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Wednesday, March 17, 2010
BARON OF LOVE, PART 2
Alex Chilton
Like Flies on Sherbert
Peabody: 1979
[Buy It]
LET ME GET CLOSE TO YOU
Alex Chilton
High Priest
Big Time: 1987
[Buy It]
DOWNS (demo)
Alex Chilton
1974
Available on: Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story
Big Beat: 2008
[Buy It]
IT'S YOUR FUNERAL
Alex Chilton
A Man Called Destruction
Ardent: 1995
[Buy It]
Alex Chilton, who died, wrote songs. He recorded songs. He made songs. He unmade them. In the end, the life was largely in song, and the songs all had life, and that's all there is to say, and there isn't anything that can be done. Once he covered "Let Me Get Close to You," which was Goffin-King via Skeeter Davis:How long I'll never know
I've waited to tell you that I love you so
Now I have finally said it
Come on baby don't make me regret it "It's Your Funeral" is an instrumental. There are no words.
*
With a few hours to absorb the news, some memories came into focus, mostly distant ones, like hearing Big Star for the first time in the early eighties in Miami, or buying Like Flies on Sherbert in college, or driving upstate with some friends some years ago and listening on the car radio to Stuff, which collected some of Chilton's songs -- you could say that they were his best songs, but it might be more accurate to say that they were the songs of his that sounded most like songs that might be on a car radio. I remembered beginning to date the woman I'd later marry, playing lots of Chilton's music for her, and trying to figure out his secret: the way his try-anything-once aesthetic was both forthright and evasive, how he could combine an anarchic sense of humor and an unironic ability to convey pain, his addiction to the brilliant throwaway, his graceless grace. He drew lines back to Slim Harpo and Ronny and the Daytonas and Danny Pearson, so many it seemed he'd get trapped in the tangle. He escaped, again and again--but escaped to what? The most recent memory was the blurriest: it was just last November when I saw him with the reconstituted Big Star (half original, half Posies) at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. I wrote a little piece about the show for the New Yorker that now seems dismissive to me, though I didn't mean it that way. I had no idea it would be the last I'd see of him.
*
NOTE: This is obviously not the first time we have written about Chilton here at Moistworks. Here is a piece by Alex Abramovich that investigates the end of Big Star and the beginning of Chilton's solo career.Labels: ben, chilton, pop, rock, soul
posted by Ben
LINK |
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
ANOTHER SONG
Carpenters
Close To You
A&M : 1970
[Buy It]
CRESCENT NOON
Carpenters
Close To You
A&M : 1970
[Buy It]
MR. GUDER
Carpenters
Close To You
A&M : 1970
[Buy It]
MY BODY KEEPS CHANGING MY MIND
Karen Carpenter
1979
Available on: Karen Carpenter
A&M : 1996
[Buy It]
STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Karen Carpenter
1979
Available on: Karen Carpenter
A&M : 1996
[Buy It]
Karen Carpenter would have been sixty today. I don't have particularly strong feelings about this fact, though I do, inexplicably, have strong feelings about her music, especially the ten top five singles she and her brother Richard released between 1970 ("We've Only Just Begun," which went to number two) and 1974 (a chart-topping cover of "Please Mr. Postman"). I heard them the way everyone heard them, on the radio, all the time. I was very small, on account of being very young, and so much of the music I heard was chaotic, exciting, and challenging: the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, the Who. The Carpenters, for me, were always a kind of oasis from energy and significance: Karen Carpenter's vocals were indisputably pretty (you could even say beautiful), but they seemed scrubbed of any emotional content. In contrast with her drumming, which could be improvisational and idiosyncratic (check out "Another Song," from the 1970 LP Close to You, and then feel free to write your own comparison of the Carpenters and White Stripes), her vocals were pristine, crystalline, perfectly meaningless. They were a thing that could not be imperfected on account of not really being there. The best example of this is "Crescent Noon," also from Close to You. "Crescent Noon," which isn't a clever play on words so much as a nonsensical phrase that appears to be a typographical error, is a kind of folk song that Richard Carpenter and his songwriting partner/lyricist John Bettis created to express their sadness at the passage of the seasons. It's in a minor key, which helps to set the mood, and the lyrics are gloomy, if insistently rhymed:Green September burned to October brown
Bare November led to December's frozen ground
The seasons stumble 'round
Our drifting lives are bound to a falling crescent noon The next song, "Mr. Guder," could not be more different on its face -- it's a sarcastic kiss-off in which Richard Carpenter and John Bettis tweak a former boss for being a company man -- and yet Karen's vocals have the same blank face. I don't think I heard either of these songs in the mid-seventies, because they weren't hits. But even the hits, catchy as they were, never seemed lived in. (I admired the songcraft greatly, and believed for a while that the duo took their name not because it was their actual name but from the fact that they built songs rather than felt them.) This was the fault of -- or, depending on your perspective, should have been credited to -- Karen's vocals; they are not so much empty as they are full of hollowness, placid in unsettling ways. There is sadness, but is it because the songs contain sadness or because they sadden me with what they do not contain? This is not to deny their beauty so much as to try to explain it.
The Carpenters got huge, of course, and then as music shifted toward disco and late-seventies arena rock, they fell out of favor. One of the group's last solid hits was a cover of Klaatu's trance-inducing UFO anthem "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft." Karen was a superstar, of course, and dated celebrities like Tony Danza and Steve Martin. The Michael Jackson hit "She's Out of My Life" was written by Tom Bahler about Carpenter after she broke up with him. Then, in the late seventies, the band took a hiatus when Richard dealt with a drug dependency to Quaaludes. During that time, Phil Ramone was going around town trying to keep female vocalists contemporary by pairing them with slick modern arrangements and handpicked chart-ready songs. He did it to Phoebe Snow on Rock Away, which came out in 1980, and he did it to Carpenter at right around the same time. The results, which were intended for a solo album, displeased A&M Records chairman Herb Alpert, who paid a kill fee for the record. In 1996, it was finally released, and while it proved that Alpert's instincts were correct, it also proved that Carpenter's voice had lost none of its characterless character over the years. "My Body Keeps Changing My Mind," a bit of boudoir disco, is supposed to be seductive, and it is, if you like unoccupied spaces. Karen's cover of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years" is equally emblematic of her gift, in that it doesn't sound regretful or passive-aggressive or foolish-fond. Rather, it doesn't sound anything. The duo reunited for another record, Made In America, after which Carpenter's anorexia accelerated rapidly and she died from heart failure in February 1983.Labels: ben, pop
posted by Ben
LINK |
Friday, October 09, 2009
ANGRY
Paul McCartney
Press To Play
Capitol : 1986
[Buy It]
HE MAKES ME SO MAD
Hollywood Jills
1968
Available on : One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found
Rhino : 2005
[Buy It]
MADNESS
Miles Davis
Nefertiti
Columbia : 1967
[Buy It]
MAD
Prince and the N.P.G.
NPG Music Club : 2001
GOD IS MAD WITH MAN
Rev. T.E. Weems
1927
Available on : Goodbye, Babylon
Dust to Digital : 2003
[Buy It]
I AIN'T MAD AT ALL
Public Enemy
Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age
Def Jam : 1994
[Buy It]
SICK OF MYSELF
Matthew Sweet
100% Fun
Volcano : 1995
[Buy It]
From diary, 1977:
"Mom and Dad were both mad at me today. I was mad at people at school and acted bad and they noticed. I felt bad because of school so I wanted them to be more nice but they were less nice because of how I acted. Six Million Dollar Man was the end of a two parter about trained sharks."
From this site, right now:
"Feel like I made some people mad this week. Didn't mean to. Might have miscalculated. Can be bossy and overbearing at times with friends. If so, am sorry. Am taking foot off gas so as not to additionally antagonize. Should concede, though, that I might be wrong, that people might not be mad at me at all, that instead it might be a matter of indifference. Should also concede there's something in me that rebels more strongly at that possibility than at the prospect of anger. Anger at least signals investment. Indifference is divestment and worse than an affront. It's a null set. Not to mention that if people aren't mad at me, then maybe it's just that I'm displeased with myself, and that's intolerable, because that requires locating myself within myself, as the damn dirty hippies say, and processing my own error without any engagement, challenge, or friction furnished by others. It requires standing still, and who can do that? Not me. Not sharks. Maybe trained sharks."Labels: ben, gospel, jazz, pop
posted by Ben
LINK |
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
HELP ME LIFT YOU UP
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Miss America
Koch : 1988
[Buy It]
THINK ABOUT YOUR TROUBLES
Harry Nilsson
The Point!
RCA : 1971
[Buy It]
HELP ME
Van Morrison
It's Too Late To Stop Now
Warner Bros. : 1974
[Buy It]
HELPING HAND
Fats Domino
1962
Available on: Out of New Orleans
Bear Family : 1993
[Buy It]
HELPING HAND (A THOUSAND MILES AWAY FROM HOME)
Snooks Eaglin
New Orleans Street Singer
Smithsonian Folkways : 1959
[Buy It]
'CAUSE I LOST MY HELPING HAND
Little Miss Cornshucks
1951
Available on: 1947-1951
Classics R&B : 2003
[Buy It]
MISTER, WOULD YOU PLEASE HELP MY PONY?
Ween
Chocolate and Cheese
Elektra : 1994
[Buy It]
The other night I had a dream. It was about the Somali pirates, which means that it probably wasn't about them at all. In the dream I was at home, watching the news. Most of the shots were aerial, footage of the captured boat and the captain with a gun to his head. A few of the shots seemed to be from the vantage of the boat; they showed helicopters with cameras bolted to their doors, zipping by in the afternoon sky. That was how the dream went: shot of boat, shot of sky, shot of boat, shot of sky. It started exciting, because it was a pirate dream -- avast, ye mateys! -- but it got boring fast.
Then after a while I noticed something in the background. It was a friend of mine. She was not on the boat. She was in the water, about fifty yards behind the boat, in a tiny white ring of a life preserver, the kind you see in movies. The air was perfectly clear, and I could see her expression. She looked peaceful. In real life, this friend is going through a series of intense experiences, some personal, some professional, some financial, some emotional. I wouldn't say I'm worried about her, exactly, because she's smart and capable and lands on her feet like a cat, but I have occasional twinges of worry, because I don't like her to be sad. Those occasional twinges displease me because I don't know what they're asking me, or even telling me, to do. Sometimes I give advice. Sometimes I back off and offer a sympathetic ear. Sometimes I tell her that if anyone crosses her during this difficult time I'm going to knock 'em out. But it's not an easy time for her, I don't think, and to be, on top of everything else, stranded in the ocean with only a bright white LifeSaver around her, well, that was just too much. She needed my help. In the dream, I called her and she answered. "Hi," she said.
"Hi?" I said. It seemed insufficiently dramatic. "I'm watching on TV and you're in the ocean behind the pirates. Are you okay?"
"Fine," she said. "The water's nice." She seemed unconcerned, like she was certain someone was on the way to rescue her.
"Okay," I said. I started to hang up, but something stopped me. "Wait a second," I said. "How come you're talking to me on the phone now, but in the picture onscreen, you're not on the phone?"
"Don't know," she said. "Maybe it's file footage." She coughed. "Did I just cough onscreen?"
"You're not even holding the phone," I said. "Anyway, I wanted to see how you are."
"Well, I have to go," she said. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine." At times, she has sounded under the weather when she has said these kinds of things, or under the gun. This time she sounded calm and confident. "Talk to you later." I hung up the phone and watched her on TV, there in the middle of the ocean. Her expression shifted -- to boredom, to anger, a flicker of fear, then to something I didn't recognize.
She had told me not to worry about her, but I did. I worried even after I hung up. I called the real-life friend and told her about the dream friend. At first, she didn't believe me. "Is that dream some kind of code?" she said.
"Dreams are always some kind of code," I said, as condescendingly as possible.
"You know what I mean," she said. "Did you really dream it, or are you just pretending as a way of telling me that you think I'm making a mistake about something?"
"Are you making a mistake about something?" I said, still condescending.
"Well, I have to go," she said. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine." Again, calm and confident. "Talk to you later."
We hung up uneasily. Or rather, I was uneasy. Telling me not to worry once, in a dream, was fine. It might have been some kind of code. But telling me not to worry twice, once in real life, was too much. I could take a hint. I wouldn't worry, which meant I wouldn't help. Instead, I went to listen to music, and specifically to songs about help. I listened to "Help!" and "Help Me, Rhonda" and "With a Little Help From My Friends." As forms of counsel regarding advice and assistance, they seemed pat, like songs you've heard hundreds of times. I dug deeper, through Elton John's "Yell Help" and Hasil Adkins' "Can't Help It Blues," until I reached Mary Margaret O'Hara's "Help Me Lift You Up." Mary Margaret O'Hara is often at the deepest reaches of any question. This song is deceptively simple, which means that it can lose its way among some of the knottier, deceptively complex songs on her "Miss America" album. When you separate it from the rest of the class, though, it excels, not only as a song about friendship and help, but as a song about dreams:I have a dream
It's very clear
You're all around
But never near As life preservers go, it's more substantial than my friend's simple white ring but also darker. The chorus, "Help me lift you up," is many things at once, a statement of mutual need, a paradox, a plea. It's selfless but not entirely so. The argument, at least of that one phrase, is that you'll never get lifted without my lift, but that I can't lift you unless you're not just letting me, but helping me. I need to lift you to feel lifted myself, and I need your help. That complex, co-extensive process can unfold over the course of a lifetime--it can nurture two people in parallel or even in intersection--but it has to begin somewhere: with a phone call, say.
And so I was determined not to call my friend. Why should I? I had offered assistance and my offer had been received but not embraced, not once but twice. That was fine. I could take a pair of hints. Still, I went through the morning in a little bit of a haze. The air wasn't perfectly clear. What was my role as a friend, exactly? Should I challenge her? Should I let time pass? Should I joke? Should I call? It wasn't my problem, really: if the emotional circumstances tanked, if the professional circumstances derailed, it wasn't my tank or my train. Maybe the best thing I could do was to let her think about her own troubles. In Harry Nilsson's "Think About Your Troubles," this leads, via a convoluted marine metaphor, to a renewed perspective.Sit down at the breakfast table
Think about your troubles
Pour yourself a cup of tea
Then think about the bubbles
You can take your teardrops
And drop 'em in a teacup
Take them down to the riverside
And throw them over the side
To be swept up by a current
Then taken to the ocean
To be eaten by some fishes
Who were eaten by some fishes
And swallowed by a whale
Who grew so old
He decomposed
He died and left his body
To the bottom of the ocean But I had my own marine metaphor, and it left me with my friend floating in a life preserver in the middle of a heartless expanse. Maybe it was unfair to leave her with her own troubles. Maybe this was one of those rare cases where rushing in was advisable. Thinking about it too much was proving unhelpful, so I left the house and went for a walk in my neighborhood. People were talking about the Somali pirates, though no one mentioned seeing my friend on the news. A new store was opening in my neighborhood. There were apples on a table. "Want one?" a woman said. "Help yourself."
The next day, I was done with the apples. There was a core in the garbage and another one in the sink. My friend was still helping herself, or at the very least hadn't asked for my help. I was curious about her situation but not curious enough to do anything about it; I was all around but never near. And so the songs kept coming: Liz Phair's "Help Me Mary," the Lyres' "Help Me Ann," Stevie Wonder's "Heaven Help Us All." I settled, this time, on Van Morrison's "Help Me," which is a live cover of a Sonny Boy Williamson song. There's a tension built into the center of the song: Morrison is asking for help, but he sounds so vital that it's hard to imagine that he needs it. And in fact, he's not asking for help so much as offering an entry-level (if you know what I mean) position that he means to fill one way or another:You got to help me
I can't do it all by myself
You got to help me, baby
I can't do it all by myself
You know if you don't help me darling
I'll have to find myself somebody else Other songs are more honest in their abjection, like Fats Domino's "Helping Hand":I'm a thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
A thousand miles away from home, waiting for a train
Nobody seems to want me or give me a helping hand
I nevermore will roam again if I ever get home again That's where my friend was in my dream, a thousand miles away from everything. She bobbed on the surface of the water and while she'd answer the phone if you called, she wouldn't call you. The song, which was adapted from Jimmie Rodgers' "Waiting on a Train," was also recorded by Snooks Eaglin, whose version is sadder than Domino's and, paradoxically, less desperate. Eaglin seems aware enough of his confusion and loneliness that there's a good chance he'll grab onto whoever reaches out to help. Little Miss Cornshucks (the stage name of the R&B singer Mildred Cummings) demonstrates this principle even more sharply with "'Cause I Lost My Helping Hand"; she's so deep in the well that it seems certain someone will pull her out.
But certainty's a funny business. Once, long ago, as a kid, I was walking with a friend -- a different friend -- and came upon a dead dog on the side of the road. There was something shocking about the sight, and it wasn't the fact of it. Dogs die. Sometimes they are violent deaths. Sometimes they are peaceful. What was shocking about this dog was that he was neither. He had an expression that I would only recognize much later in life. He was waiting for help that never came. I thought about the dog's expression while I tried to remember my friend's expression in the dream, the final one that came after boredom and anger and fear. She floated on the water and wanted...what? nothing? a chance to make her own mistakes? time to prove that they were not mistakes? a fair shake in the sea of possibilities without interference from, say, me? I was available for help but also happy not to help. The dog's expression was branded on my brain. My friend was out there in the ocean. I had woken up from my dream but that didn't mean it wasn't also true.Labels: ben, blues, pop
posted by Ben
LINK |
Thursday, March 05, 2009
SNOW
Harry Nilsson
Nilsson Sings Newman
Buddha : 1970
[Buy It]
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
Roger Miller
1960
Available on: King of the Road
Bear Family : 1994
[Buy It]
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
Ry Cooder
My Name Is Buddy
Nonesuch : 2007
[Buy It]
LOVER IN THE SNOW
Rivers Cuomo
1997
Available on: Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo
Geffen : 1997
[Buy It]
STEAL SOFTLY THROUGH SNOW
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Trout Mask Replica
Reprise : 1969
[Buy It]
HUMIDITY BUILT THE SNOWMAN
John Prine
Lost Dogs + Mixed Blessings
Oh Boy : 1995
[Buy It]
Last week I went to a land of snow, though not the land of ice and snow. I skied, which hasn't happened in years, and skied fairly well, which hasn't happened in about as many years. My only goal was not to fall. I also met some new people and found them all to be very nice, which surprised me. I had forgotten that about people. I should get out more.
While I was in the snow, one of my friends was also on vacation, though she went to a land where it never snows. She was going on her trip, in part, to forget something unpleasant. I won't say whether it was an unpleasant circumstance within her family, or an unpleasant work experience, or an unpleasant relationship. The point is that she was trying to forget, and using distance and difference as tools to do so. She went somewhere with a beach, which made for nice symmetry: her surf, my snow. We figured we'd both be out of the reach of technology, but we forgot that nearly every remote outpost has the dreaded internet, and that the reach of cell phones is now roughly equal with the reach of the human species.
My first day in the land of the snow, it was sunny and warm. People skied in jeans and light jackets. The second morning I woke up to a blizzard. Snow was coming down everywhere. I was determined to get to the mountain early, and so I went tromping out in my ski boots, picked up my skis from the rack outside the hotel, and waited for the shuttle bus to take me to the base of the mountain. When I got there, I got into the lift line and realized that I had forgotten my lift ticket. To say that I was aggravated is an understatement, but I had time, so I went back to the shuttle bus and back to the hotel to pick up my ticket. As I went into the hotel, I noticed that there were no footprints by the entrance. As a record of the morning, this was inaccurate. I had been there, and I assumed other people had been, too. But the snow that was falling had already erased them. I had forgotten my lift ticket, sure, but now the snow was forgetting me entirely. It was like natural amnesia.
When I picked up my lift ticket, I also loaded up my iPod with songs about snow, and pretty soon I saw that I wasn't the only one who had considered the connection between snow and memory. Randy Newman's "Snow," which was recorded by Harry Nilsson but left off the original version of Nilsson Sings Newman, describes snow as a medium where memories both live and die.Snow
Fills the fields we used to know
And the little park where we would go
Sleeps far below
In the snow
Gone
It's all over and you're gone
But the memory lives on although
Our dreams lie buried
In the snow The bluegrass standard "Footprints in the Snow" complicates the case considerably. The song--a staple of Bill Monroe's act that has been covered by dozens of musicians--tells the story of a man who has been separated from his lover and uses the snow to locate her. More specifically, he tracks her:Now some folks like the summertime when they can walk about
Strolling through the meadow green it's fun there no doubt
But give me the wintertime when snow falls all around
For I found her when the snow on the ground
Well, I traced her little footprints in the snow
I traced her little footprints in the snow
I can't forget the day my darling lost her way
I found her when the snow was on the ground This seems like a nice story, right? His darling got lost, he went out to find her, snow helped, the end. But then the song turns, and makes it clear that it really was the end:Well, I dropped in to see her there was a big round moon
Her mother said she just stepped out but would be returning soon
I found her little footprints and I traced them through the snow
I found her when the snow was on the ground
Now she's up in heaven she's with an angel band
I know I'm going to meet her in that promised land
But every time the snow falls it brings back memories
For I found her when the snow was on the ground Miller's version is upbeat, almost chipper, and it's easy to overlook the fact that it's a love song about a frozen corpse. Ry Cooder shifts the story so that it's a cat in the snow, not a woman -- "My Name is Buddy," where his version appears, is a concept album about the American labor movement that uses anthropomorphic felines as characters -- but goes back to the older lyric in one important respect. While neither version disputes that the woman/cat in the song lost her way, Miller "can't forget that day" while Cooder (like Monroe before him) wants to "bless that happy day." Snow death is many things, but a blessing? It almost turns the tracking into stalking, and the death into a wished-for moment of revenge. That's even more plausible in Rivers Cuomo's "Lover in the Snow," which forgoes memory entirely for discovery.I wanna know
What were you doing with my friend?
Out in the eve
Deep in the shady glen I saw you,
Lying with him, down in the snow,
Letting him do all of the things that he wants to My cell phone worked perfectly on the ski lift, and after the third run, legs burning a bit, I called my friend to compare notes. She was on the beach. "Interesting," she said. "Footprints are a pretty dicey issue here, too. You can run from here to there, and as long as you keep close to the water, pretty soon there's no record of it at all. On the other hand, if you're too many yards up on the sand, it's too dry, and the wind blows away any evidence of you. That middle band, where the sand is damp, is the one where footprints last for days. Are there different names for those different kinds of sand?"
"You're cutting out," I said.
"My phone has worked fine all week," she said.
"Maybe it's mine," I said, and hung up.
She had gone too far into the issue, and I wanted to back off to a simpler, more elegant question: Is snow an instrument of memory or an instrument of forgetting? It was snowing harder, and I looked out at a creek, at the trees, at the other mountains in the distance. I didn't know anything about them except that I was among them. And then I wasn't. Let me be clear about this: it wasn't a mystical experience so much as a mathematical one, a calculation of proportion: when everything is covered by snow, what you forget most is yourself. Newman/Nilsson were right (personal pain is under there somewhere), but also deeply wrong (insisting that it be visible is an act of narcissism). Snow may not be time, exactly, but snowfall is a measure of it, a means of cutting human experience down to size. When I got to the top of the mountain, I went through a number of songs--Marvin Gaye's "Purple Snowflakes," Jonathan Richman's "Abominable Snowman in the Market"--until I found Captain Beefheart's "Steal Softly Through Snow," which is even clearer on the opposition between nature and man's desire to mark it:Breaks my heart to see the highway cross the hills
Man has lived a million years and still he kills At the bottom of the run, my phone buzzed. It was my friend, leaving me a message. "I guess we got cut off," she said. "Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I'm doing fine. I'm not remembering as much about the bad thing as I worried I would. Sometimes I do, and it's not pleasant, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. It'll pass, right?" She was right but I didn't call back to say so. Instead, I went back up the lift with John Prine's "Humidity Built the Snowman," a song about human limits that stubbornly indulges human hope:The scientific nature of the ordinary man
Is to go on out and do the best you can I didn't fall.Labels: ben, country, folk, pop
posted by Ben
LINK |
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
PUPPET ON A STRING
Sandie Shaw
1967
Available on: The Very Best of Sandie Shaw
EMI : 1999
[Buy It]
YOUR TIME IS GONNA COME
Sandie Shaw
Reviewing the Situation
Pye : 1969
[Buy It]
This time of year is bad for birthdays, for me. There are too many, and they come in from all directions: family, friends, new friends. Recently I almost forgot a birthday. I remembered just in time, if you count being reminded by the birthday person as "in time." I had mentally set the occasion a day later, and I was prepared, but good intentions mean next to nothing when it comes to forgetting or belating birthdays. Soon I'll have to contend with a bunch more, and I'm sure I'll drop at least one ball. Hazard of juggling.
The birthday I almost forgot was especially problematic, because it belonged to a person with whom I have had ongoing nontrivial interaction. Is that the right way to say it? What I mean by that is that it is a friend who is closer than an acquaintance but has on occasion been as far away as an enemy. What this has meant is frequent attempts to move closer (in times where there has been distance) or assess the reasons for the distance (in times when we are close). Plus, we didn't really let each other off the hook, ever: when there were feuds or fights or dustups, we mocked each other as we went through them, sometimes with songs. Once she thought I was talking too much during our phone calls and sent me a mix that included the New York Dolls' "Chatterbox" and the Monks' "Shut Up." Once I thought she was in a rut, down about everything, so I sent her a book called "Creating Optimism," which an online reviewer called "the worst self-help book I have ever read, and I have read many."
A few years ago, we were going through a strange patch where she decided that I was making her miserable, even though I was doing the exact same things I had done when I made her happy. The problem, she said, had to do with the fact that she was too tied up in the particulars of my life. When I was having trouble at work, or in my marriage, or with my writing, she would ask me tons of questions and offer tons of advice. But she felt like it was emptying out her own life. I absorbed her concerns and, because I was in an unhelpful frame of mind, sent her some songs about people who were too tied up in the particulars of other people's lives. It was harder to email songs then -- big attachments -- and it seemed like a major effort, and that combined with the fact that it was a few weeks away from her birthday made it seem like I was sending the songs as a present. She chose not to read the songs as clever or sadistic commentary on our situation, and they helped to restore our friendship. A lack of scrutiny had turned my cruel act into a kindness. It's knotty, I know. Make it a bow. Presents have bows.
One of the songs I sent was "Puppet On a String," which was recorded by Sandie Shaw in 1967. Thursday is Sandie Shaw's birthday, which I had almost forgotten -- or perhaps never knew -- until I saw it listed somewhere on a site that lists birthdays. Shaw's career started, in pop-music terms, well before "Puppet on a String." In 1964, she rose to fame in Britain with her version of Bachrach and David's "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me." She took the song to number one, where it stayed for nearly a month, and went on to put a dozen more songs in the British top twenty, including "Girl Don't Come," "Long Live Love" and "Nothing Comes Easy." Shaw branched out into fashion (a line of shoes) and television (a variety show called "The Sandie Shaw Supplement"), returning to pop music emphatically in 1967, with "Puppet On a String," which won the Eurovision song contest.
Shaw was born in 1947. She was a teenager for the first wave of her fame. As she got older, as the birthdays mounted, she got sick of pop music. Who wouldn't? She didn't like most of the songs, and hated some of them. She famously derided "Puppet on a String" as "sexist drivel" that "instinctively repelled" her. She was more right than she was wrong, which is why I included it in the set of songs I sent to my friend:I may win on the roundabout
Then I'll lose on the swings
In or out, there is never a doubt
Just who's pulling the strings
I'm all tied up to you
But where's it leading me to? In 1969, as Shaw's pop-star stock was fading, she recorded an album called "Reviewing the Situation," which included covers of songs by Bob Dylan ("Lay Lady Lay"), the Beatles ("Love Me Do"), the Rolling Stones ("Sympathy for the Devil"), and Dr. John ("Mama Roux"), along with a selection from the musical "Hair" ("Frank Mills"). Some were good, like "Mama Roux." Others, like "Sympathy For the Devil," verged on oddities. All were deeply felt, which didn't always make for good music, but always made for music that raised the issue of goodness. The album also included a version of a song that had just been recorded by a new British blues-rock group named Led Zeppelin. "Your Time Is Gonna Come" is generally acknowledged to be the first Zeppelin cover, and it's also one of the best. Shaw hangs back and then belts out. She is gentle where she needs to be, mysterious where she needs to be, and menacing where she needs to be. I'm probably understating how good a version this is. The way she handles the first few lines alone is revelatory:Lyin', cheatin', hurtin, that's all you seem to do
Messin' around with every girl in town
Puttin' me down for thinkin' of someone new
Always the same, playin' your game
Drive me insane, trouble's gonna come to you
One of these days, and it won't be long
You'll look for me, but, baby, I'll be gone And look at how efficiently she reverses gender, taking John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page's "Messin' around with every guy in town" and turning it on its ear. This is sexist drivel that instinctively attracts me.
I sent it to my friend whose birthday I almost forgot. She didn't answer right away, and I figured she was mad. The next day I got a message from her. It was a speechless message, but not silent: she said nothing but played "Your Time Is Gonna Come" in the background, loud. Then I sent her an email that said "You're welcome" and she sent me one that said "thank you." It was like we were winding time backwards.
But time goes forward for us all. In the seventies, Sandie Shaw became something of an eccentric, technically speaking -- her career lost its center and she focused variously on songwriting, a rock musical, marriage, Buddhism, and writing childrens' books. She returned to more active career management in the mid-eighties, raised her profile with the help of Morrissey, had a solo album on Rough Trade that's still in print, and rerecorded much of her early work. But for me, forever, she'll exist for her cover of "Your Time Is Gonna Come." Today, she's 62. Happy Birthday. And happy birthday to my friend. My birthday is later in the year, and I'm expecting some kind of payback. My time is gonna come.Labels: ben, folk-rock, pop
posted by Ben
LINK |
Thursday, November 13, 2008
VOICES
Cheap Trick
Dream Police
Epic : 1979
[Buy It]
YOUR SWEET VOICE
Matthew Sweet
Girlfriend
Volcano : 1991
[Buy It]
I HEARD THE VOICE OF A PORKCHOP
Jim Jackson
1928
Available on: Good For What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-1937
Old Hat : 2005
[Buy It]
Recently I've been doing interviews for my new book, which is a collection of short stories about letter-writing and correspondence, and the way that the recent and advancing technologies are harming, which is not to say destroying, the intimacy that comes from that kind of communication. That's the party line I've been spouting, and I believe it, largely. The interviews have themselves become players in the case I'm building against technology: some of them have been conducted on email, which is at least a little bit ironic. Others have been on the telephone, which is at most a little bit ironic.
The phone interviews have been conversations, of a sort, but they've been conversations with strangers. When I talk to friends these days, it's not always (or even often) on the telephone. I am not alone in this. The thing that we call the telephone is in fact a nodal point for several other kinds of communication that have little or nothing to do with telephony: text, IM, email. This evolution has had several major effects, but the main one is this: there are days when I talk to friends but I don't hear their voices. In a literary sense, this isn't quite true: I read things that they write, so I learn their voices, but the physical fact of their voices is less real than ever: air, cords, tongue. This week, I was speaking to a friend I haven't talked to in a long time; we reconnected on email. She was talking (writing) about someone's voice in her office, which struck me as strange. I could imagine that person's voice, since she was describing it, but I had no information about her voice. Had it changed over time? Was it roughened up by whiskey? Deepened by age? Stealthy? Persuasive? Careful? Candied? I didn't ask, because that would have been embarrassing, but I wondered, and wondered if anyone ever asks. What does your voice sound like? It's an intimate question, and intimacy means different things than it used to.
Though the world has fewer voices in it, it also has more voices in it, and pop music is one of the sites of that paradox. You can't listen to it for more than a minute or two without thinking about voices: why this one is better than that one, why that one is more affecting than the other one, why a certain technical ability fails to convey a certain kind of honesty. Magazines are constantly running features about the best voices in the history of the genre. Is Dylan better than Sam Cooke? Is Christina Aguilera better than Grace Slick? Is Ian Hunter better than Malkmus? Is Bobbie Gentry better than Beyonce? Every answer to these questions is right, and every answer is wrong, but the questions themselves are the point: it is voices that are being considered. The fact that you could go on forever -- or, more to the point, that I could -- is one of the central aspects of the entire art form. And yet, even within a genre universally defined by voices, though, there are only a few songs that are specifically about voices. Cheap Trick's "Voices" is one, and one of the best, because the melody is sweet without being saccharine, and because Robin Zander has a better voice than most singers. It's not about a conversation, but about the memory of a conversation, and about how memory can polish a lover's voice:I remember every word you said
I remember voices in my head This song reveals one of the secret truths about voices, which is that they are mostly for other people. Singers probably know this instinctively, but it's nice when they write songs that sharpen and drive home the point. When other people give you their voice, even a few moments of it, you can use it to build upon: you can yoke it to emotions, retreat inside of it, feather your nest. This idea is handled even more explicitly, and even more self-referentially, in Matthew Sweet's "Your Sweet Voice": Speak to me with your sweet voice
And take me through another night
Speak to me with your sweet voice
And I will surely be alright Try to read this with the pun stripped away. Or rather, try to hear it with the pun silenced. I can't. It sounds like he's at once pleading with a woman and marketing his own work. I once spent the night with a woman whose voice I really liked. I like the voices of everyone I've ever been involved with (how can you not? it would be intolerable) but this one woman had a tremendous voice. I told her so, that night, all the time, until I realized that when I was telling her things, she wasn't talking.
Since I started writing this piece, my phone has buzzed twice. That's two more voice mails I'll be listening to, two more voices which will, as a result of technology, leave me slightly cold.
My younger son is four. He's just recently started reading, which means he's just recently started to learn the process by which language becomes immortal (or is it tragically attenuated?) in the printed word. Up until now, as a pre-literate but already verbal child, he has had only one option for expressing himself, talking, which he did (and does) constantly. He talks and talks, and if using your voice is a form of generosity, he is the most charitable being I know.
Sometimes, when words fill up his head, he offloads them, and pretends that inanimate things are speaking to him: fire hydrants, cars, stuffed animals. The other night, he was supposed to read my wife a book after she read him a book, but instead he picked up a stuffed dog and let it do the reading for him. The dog read well. It was funny, because he made no real attempt to differentiate the dog's voice from his own, and it was also something other than funny, because it illustrated how firmly he's located inside a world of voices. That will change, and that change will be welcome in some small ways, because it will diminish his unrelenting chatter, and it will be sad in broader ways. You can make the argument that one of the dividing lines between childhood and adulthood is the moment when we stop pretending that inanimate things are talking to us, but then you'd have to contend with the counterargument, brilliantly expressed in Jim Jackson's "I Heard the Voice of a Porkchop," from 1928:I heard the voice of a porkchop say, "Come unto me and rest"
Well you talk about your stewing meats: I ain't know what the best
You talk about your chicken, ham, and eggs and turkey stuffed in dress
But I heard the voice of a pork chop say, "Come unto me and rest" Here, the porkchop is talking in the voice of the Savior. Jackson is lampooning Matthew 11:28 (no relation to Matthew Sweet) and the popular hymn based on it, but he's transplanting the divine comfort to something much more earthy. Puzzle out the song on your own time, slowly, and give me a call when it's unpuzzled. I'll pick up. I have one friend who gets annoyed when I don't answer my phone, and instead of leaving straightforward messages, she does funny voices. Her British accent is terrible, but don't tell her. Her sassy Puerto Rican accent is excellent, and you can tell her I said so. Those messages are more like songs, because they're resigned to be one-way communications, and because they're performances. Sometimes she'll pretend to be her own secretary, telling me to call her back.
The other day, my younger son called me at the office. As he goes from pre-literate to literate, he's also going from pre-numerate to numerate, and one of his favorite things to do is to pick up the house phone and dial my wife's or my cell phone number, which he's memorized. Some days, he'll call me four or five times. I am assuming this phase will pass. The other day, he called twice. I picked up both times. The first time, he said "hi," and then I said "hi," and he said "hi" again. The second time, he told me that he was wearing a Superman sweater that had been mine when I was four. That part I understood. Then there was a garbled monologue about pants and fish and, I think, a firefighter who was wearing a hat but wasn't really standing on the side of the road so much as climbing a pole but then his shoes were not rubber but they were black rubber. I may have gotten the details wrong, but it doesn't really matter. It was nice to hear his voice.Labels: ben, blues, pop
posted by Ben
LINK |
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
SHARE IT
Reverend Coleman
c. 1970
Available on: 45 Kings vol. 1
Fat City : 2001
[Buy It]
SHARE YOUR LOVE WITH ME
Aretha Franklin
This Girl's In Love With You
Atlantic : 1970
[Buy It]
AIN'T GONNA SHARE YOUR LOVE
Hersey Taylor
Future Stars 7" : 1974
[Out of Print]
SHARE CROPPIN' BLUES
Kay Starr
V-Disc : 1944
Available on: American Pop: An Audio History
Music & Arts : 2000
[Out of Print]
I know! Slow to write back, and out of touch but. So much has happened! I though that, instead of telling you all (y'all?) in turn, I'd tell all y'all (ya'll?) all at once on my blog that First of all, I got a new job! in charge of writing press releases for this consortium of bodegas I helped organize out here Second, I got invited to a green party at a house or church something. The Mets are winning! I've been watching Weeds a lot and my favorite youtube shows OMG, the other night Cheryl came over and the delivery guy actually had ceasar salad all over his face! That's the news write me back actual letters and I will totally write you back an actual letter!Labels: alex, letters, pop, soul
posted by Alex
LINK |
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
SOUL PRESIDENT #1
John & Ernest
Rainy Wednesday 7" : 1973
[Out of Print]
THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT
Blowfly
Blowfly For President
Pandisc : 1988
[Buy It]
IF I WERE PRESIDENT
The Pharcyde
Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
Delicious Vinyl : 1992
[Buy It]
I COULD NEVER BE PRESIDENT
Johnnie Taylor
Stax 7" : 1969
Available on: Chronicle
Fantasy : 1977
[Buy It]
The difference between Blowfly and Barack Obama is like the difference between Public Enemy & Eminem: Back when Flavor Flav couldn't give a fuck about the Grammys, it was because he couldn't have imagined winning one. When Eminem recycled the reference, a decade down the line, he'd already scored two of them.
So one thing that'll happen if Obama goes the distance is, a long tradition of African-American songs - rooted in the notion that no black man will ever occupy the office - will grind to a halt. (An old joke, along the same lines: "I firmly believe that, one day, a man in a kippa and prayer shawl will sit in the Oval Office.... Unless, of course, he's Jewish.")
I'm not sure how far back the tradition goes - for all I know, it's as old as the petitions black folks would send to Abraham Lincoln - but whatever the case, here's a small sampling of songs about the job: John & Ernst's Watergate-era mashup; some presidential potty-humor from the afore-mentiomed proto-rapper, Blowfly; a skit by the (currently reunited) Pharcyde; Stax man Johnnie Taylor, with the sine qua non of presidential soul songs...
Below, a tune written by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Cynthia Weil, and Barry Mann:
ONLY IN AMERICA
The Drifters
Atlantic : 1963
(Released in 1972)
Available on: A Change Is Gonna Come: The Voice of Black America 1963-1973
Ace/Kent : 2007
[Buy It]
ONLY IN AMERICA
Jay & The Americans
UA : 1963
Available on: The Leiber & Stoller Story Vol. 3 1962-1969
Ace : 2007
[Buy It]
Here's what my liner notes have to say about it:Two weeks prior to the Drifters' "On Broadway" reaching its chart peak, the group returned to the studio to record another song by the same four co-writers, but not before it had undergone a revamp. Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the same year in which police dogs were trained on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama and Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of that state's University in an attempt to block the entrance of the school's first black pupils. [A sidenote, from John McPhee's 1969 book about Arthur Ashe: "Wallace is beautiful. He's doing his own thing. He's actually got a little bit of soul. What I worry about is people who say one thing and do another. Wallace is in his bag, and he enjoys it." - ed.] Sympathetic to the Civil Rights cause, Barry Man and Cyntia Weil wrote for the Drifters a protest song, "Only in America," the lyric of which included the lines "Only in America, land of opportunity, do they save a seat in the back of the bus just for me/Only in America, where they preach the golden rule, do they start to march when my kids try to go to school...." When Mann and Weil played [a draft of the song for Leiber and Stoller], the producers opined that it needed humour, suggesting a rewrite from the opposite viewpoint. Thus, the song was remodelled from a WASP perspective and recorded by the Drifters on the very same day that Martin Luther King was placed in solitary confinement in Alabama. Atlantic's Jerry Wexler felt that whether percieved literally or with irony, the track had little airplay potential and could in fact cause trouble for his company and the group, nixing its release. And so, the Drifters recording was shelved for a decade. The version which did appear, in July of '63, had been recorded by these guys.
It reached #25 on the pop charts.Labels: alex, hip-hop, pop, soul
posted by Alex
LINK |
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
SPANISH HARLEM
Ben E. King
Atlantic : 1960
Available on: Spanish Harlem/Don't Play That Song
Collectables : 1998
[Buy It]
SPANISH HARLEM
Aretha Franklin
Atlantic : 1971
Available on: Queen of Soul
Atlantic : 1992
[Buy It]
SPANISH HARLEM
Smith Smith
Unity : 1968
Available on: Keep That Lovelight Shining
[Out of Print]
ESCALES (PORTS OF CALL): MODERE TRES RYTHME
Jacques Ibert : 1924
Minnesota Orchestra: Eihi Oue, conductor
Available on: Ports of Call
Reference : 1997
[Buy It]
Atlantic Records was one of the very few indie labels to survive the transition from the 50s to the 60s, and they did it by shifting their emphasis slightly away from black rock and rollers (Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, The Coasters, The Clovers, The Drifters, Big Joe Turner), amping up their arrangements, and coming up with series of in-betwixt, throwin'-shit-at-the-wall recordings. (In conversation, the label's boss, Ahmet Ertegun described them as "synthetic.") And so, Atlantic's first white artist, Bobby Darin, scored with "Splish Splash," and "Mack the Knife," and Ben E. King scored his first hit with "Spanish Harlem," which rose higher on the pop charts than it did as rhythm and blues.
The song was written by Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector, who came up with an ascending melody which reminded Leiber of Ibert's Ports of Call, L'Escales. "It had that particular Spanish sound, so I kept pushing him in that direction," Leiber recalled. "Building the chords, a third up, a third up. He wrote the tune, but I was pushing him in the direction of a contour that was really an imitation of L'Escales. While he was doing this, I got the idea, which was literal. It was Spanish, 'Spanish Harlem,' and I wrote it - wrote it on the spot."
A Spanish melody, set to a Brazilian (Baion) rhythm ("By My Baby," by the Ronettes, would use it, too - "for a while, that rhythm became everyone's idea of what rock and roll was," Leiber's partner, Mike Stoller, would say.) And, of course, strings on top. (According to the American Masters biography of Ertegun - which is 20x better than the half-assed AM bio of Marvin Gaye, which PBS aired last week - the strings annoyed one of Atlantic's founders, Herb Abramson, so much that he left the company.)
Synthetic.
J'OUVERT BARRIO
Roaring Lion
Available on: The Sacred 78s
Ice : 1994
[Out of Print]
Compare "Spanish Harlem" to Roaring Lion's J'ouvert Barrio, which was recorded a few decades earlier.
The drumming, and the tightly-structured call-and-response, are utterly African. The trumpet and saxophone solos are utterly American. The lyrics combine English and patois, and conflate the sacred and the secular. And the violin at the end sounds like something you'd hear on a Django Reinhardt recording.
Synthetic?
MAMBO IN AFRICA
Maya Angelou
Miss Calypso
Scamp : 1956
[Buy It]
I LEARN A MERENGUE, MAMA
Robert Mitchum
Calypso - Is Like So
Scamp: 1957
[Buy It]
FIRE DOWN THERE
The Charmer
Monogram : c. 1954
Available on: Calypso Favorites: 1953-1954
Bostrox : 2000
[Out of Print]
Moistworks readers know that I've got a real soft spot for real calypso. In America, the form was once so popular that it threatened to eclipse rock and roll in the public imagination. Maya Angelou, Robert Mitchum, and Louis Farrakhan (or, Louis Eugene Walcott, who performed as The Charmer) all cut calypso albums.
But, with the exception of Farrakhan (who was once a serious musician, and spent some years playing alongside of bona-fide Calypsonians), American calypsonians aspired to the condition of Harry Belafonte, and the results made "Spanish Harlem" sound like folk music.
BELAFONTE
King Solomon
Carnival Kings & Pink Gin
Cook : 1957
[Buy It]
What I'm really talking about here is cultural colonialism, which brings me to a song called "Barbados Carnival."
I first heard it on Dizzy Gillespie's 1964 album Jambo Caribe!; according to the liner notes, "'Barbados Carnival' was written by [Gillespie's] multitalented bassist-guitarist-vocalist Chris White, whose wildsounding [sic] 'ah! ah!' echoes infectuously throughout this tune. Chris discovered his inspiration for this assertive rhythmic refrain on the island of Barbados in the West Indies." Needless to say, the song's credited to Chris White. But the other day, I came across another recording of "Barbados Carnival" - except for an extra verse, it's almost identical, and while I can't find a date, I'm 99.999% sure it's earlier. Which leads me to think that, if Dizzy Gillespie's sidemen are treating Trinidad's music as their own, personal property - well, draw your own conclusions:
BARBADOS CARNIVAL
Dizzy Gillespie
Jambo Caribe!
Verve : 1964
[Buy It]
BARBADOS CARNIVAL
Mighty Panther
Available on: Legends of Calypso
Arc : 2002
[Buy It]Labels: alex, calypso, kitsch, pop
posted by Alex
LINK |
Friday, May 02, 2008
REELING
Stew
The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs
Image Entertainment : 2002
[Buy It]
JEEZ LOUISE
Zumpano
Look What the Rookie Did
Sub Pop : 1995
[Buy It]
Gift horse, mouth: I bitched about spring in my last post and got a week of rain and chill in return. But now the weather may be turning. There's a chance that it'll be the springest spring that every sprang, as the homeless guy muttered to himself as I passed by him this morning. In that spirit I offer two happy pop songs, as befits the springiest spring etc. Though they are quite different--one is Canadian, for godsake--here are five things that the two songs have in common.
1. Both are relatively recent. This is intentional. Last week's selections were all from jazz and popular singers of thirties, forties, and fifties. When my wife read that earlier post, she said, "People will think you're 70," which hurt my feelings as I am only sixty-seven.
2. Both are songs by artists who have gone on to bigger and excellent-but-not-necessarily better things. Stew created the Off- and then On- Broadway musical "Passing Strange," which ensures that more people will know that he is one of the most accomplished (this is a fancy way of saying "best") psychedelic/soul songwriters of the century. Carl Newman, Zumpano's lead singer and main songwriter, went on to form New Pornographers. As it turns out, I prefer the old pornography.
3. Both are indie. I guess. Or are they? See Alex's long, excellent post of earlier this week to resolve the issue. He did the heavy lifting; this post hides behind uplift and light. But if you want to consider the question "What is pop?" to go along with "What is indie?" feel free. Or, better, yet, return to Alex's post and take part in the ongoing colloquy. It is a highly demanding adult conversation that I will not replicate, even in part, here. It seems like the wrong setting. (A friend who read a draft of this post hinted--and then came right out and said--that the process of gushing about pop songs is inherently juvenile. "Teenagery," she said. Maybe. Sourpuss!)
4. Both are perfect. That's why you may find yourself experiencing pleasure when you hear them, or (if you already know them) experiencing both pleasure and the memory of pleasure. They are like girls who are so beautiful that they don't have a bad angle. In fact, I will now irresponsibly and teenagerishly declare that they are the only two songs of the last fifteen years where I wouldn't change a note. For comparison purposes, here are the number of notes I would change in a few other songs:"The Song is the Single": 3
"Endicott": 2
"Generation Landslide": 3
"Nicotine and Gravy": 8
"Albatross": 1
"Badge": 7
"Umbrella": 3
"Small Stakes": .5
"Jambalaya": 82 5. Both are above.Labels: ben, pop
posted by Ben
LINK |
Thursday, September 27, 2007
GODMOMA HERE
BE ALL YOU CAN BE
Godmoma
Here
Elektra : 1981
Out of Print
SEX SHOOTER (DEMO)
SEX SHOOTER (EXTENDED DANCE MIX)
 Video
French TV Performance
Apollonia 6
Apollonia 6
Warner Bros : 1984
Out of Print
The girl group Godmoma was a sexed-up side project from that funk muppet Bootsy Collins. The girls: former P-Funk vocalists Cynthia "Sugar Baby" Girty, Arnenita "T Baby" Walker, and Carolyn "Baby Kay" Myles. Bootsy beamed them up to the Mothership, along with Sly Stone, and Horny Horns Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, and cut an album of dirty disco that sweats like a FEMA trailer.
The experiment only lasted the one record, but Bootsy may have ushered in one of the decades great pop trends. Didn't it seem like back in the 80s, every dude and his cousin had a girl group? Not the in a Berry Gordy supergroup kind of way. And not yet the calculated marketing creations of the video generation. No these were strictly vanity projects. The girl group as the ultimate accessory: stage candy, funk whores, the girl group as soft porn harem.
Prince had a vanity project. There were 6 girls in it. Prince called it Vanity 6. But Vanity left the band, so Prince reformed it as Apollonia 6. I would have killed to have been on the Staten Island Ferry the day of that casting call. There's a Herzog documentary in there somewhere. All that hairspray and the anxious savagery of chased dreams and the lingerie from the Red Door Store in Paramus with the tags still on it.
'Sex Shooter' is one of Prince's premier pieces of brilliantly ludicrous porn funk. (When you consider that no music critic worth his vintage Tretorns would dare discuss Prince without those four words: porn. funk. brilliant. ludicrous. - then you know I speak high praise.)
There are certain similarities between Bootsy and Prince's side projects. They both were at their peaks, both brought in all-star support, both embrace their signature sounds, and both parade some serious, vaingloriously confused sexuality.
Take a lick, gimme a hit, get on the stick
and suck upon this
and
I need you to pull my trigger babe
I need you to get me off
I'm your bomb getting ready to explode
I need you to get me off
Be your slave do anything I'm told
Im a sex shooter....
Blow me away,
C'mon kiss the gun
It's a real Pandora's Box. Normally, when it comes to early '80s girl groups and party funk, I try so very hard not to pull the trigger on concerns of sexual identity politics. Those debates of stripper pole feminism: empowerment v objectification, emancipation v subjugation, the balances of power on the fetish exchange. This music just is what it is. It's post-narrative, it's post-innuendo, it's some serious species level action. When it comes to Pandora, Bootsy and Prince really aren't worried about what's coming out of her box so much as what they're gonna' put in it. I like to leave all that figurative groping to the gender studies undergrads at Sarah Lawrence. They can hash it out in their tutorial. Maybe in that new class they have:
The Nasty Dialectic: Transgression, Aggression, Sexuality and the mOthership.
But listening to Apollonia now 20 years on, please forgive me if I clear my throat. Prince really is a freak. Sure Bootsy and the ladies get into some gender role play, but it's all in fun. You know he's just trying to bring some dialogue to the dance floor. But in the Thealogy of pop funk, Prince is flying solo. He's sorting out some serious hyper-gender-erotica business, and he's using Apollonia 6 as psycho-sexual proxies in his little vagina monologue.
Maybe Prince just loves sex so much, that he wants access to all possible POVs available. Maybe he's a raving sexual narcissist, not just satisfied to sex-up women, he wants to enter the female form to embody it so he can experience what it's like to be a woman sexing him up. Or maybe these are just the shadow puppets of his erotic theater, and Prince in the role of of sex puppeteer, Gepetto as pimp. The Apollonia 6 certainly seem like puppets. Really, you can tell their hearts are not in it. When they command "Soon as I get undressed y'all clap your hands OK?" they just sound tired and blue collar. The orgasms are obviously faked, the gyrations the tired hulas of a Tijuana burlesque. They are nice girls; all they really wanted was to work at the Macy's cosmetics counter but Prince went and turned 'em out. And look at poor Sheena Easton: a sweet Scottish kid, with a stable career in Adult Contemporary music ahead of her. She studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She sang duets with Kenny Rogers. She hooks up with Prince, and now she's inviting American inside her 'Sugar Walls' and has Tipper Gore and the Parents' Music Resource Council naming her one of music's "Filthy Fifteen." Prince takes these young ones, coaches them up, gives them a new language, a genital lingua franca.
It must be exhausting to be Prince. Me, if I lived in the Purple Rain universe, I'd skip the whole girl band thing altogether. It's just so deviant and sexually confusing. I'd go for something normal, something conservative. Maybe settle down with a fashionable manservant named Jerome who would be full of self-esteem and would dance around in front of me with a giant mirror.Labels: funk, James, pop, sex
posted by James
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Thursday, August 02, 2007
OH, CANDY
Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick
Epic : 1977
[Buy it]
LISTEN
Lambchop
No You C'mon
Merge : 2004
[Buy it]
SYMPATHY
Sleater-Kinney
One Beat
Kill Rock Stars : 2002
[Buy it]
WALKING AND FALLING
Laurie Anderson
Big Science
Warner Bros. : 1982
[Buy it]
Throughout my life there has been a type of female friend who has come to me with problems. When I was very young, these were girls I was interested in dating. Why else would you listen to four thousand hours of girl problems? Ha ha. I am joking. You would listen to them because they are people, too, people you care about, and listening to the problems of people you care about is both altruistic and selfish, in that it exhibits kindness and also illuminates aspects of the human condition, which is vital, especially if you plan to be a writer. Ha ha. I am joking again. The real answer, especially when I was fifteen, was somewhere in the middle. I wanted trust. I wanted to trust other people. I was willing to listen. I was not shy about giving advice when I thought it was appropriate. I had a certain appetite for problems and no real capacity for being shocked. And I was interested in dating them. So that's what happened.
Fast-forward fifty years. Now rewind twenty. Now rewind another ten. Now fast-forward five. Okay. That's about right. That's about now. The phenomenon I have sketched above has continued to occur, with several key differences. Just this week, for example, I heard some problems. Because I have been trusted with these problems, I am obligated to blur the facts. So what I will do is refer to individual people as if they are groups of people. I will also furnish some incorrect details. These people are half-Japanese. These people like Half Japanese. They are either the tallest or shortest people I have ever known. They never read magazines, which is rare for women, and they once punched a guy in the stomach during a carnal moment in a hotel bathroom in Portland, Oregon. There. That should do it.
Anyway, this week, these people had discussions with me about sad things in their lives. Mostly, these were romantic things. I have worked out the romantic problems in my life -- or at the very least brought them to a resting point -- but I remember the time of tumult and trouble, and as a result I am a good candidate for listening. These people said, "I don't understand this guy," or "Why didn't this guy do the thing he said?" or "Why would someone visit me and bring me a newspaper as a present?" and "I have to say I'm disappointed." Sometimes they cried a little. Five days later, their sadness has faded from memory a bit, though at the time it seemed urgent. It wasn't that I thought something tragic would happen, but I couldn't be certain. Times get tough. Self-worth wiggles and wobbles. People get sad. They need friends to pick them up. They should be reminded that they're something to many people even if they're no longer everything to one person. If I had to do it all over again, I might just email a copy of "Oh, Candy," one of the saddest songs ever written about an irretrievably sad friend. Oh Candy why did you do it
You didn't stick a needle in your vein
You just got so damned depressed
We all liked you except yourself
Oh, Candy worked so hard
At doing what he thought was right
It really really doesn't mean a thing Or maybe it would have been too much. It's about a suicide, after all. These were sad people. Believe in yourself, I said. He's a jerk, I said. He's not really a jerk, probably, I said, because if he's a jerk then that's going to undermine your sense of having picked a good guy, but he's probably afraid of you. It's hard to imagine someone not wanting to be with you, I said. In the end, it made them feel better. I know because they told me. (I'm sure it also made them feel a bit worse, to live inside their problems with such intensity, but I'm not a big believer in repressing sadness at the moment. Or rather: I am a big believer in it but I believe that other people should do the opposite.) And that was my aim, to make them feel better, so far as I could. Job well done. I went to eat with my wife and my kids. I went to shoot baskets at the playground. The women who were my friends had cut their sadness with conversation and that was enough for me. All I had to do was listen, which is what Kurt Wagner's doing in "Listen":Tell your trouble to
Someone stuck here just like you
Sucking in the smoke
Like it's going out of style
And I'll listen,
To what you have to say
You said it any way to me Then, last night, after a few days of listening, I suddenly became exhausted. I went to sleep early and woke up in the middle of the night with an evil question in my mind. I am not going to disclose the question yet, because it's embarrassing. But I'll just say that it is a horrendous question, horrendous to think and even more horrendous to actually type, so I hope that I will get at least some credit for bravery. But I'd be lying if I said that the this shameful, horrendous thought didn't cross my mind, and that's what writing is for, in part: to give voice to the thoughts that cross your mind, catch sight of themselves in the mirror, and run off, appalled by their own ugliness. So here's the thought I had when I woke in the middle of the night: Where's my goddamn reward? If you spend time being a big fat shoulder for someone to cry on, aren't they supposed to go to the catalog of shoulder gifts and pick something out and send it to you? Yecch. Even now, it makes me unhappy to hear myself think that. How bad a person does that make me, that I decompressed from the process of hearing about someone else's horrible week and settled eventually on the question of my own reward? As bad as Ken Lay? As bad as Robert Blake? As bad as Pol Pot? The charitable answer is that it puts me just south of Ken Lay, because all I was really doing was desiring, after the fact, in an imprecise way, that the friendship be mutual, as it has been before, as it should continue to be. But if the charitable answer came so easily, I wouldn't have been grappling with this in the first place.
I couldn't find a song about this, not exactly, because there's no song called "Selfish Jackalope." The closest I could come was "Sympathy," which isn't about adult friends, men and women, dealing or not dealing with each other. It's about Corin Tucker's fear over having a premature baby and her appeal to God. It would be presumptuous and even idiotic to insert myself into that relationship, even for the purposes of understanding my reaction to the people who need my sympathetic ear, and for that reason I'm going to do it:I know I come to you only when in need
I'm not the best believer
not the most deserving Do people deserve to be heard when in need? Yes, obviously. Candy did. So did my friends, which is why I listened. But what does it say about the process that they can't exactly reciprocate? Or, more to the point, that they are maybe not aware of the ways in which they can -- and, as Ken Lay would say, should -- comfort me just as I have comforted them. Just because I don't say I'm not sad (which I don't) doesn't mean I'm not sometimes. It's just that I'm less likely to say so, and say why, in a straightforward way, and so they are less likely to be able to offer comfort through listening. I guess I could say, "Hey, look, I am always happy to listen to you, but yesterday I got this crazy fleeting sense that I want more concrete rewards. It landed on me like a black butterfly while I was sleeping. It smelled like tar. It said, 'Remind them that they have the power to comfort you too.' At any rate, forget it, because that fleeting sense has fled. I am mortified. Back to normal."
I would never say that.
After this idea cooked (rotted?) inside me for a day or two, I actually did work up the courage to articulate it -- with great tentativity -- to my half-Japanese friend, and she had an interesting response. "What reward do you want?" she said. That question deafened me. What reward would I want? Money? Dirty pictures? Whiskey? An e-card? A hug? A puppy? For everyone to be fifteen again? I guess the sane safe answer, the only answer I'd ever give in public, is that I want to trust that friends will pick the appropriate reward and give it at the appropriate time so that I'm comforted when I need to be. That sounds like a dodge. In fact, it's both a cop-out and an opt-in. Which is, maybe, what friendship has to be to be real.I wanted you and I was looking for you but I couldn't find you.
I wanted you and I was looking for you all day but I couldn't find you.
I couldn't find you.
You're walking.
And you don't always realize it, but you're always falling.
With each step you fall forward slightly and then catch yourself from falling.
Over and over, you're falling and then catching yourself from falling.
And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time. Labels: ben, pop, rock
posted by Ben
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Thursday, July 05, 2007
OOPS... I DID IT AGAIN! (LIVE)
Richard Thompson
1000 Years of Popular Music
Cooking Vinyl : 2006
[Buy It]Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that.
-Britney Spears Labels: alex, pop
posted by Alex
LINK |
Thursday, May 24, 2007
PARTY GIRL
Charlie Rich
The Complete Smash Sessions
Polygram : 1992
[Buy It]
Our friends at Minnesota Public Radio are putting together a segment on campaign songs, so MW & MPR are forming like organized crime to pose the au courant musical question: What campaign songs should America's most enterprising and indefatigable candidates adopt?
BAM BAM
Toots & The Maytals
Monkey Man
Berverly's : 1970
[Buy It]? UTAH MORMON BLUES
Phil Pavey
Available on: Jazzin' the Blues vol. 4 : 1929-1943
Document : 2000
[Buy It]? Readers of Moistworks - good news. We're opening the floor up to you! What do you think? We mean, really? We're interested. And, for once, we're talking big news: Obama, and McCain. Romney, Clinton, Edwards, and Hero Mayor Rudy G. - Important stuff!
OMG WTF LOL, right? But for serious - you're our BFF! So let us know, in the comments below. Ground rules?Surprise Us: TAKE ON ME [DEMO]
A-ha
[Unreleased]& Make Us Love You: NOBODY
Larry Williams and Johnny Watson with the Kaleidoscope
Okeh : 1967
Courtesy of [the newish & wonderful audioblog]: Office NapsTell The Truth, But Eschew The Obvious - RUN ON FOR A LONG TIME
Bill Landford & The Landfordaires
Columbia : 1949
Available on: There Will Be No Sweeter Sound : The Columbia/OKeh Post War Gospel Story 1947-1962
Legacy : 1998
[Buy It]& Off Point: BRENDA AND EDDIE
Billy Joel
Live : somewhere& Omit Those Words That You Find To Be Needless: ONCE
The Feelings
Dearling Darling
Darla Records : 1990
[Buy It]
Bonus points for riffing off something whichever candidate you're on about said, or did, within the past few news cycles - we paying enough attention to you to know you're paying attention to that sort of thing so: we'll post the best songs next week, and who knows - you might even end up famous here or on the radio! Either way, any idiot with with a suitcase nuke can tell you that the fate of this free world we're building rests squarely and securely on your shoulders.
NB: Speaking of same, Moistworks' Astoria Bureau would like to take this opportunity to endorse Mitt Romney - who believe you us, the last thing we want is to see our friends and readers committing Sodomites and catching GommorrheaLabels: alex, country, gospel music, indie, pop, radio, reggae, soul
posted by Alex
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
THE LAST DAY OF OUR ACQUAINTANCE
Sinead O'Connor
I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Chrysalis : 1990
[Buy It]
GO WHERE YOU WANNA GO
The Mamas and the Papas
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
Dunhill : 1966
[Buy It]
A NEW ENGLAND
Billy Bragg
Life's a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy
Charisma : 1983
[Buy It]
On the day after a Valentine's Day made glorious by your great song suggestions and a steady chocolate IV, my divorce came through. A lone piece of paper in a thin, yellow, self-addressed stamped envelope arrived in my mailbox. Seeing my own handwriting and the stamps I had, (sadly, defiantly, resignedly? which was I that day) applied only a couple months before, was very odd. As a literary magazine editor, the "SASE" as we call it, is an instrument of a not-so-different form of heartbreak and rejection (your story/poem isn't good enough so we're returning it; you failed at marriage so we're returning you).
I thought this moment would bring elation. I had even talked of a big "divorce party," where everyone I know, including my ex, would celebrate. We're still friends, after all, and this is what we both want. Most people I've heard of go through agonizingly long battles involving lawyers, financial dispute, and in some cases, custody. We had none of that. The only property (and our version of a child) we shared was a 1993 Nissan Sentra, which, due to my relocating to the impossible-to-park-in East Village and his to LA, I let him have without a fight. But all that ease did not in fact lend itself to joy or party planning. Some relief yes, particularly that I had beaten the arcane, labyrinthine New York state court system, whose representatives told me again and again, "Get a lawyer. You'll never get it right on your own." Trumping the thrill of conquest, though, was the agonizing first moment of accepting my new adjective: "divorced." Who ever expects to bear that word? It's the thing that happens to other people, most certainly not to thirty-three-year-old me. It's horribly sad, and, even if it's for the best, is another way that life has failed to resemble anything I thought it would.
Last week, at the eye doctor, I was filling out a new patient form. There it was: "Marital status: married, single, divorced, widowed." I stared at those little boxes for a very long time. Why must they know? How is this relevant to my contact lens prescription? I contemplated just checking off "single," not a lie, but felt that truth was in order and checked the dreaded d-word. Just when I thought the agony was over, the next section: "emergency contact"! My God. Who would it be now? And who makes up these questions? I'll tell you who: a cabal of self-satisfied married people. I know because I'm a former member. I'm supposed to keep my mouth shut about the whole thing, but if you're nice, someday I'll teach you the secret handshake.Labels: classic, joanna, pop
posted by Joanna
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Monday, March 12, 2007
BRING IT ON HOME TO ME
Sam Cooke
One Night Stand: Sam Cooke Live
RCA : 2005
[BUY IT]
WHAT DID I DO WRONG?
Betty Harris
Sansu : 1966
Available on: Lost Soul Queen
[But wait for a legitimate release to BUY IT]
As a mom, trying to raise a daughter in today's challenging world, I'm always thrilled to find quality entertainment that the whole family can enjoy. Today, it's my honor to present the mother's seal of approval to Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds.
Flexibility: Top-Rated
Dating has taught me that most men can't meet the needs of a single woman. JT, on the other hand, appeals to the psycho-aesthetics of four females across two generations. My best friend, aka my daughter's other mom, just went through a break up. She rocks out to "What Goes Around Comes Around."This is the way it's really going down?
Is this how we say goodbye?
Should've known better when you came around
That you were going to make me cry My 9-year-old, the girl most likely to admire herself, prefers "LoveStoned."She shuts the room down
The way she walks and causes a fuss
The baddest in town
She's flawless like some uncut ice
I hope she's goin' home with me tonight My daughter's vice-sister (the other mom's oldest) has a pronounced taste for world domination. She prefers the title track.Tell me which way you like that
Do you like it like this?
Do you like it like that?
Tell me which way you like that And we all enjoy the feminist sensibility expressed in "SexyBack."Dirty babe
You see these shackles
Baby I'm your slave
I'll let you whip me if I misbehave Which puts JT in the tradition of such panty-peeler crooners as Sam Cooke, who have invoked the shackles of love to fine effect.
Values: Top-Rated
My favorite song is "My Love." I love the beats. I love how JT's wailing like, well, like a pussyThis ring here represents my heart
And everything that you've been waiting for and then T.I. steps in to add some much-needed perspective.I'm patient, but I ain't gonna try
You don't come, I ain't gonna die It reminds me of a story a co-worker told me, years ago. Jackie had this boyfriend who had some ex-wife that kept coming around, showing up at his house wrapped only in a raincoat, sitting out front waiting for him to get home. The boyfriend told Jackie he hadn't had any dealings with the wife for over a year. But Jackie didn't buy it. She told me, "Ain't no dick in the world that good. He's been hitting it on the side this whole time, and I'm done with him." I love those old masochistic love songs as much as anybody, but do you really want your daughter crawling on the floor like Betty Harris? Less masochism, more pragmatism. Because Jackie's right.
In an age of decadent relativism, JT bravely calls for the return of the ethical standards we've left behind.I'm bringing sexy back
Them other boys don't know how to act I have this conversation with my women friends every weekend. Three cheers for JT for using his public platform to give voice to the voiceless and raise awareness on this critical issue.
Prix d'Honneur
Best use of "bitch" in a song lyric: "Damn Girl"Don't need no Maybelline
Cause you're a beauty queen
Don't need no L'Oreal
Cause bitch you're bad as hell And thanks to James "Disco-Ball" Morris, who persuaded me to listen to this album.
Readers, I need to shake off the winter blahs. What's worth listening to these days? I'm pretty tired of rock, but I'm open to most things.Labels: megan, pop
posted by Megan
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