10. Never My Love—The Association
“Never My Love” has one of the most recognizable intros of any song ever written, right up there with the intro to Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”; the bass line, which draws you in and then drops down after just a few notes, is instantly recognizable.
I heard this song most recently walking through a café in my neighborhood called Phoebe’s, meeting a friend of mine, pre-meeting, for coffee in the backyard. Wind was through the tree leaves and all was calm; this song nicely accentuated the evening’s feel.
Certain songs sound better not at home; this is one of them. (Jeff Tweedy, in an interview in Magnet magazine, has said something to this effect.) Once, pre-show at The Mercury Lounge, on the edge of New York City’s Lower East Side, I heard the aforementioned songwriter’s band Wilco’s album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Though of course (being a big Wilco fan) I was already very familiar with the record, hearing it in that setting was an entirely new and unique experience.
Another time, in the same venue, pre-Lucero show, I heard some keening, foreboding music over the sound system.
“What is this?” I asked my friends. “This isn’t … it can’t be … the Boss, is it?”
It was. I’d always dismissed Bruce Springsteen. But the night I heard Nebraska for the first time, that night at The Mercury Lounge, my ill-informed disdain of an American treasure was kaput.
3 comments:
Um. I never new that you had a disdain for the Boss. I'm going to have to think about this for a while.
Oh lord ... I said it was an ill-informed disdain. Just go buy yourself a new mink stole, Muffy--that'll make you feel better.
Beware of putting Never My Love on a mix....the receiver can get the wrong idea.
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