With Love and Squalor

Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Sat, 07 Feb 1998 06:31:25 +0500 

I don't know how, but it has to be sheer serendepity that led me to the
following because I wasn't even searching for anything even remotely
connected with JDS (umm, but given the fundamental interconnectedness
etc. of everything, maybe that's not really correct). I thought it's
definitely something worth sharing. 

The web page address is: http://www.interlog.com/~mjs/bio.html


                                 Mia Sheard

   With Love And Squalor is the debut disc from Toronto singer /
   songwriter Mia Sheard. Co-produced by Sheard with Juno award winning
   producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda (Rheostatics, Barenaked Ladies,
   Spirit Of The West, Ashley MacIsaac) the album showcases Sheard's
   dynamic, powerful vocals and unique lyrical insights. [...]


   [...]With Love And Squalor takes it's title from For Esme, With Love And
   Squalor , from J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories). Sheard's song, "Seymour"
   is similarly based on another Salinger story.
   "It's based on A Perfect Day For Bananafish.. Salinger was a big
   influence, I became obsessed with his stories and the drama of his
   writing. It expressed immense emotion but in a very subtle way so that
   it made the emotion even more extreme, because it was suppressed."
   Extreme emotion rains over With Love And Squalor's ten tracks.
   Swinging from intimate whispers to full throated declarations Sheard's
   voice and lyrics are supported by musical textures that range from
   delicate ambience to flat out rock. [...]

   Seymour
   music and lyrics: Sheard 1996
   There's nothing I adore but this
   Said the man on the shore
   Who looked down at the perfect fish
   And the colours they wore
   Only this do I adore
   And his wife was on the telephone
   When the child saw them too
   And proved that he was not alone
   In his reds and his blues
   All the colours there were true
   Mother I think I should go
   Seymour's down there all alone
   He's been acting like an angel
   If you really want to know
   I wonder what the fishes eat
   Said the child to the man
   Who kissed the arches of her feet
   Before she got up and ran
   Mother I think I should go
   Seymour's coming in the door
   If there's change I'll let you know
   Just don't worry anymore -- no more, no more
   There's nothing I adore but this
   Said the man on the bed
   Whose wife sat there oblivious
   As she painted nails red
   He brought the gun up to his head

For some reason, in my mind's ears I hear the last line to the
tune of Simon & Garfunkel's _Richard Cory_"And put a bullet
through his head."

For some reason I couldn't download the sound-clip supposedly
available there, but I would love to hear from anyone of you who
succeeds, or who has perhaps heard the album. Heck, I guess I'd just go
back to the site and see if I can order it and somehow work out how to
send them Canadian dollars...

Sonny

obNostalgia: Yeah, I remember Helena's (then Natley's Whore?;))
appearance on the list, and thanks Will for all the kind words
(undeserved, and therefore embarassing, let me admit, even at the risk
of sounding phonily modest, to be spoken of in the same breath as Matt,
though highly flattering) but I think I joined much later than all the
other names you mention, sometime in July or August of 1996. Some names
that readily come to mind as being already on the list then, are the
handles "toenail", "jvarsoke" and Jonathan Moritz from Australia.

ps: I am intrigued by Jim's refernece to Buddhists and Hindus as
bigots, not as an aggravation but merely out of curiosity. I wonder who
the respective representatives of these sects were. I hope the general
"Hare Krishna" or the ISKON types are not identified as representative
of all "Hindus". (Not that anybody is. Nor, for that matter, is there
any agreement as to who or what a "Hindu", or indeed, "Hinduism". The
only consensus on that seems to be that all those living across river
Indus were so called, and the label has remained stuck, though the
adherents of very many religions this side of Indus would be vastly
affronted by the very idea. 

pps: i stayed up, speed reading s:ai, looking for answers to Ahimsa's
post about Hapworth and Seymour's remarks therein about at least one of
them being there on the other's departure, [on that some other time, I
feel I need to edit out the jumble of almost incoherent thoughts that I
dread even trying to start sorting out now in my sleep deprived state.

Talking of labels that stick, the word 'prolix' keeps jumping up at me now
whenever I think of Hapworth or S:AI

sorry for bunging all of this together instead of replying to
individual posts.

ramblingly,
sonny