Hidden Places: End of the Innocence

 

purchase [ Henley;s album of the same name]

Sometimes what is not stated is as clear as what is. Sometimes a place not mentioned is as obvious as one clearly labelled.

There are songs that list all sorts of cities that are not in the title: my first thought was "Yeah. >Willin'< - the classic Lowell George/Little Feat piece' ". The song IDs cities all over the US West, not a single one of them in the title.  And the song has been covered by any number of musicians. But ... it has also been covered here (tho our 2009  post from "Susan" did not include Gregg Allman's 360 studio session video that is fun to check out: good music and the panoramic presentation is kind of cool.)

But.. that song has been covered here. So ... something that appears not to have been brought up here before. That said, Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby have appeared @ SMM previously, but not for  this one.

<End of the Innocence> references an un-named "small town" with tall grass untouched by man beneath a deep blue spacious sky. Clearly in the USA (O' beautiful for spacious skies), not in a city, but rather somewhere in the heart of America. It is also a cry for a time lost.

Various music critics note Henley's disallusionment with the state of affairs at the end of the 1980s - the end of the 1960s/70s movements to fight for a better world having fizzled. The song revolves around these sentiments: plowshares into swords ... repeated references to lawyers ... tired old kings ... armchair warriors. A pretty bleak picture.

But - there's a place we can go. It's hidden. It must remain hidden to keep it free of cares, untouched by man and not poisoned by fairy tales.

The clip below has a whole bunch of my guitar heroes, BTW, and tears come to my eyes every time I listen.

Cutlery: The Dreaded Spoon

purchase [ Bruce Hornsby & Ricky Scaggs]


One of my all-time favorite albums is Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Scaggs' album of the same name.
I ran across it on a Delta flight and went out and bought it soon after I landed, it sounded so good.
The album is pretty well geared to Bluegrass - no surprise considering Scaggs' influence and a certain bent in Hornsby's style over the years.

The Dreaded Spoon is by no means the best of the pick from the album. For the most part, the song themes are decidedly Western/cowboy.
From <Come on Out>:
    Come on out, with your hands up...
From <Hills of Mexico>:
    And we all got full of stickers from the cactus that did grow
    And the outlaws there to rob us in those hills of Mexico ...


Written by Hornsby, The Dreaded Spoon is a song about his father: a kind of catharsis in that the song relates a childhood memory of family visits to Dairy Queen. The spoon perennially resides in the glove compartment but comes out for his father's ice cream treat. Hey - my dad had his own quirks - as do I. Besides, there are a lot worse uses of spoons than scooping up frozen desert!

The lyrics are a paean to American junk food - spoonfulls of the kind of stuff they say you shouldn't be eating: curly fries and fritters, cakes and Sunday pies (any different than Monday pies?).
One critic panned the song; another called it hilarious.

And ... why not ...

Come On Out :

Sinking & Falling: Free Fall

Dixie Dregs: Free Fall
[purchase]

One of my minor pleasures is when I get to write about a band that I like, but which has never been featured here. The Dixie Dregs fit that bill. And speaking of Bill, the only time I saw the Dregs was, inexplicably, in a dive bar in Kingston, New Jersey in August, 1981, with some fellow WPRB staffers, including my friend Bill Rosenblatt. (Inexplicably, because setlist.fm shows that a couple of months before that show, they played Pier 84 in New York, a fairly large venue, the night after playing the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia, another large venue, and a couple of weeks later, they played the Lakeland, Florida, Civic Center, which holds 8,000 people.)

My memory of that show is basically limited to the fact that they were incredible, especially in a place the size of a large living room, and that I was able to talk with them, go “backstage” (the kitchen, if I remember) and drink their beer. Bill’s more detailed memories of the evening can be found here. We did promote some other shows at the Tin Lizzie, but this was the only “big name” that I remember being there (although the Internet has evidence that Jorma Kaukonen played there about a year later, after I graduated).

It is also fun to be able to follow my first post in this theme, about a ska-punk song, with a sunny, fusion song. The Dixie Dregs were one of the best fusion bands of the 70s and early 80s, and as is my habit when someone else has written something better than I could, I’ll quote Rosenblatt:

The Dixie Dregs were a band from Georgia that played jazzy instrumental rock in a style that sounded sort of like Kansas without the vocals, or Lynyrd Skynyrd meets Mahavishnu Orchestra.. . .Their leader was guitar virtuoso Steve Morse, who would later join Kansas and Deep Purple when those bands reached their “playing the zoo” stages. 

Although they were mostly from Georgia, they really came together as a band at the University of Miami, at a time when musicians such as Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny (and future members of his band, Dan Gottlieb and Mark Egan) and Bruce Hornsby were studying and/or teaching there. After self-releasing an album of demos, they were signed by Capricorn Records, the Allman Brothers’ label, and released their first official album, Free Fall. The title track, which leads off the album, is a good example of their music—generally upbeat, complex but not annoyingly complicated, impeccably played, and with a southern twang. And no vocals (until an early 1980s bad experiment with guest vocalists…..). I found a review of the album that refers to the song as "a jazz-country-funk breakdown with a digital synth alien laser beam effect solo, whilst a footstompingly good delay-drenched electric violin follows up with a pentatonic jam." 

The Dixie Dregs (briefly officially shortened to The Dregs late in the game) continued to release a string of similarly excellent albums, despite some turnover in personnel, until 1982, without much commercial success despite critical acclaim and a few Grammy nominations. Because instrumentals are a hard sell anyway, and certainly during the 80s. There were a few reunions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but basically, the band has been quiet. Until now—a tour of the Free Fall lineup has been scheduled, and it doesn’t look like they are playing any place like the Tin Lizzie.

The End: End of the Innocence

purchase [End ]

I've seen cover after amazing cover of this song.
It's a pretty solid song: the lyrics can take you to all sorts of places:

it speaks to the future
it speaks to the end
it speaks to hope

At this time in history - because once it will be history - it's tough not not to get political. I got [too] political in my last post at considerable risk to being shut down (yes, that what happens in some parts of the world when you speak your voice)

What better chance to once again bring the issues to light:
In many ways, the days we are living through ARE in fact the end of our innocence.
Fake News - and worse - is all pushed aside to make room for ... less or worse ... Sudan's drought, N. Korea's nukes.. or things as mundane(!) as the UK's Brexit .. today's news ... WTF have we come to?!?!


How on Earth did Leno manage to bring this group together? It's like my dream team of music:
Jackson, Shawn, Bonnie, Bruce & David - The End Of The Innocence - TV Show

Top 10 Posts of 2015

We briefly interrupt our annual In Memoriam theme to start a new tradition—highlighting the 10 most viewed posts of 2015.

The variety of music discussed on this site is broad, and our international roster of writers brings different perspectives to their pieces. One of the great things about Star Maker Machine is that it gives our writers a forum to write about anything they want, as long as they can relate it, in some way, to our bi-weekly theme. In our top 10, there are personal memories, political and social discussions, remembrances of those who have passed, brushes with celebrity, and even just posts about songs, music and musicians. This list includes discussions of folk, rock, old-time pop, klezmer, and spoken word.

So, in case you missed them, here are the most viewed posts from the last calendar year. But they are only a small sampling of what you will find in our archives, which we invite you to explore.

1. Where I Live—Tarrytown
2. Self-Reflection—Wilco (The Song) 
3. Light→Darkness—From Light to Darkness with Richard & Linda Thompson
4. Songs South—The Southern Thing/The Three Great Alabama Icons 
5. The Future—Somewhere Down The Road 
6. Brush With Celebrity—Jean Shepherd
7. Self-Reflection—You Turn Me On I’m A Radio 
8. Light—Harbor Lights
9. Non-Christmas Holiday Songs—Happy Joyous Hanukkah
10. Water/Wet—California, The Beach Boys

And there is more to come in 2016.

Light: Harbor Lights

Frances Langford: Harbor Lights

[purchase]

Boz Scaggs: Harbor Lights

[purchase]

Bruce Hornsby: Harbor Lights

[purchase]

Think of the song Harbor Lights, and you may think of versions by The Platters, Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, or Guy Lombardo, to name a few. Whoever you think of, you will be thinking of one of the corniest and sappiest songs ever written, one I had no intention of posting. The song tells of a weeping lover lamenting a lost love who has sailed away to sea. In the original recording by Frances Langford, from 1937, the song is song by a woman, and it becomes clear that the departed lover is a sailor who has proved faithless. Versions sung by men make no sense to me, but the song is inescapable throughout pop music history. In putting this post together, I realized that one does not call a song Harbor Lights without dealing with the original cornball classic in some way.

Boz Scaggs responded with a new song called Harbor Lights. There is a sly reference to the original in a line about an old song on the juke box. Scaggs is offended by the earlier song on behalf of the male half of the human race. His song says we men are not horrible like that. His narrator is a sailor who is faithful, and looks forward eagerly to returning to his lover.

Bruce Hornsby‘s reaction is more radical. He rejects the entire setup, and says, “No, this is not at all what harbor lights evoke for me.” There is no question of faithfulness in his song. Instead there is the rush of a new romance, with its powerful sense of infinite possibility. Hornsby‘s song is both a literal and figurative statement. It was the title track to the first album Hornsby recorded as a solo artist, after three with the Range. More importantly, it was Hornsby‘s first album after spending time as a member of the Grateful Dead. The Range albums are fine, but here Hornsby cuts loose for the first time. The songs add a jazz flavor, and they lengthen to allow the musicians to stretch out with solos. The guitar solos here are by guest Pat Metheny, and Jerry Garcia appears elsewhere on the album. Hornsby is celebrating his newfound freedom from traditional pop song forms, and he is invoking and rebutting one of the hoariest examples of traditional pop to do so.

Cars: Cadillac Edition

Other cars are just cars. But a Cadillac has a special mystique. A Cadillac is... is... is.... well, it depends on who you ask. Let me show you what I mean.

Joni Mitchell: Ray's Dad's Cadillac

[purchase]

To Ray, his Dad's Cadillac is a car with room for a large number of teenagers to do what teenagers do in cars.

This comes from one of Joni Mitchell's best albums, and one that is too often overlooked, Night Ride Home. After diving deep into the heart of jazz, and losing a large part of her original audience, Joni signed with Geffen records, and tried her hand as a rocker. Her first two albums of this contract had some great songs, but were very uneven; stylistically, they were all over the place, with Joni searching for her new sound. All of this changed with Night Ride Home. For a brief moment, Joni found a consistent sound for an album. It was sort of a mellow folk-rock, but not wimpy. And the songwriting was possibly the best over the course of an entire album, since Hejira.

Bruce Hornsby: Rainbow's Cadillac

[purchase]

Rainbow's Cadillac is a powerful status symbol. It announces to the world that a very important man has just hit town.

In the liner notes to one of her albums, Kate Bush once said something I really liked: she thanked Peter Gabriel "for opening the windows". Bruce Hornsby could have said the same of the Grateful Dead. In interviews, Hornsby has told how he played it safe on his first two albums, perfecting a pop sound with new agey piano flavors Nevertheless, the members of the Grateful Dead heard something there that perhaps even Hornsby himself did not, and they invited him to join the band on tour. Musically, this liberated Hornsby. The Grateful Dead were always about playing without a net, trying new things and sometimes falling on their faces, but never being afraid to do so. Hornsby brought this new spirit to his own music, starting with the album Harbor Lights. For my money, the results were spectacular.

Southern Culture on the Skids: Voodoo Cadillac

[purchase]

To the unnamed narrator of "Voodoo Cadillac", the Cadillac is a chick magnet. "Get inside, and we'll take a ride to New Orleans in comfort and style". What woman could resist?

I don't really know the story of Southern Culture on the Skids. I can tell you that musically, there is a lot more where this came from. They've been at it for about 25 years now, and they show no signs of letting up. If anyone has more info about them, please feel free to share it in the comments.

Submitted by Darius