What Happened to You

Album: The Call, Red Moon, 1990

Acquired: I picked this up from the same bargain tape rack in a Nashville mall music store that yielded my much-played Blue Rodeo Casino cassette. As much as I love me some Call, I have only even listened to Red Moon maybe 10 times in the 14 years I've owned it.

Best Track: "This Is Your Life"

Lasting Memory: I can't honestly write that I have any specific memories of this album. That makes The Call four for four in this category. But whereas Modern Romans, Reconciled, and Let the Day Begin tend to run through too many of my thoughts and life experiences for me to choose one as outstanding, Red Moon doesn't run through any. Three of the albums have been personally permeative (yeah, it's a real word); the other has been surfactant (again, blame Messrs. Merriam & Webster).

This is not the band's fault. The lyrics of the songs on Red Moon are great, and the vocals and musicianship put most bands' offerings to shame. I just don't remember Red Moon because I have never really listened to it. The reason I've never really listened to Red Moon is because the album was never one that was for or about me.

Nearly all the characters and narrators on this album have found their purpose, their place, their people, and their peace. The central question of "What Happened to You" isn't being asked, as it usually is, to get the hearer to figure out what went wrong. Instead, the narrator wants to know what the other person has seen, heard, or done to stop being shy, tired, mealymouthed, and mean-spirited. Another character finds solace in occasionally "Floating Back" to a "you" that could be God, a friend, a family member, or a lover. Who the you is doesn't matter so much as the sense of completeness and safety that person provides.

While "You Were There" lays out all the world's problems that one person on his or her own could never solve, "A Swim in the Ocean" states the obvious truth that individuals tend to make their own problems and can minimize them by worrying less and enjoying more. The latter song also has a nice bit of like-it-or-lump-itness:

I'm too young to have problems
I'm too old to play games
I'm to wise to be standing
Standing in the pouring rain

I'm too smart to be hungry
I'm too hard to be meek
I'm too proud to be sorry
I'm too strong to be weak

[Chorus]
Go take a swim in the ocean
Go take a swim in the sea
Go take a swim in the ocean
Who's gonna care about me

In "Family," which has to be even more autobiographical than most of Michael Been's songs -- and that would make it a candidate for the most autobiographical song ever -- Been sings to his own parents

Now that I'm grown with a child of my own
I reflect on the years
The love that was lost, we all paid a cost
With a life filled with tears
Oh but I loved you dear
Let us move from here

I won't belabor what that means, but I will mention that Been currently produces, writes, and sometimes performs with his son's band, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. He's learned his lessons well.

It is almost definitely neither a coincidence nor a vagary of the record business that Red Moon is the second to last studio album The Call recorded. Their last album, To Heaven and Back, was released in 1997.

By 1990, the band's members had literally grown up on DAT over a 7-year period of constant touring and work in the studio and had said all they needed to say. They certainly must have figured they had no reason to kill themselves to land a new record deal when they had already exorcised their demons, built strong family lives, and could still play gigs when and where they wanted to for the rest of their lives.

I've gone and on, and I've quoted and quoted, in this post because I now do very nearly relate to what The Call was getting at with Red Moon. I'm settled. I'm happy. I have good relations with family members. I have money in the bank. I'm involved with volunteer work. I'm being paid to stay involved with my favorite sport. I'm even going to church again. Life is good. Substitute "my" for "you" in "This Is Your Life":

[Chorus]
This is your life
This is your world
Beginning to end
This is the price of heaven, our hope
This is the time
This is your life

The push and the pull
We give and we take
We rise and we fall
We bend til we break
The future is ours
The promise is true
This your life
I've seen it before
I've seen many times
An impossible task cut down to size
We stand in the breach
We fight at the front
This is your life

[Repeat chorus]

We've all grown up together
It's a shame we grow apart

A world without end
A stroll through the fire
The journey depends
On the length of the wire
We're rarely at ease
The pressure is high
This is your life
So it begins
We reach for the stars
Lift up your voice
Freedom is yours
The spirit's alive
Oh what a ride
This your life

[Repeat chorus]

This is your life
This is your world
The struggle begins
This the price of heaven, our hope
This is your chance
This is your life

No clip for today's best track. Feel free to pass along any you stumble across. Also, probably no new posts until Sunday.

Up Next: The Johnny Cash Collection, 1988 (a probably unauthorized, and certainly noncanonical collection of Johnny Cash's early 1960s hit singles published by an Italian company called Deja Vu Records)