Patrick Joseph - Antiques

It has been a long wet winter.  The living room windows remain streaked with moisture where rain has infiltrated the double paned glass.  Minerals deposits cling to dried drip lines to mark where droplets made their way between the panes. Looking inside out you get a frosted view of the world.

It has been cold on both sides of the casements. I lost my best friend just before the beginning of Spring after he suffered a long, painful and debilitating series of illnesses, We grew up together in Los Angeles.  He was the drummer in the first working band with which I played.  Although in the day he was great behind the kit, through the date of his death he was an even better person.

One week before the official end of winter I drove to LA for the funeral.  I hurriedly threw together a bag, hung my suit. and grabbed a handful of CD’s for the long road trip.  My emotions swirled and memories flickered through my head.  Moments and places that we had shared.

As I past Patterson, California in the rain I tore open the plastic wrap on Patrick Joseph’s CD “Antiques.”  I had no idea who he was.  It was just one of those Ripple submissions Racer sent to me.  A somber overture swelled the speakers of the Subaru with a precise military snare drum.  It swelled into a song Joseph named “Arsonist Blues.” Joseph practically whispered to me the best pop lyrical hook I had heard in months:

Burning down your bridges,

Burning down your house.

You’re killing yourself more than the law allows.

I turned the music up. I truly could not believe the next track “Don’t Believe It.”  It is a soft tune, but with enough John Lennon “I Am The Walrus” affectation and classical twists and turns to keep me brooding for about 25 miles of southbound I-5.

My demeanor brightened a little but then came “Untangled” - another pop tun that is a bit on the melancholy side with a hook of “and you came out and got me Ontario.”  I perversely thought it was an homage to the Canadian city. 

Joseph drags a song with “Public Diary.”  By that I mean the song, replete with mandolin, harmonica, honky tonk piano, trumpet, organ, guitar, bass and drums, is slowed down until you feel like teeth are being pulled in slow motion. It gives the entire composition a dark feel.  I zipped past semis a touch faster than the music.

The James Blunt in Joseph showed up on his song “Escape Artist.” I listened and I prefer Joseph to Blunt.  Here’s the hook that hooked me -

You’re always coming and going as you please, babe,

You never give me warning and you always got me on my knees, babe,

I’m always chasing after ghosts to get to you, baby blue,

You always leave me hanging and you wear me and tear me down with ease, babe.  

By the end of “Escape Artist” I’m approaching Kettleman City and getting anxious about making time to L.A. Take a break from the music and I recal other road trip from long ago - high school summer days . . . or is that daze? l  I adjust the seat and mirrors, turn up the radar and laser detector, and scan the horizon for bears. Miles down the road I switch back to the CD.

Joseph’s “Sugar and Lies” slowly swells into a great driving song. Its lyrics swirl with imagery -

And so it’s so much better in pretend.

Create amends to justify an end

You can’t always get what you intend

Don’t you think you’d know by now

Well it’s okay

Your face it says, your face it says it all

You wouldn’t understand this painted on your wall 

The beat pushes me all the way to Buttonwillow.

A strange little interlude called “Sun Through The Shade” follows and recedes until Joseph sings softly with a six string “Better Than It Was Before.” It is a mournful, quiet piece of tearful emotion with an odd assortment of accompanying folk instrumentation. As the last stanza sounds  I slowly merged toward the Grapevine.

When I passed the CHP weigh station at the intersection of I-5 and Highway 99 the final song on the album played - a short soft shoe called “Slippery Shadow.”  Here is Joseph vamping a tune with the time honored musical pattern of “Santa Baby.”  It is an add-on, a bit of fun at the end of an impressive brooding pop album effort.

Three days later, after the funeral, I got back in the car and drove I-5 north to the Bay Area.  I again popped “Antiques” in the player just to make sure that its sound was how I remembered it to be during my trip to L.A.  After all, coming down I had been in a rather dark mood. I hit the gas pedal and watched the needle on the speedometer approach 90 mph.  I blasted around a row of eighteen wheelers just about killing myself “more than the law allows.”

- Old School