Split Enz ~ Stuff and Nonsense
Oddly enough, the first song that comes up on my iTunes when I typed in this song title was the Neil Finn Boston 98 rendition of it with Eddie Vedder on lead vocals.
My secret shame? I hadn't heard this song until I acquired a bootleg of this show a week after it was recorded.
Truth be told, while I may well have grown up listening to the Finns in some way or another, I didn't truly truly love Neil Finn until I was in my final year at high school and my best friend at the time bought me a copy of "Try Whistling This". Because I really dug the song "Last One Standing".
True.
Anyway, Dawn was working a supermarket at the time of this performance and not long after I read about this magnificent duet on fivehorizons.com, her fellow supermarketeer offered up a bootleg of the Boston show. For me! Joy! I was a relatively new devoted Finn fan at the time and this was quite frankly the most glorious thing I had ever heard. Angels could not have sung this song more sweetly.
Yeah.
I actually feel a bit stupid for not trying to write about this song until now. I mean, my very first ever website (a shiteous diaryland diary) was named after it. It featured a Fur Patrol header banner, an Eddie Vedder menu panel and a Split Enzy name. And it was full of rubbish. I think I talked about telemarketing a lot.
Stuff and Nonsense is the main reason I am so in love with the Finns. And strangely enough it's a Tim Finn song. Go figure why he's not the favourite?
Listening to the original Split Enz version, his voice sounds flawless and the entire song is so timeless and beautiful - a bit of a stark contrast to a lot of Enz songs which sound like the time they were in. Like, really really really sound like 70s/80s songs. Like, really.
And you know that I love you. Here and now, not forever. I can give you the present. I don't know about the future.
Pretty devastating lyric huh?
Anyway, I have only ever seen this song live once. And funnily enough... it featured Eddie Vedder on lead vocals. I was standing front row centre at Neil Finn and Friends at the St James in Auckland and I leaned over to Laura and said "I swear if they do Stuff and Nonsense I will cry" and she nodded.
When Eddie and Tim took to the stage and introduced a song off the Frenzy album I just went kinda numb. I looked at Laura and she looked back and she had tears welling in her eyes. I had nothing. Just a feeling of guilt that I didn't actually know if I liked the way it sounded. Neil and Ed's voices melted together like cotton candy and spit. Tim and Ed's voices battled for supremacy.
If you listen to the original, Tim's voice is the lead and there are delicate harmonies behind him. One of these lovely men should have just sung the harmonies.
It's a shame, but dammit it was still 100 times better than most things I've seen live. And if it had been Neil sitting at that piano I probably would have been heard bawling in the live DVD. Or if it had just been Ed singing. Or just Tim. FYI, that live DVD recording is the night I was in the front row and it's pretty much the only song they don't show the audience in. But if you concentrate, you can see the back of my head. It's just not a crying head.
It was still a momentously memorable musical moment for me. Yet thankfully I have my mp3 of Neil and Ed's version. The one with the incredibly obnoxious voices talking loudly nearby. WAS IT RUDE OF ME TO CALL YOU A DICK? You're the dick lady. You're the dick.