Wednesday, May 23, 2007

"the last day of jimi hendrix's life," from ghana

flipside to yesterday, which was one of the first of many entries about how darnielle can make even the most trivial, most unequivocal losers as powerful as the sun.

this song is about what it says it's about: jimi hendrix as a person who dies--jimi hendrix is just like us!--on an unremarkable day. "there is nothing like cold water, there is nothing"--could a final thought any more pure, any more trivial? where darnielle collapsed distance between losers and gods--steely dan did the same thing on "deacon blues"--he also managed to make the invincible seem as real as dirt.

addendum, 5/27:

it occurred to me this morning that--i guess this is really obvious, but--this song is also about simplicity. and that's another thing that constantly unravels me about his writing and his performances: in something like "standard bitter love song #8," it's quotidian bullshit raised to the level of gods clashing, but here, and in a lot of places, there's just this reservoir of COMFORT to be taken in stuff like water or friends forever or the radio or some peanuts or stealing candy.

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