I used to do these in- studio spots at the college radio station where I live back when radio was still a thing. There was a DJ there who had worked at a public radio station in Chicago the summer before he started college. I had long curly hair. I was always hung over and a little high on weed. And unbeknownst to me the staff at the station all referred to me as “Stinky Knutson” behind my back.
The kid who'd worked at the Chicago radio station and hosted the folk music show that would have me on had this tape as I recall it of John Prine. Once. When the kid was doing a shift at WBEZ (I think) John Prine walked into the station. He got on the air and he told this story about running into this girl he knew in high school the night before. He was probly in his 40s. It was the nineties and I haven't checked the math. This woman had been drinking semi professionally since high school, as had John I imagine. -Remember all of this is remembered from a morning show spot in excess of 30 years ago.-
John had written this song, Ain't it funny how a broken bottle kinda shines like a diamond ring, or something close to that and the kid had been in the booth when John came in and had the good sense to record the story and the song.
I didn't really get it at the time. I had some good songs, but I wasn't really doing the work most of the time. I knew how to catch things out of the air, but I didn't know having them whole or keeping them alive was a thing. I just knew good-not so good, and catchy -not catchy. I was an aspiration to a mess, personally. People will slow down to see a wreck, especially if it's on fire. I may have been on fire. Sometimes you write about something that really happens because it made you feel. Sometimes you write how you feel and maybe you don't know what really happens. There's light and heat and if you keep throwing flammable s**t in there's more light and heat… and apparently an odor of some kind.
Sometimes there's a thing in the world that shines. Sometimes it's another mess of things on fire.
I recorded this on this Boss digital 8-track that saved to zip disk. When I hear it I hear the zip drive spinning up in the back ground and the noise gate closing up on the quiet noise and I hear this swoony drunken fire swaggering along a beach like it's an alive thing along the tide line with the water coming up and the sun coming down …like a set of snapshots from a beach encounter in a disposable camera I forgot where I put.
I half stole the name.
Broken Bottle
||: Girl you let me know that it's true and I do find you o, so incredibly lost to be having our fun. But I know that it's you and the way that you do what has never been done is my bane and I break like a drunk’s code of silence. An island’s a bottle in somebody's sea, and your secret 's in me.
Come near in the shallows and gather me. Anyone could take me home. My dear, you are scattered in me like the white sands are scattered in foam.
Come take me home. :||
Cryptic, I know, but outside of the reference to the John Prine song I maybe heard and maybe didn't on a tape at a morning radio spot 30 plus years ago, there isn't anything specific I recall about the inspiration for this one. It sounds boozy and sweet.
I caught this one out of the air and I can still feel the bourbon and the heartache of an ameture Casanova.
I put it on an album. Splendor.
Buy one from Bandcamp. Track 9.
