The Winter Months: December African Rain

Juluka: December African Rain

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The well-known meteorologist Bob Geldof once noted, with uncanny prescience and unflinching confidence, that there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time. Or, indeed, any Christmas time. Unless you look for it on top of the Kilimanjaro. There will, however, be rain in some parts of Africa this Christmas time. It is not unheard of that there is some drizzle in Cape Town on Christmas Eve.

Rain is, of course, mostly welcome in Africa for agricultural reasons. And in the often unbearably humid KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa, it can bring relief from the climate’s discomforts. And that region is home to our featured band, Juluka, who in their 1984 song bid the precipitations of summer farewell — though the rain here serves as a metaphor.

The song is in fact a goodbye letter. Since it appears on Juluka’s 1984 Stand Your Ground (Greatest Hits) album — the band’s final release before it briefly regrouped in the 1990s — it probably is Johnny Clegg’s wistful send-off for his friend and Juluka co-founder Sipho Mchunu.

Like many Juluka songs, December African Rain formed part of the live repertoire of Clegg’s follow-up band, Savuka, and as such has become a minor South African classic. Both incarnations were outstanding live acts.

The Winter Months: A Long December

Counting Crows: A Long December

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The calendar turns to December, and you suddenly realize that the year is almost over. New Years is coming, and with it, a chance for a fresh start. But first, you have all of December to think about what you would wish you had done differently. And December is one of the ones with thirty-one days, so there’s that much more time before you can start again. That is what A Long December expresses so perfectly. There is regret, but also far off hope.

Leftovers (Songwriting) -> The Winter Months: Air Of December

Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians: Air of December

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A fluid, dreamy also-ran from Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, Air of December doesn't just provide an unusually mellow kick-off to a week of songs whose titles mention December, January, or February. It also speaks to the apocryphal origin story of the band, which involves Edie wandering up onto a bar stage to join the local folk-rock band New Bohemians on a whim, floating improvisational lyrics over their long instrumentals and proving herself worthy of frontwoman status as they moved forward into what would become, sadly, a pretty typical 80's career: a 2x platinum debut supported by a single mega-hit, followed by a slow drift into classic alt-rock obscurity.

I mean, just listen to it. The lyrics serve the tune, I suppose - one of the things I most admire about the early work which sprung from this unusual process - but all the same, the song sounds like it was an instrumental first, and one that evolved organically at that. And we can infer what we need to from the label, which lists all five of the band members as authors. My guess is, this one came out of a bunch of well-trained musicians' improvisational jam session, after which someone wrote down the best parts for sequence and structural purposes, Edie layered one of her infamous dreamscapes over it, and voila.

Leftovers (Discoveries): Eye of the Needle

Ten Wheel Drive: Eye of the Needle

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I was busy discovering Germany during Discoveries Week and could have posted every day with ideas that came to me. This is my first Leftovers Week, too, and I can definitely see the attraction – it's pretty much guaranteed that I can match cool song to cool topic. And this song is especially cool.

I was lucky growing up with older siblings and cousins with pretty good taste. This song was hammered into my head at the tender age of 14 by my older cousin Carl, who was only in high school himself (he also introduced me to Tommy round about this time). Ten Wheel Drive was a late 60's jazz-rock group in the vein of early Blood Sweat and Tears, and with an utterly fabulous Joplin-esque vocalist—Genya Ravan. This group should've been bigger than it was, to be honest. It took several years before I got hold of a used LP of Construction #1 and managed to make a cassette tape with this wonderful song. Sadly, it went the way of most cassette tapes of the day, wrapped around the spindle, mutilated and unlistenable.

It took about 30 years for me to come across it once more. So I'm especially pleased to be able to share it with you.

Leftovers (Other People's Songs): Different Drum

The Stone Poneys: Different Drum

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The Version of "Different Drum" that most of us know is the one released by Linda Ronstadt and The Stone Poneys in 1967, but that version was neither the original nor the first cover of the tune.  Michael Nesmith of The Monkees penned the tune in 1966, and its first release came later that year on The Greenbriar Boys album Better Late Than Never (if anyone has that version, I'd love to hear it).

Even before that, however, Nesmith managed to sneak the tune onto an episode of The Monkees' TV show (see YouTube clip below).  He finally recorded a proper version of the song in 1972 for his album And the Hits Just Keep on Comin'.  Nesmith includes the song's fourth verse that Ronstadt left out of her hit.

Michael Nesmith: Different Drum (Buy Album)

Leftovers (Retrospective: Fifty States): Your State’s Name Here

Lou and Peter Berryman: Your State‘s Name Here

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It’s really not hard at this point to come up with songs that fit more than one of our previous themes. This one fits at least three, including Leftovers. As you read the post, you’ll see why I had to label it the way I did.

My first post on Star Maker Machine was during Songwriting week. The following week was our first Fourth of July, and our theme was Fifty States. What a rush that was! Our goal was to post one song for each of the fifty states, and there was a rule that you couldn’t use a state that was already posted. So the posts came in fast and furious, with everyone wanting to get theirs up before someone took their state. As a guest poster at the time, I had to wait for someone to put my post up for me, and I was only able to get Louisiana. At the end of the week, we were stuck for songs for New York and Washington, so we allowed extra posts to cover those. In the end, we had 58 posts in one week, (phew!). One of the last songs was Lower 48, which covered most of them in one song. Even at the time, I wanted to finish with a song that would cover all of the states at once, and I knew just the song to do it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the song at the time, and I knew nothing about how to get it. Well, now I do. The song, of course, is Your State’s Name Here.

Leftovers (Call Me): Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand

Primitive Radio Gods: Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand

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Do kids today even know what a phonebooth is?

This song from Primitive Radio Gods was a minor hit in 1996, and looking back, it's probably one of the songs I most identify with that year. The haunting B.B. King samples, the moody piano, the subdued vocals, all combined to perfectly captured the melancholy of my life at the time.