06 Apr Matador Playlist 4/2/15

Ah Gentle Reader(s), tis Easter time again. The blooms is bloomin and the trees are leafin and the sparrows are nesting once again beneath the eaves of the Inky Aerie. And, in keeping with seasonal tradition, Your Humble Narrator looks forward to sitting down in front of le Boîte Idiot this evening for the annual communion with The Ten Commandments (see my post of May 2, 2014). This is my personal observation of Holy Week—somewhat less strenuous than crawling on hands and knees to El Santuario de Chimayo, but then YHN is not particularly inclined in the direction of any organized religious observance. Or, for that matter, disorganized religious observance either. I watch The Ten Commandments at Easter time and It’s A Wonderful Life at Christmas time (see 1/1/15) and spend the rest of the year pondering the profound spiritual implications of both. Therefore, I feel as though I’ve got my bases covered (especially as Easter Sunday is Opening Day for the 2015 baseball season—how much spirituality can one person handle in a single day??).

 

In fact, I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the John Lennon song that Tweedy performed last week at their Santa Fe gig. The song, as I mentioned in my last Matador Playlist post, was God from the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album. It certainly doesn’t get as much airplay as Imagine or Mind Games or other highlights from the Lennon solo catalogue, but it is very likely the most profound and concise statement—aesthetically, politically, spiritually—that John ever produced. It’s opening line is a declaration unique in all of pop music: “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” The literal indication of the statement—that God is an intellectual abstraction conceived of by humanity for the purpose of comprehending its own suffering—is rather stunning in its directness and simplicity. The Great Bard stated that brevity is the soul of wit. In this case it is also the soul of heresy.

 

The assertion that God is no more than a manifestation of the needs and desires of those that proclaim His/Her/Its faith pulls the rug out from beneath the foundation of just about every religious doctrine. It would be incorrect, however, to interpret John’s one-sentence manifesto as a declaration of atheism. If God is a fiction born of human doubt, to deny the existence of God is also to deny the reality of the need of humanity to give form and meaning to its spiritual yearning. In August, 1966, in the midst of the furor over his ‘the Beatles are more popular than Jesus’ statement, John told journalists gathered at O’Hare airport in Chicago, “I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us.”

 

When, in the song God, John proclaims his disbelief in Jesus as part of the recitation of fifteen people, things and concepts which he repudiates he is not denying the historical Jesus but rather the dogmatic Christ handed down through two thousand years of Christian ideology. Similarly, when John says he doesn’t believe in Beatles he is not denying the fact of the Beatles but rather the mythic/heroic manifestation of the Beatles and, therefore, himself as well.

 

In order, the fifteen items named in the song are: Magic, I-Ching, the Bible, tarot, Hitler, Jesus, Kennedy, Buddha, mantra, the (Bhagavad) Gita, yoga, kings, Elvis, Zimmerman (Bob Dylan), and, finally, the Beatles.

 

The music stops abruptly as John spits out the word ‘Beatles.’ After a hugely pregnant pause, John finally tells us what he does believe in: “I just believe… in me. Yoko and me… that’s reality.”
The music resumes (the late, great Billy Preston on piano, Ringo on drums, Klaus Voorman on bass) and John declares that ‘the dream is over.’ In his monumental 1971 interview with Jann Wenner John said ‘…Beatles was the final thing because I no longer believe in myth, and Beatles is another myth. I don’t believe in it. The dream is over. I’m not just talking about the Beatles, I’m talking about the generation thing. It’s over, and we gotta—I have to personally—get down to so-called reality.’

 

It was a beautiful myth. And, as is often the case with myth, it springs from a kernel of truth.

 

Grammar of Life – Charles Bukowski
Sound the Alarm (feat. Sleepy Wonder) – Thievery Corporation
Los Angeles – X
Bliss Boat – Houndstooth
Rock Lobster – B-52’s (for the Bear)
Before I Was Caught – Jay Reatard
Love Is For Lovers – the dBs
War On War – Wilco
Absynthe – the Gits
Ooh Las Vegas – Gram Parsons
The Nights of Wine and Roses – Japandroids
Celluloid Heroes – the Kinks
Girls & Boys – blur
Falling and Laughing – Orange Juice
Grot – St. Vincent
SpongeBob SquarePants Theme – SpongeBob SquarePants
Rise Above – Chuck D and Henry Rollins
The Informer – David Bowie
Eternity – White Hills
Dumaine Street – Trombone Shorty
Shake Some Action – the Flaming Groovies
Last Kind Word Blues – Dex Romweber Duo
Everyday I Write The Book – Elvis Costello
Lets’ Stop Kicking Our Hearts Around – Bottle Rockets w/ Sheri Hurst
Sunbathing Animal – Parquet Courts
Shipbuilding – Elvis Costello (request)
Get A Job – the Silhouettes
Freddie’s Dead (Theme from ‘Superfly’) – Curtis Mayfield
Monday – Wilco
Fox On The Run – Sweet
Who Were You Thinkin’ Of – Texas Tornados (for El Sicario)
The Hill – Bombay Bicycle Club
You Know I’m No Good (feat. Ghostface Killah) – Amy Winehouse
New Pony – the Dead Weather
20th Century Boy – T. Rex
Scorpio Rising – Death in Vegas
Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam – the Vaselines
Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana
I Can’t Explain – the Who
Pitbull Terrier – Die Antwoord
Apocryphon – the Sword
Reuters – Wire
Kashmir – Led Zeppelin
Double It (feat. Big Freedia) – Galactic
Going Down – Jeff Beck Group
I Want You to Know – Dinosaur Jr.
Blue Suede Shoes – Carl Perkins
Halo of Ashes – Screaming Trees
Dead Moon Night – Dead Moon
Making Time – the Creation
Box Full of Letters – Wilco
You’re Gonna Miss Me – 13th Floor Elevators (request)
Golden Years – David Bowie
That Man I Shot – Drive-By Truckers
Brick House – the Commodores
Will It Go Round in Circles – Billy Preston
The Monkey – Dave Bartholomew
Ramble On – Led Zeppelin
Witching Hour – Houndstooth
Rough Detective – the Dead Weather
If I Were A Carpenter – Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
Bring The Noize – M.I.A.
Peggy Sue – Buddy Holly
Pick A Trick – In Flagranti
I’m The Face – the High Numbers
Black Hearted Love – PJ Harvey & John Parish
Fire Of Love – the Gun Club
Growing Up (Trent Reznor remix) – Peter Gabriel
Lies – SkyBombers
Been Caught Stealing – Jane’s Addiction
Machine Gun Etiquette – the Damned
The Sweet Part of the City – the Hold Steady
World Without Tears – Lucinda Williams
Buona Sera – Louis Prima
Happy Trails – Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (featuring Trigger on Elysian szaz)
Taxi – Bryan Ferry