the sisters did what they did. There is no judgment placed upon the mother, upper-class society, or even the sisters. It is told in a documentary style, allowing events to unfold as they are without extemporaneous commentary. In fact, there is not one note of music played throughout the entire film. The viewer is left to decide how to feel, and what to think.

Murderous Maids is a character study of two historical women who have captured the consciousness of French society. It is a fascinating story about how two seemingly downtrodden and simple women can be turned murderous. It’s too bad the film couldn’t have been more interesting itself

Random Shuffle – June 06, 2006 – Jimmy Buffett, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt & The Magnetic Fields

“Barometer Soup” – Jimmy Buffett
from Barometer Soup

I once played this song at a party where my Trinidadian friend was in attendance. Upon hearing Buffett’s white boy take on her native Caribbean beats she could only shake her head in disgust.

By no means am I a Parrotthead. Buffett gets very repetitive and annoying, yet there is something soothing, playful, and even lovely in some of his music. This is one of my favorites. It’s got a lilting rhythm accentuated by steel drums.

The lyrics are simple, hopeful, and full of not exactly wisdom but soothing in their own cheesy kind of way.

The wisdom of Buffet goes something like this:

Sail the main course
In a simple sturdy craft
Keep her well stocked
With short stories and long laughs
Go fast enough to get there
But slow enough to see
Moderation seems to be the key

Besides anyone who bases his life on sitting on the beach, drinking margaritas, and having fun can’t be all that bad.

“Running on Faith” – Eric Clapton
from Unplugged

This is a song that had more weight for me a few years back than it does now, but it still moves me down to my bones.

Tis a song filled with loneliness from someone left with nothing but the hope of love, a hope that is slowly running out. For many a year, I felt just exactly like that. And though today I have a true love, I remember the loneliness, the pain, the wondering longingly if there was someone out there just for me.

Put in the hands of Eric Clapton and an acoustic guitar and the song just aches. Listening to this song for the first time in a very long time just now fills my eyes with tears and a pain in my heart. Loneliness is a bastard, sometimes even when you’re not alone.

“Rocket Man” – Elton John
from Honky Chateau

They say this is based on a Ray Bradbury short story. With all the imagery of space and that lonely synth playing, one can easily see how.

I’ve mentioned before on Random Shuffle how I’ve really begun to dig into the early years of Elton John. This song fits right into that spectrum, and I certainly dig the crap out of it, though I’ve certainly known this song for many a year.

The lyrics “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids/In fact it’s cold as hell” just gets me every time.

“Angel from Montgomery” – Bonnie Raitt
from Road Tested

This was written by John Prine, but Bonnie Raitt has really made it her own over the years. There is a version that appears on both Prine and Raitt’s disks where they duet on this song, which is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Prine’s rasp fits perfectly into Raitt’s soulful mourn of a voice. When Raitt sings

How the hell can a person
Go to work in the morning
Come home in the evening
And still have nothing to say?

Breaks my heart every time. The lyrics tell the story of an old woman to perfection.

This is another live version with guys like Shawn Colvin and Bruce Hornsby playing along. Not that you can tell because they don’t do much more than sing backup. Here, Raitt speaks the verses rather than sing and though she still has soul, it just can’t compare to the duet with Prine.

You owe it to yourself to seek out that version.

“Absolutely Cuckoo” – Magnetic Fields
From 69 Love Songs

Stephen Merritt, the brains and main performer for the Magnetic Fields wanted to create an album of 100 love songs. But after considering how long that would actually be he settled for the next best number when considering love.

The three-disk set that comprises 69 Love Songs is a rare and beautiful thing made up of quirky instrumentation and ironic, funny lyrics.

This song wraps lyrics around each other with a fast, almost pulsating instrumentation. At just under two minutes it is quite short (most of the songs on the album are) but it moves along like a snowball rolling down a steep incline. It’s not the best song on the album, but it fits perfectly well amongst all the quirkiness.

Bootleg Country: Grateful Dead – Austin, TX(11/22/72)

Originally written on June 1, 2006.

And here we are, the Grateful Dead.

Without the Dead, there would be no bootlegs. Without the Dead, there would be no Bootleg Country. Without the Dead my musical life would be much, much different, and a lot more boring.

Talking about why I love the Grateful Dead always leaves me twisted and tongue-tied. There are all kinds of reasons why I love the Dead, but in the end, I always sound like a yelping dog, howling at the moon.

The old quote goes that writing about music is like dancing for architecture. Well, writing about the Grateful Dead is like doing the hokey pokey for Helen Keller. The Dead’s music is often just something you have to get. Jerry Garcia has been quoted as saying:

Grateful Dead Fans are like people who like licorice. Not everyone likes licorice, but the people who like licorice REALLY like licorice.

I don’t like licorice, but I freakin’ love the Dead.

Reasons I Love the Dead

The Grateful Dead wrote some sacrilegiously great songs. Jerry Garcia and his lyricist partner, Robert Hunter, are on par with Lennon/McCartney in terms of songcraft. And I’d give the upper hand to Hunter for writing insightful, poetic lyrics.

Add to that a dozen or so heart palpitatingly brilliant songs by the rest of the band and you’ve got a collection of songs that rivals just about anything in rock.

Let’s go ahead and admit it, the biggest chunk of the Grateful Dead’s studio albums suck. They are either too experimental or too overproduced, but they almost always are too awful to listen to more than once. But as any Deadhead will tell you, the beauty of the Dead doesn’t lie in their studio work; it’s the live stuff that counts, man.

Live, the Dead were the kings of experimentation, lords of improvisation. They constantly reinvented themselves and their music. Some nights they failed. Some nights they flew into the outmost reaches of the stratosphere. Every night they laid it on the line unscripted and always interesting.

Truly, there was nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.

Listening to a crispy soundboard recording of the Dead in concert is like Nirvana (and we’re talking about the spiritual state here, not the grunge band). Lives have been changed by less.

It is as if each member is the lead performer, playing music from the heavens. Yet somehow, on some cosmic connective level, they weave in and out of each other creating music that is alive and fitted together perfectly.

Grateful Dead
11/22/72
Austin, TX

The first several songs of the first set are marred by interesting sound problems. During “Sugaree” Phil Lesh’s bass is way up front, and overshadows the rest of the instruments and vocals. This allows for a very clear understanding of how Phil used his bass as a lead instrument. He truly plays like no other bass player I’ve ever heard. He drives the rhythm and yet steps outside to move the song in different directions. His playing is immediately recognizable and often outstanding.

In the next few songs, both Keith Godchaux’s keyboards and Bob Weir’s rhythm guitar get the same miking situation. Again it is completely fascinating to hear how the musicians play their instruments in the context of the song.

1972 was one of the peak years for the Dead. They’ve been playing as a band for 7 years now and have fine-tuned their particular brand of improvisational psychedelia. They have left behind their early days of Acid Test house band and that absolute craziness in favor of strengthened songwriting and craftsmanship.

With the release of their two classic albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, the Dead perfected the craft of storytelling in song and shed some of the cosmic dead persona they built during their early years. This is not to say that they have stopped stretching the limits of what we know as music, for they still extend their songs into the stratospheric surf. But the songs they use to launch this manic weirdness are better crafted, and more finely tuned than what they used before.

They, by this time, have also settled into a two-set pattern. As typical of the time (and ultimately the remainder of their 30-year career) the first set is exemplified by shorter mostly straightforward songs.

Here they don’t get close to anything out there until the sixth song of the set, “China Cat Sunflower”, and even then it’s coupling with “I Know You Rider” is still just over 11 minutes in length. Hardly the half an hour that combination has received in the past.

Some of my favorite moments in Deadland come from the interchanges between songs. The Dead often would squish two or more songs together without stopping for a beat between them. These transitional sequences often created some of the most beautiful, amazing music my ears have ever listened to.

Manys the time I’ve sat with my earphones on, trying to pinpoint exactly when one song would end and the other begin. The subtle change of melody, one movement at a time could be a moving experience.

The transition here between “China Cat” and “Rider” is less than brilliant, but it’s still early in the first set, and as all good heads know, the best is saved for the second set.

The first set climaxes with a splendid 16-minute “Playing in the Band.” They leave all comprehension of the song and enter a magic field of improvisation. Garcia spirals into another dimension while Weir prowls and chases Garcia’s lead. Lesh keeps the backbeat moving with thunderous applause from his bass and we are transported to a forgotten time and space.

The second set of a Grateful Dead concert is where the band really takes off. Typically they quickly launch into interstellar overdrive and stay there the rest of the night. Sometimes as few as five songs would be played over 2 hours of music.

On this night, they play more songs with less chaotic madness. The highlights of the set are a beautifully mournful “He’s Gone” punctuated with an ending musical coda that is as touching as it is surprising.

This leads to a version of “Truckin’” that actually makes me rethink the song and maybe even like it. From there we move into a short Drums followed by the apocalyptic “Other One.”

Phil’s bass must have set off seismographs in other countries it’s so bombastic. It is usually a song reminiscent of God’s thunder, and here it is nothing short of cataclysmic. Playing like that is not of this world.

From there the rest of the set is a bit of a letdown. The show is not one of the Dead’s best, it’s not even a highlight of their 1972 run, yet I would still highly recommend it. It’s a great show that stands just below brilliant, a height the Dead reached so often, that it’s hard not to feel the twinge of disappointment when they don’t create it again.

But even a less-than-perfect Dead show is light years beyond what most bands, those mere mortals, ever achieve. Even with its flaws, this is an amazing couple of hours of bootlegged music.