Great: Great Nations of Europe

purchase [ Newman's Bad Love album]


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.

War/Peace: Small collection of pensive songs with war in the title

purchase [Little Criminals - R Newman]
purchase [ Hearts and Bones - P Simon]

No, there was not even the slightest premonition that the departing theme was going to get any more real than a nod to Memorial Day (SMM tries to theme to calendar events such as Thanksgiving..) Really. That's not fake news.

The driving force behind the War/Peace theme was recognition of Memorial Day. If you follow SMM, you already know that the site tries to periodically link its theme to the calendar. This, of course, was 10 days ago.

As such, I don't feel a great need to apologize for fueling the current rage (if in fact we did, in our own limited way), but there seems to be a need to bring things around to a more mellow place with another post about War/Peace. I DID say that waging peace is almost equally as fraught with its own issues as waging war (see the furor over Lennon's sleep in for peace). I had no premonitions of the future as I chose to go with a "1968-themed" song about an ongoing war resulting from American political decisions 50 years ago. Yes, I referenced current political issues (bone spurs, senator's sons...), but they were wild shots, certainly not targeting a news item I had not yet heard about.

That said, maybe we can do our civic best to guide the conversation away from civil war (and bands with names like Guns 'n Roses, the Clash)

Songs South: Rednecks

 

 

Randy Newman "Rednecks"

purchase Randy Newman "Rednecks"

 

For the second week in a row, I am going to bend (not break) the rules. No "south" in the title and only one use of the word in the lyrics: a single mention of the south side of Chicago. But Newman leaves no doubt about the brunt of his jibes: he's singing about "down here".

 

Although we probably shouldn't assume that North/South is a predominantly American theme, for many reasons - more than 100 years after the war that tried to split the South from the North - the US is still dealing with the issue (Selma ... 10 Years a Slave ...Neil Young and Lynard Skynard). For the record, and perhaps the "lite" aspect of this is all for the best, the Google prompt for a search for South leads to ... South Park. But of course.

 

North <> South ... East <> West ... Male <> Female ...there are too many dichotomies in life to list them all. Or to dwell on them. Too firmly believing in things has a tendency to lead folks to take sides - not just to take sides, but to try to defend one side over another when, in fact, there is always more than one  (right) side to any issue. There is no South without a corresponding North.  That said, some wise man once said that music soothes the savage beast - certainly it should bridge a North/South divide.

 

 

But back to American rock and our theme. We were looking for Songs South, and I suggested in the lead off prompt to my fellow bloggers (which none has yet taken up) that they might try Idlewild South/Allman Brothers. Now, there's a quintessentially southern (or is that Southern with a capital S?) band and a southern sound. I also proposed that someone take on Southern Man (see above).But those are really a bit too trite (you'll agree?)

 

How about Randy Newman? Now there's a musician who regards few constraints towards taking sides or soothing the savage beast. His take on the south is so "in your face", whether you agree with his perspective(lyrics) or not. Pardon my French (as my folks used to say). He describes southerners so:

we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground

 

Ouch! But if you are taking offense, you missed the whole point above (and I lived in Greensboro, NC for years and years). What I do like about this song (typical of the man) is its irreverance. And the way it seems like "I could write that song" (but couldnt) - so simple on the surface, but so deep below. Lyrically and musically.

　

 

 

Useful Numbers: Dayton Ohio 1903

Randy Newman: Dayton Ohio 1903

[purchase]

Randy Newman has become known for full band pop and lushly orchestrated soundtrack music. He does both things with wonderful artistry. His songs in recent years, especially the ones used in the Pixar films, display a tenderness that very few songwriters can match. But I first heard Newman in ballads like this one, arranged for just voice and Newman’s piano playing. All of the tender emotion of his later work is here as well. This is a sepia-toned song, with a wonderful nostalgic feel. The song is short, under two minutes in fact, but that’s all Newman needs to set the mood.

You First: You Can Leave Your Hat On

art by Michele Hyacynth

Randy Newman: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Joe Cocker: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Tom Jones: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Marc Broussard: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Let's call this post "Four Decades of Soft-Core Sexual Suggestion."

Got your attention now?

I'm going to declare Randy Newman the King of Intellectual Musical Wit (the heir-apparent, though, might be Steely Dan). Here's a test for our clearly above-average Star Maker Machine reader: did you get all OMG offended! at his epic song 'Short People' and lobby your state legislature to make playing it on the radio a crime (as Maryland attempted), or did you see it as the anti-prejudicial statement it really was? In other words, do you get Randy Newman?

'You Can Leave Your Hat On' is another in Newman's wink-wink-nudge-nudge repertoire. The title phrase seems to be the only item of clothing the narrator doesn't want removed. Newman released his version in 1972 (on 'Sail Away'); it was picked up in a big way by English blues rocker Joe Cocker in 1986 and featured in a strip scene in the film '9½ Weeks'. Tom Jones, the Welsh crooner, did the same favor in 1997 for the film 'The Full Monty'. (And he sang it live in 2002 at 'Party at the Palace', a pop concert at Buckingham Palace honoring Queen Elizabeth's 50 years on the throne. Somehow imaging Queen Liz shaking her booty to this tune keeps crawling into my brain. Bad! Bad!) Finally, blues-rock artist Marc Broussard paid homage to it on the 2006 Newman tribute album, 'Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman'.

You give me reason to live…You give me reason to live…You give me reason to live…

Title Tracks: Sail Away

Randy Newman: Sail Away

[purchase]

As a budding teen audiophile, I spent a good portion of my adolescent summer nights camped out on the hardwood floor of my parents' living room, where a low custom-built cabinet held a lovingly catalogued sequence of sixties and seventies songwriters and old blues records, spinning disks one by one, trying to find my own musical sense and sensibility among that of my father's.

It was there that I found a well-worn, well-loved copy Randy Newman's Sail Away nestled among the Paul Simon and Chris Smither, the Joni and Loudon and Emmylou. More used than most in that sweet-smelling hardwood cabinet, its ragged-haired, glasses-sporting, close-cropped headshot cover called to me like a ghost of my father, and the music it held did too: sonically delicate and lyrically wry, with the swelling of soft horns and strings playing an anthem behind the title track like nobody's business. It would be years before I was mature enough to fully appreciate the sarcastic, caustic underbelly of these deceptively light-hearted tunes, but that the songs stuck in my head long enough to matter speaks pages about the pure emotive power of this singer-songwriter's singer-songwriter.

Over 30 years later, of course, the same title was used for a solid roots-and-bluegrass Randy Newman tribute album; here's one of my favorite mellow newgrass musicians crooning the equally gentle if slightly more rounded-out title track to that album, as befits both the week's theme and this coverblogger's bent.

Tim O'Brien: Sail Away

[purchase]

Adjective Noun: Short People

Randy Newman: Short People

[purchase]

They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
They're gonna get you every time
Well, I don't want no Short People
'Round here

Randy Newman is so respected for his body of work today, it's easy to forget that his first hit was dismissed by many as a poppy novelty song at best, and a potentially offensive one at that. In fact, Maryland legislators considered it so inappropriate that in 1978, the year after the song was released, they introduced a bill that would make it illegal to play Short People on the radio; happily, cooler heads prevailed, and the bill did not pass.

In later years, as in this 2003 interview, the highly literate and prolific Newman grew to hate the song, and the fact that -- despite a huge body of cuttingly precise and scathingly perceptive works -- he seemed to be best remembered in the public mind for this broadly-stated, simply orchestrated, admittedly "frothy" work. But the tide is turning. His Academy Awards and Grammys, his recent work with Disney, and the celebration of his life and work granted by blogs like ours and others, have begun to erode this association, making a case for a Randy Newman of depth and dignity.

That he was able to transcend this inauspicious start, and demonstrate over time just how powerfully he could speak to the baseness of stereotyping and elitism through unreliable narrators such as the "height-ist" voice utilized here, speaks to both his wry, intelligent wit and his perseverance. It helps, though, if we accept as given that Newman is smarter than the average listener, and that the lowest common denominator is not the best measure of the "success" of a song. And it helps, too, if we remember that Little Criminals was Newman's seventh album, and that without the success of Short People, so many of us might never have heard of him in the first place.

Which is to say: it's a shame that irony doesn't translate better, and a shame, too, that Randy has tried to distance himself from this song by dismissing it as too light and dumbed down, but in the end, who needs the support of people so short on perception? Let it go, Randy, let it go. It's a good catchy song about small-minded people. The best songs are simple songs, after all.

Clothes: You Can Leave Your Hat On

Randy Newman: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Apparently, there's a rich subset of headgear to be mined in this week's theme. But Randy Newman's classic isn't just about hats. Quite the opposite, in fact: it's about everything one could wear coming off sultry and slow, followed by a series of puppetmaster striptease chessmoves from a narrator obsessed with an unidentified, objectified stripper of some sort. I don't usually go for full-bore lyrics, but these read so perfectly like the mind of a dirty old man they just have to be shared:

Baby, take off your coat...(real slow)
Baby, take off your shoes...(here, I'll take your shoes)
Baby, take off your dress
Yes, yes, yes
You can leave your hat on...

Go on over there and turn on the light...no, all the lights
Now come back here and stand on this chair...that's right
Raise your arms up in to the air...shake 'em
You give me a reason to live
You give me a reason to live...

Suspicious minds are talking
Trying to tear us apart
They say that my love is wrong
They don't know what love is...

I know what love is

As a bonus, here's some great covers, from the slightly gawky adolescent fumbling of Paul Curreri and Devon Sproule to Marc Broussard's sexiest, funkiest Randy Newman cover ever. And, then, of course, there's Tom Jones, being Tom Jones. Not my bag, but apparently old ladies still throw their panties at him.

Paul Curreri and Devon Sproule: You Can Leave Your Hat On
[five free albums of covers]

Marc Broussard: You Can Leave Your Hat On
[purchase]

Tom Jones: You Can Leave Your Hat On
[purchase]

Fifty States: Utah

Harry Nilsson: The Beehive State

[purchase]

To Star Maker Machine's great shame, this blog has been running in its current format for nearly four months and there has only been one measly Harry Nilsson song. Come on Star Makers! Nine Bob Dylans? Eight Elvis Costellos? Where's the love for Harry?

In my own defense, half of my Nilsson collection is apparently blocked by iTunes mojo: I can't convert them from m4as so I can't post them. This has been heartbreaking to me since there's been at least one great choice for every theme we've had. Finally I'm able to get one in, though! And none of you thoroughbreads busted out of the fifty state gate with Utah! So there!

This fantastic song, written by Randy Newman, takes place on the floor of congress, as the congressmen from Kansas and Utah (aka the Beehive State) each plead for much-needed funds for their states--proving that in the right hands, anything can make a great pop song.

Fifty States: Louisiana

Randy Newman: Louisiana 1927

[purchase]

Several posts this week have already talked about avoiding the obvious song, and I often agree. But not in this case. The song is just too good.

Reader submission from Darius.

Boats: Slave Ship Edition

Randy Newman: Sail Away [purchase]

Public Enemy: Can't Truss It [purchase]

Just call me Captain Buzzkill, I'm basically docking the boat where "Redemption Song" left off. I've actually had these two in my back pocket for the whole week, wondering if someone else would tackle either song. Can't say that I blame anyone for passing on the slavery discussion. We know it's shameful and really, what is there to say that doesn't come off as painfully over-earnest? A ha! That's why we have Randy Newman, a satire machine here at the top of his game. Obviously, his seemingly nonchalant treatment of such a horrible subject rubbed some folks the wrong way, but c'mon, what was he supposed to do? Write a song telling us how bad slavery was? Gee, and all this time I thought it was like Club Med for West Africans. Besides, that's why Public Enemy was invented. While Newman addresses the horrific nature of slavery through ironic distance, Chuck D and Flav get in our faces, kickin' wicked rhymes like a fortune teller. If you're interested, you should check out PE's video for "Can't Truss It." While they abandon the slave ship metaphor for filming purposes, it's still pretty intense. Bass in your face, check it yo.