SOUNDTRACK: THE BLUE AEROPLANES-“Veils of Colour” (1987).
In Stuart David’s book, In The All-Night Café, he lists the songs on a mixtape that Stuart Murdoch gave to him when they first met.
Although I’ve been a fan of Belle & Sebastian for a long time, I knew almost none of the songs on this mixtape. So, much like Stuart David, I’m listening to them for the first time trying to see how they inspire Stuart Murdoch.
In the book, David writes how much he does not like “rock,” especially music based around bluesy rock. Most of these songs, accordingly, do not do that. In fact, most of these songs are (unsurprisingly) soft and delicate.
The Blue Aeroplanes have been around forever, forming in 1981 and releasing their most recent album in 2017. I feel like I’ve heard of them, but I’m not sure now. I guess I’ve never actually heard them as this didn’t sound familiar at all. Nor does the core lineup: the mainstays are Gerard Langley, brother John Langley, and dancer Wojtek Dmochowski. Their wikipedia pages lists about 90 other people who have played on their records.
“Veils of Colour” opens with a quiet guitar riff that, surprisingly, progresses rather than repeats. It’s a quiet song and when the lyrics come in, they’re mostly spoken in an almost excitable whisper. You can certainly see why they appealed to Stuart Murdoch.
The chorus is almost sung, but the addition of horns makes the it swell beyond what you’d expect from the verses. Indeed, the song has a kind of understated urgency, but never gets very intense.
[READ: January 24 2021] “Hansa and Gretyl and Piece of Shit”
This story was peculiar for many reasons. Obviously the title shows that this is a twist on a familiar story. But, wow, does it veer off form what you might expect (just as the title does).
Gretyl is a girl in high school. She wakes with terrible stomach cramps–not the “normal” cramps a girl might feel, but something far worse. Her mother believes she is faking because she feels like a loser at school.
She walks to school and sees a man at the bottom of the hill. His car seems to be constantly broken and he regularly asks Gretyl for help–a scrunchie to fix his carburetor, a paper clip to connect his fan belt (she gave him one from her paper, and her teacher changed her grade from an A to a B- because it had no fastener). Today he asks her to steer while he pushes. When his car is free, he gives her a whistle. If you need help, blow it, maybe we’ll come.
Gretyl’s family is strapped for cash. Although her father has a yacht and her mother has expensive jewelry–they don’t seem to have money to buy new things.
Gretyl’s mother resents her: Gestating you destroyed my metabolism. Now I can’t practice medicine (she does not mention that the mother bore Gretyl at forty).
Gretyl’s father love her but resents her oldest sister Hansa whose college they paid for and who is now a congresswoman in Massaschusets. Both parents are angry with her because she moved away–a family is a nuclear family. When Gretyl tells Hansa about her pain, Hansa says that she had the same pains. Hansa went to the hospital…
The doctors scoffed and tested her for eight venereal diseases; eventually, however they scanned her abdomen spied her enlarged appendix, and removed it.
The middle sister, Piece of Shit, had similar pains about six months ago
after the doctors tested her for ten venereal diseases they scanned her torso and saw an infected appendix.
Hansa insists that Gretyl go to the hospital right away. But how could she get there? When Gretyl tells her parents that Hansa thinks the pain is her appendix, they grow angry: “Does she think she’s a doctor? Does she know how expensive the ER is? He tells Gretyl to eat a Tylenol.
At school, the nurse tells Gretyl that appendicitis only hurts here.
Her parents concede to take her to the doctor. The doctor asks if she ever goes out barefoot and if she ever goes to places like school. He says she has worms–helminths. When she asks about her appendicitis, the doctor laughs at her
They bring her food–she hasn’t eaten in days, but she immediately throws up everything.
Piece of Shit is studying creative writing in Idaho. Her boyfriend upon hearing about Gretyl’s symptoms tells her to call the ER for her–to have an ambulance pick her up. But she doesn’t. She’s afraid of her parents.
In later years, no day will pass in which Piece of Shit doesn’t fly backwards to this moment and pick up the phone and dial 911. Every day until her death, she orders an ambulance to carry her sister away from the house.
When Gretyl asks to go to the ER again, they take her to another doctor, Dr. Blood. Dr Blood is drunk and laughs at the appendix idea. He says she has MarsVirus and gives her an antibiotic.
Gretyl has been lying on the couch. Over the last few hours she has thrown up on herself and the couch and had diarrhea on the couch Her parents are none too happy about that.
With no other recourse, she remembers the whistle that the man gave her. She decides to blow it.
As an attack on Western medicine ignoring women’s concerns, this story was pretty great. The rest of it–the fairy tale component and the daughter named Piece of Shit were all just kinda of weird without any real point that I could see. I mean, sure there were fairy tale aspects of it, but they felt rather forced together.
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