oneweekoneband:

The Billy Nayer Show – Apartment #5

Final track from “Return to Brigadoon” (1999)

The 1947 Musical “Brigadoon” tells the story of a mystical village that only appears to mundane, human eyes once every century. A part of the magic of the town of Brigadoon is that no townsman can ever leave it, and if they did, the town would disappear into the fog of time. The only way for an outsider to be allowed to stay is if they fall in love with one of it’s denizens. 

The Billy Nayer Show’s 1999 album “Return To Brigadoon” is full to the brim with love-soaked delusion. Every song details a character who’s either a tearful man in near-insane pursuit of an unattainable love, or about a hollowed out shell of a cynical man having been ravaged by a once-attained love. We have a song spelling out the A B C ‘s of failed relationships (“D is for Deceit, E: even more deceitful than D, who’d have thought that could B?”), a song detailing a man picking up his torn-out heart from behind a dirty city dumpster (“wiped off the dirt, and picked out the rocks / everything’s going to be alright, now”), and even a retelling of Eve’s Apple-Eating Mistake (the menacing jilt of “The Cat, The Crow, And The Snake”). 

It’s an album of missed opportunity— the joke of the title being that one can never return to Brigadoon in their lifetime (without true love, at least— meaning that any of the love detailed on the album is false and self-centered). It’s all a harrowing listen if you’re paying attention to the lyrics (Billy Nayer Show lyrics often take the style of children’s songs or bedtime stories, but replace the moon and stars with filthy old men alone forever). But if you aren’t, it’s an album that starts high, with ukelele and autoharp chirping upbeat melodies, anchored by singer Cory McAbee’s operatic voice.

But the album doesn’t end with a missed opportunity or jilted fury. It doesn’t end with cynicism, or heartbreak, or deceit, or Old Testament-levels of Outrage. It ends with the song “Apartment #5.” It starts with this, carried along by guitar and autoharp (played with the most ‘elementary school music class’ of tones):

“I’ll finish all my lunch, and I’ll eat all my fries 

And I’ll prove that my stomach’s as big as my eyes

I’ll spring for the check, and walk you to my home

That’s where I spend all my days …all alone.”

Bass and a tambourine enter as we’re led around this man’s apartment. We’re shown, one by one, the physical items in the room: the chair, the bed, all the movies he’s taped, the books he’s read. The song puts us in a pretty strage position: we’re sung to so directly, and the apartment is described so vividly, so personally, that we’re confronted with being both listener and subject: involved and removed from what we’re hearing/seeing. The singer is dictating, not explaining. We’re in the room, but he may as well be talking to himself.

The longer the description of the Apartment goes on („I’ll show you paintings that I’ve painted, and tell you all about my lamp / I’ll show you water damage in the corner, where it gets damp”), the more the excitement comes through, and the more we get the whole picture of this character. By the time our chair’s pulled in front of his, and our feet are pressed against, it’s clear we’re the first person ever to see the inside of the apartment. 

And with a flourish, we’re brought into a refrain: “I’ll finish all my dinner / and I’ll eat all my fries.” We realize, as the cycle repeats, but timeshifted, that we’re not the first person to see the inside— no one ever has. We don’t exist. The song has been a warmup, a ‘what will I say, what can I say,’ a dream, a fantasy. All leading up to the question. Asked once plaintively. A pause. Asked again, with force:

“Will you marry me?”

Pause. Drums. Release.

Start again.

— Ian McDuffie

(Ian previously wrote for OWOB about David Bowie in the 1990s)

Hey, it’s me! 

I would like to point out that this post represents a long-term goal of writing (and telling everyone I know) about The Billy Nayer Show, one of my all-time favorite bands that no one’s heard of. They’ve been around since the early 90s, having since made 9 albums, and produced two feature films. They’re very much worth checking out. Also frontman Cory McAbee is suuuch a nice guy.

(PS Thanks, Hendrik!)

Notes

  1. circlingskeleton reblogged this from oneweekoneband and added:
    Hey, it’s me! I would like to point out that this post represents a long-term goal of writing (and telling everyone I...
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