The Song In My Head Today

2012-01-29T15:45:00.000-08:00

Looking For A Place to Live / Bill Demain

God forbid this should happen to any of us. But it happened to Bill Demain: a devastating flood washed out his condo in Nashville, only to be followed a few months later by a second tragedy, a house fire that wiped him out completely. For more than a year he lived out of a suitcase, in limbo, waiting to find a new home. Now, Bill's not your average homeless person. He's a fairly successful singer-songwriter, not only as one-half of the duo Swan Dive, but also as a songwriter who's collaborated with the likes of Jill Sobule, Bill Lloyd, and Marshall Crenshaw. On top of that, he's a well-respected music journalist, writing for mags like MOJO and Classic Rock. Which just underscores that a misfortune like this could befall anybody.

But as luck would have it, this homeless period had a silver lining; it inspired Bill to write a collection of songs that he has now released as his first solo EP. And -- no surprise -- it's a truly winning album, offering an eclectic range of pop styles, well-crafted lyrics, and charming vocal performance. More than that: it's got heart. When you think about it, that only makes sense -- that a brush with tragedy would call out wistfulness, nostalgia, soul-searching, and mordant humor.

I'm going for the lead-off track here, although you really must check out the entire album (it's finally up on iTunes and Amazon's mp3 store now; or you could order your very own copy here). And why not? "Looking For A Place To Live" kinda says it all, doesn't it?

Acoustic folk seems just the right style for a displaced troubador; it's as if he hasn't got much but his guitar case to lug around (one of the few things Bill had time to grab when fleeing the fire was his 1937 Martin). That gentle rambling strum is perfect pavement-pounding music. But leave it to Bill to face his dilemma with wry humor: "I know how Columbus felt / Sailing round in circles / His coffee in a cardboard cup / And the Sunday classifieds." That sense of being an explorer -- that's probably the only way to face house-hunting and still stay sane. And if, along the way, you gain some sympathy with the dispossessed of this world ("Out with the refugees / Dreaming of vacancies / For what seems eternities...") -- well, that's a good thing, too.

Of course, good songwriting never stops with the obvious. In the process, he comes to understand what's really important: "Maybe home is nothing more / Than where you hang your hat." I like the fact that this song works even if you don't know Bill's story: maybe it's just about a young couple searching for a place to move in together, or maybe it's about a guy being thrown out by his girlfriend / wife and having to find himself a new lonely bachelor pad.

What matters is the wistfulness, the existential sense of dislocation. (Does anybody else hear a bit of Bookends-era Simon and Garfunkel here?) It's a song that treads lightly and takes nothing for granted. A song about stripping your life down to essentials. So self-effacing, so artlessly charming -- and so haunting. In a good way.

2012-01-15T11:36:00.000-08:00

Crash and Burn / Daryl Hall

Having just endured two weeks of resuscitating my computer after a hard drive crash -- I sympathize, Daryl. I'm still not back up to speed, trying to learn an updated system and all the updated software that comes with it. None of which improve the user interface one bit, but hey, we Americans seem to have bought deeply into the idea that only "the latest version" will do. That's what keeps all those nice programmers and software developers in their jobs. And America needs jobs, right?

Anyhoo -- I really appreciate all your suggestions of other 2011 albums I may have missed in my end-of-the year music guide. I'm all set to blog about them, if I could only figure out how to create videos/mp3s to post. The program I used to use, which always sucked, is now inoperable, and I've got to find another.

In the meantime, I've got to get resourceful. I'll have to ask you to open this link in another window: Live from Daryl's House. This will take you to one of my favorites web series, which features various musicians stopping in to jam with Daryl Hall in the barn outside his house in the country. If you haven't kept up with Daryl Hall -- renowed in the 80s for his blond shag and his non-stop Top 40 hits in the duo Hall & Oates -- then you've got a treat in store. This particular episode, second of a two-part special, features songs from his brand-new album Laughing Down Crying, which was one of my Christmas presents to myself. Once you've opened the webcast site, scroll down to the song "Crash and Burn." Go ahead. I'll wait.

I'll admit that several songs on this album fall back on Daryl's old tricks -- perky percussion, tangles of buzzy guitar, sparkly ripples of synthesizers -- although about the third time you listen to them, you realize that they are total earworms and you love them anyway. Nobody does it better, you have to admit; even the slinky cheesiness of "Eyes for You," a re-imagined disco version of "I Only Have Eyes For You," is irresistible. But there's plenty of substance here as well -- the gospel-drenched track "Save Me," the classic R&B sound of "Problem With You," and this poignant knockout of a song, "Crash and Burn."

Back story. Daryl's longtime bassist, Tom "T-Bone" Wolk, died of a heart attack last February, while they were recording this album. You probably know T-Bone -- he used to play in G.E. Smith's Saturday Night Live band, and he's also worked with Elvis Costello, Billy Joel, Squeeze -- all the fun kids. Pork pie hat, soul patch -- you know the guy, even if you don't think you do. This song isn't exactly about T-Bone, but losing such a close friend certainly set Daryl to ponder life's twists and turns. And while he's cast this as a sort of break-up song ("Why are we kissing this goodbye?," "Baby I know it's hard living here with me," "I could win if I could walk away...But a loser just keeps holding on, so why do I?"), the essence of the lyrics is philosophical. The point is, everybody's got to hit a wall some time, no matter how fortunate your life has been. Grief, sorrow, disappointment -- they come to us all, and there's no point in not feeling them when they do.

"Maybe it's just my turn / To crash and burn" -- that's the mantra of this song. And while Daryl sings it over and over, it's never static; he switches the syncopation, gives different words a melismatic flip, rivets your attention on it. "Maybe it's just my turn" telegraphs on one note, while the "crash and burn" tumbles downward, sorrowfully. It's melancholy, and yet oddly uplifting -- because the melody surges upward again, full of stubborn hope, on the concluding lines "But I gotta keep on flying / Don't know why" or "But I gotta keep on trying / It's all I know." Not much of a solution, you say? On the contrary. When you're crashing and burning, this is the best you can do; it's one foot in front of the other, one day at time.

It's a beautiful song, and a moving song. And Daryl's voice is . . . well, Daryl's voice. It hasn't lost any of its soaring soulfulness, and he can still nail those high notes. The subject matter may be middle-of-life sorrow, but his singing still sounds like a choirboy. Well, maybe a randy choirboy, cherubic and sexy all at once. It's Daryl Hall, after all.

2011-12-20T21:30:00.000-08:00

My 2011 Holiday Album Buying Guide

Always a bit bogus, these year-end "best of" lists. To start with, they're based on a completely false premise: Who says you have to stick to 2011 releases when buying holiday presents for your nearest and dearest? Still, there's something about a glossy new CD under the Christmas tree that's very alluring . It says, "I know you love music, and you're probably just as lost as I am in finding really worthwhile new stuff. So here are the newest tunes you've been too busy tweeting and Facebooking to learn about..."

In no particular order:

John Hiatt: Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns: Hiatt's best work in years -- a searing suite of vignettes about the forgotten 99% and the dying American Dream. It starts out with a howl of frustration ("Damn This Town") and ends up with two unflinchingly poignant elegies ("Adios To California" and "When New York Had Her Heart Broke"). Unpreachy, authentic, and full of rockin' righteous rage.

The Wood Brothers: Smoke Ring Halo: This brother act side-project for Oliver and Chris Wood has turned into something bigger than the both of them, situated at a country crossroads where jazz and bluegrass and Southern rock come to share a drink, swap tall tales, and eventually bay at the moon. There's a sort of rumpled ease about this album that belies their incredible musicianship; I love it when guys this good don't take themselves too seriously. Buy, buy, buy.

Black Keys: El Camino: How good are these guys! Their trademark sound -- pulsating R&B-flavored rock, with a gritty low-fi edge -- just makes me bliss out. It's a recent release, so I'm still wandering around inside its sound, but expect a blog post soon. And as the sticker on the cover insists (yes, I still buy physical product), this album should be played LOUD.

Nick Lowe:The Old Magic: Nick. Magic. And, yes, old, at least as in retro-styled. Nick's suave songwriting is as usual right on the mark, working that familiar territory of letdown, loss, and heartbreak (that voodoo that Nick does so well), but the more I listen, the more I'm impressed by the richness of Nick's vocals, ripening as never before in this crooner groove. Just because these songs are instantly enjoyable doesn't mean they don't grow on you. The more I listen, the more I . . . well, I was already in love, but this just twists the knife.

Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues: No sophomore slump for these guys -- their second effort takes those haunting reverbed harmonies to a new trippy level. It's more ambitious and less spare than their debut album, as Robin Pecknold and company take a step or two away from their folky roots, but never fear, that melodic gorgeousness is still in full flower.

Nikki Jean: Pennies in a Jar: A great discovery, this album by Philly-based singer-songwriter Nikki Jean reminds you why you first fell in love with pop music. Not the yippy cheesy kind, but the classics, written by the great master pop songwriters who co-wrote these songs with Nikki. Cool concept: cooler album.

Fountains of Wayne: Sky Full of Holes: Four years since Traffic and Weather, FoW's first entry on the YepRoc label was worth the wait. Thirteen finely crafted short stories in song, with wistfulness and whimsy in equal measures; you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll definitely want to sing along.

Fionn Regan: 100 Acres of Sycamore: The Irish have always been great poets; singer-songwriter Fionn Regan just sets his to music, that's all. Wonderful folk-inflected music with a bit of Brechtian cabaret thrown in. I loved his first album End of History, and this follow-up is just as whimsical and existential. It takes a listen or two, but then it gets under your skin, like a long draught of Jameson's on a chilly autumn night.

The Jayhawks: Mockingbird Time: The long-awaited Jayhawks reunion album (has it really been eight years since Rainy Day Music?). The good news is: It's a Jayhawks album, and it picks up right where they left off. Did you expect new frontiers? Even Mark and Gary's wonderful 2009 duo album Ready For the Flood stuck to the brand: rich harmonies, melodic hooks, laidback tempos, and more than a touch of twang. Why tamper with a sound -- and a sensibility -- this soul-satisfying?

Foster and Lloyd: It's Already Tomorrow: Waiting eight years is nothing -- try waiting 21 years for Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd to record together again. (Not that I haven' t been perfectly happy, mind you, with Bill Lloyd's somewhat more pop-oriented solo stuff in the meantime.) But this reunion album is a gem, with tuneful, well-honed songwriting. It stays on the right side of the border between Americana and country music; just enough twiddle and twang but never a trace of cornpone.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Albums I thoroughly enjoy by artists I love, though not groundbreaking efforts:
Keb' Mo': The Reflection
Ron Sexsmith: Long Player, Late Bloomer
The Decemberists: The King Is Dead
Death Cab for Cutie: Codes and Keys

RETROSPECTIVES:
Ben Folds: The Best Imitation of Myself: Love, love, LOVE Ben Folds; this 3-disc retrospective is packed with rarities, live tracks, and a sampler of Folds' most memorable tunes.

Various Artists: Rave On: A Tribute to Buddy Holly: How could this not be a treat, with such talents as Nick Lowe, The Black Keys, Zooey Deschanel, Cee Lo Green, Patti Smith, and My Morning Jacket on board?

Only a few shopping days left until Christmas -- what are you waiting for? And if you just happen to pick up a few of these for yourself...well, I won't tell.

2011-11-30T20:04:00.000-08:00

Chills and Fever / Bob Andrews

OR: MY NIGHTS AT THE IRIDIUM PART II

Watch out, City Winery -- the Iridium is threatening to steal my loyalty as my favorite New York City music joint. A scant three weeks after Marshall Crenshaw & Co. blew the roof off the old jazz club, my musical hero Graham Parker showed up for a weekend stint -- billed as half of the Graham Parker Duo, a musical act that reunites GP with his old Rumour keyboardist Bob Andrews.

Now as some of you may remember, almost exactly one year ago I saw the historic gig at NYC's Lakeside Lounge wherein Graham Parker unofficially reunited with most of The Rumour (they billed themselves as the Kippington Lodge Social Club -- like anybody would be fooled by that!). We should have known they wouldn't stop there, and a few weeks ago we finally got the big news: that the Rumour and Parker have reunited for a role in a Judd Apatow movie, and have recorded a new album, to be released next December to coincide with the movie's release. Now, the fact that these tracks have already been laid down and we won't get to hear them for another YEAR is excruciating. But in the meantime, hopefully we'll get a few more delicious sneak previews like Graham and Bob's Iridium show.

That night the Lakeside was packed beyond the fire laws; I had to watch through the front windows from the sidewalk. But since the band was playing right next to the window, I could see everything. And when they burst into "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass," I was absolutely riveted by Bob's virtuoso organ break. That's when I really began to understand that, great as Graham is, the Rumour were far more than just a backing band, and Bob Andrews was one of their most essential treasures. (Not to mention what he brought to his pre-Parker group, Brinsley Schwarz, one of the great jam bands of the pub rock era.)

Fast forward to 2011 and cruise uptown to the Iridium. It was just Graham and Bob this time around (although Rumour drummer Steve Goulding, it turned out, was sitting right next to us!) but if anything they were having even more fun than they did downtown. Laughing, dancing, wisecracking, goofing around -- they brought such joy and high spirits to the stage, we were all infected. And I thought to myself: This is why I love rock and roll. This is why you have to see music live. Who cares if neither of these guys will ever see 60 again, or if they haven't a head of shaggy hair between them? Once they started rocking, they were 22-year-old wild men all over again, only a whole lot smarter and funnier.

The setlist was a healthy mix: Graham's solo stuff, a couple superb new reunion songs, and a few greatest hits, including "You Can't Be Too Strong" -- one of my favorite cuts from Squeezing Out Sparks, which I've always longed to hear Graham perform. Now I realize why he doesn't sing it more often: It absolutely, ABSOLUTELY, requires Bob's brilliant little piano fills. And with those fills, it was positively shivers-up-the-spine beautiful.

And they did some of Bob's solo numbers too. If you're lucky enough to visit New Orleans in the near future, check out where Bob's playing -- he hops around his adopted home town, playing at various clubs, letting les bons temps roulez. Another reason to love New Orleans.

I took a crappy video that night, not worth posting, but here's something I cribbed from the Interweb, taken at the House of Blues down in New Orleans:

Come to think of it, this vid isn't much better than the one I took, but it does have the virtue of being shot from the keyboard side. (D'oh!) At any rate, it gives you the idea of Bob's inimitable loose style and lightning fast fingers.

Now here's the full track from Bob's solo CD, appropriately enough also named Chills and Fever:

There's not much to critique about this song -- it's just an insanely catchy R&B artifact, toe-tapping and full of spunk. It's built on a tried-and-true pop metaphor, where fever stands in for love/lust/passion -- a metaphor older than the hills but still apt indeed. But above all, it's a song admirably suited to a barreling roadhouse piano, which is no doubt why Bob Andrews felt compelled to give it a whirl.

"Chills and Fever" first hit the airwaves as an atmospherically spooky 1961 single by Ronnie Love, jazzed up with voodoo-inflected shivering saxes. Apparently -- Bob shared this nugget of information with us -- no less than Allen Toussaint played the piano on that original Dot Records recording; that's what I call good bloodlines. But the song is perhaps best known as Tom Jones' first single in 1964. Though it would take his next release -- "It's Not Unusual" -- to make him a star, Tom Jones' trademark sweaty passion is already all over his heated-up cover version.

Bob takes the horniness back down a notch (whew!); his version is considerably more sprightly than either Ronnie's or Tom's. It's simply a fine excuse to peel off some show-stopping boogie-woogie piano riffs. He's almost like a salesman dropping open his sample case: Who knew one man could wring that many different sounds out of one piano? Like I said, a musical treasure -- and if we are very good children, we just may be hearing a lot more from him in the months to come.

2011-11-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

How To Unring a Bell /
Nikki Jean

My concert companion bailed on me. Okay, so there was a blizzard raging -- a freakish thing to happen the night before Halloween -- and there wasn't a taxi to be had; even the local subway was out of commission. And true, we had already seen Marshall Crenshaw not so very long ago, down at the City Winery. But Marshall's October gigs at the Iridium jazz club were going to be something entirely different: A tribute to masters of the Les Paul guitar, with all sorts of special guests and the Les Paul Trio backing up Marshall. How could I miss that?

So I slogged down there alone, wet boots and all, and, man, was it worth it. Marshall more or less conducted a seminar in vintage rock and pop, featuring renditions of classics from everyone from Freddie King and Bill Haley to Smokey Robinson and the Three Suns (favorites of Mamie Eisenhower, apparently.). Along with Marshall appeared guitarist Steuart Smith of the Eagles, the fabulous Charlie Giordano of E Street fame -- who convinced me that every song should have accordion on it -- and, filling in as the voice of Sylvia Robinson on two Mickey & Sylvia covers, the effervescently charming Nikki Jean.

Some sixth sense told me that Marshall was going to include Mickey & Sylvia numbers. Maybe it's because he'd already introduced me to one of the songs -- the ridiculously delightful "Love Will Make You Fail In School" -- on his Saturday WFUV radio show. But I'd never heard of Nikki Jean, the singer Marshall had enlisted to help him out. Her shimmering, pure voice was perfect for the job, though, and when Marshall encouraged her to perform a couple of songs from her new album Pennies in a Jar, I became hooked.

Now here's the cool back story. Pennies in a Jar is Nikki Jean's debut album (although she cut her teeth on indie/hip-hop projects such as Nouveau Riche and tours with Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West). Normally those credentials would send me running in the opposite direction, but Marshall's intro helped me discover that Nikki's got a whole nother thang going on. Born Nicholle Jean Leary in St. Paul, Minnesota -- a Midwestern girl after my own heart! -- she's now based in that old-school music capital of Philly (check out her appearance with fellow Phillyite Daryl Hall on Live From Daryl's House). She's known among her friends and fans for baking cookies and knitting as well as singing -- how retro is that! All of which makes perfect sense to me, now that I've listened to her new CD, Pennies in a Jar.

For Pennies in a Jar is Nikki Jean's bid to link up to the great American pop-soul singer-songwriter heritage, a feat she accomplished with odds-defying nerve. She simply contacted all the great American pop songwriters -- Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Jimmy Webb, Carly Simon, Jeff Barry, Paul Williams, even Bob Dylan -- and asked them to co-write songs with her. And believe it or not, they all said yes.

The result is a pretty wonderful album with great range. Nikki's supple, lovely voice and innate musicality suit this classic tradition, so much so that I have to wonder what she was ever doing messing around in the hip-hop world. (To my ears the weakest track on the album is "Million Star Motel", which features hip-hoop emcees Lupe Fiasco and Black Thought).

And this track -- which she sang that night at the Iridium -- has emerged as my favorite on the album. This one she co-wrote with Philly Soul great Thom Bell, author of such classics as "Didn't I Blow Your Mind (This Time)," "Betcha By Golly Wow," and "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love." Bell's DNA is all over this track, and it officially blows my mind.

That central image -- how to unring a bell -- it's like a Zen koan, isn't it? All of the images she unspools, from falling snow to spilled milk, from shot bullets to a dropped bomb, are irretrievable acts. So, too, is the fatal moment in a relationship when you break things off; you may be able to backpedal and patch it up, but the fact that you ever inititated a break-up is on the record forever. "Once you choose / The hand you play is yours to lose" -- it's sad but true, and you can never unsay those words again.

Dig the descending melodic line of the verse, the unresolved keys, that sense of brooding they convey. In the bridge and the chorus, it expands into major key, as she philosophically regards the situation she's created -- but the die is cast, and the brooding verses will take over again. We have no idea whether she wants to save the relationship after all, only that she's seized with regret by the sense of having crossed a line. It's psychologically acute, with a hook that I can't get out of my head.

So kudos to Nikki Jean, for apprenticing herself to the masters of songwriting, and for allying herself with a longer-term tradition. When I bought this CD from her in the Iridium bar, she couldn't have been sweeter or more genuine: all she could do was gush about the generous spirit of the songwriters she'd worked with, and her awe at being on stage that night with such amazing musicians. (Those old guys?)

Somewhere in here, the planets are aligning. And it's all good.

2011-11-14T14:44:00.000-08:00

RAY DAVIES IS IN THE HOUSE! I'LL BE OTHERWISE ENGAGED THIS WEEK -- BUT JUST TO KEEP THE KINKS CHANNEL ON THE AIR, HERE'S A 2007 POST ABOUT MY FAVORITE BRITISH INVASION BAND. *

*WHAT AM I SAYING? MY FAVORITE BAND OF ALL TIME!!!

Autumn Almanac & Shangri-la / The Kinks

Long before Ben Folds and Fountains of Wayne started writing their odes to suburban life, there was Ray Davies, peering out the windows of his East Finchley villa to chronicle the lives of his neighbors.

Take the narrator of his 1967 single “Autumn Almanac.”

It opens with such nostalgic pastoral charm: “From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar / When the dawn begins to crack / It’s all part of my autumn almanac / Breeze blows leaves of a musty-colored yellow / So I sweep them in my sack.” You can’t tell me that’s not lovely, despite the twinges in our hero’s rheumatic back. I’m warmed by the comforting image of his friends gathering for “tea and toasted buttered currant buns.” The sound is a music hall softshoe, with corny horns, plinky piano, and sugary backing ooh’s; good times, good times.

But once Ray has hooked us, he begins to layer on mundane details that spell out the guy’s complacency: “I like my football on a Saturday, / Roast beef on Sundays, all right. / I go to Blackpool for my holidays, / Sit in the open sunlight” (sung in a plumping rhythm in a wavery old-timey Victorola voice -- this is where the satire starts to really dig in). In the last verse -- if you can call them verses; the melody never repeats itself, just rambles in a senile wool-gathering way -- Ray lets his narrator hang himself: “This is my street / And I’m never gonna leave it,” he stoutly declares, “And I’m always gonna stay here / If I live to be 99 / ‘Cos all the people I meet / Seem to come from my street”). Well, yeah, if you never go anywhere else, that’s who you’re bound to meet, innit?

Just two years later, Ray Davies revisits this territory with “Shangri-La,” a single off their LP Arthur (the soundtrack for a never-completed teleplay that would have been the first rock opera – but that’s another story).

Ray isn’t playing a character this time, he’s addressing a man who’s finally “made it” to that detached villa. All the flip satire is gone; Ray sings with earnest poignance, “Now that you’ve found your paradise / This is your kingdom to command / You can go outside and polish your car / Or sit by the fire in your Shangri-la.” The rueful melody drifts down the scale, ending every line on a gruff low note. Even before Ray tells you about the hollowness of this dream fulfilled, the melody’s made you feel it.

Yes, “Gone are the lavatories in the back yard” (a vivid and totally English detail, baffling to us Americans) – but Ray counters that with the reminder that “You've reached your top and you just can't get any higher.” How depressing is that? Then the satire turns even more biting: “The little man who gets the train / Got a mortgage hanging over his head / But he's too scared to complain.” I don’t know, I think Ray sounds terrified by this prospect -- terrified because he’s tempted by it too. And here’s the capping image: “And all the houses in the street have got a name / 'Cos all the houses in the street they look the same.” That English penchant for cutesy house names – “Rose Cottage” or “Storm’s End” – we don’t do that in America, but we’re just as guilty of building cookie-cutter housing developments. Little boxes on a hillside – there’s a nightmare for you.

Ray actually seems fond of his “Autumn Almanac” geezer and his cozy neighbours, but the guy in “Shangri-la”? He’s a gloomy wreck, surrounded by vicious gossips and weighed down by debt payments. Comedy and tragedy – just two sides of the same coin, courtesy of Mr. Ray Davies.

2011-11-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

Girlfriend in a Coma / The Smiths

I won't go into detail about what I was doing in 1987, but I can tell you one thing I wasn't doing -- I wasn't listening to the Smiths. A pity, I suppose. On the other hand, it means that I now face the delicious pleasure of exploring this brave new world all at once.

I feel about the Smiths the way I feel about Robyn Hitchcock; what I find most compelling is their inimitable Smiths-ness. When you figure that Robyn and the Smiths both wandered onto the music scene in the wasteland left behind by punk, it all makes sense; they were all trying to reinvent the wheel. As soon as their songs begin, you're immediately projected into some sort of parallel universe. It's not just the oddball timbre of Morrissey's vocals; it's the whole ball of wax: the unrhyming lyrics, the mesmeric repeated phrases, the modular melodies -- like a pop equivalent of Legos -- and the quirky combination of romantic yearning and postmodern irony. The emotional flutter in Morrissey's voice is simply not to be trusted.

Having come to the Smiths late, I did the prudent thing: I started out with a "best of" compilation, in this case the excellent Louder Than Bombs. But I knew -- it was inevitable -- that eventually I'd have to go back and buy all the albums, as I slid further and further down the rabbit hole. My latest purchase: the aptly titled Strangeways, Here We Come, released in 1987. All new tracks to me, since Louder Than Bombs was compiled as a sort of catch-up album for the overseas market, and was released well before they recorded Strangeways, which turned out to be their final album. It's full of wonderful treasures, but this track in particular whacked me upside the head. In a good way, of course.

Now, full confession: I've got a friend who's just come out of a coma. Tragic story, which I won't go into here, but I've been preoccupied for weeks, worrying about her condition. So from the get-go, I feel ambivalent about Morrissey singing about something so sad -- not just singing about it, but singing about it in a jaunty pop song with a rather bouncy beat. What gives?

"Girlfriend in a coma, I know / I know, it's serious." Meanwhile, there's a perky little guitar riff, not to mention cello arpeggios as he wonders, "Do you think she'll pull through?" At first he doesn't want to see her, then he's longing to see her to say goodbye. He's tormented by the memory of thoughtlessly saying in the past that he'd like to murder her or strangle her. Like so many Smiths song, this one homes relentlessly in on a callow emotional response; of course he's sorry, of course he loves her, blah blah blah, but really it's all about him, his guilt and his fears.

Maybe it's satire -- a comment on the shallowness of self-involved modern love -- maybe it's just being brutally honest about human nature. Either way, it's provocative, and yet so dreamily beautiful, in its Smith-y way, that it's been echoing in my consciousness all day.

YouTube wouldn't let me embed the official video, which is a shame. (Ah, the Eighties, when a video really mattered!) Take a look at it though -- it's a curious artifact in and of itself. There's Morrissey, earnestly emoting (in color! at a tilted angle!) at the bottom of the screen, while behind him plays scenes from the 1964 movie The Leather Boys, a black-and-white kitchen-sink drama about young working-class marrieds estranged by the husband's attraction to a studly gay biker. I haven't seen this film, but now I'm wildly curious. First of all, anything with Rita Tushingham -- she of A Taste of Honey and The Knack and How To Get It -- has to be good. But more importantly, it throws into the mix all the mystery surrounding Morrissey's own sexuality, especially because the young husband, played by Colin Campbell, looks frighteningly like Morrissey. So is that why he really can't get too worked up about his dying girlfriend?

Punk rock smashed so many barriers, artists like the Smiths and Robyn Hitchcock had to find new ways to be transgressive. Absurdist poetry about insects and transportation was Robyn's solution; the Smiths instead trained a discomforting spotlight on the worst banalities of human interactions. It's a very seductive view of the world. I might just have to listen to more of it.

2011-11-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

Madonna of the Wasps / Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock has had more musical lives than a cat. He's played folk music, psychedelic music, punk, and rock & roll; his bands have included the Soft Boys, the Egyptians, and the Venus 3, alongside a substantial solo output. And oh, yes, he draws, paints, make videos, acts in films, and has developed an eccentric stage persona that's true performance art. Whatever he does, it fascinates me.

It's exhausting to be a Robyn Hitchcock fan, though, trying to keep up with his restless, peripatetic output. He's always got some new project cooking, launched quickly and with little fanfare. When I think of the ponderous PR apparatus marshaled around the new Coldplay album, I'm bored even before it's released; but with Robyn Hitchcock, there's always some surprise popping up on the internet, some album of outtakes or oddball video or clips of tribute concerts that I'd no idea was happening. Quick, grab it now!

News somehow drifted to me on the ether of Chronology, Robyn's new career-spanning compilation (to call it a "best of" would hardly do justice to the quirky selection), which, as I understand it, is only being released in digital format. But when I went on line to buy it, what do I find but another new album, titled Tromsø, Kaptein, that he totally snuck in on me. Strange marketing plan -- I mean, I've bought enough of his stuff directly from YepRoc that they should have me down as a fan; emailing alerts to known fans should be the most basic rollout strategy. But then, hey, illogical marketing sorta fits the Robyn Hitchcock mystique, doesn't it?

Long before I picked up Chronology, I already had this song in my head. But lo and behold, when I listened to Chronology, I realized that the version in my music library is totally different. What gives?

The version I'm used to -- the version I'm in love with -- is a solo acoustic version, which I've deduced (girl detective that I am) came from the compilation CD my friend Dave K made for me, when we were going to see Robyn for the first time. You know, the way a drug pusher gives you a joint for free, knowing you'll soon be back begging to buy more?

Anyhoo, this acoustic rendition is now the only one I want to hear. Somewhere on the internet I read that it was recorded during an in-store concert at some record shop in London. If I were Robyn, this is the version I'd have put on the compilation CD. But then I'm not Robyn. The very thought of being Robyn makes me feel dizzy, in fact. Whoa.

I'll tell you why I prefer this version. Listen to the way Robyn sings the title phrase: "Lost Madonna of the wasps" -- how his voice swoops up on "wasps," like a flying insect, then the delicate buzzing as he enunciates "wah-ss-puh--ssss." It's almost like you're being stung. It's wonderfully specific and intimate, and mesmerizing.

Robyn's got a bit of an insect fixation (no wonder the Jonathan Demme documentary about RH is titled Sex, Food, Death . . . and Insects) and he has no trouble anthropomorphizing his Madonna. In the middle verse, she comes in for her close-up: "And then she settles on me / Wise Madonna of the flies / I look into her eyes / She doesn't recognize me / Is this love?" Sure, it could all be a metaphor, but for a shape-shifter like Robyn Hitchcock, it's not out of the question that he really does ponder the inner life of insects.

And yes, the logic of the main verse (repeated again in the third verse) seems dictated mostly by rhymes. "Crossed," "lost," "frost," "cost" -- if he can rhyme it, it's in the song. But if poets like Rimbaud can build a whole poem off of interlocked rhymes, so can Robyn Hitchcock. The main thing is that mood of melancholy, the rising and falling melody, the suspended chords, the sense of loss that runs through it. I find myself thinking about what short lives insects lead, how death is always imminent, how a cold spell can end it all overnight. I look out my window and see the bizarre Halloween snowfall in the park and, you know, Robyn's onto something . . . .

2011-10-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

When I Was King / Graham Parker

We're long past due for a Graham Parker post, my friends and faithful readers.

The Graham Parker world has been buzzing lately over two groundbreaking pieces of news. Firstly, Graham has reunited with his old backing band, The Rumour, for a new album entitled (don't you love it?) Three Chords Good. And as if that weren't enough, long-time Parker fan and film director Judd Apatow has tapped GP and the Rumour to appear in his new film, a sequel to Knocked Up starring Paul Rudd, set to be released in December 2012 (if we can wait that long!). Is that cool or what?

Now, anyone who knows how funny Graham can be should know that he's just been waiting for an opportunity like this to shine on camera. I predict that he's about to experience a truly epic (and long overdue) career revival. A year from now everyone will be claiming to be Parkeristas, just like everyone this fall claims to be a Nick Lowe fan. Here's your chance to be ahead of the curve and get hip to Graham Parker before the masses move in.

You'll find this track on 1991's Struck By Lightning, which just may be my favorite Graham Parker album ever. (And that's going some.) Side note: The Rumour's Andrew Bodnar plays bass on this album, and Pete Thomas of Elvis Costello's Attractions is the drummer. The Band's Garth Hudson and the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian sit in on a few tracks as well -- not too shabby, eh?

Back in 1979, when Squeezing Out Sparks gave Graham Parker and the Rumour their biggest US success, they pretty much were kings. By 1991, that was well in Graham's past -- but does he sound bitter or regretful? No way. In fact, he seems to have all the confidence of an artist who knows he's doing his best work ever, whether or not the world is listening. (I wasn't even listening in 1991 -- it took me years to rediscover Graham Parker.)

"When I was king," he muses, "I was not really the man I am now." There's just a whiff of satire to that rising melody, the mock stately rhythm lagging behind the beat with noblesse oblige. And the trappings of royalty -- or of pop success -- are almost laughably ephemeral: a "throne of china," a crown fit only to be melted down "to sell as scrap." But being a king is a sort of trap, too: "But they'd run the first run of stamps / People had cashed in their post office savings / To buy some and lick the back of my neck." It's deliciously absurd, but poignant all the same. The coronation happens anyway, and in a sort of fairy-tale reality, he finds himself ruling over "some green and pleasant land / With a frog and a princess, not necessarily in that order."

"I didn't want to be king anyway," Graham protests; "I always preferred to hang out with the servants." I love that line; to me, that epitomizes the common-man approach that makes Graham Parker's work so special. Posturing and pretension have never been his thing. (Bruce Springsteen has spent his career trying to convey the same real-guy honesty; I never buy it from him, but from Graham I do, one hundred percent.)

And after all, what would be the point of being king? "When I was king," he continues in the third verse, "there was no country left to rule / Jesters and fools were leaders / All of them a royal pain." (How could he resist a pun like that?) Too late, perhaps, he realizes he has to get back on top: "Now I'm a serf / But I'm still trying to be a king . . . I'll have to assassinate someone / With a guitar as a gun."

"Oh, it's good to be a king," he'll admit. (Who can forget Mel Brooks' classic line from History of the World Part One -- "It's good to be the king.") "I know that I've been there / Many, many, many, many kingdoms ago..." Fashions in pop music come and go, and being yesterday's hit-maker means nothing today. There's definitely something wistful about this sweet, soaring melody, but he's not weighed down with regret; it's the way of the world, and he can take it in stride.

But let's think -- who were the hitmakers in 1991? Nirvana and Pearl Jam were signaling the rise of grunge, while Guns 'n' Roses was unseating Metallica. R.E.M. and U2 were already peaking (though both continued to release music for many more years). Bryan Adams, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, and Michael Bolton ruled the charts; Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the Divinyl's "I Touch Myself" filled the airwaves. So who was ever going to notice a stripped-down, folk-inflected album like Struck By Lightning?

On the other hand, who noticed the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society album in 1968? The satire and lyrical tenderness of that album was out of step with the times, just as Struck By Lightning was out of step with 1991. But here's the thing about truly great albums: When you finally discover them, they seem as fresh as yesterday.

2011-10-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

THURSDAY REDUX

There are two artists in my archives who regularly reduce me to tears: Joe Jackson and Ben Folds. I don't know why that is, although the fact that both are stellar pianists may have something to do with it. I've had Ben mightily on my mind recently, having just received his new retrospective box set, The Best Imitation of Myself (Jesus, this guy is good.) But for some reason it was this already-covered Joe Jackson song that dominated my brain today. Who knows why -- like the Wizard of Oz, I don't know how it works.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Blue Flame / Joe Jackson

Volume 4 is such a superb album. I’m not just talking musically, though it's an exquisite fusion of rock and jazz and Latin music and cabaret and everything else. But what really takes my breath away is how Joe Jackson's songwriting has matured – those melancholy melodies, the poetic imagery of the lyrics, the psychological depth of the storytelling. Music for grown-ups, again -- and you know how I love that.

I realize I’ve already worked over “Awkward Age” and “Love At First Light”; now add “Blue Flame” to the list of songs from this 2003 album that completely wrench my heart.

He wastes no time, but plunges right in, mid-conversation: “I’ve got some walls around me too / But they’re not much, compared to your house / Fifty feet high, with barbed wire / Guards on the top, aiming rifles at your lovers one by one / And friends too.” Don’t you just know people like that? And the way that melody meanders in and out of minor keys, piano chords hanging unresolved, the drumbeat clicking along – it’s so wistful, so sorrowful, you have to take it seriously. Maybe this is the secret of Joe Jackson's emotional power: those risk-taking melodies, leaping all over the keyboard. Who can resist?

“I’ve come with hands above my head,” he declares, carrying on the metaphor, but he’s honest about his own hang-ups: “But I’m damned if I’ll try to break your door down / If you ever come out, just call me / I’ll still be armed with the memory of one evening when you smiled / At something.” It’s so little to go on, but at a certain point in our lives we realize that may be all there is. Taking a risk gets so damn hard – but NOT taking the risk, that’s death.

Yes, this hoped-for lover is a hard case – “You tell me women get you down / And as for men, well they’re all bastards / I wonder what world you call home,” he mutters, shaking his head. Later, he can’t resist an edgy snipe: “Yes, it was nice to see you too / Although I’m never sure you mean it.” Yes, he can see his would-be lover’s faults, perfectly clearly. Leading into the second chorus, he’s talking as much to himself as to his lover when he remarks, “Bitterness is a black hole.” But somebody has to bend.

So why is this lover worth pursuing? In the chorus, he shifts gears to confess that there is another side: “There’s a blue flame inside of you, so beautiful and rare / Love’s not something we decide to do / You’d be so hard to love / If love was not just . . . there.” There's the heartbreaking nub of it. Of course; they're already entangled, more than either of them can afford to admit. Who ever said love was easy?

And we have NO idea how this affair will turn out. If a happy ending is what you’re hanging around for, prepare to be disappointed. The romantic and the realist in Joe Jackson are always locked in their hopeless dance; neither one will ever win. That’s the world according to Joe Jackson . . . and it pierces my heart, every time.

2011-10-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

Sensitive Man / Nick Lowe

If you've been living in a cave for the past month or so . . . you may not have heard that Nick Lowe has a new album out. The rest of us, we've been witnessing a barrage of press coverage, adulatory reviews, radio appearances, and other coronation-type events heralding the September release of The Old Magic. Suddenly, it's okay to like Nick Lowe all over again.

I will refrain from asking where all those newly-minted Nick Lowe fans were six years ago, when he hadn't released an album in 4 years and I couldn't find his older CDs anywhere. Now the old stuff's being re-released (Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust have gotten the royal re-issue treatment so far, and more are bound to come), along with a 2-disc best-of compilation (Quiet Please) and the boxed set The Brentford Trilogy, that conveniently bundles the three late-90s-early-00s albums wherein he reinvented himself as an older-but-wiser country crooner. Buy, buy, buy!!

Well, I'm a little conflicted -- I'm not sure I'm ready to share Nick with the masses -- though once he's no longer the Flavor of the Month, things will no doubt cool down. While we're waiting, we can quietly enjoy this album for what it is: Not the capstone of a storied career, but simply another immensely pleasurable outing by an old dog who still has plenty of tricks up his sleeve.

Several of these songs -- including "I Read A Lot" -- I first heard months ago in concert, when Nick was trying them out on the road. It's hard for me to recapture how riveted I was, hearing them for the first time. So until I've properly digested the album as a whole, let me just share with you one new-to-me delight.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

From those very first brightly chattering piano chords (the ever sublime Geraint Watkins!), this song ticks along, upbeat and sly. As Nick happily tells any interviewer who asks, his songs aren't autobiographical, but he certainly does seem fond of adopting the character of a Clueless Loser. In this case, the woebegone fella is baffled to notice a new distance in his lover. (Shades of last album's "People Change" -- "and you don't know what you've done / Or even how to make it right"). He's picking up various signs, all right -- how she pulls away from his embrace, the looks she shoots across the room -- but he still has no idea what's bugging her. "I know that something is amiss, / But what it is, you won't say," he laments. Just come out and tell me, babe -- don't make me guess!

All he knows is that he's feeling rebuffed: "But how can I face it, standing out here in the cold? / I'm a sensitive man." ("Don't freeze me, baby," he begs in the second verse; "you can hear that midnight song," he adds woefully.) Of course he's wounded and stung, because he's such a sensitive man. ("Though first impressions might steer you wrong," he admits -- he's so misunderstood!) I love the chorus here: "I'm a sensitive man," he insists, while his mates chime in with doleful "ohhs." And in the coda: "Sen-sitive man! Out in the cold! / Sensitive man / Tryin' to do good." Poor baby!

This is a real Mars-and-Venus moment, isn't it? When we women gush about how sensitive a man is, it's because (we hope) he can read our moods, anticipate our desires, and -- oh, yes -- put himself in our shoes and avoid pissing us off in the first place. Nick's narrator, though, is sensitive in an entirely different meaning: easily hurt and prone to brooding. Put the two together and -- OUCH!!!

Speaking strictly from a female point of view, I can guess that this guy did something colossally stupid. (Like maybe he FORGOT HER BIRTHDAY?!!!) And the last thing she wants is to have to spell it out for him. But he's so obtuse, even when she drops hints all over the place, they shoot right over his head. MEN!!!

On the other hand -- okay, okay -- maybe this song is about how women over-complicate every emotional situation, and how hard it is for men to navigate those treacherous waters. Who knows? It's done with such a light touch, either or both readings are possible. Nick's pulled off this sort of tease before -- like in "All Men Are Liars," where he simultaneously lambasts the male sex and mocks women who rag on men.

As usual, his delivery is spot-on: Just a few pauses and ironic vocal flourishes to let us in on the joke. There's just a whisper of cheesiness in that cocktail lounge piano, the back-up crooners, the bleating Bacharach-style horns in the middle eight. Nick can break your heart with regret if he wants to: elsewhere on The Old Magic, for example, with the tender "Stoplight Roses" or the rueful "House For Sale." But that's not what he's after here. This track is way too bouncy for regret, as our hapless narrator (not Nick, remember!) pouts and scratches his head.

Talk about word play -- forget the puns and double entendres that used to riddle Nick Lowe's lyrics, now he can write an entire song about the conflicting messages contained in one simple phrase. That, my friends, is the mark of a master wordsmith.

2011-10-10T18:33:00.000-07:00

The Columbus Day Shuffle

Doncha just love 3-day weekends? Started out with my birthday on Saturday, then John Lennon's birthday yesterday, and now we have yet another day to chill and hang out. Time for music!

1. Fourth of July / Dave Alvin
From King of California (1994)
Another lonesome, plangent tune by the wonderful Dave Alvin, the King of Downey, California. Dave Alvin seems to have a pipeline into the weary lives of working-class Westerners. "On the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone / Mexican kids are shooting fireworks below" -- shoot this in black-and-white and you'd have a California version of The Last Picture Show. Devastatingly sad and tender, great stuff.

2. Rockin' the Suburbs / Ben Folds
From Rockin' the Suburbs (2001)
From the authentic to the deliciously snarky in one fell swoop. "Let me tell y'all what it's like / Being male, middle-class and white...All alone in my white-boy pain / Shake your booty while the band complains." And those perky synths -- skewer 'em, Ben!

3. Don't Lose Your Grip on Love / Brinsley Schwarz
From Nervous on the Road (1972)
Authentic at one remove, the Brinsleys channel the Band, with Bob Andrews doing a quite respectable Garth Hudson homage. They almost get it right -- "Why do you despise this travelin' man? / Even though he's doing the best that he can" -- until Nick Lowe betrays his English boarding school roots: "Working for peanuts, as is his wont --" SCREECH! Gotta love it. This is the same man who rhymes "bona fide" with "coincide" in "Cruel to be Kind," or who describes himself as "a feckless man" in "Hope For Us All" -- he's an English major's dream. Well, this English major's dream, anyway...

4. Sole Salvation / The English Beat
From Special Beat Service (1982)
Oooh, great sax, and those earnest Dave Wakeling vocals -- these guys never fail to please. The ska revival of the early 80s was right up my alley; I fell in love with the Specials first, but the English Beat kicked in right after, adding a little pop honey to the mix. Yeah, it's Sole Salvation or Soul Salvation, whichever you want, the groove goes on.

5. Shting Shtang / Nick Lowe
From Party of One (1989)
There are days when this neglected beauty is my favorite Nick Lowe album, even this throwaway rockabilly riffer. These guys are just having so damn much fun -- who needs Rockpile?

6. The Story's Over / The Lodger
From Grown-Ups (2006)
I think iTunes is prejudiced towards this indie-pop band from Leeds, because their music cycles up SO OFTEN on my shuffle, even though I only have five tracks downloaded. (Thanks, Justin.) Not that that's a bad thing -- their stuff's fun.

7. Eine Kleine Middle Klasse Musik / The Rutles
From Archaeology (1996)
The brilliant Neil Innes (he of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) masterminded the Beatles parody The Rutles, along with ex-Python Eric Idle; a few years later, when the Beatles Anthology was all over the place, Neil jumped in with this wonderful take-off of Sgt. Pepper's. Except that it's not really a take-off, IMHO, just extending the Beatles' legacy with all the songs they would have written if they had had time.

8. Back on My Feet / Al Kooper
From New York City (You're A Woman) (1971)
I am absolutely always delighted when an Al Kooper track cycles up on the old shuffle. The first true rock chicks I ever knew -- two girls who called themselves Toots and Babs -- turned me onto this stuff at yearbook camp when I was maybe 15, and it runs insanely deep in my musical DNA. (The full story here.) Truly, it's like going home for me. I have a huge grin on my face right now.

9. Loaded / The Wood Brothers
From Loaded (2008)
You really must, really must, listen to the Wood Brothers. Please? I just found them by accident and they're one of my great discoveries: I love them madly. Put together blues and folk and jazz, and mix it up with top-drawer musicianship and mesmerizing vocals and sharp songwriting -- well, what's not to like?

10. Space Oddity / David Bowie
From Space Oddity (1969)
Sigh. One of the greatest tracks ever.

2011-10-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

Shattered / The Rolling Stones

Now it's my Windows Movie Maker that's gone haywire -- the program I use to make videos so you can listen to the music I write about. I swear, will the technical difficulties ever end? These days I have a hard enough time getting time to blog anyway, without having to devote 2 hours to decoding tech issues.

Blogger is probably punishing me for not switching to its updated interface. Well, I tried it, and I see nothing about the new interface that improves my blogging experience whatsoever. It's like making me switch versions of Word (and all along I still wish Microsoft hadn't driven WordPerfect out of the market!). Now, I'm no Luddite -- just today I tried out a new GPS device that is not a Garmin system, and I loved my new and improved navigation experience. But when something isn't broken, I hate having someone else decide it's time to fix it. Does the latest version of iTunes really matter?

So once again I have to fall back on You Tube:

Mind you, after listening to this song about 50 times trying to get it downloaded, I'm not sure I like it anymore. Well, "like" is probably the wrong verb anyway. I listened to Some Girls a LOT when it first came out in 1978; I'd just moved to Manhattan, and this song encapsulated all the frustrations I felt, learning how to deal with the Big Bad Apple. I shared a shabby apartment in a fringe neighborhood, rode a filthy graffiti-covered subway train to work, and climbed up out of the subway every morning in Times Square (the old nasty Times Square, not Mayor Bloomberg's sparkling new Times Square Mall). So it was oddly comforting to listen to the relentlessly chugging rhythm track of this song, and hear Mick's campy yelps of outrage.

Among the lines that have always stayed with me:

All this chitter chatter, chitter chatter, chitter chatter
'Bout schmatte schmatte schmatte,
I can't give it away on Seventh Avenue.

Don't you know the crime rate's going up up up up up
To live in this town, you must be tough tough tough tough tough tough tough

Rats on the West Side, bed bugs uptown
What a mess, this town's in tatters

This town's full of money grabbers
Go ahead, bite the Big Apple
Don't mind the maggots

Don't you just love how opportunistic Jagger's lyrics are? He'll say anything if it rhymes, or even if it kinda rhymes. It's just brilliant dumb luck that those rhymes come off as insightful and impressionistic.

There's no melody to speak of, and the only interesting instrumentation is in the bridge, where Keith rips off several of his own old riffs. If I were really a Stones fan, I'm sure I could identify them. (If he played the riff from "You Really Got Me," I'd know that . . . ) And yet -- well, this is a supremely fun song.

This is the last album, in fact, where I really felt that the Stones were having any fun at all. From there on, it always just seemed like they had to grind out music to keep their enormous enterprise afloat. Mind you, I haven't listened seriously to anything after Tattoo You, but there's only so much time in the world.

But hey, I could be wrong.

2011-09-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

Friday Shuffle

I'm thoroughly bummed that the Amazon widget doesn't seem to work anymore. In cases like this I tend to assume that Blogger/Google and Amazon are having a hissy fit with each other (did Google steal Amazon's boyfriend?) and Google has decided not to play with Amazon ever again. Took me ages to find another way to slip those links in here. Hope it works!

1. Moments Like This / Maria Muldaur
From A Woman Alone With the Blues (2003)
Nice little bit of jazz from Maria Muldaur, in her best kittenish-sultry voice. I've been a fan of Maria's ever since the Jim Kweskin Jug Band days, though my favorite album of hers is definitely Waitress in a Donut Shop. If all you know of her is "Midnight At The Oasis," please investigate further.

2. The Good Old Days / The Lodger
From Life Is Sweet (2008).
Catchy indie pop number from this Leeds trio -- "Could it be the start of something? / Could it be the end of a phase? / Could it be the start of the future? / Could it be the good old days?" Way too upbeat for the break-up subject matter, but I'll never turn down bouncy hooks like this.

3. One to One / Joe Jackson
From Beat Crazy (1980)
Joe Jackson may have started out wearing a New Wave suitcoat, but it never really fit. By the time of Beat Crazy he was already skewing toward jazz -- we shouldn't have been so surprised by the next year's Jumpin' Jive, though who could have predicted the Latinized glory of Night and Day? The metronomic drum tick of this track is downright hypnotic.

4. I Don't Wanna Talk About Love No More / Amy Rigby
From Little Fugitive (2005)
"I'm tired of emotional discussions / I'm tired of repercussions...." Amy Rigby's such a hoot; she really tells it like it is, our most reliable guide to spunky chick desire.

5. Redneck Friend / Dave Alvin
From West of the West (2006)
Nice cover of a Jackson Browne tune, on Alvin's album-long salute to various of his fellow native California rockers. Alvin's gravelly voice adds a sexy intimacy to this tune, perfectly complemented by a slouchy jazz arrangement. More people should cover Jackson Browne, IMHO.

6. Rush Across the Road / Joe Jackson
From Rain (2008)
Joe again! And 28 years after Beat Crazy, listen to his muse in full flower on this riveting album, one of the best of the past decade. On the track before this, he rips our hearts out with "Solo (So Low)" -- only to let joy burst in again with "Rush Across the Road," a soaring paean to how love can take you completely by surprise.

7. Stick To Me / Graham Parker & the Rumour
From Stick To Me (1977)
Early GP, and great stuff -- dig those edgy rhythms and driving energy. I swear, this song just crackles out of the speakers.

8. Hate to Say I Told You So / The Hives
From Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Well, talk about edgy rhythms and driving energy -- it's the Hives' turn, dialing up the punk with those grating guitars and pounding beat, sweetened with just a dollop of playfulness.

9. Say Yes / Elliott Smith
From Either / Or (1997)
I know very little about Elliott Smith, but the handful of folky tracks that somehow landed on my iTunes always make me wistful. Was this song in the movie Garden State? Sounds like it should have been.

10. You Are A Tourist / Death Cab for Cutie
From Codes and Keys (2011)
"When there's a burning in your heart / An endless yearning in your heart..." I love the layered textures of this track, with its incantatory chorus, spooling guitar riff, and plinging echoes. Even endless radio play this summer couldn't spoil this number for me.

2011-09-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

THE FRIDAY SHUFFLE

Back to school time -- got my clean notebooks and sharpened pencils and new plaid skirt all ready to go. Summer's distractions have been put behind me, and I'm ready to get back down to bizness.

Only problem is, my Amazon widget -- the one that let me post links to mp3s so you could listen to the songs with me -- isn't working today. My apologies -- I'll be sure to come back and add those links when it's been fixed.

1. I've Got It All (Most) / Modest Mouse
From Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004)
Well, now here's a song that speaks to my current mood. "I've got it al......most / I've got it all, almost all figured out / But when I get there / Always when I get there, / The pieces, they just fall apart." If Cubists made rock and roll, this is what it would sound like: neurotic vocals and lurching offbeat rhythms, sewn together with swoops of melody and a funky underpinning. As my son remarked, listening to Modest Mouse's contribution to the Rave On Buddy Holly tribute: "If I heard this song blind, I wouldn't know it was Buddy Holly, but I'd definitely know it was Modest Mouse. You can't mistake that sound."

2. Take the Long Way Around / Teenage Fanclub
From Songs From Northern Britain (1997)
Don't these guys do great hooks?   Somehow their songs always slide past without me really listening to the lyrics, I guess because the lyrics are beside the point. But they've got all the pop energy their name promises, refreshingly s l o w e d down just enough to let it swing. And those rich vocal harmonies make me think for some reason of the Jayhawks -- anybody else?

3. Find Another Girl / The Hives
From Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Speaking of re-invented covers -- these snappy Swedes have utterly transformed this Curtis Mayfield-Jerry Butler Philly soul classic, turning it into -- ta-da~ a Hives song! What else, when you've got Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's tuneless vocals and that scruffy skate-punk wall of sound? Still, I dunno -- that note of existential despair works oddly well for this song. Who'd a guessed that?

4. So It Goes / Nick Lowe
From Jesus of Cool (1976)
Well, this has been quite a week for St. Nick, freshly canonized in the mainstream press in honor of his new country crooner album The Old Magic. (Yeah, yeah, I've got it, I'll be reviewing it soon -- that one deserves a full weekend's listen, preferably with a good bottle of Scotch.) But it's a nice change-up to get an invigorating shot of Old Nick. It's easy to get caught up in the boppy beat and those overlapping "so it goes"-es, but Nick's surrealistic lyrics were always better than they needed to be for Pure Pop. Best verse: "In the air there's aftershave lotion / In the wake of a snaky Persian / On his arm is a skin-tight vision / Wonder why she ain't mine, she's his." There's a whole novel there, my friends, or at least a Cameron Crowe movie.

5. Lost and Found / The Kinks
From Think Visual (1986)
Mmmm....Ray's hurricane song. This has been quite a week for Ray as well, as tickets have been selling like hot cakes to his November U.S. tour dates. (Hours battling Ticketmaster finally snagged me a 4th row way on the side for the New York City date -- hmmph. I hate scalpers.).

6. One for My Baby / Rosemary Clooney
From 70 -- A 70th Birthday Celebration (1998)
I'll take Rosemary Clooney over Peggy Lee any day -- nearly as sultry, but with a voice as clear as a mountain stream, even on this late recording. Sinatra's original of this Arlen/Mercer classic is pretty hard to top, but damn if Rosie doesn't pull it off, with masterly phrasing and a seen-it-all shrug in her voice. Set 'em up, Joe!

7. All In Good Time / Ron Sexsmith
From Time Being (2006)
Nick Lowe keeps telling interviewers lately that Ron Sexsmith is one of his favorite songwriters. Another thing I have in common with Nick Lowe! Ron's our great Canadian folk-pop philosopher, reflecting on the nature of love and loss with a gently lilting acoustic twang. This song pretty well sums up this album's earnest meditations on mortality -- the catchiest sermons you'll ever love.

8. The Lasting Kind / Greg Trooper
From Floating (2003)
Another Greg Trooper album you ought to own, the first one that hooked me on this guy's genius. A little country wheeze adds plangency to this yearning-for-love song that should have covered by mega-artists and made Troop the fortune he deserves. (Calling Curtis Stigers!) Dig how those brooding verses swell into the heartfelt chorus: "There's love that sees and love that's blind / Love that pays no mind / Leaving and the left behind / I'm looking for the lasting kind." Aren't we all?

9. Long Gone Lonesome Blues / Sheryl Crow
From Timeless: Hank Williams (1998)

Wow, this is really Covers Night, isn't it? Sheryl's cover doesn't take the crown away from Hank's original, but it ticks along nicely, and her yodeling is way better than you'd expect. (Disclaimer: I still haven't forgiven Sheryl for Lance Armstrong.) I got this track on a mix-tape my friend Jim sent me (yes, people do still send each other mix-tapes, children) and every time this track comes up, I grudgingly admit, "you know, I really ought to listen to more Sheryl Crow." So I'm open to suggestions....

10. I've Just Seen A Face / The Beatles
From Help! (1965)
Talk about going country -- here's Paul trying on some rockabilly shoes, back in 1965 when these guys absolutely could not fail. (Come to think of it, their entire career was like that.) A delicious dose of rockabilly syncopation: "Fallin', yes I am fallin' / And she keeps callin' / Me back again" -- oh, if only.

2011-08-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

HURRICANE'S A-COMIN'!!

Not that I buy into the panic mentality or anything -- but just in case Irene wipes New York City off the face of the earth -- or at least in case internet service goes out for the next few days -- here's a couple of old posts revisited, of my favorite hurricane songs. . .

"Feels Like Rain" / John Hiatt

Want a song to win your true love? You can't go wrong with John Hiatt. And in the end, I always go for "Feels Like Rain," from his 1986 album Slow Turning. One of the most emotive love songs ever written, it's been covered by loads of other artists -- and it deserves to be -- but I don't think anybody does it better than John himself.

That leisurely tempo takes its own sweet time to get going, with Sonny Landreth laying down light-fingered electric guitar licks while John tinkers around on the electric piano. The texture of this song feels just like the sort of gentle nighttime rain that sweeps in to wash away all the grit and hurt of the day -- if rainfall sound-effects had been layered in, it couldn't sound any more atmospheric. And over it all John's vocals work some serious R&B voodoo, crooning and howling and whispering and coaxing, so gruff and yet so tender.

The first verse starts out lazy and carnal: "Down here the river meets the sea / And in the sticky heat I feel you / Open up to me." (I'm fanning myself already, aren't you?) It's all about the mood, and the moment, and that rising barometric pressure; the chords shift upward too, with growing urgency, as John warns: "Love comes out of nowhere, baby / Just like a hurricane." Then, like a dying gust of wind, his voice drops downward, caressing the refrain: "And it feels like rain / And it feels like rain."

And get this line: ""Underneath the stars, lying next to you / Wonderin' who you are, baby / How do you do?" This isn't just a guy banging some chick whose name he can't remember; this is a moment mid-passion when he's suddenly rocked by the deep unknowableness between two human beings. They're so close physically, it's a shock to realize that she's still her own separate person.. He may have been married to her for ten years, but at this instant she's a stranger, and he hungers to get close to her all over again. It's no coincidence that Marshall Crenshaw and Ben Folds have both described this curious phenomenon as well -- I think of Hiatt, Crenshaw, and Folds as the triumvirate of Married Love Experts.

This rain that's rolling in? It isn't just rain, of course; it's a metaphor of passion, folks, and I could tell that even if I didn't know Hiatt would later write a song, "Loving a Hurricane." And in this case, it's heat-wave-breaking, drought-ending rain, the kind of meteorological event that makes folks change their plans. "We'll never make that bridge tonight / Across Lake Pontchartrain," John decides, without a trace of regret; "Batten down the hatches . . . A little bit of stormy weather / That's no cause for us to leave . . ." No indeed, I'm staying right here, all cozy and relaxed and oh yes.

"Lost and Found" / The Kinks

Sure, I knew there was a hurricane on its way on September 27, 1985. The weather forecasts had been calling Hurricane Gloria the "storm of the century" all week. In the end, however, it bypassed Manhattan; a few lashing squalls of rain (enough to send me home from work, in the worst of it!), and then the sky turned blue and calm. Free day off from work! Sweee-ee-eet!

I had no idea at the time that Ray Davies was living through the same storm that day, a mere seven blocks south of me. And because I had fallen off the Kinks bandwagon -- driven away by the arena-rock years -- I didn't hear the Kinks' 1986 album Think Visual, where Ray Davies sings, in the opening lines of "Lost and Found": "Waiting for the hurricane / To hit New York City. . . . " But eventually I found my way back into the Kinks fold, and when I finally discovered this album -- and this song -- I felt a shiver of recognition.

"Lost and Found" makes a frequent appearance on my floating list of Top Ten Kinks Songs (how hard it is to choose just ten); I think of it as the companion song to "Stormy Sky," not just because of the storm but because of its sexy syncopation, the tenderness of Ray's vocals, and the central image of lovers finding shelter in each others' arms. It ain't often you find a Ray Davies song about two people simply happy to be together; grab 'em wherever you can.

Of course the storm is a metaphor -- of course! -- for all the crises life is bound to bring.But Ray works the metaphor beautifully here -- "Somebody said it's hit the bay . . . We're near the eye of the storm . . . They're putting up the barricades . . . " It's the anticipation that gets you, battening the hatches and all that, as he sees from afar "the hurricane crossing the coast line."

It wouldn't be a Ray Davies song if he didn't also throw in some quirky details, like "And all the bag ladies / Better put their acts together" and "the old sea dog says shiver me timbers / The sky's gone black / And it's like the dead of winter." I love those lines, and the whimsical way Ray sings them -- as if this love makes him so secure, he can even see absurdity in the face of disaster.

My favorite bit is the bridge: "This thing is bigger than the both of us / It's gonna put us in our place." It's a brilliant, dual-edged line -- on one hand, the storm is bigger than they are, but it's also their love that is bigger, like the old movie cliche (think Humphrey Bogart -- "This thing is bigger than the two of us, baby.") They're overwhelmed by love, amazed that they can give up being separate and start being a couple.

In "Stormy Sky" the "lost" part of the equation was still stronger; now it's the "found" that matters. He still seems astounded by it happening -- "in the nick of time," he marvels. "We were lost and found, just in time / Now we've got no time to waste." Or, as he realizes in a later version of the chorus: " We came through the storm / Now it all seems clear / We were lost and found, standing here / Looking at the new frontier." It's not just a clear sky he's seeing there; it's the possibility of where his life could go, now that he's got her.

This isn't the way a teenager sees life; this is how you see it when you're middle-aged and have been through your share of painful affairs. When you've given up hope that it's ever gonna happen for you, that you won't get your Hollywood ending. And then joy surprises you, just like that -- "in the nick of time." Bravo, Ray.

2011-08-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

Adios to California / John Hiatt

Happy Belated Birthday, John!

I threw my back out last week -- we're talking big time pain here -- but I wouldn't let that stop me from getting down to the City Winery to see John Hiatt. I mean, this is Johnny Hiatt we're talking about -- no one's work runs closer to the bone for me. And halfway through the show, watching John groove around the stage (love the little fedora, by the way, John), it occurred to me that underneath that billowing white linen shirt, he could have been hiding a back brace just like I was. Somehow this was comforting, to imagine that John could have the same knowledge of pain that I have.

John not only has a birthday to celebrate -- his 59th! -- he has a new album, which selfishly I've been listening to for a week now without sharing it with you. Oh, but it's a magnificent thing, a vintage Hiatt stew of country blues and folk-rock and R&B, restless and pissed-off and smart. I hesitate to rank these things, but I think it's stronger than either of his two most recent CDs, Same Old Man or The Open Road. Both of which, by the way, I love, but still. While those were both wonderfully personal statements, on Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns I feel as if Hiatt's now widening the picture, throbbing with anger about modern American society. It's a righteous howl from Middle America, from the have-nots who've waited long enough for their due. Incendiary stuff, and I love to hear a guy pushing 60 taking risks like this.

Having said all that, this particular track seems to me less political and more autobiographical. My new buddies Carrie and Guy, who shared my table the other night (this is what I love about the Winery), picked up on the same storyline. Long ago John Hiatt was a struggling rocker in L.A.., until his life went south -- his ex-wife's suicide was probably the last straw -- and he tore up stakes and relocated to Nashville, taking his abandoned baby daughter with him, and turning his life around for the good. Seen in that light, this song is about the moment when he realized he had to quit L.A., and its woeful melancholy and sense of loss really get under my skin.

Take a listen:

That gently rollicking beat, the slide guitar -- there's surely an echo of California rock there. I'm not saying the Eagles, but you know what I mean. Now, Hiatt's SoCal years are not a big part of his biography, but he did live on the West Coast for a while in the late 70s and early 80s, and here he touches a few points of local color ("Living in the Canyon," and "Pasadena in the rain / Eating doughnuts and reading Twain. . . "). There's even a sly reference to his own early hit ("You said, 'That's it for me' / Have a little faith it will set you free"), or at any rate a 1989 hit for Bonnie Raitt, which helped to kick Hiatt's own star into a new orbit.

And the refrain crystallizes that moment of realization: "So Adios to California / Nothing to do but turn around / I always thought there's someone coming for you / The only way you'd leave this town." ("Adios," of course, because California is Spanish -- that's the kind of instinctive detail that rivets a good song.) I'm mixing Hiatt's story up with John Mellencamp's -- our other fellow Hoosier -- but really, there's a point at which dealing with the knives of the L.A. scene must have become counterproductive. It's a real "who needs this shit?" moment. And apparently, for John it was enough to drive him back to Nashville.

But there's one other element to the story, which he touches on only obliquely. Who is the "you" of this song? Part of it is John himself, finally rejecting the L.A. scene; but it's also the tragedy of his ex-wife -- "the only way you'd leave this town" being in a pine box. And in verse three, she seems to take over the song. "Two cigarettes from the package gone / You must have thought about it just that long." Wow, is that a forensic detail or what? And here's the killer line: "I never knew you were so strong" -- because, yes, it takes guts, incredible guts, to kill yourself. That line sends chills up my spine. "I guess I never will," he adds, a wonderfully ambiguous line -- meaning I guess I never will understand what happened? or "I guess I never will be that strong? Either way, it's a devastating verse.

It's interesting that John is still writing about this, when it happened over 25 years ago. But then, he's still singing "Crossing Muddy Water," from his 2000 album of the same name, which has got to be about this same life-shattering incident ("Left me in my tears to drown / She left a baby daughter"). I'm such a sap, I cry every time I hear him sing that song. And this makes me love his work even more, that he's been through tragedy and back. (Although, come on, Eric Clapton -- did you have to write "Tears in Heaven" when your young son died? Is it right that you should have turned that heartbreak into a major hit record? Dear readers, I await your comments.)

Anyhoo, another thing I noticed -- the album's title is embedded in this song. All the cool kids are doing this lately., naming their albums not after the hit single from the album, but after a line hidden in one track. Presumably that's an important flag, a code that signifies "this is the most essential song on this album." So is this the most essential song on this album? I really don't think so -- my choice would be the truly searing track "Down Around My Place," in which a man miserably growls about his economic woes. (Best line: "While the kids crowd round the table, down around my place / Bitchin' there's no cable, down around my place.")

On the other hand, that line about "dirty jeans and mudslide hymns" is way too arresting NOT to use it as an album title. Without getting all pretentiously poetic, John Hiatt knows an evocative image when he hears it. But the older he gets, the more judiciously Hiatt wields that imagery. This guy's still coming into his prime . I don't know about you, but I find that incredibly exciting.

PS I just have to mention this -- I love the new song "Detroit Made" (despite its similarity to "Thunderbird" from Master of Disaster) but I'm convinced that John ripped off the guitar riff from Greg Trooper's "Green-Eyed Girl" from his 2005 album Make It Through This World. Listen and let me know. After all, they share the same drummer, Kenneth Blevins, and John has stolen riffs in the past -- specifically, the opening riffs from "Waterloo Sunset" into the beginning of "Buffalo River Home" on 1993's Perfectly Good Guitar.

2011-08-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY (or maybe Saturday now) SHUFFLE

Oy, it's been a while. I have to admit that my Saturday evenings have been devoted lately not to blogging but to listening to the radio -- specifically Marshall Crenshaw's Bottomless Pit show on WFUV-FM (which you can listen to on the internet, either via live stream or in an archived version -- so now you've got no excuse for not checking it out.) But if I can get the blog done before Marsh's show starts at 10pm Eastern time...

1. Monday Morning / Death Cab for Cutie
From Codes and Keys (2011)
Wow. I was just listening to this new Death Cab CD on a car drive today, trying to decide if I really needed all the tracks in my iTunes library. (Some of those long sonic collages I could do without.) This song made the cut, though; it's tuneful and has a good beat. Plus I like to imagine that it's about Zooey Dechanel. "She may be young but she only likes old things..." Then again, it does have that line about the vultures surrounding you -- ah, Ben Gibbard, you depressive little scamp.

2. I Love That Girl / John Hiatt
From Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns (2011)
What is this, New Release Weekend? Now I really feel guilty that I haven't blogged yet about this brilliant new CD. Because you know I loves me some Johnny Hiatt -- I even saw him live last weekend at City Winery -- well, there's just no excuse. And this jubilant song of love, so simple, so infectious, is a side I like to see him letting loose with.

3. Wild Thing / The Troggs
From From Nowhere (1966)
Did someone say simple and infectious? A true British invasion classic. "Wild thing, I think you move me..."

4. Got To Get Out Of Here / Badfinger
From Wish You Were Here (1974)
Some day I really have to get down to business and listen to ALL of Badfinger's work, beyond the few big irresistible hit singles. There's something sweet and sensitive and sincere about them, and so melodic -- no wonder Paul McCartney wanted to get them onto the Apple label -- and yet a dark underside that makes them really interesting. This song is just draggy enough to make you wonder whether he is ever going to get out of here; compare this to the energy of the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" -- it's an entirely different thing going on.

5. First Day of Spring / Graham Parker
From 12 Haunted Episodes (1995)
If all you know of Graham Parker is Squeezing Out Sparks -- in other words, if you're like I was a year or so ago -- then you'll be amazed to see that GP also has this tender acoustic side. He's got an astonishingly literary gift for metaphor -- but don't let me explicate this one for you, listen for yourself. The guy's a freaking genius, honestly.

6. Woodcutter's Son / Paul Weller
From Stanley Road (1995)
Probably Weller's best post-Jam album, although I have a sneaking fondness for all his Style Council experiments too. Weller's never shy about genre-crossing; here he lets his rocking-out get plenty funky, wandering off into jazzy backwaters and losing all pretense of being a "song." And yet it works.

7. The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys / Traffic
From The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (1971)
Now there's a brilliant segue. This extended Stevie Winwood/Jim Capaldi jam works pretty much as pure music too. Remember when a song could be 11:02 minutes long and it still wasn't pretentious? They melded rock and jazz so effortlessly, we thought it must be easy. Ha.

8. Modern Nature / Sondre Lerche
From Faces Down (2002)
The movie Dan in Real Life first introduced me to this quirky Norwegian singer-songwriter, with a fondness for the retro show-tunesy side of indie pop. You could practically do a soft shoe dance to this track, but it's sweet as hell.

9. Tip of My Tongue / Graham Parker
From From a Window: The Lost Songs of Lennon & McCartney (2003)
Hooray! Another chance for me to badger you to buy this must-have album, wherein Graham Parker, Kate Pierson, and Bill Janovitz re-interpret various tunes that John & Paul wrote for other artists. As if we needed any more proof that they were brilliant songwriters.

10. Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast) / Lostprophets
From Liberation Transmission (2006)
Thus proving that shuffles are embarrassingly random. Nevertheless, this is a fun top-of-your-lungs singalong, upbeat and pulsing with punk energy; these Welsh rockers have me preaching revolution without a moment's thought. Makes me nostalgic for 2006 -- ah, yes, a simpler time.

2011-07-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

True Love Ways / My Morning Jacket

I've always had three reasons to love Buddy Holly: His band The Crickets inspired the name of the Beatles; his death was the chief inspiration for the iconic song of my youth "American Pie"; and, best of all, his last name was my first name. Though he came along well before my time (okay, a little before my time), I love his classic rock and roll sound, the way it bubbles with upbeat youthful energy.

Nevertheless, an all-star Buddy Holly tribute album to commemorate the 75th anniversary of his birth wasn't exactly high on my list of albums to buy. At least, not until I learned that Nick Lowe had been tapped to contribute a track. Then, of course, that album went from a curiosity to a must-have in my book. ( Even though I am still annoyed with Nick for agreeing to open for Wilco on their fall tour -- nothing against Wilco, but really, shouldn't Nick be headlining? And tickets have been absurdly hard to get, which isn't fair to Nick fans.)

But I digress.

So I went ahead and got the Buddy Holly tribute album, Rave On. The line-up is an interesting mix of older and younger artists, definitely skewed toward the indie-cool part of the spectrum. You know who I'm talking about -- The Black Keys, Fiona Apple, Florence + the Machine, the Detroit Cobras, She & Him. I mean, Julian freakin' Casablancas -- c'mon, these people weren't picked for their Buddy Holly affinities. Even the older artists are definitely downtown types: Lou Reed, Patti Smith. The one true Holly acolyte is Paul McCartney, and yet his frenetic rendition of "It's So Easy" is a distinct disappointment; it loses most of the charm of Buddy's original.

As for Mr. Lowe, he acquits himself respectably, covering "Changing All Those Changes." How clever of him to pick a less well-known song, and one which would allow him to go into rockabilly territory. As a cover it's quite decent, and much less intrusive than some of the tracks.

My top picks? Justin Townes Earle does a neat job with "Maybe Baby," and as expected She & Him deliver "Oh Boy" with perfect retro spunk. And Patti's "Words of Love" is absolutely fantastic, taking the tempo down a notch and going for a sincere huskiness that Buddy himself might have grown into if he hadn't died so young. Kudos to Patti.

But my number one favorite track is this one by My Morning Jacket, who just keep on rising and rising in my estimation.Who knew when we saw them open for Ray Davies in Chicago five years ago? That day they seemed like just another shaggy sloppy jam band, but they've won me over since then.

Take a listen:

Isn't that sweet? I love the strings, with their 50s-vintage fills, just like the original. (In fact this arrangement is a little less glossy and hokey than Buddy's, which also lays on a sax, angel harps, and cocktail piano.) In stripping it down, Jim James and his cohorts have really plumbed the gravity and tenderness of this song, in a way that I'd bet Buddy himself would have appreciated. Jim's earnest warble is beautifully suited to this song; it's the antithesis to show-bizzy busyness. And as the song builds -- dig those da-dah-da-dum string flourishes -- MMJ lets vocal harmonies flower, taking the emotions up another swoony notch.

Listening to this, it strikes me that "True Love Ways" manages somehow to be sad and happy at the same time. How did Buddy pull that off? That husky beginning, "Just you know why...." signals intimacy from the very start; it's like a private conversation between him and his special girl. The guy is exulting in the private world of love that they've forged between them; nobody else will ever know but them. At the same time, though, he's shouting it to the world, so joyful that he can't keep it to himself.

And yet, and yet . . . he still sounds tremulous, awed, disbelieving. He admits that their life, even with this great great love, isn't perfect -- "Sometimes we'll cry / Sometimes we'll sigh," he remarks, tinged with awareness of mortality. It's as if he's discovering for the first time that love isn't an end in itself, but a way of being; he isn't just living in the moment anymore, but putting his love into a long-term perspective. Astonishingly mature, when you consider how young Buddy Holly was when he wrote this, and how immature the rock and roll genre still was at the time.

I suppose a little of the sadness, too, comes from knowing that this song wasn't even released until after Buddy's tragic early death. Of course Buddy couldn't have known that, couldn't have put that into the song. But it still has a mysterious, elegaic quality, doesn't it? That trademark MMJ reverb underscores that haunting note, too.

Usually I'm an advocate of artists adding their own mark to a cover song -- I hate slavish copies of the original -- but way too many of the other artists on this album went overboard, distorting the essential sweetness and lightness of Holly's songs. My Morning Jacket, though? They show respect. And if Buddy Holly doesn't deserve respect, nobody does.

2011-07-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Village Green Preservation Society /
The Kinks

Gardening this afternoon -- or, more precisely, yanking out weeds from various shrubberies and flowerbeds -- I found this song popping uncontrollably into my brain. Naturally, as there was nobody about, I had to sing it, lustily and loud.

As the title song from the Kinks' 1968 album of the same name, "The Village Green Preservation Society" is exactly the sort of oddball song that baffled the music-buying public in 1968. The album of course, is cherished by fans today as Ray Davies' masterwork, his defiant embrace of Britishness when so many other English bands were chasing the American dream. But I found myself wondering what all of those oh-so-British references in this song meant. I'm embarrassed to admit that even when I wrote about this before, I didn't take the time to look them all up. And then it occurred to me: Finally, a reason for Google to exist!

First, here's a YouTube video to listen you as you read:

And now the lyrics -- with footnotes, for those of you who are Kinks-obsessed as I am....

THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY

By Raymond Douglas Davies

We are the Village Green Preservation Society
God save Donald Duck[1], Vaudeville[2] and Variety[3]
We are the Desperate Dan[4] Appreciation Society
God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties

Preserving the old ways from being abused
Protecting the new ways for me and for you
What more can we do

We are the Draught Beer[5] Preservation Society
God save Mrs. Mopp[6] and good Old Mother Riley[7]
We are the Custard Pie[8] Appreciation Consortium
God save the George Cross[9] and all those who were awarded them

We are the Sherlock Holmes[10] English Speaking Vernacular[11]
Help save Fu Manchu[12], Moriarty[13] and Dracula[14]
We are the Office Block[15] Persecution Affinity
God save little shops, china cups and virginity

We are the Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliate[16]
God save tudor houses[17], antique tables and billiards[18]
Preserving the old ways from being abused
Protecting the new ways for me and for you
What more can we do
God save the Village Green.

[1] The animated Disney character, who rose to fame in the 1930s, appearing many propaganda cartoons in World War II.

[2] A form of stage entertainment popular in North America from the 1890s to the 1930s.

[3] The British equivalent of vaudeville, with a series of acts mixing comedy, music, and dance. The use of both these terms rather than “music hall” may have been driven by alliteration as well as the need for a rhyme with “society.”

[4] A character in the British comic The Dandy, a western strong man with a Robin Hood streak. Again, it’s an alliterative name, with the same double D’s as the Disney character in the preceding line.

[5] Beer from a cask or a keg, which aficionados claim has a truer, purer taste than bottled or canned beer. It is generally unpasteurized, which makes the “preservation” part of this society’s name doubly apt.

[6] An office cleaning lady (or “char”) in the 1940s BBC radio comedy “It’s That Man Again,” starring comedian Tommy Handley. Her most famous phrase was “Can I do you now, sir?”

[7] An Irish washerwoman in a music hall comedy act and series of low-budget films popular from 1934 to 1977. Known for her malapropisms, wacky situations, and broad physical slapstick, she was played in drag by Arthur Lucan, then by Roy Rolland.

[8] A dessert made of custard pudding in a pie crust. This reference, however, probably is to “pie-ing,” the slapstick comedy tradition, popularized by Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin, of smashing a “custard” pie (probably made with shaving cream) into the face of a hapless target. Running low on rhymes for “society,” Davies must now resort to a Consortium.

[9] Great Britain’s highest possible medal awarded to civilians. The rhyme of “awarded ‘em” and “consortium” is inspired.

[10] Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective, whose stories appeared from 1887 to 1927.

[11] “Vernacular” may mean either “dialect” or “mother tongue.” It has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, but it scans, it starts with a V, and it sets up the rhyme for “Dracula.”.

[12] An Asian evil criminal genius created by British novelist Sax Rohmer, published between 1913 and 1959, also featured in a number of movies from 1923 on.

[13] In this list of evil geniuses, this probably refers to Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis.

[14] The Transylvanian count and vampire, created by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel and a number of films from 1920 on.

[15] A British term for a large office building. By forming a “persecution affinity,”the VGPS is presumably opposed to office blocks.

[16] Another group formed to oppose tall office buildings.

[17] Probably a reference not to true Tudor houses, but to the Tudor Revival of the latter 19^th-century, which introduced half-timbered exterior decoration to domestic architecture. Also called Mock Tudor, Tudorbethan, or Merrie England architecture.

[18] The British cue game, considered classier than pool, played with three balls on a billiards table. The trilled L’s in this word rhyme snappily with “affiliate.”

2011-07-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Here's a slightly different twist -- this shuffle is not from my full music library, but my huge Vacation playlist, designed to provide road tunes for the July 4th exodus. Pop it in the car's music player and enjoy!

1. Call Me The Breeze / Alan Price and Rob Hoeke
From Two of a Kind (1977)
Sorry to start out with an obscure one -- even I wouldn't own this album if it hadn't been for my lifelong Alan Price fandom. Here he pairs with Dutch keyboardist Rob Hoeke (AP has this thing for collaborations with fellow keyboardists, from Georgie Fame to Zoot Money) to make a swinging little album that's actually a ton of fun. Really, it should be better known. This J.J. Cale cover is considerably peppier than J.J.'s laidback version; it really lets out the clutch and takes off.

2. Tighten Up Pt. 1 / Archie Bell and the Drells
From Tighten Up (1968)
"Hi everybody, this is Archie Bell and the Drells, of Houston, Texas. We don't only sing, but we dance just as good as we walk!" Poor Archie Bell was already serving in Vietnam when the record he'd cut just before being drafted hit the charts. It was all over the airwaves that summer, agitating dancing bodies everywhere, a marvelous melange of irresistible riffs cycling from instrument to instrument. ("Tighten up on that bass, now....Now look here, we're gonna make it mellow now!") A long cool drink of pure summer fun(k).

3. Helen Wheels / Wings
From Band on the Run (1973)
Hang on tight! Paul McCartney -- determined to prove that he could rock out without the Beatles -- tore into this road song with no brakes whatsoever. The internal combustion of those twin descending guitar riffs, the pavement-pounding drums, the thrumming bass line -- hell on wheels indeed!

4. If I Had $1,000,000 / Barenaked Ladies
From Gordon (1992)
Barenaked Ladies are right up there with Commander Cody, They Might Be Giants, and Flight of the Concords in my pantheon of comic rockers. I love the call and response on this ambling country rocker, as the singer earnestly offers his riches to his true love -- but as for what he'd buy her with his lottery winnings...

5. Rango Theme Song / Los Lobos
From Rango Soundtrack (2011)
Fandango gave me this song for free after I went to see this animated movie last winter. (Okay, so I'll see anything with Johnny Depp in it -- wanna make something of it?) But it soon earned a permanent spot in the rotation, a campy take on the classic western theme song, mariachi horns and all.

6. She Loves the Sunset / Old 97s
From Blame it On Gravity (2008)
Throw in a cha-cha beat and some pedal steel twang and what do you have? This winner by the delightful Old 97s.

7. Shiftless When Idle / The Replacements
From Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash! (1981)
Well, this one sure puts the garage in garage rock. Nobody else has ever stuffed this many car puns into one song, with the possible exception of Little Village's "She Runs Hot." It only lasts 2:18, but that grinding gear-shift guitar, the relentless bashing drums, and Paul Westerberg's slightly strangled vocals defiantly break the speed limit, cruising with the top down, tossing beer cans out the back as they roar into the night.

8. Young Americans / David Bowie
From Young Americans (1975)
Bowie put on his soul shoes, hauled in a gospel choir and a hot sax (David Sanborn!), and lit up the discos in the summer of '75 with this hectic take on American culture. ("Blacks got respect and whites got Soul Train...")   Bowie himself described it as "plastic soul . . . the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey." Yep, that pretty much nails it.

9. Gone, Gone, Gone / Colin Farrell
From Crazy Heart: The Soundtrack (2010)
Who knew Colin Farrell could sing country? As if Jeff Bridges' mesmerizing performance in this film wasn't enough, and all those superb Ryan Bingham-T. Bone Burnett songs too. This song nails the dieselbilly sound perfectly -- "I was born on a flattop two-lane, / Picked up a guitar, and every day I'd sing / Till I was gone, gone, gone..." You just gotta drive to this one.

10. One More Day / Bill Kirchen
From Hammer of the Honkytonk Gods (2007)
Well, speaking of dieselbilly -- here's the king himself, pickin' and grinnin' with a fiddle and roadhouse piano.   "Well I reckon we all gotta pay the diagnosis / So I'm turning my two weeks notice / Then I 'scuse myself while I kiss the sky . . . I'm gonna live it up like there's no tomorrow / Crank up the love, turn down the sorrow, / Get my ducks in a row for one more day!" Hey, a little shot of carpe diem philosophy is just what you need when you're heading out the door for vacation!

2011-06-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

A lovely summer night -- crickets chirping, night breezes whispering -- time to blast it all open with some rock 'n' roll!

1. This Is Where I Belong / Ron Sexsmith
From This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies (2006)
Probably the best collection of Kinks covers I know, with dynamite tributes from Fountains of Wayne, Fastball, Minus 5, Yo La Tengo; best of all, this was the album that first introduced me to the work of Bill Lloyd and of Ron Sexsmith, both of whom have since landed several albums in heavy rotation on my music players. Ron delivers this early Kinks tune with such earnestness, I just had to hear more. And that's how it all started...

2. Next To You / Tim Easton
From Ammunition (2006)
Here's another bit of serendipity -- I discovered Tim Easton through this track on a New West Records sampler, that I picked up who knows where. Just goes to show you should always listen to those samplers. I love his slightly scratchy voice, the harmonica, the loping rhythm of this track; sometimes the simplest expressions of love ("Just let me be next to you / I want to understand . . . ") are the best.

3. Look a Little on the Sunny Side / The Kinks
From Everybody's In Show Biz (1972)
One of my first Kinks albums, Show-Biz holds a special place in my heart; to me, every track is a winner. Here we get campy Ray mincing about this bouncy little tap dance (that old music hall influence), innocently (HA!) describing the vagaries of the music business. And I do mean vagaries: "Sing 'em the blues and then they ask for a happy tune / And when you start to smile, they say / 'Gimme the rhythm and blues,' and when you / Give 'em the rhythm and blues, they simply smile and say / 'We didn't want to hear you play, we didn't like you anyway.'" Well, that's the Kinks' career in a nutshell, no?

4. Keep This Party Going / The B-52s
From Funplex (2008)
I was really sorry that this recent B-52s CD didn't live up to those great 80s albums. I can't quite figure out why -- this is a fun number (I bet it's a hoot live), but it lacks that extra wackiness that made them the quirky dance queens of New Wave. All the elements are here -- Cindy and Kate's almost offkey harmonies, Fred's lounge-lizard rapping, over an insistent dance-party rhythm track -- but it just doesn't measure up. Thank god we've still got The B-52s, Whammy!, and Cosmic Thing...

5. I'll Follow the Sun / The Beatles
From Beatles 65 (1965)
Okay, I know this now appears on a CD called Beatles for Sale, the British version knocked out in a hurry for the Christmas 1964 sales season. But the American album I grew up with was Beatles 65, and I played that baby so much, the album cover is now only held together with masses of stiff masking tape. And this little folker is one of my top tracks from this album, a standard-issue kiss-off song sung with that special tender Paul McCartney charm. "One day / You'll look / And see I've gone / But tomorrow may rain so / I'll follow the sun." Those odd climbing intervals, that alternation of short lines with a long fluid phrase, and then he reverses it: "And now the time has come / When so my love / I must go / And though I lose a friend / In the end you will know / Oh oh-oh oh.." Sheer instinctive genius.

6. Road Trippin' / Red Hot Chili Peppers
From Californication (1999)
Proving that even a psych-punk-funk bunch of skateheads from California could turn out yearningly beautiful folk-rock -- with strings, even! -- so wistful it'll break your heart. I like most everything of RHCP I've heard, but to me this album stands head and shoulders above the rest. One of my favorite albums of the 1990s. Granted, the 1990s, but still...

7. Love Is an Outlaw / Tom Gallagher
From Age of the Wheel (unreleased)
The early and untimely death of my dear friend Tom Gallagher prevented him from ever getting the audience he deserved. His unreleased album is full of superb tracks like this, with its lazy, loungy beat, plangent guitar riffs, winsome melody, and sage lyrics. I'm happy to email this track to anybody who's curious: it's how we keep his memory alive.

8. Big Boys / Elvis Costello
From Armed Forces (1978)
Another Iconic Album for me. And this song has so many great lyrics, from that opening "I am starting to function / In the usual way" through " to "Worrying about your physical fitness / Tell me how you got the sickness" and "I was down upon one knee / Stroking her vanity." So what if it's more clever-sounding than truly wise? He's drunk on allusive word play, and to me that tempers the Angry Young Man cynicism with his giddy enthusiasm. I love the thrusting bass and drums giving him his marching orders, and those Steve Nieve organ riffs? Perfection.

9. On a Promise / Fine Young Cannibals
From Fine Young Cannibals (1985)
The hoarse soulful voice of Roland Gift, matched with the English Beat's David Steele and Andy Cox -- well, Fine Young Cannibals had all the right elements lined up, that canny mix of R&B and ska and New Wave smartness. "She Drives Me Crazy" is IMO one of the best songs of the 1980s, but it was a pretty solid debut album all around, as this brooding track attests....

10. If I Said / Colin Blunstone
From Echo Bridge (1996)
So what was Colin Blunstone doing all those years between being in the Zombies and being in the Zombies again? Lots of things, but this solo album is perplexingly lovely -- it should have been a big hit. This guy has one of these greatest voices in pop music; it's just heartbreakingly beautiful (yes, and sexy as hell). Sure, he loads it up with reverb and romantic production values, all strings and maracas and a sax solo in the middle eight. It should sound cheesy, but it doesn't, because Colin Blunstone can sell wistful yearning like nobody else in the biz.

2011-06-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

Sunny Afternoon / The Kinks

All right, I'll admit it, my nose was a little out of joint. Here I was, acting carefree, blogging about all sorts of other music, when in fact I was perfectly aware that last week was one of the Kinkiest weeks in recent memory. Ray Davies curated the Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London this past fortnight, and in a stroke of brilliance, he turned it into a celebration of the 1960s British pop music revolution. Oh, I should have been there; I wanted to go in the worst way, but . . . circumstances conspired to keep me home.

For the past few days -- to rub salt in the wound -- glowing reviews have been pouring in, all of them promptly posted on Facebook where I couldn't ignore them. As promised, Ray opened and closed the festival himself, joined by all sorts of special guest stars, and, this past Sunday, he capped it all off with a full-album performance of the Kinks' great 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. And as if that wasn't enough, on the evenings in between the festival featured (get this) Alan Price, Nick Lowe, Ron Sexsmith, Yo La Tengo, Monty Python's Michael Palin and Terry Jones, and a special tribute to the British music TV show Ready, Steady, Go! (When the still-beautiful long-legged Sandy Shaw stepped barefoot onto the stage, I'd have lost it, I know). There was even a set with the Kast Off Kinks, that rowdy crowd-pleasing combo composed of various ex-Kinks members like Mick Avory, Ian Gibbons, and Jim Rodford. Ray couldn't have designed a festival I'd love more. In my secret hearts of hearts, I like to think that he planned it just for me. And I missed it.

I was so jealous of those who got to be there (yes, even you, Michelle!) that I pretended to forget that it was Ray Davies' 67th birthday on Monday.   I know, I know, I'm usually able to rise above such a snit. Even I am surprised how this one affected me.

Well, I'm over it now. (Not really over it, but I'm moving on.) So sorry I missed your party, Ray -- I still love you. And to prove it, here's one of my favoritest Kinks vids ever . . .

I'm amazed to find that I hadn't written about "Sunny Afternoon" before, even given my tendency to avoid the most iconic, and therefore obvious, tracks. This one's so charming -- and so distinctly Kinksian in its English satire -- I should have covered it long ago.

I'll admit I have no distinct memory of listening to this song 35 years ago, in the summer of 1966, but I read that it rose to #14 on the US charts (#2 in the U.K.), so the DJs must have been playing it alongside the Lovin' Spoonful, Herman's Hermits, the Beatles' Revolver, "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, and "Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrkle. (Man, what an era!) And my response to it is primal: The minute that great bass line begins -- two notes plopped wearily on each step of a descending minor scale -- I'm hooked.

Satire? Sure, on one level Ray's mocking the self-pitying plaint of a rich Establishment type, bemoaning Wilson-era tax policies -- "The tax man's taken all my dough / And left me in my stately home..." (Cue up George Harrison's less subtle "Taxman," written the same year.) But as usual with Ray Davies, autobiography creeps in too. Despite his working-class upbringing -- just think of all those political songs that will soon crop up on Lola V. Powerman and The Moneygoround Part 1 and Muswell Hillbillies -- in 1966 Ray Davies must have also felt some sneaking secret sympathy with the property-rich, cash-poor protagonist of this song, as he waged a lawsuit against his publishers and former managers to recover withheld royalties. Put this together with two other songs from Face to Face, "House in the Country" and "Most Exclusive Residence for Sale," and you've got an intriguing suite of songs, showing Ray Davies grappling with his new social status. That emotional conflict runs just beneath the surface, charging this song with ambivalence.

Meanwhile, that supremely enervated tone -- Ray's vocals sliding into campiness -- betrays the nervous breakdown Ray had suffered in March of 1966. While the Kinks went on tour in Europe with a temporary replacement (did they think the French and Belgians wouldn't notice?), Ray's erratic behavior back home in London made some skeptics wonder if the Kinks were washed up for good. "Save me save me save me from this squeeee--eeze," he wails in the bridge -- and funny as it is, I can imagine that Ray's also exorcising some demons, taking his recent existential despair and turning it into comedy.

And what are we to make of this memorable line: "My girlfriend's run off with my car / And gone back to her ma and pa / Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty"? I love the melodramatic spin Ray gives that last line, though notice he never clarifies whether the "tales" are truth or fiction. Seven years later, Ray's wife Rasa would finally move out, taking their two daughters -- leaving him on his birthday -- but this song has always suggested to me that the troubles between them had been going on for years.

"Help me help me help me sail awaa-aay," Ray begs in the second bridge. ""Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay." Ah yes, there's the trademark Kinksian longing for escape. That dream of unruffled paradise is just out of his grasp, so close he can taste it: "'Cause I love to live so pleasantly / Live this life of luxury." What should be a sybaritic declaration become a cry of woe, with jerky rhythms and yo-yoing intervals. "Lazing on a sunny af-ter-noooon" -- it's practically a howl of misery, not a blissed-out mantra. Put these same lyrics to the Young Rascals' "Groovin" and it would be a different song completely.

In the video, watch how Ray forgets to look doleful and starts to grin; brother Dave and Pete Quaife have a hard time keeping a straight face too. And if this is such a summer song, why are they playing on Hampstead Heath in the snow? (Love how Mick Avory reaches up to knock snow off the overhanging branch with his drumstick.) Since this song was recorded in May and released in June, I guess this video was an afterthought, filmed in the winter to promote the December 1966 release of Face to Face. Doesn't matter; it's still charming to the max. (Those dogs spilling out of the limousine -- priceless.)

By some miracle, all of this campy moaning and misery translates into one of the most delicious singalongs ever. Really, how did Ray pull this off? The tongue-in-cheek humor cancels out the minor key, and that plinky goodtime piano (bravo Nicky Hopkins!) turns a mopey shuffling rhythm into something tailor-made for hoisting a pint. How hard it is to listen to those high harmonies (bravo Dave!) and NOT join in on the "Save me's" and "Help me's," to croon along with that drawn-out "afternoon," or to chant those repeated "in the summertime's." Personally I think that the Beatles -- always eyeing the competition -- heard crowds in the pubs or in the football standings sing along to this song (it became the unofficial anthem of England's 1966 World Cup victory) and determined to outdo Ray, with John soon writing "All You Need Is Love" and Paul "Hey Jude" a year later. It's all connected.

Today wasn't particularly sunny -- more like "A Rainy Day In June," yet another Face to Face track. (Honestly, you don't have this album yet? Shame on you.) But somehow, as soon as that bass riff starts, I'm in another place -- a place where the beer flows and my mates are close at hand. So what if I had to let the butler go?

2011-06-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

Radio Girl / Marshall Crenshaw

This is just a reminder -- tomorrow night (June 18th) at 10 p.m. EDT, the inimitable Marshall Crenshaw premieres his new Saturday night radio show on WFUV FM out of Fordham University, here in New York. Too far away to catch WFUV on your radio dial? Not to worry -- you can listen to a live stream of the show on the internet.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'd like to share with you a little tune off of Marshall's unjustly neglected 1989 album Good Evening (which apparently can be bought for next to nothing on Amazon.com). It's not the same thing as John Hiatt's "Radio Girl" by the way, which is also a great song . . . just sayin'....

One thing that computers have taken away from us -- the pleasure of listening to the radio, late at night, when nothing else is going on and your attention is focused one-hundred-percent on that audio experience. As a kid, sneaking my little transistor radio under my pillow so I could listen after light's out, it was a lifeline to something cool and distant and impossible hip. Yeah, I know radio's not like that anymore, at least not most of the time. But you find a good station, like WFUV, and you can still recapture some of that magic.

That's at least part of what Marshall evokes here, in this ode to a female nighttime DJ ("from one a.m. to four"). I love how the song just sort of tunes in, with a slide guitar (played by David Lindsey) homing in like a radio signal. (Sonny Landreth's on there too, playing something that the liner notes call "weird experimental guitar"). She may just be a disembodied voice, but there's something deeply sexy about his connection to her -- "I take her into my bed each night." And he's not just an anonymous listener -- he does phone-in requests to her too, asking for vintage James Brown ("It's a Man's Man's World," of all things.) Yeah, she probably flirts with him when he phones in, and she faithfully plays the song, every night. Who's to say that's not a real connection?

I could use a little help from you, dear readers -- what's this reference in the third verse? "Hey, what's that sound? / What do you call that sound?" The only thing I can think of is the Replacement's "Alex Chilton," so it may be a reference to some Box Tops or Big Star song (how cool that I got to see Marshall sing at the City Winery Alex Chilton tribute, by the way).

As opposed to today's narrowly defined radio channels, Marshall's radio girl plays an eclectic range of music, just like my buddies on the Sirius/XM station The Loft. I'm thinking here of Meg Griffin, my own favorite radio girl, whose musical tastes are uncannily like my own. But I digress. "I like the stuff you play / and the things you say," Marshall croons to his radio girl; "Come on, give me some rock music, / Or some rhythm and blues / Or anything you wanna play-yay / Anything you choose." That's the peculiar satisfaction that radio listening gives you, as opposed to clicking through an iPod playlist or surfing YouTube: You surrender to the DJ, let him/her select what tune to come up next, and if you can escape the inevitability of Top 40 radio -- the same narrow range of new tracks recycled endlessly, shoot me now!! -- there might even be a few total surprises coming your way. To reflect that eclectic mix, this track's sound is a little boogie-woogie -- dig that Jerry Lee-like piano in the bridge (Steve Conn) -- and yet a little cha-cha-like too, the drums swiftly ticking along.

That eclectic musical taste is what I expect to hear on Marshall's radio show tomorrow; the man has an enormous musical catalog in his head, and he's likely to pull out stuff you've never heard before -- and you'll be glad he introduced you to it. Me, I can't wait. He'll be on every Saturday night from now on, following the classic sound of Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight. (So tune in earlier for that as well.) What else were you planning to do with your weekend?

2011-06-16T20:19:00.000-07:00

Stay Young, Go Dancing / Death Cab For Cutie

I don't go with the party line on Death Cab for Cutie -- you know, the one that says that everything Ben Gibbard writes is depressing. Depressing music should be minor-key, draggy, and mumbled, not soaring and brightly melodic. I hear plenty of irony in songs like "The Sound of Settling" and "Title and Registration"; and come on, what is "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" if not a brave statement about the redemptive power of love? "No Sunlight"? It may be about the loss of idealism, but it's way too jaunty to be truly depressing.

So when people seemed shocked that gloomy ol' Ben Gibbard would marry the world's perkiest actress, Zooey Deschanel, I just thought -- Perfect Indie Couple!! The sly humor behind Ben's "depression" is perfectly matched by the melancholy behind Zooey's doe-eyed "perkiness." A classic yin-yang pairing.

Death Cab's got a brand-new album out -- Codes and Keys -- and I bought it immediately, no preview necessary. (These guys are on my short list of bands whose music I don't need to preview.) I couldn't honestly tell you how it's different from their previous album, Narrow Stairs; the arrangements seem to have more texture, a little less glossiness, but mostly it just sounds like more Death Cab. It's hard enough for a band to craft a distinctive sound, and then you expect them to change it with every album?

But now that Ben's a married man, he gets to write an uncomplicated love song for once -- and here it is, last track on the CD, "Stay Young, Go Dancing":

 Now uab; 

Now, isn't this a lovely thing? Not only a love song, but a waltz, gently syncopated and swinging happily along. Imagine that!

Believe it or not, Ben launches into the song with a ringing, positive affirmation: "Life is sweet." Will wonders never cease? Granted, right afterwards he adds, "In the belly of the beast, in the belly of the beast," but hey, he's not wrong. And he's got a talisman to help him weather life's slings and arrows: "And with her song in your heart / It could never bring you down, it could never bring you down." Immediately I think of Zooey, with those big blue eyes of hers, artlessly singing in Elf, or scatting through "Sugartown" ("I got my troubles, but they won't last") in 500 Days of Summer. Zooey can be enchanting indeed.

Verse two follows a similar pattern ("Lost in a maze / Of a thousand rainy days, of a thousand rainy days / And when I heard her voice, / Well it led me to the end, yes it led me to the end") before he swings with an upward key change into the chorus: "Cause when she sings, I hear a symphony / And I follow its sound as it echoes through me / I'm renewed / Oh how I feel alive / And through autumn's advancing, we'll stay young, go dancing." Okay, so he can't leave the "autumn" out (and in the last verse, it's become "winter"). But Keats pulls the same trick in several of his poems; it's the knowledge of autumn that makes summer so sweet, the awareness of gloom that makes sunshine so glorious.

There's more of this hopeful stuff on Codes and Keys -- "Doors Unlocked and Open," "Unobstructed Views," "Under the Sycamore," "Portable Television" -- it still sounds like Death Cab, but those lyrics are less depressing than ever. Sure, there are still vultures waiting by the side of the road, but we just might be able to avoid them awhile more. For a change, Ben Gibbard's glass is beginning to look half-full.

2011-06-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

Take It All / Adele

Well, in case you haven't heard, Nick Lowe is releasing a new album this fall. It's called The Old Magic and from what I've seen of the track list, it's chock-full of new songs, several of which we heard at various Nick shows over the past few months. Here's a link to the Yep Roc Records press release.

I should be thrilled, right? So why am I so ambivalent?

In 2005, when I first became a Nick Lowe fan -- okay, a rabid Nick Lowe fan -- the chap hadn't put out a record in several years; some people even referred to him as "semi-retired." But since then, Nick has released not only the new album At My Age (2006) but long overdue reissues of Jesus of Cool (2008) and Labour Of Lust (2011), a "best of" collection (Quiet Please, 2009), and somewhere else in there a boxset of his 1994, 1998, and 2001 albums (The Brentford Trilogy). To date, I have seen him live over a dozen times, and that's with hardly any major traveling. (Really., I was going out to Chicago anyway...).

[So what does this have to do with Adele? Wait for it.....]

So here's my question: Did I discover Nick Lowe because he was already heading for a late-career revival -- or did I cause it? Because, you know, I have blogged about this guy A LOT, usually in raving, swooning tones. I still feel personally invested in Nick and his career, but -- and this is an odd feeling for me -- being a Nick Lowe fan doesn't make me special anymore. Being a Kinks fan, or a Marshall Crenshaw fan, or a Graham Parker fan, or a Greg Trooper fan, or a Robyn Hitchcock fan, will always feel like joining an elite club of music lovers. (The Paul McCartney thing, I'll grant you, is an aberration...). I like that inner circle feeling.

Okay, so clearly I've got to go sort all this out. In the meantime -- since I've clearly got WAY TOO MUCH invested in being a "special" fan -- let me send myself to the woodshed, and prove that I can also love a #1 hit...

Liking Adele is a wonderfully uncomplicated thing for me. C'mon, I'm a Dusty Springfield fan; how could I not love the power and the passion Adele pours into her voice? Three years ago, when her first album 19 came out, all the buzz was about Amy Winehouse, with the public fascinated by her trainwreck behavior. (Really, people, you should be ashamed.) But here was Adele on the scene at the same time, and I couldn't understand why she wasn't being touted as the real deal in comparison to Amy Winehouse. I'm delighted that she's now been vindicated with a smash hit album (where is Amy Winehouse these days?), and even after being temporarily nudged aside by the heavily subsidized Lady Gaga juggernaut, Adele has quietly returned to the top of the charts. It's refreshing to see that quality sometimes does win out. (Okay, so maybe that explains Nick Lowe too. Maybe.)

If you listen to the radio at all, you have no doubt heard Adele's magnificent "Rolling in the Deep." It's probably been overplayed, in fact, and if you're like me, an overplayed hit single is anathema. So just let me introduce you to this other track from her album, so you can see that the girl has legs. It's a solid, solid album, track after track. Just because it's a hit doesn't mean it's not good.

I realize that the Dusty comparison isn't just because of Adele's range, or the way she plays with her voice, or the back-up vocals -- it's also her no-holds-barred approach to love. "Take it all, take all my love" -- isn't that the sentiment behind all of Dusty's oeuvre? "You're giving up so easily / I thought you loved me more than this" -- it's easy to characterize her as the submissive female, but the fact is, she humbles her male lover with her unconditional passion. Whether or not he deserves it is totally beside the point. Dusty's lovers never deserved it; we only listened to her because she herself was so operatic in her passion. The word is used too loosely these days, but Dusty was a diva -- and I believe that Adele inherits that mantle. I am thrilled to hear she's got a #1 hit. If life were only that fair always!

2011-06-11T23:29:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Okay, okay, the book's done, the kitchen's back in working order, the kids have finished school. I've run out of excuses -- I'm back in the saddle. (Thanks for the nudge, Lori!)

1. I Know What You're Thinkin' / Bill Lloyd
From Set To Pop (1993)
If you like jangly guitar pop -- and you know I do -- you've gotta check out Bill Lloyd. Despite a turn in Nashville as half of Foster and Lloyd, he really shines when he goes electric, revealing his debts to the Beatles and the Kinks (I first learned of him from his cover of "This Is Where I Belong"). Don't let those catchy melodies and hooks fool you -- he slices and dices relationships like nobody's fool. Jangly guitar pop with an edge; that's even better.

2. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa / Vampire Weekend
From Vampire Weekend (2008)
Why, yes, thank you, I will go to the Cape this summer! An irresistibly catchy bit of indie polyrhythm; love that little Bach fugue they throw in on the organ towards the end.

3. Summer in the City / The Lovin' Spoonful
From Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful (1966)
Probably THE best song ever written for an urban summer night, as I've mentioned before. The back of my neck's been getting pretty dirty and gritty lately, now that you mention it.

4. Ackee 1-2-3 / English Beat
From Special Beat Service (1982)
But you know, Vampire Weekend didn't invent this indie polyrhythm sound; the English Beat and all their ska revival pals had it down in the early 80s. Another great urban summer song, with sassy horns, a touch of steel drums, an infectious sloppy singalong chorus, even a dog barking at the end.

5. We Won't Dance / Greg Trooper
From Noises in the Hallway
Aw, what a great song, and Troop's original is sooooo much sexier than Vince Gill's cover (from the album that made him a star, 1989's When I Call Your Name). The premise is, he's saying goodbye to an old girlfriend, with a shiver of regret that they won't, ahem, dance together anymore. (Wink wink, nudge nudge...) "You won't dance with him / The way you danced with me..."

6. Hollywood / Guy Clark
From Someday the Song Writes You (2009)
Well, speaking of brilliant folk-country songwriters, here's the Texas master, spinning another gently weary cautionary tale about tinsel dreams going all tarnished. I love Clark's scuffed-up voice, the acoustic twang of his guitar, but what I love most about his songs is something even rarer -- hard-won wisdom.

7. Radar Love / Golden Earring
From Moontan (1973)
Surprise! Not my usual fare, I'll grant you. But I often listen to my iPod in the car, and well -- sometimes you need to put the pedal to the metal, and this is the song that'll do it for you. Who are Golden Earring? A Dutch heavy metal band? I'm pretty sure I never heard another song from them, but Wikipedia tells me they're still together, still performing, still recording, with multiple hits in Holland, so what do I know? This is one hell of a track.

8. Tell You / Ron Sexsmith
From Grand Opera Lane (1987)
Sure, there's poppy jangle here, but Sexsmith's sweet yearning vocals make it hard to be cynical. I can't think of many modern songwriters who can honestly write about things like joy and faith. Refreshing.

9. I Can't Love You Anymore / Lyle Lovett
From The Road to Ensenada (2008)
You know, if that "Anymore" were spelled "Any More," this would be a different song. And I know that Lyle knows this. Compared to the usual dumbed-down Nashville fare, Lyle's intelligence and songcraft amaze me over and over. (I don't even consider him country, anymore -- well, maybe Western.) No wonder he's buddies with Hiatt.

10. Wild Honey Pie / The Beatles
From The Beatles (The White Album) (1968)
A minute of anarchy -- and I hang on every note.

11. Trusted / Ben Folds
From Songs for Silverman (2005)
Okay, let's say "Wild Honey Pie" doesn't count. Because how could I cut off Ben? This was the first of his albums I ever bought, and it absolutely astonished me -- those perfect pop hooks, the emotional melodies, the sharp lyrics, the edgy relationships. I can't get certain lines out of my head -- "I thought you could read my mind / Then I came home early and saw that a drawer'd been opened / Looks like you were reading my diary instead" or "That's when I know / She's gonna be pissed when she wakes up / for terrible things I did to her in her dreams." These ARE the sorts of things that drive people apart, and it's horrible, and Ben dissects it with fearless ferocity, sailing along on crashing piano chords and arpeggios. This guy's stuff absolutely rivets me....

2011-05-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

"No Help At All" / Ron Sexsmith

The book's done! (Well, sorta . . . mostly .. . ) And the kitchen renovation is over!! (Well, sorta . . . mostly . . . ) At any rate, done enough for me to get back to listening to music, and writing about music, and all that good stuff.

And in the meantime, look who put out a new album? It's the ever-soulful Ron Sexsmith, one of my favorite Canadian troubadors. Ron's on that short list of musicians* whose new CD I'll buy -- nay, even pre-order -- without previewing a single track. After all, I already know I'm gonna like it. And for me, child of the vinyl era that I am, I truly love the whole drill of getting a new album: unwrapping the plastic, sliding out the disc, putting in on my player, and listening to it for the first time, straight through, giving it the full attention it deserves. The disc's a little smaller these days, the plastic wrap a little more baffling (why do they insist on that extra strip of tape across the top of the jewel case?), and I might get it in the mail instead of at a store, but it's still a highly satisfying old-school routine.

There's something kinda old-school about Ron Sexsmith too -- that's part of the charm. Melody, well-tuned vocals, tasteful arrangements, just a little bit of swing to the rhythm -- it's very accessible music, and I mean that in a good way. (Since when did "accessible" become a diss?) It's true that he's gone for some more, shall we say, pillowy production values here. But much as I love the old acoustic Ron, I love the new Ron too, even if he does get a little groovy with flutes and strings and other studio enhancements.

So here's the track:

The thing is, as sweet as this song sounds -- and given the choirboy beauty of Ron's voice, everything he does is bound to sound sweet -- there are little barbs and bites all along the way, to keep saccharinity at bay. The shadow of the depressive folkie slips in every now and then. I met Ron once after a show and I don't think the earnestness is an act, but he's no fool either. He's seen that life sucks, and he's going to share that too.

Still, it's not his style to whine or rant. This song is surprisingly cheerful and upbeat; it's startling when you begin to realize he's talking about a crack-up of sorts. "I've been burning the candle at both ends...I've been learning all my lessons the hard way / And nursing the exit wounds from a near-fatal mistake ... I can't see the light anymore . . . You've got to go it alone . . ." Yikes, Ron!

What he uses instead is word play -- and you know how I love word play. It's often Ron's avenue into a song, which is no doubt why he numbers Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello among his fans. Ron loves to twist a cliche, and he's having a field day with it here, in lines like "I've been .. . . running myself more ragged than Raggedy Ann" or "I couldn't read the writing on the wall / Until I hit that wall" or "You say it was time for a wake-up call / I never did get that call" or "If I'm shooting myself in the foot I'll crawl / I'm willing to take that fall" Notice how he emphasizes those phrases, with syncopation, added beats, or rising pitch. It's like he's caressing those catch-phrases, turning them inside out.

It makes you realize how ways our culture has devised to say "I've messed up my life." By dwelling on the catch-phrases, of course, Ron distances himself -- and us -- from the pain. Even that hopeless-seeming refrain, "And there was no [beat] no help at all," sounds almost blithe the way Ron sings it. This is no howl of pain, not like -- for example -- Joe Jackson's harrowing "So Low (Solo)," which is pretty much my gold standard in the Howl of Pain category.

But that's okay. Even though Ron's singing in the present tense (all right, grammar buffs, the present perfect continuous tense), I get the feeling that he's already moved on. He's made a mess of things, and he knows he will in the future, and yeah, there was no deus ex machina, no Big Sky Guy, reaching down to smooth his path for him. So what? He can live with that. As the rest of the album explores, he's not in it for the quick glory or the easy out -- he's a late bloomer, he's a long-player. (If you want more word play, just check out that title track!)

Personally, this is a song that lifts my spirits in a rough patch. Slogging through research for this book, or eating takeout off of paper plates for four dusty months, it helped to have Ron Sexsmith's upbeat perspective around. He's definitely a keeper.

* Guess who the others are?

2011-04-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

"On the Run" / Marshall Crenshaw

Do y'all really need me to give you the set list from last night's show? Because -- duh -- it was the same as the track list from Marshall Crenshaw, and you do own that album, don't you? (If not, click on the link and buy it through Amazon; I'll earn a nickel or so in commission. I have to do something to support this habit of mine!)

Okay, there were a few other songs. If all he'd played was the album, it would have lasted about 30 minutes, because -- in the hallowed tradition of perfect radio pop -- there isn't a song on the LP that's longer than 3:06. So he added a few early compositions, a cover or two, and some non-album gems from the period such as "Whenever You're On My Mind," "Something's Gonna Happen," and "You're My Favorite Waste of Time" (only because our table kept rudely hollering for it).

And if you really want to know, Marshall messed up the track order by playing "Girls" second instead of "Someday, Someway" (for which he sheepishly apologized). That alone should tell you what a slickness-free zone this show was in. He even let his brother Robert -- who reprised his role on drums for the first time in 30 years -- sing "She Can't Dance," which was a nice change of pace. I love Robert's voice too.

Naturally it was an incredible show, one of the best I've ever been to. There was Graham Maby doing bass and harmonies, Ira Kaplan (of Yo La Tengo) covering guitar duties, and, along with Robert, Josh DeLeon on drums, as well as another Crenshaw brother, John, contributing assorted other percussion. Of course their parents were in the audience too. Why not?

Instead of an opening act, a loop of early MC videos was projected onto a movie screen. Was anybody ever so adorable as 1982 Marshall Crenshaw? Okay, maybe Paul McCartney in 1963. Maybe. Anyhoo, that's where I got the inspiration for today's post -- one of the videos featured this song from Marshall's 1989 album, Good Evening. (You could click again if you were so inclined. Good Evening is an extraordinary album that you just may not already own.) My tablemates and I agreed that it is a severely underrated song, even amid the severely underrated totality of Marshall Crenshaw's catalog, so I decided I just had to share it with you all today.

As I have already gone on at length -- and I have to go wash my hair for tonight's second show in this Winery celebration -- I'll just add a few remarks.

1. Those surging opening chords are so Big Star, aren't they? This is a song opening that demands you pay attention -- and I always do.

2. I love driving songs. Despite the fact that this title is "On the Run," not "Drive," this is a driving song. He's "on the run," but references to white lines on the pavement tell you that he's doing it by car -- as if you couldn't already tell by the gear-shifting chord progressions.

3. One of my tablemates, a guy I'd just met, couldn't get over what a great guitarist Marshall is. "Why does nobody ever mention this?" he wondered, awestruck. I agree, and so I'm mentioning it. Just listen to the sizzling guitar in the bridge.

4. Put this song together with "There She Goes Again" and you'd have "Dime a Dozen Guy," another of my all-time favorite MC tracks. Just sayin'. . . .

5. Should not this song have been used in about a million soundtracks by now? It is so evocative, so late-night and urban and emotionally turbulent. When will the guys who pick songs for soundtracks wake up? (I would be so good at that job, don't you think?)

2011-04-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

"You're My Favorite Waste of Time" / Marshall Crenshaw

I no longer know whether these tracks were big hits or not. That's one of the things I love about Marshall Crenshaw -- so many of his songs sound like instant classics, with dreamy hooks and irresistible melodies, and now they're so grooved in my memory, I could swear they're jukebox staples. (As a fellow Crenshaw fan once put it -- "His songs have a hook for the verse, a hook for the chorus, and another hook for the bridge.")

So knowing this song so well (it's included as a bonus track on the reissued CD of Marshall's debut album, Marshall Crenshaw), I've sorta forgotten that it wasn't on the original vinyl. I had to pore over the liner notes to clarify that it was in fact the B-side of Marshall's 1982 single "Someday, Someway," a single which I never owned. (In 1982 I was strictly an album buyer; who knew he had spare tracks that didn't make it onto that LP?).

The liner notes also tell me that this was recorded by Marshall Crenshaw and the Handsome, Ruthless, and Stupid Band -- Marshall's way of explaining that it was a home demo in which he played all the instruments and sang his own back-up vocals. A one-man wall of sound, if you will.

But now listen to this track, folks, and tell me -- doesn't it just pour out of some vein of pure pop inspiration? Whereas "Someday, Someway" is boppy, taut, and urgent, turn over the 45 and you get another side of Crenshaw, all jazzy shimmer. The guy on Side 1 is in a hurry, flustered and strung out by his perplexing girlfriend; Side 2's guy has all the time in the world, and he's happy to waste it on her.

He says it himself -- he's a "daydreamin' fool," "got my head in the clouds above." I love how those harmonies unfold, spilling over like a waterfall. The word "my" alone gets five separate notes and eight beats, before he sashays into the syncopated syllables "fav-rite waste of time."

The standard line on Marshall Crenshaw is that he's all about power pop, and a particularly retro style at that. Yes, he can pay tribute to Buddy Holly and Bobby Fuller, but the soul/jazz side of him is just as significant, and it's interesting to see it was here this early. This song is no tight three verses and a chorus, but a stream of consciousness musing; the verses don't even rhyme, and they sure don't tell a story. He's just in his happy zone, and he's taking us there with him.

My favorite line? "I don't care / If being with you is meaningless / And ridiculous." (Okay, maybe you could say that's a rhyme.) Forget flowery cliches; he's not pretending this relationship is anything noble or redeeming. It. Just. Is. And if that isn't how love feels from the inside, I don't know what is.

2011-04-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

"Eventually" / Marshall Crenshaw

This weekend, Marshall Crenshaw's doing three shows on three successive nights at the City Winery, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of his first single, "Something's Gonna Happen." I just happen to have tickets for all three nights, being of the firm opinion that you can never have enough Marshall Crenshaw. And since I can't make the weekend come any sooner, I thought I'd count down the days with a little Marshall Crenshaw Week here. (Yeah, I know, daily blogging hasn't been my forte lately -- but for Marshall I'll give it a go.)

The Friday night show, as I understand it, is going to be a special treat: Marshall's going to play his entire 1982 debut album, Marshall Crenshaw. You know that album -- it's loaded with sublimely catchy tracks like "Someday, Someway" and "There She Goes Again" and "The Usual Thing" and "Rocking Around in NYC" and "Cynical Girl." I can't wait to hear that line-up of songs; it's the best youth potion I can think of. I defy the City Winery crowd to stay in their seats.

What I'm hoping, though, is that this anniversary celebration stirs up all those original fans to re-discover what Marshall's doing now. Because, frankly, it's some of the best music out there, incredibly smart and passionate and mature. So before I take that Way Back Machine down memory lane, let's listen first to some 21st-century Marshall Crenshaw. This song is from his 2009 album Jaggedland, in my opinion one of the greatest and most underrated albums of the past decade. . . .

Listening to "Eventually," I realize that the melodic hookiness of Marshall Crenshaw's music tends to make folks overlook their intelligence. After a while, an artist grows tired of writing love songs (especially a guy like Marshall who's been happily married for years -- it's pretty hard to wring out teenage romantic angst year after year). Jaggedland solves that problem by turning instead to existential pondering. If that sounds pompous and boring, believe me, Marshall makes it work. Not only does he brood on life's big questions, he has enough sense not to pretend he's solved them. That's maturity for you.

And now here's another treat which I just found on YouTube, also from Jaggedland. I don't know who made this video but it's a priceless pairing of film with song -- enjoy!

2011-04-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

"Mr. Rabbit" / Paul Westerberg

HAPPY EASTER!!

Sometimes I get things backwards. Thanks to Nick Hornby, I started listening to Paul Westerberg way before I ever started listening to his former band, The Replacements. Now, I dig the Replacements' sloppy garage punk-pop, but I'm still fonder of Westerberg's low-fi solo stuff.

This comes from his 2002 CD Stereo, which he claims he mostly made in his basement in suburban Minneapolis (Edina, if you want to be specific -- now don't go stalking him!). For all I know, Westerberg's basement has a gleaming state-of-the-art recording studio built in it, but I tend to picture it as the basement rec room of my childhood home in Indianapolis, cheap pine paneling, linoleum floor, lumpy sofa and all.

And this track sounds like it was recorded in his basement, but that's what I like about it -- it's just an electric guitar and drums (could even be a drum machine for all I know), with one repeated circular riff that does double duty as a bass line. And some days, after this has come up on my shuffle that riff spools over and over in my head for hours.

It's not even a Westerberg original -- apparently Burl Ives (of all people) recorded this years ago. Could be something Westerberg's family listened to when he was a kid, which he started playing for his own kid, eventually adding more slouchy syncopation and delivering it in his trademark raspy snarl.

Still, I love this track. It was the first thing I thought of this morning when I woke up, and I sang it to myself as I did my own Easter Bunny duty, filling baskets with plastic grass and foil-wrapped chocolate and jelly beans. (And yes, my kids are too old to believe in the Easter Bunny but they still expect Easter baskets.)

So here it is, my Easter gift to you. Forget all the alleluias and Easter hymns from church; this is the refrain that's lifting my spirits today: "Every little soul must shi-i-ine, / Every little soul must shine...."

2011-04-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Anybody else tired of April showers? Better turn the music up loud.

1. Addicted to Love / Robert Palmer
From Riptide (1985)
From the very first beats on those whomping drums, I start to grin despite myself. "The lights are on, but you're not home / Your mind is not your own... One of the classic MTV videos, with sultry scarlet-lipped models gyrating and strumming guitars, and Palmer in a devastatingly well-cut gray suit. That mesmerizing rhythm line drove this song straight to #1; a great 80s throwback.

2. Every Planet We Reach Is Dead / Gorillaz
From Demon Days (2006)
Damon Albarn gets his funk on. The comic-book element of this project is lost on me, but I sure do dig their sound -- electronica that manages NOT to be tedious or repetitive. It can be done!

3. Uncorrected Personality Traits / Robyn Hitchcock
From I Often Dream of Trains (1984)
A cappella psycho-babble whimsy from the delectable Mr. H. One of the funniest songs ever.

4. I Was Watching You / Rosanne Cash
From Black Cadillac (2006)
Rosanne's album-length elegy for her parents -- who just happened to be Johnny Cash and June Carter -- is pretty good proof that talent is genetic.

5. Some Other Guy / The Searchers
From Sugar and Spice (1963)
I think Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (remember them? no, me neither) recorded the original hit single of this snappy little Lieber-Stoller teen love song, but every British Beat band did a cover of it; there's grainy film somewhere of the Beatles singing it at the Cavern Club. For my money, though, the best is the Searchers, with the extra zing of their guitars.

6. I Bet You Won't Stay / The Cascades
(1965 single)
Sorry, no link for this one -- an obscure pop single which I have in bootleg only because Ray Davies wrote it. And you thought the Cascades' only song was "Rhythm of the Rain"? In fact they recorded a couple of Ray's early songs, when he was still hedging his bets with a little freelance songwriting. Oddly jazzy, with a jangly electric piano and tons of reverb -- they do perfect justice to the wistful neurosis of this song.

7. Another First Kiss / They Might Be Giants
From Mink Car (2001)
There's always a daffy angle to every TMBG song, but they can also do earnest surprisingly well. Of course there can only be one first kiss -- but that won't stop the ever-winsome John Linnell from trying.

8. Vanity Press / Graham Parker & the Figgs
From Songs of No Consequence (2005)
The object of today's high-energy satire: unscrupulous journalists, for whom Graham Parker seems to have reserved a special circle of hell. Clever lyrics fly thick and fast; you gotta listen close to get every flash of wit. But never fear, GP still packs in a killer hook in the chorus.

9. Die Die Die / The Avett Brothers
From Emotionalism (2007)
I love these guys, with their hoarsely sweet folky harmonies, plucky banjo, and soaring melodies. This earlier album, before their "breakthrough" I and Love and You, proves that they've got the chops to be around for a while.

10. Without Love / Nick Lowe
From Labour of Lust (1979)
Sigh...I know I've written about this song before. But now that Labour of Lust's been reissued, it's on my daily playlist all over again. "Without love, I am an island / All alone, in a heartbreak sea...."

2011-03-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

(Nearly) WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Back again by popular demand -- for this week at least!

1. Flying / The Beatles
From Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Okay, so it's mostly an instrumental, and a woozy, loungy romp at that, full of organ and bass. But I love it when the Beatles break in with those lusty "La la la las," dissolving into that space-age scrum of random noise--psychedelic, man!

2. Senior Service / Elvis Costello
From Armed Forces (1978)
Vicious jerky rhythms on the verses, insinuating legato choruses, and a riff that roars up the scale like a fighter jet taking off--wowza! Tons of Angry Young Man aggro here: "I want to chop off your head and watch it roll into the basket . . . ." Nasty as hell, but this song is SO much fun to dance to.

3. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go / Madeleine Peyroux
From Careless Love (2004)
Sometimes I don't even want to hear Bob Dylan's original versions of certain songs. I am quite happy to leave this one with Peyroux's exquisite finger-snapping cover--it's like skipping through Paris with Django Reinhardt in my head.

4. Gasoline Baby / Marshall Crenshaw
From Jaggedland (2009)
Very few instrumental tracks make the cut onto my iPod, but somehow Marshall's always do. I like to imagine he dreamed this song up while he was at the self-service pump one day -- okay, there's singing, but it's just variations on "Gasoline baby, gasoline girl, gasoline baby, suck it on down" over and over, with rat-tat drums and a wash of brilliant guitar riffs. Any excuse to listen to Marshall play guitar!

5. I Knew It All The Time / The Dave Clark Five
(1963 single)
Hard to believe this song was just four years before "Flying." One of my fave DC5 numbers, though, with those pounding heartbeat drums (Clark always kept himself high in the mix) playing against a lonesome harmonica. I even love those growly vocals, though it's hard to believe that's Mike Smith. Could it be Dave took over lead vocals on this one? Anybody?

6. Love Attack / James Carr
From You've Got My Mind Messed Up (1966)
Same era, but oh, what a different sound! Memphis soul, a slow-dancing seducement that was James Carr's second hit single, peaking at #21 on the R&B charts. Think Otis Redding with a little extra honey...

7. 36 Inches High / Nick Lowe
From Jesus of Cool (1978)
Oh yeah, and while he was producing Armed Forces for Elvis, Nick Lowe also tossed off his own brilliant LP, lighter on the anger but just as witty. Nick always tucks in a few covers--just to keep himself humble--in this case a Jim Ford gem delivered in lazy, smoky style. It's like he's sitting in a rocking chair, spinning tales of his past as a soldier, a tax man, a king, and why he's only 12 inches high I don't know, but I believe the operative word is "high."

8. Planet of Weed / Fountains of Wayne
From Traffic and Weather (2007)
And speaking of high...how much fun is this track? That fuzztone guitar, the clink of glasses, voices murmuring in the background: It's a ready-made party, in two minutes and 46 seconds. "We've got magazines to read / We've got Doritos to eat / So lay back on the couch / And kick up your feet" -- why, yes, I think I will.

9. Hangin' Your Life on the Wall / Guy Clark
From Dublin Blues (1995)
One of the great storytellers, and totally underrated. Here Guy duets with Ramblin' Jack Elliott on a wry-but-wise Verlon Thompson song. Like two cracker-barrel philosophers, they recall foolhardy past glories -- as lover, bullrider, baseball player -- chuckling as they push back their Stetsons and put their boots up. "I used to be forever chasing firetrucks / I sure could raise me some hell" -- emphasis on the past tense.

10. Kansas City / Sir Douglas Quintet
From Soul Jam (compilation)
Must be my day for sorta-instrumentals. For years, all I knew was the Beatles' cover of this Leiber/Stoller standard, but now that I've heard Doug Sahm's swinging version--dig that horn section!--I'll never go back. Only problem is, there's just not enough of Doug's soul-shivering singing on this track. I always want more Doug.

2011-03-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICK LOWE!

Is it that time of year again?

It's an annual tradition around here, my Nick Lowe Birthday Post. I started with Let's Stay In and Make Love, part of my first Nick Lowe week, back in 2007; then Without Love, three years ago; You Inspire Me two years ago; and I Got the Love, just last year. In the four-and-a-half years of this blog, I realize I've written nearly as many posts about Nick Lowe (56 and counting) as the years he has lived (62 and counting). But there is always more to say.

Naturally, I turned to Labour of Lust, Nick's fabulous 1979 album that was finally reissued this spring. (Of course I have mine already.) And once I started listening, the choice was obvious.

[Photo credit: Dan Burn-Forti]

Nick doesn't sing "Cracking Up" in concert anymore; I suppose it's one of those songs that would seem absurd coming out of a white-haired gent in gray trousers and crisp white dress shirt. (No matter how groovy his new hipster black-framed glasses may be.) But for me, as a listener, it's still incredibly current. I can't think of many songs that capture that strung-out late-night feeling so perfectly. It's not just being high; it's being high and exhausted and neurotic and losing hold on reality. It could have been on the soundtrack to Black Swan and no one would have noticed it was 30 years old.

Just before this album was recorded, Nick Lowe and the rest of Rockpile had been touring non-stop for months; they'd barely gotten back to London before they hit the studio, simultaneously bashing out Nick's Labour of Lust and Dave Edmund's Repeat When Necessary. I've seen the BBC documentary Born Fighters; I remember the rambling all-nighter vibe of those sessions, full of empty wine bottles and overflowing ashtrays and musician friends sprawling on the studio sofas.

Nick's singing in a weary growl that's as far as possible from "Cruel to Be Kind," the bubbly hit single that leads off this album. "Cracking Up" is track two, and -- how crafty is this? -- it's the diametric opposite, anti-pop and anti-melody. It's more like a Cubist string of jagged phrases, the zoned-out lament of somebody who's well past proper conversation. "Cracking up / I'm getting ready to go / Had enough / I can't take anymore . . . " The rhythms are half stammer, half syncopation. We've all known that guy, slumping over the table, slurring his words, feeling sorry for himself. Not that any of us have ever been that guy, of course....

He's not just a sloppy drunk, though -- that would be too easy. There's other drugs in his system ("No pills / That I can take / This is too real / And there ain't no escape") and he's getting paranoid -- "Everybody / All around me / Shakin' hands and / Sayin' howdy." When his bandmates chime in on "I don't think it's funny no more" (those taunting high harmonies) it's almost as if he's hearing voices. "I'm tense and / I'm nervous," he declares--oh really?
As he slides further downhill, the lyrics get more and more aimlessly surreal: "Cracking up / Like a worn-out shoe / Ain't wet, / But the world's leakin' through" or "If I were a gunman / I would shoot / I'd tear the hair out / By the root." By the end, I swear, he's just morosely playing with the sound of words: "I'd make a knife out / Of a notion / All at sea in an ocean of emotion." And just as that last phrase makes me giggle, he protests, "I don't think it's funny no more!" Whooops. And now the genius bit: Playing against those broken phrases, Billy Bremner's jangly guitar line keeps swooping sinuously down the scale and back up again, filling in the gaps with buoyant spirit. And those great Terry Williams drums, brightly bashing away, drive the energy home. This guy may be cracking up--at least tonight--but the song is anything but a downer.   Was Nick Lowe really cracking up in those days? Maybe, maybe not. But Nick's not big on autobiographical songs; if he felt like he was having a nervous breakdown for five minutes, that'd've been enough to get a song out of it. And by the next track, anyway, he's bopping along with "Big Kick, Plain Scrap." Not that "Cracking Up" is a satire, necessarily, but it sure works as a sly little character study. After all, it wouldn't be a Nick Lowe song without playfulness and wit, would it?

2011-03-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

There is a light at the end of the tunnel -- spring vacation is here, and possibly, just possibly, I can get back to regular blogging very soon. Until then . . .

1. Seeds and Stems (Again) / Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen
From Lost in the Ozone (1971)
Now here's a little time machine for you: This track effortlessly induces a contact high, every time. It isn't just nostalgia -- I never had the pleasure of listening to this great stoner rockabilly stuff back in the day -- but thank god I found them since.

2. More and More and More and Then Some / Nina Simone
From Pastel Blues (1965)
Here's a two for one -- Nina Simone working a Billie Holliday song, and adding her own extra throb of bluesy desire. I certainly wasn't listening to this in 1965; I wouldn't have known what to make of it, anyway. But oh, what fine stuff this is, a shot of moaning late-night melancholy that's just about perfect.

3. Bingo / Madness
From The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009)
Ska-flavored music hall soft shoe, full of Cockney smart-arse patter -- all in the service of a downright Dickensian panorama of London low-life. A seriously brilliant album, criminally unheralded this side of the Atlantic. I think I can safely say that anybody who loves the Kinks would totally dig this stuff.

4. She Said / Collective Soul
From Dosage (2008)
Funked-up loungy rock, craftily laden with hooky riffs, and cue the strings and synths. I love how Collective Soul pitches to their female audience with sensitive-guy "I understand your pain" lyrics, meanwhile baring their chests and tossing their long hair...

5. Live Alone / Franz Ferdinand
From Tonight (2009)
Talk about hooks -- these Scots rockers pump 'em out recklessly, along with charged-up tempos that sweeten the minor-key desperation of their songs. "I want to live alone / Because the greatest love is always ruined by the bickering / The argument of living..."

6. Nobody Told Me / John Lennon
From Milk and Honey (1984)
What a amazing groove John hits here, loose and comical and reconciled. "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed!" He's just sitting back shaking his head, amused by the absurdity of it all. When I think that this was where he'd gotten, finally, and then to be shot down -- tragic.

7. Rain Coloured Roses / The Beatstalkers
From The Beatstalkers (1968)
Serendipity! Put together Franz Ferdinand and John Lennon and what do you get? "Glasgow's Beatles" -- or so this band was touted at the time. Sorry I can't post a link, as I only got these tracks from my Glasgow connection (thanks, Davy!). But they were clearly the peers of most British Beat bands of the period (even recorded some early Bowie compositions) and really should be better known.

8. Profoundly in Love With Pandora / Ian Dury and the Blockheads
From Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Best of Ian Dury (compilation)
Last week I finally watched Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, the brilliant recent biopic of Ian Dury, so I'm very happy to have this 1985 gem shuffle up. "My mother's heart and soul have gone halfway up the pole / My father's on the dole / It's taking its toll..." As if Dury's clever subversive lyrics weren't enough, this band was an incredibly tight jazz-ska ensemble. Man, do I love them.

9. Further On (Up the Road) / Johnny Cash
From American V: A Hundred Highways (2006)
Late Johnny Cash, gravel voice and all. The fierce distilled intelligence of Johnny Cash at the end of his career is not to be rivaled -- talk about raging against the dying of the light!

10. Retrieval of You / Minus 5
From Down With Wilco (2003)
Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck's other other job, when they're not playing with Robyn Hitchcock. I love the copacetic groove of this "pop collective," which this time round enlisted Wilco to jam with them. It's all good.

BONUS TRACK!!! (Because I can't resist these guys...)

11. All Kinds of Time / Fountains of Wayne
From Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)
Clever AND tender -- that's the special thing about Fountains of Wayne. They gently satirize the football hero in slo-mo exultation at the height of his achievement, and yet make us feel wistful about how fleeting this moment is. It really is "all kinds" of time...

SECOND BONUS TRACK!!! (Because...well, it's Johnny.)

12. Learning How To Love You / John Hiatt
From Bring the Family (1987)
My very first Hiatt post -- loved it then, love it now.

And now I promise I'll stop -- even though Graham Parker's next...

2011-03-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Huge work project, apartment renovation, crappy weather -- I've got a dozen reasons why the daily blogs just aren't happening. But when all else fails, we've always got the shuffle!

1. Hot Potatoes / The Kinks
From Everybody's In Show-Biz (1972)
Though everybody thinks of Muswell Hillbillies as the Kinks' "country album," plenty of twang was still hanging around for their next album, Show-Biz. If there's a theme on this album, it's about the hassles of life on the road: Here he longs for home cooking, specifically potatoes -- "boiled, french-fried, any old way that you want to decide." And whatever else she's serving...

2. Yolanda Hayes / Fountains of Wayne
From Traffic and Weather (2007)
Did you know that Fountains of Wayne re-united after recording the Kinks "Better Things" for a tribute album? To me, these guys carry on the Kinks spirit in so many ways. Somewhere in New Jersey there probably really is a drivers' license bureau clerk named Yolanda Hayes. I wonder if she knows that Adam Schlesinger (or was it Chris Collingwood?) read her nametag and wrote this utterly charming song while waiting in line...

3. Fluorescent Adolescent / Arctic Monkeys
From Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007)
Is this band officially defunct? I liked the whomp and jangle of their first two albums, and Alex Turner's guttural Sheffield vocals -- not that I ever thought they were the second coming, like some folks did. ("Bigger than the Beatles" . . . yeah, right.)

4. Selfless Cold and Composed / Ben Folds Five
From Whatever and Ever Amen (1997)
Don't be deceived by the smooth jazz grooviness of this tune -- Ben is telling this bitch off, in a storm of piano arpeggios and riffs and a few of his trademark vulgarities. Yes, the fine art of sarcasm is alive and well.

5. Twisted / Richard Thompson
From Henry the Human Fly (1972)
Jumping back in time -- same year as the Kinks' Show-Biz, as it happens -- another sarcastic kiss-off, this time dressed up like a robust English folk song.

6. In A Space / The Kinks
From Low Budget (1979)
The Davies brothers again -- with the album that re-launched their American popularity (for the third time). I've never quite gotten this song. It's like a mash-up of Dave's cosmic perspectives with Ray's neurotic desire to escape, cranked up like a punk anthem (listen to Ray's growled vocals). Enter the arena rock years...

7. Sure Pinocchio / John Hiatt
From Little Head (1997)
Word in the Hiatt camp is, this is his worst album. Doesn't mean it hasn't got some good songs on it, though, and I love this one, which was actually written by bassist Davey Faragher (now part of Elvis Costello's Imposters). Another spiteful kiss-off song.

8. Town Called Malice / The Jam
From The Gift (1982)
Paul Weller puts on his soul shoes, channeling his inner Supremes. Yeah, the satiric edge is still there, but the tunefulness of this track totally leaves punk behind.

9. Paper Sun / Traffic
From Mr. Fantasy (1967)
Ah, when psychedelia was young, and all that sitar and tabla and reverb seemed fresh and new. But if you want a hazy lush sound, turn loose Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi. Their first single, seemingly out of nowhere -- you could get a contact high from this one.

10. Didn't Want To Have To Do It / The Lovin' Spoonful
From Daydream (1966)
And only a year before, this was the sound of the moment: gentle jug-band music, filtered through a mellow Southern California high. (Different drugs.) The opposite of a sarcastic kiss-off, John B. is sending that girl out the door so tenderly -- "I didn't want to have be the one to say 'the end' (the end, the end...)"

2011-03-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

SUNDAY SHUFFLE

First of all, a belated happy birthday to psych-folk-punk troubador and all-around free spirit Robyn Hitchcock. And now, let's welcome spring!

1. I Feel Fine / The Beatles
From Past Masters, Vol. 1 (compilation)
Ah, 1964 -- the Beatles were in their heaven and all was right with the world. That jangly lead guitar riff, just slightly behind the beat; John's insinuating vocal, hovering chromatically above an uneasy 7th chord; that alternating backstop of harmonies, in lush major-key resolution -- it wasn't simple, but it was exciting. Does this guy really feel fine? Maybe, but he doesn't trust it, which is why he keeps repeating "you know, she said so" and "I feel fine." And what an opener: that single guitar note, warping into feedback (an early version of the "Hard Day's Night" chord strum?) -- they had us at hello.

2. Good Vibrations / The Beach Boys
From Smiley Smile (1967)
Genius, sheer genius -- a scant three years after "I Feel Fine," and music had traveled light-years. As I said here, one of the great singles of all time. Forty-four years later, it still hits it out of the park.

3. Alienation's For the Rich / They Might Be Giants
From They Might Be Giants (1986)
Proving once again that there is a place for accordions in rock music. I love Flansburgh's drunken growl and howl here, the strangled cry of a common working stiff. Watching Spanish TV, drinking Miller Hi-Life -- nope, he's not alienated or nothing.

4. Seven Miles an Hour / Marshall Crenshaw
From Miracle of Science (1996)
I like to think of this as Marshall's answer to "Expressway to Your Heart" -- he's stuck at work, watching the clock, longing to get home to his girl (or at least someone he hopes will become his girl). Except when he leaves, the traffic jam he's caught in isn't on a Philly roadway, but on the crowded sidewalks of New York. Ever try to walk fast in New York at 5pm? I can manage about four miles an hour, tops; he's doing seven, AND playing a killer guitar riff. Please, if you listen to only one song on today's shuffle, listen to this one.

5. Wintertime Blues / John Hiatt
From Master of Disaster (2005)
A jaunty little street-corner buck-and-wing from Johnny H., full of pickin' and grinnin'. But man, can I relate: "There's no spring, there was never any spring / Spring's a long gone thing, there won't never be a spring no more / At least that's the way it feels when your skin is cracked and peeled / And you've been livin' under 60 pounds of blanket and the snow's driftin' up to your window.."

6. Spiderman / Jill Sobule
From California Years (2009)
Now here is a delicious little bit of Hollywood whimsy -- pair this up with the Kinks' "Hollywood Boulevard." Our singer's dressed up as Spiderman, riding the L.A. subway to work (no one's ever on the train, of course), working the crowd outside Grauman's Chinese. I love the amiable guitar strum, like something out of a 50's Western. A sweetly etched cameo about the death of American dreams, the sort of thing Jill does better than almost anybody.

7. Out of Time / Chris Farlowe
From Out of Time (compilation)
Now we're jumping back in time, to 1966, when Chris Farlowe scored a UK hit with this Stones song (lucky they shared a manager). But oh, what a great blues voice he had. "You're out of touch, my baby / My poor old-fashioned baby / Oh, baby, baby, baby you're out of time." Of course, in the end he's blowing her off (I told you it was a Stones song), but at least Farlowe sounds a little regretful. Dig the "Soldier Boy" strings in the intro.

8. UK Jive / The Kinks
From UK Jive (1989)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- even weak Kinks albums are full of gems.

9. Down Among the Wines and Spirits / Elvis Costello
From Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane (2009)
Elvis goes old-timey Americana, Dobro and steel guitar and mandolin and all. What saves this is a tap dancing syncopation that helps him stuff in way more words than any bluegrass song would ever need. But hey, it's Elvis -- Elvis always needs a lot of words. And it's worth it for a verse like, "Down among the wines and spirits / Where a man gets what he merits / Lives with the echoing words of their final quarrel / The vacant chamber / The empty barrel" -- well, there's a whole novel right there.

10. Right Now For You / Al Kooper
From I Stand Alone (1968)
Starts with an exploding grenade and gunfire, then a swell of spooky orchestration, heard as if in the next hotel room -- a tasty sliver of this unjustly neglected masterpiece album by Al Kooper. I suppose this is the sort of record that led to the over-produced crap of 1970s prog rock; still haunts and mesmerizes me, though.

2011-02-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Can't shuffle during the week these days, with electric drills and hammering going on all day every day. (I HATE this renovation.) Thank god for the weekend!

1. Mean Mr. Mustard / The Beatles
From Abbey Road (1969)
One problem with the shuffle: It's always jarring to hear one isolated section of the great Side Two medley on this album. (Read my You Never Give Me Your Money post for the full version of how much I love this "musical mosaic"). Every time I hear John sing that Mr. Mustard is a "dirty old man," I think of Paul's grandfather -- "such a clean old man" -- in A Hard Day's Night. And "his sister Pam" -- is that Polythene Pam, whose song we'll get next? (And is Polythene Pam the roommate of Lovely Rita Meter Maid?) Yeah, I know, I listen to too much Beatles music. But I love that Mr. Mustard "keeps a ten bob note up his nose" -- perfect Lennonesque detail.

2. Why Why Why Why Why / Brinsley Schwarz
From Nervous on the Road (1972)
Another throwaway Nick Lowe country rock gem, featuring one of his standard lonely losers. Miserable in love, miserable out of love, moping around the house -- sound familiar?

3. The Thrill / Alan Price
From Alan Price (1977)
The cynical side of Alan Price, the side that made his O Lucky Man! soundtrack so brilliant. "Oh I just love the thrill of rock and roll / It gives release unto the darkest soul / The thickest yob can get a job / Rock and roll can keep you off the dole." And is it sung like a rock anthem? No indeed -- it's a chirpy little music hall ditty, sung over a ragtime piano. So there!

4. Space Oddity / David Bowie
From Space Oddity (1969)
One of the great eccentric rock songs of all time, inspiring one of my earliest posts here.

5. I Wish I Felt This Way At Home / Dolly Parton
From Just Because I'm a Woman (1968)
Adultery, one of the great themes of country music. That tremble in Dolly's voice is super-saturated with guilt and desire; yet she still has an innocent, forthright quality. (This is from her first solo album, when she was still Porter Waggoner's "girl find.") She really does wish she felt this way about her husband, that's the kicker. She means to be good...

6. Pressure / The Kinks
From Low Budget (1979)
This album marked the Kinks' US comeback with a vengeance. Just to prove they weren't British Invasion fossils, here comes this proto-punk anthem, given Ray Davies' special fragile neurotic twist: "Pressure, pressure, I've got pressure! / Oh, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah..." Was Ray mocking punk, or trying to keep up with the times? Both, no doubt.

7. You're Wondering Now / The Specials
From The Specials (1980)
Ah, the lo-fi charms of the Specials! That knock on the door, the muffled "You can't come in!" And then the mopey shuffling reggae begins, brooding over how he's going to get by now that he's on his own. At last the instruments pack up, and he's singing alone, still wondering how...

8. She's Going / The English Beat
From Special Beat Service (1982)
Perfect segue! So it's going to be a ska Saturday -- I can live with that. Hear how the English Beat jacked up the ska tempo, made it more frantic, more urban. Different drugs, I guess.

9. Take the Money and Run / Steve Miller
From Fly Like An Eagle (1976)
The tempo just got laidback again; we're far away from the Brixton streets, loping around in sunny Texas. Yahoo! I wasn't living in the US in 1976, so I missed the radio overload of this song, thank goodness. Remember all those anarchistic 70s movies about wild young couples on crime sprees? Badlands, The Getaway, Sugarland Express (with True Romance and Natural-Born Killers their 1990s offspring)? This song should have been the soundtrack for all of them.

10. Hey Jude / The Beatles
From Past Masters, Vol, 2 (compilation)
So we begin and end with the Beatles -- that's fitting. Does this song go on too long? Maybe, but I always, always, end up singing along with the "la la la la-la-la-las," which I'm sure was what Paul McCartney intended. My private theory: this is Paul's comeback to "All You Need Is Love"; he wanted the swaying crowds to be chanting along to his song, dammit. And now they are.

2011-02-16T19:15:00.000-08:00

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

I've got no excuse. Well, I do -- but I hate making excuses. So sorry, and at least I got around to it this week!

1. Love Train / Keb' Mo'
From Big Wide Grin (1998)
One thing I love about Keb' Mo': his creative covers, always total reinterpretations of the original. Take this old O'Jays classic, subtract the sexy soul groove (sacrilege, right?), and add a ticking bluegrass tempo and some banjo picking -- and voila, you've got a surprisingly persuasive peace-and-love anthem. Suddenly I hear afresh lines like, "All of your brothers over in Africa / Tell all the folks in Egypt and Israel too" -- it's totally topical.

2. Hello? Oh... / The Cribs
From The New Fellas (2005)
I like everything I've heard from this trio of brothers from Yorkshire. Crunchy guitars, loping beat, a casually raucous upbeat vibe -- addictively fun.

3. Monday Monday / The Mamas and the Papas
From 16 Greatest Hits (compilation)
Bah dah, bah da-dah dah... Those dense a capella harmonies are just heavenly. And when Denny and Cass start to weave and overlap in the bridge -- "Every other day (every other day) every other day (every other day of) the week is / Fine, (Fine) yeah!!)" How could you not sing along?

4. Poor Little Fool / Ricky Nelson
From A Ricky Nelson Anthology (compilation)
I can just picture him singing this on Ozzie and Harriet: One blink of those sincere blue eyes, one pout from that lower lip, and Elvis Presley was wiped off the planet for me. This smooth-as-buttermilk rockabilly stroll is quintessential Ricky, absolutely divine.

5. Happy Jack / The Who
From Happy Jack (1966)
Though my feelings about the Who are conflicted, I do love a good Pete Townshend comic turn -- and there's none better than this ditty about a simpleton vagrant on the Isle of Man. (In 1966, when this was all over the radio, I had no idea that was a real place.) I love those chanting childlike harmonies, that stellar bass line, and -- best of all -- Moonie's absolutely insane bursts of drumming.

6. To the River / John Mellencamp
From Human Wheels (1993)
Would you buy a Chevy from this man? I would.

7. Rollin' Like a Pebble in the Sand / Alan Price & the Electric Blues Orchestra
From A Gigster's Life for Me (1995)
So what was Alan Price doing all those years when I'd lost track of him? Enjoying himself, getting back into the blues and R&B idiom that the Animals first bonded over. This whole album is full of great covers, like this old Rudy Toombs song, sung with just the right weary creak in Alan's voice -- and wait for the barrelhouse piano in the middle eight!

8. Where's My Everything? / Nick Lowe
From The Impossible Bird (1994)
From Nick Lowe's "lovable loser" category, a gently comic rockabilly plaint. He's ticking off a laundry list of things society "owes" him -- home and family, fame and happiness -- cluelessly wondering why they haven't just magically appeared. But as always with Nick, it's got just enough of an edge, filtering all the bafflement and pain of a disappointed life. The man's craft still astounds me.

9. Switchboard Susan / Nick Lowe
From Labour of Lust (1979)
Yeah, I know Mickey Jupp wrote this one -- but it might as well have been Nick himself, in his punning lyric prime. "When I'm with you, girl, I get an extension / And I don't mean Alexander Bell's invention" -- who else could pull off something that juvenile? But this gives me a perfect opportunity to inform you (if you don't already know) that YepRoc is finally reissuing this classic album, Nick's second solo effort, which has for years been inexplicably out of print (I know!).

10. Heat Dies Down / The Kaiser Chiefs
From Yours Truly, Angry Mob (2007)
It's loud, it's fast, it's angry -- and that rollercoaster tempo is pretty hard to resist.

Bonus track (couldn't resist):
11. Up to Our Nex / Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3
From Goodnight Oslo (2009)
Featured on the soundtrack to the Jonathan Demme film Rachel Getting Married. (Robyn's even in the film, reason enough to Netflix the thing.) The loose-limbed groove of this track is so seductive, you're drawn into its hazy, unfocused spell. "We're up to our necks in love / So bad / We're up to our necks in love / Blame Dad." (Except Dad was played by Bill Irwin, and who could blame him?) "Forgive yourself / And maybe / You'll forgive me" -- well, there's the movie for you in a nutshell. Now go watch it.

2011-02-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

"Nobody In the Whole Wide World" / Greg Trooper

The whole reason I write this blog is to turn people on to music I love. (I ain't doing this for the money, that's for sure!). Now, you may recall I've written about Greg Trooper a few times already -- here and here and here. But I'm not giving up, folks; you might as well all go out and buy his albums because I'm not going to shut up until you do.

Last week I featured a new track by Amos from his Mission Bell album (sorry, because of technical difficulties the sucker just wouldn't post until today). But really, you don't need me to tell you about Mission Bell, which was the #1 album in the country the week it came out. On the other hand, you do need me to tell you about Greg Trooper's new release, Upside-Down Town. It's just as good as Amos Lee's; it even cruises along similar folk-soul-Americana pathways. But I worry it might fall through the cracks.

For one thing, Greg Trooper released this album on his own label -- he doesn't have a major label cranking up the PR apparatus for him. And for another, his blend of country, folk, and R&B means that pigeonholes don't work to his advantage. And yet this is totally accessible music, nothing fringe about it. Go figure.

Here's how the album starts out, with the feisty wit of "Nobody in the Whole Wide World." If I had to classify this song, I'd call it a Warning song -- a subset of the Advice Song category (think "She Loves You") with a bit more edge. The "I" of the song (always dangerous to imagine it's the songwriter himself) is addressing a girl with the news--news to her, at least--that her boyfriend's a jerk. "You and your boyfriend ought to call it quits," he begins, blunt from the start -- and it goes downhill from there. Like the old Betty Everett/Linda Ronstadt classic "You're No Good," when he's done cataloging the guy's faults, she'd have to be a fool to stay.

But pay attention to the craftsmanship. In verse one, he's only criticizing the relationship, which seems a mismatch -- "He buys you clothes but they never fit / They're always two or three sizes small / Don't think it's you that he wants at all." Ouch! I'd be outta there already. But he's just getting started. In verse two, he widens the time frame, contrasting how the relationship has deteriorated since its lovey-dovey early days. Then in verse three, he slips into her head a bit more, wondering why she stays -- for the guy's money and status? Of course she'll reject those motives, leaving herself with NO other reason to stay.

In verse four, he plants yet more subtle doubts, making her mistrust the guy's every glance. After the instrumental break, in verse five, he inserts the thin end of the wedge, reminding her of an earlier break-up. Why on earth did they reunite, he wonders. "Don't go thinking he's a soul to save," he begs her -- again, handing her a motive she can't possibly buy into.

It's not until verse six that he reminds her she's got other options. "You've heard about the fish in the sea," he mentions, innocently, and then -- oh, so subtly -- he slips in, "Might be a fish that even looks like me." At last, the whole song comes into focus. Up until now, he seemed to be a disinterested bystander, with a totally objective perspective. But now it's clear -- of course he hates that other guy; he's jealous. And how shrewd, not to show his hand until now. Compare this to John Hiatt's "She Loves the Jerk," where the wronged girl's confidante suffers unrequited love from the start -- dare I say that Trooper's song is even cleverer?

Look at how Trooper segues into that refrain line, "Nobody in the whole world," with a different line for each verse. "Nobody thinks that he's the man for you" -- wrong relationship. "Nobody wants to see you treated that way" -- bad dynamic. "Nobody likes him, not his family or friends" -- awful human being. "Nobody else could put up with him" and "Nobody thinks that that's a good idea" -- wrong decision on her part. But in the final verse, he flips the whole thing. Up to now, his "nobodys" are all negative, sung with a shake of the head; now he turns it into a superlative: "Nobody else compares to you." He's just dismantled her relationship, reduced her boyfriend to a hideous mistake -- what better time to swoop in with adoring flattery?

Meanwhile, Trooper swings along with a sinuous melody (perfect for that devious, dogged argument) and disarmingly loose syncopation. I love Greg Trooper's expressive voice, how he delivers earnestness edged with the occasional snarl of anger or yelp of yearning. It's a fun song, not a downer at all; Trooper's playing a character, not spilling out his heart. On the other hand, it's loaded with deft psychological strokes. Hey, I'm still steamed about that jerk buying me too-tight dresses and giving me those looks. Thank goodness Greg Trooper understands...

2011-02-07T20:14:00.000-08:00

"Hello Again" / Amos Lee

You know, I'm not the chick you'd usually come to for a review of the nation's #1 best-selling album. 2011's been a little surprising in that respect, though. First there was the Decemberists' The King Is Dead (yeah, I'll get around to that eventually), and now here's this unassuming and utterly charming album from Amos Lee, Mission Bell.

Granted, it was noteworthy as one of the lowest-selling #1 albums in recent memory -- America's record companies are still going downhill faster than a soapbox derby racer. Nevertheless, nothing else sold better the last week of January, and that's a beacon of hope. Keep this up, America, and I'm going to have to retract all those nasty things I've said about mass market tastes.

Here's my review of the album on blogcritics (I'm still waiting for my one dissenting reader to come back and explain himself). Two weeks later, "Hello Again" is the track that keeps haunting me. That groovy samba rhythm isn't typical Amos Lee, but its mellow-yet-mournful mood sure is. There's always a faint depressive gloom hanging over his songs, which he smoothly sells as sensitive-guy emotionality. I do recognize the formula, but hey, it works for me.

If you're going to write a kiss-off song -- and this is definitely a kiss-off song ("You used to be so beautiful / But you lost it somewhere along the way") -- you've got two moods to choose from: vengeful anger or disappointed regret. Lee goes for the second one, jacking it up with a minor key and his most heartfelt plaintive vocals. That sigh of regret is a shrewd choice, because -- let's face it -- the kiss-off song really isn't always aimed at the girl he's breaking up with. Sometimes it's aimed at the next girl waiting in the wings: The Lady Listener, perhaps? I can't identify with his "you" (I've never hurt Amos Lee, have I?), but it's incredibly easy to slip myself into the scenario by contrast. And in this song, Amos sets himself up as an almost ideal potential boyfriend -- a guy who wants to be in love, but isn't carrying a torch for his ex.

Amos Lee's voice isn't just beautiful, it's beautiful in a particularly passionate way -- the soul half of his folk-soul dialectic. I find it really remarkable how he pulls this off without sounding sappy or cheesy. I'd never thought of him as the heir to Stevie Wonder before, but this song goes for emotional broke in the same sincere way that Stevie made his trademark. Kudos, Amos!

The thing that Mission Bell adds to the Amos Lee formula is more instrumental texture, and I love the extra shadings on this track -- the tango piano, the wind-down-the-canyon whistle of a theremin, the conquistador trumpet in the break. For a Philly guy, he's done a remarkable job here of capturing the mood of a spaghetti Western. Somehow he layers that Clint Eastwood identity, the strong-but-silent guy with a history, on top of his sensitive troubadour act -- and miraculously, it sticks.

I'm not going to pretend that this isn't fairly mainstream stuff; it's not as if Robyn Hitchcock or Jonathan Richman or Graham Parker suddenly blazed onto the charts. Still, there's real musicianship here, and a fair amount of integrity. At least I feel Amos Lee believes what he's singing, in a way that I never believe John Mayer does. To have that rewarded with a #1 record -- well, that's something.

2011-02-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

The Wednesday Shuffle

Back to Wednesdays, and it feels so right. (Anything rather than go outdoors in this weather...)

1. "The Bad Thing" / Arctic Monkeys
From Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007)
Are the Arctic Monkeys over? I hope not. Here's what I wrote about this scrappy track a couple years ago when the album first came out...

2. "Isn't That the Thing To Do?" / Maria Muldaur
From Love Wants to Dance (2004)
Nice little palate cleanser, with Maria letting out her jazz side on this Gershwin standard.

3. "How Can I Sing Like a Girl?" / They Might Be Giants
From Factory Showroom (1996)
"I want to raise my freak flag / And never be alone" -- yes, it's another off-kilter nerd anthem from the Johns. That nasal whine of John Linnell is perfect for this song.

4. "There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards" / Ian Dury and the Blockheads
From Reasons to Be Cheerful (1978)
Speaking of raising freak flags....here's my favorite Ian Dury tune ever (here's why). Which reminds me -- I've just got the new biopic Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll from Netflix -- must watch!

5. "Sleepwalker" / The Kinks
From Sleepwalker (1977)
Or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Insomnia," by Ray Davies. Another freak flag raised! This bouncy track IMHO isn't one of the Kinks' best -- odd it should be the title track of an album. But there are Kinks fans who love it, so what do I know?

6. "Money Talks" / The Kinks
From Preservation Act 2 (1974)
Now this is more my Kinks -- savage satire with histrionic flair. Being deep into Keith Richards' Life at the moment, I realize what a pitch-perfect Stones impression this is. I'm noticing the dirty slide guitar and lovin' it.

7. "New Slang" / The Shins
From Oh, Inverted World (2001)
Charming folk-pop jangle from James Mercer and Co., spiked with stream-of-consciousness absurdity. Yes, I'll admit it, this song on the Garden State soundtrack was my back-door introduction to these indie darlings. There is an art to a great soundtrack, though. Must blog about that sometime...

8. "Don't Bug Me When I'm Working" / Little Village
From Little Village (1992)

Talk about dirty guitar -- Ry Cooder gets just plain nasty on this one. Oh, and Johnny Hiatt's snarling lead vocals, with Ry and Nick Lowe each insinuating a verse. ("I can't even work with my baby at night -- Lord have mercy!") Tell me again why Little Village didn't work out?

9. "Full Moon in My Soul" / Robyn Hitchcock
From Spooked (2004)
More folk-pop jangle, with Robyn out-absurding even the Shins -- "I'm out of here, I'm taking off / You can have my cigarettes and, mister, you can have my cough." The loungy rhythm of this number is simply too delicious, and dig that lazy slide guitar in the bridge.

10. "This Is A Low" / Blur
From Parklife (1994)
Mmm, what a lovely sonic haze enfolds this modern bit of BritPop psychedelia -- I sink right into it. My sentimental favorite Blur album. Should have known Damon Albarn would be a Kinks fan...

2011-01-22T12:50:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

I actually did a shuffle on Wednesday, but it turned out lousy -- somehow the gremlins in my computer picked out every third-rate song I'd downloaded for reasons I can't even remember. So here, instead, is a twist on the shuffle idea -- ten songs in a row that I heard on Sirius/XM's Sixties on Six channel.

1. "Sweet Blindness" / The Fifth Dimension
From Stoned Soul Picnic (1968)
Mister Pleasant has recently reawakened my interest in these guys, especially when they do Laura Nyro songs (I'm a confirmed Nyro-phyte). They swing, but they don't lose the song's edgy, racy spirit. "Don't let Daddy hear it / He don't believe in the gin mill spirit" -- up with teenage alcoholism! And the drunkest refrain ever: "Come on baby do a slow float / You're a good-looking riverboat." Yassss.

2. "The House of the Rising Sun" / The Animals
Single 1964; included on The Best of the Animals
Of course, next to this classic song about the road to perdition, the kids in "Sweet Blindness" are model citizens...

3. "Listen People" / Herman's Hermits
From When the Boys Meet the Girls (1966)
The link here is Mickie Most, who -- hard to believe -- produced both the Animals and Herman's Hermits. In the height of their American fame, Peter Noone and the boys didn't even release this as a single in the UK, but in the US it hit #3. This nifty little Graham Gouldman tune redeems its soppy earnest verse ("Listen, people / To what I say") with a snappy backbeat chorus ("Everybody's got to love somebody sometime.")

4. "Build Me Up Buttercup" / The Foundations
From The Foundations (1968)
One of the greatest Motown singles ever to be released outside of Motown -- in England, yet!

5. "I Say A Little Prayer" / Aretha Franklin
From Aretha Now (1968)
And now the Queen of Motown gives a master class. A Bacharach-David standard, mellow as Malibu ("The moment I wake up / Before I put on my make-up . . . At work I just take time ./ And all through my coffee break time") -- until Aretha unleashes her gospel pipes and starts to testify. Well, it is about praying, isn't it? By the end, she's scatting all over the place, laying down five layers of syncopation, transforming it into free-form jazz. And that, folks, is how it's done.

6. "Windy" / The Association
From Insight Out (1967)
Not my favorite Association tune -- I greatly prefer "Along Comes Mary" -- this track has great harmonies, but such dopey lyrics. I mean, come on -- "Who's tripping down the streets of the city / Smilin' at everybody she sees / Who's reaching out to capture a moment / Everyone knows it's Windy" -- even by Flower Power standards, that's way too cutesy. And I hate the way I have to chair dance with that syncopation in the chorus...

7. "Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town" / Kenny Rogers and the First Edition
From Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town (1969)
Now, this is where I'd normally just change channels. Not just because it's country -- I like some country -- but because Kenny Rogers' gravelly croon infuriates me. I have so successfully avoided this song, it wasn't until today -- compelled by the Shuffle to stick it out -- that I finally listened enough to realize it's about a disabled Vietnam vet whose wife is stepping out on him. "It wasn't me that started that old crazy Asian war" -- well, boohoo. Opportunistic songwriting at its worst.

8. "Catch A Wave" / The Beach Boys
From Surfer Girl (1963)
Classic classic classic. That tripping beat, the passed-around vocals, the explosion of harmonies in the chorus -- divine. Okay, so Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who ever surfed; so much for "So take a lesson from a top-notch surfer boy." And yes, these too are dopey lyrics -- like "You paddle out turn around and raise / And baby that's all there is to the coastline craze" or "They'll eat their words with a fork and spoon / And watch 'em, they'll hit the road and all be surfin' soon." But you don't come to Brian Wilson for the lyrics. He rises above them every time.

9. "Magic Carpet Ride" / Steppenwolf
From Steppenwolf the Second (1968)
Whoa. The jump from "Catch a Wave" to "Magic Carpet Ride" epitomizes how much music changed in the Sixties, from jangly rock-pop to churning psychedelia. As sun-kissed and clean as the Beach Boys' sound is, Steppenwolf's is just as smoky and dirty. But it's an insanely good track, full of tempo changes and texture shifts. Dig that wicked minor-key organ progression on the bridge -- "Close your eyes, girl / Look inside, girl / Let the sound take you away" -- a contact high. Yes, this song is about drugs. Was there ever a doubt?

10. "Undun" / Guess Who
From Canned Wheat (1969)
This one blew me away -- sure, I'd heard it a million times on the radio or in movie soundtracks, but I had no idea this song was by Guess Who. The same guys who strut their macho way through "American Woman"? The same guys who croon the Bread-like "These Eyes"? A pack of Canadians -- not only that, but Manitobans? But for this song -- originally the B-side to something called "Laughing" -- they went tripping, pulling out the spooky reverb and a psychedelic organ part worthy of the Zombies. Burton Cummings' vocal is unforgettable on this. You learn something new every day.

2011-01-17T19:54:00.000-08:00

"Till the End of the Day" /
The Kinks

I couldn't resist -- having seen the Muswell Hillbillies perform their Kinks tribute show in New York last August, the news that they were "doing it again" up in Northampton, Massachusetts, meant one thing for me: ROAD TRIP! So despite last week's two-foot snow dump, there I was last night, perched on a bar stool in the Iron Horse Music Hall, sipping on my ice-cold beer and singing along.

Check out the background on this Kinks kollective here. Suffice it to say that their show is hugely enjoyable, just a little ragged around the edges (like a true Kinks show would be), and full of love for the music of --- well, let's not mince words, the greatest band of all time.

While their previous show was built around a track-by-track rendition of the Muswell Hillbillies LP (a.k.a. the greatest album ever by the greatest band of all time), this gig mixed things up a little bit, kept us in the audience guessing. The setlist included such obscure tracks as "Tin Soldier Man" and "Wicked Annabella," choices that betray what insane Kinks kultists these guys are. (Which, of course, endears them to me even more.) But since I was there with a friend who was a relative Kinks neophyte, I was glad that they also pulled out some of the earlier hit singles, the ones that got mainstream radio play over here before the Kinks' mysterious U.S. touring ban. And when they launched into "Till the End of the Day," even my friend grinned in recognition.

Now, when I try to explain to uninformed people who the Kinks are/were, I usually mention their first two big 1964 hits, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night." The Kinks dutifully followed those with "Tired of Waiting," "Who'll Be the Next in Line," and "Set Me Free," all hard-driving rock songs featuring varying degrees of power-chord aggression. Naturally, by mid-1965 Ray Davies was chafing at the bit, and he tampered with the hit-making formula, coming up with the dreamy, raga-like "See My Friends." Unfortunately, this record didn't even crack the top 100 in the States, and so the pressure was on to recapture the old sound.

Kinks producer Shel Talmy gave Ray a not-so-subtle nudge by importing American songwriter Mort Shuman ("Teenager in Love," "This Magic Moment," "Save the Last Dance for Me") and sending him up to North London to give Ray an afternoon's tutorial (!) in songwriting. (Can you imagine?) Nevertheless, it worked. "Till the End of the Day" was written that evening, recorded quickly, and launched onto the UK charts, hitting #6. Inexplicably, however, the US release was delayed until the following spring, and the record only rated #50 on the US charts. Luckily, the Kinks soon bounced back with the new satiric sound of "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "Sunny Afternoon," and voila! Ray Davies could finally escape the power-chord formula.

Here's the Kinks, back in the day . . .

And here's some video from the Muswell Hillbillies' performance the other night. Dig the back-up singers, and a sizzling guitar solo that would make even Dave Davies proud:

Okay, so the title is way too similar to "All Day and All of the Night"; maybe it was a bit of a recycling effort. All the same, it did alter the Kinks formula in one important angle. Think about all those other singles -- "You Really Got Me,""All Day and All of the Night," "Tired of Waiting," "Who'll Be the Next In Line" (and its flip side "Where Have All the Good Times Gone"), and "Set Me Free" -- they're all complaint songs. Obsession songs. Misery songs. But how does "Till the End of the Day" begin? Three slashing guitar strums, then the defiant, jubilant cry "Baby I feel good!" Every time I've seen Ray Davies sing this song, I feel that absurd burst of exultant spirit.

"Baby I feel good / From the moment I rise / Feel good from morning / Till the end of the day." It's a song about fresh starts, a positive outlook, signified by the sunrise ("I get up / And I see the sun / And I feel good yeah, / Cause my life has begun"). It's a blunt, simple statement, but then again, all these early power chord songs stick to the language of inarticulate teenagers; Ray Davies the wordsmith hasn't yet raised his head. Still, the sun will always be a powerful image for Ray Davies, whether it's setting over Waterloo Station, rising over the village green, or helping the tax bankrupt of "Sunny Afternoon" sail away.

And while he's not specifically crediting his girlfriend with his happy mood, she's part of it too: "You and me, we're free / We do as we please, yeah / From morning to the end of the day." Freedom -- another recurrent theme in the Ray Davies catalog. Funny that he should be singing about freedom when in fact he had record company execs breathing down his neck -- but hey, half of Ray's songs are more wish fulfillment than reality anyway.

Notice, however, how those dark chord progressions counterpoint the upbeat lyrics. Even as he joyfully rises in the morning, he's aware that the day will end, probably all too soon. He's happy, but defiantly so, with just a touch of desperation and hysteria. (A classic depressive's happiness.) And so he needs those thrusting guitar licks, to punch the sky. He needs to repeat that title phrase over and over, with the other singers chiming in, to convince himself.

This is no namby-pamby la-la-la feel-good song -- it's emotionally complex, despite the crude lyrics. And wonderful as the record is, it's best heard live, with that surge of defiant energy coming from the stage. Thank you, Muswell Hillbillies, for picking this instead of the obvious early Kinks singles. I like how you're spreading the Kinks gospel, one show at a time. Keep it up!

2011-01-15T22:36:00.000-08:00

"It's Nearly Africa" / XTC

Why? Cuz it came up on my shuffle, that's why, and I was waltzing around chanting "Shake your bag of bones" and "Any day now" for hours. Oh, how I wish I'd known about XTC back in 1982 when this came out, on an album cryptically entitled English Settlement. I guess this polyrhythmic sport fell somewhere between the Talking Heads' baffling Fear of Music (I remember putting the needle down on "I Zimbra" in 1979 and wondering what David Byrne had been smoking) and the mainstream-ification of African influences with Paul Simon's Graceland in 1986. I owned both of those records -- so where was XTC in my life in 1982? Nowhere, I'm afraid.

If I had know about English Settlement in 1982 -- just supposing -- I would have owned it on vinyl, would have set that thing on my turntable and patiently listened to the tracks in order, trying to make sense of the album as a whole. (Not to mention that cover image of the White Horse, primitive as a cave drawing.) I hope I'd have been struck by the LP's intricate mosaics of rhythm, whether African, Latin, or Olde Englyshe. If I'd already been an XTC initiate, I would probably have worried that the band was drifting away from accessible pop, except for the glorious "Senses Working Overtime." But how could I have failed to be charmed by this track?

And I'm sure I'd have puzzled over Andy Partridge's lyrics, with their brooding apocalyptic message. (Again, I think of the Talking Heads -- "This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around!") At first he seems enamored of the tribal man, the noble savage -- "Chant your spirit free / Rush to meet truth like a dart" and, better yet, "That's not traffic roar / That's a leopard in your heart." But later in the song, skepticism leaks through, as we see it's just a Westerner posing as an African, with the faintly ridiculous lines "Unplug your future plans / Finger-paint the sun on you."

After all, it's nearly Africa, not Africa he's singing about. As he continually looks over his shoulder, he frets about "false prophets" and "drug traffickers," "warboys" and "leeches." "We're dancing with disaster," he warns in the chorus (at least I guess you'd call it a chorus, though traditional song structure seems beside the point.) In the last verse he gets more explicit, lamenting, "Our civilisation car is running wild, / Who did you give the wheel to? / The fat man driving us over the edge of the nearest cliff-face, / Is he the same God that I've seen you kneel to?" (Note: listen to XTC's most popular track on iTunes, "Dear God," for Andy Partridge's religious views.)

Though Africa is just a metaphor for a chaotic society, however, it's those cascading African polyrhythms that make this track so compelling. Melody takes a back seat to that playful percussive beat, with discordant chanting vocals that have a comic wink to them. Just a touch of English whimsy, with an absurdist slant, to keep the satire light. It's the same street Robyn Hitchcock lives on -- my cup of tea, in other words.

I guess it's no surprise that these guys didn't "cross the pond" successfully; I mean, if Squeeze didn't (yes, I am getting around to another Squeeze post soon!), how could the more oddball sound of XTC? Too bad for me -- I could have used some music like this in the depths of the Eighties. Still, I've found them now, and better late than never.

2011-01-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Let's get 2011 off to a shufflin' start...

1."I Want to Be an Anglepoise Lamp" / The Soft Boys
From Can of Bees (1978)
This is how Robyn Hitchcock started out -- the frantic beat sounds like punk, but the lyrics and spirit are way too art-school absurdist. This track always makes me think of that classic Pixar short about the baby lamp, the one they played before Toy Story...

2. "Surf Medley" / Junior Brown
From Semi-Crazy (1996)
Amazing surf guitar instrumental from country guitar whiz Junior Brown, channeling 60s hits like "Walk Don't Run" and "Secret Agent Man," plingy riffs soaring over a furiously slapping drum track. Thanks to Napoleon Wakeup for this one!

3. "The Race Is On" / Rockpile
From a BBC radio broadcast August 1979
Dave Edmunds' rockabilly leanings took Rockpile down some dusty roads indeed (we shoulda known Nick would end up a country crooner). But hey, who could resist covering this George Jones classic? No Rockpile link, sorry (me and my bootlegs), but check out George's version.

4. "State of Confusion" / The Kinks
From State of Confusion (1983)
"The tumble dryer's broken, the telly's on the blink..." Poor besieged Ray Davies -- just can't cope with the modern world, can he? Even in the midst of the Kinks' arena rock heyday, he was harping on the neuroses of "20th Century Man" and "Holiday." And the girlfriend who leaves because the VCR broke -- sounds like "Sunny Afternoon"s girlfriend, fleeing home with "tales of drunkenness and cruelty." Fickle females!

5. "Plastic Lips" / The Aquabats
From Charge!! (2005)
Not all that different from the Soft Boys, really, though the Aquabats add a comic-book twist (dig the superhero costumes, despite physiques that the tights don't flatter). Funny, absurd, hectic. Love these guys live!

6. "Smokers" / The Old 97s
From Drag It Up (2004)
What? You've been reading my blog for how long, and you still aren't an Old 97s fan? Shame on you. It's alt-country for thinking people, with clever lyrics and just enough neurosis to balance out the yearning melodies. I love this atmospheric track, the hazy sound quality, the vocal riffs that curl upwards like a trail of smoke.

7. "Bummer in the Summer" / Love
From Forever Changes (1967)
Heh heh. Talk about hazy. Heh heh.

8. "Secret Heart" / Ron Sexsmith
From Ron Sexsmith (1995)
Was it Elvis or Nick who first covered this sweet tune? Either way, I wouldn't have discovered this wonderful Canadian singer-songwriter without that, so thanks, guys. Saw him open for Nick in '06, met him after the show -- he's just as much of a sweetheart as you'd think. Of course Dan knows him, too, like all the rest of the Toronto music mafia..

9. "Rocky Road" / Nick Lowe
From Party of One (1989)
Speak of the devil. Okay, it's a perfectly pleasant track, but -- dare I say it? --a tad generic, sorta like a mash-up of earlier songs like "Raining Raining" and "I Can Be The One You Love." On the other hand, it's my fault for keeping every single track he's ever recorded on my iTunes; I'm bound to get a little filler occasionally. Doesn't mean I'm going to delete any of it...

10. "Seventh Son" / Georgie Fame
From Seventh Son (1969)
And if it hadn't been for Van Morrison and Georgie Fame, I'd never have discovered Mose Allison. Nobody else gets that intersection of Delta sharecropper blues and beatnik jazz quite like Mose. Georgie's organ goes crazy staccato on this one -- "Everbody's talkin' 'bout the seventh son / In this whole wide world there is only one / And I'm the one, the one they call the seventh son." Cheeky!

2011-01-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

"Cynical Girl" /
Marshall Crenshaw

2011 is starting out very well, thank you, with a full house of great music gigs lined up over the next few weeks. You'll just have to wait to find out what they are. (How's that for creating suspense?) Number one, though, comes up this Friday: Marshall Crenshaw and Willie Nile, appearing together (what a double bill!) at a Unitarian church out in Montclair, New Jersey, courtesy of a series called Outpost in the Burbs. Gotta love that name! Any of you who live close enough to get there, here's the link to the venue -- it looks as if they've still got tickets.

It's true, I'm dreadfully spoiled when it comes to Marshall Crenshaw. He lives in the tri-state area and plays relatively often around here, usually at human-scaled venues that charge reasonable ticket prices and don't sell out two seconds after the tickets go on line. (Spoiled, I tell you!) Personally I believe that Marshall is so good, he should be filling Madison Square Garden -- there's just no justice in this world. But until that happens, I'll enjoy the more accessible Crenshaw.

This track is probably my favorite song from MC's self-titled debut album -- though that's a tough call, since it's one of my favorite albums of all time. Still, the first time I heard this song back in 1982, it was this song that really spoke to me -- for reasons that are embarrassingly obvious.

On that debut, we were utterly charmed by Crenshaw's bright, upbeat brand of retro pop, which owed as much to the Everlys and Buddy Holly as it did to the Beatles. But unlike a lot of his power pop counterparts, Marshall never acted like a sap, never got saccharine. There's always an edgy context to his love songs, some little frisson of doubt or discontent roiling the waters. In the years since, that streak of realism has only become richer, more complex -- I can tell you, this is an artist who wears extremely well. It's a trip to revisit the early stuff and see that that wry touch was always there.

Of course, there's that wonderful jangly guitar, the handclap beat -- so classic. And yes, it's a classic teen topic, the young guy cruising around town, searching for his soul mate. But he's subverting that rock-and-roll model with a touch of New Wave nerviness (remember what else we were listening to in 1982). Like any guy, he's got his specifications -- but in this case, he insists that "she's got no use for the real world," "she harbors no illusions, she is worldly wise." A postmodern gal indeed.

And, the line that always hooked me: "Well, I hate TV / There's gotta be somebody other than me / Who's ready to write it off immediately." Okay, so I actually like TV -- still I could relate to that line. (Always reminded me of the Talking Heads song, "Found a Job," where disgruntled Bob and Judy end up writing their own television shows.)

He wants a girl with a critical streak a mile wide, and that, my friends, was me. Is me. For this particular fangirl -- always a pushover for a rock singer wearing glasses -- it was wonderful to hear that some guys actually prefer cynical girls.

Mind you, it is subtly shaded -- this girl isn't depressive, no "Ruby Tuesday" or "Girl"; she's still perfectly capable of having fun, buzzing around town. This entire album has such a downtown feel to me, as if the notes were bouncing off of pavements and tall buildings, and I swear, this same girl reappears on track after track. She's also his playmate in "The Usual Thing" ("Don't wanna know about the usual thing / And if I didn't think you were a little bit out there too / I just wouldn't bother with you") and the spirited heroine of "She Can't Dance" ("she can't dance, she can't sing, but she's got to be part of that pop music thing"). It all hangs together.

I was thrilled to find this video on YouTube -- someone with a brain had fun making it. (Ain't YouTube great sometimes?) To me it perfectly catches the snappy spirit of this song. Enjoy!

2011-01-01T20:37:00.000-08:00

"Together Let's Ring in the New Year" / Motion City Soundtrack

I believe in recycling -- so much so that I'm recycling all of last year's New Year's resolutions, namely: 1. Cut out junk food. 2. Exercise more. 3. Blog more often.

In that spirit, here's a quick New Year's post. There aren't a whole lot of New Year's themed songs on my playlist -- mostly it's just two songs from Motion City Soundtrack's 2006 album Commit This To Memory. The other one, "Resolution," is way too depressing, so I'm opting for "Together We'll Ring in the New Year." (And once you listen to this one, you'll say, "The other one was more depressing?")

I dunno, though, I don't find this track a downer. Maybe that's because I feel the same way about the forced hilarity of New Year's parties. Motion City Soundtrack does slacker alienation better than almost anybody I can think of, and our protagonist starts off in medias res, sitting in a corner bummed out. "This must be it, welcome to the new year / The drinks are consumed, the plants are destroyed / And the hors d'oeuvres dismantled." Talk about setting a scene -- haven't you been to that party, a hundred times over? I love how the monotonous guitar strum simulates the drone of party chatter, how the melodic line rambles aimlessly, the lyrics not even bothering to rhyme.

"I'm not smiling / Behind this fake veneer," he sings, his voice soaring upward in a wistful yelp. Granted, our guy is not the life of the party -- he can barely hold his own in the conversation ("I am often interrupted or completely ignored"), and it's beginning to wear on him. He feels so distanced, it's like he's a different species -- "These humans all suck," he mutters (dig the vernacular) -- and he bitterly declares, "I'd rather be home feeling violent and lonely." That to me is just a great line, the way it encapsulates this guy's misery. Later on when he realizes, way late, that the woman he's been chatting up is wearing a wedding ring, it's an apt ending to another rotten holiday.

Another band -- They Might Be Giants, for instance, or Bare Naked Ladies -- might play this all for comedy. But the intriguing thing about MCS is that they truly respect alienation and social dislocation. (It helps that lead singer Justin Pierre has one of the most angsty voices in indie rock.) There's genuine poignancy in that chorus, "I'm trying to find out if my words have any meaning / Lackluster and full of contempt / And it always ends the same." All he wants is a little human contact. Is that so wrong? (And yes, ladies -- we know we'd be different, we'd be the cute girl who finally pays attention to that scruffy-but-sensitive loser.)

All this is apropos of nothing, I suppose -- I successfully avoided this sort of New Year's celebration this year, and I hope you did too. But still, there's something about that momentous and yet artificial flip of the calendar page that always makes me feel . . . well, violent and lonely. Basically all it means is that I have to remember to date my checks with a different number (what a pain). Beyond that, what has really changed?

Okay, I guess it is cool that today's date is 1/1/11. That'll be good for a few more hours, and then what?

Hmmm --- maybe I need some junk food after all...