THE WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

This one's for Ginny!

1. "We Should Be Making Love" / Huey Lewis & the News
From Hard at Play (1991)
Totally a fangirl thing, my Huey Lewis crush. Though the 80s retro-pop groove they'd carved out was running thin by the time of this album, I'm very fond of this track, with its kicky blues beat and a sort of When Harry Met Sally plot line. That little bit of hoarseness in Huey's voice? Ssssshivers up my spine.

2. "Up Above My Head" / The Wood Brothers
From Up Above My Head (2009)
Hey, Oliver and Chris Wood! How dare you sneak out a new album last year without letting me know? I just discovered it on line and am only beginning to explore its gospel-meets-bluegrass-meets-jazz vibe. It's a mystery to me why these guys aren't better known, but clearly they need new PR folks.

3. "Hey" / Red Hot Chili Peppers
From Stadium Arcadium (2006)
Oh, play that funky music, white boys! Why do I just about always like every song I've ever heard from this band? I don't "follow" them, the way I follow so many other bands; but then a track like this cycles up and I'm instantly transfixed. That jazzy rhythm, the insouciant vocals, the nimble guitar lines -- who listens to the lyrics?

4. "Lies" / Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
From Once (2007)
Plaintive song from the utterly charming Irish film -- I refuse to be critical.

5. "Billy's Blues" / Laura Nyro
From The First Songs (1973)
How arty and sophisticated I felt, listening to this jazz-infused folk-soul when I was 17 years old. It was like Nina Simone for prep-school girls. Let others listen to the mainstream covers of Nyro's songs by the Fifth Dimension and Blood, Sweat & Tears; I felt so in-the-know, listening to the originals instead.

6. "It Makes You Happy" / Bill Jerram Band
From Bill Jerram Band (2005)
Spirited, tuneful, jangly power pop from a fellow Kinks fan down in Texas. Dig that organ riff! What a sad music world we live in that catchy bands like this don't get enough (or any) attention. But hey, these guys are on iTunes; check out their songs there, or on Bill's MySpace page.

7. "Rene" / Small Faces
From Ogden Nut's Gone Flake
Cockney humor percolates through this wicked little softshoe number, which gradually devolves into a psychedelic bluesy ramble. I wish I'd discovered this classic 60s concept album back in the day -- it's probably best appreciated in the herbally altered frame of mind in which it was written.

8. "Baby of Mine" / Alan Price
From England, My England (1978)
Despite the 80s overproduction (someone lasso that sax!), this tender little pop song hangs onto its charm. True, it lacks Price's biting social satire, or his trademark blistering organ riffs, but there's a phrase or two of his best heartbreak-husky vocals to make up for it.

9. "Peaceful" / Georgie Fame
From Superhits
Sometimes I do think the shuffle has a mind of its own -- why else would it so often follow up an Alan Price song with a Georgie Fame number? I first knew this Kenny Rankin song through the 1968 Bobbie Gentry version, then Helen Reddy's 1973 hit version, but now that I know Georgie's 1969 cover, I'll never listen to anybody else's. He takes it in a jazzy swinging direction that is infinitely more relaxed and, well, peaceful, than the others'.

10. "Business Time" / Flight of the Conchords
From Flight of the Conchords (2008)
This New Zealand folk-comedy duo absolutely cracks me up; the plus is that their music is actually musical. On this one, Jemaine Clement out-Barry-Whites Barry White. "You know when I'm down to my socks it's business time / That's why they call them business socks." Was anybody else here hooked on their HBO series? I hated to miss an episode.

“Wedding Bell Blues” / Laura Nyro
“BILL!” the girl singer cries out, extending it for two, then three measures – “I love you so / I always will,” she insists. But . . . but . . . BUT . . .

I knew this song first from the Fifth Dimension’s 1969 cover version, but once I got hold of Laura Nyro’s original (from her 1966 debut album), that was it for me. It helped, of course, that I had a crazy mad crush on a guy named Bill for the second half of high school, a guy who seemed interested but never would commit. When I think of the hours I wasted dreaming about him, with Laura Nyro egging me on . . .

I was 15, just the perfect age to sit hunched on my bedroom floor, teaching myself to blow smoke rings and pondering the romantic mess that my life would be IF I could ever move out of my parents’ house and start living it. Teen angst – we all go through it. And Laura Nyro was an ideal companion, with her smart barbed lyrics, her soulful jazz-tinged art songs, and her fierce piano playing. Sure, “Wedding Bell Blues” is about a girl who’s dying for her boyfriend to propose, which even in 1966 ran against all feminist principles. But the way Nyro handles it makes all the difference

She spins through a litany of romantic clichés -- “the passion eyes of May,” “a choir of carousels” – and declarations familiar from dozens of girl-group songs: “I never scheme or lie Bill, there's been no foolin'”, “I was the one who came runnin' when you were lonely / I haven't lived one day not lovin' you only.” (We even have the traditional back-up girls echoing those rhymes.) These are the articles of faith by which this poor female has lived -- and now this schmuck isn’t living up to his part of the bargain, dammit. “Oh, but am I ever gonna see my wedding day?” she howls, panic-stricken, and the melody howls and droops right along with her.

“I love you so, I always will,” she insists once more in verse three. “And though devotion rules my heart, I take no bows / But Bill you're never gonna take those wedding vows.” The rhythm punches out those words, like a furious girlfriend pounding on her boyfriend’s chest. She knows in her heart that he’s the wrong horse to put her money on – but she’s too hung up to move on. “Oh, come on, Bill,” she moans, urgently. “Oh come on, Bill!”

It’s the old tug-of-war between desire and social convention. Nyro’s heroine feels desire, all right; you can hear it every time she groans Bill’s name, giving it an extra trill of excitement. But she wants to know it’ll last – which in her limited world means marriage. “But kisses and love won't carry me / Till you marry me Bill!” she explodes, the line working its way up the scale and building in volume. “I’ve got the wedding bell blues!”

At fifteen, I didn’t really want to marry anybody – but I did want something to happen in my safe little suburban life. Laura Nyro gave voice to all my inchoate longing, in dozens of songs like “Billy’s Blues”, “And When I Die,” “Time and Love,” “Emmie,” “He’s A Runner” – the list is long. I wore the grooves off those records. Being a teenage girl is never easy, but thanks to Laura Nyro, I made it through -- though come to think of it, I never did perfect the smoke ring.

Wedding Bell Blues sample

PS Bill, if you read this -- call me.