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November 08, 2007
Numerology: 34, What is it Good For?
And now, the first inductees into the 34 Hall of Fame: Miracle on 34th Street, the heartwarming 1947 Christmas bauble starring Natalie Wood, Complex 34, the site where the early Apollo space missions were launched, and David Ortiz’s jersey.
Where does that leave us? With the “34 Blues.” While I can truly dig the blues, I am no aficionado of it. Truth be told, it’s not the kind of thing I tend to play a lot of at home. It’s a genre that many folks, including one of my esteemed MS colleagues, cannot embrace because “all the songs sound the same.” There is some validity to this point of view, but to put it in terms that these people might understand, that’s like criticizing New Order for being repetitive. It’s what you do with the repetition, and what you do within the strictures of a musical style, that counts.
“34 Blues” comes from a seminal figure in 20th century music: Charley Patton the Father of the Delta Blues, a hard-living, corn liquor-swilling, woman-chasing brawler whose from-the-gut bellow could be heard for hundreds of yards, without amplification, and whose influence extends from Robert Johnson to Howlin’ Wolf to Jimi Hendrix to any number of modern-day bands trading in primordial stomps and icky thumps. More than a musical innovator, he was an incredible showman. He played the guitar on his knees, behind his head, and would throw it in the air and catch it between his legs (and not bean himself like the dude in Nirvana) long before anyone dreamed of mistreating a guitar that way. Patton often used it as a drum, simply pounding on it for long stretches to keep the beat going during the wild Saturday night dance parties where he played. All the stories about Patton indicate he was as cantankerous as the U.S. general with whom he shared a surname. When one of the loose women he ran with gave him lip, he was apt to clock her on the head with his guitar. He was only about 5’ 5’’ but he was always ready to throw down.
Listening to Charley Patton and reading about his life is to learn how the blues evolved, and like Patton’s story, it is a compelling tale. In the 1920s the music industry saw the commercial potential in blues music and brought proponents of a more homogenized, sophisticated style of the blues to the cities, while players in the Deep South, like Patton, played a more raw, open-ended, rhythmically complex style. The homogenized urban style—with its 12-bar structure and predictable turnarounds—is what makes all blues sound more or less the same, but to my ears, the more raw Delta style feels less pat.
When the Depression came, the industry turned its back on the blues, and people like Patton remained unheard outside of the juke joints and parties. It was only as the economy began to turn around that the industry came calling. In the last year of his life, Patton was brought to New York to record his songs. No tapes of the sessions remain; his entire recorded output has been transferred from 78s so scratched and abused they make the lowest-fi stylings of GBV and Pavement sound like Trevor Horn productions. But that’s part of the charm; the songs are like living fossils, ancient and yet alive with passion and sorrow.
Patton’s songs were about drinking and fighting, womanizing and being thrown in jail. In moments of weakness he would repent and swear to follow the Bible, but would soon return to his lowdown ways. Only toward the end of his life did he begin to yearn for a bit of stability. “34 Blues” is a lament for a particularly cruel year. He goes broke, his car gets taken away, and he has to go back to pushing a plow on a farm. Of course he doesn’t say that 1934 is the year he died, but he does not sound like a man with a lot of time left.
“I ain’t gonna tell nobody, ’34 have done for me/I ain’t gonna tell nobody what/ ’34 have done for me/Took my roller, I was broke as I could be.”
Patton’s lyrics are very difficult to decipher. A few words come through, but the overall meaning is easily understood. His voice was a musical instrument, whose scarred timbre and haunting resonance was his and his alone. Hearing the sound of this man singing provides a visceral charge, a sense of the rough beauty of what it felt like to be in the room when he was making music.
It’s not as if “34 Blues” is the only 34 song out there; it’s just by far the best one. After repeated digging, I can only offer the following odd assemblage of mostly instrumental thirty-fouria: “M 34” by the estimable Ennio Morricone, which sounds right at home on Spaghetti Westerns Vol. 1; the Dave Matthews Band’s gently picked “#34,” perfect background music for a scene in which the title character of “House” sits in his apartment popping Vicodin and working out a chess problem, and a couple of songs from genres that I will only invoke in case of emergency: jazz (Bill Evans Trio: “34 Skidoo”) and hardcore (A Global Threat: “Channel 34” and Gorilla Biscuits: “34 34 34 34 34 34 34 34,” although the latter piece—a brief mash-up of a skipping CD and muddy hardcore riffs—has some obtuse charm.) I should also mention “Voyage 34” by Porcupine Tree, a 64-minute “extended single” that simulates the ill-fated 34th acid trip taken by a young man named Brian. The suite is divided into four phases and floats through sonic territory that will be familiar to fans of the Orb. The brainchild of English multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree’s prog-metal-indie hybrid Fear of a Blank Planet has garnered favorable attention and new fans for this prolific band (myself included) of late.
Porcupine Tree - "Voyage 34" (Phase One)
In the first phase, after Brian and his fellow travelers ingest their sugar cubes, the music that kicks in sounds like an acid house version of “Another Brick in the Wall,” and the Floyd connection remains palpable throughout the journey, with voices fading in and out, lots of wailing guitar, and an encompassing outer space vibe. Whether it would make a good soundtrack to a real LSD trip is something I’d rather not know. If I’m on high acid and I press “Play,” hearing something that begins, “This remarkable, sometimes incoherent, transcript illustrates a phantasmagoria of fear, terror, grief, exultation, and finally, breakdown…” would send me scrambling across the room in search of my Lemon Jelly CD.
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to get a bit tricky.
Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33
Posted by David Klein at November 8, 2007 10:40 AM
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Comments
Rumor has that the Merry Swankster was spotted singing karaoke at a Japanese restaurant...the song of choice: War! What is it good for....(you know the rest)
Posted by: anonymous at November 9, 2007 11:37 AM
The second song is rather interesting. I'm totally missing/ignoring the message here, but it kind of makes me want to do mushrooms.
Posted by: a different anonymous at November 9, 2007 12:20 PM
I've got a song called hopeless 73
Any good??
Posted by: matt Stevens at May 31, 2008 03:38 AM
I'll look into it!
Posted by: david at May 31, 2008 09:45 AM
I am obsessed by 34! Conspiracy?
Posted by: Silvio Ribas at July 21, 2008 11:19 AM
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