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11/14/2005 Archived Entry: "Moments"
Moments
Some moments, for whatever reason, become defined by song flashbacks. Like being a teenager....like discovering music for the first time...like a series of images that for no reason just appear through the always present lens of popular culture.
"La Grange" - ZZ Top.
Rumour spreadin' a-'round in that Texas town
'bout that shack outside La Grange
and you know what I'm talkin' about.
Just let me know if you wanna go
to that home out on the range.
They gotta lotta nice girls ah.
A gimmick band. But if you take away the long beards and the pun (Frank Beard, the drummer, didn't have a bear), you have old style Texas blues. Every kid learning guitar wants to play this riff (a play on "Shake Yer Hips" or any John Lee Hooker song). On Howard Stern this morning, Billy Gibbons played a little "La Grange" on the dulcimer but wouldn't play much. You almost get the feeling that he, too, feels the gimmick ZZ Top was/is. Those '80 videos were just too silly. This is a song I still hear as if I'm back in my friend's ''71 red Malibu, driving around Miami Beach on a Saturday Night. We probably wished we lived in Texas. I've since been to Texas. I don't want to live there.
"(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night" - Tom Waits.
I did hear this on a Saturday night, maybe when I was fifteen or sixteen. Driving around Miami Beach
again. I can't remember this friend's name, but eventually I will sell an old amp of mine to him (in a deal that lands me a harmonica holder, which, to this date, I have no idea where it is). "Listen to this," he said and slid a Waits cassette into the deck. What the hell? That rusty voice. Despair. Sounds like a guy about to fall off his bar stool.
Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
And now you're stumblin'
You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
Nothing like sixteen year olds thinking they're in their forties and already full of loneliness.
"Since I've Been Lovin You" - Led Zeppelin.
No band speaks more to my childhood than Led Zeppelin. And yet, unlike my friends, I never really cared that much for them. I didn't hate Zeppelin, and I bought some of the albums (Physical Graffiti the best of them), but I couldn't get the Zeppelin passion every other rocker wannabe had. You can only watch The Song Remains the Same for so long before you fall asleep from boredom (another man's high is not the same as being high yourself). I still remember kids wearing those "Tour Cancelled" t-shirts which were printed after Bonham died. It took me awhile to realize that these shirts were not printed for the tour and then stamped "Cancelled" after Bonham died. Ah, consumerism.
This tune, however, has always been the most intense of the Zeppelin songs for me. That haunting guitar ring - da da da da dooo. Like ZZ Top, Zeppelin was best when they just played blues. Plant and Page are powerful in this tune; each note mourning each passing note. As cliche as it is to say, this is a song about lost love - whether or not she has left him.
Baby
Since I've Been Loving You
I'm about to lose
I'm about lose
My worried mind.
This is poetry the way Lightnin' Hopkins is poetry. Like his "Sail On":
You know I can remember
First day she sail away
Cryin', I gotta go now, Lightnin'
I ain't got no place to stay
This is poetry for teenage boys. The best blues is the kind a fifteen year old can hear and then relate to some girl he's had a crush on for a month or two and who he knows (and she knows too) is too good for him. The best blues makes fifteen year old boys who think they're cool because they smoke dope and drink tall boys cry.
