I Love This Song!

5 Favorite Opening Riffs --
Guitar Heroes

Note that I'm not saying The Best Opening Riffs-- too many songs, too little time; I couldn't even limit it to 10 (thanks for all the suggestions), so 25 Favorite Opening Riffs it has to be, in five 5-riff installments.

A few arbitrary rules: 1. One riff per band. 2. Has to be an opener, starting from the record's very first note.  3. Vocals don't count. 

Let's face it -- guitar licks are our opening-riff bread and butter. And here are the masters: 

Fun, Fun, Fun / The Beach Boys

Probably the perfect surf guitar lick -- stolen from Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode," of course, but just enough crisper and tighter. This is a song near and dear to my heart, if only because it mentions Indianapolis in it.  The Beach Boys rushed out this single in February 1964, knowing that in a week or two the British Invasion would hit, and their clean-cut monopoly of the airwaves would be over. Well, they went down swinging with this one.



California Dreamin' / The Mamas and the Papas

Fast-forward to January 1966, with Beatlemania subsiding (until Sgt Pepper) and Folk Rock making its bid to take over. And here came John Phillips & Co., ready to score a hit with this beauty. That brooding acoustic opening (played by Wrecking Crew guitarist P. F. Sloan) was the perfect mix of protest-song edginess and sublime melancholy. They may have been dreaming of California (and recording it in L.A.) but the mood here is definitely cold and gray as a New York City winter.


Son of a Preacher Man / Dusty Springfield

Dripping slow and sweet as tupelo honey, this sexy September 1968 hit comes from the iconic album Dusty in Memphis. That's guitarist Reggie Young of the Memphis Cats, bringing a lazy Southern style to Dusty's soul sister sound. This narrowly beat out Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" -- there is no doubt what Dusty and the preacher's kid will be throwing off the Tallahatchee Bridge.



Ohio / Crosby, Still, Nash & Young

Protest song? This is the greatest one of all time. And that opening is just about perfect -- insistent, calm, ruthless. The marching tempo, the blithe skipping treble notes, that stern bottom line, and just enough harshness to the electric guitar to let you know we mean business.  In June 1970, this was the record that defined us.


Stairway to Heaven / Led Zeppelin

Oh, this song goes a LOT of different places before its eight minutes are over -- but for a perfect slow acoustic opener, can you beat this?  I always forget how slow it is, each note taking its exquisite time before the recorders kick in. Nevertheless, you know exactly what song this is. Wait for it....

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

I've got no excuse.  Well, I do -- but I hate making excuses.  So sorry, and at least I got around to it this week!

1. Love Train / Keb' Mo'
From Big Wide Grin (1998)
One thing I love about Keb' Mo': his creative covers, always total reinterpretations of the original. Take this old O'Jays classic, subtract the sexy soul groove (sacrilege, right?), and add a ticking bluegrass tempo and some banjo picking -- and voila, you've got a surprisingly persuasive peace-and-love anthem. Suddenly I hear afresh lines like, "All of your brothers over in Africa / Tell all the folks in Egypt and Israel too" -- it's totally topical.

2. Hello? Oh... /  The Cribs
From The New Fellas (2005)
I like everything I've heard from this trio of brothers from Yorkshire. Crunchy guitars, loping beat, a casually raucous upbeat vibe -- addictively fun. 

3. Monday Monday / The Mamas and the Papas
From 16 Greatest Hits (compilation)
Bah dah, bah da-dah dah... Those dense a capella harmonies are just heavenly. And when Denny and Cass start to weave and overlap in the bridge -- "Every other day (every other day) every other day (every other day of) the week is /  Fine, (Fine) yeah!!)"  How could you not sing along?

4. Poor Little Fool / Ricky Nelson
From A Ricky Nelson Anthology (compilation)
I can just picture him singing this on Ozzie and Harriet:  One blink of those sincere blue eyes, one pout from that lower lip, and Elvis Presley was wiped off the planet for me. This smooth-as-buttermilk rockabilly stroll is quintessential Ricky, absolutely divine.

5. Happy Jack / The Who
From Happy Jack (1966)
Though my feelings about the Who are conflicted, I do love a good Pete Townshend comic turn -- and there's none better than this ditty about a simpleton vagrant on the Isle of Man. (In 1966, when this was all over the radio, I had no idea that was a real place.)  I love those chanting childlike harmonies, that stellar bass line, and -- best of all -- Moonie's absolutely insane bursts of drumming.

6. To the River / John Mellencamp
From Human Wheels (1993)
Would you buy a Chevy from this man?  I would. 

7.  Rollin' Like a Pebble in the Sand  / Alan Price & the Electric Blues Orchestra
From A Gigster's Life for Me (1995)
So what was Alan Price doing all those years when I'd lost track of him?  Enjoying himself, getting back into the blues and R&B idiom that the Animals first bonded over. This whole album is full of great covers, like this old Rudy Toombs song, sung with just the right weary creak in Alan's voice -- and wait for the barrelhouse piano in the middle eight!  

8. Where's My Everything? / Nick Lowe
From The Impossible Bird (1994)
From Nick Lowe's "lovable loser" category, a gently comic rockabilly plaint. He's ticking off a laundry list of things society "owes" him -- home and family, fame and happiness -- cluelessly wondering why they haven't just magically appeared.  But as always with Nick, it's got just enough of an edge, filtering all the bafflement and pain of a disappointed life.  The man's craft still astounds me.
  
9. Switchboard Susan / Nick Lowe
From Labour of Lust (1979)
Yeah, I know Mickey Jupp wrote this one -- but it might as well have been Nick himself, in his punning lyric prime. "When I'm with you, girl, I get an extension / And I don't mean Alexander Bell's invention" -- who else could pull off something that juvenile?  But this gives me a perfect opportunity to inform you (if you don't already know) that YepRoc is finally reissuing this classic album, Nick's second solo effort, which has for years been inexplicably out of print (I know!).


10. Heat Dies Down / The Kaiser Chiefs
From Yours Truly, Angry Mob (2007)
It's loud, it's fast, it's angry -- and that rollercoaster tempo is pretty hard to resist.

Bonus track (couldn't resist):
11. Up to Our Nex / Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3
From Goodnight Oslo (2009)
Featured on the soundtrack to the Jonathan Demme film Rachel Getting Married. (Robyn's even in the film, reason enough to Netflix the thing.)  The loose-limbed groove of this track is so seductive, you're drawn into its hazy, unfocused spell. "We're up to our necks in love / So bad / We're up to our necks in love / Blame Dad."  (Except Dad was played by Bill Irwin, and who could blame him?)  "Forgive yourself / And maybe / You'll forgive me" -- well, there's the movie for you in a nutshell.  Now go watch it.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 11-15

This high on the list, we're in Undisputed Classics territory, which accounts for why I've already written about so many of today's tracks. Is it a coincidence that most of these date from the mid-60s, when I was at my most impressionable? Probably not. They're permanently lodged in the back of my brain, and I'll never be free of them -- nor do I want to be!

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

11. "California Dreamin'" / The Mamas and the Papas (1965)
In 1965, I wasn't dreaming of California -- if anything my heart yearned the other direction, towards Swinging London. But this exquisitely melancholy track isn't about geography, it's about loneliness and longing. Perfect for a dismal end-of-winter day like yesterday.

12. "Bus Stop" / The Hollies (1966)
I always forget that this moody single -- the Hollies' first breakthrough hit in the US -- in fact is one of those rare pop things, a Happy In Love Song. Despite the minor key, it's an endearing little novel-in-song, with a Greek chorus of lush vocal harmonies.

13. "Jet" / "Let Me Roll it" / Paul McCartney and Wings (1973)
It's only fitting that the highest-ranking post-Sixties single on my list should also be the only post-Beatles entry from my once and future love Paul McCartney.

14. "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" / The Kinks (1966)
How convenient that I've got so much room now to rave about "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" (or as Kinksters refer to it, DFOF). Now, I promised myself I wouldn't stuff this list too egregiously with Kinks songs. But unfortunately, that means I had to choose between this and "Well-Respected Man," two songs that always seem to me to go hand in hand. Released about the same time -- WRM in October 1965, DFOF in April 1966-- they both were startling breaks from the hallmark Kinks sound of "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night," themselves released barely a year earlier. I really had to sit up and take notice. Who WERE these guys? In the dizzying creative scrum of British Invasion music, these songs signaled a new thing entirely, with a music-hall bounce and sharply detailed satire that left even the Beatles scrambling to catch up. (Which they did with Revolver, but still . . . ). "Well-Respected Man" charted higher in the States, and still crops up on the set list of Ray Davies' solo shows -- but in the final analysis, I have to say, I loved "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" more. After all, I wasn't well versed in all the intricacies of the British class system (the subject of WRM), but there I was, a preteen in a flowered miniskirt and poor boy sweater, totally smitten with the Carnaby Street setting of DFOF's Mod fashion victim. Underneath a veneer of electric jangle (dig those grating strums of the intro), "Dedicated Follower"'s melody is vintage vaudeville tap dance, and you couldn't ignore the theatricality of Ray's deliberately foppish vocals. ("They seek him heah! / They seek him theah!"). Despite the mincing enunciation, the portrait is mercilessly tough -- "And when he does his little rounds, / 'Round the boutiques of London Town", "One week he's in polka-dots, the next week he's in stripes," "He flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly," and of course the most skewering lines of all: "He thinks he is a flower to be looked at, / And when he pulls his frilly nylon panties right up tight, / He feels a dedicated follower of fashion." Interspersed is the matey singlong of the chorus, with Ray's jolly fellow Kinks repeating after him: "Oh yes he is (oh yes he is!) / Oh yes he is (oh yes he is!)." I can testify that that part really is best sung with a pint of bitter in hand. According to a TV documentary I saw once (sorry, but I can't tell you which one -- I've seen so many on the Kinks!), Ray wrote this song in one blaze of inspiration, a fit of pique after some effete hipster had criticized the Kinks' manner of dress. Perhaps that lingering snit explains why Ray doesn't sing it much anymore. (Though I have seen Mick Avory do his own boozy rendition at a Kast Off Kinks gig.) Nevertheless, it is a song near and dear to my heart. It was my first sign that these guys, these Kinks, would go on surprising me for the rest of my life.

15. "I Put a Spell On You" / The Alan Price Set (1966)
Such a great song, no matter who sings it -- Nina Simone, Manfred Mann, Ctreedence Clearwater. But this is the version that most melts my heart, sung with throat-wrenching power by ex-Animal Alan Price.

"California Dreamin'" / The Mamas and the Papas

If you want proof of how much music changed during the 1960s, just listen to yesterday's Patsy Cline song and then this one. "Crazy" sounded perfectly at home on the radio in 1961, but by 1965 -- just four years later -- the airwaves were full of a new sound entirely. When the Mamas and the Papas burst onto the scene with this song (fittingly, released in November), it was a perfect counterculture anthem of defiance and alienation -- and unforgettably lush and catchy to boot.

The soft intro, picked on an acoustic guitar, stated the song's folkie intentions from the outset, but this was no folk song, not with that metallic rock 'n' roll drumbeat, the brittle echo-laden production, the jazz flute in the instrumental break. And while folk music had harmonies, they weren't harmonies like this, a dense wall of vocals you could almost climb into. Because the song had "California" in the title, I used to associate those harmonies with the Beach Boys' sound, but the Wilson brothers always sounded sunny, their mellow voices blending in Four-Freshman-inspired polyphony; there's nothing sunny about the minor-key dissonances of "California Dreamin'." No, these harmonies owe more to the British Invasion, to the Zombies' "She's Not There" and the Yardbirds' "For Your Love" and the Beatles' "Things We Said Today." (And in turn, next year we'd get the Hollies' "Bus Stop" and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby.") Denny Doherty's lines are constantly overlapped by Cass Elliott and Michelle Phillips' counterpoint, so there's scarcely a beat without vocals, their voices crunching together at the end of every verse in a haunting dissonant chord.

No, this song is about as un-California as it could be, but that's the point. The singer is roaming aimlessly in the middle of bleak winter -- "All the leaves are brown / And the sky is gray" (I can see that scene outside my window, which is probably why this song came into my head today) -- and he's pining for warm Los Angeles. But it's not just the weather that's got him so gloomy; there's a subtext of romantic complication, never spelled out but hinted at in the end: "If I didn't tell her / I could leave today." He's not telling us the story, he's just brooding -- and that note of mystery makes this even more compelling.

What really made this song a hit, though, was the controversial second verse: "Stopped into a church / I passed along the way / Well, I got down on my knees / And I pretend to pray." Pretend to pray, and Denny delivers that line with an extra punch of desperation. But religion is no consolation; quite the opposite. "You know that preacher likes the cold / He knows I'm gonna stay" -- the church seems like part of the forces ganging up to suppress this California dreamer. (It was the anti-establishment 60s, after all.)

That tantalizing flute comes weaving in right after this verse, the inarticulate expression of all his yearning, and by the time the final verse begins again, it seems like the women are taunting poor Denny, the same way the girl back-ups often seemed to be shaking a warning finger in Motown songs; there's no getting away from those nagging echoes. He's truly trapped.

Of course, when I first fell under this song's hypnotic spell in 1965, I had no idea that the singer, Denny, was sleeping with back-up singer Michelle -- but then, neither did Michelle's husband John Phillips, who wrote the song and stood there playing guitar while Denny sang it. So who is it about? I suppose it shouldn't matter, but somehow I think all that complicated emotion is what gives this song its extra power. That and the magnificent voice of Cass Elliott, who starts out trying to blend her voice in those close harmonies with Michelle's frail soprano, but can't help overpowering her by the second verse. The story goes that Cass was in love with Denny too -- you could say she's singing her heart out here.

And in the end, the only thing that really matters to me about the Mamas and the Papas was Cass's voice. I remember seeing them for the first time on TV, with John wearing that stupid fur hat he favored, Michelle slim and blond and beautiful, Denny in an embroidered Mod tunic -- and hefty Cass, wearing an absolutely huge flowered caftan, swaying and singing away. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It was so clear she was there because SHE COULD SING. I cannot tell you what a powerful message that sent me as a little girl.

And on this bleak winter's day, the sound of Cass Elliott's voice is still better than any dream of California.
Have a listen at http://www.mp3.com/albums/10021/summary.html