Codeine
A double-entendre, of sorts, though thinly veiled and audibly apropos to the feeling of the drug --- Codeine was a band that played music that was exceptionally slow, and fuzzy. Formed in the late 1980s, when punk was getting louder, faster and more obnoxious (as well as more marketable) two guys decided to try the opposite. They recorded a "torturous" 9 minute version of a Harry Nilsson classic, which, in itself, is a rather telling nod in a new direction of influence when compared to the songs being covered by most young bands at the time. While some of Nilsson's traits might have seemed to be in step with the punk ethos at the time, he was not commercially viable at all he favored making music solely as a way of satisfying his own artistic vision (be it singing pop standards in front of an orchestra or the calypso song "Coconut") he was definitely on the other side of "cool". What seems to be the most amazing thing about Codeine, the band, was that their sound was the antithesis of everything that was being praised in music, both above- and under-ground, so much so that they garnered the favor of Sub-Pop records who were pioneers in the recording and distribution of what is widely referred to as "Grunge" out of the Pacific Northwest. Here is Codeine, without the usual guitars and distortion pedals, without speed and the feverish beat driving the music, and without the melodic catchiness of any of the bands around. Instead, they focused on 1 snare drum and 1 bass drum, with a splash of cymbal every minute or two, and a crash of fuzzed guitar which seemed staccato and legato at the same time. In fact, when auditioning drummers, Codeine found that it was impossibly hard to find one who fit because none could play as slowly as the band needed. "It was like stepping on kittens," said John Engle sometime in 1993.
On their first US tour they happened to pass through Louisville, hometown of the other pioneeringly slow band, Slint. Codeine later remarked that there was something mysteriously wonderful about the land there, and the scene: "people and rent are much kinder than in New York." This fact, found this morning, seems so dazzling in its coincidence that it hardly needs words. In 1993 I was but a tender 11 years old, not a loudmouth myself, nor an athlete, nor an interesting kid in any respect --- it is like retroactive relief to know that at the exact moment I might have been feeling rather left-out, somewhere in Louisville these two bands were slowly making their way through a set of songs in some dark sleepy meeting hall or highschool cafetorium, without the protective envelope of a harsh punk sound or the quickening beats of the typical 4/4 drumming. They sang in an almost whispered hush that seemed to hide behind the fuzz of their guitars, building upon a syncopated march with one guitar sounding in unison with the bass, trading high and low and reaching a crescendo of noise in the same way Liszt or Stravinski seemed to (by isolating a note, playing it several times as though it was a photograph projected on a screen over and over and over, and each ringing note played in succession sounds individual yet part of the ever-growing whole.)
Codeine, the drug, has always seemed a miracle. In cough syrup form it is known to cause highly illusional and delusional dreams when ingested before sleep, and even stranger thoughts abound when ingested before heading to the shopping mall or for a latenight walk to nowhere special. As a pill it is chalky, bad tasting, and potent when inscribed with a "4". Though the acetaminophen portion is known to make tummies incredibly upset, the slowness provided by the hydrocodone makes the trouble well worth the high. Euphoria is listed as one of the adverse effects, hilariously. The first time I remember having a Codeine was when I broke several toes as well as the small bones they connect with on my right foot: the whole ordeal felt like a ziplock baggy of pretzels that had been amply smashed by the contents of a child's backpack. Without a proper prescription for the needed medicine my mother stepped in with several extras that she had left over from a recent surgery. A friend suggested perhaps crushing and sniffing the pills, another offered $5 per; both of these thoughts made taking the pills seem daring, albeit dangerous --- I was 11 all over again, faced with the humiliation of having a cigarette pushed in front of my face by some other kid only to balk at the offered drug and skulk off to some creek or private part of town, afraid to break rules and fearful of the fun that others so greedily enjoyed. Pills in palm: they seemed like diamonds or something else special that is coveted but the illegality made it more romantic; similar to how a kiss is nice but a stolen kiss is nicest.
As far as my own personal penchant for referential mania, combining the two made sense. Taking it for the first time and timing the swallow of a pill to the exact moment of pressing play on the song "Vacancy" from The White Birch album, I remember (or mis-remember) sinking slowly and rather realistically into the hardwood floor, on top of which I was laying, arms akimbo, after the song replayed once or twice. The heaviness of the synthesized opiate mixed well with the slowness of the music, both made a blanket over the body on the floor and it didn't even seem to belong to me any longer similar to how taking a bath while drunk can sometimes be an out of body experience. My foot was pathetic, wrapped and bandaged hastily under the fog of a too-early morning and I remember having the feeling that the thing itself was entirely not mine and by sheer will I could re-set the bones myself just by thinking of them shifting slightly in their joints, popping back into place themselves. Fearful of disturbing the thick haze, the body remained on the floor, shoulders forced downward more and more and eventually became the same matter as the planks of wood that they were splayed against. The singer sings: "What does the word Vacancy mean / when you don't expect anything?" The noise crashes in, the quiet quickly follows.
It is a strange question and it has always caught me off guard, even years later. If Vacancy is an emptiness one hopes for, then coming upon it when one is not expecting anything to begin with creates an interesting tension of thought. Not a surprise, not an epiphany, just an emptiness when you didn't plan up needing it. I think this, this very instantaneous moment of consciousness, is what Codeine means to me: an empty openness that one comes across without realizing that one had needed it in the first place. Loud gets too loud, and the drugs get too fast, and danger sometimes gets too dangerous, and oftentimes we live our life like driving a car somewhere. Codeine sang songs that were slower than most, they whispered and saved their voice rather than squandering it by yelping like the rest, and in their songs they created a sense of quiet that was next to impossible to find among the music of their time. In a sense, their songs had a vacancy in them, a place for the listener to inhabit --- an "atmosphere", for lack of a better word. I find it laughable that in their entry on Wikipedia, the first paragraph ends in an almost reprimanding tone: "they did not evolve much during their career," and even this seems to me like a 10 year old breath of fresh air. James Joyce was famous for saying that his art was one of stasis, and not kinesis, and isn't that, in a way, what Codeine was too? Beauty, a touching and delicate beauty, in the static stillness of a moment charged by a lightning bolt of life. And this, in some strange way, even relates backwards to the drug itself: an almost paralyzing stillness that can be helpful much in the same way an empty room is helpful, and even moreso when one is least expecting it.
