Junk Bond Trader

Since I arrived home from work, almost two hours ago, I've been listening to this one Elliott Smith song, "Junk Bond Trader." It's off of his phenomenal Figure 8 album that also boasts "Son of Sam" and "LA". I've liked the song since I first heard it, and I've listened to this album a pretty solid amount over the last few years, but for some reason, how great a song this is has just dawned on me.

This happens sometimes. I believe I've related once before on this blog how one night, under circumstances I need not describe in full here, I was nearly driven insane by need to listen to The Smiths' "London" on end for a few hours. I don't think I made the right decision that time.

This time, it's far less maniacal and more enjoyable, but no less obsessive. The weird thing is, I've never really thought about what the song was about before. I knew some of the words (particularly that Elliott repeats "better sell it while you can" a bunch at the end), but I've never even tried to put them together into a sensible whole before.

Now that I've read them through online, I'm still not sure I get what the song's about. I mean, I know it's about a duplicitous person, a liar, a "junk bond salesman" trying to get as much as he can for his useless wares.

And I kind of get the ending of the song, where Elliott says the following:

now i'm a policeman directing traffic
keeping everything moving, everything static
i'm the hitchhiker you'll recognize passing
on your way to some everlasting

He's just written this whole song condemning liars and cheats, and then cops to being human himself, and therefore inherently two-faced.

So, that's kind of cool. But what to make of passages like this?

happy holidays said sick savior
the leaving lover that i still favor
i won't take your medicine, i don't need a remedy
to be everything i'm supposed to be

It's almost a political critique, the Liar as not just a two-faced guy but as a corporate lie, an organized lie, a governmental lie. But maybe not? What the hell do I know?

I kind of think it's like trying to figure out old Bob Dylan songs. I mean, some of them are just batshit insane and beyond analysis, like that one about Judas Preist and the burning house on "John Wesley Harding." I mean, what the hell is going on in that song? I had an easier time following Primer.

But other Dylan songs kind of taunt you by almost making sense, and then not quite making sense by the end. A lot of "Blonde on Blonde" and "Blood on the Tracks" are kind of like this, where it starts out and he's remembering how he met this girl in some dive bar, but by the end he's hanging out with Shakespeare and Rumplestilsken on the Titanic or something.

So, to sum up...Elliott Smith, "Junk Bond Trader." The album is "Figure 8." Great song, somewhat obscure, though undeniably cool-sounding, lyrics.