Week 3 "Daddy Sang Bass"

"If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons." 
James A. Baldwin 

I opened week three to the tune of one of my all time favorite songs to cover. "Watching the Detectives" by Elvis Costello. My Dad introduced me to Elvis Costello and I have not been quite the same since.

(Though that might also be partially due to the influence of The Clash, C. S. Lewis, Will Eisner, John Steinbeck, Akira Kurosawa, Van Morrison, King Crimson, Brennan Manning, Allen Moore, Peter Gabriel, Orson Welles, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Stanley Kubrick. This is but a fraction of the influential discoveries to which my father led me.)

I wanted to record this video in such a way as to render the images on the television behind me as a sub-text. I went tide pooling through Netflix in search of visualization that would provide something unique as an additional narrative to the imagery and theme of the song.

(The song is essentially a pulp fiction rendering of a nasty relationship starring a manipulative girl. Elvis sets this commentary to the veneer of a sharp, gritty, detective story. Film Noir, Dashielle Hammet, Dick Tracy and Raymond Chandler all resonate courtesy of my father.)

I chose the funniest episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that I could find. It was the image of a catty, high-grade starlet, who was playing head games with an oily, middle management type who in fact, was gearing up to make her disappear. It was between that and a similar episode of The Twilight Zone, but as always, Hitchcock prevailed. I wanted my silhouette performing "Watching the Detectives" back lit by this grainy, black and white scene of domestic strife turning dire.

(Alfred Hitchcock? The Twilight Zone? Mystery Science Theater 3000? Dad. Dad. Dad.)

However, it turned out that videography is not a "racket" as I thought but rather a highly technical craft. Even with a state of the art iTouch, I was unable to achieve my vision and this is the result.

On Day 16, I uploaded "Conversation 16" by The National amidst great controversy from my editorial staff. Some felt it was unrealized. Others felt I was flat at crucial moments, which I refused to hear because I simply did not want to record it again, because re-recording it meant that I would have to retie my tie. My ensemble for this recording was pretty spiffy.

(I only tie a full Windsor knot on my neckties as all else looks like shit. I never leave my ties tied when I'm not using them as this encourages creasing. Fatherly advice indeed!)

Days 17 and 18's offerings were both originals: "Antique Intercourse" a more past tense number, and  "How to Make Lemonade," a newly finished piece, a number which I was clearly not ready to perform with any sort of perfection. They are companion pieces dealing with the subject of a defunct relationship. The upside to defunct relationships is that they can sometimes be worth their weight in gold as "crappy relationship songs."

(When I was young, I remember being cautioned by my Dad to watch out for girls who A) have tattoos B) talk badly about their loved ones or c) smoke cigarettes excessively.)  

Day 19 I chose "Pictures of Me” by Elliot Smith as no other choices in consideration were remotely suitable and I was running out of time. It was like choosing between Romney and Obama. I allowed random events to choose this one. As it turns out, it turned out surprisingly good. That's where the similarities between this cover and our current political rodeo end.

(Two of my father's favorites were Thomas Jefferson and William F. Buckley Jr.)

How quickly autumn swooped all around me.  I found myself drinking a gallon of tart cider and recording Days 20 and 21.  Both are very crisp, beautiful songs that lend themselves perfectly to the entire mood of a New England Fall.

Both are beautifully poetic songs about loss and time, love, and things fading, burning or being buried.

Songs and relationships are sometimes as frail as glass. It's best not to showcase the stress lines under the surface.  Nonetheless, both can become fractures before they can even be perceived or better yet, acknowledged.

I felt my first earthquake while recording week three and imagined the earth as a snow globe.

A musician that my Dad and I both loved a lot once wrote,

"We are frail
We are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion/
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage/
And with these our hells and our heavens /
So few inches apart/
We must be awfully small/
And not as strong as we think we are."

Reflectively,

Ian Ste Croix.

PS. Thank you, Dad.