Elliott . . .

I'll fake it through the day with some help from Johnnie Walker Red . . .

It's actually one of me least favorite Elliott Smith songs lyrically. It's about a lost lover that you still yearn for but who was so awful for you in every way. It would take another 7 years to know the pain of those particular circumstances (Bradley), but the music always had an immediate grip on me. Perhaps it was the driving 3/4 time and the tumult of the cord progression that kept me fascinated, but it was the voice behind the song that got me hooked.

I was sitting in a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the parking lot of a supermarket in Summit, New Jersey when I heard him first. I was with my nephew who had passed out in his car seat. NPR was profiling an obscure singer/songwriter who had been in an even more obscure Portland Oregon rock band called Heatmiser. He had written a song for a not so obscure Gus Van Sant film. Elliott's song was already nominated for Best Song, but would surely lose to a now "has been" French Canadian singer who's song's nauseating grandiosity was surpassed only by the movie for which it was "written". (In the sadest of all after words to his life, her name appeared in almost every one of his obituaries).


I bought the soundtrack to Goodwill Hunting which contains Miss Misery and four other Elliott Smith songs. It's worth having just because it is the only place to get the studio version of that song.

I often read posts on Sweet Adeline dot net by some girl's college-type sad sack who fantasizes about how if she were with Elliott he wouldn't be so sad or at least they would be sad together and that would be ok. I am she at heart.