Proof that there was a time when Perry Farrell was actually involved in making good music.
While the album came out in 1988, I associate it with the summer of 2000: I was working backstage in a production of Wizard of Oz and I had met an awesome new friend. When not at class or at the theatre, I would spend a lot of time writing bad poetry, drinking and listening to this:*
So why is it here? "Ted, Just Admit It" contains samples from an interview with serial killer Ted Bundy.
There's going to be people turning up in canyons, there's going to be people being shot in Salt Lake City , because the police there aren't willing to accept what i think they know, and they know that i didn't do these things.
That's Bundy, denying his crimes. Despite overwhelming evidence, he proclaimed his innocence throughout his trials. It was only until his appeals were exhausted that he began to give details about the murders.
Despite the song's age, there's a certain relevance to it: blood, violence and crime: it doesn't really bother people in this modern age.
*I also spent a lot of time listening to Summertime Rolls, but you didn't come here for a love story.
A brilliant piece written by legendary songwriter Leon Payne, and performed by Jack Kittel. I managed to dig up some info on it here and here.
What I can unravel is as follows: 'Psycho' was written in 1966 by a prolific blind songwriter Leon Payne, who's music career stretched back to the 1930s and who's writing credits include such classics as 'Lost Highway' (Hank Williams) and 'I Love You Because' (Elvis Presleyand Johnny Cash). Depending on who you believe, Payne wrote 'Psycho' in response to a notorious mass shooting spree at the University Of Texas and the strangely affecting letter the shooter left next to the bodies of his mother and wife, or to the story of murderer and grave robber Ed Gein (who also inspired Bloch's book/Hitchcock's movie of the same name), or possibly both. - Record Hunting in Australia
Speaking of Australia, Beasts of Bourbon also recorded a great version:
Sherwood Ross apparently took umbrage at the "lies" told in "The Ballad of Jesse James" and decided to write his own version.
Poor Jesse was not poor
That's a lot of horse manure
He stole half a million from the till;
He was 34 years old
And his only god was gold
And nary a single rich man did he kill.
Ouch. Then again, this Jesse James never cheated on America's Sweetheart.
She'd been dumped there in a patch of trees, and her death barely made the newspapers. This was around the time of the Polly Klaas case — or during some other headline-making search for an abducted girl — and Waits was disturbed at the possibility that kids like Georgia Lee don't get as much coverage because they're too poor, or too black, or too troubled, or they're not photogenic enough, or ...
Sung from the perspective of a murdered girl's father, "Georgia Lee", is a stark, haunting song, that as Mr. Gegenhuber points out, evokes Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground." It's a hymn for the lost; it echos what probably goes through so many minds when we hear about a murdered child: Why, God?
Most of the songs covered on this blog are sung from the murder's perspective. People are fascinated not only with what might go on in the mind of a murder, but with violence in general.
There another side to murders of course, the victims. But one thing about fictional songs, is that since the people in it aren't real, we don't really have to think about the pain and the sorrow that the violent death of someone's loved one causes.
Just as a reminder, here are the lyrics fromKnoxville Girl.
As I've said before I'm not a music historian so finding other's perspectives on certain songs I love is a joy. While fuddling around on the internet a while back. I discovered Murder By Gaslight, which had a post on my beloved Knoxville Girl.
Turns out, while the ballad does have it's origins in England and Ireland, Americans imprinted an actual murder on the song.
The killer didn't just visit this girl's home on Sunday evenings, he dwelt there, which carries a definite suggestion that he stayed the night. Faced with imminent death, the girl says she's “unprepared to die”, which tells us she's not yet had a chance to make her peace with God about some recent sin that's troubling her mind. Her “dark and roving eye” hints that - in the killer's mind at least - she's a bit of a temptress. Although she can now never be his bride, that possibility's evidently been raised, or why else would he mention it? - Paul Slade
Paul Slade also mentioned another great version, Charlie Louvin's version from his 2007 album, Charlie Louvin. It features Will Oldman as well. The song can be found here
I've always wondered what would have happened if Robert Ford shot Jesse James in the front. Would he still be that "dirty little coward"?
How one looks at the killing of Jesse James, probably depends on how they view him. To some he's a hero. To others he's nothing more than a cold-blooded killer, who acted out of self interest and nothing more. This entry could possibly be subtitled "sing a song of a murdered murderer".
I could go on for pages writing about the history of the James Gang, but in order to get to in the events sung about in the song, I'll post a few bios, here, here and here.
At the time of his death, Jesse James was living under the name Tom Howard, in St. Joseph, Missouri. On April 3 1882, he was preparing for a robbery with the Ford brothers, Charley and Robert. James was unaware that Robert Ford had been working with the Missouri governor to bring him in.
The Ford brothers turned themselves in, and were later tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and then pardoned all in one day.
After they left Missouri with their share of the reward, the brothers made extra money by touring. But it seems that public opinion turned against them, and the song "The Ballad of Jesse James" is evidence of that. Charley Ford, suffering from tuberculosis, committed suicide in 1884. Robert Ford, ended up being murdered himself, when Ed O'Kelley shot him in the saloon that Robert Ford owned in 1892.
Some modern historians have a far more sympathetic view of "the coward", others challenge the view of James as a wild west Robin Hood. Yet the legend still stands. Jesse James' name is still invoked as a hero and a rebel against tyranny (unless you're talking about that other Jesse James), and Robert Ford is still a coward and a traitor.
Vernon Dalhart's version, from 1925
The Kingston Trio
Nick Cave's version from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The movie does a pretty good job of forgoing nostalgia, in it's attempt to portray James and Ford.While I question the historical accuracy of Cave's delivery, I think the scene illustrates the public's view of Ford pretty well.
The Pogues version, which makes sure to mention Charley Ford's involvement in the mix.
On 1 August 1966, around 11:30 a.m., he entered the University of Texas Tower. Once in the elevator, he asked for help from an attendant, who informed him how to turn it on. "Thank you, ma'am," Whitman said. "You don't know how happy that makes me." (From www.popsubculture.com)
In 1966 singer, songwriter, satirist and future gubernatorial candidate Richard "Kinky" Friedman was a senior at The University of Texas At Austin. On August 1st of that very same year, Charles Joseph Whitman entered the school's administration building. He took elevator up to the 27th floor. He beat the receptionist, Edna Townsley (who later died), with the butt of his rifle. He fired at Mark, Mary, Mike Gabour and Marguerite Lampour who were walking up the stairs, killing Margurerite and Mark and leaving Mike and Mary injured. He went to the observation deck, loaded his gun, and started shooting at the people below.
Before Officer Houston McCoy fired a fatal shot, Whitman took the lives of 14 people and wounded 32 others. The bodies of Whitman's mother and wife were discovered later.
Kinky would later sing about these events in "The Ballad of Charles Whitman" which can be found on his 1973 album "Sold American".
Unlike Bruce Springsteen's real life killer inspired "Nebraska", Kinky Friedman's "The Ballad of Charles Whitman" is no somber reflection on the nature of man and evil. Told with a mixture of dark humor, and cold hard facts, it's a "biting examination of the culture that produced Whitman" (Fillpo, Chet. Nashville Skyline: The Subject Was Murder).
Naturally this song, upset a lot of people in Austin.
The stark reality of the song affected audiences in Austin like nothing I've seen before or since. There were usually people in the audiences who had had friends or relatives shot in the Whitman massacre, and audience reactions often ranged from tears to screams to anger and fury and occasional attempts to attack Friedman. (Fillpo, Chet. Nashville Skyline: The Subject Was Murder)
While the song is hard to listen to, Kinky Friedman isn't lampooning the murders, he's lampooning the society that cause people like Charles Whitman to happen. Society, and the Eagle Scouts:
I believe there is something in the mind-set of the Eagle Scout that provides an excellent breeding ground for the future mass murderers of America. Maybe it’s that, while the rest of us are desperately trying to extricate ourselves from a turbulent and troubling adolescence, the Eagle Scout is assiduously applying himself to the narrow, maddening craft of knot tying. It’s my theory that in a universe of Eagle Scouts, you’d find an extremely high proportion of psychopaths. (Friedman, Kinky. "Psycho Paths", Texas Monthly. July 2002)
In "The Ballad of Charles Whitman" the things America celebrates are the things that also turn Americans into killers.
Unlike the previoussongs I've written about, the inspiration for Bruce Springsteen's ballad Nebraska can be traced to a man named Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Carli Fugate.
Starkweather, and his girlfriend went on a murder spree across Nebraska and Wyoming that took the lives of 11 people including Fugate's mother, stepfather and baby sister. They were eventually captured in Douglas, Wyoming. At the time of their arrest, he was nineteen and she was fifteen.
Starkweather was sentenced to the electric chair, and Fugate, despite her claims that she was being held hostage was sentenced to life in prison. She was paroled after 17 years.
Many murder songs are sung from a first person perspective, but unlike the fictional tales of Knoxville Girl and 99 to Life, Springsteen is singing from the perspective of someone who actually existed.
The murders in this tale are no crimes of passion, but the violent acts of someone who "loss connection" with his humanity. The song mourns, not for Starkweather, but, like the song says, against the "meanness in this world".
