43. 10 Songs about the New England

New England - Billy Bragg
Moonlight in Vermont - Sam Cooke
Roadrunner - Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
O New England - The Decemberists
Massachusetts - The Bee Gees
Please Come to Boston - Joan Baez
Massachusetts - The Scud Mountain Boys
Albion - Babyshambles
Somerville - The Pernice Brothers
Boston - Piney Gir

Aargh ... clearly, I'm clumsily bringing together two separates notions here, the idealised New England Billy Bragg isn't looking for and the real New England the Democrats always dominate in - did you know both George Bushes were born in New England though. I love the Bragg song and I think Peter Doherty's idea of a mythological "Albion" was the best thing he ever came up with, in particular on the song The Good Old Days, but in fact it's the six states of New England I'm more interested in.
Probably more specifically Massachusetts ... where I've never been, but i know plenty of people who have.
Even more specifically, it's Joe Pernice's Massachusetts. Joe Pernice feels like my privileged piece of information, hardly known at all, but, though, say, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco may create more exciting, rousing, stunning, gut-churning songs, I think there's no more erudite, precise, skilful songwriter than Joe Pernice around.
If you go to the very start of this blog, you'll see that Bryte Side by the Pernice Brothers is one of my two favourite songs of all time, and it is the fifth song on what really is my favourite album, The World Won't End, which captured my heart in the weird, heavy summer of 2001. Like many great songwriters, Pernice captures a milieu, makes you feel like you know it and you're in it - for him it's long hot New England summers. If there's any kind of link to Billy Bragg's New England, it's that Pernice is very much an anglophile, his love for the Smiths, the Clash etc always evident. Indeed, when he was asked to write an appreciation for the Smiths' Meat is Murder for the 33 1/3 series, he produced a beautiful novella ... set of course in a hot new England summer.
I haven't much else to say - these things will be evident in my following words, but all i can suggest is buying The World Won't End and listening to it over and over again

Working Girls (Sunlight Shines)
7.30
Our Time Has Passed
She Heightened Everything
Bryte Side
Let that Show
Shaken Baby
Flaming Wreck
The Ballad of Bjorn Borg
Endless Supply
Cronulla Breakdown

That's a little poem all of its own

Oh, I've thought of something else - Gilmore Girls, the surprisingly excellent TV show set in New England, has an episode where Joe Pernice, Jonathan Richman, Yo la Tengo, Sparks and Sonic Youth all make guest appearances

Anyway, this is an homage

High and sun-blinded
a car crashed on a
Massachusetts
road
that road rewinded
back through that summer's
useless beauty
to
the end of school -
t-shirts with Strummer,
Richman, Cusack
through
the century's highpoint,
a hundred degrees,
fruitless duties
all
carried out, while
trying to come up
with the right music
to
fit with the words
you've been receiving
almost weekly
from
the boy who says
his dreams are all
of a New England

He fell in love
with sounds stolen
from his homeland

You fell in love
and you dreamed of
Salford Lad's Club

And he's come looking
for the bryte side
of New England

The brightest flash
on the drive to
Logan Airport