We like what we like. You get to judge. Here’s my story, and no apologies.
Al Jarreau died yesterday. When I heard the news I immediately thought of Teach Me Tonight. I loved that song.
I don’t know much of Jarreau’s career, which was a good one according to everyone, but what I know is that album that has Teach Me Tonight on it. I have that album in my basement, and if I had an actual record player I think I would play it sometimes. Or would have.
When I got back to my house today, after the news of Jarreau’s demise, I searched YouTube for Teach Me Tonight, and after listening I wasn’t so sure I should write about it. But that’s crap. I should write about it.
Jarreau’s version of a classic is all crudded up with mature music frou frou, and if I was smarter I would have hated it. But I didn’t. I really liked it as a contemporary soul/jazz sounding version of an old song. It’s good to be soft. I love his voice. It is clear and melodic. I liked it. I have to admit it.
My buddy Les Ogilby, who plays a fantastic blues harp–on occasion with the Biletones–and is as much of a music junkie as the rest of us (Les has contributed to the site, in fact) gave me a great disc with a bunch of cool less than widely known tunes, and one of the songs on it was this fantastic cover of Louie Louie by the Flamin’ Groovies (note the drummer has a real Boris Karloff look to him, and the bassist is on a Hofner!).
As I was listening and thinking about how simple this song is, the thought brought me back to Spirit in the Sky, another simple song that was a hit, but that is flat out weak compared to Louie Louie.
One reason we know the superiority is Louie Louie I believe is the most recorded pop tune, while anyone covering Greenbaum has been crucified.
Some of what works are the words, for one thing that drives me nuts about Greenbaum’s song is the “couplet:”
“When I die and they lay me to rest,
I’m gonna go to the place that’s the best.”
To say that is third grade poetry is an insult to eight-year olds everywhere. I mean that second line could have been “I love god it’s in him I invest” or “I’ll sleep with a heavenly crest” or “I’ll be denied because of incest” or something slightly more sophisticated. Not that Louie Louie has complex words, but part of the charm is like a good rock tune, the words are garbled and subject to urban myth and conjecture providing part of the essence of how Aristotle defined what poetry should do: teach and delight.
But, then I was streaming some New Wave stuff and on came a fantastic Johnny Thunders cover of the Shangri Las Give Him a Great Big Kiss, another tune that could easily be so tawdry and awful in the Honey/Teen Angel kind of sense, but somehow the song kills both in the hands of the Shangri Las and Thunders.
Anyway, I am not sure exactly where this is going. For sure I dig both these covers and was looking for an excuse to write about them, but, again, Kiss is such a simple song (two chords for the verse, two more for the chorus) and like Louie Louie it all works so well.
Maybe someone can explain that fine line to me between genius and stupid? I do know Einstein said “the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” True words for these times.
One of the most sacred elpees in rock history is Neil Young’s Harvest. And I love a lot of it, can sing along to a lot it, though I’ve never owned it.
But even when I was a teen in my friend Judy’s bedroom with a whole gang of kids, listening to this elpee for the first time, it was hard to stomach A Man Needs a Maid.
The sentiment fails, and the grandiose arrangement overcompensates for what? This is Neil Young at his absolute worst.
I’m not sure why Neil decided to tart up the song on the elpee, with all those strings. For me it takes a simple confessional statement, a good melody, and makes it a bit ugly and grandiose.
Here’s a live clip where the basic sexist shit comes across as a man looking closely at his life. He could be wrong, but who can fault him for that. I like that a lot better.
In the process of discussing our teen favorites, Tom pointed to the incredible run of brilliant albums Steveland Wonder released and I commented, noting that I felt Talking Book, Fulfillingness First Finale, and Innervisions were on my list of artists who produced three just brilliant albums in a row.
Also added in were:
Blue/Ladies of the Canyon/Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell)
Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed/Sticky Fingers (Stones)
Revolver/Rubber Soul/Sgt. Pepper (Beatles)
Bringing it all Back Home/Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde
Elvis Costello (first three) and Neil Young (Goldrush through Harvest) also made it once the list was initiated, and Prince just missed. But Steve made suggestions of Alice Cooper, the Ramones, and AC/DC which I quickly dismissed
This does not mean I don’t love Road to Ruin and Love it to Death but if we look at Cooper and Steve’s example, maybe I can explain the difference, at least as I mean it.
Love it to Death triggered three wonderful albums from the Alice Cooper band, but the third, School’s Out was a little thin in my view, and Love it to Death included the throwaway Black Juju, an immediate disqualifier.
Why, you ask?
Because in looking at the records produced by the Beatles for example, in Rubber Soul the band clearly kicked their songwriting to a deeper level with the focus of their lyrics moving to a new level, not just for the band, but for pop music. The Fab Four continued this growth, both lyrically and sonic-ally with Revolver, and then even further with Sgt. Pepper. The same can be said about Wonder, Dylan, Mitchell, the Stones, Costello, and Young, all of whom have challenged themselves and their sound, pushing into new directions, and delivering breathing works that pushed the groups collaborative art to a new level.
Not that Love it to Death isn’t art, or a fantastic album, but as good as the record is, by Killer, the band was still spot on musically and lyrically, but while 18 might really fit what I defined above, nothing else on any of the three suggested Cooper albums suggests or provides any kind of growth of the group’s art and sound any further than where it was.
Not that this means Cooper or AC/DC or any performer(s) should be dismissed, but, there is a major difference between releasing three very strong discs that contain great songs, but all basically of the same ilk, as opposed to the other artists who truly moved their skills and experience to a different level.
Snotty? Maybe.
Elistist? Maybe.
But, well, hard to argue? I don’t know.
Have at it, and just to show I understand my roots, let’s leave with Alice, and as good a garage tune as you will ever hear. It is just the individual tune does not the album or artistic value of the relative catalog make.
I remember seeing Pink Flag in a record shop window on Eighth Street in the Village in 1977. It was an import, expensive, and I hadn’t even heard of the band, but the look was clean and lovely, different than the artwork that smudged across a lof of the new punk music elpees, and it made me curious. Not long after, reviews started appearing and Wire were quickly critics’ darlings. That’s what short and incisive pop noise and catchy melody does.
I waited for the US release, I think, a few months later to finally hear what I’d been reading about. I was rewarded, with a punchy tunes that got in and out quicker than you’d want, but more powerfully than you could hope for. Pink Flag is one of the great rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time. Rolling Stone says No. 412, NME says 378, Steve Moyer says 32. I say closer to Moyer than NME, but whatever.
So, this comes up because Wire has a new song out. They’ve been releasing records off and on for the past four or five years, and even more off and on through the aughts and 90s. I have to admit that I haven’t been paying attention, so I can’t speak to what they’ve been doing, but this is a good one. Short Elevated Period.
I posted here about a Husker Du cover the Mary Tyler Moore show theme song a few years ago. Not sure why, at that point.
This week, Mary Tyler Moore died. Which is a reason think about her. That is why we die, right? We hope someone thinks about us.
In my life I thought a lot about Mary Tyler Moore. I loved the Dick Van Dyke show, I loved the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I liked that she made an issue of Pale Male. MTM ranks in my pantheon of cultural gods, a list I should probably inscribe on the surface of excellent knishes. Or something.
Enjoy the clip, which I think shows just how essential Joan Jett is and how unfortunately that didn’t change the world.
When I moved to New York late in 1976 punk was breaking. Patti Smith’s Horses was already out, and the club scene was lively and exciting. New records, new great records seemed to come out every day, and the music press, the Voice, the Soho News, NME and others were crazy with coverage and analysis of the vibrant music and the scene that came with it. It was an astonishing time to be in New York, a city that was bankrupt and dangerous and eating itself from within, but also reinventing the world.
While the punk scene was centered in the East Village, and I visited all those clubs there, I somehow ended up hanging out in the Village itself, mostly at Gerdes Folk City on West Fourth Street, and Kenny’s Castaways on Bleecker Street. There the music was also hot, artists were being signed, but it was a singer-songwriter scene that was evolving, birthing a new generation of folkies, these far less interested in folk songs per se and far more interested in songwriting and confession and reflections on the quotidian and how life is lived by everyone and themselves.
I would have to do a little research to find a list of names of performers from that scene, some of whom I’m sure got a little famous and some of whom did not, but the two acts I admired most and saw many times were Steve Forbert and the Roches. Forbert wrote aching songs and sang with an aching voice, but the result wasn’t morose. His honesty and clever melodies are compelling and enduring, at least from his first two elpees, and it was hearing him live on the radio play a rocking careering version of Telstar on his acoustic that helped me develop the idea that the rock ‘n’ roll spirit isn’t just about volume and drive, but also about an honest and straightforward accounting of whatever you’re doing in song.
Which brings us to the Roches. The three sisters were delightful, funny, vivacious, and clever. They lit up the stage as presences, even Maggie the shy one, and lit up the room with their clever and lovely and surprising harmonies. We is their far too cute origin song.
As Tom recounts below, their first album as a threesome was produced by Robert Fripp, the famed progressive and experimental rock guitarist. The result is a spare and resonant sound, full of room without obvious reverb. Pretty and High was a song by Maggie, it closes the album with surreal drama and poetry and a clanging guitar. Play it loud, as if it rocked.
Yes, it’s an internet thing. The prompt goes like this, and is irresistible: List 10 albums that made a lasting impression on you as a TEENAGER, but only one per band/artist. Don’t take too long and don’t think too long.
I turned mine in last week, before I knew it was a thing. I made two mistakes in my first pass, listed two elpees that hit when I was 12, though I suppose maybe I wouldn’t have gotten into them until the next year. Hard to know.
List 10 albums that made a lasting impression on you as a TEENAGER, but only one per band/artist. Don’t take too long and don’t think too long.
1. Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen – Lost in the Ozone
Originally had Cream’s Disraeli Gears and Blood Sweat and Tear’s Child is the Father to the Man, but they were released before I was a teen. As I type this I realize that Blind Faith should be on, but I don’t know what to bump. I’ve written about all of these here before, except Benefit. And I’ve seen all these bands live, too, which may explain some of the attachment, except Jethro Tull. I once saw Commander Cody open for Jefferson Starship in Santa Monica. Weird show.
One odd thing to note is that I’m older than most everyone who made lists I’ve read. I turned 20 before punk broke or new wave hit. Feel free to add your list in the comments. In the meantime.
I was listening to the Bristol Sessions tonight. There was an open mike recording session in Bristol Tennessee on July 29, 1927, hosted by the Victor Talking Machine Company. They made record players, and wanted to make records.
Singers, songwriters, musicians from all over the south travelled for an opportunity to record their work and sell it. These were the beginning days of the record industry. The Carter Family and the Jimmie Rodgers recorded their first sides that day. That stuff is gold.
But the tune that caught my ear was a standard and classic murder ballad, Darling Cora, recorded by a guy named BF Shelton. This song is something of a banjo requirement, and it is irresistible because of its structure and chorus, but this early version does something wonderful and hypnotic with the sound. Singer and banjo, alone, play and sing with a hypnotic rhythm, and the banjo sounds like a trance instrument and chime, rather than a, well, banjo. That’s good. Check it out.
Although Shelton went on to record some other sides, the only surviving cuts of his are from the Bristol Sessions. So there is the chance that his lovely spectral banjo sound is an artifact of the recording process, but when you listen to another of his recordings that day, a less captivating song by spades, his picking is still pretty awesome. Here’s Oh, Molly Dear:
These old cuts bring so much extraneous noise they alienate us from the start, but when you dig in it is revelatory to find pickers and players who are rocking new sounds out of the traditional. Shelton is doing that for me. Which is why it excites me to listen to old stuff.
I keep meaning to write about the new Stones album, Blue & Lonesome. It’s their first in 10 years and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. Which is likely why I heard the first single from it, Just Your Fool, so many times on the radio in recent weeks. But I keep getting distracted.
For instance, one of my favorite old blues guys is Little Walter, who contributes a number of songs to this collection of covers. Little Walter is a revolutionary harmonica player, the guy who turned the mouth harp from something small to something big. He’s the most virtuosic harp player out there, the Segovia of the harmonica, if you catch my drift. He was also a great songwriter and terrific singer. So it’s great the Stones cover his tunes on their look back on the blues they have loved, but when I listen to their cover of Just Your Fool all I hear is Little Walter. What extra are they bringing?
It’s amazingly little. Here’s Little Walter.
Here’s the Stones.
The Stones version is so good because it totally mimics the original. Fine. I suppose if they did something different they could be charged with some sort of crime of appropriation, but for the time being the Stones version seems less than essential, we already have that, and that’s not the way their old blues and R&B covers felt.
Plus, that album cover! Ugliest thing ever!
You can listen to Lonesome & Blue and enjoy it, these are great old rock musicians who love the blues playing the blues. But I’m not sure they bring much more than appreciation and chops to the project, and you’re probably better off searching out the original versions. That’s easy on YouTube.
And if you’re in to eye candy, here’s a video of Eddie Taylor’s Ride Em On Down starring Kristen Stewart! Case closed.
