Ten: Psychedelic Edition

Mark Mikel: 2010 Anthem

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I couldn't resist posting Mark Mikel's "2010 Anthem", for the obvious reason.

Mark Mikel is the lead singer and chief songwriter in a fabulously psychedelic band out of Toledo, Ohio called the Pillbugs. He has also recorded a lot of solo material, this song included.

I'm not sure when this song was written, but I'm guessing that 2010 was used as a reference to a not-too-distant future. (See also Paul McCartney's "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five", which this song occasionally echoes.) It's not quite a dystopian future, but it is a rather unsettling vision of future leaders and complacent masses. "Rule our thoughts with catchy quotes / Poison with no antidote / Shove the sh*t right down our throats / We'll swallow" is as good a description of our soundbite culture as any I've heard.


Western Electric: 10-4

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Here's some more modern-day psychedelia, this time from Long Ryders and Cole Porters frontman (and Gram Parsons biographer) Sid Griffin, leading one-album band Western Electric back in '99. The relaxed rhythm, gentle vocals, and woozy pedal steel are pretty indicative of how the rest of the album sounds.


The Yardbirds: Happenings Ten Years Time Ago

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Now for an authentic 1960's blast of energy! "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" scraped the top 40 back in 1966, but what really makes it interesting is that it is one of only three songs the Yardbirds recorded with both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on lead guitars. Not long after its release, Beck was fired.

Ten: Perfect 10

The Beautiful South: Perfect 10

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I drew a complete blank on songs with Ten/10 in the title for this week's theme... not my modus operandi at all, as I usually have too many tunes in my head and not enough time on the clock - so... I went on an adventure with my dear friend Google... and came up with this one...

My next step was to check the SMM archives to make sure the song had not been used before, whereupon I ran across Robbie's post of a bit over a year ago, covering the same band but a different song - we miss you, Robbie!

I knew nothing of The Beautiful South, but one reading of their lyrics, while listening, made me want to find out more about this group - they're clever, they're catchy, they're... disbanded?!?

Read here for some interesting observations from Wikipedia about double meanings and double entendres - there's also a sweet message behind the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink"...

'Cause we love our love in different sizes
I love her body, especially the lines
Time takes its toll, but not on the eyes
Promise me this, take me tonight...

Ten: Hang Ten

The Jazz Mandolin Project: Hang Ten

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Legend has it that this spirited improvisational jamjazz piece spontaneously arose from a late-night studio stop-in from Phish lead guitarist Trey Anastasio, but despite the regular presence of Phish drummer Jon Fishman on the skins of The Jazz Mandolin Project, the band itself is truly the baby and brainchild of rural New England-based mando master and compositional experimentalist Jamie Masefield. And Jamie continues to experiment: his most recent project involves a combination of video, literature, and live performance, and his most recent album - the sixth from the project - is an all-covers acoustic delight that features Tom Waits' bass player and Pat Metheny's pianist.

Ten: One in Ten

UB40: One in Ten

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First of all, let me apologize. The version of One in Ten heard here is the remixed version from the 1985 EP Little Baggariddim. I am posting it because it’s a great song, and I don’t have the original version from 1981. But the ‘81 version is much better, and it is easier to get. For accuracy’s sake, I have provided a purchase link for Little Baggariddim, but the 1981 album, Present Arms, is still in print, while the ‘85 EP is not. If anyone has the original version, please post it in the comments. Thanks.

Now then. UB40 takes their name from the British unemployment form. One in Ten is their reminder that the statistics you hear and read about represent real people, people in trouble. As 2010 opens, the economy is struggling. My fondest wish for this new year is that we will all notice a positive difference by year’s end. To get there, let’s all take UB40’s reminder to heart, and remember the faces behind the numbers.

Ten: Ten Men Working

Neil Young & the Bluenotes: Ten Men Working

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After closing the '70s with the Rust Never Sleeps/Live Rust one-two punch, Neil spent most of the '80s confounding even his most ardent supporters with a bewildering array of genre experiments: country-rock, electro-pop, rockabilly, pure country, synth-rock, and finally, in 1988, the blues. Many of the experiments were meant to annoy David Geffen, whose label Neil signed to in the early '80s, because Geffen wanted him to sound "more like Neil Young". But for his big-band blues album, This Note's for You, (backed by the nine-piece Bluenotes) Neil had finally found his way out of the Geffen contract and back to his old home, Reprise. And for me, it's the experiment that works the best. No, he will never be mistaken for Muddy Waters. But it's a fun album, and no song exemplifies that joyful energy more than the statement-of-purpose opening track, "Ten Men Working".

Neil liked the song enough to rechristen the band "Ten Men Working" after Harold Melvin (of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes fame) initiated legal action preventing Neil from using the Bluenotes name. Of course, by the following year, he had left the blues behind for a hard-rock power trio billed as "Neil Young and the Restless", perhaps the most aptly named of all his bands.

Ten: Big Ten Inch Record

Bull Moose Jackson: Big Ten Inch Record

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I remember this as if it happened yesterday. It was 1975 and Aerosmith had just released Toys In The Attic. By the release of that album, I was already a hardcore Aerosmith fan. One afternoon my father dropped over, during which time I was playing the LP and it was on the last track on side one, Big Ten Inch Record. Now I always read the liner notes and checked the label for the writer's credits but at 19 years old I sure didn't know who Fred Weismantel was. And without the benefit of the internet, it wasn't always as easy as it is now to do research on such things. When my dad came in and heard their version of the song playing, he simply said, "I know that one, it's an old blues tune. We used to dance to it."

When the song was released in 1952, the B side to 'I Need You', it was considered too risque for airplay and was banned from the airwaves. Loaded with double entendre,it was easy to figure out the song's true meaning. But that, apparently didn't stop my dad! And some twenty years later that didn't really matter much. But what I took away from that was a new realization that a lot of the songs that I liked way back then were actually covers of old blues tunes. After that enlightenment, I started to really pay attention and my love for the blues was born.

Bull Moose Jackson was born Benjamin Clarence Jackson in Cleveland Ohio on April 22,1919. He learned the sax and started his first band, The Harlem Hotshots, while still in high school. By 1943 he was recruited to play the sax for Lucky Millinder's band and began singing when he was needed to sub for Wynonie Harris. It was during this stint with Millinder where he got his nickname for his appearance. In 1948 he had a double-sided hit with 'All My Love Belongs to You' and 'I Want a Bowlegged Woman'. In 1961, he had a minor hit with ' I Love You, Yes I Do'.

The Moose lost his battle with lung cancer and passed away in 1989.

Ten: Ten Year Night

Lucy Kaplansky: Ten Year Night

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I knew my father loved Lucy Kaplansky - at least, I had heard her name, and his recommendation. But the first time I remember seeing her, I was solo, at the Clearwater Folk Festival. And she was so sweet, and so real, so authentically what I needed at that moment, that I bought two albums, and slipped one into the CD player without looking the moment I slid into the long, slow crawl that served as the exit from the camping area.

To be fair, I was emotionally primed. My wife was home, eight months pregnant with our very first child; the jaunt to Clearwater had been designed to be a replacement for our usual trip to Falcon Ridge Folk Fest, which was scheduled for the week after the birth, and it had succeeded marvelously well. The world was heavy with poignancy, I was alone with myself and unfettered, and the utter joy in losing myself to the folk community that weekend had been a true catharsis, just what I needed.

But there, in the car, when I slipped the disc in the player, and this track soared forth on my shitty speakers, everything coalesced.

It was, truly, the first time I had a musical epiphany, the mandolin and the echoing folk guitar, lyrics and the voice, the music and my life coming together for a moment of transcendent glory. In some ways, my entire musical journey since has been a struggle to recapture that sense of wonder, that sense of musical perfection.

Thanks, Lucy. Thanks, Dad. Welcome, 2010. May the new year and decade bring wonder to us all.

In Memorium: John Cephas

Cephas and Wiggins: Black Cat on the Line

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The Piedmont is a region that stretches roughly from Richmond VA, south to Atlanta. More to the point, it is a style of blues native to this area, dating from before WWII. The Piedmont style is characterized by the guitar player playing a bass line with his thumb while playing the chords and solo lines with the rest of his hand. Well known players in this style included Blind Boy Fuller and Rev Gary Davis. But probably the best known performers of Piedmont Blues were the guitar and harmonica duo of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

Sonny and Brownie were active until the mid 60s, but in 1976 a new duo picked up where they had left off: John Cephas and Phil Wiggins. Cephas grew up in Washington DC, where many people from the Piedmont had resettled, and it was there that he learned the style. But Cephas always felt drawn to the country, and he was eventually able to move to Bowling Green.

Together, Cephas and Wiggins distinguished themselves with their ability to adapt classic blues tunes from other regions to the Piedmont Style. And Cephas also wrote new songs that were firmly in the Piedmont tradition, and sounded like they were old standards. Black Cat on the Line is one of these.

I hope that there are still musicians as talented as John Cephas to carry on the Piedmont blues tradition. It’s one of my favorite styles of blues, and I would hate to see it go.

In Memoriam: Vic Heyman/Sean LaRoche

Rachel Bissex: Just Like That

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Denice Franke: Kindred Skin

[purchase] (on her Comfort CD)

I am weary of death - it has been a difficult year (major understatement)... and, in addition to my mother's passing, there have been a handful of others whose absence has shaken me mightily...

Two of those, while not musicians, were "movers and shakers" on the folk and acoustic music scene... and I was honored to call both of them friend - after I wrote, in my Eddy Arnold In Memoriam post last December 30, 2008, of my visit with Vic Heyman at his hospice bedside, Vic passed a week later... on January 6, 2009. His wife Reba has come back to South Florida for the winter, as usual, but it's still quite a shock to see her without him - a variety of articles have been compiled about Vic and, listening to Rachel's song about the couple, you'll get an inkling of how loved and respected he was...

Last April, Denice Franke performed in the UU church concert series I present - she's based in Texas and, having just gotten word that her former agent/forever friend Sean LaRoche was seriously ill in the Ocala area, she visited with him a few days before making it to South Florida. Soon after, he was admitted into a hospice program and passed away July 15 (4 days before my mom) - Denice sang and dedicated Kindred Skin to Sean at our concert, and she told me later that she had written it for him. He was a raucous, fun-loving, chain-smoking, heavy-drinking man whose spirit was as gentle as his voice was loud - he knew more about the music business than most people had forgotten, but the knowledge was always shared jovially, not pompously. He and I participated in a booking agent's panel together once, e-mailed regularly, talked on the phone sporadically and, one of his last work accomplishments was ensuring that John Gorka, who he represented, would play my series (the show will be next month... Saturday, February 13, 2010)...

These "folk angels" will be much missed - however, we can be comforted... knowing they are even now enjoying that great Song Circle in the Sky!

P.S. I had never heard of Scotland Barr before... but I feel as if I know him now after reading this moving piece by Lisa Lepine, who also managed Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer - as soon as I send this, I will listen to these songs intently... and then make a donation to the Finish the Album Fund, in memory of Vic and Sean (paying it forward... :-)

In Memoriam: Dewey Martin

Buffalo Springfield: For What It's Worth

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Drummers often go unnoticed in the guitar-driven worlds of country rock and folk rock. But you know Dewey Martin's greatest hit - that steady, subtle bass-and-hi-hat heartbeat that kicks off the world's most recognizable war protest song, listed as #63 in Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. And Martin knew the cadence well, having lost a few months of his own early career to the US Army before serving as itinerant drummer for a variety of sixties performers, from Carl Perkins, Patsy Cline, and Roy Orbison to The Dillards and The Standells, going on release a few singles of his own, and, subsequently, joining Buffalo Springfield at its inception.

Martin died in January of last year, having spent much of his life as a well-respected session musician and Buffalo Springfield revivalist, though without the pop culture name recognition of his more famous bandmates Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Jim Messina, and Richie Furay. But thanks to countless Vietnam-era protest films, his beat will live on forever.