Mozart's Third Brain

Göran Sonnevi's Mozart's Third Brain (translated by Rika Lesser) is a long poem of a restless, dissatisfied mind pondering problems ranging from the global to the most intensely personal. Here is all of an unusually short section that struck me (LXXVII):

Not in vain do you give me your rose The transparent forms
are reborn; from them everything arises All leaves, birds
All the images Growing quickly, quickly destroyed

I will not let you down A flower opened your heart
Now you open mine, again, with your rose, shining dark red
The yellow pollen from eternity's sunflower falls on the table

This recalls the T. S. Eliot of Four Quartets, while also being utterly independent of Eliot as it shifts rapidly between image and abstraction. (Eliot hovers in the background at other moments throughout the book, as does Wallace Stevens; I kept hearing echoes of "The Man with the Blue Guitar.")

A passage from the previous page (section LXXV) seems to me to represent how this poem works. This does not contain any of the specific references to events of the time of the poem's writing (early to mid 1990s) that pepper the poem (especially the genocides in the Balkans and in Central Africa), but it is otherwise exemplary of how Sonnevi thinks and writes:

... I pledge allegiance to the contaminated
world, such as it is, in its luminous right . . .

What sort of imaginary community do I seek? Which one
is active, est agens, within me? I project the collective Sade!
The collective Mozart! As if there were no difference!
Summed up in the Gödel-face, dark Beneath the real Gödel's
shy gray shadow In which group do I seek protection? Whom am I
excluding? Which flame of self-forgiveness consumes me?
Societies float gently, like ashes An architecture of smoke

I love the first sentence quoted here, which reminds me of Greg Brown's wonderful song "Two Little Feet": "It's a messed-up world but I love it anyway."

Sonnevi addresses this "allegiance to the contaminated / world" in more specifically political terms later in the poem: "The right to say no is the basis of democracy But only within the matrix of / a deeper yes" (section CIX). There's a philosophical point here resembling Nietzsche's insistence that one must affirm all of existence in order to affirm even one moment of one's life. But the political point is even more startling: democracy provides a space for dispute, for negation, for expressing a choice between options—but it does not (and cannot?) provide for the rejection of that space itself. You have to affirm the system of democracy in order to "say no" to some issue within that system. More specifically, you have to say yes to the result the system produces even when you do not like the result.

That's why I get very angry about claims that one's taxes should not be used to pay for things one doesn't agree with—whether the claim that school vouchers should be provided for private school or that pacifists have a right to refuse to pay taxes because of military spending. (An example from both sides, but it is usually "conservatives" who ask for the right to be exceptions to the system, in my experience.) — That's not a point about Sonnevi's poetry, but it shows how far his work takes you when you follow its leads.

Ani DiFranco, Evolve

Ani DiFranco is so prolific that I have ended up avoiding listening to her music for a long time, because I was somehow sure I would be so into it that I'd end up wanting to be a DiFranco collector (the way I am a Greg Brown collector or a Bill Frisell collector: with completist ambitions). Now I've finally started listening to her with this CD, Evolve, from 2003, and I was right: this music makes me want more. If this were a band, I could rave about the great singer and the great songwriter and the great guitarist and the great arrangements, and I'd be praising several different people, but it's all Ani D, and it's all fantastic. The songs are built around her guitar work (mostly acoustic, mostly superb fingerpicking), with some additional instruments added for most of the tracks; the instruments provide her with the foundation for her bold singing: she has a great voice, and she takes it everywhere she can. Favorite line, from "Slide":

The pouring rain is no place for a bicycle ride;
try to hit the brakes and you slide.

I was running when I listened to the album, and I heard this line and just knew the song was called "Slide." :-)

(This was not Simfy listening, but finally giving my full attention to something someone gave me a while back.)

Haze, by Mark Wallace

We live now in an empire which, in the name of reasons, has stolen our lives away from us, but which will then sell them back to us at the cost of all that we have ... ("Reasons To Write")

These lines from the brief opening essay in Mark Wallace's Haze made me think of some of my most-quoted lines from Greg Brown's song "Where Is Maria":

There'll be one corporation selling one little box.
It'll do what you want and tell you what you want
and cost whatever you've got.

As an iPhone owner, I quote these lines all the time! :-)

Another passage from Wallace's book made me think of another of my favorite musicians, this time Ornette Coleman, who once said something to the effect that he knew that the music he was playing had a system when he realized that he could play wrong notes:

Discourses create a network of statements it seems relevant to think and say. One of the main ways to recognize that one is in a discourse is through the feeling that one recognizes when other people make statements irrelevant to the discourse. ("The Haze")

And later in that essay, Wallace reminds me of Mark Rowlands's claim in The Philosopher and the Wolf that it is in our moments of defiance that we are most ourselves:

Haze shows that the potential of the human can be found just as much in what resists organized Discourse as in what organizes Discourse.

This could probably all be worked up into a nice little essay but I'll just leave it at that.

Against Naturism; If I Had Known

Roddy Lumsden's "Against Naturism" (from his collection The Book of Love) presents the case against nudism—more precisely, the case for clothes:

For me, I have to see the clothes come off:
the way a button’s thumbed through cotton cloth —
a winning move in some exotic game

with no set rules but countless permutations —
or how a summer dress falls to the floor
with momentary mass and with a plash
that stirs us briefly as we ply our passion;

For me, that summer dress's whispering fall quietly echoes Greg Brown's "If I Had Known" (from his CD "Down in There"; covered by Human Shields last Friday):

She was older than me I guess;
summer was invented for her to wear that dress.

I'd never pictured the taking off of that dress quite so explicitly until I read about it in Lumsden's poem. (Another lovely feature of the poem is the striking word "amidkiss"—as in undoing a clasp "amidkiss.")

Top 5 songs of 2008

Once I factor out the Grateful Dead tunes, here are my top five tracks from my last.fm charts for 2008:

Greg Brown, Canned Goods
World Saxophone Quartet, Hattie Wall
Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
Greg Brown, If I Had Known
Greg Brown, Cold and Dark and Wet

The next highest one that is not by one of those guys/bands is Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," followed by Chris Smither's "Leave the Light On."

An old Deadhead who loves jazz and folk, that's me. :-)

Brand New Dodge

Whenever it's November 22, and I happen to notice that it is, I think of Greg Brown's "Brand New '64 Dodge":

Money comes out of Dad's billfold.
Hankies come out of Mom's purse.
The engine hardly makes a sound
even when you put it in reverse.
It's got a push-button transmission,
hardtop convertible, 4-door.
It's November of '63
and the brand new Dodge is a '64.

And we're rolling slow down Main Street.
The asphalt and gravel crunch.
Church is finally over
and we're going to have our Sunday lunch.
And then I will play football
with my buddies down in park.
Later I'll dream about my girlfriend
as I lie alone in the dark.

She's got short red hair and blue eyes
and her swimsuit's also blue
and her little brother is retarded,
but Jesus loves him, too.
And Jesus loves our president,
even though he is a Catholic.
There's a lot for a boy to think about
as he walks along the railroad tracks.

And my sister won't get carsick
'cause we're going only half a mile
and the car still has that new car smell
and dad looks like he might smile
and the world is big and full of Autumn
and I'm hungry as can be
and we're in our brand new '64 Dodge
in November of '63

(If you are into Bob Dylan or Neil Young, and you don't know Greg Brown, then do yourself a favor and check him out! This one's from his wonderful CD "The Poet Game," but almost all of his CDs are wonderful; you can hardly go wrong.)

Even This; Eugene

Resonances between poems and songs are often intriguing, especially if I am pretty sure the poem and the song have never met outside my mind.

Here's a phrase from Reginald Shepherd's "Even This," from his book Fata Morgana:

... Keep walking
and the lake finds you,

That recalled Greg Brown's "Eugene," from his CD The Evening Call:

The dog is bound to find me sooner or later
Sometimes you got to not look too hard
Just let the dog find you

*

Both of these are available on-line, but instead of looking them up on-line, you should buy the collection and the album. They are both magnificent.

Greg Brown in London in April

My main man Greg Brown will be playing in London on April 18 at the Luminaire.

I probably won't be able to pop up from Basel for the show, as my daughter Luisa's fourth birthday is on April 17. (Unless someone gives me an official reason to be in London, say inviting me to read my poems at a poetry reading, or perhaps to do a reading of my Dieter M. Gräf translations at the Goethe Institute or something like that. Hint, hint?)

But if you live in or near London and are a fan of excellent songwriting, then you owe it to yourself to go check out Greg, who is simply one of the very best songwriters alive.

He's also playing two nights in Paris (April 15/16 at the Pomme d'Eve) and one night in Italy (April 17 in Seveso) before London, and the Blue Highways Festival in Utrecht on April 19, so if you live in (or near) one of those places (or you need an excellent excuse to go there), check him out.

Dylan as poetry 2

In their comments on my post on Dylan as poetry, Don Brown emphasized the element of performance as essential to the poetic quality of Dylan's lyrics, while Brian Campbell pointed out the absurdity of the apparent literary-critical assumption that evaluation of lyrics as poetry means that one should ignore the music when considering the "poetic quality" of a lyric. In his second comment, Brian quoted the comments on his blog by R. W. Watkins, who did not dispute that songs can be evaluated as poetry, but argued that Dylan is not the best example (Nick Cave and Tom Waits, among others, being better).

Several responses:

— Anyone listing people who are at least as good as Dylan should go and listen to a whole bunch of Greg Brown. (Do I proselytize? Yes, I proselytize. I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Don and Brian's comments mesh nicely: the performance of the music is essential to a great lyric. This has some implications about how the songwriter's goals are different than the poet's. When writing a song, I am extremely focused on how the words feel in my mouth when sung, as it were. Further, listeners to songs want to sing along, and that has an immense influence on what constitutes a good lyric. When I read poetry, which I do so quite passionately, I am looking for many things, but I don't think that "singing along" is what I am looking for, either literally or figuratively.

— The pragmatist in me says that I should stop discussing Dylan as poetry hypothetically and look at a lyric and a poem. So here's "All Along the Watchtower" (words copied from bobdylan.com):

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

To have something to compare this to, I used some random-number generation (and a bit of hedging) to pull a book out of my poetry collection and find a poem with a similar structure. I ended up with Philip Larkin:

Who called love conquering,
When its sweet flower
So easily dries among the sour
Lanes of the living?

Flowerless demonstrative weeds
Selfishly spread,
The white bride drowns in her bed
And tiny curled greeds

Grapple the sun down
By three o’clock
When the dire cloak of dark
Stiffens the town.

— I won't go into an analysis of the differences between the two, and of their relative quality. But one thing is quite clear here that I have long noticed as a significant difference between songs and poems: enjambment is rare in songs, or even completely absent (due to the conventions, I guess, of melodic phrasing), while it is an essential tool of the poet, whether in formal verse or in free verse.

If anyone would like to comment on these two texts, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Dylan as poetry

I posted this comment on Matt Merrill's post about Dylan. Matt was responding to this piece (which I have not read yet).

*

First of all, it's a little hard to test Dylan's lyrics as poetry, since his best texts are ones that one is mostly already familiar with. Perhaps Andrew Motion (and you and I) should have read the lyrics to all the songs on "Modern Times" before listening to the CD. An experiment for his next album?

Secondly, I'm a little unsure about the idea of "depending for effects on the music"? It's hard to separate the music and the text, of course, but just because the music provides effects does not mean the text could not stand alone. To use your example of RT: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" is a wondrous text. I can't imagine without the music, because I know RT's version too well, as well as Greg Brown's superb cover of it on his "The Live One," but the text is still flawless.

Finally, I have a collection of Greg Brown's live covers of Dylan that is fantastic. I can send you a copy if you like.

Great Waters

Great Waters Folk Festival, August 3, 2007
Wolfeboro, NH

My sister Sara and I drove up from Northborough, Mass., to hear Greg Brown at the Great Waters Folk Festival. A drive that should have taken at most two-and-a-half hours ended up taking four because we were stuck in traffic so often: we counted seven accidents on the way up to the concert. Luckily, none of them involved us, but Sara told me the next day that, as a doctor, she had a bad conscience about not stopping at the last of them, where I saw a motorcyclist's head being cradled by others involved in the accident. But what could she have done, she added, since she had no medical bag with her. "Murdercycles," an ER doctor she once knew called them.

So we arrived in Wolfesboro with just enough time to locate our B&B, drop off our stuff, and pick up some sandwiches on the way to the festival. We arrived a minute or two before David Jacobs-Strain took the stage. He played a short solo set that featured his bluesy guitar-playing and singing. He is a sort of cross between a blues guitarist and Michael Hedges, deft with the slide and left-handed touch-tapping. His versions of Robert Johnson ("Come On In My Kitchen" and "Walkin' Blues") on National resonator guitar were strong, but he has the young virtuoso's tendency to overplay, to try to show off everything he can do in every song, rather than just play the music that the song needs. That said, his musicality still shimmered through all the way through the set; he just needs to relax and stop pulling out all the stops all the time! A cliché, of course, but he does overplay, and when he stops doing so, he's going to be a great performer. Check him out now, and then in about ten to twenty years.

Sara and I went to the festival to see Greg Brown, but Sara was also looking forward to hearing Alison Brown, whom she went to Harvard with back in the early eighties; they attended a sophomore History and Literature seminar together. After a spell as an investment banker, AB returned to music; her specialty is banjo in a bluegrass-jazz fusion that recalls David Grisman and Bela Fleck. She has technique to spare, but it never seems to take over the music, which is relaxed and spacey, with the piano solos by John R. Burr bringing in a more edgy element. Unfortunately, the electric bass was mixed to high at this show, so the interaction between Burr and Brown (which is wonderful on her albums, as I later discovered) was not as clear as it should have been. But the highlight of her show was when AB introduced her road manager, "who always makes sure we have breakfast and don't oversleep," and out came her daughter Hannah (who must be about six or seven) to sing "California, Here I Come."

Neither Sara nor I had ever heard Chris Smither before (although I knew his name as the author of "Love Me Like a Man," recorded brilliantly by Bonnie Raitt and Diana Krall), and he floored us both. I had picked up "Leave the Light On," his latest CD, a few days before the show and had already become attached to it, but as the CD is with a backup band, I did not realize that he was such a brilliant fingerpicker. Virtuoso finger-pickers can often be a little stiff rhythmically, but Smither plays with a breathtaking fluidity that never ceases to swing and never descends into showing off. All that with a foot-tapping beat, even on ballads. His lyrics are sharp, too, and interestingly, his singing is much clearer live than on the CD (usually, after all, it is the other way around). His patter is also memorable, including this great line in the introduction to a song for his now 91-year-old father: "Your parents never forget how to push your buttons. That's 'cause they installed them." He played several memorable songs from "Leave the Light On": "Origin of Species," a hilariously funny take on "intelligent design"; "Diplomacy," an equally funny take on contemporary politics; and the utterly gorgeous title cut, one of the most beautiful songs to cross my path in several years. He closed with that one, and it left me in tears.

But I've got plenty left I've set my sight on.
Don't wait up; leave the light on;
I'll be home soon.

Northern Lights followed with a set of bluegrass, with Alison Brown sitting in on banjo. NL's extra twist is their approach to vocals: at times, they sound like a bluegrass band with old-style R&B harmonies ("Baby, I Love You"); at others, the singing is more like barbershop than anything else. Guitarist and vocalist Ben Demerath impressed me with the wide range of styles he turned his crystalline voice to; sometimes he even sounded like a Beach Boy. The highlight of their set for me was a rousing version of Little Feat's "Fat Man in the Bathtub", but there, especially, I noticed what was missing for me in their arrangements: extended soloing. This old Deadhead prefers his bluegrass with more room for the players to blow; half-chorus solo exchanges just don't let them develop any ideas. Perhaps NL kept the solos short because they were only playing a forty-minute set, but I suspect that they are "just" a bluegrass band (with short solos) rather than a jam band (oh would I love to hear Railroad Earth, Yonder Mountain, or Hot Buttered Rum live in Basel).

So after four opening acts, one of whom immediately became someone I want to listen to extensively (Smither), Greg Brown finally took the stage. This was my second chance to hear him live in 15 years of fandom (after a February 1998 show at the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA; basically, I only get chances to see him when he happens to be in New England at the same time as a visit to my sister), and his set, though short, was more than worth the extra trip up to Wolfeboro (and the seven-accident delays).

The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home
Louisiana 1927 (by Randy Newman)
Oily Boys
Jesus and Elvis
One Wrong Turn
Billy from the Hills
Here in the Going, Going Gone
Joy Tears
He Reached Down (by Iris Dement)
Two Little Feet
Wash My Eyes

A few comments:

— The opening pair of songs moved me as much as Smither's "Leave the Light On." Greg dedicated the first to Northern Lights and Alison Brown (whom he first referred to as Alison Krauss, before correcting himself and apologizing that he had just been talking about A. Krauss with A. Brown) and the second to Chris Smither. "Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline": Greg sang this song with such power and beauty that I thought, "This is the song that was worth the whole trip."

— "Oily Boys," GB's indictment of the Bush administration, received a huge round of applause, and it has received much praise from Greg's fans on the Greg Brown Yahoo group, but the song leaves me flat. I have 703 tracks of Greg's music in my I-Tunes library, and only two of those tracks are songs I don't like, this one and "My Famous Friends" from the 1999 live CD "Solid Heart." I wholeheartedly endorse Greg's politics here, but he has written much better political songs, ones that address issues more with more irony and poetry, as in "Spring Wind":

Oh to clean our dirty planet,
now there's a noble wish,
and I'm putting my shoulder to the wheel
'cause I want to catch some fish.

— "Jesus and Elvis" was preceded by a lengthy introduction explaining the origins of the song. Greg once found himself at a display of black-velvet paintings in a Missouri parking lot, the centerpiece of the exhibit being two huge paintings, one of Jesus and one of Elvis. Instead of seeing this as a symbol of a choice between Jesus and Elvis (which would be "Jesus or Elvis"), he saw it as a chance to accept both: Jesus as a symbol of gratitude that one is alive and Elvis as a symbol of rock-n-roll. Or as he put it: "We're so grateful that we need to shake our ass."

— After "He Reached Down," Greg asked for requests. I called out "Letters from Europe," and he said in a surprised voice, "Letters from Europe?" I was not really disappointed that he did not play the tune (I did not really expect him to have that old one at his fingertips or on the tip of his tongue), and the rousing version of "Two Little Feet" was definitely wonderful. After the show, Sara and I hung out by the stage, and eventually Greg came out to fetch his guitar. I explained my request to him; as a resident of Switzerland, I have a soft spot for that song, and we chatted about my chosen country for a bit. His great insight from his visits here back in the eighties and nineties: the Swiss have a great country and always downplay it, as if they don't recognize what a beautiful place it is. Sara and I later realized that we should have asked Greg to sign the CDs we had bought! And I wish I had asked him if I could take a picture of him and Sara. (And none of my photos of the performers came out well. Oh well.)

Massachusetts

I'm off to Massachusetts for two weeks. Perhaps I will post from there, perhaps not.

Miles and Luisa are traveling with me; Andrea has to go to Kassel to take care of her mother, and little Sara is going along with her.

Greg Brown on August 3, somewhere in New Hampshire! (My sister Sara knows where to go.)

Songs to listen to

Okay, here's my list of killer songs to listen to, again in alphabetical order (as with my songs to play list):

1. Down on the Corner, by Creedence Clearater Revival

Or when played by Blues Nettwork, a Basel blues band, with a tuba playing the bass line.

2. It's a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong

Especially at the end of the Madeline movie with Frances McDormand, when Madeline and her fellow pupils are running around overjoyed!

3. London Calling, by The Clash
4. Love Has Come To Town, by Talking Heads

What a bass line!

5. Loving Cup, by The Rolling Stones

But actually, it was Phish doing this one live that really blew my mind.

6. Morning Dew, by The Grateful Dead

Especially Terrapin Station - Drums - Space - Morning Dew in Ventura, July 22, 1984.

7. Mystery Achievement, by The Pretenders

Another brilliant bass line. Jack Sayers used to play this one brilliantly in various bands back in my Stanford days.

8. Spring and All, by Greg Brown

That's just my Greg song for today.

9. Visions of Johanna, by Bob Dylan

The Dylan song I love most at the moment, after the brilliant version in Zurich a few weeks ago.

10. Who Are You?, by Tom Waits

Or any other T. W. ballad.

Songs to play

"I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Borges and I")

Many people have been posting lists of songs that blow their minds. My list of songs includes those that it blows my mind to play. In alphabetical order by title, with the line I most like to sing:

1. Comes a Time, by Neil Young

It's a wonder tall trees ain't layin' down

2. Friend of the Devil, by The Grateful Dead

Got two reasons why I cry away each lonely night

(especially on mandolin)

3. I Love Paris, by Cole Porter

I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles

(Oh, that shift from minor to major!)

4. If I Had Known, by Greg Brown

Summer was invented for her to wear that dress

(That line is so cool that I stop strumming to sing it)

5. New Coat of Paint, by Tom Waits

Heard the mystery shuffle of an overflowin' day

6. No Woman, No Cry, by Bob Marley (though it was written by Vincent Ford, Marley's guitar player at the time)

In this great future, you can't forget your past

7. Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen

And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him

8. Things We Said Today, by The Beatles

Me I'm just a lucky guy

9. What a Wonderful World, by Sam Cooke

Maybe by being an A student, baby, I could win your love for me

10. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, by Bob Dylan

I could stay with you forever and never realize the time

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed."

Well, it's February, so in keeping with my plan to read one HP book every month until the new book comes out in July, I recently finished HP and the Chamber of Secrets. Little did J.K. Rowling know when she wrote the above that it was her own book that people would be causing people to run into doors.

I was surprised to find this little bit of morality at the end of the book, which I surely noticed before but had forgotten:

"It is our choices, Harry, that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Another spin on talent and effort? It also reminds me of this article by James Surowiecki, with its wonderful conclusion: "culture is what you do, not who you are."

Jeet Thayil in Softblow

I enjoyed Jeet Thayil's poems in Softblow, especially the poem "To Baudelaire":

To Baudelaire

I am over you at last, in Mexico City,
in a white space high above the street,
my hands steady, the walls unmoving.
It’s warm here, and safe, and even in winter
the rain is benign. Some mornings I let
the sounds of the plaza—a fruit seller,
a boy acrobat, a woman selling
impossible fictions—pile up in a corner
of the room. I’m not saying I’m happy
but I am healthy and my money’s my own.
Sometimes when I walk in the market
past the chickens and the pig smoke,
I think of you—your big talk and wolf’s heart,
your Bonaparte hair and eyes of Poe.
I don’t miss you. I don’t miss you when
I open a window and light fills the room
like water pouring into a paper cup,
or when I see a woman’s white dress shine
like new coins and I know I could follow
my feet to the river and let my life go
away from me. At times like this,
if I catch myself talking to you,
I’m always surprised at the words I hear
of regret and dumb boyish devotion.

*

Or, as Greg Brown put it:

I'll be happy happy happy happy happy, just by myself.

What's on my desk

C. Dale Young posted a list of everything on his desk. I posted a comment with what is on my desk, but actually only with what is on the top of the piles, plus a few stray things:

These are the things on TOP of the piles:

The latest issue of Conduit.
Bill Coyle, The God of this World to His Prophet (which I received because I did not win the New Criterion Prize for 2005)
Two DVDs of Greg Brown concerts.
Amy Clampitt, The Kingfisher (waiting to be given to a friend, since I have her Collected Poems)

Then some stray things:

A pink highlighter; a lost pen cap; a small post-it pad; a black Pentel mechanical pencil; some ungraded papers; a guitar tuner; an electronic letter scale; a green clothespin; a small package of Kleenex.

What do you have on your desk?

Greg Brown at JR's Warehouse, Traverse City, MI, May 28, 1991

Warning: What follows will not mean much to people who are not already Greg Brown fans. If you are not yet a Greg Brown fan, that means one of two things:

a) You have never heard him (or perhaps even never heard of him). Please rectify this problem by buying at least one of his CDs. My recommendation for a starter: "Dream Café" from 1992. But "Down in There," "The Poet Game," "Further In," and "Slant 6 Mind" are all brilliant, too, just to name a few.

b) You have listened to Greg but somehow not recognized just how utterly brilliant he is. This makes me sad, because you have missed something! :-)

Anyway, this is a review of a 2-CD recording of a concert of his in 1991. For insiders, but of course outsiders are allowed to read it, too.

Greg at JR's

"You Drive Me Crazy" is the opener; as with several other tunes from "Dream Café" here, it must have been quite new at the time (the "unit" had not yet been released). These tunes all sound pretty close to the album versions here, as well as to the versions on "The Live One." (The other DC tunes are "I Don't Know That Guy," "No Place Away," and "Spring Wind.")

"Good Morning Coffee" has the "Earl Grey kind of guy" story with the "expensive, greasy little buggers." It's a very quick and energetic version.

"I Don't Know That Guy" is lovely and haunting (but then I love this song); Greg introduces it as being about an "evil twin."

The introduction to "If I Had Known" is about how much Greg likes albums; I like the point about how albums would change over time in a way that CDs do not. Remember how one would get to know one's own copy of an often-played record? (Still, I don't understand why he insists that you can't call CDs "albums"; after all, a CD is still an "album" in the sense of a "collection," as in a "photo album.")

"If I Had Known" is more poignant and plaintive than some more recent versions, which often get bluesier than this version. I wonder if he knew when he wrote this one just how good it is (and how "better and better than it's already been" it would keep getting).

"No Place Away" is a haunting song even one is familiar with it, but imagine hearing it here when the CD had not been released.

"Fishing Blues" closes the first set and is real groovy, with lots of Greg's lovely, driving finger-picking and the British-trout rap: "Oh, I hardly think so" (Greg's version of "I would prefer not to"?).

Still on the first CD, the second set opens with "In the Dark with You," slower than the studio version. It is as if the song were both more subtle and more explicit at the same time: the music is more relaxed, but the sensual side of the song comes through a lot more clearly.

"Dream On" follows, also a bit quieter and subtler than on "One Night," the picking of the chords less pronounced, the guitar playing more drumlike, as it were. "Heavy-lidded eyes."

I always like "Speed Trap Boogie" without the studio effects and with the wonderful rapping. "Earl? Come in, Earl. Wake up, Earl. ... How many'd you get?"

"Twenty or So" is an eye-opener, one I had never really noticed on "44 & 66." Such a beautiful song, actually!

"Spring Wind" is very close to the studio version (again, before it was released). "The wine bottle's half-empty, the money is all spent." (My sister Sara's favorite Greg Brown song.)

The Blake set that follows is preceded by the FIRST REASON TO GET THIS CONCERT. In his intro to the songs, Greg talks about poets, including e.e. cummings. In the discussion of cummings, he recites the beginning of the Prologue to Canterbury Tales in the voice of cummings. He also recites Dylan Thomas in a fake Welsh accent.

So "The Little Vagabond" and "The Chimney Sweeper" follow, the former with its usual energetic triple meter, the latter strummed in a more floating, almost ethereal way, with occasional accents for effect and an evocative solo: humming. :-)

Disc two begins with the SECOND REASON TO GET THIS CONCERT: the Angel Poop Lullaby. It is part of the introduction to "Daughters." Sung only once, apparently, like the songs children make up: "They're just sung once; they're like jazz." A must have for any Greg fan. "This life we have on earth, the beauty and the poop are like that."

"Daughters" is full of drifting rubato, as it always is, and beautiful, as it always is. "Dad, the moon is coming home with us."

Dave Moore joins Greg for the last four songs: a rowdy version of "Help Me Make It Through This Funky Day" ("Mr. Mellow, they call me"); "Who Woulda Thunk It" as always funny and swinging; a version of the "Chicken Polka" ("Everybody dance!" cries Greg); and "Downtown." Greg's version, of course, not Patsy Cline's (or Neil Young's?). "Downtown" even includes a sax player identified only as Tom.

Greg Brown concert review from recent Philadelphia show

Here's a long review (with gorgeous photos) of a recent Greg Brown show in Philadelphia.