Wainwrights for a Tuesday
Not to narc on my friend (but this doesn’t count because not knowing about a pop culture thing is fine!!), Courtney texted me in response to yesterday’s email to be like WAINWRIGHTS?, familiar with Rufus’s cover of Hallelujah but not much else.
My dream! So!
Here’s what we’ll listen to today
Whether you are familiar or un-, here’s a playlist of some songs sung by the dysfunctional easy-to-glamorize McGarrigle-Wainwright crew (with acknowledgment that I’m way more familiar with Martha and Rufus than Loudon or Kate McGarrigle and certainly more than any of Loudon’s other kids, sorry but I was born in 1983/read on!).
I remember walking to a record store in college, homesick and also literally lost, and buying a CD copy of Poses based on—what? the cover? the title, or the name of the artist, all the syllables like feet shuffling on a bare floor?—and listening to Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk on my Discman, curled up in my extra-long twin bed. I’d leave that school before the semester was up, type RUFUS WAINWRIGHT into Kazaa on our family computer and lustily watch the progress bar fill up, toss the songs onto mix CDs for my friends, carefully hand-writing the titles, practicing my ampersands.
Conversely, I don’t remember listening to Rufus’s sister Martha for the first time, but her titular (lol) lyric I KNOW YOU’RE MARRIED BUT I’VE GOT FEELINGS TOO will always make me thrill, and the sameness in their vulgarity and bigness, and the difference between her creaky wildness and his bossy vibrato too.
And of course the hammy staged home videos:
And, just, the brother-sister connection, which I nestle myself into like a familiar blanket even though it’s not mine:
Martha it's your brother calling
Time to go up north and see mother
Things are harder for her now
And neither of us is really that much older than each other
AnymoreMartha it's your brother calling
Have you had a chance to see father?
Wondering how's he doing and
there's not much time for us
to really be that angry at each other
anymoreIt's your brother calling Martha
It's your brother calling Martha
Please call me backI know how it goes
You gotta ring your little finger
hit the tree and see what falls
and make the sun come out
on Sunday afternoonAll the while you heat the plates
and serve a little wine
and wear a hat and make 'em laugh
and forget that there is nobody
in the room
anymoreIt's your brother calling Martha
It’s your brother calling Martha
Please call me back
Please call me back / I love you,
Lindsey