Joe is working through an arbitrary and unpublished list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.
You Don't Mess Around with Jim
Jim Croce
1972
The piece of trivia that will always be linked to Jim Croce in my mind is: "Which six artists had a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 after they died?" Croce (pronounced "CROW-chee") is one of those artists, hitting #1 for a second and final time with "Time in a Bottle" after he died in a plane crash. Unlike the other five artists (Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, the Notorious B.I.G., XXXTentacion), learning this particular piece of trivia was probably the first time I had ever heard of Jim Croce. It was one of those names that sounded familiar, and as is often the case I already knew a couple of his songs, but overall, I am pretty sure that learning about his death was the first thing that I ever learned about him.
Which is kinda grim! But that's how it goes. He was obviously a talented artist, and he had some good songs, and so it makes sense that he'd still have fans after dying. But the grim part is that the death gives new meaning to his work. This isn't a new idea on this blog—honestly, check out literally any review on any prematurely dead Record Club artist—but it's still one worth exploring. Especially in a case like this—"Time in a Bottle" really gets dark and twisted in the context of the dead.
"If I could save time in a bottle,
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you."
These were not originally lyrics about death (probably more just a poignant way of describing being in love), but c'mon, how do you not hear this song now and think about Jim Croce dying after recording it? The only excuse you'd have is that if you think about death and also that cool scene from an X-Men movie I've never seen. That's cool too. But even that speaks to I think the general idea of context affecting content. Maybe "Time in a Bottle" would've been a forgettable deep cut if Croce was 82 years old and alive today and puttering around his hometown of Philadelphia. But he's not, and so "Time in a Bottle" feels creepy and beautiful, and his most well-known album feels like a blind spot.
Which is kinda grim! But that's how it goes. He was obviously a talented artist, and he had some good songs, and so it makes sense that he'd still have fans after dying. But the grim part is that the death gives new meaning to his work. This isn't a new idea on this blog—honestly, check out literally any review on any prematurely dead Record Club artist—but it's still one worth exploring. Especially in a case like this—"Time in a Bottle" really gets dark and twisted in the context of the dead.
"If I could save time in a bottle,
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you."
These were not originally lyrics about death (probably more just a poignant way of describing being in love), but c'mon, how do you not hear this song now and think about Jim Croce dying after recording it? The only excuse you'd have is that if you think about death and also that cool scene from an X-Men movie I've never seen. That's cool too. But even that speaks to I think the general idea of context affecting content. Maybe "Time in a Bottle" would've been a forgettable deep cut if Croce was 82 years old and alive today and puttering around his hometown of Philadelphia. But he's not, and so "Time in a Bottle" feels creepy and beautiful, and his most well-known album feels like a blind spot.
I like how the album You Don't Mess Around with Jim is split between comical and contemplative. The title track, for instance, is a goofy story about not fucking with people bigger than you (the "Jim" in the story is a fictional hustler, not Jim Croce himself, though the fact that he chose the same name for this character adds to the humor significantly). But then you have something like "New York's Not My Home," which is kinda sad in the way it describes that awful universal feeling of not fitting in (and it of course speaks to my own particular sensitivities about NY, which adds to the pathos significantly). Hearing Croce alternate between these two sides of himself has a way of endearing him to us. I can see why he was still on the up-and-up when that plane crashed.
What I find the most fascinating is that, through this album at least, Croce really did achieve immortality. I had never heard most of these songs before this week, and had rarely ever heard his voice at all, and so there would be a good chance that maybe this would come off like a product of its early-'70s era. Not true. This music has aged wonderfully. It sounds of a time and a place but it definitely doesn't sound "old" or "out of touch." The funny is funny in a way that your grandpa might be around the dinner table, and the sad and touching feels like a transmission from literally any point in human history.
The tricky part about finding an great album under these circumstances is to have the grace to appreciate those circumstances without celebrating them. Yes, it's fucked up that this talented artist died at the age of 30, and yes, it's fucked up that I might not been as urgent in listening to his music if he had not died at that time. I am sad that "Time in a Bottle" was prescient, but I am glad that I am listening to You Don't Mess Around with Jim. The happiness and sadness are correlation, not causation.
What I find the most fascinating is that, through this album at least, Croce really did achieve immortality. I had never heard most of these songs before this week, and had rarely ever heard his voice at all, and so there would be a good chance that maybe this would come off like a product of its early-'70s era. Not true. This music has aged wonderfully. It sounds of a time and a place but it definitely doesn't sound "old" or "out of touch." The funny is funny in a way that your grandpa might be around the dinner table, and the sad and touching feels like a transmission from literally any point in human history.
The tricky part about finding an great album under these circumstances is to have the grace to appreciate those circumstances without celebrating them. Yes, it's fucked up that this talented artist died at the age of 30, and yes, it's fucked up that I might not been as urgent in listening to his music if he had not died at that time. I am sad that "Time in a Bottle" was prescient, but I am glad that I am listening to You Don't Mess Around with Jim. The happiness and sadness are correlation, not causation.
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