Fields of Joy

I downloaded "Fields of Joy" by Lenny Kravitz last night and I've been listening to it over and over. Some things never change, I guess. I mean, Lenny Kravitz isn't exactly the hippest music any more. Was it ever? But, there was a time when Lenny's music meant everything to me -1991, just as I was turning 16.

I've always loved "Fields of Joy" in particular, and I've always been prone to listen to it over and over. Don't you just love it when you dig a song so much you have to listen to it over and over? I do. I remember first hearing that song in the summer of 1991. I has just spent a miserable month alone with my father in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He was a man I didn't really know, and all I really learned about him that summer was that he hated my fucking guts. After the disaster of visiting my father, I was spending a week with my sister in Madison before I went back home to Wyoming. She had a cool little apartment in the city with her boyfriend, Alejandro. Best of all, Alejandro had a huge CD collection - crates and crates full. Who had so many CD's in 1991? I had just recently stopped collecting tapes. In fact, I doubt that today I have as many CD's as that guy had in 1991.

I remember that Alejandro was nice, or foolish, enough to let me run through his collection. He had a brand new copy of Lenny's Mama Said album, which easily gets my vote for being Lenny's best album, and "Fields of Joy" is the best thing on there. Funny, actually, since it was the one song Lenny didn't write, but I don't care. That song rules, and I'm not some Lenny Kravitz nutswinger. Lenny didn't seem corny when he sang about love. He seemed so idealistic, and so unpretentious. This was a guy that understood love, damn it. (I know his wife had just left him for banging chicks on the road, but at least he could talk the talk). That song is so quietly optimistic, and I sure needed that feeling that summer. Shit, I need some quiet optimism at this very moment. I remember sitting and staring out my sister's window listening to that damn song until my sister insisted I change it.

Unfortunatey, Lenny started to really suck on later albums, although he achieved much larger commercial success. His next album contained one of his biggest hits, "Are you gonna go my way," but the songs didn't drip with hope and soul like the songs on Mama Said. He was instead copping some seventies Led Zeppelin sound. He always did a better job of copping John Lennon and seventies soul, if you ask me. When Lenny moved on to the riff rock, his songs had absolutely no emotional power. Yuck. I can still enjoy a spin of his Greatest Hits disc, but none of those songs mean shit to me compared to "Fields of Joy."