Five bites: Meddle

June 13th, 2011
Music

(The second of my top ten albums from adolescence.)

Meddle is a relatively obscure slice of psychedelic genius which I first played on my crappy bedside turntable after a particularly eventful evening during my senior year of high school, and revisited 20 years later as post-game music for marital happy hour, which circularity led me to reflect on how even when we change we remain exactly the same, and prompted me to share five musical bites from past and present in this post comprised of one tremendously long sentence, starting with:

(1) the ominous, throbbing bass line of “One of These Days” (holy crap– listen to it live!), a largely instrumental track which unravels one’s awareness in ways that are strangely pleasant when your consciousness is stable but but downright perilous when it’s not —  when the bass hit heavy reverb that first night I was gripped by panic, certain that a helicopter was landing on the roof above my bedroom, which was merely a prelude to the complete freak-out induced by what sounded like someone/something monstrous pounding on the door and threatening murder in a diabolically distorted voice (one of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces), which is truly terrifying when you’re alone in the middle of the night but makes for good bonding with friends when you swap stories the day after (in those pre-google days, one of my peeps told me the voice said one of these days, I’m going to dance with the evil [eagle?] king, which might be the better lyric) …

… but that’s not the kind of bonding I wanted for marital happy hour, so I saved that track for solo rides in the car the next day and began the playlist with the profound quietude of “A Pillow of Winds” (2), which, as it turned out, perfectly narrated the closing minutes of that evening (sleepytime when I lie/ with my love by my side/ and she’s breathing low/ and the candle dies), thus ushering in a blessed state of tranquility (the rarest of commodities in a household of nine) …

… seamlessly followed by (3) the transcendent crescendos of “Fearless” spiraling like the florid mandalas that appeared on the blank wall of my high school bedroom way back when, which formed a magical cloudland of existence until (4) the song segued into a chant version of You’ll Never Walk Alone performed by Liverpool lads that nonetheless sounds uncannily like the Bedouin-esque dudes singing the tone sequence in Close Encounters (which, amazingly enough, I can’t find on YouTube), thus returning me to full freak-out mode…

… which immediately dissolved upon the beginning notes of “San Tropez,” a loping beachside tune that, in context, is bewildering at best, so in hopes of avoiding any degree of buzzkill I left the track off the happy hour playlist (although it does feature the line I reach for a peach, which begs mention of “monkey grabs a peach,” which would’ve been appropriate enough) and went straight to “Seamus” (5) which played as I drifted into sweet unconsciousness around midnight, only to be jarred awake seconds later by a barking dog, which I thought was the beagle owned by our back-fence neighbors that tends to howl during romantic interludes in the most infuriating and hilarious ways, but actually turned out to be an unremembered part of the track, thus providing the surreal moment needed to make the past/present circle complete  and conclude this tangle of a post — and if such tangling isn’t your cup of tea, I suggest you avoid this album, especially side 2 (which is one long convoluted track featuring a crisp sonar-like ping that exactly echoes Reed’s Blackberry ringtone, but that’s another story).

 

 

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