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Friday, July 18, 2008
SOME PEOPLE ARE CRAZY
John Martyn
Grace & Danger
Polygram : 1980
[Buy It]
BABY'S CRAZY
Larry Williams
1958
Available on : At His Finest
Ace : 2004
[Buy It]
CRAZY WOMAN
Bill Wyman
Monkey Grip
One Way : 1974
[Buy It]
DON'T BE CRAZY
John Lennon
c. 1975
8 TON CRAZY
Andy Fairweather Low
La Booga Rooga
Universal : 1975
[Buy It]
RETURN OF THE CRAZY ONE
Digital Underground
Body-Hat Syndrome
Warner : 1993
[Buy It]
I called someone crazy this week. She deserved it. Objectively speaking, for a little while at least, she was every kind of loon. I wouldn't say flibbertigibbet, because that's sexist. I wouldn't say murderer, because that's inaccurate. I'd say crazy. When I told her about it, she balked. She should have thanked me. A crazy person has hundreds of songs at her disposal to clarify and celebrate her condition. In fact, you can argue that it's one of the five or six most decorated words in the history of pop music. Sounds crazy, I know.
The most common use of crazy is romantic: Patsy Cline's "Crazy," Billie Holiday's "I've Got a Man, He's Crazy For Me," Chet Baker's "You're Driving Me Crazy (What Did I Do?)," and Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy," to name just a few. In others, it's just a way of expressing energy: Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," or for that matter the Clash's. But then there are the songs that investigate a darker, richer seam of meaning, where crazy means what crazy means: a temporary loss of reason due to a combination of emotional and psychological factors.
That's the case in "Some People Are Crazy," one of the signature songs of the British singer/songwriter John Martyn. I missed Martyn the first time he passed through my life, in college, when a slightly older guy I knew insisted that he was like Eric Clapton but with brains. "But that's not like Eric Clapton at all!" I said, and we both had a hearty laugh, and I went on my way. In the last year or two, I have found my way back to Martyn, or he has found his way back to me, thanks largely to his 1980 album Grace and Danger. The record can sound smooth and jazzy if you don't pay close attention, but beneath the surface it's as raw a dissection of a failing relationship as, say, Shoot Out the Lights. "Some People Are Crazy," the opener, isn't among the most bruising songs; it's cryptic, but still dark and disturbing: Some people are crazy about him
Some people can't stand his face
Some people they smile when they know he's coming
Some people chase him out of the place At first blush, it seems like another "crazy for" song, but as it goes on, it becomes clear that there's a broader brief: Some people are crazy
Some people are just plain good
Some people talk wouldness and couldness
Some people don't do as they should, One of the people who didn't do as he should was Larry Williams. Williams started out as a songwriter and performer at Specialty Records in the mid-fifties, and he was designated as the label's star when Little Richard left rock and roll for the ministry in 1957. Williams had the songs, like "Bonie Moronie" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzie." He had the style. He had the platform. In "Baby's Crazy," though, he may be grasping at straws -- his main piece of evidence against the woman in the song, Marie, is that she doesn't love him like she used to do. Maybe she just came to her senses, or moved on. In real life, Williams' problems were more severe than just missing out on the record hop, thanks largely to his involvement with pimping and dealing. His life in the sixties and seventies was marked by drug and gun trouble, and in 1980 he was found dead of a gunshot wound outside of his Laurel Canyon home in a highly suspicious suicide.
Guns also figure in Bill Wyman's solo work, though they seem the stuff of blues legend rather than of reality. Monkey Grip, the bassist's 1974 album, was the first solo product from a Rolling Stone, and it opens with "I Wanna Get Me a Gun," which featured an excellent piano solo by Dr. John. "Crazy Woman" is the second song, and it builds its case slowly: Crazy woman
She caught me with somebody
Crazy woman
She caught me with somebody else
Crazy woman
She flew into a fury
Crazy woman
She said she's gonna get me some
Crazy woman
She said I'm gonna get what's coming
Crazy woman
Gonna get me with a gun Wyman's song highlights the ways in which "crazy" can be used as dismissal, even if it's tinged with admiration. After all, who is more qualified to offer his opinion on a woman's mental fitness than Wyman, who began a relationship with Mandy Smith when he was 47 and she was 13 and who drove her to a nervous breakdown and anorexia?
It has suddenly occurred to me that the woman I called crazy might be coming for me with a gun. Is that sexist? Is it dismissive? Can she even shoot a gun?
I'll end with a plea for sanity from John Lennon -- "Don't Be Crazy," from the Dakota Demos, is Lennon's workup for "(Just Like) Starting Over" -- and a pair of songs that handle craziness from the inside rather than the outside. Andy Fairweather Low is, like John Martyn, a respected and well-connected British guitarist and singer- - he has had professional relationships with Wyman, Clapton, and Roger Waters, among others - - who is more distinctive, if not more well-known, as a solo artist. The loping, beguiling "8 Ton Crazy" may be a love song, but it works more generically as a defense for temporary loss of reason: Hey mama morning, papa night and day
Don't treat me like I've got nothing to say
Please don't tell me that you think it's a shame
When things go wrong and there's no one to blame
'Cause I get 8 ton crazy
I get 8 ton mad
It's the strangest feeling
That I ever had
When you start tap-dancing
It makes me feel bad Finally, of course, there's Digital Underground's "Return of the Crazy One," which makes an strong case that a person's crazy parts are the most attractive, not to mention the most fun to handle. At times, Digital Underground sacrificed its comic genius for standard-issue P-Funk-derived hip-hop, but not as long as Humpty Hump was nearby. Here, Humpty presides over a celebration of alternative and maybe even revolutionary thinking. It seems like a good idea to quote it extensively, because what else can you do with joyful things? Lick lick let me lick
Smell let me smell the flavor
And taste the behavior
The way you
Been kicking it while the Humpster was lamping
Fishing and camping
Out renting boats in the Hamptons
Eating good, working out, and giving charity
Working on my vocal cord clarity
Hell no, I can't front, I been at the crib G-ing
Slapping poontang trying to be the mack pappy
40-dog and pina colada peeing
Making my rounds to keep the Humpty girls happy
If you missed me I was laying in the cut
Wrecking big butts
Scratching my knees
Cause my homegirl's cat got fleas
That's how it goes
The beat flow-flows
Yo peep the new color of my nose
Representing how we been living
That's how it is
I'm not the Biz
But if I was to pick a booger
It'd be a big fat gooey gold plated loogie
But I was born a yankee so I use my hanky
The way I wear my clothes freaks the hos 'cause I'm lanky
Speaking of hankies, I like hanky panky
Especially when the hanky panky's stanky
Of course ain't gonna be too much stanking
Cause then my duty would be to give the booty a spanking
I like biscuits and grits on the sausage
And so you know it's me, I wrote some nonsense
Hova glova nivlan blizman glaze niull And so, by way of apology to the crazy ones -- no, not exactly apology, but more a equal mix of admiration, impatience, fellowship, and challenge, all of which are tuned to a pleasant humming at the base of the brain because, well, there's nothing better than liking a person right on through the craziness -- I say, hova glova nivlan blizman glaze niull. And don't forget it.Labels: ben, hip-hop, rock and roll
posted by Ben
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