Another Look: Psycho

(Original post here)

Elvis Costello's version:



Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman give it a go:

Another Look: Knoxville Girl

Original Knoxville Girl post here.

One of my favorite scenes from the movie "Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus".

Goodbye Earl/The Ballad of Francine Hughes

A song about two lifelong friends dealing with an abusive spouse by killing him and dumping his body in the lake.  They end up happy and he ends up "a missing person who nobody missed at all".  The song is country pop/bluegrass lite, but it's damn fun to sing along to.












While I don't advocate killing abusers, whenever I hear of somebody beating a partner bloody I feel a little twinge that says "five minutes alone with a baseball bat". I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way.   I think this song comes from that "twinge".  Besides, hearing about how Earl made a plea bargain and only got 6 months wouldn't be as fun.

Of course there is a question if the song and it's video treat the subject with a little too much levity.  Battered women do kill their abusers, and unlike the "Goodbye Earl", they seldom get away with it so easily.











The Ballad of Francine Hughes, is a far darker and realistic take on spousal abuse. Francine Hughes (who's tale was also told in the book The Burning Bed, and in the movie of the same name), was abused by her husband for years. Even after she divorced him, he refused to leave the house and continued beating her.  On March 9, 1977, after a particularly brutal beating, Francine set fire to the bedroom that she and her ex-husband shared, while he was asleep in their bed. (Info) (Info).  She was later found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. (Info)

Sung to a traditional melody,  it's half murder ballad, and half public service announcement.  In the interview, Lyn Hardy brings up an issue that I sometime wrestle with when it comes to my love for traditional murder ballads: most of them are about men killing women.  Not just murder ballads; most of the songs I've found are about men killing women.  In most cases that I've found, if a man is murdered in the song, it's usually by another man.

What makes the men in murder ballads different than real-life perpetrators of violence, is that they are often presented as "good guys" who were suddenly overcome by rage, fear, love (yes love), or some other type of strong emotion.  Real life abuse is systematic, and often escalates.  Abusers who kill their spouses have probably abused them in the past.  These aren't crimes of passion, they are premeditated acts of violence.
(Info)

So why sing about it?  The murder ballad appeals to the darker aspect of human nature.  Tossing a abusive spouse in the lake; shooting a cheating spouse with a machine gun;  Getting revenge on a racist cop.  Would we do it if we could?

Francine Hughes wasn't just a woman in a song.  On the night of March 9th in 1977, Francine decided that Mickey had to die.

Cop Killer

I got my twelve gauge sawed off
I got my headlights turned off
I'm bout to bust some shots off
I'm bout to dust some cops off
- Body Count, Cop Killer


If you are old enough to remember the early 90's, chances are you recall that this little song  got a lot of attention. Not from radio stations, not ones that played music anyway. For moral conservatives, Cop Killer represented everything that was wrong with society.  For others it was a reaction to a corrupt police system.  Still other felt that, subject matter or not, Cop Killer was issue of free speech.


The song was eventually removed from the album.  But for myself, and a lot of my friends who grew up during that era, it still represents the rights of the artists vs social responsibility.

Cop Killer came out when a lot of minds were focused on the issue of police brutality.  Many people had witnessed footage of the beating of Rodney King.  About a month after the album was released, LA would erupt in violence in response to the acquittals of the officers involved.





So what is Cop Killer?  A "protest record"? (A Roc Exclusive: Ice T Speaks Out . .  .). Unlike "story songs", protest songs are a call to action.  And in once case "action" was taken.

While on patrol in July 1992, two Las Vegas police officers were ambushed and shot by four juvenile delinquents who boasted that Ice-T's Cop Killer gave them a sense of duty and purpose, to get even with "a f-king pig". The juveniles continued to sing its lyrics when apprehended.  (The Music of Murder)

So was Body Count telling people to go out and kill police officers, or was it simply a fantasy taken to extremes?

Delia's Gone

In high school my friend and I developed this theory: if you sing it slowly and with an acoustic guitar, you can pretty much get away with anything. One example we always provided, was Johnny Cash's Delia's Gone. It's your age old tale of a cheatin' lying woman getting her comeuppance from a vengeful lover. But it's how he does it that makes it so unerrving: he ties her to a chair, and shoots her. With a submachine gun.

I don't think it's a conicidence, that this song came out during the height of gangster rap. But unlike Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre and other of their ilk, their were no hysterical polticians and no complaints from NOW.

Like so many of my generation, this was the song that taught me that country could be cool. This dark, violent, "love song" with the coolest dude on the planet. I still get chills.

Here's an earlier version of the song, with slightly different lyrics. I think it proves that Cash was well aware of popular culture when he updated it for American Recordings:

Nebraska

Unlike the previous songs 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".

(Info on Charles Starkweather, taken from here)

99 to Life

She was my woman

I thought that she'd be true

Now she's gone and left me

You know her life is through.

- Social Distortion, 99 to Life

A simple age old tale. He loved her, she left him and he killed her "with his knife". Now he's in jail for the rest of his life, tortured by her memory.

While released in the 1990's, Social Distortion's 99 to Life, takes much of it's inspiration from another era. Blues and country ballads of love, broken hearts and murder permeate the song. Yet, the hard style of playing, and Mike Ness' rough vocals give the song a very modern edge. Mickey Spillane meets Johnny Cash meets the Ramones.

Don't try this at home . . .