Happy St. Paddy's from Dexys Midnight Runners

Yes, those Dexys Midnight Runners, and don't pretend you didn't love their big 1982 hit "Come On Eileen." Just in case you were on another planet when this single hit the airwaves, here's my previous post on that beloved hit. 

Dexys Midnight Runners generally get clocked as a one-hit band. But just listen to this track, the first single released from Dexys 1982 album Too-Rye-Ay (and the album's first track). What's sad is that I've never heard it before, and it's actually every bit as catchy and delightful as "Come On Eileen."

Everyone's having fun here, the scrappy vibe propels it forward (those spiky fiddles playing like a soul band's horn section), and there's a riff I can't get out of my head. 

We could be listening to the Dubliners and the Chieftans singing the auld tunes on St. Patrick's Day or we could be having a rare bit o' fun with Kevin Rowland (aka Dexy). I know which side of the soda bread I'm slathering my Kerrygold butter on.

52 GIRLS

"Come On Eileen" / Dexy's Midnight Runners

It was just this side of a novelty number. But why shouldn't an Irish rock song have the peculiar sound of Ireland? 

It's no accident that "Come On Eileen" lasted for 11 weeks as #1 on the Irish charts; it did pretty well this side of the ocean, too, aided considerably by MTV exposure. (Yes, children, there was a time when MTV was indispensable to music marketing.) I loved this song even before I saw the video, but the video sealed the deal -- a grainy black-and-white beauty directed by Julian Temple, with Dexy and Eileen wandering around gritty urban streets in sleeveless tanks and loose denim overalls.

But this was more than a novelty song. Just listen to all the clever musical surprises in the intro. That sappy Celtic folk fiddle opening ("Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms"!!) switches in a heartbeat to a chugging rock & roll jig that was yet somehow ska-flavored -- strange and wonderful. "C'mon Eye-leen!" Dexy yelps in the background, Irish pronunciation firmly to the fore.

In verse one, Dexy invokes the spirit of "Poor old Johnny Ray," whose music spoke to an earlier generation -- but how can modern kids relate to those elders, as he later describes them with their "beaten-down eyes / Sunk in smoke-dried faces, they're so resigned to what their fate is"? He needs a new untarnished sound, something for his generation, and thank god New Wave music had expanded the available vocabulary. That old "too-ra-loora-loora" sentimental Irish folk song is recycled for this edgy younger generation, Dexy and his mates working their way up a scale singing "Too-ra-loo-rye-ay," bursting into a wail of frustration at the top of the scale.

Naturally he's got an ulterior motive -- he wants Eileen to shrug off those old Catholic morals and sleep with him. ("At this moment / You mean everything," he pants in the chorus; "With you in that dress / My thoughts I confess / Verge on dirty.")  Well, he's a Catholic boy himself, and he clearly feels a frisson of sin, as his back-up mates chime in on the end of phrases, egging him on. Chorus after chorus, he fixates on that dress of hers -- red, as we later learn, the color of wickedness and temptation -- and all he can think of is getting her out of it. He's rejecting the old folks' morality just as he's rejecting their music -- oldest story in the book.

But, resourceful lad, he's pulling out every trick he can think of. Keys change, tempos change; the syncopated jig gives way to a march, and then it crashes to a halt for that bridge -- "Come on [beat] / Eileen, too-rah-ay!" begun as a lumbering chant, then accelerating, getting away from him, until it goes into absolute frenzy. "At this moment / You mean everything to me" he repeats, with more emphasis on the "moment" -- he knows it's all about today's desire. Who's to say how he'll feel tomorrow?

So where does Eileen stand in all this? She did, after all, choose to wear that red dress -- she must have known it would drive these nice Irish boys mad. I'm hoping Eileen is on the same page of desire as Dexy -- that would be changing the old story into something for modern Ireland.

I guess I wasn't surprised that we never heard of Dexy's Midnight Runners again -- what were the odds they'd catch this kind of lightning in a bottle twice?

13 DOWN, 39 TO GO

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 71-75

I realize that most of these are "transition" songs -- singles that crept into my heart during down times when my big music manias (British Invasion, New Wave) had spent themselves. Indianapolis was more of a Motown city than you might expect, so it was inevitable that some soul classics would land here, as much a part of my musical DNA as the British beat stuff is. Jump from there to the 1980s to find an oddball pair of MTV-enhanced songs, among the last singles I ever owned in the Decade That Killed Rock Music.

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

71. "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" / Bill Withers (1971)
By 1971, Motown fare already felt too slick -- R&B and rock were moving closer and closer to each other, and they didn't need to be kept in separate boxes anymore. When I hear Bill Withers' debut hit, though, it still feels like a real sea change to me. I was a senior in high school, a founding member of our school's crunchy-granola Human Relations Forum; we thrilled to this song, believing that Sam Cooke's longed-for change was finally gonna come. Withers' voice had a creased and weathered quality so different from the mellifluencies of Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson; this song was produced by Stax mainstay Booker T (released on Sussex Records), but the personnel also included rockers like Steven Stills on guitar and Jim Keltner on drums. Even more important, "Ain't No Sunshine" had a restless, provocative bite -- those morose verses, with their glum plodding bassline (Donald "Duck" Dunn?) and repeated melody -- "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone / It's not warm when she's away / Ain't no sunshine when she's gone / And she's always gone too long, anytime she goes away." Who knows why she's away -- a quarrel? infidelity? or is she just a free spirit? He's so down in the dumps (hear the grief-stricken swell of those minor-key strings), he can't even tell us. And of course, the best part: "Well I know I know I know I know I know" repeated 27 times, sung with shifting syncopation on one loooooong breath that finally peters into a croak. We just had to sing along with the "I knows," every time, it was so damn cathartic. Apparently Withers -- who when he recorded this still had a day job in a toilet-seat factory -- sang it this way in the studio as a placekeeper, intending to write a "proper" chorus, Holland-Dozier-Holland-style. Thank god Booker T was there to stop him.

72. "Standing in the Shadows of Love" / The Four Tops (1966)
The Temptations may have been Motown's most reliable hitmakers, but I'm sorry, in a smackdown between the Temptations and the Four Tops, I'd always choose the Four Tops.

73. "Tears Of A Clown" / Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1970)
(No, not "Death of a Clown" -- sorry, Dave Davies fans.)
So why "Tears of a Clown" and not "Tracks of My Tears" -- Smokey Robinson's 1965 mega-hit, one of the greatest soul recordings ever made? I really struggled with this one. Frankly, in my mind the two songs always run together -- "Tracks of My Tears" has basically the same theme (that great line "my smile is my make-up I wear since my break-up with you"). In fact this was originally conceived as a follow-up to "Tracks of My Tears," taking that laughing/crying dichotomy one step further -- working that clown imagery, even throwing in some strains of circus calliope and a reference to Pagliacci (for those few Motown fans who also listened to grand opera?). But while "Tracks" may be slower and more earnest, "Tears of a Clown" seems way more poignant to me. I was won over by that winsome melody, courtesy of co-writer Stevie Wonder (the only Motown artist I loved more than Smokey Robinson); it's perfect for Smokey's high breathy voice. "Now if there's a smile on my face / It's only there trying to fool the public / But when it comes down to fooling you / Now honey that's quite a different subject" (that "public/subject" rhyme kills me). Brisk and perky as the song seems, there's just enough creepy desperation in the arrangement -- listen to those shrill piccolos competing with a lagging bassoon -- because, I dunno, what's creepier and more haunting than a sad clown? I can just imagine this guy dancing as fast as he can, juggling all his balls in the air, even as his heart is breaking. I'll admit that "Track of My Tears" has been forever tainted for me by Linda Ronstadt's cover. But ultimately, as with so many songs on this list, it's all a question of timing. When "Tracks of My Tears" came out, I was lost in a British Invasion fog, but by 1970 my ears thirsted for Motown again. And of course, a year later Motown would leave Detroit and the whole soul thing would split wide open...

74. "Come On Eileen" / Dexy's Midnight Runners (1982)
Just listen to all the surprises in this song. That sappy Celtic folk fiddle opening ("Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms"!!), switching in a heartbeat to a chugging rock & roll jig that was yet somehow ska-flavored -- strange and wonderful. "C'mon Eye-leen!" Dexy yelps in the background -- love the Irish pronunciation -- and then he and his mates work their way up a scale singing "Too-ra-loo-rye-ay." It was just this side of a novelty number. But why shouldn't an Irish rock song sound like it came from Ireland? (It's no accident it lasted for 11 weeks as #1 on the Irish charts.) Dexy invokes the spirit of "Poor old Johnny Ray," whose music spoke to an earlier generation -- but how can modern kids relate to those elders, with their "beaten-down eyes / Sunk in smoke-dried faces, they're so resigned to what their fate is." He needs a new untarnished sound, something for his generation, and thank god New Wave music had expanded the available vocabulary. Naturally he's got an ulterior motive -- he wants Eileen to shrug off those old Catholic morals and sleep with him. ("At this moment / You mean everything," he pants; "With you in that dress / My thoughts I confess / Verge on dirty.") He's pulling out every trick he can think of. Keys change, tempos change; the syncopated jig gives way to a march, and then it crashes to a halt for that bridge -- "Come on [beat] / Eileen, too-rah-ay!" begun as a lumbering chant, then accelerating into absolute frenzy. I loved this song even before I saw the video, but the video sealed the deal -- a grainy black-and-white beauty directed by Julian Temple, with Dexy and Eileen wandering around gritty urban streets in sleeveless tanks and loose denim overalls. I guess I wasn't surprised that we never heard of Dexy's Midnight Runners again -- what were the odds they'd catch lightning in a bottle twice?

75. "Wrap It Up" / The Fabulous Thunderbirds (1986)
Kim and Jimmie helped me get through 1987 -- the year we lived through major apartment renovation with a colicky newborn baby. I'm sure our neighbors hated this song, though; we played it often, and loud.