Hidden Places: Dancing in the Street

 

purchase [ Martha and the Vandellas ]

Where do you dance?

Myself> at a wedding party, perhaps a similar party venue, like a year-end celebration. How about in the streets? Chicago, New Orleans, New York City. Philladelphia, PA, Baltimore, Motor City and D.C.

Aside from their country of location, what relevance to our theme? Well ..  they're places and they're not mentioned in the title.That makes them fodder for this <Hidden Places> theme. 

These cities, of course, have streets and they were chosen. Chosen to represent a kind of revolution that took hold starting back in 1964. A revolution of abandon? No, that was dancing in the streets when WWII ended. That was the jitterbug craze. But the evil that rock and roll represented was a kind of abandon where the youth danced ... wild. Arms and hands and hips all over the place. Often side by side nearly on top of eachother (definitely no social distancing here). Disgraceful.

Marvin Gaye's song - made famous by Martha and the Vandellas - has been covered by the Kinks, the Dead and Van Halen among others.

Now, 1964 is a bit early for the 'Nam revolts ... More a reaction to LBJ's Civil Rights Act? But it seems to be part of a spark that lead to a more sustained expression: we'll dance in the streets to voice our opinions and our understanding of what it means to be social. And - it doesn't even matter what you wear.

Seems quaint. These days, we'll bring our guns or drive our trucks <to the streets>

HIDDEN PLACES: SOMEWHERE (A PLACE FOR US)

So who has listened to the original of this recently? Or seen the film? Decades ago would be my answer, it, West Side Story, being a staple on the sunday afternoon film rota, bought in by my school to entertain the confined pre-teens. Yup, the great old UK tradition of sending kids away to boarding school, at the personal expense of the parents and the psychological expense of their children. Explains how I react so well to the rigours of lockdown. Or would to prison, I gather. Anyway, even in the late 60s,  I recall it all seemed desperately dated and I never quite bought the idea of teen hoodlums bursting into either song or dance, let alone both. Especially when so well groomed and clearly in their 30s. But, as it turned out, not such a bad song, and notorious pants-splitter, P.J. Proby took it high in the UK charts. I remember finding his kitschy take astonishingly awful as a boy. Now it just has me howling.

And the theme? Another kinda sorta one, I'm afraid, as I know only too well the sort of "place for us" Tony might have had in mind, very much doubting Maria would find much lasting joy there, her mind thinking more of a whole different setting, of more lasting promise. But I detract from the incisive commentary around the plight of young love in the urban jungle. Maybe. And, yes, I get it that she dies, so rendering my remarks cheap and ignorant, but given the where isn't ever discerned, that makes it, ergo, hidden. Possibly backstage, in a poky dressing room, between scenes.

Being an erudite lot, you'll know the melody isn't an original, nicking parts from both Beethoven and Tschaikovsky, who, together, had designed the New York Subway signature screech. Covered innumerable times, the purpose of this post is to demonstrate some of the less well known versions, a gig I tend more to occupy in another guise, over at Cover Me. Of course there are also innumerable stinkers, every two-a-penny talent show competitor dredging up a version for "show night". Or even their judges....

I'm going to skim over this one, it's the one I'm "expected" to post, Tom Waits being a poster boy for the serious music nerd. To be honest, I find his voice just toooooo much, although, as I get older, I find I can dip my ears in his earlier stuff. Later stuff still defeats me, but the whole grand guignol of this demolition appeals to my sense of the absurd enough to allow it. And the trumpet is really rather good.

Talking of kitsch, as we were earlier, PSB are never afraid to embrace their inner divas, and this is a song ripe for their everything and the kit(s)chen sink OTT overkill, and this is ticking most of their boxes. Sumptiously overproduced, this only lacks the chorus of the Red Army guard. As here. 

I hadn't known Aretha had done a version, this stemming from 1978, where she deconstructs most of the additional arrangements, here in background reminder only, as she swoops and soars around the melody, possible accompanying herself on piano, instilling a blast of gospel hued R&B, even as it then morphs into a jazzier vibe altogether, with a glorious walking bass line and some classy sax noodles, before returning, to finish, in the chapel.

Another welcome deconstruction, Hem transferring the song off Broadway to the Catskills, all tinkling mandolin, dreamy steel and the soothing benevolence of a pipe organ and clarinet combo. Touching on tweeness in the middle eight, the vocal charm of Sally Ellyson is sufficient to swiftly dismiss that thought.

Finally, and not without some internal dialogue, an "interesting" duet version between Marianne Faithfull and Jarvis Cocker. As with the commentator who originally put the song up on youtube, I am uncertain if it deeply awful or just plain disturbing. The arrangement is quite something, a sophisticated supper club shuffle. But the singing? Neither orthodox vocalists, rather than playing to their strengths, as, arguably, did Waits, here they seem to be playing their weaknesses. But I still felt drawn to post it. Put me under undecided.

Sorry, no time for Dee Snider, Phil Collins or the Bee Gees, for which you should thank me. Really. In the meantime and in anticipation of your plaudits, I'm off to my somewhere. To hide.........

Relive the past in olde Manhattan.

Hidden Places: Don’t Worry About The Government

Talking Heads: Don’t Worry About The Government
[purchase] 

I am sooooooo worried about the government. 

Four years ago, relying on pretty much every polling expert and pundit, and the clearly misguided belief that there was no chance in hell that my beloved country would elect a racist, sexist, selfish, pathological liar with no empathy, no interest in, or knowledge of, how the government works, and who would spend his time in office doing everything possible to enrich himself and his family, attempt to destroy any sense that the government was fair and cared about its citizens while fanning every sort of division and harping on imagined grievances, I was feeling pretty good as Election Day approached. Sure, I was surprised at the popularity that Trump seemed to be garnering, but I felt secure that we’d be electing a smart, caring woman who had devoted her life to public service. And I was comfortable that under Hillary Clinton, our country would continue bending the arc, if slowly due to the obstructionism of people like Mitch McConnell, toward a more fair and just future. 

Boy, was I wrong. 

And that’s why today, I sit in front of my computer, days before Election Day, facing the real prospect that Trump will be re-elected, whether fairly, or, more likely, due to the distortion of the Electoral College, or through fraud, and interference by sycophantic judges. Or some combination of them both. I’ve been voting in presidential elections since 1980, and never before have I had to consider that one candidate has refused to admit that he will leave the White House if he loses, or that one candidate has spent months trying to sow confusion by lying about the voting process, or that one candidate’s supporters actually have surrounded a campaign bus to prevent an appearance, or that one party has discussed ways to appoint electors contrary to the popular vote, or that there might be actual violence after the election, and on and on. 

I’m worried that even if Trump loses, he and his power hungry minions have created a playbook for future authoritarians to follow, because he’s exposed all of the ways that the Constitution and laws can be ignored, perverted or interpreted to lead to strong-man rule, when some or all of Congress and the Supreme Court is willing to roll over and not protect their prerogatives or perform oversight. And I’m worried that if he wins, with no concern about re-election, and with a compliant court system, that the march toward authoritarianism and kleptocracy and racism will continue unabated. 

I’m worried that the damage that Trump has already done will take years, even generations, to fix, and that a second term might be an existential threat to our democracy. 

And I’m worried about what I’m going to do in my spare time instead of deleting the hundreds of emails that I’ve been getting daily from Jaime Harrison. 

Like many of us, I think, to distract from this, compounded, of course, by the raging pandemic that this administration has failed to seriously try to combat, I’ve turned to television, even more than in the past, and last Friday, my wife and I watched David Byrne’s American Utopia on HBO. It’s a filmed version of the Broadway show, directed by Spike Lee, and it was great. I won’t get into the obvious comparisons between American Utopia and Stop Making Sense, considered by many to be one of the greatest music films of all time (which my then-future wife and I saw in an actual theater, on 57th Street in New York when it came out in 1984), or between it and the filmed version of Hamilton that recently ran on Disney+. If you’re interested in such comparisons, you have the same Google that I have…. (OK, here's one.)

American Utopia is a collection of songs, some from Talking Heads, some from Byrne’s solo and collaborative works, and a couple of covers, all performed by a talented group of musicians, singers and dancers, on a bare stage, all wearing essentially identical gray suits (of normal size) and no shoes, with some personal and political commentary by Byrne. For the most part, the songs are great (the Talking Heads songs tend to get the best reaction from the audience), the performances tight, and the choreography interesting and mesmerizing. And there’s a joy about the performances that is infectious. 

One of the older Talking Heads songs in the show is “Don’t Worry About The Government,” from the band’s first album, which is written from the point of view of a person (who some people believe is a government official) discussing his simple, comfortable, happy life. And it fits our “Hidden Places” theme when Byrne sings: 

I see the states across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I'm a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along 

Almost every article that I read before writing this piece referred to the lyrics of this song as “ironic” or “sarcastic.” But here’s what Byrne himself said about the song, in an interview from 2019, before American Utopia opened on Broadway: 

It’s funny. When Talking Heads originally did that song, it was a song about living in a nice condo with modern conveniences and good plumbing and no cockroaches. It became the opposite of what everybody was doing in the folk scene at that moment. Everybody was snarling and angry, and this was a young guy who just wanted to live in a nice apartment! Everybody thought I was being ironic with the song because of the lyrics and the context. But I think people will see a certain truth to it now. It’s not a great virtue living in an apartment filled with cockroaches. You don’t have to have a penthouse, but people want to have a decent life. Everyone can accept that in some way. It’ll be seen and understood in another way with the passage of time. 

I’m hoping that, in a short time, I can stop worrying about the government every day, and that we can get back to the days when civil servants do their work, and people in government work for us.

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.

HIDDEN PLACES: DRIVING SOMEWHERE

I think this sort of meets the theme, even if the hidden place is a destination, if, as yet, unknown and, probably, unimportant. Driving somewhere, arriving nowhere. So, fulfilling, if in a roundabout and reverse way, the old adage that is is the journey that matters, not the getting there. Even when the aim is never quite to arrive. Or the outcome, even. Clear?

I guess both the song and maybe the band are also hidden places, outside most peoples knowledge or hearing. Yet they will have heard Stephen Duffy, if not necessarily of him. More famous for a couple of links rather than in his own right, so if I say Duran Duran and Robbie Williams, you'll have heard of them. Not that he sounds anything like either, perhaps a relief to any regular reader, used more to my parade of motley unknowns and minor league cult favourites.

Duffy was an early member of Duran Duran, but jumped ship ahead of their transition to fame and fortune. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Duran Duran, but I can't see his country pop musings fitting in so well with the glitz and glamour of their new romanticism. Starting off as the singer, he moved then to guitar, then to bass and finally to drums, ousted from each position as later members joined. He actually then had a crack at that market, even a hit single, in the UK at least, under the title Stephen 'Tin Tin' Duffy, but it took three different versions before it made its mark. Hasn't really aged well, has it?

A few further false starts and he started the Lilac Time, with elder brother Nick, the two the mainstays as a procession of players rotated through the ranks. The sound, like the featured track, and exemplified further on its parent album, 2007s Runout Groove, is of dreamy meanders down a melodic and country tinged lane. The pedal steel brings a wistful counterpoint to the slightly languid vocal, pinned down, on this record, by the masterful double bass of Danny Thompson, the ex-Pentangle maestro and John Martyn sidekick, who remains the go to bassist for anywhere where folk might meet jazz for a natter. Runout Groove is, for me, the highlight of Duffy's recording history, so far at least, as he still records and plays. The astonishing thing about it is that it came out four years after its predecessor, his career having taken an unexpected side swerve along the way.

Robbie Williams, the effervescent ex-boy bander, the cheeky chappie who exited Take That after mingling more with Oasis and their lifestyle choices than possibly appropriate for a teen heartthrob. He then became much bigger than his old band, but needed assistance with songwriting. This had first been provided by Guy Chambers, who had previously been in World Party. After he parted company, Williams' team asked Duffy, perhaps less for his Lilac Time material, maybe more on account of songs he had written for Canadian band Barenaked Ladies. And an undoubted success it was, Duffy also touring with Williams during some of his stadium sell-out tours, delivering further hits for his new boss. Radio became thus Duffy's first number one.

Then, as if nothing untoward had happened, he dropped straight back into Lilac Time mode, picking right up from where he dropped off. I think that is quite classy. Further albums have followed, sticking to the same formula, the last being released just last year. All well worth looking out for. Here's another track from Runout Groove, Once more it fits the feel of the theme, the lyric showing him back on a figurative road, again with, literally, no direction. But, if the first song was looking for a somewhere never found, this is a happy acceptance of the journey. Spot the namecheck to his erstwhile employer. A parting personal link to the theme is that I more than likely heard the album first in the car, that being where I do most of my listening. Sometimes with no other purpose in particular, just driving somewhere, arriving nowhere. Purely for the sake of the song.

P.S. Those, who have set to wondering how he could have affected the Durannies, might like this, a revision of old tapes, made in those old days, rebuffed and polished up, hand in hand with onetime bandmate and continuing DD keyboardist, Nick Rhodes. Put out in in 2002, they called themselves the Devils, the album called Dark Circles.

Here's the map to somewhere.

Hidden Places: Dirty Blvd.

Lou Reed: Dirty Blvd.
[purchase] 

I’m sure that I was listening to some song that mentioned some place that wasn’t in the title when I thought of this theme, but I suggested it so long ago that I can’t remember what song it was. So, when I tried to figure out what to write about, I decided to write about my favorite city. The city that I’ve loved since my father brought me into Manhattan from my birthplace in Queens when I was a little kid, to go to museums, and magic shows, and just to walk around and spend time with him. Where I’d go with him to court, or to hang out in his office. And when I got older, where I’d sometimes come with friends, to go to the theater or museums or restaurants or ball games. Where I went to law school, lived for almost a decade, met my wife and started a family. And where I worked until a few years ago, commuting on the train after moving the suburbs, and loving the excitement and bustle of New York. Except on the night they lit the Rockefeller Center tree, which made my usual 10 minute walk to the train an ordeal. I miss New York, having started working from home back in 2013, and I miss it even more now, when thinking about going to the City raises all sorts of new issues. (Interestingly, in 2013, I wrote about another song from the same album, although strangely as a tribute to my suburban home).

I have a “New York” playlist on iTunes, and the rules, such as they are, are that the song has to mention New York City, or some part of the City, or at least some recognizable location or feature of the City. I’m guessing that I’ve missed a few, but it currently has over 500 songs on it. It’s possible that no artist has more songs on the list than Lou Reed, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island, but has long been associated with New York from his move to the City in 1964 to be a songwriter, and especially from his co-founding the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground was, of course, part of the New York underground scene around Andy Warhol and his “Factory,” and more than a few of their songs were about the seedy, druggy underbelly of New York, such as “I’m Waiting For The Man,” a tale of scoring drugs on Lexington Avenue and 125th Street in Harlem. 

Reed’s focus on New York continued after he started his solo career, including his biggest hit, “Walk On The Wild Side,” which mentions the city itself, and the Apollo Theater, and also referred to members of Warhol’s clique. Again, Reed focused not on the mainstream, but on the marginalized part of New York, because that was the life he was living and those were the people that he knew. 

For 1989’s New York album, Reed, approaching 50, and thus an elder statesman, put together an entire album of observations of the City. In fact, Reed’s liner notes instructed listeners to listen in one sitting, “as though it were a book or a movie” (although I know few people who read a book in one sitting, but you get the point). It’s a bleak album, about a bleak time in New York. I loved the album, although I have to admit that things for me were the opposite of bleak—I had a high paying job, a nice apartment, and best of all, I had been married to the love of my life for about four months. 

Still, I was able to appreciate Reed’s observations and lyrical wordplay, and the tight, stripped down, music from Reed, guitarist Mike Rathke, bassist Rob Wasserman and drummer Fred Maher (with some guests, including former Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker), which was perfect for the songs. The album was critically acclaimed, and the single, and our featured song, “Dirty Blvd.” was a No1. hit on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. 

“Dirty Blvd.” is not a hopeful song, by any stretch of the imagination, about Pedro, from a poor immigrant family who, because of the city’s (and country's) mistreatment of both those groups was destined to fail. It’s an angry song, contrasting the wealthy at Lincoln Center, only blocks from the rundown hotel where Pedro lives, with the difficulties of his life.  In one of the most memorable passages, Reed sings: 

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
that's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard 

By the way, guesting on background vocals on the song is another New Yorker, Dion DiMucci. 

Although since 1989 much more of Manhattan, and the other boroughs, are gentrified, and safer than back in the era described in New York, income inequality in the City, and elsewhere, is worse than ever. And the current administration’s anti-immigrant policies even led to one advisor, whose name I will not type, attempt to distance the Statue of Liberty from Emma Lazarus’ iconic verses. The album still holds up, mostly because of the music and lyrics, and also in part as a period piece and in part because of its timelessness. 

New York City has, like most of the country, taken a hit from the coronavirus and the failure of our national “leadership” to take appropriate action in face of the pandemic, but contrary to the recent statement from the liar in chief, it is far from a ghost town. My son and daughter-in-law stood on line for more than two hours the other day to vote, which is a lot of ghosts. In fact, although things are generally not going well, there’s some evidence that New York City is attracting new people, which it always has, from well before the days that my ancestors showed up here from eastern Europe (one, by way of England) before and just after World War I, and whose energy and vitality has always been fed by immigrants from other countries, and from other parts of the United States. 

[I found out late last night that yesterday, October 27, 2020, was the seventh anniversary of Reed's death, which didn't enter into my decision to write this piece.  But if I had known, I would have tried to post it earlier.  Oh, well.]