Vic Chesnutt dead

[neo]

Athens GA Memorial Service

A memorial service will be held at Bridges Funeral Home, 3035 Atlanta Hwy, Athens, GA, 30606 on Sunday, December 27, 2009, from 3:00-6:00 pm. Following the memorial service, family and friends invite you to join them at Cine, 234 West Hancock Ave., Athens, GA. In lieu of flowers the family is requesting donations be made to Shepherd Center, 2020 Peachtree Road NW, Atlanta, GA, 30309 or Nuci’s Space, 396 Oconee Street, Athens, GA 30601. A tribute at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, will be held some time in the near future. A private interment ceremony will be held later in Pike County, Zebulon, GA.

http://cstrecords.com/

[neo]

The way I see it: Vic Chesnutt

Does art make a difference?
At the very least it makes a huge difference to the artist. But rock'n'roll changed the world - so did hip-hop.

Should politics and art mix?
Politics and art are mixed. Art developed and exists as it does today because of political patronage. From cave paintings and Stone Age Venus figurines to classical architecture, Byzantine church mosaics, Renaissance masterpieces and the entire National Portrait Gallery . . . it's all political propaganda. Then there is art as populism: Guernica, Goya, Mark Twain, Bob Dylan's "Masters of War", M*A*S*H. In the beginning, rock'n'roll was by its very nature political, populist propaganda.

Does money corrupt an artist?
Not if they are rich already. And frankly, sometimes when money and artists mix, great things happen. Of course, a hungry artist is very different from a sated one.

Is your work for the many or for the few?
Um, have you ever heard my music? I would say 20 years of doing my thing has proven it's for the few, no matter what be my wishes or pretensions, ha!

Which artist do you most admire?
To write it down seems strange and I tried hard for a long time, especially in the beginning, to resist his charms, but dammit, I think Basquiat is my favourite painter.

Which artist do you least admire?
Not a big fan of the King of Pop - may he rest in peace, though.

Which product, if any, would you advertise?
Almost anything. This is where money has corrupted me. I vehemently despise Wall Street but I'll take their evil money for a song.

If you weren't an artist, what would you be?
Ask anyone - they'll tell ya. Dead.

If you were world leader, what would be your first law?
A tariff on corn syrup.

Who would be your top advisers?
Chicks and Juan Cole.

What would you censor?
Pharmaceutical advertisements.

What would you legalise?
Drugs, prostitution, polygamy.

Who would you banish?
I don't think banishment is effective. Look at Napoleon.

What are the rules that you live by?
The entire Newtonian gamut.

What would you like your legacy to be?
I'm not sure yet what I want to be when I grow up. Maybe world leader!

Do you love your country?
Love/hate, you know the drill. Stockholm syndrome.

Are we all doomed?
Well, yes, every living cell on this planet is doomed, but the human race, as a species, like rats and cockroaches, will live for ever. Or until the sun explodes.

http://www.newstatesman.com/music/2009/ ... tist-money

[basecamp]

Thx neo!
Here a nice quote of one of the band members:

"Vic was our Keats, our Nina Simone. There will never be another like him."

- Guy Picciotto, guitarist, Fugazi/ the Vic Chesnutt Band

http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/ ... ff-mangum/

[basecamp]

If you ever need a clear example of the institutionalized cruelty of the American healthcare system, you could have asked Vic Chesnutt.

December 26, 2009
Did $70,000 In Medical Expenses Contribute To Vic Chesnutt's Suicide?...
Associated Press | Read Full Story >

LA Times:

…there’s an albatross that follows Chesnutt from the door of his home to every show he plays. Though he’s currently insured, an accumulating stream of nearly $70,000 worth of unpaid hospital bills is threatening to swallow much of his livelihood as a songwriter. It’s left him in an unprecedented condition— one where he’s at a loss for words.

“I’m not too eloquent talking about these things,” Chesnutt said. “I was making payments, but I can’t anymore and I really have no idea what I’m going to do. It seems absurd they can charge this much. When I think about all this, it gets me so furious. I could die tomorrow because of other operations I need that I can’t afford. I could die any day now, but I don’t want to pay them another nickel.”

Those feelings are deeply ingrained in “At the Cut,” where almost every song offers at least a sideways glance at creeping mortality. Take, for instance, “Flirted With You All My Life,” an incandescent country tune that’s a kind of a breakup letter to Chesnutt’s own thoughts of ending his life. “I’ve been a suicidal person all my life, and that song is me finally being ‘Screw you, death,’ ” Chesnutt said.

Chesnutt’s very real ensnarement in the insurance system lends an uncomfortable yet deeply compelling undertone to his lyrical attempts to make peace with illness, his paraplegism and death. Chesnutt doesn’t hold out too much hope for whatever healthcare bill makes it through the Senate, either—“What will pass will be weak, the powers that be will be happy and the insurance companies will be thrilled,” he believes.

A.P.:

…Chesnutt had recently struggled with a lawsuit filed by a Georgia hospital after he racked up surgery bills totaling some $70,000, the Athens newspaper reported. He said he couldn’t afford more than hospitalization insurance and couldn’t keep up with the payments.

The problems baffled his Canadian bandmates, Chesnutt said.

“There’s nowhere else in the world that I’d be facing the situation I’m in right now. They cannot understand what kind of society would inflict that on their population,” he said. “It’s terrifying.”

Across The Great Divide:

Back in 1996, a Chesnutt Tribute album called “Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation,” helped raise money for his medical bills — and was intended to perhaps goose him out of obscurity so he could make a better living. At the time, he was quoted in a Strib story by Jon Bream about medical insurance for musicians.

“A lot of musicians are living supper to supper” and can’t pay for insurance. “It’s really scary,” said Chesnutt, pop’s most prominent paraplegic singer-songwriter. “I was lucky enough: I had a job when I crashed. I was working at Hardee’s and at a cotton mill, too. So I’d paid in Social Security for a couple of years and I automatically got Medicaid, which is a great thing. If not, my family would’ve been starved to death. It would’ve sucked them dry.”

Even thirteen years later, a difficult and obscure artists can’t go back to the well for another tribute album. So the greatest outpouring comes too late.

http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/ ... s-suicide/

[Bequia]

Also listen to "My Name is Judas Iscariot" -- where Vic allows Judas to offer a defense of himself:
" I too was a chosen one
To be a brave and loyal suicided soldier."

This is great take on a idea that Judas acted in accordance with divine plan which the betrayal was necessary to fulfill ...in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, his betrayal is portrayed as an act of pious obedience...the question that then arises is if the betrayal was part of divine plan, how could Judas be held accountable...from this stems a more general question of the relationship between an omnipotent God and evil...

Along these lines, Nikos Kazantzakis in The Last Temptation of Christ had this interchange between Christ and Judas:

""You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me."

Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"

Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.""

[neo]

If you ever need a clear example of the institutionalized cruelty of the American healthcare system, you could have asked Vic Chesnutt.

Thanks for the article. I'm astonished everytime I realise, that comprehensive health insurance is such a controversial issue in the USofA...

[Bequia]

In this recent NPR interview with Terry Gross linked above, Vic had this to say:

GROSS: I read that you're in debt like $50,000 because of health insurance issues.

Mr. CHESNUTT: That's right.

GROSS: So - and this is because you had a series of surgeries and although you pay a lot for your health insurance, it didn't cover all of it. Is that - do I have that right?

Mr. CHESNUTT: That's exactly true, yeah.

GROSS: Uh-huh. So, what are your thoughts now as you watch the health care legislation controversy play out?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Well, I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care reform in this country. Because it's absurd that somebody like me has to pay so much, it's just too expensive in this country. It's just ridiculously expensive. That they can take my house away for kidney stone operation is -that's absurd.

GROSS: Is that what you're facing the possibility of now?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Yeah. I mean, it could - I'm not sure exactly. I mean, I don't have cash money to pay these people. I tried to pay them. I tried to make payments and then they finally ended up saying, no, you have to pay us in full now. And so, you know, I'm not sure what exactly my options are. I just - I really - you know, my feeling is that I think they've been paid, they've already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company. That seems like plenty. I mean, this would pay for like five or six of these operations in any other country in the world. You know, it affects - I mean, right now I need another surgery and I've putting it off for a year because I can't afford it. And that's absurd, I think.

I mean, I could actually lose a kidney. And, I mean, I could die only because I cannot afford to go in there again. I don't want to die, especially just because of I don't have enough money to go in the hospital. But that's the reality of it. You know, I have a preexisting condition, my quadriplegia, and I can't get health insurance.

GROSS: Is it true you can't get good health insurance?

Mr. CHESNUTT: I can't get - I'm uninsurable. The only reason I have any insurance now is because I was on Capitol Records for a while. And I had excellent health insurance there. And then when I got dropped from Capitol, I Cobra's(ph) my insurance for as long as it was legally possible. And then - and which was insanely expensive to cobra this very nice insurance. And then, when that ran out, the insurance company said they could offer me one last thing and that is hospitalization. It only covers hospital bills. That's all it covers. And it's still $500 a month. So, it doesn't pay for my drugs, my doctors or anything like that. All it pays for is hospitalization. And yet, I still owe all this money on top of that.

GROSS: Wow. Well, I wish you the best with your health and your music. And I really want to thank you...

- For those outside the US: when Vic spoke of "Cobra" he was referring to a government-mandated means of continuing under a group health insurance plan for (usually) 18 (sometimes 36) months after loss of employment (the individual still pays the premium)

[paddieu]

As a disabled person myself, and from the UK, I am having a hard time not calling this a form of State-sanctioned murder. Most of us have by definition pre-existing conditions. !

Don't RIP Vic, take a little R and R and then pop back at nights to haunt them

Or as another singer put it :

'How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died ?'

[neo]

I was reading some online discussions about VC and there was controversy about the health insurance issue and its relation to the suicide.
Well, we'll never know for sure but I think without these circumstances the whole story would have been different...

Thanks for your great words paddieu. Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand why this is such a controversial issue in the US...

[basecamp]

Tribute: Vic Chesnutt (1964-2009)
January 3, 2010 10:46 AM

We are dedicating this week to the passing of Vic Chesnutt. Today we will publish a tribute to the artist who died on Christmas, Wednesday will be a review of a show he played a few weeks before his death and on Thursday an unpublished interview conducted last year where he spoke about his first album Little.

It's the news that we have been dreading and perhaps expecting for years: Vic Chesnutt is dead, most likely by suicide. Chesnutt always seemed older than his years and living on borrowed time: the cracked voice; those loosely-fitting clothes that suggested he was nothing but bones underneath them; the wheelchair and the limitations they imposed on him. Suicide was never a stranger in the singer's life or his songs. In various interviews he acknowledged several previous suicide attempts with a disarming degree of candor; "I flirted with you all my life/ Even kissed you once or twice" is how he addressed the subject on At The Cut. "Florida," written as an elegy for a friend who killed himself, now sounds even more chilling:

A man must take his life in his own hands
Hit those nails on the head
And I respect a man who goes to where he wants to be
Even if he wants to be dead

Most of the obituaries that have been written thus far have invariably typecast Chesnutt as a humorless and death-obsessed Southern folkie. Certainly Chesnutt spent much of his musical, and one imagines, private life confronting the types of questions about mortality many of us would prefer to keep at a safe distance. But the musician's work went far beyond that simplistic characterization; his songs could be cruel, comforting, comical and caustic all at once. At their best they told us something about the beauty and tragedy of life, about companionship and isolation, about hope and hopelessness.

His lyrics could paint pictures more vividly and believably than any painter's canvass; his songs were undeniably poetic. In Chesnutt's songs life was presented in startling detail; a bizarre, fragile and occasionally humorous world came alive in a Vic Chesnutt song. He saw the minute details about the world that most of us cannot or have been conditioned to ignore:

The filthy steps, the cold concrete
The phony earth below my feet
The ancient odor of the street
Yes the world, world, world it is a sponge
"Sponge" (from West of Rome)

Life is often portrayed as painfully transient at best in a Vic Chesnutt song. His albums are littered with characters whose little dramas we can recognize as our own and take consolation in. Chesnutt's musical worldview could be remarkably bleak; even the blissful innocence of childhood couldn't last forever. In his songs he reminded us that eventually we'll become more cynical, distant and indifferent to the world around us as we age:

And a little bitty baby draws a nice clean breath
From over his beaming momma's shoulder
He's staring at the worldly wonders that stretch just as far as he can see
But he'll stop staring when he's older
"New Town" (from About To Choke)

Time is rarely anyone's friend in a Vic Chesnutt song: it inexorably rolls on with or without us. That he could express such sentiments without resorting to melodrama is a testament to his unique lyrical and vocal abilities. When he wasn't twisting the knife into one of his hapless victims, Chesnutt could pose such questions about mortality, aging and the past with both sympathy and tenderness. He knew more about loss and loneliness than any one person should have had to:

Betty Lonely
She will always think in Spanish
Though I know her Spanish black hair will start to fade
"Betty Lonely" (from Is the Actor Happy?)

Conversely some of his songs reflect a fidelity and sense of promise that at least temporarily brightens the suffering lives that played out in his albums. A listener has to look hard and past all the jilted lovers left at the altar, coldest cadavers in the state and dead pigeons in the weeds to find such optimism, but it is there for anyone who wants to find it. If Chesnutt's music usually leans heavily towards total despair, glimpses of light still peak through. He could be unapologetically sentimental:

Cuddling up
Declarations of love
Squeeze and a hug
A kiss and a rub
Faces opposed
Eyelids closed
Nuzzling nose
Like Eskimos
"In My Way, Yes" (from Silver Lake)

In concert it was difficult to watch him perform; his stage presence was simple, genuine and unbearably heartbreaking. He'd sit in the wheelchair and sing in that fractured voice that could wrench meanings out of the even the simplest line or melody, his face twisting and contorting to the words, the bony fingers that actually worked impossible to ignore as they picked at a guitar. When it was time for an encore he'd simply roll the wheelchair back a few feet, wait and then roll it forward towards the microphone. Yet underneath that frail exterior was a defiance and confidence that suggested he knew how great these songs were, and that we'd better goddamn listen. He could quiet a belligerent crowd as easily with his acidic tongue as he could with his lyrics:

Chesnutt: Here's a song about my world actually.
Fan: It's our world, bro!
Chesnutt: It's my yard, motherfucker.
Introducing "Chinaberry Tree," 11/2/09 Athens, GA

It will be impossible to listen to his albums in the same way again. Many of Chesnutt's lyrics will now take on even darker implications in light of his death, and his memory will haunt these songs forever. For those closest to him, his death is a loss that words will never adequately describe. For those who only knew him via his songs, that loss is likewise deeply felt. His music touched our lives and put into words the indignities we endure, and he did it without ever coming across as weepy or self-pitying. He stared down the harsh realities of both his life and our lives with an endearing amount of honesty. He never glossed over anything in his songs - atheism, death, aging, mortality, the past - and he did it with a mixture of humor of the blackest sort and a remarkably colloquial yet poetic ear for language.

Today "Florida" sounds eerily prophetic:

Yes a man must make unpopular decisions, surely from time to time
And a man can only stand what a man can stand
It's a wobbly, volatile line

Vic Chesnutt dangled on that line for longer than most in his situation probably could have. His legacy will be defined by the songs that revealed the scars he'd received throughout life and how he coped with such pain. He wrote some of the most beautiful and disturbing songs any musician has created. For all of us, that will just have to be enough.

by Eric Dennis
[Photos:PJ Sykes]
Donations to Vic Chesnutt's family can be made here
http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/vic/


http://spectrumculture.com/2010/01/trib ... -2009.html

[neo]

Here you can listen to the last concert of Vic Chesnutt played at the Central Presbyterian Church on December 5, 2009 (and download it too):

http://www.archive.org/details/vc2009-1 ... 483.flac16

[Bartleby]

Here is Laura Barton's column from "the Guardian" on what Vic's music meant for her:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/de ... ock-n-roll

And here is the obituary in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2 ... t-obituary

from whence:

"In his teens, Chesnutt rejected the country music he had grown up with in favour of the Velvet Underground, the Beatles, Bob Dylan and particularly Leonard Cohen, whose mix of horror and humour would become more exaggerated in Chesnutt's own lyrics."

Just the other day noticed this reference to Leonard in Vic's sleeve notes to "Miss Mary" on "West of Rome":

"wrote it tripping in the morning after Cindy asked me who that was singing those beautiful melodies with me. "weren't no one but me" I said. I was trying to write a bad Leonard Cohen song."

As for me the news of Vic's death sent me back to listening to the haunting and majestic "Withering" on "West of Rome". Cracker were fond of this song too covering it on the tribute album "Sweet Relief II; Gravity of the Situation. This is David Lowery on the song:

"The Song we did on this record is "Withering". It's on the album West of Rome...we listened to that tape over and over. We were just blown away. I just always loved the guitar solo in the middle of the song and at the end. It's not so much a guitar solo as it is a guitar melody. It always freaked me out, it's so sublime...."

[lightning]

Can anybody make out what he is saying at 03:24 of the this video or understand what he means by the last line, " the fox was so let down when the bunny finally made the round"? We need help to make a translation. It's a lovely song and video. People on this board are usually good at deciphering lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccy9e6FffzI

thanks!

[neo]

Interview: Vic Chesnutt



January 6, 2010 11:42 AM
Before his death, Vic Chesnutt and I began an interview where we discussed his first album Little. Though I intended to turn this into a polished feature about that amazing album, Vic and I only had the opportunity to speak about the record's first half before time ran out. Three weeks before his death, I saw Vic here in Portland and talked to him about scheduling a second interview. He apologized and said he had been insanely busy. He said he really wanted to do it and to call him two weeks later when he returned from his tour. I waited the two weeks and called and left a message. I never heard back.

Rather than scrap the interview, I decided to transcribe and publish it so Vic's fans and friends will have an opportunity to hear his thoughts on Little. Listening to the interview was a cathartic experience for me. I wish I could talk to Vic again. I hope you enjoy this "little" interview.

http://spectrumculture.com/2010/01/inte ... utt-1.html

[danny]

That's upsetting news. I saw him at the Edinburgh 'Queens Hall'. A perfect gig. At the end of the concert, after his bows, he wheeled himself back onto stage. He said "Look, I just arrived. I've got no dope. I'll be waiting at the front door in a minute. If any of you have any blow and you enjoyed the concert, please give me some, I'm in pain".
I passed him shame-faced and furious because my girlfriend had made me leave my dope at home in case we got searched at the door.

If you only play one of his songs, make it "Only one of many", with an intro by Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith. Or "Dodge". Or "Kick My Ass".

A man worth hugging, and sharing your stash with.