Forty years after I first heard (and loved...and was perhaps a bit frightened by) this song, it suddenly occurred to me today, out of absolutely nowhere—I wasn't even listening to the song, or had just run across it somewhere or anything and the brain is a weird damn thing—that the line
The devil went down to Georgia he was lookin' for a soul to steal He was in a bind 'cause he was way behind And he was willing to make a deal
Wait...why was the devil behind? The devil's got quotas to meet? Does he have a boss he answers to? Meaning either God, or else it's not really the devil, is it? It's more like a demon. But I guess "A Demon Went Down to Georgia" isn't quite as catchy.
Also, even as a very superstitious child, I thought the devil kicked Johnny's ass from Valdosta to the Chattahoochee National Forest and back again.
Here's hoping not so much...but just in case, a good soundtrack always helps.
For one deadly love like a disease I came to you crawlin' on my knees Your eyes filled with rain I can feel poison runnin' through my veins I'm waitin' I'm waitin' I'm waitin', waitin' on the end of the world
Baggage—boy, we carry that weight a long time. Even when we're aware of it, it's often got its hook in us so deep we can't dislodge it.
So I always liked Hall & Oates, even as I thought they were lightweight piffle, and thought the notion that Daryl Hall had one of the great voices in rock, as he claimed in their mid-80s Rolling Stone cover story, absurd. (He did, of course.)
I'm not sure there was any stage of my music obsession where I didn't like pop. I liked it before I discovered the likes of Led Zeppelin, I liked it when I was deepest in my Pink Floyd or David Bowie phases—I not only saw no problem in liking, say, Black Sabbath and Madonna, I reveled in it—I liked it when I was all about the Replacements and REM. So of course I liked Hall & Oates.
Except for this damn song. We played it in marching band, the one year I did marching band (staggeringly poorly) and man did those wounds go deep. Deeper than I know. So that whenever I hear this song, I recoil, even as I love "Sara Smile" and "She's Gone" and "Method of Modern Love."
So when I saw this bass-centric mix come up, I shuddered. And yet I clicked play. And sweet fancy moses, that bass line by Tom Wolk is deeper than the Marianas Trench, and it turns out there are lyrics to this song! Who knew? (They're...watching a wedding? That can't be right...) And I'm reminded that the fourth line of each verse, which has that incredibly groovy rhythmic displacement thang goin' on, is absolutely fabulous. ("Mind over MATTer.")
At the end of the day, it still might not quite be "Rich Girl" or "Out of Touch," and, sure, the lyrics might be more than a touch misogynistic, but my god that bass line.
