One More Cup of Coffee (Supertunes)

I busted out an old mix CD today that I made whilst living on the corner of Union and Crown st. with my best friends JJ & Kelly, when we were all in our early twenties.  That was when I started this blog and also the year where I started to learn what writing a song was really about.  I loved living in that place with those people.  We were all bursting at the seams back then, painting and writing and singing and reading and smoking native smokes by the bag, drinking Old Milwaukee by the can.  We held singalongs in our kitchen where we'd all drunkenly sing 'Ask' by The Smiths, to the best of our abilities.  We rarely ever went to bars.  We'd have people over and we'd sit in a circle and talk about books and music.

It's fall so I'm in a very nostalgic place as always and this CD has me thinking about those times.  It's a pretty good snapshot of what was going on in my head that year in terms of finding a way to properly write.

Anyway these are some notes on that disc, which is labeled, 'One More Cup of Coffee for the Road (Supertunes).'

1: Fuck Forever - The Babyshambles

I was a little obsessed with Pete Doherty around this time.  A ridiculous poet on drugs and rock n' roll, I identified with him and admired his lyrical prowess.  I still think this Babyshambles record is pretty underrated.  Plenty of rough edges, which endear it to me, and lyrics to die for, a hint of Nirvana in there too.  We used to get high and watch 'Who the Fuck is Pete Doherty?' and actually think he was awesome for stumbling around his apartment reading poetry aloud.  My drummer/friend Arbeau and I would dress like him even.  Him and Morrissey were both pretty big parts of how I wanted to write, and there is recorded evidence of this that's pretty embarrassing.

2: Talking New York - Bob Dylan

Obviously Dylan is an important milestone for anyone taking the craft of songwriting seriously, and this year was when I really went for it.  I read that terrible book he wrote and watched all the documentaries and listened to all the albums.  I loved this song feverishly, singing along perfectly in sync with the rambling hilarious lyrics, mostly spoken.  I was so amused by the idea of a song being something like that, it was sort of new to me to think about it so loosely and it related more directly to the huge amount of prose writing I was doing that year.

3: My Love - Justin Timberlake ft. TI

FutureSex/Lovesounds was big in our household.  We were obsessed with it a little bit, always a dance party when we'd put this on.  Also watched the music videos on youtube via JJ's Wii.  Such an all-around wonderful album, aged well too.

4: I'll Have a New Life - Hank Williams

I was also listening to a lot of gospel country around this time.  Far from religious, I still found there to be a spot of inspiration in those old songs.  And the melodies!  Good lord they are something.  Our house was very big on the country greats, something that also entered my life and improved it that year, beginning with a CD JJ made me of classic country songs, that deviated just enough to incorporate a Tom Waits song and 'Come Pick Me Up.'

5: Walk the Line - George Jones

This one is an odd choice as it is wholly unremarkable as a recording, but is a song written by one of my favourite writers and sung by one of my favourite singers.  So it's not like it's bad but I feel like it was kind of tossed onto the mix.  Tons of George Jones during that time.  I remember Graham would pick me up at our place uptown in his parents car and we'd drive to the east side blasting George Jones and then get wasted at my brothers house, which I was house-sitting at the time.  I loved and fully embraced the melodramatic nature of Old Possum tunes, in particular 'If Drinking Don't Kill Me, Her Memory Will.'  I'd listen to those songs and drink myself into a stupor, take a gravol, pass out and go puke at work for 15 minutes before my shift.  Ah, the glory days.

6: With God On Our Side (unplugged) - Bob Dylan

More Dylan.  I feel like one of the things that often gets overlooked when it comes to Dylan is the melodies.  Being a big melody guy myself it's that quality that endears me to the songs much more so than narratives that play out like prose.  This song or 'Spanish Harlem Incident,' for instance, are melodic perfection to me.  This performance of 'On Our Side,' is good but the fucking DI acoustic tone is pretty hard to deal with.

7: I Am Bound for the Promised Land - Johnny Cash

One of the American Recordings albums that I really love from Cash is 'My Mother's Hymn Book.'  A straightforward acoustic recording of old hymns, most of the focus being on all the feeling and depth in Cash's voice.  Still feel a certain specific joy from songs like these.  There's a lot of sincerity there.

8: Talking Hard Work - Woody Guthrie

Guthrie is a deservingly revered legend.  All of those songs are pure craft and with such weight and such levity simultaneously, allowing them to live forever.  This song being basically a blueprint for Dylan's 'Talking New York,' among numerous others.  It's hilarious spoken word, essentially, that I identified with immediately. A detailed account of a working class life, one that I live as well, though obviously not as hard, and also a humorous bit of torch song as well, tied in smartly and neatly.

9: Barrett's Privateers - Stan Rogers

We're all maritimers here, and Stan Rogers rules.  This song is awesome.  Kelly being a caper really is what brought this into our lives I believe.  We would scream this song together on that old green torn up couch, our terrible voices carrying out the livingroom window for passersby.

10: Peaches n' Cream - Beck

Midnite Vultures is a way cool album.  I've always been just outside of true Beck fandom but that album and Mellow Gold always tickled my fancy when the time is right.

11: Love This Town - Joel Plaskett

Still love this song.  Plaskett was always a dude I looked up to being a songwriter from Saint John, since he's a songwriter from Dartmouth.  I saw him play this song acoustic on the street in front of Backstreet records and it will always stand out to me as a highlight of live music that I've seen.  La De Da is a perfect album.

12: Ballad of Ira Hayes - Johnny Cash

More JR.

13: I Love You (But You're Green) - Pete Doherty

When I heard there was going to be a solo Doherty record back in the day I thought it was going to be shit like this, and I was very excited.  I still love this song very much, in all it's wistful romantic silliness.  Nice melodies too.  'I was a troubled teen, who put an advert in a magazine.  To the annoyance of my imaginary lover.'  Picture me swooning for real.  'Oh, you, you're green.  You don't know what love means.'

14: Glory Bound Train - Roy Acuff

No one needs to be told the massive importance of Roy Acuff in American music, so I'll say just that this song is so intense about the literal description of the train metaphor and also has such cool vocal interplay and I love it.

15: On the Bus Mall - The Decemberists

This song is pretty decent but 'O Valencia!' was a FUCKING TUNE.  Was really into the Crane Wife, dug the literary bent.

16: One More Cup of Coffee - The White Stripes

That was a fucking band right there.  Could not care less about pretty much anything Jack White has done since.  I was in a two-piece punk band in high school and we obviously found them really inspiring.  Didn't used to be so many two-pieces back then.  I still like listening to all those records.  Lots of movement and variety considering the set up.  Great sounding recordings too.

That's it.  Not a bad mix, really, fun to go through again.  Time to get back to that old time feeling and start writing again.