Scrabble Value Letters (X): X-Ray Style

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros: X-Ray Style

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros: X-Ray Style (live)

[purchase]

Who knows? Maybe I will still get to my first idea for our current theme, a song starting with Z. But Z has been well represented, so I wanted to see what could be done with X. I‘m glad I looked into it, because X-ray Style is a fine addition to our theme.

Joe Strummer is justifiably best known as a founding member of the Clash. That’s understandable, since the Clash lasted for ten years, and nothing else Strummer did had the same popularity or influence. After the Clash broke up, Strummer did solo work, acted in films, worked on soundtracks, and was an occasional member of the Pogues. But the Mescaleros were the other band that Strummer really made his own. X-Ray Style is a good introduction to what this band was about. Strummer’s political concerns were a constant in all of his work, including the acting projects he chose, and X-Ray Style once again displays Strummer’s concern for the downtrodden in various societies around the world. The music has a tropical feel, and is a continuation of the global musical exploration Strummer had begun with the Clash albums London Calling and Sandinista. What I find most interesting though is Strummer’s approach to the vocal on X-Ray Style. I have presented videos for both the studio and a live version for a reason. The song comes from The Mescaleros’ first album, and Strummer is trying to decide how to present himself. The punk shouter of the past is gone, he seems to be saying, and his vocal on the album is restrained at first. Strummer seems to be saying that this is more thoughtful music, and he wants us not just to react viscerally, as we once did to his music, but now he asks us to think as well as feel. Still, this is Joe Strummer, and he was always passionate about what he did. His vocal gains more bite as the song proceeds. I assume the live version comes from a time when Strummer had lived with the song for a while, and also gained greater comfort with his new band. It’s a plugged in version that loses none of the wonderful lilt of the original, but Strummer begins with more of an edge in his voice, and gets more intense as the song goes on. He never reaches the all-out abandon of his Clash vocals, but the live X-Ray Style sounds more like the same singer.

Leftovers (Fiddles and Violins): Blues Rock Edition

Sugarcane Harris: Where’s My Sunshine

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Papa John Creach: Bumble Bee Blues

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As the unofficial keeper of Star Maker traditions, I would like to set the record straight on this week‘s theme. Leftovers week is not simply the time to revisit themes from the past year. Any theme we have ever run is fair game. So some of us may choose to revisit themes from the past year, and I may be one of them as the theme continues. But for my first Leftover, I have chosen one of our older themes, from 2010 in this case: Fiddles and Violins.

I am amused whenever I hear the term “jam band“. I grew up in the 1960‘s, and all bands I knew of jammed. It was a badge of honor, and bands that couldn‘t jam well were laughed at. The San Francisco rock bands of the time were famous for it, but so were the British blues rock groups. I can‘t think of Jerry Garcia without thinking of jamming, but Eric Clapton was just as good. It is natural to think of electric guitar players in this context, but there were jammers on other instruments too. The two musicians featured in this post both began their performing careers before jamming was common in popular music. One usually thinks of jam bands as being white, but both of these musicians were black. And both played an instrument that is not usually associated with either jam bands or, especially, with the blues. I’m talking about two fiddlers who achieved fame with rock bands of the 60s and 70s: Don “Sugarcane“ Harris and Papa John Creach.

Sugarcane Harris began his recording career in the mid 1950s as half of the duo Don and Dewey. After the duo broke up, Harris recorded with the likes of John Lee Hooker, Little Richard, and Johnny Otis. By the 60‘s, Harris had come to the notice of Frank Zappa. Harris recorded two albums with the Mothers of Invention, and several more with Zappa. This was followed by a mid-70s gig with a late edition of John Mayall‘s Bluesbreakers. Where‘s My Sunshine comes from a solo gig during the transition from Zappa to Mayall. It is more of an excuse for a jam than a song. But the quality of the jam makes up for that. Harris‘ solos are brief, as this is more of a full band effort, but his playing still shows the adventurousness that would have appealed to Zappa. At the same time, a solid blues foundation, which would have been what attracted Mayall, is also evident.

Papa John Creach began performing in Chicago bars in 1935. Blues as we know it now was still taking shape at that time, and Creach was most likely influenced by the black string bands of the day. Blues fiddlers were far more common in those days. Creach managed to stay in music for the next thirty years, but he never recorded until he met drummer Jon Covington, and became a member of Hot Tuna. Creach would go on to record with Jefferson Starship as well, before finally starting his solo career. Bumble Bee Blues hasan intro that recalls the early roots of Creach’s playing, but it soon turns into a fully plugged in electric blues number. Not surprisingly, Creach’s playing is much closer to traditional blues than Harris’. Together, they offer fine examples of the range of music that “jam bands” were making, long before anyone felt the need for the term.

Stage Names: David Bowie

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I am pleasantly surprised that, on this, the last day of our Stage Names theme, no one has tackled David Bowie. Bowie, in my mind, qualifies twice. Born David Jones in 1947, Bowie took his stage name to avoid being confused with Davey Jones of the Monkees. And, in the course of his career, Bowie has taken on the identities of Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, and others. The first of these stage identities was Major Tom. Major Tom is an astronaut who begins by relishing the fame that space travel brings him. I grew up in the 1960s, and I can assure you that the Apollo astronauts did indeed receive rockstar-like adulation in their day that is hard to imagine today. But Tom also finds his experience isolating, and the alternate reality of his unearthly environment soon consumes him. He sings, “Here am I sitting in my tin can…” and it goes from there. David Bowie was a struggling unknown when he recorded the song, but his career mirrors it in eerie ways. Bowie would soon be rocketed into this same kind of fame, and he would eventually be consumed by it, and retreat into the oblivion of a serious cocaine habit.

Luckily, that is not the end of the story. Bowie was able to overcome his drug habit. He continued his musical pursuits with some wild experiments that, for a time, resulted in a string of unpopular albums. That may have been bad news for his fans, but it probably gave Bowie some distance from his fame that aided his recovery. By 1980, Bowie was able to revisit the character of Major Tom in the song Ashes to Ashes, and view matters in a way that was both rueful and a mature reconsideration of his career and life to that point. Since then, Bowie has continued to be a restless musical chameleon. Collaborators have included a list of people who little else in common: Nile Rodgers of the disco band Chic, Brian Eno, Bing Crosby, Freddie Mercury, and Iggy Pop, just to name a few. Albums have become less frequent of late, and there may never be another full-length tour. But David Bowie has endured far longer than Davey Jones of the Monkees, and whatever Bowie does next is sure to be worth paying attention to.

[purchase]

Shutdown: Allentown

Billy Joel: Allentown [purchase]

My second post for Star Maker Machine, back in 2008, was about the difference between a protest song and a political song. The song then was Deportees, by Woody Guthrie. Like Deportees, Billy Joel’s Allentown is a political song. It attempts to persuade by humanizing a situation and thereby eliciting our sympathies. In this case, the issue was the plight of the steel industry in the United States in the early 1980s. This was the first appearance of what is now the trend called outsourcing. Joel in his lyrics cites the fact that the coal to fire the steel mills of Pennsylvania was becoming harder to find and mine, but it is also true that steel companies were starting to find that they could produce steel more cheaply overseas.

Joel takes for his narrator a generation of workers without work in Allentown Pennsylvania. Because this is a Billy Joel song, his sentimental streak shows up in his idealized depiction of how the generation before the current one lived. Joel contrasts this with the shattered hopes and dreams of the unemployed steel workers at that time. They not only haven’t achieved their own dreams, they also haven’t lived up to the hopes their parents had for them. Joel doesn’t assign blame for this, but he leaves us with the feeling that, whoever’s fault this is, it is not the hard working people of Allentown.

The video also attempts to be socially relevant, but the results are mixed. It begins well enough, although the impact is somewhat blunted by the stylized way the humanity of these unemployed steel workers is depicted. But the year was 1982, and when the song reaches the bridge, all of a sudden we start seeing these dancers doing eighties music video moves. At one point, they appear to be worshiping an American flag made out of Christmas lights. Huh? The dance sequences, in short, are best ignored. Billy Joel was, in 1982, a commercial songwriter and musician, but this song shows that something bigger than himself had moved him. The video shows that his label approved, but didn’t completely understand this.

Shutdown: Closing Time

Tom Waits: Closing Time

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Our current theme is rich with possibilities, but they require some creative thought to tease out. Shutdown. All kinds of things can be shut down. It may be permanent, or very temporary. One example happens every night, and it has been a great inspiration to songwriters. I‘m talking about closing time. You went out to a bar for an evening. You had certain hopes and intentions. Now the bar is closing, and you are still there. How did those expectations turn out? Songwriters have answered that question in a wide variety of ways. To hear some of those answers, try searching for the words “closing time“ in the Amazon mp3 store. Three completely different songs bear that title, and many other song titles contain the phrase.

One Closing Time song holds my attention here. On an album of mostly vocal tracks, Tom Waits made the instrumental song Closing Time the title track of his 1973 release. The song, appropriately, closes the album. When Sting made the instrumental The Dream of Blue Turtles the title track of his first solo album, he was taking a tune that was the result of an impromptu jam session in the studio, and using it as a declaration of personal and musical freedom. Tom Waits is after something completely different here. The song Closing Time is a mood piece that sums up the emotions of the entire album. The song could just as easily have opened the album and served as a sort of overture. The album Closing Time is one of Waits’ most lushly romantic works. Waits is known for his portrayal of down-on-their-luck men who have turned to alcohol to dull the pain, with varying degrees of success. What is remarkable is how Waits makes us sympathize with these men by showing us that, even at their lowest, these men still dream of better things. The album Closing Time focuses less on how low these characters have fallen, and instead is about those dreams. Here are some of Waits most unabashed and beautiful love songs. Still, at the end of the night, the lights come up, and these characters leave alone. So the song is still lush and sweet, but it also has a melancholy strain. Nobody balances these emotions better than Tom Waits, and here he doesn’t even need words to do it.

And Bands: Eric Clapton Edition

John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers: Steppin’ Out

[purchase]

Delaney and Bonnie with Eric Clapton: Poor Elijah

[purchase]

Derek and the Dominos: It’s Too Late

[purchase]

There are some pretty obscure pieces of trivia in the Guinness Book of World Records, but “Artist associated with the most And Bands” is probably not one of them. My guess would be that the record is held by Eric Clapton.

Eric Clapton’s first recorded work was with the Yardbirds, but the style that he became famous for first began to take shape during his brief tenure with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Clapton only made one album with them, in 1966, but that was enough to start his legend as a blues-rock guitar god. The album was simply called John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton. Mayall had a deep love of the blues, a great talent for finding sidemen who would go on to greater glory, and a horrible singing voice. He was also generous to his bandmates. Steppin’ Out is one of several instrumentals from the album that prominently featured Clapton’s guitar, and the album also included Clapton’s first recorded vocal, on Ramblin’ on My Mind.

Of course, Clapton cemented his early fame in Cream, starting later in 1966, but I have excluded them from this post for obvious reasons. Cream was followed by Blind Faith, another band that does not fit our theme. But the opening act for Blind Faith was Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. Clapton quickly became one of those friends, and his association with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett would last longer than Blind Faith did. The Bramletts made important contributions to Clapton’s first solo album. Bonnie even co-wrote one of Clapton’s early solo hits, Let it Rain.

Finally, this post would not be complete without Derek and the Dominos. The band consisted of Clapton, plus Delaney and Bonnie’s rhythm section, joined on their best known album by Duane Allman. They are seen here on Johnny Cash’s old TV show. Cash knew well the connections between country music and the blues, and it’s great to see that the in studio audience appreciated this as well. I’m not that the audiences for what passes for country music these days would respond this way, although I would like to think so.

Presidents, Rulers and Leaders: McKinley’s Blues

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I knew immediately what song I wanted to post for this week‘s theme. McKinley‘s Blues is a bluegrass classic, notably recorded by Flatt and Scruggs. It is also known as McKinley‘s Gone and White House Blues. But the version heard here is the only one I was willing to consider, and it is not strictly bluegrass, despite the impressive line up of musicians. Norman Blake is the headliner and singer, but Vassar Clements, Sam Bush, and Jethro Burns are all big names. Tut Taylor is not as well known as he once was, but he more than holds his own here on dobro. The ringer is bass player Dave Holland. In 1975, when this song was recorded, and to this day, Dave Holland is known as a jazz musician, and frequently associated with avant garde works at that. But what you have here is seven great musicians stretching out, going beyond the boundaries others have perceived for them. This album came out before the first David Grisman Quintet album, so it can be regarded as the first album in the genre we now call newgrass. In addition to Dave Holland’s presence and work here, listen to especially Vassar Clements’ fiddle lines on this song to hear the then unheard-of meeting of bluegrass and jazz.

In seeking out a purchase link, I was upset to discover that this great album is out of print. It is not currently available at all on CD, and Amazon has only used copies on vinyl to sell. The entire album is well worth having. I dare to hope that this post can help this album become available on disc, or at least mp3.

Winter: River

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This week’s theme gives me the chance to deal with a pet peeve. River is not a Christmas song. It is a winter song. Specifically, it is a transplanted Canadian, living in southern California where winter is unknown, explaining what winter means to her. Christmas, in the song, belongs to this place where “it stays petty green”. It is a place where a romance has gone horribly wrong. Winter, on the other hand, equals childhood, a time in her life before she even thought of romance. That frozen river is a place of innocence for Joni Mitchell. She wants to skate away from that hurting adult she has become.

I live in New Jersey, where winter exists, but our rivers do not freeze over. We think of winter as a harsh season, and it is all to easy to misunderstand the emotions of this classic song. But Canadians are different. Their feelings about winter are perhaps best explained by noting that ice hockey is far more popular there than baseball or basketball. I would argue that River is one of Joni Mitchell’s most Canadian songs for this reason.

In searching for a video for this song, I had thought to find Joni performing it, and I might have found that if I had looked longer. But this fan-made slide show by sherrylynn70 perfectly embodies the combination of the emotions of the song and Americans‘ misunderstanding of them. Some of the Christmas scenes here are too bright, and the winter scenes sometimes have too many people in them. But there are also some starkly beautiful winter images here that fit perfectly.

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And while I was at it, I couldn’t resist including this cover, by Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae. Of course, this comes from Hancock’s album of Mitchell covers, called River. The album was made with Mitchell’s blessing; she even sings on one track, The Tea Leaf Prophecy. Rae’s performance of River is quite different from Joni’s. Mitchell makes the song a raw wound, while Rae places the turbulent emotions of the text under a sheet of ice. It would be easy to hear the sweetness in Rae’s voice, and say that she misses the emotion of the song altogether, and I believe some critics did say this. But listen to the way Rae turns the opening phrase. All the hurt of text is there, but she is trying to swallow it whole. It almost, but not quite, works, and the result has all of the emotional power the song deserves. This is clearly what Herbie Hancock was after, judging by the musical setting he and his band have created for the song.

I hope you will forgive me for not sharing a third video here. There is a performance of River on YouTube by Herbie Hancock with Joni Mitchell doing the vocals. It has its own beauty. The performance is from 2008, and Mitchell’s voice no longer does what it did when she was younger. The events in the song are now a hurtful memory instead of a fresh wound. The video is worth seeking out for completists, but I think the two versions I have presented here say what I wanted to say.

Childhood: The Circle Game

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The Circle Game was the first song I thought of to begin this week‘s theme. Joni Mitchell walks us though various stages of childhood, and into adulthood. The song can serve as an overture of sorts for what is to come. I was lucky to chance upon this video. As nearly as I can tell, a sixth grade teacher assigned his class the task of listening to the song, and creating an artwork inspired by a section of the lyrics. These artworks have been matched to their parts of the song in order. The result may not be museum-quality, and you might be tempted to say that Joni Mitchell herself could have painted better ones. She is a fine painter, after all. But these youthful interpretations have a quality that few if any adults can capture, and they honor the song beautifully.

Holiday Transformations: Arabian Dance

The Invincible Czars: Arabian Dance

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Welcome to a week of musical transformations for the holidays. What do I mean by that? Geovicki gave us a taste of it with her post to finish last week‘s theme. This time of year, songs get asked to do things that were never intended. A song which has nothing to do with the holidays may become a staple on holiday radio broadcasts because Christmas, or presents, or even cold weather were mentioned. Familiar holiday songs may travel to strange dimensions, and come back with amazing genre makeovers. Lyricists may force a song into the holiday season by changing some of the words, or change a song from one holiday to another in the same way. All of that is fair game this week.

I wanted to start with a genre makeover, because I have a remarkable example to share. The bio on this band‘s website starts by saying, “The Invincible Czars are one of Austin's most adventurous rock bands.” All bands brag on their websites, but this statement is actually modest. The Czars fearlessly take on classic, (often classical), music, and turn it into an amazing stew of rock, jazz, klezmer, gypsy music, and probably a few other things I missed. Arabian Dance is from The Nutcracker, and the video is from an annual kid’s show that the Czars do where they perform the entire Nutcracker Suite their way. I haven’t seen the show live, but the album is as consistently crazy as this song. I love it, but I know not everyone will agree.

Mixed Formats: Rockit

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This week’s theme is an experiment. We will be presenting songs in a variety of formats, and I mean that both in terms of the music itself and the way we present it. Some of us still have file hosting and will be sharing mp3s. But others, myself obviously included, will share videos. There may also be some streaming audio. The goal is to present as much music as possible for you, our readers. This mix of audio and visual formats may be how we proceed for a while at least, so I hope you will take the time and use the comments to let us know what you think. Incidentally, the picture on the sidebar this week is by artist Miriam Pinkerton. You can get a better look at it, as well as seeing more a possibly purchasing some of her work here.

Rockit was an MTV sensation in 1983. Probably very few viewers, however, had heard of Herbie Hancock before. Hancock had long before established himself as a jazz master. He was with Miles Davis when Davis invented jazz fusion, and Hancock greatly advanced fusion with his Headhunters band. But Rockit is not jazz, is it? The song combines a funky groove with a lead line on synthesizer with the turntablism of Grandmaster DST. Hancock was finding in the music that would later be called hip-hop the same improvisational spirit he knew so well in jazz, but the song is surely not jazz itself.

Or is it? Here’s Hancock and his band performing the song again, this time live in Los Angeles in 2008:

Now, some connections snap into place. Now, on finding this video, I understand at last how Herbie Hancock could have been responsible for Rockit in the first place. This version of the song makes clear how it relates to Hancock‘s jazz fusion work. It is unquestionably the same song, but this treatment brings it home for me. The band stretches out, and this version is clearly jazz.

What Songs Look Like: Sledgehammer

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As a reader here, I’m sure you have noticed that the volume of posts has been way down lately. That is because the recording industry recently cracked down on file hosting services, and now many of the posters here, including myself, are without file hosts. We would be happy to hear from anyone who can offer suggestions or help. Feel free to respond either in the comments or by a private message to the e-mail address on the sidebar, and thank you. Meanwhile, this week’s theme offers a temporary solution.

This week, Star Maker Machine invites you the reader to watch some videos with us, and read our thoughts. Music and visuals have been connected since the rise of MTV, but the connection goes back much further than that. The history of opera takes us back more than 300 years, but again, the connection is still older, probably going back to ancient times. Dances and rituals both combined music and visuals, and they are two of mankind’s oldest activities. We need as a species to express ourselves musically, and we also seem to need to know what those songs look like. When properly wedded, both the song and the visual become something greater than either one by itself.

Having said all of that, I would like to start our exploration in the 1980s. The art of the music video flowered in the 80s because of MTV. Nowadays, it’s hard to remember that those letters originally stood for Music Television. MTV hit the airwaves in 1981, and almost immediately began to change the sound of popular music. The programmers there could be musically adventurous as long as a video was visually striking, and that made it possible for new wave to gain broad acceptance. Thomas Dolby is one example of an artist whose music most people would probably never have heard otherwise.

The first video ever played on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. But I didn’t get my MTV until around 1985 or so. I don’t remember the first video I saw, but the first to make a big impression on me was Sledgehammer, in 1986. Today, a video like this would use digital effects, and the motions would be smooth. But digital technology wasn’t an option back then, so the video relied on an ingenious mixture of live action footage and animation. Everything moves in a jerky fashion, but Peter Gabriel and his crew use this to their advantage. The song is a plea for love, but the video reveals a layer of nervousness that really adds to the overall effect. The images are imaginative and memorable. The ice head and fruitface are the two that I see in my head whenever I think of this song.