During college I worked in the paint department at Sears, probably 20-25 years later that job came up in a conversation with my Dad and he told me that he also worked in the paint department at Sears when he was in college. He never said anything about it while I had the job or any of the few times over those years where I talked about it. In his inscrutable dad way, he offered no explanation why he didn't tell me when I had the job.
Until this post I would have gone to my grave thinking the line was, "Skies are blue, cuz you don't want my love". Listening now it is clear how wrong my childhood recollection was, but I am going to keep mentally singing it my way. How much more existential sadness can you get than even the SKY being blue. Maybe I am mashing two songs up in my head.
This. This was the post that converted me to a paid subscriber. Belting out "Kansas City Star" when driving through KC is one of the few sacred rites I have. If anyone wants to bruise their hearts in two minutes or less, give "A World So Full Of Love" a listen.
Speaking of crying to songs, after reading this I came across a newish video in my recommendations, David Byrne answering questions. He describes Neko's "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" as a song he put on a "songs that make you cry" playlist. It's at the 4:37 mark for anyone who is interested.
Purse Certs (with Retsin)! You've unlocked a collective Proustian madeleine. Thank you for this, and for the songs. I recommend listening to the Muppets version with the closed captioning turned ON.
How have I never heard this before? My father's best friend was a Roger Miller fiend as I was growing up & we listened to so much while camping & road tripping. This song is exactly as you described it & I could not love it more for all the feelings it evokes.
Omfg. I literally have been singing "Oo-De-Lally" because it's been circulating through the Instagram reels with dogs and horses and I can't resist. It came up on my reels tonight and I was like "wait a damn minute" and looked up who sang it. You ever feel like musicians haunt you? Cause I do 😂 lemme get some goddamned rest.
I keep singing Desperado now, only I can't. My voice won't hit the lower octave, and if I go high I can't hit the ceiling. I tried to sing it once when I was doing karaoke in New York, and I wanted to seem cool in front of an older cousin, but that song blew my cover. I sang Danke Schoen instead and nailed it (that's how I remember it at least). You can sing that tho. I know the crying out of the side of the face trick. I remember at some point starting to dislike the eagles, but after you wrote this I was trying to remember why but I couldn't. Because Hotel California was shoved down our throats? Maybe. But listening to songs on repeat beyond reason have never been a huge problem for me. Hotel California is a deeply depressing song about someone's real drug addiction. No matter how many times it's played or aggrandized it's never going to erase someone's lived experience that gave that song life. I get it tho. I was a really, really big Beatles fan when I was in high school and now it makes me mad every time Paul McCartney makes another ten million on a story that we have all heard time and time again (right?). Especially after learning about what kind of a dick john Lennon was. (Can we talk about how NO ONE is talking about how he was forcing yoko to be in those recording sessions?????). But in high school I hung on to those albums for dear life, they taught me a lot - and I think I know why. I've been thinking a lot about soundscapes and stereo mapping and ADHD. There was this TikTok trend a while ago where neurodivergent folks were listening to this song that really played with the mapping, and these it causes these kids to stim. I guess there's one called 8D and it is meant to give the effect of the song spinning in a circle. I'm wondering if your crying has something to do with the way the sounds of certain songs hit your brain. I didn't know stimming was a thing until a few years ago. My parents were always physical with us if we "acted out" so I am assuming I never learned how to cope by stimming because it wouldn't have been allowed. But when I was a teen I would plug in to a Beatles album or a Pink Floyd album and the play with stereo would absolutely have this effect on me. Your music is very orchestral and you play around with a lot of familiar sounds, and that really floats my boat. There's that one part in Hell-On where y'all do the siren song (that's what I call it at least) and it sounds great on the album, but when I hear y'all do it live it literally sends shivers down my spine. It breaks up the concert with a shock to the system. To me Desperado sounds like your earlier music, the chord structure is honestly not that different. I don't think it's as good, obviously, but I could 100% see how baby neko was moved by it. Anyway that's a lot of words to just say maybe you can feel okay about listening to desperado, maybe singing it (for those who can't), and learning how to cry to it out loud and with both your eyes. If you want 🙂
Well, in retrospect, this should not be a surprise. I've understood since Ms. Case's first album that she -- as do we all --contains multitudes. Our parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends and so on all write on the tabla rasa of our souls and we learn things and do things and understand good-bad-different-indifferent and fucking weird from that mixed perspective. Although my dad served on a Sub nicknamed South of the Mason Dix minus 2 (for the skipper and my dad) and he had seen Hank Williams one night in a honky tonk before leaving the Navy to do other things, I was the one in the family who discovered Roger Miller; Dang Me made me want to play the guitar because he sings in counterpoint with the instrument at one or two points in the song. First time I accidentally got it was 50 years later...Miller was hired by Ray Price to play fiddle in the Cherokee Cowboys, and discovered his nutty fiddle player was also a promising song writer. He was also a dope dealer, when the drug of choice in Nashville Reds and Blackies, diet and sleeping pills. Given the way country musicians, blues musicians and early rock musicians travelled between gigs then -- and now, most of the time -- the pills were all that stood between them and falling asleep while driving. On the other hand, Roger wrote a couple of hits for Price, including one of my favorites, "Received Your Invitation to the Blues."
Miller joked about having written over 800 songs and on an Austin City Limits show, he promised to sing all of them that night. He had his own morning TV show in Nashville, and appeared several times on the Jimmy Dean Show and the Johnny Cash Show. On one of those shows, he and Cash just threw out the script and adlibbed the into and then the song, which ended up as a mini-guitar pull, with them throwing out verses. It began with Cash saying, "So, Roger, you're out in California now, right?" Miller, not being sure where this was coming from replied. "Yes, John, I am." Cash's response was "Good, good. Are you thinking about coming back to Nashville to live?" "No John, I'm tied up with other things." To which Cash responded, "Good, Good, Good." And then the song started...Kind of a cross between Cocaine Blues, I Saw the Light, and Home, Sweet Home...
Well I'm ashamed that I remember the Muppets' version and never heard the original until now. Ugh. Also I was right: those particular Muppets are kind of terrifying.
During college I worked in the paint department at Sears, probably 20-25 years later that job came up in a conversation with my Dad and he told me that he also worked in the paint department at Sears when he was in college. He never said anything about it while I had the job or any of the few times over those years where I talked about it. In his inscrutable dad way, he offered no explanation why he didn't tell me when I had the job.
I want to out myself to loving Wedding of the Bugs
Until this post I would have gone to my grave thinking the line was, "Skies are blue, cuz you don't want my love". Listening now it is clear how wrong my childhood recollection was, but I am going to keep mentally singing it my way. How much more existential sadness can you get than even the SKY being blue. Maybe I am mashing two songs up in my head.
This. This was the post that converted me to a paid subscriber. Belting out "Kansas City Star" when driving through KC is one of the few sacred rites I have. If anyone wants to bruise their hearts in two minutes or less, give "A World So Full Of Love" a listen.
Speaking of crying to songs, after reading this I came across a newish video in my recommendations, David Byrne answering questions. He describes Neko's "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" as a song he put on a "songs that make you cry" playlist. It's at the 4:37 mark for anyone who is interested.
https://youtu.be/sLZGdiXOSWQ
I'm really enjoying getting to read about the virtues of songs I'd otherwise never pay much attention to, or even hear at all.
Purse Certs (with Retsin)! You've unlocked a collective Proustian madeleine. Thank you for this, and for the songs. I recommend listening to the Muppets version with the closed captioning turned ON.
How have I never heard this before? My father's best friend was a Roger Miller fiend as I was growing up & we listened to so much while camping & road tripping. This song is exactly as you described it & I could not love it more for all the feelings it evokes.
Omfg. I literally have been singing "Oo-De-Lally" because it's been circulating through the Instagram reels with dogs and horses and I can't resist. It came up on my reels tonight and I was like "wait a damn minute" and looked up who sang it. You ever feel like musicians haunt you? Cause I do 😂 lemme get some goddamned rest.
I keep singing Desperado now, only I can't. My voice won't hit the lower octave, and if I go high I can't hit the ceiling. I tried to sing it once when I was doing karaoke in New York, and I wanted to seem cool in front of an older cousin, but that song blew my cover. I sang Danke Schoen instead and nailed it (that's how I remember it at least). You can sing that tho. I know the crying out of the side of the face trick. I remember at some point starting to dislike the eagles, but after you wrote this I was trying to remember why but I couldn't. Because Hotel California was shoved down our throats? Maybe. But listening to songs on repeat beyond reason have never been a huge problem for me. Hotel California is a deeply depressing song about someone's real drug addiction. No matter how many times it's played or aggrandized it's never going to erase someone's lived experience that gave that song life. I get it tho. I was a really, really big Beatles fan when I was in high school and now it makes me mad every time Paul McCartney makes another ten million on a story that we have all heard time and time again (right?). Especially after learning about what kind of a dick john Lennon was. (Can we talk about how NO ONE is talking about how he was forcing yoko to be in those recording sessions?????). But in high school I hung on to those albums for dear life, they taught me a lot - and I think I know why. I've been thinking a lot about soundscapes and stereo mapping and ADHD. There was this TikTok trend a while ago where neurodivergent folks were listening to this song that really played with the mapping, and these it causes these kids to stim. I guess there's one called 8D and it is meant to give the effect of the song spinning in a circle. I'm wondering if your crying has something to do with the way the sounds of certain songs hit your brain. I didn't know stimming was a thing until a few years ago. My parents were always physical with us if we "acted out" so I am assuming I never learned how to cope by stimming because it wouldn't have been allowed. But when I was a teen I would plug in to a Beatles album or a Pink Floyd album and the play with stereo would absolutely have this effect on me. Your music is very orchestral and you play around with a lot of familiar sounds, and that really floats my boat. There's that one part in Hell-On where y'all do the siren song (that's what I call it at least) and it sounds great on the album, but when I hear y'all do it live it literally sends shivers down my spine. It breaks up the concert with a shock to the system. To me Desperado sounds like your earlier music, the chord structure is honestly not that different. I don't think it's as good, obviously, but I could 100% see how baby neko was moved by it. Anyway that's a lot of words to just say maybe you can feel okay about listening to desperado, maybe singing it (for those who can't), and learning how to cry to it out loud and with both your eyes. If you want 🙂
Miller was a late discovery for me, in 1986, when in my mid twenties. Ah, love. I love and sometimes loathe it... Love is a heart's attack...
DESIGNS (1989/2014)
Across my heart
A hopeful sigh
Blood into wine
When she walks by
Thoughts aloft
In mind made cloud
Dare one voice
Desires aloud
If I took the time to tell you now
Would you soar or would I spiral
Would the words be worth the while
chorus
I put the art in heartache
Spot my canvas from a mile
I'm the clown with large, wet eyes
And rictus for a smile
I put the art in heartache
Spot my canvas from a mile
Single tear upon my cheek
Hanging all the while
Loves vast canvas
How colorful
Stretched to limits
Let all be known
Do not fear
The time is nigh
Journey to where
She resides
If I had designs on your heart
Would you flee or become drawn
To the highest form of art
chorus
Rip your heart out
Against the tide
Jump on in
Enjoy the ride
Wear your heart's colors
Upon both sleeves
Worst she could do
Is simply leave
If I took the time to tell you now
Would you soar or would I spiral
Would the words be worth the while
chorus
Well, in retrospect, this should not be a surprise. I've understood since Ms. Case's first album that she -- as do we all --contains multitudes. Our parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends and so on all write on the tabla rasa of our souls and we learn things and do things and understand good-bad-different-indifferent and fucking weird from that mixed perspective. Although my dad served on a Sub nicknamed South of the Mason Dix minus 2 (for the skipper and my dad) and he had seen Hank Williams one night in a honky tonk before leaving the Navy to do other things, I was the one in the family who discovered Roger Miller; Dang Me made me want to play the guitar because he sings in counterpoint with the instrument at one or two points in the song. First time I accidentally got it was 50 years later...Miller was hired by Ray Price to play fiddle in the Cherokee Cowboys, and discovered his nutty fiddle player was also a promising song writer. He was also a dope dealer, when the drug of choice in Nashville Reds and Blackies, diet and sleeping pills. Given the way country musicians, blues musicians and early rock musicians travelled between gigs then -- and now, most of the time -- the pills were all that stood between them and falling asleep while driving. On the other hand, Roger wrote a couple of hits for Price, including one of my favorites, "Received Your Invitation to the Blues."
Miller joked about having written over 800 songs and on an Austin City Limits show, he promised to sing all of them that night. He had his own morning TV show in Nashville, and appeared several times on the Jimmy Dean Show and the Johnny Cash Show. On one of those shows, he and Cash just threw out the script and adlibbed the into and then the song, which ended up as a mini-guitar pull, with them throwing out verses. It began with Cash saying, "So, Roger, you're out in California now, right?" Miller, not being sure where this was coming from replied. "Yes, John, I am." Cash's response was "Good, good. Are you thinking about coming back to Nashville to live?" "No John, I'm tied up with other things." To which Cash responded, "Good, Good, Good." And then the song started...Kind of a cross between Cocaine Blues, I Saw the Light, and Home, Sweet Home...
Well I'm ashamed that I remember the Muppets' version and never heard the original until now. Ugh. Also I was right: those particular Muppets are kind of terrifying.
In the Summertime and Reincarnation are my faves!!!!
I just came here for more muppet content
YEE-HAAAAWWW!!! I'm lovin' it!
Thanks Neko, love me some Roger Miller anytime
Jeff Tweedy recently reintroduced Reincarnation to his audience,so many great songs