Woody’s most famous children’s song is “Riding in My Car (The Car Car Song)” but he recorded albums of the stuff for his kids, and took it seriously. In the notes to one album, he urges parents not to just let it play for the kids while they go off to do other things. He hoped that his music might help bring families together. I imagine that this was important to his offspring, too. Natalie does a nice job of honoring that facet of Woody. I find her performance to be very charming. A strong Vashti Bunyan feel, like “Jog Along Bess” or something. She should do an album of kids’ music, herself. The Wilco track today is a nice bit of jangle pop that might have been a B-side from George Harrison or The Byrds. The Gin Blossoms might have had a minor hit with it circa 1994.
She did! Her 2010 album Leave Your Sleep is a project adapted from 18th and 19th century poetry about children. (Some people really love this. I personally found it kind of dull).
"I Was Born"- I went to go listen to today's songs and I don't even have this one. It's the one song I didn't transfer to my computer from the cd. That must say what I think of it. I had to pull it up on YouTube. There is nothing awful about it, but I believe these guest vocals disrupt the flow of the record. It's a short and average song that I can do without on this album. 2/5 "Secret of the Sea"- I thought this would get lots of praise, but I have never been overly impressed with it. The George Harrison comparisons are accurate. It even recalls "Hooked on a Feeling" with the electric sitar. It's actually a lovely song, and I enjoyed listening to it several times this morning. Overall a pretty average Wilco tune that I like, but it doesn't knock my socks off. 3.5/5
I'm a fan of this. But then again I'm a big British Folk buff... so this seemed a continuation of The House Carpenter's Daughter...
Secret of the Sea is my second-favourite song on the album. Perfect 3 minute song. And an upbeat contrast to my favourite which is yet to come...
According to setlists.fm, "Secrets of the Sea" made its public performance debut on the Letterman show, and Wilco played it another 17 times in 2000, but the band put the song away--it wasn't even part of their 2008 Chicago residency series--until returning it to the concert rotation with 26 performances from December 2014 thru September 2015. Since then, Wilco has played it just once, in Mexico last January, probably just because they were at the resort by the ocean. Jeff has played it 6 times in his solo shows, most recently in Chicago in 2018. I guess this means that the song isn't exactly close to Jeff's heart. If you hear it in concert, you're getting a relatively rare treat.
… and is likely the same as mine ? Tomorrow is gonna be the day, then. I like that the tension builds in anticipation of that monster of a song. I wonder if one of the thread participants will say something like "I know that I'm in the minority but that song never did much for me…" Ahah, people, I dare you !
"I Was Born" works for me, even though I'm not much of a fan of songs for children. I enjoy this one more than I do Merchant's lead spot on the first MA volume. Sure, it's an outlier on this album, but I still like it. "Secret of the Sea" is just amazing - one of the two Wilco masterpieces on this album. There's a lot of the Summerteeth feel to this one but, unlike most of the songs on that album, the instrumentation is more organic and the lyrics are joyful and inspiring. If this song had appeared on Summerteeth, it would easily have been the album's standout track. Woody's lyric is simple but beautiful in its comparison of the mysteries of love and devotion to the wonders of the natural world. Fantastic song.
I’m a Merchant fan so am always happy to hear her voice. She sounds great over Bragg’s folk guitar and I sing this one with my kids a lot. But Secret of the Sea? I really agree with @robcar assessment. Yes there’s George Harrison in there as others have noted, but that baritone guitar solo is pure country. It’s like Jay took all of his lush Summerteeth production and applied backwards to the Americana palate of Mermaid I, only to come out with something new. This is a top ten Wilco song for me (although as I said earlier I probably have about fifty of those). As with ELT, I’ve never understood why it gets played so little live. Maybe it’s just too Jay for Tweedy to want to revisit that much? As with ELT, it gets played solo acoustic about as much as by the full band, so maybe Jeff prefers to just play the tune without the baggage. Regardless, I love it. I would add, the Letterman performance is the first TV performance of theirs I remember seeing as a new fan. In retrospect, although Jay looks super cool, he also looks out of place. Having the time of his life with the flamboyant jacket and the larger than life double neck guitar, but failing to realize this isn’t really his band. Then again, maybe he’s just a musician who’s super pumped to play the Letterman stage. I sure would have been!
The presentation generally is kind of weird. They're sitting in a row, on a Persian rug, like it's an acoustic folk show, but John has his pink electric bass on one end, Jay has his double-neck guitar on the other, and Ken is playing his full drum kit right behind them. Why? And then Jay is wearing that thick fur like a '70s rock star, while Billy is sporting that bright yellow hula shirt (and looking a bit annoyed or bored with his role). Jeff is probably the most fashionable in a tasteful grey sport coat, accented by a hot pink shirt and... ripped jeans, while it looks like John has on his best white Canadian tuxedo. It all looks like an odd fit.
Two songs for today: Stetson Kennedy Stetson Kennedy was a writer and human rights activist who spent a decade undercover with the Ku Klux Klan. Woody Guthrie wrote these lyrics in 1950 as a campaign song for Kennedy. Musically, it doesn't interest me much. It's fine, but a bit plain. I love bare, stripped down acoustic music but the melody and words on this song don't engage me terribly. I do like this: I ain't the world's best writer nor the world's best speller But when I believe in something I'm the loudest yeller That's a couplet that has always stood out for me and been very memorable when I listen to Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. Overall, this is very much a Bragg song (Ken, John and Jay play here and Jay contributes a really understated solo) but not a favorite.
And here's one I think a few of you might have been looking forward to... Remember the Mountain Bed What's to be said? This song is almost impossibly gorgeous. It's one of those moments when everything just comes together in perfect harmony. Woody Guthrie's lyric is stunning--it is worthy of Walt Whitman. It is a song about aging and letting go of halcyon dreams of youth. The natural imagery is nothing short of masterful. Every single verse could stand alone as a poem. The final two verses are enough to make a grown man weep. I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again. And the music. Jeff's vocal performance is another of his tender, sleepy triumphs and the arrangement is so gentle and patient--just letting the song flow out like a gentle river. Leroy Bach contributes the absolutely lovely piano, Jay is on nylon-string guitar and I love the muffled sound on Ken's drums. This song is like a dream. Words and words and words like a Bob Dylan song, capturing some pure magic. It is easily one of the best songs to come out of the Mermaid Avenue project. I really look forward to reading the comments on this one!
Stetson Kennedy: Billy Bragg Wow. I wasn’t familiar with this track. It’s a nice one and Bragg’s vocals don’t bore me at all. Includes a great Jay guitar solo (and the liner notes even point this out! Bennett isn’t one to go unrecognized).
Remember The Mountain Bed: Tweedy/Bennett A classic. Beautifully sung by Jeff Tweedy. This is another song recorded in Chicago, at The Loft in 1999, and is all Wilco (and is the one and only Mermaid song that includes Leroy Bach. On piano). An epic in scope, 9 full verses. “You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes.” There’s line after line that jumps out at me, drawing me into the song. “There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life’s reason why; The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die.” This is a truly wonderful song.
It may not tbe the best track on the album, but I like Stetson Kennedy. It's another example where the instrumentation and arrangement fit the song very well. And yes, Remember the Mountain Bed is a gorgeous song. It's a long lyric which has both light and shade, giving it a depth it wouldn't if it was a straight love song. It's the start of the best stretch on the album for me, several tracks in a row which are simply fantastic.
Today is the french national holiday, and I feel proud and honored that as far this thread is concerned, it is also the ‘Remember the Mountain Bed” day. My favorite Woody Guthrie lyric of all, my favorite Jeff Tweedy performance ever , and one of my top three Wilco songs – I’m not sure about the other two, but this one would be part of any top three I could come up with on any given day, maybe that means it’s a top one after all ?? As always, @Parachute Woman sums it up beautifully, so I will essentially paraphrase. When it was released, I could not believe that song. Still can’t. A timeless classic, that conjures and honors everything folk music can or should be, with an incredible time travel magic trick. A 1944 lyric finding the music and melody it was always supposed to be sang to, with a 55 years’ time difference. The fact that it took them two volumes to get there is telling. Surely, they noticed those lyrics the first time around. But they didn’t attempt it right away, they had to give it a little more thought... As said previously more than a hundred pages ago, I’m not really a lyrics person, but these words come through anyway, I love their simplicity, their extraordinary humanistic power. Long verses, no chorus nor bridge, just a long development about life, love and the whole human experience, based on a profound melancholia, a deep feeling of something lost – or maybe not lost but eternal and elusive. It could be about any man contemplating Adam and Eve’s first embrace, not as an “original sin” but as a tender memory, universally shared. If there’s a song that deserves the Nobel price of philosophy (Kyoto price), this is it. But it’s also an incredible impressionistic and visual song. I listen to it like it’s a John Ford movie, or a Kurosawa, Murnau, Terrence Malick, all the great primal storytellers who know how to say something mythical and all-encompassing of the human spirit and longings. All the verses are of equal power to me, and Jeff’s delivery, his mastery of phrasing is at its all-time best, enhancing poetic strength by subtle changes in flow, giving each and every verse its own power and melodic specificity. None of the verses have the exact same melody, even Blood on the Tracks Dylan doesn't do it just as beautifully !! Obviously, it’s a lyric that all involved cared to give justice to. Jeff measured his responsibility to deliver in the best way possible, and Wilco’s performance is one for the ages : they give it a gentle flow, little crescendos, peaks and moments of calm, "mountains" but also “valley and deserts”, it’s never repetitive, always changing, ever evolving, building to reach the listener on a very deep level. Really, I can’t believe this song… NB : just kidding about the French national holiday, I couldn’t care less if not for the fireworks tonight, above the Dordogne river (if they’re not canceled because of the sanitary crisis).
Stetson Kennedy - another tune that shows Wilco to be the masters of Americana. A beautiful rich arrangement that doesn’t go overboard and a nice earthy vocal from Bragg. and then there’s Mountain Bed which is an absolute triumph of a song. What if Vol I was a failure and Vol II never happened?!? This is a song that needed time to materialize and we are all the better for it. It’s like one of those long meandering Dylan tunes that I love so much, but in this case written by both a mentor and disciple of Dylan! The arrangement here is flawless. I was also blessed a couple of years ago when Tweedy player the theatre in my small city and included this one. I hadn’t seen Wilco since Ghost (but follow their live sets closely), and my wife would never go to one of those noisy shows. But we got to sit in the middle of the second row and be mesmerized for six wonderful minutes with Tweedy crooning away. Pure magic.
