Let the Day Begin ... For Love

Album: The Call, Let the Day Begin, 1989

Acquired: I bought this at Mother's Record & Tape Company in 1989. Then I lent it to my sister Sue and didn't get it back again until 1997 or 1998, whenever my parents moved out of their old home, and I saw that the cassette had slipped behind a bookcase. Oddly, I didn't miss this album while it was actually missing, but I was really glad to get it back once I did.

Best Track: "You Run"

Lasting Memory: Another odd thing, to me at least, is that this the third of three Call albums that I don't associate with a specific time, place, or event. Let the Day Begin is appropriate to and evocative of so many situations that in a lot of ways, the album just is and has been. It goes with everything, kind of like a pair of nice black shoes. If, that is, the shoes could express existential longings and universal truths about the importance of just getting on with living.

I guess you could call me out on immediately contradicting myself about the no lasting memory thing since I just told the story about losing and finding the cassette. If you did, I would strongly equivocate that the anecdote in question is not a specific memory but instead a short history of events that go some way toward illuminating the human condition.

Ah, the refuge of rhetoric. Proves I didn't go to grad school for nothing.

However, I would be, and am, serious about what The Call was up to when they created and recorded their songs. The title of today's post conjoins the titles of the first song on Side A of Let the Day Begin -- the title track -- and the title of the first song on Side B -- "For Love." You've probably heard the title track, which was a decent-sized hit and is an adult version of the preschool standard "Good Morning to You." The Call's song cites the ordinariness of people doing their jobs and interacting with their peers as the special kind of heroism it is. Man, it's tough but necessary to get out of bed everyday, clothe yourself and your kids, teach, police, coach, or blog. But we do, and the efforts aren't pointless, dammit.

The efforts aren't pointless because we have an ultimate goal for work for. We're working "For Love," which is a story song about a Foreign Legion soldier who rides into the desert hunting thieves, gets wounded and stranded, and is eventually rescued and the following conversations with his rescuer and, much later, his wife or girlfriend. The conversations overlap, and the speakers switches from soldier to rescuer to wife/girlfriend to rescuer to soldier.

I went higher than I'd ever been before
I went lower than the depths could hold
I said a prayer, then without warning
A figure rose up from the desert floor
He looked ate me, said, "How high are you?"
I looked at him with my one good eye
We just smiled and stared in silence
He did it all for a chance to die for love

We think again on the dreams that made us
As I stare into your beautiful eyes
There came a day when the words had meaning
The skies cried and the waters came rushing
I do believe you are the lone survivor
I suspect of you the bravest deeds
He just smiled and said it's all worth it
I fell down on my knees and cried, for love

The Call's first album (profiled three posts down) features songs about people who were scared, scarred, and betrayed. Their third album, appropriately titled Reconciled, features primarily songs about people who have persevered and persisted in their lives and their faith in God. Let the Day Begin, the fourth Call album, gives evidence that things denied, lost, hoped for, and worked for aren't not only retrievable and achievable, but in some ways inevitable as long as we don't give up. Another of my favorite bands, The Tragically Hip, address this elliptically in a song titled "It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken." The Call are much more straightforward in "You Run":

You may find a better way
You may find the reason for it all
Say you've walked on hollowed ground
Say you've heard the sweetest sound of all
But you find out that you never really cared at all
And you find out that you have no love to share at all

So you challenge everyone you meet
Crying out to fill a void in you
What are you running from my love
What's this thing you're guilty of
Follow me and never feel accused
But you never do believe a word I say
And you never did believe there'd be a day of reckoning

[Chorus]
So you run and you run and you run
And you never stop
And you work and you work and you work
Until you drop
You're in over your head and the pressure just don't quit
But you can't escape the reach of love

Faces haunt you in your dreams
Struggles of a broken heart I fear
Waking from a fitful sleep
Dutifully appointments keep
Try to hold the image of respect
So someone tells you when and where to go
But all the time you never really show your feelings

[Repeat chorus]

You may find a better way
You may find the reason for it all
You may hold a better hand
All your pride and understanding
Never really feeling love at all
But what you thought were different worlds apart
Pulls you in and wraps around your heart forever

[Repeat chorus twice]
So you push and you push and you push
Until you drop
Oh, you run
Oh, you run

Keep on running. But let love catch you every now and then.

Watch an acoustic performance of "You Run"

Up Next: The Call, Red Moon, 1990