We know it's wrong to let this fire burn between us / We've got to stop this wild desire in you and in me

"The course of true love never did run smooth."
-- Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

I vote for Country & Western as Earth's most brutally emotionally manipulative genre of human music. Fans of other genres may strenuously disagree -- Zouk! Only Zouk can tear a man to shreds and destroy him this way! -- but I say Country & Western, which gives you the emotional experience of breakup, heartbreak, denial, self-pity, romantic failure, and tragedy sometimes involving firearms and the State Police, or an abandoned but once-beloved child -- but without the real people and the real cops. You just feel that way, but it's not really happening to you, which makes it barely endurable.

This isn't to say C&W isn't sincere and honest. It isn't. But then neither is professional wrestling, but that packs the stadium every show, too.

I have no opinion about the honesty and sincerity behind this poem. I don't know (or don't know that I know) any other Joyce Allsup songs, because I scrupulously try not to listen to contemporary Nashville C&W. I know that most of the time I'm going to react with nausea and anger at the industrial-strength synthetic manipulation of my heartstrings.

This, however, is a poem by a human being -- adult or perhaps younger, youth often generates spectacular lapses in the Judgment Center -- who has indeed spent two or three (or four or five) years in the chains of Absolutely Forbidden Love. At the exact same moment, you are wafted to Paradise, and you reach for the barf bag in the seat compartment in front of you; your heart and your stomach are on different airplanes for as long as the journey lasts. (The ticket just says: THIS WILL END or sometimes THIS WILL END BADLY.)

"GP" was the first solo album by the guitarist, singer and composer Gram Parsons. We have just a few dozen of his performances, but each one is a precious gem, if Gram and his singing partner Emmylou Harris have ever once got their hooks into your heart. I don't know how, exactly, one measures Beauty in harmony, but if there were a unit of measure, Emmylou and Gram would knock the needle off the scale.

Musicologists would probably trace the music to Appalachian Scots-Irish 18th century immigrants and settlers, and so backwards to Scotland and Ireland. No matter how industrial Nashville tries to mess with it, it's basically Gaelic/Celtic music (which some trace even further back to the Phoenicians, who were commercially very active in the British Isles).

Gram Parsons was from Louisiana, and as soon as the law allowed, headed for Los Angeles. The music he was making and wanted to make was not going to be in Louisiana or its surrounding states. (This was 1973. But Gram Parsons' music will never feel very comfortable in Louisiana.)

Parsons believed that the California LSD Mass Naked Reefer Sound could have Forbidden Relations with Country  & Western, and the bastard child of Timothy Leary and Tammy Wynette could be Beautiful. I think Tim and Tammy's Love Child is beautiful -- at least when Gram and Emmylou sing it. Parsons himself called this genre Cosmic American Music. It's more often called Acid Country.

It's an acquired taste. One important Acid Country star changed the spelling of his name on advice from a UFO alien he met in the hills of California one evening.

Country Music alas has to stumble through its evolution with a lot of historical, political and social baggage. The more to the right a Southern politician is, the more big-star Country & Western artists headline his, her or its campaign rallies. When not modified by someone as inventive and spiritually elevated as Gram Parsons, Country Music can be pure Flag Music -- the musical equivalent of our glorious Red, White & Blue, music to hate non-Caucasians by.

It sure would be cool to know what other songs Joyce Allsup wrote, and I hope things have straightened out in her romantic life.

~ ~ ~

speakers: ON
right-click on song title: OPEN IN NEW WINDOW

This is a studio recording, but the YouTube poster has backed it with film of a concert circa 1972.

~ ~ ~

We'll sweep out the ashes in the morning
 
by Joyce Allsup
 

we know it's wrong
to let this fire burn between us

we've got to stop this wild desire
in you and in me
so we'll let the flame burn once again
until the thrill is gone
then we'll sweep out the ashes in the morning

we're two people caught up in a flame
that has to die out soon
I didn't mean to start this fire
and neither did you
so tonight when you hold me tight
we'll let the fire burn on
and we'll sweep out the ashes in the morning

each time we meet we both agree

it's for the last time
but out of your arms 

I'm out of my mind
so we'll taste the thrill of stolen love
tonight until the dawning
and we'll sweep out the ashes in the morning

we're two people caught up in a flame
that has to die out soon
I didn't mean to start this fire
and neither did you
so tonight when you hold me tight
we'll let the fire burn on
and we'll sweep out the ashes in the morning

yes we'll taste the thrill of stolen love
tonight until the dawning
and we'll sweep out the ashes
we'll sweep out the ashes
we'll sweep out the ashes in the morning