"Seatbacks and Traytables" / Fountains of Wayne

Everybody go out right now and buy this new CD, Traffic and Weather, which hits the stores on Tuesday. I adore Fountains of Wayne, and I know a lot of you out there do too; this new album is just the sort of quirky rumination on modern life and love we've been waiting for.

Since I am getting on a plane tomorrow, this song's haunting me at the moment. While some of the earlier songs on the album are FOW's trademark vignettes of odd lonely characters (like the Kinks Village Green transplanted to New Jersey), this track's a Life on the Road Lament -- a fairly common rock music theme, of course, but the singer of this one could just as well be a frequent-flying business man as a touring musician.

With that wheezy Dylanesque harmonica starting us off, it's a gentle rootsy waltz with a touch of slide guitar, a plinky little banjo, and an appropriately disaffected lead vocal (is that Adam Schlesinger or Chris Collingwood?). Yet the song's setting is total 2007: "Seatback and traytables up / Stow your newspapers and cups / We're about to touch down / Midwestern town / Through the haze." The town could be Oklahoma, could be Santa Barbara; they both look vaguely familiar -- and at this point, our frequent flyer doesn't even really care. What's really on his mind is the weird limbo he's in, that in-transit routine: "Seatbacks and traytables please / Suddenly I can't feel my knees / Second-run movies / In-flight shopping magazines / Wheeze in the air up there / Got me a backache somewhere." Yup, sounds like he's flying coach all right. Who knows where the emergency exits are?

The chorus gets a little more melodic, and plaintive: "Trade one town for another / Delayed now, why did we bother? / X on a calendar square / New city, same stuff / Seatbacks and traytables up." This rueful sense of dislocation, of rootlessness, is a big theme on this new album. I guess it isn't odd that a bunch of guys from New Jersey would be hung up on highways and cars (it's no accident the album is named Traffic and Weather), but tucking this modern traveler's lament into a folky envelope gives it a plangent quality that really resonates with me.

You can always follow this up with the perfect chaser, track 8: "Michael and Heather At The Baggage Claim" (a metaphor for the search for love, of course). Sheesh -- who ever coined the phrase "the friendly skies" must have been crazy.

All the same, I'll go pack now. It's modern life -- what can you do? And anyway, I'll be back in a week.

Seatbacks and Traytables sample

"Jack and Diane" / John Mellencamp

I'm a sucker for countdown shows, and last night VH1 Classic showed The 100 Greatest Songs of the 80s (though it was really more like 100 80s Songs with Good Videos Whose Stars Were Available For Where-Are-They-Now Interviews). Like most of the 1980s themselves, it was a strange experience, mixing New Wave, punk, hard-core funk, and hair bands, not to mention all those campy British groups like Culture Club and Flock of Seagulls. I still blame MTV for sidetracking music in the 1980s, making it all about synthesizers and glossy visuals instead of musicianship and meaning and heart.

In the midst of all the high-concept videos, however, the one that really stood out was a grainy home-movie of a couple of teenagers messing around in Seymour, Indiana: the video for John Mellencamp's poignant "Jack and Diane." Sure, it came early in the decade -- 1982, back when he was still recording under the goofy stage name John Cougar -- but the artlessness of that video was remarkable even then. And it was absolutely perfect for that song, a wistful "little ditty" about small-town high-school sweethearts. I was riveted, all over again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm from Indiana myself, and I'm only a couple years younger than Mellencamp. Those images in the video look like MY home movies. But I still think it's a wonderful iconic American song, as good as anything Bruce Springsteen's ever done. By the time you get to the wailing chorus -- "Oh yeah, life goes on / Long after the thrill / Of living is gone" -- your heart's already breaking for these two dumb kids. You don't have to be told what happened after they got married and grew up (in that order); you just know it wasn't what they dreamed of. And is there anything more American than disappointed dreams?

It starts off with these big clanging guitar strums, underlaid with a hard-rocking hand-clap percussion (those claps may be the song's most irresistible hook), but for the verses things tone down to a tender acoustic arrangement. Enter our hero and heroine: "Two American kids growin' up in the heartland / Jacky's gonna be a football star / Diane's a debutante backseat of Jacky's car." The next verse is a scene out of Splendor in the Grass, absolutely dizzy with hormonal teenage lust:" "Suckin' on chili dog outside the Tastee-Freeze / Diane sittin' on Jacky's lap / He's got his hands between her knees." An incredibly sexy moment -- it's no surprise Diane takes up Jack's offer to slip off behind a shade tree. (That line "Dribble off those Bobby Brooks" is a vivid detail -- I visualize all the Bobby Brooks blouses in my old closet, circa 1970.)

The next verse is the pivotal moment when Jack -- doing "his best James Dean" (that Rebel Without A Cause reference, such a grabber) -- suggest they run off to the city. This is their moment to break free, the moment every small-town dreamer wants to seize. But Diane, the homebody, talks him out of it -- "Baby, you ain't missin' a thing," she murmurs. Doing her best Natalie Wood, no doubt.

Do you think Jack stayed with Diane? Or did he eventually get out of town? Johnny Mellencamp got out of town, even though he eventually moved back (with a supermodel wife and enough money to build his own recording studio in Seymour). Personally, I think Jack left -- he had to -- but a part of him still regrets losing that sweet and innocent happiness. Which he would have lost even if he'd stayed. Man, if Wordsworth had been a roots rocker, this is the song he would have written.

But I love the fact that you can write whatever ending you want. Mellencamp only tells us, in that anthemic a cappella bridge, with its gospel-like backing vocals, "Gonna let it rock / Let it roll / Let the bible belt come and save my soul / Hold on to sixteen as long as you can / Changes come around real soon, make us women and men." Whatever else, he's in love with the innocence of those kids, their unreflective passion. He's not going to judge them. He'll just immortalize them.

Jack and Diane will live forever now, still sucking on those chili dogs behind the Tastee-Freeze. In Indianapolis it was the Dairy Queen, but same difference. God, this song makes me want to go home again. As if any of us can.

Jack and Diane sample

“Stupid Thing” / Aimee Mann

Men, you should be afraid of Aimee Mann. Be very afraid -- she knows all your tricks.

So maybe you don’t dare listen to this track from her 1993 debut album Whatever –but ladies, I’ll recommend it as the perfect song to crank up when your significant other has been messing you around. It’s not a revenge song so much as a putting-things-in-perspective song.

What woman hasn’t watched a relationship fall apart like this? Patiently Aimee rehearses the situation as she recalls it: “Nothing was saving our day / There was nothing to say, / But you said something anyway” (unable to resist that little dig there, with a shrug and a roll of the eyes). “Claiming I stepped out of line,” she continues, “Which forced you to leave me, / As if that idea was mine.” Maybe this is a Mars/Venus situation, but I can’t help but side with Aimee – I’ve seen how men overreact to perceived slights, with an air of offended pride (wounded vanity is more like it), and the woman’s side of the story just doesn’t count. In verse two, Aimee’s even more suspicious of her ex’s motives: “I bet you knew it would come / That’s just like you to sit back / And just play it dumb / One word of warning would help / But that sacrifice was made / Trying to save yourself.” He’s put his own ego first, instead of playing things for the good of the relationship. Just waiting to blame things on somebody else . . . just waiting for an excuse to give up.

The verses are sung wearily, just acoustic guitar and drums with a fragile, lilting melody – but hey, she’s only getting started. The chorus gets more vigorous, with electric guitar and piano joining the mix, and Aimee’s singing sharpens with a skeptical edge. “Oh, you stupid thing / Speaking of course as your dear departed / Oh, you stupid thing / It wasn’t me that you outsmarted / Oh, you stupid thing / Stopping it all before it even started.” That wry description of herself as “your dear departed” clues me in that she’s not even grieving the end of this relationship anymore – how could she? It never even got out of the gate. That blunt term “stupid thing” is a pretty dry-eyed description of a guy who wasn’t worth hanging onto -- it’s his loss, not hers (“It wasn’t me that you outsmarted”). But the slightly draggy tempo, the melodic repetitions, suggests how bone-tired she is of doing all the work and not getting any generosity in return. There’s a pattern here. Familiar?

This is why we need female singer-songwriters. Probably this was an autobiographical song, but I doubt I’m the only woman who can relate. Some days I want to wear my heart on my sleeve, and then I’ll listen to Dusty Springfield and Patsy Cline. But other days, I want to stand up for myself – and for those days, it’s good to have Aimee Mann around.

Stupid Thing sample

“Perfect Day” / Lou Reed

In the summer of 1973, Eurailing around the Continent with my friend Debbie, there were two songs we sang constantly: “Creeque Alley” by the Mamas and the Papas (for the line “living off American Express cards”) and Lou Reed’s “Walk On the Wild Side.” Not that our walks were ever wild – it was just that its doo doo-doo doo doo-doo-doo doo doo-doo refrain set the perfect tempo for rambling around cobblestoned European capitals. And of course it had a verse about someone named Holly (who turns out to be a transvestite, but I still identified – heck, the only other song I knew with my name in it was (yuck) “Holly Holy” by Neil Diamond).

Despite loving that snarly, transgressive Lou Reed single, I never bought the album from which it came, Transformer. Lou Reed struck me as a difficult, dangerous guy (wonder why) and . . . well, I had other bands to follow. I don’t apologize for that; there’s only so much time in life.

If I HAD bought Transformer, though, I would have known “Perfect Day” earlier, and who knows how that might've changed my mind about Lou Reed. (Lou himself hated the fact that the atypical “Walk On the Wild Side” became his signature song – kinda like “Lola” being the only Kinks song most non-fans know). “Perfect Day” shows a different side of Lou Reed, a lyrical, poetic side. The key lies in the very ordinariness of this “perfect day” he’s marveling over; it’s wonderfully affecting, especially coming from a guy who wore eye make-up and considered Andy Warhol his mentor. “Drink Sangria in the park, / And then later, when it gets dark, / We go home. . . . / Feed animals in the zoo / Then later, a movie, too, / And then home.” Simple pleasures we can all relate to, and his gruff, half-talking, slightly wobbly voice makes it even more convincingly ordinary. As the song transpires, of course, the melancholy edge becomes clear: “You made me forget myself. / I thought I was someone else, / Someone good.” That’s the heart-breaker, the part that makes me want to put my arms around Lou Reed, leather jacket and all, and just console him.

David Bowie produced this album and Mick Ronson was somehow involved too; I’ve read that it was Ronson who gave this number its lush waltzing arrangement, with a chorus of strings swelling over the simple piano accompaniment. This walking-in-the-park conceit is tired now, after a bazillion hackneyed film montages, but in 1972 it was still code for escaping the rat race and being authentic; it was effective in Woody Allen movies and even more effective when a downtown guy like Lou Reed takes it up. For this one moment, he’s let go of all his defiance, all his desire to shock. He’s content just to BE.

I saw Lou Reed once, years ago, waiting for the subway at the Christopher Street station down in Greenwich Village -- brooding, rumpled, leonine, devastatingly attractive. Dressed in black leather, of course, but still, riding the subway, like a million other ordinary New Yorkers. I’m hoping that was a perfect day for him. It was for me.

Perfect Day sample

“Before the Night Is Over” / Jerry Lee Lewis and B. B. King

Duet albums? I’m sick of ‘em. The record companies have jumped on this gimmick to revive an aging artist’s career at the end of his/her days – Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles, two cases in point. So I was skeptical about buying last year’s Jerry Lee Lewis duet album – but I shouldn’t have been.

I should have been able to tell from its title, Last Man Standing (not to mention the cover shot of Jerry Lee hammering away at a grand piano that’s burst into flames), that this wouldn’t be a mere exercise in coasting. No collaborators made the cut unless they were willing to let Jerry Lee, the original wild man of rock ‘n’ roll, tear loose and take the lead. And it works because his playing AND singing are in prime form. The liner notes claim that this project breathed new life into Jerry Lee, who'd been sick and basically out of commission until rock 'n' roll came to the rescue. You sure can't tell it, though, by listening to this album. Respect must be paid.

My favorite track, from the very first listen, has been track #2, “Before the Night Is Over,” which teams Jerry Lee up with B.B. King, two old masters trading off sizzling solos between the verses. Jerry Lee so completely rocks the joint with his honky-tonk piano, B.B.is hard put to take the spotlight when it comes his turn -- and to give him credit, he seems happy just to let Jerry Lee shine. God bless both of them.

It’s a cunning old blues song by Ben Peters, sung by Jerry Lee with just the right amount of sexy swagger. Just get a load of the chorus: “And before the night is over you're gonna be in love / I bet you by the mornin', I'll be the only one that you'll be thinkin' of.” The way he hits that word “love” -- now there is CONFIDENCE. Jerry Lee may be 80 years old but he still knows what it means to have mojo. Those insouciant glissandos, the twiddling grace notes, the pounding chords – here is a man in charge. Listening to this for the first time in my car, I couldn’t help but shift in my seat and think, “All right, Jerry Lee, show me what you’re made of.”

Of course it’s also wheedling, and more than a little opportunistic: “I can tell by the way you're a little bit lonesome baby [“just like Jerry Lee," he can’t resist tossing in, winsomely] / It's just like someone that you're needing to forget / Honey, that's the same thing with me / I've been wonderin' baby, why don't we / Just make believe it ain't the first time we have met.” Nothing like taking advantage of a woman when she’s on the rebound. All the same, that chuckling drawl lets her know that he won’t feel hurt if she turns him down. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But if she’s up for a little fun, fun’s what this tomcat can deliver. Grrr-owll.

Confession time: I still prefer to picture Jerry Lee as Dennis Quaid in the movie Great Balls of Fire, and, okay, I have a thing for Dennis Quaid. Until I saw that movie I didn’t get the point of Jerry Lee. But listening to this new CD, with this wild man raging against the dying of the light, I have to say…whoo-ah.

http://music.download.com/jerryleelewis/3600-8735_32-100031155.html

“Let’s Stay In and Make Love” / Nick Lowe

NICK LOWE WEEK

The sexiest song I’ve ever heard, period.

MY NICK LOWE THEORY#6: Considering how many pop songs Nick Lowe has written over the past 40 years, it’s amazing how his melodic invention never flags. On his most recent CD (The Convincer, 2001) , he's still finding fresh tunes to charm us with. I dig the way this tune starts out shimmering on a seventh chord and stairsteps down into a major key, taking its sweet time to get there. It's all about seductive chord changes and unpredictable syncopation, venturing coolly onto jazz turf. (Nick's visited there before, on Dig My Mood -- check out the elegant tracks "You Inspire Me" and "Freezing.")

Here's the set-up: This guy (I imagine it as Nick) has just mustered up the nerve to tell his wife/girlfriend (and yes, I imagine it as me), “I don’t really care / About tonight’s affair / We don’t have to go.” Not unusual; lots of men say that, but they mutter it angrily, because they hate putting on a tux and would rather watch the game. The last time someone pulled that on me I was LIVID. But that tentative melody – starting OFF on a note that begs to be resolved – makes her pause, listening. And when he gets to the chorus, and she finds out why he wants to cancel the engagement – “Let’s stay in and make love” – well, how could she mind that? The languid lilting tempo, the noodling guitar and electric piano, all make this song so intimate and tender, I know I’m melting already.

Look at how he sketches the scene, so cinematic, camera angle and everything: “Now you’re waiting in the hall / And I am on the stair / Looking at you from above / Say, darling, just for a change / Let’s stay in and make love.” Again with the melody – that hopeful lift on “Let’s”, the cozy repeated notes on “stay in,” a higher note to emphasize “and”, the way he slurs “make love” into three notes that curl around caressingly. I don’t imagine any writer plots a song in such detail, but when you’re in the zone, songwriting-wise, serendipity takes over.

Soon he gives us the movie’s script as well, with a voiceover: “You say softly, ‘Darling / You’re quiet tonight’ [extra beat of silence] / And you‘re right, ‘cause what I’m thinking of / Is ‘Take off your dress / Let’s stay in and make love.’” How lightly he sings that line, just a suggestion, like drifting his fingertips over her (my) skin. But in the bridge, with building volume (and cocktail lounge-y piano arpeggios from Geraint Watkins), he moves down the stairs and presses his case, each line shifting urgently into a higher key: “Let’s forget the chattering crowd / And get back to what’s really real” (cue those chattering back-up la-la la-la la’s ).

Okay, that’s probably a new dress she’s wearing. She knows she looks fabulous in it. She’s been looking forward to this do -- it’s hard to change gears that fast. So he’s got a little more persuading to do; he tempts her with a new scenario: “I’ll put on something that’ll groove us / You may dim the lights / Then come to me darling / Let’s stay in -- / Slip off those things and love me now.” He begins to drift off, losing the train of the melody from the first two verses. Distracted . . . intoxicated by desire . . . those buttons, the zipper, a rustle of satin...

Jeez, Nick, if she doesn’t take you up on it, I will.

http://www.amazon.com/Convincer-Nick-Lowe/dp/B00005MCW4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-8741997-4930451?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1174752909&sr=8-1
Happy birthday, Mr. Lowe!

“The Beast In Me”, “I Live On A Battlefield” / Nick Lowe

NICK LOWE WEEK

When a musician gets to a certain age, he has to decide; do I get a facelift and hair plugs and maintain the same act, or do I peel off the spandex and reinvent myself as a middle-aged rocker? Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler chose Option One. Nick Lowe has chosen Option Two, and I’m glad he did.

Nick started to go gray in his twenties and never did a thing about it; the hair’s snow-white now. He’s brought the tempo down a few notches, he’s singing in a slightly lower key, and he’s settled into a mellow rootsy country/R&B sound (not all that different from Brinsley Schwarz, when you think about it). Aging gracefully doesn’t even begin to cover it. Nick Lowe seems to be standing in the middle of life’s road, giving us the straight dope about regret and disappointment and accepting reality. This kind of wisdom is worth more to me than admiring how tight Mick Jagger’s 64-year-old ass still is.

Nick wrote “The Beast In Me” for his then stepfather-in-law, Johnny Cash, and it’s a perfect gritty, world-weary song for the Man In Black. I love Cash’s passionate rendition – but when Nick sings it, I just shiver. MY NICK LOWE THEORY #5: Nick’s skill as a poet is completely underrated. Just look at the first verse of “The Beast In Me”: “The beast in me / Is caged by frail and fragile bars / Restless by day / And by night he rants and rages at the stars.” Alliteration, internal rhyme (that “caged/rages” link), the symmetry of day/night – classic poetic techniques (three verses and a bridge and he never drops the ball once).

And Nick mirrors it with his melody: “The beast in me” rises hopefully, only to sidle down the scale as the beast is caged; “restless by day” hammers restlessly on a one note, while “rants and rages” dances, agitated, around higher notes, only to descend again for the final line – “God help / The beast in me.” It’s sung softly, with just an acoustic guitar, letting silence fill every significant pause. That tone of humble surrender is just perfect. Sure, he’s Dr. Jekyll right now, but he knows where Mr. Hyde is lurking.

On this same album (1994’s brilliant Impossible Bird), “I Live On A Battlefield” perfectly complements “The Beast In Me.” The tempo picks up, with drums and a chugging electric guitar, because this soul survivor needs adrenaline to deal with life’s onslaught. “I live on a battlefield,” he says ruefully, “surrounded by the ruins of the love withheld,” and Nick keeps up the battle metaphor, verse after verse. For all the rollicking country-western sound, I picture a smoke-hung line of trenches straight out of World War I, and mud-spattered Nick staggering through barbed wire -- “I stumble through the rubble / I’m dazed, seeing double.” (Note the vowel echoes, the alliteration.) With a wail, he declares, “My new home / Is a shellhole filled / With tears and muddy water / And bits of broken heart.”

He even translates the metaphor for us: “Though one way not one single drop of blood has spilled / It’s no less horrifying / Sweet memories of a bygone situation / Now shattered, lord, and battered / Lie scattered all around,” lobbing extra rhymes at us like hand grenades (similarly, later, he gives us “my new home is one of desolation / And scenes of a devastation / There is no consolation”). That perky tempo, those call-and-response back-up vocals, keep it just humorous enough. He’s got no time for self-pity; THIS IS WAR. I grin, and then I wince, because, yeah, it sure looks familiar. Sigh.

This is what life looks like when you’ve lived it, and I for one dive into these songs gratefully. Wine and cigars improve with age – why not rock musicians? Nick’s even got the confidence to title his next album (his first in six years, due out June 26th) At My Age. I may be older myself, but I'm not ready to hang it up. I still get giddy at the promise of a new Nick Lowe album.

http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,203157,00.html