Something for Easter.
jews for jesus blues : clem snide
click here or on the image below to listen
Sometimes random purchases can turn into wonderful surprises. I only knew Clem Snide from their 2005 album, End of Love, which I picked up blindly at a bricks-and-mortar record shop late last year. I do that sometimes, without even sampling the CD, just hoping the album would be good enough for me to like. Needless to say, not all of them have been worth the dough, but End of Love made up for some previous disappointments. If you like folk-rock with a maniacal twistedness, you will be happy to know that Clem Snide have been at it for five albums now. Like most of the songs I post here, this one just doesn't encapsulate the band. My favorite track from End of Love, the upbeat Something Beautiful, is funny, sexy, and dangerously perverted all at once. Get this: You make me wanna/Soak it in gasoline, stain my new shirt/Sip lysol from a cup, so clean it hurts. Jews for Jesus Blues, on the other hand, resonates the confusion of a middle-aged fuck-up who thinks God is playing a joke on his or her good intentions. I don't wanna suffer and I don't wanna die/I want the clouds parted in an endless, blue sky/But someone up there has a different plan/Now that I'm saved I wish I was damned. As you will hear, it doesn't come off as tongue-in-cheek as it was probably intended to be.
Anyway, by pure coincidence, I learned about the Jews for Jesus movement not because of this song but after seeing the film Everything is Illuminated on a plane last month. Not that there's any reference about it in the film (or the book, which I've read, and yes, the book is way better). I just found myself searching the web about Judaism after watching the Elijah Wood movie, and as it is with Google, one thing led to another and I found myself here.
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