Incompetent/Can't : Can't Stand the Rain

purchase [I Cant Stand the Rain]



Maybe we have had enough of the rain. Maybe some of the news pundits are right about how the main stream media tried to make the most of the Carib weather - to the extent that it has surpassed overload and caused unnecessary fears. And maybe J David is right that we have exceeded the "Can't" threshold when we could have been looking at other aspects of the Incompetence/Can't theme.

If you are a regular here, you likely know I have an enduring affinity for the slide guitar, as embodied in such impresarios as Mr Ry Cooder, Ms Bonnie Raitt, Mr Duane Allman and Mr Lowell George. (There are others, but these are among my main staples)

As JDavid pointed out, there are various avenues one can pursue from a theme of Can't - primarily personal incompetence.  I don't think that <I Cant Stand the Rain> falls into this category - the weather is beyond our control, and most likely the lyrics transcend the weather, rather, here, a metaphor for other aspects of the singer's life. You know ... rain is wet and sad and brings you down, especially if you get caught out in it unprepared like...

In my ignorance, I had assumed that this was a Little Feat original. No small amount of their output was original. However, not this.

The song is credited to someone I had never heard of before: a certain Ann Peebles. And while I was only aware of the Little Feat version, there are all sorts of others who have done theirs and you can find many of them at YouTube.

A few of them:

Incompetent/Can’t: You’re No Good

Linda Ronstadt: You’re No Good
[purchase]

So far, it seems like all of our posts on this topic are self-critical—I can’t dance, I can’t stand up, I’m a simpleton, etc. But in reality, isn’t it usually someone else that raises the issue of someone’s incompetence? Most of us, I think, have enough of an ego to think that we are at least competent, if not even better than average, but there is someone—a boss, a (former) significant other, a stranger—who tells you, in no uncertain terms, that you suck. [WARNING--link is NSFW]

Over at one of my other blogging homes, Cover Me, there is a relatively new feature, “That’s a Cover?” in which we write about songs that are so well-known that many people might not know that it is a cover. For example, I wrote one a few months ago about The Youngbloods’ iconic 60s tune “Get Together,” which was at least the fourth version of the song. Linda Ronstadt’s cover of “You’re No Good,” also falls into that category.

Not to mention, the song makes it pretty clear that the singer believes the subject to be incompetent:

You're no good, you're no good, you're no good 
Baby, you're no good (you hear what I say)[original lyrics—later versions used “I’m gonna say it again"] 
You're no good, you're no good, you're no good 
Baby, you're no good.

Although admittedly, later on, the singer inevitably (at least for this theme) criticizes herself.

Written by Clint Ballard, Jr., the song was first recorded in 1963 by Dee Dee Warwick (Dionne’s little sister), and produced by Lieber & Stoller.


This version stalled on the singles chart at #117. Warwick had a moderately successful career, although not as much as big sister Dionne, and she struggled with addiction and health issues before passing away in 2008.

The first “hit” version of “You’re No Good” was by Betty Everett, also in 1963, A bit more soulful (and featuring Maurice White, later of Earth, Wind & Fire, on drums), this version topped out at #51 on the singles chart, and was more successful on R&B charts.


Everett’s next song, "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" made it to #6 on the singles chart, and although she did have a few more hits, her later career was not as successful, and she passed away in 2001.

The Swinging Blue Jeans, a now pretty much forgotten Merseybeat band, did a gender-reversed version of the song in 1964. It was quite successful in England and France, and even hit #97 on the US charts. It sounds like a version from a now pretty much forgotten Merseybeat band:


The SBJ’s had a few more cover hits, but eventually, as their Wikipedia entry sadly notes, “The band eventually retired to the cabaret circuit.”

There have been many other covers of the song, some in other languages (and even by Van Fucking Halen), but none have had the durability or success of Linda Ronstadt’s version.

Ronstadt began performing the song during 1973, and recorded it with producer Peter Asher (whose sister Jane dated a member of a well-remembered Merseybeat band that Peter also worked with) for her breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel. Her version, which became a #1 hit in the US, showcases Ronstadt’s powerful, soulful vocals, and has a great arrangement. Interestingly, Ronstadt has said:

I thought the production on "You're No Good" (her 1974 breakthrough No. 1 single) was very good, but I didn't sing it very well. As a song, it was just an afterthought. It's not the kind of song I got a lot of satisfaction out of singing. 

You could have fooled me. Because she’s so good.

Incompetent/Can't: Can't Let Go

Purchase: Lucinda Williams' "Can't Let Go", from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Print: "Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road", from Church of Type, by artist Kevin Bradley, "...one of America's most prolific letterpress printmakers." According to his amazing website, "The Church of Type is a full-custom art and design studio working exclusively in the sweet science of authentic handset letterpress."  

I've got my credit card in hand as I write this--really amazing stuff.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick has a strange distinction of being the book that all English majors can talk about while not having actually read it. The book is a titan of American Literature, one of the springs from which all that followed it had to flow. Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a bit like Moby Dick—everyone’s heard of it, but few have actually read (or in this case, listened to) it. In the world of Alternative-Country music, Car Wheels is cited as a seminal influence by more singer/songwriters than I can name here and cracked the top 300 of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It’s bonafides are bonafide; it’s accolades too many to count. Yet, for the casual listener, I wonder how many have given it more than a casual listen?

I’ve listened to the album many times, and chose to write about it for this post not because I am one of it’s true believing praise singers, but because I’ve never quite gotten my head around it.

It’s good, do get me wrong. What am I saying? It’s great. Amazing. 

I’ve just never been able to figure it out: in plain terms, I’m not sure what it is supposed to be. Every track is different, and while it won a Grammy in 1998 for Best Folk Album, it is far from just a folk album. As a collection of songs, it defies definition—it has traces of folk, to be sure, but it dives into country, rock, blues—a sonic landscape as varied and wide-ranging as the subject matter of Williams’ poignant and elegiac prose-poem lyrics. Like many great albums, it marries genres. And like a great marriage, the music comes across as effortless, even when painful and challenging. 

And that’s a good word to describe Car Wheels: a challenge. What to make of such a vast and wide-ranging collection? The songs range from cracking, bar room boogie, to traditional, gospel-tinged Nashville of country music’s heritage days. The moods are myriad, as are the producers (Rick Rubin, Roy Bittan of the E Street Band), and the players are a hall of fame guest list (Steve Earle, Charlie Sexton, Emmylou Harris). The album took six years to record, and Williams re-recorded it twice from scratch—like any piece of literature worth the paper it’s printed on, good work takes time, and not editing, but whole sale revision.  And the reviews are stellar, on a historical level. Back at its 1998 release, and up until today, as it is such touchstone of an album, that Car Wheels still gets press. Much like how we started with a comparison to literature, Car Wheels garners the same sort of praise and asks for the same kind of critical analysis as a great piece of literature. Any collection of songs that covers as much ground musically, can delve as deeply into imagistic setting and character, deserves the copy. 

The original review in Rolling Stone sang the praises of the album in verbiage befitting a literary masterpiece. Writer Robert Christgau waxes poetic about Car Wheels, but he sums up the thematic substance, the heart of the album, best near the end of the review, when he writes: “Whether it's the interrupted childhood memories of the title track, the imagistic shifts …Williams' cris de coeur and evocations of rural rootlessness — about juke joints, macho guitarists, alcoholic poets, loved ones locked away in prison, loved ones locked away even more irreparably in the past — are always engaging…And they mean even more as a whole, demonstrating not that old ways are best — although that meaningless idea may well appeal to her — but that they're very much with us.”

I suppose in the end, I’ve not been very clear about what ‘troubles’ me about Car Wheels. It’s not if I’m dubious on whether the album is good or not—I used the very lackluster adjective ‘great’ earlier to describe my feelings. That’s a poor, pale word for such an eclectic collection of aural story-telling. This is a collection of songs that, again like a great book, keeps me wondering and guessing at meaning and theme. What was Williams trying to accomplish with Car Wheels, aside from collecting memories, stories, emotions. And, as Christgau writes, Williams was working at capturing a mood of the past, an elusive zeitgeist of old times, grey ghosts on country roads, the voices of the greats rising up from the fog to stake a claim in the present tense that they so clearly can lay ownership upon. She captures moods here, many of them, yet none are so prevalent as to direct the record toward one central feeling. The motifs, the tangible, palpable imagery—all of it combines to tell a novel’s worth of story that never really ends. And that is where the album finally differentiates from the novel: there is no end, not to a song. It might fade out, but a collection as strong as Car Wheels never, ever stops telling its story.

Check out this bluesy snarl of a track, a little back porch stomp, called “Can’t Let Go”, which is about exactly like what it sounds. Williams might be tongue in cheek on the metaphors on this track, but this broken hearted blues lament on not being able to shake even the worst kind of love is raw and gets its hooks into you. Kind of like the man that the character of this song can’t let go of. A fitting track to introduce an album that, much like the song, gets a hook and won’t let go.

Incomptetent/Can't: Mayor of Simpleton

XTC: Mayor of Simpleton
[purchase]

In response to Darius' question about the theme, as the guy who suggested it back in February, it was originally "Incompetence," in "honor" of our then-new President. Who knew how bad it would get. Our current moderator, known in these pages as KKafa, although that’s not what his parents named him, felt that was too difficult, and added the related concept of “Can’t.” And so far, that’s where the posts in this theme have gone.

So, I’m going to try to steer it back to my original concept, although, as so often happens with XTC’s music, the lyrics are somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Unlike our current President of Simpleton (or Dementia, or Narcissism, or Egoism, or Delusion, or whatever), who seems blissfully unaware of his shortcomings, the titular Mayor lists all of the things that he lacks competence in:

• Learning
• Weighing the Sun
• Mathematics
• Reading profound books
• Writing a big hit song
• Solving crossword puzzles
• Unraveling riddles, problems and puns
• Operating a home computer (note—this song came out in 1989, so having one was not common)
• Converting pounds to tons
• Winning Nobel Prizes (If this was an impediment to love, there’d be a lot of single people)

On the other side of the ledger, though:

•  He loves her 

One would like to think that love should win out over mere brains (a concept which Cheers mined regularly, particularly in its early years), and I think that we are all rooting for the Mayor in this song, because of his self-awareness and clever and heartfelt professions of love. And, so, is he really incompetent?

Unfortunately, XTC never recorded a sequel, so we don’t know whether this plea led to “Sorry, Mayor of Simpleton, I’m Not Interested,” or “I Love You Too, Dummy.”

INCOMPETENT/CAN'T: I CAN'T DANCE

That much is true, and I have tried, Lord, I have tried. Indeed there have been times when I tried so hard, I thought I could, the joy and sweat both unbridled as the floor emptied about me. In fact, my dancing years can be contained within 3 succinct eras. But first the song:

This song, originally by Tom T. Hall, nails many of my feelings, even rationalisations, on the subject, and is written from the position of the lovelorn and forlorn dancehall wallflower, forever watching from the periphery, unable to get his girl on account his "affliction." Tom T. makes it matter of fact in his country boogie shuffle, but Gram imbues an extra poignancy and urgency into his cover, which, incidentally, is pegged up a pace or two, into a somewhat clumsy rhythm that is actually well nigh impossible to dance to. Even if you could.

So how did I deal with this, in phase 1, my youth? Luckily, it being the late 60s and early 70s, with the birth of the underground scene and prog, I could pin my flag to those genres. Sitting cross-legged, head bowed forward, shaking in, or slightly out of, time with the stop-start rhythms of Yes, King Crimson and E.L.P. warranted no knowledge of dancing. Dancing music: soul, r'n'b and disco, was for fools, whether they got the girl, and they usually did, or not.

Stage 2 was an awkward amalgam of conflicting pulls on my position. Punk arrived, and the demolition of all before it, including any orthodox styles of dance. And, yes, I could pogo, I discovered. And, with new wave, that slo-mo running beloved of, predominantly, Sting, came within my canon. But there was also the increased importance of Folk-Rock to me during these years, as I, simultaneously to the Clash and Costello, immersed myself deeper in all things trad.arr. I joined a Morris Dance side. There I had to discipline myself into the rigidity of 4/4 rhythmic movement. Like this:

It was hard, it was difficult, but I nailed it, albeit barely competently. It was bliss. Our side would convene once weekly for practice, and meet at weekends to give displays at school fairs and village fetes. Possibly as a result of this confidence, or probably the women I was taken with, I suddenly "got" the dance floor, hoovering up Motown and Stax into my record collection. I had the confidence of a dyspraxic Travolta and hurtled around equivalently. And for all the toes I trampled and ribs I barged, I apologise. Unreservedly.

For now, phase 3, I know I really can't dance. It is a pity, as my wife loves to and is an avid aficionado of electronica/dance. I love it too, but confine myself to listening in the car. As I drive. Occasionally thumping the windscreen repeatedly with my fist if particularly carried away. Just in case, at the age of 60 I have again joined a morris side, but I know I probably fool myself. And the moves are so much harder than they ever were.

A final reflection comes from proggers turned poppers, Genesis, originally just the sort of anti-dancing music I delighted in,  all those phase 1 years ago, latterly topping all sorts of charts with dance worthy tunes. Although I tell myself I shouldn't, I quite like this change in their style and fortunes, this song demonstrating that they too are not entirely unaware of the irony. So, like this song, maybe this dancing lark is my guilty pleasure.

But don't buy them, buy this

Incompetent/Can't: I Can't Stand Up

purchase [Get Happy]

There was a time - about 20 years back - when Elvis Costello and Talking Heads were what I mostly listened to. Both kind of quirky (as opposed to mainstream pop), but both very much in favor with the college-type crowd (which I had long since graduated from - but maybe couldn't leave behind?).

I'm pretty sure that among the things that attracted me to both were (a) the slightly-off the standard I-IV-V chord structures of their songs and (b) the near-poetic lyrics - enough that the words frequently caused me to take a minute or more to ponder their relevance to my current frame of mind. Oh, yes, and neither appeared terribly normal in the MTV videos I saw.

Now, at about the time that <Get Happy> (the album containing Can't) was released, Costello was in hot water on account of his multiple uses of "the n word". He had drunkenly referred to Ray Charles as such, and his "Lover's Army" includes lyrics to the effect "one less white ..n.".
As a result, there are those who believe that his choice of "I Can't.." is a form of either apology or appeasement - because the song comes from the legendary Sam and Dave, who recorded it in a rather slower, more soulful tenor back in the mid 60s.

As for Costello, this song stands in contrast to his earlier dark, angry, vengeful style: granted, the pace - as compared to Same and Dave's slower soul - still rubs a bit the wrong way (also see his dis-jointed dancing on the vid), but you can almost sense that Costello is onto something new, and in fact, from here, it lead to a breakthrough in his career (and puts his racial slur gaffe more or less behind him)

We've got the "Can't" covered pretty well just in the title itself. But how about the "Incompetence"? Well, there's no requirement in SMM's current theme that any single post cover both terms - and in fact they do appear to be linked - if you're incompetent, you can't ... something. But, is there something about Costello or the song that encompasses <Incompetent> as well?
Judging from where Costello went from after this output, I would say: no sign of incompetence on his part.
Your thoughts?

Incompetent/ Can’t: Can’t Find My Way Home

Blind Faith: Can’t Find My Way Home

[purchase]

I have not been the moderator here for quite some time now. Usually, that doesn’t make much difference, but it does with regards to our new theme. I have some ideas about how to treat the “Incompetent” part, and I will be presenting at least one of those as we move on. But I am not sure what was intended. Perhaps it is better not to know, but rather to put forward one’s own interpretation, which should make this a fascinating theme. But the “Can’t” part is easy enough. Can’t Find My Way Home immediately came to mind, and no wonder. The song is almost fifty years old now, and it continues to be covered in new and interesting ways. That is a fine definition of a classic.

You could say that the song deserves to be obscure. The lyric is barely there, consisting of only one verse and a chorus. The words express a sense of helplessness, and there is no resolution to this, no solace offered. But that is, in a way, the point. For all the idealism of the hippies who embraced the song and made it a hit, there was always a sense that they were fighting something they could not stop, something that was just too big for them. Of course, it did not hurt that the song was by a new supergroup. Blind Faith featured Steve Winwood from Traffic and Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream, and both of those groups had just broken up. Only bass player Rick Grech, then with the group Family, was relatively unknown. But Blind Faith was not popular just because of their lineup, nor was it simply the fact that they were one of the first supergroups. The talent that came together for this project delivered the goods, and it is ultimately the performance of Can’t Find My Way Home that makes it work, and has made the song an inspiration to musicians ever since. The song has brought together unlikely groupings of musicians for some great performances, so I wanted to include some of those.

Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George: Can’t Find My Way Home

[purchase]

In 1972, Bonnie Raitt was making wonderful blues-based music, but she was far from well known. Lowell George and his band Little Feet were just getting started themselves. Raitt would record her own solo version of Can’t Find My Way Home, although I couldn’t find it on any of her albums. But this version comes from a radio broadcast in New York City. Either Raitt or George could be playing the acoustic guitar or the slide guitar on this one, and there is also an acoustic bass part played by Freebo. This spare treatment really brings out the emotion of the piece.

Allison Krauss and Union Station: Can’t Find My Way Home

[purchase]

Allison Krauss and Union Station are known as a bluegrass group, but that label does not fully describe their artistry. This version of Can’t Find My Way Home honors the song’s roots in blues rock, while also updating the sound in brilliant ways. The recording was done for the TV show Crossing Jordan.

Sheryl Crow with Warren Haynes and Trombone Shorty: Can’t Find My Way Home

[Not Available for Purchase]

As seen here, Sheryl Crow and her band are a part of the jam band scene. She invites Warren Haynes and Trombone Shorty to join them on stage for this one, and Crow’s band supports them ably, with very satisfying results. Crow and her band do not show the elasticity that allowed the Grateful Dead to, for example, segue from Scarlet Begonias to Fire on the Montain, but this is still a strong performance. It makes me wonder why Sheryl Crow has not so far put Can’t Find My Way Home on any of her albums.