This past Tuesday night, my wife and I went to the USANA Amphitheater here in Utah to watch the Dave Matthews Band perform. They walked on stage at about fifteen after eight and didn't finish the set (with a quick wait for the encore) until about 10:30. It was a fantastic night, filled with some of their oldest songs (including my always-and-forever favorite, "Satellite", a song I didn't think I'd ever see them perform live because, well…let's be honest, they're probably pretty darn sick of it) as well as something from basically every album, and a handful from their new one, Come Tomorrow. As a result, I felt like I should pick up where I left off in my analysis of Before These Crowded Streets. However, the next track on the album is "Halloween", which is a…weird…entry. When I was a kid and listening to this album, I didn't think too much about how incongruous it is with the rest of the philosophy that undergirds Before These Crowded Streets, most particularly with the profanities and contrary message to songs like "Pantala Naga Pampa" and "Pig". The upshot was that I really didn't know how to tackle this one. Much of the guidance that I use for my look at the music comes from the 1998 guitar and vocal tablature book published by Cherry Hill, and the vocal section has an asterisk at the beginning of the ninth measure, when the singing begins: "The lyrics to this song have been intentionally omitted." At first, in my Mormonism-explains-the-entire-world thinking, I figured it was because it swore. It didn't really sound like swearing, of course (I had this problem identifying the f-bomb being dropped in "Lounge Fly" on Stone Temple Pilot's Purple album, which, when I finally recognized it, made me sad, because it was one of my favorite songs on the disc), so I rationalized that it's all so growly and scream-o that you'd be hard pressed to hear the swears. And, while it could be true that, in 1998, publishing a guitar book with swear words in it was considered a risky move, I think the better answer is probably that the band--which doesn't have the lyrics to "Halloween" printed in the liner notes--didn't want the lyrics published. I have heard alternatives to this song, including the acoustic-only version with Tim Reynolds from the Live at Luthor College two-disc set, and though the lyrics are similar to what's on Before These Crowded Streets, they're different enough for me to guess that Dave Matthews prefers to have some sort of flexibility with what he sings in this rage-a-thon song. So, what are the lyrics? Here we go: Hey little dreamer's eyes open and staring up at me Listening to the song again with the lyrics in front of me, I'd have to say that I feel like much of what's written is conjectural. "Love this I'll tame you" sounds right, but only if you see the line and then heard it sung, almost as if the suggestion is sufficient to getting the "right" response.
Still, these are close enough, and I think it's safe to call them the "official" lyrics, even if there is this weird gap in the liner notes and my music book. What's to make of these lyrics, then? Well, it's not a particularly pretty picture. There's a sense of predation, stalking, rage, substituting lust for love, and an overall impression of malintent. Much like in "Don't Drink the Water", Matthews has taken on a persona for the song (at least, I'd like to think that he's not someone who believes in stalking a "little girl" and stealing her soul), perhaps the concept of the spirit of the holiday of Halloween. If the lyrics as written are conjectural, surely so is this interpretation. These are thoughts that fit better into a Slipknot song than the Dave Matthews Band. Maybe there's something in the music that can help shed light on what's going on here? In terms of its verse, it's a three-chord song, with an F to B to C progress, repeated again and again. When the chorus comes in, it walks down a diatonic tetrachord progression, starting at A (on the guitar, it's an A5 power chord that's used) and then G, F, and E at the end. There's a bridge that uses an Asus2 and a B minor in it (at the "Why do you run around here" part), but those eight measures don't come back in for the rest of the song. And with the heavy, simple chord progression (the exact same chord progression as what Green Day uses in "Brain Stew", which came out a couple of years before the Dave Matthews Band released Before These Crowded Streets) of the chorus--a descending scale so familiar that I only had to google the notes and I could find out the name of it--there's only the verse to look at for the song's unique flavor. Well, that may be overstating it: There is something slightly eerie about having a IV to I chord progression that's off-set by including the half-step down from the I chord (in this case, using a B before the C). There is no natural B in an F major scale, so the note jars with what might otherwise be expected. In this, at least, the music mirrors the overall impression of the song--it jars and doesn't do what I would expect a song on this album to do. Taken into account the content of the lyrics, that seems to be--to some degree, at least--a reasonable interpretation of what's going on here. There's more, however, than just the guitar part. The song's rhythm section is driving and aggressive--much more so than is typical for the band--and the orchestral arrangements, unusual instruments, ethereal and threatening outro (complete with Alanis Morrisette's uncredited shrieking and surprise f-bombs) all combine to make an unhappy, brooding, antagonistic track. "Halloween" focuses on primal anger, shunting away any positivity that may be lingering in the album this far. In fact, with the sharp snare, going off like a pistol shot at the beginning of the song, whatever residual tranquility "Stay (Wasting Time)" may have left us is gone, driven away by the growling, incoherent singing/wailing of the lyrics and the off-putting musical composition. The shrill shriek of Boyd Tinsely's violin arrangement acts almost like a sonic allusion to the theme from Psycho, pushing the song deeper into a horror-movie vibe. At this point in his career, Matthews hadn't used an electric guitar for any of his songs. (And, considering the bizarre attempt at something heavier in their 2005 album with the song "Hunger for the Great Light", it's probably fair to say that most of the time, Matthews probably wouldn't have handled "Halloween" much better.) Yet with its refusal to use almost any open chords (only the E major and Asus2 are open), Matthews seems to have written a rock song. If anything, it should've been heavily distorted and the guitars dialed up higher than the rest of the album. Instead, it tries to split the difference, which leaves me, at least, a bit unsettled. And, honestly, I kind of think that was the point. Over the course of the summer, I was not idle: We spent lots of time together as a family in sundry places--Yellowstone, the cabin, at home, and my wife and I just got back from our annual pilgrimage to Cedar City and the Utah Shakespeare Festival--and I have also read a great deal. The result was that, though I've output fewer words this year than last--or, possibly, any year in the past three or so--I still have a lot of writing to show for it. I documented experiences in my reading journal--a bit of a departure, but so many bizarre things happened during this summer, I had to write them down. And, since I had my reading journal with me, I decided to use that, rather than putting anything down online.
We're eight months into 2019 and the summer has all but closed its doors. (I start my teacher training on Monday; students arrive the week after.) When the year began, I was thinking that I would ease off on my writing in order to focus more on my reading--to make my reading journal overflow with thoughts as I closely read four books. So far, I have read one of them (Persuasion, by Jane Austen; I didn't like it nearly as much as I had hoped) and cracked the cover of another--got three or four paragraphs into it. The history book that I imagined I would finish up hasn't been touched since March or so. I can't even remember what my other book was supposed to be, and my reread of Shakespeare stalled in 1 Henry VI (not my favorite play, and since I saw it just last season, I'm not really motivated to reread it). In other words, my goals for this year are in utter shambles. That isn't to say, however, that I'm not reading. My list of finished titles (not counting comic books, which are tracked in a different list) currently has 56 entries, with the most recent one being yesterday's conclusion of my rereading of the beautifully illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. (Because I'm teaching a course on Harry Potter this January, I figured I ought to get a head start on my reread, so that I'm not spending every waking moment over Winter Break trying to cram in all seven books, the play, and the new movies.) I finished rereading It back in June--a goliath read no matter how much I love the book--and I'm picking at other things, too. In other words, there's still a lot going into the well. I'm not, however, pleased with my failure of my year's goal. It was admirable of me to want to stretch myself away from the kind of stuff that I'm normally reading, but I also found myself unhappy with the time I was spending. It isn't that I don't want to read more Austen or dive into a philosophy book; I do. It's just that…well, reading is hard and the mental energy to get to the point where I can appreciate the texts is hard to come by. I used to believe my lie that I was expending too much energy on the teaching part of my life--that when summer arrived, I would be able to read more and read better. I now know that I'm simply weak-willed. Yes, it's enjoyable to dive into a book (and the Harry Potter books are particularly good at this) and not really be able to surface because you're pulled into the world. However, not all books are that way. Indeed, I'd say most aren't (and I would put my own writing in there, too). They require something of their audience, some sort of mental exertion. Video games, however, rarely require that…so I have a lot of hours logged on Overwatch. I took a break for a couple of nights to beat Resident Evil 2 again, but otherwise it was pretty much that. Though I enjoyed Beyond Two Souls, there really hasn't been a game that pulled me in and kept me returning the way Overwatch has, though I am getting a bit bored with it. And that's kind of been what this summer has taught me: In my limited amount of discretionary time, I will likely only get worse at saying no to video games and easy entertainment that Netflix provides (even if challenging shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion is available) over expending the effort to read. I know that this is a horrible confession, especially as I'm a literature teacher, but it's an honest confession. And, to go along with the honesty bit, I know that I read quite a bit more than the average adult in America does. Still, reading (and writing) is hard. There are easier things to do with one's time (I say as I note that I have 67 in the video games/movies/comic book list). And being above average on reading--especially when the percentage of Americans reading continues to decline--isn't quite the accolade I might wish. If nothing else, summer has given me a chance to stop my day-to-day stresses and recognize that I have a lot of other areas that need attention. I can't hope to end them simply because I have ten weeks in which to relax--especially when they're such incredibly packed ten weeks as my family tends to have--and I have to learn to come to peace with that. |
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