Into Dust

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6LYrGx5a39RNfXbNsaDcHq?si=3eb485a1d0b64e69

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04J0ihSeIuI

We're watching this BritBox show "Save Me" that Mike Mettler recommended. It stars Lennie Davis, who you might know from "The Walking Dead," but I never saw that series. However, I did recognize him from "Line of Duty," whose team is responsible for this show.

Lennie plays "Nelly," a charismatic man living in a council flat. Well, a number of council flats (which in this case are in a tower), because he's a Lothario, a womanizer, he's having relationships with four women at the same time...and then he gets busted.

Not that Nelly seems to have any means of support. Then again, everybody in this show except for Suranne Jones as Claire McGory is living on the bottom. Which is a reason Felice at times expressed exasperation... If you want someone to root for, if you want people you can relate to, if you want shiny happy people, "Save Me" is not the show for you.

So the lives of the characters revolve around the pub the Palm Tree, run by Stace (Susan Lynch...you'll recognize her if you're a fan of British TV)...they were all buddies growing up. And on one hand, I'm envious that they've got a clubhouse, that the relationships have been maintained, then again alcohol-fueled establishments ultimately lead to heated arguments.

Not that the more monied classes are doing so much better, Claire and her husband are living in an upscale modern house, she drives a Range Rover, but the underlying economics are sketchy...how many are living a life of illusion? If you pierce the veil there are very rickety underpinnings.

So this is one of these shows that's basically a search for a missing girl. And it's dark and intense and at the end of episode four of "Save Me Too," the second season, there's an intense, ultimately poignant moment and this song starts to play and it fits exactly, I'm mesmerized. I pause it and run for my phone to Shazam it.

I expected some modern English number, I was getting ready to be turned on to someone new. But the song was "Into Dust" by Mazzy Star. From 1993.

I've got that CD, somewhere in my garage. I've played a bit of Mazzy Star, I'm certainly familiar with the act's career arc, but I did not know this song. But it's far from obscure, turns out that "Save Me Too" was not the only sync. There's been a plethora of them. Not that I'd heard "Into Dust" before, or remember I'd heard it before.

And "Into Dust" had the feel of a toned-down version of Sinéad O'Connor's "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart" from "In the Name of the Father"...as if it was cut in a sealed room distant from the rest of society. And "Into Dust" also sounded like the ethereal album rock from the U.K. and San Francisco in the late sixties...before everybody switched to FM and bombastic rock took precedence. Even "Disraeli Gears," which is known for its riff-rock "Sunshine of Your Love," had some of this feel. Then again, it was a different era. England was going from black and white to color, with those born during the war jumping off from the blues records they were influenced by. And in the U.S...you had a middle class of musicians who could make ends meet on almost nothing experimenting.

As for Mazzy Star...

You could categorize them, Wikipedia says they're part of the Paisley Underground, a descriptor I never quite cottoned to. These were acts that had a presence in Los Angeles, their albums would get reviewed in the "Times," be featured in "L.A. Weekly," but they didn't break through nationally, one can question whether they even truly broke through locally. But unlike most of those acts, Mazzy Star had a major label deal and major label press... But their music was not broken by the radio, you had to purchase it to get into it. And then they stopped making music but their legend continued and...here I am thirty five years after its release listening to "Into Dust."

Now no one is listening to the ethereal second side of Country Joe and the Fish's "I-Feel-Like-I'm Fixin'-To-Die." As for the hits of 1992, when was the last time you heard Kriss Kross's "Jump"? But "Into Dust" lives on. With a sound so foreign to the Spotify Top 50 that it's akin to essentially nothing with traction today...it's not country, it's not EDM, it's not alternative, it's not improvisational jam band, it's just...music.

Now when done right there's a chemistry between image and song that transcends the underlying number, never mind the images themselves.

Now if there was ever promise that this would be a feature of music videos, that was quickly quashed...well, there's the "Father Figure" video...but most music videos are not narrative works, touching part of your soul that everybody has that cannot be verbalized.

So it's an important moment when "Into Dust" plays in "Save Me Too." At times the music is playing and nothing is being said and nothing is happening, it's the music that sets the mood, it runs shotgun with the images...it's not background, it's equal.

"I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain"

Now unlike the second side of that Country Joe and the Fish album, none of whose tracks break seven figures, "Into Dust" has 78,908,103 streams on Spotify. And it's track #11, of 12. Which means people have found it.

That's the power of the modern era. For all the people bitching they can't get listens, that they can't get paid by streaming services, everything from the past is up for grabs, a land mine ready to be stepped on. Hiding in plain sight, ready to be discovered or pointed to.

"It was you breathless and tall
I could feel my eyes turning into dust"

That was what was happening. The meeting, the connection in "Save Me Too." But even though the words fit perfectly, it was more about the feel of "Into Dust" that resonated.

This is the essence of music. From the classical tradition on to today. It doesn't have to be in your face, you don't have to be able to dance to it, it's the mood it puts you into, it sets your mind free and envelops you in a cocoon of warmth all at the same time.


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