Leftovers: Large Numbers—A Million Miles Away

The Plimsouls: A Million Miles Away
[purchase]

I’m kind of surprised that no one has ever written about this song on Star Maker Machine. Although someone did write about a different song with the same title.

This is one of those songs that you had to have heard, many times, if you listened to the kind of radio in the 1980s that I suspect most writers on this site, past and present, listened to. It is simply a great example of power pop, a genre that I love, and which I have written about often. (Strangely, while writing this, I’m listening to King Crimson’s Larks’ Tongue in Aspic, about as far away from power pop as you can get). It often appears on lists of best power pop songs, sometimes in the top position, and on other lists of great 80s songs.

The Plimsouls were essentially a one-hit wonder band led by Peter Case. Case had previously been in another short-lived band, The Nerves, with Jack Lee and Paul Collins, who are best known as the original performers of “Hanging On The Telephone,” before breaking up. Lee, who wrote “Telephone,” is mostly remembered as a songwriter. Collins went on to form The Beat, sometimes known as Paul Collins’ Beat, to distinguish them from the band known in America as the English Beat. And Case, after the Plimsouls, embarked on a solo career, mostly in the Americana area. Despite the generally lack of commercial success for these bands, they are considered to be influential in the new wave/power pop world.

“A Million Miles Away,” for all of its inherent quality, would probably have been ignored if it hadn’t been featured prominently in the iconic 80s movie, Valley Girl, in which the band appeared, playing the song, and another, in a bar.



Luckily, it wasn't.

Large Numbers: Millions- Humor Edition

Tom Paxton: One Million Lawyers

[purchase]

Dire Straits: Millionaire Blues

[purchase]

Bare Naked Ladies: If I Had a Million Dollars

[purchase]

As our theme indicates, one million is a very large number. Thinking about it is enough to make your head hurt. There is simply no way for most people to imagine how much one million actually is. So we humans sometimes cope with the concept by resorting to humor. Here are three fine examples.

It may be tempting to think of folk music as serious business. There are all those murder ballads, for starters. And many protest songs are solemn affairs. But Tom Paxton has always made his points using humor. One Million Lawyers doesn’t protest anything. It simply a gentle poke at all of us. I offer it here, knowing that at least one of our writers at Star Maker is a lawyer himself. All in fun, I assure you.

Millionaire Blues is a slyer form of humor. Here, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is poking fun at himself. Remember, this is the same man who wrote Money For Nothing, so he knows what it is like to have far less money. He reminds himself that, no matter how hard things may get for him, he has it better than many others. The blues is the perfect musical genre to make this point. “Low as the heals of my alligator shoes” indeed!

Finally, If I Had a Million Dollars is a song I was sure would have been posted by now. Barenaked Ladies make the point here that it most of us can not even imagine what we would spend it on if we did have a million dollars. In fact, buying all of the items listed probably would spend it down in record time, but that is not the point. This is a promise of love based on a fantasy of money the singer never really expects to have.

Large Numbers: Millions - Millionaire Waltz

purchase [A Day At The Races]

I don't recall every having bought a Queen album. I've made it this far with the basic awareness of the big hits: Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are the Champions, We Will Rock You,, Radio Gaga ... My loss. In consolation, as Confucius is said to have said: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. (Hmmm... someone else comes to mind today.)

And so, as I dug for <songs about million>, I was pleasantly surprised to come across Queen's Millionaire Waltz. If I had bought <A Day At The Races> , I might have been wiser. Then again, the album didnt have any of the hits I would have been exposed to via MSM.

I was initially struck by the similarity of <Waltz> to other Queen I was familiar with. No big surprise - a band has its style and you can expect them to sound ... well ... the same from one song to another. There's the familiar piano and the well-known vocal lead. The progression (as in time line from start to finish) also comes across as ... expected. Expected but good enough.

In reminiscing, I thought I recalled Queen at Live Aid. In fact, because I lived in a part of the world mostly bereft of this kind of media/culture, I had back then a collection of VHS cassettes that I had recorded the summer of 85 when I happened to be in the US of A and caught Live Aid on TV. Sure enough, there's Freddy Mercury and band doin' it from the London Stage (there were stages in the UK and the US/cities for that Geldoff event, and Phil Collins performed on both, flying across the ocean on the Concorde).

A long time gone. Here it is:

Large Numbers: Million: Bill Million

The Feelies: Raised Eyebrows
[purchase]

I suggested this theme (or something like it), thinking that there were large numbers of songs that fit, but strangely the first thing that came to mind when I sat down to write was the name Bill Million, best known as a member of The Feelies (and, it turns out, it isn't even his real name). Coming out of Haledon, New Jersey, The Feelies formed in 1976 around guitarist/songwriters Million and Glenn Mercer, reportedly after Million, tripping on acid, passed Mercer’s house and heard his band playing the Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” They soon gained a reputation as a live band. Ultimately, the group also included Keith Clayton on bass and Anton Fier (that guy!) on drums.

The Feelies remarkable first album, Crazy Rhythms, came out in 1980, during my WPRB days, and I remember thinking that it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. If you took the early Talking Heads’ quirkiness and twitchiness, Television’s intertwined guitars with strumming that would be made more famous in a few years by R.E.M. (who were influenced by The Feelies), add a touch of Dick Dale surf guitar, a bit of Phillip Glass/Steve Reich minimalism, some Eno drones, a heaping spoonful of Velvet Underground and back it with what is almost always referred to as “nervous drumming,” you might come close to understanding what they sounded like. And yet, it was something totally original. The Village Voice ranked it as the 17th best album of 1980, just behind X’s Los Angeles and ahead of Bowie’s Scary Monsters, The Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue, Joy Division’s Closer, and Argybargy by Squeeze, to name a few. Rolling Stone has ranked it as the 49th best album of the Eighties.

The album is many tracks deep, and we played the crap out of it. That year, the band performed at a party in a campus gym, and while their energy was evident, the bad sound and acoustics made it frustrating, because it was impossible to really appreciate the precision with which they played. Those of us who were familiar with the album enjoyed it, if with some disappointment at the sound, but I suspect that the performance failed to make many converts.

For various reasons, The Feelies splintered after Crazy Rhythms, with members leaving and starting side projects.  They pretty much dropped out of sight until 1986, when Mercer and Million, with bass player Brenda Sauter, percussionist Dave Weckerman (who had returned to the band after leaving before Crazy Rhythms was recorded), and drummer Stanley Demeski released the folkier, less nervous, The Good Earth, produced by Peter Buck of R.E.M. They also appeared in Jonathan Demme’s movie, Something Wild. 1988’s Only Life was The Feelies' major label debut, and it was followed in 1991 by the somewhat harder rocking Time For A Witness. And that was it, it seemed, for The Feelies.

But Million’s Princeton student son had been jamming with Mercer, who lived nearby, and that led to a reunion and a new album in 2011, Here Before, which simply sounds like it hadn’t been a decade since they had been together. Early this year, they released another fine collection, In Between.

Most of the band’s lead vocals are handled by Mercer, but our featured song, “Raised Eyebrows,” from Crazy Rhythms, is essentially an instrumental that features Million injecting the phrase "You get old." It is much better than my description.

LARGE NUMBERS: MILLION(S): A Million Tears/Kasey Chambers

Folk seem to be suggesting there aren't that many songs about millions, so it was with some relief I tapped into my i-pod search and and found, well, over a handful, mainly to do with miles, dollars or, as this one, tears. And delighted too I was to find this song, an artist I had somehow forgotten about of late, and, indeed, seems also to have been overlooked in the wider world of fame and fortune. Time to discover!

Kasey burst on to my consciousness back in the late 90's, in her 20's, her debut coming at me with a blast of raw, gutsy heartfelt C&W pathos. Country and western australia that is, as she hailed from,(actually south) australia, rather than the West Texas Lucinda tinted tones she reminded me of, albeit a younger and more innocent Lucinda. Her first album, 'The Captain',  was an absolute scorcher, if one discounts her years of active service in her 'family" band, honing her chops under the capable supervision of her father, himself a name in australiana. It probably did no harm that world famous in my world, hopefully yours,  husband and wife duo, Buddy and Julie Miller, were involved. Indeed, she soon eclipsed his custodianship, a run of records alerting her to international ears, with, notably, a duet with the aforesaid Lucinda appearing on her 2nd solo outing. Hell, her first 2 tours of the USA were supporting, first, Lucinda and, secondly, Emmylou Harris. The 2nd album, 'Barricades and Brickwalls', took her further, if not a better record, getting close to the sales of another australian, sales wise. The titular song from this piece comes from said album.

I was sort of surprised, whilst researching this piece, that she has a subsequent 9 releases, many performing just as well. Somehow these didn't seem to hit the radars I rely on back in the UK. I was aware she had married, and that she had become a duo with her husband, one Shane Nicholson, but none of their material had intrigued. They have since separated. The good news is that she has this year produced a new album, 'Dragonfly', which, on a first spotify, sounds and seems well much a return to form.

I feel bad suggesting there has been a fall away from grace, as, for all I know, maybe there hasn't been, but, irrespective, she's back on my register and I commend her to yours.

Buy

Large Numbers: Millions: A Million Miles Away

Jim Boyd: A Million Miles Away

[purchase]

[purchase Reservation Blues]

For our new theme, I went to YouTube and did searches for what seemed to be likely titles for songs. I am somewhat embarrassed that I had never heard of Jim Boyd until I did that. Boyd is identified in most references to him on line as a Native American singer-songwriter. He was certainly that. His roots were on the Colville Reservation in Washington state, where he was an important member of the tribal council. But, on the strength of this song, Boyd deserved to be more widely known. True, A Million Miles Away expresses the yearning many on the reservations feel for a better life somewhere else. But the theme of the song is more universal than that.

I am reminded of a book I would like to recommend, Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. Alexie is a novelist. He has achieved a level of fame where he no longer has to be called a Native American novelist, although he gives voice to Native American concerns in the book. In fact, Alexie and Boyd became friends, and even wrote songs together. Reservation Blues is about a group of young Native Americans who form a band and try to use their music as a way off the reservation to a better life. In the end, they are unsuccessful, and they have to go back to the life they knew. There was eventually a movie version, and Jim Boyd was on the soundtrack. Boyd’s music was good enough to stand with anything ever posted here, but I’m guessing most of our readers didn’t know about him either.

Musically, someone could probably have a hit with A Million Miles Away by turning it into a power ballad. I can hear in my head just where the band would come in with drums, bass, and screaming electric guitars. Boyd doesn’t do that, and the song simmers intensely all the way through as an acoustic ballad. To me, the song is better for it, but subtlety is not how you get onto the charts.