The Day the Music Came Back

I'm a big fan of synchronicity. Not the Police album Synchronicity -- I've spent 26 years not being a fan of that -- but the actual phenomenon itself. Coincidence imbued with meaning. I have a knack for it, if I can make that claim without sounding like a Secret-reading, New-Age boob.

Case in point: out of the blue two nights ago, I was struck by a profound sense of dismay over the complete absence of Buddy Holly in my life. I literally stopped whatever I was doing, looked at my wife, and told her, "We must listen to some Buddy Holly -- and soon. Life is nasty, brutish and short, and we've wasted enough time already." She agreed, and began to weep.

Ten minutes later, a friend showed up at our house and without any prompting started yammering on about exactly the same thing. We agreed that supernatural lightning must have struck Lubbock the day that skinny nerdling Buddy Holly popped out of his momma's womb, shortly to light out into the big cruel world and prove yet again that the blues scale contains an infinity of soul-shaking possibilities.

Then, the next morning, I find this -- M. Ward's cover of "Rave On," from his most recent album, Hold Time. That's the universe talkin' to me in less than 24 hours, which is amazing given the size of the thing and the speed limit. (And yes, I realize that "Rave On" isn't a Holly original, but let's agree that his version is canonical.)

And what a ravishing version of "Rave On" we have here. It starts somewhere in the languid territory of gentleman's country, drops head-first with Ward's slapback vocal into year-zero Memphis, and then retro-fits the chorus with maybe another three or four equally great ideas -- an unexpected flight into the artist's higher register accompanied by angels being probably the best of them.

Sleigh bells and rumbling floor toms enter the picture next, like Phil Spector has shimmered back to creative life behind the soundboard where he belongs, while the strangely inert beat and handclaps had me thinking of glam the whole time. And when I say glam, specifically I mean the skeletal, honky-funky glam of David Essex. Which in turn made me think of the great British movie That'll be the Day, which brings us back to Holly again. And so on, and so on. I could really rave on like this for hours.

In taking me to all these happy places as he strips and then rebuilds "Rave On," I have the feeling that M. Ward has attached a big sucker to my entire face, dragging me through 50 years of stuff I really dig, and plopping me in the present. Which I admit takes some doing here in Nostalgia-ville. Thanks, music!

Postscript: this piece is named obviously after Don McLean's "American Pie" because of its quasi-mythic association with Buddy Holly, and not from any affection for the song, which I hold to be fatuous, self-impressed and basically shite. I've thawed on a lot of the radio songs I hated growing up, but some things are just a bridge and 14 verses too far.

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