I’ve been loading my thousands of CDs (most of which have been in boxes for about three years) into iTunes in recent weeks and it’s been quite a revealing experience. (It explains, for one thing, why I’ve never been able to accumulate any money. And this project is going to require two 2TB external hard drives, because I’m using lossless compression.) Sometimes it’s embarrassing or mystifying. What void was I trying to fill with a Kurtis Blow‘s greatest hits? I already had “The Breaks” — one of the earliest non-Sugarhill rap/hip-hop hits — and ”Hard Times” on various compilations… but it sounds good. And I do love compilations, especially those from obscure jazz, soul and R&B labels from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s (like Minit or Specialty or Sue or Excello), up to the better-known Vee Jay and Okeh and Ace and Commodore, or the bubblegum label Buddah (yes, it’s spelled that way). And, of course, various label, period, artist and thematic anthologies put together by Rhino (including the massive Stax/Volt and Atlantic boxes). The “Beg, Scream & Shout!” box is the greatest.
But the reason I’m writing this now is my reencounter with Robyn Hitchcock. I did a piece a while back about the cinematic imagination of Joni Mitchell, and I was happy to reacquaint myself with “My Wife and My Dead Wife” on the album “Fegmania!” It’s quintessentially Hitchcockian, reflective of Robyn’s eerie ectoplasmic humor (though much of his work is more surreally Cronenbergian, bursting with ghastly biological horrors, as in “Star of Hairs” or “Tropical Flesh Mandala”), and suggesting Sir Alfred, too. In some respects it’s a twist on “Rebecca,” but funnier. Notice, too, the ways Hitchcock chooses to belatedly reveal what’s going on, almost as if you were suddenly catching a glimpse of a ghost out of the corner of your eye. And the final pull-back at the seashore is masterful. This is quite a movie:
My wife lies down in a chair
And peels a pear
I know she’s there
I’m making coffee for two
Just me and you
But I come back in with coffee for three
Coffee for three?
My dead wife sits in a chair
Combing her hair
I know she’s there
She wanders off to the bed
Shaking her head
“Robyn,” she said
“You know I don’t take sugar!”
My wife and my dead wife
Am I the only one that sees her?
My wife and my dead wife
Doesn’t anybody see her at all?
No, no no, no, no no no no
My wife sits down on the stairs
And stares into air
There’s no one there
I’m drilling holes in the wall
Holes in the wall
I turn round and my dead wife’s upstairs
She’s still wearing flares
She talks out loud but no one hears
And I can’t decide which one I love the most
The flesh and blood or the pale, smiling ghost
My wife lies down on the beach
She’s sucking a peach
She’s out of reach
Of the waves that crash on the sand
Where my dead wife stands
Holding my hand
Now my wife can’t swim
but neither could she
And deep in the sea
She’s waiting for me
Oh, I’m such a lucky guy
‘Cause I’ve got you baby and I’ll never be lonely…
