November 2004 Archives

Notes from an Insomniac

The heading is slightly misleading--I don't usually suffer from insomnia. Tonight, however, after getting to bed late (a frequent occurrence when old friends are visiting, as they are this holiday) I for some reason came awake at 5:22 and couldn't get back to sleep at all. I was in one of those moods so beautifully described by Scott McCloud in the title of his blog: "I Can't Stop Thinking!" Every turn of my head produced a sudden need to scratch my scalp. Every ache and pain was magnified, every thought led immediately to another; I played entire songs in my head, making sure I got the piano fingering right, and mulled over work problems that have yet to rear their heads over the horizon (but they will...)

Eventually I realized I'd be keeping Kelly awake if I didn't bail out, so I headed downstairs and logged on. I surfed the web a bit, checked on the fantasy football teams (and put in one waiver request--we'll see if I get it or not...), sat staring out the window in the study, and began to realize something about the sky. It's winter.

I've never been able to articulate the difference between the winter and summer sky. I can hypothesize that the angle of the light, or perhaps the humidity of the air through which that light passes, is different during the two seasons, and that difference has a subtle effect on the sky's appearance. Then again, maybe it's the coloration of the foliage against which the sky is contrasted, but I swear there's a difference even when you're surrounded by evergreens, as our current house is. The summer sky is fat, opaque, maybe even slightly pearly. The winter sky is thin, sharp, a piercing pale blue.

In the early morning, the color isn't obvious, as the sky is still full of stars. This morning when I came downstairs and peered outside, I could see Venus over the hill, and maybe it's just that I haven't seen it in a few months now, but man, it was bright. The size and brilliance of our sister planet wasn't merely beautiful, but truly surprising this morning, particularly in a night sky that seemed utterly clear. As I sat down at the computer, facing west, I could see the other brilliant denizen of the night sky, the full moon, as it settled in beyond the pine needles. I'm now wondering if the light of the moon, as well as the sunlight that usually illuminates it, was somehow reflected off Venus, making it more brilliant than usual.

Or then again, maybe it was just winter. As the morning stretched on, the sky around the moon gradually lightened from midnight blue to the peculiar pale heliotrope that I see only in the colder months. The sky somehow remains dark enough for the moon to glow coldly within it, but its color is as warm as a blush. I can't look at that sky without the memory of winter bird counts: dry brown grass whispering against my clothes as I trudge through the cold, small twitters and flickering silhouettes of sparrows in the briars and brush, a yearning for the warm light of day, the white fog of breath, and somewhere above, the piercing vowels of a skein of geese, slicing through the morning toward a dark, shadowed river.

Soon I'll be putting on some coffee. But not just yet.

12:07 PM

In the rush of events leading up to exams (which began today), it's been a while since I made an entry here. Or maybe I was just bummed about the election. Surely it wasn't that I've run out of things to write about, was it?

Nah.

So today let's talk about cover songs.

If you're unfamiliar with the term, you should know that it refers to a song that was originally done by another artist. Back in the Fifties, it was a more literal term, because was common practice for songs by black performers to be "covered" by white performers, thus making the songs more palatable for white audiences (or, more probably, white radio programmers) who didn't need to know about their controversial origins. Perhaps the most egregious example of this, the true cover song, is the version of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" performed by so-white-he's-translucent Pat Boone. (Reportedly, Pat originally lobbied to have the lyrics and title changed to the more grammatical "Isn't That a Shame," but funkier heads prevailed.)

Most artists, even the greats, begin not by writing their own material, but by covering the songs they like. Sometimes they quit performing these tunes once they've achieved broad popularity, but sometimes these covers survive into the artists' adulthoods; the Who kept performing Eddie Cochrane's "Summertime Blues" well into their superstar days, while the Isley Brothers announced their new funk-rock direction in the mid-70s with covers of such tunes as Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze."

Perhaps because my own various bands have leaned heavily on cover songs, I'm something of a connoisseur of the good ones. I've even been in groups that covered other people's cover versions. In the inimitable Great Wall of DooDoo, "The World's Only Wall of Voodoo Tribute Band," we devoted great effort to duplicating WoV's snarling synthesizer/tortured guitar electronica version of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." It's a brilliant arrangement, and we swiped it with pride. We also put a WoV-ish stamp on non-WoV songs, including Flash & the Pan's "Walking in the Rain" and the theme from Chuck Jones's Road Runner cartoons. Our "Death Ska" revue, Rohrwaggon, ran through dozens of tunes by the Specials, the Selecter, Madness, the Clash, and even Pink Floyd. (Admittedly, our version of "Wish You Were Here" wasn't ska; it was a breakneck cowpunk treatment that lasted about a minute thirty.) And of course, during my days playing with Bryon Settle in PC & Elmo (a/k/a Elmo & PC), we were known to cover a wide and eclectic variety of songs, including (but not limited to):

*the Beatles' "I'm So Tired"
*Laurie Anderson's "Sharkey's Night"
*Pink Floyd's "Echoes" (our version lasted about two and a half minutes)
*Melanie's "Brand New Key"
*Brian Eno's "Here He Comes"
*the Balancing Act's "Red Umbrella"
*Talking Heads' "Heaven" (probably our best song)

Lately the subject has drawn my notice because my most recent CD purchase, Robyn Hitchcock's Spooked, draws in one instance from the same well as his earlier Robyn Sings album, which consists entirely of Bob Dylan covers. Robyn Sings delighted me with its stunning version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," as well as strong treatments of such familiar Dylan tunes as "Tangled Up in Blue" and "Desolation Row." It also introduced me to some Dylan tunes I didn't know, such as "Visions of Johanna" and "Not Dark Yet." Spooked, which features mostly originals--a term that really means something when it refers to a Hitchcock song--also has a Dylan cover, a long, soft acoustic version of "Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door" that features Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. It's really pretty, and it's making me think I need to buy more Dylan.

And that, I suppose, is the point of a cover song: to draw the audience's attention to the song's originator. Oh, sure, cynically you can look at it as a chance for the new guy to make a name for himself by claiming the work of the originator as his own, but I'm feeling optimistic and thinking about the times when a cover version is actually superior to the original. There aren't many, but they exist; and Jimi Hendrix's version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" isn't the only example.

I'll be back with a list sometime later. In the meantime, find yourself a copy of R.E.M.'s version of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" and remember: a cover doesn't have to be good to be entertaining. Even Peter Buck agrees, "Roger Miller should be able to sue us for what we did to this song."





1:21 AM

LBJs

*Unhappy about the election results? Me? Well, yeah. I'm deeply unhappy that so many of my countrymen are apparently motivated by fear of foreigners and homosexuals to the point where they can't see that the guys they should be fearing are straight white American males (and a token black chick). I don't have the political savvy to recommend a new strategy for the Democrats, but I know this: if the party can't get itself together in time to take at least one house of Congress back in 2006... well, Houston, we have a problem.

*I had a very pleasant time in Harrisonburg last week, dining at Taste of Thai and speaking to the Rockingham County Bird Club. I sold a bunch of books, got to see some delightful photos of Northern Saw-Whet Owls being banded--they look kind of like tribbles with eyes--and made a few connections that may lead me to some good birding trips down the road. I also took some of the money I made from book sales and picked up several long-desired items at the H-burg Barnes & Noble: Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics, the second volume of Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series (which beats the movie all to hell), the first collection of Marvel's Ultimate Fantastic Four, and a pair of CDs I'd been coveting for years but finally decided I'd never ever find in the Used CD bin: the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, which is probably my favorite Stones album, and Queen's A Night at the Opera, which is unquestionably my favorite Queen album. It's wonderful to finally own crystal-clear versions of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "The Prophet Song," "Gimme Shelter," and "Bohemian Rhapsody."

*My debaters are doing well, even though the season hasn't officially begun yet. Yesterday we took second place in the Debate division at the Va. Catholic Forensic League qualifying tournament in Chesterfield. (The VCFL divides its competitions into two divisions: debate events include Student Congress--our specialty--Lincoln-Douglas debate, and policy debate, while speech events include original oratory, dramatic performance, declamation, extemporaneous speaking, and oral interpretation (basically prose/poetry). Despite the fact that Woodberry doesn't do policy debate at all, we've done well enough in Congress and LD to make a name for ourselves; in fact, at this year's two VCFL qualifiers, Congress has been our only event, but we've brought home third-place and now a second-place trophies. Once we get our LDers ready to go, I feel very good about our chances for success. (It helps that we've got last year's state Congress champ on the squad, but we also sent a new kid to Congress yesterday and he came home with the third-place trophy.)

*It's bird of prey time here in Virginia. I told you about logging my first American Peregrine Falcon atop Little Stony Man a week or two back, didn't I? Well, Monday I spotted a Sharp-shinned Hawk terrorizing the House Sparrows in the shrubbery outside the gym--not a lifer, but still a really cool bird, and not one I expect to see on campus. But best of all, the day before I had finally laid eyes on the long-rumored Woodberry Bald Eagle. I was at the Ropes Course with the family for Community Climbing Day when the cry went up from some of the students, and with Ian's help, I finally saw it soaring overhead: what looked like just another Turkey Vulture for a second, except that suddenly it turned and the light caught the white tail. I saw an all-dark raptor sailing up the Rapidan River a few years ago, but with no field marks, I couldn't ID it; this one was a no-brainer. The campus has eagles!

*In the "proud of my restraint" category, I should note that I really got mad only once on election night: when MSNBC was interviewing the governor of Colorado, who was discussing the difference between westerners and easterners. He claimed that the former were "more patriotic in some ways." At that point, I felt it was my patriotic duty to give him the one-finger salute. Tell the firefighters in New York City, the Marines in Camp Lejeune, and the miners in West Virginia they don't love their country as much as you do, Gov. Hell, come tell me--but do it to my face.

4:28 PM

Throughout this long election process--hell, for the last four years--I've been nursing a nagging feeling of despair. That despair has come not so much because I object to what George W. Bush and his cronies are doing to my country, but because my objection was so strong as to blot out any thoughts of what we ought to be doing instead, or of who ought to be doing it. The realization that I was against Bush, rather than for Kerry, has nagged at me since before Kerry became the Democratic nominee. (And I'm definitely voting against Bush; I'm now at the point where I can say it with confidence: I'd vote for Richard Nixon's reanimated corpse before I'd vote for George W. Bush. Nixon's corpse might be evil, shifty, bigoted, and unsanitary, but it would at least be competent. Bush can't even make his evil schemes work.)

But this morning, I found someone who showed me that I need not feel shame because I want to vote the bastard out: Anatole Kaletsky, writing for Friday's Times of London. (Yes, the one owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns FOX News.) Kaletsky's argument washed over me like a cleansing bath, a baptism of logic:

The primary function of democracy is not to elect good leaders, since nobody can predict in advance how a politician will perform. It is to eject leaders who have manifestly failed. The ability to remove leaders who turn out to be corrupt, dangerous, outrageously dishonest or manifestly incompetent is the primary privilege and duty of any democracy. And if any leader in our lifetime deserved to be ejected by voters, regardless of their ideology or political persuasion, it is surely President Bush.

And suddenly everything clicked for me. By focusing on Bush's ouster, rather than Kerry's election, I wasn't failing to achieve the ends of democracy--I was realizing them!

In 1776, we didn't worry about setting up a government--we didn't elect a leader to set policy about trades and tariffs that would be better than George III's. No, it was first things first: We voted the bastard out. We spent the next five years fighting a war, then set up a government that didn't work so well, then set up the one we've got now, then kept it honest by creating the Bill of Rights, and have been fighting over how to keep it going ever since--but first we got rid of the tyrant in charge. Sure, it took us fifteen years to set up a government that worked, but first we had to get rid of the one that wasn't working.

So get out there tomorrow, people. Declare your independence!

2:09 PM