My 1,000th Post!

"I Think It's Going
To Rain Today" /
Randy Newman

Believe it or not, I started this blog a little more than 10 years ago -- my first post was on October 26, 2006, to be exact. (The song: "Learning How to Love You" by my hometown hero John Hiatt.) I had some high hopes that I could hit the 1,000-post mark on October 26, 2016, but life got in the way, as it so often does. 

I don't post as often now as I used to, but while the internet is littered with abandoned blogs, here I still am, writing about the artists I love.

Some of whom are no longer with us.  In the past year alone, we've said goodbye to David Bowie, Guy Clark, Allen Toussaint, Greg Trooper, and Beatles producer George Martin. You all were here with me to mourn when my older brother died, and when I went through my soul-shaking discovery of the late great Harry Nilsson.

I started this blog as a card-carrying Kinks and Beatles fan, but my Nick Lowe obsession happened right here, followed by my Robyn Hitchcock craze, my rediscovery of the Zombies, my reignited connection to the great Marshall Crenshaw, and -- perhaps most memorable of all -- the heads-over-heels epiphany that led me to become a Graham Parker fan for life.

Oh, and there were many others along the way -- fascinating artists whose names you can find in the sound cloud to the right. Old artists, new artists, women and men, of all genres -- I do love to mix it up.

For the 1,000th post, I wanted something momentous, a track I had never written about before, and something that perhaps sums up my outlook on life.  In the flurry of social media these days, with the increasingly bizarre turn of events in the United States at the moment, nothing superficial would do.

And then it came to me.

This is how good Randy Newman was right from the get-go -- it appears on his debut album, Randy Newman, released way back in 1968. The list of artists who've covered this song is simply mind-boggling -- Dusty Springfield, Nina Simone, Peggy Lee, Neil Diamond, Dave Van Ronk, Cass Elliot, Francoise Hardy, Ricky Nelson, Joe Cocker, Cleo Laine, Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, UB40, Norah Jones, Madeleine Peyroux, Irma Thomas, Paul Carrack, Peter Gabriel, even Leonard Nimoy. I myself first heard it on Judy Collins' 1966 LP In My Life, back in my Earnest Folkie Phase -- that was the first I ever heard of Randy Newman. But it led me to buy his 1971 LP Randy Newman Live, and to see him in concert in 1974 in Northampton, Massachusetts (on a double bill with Ry Cooder, no less). And to become a Fan For Life.

For all the covers, Randy's own stripped-down, plangent, wistfully bemused rendering will forever be my favorite.

You want poetic imagery?  He's got it. He leads off verse one with evocative scene-setting: "Broken windows and empty hallways / A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray."  And in verse two, a rueful stroke of social satire: "Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles / With frozen smiles to chase love away."

But it's that refrain I keep coming back to -- that despairing, deeply ironic refrain: "Human kindness is overflowing /  And I think it's going to rain today." It's heartbreaking how the melodic line rises on "human kindness" and then wilts disappointedly downward on "overflowing," to move into the regretful cadence of "And I think it's going to rain today."

In verse three, he offers a fleeting glimpse of social action: "Bright before me the signs implore me /  To help the needy and show them the way." Oh, those do-gooders. But Randy doesn't place much faith in them; knee-jerk liberals can write a check one minute and forget the dispossessed the next. The rain will still fall.

The bridge is absolutely haunting: "Lonely, / Lonely. /  Tin can at my feet / Think I'll kick it down the street / That's the way to treat a friend." Those broken, almost disconnected phrases, the fatalistic shrug of "Think I'll kick it down the street" -- there's more than a shot of Leonard Cohen world-weariness there.

Whether or not this is explicitly about homelessness, or alienation, or -- who knows? -- refugees and  immigrants, I 'll leave to you to decide. In the 50 years since, I've pored over a lot of Randy Newman songs, and I know that his satire is complex and elusive. Every one of his songs is written from a character's viewpoint, and it's not always clear how much he means us to identify with the character. (Check out, for example, his devastating song "Political Science," which terrifyingly feels more true today than ever.)

But it's not just about the lyrics; it's also about the heart-breaking melody. It's no surprise to me that Randy Newman has blossomed into one of our great film composers; there's something in his melodic sense that hits all the emotional buttons.  Which is why I'd always rather hear Randy himself sing the songs, in his deceptively unshowy, croaky, real-guy voice.  No pyrotechnics; just the real thing.

And truer now than ever.

"Whenever You're On My Mind" /
Marshall Crenshaw

Oh, my brothers and sisters, I wish I could post here more often. I promise I will do so, hopefully after, oh, let's say June 15th. And in the meantime . . . well, today I was grocery shopping for my mother (90 years old, broken hip, let's not get started) and who did I hear on the muzak?  Yes, Marshall Crenshaw.

Now, Marshall Crenshaw is definitely one of My Guys -- the musicians I love so much, and listen to so much, that I feel like they are my friends. Old boyfriends, even.  And (with the exception of Paul McCartney, who needs no more fans, but I could no more abandon him than stop breathing), My Guys are inexplicably artists who just don't get the attention I feel they deserve. I never hear Graham Parker or John Hiatt on muzak, and I certainly never hear Robyn Hitchcock. Once or twice maybe Nick Lowe, and if so, only "Cruel to Be Kind.*" (*Note: a song co-written with Ian Gomm).

But this isn't the first time I've heard Marshall Crenshaw on muzak. I'm sure there are business marketing reasons why MC has gotten his product into the proper lucrative channels, and I note that it's usually his earlier power-pop-ish stuff (not the magnificent 2009 Jaggedland or even my current favorite, 1999's dark and delicious #447). This particular track is from Marshall's sophomore effort, Field Day, which some haters people trash, and I personally love. But it is more power-pop than his later stuff, and it sounds perfectly plausible coming out of the PA system.

So I asked my sister, with whom I was shopping (I said DON'T get me started), "Do you know who this is?"

Well, she didn't, even though she lived in New York with me in 1982 when my buddies and I were all ga-ga over Marshall Crenshaw. Guess she wasn't listening. And by the time Field Day had come out, she'd decamped to Connecticut.

So what's your excuse?

 Jangly? You betcha. And yet, there's a wistfulness, a yearning to this song that a lot of power pop completely missed out on.  Those hooky guitar riffs spangle in the foreground, while Marshall's earnest and youthful vocals puzzle over his dilemma.  The very thought of this girl sends him into an existential dither -- everything is foggy, he's disoriented in a crowd, he loses track of time -- it's a "reverie," a "fantasy." The jangliness adds a certain star-crossed quality that totally works here.

What really hit me in the grocery aisle today, though, is the rhythmic sophistication of this track. (Yes, I'll admit: I danced with my shopping cart.) We start out in Buddy Holly-ish straight time, but with a sinuous melodic line. Then we shift into that bridge full of syncopated modulations (hey, the guy's confused!), resurfacing in a samba-like chorus of bright and sunny harmonic resolutions. 

We're always driving towards the major key, the 4/4 time. The kid's an uncertain mess, but the song itself lets us know that in the end, he's gonna be all right. And not just all right; better, because he's given in to the copacetic flow. The very thought of this girl will make him better than himself, if he can only give it time. And we're witnesses to his faithful surrender

Did Marshall Crenshaw and his cowriter, the great Bill Teeley, think this all out when they wrote this song?  Nah, probably not. They just wrote it. But that's the mark of real songwriters; their instincts tell them where to go.

And me, dancing in the grocery aisle?  Well, I felt the fug of my mother's illness magically lift, and I felt grateful for my sister's solidarity (even if she didn't know who Marshall Crenshaw is), and I felt just this teensy bit lighter in my heart.

Which is, let's admit it, the whole reason we listen to music.

Another Shuffle for Holt

Because that playlist just has too many great tunes not to go for another round.

1. "American Tune" / Paul Simon (1973)
"I don't know a soul who's not been battered / I don't have a friend who feels at ease / Don't know a dream that's not been shattered / Or driven to its knees" -- yep, that's life, and Paul Simon's never been afraid of facing that down. My brother the minister got that, too. Best part of this song -- where he dreams that he's dying, and he flies, freed from his mortal bonds, over the Statue of Liberty. The song breaks free of its gentle melodic patterns (stolen from Bach, I feel compelled to note) and soars into another realm of consciousness.

2. "The Weight" / The Band (1968)
Surely I'm not the only one who finds something Christlike about the singer of this song, wandering into town to "take a load off Fanny / And put the load right on me." And after meeting all the characters in town, he takes his wistful fare-thee-well -- "My bag is sinking low and I do believe it's time." Holt had this album, Music From Big Pink, though it took me years to figure out why these guys were worth listening to. They may have been a Canadian band, but they took their cue from Appalachian folk music, and from thence all the great Scots-Irish folk songs, in which the spectre of death is ever-present.

3. "Drive South" / John Hiatt (1988)
I've bragged here about how I knew Johnny Hiatt, growing up in Indianapolis, but my brother knew him better than I did, and was just as astonished as I was when we discovered he'd become not just a rock star but a genuine artist. I took Holt to see JH for his birthday a few years go, and he saw him a few more times after that. So you know there had to be at least one Hiatt tune on the playlist. I love this one for three reasons: 1) It's about driving, and Holt loved driving (Indy, natch); 2) It's a sexy seduction song ("Don't bother to pack your nylons / Just keep those pretty legs showing / It gets hot down where we're going")  and my brother, he loved the ladies; and 3) "drive south" may be a metaphor for going to hell. My brother worked a powerful lot of good in his life, but he was no saint, and who knows how tough the grading system is at the pearly gates?  But if he's headed to hell, then hell's a reasonable option for us all.

4. "The Cape" / Guy Clark (1995)
The first time I heard Guy Clark sing this song, all I could think of was my brother, and how much he loved to dress up in costumes as a kid. And yes, like the hero of this song, even when he was old and grey, people still thought he acted like a kid. But as Guy puts it, "he's one of those who knows / That life is just a leap of faith / Spread your arms and hold your breath / And always trust your cape." Brilliant song that never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

5. "Don't Forget Me" / Marshall Crenshaw (1995)
Here's a two-fer: Marshall Crenshaw AND Harry Nilsson, who wrote this tender wry song. I don't know if Holt shared my Nilsson obsession, but I know he loved Nilsson's oddball animated movie The Point when it first came out; in hospice, Holt smiled when I played him my Nilsson playlist. Although this is basically a song to an ex-wife, we can extrapolate the sentiments to any loves from the past. Even the spookily apposite verse three: "And when we're older / Full of cancer / It doesn't matter now / Come on, get happy / Cause nothing lasts forever / But I will always love you." Amen.

6. "Miles From Nowhere" / Cat Stevens (1970)
Tea for the Tillerman was an inescapable album that year, full of folky riffs and mordant black humor. Perfect soundtrack for Harold and Maude, a movie Holt loved for its warped fascination with death. Many songs on this album are about fathers and sons (I watched that battle from a front row seat) and taking journeys. But the line that really resonates here? "Lord my body has been a good friend / I won't need it when I reach the end." And so we told Holt in the hospice -- time to turn in the loaner car, it's reached the end of its usefulness.

7. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
For a Methodist minister, having "Losing My Religion" as your ringtone was a pretty gutsy move, doncha think?

8. "Don't Forget About Me" / John Mellencamp (2010)
Our other homegrown Indiana talent, Johnny Cougar nee Mellencamp always held a special place in our hearts. From his stellar back-to-basics album No Better Than This, another ex-wife song that can, if you squinch your eyes just so, be re-interpreted to apply to an old beloved friend who's moved to another plane of being.  

9. "Over the Rainbow / Wonderful World" / Israel Kamakawiwo Ole (1993)
One song we all agreed had to be played at Holt's memorial. Because, no matter how often it's played, this lilting ukelele rendition of the old standards transforms them into something new and hopeful and uplifting.

10. "Warmth of the Sun" / The Beach Boys (1964)
It was Holt, not me, who owned all our Beach Boys albums. (Note that possessive "our," because I listened to them just as avidly as he did.) In the face of the British Invasion, he never gave up on their American counterparts. In 1966, our family took a cross-country train trip to California that gave us our one taste of golden SoCal surf summer, before the Monkees and the Summer of Love happened. In my mind, this glorious Beach Boys ballad sums it all up -- how we keep the warmth of the sun inside us, to survive grief and loss. Interesting to note that Brian Wilson and Mike Love began to write this song on November 22, 1963, but didn't finish it until the tragic events of that day -- the Kennedy assassination, for those of you too young to have been permanently scarred by this event -- had happened. So the elegiac tone of this song was no accident. Those exquisite chord changes, the vocal counterpoints, and above all Brian's heart-melting falsetto -- they make me weep, make me smile, make my heart swell in my chest. Magic.

Cleaning out my brother's apartment, I found his iPod and put it in the dock to play on shuffle while I folded clothes and emptied drawers. How lovely it was to hear his own curated inventory of music! It was as if he were in the room with me. Expect to hear more from that source....

"Don't Forget Me" /
Marshall Crenshaw Sings
Harry Nilsson

I'll admit it -- I'm still part-time obsessed with Harry Nilsson, have been ever since last summer. So please permit me to interrupt the regularly-scheduled program here to post a memorial tribute.

I've just finished the Alyn Shipton biography of Nilsson that I was reading, and realized that it was 20 years ago this January that Harry Nilsson died, at the way-too-soon age of 52. If I'd read the book faster, I'd have known the date in time to post this on January 15, but I'm sure Harry wouldn't mind that I'm getting around to it a couple weeks late.

Because Harry didn't want to be forgotten.

I promise you a Harry Nilsson week this summer, to celebrate his birthday (always better to celebrate births than deaths).  But I couldn't let this anniversary pass without something, and this song is perfectly apropos.

Harry Nilsson had one of the great voices of the 20th century -- at least he did early in his career, before damaging it with his legendary rock-n-roll lifestyle. When Harry recorded "Don't Forget Me," for his 1974 album Pussy Cats, the months-long party that accompanied that recording session had left his voice ravaged. So instead of listening to Harry's version, let's get an idea of what it could have been by hearing Marshall Crenshaw's faithful cover, from the brilliant 1995 tribute album For the Love of Harry. After all, Nilsson was also one of the great songwriters of the century, and I've always believed that the mark of a great songwriter lies in how good his songs' covers are.

Nobody could outdo Harry Nilsson when it came to wistful songs about loss and parting. This is a break-up song -- a divorce song -- but with dashes of ironic humor and regret that make the parting even more bittersweet. (And having already gone through two divorces, Harry knew whereof he spoke.) "In the wintertime," he begins, already projecting into their future apart. Still feeling protective, he advises her to "Keep your feet warm," but then adds wryly, "Keep your clothes on" -- he may be letting her go, but he's not ready to imagine her getting naked with anybody else. He keeps working that fine line between sentiment and sarcasm: "Don't forget me / Keep the memories / But keep your powder dry too."

Verse two follows songwriting convention, moving onto the next season, projecting even further forward in time. It's a lyrical vision at first -- "And in the summer / By the poolside / While the fireflies are all around you / I'll miss you" -- but before he gets too sappy, he undercuts the sentiment to add, "And I know that / I'll miss the alimony too."

The chorus simply repeats the melody, only in a higher key -- a trademark move for Nilsson, he of the three-and-a-half-octave voicespan. (Luckily, Marshall Crenshaw also has that upper register well in his range.) "Don't forget me, / Please don't forget me," he yearns in that higher key. "Make it easy on me, just for a little while" -- I love how that phrase admits to the pain of this split, without asking for pity. And then the chorus shifts down to the original key, adding tenderly, "You know I think about you / Let me know you think about me too." Because marriages don't just vanish; it takes time to work through this stuff.

To me, the tour de force is verse three. Talk about projecting into the future: "And when we're older / Full of cancer / It doesn't matter now, / Come on, get happy." Nothing like putting perspective on today's pain. And then he winds it up with "'Cause nothing lasts forever / But I will always love you." If nothing last forever, how can he "always" love her?  Yet he will.

Harry was one of the world's great Beatle fans -- he was thrilled to be referred to as the Fifth Beatle, and not only because he was close friends with John Lennon, and even closer with Ringo Starr. (The respect was mutual -- at one press conference when the Beatles were asked who their favorite group was, they all answered, "Nilsson.") It wouldn't be surprising, given that his idol John Lennon was producing this album, that this simple melody sounds Lennonesque in its pared-down range, the narrow intervals and chromatics and repeated variations. Yet there's also a McCartneyesque playfulness to the rhythm, a skiffle-ish dance before and behind the beat that gives the song extra buoyancy.

But what really makes this a wonderful song is the unique Nilsson touch, the sidelong way he communicates heartbreak, without ever getting soppy or melodramatic. Who else has ever captured the perverse yin and yang of love and loss so well?

We won't forget you, Harry.

"Mary Anne" / Marshall Crenshaw

I heard this on the grocery store musak the other day. What?!! Either grocery store musak is getting hipper, or I've evolved into the middle-aged, Hush-Puppy-wearing, easy-listening person that grocery store musak has always catered to.

No, that just can't be. I categorically reject the idea that Marshall Crenshaw does easy-listening music. Is it easy to listen to? Well, yeah . . . but that's soooo deceptive.

It is true that this song is now, what, more than 30 years old?  It appeared on Marshall's 1982 debut album, which I did own in 1982 (one of the few times I've actually been current with the music).  Even at the time, this record had a retro feel, harking back to the classic early rock-'n'-roll of Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, and Ricky Nelson. (Play this next to Ricky's "Hello Mary Lou" and you'll see.) Still, there's a modern jangle to this album that places it firmly in its own time.

Ah, the 80s. The decade when music scurried into its niche caves and refused to come out. Marshall Crenshaw, for better or worse, got filed into Power Pop. He was not angry enough for punk, not high-concept enough for New Wave, too subtle for metal, not corny enough for country rock. The power pop mantle never quite fit, though. It ignores the sneaky musical sophistication of Crenshaw's records, and the soulful earnestness that raises them above pop clichés.

When I posted this grocery store sighting (hearing?) on Facebook, a friend of mine, who happens to be named Mary Ann, knew the song immediately. (Naturellement. Do I not sit up whenever I hear "Holly Holy," "Holly Up on Poppy," or even "Holly Jolly Christmas"?)  Classic pop songwriting gambit: Name a song after a girl, and every girl with that name will make it "her" song. The Beatles, of course, went one further and put a "you" in their song titles, so every girl could make it "her" song. But I digress....

My friend Mary Ann's memory of this record is that the only lyrics are her name over and over, with an occasional "I really want to tell you." True, that is the chorus, and the chorus gets repeated a lot. But she's missing some great stuff in the verses.

It starts out, provocatively, in medias res: "It isn't such a crime / It isn't such a shame / It happens all the time / You shouldn't take the blame." Immediately we're curious -- what has happened? What's the crisis? We're plunged right away into their relationship. Let's say he forgot to call her, in those pre-cellphone days, or I suppose it could have been an amatory mishap in bed, a failure to perform ("it happens all the time" ranks right up there with "size doesn't matter" as a sextime excuse). I have to admit, though, my first thought is of Paul McCartney singing "Martha My Dear" to his English sheepdog who ruined the carpet ("Hold your head up, you silly girl / Look what you've done.")  Did MC ever have a dog named Mary Anne?

 

But I think the heart of this song is the repeated second half of the verse, as he sweetly urges her to lighten up: "Go on and have a laugh / Go have a laugh on me / Go on and have a laugh / At all your misery." What a great boyfriend, coaxing her out of her black mood, giving her permission to relax. (Love the generosity of "have a laugh on me.") And yes, getting himself off the hook, quite possibly, but in the best way. Because these are the relationships that last, the ones where partners are willing to be caretakers of each other's moods and well-being. 

The second (and third) verse delicately hints at this tendency of hers: "You take a look around / And all you seem to see / Is bringing you down / As down as you can be." (Followed again, both times by the "Have a laugh" exhortation.) Think about this in tandem with "Cynical Girl," on the same album, and a picture starts to evolve. We don't expect to see such psychological acuteness in a simple pop song, or such wisdom about relationships, but this has always been Marshall Crenshaw's secret weapon.

The important thing is that it's all underlaid with love, which he reiterates in the chorus:  "Mary Anne, Mary Anne / I really wanna tell you, Mary Anne, Mary Anne / I'm thinking of you / Mary Anne, Mary Anne / I really wanna tell you / Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Mary Anne." Okay, that is a lot of Mary Annes. But it's lovely, isn't it? It's as if his heart is too full of her to think of anything else.

I often wonder, when I listen to a song, whether the words came first or the music. In this case, I'd guess it was the music.  That's not just because the lyrics are so simple -- the basic rhymes, the repeated line openings -- because as we've seen those deceptively simple lyrics do carry some deft psychological twists and turns. But this tender, heart-lifting song already says it all in the music.

Notice how the verses set up a neat pattern, lines one and three walking down the scale only to be scooped back up the scale by lines two and four, as if refusing to stay down in the dumps. And in the chorus, I love how the "I really wanna tell you's" and "I'm thinking of you" curl tenderly around the ends of the lines, riffs more than phrases, while the "Mary Anne's" sing forth, proclaiming his joy in her. The uplift, the stubborn optimism, is all there in the melody, and that backbeat syncopation, with its whispers of samba and jazz, is irresistibly energizing.

And catchy, of course -- undeniably catchy. Which is why my friend Mary Ann remembered it all these years, and most likely why the grocery store muzak-makers picked this song. It sure had the shoppers dancing in the aisles the other day. Maybe even made them so happy, they bought more pork chops, Charmin, and Cheerios. Who knows?  Now if we could just get them to buy more Marshall Crenshaw records. . . .

The Christmas Shuffle

Where have I been for the past two months? Long story, with more doctors involved than I'd like to admit. But I'm back, and now that Thanksgiving is in the rearview mirror, I'm happy to plunge into my favorite musical season of the year. I've got 73 tunes in my fastidiously curated Christmas playlist -- which ten tunes will show up next on the random shuffle?

1. Santa Bring My Baby Back -- Marshall Crenshaw
Sorry I can't give you a link for this retro charmer -- I only have it only a bootlegged disc called MC Rarities, wheedled out of a fellow Crenshaw fanatic. As you'd expect, Marshall swings beautifully on this cover of this oft-covered 1957 Elvis Presley Christmas tune. Where it came from, I don't know, but Marshall does it more than justice. Love this guy.

2. Remember (Christmas) -- Harry Nilsson
Oh, I was hoping this one would cycle up. Over the summer I had a rather intense -- dare I say transformational -- Harry Nilsson period, and if you're a Nilsson fan you'll know that never wears off. I'm not sure this is really a Christmas song, but I'll take it. The upward surging key changes, the yearning vocals -- "Remember, life is never as it seems / Dreams...." Well, it's all about heartbreak and longing and disappointment and hope, and if that isn't Christmas I don't know what is.

3. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) -- Death Cab for Cutie
I don't care if he did break up with Zooey Deschanel -- I still love Ben Gibbard, our alt-indie troubadour of depression and loss. Here he moons all over the 1963 Darlene Love classic -- "I remember when you were here / And all the fun we had last year" -- oooh, what can I do to make it better, Ben?

4. Run Run Rudolph -- Chuck Berry
Enough with the covers -- here's the original version of a rock & roll Christmas classic, in which Chuck Berry repurposes "Johnny B. Goode" for the holiday market.  Dig that snaky guitar solo, which was probably the whole reason for this track's existence.

5. Waking On Christmas -- The Smithereens
Gotta love these guys, with their psychedelic garage-y crunch. Why should I be surprised that they released a 2007 Christmas album, Christmas With the Smithereens? They've always been about defying expectations and doing what they damn well please.   "Watching the snowmelt into the ground /  While the sun shines..." That's a Christmas morning scenario well observed.

6. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) -- Darlene Love
Now here's the original that Ben Gibbard covered, a prime cut from Phil Spector's Christmas album, which under various titles has been a staple of my holiday listening since 1973. That famous Wall of Sound needed a brassy voice like Darlene's to cut through, and oh, how she sashays center stage to claim her due.

7. Ain't Nothing Like Christmas -- Shelby Lynne    
"I bring the nog, you put on the log / It's a Christmas party"-- Shelby's country-twanged paeon to the holidays gets me where I live. I love that Shelby released an entire album of Dusty Springfield covers; I love that she's Steve Earle's sister-in-law; but most of all I just love Shelby for bucking the Nashville norm and finding her own idiosyncratic C&W groove.

8. Christmas Time Is Here -- Diana Krall
Diana Krall -- who to me, I'm sorry I can't help it, will always be Mrs. Elvis Costello -- earns her stars by reimagining Vince Guaraldi's instant-classic theme song from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Breathy, evocative, and so on point. Sweet spot duly hit.

9. Lousiana Christmas Day -- Aaron Neville
Throw a little Cajun shuffle into the holiday cheer. I love it when Aaron Neville rocks out; even Jimmy Fallon parodies can't touch this exuberant celebration of the season.

10. Christmas at the Airport -- Nick Lowe
Seasonal serendipity indeed. A new holiday original from Nick Lowe, whom you all know I love to death. Check out the adorable animated video here. This year Nick actually released that most cliched of products, a Christmas album (Quality Street), and I was all prepared to cringe. Mea culpa, Nick. I should have known you'd pull it off with not one whiff of cheesy sleigh bells.

      

"Coconut" / Fred Schneider

It must be fun to be a B-52.

Trawling around iTunes trying to find more songs by Victoria Williams, I discovered this adorable Harry Nilsson tribute album. So many artists on here that I love -- Marshall Crenshaw, Ron Sexsmith, Al Kooper, Aimee Mann, Randy Newman, Bill Lloyd, both Brian and Carl Wilson -- and smack dab in the middle of it is our very own Love Shack sherpa Fred Schneider of the B-52s. Now, if you'd asked me which Harry Nilsson song would be perfect for Fred Schneider to cover, I don't know if I would have come up with this one. But the minute I heard it, I realized it was PERFECT.

It's a raucously fun song even when Harry himself sang it, but Fred pushes it to a whole new level. "Coconut" was just a hair shy of a novelty tune; I've always imagined that Nilsson began singing it to himself in the middle of a colossal tropical-drink bender, and luckily remembered enough of it the next day to capture the lightning in a bottle. (So to speak.) There's not much to it lyrically -- mostly just the repeated mantra "you put the lime in the coconut / And drink 'em both up." To tell you the truth, sometimes I forget and think this song was written by Jimmy Buffett. Not that there's anything wrong with that, for all my Parrothead friends out there.

I have one major criterion for a great cover version: It has to bring something new to the song. And on that score, Fred Schneider succeeds brilliantly. (It was first recorded for his 1996 solo album Just Fred.) In the great B-52s tradition, he takes this amiable little tune and sends it off into outer space, with dissonant snarls of guitar, frantic drum smacks, and buzzy little synth riffs that sound like transmissions from Mars.

Besides putting the lime in the coconut, we're also supposed to call a doctor and ask him what to do -- and this is the motif that Fred really goes to town on. His voice comes out of one speaker, frantically begging the doctor to tell him what to do about his bellyache; out of the other speaker, he plays a particularly snide doctor, advising his patient to put the lime in the coconut and call him in the morning.  In true Rock Lobster-style, he unleashes layers of wails, growls, and shouts, weaving in and out of those messy instrumentals.  (Really, has anybody ever done more with less vocal talent than Fred Schneider?)  It's truly a party gone out of bounds.

Well, it's spring vacation and I have NOT gone to the Caribbean. In fact, the landscape outside my window is six inches deep in crusty snow and slush. But Fred Schneider has just delivered an umbrella drink to my lounge chair, and I'm lovin' it.

All I Know Right Now / Marshall Crenshaw

All I know right now is that there are only a few days left for you to be part of something pretty amazing. Marshall Crenshaw has mounted a new project on Kickstarter which will allow music lovers to help underwrite his new baby:  a series of EPs to be released on vinyl over the next year or so, featuring a mix of new original Crenshaw songs and dynamic cover versions of other people's songs.  (Because, as you know if you've ever seen Marshall live, he really digs performing other people's music too.)

Click here and Marshall himself will tell you all about it: Marshall's Kickstart campaign

I signed up.  You should too.

One of the cool things about this Kickstarter project is that it will allow you to sample many facets of this multi-dimensional artist. There's the romantic spirit, full of yearning and emotional vulnerability, that breaks through the lush 80s-style wall of sound on his 1983 album Field Day. "All I Know Right Now" is a song that literally stops me in my tracks everytime I hear it:

But anyone who thinks that Marshall Crenshaw is only about bright and bouncy power pop deserves to listen more. He does dark and brooding and edgy perfectly well -- like this song, "On the Run," from his 1989 album Good Evening.  I have this track on my favorite workout playlist, and everytime it cycles up, I feel a burst of power.

And lest you think he's a relic of the 80s, just listen to the powerful stuff he's doing today. "Stormy River" is . . . well, I was about to say it's one of my favorite tracks from Marshall's most recent album, Jaggedland, but that's crazy talk:  I love the entire album, just love it to death. Because the real great artists don't stop growing.

Now as you know I'm a besotted fan of this guy, and I've written about him a lot: Here and here and here, just for starters.  Oooh, and I can't help throwing in a link to this post, either.  And maybe just one more YouTuber, because the accompanying video is just too much fun:

So now that you've spent your afternoon listening to all this Marshall Crenshaw -- isn't it time you went and got yourself a little piece of the action?  Marshall's Kickstart campaign

Looking For A Place to Live / Bill Demain

God forbid this should happen to any of us. But it happened to Bill Demain: a devastating flood washed out his condo in Nashville, only to be followed a few months later by a second tragedy, a house fire that wiped him out completely. For more than a year he lived out of a suitcase, in limbo, waiting to find a new home.  Now, Bill's not your average homeless person. He's a fairly successful singer-songwriter, not only as one-half of the duo Swan Dive, but also as a songwriter who's collaborated with the likes of Jill Sobule, Bill Lloyd, and Marshall Crenshaw. On top of that, he's a well-respected music journalist, writing for mags like MOJO and Classic Rock. Which just underscores that a misfortune like this could befall anybody.

But as luck would have it, this homeless period had a silver lining; it inspired Bill to write a collection of songs that he has now released as his first solo EP.  And -- no surprise -- it's a truly winning album, offering an eclectic range of pop styles, well-crafted lyrics, and charming vocal performance. More than that: it's got heart.  When you think about it, that only makes sense -- that a brush with tragedy would call out wistfulness, nostalgia, soul-searching, and mordant humor.

I'm going for the lead-off track here, although you really must check out the entire album (it's finally up on iTunes and Amazon's mp3 store now; or you could order your very own copy here).  And why not? "Looking For A Place To Live" kinda says it all, doesn't it?

Acoustic folk seems just the right style for a displaced troubador; it's as if he hasn't got much but his guitar case to lug around (one of the few things Bill had time to grab when fleeing the fire was his 1937 Martin). That gentle rambling strum is perfect pavement-pounding music. But leave it to Bill to face his dilemma with wry humor: "I know how Columbus felt / Sailing round in circles / His coffee in a cardboard cup / And the Sunday classifieds." That sense of being an explorer -- that's probably the only way to face house-hunting and still stay sane.  And if, along the way, you gain some sympathy with the dispossessed of this world ("Out with the refugees / Dreaming of vacancies / For what seems eternities...") -- well, that's a good thing, too.

Of course, good songwriting never stops with the obvious.  In the process, he comes to understand what's really important:  "Maybe home is nothing more / Than where you hang your hat." I like the fact that this song works even if you don't know Bill's story: maybe it's just about a young couple searching for a place to move in together, or maybe it's about a guy being thrown out by his girlfriend / wife and having to find himself a new lonely bachelor pad.

What matters is the wistfulness, the existential sense of dislocation. (Does anybody else hear a bit of Bookends-era Simon and Garfunkel here?) It's a song that treads lightly and takes nothing for granted.  A song about stripping your life down to essentials.  So self-effacing, so artlessly charming -- and so haunting.  In a good way.

How To Unring a Bell / 
Nikki Jean

My concert companion bailed on me. Okay, so there was a blizzard raging -- a freakish thing to happen the night before Halloween -- and there wasn't a taxi to be had; even the local subway was out of commission. And true, we had already seen Marshall Crenshaw not so very long ago, down at the City Winery.  But Marshall's October gigs at the Iridium jazz club were going to be something entirely different:  A tribute to masters of the Les Paul guitar, with all sorts of special guests and the Les Paul Trio backing up Marshall.  How could I miss that?

So I slogged down there alone, wet boots and all, and, man, was it worth it.  Marshall more or less conducted a seminar in vintage rock and pop, featuring renditions of classics from everyone from Freddie King and Bill Haley to Smokey Robinson and the Three Suns (favorites of Mamie Eisenhower, apparently.).  Along with Marshall appeared guitarist Steuart Smith of the Eagles, the fabulous Charlie Giordano of E Street fame -- who convinced me that every song should have accordion on it -- and, filling in as the voice of Sylvia Robinson on two Mickey & Sylvia covers, the effervescently charming Nikki Jean.

Some sixth sense told me that Marshall was going to include Mickey & Sylvia numbers.  Maybe it's because he'd already introduced me to one of the songs -- the ridiculously delightful "Love Will Make You Fail In School" -- on his Saturday WFUV radio show.  But I'd never heard of Nikki Jean, the singer Marshall had enlisted to help him out.  Her shimmering, pure voice was perfect for the job, though, and when Marshall encouraged her to perform a couple of songs from her new album Pennies in a Jar, I became hooked.

Now here's the cool back story. Pennies in a Jar is Nikki Jean's debut album (although she cut her teeth on indie/hip-hop projects such as Nouveau Riche and tours with Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West). Normally those credentials would send me running in the opposite direction, but Marshall's intro helped me discover that Nikki's got a whole nother thang going on.  Born Nicholle Jean Leary in St. Paul, Minnesota -- a Midwestern girl after my own heart! -- she's now based in that old-school music capital of Philly (check out her appearance with fellow Phillyite Daryl Hall on Live From Daryl's House).  She's known among her friends and fans for baking cookies and knitting as well as singing -- how retro is that!  All of which makes perfect sense to me, now that I've listened to her new CD, Pennies in a Jar.

For Pennies in a Jar is Nikki Jean's bid to link up to the great American pop-soul singer-songwriter heritage, a feat she accomplished with odds-defying nerve. She simply contacted all the great American pop songwriters -- Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Jimmy Webb, Carly Simon, Jeff Barry, Paul Williams, even Bob Dylan -- and asked them to co-write songs with her. And believe it or not, they all said yes.

The result is a pretty wonderful album with great range. Nikki's supple, lovely voice and innate musicality suit this classic tradition, so much so that I have to wonder what she was ever doing messing around in the hip-hop world. (To my ears the weakest track on the album is "Million Star Motel", which features hip-hoop emcees Lupe Fiasco and Black Thought).

And this track -- which she sang that night at the Iridium -- has emerged as my favorite on the album. This one she co-wrote with Philly Soul great Thom Bell, author of such classics as "Didn't I Blow Your Mind (This Time)," "Betcha By Golly Wow," and "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love." Bell's DNA is all over this track, and it officially blows my mind.

That central image -- how to unring a bell -- it's like a Zen koan, isn't it?  All of the images she unspools, from falling snow to spilled milk, from shot bullets to a dropped bomb, are irretrievable acts.  So, too, is the fatal moment in a relationship when you break things off; you may be able to backpedal and patch it up, but the fact that you ever inititated a break-up is on the record forever.  "Once you choose / The hand you play is yours to lose" -- it's sad but true, and you can never unsay those words again.  

Dig the descending melodic line of the verse, the unresolved keys, that sense of brooding they convey.  In the bridge and the chorus, it expands into major key, as she philosophically regards the situation she's created -- but the die is cast, and the brooding verses will take over again. We have no idea whether she wants to save the relationship after all, only that she's seized with regret by the sense of having crossed a line. It's psychologically acute, with a hook that I can't get out of my head. 

So kudos to Nikki Jean, for apprenticing herself to the masters of songwriting, and for allying herself with a longer-term tradition.  When I bought this CD from her in the Iridium bar, she couldn't have been sweeter or more genuine:  all she could do was gush about the generous spirit of the songwriters she'd worked with, and her awe at being on stage that night with such amazing musicians. (Those old guys?)    

Somewhere in here, the planets are aligning.  And it's all good.

Radio Girl / Marshall Crenshaw

This is just a reminder -- tomorrow night (June 18th) at 10 p.m. EDT, the inimitable Marshall Crenshaw premieres his new Saturday night radio show on WFUV FM out of Fordham University, here in New York.  Too far away to catch WFUV on your radio dial?  Not to worry -- you can listen to a live stream of the show on the internet.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'd like to share with you a little tune off of Marshall's unjustly neglected 1989 album Good Evening (which apparently can be bought for next to nothing on Amazon.com). It's not the same thing as John Hiatt's "Radio Girl" by the way, which is also a great song . . . just sayin'....

One thing that computers have taken away from us -- the pleasure of listening to the radio, late at night, when nothing else is going on and your attention is focused one-hundred-percent on that audio experience.  As a kid, sneaking my little transistor radio under my pillow so I could listen after light's out, it was a lifeline to something cool and distant and impossible hip.  Yeah, I know radio's not like that anymore, at least not most of the time.  But you find a good station, like WFUV, and you can still recapture some of that magic. 

That's at least part of what Marshall evokes here, in this ode to a female nighttime DJ ("from one a.m. to four").  I love how the song just sort of tunes in, with a slide guitar (played by David Lindsey) homing in like a radio signal. (Sonny Landreth's on there too, playing something that the liner notes call "weird experimental guitar").  She may just be a disembodied voice, but there's something deeply sexy about his connection to her -- "I take her into my bed each night."  And he's not just an anonymous listener -- he does phone-in requests to her too, asking for vintage James Brown ("It's a Man's Man's World," of all things.)  Yeah, she probably flirts with him when he phones in, and she faithfully plays the song, every night.  Who's to say that's not a real connection? 


I could use a little help from you, dear readers -- what's this reference in the third verse? "Hey, what's that sound? / What do you call that sound?" The only thing I can think of is the Replacement's "Alex Chilton," so it may be a reference to some Box Tops or Big Star song (how cool that I got to see Marshall sing at the City Winery Alex Chilton tribute, by the way). 

As opposed to today's narrowly defined radio channels, Marshall's radio girl plays an eclectic range of music, just like my buddies on the Sirius/XM station The Loft.  I'm thinking here of Meg Griffin, my own favorite radio girl, whose musical tastes are uncannily like my own.  But I digress. "I like the stuff you play / and the things you say," Marshall croons to his radio girl; "Come on, give me some rock music, / Or some rhythm and blues / Or anything you wanna play-yay / Anything you choose."  That's the peculiar satisfaction that radio listening gives you, as opposed to clicking through an iPod playlist or surfing YouTube: You surrender to the DJ, let him/her select what tune to come up next, and if you can escape the inevitability of Top 40 radio -- the same narrow range of new tracks recycled endlessly, shoot me now!! -- there might even be a few total surprises coming your way.  To reflect that eclectic mix, this track's sound is a little boogie-woogie -- dig that Jerry Lee-like piano in the bridge (Steve Conn) -- and yet a little cha-cha-like too, the drums swiftly  ticking along.

That eclectic musical taste is what I expect to hear on Marshall's radio show tomorrow; the man has an enormous musical catalog in his head, and he's likely to pull out stuff you've never heard before -- and you'll be glad he introduced you to it.  Me, I can't wait.  He'll be on every Saturday night from now on, following the classic sound of Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight.  (So tune in earlier for that as well.)  What else were you planning to do with your weekend?

"On the Run" / Marshall Crenshaw

Do y'all really need me to give you the set list from last night's show?  Because -- duh -- it was the same as the track list from Marshall Crenshaw, and you do own that album, don't you? (If not, click on the link and buy it through Amazon; I'll earn a nickel or so in commission. I have to do something to support this habit of mine!)

Okay, there were a few other songs.  If all he'd played was the album, it would have lasted about 30 minutes, because -- in the hallowed tradition of perfect radio pop -- there isn't a song on the LP that's longer than 3:06.  So he added a few early compositions, a cover or two, and some non-album gems from the period such as "Whenever You're On My Mind," "Something's Gonna Happen," and "You're My Favorite Waste of Time" (only because our table kept rudely hollering for it).

And if you really want to know, Marshall messed up the track order by playing "Girls" second instead of "Someday, Someway" (for which he sheepishly apologized). That alone should tell you what a slickness-free zone this show was in. He even let his brother Robert -- who reprised his role on drums for the first time in 30 years -- sing "She Can't Dance," which was a nice change of pace. I love Robert's voice too. 

Naturally it was an incredible show, one of the best I've ever been to.  There was Graham Maby doing bass and harmonies, Ira Kaplan (of Yo La Tengo) covering guitar duties, and, along with Robert, Josh DeLeon on drums, as well as another Crenshaw brother, John, contributing assorted other percussion.  Of course their parents were in the audience too. Why not?

Instead of an opening act, a loop of early MC videos was projected onto a movie screen. Was anybody ever so adorable as 1982 Marshall Crenshaw?  Okay, maybe Paul McCartney in 1963. Maybe.  Anyhoo, that's where I got the inspiration for today's post -- one of the videos featured this song from Marshall's 1989 album, Good Evening. (You could click again if you were so inclined.  Good Evening is an extraordinary album that you just may not already own.)  My tablemates and I agreed that it is a severely underrated song, even amid the severely underrated totality of Marshall Crenshaw's catalog, so I decided I just had to share it with you all today.

As I have already gone on at length -- and I have to go wash my hair for tonight's second show in this Winery celebration -- I'll just add a few remarks.

1. Those surging opening chords are so Big Star, aren't they?  This is a song opening that demands you pay attention -- and I always do.

2. I love driving songs.  Despite the fact that this title is "On the Run," not "Drive," this is a driving song. He's "on the run," but references to white lines on the pavement tell you that he's doing it by car -- as if you couldn't already tell by the gear-shifting chord progressions.

3. One of my tablemates, a guy I'd just met, couldn't get over what a great guitarist Marshall is.  "Why does nobody ever mention this?" he wondered, awestruck.  I agree, and so I'm mentioning it.  Just listen to the sizzling guitar in the bridge.

4. Put this song together with "There She Goes Again" and you'd have "Dime a Dozen Guy," another of my all-time favorite MC tracks.  Just sayin'. . . .

5. Should not this song have been used in about a million soundtracks by now?  It is so evocative, so late-night and urban and emotionally turbulent.  When will the guys who pick songs for soundtracks wake up?  (I would be so good at that job, don't you think?)

"You're My Favorite Waste of Time" / Marshall Crenshaw


I no longer know whether these tracks were big hits or not.  That's one of the things I love about Marshall Crenshaw -- so many of his songs sound like instant classics, with dreamy hooks and irresistible melodies, and now they're so grooved in my memory, I could swear they're jukebox staples.  (As a fellow Crenshaw fan once put it -- "His songs have a hook for the verse, a hook for the chorus, and another hook for the bridge.") 

So knowing this song so well (it's included as a bonus track on the reissued CD of Marshall's debut album, Marshall Crenshaw), I've sorta forgotten that it wasn't on the original vinyl.  I had to pore over the liner notes to clarify that it was in fact the B-side of Marshall's 1982 single "Someday, Someway," a single which I never owned. (In 1982 I was strictly an album buyer; who knew he had spare tracks that didn't make it onto that LP?). 

The liner notes also tell me that this was recorded by Marshall Crenshaw and the Handsome, Ruthless, and Stupid Band -- Marshall's way of explaining that it was a home demo in which he played all the instruments and sang his own back-up vocals.  A one-man wall of sound, if you will.

But now listen to this track, folks, and tell me -- doesn't it just pour out of some vein of pure pop inspiration?  Whereas "Someday, Someway" is boppy, taut, and urgent, turn over the 45 and you get another side of Crenshaw, all jazzy shimmer. The guy on Side 1 is in a hurry, flustered and strung out by his perplexing girlfriend; Side 2's guy has all the time in the world, and he's happy to waste it on her.

He says it himself -- he's a "daydreamin' fool," "got my head in the clouds above." I love how those harmonies unfold, spilling over like a waterfall. The word "my" alone gets five separate notes and eight beats, before he sashays into the syncopated syllables "fav-rite waste of time." 

The standard line on Marshall Crenshaw is that he's all about power pop, and a particularly retro style at that.  Yes, he can pay tribute to Buddy Holly and Bobby Fuller, but the soul/jazz side of him is just as significant, and it's interesting to see it was here this early. This song is no tight three verses and a chorus, but a stream of consciousness musing; the verses don't even rhyme, and they sure don't tell a story.  He's just in his happy zone, and he's taking us there with him.

My favorite line?  "I don't care / If being with you is meaningless / And ridiculous." (Okay, maybe you could say that's a rhyme.)  Forget flowery cliches; he's not pretending this relationship is anything noble or redeeming. It. Just. Is. And if that isn't how love feels from the inside, I don't know what is.

"Eventually" / Marshall Crenshaw

This weekend, Marshall Crenshaw's doing three shows on three successive nights at the City Winery, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of his first single, "Something's Gonna Happen."  I just happen to have tickets for all three nights, being of the firm opinion that you can never have enough Marshall Crenshaw. And since I can't make the weekend come any sooner, I thought I'd count down the days with a little Marshall Crenshaw Week here. (Yeah, I know, daily blogging hasn't been my forte lately -- but for Marshall I'll give it a go.)

The Friday night show, as I understand it, is going to be a special treat:  Marshall's going to play his entire 1982 debut album, Marshall Crenshaw. You know that album -- it's loaded with sublimely catchy tracks like "Someday, Someway" and "There She Goes Again" and "The Usual Thing" and "Rocking Around in NYC" and "Cynical Girl."  I can't wait to hear that line-up of songs; it's the best youth potion I can think of. I defy the City Winery crowd to stay in their seats.

What I'm hoping, though, is that this anniversary celebration stirs up all those original fans to re-discover what Marshall's doing now.  Because, frankly, it's some of the best music out there, incredibly smart and passionate and mature.  So before I take that Way Back Machine down memory lane, let's listen first to some 21st-century Marshall Crenshaw.  This song is from his 2009 album Jaggedland, in my opinion one of the greatest and most underrated albums of the past decade. . . .




Listening to "Eventually," I realize that the melodic hookiness of Marshall Crenshaw's music tends to make folks overlook their intelligence.  After a while, an artist grows tired of writing love songs (especially a guy like Marshall who's been happily married for years -- it's pretty hard to wring out teenage romantic angst year after year).  Jaggedland solves that problem by turning instead to existential pondering. If that sounds pompous and boring, believe me, Marshall makes it work.  Not only does he brood on life's big questions, he has enough sense not to pretend he's solved them.  That's maturity for you.

And now here's another treat which I just found on YouTube, also from Jaggedland.  I don't know who made this video but it's a priceless pairing of film with song -- enjoy!

(Nearly) WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Back again by popular demand -- for this week at least!

1. Flying / The Beatles
From Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Okay, so it's mostly an instrumental, and a woozy, loungy romp at that, full of organ and bass. But I love it when the Beatles break in with those lusty "La la la las," dissolving into that space-age scrum of random noise--psychedelic, man!

2. Senior Service / Elvis Costello
From Armed Forces (1978)
Vicious jerky rhythms on the verses, insinuating legato choruses, and a riff that roars up the scale like a fighter jet taking off--wowza!  Tons of Angry Young Man aggro here: "I want to chop off your head and watch it roll into the basket . . . ." Nasty as hell, but this song is SO much fun to dance to.

3. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go / Madeleine Peyroux
From Careless Love (2004)
Sometimes I don't even want to hear Bob Dylan's original versions of certain songs. I am quite happy to leave this one with Peyroux's exquisite finger-snapping cover--it's like skipping through Paris with Django Reinhardt in my head.   

4. Gasoline Baby / Marshall Crenshaw
From Jaggedland (2009)
Very few instrumental tracks make the cut onto my iPod, but somehow Marshall's always do. I like to imagine he dreamed this song up while he was at the self-service pump one day -- okay, there's  singing, but it's just variations on "Gasoline baby, gasoline girl, gasoline baby, suck it on down" over and over, with rat-tat drums and a wash of brilliant guitar riffs. Any excuse to listen to Marshall play guitar!

5. I Knew It All The Time / The Dave Clark Five
(1963 single)
Hard to believe this song was just four years before "Flying." One of my fave DC5 numbers, though, with those pounding heartbeat drums (Clark always kept himself high in the mix) playing against a lonesome harmonica. I even love those growly vocals, though it's hard to believe that's Mike Smith. Could it be Dave took over lead vocals on this one?  Anybody?  

6. Love Attack / James Carr
From You've Got My Mind Messed Up (1966)
Same era, but oh, what a different sound! Memphis soul, a slow-dancing seducement that was James Carr's second hit single, peaking at #21 on the R&B charts.  Think Otis Redding with a little extra honey...

7. 36 Inches High / Nick Lowe
From Jesus of Cool (1978)
Oh yeah, and while he was producing Armed Forces for Elvis, Nick Lowe also tossed off his own brilliant LP, lighter on the anger but just as witty. Nick always tucks in a few covers--just to keep himself humble--in this case a Jim Ford gem delivered in lazy, smoky style. It's like he's sitting in a rocking chair, spinning tales of his past as a soldier, a tax man, a king, and why he's only 12 inches high I don't know, but I believe the operative word is "high."

8. Planet of Weed / Fountains of Wayne
From Traffic and Weather (2007)
And speaking of high...how much fun is this track? That fuzztone guitar, the clink of glasses, voices murmuring in the background: It's a ready-made party, in two minutes and 46 seconds. "We've got magazines to read / We've got Doritos to eat / So lay back on the couch / And kick up your feet" -- why, yes, I think I will.

9. Hangin' Your Life on the Wall / Guy Clark
From Dublin Blues (1995)
One of the great storytellers, and totally underrated.  Here Guy duets with Ramblin' Jack Elliott on a wry-but-wise Verlon Thompson song. Like two cracker-barrel philosophers, they recall foolhardy past glories -- as lover, bullrider, baseball player -- chuckling as they push back their Stetsons and put their boots up. "I used to be forever chasing firetrucks / I sure could raise me some hell" -- emphasis on the past tense.

10. Kansas City / Sir Douglas Quintet
From Soul Jam (compilation)
Must be my day for sorta-instrumentals. For years, all I knew was the Beatles' cover of this Leiber/Stoller standard, but now that I've heard Doug Sahm's swinging version--dig that horn section!--I'll never go back. Only problem is, there's just not enough of Doug's soul-shivering singing on this track.  I always want more Doug.

SUNDAY SHUFFLE


First of all, a belated happy birthday to psych-folk-punk troubador and all-around free spirit Robyn Hitchcock.  And now, let's welcome spring!

1. I Feel Fine / The Beatles
From Past Masters, Vol. 1 (compilation)
Ah, 1964 -- the Beatles were in their heaven and all was right with the world.  That jangly lead guitar riff, just slightly behind the beat; John's insinuating vocal, hovering chromatically above an uneasy 7th chord; that alternating backstop of harmonies, in lush major-key resolution -- it wasn't simple, but it was exciting. Does this guy really feel fine?  Maybe, but he doesn't trust it, which is why he keeps repeating "you know, she said so" and "I feel fine."  And what an opener: that single guitar note, warping into feedback (an early version of the "Hard Day's Night" chord strum?) -- they had us at hello.  

2. Good Vibrations / The Beach Boys
From Smiley Smile (1967)
Genius, sheer genius -- a scant three years after "I Feel Fine," and music had traveled light-years. As I said here, one of the great singles of all time. Forty-four years later, it still hits it out of the park. 

3. Alienation's For the Rich / They Might Be Giants
From They Might Be Giants (1986)
Proving once again that there is a place for accordions in rock music.  I love Flansburgh's drunken growl and howl here, the strangled cry of a common working stiff.  Watching Spanish TV, drinking Miller Hi-Life -- nope, he's not alienated or nothing.   

4. Seven Miles an Hour / Marshall Crenshaw
From Miracle of Science (1996)
I like to think of this as Marshall's answer to "Expressway to Your Heart" -- he's stuck at work, watching the clock, longing to get home to his girl (or at least someone he hopes will become his girl). Except when he leaves, the traffic jam he's caught in isn't on a Philly roadway, but on the crowded sidewalks of New York. Ever try to walk fast in New York at 5pm? I can manage about four miles an hour, tops; he's doing seven, AND playing a killer guitar riff.  Please, if you listen to only one song on today's shuffle, listen to this one.

5. Wintertime Blues / John Hiatt
From Master of Disaster (2005)
A jaunty little street-corner buck-and-wing from Johnny H., full of pickin' and grinnin'. But man, can I relate: "There's no spring, there was never any spring / Spring's a long gone thing, there won't never be a spring no more / At least that's the way it feels when your skin is cracked and peeled / And you've been livin' under 60 pounds of blanket and the snow's driftin' up to your window.."  

6. Spiderman / Jill Sobule
From California Years (2009)
Now here is a delicious little bit of Hollywood whimsy -- pair this up with the Kinks' "Hollywood Boulevard."  Our singer's dressed up as Spiderman, riding the L.A. subway to work (no one's ever on the train, of course), working the crowd outside Grauman's Chinese. I love the amiable guitar strum, like something out of a 50's Western.  A sweetly etched cameo about the death of American dreams, the sort of thing Jill does better than almost anybody.

7. Out of Time / Chris Farlowe
From Out of Time (compilation)
Now we're jumping back in time, to 1966, when Chris Farlowe scored a UK hit with this Stones song (lucky they shared a manager).  But oh, what a great blues voice he had. "You're out of touch, my baby / My poor old-fashioned baby / Oh, baby, baby, baby you're out of time."  Of course, in the end he's blowing her off (I told you it was a Stones song), but at least Farlowe sounds a little regretful. Dig the "Soldier Boy" strings in the intro.

8. UK Jive / The Kinks
From UK Jive (1989)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- even weak Kinks albums are full of gems.

9. Down Among the Wines and Spirits / Elvis Costello
From Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane (2009)
Elvis goes old-timey Americana, Dobro and steel guitar and mandolin and all.  What saves this is a tap dancing syncopation that helps him stuff in way more words than any bluegrass song would ever need.  But hey, it's Elvis -- Elvis always needs a lot of words. And it's worth it for a verse like, "Down among the wines and spirits / Where a man gets what he merits / Lives with the echoing words of their final quarrel / The vacant chamber / The empty barrel" -- well, there's a whole novel right there. 

10. Right Now For You / Al Kooper
From I Stand Alone (1968)
Starts with an exploding grenade and gunfire, then a swell of spooky orchestration, heard as if in the next hotel room -- a tasty sliver of this unjustly neglected masterpiece album by Al Kooper. I suppose this is the sort of record that led to the over-produced crap of 1970s prog rock; still haunts and mesmerizes me, though. 

"Cynical Girl" / 
Marshall Crenshaw

2011 is starting out very well, thank you, with a full house of great music gigs lined up over the next few weeks.  You'll just have to wait to find out what they are. (How's that for creating suspense?)  Number one, though, comes up this Friday:  Marshall Crenshaw and Willie Nile, appearing together (what a double bill!) at a Unitarian church out in Montclair, New Jersey, courtesy of a series called Outpost in the Burbs.  Gotta love that name! Any of you who live close enough to get there, here's the link to the venue -- it looks as if they've still got tickets.

It's true, I'm dreadfully spoiled when it comes to Marshall Crenshaw.  He lives in the tri-state area and plays relatively often around here, usually at human-scaled venues that charge reasonable ticket prices and don't sell out two seconds after the tickets go on line. (Spoiled, I tell you!)  Personally I believe that Marshall is so good, he should be filling Madison Square Garden -- there's just no justice in this world.   But until that happens, I'll enjoy the more accessible Crenshaw.

This track is probably my favorite song from MC's self-titled debut album -- though that's a tough call, since it's one of my favorite albums of all time.  Still, the first time I heard this song back in 1982, it was this song that really spoke to me -- for reasons that are embarrassingly obvious. 




On that debut, we were utterly charmed by Crenshaw's bright, upbeat brand of retro pop, which owed as much to the Everlys and Buddy Holly as it did to the Beatles. But unlike a lot of his power pop counterparts, Marshall never acted like a sap, never got saccharine. There's always an edgy context to his love songs, some little frisson of doubt or discontent roiling the waters.  In the years since, that streak of realism has only become richer, more complex -- I can tell you, this is an artist who wears extremely well.  It's a trip to revisit the early stuff and see that that wry touch was always there.

Of course, there's that wonderful jangly guitar, the handclap beat -- so classic.  And yes, it's a classic teen topic, the young guy cruising around town, searching for his soul mate. But he's subverting that rock-and-roll model with a touch of New Wave nerviness (remember what else we were listening to in 1982). Like any guy, he's got his specifications -- but in this case, he insists that "she's got no use for the real world," "she harbors no illusions, she is worldly wise." A postmodern gal indeed.

And, the line that always hooked me:  "Well, I hate TV / There's gotta be somebody other than me / Who's ready to write it off immediately."  Okay, so I actually like TV -- still I could relate to that line. (Always reminded me of the Talking Heads song, "Found a Job," where disgruntled Bob and Judy end up writing their own television shows.) 

He wants a girl with a critical streak a mile wide, and that, my friends, was me.  Is me.  For this particular fangirl -- always a pushover for a rock singer wearing glasses -- it was wonderful to hear that some guys actually prefer cynical girls.

Mind you, it is subtly shaded -- this girl isn't depressive, no "Ruby Tuesday" or "Girl"; she's still perfectly capable of having fun, buzzing around town.  This entire album has such a downtown feel to me, as if the notes were bouncing off of pavements and tall buildings, and I swear, this same girl reappears on track after track. She's also his playmate in "The Usual Thing" ("Don't wanna know about the usual thing / And if I didn't think you were a little bit out there too / I just wouldn't bother with you") and the spirited heroine of "She Can't Dance" ("she can't dance, she can't sing, but she's got to be part of that pop music thing"). It all hangs together.

I was thrilled to find this video on YouTube -- someone with a brain had fun making it.  (Ain't YouTube great sometimes?) To me it perfectly catches the snappy spirit of this song.  Enjoy!