Jeff’s Live Nudes

As per my OCD, I take great pleasure in categorizing and rating things.  Of all the things I like to compare, I feel strongest about music, which is why I’m introducing Jeff’s Live Music, a chance for me to share songs I cherish, whether from immediate devotion or a rediscovery of a long-forgotten melody.

Our inaugural piece can be said to be a little bit of both.  I downloaded Castles Made of Sand after reading a wikipedia article on Dispatch, in which a reviewer praised them for a sound similar to that of our featured song.  Like most Hendrix songs, I couldn’t fully appreciate the soul of the tune on the first playback.  It was tossed aside for several weeks, incubating in the library until I had the leisure time to revisit it, and I became entranced.

Good music can bring about catharsis upon listening once, great music can upon listening infinitely.  Castles features a creative, challenging guitar part and an uneven tempo that keeps you on your feet.  It’s difficult to pinpoint a single mood Hendrix wants to convey — he dances between a bitter sadness and a wistful, almost hopeful pining in both his guitar and his voice.  The song is not sappy, not sad, not upbeat and not cheerful.

It tells of a story of a deadbeat husband kicked out by his embittered wife, a husband who, in his younger days of lust and love, may have promised the world, but has become disillusioned with it.  It tells a simple story of an indian boy who grows to be chief and dreams of leading his people to war, but is killed in his sleep on the eve of battle.  And it tells of a girl, cripped and mute, who prepares to end her life in the sea when she spots a golden ship over the horizon.  Each story is brief and cut short, like the characters they depict.  It’s a song about the best of plans thwarted, about the ephemerality of all good and bad, about Jimi’s childhood and family.

And as Jimi croons, so castles made of sand melt in the sea… eventually.