What's it about?
Daisy Glaze.
Track eight
on Big Star's
Radio City.
I keep listening to it
for almost thirty years now.
I still remember the first time
I heard it
as vividly as someone remembers
hearing a loved one has passed away
and some of mine have.
It was summer of 1983
and I had just met Roosty
we made a garage band
inna garage.
He introduced me to Mot
who
was Mod
and played
a Rickenbacker
330
and who
in turn
introduced me to his sisters
Soup and Psyndi.
It was them
the two weird sisters,
n I'm using the olde version of weird
here,
who liked Big Star
and liked
Radio City most of all.
Nice summer day
stoned at Salter's Point beach
with Tom's VW van doors open
It came on in the still air of the afternoon
and time started to stretch out
into long languid streams.
Alex Chilton
singing like a little lost boy
who only lives in the smallest dream.
The one you can't ever fully
remember
before you're jolted awake
but
you weren't really asleep.
"You'd better not leave me here"
over and over against that chiming guitar
and the slow progression of ride
and snare.
"I'm lying in the stream
and floating fine
receiving things
in my beautiful mind."
Christ.
It was like the darkest night
was dropped like a heavy blanket
on existence.
"and now I'm thinkin' Christ
nullify my life...
nullify my life."
I wanted to know what it was like to have
Daisy Glaze
come out of my mind
my voice
my guitar.
It's never happened
never even come close.
Why?
Issit because they recorded it at Ardent Studios
in Memphis
n used the now sacred relic
Fairchild Limiter?
Sweet compression
squeezes the notes through the bright filament
of vacuum tubes.
No.
It's because I don't know what it means.
I think it may be
about heroin
but that's just the words on paper.
I know it's about so much more
to me.
But does that mean I know what it's about?
I live too often in Daisy Glaze.
Things fall apart
n I just stand blankly
unable to choose the right decision
"This is the story of a man who could not
make up his mind."
Thank you Sir Larry.
Stand blankly
through two marriages
through countless bands
through tearful girlfriends
through a series of goodbyes
through the years
inna Daisy Glaze.
Not because of narcotics
or Bushmills
like some of you may think
but
because I am lost.
Like the sad voice in the song
but at a strange kind of peace
'cause I know
I'm lying in the stream
and
floating fine.
What's it about?
6 comments:
A.M. that was not only very beautiful but thoughtful as well n if you were here right now, I'd sit you down and I'd play this sleepy tune called Daisy Glaze on my 12 string and I'd sing it as true and lonesome as our Alex Chilton did when the magnetic tape was rolling across the tape heads oh so many lifetimes ago.
Guess I'm just one more tearful girlfriend thrown into the mix, huh?
I can work myself, magically, into your past now as if I've always been a relic and nothing more. Feels strange.
Funny, too, since I recall an earlier response to this post--something 'bout how I thought being lost, floatin' in the river just fine, was all right and sounded quite good to me, actually.
That and the bit about Indra's net. I remember.
p.s.: you should stay away from the Bushmills 'cause I'm in love with you.
Post a Comment