Category Archives: Great Songs

Long Time Coming

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I’ve been listening to Graveyard’s Hisingen Blues for the last month and it’s a dandy of an album. Definitely my Summer of 2014 album for sure, even though it’s from 2011.

Random thoughts:

1) Was gonna post a couple other more “grab you right off the bat” songs but never got around to it. This one turns out ultimately to be my fave. Once it creeps in, it doesn’t go away.

2) Hisingen Blues has been such a wonderful album experience for me. I now enjoy the whole thing entirely and know the flow. I anticipate the next song. It’s a wonderful thing, baby. If any of you guys can pull your heads out of shuffle-land, I highly, highly recommend this selection.

3) These guys STILL EXIST believe it or not. They were in the states not too long ago playing Coachella, but I missed the boat. Please God, let them survive as a band for another trip to the US. (Who wants to go with?)

4) Tell me who they remind you of. Obviously, this song is pretty Zeppy, but there’s other stuff there. I can’t pinpoint it.

5) I usually favor the Gibson/Marshall guitar sound, but this isn’t that. These guys are Orange (the latest thing in hard rock, I guess) men, but I love it.

6) This song’s about heroin, no? Bonus points.

7) The voice as an extra instrument: When the singer belts out the melodic scream immediately following “Tonight a demon came into my head” (yes, a demon came into his head), it hits me as hard as any lyric.

8) Checked out some reviews and stumbled upon this: “Earlier this year, the much-anticipated Hisingen Blues topped the Swedish album chart, outselling even the ballyhooed return of Britney Spears.”

Sure must be nice to have the masses care about quality music, huh? (Maybe I wouldn’t like it, kind of like everyone screwing your girlfriend.) Anyway, maybe I need to move to Sweden. Something’s definitely different there musically.

OK, here goes:

Night Music: X, “Breathless”

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The one cover song on X’s fourth album, New Fun In The New World, is their version of Otis Blackwell’s tune Breathless.

Breathless was a giant hit for Jerry Lee Lewis. One of my favorite songs of his.

But Breathless was also the name of Jean Luc Godard’s first feature.

And was also the name of a sort of remake by the once underground filmmaker Jim McBride, who turned a film about an American girl in Paris loving a French gangster into a film about a French girl in LA loving an American gangster.

X did the cover for the money and promotion, but as you can see in the clip, they perform it brilliantly. And differently. And this one of the great rock songs, no matter whose version you hear.

But we’ve opened up a can of it here. Godard meets McBride. Blackwell meets Jerry Lee Lewis meets X.

There is more to be said.

Lunch Break: 16 More Tons

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Maybe the measure of a song is how many people see fit to shape it to their own musical styles, kind of like mining.

Stevie Wonder imagined the song as a Motowny bit of danceable social protest in the 60s:

An English socialist rock band with the appalling name The Redskins recorded a jazzy rockabilly version.

And you can’t overlook the Swedish death metal band Momento Mori’s swinging version from 1993.

And there are thrash metal, hip hop, folk, a cappella and other versions, that maybe we’ll get to another day when we’re deeper in debt.

Breakfast Blend: 16 Tons

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Jeff Beck and ZZ Top are on tour, and last week’s encore in LA was recorded. The song 16 Tons is one of the enduring country chestnuts first recorded by Merle Travis in 1946 which became a hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955. It’s one of those songs I bang out on the guitar, singing along, in my living room, and that’s the approach the boys took last week. Until the guitar solos.

Here’s the original Merle Travis version. A lighter touch, for sure, and he explains how the whole company store thing worked.

Which led me to this version, with Billy Gibbons singing in front of Jeff Beck’s band. Much better sound and way more engaged vocals than the Beck with ZZ Top.

Night Music: Chuck Berry, “Johhny B. Goode”

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The question about what makes a great song is complicated by all sorts of contingencies.

But what makes the Ur songs of rock Ur are their, um, Ur-ness.

There is no rock song that rings all the bells as much as Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode.

I can argue that he wrote better songs (how about Carol? Back in the USA? Maybelline?), but Johnny B. Goode has a great beat, a good hook, and is about inventing the music. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s catchy.

Johnny B. Goode kills.

The 17 Commandments Of Great Songs

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1) Agreed that one knows a great song when one hears it, as at least a couple others have suggested. This overrules anything else (except #17).

2) A great song makes one bob one’s head, shimmy one’s shoulders or purse one’s lips. Multiples are best.

3) Melody is good. The voice should be considered an extra instrument. The better the voice and the better the melody, the better the chance the song is great. A melody that adds to the song is better than one that simply mimics a riff. To use Black Sabbath as an example, War Pigs is a great song, Iron Man is not. The vocal melody has a lot to do with this.

4) Speaking of riffs, they are good.

5) Good harmony is good. Weird, innovative harmony that is still good is best.

6) At this point I’m reminded of something I once heard about The Smithereens. Their goal was to be The Beatles and AC/DC at the same time. They never came close, but it was a noble goal.

7) Hooks are good. A great musical hook is felt somewhere between the belly and balls.

8) Fast is good. There are great slow songs, but they are few.

9) Heavy is good. Most great slow songs make up in heaviness what they sacrifice in tempo.

10) Mellow is bad.

11) Great music demands attention. One cannot multitask in the presence of great music.

12) Good lyrics help, but good lyrics are not essential. If everything else is there, who cares what the band is singing about? By the same token if everything else is there, who cares whether one can decipher what the band is singing about? Misogyny and profanity are good when used properly.

13) Lyrics ideally take the listener to a fantasy world the average Joe will never experience. Songs about screwing exotic women while high on smack are better than songs about admiring one’s wife as she drives the kids to the soccer game (see pop country).

14) Electric guitars are good. Keyboards and synthesizers not so much. There are exceptions.

15) Musical proficiency sometimes helps, but is never a deal breaker. There are many great three-chord songs. Musical talent alone never makes a great song (not even a decent song).

16) Drums. Let me tell you a little story. I was at a birthday party for a relative last fall. As I sat with my brother at the beginning of the party, the DJ was playing Frank Sinatra, etc. I hate that stuff. My brother detected my displeasure and eventually exploded with something like, “This is the American Songbook! How can you call yourself a musician if you don’t at least appreciate the American Songbook?” While the American Songbook was playing, folks were milling around, generally socializing, not really paying attention. Eventually, the DJ bagged the American Songbook. He began with Hang On Sloopy. As dippy as Hang On Sloopy is, the floor immediately filled with people dancing. Drums.

17) The dark side of dancing is modern choreographed dancing. Modern choreographed dancing has been the worst thing to happen to pop music in the past 20 years. Any sniff of greatness a modern song may possess is negated by choreographed dancing. The two cannot coexist. There are surely great songs that include great choreographed dancing, but none since 1980.

Night Music: The Impressions, “Gypsy Woman”

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I had this piece in my head when back a few weeks ago when we were discussing those lost years of the 60’s, btween Elvis and the Beatles, which as Gene noted were not quite so lost if you knew where to look and listen.

I do confess that Top 40 and pop, and the Four Seasons and then the Beachboys ruled the airwaves in my bedroom during that time. Those were also the days of Bobbys Vee and Rydel and Vinton, all of whom were safer than Elvis, let alone Little Richard, and well, in 1961, When Gypsy Woman was released, I was still just 9 (didn’t hit 10 till the end of October).

I do confess to liking Vee’s Take Good Care of My Baby, and the truth is by then the Elvis who released tunes like Return to Sender bore very little resemblance to the bluesy guy who covered That’s Alright Mama so wonderfully during the Sun sessions.

Though I am sure there were a myriad of songs in between Peggy Sue, which really triggered my consciousness and subsequent love for rock’n’roll, and Gypsy Woman, somehow with each I remember thinking at first listen, “man, how could anything sound so good?”

So here it is, with greats Curtis Mayfield (who penned the tune) and Jerry Butler leading the charge.

Swear. I’ll be back soon. More tunes festering, and the “What makes a great song?” issue is something I tried to tackle almost a year ago but it went nowhere (lots of words, little point).