search c90: songs which turn your blood to electric and give your mangled broken brain a jumpstart of clarity and intent

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Tom Ewing wrote the following about a pop song:

"The wounded mind draws into itself, narrowing perception down to a hard, unarguable line, sacrificing perspective and judgement for an awful, logical clarity. The poles of this line are absolute and do not vary: strength and weakness, control and its opposite, caving in or not compromising. And gradually, every action seems entropic, seems to leave behind a silty, weakening residue of this compromise. The angle of descent steepens - from now, thankfully, I'm only projecting from experience, not writing from it - the line itself contracts to a point, a single undeniable action.

The best metaphor I have for the state of depression - partly because it's so distanced and unromantic - is the Doppler Effect: everything looks and feels different to the depressive because the world is going past at another speed to them. For me, either I would wake up with my brain treacle and my words and actions seemingly having to pass through thick, slow glass, or I would feel superconducted, sharp and alien, afflicted with a terrible neural velocity under which I couldn't hope to communicate: faster."

i'm not particularly after stuff which sounds the same as the song Tom is describing, but songs to which a similar logic could apply. music that you listen to when you're depressed and even if it doesnt make you feel better somehow galvanises you into a fierce and purposeful state of being/awareness.

― Wyndham Earl, Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:13 (twenty-two years ago)

What song was he writing about?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Dylan always does that for me.

"You feel to moan, but unlike before / You discover that you'd just be one more person crying."

― Kenan Hebert, Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:22 (twenty-two years ago)

alex - its somewhere in the spiel but i didnt want to say in case it lead people to put other songs by the same band in this thread, which although not inappropriate would be too obvious and not really what i'm after.

― Wyndham Earl, Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:24 (twenty-two years ago)

"Kangaroo"

― Kenan Hebert, Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Whose version?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Er, Techno? Really, too many tunes to count that do this in that vein. Give me a pounding backbeat and some kind of low midrange pulsing noise or such with a fat fifth here & there for good measure (wow, that sounds like a description of punk rock) and I'm generally ready to go.

Whatever's been in my head lately - if I play that for myself I usually find my super-powers manifesting themselves in a jiffy.

― Millar (Millar), Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Much Throwing Muses does this for me, but especially "Delicate Cutters" and "Hook in her Head".

"If I were a man, I'd have a gun/But I'm so bone tired..."

That sums up the dichotomy of "I'm fucked off, but I can't be bothered doing anything about it" for me perfectly. Which to me is the insidiousness of depression in a nutshell.

― Trayce (trayce), Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Whose version?

The original Big Star, mostly, but I'm also partial to Jeff Buckley's reading.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Saturday, 15 February 2003 07:22 (twenty-two years ago)

those drumfills in 'makes no sense at all'

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 15 February 2003 07:27 (twenty-two years ago)

David Bowie - "Five Years" ("And it was cold / and it rained / and I felt like an actor"), which then makes it impossible for me not to listen to the rest of Ziggy Stardust, which often makes me feel a whole lot better
The Velvet Underground - "Beginning to See the Light"
Radiohead - "Idioteque"
Tricky - Pre-Millineum Tension (if I just want to wallow, but interestingly)
Sigur Ros - ()
...and when I've drugged myself into ner catatonia, and I look like Jack Nicholson after electroshock in "One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest," Stars of the Lid - The Ballasted Orchestra

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Saturday, 15 February 2003 07:39 (twenty-two years ago)

There was a band making the rounds about twelve years ago called Tooth & Nail whose debut cassette (remember those?) found its way onto the review pile where I was scribbling at the time (The New York Review of Records....don't bother looking for it, as it's gone the same way as the pteradactyle) and while the band was pretty uninspired as a whole, there was a track thereon (I forget the title) that had the most cathartic chorus for me at the time (I'd just been dumped like a spooge-splattered bag of dirty laundry) that went:

"JUST...ONCE..I'D LIKE TO SEE IT TURN OUT RIGHT!", with real angry, oomphy emphasis on the "Just" and the "Once." Then, they go and ruin the riff by having a violinist saw all over the place, dilluting the bluntness a bit. I still played the fuck out of it for weekes on end.

Simillarly, "I Will Refuse" by Pailhead never fails to....not so much "cheer me up" per se, but rather strengthen my resolve in the face of difficulty/conflict.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 15 February 2003 08:03 (twenty-two years ago)

for general malaise definitely dylan and bowie, and bruce springsteen's 'thunder road': "you can hide beneath the covers and study your pain ... waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to arise from these streets", which gets three cheers for melodrama.
and in the romance-gone-awry department, tom petty's 'even the losers' ("god, it's such a drag when you're living in the past") and todd rundgren's 'couldn't i just tell you' ("you didn't have to make me feel like a fool when i tried to say i feel the way that i do").

― lauren (laurenp), Saturday, 15 February 2003 19:42 (twenty-two years ago)

The Mekons' "Dan Dare." I once splattered my room with ink air-drumming with a pen in my hand and didn't even realize it for a couple of minutes.

― Douglas (Douglas), Sunday, 16 February 2003 00:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't help but smile at Nirvana's "In Bloom," because the chorus basically describes everyone who I know to be a hardcore "COBAIN-IS-JESUS-YOU-FUCKERS" Nirvana fan, and yet said fans never seem to notice that Kurt's mocking them.

― Curtis Stephens, Sunday, 16 February 2003 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

"Kanga Roo" is good...actually, "Downs" from that same Big Star record always makes me feel good, for some reason, as does "You Can't Have Me."

But for velocity, I find "Let Yourself Go" by Soul Brother #1 hard to beat. "Tomorrow's Dream" by Al Green gives me a hard-on. "Flash Gordon's Ape" by Beefheart--I'm sure there are more genuinely crazy recordings but I can't think of one.

― frank p. jones (frank p. jones), Monday, 17 February 2003 23:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Man whose head expended by The Fall
No queen bluse by Sonic Youth
Murder by Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker

songs i can't help but start screaming with the coruse or just bang my fists like fucking drum sticks on the sofa and cough from all the dust thet rises up hehe

― rex jr., Monday, 17 February 2003 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Pretend To Be Nice, Josie + Pussycats (et al)

― jm (jtm), Monday, 17 February 2003 23:58 (twenty-two years ago)

the start it up by joey beltram

― robin (robin), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 00:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Strokin' by Screamin Jay Hawkins
Chili Dog by Sightings
Thirteen Monsters by Lightning Bolt
Teenage Caveman by Beat Happening

― Ian Johnson, Tuesday, 18 February 2003 00:12 (twenty-two years ago)

"Fazer" by Quicksand
"Something I Can Never Have" by Nine Inch Nails

― J-rock (Julien Sandiford), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 06:46 (twenty-two years ago)

i absolutely refuse to believe that there are as many as FOUR SONGS that have such a dramatic effect on people (at least consistently).

― Dave M. (rotten03), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 08:35 (twenty-two years ago)

no dude, i think this thread is mostly for random mantion
for me thouse songs held that place for about a week

― rex jr., Sunday, 23 February 2003 23:35 (twenty-two years ago)

That (Tom's, upthread) is one of the best pieces of writing I have ever!! read.

― Cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 23 February 2003 23:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Do songs deserve writing that good? I bet that that is better than the song he was writing about.

("Don't give me songs, don't give me songs, give something to sing about." - Buffy, Once More With Feeling.)

― Cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 23 February 2003 23:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm fully open to the possibility that that Buffy quote doesn't support what I said above it, smartass.

― Cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 23 February 2003 23:42 (twenty-two years ago)

"I Am The Cosmos" - both the original AND the This Mortal Coil versions!

― matt riedl (veal), Monday, 24 February 2003 23:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" does the job for me - "Standing on the corner/ suitcase in my hand" starts it up with a Robert Johnson allusion, and as soon as the chorus kicks in, I feel a bit better. And then, and then, the middle 8 pops up, and the fact that everybody sings out of time and tune with each other makes the entire song incrediably cathartic- "AND ANYONE WHO HAD A HEART/ WOULDN'T TURN AROUND AND BREAK IT! SWEEET JAAAANE!" Ah, sonic luxery!

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 25 February 2003 10:44 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.