30 day music meme #27
Aug. 14th, 2020 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyFlaked on posting this yesterday, sorry.
27. A song that breaks your heart
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy, Part 2
The song hits hard on its own, but even more so in the context of the album. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is a grief album, for both personal, historical and existential reasons, one that at first seems to want to raise the dead, give life back to what was lost through the magic of music... and then by track 8 ("Will she remember me 50 years later/I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine"), it becomes obvious to frontman Jeff Mangum that it simply does not work. That he can't work miracles, that all his words and desperate cries won't achieve anything more than reminding him of what was lost and his own inability to do anything about it. And so the album ends on a song that takes 4 minutes to reveal that it's a reprise of the hopeful up-tempo song at the beginning of the album, but this time there's no hope left - just knowing that he'll have to live with this.
When we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life
Two headed boy she is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires
And retire to sheets safe and clean
But don't hate her
When she gets up
To leave...
We hear him put his guitar down and walk out of the studio. 22 years later, he's still to make another record.
27. A song that breaks your heart
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy, Part 2
The song hits hard on its own, but even more so in the context of the album. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is a grief album, for both personal, historical and existential reasons, one that at first seems to want to raise the dead, give life back to what was lost through the magic of music... and then by track 8 ("Will she remember me 50 years later/I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine"), it becomes obvious to frontman Jeff Mangum that it simply does not work. That he can't work miracles, that all his words and desperate cries won't achieve anything more than reminding him of what was lost and his own inability to do anything about it. And so the album ends on a song that takes 4 minutes to reveal that it's a reprise of the hopeful up-tempo song at the beginning of the album, but this time there's no hope left - just knowing that he'll have to live with this.
When we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life
Two headed boy she is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires
And retire to sheets safe and clean
But don't hate her
When she gets up
To leave...
We hear him put his guitar down and walk out of the studio. 22 years later, he's still to make another record.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-14 02:33 pm (UTC)(Sigh. All right...)
Badfinger: "Day After Day"
https://youtu.be/XonFZjuyc6E
No question about it, the song is a heartbreaker. You want to put an arm around the guy's shoulder and tell him, "Dude, she's not coming back. Get out of this room and get some fresh air." But you know he won't.
And the production is immaculate. George Harrison is at the control board; he brings in Leon Russell(!) on piano and pitches in his own self with a perfect slide guitar solo. Pete Ham's vocal makes Alex Chilton and Chris Bell go, "That's it! That's the sound we want!"
But would this song be here if Badfinger wasn't one of saddest, most horrible chapters of rock music history? The way they started as the golden boys of Apple Records, then were robbed blind and virtually strangled by their manager, with the whole godforsaken mess ending with the suicide of BOTH lead singers....
Uccch.
In a better world, Pete Ham and Tom Evans would be living like kings off the royalties from "Without You." But that's not the world we live in.
Excuse me, I need a drink.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 07:55 pm (UTC)