| St. Vincent – Jesus Saves, I Spend Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
I just hear about St.Vincent in the NYT yesterday for the first time. I have absolutely no idea what she is talking about in this song. |
|
| David Wilcox – For Real Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Bob Franke wrote this song. I have heard David perform it. It is marvelous: beautiful, accurate, unflinching theology. | |
| David Wilcox – Let Them In Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| John Gorka created this song from a poem written by a nurse in the Phillipines during World War II. The woman's daughter sent the poem to Gorka. Gorka offered the song to Wilcox -- it's a bit more in Wilcox's vein than Gorka's -- although I think Gorka did eventually record it. | |
| David Wilcox – Burgundy Heart-Shaped Medallion Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| This song is one of the clearest, truest descriptions of love I have ever heard. | |
| David Wilcox – The Kid Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This is a classic Wilcox song, except he didn't write it. Buddy Mondlock did. For me, this song isn't just about fanciful, never-fulfilled wishes. For me, the dreams in this song carry hope. A boy who dreams of the spice trade while failing his test in school may yet succeed in his adult years -- even succeed brilliantly -- as this kind of imagination cannot be taught and is a power greater than rote knowledge. Similarly, we don't know the ending of the lovers' tale. Does she stay? or not? Perhaps she does. This song is my namesake. "Time was talking / guess I just wasn't listening / No surprise if you know me well." That's me to a T. |
|
| David Wilcox – Rudolph Rap Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I heard this for the first time when Wilcox performed it as an encore at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. We were rolling in the aisles; it was so completely unexpected. Brought down the house. | |
| David Wilcox – Eye Of The Hurricane Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Wilcox has said in concert, "This song is about addiction, and about how something which feels so good can do you damage." He has also said it is about how addiction can block you from joy. "You can get what's second best, but it's hard to get enough." That's artistic understatement -- actually it's impossible to get enough. You cannot fill the hole inside you by using any sensation, however pleasurable. | |
| David Wilcox – Chet Baker's Unsung Swan Song Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This song is a very accurate depiction of addiction, told from the inside. On one of his live albums, Wilcox says he didn't know anything about Chet Baker except what he read on the liner notes. (Baker died from a fall out of a window, which is referred to in the ninth line.) Somewhere else -- it might have been in the interview on his DVD -- Wilcox says this song "saved my life". My impression is Wilcox was suffering from addiction when he wrote this song -- he says in the interview "I could not have recopied it faster than I wrote it" -- and this song helped him see a way out. (My guess is Wilcox was addicted to sex. I have no data for that other than the songs he has written, such as "Right Now", "Language of the Heart", "Dangerous", and especially "Please Don't Call"). As an unrecovered addict, you keep doing something you really want to stop doing. "Changed the wiring in my brain", "Like the flowers towards the sun/I will follow", and "These open mouths/will trust and swallow/anything that came along" all describe this state of inability to stop, to choose, to be rational. The siren call of the solace of whatever you are addicted to -- and addiction is nearly always an attempt to numb a seemingly unbearable pain -- this siren call includes the insidious suggestion that you could take just a nip, just a puff, just a look, just a little of the desired sensation. But. No You Can't. Attempt "just a splash" and you are "five miles deep". |
|
| David Wilcox – (You Were) Going Somewhere Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Like most of Wilcox's songs, this song has at least two levels of meaning. You can hear it as a song of unrequited love. It's also, as Wilcox says in his liner notes, a song about the singer himself being too distracted to notice "all that help from above". In this meaning, the singer is imagining the "...I hope you like the ride" verse being said to him. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.