Category Archives: night music

Night Music: The Mekons, “Where Were You?”

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From 1978. Over too soon.

Notes: I have this song on an album called Where Were You? Hen’s Teeth and other Lost Fragments of Popular Colture, which collects early Mekons’ and oddments. But it turns out Where Were You? was written about at Aquarium Drunkard a few weeks ago, by a guy with a potent thirst for mythologizing. And Googling landed me on a story about this song on Popmatters, about five years ago.

Night Music: Aztec Camera, “Oblivious”

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The 80s were a dark time for rock, what with hair metal and the extremism of a lot of hard core and so much poppy hit mongering by everyone else. Nena released her album early in the year. Metallica fired Dave Mustaine. Thin Lizzy was done with Phil Linott. There was Flashdance and Men At Work. Punch the Clock was Elvis Costello’s album, which epitomized the slough of despond. Bob Dylan’s Infidels flooded it. This was a year of soft hits, UB40 broke big, and forgettable late albums by punk bands trying to find a new way. Oh, and Joe Strummer fired Mick Jones. Dark.

The big moment in music in 1983 came when Marvin Gaye sang the National Anthem at the NBA All Star Game. But that’s a clip for another day.

I was thinking about what I was listening to in the time My Struggle: Book 1
takes place. Karl Ove is big on Echo and the Bunnymen, but I was not. A record I listened to a lot was by the Scottish band Aztec Camera. Roddy Frame, the lead guitarist and singer, could play, and he wrote at least an album’s worth of good songs. This was the hit, though I don’t think it had much presence in the states.

Hate to burden the night music listeners with additional tracks, but reading some stuff about Frame and Aztec Camera (on Wikipedia) revealed two facts: He used a different guitar on every song on Hard Land, Hard Rain. And, on the song Orchid Girl, a very nicely crafted song on a grand cliche, he tried to merge the style of the jazz guitar great Wes Montgomery with that of Joe Strummer. That’s a worthy project. How’d he do?

I would say that he’s great with words, ideas? Well, he’s a really good guitarist. It all works on Oblivious, which should be remembered.

Night Music: Iggy Pop, “Lust for Life”

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I think of this song a lot, and that’s n0t a gimmick.

I’ve been reading the novel My Struggle, and the fictional young Karl Ove Knaussgard (not the writer, who shares his lead character’s name), is left alone for the weekend by his father. The year is 1985. On the first night alone he eats a lot of shrimp, drinks some beers, and then walks the street of his town listening to Iggy’s Lust for Life and one of the later Roxy Music albums on his Walkman. He marvels that with the music filling his head the sights he sees, the people working in stores and driving in cars, seem to be in an entirely different world than the one he’s living in. Later on that night, after perhaps a few too many more beers, he falls in the love in an earthshaking way with Hanne, a Christian girl who says she cannot fall in love with him. It is one of the three or four real loves, he recognizes, that he will have in his life.

The novel I cannot recommend highly enough. The song is a classic, but one that has become a little bit like wallpaper. Is it a car commercial? Or from a hip film? Or from a not so hip film? This is a song that has been iconized and exploited beyond redemption. But if you can cut through all that and turn it up, you will be awed. (This clip has the wackly poetic lyrics, too, which are a nice reminder of how loopy a great song can be. Just like hypnotizing chickens.)

 

Night Music: Stars “Your Ex Lover is Dead”

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While the main reason I started this site was to talk to my friends, the other was to provoke my deep thoughts about the music I loved.

I haven’t done as much of that as I expected, because (surprise), that’s hard work and takes time that isn’t compensated.

But I love the first few Stars albums, and I like the later ones. This is a fine rock art band trying to find the sweet spot, that is get popular, and I find it cool how they’ve made a career without actually making that happen.

So, for now, I offer my first Stars post. There will be more:

Night Music: Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

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A movie about Jimi Hendrix came out this past week, and doesn’t seem to be making a lot of noise. It was written and directed by John Ridley, who wrote 12 Years a Slave, but was made without the cooperation of the Hendrix heirs, and they withheld song rights.

I haven’t seen it, so no comment on how you make a Hendrix in 1967 movie without Purple Haze, but I have seen this clip of a show in London when Hendrix and the Experience started the show with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, notable because John Lennon and Paul McCartney were sitting in the front row.

Night Music: Psychedelic Furs, “We Love You”

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Gene lumped the Smith’s with the Psychedelic Furs and Tears for Fears earlier today, which is maybe in the right time frame. Heck, could be the same cultural moment, but for me it’s all different.

I liked the beginning Psychedelic Furs music. I never saw them, but Richard Butler was a personality like Morrisey, with more of an attachment to Johnny Rotten. That isn’t bad.  And the Furs played rock music.

In other words, I own Psychedelic Furs vinyl, but not vinyl of the Smiths. I’m not sure that means anything, but it tells me what I was thinking at the time.

Today, the Furs still sound good, kind of like an Englishy Strokes. Lots of chops, lots of personality, but also lots of derivation. In any case, this is fun.