Category Archives: song of the week

Song of the Week – Atomic Bomb, William Onyeabor

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A few years ago a popular documentary was released called Searching for Sugarman. It told the story of an American musician named Sixto Rodriguez who was very popular in South Africa. The Detroit based Rodriguez — whose signature song was called “Sugar Man” — released a couple of albums in the early 70s that received little recognition before he retired from music. In South Africa he was rumored dead but some fans decided to try to find him to determine if the rumor was true. The rest is history.

Another artist, William Onyeabor, has a story with similarities to Rodriguez. The Nigerian born Onyeabor released a series of serious funk records between the mid 70s to mid 80s. His eight albums languished in obscurity after Onyeabor left the music industry and became a devoted born again Christian. A parallel with Rodriguez is that his fans were left with little idea where he was or how to reach him.

In 2013, Talking Head David Byrne secured the rights to reissue some of Onyeabor’s music on his Luaka Bop label on a compilation called Who is William Onyeabor?. That’s where I discovered today’s SotW, “Atomic Bomb.”

The song instantly finds a groove that ambles along for its full 8 minutes. At various points along the way it is punctuated with tastful guitar licks and the early synthesizer noodlings that Onyeabor was famous for – and would later be an important ingredient that Bernie Worrell brought to Stop Making Sense era Talking Heads music. I pay no attention to the mildly suggestive lyrics, but I do like the sound of the background singers’ call and response as well as their “atomic bomb” chant in the chorus.

A loose collective of alt rock artists formed in 2014 to perform Onyeabor’s music under the name Atomic Bomb. According to Wikipedia the group consists of:

“… music director Ahmed Gallab and his band Sinkane (composed of Jason Trammell on drums, Ish Montgomery on bass and Jonny Lam on guitar), Alexis Taylor (of Hot Chip), Pat Mahoney (of LCD Soundsystem), Money Mark (of the Beastie Boys) Lekan Babalola and Jas Walton (of Antibalas).

The group has also featured special guests including David Byrne (of Talking Heads) Damon Albarn (of Blur), the Lijadu Sisters, Pharoah Sanders, Jamie Lidell, Joshua Redman, Kele Okereke (of Bloc Party), Luke Jenner (of The Rapture), Ghostpoet, Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange / Lightspeed Champion), Wally DeBacker (Gotye), Young Fathers, Mahotella Queens, Andrew Ashong, Zap Mama, Charles Lloyd, Cheikh Lô, Peaking Lights, David Murray, Para One, Mike Floss, Moses Sumney, Sarah Jones, and Green Gartside.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – The Bridge, Sonny Rollins

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In one of the most humble acts in human history, Sonny Rollins interrupted his lucrative career as a jazz saxophonist in order to hone his craft more fully. Even though he was already well established in the jazz circles – having played with luminaries such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, and recorded more than 20 albums – in 1959, at the tender age of 29, he nevertheless decided he needed to drop out of the scene and woodshed in order to take his game to the next level. He spent the next three years in relative seclusion, practicing his playing under New York’s Williamsburg Bridge for most of each day, in all kinds of weather and through all four seasons.

In April 2015, Rollins told the New York Times:

“The problem was that I had no place to practice. My neighbor on Grand Street was the drummer Frankie Dunlop, and his wife was pregnant. The horn I’m playing, it’s loud. I felt really guilty. One day I was on Delancey Street, and I walked up the steps to the Williamsburg Bridge and came to this big expanse. Nobody was there, and it was beautiful.”

He returned in 1962 with his album titled The Bridge. Today’s SotW is the title song from that album.

In an article from the AV Club, Joseph Heller describes the beauty of the piece:

Like a runaway daydream, “The Bridge” is both frenetic and meditative, the sound of a scattered mind exulting in its own agility. Hall and Rollins trade solos like sparring tides; the rhythm section of bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Ben Riley lock into a fleet, liquid-tempo syncopation. But rather than trying to hop on the bandwagon of free-jazz abstraction, the Rollins composition reflects a very real set of coordinates in emotional space-time: when he stood below that bridge, day after day for months on end, pouring out his soul. What it must have been like to be a random passerby during those years, hearing the song’s embryonic skronk slowly coagulate into a masterpiece.

Indeed!

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Strawberry Letter 23, Brothers Johnson; Inspiration Information, Shuggie Otis

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One of the greatest albums you probably never heard is Inspiration Information by Shuggie Otis. If you’re a fan of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and the great Stevie Wonder albums of the 70s (Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, Songs in the Key of Life, whew!) you must listen to Inspiration Information. You will love it.

Shuggie is the son of R&B pioneer Johnny Otis who was sometimes called the Godfather of R&B because of his Zelig like appearances in the careers and recordings of most of the giants of the genre.

Shuggie is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his prowess on guitar. That led him to work with Al Kooper on Kooper Session (another album worth searching out) that was the follow up to the original Super Session with Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield, and Frank Zappa on Hot Rats as a 16 year old.

His second solo album – Freedom Flight (1971) – contained the great “Strawberry Flight 23” that was covered by the Brothers Johnson in 1977 and ran up the Billboard Hot 100 all the way to #5, #1 on the Soul charts.

Inspiration Information was released in 1974. Like Stevie Wonder of that era, Otis adopted a DIY ethic and played almost every instrument on the record himself. Musically, the album was a bit ahead of its time with the use of a Rhythm King analog drum machine. The overall effect is to station him as the missing link between Hendrix (or maybe Sly Stone) and Prince.

The title song was released as a single but only touched #56 on the R&B charts and never scared the pop charts. The album sales were poor too, so Epic dropped Otis who went dark for most of the next 40 years.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Darling Be Home Soon, Joe Cocker

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mpw-28919John Sebastian wrote “Darling Be Home Soon” for the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1966 film You’re a Big Boy Now, while still with The Lovin’ Spoonful.

“Darling…” is very sentimental which is typical of so many other Sebastian compositions. It was one of five songs Sebastian played at his unscheduled performance at Woodstock.

The Lovin’ Spoonful version is terrific but Joe Cocker did it one better. He ditched the sappy strings for a more organic musical arrangement (including a great piano part) and gave it a gospel feel, all without losing the earnest sentiment of the original.

The lyric is a love letter to a dear one that is away and sorely missed. This has got to be the only song in rock history that would attempt a rhyme like “dawdled” and “toddled.” A bit twee, but perfect for the emotion of the song.

The melodic structure of the composition is flexible enough to have a different form in each of the verses. For instance, in the first verse the last two lines end in rhymes. In the second verse the last three lines rhyme. In the final, shortened verse, there is no rhyme for the final line.

Although I chose to present the Cocker version to you, check out the Lovin’ Spoonful original too.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – I Can Help, Billy Swan

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Someone recently posted a list of Tom Petty’s favorite songs as enumerated in an appendix to his biography. I checked it out and was surprised by one of his selections – “I Can Help” by Billy Swan. Just last week he included the song in the playlist for his SiriusXM radio show, Buried Treasures. Clearly he’s fond of this song.

For me, the 1974 hit is a reminder of my high school days, driving around town, listening to AM radio, which is pretty much all most cars had back then.

It’s a slight song, both lyrically and musically, but it’s also very catchy — especially its use of those distinctive, alternating Farfisa organ chords over the rockabilly shuffle. Many articles claim the organ Swan used was a wedding gift to him from Kris Kristofferson and (then wife) Rita Coolidge. But in a 2007 article I found, Swan told interviewer Richard Buskin that the gift organ was used to write the song and produce a demo, but was not the one he used on the commercially released recording.

Although “I Can Help” was Swan’s only hit as a performer, he had earlier success in the music business. He wrote “Lover Please” that was a top 10 recording in 1962 for Clyde McPhatter, who had left the Drifters in 1954 after serving a stint in the Army.

As a producer, he hit in 1969 with Tony Joe White’s Southern cult classic “Polk Salad Annie.” As an instrumentalist, he was a touring musician in bands for Kristofferson, Kinky Friedman and Billy Joe Shaver.

Swan says he wrote “I Can Help” in just 20 minutes. More than 40 years later, that 20 minutes of inspiration is still satisfying listeners.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – I Got You, Split Enz

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One of my favorite bands of the 80s and 90s was Australia’s Crowded House, the band founded in 1984 by Neil Finn. If you’ve never heard Woodface (1991) in its entirety, check it out. It is a flawless record.

So naturally, I’ve also been interested in the earlier music Finn made with his brother Tim in New Zealand’s Split Enz. That band started in the late 70s and managed to release about nine albums before calling it quits. The most successful was True Colors (1980) that contained their biggest hit – today’s SotW – “I Got You.”

Initially the band thought “Shark Attack” was the album’s most likely hit, so they made it the lead track, followed by “I Got You.” But when “I Got You” took off, they repressed the record with the order of the two songs reversed.

The production of the song is very much of its time (early 80s) but it has a memorable, singable chorus that is timeless.

I don’t know why sometimes I get frightened
You can see my eyes, you can tell that I’m not lyin’
I don’t know why sometimes I get frightened
You can see my eyes, you can tell me you’re not cryin’

They album made other breakthroughs as well. It may have been the first vinyl pressing to be laser etched. Very cool and collectible.

split-enz-etched

The cover was also released with a single graphic design but in nine different color combinations — yellow and blue, red and green, purple and yellow, blue and orange, yellow and red, lime green and pink, hot purple and burnt orange, and gold and platinum.

split-enz-covers

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Cruel Girl, Red Button

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The Red Button is an LA based power pop duo of Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. So far, they’ve only released two albums – She’s About to Cross My Mind (2007) and As Far As Yesterday Goes (2011). Even though both have received wide acclaim in power pop circles, you still probably never heard of them.

I know about them because I’m a regular listener to Little Steve’s Underground Garage on SiriusXM. That channel plays a song off the first album called “Cruel Girl” that is today’s SotW.

In 2007, the Underground Garage chose it as one of their weekly “coolest songs in the world.”

“Cruel Girl” has an authentic 60s garage pop sound — retro chiming guitars, harmony vocals and an instantly catchy melody. It could be a missing song from the catalog of The Beatles, Beau Brummels or maybe Badfinger. It’s anyone’s guess. The video for the song captures the era beautifully – all things British, teeming with miniskirts and go-go boots.

According to their official website, Swirsky has been a successful songwriter for other artists (“Instant Pleasure” for Rufus Wainwright, “Love is a Beautiful Thing” for Al Green and the Grammy nominated “Tell it to My Heart” for Taylor Dayne) while Ruekberg composed the soundtrack for the cult classic Dummy.

On a side note, Swirsky is also a baseball fan, writer and memorabilia collector. He owns the infamous ball that slipped through Bill Buckner’s legs and caused almost 20 more years of pain for Red Sox fans (myself included) and the last know bottle of bubbly that the error left unopened that season.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Fifty Mission Cap, The Tragically Hip

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The Tragically Hip is a band that is yuuuge in Canada but not so well known below the border, here in the US (except for a few spots like upstate New York). There are other acts in that category — Sloan comes to mind – but none as well loved as The Hip. They write and perform their own brand of hard rock anthems.

I recently stumbled across an article in the New Yorker that covered the band’s farewell tour (New Yorker – Canada’s Biggest Rock Band Say a Dramatic Goodbye). Apparently the band’s lead singer, Gord Downie, has a particularly nasty, terminal brain tumor known medically as glioblastoma.

Hearing about this prompted me to write this long overdue post on my favorite song by The Hip, “Fifty Mission Cap.”

This song rocks! But one of the reasons I’ve always liked it so much is because it has such an interesting back story. It all starts with a card.

bill-barilko-1951-52-parkhurst

The verse tells the story of Bill Barilko, the hockey player that scored the winning goal to give the Toronto Maple Leafs the Stanley Cup in 1951. A few months later, Barilko was on his way to a fishing trip when his private plane crashed and he went missing. Some Leafs fans felt this set off a curse. Some believed they couldn’t win another Cup until his body was found. Others said his body wouldn’t be found until they won another Cup.

In April 1962 the Leafs won their next Stanley Cup. About 2 months later Barilko’s remains were finally discovered about 60 miles from the place his plane was thought to have crashed.

So what has any of this got to do with a “fifty mission cap?”

I found the answer to that at a fan website called The Hip Museum, dedicated to “the people, places and poetry found in the music of The Tragically Hip. You will find listed here all of the references that make The Hip’s music so entertaining and enriching.”

HOGAN'S HEROES Bob Crane as Colonel Robert E. Hogan John Banner as Sergeant Hans Georg Schultz © TV Land, a business unit of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc.

HOGAN’S HEROES
Bob Crane as Colonel Robert E. Hogan

It turns out Gord wanted to make the story a little more interesting so he melded it with the legend of the WWII fifty mission cap. Pilots in the war were issued caps that they wore under headphones when flying bombing missions. Over the course of 50 missions (if you were lucky enough to survive that many) the caps would become crushed. This was such a status symbol that pilots would intentionally break them in to achieve “the look.” I’ll let The Hip Museum take it from here, quoting Cory Graff of the Seattle Museum of Flight:

“But here’s the little detail that might be important to part of the song… It was cool to have the sides of your hat all smashed. But it was very uncool to have the front droop down or collapse. As a result, many of these guys put in a piece of cardboard or a playing card on the inside in the front to keep it all going upward. So this hockey card (doing a bit of time travel I guess) is worked into the front of the 50 mission cap as a stiffener.”

BTW, if you’re wondering, a fifty mission cap looks like the one Colonel Hogan (Bob Crane) wore in Hogan’s Heroes.

I hope this post turns a few more Americans onto one of Canada’s best kept secrets.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Oh Girls, Girls, The Sparkles; Girls, Iggy Pop; Girls, David Johansen; Girls, Beastie Boys

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The earliest rock and roll music dealt with a few recurring subjects – cars, fashion, school… and GIRLS!

There are a million rock songs about girls. Many call girls out by name – Gloria, Peggy Sue, etc.

Some pay homage to their geographical location.

California Girls – The Beach Boys
Italian Girls – Rod Stewart
Southern Girls – Cheap Trick
West End Girls – Pet Shop Boys

Others deal with their emotions.

Big Girls Don’t Cry – Four Seasons
Girls Just Want to Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper
Girls Talk – Elvis Costello/Dave Edmunds

Today’s post is a tribute to a few of my favorite rockers about GIRLS.

I’ll start with “Oh Girls, Girls” by a Texas based garage band called The Sparkles.

This hep number was released in 1966 as the b-side to “The Hip.” The vocal is awesome. The urgency borders on lecherous.

Next is Iggy Pop’s “Girls” from 1979’s New Values.

The proto punk is in form for this release which came at the peak of the punk/new wave return to the straight ahead rock ‘n roll style he pioneered with the Stooges in the late 60s.

Another punk pioneer was David Johansen, originally of the New York Dolls. He released his song about “Girls” on his self-titled solo debut in 1978.

This is another party rocker. Like all of the others, the lyrics are just an unabashed ode to a guy’s infatuation for girls of all types.

By the mid-80s, Hip Hop had worked its way into mainstream pop culture. The Beastie Boys added their “Girls” to the ongoing history of the genre.

This is typical of the Beasties goofy, humorous take on any subject they tackle.

I apologize if any of these songs come across as sexist or politically incorrect. But it’s only rock and roll and I like it.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Can’t Stand It, Wilco

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Back in the early 80s I was a fan of Uncle Tupelo – the brainchild of Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar. When they split to form new bands – Tweedy with Wilco and Farrar with Son Volt – I was going to follow both.

Since then, Tweedy has come out on top. Wilco has been a hugely successful, critically acclaimed band and Tweedy has had further success as a producer and collaborator.

Wilco started covering the same alt-country terrain that was staked out by Uncle Tupelo. They would eventually record the adventurous Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and other innovative albums. The bridge between was Summerteeth (1991).

On Summerteeth, the band changed their recording style from “live in the studio” to more heavy reliance on overdubs and post production. Today’s SotW is “Can’t Stand It”, the lead off track from Summerteeth.

In fact, “Can’t Stand It” was originally recorded in a simpler form. But the record company suits at Reprise intervened and persuaded the band that it needed to be remixed to make it a more suitable single for a broader radio audience. I’ve never heard the original (I can’t believe it wasn’t included in the “expanded” reissue of Summerteeth along with the other bonus cuts) but I’ve read that they shortened the bridge and added bells. (Other than Naked Eyes version of “Always Something There To Remind Me”, who puts bells on a rock song?)

The lyrics tell the age old story of a broken relationship. This time it seems to center on the lies or misunderstandings between the couple.

The way things go
You get so low
Struggle to find your skin
Hey ho
Look out below
Your prayers will never be answered again

Phones still ring
And singers sing
Speakers are speaking in code
What now
Well anyhow
Our prayers will never be answered again

Depending on when you became aware of Wilco might affect how well you like this song. Fans of the later albums might find this too poppy. But I think the song has soul and the spirituality of the line “prayers will never be answered again.”

Enjoy… until next week.