Season of the Witch & Jockey Full of Bourbon

Just after Christmas in 2003, a friend and I drove from Peoria to Washington, D.C. This was the winter when it seemed everyone had acquired an iPod, and the prospect that we had our entire music collections available for the drive was completely mind blowing. (Really, this capability should never stop blowing our minds.)

My friend DJ'ed for most of the drive, and after playing selections from The Fall, Wire, and The Modern Lovers, he told me, "Okay, now I'm going to put on the coolest song of all time." Great, I thought. "Jockey Full of Bourbon." Here we go. 

Nope. He put on something by Donovan. I barely knew anything about Donovan, and the idea that he had written something cooler than "Jockey Full of Bourbon"... forsooth! This friend, after all, was a big film guy and had seen the opening sequence in Down By Law. So, seriously, what in the fuck.

And so he puts on "Season of the Witch." Had I not been driving, I would've folded my arms in skepticism. But I heard it out, and, damn it... it was pretty cool.

There may be songs that are more epic, more clever, more poignant, more urgent... but I don't know of any that are more cool (cooler?) than these two. (One quick aside: if you ever get the chance to shoot pool while listening to Them, you should take it.) "Season of the Witch" and "Jockey Full of Bourbon" are songs for when you don't need anybody (though you still may need them to know it). They give you the courage to walk into the bar alone and to claim the whole damned corner booth for yourself. They offer an atmosphere of cool... the sort you hope might rub off on you.

And speaking of things that should never stop blowing our minds, Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs came out in 1985. 1985! The year that Wham implored us to wake them up before we went-went, REO Speedwagon could not fight that feeling any longer, and a young Marty McFly auditioned for the battle of the bands. “Season of the Witch” came out in 1966. The young chap on guitar is session musician Jimmy Page.

Dig it.

Wake Up & Chicago

It's a bit startling to consider that both of these songs are a decade old now. Both artists have carried on, released more work, and show no signs of slowing down (even if Sufjan has left 48 other states waiting to get their due). And yet I suspect that when they play live, these two songs are still the ones that elicit a sense not just of joy but of relief from the audience. Yes! They're playing it!

This is music not just for movies but for movie trailers... songs for the soundtrack to the life you wish you had. I suspect that more than one wedding party has entered the reception to the tune of one of these beauties.

Yet, oddly, I feel like if these songs had surfaced in the 1990s, we would've rejected them. Too polished... too orchestral... too angelic. Bands are for cool kids... not for kids who, like, try really hard. Gross. We all think we have a solid sense of the distinctions between the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s... inevitably we will one day put the 2000s and the 2010s in two distinct buckets. The 2000s will look bleak, but we did get to play some heavenly music on our glossy new gadgets.

As advertised, it's not a contest. But I'm starting to think these pairings might be something of a personality test. And in this instance if you find yourself hating on both, finding them too precious or too grand, then please know that you cannot be my friend. (No big loss... I don't get out much.)

A Day in the Life & Good Vibrations

Here, try this: Imagine you’ve never heard The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” before. Which is more likely to blow your mind?

I posed this question to a friend over email the other day, and he suggested that such a match-up would be a decent premise for a blog. So, here we are.

The idea is song pairings. Songs with a kinship. Songs that are getting at the same thing, or share the same sense of “bigness,” or that otherwise have an intangible connection… songs that you would file closely together in your mental bookshelf.

I should mention that I have absolutely no interest in trying to pin down which song is “best.” I’m trying to think of it like this: when a museum hangs a Gaugin next to a Van Gogh, it’s not to prod you into picking a winner. Rather, it can simply be a way of drawing out the unique properties of each, and, ideally, enhance your appreciation of both. (Disclaimer: I don’t know much about music beyond the fact that I really like it. So, I’m not making any pretenses at educating people here… it’s just a blog. Let’s all calm down.) Also, to completely contradict what I just wrote, I might include a voting feature just for kicks… and just to see if anyone’s actually looking at this.

So! First up: “A Day in the Life” and “Good Vibrations.” The Beatles/Beach Boys history and rivalry are well known. To me, what I see in these songs are the bands at their most ambitious… these songs seem to contain multiple songs within them. Let’s have a listen, shall we?

Returning to the original question (Which is more likely to blow your mind if you hadn't heard it before?) I have no idea. "A Day in the Life" comes off as a bit more complicated, a bit more grown up. The complete shift in singer/narrator/perspective has that jarring quality that it has when an author pulls off a similar feat in a short story. "Good Vibrations," however, to me feels a bit more musically accomplished... more "of a piece." It can be hard to give it adequate credit if you grew up, as I did, hearing this song lumped in with the more simplistic, be-true-to-your-school Beach Boys. Indeed, it seems like everyone's musical education includes that moment when you figure out that, wait, The Beach Boys are actually pretty fucking amazing.

So... what are we thinking? Talk to me, people.