I've had a few glasses of red wine and watched a bit of Glastonbury (and thought, not for the first time, that the ridiculously talented and ethereal Laura Marling is really not of this world and is most likely on furlough from Lothlorien) and almost inexorably I reach for Spotify. And after a short while I am drawn to the Blue Aeroplanes. It's not surprising. They are my favourite band of all time: a mix of experimental Beat poetry semi-intoned over a generally driving beat with that beautiful 1987-92 period of post REM semi-jangle guitar and just a slight inflection of folk whimsy.
There's really nothing quite like it even if almost no-one now remembers them. But for those that do there's this slightly magical aura of being part of a secret club.
And the song that I almost always end up playing at maximum volume is Colour Me from the 1991 album Beat Songs.
Why?
It has the most stunning tune. Mesmerisingly lovely both in terms of the melodic line and the arrangement; a beat that just invites participation and the most fabulous guitar solo at about 3 minutes 40" after a wonderful pause following which the whole band crash in again.
And then there's the lyrics.
They are as usual very clever.
"I'm talking to you in bar code' so you're going to have to do some work to decipher what I mean and to do so you need the right scanner. The artists mentioned in the song all had tragic ends and as it says might well have been channeled by Tom Waits as a troubadour of gloom.
But there's more.
"You can make me
seem like you
OK I like you
you can me me like you
OK I'm like you"
So do I like you or seem like you? Well it's both - isn't it? The tragic artists asking for their later readers and listeners to keep them alive, colouring them in the rich but sombre yellow brown, the kind of colour one might find on a Roman fresco or a Renaissance house in a Tuscan hill town. It's an earth colour, one for which we have an instinctive feel, it's ancient but protean; it feels as though it has been with us forever and is endlessly rediscovered by generation after generation.
You have to draw your own painting from 'someone else's well head' but there are so many from which to choose. A rich history of poetry and talent whether its Elvis or Marlowe or Piaf. All were young once and indeed as Elvis sings Return to Sender we are all momentarily younger; it's evanescent but that doesn't matter. Whilst it happens it's real.
And that surely is the beauty. The tragedy is part of it. When you seal it with a kiss you are keeping the spirit alive; you are both them and like them because you want to be and you want to be because they are describing emotions and states that are common to us all as human beings. Just doing so from the vantage point of prodigious powers of artistic interpretation.
I love this song so much. It plays to your brain and your heart in equal measure; you can make a ribolitta whilst dancing round the kitchen drinking wine and shouting about politics and love.
A glorious uplifting anthem to tragic poets and eternal human emotions.
