Count Me Down

Jeff Buckley, "Forget Her" - I will unashamedly cop (FIVE) to being One Of Those People for Jeff Buckley's Grace, by which I mean that I'm well aware that it's an imperfect album, but you'd never know it from hearing me talk about it. It helps, of course, to live in the age of (FOUR) CDs, which give you all the power in the world to turn any album into an EP for all intents and purposes; I doubt I'd be so tempted to give Grace a pass if I didn't have a choice but to endure "Lilac Wine". But there's also the (THREE) fact that the songs on Grace that work really hit the spot; the "Halleleujah" cover by itself was all I needed to hear to go rocketing off to Amoeba to pick up the three-disc Double Secret Probation Edition that (TWO) came out a few years back (and which furnished the world with "Forget Her" for the first time, the song having famously been deleted from the album's running order right before its original release and replaced with the vastly inferior "So Real"), and it's not leaving my collection any time soon.

(ONE)

That being said, yeah, it's downright impossible not to go super in-depth* about his death. How can you possibly blame anyone? It's not like Grace is Citizen Kane or basically every song Kurt Cobain or Biggie ever wrote; forensics haven't turned its songs into anything they weren't before. After all, Grace was already an extravagantly mournful, achingly beautiful album - the only thing Buckley's death did was give people a reason to pay closer attention. Hell, I'd argue that overanalysis hasn't even ruined Buckley's legacy, which is really kind of shocking when you think back on all the other musicians the general public (i.e. everyone who neither writes for nor reads this blog) have managed to oversimplify into irrelevance - I mean, fuck, paging the White Stripes, ferchrissakes (sorry Gregg). Maybe that's the benefit of only making one album and then dying suddenly and creatively - nobody has time to figure out what's genuine and what's just schtick.

See, I remember Grace actually happening, which is another way of saying I don't remember Grace happening at all. I was in the eighth grade in 1994 when Grace came out, and my tolerance for what I perceived to be maudlin, emo-y bullshit was at an all-time low; ten years later I would move within rock-throwing distance of Silverlake for some reason, but back then I would have volunteered to drown the motherfucker myself just from hearing someone describe what his songs sounded like. But here's the thing - I never consciously ran into Buckley even once. I'm sure I ran into his music a few times; "Last Goodbye" was apparently on MTV on occasion, and the first time I listened to Grace I was convinced that I'd heard the title track on G105 a few times, but most of my friends who I might have expected to like Grace were too busy being captivated by the Dave Matthews Professional Rock And Roll Organization. They didn't even "like" Jeff Buckley in the way that stupid teenagers can "like" songs way too complex for them to actually understand and appreciate (paging Fiona Apple's "Criminal") - the man was just a total non-entity. Grace, to me, always just sounded like music for parents.

Needless to say, I was a heroically stupid teenager. Grace isn't music for parents; it's just not music for teenagers, as countless teenagers have proven since 1997 by using the combination of his death, his music, and Amazon.com's user reviews section to achieve hilariously non-profound insights about the world. This is mostly because Grace is one of those albums that in no way sounds like it was made to get some pussy, and when you're young and dumb, this can seem (a) counterproductive in general, and (b) hypocritical in light of watching your peers refine their "sensitive" act in order to break themselves off a piece. But explaining it's another story entirely; it's practically a "sensitive" act in and of itself. Which is fucking retarded, of course; one of the best arguments I can come up with against Grace being a capital-g Great album is that at times, it's downright mundane in its aspirations - it's a very non-specifically sad album in a lot of ways, and a lot of it can leave me feeling like the only thing I've learned about Jeff Buckley is that he isn't all that great at the whole "relationship" thing. Finding yourself in terms of Grace is like finding yourself in terms of Tuesdays With Morrie - how could you not?

To a young person, this is probably the most offensive thing a piece of music can do. Young people like tangibly specific music, probably because they still have the luxury of defining themselves in terms of the stuff they consume; this is probably why so many kids like really shitty punk rock. Of course, now I'm twenty-four going on seventy-three, and the universality of Grace is one of its most attractive features; Grace is arguably the most blisteringly emotionally-forthright album built for a wide audience since Rumours, although of course it goes without saying that Rumours makes as deep a hole in the earth with Grace as Grace does with, say, everything Live ever put out. At the risk of cannibalizing emails I've sent out recently, Grace is a towering achievement of one man turning himself into an archetype; making yourself apply to the whole world isn't an easy thing to do, and it's worth recognizing whenever someone does it on Buckley's scale, even if it's not perfectly done - hell, even if it's not an archetype that has anything to do with Your life. Admittedly, yeah, Buckley's sadness sure makes a whole lot of sense out of parts of my life, but even so, goddamn - it is kind of a spectacular accomplishment. I mean, listen to "Forget Her" and tell me Buckley's not trying to shake some demons loose - either that, or he's a good enough performer that you might simply want to check out his performance. Either way, you know what to do. (Click here to order the 3-disc Legacy edition of Grace from Amazon)

*ZING

Wire, "Dot Dash" - The thing about Wire is that they're a great idea for a band - great name, great gimmick (super-short songs), great album covers - but I actually like maybe a total of four of their songs, and I like a total of one of those more than the Elastica songs that shamelessly ripped off the other three, and that one song is "Dot Dash". But GOD, "Dot Dash" is a motherfucker of a song, two minutes and twenty-four seconds of the catchiest melody they'd ever stumble over topped with the most instantly-shout-along-y chorus maybe anyone ever stumbled over. Maybe Elastica figured they better leave well enough alone. (Click here to order the recently-remastered Pink Flag import from Amazon)