Periodically, I check in at 3 Chord Philosophy to scan the comments on The Jim Carroll Band's "People Who Died." (1,526 viewers have weighed in since I uploaded the song; my visits in 2018 and last year are here and here.) I'm fascinated by the community that forms out of, and as, YouTube comments, a gathering place akin, at times, to an intimate party or a group of strangers around a merch table at a club: commiserations, sighs, shy one-off responses or testimonials. Amidst the typical show-offy, tone-deaf, and/or "[whatever show or movie] brought me here" comments are unusually candid replies from grieving folk who've recently lost a loved or or who've been laboring with loss for years, and who hear, and rock out to, Carroll's frank litany of senseless or otherwise confounding deaths, and find release, or at least something to identify with. And with the Covid pandemic, a new tragic voice has entered the room. As long as this song's heard, it'll speak.
No comments:
Post a Comment