Light On Dark Water

Weekend Music

This is not the kind of music I generally listen to–high-speed more-or-less-punk rock, with a ska touch–and when I do listen to it, a few songs at a time are enough. It may not be to the taste of most people who read this blog, either, but bear with me–there's an interesting story here.

One night some years ago, probably around 1996 or 1997, I went out to the grocery store for milk or something that was needed for the next morning. The radio station I was listening to (pretty much the only listenable one around, apart from the "public" station), was playing music by local bands. I heard a song called "Fight" by a band called Pain. It was catchy and witty, and I remember mentioning the band to my then-teenaged children as possibly being worth checking out. It turned out the band was from Tuscaloosa, and was pretty widely popular for a while, though never breaking into the top ranks.  A couple of my children became fans, and bought the CD from which this song is taken. I liked it, too, though as I said it's not really my type of music.

The singer, Dan Lord, and another guy who was generally known just as Pose, seem to have been the core of the band, and the main writers. And they were originally from Mobile, and had attended the Catholic high school, McGill-Toolen, from which two of my children graduated. The lyrics were one of the main reasons I liked the band–they were ingenious, often funny, and perceptive. Overall, and unlike so much punk, the general feel of the music was not predominantly angry and nihilistic, but had a wry sense of fun. The album Midgets With Guns starts off with a brief ditty explaining their name:

Pose, Pose, why do you suppose 
That Pain is our name? 
Because that's what we chose 
And life without pain is a long endless chain 
Of errors repeated again and again 
So don't be afraid of pain, don't run away.

Here's the title song. In case you have trouble understanding the words, "midgets with guns" are the petty and malicious part of our selves:

There's little guys with little guns
Inside our mouths, inside our heads,
They make us suffer.

Here's another song, "Square Pegs", which is somewhat harder and more punk:

A few years ago something or other I was reading online had a link to a blog called That Strangest of Wars. I thought the writer's name, Dan Lord, sounded familiar, but it had been a long time since I heard Pain, and I didn't make the connection at first.  Here, I'll let him explain. 

Dan's wife, Hallie is also known as a Catholic blogger, writer, and speaker.

As Chuck Berry said, it goes to show you never can tell.