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.

Z Is For...

The last of our 26 artists, A to Z -- and who else could it be but the band who recorded the first single I ever bought, back in 1964?

The Zombies / "I Love You"

I love the Zombies.  Love them, love them, love them.  Loved them then, love them now.

In August 1965, this track, written by bassist-songwriter Chris White, was the B-side of "Whenever You're Ready." A measure of how good the Zombies were in their all-too-brief 1960s career is how often this B-side has been covered since then.

Meanwhile, this video has led me down a whole 'nother rabbit hole. The images star the brilliant Rita Tushingham, whose performances in such seminal 1960s British films as A Taste of Honey, Girl With Green Eyes, and The Knack...And How to Get It were linchpins in that cinematic revolution. (If there's anything I love more than British pop of the mid-1960s, it's British cinema of the mid-1960s.) I've watched this video over and over, trying to pinpoint which film these clips are from. And finally I've had to come to terms with the fact that no one else is as obsessive as I am when it comes to Brit Nouvelle Vague circa 1965 and I had better just move on to the topic at hand. Which is, after all, THE ZOMBIES.

The Zombies had two extraordinary things going for them -- Colin Blunstone's incredibly ethereal voice, and Rod Argent's keyboard wizardry. What Chris White concocted in this song is a jazz-soaked number that gave both those assets a chance to shine.

The formula is devastatingly simple. Over and over, the singers repeat "I love you," numbly, dumbly. When you're hog-tied by infatuation, that's all you can do. Then the combo snaps into a crashing halt, to let the lead singer urgently emote: "And I don't know what to say!"

He's so sunk in desire, he can scarcely think. "My words should explain / But the words won't come." And the chords -- mostly minor key -- shift into conditional mode as he laments: "I should tell you just how I feel / And I keep tryin' / But something holds me back when / I try to tell you."

Tied up in knots? Anyone who's ever been an anguished adolescent (and that's just about all of us) can relate to that.

But finding a musical expression of that is something else. The Zombies were always the earnest, anguished suburban boys of the BritBeat scene. In this devastatingly perfect number, they forever lay their claim to that territory. Which is as good a note as any upon which to end this serendipitous series of posts.

"Beechwood Park" / The Zombies

What a great concert I went to Friday night!

One of the most underrated bands of the British Invasion, the Zombies long ago forged a distinctive brand of jazz-inflected backbeat pop. Yes, the first single I ever bought was their haunting 1964 debut hit "She's Not There, but ever since seeing their modern-day incarnation in 2005 (led by keyboard genius Rod Argent and the amazing singer Colin Blunstone), I've delved much deeper into their rich catalog, and I've gone back again and again to see them in concert. I have yet to exhaust their charms.

Friday night promised to be something special:  They would be performing live their entire 1968 album Odessey & Oracle. Not only that, the other two surviving members of the original fivesome -- bassist/songwriter Christ White and drummer Hugh Grundy -- would be brought out of retirement to perform it with Argent and Blunstone. Finally.

Because, you see, the Zombies actually broke up right after they finished recording Odessey & Oracle. Their career had been on the slide for several months and half the band was too discouraged (and too broke) to keep on. And at first, the album's sluggish sales did nothing to change their minds. Rod Argent formed a new band, Argent, Chris White went into producing, and the others basically quit the biz. With no band left to support it, Odessey & Oracle didn't get much promotion.

But Odessey & Oracle slowly began to climb the charts, especially in the U.S. By 1969, the record company belatedly decided to release a single from the album, the trippy and mysterious "Time of the Season" -- and it eventually became the Zombies' biggest hit.

Over time, the album has become regarded as a classic: a masterpiece of psychedelia filtered through the lush romantic sound that was always the Zombies' hallmark. But the Zombies had never performed it -- until one U.K. show in 2013, and now at last a handful of shows here in the States.

And hearing it live, it sounded fresh and exciting all over again.  Just listen to them do "Beechwood Park."

The sinuous melody and slightly woozy beat float along, as Blunstone's ethereal tenor interweaves with Argent's minor-key baroque organ arpeggios. The lyrics paint a romantic picture of a guy and a girl cavorting through a leafy suburban park -- or rather (important distinction) his memories of them cavorting in the park. The wistful haze of nostalgia is the perfect final touch.

"All roads in my mind / Take me back in my mind / And I can't forget you / Won't forget you / Won't forget those days / And Beechwood Park." A subtext of loss haunts this song -- you've gotta figure he's lost her and has been regretting it ever since.

You could get away with that soft-focus stuff in the late 60s, talking about the breeze in a girl's hair and counting evening stars. (Poet Rod McKuen made a fortune peddling this line of hooey.) But somehow, the still-youthful urgency of Blunstone's voice makes me buy this one-hundred percent. No other band of that era had such a romantic, earnest aura. 

The cool thing about "Beechwood Park" is that it doesn't sound dated -- it simply transports you back to 1968. Everybody had a Beechwood Park, didn't they? (Mine was Holiday Park in Indianapolis -- I can still summon up the sound and smell of that place.)

All I know is that for three minutes or so, on that cold rainy October Friday night, we were all going back in our minds to that summer world.  Ah, what a trip.

I Love This Song!

5 Favorite Opening Riffs -- Jazzing It Up

Next installment of 5 in my 25 Favorite Opening Riffs. The parameters: 1. One riff per band. 2. No vocals. 3. Must occur right at the beginning of the record. This is all totally subjective, folks, and they're in no particular order. Enjoy!

So far we've been talking rock riffs, mostly, but here are a few that venture into jazz territory -- and announce those intentions right off the bat.

Moondance / Van Morrison

Two backbeat piano chords, repeated. A few light brushes on the drums. And then That Voice, slipping in like butter. "Oh, it's a marvelous night for a moon dance...."  Talk about Less Is More.  Eventually we'll get a divine jazz solo, plus Van's jazz-freak vocal swoops and scats (it's as if he becomes the saxophone himself); pianist Jeff Labes really gets to fly with his piano improv in the middle eight. But it's those first chords -- cool, laidback, effortlessly syncopated -- that set the whole swinging thing in motion. Sometimes you only need two measures....

Undun / The Guess Who




What? No Canadians so far?  I'm sure that violates broadcasting protocols north of the border, so let's slip in this 1969 gem. It's like "Moondance"'s minor-key cousin, with a little more Latino beat.  Guitarist Randy Bachman, later of Bachman-Turner Overdrive (a best riff runner-up for "Taking Care of Business") has said he based this song around some new jazz guitar chords he'd just learned; it sure doesn't sound like any other Guess Who song. That opener is quick and crafty: Three guitar chords, syncopated, with a few smacks of offbeat drums, and a percussive vocal choo-pah! on the backbeat. (We'll soon see where they got THAT idea...)

Build Me Up Buttercup / The Foundations

Stairstep guitar strums, underlaid with tambourine -- and yes, bongos! -- it's so simple, and it's all about the syncopation. (Do you sense a theme here?)  Soon enough we get the second motif, layered on in counterpoint by a percussive electric piano; it's upbeat, happy pop, and just jazzy enough to make you snap your fingers and bounce in your chair. Oh, give in to it; just get up and dance, folks; you know you want to. And the singer hasn't even started yet!

Time of the Season / The Zombies

Start to finish, this is one magnificent song (read here my full take).

But today, let's focus on that brilliantly crafted intro. Like the opening of "Under Pressure," it's pure percussion, but put together like a Swiss cuckoo clock. As I dissect it, it's two beats on a tom-tom, one thump on the bass drum, then a hand clap, then a block, then a vocal gasp. All in rapid succession, intricately syncopated; it takes a downbeat plus two beats, no time at all. Repeat three more times, and it's what, eight seconds? But by the time Colin Blunstone starts singing, we're already spooked out. Brilliant.


House of the Rising Sun / The Animals

Hilton Valentine's unspooling guitar lick, hung on stairstep notes from Chas Chandler's bass, sets the whole song up, as if he's casting a fishing line and deftly reeling us in. Minor-key glissandos, rising ominously upwards, will soon be handed over to Alan Price's prophesying organ. (Which will eventually blow things into another stratosphere in the middle eight.)  I suppose this isn't technically jazz: It's more like mission revival meets the blues. But oh, is it dark, and OH is it compelling.  Still sends shivers up my spine, every time.

"You Make Me Feel Good"
 The Zombies

A bit of a retread, this, from a 2009 post. But I just saw the Zombies tonight, at B.B. King's in NYC, and it was such a delicious show, I just had to post something. Even though it's late and I'm, y'know, tired, and writing a whole new post would take the edge off of this wonderful post-concert euphoria. So let's just trust that what I had to say 5 years ago still holds true...

"You Make Me Feel Good" was the B-side of the first single I ever owned, the Zombies' "She's Not There" (one of the first songs I ever wrote about on this blog; click here to read that post). I'll admit it, I am deliriously uncritical about all those tracks from the Zombies' all-too-brief 1960s heyday. But when I listen to them again, I'm amazed at how well they hold up.

Tonight, introducing this song, Rod Argent mentioned that back in 1964 it was a close contest which of those songs would be the A side and which would be the B side. Now, I love "She's Not There" and I probably would have picked it as the A side too. But in my adolescent basement with my little fold-up stereo, I know that I played both sides of this 45 (since I had no other singles yet, I played it A LOT), and "You Make Me Feel Good" is deeply woven into my pop DNA.

And listening to it tonight, I was reminded just how jazzy the Zombies always were. The Stones were so bluesy, the Beatles were all about rock and roll, the Kinks were...well, someday I'll write a whole book about that. But while all those other bands were based on the guitar chords, the Zombies were led by a keyboardist, and blessed with a lead singer with faultless pitch who could hit any interval you threw at him. It wasn't chord-based melody but something entirely other, an effect only enhanced by those tight off-beat stops and starts. Tremendously sophisticated for 1964 -- which may be why the Zombies never hit the heights they deserved back then.

And it's not just musical sophistication -- these are crafty little numbers emotionally as well.

Sure, the song is all about how happy he is with his girlfriend -- as the chorus puts it, "So good, so good, don't have to justify why / I feel so good, so good, so good / Never thought could be so good to me." But it's not all sweetness and light. There is, in fact, a lurking subtext, and it's all about sex. Notice how it starts out in the middle of a conversation: "You don't need any reason, do you baby?" Reason for what? You might well ask. Listen to that pleading refrain, "But if you need a reason, / I'll give one to you / [oh, yeah] You make me feel good / [what, oh yeah] You make me feel good!" I love how all the voices in the group join in this conversation -- it's not technically a call-and-response but it has the same caught-in-mid-life vitality to it. (They'd do this again, to brilliant effect, in "Time of the Season.")

I have learned that in pop songs, when they won't call something by name, it's sex they're talking about. I didn't make this connection back in 1964, but now I see it plain as day -- he's buttering up his adorable teenage girlfriend so she'll sleep with him. That accounts for the groan at the edge of Colin Blunstone's voice, for all the impatient mmms and oh yeahs and harmonized moans that burst out through the song. That accounts for the insistent foregrounded drumbeat, for the winsome organ intro, for those un-hunh electric guitar curls that punctuate the verses. For a guy who claims to be contented, he's practically squirming off the sofa. But he's a nice suburban kid too, not some over-sexed thug; he's trying to win her over with psychology. For a certain sort of girl (ahem, yes), that's the only way to get in.

None of those other British Invasion bands did sincere longing the way the Zombies did. The Beatles and the Stones were more menacing, the Kinks and the Who neurotic, Herman's Hermits safe and cuddly. The Zombies struck other notes as well, but this sort of song was their specialty -- and man, did they do it right.

52 GIRLS

"A Rose for Emily" / The Zombies

The Zombies, too, had their version of "Eleanor Rigby," on 1968's Odessey and Oracle, one of the great British Invasion albums ever, despite its fluky history.  The sound of this track is pure 1968 -- the electric piano sounding like a baroque minuet, the flower imagery, the literary allusion (to the William Faulkner short story "A Rose for Emily," a dazzling bit of Southern Gothic).  Best of all, though -- as always with vintage Zombies tracks - is the chilling beauty of Colin Blunstone's high clear tenor, wistfully relating this sad sad story.



 

 

Right from the start, this song delicately boxes in its nature cliches. "The summer is here at last / The sky is overcast / And no one brings a rose for Emily." Already we know she's neglected, overlooked, but the rest of the first verse presses the sad irony deeper: "She watches her flowers grow / While lovers come and go /  To give each other roses from her tree / But not a rose for Emily." My heart's already breaking for her. I love how the melody supports the theme, the ambivalent chords on "overcast" and "lovers come and go," the mournful sustained high notes of "rose for Emily." I picture Emily as a frail lady in a careful sunhat, secateurs in gloved hand, patiently pruning her rose bushes.   

 

In the chorus, the trademark Zombies vocal overlaps (see "Time of the Season" and "She's Not There") begin to interlace, underscoring the divergent views of summer's joys.. "Emily [Emily,] can't you see? / There's nothing you can do [how the sun is shining) / There's loving everywhere but none for you." No one in 1960s rock could use counterpoint better than the Zombies: how much sadder it seems to be lonely when everyone else is having a fine time.

 

Verse two is the most Eleanor-Rigbyish of all:"Her roses are fading now / She keeps her pride somehow / That's all she has protecting her from pain." Okay, so in the late 60s we all got tremendously sentimental about old people. (Go listen to Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends if you need a primer.) Still, Rod Argent offers us an unflinching, unsentimental take on the realities of growing old. "And as the years go by, / She will grow old and die / The roses in her garden fade away / Not one left for her grave / Not a rose for Emily." Do we feel crappy and guilty about this? Yes, we do -- thank you, Rod Argent.

But let's be honest -- the whole thing is overlaid with a patina of young-people's romantic fascination with aging, loneliness, and death. (I do not exempt "Eleanor Rigby" from this remark; the Elvis Costello-Paul McCartney "Veronica" swims in the same boat.)  It was 1968, fer chrissake. How old were Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone?

And now, down the line -- do we still feel melancholy about lonely overlooked gardener Emily?

You betcha. 

 

50 DOWN, 2 TO GO

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Sweltering hot here in New York City the past few days -- how has it been where you are? Too hot to do anything else but switch on my shuffle!

1. "Hey Scenesters!" / The Cribs
From The New Fellas (2005)
Snappy guitar riffs, crisp drums, and the Jarman brothers shouting "Hey scenesters! Hey, hey scenesters!" over and over. It's like a BritPop version of the Tremeloes' goofy, genial "Even the Bad Times Are Good," right down to the lo-fi production qualities -- except for a certain tunelessness (think the Strokes on a lager high) that betrays it as a 21st century track. Infectious energy -- you've just got to giggle.

2. "Back on the Corner" / John Hiatt
From Master of Disaster (2005)
Hard to believe this was released the same year as The Cribs' -- it's a little vintage soft shoe, sung in John's creaky old-guy voice, with banjo and slide guitar to give it that O Brother Where Art Thou? style. It almost sounds like a throwaway track, but hell, nothing Hiatt writes is ever a throwaway -- listen carefully and you'll pick up nuggets of survivor wisdom.

3. "If You've Got to Make A Fool of Somebody" / Jackie DeShannon
From For You (1967)
Ah, mid-60s pop. Strings, back-up choirs, even a bloopy trombone here and there -- pour on the lush studio effects! Still, you have to hand it to Jackie -- who else was going to move the girl group sound into the hippie era?

4. "I Want to Say a Prayer" / Colin Blunstone
From Echo Bridge (1995)
I don't care who knows it -- I have a fangirl crush on Colin Blunstone, or at least on his dreamy, creamy voice. His soft-rock solo albums are nothing compared to his work with the Zombies, but sometimes this romantic mush is just what I need. (Picture big-haired Colin with his jacket slung over his shoulder and shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest.) Anyway, it's appropriate to hear this today, as today -- July 7 -- is the birthday of the wonderful Jim Rodford, who's played with Argent, the Kinks, the Animals, and nowadays with Colin in the modern-day Zombies. (Also Ringo Starr's 70th birthday, but who's counting?)

5. "She's Got You" / Loretta Lynn
From I Remember Patsy (1977)
Very few singers can cover a Patsy Cline song and hold their own -- but there's a reason why Loretta is the queen of country music. Her take on this Hank Cochran number is just a shade lighter and more kittenish than Patsy's, and in a way it works even better -- while Patsy's original was underlaid with steel, Loretta actually sounds just like a moony high-school girl, carrying a torch for her ex-steady guy.

6. "Garden Party" / Rick Nelson
From Garden Party (1972)
Oh, man, Ricky Nelson goes country. I remember being amazed by this amiable, lilting late hit -- like "American Pie," which had come out a year earlier, it's a riddling string of coded references to other musicians. But it's also Ricky's declaration of independence, casting aside the teen idol and coming into his own as country-rocker Rick. "You can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself," he tells us with a wink and nod. Life lesson.

7. "Funny Face" / The Kinks
From Something Else (1967)
A Dave song! I love Dave's voice, and this is a charming, quirky little love song, with a bit of music hall bounce. But when you're always being compared against a talent like his brother Ray . . . .

8. "How Kind of You" / Paul McCartney
From Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
And now here's Ringo's ex-bandmate. No surprise -- I've got A LOT of this guy's stuff on my iPod, and (ahem) not all of it good. I do wish Paul McCartney would pay somebody -- somebody like me, perhaps -- to warn him off of gooping up simple little songs. That muddy harmonium, or whatever, tries to build this into an anthem, a status this slight song can't carry. I'd have rewritten a lyric here or there, kept the track acoustic, and cut the whole thing off at three minutes. Then we'd have had a beauty!

9. "Seesaw" / Don Covay
From Seesaw (1966)
Classic R & B, with a sassy horn section, handclap rhythms, and an innuendo streak a mile wide. "Your love is like a seesaw / Up, down, and all around..." I wonder who that is doing the crazy talking alongside Covay's honey-sweet vocals. Covay's one of those guys whose fingerprints are all over 1960s R&B; he started out in The Rainbows with young Marvin Gaye, but he's best known as a songwriter ("Chain of Fools," "Mercy Mercy," and many others). He wrote this one with resident Stax genius Steve Cropper, which may account for the perky Booker-T-style beat. Deee-lish.

10. "Oklahoma USA" / The Kinks
From Muswell Hillbillies (1971)
Now this is how it's done. That harmonium is so light, just a sigh here and there, against a tinkling upright piano; and Ray's breathy, yearning vocals. I think of this as an early version of "Come Dancing," soaked with nostalgia for the American culture that fed North London teens in those lean postwar years. It makes me cry every time. "All life we work, but work is a bore / If life's for living, what's living for?" Words to live by.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 1-5

AND THE WINNER IS . . .

[ . . . drum roll, please!]

Well, I told you it would be subjective. These are not the top five singles of all time on Rolling Stones' list, or Mojo's list, or any other list put together by rock snobs or music pundits. I haven't jiggered it to showcase my favorite bands (look, no Kinks! no Nick Lowe!) or to make a political statement or to show off my superior taste. You'll notice I've already written about all of these songs -- BUT OF COURSE!! These are simply the five singles that knocked me hardest off my feet in the course of my life.

And yeah, they're all from the 1960s, because that was the decade that made me the music fan I am. Or more importantly, that made me the person I am. Which is really what the music's all about, isn't it?

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

1. "The Letter" / The Box Tops (1967)
I hear those knocking lead-in drum beats, and I am GONE. When all is said and done, the essence of rock and roll is nothing more or less than hormonal teenage cravings, and nobody has ever expressed that randy yearning better than an absurdly young Alex Chilton, fronting this seminal Memphis pop group.



2. "Happy Together" / The Turtles (1967)
They were hardly one-hit wonders, but even the Turtles never again hit such a sweet spot, a magical convergence of lilting melody, playful rhythms, and intimate vocals that will forever be the soundtrack of my eighth-grade nirvana.



3. "She's Not There" / The Zombies (1964)
The first 45 I ever owned -- if only my taste had always been this impeccable!



4. "If I Fell" / "And I Love Her" / The Beatles (1964)
Desperately in love with the Beatles -- okay, okay, in love with Paul McCartney, who was in 1964 the most beautiful man on the planet -- of course I had both of these tracks on the Hard Day's Night album, the first LP I ever owned. But I simply had to buy the single too, so smitten was I with this matched set of John/Paul declarations of love.

5. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" / "God Only Knows" / The Beach Boys (1966)
Honestly, I wasn't a Beach Boys fan, not really. And by 1966, I already had the Beatles to keep me warm -- what did I need with these clean-cut California boys in their squaresville striped shirts? But then they unleashed this pair of gloriously inventive tracks, back and front of one 7-inch vinyl masterpiece, and set a new gold standard for rock-pop brilliance.

And now, YOU tell ME -- what would your #1 be?

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 56-60

For better or worse, my musical tastes were born out of the British Invasion, so it's no surprise I'm hitting a run of mid-60s English rock in the heart of my list -- and no surprise that I've already written about so many of today's songs. Some of these bands belong to that elite group of artists who've nabbed more than one spot on my list (guess which); others are more in the category of one-hit wonders, but as my write-ups explain, don't dismiss them so quickly.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

56. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" / The Animals (1965)
The last great Animals single to be recorded with Alan Price on organ -- and oh, it's a sizzler.

57. "Sunshine Superman" / Donovan (1966)
So many great Donovan tracks, it was hard to choose just one. (I'm prepared now for the onslaught of comments telling me which Donovan tracks you thought were better.) But in the end I had to go for "Sunshine Superman" because it encompasses everything we loved him for -- folkie innocence, hippie psychedelia, and a nifty world music groove.

58. "Time of the Season" / The Zombies (1969)
Thank goodness I've got links for the rest of today's songs -- that leaves me plenty of room to write about this song. As many of you know, I go weak in the knees whenever I think about the Zombies. They weren't around very long -- in fact they broke up a full year before this single was released. Fun facts to know and tell: Wikipedia tells me that it was rock & roll zelig Al Kooper, who'd recently become an A&R exec at Columbia Records, that pushed to lift this track from their 1968 farewell album Odessey and Oracle and put it out as a 45. How cruelly ironic, then, that it turned out to be their best-selling single ever, at least in the U.S. (The Zombies were one British Invasion band that didn't really catch on over here, though I can say I was a Zombies fan from the get-go.)
Talk about the Spookiness Quotient -- this song is simply drenched with it. Some songs just deserve to be heard in the dark, late at night, and this is one of them. That mysterously tip-toeing bass line, the descending triplet on the organ, strange little percussion accents like bumps in the night -- dig that one repeated tic, a lightning-swift combo of block clap, cymbal, and gasp (sounds like somebody's being whipped down in the dungeon). Above all, it's Colin Blunstone's other-worldly voice, doubled and echoed until it sounds like it's coming from some parallel dimension. And on the second verse, all those overlapping voices, falsettos and booming baritones, coming out of the woodwork like a spirits at a seance: "What's your name? (What's your name?) / Who's your daddy? (Who's your daddy?)/ (HE RICH) Is he rich like me-ee? / Has he taken (Has he taken) / any time (any time) / (TO SHOW) To show you what you need to live?" It's like an allusive, coded conversation, something heard through a wall maybe; we have no idea what they're talking about. In the bridge, the imaginary voices take the lead: "(Tell it to me slowly!) / Tell you what?/ (I really want to know). . . " Then they all chime in together in thick clotted sacral harmonies for the refrain: "It's the time / For the see-ea-son for loving," ending on a VERY disturbing chord. After which, off goes Rod Argent's lunatic, inspired organ solo -- I've got to think that Al Kooper was grooving on that. The baroque textures of this song tap into so many dark psychological states -- it makes me think of time travel, of drug trips, of haunted houses, of black magic, of kinky sex, of mad wives locked in the attic, of evil clowns and malevolent ventriloquist's dummies coming to life. You know, like The Twilight Zone on acid, with a script by Ray Bradbury, directed by David Lynch, starring Jeremy Irons and Amanda Plummer. Gothic and stylish, a pure class act.

59. "Concrete and Clay" / Unit 4 + 2 (1966)
Ah, just listen to that cowbell intro. A fluky hit, catapulted from obscurity by pirate radio stations (raise your hand if you saw the film Pirate Radio, a.k.a. The Boat That Rocked), this irresistible little swinger was best listened to on a transistor radio snuggled underneath your pillow. Few songs transport me back as totally as this one does.

60. "A World Without Love" / Peter & Gordon (1964)
The fact that this song was written by Paul McCartney is one-hundred-percent beside the point. I adored Peter Asher, and the heavenly harmonies on this record were pop perfection.

"You Make Me Feel Good" / The Zombies

Don't have much to say about this song, actually -- though I did spend the afternoon experimenting with this little movie, which seems the most reasonable way to post the entire song on this blog without embedding a downloadable mp3 (sorry, but giving away music I don't own isn't really my thing). Besides, I think it's always fun to have an image to look at too.



"You Make Me Feel Good" was the B-side of the first single I ever owned, the Zombies' "She's Not There" (one of the first songs I ever wrote about on this blog -- click here to read that post) . I am deliriously uncritical about all those tracks from the Zombies' all-too-brief 1960s heyday. They've recently reformed, and are still wonderful, but guys in their early 60s just can't do the yearning adolescent thing the way they could when they were 20.

Generally I prefer the tracks where Colin Blunstone sings lead -- that angelic choirboy voice of his sent shivers up my spine then, and still does today. On this B side, however, I hear Rod Argent singing lead instead. While Rod's voice isn't as angelic, it adds a note of urgency that works just right for this song. Oddly enough, they keep trading the vocals back and forth -- not in simple classic call-and-response, but handing it back and forth, Rod for the verses and Colin for the refrain.

Sure, the song is all about how happy he is with his girlfriend -- as the chorus puts it, "So good, so good, don't have to justify why / I feel so good, so good, so good / Never thought could be so good to me." But the way Argent sings it, it's not all sweetness and light. There is, in fact, a lurking subtext, and it's all about sex. Notice how it starts out in the middle of a conversation: "You don't need any reason, do you baby?" Reason for what? You might well ask. Rod never spells it out, though; he simply hands the vocal over to honey-voiced Colin, who finishes the pleading refrain, "But if you need a reason, / I'll give one to you / [oh, yeah] You make me feel good / [what, oh yeah] You make me feel good!"

I have learned that in pop songs, when they won't call something by name, it's sex they're talking about. I didn't make this connection back in 1964, but now I see it plain as day -- he's buttering up his adorable teenage girlfriend so she'll sleep with him. That accounts for the groan at the edge of Rod's voice, for all the impatient mmms and oh yeahs and harmonized moans that burst out through the song. That accounts for the insistent foregrounded drumbeat, for the winsome organ intro, for those un-hunh electric guitar curls that punctuate the verses. For a guy who claims to be contented, he's practically squirming off the sofa. But he's a nice suburban kid too, not some over-sexed thug; he's trying to win her over with psychology. For a certain sort of girl, that's the only way to get in.

None of those other British Invasion bands did sincere longing the way the Zombies did. The Beatles and the Stones were more menacing, the Kinks and the Who neurotic, Herman's Hermits safe and cuddly. The Zombies struck other notes as well, but this sort of song was their specialty -- and man, did they do it right.

"Maybe After He's Gone" / The Zombies

If I was too besotted with the White Album in 1968 to pay attention to The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, there was no way I would have been aware of Odessey & Oracle. Oh, yeah, I'd bought the Zombies' first single, the haunting "She's Not There," but they never made much of a dent in the American market, and I soon lost track of them. By the time Odessey & Oracle was released, the discouraged Zombies had officially disbanded. With no band to promote it, the album languished in obscurity, except for one single, "Time of the Season," which scored a fluky burst of posthumous success.

Over the years, though, this "forgotten" album gathered a cult reputation. (To mark its 40th anniversary, all four surviving Zombies reformed in March 2008 to perform the album in its entirety at the Shepherd's Bush Empire Theatre -- what a show that must have been!) When I listen to these songs, though, there's no haze of nostalgia coloring them -- after all, I only discovered the album a few years ago. But in a blind listening test, I'm not sure I'd pick it as a late 60s record. This music sounds anything but dated.

Just listen to this third track, "Maybe After He's Gone," which was written by the Zombies' bassist, Chris White (the same guy who wrote "You Make Me Feel Good" and "I Love You" and "Beechwood Park," among my favorite Zombies songs). That moody minor-key melody grabs you from the very beginning, as the singer (Colin Blunstone) recalls, his voice plaintively soft over acoustic guitar, "She told me she loved me / With words as soft as morning rain." The tempo lags anxiously after the beat; that fugitive melody skips and dodges all over the place, though Blunstone's acute sense of pitch hits every note. You just know there's a "but" coming, and here it is: "But the light that fell upon me / Turned to shadow when he came," ending with a chillingly dissonant chord. It's a story of love lost, in full folk mode.

And then suddenly, abruptly, it changes; the song explodes with a burst of lush major-key harmonies, backed by drums and a driving electric piano, as the singer (and friends) declare, "Maybe after he's gone / She'll come back and love me again / Maybe after he's gone / She'll come back and want me again." That dense texture is almost dizzying in contrast; curiously, it sounds more like the Beach Boys, circa Pet Sounds, than like any other British band of the time. It may be sheer bravado -- do we really believe for a moment that she'll ever come back? -- but the emotion is intoxicating.

Pensively, Colin goes on in acoustic mode, "I remember joy and pain / Her smile, her tears are part of me." (Lovely parallelism.) A background vocal weaves around in counterpoint, as if to underscore how divided his consciousness is. "I feel I'll never breathe again / I feel life's gone from me" -- the breathiness of Blunstone's choirboy voice was never more appropriate. As the song rambles on, there's no story to be told, no striking details to convey -- it's all atmosphere and mood, all grief and baffled desire. And every time that frenzied chorus breaks out -- even at the end, when it goes a cappella -- the idea that she'll come back seems less and less likely.

What a cruel irony -- that their swan song released a flood of creativity the Zombies would never follow up on; and that it had to compete head to head against the White Album, of all records. I wonder what I'd have made of it in 1968; now I'll never know. Still, better to find it late than never!

Maybe After He's Gone sample

"Beechwood Park" / The Zombies

I've got a new dog, so I'm out walking him in the park a lot. A LOT. (Thank god for my iPod.) I can't deny, though, that Central Park is gorgeous this time of year; we've got flowering trees all over the place, dogwood and redbuds and cherry trees, and the grass is thick and fresh. So when this song cycled up on my iPod today, I hit replay several times, and hardly noticed how long I had to wait for the pooch to do his bidness.

Talk about bad timing -- in 1968 the Zombies decided to break up right after they finished recording their album Odessey & Oracle. Their career had been on the slide for several months and half the band was too discouraged (and too broke) to keep on; songwriters Rod Argent and Chris White were already mentally onto their new project, the band Argent. Singer Colin Blunstone started working in insurance, that's how sick of the pop world he was.

But Odessey & Oracle was one of the great albums of the late 60s; its single "Time of the Season" turned out to be the Zombies' biggest hit -- everywhere except Britain, that is. It wasn't enough to save the Zombies (only recently have Argent and Blunstone reunited in a revived Zombies); many music fans, me included, missed this album at the time. With no band left to support it, Odessey & Oracle didn't get much promotion, but over time it's become regarded as a classic: a masterpiece of psychedelia filtered through the lush romantic sound that was always the Zombies' hallmark.

Listening to "Beechwood Park" is still a trip. The sinuous melody and slightly draggy beat make it downright woozy, as Colin Blunstone's ethereal tenor floats above Rod Argent's minor-key baroque organ arpeggios; Paul Atkinson gets a strange shimmery reverb out of his electric guitar, matched by the echoing falsetto harmonies. The lyrics are gloriously romantic too, all about a guy and a girl cavorting through a leafy suburban park, or rather --important distinction here -- his memories of them cavorting in the park. The wistful haze of nostalgia is the perfect final touch. "All roads in my mind / Take me back in my mind / And I can't forget you / Won't forget you / Won't forget those days / And Beechwood Park." A subtext of loss haunts this song -- you've gotta figure he's lost her and has been regretting it ever since.

It's ripe with nature images -- "Do you remember summer days / Just after summer rain / When all the air was damp and warm / In the green of country lanes?" You could get away with that soft-focus sort of thing in the late 60s, talking about the breeze in a girl's hair and counting evening stars. (Rod McKuen made a fortune with this kind of pseudo-poetry.) But it wasn't just the time period; the young urgency of Blunstone's voice makes me buy this one-hundred percent. No other band of that era had such a romantic, earnest aura. The Zombies never sounded like bluesmen; they sounded just like what they were, nice middle-class English boys. Maybe that's why they were always more popular in the States than at home -- to us they sounded exotic, to other British people they just sounded . . . wet.

Sure, it's a period piece. But the cool thing about "Beechwood Park" is that it doesn't sound dated -- it simply transports you back to 1968. The vagueness of it is perfect; everybody had a Beechwood Park, didn't they? (Mine was Holiday Park in Indianapolis -- I can still summon up the sound and smell of that place.) For two minutes and forty-five seconds you too can go back in your mind to that summer world. You don't even have to drop acid to get the high.

Beechwood park sample

“Whenever You’re Ready” / The Zombies

MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!

One of the great mysteries of the British Invasion: Why weren’t the Zombies one of the era’s biggest bands? In mid-1964, their first single “She’s Not There” (see here for my previous rave) was a bona fide classic, haunting and evocative. Its B-side, “You Make Feel Good,” was just as fine. Their follow-up, “Tell Her No” (early 1965), was yet another lovely thing. But the Zombies floundered after that; their third and final hit single, “Time of the Season” (from their brilliant LP Odessey and Oracle), didn’t even get airplay until after they’d split up.

I don’t think internal strife tore them apart – lead singer Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent have been touring happily together the past couple years – so I’ve got to blame rotten management. Maybe these nice grammar-school boys from St. Albans weren’t edgy enough for the British Beat. Maybe they just weren’t hungry enough for fame, not the same way John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and Eric Burdon were. Maybe all those factors combined . . . . or maybe it was just bad fate.

“Whenever You’re Ready” was one of those “failed” singles from 1965. Why? It starts off light and syncopated, just an electric piano riff and hissing cymbals, nothing too demanding (granted, in the instrumental break that piano gets jazzy as hell, but surely that’s a good thing). The lyrics are a little masochistic – “Oh I’ve been hurt / But I still love you / I’ve been hurt like this before” – but if any vocalist could sing this convincingly, it would be Colin Blunstone, with his ethereal angelic tenor. The echo on that vocal makes him sound so lonely, so lost; he soars sweetly up to the repeated word “hurt,” punching it with just a smidgen of self-pity. I wasn’t even the one who hurt him and I’m already sorry.

Rod Argent’s grittier voice joins in on the chorus, along with drums and guitars, lending things some spunk and spine: “You’re not teaching me a new thing,” he informs her sharply; “Try to realize / And call me when you’re ready / Whenever you’re ready,” with tight harmonies modulating all over on the “readies.” Okay, the harmonies are dissonant, but was this really too sophisticated for 1965 listeners? I doubt it.

The drums and backing vocals disappear as Blunstone gets winsome again for the next verse: “I know you left / But I still love you / And though I’ve cried like this before…” But he stands up for himself in the bridge, finding an R&B edge in his voice: “But if you call me / You’ve got to treat me in a different way / And if you call me / You’ve got to listen girl to what I tell you.” If Eric Burdon sang this, he’d sound like a bully; when Colin Blunstone sings it, I start vowing to change my ways. He actually scolds her in the last verse -- “And never hurt me / Cause I love you / Never hurt me like before” – but it’s too vulnerable to seem mean. And then the piano solo explodes, releasing all his pent-up anger. In the coda Blunstone goes totally R&B on us – “All you gotta do is call me, call me, call me” – just a taste of the passion she’s passing up. The idiot.

So here’s my question: What fangirl could possibly prefer Mick Jagger snarling “Get Off My Cloud” to this? Don’t give me the old nice-girls-go-for-bad-boys cliché; I think this record just didn’t get promoted properly. I know I never heard it – and believe me, my ear was glued to the radio in 1965. Someone fell down on the job. Just think of all the great Zombies music we missed.

Whenever You're Ready sample

"She's Not There" / The Zombies

This was the first single I ever owned, and yeah, okay, the mere fact that I remember owning a vinyl 45 dates me more than I'd like to admit. Still, I played this one over and over incessantly before I saved up enough allowance to buy my second 45 (which I believe was the Honeycombs' "Have I The Right?"). What I can't figure out is: Why this song? In a universe of bright, glossy, upbeat pop product (like "Have I the Right?," not to mention anything by the Dave Clark Five or the Searchers or dreamy Chad & Jeremy), why was a child like me drawn to this haunting minor-key song, with its hypnotic electric piano and breathy lead vocals? I haven't a clue -- but I'm pretty proud of myself for spotting quality at such a precocious age.

Being so young, of course, I didn't "follow" pop groups; I didn't know that the Zombies were nice suburban kids from St. Albans, with a choirboy named Colin Blunstone as lead singer and a keyboard prodigy named Rod Argent writing their songs. If I had ever seen a photo of angelic dark-haired Colin Blunstone I might have become a Zombies groupie, but it was 1964 and my heart was devoted to the Beatles (specifically, Paul McCartney). No, I liked this song because I liked this song. I liked its air of mystery, and the interlapping harmonies -- Colin's innocent high voice begins softly, "Well, no one told me about her" and the others chime in "The way she lied"; "Well, no one told me about her," Colin protests again, raising his voice in anguish, and his bandmates add, "How many people cried." The melody snakes around as the singers point out "But it's too late to say you're sorry," and solo Colin notes ruefully, "How would I know? / Why should I care?" (yeah, right); "Please don't bother tryin' to find her" the band declares, before punching out a dissonant crescendo on the climactic "She's not there."

The chorus builds in volume, chords keep modulating tensely upward, and the vocals get even more anxious and percussive -- "Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked / The way she acted and the color of her hair." Colin sucks in his breath desperately and goes on, "Her voice was soft and cool / Her eyes were clear and bright / But -- she's not there!" That quicksilver keyboard solo in the middle is slippery, too, dancing all over the scale and refusing to stay put. The sound seems to be bouncing off of empty city streets and blank walls and underpasses, the drum work tapping like bootheels on pavement, and the melody circles around relentlessly, as if the whole song is one obsessive late-night wild goose chase.

Even as a kid, I could tell this song was emotionally conflicted. The guy's disgusted with this girl, and disgusted with himself for being such a chump ("Well, no one told me about her / Though they all knew," he gripes in the second verse); but he can't stop thinking about her, either. He doesn't want to go after her, but he's miserable without her, too. Nothing gets resolved in the course of its two minutes and 24 seconds, but in terms of capturing a sliver of angst, it can't be beat.

This was the Zombies' first record, and perhaps their biggest hit ever (rivaled only by the equally haunting "Time of the Season" three years later, just as the group was disbanding). I listen to it now and it's still mesmerizing. When you start out with a gem like this, it's hard not to end up a true believer in rock and roll.