The Song In My Head Today

2009-11-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

"Have A Cuppa Tea" / The Kinks

Of all the great songs on Muswell Hillbillies -- my personal favorite of all the Kinks' albums -- why pick "Have A Cuppa Tea"? Well, for one thing, I've already written about Complicated Life and Oklahoma USA, and tackled all the big "themes" of this very funny, and deeply serious, album. But also, I can't help loving this song. I've loved it since the day I first brought home this album in 1973. (I know, I know, it was released in 1971, but I was a bit late to the party.)

It may be gussied up with bluegrass and gospel and country-music twang, but Muswell Hillbillies is still really about North London. On Village Green Preservation Society, Ray mourned the passing of quaintly English things like church steeples and china cups and steam trains; on Muswell Hillbillies, he eulogizes something even dearer to his heart, the working-class urban districts that English Heritage preservationists paid no attention to. This was Ray Davies' village green; this is where he belongs. He can't stop the people in grey from knocking it down, but he can preserve its essence in song before it's wiped away forever. And for a kid like me -- raised in Indiana, but madly in love with London, right down the last sooty brick and grimy chimneypot -- Ray Davies' song were like a magic portal into what I saw as the "real" London.

"Have A Cuppa Tea" begins like a 1930s cakewalk, just acoustic guitar and piano, but if you're expecting some twee tea party -- the sort Paul McCartney might serve up -- think again. Starting in his lowest voice, Ray bounces up the scale like he's bounding up stairs, as Granny bursts onto the scene : "Granny's always ravin' and rantin', / And she's always puffin' and pantin', / And she's always screaming and shouting, / And she's always brewing up tea." Hardly your typical genteel little old lady, eh? I can just see this woman racketing around her narrow two-up-two-down row house, pinafore flapping, hair under a kerchief, sleeves rolled up above her red rough hands. (No dishwashers for her.) And then her husband bellies up to the table: "Grandpappy's never late for his dinner, / Cos he loves his leg of beef" -- reminds me of the bloke in "Autumn Alamanc," and how he loves his "roast beef on Sunday, all right!" But just so we don't idealize Grandpappy either, Ray tells us, "He washes it down with a brandy, / And a fresh made pot of tea."

The chorus switches into a dainty minuet -- ironic, of course -- as Granny invites us in: "Have a cuppa tee-ee-ee-ee-ea, have a cuppa tea." But there'll be no little fingers crooked here; the second half of the chorus is a thigh-slappin' gospel hoedown: "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, Rosie Lea!" That Cockney touch at the end -- "Rosie Lea" being rhyming slang for "tea" -- perfectly seals the deal.

In verse two, Ray recites all the ills Granny claims a cuppa will cure, getting more and more ludicrous -- "It's a cure for hepatitis, it's a cure for chronic insomnia, / It's a cure for tonsillitis and for water on the knee." Another hearty round of the chorus, and then -- this never fails to crack me up -- for the bridge Ray spins into a parody of the old McGuire Sisters/Johnny Cash hit "Sugartime": "Tea in the morning, tea in the evening, tea at supper time, / You get tea when it's raining, tea when it's snowing, / Tea when the weather's fine." I can just imagine that song playing on the radio in the front room when Ray was a kid.

Remember how in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the family was always urging people to "put a little Windex on it"? Tea is the same deal for Ray's Granny, and you've got to love her for it. "You get tea as a mid-day stimulant / You get tea with your afternoon tea" -- sure, Ray sees how crazy this is. But he loves her for it, and we do too.

With a lot of writers, the last verse often slacks off, just trying to fill out the scheme. Not so with Ray. In fact, I think it's the third verse that turns this song from a novelty piece into a real statement: "Whatever the situation, whatever the race or creed, / Tea knows no segregation, no class nor pedigree / It knows no motivations, no sect or organisation, / It knows no one religion, nor political belief." For the Granny Davieses of this world, tea is a way to show love, and she let no one escape her crushing embrace. This is what happens when you grow up in a big family crowded into a tiny house, on a street full of other tiny houses; everybody is in and out of each other's lives, not isolated in carpeted bedrooms and set off by velvety lawns. That's what you lose when you knock down rowhouses and put up big modern anonymous towers.

Working on Muswell Hillbillies, as Ray Davies looked back on his North London childhood, I sense he fully realized at last how much he loved his family. (Yes, and brother Dave too.) As for the people in grey -- well, he's not done with them yet. To be continued...

2009-11-10T11:22:00.001-08:00

"The Way Love Used To Be" / The Kinks

Well, I had to buy Percy to be a Kinks kompletist -- but I can't say I listen to it much. As a film soundtrack (and by all accounts the film is truly dreadful), it caters to the story rather than telling its own tale. All the Kinks play on it, but it doesn't much sound like a Kinks album.

NEVERTHELESS!

"The Way Love Used to Be" may not sound like a Kinks song, but it's still simply gorgeous. It isn't just the orchestral arrangement that's unusual (the Kinks never got hooked on string quartets like some bands did); its tender quality is something Ray Davies rarely employed on Kinks records. It's the sort of stuff he could handily turn out for TV themes, however, as he did for several BBC productions, like "Until Death Us Do Part" (the British series that America's All In the Family was copied from). A handful of these and other stray tracks are cobbled together on the rogue album The Great Lost Kinks Album, issued in the US by Reprise Records after the Kinks had moved to RCA. (Every time the Kinks changed labels, the old label would crank out a couple of tacky compilations to recoup their lost investment.) And what do you know, "The Way Love Used to Be" also appears on TGLKA, where it fits in just fine.

Listen carefully and you'll discover that "The Way Love Used To Be" has all the hallmarks of a Ray Davies song -- the secret handshake, if you will. There's the yearning to escape ("I know a place not far from here / It's not far away, love, but if you come / I know a place where we'll be alone"), the nostalgia for times past ("And we'll talk of life, the way love used to be"), the horror of modern civilization ("And we'll find a way through the city streets / We'll find a way through the mad rushing crowd"). Although Ray sings it with a tremulous flutter, for once it doesn't sound campy to me -- no, it's wistful and yearning, not hiding behind a scrim of irony.

Yes, the arrangement is old-fashioned, like something from the 1940s or early 1950s, with a pillow of strings and delicate classical accents. It's movie music, pure and simple -- something that wouldn't be out of place in a film like Brief Encounter or Mrs. Miniver. But I get the idea that Ray loves old movies, that he's totally into recreating this romantic, gently melancholy sound.

So what was a song like this doing in a movie about the comic adventures of a man with a penis transplant? I swear, it would almost be worth watching Percy to find out.

Almost.

2009-11-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

"Get Back In Line" / The Kinks

Oh, I'm NOT going to write about "Lola." I am grateful to that song for resurrecting the Kinks' US popularity in 1971; and yeah, I'll sing along lustily when Ray performs it in concert. But it's been overplayed and I'm tired of it. I hate the fact it's one of the few Kinks songs that most people know.

And there are so many better songs on Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround Part One. (Crazy title, hunh?) One of the first Kinks albums I ever owned, its songs are deeply imprinted in my brain. I've already written about two of them, Strangers and Apeman. But for today's designated album, I had to write about "Get Back In Line."

A lot of Lola v Powerman's satire about the music business went right over my head as a kid -- I'd never been to "Denmark Street," had never read NME or Melody Maker or watched "Top of the Pops" on TV; I had no idea who those guys were in "The Moneygoround" (Robert? Larry? Grenville?). Not that that stopped me from loving those snappy comic gems. Nestled amidst them, however, "Get Back In Line" always stole my heart. I'd seen all those gritty black-and-white 1960s British working-class movies, like "This Sporting Life" and "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning"; just like their working-class protagonists, Ray's aspiring musician goes glumly back to his day job -- or rather, back to the labour exchange hoping to get a day job. With its plodding melody, bucketing drums, and Salvation-Army-style organ, it's like a snapshot of workers hunched in shabby overcoats, shuffling along a sooty brick wall.

Ray Davies has never done a day's menial labor himself, but it was all around him growing up, especially in the austerity of 1950s Britain. Unemployment was on his mind five years earlier, when he wrote the jaunty but dark "Dead End Street"; on this song his empathy with the working man has become gentler, more tender. "Facing the world ain't easy / When there isn't anything going," he remarks wistfully in verse one; "Standing at the corner waiting / Watching time go by." Hopelessness, male pride, and mind-numbing boredom well up in his heart, as he wonders dully: "Will I go to work today or / Shall I bide my time?" The most touching line comes later, in verse two, when he says to his wife/sweetheart: "I don't ever want you to see me / Standing in that line." Poor emasculated guy! (Trust Ray to focus on wounded pride rather than the rumbling belly...)

With a momentous drum fill, our hero looks up and sees the ruler of his miserable little universe: The Union Man. "He's the man who decides if I live or I die, / If I starve or I eat," he declares, the line swelling with apprehension as it hangs on one anxious note. And then we get a cinematic little shot: "He walks up to me and the sun begins to shine" (cue up spangly guitars), only to dissolve into a series of sledgehammer beats as "he walks right past and I know that I've got to get / Back in the line." I love how the back-up harmonies chime in on alternate lines here; our hero's not the only person holding his breath as The Union Man struts past.

I love the slow wheezy twang of "Get Back In Line"; it's a taste of what we'd be getting on the Kinks' next album, Muswell Hillbillies. In a way, this song is the flip side of Muswell's "Uncle Son," another song about union politics; you could also match it up with Think Visual's "Working At the Factory," where Ray moans about the assembly-line drudgery of recording. (May I repeat: Ray Davies has never done a day's menial labor.) But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's just savor the sweet melancholy of "Get Back In Line." Funny how Lola v Powerman set out to be the Kinks' most satiric album -- and yet it contains some of the most wistful, affectionate songs Ray Davies ever wrote. Go figure.

2009-11-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

"Victoria" / The Kinks

Talk about starting off with a bang. After the introspection and retrospection of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, the opening riffs of "Victoria" signaled to the world that the Kinks were ready to rock out again on Arthur, Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire. So what if Pete Townshend had beaten them to the wire, officially making The Who's Tommy the first "rock opera"? So what if the film of Arthur never made it into production? Arthur would nevertheless be the beginning of the Kinks' renaissance -- and its lead-off single, "Victoria," would blaze the way.

"Victoria," in fact, was the first Kinks single to chart higher in the US than in the UK (it hit #62 in the US, and never even charted in the UK). With the mysterious concert ban lifted, the Kinks could once again tour in the US, and "Victoria" was their re-entry key. It's pretty hard to resist the whooping energy of this track; I can't dial up this song without wanting to dance, pound my fist, and sing along. This was the first track that won my teenage son Hugh over to the Kinks, with its pulsing energy and upbeat joy. It almost doesn't matter what it's about . . . but oh, what am I saying? With Ray Davies' lyrics, it always matters what it's about.

"Victoria" has a very specific dramatic purpose. Though Ray originally conceived of Arthur as the story of his sister Rosie (as in"Rosy Won't You Please Come Home") and her husband Arthur emigrating to Australia, by the time he was finished Arthur had grown into a sweeping fable about Britain's declining luster. At the story's outset, therefore, Ray had to present the magnificence of Great Britain at its imperial height, and ever so subtly foreshadow its fall.

But plot be damned, it also had to kick off the show with a jolt of energy -- and "Victoria" does so brilliantly. Have I ever mentioned what a kick-ass guitarist Dave Davies is? The guitar motif of "Victoria" is a thing of glory indeed. It's like a trumpet flourish ringing out, yet with a hint of surf guitar twang; driven by the fierce locomotive of Mick Avory's drum beat, it charges out of the gate hellbent for whatever. Eventually Ray Davies comes in to sing, but he can barely keep up with the breakneck pace.

I used to puzzle over the half-strangled, fluttery quality of Ray's voice here, until I realized {smack to head} he's playing a character. That is crucial to remember. At first Ray -- or rather his character, Arthur -- seems to be extolling the good old days of Victorian England: "Long ago life was clean." But then he adds, "Sex was bad and obscene / And the rich were so mean." Ray can't be in favor of that, no way! But wait . . . the next couple of lines sound eerily familiar: "Stately homes for the Lords / Croquet lawns, village greens / Victoria was my queen." Isn't that Village Green Preservation territory?

And in verse two, Arthur's totally sympathetic: "I was born, lucky me / In a land that I love / Though I am poor, I am free." We have to root for that, and admire his patriotism as he adds, "When I grow I shall fight / For this land I shall die / Let her sun never set." Pride and national sentiment leak into Ray's voice as he sings lines like "Land of hope and gloria" and recites the vast holdings of the Empire. "From the rich to the poor / Victoria loved them all" -- well, if that were true, it would be a noble thing indeed.

So where does Ray really stand on all this? The obvious answer is that you have to follow the rest of the story, where the cracks in Britain's facade are revealed one by one. But irony would be fatal to this opening track -- and so Ray balances on the fence between satire and sincerity. At this point in the story, you should be on Arthur's side; plenty of time later to see his flaws.

And in the end, you must join in with Arthur on the chorus. Those repeated "Vic-TORR- ee-ahs" simply cry out for a singalong -- a LOUD singalong. I myself have ripped out my throat many nights joining in with Ray on this song. That is what it was written for. And with Ray on stage, kicking out all the jams, cajoling, seducing you -- well, how can you resist?

2009-11-06T07:46:00.001-08:00

"Picture Book" / The Kinks

As a card-carrying Kinkaholic, I am honor-bound to say that today's album -- officially titled The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, fondly known as VGPS (Kinks Kultists have to be handy with acronyms) -- is one of the greatest record albums ever made. This isn't just group-think, though; I really and truly believe it. So naturally I've already written about several songs on this landmark album, like "Starstruck" and "Phenomenal Cat" and the title track, "The Village Green Preservation Society". I've even broken with my song-a-day format to write about the entire VGPS album. But have I said all there is to say about the Village Green? Hey, I've barely scratched the surface.

For a number of reasons (the White Album, the Kinks' US ban, adolescence), I knew nothing of this album for years. The Kinks' great single of this period, "Days," wasn't even included on the album (and in the US we barely heard it anyway). So my introduction to VGPS was, oddly enough, a clever HP printer commercial a couple of years ago, which showed satisfied HP customers melting in and out of their own home-printed photos -- all to the tune of "Picture Book." The first time I saw this on TV I sat up, immediately riveted. I didn't recognize the song but by god I knew that was the Kinks -- and I had to track it down. It was all part of that curious tangle of fate, destiny, and serendipity that led me back into the Kinks fold, after years in exile. (A story for another day.)

With so many incredible songs on this album, "Picture Book" might not otherwise have ranked among my favorites, but I'm so grateful it triggered my Kinks renaissance, I still feel a rush of happiness when it comes on. It's actually half of a "picture" pair on the album, the other being the LP's last track, "People Take Pictures Of Each Other." As the album's send-off, PTPOEO finally shrugs off the nostalgia that runs throughout the album, declaring "People take pictures of each other / Just to prove that they really existed." But "Picture Book" falls earlier in the album, on track 3, and it shows Ray still fondly flipping over the pages of his memory book.

"Picture yourself when you're getting on," he sets the scene, "Sat by the fireside a-pondering on." This song is like Ray's version of the Beatles' "When I'm 64," except he isn't just projecting into the future -- he's looking back over his life from the future. And to further complicate the time scheme, that picture album's parade of images depicts not only his past but his family's past before he was born: "Pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago." There's a weird fascination to pictures like that, isn't there? how you stare at the image of those carefree youngsters, rearranging their features to find your parents in them.

I'm betting that Ray Davies had in mind a specific photograph for every picture he describes in verse two: "A picture of you in your birthday suit, / You sat in the sun on a hot afternoon . . . Your mama and your papa / And fat old Uncle Charlie out boozing with their friends. . . . A holiday in August, outside a bed and breakfast / In sunny Southend" (or South Bend, as one Kinks friend used to mishear it.) What I wouldn't give to get a look at the Davies family scrapbook, to see Fred and Annie Davies and Uncle Son boozing it up at the Clissold Arms. And as Ray looks at those images, the people flare briefly into life, just as they were.

So how does Ray feel about this? Well, come on, this is Ray Davies -- naturally he feels ambivalent. He's skeptical of the picture-snapping impulse in verse one ("Picture book, of people with each other, / To prove they loved each other / A long ago"). But as he leafs through the holiday snaps, they work their spell on him; by the end of verse two, he's sucked into the emotion ("When you were just a baby, / Those days when you were happy, / A long time ago" -- implying, of course, that happiness is a thing of the past).

The whole song is propelled by that steamroller bass/guitar line, charging up and down the scale, punctuated by fat splashes of cymbals from Mick Avory. While that marks the time, Ray's melody hopscotches all over the place, before and behind the beat; the two lines dive and cross each other over and over, in spectacular rock counterpoint, like they're weaving a tapestry of time and memory. Ray's voice sounds light-hearted, youthful, even a little campy -- no, a lot campy, goofing through the repeated chorus of "na-na-na na na na's" and tossing in a little Sinatra-esque "scooby doo be doo." In the background, Dave's falsetto echoes of "pic-ture book" are jolly and jaunty; the whole song is sung with reckless gaiety. It's simply irresistible.

Fifteen years later, on the album State of Confusion, Ray would write another song about photos and souvenirs that trace the course of a life. It's called "Property," and it's one of his most heart-breaking songs ever. "You take the photographs, the ones of you and me, / When we both posed and laughed to please the family" -- now he's at the other end of life, not sitting by his fireside but standing in the doorway with a suitcase. Yet don't let the jauntiness of "Picture Book" fool you -- the sorrow and regret of "Property" are already there, in utero. Now consider that Ray Davies was only 23 years old when he wrote this song. Humbling, ain't it?

2009-11-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

"Waterloo Sunset" / The Kinks

One of the loveliest benefits of this album-a-day Kinksathon is the chance to savor the album back tracks, not just the obvious "big" songs. However, today's album is Something Else By the Kinks (released 1967), and the last song on that album is so monumental, I have no choice but to write about it. "Waterloo Sunset" may be one of the Kinks best-known songs, but no matter how many times I listen to it, it always devastates me.

Although Ray Davies claims this song was written as an elegy to the end of a musical era -- at one time, he says, he considered calling it "Liverpool Sunset" -- by the time he got done it was something else entirely. Even as he was writing it, he suspected it might be his masterpiece (although for a long time he kept the lyrics a secret from the other Kinks, fearing they would think he was daft). After the Kinks' producer, Shel Talmy, had finished mixing the song, Ray stole back into the studio with the other Kinks and recorded it all over again, until it was just the way he wanted it. I love those majestic marching bass thrums of the opening, the twangy counterpointing guitar riff, the ethereal oohs in the background (Ray's wife Rasa singing an octave above Dave), the "sha-la-la's" in the bridge and the overlapping repeats of "Waterloo Sunset's fine." It's a damn near perfect recording.

Even the melody sounds like a sunset, with sets of gently descending D-A-G chords, each short phrase making an arc until the final phrase dips below the horizon. Each verse begins with a widescreen panorama -- the "dirty old river" flowing under the bridge, the lovers Terry and Julie meeting by the platform, crowds swarming "like flies" into the tube entrance. Then, in verses one and two, after the panorama Ray telescopes his view, bringing himself into the picture -- saying the busy crowds make him feel dizzy, and he's too lazy to leave home and meet friends. It's not just about London, it's really about his aching heart. The end of verse one shifts into minor chords as Ray plaintively muses, "But I don't need no friends" and protests "But I don't feel afraid." And yet, in his isolation, he still is nourished by the world outside his window, as he return to the D-A-G chords for that grand final line: "As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset / I am in paradise."

The tension between the lonely observer and the teeming metropolis is the bittersweet heart of this song. He never gets out of that room, as he admits in the bridge (all those wistful 7th chords): "Every day I look at the world from my window," a memory drawn from Ray's childhood, when he was confined by a long illness in St. Thomas hospital near Waterloo. His perspective is tinged with a fear of death -- "Chilly, chilly is the evening time" -- but at the moment, nature uplifts him, and "Waterloo sunset's fine." Not since John Keats wrote his ode "To Autumn" has anyone quite so poignantly etched the intersection between life and death.

It's almost as if writing the song itself conquers death. By verse three, notice, he has shifted the story completely away from himself and over to Terry and Julie -- they're the ones who "don't need no friends" now. And unlike loner Ray, they don't need friends because they have each other. They're in love, and we get our happy ending. Or do we? The shadows haven't entirely been chased away -- as Terry and Julie "cross over the river," I recall old myths in which crossing a river means death (which gives the line "they are in paradise" an extra twist). Love and loss are intertwined, tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same mask.

"Waterloo Sunset" is like a great landscape painting, worthy of Turner or Monet; it's also a cinematic piece, with its wide-angle shots, dissolves, close-ups, and long tracking shot. It's a lyric poem, and it's also an epic novel. To do all this with one pop song, in the space of three minutes and seventeen seconds -- and to do it with a simple four-piece band (no added strings or horn sections, thank you) -- well, it's a wondrous achievement. If Ray Davies had done nothing else in his life, he'd be worthy of undying respect.

And of course, he has done more -- so much more....

2009-11-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

"Too Much On My Mind" / The Kinks

The Kinks' first three albums were pumped out one after another, in a little over a year; it took them nearly another year to produce their fourth, Face to Face, released in late 1966. In the meantime, lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies had suffered a nervous breakdown (the Kinks had to tour Belgium and France with a stand-in); even after he returned, sporting a tentative new moustache, many concerts were cancelled and endless obsessive hours were spent in the studio. The bassist, Pete Quaife, quit; a new manager, the infamous Allen Klein, was hired. It was a rough time.

But painful as it was, that transition was necessary, for the Kinks were refusing to stay in a box. Dave wasn't going keep on playing the same stale blues riffs, and Ray was done with writing generic love songs. And amid all the smart, snappy satires and character studies of Face to Face, Ray Davies gave us one introspective song to explain what was going on inside that messed-up head of his.

Introspective? That's an understatement. "Too Much On My Head" is practically a textbook definition of introspection. "There's too much on my mind," Ray sings wistfully, over the simple acoustic guitar of the first verse; "there's too much on my mind," he repeats, "and I can't sleep at night thinking about it." (Ray Davies has wrung more fine songs out of insomnia than any other living songwriter.) Notice that last phrase -- if this were a love song, he'd have sung, "thinking about you." I have to admit, conditioned by pop love songs as I am, I still half hear "you" at the end of that line. But Ray is not singing about a girl, he's singing about his favorite subject -- himself.

Now a tentative harpsicord tiptoes in (thank you, Nicky Hopkins!) as Ray expands his complaint to the daytime hours. "I'm thinking all the time, / There's too much on my mind." How exhausting it is to be a neurotic! (Yes, Ray does indulge in self-pity here -- but he makes it seem so charming, doesn't he?) And next comes my favorite line in the song: "It seems there's more to life than just to live it." In that one line -- he sweeps away carefree youth and trudges into adulthood, still feeling stung that life has tricked him.

Drums and back-up harmonies join in on the chorus, lending muscle to the wispy ballad as he kicks back in protest: "There's too much on my mind, / And there is nothing I can say / There's too much on my mind, / And there is nothing I can do / About it, / About it." I love how those last two words slide briefly down to a dissonant chord, groaning miserably before resolving.

Ray Davies didn't need pop psychobabble to explain the mind-body connection -- in the second verse he tells us in concrete detail how his mental state has affected his physical state: "My thoughts just weigh me down, / And drag me to the ground, / And shake my head till there's no more life in me." (Dig how he adds the extra words, "life in me," as if giving himself an extra shake.) Woefully, he projects into the future: "It's ruining my brain, / I'll never be the same, / My poor demented mind is slowly going." The telegraph monotone of that last line is especially miserable. Sunk in the blackness of melancholy, he sees no way out.

But the tempo remains just upbeat enough; the bright harpsicord, the brisk high-hats, and the rising guitar riffs buoy the song -- as if the music itself rescues him from the depths of despair.

Perhaps that is exactly what happened to Ray Davies in 1966 -- being able to write the kind of songs he wanted to did pull him through. And on bleak days, when this song creeps into my mind -- as it always does when I'm blue -- this lovely little wistful melody saves me as well. Works like a charm.

2009-11-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

"Where Have All the Good Times Gone" / The Kinks

On The Kink Kontroversy (1965), the Kinks were still teetering between the power chord singles that had made them famous ("Till the End of the Day") and Ray Davies' growing gift for satire ("Dedicated Follower of Fashion"). How to combine the two? The answer lay on the B side of the "Till the End of the Day" single: "Where Have All the Good Times Gone." Ray Davies still hauls this one out frequently in concert; he hardly ever sings "Till the End of the Day" any more.

"Where Have All the Good Times" still offers up the rough, raw energy of brother Dave's guitar work, but Ray isn't trying to pretend anymore that lust is the only thing on his mind. Looking for a template for satire, he borrows a page from Bob Dylan (he could segue any minute into "Like A Rolling Stone") and begins to twang out a sort of talking blues: "Well, lived my life and never stopped to worry 'bout a thing / Opened up and shouted out and never tried to sing." But while Dylan is skewering some old girlfriend, Ray is skewering himself -- or at any rate, some fictional version of himself, your prototypical 60s British rocker. Now, he laments, the musical trend is running on empty and his creative energies are failing: "Wondering if I'd done wrong / Will this depression last for long?" (Trust Ray to get depressed about the fact that he's depressed.)

The gutsy wail of the chorus is totally heartfelt: "Won't you tell me / Where have all the good times gone? / Where have all the good times gone?" I love how matey and boozy the Kinks sound on the chorus, with its lurching rhythm, the chromatic melody sliding back and forth between F and G. Discordant and sloppy, with those trademark crunchy riffs, it's like an old-fashioned pub singalong, definitely near to last call and closing time. But the last call Ray envisions is the end of the Beat revolution (originally he was inspired to chronicle the death of the Merseybeat scene, but as a Londoner, he couldn't really comment fairly on that). Those early 60s days must have been heady indeed -- I can only imagine how exciting it must have been to be caught up in that madness. But it is only 1965, and while other bands are trying to reproduce their early hits, Ray Davies has already checked out.

Long before "American Pie," Ray Davies was cleverly name-checking other artists' work in his verses -- the Rolling Stones ("Time was on our side and I had everything to gain"), the Beatles ("Yesterday was such an easy game for you to play"). Any of you see other references there that I've missed? Verse three may be more autobiographical -- "Ma and Pa look back at all the things they used to do / Didn't have no money and they always told the truth / Daddy didn't have no toys / And mummy didn't need no boys" -- but he's also making fun of people who live in a fantasy past (nostalgia ain't what it used to be), including his peers who cling stubbornly to their old sound.

Ray Davies has always had a complex reaction to nostalgia. On one hand, he longs to live in the past, when life was less complicated; on the other, he's suspicious that the past can be a prison. (The whole Village Green Preservation Society album is Ray's conflicted dance with nostalgia.) "Where Have All the Good Times Gone" sits right on that fence; it's an obituary for the British Invasion and a declaration of independence, but it's also tinged with regret. The good times were good, and he owes that musical revolution everything. But now it's time to move on.

2009-11-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

"Nothin' In the World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl" / The Kinks

Back in the early 60s, when Kinda Kinks was released, singles and albums were more or less separate. The Kinks had a string of hit singles in 1965 -- "Tired of Waiting For You," "Set Me Free," "Who'll Be the Next in Line" -- but only "Tired of Waiting" was on this LP. And back then, I was 11 years old, with only enough babysitting money to buy 45s. Naturally I spent my nickels and dimes on "She's Not There," "I Don't Want to See You Again," and "Yesterday," not the Kinks' hard-rocking, sexually charged singles. I had my priorities.

If I had bought Kinda Kinks, though, I bet I would soon have been cutting photos of Ray and Dave Davies out of 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat, to tape to my mirror alongside Paul McCartney and Peter Asher. This album is packed with the yearning, sensitive side of Ray Davies. Just listen to the song titles: "Look For Me Baby," "Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight," "Don't Ever Change," "So Long," "You Shouldn't Be Sad." (Meanwhile oversexed brother Dave is tearing his way through "Got My Feet On the Ground" and "Come On Now"...). They were just the kind of dreamy stuff I would have loved at age 11.

I've already written about my favorite song on this album, "Something Better Beginning" -- a neglected masterpiece, IMO. But a close runner-up has to be "Nothin' In The World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl." I have to giggle at that crazy long title (you'd think it was a comic novelty song) and all those apostrophied contractions. But behind that oddball title is a brilliant little song. Ray probably tossed it off in half an hour, but that doesn't mean it isn't great.

While most songs on this album start off with a bang, "NITWCSMWBTG" (gotta go for the acronym) begins gently, in a melancholy minor key, with Ray singing softly over an acoustic guitar. Eventually we get a little percussion and electric guitar, stepping up the bluesy factor, but it remains marvelously stripped-down and intimate -- you can just imagine the singer lying in his bed brooding late at night. Despite that word-drunk title, the lyrics are fairly basic, in true blues style. "Met a girl, fell in love, glad as I can be" -- the old story. But Ray Davies in love is never a happy man; he's not worrying about that girl because he wants to protect and care for her. No, he's jealous, suspicious, possessive, and obsessive. (Remember, this is the man who wrote "All Day and All Of the Night"). "But I think all the time, is she true to me?" -- does this man have trust issues or what?

Not that he doesn't have reason. As the song picks up steam, he reveals that she has been two-timing him (he may be paranoid, but people ARE out to get him). "Now she tries to tell the truth, and I just can't believe" -- he's wracked with doubt. He can't quit her, as he explains in verse three, "Tried to put her out of my mind, she'll only cause me grief / I love that girl, whatever she's done." But his wounded ego is caught up in it too, as he admits in verse four: "I ache inside every time I think, I know it's just my pride." The lyrics may sound simple, but their psychological acuity is dead-on.

I love how the melodic line mirrors the singer's anguished to-and-fro. Line one of each verse morosely works its way down the scale, hitting the gravelly bottom of Ray's register. Line two goes the opposite direction, fluttering upward in his high voice, as if reaching for hope. Line three shifts into major key, but hangs anxiously on two chromatic notes; line four resolves it all, cresting over the top and coming home to roost on "worryin' 'bout that girl." For worrying IS his home state, where he's bound to end up.

Ah, the torture of being Ray Davies. It just makes a girl want to hold his hand, mop his fevered brow, smooth his ruffled hair...well, like I said, I'd have been cutting out those photos from the teen magazines. That sensitive soul -- he needs a better girlfriend. Any volunteers?

2009-11-01T11:37:00.001-08:00

"Stop Your Sobbing" / The Kinks

NOVEMBER IS KINKS MONTH!

On the Ray Davies Official website fan forum, a posse of us Kinks fans are listening to one Kinks album per day, in chronological order, throughout November. So for this next month, I'll take you on a chronological Kinks tour, writing about one song from each day's designated Kinks album.

When The Kinks was first released in the UK in October 1964, "You Really Got Me" had just rocketed to number one on the UK charts (here in the US, it would peak at #7). Rushed out to capitalize on that success, The Kinks is a snapshot of a very young band (Dave Davies was only 17, his older brother Ray 20) scrambling for attention amidst a UK music scene that had just erupted through the roof. Who would the Kinks sound like? The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? The Animals? The Yardbirds? On this album, they try on all those sounds, with varying success. The real answer would be to sound like the Kinks, which is what happened with "You Really Got Me" and its follow-up hit, "All Day And All Of The Night."

Still, I've always been more drawn to the quirky side of Ray Davies's songwriting. As an adolescent in 1965, all I knew of the Kinks was what the radio played, those two power-chord singles -- and they frightened me. If I'd bought this album, however (retitled You Really Got Me for its US release), I might have become a Kinks fan much sooner. "Stop Your Sobbing" may have seemed like album filler (track #6 at the end of the B side), but it's one of their most delicious early songs, a hint of the glories to come.

With its sashaying syncopation and tight back-up harmonies, "Stop Your Sobbin'" taps into the British Beat scene's passion for American girl group numbers (look at how many girl-group covers the Searchers and Manfred Mann did). But most of those girl groups sang about devotion and heartbreak; in "Stop Your Sobbing" Ray Davies explores much more complicated emotional terrain. He begins, oh so earnestly, "It is time for you to stop / All of your sobbing," and I imagine at first that he's being tender and loving, drying away his girlfriend's tears. No need to weep, my darling, I am here -- that sort of thing. But as he continues, another emotion entirely creeps in. "There's one thing you've got to do / To make me still want you -- / Gotta stop sobbin' now." That not-so-thinly-veiled threat, the note of irritation in his voice -- he's not going to put up with her female hysteria, not for one minute. No girl group would ever have sung a song like this.

In verse two, he lamely tries to lift her spirits -- "It is time for you to laugh instead of crying" -- and he attempts to comfort her in the bridge: "Each little tear that falls from your eye / Makes, makes-a me want / To take you in my arms and tell you to stop all your sobbing." But we know what he's really thinking. I will break up with you if you go on like this. It's perfect for Ray's particular singing style -- he's not sweetly sincere like Paul McCartney or husky with desire like Eric Burdon; that neurotic quaver in his voice, that petulant whine, tell you he'd be prickly and difficult to love. (Which, let's admit it, is a huge part of his charm. Am I right, girls?)

Notice how the syncopation hesitates and dodges around the beat at first ("I would like for you to stop") but comes in with sledgehammer beats when he finally reaches the point ("all of your sobbin'"). That low note he hits on "sob" is like a gut punch. And now, having broached the subject, he coolly, almost heartlessly repeats it, tossing off "all of your sobbin'" in a careless vocal flutter. Notice in the chorus how he hurriedly stuffs in the extra syllables, "Gotta stop your sobbin' now," as if mortified by her emotion.

Why does he say "all of your" sobbing? Immediately we sense her tears as excess, as overkill. In his "unauthorized autobiography" X-Ray Ray Davies relates the incident that sparked this song, how he watched a girlfriend crying hysterically and just stood back, always the detached observer, feeling vaguely guilty and confused.

So whom are we sorry for here? The guy, saddled with a hysterical female? Or the girl, dissolving in tears while her wary boyfriend passively looks on? To me it's a classic statement of love's frustrations -- of two mismatched people trying to sustain a doomed relationship. Over the years, this simple little album track ended up inspiring more than its share of cover versions -- mostly notably by the Pretenders in 1979 (a single produced by Nick Lowe, I must note). When Chrissie Hynde sang it, however, it was just baffling -- a woman watching her boyfriend cry is a totally different scenario. Oh, don't get me started on Chrissie and Ray....

2009-10-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

EIGHTIES CHEESE WEEK

"Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" / Wham!

Here's the trouble -- after a week immersed in 80s cheese, it doesn't sound so cheesey to me any more. I'm thinking -- is it fair to make fun of Yes just because, in the last stutter of their prog-rock decline, they released an overproduced dance-rock hit like "Owner of a Lonely Heart"? Did Christopher Cross ever pretend to be anything more than the mellow soft-rock crooner of "Sailing"? Am I going to mock the glossy synth-pop of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away," just because I associate it too closely with Tom Cruise in Top Gun? Can I deny that I still enjoy the perky pleasure of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fu-un"?

And then it hit me -- Wham! There is no song that better sums up the slick plastic club beat of the 1980s than "Wake Me Up Before You Go." No, wait, excuse me, it's "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" -- that second syllable is essential to this deliriously frivolous track. Of course it's "go go" so that they can rhyme it in the chorus with "yo-yo" ("don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo") and "solo" ("'Cause I'm not planning on going solo"). Clever, hunh?

Remember in the movie Zoolander, where Derek Zoolander and his male model buddies go out for a double orange mocha frappuchino to lift their spirits? It's this infectious track on the car radio that inspires the guys to goof around the gas station, playfully spraying each other with gasoline. For just one moment -- before a tossed match incinerates them -- we can bask in their carefree frolic. The minute you hear that song, it signals that the characters are shallow mindless hedonists addicted to glitz.

This single hit the clubs in 1984, almost a parody of itself from the very beginning. Wham! didn't last long -- they broke up in 1985 -- just long enough to spawn the career of George Michael, who was one half of the duo (his partner was Andrew Ridgeley). I couldn't tell you a single other song by George Michael; as far as I'm concerned, he only exists to provide Craig Ferguson with punchlines for his late-night talk show monologue. But I gather he's made a fortune as a Pop Star of the First Magnitude, at least over in the UK. The plot line of this song is absurdly simple: He complains that his girlfriend's been cheating on him -- not by sleeping with another man, but by going out dancing (hence the "go-go"). Tonight, he cajoles, he wants her to dance with him -- in bed. Hey, you expected profundity?

The joyous spirit of doo-wop dances through this song, with its upward swooping vocals, handclap percussion, and irresistibly syncopated beat. Although there are enough drums and keyboards to bring it squarely into the disco camp, the flat, foregrounded sound reminds me more than anything else of the sound of a 1960s transistor radio tuned to an AM station. The sound isn't retro, exactly, but the spirit is.

And I have to say, there's some nifty word play in some of these verses -- like the opener: "You put the boom boom into my heart, / You send my soul sky high when your lovin' starts. /Jitterbug into my brain, /Goes bang bang bang till my feet do the same." Or the later verse, that proclaims, "You get the gray skies outta my way, / You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day. / Turn a bright spark into a flame, / My beats per minute never been the same."

I'm posting a video because you really have to watch these guys sell this song; that's the whole point. The perfectly coiffed hair, the groovy dance moves, the tight white pants and blinding white teeth -- it was a whole package. Totally 80s.

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go video

2009-10-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

EIGHTIES CHEESE WEEK

"More Than This" / Roxy Music

To a non-fan like me, it was glaringly obvious that Roxy Music was all about the ego of Bryan Ferry. Other talents might pass in and out (Brian Eno during their glam-art-prog phase, Paul Carrack in the disco-soul reincarnation) but it was always Ferry that mattered, he of the broad shoulders, strong jaw, and winsome black forelock. Only a guy who looked like a suave 1930s film version of Heathcliff could make it look sexy to sing with such a high falsetto.

I never listened to Roxy Music before this song exploded in America in 1982-83, so I'll eternally think of Ferry in that leather jacket and bow-tie, gyrating so earnestly on the More Than This video. (Awful dancing, BTW -- even David Byrne managed to dance better than this, once he'd found he had a pelvis.) It immediately struck me as the fakiest piece of crap I'd ever heard. I hate overproduced music, and this was over-the-top lush, full of shimmering synths and splashy drums and pling-y electric guitars. Ferry sings for about the first two minutes and the rest just zones out into mesmerized instrumentals.

Ferry has said this was about a doomed love affair; the video, with its luminous cross hanging behind Ferry, implies that it's about God, or Jesus. For all I know it's about a woman who left him to enter a nunnery, which would definitely be an option for me. Those vague arty lyrics don't help, either. He offers us no particulars, just knee-jerk poetic images like dead leaves and wind and sea tide, interspersed with ruminations about knowing and learning. All very deeply felt, of course, brooding and melancholy. The chorus hints at some deeper meaning: "More than this /There is nothing / More than this / Tell me one thing / More than this / There is nothing." But more than what, Bryan? Please tell us.

Well, what it's really about is the verse's odd melodic intervals, which give Ferry opportunity to jump back and forth between that beguiling high register and his manful lower voice. Every time he switches to the falsetto, it's like he's saying "Look at me, I'm a sensitive guy!" Then he switches low again -- "But I still have testosterone, ladies!" Then he coyly ducks his head, flashes his blindingly white teeth, gives us his best profile, and shakes the raven forelock down in front of his bedroom eyes.

Years later, when I finally discovered Style Council, I realized what Roxy Music was trying to do, bringing soul into the disco era; the difference is that Paul Weller was writing the songs for Style Council, and they had backbone. For all its aural lushness, that pillow of synthesized sound, "More Than This" is just stupid. The only people I know who really liked it also happened to have the hots for Bryan Ferry (a substantial population, I must say). Until Robert Palmer came along with "Addicted to Love" and proved that a handsome guy in a suit could still sing with irony and wit....

More Than This MTV video

2009-10-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

EIGHTIES CHEESE WEEK

"I Melt With You" / Modern English

The mushy soft rock hits that began this decade were really a holdover from the 1970s, like a nasty cold that just wouldn't go away. But as it oozed along, the 1980s became a musical Petri dish in which bad musical ideas bred like viruses, spawning a new race of slick, faux-sincere pop trash. I'm afraid I know this music far better than I ought to, thanks to a 2-CD package called Eighties Wave! put out by Entertainment magazine. My kids were hooked on this for several months when they were toddlers -- and why not? Culture Club, Tears for Fears, the Thompson Twins, Wang Chung, A Flock of Seagulls, Haircut One Hundred, the Vapors -- all produced glossy, gimmicky tunes with cartoonlike voices and an unmistakeable beat.

Prime among them was Modern English's one big hit, from their 1982 album After the Snow. Not that I bought the album -- it was never a good bet to buy the album for any of these 80s pop bands, since quality usually fell off drastically after the one hit track. (Although I did buy Culture Club's Kissing To Be Clever and enjoyed it hugely, for reasons I can no longer fathom.) But for a while, when "I Melt With You" was saturating the airwaves (it hit the States in 1983, and oddly enough, again in 1989), I was convinced it was a good song.

Instead of overproduction, "I Melt With You" offered a refreshingly amateur mix of jangly surf guitars, autopilot drumbeats, and crudely reverbed vocals, with all the mumbly glottal diction of punk rockers (Modern English, who hailed from Colchester, England, started out as a punk band named -- get this -- The Lepers). Even when synths get layered into the mix, it's only a splash of color, a sort of knee-jerk contrapuntal riff. And defying the conventions of ponderous anthemic build-up, this song deliberately strips out the instruments a couple of times, so the singers can hollowly intone, as if hypnotized, "The future's / open /wide!" Whatever that meant.

So here's the big question: why isn't this song sexy? It should be, if you look at the lyrics of the chorus: "I'll stop the world and melt with you /You've seen the difference and /It's getting better all the time / There's nothing you and I won't do [okay, that line's a little kinky] / I'll stop the world and melt with you." That one word, that verb "melt," should be so delicious. I did read somewhere that the song is supposedly set at the moment of nuclear apocalypse, with the two lovers clasping each other, their bodies fusing. It's an intriguing idea, but ultimately I don't buy it. That storyline would at least be romantic; there's no romance here.

No, the haggard vocals, that inexorable ticking beat, the hard metallic surface of the instrumentation, make this song anything but soft and melting. Aggression and paranoia run through the first verse: "Moving forward using all my breath / Making love to you was never second best / I saw the world thrashing all around your face / Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace." Even if you knew that Modern English's previous album was titled Mesh and Lace (I didn't), the S&M subtext is hard to miss. And yeah, the second verse pays lip service to noble ideals, throwing out lame catch phrases like "dream of better lives" and "imaginary grace" and "a pilgrimage to save this human race," but it's way too vague to convince anybody.

In this song -- and in so many other New Wave songs -- love isn't an emotion, it's a conditioned reflex. No orgasm, just spasm. I listen to it now and wonder, "What was I thinking?" But of course I wasn't thinking. Hello? It was the Eighties.

2009-10-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

EIGHTIES CHEESE WEEK

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" / Bonnie Tyler

If we have the Bee Gees to blame for Air Supply, then I think Stevie Nicks should have to take credit for the new breed of rock chicks that started yelping all over the airwaves in the 1980s. I didn't mind the New Wave girls, like Debbie Harry of Blondie, Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics, or Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders -- at least they had saucy wit and girl-power toughness. (Hooking up with Ray Davies, though, Chrissie -- I'll never forgive you for that.) No, the ones I really couldn't stand were the Top-40 belters -- Pat Benatar, Laura Branigan, Irene Cara, and Welsh rocker Bonnie Tyler. Long before the term "diva" was co-opted to mean any female singer with a big voice, these babes were tearing out their vocal cords on every speaker within earshot.

Maybe it's no coincidence that at the dawn of the 1980s, just as working girls in power suits were striving to shatter corporate glass ceilings, the women of rock set out to kick the asses of their wimpy soft rock male counterparts. All these babes cultivated the hard edges of their voices -- no soft-focus girly sopranos here. Bonnie Tyler's first hit, "It's a Heartache," paid tribute to Rod Stewart, and her voice, like his, is equal parts grit and sob, perfectly calculated to sing about desperation and desire. In fact (fun facts to know and tell), Tyler's distinctive voice developed after an operation for nodules on her vocal cords; apparently she violated doctor's orders and started singing too song after the operation. At first she thought that huskiness was the end of her singing career. She was wrong.

What really made Tyler's 1983 album Faster Than the Speed of Night a megahit, though, was the no-holds-barred arrangements of her producer, Jim Steinman, the guy who made Meat Loaf a star. The album version of this song clocked in at 6:58 -- nearly seven minutes -- though it was truncated to four-and-a-half minutes to get radio play. Of course I'm giving you the unedited version here, for total schlock effect, as well as the cheesiest dissolve effects available on my moviemaker program. Might as well go whole hog.

Building a song to a bombastic climax was de rigueur in the 1980s. Steinman, however, was crafty enough to know that a song couldn't sustain that level of intensity for seven minutes; the song keeps retreating to wistful interludes where it's just Bonnie and her piano (well, really Roy Bittan's piano), before rolling back in with the Rick Derringer guitar licks, a tsunami of synths, a thunderstorm of percussion (hi there, Max Weinberg!). How to funny to find all these Springsteen sidemen here, since IMO Bruce himself is still addicted to those 1980s overblown endings.

How could this song fail to be a hit? It's got not one but three addictive hooks. The first is the call-and-response duet with Rory Dodd, as she babbles about her emotions ("Every now and then I get a little bit helpless till I'm lying like a child in your arms") while his distant voice nobly exhorts her, "Turn around, bright eyes!" Ah, there are those strong, understanding arms she can collapse into. I read somewhere that Steinman was inspired by the Heathcliff-Cathy romance in Wuthering Heights. Oh, yeah, Emily Bronte was totally thinking of this song when she wrote that book.

Next Bonnie launches into a Meat Loaf-style voice rip, declaiming "And I need you now tonight / And I need you more than ever /And if you only hold me tight / We'll be holding on forever." Yes, "hold me tight" -- wink wink -- that's always been pop-speak for "screw my brains out." Then (the Steinman touch) things suddenly hush up as she ruefully sings, "Once upon I was falling in love / Now I'm only falling apart / There 's nothing I can do / A total eclipse of the heart." Wipe a tear away and start it all over again -- you've got four more minutes to fill up.

The lyrics paint her as a needy, pathetic mess, but those bulldozer vocals send the opposite message. If I were a guy, I'd be terrified of this chick. This song may have single-handedly set feminism back 20 years. And Bonnie Tyler followed it up with the even more desperate "Holding Out For A Hero," featured in the film Footloose, which served as an anthem for an entire generation of love-starved single gals in the Looking for Mr. Goodbar era. Oh, man, am I glad the 80s are over.

2009-10-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

EIGHTIES CHEESE WEEK

"I'm all out of Love" / Air Supply

Frankly, I don't know if I can cover this all in just one week...but I've been beseiged lately by screeching echoes of the 1980s, quite possibly the worst decade in the history of pop music. I'm not just talking disco (hey, I liked the Pointer Sisters and Donna Summer), the goofy excesses of New Wave and power pop, or even heavy metal (which, as you may well guess, I am constitutionally incapable of listening to). No, the stuff that's been haunting me is the truly awful Top-40 radio hits of the era, with MTV serving as an accessory to the crime. . . .

Surely no band in the 1980s did more to lower the quality of mainstream pop than Air Supply. The term "soft rock" had to be invented to explain what this duo -- English singer/guitarist Graham Russell and Australian singer Russell Hitchcock -- were doing to the noble art of the pop song. Well, okay, the Bee Gees had already pointed that bus downhill (remember "How Deep Is Your Love"?) but Air Supply took off the parking brake and stomped on the accelerator.

This hit single came out in 1980, starting the decade with an anguished whimper. It came from their megahit LP Lost in Love, which also gave the world the unforgettable (and oh how I've tried to forget it) "Every Woman in the World." Two years later they would assault the airwaves again with "Even the Nights Are Better," and would top even these abominations in 1985 with the excruciating "Power of Love (You Are My Lady)."

The Air Supply formula was simple: Take two saccharine tenor voices; have them wail in close harmony about passionate love, using only superlatives and ultimatums; load up the tracks with bombastic strings and whaling percussion; and whip it all up in a sea of doubled vocals and reverb. Got a chorus? Repeat it at least four times, building the volume and the frenzy each time.

Unlike most of their big hits, "All Out Of Love" is a break-up song, which just meant that the singers could wail a little more miserably. The story, however, is pretty vague -- at first it just seems like he's away on a trip ("I'm lying alone with my head on the phone [OUCH!] / Thinking of you till it hurts"), but in the chorus, it seems that they've totally split up: "I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you / I know you were right, believing for so long / I'm all out of love, what am I without you / I can't be too late to say that I was so wrong." Hmmm. So she was the one who held it together, he was a schmuck, and now he's trying to get her back.

In the second verse, however, he's pleading with her to come carry him home (from where? why can't he carry his own self home?). So perhaps they're just on a self-imposed "break." (Why does that term always make me think of Ross and Rachel from Friends?). "What would you say if I called on you now," he wheedles, "and said that I can't hold on?" The self pity is almost unbearable. And then there's that odd bridge, where he whimpers over and over, "What are you thinking of?" I just don't get what that has to do with anything.

Well, it wouldn't be the first pop song with a muddled story line. But that seems like an awful cheat, given the overblown emotion of that pompous production. After all, it was the 80s, the era of big hair, wide lapels, shoulder pads, and platform shoes; no wonder pop music also became a grandiose cartoon of itself. The sad thing is, I feel as if this era sucked love dry of all genuine romance, leaving pop music with only two modes: crude sex (hip hop) and neurosis (indie pop). What a shame.

2009-10-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

"You Make Me Feel Good" / The Zombies

Don't have much to say about this song, actually -- though I did spend the afternoon experimenting with this little movie, which seems the most reasonable way to post the entire song on this blog without embedding a downloadable mp3 (sorry, but giving away music I don't own isn't really my thing). Besides, I think it's always fun to have an image to look at too.

"You Make Me Feel Good" was the B-side of the first single I ever owned, the Zombies' "She's Not There" (one of the first songs I ever wrote about on this blog -- click here to read that post) . I am deliriously uncritical about all those tracks from the Zombies' all-too-brief 1960s heyday. They've recently reformed, and are still wonderful, but guys in their early 60s just can't do the yearning adolescent thing the way they could when they were 20.

Generally I prefer the tracks where Colin Blunstone sings lead -- that angelic choirboy voice of his sent shivers up my spine then, and still does today. On this B side, however, I hear Rod Argent singing lead instead. While Rod's voice isn't as angelic, it adds a note of urgency that works just right for this song. Oddly enough, they keep trading the vocals back and forth -- not in simple classic call-and-response, but handing it back and forth, Rod for the verses and Colin for the refrain.

Sure, the song is all about how happy he is with his girlfriend -- as the chorus puts it, "So good, so good, don't have to justify why / I feel so good, so good, so good / Never thought could be so good to me." But the way Argent sings it, it's not all sweetness and light. There is, in fact, a lurking subtext, and it's all about sex. Notice how it starts out in the middle of a conversation: "You don't need any reason, do you baby?" Reason for what? You might well ask. Rod never spells it out, though; he simply hands the vocal over to honey-voiced Colin, who finishes the pleading refrain, "But if you need a reason, / I'll give one to you / [oh, yeah] You make me feel good / [what, oh yeah] You make me feel good!"

I have learned that in pop songs, when they won't call something by name, it's sex they're talking about. I didn't make this connection back in 1964, but now I see it plain as day -- he's buttering up his adorable teenage girlfriend so she'll sleep with him. That accounts for the groan at the edge of Rod's voice, for all the impatient mmms and oh yeahs and harmonized moans that burst out through the song. That accounts for the insistent foregrounded drumbeat, for the winsome organ intro, for those un-hunh electric guitar curls that punctuate the verses. For a guy who claims to be contented, he's practically squirming off the sofa. But he's a nice suburban kid too, not some over-sexed thug; he's trying to win her over with psychology. For a certain sort of girl, that's the only way to get in.

None of those other British Invasion bands did sincere longing the way the Zombies did. The Beatles and the Stones were more menacing, the Kinks and the Who neurotic, Herman's Hermits safe and cuddly. The Zombies struck other notes as well, but this sort of song was their specialty -- and man, did they do it right.

2009-10-22T20:43:00.001-07:00

"Moonshadow" / Cat Stevens

This is the way it works. For days I had "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out" stuck in my head, thanks to that obnoxiously ubiquitous iPhone commercial. (I tell myself it's just a fond flashback of Bud Cort dancing around a cemetery in Harold and Maude, but I know better.) So I surrender to the inevitable and go onto iTunes to download that song. While I'm looking for it, though, I run across this other Cat Stevens song and I'm instantly hooked.

I remember "Moonshadow" very well - it was the standout song from Teaser and the Firecat , Stevens' valiant 1971 follow-up to his phenomenal Tea For The Tillerman. Like every other girl in my class, I owned both in vinyl, but years later when it came down to replacing the LPs with CDs, Tillerman made the cut, not Teaser. "Moonshadow" vanished into the twilight zone of forgotten tracks -- until today.

Now I'm seduced once more by its fey charm. Yesterday I was pondering the childlike quality of late-1960s Donovan; moving on to Cat Stevens is a totally logical transition. Like a nursery rhyme, it begins with its chorus, a frothy bit of fairy-tale imagery: "I'm being followed by a moonshadow, / Moonshadow, moonshadow, / Leaping and hopping on a moonshadow, / Moonshadow, moonshadow." All that repetition is almost like an incantation. Then come the verses, which follow a consistent pattern -- "If I ever lose my hands [eyes /legs /mouth] . . . I won't have to work [cry /walk /talk] no more." It's an old folk song device; the fun lies in predicting how the singer will complete the pattern each time.

None of which adequately explains why this is such a splendid little song. You just can't resist its glorious sense of optimism -- the lighthearted skipping rhythm, the dancing melody, are so joyful, especially sung in Stevens' warm timbre, over that nimble, delicate acoustic guitar. Stevens has said in interviews that it was inspired by a visit to Spain, where one night he stood by the sea under moonshine so strong that he could see his own shadow. I love the idea of that transfiguring nature experience.

Of course, in true Cat Stevens fashion, it's edged with darkness -- all those physical losses in the verses. I've read that when Stevens was young, he nearly died of tuberculosis; melancholy always shadows his songs. This song could so easily misfire, with its relentless verse-by-verse translation of tragedy into triumph. It's just a whisper away from the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who continues to taunt his attacker while his limbs are hacked off one by one. ("Come back here and I'll bite your legs off!") But that perky formula saves it -- all those disasters remain imaginary, held at bay by his buoyant positive spirit.

Ever since Cat Stevens turned into Yusuf Islam, listeners have been suspicious of anything that sounds like a coded religious message in his songs. There is something provocative about that bridge: "Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light. / Did it take long to find me? and are you gonna stay the night?" But get over it folks -- this is the sort of anthropomorphic stuff you'll find in hundreds of children's picture books, and Stevens didn't convert to Islam until 1977, long after he wrote "Moonshadow." Stevens' sense of childlike wonder seems totally sincere to me, and nearly 40 years later, it still seems fresh and lighthearted and uplifting.

Let's just hope no one decides to spoil this one with a tacky commercial, ok?

Moonshadow video

2009-10-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

"Green Tambourine" / The Lemon Pipers

Sometimes I'll hear a song like this, a half-forgotten hit from my tender youth, and I nearly swoon with love for it. Don't tell me it's just nostalgia, that everybody feels this way about "their" music. No, I'm convinced that the music my generation grew up on ( this one hit #1 in February 1968) was deeply, radically better than whatever our parents listened to at the same age. The stuff our kids are listening to today? A mere shadow. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

It's not really fair to call "Green Tambourine" a one-hit wonder -- that makes it sound cheesy and second-rate, when in fact it's anything but. Perhaps a better term would be what Glenn in a recent comment termed "Martian music": It comes out of nowhere, a perfect gem with no obvious reason for existing. The Lemon Pipers never had another serious hit, though it's not their fault -- they were a blues-jam rock-and-roll band from Ohio that never enjoyed the sort of smartly crafted pop songs that their label, Buddah Records, steered them towards. (The old story, eh?) This song was written by professional songwriters, Paul Leka and Shelly Pinz, whose offices were across the hall from Buddah's New York headquarters, and apparently the Lemon Pipers only performed it because they knew the label would drop them if they didn't. Later, they got out of their contract so they could reassert control over their own music -- and were never heard from again.

Oddly enough, the lyrics of the song reflect this music-for-money conundrum. It's the song of a street busker, begging passersby for spare change: "Drop your silver in my tambourine / Help a poor man fill his pretty dream / Give me pennies I'll take anything / Now listen while I play [echoing ay-ay-ay-ay] / My green tambourine." (Why a green tambourine? Because it rhymed, probably, but it's still a beguiling detail -- hippies were always painting their stuff weird colors.) There's no pretense of art, as the singer admits in the third verse: "Money feeds my music machine." Surely the Lemon Pipers could see the irony of that.

It isn't played as cynical satire, though. Are you kidding? This was the hippie era; street people were seen as romantic outsiders, not ragged bums. Besides, the main thing about this track isn't the story, it's the psychedelic swirls of sound laid over the lyrics. Listen to the spiraling string accents, the little guitar fiddles, the spinning ratchets and jangly triangles, the sitar in the instrumental break (you couldn't have a proper psychedelic track without a sitar, could you?). Vocals dissolve into a wobbly echo at the end of each verse, and the tinny rattle of the tambourine is foregrounded out of its own speaker. Even though it only lasts for two and a half minutes -- no endless "In-a-gadda-da-vida" jams here -- it's actually quite mesmerizing while it lasts.

For some reason " Green Tambourine" is often referred to as the first bubblegum song. Knowing the kind of crap that came later, I hesitate to call this "bubblegum." I think of bubblegum music as having nonsense lyrics (like "Sugar Sugar" or "Yummy Yummy Yummy") and being way more cheerful than this song, which keeps sliding into minor chords and the unresolved C# on "play." Okay, there's a childlike quality to the song, but that was the hippie-dippie vibe -- listen to some of Donovan's stuff from this era if you want to talk childlike quality. To me it sounds earnest, not pre-digested pap. But then again, it's not surprising that a #1 hit would spawn a lot of cheap imitations, and once the hitmakers got their hands on it, the whole psychedelic sound devolved into meaningless goop.

"Green Tambourine" sounded great in 1968 when it first came out; hearing it unexpectedly the other day, I felt that old shimmer of delight all over again. If you can't smell the pot on this song, at least you can get a whiff of incense (with no peppermints).

Green Tambourine video

2009-10-13T14:30:00.001-07:00

"I Live On A Battlefield" / Nick Lowe

As I close in on 500 posts from nearly 2 years of blogging, there are occasional days when the song haunting my brain is something I've already written about. The problem's even worse in Nick Lowe Season. I'm seeing Nick tonight at the City Winery, and I'm sorry, I just can't think about anything else.

I don't know what tonight's set will include, but there's a good chance he'll haul out this song, as he often does lately. When I saw him a couple weeks ago at the Apollo, taping a segment of Elvis Costello's TV show Spectacle, Nick himself made a winking comment about how many of his best-loved songs are so "dreary." But though "Battlefield" is all about heartbreak and misery, it's hardly a mournful dirge; Nick rescues it with wit and spunk and verve. It's simply a fabulous number, and I could hear it every day of my life.

So pardon me for raiding my own back pages, but here's what I wrote a year and a half ago, on yet another day when the only tune in my head was "I Live On A Battlefield...."

...On 1994’s brilliant Impossible Bird, “I Live On A Battlefield” doesn't seem like a downer at first; it has a brisk tempo, with drums and a chugging electric guitar. But that's just because this soul survivor needs adrenaline to deal with life’s onslaught. “I live on a battlefield,” he says ruefully, “surrounded by the ruins of the love withheld,” and Nick keeps up the battle metaphor, verse after verse. For all the rollicking country-western sound, I picture a smoke-hung line of trenches straight out of World War I, and mud-spattered Nick staggering through barbed wire -- “I stumble through the rubble / I’m dazed, seeing double.” (Note the vowel echoes, the alliteration. The man is a POET.)

With a wail, he declares, “My new home / Is a shellhole filled / With tears and muddy water / And bits of broken heart.” He even translates the metaphor for us: “Though one way not one single drop of blood has spilled / It’s no less horrifying / Sweet memories of a bygone situation / Now shattered, lord, and battered / Lie scattered all around,” lobbing extra rhymes at us like hand grenades (similarly, later, he gives us “my new home is one of desolation / And scenes of a devastation / There is no consolation”).

That perky tempo, those call-and-response back-up vocals, keep it just humorous enough. He’s got no time for self-pity; THIS IS WAR. I grin, and then I wince, because, yeah, it sure looks familiar. Sigh.

Couldn't have said it better myself.....

I Live On A Battlefield sample

2009-10-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

"Tomorrow" / Paul McCartney

I spend way too much time messing around creating iPod playlists, I'll admit. Sometimes they work, sometimes they're just stupid. Recently, I've been experimenting with playlists that feature artists who all have the same first name -- "Doing Daves," "Going to the Johns," that sort of thing. The best one of these so far is my "Peter and Paul" playlist, which features everyone from Herman's Hermits (Peter Noone) to the Who (Pete Townsend) to the Jam (Paul Weller) and the Replacements (Paul Westerberg). I've even got a little Paul Simon and Peter Frampton in there (I'm sorry, but "Show Me The Way" is so bad it's good).

Naturally I agonized -- agonized! -- over which Paul McCartney track to include. Even setting aside the Beatles catalogue, I had way too many songs to consider from Paul's solo albums, not to mention the entire Wings oeuvre. After a long happy afternoon spent transferring the vinyl to digital, I'm amazed to find how much I still love those Wings albums.

Wild Life, for example. The first Wings album (it came out in 1971), it may be Paul McCartney's most stoned-out sonic ramble, but the very looseness of the jamfest endears it to me. It's one of the very few entire albums that I keep complete on my iTunes; I can't lose a single track, and I MUST listen to it in order -- no surprise, considering how many hours I spent in my college dorm room blissing out on Wild Life.

Wild Life's "Tomorrow" was my final choice for the "Peter and Paul" playlist, and I'll tell you why. To me it's the final proof that Paul McCartney is the world's greatest living composer. Notice that I say "composer," not "songwriter," because let's face it -- sometimes Paul McCartney's lyrics are embarrassingly stupid. There, I've said it. And I'm a words person; my devotion to Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, and Nick Lowe is largely driven by the wit and brilliance of their lyrics. If I can remain besotted with Paul McCartney for 45 years, it must be because his tunes are the best.

(This is all assuming that his enormous personal charms don't matter. Which of course they do. But still.)

This, after all, is the guy who wrote "Yesterday"; you'd expect "Tomorrow" to be a momentous sequel, just like Paul followed up his Beatle song "Blackbird" with Band on the Run's "Bluebird." But no, "Tomorrow" is slight and sloppy, with gauzy background oooh's, a plinky piano, and Paul warbling in his higher register. And the lyrics? Totally amateur. "Ooooohhh, baby, don't you let me down tomorrow, / Holding hands we both abandon sorrow, / Oh, for a chance to get away tomorrow" -- it's awkward, meaningless pap.

Well, hold on there. Actually, the song is written in an Italian verse form called terza rima, in which the first and third lines of a three-line verse not only rhyme, but are the exact same word. (I knew my English major would come in handy one day.) In classic terza rima, the end word of the middle line should become the first and third endings of the next tercet (the pattern is aba bcb cdc, etc.), but it's really hard to sustain that in English, where we don't have so many similar word endings. Paul's next verse is just another aba tercet: "Hey, baby's got a lazy day on Sunday, / Here's a pound, we hang around 'til Monday, / Oh, baby don't you let me down on Sunday." Clearly Sunday and Monday are introduced because they are the only days of the week that rhyme. The laziness of this lyric-writing is astounding.

Even this half-assed terza rima gets abandoned in the bridge, which offers a trite pastoral vision with weak, convenient rhymes: "Bring a bag of bread and cheese and find a shady spot beneath the trees / Catch a breath of country air and run your pretty fingers through my hair." (Just don't get the cheese in the hair, or vice versa.) The second time, he serves up different lyrics for the bridge, but they're no better: "Honey, pray for sunny skies so I can speak to rainbows in your eyes. / Let's just hope the weather man is feeling fine and doesn't spoil our plan." As if the weather depended on a TV meteorologist's moods. I'm tempted to wince every time I hear these lyrics.

And yet I could listen to this song all day. Instead of wincing, I find myself grinning affectionately at Macca's goofy exuberance. I feel buoyed by the song's soaring, up-and-down melody, that complexly layered syncopation that makes your heart skip. (Nobody knows how to play with the beat like a bassist.) It begins as a music hall softshoe shuffle, morphs into that jazzy bridge, switches into an anthemic rock phase, and winds up in full rockabilly mode, with Paul doing his best Elvis, building into wild wails and a driving bass line for the coda. He takes that simple, mindless song through all its changes, propelled by a sure sense of its infectious groove.

It's a song that always, ALWAYS, makes me feel joyful. That magic trick is what we need from music, and nobody -- nobody -- does it better than Sir Paul.

Tomorrow sample

2009-10-02T20:30:00.000-07:00

"1-2-3" / Len Barry

Len who? Yeah, that's what I said too. This was the second blast-from-the-past song I heard in the restaurant the other night, after "Baby Now That I've Found You", and I was convinced that at least this one was genuine Motown -- if not Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, then at least the Impressions or the Four Tops.

But no, it turns out that this 1965 soul classic was released by Decca, and singer Len Barry -- born Leonard Borisoff -- was a white guy, a blue-eyed soul man who grew up in a black neighborhood in West Philadelphia. He was originally one of the Dovells, whom you may know from their hit "Bristol Stomp" (for some reason, that got no airplay in Indianapolis, but I know Philly-area folks remember it instantly). Barry co-wrote this song with John Madera and Dave White, although nowadays the songwriting credit legally has to be shared with the Motown hit machine of Holland-Dozier-Holland, who successfully claimed Barry had ripped the song off from a Supremes number, "Ask Any Girl." It does sound vaguely similar -- though nowhere near as close as, say, "My Sweet Lord" is to "He's So Fine" -- but to me "Ask Any Girl" is staid and boring, while "1-2-3" is a juicy number indeed.

"1-2-3" was a Top Ten hit that fall, in both the US and the UK, and even I remember briefly tearing my ears away from the Beatles to dig this song. It was all over the airwaves -- who could ignore it? It percolates with a snappy syncopated rhythm, emphatic slapping drums, echoing back-up vocals, and exultant horn fanfares. Barry's voice has a nice gritty texture, adding urgency and desire to what would otherwise be a well-crafted bit of fluff. It follows that classic Brill Building three-verses-and-a-bridge structure, with parallel imagery in each verse -- counting numbers in the first ("One two three / Oh that's how elementary / It's gonna be"), alphabet in the second ("A-B-C / Fallin' in love with you was / Easy for me"), and simple math in the third ("One and one are two / I know you love me, and oh / Oh how I love you." That's a ready-made line of imagery, which the Jackson Five would exploit a few years later with their song "ABC."

But basically it's a pleading song -- no story, no testifying, no celebration, just a guy intent on the chase. He and the girl definitely aren't together yet, no matter how assured he sounds. In the verse, he promises her (with his back-up friends chiming in) "it's easy (it's so easy) / Like takin' candy (like takin' candy) / From a baby." To my mind, this odd cliche is the very heart of the song -- that's the phrase I remember most. Maybe he just latched onto a convenient turn of phrase, a trite simile for "easy," but it adds all sorts of layers to the song. After all, isn't taking candy from a baby mean? Though he's urging her to take that candy with him, we can't help feeling a shadow of predatory behavior; that's the knife edge this song skates along. Face it; he does intend to take advantage of her -- when he says he wants her to "fall in love," he really means "have sex with me." Still, Barry's vocals artfully keep things more sincere than sinful. He's not forcing her -- he wants her to want it too.

See him in the bridge, a lawyer of love, laying out all his arguments: "Baby, there's nothing hard about love / Basically, it's as easy as pie / The hard part is living without love" -- ah, there a classic rhetorical feint, painting a dire picture of the alternatives. And at the end of the bridge his voice wobbles just so, as he exclaims, overwhelmed by desire: "Without your love / Baby, I would die!"

We know how to count, know our ABC's; this song pleases us by checking off familiar mantras. But that syncopation doesn't play by the rules; the song is full of lagging pauses at the beginning of lines, filled in by horn toots or back-up echoes. In the bridge, he's playing behind and in front of the beat, swinging us into the groove of his passion. We're leaning forward, waiting for him to hit the phrases, longing to hear that other shoe drop. Even though nothing is settled by the end of the fade-out, the momentum of desire has already clinched the deal. She'd have to have a heart of stone to say no.

1-2-3 video

2009-10-01T21:13:00.000-07:00

"Baby, Now That I've Found You" / The Foundations

I've had it up to HERE with my slow computer and its small hard drive -- I finally ordered a new one, which should be arriving next week. Once it comes, I promise I'll begin to post mp3s so you can all listen properly to the songs I write about. But if you're of a certain age, I'm betting you know this song already.

A few nights ago, this came on the sound system at an Italian restaurant we were eating at in our neighborhood, and it triggered an immediate, visceral response in me. I can remember singing this song at the top of my lungs when I was an adolescent, madly in love with some gangly boy or other (the name Bruce Jordan rings a bell). It came out in the fall of 1967, and I'll bet I assumed it was a Motown song: It certainly had all the earmarks -- the handclaps, the horn section, the passionate r&b lead vocals.

In fact, however, this was a British band, though it wasn't a bunch of white English boys pretending to be soul singers. No, the Foundations were Britian's first multiethnic group, with West Indians and even a Sri Lankan joining the English musicians in the band. (And here I thought all that had started in the early 80s with the English Beat). Their better-known song is probably "Build Me Up, Buttercup," but that one sounds definitely more pop and less soul. By the time they recorded that (1968) the original vocalist, Trinidadian Clem Curtis, had left and was replaced by a chap from Barbados, Colin Young. Ain't the British Empire grand?

In this earlier single, though, the sound is still pure soul, and I love it to death. The conceit is simple: a guy has found a girl and intends to hang onto her, even though his prospects are dicey. As a female listener, I responded intensely to the idea that a guy was willing to expend energy to keep a relationship together -- how refreshing!

The structure of this song is radical: It starts out with a chorus, and spins back around to that chorus over and over, with a kind of emphatic persistence that's perfect for the song's theme. "Baby," Curtis begins, leaning lovingly into that long sustained vowel sound, "now that I've found you I can't let you go / I'll build my world around you." Oh, ladies, this is music to our ears. A man expressing naked need? It must be a soul record. He shifts from those long statements into short urgent messages -- "I need you so / Baby, even though /You don't need me / You don't need me." Ah, there's the killer. He has to repeat it, as if he can't believe it. This chick has this guy wrapped around her finger, and she doesn't even appreciate it! This triggers what I like to think of as the Offstage Response -- we the listeners are dying to butt in, to divert this guy's devotion to our own service.

We move to a single verse, classic call and response, for the explication, as the singer describes how he first fell in love and the back-up guys underscore his persistence. Melodically, however, the sweet spot of this song is the bridge, when Curtis chromatically croons: "Spent a lifetime looking for somebody / To give me love like you." The key shifts in to minor as he regretfully adds, "Now you've told me that you wanna leave me," only to burst out willfully, "Darling, I just / Can't let you!" and swings into those exuberant chorus again -- twice, before he reiterates that bridge and then hammers away with the chorus again. It's as if saying it will make it so. Baby I need you Baby I need you Baby I need you!

Fellas, let me tell you, we women are sick and tired of doing all the heavy lifting. What we really want is to find a guy who'll cling to us like a bur, who's made an intelligent choice and chooses ME. This is intoxicating. All the brakes are off, passion is rocketing into the sky, and the man is the one expressing lifelong devotion. Of course it's a pop song; of course it's just hormones making him think this is a now-and-forever kind of love. Do I care? No; I want to believe that he is true. I didn't attach this song to the particular singer (did I even know who Clem Curtis was when this song came out?), but I adopted this song's ferocity and made it my own. Singing along in the back of a car, I could split into two: I was the singer, and I was the one the song was being sung to. It's two and a half minutes of raw romantic lust, with horns, and I defy you to resist its infectious charm.

Baby, Now That I've Found You sample

2009-09-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

"Mr. Fool" / George Jones

Country music. Growing up in Indiana, I had to declare myself on one side of the fence or the other, and I definitely went for the rock 'n' roll side. Damn, I'd even go for soul over country. (Motown was very big in Indianapolis.) You cannot understand this unless you know what it was like to have to suffer through Midwestern Hayride when there was nothing else on TV, back in the days when there were only four channels.

One of the reasons it took me years to discover John Hiatt -- even though I knew the kid from my neighborhood growing up -- was because he was working in Nashville, and I assumed that meant he was writing country music and I didn't want to hear about it. Can you believe that? For years, there was Johnny Hiatt writing this incredible music, and I remained ignorant of it because of my old country music prejudices.

But here's another thing I have to thank Elvis Costello for. On that very same compilation CD where I discovered Nick Lowe, Elvis also included this track by George Jones. Now, I had relaxed my anti-Nashville bias by 2005; I even saw Tammy Wynette (George Jones's ex) in 1976 when I was in graduate school at Oxford, in England. So somehow this George Jones song wriggled onto my playlist. And before long Elvis's 1981 album Almost Blue and Van Morrison's 2006 Pay the Devil served as my crash course in all the country classics I'd closed my mind to all those years. Finally, I could let my ears accept the fact that, mixed in with all the cynical Nashville dreck, there is a hell of lot of great music out there, classified as country.

There's a kind of purity to this recording, which is early George Jones (I can't find the original album release, though it's on compilations of his Mercury years, 1955-1962, as well as an import called Don't Stop The Music, which I can imagine Declan MacManus hearing as a kid in Liverpool). "Mr. Fool" is a classic honky-tonk two-step, complete with twanging pedal steel intro, plangent fiddles, and a slight yodel in George's vocals. I don't want string sections in my country music; I want a slide geetar and fiddle. And "Mr. Fool" obliges, thank you very much.

As far as the sentiments go, this song is the most basic human stuff -- universal loss, humiliation, and heartache -- and the lyrics trot out a string of romantic cliches, all scattered tears and shattered dreams and broken vows. No doubt they seem even more cliched now, after 50-odd years of pop music have worked the same few rhymes to death. But such cliches became cliches because, when all is said and done, this IS the way love works.

And this song is craftier than it appears, a psychologically acute portrait of how past, future, and present vibrate together at moments of pain. In a low, confidential voice, George starts out by projecting into the near future: "I've got a feeling / You'll soon be leavin'" (I love the slide in his voice, replicating that sickening feeling). Then he loses control, as his voice soars, "But I won't beg you not to go." You can tell he wants to beg, but his mind flashes to the past, remembering how he's been burned before: "Because I've always been / A fool to cry for you" (get that woeful strain of his voice on the word "fool"). There's so much history in this song -- all those "alwayses" and "nevers" and "befores" and "no mores" -- it doesn't take much for us to reconstruct the needy, pleading slob he's been. Listening to George Jones reminds me that singing isn't just about timber or volume; the genius stuff is all phrasing and technique, those artful wobbles and snags that betray where the passion really lies.

Taking his own emotional temperature, George assesses his present frame of mind in the second verse: "I know this time it's / Really over." That being the case, there's only one thing he can cling to: The last shreds of his dignity. I picture him with his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans, kicking a little dust up with the toe of his cowboy boot, as he proclaims, "No one can ever call me Mr. Fool no more." Hey, at least he's got his pride. Right?

In the final verse, he draws a breath (the slippery fiddle solo in the middle eight) and fixes a smile on his face. Now he projects his emotions farther into the future -- "For time will heal a heart that's sore." (Listen to the hopeful -- but not quite convinced -- lift of his voice on "heal"). Scarred and battered, he's ready to move on, "And I will never be the fool I was before / No one can ever call me Mr. Fool no more." Okay, lovely, good luck with that.

Because frankly, what lasts in my mind is the image of Mr. Fool, not the image of no-more-Mr. Fool. I've never been one for the tough guys anyhow; I like a man who can throw his heart into the ring. And you know what? If he really does heal, we'll know it when he becomes Mr. Fool again over some new woman.

Mr. Fool audio

2009-09-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

"What's Shakin' On The Hill" / Nick Lowe

So indulge me. Just one more Nick track, this one from his criminally neglected 1989 album Party of One. Much is made of Nick's comeback "trilogy" (they've actually been repackaged as a box set called The Brentford Trilogy), which includes The Impossible Bird (1994), Dig My Mood (1998), and The Convincer (2004). But in my humble opinion, the comeback really began with Party of One, where he first began to move into the more subtle, wry, laidback groove that's been his territory ever since. Party of One was the first Nick Lowe album I could get my hands on after the Great Awakening of spring 2005; it's the one that confirmed my suspicion that this guy's music was all I'd been waiting for.

It's hard for me to believe that "What's Shakin' On the Hill" was written 20 years ago. Nick still sings it in concert (along with the priceless "All Men Are Liars," also from this album), and it doesn't sound one bit dated -- although truth to tell it never sounded like an 80s song to begin with. That simple opening riff -- a series of descending thirds, falling lazily just behind the beat -- eases us into the song like a stroll down a country road. And indeed, it begins with a pastoral scene -- "There's a cool wind blowin' in the sound of happy people" (that internal rhyme of "wind" and "blowin' in" swings us along). Curious, we move toward that sound, already picturing the venue: "At a party given for the gay and debonair." He adds more details, in shorter lines that don't quite complete that signature melodic line: "There's an organ blowing in the breeze / For the dancers hid behind the trees" -- just offstage, so tantalizing. But then comes the cruel reality, as the last two lines work their way down to the resolution of the melody: "And I ain't never gonna see / What's shakin' on the hill."

So why not? I'm dying to know. He's brought us so close, only to snatch it away. In verse two he explains himself, ruefully, his awkward grammar betraying the sting of rejection: "That I someday may be joining in / Is just wishful thinking / Cause admission's only guaranteed / To favored few." And Nick, apparently -- in his classic role as the wistful loser -- isn't on that guest list.

In the bridge, he owns up to the truth: "I'm too blue to be played with / And I get heartaches / So they tell me, 'No dice'." (The casual cruelty of that "no dice" -- what a slap in the face!) If he were younger, he might pin the blame on one girl, one heartbreak, but no, he's old enough by now to admit it's his own melancholy temperament at fault. Like Ray Davies in "Waterloo Sunset," he's forever on the outside, a mere observer of life. With a defensive shrug, he notes, "It isn't allowed / In that carefree crowd / To be seen with tears in your eyes." Well, as soon as Nick tells me that, I realize I don't want to be with that carefree crowd either. Bunch of shallow hedonists. The "gay and debonair" -- HA! No, I want to be outside with Nick, "Kicking cans 'round / While that happy sound / Keeps cracking on." That image of the lonely kid kicking cans around -- how that wrings my heart.

But self-pity's not on the agenda -- no, not tonight. Stuck outside in the shadows, he confesses honestly, "Though I long so strong to be inside / With the blues is where I do reside," letting the melody crest upwards on "where I do reside." And after the instrumental break and one last go of the chorus, he peters out, muttering "what's shakin'" over and over, like he can't quite tear himself away, no matter how resigned he is to his fate.

Who needs visual details? Somehow Nick makes me imagine my own scene -- golden lights gleaming through the trees, shadows pooled around parked cars, an empty roadway gleaming pale in the moonlight. The far-off clink of glasses and ripples of disembodied laughter. Assured in his craft, Nick no longer overworks his metaphors, but we know that it's not just a party he's missing -- that hill could represent social acceptance, career success, critical acclaim, domestic happiness, religious faith, whatever.

What kills me is the light touch of this song -- the liting jazzy tempo, the major key, the skipalong melody. (It's really at its best sung solo and acoustic.) He's not slamming angrily against that barred door, nor curdled with bitterness, nor drowning in woe. He's accepted his place on the sidelines of life, though he still feels twinges of envy and regret. It's goddamn Keatsian, that's what it is, delicately maintaining a fragile equipoise between love and loss, between sorrow and acceptance, between now and then and someday.

Or maybe it's just a pop song, you daft fangirl you. Well, that too.

What's Shakin' on the Hill video
What's Shakin' on the Hill audio

2009-09-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

"I'm A Mess" / Nick Lowe

Hrmpphh! Not only did Levon Helm not sing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" at last night's taping of Elvis Costello's show Spectacle -- Levon himself didn't sing at all. Elvis assured us that it's not a question of Levon's throat cancer recurring, simply vocal strain from too much performing lately. Still, he was under doctor's orders to do nothing more than drum (at least we got the pleasure of watching him do that), while no less a ringer than Ray LaMontagne filled in with Levon's vocals on the show's finale, a rendition of (I should have guessed) "The Weight."

But was I disappointed? Oh, no, my brothers and sisters, for by the time Levon came on stage I was already in a state of utter bliss. Yes, I enjoyed watching the ever-droll Richard Thompson and superlatively elegant Allen Toussaint do their parts of the show. But there was really only one reason why I'd venture up to 125th Street on a weeknight, and that was -- sigh -- Nick Lowe.

And so I officially enter the time of year I call Nick Lowe Season. For the past couple of years, Nick has been kind enough to swing through town round about this time of year (generally on his way to sing at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival -- you lucky West Coast dogs), and I have not missed seeing him. Are you kidding? Me miss Nick Lowe? And while I think I do a pretty good job the rest of the year of pretending to be interested in other artists, when Nick Lowe Season is upon us, I am simply a besotted basket case. So apologies in advance, but a fangirl's gotta do what a fangirl's gotta do.

Last night, Nick -- who was looking dapper as ever in black trousers, a black jumper, snappy black Converse kicks, and his new hipster black-framed eyeglasses -- began by ripping my heart out of my chest with his rendition of "Lover Don't Go"; please read my earlier post, which already says all I need to say about why that is a brilliant song. After his "interview" with Elvis -- Elvis playing the eager boy reporter, Nick deadpanning self-deprecatory remarks to the crowd -- he went on to slay us even further with "The Beast In Me." (Which he wryly introduced with the remark, "I don't know why I seem to be doing all the dreary songs tonight. I actually do have some upbeat numbers, really I do.")

So to prove Nick's point, I figured it was a good time to write about one of Nick's upbeat songs -- THE song, in fact, that first made a Nick Lowe fan out of me. Appropriately enough, I have Elvis to thank; he included this track on a Starbucks compilation disk of "what I'm listening to now," the sort of easy-cheesy promotion that Elvis seemingly can't pass up. I knew who Nick Lowe was, without really having a clue as to what he'd been doing lately, musically speaking. I began listening out of mild curiosity; three minutes and eleven seconds later, I was practically hanging from the chandelier.

Upbeat? Well, uptempo, at least, and wickedly funny, in its own droll dry sly way. With no intro at all, Nick announces, "I'm a mess!" a numb and disoriented squawk of complaint. Then, after a few beats of silence, he explains: "I should be filling rooms / with the sweet smell of success" -- and no doubt there's a touch of autobiography there, Nick's own confession that his once-bright career somehow got off track. Ruefully he admits, "I'm a mess / Look at what I've been reduced to," accompanied by Geraint Watkins' wheezing organ and Bobby Irwin's slow ticking drums. As if shaking his head in regret, he addresses his ex: "I don't blame you for saying no / when you should have said yes," but if he may be permitted one last twist of the knife, lapsing miserably down the scale: "But darlin' darlin' darlin' /Look at me now, I'm a mess."

That lovable loser pose has served Nick well; it's a venerable country music conceit, though considering how often it appears on this album -- 2004's The Convincer -- it suspect it had some basis in Nick's own life. This "character" could easily be drawn from his life, as he complains, "the smart set / I used to run around with are invisible now / They cut me loose / When one said that what I've got might just rub off on them somehow." (Forget about having the same number of syllables in each verse -- our singer is too glum to worry about scanning right now.) Though by this time Nick was well past the bottom he hit in the early 1980s, when drink and divorce had left him on the rocks, the residue of that misery still seeps into this song.

And yet it IS an upbeat song, because Nick's poking such delicious fun, objectifying himself into a character, and winking at us to join in with him. Even he knows this is only a phase -- as he says in the second verse, "Some of these days I'm gonna get back on my feet / And quit this blue address" (lovely compressed image there). He's already pulled hmself together enough to write this song, hasn't he? And his country crooning drawl, the slight cheesinsess of the organ, are so damn companionable, you can't imagine why this slob would be ostracized. Drowning lazily in self-pity (men are such babies), he's a parody of lovesick loss.

What brilliant songwriting this is, skillfully nudging at the boundaries of classic pop structure. The melody pretends to be rambling and disjointed; each verse collapses into that woeful reiterated"Darlin' darlin' darlin'," as if he's too lost to articulate anything more. (How rare, to make the repetition of a chorus something more than just formal necessity.) And with less-is-more economy, Nick leaves us curious about so many details. Is he just wallowing in his own sorrow? Is this simply a shrewdly calculated bid to win her sympathy? Does he even want the girl back?

The emotional complexity behind the lyrics -- rendered in his slightly battered, real-guy vocals -- devastated me at first listen. Frankly, it made me want to swim the ocean to comfort this hapless broken-hearted chump. (Did I even know what Nick Lowe looked like? Did it matter?) But here's the mark of Nick's genius: This song just keeps getting better and better, every time I listen to it. And when you think how many songs the man has written that are just this good -- well, that why I welcome Nick Lowe Season more eagerly every year.

I'm a Mess sample