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Sometimes music is emotional. Sometimes sophisticated. Sometimes political. But sometimes it’s just for pure, simple fun.
In that vein I offer “I Love My Shirt” by Donovan from the underappreciated Barabajagal (1969) album.
So there it is! Don’t judge me. That’s all I have to say except…
Enjoy… until next week.
Fortunately, a digital online museum.
Though some of the links don’t work and I could not find any references to Steve Moyer’s not-DC but close band, the Forward Fashion Monkeys, this is well worth a look. It’s amazing how visceral the graphics and bandnames are. And the links that do work dig deeper and closer. And then there is the music, loud political hard not to mosh to:
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The Gun Club was a pioneering punk rock band out of LA. They separated themselves from the rest of the punk rock scene by incorporating blues and country influences into their sound, leading to the genre titles “psychobilly” and “cowpunk.”
They performed and recorded from 1979 to 1996 and the untimely death of their cofounder and leader, Jeffrey Lee Pierce. His erratic behavior and stage antics made him a true rock and roll original.
Pierce was also a huge Blondie fan. He rose to be the president of the LA chapter of the Blondie fan club. That led to a relationship with Blondie’s Chris Stein and Deborah Harry. The Gun Club’s 1982 album, Miami, was produced by Stein and included backing vocals by Harry under the pseudonym D.H. Laurence Jr.
Today’s SotW is “Mother of Earth” from Miami.
The song has an interesting connection to Billy Idol as told here by Drew Wardel of Far Out:
Around the time The Gun Club released their second record, Miami, Billy Idol met up with Jeffery Pierce at a bar in L.A. and told him that his smash hit, ‘White Wedding’, was an attempt to emulate ‘Mother of Earth’. The song is a beautiful example of Pierce’s impeccable ability to mix rockabilly with Americana, and reverb-soaked cowpunk. It sounds like Johnny Cash on acid.
Pierce died at the age of 37 in Salt Lake City from a brain hemorrhage attributed to alcohol and drug abuse. But his influence on rock music far exceeds the popularity of the Gun Club whose fans include Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the White Stripes, and the Black Keys.
Enjoy… until next week.
A very sad and troubled obituary for the drummer Anton Fier, who lived a rocketship of a life full of celebrity and achievement but could not reach escape velocity from his own inner demons. Read it here.
I saw him live twice. He was backing the guitarist Tony Scherr in front of a crowd of maybe 30 15? people in the intimate and far from sold out Living Room on New York City’s Lower East Side. I was there because my friend Walker was a fan of Scherr, who played guitar on at least some of Norah Jones’ records. It turns out I wrote about Fier and the Golden Palominos here in 2014.
“He was playing drums because that’s what he does.” Here he is playing drums with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith in Japan in 1984, ferociously. Rest in peace.
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Today’s post was written by frequent guest contributor, Michael Paquette. I hope you like it!
There are three songs in the early lexicon of Jackson Browne’s work that speak to the angst of the seventies brought on by the loss of a generation that sought social change and instead had morphed into a “Me” generation that was more about personal reflection.
The first of these songs is “Rock Me on the Water” from his 1972 debut album.
The social movements of the sixties were still fresh when Jackson Browne released this material. Like much of his material this song is a lament rather than a battle cry. The song opens with “the signs are everywhere you’ve left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care.” Then in the third verse, he entreats his listeners with the line, “people look around you, it’s there your hope must lie.” He holds out hope that the “fires are still burning, hotter and hotter” and that we will “get down to the sea somehow” and the “sisters of the sun” will “rock me on the water.” Through this, maybe, we will remember how to return to the sense of social awareness and action.
His second album took two years to write. The title cut from the album is called “For Everyman.”
This song was written as a response to the escapist vision of David Crosby’s “Wooden Ships.” This classic appeared on the first Crosby, Stills & Nash release (1969) and was covered by the Jefferson Airplane on their Volunteers album in the same year. In the song, Crosby envisioned how he and his entourage would sail away on his boat if society broke down or there was a nuclear war. Browne’s song poses the question, what about everyone who doesn’t have the resources to sail away? The song opens with an acknowledgment that his friends are planning to leave society because:
They’ve seen the end coming down
Long enough to believe
That they’ve heard their last warning
But Browne still holds onto the concern For Everyman. His concept of social change is through collective action, and the song concludes with his message to the ones who are leaving.
I’m not trying to tell you
That I’ve seen the plan
Turn and walk away if you think I am
But don’t think too badly
Of one who’s left holding sand
He’s just another dreamer
Dreaming about Everyman
This song clings to hope against the loss of the ideals of the ‘60s generation.
The third song is from Browne’s third album Late for the Sky. LftS was written in about six weeks in 1974 as the ‘60s were receding into memory at the height of the Watergate scandal. It was a massive achievement for him as he emerged as one of the brightest singer/songwriters of the era alongside such titans as Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. The record featured the multi-talented artist David Lindley, who had been touring with Browne. It is a spare and underproduced work. It became his first gold record and reached #14 on the Billboard charts. Much of it was written on a grand piano with his infant son crawling nearby on the floor. The album concludes with the masterpiece “Before the Deluge.”
It opens with a reflection on the generation that was left behind.
Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
But much of the hope and idealism of this era are lost in a sudden rush to drugs and hedonism. Many have forgotten and abandoned their values. The generation that sought social change has turned inward for spiritual reflection, and many gave up trying to pursue change, except within.
Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love’s bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept before the deluge.
Browne also mentions that “some of them were angry” at the way the earth was abused but they have forsaken their call to arms and instead became preoccupied with their own lives. This song still resonates with the loss of ideals, social change, and responsibility that is evident in recent years. “Before the Deluge” offers less chance of renewal or escape, yet it does end with the idea that nature will reveal its secrets by and by. Whether this will be a dark reveal or a light to the end of the tunnel remains to be seen.
Jackson Browne has always kept true to his values to use his music to speak out for causes of justice in society (antinuclear energy, antiwar in Central America, and support for Farm Aid and Amnesty International).
Enjoy… until next week.
We’ve featured Fripp’s YouTube videos with his wife Toyah, which they started putting out each Sunday during lockdown.
We loved In the Hall of the Crimson King when it came out, and we love his production of the first Roche’s album, which was so gorgeously perfect it’s hard to imagine better.
So, now he’s on the road with his manager, speaking and giving Guitar Craft lessons, and he just seems like a heck of a guy. Read the interview here.
The Times screws up credit for Frippertronics, so here’s a demonstration:
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I recently read The Dark Stuff – Selected Writings on Rock Music, by British rock critic Nick Kent. The opening 75 page article on the Beach Boys was the best I’ve ever read. The articles that followed were no disappointment.
I was intrigued by a particular paragraph Kent wrote about the young Morrissey, lead singer and lyricist of the Smiths.
And then there was music. He bought his first disc at age six – a year before Hindley and Brady’s gambols on the moors commenced.1 The record featured the virginal entreaties of a very young Marianne Faithfull singing “Come and Stay with Me”. The mild sexual overtones of the lyric went well with the halcyon blend of folk guitar and baroque pop. Indeed, Ms Faithfull was Morrissey’s first love, and in a world where first loves never die it’s intriguing the the only two non-originals the Smiths have attempted were her “Summer Nights” (a thrilling harpsichord-led piece that foreshadows some early Smiths songs) and the “Sha La La Song”. Quintessential British pop, an influence either due to the radio or elder Jacqueline or his own simple rationale: “I was brought up in a house full of books and records… I devoured everything.”
Let’s check them out for ourselves.
“Come and Stay with Me” was written by Jackie DeShannon and reached #4 in the UK for Faithfull.
The “Summer Nights” single was released in July of 1965. Faithfull performed it on the American pop music variety show Shindig.
“Sha La La Song” was the B-side to “Summer Nights.”
Now, back to The Dark Stuff. Read it!
Enjoy… until next week.
1 This reference relates to the Moors murders that took place in Morrissey’s hometown of Manchester England between 1963 and 1965.
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Dots Will Echo is the brainchild of New Jerseyite, Nick Berry. I have a copy of the band’s first, self-titled CD that was released on the Windham Hill label subsidiary, High Street, in 1991. Hardly anyone heard the set, but it earned a Rolling Stone feature on “artists-to-watch” and was a #3 record in Sweden. Go figure!
That version of the band included Berry (guitars and vocals), Bob Albanese (bass), and drummer Steve Meltzer.
The debut disc was full of power pop hooks. Take, for instance, the compact “Sandra”.
These songs are templates for the work of another New Jersey-based group – Fountains of Wayne, of “Stacy’s Mom” fame.
Today, DWE is the duo of Berry and drummer Kurt Biroc. They record for Sufjan Steven’s Asthmatic Kitty label. Their recent, eclectic albums have been garnering very favorable reviews.
By the way… “dots will echo” is a term from the early days of the internet. Instructions to enter a password were often followed with “(dots will echo)”, meaning that the PW would be masked using the “dots” everyone currently expects, making the phrase unnecessary today.
Enjoy… until next week.
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Today’s SotW revives the “evolution series” that I haven’t presented in a very long time. The featured song is “Mercury Blues.”
Written and first recorded by KC Douglas (and Robert Geddins) in 1948 as “Mercury Boogie”, the song was a tribute to the automobile.
The song languished in relative obscurity until it was given a facelift by Steve Miller on his multi-platinum 1976 album, Fly Like an Eagle.
The definitive, modern version was recorded by David Lindley – the el supremo session musician that has worked extensively with Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Warren Zevon – on his underappreciated solo album, El Rayo-Ex (1981).
Though the disc peaked at a modest #83 on the Billboard Hot 200 album chart, “Mercury Blues” was selected as a single and reached #38 on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
“Mercury Blues” has been recorded by many other artists including country stars Dwight Yoakam and Alan Jackson.
Wikipedia reports:
Rights to the song were purchased by the Ford Motor Company (who already owned the Mercury marque). Ford, in turn, used it for a television commercial featuring Alan Jackson singing his version of the song with the word “Mercury” replaced by the words “Ford Truck.”
The Mercury division of Ford was retired in 2011.
Enjoy… until next week.
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Today’s SotW is a beautiful “end of summer” song. “Summer Wages”, written by Ian Tyson, also seems appropriate as we celebrate Labor Day. The song has been recorded many times by many artists, including twice by Tyson himself. The version I like is technically by Ian & Sylvia, from their album So Much for Dreaming (1967), though I don’t hear Sylvia contributing her trademark harmony vocals.
So what is this song about?
Never hit 17 when you play against the dealer
Oh, you know that the odds won’t ride with you
Never leave your woman alone when your friends are out to steal her
Years are gambled and lost like summer wages
And we’ll keep rollin’ on ’til we get to Vancouver
And the woman that I love who’s livin’ there
It’s been six long months and more since I’ve seen her
Maybe gambled and gone like summer wages
In all the beer parlors all down along Main Street
The dreams of the seasons are all spilled down on the floor
Of the big stands of timber just waitin’ for fallin’
And the hustlers standin’ watchfully waitin’ by the door
So I’ll work on the towboats with my slippery city shoes
Which I swore I would never do again
Through the grey fogbound straits where the cedars stand watchin’
I’ll be far off and gone like summer wages
Ah, she’s a woman so fine, I may never try to find her
For the good memories of what we had before
They should never be changed, for they’re all that I’ll take with me
Now I’ve gambled and lost my summer wages
So never hit 17 when you play against the dealer
For you know that the odds won’t ride with you
Never leave your woman alone when your friends are out to steal her
Years are gambled and lost like summer wages
Years are gambled and lost like summer wages
To me, this is a story of a young man that left his girlfriend back home in Vancouver to take a summer job (as a lumberjack?) to earn money for their future together. But he blows it and loses all his earnings on a gambling spree. Now he must go home with his tail between his legs and admit his failure. He wonders if she will even still be there for him since he’s wise enough to know you should “never leave your woman alone when your friends are out to steal her.”
But it is the ambiguities that I cherish about this song. I wonder, was the woman he left his girlfriend or, was she someone he desired and hoped to impress when he returned home triumphantly (though that was not to be)? Could he bear to return home and discover she was in a relationship with one of his friends? He even thinks about not returning home (“I may never try to find her”) to keep his memories of her intact. That too makes me question if the relationship was real in the first place. If there was true love between them, wouldn’t she forgive his mistakes and welcome him back after being away for over 6 months?
As a team, Ian & Sylvia wrote a few other top-notch compositions such as “Four Strong Winds”, “Someday Soon” (popularized by Judy Collins), and “You Were on My Mind” which was a #3 hit for We Five.
I always assumed the mockumentary A Mighty Wind was inspired by Ian & Sylvia, connecting their “Four Strong Winds” and Canadian roots to the writers and cast of the film. But I was surprised that the Wikipedia page for A Mighty Wind doesn’t mention that the Mitch & Mickey characters were a parody of Ian & Sylvia. But I think my speculation holds up!
Enjoy… until next week.
