Elvis Costello "Good Year For The Roses"

I played this song last week when I heard that George Jones had passed away.

Not growing up with country music here in the Northeast, I had no awareness of Jones’ music.  This Elvis cover was my introduction.

The song was part of a story of mine.

Back when I fancied the idea of writing short stories as a way to understand and explore my life, I wrote this story about how I had split with a girlfriend, had moved out, but was having trouble moving on.

In the story (as it happened in real life), as I’m moving out, she gives me a set of 5 coffee cups.  She had mail ordered a set of 6 cups but when one of the cups arrived broken, they sent her a full set as a replacement.  She gave me the incomplete set, and that’s all I really took from the relationship as I left.

In the story, I’ve left behind “The Best Of Elvis Costello.”  But I like to listen to "Good Year For The Roses" on her birthday/when feeling melodramatic:

“Or the lip print on the half filled cup of coffee that you bought but didn’t drink.  But at least you thought you wanted it, but that’s so much more than I can say for me.”

The story goes jumps forward in time to vignettes with various new girlfriends where, in each scene, a coffee cup breaks.  The story ends with me contemplating the fate of the last coffee cup, hopeful that when it does break, it will mean I am finally over the original girl.

So last week I played Elvis Costello’s version of “Good Year For The Roses,” and I thought about the girl and the story and young love and how sad I was in those years.  And I thought about the story, and something struck me funny.

In the story, I left behind “The Best Of Elvis Costello.”  I wrote that into the story, because I loved “Good Year For The Roses,” and because the lyric worked with the coffee cup plot device.

But in reality, I didn’t lose that record in the relationship.

No, in reality, I was always bummed that I had left behind my copy of “A Decade Of Steely Dan.”

So why the wistfulness at hearing Elvis Costello, if that part of the story was complete fiction?

I’d spent a long time writing this story.  Worked on it for months on end.  Told it and retold it and revised it and reshaped it.  To the point that the story was how I explained my feelings, with more clarity than the facts could have.

The story became the reality.

It's not what happened, but it best explained what happened to me.

And for a moment, I felt kind of like a songwriter.

The narrator of "Good Year For The Roses" (made famous by George Jones, but written by Jerry Chestnut) probably did get his heart broken by a woman.  But did he really see a lip print on a half-filled cup of coffee?  Probably not.  But that's what it felt like, to have his heart broken.  And maybe, forever more, if he saw a half-filled cup of coffee, discarded, he thought of his heart-ache, whether the original image was real or not.

So it makes some sense that I would listen to "Good Year For The Roses" and feel what I felt, even if it isn't attached to my actual story.

It makes more sense than feeling sad about "Peg."


Hear the song on Youtube.

Steely Dan "Peg"

Steely Dan came on the radio, and, unusually, I did not change the channel.

If I'm in the car with my wife, and Steely Dan comes on, I instinctively either turn down the volume, or surf to the next channel.

My wife does not like Steely Dan.  At all.

But it was Christmas Eve and we were going to my Aunt Peg's house, so when Steely Dan's "Peg" came on, I left it on.

My wife was into something.  Looking at her iPad.  Talking to the kids.  I can't quite remember.  But whatever the distraction, "Peg" did not register with her.

But I couldn't help singing.

"It's your favorite foreign movie . . ."

"Steely Dan!?!  Ugh.  I hate Steely Dan," she mock moaned.

She didn't have to real moan, because she we've been married long enough to know that she knows that I know that she hates Steely Dan.

"Yeah," I said, "but this is the most mainstream/tolerable of their work, right?"

"Yeah it is."

"Plus, we're going to Auntie Peg's house, so . . . I had to keep it on."

"Yeah."

"It's a good song."

Long pause.

"It just takes me right back."

My wife's father loves Steely Dan.  And back when records like "Aja" and "Katy Lied" were out, he LOVED Steely Dan.

She can't hear a Steely Dan song without being instantly transported to the 1970s of her childhood.

But even then, she didn't like them.

Something about the weird tension in the songs.  The creepy, oblique lyrics.  The overly pristine sound.  Something about Steely Dan rubbed her the wrong way in the 1970s.  And still does.

And yet, she knows every song.  Every word.  Every inflection.  Because her Dad listened all the time.

It made me think about my own kids.

Yes, today we'll play Mumford And Sons and The Beatles and Janelle Monae and who knows what else, ad finitum around our house and in our car.  And we'll be thinking we're doing the kids a favor by sharing our awesome jams.  But inevitably, they're going to silently hate some of it.

And in the year 2045, my daughter will be driving with her spouse (or perhaps flying with her spouse in her space hover craft), and some old song will come over the transom and she'll find herself singing along, awash in a mix of nostalgia and resentment for her lovely childhood and her parents' terrible taste in music.

"Peg, it will come back to you . . ."
 

Hear the song on Youtube.