Friday Night Jukebox

A little while ago someone had the audacity to ask which version of Wonder Wall was the best: the original by Oasis, the cover by Ryan Adams, or the cover by Mike Flowers. I thought it was on The American Scene, but I can’t find the post anymore; nevertheless, I’ll let the obvious winner in my mind speak for himself:

I personally get tired pretty quickly of the whole tortured artists trope, it’s been done so many times by so many different people that it’s place in the pantheon of well beaten cliches is beyond doubt. But if anyone does the tortured artists and does it well, it’s Ryan Adams. Consummately cranky and upset about the roughshod manner in which his audience handles the forbearance of his soul, Adams’ torture skirts cliche because the beauty of the music it produces bespeaks some kind of sincerity underneath it all.

Ryan Adams produces what I like to call scotch music, which is in juxtaposition to, say, beer music. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of beer, the fact that I haven’t been able to drink any since New Year’s is a source of near constant pain. But there’s almost no music I can’t listen to over a beer, as much as I may love the hops ‘n barley it has a certain dulling effect that makes just about anything bearable played at a loud enough volume with the requisite level of cheer in play. Some people make the mark of good music with red wine and spin tales of intense evenings with joints smoked and Leonard Cohen played over a bottle, which is an effective barometer in its own way and not to be dismissed.

But truly great music is something you’re compelled to listen to at night, sitting in your living room alone with a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of scotch, and maybe one light on. Chairs may be involved for the first half of the night, but eventually you end up on your back on the floor too drunk to take another sip, chain smoking with your eyes closed most of the time, head nodding in time with the chords, totally, vibrantly awake and utterly engrossed in the music, which is turned up far too loud and threatens to get you evicted.

Scotch is itself an acquired taste, an unlikely mixture of descriptors: dark, musky, and aged yet sharp, crisp, and exposing, the music to go along with it has to be chosen just so, it has to have the right blend of agelessness and innovation, surreality and grounded organic-ness, sorrow and satisfaction.

There are only a handful of artists who can play that venue and they are the ones who define the term musician, they are remembered long after they’ve passed, and if we’re lucky they stick around for long enough to fundamentally shape your life. Ryan Adams, for all his youth, is one of those cats for me, you can’t hear Love is Hell and not feel like you’ve tapped directly into life in the same way that people like Kerouac and Burrows did — life unmitigated, directly experienced, no added sugars or flavouring, confusing, thrilling, terrifying, overwhelming.

Oasis and Mike Flowers, indeed…

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Tags | artists, beer, Burrows, Kerouac, Love is Hell, red wine, Ryan Adams, scotch, Wonder Wall