C Is For...

Songs A to Z

My 26-day challenge to myself -- write about a different band every day, working from A to Z. And lest we get stuck in the 80s...

Commander Cody & 
His Lost Planet Airmen / 
"Wine Do Yer Stuff"

Mea culpa, mea culpa. I didn't know about these guys in 1971, when this track was released on their debut LP Lost in the Ozone.  The best I can figure out is that, even though they'd started at the University of Michigan in 1967 or so, they'd moved to San Francisco by the time they landed this recording contract. Just as I was migrating from the Midwest to the East Coast, they headed in the other direction and established themselves as a West Coast band. Which, in those pre-Internet days, meant it was easy to miss them altogether.

But even if it wasn't actually in my dorm room vinyl collection, spinning on my trusty pack-n-play turntable, this one brings back college days quite nicely all the same.

I will admit, as a kid I hated country music (I was probably forced to watch Midwestern Hayride a few too many times), but the genius of this band was to ramp up the twang, ditch the slickness, and replace cornball humor with stoner humor.  (I can't imagine Chet Atkins ever singing a song like "Down to Seeds and Stems Again.") I guess if they'd been willing to dumb it down, they could have gone the soft country-rock route of the Eagles.  Respect must be paid to them for never selling out like that.

What I love about their stuff is that the musicianship is so topnotch. There's that witty roadhouse boogie-woogie piano, played by the Commander himself, George Frayne; the counterpointed pedal steel (Steve Davis) and lead guitar (the inestimable rockbilly guitarist Bill Kirchen); and especially on this track, the nimble fiddle of the brilliant Andy Stein (who years later I'd meet in a New York City playground while our kids played together, who modestly told me "I'm a musician" without ever 'fessing up to just what a musician he is*).

True, that opening line is vintage George Jones lament, right down to the pregnant pauses: "Today was the last day / You played me for a fool / So I stopped in here like I always do /Before I lose my cool."

But things drift into irony mode as he woefully continues, in a hangdog voice: "Now the color of this warm red wine / Is the color of her hair / And as I stare into my glass / I see her face in there." Forgive me my English major tendencies, but he has now descended into what we call bathos -- mixed metaphors and all that stuff.  And so we're allowed to distance ourselves; he becomes a character, a meme, and we notice he's getting sloppy in his cups.

We can distance ourselves, AND AT THE SAME TIME kick back and enjoy the buzz. Feel free to chime in ever more raucously on the chorus, "Wine, wine, wine / Do yer stuff."

We can be dumb and smart at the same time. And high. Low culture, high culture.

Noam Chomsky would approve.

* More recently Andy's been playing with Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion house band, which is no mean notch on the resume. 

52 GIRLS

Two Shelleys:
A Nick Lowe Two-Fer

"Shelley My Love" / Nick Lowe

This track, from Nick's great 1994 album The Impossible Bird, is a perpetual mystery to me. On a album full of heartbreak gems like "The Beast In Me," "Where's My Everything?," "Lover Don't Go," and "I Live On a Battlefield," how does this one song of perfect love and harmony fit in? Frankly, it's not one of my favorite Nick Lowe songs, and not only because I wish he were singing it with my name instead.

You see, one of the things I most love about Nick Lowe is his clever storytelling lyrics, and those seem to have deserted him here. I tell myself it's all part of the song's scenario -- he's inarticulate, resorting to clichés, because he's so much in love, safe within the cocoon of simple happiness. But there's no room in there for me. 

Not only is there no story, we don't even learn much about this Shelley person (honest, I'm not jealous, I swear). All we see is her effect upon him. As soon as she calls his name, he's "all aflame," and "a passion fills my very soul." Now, I know we humans tend to fall back upon poetic clichés when we're in the grip of strong emotion. But I expect more of Nick Lowe.

Okay, there is some creative songwriting structure -- he picks up the second couplet of his first verse and repeats it as the first couplet of the second verse, adding two new lines about how extra-terrestrial and "supernatural" this love is. But that's hardly a villanelle, and again, it's all about his feelings, nothing about the girl who inspires them.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it allows one to imagine that one is oneself the girl Nick is singing to/about. (See, I AM trying here.) That slow two-step tempo is so relaxing, the melody wistful and beautiful as it caresses her name then soars upward. The arrangement is understated and perfect, with just a soft guitar, brushed drums, an exhalation of organ. Nick's singing is exquisitely tender and earnest (though even better is Rod Stewart's surprisingly effective cover version -- who knew?)

I should love it. What's wrong with this picture?

"Shelly's Winter Love" / Nick Lowe, Paul Carrack, and Bill Kirchen

Ah, now this is more like it.

On his 2010 album Word to the Wise, guitar god Bill Kirchen (a.k.a. "Titan of the Telecaster") offers a treasure trove of collaborations. I happen to like Kirchen's singing, but I'll forgive him for tapping ringers when the vocal guest list includes Elvis Costello, Maria Muldaur, Dan Hicks, and these two guys.

There's always a twang in Bill Kirchen's dieselbilly sound, and Nick Lowe needs little encouragement to turn country crooner. Paul Carrack may have played with everyone from Roxy Music to Squeeze to Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band, but after all, he was part of Nick Lowe's Cowboy Outfit in the 1980s. So when these three get together, why not cover a country gem?

And what better than this track from Merle Haggard's 1971 mega-hit LP Hag? It's a fair bet that Bill Kirchen (then in Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) and Nick (then in Brinsley Schwarz) listened to Hag when it came out. (Could Nick even have been remembering it 20-some years later when he wrote "Shelley My Love"?) They sing this with all the fondness of a long-familiar song.

In this song, powerful love doesn't render the singer speechless; what it does do is fool him into accepting a less-than-ideal situation. "I know I'm only Shelly's winter love / She only seems to need me now and then. / I know I'm only Shelly's winter love / But she's mine alone till springtime comes again." Apparently a little bit of Shelley is worth the frustration, and he's making the most of the time he does have with her. That easy-ticking tempo is anything but mournful, and both Nick and Paul -- who trade lead vocals -- instinctively revert to the Haggard yodel on that brief triumphant boast "she's mine alone."

So is Shelley a fickle slut? Loyal to the core, that's not how he sees it. She leaves in the spring, it's true, but only when outside forces tempt her -- "When those friends of hers start callin' her from town." (In country terms, "town" is an evil force; in verse two it's her "painted world.") She's just a free spirit, country-music-style. But our hero waits patiently for "Shelly's winter season / When her troubled moments bring her back around." It's not just about the calendar, but the seasons of the heart. It's a weird kind of schadenfreude -- he's secretly happy when she's unhappy, because it drives her back to him.       

 

And who wouldn't return to such a faithful, understanding lover? "These arms of mine she knows are always waiting" -- how comforting that sounds. Yet he's no fool -- he's fully aware, in the second verse's last line, that "she'll leave when love has thawed the winter ground." 

 

I'm bursting with questions about this scenario. Is Shelly just using him? Will there be a day when she stops coming back? Will he finally get fed up? Will she finally realize he's the best thing that ever happened to her?  We'll never know, of course. But for four minutes or so, I'm living in the push-and-pull of their relationship, and registering every break of the singer's voice, every plangent guitar riff and piano fill.

 

That's a song that works.

23 DOWN, 29 TO GO

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Well, here we are again. Or rather, here you are again, since I am somewhere else, remotely blogging from some rocky New England beach. (Lobster dinner, anyone?) But so long as I don't get my iPod waterlogged...

1. "The Colour of Your Eyes" / Dusty Springfield
From Dusty . . . Definitely (1968)
Written by Dusty's partner Norma Tanega, this shimmering tone poem may not rank up there with Dusty's great soul numbers, but for pure late 60s schmaltz -- turn on the strings! hear that quivering flute! -- it's pretty darn lovely.

2. "Be My Love" / Geraint Watkins
From Dial W for Watkins (2004)
Maybe I first discovered this guy's work because he plays keyboards for Nick Lowe. So what? That's Watkins' dilemma --he's so in demand as a session man, somehow he never got around to the solo career he deserves. "Come on, little darlin' / Be my love" -- Geraint trips pleadingly down the scale, dropping into a throaty coax. There's just a whiff of zydeco in the rhythm, and a touch of twang in the chugging chorus -- pitch-perfect Americana, served up by a Brit.

3. "I Want to Break Free" / Queen
From The Works (1984)
Of course I listen to Queen -- what are you, some kind of rock snob? I love the over-the-top drama, Freddie Mercury's histrionic vocals, the synthesizers, even the arena-rock guitars. (Only when Queen is doing it, that is -- they're just having so much fun.)

4. "Pieces of What" / MGMT
From Oracular Spectacular (2007)
Reverbs, synths, the whole electronica package, mixed up with yelping vocals that sound just amateur enough to make this endearing. In fact, I sometimes mistake this for a Minus 5 song when it first comes up -- that's how loose and genial it is. I enjoyed this debut album so much more than I expected.

5. "Wine Do Yer Stuff" / Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
From Lost in the Ozone (1971)
Why, oh why, oh why didn't I discover these guys back in the 70s? I would have had SO much fun listening to this in college. Laidback country-rock, topped off with a little psychedelic druggie culture -- Americana begins here.

6. "Solar Sex Panel" / Little Village
From Little Village (1990)
I amuse myself, when listening to Little Village tracks, by imagining which one of the talents in this all-star project contributed what. The piled-on puns have to be Nick Lowe, but I'm betting John Hiatt was right there, throwing in all those car puns. Yes, it's ultimately a stupid song, hardly worthy of their talents. But Hiatt sings it as if it mattered.

7. "Six-Fingered Man" / Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint
From The River In Reverse (2006)
Elvis gets funky -- as who wouldn't, with Allen Toussaint sitting over there at the piano, tossing off those elegant little riffs? It's a wonderful swampy stew.

8. "I Think We're Alone Now" / Tommy James and the Shondells
From I Think We're Alone Now (1967)
THE perfect groping teen make-out song.

9. "Ten Girls Ago" / Graham Parker
From Struck By Lightning (1991)
Resurrecting a perky New Wave beat, my (new) idol Graham Parker trotted out this endearing track on Struck By Lightning, one of the best albums I've ever heard. He's not slamming that old romance, more poking fun at himself (and grateful that now he's in a better place). The sound, though, takes me back to my own crazy 80s. "It was just a crazy thing / Flying an airplane made of string / Sweet pain of a needle's sting / Ten girls ago...."

10. "Woman In a Bar" / Lloyd Cole
From Antidepressant (2007)
Here you go, Uncle E -- I am listening to Lloyd Cole. And I like it. Witty, articulate lyrics and a sweetly rocking beat.

"What's the Matter Now?" / Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen

Being in a bluegrass mood got me to listening to Bill Kirchen again, which sooner or later was bound to get me pulling out the classic album Lost in the Ozone, by Commander Cody. It's snowing outside but this tasty bit of vintage ham-and-grits warms me up just fine.

Now, I have to make one big embarrassing admission: For years I got Commander Cody and Captain Beefheart mixed up. I remember albums by both of them in the guys' record collections I'd thumb through in college, but I can't recall anybody ever actually playing them. It never seemed important to me to learn the difference.

Well, I was wrong. I've listened to Captain Beefheart now and it just doesn't do it for me (please, somebody, explain what I'm missing). But I completely dig this Commander Cody stuff, with all its honky-tonk piano and country twang geetar and deadpan humor. These guys deliver the same sort of fun as the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks, only less esoteric and arty; they're like all those British pub rockers I love, but much more lazy and laidback.

There isn't any "message" in a song like "What's The Matter Now?" -- nothing but a leisurely rhythmic stroll that leads us from one solo to another ; some twiddling on a tinny piano, a shuffling steel guitar, a meandering fiddle solo, and a loping bass. The singer wanders in from time to time to scratch his head and wonders what his woman's up to, singing in a woeful, baffled voice, "What's the matt-errrr now? / What's the matt-errr now? / Well I haven't seen my baby since way last spring / Tell me pretty mama did you bring that thing? / I want some honey from that honeycomb (gimme!) / Tell me what's the matter now."

This guy is so clueless. His wants are simple: he hasn't seen her in ages, he wants some love, and he just can't fathom why she has to make it so complicated. That classic honeycomb metaphor is just graphic enough to make me snort. MEN! If he really thinks he can just walk in, probably without washing his hands or nothing, and get a piece of that action -- well, buddy, you got another think coming.

It's like Nick Lowe* sings in "People Change," "Storybook love, meant for each other / And now she treats you like a brother / And you don't know what you've done / Or even how to make it right." I'll side with the ladies here; men can be so dense sometimes. If I have to tell you what's wrong, then what's the point?

Of course this track is really all about those loose-limbed, easygoing solos; the singer can moan and complain all he wants, those playful instrumentals make sure we don't take him one bit seriously. Every once in awhile somebody hoots in the background, just to keep the roadhouse vibe going, and eventually a slightly offkey barroom chorus harmonizes in sympathy. Sure, there's the old war between the sexes, but hell, sugar, have another beer and it'll be all right.

What's the Matter Now? sample

* You knew I'd bring him in eventually.