My mum, quite a hip chick in her day and still pretty lively for an old girl, used to own a record by a band called Eden Kane, whose main refrain went something like:
"Boys cry
Where no-one can see them
When no-one can hear them cry
No-one can see them cry".
I used to rather like this record, mainly because it had rather a jolly tune counteracting the somewhat plastic sentimental lyrics. So the Edens may not have been the "new" Beatles or Stones, but the record was a workmanlike enough piece of 60s filler to have been stored in my memory from about the age of 4 when music started really meaning something to me. BTW, I can also remember advertising jingles and slogans from when we had a black and white telly as our only telly. How very pointless, but there you go.
So to the lead-in to the blog article de jour. Music and crying. While I was thinking about it a few weeks ago while trundling round London, iPod giving my tinnitus something to think about, that bloody arsehole student betraying Judas Nick Clegg spoiled my very show by admitting that he cried to music. Well Nick, old china, old pal. My horse had been stolen by a more famous person than me, making *my* bloody idea appear unoriginal and me-to. Not the case, believe me, I got there first, just for the record if only by a few hours.
Music, is the ONLY fricken thing which has ever touched me in the crying department. Nothing else can. Some old bit of American country song wisdom says that a man is entitled to cry only when his "mom" or "dawg" dies. My mum is fortunately still well and able. I cannot guarantee for sure that I won't shed a tear or probably more like a bucketload when she does pass away, but hopefully she's a few decades left on the mileometer yet. Let's hope so. Unfortunately though, in the weeks between starting and publishing this post, I have had a mutt pass away, the sometimes q.v.'d Nicki – and yes, I bawled quite a bit over that, so buy me a Stetson, a car with no wheels, yet with enough battery power left to play the still- working eight-track of Willy Nelson best of moments and let me gurn into my bourbon glass.
Get me on a tube in the rush hour, in the right (or wrong) mood and then insert one of the following tracks between my ears on a decent set of Bose (or just a cheapjack piece of shit will do) and…………blubberitis, here we come. Help. Public embarrassment doesn’t come into it. Not being able to remember what stop I’m approaching doesn’t come into it either. I’m a lost cause, and sometimes end up actually lost.
Sad films can do it too. But the music has to work with the film. No sad music, no saltwater from moi. I don’t think, for example, that the admittedly moving plot of Atonement would have worked half as well if the Dunkirk soldiers’ singing hadn’t magically – in a moment of almost breathtaking pathos inducing beauty – morphed with the orchestral soundtrack. I almost fell over when I heard this, except I couldn't because I was in Goa, on a hostel bed, so not too many places to fall. Partly wonderment is down to the sheer skill and artistry demonstrated by the person responsible for bolting soundtracks together, and partly because it was just so fucking poigniant.
I don’t come from a particularly macho family – as an older brother to three sisters, that was always gonna be a hard one to pull off anyway, but I can count my dad as introducing me to one of the bawl-tracks mentioned below. Whether or not he cried when listening to is, I’ll never know because I wouldn’t ask him. It’s mostly a private business this crying to music bolllocks, and the only reason I’m sharing it with the world is that I doubt I’m alone. But fear not, I shall return shortly to the joys of assembling flatpacks, the trams of Croydon, or something else more prosaic.
So there it is, my confession. And also below, is some of the music that does it.
Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, Adagio
Surely one of the most gorgeous pieces of music ever committed to score? So, its Mozart. So, you’ve heard it a thousand times before. For a reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsvgIW2YMWA&feature=fvst
Wendy Carlos/JS Bach – Brandenburg 3, part 3
Two things turned me onto electronic music. The second thing was discovering under a Chiswick bed and covered in dust, the Moog Prodigy, belonging to my then-girlfriend Nicola's dad and just having to footle with it. The first was being played this, aged 4 by my dad who I think was as besotted with it at the time as I became later. Works on so many levels. I’m so glad myself and Ms Carlos met while I was such a musical virgin . It was the best selling classical music record of 1968. Not surprising.
I could not find the exact track on Youtube – Ms Carlos seems rather precious about copyright for whatever reasons. Here's something from the the other end of the same concerto “in the style of”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJo5q-SbvT0
Livin’ Joy – Don’t Stop Moving
A complete change of tempo and style here. Early 90s dancey,ravey floorfilla with heaps of Korg M1 piano, one of the most evocative sounds from this generation. This track is actually a piece of utter smileyness and never fails to put a humongous stupid grin on my face even during the depths of depression (and there have been some prize moments). And it makes me bawl out of sheer euphoria. One of the most positive lyrics going methinks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIbFO-kXeyU
One Day Like This – Elbow
I can’t think of a more poetic, beautiful love song than this - I tell you, when I look at these lyrics, I suffer from extreme song envy. Guy Garvey sure knows how to sum up what it might be like to grow old with someone. And the orchestration, my goodness! Overflows with joy and optimisitc good vibes. Guy Garvey might have a show on 6 Music known as his “Finest Hour”, but this was easily his finest 6 mins, 51 seconds. If someone ever wrote me a song like this, I'd be boholden to them for-bloody-ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfVejpYc8Zc
Little 15 – Depeche Mode
It's the key shift DOWNWARDS starting n verse 3 wot does it. Aaaarrrgghh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfA2U4V2DZY
Nervously – Pet Shop Boys
Chris Lowe, the “other half” of the PSBs, knows how to combine textures in sound and chords to break the heartstrings of the toughest hod carrier. The schmaltzter is aided and abetted by one of the kings of analogue synthesis, Harold Faltermeyer, let loose on this number.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS30s3X5ccM
(as an aside, I've just noticed that these two last songs are in the same key – coincidence?)
Set You Free – N-Trance
More dancey stuff that shouldn't fit into the mould of a classic bawl song but does - for me. This is a kind of lament to lost youth and quite likely reflects possibilities never fulfilled. Can almost see myself, aged 24, wondering in a scratching head, “doh!” sort of way what would happen next and not fully recognising the opportunities being dangled. I have relatively few regrets, in life, but there *are* some, and this is one of those songs which can transport me back to that less responsible, almost but not quite carefree period.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWbmmsH4SJU
Please comment and add your tracks if you're man (or woman) enough to do it. Come on, I am not alone, am I?
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