Alphabet Soup Week 43: Artists Filed Under V

With no hiking since my last installment, I offer a few highlights from a week of rest in London before presenting my eclectic playlist of V Artists.

After the better part of a week in London to relax and heal, as my wife continued on her own with the group walking tour in Argyll, we’ve now reunited and are spending a long weekend together in Edinburgh before heading to the Scottish Borders for our next hike, the last big one of the year. Thankfully my back has improved significantly as have my knees, which I hadn’t realized were a problem until they stopped hurting four or five days into my time off. Given that I haven’t been out hiking in over a week, there won’t be a photo dump to end this week’s newsletter. Instead, I’m including a few highlights of my week before getting into this week’s playlist.

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On Sunday afternoon I spent a few hours in the National Gallery, a venue I’ve never visited before despite my numerous trips to the city over the years. Of the dozen or so photos I took of the of pieces that really captured my attention, here’s one of my favorites:

The Concert, oil on canvas, was painted by Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588-1629) in about 1626. The information panel had this to say:

The lighting in this picture is particularly striking: the bright light of the candle creates sharp contrasts which heighten the three-dimensionality of the figures. The subject of a group of richly dressed musicians seen by candlelight shows the influence of the Italian painter Caravaggio and his followers.

I’m certainly not an art critic or an art historian, but I was impressed with the clarity of the figures and the contrast provided by the candlelight. While not perhaps a photorealistic rendition, the realism is nonetheless impressive to me from a piece of art almost 400 years old.

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On Monday I headed to the borough of Kensington and Chelsea to take in the Victoria & Albert Museum, a bastion of applied arts, decorative arts, and design with a collection comprising over 2.8 million objects. Although I’d been here before with my wife Tina, she doesn’t much like museums and I spent less time than I would’ve liked, skipping an entire floor. As a huge fan of the decorative arts, particularly ceramics, metalwork and carvings/sculpture, I spent over four hours wandering through the galleries until my knees told me it was time to head back to the flat. I took dozens of photos to capture my favorites for posterity and here’s an item that really fascinated me:

This hard-paste porcelain plate, a painter’s palette plate produced in the early 19th century, really caught my attention. Not only is it a wonderful historical record but it’s an absolutely gorgeous piece of decorative porcelain in its own right. The info panel had this to say:

Eighteenth-century enamels were often painted on as dull grey or brown pastes, and only took on their rich colours during firing. Painting with a combination of enamel colours therefore demanded great skill and judgement. Painters made palette plates with sample areas of their entire range of colours to refer to when painting.

When I look at some of the beautifully crafted and colored enamel-painted ceramic pieces from that era, I never ceased to be amazed by the level of craftsmanship displayed in the final product, especially given how muted the applied colors would have been before the firing process.

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The highlight of my week came on Thursday when I met fellow Substacker Andres, author of the wonderfully informative and entertaining The Vinyl Room. Knowing that Andy lives in London, I reached out to let him know I’d be in town and suggesting that perhaps we could meet for coffee, an opportunity he immediately accepted. To be honest, this was a little out of character for me and right at the edge of my social comfort zone. But I’ve learned that, for me, growth tends to happen when I push myself beyond my comfort zone. So I just went for it and am happy that I did! Andy and I spent an hour gabbing away over coffee like we’d been friends forever. It’s been nice to make some new virtual friends since joining Substack last summer, but to finally meet one in real life really took the cake!

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So those are my three highlights from a week in London! Let’s jump into this week’s playlist. The universe of artists beginning with V was, as could be expected, fairly limited. I’ve managed to craft a fairly cohesive playlist of tracks and in the process have rediscovered and reconnected with some gems that I’d long ago forgotten.

Take a read, have a listen, and let me know your thoughts in the comments. Thanks, as always, for being here.

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 43: Artists Filed Under V

This week’s selections:

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ARTIST: Vicki Lawrence

TRACK: “The Night the Lights Went out in Georgia” from Time Life AM Gold - #1 Hits Of The '70s: '70-'74 (2000)

We start this week's entry with a real blast from the past. Described in its Wiki entry as a "Southern Gothic murder ballad", Vicki Lawrence's 1972 single The Night Lights Went out in Georgia spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973. I'm a sucker for a great "story song" and this one has it all: a cheating girlfriend, a best friend's betrayal, a missing wife, a murder, and the unjust execution of the song's protagonist. What happened to the missing wife? Who was the real killer? Well you'll just have to listen to the end of the song to find out!

This track was the only hit for Lawrence, who was perhaps best known for her television work on the Carol Burnett Show and Mama's Family (and later her own short-lived talk show).

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ARTIST: Vanessa Carlton

TRACK: “A Thousand Miles” from Be Not Nobody (2002)

As I began writing this week’s the blurbs I was fairly confident I could only name one Vanessa Carlton song off the top of my head and it was this one, A Thousand Miles, from her 2002 debut Be Not Nobody. Despite having purchased the album on its release, when I listened to the album this past week I didn't remember any of the tracks except for this one. The single would spend a total of 41 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number five, and the album would go on to be certified platinum in the US. Carlton's subsequent two releases would be far less successful, both critically and commercially. While her three album run from 2011's Rabbits on the Run to 2020's Love is an Art have garnered more positive critical reviews, she has yet to replicate the commercial success of her debut.

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ARTIST: Vanessa Daou

TRACK: “Sunday Afternoons” from Zipless (1994)

I'd  completely forgotten about this gem of an album until I began compiling this week's playlist. Listening to it over the last week, I was reminded how much I loved the enchanting fusion of jazz, trip hop and soul overlaid with Daou's sultry vocal and spoken word performances. The album, which is subtitled Songs from the Works of Erica Jong, sees Daou interpreting works by the noted feminist author and poet. While Zipless gained somewhat of a cult following, it never achieved any significant commercial success. The album's first single, Near the Black Forest, made it into heavy rotation on VH1 with this track, Sunday Afternoons, topping the Billboard Dance Clubs Songs chart.

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As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

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ARTIST: The Verve Pipe

TRACK: “The Freshmen” from Villains (1996)

Michigan's The Verve Pipe have released six studio albums since their formation in late 1992. The band have produced a handful of charting singles over the years, the most successful of which, by far, was 1996's The Freshmen. The third single from the band's second studio album Villains was their commercial breakthrough and highest-charting single, peaking at number five on the Billboard Hot 100. The success of the song, which also topped Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart, would help the album go platinum.

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ARTIST: The Verve

TRACK: “Lucky Man” from Urban Hymns (1997)

Lucky Man, the third single from The Verve's third studio album, 1997's Urban Hymns, will almost always bring a tear to my eye. While the themes of gratitude, self-knowledge and self-love are inspiring, it's the recollection of a sacred experience in 2006 on the island of Koh Phi Phi Don in Thailand that pulls on my heartstrings.

In June 2006 I accompanied my wife and a dozen of her students and fellow teachers on a school trip to the island during which we provided assistance by way of supplies and manual labor to local schools and the community as they worked to recover from the aftermath of the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami which killed over a quarter of a million people in 14 countries. Towards the end of our time there, we gathered at the Tsunami Memorial Park for a ceremony during which we honored those on the island (over 2,000 people) that had lost their lives. We were also saying farewell to members of the local community and to the teachers and students from the Regents School, a Pattaya-based school with which we'd partnered for the week. As we wrapped up what was an already an incredibly emotional afternoon, Kat, one of the Regents' students, closed out with a performance of Lucky Man.

When I hear the song now I can almost feel the heat and humidity and hear the sound of Kat strumming on her acoustic guitar, accompanied by her gentle, insistent, and clear vocals. A reminder to us all of how blessed we were to be alive and to be surrounded by friends, both old and new. Since then, this song gets me just about every time.

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ARTIST: VAST

TRACK: “Dedicate (A Place For Me)” from April (2007)

April, Jon Crosby's fifth studio album as VAST, represented an artistic change in direction for Crosby as he shifted away from the dark and industrial elements of his earlier releases and into more of an acoustic folk-oriented album. The reviews for the album were mixed; while Allmusic acknowledged the songwriting quality in their 3.5 star review, Sputnikmusic was scathing (unfairly so IMO) in their 2 star review. From my perspective, this is the best release in VAST's entire catalog, so much so that it only just misses the cut for being one of my eight Desert Island Discs.

The pain and anguish are clearly evident in the lyrics for Dedicate (A Place For Me) as Crosby, seemingly bitter and filled with ill will, struggles with a relationship presumably ended by his partner's infidelity:

People say that I loved you too much

Because I think about you now and it's been two years

Images of you with him play again and again inside my head

I hope you fall

I hope you fail

Later in the track after Crosby acknowledges that "I'm gone and I'm forgotten" his voice slides into a higher register as he finishes the thought on a scream, despairing and lonely: "maybe it's like I never existed at all." Just devastating.

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ARTIST: The Vapors

TRACK: “Turning Japanese” from Like, Omigod! The '80s Pop Culture Box (Totally) (2002)

The immediate question that came to mind when I decided to include Turning Japanese in this week's playlist was whether it was or ever had been considered offensive or racist. Given how poorly much of the western entertainment and popular culture from that period has aged, it's a fair question. The reviews are mixed. Lead singer Dave Fenton claimed in a VH1 True Spin special that it's a love song about someone who lost their girlfriend and was going slowly crazy. "Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn't expect to." Hmmm, not sure I buy that one.

A Guardian article from 2008 includes the following purported rationale behind the song's title: "these lads were believed to be invoking the squalid moment of their auto-erotic climax, causing them to pull a funny face making them - oh dear - tighten their eyes and "turn Japanese"."

As can be expected, searching Google for an answer to the "is it racist" question just sends you down multiple rabbit holes, running the gamut from the aggrieved edgelord trolls ("absolutely not, why does everyone have to be so sensitive and politically correct?") to the social justice keyboard warriors that will find a way to explain why just about everything is racist nowadays.

None of this, of course, mattered to me in my pre-teens singing along to the weird and wacky chorus, oblivious to any of the possible social ramifications. It was just a jam!

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ARTIST: Violent Femmes

TRACK: “Blister in the Sun” from Violent Femmes (1983)

I know exactly where I was when I first heard this song: a party at my friend Aran's house during the summer of 1987, over four years after its initial release. I was probably a quarter of the way through the obligatory two six-packs of beer I'd always bring to the BYOB parties in those days when the song first emerged from the boombox. I remember thinking “WTF is this?!?” I wandered over and sat down right next to the portable stereo, replaying the track several times in a row (until somebody finally asked, "why is this song playing again?").

Within short order I'd purchased the album, which would help soundtrack that summer along with The Smiths' Louder Than Bombs and The Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Despite loving the album, it would be the only Violent Femmes release I'd ever own and I've never followed their music. If you're a fan of the band, please let me know your suggestions in the comments on where to go next in their catalog.

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ARTIST: Veruca Salt

TRACK: “Forsythia” from American Thighs (1994)

Veruca Salt are perhaps best known for the lead single Seether from their 1994 debut album American Thighs. While that's an excellent track, it's the most obvious one to go with and I always prefer to go with a deeper cut, particularly on an album I really enjoyed. There's really not a bad track on the album and it was likely a top 20 release for me that year. Having included Number One Blind from the same album back in week 28, I've chosen to go with Forsythia here; it was never released as a single, but remains one of my favorite tracks.

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ARTIST: Velvet Revolver

TRACK: “Fall To Pieces” from Contraband (2004)

It's hard to believe this Velvet Revolver song, the third single from their debut album, is already twenty years old and that Scott Weiland (R.I.P.) has been gone almost nine years. The music video for the song portrays Weiland struggling to maintain his relationship with his then wife Mary Forsberg (who appears in the video as herself); he's later shown overdosing, only to be saved by bandmate Duff McKagan.

In a textbook example of art imitating life, the parallels with Weiland's well-documented struggles with substance abuse cut awfully close to the bone. Weiland's battle with heroin ultimately led to his divorce (he later remarried) and in December 2015 he would be found dead in his tour bus in what was as deemed an accidental overdose. As someone who's spent the last 30 years in recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, it's a story I've seen far too many times, a person's life snuffed out by a cruel and debilitating disease long before their time.

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Here’s the link to the running playlist which is updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published:

ALPHABET SOUP RUNNING PLAYLIST

Tracks missing from the Spotify playlist:

• Allegory by Murray Attaway (Week 02)

• Face Me and Smile by The Lover Speaks (Week 12)

• From Your Mouth by God Lives Underwater (Week 13)

• This Can’t Go On! by The Lover Speaks (Week 23)

• Two for the Show by Trooper (Week 40)

• Twenty One by Marry Me Jane (Week 40)

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Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.