It’s early spring in Dayton, Ohio. I’ve just arrived in town, and I don’t plan to stay, but I’m gonna rest a while and save up a little money. I’ve found a job, working at the local gas station-slash-convenience store. I’m a night person, and they’ve hired me to work second shift, 3-11 PM. These are perfect hours; I arrive late enough to sleep in, and get off early enough to go to the bar after work. But for training I have to come to the store in the morning for the first two weeks. At seven o’clock in the morning, to be precise. This is torture.
Belly’s second CD has just come out, and because their first is one of my all-time favorites, I’ve bought the new one on the day of its release, even though I can’t really afford it. The fifth song, “Super-Connected,” is the first to really catch my attention. It starts off very downbeat, with a slow, heavy-reverb bass line. Tanya Donelly sings the first verse in a tired-sounding, off-key sort of groaning whisper. She sounds, in fact, like me when the alarm goes off at six AM.
When that verse is finished her voice trails off, and the guitar starts up. It’s a rising-and-falling, grinding, aching sound. It sounds angry. It sounds unhappy to be alive. That’s me, too, as I struggle to sit up, to throw off the covers. I’m hung over, and I haven’t had enough sleep, and the arthritis in my knees has locked them in place during the short night, so that it’s painful to move my legs. I am outraged that I have to go to work.
But then a strange thing happens. Donelly returns, singing the next verse, but now her voice is stronger, more awake, as if she is becoming more sure of herself. She sounds defiant, though she’s still struggling. Now she means business. She faces the meanness and bitterness of the guitar, and she shoves it aside, and goes on.
And then she reaches the chorus, and suddenly there are harmonies, and the guitar stops grinding and begins to shimmer and pulse, and her voice soars. It is not a beautiful voice, but it means what it says, and is everything it wants to be. She is transcendent, otherworldly. She is the sun rising above the clouds, and she sings to me, and she takes me with her.
After that, each verse is stronger and stronger, and each chorus flies higher and higher, until the song achieves escape velocity and shoots off into space. It ends abruptly, except for a ringing echo of the exhausted drone from the song’s beginning. But now that sound is forlorn and abandoned. She has shaken it off. She is finished with it now, and has gone off to get busy living.
I can’t smoke in the house. Every morning I get up, and I get a cup of coffee, and I shuffle into the garage for a cigarette. I’ve put a stereo out there, and I play this song compulsively, over and over, every single morning. Early spring in Ohio is still winter-cold. Although it’s dawn, the sun hasn’t really risen yet, and there’s no heat in the garage. I sit shivering, nearly sightless in the dusty grey, having the first smoke(s) of the day, heaving great shuddering coughs and coming to life painfully but steadily, listening. It’s one of the greatest early-morning songs ever.
That was long ago, and though I still love the song I don’t listen to it as often as I used to. But sometimes, when I do, I close my eyes and I’m back there. It’s strange that some songs have the power to carry you through time, isn’t it? I love songs for lots of reasons, because of their great beauty or because they’re silly and they raise my spirits, or because they have an irresistible energy that I can draw from them. But the ones I love best are the ones that have an anchor in time and memory. It doesn’t even have to be a happy time that they’re taking me to. There was absolutely no reason to love six AM in Dayton, and I don’t miss it. I guess it’s the trip itself that’s important, rather than the destination.
I sit now and listen to “Super-Connected,” and it’s a time machine. I’m smoking the day’s first cigarette, standing in the freezing grey light of an Ohio morning in March of 1995. Everything is so clear, it can’t be a trick of my mind. I’m really here, and it’s amazing.
Belly’s second CD has just come out, and because their first is one of my all-time favorites, I’ve bought the new one on the day of its release, even though I can’t really afford it. The fifth song, “Super-Connected,” is the first to really catch my attention. It starts off very downbeat, with a slow, heavy-reverb bass line. Tanya Donelly sings the first verse in a tired-sounding, off-key sort of groaning whisper. She sounds, in fact, like me when the alarm goes off at six AM.
When that verse is finished her voice trails off, and the guitar starts up. It’s a rising-and-falling, grinding, aching sound. It sounds angry. It sounds unhappy to be alive. That’s me, too, as I struggle to sit up, to throw off the covers. I’m hung over, and I haven’t had enough sleep, and the arthritis in my knees has locked them in place during the short night, so that it’s painful to move my legs. I am outraged that I have to go to work.
But then a strange thing happens. Donelly returns, singing the next verse, but now her voice is stronger, more awake, as if she is becoming more sure of herself. She sounds defiant, though she’s still struggling. Now she means business. She faces the meanness and bitterness of the guitar, and she shoves it aside, and goes on.
And then she reaches the chorus, and suddenly there are harmonies, and the guitar stops grinding and begins to shimmer and pulse, and her voice soars. It is not a beautiful voice, but it means what it says, and is everything it wants to be. She is transcendent, otherworldly. She is the sun rising above the clouds, and she sings to me, and she takes me with her.
After that, each verse is stronger and stronger, and each chorus flies higher and higher, until the song achieves escape velocity and shoots off into space. It ends abruptly, except for a ringing echo of the exhausted drone from the song’s beginning. But now that sound is forlorn and abandoned. She has shaken it off. She is finished with it now, and has gone off to get busy living.
I can’t smoke in the house. Every morning I get up, and I get a cup of coffee, and I shuffle into the garage for a cigarette. I’ve put a stereo out there, and I play this song compulsively, over and over, every single morning. Early spring in Ohio is still winter-cold. Although it’s dawn, the sun hasn’t really risen yet, and there’s no heat in the garage. I sit shivering, nearly sightless in the dusty grey, having the first smoke(s) of the day, heaving great shuddering coughs and coming to life painfully but steadily, listening. It’s one of the greatest early-morning songs ever.
That was long ago, and though I still love the song I don’t listen to it as often as I used to. But sometimes, when I do, I close my eyes and I’m back there. It’s strange that some songs have the power to carry you through time, isn’t it? I love songs for lots of reasons, because of their great beauty or because they’re silly and they raise my spirits, or because they have an irresistible energy that I can draw from them. But the ones I love best are the ones that have an anchor in time and memory. It doesn’t even have to be a happy time that they’re taking me to. There was absolutely no reason to love six AM in Dayton, and I don’t miss it. I guess it’s the trip itself that’s important, rather than the destination.
I sit now and listen to “Super-Connected,” and it’s a time machine. I’m smoking the day’s first cigarette, standing in the freezing grey light of an Ohio morning in March of 1995. Everything is so clear, it can’t be a trick of my mind. I’m really here, and it’s amazing.
1 comment:
One pizza, no cheese, no meat, thank you.
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