CANDY/SWEETS: CANDY EVERYBODY WANTS

 I have never quite worked out whether my love for 10,000 Maniacs stemmed more from their name than their music. Certainly it was the name that first caught my eye, before their songs caught my ear. Like Cowboy Junkies*, another band I adore, emerging at much the same time, they had the canny ploy of linking their often downbeat and distinctly unaggressive music with an edgy sounding name. Hell, it was for that reason alone I owned T-shirts emblazoned with their band names. But, of course, I did love the music, discovering here that they were, sort of, the subject of one of my debut posts for this site, a galling 8 plus years ago. (Gulp, so, at a conservative estimate of of, say, three posts a month, that's north of 300 posts I've inflicted on you poor devils, should any have lasted the pace.....)

'Candy Everybody Wants' was the striking 2nd single from the 5th and final studio album the band did whilst Natalie Merchant was still a member, and was a commentary on the then prevalent US audience taste for sex and violence on screens big and small. (I say then prevalent, wondering if that has ever changed? As mainstream TV and films have become less reliant on at least the sex side of things, cable networks are eagerly, um, thrusting that opportunity on their hungry subscribers. Violence has never been out of taste, the flavours increasingly now for the graphic.) Merchant was never afraid of sociological polemic, and has remained a fierce and outspoken critic of many of the ills she perceives in society, from the military and guns to child abuse, alcohol and the environment, sometimes to the point of being perceived as almost  unbearably liberal and politically correct. 'Candy Everyone Wants' was co-written with the keyboard player, Dennis Drew, one of the co-founders of the band still with them today. It hit a respectable 67 on the singles chart, the album, 'Our Time in Eden', faring better, at 28. The band had also hit a vein of popularity in the UK, where it peaked at 33, figure a slight drop down from the more successful Blind Man's Zoo, which preceded it. Still enough for it to eventually go double platinum, mind.

I don't often print out chunks of lyric but think it is warranted here:

"We give them what they want

If lust and hate is the candy,

If blood and love taste so sweet,

Then we...

We givem what they want.

Hey, hey, We givem what they want".

Something I hadn't appreciated ahead of this piece, despite having the disc on my shelves, and generally being an avid reader of the credits, is that the brass on the song, and on the whole parent album, is provided by the JBs, surely finding this literate fare a world apart from the exacting schedule of their usual employer, James Brown. The fact raises both they and the Maniacs up in my estimation.

For a slightly different mood, below is the version from the MTV Unplugged concert, an orchestra providing the backing, but otherwise little different.

Whereas, from another live performance, old chum Michael Stipe turned up and joined in. Again, clearly not the JBs, but it looks a lot of fun. It was performed, hello again, for the MTV Inaugural Ball for Bill Clinton. (At the risk of descending into smut, with a title like that, I wonder if they did?!)

Finally, given the comments around the ongoing longevity of the band, how does it sound these days? Replacement singer, Mary Ramsey, was already within the wider pool of band associated musicians, featuring on viola and backing vocals on both 'Our Time in Eden' and 'MTV Unplugged.' As also the musical partner of the Maniacs erstwhile guitarist, John Lombardo, who had left the band in 1986, they were together performing as John and Mary, so it seemed logical to have them both incorporated back/fully into the band on Merchant's exit. Here is the song as performed on the 'Playing Favourites', which had the new version of the band play old and newer songs from both per and post Merchant days.

Here's the sweetshop.

*Hope you SWIDT! Candy? Teeth? (I'm here all week!)

MAY/MIGHT: JUST AS THE TIDE WAS A'FLOWING

Disclaimer: This post might well contain folk music.

May, both the day and the month, is big in british folk, with any number of songs relating to happenings in the the days thereof, many more specifically to actual individual days. Why not so April or June? I don't know, and there probably are examples in and of each, but I suspect it has to do with the whole pagan shebang of Mayday, a date long important before any international workers apprehended the date. Walpurgisnacht and Beltane vie with the Floralia for the earliest affectations, each being, broadly, celebrations of spring into summer.  Thus, and unsurprisingly, many of the songs set in May are based around sex and fertility, with, often, the snatched deflowering of maidens fair, overtly or in allegory.

This is one of my favourites, the initial amalgam of Shirley Collins, linnet voiced doyenne of the early 60s folk movement, and Ashley Hutchings, soon to be her husband, and the guv'nor of the whole  english electric folk-rock movement a near decade later, founding, in turn, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and the various incarnations of the Albion (Country and/or Dance) Bands.

This first iteration of the Albion b(r)and was a remarkable mix, melding many of his chums from Fairport/Steeleye alongside such mavericks as Lol Coxhill, free jazz sax maven, and some of the champions of the unaccompanied choral song tradition, the Watersons.  (Shirley had earlier included the song on a recording with her sister, Dolly, in which the genesis of the version below is ever more apparent.)

This next version, an unashamed tribute to the first, to the extent of later royalties having to cross hands for the appropriation of the arrangement, was my first exposure to the wonderful and still extant 10,000 Maniacs. Short and simple, carried by the ghostly vocal of Natalie Merchant and the swell of keyboard in the instrumental middle eight, this was enough for me to give up my then immersion in only folk to explore the rest of their catalogue, as it appeared, in turn leading me on to the delights of the then not unassociated act, R.E.M. (Natalie and Michael Stipe were factionalised, or not, by their respective publicity machines into being a couple, 10k M often appearing as support to the more famous group, and Natalie sharing a vocal on 'Photograph', for a charity recording.) Whilst some of the sparkle may have dropped since Natalie left to plough her own furrow, 10k M forge on, with a thoroughly decent 2015 offering, 'Twice Told Tales', containing only songs culled from the trad.arr folk tradition, give or take a lyric by W.B. Yeats.

Sort of full circle, I guess, in the never more incestuous canon of the UK folk scene, Eliza Carthy, daughter of Martin, who appears on 'No Roses', as do her uncle and auntie, Mike and Lal Waterson. (Carthy is married to Norma, the 4th and final member of the celebrated Watersons.) Here she slows the song right down, and imbues it with a drama missing from the two earlier and jauntier versions, her voice retaining, however, the same degree of melancholia. 'Anglicana' was, arguably, her breakthrough solo recording, but she remains a powerful force on the circuit, with her Wayward Band.
As a footnote, the Watersons themselves were no stranger to May songs, with, strangely enough, this also turning up on 'No Roses.'

Keep it simple, get this, this and this. (Yep, all of 'em.)