The Return of the Shuffle!
When life's too mixed-up and muddled-up for blogging, there's always the Shuffle.
1. In a Space / The Kinks
From Low Budget (1979)
Most likely that Ray Davies wrote this one sheerly for the pun: "in a space" = "inner space," as in the opposite of "outer space." But who cares? By the time he's done, he's managed to deliver an existential commentary on the population explosion. My favorite part is at the end, when Ray goes all Jagger on us ("Well I'm out in inner space / And I'm lookin' at the people . . .").
2. So Long Dad / Alan Price
From A Price on His Head (1967)
Great Alan Price cover of a Randy Newman song, all ragtime and snarky satire. In fact, coming from a Geordie, the satire works even better: "Home again, but we won't be living here Dad / The smoke makes Jane's eyes tear so bad, and we can't have that / I'll write you where we're at / Janie's uncle owns a bank, I think I'll try my hand at that.. . ."
3. If You Need Me / Tom Jones
From It's Not Unusual (1965)
An ambitious young Tom Jones took on Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, and the Rolling Stones when he covered this Pickett song in 1965 -- and he totally nails it. All the more pity that he was seduced by Vegas and American TV and hordes of lingerie-flinging female fans. It would take him another 40 years to finally get back his soul-man cred.
4. Here Comes Flash / The Kinks
From Preservation Act II (1973)
For the uninitiated, Flash is the villain of the Kinks' satiric rock opera Preservation, a master spiv with more than a little of the Kray twins about him. "You'd better run, you'd better fly / Hide your daughters, hide your wives / Lock your doors and stay inside / Here comes Flash!" Yeah, it's a campy slice of theatricality, but you gotta love it.
5. Queen of Hearts / Dave Edmunds
From Repeat When Necessary (1979)
The other half of Nick Lowe's Labour of Lust, recorded at the same time and with the same musicians, a.k.a. Rockpile. Primo rockbilly, written by country guitarist Hank DeVito, and perfect material for Dave Edmunds, with its speedy vocals and clangy guitar strums. If all you know is Juice Newton's hit cover, you MUST check out this original.
6. Fear Is Man's Best Friend / John Cale
From Fear (1974)
What is this, Welsh Night? Tom Jones, Dave Edmunds, now John Cale? (Plus we all know the Davies brothers and Alan Price are really Welsh...). Well, I'll admit I wasn't cool enough to know this album in 1974, but hey, it's not how you start the race, it's how you end it.
7. To Susan on the West Coast Waiting / Donovan
From Barabajagal (1969)
Oh, so now we break the Welsh streak with a Scotsman. The Shuffle really is teasing me tonight. Donovan's fey flower-child persona is the perfect antidote to Cale's art-rock, but that tentative, wistful vocal delivers a punch of anti-war propaganda all the same.
8. This Empty Place / The Searchers
From The Definitive Pye Collection (1969)
While all the other British rockers were going psychedelic, the Searchers clung to their backbeat roots. Yet there's something brittle and haunting about this track, with its restless bossa nova beat, the low vocal swoops, the sibilant drums and clangy guitars. Love is not going well for this fellow.
9. Time Wraps Around You / Velvet Crush
From Teenage Symphonies to God (1994)
Lovely crunchy psychedelic grunge, from a Rhode Island indie outfit that deserved to be better known. Is that a mellotron in the bridge or just wicked bad feedback?
10. Night Ride to Trinidad / Robyn Hitchcock
From Groovy Decay (1982)
And while we're in the psychedelic groove, here's a gem of jump-jive jazz from the surreal genius of Robyn Hitchcock. Cue up some sassy horns: "Well the worst trip I ever had / Was a night ride to Trinidad." Why Trinidad? Maybe because it rhymes. Any starting point will do, and after that just free-asociate like hell. It's the ride that matters.
Showing posts with label tom jones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tom jones. Show all posts
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Thursday, August 02, 2012
"Help Yourself" / Tom Jones
Ah, here we are in the august days of August, the dog days of summer. We're already hot and sweaty -- might as well cue up the Tom Jones.
Like Petula Clark, Tom Jones -- born Thomas Woodward in Pontypridd, Wales -- slipstreamed on the British Invasion and slid straight into Easy Listening fame. As a kid, I was always embarrassed by Tom Jones -- all hip gyrations, unbuttoned shirts, and man jewelry tangled in chest hair. Why listen to Tom Jones when Davy Jones was so much more my cup of tea?
But I've come around. Tom Jones -- or rather, Sir Tom Jones, since he was knighted in 2006 -- has had a late-career resurgence that makes even Nick Lowe look like a slacker. When his pop career faltered, he turned country crooner in the 1980s; he stormed back into critical acclaim in 1999 with his duets album Reload and iced the cake in 2002 with Mr. Jones, an album produced by -- get this -- Wyclef Jean. Stealing a page from the Johnny Cash playbook, Sir Tom has exploited the grit and growl of his aging voice, raging and testifying away on his 2010 album Praise & Blame and 2012's Spirit in the Room. He's in better form than ever, freed at last to sing however the hell he wants to. An example to us all.
Inevitably, now that I can hear the authentic bluesman within the pop star, I've come to re-evaluate the 60s stuff as well. And so I give you the Ultimate Swinger's Anthem:
This clip is from Tom's first TV variety show (notice the TJ's embroidered on the male slaves' PJs), and it unabashedly celebrates everything that used to repulse me about Tom Jones -- the tight trousers, the ruffled satin shirt, the mini-skirted females rushing to his arms. Nevertheless, I find the song itself irresistible. That perky horn intro lifts my heart instantly; the smashing crescendos leading into the chorus compel me to dance in my chair.
The utter randiness of this song strikes me now as rather quaint, a relic of that pre-AIDS era when the sexual revolution was tipping over into unbridled promiscuity. By all accounts, Tom Jones took to that era like a duck to water. Though he's been married to the same woman since 1957, that never stopped him from sleeping around -- at the height of his fame, he once claimed, he slept with 250 groupies a year. Well, if enough panties and hotel room keys get flung onto a Vegas stage, something's gonna happen. I don't believe his wife was totally cool with this -- reports say she beat him black and blue on a few occasions. Jones, though a serious boxing aficionado, claimed he never struck her back, just took it like a man because he deserved it. There's Welsh morality for you.
But "Help Yourself" has a bouyant, giddy quality that somehow redeems it for me. There's none of the sleazy, predatory undertones of "What's New Pussycat?" and "It's Not Unusual," or the flogging rhythms of "Delilah" (I apologize in advance for planting those three earworms, but you really can't talk about Tom Jones otherwise.) Even Tom doesn't seem to be taking it seriously. And really, when a song starts out comparing sex to candy, it's pretty hard to keep a straight face. There's something downright sweet about that last verse: "My heart has love enough for two / More than enough for me and you / I'm rich with love, a millionaire / I've so much, it's unfair / Why don't you take a share." Aw, all he wants is to make you happy. . . .
"Help Yourself" is totally a summer song for me, released in July 1968, on the heels of "Delilah." It was everywhere that summer, climbing to #1 in the UK and #3 in the US. I never owned it and never had any reason to look at the label, so only now do I learn that it's a rewrite of a bubbly Italian pop song, "Gli Occhi Miei" ("These Eyes of Mine") by Carlo Donida; the English lyrics were penned by Jack Fishman. Donida was no flash in the pan; he also wrote the song "Uno Dei Tanti," rewritten in English as "I Who Have Nothing," which Jones also recorded in 1970. Hey, ripping off Italian pop worked for Dusty Springfield, why not for Tom Jones? Just for fun, here's the original, as recorded by Wilma Doich.
It's a different thing entirely when a chick sings it, right? I can imagine Sandie Shaw's doing "Help Yourself" without the bombastic orchestral stuff, and it would be a marvel of delicate surrender. Instead, we have Tom Jones's gyrating pelvis.
But oh, go back to Tom's version and listen to that voice. The phrasing, the rich vibrato, the tender swoops around certain words -- yes, and his oddball vowels -- as a vocal stylist he couldn't be beat.
Ah, here we are in the august days of August, the dog days of summer. We're already hot and sweaty -- might as well cue up the Tom Jones.
Like Petula Clark, Tom Jones -- born Thomas Woodward in Pontypridd, Wales -- slipstreamed on the British Invasion and slid straight into Easy Listening fame. As a kid, I was always embarrassed by Tom Jones -- all hip gyrations, unbuttoned shirts, and man jewelry tangled in chest hair. Why listen to Tom Jones when Davy Jones was so much more my cup of tea?
But I've come around. Tom Jones -- or rather, Sir Tom Jones, since he was knighted in 2006 -- has had a late-career resurgence that makes even Nick Lowe look like a slacker. When his pop career faltered, he turned country crooner in the 1980s; he stormed back into critical acclaim in 1999 with his duets album Reload and iced the cake in 2002 with Mr. Jones, an album produced by -- get this -- Wyclef Jean. Stealing a page from the Johnny Cash playbook, Sir Tom has exploited the grit and growl of his aging voice, raging and testifying away on his 2010 album Praise & Blame and 2012's Spirit in the Room. He's in better form than ever, freed at last to sing however the hell he wants to. An example to us all.
Inevitably, now that I can hear the authentic bluesman within the pop star, I've come to re-evaluate the 60s stuff as well. And so I give you the Ultimate Swinger's Anthem:
This clip is from Tom's first TV variety show (notice the TJ's embroidered on the male slaves' PJs), and it unabashedly celebrates everything that used to repulse me about Tom Jones -- the tight trousers, the ruffled satin shirt, the mini-skirted females rushing to his arms. Nevertheless, I find the song itself irresistible. That perky horn intro lifts my heart instantly; the smashing crescendos leading into the chorus compel me to dance in my chair.
The utter randiness of this song strikes me now as rather quaint, a relic of that pre-AIDS era when the sexual revolution was tipping over into unbridled promiscuity. By all accounts, Tom Jones took to that era like a duck to water. Though he's been married to the same woman since 1957, that never stopped him from sleeping around -- at the height of his fame, he once claimed, he slept with 250 groupies a year. Well, if enough panties and hotel room keys get flung onto a Vegas stage, something's gonna happen. I don't believe his wife was totally cool with this -- reports say she beat him black and blue on a few occasions. Jones, though a serious boxing aficionado, claimed he never struck her back, just took it like a man because he deserved it. There's Welsh morality for you.
But "Help Yourself" has a bouyant, giddy quality that somehow redeems it for me. There's none of the sleazy, predatory undertones of "What's New Pussycat?" and "It's Not Unusual," or the flogging rhythms of "Delilah" (I apologize in advance for planting those three earworms, but you really can't talk about Tom Jones otherwise.) Even Tom doesn't seem to be taking it seriously. And really, when a song starts out comparing sex to candy, it's pretty hard to keep a straight face. There's something downright sweet about that last verse: "My heart has love enough for two / More than enough for me and you / I'm rich with love, a millionaire / I've so much, it's unfair / Why don't you take a share." Aw, all he wants is to make you happy. . . .
"Help Yourself" is totally a summer song for me, released in July 1968, on the heels of "Delilah." It was everywhere that summer, climbing to #1 in the UK and #3 in the US. I never owned it and never had any reason to look at the label, so only now do I learn that it's a rewrite of a bubbly Italian pop song, "Gli Occhi Miei" ("These Eyes of Mine") by Carlo Donida; the English lyrics were penned by Jack Fishman. Donida was no flash in the pan; he also wrote the song "Uno Dei Tanti," rewritten in English as "I Who Have Nothing," which Jones also recorded in 1970. Hey, ripping off Italian pop worked for Dusty Springfield, why not for Tom Jones? Just for fun, here's the original, as recorded by Wilma Doich.
It's a different thing entirely when a chick sings it, right? I can imagine Sandie Shaw's doing "Help Yourself" without the bombastic orchestral stuff, and it would be a marvel of delicate surrender. Instead, we have Tom Jones's gyrating pelvis.
But oh, go back to Tom's version and listen to that voice. The phrasing, the rich vibrato, the tender swoops around certain words -- yes, and his oddball vowels -- as a vocal stylist he couldn't be beat.
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