Category Archives: I Like This Song

Tommy James and the Shondells, “Mony Mony”

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I was making dinner last night and started thinking for some reason about I Think We’re Alone Now, which is pretty much a perfect piece of pop songwriting art. I was not, by the way, making apple pie.

I put on a Tommy James and the Shondells greatest hits album, and they had many of them. But this is the one that surprised me. I’ve heard it way too many times, but it still sounds old and new, out of control and perfectly modulated, fresh and a part of my history. I’m not arguing it’s better than I Think We’re Alone Now or Crystal Blue Persuasion or even the very lovely Mirage, but this is a very funny and real corner of rock history that deserves some love.

Rufus, Tell Me Something Good

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Gene’s post of the Brothers Johnson on Facebook led me to this Rufus with Chaka Khan track, which I adored back in the day when it was new. This is all modulation and anticipation, the beat is slowed and crawling, and Chaka revels in the suspense.

I count this as an example of the most serious and amazing sounds released and people got it. Art and the godhead mix.

American Breed, “Bend Me Shape Me”

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I loved this tune when I was 12. I bought the 45. What I didn’t know is that on the album, the American Breed covered Allen Toussaint’s Lipstick Traces, a recording that doesn’t seem to be on YouTube. Bend Me Shape Me has a great drum pattern, but the song is really made up of all sorts of hooky elements, like the hand claps and the inserted horns. I’m not sure without the frippery there’s that much there. But pop songs are frippery. Plus this video is a goof.

Fortune Teller

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This tune has always been one of my favorite early Rolling Stones songs. It only appeared on Got Live If You Want It!, where a studio track was overdubbed with screaming girls, until the More Hot Rocks greatest hits album was released. Turns out it was written by Allen Toussaint.

The song was originally released as a B-side to Benny Spellman’s Lipstick Traces (on a cigarette), both tunes credited to Naomi Neville (Toussaint’s nom de pop–and also his mother’s name).

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, gave Greil Marcus the name for his brilliant historical exploration of the roots of punk rock. This is Spillman’s version.

 

Elliot Murphy, “Last of the Rock Stars”

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Around the time the Dolls and Springsteen were going for stardom, Elliot Murphy was the darling of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, which didn’t lack for cachet because of that whole Velvet Underground thing.

One day when I was in high school I was in New York City for some unremembered reason, and I was on the Long Island Railroad headed home reading Interview, a feature about Elliot Murphy, and I look up and there on the danged LIRR car is Elliot Murphy, wearing a neon blue (aqua) feather jacket, like a true rock star, with hangers on (friends) and everything. On the Long Island Railroad! Though I’m not sure the record was even out yet, which may explain something.

Murphy didn’t endure nor soar the way the Dolls and Springsteen have. I don’t have a theory why. He seemed very delicate and kind of made up on the train. Aquashow was a good album, but careers get derailed in many ways. Stardom selects in reverse. Many aspire and a few survive the gauntlet.

In any case, Murphy didn’t stop. Here’s a version from a live show in Italy in 2006. No longer innocent nor callow.

Johnny Cash, First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

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I like the Roberta Flack version, which is direct and simple. But apparently Ewan MacColl, who wrote the song, thought it was too pop.

It is pop, it has strings, which is why it was a big and deserved hit.

There is a new album of Ewan MacColl covers out. A tribute album, as it were. He was a giant of the Englishy folk scene of the 50s, and married Pete Seeger’s sister to boot. He claimed their version of this song was the best, stripped down and weird, but he’s wrong (though to be fair he died before Johnny Cash recorded his version).

For the record, here’s the lovely Roberta Flack version, which is also better than MacColl’s.

Radio Radio

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I was at dinner with some friends the other night, when talk turned to Elvis Costello’s new book, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. Many people there that night claimed fandom, but I think I won with my story of being at the first show at the Bottom Line, standing on our chairs so we could look over the fucking piano, and telling the bouncers to go to hell, since we didn’t want to look in the stupid mirror they had for those of us in our blocked seats.

I also told the story of hanging at the bar with Joey Ramone, talking about just how sucky the Tuff Darts (opening act) were.

But then I told the story of seeing Costello and the Attractions on Saturday Night Live, and I got the whole story totally wrong. In my head, the label wanted Elvis to play Allison, and he instead played Radio Radio.

But the clips are clear. He was scheduled to play Less Than Zero, a track about British fascist Oswald Mosely, and who could know it would later become a Bret Easton Ellis post teen drug romp novel and movie, but played instead the insolent and immature but uberly catchy Radio Radio.

For this, Lorne Michaels or NBC, I’m not sure which, banned Costello from NBC shows. Wow.

But on the 25th anniversary of SNL, Costello was back, recreating the moment (equally awkwardly) and played Radio Radio with the Beastie Boys. It’s cool, and I think shows just how tight the Attractions were.

Albert Hammond Jr., “Losing Touch”

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I heard this on the radio this morning while parking the car. Hammond Jr. was the guitarist in the Strokes, and he also plays keyboards and writes songs.

The video for this song is opaque and diminishes the tune, I think, so ignore it, but as a commenter on YouTube says, this is like the Strokes with a different vocalist. That’s something to like. As is the chorus, which is big and bountiful.

This version is way better.