The Songs You Wrote, Got Me Through A Lot, Just Wanna Tell You That.

After a whole "day" of travelling, it's good to be back home. Real real good.

I am in anticipation like you would not believe to be back in the city with the old karl krew. You know the ones I mean.

I'm excited for Tess's big celebration. I'm excited to meet the one who calls herself Hughes.
I'm excited for John's...

I like John.

All in all, should be a hoot 'n a holler about which I should be reporting constantly. As long as you care to listen.

But just to let you know, as a wise man once said.

"It's a very exciting time."

I have tried to post on my blog for the past week, both times they were videos cribbed from YouTube that I found quite quirking. And both times I was denied, no stairway style.

I hope this one works.

I've been thinking about Elliott Smith a lot recently (I know, I know the collective eye roll begins with the oh hear comes another plea for Mr. Smith) After hearing New Moon, the collection of B-Sides and lost recordings just released this week, I am simply stunned as to the man's songwriting abilities, I think he is unrivaled in his age bracket. Even the stop he didn't put on the album is better than what most slave over to press to disc. It's inspiring and then a bummer for its just another reminder of what a colossal we lost when he died. After listening to the cd, I decided to take a trip over to the Audio-Video solutions store where the Figure 8 album cover was shot in front of. It's quite a sight actually, thousands of hand-written notes by fans from various points throughout the last three years since his death. Some of them are touching and poetic, some not so much, and some were inspired. The common thread through all of these was, "Your music got me through a lot of shit." or "I wouldn't have made it without you, thank you so much." Obviously, more elegantly worded than that. Now, it's debatable whether or not that's true, I can't speak for the people who wrote the messages, and a lot of music is supposed to do that. But I think it's really interesting that all of Mr. Smith's fans chose to thank him for that particular part of his music, as if to suggest that his talent and his emotional gifts as a songwriter somehow translated into therapy for a few listeners. And to me that is what's so fascinating about his music and ultimately rewarding, the constant push and pull between disaster and recovery. On the one hand, his music culminates with some really dark subject matter, places no human being likes to see inside themselves or inside each other. On the other hand, here is a guy who would get up on stage with a guitar and just release all of this and people got better because of it (or so they thought). That's why to me, his music has always been much more complicated than happy/sad, sure there are sad moments in it, but I think his music is about survival. Ultimately he succumbed, but that by no means makes him a martyr for the music. It just proves once again the age old wisdom that music is immortal and in a strange way, so is Elliott. (I know I stole that from the end of Big Fish, but it works really well.) Anyway I was just thinking about that, and just how I wish he were still around.

I'm gonna try posting a video in the next entry (we'll see if it works this time, thank you very much youtube.) I'm not sure when it's from, but it's Kevin Devine covering The Biggest Lie, which is an Elliott Smith song and if there's anyone I want to hear covering Mr. Smith, it's Mr. Devine. (To give credit where credit is due, Bright Eyes also does a fantastic cover of it as well, there's even a video on youtube of Mr. Oberst playing that song in a what looks like a gymnasium in full on halloween get up, I think it's from the year he died, check it out I'll let Nate post that one, even though he swore off videos for a while.)

Happy Mother's Day too, if you want you should check out this website, it's got a pretty moving short film directed by Robert Greenwald. Just reminds you the simplicity of the message and how complicated it is to put it in action. Hope you all did something special and worthy of yo mama.

http://mothersdayforpeace.com/

Good night america,

"You look and him like you've never known him
but i know for a fact that you have
the last time you cried who'd you think was inside?
thinking that you were about to come over
but i'm tired now of waiting for you
you never show."