109: Run For Your Life

A fair warning, this entry is mostly going to be a nonsensical rambling about music. and when I say nonsensical, I mean that I am going to touch upon a number of unrelated musical topics before getting to the main event, which is usually a description of what happened to me today. Some interesting stuff did happen today, but right now music is on my mind.

I get on these kicks where I am really into music, and then very abruptly get sick of the music I listen to and never want to hear it. Considering I rarely am not listening to music, it's hard to discern when one phase ends and the other begins, but it's generally just a mood. I pout and go "I wish I didn't have to be listening to music all the time." Then you'd go "But Scott, you DON'T have to be listening to music all the time, you can just enjoy the silence and the natural ambient sound of the world." And I would say "Fuck! You try enjoying the ambient sound of a GO train and see how long you go without choking a bitch." That's a real conversation. We just had it. In my mind.

So for a while I was on a negative kick where I was sick of thinking about music and tired of hearing the same songs over and over. And of course the cure for this is to download something new. Of course it's hard to actively find new music to listen to, mostly I just have to find unheard songs from previously known artists. One of the best tricks is to seek out obscure Beatles songs. This entry derives its title from such a song.

"Run For Your Life" was the last track on the watershed Rubber Soul album. Now, to a certain degree, every Beatles album was a watershed of some kind (Except maybe the second, which is just a better version of the first, and Magical Mystery Tour, which doesn't qualify as an actual album.) Rubber Soul marked a great expansion of lyrical topicality, song structure, and sonic texture. Consider "The Word," which broached love as a universal topic years before "All You Need Is Love," and "Nowhere Man" which eschewed love for the first time on a Beatles record. The sitar on "Norwegian Wood" and piano-as-harpsichord on "In My Life" contributed to the bold experiments of their next record, "Revolver," and everything in the canon thereafter.

Anyway, permeating the outer text of the album is a restlessness with the boy-girl narrative. Paul McCartney had only exhibited an emotion approximating sadness or despair for the first time on the previous album's "Yesterday," but here gives great complex emotional tunes like "I'm Looking Through You" and "You Won't See Me" (I'm not saying he was great with coming up with a variety of metaphors, but both are excellent tunes) chronicling his growing frustration with his relationship with Jane Asher. "Run For Your Life," however, is a John song, and John's romantic narratives had grown darker and darker over the course of the last three albums, with Beatles For Sale (two records or approximately a year earlier) presenting "No Reply," "Baby's in Black" "I'm a Loser" (30 years before Beck!) and "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party." The next album he cried out for "Help!" and lamented that "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" when your girl's got a "Ticket to Ride." (See what I did there? I have a degree in Journalism you know.)

So by the time of Rubber Soul, Lennon was understandably weary about relationship songs (his marriage to Cynthia was by now a disaster.) So one of the only boy-girl songs he wrote on the record was "Run For Your Life," which contains the telling lyric - "You better run for your life if you can, little girl / Hide your head in the sand little girl / Catch you with another man / That's the end / little girl." Wherein he basically declares himself to be so jealous that he will murder his girlfriend if he catches her with another man.

Now, I'm not saying that cheating isn't wrong (it is. Usually.) I'm also not saying that this is Lennon talking about his own life. Obviously he had jealous feelings, insecurities, but he wasn't a homicidal maniac. He was allowing his creative mind to wander, as writing "She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah" gets tedious after 3 years or so of Beatlemania. So he was indulging those creative impulses and putting a very extreme lyric (for the time - or ever, really) on a record, because by that point, it must've been like a game of "We're the number one group in the world. Let's see what we can get away with" (the end result - everything.)

Of course, Lennon isn't totally responsible for this. The first line of the song, which was the genesis of the lyric, "Well I'd rather see ya dead little girl / than to be with another man" came directly lifted from an Elvis song, so there's that. Lennon just stole it (George Harrison later did the same to a James Taylor lyric for his brilliant "Something.") Of course, Lennon was of a mental state that of course such a lyric would resonate with him but anyway.

Also notable is the fact that he considered it basically the worst song he ever wrote. So there's that. It's really not that great of a song. In fact, most of the songs I downloaded weren't all that impressive, leading me to the conclusion that perhaps I've already heard every good Beatles song by now. I downloaded 32 songs (yes, I'm a scurvy-ridden pirate of the net, yarr,) ranging from early album filler, well-known covers, and random tracks of the White Album (of which I haven't got a really high opinion anyway.) And while most of it has merit (Except for "Wild Honey Pie" which they were wrong to release, it should've been chucked in the trash,) there's nothing I really wanted to keep on my iPod. And so I have written 8 or 9 paragraphs detailing how much closer I have come to checking off every single song in the Beatles catalogue. There's a Sporcle quiz there. Nearly as many Beatles album songs as countries of the world, and I can name all the countries.

Then again, "Don't Pass Me By" (the first one penned by Ringo) is fun.

It was a nice, warm-yet-cool, crisp night for walking home from the GO station and listening to Classic Rock, specifically old Aerosmith. Back around the time of their second album, Get Your Wings, they had a really spare, funky, bluesy arrangement, hardly anything in common with their later, lush, extreme production. Toys in the Attic and Rocks lean toward the later development, but there's something so distinct and dark about the tracks on Get Your Wings. That's why I love Aerosmith. I can't imagine another band recording "Lord of the Thighs" or "Pandora's Box."

Possibly my favourite album for walking around at night is the aptly-named Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker by the Coral. I don't have it, basically any of its tracks, on the iPod anymore, because it's basically a lightweight throwaway album, but it's also very moody and atmospheric, and if you hear the songs in the right place and time it's almost a knockout. Evocative is possibly the word I'm looking for. If not, it's the one I'm sticking with.

So I was awakened by the ominous buzzing of my cell phone at 9 AM today. I'm starting to consider moving my charger to the basement so that I can't even check my messages until I've agreed to get out of bed. Not out of disrespect to the people who try to reach me at 9 AM (or, in the case of Eric, 2 AM,) but it's part of an overall pattern of behaviour. I have a policy of not getting out of bed to answer the home phone. Of course anyone calling the cell would actually be looking for me (with the exception of those occasional godforsaken insurance sales calls) but when I'm deep in sleep it freaks me way the fuck out. I don't think anyone needs to contact me that badly. We'll see.

Anyway, in this case it was a text from Ryan saying he'd be at Yonge and College, the latest installment in our attempts for me to help him at his job begging for donations to Sick Kids. Every so often he tells me where he is if he thinks it's close to where I'm at (circa the University campus) and I don't go because I haven't got the time or it's too far out or whatever. Well in this case, I decided it was good. I even got on an early train so I could go to the College TTC stop, find him, talk a while, then walk down College to U of T.

Actually, scratch that. First, I had to call up Sick Kids, with a scratchy morning voice, cancel my donation, and then get on my way. Yes, I canceled my donation so I could get a new one with my friend.

So I found him, after avoiding two other teams of his co-workers in various nearby areas. He took down my information and we talked a while, he described how much he loved the job and what some of his tactics were for getting peoples' attention. He seems really good at it. Eventually I went on my way. It was a pretty average day beyond that, although my sandwich was smooshed, which made me sad.

Sitting in Short Story class makes me want to write, which is distracting when I try to learn. PoliSci at this point is basically stuff I gleaned from the Daily Show over the past year.

Last night I stayed up good and late taking care of something (totally irrelevant what) I had been putting off forever. Now my conscience can rest easy and, at long last, I can feel secure moving forward. Oh the possibilities! I can write freely now! I feel good. Hello summer.

I had an Iced Coffee today at Tim Hortons. I wouldn't have, except it was free and it was warm out, and while I'm no stranger to drinking hot coffee on a hot day, I refer you to my first point about it being free. It wasn't an unenjoyable beverage, although I prefer Iced Caps still and won't buy another one. It wasn't as much a coffee as it was an unblended watery Iced Cap, which is coffee-like but milder. Or maybe I'm fucking crazy.

Well, I'll leave you to ponder that while I smash little birds with a hammer.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto