Songs in the Key of Griff; Both Sides, Now

Welcome to the latest installment in the 'Songs in the Key of Griff' series, in which I attempt to provide meaningful analysis to the lyrics of a song which has come to have a very special meaning for me (see 'here' and 'here'for previously featured songs). Tonight's song is 'Both Sides, Now' one of the best-known songs written by the Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. Most of you will be familiar with this track, as it was written way back in 1967. Shortly thereafter, in 1968, and before Mitchell had even released it herself, Judy Collins' recording of the song reached Number 8 on the U.S. pop singles charts. That same year, Collins' recording reached Number 3 on Billboard's Easy Listening survey and, sadly, that has often been the story of the song since; killed by the dead hand of mainstream music. Just think of an 'easy listening' artist from the last 30 years and then Google to see if they've released a cover version of this song. Yep,they're all there; Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, Roger Whittaker, Clannad & Paul Young (in the ultimate double whammy of blandness), Doris Day, Ronan Keating and (Oh, the Horror!) Susan Boyle. So, why on earth am I mentioning this song on 'The Streetlamp'; I mean it's hardly our usual fare, is it?

Well, actually, I like to think that it is. 'Both Sides, Now' is truly a magnificent song, and that's evident when you hear Mitchell's own versions. However, most artists cover it like it's a facile ballad from a West End musical when, in my opinion, it's nothing of the sort.And when you hear the right artist perform it in the right way, then the subtleties of meaning can be teased out and the song can be truly special again, as you will hear; but more of that later.
Firstly, let's have a look at the lyric.

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; I've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.

I've looked at love from both sides now,
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall.
I really don't know love at all.

Tears and fears and feeling proud to say "I love you" right out loud,
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds, I’ve looked at life that way.
But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say
I've changed.
Something's lost but something's gained in living every day.

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall.
I really don't know life at all.

On the surface, this is a song, as so many of Mitchell's are, about loss - loss of innocence, loss of love, loss of self. But there's something deeper at work here too and a good interpretation can tease it out. When I hear this song; or any song with an often missed 'deeper' theme, like Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen; properly interpreted I'm always reminded of this passage from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis;

"But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation."

So, what am I talking about, and why an I quoting C.S. Lewis, and more importantly, what do I think is going on in this song? My feeling is that Mitchell is taking us here on a trip into the world of the mystic. In particular, she seems to be invoking the concept of Maya (illusion), an idea central to many Indian religions. While Maya has multiple meanings, its basic premise is centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us; the universe as a dream, if you will. Now have a look at the lyric above again. I love the central conceit of this; the comparison between the nebulous, intangible clouds and life and love. This along with the realisation at the end of the song that our perception of things, both emotional and physical, must always be a less than perfect conception of an unattainable ideal make this, for me, a song of true depth and artfulness, and Joni Mitchell's finest song in a career of fine songs.



Now, I want you to hear a version of this song from an artist whom we've previously lionised here as writing songs which are "profound dense, implicative and pregnant with myth and meaning... (whose songs) bear repeated listenings as slowly and magically the full hidden treasure of each is revealed."

I am referring, of course, to long-time Streetlamp favourite Syd Lane (see 'here'). If you're not familiar with Syd (where have you been?) you should know that she is a prolific, Dublin-based writer of pyschedelic-flavoured dream-pop songs and that she releases all of her material for free on her bandcamp site. The good news is that Syd has just released her latest album 'With Your Shield Or On It', and that, as usual, it is chock-full of wonderful, fragile pop nuggets. The really, really good news is that the final track on the album is a cover of...yep, you guessed it, 'Both Sides, Now'. Talk about the right singer and the right song; this is a marriage made in Heaven. I embed it below, for your pleasure, with only this for comment about Syd's version;

She has looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she has read there a different incantation.

Griff
xx

Griff says: Solstice Reborn

Don't worry about the title, this site hasn't suddenly shifted from blogging about music to blogging about games. The Solstice reborn I'm referring to is the latest precious musical offering from Streetlamp favourite Syd Lane (pictured). You may be a little confused at this point, and may even be asking yourself; "Has Griff lost it? Why he rhapsodised over Syd's new album, Hypatia, only last month." Indeed I did, and for those who are not yet acquainted with the very lovely Syd, you can catch up 'here'. But tonight I'm talking about a newer album, or rather a new, old album. Confused? Let me explain.



On the 21st December (the day of the Winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere) 2009, in her home studio in Dublin, Syd Lane recorded nine songs in a couple of hours, with no breaks in the recording process. The album was named The Solstice Sessions and can still be found on Syd's bandcamp page. Syd felt at the time that she didn't want to hold the songs back and, in January 2010, she released the songs as they were, but deep in her heart she knew that, like all great works of art, they weren't quite finished, but instead abandoned. Syd has now returned to these songs and, with Jason Raspa of frogville originally ear-marked for mastering duties but unable to do so, has herself produced the fully realised conception of that which she heard in her mind back on that short Winter's day in 2009. So how does the remastered Solstice compare to the original? Well, magnificent, of course, but whatever I have to say about it I doubt very much that I could top either this review 'here' by the poet Jeremiah James for insight and affection or this 'here' by the irrepressible Smally of Quixodelic Records for sheer enthusiasm and passion. Please check them both out as they really will make you want to listen immediately to this wonderful album. Incidentally, the album now contains 10 tracks due to the inclusion of Love Far Away. I'd like to write more about how beautiful and sincere this music is but I feel constrained not to. I guess that sometimes I feel that Syd is like a tiny, fragile bird that I'll damage if I hold her too tight with my words, so instead I'll let her fly free and leave you with my two favourite songs from the album.






Beautiful! If you loved those, and I fervently hope that you did, then you may also want to check out Syd assisting Jason Raspa on frogville's brand new Syd Barrett covers EP; Songs In the Key of Barrett. As with Syd Lane's, all of Jason Raspa's music, including new album Love, is free to download from bandcamp.






Griff
xx

Songs in the key of Griff: Dark Lonely Street

Now, I know that I generally leave the meanders down musical memory lane to Gordon, but I'm going to break with tradition today and write a retrospective piece about a song that means an awful lot to me, for reasons that I hope I'll soon make clear. In actual fact, it was Gordon who prompted this piece and it's really a companion piece to his own commendable Eddie Cochran blog (see below). After reading Gordon's blog I was struck with two thoughts:
Firstly, I was wryly amused by his mention of my own, off-the-cuff, joke based around the premise that the listeners would have an intimate knowledge of obscure Eddie Cochran B-side tracks. I'm afraid to say that that is indeed a true account of the type of badinage in which the Streetlampers indulge, even when engaged in 15 mile treks across heath and muir . If that glimpse into our day-to-day life makes us seem a little like music-obsessed, anal compulsives then I can only say in our defence... Erm, actually, I can't say anything in our defence, we are what we are, but we're harmless at least!


Secondly, it made me think, for the nth time, about a song that has haunted me from the first moment I heard it, namely; Dark Lonely Street by Eddie Cochran. Interestingly, although it was originally a B-side, I first heard this song on a, hard to obtain, 1985, recorded in mono, vinyl LP that I had borrowed from Gordon. Called 'Eddie Cochran - The Hollywood Sessions', the album features; Eddie, sound engineers and assorted musicians rehearsing songs in a fairly informal way in the studio, while the tape recorder rolls in the background. For a neophyte musician, the album was a priceless insight into the process by which professionals record and how they behave in doing so. What's more, it was agreeably reassuring to hear the multiple false starts and re-takes so familiar to my own musical experience. Many people would consider an album of discarded studio out-takes to be merely a typical music industry, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel, money-making exercise, but to me that album constituded an incalculably valuable part of my musical education. Plus, it brought me Dark Lonely Street.


So what is it about Dark Lonely Street that marks it out from other songs? Let me attempt to explain. A couple of years ago I decided to compile a list of those songs which held the most meaning for me personally. The culmination of this was a blog-piece I posted on Myspace called '15 songs I wish I'd Written' (it was originally 10, but I couldn't confine myself to that. Believe it or not, I actually started with a list of around 80 songs - if you're interested you can see and hear them here). Dark Lonely Street made the cut and featured as one of the 15, and essentially, I suppose, it is because of one line in the middle of its mere 9 lines of lyrics. Here is the lyric in full:

mmm ... mmm ... mmm, this dark lonely street
here am I, I walk alone, I have no love of my own
now each shadow I pass is my looking glass
on this dark lonely street
I'm in love with the dream, of a girl I've never seen
out of reach, out of sight, will I find her tonight
on this dark lonely street?
is my love just pretend, will this dream never end
maybe this cigarette, will help me to forget
this dark lonely street?
mmm ... mmm ... mmm, this dark lonely street

So, what are you thinking? Seems rather slight, perhaps even superficial. Well, I don't think so. Yes, it's sparse and succinct, but it's by no means insignificant. After all, a haiku is composed of only three lines but manages to contain beauty and reveal great truths within that economy. Perhaps it's the very constraint of the medium that makes it so intellectually and aesthetically satifying? The genius of the haiku poet is to focus on 'showing' rather than 'telling' and that's something that Cochran (and song-writing partner Jerry Capehart) manage to such telling effect here. The crucial line, which adds such weight of meaning of the song for me, is:

'I'm in love with the dream, of a girl I've never seen'

The motif of the 'dream lover' is a common one in popular music and has long held a fascination for me through songs such as; Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams', Sunny Clapp's 'Girl of My Dreams' and Patsy Cline's 'Sweet Dreams' to name but three. Where Cochran differs from these songs is that, as well as painting a pithy picture of dark and brooding existential angst, into this he suddenly introduces a further degree of removal from his ideal archetype by singing that; 'he's in love with the dream, of a girl he's never seen'!
He then goes on to ask; 'is my love just pretend, will this dream never end?'

What could he mean? From the moment I first heard this song, this lyric has gnawed at my psyche. In my opinion, this song cuts right to the heart of the nature of love and romantic idealisation, and perhaps even the nature of reality itself. The line "I'm in love with the dream, of a girl I've never seen" shows how aware Cochran was of the self-deceiving notion of romantic love and of how we are all chasing an unattainable exemplar against which reality is a poor and shabby substitute. This lyric can look cynical but to me it's more than that. I believe that in these few lines Cochran shows devastating self-insight with a brutal, penetrating, yet somehow abstruse truthfulness that few pop writers ever achieve. In doing so, he arrives at a philosophical self-awareness that one would normally associate with French existential novelists or ancient Eastern mystics. You think I'm reading too much into a three-minute pop song? Perhaps, but as Gordon would say, if you don't take music deadly and profoundly seriously then you're on the wrong blog.
The other strength of the song is the way in which the music is so beautifully married to the mood of the lyric, something that many song-writers would do well to study. To see what all the fuss is about, here's the song itself on a 78rpm pressing played on a magnificent, classic Dansette-type player (as favoured by our Panda mascot).



An MP3 of the song (minus the crackles) can be downloaded, courtesy of The Streetlamp, here, for further contemplation. For good measure, I'd also like to throw a couple of other cultural nuggets your way. The idea of Maya (the illusive, dreamlike concept of reality found in Indian religions) hinted at here can be found in other Western pop culture artefacts. See the chimerical, intriguing films (and music) of David Lynch or Syd Lane's wonderful, complex album, Hypatia for a very recent example. This type of art, on the edge of the unreal, full of hints, allusions and implications follows in the ancient, mystical tradition; the truth is in there, but grasping it takes both perseverance and a willingness to take leaps into the unknown. Also, as a very good illustration of the unattainable ideal; forever pure and uncontaminated by the disappointment of real life; in popular art I can think of nothing better than this incredible scene from Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane:



One of my favourite scenes in cinema history; I think it's fair to say that not a month goes by since I first saw that scene that I don't ponder on the enigmatic and transcendent truth that it contains.

Well, that's all from pseuds corner for this installment. Normal service will be resumed next time, but I hope that this deviation from my usual posts was at least a little 'enlightening'.

Griff
xx

~Gordon~ Says:
Hmmm....it appears we are mutating into the same being. A hybrid so scary it defies comprehension!
(I see the girl in the white dress every day....but then you knew that!!)
And now I know where that album went to!!

Griff says; Hypatia - beautiful, brilliant, accomplished and free.

I took the above title from a description of Hypatia of Alexandria, the 4th century CE philosopher mathematician, and one of the greatest women of classical antiquity, but it applies equally well to the other Hypatia, who I am introducing this evening. This Hypatia is the brilliant new album by Dublin-based, singer-songwriter Syd Lane (pictured).



Syd Lane has been writing and recording music in her own home-studio for the past seven years, and in that time has released eight full-length records, all of which she has released for free. Many of you will, no doubt, be familiar with her as one of the recurring artists on the excellent Daydream Generation compilations released through the lovely, Scottish-based, Quixodelic Records label.

Originally, however, Syd formed a creative collective in 2004 with poet Jeremiah James under the name The Loaded Whispers. Later the duo changed their name to Chansons De Geste, but the dynamic remained the same with Syd writing, arranging, recording, and performing all of the music and Jeremiah James providing lyrics. The songs they recorded can be heard and downloaded for free at the respective last.fm pages as well as at Syd's tumblr page and the Quixodelic Records site. Do check them out as they are very, very good.

Nowadays, Syd records her music under the Syd Lane name and describes herself as; "a recluse preferring to write and record songs in my home studio than to play many gigs."

So, while you can't expect to see her at your local venue any time soon, at least give thanks that she is still writing and recording because, quite frankly, whatever name she chooses to give herself this is one very special talent. Syd Lane's music can be hard to pin down as it often shifts brilliantly from genre to genre but basically it should appeal if you like dreamy, psychedelic folk-pop with beautifully harmonised female vocals.


The new album, Hypatia, contains 12 tracks, each given a single feminine name and, even now after listening to it several times, I'm hard pushed to pick out favourites. Every song seems to come replete with a clever, unusual arrangement but still manages to contain a catchy melody. The lyrics are dense, implicative and pregnant with myth and meaning. It's the sort of album that will bear repeated listenings as slowly and magically the full hidden treasure of each song is revealed. But don't take my word for it, after much thought, I've embedded three tracks below to illustrate what I mean.

First up, conventionally enough, is track one; Maya. This is a hymn to the mystical concept in Hinduism which manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality in the phenomenal universe. And what's more, it opens with 'In Heaven (the lady in the radiator song)' from David Lynch's incomparable 1977 classic Eraserhead; any song that incorporates that particular cultural nugget was always going to be a Streetlamp team favourite.




The next song I'd like to feature is track 7; the short and much more playful 'Kate'. This song owes an obvious debt to the kooky pastoralism of Syd Barrett, and again this was bound to immediately endear it to the Streetlampers.




Finally, here's track 9; Siren. This is a cover version of Tim Buckley's renowned and remarkable Song to the Siren. It's generally agreed that this is Buckley's greatest song and I, personally, absolutely adore the This Mortal Coil version (which interestingly enough featured on another David Lynch masterpiece; 1997's Lost Highway). However, the Syd Lane version stands it's own ground in this accomplished company. Syd's ethereal, gossamer-light vocal floats over the top of a doomy, bassy accordian/organ accompaniment. It's the song I love, but played as a funereal sea-shanty; and you know what? I love it even more.




Hypatia is available as a free download on Syd Lane's bandcamp page or, if you like, you can donate a little money. As regards her attitude to art and commerce Syd has this to say:

"So I recently joined bandcamp.com. On the front page, there are praises being sung by users of the site, and on more than one occasion I have seen musicians referring to their customers.

I don’t like the idea of musicians and artists having customers. Something about that makes me feel strange and uncomfortable.

I have set my records for free, and there is also an option to donate upon downloading if you like. I’ve done that because over the years people have wanted to have a way to send me money for my music. Certain people have felt wrong about taking it for nothing, and have asked me to allow them to send money. I appreciate the thought behind this - it’s a beautiful idea that they want to support me to continue making music. But I personally love to give my music away for nothing, I don’t like having a price on it… There is no price in the world that could denote all of my thoughts and dreams and tears and love going into these songs."

I think that is a beautiful, well-expressed and profound sentiment; much like a Syd Lane song, in fact.

Enjoy!

Griff
xx