Three Imaginary Girls - Jim White

Jim White

Chris Estey — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 07:00:00 +0000

Jim White was an aspiring model when he was twenty-three years old. He was in Europe, waiting on another shoot, in a hotel room he could barely pay for. Out of boredom, he began to pick up books. He hadn't read much before — his strict fundamentalist upbringing kept him to the Bible and fantasy by C.S. Lewis. Now he was starting off with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut and Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, then moving on to Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

"I was saved by Salinger, and the satirical sanity of Vonnegut," he says. "Sure, it was a pop culture conduit. But Vonnegut taught me that a person facing terrible isolation didn't need to resolve it religiously."

Just a short while before, White actually had tried to redeem his life by walking 'the narrow road' in Florida. He'd gone home, a prodigal son who had been surfing in California for a few years, and the Christians who were a big part of that scene inspired him to renew his childhood spirituality.

"I'd been 'saved' when I was fifteen," White says, "and I went back to Pensacola to embrace the church, to have a 'spirit-filled life.' Within four months I'd opened up a surfboard factory, and fell in love with a girl I attended church with."

But White's life took a turn for the worse. "She started cheating on me, having sex with the guy who sat in the pew directly behind us," he explains. "My business partner, who also went to that church, embezzled a bunch of money from our company to fuel his cocaine habit. And then my best friend got in a horrible motorcycle wreck and was lingering on the edge of death. We went to church that night, and my friends and I resolved to pray for him exhaustively — which we did for two weeks. Then he died.

"I was leading the singing at that church, and then one night realized I couldn't do this anymore. I had a 'hallelujah breakdown.'"

White says he realized that all of this activity is just a misunderstanding. "Who are we to tell God what to do? I decided not to worry about my faith anymore. I'm not going to go out of my way for it. That feels like you're inventing it."

His sister was getting into the fashion industry in New York, so he moved up to be with her, to try and help him forget his misery. Someone mentioned he could make it as a model, so he gave it a shot. As that career floundered and his intellectual curiosity deepened, he began to write songs that combined the ecstatic religious imagery and scattered cultural debris of his upbringing, culminating in his first album, Wrong-Eyed Jesus. When it was released by David Byrne's multi-cultural record label Luaka Bop, White returned to Pensacola to play a free show.

"I expected about fifty people, but only about eight showed up," he says. "Six of them were Born-Again Christians trying to get me to come to their church." In the parking lot afterwards, they told him that he should accompany them to their services, that God was "really, really there." This angered him so much that he kicked his car and yelled, "The Lord is in my car!" and "How can you say that you know where the Lord is?"

At nearly fifty years of age, White still has a profound respect for the mystical side of things — he rejected Rand's Objectivism because "she has no conception of mysteries from externalities; she places herself in the nexus of perception" — though he maintains contentious friendships with Christians.

"I don't hold them too close; they tend to view my opinions as utter heresies," he says. "They don't seem intellectually prepared to deal with them. I know it makes their hearts ache. I don't proselytize but when they get on me I give it back to them. I just think that when you say, 'This is God,' then God disappears."

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Jim White is white. Very white. He's related to Princess Diana and had relatives arrive on Plymouth Rock. This whiteness was troubling to him when he was a boy, a sailor's youngest of five and an outcast due to their vagabond life — so he didn't feel he fit in with the other white kids. "But the black kids wouldn't accept me, either, so I struggled hard to be pathetically white — instead of 'cool' black, making myself white enough to slide into a strange realm of grace, becoming super-white."

He feels the ex-Talking Heads front man who has put out his three albums (Wrong-Eyed Jesus, Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See, and No Such Place, respectively) shares this craving for white-defined soul with him. "Though these days he's trying to be the Latin lover," White cracks. "He does this knowingly — he's Scottish and has become a wanderer; he knows the pratfalls, sings beautiful Latin songs, it's his acknowledgment as a universal human being."

White's new record is a soundtrack made after Andrew Douglas, an Englishman who was inspired by the tales of religion and despair in the South on White's first album, collaborated with him on the documentary Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus. It's a compilation that features previously released songs by White and roots-based covers and music from contemporary artists such as Johnny Dowd and Maggie Brown, Cat Power, Sixteen Horsepower, David Johansen, and the Handsome Family.

Broadcast initially on the BBC, the project had much input from various sources — some inbred, like the twisted tale-weaving performances of striking rural-gonzo novelist Harry Crews, who happened to be a teacher of White's wife in Florida. "I couldn't really be the quintessential voice of authority when it came to the subject matter," White says, "so the producers said, 'We have someone to do that.'"

But Crews wasn't particularly enamored with working directly with White. "He wasn't really interested in talking to me, though when the camera was on he really worked. He was in a lot of pain from cancer. When he limps away on a cane at the end of his scene, he's not acting."

Another awkward personal connection is related to one of the album's songs, White's own "Christmas Day," from his previous release. "That's about Christmas 1998, and in the film one of the three ladies singing 'Knoxville Girl' was the mother of a child we'd had three months prior to being in the bus station described in that song. Mostly when I write songs I write about what I want to be. But this one was about me realizing that I was never going to have a happy life with this woman, even though we had this child. And all those promises that descend on Christmas, when grace is the rule of the occasion — feeling this horrible sadness among these other people suffering in the face of what hope is supposed to be promising you on that day."

For an example to confirm this juxtaposition, I mention how he drops both "Amazing Grace" as well as James Taylor's song "Fire and Rain" into "Christmas Day," both tunes ubiquitous in our culture — one joyful, the other melancholy.

"The great thing about 'Fire and Rain' is that it's a dictionary of sorrows, but it's one of the first songs many people learn to play on guitar," White says. "It was a strange moment in popular music when sincerity was applauded."

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When White converted to Christianity as a teenager, it was at the legendary and notorious Assembly of God church in the Florida panhandle known as the Brownsville Assembly.

"I took these English filmmakers to Brownsville," White explains. "When I got saved, there was only about fifty people in the congregation. Then strange things started happening, and the church got enormous. It had an affect on the whole nation. I thought, 'Let me take you to this place.'"

White took director Douglas to a healing service. "They shut the doors and got to business," White says. "No sermon, nothing but intense emotional laying on of hands. We were sitting behind this morbidly obese woman, and the deacons came down to heal her. As they were praying over the 400 pound woman, and she was being 'slain in the spirit,' one of the deacons whispered back to Andrew, 'You're a catcher!' That meant he was going to be the one she would fall on. Andrew is this posh English atheist, who has serious disc problems in his back, which he has a lot of pain from. He literally started praying against her getting healed. So there was this great collision -- and in the end Andrew won! She walked out of the church without being healed.

"When I later told a fundamentalist friend who works at an advertising agency about this, she said, 'That can't be true, because God doesn't hear the prayers of the unsaved.'"

White finds this sort of attitude pestiferous — "truly damaging to a country with a broad cross section of Americans feeling a spiritual void," he says. "It's a quiet, slow rendering asunder a holy garment. What happens is that their religion becomes a hiding place. They are warned not to hide their light under a bushel, that entropy will take it down."

An interesting thing to note is David Eugene Edwards' participation in the film and soundtrack, both solo and with his original band Sixteen Horsepower. I tell White that Edwards is well known for his own theological and cultural conservatism.

White responds, "Well, it makes sense. I didn't talk to him myself. The filmmakers let him give testimony in the movie. He didn't seem like the kind of guy who would force his notions of God down my throat. But I did have a discussion with his aunt and uncle around the time of filming about people in churches putting Bush in office, and I did later regret the strong language I used.

"Americans desperately need to be hooked up to others in the world right now," White says. "And as one of my favorite teachers once said, 'No, no, no — only ask questions.'"

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It was reading fiction that got Jim White into storytelling, but he claims that he's also strongly influenced by films, a particularly American art form. "I was really inspired by Paris, Texas and The Elephant Man as well," he says. "The latter film especially, with how the character felt in the context of humanity.

"There aren't very many artists that can create mystery," he asserts. "David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch are two. But Jarmusch isn't at odds with himself. I prefer him. Lynch can create mystery, too, but it's because there's this hunger for annihilation in his work. Wild at Heart is his best film because it most represents this. Lynch is a person with a hunger for oblivion, he's one of those people who has to tear down the temple, tear down the temple, to build it back up again."

"Richard Grant's American Nomads is a book I would really recommend," White offers. "It describes what the displaced mind tends to do. It's these Scottish-Irish people who always tried to settle someplace. That's who pretty much settled the South. They were seeking some sort of worldly representation for an otherworldly dis-ease.

"When there's a bubbling cauldron underneath, as there is in the South, you need a surface for society to exist," White says. "In truth, I'm away from that now. I wrote a song in 1997 titled 'Angel Land' that has the line, 'Mostly now these days I'm dreaming normal dreams.' . But although I am relaxed I am not asleep."

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Jim White is white. Very white. He's related to Princess Diana and had relatives arrive on Plymouth Rock...

AstroPOP! for August 2005

Chris Estey — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 07:00:00 +0000

Your monthly imaginary horoscope told in album reviews!

August 2005 AstroPOP! is brought to you with musical reviews by Chris Estey.

Leo
Some people have earned their pride—and this is a good month to fan your flames among all the poseurs, Leo. Some might consider your spirit hubris, but The Black Halos know you got to walk it like you talk it, and they do on Alive Without Control rough trade-produced in the studio by Mr. Endino (ironically, as they leave Sub Pop). This is the soundtrack to those nights of doing some business from uptown to downtown (title track), despite your poverty ("Third World USA"), and the weak minds of those who oppose your rock and roll confidence ("Burning Trash.") Some may only see the sleaze in your Gotham-juiced hellfire club anthems, but there's an underlying optimism and tenacity to live that will get you through the sweltering city this summer (e.g., "Last Call at the Toothless Saloon"—this isn't some band's first firecracker record?).

Virgo
You're a producer, Virgo, and like the people who put together the creative S.H.E. Warped tour, it's all about getting shit done {"providing a cool fun place where girls and guys can exchange ideas about pro-grrl music, art, lifestyles, politics, trends"}—as an earth sign, you dig your hands in. In the middle of your beautiful work-maelstrom in the next four weeks, you're going to need some music that grinds as hard as you, with a heart full of passion—and that album would be the debut Play Like A Girl by band-named-after-leader Jerra, who calls bullshit on male manipulation ("Drama King"), trips on lust and anger ("Slow 2 Burn"), and can throw some insanely-catchy-chorus dirt in some sucker's face ("The Others").

Libra
You're in the middle of pulling a bunch of shit together, Libra, and that's good to see. But August is a month of decisions, and you're going to have to learn how to adapt no matter what happens. Still, it's great to see how things get pulled together out of the air—like the playing on This Microwave World's first album, Red States), in which the bass work of Brandon Loe weaves a wonderful funk-spiraling canvas for the almost-atonal organ of Evan Lawrence. You can't do the same things over and over, though, Libra, expecting different results—like Sean O'Neal's voice, which could really use more variation in intonation. But when you do go for the jugular, as the band does on "She's Insecure," it seems more like a culmination of all that relentless anxiety, and the caustic air of revival fills the lungs. (Good call on TMW adding the deadly accurate but rhythmically fluent Kevin Bybee on drums, raising the band above the stiffness of their competitors in this brimming genre.)

Scorpio
Scorpio, let it go! Get over it! Soon it will be autumn and you need to forget those things that drive you so bat-shit. I wouldn't recommend meth, you're too confident already. Instead, drain out all the content like fluid, and just let your controlling nature embrace the chaos—as Agape does on their approach to electronics, which sounds like classic Wax Trax! bands meet the Locust. This six song drill-to-the-head was even mastered by Dan Maier, who has balanced levels for that latter band, whom Agape has also opened for, so dress up in black, slick your hair back, and dance till your shanks collapse.

Sagittarius
"She's in command of my heart," Vancouver power pop legends The Pointed Sticks sang at the end of the 70s (and at the beginning of their Sudden Death reissue "Perfect Youth"), a band that like you Sagittarius my sweetheart uses its pyromaniac tendencies to burn up the rule book while sometimes forgetting how much smoke it causes. Sagittarius is best represented by such a band that originally featured monster Subhumans drummer Dimwit (R.I.P.), that actually released an EP on Stiff (produced by Brinsley Schwartz!), a punk band not afraid to sing sweetly or add soulful Springsteen-style horns ("No Use For U") to its pubby mix. As irresponsible as you can be, Saggy, your exuberance carries you over every time, even when you're scary ("If you're perfect/there is no right and wrong").

Capricorn
It's easy for most people to lose track of time in this season, Capricorn, but you're the opposite—you need to relax a little and keep something for yourself when the occasion calls for it. Take Joel Peterson of The Faint for example—he wrote most of the new Broken Spindles' record Inside/Absent whilst on tour, sounding like it was something to do during a wind-down. He avoids electronic layering, tinkering away on piano and keyboards, singing journal entries, ideas that pop into his mind, avoiding the excess of his primary band's noisy melange. He took it home and just eased it into existence, and like reading a musical diary, or 'zine, it shines with a simple beauty. It's mysterious—like someone born during the holiday season who has to find their own private joy in the celebration of their existence occurring.

Aquarius
You are a flower that will bloom planted anywhere, Aquarius, but sometimes where you're planted can seem awkward. And yet, it's exactly where you should be this month—in a place that sounds awkward, but gives much pleasure where you are. The combination of "new wave" and "bossa nova" sounds awkward too, but they supposedly mean the same thing in French and Porteguese respectively when pronounced "Nouvelle Vague." Two older French gentlemen named Marc and Olivier who remember the dark days of the 80s bring back a delectable sequence of arguably timeless songs, and put delicate strumming and brushwork and additional percussion behind the silky voices of two Parisian girls apparently surnamed "Pain." What really grows on you isn't the uncanny juxtapositions, such as turning the Clash's "Guns of Brixton" into a Leonard Cohen style rumination on civil war, or the initial burst of creativity "This Is Not A Love Song" by Public Image— though the anomie of the latter is actually preferable in this format. The sublime reinvention is in how "Too Drunk To Fuck" by the Dead Kennedys gets creepier and yet more provocative by the giggling and ambivalence of the gender switch (taking an anti-Mentors style rant into artful territories) and the Specials' "Friday Night Saturday Morning" becomes THEE soundtrack of my hangover this morning—turning a public anthem into a personal abyss. Lovely tending, beautiful crop.

Pisces
Pisces, August will be a breeze for you. Take chances, shift around, find new ground. You're definitely swimming against the grain right now, but that works for you. Swimmers run up against it every way they can—melodic one minute, complete chaos the next, antediluvian punk producer Kurt Bloch turning their car jamming into a nightmare commute of drum rolls, vocal shrieks, and runs up and down he frets. It lurches, it burns, and it never gives up—just like you. Sure, I'll never play this EP again after reviewing it—it's like the Minutemen, only not eloquent, revelatory, or even much interesting. But it does create empathy, which Pisces excel at—put that lead singer out of his misery! Please, Pisces!

Aries
It's time to stop thinking about switching apartments again, and to start thinking about finding true love, Aries. You had it once, and it wants you back. You are so rational and precise you're metaphysical, your higher language beautiful and perplexing. You combine an Epicurean intellectual sensibility with futuristic tendencies, so opened-for-Scream Club Canadian freak-fi Gordon B. Isnor's effortless, uncanny mixture of Spanish guitar and cheap synthesizers, great drum programming with sweetly melodic keyboards, and disturbingly vague and vaguely disturbing lyrics mixed with coy anthem-like compositions, is the perfect soundtrack to those psychodramas you will host in your box-like apartment off Broadway this summer ("Just A Fleeting Thing").

Taurus
Get away from the cracked mirror, it can't be fixed! Is it usefulness you seek to repair it to, or are you afraid of your own self-image? Let the hot air swarm you like a warm blanket, let the chilled gin flow through your insides, lie back and stare at the ceiling whilst listening to the lush strumming and humming of Player Hater—which has possibly the worst band name of late. Very good vocals, like an American Music Club without the ragged homoerotic Beatific cesspool of self-loathing and satire, or an always-heartbroken, non-feedback ballad Starflyer 59-style. Jeff Gomez seems to like himself, name of band regardless, and just wants to make some observations about selfish lovers.

Gemini
There is redemption within entropy, so you need to settle down and accept some things this month. You are the master of masking and unmasking at the same time, dear Gemini, and we can see both of your faces quite clearly, even through a scanner darkly. Your song is "I Will Always Find A Way" by Suffering & the Hideous Thieves, from their new album Ashamed—a demented alternate universe doo-wop, with a malicious Judas kiss-off, due to be included on legions of mix CD-Rs sent between fans familiar with the band's baroque but throttling, violin-virulent, luscious gypsy-skronk ("Don't you ever stop believing I'll be leaving you forever more").

Cancer
In the murky depths of your puddled emotional trenches, Cancer, there is a need for salvation, even if religion is a ripe stink to you. This month you should focus on the past, South of now. As Luaka Bop artist Jim White chillingly sings in "Still Waters," the first song on his multi-artist soundtrack for his upcoming film Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus>: "There are projects for the dead and projects for the living / Though I must confess I get confused by that distinction / And throw myself into the arms of that which betrays me / To see how far the arms of Providence will come to save me".
Like you, White has no love for the faith himself but is fascinated by the fire the crucible arouses in criminals, poets, and holy fools who make art and run nations. Gonzo-freak writer Harry Crews opens the album with a liturgy of spoken word about storytelling, and the secretly-iconic Handsome Family, the passionately-pendant Cat Power, the fire-and-brimstone Sixteen Horsepower, and the immortal David Johansen among others are here to wade into the Baptism pool with you.

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See what's in the stars -- and the record stores -- for you for August 2005, including reviews from Suffering and the Hideous Thieves, Jim White, Swimmers, Broken Spindles, the Black Halos, and more.