WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Back on schedule! 

1.  "William It Was Really Nothing" / The Smiths
From Louder Than Bombs (1987)
Anybody here see 500 Days of Summer?  Remember that scene in the elevator where Joseph Gordon-Levitt finally strikes up a conversation with Zooey Deschanel?  It happens when he recognizes that she's listening to the Smiths on her iPod -- the sign of a kindred spirit. Actually she was listening to "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" -- the flip side to this 1984 single -- but let's not split hairs. Their sound is so distinctive, it's like walking into a room and being transported to the Planet of Morrissey. 

2. "The Lovecats" / The Cure
From Japanese Whispers (1983)
Still in British New Wave territory, with this spiky but highly danceable little track by the Cure, a.k.a. Robert Smith and whoever he's playing with now. When I first bought Boys Don't Cry, I never thought this was a band that would still be around 25 years later. Shows how much I know!  I love the alley cat meows tossed in, and that bang-on-a-can percussion.

3. "This Is Where I Belong" / Bill Lloyd
From The Modern Genius Of Ray Davies (Mojo magazine giveaway, 2006)
One of the better Kinks tribute albums (amazing how many of those are around when you start digging). Lloyd throws a little extra good ol' boy twang into this iconic Kinks track, an interesting idea.  Personally I prefer Ron Sexsmith's version (on -- he captures the oddball neurotic edge of Ray Davies's original. (Borderline agoraphobic, more like.) But this track lured me into exploring Lloyd's other music, which I like a good deal. Note to musicians: Those tribute album tracks DO snare new listeners. 

4. "Alex Chilton" / The Replacements
From Pleased To Meet Me (1987)
Still in the 1980s, but now in American post-punk garage rock territory (actually, more like basement rock.) No wonder Paul Westerburg developed a man-crush on ex-Big Star leader Alex Chilton -- the album was recorded in Chilton's hometown Memphis, with Jim Dickinson producing, and Chilton joined them on guitar for "Can't Hardly Wait."  Of course, after Chilton heard this track, I don't think he ever spoke to Westerburg again. So it goes.  

5. "A Heartbeat" / Roman Candle
From Oh Tall Tree in the Ear (2009)
At last, a newer song, but frankly this irrepressibly cheery gem has such a classic pop sound, it could have been written anytime between 1962 and 2010. I love this little North Carolina band -- check out my previous post.  

6. "Something Better Beginning" / The Kinks
From Kinda Kinks (1965)
One of my favorite British Invasion tracks EVER.

7. "Cold River" / John Hiatt
From Master of Disaster (2005)
Love this album -- it came out the season when I first discovered Hiatt's music, and I gorged on it.  I just noticed a line that never struck me before -- about a woman slipping on her stockings, "and it made the sweetest sound." (Remember when he tells his girl in "Drive South," "don't bother to pack your nylons"?) John knows that equation:  Lingerie = intimacy.

8. "Art Lover" / Holly Ramos
From Racehorse (2006)
What is it, Kinks covers night?  Interesting twist, to have a woman singing this song, with its creepy hints of pedophilia. (Borderline twisted stuff comes so naturally to Ray Davies.)  I interviewed Holly back in 2006 when this album came out; she has just the right waifish punk charm to pull it off.

9. "Cushie Butterfield" / Alan Price
From Geordie Roots and Branches
No links, sorry.  This album is an obscurity indeed -- a charity effort by some Newcastle bank, which ex-Animals bassist Chas Chandler produced; he roped in his old bandmate Alan Price to sing a bunch of traditional English folk songs. I know this song well, not from pub singalongs but from a kids' music album my toddlers listened to incessantly -- "Cushie Butterfield" was Sting's contribution.  (Those guttural Northern vowels -- priceless!) A great little ditty with a sea shanty lilt.

10. "Lady Scarface" / Lydia Lunch
From Queen of Siam (1991)
One of the joys of internet fan forums is that from time to time folks do CD mixes for each other, which is how this offbeat Lydia Lunch track ended up in my iTunes.  It's a deliciously kinky little spoken word number, kinda Gothic cabaret in mood, with Lydia's kittenish pout tilting toward the psychotic. (She's all whips and handcuffs to the dirty raincoat of Holly Ramos' "Art Lover".) Is there an arc here, from the Smiths through the Replacements to Lydia Lunch?  Maybe, but who can tell at this time of night?

"Why Modern Radio is A-OK" / Roman Candle

So just how DO we learn about new music? I remember having my ear glued to the radio when I was a kid, drinking in every new release the DJs touted -- a listening strategy that could be surprisingly satisfying, if you had a decent local station. Naturally that station would be attuned to your musical tastes; those tastes were molded by the station in the first place. College years were no problem, either; we were in and out of our friends' rooms, rifling through their record collections (a milk crate full of well-loved LPs, those with gatefold covers in front for easy access when it was time to roll a joint).

Nowadays, though, you really have to work at finding new music. I think that's why my kids restlessly trawl around the internet -- they've got to chase YouTube links and MySpace band sites to find music they like, often a hit-or-miss proposition. Just about the only way I get turned on to something new these days is when somebody whose taste I trust tells me to listen to something (lacking such friends in my day-to-day life, I find them on the internet). Meanwhile, the record companies have their heads up their backsides, pouring all their promotion into proven moneymakers and taking no chances with new talent.

A wonderful young band like Roman Candle is so likely to fall through the cracks. Their first album (The Wee Hours Review) languished on the shelf for nearly 3 years before it was released. Meanwhile they toured relentlessly, opening for quality acts like Aimee Mann and the Indigo Girls and the Psychedelic Furs, captivating audiences wherever they played. When the album finally came out in 2006, critics raved, but did Roman Candle become a household name? Nope. By all rights their superb new album, Oh Tall Tree in the Ear, should make them stars at last, but I'm too cynical to expect miracles like that.

So it should come as no surprise that Roman Candle's personnel -- brothers Skip and Logan Matheny, plus Skip's keyboardist wife, Timshel -- would have a cynical take on this themselves. The evidence: track 3 on the new album, "Why Modern Radio Is A-OK," a nifty bit of talking blues. The setting is deliberately lowbrow, as befits their twangy rootsy sound (they started out, after all, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina): "I was down at my favorite watering hole / With a buddy of mine that was out on parole / And we were flipping through the jukebox, / Talking how we’d been and how we are." I love the casualness of that scene; these aren't music geeks, they're just guys in a bar. The parolee gets a notion to play some Neil Young, an artist he'd learned about from a friend in prison. Our singer, however, panics: "Now he didn’t know, but while he was in jail, / I’d had my heart broken by a woman too wondrous to tell / And we‘d fallen in love to half the songs that jukebox played." I can just see this scene unfolding, can't you?

The action comes to a peak: "So when he flattened his dollar on the side of the machine / and I saw “Comes a Time" come on the karaoke screen / I realized there was a couple things I had forgot to say." The visceral heave is palpable. Then they launch into the chorus: "Don’t play Neil Young / Don’t play Van Morrison / Just let some high school emo band start versing and chorusing / Because there’s no way it will break my heart as far as I can see." (That Morrison/chorusing rhyme kills me.) The irony makes me giggle-- here's a guy singing his heart out, like a born follower of Neil or Van, saying he doesn't want to hear them? Ah, yes, because they're real, they touch the heart, and right now he can't handle that. With a deft twist, his last line slams the satire home: "And that’s why modern radio is A-OK with me."

The music itself is straightforward, a jovial bar-band rollick -- guitar, drums, organ, and Skip Logan's earnest, down-to-earth vocals. That title line practically begs the audience to sing along. I described this as "talking blues," and it does echo early Dylan -- that harmonica interlude is no accident -- but it also makes me think of Don McLean's "American Pie," that radio hit you could not escape in the winter of 1972. And like "American Pie," it name checks a list of musical greats -- John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, "Johnny and June" (Cash and Carter), even Merle Watson (no doubt chosen for the rhyme, "They just trade some Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham for a broke-down Datsun"). His bar companion the ex-con begins to wax poetic, urging him to "think of a winter afternoon when you fell in love / And ten songs on a record sounded like a string of pearls." But our heartbroken hero is too raw to appreciate the poetry: "Now my buddy rattled on till an hour'd gone by / And I thought to spit a mouthful of Beam in his eye."

Such a deft little piece of irony, and a great way to honor their musical heroes, artists whose music isn't soulless and tiny-hearted. Roman Candle may be a young band, but they've paid their dues, and they respect the masters who came before them. These guys sure sound like the real deal to me. So why doesn't modern radio know about them? Hmmm?

Why Modern Radio is A-OK