Buddy’s Rendezvous is the name of a diner, the place where the character in Father John Misty‘s song meets up with his estranged daughter after a spell in jail.
It’s an entire movie in song, FJM proud at how pretty his daughter has turned out, lying to the old soaks in the bars about what a great job he did bringing her up, she noticing that he’s wearing the same coat he had on when he was sent down and telling him she’s going to be a singer, he telling her not to try and please everyone all the time and to ‘forget that leftie shit your mom drilled in your mind…whatever happened to the girl I knew?‘ It’s a brilliant song, evocative and filmic, that in its arrangement alone stirs up notions of Hollywood’s golden age of Art Deco and smooth-rolling, shiny-spoked Lincoln Continentals.
It begins with a film noiresque saxophone bleating out the bluest of notes, climbing out of a smoky nightclub fug into the dark L.A. night, a loose, doo-wopish backing track accompanying it, the strings rising like smoke from a disgarded cigarette holder at a cocktail table. If Misty and producer Jonathan Wilson were aiming for ‘atmosphere’, you might say they nailed it.
Buddy’s Rendezvous and its parent album, Chloë and the Next 20th Century is a bit of an outlier in the FJM catalogue. For the most part, gone are the songs of syphilis and sexual proclivities, in are big sweeping Hollywood ballads, deft and ambitious in arrangement and played with an entirely straight face by a guy who’s normally happy to come across like a southern-fried Nick Cave. It wasn’t an album I immediately took to, but like much of FJM’s output, repeated plays reward the listener. Think of it as A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night for Gen-Xrs and you’ll get on just fine with it too.
Released on Sub Pop, the record was presented to look like the sort of old time jazz record you might routinely shuffle past in your search for charity shop gold. The gatefold sleeve is thick and shiny, the labels on the records feature a fictitious label name and, occasionally annoyingly, fictitious song titles (and song times too). Even the publishing credits are made up. It’s a concept as grand as Misty’s musical vision and has, over time, become a real favourite.
It stands to reason then that Lana Del Rey should do a cover of Buddy’s Rendezvous. Stately Hollywood glamour? Small hours and noirish? Slo-motion melodies unravelling like shook-free curls at midnight? Her version, of course, totally flips the perspective and that’s a big part of the appeal. Released as a one-off 7″ as part of the deluxe version of Chloë, it remains a sought after element of Del Rey’s expansive and exquisite catalogue.
I’m not sure of the officialness of the track below, but some enterprising and technically-minded public servant has produced a version with both Misty and Del Rey duetting on it. It seems to take FJM’s original backing track, leads off with Lana’s breathy vocal and by the end of the first verse has brought two idiosyncratic vocalists onto the one record. It’s clever and smart-arsed, but more than anything, just sounds terrific.
Buddy’s Rendezvous – Lana Del Rey and Father John Misty
*For the record, as much as I love the quirkiness of this ‘duet’, I think FJM’s original is the superior version. You should check it – him – out forthwith.
Plain Or Pan 