The Music Court

       In case anyone did not have a chance to read the post from yesterday, yes, I do understand that the above title says Lyricist #97. #97, as I am sure everyone can remember was Don McLean, but due to a radical list change-around I am promoting McLean (and his corresponding post) to #92. This post below will cover #97.

    Harmonica, Mouth Harp, didgeridoo, drums, 12-string guitar, 6-string guitar, resonator lapsteel and Weissonborn lapsteel, Baritone tricone resonator guitar, Acoustic/amplified open back banjo, Nylon string acoustic guitar, Ukelele. There are several instruments on this list. What the heck is a Bariton Tricone mumbo-jumbo guitar? I prefer my six string acoustic variety (with whatever strings I tie on). So, what do the instruments on this loaded list of crazy rock combinations have in common. They all can actually be linked to the Australian-American musician who can play them all (rather well may I add). His name is John Butler and his skill with musical instruments (while amazing in its own right) is not what we will be discussing today. It simply was acting as a smoke screen to misguide you readers down the wrong musical track. Hahaha (make believe that was an evil laugh). Okay, I will just get to why we are reading this thing, John Butler’s lyrics.

        John Butler began his young music career as a busker (street musician) in Fremantle, Western Australia. This added fuel to the lyrical fire, for while street performing Butler was able to get a glimpse of the main subject of any good lyric, people. How people walk, talk, and get seemingly addicted to anything and everything. This prompted the first lyrics that we will be discussing today from his 2007 hit “Used to Get High,” off of Grand National.

” I used to get high for a living
Believing everything that i saw on my tv
I used to get high for a living
Eating all the bullsh*t food that they sold me
I used to get high for a living
Thinking that my destiny was out of my control
I used to get high for a living
There’s lots of different reasons and i’ll tell you so

Super size, large fries, big mac, coca cola
Go on man, pick your poison
Speed, weed, ecstacy, LSD
Man, it don’t bother me cos we’re all on something
Caffeine, cigarettes, alcohol
You know i’m clawing at the walls trying to get my fix
Prozac, ADD tablets, coke, smack
Now you know i am turning tricks cos”

         The lyric is deceptively clever. It does not try to hard and remains rather fun (Butler practically raps the catchy verse). The reasoning behind my pick of Butler can be best described by this lyric above. Truthful and down to Earth observations hidden     underneath his exciting musicianship. The first lyrics of the verse demonstrate this.  

Super size, large fries, big mac, coca cola   
Go on man, pick your poison
Speed, weed, ecstacy, LSD
Man, it don’t bother me cos we’re all on something

          He portrays addiction in two lights. What is worse, being addicting to fast food or drugs, or is it all the same in the end. Yes, they do vary greatly in their effect but man, it don’t bother me cos’ we’re all on something.

        When Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005 the United States Government was criticized for managing the relief and rescue operation poorly and, in many cases, completely neglecting those who were dying of starvation and thirst. John Butler, after seeing the response to the destruction scripted “Gov’ Did Nothin’, which also appeared on Grand National. Here are some lyrics.

“Way on down where they’ve been forgotten
city just sinking with the whole world watching
wading waist deep in water, living on my roof in the land of forgotten
hey, to the deaf giant with the big muscles why ya moving so slow
con, conquer and dividing, hole in the bucket got nothing to show”

     Not a tough lyric to unravel now that you know what it is about. It is pretty clear that the city that is sinking and being forgotten about is New Orleans. I enjoy how Butler refers to the United States as a deaf giant with big muscles that do not move. It is clever and that is what Butler does best. Clever, catchy, inspired lyrics. Enjoy the videos of the songs posted below

“Used to Get High”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI0_w9aV8G0&feature=PlayList&p=1C6403914C47406B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12

“Gov Did Nothin”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNs7QcLaCeE

          Look, I will be the first to admit that modern music today has become, for lack of a better word, uninteresting. I find the music on the “popular” mainstream radio stations to sound all alike and almost daily I hear a new song sampling a good classic rock song or even a good underground modern song. 

When I searched Modern Music this is what I found. I am not complaining it is pretty cool.

It is close to sad. Is there not any talent left? Maybe it transformed from the focus on electronic “synth” music or the teen’s need to just hear one good single and ignore entire album creations (tracks, liner notes, album covers). If someone decided to cryogenically freeze themselves in the 60’s and came back today, out of the closet next to me, and after releasing his 40 year old bladder asked what became of all the great music (like anyone but me would pose that question first), I would probably respond, “Freeze yourself another forty years and we’ll talk then.” But, if he insisted on an answer I would definitely not show him the Billboard Hot 100 charts, focusing more on some really great music by some talented singer-songwriters who somehow still exist in this day that covets a song about getting freaky (and I don’t mean the paranormal) in a hotel room as #10 on the charts.

          One of those singer-songwriters who most definitely reaches back to the good ol’ days of forty years ago when lyrics mattered is a 32 year old from Moscow, Idaho named Josh Ritter. With him, and many other young lyricists like him, it is only body of work that has them low on the list of top 100 lyricists. Ten years from now he might be much higher.

        Josh Ritter is smart. Like Neuroscience smart. Like much smarter then I’ll ever be. I mean look at the last two sentences, I said like twice, I could have found another synonym don’t you think. And, that sentence I wrote is definitely not a sentence. I comma spliced like a freak. Okay, I am confusing myself, on to Josh Ritter and his incredible history.

       Josh Ritter, besides being smart, is also awesome and, most likely (I never met the guy), incredibly cool. Born to two neuroscientists in Idaho he first got the urge to play music at fourteen after listening to “Girl From the North Country,” by Bob Dylan. How many musicians have been inspired to first pick up a guitar by listening to Bob Dylan? The number must be in the thousands. He first attempted writing songs on a homemade lute, but, most likely, after every song came out sounding like a jester was singing in a medieval court, he bought his first guitar at K-Mart and has never looked back. After going to Oberlin college for neuroscience  he figured that, that major could not withhold his interest. So, instead of switching to English or Music, he decided to create his own major entitled “American History Through Narrative Folk Music.” Yeah, he is a bit eccentric. I wish I went to that school. After college he moved to Scotland and studied folk at the School of Scottish Folk Studies, before eventually moving back to the states (Massachusetts, this time) to play open mic’s until finding success in his music (from Ireland first). The Irish have good taste in music. Quite an interesting history. It makes the two lyric samples I am going to show you (one an apocalyptic love song and one about a girl in the war) make some more sense.

         Ritter’s lyrics are a delicate mix of intelligence, symbolism, and emotion. He knows how to control himself and carefully paint a picture, even with a scattered palette of mixed colors and shades. His lyric is both haunting and quite scenic and beautiful. His metaphor is abstract but certainly not cryptic. A brief analysis of some of Ritter’s lyrics will reveal his skill and beauty. Here is a segment of Ritter’s “Girl in the War,” off of his 2006 album The Animals Years

“Because the keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom
And the angels fly around in there, but we can’t see them
And I gotta girl in the war, Paul I know that they can hear me yell
If they can’t find a way to help, they can go to Hell”

           In a clear anti-war statement, Ritter likens the war to the struggle in his head with the concept of heaven. The keys to the kingdom (referring to the key to the pearly gates, the entrance to heaven) are locked inside heaven, with “angels” who are invisible to our human eyes. In this he is suggesting that Heaven is an unreasonable clutch. One cannot be so sure that their loved one dying in war is going to go to this magical place. Paul, who represents one of the holy saints, St. Paul, has a conversation with Peter (representing St. Peter who holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Peter does not have the keys any longer and Paul is exclaiming that they (God) cannot hear him yell. He has a girl in the war and if God cannot help her then he can go to hell. Of course, a blasphemous and angry statement like that is simply one interpretation of a beautiful song that can, in all respects, simply be about love. Yet, this song emits a desperate anger. “The Temptation of Adam,” which appears on Ritter’s 2007 release The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter focuses on being a quirky love song. Perfect, for an odd guy like Ritter. Here are some lyrics.

“We could hold each other close
We’d stay up every night
Look up into the dark and pretend it’s the night sky
Pretend this giant missle is a old oak tree instead
And I’d carve your name in hearts into the warhead
Oh Marie something tells me things just won’t
Work out above
That our love would live a half-life on the surface
So at night while you are sleeping
I hold you closer just because
As our time grows short I grow a little nervous

So I think about the big one
WWIII
Would we ever really care the world had ended?
You could hold me here forever
Like you’re holding me tonight
I think about that big red button and I’m tempted”

        The song is literally about two people stuck “In a top secret location 300 feet under the ground,” with the ability to destroy the entire world with nuclear warheads that are patiently waiting to be fired at the press of a red button. These two people fall in love and the words above is the conclusion to the song. In what are quite possibly the most incredibly ironic and magnificent words ever to be constructed in a song, Ritter plays with the human tendency towards the two most natural feelings man has. Love and Violence. I mean, he does it in two lines.

 “Pretend this giant missle is a old oak tree instead
And I’d carve your name in hearts into the warhead”
        

           Wow is all I can say. He is talking about two love birds innocently carving their initials into an oak tree to exclaim to the world (or those who look at the tree and see the heart surrounding the initials and are angry that people have defiled the tree) that they love eachother. Except, the tree is a WARHEAD. It is love and war right there for you folks. Make peace, Drop bombs, Josh Ritter has combined them both. Plus, we get the symbolism at the end of the song with the red button. The temptation of Adam. The original love story between Adam and Eve. Adam is tempted by the red button so he, and his love Marie, could spend their lives in love down underground. In his own garden of Eden. Marie, another form for the name Mary; Mary, The Virgin Mary, the most immaculate woman in Christianity. I told you Josh Ritter was smart!

“Girl in the War”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqLssKusGzM

“The Temptation of Adam”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76MXROcqqxo&feature=PlayList&p=7AF39F0EF4F0E947&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=10