Song of The Day #18 - Ryan Adams - 'Meadowlake Street'

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Not that easy to get a picture of this guy off google without him looking like a ridiculous idiot.

I use to absolutely adore Ryan Adams. I mean that too. I think I've seen him live six times. I've bought all his albums a couple of times. I've got merchandise and I've got posters. Hell, I've got vinyls and I haven't even got a record player. Serious shit friends, serious shit. At some point down the line though, I fell out of love with him spectacularly. The stupid stoner behaviour he started indulging in like creating 'funny' websites and writing rambling rants on (his own) messageboards about space and pizza might've done it, yes, that'd be a fair assumption. Ultimately though, as I've stated many of times, you have to separate the artist from the music as much as you can lest you ruin everything. So I tried to ignore all that. Their gift is their tunes, not their personalities, beliefs or moral stances. So I let the stupid shit slide. Nah, for Ryan and I it was the records. They just kept getting worse and worse and worse. The live shows too. No self control and sometimes almost no awareness for about 95% of the audience. i.e. those of us that DON'T want to see a 18 minute Grateful Dead cover noodling jam that goes on and and on and on until it arrives nowhere.

Ryan Adams - 'Meadowlake Street'

Count 'em back to nothing till I got to you.

There are, of course, reasons that I was so taken with this guy once. His old band, Whiskeytown, remain one of my favourite acts and once upon a time as a solo artist he was on a particularly 'golden' (oof, poor pun) run. This song is taken from a double record called 'Cold Roses' that really did hit many more times than it missed and it's impossibly pretty. The drumming is really great and beautifully understated on this song right until about halfway through when it starts to build and build and build. Props to the kick drum. It's solid and ever present and absolutely vital. It's a kick drum as a heart beat. To be frank, this song from the line 'I feel like a dream that's not worth having/like a nervous joke/ain't nobody laughing' onwards really is breathtaking. Listen to it on summer nights when you're with people you care about, c'mon, share the warmth man.

I feel like a dream that's not worth having
Like a nervous joke ain't nobody laughing
Like somebody with nothing 'cause they don't know
What they're wanting
Tiny like the sand in the cracks of the drift wood
Washed up on the shore of an ocean of you