Re: Pacific States - WV56 - Ariel Pink - Put Your Number In My Phone
WorldVision 57 - Judee Sill - The Kiss
This edition i'll be sending a song planned way in advance for exactly around about this time of year. This is one those artist discoveries that truly ended up enriching my life, up there with the very top artists I hold dear to my heart.
Judee Sill's life was one of addiction, suffering and spiritual awakening. Born in Oakland, California, Judee lost her Mother, Father and brother young. She fell in with a gang of bandits, developing a drug habit that saw her turn to criminal activity to support her addiction, stooping as low as armed robbery even. It was at reform school that Judee was taught a lot of her gospel licks that would appear later on in her music. She picked up a crippling Heroin addiction after marrying a pianist in 1966, resorting to prostitution to feed it. She went to jail and upon coming out started songwriting.
"Jesus Was A Cross Maker" was Judee's first single released in 1968 and a self titled album followed shortly after the same year. Despite some exposure and radio play, the baroque country pop with trippy psychedelic elements didn't quite fit the popular mold of the time so never took off. Her second and final album "Heart Food" released in 1971, again not a commercial success. Judee toured the world, opening for rock bands that she despised, pleading with the audience to buy her records so that she didn't have to open up for "snotty rock bands" anymore. Judee dropped out of the music business, suffering from a number of car accidents and failed back surgery that left her in crippling pain. She died on November 23, 1979, from a drug overdose at the age of just 35.
It was an incredibly tragic life she lived, full of failure, misfortune and pain. The music though that she created, gosh does it cut me in two. So much hurt and longing in her voice, and these songs, so beautiful and celestial. At times you feel like you're floating upward through the clouds whilst listening to her. I'm an atheist but i'm still swept away by these often highly spiritual works. Then again, it's a lot easier for me to love this kind of stuff when it comes from a highly flawed, bisexual ex-bandit for some bizarre reason. Judee Sill is fascinating. Despite all of the wrongs of her life, there is such warmth and sincerity to be found within the music she's left us behind.
"The Kiss" is the song i'm sharing with WorldVision this edition, from Judee's second album.
"It's about the union of the opposites that are in us all but I think about them a lot" she explains at the start of a BBC performance. "Achingly beautiful" is a description I probably use too much to describe a lot of the music that really gets to me. Discard everything i've described as being that previously, THIS is achingly beautiful. From start to finish it pains me. "The Kiss" is one of my favourite songs of all time, and despite the fact i'd always planned this moment of sharing the song with you all, it's still been hard to let it go because the song means a ridiculous amount to me, and it's going to be testing to see it ranked (god forbid experiencing it's possible failure). I really do hope you all get something from the song. Just by how the LL went this evening, I already feel i've made the right decision sharing Judee Sill with you all.
Live performances
Touching performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test
7:56 of the video. This is the only other live piece of video footage that exists of Judee performing the song, although other live versions are available on CD.
Lyrics
Love rising from the mists,
Promise me this and only this,
Holy breath touching me, like a wind song
Sweet communion of a kiss
Sun sifting through the grey
Enter in, reach me with a ray
Silently swooping down, just to show me
How to give my heart away
Once a crystal choir
Appeared while I was sleeping
And called my name
And when they came down nearer
Saying, "Dying is done,"
Then a new song was sung
Until somewhere we breathed as one
And still I hear their whisper
Stars bursting in the sky
Hear the sad nova's dying cry
Shimmering memory, come and hold me
While you show me how to fly
Sun sifting through the grey
Enter in, reach me with a ray
Silently swooping down, just to show me
How to give my heart away
Lately sparkling hosts
Come fill my dreams, descending
On fiery beams
I've seen 'em come clear down
Where our poor bodies lay,
Soothe us gently and say,
"Gonna wipe all your tears away."
And still I hear their whisper…
Love, rising from the mists
Promise me this and only this,
Holy breath touching me, like a wind song
Sweet communion of a kiss
____________________
Stay tuned as i'm going to share and write about some of my favourite Judee Sill songs here soon for those who may be interested. Doesn't matter if none of you are (i'm good at rambling to myself). I just wanted to get this greenroom post up quickly now, as I was late with starting it today.