Friends!

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1. So the Doc and I discussed “All My Friends” over at BT recently, and I thought it’d make a good Wednesday music post.

   But when it came time to write it up, I had trouble. It’s not easy trying to find something new to say about one of the most written-about songs from one of the most written-about bands of the last several years.

   LCD’s James Murphy is that proverbial “genius who steals”, and the song’s ingredients comprise several of the best songs of the rock and roll era, each of which really deserves its own post; songs which vie for the title of my favorite song ever.

   It was inevitable that I’d love “All My Friends”, and maybe just as inevitable that it would stymie me writing about it in any concise fashion. To explain it, I’d have to explain too many other things.

   Like how to create “All My Friends”, you start with the relentlessly-pounding piano from The Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” (that piano player must get tired – they play it all live, all seven-and-a-half minutes of it).

   Add at least two or three liberal scoops of the musical DNA of New Order – a bit of “Ceremony” (listen to the bass in particular; if I could only listen to one song for the rest of my life, it might be this one), the general structure of “Temptation” (it’s nearly possible to sing those falsetto “oooh”‘s in the bridge; and maybe THIS is the one song I’d have to keep forever), and the Bernard-Sumner-like guitar from 2:15 onwards.

   Then you take the mid-life crisis at the lyrical center of Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime” and expand it. Give it a narrative shape that describes a particular period, in a particular set of aging lives, and do it in a way that is universal enough to generalize to most anyone who has reached a point in their life where they can look back and see what they have gained, and all they have lost.

   We all, if we are lucky, have had a period in time (perhaps several) when we were with that perfect group of friends, the ones we knew we’d be with always.

   Maybe that period is now.

   But it never lasts: that shining couple everyone thought would be together forever splits up; someone cheats on someone else, the factions splinter and splinter again; friends fight and fall out with one another, or just slowly grow apart; people get lost somehow due to moves or jobs or schools or family or death; or they just plain get lost to drugs or booze or sadness, and you wonder if they’ll ever come up for air again.

   I miss them all.

   • I look back at some of the crazy stuff we did in the early 90’s, the crazy lies we told ourselves, the crazy truths we told each other, and how much freakin’ drama we had. It’s like we thought we owed it to each other to provide topics of conversation.

     I still hang with a handful, a tiny handful, of friends from then. Occasionally, we sit and talk about how much drama there used to be. It’s easier to eat and drink (but not too much) and talk about “whatever happened to so-and-so?” “she’s on facebook, she got married, two kids, posts pictures of them all the time”.

   • I think to a certain degree, we all had that group of friends, and that is why we are here at the league. We need someone to argue about food labeling, evil libertarians and how fished up the education system is. And as we age, and it becomes harder to find those people, we find that we don’t like our old friends husbands, that some of our interests were a little superficial and that talking on the phone to someone a thousand miles away kinda sucks.

     But I miss them too.

     • I wonder about that too. This is the first online community I have participated heavily in, so I am still unsure if the people here are friends, or acquaintances, or an audience, or something else entirely.

       And it’s strange to think that one day I may look back this same way at the League: after we mostly have drifted away, or some ridiculous political schism and online fight blows the place up for good, or Erik decides he is tired of spending time and money maintaining a space where people can hang out all day and make stupid puns and accuse each other of mental, moral and political deficiency.

       We should enjoy it while it lasts.

       • so I am still unsure if the people here are friends, or acquaintances, or an audience, or something else entirely.

         A little bit of all of those, eh? It seems to me that the people who stick around here develop relationships, something like friendships, but unless they extend beyond this medium, probably not fully realized friendships (I don’t mean offline, necessarily, but if you’re just communicating in comments, the relationship is limited). At the same time, everyone here is reading and producing something for people who extend beyond that group, so to that extent we’re audience too.

         • Also, “Ceremony” is definitely a desert island song for me. I don’t know if it’s the song, but I have probably heard it 200 times, and it still gets me every time I hear the opening.

         • “Ceremony” is definitely a desert island song for me

           Dude, no doubt. It is an extraordinarily powerful piece of music on a primal level.

           Here’s the original (New Order) version:

           http://youtu.be/H5UK40sSo8I

           I actually much prefer the re-recorded version – it seems like they had a better understanding of all the dynamic elements: the quiet parts are quieter, the loud parts are louder; everything just pops more, it’s more energetic and passionate (maybe that’s just confidence).

           There’s a couple live JD versions out there (notably on Still), but they never got a a chance to record it. Bernard listened to the live recordings and tried to suss out the lyrics from those. (Supposedly, when NO was just starting out, they sometimes thought they were hearing Curtis’ voice in the amps/recordings. But I think they were also doing a lot of coke).

           Here’s the original “Temptation”:

           http://youtu.be/w43uSMJntgw

           Again, I prefer the re-recording, not just for the improved sonics, but the structural & lyrical changes. Over time they really worked out what worked best, and where, in the song.

           “It hurts me to treat you this way” is much more ambiguous, and therefore interesting, than the original and more prosaic “It hurts me to see you this way”.

           Saving the delirious “oh, you’ve got green eyes/blue eyes/grey eyes” bit for the song’s ecstatic climax rather than throwing it there out at the start is a wise choice dramatically.

         • Also, I am sure you are familiar with Galaxie 500’s narcotized take on “Ceremony”:

           http://youtu.be/4CnAnmnEPcU

           I think this is almost as great as New Order’s, despite the very different sound; somehow the restrained, laid-back approach is almost as powerful. By the time it gets to the “forever” part at 3:55, it’s just sweeping me along with it, and I never want it to end.

           There was a sticker on one of the G500 reissues, exhorting listeners to “Come ride the fiery breeze!”, and that is a better description than any I can come up with.

2. I gonna guess that you were a big Big Audio Dynamite fan, right?

   • Actually, not really. I love the Clash, and I liked some of B.A.D.’s singles (“Rush” was fun), but that’s about it. Why do you ask?

     • just a hunch, still trying to get a feel for your point of view.

       • Cool. I am still trying to figure out how to do this. You’d think with as much music as I have heard and as much as I like to talk about it that I’d have a better handle on writing about it, but that old saw about “dancing about architecture” really seems to hold true. I still get tongue-tied somehow.

         In this post, because I couldn’t find a concise way in (how do you include the lyrics, and the influences, and what it all means to you, in less than 20 pages?) I tried sort of an experiment – I was wondering if interspersing those songs that I see as clear precedents at appropriate points in the lyrics, would get my points across without actually saying anything else.

         Not sure if that worked at all.

         If there’s anything you’d like to see/hear, let me know (it sounds like you’d prefer more of a personal POV maybe?). Constructive criticism is welcome. I am always looking for suggestions about how to make this more interesting and entertaining to y’all. And guest posts are always welcome!

         • I look forward to these Wednesday posts from you, and from Mike.

         • Thanks Chris. And I wasn’t kidding about the hip-hop guest post. It’s just not an area where I have a ton of knowledge, and what knowledge I do have is not very current.

         • Eh, I’m not much of a music writer. I suppose I could try to think up an angle. If I do, I’ll write one up.

3. Another thing about the song is the way that its structure evokes the structure of not just the passing years in the lyrics, but also a single night’s party or experience.

   When the lone piano starts, it sounds like the anticipatory butterflies fluttering in your stomach, and the song continues to pick up speed and energy all the way until the inevitable disordered crash.

   “We set controls for the heart of the sun, one of the ways that we show our age.”

   EDITED TO ADD:

   One thing I DON’T understand about the song, is its relative lack of dynamic range – especially compared to the songs that it is clearly riffing on, the sound on “All My Friends” is really dynamically-compressed, almost tinny. Murphy is a talented, in-demand producer, and his other songs have plenty of space and low-end thump, so I am not sure why he chose a different direction for this one.

   Maybe it’s a trick that’s supposed to evoke nostalgia/memory, as though it’s being heard through a cheap old radio?

4. Also a little.

   • That song always kind of struck me as Billy trying to do a New Order song!

     (With a tiny bit of Cure moodiness too – the Cure and New Order had a bit of rivalry, each sometimes accusing the other of “borrowing” the others’ bits. Cure would do a Peter Hook-like bassline in “Inbetween Days”, or do their own their version of “Blue Monday” as “The Walk”; then NO clearly and obviously returned the favor, when they nicked the bassline from “Just Like Heaven” for “All The Way”. Cure were pretty open about their JD-Worship, and have covered “Love Will Tear Us Apart” live.)

     Billy’s definitely shooting for that same nostalgia.

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