Is there a more chilling song in the the already well-refrigerated canon of Richard Thompson? No stranger to a bleak lyric, this song, from his acclaimed 1974 duet debut, alongside his then wife, Linda, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, says more in the stark description and build up than any delineation or hint of what might come next. Because it doesn't need to. Linda's icy narrative tells exactly where it is going, where Valerio is going. And with him, any dreams for a brighter future. I guess it's an allegory for the futility of love, which is as daunting a phrase to write as to consider, our hearts and souls all praying for the opposite. The album is not short on other such cheerful ditties either, End of the Rainbow being a blunt warning against any hope for anything at all.
Richard & Linda
But I have always wondered whether there ever was a Valerio and it seems there was. In 1863 it was reported that a 'dreadful accident' had taken place as 25 year old Carlo Valerio performed his high wire act at Cremorne Gardens. Here is an excellent blog article that describes it all. Thompson's skill is to weave the tale into a wider perspective, deploying the style of an ancient broad sheet ballad, the traditional folk idiom being full of songs about disasters and death, yet cataloguing a far more universal prophecy.
I have always loved the darker aspects of Richard Thompson's writing. Whilst he always comes across as less pessimistic in real life, engaging a dry wit, heavy with a shy self-deprecation, his songs lightening up (a little) over the years, it is these early shards of nihilism I enjoy(!?) the most. Not for nothing were a couple of early cassette compilations called Doom and Gloom From the Tomb, Volumes 1 and 2. Often asked why his material has such depressing content, here is as good a recent interview, with some possible explanation, as any.
Richard solo
I am an avid seeker of cover versions. So, are there any great Great Valerio's out there? Maybe a reggae version, or thrash metal? Well, if there are, I can't find 'em, most fitting into a similar niche of austerity, artists also with a trad.arr. streak embedded in their marrow. So June Tabor, Maggie Holland, even Barb Jungr; no surprises there. But Cathal Coughlan's maverick Fatima Mansions? The angry and cathartic irish rockers might seemingly have little in common with the chamber chill of this song. But you'd be wrong. OK, it seems a fairly straight facsimile, but Coughlan's voice is way more yearning than the reportage of the original. It works. Similar, yet poles apart.
Fatima Mansions
There's this and this, but you might consider this.
When I was a kid, my folks picked up a couple of Tom Lehrer albums for family entertainment. Being distant/removed from mainstream US life, we listened to our limited collectıon of LPs to the point that we had the full album memorized. Lehrer's music was pithy and dealt with social and political issues of his day (says wikipedia about him). He played the piano to accompany his satire of current affairs, performing songs like Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and Who's Next (to get the A-bomb).
I suppose not everyone cares for the wry humor that is Randy Newman's trademark. For me, his songs give pause, a chance to stop and think about what his lyrics convey, and more often than not they tease people/animals who consider themselves "great". He's got no respect for the ones at the top. We're talking <great>, right? There's nothing that says great is "good" or great is "bad", as in great big mistake.
I wouldn't credit Newman with a great voice - or great piano chops. That's not his style. It's lyrics that matters. They bite, cut and hurt, but make you stop and think about what's right and what is wrong.
How prescient is Newman's Great Nations of Europe, released back in 1999. And while it may be named "...Europe", dont think for a minute that the actual target is that local. As I said, it's aimed at you and me. At the end of the story, it's a bug from out of Africa, not the China virus that's going to come for us all, just like the Conquistadors carried their bugs West in the 16th century. But for now, everyone is as happy as can be.
I watch a lot of TV in general, but the end of almost all outside the home entertainment and, until recently, televised sports, has meant that I have watched even more. One of my favorite shows from the last few months was The Great, on Hulu, which describes itself as “a satirical, comedic drama - based on the occasional historical fact - about the rise of Catherine the Great from outsider to the longest reigning female ruler in Russia's history.” It is completely over the top, barely historically accurate, bawdy, violent, silly, and exciting. Basically, it was a lot of fun, with some great performances (and some of the most amusing color blind casting that I’ve seen). And yes, they address the whole “sex with a horse” thing. (“Fake news,” apparently.) It has been nominated only for best directing and best writing in a comedy series Emmys, which is not nearly enough.
There are ten episodes in the series, and at the end of each episode, the credits roll over a modern song, and the choices by music supervisor, Maggie Phillips, who had a similar role with The Handmaid’s Tale, are generally inspired. Warning, spoilers follow!
Episode one, where we first learn of Catherine’s goal to wrest control of the country from her feckless husband, ended with Patti Smith’s strangely faithful cover of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World.” In episode 2, she begins to gather allies, and the credits play over Primal Scream’s “Movin’ On Up.” Cat Power, who titled an album The Greatest, contributed “Free,” for episode 3, although that song is from a different album. In episode 4, Catherine and her officially appointed lover enjoy each other’s’ company, so what better song could play during the credits than Buzzcocks’ great pop/punk song “Orgasm Addict?” And in episode 5, Czar Peter has been poisoned, but Catherine realizes that she’s not ready to take over, so Courtney Barnett’s rocking "Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go To The Party,” with the lyric "you say you'll sleep when you're dead, I'm scared I'll die in my sleep" highlights Catherine’s ambivalence.
The second half of the season begins with episode 6, where Catherine attempts to interest Peter in science, to less than positive results. Under the credits, we hear Thomas Dolby’s signature song, “She Blinded Me With Science.” As Catherine seems defeated in episode 7, Phillips chose Sharon van Etten’s lugubrious cover of “(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding,” featuring Josh Homme (and if you want more, and I think better, covers, check out this post). But as the treasonous planning picks up in episode 8, the credits play over female hard rock pioneer Suzi Quatro’s “The Wild One.” And as Catherine’s plot seems likely to succeed, the credit music is Cass Elliot’s appropriately hopeful “New World Coming.”
The final episode ends with a cliffhanger, after a pregnant Catherine sacrifices her lover to save her coup. But is he dead, and does she succeed? (We do know the real answer to the second question.) And in a twist, the season ends with a haunting new cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire,” by Simone Istwa. It is the only one of the credit songs that appears on the show’s soundtrack album, which otherwise features selections of the show’s original music composed by Nathan Barr. Including a song called “Tainting the Borscht.”
I could have linked to the videos of all of the songs, but instead, just go here, and you can read more about the music, and play all of the songs. And you can look forward to season 2.
So much of what is deemed is great just grates. At least to my ears. I have always had a taste eccentric to the vox populi, preferring and tending to seek out the less well served by collective opinion. I guess as in the same way my favourite dog breed is under. Luckily, courtesy this mouthpiece, my clarion call to the masses, this allows me free rein to inveigle my audience, that's me and my sockpuppets btw, into submission.
The Greatness and Perfection of Love
I bloody loved this album when it came out, World Shut Your Mouth, the first record by Julian Cope after the demise of The Teardrop Explodes. Always prone to overtly english vocals: Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayers, Ray Davies, Cope was another who rejected the standard transatlantic twang most UK singers have always tended to adopt, knowing, I guess, the bigger market. Mind you, I had always been pretty keen on the Teardrops, especially the standout single, below.
Reward
Cope was never going to be conventional. Coming from Tamworth, a desultory town slightly north of Birmingham, it was never going to be his provider, that taking a move to Merseyside where his accent would always have been a sore thumb amongst those around him. And perhaps why and how a young Courtney Love took such a shine to him? When the record came out, in 1984, I really thought he would be a big star. Hell, he was even on Top of the Pops with the title track, confusingly not included on the album, it coming out two years later, sporting his own design microphone stand.
World Shut Your Mouth
In the years since he has built a name for eccentricity, inconsistency and a weird sort of reliability to avoid entirely any kind of pigeon holing, with this not the place to celebrate his increasingly bizarre stylistic ricochets. Well, not entirely and not now. But, should his musical meanderings not prove easy enough on your ear, consider the fact that he is a celebrated author on subjects as unrelated as (am I still allowed to call it, even if he does?) krautrock and ancient monuments.
Elegant Chaos
Lunatic and Fire Pistol
Back to the o.p. and why it is so great. One reason is always within the lyrics; is he really singing "the greatness and perfection of love"? Sounds mighty like the "greatest imperfection" to me, so much so I am not going to check, preferring the incongruity. But it isn't by any stretch the only good track on the album, I being drawn also to the oboe led majesties of Elegant Chaos and Lunatic and Fire Pistol, peculiar whimsies of uncertain provenance. This pair stand out, along with Head Hang Low, at full arms length from the poppier, Teardroppier other songs, betraying his then state of mind.
Head Hang Low
Fast forward and Cope is still around, with somewhere around 20 albums under his own name, more if you include ones his many and varied labels have suppressed or rejected, often sneaking out years later under some arcane imprint. Some are good, very very good, some frankly unlistenable, but always interesting and seldom classifiable alongside his peers. Somehow I think I need to return to his muse another day.
There are many notable version of The Great Pretender and it is no surprise that it was voted one of the greatest songs of all time by Rolling Stone magazine back in 2004 (Yeah, OK, in @ #360, but still...) But the song also carries on our previous mask theme, where the protagonist puts on a public face/performance that just aint true. And it would appear that this is something you just about have to do when you get up on a stage, be you Dolly Parton, Elvis, Freddy Mercury, Roy Orbison or Sam Cooke.
Way back in the year I was born, the story goes, a music producer named Buck Ram wrote this song in 20 minutes in a Vegas hotel washroom. At the time, he was the manager for the Platters, who recorded the song as a follow up to their first hit, Only You. When Mercury records signed them in a two-fer deal on the coat-tails of The Penguins (who, unlike the mostly unknown Platters, had a charting hit called Earth Angel), it wasn't at all clear that The Platters would go down in history. But they did- for a number of reasons - and the Penguins mostly did not. They went on to have many hits (something like 40 of them in about a 10 year span), they were like the first cross-overs from doo wop R&B to rock, they included a female in the line-up, and then they rapidly fell out of favor after they were busted.
Sam Cooke did a version on his 1960 album Hits of the 50's
Dolly Parton covered it in 1984. Now there's someone who was well aware of the need for pretense as part of her show/pesona. Says Michelle Lindsey [link], "‘The Great Pretender’ is what she set out to be as a poor kid playing dress up, writing songs and hoping to become a star. ... [Parton] admitted, ‘I do it because I’m a show person.’ To drop the pretence, the persona and age like a normal human being is not an option. You see this now in almost every famous person, trickling right down even to the average person in the street."
The most familiar to me is the version from the Band. I guess by that time I was consuming most of the music that was being produced and The Band, as J David recently noted was [link] hot. J David references the Stage Fright album. How appropriate! The best way to get over your stage fright? Pretend.
The version by Freddy Mercury in 1987 has a certain poignance to it in that it immediately predates his HIV public announcement, and most research indicates that he must have been aware of his health issues well before the song came out. That said, there isnt much debate about his sexual orientation at that time, and that, too, could certainly entail an element of pretense. These factors may be part of the strength of his commanding performance of the song. About Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddy's lover, Jim Hutton said "Freddie was never going to admit it publicly, because he had to carry on the charade about being straight, for his family. But we discussed it many times."
Old and In the Way also cover the song in a wonderful country style, this recording without Garcia unfortunately.
None of the above will be confused with the Foo Fighters' song similarly named The Pretender, which is a great song but doesn't pass our theme test for "great" unless you force a match like this :
There’s an old theory of history called the “Great Man” theory, which, not surprisingly, looks at the historical record by focusing on a series of “Great Men,” like kings, generals and presidents. I suspect that this is still the way that many children are taught history in school, despite the fact that most modern historians believe that so many other factors shape history, including people who aren’t men, or aren’t “great.” And as a former history major, I’m happy to see that broader inquiry into the lives of all people, no matter what gender, or what level of “greatness,” has in many ways changed the shape of the historical narrative. I do believe that while there’s still a reliance on teaching history through focusing on prominent individuals, many schools are widening their curricula to take into account the lives and influence of “ordinary” people. Although as John Oliver pointed out on Sunday, there are big problems about how American History is taught. History teachers, feel free to comment.
For example, one recent, high profile example of this was The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which investigated the profound influence that slavery had on the founding and development of the United States, from 1619 to the present. And although one of my favorite college professors, among others, have raised questions about some of the premises of the “1619 Project,” the disagreement didn’t dispute the essential conclusion that slavery was an enormous factor in our nation’s development. (And some of the disputed language has been revised.)
But, as I often have to remind myself when I go off on a tangent, this is a music blog, even though my musing was inspired by our featured song, Gang of Four’s “Not Great Men,” from their remarkable and influential debut album, Entertainment!. Andy Gill, one of the band’s founders and its guitarist (who died in February, possibly as an early casualty of COVID-19) once said about the album,
I remember saying to Rob Warr, who was our friend and managing us at the time, and the others: ‘Do you realize how important this is? Do you realize that this is going to change the musical landscape? Do you realize that they’re going to teach this in schools?’ And they’re like, ‘You’re mad, you’re fucking mad,’ and just basically laughed at me.” As it turned out, “I kind of was right, but everybody else thought I was being stupid and crazy.
Although I don’t remember the first time that I heard that album at WPRB, I do know that it became a regular part of my shows, and most of my fellow DJs loved it (and based on a quick look at some playlists, they still love it, decades later). The album was unlike anything I had ever heard before, with pounding beats, metallic guitars and political, Marxist influenced lyrics. From 1979’s Entertainment! through the Yellow EP, 1981’s Solid Gold and 1982’s slightly more accessible Songs of the Free, the Gang of Four was incredible. After that, I sort of lost interest, as they went through personnel and stylistic changes and a series of breakups and reformations. I interviewed drummer Hugo Burnham on the air at WPRB, and always assumed that it was in connection with a gig at City Gardens, but my research indicates they only played there at times that I wouldn’t have been on campus. So, maybe it was when they played in another club in the area. I remember being impressed by Burnham’s intelligence, and after leaving the band, he ultimately became a college professor. I think that I eventually did see them the summer after graduation at The Pier in NYC.
“Not Great Men” takes direct issue with the “Great Men” theory of history:
No weak men in the books at home The strong men who have made the world History lives on the books at home The books at home It's not made by great men
[Repeat: x4] The past lives on in your front room The poor still weak the rich still rule History lives in the books at home The books at home
Political criticism that you can dance to.
Bonus cover: I came across this cover of “Not Great Men” by what appears to be an all-female Javanese gamelan ensemble, Sekar-Melati, which is both utterly unexpected and completely charming.
And, remarkably, there’s another gamelan cover of that gamelan cover, this time with vocals:
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