In Amongst The Millions.
Almost as to add insult to injury of a very long week, and overall, a very long year, Vic Chesnutt left us all tonight.
I won’t pretend to be the cool guy that has loved Vic’s music forever. Actually, the first time I listened to him was with his album ‘Left To His Own Devices.’ It felt mournful yet hopeful at once. One track in particular that really hit home on that album was “In Amongst The Millions.” It had a refrain of the line, “people can’t die anymore.” For some reason or another, that line always stuck with me.
After listening to that record over and over I started to research him a little deeper. Found out he was wheelchair-bound because of a car accident from when he was 18. This made his music become so much more clear to me, because everything I listened to by him always sounded incredibly fragile, yet very powerful.
In the last couple of years he released five different records, two of which were recorded with members of Godspeed You Black Emperor, one with Elf Power, and one with Jonathan Richman, which was basically a very intimate, stripped down performance of Vic in the studio. All of these records were important to me for a number of reasons. But the main reason was that they all had the feel of a musician who had been playing for many years, yet could manage to always stay vital and interesting. Hell, I would argue that ‘North Star Deserter’ is one of the most important and vital records of the past 10 years.
While all of this is good and well, Vic left no illusions through his music that death was a reoccuring theme, at times almost sounding as if he had been to the other side already, and his songs were nothing more than a very detailed description of what he had witnessed.
I won’t get into speculation of anything, as that is a matter that only Vic and his family knew. I will say, however, that we are very lucky to come away with the output of music he left us with.
Let us hope that his pain will be taken away wherever he rests now, and remember that people cannot truly be saved in the end.
