With a little pen knife held in her hand . . .

Weegee (Arthur Felig), Untitled, ca 1940

Blog News
10/14/12:Hello Darling 

Recent Songs
04/18/13: Henry Lee
2/5/13: Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender
1/1/13: Strange Fruit
11/14/12: Yet Another Look: Stagger Lee
11/11/12: Day of Rest: I Want Jesus to Talk With Me
11/7/12: El Paso

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads Project
04/18/12: Henry Lee
10/18/11 : Stagger Lee, Pt 2
10/10/11: Stagger Lee, Pt 1
9/13/11: Song of Joy

Articles/Rants/Quotes
04/30/13: Farewell Possum
11/9/12: The Lonely Grave of Virginia Rappe
10/31/12 Quote of the Week
10/31/12: Happy Halloween

Farewell Possum.

George Jones wasn't a murder ballad type of guy, he was more of "drinking whiskey and crying 'cuz she left me" honky tonk guy.  But looking at his life, it's almost surprising that he didn't become the topic of a murder ballad: violence, drug addiction, divorce, occasionally singing like a duck on stage, more divorce, and a lot of booze.

I'm not kidding about the duck thing either:

In his autobiography "I Lived to Tell It All," country legend George Jones describes a mega-bender of booze and drugs that continued until his brain snapped and he found himself locked in a Donald Duck voice that he couldn’t stop using when he spoke. Let me reiterate: George Jones got so wasted that he was only able to speak in a Donald Duck voice for days on end. He performed several entire concerts in his Duck impression and, at one point, to make matter worse, he locked himself in his dressing room and wouldn’t hit the stage until he was introduced as Hank Williams.  - Holy Taco 

There's also this legendary tale:

Once, when I had been drunk for several days, Shirley decided she would make it physically impossible for me to buy liquor. I lived about eight miles from Beaumont and the nearest liquor store. She knew I wouldn't walk that far to get booze, so she hid the keys to every car we owned and left. 

But she forgot about the lawn mower. I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat; a key glistening in the ignition.

 I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did. -  George Jones, "I Lived to Tell All"1

But that voice:

I've been racking my brain trying to find words to describe it that haven't already been used.  Pure  heartbreak in a voice.  A national treasure. How about, "goddamn, that voice"?

Only a voice like that, could lyrics like this seem poinant:

I pulled the head off Elvis
Filled Fred up to his pelvis
Yabba Dabba Doo, the King is gone
And so are you.2

Eventually, with the help of his 4th wife Nancy, Jones cleaned up.  With the exception of a few stumbles (and one huge car crash) he pretty much stayed out of the news.  

He died April 26th 2012 at the age of 81.  With all the slick, pop driven, sugar coated crap that's being passed off as country music,  I can't help but thing that so much of the real thing has died with him.

---------------

1.  Jones, George with Tom Carter.  I Lived to Tell it All. Dell Publishing, 1996

2.  Ferris, Roger. D. The King is Gone and So Are You 

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads Henry Lee pt 1

This version begins with Judy Henske's wonderful comic intro.

After almost two years, I have returned to the "Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's Murder Ballads" project, with the third track on the album, Henry Lee.  Originating in Scotland, Henry Lee has been Earl Richard, Love Henry, and Young Hunting.  Other variants sing of the Proud Girl as well.



(Note: this version is cut off at the end.) A woman, often called "Lady Margaret" bids a man to stay the night with her.  He rejects her saying that he has a love in another land.  Sometimes this other woman is in Scotland.  Other times she waits for him in Merry Green Lea, and there's even one version that sings of Arkansas.   If this wasn't enough, Henry sometimes informs the woman that his love is "ten times fairer" than she.  Ouch. 
Despite having rejected her, Henry leans over to give her a kiss.  The woman stabs him with her pen-knife, apparently the number one choice for female killers.

She then disposes of him:
She took him by his lilly-white hand She drug him to the well, Which you know was cold and deep 1
Like the verse up above, she often does this herself, and sometimes maid helps her with this task:
She called unto a maid of hers: Keep a secret, keep a secret on me All these fine robes on my body Shall always be to thee
One takened him by his long yellow hair And the other one by his feet And they threw him into the deep well waters Which was so cool and deep 2
After that a woman calls to a bird.  A talking bird.

Come down, come down my pretty little parrot  And sit upon my knee, And you shall have a cage of pure, pure gold Instead of a willow tree. 3
The bird, wisely, is having none of it:
I won't come down, nor I shan't come down To sit upon your knee For you have murdered your true love Henery, More sooner you would kill me 4

One striking difference between the "Scottish" and "Appalachian" versions is that the former versions tend to be much longer and often take on a supernatural element.  Once Young Hunting crossed over the pond, the story was cut short, often ending in the bird flying away.  But in the Scottish ballad the story continues as shown in this version by James Findlay.

The bird, which serves as a voice of morality in the song, plays greater role, assisting in bringing Lord Henry's killer to justice:

Then up and speaks that pretty little bird
A-sitting up high in the tree,
Saying, “Oh, cease your diving, you divers bold,
For I'd have you to listen to me.”

“And I'd have you to cease your day diving
And to dive all into the night.
For under the water where his body lies
The candles they burn so bright.”

So the divers ceased their day diving
And they dived all into the night.
And under the water where his body lay,
The candles they burned so bright. 5

The killer's guilt is also prove through otherworldly forces.  Her maid, condemned for the killing is thrown on the fire:

But the fire wouldn't take upon her cheek
And the fire wouldn't take upon her chin,
And nor would it take upon her hair
For she was free from the sin.

And when the servant girl touched the clay cold corpse,
A drop it never bled.
But when the lady laid a hand upon it
The ground was soon covered with red. 6

Having been found guilty by God, the lady is now placed on the stake instead of her maid:

And the fire took fast upon her cheek,
And the fire took fast upon her chin,
And it sang in the points of her yellow hair,
And 'twas all because of her sin. 7

As I've discussed before, there seems to have been a habit of condensing ballads once  they made it to the states.  Supernatural elements, and back stories are shortened or even outright removed: Henry rejects her, she stabs him, she throws him in a well, end scene.  For me the omission of the fate of our lady, makes the tale even more disturbing.  Henry rots at the bottom of the well, while his lost love waits for him, never knowing what happened.  No supernatural justice, just, a woman scorned, murder and a talking bird. 

Next up.  Henry Lee pt 2, or "what's up with the talking bird?"

-------------------------

1. Campbell, Olive Arnold. "Young Hunting" (version E).  English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. New York, The Knickerbocker Press, 1917.  Reprint, Forgotten Books, 2012.

2.  Campbell, Olive Arnold. "Young Hunting" (version D).  

3. Campbell, Olive Arnold. "Young Hunting" (version D).  

4.  Campbell, Olive Arnold. "Young Hunting" (version E).  

5. Rose, Tony.  "Young Hunting"

6. Ibid

7. Ibid

Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender

The concept of "love matches", marrying someone because you're both in L-O-V-E is a fairly modern one.  For many years marriages were arranged to increase wealth, or social standing.  They were formed to forge alliances between families and countries. 1  No one married for love.  That doesn't mean that poets, musicians and writers were unaware of the concept of love.  They wrote and sung of lovers all the time, and often of the tragic results.  One of these tales is "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender" (or Ellinor/Eleanor/Ellendry) which tells of a love triangle that ends with three bodies dead on the floor.

Like many old ballads, lyrics vary, but I'll be using the version found in Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians as Sung by Jean Ritchie as my primary source.

The tale begins with Lord Thomas posing a question to his mother:

Oh mother, oh mother, come riddle it down
Come riddle two hearts as one
Say must I marry fair Ellender 
Or bring the brown girl home? 2

 It should be noted that "brown" in this song more than likely suggests a olive or tanned complexion.  Up until the 20th century, fair or light skin was associated with wealth, while darker skin was associated with those of a lower class, meaning, people who had to work outside in the sun. 3 

The mother, when posed with the question of who Lord Thomas should take for a wife responds with cruel common sense.  Marrying a woman of wealth will not only benefit Lord Thomas, but his family:

The brown girl
She has houses and land
Fair Ellender she has none
So the best advice I can give you my son
Is bring me the brown girl home 4

Before going off to find the wealthy brown girl.  Lord Thomas decides to break the news to his pale, rosy cheeked, beloved:

I come to ask you to my wedding
Now what do you think of me? 5

Lady Ellender, distraught asks her mother:

Oh mother, oh mother, come riddle it down
Come riddle two hearts as one
Oh must I go to Lord Thomas' wedding
or stay at home and mourn? 6


Ellender's mother, wisely tells her:

Oh, the brown girl she's got buissness there
You know you have got none
So the best advice I can give you my daughter
Is to stay at home and mourn. 7


Of course, the fair skinned, beautiful maid doesn't listen.  Instead she pulls a stunt that would probably fit right with in with a bad chick flick:

She dressed herself in a snow white gown
Her maids they dressed in green
And every town that they road through
They took her to be some queen. 8

 While the wearing of a white dress to a wedding didn't hold the same meaning then as it does now 9,  dressing like a "queen" is still an insult. Not only does Ellender arrive at the wedding, but Lord Thomas brings her in and sits her down in a place of honor.  So Ellender, dressed in her finest clothes, sitting among the guests decides to humiliate the brown girl by proclaiming.

Is this your bride, Lord Thomas? She cried.
She looks so wonderful brown. 10

Keep in mind, brown, tanned skin was associated with poverty.  Ellender is not simply calling the bride ugly; she saying that despite her wealth she looks poor, she looks "low class".

Lord Thomas doesn't try to defend his new wife.  Instead he proclaims his love for Ellender, and proceeds to heap a few more insults upon the brown girl:

Dispraise her not, fair Ellender, he 
cried
Dispraise her not to me
For I think more of your little finger,
Than of her whole body 11

Now, I hope I'm not the only one who feels some sympathy for the brown girl here.  Her only crime was saying yes to a man who was only interested in her wealth.  Not only does she have to deal with some wedding crashing bimbo calling her ugly, but she has to deal with her brand new husband agreeing with the girl.

I also hope I'm not the only one who takes some satisfaction at the brown girl's response.

The brown girl had a little pen 
knife,
It being both keen and sharp
Betwixt the long ribs and the 
short,
Pierced fair Ellender to the heart 12

Got to love a girl who always carries a knife with her.  You know, just in case.

 Naturally, Lord Thomas responds to the death of Ellender in a rational manner:

Lord Thomas he drew his sword from
his side
As he run through the hall;
He cut off the head of his bonny
brown bride
And kicked it against the wall 13

Ponder that image.  Just take a moment and ponder that slightly hysterical image.

Another version, found in Olive Arnold Campbell's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians is even more graphic:

Lord Thomas had a sword by his side
With a blade both keen and sharp
He cut this brown girl's head smooth off
And cleaved the body apart 14

After dispatching the brown girl Lord Thomas impales himself with his own sword.  His final words are this plea:

Oh mother, oh mother 
And dig it both wide and deep
And bury fair Ellender in my arms
And the brown girl at my feet 15

Now that's what I call an entertaining wedding.

Most versions seem to side with Thomas and Ellender; this one which can be found here even invokes the "rose and briar" motif.16  But, if you do side with the brown girl,  you can take comfort in this ending, found in Olive Campbell's book, in which the living decide to deliver an eternal insult to the dead lovers:

Go dig my grave both wide and deep
and paint my coffin black
And bury fair Ellendry in my arms,
The brown girl at my back

The dug his grave both wide and deep
And painted his coffin black,
And buried the brown girl in his arms
And fair Ellendry at his back 17

 While not all the Child Ballads end like "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender", anyone who takes the time to read a collection of them will quickly notice that most ballads concerning young lovers don't end well.  Why didn't Lord Thomas ignore his mother and bring Ellender home?  Why couldn't have they rode off into the sunset?  As romantic as the tale of Ellender and Thomas might have been to some, what they did violated the norms of the time. Passionate love, did not a marriage make:

.  . . the social order rests entirely on marriage and because marriage is an institution, a legal system which unites, alienates and imposes obligations ensuring  the continuity of of social structures, particularly the stability of power and wealth.  It is not fitting that marriage should embrace frivolity, passion, fantasy and pleasure[.] 18
- Georges Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages

 To allow them to live happily ever after, would also mean condoning such behavior.  Killing them off allowed musicians to sing of romantic love, but keep the social order intact.

Or maybe people enjoyed a blood splattered tale then as much as the do now.




---------

1. Duby, Georges. Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages. trans Jane Dunett. The University of Chicago Press. 1994. pg 3

2. Ritchie, Jean. "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender".  Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians. University of Kentucky Press, 1997.

3. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/03/01/249992.htm?site=science/greatmomentsinscience

4. Ritchie, Jean. "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender"

5. ibid

6. ibid

7. ibid

8. ibid

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_wedding

10.  Ritchie, Jean. "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender"

11. ibid

12. ibid

13. ibid

14. Campbell, Olive Arnold. "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor" (version B).  English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. New York, The Knickerbocker Press, 1917.  Reprint, Forgotten Books, 2012.

15. Ritchie, Jean. "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender"

16.  "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor". http://www.contemplator.com/child/thomas.html

17.  Campbell, Olive Arnold. "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor" (version A).  English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. New York, The Knickerbocker Press, 1917.  Reprint, Forgotten Books, 2012.

18.  Duby, Georges. Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages. trans Jane Dunett. The University of Chicago Press. 1994. pg 32

Strange Fruit

"That is about the ugliest song I have ever heard, ugly in the sense that it is violent and tears at the guts of what white people have done to my people in this country." 

-  Nina Simone (1)

Suffering and art have an uneasy balance. While humanity often dreams of eliminating the horrors of war, death, disease and violence, it is hard to deny that those very things have inspired great works of art.  The bombings of the city of Basque inspired Picasso's Guernica (2).  Angels in America sprung from the AIDS crisis.  And the lynchings in the American South inspired the protest song, Strange Fruit.

 In 1871,  in response to restoration, and the lost in the Civil War (3) "whites roamed the countryside, hunting and lynching Negros"(4). This started a legacy that lasted into the 1960's.  An act of homegrown terrorism "[l]ynching a black man taught other black men to say in their places at the bottom of the economic ladder."(5)  Criminals, murders where never punished and remained free to brutalize black Americans at will.

It was this violence that led Jewish academic Abel Meeropol to write the poem Bitter Fruit, which first ran in the union backed which first ran in the New York Teacher in 1937.  When he latter it adapted Bitter Fruit to music, became Strange Fruit (6)(7).  Writer Dorian Lynskey calls this name change "inspired" saying that it "It puts the listener in the shoes of a curious observer spying the hanging shapes from afar and moving closer towards a sickening realization"(8).  The idyllic myth of sleepy plantations, sweet tea, and southern belles crumbles to reveal decay.

While she did not write and others have recorded it (including singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone),  it is Billie Holiday who is forever linked with Strange Fruit:

'Strange Fruit' was a landmark recording but of a very different kind that was perceived at the time. It was one of first examples of a popular song becoming impossible to disentangle from a single, specific recording  of it. (9)

This is with good reason; listen to the way she sings "pastoral scenes of the gallant south."(10)  The way anger undercuts the sweetness of her voice.  Much like the magnolias in the song, she lures you in for a closer look, and then makes your blood run cold.

Strange Fruit remains a beautiful, yet ugly testimony to the horrors that men do.


-----

Strange Fruit live:



Nina Simone's version: ---------
1.  Lynskey, Dorian.  33 Revolutions Per Mintue: A History of Protest Songs From Billie Holiday to Green Day.  Harper Collins, New York. 2011

2. Cohen, David.  Hidden Tresures: What's So Controversial About Picasso's Gurnica? Slate Magazine: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/2003/02/hidden_treasures.html 2003.

3. Watson, Bruce. Freedom Summer.  Penguin Group, New York. 2010

4. Ibid

5.  Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Defying Dixie. The Radical Roots of Civil Rights: 1919 - 1950.  WW Norton & Company, New York. 2008

6.  Thomson, Graeme.  I Shot a Man In Reno: A History of Death By Murder, Suicide, Fire, Floor, Murder, Drugs, Disease and General Misadventure As Related in Popular Song. Continuum, New York. 2008

7.  Lynskey, Dorian.  33 Revolutions Per Mintue

8. Ibid

9.  Nicholson, Stuart.  Billie Holiday.  Northeastern University Press, Boston. 1995

10. Meeropol, Abel. Strange Fruit.


--------

Yet Another Look: Stagger Lee

I know you're all probably getting tired of old Stagger Lee but . . . this blew me away:

The Collins Kids. Larry and Lorrie.  Larry is probably around twelve or thirteen here. All the little teenyboppers of today ain't got nothing on this kid.  Lorrie is pretty stellar as well.

This has nothing to do with murder but here's another one of their songs:

Larry went on to write such songs as  Delta Dawn and You're The Reason God Made Oklahoma (1).  Not bad.

------------

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collins_Kids

Day of Rest: I Want Jesus to Talk With Me

As I type this, Sunday is about ten minutes away from being over. I hope that everyone had a good one.  I also hope you enjoy Homer Quincy Smith's 1926 recording of I Want Jesus to Talk With Me.  





If you're interested in this song, it can be found here.

The Lonely Grave of Virginia Rappe

While I was in LA this summer, I made a point to visit Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  One of the graves I wanted to check out was the grave of Virginia Rappe.

Who was Virginia Rappe?:

She was a actress in silent films in the late 1910's in early 1920's.  If you haven't heard of her, don't worry she never "made it".  Most of her films roles were bit parts, and many of those films no longer exist.

The details of her life are pretty sketchy.  Biographies of her are a mixture of sordid facts and sordid rumors.  Multiple abortions, venereal disease, children given up for adoption, spiked with lots of nudity and alcoholism.

On September 5th, 1921 she attended a party at the St. Francis Hotel suite of legendary actor Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.  At some point during the party, she became ill.

Four days later she was dead.

An acquaintance of Rappe's  accused Fatty of sexually assaulting the actress and causing the injuries that let to her death.   After three separate trials, Arbuckle was eventually acquitted, but the scandal ruined his career.

Here's her grave:

That some jackass stuck stickers all over

It's almost being over taken by a tree.  Her fiance Henry Lehrman is buried one grave over:

That's it.

Douglas Fairbanks' grave is also close by:

If you wish to read more about the "Fatty Arbuckle Scandal", you can check out these links:

"Fatty Arbuckle and Hollywood's First Scandal"

Fatty Arbuckle and the Death of Virginia Rappe

El Paso

Songwriter and singer Marty Robbins, a native of Arizona and one of ten children, grew up listening to his maternal grandfather tell stories of the west. (1)  This obviously had a profound impact, which can be heard on the, 1959 album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, and the track El Paso. 

In what writer James Miller calls "the last great cowboy ballad" (2), Marty Robbins sings of love, a wicked woman, obsession, vengeance and western justice.  Released in 1959, El Paso is a mini-movie set to music, an "essentially aural version of cowboy b-movies that were so popular at the time." (3) It's a tribute to an American west, not of fact, but of Hollywood dreams.

 The west presented to us in El Paso is "a dangerous place of large passions and empty violence, where death and eros an intertwined." (4)  Moral ambiguity does not exist here.  Laws of conduct are set in stone, and those that break those laws are punished.

Light! Camera! Action!

The narrator "[falls] in love with a Mexican girl" (5) by the name of Felina (or Feleena), and spends the night in the local cantina watching this beautiful girl with "eyes blacker than night"(6) dance.  We've seen her before, the wicked woman "casting [her] spell"(7), and rendering men powerless.  In other songs, such as She's Making Whoopie in Hell, her "spell" is so powerful that the decision is made to kill her in order to break it.  But in El Paso, she prompts a man to murder for the love of her.

The "hero" of our story, discovers his love, his obsession, drinking with a "wild young cowboy" (8).  Overcome with anger and jealousy he challenges the man to a showdown:

My challenge was answered in less than a heartbeat
the handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor (9)

Unlike so many songs, the killer is no nihilistic psychopath, for right after the killing he's shocked by his "foul evil deed" (10) .  Remorse doesn't stop him from stealing a horse and galloping off into the desert.  No judge's gavel need fall for him to know his fate if he stays: his sentence is death.

Yet his love for Felina overwhelms him.  The desert, for all it's dangers is nothing compared to missing her.  Seeing her again is worth dying for, and he knows that he will die.  Women are dangerous creatures, men will not only kill for them, but against all reason, they will die for them. So still in the grips of her spell, the killer rides back to El Paso

When he gets there, he finds a posse of cowboys waiting for him, dashing any hopes the listener may have had for earthly redemption.  It was a foolish hope: a crime of passion or not,  El Paso is still "the staunch tale of a man who kills another and must return to the scene of the crime to take his punishment" (11).  This is the west, and justice must prevail:

I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle 
I feel the bullet go deep in my chest (12) 

Yet death is worth it, because, before he leaves this world, he winds up in sweet Felina's arms.

One little kiss and Felina
Goodbye (13)

A man's dying wish is granted, and the law of the gun still stands.  Everything fades to black and the credits roll.


-----------------------------------------------
1.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Robbins 
2. Miller, James. "El Paso", The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in The American Ballad. ed Marcus, Griel. Wilentz, Sean. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2006)
3. Thomson, Graeme.  I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death by Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease and General Misadventure as Related in Popular Song.  (New York: Continuum, 2008)
4. Miller, James. "El Paso" The Rose and the Briar 
5. Marty Robbins, "El Paso", Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, 1959.
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Ibid
9.  Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Thomson, Graeme.  I Shot a Man in Reno
12. Marty Robbins, "El Paso".
13. Ibid   

Quote of the Week

“He can neither read nor write and in him already there broods a taste for mindless violence.”
— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Day of Rest: Rise Up Lazarus

 An excellent track from Patty Loveless' "Mountain Soul" album. I'm a sucker for great bluegrass harmonies.


 Enjoy the day of rest. Back to mayhem and murder next week.

Another Stagger Lee roundup.

(Other Stagger Lee posts can be found here, and here)

Taj Mahal




Wilson Pickett




Jerry Reed's odd, heavily sanitized version. Billy and Stack have a quarrel over a broad, then make-up. No one gets murdered, no one even gets shot.  Sorry Jerry, but if you're going to cover Stagger Lee, someone needs to end up dead.

 

Quote of the Week - 10/31/12

I say murder is abstract.  You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens

- Jean Paul Sartre

Happy Halloween from Sing a Song of Murder.

I

A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,
But forth of the gate and down the road,
Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

II

Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:
It is only their call that comes on the breeze;
Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:
It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;
Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:
It is only the touch of their hands that grope--
For the year's on the turn and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

III

And where should a man bring his sweet to woo
But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?
Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,
The empty hands that their fellows miss,
Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,
Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

IV

And now they rise and walk in the cold,
Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.
Let them see us and hear us, and say: "Ah, thus
In the prime of the year it went with us!"
Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,
Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.

V

Till they say, as they hear us--poor dead, poor dead!--
"Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed--
Just a thrill of the old remembered pains
To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,
A touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,
As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart--
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight."

VI

And where should the living feel alive
But here in this wan white humming hive,
As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,
And one by one they creep back to the fold?
And where should a man hold his mate and say:
"One more, one more, ere we go their way"?
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the living can learn by the churchyard light.

VII

And how should we break faith who have seen
Those dead lips plight with the mist between,
And how forget, who have seen how soon
They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?
How scorn, how hate, how strive, wee too,
Who must do so soon as those others do?
For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day,
And behold, with the light the dead are away. . .

Edith Wharton, All Souls

                                         

Have a lovely day. Stay away from strange houses and old graveyards. Or don't.

Off Topic: Mutiny in Heaven - Nick Cave and the Cavemen

In between The Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds, there was "Nick Cave - Man or Myth?" and "Nick Cave and the Cavemen" (link).  The latter is pretty clever, huh?  I wouldn't really call them separate bands, more like attempts to try out different names.

But there's this . . .

Can someone please tell me what hell he's saying at the beginning of this video?  Is there anyone out there that can translate drunk-heroin-taking-Australian to English?

Papa Loved Mama

Papa Loved Mama, penned by Garth Brooks and Kim Williams, adds another tale to the the pantheon of tunes about killing your spouse/wife/partner/lover/obsession.  Seems a trucker has discovered that his wife likes to fool around while he's on the road.  Naturally he reacts to this in a calm, rational, manner:


Well the picture in the paper showed the scene real well
Papa's rig was buried in the local motel


Yep, he drives his semi into the motel room where she's holed up with her one night stand. You have to admit, "Papa" was creative.  Significant others in other tunes have been stabbed, shot (a popular option) cut with a razor, and beaten with sticks.  They've also been tied to chairs, then shot.  I'm pretty sure that "Papa Loved Mama" was the first song that involved death by truck.



Ever wanted to hear David Allan Coe cover this song?

Sing a Song of . . . Steamrollers?: The Big Tragedy AKA Slide Her Under The Door

"The Big Tragedy" contains no murders.  Yet the fate of "little Rosemarie" and the reaction of her beloved upon hearing the news of her demise makes it worthy of inclusion here.
When I first became aware of this song, it was titled "Slide Her Under the Door" sung by one Moses Longpiece. Turns out that when DJ Pete "Mad Daddy"Myers (of WHUS in Cleveland)  received the single, the record bore no mention of the title of the song or the name of the singer.  So the "Big Tragedy" became "Slide Her Under the Door" and Johnny Lance became Moses Longpiece.
I almost hate to call this a novelty song.  I love the guitar sound, and Moses' . . . er, Johnny's smooth, deep vocals.  The punchline and the "CLANG" of the instruments brings it together perfectly. A lovely, near forgotten cut from a time when rock n' roll was truly strange.

Another Look: Psycho

(Original post here)

Elvis Costello's version:



Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman give it a go:

Hello Darling . . .It's been a long time.

Yeah, I've been gone awhile.
At the end of last year I decided to stop hemming and hawing and devote my free time to writing a novel.  It's been a long process, and has left me with little time for other writing activities, including this blog.
So am I back? Not entirely.  But fear not!  I've enlisted the help of other writers with similar interests (murder, madness, Nick Cave) to help me keep my little blog alive.  So stay tuned.

Day of Rest: The Cherry Tree Carol

A lovely little Christmas ballad that dates back to the 15th century.  This version is sung by the amazing, and very under-appreciated Jean Ritchie.