A Veterans Day Eve Shuffle

[that has nothing to do with Veteran's Day...]

TIP: Click on the title to see a video of the song, if there is one.

1. "Tell Me More and More and Then Some" / Nina Simone
From Pastel Blues (1965)
Lordy, lordy, lordy. That husky contralto with just a quaver of emotion -- that languid tempo, the growly piano and persistent counterpoint of harmonica -- I don't know the Billie Holliday original but I can't imagine she captured the raw sexual longing of this song any better than this.  

2. "Modern Love" / David Bowie
From Let's Dance (1983)
Ah. One of the classics, as I rhapsodize here.

3. "We Were Both Wrong" / Dave Edmunds
From Repeat When Necessary (1979)
Dave Edmunds and his back-up band Rockpile charge through this number by guitarist Billy Bremner (credited to his pseudonym Billy Murray) with their characteristic finger-snapping sexiness, all straight-legged jeans and a cigarette pack in the rolled-up shirtsleeves. How, when all the other kids on the block were going all jangly and New-Wave-y, did Dave E convince his pals to commit so totally to rockabilly? That swaggering retro guitar intro sounds so Nashville, it's amazing it came out of London.

4. "One (Blake's Got A New Face)" / Vampire Weekend
From Vampire Weekend (2008)
Mmm-hmn.  Now, that I mention it, there's something jangly and New Wave-y about this song, 30 years later though it may be. Stitching together musical styles in a world-music montage, this song weaves a cryptic spell.  But mostly I love how Ezra Koenig yelps "Blake!" in the hypnotic refrain. Sometimes that's all it takes.

5. "Working in a Coal Mine" / Lee Dorsey
From The New Lee Dorsey, 1966
And here's another yelp that makes the song. It's that hooky refrain, the monotonous "working in a coal mine, / going down down down / working in a coal mine / Whoop! about to slip down" that's forever branded on my musical memory. Dig the sound effect of pick axes hitting metal, too. Written by Allen Toussaint, memorably covered by Devo -- it's one of the great pop songs about physical labor, a worthy companion to Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang."

6. "Shoplifters of the World Unite" / The Smiths
From Louder Than Bombs (1987)
No monotony here, just Morrissey's campy enervated vocals -- but it's about oppression, all the same. (Or is it? I never know with the Smiths...)

7. "Don't B Movie Me" / Georgie Fame
From Georgie Fame 1973
Two minutes into his teen-idol career, Georgie Fame was already shrugging off the pop shackles to became the jazz keyboardist he'd always really been, borrowing happily from ska and blues as well. I'm sorry I couldn't find a video for this one; you may not even be able to find a video link. (My version was lifted from vinyl -- it would not be an exaggeration to say that I invested in a turntable and software mostly just to capture my old Georgie Fame LPs). Sigh. Sometimes I wonder if Elvis Costello knew this song when he wrote "B Movie" on Get Happy!  Any other artists, I'd say it was a coincidence, but you never know with Elvis...

8. "Just A Thought" / Gnarls Barkley
From St. Elsewhere (2006)
No trouble finding a video for this one. I promise you, I had this song on my iTunes long before I discovered Cee Lo Green as a judge on The Voice.  Glad to see he was always a musical chameleon -- what is this song?  It's not hip-hop, it's not R&B, it's not indie pop (not with all those grating musical effects).  Weird song, sublime vocal. Sometimes I think this guy is from Mars.

9. "I Pray Now" / Fred Eaglesmith
From Tinderbox (2008)
And while we're at it, what label would you slap on Fred Eaglesmith?  He's like the Canadian heir to Pete Seeger's populist folk mantle, but only if you throw in crunchy Tom Waits guitar effects and dead-eye Neil Young political commentary. "I pray now / I pray now / I didn't use to pray" -- it's prayer on the edge of desperation, and you have to fear whatever drove this man to his knees.

10. "For Debbie Reynolds" / Robyn Hitchcock
From Shadow Cat (2007)
Ah, a perfect confection to end on, from the master label-eluder Robyn Hitchcock.  I imagine Robyn dashed this song off at 4 am after watching Singing in the Rain on TV -- which doesn't mean it's not profound, not by a long shot. "It's all about success," he croons, "What are you doing this time tomorrow, baby?" And all I can see is Debbie Reynolds' scrubbed face and ponytail as she tap danced her way into Gene Kelly's arms -- oh, if only the fairy tale ended there. Robyn, of course, knows it doesn't, and sadly so do I.

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

A few songs to be thankful for as you gobble your turkey tomorrow!

1. "Save Me" / Aimee Mann
From the Magnolia soundtrack (1999)
I never saw this movie -- Tom Cruise really puts me off -- but I know I should.  Any movie with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Al Molina, AND William H. Macy has to be worth watching; all the Aimee Mann songs on the soundtrack are the icing on the cake. Talk about spiky emotions? This chick wrote the book.


2. "Kansas" / Fred Eaglesmith
From Milly's Cafe (2007)
"It's always Kansas, that's where I always break down" -- could be a touring musician, could be a trucker, could be a traveling salesman, but in the dead-center of the country, his still-raw heartbreak trips him up, every time.  For grit and twang, it's hard to beat Fred Eaglesmith; he puts the folk right back in alt.country.

3. "Warming Up to the Ice Age" / John Hiatt
From Warming Up to the Ice Age  (1985)
John Hiatt before he properly found his own grit and twang. My shuffle sure does love this song. 

4. "A Little Bit of Sunlight" / The Kinks
From Picture Book (box set compilation)
Here's a little mono gem -- an early Kinks demo for a Ray Davies composition that would be a modest hit for the Majority, way back in the Swinging 60s. "A little bit of sunlight is all that I want from you" -- I've always thought Ray was channeling the Beach Boys when he wrote this one.   

5.  "Have Another Drink" / The Kinks
From Soap Opera (1975)
Fast-forward another 10 years to the middle of the Kinks' "theatrical period." A perfect pub singalong -- "if you're feeling down and you're under the weather / Have another drink and you'll feel all right." It's the missing link between "Have a Cuppa Tea" and "Alcohol," all summed up in that gullible refrain: "Don't stop and think / Have another drink."

6. "Lola" (live) / The Kinks
From Everybody's in Showbiz (1972)
A Kinks trifecta!  But only a snippet, really, a rowdy crowd singalong of the obligatory hit song from Disc 2, the live concert half of this quixotic double album. (The first disc being all about the hell of touring.)  Everybody put your hands together! PS If I never hear Ray sing "Lola" again I won't be disappointed. 

7. "I Don't Want To Do Wrong" / Gladys Knight and the Pips
From The Ultimate Collection (compilation)
Ah, one of the Queens of Motown Soul -- the fiery, passionate Gladys Knight. Her man's been gone a while, and  . . . well, the flesh is weak. "I don't wanna do what my heart keeps telling me to / I know I'm trying with all of my might / I think I've lost this fight." Dig the Ray Charles-esque strings.

8. "I'm In Love With You" / Georgie Fame
From History of British Pop #5 (compilation)
Not Georgie's usual thing -- a pitch-perfect retro R&B number, back-up singers and horns and all. No link, as I converted this off an old vinyl compilation.  Obscure, but tasty indeed -- take my word for it.   

9. "Birdhouse in Your Soul" / They Might Be Giants
From Flood  (1990)
Hey, this song cropped up the other night on one of my favorite TV shows, HBO's Bored to Death (starring the ever-adorable Jason Schwartzman). Quirky Brooklyn comedy, quirky Brooklyn band: a perfect match. "Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch / Who watches over you / Make a little birdhouse in your soul" -- if it were any other rock band, I think this was a metaphor, but TMBG? It really IS about a bird nightlight.

10. "Never Been Done" / Ron Sexsmith
From Blue Boy (2001)
From blue canary to Blue Boy -- here's another plucky, bouncy bit of uplift from one of my favorite Canadian troubadors.  (Notice, Scott, I said "one of my favorites" -- there's still room for you).

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Sitting in my hotel room...but my iPod seems haunted by Nick Lowe again! Yikes!

1. "Alone in the Summer" / Tom Gallagher
From Age of the Wheel (unreleased)
Lurchy, angst-ridden rock & roll from the late Tom Gallagher, a fellow Kinks fan whose musical gifts sadly escaped the recognition he deserved.

2. "Ireland" / Greg Trooper
From Between a House and a Hard Place (2010)
Ooh, another of my special guys! Here's a live acoustic performance of one of Troop's most euphoric love songs, a lilting rhapsody about a girl from ( -- wait for it -- ) Brooklyn. It's dizzying how over-the-moon he is -- "When I'm with you, it feels so right / My wallet's full on Friday night / My ship has docked, and my kingdom's come / And my heart's unlocked and overrun" -- 000h, that's love for you.

3. "What's Shakin' On the Hill" / Nick Lowe
From Party of One (1989)Here he is again. Wistful reflections from a misfit loner -- and yet he's still the Jesus of Cool.

4. "Nearer to You" / Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint
From The River in Reverse (2006)
Okay, so it's more Elvis than Allen. Still, Elvis (a.k.a. Nick Lowe's most famous protege) is spilling his heart out in classic R&B mode, all dressed up with AT's rippling piano riffs -- and if it ain't New Orleans proper, it's still a fine thing.

5. "Big Hair" / Nick Lowe
From Pinker and Prouder Than Previous (1988)
All roads lead back to Nick. "Big hair, where you going to?" One of my favorite driving songs ever, a rockabilly romp with a ton of car puns and a sexy subtext. Nick at his worst -- which still means it's wonderful.

6. "Summer Is Over" / Fred EaglesmithFrom Milly's Cafe (2006)
The country vibe continues with this twangy little waltz, perfect for the waning days of August, with a slightly scruffy carnival wheeze. Think Springsteen's "4th of July, Asbury Park," filtered through Tom Waits' lowlife sensibility, with a little Kerouac thrown in for good measure. There's no trumped-up melancholy here, though -- Eaglesmith's a genuine man of the people. Check him out; you'll love him.

7. "Star Ship" / Brinsley Schwarz
From Despite It All (1970)
Why, what a surprise -- Nick Lowe again! (Really, it's all coincidence, I swear.) Another waltz, a little more uptempo but just as twangy. A deservedly neglected track, from the days when Nick Lowe churned out imitative country-rock by the boatload.

8. "Show Me" / Lulu
From It's Lulu (1969)
Lulu pulls out the Big Production Values -- horns, strings, Latin percussion, and 60s-era sizzle worthy of a James Bond theme song. But beneath it all is a snappy R&B number from the pen of Joe Tex (remember Rockpile's version of his song "If Sugar Was As Sweet As You"? Another Nick connection. . . .) "Show me a woman that's got a good man / And I'll show you a woman doing all she can / To make life happy for her lovin' man / So worry don't cross his mind." It IS that simple, folks.

9. "Jack Shit George" / Ian Dury & the Blockheads
From Mr. Love Pants (1998)
Oh, ye modern rappers, look at how the Cockney master did it. Leading off Dury's final album -- which reunited him with the Blockheads after 15 years -- this snappy litany skewers all the ills of modern education and their dire consequences, spooling out over a background of deeply, deeply funky jazz. "What did you learn at school today? / Jack shit / The minute the teacher turns away / That's it / How many times were you truly intrigued? / Not any / Is boredom a symptom of mental fatigue? / Not many. . . ." (Oh, and guess who performed on the Live Stiffs Tour with Ian Dury?)

10. "Bowie" / Flight of the Conchords
From Flight of the Conchords (2008)
(Weren't we just talking about this number?) On the TV show, the spectacle of Jemaine tricked out like Ziggy Stardust, floating into Brett's dream, was one of the funniest comedy bits I've seen in ages. And of course the musical parody is spot-on. "Do you have one sequined jumpsuit in space, Bowie, or do you have ch-ch-changes?" The Nick connection? Just look at this David Bowie single's sleeve --

Now look at the single Nick Lowe released immediately after:


So you see, Nick Lowe likes to make fun of David Bowie too. There, I knew I'd find something!

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Sure, the Memorial Day long weekend threw us all off -- it still feels only like Tuesday. But it isn't! It's Wednesday! So let's shuffle!!!

1. "For the Girl" / The Fratellis
From Costello Music (2007)
High-energy beat, crunchy guitars, rapid-crammed lyrics, and cheery la-la-la la-la-la's -- a bracing jolt of Brit Pop indeed. I love the shifting minor and major keys in this track. "She was into the Stones when / I was into the Roses" -- whoever this girl is, he's sure ambivalent about their never-quite-meshing relationship.

2. "Pontiac" / Fred Eaglesmith
From Lipstick, Lies & Gasoline (1997)
Fred who? One of America's best-kept secrets, a true grass-roots music treasure, with an unwavering connection to real American music fans. I won't give away the story this track tells -- it's a heartbreaker -- find it online and listen for yourself.

3. "What Is Wrong, What Is Right" / Herman's Hermits (1966)
From The Very Best of Herman's Hermits
A deft satiric character sketch that even Ray Davies could appreciate. It was only on the B-sides that Hermits Derek Lekenby and Keith Hopwood got to feature their own compositions, but while the band's radio hits sound trite today, those original numbers are a revelation.

4. "Michelle" / David and Jonathan (1967)
Yes, that "Michelle" -- but it's not Paul McCartney singing. Not a bad cover, though, all things considered.

5. "End of the Party" / The English Beat
From Special Beat Service (1982)
Ska-flavored jazzy pop from Dave Wakeling and company. There's always a soap opera embedded in these English Beat songs, a series of betrayals and frustrated love affairs played out in dingy flats and grubby streets. It seems the girl here is keeping our singer on tenterhooks, making him wait to sleep with her -- the tension is palpable in every word-crammed line, the yelp of every leaping, offbeat interval.

6. "The Crush" / John Hiatt
From Warming Up to the Ice Age (1985)
Having shed his proto-New Wave punk pose, Johnny Hiatt went into neo-soul mode on this album, recorded at the tail-end of his boozy California years. Oh, sure, I know that Hiatt's seriously great work would come later, once he got his life together -- but I hafta admit, his voice is in spectacular shape here, and his guitar licks sizzle. For a flop album, this is a neglected gem, 80s synths and all.

7. "Sinister But She Was Happy" / Robyn Hitchcock
From Moss Elixir (1996)
Neurotic rhythms, non sequitur lyrics, and a frenzied sawing of fiddle and cello -- ah, Robyn Hitchcock lets his English eccentric freak flag fly. There's something baroque about this track, with surreal lines like "Sinister but she was happy / Like a chandelier festooned with leeches," but it's also a totally nifty acoustic rocker, with an addictive loose-limbed beat. I can just imagine Robyn, in a loose flowered print shirt and jeans, gray hair flopping across his forehead, strumming madly away. Imagine? I've seen him sing this, with a wicked glint in his mad dark eyes. Delicious.

8. "I Am Your Singer" / Wings
From Wild Life (1971)
I know I'm supposed to look down on this stoned mishmash of an LP. The songs make no sense, they go on too long, the rhymes are infantile, and Linda is encouraged to sing way too much. (Any Linda vocals are too much in my book.) Well, sorry, folks, I love Wild Life. IMO Paul McCartney is at his best when he isn't trying to score radio hits or prove a critical point; he's just reveling in melody, rhythmic patterns, and musical textures. Wings would become a hit machine soon enough -- let's enjoy this freeform debut album for what it is.

9. "No Other Baby" / Paul McCartney
From Run Devil Run (1999)
And then Linda died and a grief-numbed Paul was spinning his wheels, unable to write new material for the first time in his fertile career. For some reason I think it was Elvis Costello who suggested that Paul try his hand at a covers album, paying tribute to the early rock 'n' roll numbers that first inspired him; this one is an old 1957 Dickie Bishop hit. You can pretty much hear Paul healing his heart on every track of this CD.

10. "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" / Death Cab for Cutie
From Maybe This Christmas (2004)
Death Cab's winsome cover of the classic Darlene Love Xmas tune, this has just enough tinsel shimmer (dig Ben Gibbard's reverbed vocals!) to put the frost on your holiday listening. It's from one of those me-too all-star charity Christmas albums (god forbid any hipsters should record a Christmas album without the air quotes of a do-gooder objective). It's weird to hear a Christmas tune in June -- but hey, that's what the shuffle's all about!

"Kansas" / Fred J. Eaglesmith

Here's another thing the internet is good for; occasionally on a message board or music site you hear tell of musicians who're never gonna get played on the radio--not even Sirius or XM--who're never gonna be nominated for a Grammy or a CMA, or interviewed in the New York Times. And provided the recommendation comes from someone whose taste you trust, you know you have to follow it up.

So thanks to my Kinks friend Jim (a.k.a. Nappers) for dropping the word about Fred Eaglesmith. That rattled around in my brainpan for a few weeks, until by chance I was offered a album of his to review for Blogcritics.org -- not even a new release, but his 2006 CD Milly's Cafe. The first time I put that baby on my CD player, I was just blown away. So how come Steve Earle gets all the press and this guy gets none?

This is a whole album full of lonesome-highway songs, ballads about forgotten Americans, done in an exquisitely worn and scrubbed alt.country style. "Kansas" in particular has the light touch of a true master: the whole thing's just a guitar, a bare whisper of drums, and a particularly effective Dobro. About fifty percent of the lyrics of this song consist of the line "It's always Kansas" repeated over and over, but if you think that's lazy songwriting, you are completely wrong. Playing up the creaky, weary edges of his voice, Eaglesmith is taking on a character here--a guy who's inarticulate in the first place, and numb with heartbreak on top of that. I don't know about you, but I'd be suspicious of any guy who could spin fine phrases in the middle of that kind of grief.

Have any of you ever driven across Kansas? Well, I have, and I know just what Eaglesmith's talking about here. The yawning emptiness of a straight-shot west Kansas highway is exactly where all the thoughts you're trying not to think will catch up with you. As he remarks in the second verse, "Those sad sad songs / On the radio, in the jukebox in the truck stops / They don't bother me, you know / I can face the day / I can walk away / I can tell myself I'm gonna be okay." That's how it works, all right; for a while you're keeping it together, you're proud of yourself. And then you let your guard down, and suddenly you're a mess all over again.

Or as Fred puts it, "It's always Kansas / That's where I fall apart / That's where my broken heart / Catches up with the news." That seems to me an pretty astute insight into human psychology--that gap between knowing something and accepting it can be HUGE. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." We're catching this guy at the very moment where he can finally admit that he's lost his woman, and I can just imagine the dull agony of that long drive from Leavenworth to Dodge. I see the guy through a rain-spattered windshield, sobbing; and yeah, I know I added those details, but it's Eaglesmith's genius to pull you into his storytelling and let you take over for yourself. (May I add here that Bob Dylan still hasn't learned how to do this?)

It doesn't have to be Kansas, really; it could be the A train, or the Staten Island ferry late at night, or the Stop & Shop check-out line--any place or any time where your heart catches up with the news. The news could be 20 years old, even; it doesn't matter. We all have some kind of Kansas where we always break down, and somehow just having it put into a song helps.

Thanks, Fred; and thanks, Jim.

Kansas sample