Everything Changes, Nothing Changes

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The most surprising aspect of our Spotify subscription is that Diane is crazy for it. She is admittedly not a music junkie like any of us here at the Remnants, in fact I asked what artists she followed and she promptly replied, “none.”

She just likes listening to playlists with high energy stuff she can work out to, and soul and funk from any era she can bop to while driving her car. But, I was surprised when she sent me a link to a song the other day, and I could not help but think of the song as analogous to other generations of horny post pubescent music junkies.

The first instance of song where boys are pleading for sex I could think of was the wonderful Good Golly Miss Molly by the one and only Little Richard, who was certainly clear about the whole sex/music thing in the fifties. This was at a time when saying words like “panties” were verboten on screen, for example, as shown in this clip from the Otto Preminger’s 1959 film, Anatomy of a Murder.

This clip of Richard, covering his tune, released in 1958, a year before Anatomy of a Murder came out, speaks for itself with respect to lyrical content, but this  clip was so perfect, as it is Richard live, playing for Muhammad Ali’s 50th birthday. And, well I have been thinking a lot about the loss of the great Ali as well as that of Prince, recently, and what a huge loss to our planet their spirits is.

The 60’s were not much better, and though this is indeed my favorite song by the Beach Boys, it is so lily-white in the Pat Boone’s cover of Little Richard’s Tutti Fruitti, sense, it makes my skin crawl. But, Brian Wilson could only hint at a time when “making love” still was kind of like Laurence Olivier suggesting the wooing of Joan Fontaine in Rebecca meant sweet talk behind a potted plant.

Here is the Beach Boys supporting that in the middle class white world very little changed over the 20 or so years between Rebecca and Don’t Worry Baby (which included that awful Boone shit in the middle of the time span). By the way, I love the song, but is this the worst “video” ever?

But, 50 years after Don’t Worry Baby, reality has struck and the world has simultaneously gone to hell in a hand basket, as witnessed by this song, by Strip Johnny, that popped up on Diane’s “Discover Weekly.” She heard it and  just had to share with me.

Truth is, I really like this last song a lot! Not as much as Little Richard, though. At least not just yet.

Kansas, Dust in the Wind

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My daughter is writing a research paper about the Dust Bowl. She was looking for a title, and I glibly suggested Dust In The Wind. She liked it. I hope she gets an A.

But that moment was a reason to listen to the tune, which I probably haven’t done in a really long time. But in all these years, I could sing the song, and certainly have.

Checking out the video tonight. It is cheesy, but the melody and starkness of the tune are unforgettable. Is abjectness a vibe? Apparently.

Does that make it a great song? The video tells me this is some sort of midwestern crazy fundamental evangelical nonsense. All these pictures are like those on the internet that promise me pictures that changed weddings, history, Woodstock.

But the tune is straightforward, and was a hit everywhere. Maybe it’s the great melody, with an idea that everyone finds inevitable. Hell yeah!

What I don’t hear is careerism. I hear Remnants who went big and hit one out. Cool!

Song of the Week – Tonight’s the Night, Neil Young

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

Neil+Young+1973+PhotoLast week’s post was about the first album in Neil Young’s “Ditch Trilogy” – Time Fades Away. The next is Tonight’s the Night. This may be somewhat confusing to some Young fans because TTN was released after On the Beach, even though it was recorded before. But it makes more sense to deal with them in chronological order in the context of the Ditch Trilogy story.

Part 1 of the this series dropped off with the live album Time Fades Away, recorded on the tour that began right after the heroin overdose death of friend and bandmate Danny Whitten in November 1972. A few months later, in June 1973, tragedy would strike again when Young’s friend and roadie Bruce Berry would also succumb to the drug.

This time Young reacted by pulling together that band to grieve and record. They would hang out at his ranch and play pool and party from early evening until the wee hours of the morning when they would turn their attentions to recording. The resulting TTN is a ragged set of cuts, even by Young’s standards. So the album was finished in just a few days in August 1973 at Studio Instrument Rentals, a rehearsal space owned by Berry’s brother Jan (as in Jan of Jan and Dean).

In Young’s book Waging Heavy Peace, he describes TTN as “a wake of sorts.” He admits the LP was “recorded in audio verite, if you will, while completely intoxicated on Jose Cuervo tequila.”

The SotW has got to be the title song.

You can feel the pain in Young’s voice as he bios the life and death of Berry, especially the way he yowls the lyrics in the final verse.

Bruce Berry was a working man
He used to load that Econoline van.
A sparkle was in his eye
But his life was in his hands

Well, late at night
when the people were gone
He used to pick up my guitar
And sing a song in a shaky voice
That was real as the day was long.

Early in the mornin’
at the break of day
He used to sleep
until the afternoon.
If you never heard him sing
I guess you won’t too soon.

‘Cause people let me tell you
It sent a chill
up and down my spine
When I picked up the telephone
And heard that he’d died
out on the mainline.

The mixing for the sessions was tortured. Ultimately the tapes were put away for two years before they were dusted off and finally released, thanks in part to The Band’s Rick Danko. Danko was previewing a tape of Young’s latest album Homegrown (still unreleased) in early 1975. The TTN recordings were on the same tape. When Danko heard TTN he said “You ought to put THAT out!” So he did, in June 1975.

In Waging Heavy Peace Young also says “The album was risky and real. It was a real mess of a recording, with no respect given to technical issues, although it sounds like God when played loud…”

Turn it up!

I’ll post he final installment of the Ditch Trilogy – On the Beach – next time.

Enjoy… until next week.

Ali Boom-a-ye!

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818px-Muhammad_Ali_NYWTSThere was no greater rock star than Muhammad Ali.

I once (a long time ago, in the 70s) worked as the sound guy on a film shoot at the Apollo Theater, yes, that Apollo Theater (James Brown!), for a benefit for a Harlem-based bicycle-racing club trying to make the Olympic team.

I was positioned in the aisle, crouched on the floor, doing my work on the Nagra, about 30 feet from the stage. When Ali, a supporter of the club, a sponsor/supporter of the event, was announced, he strode down the aisle right by me. Within inches. Fortunately he didn’t spill over my cables.

When I think about charisma and magic, I think of that moment. I didn’t meet Ali, I didn’t shake his hand, but his charisma filled the (big) room. It washed over me and all of us. His passing by me rained magic down on me. He was a hero, to me already, but his presence in that room was something else. It was the Greatest.

Tonight, he left the room, but he will surely endure.

Maren Morris, My Church

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Lots and lots of music sounds derivative of some other music. Sometimes that’s a bad thing, evoking the thought, Why bother? But other times the song is so right it feels absolutely fresh and absolutely classic at the same, which is the case with this new country song.

What’s extra-funny about this tune is that it is paean to listening to FM radio in the car, which is not the religious experience it once was (unless one finds one of those rare stations practicing the free form format).

Form meets function in My Church. I can’t stop playing this.

The Abysmal State of Government

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If the world of pop music is endangered, then our system of finance and government is on life support.

It is Memorial Day, a day we need to seriously acknowledge the sacrifices made to keep our freedoms in tact and yet just now Congress is working to make our National Parks open to corporate sponsorship. Great. “Yosemite, Sponsored by Geico” is just what I was hoping to see next time I go the the park in order to get away from…Geico commercials.

I mean, it is bad enough that when the US Government evicted the Ahwahnechee tribe from the park when Theodore Roosevelt and Congress made Yosemite government protected land in 1903 (the park moved under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service in 1916). The Ahwahnechee had only lived in the valley for what some estimate as 7,000 years, basing their life cycles, religion, and culture around the seasons in what they considered a sacred place. But, what the fuck: the government evicted the tribe, and relocated them to Florida.

That is a terrible legacy, but the real problem is our culture is so focused on who has the most money and what said funds can buy that we have sold our soul accordingly. Don’t want to wait in the TSA line? Pay to get pre-check. Wanna drive in the carpool lane alone? Pay extra to the government and you can in some states.

Both these examples might seem silly, and even benign, but in a country where ostensibly “all men are created equal,” the very statement suggests we are all content to wait our turn in the lines of life.

Hah.

Impatient, money grubbing, and confusing financial success and power with competence and the ability to actually structure and order our society in a manner that does give everyone an equal shot are the rule, and if you doubt that, try explaining Donald Trump.

In contemplating this sorry state of affairs, all I could think of was the Brains fantastic song Money Changes Everything, and I went to YouTube in search of a version by the band, but what I really liked is this great live cover by Cyndi Lauper of the song that does indeed appear on her wonderful album She’s So Unusual.

Backed by another band I dig, The Hooters–who scored a hit during the same time frame with And We Danced–Lauper does indeed deliver a tour de force performance. I wish her passion could be channeled to the rest of the country so we would fucking wake up and recognize, money does change everything, and not necessarily for the better. (BTW, check out Lauper’s kicks: one white Chuck Taylor with black laces, and a Black one with white laces. Brilliant.)

 

Song of the Week – Don’t Be Denied, Neil Young

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

Between February 1972 and April 1973 Neil Young recorded three of his darkest and most misunderstood albums. Coming off the success of his work with Crosby, Stills and Nash, then his blockbuster country rock album Harvest (1972), he had the music world eating out of his hand. He even had a #1 hit with Harvest’s “Heart of Gold.”

But Young famously wrote in the liner notes to his Decades compilation: “‘Heart of Gold’ put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch.” This quote is responsible for the next three albums – Time Fades Away, Tonight’s the Night and On the Beach – to become known as “The Ditch Trilogy.”

When Time Fades Away was released, fans expecting the follow up to Harvest to contain more material in the singer/songwriter vein were caught by surprise. Was Young intentionally trying to sabotage his own career? Clearly, they weren’t aware of the anguish Young was facing at the time – the first hint of which he tossed out on Harvest’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” – a song that bore his observations of the effects of bandmate Danny Whitten’s heroin addiction.

In fact, Young and his band were rehearsing for a tour to promote Harvest at his ranch south of San Francisco when Whitten’s substance abuse caused him to struggle to learn and play his parts. Though Young tried to help him out, he was finally persuaded it wasn’t going to work out. He gave Whitten $50 bucks and a ticket back to LA. That night Whitten ODed and died. Young felt responsible.

But the tour was about to begin, so Young headed out on the road with no time to grieve. Instead, he dropped the material he was supposed to promote and instead played a set of loud, menacing, new songs that were a better reflection of his mood. That became the live album Time Fades Away.

The signature song from Time Fades Away is “Don’t Be Denied”, penned the day after Whitten died.

Its autobiographical lyrics cover Young’s journey from his father’s abandonment to schoolyard bullying, to rock and roll stardom. But he ruefully concludes:

Well, all that glitters isn’t gold
I know you’ve heard that story told.
And I’m a pauper in a naked disguise
A millionaire through a business man’s eyes.

Part 2 of the trilogy – Tonight’s the Night – is coming next week.

Enjoy… until next week.