R.I.P. Phil Everly

As a coda to yesterday's post . . . yet another cover of "Last Thing On My Mind," this one sung by the late, great Phil Everly.

Again, the Everly Brothers were just before my time -- that's me, always playing catch-up. I do own a copy of Dave Edmunds' and Nick Lowe's EP of Everlys covers, but even that I only bought in 2008 when I discovered Rockpile years too late.  So I won't claim to have been an Everly Brothers fan. That doesn't stop me from being genuinely sad at the news that Phil Everly, the younger of the duo, has just passed away at age 74.  (Only 74? So they were really still kids when they starting making hit records in 1957...)  

I'm sure I saw them perform on TV variety shows -- from the old school programs like Ed Sullivan and Perry Como's and Andy Williams', down to network attempts at hipness like Shindig! and Hullabaloo.  (Or was it Shindig and Hullabaloo!?). I certainly knew who they were, even if I vaguely confused them with the Righteous Brothers. I know, I know, totally different sound and those guys weren't even brothers, but all that flew right over my grade-school head.

I had no idea which one sang the high part and which one the low part, or rather the not-as-high part, in their close brotherly harmonies. (For the record, research tells me Phil was the higher voice). But I definitely recognized their songs when I heard them on the radio. "Wake Up Little Susie" was probably my favorite -- what was yours?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICK LOWE!

Is it that time of year again?

It's an annual tradition around here, my Nick Lowe Birthday Post. I started with Let's Stay In and Make Love, part of my first Nick Lowe week, back in 2007; then Without Love, three years ago; You Inspire Me two years ago; and I Got the Love, just last year. In the four-and-a-half years of this blog, I realize I've written nearly as many posts about Nick Lowe (56 and counting) as the years he has lived (62 and counting). But there is always more to say. 

Naturally, I turned to Labour of Lust, Nick's fabulous 1979 album that was finally reissued this spring. (Of course I have mine already.) And once I started listening, the choice was obvious.


[Photo credit: Dan Burn-Forti]


Nick doesn't sing "Cracking Up" in concert anymore; I suppose it's one of those songs that would seem absurd coming out of a white-haired gent in gray trousers and crisp white dress shirt. (No matter how groovy his new hipster black-framed glasses may be.) But for me, as a listener, it's still incredibly current. I can't think of many songs that capture that strung-out late-night feeling so perfectly. It's not just being high; it's being high and exhausted and neurotic and losing hold on reality. It could have been on the soundtrack to Black Swan and no one would have noticed it was 30 years old.

Just before this album was recorded, Nick Lowe and the rest of Rockpile had been touring non-stop for months; they'd barely gotten back to London before they hit the studio, simultaneously bashing out Nick's Labour of Lust and Dave Edmund's Repeat When Necessary. I've seen the BBC documentary Born Fighters; I remember the rambling all-nighter vibe of those sessions, full of empty wine bottles and overflowing ashtrays and musician friends sprawling on the studio sofas.    

Nick's singing in a weary growl that's as far as possible from "Cruel to Be Kind," the bubbly hit single that leads off this album. "Cracking Up" is track two, and -- how crafty is this? -- it's the diametric opposite, anti-pop and anti-melody. It's more like a Cubist string of jagged phrases, the zoned-out lament of somebody who's well past proper conversation. "Cracking up / I'm getting ready to go / Had enough / I can't take anymore . . . " The rhythms are half stammer, half syncopation. We've all known that guy, slumping over the table, slurring his words, feeling sorry for himself. Not that any of us have ever been that guy, of course....

He's not just a sloppy drunk, though -- that would be too easy. There's other drugs in his system ("No pills / That I can take / This is too real / And there ain't no escape") and he's getting paranoid -- "Everybody / All around me / Shakin' hands and / Sayin' howdy." When his bandmates chime in on "I don't think it's funny no more" (those taunting high harmonies) it's almost as if he's hearing voices. "I'm tense and / I'm nervous," he declares--oh really?  
As he slides further downhill, the lyrics get more and more aimlessly surreal: "Cracking up / Like a worn-out shoe / Ain't wet, / But the world's leakin' through" or "If I were a gunman / I would shoot / I'd tear the hair out / By the root."  By the end, I swear, he's just morosely playing with the sound of words: "I'd make a knife out / Of a notion / All at sea in an ocean of emotion." And just as that last phrase makes me giggle, he protests, "I don't think it's funny no more!"  Whooops.  And now the genius bit:  Playing against those broken phrases, Billy Bremner's jangly guitar line keeps swooping sinuously down the scale and back up again, filling in the gaps with buoyant spirit. And those great Terry Williams drums, brightly bashing away, drive the energy home.  This guy may be cracking up--at least tonight--but the song is anything but a downer.   Was Nick Lowe really cracking up in those days?  Maybe, maybe not.  But Nick's not big on autobiographical songs; if he felt like he was having a nervous breakdown for five minutes, that'd've been enough to get a song out of it. And by the next track, anyway, he's bopping along with "Big Kick, Plain Scrap." Not that "Cracking Up" is a satire, necessarily, but it sure works as a sly little character study. After all, it wouldn't be a Nick Lowe song without playfulness and wit, would it? 

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Let's get 2011 off to a shufflin' start...

1."I Want to Be an Anglepoise Lamp" / The Soft Boys
From Can of Bees (1978)
This is how Robyn Hitchcock started out -- the frantic beat sounds like punk, but the lyrics and spirit are way too art-school absurdist.  This track always makes me think of that classic Pixar short about the baby lamp, the one they played before Toy Story... 

2. "Surf Medley" / Junior Brown
From Semi-Crazy (1996)
Amazing surf guitar instrumental from country guitar whiz Junior Brown, channeling 60s hits like "Walk Don't Run" and "Secret Agent Man," plingy riffs soaring over a furiously slapping drum track.  Thanks to Napoleon Wakeup for this one!

3. "The Race Is On" / Rockpile
From a BBC radio broadcast August 1979
Dave Edmunds' rockabilly leanings took Rockpile down some dusty roads indeed (we shoulda known Nick would end up a country crooner).  But hey, who could resist covering this George Jones classic?  No Rockpile link, sorry (me and my bootlegs), but check out George's version.

4. "State of Confusion" / The Kinks
From State of Confusion (1983)
"The tumble dryer's broken, the telly's on the blink..." Poor besieged Ray Davies -- just can't cope with the modern world, can he?  Even in the midst of the Kinks' arena rock heyday, he was harping on the neuroses of "20th Century Man" and "Holiday."  And the girlfriend who leaves because the VCR broke -- sounds like "Sunny Afternoon"s girlfriend, fleeing home with "tales of drunkenness and cruelty."  Fickle females!

5. "Plastic Lips" / The Aquabats
From Charge!!  (2005)
Not all that different from the Soft Boys, really, though the Aquabats add a comic-book twist (dig the superhero costumes, despite physiques that the tights don't flatter).  Funny, absurd, hectic.  Love these guys live!

6. "Smokers" / The Old 97s
From Drag It Up (2004)
What?  You've been reading my blog for how long, and you still aren't an Old 97s fan? Shame on you.  It's alt-country for thinking people, with clever lyrics and just enough neurosis to balance out the yearning melodies. I love this atmospheric track, the hazy sound quality, the vocal riffs that curl upwards like a trail of smoke.

7. "Bummer in the Summer" / Love
From Forever Changes (1967)
Heh heh.  Talk about hazy.  Heh heh.  

8. "Secret Heart" / Ron Sexsmith
From Ron Sexsmith (1995)
Was it Elvis or Nick who first covered this sweet tune? Either way, I wouldn't have discovered this wonderful Canadian singer-songwriter without that, so thanks, guys.  Saw him open for Nick in '06, met him after the show -- he's just as much of a sweetheart as you'd think.  Of course Dan knows him, too, like all the rest of the Toronto music mafia.. 

9. "Rocky Road" / Nick Lowe
From Party of One (1989)
Speak of the devil.  Okay, it's a perfectly pleasant track, but -- dare I say it? --a tad generic, sorta like a mash-up of earlier songs like "Raining Raining" and "I Can Be The One You Love."  On the other hand, it's my fault for keeping every single track he's ever recorded on my iTunes; I'm bound to get a little filler occasionally.  Doesn't mean I'm going to delete any of it... 

10. "Seventh Son" / Georgie Fame
From Seventh Son (1969)
And if it hadn't been for Van Morrison and Georgie Fame, I'd never have discovered Mose Allison.  Nobody else gets that intersection of Delta sharecropper blues and beatnik jazz quite like Mose.  Georgie's organ goes crazy staccato on this one -- "Everbody's talkin' 'bout the seventh son / In this whole wide world there is only one / And I'm the one, the one they call the seventh son." Cheeky!