Remake

[stoutfellow]

I recently obtained Mary Chapin Carpenter's Party Doll album, on a recommendation from desertvixen. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but I've enjoyed most of what I've heard. I do, however, have a bit of a beef.

The album shares a few songs with Come On Come On, which I already had. In particular, it features a live version of "I Take My Chances", which differs in one significant respect from the version I had previously heard.

In the second verse, Carpenter sings of briefly watching a televangelist (but there was brimstone in his throat). The verse, in the earlier version, ends thus:
I flipped my channel back to CNN
And then I lit another cigarette.
The version on Party Doll replaces the last line with
I threw away my cigarettes.

Now, the first version makes artistic sense; the general tone of the song is a defiant one, and reacting to a preacher by lighting another cigarette is an appropriate gesture - smoking is one of those things that Good Girls Don't Do. But what does throwing away cigarettes mean, in context? It seems a purely random act, totally unconnected to the scene.

Now, I have no particular brief for smoking; I've never smoked myself, and I've known of its hazards since childhood. (I was the target of a certain amount of derision for my opinions on the matter, in my youth, but... well, "raindrop in ocean, hani," as the man - er, the mahe - says.) It seems clear that Carpenter is making a statement by changing the line (and it met with the approval of her live audience). But in aesthetic terms, I think it's a mistake.

She's still one of my favorite singers, though.


Oh, yes - brownie points for the first person to correctly identify the meaning of the title of this post. (What does one do with brownie points, anyway? p_o_u_n_c_e_r, you need not answer that.)

Comments

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Right, of course. (And the future she described there is not all that implausible, sad to say. We've gone through periods like that before, though, and survived them. But there is loss...)