She Works Hard for the Money /
Donna Summer

I'm sure I won't be the only blogger trying to say something sincere about Donna Summer's death today, reportedly from lung cancer, at the relatively young age of 63. And in contrast to the enshrinement of Saint Whitney Houston after her death, I wouldn't be surprised if the pundits took this opportunity to rake up the old culture wars -- rock versus disco, soul versus disco, gays versus born-again Christians -- and to turn up hipster noses at some of her cheesier tracks, such as "Love To Love You Baby" with all its fake orgasms, her kitschy version of "MacArthur Park," or the disco anthem "Last Dance." 

Ironically, I'd already been thinking a lot about Donna Summer, wondering why so few Whitney Houston obits even mentioned her. After all, she was the reigning pop-dance diva before Whitney came along. Now, I have no vested interest in defending disco; in the late 70s, I never set foot inside a single disco. I wasn't even listening to the radio much back then.  But still.

You see, towards the end of her long run of hits -- when she herself was eager to shed the disco mantle and move on -- I too had a brief Donna Summer period. That was in the very early 80s, when a couple other junior assistant baby editors and I were taking aerobic dance classes (remember aerobic dancing?) after work in a school gym down in Greenwich Village. Week after week, the soundtrack pulsed with high-octane tracks like the Pointer Sisters "I Get Excited," Tina Turner's comeback hit "What's Love Got to Do With It?," the Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" -- and this surprising feminist anthem: 

That video was all over MTV at the time, making Donna one of the first black artists to get significant airtime. (So see, she paved the way for Michael Jackson, too).  MTV exposure certainly gave a major push to this song and its album, She Works Hard for the Money. Apparently this record was released grudgingly, with Summer at loggerheads with her record boss David Geffen, but it revived her faltering career and put her right back up on top.   

Though I always heard it as a song about a hooker (who else works so hard for her money?), the video underlines its sympathy for women stuck in any menial/demeaning jobs. The relentless beat and the hard-edged synthesizers were totally of their time, agreed.  But at least it's about something other than sex, which was ground-breaking territory for disco music. 

And it was compulsively danceable. I'd slip this album onto my stereo turntable (yes, we're still talking vinyl era) and dance by myself in my apartment. Often once this lead-off track was over I'd lift the needle and flip the disc to play the first track on Side 2, the reggae-flavored "Unconditional Love." These songs made me feel pumped-up and powerful -- ready to don my big-shouldered power suit and go crash through some glass ceiling somewhere.

I've still got one or two of those power suits in my closet. The glass ceiling? Tt's still there too. Unshattered.  

For A Fool / The Shins

The Shins . . . well, come on, we all know they're good. That's the orthodox music geek line, isn't it? And yeah, I've liked them ever since I first heard "New Slang" in the movie Garden State; having a song in The Sponge Bob Movie ("They'll Soon Discover") just gave them more indie cred.  (What is this indie cred stuff, anyway?  Can you spend it at the store?)

But for some reason, I didn't really fall in love with the Shins -- not in-love love, in my heart of hearts -- until this new album, Port of Morrow.  Frontman-songwriter James Mercer -- who, let's be honest, IS the Shins -- always struck me as impossibly clever and talented and post-modern-hipster cool. Clearly he didn't need me for a fan. Not one of My Special Bands.  

So I'm wondering -- did I get James Mercer wrong?  Or has he finally developed the kind of musical heart that I'm always looking for? Because Port of Morrow completely shivers me timbers.    

Just listen to this gorgeous track:

Why do I love it? Let me count the ways.  There's the loping rhythm, the twangy surf-guitar riff, the haunting theremin-like keyboard sigh woven into the background. And ohmygod, the melody, soaring like a seagull into Mercer's earnest falsetto. He doesn't have a great voice, it's true, but now he's really writing for the idiosyncratic wobble, creak, and swoop of his range. And dig the skipping syncopations, which Mercer throws in all over this album; it reminds me of how much better the Talking Heads got after David Byrne discovered his pelvis. 

Perhaps most of all, I sense that the Shins are finally producing Music For Grownups.  (I really gotta copyright that term.)  Clever Boy James Mercer is now rueful and wise in a way he just wasn't before.  "Young and bright / But now just a dim light / Off in the distance," he modestly describes himself; not a hero, but a "falling stone / Following the path / Of least resistance." He knows he's still making things difficult for his other half, but at least he can now put it into perspective -- "If I still fight, / It's just that I'm / Afraid I'll slide under that spell again." (Love how his voice slides upward to a panicky yelp on "spell again.")

I love how he can gently scoff at his own internal debates: " So many times / Caught up in my head at night / With a leash and a label."  And -- wow -- he's actually trying to adapt and grow: "If I can learn / Anything from this, then I'd be like / The fox in the fable." (For those of you who don't remember your Aesop:  The fox gave up trying to steal the vineyard's grapes, telling himself that they were probably sour anyway. (Which is where our catchphrase "sour grapes" comes from.)

But it's the chorus that really pierces my heart: "Taken for a fool / Yes, I was / Because I was a fool."  He's not making excuses, not blaming the other party -- he's taking a good hard look at himself and is willing to admit he blew things.  The melody skips downward, the rhythm stutters gently as he fesses up. But he knows he was a fool; he accepts full responsibility. That's the first big step to solving things between them.

Is this a love song?  Could be; doesn't have to be. Perhaps we'd better just call it a "relationship song."  But we have enough ooh-baby-I-want-you songs out there. A few more I-fucked-up-I'm-sorry songs -- that's all to the good.    

The Saturday Shuffle

At last -- a free hour in my day!  Let's turn on the old shuffle machine and see what it yields...

1. Do You Want It All? / Two Door Cinema Club
From Tourist History (2010)
Tasty little morsel of British indie pop, sort like Death Cab for Cutie meets the Kooks. (And no, that's not a reference to the sadly kaput marriage of Ben Gibbard and Zoe Deschanel). The production values are quirky, almost lapidary, with fragments of phrases repeated urgently, like mantras, over a peppy rhythm track spiced with space-age sound effects. But absolutely radio friendly!

2. When in Rome / Nickel Creek
From When Will the Fire Die? (2005)
Sitting sweetly at the intersection of bluegrass and indie pop, this wonderful trio (also, sadly kaput) composed of fiddler Sara Watkins, her guitarist brother Sean, and mandolinist Chris Thiele (now of Punch Brothers) was a real find for me. Snarky lyrics and modernist rhythms, textured with Americana  instrumentation -- trust me, it's a winning combination.

3. The Rat's Prayer / The Soft Boys
From A Can of Bees (1980)
And now for something completely different -- at least on the surface -- Sir Robyn Hitchcock's first band, psych-folk-punk renegades the Soft Boys. Garage-y guitars and drums, herky-jerky tempos, folky harmonies, and best of all, wickedly absurdist lyrics.: My. Cup. Of. Tea.

4. Better Days / Roseanne Cash
From This One's For Him (2012)
No, not the Kinks' "Better Things," but a wise and rueful Guy Clark song, covered here by real Nashville royalty, Twitter queen Roseanne Cash. This new tribute album is one of the finest country albums of many a year -- with Clark's warm and witty songs as the foundation, it should be brilliant, and it is.

5. Martha My Dear / The Beatles
From The White Album (1968)
Paul McCartney in full music-hall mode -- scrumpdillyumptious.  I say music-hall, but alongside the oom-pah/ragtime beat Sir Paul can't help tossing in a bossa nova groove here and there.  And yes, we all know he really wrote this about his Old English sheepdog ("hold your head up, you silly girl / Look what you've done" -- poop on the carpet!), but it's still a crazy mad wonderful song.

6. (I Wanna) Call It Love / Sondre Lerche
From Duper Sessions (2006)
Remember the Steve Carell movie Dan in Real Life? Probably not; it was highly missable.  But I loved the soundtrack tunes by this sweet Norwegian singer-songwriter, and immediately plucked several other tunes out of his slim catalog. There's a little soft-shoe jazziness here too, a smooth strain of Cole Porter romanticism, but with a touch of Scandi angst, too.  Well, why not?

7. Groovy Movies / The Kinks
From The Great Lost Kinks Album (1973)
Sorry, no link -- it's a bootleg. (Got to solve this mp3 posting conundrum...) This album only hit the market for a nanosecond before the horrified Kinks demanded it be withdrawn; most of it was discarded demos, scraps of songs that Ray Davies had written for other projects, padded out with some Dave Davies solo work.  This is one of the Dave tracks, sloppy rather than whimsical, but kinda endearing all the same.

8.  Cry Like a Baby / The Box Tops
From The Best of the Box Tops (1968)
Hard to believe this came out the same year as "Martha My Dear"; it's soul-saturated Memphis pop, with horns instead of oom-pah, Farfisa organ instead of plinky piano, and a raft of gospel back-up singers.  And the divine vocals of Alex Chilton...

9. I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord / Lyle Lovett
From Smile: Songs from the Movies (2003)
Full-on gospel -- whoever said Lyle Lovett could only do country?  This track appeared in the 1997 Robert Duvall film The Apostle (searing performance, Bobby D!) and it sure enough gives me that old-time religion. Do I love this cat's voice or what?  That supple vibrato with just enough creak and twang -- there's no one else sounds even remotely like him.

10. We Should Be Making Love / Huey Lewis & The News
From Hard At Play (1999)
Lazy, loungy, soulful pop, as easy on the ears as Huey himself is easy on the eyes (Huey and Daryl Hall: my two big 80s music crushes.)  And one of my favorite song premises:  Our singer hero is always listening to his woman friend's romantic issues, until now he's finally 'fessing up that he longs to BE her romantic issue.  You could slide into this like a pair of warm moccasins, girl.  Why not?

Twenty Four Hour Service / Ian Gomm

I'll be honest: this is a test post.  So it made sense to try it out with an artist I've been dying to write about, who doesn't have a ton of YouTube links (the handy resort of bloggers who don't need to get obscure). The sad truth being that I DO need to get obscure sometimes.

Though honestly, folks -- why should Ian Gomm be obscure? When Brinsley Schwarz dissolved (I refuse to say "broke up") in 1975, while most of the group re-formed as the Rumour (as in Graham Parker and the), both bassist/singer/songwriter Nick Lowe and rhythm guitarist/singer/songwriter Ian Gomm headed off to try solo careers.  And they had every reason to. Nick's career took off, sorta-ish, and thanks to his serendiptitous meeting with Dave Edmunds, with whom he formed Rockpile, managed to get some traction.  But we forget that Ian Gomm did pretty well out of  the gate as well, charting a #18 hit with "Hold On" in 1979. Yeah, Nick produced for Stiff Records and Elvis Costello, but Ian produced the Stranglers and Alec Korner at his studio up in Wales. Now that we're in the throes of this Nick Lowe renaissance, maybe we need to take a second look at the very talented Ian Gomm as well.

Okay, let's backtrack. Ian Gomm was a late addition to Brinsley Schwarz, joining them I think in September 1970 (please, Ian or Will, correct my research) -- early enough to join all but their first two albums, but late enough to completely escape responsibility for the Fillmore East debacle. This is a good thing.

Once Ian showed up, Nick Lowe wasn't the band's only songwriter any more -- which, given the congenial pub rock culture, meant collaboration as well as competition.  Okay, quick quiz:  Who wrote Nick Lowe's only bona fide hit single, "Cruel to Be Kind"?  People tend to forget that this was a co-write job, and Ian Gomm never gets the credit he deserves.

Check out this addictive track from Ian's first solo album, 1978's Summer Holiday. (Originally titled Gomm With the Wind in the US.) 

http://www.divshare.com/download/17573014-044

What's not to love about this track? That upward bubbling rhythm line, the confiding lyrics of the verse, exploding into a joyful profusion of snappy horns -- this is a feel-good track indeed. (Got to love the Presley-like low voice as he sneaks in the "twenty-four.")  Now that we actually live in a 24-hour service economy, we should pay homage to this prescient track. This came out back when it was actually special, and kind of exciting, to offer around-the-clock service -- sad that it's become a jejeune thing.

And if Nick Lowe is currently producing some of the best work of his career, I direct your attention to Ian Gomm's 1997 Crazy for You or 2002's Rock 'n' Roll Heart. C'mon, folks, expand your horizons!

And please let me know if this method of linking worked for you.  Because I need to get back in the game with those obscure tracks we all want to know about!

All I Know Right Now / Marshall Crenshaw

All I know right now is that there are only a few days left for you to be part of something pretty amazing. Marshall Crenshaw has mounted a new project on Kickstarter which will allow music lovers to help underwrite his new baby:  a series of EPs to be released on vinyl over the next year or so, featuring a mix of new original Crenshaw songs and dynamic cover versions of other people's songs.  (Because, as you know if you've ever seen Marshall live, he really digs performing other people's music too.)

Click here and Marshall himself will tell you all about it: Marshall's Kickstart campaign

I signed up.  You should too.

One of the cool things about this Kickstarter project is that it will allow you to sample many facets of this multi-dimensional artist. There's the romantic spirit, full of yearning and emotional vulnerability, that breaks through the lush 80s-style wall of sound on his 1983 album Field Day. "All I Know Right Now" is a song that literally stops me in my tracks everytime I hear it:

But anyone who thinks that Marshall Crenshaw is only about bright and bouncy power pop deserves to listen more. He does dark and brooding and edgy perfectly well -- like this song, "On the Run," from his 1989 album Good Evening.  I have this track on my favorite workout playlist, and everytime it cycles up, I feel a burst of power.

And lest you think he's a relic of the 80s, just listen to the powerful stuff he's doing today. "Stormy River" is . . . well, I was about to say it's one of my favorite tracks from Marshall's most recent album, Jaggedland, but that's crazy talk:  I love the entire album, just love it to death. Because the real great artists don't stop growing.

Now as you know I'm a besotted fan of this guy, and I've written about him a lot: Here and here and here, just for starters.  Oooh, and I can't help throwing in a link to this post, either.  And maybe just one more YouTuber, because the accompanying video is just too much fun:

So now that you've spent your afternoon listening to all this Marshall Crenshaw -- isn't it time you went and got yourself a little piece of the action?  Marshall's Kickstart campaign

The Weight / The Band

Obvious, I know. Levon Helm dies, and every blogger has to pipe up. But this death did get to me, a real sock to the gut, more than I ever would have expected. 

It's not because I was a longtime fan of The Band or anything.  Count me in the legion of music fans who only discovered The Band when The Last Waltz came out in 1978. (Hey, at least I'll admit it.) I explained it all when I wrote last year about "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
   
In that film, watching Levon, with his gingery beard, open grin, and twangy drawl, I immediately sensed he was the authentic heart of The Band. The guy from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was real country, as opposed to those Canadian wannabes. If the Band invented Americana -- and we might as well give them credit for that -- Levon was their pipeline to the real stuff. Okay, okay, so that's a gross simplification. The music we now label Ameericana has always been a fabrication of sorts, a self-conscious blending of folk rock and bluegrass and Delta blues, There's no reason why a talented bunch of Canadians couldn't do it as well as anybody. If Nick Lowe can pass himself off as a country crooner, anything is possible.

But accidents of geography aside, Levon's joyous passion for music seemed to me to be the energy feeding The Last Waltz's performances. I saw that same passion still alive a year and a half ago, when Levon joined Nick Lowe, Richard Thompson, and Allen Toussaint at a taping of Elvis Costello's Spectacle. Even though Levon couldn't sing -- he claimed it had nothing to do with his bouts of throat cancer; now I wonder -- just watching him bash those drums was a joy. There was no disguising the evident affection those other musicians felt for Levon, either. I went to that taping to watch Nick and Elvis, but in the end it was Levon's night all around.

So here, in tribute to one of the music greats, is another Band classic:

In many ways this is the quintessential Band song: the traded harmonies, the rustic setting, the Biblical overtones, the old-timey storytelling.  From the very first line -- "Rolled into Nazareth, I was feeling 'bout half-past dead" -- we seem to be dwelling on the border between gospel and folk song. Never mind that it's most likely Nazareth, PA, he's rolling into, home of the Martin Guitar factory -- you can't tell me that Robbie Robertson didn't assume listeners would think he was writing about Jesus.

The ambiguous clues keep on coming. The traveller can't find a place to sleep, just like Mary and Joseph stranded in Bethlehem. He runs into the Devil, walking down the street. There's a Luke (like the Gospel writer) waiting for the Judgment Day. There's a Miss Moses, who he tells to "go down" (like in the spirtual "Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land, / Tell old pharoah, / Let my people go").  Come on, Robbie!

And what is this "weight" that the singer/s is going to take off of Anny and "put right on me"?  Is it really just a simple obligation, to say hello to an old friend?  Or is it Christ taking on the sins of the world?

Of course, Robbie Robertson wasn't writing a Christian parable. All of the people the traveler encounters -- a song structure that he totally ripped off of their mentor Bob Dylan -- are supposedly real people they knew, all the way down to Crazy Chester and his dog Jack. (Do we not love Rick Danko's strangulated singing on the Crazy Chester verse?) But if Robbie could rip off Dylan, why not borrow a little flavor from the Bible, too? All smoke and mirrors, my friends.

And yet, the lyrics of the song aren't why it's great.  It's those stately, momentous piano chord progressions, the glorious wailing harmonies on the chorus, and, yes, that loping whack of the drums, courtesy of Mr. Levon Helm.  It's definitely more than the sum of its parts.  How perfect to have the Staples Singers join in on this number in The Last Waltz, testifying their hearts out.

I'm sorry now that I wasn't more clued in in 1968 when Music From Big Pink came out. This music may have sounded old-fashioned, but at the time it was in fact something original indeed. In a world full of Beatle-esque pop and psychedelia, someone was finally coming out with a new sound.  (Not that it didn't have its own psychedelic buzz...).

And at the heart of it all was Levon Helm, one of the music greats. Lay your head down in peace, brother.

King of Anything / Sara Bareilles
HELL HATH NO FURY WEEK-ish

You want to see a pissed-off woman, you should have seen me two weeks ago when my replacement hard drive also decided to crash, putting me off-line again. But I'm back -- and wrapping up Hell Hath No Fury Week, just a feee-eee-ew days late.

I'll admit, I had very little interest in Sara Bareilles until she showed up as one of the judges of The Sing-Off, alongside the perenially adorable Ben Folds. Sara replaced that girl from the Pussycat Dolls -- you know the one -- whose name I refuse to learn, and yeah, yeah, the third judge is sweater-boy Shawn Stockman from Boyz 2 Men, who has been slowly growing on me. But let's face it, I watch the show for Ben Folds.

Turns out Sara was a natural addition to the show, since she herself started out in a capella groups. And while her notes to the contestants are never as detailed as Ben's ("I heard your second soprano lose pitch," he consults his notes, "about a half-tone in measure 48, which really threw off your key change..."), she still impressed me with her musical knowledge. So I did what any music fan does these days -- I went to iTunes and listened to snippets of various songs -- her big hit, "Love Song," is the one you'll recognize -- to cherry-pick one or two that I liked. I'll let those swap around in the stewpot of my Shuffle for awhile and then see if I feel like splurging on a whole Sara Bareilles album someday.

 But this one jumped right to the top of my playlist, and for obvious reasons.  Don't be misled by the perky opening -- Sara Bareilles is not about perky. This girl is so sassy, so sure of herself, you can tell she's not even going to waste her time, not with this guy.  This is better than a break-up song; it's a pre-break-up song.

Dig the specificity of that coffee shop setting, the cars crawling past the window, the awkward pauses in their conversation -- awkward at least for her, who's given up trying to get a word in edgewise. We can only guess what kind of superior advice he's dispensing, judging from her (unspoken) side of the conversation:  "I hate to break it to you, babe, but I'm not drowning," "I'm not the one who's lost, with no direction," and in the refrain, with its syncopated hoots of scorn, "You dare tell me who to be?" He's cast himself in the role of the hero who'll save her, but she sees that for the hoary old-movie cliche it is: "But you expect me to jump up on board with you / and ride off into your delusional sunset."

I can just picture this guy -- a beard, probably, an artfully ratty sweater, maybe an esoteric tattoo or two.  I can imagine how confidently he lounges on the banquette, occupying more than his share of the booth. Sitting across the table from him, fighting for oxygen, she takes refuge in silent snarky observations: "You've got opinions, well, we're all entitled to 'em," "You're so busy making maps / With my name on them in all caps," and, my personal favorite, "You got the talking down, just not the listening."  For the refrain, she twists a snide cliche into her own mantra of empowerment: "Who died and made you king of anything?"  

 

But in the bridge, as the melody turns dreamy and the arrangement lush, she admits that this self-possession of hers is only a recent discovery. "All my life / I've tried / To make everybody happy while I / Just hurt / And hide / Waiting for someone to tell me its my turn / To decide." How many of us were raised like that, to be good little girls and please everybody in our lives?  How hard it is to un-learn those lessons -- and how essential. 

 

Then those triumphant staggered intervals break in again, Bah bah, bah bah / Bah bah. bah bah (I hear echoes of Jackie DeShannon and Burt Bacharach, those quintessential interpreters of SoCal culture) as, gathering up her new courage, she launches back into taunting the King of Anything.  "Lemme hold your crown, babe," she purrs, but the way I see the scene, she's already on her feet and walking out of that coffee shop. C'mon, boots, start walking!