Perfect Songs - Winter

I have a playlist I've put together I call Zoey Sleep, that we use for the shocking purpose of getting my 4 year old daughter to sleep. It's not your typical set of lullabies, but instead features songs from Juliana Hatfield, Tanya Donelly, Bon Iver, Alison Krauss and several others. I add to it once in a while and she likes the songs I've added. But there's one that not only works best, it has a whole other impact on me: Tori Amos' "Winter.," a perfect song.

This song has taken on new meanings for me over the past 8 or so years, since the birth of our first daughter. Most nights, it works like a charm, calming Zoey down quickly which is a big deal if you know Zoey. It used to do the same for Shayera. And that calmness comes with a lot of reflection on my part as well as it gives me a few minutes of just laying with my daughter, listening to the lyrics and having images run through my mind. Every single time, there are tears. Usually they come after the girl is asleep, and I can just lay there listening to the rest of it.

I've always thought of this song as a (better) companion to Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide," complete with the father daughter relationship and the images of snow. The whole concept of growing older and somehow colder, from the daughter's perspective, and how the father is still there for her, knowing what the future will bring as she faces her teenage years, etc. Look, the song speaks for itself. It's beautiful and multilayered and it was always one of, if not my very favorite of Tori's songs. To the point that we briefly toyed with naming our first born Winter. But my moments with the girls tend to turn the song around a bit, because I imagine the conversation in it slightly different than is perhaps intended.

In my version, the father (me) and the daughters are both sort of saying parts of the lyrics to each other. "You must learn to stand up for yourself cause I can't always be around" is the guiding principal and heartbreaking truth that guides every parent that gives a shit about their kids. And maybe even more so when it's daughters facing a world that continues to be shitty to women. "When you gonna love you as much as I do?" could easily be my daughters telling me that when they were first born and I was really overwhelmed by what the love felt like from them and for them. And I hope it's not something I ever have to say to them, but then the song also goes into the complexity of what our relationship may be like as she gets older, when she says she'll always want her father near and he responds with "things change." By the time the song swells with the last verse about grey hairs, dreams on a shelf and wanting each other to be proud of the other, I'm usually laying in a puddle of tears.

I've always said the most tragic thing you can give a child is a balloon. It's really just a metaphor for mortality and never ends in happiness. It's just this ball of impending sadness. Either you watch it slowly die as it floats less each day, withering like a senile relative before your eyes in a matter of days, or it floats away before you had a chance to truly get to know it, forever a memory of happiness that really could never have been. Sure you can suck the life out of it and speak in a funny voice for a few seconds, but then you're a murderer and empty inside (yeah, just go with it). Even with all this pain, it doesn't prepare you for the realities of parenting. The dread you feel at maybe not being able to be there for them, no matter what, leads to panic when you realize you obviously can't. And then you scramble, daily, to prepare them for EVERYTHING, as if anybody possibly could. But you know full well you can't. You've lived this life and you know what it's done to you. I remember every balloon I've lost both literal and figurative. And it sucks that I can't keep my kids from losing their share as well.

So, yeah, I get a little warm in my heart when I think of Winter. 

Perfect (Cover) Songs: A Case of You

Drink the whole thing, dust and all.

It happens often that the first time I hear a song it turns out to be a cover, I dig back to the original and wind up liking the cover better. Sometimes, the opposite happens, though. And sometimes, they're pretty even. Sometimes I'll hear yet other versions and find some that stand on their own, bringing something new to the mix and I'm left unable to decide which is better because it really depends on what you're in the mood for. But at the end of the day, the strength of the song itself is what stands, and practically any version will do. I haven't heard every single version as I'm sure there must be millions, well, maybe not that many, but a lot, but I think Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" is in that league where you can have a, uh, case of different versions to choose from. I'm saying it's a perfect song with several perfect covers.

The first time I heard it was Tori Amos' version which is a B-Side from Under the Pink's "Cornflake Girl" UK single. If you were ever into Tori, you sought these things out. It's the version I first hear in my head since it's ingrained deeply. I played this thing over and over again, obsessed with the melancholy longing to want to get completely drunk on someone. There's a sense of morbidity in love that is rarely talked about explicitly, but I often hear in the best love songs. Tori's take on the song seems to drown in that submission and it's captivating. But eventually, I had to hear the original.

Remember that Janet Jackson song, "Got Til It's Gone" where she sampled Joni Mitchell and Q Tip kept saying "Joni Mitchell never lies"? Yeah, he wasn't lying either. Though her's is not my favorite, I think it's interesting that her's seems to lean a little more towards the defiant joy of a complicated, sometimes combative and maybe even slightly abusive (?) relationship. I mean it's her song, she knows what it's about so it makes sense her performance seems to stay closer to the emotion of the lyrics. And again, it's entirely possible the difference between these two versions is all in my head. But it is what it is and it's what this song is to me. So, then there was Prince.

Only Prince can do that. He takes it to a level that is at once true to both of the other two versions but amps up the sexy to the point that this is a bedroom jam. It's candle light and satin sheet music and it somehow fits perfectly. I don't normally go for this type of R&B, but this is just so different from the original that it's hard not to appreciate what he's done here. I'd mention the fact that it's coming from a male point of view when the song seems to be coming from a much more traditionally feminine perspective, but the truth is, Prince has never been tied to any gender and that fact also manages to add another layer of depth to this. Because at the end of the day, what does gender have to do with it? It's a direct challenge to preconceived notions that while now a days is beginning to seem obvious, wasn't always so. Anyway, one more to round this out, which I just discovered, can't stop listening to and I think has become my favorite.

Ana Maoura's fado version is absolutely perfect to me. It's a no-brainer to take this song of longing and do it in a style that is all about longing. This really brings the atmosphere of someone drinking a case of bittersweet memories of their lover in a lonely tavern to life in a way none of the other versions do. I could feel all of these, but I can really see this one. I'm in that room. I'm drinking with her. I get it in a way that can't be explained. That's perfection and I could drink many cases of that shit.

Live Looping

There's something about watching somebody work with loops that's just magical, like watching a modern day one man band. It can seem very simple, but I know for a fact that it's pretty complex stuff to string together a bunch of seemingly random bits of sound into a song. To do it while an audience is watching, seamlessly building and performing at the same time, demonstrates a real mastery to me. The first time I saw anyone do it was during Tori Amos's Scarlet's Walk Tour, when Howie Day opened for her. I remember I was completely floored by it when I realized what was happening. The thing is, later on I went looking for his music and found that I didn't care for it outside of that live context. Still, I can't deny the guy has some skill.



I've since seen a couple of people do this sort of thing and each time I'm as captivated by it as I was the first time. The most reacent person I saw do it was Joseph Arthur, who takes it to a whole other level of transcendence, though. I still hold this as being the most amazing thing I've ever seen at a show.



Music is one of the only activities that engages all parts of the brain. It would pretty much have to in order for a musician to be able to coordinate everything that is going on at any given time in a performance. I try to mess around with the guitar and in the past I messed around with keyboards and minor sequencing. I can barely coordinate the fingers of one hand. But here is Joseph Arthur, managing to play, sing, sample, sequence, fucking paint, edit the sequence, continue painting and singing complicated as fuck lyrics, and never miss a note or beat. If you're not impressed by that, well, then fuck you.



Kawehi is now an artist I'm watching closely. There's noting novel, necessarily about the end result (though it is really good) but the fact that she does this sort of thing live and on the fly just goes to show that all those people that have ever ignorantly dismissed electronic music as if it were being made by computers and therefore the artists had no talent are full of shit. We're not talking about studio trickery here. This is performance in the truest sense.



But this guy, DD Dumbo, I really want to see live. Not only is he doing some impressive shit, but his music is unique and haunting. There's something otherworldly about his voice and his melodies. And it all seems to fit perfectly with the live looping style. His stuff seems more complicated than the others too and it gives him a sort of mad genius aura a that I don't see often enough in musicians anymore.

Tori Amos at The Fillmore Miami August 24, 2014

I learned a lot about what it means to be a woman from Tori Amos. I'm pretty sure the first thing I ever heard from her was "Crucify" on the University of Miami radio station, WVUM. I immediately went out and bought whatever she had out, which just her first album, Little Earthquakes and the Crucify EP. So I can safely say I was there from the start, though it would be several years before I saw her live. One of the many things that bonded my wife and I when we met was that we were both big fans. And it's with her that I've seen Tori live about 6 times now over the years. The last time we saw was over 10 years ago, during her Beekeeper Tour. Until about 2 weeks ago, when we saw her on the last date of her North American tour supporting her latest album, Unrepentant Geraldines.

Right off, the first thing that hit me when showing up to The Fillmore in Miami Beach, was that there were no strange little girls in faerie wings running around, squealing as in the past. There were no outcast boys, some slightly feminine, some just open, some quiet. There was instead, what I assume were those same kids who found comfort and acceptance in Tori's music and each other, grown up, well adjusted, mature and seemingly secure in the identities they were able to develop, thanks, in no small part, to the fandom they had been a part of this many years. A fandom that can be intense, weird (whatever that even means in this context), loyal, completist and caring.

There's a reason I hadn't seen Tori in 10 years, though. The Beekeeper was not an album I was all that crazy about. In my mind, she peaked musically with the previous album, Scarlet's Walk, which I can safely say is my favorite, by far, even though I still love her previous efforts. Her latest album has gotten much praise and there are good songs on it, as there were on Beekeeper, but overall, I still draw a line post Scarlet as being a different Tori. And that's fine, I expect change and it should happen. In any case, live can always be something different and I came because it had been a long time.



For the most part, it was what I expected. It was just her and a piano. In the past, I've seen her with a full band, a couple of supporters and alone, and I have to say, I think I prefer her with some support. I think her songs are much more complex than a simple piano can deliver in the way she seems to prefer. I'm not a fan of too much reliance on sequencing, which happened several times. Highlights for me included a surprise song, "Leather," "Don't Make Me Come to Vegas," and of course "Winter," which now always makes me think of my daughters. The Lizard Lounge section, in which Tori does a couple of covers requested by fans was a little underwhelming. The song choices, Massive Attack's "Tear Drop" and Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" were fine, but the choice to go with a drum machine and sequencer seemed to defeat the purpose of having her cover those songs. I expected to hear her strip them down and deconstruct them. Give them new meaning. Make them hers. Instead, it felt like vague karaoke, a feeling I got again at the end when she played "Cornflake Girl" over the actual album track.


So overall, this was not the best Tori concert I've seen. I'd have to say, it was the weakest. Still, it was good to see her and it has made me listen to her albums once again, in a new light. But the show did leave me with a sense that she was sort of "getting back into it." As if she was just seeing what she can do at 50 years old and that maybe the next thing will be a whole new ball game for her. We'll see.