Posted on Thursday 27 May 2010
(Sad Songs & Waltzes is a recurring feature on Muzzle of Bees, where artists share their favorite sad songs. Previous contributors include Damien Jurado, Kasey Anderson and Will Phalen.)
Send in the Clowns – Sad Song of the Year
(1973, Stephen Sondheim)
By John Gleason | Roadside Graves
I believe it was midway through the seventh listen in a row to this song that my wife said, “I thought you hate clowns”.
Everyone hates clowns. At least that’s how it seems when I share my own personal fears with others. I have a recurring dream where I’m being chased by an average sized clown in the dark. He always catches up and then as I turn my head over my right shoulder he lifts his foot towards me and it immediately inflates in size and crushes me. Wake up. Then back to sleep.
Doctors foolishly frame pictures of them to relieve a child’s stress level, but could easily be blamed for creating this fear. When I think of a doctor’s room the first two images I have are needles and clowns. If you don’t hate clowns someday you will.
Clowns have every intention of cheering you up. Yet to imagine who is behind the make-up just depresses me. The unappreciated work that must go into putting on a face, picking out an outfit, and walking proudly in those shoes is tragic and obscene. These are the clowns arriving in this sad song. Arriving too late, if at all.
Sad songs bring the listless to the dance floor. The acne boys smile.
In the winter it’s Townes Van Zandt and Leonard Cohen and a bowl of soup.
Lately though it’s been this song, Send in the Clowns, specifically the Judy Collins version even though Mark Kozelek does it better I prefer Judy’s as it brings out the middle aged woman in me. I cried once while watching a Fleetwood Mac concert on VH1, Lindsey was singing and Stevie quietly came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder for the duration of the song. Each year I become obsessed with a song (Kiss Me Deadly being a close second this year), but I’m a poor listener as I tend to not pay attention to what the song means and I could care less about what the chords are. I simply play it repeatedly because of how it makes me feel. Send in the Clowns tells me it’s ok to be a failure, to have regrets, to shake at the big sweeping decisions.
Man, I’ve been in bands since I was 15, I’ll be 33 next week and there are many nights where I’m a failure. And I have no intention of quitting. How do you continue? Well, you listen to Send in the Clowns, drink heavily, and consider yourself fortunate if someone is sleeping next to you.
Be it artistic or personal people seek approval. Praise is rare. Simple and honest recognition goes along way. The narrator in the song seems to have carried his/her life on the success or failure of a career and only at the end when no one is there does it seem to have an impact. When we are old will we be satisfied on how we treated our family and friends? Or will we wake up to the son of a bitch we really were. “I thought that you’d want what I’d want, sorry my dear”
Buy: The Very Best of Judy Collins
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MP3: Judy Collins – “Send In The Clowns”
MP3: Mark Kozelek – “Send In The Clowns”
MP3: Roadside Graves – “Far and Wide”
MP3: Roadside Graves – “Liv Tyler”
has been on such heavy rotation for me that it recently cracked my top 20 artists on LastFM and for months has been my go-to album for long, excited car rides whenever the destination is worthy enough for their yodeling sing-along melodies. As a nice bonus, the members are also genuinely nice people, as Canadians generally are, and deserve high praise just for karma’s sake, but I’ll just stop there and just implore you to check them out if you haven’t yet. Anyway, as you can imagine, their set was my most anticipated of the weekend and R.A.A didn’t disappoint, pulling the lounging, blissed-out crowd out of their lawn chairs and up to the stage to dance and holler along to the music just like you’re supposed to do at a backyard barbeque.
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