It feels like someone famous always dies around Christmas (although James Brown is the only one who springs to mind right now), and today I was saddened to hear (from an Uncut email newsletter) that Vic Chesnutt had died on Christmas day.
While he was very much of the Uncut 'genre' I have written frequently about in this blog, I first heard of Vic quite a few years before I read about him in Uncut, with 1995's 'Is the actor happy?'. That album featured a memorable duet with Michael Stipe, 'Guilty by association', which celebrated and bemoaned his sponsorship by his far more famous (then as now) fellow denizen of Athens, Georgia, as well as 'Gravity of the situation'. I read a bit about Vic then, and learned how he was rendered paraplegic by a car accident at the age of 18.
The famous (at least on these pages) Uncut CD 'Songs of the new west' then featured 'Until the led', a gloriously uptempo romp with Lambchop as his backing band, taken from their full album together 'The salesman and Bernadette', which I still rank as one of my favourites of the alt-country scene (although I do not necessarily think Vic fitted too neatly into even a category as wide-flung as that, and in fact I have no idea what category he ever fitted in to). 'Until the led' can be seen below:
I listened to Vic's later albums faithfully, and while none for me reached the heights of 'Salesman', there were always great songs to be found, such as 'Strange language'
And another uptempo romp in 'Band camp' from 2003's 'Silver lake':
The songs shown here, I think, demonstrate his characteristic and somewhat unmistakeable take on music and lyrics, which just didn't sound like anyone else. I have been listening today to a playlist of my favourite of his songs, which is as follows:
Arthur Murray
Band Camp
Bernadette & Her Crowd
Duty Free
Gravity of the Situation
Guilty By Association
Little Man
Maiden
Mysterious Tunnel
Old Hotel
Parade
Stay Inside
Strange Language
Until The Led
Woodrow Wilson
He also acted in the very good movie 'Sling blade', written and directed by Billy Bob Thornton, from which a clip featuring Vic can be seen here:
It seems clear from what I have read on-line, previously and since his death (e.g., see Guardian piece here) that Vic had a hard and troubled life, and that his early death (from an overdose of muscle relaxants) may well have been suicide. This is certainly a very sad tale, whose end was perhaps foreshadowed since that car accident left him in a wheelchair. All that can be said is that he left a great body of music behind, and made an impression on many, from those famous fans who have come out to praise him in recent days, to far-away fans like me.
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