1. "Great Western." This is a sequential list, at least for the first couple of entries, because this was the song that blew the doors off and invited Ford into my life. See, way before I met my wife, maybe fifteen years ago, I was hooked up for awhile with this pretty great woman -- really enjoying myself, and managing not to fuck things up, which I had a tendency to do -- and one day she wanted to play me a song, and so she did. "Listen to the lyrics!" It was hilarious, brilliant, very tuneful. And I asked who it was, and she told me, and I went, "Really?"
...because I'd seen Ford do solo sets for Nomeansno and Daniel Johnston, a few years before that, and it didn't really take. Maybe it was just me, but he seemed introverted and unfunny, like the only person he was playing for was himself. I'd also seen him in extrovert mode, leaping around with the Show Business Giants and once even with Nomeansno, when he was living out in Toronto, but though it was curious to see such an extreme contrast, the songs he did with them ("Sugartown," say) were not among the ones by the Show Business Giants that sank a hook (sorry, "Sugartown"), so it didn't really change matters. I think when I'd followed Nomeansno through three gigs around Toronto (also Hamilton and Waterloo -- hi to Jillo and T-Bone) I saw his opening set one night then kinda skipped the other two, even, though one night it was because I was down the street watching Tony Conrad, so no apologies there.
In any case, "Great Western" was my "Clearly I have underestimated this man" moment, a witty, tuneful, crowd pleasing song, vividly realized, taking me back to a very specific bingo hall of my childhood (my mother played bingo there, and brought me, sometimes; trivially, this very bingo hall was documented on film, being used as a bingo hall, by Uwe Boll, in the movie Rampage). Incidentally, "You look like a banana" is a line that would resonate with my wife, later on, when I played the song for her, but I forget the full story as to why. I bought Meconium, liked it -- continued to love "Great Western" best -- and resolved to spend some time on this man's music.
2. "Lions and Tigers and Bears." So having had that experience, I was primed to actually re-evaluate this man, ready for more Ford. Then he opened for Mike Watt at the Media Club -- the gig where Watt was being accompanied on Hammond organ, singing songs about his infected perineum, as informed by Dante's Inferno. I mean, I'm glad I got to see that gig, and I do have some fondness for that album, now, and listened to it once during a hospital stay and appreciated it more -- "Pissbags and Tubing" in particular is an earworm and is really a song you can relate to when you're on a catheter, though it's not as joyful an experience as Watt's other song about piss, "Piss Bottle Man." (Do many other people have songs about piss? There's a Clash lyric about pissing in an elevator but pissing is not the central topic. I don't think "Pissing in a River" is literally about pissing, or "Piss Factory," either... but is "Piss on You" figurative or literal, or both at the same time? RIP Mitch Funk, Jon Card). It was curious and entertaining in a singular way but it was not as inviting as Contemplating the Engine Room. Plus there was a Bob Dylan cover in the set, as played on the organ, and SUNG by the organist, if memory serves -- an interminable version of "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," which, I dunno, was no "The Red and the Black," if you see what I mean. (I did enjoy Watt's cover of Cobra Verde's "Riot Industry" that night, though -- a connect-the-dots tune that links Watt with Guided by Voices, since Doug Gillard was in that band. Watt's even in the rock video for that song! I asked Watt at the end of the night -- what's this about the blowjob of liberty? And he pointed it out to me).
Anyhow, the opening band that night was the Ford Pier Vengeance Trio. I had seen Ford solo a few times (and maybe even once with DOA, and once backing Daniel Johnston), but this was the first time I saw him with a band -- a proggy, potent power trio. It blew me away. I didn't really know what the songs were about, for the most part -- the lyrics are pretty gnomic on some of the tunes, and didn't necessarily lay themselves out for you on first listen, but it was a stunning gig, with Pier jumping around with his guitar (I reviewed it somewhere and said something about "Pete Townshend on a trampoline"). The band was incredibly tight, and the audience was just GRABBED, which is the best kind of audience to be in: compared to those earlier shows where there seemed a great divide, between Ford and the people watching him (or at least me), where no one seemed to be paying a whole lot of attention, it was like he had decided, maybe with a bit of annoyance, that he was going to reach right out and grab us all collectively by the nuts and just, like, HOLD us that way until he was done, maybe even tug us around the room a bit. And so he did. I described his rhythm section of Bradford Lambert and Eric Napier as "jazzy virtuosos" and while I later wondered whether really "jazzy" was the right word, that was a stunning set. And who can complain about gnomic, hard-to-hook onto lyrics when the headliner is singing about pissbags? ...it was a weird night all around, but I came away a Ford Pier fan.
So I bought Huzzah! as soon as it came out. And then I bought it again, on vinyl. And then I got Ford to sign it, because, like, he's right there at Red Cat, man. To be honest I still haven't really tried to unpack a lot of it, and have no idea, say, what "Newton and the Counterfeiters" is about -- it would probably require me to read the book, though I doubt that would be sufficient as a decoder ring -- but how many songs can you say that about, that you could put an asterisk besides and down at the bottom say, *"some homework required"? Most rock is too easy, too obvious, laid out there for you like you're a three year old, but there are also songs that are like Joyce's Ulysses, if briefer, insofar as you can feel them going so far over your head that you might as well not bother.
Again, maybe it's just me -- laziness, a desire for things to come to me, rather than asking me to go to them. But I can respect a song that requires some work, even if I don't always elect to do it.
But to my great pleasure, there was a song that I connected with lyrically 100% on that album, that just seemed a masterpiece of rock writing, lyrically, that DID come right up to me and stake a territory: "Lions and Tigers and Bears." Which is an ungainly thing, mind you! It's no crowd-pleaser. I associate it with Nomeansno's "Victory," in fact, in that it has a monolithic quality, a towering, demanding intensity to the music, taking it about as far from Meltzerian "mereness" as a song can get and still be rock music... but that quality suits it perfectly, and lyrically, there's no decoder ring, no homework required. There's a rage at aging, a rage at superstition, and a haunted powerlessness that captures how life as a man feels once you round a certain corner. It's not kidstuff -- I doubt I would have gotten it as a teenager -- but from the first time I sat down to it, I was won. Doesn't hurt that I lived in Japan where they cell powdered rhino horn and snakes' blood and all these offensively stupid, dead-animal snake-oils designed to give you a better boner. I have never yet taken anything, animal, herbal, or chemical to help with my boners, but the idea that because some part of an animal (rhino horn, say) or the whole of it (snakes, eels) has a vaguely phallic aspect, it's going to be good for your cock, is, well, dumber, even, than homeopathy, dumb in a cargo cult kind of way (but more tragic, in that innocent, magnificent animals DIE for it; cargo cults are just a good-luck-with-that-buddy kind of thing). It's pre-civilization stuff, something that humanity should have grown out of around the time we stopped living in caves. Add to which, I just really like the words "new age mumbo-jumbo," spat with venom. I had a girlfriend once who was into stuff like sleeping on magnets, hawking mangosteen juice for an MLM hustle, blah-blah (I bought a bottle of that, but just to humour her). Suffice to say, I'm cranky about shit like that, and this song hits me exactly where that crankiness lives.
I could go on: like, rhyming "unscientific lies" with "these animals' demise"... wow.
3. "Ponce DeLeon Vs. the Risible Shuck of Authenticity". So about this time as a music journalist, as Ford is gearing up to release my new favourite of his albums, Gormful in Maya, which tbh remains my favourite of his, I do a big interview with him when he's set to open for Bob Mould, because a) he's less intimidating than Bob Mould; b) though I do not know him well, I know him better than I know Bob Mould; and because c) a Rickshaw-load of people are going to see him open for Bob Mould, and, what the fuck, we might as well prepare them! So I namedrop his associations with Nomeansno and DOA and so forth, splashin' that stuff left and right, to get people to PAY THIS MAN SOME FUCKING ATTENTION WHYNTCHA, and, like, I'm pretty sure that this actually was one of those few times in my "career" as a music journalist that a piece of writing does a Harry Smith on things, reaches down and tunes the monochord, albeit not the monochord of the universe (cf: Harry Smith) but the monochord of the Rickshaw, which I will happily settle for. Because here's the thing: PEOPLE ACTUALLY LISTEN TO HIM, that night, in a way they sure weren't doing when I saw him in Waterloo. The whole Rickshaw just shuts up and pays attention in a way that radically contrasts with how I'd seen people treat Ford in other opening slots. I caught video of one song that night, "The Dark Women," which is not in fact my favourite song off Gormful in Maya, but it does give you a sense of Ford playing to a large, attentive, and respectful crowd. And tho', like I say, I don't know Ford well, even he remarked on this to me, afterwards -- how closely people were listening. Not to toot my own tiny horn, here, but I think my interview had something to do with that: not because it was so well-done, but because it was so well-timed, every Bob Mould fan in Vancouver went, "So who is this guy? What's this about Nomeansno and DOA? What?" And then they decided that they should listen to him, and they did.
Were it always that easy.
Anyhow, let's get back to my penis here (TMI alert! Skip this paragraph if you are not hearty enough for some real medical unpleasantness): I had been having, at that time, a problem (not with boners). See, I had this big kidney stone, and the urologist couldn't reach it, so while we were trying different things, he stuck a plastic tube up my dick (a stent) designed to keep the piss flowing (a common, but possibly unnecessary, thing to do; if you find yourself in this position, ask your urologist if a stent is really necessary). This stent was not all that supple, so basically if I moved around at all, it wiggled and waggled against my waterworks and scraped their walls and caused me to BLEED OUT MY DICK, which alone is startling and unpleasant -- up there on my list of "holes I don't want to bleed from" -- but also, as an added bonus, is REALLY PAINFUL. Men, have you ever bled out your penis? I guess a woman bleeding out her urethra would have the same experience, here, too: For whatever reason, blood and the walls of your urethra do not get along at all. The blood burns like you're pissing napalm (well, maybe not quite that bad, but closer than you'll want to come to that experience, y'know?). And I had that stent in me for motherfuckin' MONTHS.
Gormful in Maya had yet to be released, that night at the Rickshaw, and I think in fact I had by that point finally had a successful removal of the stone -- there are photos of it on my blog, somewhere back there -- but it was fresh in my memory, and this is where my mind went when Ford sang the opening line of that song that night, which is, of course, "happy days are here again/ I'm bleeding out my ass." NEVER HAS A SONG LYRIC RESONATED in quite the same way. Because lemme tell you, when you're bleeding out your dick every time you pee, over a period of time measured in months, and it burns like hell, every time, you develop a somewhat DARKER VIEW OF LIFE.
Anyhow: it's a real catchy tune! And I think I understand it, more-or-less. It doesn't exactly invite an unpacking, has a sense of giddy wordplay, like it's off an early Eno record, where some of the lyrics just seem to be there for the sheer exuberant fun of them, BUT (unlike with early Eno, which is ultimately so goofy you just give up and have fun with the words without thinkin' on'em much, yeah whatever Brian, there's a raincoat under a tree, there's a whale without any eyes, sure, whatever you say), you can still feel it cohering, maybe a bit beyond your grasp, but enough that you can feel (I can feel, anyhow) that you are WITH it, that it is a song FOR YOU. (For me), and worth a bit of a stretch to draw closer to you:
Happy days are here again, I’m bleeding out my ass
The author here is posing a paradox for us: is he undercutting happiness, or asserting masochism? Either way, happiness is not simple and comes at a cost. Artists know this. Incidentally, when I shot a clip of this song being performed at the Folk Festival, with realtime ASL interpretation, Ford expressed curiosity what this lyric might have "looked" like.
Apparently food is the new thing, but I’m sure this too will pass
A good vulgar bit of word play. What seems like food going in might seem like shit coming out. Given that this seems to be a song about making music, we sense here that we have an artist feeling cynical about his art, or art in general, or certainly art that is popular, or the fickle, shallow public's relationship to the same: there has been a flicker of public appreciation for art with content, maybe, for song lyrics that have meaning, but...
A conoisseur’s palate and $2.28’ll getcha a gallon of gas
Which is about what gas cost then, I guess. Your tastes may be refined, but...
So it’s out the cloaca, into the sewer
Unlike "meconium," I knew what "cloaca" are, thanks to David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, where Julian Sands' character (the one who turns into a horny giant centipede and claims Kiki) is named after this orifice. I am not sure if cloaca are a multi-functional orifice (sexual and excretory) but "asshole of a bug" is close enough for unpacking the line: the artist excretes, and plop, the art lands in the stream, and floats off.
Out with the older, in with the newer
Which suggests a fair bit of, I dunno, cynicism and despair, cloaked (as it were) with a mien of good-natured playfulness, but wait til we come to the next song in this discussion.
Ah, hahahaha
I mean, what's the alternative? I love that he writes this out; it's an actual lyrical laugh. The song does have some wordplay for its own sake ("sacred numbers of the zombi cucumbers?") but even that kind of encodes a derision for rock audiences. If you can't find things to chew on in the subsequent lyrics, you're not hungry.
I'm not going to keep unpacking the lyrics, but fyi, another amusing moment (besides the slightly embarrassed-seeming ASL lady having to sign "out my ass") which ensued from the words to this song: I popped into Red Cat to tell Ford that I had misunderstood the rhyme for that aforesaid line (about zombi cucumbers), which is actually about not having "bent any spoons," but I had, for the first few times I heard it, though Ford was singing, "I've never been Dennes Boon" (AKA D. Boon). It's the only Minutemen-related mondegreen I've encountered to date. Whereupon Ford pointed out, after I told him this, that the album they were playing in the store at that very moment, as I blathered, was Double Nickels.
How about that.
How many songs about suicide are actually witty? There's this, and there's Rocket From the Tombs' "Never Gonna Kill Myself Again." (Zappa's "Suicide Chump" isn't witty, it's just mean). In point of fact, when I recorded this clip, I was hoping to get the previously-mentioned song on camera; this song isn't quite as immediately attention-grabbing. But when you realize what he's singing about, it's pretty heavy stuff, also off Gormful in Maya. Someone on Ford's bandcamp describes this collection of songs as "uplifting" but to my mind, this is a pitch-dark album disguising itself with a cheerful grin and the outward manifestations of playfulness.
5. I Can't See You:
Now, my timelines might be wiggly, here, but Gormful in Maya came out during the pandemic, at a juncture when you had these feuding constituencies: the people who, on one side of the divide, believed (possibly because of malign, Russian-crafted misinformation they'd been exposed to on Youtube) that our civil liberties were being eroded by a trumped-up virus to ensnare us in a Commie/ authoritarian-administered subscription-model of vaccine dependency, and those of us who found those other people about as welcome at the COVID-party as an active shooter, a threat to our very survival, so let's shout them (or anyone who we think has been listening to them) down as loudly as we can. I do not know if the extreme apparent timeliness of this tune, capturing this divide, this polarized failure of communication, was actually because that's what Ford was actually, directly writing about, or if the genesis of the song lies somewhere else, but I'll tell you this -- Ford made explicit reference to the trucker's convoy when introducing this song at a Folk Fest tweener, saying -- at least as I recalled it afterwards -- "What I like about that song is, those freedom convoy schmos could sing it, too, and they wouldn't have to change a word."
Yep. If someone asked me, "What's the best song (at least ostensibly) about the pandemic," this would be my pick.
Ford also told a story that Folk Fest about how Mr. Chi Pig had enjoyed Ford's song "Boyfriend," and that makes perfect sense, too, and that's also a really good song, another wide-open-book of a song, compared to some of these others. Hey, lookie, someone put THAT on Youtube, as well (not I!).
Honourable mention: "Maybe It Came at the Wrong Time." This is a great, fun song and a treat to hear Ford do with Dead Bob. It's on Organ Farming, but for some reason, save for one song, you can't buy or even stream that album on bandcamp; you've got to buy the record. You can do so easily, at Red Cat.
Meantime, if you've been watching Ford leap around like a madman at Dead Bob shows, and wondered about who this guy could possibly be, he's about as brilliant and under-appreciated a songwriter as we have in Vancouver, even if he makes you work for it a bit. I hope he's having as much fun as he seems to be having (he's also working really hard, but I don't think he'd do that if it weren't fun). Maybe it will turn a corner and people will realize he's a local (hell, a national) treasure?
Start with Gormful in Maya. It's great.
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