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| Ecce Homo and Hope Again |
| band: Baby Dee |
| Album: Safe Inside The Day |
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I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
~ Emma Lazarus
"America has forgotten how to say, 'I love you.'"
~ A quote I remember from the writings of Tennesee Williams
"And if I can remain there / If I can remain there / And if I can remain there (In that heaven of your eyes) / I will stay / And I will live another day / Safe! / inside the day / Where angels soft as kisses ride / Gentle horses safe inside the day / And I will live another day."
~ Baby Dee (transcribed and paraphrased from the song Safe Inside The Day)
Dare we tolerate what God has created?
Does our love have its limits?
Has America forgotten how to say, "I love you?"
The mantle of Tom Waits, Pauline Oliveros, Wendy née Walter Carlos, Sarah Brightman, Bozo, Bette Midler, Antonio Carlos Jobim, British and Celtic ballads, all things cabaret, Judy Garland and Shirley Temple has fallen hard on Baby Dee. In a climate of rabid politics in Ohio this election season, I am prompted to ask, "Who is the real Baby Dee?" He was once the musical director for a Catholic church in the South Bronx while also playing accordion at a Coney Island Sideshow, felled trees for a living until a mishap involving a house, rode a tricycle in Greenwich Village simultaneously playing the harp, and appeared in performance as "the bilateral hermaphrodite" in carnival performances. Save a hiatus from music for that misbegotten half life pruning widow makers, Baby Dee has produced haunting, lyrical music and astonishing, heart-wrenching songs and bawdy ballads with depth and humor beyond the scope of America's selected and celebrated gaggle of singer songwriters. She's a mezzo-soprano in the mold of Rev. Tom Waits. Baby Dee's music is the gospel of love against all odds. Perhaps Dee's heart is bigger than one sex could bundle. Behold the man and praise this woman! Cleveland has produced the voice of the discontented art song worthy of a dispossessed generation.
We are all hurt deeply sometimes. I've been capsized by circumstance, haven't you? How then can any of us afford to ignore the captain of the deep insistent longing contained in the songs of Baby Dee? Ignore the red flags at your peril, I've been told. I believe we must cling to the words of hope sung from the depths of incessant despair, or risk facing the darkness without a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. Baby Dee knows that predicament and writes in anger that light must be fixed! Hope is there dim and glistening at the end of every dark horizon. I feel it in these songs, need it in my bones, and seek to identify it as I march into bleak tomorrows. "Who will save us now?" asked Baby Dee when I was dancing to disco and planning for retirement. My heart may soon sing along in that self-same fear, but there is hope in that voice. I may be listening to an angel in disguise though I suppose that harp should have been a dead giveaway. Love hurts and heals in these songs. "And if I can remain there, I will live another day. Safe! Safe inside. Where angels soft as kisses ride on gentle horses safe inside the day, inside the song, safe inside." (Paraphrase from the song Safe Inside The Day.)
Ah, come on! You may say that's not possible. Prove me wrong! Listen to the songs. Get quiet, no one watching. Turn off the news. Stop writing emails. Click on the page and wait for the sound. Open up that dusty door in your heart you thought was broke. Storm the barricade of your cynical denial that has kept you at home with diminished dreams. Imagine what it would be like to feel love again for something more than the object of your own affectation. There's a child inside stuck in the corner of a forgotten room, numb with shame, who wants to cry and laugh and love again. These songs are the work of a dancing boy or girl born among the demons of uncertain, smallish goals and diminished by the fallacy of accepted certainty. It's time to put down the guns and dance, let hope flicker into flame, and dare to believe.
Safe Inside The Day is worth those few and precious remaining dollars you rescued from your 401K for a rainy day. When the hard rains fall, you'll need hope more than a sandwich. There's also a damn fine double album containing Little Window and The Robin's Tiny Throat available at better websites everywhere.
ARTICLES ON BABY DEE:
(None of these non-myspace sources asked for my password. Take a chance.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jan/20/popandrock.shopping4
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17940655
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/48509-safe-inside-the-day
http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-02-13/music/baby-dee-a-little-buzz-in-a-big-bee-costume/
http://www.last.fm/music/Baby+Dee
http://www.brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=373&Itemid=64
http://hellisforhipsters.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/baby-dee-safe-inside-the-day/
http://www.mp3.com/artist/baby-dee1/summary/
http://www.threeimaginarygirls.com/recordreview/2008jan/safeinsidetheday
http://www.topix.com/who/baby-dee
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