Wordsmith Wednesday: Beat Happening “The This Many Boyfriends Club”

This week’s words come from the Beat Happening track “The This Many Boyfriends Club” off their 1988 album Jamboree on K Records/Rough Trade Records.

The lines are:

“It makes me mad
When I see them make you sad
Sometimes I wanna be real bad
And shove those words back down their throat”

Calvin Johnson’s raw and thoroughly Calvin Johnson-ish delivery of lyrics so simple over dissonant guitar seems to distill emotions down to their pure/childish/truthful cores. Anyone who’s ever loved someone, be it a friend/family member/romantic interest, has likely felt this immature but nonetheless very real impulse to cause harm, physical or otherwise, to people causing pain to the one they love. These words are devoid of decorum or self-consciousness or pretense. They are aggressive in their vulnerability, complex in their plainness. This is someone clenching their fists in the bar’s gravel parking lot. This is a parent wiping tears from a bullied child’s face. This is “I LOVE YOU” written in kiddish scrawl on a folded sheet of classroom loose leaf. And we love you a lot, Lori.

– NR

Wordsmith Wednesday: The Halo Benders’ “Virginia Reel Around the Fountain”

Our Wordsmith Wednesday this week are from The Halo Benders‘ song “Virginia Reel Around the Fountain” off their album The Rebels Not In, released on K Records in 1998.

 

The lyrics are,

 

“I still confide in you almost every day,

Even though you’re not around”

 

Doug Martsch’s delivery of these lines pulls at my stomach strings, filling me with nostalgia and longing for formless memories. For anyone that has been separated from someone they love, whether through distance or death, these words articulate emotions simultaneously intangible and engulfing. They remind me of people I miss, some of which I know I’ll never speak to again. Thanks to everybody that talks to me, even if it’s only in my head.

– NR

Wordsmith Wednesday: Beck’s “I Get Lonesome”

Hello. This is the first entry in what we hope will become our weekly “Wordsmith Wednesday” project.

Basic idea: share some words we like. Whether from a literary piece, song, speech, or any other medium, these words met us at some point and continue to move us or make us think.

Our inaugural post comes from Beck‘s song “I Get Lonesome” from his album One Foot in the Grave, released in 1994 on K Records.

The line reads:

“I stomp on the floor/
just to make a sound”

My connection to these ten words is deeply personal and multi-pronged, simultaneously reminding me of distinct people and points in time yet overlapping strangely in my psyche. A good friend once said of this record, “he does so much with so little.” Sometimes fewer words/notes translate into more feelings.

-NR