Near the end of Cameron Crowe’s self-described love letter to rock and roll, Almost Famous, Elton John’s Mona Lisas and Madhatters plays as Patrick Fugit, serving as the fictional stand-in for the incredibly young Crowe the Rolling Stone writer, seeks out Kate Hudson as the charismatic yet tragic Penny Lane. As with most of the cuts on the spot-on soundtrack, Elton’s song anchors the sequence with emotional truth and pathos, culminating in the surprisingly affirming anthemic “I thank the lord for the people I have found…”

It was only today listening to Deeper Into Music, however, that I recognized the glaringly obvious art reference in Elton’s (or I suppose I should say Bernie’s) “Mona Lisas.” By setting it in the plural, the term hints at a Mona Lisa type, someone who is, perhaps, inscrutable, quiet, looking out at the world from a place of stillness, always with the slightest smile. It wasn’t until today, however, that I heard the song and thought of the literal image of the famous Da Vinci painting that lives permanently in the Louvre. I really only made the connection when, in a moment of divine DIM providence, the song that followed it also payed homage to art, Paul Cezanne by Five Chinese Brothers.

Mona Lisa

This goofy bit of Zydeco pop is a tribute to the great impressionist with lots of clever turns of phrase, incorporating rhyming structures that rely on badly mispronounced French, such as “His oover’s in the Loover.” Indeed, it was probably that very phrase that sparked the association to the actual Mona Lisa.

Leave it to DIM to have me bopping around to great music and free associating to famous paintings. You’ve gotta love a song that rhymes “MoMA” with “coma” and tweaks syllables at will: “The father of cu-BISM.” The song also has sly references to De Chirico, Modigliani and Picasso.

Now if DIM had only played Jonathan Richman’s classic Pablo Picasso, it would’ve been a (mad) hat trick. Someone make a request, quick.

Note: no Five Chinese Brothers on YouTube, but there’s this other version.

Siouxsie Sioux - Best Of

Siouxsie Sioux was a pop singer of a different order. I could never really imagine her as real. Siouxsie never seemed of this world but rather came off as a mythic figure, a being who perhaps landed on the planet and reverberated music back to us as a transcendent means of intergalactic communication. Her cover of the Beatles’ Dear Prudence is a sober, almost dirge-like reiteration of the original. There’s something literal about it, as if Siouxsie believes it’s a song that must be sung and understood by humans in order for us to evolve according to some predestined cosmic agreement.

Siouxsie gives her best approximation of being earthbound but she’s obviously not from around here as she intones the lyrics, originally written by John Lennon for Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence at an ashram in India where she spent days on end meditating in isolation. The question is whether enlightenment arises from separating oneself from this world or communing in the light of day with others. Siouxsie’s impassive delivery suggests she floats outside of the two sides of this question, calling Prudence to come out and play without any sense of urgency. “The wind is low/the birds will sing/That you are part of everything/Dear Prudence won’t you open up your eyes?”

I don’t know where she is now, but I prefer to imagine Siouxsie somewhere across the universe, having implanted her messages into our collective consciousness and now having moved on to other realms. “Look around, round, round round round…”

One case where the video is better than the song alone.  Enjoy:

and so the playlist unfolds...

A while back a loyal DIM listener posted that “DIM is vibin’ the air big time…” Golden Brown by The Stranglers, the 1981 retro uptempo waltz goes round and round this afternoon, I’d say vibin’ the air big time absolutely . . . bright harmonics, dark reverie.

Love That Never Ends by The Grip Weeds is a pop counterpoint . . . “Like light that shines through an open window/We soon will see if we can live up to.” Juliana Hatfield, in The Fact Remains, laments as the song fades out “I stayed too long, I stayed too long…” And so the playlist unfolds in dark and light . . . Lonesome Eyes by Chris Lee keeps it all in balance with big sound and a crackling horn section bebopping us home, vibin’ the air . . .

I’ve been doing some SEO (search engine opt.) on DIM’s web site.  You’ll note changes and additions on several pages.  It’s all an attempt to make DIM a better web experience.  Feel free to comment or email me to let me know your thoughts about any DIM issues.

9:28 a.m. EST Rocking out to Sleep, Forever by Madder Rose . . . and, according to the DIM world map, so are lots of you from Dublin, Ireland to Rockford, Illinois. Now we’re on to Song For Epic by Baby Lemonade . . . lush groove . . . for some reason I thought Evan Dando of the Lemonheads had something to do with Baby Lemonade and I was wondering about his lemon obsession but I guess I made that up. Blind Lemon Jefferson was a righteous blues singer from the ’20s. This Code Blue (The Dub Mix) by DJ Trippy is hypnotic and delicious . . . pour me a tall cold glass. . .

Billy Bragg echoes a spare energized vocal into the luminous chamber accompanied by insistent articulated guitar riffs. Tells a story about a distant memory punctuated by French horn and brash percussive rhythmic chord changes.

The Saturday Boy by Billy Bragg – available on “Back to Basic”
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