Category Archives: song of the week

Song of the Week Revisited – Walk Away Renee & Pretty Ballerina, The Left Banke

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I learned today that Michael Brown, the initial creative force behind The Left Banke, has passed away at the young age of 65. The post below was originally published by me on April 24, 2010.

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Women have been the inspiration of love songs for as long as there’s been music. In rock music, Pattie Boyd must hold the record as the most important subject of love songs. As the wife to both George Harrison and later Eric Clapton, she is credited as the inspiration for Harrison’s “Something”, “For You Blue” and “Isn’t It a Pity”, as well as Clapton’s “Layla”, “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Wonderful Tonight”. Not a bad collection of songs.

Some would argue the next most important woman in pop songs is Renee Fladen. Renee Fladen? Who the hell is Renee Fladen? She happens to be the inspiration of today’s songs of the week, the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee” and “Pretty Ballerina”. Both were top 40 hits in the mid 60s in the genre that became known as Baroque pop or “Baroque and Roll”. (A third song, “She May Call You Up Tonight” was also written about Renee.) But back to Renee.

In an article I found on the internet, writer Tom Simon tells the story like this:

Violinist Harry Lookofsky owned a small storefront recording studio in New York City that he called World United Studios. In 1965, he gave a set of keys to his 16-year-old son, Mike Brown [real name: Mike Lookofsky], who helped out by cleaning up and occasionally sitting in as a session pianist. Mike began bringing in his teenage friends who tinkered with drums, guitars, amplifiers, the Steinway piano, and anything else they might find. Except for Mike, who had a background in classical piano, none of them were top musicians. But they could sing, especially one guy named Steve Martin.

By 1966 they started to call themselves the Left Banke. In addition to Mike and Steve, they included Rick Brand on lead guitar, Tom Finn on bass, and drummer George Cameron. Finn brought his girlfriend to the studio one day when the group had assembled for a practice session. She was a 5′ 6″ teenager with platinum blond hair. Mike Brown was infatuated with her the instant he saw her. Her name was Renee Fladen.

The group had begun recording songs, and Harry was particularly impressed with Steve Martin’s voice. Mike wrote a song about Renee. Although there was never anything between the two, Mike was fascinated by her and pictured himself standing at the corner of Hampton and Falmouth Avenues in Brooklyn with Renee, beneath the “One Way” sign. In his fantasy, he was telling her to walk away.

Harry played all the string parts on the Left Banke record Walk Away Renee. With Mike on the harpsichord and Steve Martin’s strong vocal performance, the song was a good one with a different type of sound to it. It came to be known as baroque rock, a style of music that included songs such as the Yardbirds’ For Your Love.

Harry took the song to ten different record companies before Smash Records picked it up. It entered the pop charts in the Fall of 1966 and remained there for ten weeks, peaking at number five. Early the next year the Left Banke followed up with another song written by Mike Brown called Pretty Ballerina, and it reached number fifteen…

As for Renee, she moved to Boston with her family shortly after the Left Banke recorded Walk Away Renee, and no one in the group ever saw her again.

Well, the last sentence may not be entirely true. In 2003, rock journalist Dawn Eden claimed to identify a San Francisco Bay Area classical singer and vocal teacher, Renee Fladen-Kamm as the long lost “Walk Away Renee.” Fladen-Kamm was also in a medieval English music ensemble called The Sherwood Consort. But she isn’t talking, so no one can confirm that she is in fact the Left Banke’s Renee.

In the 70s, Brown went on to form the Stories of “Brother Louie” fame, though Brown didn’t write the then controversial song about a white guy dating a black woman. A different Brown (Errol) wrote it.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Avant Gardener, Courtney Barnett

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Courtney Barnett is an Australian musician with a penchant for clever lyrics and a deadpan, Lou Reed like, vocal style. Her song “Avant Gardener” was on my list of top cuts in 2014 and is today’s SotW.

The song actually came out on a 2013 EP called How to Carve a Carrot into a Rose, but I didn’t discover it until last year.

Pitchfork named it the “Best New Track” of 2013 and describes it like this:

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“Avant Gardener” tells the story of a girl dragging her underemployed ass out of bed late on a Monday morning to try her hand at gardening– at which point she suffers a panic attack.

The scene unfolds like a dream: “Halfway down High Street, Andy looks ambivalent/ He’s probably wondering what I’m doing getting in an ambulance,” Barnett sings, her voice drifting through the lines in sweet speak-sing. “The paramedic thinks I’m clever ’cause I play guitar/ I think she’s clever ’cause she stops people dying.” They’re both right. Later, the song’s poor narrator struggles to get a good pull on her asthma inhaler. “I was never good at smoking bongs,” she confesses.

I think it was an asthma attack (she’s in a garden!), not a panic attack — thus the need for the inhaler — but close enough.

I’m pretty sure it’s Barnett that plays those angular guitar fills that sound like fingernails on a chalkboard (which is good in this setting). And just to make me like her a little bit extra, she plays left-handed.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Hey Jimi, The Dream

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As a music lover and record collector, I’m always interested in checking out the CDs and albums other people have in their homes. You know what I mean. Just like people who read; they always peruse the bookshelves when they visit someone’s home.

I’ve often thought that it would be especially interesting to browse the collections of celebrities, especially rock stars. What unusual gems were they listening to and influenced by?

I recently read an essay by Jeff Gold who runs the website Recordmecca that tells the tale of Jimi Hendrix’s record collection. Gold knows what he’s talking about – he acquired, at auction, part of the collection (the rest is on display in Seattle’s Experience Music Project Museum).

Here’s a list of some of Jimi’s discs:

Robert Johnson “King of the Delta Blues Singers”
Muddy Waters “The Real Folk Blues”
John Lee Hooker “Drifting Blues”
Wes Montgomery “A Day In The Life”
The Roland Kirk Quartet “Rip, Rig and Panic”
Ravi Shankar “India’s Master Musician” and “Portrait of a Genius”
The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Electric Ladyland”
The Dream “Get Dreamy”
Howlin Wolf “The Howlin’ Wolf Album” and “Moanin’ In The Moonlight”
Bob Dylan “Greatest Hits” and “Highway 61 Revisited”
Elmore James “Memorial Album”
James Brown “Showtime”
Clara Ward “Gospel Concert”
Acker Bilk “Lansdowne Folio”
The Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”
Various “Chicago The Blues Today” and “American Folk Blues Festival ‘66”
Bill Cosby “Revenge

Lots of blues, some jazz, rock, R&B and gospel. No surprises here. But Get Dreamy by The Dream? Now that’s something that arouses my curiosity. Here’s what Gold says about the album:

The rarest album in the bunch was “Get Dreamy” by The Dream, a 1967 LP by a Norwegian psychedelic quartet. This album featured what has to be the earliest ever Hendrix tribute, their song “Hey Jimi” (Hendrix’s debut single, “Hey Joe” was first released in December 1966.) This copy was inscribed to Jimi by Dream guitarist (and later celebrated ECM jazz guitarist) Terje Rypdal, who wrote “With all the respect we can give a fellow musician, we wrote “Hey Jimi” as a tribute to you. We hope you like it and enjoy the rest of the LP too. On behalf of the Dream, Terje Rypdal.” In 2005 I googled “Terje Rypdal” and “Jimi Hendrix” and found an interview where Rypdal mentions sending a copy of the album to Hendrix through a friend of a girlfriend of Jimi’s, but never being sure it got to him. I found an email address for his manager and sent him a message that the album had indeed found it’s way to Jimi, and got a message back that Terje was thrilled to know that Jimi had received it—and letting me know that if I ever wanted to sell it, “mail us first !!!!!” However, this one’s not going anywhere!

So let’s get to it! Today’s SotW is “Hey Jimi” by The Dream.

The Dream – Hey Jimi

Follow this link if you’re interested in reading Gold’s complete article:

Jeff Gold – Jimi Hendrix’s Record Collection

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Ten Years Gone, Led Zeppelin

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Most of you that read this weekly missive are music nerds, so you’re probably already aware that this week marks the 40th anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s classic double album Physical Graffiti.

The story of Physical Graffiti really starts in earnest in January 1974 when the band assembled at Headly Grange (the Grange), a dank 18th century English estate where the band had recorded albums starting with Led Zeppelin III, to work on some new tracks. By March they had tapes of eight very strong songs that would become enduring classics in the Zeppelin catalog. Those rough mixes were for:

• Custard Pie
• In My Time of Dying
• Trampled Under Foot
• Kashmir
• In the Light
• The Wanton Song
• Sick Again
• And today’s SotW, Ten Years Gone

When the mixes for these songs were finished over the summer, there was too much music to fit on a single album, but the band couldn’t stomach the idea of dropping any of them. So they decided to release a double album and filled it out with seven leftovers from recordings dating back as far as 1970.

But let’s get back to “Ten Years Gone.”

It has been well documented that Robert Plant’s lyric was inspired by the memory of a 10 year past relationship he had with the younger sister of the woman he was then married to.

In a 2010 article in Classic Rock magazine, the great rock critic Barney Hoskyns wrote:

The song’s feel suggests a less dramatic ‘Kashmir’, with another airy dose of mysticism in the lyrics: “Then as it was, then again it will be/And though the course may change sometimes/Rivers always reach the sea…” Personally I love Plant’s hippie-dippiness because it’s shot through with empathy and compassion: give me his flowery poetics over the flip worldliness of a Mick Jagger any day.

Old wounds are keenly felt in the song’s hoarse middle-eight outpouring of “Do you ever remember me, baby/Did it feel so good…”

And the music is in my favorite Led Zep style – you know, those songs like “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” where they start out with gently picked acoustic guitar then go all dinosaur stomp, loud hard rock.

In a Rolling Stone article called “50 Artists’ Favorite Playlists”, producer Rick Rubin described “Ten Years Gone” as “A deep, reflective piece with hypnotic, interweaving riffs. Light and dark, shadow and glare. It sounds like nature coming through the speakers.” That about covers it.

Jimmy Page’s guitar riff was too good to pass up, so 2Pac sampled it for 1997’s “Life’s So Hard.”

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Black Moon Spell, King Tuff

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One of my favorite songs of 2014 was by King Tuff (aka Kyle Thomas) hailing from Vermont by way of LA. His style of music has been described as “garage-glam.”

Today’s SotW, the title song from the album Black Moon Spell, shows that label is spot on.

The song sounds like it was recorded by the illegitimate son of Marc Bolan (T-Rex) and Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick). It has great big hooks and fuzzy guitar amplified through Marshall Stacks. This is serious party music. It doesn’t hurt that fellow grunge/psych/rocker Ty Segall viciously pounds the drums.

The lyrics conjure up some weird, ominous voodoo yarn.

I feel a sickness in your heart
Cuz you drank my witch’s brew
You were doomed right from the start
And you know I feel it too

I really dig it.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Andmoreagain, Love

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Happy Valentine’s Day. What better time is there to feature a SotW by a band called Love that is itself, a love song (of sorts). It is called “Andmoreagain” from the classic 1967 album Forever Changes.

I like some of how Matthew Greenwald reviewed the song at AllMusic.com, though I don’t necessarily interpret the lyrics the way he does:

“Andmoreagain” is another example of Arthur Lee letting the song he was writing lead him, rather than the other way around. Its lilting, slightly spaced folk melody is somewhat similar to Burt Bacharach, as well as Neil Young’s “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.” Loaded with sweet, major-7th chords, its calm, infectious beauty is, in a word, mesmerizing. Lyrically, it’s another example of Lee free associating on his acid-magnified state of mind, meditating on reincarnating his own defense mechanisms. The line “undone, wrapped in my armor/’cause my things are material” bears this out. One of Lee’s best-loved compositions, it’s always been included in his concert repertoire, even after disbanding Love.

To me, the lyrics are a text book example of the kind of hazy, mystical, psychedelic mumbo jumbo to come out of the “Summer of Love;” so vague and cryptic that they can be construed an infinite number of ways.

I’ve heard interpretations that the title refers to the girlfriend of Love’s leader Arthur Lee, or the film and TV actress Ann Morgan. (I think it’s just a word that is sung to sound like a name.)

I’ve heard that it is about love’s “duality” – the light and dark of love. But my favorite theory is that Angmoreagain is a succubus, defined by Wikipedia as “a female demon or supernatural entity in folklore (traced back to medieval legend) that appears in dreams and takes the form of a woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual activity. The male counterpart is the incubus.” Now that’s cool!

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And if you’ll see Andmoreagain
Then you will know Andmoreagain
For you can see you in her eyes
Then you feel your heart beating
Thrum-pum-pum-pum

And when you’ve given all you had
And everything still turns out
Bad, and all your secrets are your own
Then you feel your heart beating
Thrum-pum-pum-pum

And I’m
Wrapped in my armor
But my things are material
And I’m
Lost in confusions
‘Cause my things are material

And you don’t know how much
I love you
Oh, oh, oh

The music has a baroque rock (The Left Banke) feel. Arthur Lee’s vocal is reminiscent of Bee Gee Robin Gibb circa “I Started a Joke” but not nearly as maudlin.

Forever Changes is a great album that really deserves your attention if you’re not familiar with it. It has received numerous accolades — #40 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, #11 on Mojo’s list of the 100 greatest albums ever made. Other songs to check out include “Alone Again Or”, “The Red Telephone” and “You Set the Scene.”

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White, The Standells

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One of the proud traditions at Fenway Park is that they play The Standells’ “Dirty Water” (“Oh Boston, you’re my home”) at the conclusion of every Red Sox victory.

So last Sunday, when the Patriots won another Super Bowl after their undrafted rookie cornerback made an unlikely interception with only 20 seconds left in the game, I was yearning to hear “Dirty Water” to help celebrate the win.

But that wasn’t gonna happen – the game was played in the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona, not Fenway. Beside, after all of that “Deflategate” nonsense, much of the country was filled with Patriots haters.

So instead of “Dirty Water” maybe the more appropriate Standells song to play would be “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White.”

This 1966 release only made it to #43 on the Billboard charts. But it was a song that was noticed by The Cramps and Minor Threat – both covered it. That’s because it’s a great garage/psych rocker.

Go Pats!

Enjoy… until next week.

BTW – Today is the 7th anniversary of the SotW; over 350 posts, almost 500 songs and never a week missed. Thank you all for continuing to inspire me to keep this thing going.

Song of the Week – Wild Summer Nights, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band

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Today’s SotW was written by guest contributor Pete McQuaid. Pete is a fellow Boston College alum and the former lead entertainment writer for a newspaper in the Boston area. Pete has recently sold his soul to work in commercial real estate. He also plays guitar and is a wicked pissah soul singer.

In late 2014, many entertainment outlets celebrated the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain, Prince’s smash film/album/vanity project that proved the public will always sit through any poorly-acted, unintelligible movie about musicians as long as the soundtrack is amazing.

Well, they almost always will. Eddie and the Cruisers came out just eight months before Purple Rain in September 1983 and didn’t even make its $5 million budget back (by comparison, Purple Rain took in $68 million at the box office — and that doesn’t include the 20 million-plus copies of the album that sold). It was pulled from theaters three weeks after its release, only to find a second life on VHS and HBO in 1984, after which the film’s main hit “On the Dark Side” climbed to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Much like Purple Rain, Eddie and the Cruisers is an unintentionally hilarious mess. It stars Tom Berenger (a week away from his leading turn in The Big Chill) as a teacher who gets questioned by a reporter about his time as a member of Eddie and the Cruisers, a flash-in-the-pan rock group who released one album in the ’60s before its titular lead singer and visionary (played by Michael Paré) vanished.

The film is told in a hackneyed Citizen Kane-style flashback with laughable dialogue and a limp plotline, and has an ending Roger Ebert described as “so frustrating, so dumb, so unsatisfactory, that it gives a bad reputation to the whole movie.”

But — that music, though.

Performed by Narragansett, Rhode Island rockers John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (and ably lip-synched by Paré), the music of the Cruisers is Wall of Sound meets Jersey bar group, in the style of acts like the E Street Band and the Asbury Jukes. Their sound is a little anachronistic for a movie set in the early ’60s, but hey, Eddie was ahead of his time. The snappy, John Mellencamp-y, not-very-wordy “Dark Side” is the only song from the soundtrack that still gets played on the radio (or referenced on Family Guy) but it may be the weakest tune on there, overshadowed by everything from sax-soaked ballads (“Tender Years”) to existential pre-prog rock (“Season in Hell”).

The best cut is “Wild Summer Nights,” a rollicking number that is so ridiculously “Springsteen-esque” a casual listener might mistake it for a fun outtake from The River. With its swirling saxophone riff, gruff vocals, twinkling piano and talk of “rebels lac[ing] midnight in black leather,” “Wild Summer Nights” is as close to The Boss as you’re going to get.

Here is the version from the soundtrack:

and here is Beaver Brown’s less-polished (but possibly harder-rocking?) version released a few years earlier:

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Just Like A Prisoner, Eric Clapton

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Every musician/band has their “golden age” no matter how great their entire musical legacy may be. Today’s case in point is Eric Clapton. He made his mark early on with major contributions to some of the most important records in rock history with The Yardbirds, John Mayall, Cream, Blind Faith, Delaney & Bonnie and Derek & The Dominoes. But with each of those bands he became restless in short order and never spent more than a few years with any of them.

Then he went solo and that’s the part of his career that I mean to discuss today. Clapton has recorded some 30 albums since his first solo release, Eric Clapton in 1970. That was followed by 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), Slowhand (1977) and Backless (1978) – his “golden age”. Many of you can name at least a few songs on each of those albums but how many of you can name a few songs on August (1986), Pilgrim ((1998) or Reptile (2001). Only true fans, for sure.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that the records he produced after the 70s don’t contain lots of good music. It’s just that we fans lose interest and need to work harder to keep up and find the gems within.

One such gem is “Just Like A Prisoner” from Behind the Sun (1985).

OK, I admit that the lyrics are a bit mundane, but Clapton’s guitar playing is amongst his best since Layla (perhaps because it was inspired by the same woman). In fact I recently read in MOJO he was once asked if he’d ever created “a thing of beauty.” “A long solo at the end of Just Like A Prisoner,” he replied. “It gets better and better. You think, ‘This could go on forever’. Some of the most beautiful guitar playing I’ve ever heard. And it’s me.”

That’s a good enough endorsement for me!

The only problem is that the cut contains typical 80s production values (the album was produced by the then VERY HOT Phil Collins). If the song could be remixed to take out the wash of synthesizers and drum machines the solo would stand out more and probably sound a lot better (IMHO).

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – The Holdup, David Bromberg

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I was looking for something to watch on TV a few weeks ago and stumbled upon a David Bromberg documentary called David Bromberg Unsung Treasure. It was a pretty good show and can be streamed online here:

I remember seeing Bromberg live for the first time at the famous Passim’s coffeehouse in Cambridge’s Harvard Square back in the mid 70’s. I got to see him again a 5-6 years later at a free summer concert at Rogers Park in Brighton, MA.

Bromberg’s proficiency in all of the sub-genres of American roots music (blues, bluegrass, gospel, R&B), combined with his wicked sense of humor, always made his performances worth attending. Plus he’s a virtuoso on just about every instrument that has strings.

Today’s SotW is “The Holdup”, a song co-written with George Harrison. It appeared on two different Bromberg albums. It was originally on Bromberg’s first album in what’s come to be known as the “Harrison version” because George added his slide guitar to it. The one on Wanted Dead or Alive is known as the “Dead version” because several members of The Grateful Dead (Jerry Garcia, Keith Godchaux and Bill Kreutzmann) played on it. I favor the Wanted Dead or Alive version (plus that album had one of the greatest album covers of all time!).

“The Holdup” opens with an intro of piano, guitars and percussion that sounds Spanish influenced. It romps along with high energy before mariachi horns begin to blare.

The lyrics are cousin to Harrison’s “Taxman” (US Revolver) in that “the holdup” refers to the government tax thugs coming to take your money.

STICK UP YOUR HANDS, YOU MUST STAND AND DELIVER,
MY STOMACH’S EMPTY, MY CLOTHES ARE ALL TORN.
OPEN YOUR HEARTS TO THE JOYS OF THE GIVER,
ALL OF YOUR POCKETS ARE TERRIBLY WORN.

THIS IS A HOLDUP, NO WAY TO MISTAKE IT,
WE’RE MEN OF VIOLENCE SO DON’T FOOL AROUND.
IF YOU HAVE MONEY, WE’RE GOING TO TAKE IT,
YOU’LL TRY AND STOP US, YOU’LL END UNDERGROUND.

SO HAND US THE MONEY, DON’T STAND THERE AND SHIVER,
TAX TIME IS COMING, GIVE ALMS TO THE POOR.
OR I´LL PUT A BULLET RIGHT THROUGH YOUR BEST LIVER,
WEALTH IS DISEASE AND I AM THE CURE.

Bromberg has played on the albums of a who’s who of great artists – Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Ringo, Bonnie Raitt, etc. It’s worth checking out his work with all of these artists and more. He also still performs live in small venues, mostly up and down the east coast. Go see this “unsung treasure” while you have the chance.

Enjoy… until next week.