Counterfeit Blues / Corb Lund
My favorite Albertan. (I would say my favorite Canadian musician, but that would be unfair to Ron Sexsmith, Neil Young and Dan Bryk.)
I'll give my good friend Nick S. credit for turning me on to Corb Lund, although to tell you the truth he only planted a seed -- it was 2012's Cabin Fever,stumbled upon in a year-end frenzy, that really leapfrogged him into my roots-rock pantheon. Oh, hell, let's admit it, he's a country singer. And me, who grew up vowing that I hated country music -- well, let's just say I know what I like and I like this.
Though I'm tempted to focus on the haunting "Truth Comes Out," I'm just too in love with this track -- "Gonna Shine Up My Boots" -- to pass it up. And -- bonus points! -- the video is a total hoot.
While this album starts out with a Dylan-esque talking blues track called "Counterfeiter's Blues," note that the album itself is called Counterfeit Blues -- and I'm guessing that's because Corb Lund has too sunny a personality to do more than fake the blues. That must be why these smarty-pants comic songs of his are so infectious.
But really, it's a tightly crafted little song. Our cowboy hero has such a simple agenda: "I'm gonna shine up my boots / I'm gonna go into town / I'm gonna scrape up twenty dollars / I'm gonna throw it around." (Love how each line of that refrain move up a triad, with the escalation of hope.)
Of course, it never stays simple. Next thing he knows, he's bought a dance, and met a girl, and in order to win her hand he's got into a card game. And when he wins, he buys a ranch, and then -- well, I won't give away the ending, but you can see where this is going.
The repeated chorus, with its parallel phrases, helps anchor us in this shaggy-dog time-telescoping tale. (It makes me think of that wickedly wise John Mellencamp song "Love At First Sight.") But it's worth noting that the cowboy himself is no fool -- he's the one telling us where all this is going. And in the last verse (wait for it), he resolves everything with a down-to-earth shot of wry wisdom.
This song makes me smile every time I hear it come on. And hey, that's no small thing.
Friday, June 27, 2014
"Ohio" / Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Wrote this 2 months ago. No idea why I didn't post it until now. Go figure.
What a winter I had. Okay, yeah, we all had an awful winter weather-wise, but I'm not just talking weather. In fact, for me the blizzards and ice-storms were totally appropriate: they reflected the life-changing miseries of having brain surgery and sitting at my only brother's bedside as he slowly, agonizingly died. Can't lift your head off the pillow? That's cool; life sucks so badly that head-lifting is no longer considered an option.
And then, when I most needed to believe that life could still be good -- I spent 48 hours in April in my hometown of Indianapolis hanging out with my grade-school friends. Not high-school, mind you, but grade-school, though I ought to explain that this wasn't your normal grade school class but a hand-picked crew of ostensibly gifted and talented weirdoes. We were kept in the same socially awkward corral together for 4 years, long enough for us all to embrace our inner geeks, and to give up on ever being cool (though some of you folks are in retrospect the coolest human beings I've ever known).
Who else would so get into the trivia quiz I invented? I've never seen adults so eager to tackle a pointless exercise, just for the fun of knowing stuff. Watching you all obsess over the quizzes, I suddenly realized I had come home to MY PEOPLE. You are the core of who I have become, for better or worse, and screw everyone who doesn't understand why it's cool to just be fully alive in the geek-o-rama moment.
And when I asked the (trick) trivia question: "To what is Neil Young referring when he sings, "Three dead in Ohio"? Bless you, you all came back with, "It was FOUR dead in Ohio, and it was Kent State."
Because our generation -- at least the thinking parts of it -- will never forget the images of college students like ourselves being mown down by scared-shitless National Guardsmen on the Kent State campus on May 4, 1970. Neil Young, ever quick to record the national temperature on such matters, released this song with his CSN colleagues in June 1970 (lightning fast response, in those days). Life, as it is lived.
The Kent State Massacre (yes, let's call it by its proper name) happened on May 4 and by May 21 songwriter Neil Young had gathered in the studio his colleagues David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash to record the song Young had written. (Parenthetical aside: Forgive me, but I've never really been a fan of CSN; it's only when you add Young into the equation that I get interested. Why is that?)
The fast-track release of this song fascinates me. You'd never get that nowadays. But how important was it that this song got onto the airwaves when this tragedy was still fresh in our minds? Today the recording industry is all bottom-line and post-production folderol, but in 1970? This song mattered, and so the record label suits (probably not suits in those days) did what needed to be done to get it out FAST.
The lyrics are dead simple, really, and the main thing is the lightning-bolt courage of that first line: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming / We're finally on our own." To call the National Guard "tin soldiers" was pretty ballsy, even in 1970, but to call out President Nixon on his role in this tragedy took major cojones.
Once you've named Nixon, the battle lines have been drawn, and so "This summer I hear the drumming, / Four dead in Ohio." I love that evocation of ominous jungle drums, the youth culture rising at last to draw a line in the sand.
And it was this photo that galvanized us all, one of the great photo-journalism shots of all time. The second part of the verse sums it up: "What if you knew her / And found her dead on the ground /
How can you run when you know?" Okay, so Neil didn't get it quite right; it's a guy on the ground and a woman keening over his body. That doesn't change the emotional power of this image.
Oh, and that great crunchy guitar line, and Uncle Neil's whiny urgent vocals. This song cried out to us as a tale that NEEDED to be told. We didn't need Facebook to pass around the counterculture meaning of this thing, and enshrine it as a cultural milestone. Let us take note: The jungle drums worked better than the internet, when the message meant so much. A trending hashtag? Please -- we invented that, along with unspoken filters that would have kept Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus marginal for good
This is what it meant to be a teenager in 1970 -- scary and powerful and incredibly sad. Is it any wonder that I should feel bonded for life to these peeps?
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Wednesday Shuffle
It's been raining off and on for a week. And I've got a wicked cold incubating in my sinuses. So forget the looming book deadline -- let's shuffle!
1. "Mercury Poisoning" / Graham Parker
From Another Gray Area (1982)
So what do you do on your first album after leaving Mercury Records? You write a song about how much you hated Mercury Records! "Their promotion's so lame...the geriatric staff thinks we're freaks... I've got a dinosaur for a representative" -- GP pulls NO punches on this mischievously danceable track -- and we can't help but sing along.
2. "You Don't Know Me" / Ben Folds with Regina Spektor
From Way to Normal (2008)
This snappy little duet got a lot of airplay a couple years ago, and why not? Ben and Regina blithely trade zingers, their voices weaving in contrapuntal accusations. Why do we always imagine that our true loves will "get us," when in the end we're always disappointed? Just another lesson in disillusionment from this master cynic.
3. "Ohio" / Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
From So Far (1974)
Ah...the days when music and politics walked hand in hand. The Kent State shootings chilled our generation in May 1970; the next weekend, 100,000 students marched on Washington; this record hit the airwaves 2 weeks later, an amazing feat in that pre-digital era. The righteous indignation shivering through Neil Young's voice still stirs me to the bone, more than 40 years later.
4. "Hold On" / Ian Gomm
From Summer Holiday (1978) (Original US title: Gomm With the Wind)
Sparkly New Wave pop from ex-Brinsley Ian Gomm's debut album. This was the album's big radio hit, rising to #18 on the US charts in 1979 (nearly as good as the #12 scored by ex-bandmate Nick Lowe that same year with "Cruel to Be Kind," a song Gomm and Lowe co-wrote). The chorus is a real earworm hook -- just try to get it out of your head.
5. "Do You Remember Walter" / The Kinks
From The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968)
This should be the theme song of all high school reunions. "I bet you're fat and married and you're always home in bed by half-past eight / And if I talked about the old times, you'd get bored and you'd have nothing more to say" -- a jaunty tune underlaid with despair at the fleeting power of nostalgia. Not coincidentally, that's the theme of this entire album, a neglected masterpiece for sure.
6. "Chasing Forever" / Ron Sexsmith and Don Kerr
From Destinations Unknown (2005)
Wistful folk-pop from my favorite Canadian songwriter. Ron's quite a Kinks fan himself, and this album is its own kind of Village Green, reflecting on nostalgia and preserving an already-lost past in songs like "Lemonade Stand" and "Diana Sweets." I've surrendered to the inevitability of Ron Sexsmith; might as well buy all the albums, they're all soul-satisfying.
7. "Nutted By Reality" / Nick Lowe
From Jesus of Cool (1978)
That album cover, featuring Nick in six different outfits (twelve if you count the inside shots), clues us in: This album is all about showing how many different musical styles he can master. And this track goes even further -- it's a two-fer! Adolescent humor rules (a song about castrating Castro -- really?) and if we Americans weren't exactly sure what it means to be "nutted" by reality -- well, it's too catchy for me care. Am I the only person who hears the McCartney parody in all this?
8. "My Home Town" / Alan Price
From Geordie Roots and Branches (1982)
A brassy updated version of this clever little rag, first heard in the brilliant film soundtrack for O Lucky Man! I'm guessing that this album was never released in CD -- I only have the vinyl, and it's one of my most precious rarities -- it was recorded for a Newcastle charity project as a favor to Alan's former Animals bandmate Chas Chandler, a year before their second reunion tour. This track isn't nearly as charming as the O Lucky Man! original, but the very fact that I've got it on my iTunes at all brands me as a hopeless Alan Price fangirl.
9. "Bone Tired" / Gomez
From A New Tide (2009)
I like this young-ish English band (debut 1998), but for some reason I can't quite love them. They've got too many songwriters, and in the name of versatility they dabble in too many styles, so I can never quite find their groove. But hey, I'm still waiting for them to grow on me. Listen and see what you think.
10. "List of Distractions" / Fionn Regan
From 100 Acres of Sycamore (2011)
On the other hand, the minute I heard this winsome Irish songwriter I knew I loved him. This is his second album, and it's just as charming as his first, The End of History. Dig his sweetly confiding voice, the truly poetic lyrics, the romantic sweep of his melodies -- I'm a sucker for it all.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE
Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops --
1. California Girls -- The Beach Boys From Summer Days (And Summer Nights!) (1965) I swear, a sea breeze just stirred my hair -- and is that sand between my toes? An instant trip to Southern California. When this first came out, I rankled at the line, "Those Midwest farmer's daughters really make me feel all right," but I longed to become a California girl myself. White Levis, Sun-In in my hair -- I tried everything. And then of course there's the Beatles' parody in the bridge of "Back in the USSR" -- "well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out ..."
2. "Lately I've Let Things Slide" -- Nick Lowe From The Convincer (2001) One reason I love the Shuffle: Nick Lowe suddenly appears when I least expect it -- and it hits me all over again why I love him so. "Smoking I once quit, now I've got one lit / I just fell back into it . . ." -- how succinctly he nails this lovelorn loser, sloping around his messy flat, laundry piling up in the corners, a carton of untouched takeaway spoiling on the table. God is in the details, both lyrics and music (those Nashville horns!).
3. "Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)" -- Lostprophets From Liberation Transmission (2006) Welsh indie rockers! Mostly this got onto my iPod because it is just so much damn fun to proclaim that staccato chorus at the top of your lungs: "Standing on the rooftops, everybody scream your heaaart out!" One of the rare tracks where a crunchy metallic tangle of guitar is totally necessary.
4. "No More, No Less" -- Collective Soul From Dosage (1999) My dear rock chick buddy Sharon loves this band, just loves 'em to death. I hear the hooks, I appreciate the soulful metal quality, but in the end, they just don't light my fire. Too much open passion for me, and not enough irony. Can't help it; I'm an irony junkie.
5. "Sister Madly" -- Crowded House From Temple of Low Men (1988) Irony -- like this. That great skippy pop rhythm sets off a tart little character study ("sister madly, stepping on my head!). Wonderful bebop piano solo too. Thank you thank you thank you Inaki for hepping me to this band -- I knew the singles, but there's so much more to discover.
6. "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" -- Dusty Springfield From Dusty in Memphis (1969) There's not a bad track on this album, is there? Dusty shows Bobbie Gentry how it's done. It matters not one whit that Dusty never lived in a shotgun shack at the edge of a cotton field; she never slept with the son of a preacher man either.
7. "Nightswimming" -- R.E.M. From Automatic for the People (1992) Ah, the mesmeric powers of Michael Stipe. The piano reels off endless arpeggios, strings and clarinet mourn, Stipe scats the same melodic phrase over and over -- and yet somehow I'm back in Indiana, in the dark of a summer night, brooding over boyfriends lost. Who knew R.E.M. had so much sweetness and melancholy in them?
8. "Take Off Your Uniform" -- John Hiatt From Slug Line (1993) In which Johnny H. langorously strips a coffee shop waitress and makes sorrowful, sympathetic love to her, in his best soulful yelp. A true man of the people. Why is this guy not bigger than Bruce Springsteen? Oh, I know the answer. . .
9. "One Thing" -- Neil Young From This Note's For You (1988) Possibly my favorite Neil Young album, his one brief shining jazz moment (that achingly beautiful guitar line!). Whatever was going on in Neil's life at the time, he proved beyond a doubt that he had intimate knowledge of the blues. "I think we're heading for a heartache / That's my suspicion / I think we're heading for a heartache / That's how I feel." The quaver in Neil's voice never worked better.
10. "Sound and Vision" -- David Bowie From Low (1977) Glam meets funk, all gussied up with synths -- yes, the experimental 80s were upon us, with Bowie and Brian Eno leading the way. This album is most memorable to me as the inspiration for Nick Lowe's own e-less EP titled Bowi. But you gotta love this disco-ready musical collage, with Bowie alternately growling and wailing disconnected phrases, like snatches of conversation overhead at a bar. Strung along that brilliant rhythm track, it's a song that begs to be danced to. With drugs.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Wednesday Shuffle
Okay, I've got 5000+ songs on my iTunes -- a carefully culled selection, thanks to the limits of my hard drive. So every time I do a shuffle, it should be only great songs, right? Well, we'll see. Every Wednesday, I promise I will honestly record what comes up on a shuffle of ten songs -- no matter how embarrassing it turns out to be . . .
1. "Someone's On the Cross Again" / Al Kooper From New York City (You're a Woman) Why didn't I keep up with Al Kooper through all the twists and turns of his career? For a few years there at the end of the 60s and dawn of the 70s, this guy's smart, snarky, restless albums so spoke to my heart. Hadn't listened to him for years; thank God iTunes put him back into my life.
2. "Gospel Night" / Dave Alvin From Blue Blvd. I love the weathered, real-guy quality of Dave Alvin's voice. I mostly know his post-Blasters work, and it's so appealing. Saw him live a couple years ago, and man, that guy can play his beat-up old geetar.
3. "Honey Pie" / The Beatles From The Beatles (the white album) One of my Greatest Life Albums Oh, Paulie. Like thrift shop clothes, when you haul out the vintage music hall sound it's somehow so cool. Dig the ukelele in the instrumental break, and Paul singing in his Tiny Tim voice, "I like that -- ahh! -- I like this kinda, that kinda music, hot kind of music, play it to me, play it to me Hollywood blues!"
4. "Here For You" / Neil Young From Prairie Wind Middle-aged Neil Young is still better than most young guys. In fact, middle-aged Neil Young is the Neil Young I like best. Rumpled, wrinkled, and unrepentant.
5. "Uncle Son" / The Kinks From Muswell Hillbillies My favorite Kinks album, hands down. And this song tells you why -- that vintage blues shuffle (dig the steel guitar), mixed with Salvation Army earnestness and a heady shot of socialist politics. Bless you, Uncle Son.
6. "Question" / The Old 97s From Satellite Rides One of my great finds of recent years. It amazes me how consistent their catalog is. Rhett Miller has a great voice, and a real knack for catchy tunes. If only all alt-country was this good. 7. "Run" / Vampire Weekend From Contra There's a reason why these kids burst out of the gate with a hit record -- talent up the wazoo. They've got such a great sound, mixing Afrobeat and world music with crisp alt pop, and their songs are just so damn savvy. This is from their sophomore album -- such a relief to find that they lived up to their promise.
8. "Hope For Us All" / Nick Lowe From At My Age The silver fox ages like fine wine. The only thing that could make this song better would be if Nick were singing it about me.
9. "Come Again" / Billy Nichols From Selected Hits One of the lost voices of the British Invasion -- pure quality British Beat pop, and yet how few people know his stuff? Makes ya think. 10. "I Melt With You" / Modern English From After The Snow * blush* Really, honestly, I only put this onto my iTunes because I was doing that Eighties Cheese Week. . .
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
"Coupe de Ville" / Neil Young
I'll admit it, I came late to Neil Young. There was a time, in fact, back in high school, when I actually hated him. Of course, back then every kid who could strum a guitar had worked up a whiny version of "Rockin' in the Free World"; you couldn't get away from Neil Young, those days. Then about six years ago, I was listening to Harvest Moon one evening and, all in a flash, I finally GOT Neil Young. I could finally look past the torn jeans and straggly hair and realize the bone-deep sincerity of everything he's ever written. Shoot, I've even grown fond of his nasal strangled-cat yelp.
One of the cool things about coming late to an artist is that you get to plunge in and explore his whole body of work all at once. I missed This Note's For You in 1988 because that was when I still hated Neil Young. Besides, with its jazzy rhythms and horn section, it's not a "typical" Neil Young album--the enthusiasts (yes, the same Neilaholics who used to torment me) forget to mention it much. I only recently discovered This Note's For You; it's still a fresh thing on my Uncle Neil playlist. I have to say, I'm loving it.
This song takes melancholy to a whole new level; Neil's mournful voice has a surly edge of self-pity, totally appropriate for a song with the refrain "If I can't have you / I don't want nothing else." It's in the same vein as Nick Lowe's "Lately I've Let Things Slide," without the wry humor; it also reminds me of Marshall Crenshaw's "Where Home Used To Be," but not nearly so wistful. No, this is a guy who's still hung-up on the woman who's left him, and that plaintive sax counterpoint is like one more twist of the knife.
"I got a coupe de ville," he announces, chip firmly on shoulder; "I got a bed in the house / Where you once lived." The house is absolutely defined by her absence--that's misery for you. "I had a few cheap thrills," he admits, grudgingly, "But they cost me a lot more / Than I could give." He's admitting some guilt, vaguely, but I don't hear a whole lot of remorse in that edgy syncopation. "I got a right / In this crazy world /To live my life / Like anyone else," he insists, voice quavering. "How long can I/ Carry this monkey around/ All by myself?"
So what were those "few cheap thrills" that drove her away? At first I thought it was infidelity, but then there's the monkey on his back -- is it drugs? I picture this lonely, stubborn man shambling around his big house (a Coupe de Ville is a luxury car, after all, not what I'd imagine Neil Young driving), and the straggly hair, the torn jeans are part of the picture. He's still aching -- "Well I hit the wall /Woke up this morning / And I hit the wall," he confesses, still in shock. He's not coping very well.
I have no idea if she's ever coming back; that's almost beside the point. The raw hurt is the point. The horns sound so far off at times, the drums a shimmer of brush on cymbal, the guitar line loping like the dull throb of a hangover. This song just kills me. How could I not love a guy who can write a heart-breaker like this?
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
"Only Love Can Break A Heart" / Gene Pitney "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" / Neil Young
Listed among all the American musicians who inspired the young Beatles -- Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers -- it always surprises me to hear Gene Pitney's name. Somewhere in the aural slagheap of songs I heard on the family radio before I gained musical consciousness (i.e., before the Beatles' first U.S. tour), I remember those torchy Gene Pitney ballads, but they seemed quintessentially 1950s music to me. I lump all those guys together: Frankie Laine, Roy Orbison, Dion, Ricky Nelson, and all the Bobbies (Vee, Vinton, Darrin, Rydell, etc). That's not to say I don't like them . . . but hey, I like Dean Martin and Vic Damone too. I always thought rock 'n' roll was something different.
On the radio the other day, however, this Gene Pitney song came on, and -- you know what? It is a GREAT song. What makes it great is that flat-out yearning in Pitney's voice, the emotional catch in the throat, all its little wobbles and swoops, the way his vocal cracks on the occasional line. ("You know I'm sorry / I'll prove it / With just one kiss..."). I can see how this intensity inspired the Beatles, not to mention how John Lennon stole that crafty cracking-voice trick.
Of course the arrangement is horribly dated, with its melodramatic string section, echo chamber backup choir, those two interludes of cornball whistling. All this schmaltz for a teenage love song? But teenagers were his core audience, and having a blow-out fight with your girlfriend can be a Huge Event for a teenager -- and Pitney gave it the passion it deserves. Let's also remember that he wasn't speaking for his male listeners so much as casting himself as the sort of tender lover his female fans wanted. I can imagine plenty of tear-stained pillows were clutched to angora-sweatered bosoms while this 45 spun on the turntable.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote this tune (those guys pop up EVERYWHERE), which may account for its sophisticated angle. We launch abruptly into the middle of the story -- it starts out "Last night I hurt you / But darling / Remember this" -- and we never actually find out what he did (I have to admit, I'm curious). But that's beside the point, at least from his perspective. Now he's backpedaling like crazy, offering a convoluted argument to win her back: if you're so heartbroken, you must love me a lot -- therefore you must love me enough to take me back. It's flawed logic, but there's a good chance that her hormones are raging so hard, she'll fall for it. Pitney goes at it with full-bore regret, though I suppose in a modern cover the singer could be a sleazeball seducer. "Please let me hold you / And love you / For always, and always" -- that's one horny line, even the way Pitney sings it. He wants back in, and he'll do anything to get there.
Eight years later, Neil Young recorded a winsome acoustic waltz with practically the same title, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," but it's about as different as a song can be. By 1970 "love" had a new meaning, a post-Summer of Love hippie meaning. In classic wistful folk-rock mode, Neil muses on the value of making honest emotional connections, even if it means risking heartbreak. Addressing the whole world, not just one specific lover, he's armed with just a acoustic guitar and that earnest, slightly strangled vocal, with a few friends harmonizing in the background. No echo chambers. No strings. It's a grander statement about life, but delivered with affecting simplicity.
"But only love can break your heart / Try to be sure right from the start / Yes, only love can break your heart / What if your world should fall apart . . . " The mellow, slightly stoned tempo floats you along, thinking lovely abstract thoughts about how love is all you need. The heartbreak reality gets lost in the shaky shuffle.
I love this Neil Young track -- and yet whenever I read that title, it's Gene Pitney's voice that flashes first into my mind; that's how deeply that Pitney track lies embedded in my subconscious. Lovely abstract thoughts just don't pack the wallop of a real guy and a real girl going through teenage angst. I guess I've sold Gene Pitney short all these years. Well, for the record, I think she should take him back, no matter what he did. After all, he's really sorry. Just listen to that shiver in his voice...
