KJR

This phase – “75” – of the 2 Kool Project has now been completed.

The Project continues . . . .

A bit of progress on the 2 Kool x 71 (versions) project.

Cover art (subject to tweaking):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44555304@N08/sets/72157625977130463/

@punchdrunklove wrote:

for the 3rd phase, robert confirmed 71 versions (1st: 14; 2nd: 22).

it’s more like 70 nice, great versions and ONE STUNNING DISCOVERY.

Yes, 5 CDs worth. Actually, 69 different performances, with two recorded versions of two of the performances.

For me, the stunner is the early performance with just the guitars.

Anyway, it will take some time to finish this project.

Let us hope there will not be a Phase IV. . . .

This is fantastic news! I’m going to have to go round up all the fatboy 4-CD cases I can find!

Thanks to punchdrunklove for his rumination on “2 Kool”.

So how does one end up doing a CD compilation of 14 versions of “2 Kool” and then a second compilation of 22 versions of the same song? Moreover, why does one end up making these compilations?

Short background – I am an American (from Los Angeles) who’s lived in Paris, France, off and on since 1987 (continuously since 2004). I listen nowadays mostly to classical music (Bach through Chopin) but am at heart a Beatles, Stones, Motown, Dylan, Stax/Volt, Hendrix classic rock enthusiast. I still listen to that stuff but on an intermittent basis, and know very little about rap, hip-hop, grunge, punk, and the other genres that have emerged in the past couple of decades. In short, I am old-fashioned, stick safely to what I know and like very well, and am not very adventurous when it comes to current pop music, although every so often something new will catch my attention.

Up until a couple of years ago I was vaguely familiar with Lucinda Williams but I hadn’t really listened to her. I knew she had a reputation as a cult figure, crossing the pop/rock/country boundaries, with a mild tough-gal, outlaw image, with a touch of pre-nostalgia-act Keith Richards. There was a good profile in the New Yorker a few years ago that piqued one’s interest. After hearing so much about it, I picked up “Car Wheels” (deluxe edition, with the live set) a couple of years ago. A somewhat rare foray out of my usual limited pasture.

My first impressions were not that positive. I found her voice a bit thin, not always on-pitch. Technically, she made judicious use of vibrato in an effective way, which suggested a little more training and calculation than her heart-on-her-sleeve, emotional, and confessional style would otherwise indicate.

There was enough there to keep my attention and interest. A broken-hearted, world-weary view of life can always be attractive, since very few are spared first-hand knowledge of life’s disappointments, especially in that great segment of life centered on “love,” a concept hard to define much less control. Most of her songs are about loss, disappointed love, betrayal, anger. She can seem so very vulnerable but at the same time so tough, so hard-bitten. Someone who wants intimacy and partnership but who trusts no one and who has been hurt enough to be justified in her unease with anyone getting too close. Someone who doesn’t trust herself very well either.

So I gradually came to like and savor “Car Wheels” and to appreciate her artistic persona and gifts, her craftsmanship. Her less than full bodied voice came to seem a virtue, contributing as it does to the sense of vulnerability one associates with her lyrics.

“2 Kool” stood out, even from all the other songs about lost loves and lost lives. It is a strange song, a unique song. It seems to be not so much a song about loss but about death itself. Robert Johnson making deals with the devil, snake charmers able to avoid harm even while drinking ostensibly deadly brews, bridge jumpers almost convincing one to join them. Much negative imagery – no gambling, no fighting, no booze, June bugs standing up to hurricanes (whether bugs against the weather or one gang against another). Everything in the past, with no future reference, except the reminder not to forget. The only things requiring remembrance are things no longer around, i.e., dead things.

Why is a song about death so compelling? I think it has to do with the whole artful construct of the song, the way she took a couple of photos, created a story, drawing on the Robert Johnson legend (just how did he get to be such a virtuoso?), adding the circus sideshow element of the snake charmer, becoming chillingly personal with the scene on the bridge. Out of these disparate elements she somehow creates a narrative touching on mystery, the unknown, the carnival-like, the anti-scientific, almost anti-matter, magical, traveling-alone-on-the-ether quality of life. It’s quite literally voodoo.

Voodoo themes built on a hypnotic riff that reasserts itself with regularity, a simple structure impossible not to integrate into one’s appreciation of the song. A three-chord loop with its own mesmerizing quality.

“2 Kool” reminded me vaguely of another seductive tune, the Pretenders’ “Sense of Purpose” (especially the “unplugged” version on the “Isle of View” live album), another song with a similar search for meaning within life’s chaos, with its own reference to an early death.

The live set on the deluxe edition of “Car Wheels,” with its rendition of “2 Kool,” set me on a quest to find just how many versions of this song were out there. I came across this site: http://www.ousterhout.net/lossless/lwilliams.html, and then, when I got to talking to others in this forum, punchdrunklove and tntracy of course made their very generous contributions. It was fun, if tedious, to put the compilations together, with the artwork, photos, labels, etc. But worth the effort. Hearing the evolution this song has gone through over some 15 years has itself been a revelation, and she has always done justice to the song by singing it in its entirety, without truncating it. More recently, she’s tended to rock it up a bit more. Its meaning remains elusive.

I had the good fortune of seeing her live (for the first and so far only time) on July 23, 2009, here in Paris. The day of the show I Twittered and asked her to play “2 Kool”. I don’t know if my entreaty had any effect, but she did play it that night, much to my great joy.

As indicated in one of the previous messages, more versions of this strange and powerful song may be forthcoming. If so, the “2 Kool” project will continue. May it do so for a good while.

@punchdrunklove wrote:

agreed, that one tops everything, the hey hey-finale is joyful. but the ’95 version is pretty terrific as well; not only because it’s old-timey, almost ancient, but especially because of the way she introduces the book and tells the title of the song during her performance, not before. i love that, the guitar soaring over her words.

and i have a question about the lyrics of this live version:

“??? (cf. rosedale), mississippi, freedom village (cf. magic city) juke joint”

i keep hearing marseille. is that right?

I think she refers to “Marcella, Mississippi” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella,_Mississippi). Probably one of those places in the American Deep South where the ghost of Robert Johnson resides . . . .