Steve Moyer’s Car
Night Music: Leonard Cohen, “Save The Last Dance for Me”
Doc Pomus and Mort Schuman wrote this classic in 1960. It was originally recorded by Ben E. King and the Drifters in 1960.
Pomus had polio as a child and used crutches to get around until later in life, when he used a wheelchair. The irony of a man who can’t dance writing a song about watching his lover dance with another is powerful stuff, and Lou Reed has told the story that the lyric was inspired by Pomus’s wedding day, when he married a Broadway star and dancer, but could not dance his own wedding dance.
All of which would be way too much, except it’s true. And the song is not comfortably romantic. There is angst, lots of angst in there, too.
Which is what helps make Leonard Cohen’s closing time singalong with 14,000 Irish so touching. Oh, that and Leonard’s age. We’re all too freakin’ human.
Maybe I’m Tripping.
So I’m digging deep into the land of hardcore. Early hardcore.
And I find this tune. (Not early hardcore, late Minutemen.)
Is this trangressive? Progressive? Radical? Pop? Answer freely.
Lunch Break: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, “The Fever”
A bit of ashcan soul by Springsteen, from which Johnny grabs the gritty realism, adds some soaring horns, cornball harmonica and a chorus of complementary voices and makes a bombastic kind of perfection. Me? I’ve had a fever for the last couple of days, so it got into my head.
Song of the Week – Underwhelmed, Sloan
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Sloan is a Canadian quartet that’s been around for over 20 years but is virtually unknown here in the US. They are a national treasure in The Great White North, right up there with their much more famous rock brethren such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
I first heard of them on a compilation disc I picked up in the very early days of the CD, when titles available on the format were still relatively few. The CD contained the first single, “Underwhelmed,” from their Geffen debut Smeared.
There’s a distinct feature to “Underwhelmed” that makes it a very odd choice for a first single – the lyrics contain no rhymes. Instead, the song is a long narrative about a boy that is infatuated with a girl in his class, but they’re very different. He’s pretty conventional (maybe a geek) and she’s a bit of a rebel. He’s smitten with all of her little peccadilloes – things that she’s totally oblivious to. She couldn’t care less about him. Here’s a sample:
She wrote out a story about her life
I think it included something about me
I’m not sure of that but I’m sure of one thing
Her spelling’s atrocious
She told me to read between the lines
And tell her exactly what I got out of it
I told her affection had two F’s
Especially when you’re dealing with me
I usually notice all the little things
One time I was proud of it, she says it’s annoying
She cursed me up and down and rolled her R’s, her beautiful R’s
This is pure genius. And it’s a pretty fun pop song too. It opens with a sound like a buzzing bee then bursts into psychedelic riffage you might expect to hear from Nirvana or Sonic Youth. The vocal harmonies fit the style of the song and enhance it.
With all four band members writing songs, Sloan is a very prolific group. They’ve released somewhere in the order of 175 songs! Check them out.
Enjoy… until next week.
Breakfast Blend: Do You Wanna Dance
I was working this morning and the Mamas and Papas came up in the mix. I didn’t know they did so many covers. They did a killer “Dancin’ In The Street,” for example, though it’s hard to hurt that song. They also a version of Do You Wanna Dance, a song I always associate with the Ramones, though it was written by Bobby Freeman, who recorded it in 1958. Cliff Richard who had the first hit with it, and the Beach Boys had the biggest hit, at least until Bette Midler recorded. The Mamas and Papa’s version is slowed down, the melody is shifted a little, not unpleasingly.
But what jumped out for me was the instrumental break, which features some cheesy strings that I knew from a song called Maple Leaves, Jens Lekman. Lekman is a Swedish singer-songwriter who I discovered after he became a more traditional performer, but who got started building songs on other people’s recordings. Perhaps his biggest hit is a song called Maple Leaves, which is about a misunderstanding and has some very clever lyrics and booming drums.
While looking for this recording I found a version of Jens performing live in Gothenberg in 2003. He starts the song singing Do You Wanna Dance, making the connection explicit.
Night Music: The Ramones, “Do You Wanna Dance”
New Years Eve. 1977. London.
Breakfast Blend: Bad Way To Go
Steve wrote a while back about how some of the best rock today is country. With that in mind I listened to the new Lydia Loveless EP and was not impressed. A pop move, it has some rock and country sounds, but it sounds crafted for the radio.
But tonight, when I called up Google Music All Access, her last album, Indestructible Machine, was in the queue. For some reason I played it and there’s a world of difference. The first song on side one is called Bad Way to Go and it is one of a bunch of drinking and drinking some more songs, and not always regretting how things worked out. On YouTube I couldn’t find performances of any of the songs with the album arrangements, but I did find this live performance at SXSW from a few years back of the second song, Can’t Change Me.
Not as hot as the album version, and not a perfect song, but very driven and likeable. And the guitarist is sharp.
There are a lot of references on Indestructible Machine (Can’t Change Me uses the ringing guitar sound from London Calling, though I think that was actually originally on a Blue Oyster Cult song, but she doesn’t appear to be aping anyone. And with the hard guitar and drum attack she reminded me some of Chrissie Hynde (with less melody). On other songs though, when the country sound played fast peeks through she reminded me most of Exene Cervenka and the music she made with the Original Sinners.
Country coming from a different place.
Night Music: The Bruthers, “Bad Way to Go”
The Bruthers signed a management deal with Sid Bernstein and managed to get one single released: Bad Way to Go b/w Bad Way to Go.
The only reason I know this is because I was researching another song, not the same song, called Bad Way to Go for a Breakfast Blend tomorrow. But this is fun because it is a fairly deranged song with lots of moving parts.
It also turns out that the Bruthers are real brothers. The band broke up after Bad Way to Go didn’t hit and RCA released them, but they didn’t get out of the business. Keyboardist Joe Delia ended up arranging and playing on David Johansen’s 1978 hits, Hot Hot Hot, while guitarist Frank Delia went on to direct videos for the Ramones, Wall of Voodoo and Jefferson Starship.
The video is suitably crazy, but is clearly from a time much more recent than 1966.
Night Music: tUnE yArDs: “Doorstep”
Lindsay dropped this cut on my Xmas disc a couple of years back, and there is something so basic and rhythmic about it, although to be truthful, I cannot put my finger on specifically what kills me about the song.
I do think there is something hypnotic about repetition in music when pulled off right. Prince’s Purple Rain being a great example of a song that seems like the only real words are in the chorus, for example, although there is some actual substance beneath that repetitive portion of the tune that draws us in.
Much the same is this one by the tUnE yArDs (hey, that is their spelling, not mine, though I confess as a fan of e.e. cummings, I love lower case letters dominating) during which we only seem to hear the scary chorus over and over (listen carefully, cos it ain’t pretty) although the sweetness and innocence of the voice of band brain child and leader Merrill Garbus somehow transcends the ugly scene.