Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I was listening to Stan Rogers this afternoon and decided I wanted something more cheerful, so I told Spotify to play one of Laura Nyro's upbeat songs. I listened to two or three lines of "Stoned Soul Picnic" and started crying, hard. I'm fairly sure that's because I connect Laura Nyro with Velma (roadnotes), but I wasn't expecting that reaction, several years after she died.

I turned the music off, made a cup of tea, and switched to They Might Be Giants, starting with their cover of "Istanbul Not Constantinople," which was fine.

I wanted inspirational music, and after listening to a bit of VNV Nation went to YouTube, for the "Internationale" and "Which Side Are You On?" and Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and a lot of other people singing "This Land Is Your Land" at Obama's inauguration in 2009. (Yes, all the verses, including the one about the relief office.) Then I decided I wanted to listen to Paul Robeson. "Ballad for Americans" is almost certainly on there, but first I found what was described as the best black radical socialist speech ever, Robeson's testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Last night, livredor and I went to the VNV Nation show here in New York. (I was going to write "saw," but we're both short enough that it was much more "heard" and "danced to" than "saw," though Ronan's bouncing around on stage made him pretty visible.

This is not really a concert review (rysmiel wrote a good review of their concert in Montreal earlier in the week), so no attempt at a set list. But we did get one song that he said they'd never done live before, and therefore he had cue cards for: "Stillwater," which he wanted to do in New York because he wrote it in lower Manhattan.

Taking rysmiel's advice, we sat in a lounge area for both opening acts and saved our energy for VNV Nation. (We were near the actual concert space, and there were video screens, so if we'd disagreed with his opinion we could have changed our minds.) Instead, we sat, talked a little, and looked at people: there was a wide range, from seriously dressed-up goths to punk to band t-shirt and jeans. I was in a purple tank top--show off the tattoos--and black pants, figuring I don't have goth clothes or care enough, but could get the colors right. Liv's host had managed to get her up as a goth despite not being one. The band did a mix of material, and a long show. Near the end of the main performance, it felt short. Then they gave us three encores. Before starting the third encore, Ronan said that when they were done, this encore would make it the longest show so far this tour.

Ronan did some working the crowd that I didn't entirely like: urging us to sing along, cool. Saying "I can't hear you," not so cool. (My throat was too tight for much noise, though I was happy to clap and wave my hands and jump in the air.) But it works, and it's part of the show. At one point, he said he wanted to see us dancing "unless you have a medical excuse" and I was thinking I did have a medical excuse (knees not quite recovered from earlier in the summer) and wasn't letting that stop me. Slow me down a bit, yes: I swayed more, and jumped less, than I otherwise would have. And then, near the very end, having spent the show not singing along because it wasn't sensible, I joined in shouting back lines from "Judgement."

One unfortunate thing: either Ronan's voice was going, or the people running the sound board didn't do a good job, and the instruments (and crowd noise) overwhelmed the vocals.

You're never too old to rock and roll, but I'm starting to feel a bit creaky for this form of it. Or maybe it's the combination of timing—I bought our tickets before I hurt my knees—and timescale. It was fun in the moment, but I was fretting a little by the end of the evening that I might have overdone it. But the walk home from the train was fine, and my feet, which felt a little tender from all that bouncing, didn't hurt at all this morning, nor did my knees. And either they used more strobe than last concert, or my sensitivity to strobes was higher than last time (it seems to vary somewhat, non-monotonically).

This was also a nice chance to catch up with Liv. Our friendship has been almost entirely electronic (we've never lived on the same continent, and she's been in Sweden for the last three years), and it was nice to sit together over tea and on an A train and to be dancing in the same place ("together" doesn't apply in the usual sense: in the only way it does, we were both dancing together with hundreds of strangers). She was delighted by my going ahead and doing the organizational work here, both getting her ticket and mine while she was in Sweden, and picking a place for dinner last night (Excellent Dumpling; I'm not aiming for dinner in Times Square at that hour on a Saturday night, even if I were still familiar with the area).

My friend serenejournal has started a blog for pointing to, and maybe discussing, healthy love songs. This was prompted by a discussion of how many popular songs show really unhealthy relationships—ranging from the subtext of trading sex for financial support in "Eight Days a Week""A Hard Day's Night" (thank you, Avram) to the weirdness of people using the blatant stalker song "Every Breath You Take" as a wedding song. I'm also blogging there, as is Rob (who may be on LJ but I don't remember his handle), and I have skimmed the song list in my iTunes library (just because it's handy) and been disconcerted by how few of the songs in there definitely qualify. A lot are about other things, of course—for example, the only love song in Sondheim's Assassins is "Unworthy of Your Love," the duet for Squeaky Fromme and John Hinkley, but that's not primarily a musical about relationships. (Company is, but I'm not convinced there's anything there either, much as I like the show.) But I was still hoping for more, and will be posting some of these, probably only one or two a day, and seeing what else I find. There's a lot I don't remember well enough to be sure of: it may be an afternoon for listening to VNV Nation and/or They Might Be Giants and seeing which lyrics fit. This definitely calls for attention, as a lot of music has disturbing subtext but is far less blatant than "Every Breath You Take."

Obviously, people may disagree on what counts as healthy here; this thread started on alt.polyamory, though quite a bit of what we come up with is more or less explicitly monogamous, which is fine as long as it's "I love you" and not "s/he's mine, keep your hands off" or "I'm watching to make sure you don't look at another man."

ETA: I think I shall spend some time tracking down some of the songs people have pointed to here (though it may take a while). If anyone would rather not be credited elsenet, or wants to be credited under a name other than your LJ handle for songs you've pointed to, please let me know.

When cattitude came upstairs with the mail today, he said "I've got you a present."

He had tracked down a copy of the (second edition of) the first VNV Nation album, Advance and Follow. I gather this was a time-consuming process--I'd originally suggested this as a birthday present, back in November, and eventually concluded that he wouldn't find one at any sane price, so he got me a fine pair of ammonite earrings.

I waited until he'd had his afternoon nap to play it. From one listening, I like it, but it hasn't yet oozed into my brain the way Empires has. The sound is rather different from that, and certainly from Judgment. Another listen later, but right now Cattitude has Idiot's Delight on while he cooks.

This was the first time I've seen VNV Nation live (and the first live rock show I'd been to in several years, somehow). I was thinking "concert" when I bought this ticket, though Irving Plaza is a "no seating" venue, so you either stand on the dance floor, or line the balcony and stand more quietly. I was down on the dance floor, but it was crowded enough that I found myself periodically jumping up and down, then landing a few inches off of where I'd meant and either crowding into someone or getting my feet tangled.

I had fun, but less than I'd expected: a lot of what I like about VNV Nation is the lyrics, which in the live show were often covered by the instruments. (I have the feeling that much of the crowd could have sung along to the entire thing, not just the songs the band asked us to, so it mattered less to them.) If I do this again—and I may, the next time they tour—I'll time things to arrive during the opening act, not well before, to save my energy for dancing to VNV Nation. I also think I would have enjoyed myself more if I'd pre-ordered the album the tour is supporting, and had it by mail in time to listen before the show; I picked up a copy last night, along with one of the tour t-shirts (they also had tank tops, hoodies, etc.)

The openers, And One, were okay to dance to, but didn't grab me beyond that. They began their set by announcing "From now on, this is German territory", and the crowd seemed cheerful about that because it meant they were about to sing; I was left thinking "we won the peace, that time" [for large values of "we," obviously, but some of the names that came to mind were Truman, Marshall, de Gaulle, and Willy Brandt]. It also reminded me that I may have been the oldest person on the dance floor (no way to be sure, in either direction). The random people near me in the crowd were friendly, including a couple of conversations that basically were someone apologizing for bumping me while dancing, and me saying things like "it happens, I'll try not to bump you."

I got home late, by my current standards (about 1:30); maybe not by those of the people I overheard after the show discussing whether they were going clubbing. cattitude was happily asleep, of course. [He also likes VNV Nation, but wasn't up for standing that long in a crowd, so I only bought one ticket.]

Over on Making Light, pnh tnh included a link to Chumbawamba's new album. Having listened to most of the sample bits, and looked at some lyrics, I'm sold, and not just by the remarkably sweet love song "When Alexander Met Emma" (few love songs mention propaganda by deed). I'm going to try a couple of local record stores first, I think; the exchange rate makes ordering directly from the band less appealing. (12 pounds, plus three for shipping, comes to thirty dollars in U.S. money.)

In the meantime, I have downloads of a few of their older songs, including a wonderful extension of the Beatles' "Her Majesty."

After exercising this morning, I met cattitude for lunch at Excellent Dumpling, which he now works near. The waiter assumed that we knew what we wanted right away, because I usually did; I asked him to come back in a couple of minutes. Cattitude basically said "you know what's good here," so I took advantage of their being two of us to get fried pork dumplings and sizzling beef chow fun. I like dumplings, but just dumplings means I feel vegetable-deprived (though the beef chow fun isn't as good on that score as most of what I order). [As I noted at the time, I don't like Cantonese vegetable dumplings, because they tend to have slimy green insides: I do like potato pierogi, which are technically a vegetable dumpling, but very different. papersky, this may be something to look into when you do that "where does the pierogi turn into the wonton" trip.] It was nice to have the company, and now Cattitude knows where Excellent Dumpling is, which he may find useful.

While Cattitude went back to work, I walked over to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, because I wanted a ginger cone. They had ginger ice cream this time (they'd been out of it when I was there last), but while it was pleasant enough, I didn't think it had enough ginger. Okay, time to buy more crystallized ginger and make my own again. Thence, I took the 6 up to Union Square, with the intention of getting a new mobile phone and an ink cartridge for my printer.

It may be possible to walk into the Virgin Megastore, buy a phone, and walk out, but I wasn't in a hurry, the background music wasn't aggressive, and they were pushing a variety of CDs on sale for $10, so I picked up a John Lennon collection. Then I walked over to the R's, because various people had recommended Radiohead. It turned out that OK Computer was in the $10 sale. Done. The phones are kept behind the counter, and there's no way to look at them rather than the boxes, so I pulled out the notes I'd made while looking online, and asked the cashier to show me the two I'd narrowed it down to. In the end, I decided that I would use at most one of the features that the $90 one had and the $30 one didn't (there's a slight chance I might use a camera if my phone had one), and asked for the $30. The cashier rang me up, and asked if I was interested in their new VIP card; after determining that it costs nothing, I said yes. I filled out the form, then realized that I was being charged $43 and change, including tax. I asked how that worked, and discovered that the phone that would have cost me $29 on the Web was $19 in the store, so I'd not only saved some time, I'd saved $10. Whether it would have been worth going downtown just for the financial difference is an interesting question; it was definitely worth stopping off on my way home to get the same product sooner and for less, and buy other things in the same neighborhood.

My mental tag on Union Square is "Greenmarket" [1]. Monday isn't the biggest day, but there was quite a bit there. The available grapes were Niagara and Concord, neither of which I like; I think the people who bring Vanessas to the market are Saturday-only, and we may be late in the season for those anyhow. I got plums (the little Italian prunes). I got two pounds of cooked crabs, for $4/pounds, which seemed fair. I got some baby lettuce and a couple of small cucumbers to go with them. There are par-baked croissants in the freezer.

The printer ink cartridge I need was $69 at Staples. I decided to wait, and see about shopping around. That seems to be about the going rate for the HP cartridge in question. I may wait a bit, and hope for a sale before I actually need to replace this one (over the weekend I took it out of the printer, shook it, and replaced it, and it's working properly for the moment), or see what information I can find about the merits and otherwise of refilled cartridges or non-HP supplies. I was carrying enough by then that, had I bought the cartridge, I'd probably have skipped the crabs and salad, and there's a Staples up in Kingsbridge, much closer to home, if I need a cartridge in a hurry.

Then I came home, put things away, turned the stereo on, unwrapped the Radiohead album and started listening to it,, and went to make tea. Five or ten minutes later, I went into the kitchen for something else, looked at the stove, muttered "it works better when you turn it on," and actually started to heat the water. Tea is good. Radiohead is also good; next time through I should pay more attention to the lyrics, but I was reading all your journals.

[1] the name used by the local farmer's markets to distinguish them from various groceries and greengrocers that were calling themselves "farmer's markets" when the Greenmarket started, 30 years ago.

I would be hopeless at "Name That Tune." (It took me at least a minute to identify this, and most of that time even to identify the band.)

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?
copyright © Eric Bogle

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Additional Note: According to the Pogues site I pulled the lyrics from, Alec Campbell, the last known survivor of the ANZAC forces at Gallipoli (and the last known survivor of Gallipoli) died on Thursday, May 16, 2002 at the age of 103.

Mr. Campbell enlisted at 16, and served at Gallipoli in 1915. He led Hobart's ANZAC Day parade three weeks prior to his death.