This is a Modern English pop song, but it’s apocalyptic enough to raise questions.
Pop!
Category Archives: night music
Night Music: X, “Breathless”
The one cover song on X’s fourth album, New Fun In The New World, is their version of Otis Blackwell’s tune Breathless.
Breathless was a giant hit for Jerry Lee Lewis. One of my favorite songs of his.
But Breathless was also the name of Jean Luc Godard’s first feature.
And was also the name of a sort of remake by the once underground filmmaker Jim McBride, who turned a film about an American girl in Paris loving a French gangster into a film about a French girl in LA loving an American gangster.
X did the cover for the money and promotion, but as you can see in the clip, they perform it brilliantly. And differently. And this one of the great rock songs, no matter whose version you hear.
But we’ve opened up a can of it here. Godard meets McBride. Blackwell meets Jerry Lee Lewis meets X.
There is more to be said.
Night Music: X, “The Hungry Wolf”
I could write about the way John Doe and Exene Cervenka fuse metaphor with rhythm in changing ways. And the way X’s songs always seem to approach pop rhythms or melodies, but then back off, chopping off the part that’s easily likeable and giving their energy to the part that’s different. But I don’t have to. Listen.
From Under the Big Black Sun, which they were playing in Soho tonight.
Night Music: X, “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline”
No other band ever sounded like X.
They’re doing that thing this weekend, where a band plays multiple nights of shows at a venue, each night playing one of their albums in its entirety. Johnny Hit and Run Pauline is from their first elpee, Los Angeles.
Night Music: Jake Bugg, “Trouble Town”
THere’s a new English police series on Netflix which got some rave reviews this week. Called Happy Valley, it’s the story of an older woman who is the sergeant in a provincial police station in a town in Yorkshire. The title is ironic, but the drama mixes the ups and downs of family life and the dark side of the town in a pretty compelling way. Nothing radically new, but very nicely acted, written and done.
And the theme song is Jake Bugg from a few years ago. Timeless as folk.
Night Music: Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Burn It Down”
I loved this song. Bought the UK single for beaucoup dollars, and played the crap out of it. For me, this was Dexy’s. Enjoy the video:
The notable aspect, of course, apart from the poetic intonations, are the cheesy horn parts. The English loved these cheesy horn parts, which were more beacons than swing items, which I attribute to the popular preference for disco beats above all others.
In any case, Dexy’s made much more pandering music later. Read more Brendan Behan and all is good.
I mean you.
Night Music: The Chordettes, “Mr. Sandman”
Broken link fixed. Meaningful thoughts excised. I really like this song.
Night Music: Chuck Berry, “Johhny B. Goode”
The question about what makes a great song is complicated by all sorts of contingencies.
But what makes the Ur songs of rock Ur are their, um, Ur-ness.
There is no rock song that rings all the bells as much as Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode.
I can argue that he wrote better songs (how about Carol? Back in the USA? Maybelline?), but Johnny B. Goode has a great beat, a good hook, and is about inventing the music. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s catchy.
Johnny B. Goode kills.
Night Music: The Impressions, “Gypsy Woman”
I had this piece in my head when back a few weeks ago when we were discussing those lost years of the 60’s, btween Elvis and the Beatles, which as Gene noted were not quite so lost if you knew where to look and listen.
I do confess that Top 40 and pop, and the Four Seasons and then the Beachboys ruled the airwaves in my bedroom during that time. Those were also the days of Bobbys Vee and Rydel and Vinton, all of whom were safer than Elvis, let alone Little Richard, and well, in 1961, When Gypsy Woman was released, I was still just 9 (didn’t hit 10 till the end of October).
I do confess to liking Vee’s Take Good Care of My Baby, and the truth is by then the Elvis who released tunes like Return to Sender bore very little resemblance to the bluesy guy who covered That’s Alright Mama so wonderfully during the Sun sessions.
Though I am sure there were a myriad of songs in between Peggy Sue, which really triggered my consciousness and subsequent love for rock’n’roll, and Gypsy Woman, somehow with each I remember thinking at first listen, “man, how could anything sound so good?”
So here it is, with greats Curtis Mayfield (who penned the tune) and Jerry Butler leading the charge.
Swear. I’ll be back soon. More tunes festering, and the “What makes a great song?” issue is something I tried to tackle almost a year ago but it went nowhere (lots of words, little point).
Night Music: Modestep, “Another Day”
I wasn’t going to dwell on dubstep because I thought I had a simple point to make about it. But this turned up tonight and it is such a crazy hash of rockish ideas and this other music, it seemed worth passing it along. For the video, for the most part, though it is the way it comments on the music and vice versa that is of interest.
Isn’t it priceless how the hero’s dream is to play guitar in a rock band, but the track makes no attempt to simulate that sound or culture. Just the story.
One of the immutable structures of dubstep is called the drop. This is when the music, in this case the r+b groove singing about Another Day, starts to get a little discombobulated. The pace hurries, the sound starts to disintegrate, and when the drop comes the sound becomes massive and sawing or seething. For a while. And then you’re back to the easy groove (or abstract atmospherics) that started the whole thing, until it happens all over again later.