HORSE/S: PONY/S, DONKEY/S, MULE/S & ASS/ES

All the same thing, aren't they? All have hooves and tails, and the why-the-long-faces, so, yes, they must be. OK, I know, they aren't, but can you all recall the differences? I will assume that you know horses, the odd-toed ungulate mammal, whether cart, race or just a plain old Dobbin, so, moving swiftly on......

Jenny's Got a Pony/Los Lobos

I haven't a clue what this song, by the always excellent Los Lobos, could possibly be about. Is there much of a pony population in East L.A.? Anyhow, this riveting ride, SWIDT, comes from their 1990 opus, 'The Neighbourhood', showing off their best, a fusion of latino, tex-mex and plain good old rock'n'roll. Ponies are horses, in fact, the delineation tending to relate to smaller sizes of beast. Whilst clearly there are tiny ones, whether your steed is a horse or a pony is often as much in the eye of the beholder. In slang a pony might be a small amount of liquor. Is that what Jenny got? Alternatively,  in my country a pony is £25, increasingly equal to $25.

Donkey Town/Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris

Donkeys are not horses, but are very close. I think they look cuter but traditionally have tended more to be more beasts of burden than for racing. And to be the butt of many an insult, the derogatory opinion being that donkeys are for peasants, horses being only fit for the higher echelons. Hence, I guess, this song, from the, at the time, critically underacclaimed album of duets, Knopfler imagining himself, yeah, right, as a loser in a one horse, sorry, donkey town. If Emmylou were there, chum, I'd stay.

Muleskinner Blues/The Cramps

This is where it all gets a bit surreal, as I explain a muleskinner is ahead of a mule. And, until today, I had the notion that the pelt of a mule might be a useful commodity. Good leather or something like that. Wrongity-wrong, it is the human handler of a mule or a set of mules. So called as you had to be quick witted to outsmart them, or "outskin" them, me, neither, given their stubbornness. No wonder they got the blues, the song originally a hit for Jimmie Rodgers in the 30s, before the Cramps gave it a reverential kick up the, um, ass. We don't feature the late lamented Cramps here enough, I feel. 

A mule is the sterile progeny of when a horse, or pony, mates with a donkey, the genetics close enough to procreate but not close enough to prolong the line further. It seems a bit of a long way to go for a somewhat short end to me. But, mule lovers, worry not, they can now be cloned. Mule is also slang for the middle man in a drugs heist, responsible for transporting the illicit material across county lines and continents, often, literally, in their "middles". Why the name? Presumably as such individuals are seen as slow witted carriers of little importance beyond the carriage of the goods. Confusingly, what they carry may often go by the slang of horse. Or, perhaps in a sly dig at its retrieval, shit.

Jack Ass/Beck

Here's where I could get myself into trouble, as in get my ass kicked, mixing and muddling my homonyms. But, I will resist that temptation and stick to the literal, wherein Beck Hansen compares his situation to that of a Jack, or male, Ass, or donkey, the two terms being near equivalent. (See horse/pony). So it is really back to Mark Knopfler and his donkey town, self-esteem apparently quite a rare premium for worldwide superstars. But, in recompense for reading this far, I can't but leave you without just a little horseplay...... (Spoiler: twerk free; have you ever typed ass into youtube?)

Get Off Your Ass and Jam/Funkadelic

Pony, donkey, mule, ass (or ass.)

New York: High 5 (Rock The Catskills)

Beck: High 5 (Rock the Catskills)

[purchase]

Assuming that the Catskill's reference in the parenthetical title is deliberate - Beck was infamous in the nineties for taking misheard phrases and using them as adopted in-jokes in lyrics and titles alike - then there's a case to be made that this odd little broken collage of a song from mid-nineties masterpiece Odelay, which fades in and out of a plethora of feedback-heavy beats and melodic interludes covering everything from obscure 70s funk to a chunk of Schubert's Unfinished 8th Symphony, and even crashes to a self-referential halt about two thirds of the way through, is actually much smarter than it pretends to be.

The richly layered stop-and-start cycle of beats pays effective tribute to the evolution of the beautiful Catskill Mountain region of New York, known in the nineteenth century as a high-culture retreat and locus of the Hudson River School of painters, in the early twentieth as the "Borscht Belt", a middle-class summer retreat for predominantly Jewish and ethnic cityfolk looking economically upwards, and in the mid twentieth as a concentrated space for summer camps for city kids. These days, like Beck's narrator, the region is "more dead than alive", peppered with economically depressed working-class tourist towns, hiker's outposts, isolated weekender and summer homes, failing farms and antique shop barns, and deserted hotels even as it struggles to return to the grandeur it once represented for urban generations.

*With apologies for the irresistible visual pun...

Adjective Noun: Hollow Log

Beck: Hollow Log

[Purchase]

Beck has a myriad of songs that would have fit this theme, but for my money, the songs off his early folk record "One Foot In The Grave" are among his best, or at least my favorites. Generally, people seem to appreciate him for his off the wall samplings and beats, but when he can write songs that sound so timeless and organic like "Hollow Log", you see that there's a lot more to him than two turntables and a microphone. Despite trying to get back to his more mellow roots with albums like Mutations and Sea Change, I never found they had the same feel of One Foot In The Grave that I loved.

This song is one of my favorites from the album because it feels so genuine. It feels like an old blues song, and I can imagine a young man singing this song while sitting on that hollow log in the damp woods trying to fight off the loneliness.

Hell Week: Satan Gave Me A Taco

Beck: Satan Gave Me A Taco

[purchase]

Beck got his taco, and he got to eat it, too!

Lot's of folks in the indie music scene seem convinced that the major labels are Evil. That opinion is debatable, I suppose, but when Beck signed with Geffen, he managed a clause in his contract that allowed him to release indepenent albums, in addition to ones on Geffen. Not quite totally evil, then.

P.S. I realize that Beck already made the listings this week, in a haberdasher-ary manner, but this song was just too good for me to pass up.

Hell Week: What's the Devil look like?

Well of course there are all manner of lesser imps and demons, but the Great Satan himself is red and scaly with a bifurcated tail and he carries a hay fork.

O Brother Where Art Thou?: Devil Clip [purchase]

Beck: Devil’s Haircut [purchase]

I guess this is as good a song as any to kick off Hell Week at SMM.

Boats: Rowboat

Beck: Rowboat

[purchase]

An obvious choice for this theme, but it would be foolish to leave it out for that reason. Rowboat, or: how things are always better on the other shore. Beck´s ´94 original presents the lofi hero (well, he was at the time) at his most polished, also thanks to Leo LeBlanc´s beautiful pedal steel. "Rowboat, row me to the shore, she don't wanna be my friend no more... She dug a hole in the bottom of my soul."

Johnny Cash: Rowboat

[purchase]

Johnny Cash did a marvellous version of the song on Unchained (´96), the second volume of his acclaimed American Recordings series. He´s got the following to say about Rowboat in the liner notes: "Dog food on the floor. And I've been like this before. Beck's been reading my mail. I do believe that the sum extent of the messiness, disarrangement, disorder and dirtiness of your room is equal to that of your brain. I'm not even going to ask Beck what the line means, "I'll be home with the gasoline." Is it for her truck, or to burn her house? I know. In my head I know. I've been like that before. Rowboat, things are much better on the other shore."

Little Black Book: Debra

Beck: Debra

[purchase]

Debra is not about a girl named Debra, it's about Debra's sister -- who might be named Jenny. Beck falls for Jenny when he meets her at the JC Penny, but he doesn't discriminate. He'd like to "get with" both of them.

This is one of Beck's funniest and funkiest songs, and is a high point from the album of his that I like least.