True Love Ways / My Morning Jacket

I've always had three reasons to love Buddy Holly:  His band The Crickets inspired the name of the Beatles; his death was the chief inspiration for the iconic song of my youth "American Pie"; and, best of all, his last name was my first name.  Though he came along well before my time (okay, a little before my time), I love  his classic rock and roll sound, the way it bubbles with upbeat youthful energy.

Nevertheless, an all-star Buddy Holly tribute album to  commemorate the 75th anniversary of his birth wasn't exactly high on my list of albums to buy.  At least, not until I learned that Nick Lowe had been tapped to contribute a track.  Then, of course, that album went from a curiosity to a must-have in my book. ( Even though I am still annoyed with Nick for agreeing to open for Wilco on their fall tour -- nothing against Wilco, but really, shouldn't Nick be headlining?  And tickets have been absurdly hard to get, which isn't fair to Nick fans.)

But I digress.

So I went ahead and got the Buddy Holly tribute album, Rave On.  The line-up is an interesting mix of older and younger artists, definitely skewed toward the indie-cool part of the spectrum.  You know who I'm talking about -- The Black Keys, Fiona Apple, Florence + the Machine, the Detroit Cobras, She & Him.  I mean, Julian freakin' Casablancas -- c'mon, these people weren't picked for their Buddy Holly affinities.  Even the older artists are definitely downtown types: Lou Reed, Patti Smith.  The one true Holly acolyte is Paul McCartney, and yet his frenetic rendition of "It's So Easy" is a distinct disappointment; it loses most of the charm of Buddy's original.

As for Mr. Lowe, he acquits himself respectably, covering "Changing All Those Changes." How clever of him to pick a less well-known song, and one which would allow him to go into rockabilly territory.  As a cover it's quite decent, and much less intrusive than some of the tracks.

My top picks?  Justin Townes Earle does a neat job with "Maybe Baby," and as expected She & Him deliver "Oh Boy" with perfect retro spunk.  And Patti's "Words of Love" is absolutely fantastic, taking the tempo down a notch and going for a sincere huskiness that Buddy himself might have grown into if he hadn't died so young.  Kudos to Patti.

But my number one favorite track is this one by My Morning Jacket, who just keep on rising and rising in my estimation.Who knew when we saw them open for Ray Davies in Chicago five years ago? That day they  seemed like just another shaggy sloppy jam band, but they've won me over since then.

Take a listen:




Isn't that sweet?  I love the strings, with their 50s-vintage fills, just like the original. (In fact this arrangement is a little less glossy and hokey than Buddy's, which also lays on a sax, angel harps, and cocktail piano.)  In stripping it down, Jim James and his cohorts have really plumbed the gravity and tenderness of this song, in a way that I'd bet Buddy himself would have appreciated.  Jim's earnest warble is beautifully suited to this song; it's the antithesis to show-bizzy busyness.  And as the song builds -- dig those da-dah-da-dum string flourishes -- MMJ lets vocal harmonies flower, taking the emotions up another swoony notch.

Listening to this, it strikes me that "True Love Ways" manages somehow to be sad and happy at the same time.  How did Buddy pull that off?  That husky beginning, "Just you know why...." signals intimacy from the very start; it's like a private conversation between him and his special girl.  The guy is exulting in the private world of love that they've forged between them; nobody else will ever know but them.  At the same time, though, he's shouting it to the world, so joyful that he can't keep it to himself.

And yet, and yet . . . he still sounds tremulous, awed, disbelieving.  He admits that their life, even with this great great love, isn't perfect -- "Sometimes we'll cry / Sometimes we'll sigh,"  he remarks, tinged with awareness of mortality. It's as if he's discovering for the first time that love isn't an end in itself, but a way of being; he isn't just living in the moment anymore, but putting his love into a long-term perspective.  Astonishingly mature, when you consider how young Buddy Holly was when he wrote this, and how immature the rock and roll genre still was at the time.

I suppose a little of the sadness, too, comes from knowing that this song wasn't even released until after Buddy's tragic early death.  Of course Buddy couldn't have known that, couldn't have put that into the song.  But it still has a mysterious, elegaic quality, doesn't it?  That trademark MMJ reverb underscores  that haunting note, too.

Usually I'm an advocate of artists adding their own mark to a cover song -- I hate slavish copies of the original -- but way too many of the other artists on this album went overboard, distorting the essential sweetness and lightness of Holly's songs.  My Morning Jacket, though?  They show respect.  And if Buddy Holly doesn't deserve respect, nobody does.

The Village Green Preservation Society / 
The Kinks

Gardening this afternoon -- or, more precisely, yanking out weeds from various shrubberies and flowerbeds -- I found this song popping uncontrollably into my brain. Naturally, as there was nobody about, I had to sing it, lustily and loud.

As the title song from the Kinks' 1968 album of the same name, "The Village Green Preservation Society" is exactly the sort of oddball song that baffled the music-buying public in 1968.  The album of course, is  cherished by fans today as Ray Davies' masterwork, his defiant embrace of Britishness when so many other English bands were chasing the American dream.  But I found myself wondering what all of those oh-so-British references in this song meant. I'm embarrassed to admit that even when I wrote about this before, I didn't take the time to look them all up. And then it occurred to me:  Finally, a reason for Google to exist!

First, here's a YouTube video to listen you as you read:





And now the lyrics -- with footnotes, for those of you who are Kinks-obsessed as I am....

THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY

By Raymond Douglas Davies

We are the Village Green Preservation Society
God save Donald Duck[1], Vaudeville[2] and Variety[3]
We are the Desperate Dan[4] Appreciation Society
God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties

Preserving the old ways from being abused
Protecting the new ways for me and for you
What more can we do

We are the Draught Beer[5] Preservation Society
God save Mrs. Mopp[6] and good Old Mother Riley[7]
We are the Custard Pie[8] Appreciation Consortium
God save the George Cross[9] and all those who were awarded them

We are the Sherlock Holmes[10] English Speaking Vernacular[11]
Help save Fu Manchu[12], Moriarty[13] and Dracula[14]
We are the Office Block[15] Persecution Affinity
God save little shops, china cups and virginity

We are the Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliate[16]
God save tudor houses[17], antique tables and billiards[18]
Preserving the old ways from being abused
Protecting the new ways for me and for you
What more can we do
God save the Village Green.

---

[1] The animated Disney character, who rose to fame in the 1930s, appearing many propaganda cartoons in World War II.

                                                      

[2] A form of stage entertainment popular in North America from the 1890s to the 1930s.

[3] The British equivalent of vaudeville, with a series of acts mixing comedy, music, and dance.  The use of both these terms rather than “music hall” may have been driven by alliteration as well as the need for a rhyme with “society.”

[4] A character in the British comic The Dandy, a western strong man with a Robin Hood streak.  Again, it’s an alliterative name, with the same double D’s as the Disney character in the preceding line.

[5] Beer from a cask or a keg, which aficionados claim has a truer, purer taste than bottled or canned beer.  It is generally unpasteurized, which makes the “preservation” part of this society’s name doubly apt.  

[6] An office cleaning lady (or “char”) in the 1940s BBC radio comedy “It’s That Man Again,” starring comedian Tommy Handley. Her most famous phrase was “Can I do you now, sir?”

[7] An Irish washerwoman in a music hall comedy act and series of low-budget films popular from 1934 to 1977.  Known for her malapropisms, wacky situations, and broad physical slapstick, she was played in drag by Arthur Lucan, then by Roy Rolland.

  

[8] A dessert made of custard pudding in a pie crust. This reference, however, probably is to “pie-ing,” the slapstick comedy tradition, popularized by Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin, of smashing a “custard” pie (probably made with shaving cream) into the face of a hapless target.  Running low on rhymes for “society,” Davies must now resort to a Consortium.   

[9] Great Britain’s highest possible medal awarded to civilians. The rhyme of “awarded ‘em” and “consortium” is inspired.

[10] Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective, whose stories appeared from 1887 to 1927.

[11] “Vernacular” may mean either “dialect” or “mother tongue.”  It has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, but it scans, it starts with a V, and it sets up the rhyme for “Dracula.”.

[12]  An Asian evil criminal genius created by British novelist Sax Rohmer, published between 1913 and 1959, also featured in a number of movies from 1923 on.  

[13] In this list of evil geniuses, this probably refers to Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis.

[14] The Transylvanian count and vampire, created by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel and a number of films from 1920 on.

[15] A British term for a large office building. By forming a “persecution affinity,”the VGPS is presumably opposed to office blocks.

[16] Another group formed to oppose tall office buildings.

[17] Probably a reference not to true Tudor houses, but to the Tudor Revival of the latter 19^th-century, which introduced half-timbered exterior decoration to domestic architecture.  Also called Mock Tudor, Tudorbethan, or Merrie England architecture.

[18] The British cue game, considered classier than pool, played with three balls on a billiards table. The trilled L’s in this word rhyme snappily with “affiliate.”

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Here's a slightly different twist -- this shuffle is not from my full music library, but my huge Vacation playlist, designed to provide road tunes for the July 4th exodus.  Pop it in the car's music player and enjoy!

1. Call Me The Breeze / Alan Price and Rob Hoeke
From Two of a Kind (1977)
Sorry to start out with an obscure one -- even I wouldn't own this album if it hadn't been for my lifelong Alan Price fandom.  Here he pairs with Dutch keyboardist Rob Hoeke (AP has this thing for collaborations with fellow keyboardists, from Georgie Fame to Zoot Money) to make a swinging little album that's actually a ton of fun.  Really, it should be better known.  This J.J. Cale cover is considerably peppier than J.J.'s laidback version; it really lets out the clutch and takes off.

2. Tighten Up Pt. 1  / Archie Bell and the Drells
From Tighten Up (1968)
"Hi everybody, this is Archie Bell and the Drells, of Houston, Texas. We don't only sing, but we dance just as good as we walk!"  Poor Archie Bell was already serving in Vietnam when the record he'd cut just before being drafted hit the charts.  It was all over the airwaves that summer, agitating dancing bodies everywhere, a marvelous melange of irresistible riffs cycling from instrument to instrument.  ("Tighten up on that bass, now....Now look here, we're gonna make it mellow now!")  A long cool drink of pure summer fun(k).

3. Helen Wheels  / Wings
From Band on the Run (1973)
Hang on tight!  Paul McCartney -- determined to prove that he could rock out without the Beatles -- tore into this road song with no brakes whatsoever. The internal combustion of those twin descending guitar riffs, the pavement-pounding drums, the thrumming bass line -- hell on wheels indeed! 

4. If I Had $1,000,000 / Barenaked Ladies
From Gordon (1992)
Barenaked Ladies are right up there with Commander Cody, They Might Be Giants, and Flight of the Concords in my pantheon of comic rockers. I love the call and response on this ambling country rocker, as the singer earnestly offers his riches to his true love -- but as for what he'd buy her with his lottery winnings... 

5. Rango Theme Song  / Los Lobos
From Rango Soundtrack (2011)
Fandango gave me this song for free after I went to see this animated movie last winter. (Okay, so I'll see anything with Johnny Depp in it -- wanna make something of it?)  But it soon earned a permanent spot in the rotation, a campy take on the classic western theme song, mariachi horns and all. 

6. She Loves the Sunset / Old 97s
From Blame it On Gravity (2008)
Throw in a cha-cha beat and some pedal steel twang and what do you have?  This winner by the delightful Old 97s.

7. Shiftless When Idle  / The Replacements
From Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash! (1981)
Well, this one sure puts the garage in garage rock.  Nobody else has ever stuffed this many car puns into one song, with the possible exception of Little Village's "She Runs Hot."  It only lasts 2:18, but that grinding gear-shift guitar, the relentless bashing drums, and Paul Westerberg's slightly strangled vocals defiantly break the speed limit, cruising with the top down, tossing beer cans out the back as they roar into the night.  


8.  Young Americans  / David Bowie
From Young Americans (1975)
Bowie put on his soul shoes, hauled in a gospel choir and a hot sax (David Sanborn!), and lit up the discos in the summer of '75 with this hectic take on American culture. ("Blacks got respect and whites got Soul Train...")   Bowie himself described it as "plastic soul . . . the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey."  Yep, that pretty much nails it.


9. Gone, Gone, Gone / Colin Farrell
From Crazy Heart: The Soundtrack (2010)
Who knew Colin Farrell could sing country?  As if Jeff Bridges' mesmerizing performance in this film wasn't enough, and all those superb Ryan Bingham-T. Bone Burnett songs too. This song nails the dieselbilly sound perfectly -- "I was born on a flattop two-lane, / Picked up a guitar, and every day I'd sing / Till I was gone, gone, gone..."   You just gotta drive to this one.

10. One More Day / Bill Kirchen
From Hammer of the Honkytonk Gods (2007)
Well, speaking of dieselbilly -- here's the king himself, pickin' and grinnin' with a fiddle and roadhouse piano.   "Well I reckon we all gotta pay the diagnosis / So I'm turning my two weeks notice / Then I 'scuse myself while I kiss the sky . . . I'm gonna live it up like there's no tomorrow / Crank up the love, turn down the sorrow, / Get my ducks in a row for one more day!"  Hey, a little shot of carpe diem philosophy is just what you need when you're heading out the door for vacation!

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

A lovely summer night -- crickets chirping, night breezes whispering -- time to blast it all open with some rock 'n' roll!

1. This Is Where I Belong / Ron Sexsmith
From This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies (2006)
Probably the best collection of Kinks covers I know, with dynamite tributes from Fountains of Wayne, Fastball, Minus 5, Yo La Tengo; best of all, this was the album that first introduced me to the work of Bill Lloyd and of Ron Sexsmith, both of whom have since landed several albums in heavy rotation on my music players. Ron delivers this early Kinks tune with such earnestness, I just had to hear more. And that's how it all started...

2. Next To You / Tim Easton
From Ammunition (2006) 
Here's another bit of serendipity -- I discovered Tim Easton through this track on a New West Records sampler, that I picked up who knows where.  Just goes to show you should always listen to those samplers.  I love his slightly scratchy voice, the harmonica, the loping rhythm of this track; sometimes the simplest expressions of love ("Just let me be next to you / I want to understand . . . ") are the best.

3. Look a Little on the Sunny Side  / The Kinks
From Everybody's In Show Biz (1972)
One of my first Kinks albums, Show-Biz holds a special place in my heart; to me, every track is a winner.  Here we get campy Ray mincing about this bouncy little tap dance (that old music hall influence), innocently (HA!) describing the vagaries of the music business. And I do mean vagaries: "Sing 'em the blues and then they ask for a happy tune / And when you start to smile, they say / 'Gimme the rhythm and blues,' and when you  / Give 'em the rhythm and blues, they simply smile and say / 'We didn't want to hear you play, we didn't like you anyway.'"  Well, that's the Kinks' career in a nutshell, no?

4. Keep This Party Going  / The B-52s 
From Funplex (2008) 
I was really sorry that this recent B-52s CD didn't live up to those great 80s albums.  I can't quite figure out why -- this is a fun number (I bet it's a hoot live), but it lacks that extra wackiness that made them the quirky dance queens of New Wave.  All the elements are here -- Cindy and Kate's almost offkey harmonies, Fred's lounge-lizard rapping, over an insistent dance-party rhythm track -- but it just doesn't measure up. Thank god we've still got The B-52s, Whammy!, and Cosmic Thing...

5. I'll Follow the Sun  /  The Beatles
From Beatles 65 (1965)
Okay, I know this now appears on a CD called Beatles for Sale, the British version knocked out in a hurry for the Christmas 1964 sales season.  But the American album I grew up with was Beatles 65, and I played that baby so much, the album cover is now only held together with masses of stiff masking tape. And this little folker is one of my top tracks from this album, a standard-issue kiss-off song sung with that special tender Paul McCartney charm.  "One day / You'll look / And see I've gone / But tomorrow may rain so / I'll follow the sun."  Those odd climbing intervals, that alternation of short lines with a long fluid phrase, and then he reverses it:  "And now the time has come / When so my love / I must go / And though I lose a friend / In the end you will know / Oh oh-oh oh.."  Sheer instinctive genius.

6. Road Trippin'  / Red Hot Chili Peppers
From Californication (1999)
Proving that even a psych-punk-funk bunch of skateheads from California could turn out yearningly beautiful folk-rock -- with strings, even! -- so wistful it'll break your heart.  I like most everything of RHCP I've heard, but to me this album stands head and shoulders above the rest.  One of my favorite albums of the 1990s. Granted, the 1990s, but still...

7. Love Is an Outlaw / Tom Gallagher
From Age of the Wheel (unreleased)
The early and untimely death of my dear friend Tom Gallagher prevented him from ever getting the audience he deserved.  His unreleased album is full of superb tracks like this, with its lazy, loungy beat, plangent guitar riffs, winsome melody, and sage lyrics.  I'm happy to email this track to anybody who's curious: it's how we keep his memory alive.

8. Big Boys / Elvis Costello 
From Armed Forces (1978)
Another Iconic Album for me.  And this song has so many great lyrics, from that opening "I am starting to function / In the usual way"  through " to "Worrying about your physical fitness / Tell me how you got the sickness" and "I was down upon one knee / Stroking her vanity."  So what if it's more clever-sounding than truly wise?  He's drunk on allusive word play, and to me that tempers the Angry Young Man cynicism with his giddy enthusiasm.  I love the thrusting bass and drums giving him his marching orders, and those Steve Nieve organ riffs? Perfection.

9. On a Promise / Fine Young Cannibals 
From Fine Young Cannibals (1985)
The hoarse soulful voice of Roland Gift, matched with the English Beat's David Steele and Andy Cox -- well, Fine Young Cannibals had all the right elements lined up, that canny mix of R&B and ska and New Wave smartness. "She Drives Me Crazy" is IMO one of the best songs of the 1980s, but it was a pretty solid debut album all around, as this brooding track attests....


10. If I Said  / Colin Blunstone
From Echo Bridge (1996)
So what was Colin Blunstone doing all those years between being in the Zombies and being in the Zombies again?  Lots of things, but this solo album is perplexingly lovely -- it should have been a big hit.  This guy has one of these greatest voices in pop music; it's just heartbreakingly beautiful (yes, and sexy as hell).  Sure, he loads it up with reverb and romantic production values, all strings and maracas and a sax solo in the middle eight. It should sound cheesy, but it doesn't, because Colin Blunstone can sell wistful yearning like nobody else in the biz.

Sunny Afternoon / The Kinks

All right, I'll admit it, my nose was a little out of joint.  Here I was, acting carefree, blogging about all sorts of other music, when in fact I was perfectly aware that last week was one of the Kinkiest weeks in recent memory.  Ray Davies curated the Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London this past fortnight, and in a stroke of brilliance, he turned it into a celebration of the 1960s British pop music revolution.  Oh, I should have been there; I wanted to go in the worst way, but . . . circumstances conspired to keep me home.

For the past few days -- to rub salt in the wound -- glowing reviews have been pouring in, all of them promptly posted on Facebook where I couldn't ignore them.  As promised, Ray opened and closed the festival himself, joined by all sorts of special guest stars, and, this past Sunday,  he capped it all off with a full-album performance of the Kinks' great 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.  And as if that wasn't enough, on the evenings in between the festival featured (get this) Alan Price, Nick Lowe, Ron Sexsmith, Yo La Tengo, Monty Python's Michael Palin and Terry Jones, and a special tribute to the British music TV show Ready, Steady, Go! (When the still-beautiful long-legged Sandy Shaw stepped barefoot onto the stage, I'd have lost it, I know). There was even a set with the Kast Off Kinks, that rowdy crowd-pleasing combo composed of various ex-Kinks members like Mick Avory, Ian Gibbons, and Jim Rodford.  Ray couldn't have designed a festival I'd love more. In my secret hearts of hearts, I like to think that he planned it just for me.  And I missed it.

I was so jealous of those who got to be there (yes, even you, Michelle!) that I pretended to forget that it was Ray Davies' 67th birthday on Monday.   I know, I know, I'm usually able to rise above such a snit.  Even I am surprised how this one affected me.

Well, I'm over it now.  (Not really over it, but I'm moving on.)  So sorry I missed your party, Ray -- I still love you.  And to prove it, here's one of my favoritest Kinks vids ever . . .




I'm amazed to find that I hadn't written about "Sunny Afternoon" before, even given my tendency to avoid the most iconic, and therefore obvious, tracks. This one's so charming -- and so distinctly Kinksian in its English satire -- I should have covered it long ago.

I'll admit I have no distinct memory of listening to this song 35 years ago, in the summer of 1966, but I read that it rose to #14 on the US charts (#2 in the U.K.), so the DJs must have been playing it alongside the Lovin' Spoonful, Herman's Hermits, the Beatles' Revolver, "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, and "Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrkle. (Man, what an era!)  And my response to it is primal:  The minute that great bass line begins -- two notes plopped wearily on each step of a descending minor scale -- I'm hooked.

Satire?  Sure, on one level Ray's mocking the self-pitying plaint of a rich Establishment type, bemoaning  Wilson-era tax policies -- "The tax man's taken all my dough / And left me in my stately home..."  (Cue up George Harrison's less subtle "Taxman," written the same year.) But as usual with Ray Davies, autobiography creeps in too.  Despite his working-class upbringing -- just think of all those political songs that will soon crop up on Lola V. Powerman and The Moneygoround Part 1 and  Muswell Hillbillies -- in 1966 Ray Davies must have also felt some sneaking secret sympathy with the property-rich, cash-poor protagonist of this song, as he waged a lawsuit against his publishers and former managers to recover withheld royalties. Put this together with two other songs from Face to Face, "House in the Country" and "Most Exclusive Residence for Sale," and you've got an intriguing suite of songs, showing Ray Davies grappling with his new social status. That emotional conflict runs just beneath the surface, charging this song with ambivalence.

Meanwhile, that supremely enervated tone -- Ray's vocals sliding into campiness -- betrays the nervous breakdown Ray had suffered in March of 1966.  While the Kinks went on tour in Europe with a temporary replacement (did they think the French and Belgians wouldn't notice?), Ray's erratic behavior back home in London made some skeptics wonder if the Kinks were washed up for good. "Save me save me save me from this squeeee--eeze," he wails in the bridge -- and funny as it is, I can imagine that Ray's also exorcising some demons, taking his recent existential despair and turning it into comedy.  

And what are we to make of this memorable line: "My girlfriend's run off with my car / And gone back to her ma and pa / Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty"?  I love the melodramatic spin Ray gives that last line, though notice he never clarifies whether the "tales" are truth or fiction.  Seven years later, Ray's wife Rasa would finally move out, taking their two daughters -- leaving him on his birthday -- but this song has always suggested to me that the troubles between them had been going on for years.

"Help me help me help me sail awaa-aay," Ray begs in the second bridge.  ""Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay." Ah yes, there's the trademark Kinksian longing for escape. That dream of unruffled paradise is just out of his grasp, so close he can taste it:  "'Cause I love to live so pleasantly / Live this life of luxury."  What should be a sybaritic declaration become a cry of woe, with jerky rhythms and yo-yoing intervals. "Lazing on a sunny af-ter-noooon" -- it's practically a howl of misery, not a blissed-out mantra. Put these same lyrics to the Young Rascals' "Groovin" and it would be a different song completely.

In the video, watch how Ray forgets to look doleful and starts to grin; brother Dave and Pete Quaife have a hard time keeping a straight face too.  And if this is such a summer song, why are they playing on Hampstead Heath in the snow? (Love how Mick Avory reaches up to knock snow off the overhanging branch with his drumstick.)  Since this song was recorded in May and released in June, I guess this video was an afterthought, filmed in the winter to promote the December 1966 release of Face to Face.  Doesn't matter; it's still charming to the max.  (Those dogs spilling out of the limousine -- priceless.)

By some miracle, all of this campy moaning and misery translates into one of the most delicious singalongs ever. Really, how did Ray pull this off?   The tongue-in-cheek humor cancels out the minor key, and that plinky goodtime piano (bravo Nicky Hopkins!) turns a mopey shuffling rhythm into something tailor-made for hoisting a pint. How hard it is to listen to those high harmonies (bravo Dave!) and NOT join in on the "Save me's" and "Help me's," to croon along with that drawn-out "afternoon," or to chant those repeated "in the summertime's."  Personally I think that the Beatles -- always eyeing the competition -- heard crowds in the pubs or in the football standings sing along to this song (it became the unofficial anthem of England's 1966 World Cup victory) and determined to outdo Ray, with John soon writing "All You Need Is Love" and Paul "Hey Jude" a year later. It's all connected.

Today wasn't particularly sunny -- more like "A Rainy Day In June," yet another Face to Face track.  (Honestly, you don't have this album yet?  Shame on you.)  But somehow, as soon as that bass riff starts, I'm in another place -- a place where the beer flows and my mates are close at hand.  So what if I had to let the butler go?        

Radio Girl / Marshall Crenshaw

This is just a reminder -- tomorrow night (June 18th) at 10 p.m. EDT, the inimitable Marshall Crenshaw premieres his new Saturday night radio show on WFUV FM out of Fordham University, here in New York.  Too far away to catch WFUV on your radio dial?  Not to worry -- you can listen to a live stream of the show on the internet.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'd like to share with you a little tune off of Marshall's unjustly neglected 1989 album Good Evening (which apparently can be bought for next to nothing on Amazon.com). It's not the same thing as John Hiatt's "Radio Girl" by the way, which is also a great song . . . just sayin'....

One thing that computers have taken away from us -- the pleasure of listening to the radio, late at night, when nothing else is going on and your attention is focused one-hundred-percent on that audio experience.  As a kid, sneaking my little transistor radio under my pillow so I could listen after light's out, it was a lifeline to something cool and distant and impossible hip.  Yeah, I know radio's not like that anymore, at least not most of the time.  But you find a good station, like WFUV, and you can still recapture some of that magic. 

That's at least part of what Marshall evokes here, in this ode to a female nighttime DJ ("from one a.m. to four").  I love how the song just sort of tunes in, with a slide guitar (played by David Lindsey) homing in like a radio signal. (Sonny Landreth's on there too, playing something that the liner notes call "weird experimental guitar").  She may just be a disembodied voice, but there's something deeply sexy about his connection to her -- "I take her into my bed each night."  And he's not just an anonymous listener -- he does phone-in requests to her too, asking for vintage James Brown ("It's a Man's Man's World," of all things.)  Yeah, she probably flirts with him when he phones in, and she faithfully plays the song, every night.  Who's to say that's not a real connection? 


I could use a little help from you, dear readers -- what's this reference in the third verse? "Hey, what's that sound? / What do you call that sound?" The only thing I can think of is the Replacement's "Alex Chilton," so it may be a reference to some Box Tops or Big Star song (how cool that I got to see Marshall sing at the City Winery Alex Chilton tribute, by the way). 

As opposed to today's narrowly defined radio channels, Marshall's radio girl plays an eclectic range of music, just like my buddies on the Sirius/XM station The Loft.  I'm thinking here of Meg Griffin, my own favorite radio girl, whose musical tastes are uncannily like my own.  But I digress. "I like the stuff you play / and the things you say," Marshall croons to his radio girl; "Come on, give me some rock music, / Or some rhythm and blues / Or anything you wanna play-yay / Anything you choose."  That's the peculiar satisfaction that radio listening gives you, as opposed to clicking through an iPod playlist or surfing YouTube: You surrender to the DJ, let him/her select what tune to come up next, and if you can escape the inevitability of Top 40 radio -- the same narrow range of new tracks recycled endlessly, shoot me now!! -- there might even be a few total surprises coming your way.  To reflect that eclectic mix, this track's sound is a little boogie-woogie -- dig that Jerry Lee-like piano in the bridge (Steve Conn) -- and yet a little cha-cha-like too, the drums swiftly  ticking along.

That eclectic musical taste is what I expect to hear on Marshall's radio show tomorrow; the man has an enormous musical catalog in his head, and he's likely to pull out stuff you've never heard before -- and you'll be glad he introduced you to it.  Me, I can't wait.  He'll be on every Saturday night from now on, following the classic sound of Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight.  (So tune in earlier for that as well.)  What else were you planning to do with your weekend?

Stay Young, Go Dancing / Death Cab For Cutie

I don't go with the party line on Death Cab for Cutie -- you know, the one that says that everything Ben Gibbard writes is depressing.  Depressing music should be minor-key, draggy, and mumbled, not soaring and brightly melodic.  I hear plenty of irony in songs like "The Sound of Settling" and "Title and Registration"; and come on, what is "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" if not a brave statement about the redemptive power of love? "No Sunlight"?  It may be about the loss of idealism, but it's way too jaunty to be truly depressing.

So when people seemed shocked that gloomy ol' Ben Gibbard would marry the world's perkiest actress, Zooey Deschanel, I just thought -- Perfect Indie Couple!!  The sly humor behind Ben's "depression" is perfectly matched by the melancholy behind Zooey's doe-eyed "perkiness."  A classic yin-yang pairing.

Death Cab's got a brand-new album out -- Codes and Keys -- and I bought it immediately, no preview necessary.  (These guys are on my short list of bands whose music I don't need to preview.)  I couldn't honestly tell you how it's different from their previous album, Narrow Stairs;  the arrangements seem to have more texture, a little less glossiness, but mostly it just sounds like more Death Cab.  It's hard enough for a band to craft a distinctive sound, and then you expect them to change it with every album?

But now that Ben's a married man, he gets to write an uncomplicated love song for once -- and here it is, last track on the CD, "Stay Young, Go Dancing":



 

Now, isn't this a lovely thing?  Not only a love song, but a waltz, gently syncopated and swinging happily along. Imagine that!

Believe it or not, Ben launches into the song with a ringing, positive affirmation: "Life is sweet." Will wonders never cease?  Granted, right afterwards he adds, "In the belly of the beast, in the belly of the beast," but hey, he's not wrong.  And he's got a talisman to help him weather life's slings and arrows: "And with her song in your heart / It could never bring you down, it could never bring you down."  Immediately I think of Zooey, with those big blue eyes of hers, artlessly singing in Elf, or scatting through "Sugartown" ("I got my troubles, but they won't last") in 500 Days of Summer.  Zooey can be enchanting indeed.

Verse two follows a similar pattern ("Lost in a maze / Of a thousand rainy days, of a thousand rainy days / And when I heard her voice, / Well it led me to the end, yes it led me to the end") before he swings with an upward key change into the chorus: "Cause when she sings, I hear a symphony / And I follow its sound as it echoes through me / I'm renewed / Oh how I feel alive / And through autumn's advancing, we'll stay young, go dancing."  Okay, so he can't leave the "autumn" out (and in the last verse, it's become "winter").  But Keats pulls the same trick in several of his poems; it's the knowledge of autumn that makes summer so sweet, the awareness of gloom that makes sunshine so glorious.

There's more of this hopeful stuff on Codes and Keys --  "Doors Unlocked and Open," "Unobstructed Views," "Under the Sycamore," "Portable Television" -- it still sounds like Death Cab, but those lyrics are less depressing than ever.  Sure, there are still vultures waiting by the side of the road, but we just might be able to avoid them awhile more. For a change, Ben Gibbard's glass is beginning to look half-full.