Achy Breaky Heart

Achy Breaky Heart Acoustic Cover

Here's where I ruin that Billy-Ray Cyrus song everyone liked. I always thought it would be better as a sad song because the lyrics are really a downer. It reads like what you would write if you were making fun of an old-fashioned country break-up song.

I especially like all the poetic turns the song makes around body parts in general and fingers/lips in particular.

First
You can tell my lips to tell my fingertips they won't be reaching out for you no more.
And then
You can tell your brother Cliff whose fist can tell my lip he never liked me anyway.

That's pretty golden because it rhymes both halves of the song in a way that links them thematically and gives your brain a little flash of slanted recollection. It's a neat little song, and even though it does not stand up to the test of time, I can see why it was such a huge success.

Missing You (John Waite) Sky Jack Cover

In the 80's John Waite belted out this bad boy for one of the greatest songs of his era. It was his biggest hit, and he's still singing it. He even did a country version with Alison Krauss. Tina Turner did a version of it in the 90's that I always thought was kind of an Ike burn song. It's been covered a million times. Brooks and Dunne, Rod Stewart, and tons of others have done it. I hate pretty much all the covers, including even the Alison Krauss duet. It always sounds overly earnest or over-produced or just too loud.

I think it tracks better as a stripped down sad and quiet song. You could argue that a belting lament is always welcome on a record, but I'd say the song's too good for that.

I love how old-fashioned it is. It mentions long-distance lines, which is so funny because there's no such thing anymore. It reminds me of how hard (and expensive) it was to have a long-distance relationship back in the day when you could barely hear someone through the static of a long-distance phone call. You might as well send a telegraph to be clear. So he sends his lover's soul a telegraph! That's really funny and sappy and such a true feeling for a little pop song.

I love how he admits to lying to himself and how he confesses to his hyperbolic desperation. The confessional parts of the song are simply great because they're intimate and relate-able.

Anyway, here's my sad version of it. I'm noticing myself looking down a lot in these videos. I'm looking at the microphone. It looks like I'm reading or something, but the whole point of me doing these is to really live in the songs, so I memorize the lyrics and change them a little when I sing. I do actually care for you to know that I'm not reading these lines. 

Tea Time with Sky Jack: The Bro Episode

I've uploaded the latest installment of Tea Time with Sky Jack, the Bropisode. It's about bros, #MeToo, opium, tea, and how political movements succeed. There's also some talk about what I'm liking right now, like this book:

I Have a Podcast Now: Tea Time with Sky Jack

This is my first attempt at a podcast. My plan is to drink tea and talk about things that interest me every week. Maybe it will be funny. Maybe it will be sad. Either way. It's my first one, and I hope you kind of like or at least enough to see if the next one is better.

German Humor as a Cure for Depression

This is where I ruin Max Raabe's Der perfekte Moment... wird heut' verpennt

I've received a lot of support for my guitar vlogging. A lot of people have recommended songs I should cover, and even though I'm just messing around with some new toys, the response has been all positive. I love that about 2018 so far.

My dear friend in Germany, Isabella, called me a couple weeks ago to tell me that she was going to have her baby that day. A little over a year ago, her boyfriend of 6 years lost his fight with bone cancer. This year, she's given birth to a bouncing baby boy. That kind of emotional swing is something I've not been able to pull off. Rock-bottom despair with no faith that the indifferent world had any kind of goodness to offer to buying stake in its future with optimism and excitement is a miraculous recovery from depression.

And she sent me a video of Max Raabe when she saw my sad song videos. I laughed through the whole video and re-watched it a dozen times probably. I told her the whole point of what I was doing with my guitar was to sing songs that were secretly sad. And she countered by reminding me that I was in a sandbox and could do whatever I wanted. I told her I wanted the boat in the video. She explained to me why that wasn't a good plan.

Max Raabe is a big star I've always dug. He started the Palast Orchester having fun with German pop songs from the 1920's and 30's. His modern pop songs are all interesting and often hilarious. German humor is special in its acknowledgement of the absurdity and futility of our existence in this aloof universe, and I love it.

The world's just a sandbox.

13 years ago I was heart-broken when Bella called off our wedding. When I was with her I thought often about sandboxes and playgrounds. I guess she'll be going to both more often in the very near future.

Creep

Here's where I ruin that Radiohead song everyone likes

When I was a kid, I had to go to my friend's house to watch MTV because my family didn't have cable. I was a jealous friend. When I was 14, we moved to Orange County, and the HOA wouldn't allow antennae, which meant we had to get cable. And it happened to be the greatest years in MTV history.

In the early and mid-90's, the music world was a filled with great acts like Nirvana, Bon Jovi, Dr. Dre, 2 pac, Cypress Hill, Radiohead. And some of the best work from your favorite 80's stars like Madonna, Janet Jackson came out at that time. Everyone was making music videos, and they were cool as hell.

Radiohead came out with their first album, Pablo Honey. Four guitar players in a band? Why not! That guitar pound like a shotgun cocking to introduce the chorus of Creep was a wakeup call. Radiohead really stood out in the giant wave of alternative rock, and they'd go on to evolve and grow as I did through those formative years.

But Creep is so great because who hasn't felt like they "don't belong here"? It's a unique theme for a pop song but immediately accessible to everyone. And haven't you thought someone else was so perfect that you're ugly and unworthy by comparison? Well, Thom Yorke obviously has.

Much later I got off a train in Prague. A guy with a car said he ran a little hotel called Prague Lion and would give us a ride into town if we just checked out the hotel. I rode in front and Kid A was playing on his CD player. He'd gotten the album that day and was stoked. We ended up staying at his hotel and having a crazy adventure in the Czech Republic filled with absinth, running from the law, and an insane ossuary. But that's another story.

Bad Romance

This is where I ruin that Lady Gaga song everyone likes

Bad Romance is a grossly underrated song.

The two halves of the song mirror each other wonderfully. Ugly is echoed by horror, and disease rhymes with design as the first lines of both halves so that all the stuff in the middle is sandwiched together perfectly.

Plus, all the movie references in both halves strengthen that bond. Leather studded kiss in the sand is a reference to Sandy getting her leather kiss in Grease. And psycho, vertigo, and rear window are all references to Alfred Hitchcock movies.

What do all the movies have in common? The horror of romance? The dangers of love? The acceptance of our worst attributes? Who knows? Who really cares? Thematically, it works with the mechanics of the song in such a tight way that all the weird French stuff and the Fashion/Real Bitch bridge thing that happen in the original version are there just for fluff that work because the rest of the song is so damned strong.

My favorite part of the song is "I don't want to be friends." In the original version I swear I hear "I don't want to be French" the first time she says it after the French part of the song. But that could just be my lying ears.

Who can't relate to the sentiment of wanting more than friendship from someone? The complete letdown and heartbreak contained in the last few lines of the song, the idea that even a bad romance is better than friendship, is something I think everybody can relive at the close of the song. For a pop song to leave you lamenting one-sided love is impossible, so Lady Gaga belts out the chorus a few more times in the original.

It's a tricky little song in a lot of ways. Bad Romance has plenty for your brain to suss out and it happens to come in a fun package. I hope you like my stripped down version of it.

Yellow

This is where I ruin that Coldplay song everyone likes. I love how this song is basically a 3-chord-country song that mixes in motifs of jaundice, suicide, drowning, and the futility of loving someone else. My favorite line is "then I took my turn/what a thing to have done." That sentiment of "everyone else has tried, so I guess I will too now" has no business being in a pop song, but there it is, and it's beautiful and sad. It's overshadowed by the "bleed myself dry," but it's subtly powerful in a short, sweet song like this. 

All Along the Watchtower

This is where I ruin that song Dylan wrote and Hendrix made iconic. Its lyrics are psychedelic enough to be open to constant interpretation,  enabling it to stalk our culture. It was even a pivotal motif in  Battlestar Galactica! 

Paper Planes

This is where I ruin MIA's awesome homage to the Clash. She managed to take a playful song about a damning political topic and modernize it into something topical and relevant and to breathe new life into it.

Should all be polemics be playful? 

It's not Dark Yet

This has been one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs for a long time. You don't hear many really good weltschmerz songs.

Patience

This is where I try to ruin a Guns n' Roses song. It's been one of my favorite songs since 1986. I like the way it morphs into Bowie's Heroes in my mind. Heroes has been part of my life for a long time, too, and I was lucky enough to play it in German to a puzzled crowd at the Blackfriars' Playhouse many years ago. 

And I think the Dolphins in Heroes are a reference to French royalty. But that's for a longer conversation.