The film "Walk the Line" is a masterpiece. Shotguns for love.
My best friend Julie is moving out to Algeria, to live with the North African Blue Skinned people - the Tuaregs, so we're playing Johnny Cash's version of Nine Inch Nails "Hurt", here's the lyrics:
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
I wear my crown of shit
On my liar’s chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stain of time
The feeling disappears
You are someone else
I am still right here
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
__________
Artist? An Artist contacted me? Try not to act too excited. So the other album/video Julie is taking with her to Africa is the Ethan Coen film, "Oh Brother where art thou?"
Do seek the treasure. Do seek the treasure. Do seek the treasure.
__________
What an odd mood I am in, listening to the Chieftains and reading the lyrics which run into little streamlets and springs that become another set of songs, bursting through Pearl Jam, into Bob Dylan's Black Diamond Bay
Up on the white veranda
She wears a necktie and a Panama hat
Her passport shows another face
From another time and place
She looks nothing like that
And all the remnants of her recent past
Are scattered in the wild wind
She walks across the marble floor
Where a voice from the gambling room is calling her to come on in
She smiles, walks the other way
As the last ship sails and the moon fades away
From Black Diamond Bay.
As the morning light breaks open the Greek comes down
And he asks for a rope and a pen that will write
"Pardon monsieur" the desk clerk says
Carefully removes his fez
"Am I hearing you right ?"
And as the yellow fog is lifting
The Greek is quickly heading for the second floor
She passes him on the spiral staircase
Thinking he's the Soviet Ambassador
She starts to speak, but he walks away
As the storm clouds rise and the palm branches away
On Black Diamond Bay.
A soldier sits beneath the fan
Doing business with a tiny man who sells him a ring
Lightning strikes, the light blow out
The desk clerk wakes and begins to shout
"Can you see anything ?"
Then the Greek appears on the second floor
In his bare feet with a rope around his neck
While a loser in the gambling room lights up a candle
Says "Open up another deck"
But the dealer say "Attendez-vous, s'il vous plait"
As the rain beats down and the cranes fly away
Black Diamond Bay
_______________________________________________
Somehow this song reminds me of the same kind of story, feeling,
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds/
(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World
It was a miracle I even got out of Longwood alive,
this town full of men with big mouths and no guts;
I mean if you can just picture it,
the whole third floor of the hotel gutted by the blast
and the street below showered in shards of broken glass,
and all the drunks pouring out of the dance halls
staring up at the smoke and the flames;
and the blind pencil seller waving his stick
shouting for his dog that lay dead on the side of the road;
and me, if you can believe this,
at the wheel of the of the car
closing my eyes and actually praying;
not to God above but to you, saying:
Help me, girl; help me, girl
I'll love you till the end of the world
With your eyes black as coal
and your long dark curls
Some things we plan,
we sit and we invent and we plot and cook up;
others are works of inspiration, of poetry;
and it was this genius hand that pushed me up the hotel stairs
to say my last goodbye
to a hair as white as snow and of pale blue eyes
saying:
I gotta go; I gotta go,
the bomb in the bread basket are ready to blow
in this town of men with big mouths and no guts,
the pencil seller's dog, spooked by the explosion,
leaping under my wheels as I careered out of Longwood
on my way to you waiting in your dress,
in your dress of blue
I said:
Thank you, girl; thank you, girl
I'll love you till the end of the world
with your eyes black as coal
and your long, dark curls
and with the horses prancing through the fields,
with my knife in my jeans and the rain on the shield;
I sang a song for the glory of the beauty of you
waiting for me
in your dress of blue
Thank you, girl. Thank you, girl
I'll love you till the end of the world
with your eyes black as coal
and your long, dark curls
Then into The Donagal Set by the Chieftains, toned down by Chalkhills and Children, XTC's brilliant open letter to America, Oranges and Lemons.
Telluride Sessions, One Wintery Night, by Strength in Numbers. I blasted past The Locks of Dread. And wound up writing about it faster than I could tell you this story so I stopped right here.
Ah Pink Floyd in Paris, but 6 Turned Out to Be 9. Jimi hi Jimi. "It's a beautiful day", When I come around, Green Day, Dookie, Long view.
Humans From Earth, T-Bone Burnett
We come from a blue planet light-years away
Where everything multiplies at an amazing rate
We're out here in the universe buying real estate
Hope we haven't gotten here too late
chorus:
We're humans from earth
We're humans from earth
You have nothing at all to fear
I think we're gonna like it here
We're looking for a planet with atmosphere
Where the air is fresh and the water clear
With lots of sun like you have here
Three or four hundred days a year
chorus
Bought Manhatten for a string of beads
Brought along some gadgets for you to see
Heres a crazy little thing we call TV
Do you have electricity?
chorus
I know we may seem pretty strange to you
But we got know-how and a golden rule
We're here to see manifest destiny through
Ain't nothing we can't get used to
We're humans from earth
We're humans from earth
