All My CDs, pt 47: All the Pain Money Can Buy

All The Pain Money Can Buy - Fastball

This is an album I was once so ambivalent about that a year or so after buying it in my teens, I got rid of it, and a few years after that I bought it again and simply never listened to it. (The second purchase was at a yard sale for fifty cents, so this ambivalence has hardly set me back much.) Since then I’ve realized that the source of my ambivalence is that only one song is really worth much to me, and for a time I felt that meant I should not own the album. But this is not the only album I keep around mostly for one song, so I think this time I’ll keep it in my collection for good.

The one song that I thought worth buying the album for - twice - is The Way, the opening track after which all the others seem to be bland and rather meaningless light rock. I don’t remember exactly when I first heard The Way, but I’m quite sure it wasn’t on the radio. I think my father must have put it on when I was a child. (Since the album was released when I was ten years old, I can’t have been very young, but my memory is indistinct nonetheless).

From time to time after that, the words and melody of The Way would haunt me until I tracked the song down and bought the album. And after all these years, I still find it compelling in a dark and beautiful way. It tells the story of two people who pack up their lives and leave, with no warning and, apparently, no plan: “Where were they going / without ever knowing the way?” Even more disturbingly, they have no intention of returning, which means they have abandoned all their responsibilities and their children. (Yes, children.)

Although the song clearly describes the travelers’ journey as taking place on roads, by car and then on foot, I have speculated that it is actually a metaphor for suicide. The chorus contains too many allusions to a paradisaic afterlife : “The road that they walk on is paved in gold / it’s always summer, they’ll never get cold / they’ll never get hungry, they’ll never get old and gray.”

 The rest of the songs on the album are certainly adequate to listen to. I’d have no problem putting them on for a party or any other situation where pleasant music is called for. And I’d be lying if I said some of the songs can get stuck in my head sometimes (Better Than It Was comes to mind when I’m feeling appreciative of life in general). But none of them really stands up to The Way, in my mind.

Next: The Transit Rider