Episode 55: Jeff Buckley's "Grace"

Episode Transcript
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Kyle (00:00):
Today we're talking about Grace by Jeff Buckley.

Cliff (00:02):
For me, this record was one of those nice swift kicks in the ass
because I don't understand why I didn'talready love this record, why I didn't
care as much about the individual songsas so many people that I admire on some
of the deepest musical levels possibleI have been shocked I had heard of

(00:27):
people like Jimmy Page mentioned JeffBuckley before but had never heard him
gone far enough down the rabbit hole tounderstand what he was actually saying
about this and the words that he used.
Jimmy Page specifically is a personwho's like famously kind of shits on
other people and definitely doesn't usesuperlatives to describe the musicality

(00:50):
of other people who weren't in hisband at that literal moment in time.

Kyle (00:54):
He has such a boomer attitude about music.
If it was made afterLed Zeppelin, it sucks.
Except grace

Cliff (01:02):
Yup.
And he is breathless about it.
Calls it one of his favorite albumsat that time of that decade, said
that, you know, would say things likehe couldn't stop listening to it.
when he and Robert plant end up makinga plan to go see a particular artist,
cause they're performing nearby.
And then when you start to connectthat dot, as we'll talk about,

(01:24):
like, this is why it made it,the whole thing just felt like a.
Kick in the pants, likeunderstanding how they talked
about it and then understanding,Oh, this whole loop is complete.
Jeff Buckley is obsessed with them.
He's imitating them.
This is like literally the highest praiseyou could achieve inside of musicality for
like the modern era of blues rock musicand like, Here's this just unassuming

(01:48):
singular record that existed from thisone moment in time from a person who
didn't Exist long enough to show us whatwould happen after they followed up a
record like this And it just this wholeprocess just really blew me away in a way.
I didn't expect.

Kyle (02:02):
30 short years on earth.
We got with this guy, like it'll reallymake you believe in cosmic messengers.
And some people were just cosmicallyordained and the stardust of their
bodies to like bring the divine to us.
Um, it's.
It's hard after you learn the things we'velearned, to feel like Jeff Buckley was

(02:23):
anything other than one of those things.
And, and he was not only a LedZeppelin fan, like that, that
undersells it a great deal.
Physical graffiti was a gift from hisstepfather, was the first record he owned
and became the blueprint for everything.
So parents listening, if this isnothing, if not a testament to

(02:46):
like, make sure the first albumand show your kid gets are good.
Not saying they're going to turnout to be Jeff Buckley because
they unequivocally will not.
But.
They can go in pretty special directionsif you give them pretty special tools.

Cliff (03:00):
Yep.
Nope.
It was realizing that that exampleof Led Zeppelin and Jeff Buckley was
just one in a constellation of peoplewho were falling over themselves
to talk about how good he was.
And so, I just for this episode inparticular, it's cool to just come
right out and say, I didn't get it.

(03:20):
I still kind of don't get it.
But like I am trusting the words andthe lineage of people who do get it
whose opinions I respect so deeplyThat I can like ride that wave on
into this record Learn a lot about it.
Enjoy it differently than I had beforeAnd certainly come to respect it on
a much deeper level than I had beforeI had Kind of gone in intentionally.

Kyle (03:45):
So, so two things real quick and then we can dive in.
One, yes, a lot of musical heroes,uh, law this record and I know we'll
name check a bunch of them lateron, but the, my entry point was in
late high school or early college.
Good looking cool girls allseem to like this record.

(04:08):
And I had, uh, Lover You Should HaveCome Over on my iPod accordingly,
but that was kind of like it.
And, you know, the Hallelujah cover isa, is a whole, whole other ballgame.
But then also not, not only did peoplerecognize something sort of special
and cosmic and containing multitudesin him he, I think, aspired to contain

(04:35):
the whole of all good music in himself.
I will lean often on the phenomenalwriting of Daphne Brooks, who wrote the
33 and a third book on Grace and as aprofessional writer of sorts myself, I
will just say I was moved few, a fewtimes to the point of tears reading

(04:56):
this book, just really dazzling,phenomenal writing and she said of him.
Uh, the many things she said of him inthe book, uh, I thought this summed it
up nicely, a 30 year old white boy whostretched himself valiantly across a whole
gamut of sound from Ella Fitzgerald toLed Zeppelin from Mahalia Jackson to the

(05:16):
Melvins in a series of Fearlessly poeticmusical boundary crossing Jeff Buckley's
scored the achingly beautiful soundtrackto an entire generation's odyssey of
difference and deliverance, diversity anddiscontent, a quote, mystery white boy.
He was possibility hope themanifestation of all that post
revolution turmoil entangled withitself in a sweet, bitter embrace.

(05:38):
All right, give us some context.
what literally was grace?
the album, not the thing.

Cliff (05:44):
Favorite of Gen Xers released in August of 1994.
Uh, and part of the reason thiswhole thing is so fascinating
and mysterious, right?
His only actual full length studio album.
This record was not an immediate successin the traditional ways of measuring
that, uh, it has been one of thosepieces of art that we've talked about

(06:07):
in other episodes and, and other relatedartists that we've discussed where,
uh, only posthumously do they reallygrow in accolade and praise and, um,
Almost reputation of the piece itself.
And so in that case that'sreally what grace has become.
We know that people were inlove with it while he was alive.

(06:29):
So we know that it is not just an effectof him no longer being here or, you
know, projecting onto something else.
But certainly the amount of attentionthat people have paid to it in the time
since then, uh, has grown significantly.

Kyle (06:42):
I think it was cool to see in the wiki.
Uh, they, they sort of chartlike how it has climbed on
ranking list over the years.
Every time they revisit one of thosebig lists, grace always gets moved up,
which isn't always the case with records.
It's now 99 and Colin Larkin'sall time top a thousand records.

(07:03):
And Colin Larkin said his musicachieved a perfection that was
staggering for a debut album.

Cliff (07:08):
A few things that are definitely interesting about it, though, that
I think for the lesser initiated oruninitiated will, I I think having
this key before you try to understandit for the first time will help.
Okay?
This dude's voice, he had afour octave vocal range, okay?
He was directly compared to havingthe same range as Pavarotti.

(07:31):
so, that's not just a really good artist,that is like Mariah Carey, Celine Dion
levels of vocal control, where now allof a sudden you have twice the space
to play out vocals that correspondwith guitars, which is going to really
come in handy if you're a fan ofsomeone like Robert Plant who's going

(07:54):
to stretch way on the upper end of it.
And if you can switch into that mode.
The pure surface area of your music.
Expands and changes at that point.
And I think going into these songs,understanding that level of not only
control, but capability that he hadhelped sort of unlock what it is
he's doing in some of these moments.

(08:14):
But then also something I'll point out.
Probably point out as we go along a numberof times things really clicked into place.
The more I watch live videos, like Iunderstood why people clamored to get
to this dude while he was performingbecause between the, thought and
presentation that he brought to it andthe capabilities that he brought in.

(08:36):
improvising or creating new ways ofdoing particular songs or changing the
way a song would work in a given time.
He was channeling the lineage of thepeople that he studied and loved in music,
whether that's blues tradition or just thesongwriting tradition of, you know, slowly
adding or changing verses over time.
Like, All of this swirling mass of stuff.

(08:56):
He found a way to channel directly intonot only his live performances, but
like we said, this literally singularfull length studio album from the
mid nineties, that is just people canreturn to it over and over again to
figure out that, yeah, they were right.
It was really good back thenwhen they first heard it and
they still think it's good now.

Kyle (09:16):
And to call it a debut is really deceptive because, to your point,
he'd been honing material or likesort of excavating stuff Soulquarian
style for two straight years.
He was playing weekly gigs at Sine Cafe.
In New York and recordings of that,thankfully are out now, but you can

(09:38):
see where he has taken on everythingfrom, Van Morrison to strange fruit,
which is like a bold choice for a whitedude at a coffee house and stuff would
stretch into eight, 10, 13 minutes.
Renditions and there's always searchingand striving and expansiveness in it

(10:00):
like there's just a sense of bignesswhich for an intimate venue like a
coffeehouse is a strange thing to do.
A scribe.
But he was seasoned.
I mean, he'd, he'd been playinga lot, which I know you'll get
into by the time we got to Grace.
So it's like, it's a entry levelposition with 20 years of job experience,

(10:20):
like all employers seem to want.

Cliff (10:22):
Yeah, so, just to pile on, especially before we go a little
further into the things that were reallyhappening at the moment where he was,
uh, Again, putting those so called20 years of experience into practice.
You know, I already mentioneda little bit of something that
was impactful to me personally.
Like, I, you know, I deeplyconnect with the music of Led

(10:43):
Zeppelin for a number of reasons.
But one of them is the I just, I vibewith the reverence that those people have
for music and how impossible it is formost people to achieve an appropriately
elevated level of musicality.
they kind of hate everythingbecause nothing's good enough.

(11:07):
Whether they have the self awareness toknow that's because they've been able
to spend their whole lives cultivatingit and other people can't, who knows.
The, the way that they connectand almost judge other music has
helped me to find other placesto start and expand and explore.
Because if they're willing topoint at something, it's something

(11:28):
I'm willing to pay attention to.
And so, while they won't be the onlyones I'll mention here in a second,
like, One of the quotes that reallykind of blew me away was that, so Jimmy
Page and Jeff Buckley met each other.
Um, they cried.
They both cried when they met each other.
And in the most sincere moment I canimagine Jimmy Page being a part of, ever.

(11:50):
There was a recognition that JimmyPage was hearing himself in Jeff,
who was a guitar player and avocalist who was part of the band.
Really channeling a lot ofwhat Led Zeppelin was doing.
But like, even beyond those, Bob Dylansaid that Jeff Buckley was one of the
greatest songwriters of the decade.
David Bowie said that Gracewas the best album ever made.

(12:13):
And that if he, it washis Desert Island album.
So, Even though we took one particularchannel for me to start to show
how kind of blown away I was by theaccolade, like that should be another
pretty solid lineup there already,uh, of people who are across the
spectrum of music, who all somehoware seeing something similar despite

(12:35):
having totally different approachesto how music ought to be written.
Like, I can't think of honestlythree different people from a similar
time period more apart than JimmyPage, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie.
I

Kyle (12:53):
worked with Patty Smith.
He started work, uh, with Tim Verlaineof television they, they started
to work together on the very earlyformation of the followup to grace.
He sent Radiohead in a whole differentdirection because of Tom York.
There's just almost No, nowhere that thisdude hasn't touched in the past 25 years.

(13:18):
And this, this album was released in 94and it's so set apart from the rest of
its cultural context, you know, you thinkabout we have Nevermind and in utero at
this point, we have Pearl Jam's 10, wehave like all, all of grunge has sort of
risen up and started to, Explode outward.

(13:41):
I guess super unknown would havebeen out by this point to probably,
and then there's LA West coast rap.
Just a ton of stuff happeningthat is not like this.
It's a time laden with disillusionmentand just Of post Reaganomics and
whatever, like, the early 90s were astrange time culturally, and here comes

(14:05):
this thing that is deeply, piercinglyearnest and part of me wants to connect
it so badly to things of this momentthat are so singular and, like, vibe
shifting, you know, I'm thinking aboutthe Chappell Roan, Brat, whatever moment
that's happening right now, that, thatwas just like You wake up from the dream

(14:28):
within the dream within the dream to, toascend to a different level that maybe
is also surreal, but totally different.
But it's hard to find contextual equalsfor, for what happened with this record.
that at once seems like it was such anunderground, if you know, you know thing.
But was also like kind of a huge thing.

(14:50):
Like he had a, he had a concert on muchmusic that is very much worth watching.
So, it, it is a little bafflingto be like, what other things
happen that were like this?
Um, I, I think the more times you tryto ask that question of Jeff Buckley
and have this record, the more theanswer is like, It's just that it's
this it almost kind of makes sensethat it was his only solo record ever.

(15:11):
It would be great to have25 Jeff Buckley records.
But the fact that in away, this is all we got.
There's a lot of bumper content around it.
So big caveat there.
But you know, the one sort of startand finish studio statement really
makes it feel like a singular moment.
And I think we got to likealmost take it in as such.

Cliff (15:31):
think part of probably what contributed to that odd to explain
moment in time that we can't reallycreate very often with singular artists
like this, it's like, one of thereasons we're already talking about a
million people who aren't Jeff Buckleyto contextualize Jeff Buckley is like,
this is also how he thought of himself.

(15:52):
And I, I think it's worth just.
Describing a little bit of the Petridish that he sort of evolved out of
the scientific accident that we had increating Jeff Buckley because even in

Kyle (16:05):
to quote the parlance of the times.
He didn't just fall out of a coconut tree.
He is in the context ofall that came before him.
He is.
Jeff Buckley is the most coconut peeledartist I can imagine at this moment.

Cliff (16:19):
what a time to be alive.
But even in, so apparently he self wrote apress bio at some point, but he described
himself as quote, the warped love childof Nina Simone and all four members of
Led Zeppelin with the fertilized eggtransplanted into the womb of a deep PF

(16:40):
out of which he is born and left on thestreet to be tortured by bad brains.

Kyle (16:45):
why?
Bad brain's gotta do the torture it, man.

Cliff (16:49):
But like, so I'm even going to use that as a little moment before
we keep talking about the album, butthat's a self description, right?
He saw himself as an amalgamationof the things that he thinks about
or was chasing or was tortured by or

Kyle (17:05):
It beats other things.
He workshop like Chuse witha penis was one of 'em.
. Mm-Hmm.

Cliff (17:11):
this is certainly not the only reason we, you know,
Picked this record to talk about.
But one of them is that when we havean artist who is like this, it is a
rare opportunity for you to do thebest version of Spotify related artists
that's ever existed because now.
Every quote, every cover, everyintimation, interpolation, everything

(17:36):
is an arrow pointing at someonewho is deeply good at music.

Kyle (17:41):
Mm-Hmm.

Cliff (17:43):
so just using the example of the quote I just gave about his own press bio,
a DPF is a reference for me that I was notsuper familiar with as a French singer,
except This is what keeps happening.
This is sometimes I get too earnestlyexcited about music shit and it's nice
to have an outlet for it, but like, okay.

(18:05):
So I started lookinginto who Adit Piaf is.
Well, it turns out that, in this momentin time that we're recording it not
too long before now, uh, we have theopening ceremony of the Olympics.
Celine Dion makes a comeback froma neurological disorder that's
preventing her from being able to sing.
It's this like hugely triumphant.
Moment.
And we'll probably never talk abouta Selene record on a tuned egg

(18:27):
episode, but like, she's really good.
Like we're all on thesame page about this.
What she chose to sing wasn't a deephalf song called him to them more.
And that was what she chose as hercomeback performance for the first time
years after not being able to perform.
Literally standing on the Eiffel Towerin front of the world, like every little

(18:50):
dot that you chase is some other justdeeply good, fascinating aspect of
music that just flowed out of this humanbeing who seemed to be like the human
equivalent of a crate of vinyl, like.
Everything was all together somehowfor him and he was channeling different

(19:10):
aspects of things all the time.
And so like that was just oneexample like that took me in
a whole different direction.
That I definitely never wouldhave chased myself, much less
had the algorithm present to me.
Um, if I hadn't chased it at all.

Kyle (19:25):
It was said of him, by the biographer, David Brown, that he could
hear a song once, instantly memorizeit, and then play it straight through.
So, He said he was voraciously curiousabout music and culture, about the rich
and remarkable world in which he lived.
A teenage Jeff Buckley found solaceand release in both intellectually
sardonic humor and scalding rock excess.
George Carlin and Led Zeppelin,1980s ironic David Letterman

(19:47):
humor, and Rush and Kiss.
All of that cultural mayhem wasswirling around in Jeff's head and
with the equivalent of a photographicmemory in relation to music, he
could, hear a song once, instantlymemorize and play it straight through.
That's rad.
it brings to mind, you know, LesterBang's said of Van Morrison that he
could compress a ton of information,emotional information into a song.

(20:11):
And I, I think that's what, Buckley wasalways doing was, was just, he saw it
all as information to enrich the sortof textures and shades of a feeling.
It was all in service of feeling.
This is a big feels recordand he was a big feels guy.
So if that's what you're going for islike maximum feeling, I, You know, can't

(20:32):
imagine more than that, but I like thatidea of like compressing, compressing
a creative records until like one,one densest matter of the universe
unit of emotional information and thengiven it to you in a coffee house.

Cliff (20:49):
a great way of thinking about it.
The way that he packed informationinto music was incredible.
Because saying that, even if you justtook one example and said that he,
channeled blues or channeled emotioninto whether it's his own covers
or his original songs or whatever,it doesn't quite go far enough.

(21:11):
Because he understood things ata deep enough level to pack in
context without being historicallyirreverent, if that makes enough sense.
That's a really hard thing to do,to bring forward old things while
actively and verbally talking aboutexactly aping, in a lot of cases.

(21:33):
And be able to, you know, Then stillcreate something original and interesting
enough that people want to be a partof it And that makes some of those same
musicians want to learn more about itIt's just incredible, once in a lifetime
type stuff and things that I, you know,frankly, just experienced jealousy, uh,
that this person existed and he had that.

Kyle (21:54):
You know, it occurs to me.
One of the things is we get.
into the dozens and dozens and approachinghundreds of episodes of the show.
One of the things that I find ussaying more and more often is like,
I hear what we learned about otherrecords and this record, right?
It seems like the really great recordsconnect us to the feelings and ideas

(22:16):
and context of other records, right?
Because that's what music is tryingto do is trying to connect us to the
great Cosmic tapestry between us all.
And I specifically appreciate aboutthis record that other people recognize
it immediately in Jeff Buckley.
Like it, it has been an afterthoughtas you and I digest records most
of the time that that was hopefullypart of the intent, certainly

(22:39):
its intent that we ascribe to.
Great records.
You know, the, the Alice Coltrane'sthe Lauren Hills, the D'Angelo's, the
records that I keep talking about overand over and over again, but Steve
Berkowitz was an A and R and a producerwho went and saw him at the Sinead cafe.
And.
So that he had never metanybody like Jeff Buckley.
And he said, from the first time he sawhim, he leaned over to the guy he came

(23:02):
with and said, Hal, it's all in there.
Isn't it?
It's just all in there.
And I put it in the notes and Ihadn't really thought about it.
Why that sentence struckme, but like, that's what.
That, that, that's the common threadbetween the episodes of this season.
I think in the ones that wereinadvertently picking month over
month from the calendar is the,I use the men in black outer

(23:23):
space ball on the cat's necklace.
thing in one of the last two episodes,but the, like, it's all in there.
Like that is the kind of music thatI, I find you and me reaching for to
your point, whether it is somethingyou go off and listen to all the time
I think you're going to be a littlebit altered forever by Jeff Buckley.

(23:44):
Just because you have approached thesensation that it's all in there.
Like you've, you've touched a thing thathas opened a third eye a little bit.
Like it's hard not to talk aboutreally great densely emotionally
packed records without getting alittle Rick and Morty about it.
Like, Oh shit.
I went into the Jerry simulator andlived, lived a hundred year life.

(24:05):
And then I pull back and realizethat I'm at Dave and busters.
Yeah.
How did he get 250,

Cliff (24:11):
I think The reason that what we've talked about so far doesn't end
up amounting to an academic exercisefrom a music student effectively
is partially because of the actualbackstory of how he came to become
the artist that got discovered.

(24:31):
And I think that that's pretty criticalbecause again, in the short span of
time that he sort of existed as anartist that people could experience.
A lot of this all happened in apretty short period of time that then
resulted in this full length record.
That's, you know, the only version ofthis sort of thing that we have from him.

Kyle (24:54):
000 highway miles in 30 years, so to speak?

Cliff (24:56):
so he's the, he was the son of singer Tim Buckley, which you would sort
of naturally think is the sort of musicalnepotism thing you see on a fairly regular
basis where even if they're not literallyconnected as a parent and child, there's
a sort of gravity that pulls people alongby their last name, uh, or something.

(25:19):
Yeah.

Kyle (25:20):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And let it be known, Tim Buckleyhad his own cult following for
sure in the, in the folk circle.

Cliff (25:27):
But in Jeff Buckley's case, he was.
estranged from that father, so whileI don't think there's really any
reason for us to just spend a tonof time trying to either diagnose
or even comment on, uh, what was

Kyle (25:43):
Don't want to do it any more than I wanted to do it with Marvin Gaye.
Not a licensed therapist.

Cliff (25:48):
Nope.
At the same time, what you candefinitely see and hear in interviews
with Jeff Buckley and then instories written about him and all
this, like he had a really complexrelationship to this concept, right?
And, but then there was a, I mean, thelevel of poetic justice that this guy

(26:09):
must have experienced on Earth musthave made him feel like he was in a
video game or something like that.
Cause like, everything that wasequally seemingly terrible and weird
also had a counterpoint that sortof propelled Jeff Buckley forward.
And so in this case, Jeff Buckleyeffectively gets discovered at a

(26:30):
tribute concert for his estrangedfather, where he is blowing people
away and they are in real timerealizing, Oh shit, this is his kid.
that's such a scene from a show.
That's, It's so hard to believe that

Kyle (26:50):
like East Village Succession a little bit, yeah.
Kent Kindle goes away to rehaband grows up without Logan.
And here we are!

Cliff (27:01):
like we would keep hearing from people who have talked about
him for his entire performing career,they were Literally blown away.
It w it's all there.
People were having that same experienceover and over again, because he was
a phenomenally good live musicianwho you can, you can clearly tell was
comfortable, not just performing, butreally owning and improvising sort of

(27:26):
moment to moment, how everything wasgoing to come across what he was going
to play, how he was going to flourish.
Everything was a little bit different.
I mean, even that oversimplifies someof the lead up, uh, of, you know,
of, of him hitting that curve andgoing up towards becoming the person
that, that people would recognizeas the inimitable Jeff Buckley.

(27:49):
But even that little vignette, man, likethat struck me because it's at once.
Emotionally intense in a way thatmakes me really uncomfortable,
is that not one of the rawest formsof bravery that I've ever heard?
it's

Kyle (28:08):
you got to go a level deeper and here's another piece of great writing
like this dude is raising the vibrationsof everyone he touches because here's
another instance of great writing aboutthe moment swirls a furiously strummed
guitar and shimmering psychedelic swoopsechoed across the nave as he launched
into I never asked to be your mountain.

(28:28):
From 1967's Hello and Goodbye.
It was one of Tim's most personal songs.
A kiss off to his wife and theinfant son he was leaving behind.
Buckley sang the tuneof his own abandonment.
That shit is haunting.
That's not regular, like, he got up andhe sang a beautiful He got up and he did
Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and everyoneloved him, and then that was the famous

(28:49):
song that eventually got used in Shrek.
Like, if that doesn't feel like alightning bolt through the middle
of your body, then like, sorry,don't turn off this episode.
Don't try to listen to this recordand honestly go make sure you
still exist on this mortal coil.
Because, because there's noway to know that you're real.
If that didn't make you feel anything.

Cliff (29:08):
Hard with a capital H.
I don't know how elseto describe that, man.

Kyle (29:11):
As that old, uh, that old noise rock record or whatever goes
heavier than a death in the family.
Quite, quite literally.

Cliff (29:19):
Yup.
we'll talk more for sure aboutindividual songs, aspects of that
kind of stuff that, Stood out to usas we can easily do with this record.
we sort of have started talking aboutnow in episodes, since we have tried to
focus on more of listening and absorbingmusic as a practice, we always ask like
a few specific questions as we go along.

(29:41):
And so one of them is trying totake this in fresh, even if you
are aware of the album, right?
Trying to experience it with somethinglike a beginner's mind so that
you can listen to the things that.
Catch your attention without havingto apply too much energy or take
it too seriously all at once.
I'd like to promptmyself, if you don't mind,

Kyle (30:02):
Yeah, I went hard on this with Botch.
I would really, I was saying, Iwanted to say that I would like
to hear from you on it first.

Cliff (30:09):
I do not think too highly of myself, I want to be clear, okay, I,
I'm no professional at music, I am nohistory teacher and whatever, but we've
been doing this for a while, we takeit pretty seriously, we're pretty good.
At listening to music, we're prettygood at like finding the things that are
interesting about it and figuring out whypeople like it and how it hits people.

(30:30):
And like, a lot of things click intoplace pretty quickly at this point,
especially when you practice listeningto music and trying to understand it.
For me, what surprised me is thatI still can't get myself to want to
listen to this record very often.
And I.
Was struck by it this time because it'sa thing that I remembered about this

(30:51):
record and its general existence andIt was sort of you know Filed in my
brain alongside that fascinating photothat they chose for the album artwork
uh for this particular record, Well,frankly, makes me laugh a little bit.

Kyle (31:07):
Somebody, somebody said that people thought it made him look like Adam Ant.

Cliff (31:13):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a little, a mild version ofcathartic to learn that most everybody at
the record label and other people workingon the record were like, The fuck is this?
When they saw that picture.
Like,

Kyle (31:27):
I do want to come back to the cover later because it's got some
cool stories associated with it.
But
yeah, it, it, uh, it's a, it's a thing.

Cliff (31:35):
We should.
But the point in it is It's hard forme to get into and this is coming from
a person who listens to a lot of stuffThat is canonically difficult to get
into and here's a record that has almostuniversal appeal to like brilliant
musicians and I just I it doesn'thit the same way to me every time and

(31:56):
so What has surprised me about it inlistening to it so much and listening
to other people talk about it Is findinga new muscle In my musicality, I guess.
I found a new way to click into this musicwithout having it match my vibe in the way
that I would normally expect things to.
And that has given me a way to appreciatewhat was going on here, and as I'm

(32:21):
sure we'll talk about some more aswell gave me some things to tune into.
That might have been different,uh, than I would have picked if I
just like found this really easyto sort of sink my teeth into,

Kyle (32:33):
Okay, but I want to, I want to give you some reassurance
coming from the other side of this.
I think it's probably welldocumented on this page.
Podcast now, at least throughContext Clues, I'm always looking
for, how does this make me feel?
What's the vibe or energy of thisthing before I pick up anything
technical or musical about it?
And there's something to be said for thefact that I knew that I also knew this

(32:54):
record was great, but for a long time,just had the one song on my iPod and, and
sort of like unconsciously resisted it.
And I think it's something to dowith yeah, it's feel, but it's It's
like, if you're going to get intoit, you get all the way into it and
it's not like it's bright or noisyor whatever, or it's sad, you know,

(33:18):
unidirectionally emotional or whatever.
It's just truly everythingeverywhere all at once.
Like you're the two rocks on theside of the cliff or whatever.
It makes you sort of feel thewhole universe when you touch it.
That's No matter what, you're striped.
That's hard.
And eventually I realized I'm gettingmore into listening to it because of

(33:40):
the stuff that it is opening up in me.
It's like opening a new sort of emotionalchapter in my life or accompanying one.
It's like hitting at a time and placewhere that is appropriate and necessary.
there's work requiredwith this record, right?
it's not casual.

Cliff (33:59):
That's a good way to put it.
It's not

Kyle (34:01):
it's not casual at all.
And that doesn't make it like, Burdensome?
There's so much joy in this record.
Like, I feel explosions of joy listeningto his voice and the musicality.
But like, you gotta get after itwhen you're listening to this thing.
Like, the joy of music does notcome without a price on grace.

Cliff (34:23):
So then definitely the things that stood the farthest
out to me in that context.
One is, like, Let's justcall out the easy one.
Hit the center of the bingo card.
Corpus Christi Carol is a wildthing to include on this album.
I

Kyle (34:42):
What's the movie where Will Ferrell, uh, stands up at the Irish, in the other
guys, Will Ferrell stands up at theIrish pub and does the old funeral songs?
That's what this felt like.
You're having a conversation with him,you're Mark Wahlberg, and you're having
a conversation with him, and thenhe stands up and faces in the other
direction, does Corpus Christi Carol,and you're like, what the fuck, man?

(35:03):
First of all, how do you, that'sfrom the early 16th century.
How do you know that?
Second, wha, wha, why now?

Cliff (35:11):
what's cool is I don't have an answer at all, that's what I'm saying,
none of this like, makes any sense to

Kyle (35:17):
Truly weird flex, but okay.

Cliff (35:20):
just, yeah, there's a piece of chocolate in the middle of your
peanut butter sandwich, just beprepared, I can't, like, I'm fine
with it, I just like kind of wishI knew it was coming, know, so,
Because if I don't chewthis right, I'm gonna choke.
Why, like, why is it not the last track?

Kyle (35:42):
It's a, it's a skit on a rap album.

Cliff (35:45):
yeah, they went into left field, to come from left field, and then
like, built another stadium a few milesout that way, and went to that left
field, and then came back in with it.
I fundamentally love when peopleare weird and unexpected in music.
So even though that makes no senseto me, I have a tremendous amount
of love and appreciation for thefact that it happened at all.

(36:06):
Cause like light antagonism is mylove language when it comes to art.
So I love that.
on a much like simpler vibe to catch,uh, yeah, we'll kind of bring up the
same things we've talked about before,but like there is a very specific
way that a love for someone like.
Led Zeppelin can play out.

(36:28):
And this is like, it's fun to havecreate opportunities that we have in
this podcast to talk about shit that noone would ever ask us about, but that
we can otherwise eloquently explain.
And you really shouldask me about sometime.
So what does it mean when you

Kyle (36:43):
You hit, you hit play bro.
You sat down at our booth at the bar.

Cliff (36:47):
You put in a quarter.
You got to let me finish

Kyle (36:49):
You, you put in a quarter, you're someone who cares.

Cliff (36:54):
Oh no, that's a very good backup title for my memoir, the
ability to use your voice to imitateand or interact with guitar lead lines
is like an extremely specific move.
And as part of the reason Led Zeppelinwas good at all, like It was a move

(37:15):
that the guitarist and the vocalistunderstood because they were both
phenomenally good at what they were doing.
And like the tone and range of whatyou're doing on the guitar and on
the voice, you have to understand theboundaries of that range in order to
connect them together in a meaningful way.
Like it's both academic and then itbecomes really intuitive, but it's

(37:38):
like, It's not something you hearvery commonly, like if you go to a
show and a blues artist does that moveand sings with their riff, I've never
been in a show where that happened,where people didn't clap immediately.

Kyle (37:52):
Every time I see somebody do that, I'm like.
How the hell do you do that?

Cliff (37:58):
it is like, yeah,

Kyle (37:59):
How do you even get your brain I know how hard it is to sing
anything while you play guitar.
How do you make them do the same thing?
I Yeah, it's physics defying for me.

Cliff (38:12):
yeah, it is truly wild.
But like, that is a way to describesome of the things that he's doing,
not only throughout several songs,but then specifically my third eye got
tapped a few times during this record.
Right.
And one of them was on eternallife and like the moves that he
is doing there vocally immediatelydraw yes, Robert plant, right?

(38:36):
So like.
Yeah.
So examples of what we've talked aboutso far, you know, whole lot of love,
Achilles last stand, like the vocal movesin creating something that interacts with
the guitar lines was, you know, a reallycommon thing, but, you know, it kind of
brought those songs to mind, but the otherperson that it brought to mind for me was

(38:56):
a contemporary, which was Chris Cornell.
And it reminded me not only of howChris Cornell sang then, but then
again, now I'm just kind of lookingfor doorways to push people into that,
that sends them down a trash chutethat lands at Jeff Buckley's grace.
So, so one of those little doors isis that first audio slave record.

(39:19):
And when Chris Cornell did,

Kyle (39:21):
That shit's better than it's got any business to be in, man.
That

Cliff (39:24):
percent, a hundred percent.
Yeah.
And it's.
One thing that really twisted my noodlein a fun way was understanding that that
record, that first Audioslave record,came out only eight years after Grace.

Kyle (39:39):
Mm.
Heh

Cliff (39:41):
but, point being, songs from that record that especially folks
would probably recognize rightnow, like, Like a Stone the way Go
back now and listen to that song.
If you're at all peaked, uh, in yourinterest by what we're talking about
here, because what you can do is go backand listen to Chris Cornell singing.
Not only, that song rips likehis, the whole thing rips.

(40:02):
It's a very, very good song andhe's an incredible singer, but the
flourishes that he'll do with hisvoice match things Tom Morello does
in the solo later on, which is itself.
a really cool move and a neatexample because like I truly
don't mean this disrespectfully.
Tom Morello is not a very good guitarplayer so like being able to find a way to

Kyle (40:28):
he has a masterclass.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Have

Cliff (40:33):
he's really good at effects so

Kyle (40:35):
you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?

Cliff (40:37):
I'm not saying I'm better than he is I'm just saying if you
listen to the like functional likemusicality of what he's playing it's
not especially complex most of the time.
And that worked well for rageagainst the machine and all that.
But point being like that song, like,like a stone or even I am the highway,
other songs where Chris Cornell istruly taking the lead of melody.

(40:59):
If you listen for it, you'll hearanother extremely talented vocalist.
Like intuiting how the song is goingto eventually sound or what little
lines and hooks will come out of theguitar parts later and introducing them.
And one offs throughout theverses and things like that.
So I think it's just like areally cool thing to not only

(41:22):
notice for the first time.
But then as we'll talk some moreabout, it's something that you can sort
of apply your focus in and draw outsome different parts of this record
that you might not otherwise hear.

Kyle (41:33):
Eternal Life is my favorite song on the record.
And it's probably weird to belike the one heavy song is my
favorite song on the record.
But I thought immediately like thiscould have been a later Soundgarden song.
I also appreciate the Audioslaveconnection because, you know, Rage being
so into funk there's a very, like, funky,skronky thing to the way that they play.

(41:58):
Like, the bass is almost almostless Clay Pooley a little bit.
and one piece of trivia that I justlike cannot get out of my mind is in
the late 80s, one of the many hardrock heavy metal bands that, that
Jeff Buckley played with in LA hadDanny Carey, a future Tool fame in it.

(42:18):
So like he was.
Light years apart from that world andI think actively tried to distance
himself from the the machismo of allof that stuff Happening, but he still
had an interesting intersection pointswith it and you can see it in eternal
life I'd like to me eternal life.
I'd know this was not his intentat all But it's it's a like I could

(42:43):
have done that kind of music and beensuccessful but y'all can't do You
Lover, you should have come over.
He did.
He did say.
this is an angry song.
Like he, he did a lot ofintroductions of his songs and stuff.
He's, he's a pretty good stage talker,which I think is the thing you and I have
talked about, maybe not on the podcast,but just like at shows, especially

(43:06):
since the pandemic, people don't reallydo stage banter much at all anymore.
And when they do, they don't do it well.
Uh, go to Toastmasters, bands, singers,please let's, let's bring back the
art of, of stage talking and not thehardcore, here's 30 minutes on PETA or

Cliff (43:23):
Yeah.
No, no, no.

Kyle (43:24):
yeah,

Cliff (43:24):
you're tuning.
Thank

Kyle (43:25):
yeah, yeah, yeah, not a let's bow our heads in prayer thing for
20 minutes before the last song.

Cliff (43:30):
Yeah, this isn't Wolves in the Throne Room.
Let's keep

Kyle (43:33):
Yeah.
Uh, he said of eternallife this is an angry song.
Life's too short and too complicatedfor people behind desk and people
behind mask to be ruining other people'slives, initiating force against other
people's lives on the basis of theirincome, their color, their class, their
religious beliefs, their whatever.
And this was a 93, 94, he was saying stufflike this and then launching into here's

(43:56):
Soundgarden Zeppelini sounding song.
Eternal life and like really ripping.
Like I, I I have a playlist, you know,that is almost a thousand songs large now.
That is my version of a Tony Hawkspro skater game soundtrack that I
just keep adding to and expanding to.
So like what stuff that feelsgood for kicking and pushing
out there in the world.

(44:16):
And in the process of spinning uppreparations for this episode, I
put Eternal life on that playlist,

Cliff (44:24):
Incredible.

Kyle (44:24):
I would not do for any of the other songs on this

Cliff (44:26):
I was Yep, that's exactly where my brain had started to go, was

Kyle (44:32):
it's, unless it's skateboarding to a girl's

Cliff (44:34):
Yep.
To get myself in the mood.
Yeah, sure.
as always, I love our earnestnessabout how this record hits us, but
give me an idea of a context ortwo where this one works for you.
Like, when do, when do youwant to put it on now as a non

(44:54):
skateboarding, non teenage adult

Kyle (44:57):
In the fucking real world, in, in the, in being a
spirit in the material world.
We, we were texting about this, but likemy new deeply held belief is that this
record is an antidote to to use another.
Parlor parlance that's becomingmore common in 2024 quickly weird,
like everything's weird and onlineand disconnected and not physical.

(45:20):
And I think a lot of our angst comesfrom just not being aware of that.
With people and in love with peopleand the physicality and the, and the
tactileness of being alive and smashingagainst senses in the real world,
being at a bar, seeing faces, huggingnecks, drinking cold beer, like just
do doing things out in the world.

(45:40):
As they say online, touchinggrass, proverbially.
So if you.
If you are in a place in your life whereyou are trying to touch more grass or you
are depressed and you need an inspirationto go out in the world and feel more
things and fall in love with being aliveagain like touching grass is great.

(46:02):
But if you're in a place where youcan't really necessarily do that yet
Cliff, I thought you put it beautifully.
You said this feels like thequintessential aimless driving record.
And I think there's a connection toQawwali music, which we'll get into
in a second and like meditation andthe practice of existing more deeply.
but like, I can't encourage enough touse this as maybe a vessel, a springboard

(46:27):
to like, get out there and live.
Go drive to this record, butjust go, go like have the next.
Six months of your life be the best.
We're sensing a vibe shift in, in thecountry and in the world right now.
And maybe you haven't gotten it personallyto trickle down into your own life.
And hopefully this can belike a jolt of a moment.

(46:48):
I could never in good conscience.
Get on the internet and tell anyoneto like, exercise or drink more
water or do healthy habits orwhatever to turn their life around.
But I can point you to a fucking recordthat will maybe lead you to some of
those other good and beautiful things.
Like if, if you want to try to make somememories and get to being the person out

(47:09):
there in the real world with people thatyou love, loving you back, maybe this
is a small first step to get you there.

Cliff (47:15):
That makes me want to just say out loud.
Maybe it's a good soundtrack foryour next quote, stupid little mental
health walk that you may be takingto get yourself out of your head.
I love that people started referringto it as that and hearing you
sort of describe it that way.
Makes me want to put it in the contextof, well, you got to start as early

(47:39):
as you can in the day to catch momentsof beauty and optimism before they
get ruined by the experiences thatyou'll inevitably have after that.
So this is kind of making me want to like,I wonder if this could be like a wake up
type, a deal for me or one that's like.
Just really early on before thingshave sort of settled in or you've
had to get started on something.

(47:59):
As someone who's currently healingmyself through literally going
outside and looking at a mountainthis is uh, this is giving me some
even better ways to think about it.
Maybe

Kyle (48:12):
I am more of a purge at the end of the day, put on this
record and come alive at night.
Like, you know, like your secondday, your real life starts at dusk.
But either of those work just dependingon who you are physiologically and
what your life rhythms look like.

Cliff (48:27):
So I think talking just a little bit about how Jeff Buckley thought about
his own work at this point in time wouldbe helpful and it'll, it's nice because
it's, Well, we're well past the pointtogether where, uh, we fully understand
that one another finds the topic ofdeath just a little bit funny, honestly.

(48:50):
So I kind of keep laughing aboutlike, it's cool to be able to talk
about this because there's not toomuch information because, you know.
But,

Kyle (48:57):
It's the only universal language.

Cliff (48:59):
that's right.
But one of the reasons that that'snot just darkly funny to me is the way
that he expressed his intent in thismoment is itself really beautiful.
In in, you know, he, like you mentioned,he was pretty comfortable talking
off the cuff and giving interviewersinteresting answers and all that.

(49:21):
But in one of them where he was talkingabout this concept of grace, like kind
of what is this album conceptually?
He instead sort of described What graceas a concept meant to him in a little bit
more of an abstract sense, which I guessthe musicality is supposed to express.

(49:41):
Um, but he said, quote, the best art comesfrom artists who have an unending life
or death urgency to speak their heart.
And as those artists grow older,there's a real serenity to that
art and a great relaxation and anease that's beautiful to watch.
And that's what I want.
That's what I call grace.

(50:02):
And, on, on top of the.
Eerie ness of him speaking of himselfin a future that he would never
come to inhabit, unfortunately.
At the same time, like, he givesus the gift of pointing out pretty
immediately that he feels that hehas a tremendous amount of urgency
to speak from his own heart, and thatwhat he's expressing here on Grace

(50:24):
is an encapsulation of that urgency.

Kyle (50:27):
He also called himself a fleeting memory, which to me speaks to a bit
of prescience around the whole thing.
Yeah he also described himselfas an imperceptible fleeting
memory, which I think speaks to

Cliff (50:41):
Oh my god.
Really?
Seriously, he said that about himself?

Kyle (50:46):
Um, pretty prescient.
I don't want to be like this guyknew he was going to die because
I don't think that's true at all.
But it's, that's just a very coolway to describe your artistic intent.
He said, do you ever have one of thosememories where you think you remember a
taste or a feel of something, maybe anobject, but the feeling is so bizarre
and imperceptible that you can't.
You just can't quite get a hold of it.

(51:07):
It drives you crazy.
That's my musical aesthetic.
Just this imperceptible fleeting memory.
The beauty of it now is that I canrecord it onto a disc or play it live.
It's entirely surreal.
It's like, there's a guard at the gateof your memory and you're not supposed
to remember certain things because youcan only obtain the full experience
by completely going under its power.
You can be destroyed or scarred.

(51:27):
You don't know.
It's like dying.
So maybe we like Jeff Buckley.
Maybe it just boils down to the fact thatwe all, uh, like thinking about death
in, in like a healthy memento mori way

Cliff (51:38):
That is a much, uh, more mature way of saying what, yes,
I was trying to point out too.
Like, he, he's unafraid to talk about it.
And he's unafraid to

Kyle (51:49):
or, or
to do

Cliff (51:50):
Yeah,
we assume so.
but everything is a little, bothinteresting and has a comic relief
nature to it, which is part of why itall feels like it's intertwined with
this concept of death in general.
Cause that's, that's the point.
It always feels like two sides of athing, a deathly serious thing and a
deathly funny thing happening at once.

(52:12):
And so to that end, Jeff Buckley,the immense talent that we've talked
about so far, and have tried to heapas much praise as humanly possible on
it, Still taken by bad relationships,like still obsessed with, particular
relationships, not working out, writinglove songs, sad songs, emotionally whiny
things, uh, about their relationshipand producing that into an album that

(52:35):
somehow once again connects with, youknow, an entire generation of people.
Despite being about this ostensibly basetopic, that really captured me again
here, because speaking of things thatare well documented in this podcast
is my disdain for lyrics in general.
If I could get rid of vocals inlike 90 percent of music, I would.

(52:59):
So for me to come to a recordlike this and be like, so.
Okay, but if everyone could doit to the degree that he was
doing it, maybe I'd be more okay

Kyle (53:09):
Totally.
Totally.
I made the note, stop me.
If you've heard this before, it's notunfair to say this record was hugely
inspired by a woman like a specific woman,but also the divine feminine more broadly
and It just, once again, reinforces thingsthis beautiful and powerful do not happen

(53:30):
without women, like not to be too Helenof Troy about it, but men simply cannot
conceive of things like this on their own.
So, shout out to women.
Thanks once again for everything,like, like literally everything,
including the fact that we're here

Cliff (53:46):
So it's always back and forth in the seesaw of like,
it's simple, it's complicated.
So yeah, all those things are true.
And he came to this one with an extremesense of urgency, and yet he's telling
a classic story, and yet he's doing soin a new and unexpected way, with an
incredible level of artistry and detail,and yet at the same time, it's still
mostly a set of recognizably 90s songs.

(54:08):
But yet, all of those things weretrue, and on top of it, The urgency
was channeled through into the literallogistics of recording the record, um,
because he assembled this band weeksbefore they started recording this record

Kyle (54:23):
said they had played together like 10 times.
Total, before they went into thestudio, which is like insane, insane,

Cliff (54:33):
and certainly that was helped along by Apparently Jeff Buckley
coming with, you know, one of thosefolks who comes with 1 million ideas,
uh, and can just sit down and letthings kind of flow out of them.
Uh, and so, uh, I'm sure that thatguided other people along, but I also
found it really fascinating to listento, uh, like I caught an interview

(54:53):
with the drummer from the record, justlistening to him sort of talk about
the way that they were able to just.
Feel comfortable with Jeff Buckley in thatmoment and kind of absorb some of that
unafraid energy to what they were writingand how they use that to introduce,
you know, very simple, simple isn'teven the right word, deceptively simple

(55:16):
complexity into the rhythm, into littleflourishes as the songs would go along.
Like it drove people to be creative,but in a way that never somehow.
Took them too far away from the emotionalcenter that everyone connected back into.
And that itself is just a mind blowingpiece of music to come out of the group

(55:37):
of people who don't have enough experienceto do something this emotionally

Kyle (55:41):
So another plug for the 33 and a third book detailed in that
book is the studio set up AndyWallace at the boards for this one
incredible discography on that guy.
Most of which looks nothing like this.
If you like chocolate starfish and thehotdog flavored water and Lincoln Park's
hybrid theory, um, but also Nirvana'snevermind probably his most famous

(56:02):
credit, like Andy Wallace is the kingof the nineties sound, I guess, so to
speak as of May, 2021, over 120 millionalbum units have been sold worldwide
that contain a credit to Wallace.
So, uh, dude has his stamp on allthe big sounding records of, of
a 10 or 15 year period and stillvery, very much going strong.

(56:22):
So there were three.
Three spaces set up at thestudio in Woodstock, New York.
There was one for loud music, Iswear to God, one for loud music,
one for quiet music, and then a cafeemulating setup that was just Buckley
with a close mic and a guitar plugin.
And my, everything stayed mic'd thewhole time and they just sort of

(56:43):
cycled between spaces as they gotinspiration and wanted to work on a vibe.
So it stayed very live and focusedon the emotion because, Andy
Wallace helped design it that way.
So a bit of studio genius to drawthe most out of the spontaneity of
these players playing together, likejust a little, a small, but large

(57:04):
note on this record that I love,

Cliff (57:07):
I didn't realize that, but that connects directly in my mind to when.
Folks who were participatingin or attending Jeff Buckley's
weekly shows at a coffee shop.
Like, what they talked about was howhe took ownership of that night and
everyone was really comfortable with it.
And what that meant was It's notjust that every set was unique,

(57:30):
like the entire night was unique.
They'd say that sometimeshe'd play a normal set.
Sometimes he'd stop in the middleand go grab a beer or a coffee.
Sometimes you just go talk to peopleand come back later or experiment with
something new or play something forthe first time in front of people.
Like it was a real, like, I'm just goingto move myself around this space and do
kind of whatever comes to me at the time.

(57:53):
And to be able to trust that you havean audience at that level, That early
in your career is pretty incredible tobegin with, but I love that story that
you just brought about the recordingprocess of it, because like, another
detail fills into the place of like,okay, he, like he was creating contexts

(58:15):
for him to do whatever thing this wasthat was cranking out these emotionally
intense songs and, or, you know, wellthat middle english hymnal in the middle

Kyle (58:27):
and again, credit to Rebecca Moore on this because, she is the
daughter of a famous photographerand was like of the avant garde.
In New York City.
And, uh, I think what interested him abouther was that she was key to a lot of those
scenes, one of which was called Fluxus.
And it was all about,like, performance context.

(58:51):
And in the audience involvementin it being as important as the
content of the performance itself.
So I think he was always thinkingabout context and that was really
drawn out in the Sine Cafe stuff.
You can pretend you're Miles Davis andturn your back on the audience 99 percent
of the time as much as you want, but Likewithout context of the place and the thing

(59:15):
it's, you're a tree falling in the forest.
Like what does any of your art matter?
If it doesn't bump up againstthe world, it's expressing
something about in some way.
And he himself was quoted assaying, music is so many things.
It's not just the performer.
It's the audience and the architecture ofthe song and each builds off the other.
And I think.
The Sinead and the moments in the studiowere really about building, destroying,

(59:37):
rebuilding, uh, and just, just scaffoldingmusical ideas in as many different ways
as possible, which is that's what I love.
about music and just creative artsin general is, uh, you're just,
you're just figuring like living isjust about the process of living.
You know what I mean?

(59:58):
You're just trying to build a new,a new way to go about your day.
Cause otherwise you're justdoing TPS reports all day.

Cliff (01:00:06):
So actually, okay.
So us talking about putting himselfin the context that is the right
feeling energy, whatever to do this.
So let's add that to what you werealso mentioning earlier about the
way that he pipes information intothings for lack of a better term.

(01:00:28):
So I think it'd be good to justmention the covers themselves on
the album, because those like.
More so than nearly any other artists thatwe have or will talk about, the covers,
the act of covering is meaningful here.
Um, much more in the veinof the blues tradition.

(01:00:51):
I am not saying that they are the same,but I am saying that he is channeling
that Lineage in the same way that onceagain, bands like Led Zeppelin were like
channeling that exact lineage, right?
It's not that it's not sacred andso therefore I can iterate on it,
it's that I'm iterating because itis sacred and so is my iteration.

(01:01:14):
So we already mentioned CorpusChristi Carol, which is a Benjamin
Britten adapted middle English hymnal.
I think maybe enough is said aboutthat one because the other two
are worth discussing a little bitmore specifically, in my opinion.
So first, Lilac Wine is effectivelya jazz standard that was made famous

(01:01:34):
by Eartha Kitt, but the interpolationthat we see here from Jeff Buckley
is based on the interpolation fromNina Simone and her rendition of it.
And he, he even said, quote, I'veonly heard Nina Simone's and that
is the only one that matters,which is a strong statement.

(01:01:56):
But, you know, he mentionedlike, there's one by Eartha Kitt.
There's one by Elkie Brooks,which he's never, ever heard.
Uh, and there's another one and they'vedone it, but he said, Nina does it best.
That's the end all of it.
That's the be all end all version.
She is the king.
Like, okay.
All right.

Kyle (01:02:13):
cause the Elkie Brooks version is the one that
charted in popular music, but.
I mean, yeah.
Nobody's beating Nina Simone.

Cliff (01:02:21):
And it's hard to express unless you consider yourself to be a fellow true
musical like dork at this moment in timebut like The confidence that it takes
to say not only am I covering the songbut I'm doing a really specific version
of it based on Nina Simone is a level ofself confidence and assurance that I have

(01:02:44):
cumulatively never experienced in my life.

Kyle (01:02:47):
I'm not doing the Star-Spangled Banner.
I'm , or I, I'm doing the version thatWhitney Houston did at the Super Bowl.

Cliff (01:02:57):
Huh.

Kyle (01:02:58):
You
gotta love it.

Cliff (01:03:00):
yes.
And you can love it not only becausethat's an energy worth appreciating,
but also because it's also good.

Kyle (01:03:07):
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.

Cliff (01:03:08):
okay.
Um, And then secondly, I don't know thatwe haven't, we, we purposely not talked
about it, but the popular star of the showon this record, especially in the time
since then is the cover of Hallelujah.
And yes, It is important not to overlyfocus on that one particular song

(01:03:30):
in order to try to gain the contextof this otherwise very good record
in addition to all of that, but it'sunironically a really good example
of what he had the capacity to do.
Because this song is, I mean, first ofall, if you haven't heard the Leonard
Cohen version, of Hallelujah, you needto hear it so that you understand the

(01:03:53):
contrast that exists between it andthen what happened for Jeff Buckley.
Cause it's not just like, Oh,he was more emotional about it.
He like, he inverts an entire feelingfrom the Leonard Cohen version, which
In my opinion, I described that firstone as like, there's much more of
a reserved nihilism, like a sort of

Kyle (01:04:17):
it, it is cold and broken.
Hallelujah is way, way more literal.

Cliff (01:04:23):
yeah, and so not only is he, yes, injecting it with emotion, but he is, once
again, in the same way that he did it.
Lilac Wine in the styleof what Nina Simone did.
What he's actually doing is basedon John Cale's version of this song.

(01:04:43):
John Cale, the co founderof the Velvet Underground.
Again, like another one of those momentswhere it's just like, as soon as you start
checking into a detail, it's unbelievable.
So John Cale did a version on the piano.
You know?
As a tribute to Leonard Cohen andJeff Buckley heard that version of it.
And I think, I think also hearingJohn Cale's version helps plot the

(01:05:08):
path to how Jeff Buckley got to wherehe got and why it's so good because
he builds on what John Cale doessimply by using the piano instead.

Kyle (01:05:21):
Yeah.

Cliff (01:05:22):
simply by becoming a pianist and then doing that song that way, it
has an entirely different feel to it.
And building on that level of emotionalintensity and the way that certain
things get really focused in onand become more kind of yearning.
That's the thing that he builds on inhis version that makes it so Unbelievably

(01:05:45):
impactful, like I, I'm going to say athing I'm embarrassed about now, but the
first time I can remember crying to JeffBuckley's version of Hallelujah was during
an episode of House MD, where they playedthis song and I was just like, what?
What is happening to me?
It hit perfectly in thatmoment at a way that was like,

(01:06:09):
almost comically inappropriate.
Like, how did this show justbecome fundamentally serious when
this is otherwise a show aboutpeople who don't have lupus?
I'm blown away by it.
And I can, but I rememberwhere I was sitting.
I remember I was like, around my family.
Like, I It was such a concrete momentin time, and I'm nearly embarrassed by

(01:06:30):
how emotionally intense and memorableit was to hear it, but it speaks to how
not only well done it is as a song, butaligning that song or some of these songs
to the right feeling and moment in timeis it opens up an order of magnitude
different experience to the whole thing.

Kyle (01:06:54):
Yeah, you can, you can kind of hear in the core of the song how, you
know, in love, we take all our feelingsabout the world and we put them into
all our feelings about one person.
We're constantly projectingthings onto other things.
And his version of hallelujahis stunningly intimate.
It is.
It's scary, intimate.

(01:07:15):
It's just like too muchlaser pointed at one person.
And usually the person that's yourself.
So it, when we talk about it being likealmost too much to take, I think it's the
song mostly at the core of the record.
It's also the most indicativeof the Sinead cafe experience.
Cause it's, it's mostlyjust him and the telecaster.
And when you listen to the live at Sineadrecordings of that song and other stuff

(01:07:39):
that's really a lot of what you get.
And it's powerful.
And you can, if you like that,you should go listen to him
do other cover songs live.
Cause it's, it's There's so manywow, so many wow moments with
him doing the American songbook.
And like we've heard so many badcovers now that it almost cheapens it.
But I think about a Ray Charles,you know, he loved Ray Charles

(01:08:02):
as well and was chasing someof what Ray Charles was after.
And the Ray Charles, modern soundsand country music to, to Sturgill,
metamodern sounds and countrymusic and, uh, when in Rome.
The promise cover on that andjust how they were like inverting
feelings to use your phrase toget to maximum emotional effect.

(01:08:23):
He does covers in a Ray Charlesy way where he's, he's cutting
to the core of them emotionallyand also like, like Ray Charles.
This is one of just 650 recordings in thelibrary of Congress's national library.
music library.
Uh, the Library of Congress selects25 recordings annually, and in its

(01:08:43):
short history has only initiated650 total recordings in the history
of American music that are deemedculturally, historically, or
aesthetically significant and or informor reflect life in the United States.
So as much as the song itself stuns me,thinking about it belongs in the very

(01:09:04):
exclusive company of 649 or so otherrecordings is like, I'm what, what more
do you need to know, dude, you wouldn'tbe listening to this if we were, if you
needed a case mounted for why you needto, like, you could have stopped at Jimmy
page and Robert plant cried when theyheard this guy play, but, but there,

(01:09:24):
there's yet another exhibit on our thesis.

Cliff (01:09:28):
I love everything you just said.
Just to add one extra level.
I know every now and then we do likea little, Me and you, Kyle, do our
little Deadpool thing where we breakthe fourth wall and we do a laser beam
directly at Unevolved White Dudes, soI just want to do one here, okay, like

(01:09:49):
you don't have to be afraid that thisemotionally intense thing will make
you emotional when you listen to it.
This is not the equivalent of turninginto a softie who likes stupid music
about stupid trivial things all thetime, or is constantly preoccupied
by the minutiae of Stupid life.

(01:10:10):
This is someone channeling the levelof energy that we are always trying to
describe in words that we have no wordsfor, and this is another example of it.
And if you are a person whorecoils at the idea, Of emotional
vulnerability through art.
This is a very good opportunity foryou to go practice alone by yourself.

(01:10:33):
So you can grow up and jointhe rest of us like this.
It's good practice to cry to one ofthese songs or to otherwise be like
shocked by how intense it is andhow it's not normally the thing that
you'd want to do, or you wouldn'twant to tell everybody this is your
favorite record or your favoriteartist And like, to me, they're just.

(01:10:55):
There are not too many good examplesof like a nearly foolproof way to gut
check yourself and make sure you'restill available enough to be touched
by things as this can be, to me.

Kyle (01:11:08):
If Shane Gillis can cry, you can cry too, bro.
because you reminded me of a story.
I was thinking as you were talking,like, who needs to hear this?
It's mostly people that will neverlisten to this podcast because they
also don't read books, but, um, I'mthinking of, uh, one of my best friends

(01:11:32):
in high school, who you also knowhis girlfriend broke up with him, and
the next morning we got to school,uh, And he was already in the parking
lot and his windows were fogged up.
It was a cold day and I openedthe door and it smelled like beer.
Cause he'd been drinking all night andhe was blasting, I think Hank Williams.

(01:11:54):
I think he was listeningto I'm so lonesome.
I could cry.
And he was bro.
He was sobbing seven 30 in themorning, drunk as a skunk about
to go into high school, sobbing.
And I was like, I was like, you know what?
If this guy can feel somethingthis deeply, then there's no
excuse to play that tough.

(01:12:15):
And I haven't thought about thatmoment in a long time, but it
was very instructive for me.
So I won't name drop that personbut it was a big white F 250.
And just the, if you can, if you canlook at the person to your left at a
red light with their big lifted truckwith the truck nuts with a little bit of
sympathy And, you know, maybe just maybesomething in this world will, will break

(01:12:38):
them down and make them real boys again.

Cliff (01:12:40):
Hopefully it's the sad boy from the 90s.
We'll deploy him as much as we can.

Kyle (01:12:45):
Yeah, if If nothing else works, you can say, Hey, remember,
like Jeff Buckley got girls.
This gets girls.
You can't fake it.
You got to be genuinely sensitive,but you could just try being
sensitive for once you have youtried caring about other people?
In the world.
I
wonder why everybody'sso lonely these days.

(01:13:08):
Hmm.

Cliff (01:13:09):
Caring about other people is the top thing I both recommend and
don't recommend at the same time.

Kyle (01:13:14):
"Caring's so gay, bro."
Yeah, it is.
Everybody's gay.
Be in love with people, you stupid bitch.

Cliff (01:13:27):
While, uh, while we're still in the territory of, uh, things
that might surface level offend you,but, but you should get past it.
Let's just touch one moretime on this album art.
Cause, I mean, this This GlamourShot ass shit just drives me
crazy every time I look at it.

(01:13:48):
I can't, like, why is GeorgeMichael on the cover of this thing?
I cannot understand it,for the love of God.
But there's funniness behind it.

Kyle (01:13:57):
Okay, so, so first of all, the jacket that he's wearing was from a
thrift store and his friends called ithis Judy Garland jacket, which is just
Just the best thing because you knowlike everybody's been a teenager once
and has tried to take a fashion riskthey're really excited about and their

(01:14:18):
friends are like this shit is notit But we cannot tell Kyle because
he will be devastated because he'swrapping his identity around this
thing.

Cliff (01:14:26):
yeah, just let him, just let him wear a
monocle.
Just let him do it.
He can pull it off.
Ha ha
ha

Kyle (01:14:33):
remember when monocle era Oh, shit.
I did jorts for a while.
I tried to make that work pretty hard.
And I'm just, it's, I don'thave the build for it.
Just, just

Cliff (01:14:47):
ha ha ha ha ha ha

Kyle (01:14:49):
wearing more normal shorts that were designed to be shorts now.
So I appreciate the Judy Garland jacketon the thing, but the photo was taken
in the stairwell of William Baczynski'sloft, who like, if you read the,
"here's the 10 fun facts about Graceyou may not have known" the photographer
who took the photo called him Billy.

(01:15:10):
So there's no indication that the loftis the man who made disintegration
loops, one of the great ambient recordsof the past 30 years or whatever.
And apparently to get in the headspacefor the brooding, deeply earnest
look on the cover, he was listeningto his recording of Dream Brother,
the final song on the original,iteration of the record, on cassette.

(01:15:33):
So like, the man is listening to basicallythe The raga he made to close the
record and getting in the mood to brood.
And we got the photo.
I would never in a million years if Iwrote an autobiography about my life,
God forbid I would never let anyoneput a photo of me like this in any,

(01:15:53):
anywhere on the internet or anything,if I would immediately be like Lars
Ulrich's dad, if I saw a photo of myselflike this, I'd be like, delete that.
But it's a, it's just yetanother thing that he makes work.

Cliff (01:16:07):
well, that's because he's very pretty, which is
another annoying thing about
him.
Yes.
so we've, we've had some fun with theunexpected twists and turns of it.
But so another one of our sort ofexercises and focuses, we talked
a little bit about what sort of,is surprising from time to time.
But then on this one, once you starteddrilling in, what are some things to

(01:16:29):
focus on if you want to do like activelistening or, you know, educational
listening or emotional depth, plummet,plumaging, plumaging, emotional, whatever
you want to dive into your feels.
What are some things that for you likestand out or especially interesting?
Yeah, there's

Kyle (01:16:49):
Four technical that add up to one spiritual, and I want to hear
from you on a couple specifically andanything else you want to chime in on.
The four technical arevoice, obviously, duh.
Lyrics, because holy shit.
Uh, guitar, surprising.
Maybe not surprising how incrediblehe is a guitar and then atmosphere.
So just real quickly on voice hisown mom and one of the documentaries

(01:17:12):
said, you know, his two influenceswere Robert plant and Nusrat Fateh Ali
Khan, a legendary Pakistani singer.
so if Shankar, go to Jeff Buckley.
His mom, Mary Gweebert, said what RobertPlant gave him was the ability to just
take the envelope all the way open, justfling it wide open to his voice and take

(01:17:32):
it wherever his heart would take him.
And Nusrat took him to the Divine, soit was sort of a natural progression
between Robert and Nusrat, and Jeff wasthe bridge between the two, and when he
found that bridge, it was bliss for him.
So thinking about, like,
Eastern modes and Led Zeppelinand, you know, Led Zeppelin also
played with Eastern modes, butjust sort of like East meets West

(01:17:55):
in his voice and instrumentation.
I have a note in my phone, lines Iwish I'd written, and I mean, I could
probably copy and paste every lyric onthis record to be in there, but there
are tons, but one of my favorites iswe walked around till the moon got full
like a plate, then the wind blew anindication and I fell asleep like a gate.
on So Real.

(01:18:17):
I'll save guitar for youbecause you're the only one of
us who actually plays guitar.
And then Atmosphere, I think partlycomes from Andy Wallace mixing minimal
instrumentation to huge effect.
Or even when it gets kind of layered,but also the Kaua'li influence.
So, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan heheard one day in his apartment,

(01:18:37):
just like in a stack of records.
He called his voice mystical and chanting,and he likened his voice to velvet fire.
And they went on to strike up afriendship and an interview magazine,
which, you know, the, the conceptof interview magazine, where an
artist interviews, an artist isstill very cool and well trod ground.
But there's a 96 interviewbetween the two of them.

(01:19:00):
And it's clear, he talked about thisguy, Every time he possibly could.
So I think a lot of the atmosphere andthe like desire to drone and get into
the cosmic, uh, there's indicationsof can, there's invocations of in a
silent way, Miles Davis, there's allsorts of that sort of heady stuff, but,
but it really goes back to this guy,uh, what it taught him about voice and

(01:19:22):
what it taught him about expansivenessof an arrangement or of improvisation
or, or whatever, it's not quite jazz.
It's more Eastern stuff, Kaua'li stuff.
So that's a rabbit hole togo down in and of itself.
And then there's a handful oflike, I like listening for the big
feels moments where he just like.
goes for it.
That's the spiritual thing.

(01:19:43):
So, it started, the first one that Inoticed, and I don't want to rattle them
all off, but the first one I noticedis there's a big guitar strum and then
he lets out a big howl around fourminutes of the first song of mojo pen.
And you're just like, Whoa, likeif you, if you put it on and walked
away for a minute, that's the thingthat draws you back to the speaker.
And you're like, Oh no, I need toreally Actually listen and there's

(01:20:05):
about one of those a song and sometimesmore what else is there for you?

Cliff (01:20:09):
hearty endorsement to pretty much all of those.
The only thing I'll add is in thevein of Prince, here is a dude who
was extraordinarily good at guitar,but unless you were looking for that
information, and or, a very experiencedmusician, you may not notice that at all.

(01:20:32):
And It is even more obscured onthis record than Prince tended to
obscure his, uh, in the sense that,like, Prince would note a song or
two on an album, and be like, justin case you forgot, Here's my shit.
Right.
Which he could do with aton of instruments, right?

(01:20:53):
What we don't have here though,this is not a, in my opinion, this
is not a guitar driven record.
I know that other people would probablydisagree with that classification, but
like, this is a vocal driven recordin my opinion, and because of all
the things we've talked about before,Jeff Buckley deeply understood the
interplay between guitar and voice Andso that came out in not only his own

(01:21:15):
songwriting, but also in how these songsgot structured and recorded in general.
But if you want to focus on it or, youknow, understand a little bit of what I'm
looking for, or referencing on So Real,the chords that he uses in the verse are.
An unexpected voicing of chords.

(01:21:36):
I like, I don't reallyknow how else to say that.
Like, once you listen to it, you canprobably understand what I'm kind
of pointing out about, like, therewere a lot of ways to play that chord
that did not require whatever voicingthat they're currently using for
it, but it creates a, almost like anunease, even though the chord isn't.

(01:21:58):
As far as notes go out of keyor wrong or anything like that.
But simply the inner mix of the kindof tonal ranges and how they choose
to play that particular chord is likeone example of how the emotional tenor
of this whole record can surprise you.
And that's some of the ways thatit's happening is by just like subtle

(01:22:20):
unusual decisions about how the guitar.
Plays its own role in thewhole kind of spectrum.
And then, yeah, you, you mentionedmojo pen, but like, that's another
good example, like just to keep itpretty simple, like several people
were like, Jeff Buckley couldhave very easily been a rock star.
In the very classic vein of itin the nineties, everything, like

(01:22:42):
he could have just made anotherversion of those bands and ripped.
And I think you can see thatin how he is capable of whether
it's mojo pin or eternal life.
Oh, he can just dip his toe directlyinto this and come right back out of it.
He's not not doing it because hecan't, he's not doing it cause he
wants to do something different.

(01:23:03):
And yeah,

Kyle (01:23:04):
he has one of the most mc5 that i've ever heard And he did that on
a pretty regular basis and it slamsand he did Uh He covered Big Star's
Kangaroo or Alex Chilton's Kangaroo.
he did a pretty faithful ScreaminJay Hawkins Alligator Wine, which on

(01:23:29):
the one hand makes me wince a little,but like he really went into it with
both feet and that's super ballsy.
Um, and not in a, an appropriativeway, like getting whatever demon in him
that was also in Screamin Jay Hawkins.
He covered Hank Williams lost highway.
Uh, he did parchment farm blues.
Like he, he, he was really good at opentune stuff and slide guitar, which is

(01:23:52):
we talked about on the almond brothersepisode is very easily to do horribly
and extremely difficult to do well.
So the fact that not onlycould he rock really hard.
And shows not to a gentleman as someonewho can play the accordion, but doesn't
once again but he could switch betweenmodes not just like song genre, but
guitar style wise, which shows that hewas always studying, always playing,

(01:24:17):
always practicing, always expanding.
And very much like Prince in that way.
Like you can't really appreciate Princejust by listening to Purple Rain.
You also need to hear like the Minneapolisafter show, July, 1984, or whatever,
and all the stuff that was in the vault.
Like all of it, the body of workinforms each little musical moment.

(01:24:39):
And again, how much information waspacked into what you were getting as a
dropper of feeling right on the tongue.

Cliff (01:24:46):
Robert plant talked about when they would.
Watch or listen to him that early on intothat experience, Robert Plant himself,
again, I just want to be really clear,an extremely talented musical genius.
Uh, and I don't mind using any ofthose words to describe Robert Plant.
He's standing there with Jimmy Page,another extreme musical genius, and

(01:25:10):
they are trying to decipher what theyare hearing in the songs because they
believed that it was in different tunings.
And we're trying to figure out how he wasgetting that tone back out of instruments.
And these are from, again, twopeople with tremendous range in their
respective instruments, who knowhow to take influence from other
cultures, who know how to use effects,like for all intents and purposes,

(01:25:35):
people with the most informationabout what could have been happening
in a given moment inside of music.
And they were stumped.
I mean, it's the shockingsimplicity of mastery, which is
a common theme we talk about.
Cause when we pick up these albums,we always want you to know when
you're listening to somethingand you go, why is it that good?
And it's like, cause they're that good.
Uh, and they've been channelingit into a million tiny moments.

(01:25:57):
But even that was justanother killer example of.
How his understandingof musical instruments.
And again, that like really a spectrum,not just a range, but a spectrum of
tonality in a song can be like filledin and painted in different ways to
really draw out a particular aspect ofa song or a word or a lyric or a melody.

Kyle (01:26:23):
And he didn't just play the guitar.
He played bass, he played dobro, heplayed the mandolin, uh, the intro
to Lover You Should Have Come Overhas harmonium, he played the organ,
he played the dulcimer for the DreamBrother intro, the tabla the harmonica.
He could get after it.
He, um, he, he was raw onvocals like Robert Plant.

(01:26:47):
He, Could rip and rock on the guitarlike Jimmy Page and take arrangements
a million different directions and hecould play anything like John Paul Jones.

Cliff (01:26:56):
Yeah.
I was going to say he played all theinstruments John Paul Jones played.
Yeah.

Kyle (01:26:59):
but, but could he blast through with his bare hands
a drum kit like John Bonham?
The world will never know, but he was,he was certainly the rest of, uh, he was
the rest of what's up on all in one body.

Cliff (01:27:10):
So let's take a fun final sweep, because this has all certainly
been leading towards the possibly,literally, endless amount of options
you have for where to go from here,if anything just connected with you.
Because we have, I mean we have alreadyprobably name dropped the entire game.

(01:27:33):
Non topical artists as much or morethan we usually try to do in episodes
So we're not just constantly throwinga million people out in your general
direction, but even with that saideveryone that we've mentioned so
far it goes further especially whenyou think about Who was inspired?
By this singular record and jeffbuckley in general And then further

(01:27:57):
and further downstream how that furtherimpacted music that Might not even
be considered part of this genre.
Otherwise like the leap between JeffBuckley and Celine Dion that we did at
the beginning is not as weird of a moveas it seems like it would be because
it pops up a lot across the board.

Kyle (01:28:16):
mean, you could envision them on a bill together after you watch him live.
You know, Jeff Buckley opens forCeline Dion and both camps being
like, wow, that was something new.

Cliff (01:28:26):
Wow, I'm thinking about that a lot now.
Okay, that'll, I'll have to put a pin in

Kyle (01:28:29):
Jeff Buckley

Cliff (01:28:30):
that's, uh,

Kyle (01:28:30):
Dion at the Fox.

Cliff (01:28:32):
And Bjerk, uh, yeah, just all three.
Let's get them together and figure

Kyle (01:28:37):
You'll never hear music the same again.

Cliff (01:28:39):
this could be an easy ramp up, meaning that this is probably the
simplest and in a sense, like dumbestthing we can point out here, but
it's also surprisingly consequential.
He, Jeff Buckley convinced peoplethat they could sing in falsetto.
Which is understandable as youknow, I don't do it as much

(01:29:02):
these days, but I've had vocaltraining and experience in my life.
Falsetto is a scary thing to jump into.
You have to, it's a,pretty sincere muscle.
You have to practice being able to,especially switching between them and
songs, switching to falsetto and backis not only scary because of what, like
what you're having to do physically withyour body, but it's But it's, it's a

(01:29:23):
real big risk of going atonal real fast.
And this is another one of thoseplaces where, as we've mentioned, the
album will show you, yes, but thenevery live performance you can catch
of this dude past this will reallycement the whole thing into place.
He had zero trouble going to any level ofthe range that he wanted to get on demand.

(01:29:48):
And so.
On top of that being just generallyfascinating, I think to a lot of people,
including musicians who mentioned it.
Like Tom York from Radiohead was adirect, verbally stated descendant
of the inspiration of Jeff Buckleyrelative to being able to sing falsetto
and literally at the moment, I'mforgetting exactly what the song was.

(01:30:10):
Um, but the story as it

Kyle (01:30:12):
Fake plastic trees.

Cliff (01:30:14):
Thank you.
I mean, he, he did the movewhere one artist went to another
artist's show and went, Oh, fuck.
I gotta go home and work on this now.
And then went and wrote a songthat tried to capture what it
is that he got excited about.
And so to me, even though this is, Abit of a extrapolation from that, right?
Like I think examples of where thathas played out in popular music.

(01:30:37):
I, one of my regular touchstones, yes.
For guitar music, John Mayer has a lotof falsetto esque stuff that he also does
specifically in the context of what he'splaying on guitar, which is an interesting
move that has a, Pretty direct lineagefrom Jeff Buckley and from this album.
But also bands like think about Muse, theband, even if you don't like them very

(01:31:01):
much, like their approach to falsettobehind a driving song is a lot of what
Jeff Buckley was doing when he wasletting people know he could be in a
grunge band, but he didn't want to be.
And then even other, you know, kind ofmore recent examples, closer to, to my
world, I guess, like, even though thisisn't technically falsetto, Anthony
Green and like Circus Survive and someof the bands that began to utilize much

(01:31:27):
higher pitched vocalizations and theway that guitar players and I could
talk about this all day, but won't, butthe way that like a good guitar player
can find a way to change the way thatthey play to fill in the space that's
now not occupied by a voice, likeall of those things are, while not.

(01:31:47):
100 percent Jeff Buckley's fault or,and we're not saying they wouldn't
have evolved in this direction,his singularity and the ability for
people to hear how good he was at thisliterally inspired new ways of singing.

Kyle (01:32:03):
I, I would also put and apologies if this is over
ascribing, but I would also put.
Jonesy from Seeker Rose, and, and JoshHomme from Queens of the Stone Age

Cliff (01:32:14):
yeah, great examples,

Kyle (01:32:16):
well.

Cliff (01:32:17):
great examples.
So then, uh, on a slightly, maybedeeper level, depending on how you
feel, um, although this will be a nicedip into pop, uh, if anyone was, so if
anyone stuck around for an hour and ahalf, but was scared off by the other
things we mentioned, here's a few more.
When it comes to like lyrical depth.
Depths, uh, in, in the sort of emotionalangle, I guess that Jeff Buckley

(01:32:42):
came with a few folks really stoodout as, as being like verbalizing
their direct inspiration from that.
So one of those is Adele.
Uh, and again, like, regardless ofwhether you like listening to Adele
or not, I think we can probably agreeshe's written or performed some very
moving songs and is an extremely good

(01:33:02):
vocalist.
And so Adele said, quote, I try tolisten to music that might uplift me,
but I don't really connect with it.
So mainly, Jeff Buckley.
And that's been my entirelife that I've done that.
I remember falling out with my best friendwhen I was 7 years old and listening to
Jeff Buckley because my mom was a hugefan and Grace has always been around for

(01:33:24):
me.
Another example, Phoebe Bridgers.
maybe in the same echelon, but,you know, probably now attracting a
totally different column of people whoturned the volume up on this podcast.
Um, but the live at Sinead.
EP that we were, thatwe've been talking about.
That was the, the precursor to theactual full length studio record.

(01:33:45):
That was the first record that PhoebeBridger said she ever fell in love with.
Uh, and in a moment that willimmediately date everyone, she said,
quote, I had it on my iPod shuffle andI listened to it when I was supposed
to be asleep every night for years.
So, shout out to iPod modelsfor always placing us at a
very particular moment in time.

Kyle (01:34:05):
out of that quote.

Cliff (01:34:05):
Yep.
You know that.
A significant number of people justpictured a square iPod and nothing else.
And then everyone else went, why do youthink of that when you think of an iPod?
So yeah but he, she also mentioned thatshe loved how you can hear in real time
from that EP the audience reaction towhat Jeff Buckley was doing, which is,

(01:34:28):
you know, if you haven't heard it saidplainly in everything we've said so far,
it was connective when people saw him liveand it was participative participatory.
Yeah.
And you can imagine that like, not onlycan you literally hear the responses,
yes, but in a very similar way thatwe've talked in the past about singular
vocalists and how they would have thesemoments that like, it felt like all the

(01:34:53):
lights got turned down everywhere else.
And there was one spotlight onplanet earth on this human being
who is performing a vocal that.
What just echoed and reverberatedseemingly throughout everyone's heart.
Like these are the types of momentsthat he was able to capture.
At a time that's, honestly, 20, 30years past when those types of musical

(01:35:15):
moments were a lot more prevalent becauseof how people were listening to them.
So it's, it's that much moreimpressive that those things were
happening, uh, in the nineties.
One last thing that we can mention,which is super easy and fun, uh, which
we didn't know about until well, rightbefore we started recording actually,
but as the crow flies, not longfrom when this episode is released.

(01:35:38):
So the, the following

Kyle (01:35:40):
If you're listening to this on day one, it is the 30th anniversary
of the release of this record.
And then I guess three weeksafter the release of this
episode will be this thing.

Cliff (01:35:53):
Yeah.
So BBC is doing a 30 years of gracetype documentary or interview type deal.
But several of the people thatwe mentioned are in there,
including, uh, Phoebe BridgersLana Del Rey is in there as well.
Like if you, if you can't draw the linebetween this dude and Lana Del Rey,
like I, you might need to start over.

(01:36:13):
Um, like it's almost too on thenose, uh, regardless of kind of how
you feel about her style of music.
without trying to oversimplify it,I mean, you could, you could almost
see Lana Del Rey's more effeminateor traditionally feminine versions
of what Jeff Buckley was doing here.
And they're Descendants for sure.

(01:36:34):
But other people who are a partof this 30 years of grace thing
on BBC, Guy Pearce, Nick Cave, TomYork, Alanis Morissette, right?
Like a solid list of people thatyou probably know as songwriters
like songwriters with a capital S,um, are sort of lining up to praise
this dude and his moment in time.

(01:36:56):
And so there is just a,there is a long tail of.
People and artists and art that wasinspired by this really singular
record, which is really cool.

Kyle (01:37:07):
So I'm not going to say if this record makes you feel
something, because I don't know.
That hopefully goes without saying,but the matter of what to do with
what you feel our final exercise,our, our closing thought is always
what to listen to or what to do next.
If the piece of music we'vetalked about moves you.
So the first thing is exactlywhat you just said is.

(01:37:30):
Visit more of the capital S songwriterswho pack emotional information densely in
into a little piece of proverbial acetate.
So who are some of those folks for you?

Cliff (01:37:44):
I started having to bucket them because of how, kind of went
through loops of realizing again.
The level of impact that this recordhas had and then just trying to
go back and reorganize the entireconstellation of people that come to mind.
But so hopefully these kindsof categories will make sense.
But so one category, the generallyspeaking, men who wear stupid fucking

(01:38:07):
hats, but are really good at songwriting.
uh, so Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan,Tom Waits, Mark Lennigan, Nick
Cave, Townes Van Zandt, like.
The men who are on top of theirwillingness and ability to be emotionally
stark and write extremely just likebare feeling, almost literalist type of

(01:38:31):
Phrasing and writing and storytelling.
I think that there's a,there's a deep lineage there.
Uh, and I know that you addedpeople like Mark Lannigan.
So I'd be curious if thatconnects with you as well.

Kyle (01:38:42):
Yeah, I mean, Lanigan for my money, like I don't really think I like singer
songwriter stuff too much or when itgets overly lyrical, but Mark Lanigan is,
is probably one of my favorite artists.
Certainly one of my favoritewriters of all time.
He's been my friend when I've beenin the darkest of the darkness.
But what I like about this list of guysthat you've put together is I think they

(01:39:05):
also represent the kind of career arc.
That Jeff would have had if he'd stayedaround a long time where all of these guys
were extremely nonlinear and went wherethe inspiration took them and then went
20 percent farther from thing to thing.
Bob Dylan is, is one of thegreatest living examples of that,
where everything is so differentas almost to cause whiplash.

(01:39:29):
And right when you thinkthey're going to zig, they zag.
Like same also definitelygoes for Nick Cave.
And we were only just seeing the, thetiniest little glimmers of that with Jeff
Buckley, but if we had gotten 25 or 30years with him, I think we would have been
astounded by the boundaries that he broke.
So I think if you want to seespiritually where it could have
gone, that's a good list of dudes.

(01:39:51):
To.
To take out for a spin in additionto just being like really hung out
to dry emotionally after a binge ofany, any one of those dudes catalogs,

Cliff (01:40:01):
So then another sort of adjacent category which we can call
Maybe traditionally unsufferablewhite people, um, but, uh, uh,
a bunch of folks who, who go,

Kyle (01:40:15):
bad grouping names for great artists.

Cliff (01:40:19):
yeah, well, yeah, it's

Kyle (01:40:21):
I'll take, I'll take Kick Cliff out the marketing brainstorm for 500 Alec.

Cliff (01:40:27):
Look, I can put good things in the bucket.
Just don't let me

Kyle (01:40:29):
That's

Cliff (01:40:30):
the buckets.

Kyle (01:40:31):
what I'm here for.
I'm here to

Cliff (01:40:32):
Yeah.

Kyle (01:40:32):
on the tape.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Cliff (01:40:33):
But okay, but yeah Being a little bit silly so that we can
create a caricature kind of a whatwe mean so that you can visualize it.
Okay, so people that I mean by that,Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple, uh, Sufjan
Stevens, Damian Rice like the typesof people who are Transcribed Who are

(01:40:54):
choosing every word and every syllable ina very, very particular way and can get,
rhythmic with it or can be trying to doword painting equivalents using folk music
instead of hip hop or something like that.
Like, so the types of people who pushreally hard into almost wordiness

(01:41:15):
or at the very least cleverness.
In speak as opposed to, you know, theprevious category of folks that we
talked about, like, Bob Dylan doesn'tgive a shit if you think he's clever.
That was never his whole thing.
Right.
Even if you consider him to be,whereas, you know, some of these
other folks that we're talking aboutare like, when you hear someone
and you're like, Oh, that's dense.

(01:41:35):
Like they thought a lot about that.
That's sort of a category of people.

Kyle (01:41:40):
Yeah, like when you would read a poem in school and you'd be
like, Oh, words can do a lot morethan the words themselves can do.
And it doesn't necessarily need music.
That's pure.
pure power of human beingand of consciousness.
I would add to that list Chan Marshall,Cat Power, one time of Cabbage Town,

(01:42:00):
East Atlanta fame phenomenal wordsmithBonnie Prince Billy, Will Oldham who I
just saw at Big Ears in, in Knoxvilleand was once again blown away by his
connection to the folk tradition andhis ability to do a lot with the little.
Word wise, uh, silver Jews, Ithink a lot are a lot of other

(01:42:22):
artists point to him as an example.
And I don't listen to him often, but whenI do, I'm like, holy shit, I need to come
back to this and like study every word.
John Prine, who's pretty recently passed,Brandi Carlile and to connect to Phoebe
Bridgers, Julian Baker I think is anup and comer in the tradition partly
because, like you, Cliff, she's fromthe Tennessee religious tradition and

(01:42:46):
has been using words to try to outrunthat tornado for quite some time.

Cliff (01:42:51):
a couple more categories.
Um, one, one relatively seriousbucket to label, one far
less serious bucket to label.
The next one is Powerful vocalistswho are creating like once in a
lifetime types of moments, butjust stand out unbelievable people.

(01:43:13):
So just, that's the bestlabel I can give to this.
Cause some of the, the peoplethat we've thought about, right.
Nina Simone, Billie Holiday.
We mentioned Prince.
Um, I think Marvin Gaye is a good example.
And you can go back to ourrecent episode on that one and
hear us kind of talk about that.
But people in that, that vein oflike the strange fruit type moment.

(01:43:34):
Of just like, they knew exactlywhat they were doing, could do it on
command, did do it on command whenthey wanted to in a lot of senses
had full kind of control over theircapabilities and careers, um, because
of how immensely talented they were.

Kyle (01:43:50):
Absolutely.
Probably my favorite categoryof these so far, I would add Ray
Charles Jeff Buckley covered.
Don't let the sun catch you crying,which is one of those beautifully
emotive power of the performance bringsout the power of the words moments.
And then Stevie Wonder, if you likemusic at all, we don't, we don't
have to tell you about the power ofearly seventies Stevie in particular.

(01:44:12):
And there's just so many moments.
If you watch if you watch Atlanta, DonaldGlover show on FX, uh, the Teddy Perkins
episode is bookended by Stevie Wonder.
songs and at the end plays evil andin a very small way connected somewhat
spiritually to Billy doing strange fruitin that club with the soul spotlight.

(01:44:34):
The context of that episodemet with the power of Stevie's
performance of evil on that songreally makes the words come to life.
So a small but instructive example there.

Cliff (01:44:46):
So we, we sort of went in three different buckets, all of which are
honestly pretty safe musical bets foryou to dip into and grab some artists.
If you weren't familiar with anyone,we mentioned the last one I'm going
to freely admit is sort of like, youcan take it or leave it depending on
where you're at and how things hit you.
And that would be the.

(01:45:06):
in sincerity, the emo lineage ofemotionally intense musical writing.
Okay.
There are examples I'll give of people whoare very inspired and I won't necessarily
agree that all their music is great.
But I think you can also see again,an entire Potential genre of music
heavily inspired by this kind of greatmoment of emotion and expression.

(01:45:32):
So bands and that would bechris Carraba fronted bands.
In my opinion, he had various successover his career in translating
emotional intimacy and intensityinto songwriting, but especially that
first further seems forever record.
The moon is down.
That's one that I like because itgot in before I could tell myself

(01:45:53):
I shouldn't like that record.
But like the, some of the moments thatgive you like the words are sort of
perfect every now and then, and gives youa visceral feeling of the thing that's
being described and puts you in like amoment of time, which helps you to recall
a feeling like that sort of capability youcan see play out in some of the better.

(01:46:16):
Songwriter driven emo bands.
So in addition to Further Seems Foreverand potentially Dashboard Confessional,
if that's a thing you can get intoother examples of that with varying
levels of success Connor Oberst, likeBright Eyes, that whole approach,

Kyle (01:46:32):
Phoebe Bridgers approved.

Cliff (01:46:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, he's too much of a sadboy for me, but like, you can see
the lineage and you can feel it.
Yeah, and then in a lighter and moreaccessible sense, honestly, so early
Jimmy Eat World records Like StaticPrevails and Clarity and all that stuff.
The band Mineral is another Likeband I would kind of recommend on the

(01:46:57):
emo fringes who thought more deeplyabout their songwriting and even the
more recent I kind of hate it beingcalled an emo resurgence in general.
But there are a lot of bandsin that vein who exist today.
One of them is the world is a beautifulplace and I'm no longer afraid to die.
And they also definitely channelthis whole, like, I want to pack

(01:47:19):
feeling, emotion, word, narrative,everything I can into as many things
as I can say inside of this song.
And let the sort of nostalgiaof the music support it.
That's a, like I said, that whole bucketis less serious and in my opinion, less
consequential than the other buckets thatwe've talked about, but it's nevertheless

(01:47:41):
like a direction that you can chase.
And if you're someone who loves someof that music, you can appreciate
where some of it came from.

Kyle (01:47:47):
The way you just described the world as a beautiful place reminded
me of seeing when we saw the armedtogether in Brooklyn and like the idea
of hyper pop is sort of, it's like ametal take on Jeff Buckley in that way.
It's let me bring it all up to thefront of the mix, spiritually speaking,
and, and hit you with it like a hammer.
That that's another pretty cool band.

(01:48:08):
It doesn't sound anything likeJeff Buckley, but if you like
getting your face smashed in withfeelings, that's another way to go.

Cliff (01:48:15):
so we've talked in practical terms about what you can do.
And yeah, this, thiscomes up pretty often.
Yes, you can always sort of chase moremusic from what inspired you, but just,
you know, Saying it more clearly, thereason we would even provide you with
buckets is so that you have more contextand knowledge to go more meaningfully

(01:48:37):
understand and discover more music,not just sort of abstractly clicking
through artists in an app and playingsingles and all that stuff, but actually
understanding what it is that you'rechasing when you do it, um, I think
becomes, um, Well, I don't think it is ahelpful way to understand music, discover
more artists and specifically makes youbetter at discovering the things that

(01:49:01):
you would not really expect yourself tojive with, understand, or appreciate.
And so, on top of letting this driveyou to discover other things that were
inspired by and driven by this music.
I also think that there is in.
introspection aspect of whatthis project means at all.

(01:49:24):
What that album meant that you cansort of inhabit and think about, what
does it mean to for lack of a betterterm, Jeff Buckley, grace, some of the
things that are going on for you andhow you can think about what's going on.
You know, what is oftentimes like,you know, we mentioned in, in laughed
about no matter how complex or advancedit all is, a lot of this stuff is

(01:49:46):
still just like, I'm sad about girl.
and I think to me, like thatgives, that gives me some hope.
That's a reminder to me because when Iwake up in life hits me and I'm like,
I'm real wound up about some dumb shit.
there's a beauty that Kyle, youspecifically have helped me to see

(01:50:07):
through this record in going into thosefeelings, knowing that you don't have
to live there or be a permanent sad boyor collapse into nothingness because you
experienced emotion, but actually sort ofwillingly pushing yourself down into that.
And I think.
Thinking through what this recordmeant and how it was approached

(01:50:29):
gives you some ways to do that foryourself in a way that's maybe kind
that I hadn't thought about before.

Kyle (01:50:35):
Yeah.
the kids on Tik Tok are saying toromanticize your own life and I think
to boil it down to just, I'm sad aboutgirl or just I have big feelings.
Is only like part one Action and thenreaction is go diffuse big feelings

(01:50:55):
all over the big wild world Likethis dude was living in new york
doing an extremely new york thingand just the everything is alive.
Everything is breathing this of NewYork and constantly having more around
every, every corner to discover iswhat made this record so potent.
I hope that you can use this as anopportunity to romanticize your own
life and to bring out that beautyfor others because, uh, the world's

(01:51:19):
fucked right now and people are lonely.
And Society has all but come to a grindinghalt because we are alone together.
So like go be with people andgo role model that it's okay for
like interactions to not go well.
And what, like, we have a bighump that we need to collectively
get over as a society.

(01:51:40):
Like the vibe's just goingto be weird as we learn, we
relearn how to be people again.
Cause we, uh, had a bigcultural reset a few years ago.
I'm like, this is.
Super top of mind for me all the time.
That we all, we all quite obviouslyneed to touch grass and touch each
other consensually and remember,you know, remember once again,

(01:52:02):
that life and the other peoplein it can in fact be beautiful.
And.
Buckley talked about how he likedthe small cafes, the small gigs,
because it was quote, where peoplecome to drink and be with friends to
get laid and fall in love, or maybeto forget and even get depressed.
It's an emotional kind of place.
So just like go be in the world withemotions and give your world grace.

(01:52:23):
And I think the last thing that I'llsay is to once again, give credit
to Daphne Brooks, who put it sobeautifully in the epilogue of her book.
Perhaps grace is.
Such a thing of beauty because it'sa musical work that like the artist
himself on the cover is so aware.
To say grace before a meal is togive thanks and be mindful, present,
aware of, and grateful for not onlythe nourishment before you, but for
the long line of rituals, activities,and people who made it possible for

(01:52:46):
this food to arrive at your table.
Grace is a work of beauty becauseit's unafraid to stretch itself
out in full gratitude to all thathas come before it, for all that
has made this work of art possible,and for all that it might inspire.
Or as Jeff Buckley himself said,grace is what matters in anything,
especially life, especiallygrowth, tragedy, pain, love, death.
It's a quality that I admire very greatly.

(01:53:07):
It keeps you from reachingfor the gun too quickly.
It keeps you from destroyingthings too foolishly.
In short, grace keeps you alive.

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Episode 55: Jeff Buckley's "Grace"

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