7/31/08

In her lacy black uniform, with her tales of gypsys and angels and loving Lindsey Buckingham more than life itself, it seems, Stevie Nicks is easily one of my favorite songwriters, definitely favorite female songwriter. Her love songs are heartbreaking, her stories are fantastical, and no one needs telling that she's got passion for what she does.

I kind of adore her, actually--though i don't think i would ever personally refer to myself as a priestess. Either way, keep doing your thing, Stevie.

This song is a lesser-known example--lots of people know Landslide or Edge of Seventeen or Rhiannon and can recognize that they're great songs in their own rights. I came across this song by accident when I worked in the city it's named for.

You could be my silver spring
Blue-green colors flashing
I would be your only dream
Your shining over ocean crashing

Don't say that she's pretty
And did you say that she loved you
Baby I don't want to know

So I begin not to love you
Turn 'round, see me running
I say I loved you years ago
But tell myself you never loved me no

And don't say that she's pretty
And did you say that she loved you
Baby I don't want to know

And can you tell me was it worth it
Baby I don't want to know

Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me

Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me

I follow you down 'till the sound
Of my voice will haunt you
You'll never get away from the sound
Of the woman who loves you
--Fleetwood Mac, Silver Spring


Silver Spring was cut off the legendary Rumours--Fleetwood Mac's best-selling album, I believe, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. It's a powerful song, though, and I wonder how it would've affected the feel of Rumours.

What a meaningful line--"you'll never get away from the sound of the woman who loves you." People stay with you over the years. We fight, cry, swear to never speak to each other again, or--sometimes even more sadly--drift away in silence. But every now and then, those people can creep into your subconscious, and sometimes, they can still get under your skin.

I think, with time and moving on, those feelings can go away. But in a love affair like Nicks had with Buckingham, the moving on is relative. She captured her feelings so well in this song and many others, that her songwriting is often tragically romantic.

The last minute or so of the song is especially potent. This performance sends shivers down my spine every time, the way she and Lindsey are just staring at each other. I remember seeing the Rumours cassette tape in my mother's collection as a kid, and i can still so clearly remember staring at the cover, thinking how royal and beautiful and mysterious these musicians looked. It's easy for me to love Fleetwood Mac for having such a great balance of reality and fantasy, storytelling and personal documenting.

The story of Silver Spring, in Stevie's own words

7/30/08

Elliott's Smith song collection has got a whole lot of heartbreak to pine along to. Folk style storytelling with John Keats-like kind of emotions--he was a fantastic songwriter.

You don't deserve to be lonely
But those drugs you got won't make you feel better
Pretty soon you'll find it's the only
Little part of your life you're keeping together

I'm nice to you
I could make it through
That you're already somebody's baby
I could make you smile
If you stayed a while
But how long will you stay with me, baby?
-Elliott Smith, Twilight
From a Basement on a Hill

There's a string break that occurs almost exactly midway in the song that makes something that was so simple seem so much more epic. It's so satisfying, and the same phrase repeats so much it's almost hypnotic. Hypnotized is how i want to feel when i'm listening to a singer/songwriter/acoustic guitar musician like Smith. i want it to be sad and dreamy and beautiful. Joshua Radin, The Spill Canvas-i think they're pretty good at it too, for their respective genres, but they lack the dusty-trail sound that Smith's got in his guitar playing.

He's got that drug chic dripping all over his lyrics, making it a tripped-up, tragic love song for the doomed-from-the-start-everyone's-down-chips kind of romance. He's got in his breathy high notes, too, and in the pop-structure chords, that hypnotic thing. Oh the 90s. You had some great stuff.

i read this book from the 33 1/3 series that reminded me "My Heart Will Go On" beat "Miss Misery" for the Oscar for Best Original Song. Caused the author of a book to write a whole book about why people care about Celine Dion, if somehow a song like that mattered more to the Academy than a sing-along-to-the-sad-story kind of song like Miss Misery.

But Smith sounds a bit different to those who got into him after his death i think. He's a learning tool for us, and while current fans may have really valued his musicianship, those listening closely might take his messages different than his fans did then. It might go for anyone whose art survives them if that's what they were well known for when they were alive--does it resonate differently to the person depending on when they became fans?

I'm inclined to say yes. John Lennon's fans when he was doing all his solo work for example, compared to those who listen to what he's saying now--taken in totally different contexts. To them, he was talking about their plights, and now, we can relate them to ours. People here are still singin' "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" but it's about different issues, with even more history piled on top of what those songs stand for.

The fact we're still singing them? That's a whole other show.

Twilight, from YouTube.

Sidenote: i still don't know how i feel about people putting covers of themselves singing on YouTube. Are you trying to get discovered? Looking for advice to gauge your talent? i don't know, and i don't think there's a wrong answer but, something about it is interesting. There's fucking tons of them.