And here is the actual TV performance that first drew my attention to the man. This was during my four or five year phase of actually listening to popular country on the radio and watching The Nashville Network.
What impressed me about Wilcox here, in addition to the song’s lyric, was the musicianship he displayed–making eye contact with the audience while playing complex guitar lines throughout the song. This was not standard TNN fare.
So I went looking for his album (on cassette, my format of choice for most of the 80’s, sorry to say). But by the time I made it to the shop, I’d forgotten his name! Undaunted, I began browsing through the tapes, thinking I just might get lucky and recognize the guy’s name if his cassette happened to be there. Of course, looking alphabetically, it took a while to get to Wilcox, but I did indeed recognize his name. And the album’s title was completely appropriate: How Did You Find Me Here.
When I finally got a chance to see him live his guitar playing blew me away even more. I’d never seen a guitarist change tunings nearly every song or two, or use multiple capos. (Wilcox shaved down parts of his capos so they only touched certain strings. On a given song he’d use as many as three of them.)
David Wilcox is worth a listen if you prefer substance to gimmick–if you like a well-turned metaphor and a life lesson in a lyric.
In case you haven’t heard him, I’ll introduce you to David Wilcox the same way he was introduced to me back in 1989: with the song that relates the experience of falling a little deeper for someone than they fell for you. “Language of the Heart” shows off both his lyrical gift and his gift for lyrical guitar playing.
This isn’t a perfect performance–Wilcox was quite ill on this particular night, almost to the point of passing out onstage. But fortunately he wasn’t playing “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.
“The thinking man’s James Taylor” was something a writer slapped on Wilcox early in his career. It’s a fair description.
Sometimes I wonder if this category should be called “Songs That Haunt Me”. This one is hovering close by tonight, as I call to mind someone who’s “gone in some foreign direction”.
I occasionally worry that I may be revealing too much about my own life in the songs I recommend, so I can only imagine the excruciating soul-baring of the songwriter.
Anyway, most any song that mentions Icarus metaphorically is one that must be passed along, so here ya go…
BT (Brian Transeau from Rockville, Maryland) is a classically trained musician who attended the Berklee College of Music at age 15. He is also widely regarded as one of the forefathers of today’s electronic music and a creator of the house music sub-genre known as “trance”. If that weren’t enough, he has developed revolutionary new music programming and software technologies and, over the course of a 15-year career, worked with such biggies as Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, Sting, Seal, Britney Spears and Madonna.
These Humble Machines is a single-disc truncation of BT’s two-disc These Hopeful Machines album, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance album. For the non-trance fan, it’s a more palatable distillation of the longer work, trimming songs of 8- and 11-minutes duration to a more digestible 4-to-6 or so.
As for the “Electronic/Dance album” tag, that’s somewhat misleading in and of itself. Because if you’re not a fan of the genre and BT in particular, what you won’t know is that this is an album which can be appreciated as much or more for its rock and pop elements as for its electronic leanings. Its fusion of styles is unique in BT’s catalogue and possibly in all of contemporary pop. While some songs (especially the instrumental tracks) are indeed electronic and trance music extravaganzas, at least half of These Humble Machines consists of pop rock or pop prog songs with linear lyrics and a rock backbeat overlaid with electronic flourishes.
I’m reminded of when Yes (considered dinosaurs even then) burst back on the scene in 1983 with the Trevor Horn-produced 90125 album and a leaner, contemporized sound that included keyboard sampling. BT has created, in some ways, a modern equivalent–similarly offering up (what are to my ears at least) rock songs topped off with colorful avant-pop sprinkles. I’m not sure if BT has made rock music for the house music audience or house music for rock fans. But, approaching this record from a rock fan’s perspective, I hear propulsive songs with ecstatic choruses in musical settings that feature electronic sounds and keyboards mostly assuming the traditional rock guitar role. And the result is fresh and exhilarating.
“Suddenly” might best typify the album’s blending of genres. “Always” sounds to me, lyrically, like a “Born to Run” update (minus the motorbike motif). And “Love Can Kill You” seems content to simmer in its own groove for a minute and a half before suddenly exploding into a flat-out killer chorus.
“Best Electronic/Dance Album”? I can’t speak to that. But if there were a category called “Best Album for Blaring Out an Open Window at High Volume”, this album would have certainly deserved that Grammy.
Jarvis Cocker and company explore the role of Fate’s fickle hand in love. This one may bring a tear if you’re so inclined:
I wrote this song two hours before we met/I didn’t know your name or what you looked like yet
I could have stayed at home and gone to bed/I could have gone to see a film instead/You might have changed your mind and seen your friend/Life could’ve been very different but then: Something Changed
Do you believe that there’s someone up above?/And does he have a timetable directing acts of love?
Why did I write this song on that one day?/Why did you touch my hand and softly say/Stop asking questions that don’t matter anyway/Just give us a kiss to celebrate here today: Something Changed
When we woke up that morning we had no way of knowing/That in a matter of hours we’d change the way we were going
Where would I be now if we’d never met?/Would I be singing this song to someone else instead?/I don’t know but like you just said: Something Changed
Every Moment Has A Song 