Done: All My Life

 

purchase [ One by One ]

For someone who for many years had one foot in Seattle, I know relatively little about the local music scene. My excuse being that I have only ever been a transitory visitor even though my legal US residence is still WA state. That said, among the handful of live concerts I have attended in the US is Blind Faith and again Eric Clapton about 50 years later - both in Seattle.

But Nirvana? Pearl Jam? Alice in Chains? Sound Garden? Green River? All Seattle bands. The best I can say in my favor on this count is that I have listened to a little of them. And I keep saying it's time I did some more. In the late 60s and early 70s I listened to a fair amount of what then passed for "heavy", such as Led Zeppelin, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Deep Purple  .. And for all that, following a little search at SMM archives, I see that I have actually  touched on the Foo Fighters more than once. And still don't know much of their music. 

This post would be one that our sometime itinerant/irregular writer Andy La Raygun might have chosen, he being much more knowledgable about this sound and style. And considering that they were just inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year (which see), there are a lot of other folk who like their music. 

I could become a convert if I listened to more. Maybe. Dave Grohl is a name I am somewhat familiar with, but I know squat about the rest of the band, and that would be yet another trail to follow and improve myself.

Grohl says the song is a little dirty. You can search that one yourself. He also notes that it really isn't that heavy, for his taste. Mmmm. Heavy enough for me but harmonic enough that I can enjoy it more than I do with most of its ilk. No really. I'm not a  grunge listener and in spite of my off and on resolutions to widen my horizons, I probably never will be.

But I do appreciate the <drive> incorporated in this piece. Oh, and "done"? It's the lyrics: 

Done, done. I'm on to the next one (again and again)

Done: Nothing Can Be Done

 

purchase [ Night Ride Home]

A tip of the hat to our own Seuras Og, who undoubtedly would have given you a different take on this one, but left it for me while probably wondering by this time if I would ever get around to the task.

A lot of the music I like to listen to comes from the Laurel Canyon crew. Never having delved too deeply into the historic records of that scene, I find myself scrolling through photos taken by Henry Diltz and amazed at the shallowness of my knowledge of that bit of history. There's so much more to learn but the photos provide a lot of fodder for a wandering mind.

I had ended up at that page following a trail about Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell - and trying to come to grips with my ambivalence about Joni Mitchell. Due to my age and cultural exposures, I certainly heard Joni Mitchell, but always felt her music was a little too Blue for my taste. I certainly have had respect for her unique style - even play my own interpretation of Both Sides Now, just one of her many excellent songs. But, well ... too often melancholy. Even the seemingly ever-present pout carries that same sensibillity to me.

This digging has also lead me to question my lack of interest in female musicians of the type. Yes, Joni is unique, but in my mind she has been associated with Joan Baez for some reason. And much of the above pertains to her as well: gifted but not my bag, whereas Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Billie Elish (just to name a few) - I can listen to again and again. So it's not gender related dis-interest.

So ... "done" and Joni Mitchell: When I first heard "Nothing Can Be Done" - yes, just the other day - my ambivalence shriveled a bit. This isn't the Joni Mitchell I thought I knew. Well ... the lyrics fall into the category of stories she might tell. But the music doesn't. At all. But then my aversion means that I haven't listened to all that many Mitchell works.

While the lyrics are Mitchell's, the music is credited to Larry Klein. And again, writing here at SMM takes me to places I should but don't know about as I learn that Klein and Mitchell were married for some time and continued collaborating afterwards. And that Klein also has had a rather eclectic musical background.

It's a song of sadness, growth, skeletons and wisdom gained. It's not "I'm done", but rather, since nothing can be done about the smoking gun of my heart, it's time to learn a lesson and move on wisened by the experience.

DONE: RUST (WHAT'S DONE IS DONE)

Nothing like a bleak and misty January morn to instil a sense of hopelessness. No, scratch that, not hopelessness, more inevitability. Hopeless is a a state of feeling, an ur-idealism, whereas inevitability carries at least a tint of realism, an acceptance possibly,  rather than the blanket sense of fear. Which may have you thinking to skip this one, for fear of contagion. But don’t go, I’m OK and this gets lighter. Well, not the song. Clearly.

Rust (What's Done Is Done/Therapy?

A confession. I originally planned this post around a different song altogether, that being the Joni Mitchell deep cut, Nothing Can Be Done. But I discovered my compadre, KKhafa of this parish, was planning on doing the same song, getting his dibs in first. That needed some swift recalibration, and another song to convey a similar mood. Digging around in various lyrics search engines I eventually came across this, by Therapy?, the metalheads from N'orn, a band I have never knowingly heard or investigated. But their name, ahead of listening to the track, gave a semblance of also being able to address the full mental health of my current. Plus, for all I knew, maybe listening to them would prove good medicine. (Intriguingly, a scan through their song titles gave me no small joy, as they contain some evident wit and a fair amount of apparent self-deprecation. Jude the Obscene certainly grabs the eye, as a title, as does Stark Raving Sane and Perversonality, each title suggesting some experience on one side or other of a white coat or padded cell.)

Stories (cello version)/Therapy?

So, I listen, bemused. Not really heavy metal as I know or ever knew it, smacking more of punk in the pace and the attitude. Do I like it? Not sure I'd go that far, but it has a certain angular graceless charm. It comes from the band's 7th album, High Anxiety, in 2003, with wiki telling me the sound, my bad, is actually melodic punk, rather than metal, heavy or otherwise. Sometimes a four piece, as on this record, more often they have been a trio, my interest piqued by the fact that cello featured amongst their available instrumentation. Sure, it isn't really evident in Rust, but the other track, above this paragraph, displays this better. Clearly a wormhole needing exploring!

Peek-a-boo/Siouxsie & the Banshees

Martin McCarrick is the cellist, and was a member of Therapy? between 1996 and 2004, doubling also on guitar. I confess to being unfamiliar with his name, so decided to do a bit of a search, discovering him to be quite the journeyman, with time spent in, or attached to, a number of bands, with quite an illustrious career. Possibly better known as a Banshee, he featured on several of their records, between 1984 and 1995. Starting off as their string arranger, for the Thorn EP, he was later contributing keyboards, as well as playing cello. This includes the accordion in Peek-a-boo, above. But even ahead of that he was a Mamba, Marc Almond's backing band of the early 80s, and with whom he has maintained a lasting link. At possibly the same time he joined Therapy?, he was also integral to any number of looser knit collectives, including This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance. He would also add the strings to records by Kristin Hersh and, later, Skunk Anansie. Diversity clearly his middle name, it seems almost strange he spent so much time in the less than rarified atmosphere of the Belfast rockers. Unless it is just me? Unsurprisingly, he has since become a well known soundtrack composer, as well as working with his wife, Kimberlee, as/in the McCarricks, she playing violin to his cello.

Letter From Nagoya/The McCarricks

My final clip shows him, back with Marc Almond, back on accordion and playing live, in 2020, ahead the pandemic. Let's truly hope he isn't done.

Hymn of Love/Marc Almond

Where we began...... 

(And I no longer feel hopeless, btw.)

Done: The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done

Woody Gurthrie: The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done
[purchase] 

I’m staying in the political song area again, but this time something more overt, Woody Guthrie’s “The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done.” The song takes the form of recollections of an “historical bum,” present at great moments in human history (real or imagined), sort of like a folk song version of Zelig. 

It turns out that Guthrie borrowed the idea from earlier songwriters—the template (and even some of the lyrics) come from an 1894 song called “I’m A Highly Educated Man,” a version called “When Abraham And Isaac Rushed The Can,” was recorded in 1924 by “Fiddlin’ John Carson,” Grand Old Opry stars Uncle Dave Macon, Charlie Poole and Vernon Dalhart each did a version called “I’m The Man Who Ride The Mule Around The World,” (as has Loudon Wainwright III), and it has been recorded by many others, including Elvis Presley (in 1970), as “I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago.” (And if you look hard, you might be able to find a version of the song by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter from 1961, before the Grateful Dead was formed). 

Guthrie took the bones of the song and grafted on to it the populist, pro-labor, probably small-c communist politics that he espoused (and yes, I know that the evidence shows that Guthrie was probably a member of the Communist Party at some points, but also that he really wasn’t a “Party” kind of guy.) So, he’s present at the creation, worked in the Garden of Eden (as a member of the apple pickers union), worked on the Pyramids and the Tower of Babel, fought in battles, beat Romans, Turks, and other great powers, helped win the American Revolution and the Civil War before moving on to the issue that was directly on Guthrie’s mind in 1944, when the song was recorded: World War II. 

There was a man across the ocean, I guess you knew him well,
His name was Adolf Hitler, goddam his soul to hell;
We kicked him in the panzers and put him on the run,
And that was about the biggest thing that man has ever done. 

There's warehouse guys and teamsters and guys that skin the cats
Guys that run my steel mill, my furnace and my blast
We'll stop the Axis rattlesnakes and thieves of old Nippon
And that will be the biggest thing that man has ever done.

I know that the card that I used as an image indicates that it was recorded in 1942, and it may well have been—the record is vague—but the version above was probably from 1944, which makes sense, because by then, Hitler was more “on the run” than he would have been in 1942. But it is clear that Guthrie is also giving credit for winning the war to the workers, as well as the soldiers. 

Guthrie ends this version of the song (and if you’re interested, here’s a set of lyrics that has many more, and different verses, but I haven’t been able to find a recording of this version): 

Well I better quit my talking 'cause I told you all I know
But please remember pardner wherever you may go
The world is digging Hitler's grave and when the job is done
This'll be the biggest thing that man has ever done. 

And, in 1944, that probably was right (and it still might be right, today.) 

I’ll confess that the first time I heard this song, it was being sung by Dan Bern, and I didn’t know that it was a Woody Guthrie song until I did a little poking around. Bern, a family favorite who I’ve written about a few times, and seen even more times, is a folksinger in the Guthrie tradition, mixing politics with nonpolitical songs (and, like Guthrie, writing children’s songs and Hanukkah music). Bern released his version in 2004, and it included a few of the verses from the longer version linked to above (modified a bit). But he also updated it a little, adding a verse about the moon landing, and then the verse that probably was the impetus for the release: 

There's one big thing we must do when shove comes to push
Defeat the so-called President by the name of Bush
Vote early and vote often, November 2 not 1
And that will be the biggest thing Man has ever done
That'll be the biggest thing Man has ever done 

Now, that didn’t work, sadly, but it is nice to know that the Guthrie tradition of political songwriting carries on (and yes, Bern has written anti-Trump songs).  

Dan Bern: The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done
[purchase]

Done: You Haven’t Done Nothin’

Stevie Wonder: You Haven’t Done Nothin’ [purchase] 

I’m still trying to wrap my head around this theme—“Done” would have made sense to me at the end of 2021, although the year-end here at SMM is filled with traditional themes, like our post-Thanksgiving “Leftovers,” some holiday-related theme(s) around Christmas, and the post-Christmas “In Memoriam.” So, if we had kicked off 2022 with “Beginning,” which we did in 2016, or “Fresh Starts” (2012), I’d get it. But maybe I protest too much, since our first theme of 2021 was “Over,” but I think that tied into the end of the Trump Error, and not the end of the also crappy 2020. 

Anyway, even though, so far, there’s no evidence that 2022 is going to improve on 2021 in any way, my choice of song for this theme is unrelated to the definition of “Done” as an adjective meaning “over,” but rather in its role as the past participle of the verb “do.” (Yes, we here at SMM are grammar nerds). And after the somewhat disappointing view totals of my In Memoriam piece about Larry Harlow, not exactly a household name outside of the Harlow household (and, of course, the salsa world, which doesn’t appear to overlap too much with our readership), I’m going to write about a big hit for a massively famous musician, Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” which was a No. 1 pop and soul hit for Wonder.

I’ve probably mentioned more than a few times here (and maybe at some of my other blogging homes) that one of the joys of writing these pieces is that I often learn things about the song or artist that I didn’t know, and that’s what happened here. “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” was released as a single in 1974, and I probably heard hundreds of times over the years. But what I did not know, until I began researching this piece, was that it was directed at Richard Nixon, who resigned two weeks after the album it was on, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, was released, and one day after the single was released. Thanks for making that happen, Stevie. (I still remember the joy that my 13-year-old self felt when I heard, while working as a junior day camp counselor, that Nixon had decided to step down, which is maybe why this is my second Watergate related post in recent weeks.) 

I also didn’t know that the background vocals on the song were sung by the Jackson 5—despite the fact that Wonder literally sings “Jackson 5 join along with me” during the song. Or that all of the instruments on the song (other than bass) were played by Wonder, including the horn parts on synthesizer. 

Wonder is, of course, amazing, which was brought home to me this summer when, during that brief period when we thought COVID was on the ropes, my wife and I went to an actual movie theater to see the brilliant documentary, Summer of Soul, about the mostly forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival that took place in 1969, featuring an incredible roster of talent. Questlove, the director, made the decision to open the film with 19-year-old Stevie Wonder playing an amazing drum solo (!). You can see a bit of it (and hear a little more of it) in this trailer for the film (it’s on Hulu, and you really should just see the whole film because it is mind-blowing)



I also found this interesting essay from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that discusses Wonder’s performance, including speculation as to why Wonder chose to include the drum solo in a cover of the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing,” which was considered to be a “kiss-off” to Motown Records, Wonder’s label, and it’s a worthwhile read.

DONE: ANOTHER GOOD MAN DONE GONE

 I think it probably the garbled syntax that attracted me first to this song, having always a love for the vagaries of language and how it can devolve. (Yes, devolve.) Especially in the southern states of the US, where there seems often gratuitous joy in treading roughshod over any concept of grammatical fluency. But it seems I am wrong to poke fun or criticise, as the good folk of Yale have looked into all of this, and more, in some depth. I give you the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project, which addresses the use of english in north America. Done gone is what is called a "perfective done". Good, innit!? And I refer and recommend you to the whole of the rabbit warren that clicking on that site can open up, but not right now, we have a song to discuss.........

You may know this song from other versions, which may be touched on, but it is hauntingly and stunningly gaunt in this presentation, a lone voice of lamentation that burns through any need for accompaniment. The singer is one Vera Hall, she acknowledged as, if not the author, certainly the owner, via possession being  9/10 of the law. For, when John Avery Lomax, the ethnomusicologist began collating the songs of America in the 1930s, it was Hall he wooed more asiduously than many, recording as many songs as she could sing for him. This is the one that stuck the hardest, with it being recorded for the Library of Congress in posterity. Lomax's son, the slightly better known Alan, who continued in the same stock of trade, later presented her in concert at Columbia University's American music Festival of 1948. 

But what of those other versions? Perhaps the most well known is that by Johnny Cash. In a spare call and response with Anita Carter, his sister in law, it remains a striking call to arms, solitary vocal tracks drenched in echo. So what or why was the subject done gone? It seems the song refers to the death of a man, a black man, on a chain gang, the unsaid implication that his presence in said chains was down to some trivial misdemeanour, such as within the context of such times. (Such times? This article opens a not so distant eye to the practice I had thought long since, along with Paul Muni, been confined to history.) Still, my new year resolution is be to avoid outraging myself as much I can, so, rather than progressing this as any diatribe, have another, final version, this time with backing.

In 1974 Jorma Kaukonen was probably still better known as the shit hot electric guitarist in Jefferson Airplane, although he had dropped stellar hints around his fabulous acoustic technique as well, courtesy the Hot Tuna side project he and JA bassman Jack Casady set up five years earlier, and which still survives, if only from time to time. Quah was a solo album he dropped that year, nominally in cahoots with his friend, Tom Hobson on additional guitar and occasional vocals. 45 years on it is a record to which I frequently turn, the pervasive mood of melancholy something I find uplifting. His picking and the spectral hollowness of his voice is just perfect for this song.

And that's all I done got to say.

Done Vera, Done Johnny and Done Jorma (a later live version).