Noircon 2012, Evening I

I was second on the bill at the kick-off for Noircon 2012 at the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art Thursday evening, after the German artist Heide Hatry and before short films and commentary by filmmakers Oren Shai and Ed Holub and a set of music by Philadelphia's Scovilles.

My talk was short, sweet, and simple: ten minutes on noir music people might not think of as noir music, with examples from Brazil, Peru, Ireland, from jazz, country, symphony, opera, and flamenco, and a smashing conclusion with a recording of this song, from right here in America.

The presentation went well, I think, with a couple of hosanas and a huzzah flung my way afterward, including one from Robert Polito, editor of the Library of America's volumes of David Goodis and of American noir from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.

Two highlights of the evening were contrasting views of Quentin Tarantino from the two filmmakers, and a surprising remark from Hatry about her choice of Wagner's Tannhäuser as a soundtrack for part of her presentation.

If I understood him correctly, Oren Shai cited Tarantino's self-referential genre storytelling as a vital response to exhausted genre conventions. Ed Holub, on the other hand, said it was fine for "Mr. Quentin Tarantino" to engage in "revisionist history, making sure all the parts line up, but there's more than that. I think he's missing the core." For Holub, the core of the original noir was postwar angst. Today, in neo-noir, he said, that emotional core has to be personal. 

The remarks on Tarantino caught my ear because I'd said in my talk that Nick Cave's music struck me as mannered and too aware of itself, "a musical equivalent of the Coen brothers or Quentin Tarantino."

And Heide Hatry, whose work is intensely political, surely chose Wagner as an acid commentary on Germany and the hellish dangers of a nation gone wild? Nah, she said, she just liked Tannhäuser. Sometimes a piece of music is just a piece of music.

(Read Cullen Gallagher's behind-the-scenes account of Noircon, Day I at Pulp Serenade.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

A little noir music

Noir and Crime Songs – Noircon 2012

presented by

 Peter Rozovsky/Detectives Beyond Borders http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com

===================

 1. “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”-Richard Thompson

2. “A Pair of Brown Eyes”-The Pogues
3. “A Thing Well Made”-The Mutton Birds
4. “Alabama”-John Coltrane
5. “Alice’s Restaurant”-Arlo Guthrie
6. “Alto Songo”-Afro-Cuban All Stars, many others
7. “Angelina”-Bob Dylan
8. “Atlantic City”-Bruce Springsteen
9. “B-Movie Boxcar Blues”-Delbert McClinton
10. “Bad As Me”-Tom Waits
11. “Bad News From Home”-Randy Newman
12. “Ballad of a Lonely Man”-Mike Ness
13. “Bang Bang”-Cher
14. “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
15. “Black-eyed Susan”-The Triffids
16. “Blues in the Night”-Rosemary Clooney, Louis Armstrong, many others
17. “Only the Lonely”
18. “Bonnie and Clyde”
19. “Boston”
20. “Bright Lights, Big City”-Jimmy Reed
21. “Bright Lights, Big City”-The Triffids
22. “Burn”
23. “Calling Out to Carol”-Stan Ridgway
24. “Carmelita”-Warren Zevon
25.   Carmen-Georges Bizet (composer)
26. “Charlie’s Medicine”-Warren Zevon
27. “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”-Tom Waits
28. “Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice”-Hamish Imlach
29. “Cold Kisses”
30. “Criminal Mind”
31. “Deep in the Woods”-Nick Cave
32. “Delia’s Gone”-Johnny Cash
33. “Delilah”-Tom Jones
34. “Diggin' Up Bones”-Randy Travis
35. “Dominion Road”-The Mutton Birds
36. “Douce dame jolie”- Guillaume de Machaut composer (France, 14th century)
37. “Down by the River”-Neil Young
38. “Down in the Willow Garden”
39. “Down Into Mexico”-Delbert McClinton
40. “Every Breath You Take”-The Police
41. “Excitable Boy”-Warren Zevon
42. “Face to the Highway”-Tom Waits
43.  Field of Glass-The Triffids
44. "Film Noir Love”-Jukebox Zeroes



Luke Kelly

45. “Frankie Teardrop”-Suicide
46. “Galveston Bay”-Bruce Springsteen
47. “Germany Before the War”-Randy Newman
48. “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry”
49. “Hazard”-Richard Marx
50. “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)”-The Crystals
51. “Heartbreak Hotel”-Elvis Presley
52. “Hell Broke Luce”-Tom Waits
53. “Hey Joe”-Jimi Hendrix, many others
54. “Hometown Farewell Kiss”
55. “How High the Moon”-many versions
56. “Hurricane”-Bob Dylan
57. “I Don’t Like Mondays”-The Boomtown Rats
58. “I Feel So Good”-Richard Thompson
59. “I Fought the Law”-The Bobby Fuller Four, the Clash, et al.
60. “I Hung My Head”-Johnny Cash
61. “I’m Dyin’ As Fast as I Can”
62. “It’s a Fine Day for a Reunion”
63. “Jacob Green”-Johnny Cash
64. “Jailbreak”
65. “Jeannie Needs a Shooter”-Warren Zevon
66. “Kelly’s Blues”
67.   Kindertotenlieder-Gustav Mahler (composer)
68. “L’affaire DuMoutier (Say to Me)”-The Box
69. “Life of Crime”
70. “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts”-Bob Dylan
71. “Lone Star Blues”
72. “Long Black Veil”-The Band, others
73. “Love in a Faithless Country”-Richard Thompson
74. “Love Me Tender”-Elvis Presley
75. “Love You) Till the End of the World”
76. “Mack the Knife”-Brecht/Weill; Bobby Darin, many others
77. “MacPherson’s Lament”-traditional, fine version by Hamish Imlach
78. “Maria Lando”-Susana Baca
79. “Matty Groves”-Fairport Convention


Camarón de la Isla

80. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”-The Beatles
81. “Mercy Seat”-Nick Cave
82. “Merritville”-Dream Syndicate
83. “Mi Sangre Grita”- Camarón de la Isla
84. “Miriam”-Norah Jones
85. “Miss Otis Regrets”-by Cole Porter, many versions
86. “Murder Tonight in the Trailer Park”-The Cowboy Junkies
87. “Nancy Whiskey”-traditional
88. “Ocultei”-Elizeth Cardoso 
89. “Ode to Billy Joe”-Bobbie Gentry
90. “Oh, Darlin’, What Have I Done?”
91. “One For My Baby (and One More For the Road)”-Frank Sinatra, many others
92. “One Mechanic Town”-The Triffids
93. “Paint It, Black”-The Rolling Stones
94. “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”
95. “Pay Me”-Tom Waits
96. “Peg and Pete and Me”-Stan Ridgway
97. “Philby”-Rory Gallagher
98. “Psycho”-Puddle of Mudd
99. “Psycho Killer”-Talking Heads
100. “Rain Street”-The Pogues
101. “Red Right Hand”-Nick Cave
102. “Robbery, Assault and Battery”-Genesis
103. “Rocky Road to Dublin”-1976 live version by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners  
104. “Sam Hall”-Johnny Cash, others
105. “Seminole Bingo”-Warren Zevon
106. “She’s Hit”-The Birthday Party
107. “She’s Not There”-The Zombies
108. “Stagger Lee”/”Stack-O’Lee,” etc.-Lloyd Price, many others http://www.staggerlee.com
109. “Stan”-Eminem
110. “Strange Fruit”-Billie Holiday
111. “Stranger Than Kindness”-Nick Cave
112. “Sunny Came Home”-Shawn Colvin
113. “Swamplands”
114.  Symphonie Fantastique-Hector Berlioz (composer)
115. “Teen Angel”-Mark Dinning
116. “That Georgia Sun Was Blood Red And Goin' Down"-Tanya Tucker
117. “The Ballad of Robert Moore and Betty Coltrane”-Nick Cave
118. “The Carny”-Nick Cave
119. “The Continental Op”-Rory Gallagher
120. “The Curse of Millhaven”-Nick Cave
121. “The Friend Catcher”-The Birthday Party
122. “The Heater”-The Mutton Birds
123. “The Loading”-Tom Cochrane
124. “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia-Vicki Lawrence
125. “The Perfect Crime #2”-The Decembrists
126. “The Road Goes on Forever”-Robert Earl Keen
127. “The Rub”-Delbert McClinton
128. “The Shape I’m In”-The Band
129. “The Theme to Chinatown”
130. “Tom and Annie”-Deric Ruttan
131. “Tom Dooley”-traditional
132. “Too Much of Nothing”-Bob Dylan and the Band
133. “Trick of the Light”-The Who
134. “Unmade Love”-The Triffids
135. “Vagabond Holes”-The Triffids
136. “Walkin’ After Midnight”-Patsy Cline
137. “Watching the Detectives”-Elvis Costello
138. “Weila, Weila, Weila”-The Dubliners
139. “What’s Her Name Today?”-Elvis Costello
140. “Whiskey in the Jar”-The Dubliners, Thin Lizzy, others
141. “White City”-The Pogues
142. “Woods of Darney”-Richard Thompson
143. “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”-Patty Loveless
144. “Zoo-Music Girl”-The Birthday Party

==============

145. "Killing Floor"-Howlin' Wolf

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

What, besides the words, makes a noir song a noir song?

Previous posts about noir and crime songs (click the link, then scroll down) elicited suggestions based mostly on what a song says — its lyrics.

But what about how it says what it says — its vocal inflections, its instrumental breaks, its production, its orchestration if you've chosen a piece of classical music? (Yes, classical, perhaps opera especially, can be noir. Think of Carmen.)

What does Shane MacGowan add when he drops his voice on the line "There ain't much else for kids to do" on "Rain Street"? What about the ghostly refrain of "Maria Lando," at first a chorus, separate from Susana Baca's lead voice, joining with her on the words solo trabaja ... Maria only works and never has time to raise her eyes toward the sky?

Think of those noir and crime songs that make you shiver, and tell me what, besides the words, makes you feel the way you do: the arrangement? A chilling flatness or an emotional catch in the singer's voice? Just to make things difficult, what are the literary equivalents of those tools? How does an author produce the effect in a reader that Billie Holiday's voice does in a listener?

***

I'll be talking about crime and noir songs next week at NoirCon 2012 in Philadelphia. If you don't come to hear my Project Noir Songs, come and meet Lawrence Block, Joyce Carol Oates, Megan Abbott, Duane Swierczynski, Otto Penzler, Vicki Hendricks, and many more. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Project Noir Songs to go live at NoirCon 2012

I've been talking about noir and crime songs for years at Detectives Beyond Borders, and next week I'll do it in front of an audience at NoirCon 2012 here in hurricane-ravaged Philadelphia.

My bit of the program is called Project Noir Songs, and it happens next Thursday. I'm not sure yet of PNS' final form, but Tom Waits will be a part of the festivities (in recorded form, alas. In person he'd make a fine MC), as will Shane MacGowan, the Band, Elizeth Cardoso, Luke Kelly and the Dubliners, Susana Baca, Fairport Convention, the Bobby Fuller Four, and, as usual, more.

That list includes Peruvian, Brazilian, English, Irish, American, and Canadian musicians; this is Detectives Beyond Borders, after all. If you can't make the scene at the Society Hill Playhouse, the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art and other NoirCon venues in person next week, be part of NoirCon in spirit and tell me what songs you think should be part of Project Noir Songs.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

I don't like Nick Cave

I have a confession to make: I don't like Nick Cave.

Maybe you don't either, but I'm the one who's going to play and maybe talk about noir and crime songs at Noircon 2012, and Cave is the guy who recorded an album called Murder Ballads, his nod to murder ballads.

On first listen, I found the album noirish, all right, but too mannered, too studied, too aware of and pleased with itself. Indeed, one review had this to say (the courtesy title is a clue to the newspaper in which the review appeared:

"...Murder Ballads is about more than storytelling. In each song, Mr. Cave meticulously creates a macabre fable and then distills it to a single image of death in much the way a photographer arranges a studio shoot..."

Fair enough, but I like my ballads to sound more like ballads and less like carefully posed daguerreotype death portraits. And it's not that I'm a musical stick in the mud, either. I've got a song by Jack White on my list, and Tom Waits' album Bad As Me is even more eclectic and musically daring than Cave's, and I like it just fine.

So talk me into liking Murder Ballads better. If I picked one Nick Cave song from the record for my Project Noir songs list, which should it be?

Here's one that has some good lines: "The Curse of Millhaven." Fans of noir and crime songs might notice its melodic similarity to the Pogues' "The Boys From the County Hell." And here's an "Irish Ballad" of quite another kind from Tom Lehrer.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Project Noir Songs goes to Brazil

I knew Elizeth Cardoso’s “Ocultei” was a great melodramatic noir song before I understood the words. (Cardoso and the song are Brazilian, and she sings it in Portuguese.)

Atmosphere was everything: the languid, matter-of-fact singing of the opening verse giving way to vocal tremor, then building to intensity a good deal stronger than that of your average torch song. The jacket photo of Cardoso, eyes closed in concentration as she sings, a bead of sweat (or a tear) below her left eye.

Then I learned what she was singing (Lyrics translated freely if not downright ineptly by your humble blogkeeper):

  Ocultei
  Um sofrimento de morte
  Temendo a sorte
  Do grande amor que te dei

 (I blocked out
  A torment of death
  Fearing the fate
  Of the great love I gave you – and this is the matter-of-fact part!)

  Procurei
  Não perturbar nossa vida
  Que era florida
  Como, a princípio, sonhei

 (I tried
  Not to disturb our life,
  Which was going so well
  As I, at first, dreamed – A note of foreboding as sure any in a good '40s or '50s melodrama, the pause between third and fourth line adding to the effect.)

  Hoje, porem,
 Abri as portas do destino

(Today, however,
  I open the doors of destiny – and we skip to …)

  O meu ardente desejo
  Que Deus me perdoe o pecado
  É que outra mulher ao teu lado
  Te mate na hora de um beijo

  (My most ardent desire
– May God forgive me the sin! –
   Is that another woman, by your side,
   Kill you during a kiss.)

She loves him, she hates him, she begs forgiveness, she fantasizes another woman into his arms even as she dreams of his death. That's enough seething emotion to burn holes in the page or on the screen, I'd say.

And now I'm happy to be able to say you can listen for yourself. Though written by Ary Barroso, one of Brazil's best-loved popular composers, "Ocultei" is one of his less-recorded songs. I bought my copy in Brazil twelve years ago, and I'd never been able to find another recording or clip of Elizeth's version — until yesterday. Ladies and gentlemen, Elizeth Cardoso.

***

I'll be presenting Project Noir Songs at Noircon 2012 in Philadelphia in November, a preliminary act for a Newport Folk Festival 1965's worth of crime-fiction talent including Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, and Joyce Carol Oates. Yes, I'm excited!

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Welcome to Project Noir Songs

Sunday was a day of research for what could be an interesting and enjoyable project involving noir and crime songs, and you can help.

First, what I realized during the day's listening and thinking: My favorite crime and noir songs grab me with their atmosphere more than with their plots. Some, in fact, are not about crime at all, at least not in the traditional crime-story sense.

I realized, too, that I'll have to listen to more Dream Syndicate and Nick Cave if I'm to learn to appreciate them. I found their songs, often recommended in crime-song discussions, too arch, too deliberately weird, too aware that they are recreating tradition. But a coffee server/smoothie maker in my local café recommended a song by Jack White that will make my list, so I'm not totally past it musically.

Here's where you come in: What else belongs on my list of great noir and crime songs? Why? What make a great noir song great? Do particular songs remind you of particular noir or crime writers?

***

[Here are the previous Detectives Beyond Borders posts about crime songs. (Click the link, then scroll down.) Extra points for suggesting songs that have not come up in previous posts and comments.]

***

What does noir mean to you? Get down in the Gutter, answer in 75 words or less, and you might make it into a book.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Shane MacGowan meets Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

One of the bounciest, most cheerful songs I've heard recently also makes the Detectives Beyond Borders list of great noir and crime songs (click the link, then scroll down for some good reading and listening.)

The song is "Rain Street," from the Pogues' 1990 album Hell's Ditch, and it includes lines such as:

"Down the alley the ice wagon flew
Picked up a stiff that was turning blue
The local kids were sniffin' glue
Not much else for a kid to do
Down rain street."

Lyrically, the song is a bit like Lou Reed and, in its stream of images, something like Bob Dylan's long, near-surrealistic songs from the mid-1960s. But Shane MacGowan had a livelier sense of fun than both those guys, and the Pogues were better and tighter musically, so the song is just plain fun to listen to even if you ignore the words.

But those words ... they're a little like David Goodis or maybe, I don't know, Nelson Algren. Click on the song's title above to hear Shane and the boys perform it.

***

Rashomon is one of the greatest and most celebrated of all movies, and probably the best-known Japanese movie in the Western world. (How many movies have lent their titles to a psychological effect?)

But thirty-six years before Akira Kurosawa's film, "Rashomon" was a story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, one of two by the author that formed the basis of the movie. (The story "Rashomon" is the source of the ramshackle gate and the unforgettable rain in the movie; the "Rashomon effect" is depicted in a story called "In a Grove.")

Late on a rainless night in a deserted office is no time or place to start a consideration of twentieth-century Japanese literature, so I'll begin and end by saying that "In a Grove" is one of the wittiest and most carefully and deliberately constructed stories this writer has had the pleasure to read. As of now, I am, albeit tentatively, a Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and you should be, too. Read him to have your eyes opened to new, little-explored possibilities for crime stories.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Alto Songo

Listening to this, can you believe that its lyrics mean this? (Here's another version, with vocal improvisations that wander from the song's narrative subject.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

What's the worst crime song ever?

I've asked readers to choose the greatest crime song ever, but what about the worst?

I owe this one to Sean Patrick Reardon, who was joking – I think – when he called "The Night Chicago Died" the best crime song.

(I have just discovered that the same germ-spreaders who wrote "The Night Chicago Died" also composed "Billy, Don't Be A Hero," its only rival for worst song of my youth. The Wikipedia entry on the former song convinces me that however head-cracking a strongman he may have been, Chicago's first Mayor Daley had excellent musical taste.)

Can you name a crime song as bad as "The Night Chicago Died"? Is your musical sensibility as finely calibrated as Richard J. Daley's? What's your choice for worst crime song ever?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Scottish crime in song

Scott Monument,
Edinburgh. Photo
by your humble
blogkeeper.

It's not my fault I keep posting about crime songs; there are so many good ones, and they trigger all kinds of insights into American history and European history and the places where the two meet and converge into something deeply human and beyond what we normally mean by "history."

Here are a few versions of "MacPherson's Lament." Here's some information about James MacPherson, the seventeenth-century Scottish outlaw who composed or inspired it.

Here's another song (or try here) that, while not about crime, is one hell of a hard-boiled noir melodrama. And here are all my posts about crime songs. Happy listening.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

The greatest (darkest? most disturbing?) noir song ever

I've posted often about crime songs, but not until tonight did I hear the greatest noir song ever.

The song was written and produced by three of the more celebrated names of the rock and roll era and recorded by a wildly popular girl group — in 1962.

So why had I never heard it until 10:30 on a Tuesday night in 2010, when many of us have had oldies shoved down our throats almost all our lives? Maybe because I'm not as cool as I thought I was. But maybe because of good, old-fashioned, do-gooding American censorship. Fear of the truth. Misconstruction, deliberate or otherwise, of protest as endorsement. Or maybe the subject matter is just too upsetting for people to deal with, and damn it, can I blame them?

This may be the most chilling recording I have ever heard. Listen, and tell me what you think.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

What a difference a word makes

I was boosting my spirits with some rock and roll two days ago, and I came across this, which I then compared with this. The first is the Clash doing "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)." The second is the same song by Bobby Fuller Four, who first made the song a hit.

"I Fought the Law" occasionally comes up in discussions of crime fiction and music, but I'd never considered it a noir song until last night. That's when I listened again to the Clash's version, and I heard the one-word alteration that plunges into noir hoplessness. See if you can find that word.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Another great Brazilian noir song

Last year I nominated "Ocultei," recorded by the Brazilian singer Elizeth Cardoso, for a place among the great noir songs ever. There's something about the last verse, which runs tremulously thus (tentatively translated from the Portuguese by your humble blogkeeper):

"And my most ardent desire
May God pardon me the sin!
Is that another woman by your side
Kill you in the hour of a kiss."

If you think that looks good on your screen, you should hear Elizeth sing it, her voice melting from dreamy resignation to trembling passion, jealousy and anger.

This week, I finally paid attention to my second-favorite song on the album, "Só Voce, Mais Nada," which I think means "Only You; Nothing Else." Translating even more shakily than before, I hear the first verse as:

"Only you, nothing else
In the silence of the night
The emptiness of the street
When nothing happens
Only you go on."

The first song covers obsession and doom. The second has atmosphere down, I'd say.

What new noir songs have you heard since last year's list? And what makes noir noir for you?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

More crime songs

I've heard two folk songs recently that share something of the darker, Thompson/Goodis/Woolrich strain of noir and hard-boiled, yet remain two of the happiest, toe-tappingest, jolliest ballads you'd ever want to hear. This seeming contradiction captures the appeal of a certain school of crime story, and I invite your thoughts on the matter when you're done with this post.

The narrator of "Nancy Whisky" (known in some versions as "The Carlton Weaver") celebrates his "seven long years" in the thrall of the bottle, personified as a woman with "a playful twinkle in her eye." In some versions, such as this one by Shane MacGowan and the Popes, the singer "ran out of money, so I did steal."

In that way that folk songs and stories have, the song exists in multiple versions. In some, the narrator repents of his errant ways. In others, he pines away for his lost "Nancy Whisky." In still others, such as the version by Philadelphia's own Patrick's Head, the ending is more ambiguous: "As I awoke to strike my first (Or "slake my thirst"?) / As I went crawling from my bed / I fell down flat and could not stagger / Nancy had me by the legs," trailing off into the repeated, celebratory chorus: "Whisky, whisky, Nancy Whisky / Whisky, whisky, Nancy-o."

And how about this verse?:

"I bought her, I drank her, I had another
Ran out of money so I did steal
She ran me ragged, lovely Nancy
Seven years, a rolling wheel"

If that's not a Bonnie and Clyde or The Big O or a Barry Gifford story waiting to happen, I don't know what is. Of course, since "Nancy Whisky," though Scottish, is beloved of Irish bands, perhaps Big O author Declan Burke liked the song in his youth. Comment from said Mr. Burke is welcome.
================

The amazing "Weila, Weila, Waila," with its sing-song chorus and horrific subject matter, invites comparison with a form of literature darker and more violent than crime fiction: nursery rhymes. Have a listen here.

"And there was an old woman and she lived in the woods
A weila weila waila
There was an old woman and she lived in the woods
Down by the River Saile

"She had a baby three months old
A weila weila waila
She had a baby three months old
Down by the River Saile ... "

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Two songs, two crime writers, one question for readers

Two of my favorite Irish crime writers fall nicely into analogies with two of my favorite Irish folk songs:

Declan Burke's humorous caper novel The Big O is like the humorous caper ballad "Whiskey in the Jar," and Adrian McKinty's harsh, sometimes grimly funny Michael Forsythe novels are like the harsh, sometimes grimly funny "Rocky Road to Dublin."

Readers: What crime novels match up with songs in a similar manner? (In a match-up of a different kind, "Rocky Road to Dublin" is something like an Irish "Living for the City," especially the more-intense album version of that Stevie Wonder song.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Whiskey in the Jar: An Irish noir ballad

Two posts here this summer elicited scores of good crime songs, tunes that pack the punch of a good crime story. Your suggestions (and mine) included "Long Back Veil," "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," "Mack the Knife," Eminem's "Stan," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and many, many more.

My trip to Ireland turned up another classic: "Whiskey in the Jar." This humorous noir story tells of a highwayman who robs a captain, then brings the money to his (the highwayman's) girlfriend or wife. Here's where the noir comes in: This Jenny is in league with the captain. She disarms the protagonist while he sleeps, then calls in the captain "to be ready for the slaughter."

Where's the humor? In the song's rollicking, sing-along beat, in the protagonist's bluff attitude, and in the song's desperately hopeful ending, at least in the versions available today. (In one form or another, the song dates to the middle of the seventeenth century.)

Want to hear "Whiskey in the Jar"? Visit any pub in Ireland. By my reckoning, it's the most popular song in the country. Or listen to The Dubliners sing it here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

A grace note: What song has the best crime-fiction line?

Here's one more ornament to last week's Crime songs post. Your task there was to suggest songs that would make good crime stories. Someone (well, two people, including me) cited Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives" for this chilling line: "She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake." That line is a story in itself or at least the germ of one. What other lines from songs pack that kind of condensed narrative punch?

UPDATE: Here's another crime song: Bob Dylan's "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," about simultaneous bank robbery and romantic exhaustion and betrayal:

"Two doors down the boys finally made it through the wall
And cleaned out the bank safe, it's said that they got off with quite a haul.
In the darkness by the riverbed they waited on the ground
For one more member who had business back in town.
But they couldn't go no further without the Jack of Hearts."

Wikipedia says the song has inspired two screenplays, so I'm not the only one who thinks the song makes a good story.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Crime songs

Cop Killer, Weegee, negative, January 16, 1941; print, about 1950
© International Center of Photography

This one began as a post on Declan Burke's Crime Always Pays and continued in a discussion with one of my colleagues at work. The subject as enunciated by Declan: "songs as condensed crime fiction novels – stripped-back and pared-down narratives about losers, loners and the kind of suckers who never caught an even break."

Bruce Sprinsteen's Nebraska came up, and I am proud to say that one of its crimes ("They blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night") happened not far from where I live. Bobbie Gentry’s "Ode to Billie Joe" drew a mention, and someone suggested Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."

The first verse of Bob Dylan's "Hurricane," the part before the song turns to crap, has the makings of a crime story, but my contribution on C.A.P. was "Ocultei," recorded by the great Brazilian singer Elizeth Cardoso with a last verse (rendered into English for blogging purposes) that runs tremulously thus:

"And my most ardent desire
– May God pardon me the sin! –
Is that another woman by your side
Kill you in the hour of a kiss."

Now, let's hear from you. What songs would make good crime stories?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008