H Is For...

My challenge to myself: write about 26 different artists, A to Z, in 26 days. (Well, maybe not consecutive days...)

Hall & Oates / 
"I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)"

Of course it was always Hall for me, rather than Oates -- and I know I wasn't the only music fan who harbored a crush on Daryl, judging from how the camera dwelled on his tall rangy figure and blond shag in the 1980s videos that made these guys stars. But honestly, it was his voice that did it for me, not his good looks. Really, really, I swear.

I'd been a fan since the early 1970s -- and now I had to suck it up and watch Daryl and John hit the big time with a new sound that ran perilously close to disco. Yet those scatting, soulful vocals kept Hall & Oates from being dragged under by the layers of synths and glossy production values of the times.

Let me do you a favor and post something besides the original official video, just so you won't be distracted by all the backlighting and dry-ice mists and big-shouldered suits that stamp this 1981 hit as a sign of its times.

 
Given the soft-focus R&B sweetness of H&O's earlier stuff -- songs like "When the Morning Comes," "She's Gone," and "Sara Smile" -- the 80s stuff had a lot more edge. ("Maneater." anyone?) This song, too, is not all that flattering to women, with lines like "You've got the body / Now you want the soul." But now I'm thinking that this push-pull may have been what made it interesting.

The brooding intro runs for nearly a full minute, mostly pugnacious drums, overlaid with ripples of minor-key descending keyboard riffs. Anxious tension runs through the verses, with their jerky rhythm and tinny vocal reverb: "Easy, ready, willing, overtime / Where does it stop? / Where do you dare me / To draw the line?" This is clearly a man who's getting tired of making nice.

But then it blooms into lush soulfulness for the bridge -- "I, I-I, I'll do anything / That you want me to do, / Yeah I, I-I,  I'll do most anything ' That you want me to, ooh, yeah." Hall's supple vocals caress the long legato phrases, swooping around them, stroking the vowels. We're in happy major key territory, with the background singers chiming in, scattering rose petals in his path. He's in full-on Lover Boy mode.

And then he turns on a dime. "But I can't go for that, / Nooo, / No can do / I can't go for that, / Nooo, / No can do."  That refrain's staccato words are spit out with venom; the tempo is like a wagging finger. And of course, the mind boggles: What is it she wants him to do that's so beyond the pale?

It could be anything, of course.  Going to dinner's at her folks' house; taking her shopping; having a baby; signing a pre-nup.  Yet the song's slinky, sexy underpinnings trip me up, making me picture other kinds of requests indeed. Dirty deeds. Kinky things. It's completely against my nature, but there it is.

It's a cryptic song, after all, and unsettling.  It almost doesn't hang together, the melting "I'll do anythings" pitted against those scolding "No can do's.** But something about the jam just jells.

And then, of course, the musicians themselves puncture the balloon by telling interviewers that it's not about a couple at all, but about the music business -- how they're willing to cooperate with their label, touring, doing press (appearing in back-lit videos with dry-ice smoke) -- but only up to a point. No matter how hungry they are for stardom (and I'm betting these guys were hungry as hell for it), there were certain things they wouldn't do.

Well, that clears up that mystery.  But I think I liked the song better when I thought it was about a girl.

In fact, I loved the song when I thought it was about a girl -- so I'm just going to go on hearing it that way.

BONUS: Here's a link to an episode of Daryl's House, where Cee Lo Green joins the band for an extra funky version of this song. Love how Daryl and Cee Lo keep raising the bar for each other, verse after verse.

**This song alone thrust "no can do" -- originally an obscure (and racist) phrase of pidgin Chinese -- into common usage. Who knew?

52 GIRLS

"Sara Smile" /
Hall & Oates

I'll admit it: I have a fangirl crush on Daryl Hall. Had one in the 80s, still have one today. One of the great things about cable TV for me is that I can watch music jams on Daryl's House on VH1 and soon will be able to watch Daryl renovating his Sherman, CT, house on his new DIY series Daryl's Restoration Over-Hall. (And to think we were renting in Sherman only a few years ago...)

So in 1976, having already been a fan of Hall & Oates ever since their folk-tinged debut LP Whole Oats, I felt very ambiguous about "Sara Smile." On the one hand, yay, it finally broke Hall & Oates through to chart success (leading to a run of hits in the 80s, as Daryl and John married their native Philly soul to the 1980s disco-and-MTV formula). But on the other hand -- was my beloved Daryl two-timing me?

Well . . . yeah.

I'm just going to have to bite the bullet on this one. It's so clear that this is a man besotted. There was a real Sara: Sara Allen, Daryl's main squeeze for many years, who co-wrote songs with him as well as being his muse. Listening to this song, I cannot deny that this was a relationship that worked.  Every beat of this song tells you that.

With the wonder of love, he describes her, in a hip-shifting tempo that goes right to the core: "Baby hair / With a woman's eyes / I can feel you watching in the night / All alone with me and we're / Waiting for the sunlight." Unh-hunh. If they're watching the sunrise, it's because they spent the night together -- having sex, of course. But what sets this song apart from so many "doing it tonight" pop songs is that they've already "done it"; that languorous tempo is all about feeling satiated and satisfied. And he's in no hurry to leave -- he's happy to lie there, drowsily, having a cuddle. Guys, I gotta tell you, this is what ladies find sexy.    

One line jumps out at me: "All alone with me" -- there's pride of possession there, and amazement that he won this particular lottery. That has to make a girl feel good. You'd think that a guy as impossibly good-looking as tall, blond Daryl Hall would be an egomaniac, but I've never gotten that impression of him. (Another thing we ladies find sexy.)   

In the chorus, he stirs himself from the caressing phrase "Sara, smile" to hop (effortlessly, of course) into his upper register, scatting happily, as the soul/gospel/jazz protocol demands. It's as if his heart is bursting with joy.

The soulful tempo is one thing; then there's the oozy chord changes, from minor to major, sevenths and tonics, never quite resolving at the ends of lines. (You do need a pitch-perfect singer like Daryl to make this song work.) It's drowsy, a little aimless, ebbing and flowing -- and intentionally so. Because this isn't a storytelling song with a beginning, middle, and end, with tension and suspense and a crisis to resolve. It's about two lovers catching a moment of glorious equipoise, simple happiness.

Oh, there's change all around them -- in the first verse, night changing into day, in the second verse Sara's restless need to go. (A little 1976 feminism, and why not? I love that he's intrigued by her independent spirit.) We're aware of changes in the offing, aware that this relaxed moment in each other's arms can't last. But that just makes it feel all the more precious.

One nice touch: In the first verse he marvels, "When I feel cold you warm me / And when I feel I can't go on, / You come and hold me." (Love how the melody rises, anxiously, on that "feel I can't go on.")  But notice how he switches pronouns in the second verse, promising now to warm her, hold her, be the supporting actor if she needs it. Maybe that's a pop sleight-of-hand; I don't know. But I love it as an acceptance of the quid-pro-quo of love.

At the end of every verse, he carves their initials in this pop-song tree: "It's you and me forever, ahh aaahhhh." Unfortunately Daryl and Sara are not still together -- except they are, eternally, in this song.

And when I listen to it, I'm happy that someone made Daryl this happy. Though seriously, D? Now that Sara's out of the picture . . . .

5 DOWN, 47 TO GO

Crash and Burn / Daryl Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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