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Better Ed than Dead

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(Steven J Wilson)

Ed Sheeran - He looks like Van Morrison, kinda, huh? Check the tats.  

Ed Sheeran is the highest paid entertainer on the planet. I think. I don’t know. They say he’s worth 65 million. Anyway, I read that somewhere. God knows he travels light and doesn’t have to share that dough with an orchestra or anything.

I saw Ed once. At least that I’m aware of. He opened for the Rolling Stones in 2015 (or was it 16?) at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Just me and several thousand of my closest friends. He came out with a guitar in front of that throng and mesmerized the crowd. Okay, not really. Some kids seemed to like him. Old people, eighty percent of the attendees, treated him as a curiosity or mild irritant, not uncommon for a warmup act served up before the Stones’ Lions and Christians, bread and circuses exhibition. Later, he sang “Beast of Burden” with Mick. He was better than Dave Matthews.

I see his ruddy little mug and tousled ginger top here and there in the social media. He seems like a nice fella. What little of his music I’ve heard I found inoffensive, innocuous, fairly musical. But nothing to get hung about.

But context, you know, can be everything. Last night I was driving home from having seen If Beale Street Could Talk, which put plenty on my mind, about white privilege, the souls of black folks, and all kinds of stuff. I located the FM station with the best reception for the KU (Jayhawks) basketball and distracted myself with the talents of young African-Americans (mostly) performing for proprietary white (mostly) people. Go, team.

I’d tell you that I’m semi-retired and I just work at my encore career as a library flunky at Lawrence High School because I want to stay active and give back to my community. That would be 1/3 true. The other 2/3 is I need the money because life in the music business left me where it leaves most people in the music business – nowhere. I get social security; which Mitch McConnell wants to take away from me to pay for David Koch’s appropriation of National Public Radio. But I digress.


Alright, cut to the chase, I’m driving to work at 6:54 in the morning and the radio is tuned to the same station as the night before, only now the station has returned to its usual programming of ‘hits.’ And on comes “Castle on the Hill” by Ed Sheeran. I caught a fragment of lyric that was pedestrian, but evocative in its way. Attached to it was a sort of melody. Surrounding it was this predictable wash of “I, too, treasure my original copy of The Unforgettable Fire sounds.” And you know, it wasn’t bad. It told a story (you know, like country music … doink, doink, doink) and as I listened I was transported. Specifically, to being the age most of his target audience is. To not having a million prejudices and the weight of the western pop music canon on my temples. To hearing this not charmless little graft of “Brown-eyed Girl” and “Summer of ‘69” (without, perhaps, ever having heard either) and thinking … I like this.
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The people have spoken.

Cancer Rising, Goodnight Grant, So Long Jessi

(Steven J Wilson)
A few weeks back my urologist cut something out of my bladder. A papillary carcinoma, I think it is called. One more box to tick off on my Medical History, one more reason I’ll never buy life insurance: Cancer. Oh, I’m alright. Doc’s pretty sure they “got it.” Of course, having a cam and a cutter crammed up my prick may be a little more frequent feature of my life. But, so it goes. It goes, that is, until you’re gone. Grant Hart is gone. 56, cancer. Jessi Zazu is gone. 28, cancer. I scroll through my Facebook friends – Jesus, lots of gone ones. Most gone to cancer. Devin, Greg – hell, so many. Shit’s in my family, too. My in-laws and my sister-in-law have had their battles with the stuff. My mom was lost to cancer, at 73. She’d be 100 in October. My dad followed her three years later; he was 87. He would have been 109 yesterday if he was from the Caucasus Mountains and ate lots of yogurt. Cancer? Nope. Heartbreak. It happens. Saul Bellow understood. Oh,
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The Necks are from Australia. They are improvisors.

(Steven J Wilson)
The new release by the Necks was reviewed recently in Pitchfork. 755 bloody words and other than some vague references to genre, mention of label mates, there’s one reference of a musical nature - to the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.  Sorta. The rest of it is a lot of bubble and squeak about cascades or echoes or some such shit.   Pitchfork gives me gas. It’s a handy reference because they do review a lot of releases, but whatever critical paradigm they have is dominated and subverted by a lot of psycho-babble and allusion to extraneous nonsense.   So, down to brass tacks. Whatever else the Necks may be, they are a jazz ensemble, a trio. Drummer Tony Buck, bassist Lloyd Swanton and keyboardist Chris Abrahams are Aussies who’ve performed together since the Eighties. I don’t pretend to know their entire history, but their last two recordings have been compelling sets of group improvisation. Recordings I discovered in part thanks to the British online journal Quietus,
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John Murry, gutter Gothic poet from Tupelo.

(Steven J Wilson)
A call went out from central casting for a singer-songwriter. A particular sort. The call out read as thus: Wanted, man in black type figure, roots in the Deep South, profound experience with drugs and heartbreak, think Flannery O’Connor protagonist who time warps into a Lou Reed fan. John Murry applied. He got the job. All other interviews were canceled. Based on his previous solo recording The Graceless Age , his previous work with Memphis legend/recluse Bob Frank, and his resemblance to Hazel Motes … well, it was no contest. The first thing I had to get over about John Murry was how fucking much he sounds like his friend Chuck Prophet. I think they must share a larynx.  The second thing I had to get over about John Murry was how close in sensibility he is to Nick Cave. The American South and Australia have a lot in common. Most of it ugly, but damned if it doesn’t make for great lore.  Okay, I’m over it, whatever it is. A Short History of Decay is  a collection that ins
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