Friday Shuffle

I'm thoroughly bummed that the Amazon widget doesn't seem to work anymore.  In cases like this I tend to assume that Blogger/Google and Amazon are having a hissy fit with each other (did Google steal Amazon's boyfriend?) and Google has decided not to play with Amazon ever again.  Took me ages to find another way to slip those links in here. Hope it works! 

1. Moments Like This / Maria Muldaur
From A Woman Alone With the Blues (2003)
Nice little bit of jazz from Maria Muldaur, in her best kittenish-sultry voice. I've been a fan of Maria's ever since the Jim Kweskin Jug Band days, though my favorite album of hers is definitely Waitress in a Donut Shop.  If all you know of her is "Midnight At The Oasis," please investigate further.

2. The Good Old Days / The Lodger
From Life Is Sweet (2008). 
Catchy indie pop number from this Leeds trio -- "Could it be the start of something? / Could it be the end of a phase? / Could it be the start of the future? / Could it be the good old days?"  Way too upbeat for the break-up subject matter, but I'll never turn down bouncy hooks like this.

3. One to One / Joe Jackson
From Beat Crazy (1980)
Joe Jackson may have started out wearing a New Wave suitcoat, but it never really fit. By the time of Beat Crazy he was already skewing toward jazz  -- we shouldn't have been so surprised by the next year's Jumpin' Jive, though who could have predicted the Latinized glory of Night and Day?  The metronomic drum tick of this track is downright hypnotic.  

4.  I Don't Wanna Talk About Love No More / Amy Rigby
From Little Fugitive (2005)
"I'm tired of emotional discussions / I'm tired of repercussions...."  Amy Rigby's such a hoot; she really tells it like it is, our most reliable guide to spunky chick desire.

5. Redneck Friend / Dave Alvin
From West of the West (2006)
Nice cover of a Jackson Browne tune, on Alvin's album-long salute to various of his fellow native California rockers.  Alvin's gravelly voice adds a sexy intimacy to this tune, perfectly complemented by a slouchy jazz arrangement. More people should cover Jackson Browne, IMHO.  

6. Rush Across the Road / Joe Jackson
From Rain (2008)
Joe again!  And 28 years after Beat Crazy, listen to his muse in full flower on this riveting album, one of the best of the past decade.  On the track before this, he rips our hearts out with "Solo (So Low)" -- only to let joy burst in again with "Rush Across the Road," a soaring paean to how love can take you completely by surprise.

7. Stick To Me / Graham Parker & the Rumour
From Stick To Me (1977)
Early GP, and great stuff -- dig those edgy rhythms and driving energy.  I swear, this song just crackles out of the speakers.    

8.  Hate to Say I Told You So / The Hives
From Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Well, talk about edgy rhythms and driving energy -- it's the Hives' turn, dialing up the punk with those grating guitars and pounding beat, sweetened with just a dollop of playfulness.    

9. Say Yes / Elliott Smith
From Either / Or (1997)
I know very little about Elliott Smith, but the handful of folky tracks that somehow landed on my iTunes always make me wistful. Was this song in the movie Garden State?  Sounds like it should have been.

10. You Are A Tourist  / Death Cab for Cutie
From Codes and Keys (2011)
"When there's a burning in your heart / An endless yearning in your heart..."  I love the layered textures of this track, with its incantatory chorus, spooling guitar riff, and plinging echoes.  Even endless radio play this summer couldn't spoil this number for me.

THE FRIDAY SHUFFLE

Back to school time -- got my clean notebooks and sharpened pencils and new plaid skirt all ready to go.  Summer's distractions have been put behind me, and I'm ready to get back down to bizness. 


Only problem is, my Amazon widget -- the one that let me post links to mp3s so you could listen to the songs with me -- isn't working today.  My apologies -- I'll be sure to come back and add those links when it's been fixed. 

1. I've Got It All (Most) / Modest Mouse
From Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004)
Well, now here's a song that speaks to my current mood.  "I've got it al......most / I've got it all, almost all figured out / But when I get there / Always when I get there, / The pieces, they just fall apart."  If Cubists made rock and roll,  this is what it would sound like: neurotic vocals and lurching offbeat rhythms, sewn together with swoops of melody and a funky underpinning.  As my son remarked, listening to Modest Mouse's contribution to the Rave On Buddy Holly tribute: "If I heard this song blind, I wouldn't know it was Buddy Holly, but I'd definitely know it was Modest Mouse. You can't mistake that sound."  

2. Take the Long Way Around / Teenage Fanclub
From Songs From Northern Britain (1997) 
Don't these guys do great hooks?   Somehow their songs always slide past without me really listening to the lyrics, I guess because the lyrics are beside the point.  But they've got all the pop energy their name promises, refreshingly s l o w e d  down just enough to let it swing. And those rich vocal harmonies make me think for some reason of the Jayhawks -- anybody else?

3. Find Another Girl / The Hives
From Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Speaking of re-invented covers -- these snappy Swedes have utterly transformed this Curtis Mayfield-Jerry Butler Philly soul classic, turning it into -- ta-da~  a Hives song!  What else, when you've got Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's tuneless vocals and that scruffy skate-punk wall of sound? Still, I dunno -- that note of existential despair works oddly well for this song.  Who'd a guessed that?

4. So It Goes / Nick Lowe
From  Jesus of Cool (1976)
Well, this has been quite a week for St. Nick, freshly canonized in the mainstream press in honor of his new country crooner album The Old Magic.  (Yeah, yeah, I've got it, I'll be reviewing it soon -- that one deserves a full weekend's listen, preferably with a good bottle of Scotch.)  But it's a nice change-up to get an invigorating shot of Old Nick. It's easy to get caught up in the boppy beat and those overlapping "so it goes"-es, but Nick's surrealistic lyrics were always better than they needed to be for Pure Pop. Best verse: "In the air there's aftershave lotion / In the wake of a snaky Persian / On his arm is a skin-tight vision / Wonder why she ain't mine, she's his."  There's a whole novel there, my friends, or at least a Cameron Crowe movie.    

5.  Lost and Found / The Kinks
From Think Visual (1986)
Mmmm....Ray's hurricane song.  This has been quite a week for Ray as well, as tickets have been selling like hot cakes to his November U.S. tour dates.  (Hours battling Ticketmaster finally snagged me a 4th row way on the side for the New York City date -- hmmph. I hate scalpers.).  

6. One for My Baby / Rosemary Clooney
From 70 -- A 70th Birthday Celebration (1998)
I'll take Rosemary Clooney over Peggy Lee any day -- nearly as sultry, but with a voice as clear as a mountain stream, even on this late recording.  Sinatra's original of this Arlen/Mercer classic is pretty hard to top, but damn if Rosie doesn't pull it off, with masterly phrasing and a seen-it-all shrug in her voice. Set 'em up, Joe!

7. All In Good Time / Ron Sexsmith
From Time Being (2006)
Nick Lowe keeps telling interviewers lately that Ron Sexsmith is one of his favorite songwriters. Another thing I have in common with Nick Lowe!  Ron's our great Canadian folk-pop philosopher, reflecting on the nature of love and loss with a gently lilting acoustic twang.  This song pretty well sums up this album's earnest meditations on mortality -- the catchiest sermons you'll ever love.


8. The Lasting Kind  / Greg Trooper
From Floating (2003)
Another Greg Trooper album you ought to own, the first one that hooked me on this guy's genius. A little country wheeze adds plangency to this yearning-for-love song that should have covered by mega-artists and made Troop the fortune he deserves. (Calling Curtis Stigers!)  Dig how those brooding verses swell into the heartfelt chorus: "There's love that sees and love that's blind / Love that pays no mind / Leaving and the left behind / I'm looking for the lasting kind."  Aren't we all?

9. Long Gone Lonesome Blues / Sheryl Crow
From Timeless: Hank Williams (1998)

Wow, this is really Covers Night, isn't it?  Sheryl's cover doesn't take the crown away from Hank's original, but it ticks along nicely, and her yodeling is way better than you'd expect. (Disclaimer:  I still haven't forgiven Sheryl for Lance Armstrong.)  I got this track on a mix-tape my friend Jim sent me (yes, people do still send each other mix-tapes, children) and every time this track comes up, I grudgingly admit, "you know, I really ought to listen to more Sheryl Crow." So I'm open to suggestions....

10. I've Just Seen A Face  /  The Beatles
From Help!  (1965)
Talk about going country -- here's Paul trying on some rockabilly shoes, back in 1965 when these guys absolutely could not fail. (Come to think of it, their entire career was like that.)  A delicious dose of rockabilly syncopation: "Fallin', yes I am fallin' / And she keeps callin' / Me back again" -- oh, if only.

HURRICANE'S A-COMIN'!!

Not that I buy into the panic mentality or anything -- but just in case Irene wipes New York City off the face of the earth  -- or at least in case internet service goes out for the next few days -- here's a couple of old posts revisited, of my favorite hurricane songs. . . 
 
"Feels Like Rain" / John Hiatt

Want a song to win your true love? You can't go wrong with John Hiatt. And in the end, I always go for "Feels Like Rain," from his 1986 album Slow Turning.  One of the most emotive love songs ever written, it's been covered by loads of other artists -- and it deserves to be -- but I don't think anybody does it better than John himself.

That leisurely tempo takes its own sweet time to get going, with Sonny Landreth laying down light-fingered electric guitar licks while John tinkers around on the electric piano. The texture of this song feels just like the sort of gentle nighttime rain that sweeps in to wash away all the grit and hurt of the day -- if rainfall sound-effects had been layered in, it couldn't sound any more atmospheric. And over it all John's vocals work some serious R&B voodoo, crooning and howling and whispering and coaxing, so gruff and yet so tender.

The first verse starts out lazy and carnal: "Down here the river meets the sea / And in the sticky heat I feel you / Open up to me." (I'm fanning myself already, aren't you?) It's all about the mood, and the moment, and that rising barometric pressure; the chords shift upward too, with growing urgency, as John warns: "Love comes out of nowhere, baby / Just like a hurricane." Then, like a dying gust of wind, his voice drops downward, caressing the refrain: "And it feels like rain / And it feels like rain."

And get this line: ""Underneath the stars, lying next to you / Wonderin' who you are, baby / How do you do?"  This isn't just a guy banging some chick whose name he can't remember; this is a moment mid-passion when he's suddenly rocked by the deep unknowableness between two human beings. They're so close physically, it's a shock to realize that she's still her own separate person.. He may have been married to her for ten years, but at this instant she's a stranger, and he hungers to get close to her all over again.  It's no coincidence that Marshall Crenshaw and Ben Folds have both described this curious phenomenon as well -- I think of Hiatt, Crenshaw, and Folds as the triumvirate of Married Love Experts.   

This rain that's rolling in?  It isn't just rain, of course; it's a metaphor of passion, folks, and I could tell that even if I didn't know Hiatt would later write a song, "Loving a Hurricane."  And in this case, it's heat-wave-breaking, drought-ending rain, the kind of meteorological event that makes folks change their plans. "We'll never make that bridge tonight / Across Lake Pontchartrain," John decides, without a trace of regret; "Batten down the hatches . . . A little bit of stormy weather / That's no cause for us to leave . . ." No indeed, I'm staying right here, all cozy and relaxed and oh yes.

"Lost and Found" / The Kinks

Sure, I knew there was a hurricane on its way on September 27, 1985. The weather forecasts had been calling Hurricane Gloria the "storm of the century" all week. In the end, however, it bypassed Manhattan; a few lashing squalls of rain (enough to send me home from work, in the worst of it!), and then the sky turned blue and calm.  Free day off from work!  Sweee-ee-eet!

I had no idea at the time that Ray Davies was living through the same storm that day, a mere seven blocks south of me. And because I had fallen off the Kinks bandwagon -- driven away by the arena-rock years -- I didn't hear the Kinks' 1986 album Think Visual, where Ray Davies sings, in the opening lines of "Lost and Found": "Waiting for the hurricane / To hit New York City. . . . " But eventually I found my way back into the Kinks fold, and when I finally discovered this album -- and this song -- I felt a shiver of recognition.

"Lost and Found" makes a frequent appearance on my floating list of Top Ten Kinks Songs (how hard it is to choose just ten); I think of it as the companion song to "Stormy Sky," not just because of the storm but because of its sexy syncopation, the tenderness of Ray's vocals, and the central image of lovers finding shelter in each others' arms. It ain't often you find a Ray Davies song about two people simply happy to be together; grab 'em wherever you can.

Of course the storm is a metaphor -- of course! -- for all the crises life is bound to bring.But Ray works the metaphor beautifully here -- "Somebody said it's hit the bay . . . We're near the eye of the storm . . . They're putting up the barricades . . . " It's the anticipation that gets you, battening the hatches and all that, as he sees from afar "the hurricane crossing the coast line."

It wouldn't be a Ray Davies song if he didn't also throw in some quirky details, like "And all the bag ladies / Better put their acts together" and "the old sea dog says shiver me timbers / The sky's gone black / And it's like the dead of winter."  I love those lines, and the whimsical way Ray sings them -- as if this love makes him so secure, he can even see absurdity in the face of disaster.

My favorite bit is the bridge: "This thing is bigger than the both of us / It's gonna put us in our place." It's a brilliant, dual-edged line -- on one hand, the storm is bigger than they are, but it's also their love that is bigger, like the old movie cliche (think Humphrey Bogart -- "This thing is bigger than the two of us, baby.") They're overwhelmed by love, amazed that they can give up being separate and start being a couple.

In "Stormy Sky" the "lost" part of the equation was still stronger; now it's the "found" that matters. He still seems astounded by it happening -- "in the nick of time," he marvels. "We were lost and found, just in time / Now we've got no time to waste." Or, as he realizes in a later version of the chorus: " We came through the storm / Now it all seems clear / We were lost and found, standing here / Looking at the new frontier." It's not just a clear sky he's seeing there; it's the possibility of where his life could go, now that he's got her.

This isn't the way a teenager sees life; this is how you see it when you're middle-aged and have been through your share of painful affairs. When you've given up hope that it's ever gonna happen for you, that you won't get your Hollywood ending. And then joy surprises you, just like that -- "in the nick of time." Bravo, Ray.

Adios to California / John Hiatt 

Happy Belated Birthday, John!

I threw my back out last week -- we're talking big time pain here -- but I wouldn't let that stop me from getting down to the City Winery to see John Hiatt.  I mean, this is Johnny Hiatt we're talking about -- no one's work runs closer to the bone for me. And halfway through the show, watching John groove around the stage (love the little fedora, by the way, John), it occurred to me that underneath that billowing white linen shirt, he could have been hiding a back brace just like I was. Somehow this was comforting, to imagine that John could have the same knowledge of pain that I have.

John not only has a birthday to celebrate -- his 59th! -- he has a new album, which selfishly I've been listening to for a week now without sharing it with you.  Oh, but it's a magnificent thing, a vintage Hiatt stew of country blues and folk-rock and R&B, restless and pissed-off and smart.  I hesitate to rank these things, but I think it's stronger than either of his two most recent CDs, Same Old Man or The Open Road.  Both of which, by the way, I love, but still. While those were both wonderfully personal statements, on Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns I feel as if Hiatt's now widening the picture, throbbing with anger about modern American society.  It's a righteous howl from Middle America, from the have-nots who've waited long enough for their due. Incendiary stuff, and I love to hear a guy pushing 60 taking risks like this.

Having said all that, this particular track seems to me less political and more autobiographical.  My new buddies Carrie and Guy, who shared my table the other night (this is what I love about the Winery), picked up on the same storyline. Long ago John Hiatt was a struggling rocker in L.A.., until his life went south -- his ex-wife's suicide was probably the last straw -- and he tore up stakes and relocated to Nashville, taking his abandoned baby daughter with him, and turning his life around for the good.  Seen in that light, this song is about the moment when he realized he had to quit L.A., and its woeful melancholy and sense of loss really get under my skin.

Take a listen:
 


That gently rollicking beat, the slide guitar -- there's surely an echo of California rock there. I'm not saying the Eagles, but you know what I mean. Now, Hiatt's SoCal years are not a big part of his biography, but he did live on the West Coast for a while in the late 70s and early 80s, and here he touches a few points of local color ("Living in the Canyon," and "Pasadena in the rain / Eating doughnuts and reading Twain. . . "). There's even a sly reference to his own early hit ("You said, 'That's it for me' / Have a little faith it will set you free"), or at any rate a 1989 hit for Bonnie Raitt, which helped to kick Hiatt's own star into a new orbit.

And the refrain crystallizes that moment of realization: "So Adios to California / Nothing to do but turn around / I always thought there's someone coming for you / The only way you'd leave this town."  ("Adios," of course, because California is Spanish -- that's the kind of instinctive detail that rivets a good song.)  I'm mixing Hiatt's story up with John Mellencamp's -- our other fellow Hoosier -- but really, there's a point at which dealing with the knives of the L.A. scene must have become counterproductive.  It's a real "who needs this shit?" moment.  And apparently, for John it was enough to drive him back to Nashville.

But there's one other element to the story, which he touches on only obliquely.  Who is the "you" of this song?  Part of it is John himself, finally rejecting the L.A. scene; but it's also the tragedy of his ex-wife -- "the only way you'd leave this town" being in a pine box.  And in verse three, she seems to take over the song.  "Two cigarettes from the package gone / You must have thought about it just that long." Wow, is that a forensic detail or what?  And here's the killer line:  "I never knew you were so strong" -- because, yes, it takes guts, incredible guts, to kill yourself.  That line sends chills up my spine.  "I guess I never will," he adds, a wonderfully ambiguous line -- meaning I guess I never will understand what happened?  or "I guess I never will be that strong?  Either way, it's a devastating verse.

It's interesting that John is still writing about this, when it happened over 25 years ago. But then, he's still singing "Crossing Muddy Water," from his 2000 album of the same name, which has got to be about this same life-shattering incident ("Left me in my tears to drown / She left a baby daughter"). I'm such a sap, I cry every time I hear him sing that song.  And this makes me love his work even more, that he's been through tragedy and back.  (Although, come on, Eric Clapton -- did you have to write "Tears in Heaven" when your young son died?  Is it right that you should have turned that heartbreak into a major hit record?  Dear readers, I await your comments.)

Anyhoo, another thing I noticed -- the album's title is embedded in this song.  All the cool kids are doing this lately., naming their albums not after the hit single from the album, but after a line hidden in one track. Presumably that's an important flag, a code that signifies "this is the most essential song on this album." So is this the most essential song on this album?  I really don't think so -- my choice would be the truly searing track "Down Around My Place," in which a man miserably growls about his economic woes.  (Best line: "While the kids crowd round the table, down around my place / Bitchin' there's no cable, down around my place.")

On the other hand, that line about "dirty jeans and mudslide hymns" is way too arresting NOT to use it as an album title. Without getting all pretentiously poetic, John Hiatt knows an evocative image when he hears it.  But the older he gets, the more judiciously Hiatt wields that imagery.  This guy's still coming into his prime . I don't know about you, but I find that incredibly exciting.

PS  I just have to mention this -- I love the new song "Detroit Made" (despite its similarity to "Thunderbird" from Master of Disaster) but I'm convinced that John ripped off the guitar riff from Greg Trooper's "Green-Eyed Girl" from his 2005 album Make It Through This World.  Listen and let me know.  After all, they share the same drummer, Kenneth Blevins, and John has stolen riffs in the past -- specifically, the opening riffs from "Waterloo Sunset" into the beginning of "Buffalo River Home" on 1993's Perfectly Good Guitar.

FRIDAY (or maybe Saturday now) SHUFFLE

Oy, it's been a while.  I have to admit that my Saturday evenings have been devoted lately not to blogging but to listening to the radio -- specifically Marshall Crenshaw's Bottomless Pit show on WFUV-FM (which you can listen to on the internet, either via live stream or in an archived version -- so now you've got no excuse for not checking it out.)  But if I can get the blog done before Marsh's show starts at 10pm Eastern time...

1. Monday Morning / Death Cab for Cutie
From Codes and Keys (2011)
Wow. I was just listening to this new Death Cab CD on a car drive today, trying to decide if I really needed all the tracks in my iTunes library. (Some of those long sonic collages I could do without.)  This song made the cut, though; it's tuneful and has a good beat.  Plus I like to imagine that it's about Zooey Dechanel.  "She may be young but she only likes old things..."  Then again, it does have that line about the vultures surrounding you -- ah, Ben Gibbard, you depressive little scamp.


2. I Love That Girl / John Hiatt
From Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns (2011)
What is this, New Release Weekend?  Now I really feel guilty that I haven't blogged yet about this brilliant new CD.  Because you know I loves me some Johnny Hiatt -- I even saw him live last weekend at City Winery -- well, there's just no excuse. And this jubilant song of love, so simple, so infectious, is a side I like to see him letting loose with. 

3. Wild Thing  / The Troggs
From From Nowhere (1966)
Did someone say simple and infectious?  A true British invasion classic.  "Wild thing, I think you move me..."

4. Got To Get Out Of Here /  Badfinger
From Wish You Were Here (1974)
Some day I really have to get down to business and listen to ALL of Badfinger's work, beyond the few big irresistible hit singles.  There's something sweet and sensitive and sincere about them, and so melodic -- no wonder Paul McCartney wanted to get them onto the Apple label -- and yet a dark underside that makes them really interesting.  This song is just draggy enough to make you wonder whether he is ever going to get out of here; compare this to the energy of the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" -- it's an entirely different thing going on.

5. First Day of Spring / Graham Parker
From 12 Haunted Episodes (1995)
If all you know of Graham Parker is Squeezing Out Sparks -- in other words, if you're like I was a year or so ago -- then you'll be amazed to see that GP also has this tender acoustic side.  He's got an astonishingly literary gift for metaphor -- but don't let me explicate this one for you, listen for yourself. The guy's a freaking genius, honestly. 


6. Woodcutter's Son  / Paul Weller
From Stanley Road (1995)
Probably Weller's best post-Jam album, although I have a sneaking fondness for all his Style Council experiments too. Weller's never shy about genre-crossing; here he lets his rocking-out get plenty funky, wandering off into jazzy backwaters and losing all pretense of being a "song." And yet it works.

7. The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys  / Traffic
From The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys  (1971)
Now there's a brilliant segue.  This extended Stevie Winwood/Jim Capaldi jam works pretty much as pure music too. Remember when a song could be 11:02 minutes long and it still wasn't pretentious?  They melded rock and jazz so effortlessly, we thought it must be easy.  Ha.

8. Modern Nature / Sondre Lerche
From Faces Down (2002)
The movie Dan in Real Life first introduced me to this quirky Norwegian singer-songwriter, with a fondness for the retro show-tunesy side of indie pop.  You could practically do a soft shoe dance to this track, but it's sweet as hell.

9. Tip of My Tongue  / Graham Parker
From From a Window: The Lost Songs of Lennon & McCartney (2003)
Hooray!  Another chance for me to badger you to buy this must-have album, wherein Graham Parker, Kate Pierson, and Bill Janovitz re-interpret various tunes that John & Paul wrote for other artists. As if we needed any more proof that they were brilliant songwriters.

10. Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast) / Lostprophets
From Liberation Transmission (2006)
Thus proving that shuffles are embarrassingly random.  Nevertheless, this is a fun top-of-your-lungs singalong, upbeat and pulsing with punk energy; these Welsh rockers have me preaching revolution without a moment's thought.  Makes me nostalgic for 2006 -- ah, yes, a simpler time.

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.”