An interesting comment that I got on my previous post (‘Killer Songs’) came from Rik who suggested some great killer songs for funerals. One was a track from ex-Move man Roy Wood, titled Music to Commit Suicide By. An intriguing title for sure and one that makes you think about songs that are so sad that you can only listen to it with a bottle of scotch and a piece of rope close at hand. Maybe the song is not even that bad, it is just so incredibly, unbelievable bad that it pushes you close to the edge.
It is actually not that easy. In the past I have been accused by friends of playing typical ‘suicide music‘ and with that they usually meant guys like Tom Waits, Randy Newman or Lou Reed (‘Berlin’). Not really cheerful party stuff, true. But you will agree that it has to be much worse to make it fit in that special category of Music to Commit Suicide By....
So which musician has that special quality to push it just that little bit further, who can make you realize, right on the spot, that your life, any life at all really, just doesn’t add up? Mentally I am going through a list of the usual suspects: Joy Division, Leonard Cohen, Marianne Faihful, Tim Hardin.. Sad, but still not bad enough.
Then we have the really sad stories of two great musicians, who couldn’t stand it any longer and killed themselves. I am talking about Nick Drake and Elliott Smith. With hindsight you can hear all that bad stuff in their songs and where that just had to lead to. But their music is so beautiful, melodic and also hopeful that they don’t fit the picture either.
I have to go back a long time when I still lived with my parents in Holland. My dad used to love those sentimental Dutch ’tear jerkers’, sad and unbelievable bad at the same time. His favourite was a female singer from Amsterdam, the Singer Without A Name (‘Zangeres Zonder Naam’) was her name. Not much of a voice either, if you would ask me. She sang these truly awful songs about human misery and tears and abuse. A classic that I specifically remembered was a song about a little child having lost his parents and probably everyone else in the world including the dog and other pets. That song was titled ‘At the Wall of the Old Cemetery’. My father loved it and at parties he would turn the music up to unbearable levels. Upstairs I was trying to protect myself by pressing my hands to my ears and holding a pillow case over my head. In vain and my head was filling up with very unhealthy thoughts.
If you ever want to hear Music to Commit Suicide With…don’t look further. I am not sure if you have anything like that in the English musical world. To really understand this you will probably have to listen to those old Dutch records. Even if you don’t understand a word of it, I am sure you will agree that that stuff is hard to beat.
Just make sure you are not alone when you put the record on!!
