"Another Day"/"Silly Love Songs"/"Goodnight Tonight" / Paul McCartney & Wings

 I was wrong about Paul McCartney.

Mind you, I've been in love with this man since February 1964. And I'll go to my grave insisting that McCartney was the true musical genius of the Beatles, with a melodic gift on the level of Cole Porter and Puccini and Mozart. (I'll grant that Lennon might have been the literary genius of the band.) I'd say more but I'm saving it for my masters thesis, when and if that ever happens.

I've never wavered from loving Paul's early solo albums (McCartney and Ram for sure, and I'll go deep on the often-undervalued Wild Life.) When Wings came along, I obsessed over Band on the Run (still one of my favorite albums of all time), and played all the other albums endlessly. For all of Paul's solo albums since then, it's never been hard to find gold. 

But Paul's pop singles -- especially in the 70s, when everyone was obsessively comparing the ex-Beatles' solo careers -- well, those were another matter altogether. Were they cheesy? Possibly they were cheesy -- I couldn't decide. And when other music fans I respected dissed those tracks, I backed off. (The fact that those songs sold like crazy was beside the point.) I became convinced that Macca had no one around him who'd tell him when something was not up to his best. If only I could become the one person Paul trusted (naturally, because he was in love with me -- oh, don't get me started), I could help him out by telling him that those tracks were crap. 

But were they?

I've spent the last 48 hours listening to these 3 tracks over and over, and I am gobsmacked.

Let's start with "Another Day," Paul's 1971 debut single as a solo artist. I'm sure I disliked it when it first came out because Paul wrote it with his new wife Linda, and I was sore that he'd married her. I was also disappointed that he seemed to be trying to write another "Eleanor Rigby," describing the sad routine of a lonely woman -- dressing in the morning, drinking coffee at the office, going to the post office. Yet the tune is so boppy and perky, it seemed like there was a disconnect. 

But I listen to it now, and I see how the perkiness is just the brave face the woman puts on, staving off the quiet despair that is so clear in the lyrics. And it's complemented by the other half of the song, which switches to a poignant minor key waltz ("Sad / so sad /sometimes she feels so sad") as she fantasizes about the man of her dreams, who in reality is a cad who leaves her. It's a heartbreaker, and I'm drawn in by its genuine sympathy for this nameless woman. That sort of observational social commentary was always Paul's thing in the Beatles era. If I hadn't been so jealous of Paul's marriage, I'd have gotten this years ago.

It was songs like this, I suppose, that John Lennon mocked Paul for. Paul defended himself by writing 1976's "Silly Love Songs." It's the song that Macca-haters bring up first when they're trying to prove that he's a lightweight, and therefore it was for years the song that made me most embarrassed to still be a Paul McCartney fangirl. But I am so over that now. If you actually listen to this song's melodic energy, it's hard to resist. 

Simple? It's anything but. Listen to how it builds and builds, interweaving various melodic themes (not so different from the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," which when you think about it is also pretty much just a silly love song). When the whole thing gets going, it's all contrapuntal and polyrhythmic; you could crawl inside it and get lost. My heart kicks over at that surprisingly insightful middle eight: "Love doesn't come in a minute / Sometimes it doesn't come at all / I only know when I'm in it / Love isn't silly, love isn't silly at all." (Rhyming "minute" and "in it" = genius.)  And yes, it helps that this song is a perfect vehicle for McCartney's voice. It's also one of the catchiest tunes he ever wrote, which I know isn't the point, but it is the point. Paul, I am so sorry for taking this song on face value. Can you ever forgive me?

And finally I started listening to "Goodnight Tonight," which came out in 1979. I don't think I EVER listened to this single back in the day. It seemed to me that Paul was selling out by going disco, and I was a New Wave girl who hated disco. But while I'm sure it played in dance clubs, this is so much more than a mindless disco track.

The rhythmic patterns of this track are insane. That Latin percussion, the saucy guitar licks, the flamenco guitar in the middle eight -- and let's not overlook the gorgeously melodic bass line (another topic for my masters thesis: how Paul McCartney transformed the role of the bass in rock music). Lyrics? Pretty much non-existent, just repeated "Don't say it / don't say it / don't say it / Don't say goodnight tonight," though the verse has a lovely leaping plea ("Don't say goodnight to love"). It's basically a seduction track, but it's so joyful and tender. Again, a track you can get lost in -- and now that I'm not fighting the disco wars, I am very happy to sink into its groove.

So after all these years, mea culpa, Paul. I doubted you and I was wrong. 

And now that we've cleared that up, any chance you'd still take me on as your most trusted crap tester (with benefits)? Because I'm totally available for the job...

 

 

Smackdown!

"California Girls" /
The Beach Boys

vs.

"Back in the U.S.S.R." /
The Beatles

Okay, so maybe this is unfair. The great American band of the 1960s, versus the great British band of the 1960s. Do we vote for Brexit or for making America great again?

Oh, but hold on there, Parnelli, as my driver's ed teacher in Indianapolis used to say.

Let's start with "California Girls." In many respects it's just another sun-drenched SoCal feel-gooder, and the album it appeared on -- 1965's Summer Days (And Summer Nights) still has one foot in the classic Beach Boys mold, with tracks like "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Amusement Parks USA" and a cover of "Then I Kissed Her." This song, however, was written by Brian Wilson after he took his first acid trip, and within it are stirrings of the great Wilson masterpieces to come.

The shuffle beat was, Wilson claimed, inspired by cowboy movies but also Bach's "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring." How's that for a pair of influences?

The lyrics were all written by Mike Love, in the longstanding tradition of Mike Love banality. The first verse contrasts the merits of girls from all sections of the country, and as a Midwesterner I am still offended by the description of us as "farmer's daughters," even if we do "make you feel all right." (Apparently we lack East Coast style, the sexiness of a Southern drawl, or the nighttime heat of Northern girls. Screw you, Mike Love!) Verse two plods through reasons why California girls are the best -- they're tan, they wear bikinis, and they . . . well, um, that's about it.

The melody, though, and the arrangement? Divine. There's that dreamy sun-dappled orchestral intro, which goes on surprisingly long, with its spangly electric piano, Carl Wilson's 12-string guitar, and a laid-back tempo. Then it jumps into line for the song itself; the verses have a finger-snapping sassiness that distills a 77 Sunset Strip brand of cool, with Mike Love's whiny brash vocals evoking previous songs such as "Be True to Your School". But then just as you get used to that, in comes that chorus, exploding into dazzling harmony. "I wish they all could be California girls" they sing repeatedly, but it's hardly repetition. The melodic line crests over and over like a curl of surf at Laguna Beach, with overlapping contrapuntal harmonies like an undertow, while chord changes and key changes continually add new swirls of mood. Production values are top-notch (of course they had the Wrecking Crew studio musicians playing everything), lush and dense and joyful as all get-out. Honestly, "Good Vibrations" and "God Only Knows" are so close you can taste them. 

So jump forward in time 3 years, to 1968, and the Beatles' astonishing, eclectic album The Beatles, known forevermore as The White Album. And this is the lead-off track, Side 1, Track 1: "Back in the U.S.S.R."

Macca wrote this while the Fabs were in India, doing TM with the Maharishi. -- like "California Girls," it's the product of a newly expanded consciousness. You can tell it's a McCartney song because A) the melody leaps and bounds all over the place, and also B) because of the beat-lagging tempo (was there ever a bassist who so consistently played behind the beat?).

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the bridge catalogs Soviet chicks a la "California Girls" -- Mike Love (ever eager to glom onto a happening scene) was in India with the Maharishi too, and he claims credit for those few lines that reference "California Girls": "Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out / They leave the West behind / And Moscow girls make me sing and shout / That Georgia's always on my mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-hi-mind." (Shout-out to Ray Charles.)

I prefer to imagine that Mike Love was such a dick at the retreat that McCartney wrote those lines to satirize Love's contribution to the Beach Boys hit song.

Because the rest of this song sounds nothing like the Beach Boys. The template is pure Chuck Berry, from his song "Back in the USA". (Okay, okay, I know the Beach Boys were also influenced by Chuck Berry -- just listen to "Surfin' USA. But c'mon, EVERYONE in the 1960s owed a debt to Chuck Berry.)

Listen to the first two verses, and it could just as easily have been titled "Back in the U.K." He's flying in from Miami (did British Airways even fly Miami-Moscow in 1968?) and the flight was awful; he gets home and everything looks different, surreal -- "Been away so long I hardly knew the place . . . ". He's feeling so dislocated, he can't even unpack. I'll admit that I imagine Paul McCartney coming home to his section of the terrace houses in Help! Still, it isn't until verse three that actual Russian references creep in: "Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out / Come and keep your comrade warm . . ."

I'm guessing that McCartney wrote the kernel of this as a "god I'm glad not to be touring anymore" song. At the ashram in India, he may also have been worrying how he'd return to his life in England  -- a sort of "you can't go home again" moment. When they needed material for the double album, he resurrected it with a few topical Cold War references . (And maybe a dig at the exorbitant U.K. tax rate on top earners, which at this point the Beatles were -- might as well be in the U.S.S.R., eh?) With the sound effect of the jet landing at the beginning (love how the jet moves from one speaker to the other), and the chugging Berry beat, it made a handy album opener.

Still, as the Beatles so often managed to do, even their cast-offs had profound impact. Those of you who did not grow up in the Cold War cannot imagine the mind-blowing idea of this switcheroo -- our beloved Beatles pretending to be evil empire Soviets?

Just to show how weird a period it was for the Beatles, think on this: Paul played the drums on this track (Ringo had just walked out and was threatening to quit), while John took over on bass. Paul also did some piano work on this track, with George Martin adding other fills. In such turmoil, any other band would have turned out a mess of an album. The Beatles? Somehow they pulled rabbits out of their hats and ended up with one of the top LPs of all time.

Which brings us to the Smackdown finale: Which song wins?

Man, I love that Beatles track. The White Album is one of the great records of my life (see here for my ride through Side 2). I love the snarkiness of this song, the subversive energy of its rock-n-roll, satire and parody all rolled up in a wicked fun package.

But when the Beach Boys burst into gorgeous harmony on the chorus of "California Girls" -- even this Midwest farmer's daughter (who never ONCE lived on a farm) is swept away.

WINNER: "California Girls" by a nose.

My Musical Advent Calendar

"Little Saint Nick" /
The Beach Boys

Ah, it's Christmas season at last (no, I won't go there before Thanksgiving is over, but once the turkey's done, hold on to your hats...)

And let's kick things off with a band who totally bought into the pop music industry's mandate for holiday material -- because if the Beach Boys weren't earnest about Christmas, who would be?

PS If you haven't seen the amazing bio-pic film Love and Mercy, acquire it now by whatever technological means you possess.

St. Nick = Santa Claus = a totally non-sectarian approach to Christmas, which was what was most decidedly wanted in 1964, when The Beach Boys Christmas Album was released. It's an incredible album which I would highly recommend you download. I personally demand that my 20-something offspring listen to it every holiday season, just to tap into, y'know, the spirit of the season.

Oh, the multi-layered dimensions of this two-minute pop confection. Sure, it's more on what I think of as the Mike Love end of the Beach Boys spectrum, with a jaunty beat and chord changes that sound like gear shifts, but it's good to start the holiday season with something sunny and light. Even on something this slight, it's a thrill to hear those trademark overlapping vocals go off in all directions (dig that punchy bass vocal: "Christmas comes this time each year...").  And there's something adorable about Mike Love's nasal vocals and the corny updated lingo ("And a real famous cat all dressed up in red / And he spends the whole year working out on his sled.")  Santa was into drag-racing? Who knew?

And where those trademark Beach Boys harmonies (courtesy of the Four Freshmen) kick in, the whole thing goes into another dimension, a la Brian Wilson. (Have you not seen Love and Mercy? Because YOU REALLY SHOULD.) As that chorus of "Run run reindeer" swells and swirls, I see the roots of their later masterpiece "Good Vibrations" starting to grow.

Yeah, okay, this track is mindless pop fun. But when the talents involved are this awesome -- is not that what we desire?

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" /
"God Only Knows"
The Beach Boys

If you haven't seen the Brian Wilson bio-pic Love & Mercy, I beg of you, PLEASE don't miss it. I just saw it last night, and it's sending me into a weekend of Beach Boys nostalgia.

Two brilliant actors -- Paul Dano and John Cusack -- play Brian Wilson at different periods of his life, and both deliver performances of exquisite subtlety, intelligence, and heart-breaking empathy. But what's even more rare about this film is how it gets the magic of musical creation, with scene after scene of Brian in the studio creating Pet Sounds. It geeks out on the "how did they make that sound" details, and somehow even captures the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of Brian's artistic genius.

And in the throes of this Beach Boy weekend, I'm happy to see that post I wrote a couple years ago about these two landmark songs basically already says everything I want to say. 
    
I won't lie, Beatlemania was the reigning passion of my adolescence, but there was an interlude -- think of it as my Lost Weekend -- in the summer of 1966, when my family took a train trip west to Southern California. Our West Coast sojourn was one golden blur of Disneyland, malls, Baskin-Robbins ice cream, and trips to the beach, preferably in the company of my one-year-older cousin Jeff, who had black hair and ice-blue eyes and a strong jaw -- possibly the dreamiest male I had ever met in the flesh. This SoCal infatuation lasted well into the fall -- as I recall, that was also the year the Monkees debuted on TV -- until who knows what Beatles song jarred it loose.

And right in the heart of that Golden Summer came this double-sided hit from the Beach Boys. These guys had always been the sound of summer for me -- even in the Midwest, with a turquoise cement-rimmed swimming pool standing in for the LaJolla cove. (Hey, in the Midwest we needed the Beach Boys even more, to create the illusion of summer.) The Beach Boys brand was a dependable sun-kissed commodity. But in the summer of '66, with these two songs, Brian Wilson leaped light-years into the future, leaving even the Beatles in his dust (presumably that was Brian's goal). Even as a kid, I could instantly tell this was something special and new. Really, listen to these two melodies -- was anything EVER this gorgeous?

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" was the ultimate Good Kids Waiting For Sex song, which hit me right in my adolescent sweet spot -- though I didn't yet have a boyfriend (my hunky cousin being off limits) I yearned and burned in principle. The Beatles were all about sex, but now here were the Beach Boys making chastity sound romantic and cool. Listen to how that plinky electric piano riff at the beginning gets suddenly smacked down with a treMENdous drum whack. This whole song is about trembling on the verge of intercourse, yet the rock-bottom assumption was abstinence. "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older / Then we wouldn't have to wait so long" -- we all knew what they were waiting for.

Cynicism was never the Beach Boys' game, but this song is remarkably earnest even for them. Hand it to Brian Wilson, arrested adolescent par excellence, for dwelling whole-heartedly in this pre-lapsarian scenario. In verse two, he does get a little hungry as he projects into the future: "Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up / In the morning when the day is new / And after having spent the day together / Hold each other close the whole night through." And yet STILL so innocent -- just holding each other, that's all, really! (I love how it slows down, almost groaning with desire, as he sings, "You know it seems the more we talk about it / It only makes it worse to live without it..."). Naturally they will be married ("we could be married") which equals being happy ("then we'd be happy"), and OH, wouldn't it be nice? And then the whole thing dissolves into a masturbatory swirl of overlapping phrases and echoes and harmonies, as never-ending as that passionate long kiss.

Believe me, I spent hours agonizing over which was my favorite side of this single (bought, oh so eagerly, with my hard-earned babysitting money). The B side, though, eventually came up the winner, for one simple reason:  The glorious lead vocal of the most underrated Wilson brother, Carl. I had no idea it was him singing -- if you'd asked me, the only Wilson I was interested in was the beautiful Dennis -- but something about Carl's voice dove straight into my heart.

This song has no dramatic tension at all. It's just a straight-shooting expression of devotion, and nobody could do sincere like Carl. But even more important was his exquisite ear -- who else could have steered that tune through its morphing key changes, vertiginous swoops up and down the scale, the surging swells of volume? The vocal had to be strong to stand up against the densely layered instrumentation of strings, woodwinds, synthesizers, and whatever else obsessive Brian had hauled into the studio. It expresses passion on an operatic scale, and for once pop music had musical tools worthy of that passion.

That opening is so damn noble, like an opera overture, with marching electric piano chords and a French horn fanfare. Enter our white knight, Sir Carl, singing humbly, "I may not always love you" -- hunh? but no, it's a rhetorical trick, as the next line resolves. "But long as there are stars above you / You never need to doubt it / I'll make you so sure about it." The way he throws his voice into that top note "sure" is equaled only by the poignance of the same line in verse two, as he imagines her leaving him and protests -- "So what good would livin' do me?" What good indeed, I ask myself.

That's about it as far as lyrics go -- from there on it's just repeats of "God only knows what I'd be without you," sung as a round, then as a madrigal, then amplified into full orchestral counterpoint, until you're lost in the dizzying tapestry of aural textures. I find myself singing along with one voice, then another; sometimes the wave breaks on "what," other times on "without," but it never resolves, never ends, a continuous spiral of sound. He's fighting through a wilderness, with only his steadfast love to guide him. It's amazing how ego-less this is -- he's not bragging about his passion, simply stating, over and over, with dogged humility, that he'd be nothing without her. Simple as that.

Raised on songs like this, is it any wonder that we who were girls in 1966 found real-world adult love baffling?

I Love This Song!

5 Favorite Opening Riffs --
Guitar Heroes

Note that I'm not saying The Best Opening Riffs-- too many songs, too little time; I couldn't even limit it to 10 (thanks for all the suggestions), so 25 Favorite Opening Riffs it has to be, in five 5-riff installments.

A few arbitrary rules: 1. One riff per band. 2. Has to be an opener, starting from the record's very first note.  3. Vocals don't count. 

Let's face it -- guitar licks are our opening-riff bread and butter. And here are the masters: 

Fun, Fun, Fun / The Beach Boys

Probably the perfect surf guitar lick -- stolen from Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode," of course, but just enough crisper and tighter. This is a song near and dear to my heart, if only because it mentions Indianapolis in it.  The Beach Boys rushed out this single in February 1964, knowing that in a week or two the British Invasion would hit, and their clean-cut monopoly of the airwaves would be over. Well, they went down swinging with this one.



California Dreamin' / The Mamas and the Papas

Fast-forward to January 1966, with Beatlemania subsiding (until Sgt Pepper) and Folk Rock making its bid to take over. And here came John Phillips & Co., ready to score a hit with this beauty. That brooding acoustic opening (played by Wrecking Crew guitarist P. F. Sloan) was the perfect mix of protest-song edginess and sublime melancholy. They may have been dreaming of California (and recording it in L.A.) but the mood here is definitely cold and gray as a New York City winter.


Son of a Preacher Man / Dusty Springfield

Dripping slow and sweet as tupelo honey, this sexy September 1968 hit comes from the iconic album Dusty in Memphis. That's guitarist Reggie Young of the Memphis Cats, bringing a lazy Southern style to Dusty's soul sister sound. This narrowly beat out Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" -- there is no doubt what Dusty and the preacher's kid will be throwing off the Tallahatchee Bridge.



Ohio / Crosby, Still, Nash & Young

Protest song? This is the greatest one of all time. And that opening is just about perfect -- insistent, calm, ruthless. The marching tempo, the blithe skipping treble notes, that stern bottom line, and just enough harshness to the electric guitar to let you know we mean business.  In June 1970, this was the record that defined us.


Stairway to Heaven / Led Zeppelin

Oh, this song goes a LOT of different places before its eight minutes are over -- but for a perfect slow acoustic opener, can you beat this?  I always forget how slow it is, each note taking its exquisite time before the recorders kick in. Nevertheless, you know exactly what song this is. Wait for it....

Another Shuffle for Holt

Because that playlist just has too many great tunes not to go for another round.

1. "American Tune" / Paul Simon (1973)
"I don't know a soul who's not been battered / I don't have a friend who feels at ease / Don't know a dream that's not been shattered / Or driven to its knees" -- yep, that's life, and Paul Simon's never been afraid of facing that down. My brother the minister got that, too. Best part of this song -- where he dreams that he's dying, and he flies, freed from his mortal bonds, over the Statue of Liberty. The song breaks free of its gentle melodic patterns (stolen from Bach, I feel compelled to note) and soars into another realm of consciousness.

2. "The Weight" / The Band (1968)
Surely I'm not the only one who finds something Christlike about the singer of this song, wandering into town to "take a load off Fanny / And put the load right on me." And after meeting all the characters in town, he takes his wistful fare-thee-well -- "My bag is sinking low and I do believe it's time." Holt had this album, Music From Big Pink, though it took me years to figure out why these guys were worth listening to. They may have been a Canadian band, but they took their cue from Appalachian folk music, and from thence all the great Scots-Irish folk songs, in which the spectre of death is ever-present.

3. "Drive South" / John Hiatt (1988)
I've bragged here about how I knew Johnny Hiatt, growing up in Indianapolis, but my brother knew him better than I did, and was just as astonished as I was when we discovered he'd become not just a rock star but a genuine artist. I took Holt to see JH for his birthday a few years go, and he saw him a few more times after that. So you know there had to be at least one Hiatt tune on the playlist. I love this one for three reasons: 1) It's about driving, and Holt loved driving (Indy, natch); 2) It's a sexy seduction song ("Don't bother to pack your nylons / Just keep those pretty legs showing / It gets hot down where we're going")  and my brother, he loved the ladies; and 3) "drive south" may be a metaphor for going to hell. My brother worked a powerful lot of good in his life, but he was no saint, and who knows how tough the grading system is at the pearly gates?  But if he's headed to hell, then hell's a reasonable option for us all.

4. "The Cape" / Guy Clark (1995)
The first time I heard Guy Clark sing this song, all I could think of was my brother, and how much he loved to dress up in costumes as a kid. And yes, like the hero of this song, even when he was old and grey, people still thought he acted like a kid. But as Guy puts it, "he's one of those who knows / That life is just a leap of faith / Spread your arms and hold your breath / And always trust your cape." Brilliant song that never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

5. "Don't Forget Me" / Marshall Crenshaw (1995)
Here's a two-fer: Marshall Crenshaw AND Harry Nilsson, who wrote this tender wry song. I don't know if Holt shared my Nilsson obsession, but I know he loved Nilsson's oddball animated movie The Point when it first came out; in hospice, Holt smiled when I played him my Nilsson playlist. Although this is basically a song to an ex-wife, we can extrapolate the sentiments to any loves from the past. Even the spookily apposite verse three: "And when we're older / Full of cancer / It doesn't matter now / Come on, get happy / Cause nothing lasts forever / But I will always love you." Amen.

6. "Miles From Nowhere" / Cat Stevens (1970)
Tea for the Tillerman was an inescapable album that year, full of folky riffs and mordant black humor. Perfect soundtrack for Harold and Maude, a movie Holt loved for its warped fascination with death. Many songs on this album are about fathers and sons (I watched that battle from a front row seat) and taking journeys. But the line that really resonates here? "Lord my body has been a good friend / I won't need it when I reach the end." And so we told Holt in the hospice -- time to turn in the loaner car, it's reached the end of its usefulness.

7. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
For a Methodist minister, having "Losing My Religion" as your ringtone was a pretty gutsy move, doncha think?

8. "Don't Forget About Me" / John Mellencamp (2010)
Our other homegrown Indiana talent, Johnny Cougar nee Mellencamp always held a special place in our hearts. From his stellar back-to-basics album No Better Than This, another ex-wife song that can, if you squinch your eyes just so, be re-interpreted to apply to an old beloved friend who's moved to another plane of being.  

9. "Over the Rainbow / Wonderful World" / Israel Kamakawiwo Ole (1993)
One song we all agreed had to be played at Holt's memorial. Because, no matter how often it's played, this lilting ukelele rendition of the old standards transforms them into something new and hopeful and uplifting.

10. "Warmth of the Sun" / The Beach Boys (1964)
It was Holt, not me, who owned all our Beach Boys albums. (Note that possessive "our," because I listened to them just as avidly as he did.) In the face of the British Invasion, he never gave up on their American counterparts. In 1966, our family took a cross-country train trip to California that gave us our one taste of golden SoCal surf summer, before the Monkees and the Summer of Love happened. In my mind, this glorious Beach Boys ballad sums it all up -- how we keep the warmth of the sun inside us, to survive grief and loss. Interesting to note that Brian Wilson and Mike Love began to write this song on November 22, 1963, but didn't finish it until the tragic events of that day -- the Kennedy assassination, for those of you too young to have been permanently scarred by this event -- had happened. So the elegiac tone of this song was no accident. Those exquisite chord changes, the vocal counterpoints, and above all Brian's heart-melting falsetto -- they make me weep, make me smile, make my heart swell in my chest. Magic.

Cleaning out my brother's apartment, I found his iPod and put it in the dock to play on shuffle while I folded clothes and emptied drawers. How lovely it was to hear his own curated inventory of music! It was as if he were in the room with me. Expect to hear more from that source....

52 GIRLS

"Help Me Rhonda" / The Beach Boys

When this record came out, I only knew one Rhonda -- Rhonda Becker, who went to my grade school in Indianapolis. Rhonda was tall and thin, with a long blonde flip; she hung with the cool crowd, unlike me. She perfectly fit the image of this song.

You couldn't escape hearing this record in the spring and summer of '65. It was the Beach Boys' second #1 hit, after the previous year's "I Get Around" (which also struck home to me because it mentioned Indianapolis -- "she makes the Indy 500 looks like a Roman chariot race, now"). Refreshingly, the lead vocalist on "Help Me Rhonda" was neither nasal Mike Love nor angsty Brian Wilson, but -- surprise! -- guitarist Al Jardine, singing with a wholesome sincerity that made this uptempo love song really work.

  

We can dispense with the lyrics rather quickly. That first verse is classic Brian Wilson rueful self-pity and navel-gazing: "Well, since she put me down / I've been out doing in my head." (What "doing in my head" means, I haven't the faintest idea.) "Come in late at night, / And in the morning I just lay* in bed," an image that always makes me flash back to the great ballad "In My Room," from their 1963 album Surfer Girl. You know, the one where they're all carrying the surfboard?

But here, as soon as he's set up the morose teen context, Rhonda strolls in, on a promising chord change. "Well, Rhonda, you look so fine (look so fine) / And I know it wouldn't take much time / For you to  / [chord finally resolves] Help me, Rhonda / Help me get her out of my heart."

Sure, he's flattering her, but it's an awkward moment, because he's still more concerned with forgetting the other girl. Personally I wouldn't be interested in applying for this job, but who knows, maybe a superfox like Rhonda enjoys just this kind of challenge. Never having been a superfox, I couldn't say.

Verse two fills in the story -- or rather the prequel, all about this other girl who is NOT Rhonda. "She was gonna be my wife / And I was gonna be her man / But she let another guy come between us / And it ruined our plan." Poor betrayed Beach Boy. But just when he was ready to give up, Rhonda "caught my eye (caught my eye)" and now he's got a new plan, to "give you lotsa reasons why / You gotta help me Rhonda / Help me get her out of my heart."

The chorus is simple lyrically -- it's basically "Help, help me, Rhonda" over and over, climaxing in an emphatic "Help me Rhonda, yeah," after which Al pleads/demands "Get her out of my heart." But who ever gets bored with these endless repetitions? I adore how the various voices -- Carl, Brian, Dennis, Mike -- overlap and interweave hypnotically, always building, infinite variations on a theme. (Already they were heading toward the magnificent aural tapestry that would be "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations.") And yet somehow it is a GREAT singalong song, as I can testify from years of belting it out with girlfriends in the car as we tooled around Indianapolis.

Is he in love with Rhonda yet?  No way. He knows she's cute, and he's determined to move on from his heartbreak -- might as well be Rhonda as anybody else.

We know nothing about Rhonda except that she looks fine. I'm not surprised to learn that Brian Wilson has said, on the record, that there was no Rhonda -- but I'm betting there was a girl who dumped him for another guy. That's who the song is really about, and that part of the back story? It reads like real life.

* Hate to be the grammar police, but please, Brian, it should be "lie in bed." You don't even need "lay" for the rhyme.

49 DOWN, 3 TO GO

"Coconut" / Fred Schneider

It must be fun to be a B-52.

Trawling around iTunes trying to find more songs by Victoria Williams, I discovered this adorable Harry Nilsson tribute album. So many artists on here that I love -- Marshall Crenshaw, Ron Sexsmith, Al Kooper, Aimee Mann, Randy Newman, Bill Lloyd, both Brian and Carl Wilson -- and smack dab in the middle of it is our very own Love Shack sherpa Fred Schneider of the B-52s. Now, if you'd asked me which Harry Nilsson song would be perfect for Fred Schneider to cover, I don't know if I would have come up with this one. But the minute I heard it, I realized it was PERFECT.

It's a raucously fun song even when Harry himself sang it, but Fred pushes it to a whole new level. "Coconut" was just a hair shy of a novelty tune; I've always imagined that Nilsson began singing it to himself in the middle of a colossal tropical-drink bender, and luckily remembered enough of it the next day to capture the lightning in a bottle. (So to speak.) There's not much to it lyrically -- mostly just the repeated mantra "you put the lime in the coconut / And drink 'em both up." To tell you the truth, sometimes I forget and think this song was written by Jimmy Buffett. Not that there's anything wrong with that, for all my Parrothead friends out there.

I have one major criterion for a great cover version: It has to bring something new to the song. And on that score, Fred Schneider succeeds brilliantly. (It was first recorded for his 1996 solo album Just Fred.) In the great B-52s tradition, he takes this amiable little tune and sends it off into outer space, with dissonant snarls of guitar, frantic drum smacks, and buzzy little synth riffs that sound like transmissions from Mars.

Besides putting the lime in the coconut, we're also supposed to call a doctor and ask him what to do -- and this is the motif that Fred really goes to town on. His voice comes out of one speaker, frantically begging the doctor to tell him what to do about his bellyache; out of the other speaker, he plays a particularly snide doctor, advising his patient to put the lime in the coconut and call him in the morning.  In true Rock Lobster-style, he unleashes layers of wails, growls, and shouts, weaving in and out of those messy instrumentals.  (Really, has anybody ever done more with less vocal talent than Fred Schneider?)  It's truly a party gone out of bounds.

Well, it's spring vacation and I have NOT gone to the Caribbean. In fact, the landscape outside my window is six inches deep in crusty snow and slush. But Fred Schneider has just delivered an umbrella drink to my lounge chair, and I'm lovin' it.

Surfer Girl / The Beach Boys

It Was 50 Years Ago Today . . .

All this hoopla about the Rolling Stones' 50th anniversary makes me yawn. For one thing, Charlie Watts didn't join until January of 1963, and without Charlie Watts, it doesn't count as the Rolling Stones in my book. Besides that, it's such a naked marketing ploy. God forbid the Stones should miss a marketing opportunity, even though they could barely get their bony billionaire asses off their Barcaloungers in time for the requisite 50th anniversary tour.

The Beach Boys, on the other hand -- that's a 50th anniversary that matters to me. Their reunion tour lasted for months and felt so positive (that is, until it crashed on the shoals of Mike Love's crazy ego). The date is a little artificial, granted -- Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson had been singing together, with or without cousin Mike, for years before their first single, "Surfin'," was released, technically in November 1961 but finally on a proper label in January 1962. It crept onto the bottom of the charts, followed by a bona fide hit single, "Surfin' Safari," in June 1962. And 50 years ago this October, their first album -- also called Surfin' Safari, for obvious reasons -- landed in record bins, soon cracking the top 50 on the album charts. The Beach Boys had arrived.

Gotta love the Wilson boys for sticking with that surfing theme. Next to come, in March 1963, would be -- you guessed it -- "Surfin' USA." Of course I knew all those songs; no kid with a radio could escape them. But those upbeat, jangly anthems to the beach lifestyle never really got to me. Nope, it took a ballad to convert me: a love song called (naturally) "Surfer Girl." 

Now, let's think about this. Who is the lead singer for "Surfin' Safari" and "Surfin' USA"? The aforementioned Mike Love, with his nasal, sarcastic-sounding vocals. And who is the lead singer on "Surfer Girl"? Brian Wilson, his soulful tenor rising to wistful falsetto ooh's. It's the same sound as all my favorite early Beach Boys songs: "In My Room," "Don't Worry Baby," "The Warmth of the Sun." Until they finally let Carl Wilson loose with "God Only Knows," this was the sound of the Beach Boys for me. 

The cockiness of those Mike Love songs put me off, but here was a tenderness, a vulnerability, I'd never before heard from this band. "Little surfer, little one / Made my heart come all undone" -- it may be a convenient rhyme, but amid those plush doo-wop harmonies, the image of  heartstrings unraveling is surprisingly affecting. And the uncertainty of that question, "Do you love me / Do you, surfer girl?" well, it's Sensitive Male 101.

The second verse is where they really grab me. "I have watched you on the shore / Standing by the ocean's roar" -- like Ray Davies in the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset," Brian Wilson is the wistful observing outsider. Has he ever even spoken to her? I'm voting for no. This song is saturated with the purity and loneliness of unrequited love, trembling on the threshold.

There a sweet huskiness to the bridge, as Brian drops in the requisite surf references (dig the line "In my Woody I would take you / Everywhere I go-oo-oo" -- trust Brian Wilson to turn a surfing song into a car song!). But notice that it's still in the conditional tense -- this is what he yearns to do, not what he has already done.

Cue an upward key change for verse three, as he makes his first fumbling declaration: "So I say from me to you / I will make your dreams come true." The upward surging chord changes, hopeful and heartswellingly eager -- this is Grade A American Optimism. Once again he dares to ask, "Do you love me, / Do you, surfer -- " And then, with a two-beat pause, he draws out the suspense, halting, making us wait too. Then, with an exhalation of harmonies, he sighs into "girl, surfer girl, my little surfer girl." Over and over, the voices intertwine and repeat, with the falsetto oohs soaring over them. The path from here to the aural tapestry of "Good Vibrations" is a straight shot. 

The difference between this 50th anniversary and the Stones'? Or even, really, the Beatles'? This is actually what I was listening to in 1962. My brother owned all the Beach Boys albums, and our parents let us play them endlessly ("You know, they sound a heck of a lot like the Four Freshmen...") They were clean-cut, All-American boys. And for us Midwestern kids, besotted with the golden sands of Southern California, they held out an enviable dream -- one that would soon be forgotten in 1963, when the British Invasion hit.

I hold these early, pure Beach Boys songs very close to my heart. Brian Wilson was working within all the standard pop idioms, believing in them with all the innocence of his SoCal heart. Fifty years later, he still seems untarnished by cynicism. That surfer girl is still out on the far wave, and he's still on the shore, yearning.

SUNDAY SHUFFLE


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

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

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

2. "The House of the Rising Sun" / The Animals
Single 1964; included on The Best of the Animals
Of course, next to this classic song about the road to perdition, the kids in "Sweet Blindness" are model citizens...
 
3. "Listen People" / Herman's Hermits
From When the Boys Meet the Girls (1966)
The link here is Mickie Most, who -- hard to believe -- produced both the Animals and Herman's Hermits.  In the height of their American fame, Peter Noone and the boys didn't even release this as a single in the UK, but in the US it hit #3. This nifty little Graham Gouldman tune redeems its soppy earnest verse ("Listen, people / To what I say") with a snappy backbeat chorus ("Everybody's got to love somebody sometime.") 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Christmas Shuffle

Not Wednesday, sorry! Lately it seems I'm either a day behind or a day ahead of myself at every turn.  Perhaps it's best that I waited until today for this, though -- so you can hold this seasonal collection of tunes in your head all the way through Christmas day.

1. Postcard From London / Ray Davies with Chrissie Hynde
From The Kinks Choral Collection (2009)
Don't worry -- Ray and Chrissie were never in the same room when they recorded this "duet." Nevertheless, it was a brilliant move to have his ex add her vocals to this poignant number. Ray scores an emotional trifecta, wrapping three of his favorite themes -- Christmas, London, and long-lost love -- in one song.

2. I Told Santa Claus / Fats Domino 
From Christmas Is A Special Day (1993)
Mmm, this laidback boogie-woogie is one of my favorite Christmas classics. Fats has one request for the Man In Red -- he wants his baby to marry him. Yessiree -- "We'll have a boy for you / And a ten-pound girl for me," he croons happily. Was life ever this simple? Listening to Fats, you believe it could be.

3. "We Call It Christmas" / Keb' Mo'
From Christmas Calling (2003 various artists compilation)
I love it when Keb' gets his social conscience going, putting the blues on a back burner and reaching into his gospel/protest folk bag. Just listen to him testify about the power of the holiday season -- "It's bringing out the very best in all of us."  Amen, brother!

4. "Merry Christmas Baby" / The Beach Boys
From Christmas With the Beach Boys(1991 re-issue)
Man, did the Wilson brothers love holiday numbers -- maybe it's that seasonal Southern California yearning for snowy climes.  I've got their whole Christmas album in my iTunes, and I can never get enough of it.  Here Mike Love pleading with his ex to make up in time for Christmas -- like "Help Me Rhonda" with a wreath and spray-on snow.

5. "Merry Christmas, Baby" / Charles Brown and Bonnie Raitt
From A Very Special Christmas (2003 various artists compilation)
An entirely different song, Charles Brown's stellar contribution to the contemporary Christmas catalog.  Could this song be any sexier? Here's my original post...

6. "Christmas for Cowboys" / Jars of Clay
From Maybe This Christmas Tree (2003 various artists compilation)
A John Denver song, I think, but I love the way Jars of Clay earnestly lope their way through it.  These guys pretty much own the Christian alt-country niche as far as I'm concerned, and they never let it go corny. 

7. "Valley Winter Song" / Fountains of Wayne
From Welcome Interstate Managers (2005)
Wouldn't you know that FoW -- our great troubadors of suburban pop culture -- would have a Christmas song or two up their sleeves.? Okay, technically not a Christmas song (for that, you'd have to go to their "I Want An Alien For Christmas", from Out-Of-State Plates), but this sweet little song shimmers like a fresh snowfall.

8. "Get Behind Me, Santa" / Sufjan Stevens
From Songs For Christmas (2005)
No surprise that the defiantly unconventional Sufjan would release a five-disc Christmas album, mostly featuring sincere arrangements of traditional carols. But then there's this insanely fun original tune, subject of my very first Christmas song blog.

9. "Sock It To Me Santa" / Marshall Crenshaw
From A Home for the Holidays (1997 various artists compilation)
Add Marshall to that list of artists who really love Christmas novelty tunes -- I've got several MC numbers on my playlist, courtesy of a bootleg disc of Crenshaw rarities.  Here he has some rockabilly fun with a Bob Seger tune, featuring the inimitable James Brown reference,"Christmas ain't gonna be a drag / Santa's got a brand new bag!"  Take my word for it, Marshall's version knocks Seger's down cold.

10. "Zat You, Santa Claus?" / Buster Poindexter and His Banshees of Blues
From How Cool is Christmas (2006 various artists compilation)
Gotta love Buster's infectiously fun take on the old Louis Armstrong classic. Buster (aka David Johansen, aka Sri Rama Lama Ding Dong) has no shame about being theatrical, which is exactly what this jump-jive number craves. Merry Christmas, Buster!

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops --

1. California Girls -- The Beach Boys
From Summer Days (And Summer Nights!) (1965)
I swear, a sea breeze just stirred my hair -- and is that sand between my toes? An instant trip to Southern California. When this first came out, I rankled at the line, "Those Midwest farmer's daughters really make me feel all right," but I longed to become a California girl myself. White Levis, Sun-In in my hair -- I tried everything. And then of course there's the Beatles' parody in the bridge of "Back in the USSR" -- "well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out ..."

2. "Lately I've Let Things Slide" -- Nick Lowe
From The Convincer (2001)
One reason I love the Shuffle: Nick Lowe suddenly appears when I least expect it -- and it hits me all over again why I love him so. "Smoking I once quit, now I've got one lit / I just fell back into it . . ." -- how succinctly he nails this lovelorn loser, sloping around his messy flat, laundry piling up in the corners, a carton of untouched takeaway spoiling on the table. God is in the details, both lyrics and music (those Nashville horns!).

3. "Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)" -- Lostprophets
From Liberation Transmission (2006)
Welsh indie rockers! Mostly this got onto my iPod because it is just so much damn fun to proclaim that staccato chorus at the top of your lungs: "Standing on the rooftops, everybody scream your heaaart out!" One of the rare tracks where a crunchy metallic tangle of guitar is totally necessary.

4. "No More, No Less" -- Collective Soul
From Dosage (1999)
My dear rock chick buddy Sharon loves this band, just loves 'em to death. I hear the hooks, I appreciate the soulful metal quality, but in the end, they just don't light my fire. Too much open passion for me, and not enough irony. Can't help it; I'm an irony junkie.

5. "Sister Madly" -- Crowded House
From Temple of Low Men (1988)
Irony -- like this. That great skippy pop rhythm sets off a tart little character study ("sister madly, stepping on my head!). Wonderful bebop piano solo too. Thank you thank you thank you Inaki for hepping me to this band -- I knew the singles, but there's so much more to discover.

6. "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" -- Dusty Springfield
From Dusty in Memphis (1969)
There's not a bad track on this album, is there? Dusty shows Bobbie Gentry how it's done. It matters not one whit that Dusty never lived in a shotgun shack at the edge of a cotton field; she never slept with the son of a preacher man either.

7. "Nightswimming" -- R.E.M.
From Automatic for the People (1992)
Ah, the mesmeric powers of Michael Stipe. The piano reels off endless arpeggios, strings and clarinet mourn, Stipe scats the same melodic phrase over and over -- and yet somehow I'm back in Indiana, in the dark of a summer night, brooding over boyfriends lost. Who knew R.E.M. had so much sweetness and melancholy in them?

8. "Take Off Your Uniform" -- John Hiatt
From Slug Line (1993)
In which Johnny H. langorously strips a coffee shop waitress and makes sorrowful, sympathetic love to her, in his best soulful yelp. A true man of the people. Why is this guy not bigger than Bruce Springsteen? Oh, I know the answer. . .

9. "One Thing" -- Neil Young
From This Note's For You (1988)
Possibly my favorite Neil Young album, his one brief shining jazz moment (that achingly beautiful guitar line!). Whatever was going on in Neil's life at the time, he proved beyond a doubt that he had intimate knowledge of the blues. "I think we're heading for a heartache / That's my suspicion / I think we're heading for a heartache / That's how I feel." The quaver in Neil's voice never worked better.

10. "Sound and Vision" -- David Bowie
From Low (1977)
Glam meets funk, all gussied up with synths -- yes, the experimental 80s were upon us, with Bowie and Brian Eno leading the way. This album is most memorable to me as the inspiration for Nick Lowe's own e-less EP titled Bowi. But you gotta love this disco-ready musical collage, with Bowie alternately growling and wailing disconnected phrases, like snatches of conversation overhead at a bar. Strung along that brilliant rhythm track, it's a song that begs to be danced to. With drugs.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 1-5

AND THE WINNER IS . . .

[ . . . drum roll, please!]

Well, I told you it would be subjective. These are not the top five singles of all time on Rolling Stones' list, or Mojo's list, or any other list put together by rock snobs or music pundits. I haven't jiggered it to showcase my favorite bands (look, no Kinks! no Nick Lowe!) or to make a political statement or to show off my superior taste. You'll notice I've already written about all of these songs -- BUT OF COURSE!! These are simply the five singles that knocked me hardest off my feet in the course of my life.

And yeah, they're all from the 1960s, because that was the decade that made me the music fan I am. Or more importantly, that made me the person I am. Which is really what the music's all about, isn't it?

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

1. "The Letter" / The Box Tops (1967)
I hear those knocking lead-in drum beats, and I am GONE. When all is said and done, the essence of rock and roll is nothing more or less than hormonal teenage cravings, and nobody has ever expressed that randy yearning better than an absurdly young Alex Chilton, fronting this seminal Memphis pop group.



2. "Happy Together" / The Turtles (1967)
They were hardly one-hit wonders, but even the Turtles never again hit such a sweet spot, a magical convergence of lilting melody, playful rhythms, and intimate vocals that will forever be the soundtrack of my eighth-grade nirvana.



3. "She's Not There" / The Zombies (1964)
The first 45 I ever owned -- if only my taste had always been this impeccable!



4. "If I Fell" / "And I Love Her" / The Beatles (1964)
Desperately in love with the Beatles -- okay, okay, in love with Paul McCartney, who was in 1964 the most beautiful man on the planet -- of course I had both of these tracks on the Hard Day's Night album, the first LP I ever owned. But I simply had to buy the single too, so smitten was I with this matched set of John/Paul declarations of love.

5. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" / "God Only Knows" / The Beach Boys (1966)
Honestly, I wasn't a Beach Boys fan, not really. And by 1966, I already had the Beatles to keep me warm -- what did I need with these clean-cut California boys in their squaresville striped shirts? But then they unleashed this pair of gloriously inventive tracks, back and front of one 7-inch vinyl masterpiece, and set a new gold standard for rock-pop brilliance.

And now, YOU tell ME -- what would your #1 be?

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 16-20

This high on the list, we should have nothing but Major Artists, right? Wrong. Beatles, yes, Beach Boys yes, but those other three? Well, this is MY list, and I'm happy to tell you why those three belong so near the top. For one thing, notice their distinctive intros -- you could easily name that tune in four beats or less. That may not be the only mark of a great single, but it's a pretty persuasive start.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

16. "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" / The Beatles (1967)
Hard to imagine that the Beatles captured this much genius on one seven-inch disc of plastic. Shrewdly, they marketed this as a double-A single -- there was the John side and there was the Paul side, and they were as different as could be.

17. "Good Vibrations" / The Beach Boys (1966)
This record was released the week I turned thirteen. You remember what it feels like to be thirteen: Everything inside you and around you is changing; you don't know who or why or where you are. And suddenly here was this song that totally captured that shape-shifting state of mind -- not only that, it made it seem mysterious, exciting, and cool. "Good Vibrations" is a truly astonishing track, a perfect little "pocket symphony." It starts out with Carl's sweet anxious tenor, soon joined by Brian's falsetto, on the ballad-like verse. (Any time a song starts out with Carl Wilson singing, you know I'll love it.) Then we switch into a more traditional Beach Boys sound for the chorus, Mike Love booming in his low voice, "I'm picking up good vibrations / She's givin' me excitation," while the others chant "um bop bop good vibrations" in their trademark close harmonies. But what is that whiny space-age sound floating over their voices? I had never heard a theremin before, but it was a genius move to throw it into the mix, adding an other-worldly dimension to this song about finding your soul mate. And just when you think you've got the pattern -- verse, chorus, verse, chorus -- after the second chorus the song suddenly transmogrifies, each "good good GOOD" rising in pitch and volume, chords shifting upward until it achieves lift-off. There's a jangly little interlude, a meteor shower of overlapping vocals, and at last we hit cruise altitude in the bridge, with a mellow organ and creamy call-and-response vocals -- "got to keep those good vibrations a-happening with her" -- all soft rock, L.A. style. But wait! Just when you least expect it, we break on through to the other side, with that magnificent wall of sound: "AAHHHHHHH!" Then we go into warp drive, tempo faster, chords shifting, voices crossing, drums jingling -- and finally burst into a new galaxy entirely, with a shimmering cascade of vocals in counterpoint, a rock madrigal, with nothing but a tambourine for accompaniment. By the time the theremin whizzes in again, like a rocketship to bear us away for the fadeout -- WHEW! I suppose you're gonna tell me now that the song was meant to replicate a drug trip, or the act of intercourse (that orgasmic AAHHHHHH!!). But what did I know at the time? I was only thirteen. And YET it spoke to me, in an ecstatic musical language all its own. It certainly wasn't the words ("She goes with me to a blossom world"?) Mike Love lyrics never did the trick for me. But who cares?

18. "I'm a Believer" / The Monkees (1966)
One day one of my older brother's friends -- maybe it was Skip Keene -- told me that the Monkees were fakes. "They don't even play their own instruments!" he sneered. I knew he was only saying it because he knew how much I loved Davy Jones. But still, it made me cry because I loved the Monkees, and I'm not afraid to admit it. (Click here for my "Last Train to Clarksville" squeal of fangirl devotion.) Glued to that television set every week, I knew all their songs, but like everyone else I was swept up in the triumphant success of "I'm a Believer" -- their great #1 hit, and the US's top-selling record for 1967 (click on the 1967 label to the right to see what other amazing songs it beat out). Take THAT you scoffers! Though the Monkees had only released their first album in September 1966 -- timed to coincide with the debut of their TV series -- they were such an instant hit that a second album was rushed out in December 1966. Compared to their carefully assembled first album The Monkees (a surprisingly fine LP), More of the Monkees was, er, kinda spotty. The Monkees themselves were so busy filming, music director Don Kirshner only had them drop by the studio to record vocals; the compelling guitar hook here was played by the song's composer, none other than Neil Diamond, and other session musicians did the rest. (I'd love to know who contributed that distinctive calliope organ riff.) Still, there were some excellent tracks on the LP -- not only this but also its B-side, "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" -- and it wasn't just Monkeemania that made this single a hit. It fairly bursts with youthful high spirits, and that toe-tapping beat is irresistible. One of the Monkees' first acts of rebellion was to override Kirshner's choice of Davy Jones as the band's main lead vocalist; listening to this, even I have to admit that Mickey Dolenz was the right man for the job. There's something boyish and tentative about his voice at first, as he recounts, "I thought love was only true in fairy tales / Meant for someone else but not for me." But he gathers intensity in the chorus, declaring, "Then I saw her face / Now I'm a believer! / Not a trace / Of doubt in my mind." He's a convert, testifying and bearing witness for all he's worth, building to a groan of slaked lust: "I'm in love, Ummmmm! / I'm a believer, I couldn't leave her / If I tried." As the song spun off in its own orbit with the fadeout, Mickey scatting away, we legions of Monkee fans were like the children of Hamelin town -- ready to follow that pied piper anywhere.

19. "Dancing Queen" / ABBA (1976)
I defy ye, rock snobs! (Yes even you, Ray Davies, making fun of ABBA at your concert last Saturday night. . . what have you got against Sweden these days?) I refuse to apologize for loving ABBA. At the height of ABBA's fame, I was living in the UK, and although I had missed the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, when "Waterloo" swept the top prize, most of my English friends were confirmed ABBA addicts, and I quickly caught the bug. In 1976 this hit single was an absolutely essential part of every night out at the disco. When I say disco, I don't mean Studio 54 -- I mean some drafty little community centre in a small town on the Kent coast, with watery drinks and a dodgy PA system and warps in the lino floor. But when "Dancing Queen" came on, a cry would go up, and the dance floor filled in an instant. You immediately know it's "Dancing Queen" from that long downward keyboard glissando, followed by a sheer wall of ahhh'ed vocals and synthesizers -- production values to the max -- punctuated with Liberace-style hammered piano chords. Then in swoop the girls, wasting no time; they START with that frantically emotive chorus: "Yooo-OU can dance, yooo-OU can ji-ive / Having the time of your life / See that girl, watch that scene / Digging the dancing queen." The mix of Agnetha and Frida's voices always sends a shiver up my spine, and recently I learned why: Their voices were recorded at slightly different speeds, then one was sped up, to create a whisper of dissonance when they were played together. That gives their doubled vocals a hard edge, and a melancholy that always seems to me to be peculiarly Scandinavian. Gently rocking verses set the nightclub scene (memorable phrases: "Friday night and the lights are low . . . Anybody could be that guy / Night is young and the music's [beat] hi-igh. . .") -- just a beguiling hint of scuzziness. Then it's back to the chorus to celebrate our heroine: "Dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen (ahh ooooh) / Dancing queen, feel the beat of the tambourine (yea-ahh)." (Do I hear an echo of the Beatles in that "only seventeen" line?) The whole thing dances on the cusp of moral ambiguity, innocence and depravity held in the balance. Is the "queen" a woman, a drag queen, or the female monarch of Sweden? IRRELEVANT, I tell you! It's all about that crisp, taut dance beat, and how it can take over your cerebral cortex for three minutes and 52 seconds. (Check out this link to the invaluable Songfacts site to sample critical opinion.) If you can sit in your chair while this thing's playing, I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU.

20. "96 Tears" / ? and the Mysterians (1966)
Now THIS is what I think of when I think of a radio hit classic -- 2:57 of swampy fun, with an organ riff you cannot get out of your head.