*Note: Publishing this story a few hours early due to planned site downtime tonight.
Mary Lou Lord started off playing guitar and singing in Boston subway stations and Harvard Square. Some Jingle Jangle Morning (1993) is from her first 45. It’s a song written about/to Kurt Cobain (one of several in the her catalog) — a not insignificant factor in the Courtney Love feud that played out in the music press and AOL message boards during the 90’s (which flared up again a few years back).
As difficult as it was for a time to hear over the din of Mary Lou Lord’s notoriety as the cherubic face on Courtney Love’s dartboard (thanks to a brief but subsequently well-publicized pre-Love love affair with Kurt Cobain), the Boston busker renders the infamy irrelevant on her self-titled Kill Rock Stars mini-album, an affecting acoustic gem that is alternately sad, funny, malicious and tender. — Trouser Press
My friends are all I have now
But they're so far away
They all moved out of Seattle and back to L.A.
And they ask me how I'm doing
And I ask them if they've seen you
But no one sees much of anyone these days
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Some Jingle Jangle Morning
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"I didn't plan on becoming a musician," Lord says in a thick, Boston drawl from her Beverly, Mass., home. "The money I made singing in the subway was awful when I first started, but I just kept doing it nine hours a day because I didn't want to waitress and I was meeting really fun people. A year after I started I met Shawn Colvin, and after that all I wanted to do was play this person's songs. It was before anyone knew who she was, and her songs hadn't been recorded yet so it was the only way to get them heard.”
Instead, Lord recorded a number of EPs and singles of her own, which were released on tiny indie label Kill Rock Stars before catching the ear of someone at Sony, which released her 1998 full-length debut, Got No Shadow. The collection includes a number of originals (many co-written with Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond) that she'd been singing for years on the street corner, including an ode to ex-boyfriend Kurt Cobain called "Some Jingle-Jangle Morning." — Lazy-I
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You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
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What does playing subway stations teach you about audiences?
What I’ve tried to remember is that I can’t expect every person who walks down those subway stairs to be an indie kid who loves the Kill Rock Stars label and Lois and Sebadoh. I’ve tried to keep my themes universal as a performer because you can’t pick and choose who’s going to come down that platform. I try to stick to good chord progressions and melodies and lyrics. Because when someone’s standing there waiting for the train, each line has to be as good as the next one. Sometimes, you only have 20 seconds to reflect that person’s life back to them so they notice you and give you a dollar.
What makes a great song?
A song that has a simple melody and interesting turnarounds in it. Something that can remind you of something you might have forgotten about, that puts you in a place where you’ve been before — maybe childhood.
When you hear a song, how do you know it’s the right one for you to cover?
If it’s a love-gone-wrong type song, I’m on it! [laughs]. A song that’s about a situation I’ve been involved in written by someone who can explain it better than me. — Rolling Stone
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He'd Be a Diamond (Live on Santa Monica Promenade)
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Mary Lou Lord is the female Evan Dando. It’s not just that they’re both from Massachusetts or that they’re both essentially folk troubadours with an uncanny knack for inhabiting others’ material–and frequently even the same material, e.g., Big Star’s “Thirteen” and Neil Young’s “Barstool Blues.” Nor is it the Cobain connection–Lord reportedly had a pre-Courtney fling with Kurt, while Love was forced to deny rumors that she and Dando had been carrying on–or that they’ve both taken long sabbaticals to deal with substance abuse and family commitments. What really ties them together as artists is that Lord, like Dando, has a bewitching ability to convey both bubbly charm and gravity in her songs, a talent that has earned her a dedicated fan base willing to suffer through any strange twists her career and catalog take. How else to explain the public’s continued interest in Lord given her paltry discography? — Chicago Reader
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His Indie World
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I’m not sure if Mary Lou Lord is a guilty pleasure for me or not. Traditional indie snobbery seems to indicate that, at the very least, I should be ashamed to own her major label effort Got No Shadow. But in reality, naw, man. When I first heard that album, I knew every other disc would fade into momentary irrelevance. I was hooked for a good three or four months, long enough for it to become ingrained on my brain for life. — ink19
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Speeding Motorcycle
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Andy Samberg, Lukas Gage, RAYE
Jimmy Fallon: Keanu Reeves, Melanie Lynskey, De La Soul
Stephen Colbert: Jim Gaffigan, Jesse Williams, RAYE featuring 070 Shake (R 2/15/23)
Seth Meyers: Jason Sudeikis, Annaleigh Ashford, Nic Collins
James Corden: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Meagan Good (R 2/9/23)
Daily Show: Chasten Buttigieg, guest host Kal Penn
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