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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 20, 2021 13:42:14 GMT -5
Great wrapup to a great undertaking. My own relationship to Hoodrat is a lot deeper than my relationship to Stuck Between Stations --- it was the song that hooked me, too, and the lyrics, some of the finest ever written anywhere, have probably spent more time on repeat in my head than those of any other song in the catalog. But there's no way it can compete with Stations for anthem status. What you say about the live-setting euphoria Stations brings out is sort of the clincher, in my mind ... Hoodrat is awesome, but it's not the all-encompassing, full-heart reflection on life that Stations is.
You made me go put on AKM yesterday, something I haven't done in a long time. It was really great to listen carefully with all the points of your writeup in mind ... going to see if I can get through the whole catalog while it's all fresh in my head. Thanks a lot for putting in all this work, it's been a lot of fun.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 20, 2021 13:31:58 GMT -5
BOARDWALKA third reference to flooring at the brewery is "the tiles" mentioned in Barely Breathing. [*1] The tiles are different from the carpet and the hardwood in that there is no evidence of injury being *caused* by the tiles. Still, the kids are described as lying injured on them: To be out on the tiles and barely breathing, we were barely breathing [BBreathing] In the Here Goes thread, before looking into Lifter Puller, I'd noted the ample tiling in the brewhouse buildings and supposed that "tiles" referred to that. But the LP corpus gives us a much stronger data point to work with. The Slips Backwards alternative lyrics (from the liner notes of the seven-inch; unlike the mostly absurd alternative lyrics of The Entertainment And Arts, these have a lot of serious material in them), riffing off the "girl you know this party ..." opening, begin: girls who know this part of me just roll their eyes between these boardwalk fruits and yr bathroom tiles [SBackwards alt lyrics] This is evidently still connected to the party: "yr bathroom" needs no explanation, and we've already documented the use of "fruits" in reference to the same-sex rapist gangsters [PJ, BBlues, TMS]. There are a number of lyrical references to kids rolling their eyes back when they get too high [LGI, UBreakfast, Newmeyer's Roof, Three Drinks], a theme to which these lines too can be connected. What's left is the "boardwalk" and the "bathroom tiles" that the "girls" go between, making it a pretty safe bet that the tiles of Barely Breathing are also meant to refer to the tiles on the floor of the bar's bathroom. ***More interesting than the "bathroom tiles" themselves is the "boardwalk," whose juxtaposition with the tiles makes it evidently a reference to the hardwood flooring in the bar. We'd already figured out (see AIRPORT & LBI above) that the East Coast beach party towns are metaphors for the brewery bar; it's now clear that the "boardwalk" references in "boardwalk freaks" [11AF] and "we were bored on the boardwalk so we just started talkin" [CaAoC] are allusions to the bar's hardwood floor. ***Similarly, the "seaside arcade" [CaAoC] is the arcade of huge picture windows with the curved beams between them in the west wall of the bar (see picture #4 under BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above). In TLaDiLBI we're told that the arcade is in the "western concourse" of the airport. We'd already worked out that the "airport" is the Nice Nice, home of the jets, and that the "airport" of TLaDiLBI (there are others, referring to other gangster dens) is the brewery bar specifically (see SHARKS & JETS and AIRPORT & LBI above); but now that our map plainly shows the brewery bar's division into the main barroom on the west and the rear area on the east, we can confirm that the "western concourse" is the barroom with the windows. This airport would appear to have a bar at the end of it, too: He shaved his head at the airport In a bar at the end of the concourse [DH] [*1] These "tiles" are both a metaphoric reference to drinking at bars, Led-Zeppelin-style ( genius), and a literal reference to physical tiling.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 19, 2021 6:14:15 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: VISIONSSo the last scene of Party Zero plays out with the kids being gangraped on the carpet, high as hell, shivering, smashed, and seeing visions. ***Juanita, we're told, watches Ezekiel's "wheel" [SH1999] (compare the THS descriptions of Mary's visions in terms of imagery from Ezekiel: heregoes; heregoes; heregoes). The Narrator, on the other hand, is traveling through the solar system. Let's scroll back a minute to the corner of the kitchen, where, having first taken the shot of meth, the Narrator tries to formulate a plea to Juanita (see FEELIN SMALL, THE CRASH, and SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above) in which he repeatedly appeals to the planets: It's a big world, girl, and I can't understand it We're tiny white specks in a bright blue planet ... To some weird-talking chick who just can't understand That we're hot soft spots on a hard rock planet [MPADJs] These drug-induced astronomical observations continue, according to Denver Haircut, through the hours of the gangrape and its aftermath: In five hours on the carpet He visits six different planets. On a spaceship shaped like a Gibson Marauder The pilot kinda looked like Kirk Hammett [DH] with symmetric details matching the musical background given a few lines earlier: Todd Youth of Agnostic Front played a Gibson Marauder ( link), and Kirk Hammett is of course the guitarist of Metallica. Piloted by the Kirk-Hammett-looking gangsters, the kids endure five drug-fired hours on the carpet, literally seeing stars and hearing the hesher soundtrack in the background the whole time. ***Let's return to the tape deck on which the music is being played. We've noted (see THE TUNES above) that Records And Tapes describes this as an old-school boombox with autoreverse, which is both plausible on the face of it and fits the rest of the evidence we've looked at so far. Why then does Denver Haircut present it as a "clock on the bed stand" (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above)? A window sucking up all the available light, right? And a clock on the bed stand with a cord to connect it. Liberty and Justice into Master of Puppets. Rolling off of the mattress. Waking up on the carpet [DH] There are two reasons for this framing. The first reason is that Craig is creating one of his elaborate symmetries (see CONVENTIONS above). We can't spoil this yet, but there is a second room, another avatar of the Nice Nice, that is as central to the end of the story as the brewery bar is to the beginning; the DH line is one of many in the lyrics that draw a parallel between these two rooms. In this case, the parallel is based on the physical appointment of the rooms, both of which are very sparsely furnished: Brewery Bar | [Room 2] | basement[*1] | basement | windows | window | shutters | curtains | carpet | mattress[*2] | milkcrate[*3] | bedstand | boombox | clock radio |
We have to wait until the story takes us to this second room before we can explore the parallel further; for now, the point is that the "clock on the bed stand" [DH] really is the boombox and the milkcrate it sits on, seen through a symmetric poetic lens. ***The second reason for the boombox-as-clock framing is that the music is literally the background against which the hours on the carpet are measured out ("five hours ... Gibson Marauder ... Kirk Hammett" [DH]; see also DAWN above). [*4] That's not a lazy metaphor; the mechanics of this clock are precise, and very important. Again, we have a 90-minute casette --- a little less than 46 minutes per side (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above) --- playing "over and over" [R&T] on autoreverse for "five hours on the carpet" [DH]. The autoreverse mechanism in boomboxes of the era (I had a couple of these) was driven by a solenoid that made a very loud "click" when the end of one side of the tape was reached, followed by a clatter at lower volume as the tape deck's head and motors switched direction. The switch from side B to side A of the gangsters' mixtape --- the *literal point of transition* from "Liberty and Justice into Master of Puppets" (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above) --- is the very moment in which such a click would occur. The clicking of the tape deck is being recast in metaphor as the ticking of a clock. In favor of this reading, Epaulets links the "click" to the passage of time while sitting around and waiting: She says she loves the way these little flames Make everything all black and grey. But sometimes all that smoke can make you sick. Still a scorch mark or a blistered hand Seems a whole lot better than Sitting around and waiting for the click [Epaulets] What she's saying is that the drugs, bad as they are, seem better than boredom; compare "don't blame your baby's binging on the bass bins/ blame the boredom, blame the basements" [BiB] (note also "basements" in connection with the discussion of the clock on the bed stand above). [*5]The Last Time That She Talked To Me also associates the "clicks" with the "tape machine," says in addition that the "hisses" come from "speakers," and connects the "tape machine" with the alpha couple "kissing" (this is the Narrator speaking): If all of my existence is ever on exhibit. Tell the curator to emphasize the tape machine 'Cause that's what she was sitting on When we finally started kissing on The last time that she talked to me. In the entrance there was barely any mention That the armies were amassing in the streets. The lingering suspicions of a million Hare Krishnas Hissing from the speakers in the trees. In the kitchen there were signs that she was slipping Someone saw her breaking off the tape machine. All I really said was that the clicks were in her head. It was the last time that she talked to me [TLTtSTtM] Putting all of this together, it's apparent that, like so many other THS phenomena, the "clicks and hisses and complicated kisses" of Same Kooks and Stuck Between Stations *also* have a Party Zero origin: the static hiss of the blank space at each end of the mixtape leading into the click of the tape deck switching into autoreverse was heard at regular intervals throughout the party --- first during Juanita's kiss of betrayal, and then ("cranked up" for the assault, see THE TUNES above) during the gangrape on the carpet. [*6]The Rock Problems account of the alpha couple in the corner (the kiss and everything that follows) also firmly links it to the clicks-and-hisses timekeeping of the boombox: Had a moment in the middle of "In Color" and "In Black & White" Sing along to the "Southern Girls" Rip me out of my little world [RP] Right before getting ripped out of his "little world" (see FEELIN SMALL above), the Narrator *had a moment* between side A and side B (here, the "few different versions" [R&T] of the Cheap Trick album). The "stuck between stations" image, then, is based not only on "stuck" as in "stabbed," "stuck" as in "penetrated," "stuck" as in "injected," and "stuck" as in "stranded" (see PARTY ZERO, STRANDED, SHOT IN THE SHOULDER, and THE CENTER, above), but also specifically on the "between stations" hissing, static, and clicking heard in the interval between the two sides of the mixtape. [*7]***Back to the visions. Taking a second look at the the Lie Down On Landsdowne line about abrasions, we note that "dreaming" specifically references the visionary aspect of this injured-high-seeing-stars-on-the-floor time: we're all just sitting dreaming and applyin cream on our abrasions [LDoL] This stretch of time is also evidently the original source of the various "matinee" references, since the five hours in question run from morning through the beginning of the afternoon (see DAWN above). The Sweet Part Of The City links the matinee and the outer space references: The sweet part of the city The part with the bars and restaurants We used to meet underneath the marquees, we used to nod off in the matinees ... And so we shot ourselves out into outer space, it was tough to place the aftertaste It was stark but it was spacious [TSPotC] That "it was tough to place the aftertaste" sounds pretty gross now (the "spit a little treat between my teeth" [SSC] taste would be something new for "the first-time french kissers" [LGI], with "french kissers" in an extra set of air quotes). The first "matinees" reference in Multitude of Casualties reads a little less generically now, too: We spent a few years nodding off in matinees We were high as hell and shivering and smashed Yeah, we were hoping for an action adventure Or something loud that we could feel through all the Feminax [MoC] where that "something loud that we could feel through all the Feminax" fits exactly what we know about the background music playing while the kids lie smashed and shivering on the carpet. [*1] Recall that the name of the brewery bar was the Hamm's Rathskeller, literally "council cellar" in German, and that it's also referred to as a "basement" in SPayne. [*2] We don't need any further interpretation to see the evidence for a carpet/mattress parallel: Blood on the carpet Mud on the mattress [OwtB] Rolling off of the mattress. Waking up on the carpet [DH] [*3] It makes sense that the gangsters throwing the party would bring a tape deck along with them; but (despite knowing that they'd want something to set it on in order to amplify the sound) they wouldn't bring a stand along --- they'd expect to be able to find something suitable on the premises. Given that they're in a mostly shuttered bar that's had its tables and chairs removed, what are they likely to have found? We've noted repeatedly (see DAWN, BREWERY BAR: THE BACK HALF, etc., above) that the setting of Holly's birthday party is modeled after the brewery bar; we also know that Holly's party prominently features a milkcrate [MM, HF] with a connection to the violent music being played ("Milkcrate Mosh"). There's no direct evidence for this, but the web of parallels is very tight, and I'm certain that that later milkcrate is the reflection of an original milkcrate, one used as a stand for the boombox, at Party Zero. If the milkcrate is a pedestal for the boombox, what are we supposed to make of the fact that Charlemagne put it on his head? I put a milkcrate on my head and surrendered in the corner [HF] This is a detail with two thematic implications, neither of which presumes that Charlemagne literally upended the boombox to get at the milkcrate. The first point is that, like Gideon behind the spiderweb of his tattoo, Charlemagne has put himself behind bars of his own construction; this is the usual THS emphasis on "this is just what we wanted" (see ROOFIES and MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above). The second point emerges from a story Craig told the audience at the Constructive Summer show of Sept 12, 2019. In 1989, as a freshman at Boston College, Craig went to a hardcore show at the Rat with The Wrecking Crew and another band; he was standing alone in the audience when a guy came up to him and said "I'm going to go up there and kick it old-school Boston." Then the guy got on stage, grabbed a milkcrate, put it over his head, and dropped his pants in front of the crowd. Which is the point: Charlemagne too "surrendered in the corner" and dropped his pants in front of the crowd. [*4] The urgency of the THS Narrator's attempts to follow the time are shown not just by general lines like "now you want to go home" [YDGK] and "you just want it to end" [FB], but by the fact that, in the song Beer On The Bedstand, he explicitly wants a clock and can't find one: "He's flippin cards in a basement bar ... The law's long arm don't work down there/ And they covered up the clocks" [BotBedstand]. Note the connection of "bedstand," "basement bar," and "clocks" in light of the table of symmetries above. [*5] In making the reproach that "the clicks were in her head," the Narrator is telling her that the boredom is in her head, drugs or no drugs; but we'll get to this later too (see BORED below). [*6] We can't do a line-by-line breakdown of TLTtSTtM here without derailing the analysis, but note all the familiar themes: "the last time that she talked to me"="gonna walk around and drink some more" (see WALKED AROUND above); "the armies amassing in the streets"="the club kids as they crowded around us" (see THE CENTER above; this is also the beginning of the "war of attrition" [OwtB, TSTux] which we'll get to later, see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES and SHERMAN CITY below); "In the kitchen there were signs that she was slipping"=alpha girl getting roofied at the Nice Nice (see THE KITCHEN and SLIP AND TRIP above); etc. [*7] The blazing static loop at the end of Fiestas & Fiascos too is a breaking-the-fourth-wall callback to this clicks-and-hisses interval between the sides of the endlessly looping mixtape.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 19, 2021 6:11:37 GMT -5
.... had a fantastic thread about two weeks back where everyone was writing custom verses based on "The Swish" ("X & Y, baby, Y & X . . . "). It's ridiculously satisfying.
Clicks and hisses, baby, hisses and clicks Tried some new upper drug that's making her sick Don't party with skins, they're a bunch of dicks, We got pricked.
I'm not certain if this is related to a guess about the moment between albums, but if so it's a pretty good guess ...
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 17:50:08 GMT -5
#3: SWEET PAYNESweet Payne feels pretty unique to me because of how fragile it sounds. There’s so much confidence in what Hold Steady usually put on, and I wouldn’t say they seem particulary shy here, but there’s a fumbling shakiness, like the song is being constructed right in front of our eyes. And this is underlined by Craig’s not exactly weary, but kind of tired, almost defeated delivery. There’s a surrender going on here, a resigned sigh grounded in history repeating itself - your father worked at the mill till he died, and you, you’re gonna work at the mill untill you die. And you know, Payne Avenue isn’t even trying to hide what it has to offer, it’s right their in the freaking name of the street. There’s a sense of predetermination here. He wanted some rock’n’roll problems, now he’s got what he wanted, and I sense the tired, almost ironic layer in the way he describes it. You've said a lot that is well said, but I think this part in particular is really insightful. Leaving aside my huge attachment to Sweet Payne for personal reasons, it's always seemed to me like the THS mirror image of Viceburgh, and in talking about both the fragility and the resignation in the song you captured the reasons for that perfectly. This tentative, strange description of being trapped in a world gone wrong, meandering through melodies that shift through unfamiliar changes, for an effect that nevertheless ends on an unaccountable high note above the sadness. The double upshift in the last four verses of the song always gets me. Everything from the Unified Scene through Jada Pinkett is breathtaking. And then, up it goes again, for those last two crazy verses. "Gideon was living up in South Minneapolis" always puts chills down my spine. And to me, that "We got tangled in electrical fences/ We got wrapped up in the indian fringes" is somehow the most final statement of loss in the THS catalog if you don't look at Oaks, which I try not to. Something about the music, something about the statement makes these lines seem to hit harder that way than anything else I can think of. It's very strange to me that Sweet Payne has deep cut status. Per setlist.fm (https://www.setlist.fm/stats/the-hold-steady-bd64946.html), it's tied with Knuckles for the 53rd-most-played THS song (both have been played 40 times), which is pretty far down there. But Knuckles, which I seem to remember reading once was a song that Tad didn't even like much in retrospect, is on the way up, played 16 times since 2015. Sweet Payne seems to be going the other way, having only been played 5 times since then. I care of course because I really want to see it live, but apart from that it's just really surprising to me, like you I think it's one of their greatest songs ever.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 17:10:51 GMT -5
I think there's a very particular thing that's going on here, and I'm going to talk about it with the perspective of the whole LP story behind us in THS CHARACTERS below. But to your point, yes, there's a lot in common between Jesse and Juanita here ("she gets low on her seat when she gets high in her car"=she's going down on whoever's in the car with her and doing drugs, even if it's not speed and even if the guy, rather than the drugs, is her main focus). My inital thought here (and it's not very well thought through, but still): Jesse in the THS narrative is an retrospective/sentimental representation of Juanita before she went off the rails. It's the narrator of the songs (often Charlemagne in THS, The Narrator in Lifter Puller) memories of a more innocent, yet to be burned (out) girl. We get to see the signs of how and when things will go wrong, but for now she's this pretty sweet girl who's into cigarettes and music. All correct, although you could say that she had already gone off the rails; she "used to be a speed shooter" [SM] before Charlemagne got her cleaned up ("forgave me for my sins ... let this famine end," etc. [SM]). So maybe add to that, the retrospective/sentimental representation of a girl who wants to, and can, be rescued. Even if, as you also say, things will go wrong again.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 17:05:11 GMT -5
I'm certain of this --- as we'll see in Monday's post, the crucially important moment referenced by that lyric happens *between* sides of the tape. (It's the same "moment" referred to, by analogy with Cheap Trick, in "Had a moment in the middle of In Color and In Black & White" [RP].) If you want a hint, the crazy loop at the end of The Flex And The Buff Result is a deliberate fourth-wall-breaking allusion to this same moment between the end of one album and the beginning of the next on the mixtape. Listen to it, and it may come to you. I've been listening through some snippes of Master Of Puppets now, trying to find a reference near the end of Damage Inc. to The Flex And The Buff Result, but nothing really clicks. What I did discover, though, was the lyrics for Mick's Tape, which I've probably read in detail sometime, but without catching the eye-opening link to Denver Haircut. A small but significant wow-moment, a little over five years into this mind-bending project. I can't quite piece it together right now, but the car keys, the wallet, the theft (made by someone small and sweet, I guess) and the double-teaming on the carpet, is pretty much out in the open. Ah, no, sorry, I wasn't clear and sent you off in the wrong direction (it takes a certain skill to set up a good hint, and apparently I haven't got it down very well). You don't need to listen to either Master of Puppets or Liberty and Justice For, as far as I know there isn't anything in the detail there that's of importance. I just meant listen to the repeating end of the Fiestas and Fiascos album. Think about what it sounds like (if you ignore the musicality of it). Imagine that sound as the background of some of the things that have happened since Juanita headed off to the bathroom. If it all clicks, you'll recognize the origin of something very familiar from THS. (If not, we'll get to it tomorrow in any case.) Apart from "jingling/jangling the keys" as a slang expression for offering drugs in exchange for a blowjob ( ondcp), something that happens both at Party Zero and later, there are also a real set of car keys (and, as you say, a wallet) in the story, and yes, it's Juanita who steals them. But that's part of an episode that doesn't happen for months of story time yet. All in good time!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 11:10:33 GMT -5
1- If Master of Puppets is on the A side, with a few tracks on the B-side, and Liberty and Justice For is on the B-side, it seems awkward that the lyric runs Liberty and Justice For into Master of Puppets, reading like LaJF is on the A-side. I guess this could be indicating the tape being on autoreverse, and flipping from the A back to the B as you've suggested. I'm certain of this --- as we'll see in Monday's post, the crucially important moment referenced by that lyric happens *between* sides of the tape. (It's the same "moment" referred to, by analogy with Cheap Trick, in "Had a moment in the middle of In Color and In Black & White" [RP].) If you want a hint, the crazy loop at the end of The Flex And The Buff Result is a deliberate fourth-wall-breaking allusion to this same moment between the end of one album and the beginning of the next on the mixtape. Listen to it, and it may come to you. 2- You cite Records and Tapes until the tape deck dies... One of the lines in the same verse runs that the same program is on both the sides.
My initial reading of that would be that the A-side is the same as the B-side. That's a good question; without a confirmer, I don't have an air-tight reading of that line. But a "program" isn't an album, and there are a lot of ways one could read that, whereas the mixtape problem is so heavily constrained by so many pieces of evidence that I think "same program" has to fit the solution proposed in ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC. (Plus, the LP story is a scrupulously realistic one, and nobody would make a mixtape with the same album on both sides.) It looks to me like R&T is connecting the two-sided tape playing in an "infinite loop" to the "disputable truth" problem; like the LP/THS story itself, every single story has a few different versions, you can look at the same story from one side, or you can look at it from the other. In the switch from the LP version to the THS version, we're getting the one that makes the kids look better. Again, not air-tight, but it looks to me like that's the direction it's going.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 10:37:55 GMT -5
Was thinking of "Paradise By the Dashboard Lights" and Jessie's role as runner and the line about why do you keep going to the car in Hurricane J. It seems connected to the Juanita scenario going to the bathroom stalls and giving blowjobs. There is the post earlier in this thread connecting all the J names with Juanita (The Girls) and I can't remember if there is one that says there is a carryover of that trend to the THS universe (Note:Hurricane J). Man, you know I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I never even thought of "Hurricane J" as a direct callback to the J of "hey my name's juanita but my friends they call me ll cool j" (it's funny how much not *hearing* the titles makes them easy to miss). Thank you, that's a great catch. I guess it's already starting to be pretty obvious that Mary, Holly, and Jesse all have elements in common with Juanita (to mention things that we've already talked about in Alright Alright: Mary gets the colored drinks; Holly gets the noisemaking during sex; we haven't talked about Juanita's cigs and love of music, but Jesse gets those; there's much more), even if they are well distinguished from one another in the THS story per se. I think there's a very particular thing that's going on here, and I'm going to talk about it with the perspective of the whole LP story behind us in THS CHARACTERS below. But to your point, yes, there's a lot in common between Jesse and Juanita here ("she gets low on her seat when she gets high in her car"=she's going down on whoever's in the car with her and doing drugs, even if it's not speed and even if the guy, rather than the drugs, is her main focus).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 10:16:48 GMT -5
It seems that perhaps he wasn't making up lyrics on the spot but already had them worked out and in his head? I'd have to do some digging to find quotes to back all of this up, but Craig has talked a lot about his compositional methods, and it seems plausible to me that it works something like this: - He's got a complete story in his head. Has had for a very long time. The THS rewrite version has a little more room for improv around the edges, but he's got a rock-solid base of narrative material to draw on whenever he wants. (About the story, he's actually said somewhere that "it's a method of composition.") - He goes around, or at least used to go around, with notebooks/scraps of paper, and writes down things he hears, lines from books he's reading, etc., collecting nuggets for the lyric framing of the narrative material. I imagine that being something like: he sees a 212-MARGARITA ad on the subway, associates that with the character of Mary and her margaritas, and gets the spark of an idea of her telling someone to call her at that number (like the ad does). It's just the briefest idea of a little scene, but it's a starting place for an actual song. - If he decides to follow up the idea, then he takes a tune and starts trying to put a verse to it. I think he's said things like "I usually get the first verse pretty quick" and "I have these notebooks full of scraps of lyric, and I'll go back to those to see what will fit." For most songs, I think he's also said that he usually rewrites and rewrites to see what else he can get in there, so you imagine a process taking a while. - But it also seems perfectly likely that for some songs, he'll have a lot of good stuff that fits without his even needing to struggle to fit it in. It's interesting that the two songs which we have reason to believe were whipped up in under an hour, You Can Make Him Like You and Epaulets, are both short songs (don't need to come up with a lot of lyrics) with loose tetrameters in both the verses and the choruses; if the default meter that he uses to frame up lyrical scraps in his notebooks has four beats, you could imagine him being able to haul out a lot of good stuff for that kind of musical backbone almost on a dime. So, some speculation there, but it seems plausible to me. The other thing of course is that he's been doing this for 25+ years, so he's surely getting faster and better with time.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 9:29:14 GMT -5
#4: HOW A RESURRECTION REALLY FEELSThere’s plenty of Hold Steady songs that rock out, and there’s plenty who’s wrapped in warmth and empathy. And there’s songs who tell a singular story, songs with snapshots spread out like polaroids on a table, and songs who ties the big picture all together. Resurecction is all of these things at one. It’s not so much the archetypical Hold Steady song as an amalgam of them all, if not musically, then most definitely emotionally. It’s a massive closer on a massive album, but it’s not braggy or capital B big. It’s just there: Near, emphatic and understanding, while still building the mystique, the romantiscism and the ever-returning bittersweet taste of triumph and defeat, all at the same time.
The band have once talked about how this was dubbed “The Southern Song” during the sessions. And while I can understand why, at least compared to the other songs out of the Separation Sunday sessions, I’d argue that it’s most of all The American Song. Not a cliché of a particular sound, genre or style, just a pretty pitch perfect sort-of-big midtempo song based on a little bit americana, some classic rock’n’roll, the vastness of the Midwest, the ambitions of the big cities, the everlasting dream of a idealized past and a brighter future. Damn right you’ll rise again, all right.
When they close out the shows with this song, a special vibe spreads in the audience. I get the impression that people go into a certain mode of gratitude and admiration, eager to be in the moment, to just feel the song. I could project own feelings onto my fellow fans here, but it brings a certain atmosphere that few songs does. And even though it’s a brilliant song in its own right, it probably wouldn’t be this near the top of the list if it didn’t have this special position in the mythology of Hold Steady. I said at the start of this ranking that I would try to evaluate each song as a Song, and not bring in too much context. But in this case, a lot of the context is so embedded in what it feels like listening to the song, that it’s pretty much two sides of the same coin. And that reflects on how this band feels to a lot of us too, I would guess. The amazing music were obviously the starting point, but I would guess anyone dedicated enought to go to multiple shows, register on a message board like this, spending time actually reading lyrics, can agree that what Hold Steady have created outside the mere music, contribute to how, and how much we love the band. Resurrection is a very important part of that package for me. Final points: - I rarely consider Hold Steady as a "soulful" band, musically speaking, but that "walk on back" part certainly brings them close - The little glockenspiel (?) near the very end is a pretty perfect way to close a record like this. It reminds me a little of the very end of Be Here Now by Oasis, for anyone familiar with that For the last batch of flawless songs you've done an amazing job of analyzing them in their entirety, sound, mood, storytelling, effect, the whole works. The Unpleasant Breakfast writeup was pretty groundbreaking, and now you've even made me go back and listen to Banging Camp and HaRRF again, which I wouldn't have thought I'd ever *need* to do. Great job. I'm sure I know what the final three songs are and I'm *really* curious now what you'll have to say about them. A few random reactions: - Pretty shocked to see UB so high but you make a great argument for it. I'm curious, when the dust settles on ODP, whether it'll still be above Entitlement Crew, or on a different axis of comparison, Heavy Covenant, in your estimation. - Banging Camp is a colossal song but for me it gets lost a little bit in the unreal stretch between YLHF and Stevie Nix, making it just slightly less of an anchor. Oddly, if there's a thing that makes its claim to off-the-charts greatness, in my mind it's probably the hold-your-breath moment, the silence in the middle of the music. So many other great moments in that song, though ... it's always going to live in the shadow of "denial/Massachusetts," but the whole verse about the black and tans, oh my god. "we don't got time to mix it all together/ I'm a very busy man, man ..." - I haven't actually done the ranking exercise for myself, but I'm pretty sure MPADJs is in my top 5. You really put it all together perfectly. You also hit on something with the handclap and break-it-up theatrics, about just wanting to be in the song all the way through, that I strongly agree with. Going back a long way, THS was often praised for refusing to engage in irony, and whether the praise was framed this way or not, the thing about that that seemed important to me was that they refused to lean on irony as a cheaply available defense against the cost of sincerity, if that makes sense. The problem with the live antics is that they kind of do the same thing. Stay Positive is a really, really heavy song; I'd like to get a chance to plumb the depths of that without Mosh Pit Josh stepping into the middle to ham it up. And MPADJs is so fucking joyful; maybe Tad on an unstoppable drunken guitar solo is as direct a channel to God as any of us are likely to hear in our lives. Why get in the way of that? Well, I've just said that it costs a lot; maybe it costs too much? I don't know, but like you I wish they'd let it all go once in a while. - Objectively, I think there's an argument to be made that HaRRF is their True #1. It's not my #1, and obviously not yours, but anybody who'd want to contend strongly that it's #1 isn't going to get any protest from me. I think you've done a really beautiful job of explaining why that is here. I'll add, and this is partly related to my comments on theater above, that Killer Parties, great as it is, has lost a good deal of its power as a show closer for me; HaRRF is a different deal and, as you say, really special. Greatest possible end to the greatest possible album. Looking forward to the rest.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 16, 2021 10:56:54 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: MUSICWe've already talked about the "room full of dudes [who] cranked up the tunes" for the gangrape (see THE TUNES above). What we see now is that the searing of this background music into the minds of the victims is described as an effect of the "scratching" of the floor, as if the music were being physically ground into them while the rape is in progress. ***The most famous description of this is obviously in Certain Songs: Certain songs they get so scratched into our souls [CSongs] The same idea explains the bizarre image of "back scratch choirs" in THS, observed in a few places: The scratches on my back, they formed into a choir [SK] Belt it out like back scratch choirs [NS] ***Jesse wasn't present at the metal bar rape, but Charlemagne's persistent view of her as another Holly makes him frame her obsession with music in the same "scratching" terms, and this too is associated with the floor; compare the lines That song got scratched into her soul [HH] Sit down on your floor and listen to your records [WCGT] both of which are expressed from Charlemagne's perspective while hanging with Jesse and listening to her music. ***This association of the background music with the hardwood scratches is referenced only once in the LP catalog, but it's a very strong connection: makin love to hardwood floors, now we go into the 4/4 [TMS] ***What else can we say about the "tunes" at the end of the party? Our gangsters are heshers. Recall that the term "hesh" is derived from 'heavy metal + thrash' (see HESHERS above); this music is a key aspect of their identity. Without knowing anything more, we can be pretty confident that the music they were playing belongs to these genres. [*1]There are other indications that this is correct: - The title of Sketchy Metal, which includes significant details about the THS version of the assault party, makes an obvious allusion to heavy metal.
- The two bands mentioned in conjunction with the events of Party Zero in Sangre De Stephanie, "[Black] Sabbath" and "Nazareth" (see DAWN above), are heavy metal bands.
- YDGK's "thrashing through the passion," a direct allusion to the gangrape (see ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES above), refers to "thrashing" as a specific musical term as well.
***But we can do better than identify the genre; we can identify the specific songs being played. The Denver Haircut description of the gangrape video (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above) segues directly into a description of the background music, complete with a reference to rolling on the carpet: And a clock on the bed stand with a cord to connect it. Liberty and Justice into Master of Puppets. Rolling off of the mattress. Waking up on the carpet [DH] While this is only one of many sex-inflected "they did the X into the Y" musical pairings in the LP/THS lyrics, it's the only one that identifies a plausible "soundtrack" [RtF] for the assault and video. Consider: - Agnostic Front's "Liberty And Justice For ..." (1987) and Metallica's "Master Of Puppets" (1986) were seminal albums in the thrash metal / crossover thrash genres.
- Juanita is mentioned, dryly, as liking the Agnostic Front in connection with her love of speed in The Gin and the Sour Defeat.
- Roger Miret of Agnostic Front was living with the members of Nausea at the reported foundation of crust punk in the US, closely tying the band to the "crust punk" [BBlues] characterization of the gangsters as well (wikipedia; link; see ORIGINS OF IMAGES and HESHERS above).
- "The stench of death in the credits" in Denver Haircut's account of the gangrape video (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above) makes a probable dual allusion to "stenchcore" and "death metal," names/styles closely associated with crust punk (wikipedia), bringing us full circle to the genre allusions catalogued above.
***The identification of "Liberty And Justice For"/"Master Of Puppets" squares perfectly with other particulars of Party Zero staging. Let's start with the name of the song "Mick's Tape," whose reference to roofies ("mick[ey]") suggests that the music playing during the assault came from a mixtape. [*2]In its most artful form, a "mixtape" ( wikipedia) meant the careful selection of individual songs from different sources for compilation on cassette; see, for example, Craig's 1994 I've Got Drugs mixtape: http://instagr.am/p/B-Zo3qejYJx (Check out also the firsthand testimony of vinyltravis from the boards: link; link). The term was also applied to the less artful but very common compilation of two albums on a single cassette (which presented the same challenges of selection and fit as the song-by-song type, just at a cruder scale). A look at the Denver Haircut albums through the lens of mixtape composition yields a surprising amount of information. ***Consider the task from the point of view of the hesher authoring the Party Zero mixtape. The Sketchy Metal characterization of the gangsters as "rock and roll promoters" ("we rubbed up pretty close to" affirms the gangrape context, and therefore the reference to the mixtape) frames his choice of music on the tape as a deliberate act of "promotion," of selection. What constraints would have governed the choice of these albums, rather than others? The standard blank 90-minute cassette tape --- like the one used for Craig's I've Got Drugs mixtape, which clocks in at right under 90 minutes (see instagram link above), or the one used for Steve's 1996 Lo-Fi Hawaii album, with 37+ minutes of music "all on side A" ( youtube) --- was precisely long enough to permit a copy of one standard-length LP on side A and a second standard-length LP on side B. That was great, if you wanted to make a compilation of standard-length LPs. But if you wanted to include an album that overran the standard LP maximum of 46 minutes, things got complicated. Often (speaking from personal experience here), your recourse was to cut out a least-favorite song in order to get it back under 46 minutes, and even that extreme solution wouldn't work for a very long album like Master of Puppets (clocking in at 54:47; wikipedia), from which you'd have to amputate two of its eight tracks in order to get it to fit. So the only way to get Master of Puppets on tape without hopeless mutilation would be to find a second album that both paired up well with it in style, and also happened to be as improbably short for an LP as Master of Puppets was improbably long, so that side B could take up the overrun from side A and still leave room for the entirety of the second album. (To be clear, this is the essence of the mixtape challenge --- to work within a bunch of overlapping constraints to produce a stylistically balanced whole.) Wonderfully, if this is a problem for which you as a rock-and-roll-promoting hesher in the early 90's require a solution, there is Liberty and Justice For, which has an extremely short total runtime of only 25:50 ( wikipedia), clearing the bar for classification as an LP rather than an EP by seconds ( wikipedia). With this, you can copy the last two tracks from Master of Puppets onto the beginning of side B, follow it up with Liberty and Justice For, and end up with two sides of a little over 40 minutes each, leaving only a few minutes of dead time at the end of each side, and letting autoreverse take care of the continuity of the split longer album. If the fact that these unusually-proportioned albums combine so perfectly to fit the constraints of a 90-minute cassette tape is a coincidence, it's quite a coincidence. This looks, in short, like the strictly realistic description of an actual mixtape from that era. ***A 90-minute Liberty And Justice For/Master Of Puppets mixtape is for the rest consistent with the Records and Tapes account of a cassette tape playing repeatedly on autoreverse during the party (see THE TUNES above). It also accounts for the "battle of the bands" image in love is like a battle of the bands, crank up your amps man [LPvtEotE] which presupposes a duel-by-turns between two bands as its basic definition, again consistent with a mixtape featuring Metallica and The Agnostic Front in succession. ***There's still more to be said about the playing of the tape, and about the "clock on the bed stand" [DH] which is apparently linked to the source of the music; but we'll defer this discussion for ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS, coming up next. [*1] We can say with some confidence that the songs scratched into Jesse's soul --- "Only The Good Die Young," "Paradise By The Dashboard Light," "Running Up That Hill," etc. --- are not what the dudes cranked up when things got ugly. [*2] Compare the reference to heavy-metal "nazareth" [SdS] in the background of the party (mentioned above) with the "nazareth tape" [C&N] mentioned in Curves & Nerves.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 16, 2021 7:20:19 GMT -5
It's all there: the kitchen, the sunrise, the tunes, and now the literal "passion" on the carpet. ... Hadn't had a lot of time lately, and there's other things I would like to comment on as well, but couldn't resist dropping by for a few moments and saying how this gangrape scenario reading gives such a twisted meaning to the title "Thrashing Through the Passion."
There's a lot of other lines this scenario gives subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in meaning. For instance, the other night I was listening to Southtown Girls and the lyrics about hey bloomington what they did to you seemed like it could refer to that.
Yup --- that "what'd you let em do to you" in Southtown Girls, with that creepy "let em" in the middle, is pretty ugly in retrospect (and yes, the THS version of the party is exactly what it refers to). I have a whole post on DOUBLE TAKES at the end to try to deal with this pervasive phenomenon of darker meaning in the lyrics. With song and album titles especially, it seems like Craig selects specifically for strong vehicles of surface meaning underlaid by heavy secondary meanings, almost like that's his criterion for Truth. And we're not even done wringing significance out of "Thrashing Through The Passion" ... more coming in a little bit here.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 15, 2021 6:07:23 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: INJURIESReferences to the injuries inflicted by the floor during the rape --- abrasions and burns from the carpet, and, worse, scratches from the hardwood --- are numerous and graphic. ***There's the famous line from Stevie Nix, now revealed as an allusion to the carpetburn sustained by Gideon inside the ring of gangsters (the Thunderbird is just another motel metaphor for the Nice Nice, see NIGHTCLUBS above): And the carpet at the Thunderbird Has a burn for every cowboy that got fenced in [SN] Lie Down On Landsdowne mentions the kids treating the abrasions left by the carpet with the "cream"=meth (see LISTED, and also notes about the vicious cycle discussed in THE FOAM above) they got in exchange for the sex: we're all just sitting dreaming and applyin cream on our abrasions [LDoL] Positive Jam and On With The Business mention bleeding on the same carpets: And the '70s got heavy, we woke up on bloody carpets [PJ] Blood on the carpet Mud on the mattress [OwtB] ***As bad as the carpet is, the hardwood floor is worse. The Brokerdealer "vision"/"fever dream" of the LP story described in If Not For Hipster Pictures (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above) adds to its description of the rape: it was the denim and all the scratched up skin [INFHP] and The Last Ones Up Become Lovers links the scratches on the back with the hardwood: the skin on my back all scratched up in splinters [TLOUBL] Suddenly we realize that the RfLB line (see ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOOD above) isn't expressed from the point of view of the rapist, but from the point of view of the *victim*: and ain't it easy once you get em on the carpet [RfLB] in other words, getting raped on the carpet is a cakewalk compared to getting raped on hardwood. This is the point, too, of "boys, let's try to keep it on the carpet" in You Did Good Kid; remembering that this line follows the kids' arrival at the "club," and the girl's gift of the "crystal container" (see A LITTLE BIT above): the drifters in the kitchen were thrashing through the passion boys, let's try to keep it on the carpet you wouldn't be so impressed with the sunrise if it wasn't for the darkness [YDGK] It's all there: the kitchen, the sunrise, the tunes, and now the literal "passion" on the carpet. ***Other generic references to scratches, bleeding, banging and getting "stabbed" on the floor include: We were hot soft and pure, now we're scratched up in scars [JaJ] They're shooting through the ceiling and they're bleeding on the floor [SM] We walked into the church and people got down on the floor Rolled around and banged the chairs all filled up with the spirit of the Lord [ABlues] Falling on the floor just like Saul on his sword [R&T]
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 15, 2021 6:00:51 GMT -5
And for what it's worth, I've tried to make this ranking as personal as I can, simply cause that's how I like to read about music too - experiencing through other people's eyes, ears and lens, to get a sense of what music feel to them. And just to be clear about Thrashing: I think it's great. Back when it came out, I might have ranked it as their fourth best album, better than not only Teeth Dreams, but also Heaven Is Whenever or Stay Positive. But as I tried to express in the post above this, I think the overall sense of the album as an album has worn slightly off. I still think it's a really, really good collection of songs (had it not been for the confusion about Confusion, all of it's tracks would be on this list, while Teeth Dreams, Heaven Is Whenever and Open Door Policy have songs left out), but the overall feeling of the album has bleaked a little. Completely agree with all of that. As much as I love analyzing Craig's story and lyrical phrasing and whatnot, this thread has reminded me that it's just as amazing to hear about people's personal relationships with these songs, technicalities aside. I haven't been able to totally keep up with the entire list so far and I'll definitely come back to reread some of these posts, but hearing all your THS thoughts has made for a great few days — thanks for doing this. About TTtP: for me, there's no particular rule to it --- Entitlement Crew remains a single in my mind; Epaulets is a straight-up second-slot album track; Confusion In The Marketplace has somehow become a genuine album closer. Still like listening to it front to back, though. Excited to see the rest of the top ten. After looking over everything again, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be Banging Camp, Resurrection, Constructive, Hoodrat, Sweet Payne, Stations, and Casualties, but I have absolutely no idea what the order is gonna be. Based on gut feeling alone I'd put my money on Resurrection being first. I'm hoping Sweet Payne cracks the top five, but I'm happy it's made it this far regardless. The part where it kicks in with "I always dream about a Unified Scene" has gotta be one of the best THS musical moments. MoC already came in at #40; I know there's another track from AKM on tap, since I've been waiting to see where it comes in. I have to admit that I'm surprised and pleased to find Sweet Payne so high on people's lists, but I'll wait to comment on that for when it comes out. Looking forward to #8. :-)
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2021 7:12:03 GMT -5
About the personal stuff: Yes, I think you're right. It's a circular thing, I guess. The more I like these songs, the more personal the reason for ranking them this high. Also, somewhere along the way here, I figured out it didn't make sense to do this in a cold and faux-objective way. This is a personal ranking, the reasons are personal and the songs are intertwined with my life in general. It's also feels nice to be reminded of how many good times this band have brought me, from traveling to friendships to just being the soundtrack to important times in my life. It's one of the best parts of the thread, and in some backwards way the thing that makes it most objective. Great stuff. I'll hold out for #9 till tonight (local time)! I'm glad you added "local time" :-)
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2021 7:03:09 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOODWith the layout of the Nice Nice out of the way, let's talk about the flooring. The "Rathskeller in the Sky" video has a nice shot at 1:08 ( youtube) of the floor of the actual brewery bar --- part carpet, part hardwood: These are appointments that a casual visitor to the place might not notice, but that take on an outsize importance if you're down there getting gangraped. ***A fair amount of detail about the situation and the mechanics of the sex is described in relation to the carpet and hardwood of the floor. Blackout Sam links the carpet to the "party house," recognizable in both THS and LP contexts as the brewery bar: The carpet at the party house [BSam] Rock for Lite Brite confirms that there's sex on the carpet (more about this line very shortly): and ain't it easy once you get em on the carpet [RfLB] Touch My Stuff confirms that there's fucking happening on the hardwood floor, and Solid Gold Sole links the hardwood to the "south side" that we've already identified (see NICE NICE: THE ROOF above) as the south wall of the barroom: makin love to hardwood floors, now we go into the 4/4 [TMS] southside hardwood floor apartment [SGS] Lie Down on Landsdowne and 4 Dix both make reference to sex on the floor --- in the latter case, sex on the dance floor at a party: sometimes it's so wide open, rollin on the floor and moanin for me [LDoL] seizured on the dance floor and slithered from her party dress [4Dix] Roaming The Foam has a couple of lines about the sex-for-drugs trade whose alternative version (found in the liner notes) expands on the "rolling on the floor" angle of the LDoL line above: these yayo hoes take off their clothes and try to get me to give them something chemical [RtF] These Day Glo whores roll on the floor Try to get you to touch them with your tentacles. [RtF alt lyrics]
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2021 6:58:43 GMT -5
There's certainly a lot of powerful formulas you could use.
Was thinking of a MAD LIBS type approach. Here's one based on "Knuckles":
I've been trying to get people to call me (celebrity name) but people keep calling me (ridiculed celebrity/mocking nickname/insult)
I dunno how much overlap there is between there and here, but the "Positive Posting" FB group had a fantastic thread about two weeks back where everyone was writing custom verses based on "The Swish" ("X & Y, baby, Y & X . . . "). It's ridiculously satisfying. quotes and comments, baby, comments and quotes lotta tiny little text in notes working backwards from the soup head goats through my posts
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2021 6:50:49 GMT -5
This is just so tight and dense and really fucking cool, that I just have to take a step back to take it all in. But for what it's worth, I'm starting to see the the room before my eyes when I'm reading it, almost like it comes to life. So you must have done a pretty good job. I'm dropping by with another little side note. In the car about a week ago, I heard Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, a song I must have heard like 150 times before. I've never spent too much time listening to the lyrics, though, and wasn't planning to change that anytime soon. But suddenly it struck me that George Michael sings "bang bang bang", and then I thought about the repeated "Jitterbug" in the intro of the song. When you add in the wake up/woke up similarity, and that the entire song is about a guy left alone cause his girl is out "dancing" by herself, there's suddenly an awful lot that links it to Massive Nights and Our Whole Lives. And I have a sneaky feeling that some other lines from the song could be relevant for the return parties. "Wake me up before you go-go I don't wanna miss it when you hit that high Wake me up before you go-go 'Cause I'm not planning on going solo Wake me up before you go-go Take me dancing tonight I wanna hit that high, yeah yeah"She's obviously hitting highs without him, and he wants to come along, hitting that high too. I don't really thing this enlightens anything, but it wouldn't be that weird if this is a source of images describing the core events we've learnt so much about. Thanks man! The farther we go, the more we can build on what we've already worked out, so I hope the interest just ramps up from here. I've got 16 more posts going through the remaining details of Party Zero, and then I'll do an overview post to wrap up the whole thing in a 1000-word summary of the action, with no quotes or commentary. My hope is that that will be a bit of an inflection point, so that everything thereafter feels like a new brick on top of a solid foundation in the ground. We'll see. About Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go: from looking at an awful lot of Craig's references to other bands/songs, I can say that I think he *mostly* just references them for the specific names/lyrics that he actually borrows; mostly there isn't a deep or recursive reference to the content. But, having said that, there's at least one major exception coming up, and it's for a song that is at least as improbable, on the face of it, as the Wham! hit. Which would by the way have been a pretty probable prom tune for Craig himself, if we're looking for a reason why he would go there for "bang bang bang" in OWL specifically. In short, I don't know, but it's possible!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 13, 2021 22:09:47 GMT -5
#10: OUR WHOLE LIVESBam-bam-BAAAAM-da-di-da-di-bam-bam-BAAAAM-duuu-duuu. OWL at 10 really surprised me; I knew you hadn't wrapped up HiW yet, but I hadn't had a chance to check off what you'd already included, and to work out where we were going. There are two trends here that are taking on accelerated importance --- the story of your own path through the songs, and the countdown itself --- and I wish I had a little more time to try to forecast where both are going, although as we get close to the end, maybe it makes sense for you to get your picks out before people have a chance to go through a process of elimination and spoil the surprise. I hope you'll post a summary list at the end; I'm really curious to go back and see what came in 2nd and 3rd on particular albums, for example. Psyched to get the rest.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 13, 2021 6:59:44 GMT -5
I might have this wrong, but I believe Craig said it was the first lyric (or slice of lyric) for the entire THS project. The phrase itself first appears in "Hostile Mass." Pretty sure that's right. My recollection, and I could probably find the quotes for this, is that 1) he was at his desk at work when the image/phrase "Charlemagne in Sweatpants" came to him, and he wrote it down on a piece of paper; that was the seed out of which the whole THS story crystallized. 2) Knuckles was the first song they wrote.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 13, 2021 6:50:47 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE CORNERBetween the map and a few other recently-worked-out bits, we now have enough information to positively identify the kitchen corner. We've said (see STEREO SOUND above) that when the Narrator hears Juanita fucking in the bathroom and yelling that she's coming, he flees to the far corner of the bar so he doesn't have to listen. This is already a probable reaction on the face of it; if we had to guess where he goes, the information provided by the map would help us narrow down the probabilities quickly. It can't be the northwest corner, which still has a direct line of sight and sound to the bathrooms. It can't be the northeast corner, which is right next to the bathrooms. It can't be the southeast corner, which would put him in the middle of the fire exit. But the southwest corner? ***As it happens, we have additional evidence that bears on this. The Brokerdealer song If Not For Hipster Pictures, which describes the "vision"/"fever dream" of the Lifter Puller story in recognizable detail (see VARIETIES OF PHYSICAL ASSAULT above), says of the gangrape scene: it was bar sharks it was street rats it was alley cats and they were feasting on the city pigeons it was the southwest corner where Milwaukee hits Division [INFHP] These lines first locate "it" in the brewery bar ("bar," "city"; see THE CITY above), where the gangsters ("sharks" and "cats"; see SHARKS & JETS and RATS & CATS above) are "feasting" on the kids ("street rats"; see RATS & CATS above, with the suggestion of prostitution familiar from The Langelos; for "pigeons" see EAST VS MIDWEST below). Then, we're given the precise location in the bar: it's not just the generic "corner" we've come to recognize, but the "southwest corner," where "Milwaukee hits Division." On the one hand, "where Milwaukee hits Division" is a reference to the Chicago setting of Nelson Algren's "The Man with the Golden Arm" (compare "Nelson Algren" [CSTLN]; wikipedia): On the other, it's a metaphor on which to hang the "southwest corner," which is *not* from Algren's novel (see searchable text, in which "southwest" does not appear: link): rather, it's where the 3.2 bar ("Milwaukee" as beer metaphor; see the roof reference to "stuck in Milwaukee" [TCMamG] here, and also STRANDED and BREWERY BAR: THE ROOF above) plays host to the kids' breakup on the original Separation Sunday ("Division"; see "broke up" [SdS] and DAWN above). In short, that 'X' in the southwest angle of the map is the original kitchen corner, where the Narrator, like Algren's hero, becomes a needle junkie, and where he and Juanita's brief bond is snapped in two. ***Juanita's "came around the corner" [YDGK] refers (compare MoC and SPositive) to the corner where the Narrator is waiting, not the corner at the end of the hall between the bathrooms and the barroom. Nevertheless, she does turn that corner, and stumbles across an open space in bringing the stolen drugs to him (see A LITTLE BIT and STUMBLING & RESURRECTION above), which only really works if he's located in the southwest of the bar. ***The reflected evidence of The Swish further suggests that her gift takes place by the window in the corner: I got some hazardous chemicals So drive around to the window [Swish] ***Denver Haircut, in a bizarrely-worded line, also identifies the window as the place where the cornered Narrator takes the shot of meth (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above) and surrenders himself to "sucking" off Dwight: A shot in the dark in a bar that's too bright. A window sucking up all the available light, right? [DH] Again, "light" is the meth she brought in the "crystal container" (see LISTED above; for other expressions eliding the dealer and the cash links in the blowjob-to-drugs chain, see CASH MACHINE above). ***We've noted (see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above) that the window shutters have been kept open to this point for the sake of the spectacular view. The Gin And The Sour Defeat specifically links this view to the moment in which the Narrator can't produce the money to save himself from having to blow Dwight: but you've never seen destitute until you've seen that view from my baby's roof [TGatSD] ***Viceburgh also references the windows in telling us how things snowball from there: he signals two guys the windows of highrises went down in dogtown, drive-thru turned into a drive-by [Viceburgh] Here we have the bj ("went down"), the double-teaming ("two guys"), and the killer part of the party ("drive-by"). The reference to "guys in the windows of high-rises," in particular, while obviously framed in a way to suggest a couple of snipers overlooking the streets, actually refers to guys inside the bar, closing the window shutters so that the gangrape can be filmed, with fill light and flashes (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above). ***Finally, Sangre de Stephanie includes the closure of the shutters in its description of the transition to the gangrape: and after the aspirin binge, before she got sent to the shrink she had me up for a couple of drinks put on the porcupines, closed the venetian blinds woke up in rags and wrapped in a plastic bag [SdS] - "and after the aspirin binge, before she got sent to the shrink": out of order with respect to the next line, but referring to Juanita getting high in the bathroom ("aspirin"=cocaine, see LISTED above, with a suggestion of suicide before her resurrection), while she was still high, and before the crash and gangrape; - "she had me up": upstairs at the brewery bar;
- "for a couple of drinks": the roofied drinks;
- "put on the porcupines": both 'cranked up the tunes', and 'broke out the needles';
- "closed the venetian blinds": shuttered the windows;
- "woke up in rags and wrapped in a plastic bag": got "killed," clothes shredded, with an allusion to the "little bit" plastic bag.
***The closure of the shutters, then, appears to be the second sense aimed at by the Denver Haircut line, in which the *window* is described as sucking up the available light: the shutters were closed on the rising sun, and the afterbar cave became "just like [the kids'] graves" [NN].
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 12, 2021 13:57:24 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE ROOFThe Action Squad log shows that the route from the top of the stairs to the fire door in the south wall of the bar ran over the open rooftop of stockhouse #4; the lyrics too make several references to activity out on the roof. ***Like the kids, the cops from the first of the "busts" [TMS] in the story (see FIRST BUST below) can be inferred to have come in via the stairs and the roof, lending a particular sense to "rooftop cops" in Sherman City: rooftop cops and the deadbolt locks keep these rocks inside these socks [SCity] ***The description of the brewery as a "fortified fortress" in The Stove And The Toaster includes a note about entry to the complex via a window (compare the quotes in BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT #8 above), and exit from the bar over the rooftop: Going in through the window Leave through the terrace [TS&tT] ***The Candy Machine And My Girlfriend mentions an open-air rooftop party scene above The City: we drank on the roof and we pissed on the city [TCMamG] ***The Prior Procedure describes another rooftop party scene (indoor rather than outdoor; the whole bar is on the roof deck, and for the "sweet view" of the westward-facing windows, see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above). Here some of the gangsters at the party mention their leader and "local legend" [BSam, Riptown] Shepard, who's not there "in person" [Feelers], for the first time: There were some dudes on the roof deck that were sitting with sweet view of the sunset They said you got to meet the guy that gets the tab for this Anything you want he can cover it [TPProcedure] ***There's a final scene of particular interest that takes place on the open rooftop. We've already shown that the THS prom night songs are a collective reworking of the events of Party Zero, and that "hit it again on the south side of the gym" [YGD] is a THS reflection of Juanita going down on the LP Narrator (see SUCKING OFF EACH OTHER above). The reference to the empty barroom as "the gym" is clearly made for the sake of the prom metaphor; but then that bit about "the south side" is pretty specific. Why the precision? Given that the gym is the bar, "on the south side of the gym" must mean "along the south wall of the bar"; this, plus the description of her leading him outside, supposedly for a cigarette, in order to blow him ("the majorettes ... lead the band onto the field with their cigarettes" [OWL]) suggest in turn that she went down on him out on the roof, against the south wall of the bar outside the fire door. The photos in BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT #1 and #2 above confirm that the south wall of the bar is in fact the *only* wall with open rooftop adjacent to it. ***We've already observed that Holly's birthday party in the THS story is situated in a locale modeled on the brewery bar, and that certain of the events of that party are reflections of the events of Party Zero (see DAWN and BREWERY BAR: THE BACK HALF above). The Milkcrate Mosh account of Mary using cigarettes to lead Gideon and Holly outside so that Holly can give him a blowjob is another of these, reflecting Juanita's use of a cigarette to draw the LP Narrator outside for the same purpose during Party Zero. In Milkcrate Mosh, the cigarettes belong to Holly and Gideon, but it's Mary (the point-of-view character of the song) who, in her role as the Phil-Spector-like producer of the scene, frames them as instruments of seduction: Waving Marlboros like magic wands. Listen up closely to the lit tips of your cigarettes. Can't you hear the serpent hiss? Saying, sweet baby, suck on this. ... He smoked the Camel Filter Kings. We went back behind the building. [MM] More specifically, it's Mary who tells Holly and Gideon to "listen up closely to the lit tips of your cigarettes," on the one hand encouraging Holly to succumb to the exchange for the sake of the drugs, and on the other drawing Gideon outside for the blowjob. The difference between this and the Party Zero account is that, rather than exiting on the south side of the building, they go "back behind the building," following Mary's instruction to Gideon to "meet me right back here around dawn" [SN] (compare "dawn" [MM]), where "here"="camped out by the coat check" [Weekenders]. In other words, the LP Juanita-leads-the-Narrator-outside-to-blow-him scene appears to have *two* different reflections in THS: - one in the prom encounter related in YGD, MN, OWL, where the scene is transplanted more or less in its entirety, without changes;
- the other in the Holly-blows-Gideon scene, where "back behind the building" *combines* the outside situation of Juanita and the Narrator on the roof with the back-halfsituation of Juanita and the gangsters in the bathroom.
This is an eye-opening look at the methods behind the composition of the THS story; we'll see more remixing along these lines as we progress.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 12, 2021 13:42:39 GMT -5
Funny (?) coincidence: The same day this was posted, one of my favourite Norwegian artists, John Olav Nilsen, dropped a brand new song called Musikk for trappeoppganger (Music for staircases): www.youtube.com/watch?v=h54af9z5AGoI gave it an International Like :-)
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 12, 2021 13:37:57 GMT -5
Felt like you read my mind on this one, bud. Right as you were saying the 5/10 thing, I was thinking "but wait, in most buildings there's two actual sets of steps between floors!" I was really hoping for a silver bullet here, but I'm not confident that I can square the unambiguous Action Squad statement that there were 9 floors of hallways plus the roof with the idea of 5 double-flights of stairs ... I'd think the entrances to the hallways would have to be staggered if that were the case, which seems unlikely. So it's still entirely possible that this is the answer, but I'd have to know more about architecture of this kind of building to make a strong claim for it. (Trying to preserve my credibility for the claims I *am* confident of, ha.)
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