~Kitten Wine~#34: Awakenings prt2: Tonight Were Gonna Party Like It's 1999

In the second of my Blogs about the late 1990s, we look at the events of 1999, possibly the most transitional period of my life, and how it was soundtracked by an oddly beautiful album called 'Overcome By Happiness' by the Pernice Brothers.....

So 1998 evaporated into 1999, and I was still pounding the streets after my re-awakening from the wilderness of self-inflicted isolation. 1998 had played out in what is now, rather shamefully, known as 'the Summer of Single Mothers' (and yes, it probably means exactly what you think it means!), but I still could not have seen the juggernaut that was 1999 coming hurtling towards me.
1999 began with an incident with a mad girl named Alison, and was followed almost immediately by a strange relationship with a married woman (who was actually 7 years younger than me, and had married young) called Melanie. Melanie's (moribund) marriage meant that there were no strings attached in any way, so when one night, exactly 13 years ago this week, I was introduced to someone new, there were no hard or awkward feelings between me and Melanie.
It was Ray who did the introductions....some girl he used to work beside came over and started talking to him as we frequented the weekly Bannockburn meat-market-parading-as-a-disco, and he pointed out that she was the daughter of one of our old High School teachers. This was like a red rag to a bull with me, and I immediately followed her and began talking to her, something I would never have done in the preceding four years. Almost as soon as we began talking, the world seemed to shift on its axis....from that very opening sentence my whole life changed and went in a direction I could never have foretold, nor have ever expected. The girl's name was Elizabeth, but everyone called her Libby, and we've been together from that very first introduction, getting married two years ago.

"I feel better now you're gone// A minute in the sunlight// Can take away a whole life// Still, there's something about you"....the opening lines from 'Clear Spot', a track from the then latest album by the Pernice Brothers, 'Overcome By Happiness', which I had just bought that afternoon, and had played several times before going out that night. The Pernice Brothers had began life as the Scud Mountain Boys, purveyors of aching, poignant alt-Country, but had now decided to play at being a Pop/Rock band....the transition was seamless!
And that opening line hit the (clear) spot perfectly; I feel better now WHO is gone? The depression? The self-enforced exile? The other girls who walked all over me and left their stilettos in my heart? A minute in the sunlight can make you see clearly that all you previously thought you knew was wrong, and it can eradicate a useless existence. There's something about you....and there was....
(the video below says 'Overcome By Happiness', but I assure you this is 'Clear Spot')

'Overcome By Happiness' is a peculiar album, as it features upbeat songs about suicide, heartbreak and desolation, and slow aching songs about true love and contentment. Take for example the song 'Chicken Wire', it's all about a girl who gasses herself in her garage. That's all it is about! We never really find out much about the girl, but we know that the garage is full of chicken wire, along with Winter tyres and an old lawn mower....but it's one of the most beautiful songs you will ever hear....

The whole album is bathed in a particular beautiful light that you only see at certain times in your life. That magical, late Summer light when it's still warm enough to sit outside after 10:00pm, sharing a beer or a bottle of wine with friends, and you feel the first thoughts of Autumn encroaching upon that last ray of sun against the bruised sky. The same light you only see when you're in love.
Take, for example, the track 'All I Know' with it's Beach Boys Smile-era string arrangements and honeyed tenor vocals, it's a song that fully encapsulates that golden late Summer sunshine tinged with the melancholy of that first Autumn day....and that's before we even look at the lyrics; "All your friends may go// And your luck may go// but you'll never feel as bad as when SHE goes// It's all I know". Add to that the verse "All the time you were happy// It makes the end so hard to take// How a voice can fill the room like singing// The crooked moon upon her face"....so why did a beautiful song about the end of a relationship resonate so deeply at the time? Because, as with 'Clear Spot', it was my old life I was bidding farewell to. Don't ask me how, but I knew from the very start that this was the girl I would spend either a long time, or the rest of my life with. And it was time to put away the childish things, to bid adieu to tiresome nights in the pub, to hang up my wild years, to stop feeling like a ship without a rudder, flailing about in stormy and damaging seas of my own making, and to finally get my life into some kind of cohesive order....


Finally, after a decade of unhappiness and blank existing, I could bury the previous 10 years and start again. It was like being back at the tail end of 1989. With Libby the days and nights, especially in that first year or so, would be filled with concerts, going to the movies, restaurants, days out, nights in, and a sense of well-being that I had long believed would elude me forever.
In the gorgeous 'Crestfallen', there lies the exact summation of everything I felt at that time; "Oh I Need somebody who won't see through me// Was happy living a lie// Thought I was fine// Then it breaks without a sign// It's hard to read a simple mind// Leaves me looking back for a thing I'll never find// It's a long way to fall// When you find out how it never was// It's a long way to fall// When you find out that it never happened at all".....

And so, here we are, 13 years on, and Libby and I aren't just still together, but we are now married. Two years ago we got hitched in what became something of a ~Streetlamp~ wedding as both Griff and Ray were my Best Men. It was a spectacular day, almost certainly the happiest day of my life, and something I would have never thought possible back in that grim period of 1994-98. My only regret on the day was that I didn't get more say in the music that was chosen for the occasion. Maybe, I should have chosen a Pernice Brothers track, but maybe the time wasn't right for evening sun-dappled tales of existential anguish, suicide and melancholy.
All I know is, that from the moment I met Libby, all that waiting for something special to happen....stopped!

~Gordon~

Dedicated to Libby....I Love You xxx 

~Kitten Wine~#19: Red Wine And Downers

Tales from the years in exile:

The years 1994-98 may as well have never existed for me!

They were a four year period where I pretty much shut myself away from the world. The depression that had struck in 1991 clearly wasn't going to go away and it clung to me like an ungainly and smudged tattoo. On top of that there had been a succession of disastrous relationships, all of which never seemed to end in the non-acrimonious way they often did in TV and films but in calamitous misjudgements that left me battered, bruised and emotionally scarred. Yet another relationship crashed on the rocks in 1994 and so I called it a day and simply withdrew.

For the previous 10 or 11 years I felt like I had gone out every single night. Staying in at home was almost a taboo....it was unthinkable! In my diary of 1989 I actually write of the shock of staying in one Wednesday night in March....meaning I had gone out EVERY single night in the first three months of 1989. Nights in were viewed as a waste, especially when there were bands to go and see, friends to have a drink with, our own bands to rehearse with, girls to smooch around with, and the feeling that if we stayed indoors something important might happen and we'd miss it!

So now, in mid-1994, I shut myself away. Locking myself in my room with my records, my videos, my books and my ever increasing fondness for Red Wine and Jack Daniels. Red Wine had become my drug of choice....I had progressed from the ludicrously unpleasant German sugarswill of Liebfraumilch and Riesling, through the Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs and had now found that Red Wine suited my mood, and did the job properly.

I also seemed to give up on music at this time too. Grunge and Britpop came and went without affecting me in the slightest. The Nineties became a non-decade for me. Some people, 5 to 10 years younger than me will talk longingly of a decade of Oasis, Take That, The Spice Girls and 'Three Lions', but it all just passed me by.

My own listening pleasure became tainted by my mood; Morrissey, Nick Cave and Tindersticks being the most played artists around this time. Plus a couple of others who suited my mood of the time and who we have come to talk about today.

In the Autumn of 1994 I went on holiday to Lanzarote....NEVER had I felt the need to get away and chillout so completely as I did at that time. Lanzarote isn't a particularly nice place, scenery wise....it's very parched and barren in places but this, and the intense heat felt just what I needed. I had with me a cassette that I had made of two bands I had recently become smitten with; Grant Lee Buffalo and The Scud Mountain Boys, and their music became so appropriate in every way to both the natural landscape and to the landscape of my mind.

I have a vivid memory of sitting on the porch of our apartment at almost 2:00 in the morning, the air still warm and humid, large stretches of scorched earth unfolding before me in the shadows, and the bottle of Red Wine I had for company loosening the grip of anxiety around me....just then 'Lone Star Song' by Grant Lee Buffalo crashed in on the headphones....it was PERFECT! The crunching guitar, the drawled vocals, the shrill harmonica and the blistering guitar solo just complimented everything.

As the wine worked it's magic, 'Mockingbirds' played out, that strange Lennonesque falsetto spinning around my head like refreshing breeze....miles from anyone or any unhappiness.

Another night I recall with remarkable lucidity; it had been an incredibly hot afternoon and we had all sat in the garden of our apartment enjoying a few light ales and the heat and the loooooong sunny afternoon meant that by early evening we were all rather over-refreshed. But we had to go out for our dinner and as everybody lethargically got ready to go out I stood looking out the front door, gazing at the deep crimson sunset, the smell of deodorant and hairspray everywhere, my head swimming in alcohol when 'Honey Don't Think' came on the music player. "It's the luck of the draw// How you wound up with me// I don't know how at all// But I beg you to stay// Crawl around on this earth// While the world's still small"....even now I can't hear those lines without being taken back there.

And then there was 'Happiness', a song I turned to a lot back in those days because of it's irony, and because it genuinely made me feel like everything was alright in the world.

The songs of the Scud Mountain Boys never really had much of an effect until I was back home again and dealing with my own self-imposed exile. Like I said in the opening paragraphs, there was a time when staying in was a novelty, but now by locking myself away, I felt safe. Safe from mental unhappiness and from having make decisions and deal with situations that were causing me deep anxiety.

The Scud Mountain Boys music is so slow and so painfully melancholic that I just enshrouded myself in their warm comforting embrace. Take the first two songs below; 'Reservoir' and 'Letter To Bread'....aren't they just the saddest songs you've ever heard?

Or take their woozy, somnambulent covers on well known songs; 'Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves', 'Witchita Lineman' and 'Please Mister, Please'.....so agonisingly beautiful, can't you feel exactly where my head was at in those dark days?

I also love the contradictory use of fire images in the songs 'Silo' and 'Freight Of Fire'(both in the one clip below); "Well I'm gonna burn the silo when you go" from the former juxtaposed with "Love it comes like a burning freight of fire// Love it dies just like three days without water" from the latter.

I realise that this must paint a sorry picture of someone dealing with their emotional issues with Red Wine and mournfully sad music, and that maybe that's not what this Blog is supposed to be about. We're supposed to be writing about our love of music and the happiness it brings us, right? But sometimes music goes way beyond that....sometimes music really is medicine for the soul, and if it hadn't been for these beautiful songs I can't even begin to wonder where I might have ended up. If you can't relate to any of this, if "it's only just music" then piss off and read an article about Paul Weller or Sting!!

I'd like to finish with a song that isn't by either of the two featured in this article, but which is my ultimate Red Wine And Downers moment; 'Dallas' by Silver Jews. I actually get scared listening to this track as it saw me through many a Cabernet Sauvignon soaked moment of doubt, and the very timbre of David Berman's voice just transports me back to a time and place I hope I've left far behind.

Happy trails to you, my Friends!

~Gordon~