52 GIRLS

"Magdalene" / Guy Clark

Right here, at the crossroads of country and folk, stands an underrated giant, Texas's own Guy Clark.  Okay, so he won the Grammy this year for best folk album (My Favorite Picture of You) -- he's still not the household name he deserves to be.

Now, I don't normally think of Guy Clark as an outlaw country artist, if only because I prefer some of his more domestic songs such as "Stuff That Works" and "Worry B Gone". But as the author of, among other songs, the great "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train," he certainly helped to invent outlaw country with his Austin cronies Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Waylon Jennings in the 1970s -- and on his 2006 album Workbench Songs he's still writing (or co-writing, in this case with Ray Stephenson) about an outlaw.

Or a sorta outlaw...

Our hero is no calculating criminal, just a man who's somehow run afoul of the powers that be. "I ain't lookin' for trouble," he insists in the opening line, but trouble's found him: "I can't stay here tonight / I got to leave here on the double / If I want to see the morning light." The wary chromatics of those short simple lines are like urgent muttering in the shadow of a back porch. 

Further proof that he's not on a wild crime spree: "Don't need no pistol for the tickets /  I've got just enough to get us down the line / I don't know what happens next / Your guess is just as good as mine." He's confused, desperate, but he's rather pay for the bus tickets than hold up the ticket clerk.

Whatever crime he's committed, he's a man teetering on the brink, and the only thing he has to cling to is the one woman who makes sense to him. Magdalene is a common enough name in Tex-Mex circles, but I bet Guy was also thinking about the Bible's Mary Magdalene, a woman of cloudy reputation but pure heart.

"Move with me, Magdalene," he pleads. Even without the law (or whoever) on his tail, he's been ready to shake this town's dust off his shoes: "I'm tired of the same old scene / There's a Greyhound leaving at midnight / If you came with me, it'd be like a dream." Note that last-run bus, anything but glamor travel - but Magdalene isn't used to riding first-class anyway, is she? And if she's the kind of gal to risk everything on a mad leap of faith, all the better. Edging closer, his voice dropping into a huskier register of persuasion, he repeats his plea: "Come on, Magdalene / Move with me, Magdalene."

As verse two commences, she still hasn't turned him down, and his hopes are rising. He flips through an arsenal of arguments -- tempting visions of the future ("I've heard Mexico is easy"), brushing off the past ("I wouldn't stay here if I could"), reverse psychology ("Don't come along just to please me"), pragmatic strategy ("Let's go while the getting's good"). Whatever it takes to make her come, he'll try it out.

Last but not least, in the second chorus he adds these two lines: "Let's go down to San Miguel / Let's go be somebody else tonight." Ah, the ultimate temptation -- to junk this rotten life and try on a new one. Who wouldn't fall for that?

We never hear Magdalene's side of the conversation, it's true. But oh, I do hope she's already slipped indoors to pack her bags.

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52 GIRLS

"Lucy At the Gym" / Jill Sobule

Because we don't have enough songs about eating disorders. In fact, I can't think of any other songs about eating disorders -- but leave it to Jill to know how much we needed one.

I was so happy to find this video, telling the song's story in Sims animation. We see our singer arrive at the gym -- where, she's quick to tell us, "I don't go that often,." Her slightly shlumpy build bears witness to that fact. (The real Jill Sobule, of course, is petite and elfin, not shlumpy at all.) That remark quickly establishes her as one of us, who always intend to go the gym and never do.

Ah, but Lucy?  Lucy's always there. Already we see that her animated character is thinner than the singer's, as she trudges dutifully on the treadmill. "I stare at her ribs," Jill tells us in a sort of horrified fascination, "they show through the spandex." She observes Lucy's obsessive behaviors -- "Lucy on the scale for the third time" and "She's staring at the clock / And like the second hand she never stops."

Notice how the melodic line doesn't quite resolve, the chromatic intervals rambling around, making no progress. With deadpan irony, Jill notes that Lucy on the treadmill is "going somewhere"; after she switches to a Stairmaster, "She's climbing the stairs / And when she reaches the top" -- which of course one never does on a Stairmaster.  We see her "little legs working," we are told that she's in the gym "through thick and thin," "little" and "thin" suddenly becoming loaded words.

Ah, that poignant bridge, picturing Lucy in the shower -- obsessively soaping her bony limbs no doubt -- and then going home alone. There's a yawning emptiness to that passage, as there is to her life, and all the exercise in the world isn't going to fill it.

That wistful motif on the recorder reminds me of a 60s song, "Come Saturday Morning," the theme song from Liza Minnelli's first big movie role The Sterile Cuckoo. (It was sung by the Sandpipers, with Dory Previn lyrics and music by Fred Karlin, who also wrote the Carpenters' "For All We Know".)  It's an eccentric little film about a friendless college student who has a nervous breakdown -- a pretty apt musical allusion, I'd say.

The real kicker is verse three, the inevitable day when Jill makes it to the gym and Lucy's not there. "It's got me kinda worried / So I imagine the worst," Jill tells us in her tremulous girlish voice. Remember, she doesn't even know this girl, she's only watched her from afar -- but something about Lucy's compulsive behavior has gotten under her skin.

And then, to cheer herself up, she pictures Lucy in heaven, a gleaming gym where "Everyone is beautiful and thin / And here there's no sin " (psychologists have written reams about how anorexics confuse body image and sin, but Jill and her co-writer Robin Eaton do it so deftly). And with the ultimate irony, God adds "And your life can begin."  Anorexics are always postponing life, just until I lose the next few pounds.  But sometimes they die first. 

A powerful cautionary tale, right? But scrolling through the comments on YouTube for this video, I read one that says: "I listen to this everyday. It reminds me it's worth it. I hope I reach the top." The Lucys of this world are so skewed, they can't even see that Lucy's plight is meant to be a tragedy. My heart aches for them.

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52 GIRLS

Two Glasgow Girls

Heading for the finish line -- so near and yet so far. Time to slip in a few more recent numbers, from two of my favorite indie bands with brains and storytelling heart. 

"String Bean Jean" / Belle & Sebastian

On their 2005 album Push Barman to Open New Wounds, this cool bunch of Scots -- led by the gifted and quirky Stuart Murdoch -- tell tales of the modern age, one misfit at a time. The lyrics are conversational, cryptic, and allusive, but there's always a musical hook to pull you in. Listen to that commanding guitar riff, all spaghetti western swagger. . . .

 

 

Our hero may or not be a musician -- "I got my fingers dirty at the school of rock," he tells us, but it's hardly as if he's a star. Aimlessly he takes a walk, he goes to the park, he's killing time -- "until the girls got home." Now I'm curious -- who are these girls?

 

Wasting no time, he zooms in on the one he's really interested in. She's a free spirit, a bit of a character -- when she's "on the rag [menstruating, in case you don't know the slang] / She spent the summer day inside her sleeping bag." But we do learn that she works at night, which makes me wonder -- is she like Monica, a "working girl"? Even if she isn't, a night job is usually something you take only because you're broke.

You can see why he's drawn to the girls' house -- it's "like a caravan" and "like your holidays." They're living communally, scrimping on the electric bill (in verse three he lends her money to pay the bill, because for once he's got a bit extra). It almost makes me feel nostalgic for the roommate era of my life. And in the bridge, he gets up early the next morning to catch his bus and go to work (my favorite line in the song: "I left the keys down in the caf" -- because of course the girls are chummy enough with the café down the street to use it as their personal concierge service.) There's something about being young and living on the edge that makes you treat the world as an opportunity to improv. And that restless foot-jiggling tempo, the skittering melody, convey how ready they all are to go off on any tangent they please.

Last verse, a lovely little scene: "She asked me, 'Do I need to lose a bit of weight?' / And I told her, 'Don't be stupid, because you're looking great' / And I call her String Bean Jean because the label on her jeans / Says seven to eight years old / Well that's pretty small." Because of course kids' clothes are cheaper, so if you can wear 'em, why not? I see the petite girl, I see the jeans, I imagine their a-little-more-than friends relationship. And is it just me, or does the youthful tremor in his tenor suggest that he'd like even more?

 

"Mistress Mabel" / The Fratellis

From 2008 (because I know you're keeping the timeline, Nick), this is the first single released from Here We Stand, the sophomore album from yet another Scottish indie pop band -- though these guys are a little more inclined to rock out.

 

So here's another free spirit, though a little less Bohemian glamorous. "Mistress Mabel / Seriously wrong / Clears my table / Badly then she's gone" -- she's not just a bad waitress, she's a waitress with whom he has a history, and he's still not sure whether or not he's still hooked. (My take? If he's not sure, then he's still into her.) The seesawing notes, the whiplash tempo, all tell us he's conflicted.

In verse two, dig how he describes her reputation" "Mistress Mabel / All the kids agree / You're unstable / Curious and free." That felicitous "Mabel / unstable" rhyme pins her down. She still flirts with the customers, but it doesn't always get her where she wants to be: "Hemline rat bag so they told her / Last night's nametag across her shoulder" -- has she pushed this brassy waitress act too far?

 

Like Maggie May, she's the Older Woman ("And tell me where all the days have gone / When you robbed my cradle / Tell me Mabel"). But he's far enough down the road to see it as a "filthy fable."  (These guys do love their rhymes.)  In verse three, he offers "Mistress Mabel, won't you marry me?" But the very next line, he admits "I'm unable / To take it seriously." So where does songwriter-front man Jon Fratelli (like the Ramones, all the band members go by this made-up last name) stand vis-a-vis Mabel? 

 

I realize that it is entirely possible that this song was just written to take advantage of all the rhymes for Mabel. Yet there's something to its impatient energy and ziggurat melody, the pinball rhythms of those short lines, that makes me feel our hero's push-pull attraction. Written from his point of view, it's all about resisting commitment. But I can't help wondering what it looks like from Mabel's side of the table.  





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52 GIRLS

"Linda Lee" / Buster Poindexter

One reason why The 80s Didn't Suck: Those were the years in which New York Doll David Johannsen decided to transform himself into the lounge lizard Buster Poindexter, all pompadour, sharkskin suit, and calypso-flavored pop. What started out as a novelty proved surprisingly enduring; he was still recording as Buster Poindexter in 1997 (Spanish Rocket Ship, the album "Linda Lee" is on), a full decade after his 1987 party hit "Hot Hot Hot." Johanssen still lets Buster out of the wardrobe occasionally, most recently last fall at NYC's Café Carlyle. And why not? Buster is fun.

Dig the mariachi strum that launches this song -- pick up your maracas and prepare to party.

You think Buster is fun? He's nothing compared to Linda Lee. In exuberant calypso tempo, he raves in verse one: "I swear there's somethin' shining / Shining out of Linda Lee." Sure, she's pretty, but so are plenty of other girls; what Linda has is special. Later, in the third verse, he describes it as "She's like a thousand girls / Jumping up and down inside her" (and naturally there are back-up singers standing in for the thousand girls). In the last verse he adds, "She's got a carnival inside her." He may not have told us what she looks like, or what color dress she's wearing, but he gives us something more important: her essence.  

Where he does get specific is his scene-setting: "Aim this car straight towards Miami / I'm going to see my Linda Lee." I can just picture him driving south in some big-finned car, rapping out the beat on a zebraskin-covered steering wheel. Once he's there, they head for the Hialeah racetrack, and presto! "I gave her all of my money and said / Pick a winner for me. / You know it's crazy all the luck I got /  Hangin' 'round with Linda Lee / ¡Que Linda!" Linda isn't just her name, it's what she is: "beautiful" in Spanish.

As the song heats up, he starts to vary the melody, repeating lines, embellishing the verses. His voice is rasp-edged, thick, all cigar and margaritas. This is just the kind of guy who'd dig a one-woman fiesta like Linda Lee.

He's so intoxicated with her, when he's stopped on the street by a fan (okay, a little self-promotion here), all he can talk about is his girl: "They say they heard me on the radio / And seen my face on Latin T.V. / Well I tell them that ain't nothin' /  You should get a load of Linda Lee."

¡Que Linda!

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52 GIRLS

"Roxette" / Dr. Feelgood

Dr. Feelgood's debut single, "Roxette" didn't exactly burn up the UK charts in 1975; getting US airplay? No way. Maybe it was too early for the general public to embrace this raw R&B sound, married to gritty satiric lyrics. But their fellow musicians were listening, notably Paul Weller of the Jam, Bob Geldof of Boomtown Rats, Clem Burke of Blondie. The seeds of punk had been sown.  

Normally I don't go with a live performance video of a song -- but in this case, the live performance is without a question the version you want.

 

Watch bassist John Sparks and drummer The Big Figure drive home that propulsive rhythm track, while Wilko Johnson snaps off obsessive-tic guitar licks. Above all watch Lee Brillaux command the mike, snarling Words of Warning to his straying girlfriend Roxette. (Perfect name for a rock girlfriend, with just a hint of cheap trashiness.) 

 

"I saw you out the other night," he begins, head lowered, eyes narrowed. "I saw somebody hold you tight / Roxette, / I wonder who it could be." If there's a whiff of the voyeur about this, so be it. "It was so dark I couldn't see / But I know it wasn't me," he remarks, a cruel ironic jab.

But he doesn't stop there. He follows her into a loud rock club, where he creeps around and eavesdrops enough to hear her "telling everyone / About a new guy you'd found." (Now that lurking guitar line makes even more sense.) Maybe she's clueless, publicly bragging about her new relationship, but I have wonder -- why is he stalking her instead of confronting her? Isn't that what a decent guy would do? Could it be -- is it possible -- that her new man is actually a better bet?

True as that may be, our singer can't afford to think that way. (Classic case of an unreliable narrator.) Love doesn't enter the picture for him at all, only jealousy and a prurient kind of rage. In verse three he's outright sinister: "Roxette I gotta go away / And leave you for a couple of days." If I were her, I'd be scared. And now the threat is made plain: "Roxette, I don't want no more of your tricks / I'm gonna get some concrete mix / And fill your back door up with bricks."  (Delicious triple rhymes.)  Sneaky songwriting from Wilko Johnson, to draw us into collusion with this yobbo until we're accessories in his hoodlum revenge. I think of the notorious Kray Twins, convicted only a couple of years before for their vicious East End crime racket. File for a restraining order NOW, Roxette!

Talk about clueless -- he's convinced that this intimidation will win her heart. "And you better be there waiting / When I get my business fixed," he signs off with a crisp threat. Because she's still his property, in't she?  Well, in't she? 

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52 GIRLS

Two Annies

Another two-fer, which coincidentally (or maybe not) also features Ben Folds.

"Annie Get Your Gun" / Squeeze

"Annie Get Your Gun" -- you mean, like the Ethel Merman musical?  Yes, just like, and Squeeze lyricist Chris Difford says he'd written earlier songs about Annie Oakley as well. But by the time it passed through his hands, this October 1982 single isn't a straight character sketch, more like a jumble of images hung on a great Glenn Tillbrook tune. Recorded just as Squeeze was breaking up (for the first time), "Annie" never made it onto a regular album, nor did they tour to promote it (shades of the Zombies and "Time of the Season."). If they had, maybe we American music fans in Annie's home country would have made it a hit.

With spangly 80s guitar riffs, long melodic arcs, and a chugging beat that's half-ska, half-power pop, this track is full of upbeat energy right from the downbeat. The first verse throws us into the story halfway through: "She goes for her medical / She's passed, it's a miracle / She's up over the moon / She whistles nonsense tunes / She wants drinks for everyone." Anybody else think of Sarah Holcomb in the 1980 hit movie Caddyshack, dancing in the moonlight when she discovers she's not pregnant?

"She's found a chord that she can strum," he adds, before launching into this finger-snapping question-and-answer chorus:  "What's that she's playin'? /(Annie get your gun) / What's that she's takin'? / (The song has to be sung) / She's gone electric / (Annie wipe them out) / That's unexpected / (Strum that thing and shout) / Don't pull that trigger / (Annie get your gun) / Don't shoot that singer / (You're shooting number one.)." With its near rhymes and mixed metaphors, it has the loose dynamic of improv. I don't see a real gun, but "gun" as slang for "guitar," yes indeedy -- "she's gone electric" (like Dylan at Newport), she's commanded to "Strum that thing and shout" and when she shoots, it's the singer she's shooting.

This Annie is an 80s girl, confident and effervescent, looking for freedom and a good time. In verse two, however, we meet her counterpart and polar opposite: "He's not into miracles / Sees life all too cynical / The cat has got his tongue."  So what does Annie do to stir him up? "Now she bangs on his drum" (translate that metaphor however you please), and it seems to do the trick. Oh, she's found a chord that she can strum all right.

"Annie Waits" / Ben Folds

In a lot of ways, I see Ben Folds as the heir to Randy Newman: a storyteller-social commentator who somehow combines snarky humor with a romantic streak a mile wide. Every song is a character, every song tells a story. And being pianists rather than guitarists (and incredibly gifted pianists to boot), unfettered by chord changes, they can both write gorgeous heart-rending melodies when the occasion requires. Exhibit A, from 2001's Rockin' the Suburbs: As a portrait of the modern lonely single woman, "Annie Waits" nails it.

 

Striking a strict piano chord tempo, Ben trains the camera's eye on his heroine, "And so / Annie waits, Annie waits, Annie waits / For a call / From a friend." (Cut to a quick close-up shot of the telephone on a nearby table.) That repetition of "Annie waits" amidst the other short lines hammers home the excruciating boredom of waiting. And it's not an unfamiliar situation to her:  "The same / It's the same / Why's it always the same?" We begin to get the idea that this isn't just a friend, and he's let her down before. 

 

Verse two shows us the merciless clock, and this concise couplet,  "She's growing old / It's getting late" -- her biological clock is ticking too. Maybe that's why she's put up with such a cad. Her anxious mind runs through the possible scenarios: "And so he forgot, he forgot, maybe not / Maybe he's been seriously hurt / And that'd be worse." A little mordant humor there -- she has to remind herself that a car crash would be worse than her being stood up.   

Melodic phrases lengthen, swinging into panoramic action, for the bridge, as we join Annie at the window: "Headlights crest the hill / Shadows pass her by and out of sight . . . "  Sigh; it isn't his car, and Annie suffers a brief and terrifying glimpse of her future as a single old lady: "Friday bingo, pigeons in the park." So she stays at the window, waiting "for the last time." But doesn't she always say that?

And then the song hushes down for Annie to speak -- "You see this is why I'd rather be / Alone." Ah, the lies we tell ourselves. Because despite the agony he puts her through, she still doesn't really prefer to be alone.

But this wouldn't be a Ben Folds song if the plot didn't thicken towards the end. The second time through, the bridge's lyrics change: "Headlights crest the hill / Who will be the one for evermore? / Annie, I could be / If we're both still lonely when we're old." I picture her so busy staring out that window, she doesn't even hear him -- wake up, Annie!!

"Annie waits for the last time," he repeats ruefully in the final chorus, "Just the same as the last time." Chords crash, backing vocals overlap -- it's a tumult of emotion. "Annie waits," he concludes, and then it all abruptly stops as he sighs: "But not for me." All we're left with is a few more bars of relentless drumbeat, overlaid with lonely synthesizer twiddles . . . and then SCENE and out.

40 DOWN, 12 TO GO

52 GIRLS

Two Janes

If you've tuned in looking for "Janie's Got A Gun" by Aerosmith . . . .really?  On what planet?

 "Jane" / Golden Smog

Technically this is a Golden Smog track, from that alt-country supergroup that has at various times included everyone from Wilco's Jeff Tweedy to the Replacements' Chris Mars to Big Star dummer Jody Stephens. But I prefer to think of it as a lost Jayhawks song. Though it appears on the 1998 Smog album Weird Tales, it was written by Jayhawks Gary Louris and Marc Perlman, with a Louris lead vocal. And like the best of the Jayhawks' stuff, it's a well-crafted short story with a yearning heart.

In a way, Jane is Eleanor Rigby with a twist -- she escapes from the mouldering mansion. "She came from a wealthy family," he sets the scene, and then draws an almost cinematic picture of her trapped in their house, with "walls inside the walls" and a widow's walk where she paces restlessly. "She watched from every window / Darkened every door / Saw her reflection / In every wave that hit the shore" -- it's like a montage from Rebecca, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, or maybe Dark Shadows. A mellotron sighing underneath the folky acoustic guitar jingle adds just the right melancholy touch.

In verse two we learn that she has "wandered off into the night / One eye closed, the other blind / Reading the silver side of signs." That last image is striking; I picture her walking in the wrong lane, against the traffic. Up to now, I've imagined her as a rebellious young daughter -- but then the line "everything you had, you lost before" turns things around, as I realize that Jane is haunted by her past, not longing for a future.

Shifting into a higher key, that plangent chorus is nothing but unanswered questions: "Jane, why don't you give a damn? / Jane, why don't you stay?" I wonder indeed, and can't help thinking about Elvis Costello's "Veronica." Could Jane be wandering off because she's got dementia?

In verse three, she seems to be back home: "And when her scattered thoughts had died / The sand upon her feet had dried / Among chandeliers and sweet perfume." So much for running away. I should be glad to know she's safe and sound -- then why does this ending feel so sad?

"Jane" / Ben Folds Five

Only a year later, this "Jane" is much more of an indie heroine. It's from the Ben Folds Five's ironically titled 1999 album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. (Inside joke: That was the name on drummer Darren Jessee's fake ID in high school -- the guys didn't know there was a real Reinhold Messner, a world-famous Italian mountain climber, until the album was nearly finished. Reportedly instead of suing he just sent them a note saying he enjoyed their record.)

Not your typical love song, I guess; you could call it an Advice Song. But unlike 1960s girl-group advice songs, this one is the opposite of finger-wagging sass.

It starts with a lonesome whistling wind (Reinhold Messner standing atop a peak?) before abruptly plunging us into a lounge of cool piano trio jazz. The textures and syncopation remind me of Steely Dan, but this is something else entirely, with a rueful tempo and tender vocals. The chords shift uncertainly, and the lines are short, as if he's hesitating, so anxious to be tactful. "Jane, be Jane," he counsels her (I like the tautology of that line, more personal than a boring old "be yourself " mantra). "You're better that way," he adds, "Not when you're trying / Imitating something / You think you saw." The lines don't even rhyme; he's groping for the right words.

It's no time for an "I am woman hear me roar" anthem -- Jane (as in plain Jane) is so anxious and insecure, she clearly needs a nudge. What if the boys won't like me? you can almost hear her wail. But verse two has an answer for her: "Jane, be Jane / And if sometimes that might / Drive them away / Let them stay there / You don't need them anyway." You're too good for those guys, Jane.

The key shifts higher and the volume swells in the bridge; brushed cymbals and a riot of piano glissandos add starry hope, as he dives deeper into her insecurities. "You're worried there might not be anything at all inside / If that's your worry / I should tell you that's not right." I love how his voice lifts, with such a touch of exasperation, on "tell you that's not right." Fact is, we're all vulnerable to that worry in the dark nights of our soul.

In verse three, he shifts from chiding to cheerleading: "It's your life / And you can decorate it / As you like." I love this next line: "Beneath the pain and armor / In your eyes  / The truth still shines." Will the real Jane please stand up? 

Okay, so I've said it's not a love song -- but who is this singing? A brother? A shrink? An old boyfriend? A friend with a secret crush on her? Whoever he is, he clearly loves Jane and sees how special she is. Who knows what might happen if she'd take his advice . . .

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