SOUNDTRACK: CITIZEN COPE-NonCOMM (May 15, 2019).
I was marveling at the set lengths that various artists get at NonComm. Most are pretty short (around 20 minutes). So I was pretty surprised to see that Citizen Cope got 40. I thought Citizen Cope was a fairly new artist (although XPN talks about him a lot).
I was surprised to see that
Singer-songwriter Citizen Cope, otherwise known as Clarence Greenwood, has been around for close to two decades [and his fans were] ready to embrace his colorful blend of blues, folk, and rock.
I don’t especially like Citizen Cope’s music. It’s okay and much better in small doses. But I am especially amused at the write up of this concert because I feel like the person there was listening to a very different show than I was. He opened
with the driving, upbeat “Let The Drummer Kick.” A fan favorite, the tune had everyone jumping.
I kind of like the song, although I would never describe it as upbeat. His delivery is extremely drawly with him mostly him slowly rhyming words that end with “tion”: Equation / Humiliation / Reincarnation / Situation and a chorus of him repeating the title. It’s kind of interesting but hard to believe he built a five-minute song out of that.
From there, he transitioned into “The River,” a new cut off of Heroin and Helicopters, his first release in six years. The song’s somber lyrics drifted on as the band played with grace.
This is a very funny description. The lyrics do seem to drift on (as most of his lyrics so). It’s hard to say the band plays with grace. They play fine though.
“Justice” is a song that gets a lot of airplay on XPN. It’s in the same style as his other songs–slow and kind of downbeat. Although the chorus is pretty catchy. I also like the psychedelic musical interludes.
“One Lovely Day” is a quieter song that begins with just him on guitar but when the band joins in, it sounds like the others.
Cope could not go without playing cuts from his 2004 record The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, of which he features “Son’s Gonna Rise” and “Sideways.” Both tracks transitioned perfectly from one another, matching the energy and vibe the crowd was looking for.
“Bullet & a Tart” picks up the pace somewhat although it’s not a very dramatic change.
As Cope finished, he shared an anecdote that inspired the title for his album — Carlos Santana warning Greenwood to stay away from the “two h’s,” heroin and helicopters, two things that historically and tragically claim the lives of musicians. The message resonated so strongly with Cope that he went on to name it his album, which was just released on his label Rainwater Recordings.
As Cope’s set drew to a close, he ended with another single off of his record, titled “Caribbean Skies.” This song’s lively beat and catchy hook moved the crowd.
“Caribbean Skies” is certainly catchy. But again, not in any way lively.
This set is kind of monotonous, and I won’t be a Citizen Cope fan anytime soon, but clearly he doesn’t need me either.
[READ: May 20, 2019] “Forecast from the Retail Desk”
I typically enjoy Rick Moody stories, but I found this one really puzzling and hard to get into.
It begins with the (probably true) statement: “Nobody likes a guy who can foretell the future.” The narrator, Everett Bennett works at a retail desk for some kind of investment firm. He says he is not well liked at work and his job is surely the first to be made redundant.
His first demonstration of his prophetic skills came in school, in 1977. He was in a lab with Bobby Erlich. Erlich didn’t like him (nobody really did). Bobby wouldn’t talk to him or collaborate in any way, so the narrator had to tel him straight up: “You’re going to be maimed in a horrible motorcycle accident. It’s really going to hurt too. Just remember we had this chat.”
Bobby replied, “You know what Bennett, I always thought you were a jerk. And I was right.”
Bobby doesn’t get into a motorcycle accident although he is in a car accident several years later. He is making out with a policeman in the man’s car when it is hit by another car. Everett had to wonder if he somehow caused the accident with his prediction.
Of course, it wasn’t a motorcycle, so what the heck.
He told his mother she was going to inherit a lot of money from Lithuania (she knew no one in Lithuania and was Irish). She did play the lottery though and did win small sums from time to time. Perhaps it was just his way of making his mom feel better since he and his brother Jack always fought.
Another forecast is that his brother’s kid, who has leukemia, will get sicker.
He met his wife on the subway. A person fell onto the tracks and the conductor slammed on the brakes. Everett fell into a woman. She was concerned about why they stopped and feared that someone fell on to the tracks. As he was getting off of her, she asked him if he though the person was alright. He replied by asking the woman if she’d like to go to the Knicks game with him that night. He knew they were going to lose, but he wouldn’t reveal by how much. He didn’t want to be alone that night.
That woman became his wife.
His brother never liked him and never talked to him in school. His brother was handsome, wore tailored suits and became rich. But he was late to the Everett’s wedding because he had persuaded Elise, an alcoholic, to go to a hotel and do lines of coke with him.
Some years later his brother came by with a gold Porsche. It was dented up–the passenger side smashed and there may have been blood on the dashboard. Jack wanted to know if he could park the car in his garage for a few days–he had points on his licence and wanted the car out of the way.
Everett says he knew where they’d find Elise’s body–where his brother drove into a tree. Then Jack waded into a river in his Armani suit and drifted downstream leaving no trail.
But later it sounds like he is getting Christmas cards from Elise and of course his brother does have a boy with Leukemia.
So I’m not really sure just what happens here. Everett certain’y isn’t predicting the future in any meaningful way and I’m unclear what anything in italics is supposed to be.
I was really intrigued by the beginning of this story but really disappointed by the end.
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