Release Date: 4/01
Album: LUDLOW 6:18 and DAYLIGHT KISSING NIGHT
Writer: ADAM MARSLAND
Audio:
Video:
Lyrics:
I met her on the 13th day of Spring
A beautiful woman named Ginna Ling
I came to sing and she stood there
Laughing and clapping
I lost it for her in a half-heartbeat
Talked and told her I hoped we'd meet again
And then I kissed her on the cheek
And she seemed happy
Now my heart will burst
If my brain won't first
Because I met someone
Nothing I can do
So I'm telling you
I have to tell someone
Mysteries inscribed on a perfect face
Diode letters that gracefully self-effaced
"Hi how are you, this is Ginna.
I bet you don't remember me."
I answered the letters on the same day
Asked her if she'd make it to L.A.
And I might be back out her way again in
August or September
Now my heart will burst
If my brain won't first
Because I met someone
Nothing I can do
So I'm telling you
I have to tell someone
Thoughts of future tenses and picket fences
Naive and senseless filled the back of my mind
Dumb enough to believe there was nothing but time
Meanwhile, Ginna's real world was far more bleak
And these were the things of which she would not speak
And three weeks before I came back to town
This is exactly what went down:
The things Ginna cared about, was scared about
Closed in on her from within and without
And for reasons I don't fully understand
Ginna Ling died by her own hand
This is a song for someone I barely knew
Someone I guess it's strange for me to miss or mourn
Like the sister who died before I was born
Her name was Gina too.
But sometimes I have this crazy cream
I break down the door, yank out the keys
Drag her out of the car and scream
"Ginna, someone loves you!"
Musicians:
Adam - vocals, guitars
Robert Ramos - bass, vocals
Severo Jornacion - guitar, vocals
Kurt Medlin - drums
I think it's safe to say that of all the songs I've ever written, "Ginna Ling" is the one that has garnered the strongest response.
When we finished LUDLOW 6:18, "Ginna Ling" was the song I was least satisfied with, because it was a difficult topic to write about and I was very concerned about striking the right tone, to the point where we recut the suicide line about 15 times so that I didn't overstate it...we took a lot of our cues in cutting LUDLOW from Johnny Cash, not so much in terms of sound but in the idea that a message carries a lot more emotional weight if you just say something bluntly than making a big histrionic deal about it. I still wasn't completely satisfied, though. Cutting the basic track was equally difficult. The first take of it was a disaster, and the band had to go home and rehearse for a few more months before we could pull it off properly.
As I've said before, LUDLOW 6:18 was an album where we were definitely trying to communicate a feeling to the listener, and since it's unusual for that to work, we were extremely pleased when the album came out that people got out of it basically what we'd put into it. On that level, no song succeeded more than "Ginna Ling." Given the small amount of people that heard the album initially, I was stunned at the reaction it got and how much the song affected people. I heard stories about the song being played for groups of people and complete silence afterwards. The song was deliberately constructed to sound like a happy-go-lucky pop song -- with a chorus that means something completely different than it first appears to -- so that when the switch comes in the middle of the song, it has more impact. I had worried that we hadn't quite pulled it off, but apparently we did. As a songwriter, I was gratified, but at the same time, aware that all I had done was told the story of a real-life tragedy that many people can relate to. The impact was derived from that, not from any particular cleverness on my part.
Like "Burning Me Out," the lyrics are literally true. Ginna Ling was a woman I met through Rick and Nicole McBrien when we were playing with Rick's band Paranoid Lovesick on the SCAPEGOAT tour in 1999. I really had a thing for her, and was looking forward to seeing her on the next tour when Rick called and let me know what had happened (Tragically, history repeated itself a year later when I got a similar pre-tour call from Nicole telling me Rick himself had died suddenly of a heart attack at age 33).
The back story -- of an abusive on-off relationship, Cultural pressures and a job where your boss is literally trying to force you into a breakdown so you quit -- angered me so much that I determined to write a song about it as a form of revenge, and I had all the lyrics by the next day. I wasn't sure about using the real name, but Rick assured me that there wouldn't likely be a problem, and in fact I've periodically run into people on the road who were friends of hers and who told me they appreciated the song. It's been said of the real-life Ginna that "she didn't like life very much" but I'm glad, anyway, that she got a little memorial of sorts. A lot of people in this world are basically screwed, whether by accidents of genetics, geography, chemical imbalances or twists of fate. We don't think about that enough.
The music was drawn from an earlier and dippier song called "Donuts On The Freeway" which I thankfully never finished, and yeah, I know the riff sounds like the Havah Nagilah.