Joanna Newsom - Sawdust and Diamonds (earliest recording - Live at ICA 2004)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- The earliest known recording - albeit unfortunately truncated - of Joanna Newsom performing Sawdust and Diamonds (or rather, an early version of it) at at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts on November 4th 2004.
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to think she was only 22, with that level of harp virtuosity and lyrical depth, i die
Paul McCartney was almost pathetic after he turned 35, like in 1983? Nobody was buying those records. No shade on Joanna but keepin' it real.
@@gibberconfirm425I’m so confused by this comment lol
The “it was not my mistake, it was not your mistake” section is so beautiful - I love the album version but part of me wishes she had kept it. What an amazing gift this recording is.
Ys with MEM's vocals. Love it.
Exactly what I thought when I first heard it
Amazing to hear this again. I was there that night, one of the most amazing shows I've ever seen. Beyond stunning.
This is a relic
Oh! the lyrics near the end are different from the final version. Its incredible to be able to hear this version of the song.
love the illustration too!
Lyrics from ear (please correct if you point something out) -
From the top of the flight
Of the wide, white stairs
For the rest of my life
Will you wait for me there?
There’s a bell in my ears
There’s the wide, white roar
Drop a bell down the stairs
Hear it fall forevermore
Hear it fall forevermore...
Drop a bell off of the dock
Blot it out in the sea
Drowning mute as a rock;
And sounding mutiny
There’s a light in the wings, hits the system of strings
From the side, while they swing -
See the wires, the wires, the wires
And the articulation in our elbows and knees
Makes us jerk in the breeze;
Makes a bell, makes a barrel, ? on wires
And the little white dove
Made with love, made with love;
Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers
Swings a low sickle arc, from its perch in the dark:
Settle down, settle down, settle down, settle down my desire
And the moment we slept, was a moment I met with a tremor
For I was not bereft, and I shook! And I couldn't remember
And then the furthermost shake drove a murthering stake in
And cleft me right down through my center!
And I shouldn’t say so, but I know that it was then, or never
Push me back into a tree
Bind my buttons in salt
Fill my long ears with bees
Praying please, please, please love
Oh, no you ought not
No you ought not
And then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings
Cut from cardboard and old magazines,
Makes me warble and rise, like a sparrow
In the place where I stood, there’s a circle of wood
A cord or two - which you chop, and you stack in your barrow
And it is all well and good, to carry water and chopped wood
Streaked with soot, heavy-booted and wild-eyed;
While I crash through the rafters, ropes and the pulleys trail after
Holy, holy, holiest belfry burns sky-high
And then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision
And, somewhere with your pliers and glue, you make your first incision
And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision
Doubled over with the hunger of lions
Hold me close, cooed the dove
Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds
I wanted to say: Why the long face?
Slowly, slip away with your long face
Sparrow, perch and bray plays songs of the long face
Burrow, buck and bray songs of long face!
I will eat your sadness, I will swallow cold clay
Just to lift your long face;
And though it may be the madness, I will take to the grave
That precious long face
And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate-
Why the long face?
And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil-
Why the long face?
It was not my mistake, it was not your mistake
There is a bell beneath the lake
And there, I believe the spell begins to break
And there, I believe the spell begins to break
In the trough of the waves
Which are pawing like dogs
Pitch we, pale-faced and grave
As I write in my log
And then there’s a noise in the hull
Seven days out to sea
It is the damnable bell!
And it tolls - well, I believe that it tolls - it tolls for me
And it tolls for me
And in the night, in the wings, perhaps in the tip of my wings
Makes me rise,
Makes me rise,
Makes me wobble and rise like a sparrow
And the moment I slept, was a moment I met with a tremor
For I was not bereft, and I shook! And I couldn't remember
And then the furthermost shake drove a murthering stake in
And cleft me right down to my center
Where did you get these? They're amazing!
years ago there were recordings of her performing this song where she'd sob uncontrollably during it, does anybody have any links/recordings of that anywhere? I'd do anything to hear those version again.
omg
wow. it's funny you mention that, because years ago I dreamed of joanna recording this song in a studio and she was weeping at some point... I woke up sobbing uncontrollably myself. I remember this dream so vividly. And of course being such a personal, full of emotion song, I never doubted that that was ever the case - at least in the beginning when she composed the song. Never really thought she would happen to cry to the audience, that sounds harsh :/ But at the same time it gives me strength to think that she managed to settle down, settle down those emotions eventually. It gives me hope. So while I think it'd be interesting - to say the very least - to have access to such a video, it does sound a bit sadistic too to find some form of gratification from watching someone sob uncontrollably. But anyways, I'm so grateful for her music, and grateful for your comment too!
Interesting point.. I think it would only be sadistic if Joanna's tears or sobbing are associated with an unfortunate breakdown in control, a moment of vulnerability she wishes she could have back, some kind of pain you are happy "she" is personally suffering. In a different light, and especially because the song has made so many of us cry, it reveals something of our common humanity with the artist. It's not a matter of bringing her down to our level, but of allowing ourselves to rise to hers. To see them inverted as much as to witness ourselves in her pain. If the song makes both the artist and the audience sob passionately in a beautiful cathartic way (or any way, which are all beautiful), and we experience her as the angel that brought it to us, perhaps she experiences it in a similar way, as being a gift from above or outside herself. Something that came down to her, and helped her "sad-face," be fully felt, realized, and released. It's the ones who can't cry you should pity, and if you were a sadist who enjoyed the suffering other people went through, its the people who sob that no longer allow themselves to be the source of your joy. This song has been the source of much transmutation in my own life, it makes me happy to think she was able to use it in the same way.
*Deep Bow To Joanna
If you ever found them please reply :) !
TH-cam has plenty of filmed versions where she weeps playing it, but I think this really is the earliest one.