Song of the Week – Mother Earth, (Tracy Nelson’s) Mother Earth

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Today’s SotW is “Mother Earth” from the band of the same name, a group led by Tracy Nelson. The song was written by country blues artist Memphis Slim and was included on Mother Earth’s debut album Living with the Animals from 1968.

Nelson was a pretty good blues singer and piano player that often drew comparisons to Janis Joplin – partly because she moved her band’s home base to San Francisco in the late 60s and partly because her repertoire leaned toward the blues and R&B favored by Joplin. I don’t think they sound much alike even if the pained shriek Nelson lets out on the word “go” on the last line of “Mother Earth” (“You got to GO back to Mother Earth”) does remind me of Janis’ scream in her classic “Piece of My Heart.” It’s beautiful.

Another “connection” to Joplin is through Powell St. John who wrote several originals for the album and, in the early 60’s, was in a Texas band with a young Joplin called the Waller Creek Boys.

But I must admit, the real reason I’ve selected “Mother Earth” for the SotW is because it benefits from a great performance by blues guitar master Mike Bloomfield who was originally credited on the album as Makal Blumfeld, apparently due to contractual obligations.

Bloomfield grew up in Chicago and knew from a very early age that he wanted to be a blues guitarist (much to the chagrin of his wealthy parents). He studied the seminal recordings and went a step further, befriending some of the idiom’s most important masters and picking their brains to learn the techniques they devised.

Just listen to the licks and solos he played on “Mother Earth” and you can tell this guy really understood the blues including its vices — drugs and alcohol. It has often been rumored that Bloomfield recorded his parts on Living with the Animals lying on his back, too drugged out to sit up or stand. Unfortunately his excesses led to an early death by overdose at the age of 37.

But I shouldn’t sell the album too short. It really is a pretty decent album aside from Bloomfield’s contributions. Other quality musicians were involved including his colleagues from the Butterfield Blues Band, keyboardists Barry Goldberg and Mark Naftalin.

Enjoy… until next week.

Night Music: Steve Gibbons Band, “Down In The Bunker”

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Steve Gibbons, at the time this record came out, was sold as something of a UK Bob Seger. That is, a rock vet finally being recognized for his powerful original worth.

The album this was on had, what seemed at the time, a progressive song about racial mixing, like why not, and some other rock songs. And it had this obvious chart attempt, mixing Gibbons’ rock heart with Dire Straits’ lyricism. I find the music quite winning, as I do all of Dire Straits when that style is working.

But the lyrics? The concept? OMG. What is this story? It seems to be based on the idea that WWII soldiers, during the war or just after, find a naked girl in the bunker, and then stuff happens, as long as one doesn’t lose… um, well, that’s it. Well, until they um… How far do they go? No one knows.

I’ll be the last to inhibit anyone’s fantasies, in private, but if you’re going to turn this loaded scenario into a hit song, Steve Gibbons, you should do better. Great tune, really bad lyrics, unless on the off chance your fantasy involves women disrupted by war (and naked) desiring soldiers to, um, satisfy their desires. That would be B-movie worthy, at least a little, even if exploitable. But in the context of Gibbons’ song, the womenhave no desires at all. That’s too bad.

Video: All KISS All The Time

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Night Music: Nina Simone, “Please Don’t Let Me Be Understood”

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One of the great lyrics, sung by a great vocalist who had some problems with understanding.

Breakfast Blend: “I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself”

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There were two revelations on the Stiff’s Live album. I’d heard much of it before, but I hadn’t heard Larry Wallis’s Police Car, which is a brilliant bit of rock poetry. And I hadn’t heard Elvis Costello, who I was infatuated with, singing Burt Bachrach’s and Hal David’s I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself. It is so very soulful.

I later came across Dusty Springfield’s version. She is a great singer and interpreter, but the stripped down Costello version seems so much more appropriate.

There is a Linda Ronstadt version out there, which I think bridges the two, but the YouTube video id’d as Ronstadt is actually Springfield. Bet that’s the first time that has happened.

Which brings us to the end of the song. The White Stripes have made some good records. And I like the idea of taking a slow one and making it hard. But random noise only works sometimes.

Like a lot of Jack White music, it seems to be more about him than the tune. Which is fine. Up to a point.

Night Music: Ian Dury & the Blockheads (with Mick Jones): “Sweet Gene Vincent”

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220px-Gene_VincentAll this Wreckless Eric brouhaha is wonderful.

I so loved the punk movement. I was 25, and actually in London the week of the Stiffs Live. I remember getting on the Underground to go back to my Grandmother’s in Finchley and the punks who had been at the shows that featured Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Larry Wallis, and Ian Dury and the Blockheads were on the same train.

Blue Mohawks-crap, any Mohawk on a white kid in the fall of 1977–and pierced tongues and such were still a little outrageous in the states where ELO and ABBA ruled. In fact Roxy Music, 801, The Tubes, and Queen were about as far as I could push the envelope before that fateful trip to London to visit my Granny and cousins for the first time on their turf.

What a great time I had! I remember sleeping on a boat hostile in Amsterdam with a bunch of other kids, and getting up in the morning to eat some yogurt and fruit and cheese (remember, I am in Holland) with Marshall Tucker’s “Can’t You See” blasting in the dining area.

As previously noted, that was the first time I heard the Sex Pistols:  in the tub in my Granny’s home, listening to my Aunt Hedda’s tinny transistor radio, tuned to John Peel and Top of the Pops. “Anarchy in the UK” blasted out and life would never be the same for me.

I came home hungry, riding the new wave as it broke here, a pierced (yep, did my ear the first time right after I got back), tattooed (long story, but that was actually a couple of years earlier) ever the long-hair who still fit right into his Berkeley community.

I saw as many of the English and New York bands as they arrived as I could, and being near San Francisco, that was pretty easy to do, and it was cheap, too. $3.50 or $4.00 to see three bands at a great venue.

Anyway, Gene commenting on (I’d go the) Whole Wide World, that “punk opened things up” suggesting Eric would not have happened in 1972 is so dead on. But, with the Pistols and Malcolm McLaren and the Clash, all bets were off.

Never prior to John Lydon did any band ever seem to consider that there was the radical difference between singing harmoniously and being an effective vocalist had suddenly fallen away. In fact, I remember arguing similarly with my life-long friend Karen Clayton at the time about Elvis Costello. Karen called Elvis a lousy vocalist, and I noted that maybe he was a lousy elocutionist, but he was a great lyricist and voclalist.

Enter Ian Dury, and Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll, a really wonderful song: funny, self deprecating, and yet brutally honest.

But, because Sex and Drugs… seemed more like a gimmick song, it was hard to take much else by the Blockheads seriously. In fact it was hard to take Sex and Drugs… seriously.

Too bad, because they were a pretty tight band, and if you know the song Sweet Gene Vincent, you know this to be true. Not just a great song that links the same attitude of Little Richard and Chuck Berry to that of the punks, the song moves to that place using Vincent–Mr. Be-Bop-A-Lula and maybe THE original punk–as a vehicle.

This version of the song is from the The Concert for Kampuchia, and joining in the Blockheads is the Clash’s Mick Jones, by the way. And, let me tell you, we are far from done with the subject.

 

Night Music: Wreckless Eric, “Final Taxi”

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Lawr posted Eric’s greatest song (good one, Lawr!), but this tune is one of those songs that plays in my head at specific times, like a sound effect. When something happens (like seeing a hearse on the highway) this is the song that pops into my head. So, it’s kind of ingrained, worn a deep trough, but really only the part that goes, “THERE’S ONLY ONE DESTINATION IN THE FINAL TAXI!”

When I played it this afternoon I was reminded that it has a catchy reggae beat and a surprising, shocking element in the mix that seems wacky at first, but then turns this dark subject into a pop song.

Also, the video is just a slide show somebody added. It’s not terrible, but it can be distracting. You don’t need it.

Night Music: Wreckless Eric, “(I’d go the) Whole Wide World”

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To me, there are few things better than hearing a song you had not heard for a long time and think, “man, I remember this tune and it is great. I am so glad I heard it out of nowhere.”

Well, this morning Wreckless Eric, from 1978 as Punk was really cranking it up, came blasting out of the Laptop-Stereo-Whatever this configuration is. I heard a lot of  this song for a while around that time, but not since till KTKE in Truckee played it today, and bingo.

Just a wonderful cut!

 

 

Night Music: Jane’s Addiction, “Obvious”

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I am not sure what even prompted me to buy Jane’s Addiction’s second album, Ritual de lo Habitual.

Maybe because they had sort of been hyped, I bought the disc to prove to myself that they were crap. That is because the one song that got airplay–Been Caught Stealing–was but nothing special at the time.

Maybe it was because the sexually ambiguous cover is so intriguing. Maybe, after finding myself single after 12 years of marriage where I never really felt like myself I just wanted to explore and listen to shit that was not just Bruce Springsteen (not knocking the Boss, just wanted some new direction) and ugh, not having my family play Journey’s Escape and 90125 endlessly. Both of which I hated, but my newly adolescent step sons loved.

But, somehow when I went to the record store, Ritual found its way into the bag.

I did not listen to the disc right away, and as my life had changed, one of the other things I had started doing back in the early 90’s was running.

So, one Sunday, when I had completed a 10K and gotten back home, I decided to soak in the tub, and with a mineral water, a doob, and some candles lit (how trippy) I put the disc on the player and slid into the hot water.

I am not sure I knew at the time just how appropriate the candles and joint were since I didn’t know the Jane’s were really a neo-psychedelic band, but I don’t think I could have put together a better confluence of items than I did.

The album just killed me right away, and it even found its way onto a cassette (the old days, and I still had a Walkman) with Joe Satriani’s Surfing With the Alien on the flip that I used for downhill skiing music for a couple of years.

Back then I was also just starting to play guitar seriously, and I found the basically simple E-A-D-E progressions of the Jane’s easy to figure out, and extra easy to practice to (Cheap Trick is pretty good for this too).

Anyway, Three Days from the album hopped out of my shuffle the other day, and though I love that song (it really belongs somewhere with Steve’s best songs over seven minutes), I chose something a little shorter, but no less great.

That song is Obvious. Note that I did search for a live version and though there are a few out there on You Tube, the sound quality for all of them was stretched. Too much bass, too many highs, or something, but the mix on the original studio piece I originally fell in love with worked the best.  BTW, Been Caught Stealing has proved to be my least favorite song on the disc.

So, here it is!

 

Night Music: Roxy Music, “Love Is The Drug”

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I was at Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks tonight. I enjoy watching great basketball players occasionally make great plays. But for years I’ve hated the entertainment bubble the Garden blows up around you. Relentless noise and flashing lights, it was an embarrassment.

They remodeled the Garden in the past year and it is a different place. The architecture is better, though the $95 seats are crammed together in humiliatingly long rows, so if you’re in the middle you have to climb over 20 people to get out. And without clear rows to walk in the arena you have drop under the seats to move around the auditorium. Every once in a while some guy climbs over you, steps on your toes (because there’s no knee or leg room) to get to the next aisle over. It is a design of density, with little care for customer comfort. As sucky as that is, everything is nicer, plainer, less like some pervert’s basement and more like the Barclay Center.

In any case, I’m not here to analyze, but only to say that it was not awful enduring the interstitial schtick that takes up so much time during any sporting event. One of those highlights was music mixes during the game that skewed hip hop, but grabbed snippets of new and old, catchy and hard, mixed with soul and rock so that one was never ground down by relentless ugliness. In fact, most of it was pretty nice (helped by an excellent sound system).

And after the local community dance troop finished their set on the floor at half time, we had a some good tunes. One of which was Love is the Drug. Nice.

And the Knicks won.