Song of the Week – Lazarus, David Bowie; You Want It Darker, Leonard Cohen; Jesus Alone, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

My mind has been unnaturally fixated on mortality lately. Today marks the 39th year anniversary of my father’s passing. A few weeks ago I lost a very dear friend of mine at the far too young age of 61 after a short but very nasty battle with cancer. I was fortunate to have a long conversation with her in February when it appeared that her late 2016 surgery had bought her more time. Sadly, she took a terrible turn for the worse shortly afterward.

2016 was an especially hard year for rock deaths. A number of very important artists died during the year – Bowie, Prince, Glenn Frey, Keith Emerson, Paul Kantner, Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell, Greg Lake and George Michael to name a few.

Bowie was first, on January 10th, just 2 days after the release of Blackstar. He was struggling with cancer but chose to keep his illness private and focused on his work. An example to all of us, he worked right up until has passing and left us with one of the best albums of his storied career – yes, even compared to his iconic 70s and 80s classics.

The song “Lazarus”, released as the second single from the album, has often been cited for lyrics that hinted at the artist’s struggle to deal with his illness and impending mortality:

Look up here, I’m in heaven
I’ve got scars that can’t be seen
I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen
Everybody knows me now

In an eerily similar circumstance, Leonard Cohen released his last album – You Want It Darker – on his 82nd birthday, less than two months before his death from complications after a fall.

In an article in the February 2017 issue of Mojo, referring to the title track, Sylvie Simmons wrote:

In his final album, he sang himself back home. “Hineni,” he sang. “I am ready”’, accompanied by the cantor and choir of Congregational Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal, the synagogue his great grandfather founded, and in whose cemetery he would be buried on November 10, in a private ceremony, next to his parents.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds also released a superb album in 2016 called Skeleton Tree. The album was initiated in late 2014 but took a much different turn after the death of Cave’s 15 year old, twin son Arthur who fell from a cliff in England in July, 2015. The tragedy initially debilitated Cave but eventually he channeled his grief into a very moving work, the making of which he had documented for a film called One More Time With Feeling.

The album’s opener is “Jesus Alone.”

It includes a line “You fell from the sky, crash landed in a field…” that could only be described as a premonition since it was written before Arthur’s demise.

At least when we have to deal with such sadness, we have exceptional art to help us to process our emotions and feel community with others that have suffered similar experiences.

Enjoy… until next week.

Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter (on Ed Sullivan)

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That ranking of Stones’ tunes I posted about earlier in the week ends, if you get that far, with You Can’t Always Get What You Want edging Gimme Shelter because it’s less of a cliche about the Stones. Happy song wins, dark song finishes second.

Fair enough.

But then there is this clip. The Stones on the Ed Sullivan show promoting Let It Bleed. And they do a version of Gimme Shelter without Merry Clayton! Still a good song, but stripped down, without the fire, is this close to the Stones’ best song?

I leave that for you to decide for yourself. For me the issue is how much does what we love hinge on the tangential, or not the core of the tune or the performance. Is it the singer, the song, or the backup singer and the mix? Each and every cut varies because the circumstances of the performance, the particulars of its creation, differ.

So, why rank them? If something can be both this and that, and something else also, isn’t the ranking of them a narrowing of vision, a squinting (in this case with the ears) that restricts the experience?

Shane McGowan and the Popes, The Snake

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This is an album, not a song.

It was the product that McGowan produced after being ejected by the Pogues.

The Pogues, with McGowan, were a fantastic band. Lots of that was songwriting, much of it McGowan’s, some was approach, and a lot was an intense commitment to making real Irish music, sometimes in a punk framework.

When the Pogues, an ongoing enterprise, kicked McGowan out, it was at least partly because his rather self-destructive and theatrical love of the drink was disruptive to an ongoing enterprise. To find an equivalent, think of the Stones kicking Brian Jones out of the band. McGowan was of similar importance to the Pogues, and similarly dangerous.

What came next, for the McGowan, was the Snake.

It’s an Irish-y record, not that dissimilar from his Pogue’s stuff, but heavier. And after McGowan wasn’t a Pogue, the Pogues went more international. Less intense. Lovely tunes, often pot infused, but without the edge that McGowan often brought simply by showing up.

This is the first song from the Snake, the first song on McGowan’s answer record. It rocks as hard as the first song on the Pogues’ first album. I’ll post both. Enjoy.

The Sickbed of Cuchylainn.

 

 

 

Two Year Old, Glory Days (car karaoke)

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Cute video making its way around the way things make their way around today.

No doubt, this song is hooky as heck, and I think the two year old gets it right. When asked to sing “throws that speedball by you, makes you look like a fool,” the tyke seems a little nonplussed.

Either he knows that a speedball is a shot of half heroin and half cocaine, or…

He knows no one in baseball calls a fastball, even a hot one, a speed ball.

Here’s what Paul Dickson says in the Baseball Dictionary:

speedball n. the fastball

Alright, okay, maybe I’m wrong. But I’ve never heard anyone ever call a fastball a speedball. Except Springsteen. This has always struck me as one of the jankiest lyrics by a guy who usually gets it right.

Dee Lite, Groove Is In The Heart

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I’ve posted this tune a couple of times before.

If you don’t get it, it is too late.

The High Numbers, “You Gotta Dance To Keep From Crying”

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This is the High Numbers, an early detour into mod by the Who, covered with professional film. Careers are made of this, though the band didn’t fit the fashion and soon reverted to their original name.

But this is also a great cover of a Miracles tune, a Holland-Dozier-Holland composition, something that can make a career, too.

In this case, however, it wasn’t this great cut but what came later that made the career. And the film of their live performance ended up in a documentary that earned a Grammy nomination in 2009.

 

 

 

Rolling Stones, Brown Sugar

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I just read Gene’s comment about the Political Correctness Police in the comments to the Now I’ve Got A Witness post (about the ranking of every Rolling Stones’ song). I started reading the list from the bottom up, and was noting the very excellent songs ranked near the bottom of the list. Short and Curlies, in particular, apparently because it is misogynistic ignoring the jamming instrumental track behind the lyrics.

In any case, I come at the Political Correctness Police a little differently. I believe people have a basic right to express their opinions, and I also believe people have a right not to be aggressively attacked with hateful speech. Since those two positions are not mutually exclusive, the resolution is one of constant negotiation with oneself and with those within earshot.

For me, there is a big distinction between words said by a person directly to another person in such a way that the implication is personal, and the same words issuing into the public space in a more general way. The former is hate speech, the later is hateful speech (if the subject is hate) and hate speech is perhaps not illegal but certainly morally reprehensible, while hateful speech can be extreme and uncomfortable and repulsive, but its immorality is far from automatic and should be given every benefit of the doubt.

Which brings us to the Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar, which is certainly one of the most rampantly offensive and rocking songs in their oeuvre. A writer named Lauretta Charlton wrote a defense of the song in Vulture a couple of years ago,  and quotes Mick Jagger as saying, in 1995, “I never would write that song now. I would probably censor myself. I’d think, ‘Oh God, I can’t. I’ve got to stop. I can’t just write raw like that.’”

I can imagine a world without the hatred and history of Brown Sugar didn’t exist (I have a good imagination), and in such a world such a song probably wouldn’t exist. But that isn’t our world, and if in 1969 Jagger didn’t pour out the lyrics to the song (which he in subsequent years in live shows changed, because he felt uncomfortable singing the originals) as he did, our world would be a lesser place. Fuck those Political Correctness Police.

David Marchese ranks Brown Sugar as the 10th best Stones song of all time.

The Rolling Stones’ 364th Worst Song. Now I’ve Got A Witness (Like Uncle Gene and Uncle Phil)

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This Nanker Phelge instrumental is off of England’s Newest Hitmakers. It features lots of Ian Stewart on the organ, Jagger on the harp (I presume), and a rank and kind of exciting guitar solo.  Stewie seems to be a recurring theme in these low-rated songs. Judge for yourself:

The tune is from the same sessions and was released on the same album that produced this cover of Marvin Gaye’s hit, which was written by Holland-Dozier-Holland. Can I get a witness is judged to be the 324th worst song by the Rolling Stones.

 

Song of the Week – Houston, Dean Martin

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

Good music is good music. How’s that for profundity? I make that point because today’s song of the week may seem to be a very unlikely choice to many of you. It is “Houston” by Dean Martin.

This song is just cool. It is rock and roll. Not in a purist way, but in the same way that James Dean or the Firesign Theater were – and they weren’t even musicians (at least in the main). It’s all about the attitude! Martin and the rest of his Rat Packers had it in spades.

“Houston” was written by Lee Hazelwood, who is most famous for his work with Nancy Sinatra – he wrote and produced “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” – including their duet on “Some Velvet Morning.” “Houston” made it to #21 on the Billboard pop charts in 1965, a year that was still dominated by the British Invasion groups and Motown.

Lyrically the song is about a good natured guy despite being down on his luck and unable to catch a break.

I got holes in both of my shoes
Well I’m a walking case of the blues
Saw a dollar yesterday
But the wind blew it away
Goin’ back to Houston, Houston, Houston

Good music is good music – no matter where it comes from.

Enjoy… until next week.

Ranking Every Rolling Stones Song. Beginning to Think About That. First Up: Short and Curlies.

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I came upon this project today. It was published today. A guy named David Marchese has published his ranking of all 373 Rolling Stones, from last to first, in Vulture, which is the culture blog of New York magazine. Presumably the print edition will feature some of this stuff, but what caught my attention is that I know all this music.

I’ve seen people ranking all of Bowie’s songs, or Prince’s, and I’m naturally interested, but as closely as I followed parts of their careers, I’ve also ignored parts. So, I’m not an expert.

And while I lost touch with the Stones albums in the 90s and onward, I did listen to them all, and I know lots about all the classic phases. So, every decision, I figured, in this list, would matter.

But how to approach such a massive thing?

I read the introduction and discovered some parameters. I also discovered that the Stones wrote some songs that were offensive to less privileged people, that is those without a penis and white skin. This is certainly true.

When I went off to college, in 1974, I was immediately challenged by the women on my floor, for loving the Stones. Jack Kerouac, too. Their gripe then about the Stones was Under My Thumb and Stupid Girl. And Brown Sugar, obs. And all those objections have a point.

When you’re making a list ranking the songs of a band, or a person, or a genre, or whatever, balancing the viscerally pleasing with the culturally objectionable is the biggest challenge. The story, the attitude a song expresses, the context of its release, its cultural moment all come into play.

Which David Marchese tackles in his intro to his list. He writes: “The Rolling Stones have multiple songs that are lyrically reprehensible to women and people of color — often both at the same time. If I were questioned about this topic at the Pearly Gates, I’d suggest that the Stones’ offensive attitudes had more to do with a craven desire to be provocative than any fundamental malignant worldview, but maybe I’m a fool. Whatever the true motivation behind them, a handful of the band’s songs have been tarred by Jagger and Richards’s sex and race insensitivity. There’s no getting around it.”

The question is still how to approach this massive thing. You should read Marchese’s piece and make up your own mind. I waded in and found the bottom ranking of Sing This Song All Together (See What Happens) as a bit polemic, but perfectly reasonable. Especially since he notes just how good the rest of Their Satanic Majesty’s Request can be.

Then comes awfulness. Indian Girl, from Emotional Rescue, has all the awfulness of Jagger’s line about Puerto Rican girls just dyin’ to meet you, from the title track, without the groove.

Going Home, from Aftermath, is a great three minute song extended for some reason. Is it this awful? I would have to revisit. Not time for that. The song is too long.

Melody, from Black and Blue, is a curious jam featuring Billy Preston. The Fifth Beatle and the Sixth Stone. Not a great tune, but hardly awful or deserving approbrium.

Harlem Shuffle, from Dirty Work, offended me the day it came out. In those days a new Stones single got radio play. It’s a cover, and a not particularly felicitous one.

Which brings us to Short and Curlies. This is from It’s Only Rock and Roll. Marchese calls Ian Stewart a frequent sideman, but Stew was actually in the original band and was jettisoned for craven reasons. (Not handsome enough?)

Short and Curlies reminds me of the delightful Jamming With Edward, which is basically a jam session with Mick, Charlie and Bill with Ry Cooder and  Nicky Hopkins (playing the Stew part). A piano fronted jam band playing rollicking (mostly) blues.

Allmusic hates on Jamming, and Marchese hates on Short and Curlies, which does exhibit women-hating tendencies, but if this is the Stones 368th best song, you’re not listening to how strong this jam is. Even if it doesn’t really go anywhere.

If this is the shit, I’m looking forward to making my way through the rest.