Unless you are super hard or super poor, all of us need some shoes on our feet, so as to protect our tootsies from the assaults of hot tarmac, wet mud, ground glass or dog poop. You name it, any of those can make a make a walk in the park anything but a walk in the park, as well as giving ample opportunity to strut your stuff or stamp your style. So, tonight I am going to be looking at the popular topic of shoes through the medium of popular song. (Well, I like 'em.)
Barefoot/Ray Collins Hot Club
Barefoot isn't shoes, but I can't resist this instance of unshoddery, so delightfully kitsch it is. Apparently the title track of a German film, thus Barfüss, it is by the Ray Collins Hot Club about whom I know nothing. So imagine my surprise as I discover they still exist and are still playing, having only come into being this century.
Men in Sandals/Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby
Ooof! Has there ever been a better exposition of the horror of men in sandals? DOI, here, I am actually quite partial to a sandal in the summer, although only ever paired with shorts or flappy linen trousers, as they don't go with else. And never, absolutely with socks, that peculiarly English affectation that curdles my blood. Wreckless Eric is a chap unlikely to take kindly to the sort of men who rock that particular folly, with his wife, Amy Rigby singing and explaining exactly why.
Bad Sneakers/Steely Dan
I never got the fancy trainers argument, all these megabuck sports shoes worn as a badge of one-upmanship. Wrong generation, I guess, my son still near needing a separate room to house his collection, at 13 his defined go-to essential in a family trip to NY in the 90s being the Nike Store. To me they are just plimsolls or gym shoes, not my bag at all. I don't see Becker and Fagen ever having been that keen either.
New Shoes/Paolo Nutini
Back at the beginning of his career, Scots-Italian singer Paolo Nutini was a simpler soul, the pleasure of some new leather sufficient to give him joy. And inspiration. With his heritage, I can see him in a pair of snakeskin winkle pickers, so his expectation to be walking to the break of dawn, blister free, may be optimistic.
Blue Shoes Stepping/The Bible
I have a pair of blue shoes. Not suede, I am afraid, but still quite natty. I like a fancy shoe, having also examples in green and red, but the blue ones were a mistake, pinching my toes and hobbling my gait. The blue shoes quoted here sound a bit more promising. The Bible never got quite as much acclaim as they deserved, despite boasting Kirsty MacColl's brother, Neil, and ace songwriter, Boo Hewerdine in the frontline.
In These Shoes/Kirsty MacColl
Talking of Kirsty MacColl, perhaps this is the time to veer off into the world of women's shoes, a strange and mysterious money pit where any link between the number of feet and the number of shoes needed is of no connection or relationship. A single pair is never enough and Imelda Marcos the only upper limit. (And, funnily enough, there is a song about Imelda.)
Soul Shoes/Graham Parker & the Rumour
Finally, a song that really makes me smile, especially in this version, filmed decades after Graham Parker and the Rumour originally recorded it, showing exactly my style, a built for comfort ambience embracing the band from head to their soul shoes. Of course, the video never gets around to showing their feet, but I will bet the shoes on show would be well worn and battered, much like the band themselves appear. Marvellous.
Iron, actually, iron pyrites, but, given its name, not to say the myriad songs so entitled, hopefully quite worthy of a mention here. And clearly a theme of some inspiration, the age old tale of being taken in by all that glitters. Akin to buying a record unheard on the strength of a review. Or a cover.
The Stone Roses were huge for a moment at the rump of the '80s, their debut single blazing a trail that could never quite be replicated, a blend of dance and guitars, heralding the era of 'Mad'chester. For a while (that still lingers) all drums sounded like this, leading rather than riding. I found it exhilarating and still do, but the combination of management and internal rancour effectively leaves it a much better epitaph than the much delayed later product and ill-advised ongoing reformation. Lyrically this is an odd concoction, seemingly both a warning and expectation, about the discovery/dessert of riches the final lines almost apocryphal:
'Gold's just around the corner Breakdown's coming up round the bend'
Graham Parker and the Rumour are/were, in my opinion, the closest thing to Bruce Springsteen produced in the UK, Parker's gritty songs and presentation pre-dating the passion of punk by a year or two too soon, arguably then diminished by its onslaught. The Rumour were the epitome of classic bar band, grizzled pros even then, most still playing, not least when quirk and circumstance put the original line-up back on the road a few years back. Parker was the angriest man in music, spitting his words out with a venom barely believable from his slight frame. On his last tour of Britain, last year, in duo form with the exemplary Brinsley Schwarz on guitar, he seems finally to have found some mellow. The lyrics here seem to suggest a knowingness, suggesting not only is the music biz paved with fool's gold, but the searching of it is a fool's errand. Or it could be about girls:
'I'm a fool so I'm told I get left in the cold 'Cause I will search the world for that fool's gold, fool's gold'
Ryan Adams is almost frustratingly prolific and terrifyingly inconsistent, at least in live performance, previous shows often marred by his various demons. The story around Fools' Gold is almost typical of his battles. Gold was the name of his 2nd long player, to my mind his best, but not what he wanted or had intended, the idea being of a double set, thwarted by his record company. Some songs came in a limited edition extra disc, others sneaked out, like this, as a b-side for a single, the rest sneaking out as a bootlegged recording. As is so often the way with Adams, his best work is sometimes the hardest to source. The words perhaps display a well-learnt cynicism:
'Fool's gold can buy you anything you want Fool's gold, fool's gold'
What hasn't ever been said about Amy Winehouse that I could add here, the backline almost lifted from any of the recent posts about Songs From Movies About Musicians, riches and recognition to ruin. Whilst only putting out 2 records, she was prolific enough to have a swell of other material, b-sides, outtakes and more, and this is one, appearing on a later de-luxe edition of Frank. Of all the 4 songs I feature, it is lyrically the most poignantly apposite, a warning as to the falsehoods that can arise from the entrapment of a band of gold on your finger: 'For me it ain't real, it's fools gold There too many fools sold, not an excuse, oh For me it ain't real, it's fools gold I don't hear everything I'm told'
There are other songs by other artists about this shiny deceitful stone, from Thin Lizzy to One Direction, citing it both a subject and a metaphor for the desperation of hope versus the disappointment of discovery. How apt for popular music, this most fickle of industries.
So, what Fool's Gold old are you going to buy? Fill yer boots!
“I Want You Back” was recorded by the Jackson 5 as the first single the band released on Motown, on October 7, 1969, so I’m kind of pushing the theme a bit. But it became a Billboard No. 1 single for the week ending January 31, 1970, so there’s that.
By the time that Michael Jackson died in 2009, he had gotten pretty strange, what with the skin lightening, the nose, the glove, the monkey, the Neverland ranch and the sexual molestation allegations. But as a child myself when “I Want You Back” was released (MJ was born three years before me), it never struck me how strange it was that the Jackson Five songs about love and loss were being sung by an 11 year old child.
And yet, it is hard to deny that “IWYB” is a great song, with an incredible riff. It was ranked 121 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, and the notoriously picky Pitchfork listed it as the second best song of the 1960s (sorry, theme maker). Apparently, the Daily Telegraph said that it was “arguably the greatest pop record of all time.” As a lawyer in my non-blogging time, I’m always wary when someone uses the word “arguably,” but it is certainly in the conversation.
Not surprisingly, it has been covered many, many times. My favorite version is by Graham Parker & The Rumour, who regularly began performing the song on their 1979 tour supporting Squeezing Out Sparks, the album that briefly catapulted them to fame. It was originally released as a single, with “Mercury Poisoning,” one of the great record company “fuck you” records of all time, and later as part of the Live Sparks radio station promo disc (ultimately released to the public as a bonus CD with Squeezing Out Sparks). Parker’s version is, predictably, intense. That it is being sung by an angry adult seems way more appropriate than the pre-teen fronted original. But who says rock ‘n’ roll needs to be appropriate?
Proof that “I Want You Back” is a great song is demonstrated by the fact that it works in pretty much any genre. My friend Patrick wrote about Five Good Covers of the song, including the Parker version, here, and it also is successful in jazz instrumental and vocal versions, Brazilian versions, performed by a steel drum band (hey--that fits the last theme!), as an emo song, in Japanese, by former Michael Jackson backup singer Sheryl Crow (here, inaccurately, but more theme-appropriately, introduced by Jamie Foxx as a “1973 hit”) and, predictably, if excellently, by Bruno Mars.. Although, I’m not liking this version.
But if you want to see something incredible, again, thanks to Patrick, here’s a version with just Michael Jackson’s vocals.
(Heh, heh, heh, esteemed buddy, KK, you can't throw a gauntlet of that size down and expect me to walk away........)
Now, where were we?
Uranium: Uranium Fever by Elton Britt.
Wow, what find! A sassy 50s rap eulogising the joys of this most famous of the radioactive particles, just the sort of song aching to have been revived in the 70s heyday of Commander Cody's gloriously louche Lost Planet Airmen. Hell, I can see 'em playing it right now in my head. Smoke smoke smoke THAT cigarette!! Britt was a fairly successful country singer of his day, famous more for his yodelling than his singing, I learn, oft-covering the King of the Yodel, Jimmie Rodgers.
Lanthanum: Lanthanum by Vain Velocity.
'Haunting tune' speaks a comment on the youtube, and for a moment I bought that too, before it nosedived through the ground into a throat singing implosion of grunge-plated metal. So this is greek heavy metal? I always confuse lanthanum with laudanum, wondering if they did too. Hell, it's the sort of haunting nightmare that might strike if laudanum had been taken.
Dubnium: Haze by Dubnium.
I rather like this. I only searched because of the name, never having heard of the substance, but hoping it may have been similarly noted. Reassuringly heavily dubby, this is the work of a Plymouth, U.K., DJ, Sean, um, Dubnium, possibly not his birth name, mentioned to distinguish from U.S. based Dubnium Soundsystem, whom I didn't investigate. I could easily come down from a Laudanum hit on this.
Iridium: Iridium by Dark Tranquillity.
Shucks, I should have known better, lulled in again by a tasteful intro ahead of stentorian grunting dragging me down out of my demographic. Could be the same fella as the greek above, but they are swedish death metal stalwarts of the Gothenburg scene, it says here. I'd love to sound less grudging of their art but when I say it is nauseous, it's only because I would be if tried to sing like that. But then, what do I know?
Lead: Weights Made of Lead by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
Well I never, mere weeks after this and I discover this little nugget somehow earlier having passed me by. Could it be the repetitive nature of the tune or the plodding rhythm, but it certainly seems apt for the subject. 'I've got weights made of lead' sings Harvey but we never learn why. Is it a paean to fishing?
Tin: Tin Soldier by the Small Faces.
At last, cries my reader, at last one I know. A 1967 single that was perhaps their best, blending a pop sensitivity with something instrumentally a bit more inventive. The stop at 1.30, with then repeated keyboard motif predates that later stylisation, common across house music, by decades. Terrible to think that, with the death earlier this year of keyboard player, Ian McLagan, that drummer, Kenney Jones, is last man standing. R.I.P. Mac, along with Ronnie 'Plonk' Lane and Steve Marriott.
Krypton: Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down.
Is kryptonite the same as krypton? Do we know or care? Always and irrespectively associated with Superman, this was a massive hit in 2000 for Escatawpa, Mississippee band, whose singer and, for the first 4 years, drummer, Brad Arnold, seems to be the only permanent. Struggling to say much more as it is so inoffensive.
Mercury: Mercury Poisoning by Graham Parker & the Rumour.
All at once I'm dragged back to the early 70s with this righteous blast. Jeez, I loved this band, GP a much more vitriolic character than the benign old dude revived in Judd Apatow's 'This is 40'. I saw them then and saw them again, last year, touring again on the back of the films exposure, marvelling at the still smoking embers of pre-punk. The song, a thinly disguised jibe at his record label, Mercury, was and is typical of his lyrical spikiness. Wonderful.
Bismuth: Bismuth by Michael Johnson
I know nothing of this new age instrumental beyond a link to this, from where which it comes. And all the tracks are inspired by different elements. Quite how the pastoral tone of this example fits with the active ingredient of 'Pepto-Bismol', a proprietary anti-diarrhoeal, I don't know, apart from perhaps the calm it's apparent efficacy might provoke. The whole album is a free download, if you forgive the use of that term apropos to a discussion around diarrhoea.
Tungsten: Insomnia (Dark Dubstep) by Tungsten
More instrumental gobbledegook cooked up in someone's bedroom, but I like it. As I get older I seem strangely drawn to this sort of stuff, certainly enjoying it way more than the hideous elemental metal cliches the elements seem to bring forth. OK, neither clever, nor art but hey, it made me smile. and who Tungsten? Not a clue.
So, another 10, and like radioactivity, it's nearly killed me.
Part 4? Only when they make polony out of polonium.
Can you buy 'em? Probably. Go search, as the usual might not have then all.
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