Category Archives: I Like This Song

Night Music: Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

by

As a student of literature, I was always struck by the function of the spice cake in Marcel Proust’s Remembrances of Things Past .

The whole thing is framed around Swann, the main character, taking a bite out of a piece of spice cake that reminds him of cake of his youth.

This olfactory experience brings Swann back to his childhood, and that becomes the vehicle for moving forward with the whole story of Swann’s experience.

Well, Peter putting up Freddy Fender totally tripped the musical spice cake in me, reminding me of my favorite Fender tune, Wasted Days and Wasted Nights. Though the version I favor is from Doug Sahm’s wonderful, The Return of Doug Saldana.

Sahm, leader of the super hippie trippy Sir Douglas Quintet, always had his finger on some kind of musical pulse, with his band kicking out some really great songs. She’s About a Mover,  Rain, and Mendocino were all fine radio tunes with a Tejano twist that complemented the psychadelic sounds of the time.

With Doug Saldana, Sahm did move back to the roots music of his youth in a really solid work.

And, well, this version of Fender’s tune is as rocking and soulful as can be.

So, on this Thanksgiving day, grab your spice cake, or turkey, or yams, or whatever and have a taste of some ear candy.

 

Night Music: Oh Lucky Man!

by

I kind of get a kick out of those Sprint commercials with James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell.

I have always been a fan of McDowell’s since I saw his first film, Lindsay Anderson’s IF, and Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is my all time favorite movie (though in fairness, it is tied with Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game).

Anyway, seeing the commercial usually reminds me of A Clockwork Orange , but the other day I found myself thinking about Anderson’s brilliant sort of sequel to IF, his film Oh Lucky Man!

Oh Lucky Man!  shows us McDowell’s IF character Mick Travis a few years later, giving a treatise on capitalism, life, death, and existence in a sort of comedic dramatic epic form that is also Zen.

If nothing else, the story is fascinating (it also really needs a couple of viewings).

Anyway, the soundtrack to Oh Lucky Man! was written by Alan Price, the keyboardist/songwriter of the Animals, the great British blues-pop band, who not only featured Eric Burdon, but whose bass player, Chas Chandler, is credited with “discovering” Jimi Hendrix.

Price wrote a fabulous soundtrack to the movie, bookended by one version of the title track for the opening credits,

and then a second version that serves as the closing credits.

Just a great cut. And, now I will have to dig up my old VHS of the movie and watch it again. Hell, maybe I will even buy it on DVD!

Night Music: Tiki Brothers, “Ocean—Thank You Lou Reed”

by

My buddies the Tiki Brothers play a lot of water and beach themed tunes. They started out playing covers, lots of novelty tunes (Pipeline anyone?) a few years ago and at one of their early shows at the Steinhof Cafe, a bar up the road from my house, they played a gorgeous non-novelty song about the sea that stately-sloshed it’s way up the bank and back down the beach again, with a long inevitable build of tension and melody and determination. These are the not coincidentally the characteristics that, for me, dominate Lou Reed’s song writing. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he wrote this late Velvet Underground song that I didn’t know, called “Ocean,” which I’d surely heard because it was on the Velvet’s big commercial move, Loaded. (The link here is to the demo version, which features John Cale on organ and wasn’t on the released elpee.)

Walker, the Tiki’s bassist, sent me a recording today. It’s Ocean, the Lou Reed song, only with a kind of righteous poem dedicated to Lou Reed laid on top by the Tiki’s vocalis/mandolin player, Buck, extemporaneously I’m told. And like the original it starts quiet and builds into something of a roiling swamp of tone poem and tribute and something a little lovely and oddly familiar with Lou. It’s recorded live in the rehearsal studio so the balance and mix isn’t always perfect, but that’s okay. It builds to something I thought worth sharing.

Ocean–Thank You Lou Reed, by the Tiki Brothers.

louandlaurie-southfork Ps. I went looking for a picture of Lou Reed at the beach, maybe doing tai chi or working on his tan, but this was the closest I could find.

Night Music: Gene McCaffrey, “This is the End”

by

My buddy Gene wrote this song, and with each iteration he raises the level of the vocals and the cleanness of the mix. Which is good. But the reason to love this song are the propulsive guitars and the rock solid drums. This thing kicks from the stall to the cleaning stall and probably even to the sleeping stall (I’m borrowing my daughter’s horse vocab here).

A metaphor lives forever.

http://www.reverbnation.com/bluegene/song/19254234-this-is-the-end

Night Music: The Kinks, “Berkeley Mews”

by

I’ve been reading Zadie Smith’s novel NW, which is set in Willesden, in NW London, which reminded me of the Kinks corny country song, “Willesden Green,” and which I always imagined (because I didn’t look it up) as the locale for Village Green Preservation Society. (It turns out that isn’t true, the Village Green is really in the country, call it Devon.) Willesden is a part of London that was once kind of middle class, but is now a hodge podge of old timers and immigrants, some middle class and lots of poor. Smith’s story, similar to her fantastic first novel, “White Teeth,” is about how the old ways have been overcome by the new ways, just like the Kinks were saying 35 years ago.

Well, Chapter 6 of NW starts: “We are the village green preservation society…” and proceeds until its end as a collage of Kinks lyrics, which got me to thinking of this song, Berkeley Mews, which I know from the odds and sods and some hits compilation double elpee, The Kinks Kronikles. I’ve always liked the tempo changes and the way that it rocks when it wants to, plus the catchy lyric, “I stagger through your shitty dining room, but I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you.” Still, it’s certainly of the post-rock Kinks era.

Night Music: Joe Ely, “Musta Notta Gotta Lotta (Sleep Last Night)”

by

Somebody in the Greenwich Village scene turned me onto Joe Ely, a Texas songwriter, and then the Clash embraced him, too. It was a reminder that punk was about rock and roll, and that roots music (what demographers call Americana today and what back then we probably called, for example, Texas rock) is a big part of that. Ely was also a member of what was, until their unreleased album was released, a legendary Texas band called the Flatlanders, but in 1978 it was his solo energy and a set of excellent songs that propelled his rocket to stardom.

Night Music: The Damned, “Neat Neat Neat”

by

I never became a Damned fan, meaning I never bought an album, but at the point in 1977 when Neat Neat Neat and New Rose came out on 45 every bit of the new music coming from England was like discovering there were new flavors to be savored. Who knew the elements of music could be rearranged in such pleasing yet odd ways?

Night Music: Ellie Goulding, “Burn”

by

We hear a lot of my daughter’s music around the house these days, and she plays no song more often than the new one from Ellie Goulding. Goulding is English, kind of a folkie singer-songwriter who got mixed up with dubstep and Skrillex, grew pop ambitions, and whose songs marry a big drum sound with colorful synths and front her wispy soft voice seducing with sneaky melodies. Like in much of the music world these days, credits on the tunes are something of a mashup of original writer, producer, fixer writers, Ellie and her friends. This is the pop music machine, and Burn is her first single to reach number one on the British pop charts, but I like her music. It is defined by her qualities and talents. What got me thinking about it today was the MGMT album, which sounds like it should be pop music, maybe it wants to be pop music, but isn’t at all poppy. Maybe MGMT, who started out as popmeisters, have withdrawn, but it sure feels like these guys should be marrying whatever other ambitions they have with their skill making popular sounds. Making pop noise without pop pleasing form (and, importantly, craft) seems like a waste. Burn is certainly not a waste and has a big pop form, and while that commerciality may be suspect, I really like the way the production’s prettiness turns anthemic, and when the big drums pound toward the end my heart lifts in a good way.