Song of the Week – Electricity, Captain Beefheart; Electricity, Joni Mitchell; Electricity, Suede

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

Today’s installment in my Contrast Series examines “electricity” as a metaphor in rock music.  It’s a familiar force in our everyday lives, but in the hands of three very different artists, it becomes something far more interesting: a source of danger, a metaphor for emotional overload, and the spark that ignites an intense romance.

In 1967, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band introduced their own volatile version of “Electricity” on their debut album, Safe As Milk.

Beefheart’s “Electricity” is a frantic, avant-garde blues-rock workout that turns an everyday household utility into a wild, predatory force.  Electricity becomes an invisible monster, capable of shocking, burning, and exerting control over human existence.  The song’s surreal, impressionistic imagery captures the unnerving power of a technology that can be both useful and dangerous.  (Given the enormous amounts of electricity consumed by today’s AI systems, the metaphor feels surprisingly timely.)

Musically, the track is every bit as volatile as its subject.  A deconstructed blues groove collides with jagged rhythms, abrasive guitar work, and the eerie, whirring sound of a theremin.  The latter seems to hover over the arrangement like a live wire, while the sliding, reverberating guitar of a young Ry Cooder adds to the sense that something might short-circuit at any moment.  This is electricity as raw, barely contained energy — not something to be harnessed so much as something to be feared.

Five years later, Joni Mitchell offered a very different take on “Electricity” on her 1972 album For the Roses.  Here, the metaphor shifts from technological menace to the complications of human relationships.

Mitchell uses electrical circuitry to describe emotional breakdown and romantic miscommunication.  Her characters, “Plus” and “Minus,” struggle to connect, resulting in “wrong fuses and splices.”  A relationship that once carried a powerful current has become an overloaded circuit, with sparks flying and loose wires threatening to lash out.  Where Beefheart’s electricity is an external force of nature, Mitchell’s is something generated between people — and just as capable of causing damage.

As the song unfolds, its focus broadens from romantic discord to the wider confusion of modern life.  A flashlight becomes a search for answers, while the narrator begins to recognize the appeal of stepping away from the noise and dysfunction of the world: “Well I’m learning—It’s peaceful, with a good dog and some trees / Out of touch with the breakdown of this century.”

Musically, Mitchell provides a striking contrast to Beefheart’s abrasive attack.  Her lead vocal floats over a rich tapestry of multitracked backing vocals, all sung by Mitchell herself.  The layered harmonies create an almost a cappella warmth, offering a measure of serenity that reinforces the narrator’s longing for a simpler existence.  If Beefheart’s electricity threatens to overwhelm us, Mitchell’s song suggests that sometimes the best response is to unplug.

Jump ahead to 1999, and Suede’s “Electricity” puts the metaphor to a third use.  On their album Head Music, the British band combines its trademark glam-rock drama with electronic textures to celebrate the intoxicating power of romantic attraction.

For Suede, electricity is neither a monster to be feared nor a circuit destined to fail.  It is the spark that makes life feel vivid again.  The song presents an intense, consuming relationship as an escape from a bleak, dysfunctional reality.  The connection between two people becomes a jolt of energy capable of cutting through the dullness of everyday life. (“We got a love between us, and it’s like electricity.”).

The music reinforces that sense of exhilaration.  Brett Anderson delivers his vocals with characteristic theatricality, while Richard Oakes supplies jagged, distorted guitar riffs.  Pulsing synthesizers propel the arrangement forward, giving the song a distinctly late-’90s electronic edge without abandoning the band’s glam-rock roots.  The result is a track that feels wired, restless, and alive — a celebration of electricity as romantic chemistry.

Three songs, three decades, and three very different ways of putting electricity to work.  For Captain Beefheart, it is a dangerous, unpredictable force; for Joni Mitchell, a metaphor for relationships that overload and short-circuit; and for Suede, the jolt of romantic connection that makes an otherwise dreary world bearable.

The common thread is the power of an invisible current to shape our lives, whether we’re struggling to control it, trying to escape it, or hoping to feel its spark.  Electricity may keep the lights on, but in rock music, it can illuminate a much wider range of human experience.  Just be careful where you plug in.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Let’s Take Our Clothes Off & Darling, I Respect You, The Kinks

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

Back in 1969, BBC Two aired a late-night sketch comedy and satire series starring Eleanor Bron and John Fortune, produced by Ned Sherrin.  Ray Davies of the Kinks was commissioned to write songs for several episodes, ultimately contributing five:

  • “We Are Two of a Kind”
  • “Where Did My Spring Go?”
  • “When I Turn Off the Living Room Light”
  • “Let’s Take Off Our Clothes”
  • “Darling, I Respect You”

Two of the songs — “When I Turn Off the Living Room Light” and “Where Did My Spring Go?” — eventually surfaced on the Kinks’ 1973 compilation The Great Lost Kinks Album.  The other three, however, seemed destined to remain lost to history.  The BBC had wiped the tapes of the shows, and the songs hadn’t been heard since their original broadcasts.

Now, two more have resurfaced.  “Let’s Take Off Our Clothes” and “Darling, I Respect You” were recently uploaded to the internet by a bootlegger known as Prof Stoned, giving us the chance to hear these long-lost musical curiosities for the first time in 57 years.

The sound quality is less than stellar, but hey, better than nothing!  (Who knows what the source was!). The lyrics, meanwhile, can be a bit cringe-worthy. (The same could be said of “When I Turn Off the Living Room Light,” which I included in a January 2019 post about misogynistic and politically incorrect songs.). Still, these tunes deserve to be heard in context: Davies wrote them specifically to accompany the satirical material in the television episodes, rather than as conventional Kinks songs.

That leaves just one song still missing: “We Are Two of a Kind.”  After 57 years, two of these musical time capsules have finally resurfaced.  Let’s hope the last one doesn’t take quite so long to turn up!

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – I Ain’t Superstitious, Howlin’ Wolf

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

In May 1970, the legendary Howlin’ Wolf flew to London to record an album with some of the biggest names in British blues-rock.  The meeting came about after Chess Records producer Norman Dayron ran into Eric Clapton backstage at a Fillmore West concert and extended an invitation.  Once Clapton realized the offer was genuine, he jumped at the chance to work with — and learn from — one of his musical heroes.

Wolf was in poor physical health at the time, but Dayron cleared the trip with his doctors, informally agreeing to make sure Wolf took all his many medication.

On the first day of recording at London’s Olympic Studios, the musicians cut what would become the standout track on The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions: “I Ain’t Superstitious.”

The remake of the Willie Dixon penned classic featured Wolf on vocals, Clapton on lead guitar, Klaus Voormann on bass, Ringo Starr on drums, and Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman on cowbell.  One interesting twist: Wolf’s longtime lead guitarist, Hubert Sumlin, played rhythm guitar. Chess had hoped to save a few bucks by leaving Sumlin off the sessions, but Clapton insisted he wouldn’t make the album without him.  Chess eventually caved.

Once the London sessions wrapped, additional overdubs were recorded in Chicago, including a horn section and piano parts played by Steve Winwood, who was touring the United States with Blind Faith.

After that first day, Voormann and Starr dropped out, reportedly uncomfortable with the way the sessions were being conducted.  In Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf, Voormann recalled a strange, almost unnerving atmosphere: the band “… played take after take — hardly any comment from anyone.  The take we had just done was finished.  Howlin’ went back to his chair sitting there and sitting there.  I’ve never seen anybody sit like that in my whole life: like a statue — no comment, not a word.”

When the album appeared in 1971, it received a mixed reception.  Blues purists dismissed the pairing of Wolf with British rock royalty as a commercial mishmash that sacrificed the authenticity of traditional blues.  Some listeners also felt the London version of “I Ain’t Superstitious” lacked the raw menace of Wolf’s original 1961 Chess recording.

There was another complication.  By 1971, rock fans were already familiar with the Jeff Beck Group’s volcanic, heavy-rock reworking of the song on Truth (1968).  Against Beck’s ferocious attack, the London version could sound almost too clean, even polite.

Time, however, has been kinder to the recording.  Heard on its own terms, the London performance has a groove all its own, propelled by Ringo’s distinctive, bouncing boogaloo beat.  Rather than trying to outdo Beck’s hard-rock assault or simply recreate Wolf’s original, the musicians find a looser, more relaxed pocket — one that gives Wolf plenty of room to command the song.  It’s a fascinating meeting of blues generations, and a reminder that sometimes the most revealing collaborations aren’t the ones where everyone has to play at full throttle.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Lost Boys, Phoebe Bridgers

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

Phoebe Bridgers released “Lost Boys” on June 25, 2026, as the lead single from her third solo album, Lost Weekend, which followed on August 14.  It marked her first solo release in six years. I’ve been listening to it frequently, and it’s become an irresistible earworm.

Writing in The Guardian, music critic Laura Snapes noted that “the ornate fingerpicked guitar and darting woodwinds” evoke Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan and Illinois, with a touch of Alex G’s “ramshackle opulence” (he also contributed additional production).  Snapes describes the result as “earnest, intricate and old-fashioned” — a rugged upgrade from Bridgers’ trademark silvery sound.

Bridgers has explained that the song revolves around a recurring character who keeps resurfacing in different people in her life:

“This song is about 3 different people who all have a lot in common, whether it be addiction issues or self-sabotage — just this general raw nerve relationship with the world, so they are struggling with this big bad feeling and I struggle with my love for them.”

She explained that the first verse concerns her father, the second a romantic relationship, and the last “probably the most important relationship of my life.”  Despite the difficult subject matter, she added, “I love how joyous it is.”

That contrast is part of what makes “Lost Boys” so compelling.  Alongside Bridgers’ hushed vocals, the arrangement has a couple of moments when the music perfectly captures the emotional push and pull of the lyrics.  At around 2:40, the song opens into a grand swell, giving the track a sudden rush of emotional release.  Then, at 3:22, a shouted count-in launches the final chorus, propelling the song toward a wonderfully joyous finish.

Bridgers TV debut of “Lost Boys” was on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, backed by a youth band.  The performance is a joy to watch — and keep an eye on the drummer!.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Imagine a Man, The Who

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

Another anniversary deluxe album release is due out soon, this time for The Who’s The Who By Numbers.  While it’s not my favorite Who album, it contains some excellent music, including my favorite deep cut, “Imagine a Man.”

For The Who By Numbers, songwriter Pete Townshend moved beyond the grand fictional narratives of Tommy and Quadrophenia, turning inward instead.  The album is one of his most personal works, an intensely first-person record that plays out directly inside his own psyche.

“Imagine a Man” reflects the immense psychological burden Townshend felt as the band’s principal songwriter and creative force.  The song captures a rare moment of vulnerability, exposing the doubts and pressures that accompanied his success.

Lead singer Roger Daltrey, who was often selective about which of Townshend’s lyrics he was willing to sing, immediately recognized the song’s power.  “Imagine a Man” became an instant favorite.  In 1975, he told New Musical Express:

“One song particularly, called ‘Imagine a Man’ [originally misprinted as ‘Imaginary Man’], I think is the best song Pete’s ever written.”

Daltrey has frequently spoken about the challenge of inhabiting Townshend’s deeply personal songs.  When Townshend handed over acoustic demos sung with raw, painful honesty, Daltrey felt tremendous pressure to match that emotional intensity.

For “Imagine a Man,” he deliberately set aside his usual bare-chested rock swagger in favor of a restrained, delicate performance.  Critics and fans alike often cite it as one of his finest vocal achievements.  Daltrey manages to command the song dramatically without ever breaking its emotional fragility.

The new 50th-anniversary super deluxe edition of The Who By Numbers, due for release on October 30, features 92 unreleased tracks along with two archival live shows.  Among the early previews is a previously unheard mix of “Imagine a Man” featuring Townshend’s guide vocal.  Listening to it, you can easily understand why Daltrey was so moved by the song — and perhaps why he was inspired to deliver one of the most nuanced and affecting performances of his career.

So which version do you prefer: Townshend’s intimate original vocal or Daltrey’s masterful interpretation?

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Radio Radio, Elvis Costello; Radio Free Europe, R.E.M.; Radio Nowhere, Bruce Springsteen

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

For anyone under 30, it’s probably hard to explain just how important radio once was.

Before streaming services, playlists, and algorithms, radio was how you discovered new music.  A great DJ could change your life.  A late-night college station might introduce you to your next favorite band.  And if you were lucky, some distant signal crackling through the static could make the world feel a little bigger.

As someone who spent time behind the microphone at a college radio station (WZBC), I’ve always had a soft spot for songs about radio itself.  Musicians have long viewed the medium with a mixture of affection, frustration, and suspicion.  Some saw it as a lifeline connecting artists and listeners.  Others viewed it as a gatekeeper controlled by corporate interests. A few managed to see both sides at once.

Three songs in particular capture that evolving relationship: Elvis Costello’s “Radio Radio,” R.E.M.’s “Radio Free Europe,” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere.”  Taken together, they tell a fascinating story about how artists viewed the airwaves across three decades.

Elvis Costello fired the first shot.

Released in 1978, “Radio Radio” remains one of the most blistering attacks ever aimed at the music industry.  Costello portrays radio not as a source of discovery or enlightenment but as a system designed to dull curiosity and reward conformity.  The song bristles with frustration at executives and programmers who decide what listeners hear and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t.

What makes “Radio Radio” so effective is that Costello delivers his critique inside a perfect pop song.  The Attractions provide a punchy New Wave groove, the chorus is instantly memorable, and the entire track sounds radio-ready. It’s a Trojan horse — a catchy hit carrying a deeply subversive message.

The song’s reputation was cemented when Costello appeared on Saturday Night Live in December 1977.  Scheduled to perform “Less Than Zero,” he abruptly stopped the band a few bars into the song, apologized to the audience (I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no reason to do this song here) and launched into “Radio Radio” instead.  Inspired by Jimi Hendrix — who had famously defied producers by switching songs mid-broadcast on the Lulu Show — Costello used a national broadcast to challenge the very system he was criticizing.  Nearly fifty years later, it remains one of rock’s great moments of resistance.

If Costello viewed radio as a battleground, R.E.M. saw it as an opportunity.

“Radio Free Europe,” originally released as a single in 1981 and later re-recorded for Murmur in 1983, became one of the foundational records of American college rock.  The title borrowed from the Cold War broadcaster that transmitted news and music beyond the Iron Curtain, but R.E.M. transformed the phrase into something more personal: a symbol of alternative culture operating outside the mainstream.

Michael Stipe’s famously cryptic lyrics are less important than the feeling the song creates.  Peter Buck’s chiming Rickenbacker guitar, Mike Mills’ melodic bass lines, and the band’s youthful urgency combine to produce a sense of motion and possibility.  Unlike Costello’s anger, R.E.M.’s approach is optimistic.  The song sounds like a secret being passed from one listener to another.

For many music fans in the early 1980s, college radio served exactly that purpose.  Long before commercial radio embraced bands like R.E.M., college stations were already spinning their records. “Radio Free Europe” became both a celebration of that world and a rallying cry for independent music.

By the time Bruce Springsteen released “Radio Nowhere” in 2007, however, the landscape had changed dramatically.

Following years of consolidation in the radio industry, many listeners felt that local flavor and adventurous programming had largely disappeared.  Springsteen channels that frustration into one of the strongest songs of his later career.

The opening question — “Is there anybody alive out there?” — immediately establishes the theme.  Springsteen isn’t simply searching for a song.  He’s searching for evidence of life, connection, and authenticity.  The radio dial becomes a metaphor for a broader cultural loneliness.

Musically, “Radio Nowhere” is relentless.  The pounding drums, dense guitars, and dark atmosphere create a sense of urgency bordering on desperation.  Even when Clarence Clemons’ saxophone finally breaks through, it feels less like celebration than a brief reminder of what has been lost.

Where Costello fought the system and R.E.M. found ways around it,  Springsteen sounds like a man driving through the wreckage, wondering whether the battle has already been decided.

What strikes me most about these three songs is that none of them are really about radio.

They’re about the search for connection.

Costello hears a medium being constrained by corporate interests and fights back.  R.E.M. celebrates the possibility that somewhere beyond the mainstream, another signal is waiting to be found.  Springsteen arrives decades later and wonders whether anybody is still listening at all.

The technology may have changed, but the desire remains the same.  We still search for voices that surprise us, challenge us, and make us feel less alone.  Radio once carried that promise across the airwaves.  These songs remind us why it mattered — and why we still miss it when the signal starts to fade.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Popafangout, Sharp Pins

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

Sharp Pins, the Chicago power-pop group led by 21-year-old Kai Slater, released their third album, Balloon Balloon Balloon, last year.  The remarkably prolific Slater keeps himself busy with several projects, including Sharp Pins, the post-punk outfit Lifeguard, and the psychedelic folk duo Dwaal Troupe.  (He also publishes the Hallogallo zine.)

Sharp Pins inhabit much of the same retro territory once explored by XTC’s psychedelic alter ego, The Dukes of Stratosphear.  Their music draws heavily from British Invasion-era garage rock and power pop, packed with jangly guitars, infectious melodies, and enough psychedelic flourishes to keep things interesting.

The album’s opening track, the Cryan’ Shames-inspired “Popafangout,” is a perfect introduction.

“Oh popafangout / She don’t know what you’re shouting about”

I have no idea what this means, and something tells me Slater may not either.  More likely, it’s a delightfully nonsensical phrase chosen for its sound rather than its meaning — a bit of psychedelic wordplay that perfectly complements the song’s kaleidoscopic charm.

If “Popafangout” catches your ear, there’s plenty more where that came from. Balloon Balloon Balloon packs in another twenty tracks, with only one stretching beyond the three-and-a-half-minute mark. It’s a brisk, hook-filled ride that never overstays its welcome.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Going, Going, Gone – Bob Dylan

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

On November 6, Bob Dylan will release The Rolling Thunder Revue 1976, a boxed set containing 39 discs for the surprisingly reasonable price of about $160 — roughly $4 per disc.  That’s a staggering amount of music, drawn from the second leg of the tour as it wound through the American South.  And it shouldn’t be confused with the excellent two-disc The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue, which documented the earlier leg of the tour.

I recently heard a preview of one of the 13 performances of “Going, Going, Gone” included in the new set.  It was a reminder of what a terrific deep cut the song is.  Yet as good as these live recordings may prove to be, they’ll have a hard time surpassing the original studio version from the often-overlooked Planet Waves (1974), the album that reunited Dylan with The Band.

“Going, Going, Gone” has frequently been interpreted as a song about suicide.  I’ve always heard it differently — as a song about loss, resignation, and grief.  Not necessarily grief over life itself, but over life’s accumulated disappointments: failed relationships, career frustrations, declining health, financial worries, and the countless burdens that can wear a person down.  The narrator sounds exhausted, pushed to the brink, and struggling under a weight that has become almost unbearable.

I been hangin’ on threads

I been playin’ it straight

Now, I’ve just got to cut loose

Before it gets late

So I’m going

I’m going

I’m gone

Rock critic Tim Riley captured the power of the performance when he wrote that “The Band’s windup pitch to ‘Going, Going, Gone’ is a wonder of pinpoint ensemble playing: (Robbie) Robertson makes his guitar entrance choke as if a noose had suddenly tightened around its neck.”  Riley also observed that The Band’s accompaniment is so perfectly attuned to Dylan’s despondent mood that “Robertson’s guitar sounds like it’s scratching the itch in Dylan’s throat.”

Perhaps the Planet Waves recording is merely the opening chapter in the song’s story.  If the early preview is any indication, the newly released Rolling Thunder performances may reveal fresh dimensions of one of Dylan’s most haunting and underappreciated songs.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Can’t Find My Way Home & Ain’t No Two Ways About It (It’s Love), Ellen McIlwaine

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

Back in the early 1970s, one of my cousins introduced me to the music of Ellen McIlwaine.  At the time, McIlwaine was a singer-songwriter making the rounds in New York’s Greenwich Village, earning a reputation for her dazzling slide guitar work and inventive use of harmonics.

Like many artists who never quite received the recognition they deserved, she gradually faded from my radar.  Recently, however, her name resurfaced in my memory, prompting me to revisit her catalog.  What I found was a reminder of just how original — and ahead of her time — she really was.

One of the first songs that appears on Spotify’s list of her most popular recordings is her extraordinary interpretation of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” from her 1972 album Honky Tonk Angel.

The performance showcases everything that made McIlwaine unique.  Her fluid slide guitar lines weave around a rich bed of harmonics, while her expressive voice transforms Steve Winwood’s melancholy classic into something entirely her own.  Listening to it today, I’m reminded of Karen Dalton’s ability to sound both vulnerable and commanding at the same time.

By the following year, on We the People (1973), McIlwaine was pushing her music even further.  The album’s opening track, “Ain’t No Two Ways About It (It’s Love),” features a vocal style that blends blues, folk, and African-inspired rhythmic chanting into something difficult to categorize.  It sounds startlingly modern more than fifty years later.

In fact, her vocals on the track immediately brought Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs to mind.  The resemblance is striking enough to raise an intriguing question: has Garbus ever heard these recordings?  Given the adventurous vocal techniques and rhythmic approach that both artists employ, the connection is hard to ignore.

McIlwaine’s career never followed the trajectory her talent seemed to promise.  Yet revisiting these recordings today, it’s easy to hear why musicians and dedicated record collectors continue to speak of her with such admiration.  She occupied a musical space all her own, drawing from blues, folk, rock, and global influences long before such cross-pollination became commonplace.

I’m glad I rediscovered Ellen McIlwaine.  Though she passed away in 2021, her recordings remain vibrant, adventurous, and surprisingly contemporary.  If there is such a thing as a musical buried treasure, McIlwaine’s catalog surely qualifies — waiting patiently for a new generation of listeners to uncover it.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Save Me, Joan As Police Woman

by

Ignored   Obscured Restored

Those of you who have been following the SotW for some time will be familiar with my “Evolution Series.”  That’s where I select a song and trace how different artists have interpreted and recorded it over the years.

In a twist on that concept, the artist known as Joan As Police Woman (Joan Wasser) has recently revisited her own debut album, Real Life (2006), reinterpreting the entire record.  Appropriately enough, she has titled the project Real Life Evolution.

Before emerging as Joan As Police Woman, Wasser was best known as a gifted violinist and as the fiancée of Jeff Buckley. His sudden and tragic death in 1997 left an indelible mark on her life, and the emotional honesty that has characterized her music ever since can be traced, in part, to that devastating loss.

Take a listen to “Save Me” from the original album.

Wasser’s piano-based song captures a sense of emotional desperation as she struggles to salvage a relationship that is “already good as gone.”

In the newly reimagined version, Wasser recruits Iggy Pop to handle the lead vocal.

Pop’s weathered voice, combined with a harsher musical backdrop, changes the song’s emotional tenor.  The desperation remains, but it is now tempered by tension and friction rather than the wounded self-pity that permeated the original recording.

Wasser’s willingness to revisit and reinterpret her early work demonstrates the creative courage of an artist who continues to grow, evolve, and find new meaning in familiar songs.

Enjoy… until next week.