Category Archives: I Like This Song

Lunch Break: Lee Michaels, “Streetcar”

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Peter posted last week on the ever-fun Lee Michaels (sigh, no relation unfortunately) and his biggest hit, Do You Know What I Mean?

I was a big Michaels fan back then, and I think I saw him at Winterland and Sound Factory and various little northern California venues four times with my childhood friend Stephen Clayton.

I never saw him play with anyone but his great and behemoth drummer, Bartholomew Smith-Frost aka “Frosty.”

Further, I always remember he was barefoot, and from what I could see, his feet were really dirty (even back then, he was a stoner after my own heart).

I remember loving Michaels’ first pair of albums–Carnival of Life and Recital–after which he released Barrel, the work the artist insisted was his first real album. That is because Barrel was just Michaels and Frosty whereas the first two efforts featured the likes of studio-men Eddie Hoh and Hamilton Watt and friends.

The problem is as much as I liked Michaels and Frosty live, similarly I thought those first two albums were full of great tunes and some decent crunch and psychedelia.

The song I picked here is Streetcar which was my fave on that first Carnival of Life album.

As I was searching for Michaels information to assemble this little ditty, I did come across his website, which is kind of a hoot in a “peace and love I am a bit of a scattered stoned out hippie but that doesn’t mean I am stupid or anything” way.

Here is the link:

http://www.leemichaels.com/LeeMichaels.com/no_war.html

As they say at Penny Lane, “very strange.”

Night Music: tUnE yArDs: “Doorstep”

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Lindsay dropped this cut on my Xmas disc a couple of years back, and there is something so basic and rhythmic about it, although to be truthful, I cannot put my finger on specifically what kills me about the song.

I do think there is something hypnotic about repetition in music when pulled off right. Prince’s Purple Rain being a great example of a song that seems like the only real words are in the chorus, for example, although there is some actual substance beneath that repetitive portion of the tune that draws us in.

Much the same is this one by the tUnE yArDs (hey, that is their spelling, not mine, though I confess as a fan of e.e. cummings, I love lower case letters dominating) during which we only seem to hear the scary chorus over and over (listen carefully, cos it ain’t pretty) although the sweetness and innocence of the voice of band brain child and leader Merrill Garbus somehow transcends the ugly scene.

http://youtu.be/cbWqhITwgL0

 

 

 

 

 

I LIKE THIS SONG: Fred Eaglesmith, “Time To Get A Gun”

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Walther_P99_9x19mmI just heard this for the first time about an hour ago, and I’m smitten. It’s a part of my musical DNA bullseye.

Personal, hand made, not amateur at all, but not at all slick. Still, self aware enough that it isn’t possible to read the attitude as sincere, though there is that possibility. Singalongy, too, but fresh. Great stuff. Just don’t get a gun.

Night Music: The Beatles, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”

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One of the problems of the Beatles is that the music has been heard so often for so long that it’s hard to bring fresh ears to it. Gene’s comment about the innovations of this great hit brought me back to try to listen as if I haven’t heard it 10,000 times before.

Another issue is what mix one is actually listening to. I’m not enough of a student to talk about innovations. What I can say for sure listening to this clip is that it is a marvelously appealing concoction, that each of the instrumental lines and each of the vocal harmonies is utterly distinct and greater for being a part of the whole than notable on its own. Plus the song, as seemingly simple as it is, is really three songs in one lovely shell.

One can imagine any band taking one of the three sections and turning it into a hit pop song, but it is perhaps the schizo genius of Lennon-McCartney filtered through George Martin, with other important voices at hand, that makes this music not only simple pop but appealingly and enduringly complex.

This curiosity, with the German version of the song laid over the English lipsynch, shows that singing in one’s native tongue brings more passion (but the German version was a big hit with Germans). So there is that.

Night Music: The Replacements, “Takin’ a Ride”

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I’ve been listening recently to a set called The Replacements “The Complete Collection.” As you might imagine, it seems to have just about everything the Replacements recorded and released on lp or ep. Don’t ask me about bonus tracks or anything, the draw here seems to be all the discs in track order, from the first to the last. (If you want rarities and alt versions, check out this site.)

I remember seeing the Replacements’ first album, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, in some record store when it came out. Great title, for sure, but I’ve never owned it and didn’t get into the band until later, when everyone did. So sue me.

So the other night I was making some food and I started at the beginning. The first song on Sorry Ma is called Takin’ a Ride, and it is mind blowing. First of all, it’s fast. The drums hurtle right at you and the guitars pizzicato and roar and then pulsate like a siren, while Westerberg seems determined to say it as plainly and as quickly as he is able. The effect is transfixing, even if his voice sounds a little like a box being crushed.

This is a tune that starts out sounding like the Clash, chugs like Blue Oyster Cult, suddenly becomes vintage Modern Lovers, embraces the Heartbreakers, and then explodes with some of that good regular rock music from the 70s that bubbles out of the gutter and reaches greedily for the bright lights. What teenage boys in suburbia dream of instead of disco. For a bunch of goofball fuckups, this is some powerfully ambitious songmaking. Tommy was only 14 at the time. Maybe they didn’t know any better.

And it seems like every song on this album is like this, a million ideas and sounds, all of them played as hard as they can, as if this was their last chance. Their only chance. Maybe because it almost was.

PS. One thing about the (digital) boxed set is that it sounds great. YouTube is not nearly as alive. I’m assuming the masters were cleaned and remixed, but in fact after a little digging around it doesn’t seem like much push was put behind this. Whatever. I have it streaming on Google Music All Access, and it’s getting plenty of play in my house. The Replacements albums I did own, Let it Be, Pleased to Meet Me, All Shook Down, came out during my cassette years. Ugh.

Night Music: Ben Harper, “Get It Like You Like It”

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Once again, I found myself listening to KTKE the other day when this Ben Harper song came on. Only, I did not realize it was Ben Harper, sounding to me like some kind of cross between Prince’s Raspberry Beret and anything out of the Band’s catalog.

Harper is so interesting.

Clearly, he is a killer guitar player, and has so many influences that drive his music which I think is the result of exploration of whatever groove he is feeling as anything. And, I guess that is a good thing.

 

 

Night Music: Blood Sweat and Tears, “I Can’t Quit Her”

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Talking about great first albums that dwarf everything that came after, the story of Blood Sweat and Tears is a good one.

Al Kooper and Steve Katz played together in the Blues Project. Kooper, known for going electric with Dylan and producing Hendrix and playing on Let it Bleed with the Stones, was something of a quiet star. He wanted to start a jazz-rock fusion band before that was really a thing. Blood Sweat and Tears was to be his band, named after a Johnny Cash album, for some incongruent reason.

But the better point is that these musicians, working only a few years after the Beatles and Motown and others launched the brave new world of modern pop, rock and soul music that was both fantastically popular and often formally ambitious, were trying to take it up another notch. Could they make music that incorporated blues sounds, pop song structures, horn parts and maybe even strings, plus backwards masking when it worked, to make pop music?

The band’s first album, The Child is the Father to the Man, has fantastic cover art. It also meets the challenge in spades. It is an album full of improbable pop hits, though it was slow to catch on despite the band’s pedigree and the attention it garnered even before its music had been heard.

But even after its minor success, the band thought Kooper’s voice, which I think is an major asset, was not that exact. Which is also true. So they canned him, even though he was the band’s leader. They offered him the keyboard job. I’m sure he cursed. And after that Blood Sweat and Tears were dead to me.

But for one album this improbable ensemble really nailed it.