Some Songs Considered

“Holy Diver” – Dio
(Words/music: Ronnie James Dio, available on Holy Diver, Reprise 1983) 

Given different circumstances, I might have been a metalhead.  If I had a close friend who slipped me a Metallica record, or if the guys who worshiped Iron Maiden in high school weren’t completely intimidating, my shelves might be full of obscure Scandinavian dark metal and not jangly late-80s college rock.  So only approaching metal from a curiosity later in my listening life, it’s been a series of brief dabbles.  That explains why my strongest memory of Ronnie James Dio comes with “Holy Diver” and only after South Park used it in an episode in its early days.  Only later did I find that the voice carrying this recording, one of potency due to its weight and clarity, voiced some of the late 1970’s essential metal albums.  Even if I only knew of him tangentially, I grew to respect Dio’s credentials. 

So today, upon hearing about Ronnie James Dio’s passing after a long bout with stomach cancer, two thoughts filled my head.  The first was sadness not only for Dio’s family but also for the many, many people who spent days and months of their lives listening to his records.  Knowing how the metal community looks at its idols like gods, Dio’s passing is one felt deeply.  I found myself thinking too that the world lost itself one of metal’s strongest ambassadors.  Where metal, at least to an outsider, feels like an insular community, Dio regularly championed music and other musicians he felt carried the torch.  Even on those lame VH-1 countdown shows, Dio always came across as someone who loved music and appreciated the music that others made.  He’s far from the genre’s only champion, but his death marks the departure of someone who cared about music (and, to get back to the song, had one hell of a voice too).  The world is a little quieter without him in it.

More on Dio: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“People Who Died” – Jim Carroll Band
(Words/music: Jim Carroll, available on Catholic Boy, Atco 1980)

I envisioned this blog as an opportunity to discuss songs and my relationship with them, so this is not the place for me to eulogize Jim Carroll. To be honest, Carroll’s death saddened me mainly because I know a lot of people who loved his work, in particular The Basketball Diaries, and will consider this death a personal blow. I only mention it because the touching tributes around the web pointed me back toward “People Who Died,” a song I haven’t heard in years and hadn’t thought about in almost the same amount of time.

Most of the tributes characterized Carroll as a “punk poet” – a writer who tried his hand at music the way other writers adapt a new genre. I’ve heard the term attached to people like Patti Smith (who described Carroll as “pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation” in the New York Times obituary) but thought of it as a stopgap term – the way to describe someone who dabbled in the spirit of punk rock and approached songwriting with a literary eye. I’m skeptical to call a poet playing punk rock a “punk poet” – as it seems too tidy. However, hearing “People Who Died” now after being introduced to it on VH-1 Classic a few years back, Carroll’s song embodies the spirit of both punk and poetry. Poetry has this stigma of being dense and unapproachable, but just as often a writer will compose something that looks simple (at least on the outside) as the best way to communicate an idea. Specifically, a trashing punk song doesn’t provide the optimal ground for a web of complex imagery (at least usually), and Carroll seems to understand this about the medium. Rather than get bogged down in details, he presents his “poem,” (if you want to call it that) as a series of images bombarding his audience. It creates the same effect as elaborately lurid details, except using bodycount rather than gore to elicit shock. The stories fly by too fast before Carroll and his band describe them in a droll and deadpan way in the chorus, perhaps as a commentary to those who turn a blind eye to the casualties of drug abuse. The sing-songy chorus and blank faced descriptions give “People Who Died” the same feel as an Edward Gorey painting – simple on the outside and subversive right below the surface.

More on Jim Carroll: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” – Michael Jackson
(Words/music: Michael Jackson, available on Off the Wall, Epic 1979)

I desperately wanted to write about someone else tonight, but I’ve been surrounded by Michael Jackson’s death between Twitter, the pop radio stations playing him non-stop, and even MTV briefly playing videos tonight.  It’s next to impossible for me to think about anything else tonight.  I try my best to keep the focus on the songs and my personal reactions to the songs, but tonight it’s hard not to think about Jackson’s place in popular culture.  Maura at Idolator says that it’s “very tempting to say that Jackson was something of a mirror of the past 40-ish years of popular culture, from his family’s band’s beloved singles in the ’60s and ’70s to his boundary-breaking solo career that followed to the celebrity-spectre existence,” but I’m not sure that does Jackson justice entirely.  Jackson helped to push popular culture by expanding the boundaries of popular music and the reach of a pop star.  He might have made a dozen more singles that sounded like “I Want You Back” and still remained popular, but he never seemed content to rest on his laurels.  Instead, Jackson kept thinking bigger.  Soon, his singles nearly burst at the seams with different sounds.  He almost single-handedly turned the music video into an artistic statement by employing film directors and calling in famous friends for cameos.  And even as recent as a few years ago, Jackson still outshined an entirely slew of contemporary pop stars.  “Billie Jean,” his finest single, was also, in the words of Freaky Trigger’s Tom Ewing, “a disquieting, troubled record.”  Sure, these quirks gave way to a man with serious personal and legal issues later in life, but Jackson’s shortcomings shouldn’t diminish his role in pushing popular culture to new heights.

“Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” was essentially the adolescence of Jackson’s musical career – the period between his beginnings as a child start and his ascendaency atop the musical world in the early 1980s.  During this time, Jackson stepped out on his own, left behind the vintage Motown sound that made him famous, and made a dance record.  Maybe it’s the clarity hindsight affords, but all of the elements that would catapult Jackson into becoming the world’s most recognizable entertainer are in this song – a terrific and charming vocal performance, an overriding sense of joy, and a musical arrangement that took a few risks.  It’s not as edgy as some of his later singles, but it marked a steep departure from his Jackson 5 days.  It’s also immensely satisfying to listen to now, and if the song comes up on shuffle and gets past that opening “woo,” I’ve committed myself to listening to the whole thing.  I may not be a Jackson aficionado, but I’m overcome with joy any time I hear this song.

More on Michael Jackson: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm