Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. DXXXVIII--Beck: True Love Will Find You in the End

Once again, it's the (really) late great John Garfield blues....

My introduction to this week's tune is, for what seems like the millionth time, my darling daughter, who ever so kindly sent me a burned CD of this week's album, which I instantly fell in love with.  Of the nineteen songs on the album, I counted nine that have made it onto my favorites playlist...which for an album that probably sold four copies is pretty impressive....

I wrote about Beck in Vol. CXXXIX, and in the eight years since I wrote that post his career has been surprisingly quiet.  He's released two more albums, won three more Grammy Awards (nominated for six), and appears to have mostly collaborated with numerous other artists on one off projects.  A list of his releases is here, and a list of his awards (the guy must literally have spent half his life at awards ceremonies) is here.

A brief note about Daniel Johnston, the man behind this week's tune and album:  despite suffering from bipolar disorder and spending parts of his life in mental institutions, Johnston carved out a career in the music industry (big assist from Kurt Cobain) that spanned over forty years.  He got his start by recording his own cassettes and handing them out to people to listen to, even when he worked at a McDonalds. He also created visual art that was displayed in galleries around the world.  For his career, Johnston released twenty studio albums, twelve of which were cassettes he recorded himself.  Sadly, he passed away in 2019 from a heart attack.

Fun Fact:  Among the numerous awards won by Beck was a Hungarian Music Award in 2015 for the International Alternative Music of the Year.  And you know just how big your career has become when you're getting awards from Hungary....

"True Love Will Find You in the End" was the tenth song on the rather ascertained entitled 2004 compilation The Late Great Daniel Johnston:  Discovered Covered [Ed. Note:  Despite the use of the world "Late" in the title, Johnston was very much alive when it was released].  The song was not released as a single, and near as I can tell, the album did not chart.

A harmonica.  Acoustic guitar.  Bongos (heard them while doing my half-assed research!).  Beck's vocals.  Three minutes, twenty-three seconds.  And it is a work of sheer brilliance, because Beck manages to convey all the hope and wisdom that that seven little words can muster:  true love will find you in the end (whether or not that's actually the case, on the other hand....).  I've noted a time or two before how well simplicity can play in music, and this is a shining example of it.  I also noticed as I listened this week how much it sounded like it could have been on Bob Dylan's debut album--there's a starkness coupled with hopeful hubris that reminds me of the youthful Dylan.  In the end, it's another reminder of the legacy of folk music in America, a legacy that will continue as long as folks are making music.

Lyric Sheet:  "This is a promise with a catch/Only if you're looking will it find you..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CDVIII--John Prine: Souvenirs

 Like so many things in life, the beauty of this week's featured tune came to me much later in life than it should have.  I first heard it in the early nineties, but it wasn't until the middle of the last decade while on one of my periodic John Prine listening fests, on a cold winter's night driving home from my job at the thrift shop, that I listened to the lyrics in its first stanza with my much older ears while sitting in another of too many traffic jams, and thought, "Holy shit--there's a lot more to this song than I've noticed before...."  I played it several more times while I sat stuck in a sea of cars, and the song has become a favorite of mine, and, even better, a never-ending source of wonder ever since that fateful night.....

I wrote about Prine's song "Christmas in Prison" in a December 2015 post, and I wrote about his song "Sam Stone" in a December of 2016 Friday Night Jukebox.  Unlike last week's post about the Faces, John Prine's bio has had some significant (and not all good) changes since then.  On the good end, Prine had his two highest charting LPs, 2016's For Better or Worse which hit #30, and The Tree of Forgiveness, released in 2018, which gave Prine his lone top ten hit, landing at #5.  He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.  On the sad end, after years of poor health (including beating cancer) Prine contracted the COVID-19 virus and never recovered, passing away in April of 2020.  

"Souvenirs" was featured on Prine's second album, the 1972 release Diamonds in the Rough.  It was never released as a single (though it should have been) and the album would peak at #148 on the Billboard 200.

Fun Fact:  Prine first began performing regularly at a club in Chicago called Fifth Peg.  He didn't want people hearing the same songs every Thursday when he performed so he tried to add a new song each week.  Prine said he wrote "Souvenirs" in a '65 Malibu while en route to one of his Thursday night performances--which for me makes the song just that much more amazing.

From the acoustic guitar interplay between Prine and frequent collaborator Steve Goodman at the beginning, "Souvenirs" sets forth a folk and bluegrass-tinged tale of the fleeting nature of loss.  Prine's lyrics (maybe the best of his career and that's saying something) subtly paint a picture that effortlessly moves from the lost joys of childhood to the heartbreak of lost love.  Prine's vocals are heartfelt without being maudlin, and the harmonies he and Goodman share in the chorus are superb.  I'm not one to ascribe literary qualities to a song, but "Souvenirs" is much like a well written short story--it's three and a half minutes of us watching a man look into the mirror that reflects his life...and his sorrow for how quickly so much of it has disappeared without his even knowing.  

Lyric Sheet:  "All the snow has turned to water/Christmas days have come and gone/Broken toys and faded colors/Are all that's left to linger on..."

Enjoy:

Republican = Traitor

Peace,

emaycee

Sweet songs never last too long

Exactly-odo, Quasimodo--only John Prine

It hasn't been the best week for my musical heroes and their families--sadly, John Prine joined Bill Withers at the Great Rock and Roll Concert in the Sky yesterday, due to complications from COVID-19.  As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate Donald Trump...

I discovered John Prine thanks to a great review in Rolling Stone in 1978 for his album Bruised Orange.  While he'll primarily be remembered for his songwriting skills (which were formidable), I'll remember him for his sense of humor and self-deprecating wit as well.  John Prine was one of those rare artists who never let his success go to his head, and always seemed more like a guy you'd like to have as your next door neighbor than a Songwriting Hall of Fame musician.

This one really hurts--the joy I got from listening to John Prine these now forty some odd years is immeasurable.  While Prine likely had several songs that could be called signature songs, this one was the first to showcase both his gift with words and his gigantic heart.  It also contains one of my favorite lines ever written in a song:  "Sam Stone was alone/ When he popped his last balloon/Climbing walls while sitting in a chair...."  Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCLVIII--Nanci Griffith: On Grafton Street

I first discovered Nanci Griffith on Other Voices, Other Rooms, her paean to the artists who influenced her (which won a much deserved Grammy Award for Contemporary Folk Album in 1994).  I have been quite a fan of hers since (even went to see her with John Prince--a dream concert for an Old Fart Folkie), and could quite easily have picked any one of eight or nine songs on that album for this week's tune.  But I wanted to highlight a song that she had written (all fifteen of the songs on Other Voices, Other Rooms were written by the artists she was influenced by), and chose this week's tune because it seemed to me to reflect best her songwriting abilities...though any of another seven or eight could have probably done the same.

Nanci Griffith's career got its start in 1978 in Austin, Texas and has extended to the present day.  While she has never had a great deal of commercial success, she can best be described as an artists' artist--with the testament of the plethora of musicians who have played at one time or another on one of her albums (Bob Dylan, John Prine, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. of U2, and Adam Duritz to name a few).  Over the course of the last forty-one years, she has released 20 studio albums, five compilations, and one live album.  While her highest charting album here in the States broke the top fifty on the Billboard 200, she has had two top twenty albums on the U.K. charts (so many cool kids in the U.K.).  Griffith has also written a couple of top ten hit singles on the country charts for Kathy Mattea and Suzy Boggus.  Griffith's backing band is known as the Blue Moon Orchestra (kind of cool for a backing band name).  She is a survivor of breast cancer and thyroid cancer. 

(Not so) Fun Fact:  Griffith's high school boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident after taking her to the senior prom.  He has been the inspiration for a number of her songs since.

"On Grafton Street" was never released as a single.  It appeared on Griffith's 1994 album Flyer, which was the highest charting album of her career, peaking at #48 on the Billboard charts.

In "On Grafton Street," Nanci Griffith weaves the tale of a woman walking the streets of a foreign town at Christmas time who is reminded of a lost love (Griffith has noted that Flyer was her most autobiographical album, so there's probably a germ of reality in this one), but despite once having believed she couldn't live without him is surprised to find so many years later that her life has gone on just fine without him, and that the memory of him can still bring a smile to her face.  While it would have been easy to turn such a song into a sappy affair, Griffith does a nice job of letting the unexplained remain unexplained, with her nod to the path to happiness not always being the one we wished.  Griffith has a beautiful voice, makes good use of the sweet melody that permeates both song and chrous, and lets the instruments throughout speak softly but carry a big stick.  Every now and again a song comes along that--while maybe not your exact experience--has a ray of truth to it that you've seen reflected in your own life, and makes for some winsome listening.  "On Grafton Street" is one such song, and is a testament to the enduring--if sometimes fleeting--nature of love.

Lyric Sheet:  "It's been twenty years or more/Since I last said your name/I hear you live in Dallas now/In a house out on the plains/Why Grafton Street brought you to mind/I really can't explain..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CIII--John Prine: Sam Stone

Fans of Friday Night Jukebox (all three of you) may remember that Christmas fell on a Friday last year, and as such, our featured tune was "Christmas in Prison" by one John Prine.  And where I noted that song was one of the most hopeful songs I'd ever heard, this week's tune, "Sam Stone," is one of the saddest.  In fact, in 2008 it was voted #8 in a Rolling Stone poll of the ten saddest songs of all-time.

Merry Christmas!

Anyhoo, since we've already done the half-assed John Prine bio. we can do a condensed version for those not familiar.  Discovered in 1971 by Kris Kristofferson, Prine has been recording and touring now for forty-five years, has never had an album chart higher than #55, has no Billboard Hot 100 singles, and has remained one of music's truly great unknown talents and songwriters to most of the general public.  Still, he has won a Grammy Award for best folks album (The Missing Years), and counts Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Roger Waters, and the aforementioned Kristofferson (among many, many others) as fellow artists who consider him one of the best songwriters in American folk music history.

Released in 1971 on his aptly titled debut LP, John Prine (#452 on Rolling Stone's Five Hundred Greatest Albums of All-Time), "Sam Stone" is the tale of a war veteran (though it's never mentioned specifically, due to the date of release it's popularly assumed that Sam Stone fought in Vietnam) who comes home with a significant drug addiction (again, not noted but assumed to be heroin).  Prine chronicles his and his family's struggles with as much compassion as you'll ever hear in a pop song, and has as memorable of a chorus as you'll ever remember, especially the first two lines:  "There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes/Jesus Christ died for nothin' I suppose...."  Complimented by a funereal organ (either a church or a funeral home, you decide), a lightly picked acoustic guitar, and Prine's gift for turning a phrase, "Sam Stone" takes us though Stone's crumbling life, and unlike most songs, there is no happy ending or moral to the story:  Stone O.D.s alone and his family is left to trade his house for his burial.  It's a vivid portrait, sung with empathy but not pity, and a fine addition as song #103 on this musical journey.

Lyric sheet (this is one of my favorite lines ever written, not just musically, but in every form the written word has ever taken):  "Sam Stone was alone/When he popped his last balloon/Climbing walls while sitting in a chair...."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. LII--John Prine: Christmas in Prison

Those who are unfamiliar with this week's tune and are perhaps thinking, based on the title alone, it was chosen for satirical reasons or as an indictment of the crass commercialization of Christmas, will be sorely disappointed.  No, it is my favorite Christmas song of all-time because it is one the most goddamned hopeful songs I've ever heard.

And isn't that what Christmas is all about?  Hope?

John Prine has been making music since 1971 (when he was discovered by one Kris Kristofferson), and yet I've met exactly one person in my life who was a John Prine fan.  While Prine isn't a household name, his songwriting has drawn praise from the likes of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Roger Waters (and much critical acclaim) for its compassion, ability to turn a phrase, and sense of humor.  And although he's never had an album chart higher than #55 on the Billboard 200, he did win a Grammy for Best Folk Album for The Missing Years.  All of which is to say that Prine is one of those artists, like The Kinks or The Band, who should have had a lot more popular success but nonetheless added immensely to the pop music archives.  And any way you slice it, a 45 year career in the music business isn't too darn bad.

A song that starts, "It was Christmas in prison/And the food was real good/We had turkey and pistols/Carved out of wood..." has all the earmarks of a classic, and "Christmas in Prison" lives up to its intro.  Released in 1973 on Prine's Sweet Revenge album, the song is, despite its seasonal nature, a fan favorite at all of his shows.  Like many recent Jukebox featured tunes, "Christmas in Prison" is spare in setting--while there is some background instrumentation, it's primarily Prine's guitar playing and vocals, and really, the song doesn't need much more.  Prine tells the story, as he sings, of a Christmas in prison (surprisingly enough) wherein the inmate narrator expresses his longing and love for the woman whose "...Heart is as big as this whole goddamn jail."  The song never tells us whether the inmate is just serving a long stretch, or is there for the rest of his life, but it doesn't really matter because he can "...Wait awhile eternity/Old Mother Nature's got nothin' on me..."  Throughout, Prine never gets sappy or maudlin--he just sings a bittersweet tale of love and loss, filling it with as much hope as one supposes one can find when spending Christmas in prison.

No special words this week, just these lines, among my all-time favorite in song:  "The search light in the big yard/Swings round with the gun/And spotlights the snowflakes/Like the dust in the sun...."

There isn't much of a video for this, but it was the only non-live version I could find.  Nonetheless, enjoy:

Merry Christmas,
emaycee