"Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" / Michael Jackson
What can I add to the tsunami of commentary on the death of Michael Jackson? I wouldn't bother at all, except that everywhere I turn for the past couple of days there has been Michael Jackson music playing, and it is way too catchy not to get stuck in my head. Here I have been away from this blog for months, finishing a book (and then, for the past few days, officially on vacation -- see my other blog The Family Truckster) -- how ironic that it should be Michael Jackson to haul me back.
Sadly, however, I notice that the songs being played are mostly from the first half of his career, up through his hugely successful Thriller album. Did the man not record any music later? Of course he did, and a chart I saw in USA Today says that many of those later albums -- Bad, HIStory, et cetera -- sold in the range of 7 million copies each. Who was buying those records?
I loved all those early Jackson 5 Motown hits, of course -- who could fail to love those? -- but for me Michael Jackson's crowning achievement was Off The Wall, the album where he finally declared himself a grown-up artist. And of all the intoxicating dance songs on that album, "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" is my favorite. Those little shimmers of synthesized strings runnning through it, like shivers of desire; the insistent pulsating rhythm and the backbeat melody; Michael's wails and vocal spasms -- it's such a sexualized tapestry of sound.
Oh, yes, brothers and sister, listening to this track you could have no doubt that Michael Jackson had experienced sex. Exactly what kind of sex he had experienced was always up for speculation, but there is something so flesh-and-blood about this track, you couldn't deny it. And there's just enough melodic darkness to his riffs, just enough jerkiness to the rhythms, to give it an undertow of menace. Kinkiness, even.
I'm not going to analyze the lyrics, because they barely exist -- it's the disco-tized texture of this recording that's the real genius. Michael seems totally in thrall to animal desire on this track. He sounds hynotized, imprisoned, delirious, out of control. He doesn't sound happy, and yet he's ecstatic. The ambivalence of this song is simply mind-blowing. Who knew that Michael (not yet Jacko, the grotesque thing he would become) could be so complex?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
"Houston Chicks" / Doug Sahm & The Tex Mex Trip
Eeyow. Just finished meeting a copy deadline on my next book, and I've got an hour here before I have to be somewhere else. Should I run to the gym and exercise, or should I do a blog post?
No contest.
I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but my life has been clogged with crap lately, so many low-grade hassles coming at me from every direction that it's been impossible to think straight. I've been needing a shot of tequila 'n Tecate -- or, failing that, some tunes from the late great Doug Sahm.
Long ago I owned the Sir Douglas Quintet single "She's About a Mover," their biggest early hit and least typical track (some liner notes I just read referred to this as Sahm's turn at British Invasion pop, which probably explains why I loved it so much). Then a couple years ago, I got me a Sir Douglas Quintet album called Soul Jam that's a perfect marvel -- but completely different, which piqued my curiosity big-time. For some reason or other, though, I kept getting distracted and did not follow up properly. (Memo to self: Stop getting distracted.) So last week, who knows why, in the middle of all that crap-wading I decided just to download some Doug Sahm tracks and be done with it. I still can't figure out what his "typical" sound is, but who cares? The guy could do just about anything, and with snarky humor to boot. I think of him as a sort of cross between Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (for the stoner wit) and Joe "King" Carrasco (for the Mexicali dance hall energy). Add a dash of Joe Tex for the soul, and you've got Doug Sahm. What's not to love?
This track comes from a nifty little 1974 outing called Groover's Paradise, which saw Sahm teaming up with the rhythm section from Creedence Clearwater Revival. And yes, it's just as tasty as that sounds. Even though I didn't know about this album in 1974, listening to it sends me right back to those mellowed-out years, fumes and all. "Houston Chicks" is a lasciviously slow bluesy stroll with lots of organ and bass; it keeps circling around to a moaned "Whoa-o-o-o-o-o, Houston, Texas." In "California Girls" style, it begins by acknowledging "Love girls all over the country / Even met a few around the world," but you know already that the hometown girls are gonna win out.
"Worked the clubs in Galveston," he ruminates in verse two, "Couldn't have been more than 15 / When one of those boarding-house mothers / Said 'Little boy, come on down to Houston with me." "Boarding-house mother"? Yeah, um-hmm, I can see the flimsy chiffon wrapper she's wearing right now.
I hear this a song as a companion piece to "House of the Rising Sun" (the brilliant organ work helps -- who's playing here? Now I wish I had the physical album, damn it.) But whereas "Rising Sun" is saturated with warning and regret, "Houston Chicks" is like one long lazy stretch of sexual satisfaction. In the bridge, he rouses himself on one elbow to declare "Houston chicks / Get their kicks / Out of / Taking care, care, care / Of the man that they love," with long drawn-out pauses between phrases to give you plenty of time to read between the lines.
In the last verse, he sums it all up: "If I live my life over / Don't you know where I wanna be / Somewhere, somewhere, out on the outskirts of Houston / Houston girl take care of me." The band joins in to "whoa-o-o-o" away, the organ builds, and in the fade I can just see Doug stubbing out that post-coital cigarette, then sinking back into the pillows for another go-round.
Houston Chicks sample
Eeyow. Just finished meeting a copy deadline on my next book, and I've got an hour here before I have to be somewhere else. Should I run to the gym and exercise, or should I do a blog post?
No contest.
I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but my life has been clogged with crap lately, so many low-grade hassles coming at me from every direction that it's been impossible to think straight. I've been needing a shot of tequila 'n Tecate -- or, failing that, some tunes from the late great Doug Sahm.
Long ago I owned the Sir Douglas Quintet single "She's About a Mover," their biggest early hit and least typical track (some liner notes I just read referred to this as Sahm's turn at British Invasion pop, which probably explains why I loved it so much). Then a couple years ago, I got me a Sir Douglas Quintet album called Soul Jam that's a perfect marvel -- but completely different, which piqued my curiosity big-time. For some reason or other, though, I kept getting distracted and did not follow up properly. (Memo to self: Stop getting distracted.) So last week, who knows why, in the middle of all that crap-wading I decided just to download some Doug Sahm tracks and be done with it. I still can't figure out what his "typical" sound is, but who cares? The guy could do just about anything, and with snarky humor to boot. I think of him as a sort of cross between Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (for the stoner wit) and Joe "King" Carrasco (for the Mexicali dance hall energy). Add a dash of Joe Tex for the soul, and you've got Doug Sahm. What's not to love?
This track comes from a nifty little 1974 outing called Groover's Paradise, which saw Sahm teaming up with the rhythm section from Creedence Clearwater Revival. And yes, it's just as tasty as that sounds. Even though I didn't know about this album in 1974, listening to it sends me right back to those mellowed-out years, fumes and all. "Houston Chicks" is a lasciviously slow bluesy stroll with lots of organ and bass; it keeps circling around to a moaned "Whoa-o-o-o-o-o, Houston, Texas." In "California Girls" style, it begins by acknowledging "Love girls all over the country / Even met a few around the world," but you know already that the hometown girls are gonna win out.
"Worked the clubs in Galveston," he ruminates in verse two, "Couldn't have been more than 15 / When one of those boarding-house mothers / Said 'Little boy, come on down to Houston with me." "Boarding-house mother"? Yeah, um-hmm, I can see the flimsy chiffon wrapper she's wearing right now.
I hear this a song as a companion piece to "House of the Rising Sun" (the brilliant organ work helps -- who's playing here? Now I wish I had the physical album, damn it.) But whereas "Rising Sun" is saturated with warning and regret, "Houston Chicks" is like one long lazy stretch of sexual satisfaction. In the bridge, he rouses himself on one elbow to declare "Houston chicks / Get their kicks / Out of / Taking care, care, care / Of the man that they love," with long drawn-out pauses between phrases to give you plenty of time to read between the lines.
In the last verse, he sums it all up: "If I live my life over / Don't you know where I wanna be / Somewhere, somewhere, out on the outskirts of Houston / Houston girl take care of me." The band joins in to "whoa-o-o-o" away, the organ builds, and in the fade I can just see Doug stubbing out that post-coital cigarette, then sinking back into the pillows for another go-round.
Houston Chicks sample
Thursday, April 30, 2009
"The Wanting Comes in Waves" / The Decemberists
Way too trendy, I know. The Decemberists are everybody's indie darlings -- heck, they live in totally-PC Portland, Oregon, and their mock sparring with Stephen Colbert on TV's The Colbert Report is the last word in wink-wink knowingness. (They're supposed to be on again tonight, singing this very song, a blurb about which appearance triggered today's aural tic.) And, talk about indie creds, they even lined up Robyn Hitchcock for their latest album, The Hazards of Love, a concept album-cum-rock-opera that's practically Colin Meloy's PhD thesis on archaic English folk ballads. All they let Robyn do was play guitar on one track, but still, they got to name-check him in the liner notes.
Still, their last album The Crane Wife worked its way under my skin, and Hazards of Love shows every promise of doing the same. I ended up giving this album a thumbs-up in my review for Blogcritics and I got tickets to see them at Radio City in June (I found out later that Robyn and the Venus 3 are the opening act, so really, there must be a God).
The fact that I get hooked on their music still baffles me, though. Usually I look for classic song structure, neatly turned lyrics, and catchy melodic lines, and Colin Meloy's compositions don't do very well on any of those scores -- his stuff is more symphonic, with recurring leitmotifs, lushly textured arrangements, and words that are little too Poetry-With-A-Capital-P for my tastes. I don't know what the guy is like personally, but there's a distinct lack of humor in this album, and that is usually the kiss of death for me. And yet.
I should point out that this track on the album isn't just "The Wanting Comes in Waves" -- it's medlied up with another song, "Repaid," sung by the opera's villainess, The Queen. That half of the track is delivered with shivering blues-rock intensity by guest singer Shana Wordren, who apparently is in a band called My Brightest Diamond (no, I'd never heard of them either). The way she swaggers through "Repaid" is impressive, but that's not the song that's stuck in my head.
No, I'm stuck only on "The Wanting Comes in Waves" half, which is sung by Colin in his earnest folky vocals. It starts off at a solemn, tentative pace, accompanied by harpsichord (yes, they do get away with it), a doleful minor-key recitatif in which our hero William -- who is, get this, a sort of silkie foundling (yes, they get away with that too) -- recounts how his mother rescued his cradle from the reeds when he was just a wee babe. Honest.
But then the song blossoms and swells, picking up pace, adding drums and electric guitar; as it shifts into a major key, back-up singers pitch in with ooohs, until it reaches almost cinematic grandeur. "But the wanting comes in waves," William wails over and over, and you've got to feel sorry for the guy, sorta like I felt sorry for that cute little David Naughton in An American Werewolf in London, totally at the mercy of his animal impulses. I hate to put it so crudely -- this is such a twee project, after all -- but William is getting the musical equivalent of a hard-on. Within the story line, that is actually exactly the point. And as it morphs into the the Queen's hot-mama rendition of "Repaid," this story plumbs its own Freudian depths. "And I want this night," William begs, passionately, in the first movement; when he takes over the stage again, after the first go-round of "Repaid," his plea has changed to "And you owe me life!" The Queen gives in, no doubt with a testy swish of her black skirt -- but you just know this is not going to end well for poor William. Fade out and dissolve.
You know, it's taken me years to work past my old English major pretensions, and now here's Colin Meloy pulling me right back in. Still, I gotta admire him for even trying this kind of sophomoric artsy crap. The fact that it's actually listenable -- no, make that compelling -- is pretty amazing. If he can get past the defenses of a skeptic like me, he must be doing something right.
The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid
Way too trendy, I know. The Decemberists are everybody's indie darlings -- heck, they live in totally-PC Portland, Oregon, and their mock sparring with Stephen Colbert on TV's The Colbert Report is the last word in wink-wink knowingness. (They're supposed to be on again tonight, singing this very song, a blurb about which appearance triggered today's aural tic.) And, talk about indie creds, they even lined up Robyn Hitchcock for their latest album, The Hazards of Love, a concept album-cum-rock-opera that's practically Colin Meloy's PhD thesis on archaic English folk ballads. All they let Robyn do was play guitar on one track, but still, they got to name-check him in the liner notes.
Still, their last album The Crane Wife worked its way under my skin, and Hazards of Love shows every promise of doing the same. I ended up giving this album a thumbs-up in my review for Blogcritics and I got tickets to see them at Radio City in June (I found out later that Robyn and the Venus 3 are the opening act, so really, there must be a God).
The fact that I get hooked on their music still baffles me, though. Usually I look for classic song structure, neatly turned lyrics, and catchy melodic lines, and Colin Meloy's compositions don't do very well on any of those scores -- his stuff is more symphonic, with recurring leitmotifs, lushly textured arrangements, and words that are little too Poetry-With-A-Capital-P for my tastes. I don't know what the guy is like personally, but there's a distinct lack of humor in this album, and that is usually the kiss of death for me. And yet.
I should point out that this track on the album isn't just "The Wanting Comes in Waves" -- it's medlied up with another song, "Repaid," sung by the opera's villainess, The Queen. That half of the track is delivered with shivering blues-rock intensity by guest singer Shana Wordren, who apparently is in a band called My Brightest Diamond (no, I'd never heard of them either). The way she swaggers through "Repaid" is impressive, but that's not the song that's stuck in my head.
No, I'm stuck only on "The Wanting Comes in Waves" half, which is sung by Colin in his earnest folky vocals. It starts off at a solemn, tentative pace, accompanied by harpsichord (yes, they do get away with it), a doleful minor-key recitatif in which our hero William -- who is, get this, a sort of silkie foundling (yes, they get away with that too) -- recounts how his mother rescued his cradle from the reeds when he was just a wee babe. Honest.
But then the song blossoms and swells, picking up pace, adding drums and electric guitar; as it shifts into a major key, back-up singers pitch in with ooohs, until it reaches almost cinematic grandeur. "But the wanting comes in waves," William wails over and over, and you've got to feel sorry for the guy, sorta like I felt sorry for that cute little David Naughton in An American Werewolf in London, totally at the mercy of his animal impulses. I hate to put it so crudely -- this is such a twee project, after all -- but William is getting the musical equivalent of a hard-on. Within the story line, that is actually exactly the point. And as it morphs into the the Queen's hot-mama rendition of "Repaid," this story plumbs its own Freudian depths. "And I want this night," William begs, passionately, in the first movement; when he takes over the stage again, after the first go-round of "Repaid," his plea has changed to "And you owe me life!" The Queen gives in, no doubt with a testy swish of her black skirt -- but you just know this is not going to end well for poor William. Fade out and dissolve.
You know, it's taken me years to work past my old English major pretensions, and now here's Colin Meloy pulling me right back in. Still, I gotta admire him for even trying this kind of sophomoric artsy crap. The fact that it's actually listenable -- no, make that compelling -- is pretty amazing. If he can get past the defenses of a skeptic like me, he must be doing something right.
The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
"This Diamond Ring" / Gary Lewis & the Playboys
Well, I've already come clean with you guys about my Herman's Hermits phase, so I may as well 'fess up to this one too: somewhere in Indiana there's a well-worn Gary Lewis LP somebody bought at a garage sale (along with my original Barbie doll), and everyone once in a while I wish I had it back. Did I know that Gary Lewis was the son of Jerry Lewis, the old Nutty Professor himself? (Surely one the most disturbing films ever, which I first saw at a way too impressionable age.) Yes, I did know that, and even that didn't stop me. Hey, I liked Dino, Desi, and Billy too.
True, I was too naive to fully appreciate that the ONLY reason anybody ever gave Gary Lewis a recording contract was because of who his daddy was. And only a couple days ago did I learn that, thanks to those Hollywood connections, he had Snuff Garrett to produce the thing, Leon Russell to arrange it, had Jim Keltner sitting in on the drums, and was handed a song written by Al Kooper. Talk about pop pedigrees.
Still, when you listen to this song -- and oh, I listened to it A LOT -- it could not have failed to be a hit. In a mere two minutes and eight seconds, it distills heartbreak into a single image of one rejected engagement ring. "Who wants to buy-ee-eye / [dramatic strum] / This diamond ri-ii-ii-ing," Gary wails, in a totally believable adolescent nasal twang. "She took it off her finger now / It doesn't mean a thing." If you've ever studied T.S. Eliot (and I humbly submit that I have), you'll know that the term for this is "objective correlative," the physical thing that represents a whole complex of emotions. And good ol' Al Kooper, that immensely underrated genius, explores absolutely every facet (excuse the pun) of this aptly-chosen image.
"This diamond ring doesn't shine for me anymore," Gary bitterly declares; "And this diamond ring doesn't mean what it did before." He switches into Friend Advice Song mode to add, "So if you've got / Someone whose love / Is true-ooo-ooo-oo / Let it shine for you-ooo-oo-ooo."
Did Al Kooper have a relative in the gem trade? Because that next line is classic: "This stone is genuine / Like love should be-ee-ee-eee." The petulance in Gary's whine is so appropriate, as he adds, "So if your baby's truer than / My baby was to me-eee-ee-eee." (Dig those modulated chords at the end of the verses.)
That's about it, save for one last iteration of the chorus: "This diamond ring can mean something beautiful / And this diamond can be dreams that are coming true" (heh-heh, let's watch Al Kooper run out of inspiration at the close of the song). "And then your heart / Won't have to break / Like mi-ine did / If there's love behind it." And here's Leon Russell, stuffing in the guitar riffs that echo melodic phrases and highlighting dramatic drum fills (Gary was ostensibly a drummer, after all) in the breaks between phrases.
Slick? You betcha. But it was radio-ready, and I ate it up. And I make no apologies, because the rest of that album was damn fine too, if all you're looking for is spot-on mid-century pop music. On song after song -- "Save Your Heart for Me," "Just My Style," "Everybody Loves a Clown," "Count Me In," "Sure Gonna Miss Her" -- Gary Lewis cranked it out in expertly chiseled commercial style.
Believe it or not, I didn't even have a fangirl crush on Gary Lewis. Hey, who could have a crush on Gary Lewis? He looked like the ultimate nebbish. I'm not making a case for him being some overlooked artiste, but I suspect that if he hadn't been suddenly drafted in December 1966, he might have had a chance at developing into a real musician.
But what do I know? I loved the Monkees too. But then, I did have a fangirl crush on Davy Jones...
This Diamond Ring sample
Well, I've already come clean with you guys about my Herman's Hermits phase, so I may as well 'fess up to this one too: somewhere in Indiana there's a well-worn Gary Lewis LP somebody bought at a garage sale (along with my original Barbie doll), and everyone once in a while I wish I had it back. Did I know that Gary Lewis was the son of Jerry Lewis, the old Nutty Professor himself? (Surely one the most disturbing films ever, which I first saw at a way too impressionable age.) Yes, I did know that, and even that didn't stop me. Hey, I liked Dino, Desi, and Billy too.
True, I was too naive to fully appreciate that the ONLY reason anybody ever gave Gary Lewis a recording contract was because of who his daddy was. And only a couple days ago did I learn that, thanks to those Hollywood connections, he had Snuff Garrett to produce the thing, Leon Russell to arrange it, had Jim Keltner sitting in on the drums, and was handed a song written by Al Kooper. Talk about pop pedigrees.
Still, when you listen to this song -- and oh, I listened to it A LOT -- it could not have failed to be a hit. In a mere two minutes and eight seconds, it distills heartbreak into a single image of one rejected engagement ring. "Who wants to buy-ee-eye / [dramatic strum] / This diamond ri-ii-ii-ing," Gary wails, in a totally believable adolescent nasal twang. "She took it off her finger now / It doesn't mean a thing." If you've ever studied T.S. Eliot (and I humbly submit that I have), you'll know that the term for this is "objective correlative," the physical thing that represents a whole complex of emotions. And good ol' Al Kooper, that immensely underrated genius, explores absolutely every facet (excuse the pun) of this aptly-chosen image.
"This diamond ring doesn't shine for me anymore," Gary bitterly declares; "And this diamond ring doesn't mean what it did before." He switches into Friend Advice Song mode to add, "So if you've got / Someone whose love / Is true-ooo-ooo-oo / Let it shine for you-ooo-oo-ooo."
Did Al Kooper have a relative in the gem trade? Because that next line is classic: "This stone is genuine / Like love should be-ee-ee-eee." The petulance in Gary's whine is so appropriate, as he adds, "So if your baby's truer than / My baby was to me-eee-ee-eee." (Dig those modulated chords at the end of the verses.)
That's about it, save for one last iteration of the chorus: "This diamond ring can mean something beautiful / And this diamond can be dreams that are coming true" (heh-heh, let's watch Al Kooper run out of inspiration at the close of the song). "And then your heart / Won't have to break / Like mi-ine did / If there's love behind it." And here's Leon Russell, stuffing in the guitar riffs that echo melodic phrases and highlighting dramatic drum fills (Gary was ostensibly a drummer, after all) in the breaks between phrases.
Slick? You betcha. But it was radio-ready, and I ate it up. And I make no apologies, because the rest of that album was damn fine too, if all you're looking for is spot-on mid-century pop music. On song after song -- "Save Your Heart for Me," "Just My Style," "Everybody Loves a Clown," "Count Me In," "Sure Gonna Miss Her" -- Gary Lewis cranked it out in expertly chiseled commercial style.
Believe it or not, I didn't even have a fangirl crush on Gary Lewis. Hey, who could have a crush on Gary Lewis? He looked like the ultimate nebbish. I'm not making a case for him being some overlooked artiste, but I suspect that if he hadn't been suddenly drafted in December 1966, he might have had a chance at developing into a real musician.
But what do I know? I loved the Monkees too. But then, I did have a fangirl crush on Davy Jones...
This Diamond Ring sample
Monday, April 20, 2009
"New Amsterdam" / Elvis Costello and the Attractions
I saw Elvis last Friday night, at a dress rehearsal for Prairie Home Companion (c'mon, you didn't think Elvis could resist, once he discovered that his pal Nick Lowe had charmed Prairie Home's listeners not once but twice in the past year or so?) Elvis was at his cuddly teddy-bear best, agreeably mugging along with Garrison Keillor and the gang in various skits and flogging several songs off of a new album (due in early June), Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, which he cranked out one afternoon in Nashville recently. Really, has the man no Off button?
On my way to the show, I wondered what Elvis would sing. The one song I guessed was the only older number he performed -- "Indoor Fireworks," from King of America, which has been in my Top Ten Elvis Songs for just about forever. I even heard him sing it in duet with Nick about a year ago, which as you can imagine was a moment of sheer fangirl transcendence for me.
But ever since, oddly enough, I've been humming this song, which Elvis didn't sing at all on Friday. True, it's a natural default for me to dial into Get Happy!, probably my favoritest EC LP ever. But why this one, and not, say, "Motel Matches" or "Riot Act" or "Five Gears in Reverse" or "B Movie"? I suspect it was triggered by an interview I read recently, in which Elvis scoffed about his youthful addiction to puns and word play. I thought to myself, "Yes, you're right, Declan" (in my head I'm always on a real-name basis with EC), "you really were a fool for the word play back then." But who am I kidding? The word play is what I LOVE about this track.
He simply can't resist. "You're sending me tulips mistaken for lilies," he begins with that knee-jerk Dutch tulip image, then twists it into "You give me your lip after punching me silly." This makes no sense at all, outside of the pun, does it? And he follows it up with another grotesque physical image: "You turned my head till it rolled down the brain drain / If I had any sense now I wouldn't want it back again." It's awful, isn't it? And yet he's speeding through it all with such reckless abandon, I can't help but love it.
The deal is, this song is a waltz -- I don't just mean it's in 3/4 time, it actually whirls and dips like a waltz, with a funny sort of coked-up musicbox quality. Steve Nieve's calliope-like organ doesn't surface until the end, but it's pattering away underneath the whole time, and no matter how many words Elvis stuffs into this carnival tune, all you really hear is the stressed first beat of nearly every measure, which generally is also the highest note, cascading downward after that. It's like a horror film fun house, like a merry-go-round Elvis can't jump off of. And somehow that makes all those grotesque images fit right in.
New Amsterdam is code, I guess, for New York, or so the chorus suggests: "New Amsterdam it's become much too much / Till I have the possession of everything she touches." Yeah, that sense of excess is 1980 NYC all right. And he follows it up with a real groaner of a couplet: "Till I step on the brakes to get out of her clutches / Till I speak double dutch to a real double duchess." Beyond the car puns and the snarky play on "double" (morphing innocent double-dutch ghetto jump-ropers with Eurotrash hypocrisy), there's an absolutely vertiginous sense of danger and distrust, which with 1980s Elvis was pretty much par for the course. (Check out the end of verse two, where he fires off one of his more jaundiced insults, "Everything you say now sounds like it was ghost-written" -- ouch!)
But then the bridge is oddly poignant: "Back in London they'll take you to heart after a little while / Though I look right at home I still feel like an exile." Wait, is it London or New York where he feels like an exile? I'm betting both, actually. Funny that he lives here in New York now, but then again, today he's a hobnobber par excellence, no longer an angry young man. It doesn't matter where he actually lives, he's always inside that celebrity bubble now.
He carries on in that lonely, winsome vein in the last verse: "Somehow I found myself down at the dockside / Thinking of the old days of Liverpool and Rotherhithe / The transparent people who live on the other side / Living a life that is almost like suicide." I'm not sure whether the "other" side is the past he's left behind, or the new fake plastic people he's forced to hang out with. Either way, he hates 'em. Ahh, vintage Elvis.
New Amsterdam video
I saw Elvis last Friday night, at a dress rehearsal for Prairie Home Companion (c'mon, you didn't think Elvis could resist, once he discovered that his pal Nick Lowe had charmed Prairie Home's listeners not once but twice in the past year or so?) Elvis was at his cuddly teddy-bear best, agreeably mugging along with Garrison Keillor and the gang in various skits and flogging several songs off of a new album (due in early June), Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, which he cranked out one afternoon in Nashville recently. Really, has the man no Off button?
On my way to the show, I wondered what Elvis would sing. The one song I guessed was the only older number he performed -- "Indoor Fireworks," from King of America, which has been in my Top Ten Elvis Songs for just about forever. I even heard him sing it in duet with Nick about a year ago, which as you can imagine was a moment of sheer fangirl transcendence for me.
But ever since, oddly enough, I've been humming this song, which Elvis didn't sing at all on Friday. True, it's a natural default for me to dial into Get Happy!, probably my favoritest EC LP ever. But why this one, and not, say, "Motel Matches" or "Riot Act" or "Five Gears in Reverse" or "B Movie"? I suspect it was triggered by an interview I read recently, in which Elvis scoffed about his youthful addiction to puns and word play. I thought to myself, "Yes, you're right, Declan" (in my head I'm always on a real-name basis with EC), "you really were a fool for the word play back then." But who am I kidding? The word play is what I LOVE about this track.
He simply can't resist. "You're sending me tulips mistaken for lilies," he begins with that knee-jerk Dutch tulip image, then twists it into "You give me your lip after punching me silly." This makes no sense at all, outside of the pun, does it? And he follows it up with another grotesque physical image: "You turned my head till it rolled down the brain drain / If I had any sense now I wouldn't want it back again." It's awful, isn't it? And yet he's speeding through it all with such reckless abandon, I can't help but love it.
The deal is, this song is a waltz -- I don't just mean it's in 3/4 time, it actually whirls and dips like a waltz, with a funny sort of coked-up musicbox quality. Steve Nieve's calliope-like organ doesn't surface until the end, but it's pattering away underneath the whole time, and no matter how many words Elvis stuffs into this carnival tune, all you really hear is the stressed first beat of nearly every measure, which generally is also the highest note, cascading downward after that. It's like a horror film fun house, like a merry-go-round Elvis can't jump off of. And somehow that makes all those grotesque images fit right in.
New Amsterdam is code, I guess, for New York, or so the chorus suggests: "New Amsterdam it's become much too much / Till I have the possession of everything she touches." Yeah, that sense of excess is 1980 NYC all right. And he follows it up with a real groaner of a couplet: "Till I step on the brakes to get out of her clutches / Till I speak double dutch to a real double duchess." Beyond the car puns and the snarky play on "double" (morphing innocent double-dutch ghetto jump-ropers with Eurotrash hypocrisy), there's an absolutely vertiginous sense of danger and distrust, which with 1980s Elvis was pretty much par for the course. (Check out the end of verse two, where he fires off one of his more jaundiced insults, "Everything you say now sounds like it was ghost-written" -- ouch!)
But then the bridge is oddly poignant: "Back in London they'll take you to heart after a little while / Though I look right at home I still feel like an exile." Wait, is it London or New York where he feels like an exile? I'm betting both, actually. Funny that he lives here in New York now, but then again, today he's a hobnobber par excellence, no longer an angry young man. It doesn't matter where he actually lives, he's always inside that celebrity bubble now.
He carries on in that lonely, winsome vein in the last verse: "Somehow I found myself down at the dockside / Thinking of the old days of Liverpool and Rotherhithe / The transparent people who live on the other side / Living a life that is almost like suicide." I'm not sure whether the "other" side is the past he's left behind, or the new fake plastic people he's forced to hang out with. Either way, he hates 'em. Ahh, vintage Elvis.
New Amsterdam video
Saturday, April 18, 2009
"O Lucky Man!" / Alan Price
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALAN PRICE!!
When I went to this movie's premiere run in the summer of 1973 in London -- the Leicester Square Cinema, I remember it well -- I was all hepped up about seeing Malcolm McDowell, who'd mesmerized me so in his previous film, A Clockwork Orange. But about four minutes into the film, Anderson cuts from a close-up of McDowell's face -- oh, those huge, sinister blue eyes -- to an image of hands crashing onto a electric piano keyboard. Commanding chords ring out, and the camera pans up to the finely-planed face of Alan Price, who begins to sing, in his smoky tenor voice, "If you have a friend / On whom you think you can rely / You are a lucky man." He rolls his eyes, grins, and goes on, "If you've found a reason /To live on and not to die / You are a lucky man."
Honestly, my heart leaped in my chest. It's one of the few moments in my life when I was aware of a life-changing event, of planets abruptly slewing around and re-aligning themselves. I walked out of that movie two-and-a-half hours later trembling, truly trembling. Yes, the story and the acting and the cinematography were fantastic -- I mean, it is Lindsay Anderson's masterpiece, a sweeping indictment of pre-Thatcherite England, and besides McDowell it stars brilliant actors like Helen Mirren and Ralph Richardson and Rachel Roberts. But to be honest, the only thing on my mind as I left the cinema was I must find out who this Alan Price is.
You think my current Nick Lowe obssesion consumes me? That's nothing compared to how I was obsessed by Alan Price throughout the late 1970s. And I still feel attached to him, like you might to your college boyfriend who never really dumped you, just eventually drifted out of your life. Even though he rarely records anymore, and hasn't toured the States in decades (I've only been able to see him live twice), Alan Price still is, and always will be, an immutable part of the soundtrack of my life.
The brilliant thing about the songs Alan Price wrote for this film (get this soundtrack album NOW) is how he marries jaunty pop music -- jazz, a samba, a cha-cha-cha, music-hall soft shoe, even a recycled hymn thrown in for good measure -- with bleak, disillusioned lyrics about the vanity of human endeavor. I'm talking lyrics like "Sell, sell, sell, sell everything you stand for" and "We all want justice but you've got to have the money to buy it" and
Hope springs eternal in a young man's breast
And he dreams of a better life ahead
Without that dream you are nothing, nothing, nothing
You've got to find out for yourself that dream is dead.
I don't think of myself as a cynical person -- though, okay, my lifelong Kinks fanship suggests a certain jaundiced outlook -- but I sure bought into the deliciously dark world view of this movie. And this title track raises it to the level of an anthem, with unspooling arpeggios, spiraling melodic phrases, and mounting chord changes, as he declares the snarky truth: "Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you / Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you /When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell / You'll be a lucky man!"
Perhaps my favorite line in this whole song, the one that became my de facto motto, is "If knowledge hangs around your neck / Like pearls instead of chains / You are a lucky man." I wore a strand of fake pearls every day, my junior year of college -- fashionably pairing it with blue denim overalls -- as my trademark look, just because of this song. People who knew me in college still ask about the pearls.
I've seen O Lucky Man! at least a dozen times since then, and I still get all jangled by it. I'm sure I could attribute my love of the film to the cynical temper of the mid-70s, or about the fact that I was still in college, when you're supposed to question the values of society. But in my heart I know it has more to do with Alan Price's cheekbones, the brooding gaze in his gray eyes, the thick Geordie rasp in his voice. (Later he bursts into the movie as a character as well -- imagine how that rattled my popcorn -- and though I could barely understand a word he said, I knew I was a goner.) I laugh now, but really, it was glorious to be overwhelmed by this, purely out of the blue. Ah, we should all be so lucky.
O Lucky Man sample
O Lucky Man clip
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALAN PRICE!!
When I went to this movie's premiere run in the summer of 1973 in London -- the Leicester Square Cinema, I remember it well -- I was all hepped up about seeing Malcolm McDowell, who'd mesmerized me so in his previous film, A Clockwork Orange. But about four minutes into the film, Anderson cuts from a close-up of McDowell's face -- oh, those huge, sinister blue eyes -- to an image of hands crashing onto a electric piano keyboard. Commanding chords ring out, and the camera pans up to the finely-planed face of Alan Price, who begins to sing, in his smoky tenor voice, "If you have a friend / On whom you think you can rely / You are a lucky man." He rolls his eyes, grins, and goes on, "If you've found a reason /To live on and not to die / You are a lucky man."
Honestly, my heart leaped in my chest. It's one of the few moments in my life when I was aware of a life-changing event, of planets abruptly slewing around and re-aligning themselves. I walked out of that movie two-and-a-half hours later trembling, truly trembling. Yes, the story and the acting and the cinematography were fantastic -- I mean, it is Lindsay Anderson's masterpiece, a sweeping indictment of pre-Thatcherite England, and besides McDowell it stars brilliant actors like Helen Mirren and Ralph Richardson and Rachel Roberts. But to be honest, the only thing on my mind as I left the cinema was I must find out who this Alan Price is.
You think my current Nick Lowe obssesion consumes me? That's nothing compared to how I was obsessed by Alan Price throughout the late 1970s. And I still feel attached to him, like you might to your college boyfriend who never really dumped you, just eventually drifted out of your life. Even though he rarely records anymore, and hasn't toured the States in decades (I've only been able to see him live twice), Alan Price still is, and always will be, an immutable part of the soundtrack of my life.
The brilliant thing about the songs Alan Price wrote for this film (get this soundtrack album NOW) is how he marries jaunty pop music -- jazz, a samba, a cha-cha-cha, music-hall soft shoe, even a recycled hymn thrown in for good measure -- with bleak, disillusioned lyrics about the vanity of human endeavor. I'm talking lyrics like "Sell, sell, sell, sell everything you stand for" and "We all want justice but you've got to have the money to buy it" and
Hope springs eternal in a young man's breast
And he dreams of a better life ahead
Without that dream you are nothing, nothing, nothing
You've got to find out for yourself that dream is dead.
I don't think of myself as a cynical person -- though, okay, my lifelong Kinks fanship suggests a certain jaundiced outlook -- but I sure bought into the deliciously dark world view of this movie. And this title track raises it to the level of an anthem, with unspooling arpeggios, spiraling melodic phrases, and mounting chord changes, as he declares the snarky truth: "Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you / Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you /When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell / You'll be a lucky man!"
Perhaps my favorite line in this whole song, the one that became my de facto motto, is "If knowledge hangs around your neck / Like pearls instead of chains / You are a lucky man." I wore a strand of fake pearls every day, my junior year of college -- fashionably pairing it with blue denim overalls -- as my trademark look, just because of this song. People who knew me in college still ask about the pearls.
I've seen O Lucky Man! at least a dozen times since then, and I still get all jangled by it. I'm sure I could attribute my love of the film to the cynical temper of the mid-70s, or about the fact that I was still in college, when you're supposed to question the values of society. But in my heart I know it has more to do with Alan Price's cheekbones, the brooding gaze in his gray eyes, the thick Geordie rasp in his voice. (Later he bursts into the movie as a character as well -- imagine how that rattled my popcorn -- and though I could barely understand a word he said, I knew I was a goner.) I laugh now, but really, it was glorious to be overwhelmed by this, purely out of the blue. Ah, we should all be so lucky.
O Lucky Man sample
O Lucky Man clip
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
"Wichita Lineman" / Glen Campbell
I won't even tell you how this song got stuck in my head -- suffice it to say it had something to do with a fantasy conversation I was having with Nick Lowe. (Come on, can't you just hear Nick covering this song?)
At first, I'll admit, its melody was all tangled up in my memory with "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," that stirring 1969 ballad by the Hollies (although -- fun facts from Wikipedia -- Neil Diamond actually recorded it first, and I'll wager it's Neil's rendition that drilled it most relentlessly into my brain). "He Ain't Heavy" is beautiful but, come on, admit it, just a tad self-righteous and histrionic.
"Wichita Lineman," on the other hand, is spare and heartfelt. Once you get past the syrupy strings and Glen's trademark yodel, it's a breathtaking ballad about love and loneliness and the American west. In fact, it's so spare and subtle that you need to load on the the syrupy strings and Glen's yodel to load all the sentiment into it.
Glen put this song out in 1968, when the barriers between rock and country music were mile-high stockades. Glen had short hair and wore string ties and suits and cowboy boots -- there was no way we rock fans were going to buy this record. I remember a friend of my mother's giving my older brother the Wichita Lineman album for his birthday; I can still see the grimace on his face as he tried to thank her politely. Chances are he never listened once to that LP.
Now I'm embarrassed that music snobbery blinded me to this song. Written by Jimmy Webb, who also wrote "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" and "Galveston" for Glen, it has a wonderful high-country loneliness to it. In fact, it's downright existential. Nothing much happens here; the singer is stringing telephone wire in some vast western landscape ("I am a lineman for the county," he humbly introduces himself, "and I drive the main road / Searching in the sun for another overload.") Later he admits, "I know I need a small vacation, / But it don't look like rain" -- this is the kind of ordinary Joe who only gets a rest when the weather's bad. He's just an American working man, way back before Bruce Springsteen made that kind of guy glamorous.
With nothing to distract him out here, he can't get his mind off his girlfriend/wife (could even be his boyfriend, for that matter). There's no back story provided -- it's not like they're in the middle of a break-up, or he's just found out she's cheating on him, or she's been sick, or anything. He just . . . well, he just misses her.
In fact, she's such a part of him that she seems to be everywhere. "I hear you singin' in the wire / I can hear you through the whine" -- is that not the most poignant thing you've ever heard? (Meanwhile, the strings whine like the wind in the wires.) And then he tops that in the next verse, when the same heart-breaking melodic phrase gets these words: "And I need you more than want you / And I want you for all time." That's as splendid as the biggest horizon, a sweeping majestic statement of love.
In both cases, he's jerked back to reality with a dull jolt: "And the Wichita lineman / Is still on the line." He jumps an octave to that last dissonant note on "line," underlaid with a throbbing riff like a Morse code signal. He's still out there, for all we know, still searching in the sun for that overload. Iconic.
Wichita Lineman clip
I won't even tell you how this song got stuck in my head -- suffice it to say it had something to do with a fantasy conversation I was having with Nick Lowe. (Come on, can't you just hear Nick covering this song?)
At first, I'll admit, its melody was all tangled up in my memory with "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," that stirring 1969 ballad by the Hollies (although -- fun facts from Wikipedia -- Neil Diamond actually recorded it first, and I'll wager it's Neil's rendition that drilled it most relentlessly into my brain). "He Ain't Heavy" is beautiful but, come on, admit it, just a tad self-righteous and histrionic.
"Wichita Lineman," on the other hand, is spare and heartfelt. Once you get past the syrupy strings and Glen's trademark yodel, it's a breathtaking ballad about love and loneliness and the American west. In fact, it's so spare and subtle that you need to load on the the syrupy strings and Glen's yodel to load all the sentiment into it.
Glen put this song out in 1968, when the barriers between rock and country music were mile-high stockades. Glen had short hair and wore string ties and suits and cowboy boots -- there was no way we rock fans were going to buy this record. I remember a friend of my mother's giving my older brother the Wichita Lineman album for his birthday; I can still see the grimace on his face as he tried to thank her politely. Chances are he never listened once to that LP.
Now I'm embarrassed that music snobbery blinded me to this song. Written by Jimmy Webb, who also wrote "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" and "Galveston" for Glen, it has a wonderful high-country loneliness to it. In fact, it's downright existential. Nothing much happens here; the singer is stringing telephone wire in some vast western landscape ("I am a lineman for the county," he humbly introduces himself, "and I drive the main road / Searching in the sun for another overload.") Later he admits, "I know I need a small vacation, / But it don't look like rain" -- this is the kind of ordinary Joe who only gets a rest when the weather's bad. He's just an American working man, way back before Bruce Springsteen made that kind of guy glamorous.
With nothing to distract him out here, he can't get his mind off his girlfriend/wife (could even be his boyfriend, for that matter). There's no back story provided -- it's not like they're in the middle of a break-up, or he's just found out she's cheating on him, or she's been sick, or anything. He just . . . well, he just misses her.
In fact, she's such a part of him that she seems to be everywhere. "I hear you singin' in the wire / I can hear you through the whine" -- is that not the most poignant thing you've ever heard? (Meanwhile, the strings whine like the wind in the wires.) And then he tops that in the next verse, when the same heart-breaking melodic phrase gets these words: "And I need you more than want you / And I want you for all time." That's as splendid as the biggest horizon, a sweeping majestic statement of love.
In both cases, he's jerked back to reality with a dull jolt: "And the Wichita lineman / Is still on the line." He jumps an octave to that last dissonant note on "line," underlaid with a throbbing riff like a Morse code signal. He's still out there, for all we know, still searching in the sun for that overload. Iconic.
Wichita Lineman clip
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