Category Archives: night music

Night Music Too: Bjork, “My Favorite Things”

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Movie clips are a problem, of course. Without the context, does it mean anything?

Lars Van Trier is one of my favorite directors, and Bjork has long been my favorite Icelandic vocalist. Put 1 and 1 together and you get way more than two. Though I think you’ll have to watch Dancer in the Dark to see what I’m getting at.

For now, this is a disembodied clip of a singular singer coping in a musical she wishes she’d never signed up for. Still, she shines, and it isn’t all Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Night Music: Dead Man’s Bones, “Pa Pa Power”

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This doesn’t seem to be a version of Pa Pa Power that Sweet Little Demons’ guitarist Lydia Night played on. There is no guitar here. Instead it is an epic music video, longer I think than Scorsese’s Thriller for Michael Jackson, featuring the band of actor Ryan Gosling performing at a nursing home or extended care facility, with a choir of children singing. And everybody eventually dances, too.

There is even a segment with puppets in a field in the middle, kind of like Children of the Corn, but only one child and not all that scary.

The comments on Youtube are full of people raving about the genius of Gosling, asking how could any one person be so talented. That wasn’t my reaction, but at the same time I kind of admire him for embracing (in the other Dead Man’s Bones songs and videos, too) an aesthetic of messy edges and crepuscular whimsey. He could have done many things better that would have been far worse.

Night Music: The Fleshtones, “American Beat”

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These guys never broke out in any meaningful way, but in those golden days of rock ‘n’ roll they were soldiers on the front line. I loved this song, played this single constantly for a while, because it was so clued in to all the different sounds we rocked to. Anthemic without being bossy, devoted without being chaste.

Night Music: The Hombres, “Hey Little Girl”

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You tell me the year. The We Are Family Pirates were playing the Orioles in the World Series. I was working for a film distribution company, specializing in arty European movies. We had a hit with a bit of sexploitation called Wifemistress, about (if I’m remembering correctly) an Italian revolutionary who had to go in hiding in a barn across from his old apartment, and thus witnesses his beautiful wife’s liberation, after which she chooses to bed many of his old foes and friends. Laura Antonelli was brilliant as, The Wifemistress.

On this particular October day, it seems that we had a routing problem with the prints of the film, and the only way to get a copy of the movie to the theater in Old Roslyn, on Long Island, for its Friday opening, was for me to personally drive to Harrisburg and pick up the print after the last show on Thursday night, then drive back and deliver the print on LI when the theater opened the next morning.

I listened to the World Series on the radio that night, drove through the PA night past Three Mile Island, which had only recently almost gone China Syndrome, stayed in a cheapo motel somewhere, and then hit Long Island the next morning, delivering the print in time for them to begin their regular schedule. Success!

hombres_picThere was a record store in Old Roslyn, and it was there I found a copy of the Hombres’ Let It All Hang Out. I bought it because of the cover photo, which shows the band dressed in serapes and those big round Mexican hats, hanging out around a dumpster. Also, probably because it was cheap. Maybe fifty cents or a buck. The revelation came when I got home.

This was cheese. These guys were going for the novelty hits, the way, let’s say Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs did, but they were just as tight and fun as Sam et al were. This was cheese with chops. The bottom line was, if you take off from this post and play any of the songs on the elpee, including the hit, Let it All Hang Out, or the cover of Lee Dorsey’s Ya Ya, or whatever, you will be charmed. By an album that coughed up one semi hit and laid down a winning mix of New Orleans/Memphis style rock roots tunes and soul.

I give you Hey Little Girl, tonight, which reflects the band’s blue-eyed soul roots, an abiding interest in the rhythm part of I Fought the Law, and a video of ace go-go dancing. The band’s organist was brother to the bass player in the Box Tops, for what that’s worth. Memphis is a small town it seems. Let It All Hang Out.

Night Music: The Strokes, “Someday”

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When we first heard the Strokes they sounded like guys glomming on to all that was already good about rock ‘n’ roll. But now, many years later, they sound a little like the last breath of fresh rock ‘n’ roll. I’m not sure what the real context is, today, but this was a band that always sounded like they were ready for pleasure. That is a very good quality.