Take Five: Save me from tomorrow
Which assumes, of course, that we survive today. Music from Rachel's, World Party, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and Sly and the Family Stone are joined by wise words from Nick Cave to weather another week.
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.
1. Egon Schiele — ‘Four Trees’/Rachel's — Music for Egon Schiele
I have a beautiful painting to thank for reminding me of a beautiful album. After staring at a blank wall in my office for years, I finally decided to take advantage of the Iowa City Public Library's Art to Go! collection. You can check out framed art to keep in your home or office for weeks at a time, endlessly cycling through famed prints and locally created works. I was perusing the list when I came across "Four Trees" by Egon Schiele. I knew nothing about Schiele save for the fact that the experimental indie chamber group Rachel's released an album titled Music for Egon Schiele back in the '90s. I hung the painting and listened to the album (whose cover includes another tree painting from Schiele). The expressionist painter, better known for his figurative paintings of oddly twisted bodies, painted this landscape at the very end of his life in 1918 at age 28. It is beautiful, a term I wouldn’t use to describe his more well-known work. The music was composed by the group’s namesake, pianist Rachel Grimes, to accompany a dance production based on Schiele’s life, and features viola and cello accompanying Grimes. Other Rachel’s albums featured more expansive ensembles, so this more stripped-down presentation allows more space for Grimes’s melodies to show through. It’s a soothing day at the office with this view and these songs as a quiet soundtrack.
2. World Party — ‘Ship of Fools’
Anyone who can embed a lyric like "avarice and greed, are gonna drive you over the endless sea" in a funky, hummable tune is some kind of genius. That's the late Karl Wallinger, the talent behind the band World Party. Blending an acerbic wit and serious Beatlesque chops, Wallinger launched a handful of minor hits at the masses, but his world view was always going to make commercial acceptance a tricky proposition. Seeing reference recently to another song titled "Ship of Fools" sent me in search of World Party's take on the concept, and I was reminded of an opening lyric that could have been penned yesterday:
We're setting sail to the place on the map
From which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
By the light of the crosses that burned.
Like Wallinger, I plead, "Save me from tomorrow, I don't want to sail on this ship of fools." I hope enough others eventually feel the same. In the meantime, we have this catchy protest song, still relevant nearly 40 years later.
3. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy — ‘Turned to Dust (Rolling On)’
OK, that World Party track is a little dark, particularly given our current situation. So here’s an antidote of sorts from someone who isn’t usually quite so chipper. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Will Oldham to his mother, has a long, prolific career of blunt, droll, impressionistic songs that are an ever-shifting mixture of country, rock, folk, and oddity. His latest, Purple Bird, was recorded in Nashville, and it is the most accessible, most direct album of his career. Also the most earnest. Take the lead track, “Turned to Dust (Rolling On),” a sort of “can’t we all get along?” anthem that wouldn’t work if Oldham’s tongue was anywhere near his cheek. Its generalities — “A lie's a lie, a truth's a truth / It's all up to me and you” — are sung without the hectoring tone that would sink them, and thus it is difficult to hear it as anything other than a well-intentioned plea: None of us will avoid the grave, so why fight so much while we are here? However, this is no Pollyanna take on the world; the most pointed verse is fairly obvious in its targets —
Tempted by the lure of a liar
Who preys upon the foolish and the weak
If we rely on love to lift us higher
Things'll be all right for you and me
— but it is nevertheless a refreshing sentiment at a time when it is all too easy to lead with unproductive vitriol.
4. ‘Sly LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)’
A key takeaway from a viewing of this new documentary this week is that Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson is a helluva documentary filmmaker. After the great “Summer of Soul” comes this look at the life and work of Sly Stone. It’s deeper than the usual “Behind the Music” take of a troubled artist. Yes, it follows his career arc from early promise through soaring success through drug-fueled fall, but Questlove spends considerable time exploring the “why” as much as the “how,” He explores the idea of black genius, which evolves into a discussion of the burden of black genius, the notion that a black artist too often faces the “be twice as good, work twice as hard, fall twice as far” trajectory. He does so with a deft touch. Family members — by band or birth — are shot against a red background, others in blue, a subtle framing that helps to delineate who was there and who was observing. Interviews with D’Angelo, Andre 3000, George Clinton and others provide context, while interviews with most of the original Family Stone offer an enlightening and sobering perspective. The most telling quote for me came from Mark Anthony Neal, James B. Duke Professor of African & African Studies at Duke University, commenting on a clip from the Mike Douglas Show from the 1970s where the host practically begs a fresh-out-of-rehab Stone to offer wise words to the audience. “Mike Douglas is pushing Sly, ‘can you say to the crowd why angel dust is bad,’ but never asking him, ‘Where were you in your life that you felt the need to have to take angel dust?’ There’s a desire for black folks to blow up in public.” Questlove shows us where Stone was, and it is an eye-opening journey that resonates long after the music fades.1
5. Nick Cave — The Red Hand Files
I have become quite obsessed with Nick Cave in the past year after listening to his entire catalog front to back and then spending considerable time with his latest album, Wild God. Along the way, I rediscovered his “The Red Hand Files,” which I had previously seen on occasion but had not fully appreciated. The Red Hand Files, begun in 2018, is, in a wonderful description by the New York Times, “a recurring online column in which he, a formerly somewhat intimidating figure, answers with moving care and moral clarity the frequently soul-searching questions submitted by readers.” Without fully appreciating Cave, I didn’t fully appreciate the gift of this correspondence with his fans. Early on, much was predicated on his explanations of his own grief after the death of his son, Arthur, but it has expanded to include wisdom on any number of topics, Cave a sort of elder statesman therapist to the masses. The latest post responded to two questions, one from someone feeling it would be difficult to forgive a mean friend, another asking about a mean quote from a much younger Cave about the band the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Cave’s discursive response is a marvel that leaves one in awe of the self-actualization of Chili Peppers bassist Flea. I had long dismissed Cave as a cartoonish presence to my own detriment. I suppose the upside is that I have a wealth of things like this to discover about someone who has quickly become one of my favorite artists.
Listening to a lot of Sly and the Family Stone this week, I couldn’t help but note that Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “Turned to Dust” is essentially an update on Stone’s “Everyday People.”
Right is right, wrong is wrong
No matter what side you're standing on
Can't we all just get along?
As life keeps rolling on
is pretty much the same sentiment as
I am no better and neither are you
We're all the same, whatever we do
You love me, you hate me
You know me and then
You can't figure out the bag I'm in
and the takeaway, depending on how cynical you’re feeling, is either that Stone was a talented songwriter who wrote a timeless anthem, or that we’ve made not a lick of progress on any of this in 57 years.