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.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 51-55

Hovering here at the middle of my list are a curious bunch of songs, each one testing the boundaries of its era's shifting musical tastes -- American bands aping the British Invasion sound, Philly soul artists updating their streetwise groove, or a girl group trying to stand out from the pack. Usually I detest calculated hits -- but here are five songs too clever and fun to resist.

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

51. "We Ain't Got Nothing Yet" / The Blues Magoos (1967)
In 1967 every major band in London was dropping acid and trying to express the psychedelic experience. As it turns out, the template was laid down by this upstart bunch of kids from New York City.

52. "She's About A Mover" / Sir Douglas Quintet (1965)
The late great Doug Sahm recorded under many names over the years -- it was almost impossible to keep up with them -- but when this early ensemble scored his first nationwide hit, the name sure fooled me into thinking they were another British band. Dig this video -- there's nothing about it to suggest that these long-haired guys in their skinny suits were from Texas, at least not until Trini Lopez spills the beans at the end. This stripped-down little rocker even has that sort of primitive Mersey sound, with its offbeat Farfisa chords, clangy guitars, and mumbled bluesy vocals. The lyrics are minimal -- mostly a lot of things like "Whoa, yeah, what I say, / Hey, hey!" and, for a chorus, "She's about a mover!" repeated over and over, toggling back and forth between two notes. (What is a "mover," anyhow? Inquiring minds want to know.) The thing has like four chords total, so it's no surprise that every garage band I knew included this in their repertoire -- once they'd mastered the Shadows of Knight's "Gloria," that is. But there's an art to making a record this ecstatic and fun, and Doug Sahm had that art down cold. Every time this song came on the radio we'd yelp with joy and turn the volume up. Years later, I still do the same whenever I hear any Doug Sahm record. A sorely neglected genius.

53. "98.6" / Keith (1967)
Every time I take my temperature, I think of this song. Don’t you? Honestly, without this song for a mnemonic, how did previous generations ever remember what a normal temperature should be? It’s the only hit that Keith (real name James Barry Keefer) ever had, but he certainly hit the jackpot with it. The central conceit is dead simple: The singer’s temperature is back to normal now that he’s happy in love (“Your lovin’ is the medicine that saved me / Oh, I love my baby”). What could have been a formulaic pop song, however, turned out to be anything but. It was written by the Brill Building team of composer George Fischoff and lyricist Tony Powers, who also wrote Spanky and Our Gang’s “Lazy Day” (hear the resemblance?). Fischoff’s bouncy melody, with its skipalong beat, was perfectly suited to Keefer’s suave Philly-soul voice, but the real key to success was Powers’ lyrics, which tapped into the hippie era's madcap flower-child giddiness. “Good morning sun, I say it’s good to see you shinin’,” Keith begins exuberantly, “I know my baby brought you to-oo-oo-oo me / She kissed me yesterday, hello you silver lining / Got spring and summer running throo-oo-oo-ough me.” (Notice how compression jazzes up those familiar nature images.) There’s a wonderful contrast between the good-timey sound of the verses, with their jubilant horns and softshoe tempo, and the hushed chorus, tautly confined to a few notes and a heartbeat pulse, as he checks his temperature again (“Hey, ninety-eight point six, it’s good to have you back again…).” My favorite line, though, comes in the second verse, where Keith proclaims, “You know she got me on another kind of highway / I want to go-oo where it ta-aa-aa-akes me!” Is that sexy or what?

54. "One on One" / Daryl Hall and John Oates (1983)
I suppose I could blame MTV for hooking me on these 80s groovemeisters, with their well-groomed shag haircuts and big-shouldered pastel suits. But the real history is a bit more complicated . . .

55. "Leader of the Pack" / The Shangri-Las (1964)
I know there were classier girl group songs -- the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" for one, or the Shirelles' "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," or the Exciters' "Tell Him." But I was too young in the early 1960s, and probably too white, to be a serious girl group aficionado. By the time "Leader of the Pack" vroomed into the charts, however, Beatlemania had transformed me into a voracious pop music fan, gobbling it all up. Among the East Coast girl groups, the Shangri-Las specialized in a tough-girl image; this romance about star-crossed love with a biker (I pictured him as a James Dean hottie) was right up their gritty alley. With all the sound effects -- the revving motorcycle, the screeching tires, the shattering glass -- it verged on being a novelty song, though that wouldn't have bothered me; it riveted me with its themes of death and breaking class barriers (I think this was the first time I'd ever heard the phrase "the wrong side of the tracks"). But more than anything else I was sucked in by its narrative technique. We overhear the girls chatting on the sidewalk:

"Is she really going out with him?"
"Well, there she is. Let's ask her."
"Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Gee, it must be great riding with him. Is he picking you up after school today?"
"Unh-unh."

Real dramatic irony in a pop song! And then Betty takes center stage to wail her tale of woe: "I met him at the candy store / He turned around and smiled at me / You get the picture?" to which her girlfriends, nodding, reply, "Yes, we see." (That conversational set-up was another Shangri-La trademark.) A few months later, though, when a band called the Detergents released a parody called "Leader of the Laundromat," I was ready to laugh at the melodrama of "Leader of the Pack." Ah, how fickle the public can be!

"The Only Flame in Town" / Elvis Costello

Well, I'm in the middle of changing computers -- gotta move everything from my old ThinkPad to the newer Lenovo my son abandoned to become a Mac-head, and I better do it fast because the old one could blow up any minute. But one component wouldn't work on the new machine: iTunes. And as you can imagine, I am unable to function without iTunes. (I don't just mean unable to write this blog -- I mean unable to function.)

Finally I spent a morning with my new best friend at Apple, Jamila, and iTunes is working again, but because the old computer's drive is so compromised (I'm not kidding when I say "blow up any minute"), I couldn't just shift the whole humongous mass of music with seven keystrokes and a flash drive. Instead, I've been reloading the entire library by hand, which I don't have time to do but I'm doing anyway, in the most OCD manner possible.

Which is why I missed a few days writing.

But I have to say the process is very therapeutic. I'm reminded of a lot of songs that've gotten buried (thanks to all of you whose music samplers have contributed gems like Magali Noel's "Fais-Moi Mal Johnny" and the Black Lodge Singers' "Theme from the Flintstones"). And while CDs are dumping in the tracks, I've looked at certain CD covers for the first time since I originally loaded these things into my computer. Which is how I discovered a picture of Elvis and Daryl Hall inside the booklet for Goodbye Cruel World, a 1984 album I completely undervalued at the screwy moment in time when it first was released. (Note to self: You got married in 1984, dingbat, that's where your mind was at instead.) I had completely missed the fact that it was Daryl contributing those lovely high backing vocals on "The Only Flame in Town," though really, it's perfect -- how else to capture the 80s pop zeitgeist?

Here's Elvis' liner notes on the subject: Our second guest was Daryl Hall who added some effortless high harmonies to the chorus. He was also adored by the camera during the shooting of the accompanying 'Win a Date with Elvis and the Attractions' video . . . Daryl made the rest of us look as if we had just crawled out of a hedge. My humour wasn't helped by the record company representative shrieking at the make-up girl: 'Make him look handsome' as I was about to go under the pancake. Ah! The Eighties.*

Of course, this must be how Daryl met Nick Lowe, his guest on his recent delightful webcast. It's ridiculous how happy this information makes me.

Re-listening to "The Only Flame," I'm thrilled to discover what a nifty little track it is. I suppose in 1984 I felt disappointed in Elvis for going all power-pop on us -- and reading the liner notes, I see that Elvis was pretty disappointed in himself for doing it, too. But then there are those glorious harmonies in the chorus -- and jesus, any track that gives Steve Nieve an excuse to throw in riffs from J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavichord just can't be bad.

The Only Flame in Town sample

* cut-and-paste inspired by Uncle E

“One On One” /

Daryl Hall & John Oates

I hadn’t thought about Hall & Oates for years. Then someone sent me a link to Daryl Hall’s webcast “Live From Daryl’s House” -- basically an at-home jam session with whatever guest star he’s invited over. The session I saw was with Nick Lowe (well, why else would someone send me a link?), and it was dynamite -- and not just because I love Nick. The harmonies Daryl laid onto Nick’s songs were simply divine. Daryl went way beyond what Nick’s bandmates sang on “Cruel to Be Kind” – he added syncopations and modalities no one had ever dreamed of before, a complete revelation. His voice is still angelically pure, and soulful as hell.

I found myself flashing back to 1972, when I first heard Hall & Oates’ debut album, Whole Oats, a beautiful hybrid of folk and Philly soul. When they hit their commercial groove in the late 70s I felt letdown, though like everyone else I was eventually seduced by their catchy pop hooks and videogenic shag haircuts. I even interviewed them in the early 80s, when I was a green young journalist, and they were perfectly pleasant, just a pair of decent working musicians milking the money cow until she ran dry. They had timing and luck on their side, but they also had the talent to keep cranking out hits. Their big singles -- “She’s Gone,” “Rich Girl,” “Kiss On My List,” “You Make My Dreams,” and “Maneater” – are still fine pop confections.

Of all those radio hits, the one I keep coming back to is “One on One,” from 1982’s H2O album. With true professional songcraft, John Oates (generally the songwriter) sets up his main metaphor, one-on-one basketball being a stand-in for sex. “I'm tired of playing on the team / It seems I don't get time out anymore / What a change if we set the pace face to face / No one even trying to score.” Think back to the fevered pre-AIDS singles scene of the eighties and this is even more apt. Laid against Barry-White-ish percussion and vibrating stabs of keyboard chords, it’s perfect lounge lizard music.

As usual with Hall & Oates, though, the chorus is the money shot, and this is a positively creamy one. Daryl’s choirboy countertenor insists, pleads, demands, “One on one, I wanna play that game tonight.” The melody ping-pongs between two notes, tightening the sexual tension, until it ripples downward, thrillingly, on “tonight.” Not only is that a great hook, it’s a hook that very few singers but Daryl Hall could pull off. (Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie, maybe Marvin Gaye -- that’s pretty impressive company.)

Daryl scats around at the end of the chorus, till it dissolves into a sax solo. The ending is a hypnotic mélange of the stabbing chords, Daryl’s scatting, John’s back-up echoes, swirls of synthesizer – pure cheese, of course, but damn sexy.

In the 80s I never got beyond H&O’s MTV hits, because I resented them abandoning their early sound. Now I’m scrolling through those 80s albums and hearing lots to like in their back tracks. Their “comeback” albums in the early 2000s? More to like there. And I’m hankering after digital versions of all that 1970s stuff that never topped the charts. Jeez, this could get expensive. I should send Nick Lowe the bill – after all, it’s all his fault.

One on One sample