Scrabble Value Letters (Z): Zomby Woof

 

[Purchase Asphalt Orchestra - Zomby Woof]
[Purchase Frank Zappa - Zomby Woof] 


I learned about Frank Zappa in college, though I had heard "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" on the radio once before when a disc jockey made fun of it. I liked it anyway.

So Apostrophe and Joe's Garage (Act One) and Chunga's Revenge are favorites of mine for their combination of juvenile humor and complex musicianship, Then I lost interest in the man, even if I still bought a number of his albums. He became more of a misogynistic misanthrope to me than anything else--doesn't he like anyone or anything?

When this topic came up, I searched through songs I had in old playlists and the word "zombie" came up. Zombies are a hot topic in movies and TV shows and songs, of course. I considered posting a few that approached the subject from different angles.

Then this song popped into my head. The Frank Zappa and the Mothers version is off Over-Nite Sensation, which has a lot of great tunes, but also some of his rudest, most sexist lyrics. The album version starts out with Frank falling asleep and transforming into Ricky Lancelotti's crazed zombie/wolfman sex fiend, with Tina Turner and the Ikettes on backup vocals (uncredited on the album).

I figured I would check for You Tube videos. There are the requisite guitar jams; they are fine, but just not my cup of tea. And there is the video above. Crazed street musicians taking on the master?

It turns out the Asphalt Orchestra is an offshoot of Bang on a Can, the New York City "new music" promoters..They are professionals, looking like they are having a lot of fun. You have to see it to appreciate it, and man, I do.

At this moment, the Asphalt Orchestra has a Kickstarter Project to record their version of the Pixies' first full LP Surfer Rosa. It might not get funded, but we have not heard the last of them.
The Asphalt Orchestra is a 12 member post-modern "marching band." They have worked with other musicians such as David Byrne, St. Vincent, and Brian Eno.

by Paul Tessene

(SMM welcomes Paul and looks forward to reading his regular postings in his own name starting after this post on his behalf)

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.

Scrabble Value Letters (Z): Zip City

Drive-By Truckers: Zip City
[purchase Southern Rock Opera]

There is one member of my family who would be disappointed if I had the chance to write about songs that begin with the letter Z and didn’t write about “Zip City,” maybe my son's and my favorite Drive-By Truckers song not written by Jason Isbell.

In the early days of the Truckers, Patterson Hood dominated the songwriting, but Mike Cooley’s smaller output was often more memorable. I once saw a quote from Hood somewhere in which he essentially said that he wrote tons of songs, not all of which were great, and that Cooley wrote fewer songs, and they were all great. I can’t find the damn quote, but I know I saw it. And if you look at the commentary that Hood writes about all of the band’s albums, he invariably refers to a Cooley song as his favorite on the album. Sure, there is a bit of modesty there, but I honestly believe that Hood is sincere.

The new English Oceans, released today, has 13 songs, 7 by Hood and 6 by Cooley—but for the first time, Cooley sings a song written by Hood. Stuff like this is just manna for fans. I could have streamed the new album, but I’m waiting for my CD to arrive (hopefully in today's mail) before listening to it. I’ve liked what I have heard, so far.

But back to “Zip City,” from the Truckers’ breakthrough album, Southern Rock Opera. This was the album where a band that wrote songs like “The President’s Penis is Missing,” matured into one of the great American rock bands. Using a slightly fictionalized version of the Lynyrd Skynyrd story as a jumping off point to discuss perceived misconceptions of the South, modern southern mythology and the power of rock ‘n’ roll, it is an album that grows on me every time I listen to it.

“Zip City” is probably the Cooley song that fans most want to hear, and I think the band plays it at most every show (the version I posted is from a 2010 show at Webster Hall in New York that I was lucky enough to attend). And it is great live. Despite that, being somewhat of a contrarian (polite for “smartass”), the song is omitted from Cooley’s live solo album, The Fool on Every Corner,” which was released in late 2012. And it wasn’t like he didn’t play “Zip City” during the live performances that were used to create the album. Here’s proof. He just chose to leave it off.

What makes “Zip City” such a great song? Start with the story—although at the base, it is a classic tale of teenage lust, there is a twist. The seventeen year old narrator displays incredible maturity—he knows that he is never going to marry the girl, and he resignedly tells her to keep her drawers on, because it just isn’t worth the fight. And add to that the overlay of the narrator’s recognition of the hypocrisy of his girlfriend’s father, a church deacon, and the subtle references to the aimlessness and boredom of the narrator’s life. But then there are the lyrics, which are typically brilliant. For example, after telling his girlfriend that she should keep her drawers on, the singer predicts the dead end life his girlfriend faces:

By the time you drop them I'll be gone 
And you'll be right where they fall the rest of your life. 

The bleakness doesn’t stop there—Cooley describes her family like this:

Your Daddy is a deacon down at the Salem Church of Christ 
And he makes good money as long as Reynolds Wrap keeps everything wrapped up tight 
Your Mama's as good a wife and Mama as she can be 
And your sister's puttin' that sweet stuff on everybody in town but me 
Your brother was the first-born, got ten fingers and ten toes 
And it's a damn good thing cause he needs all twenty to keep the closet door closed 

I particularly like his description of the closeted brother.

There’s more, but better you should listen to the song, which, according to Hood is “90% true and is my personal favorite song on the album.”

And, if you want to learn more about the actual locations in the song, and see pictures, check out this blog.

Scrabble Value Letters (Z): Zydeco Honky Tonk

Buckwheat Zydeco : Zydeco Honky Tonk

[Out of Print]

     You don't have to be born in a bayou to appreciate this swinging instrumental from Buckwheat Zydeco's 1987 album On A Night Like This. It has been called the most important zydeco album ever made. Not the best. But the most important. With covers of tunes from Bob Dylan ( "On a Night Like This") , The Blasters ("Marie Marie"), Booker T and the MG's ("Time Is Tight")  and the great Clifton Chenier ("Ma 'Tit Fille"), On A Night Like This broke new ground for zydeco music... beginning with a record release party like no other.

   It happened at the Island Records 25th Anniversary Concert . With no notice, Stanley "Buckwheat Zydeco" Dural Jr was shoved on stage with Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. "Buck" sat at his Hammond B-3 organ.  Sharing his bench was In a Night Like This producer GeorgeFox who recalls what happened in Michael Tisserand's book The Kingdom of Zydeco:

   Ringo is like six feet away on the right, and he's looking over like "What the fuck is this?" And Clapton was maybe five feet in front of us, and Buck gets up there, and Clapton does this solo, and Buck played it on the organ and bumps it up a notch. And Clapton plays what Buck has just played, and he bumps it up a notch. And they're getting into this furious cutting contest, and Clapton hasn't even turned around at this point . And all of a sudden four thousand people are screaming , and Eric just stops playing, and he turns around and he puts his hand out to Buck and says "I'm Eric Clapton. Who are you?" It was just one of those kind of moments.

   Now that's the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Buckwheat Zydeco would soon be touring with Clapton. The album would make many critic's top 10 lists and, by 1988,  you couldn't sit through a TV commercial break without hearing zydeco. Buckwheat Zydeco performed at both Clinton inaugurations and during the Closing Ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. You can hear his music in The Big Easy and Adam Sandler's The Waterboy .At 66, Buckwheat Zydeco is still going strong.

Scrabble Value Letters (Q): Question

Old 97’s: Question [purchase]  

Rhett Miller: Question [purchase]

The song that I chose gives me a couple of things to write about, neither of which is really about the song, although we will get to that eventually.

First, as someone who loves to listen to music, it is important to me that my family also loves to listen to music, and that turned out to be the case. My wife has often said that she knew that we were truly a couple when we alphabetized our albums (vinyl!) together. As I have previously pointed out, our musical tastes are somewhat different, but the overlap in our Venn diagram (called the “intersection,” according to Wikipedia) is big enough that we rarely fight about music. I do complain sometimes about getting snared in the sticky trap of my wife’s favorite Sirius XM’s “The Bridge” soft-rock station, and she complains about some of the harder edged things I like, and some of the jazz, and some of the prog, but we have a nice sweet spot of common likes.

When we had kids, we heard horror stories of parents being “forced” to listen to children’s music in the car, and in reaction, I created mixtapes that included the occasional kidsong along with good grownup stuff. And when our children became old enough to have their own tastes, we tried hard to be supportive. I never told my kids that something they liked was crap; instead, I tried hard to say what I liked and what I didn’t, and I think that helped. Both of my kids have turned me on to bands that I truly like, and in some cases I introduced them to artists that I liked, and they loved, which led me to appreciate them more.

The Old 97’s is a band that everyone in my family likes, and for good reason—they are great. We’ve seen them live and enjoy their great mix of Texas twang, power pop, clever lyrics and tight playing. I’ve previously written about how and why we became fans, so I won’t belabor the point, except to reiterate how great it is to share the love of music with your wife and children.

The second thing I wanted to discuss is what I will call the self remake, for lack of a better term, where an artist releases a different version of one of their own songs. I’m not talking about a live version, but when an artist takes a song and releases it changed in some way. The Rolling Stones, for example, released “Country Honk,” which completely reimagined “Honky Tonk Women” in an interesting way. Other times though, doing this leads to failure. The Police decided to re-record the perfectly fine, if creepy, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” for a greatest hits compilation, and the newer version is just not good. Not only that, according to drummer Stewart Copeland, his fight with Sting over what synthesized drums to use on the track (the right answer would have been “none”) was the last straw in breaking up the band. Other artists have remade their own songs for copyright reasons and/or to just revisit older work with the perspective of a long career, such as John Prine or Loudon Wainwright III.

The original version of “Question” was released in 2001 on an Old 97’s album, Satellite Rides, in a very stripped down version with just Miller’s voice and acoustic guitar. The simplicity of the music fits well with the straightforward message of the song—that there is a time to say yes to love. The question at issue is a proposal, and this version was used in the TV show Scrubs when Carla says yes to Turk. People even propose on stage at Old 97’s shows when the song is played.

Personally, I like the original version, and despite my love of covers, I really see no reason why Miller needed to do a new version of the song on his 2006 solo album, The Believer (along with a new version of “Singular Girl,” a Satellite Rides bonus track). It isn’t bad, but it adds a wholly unnecessary keyboard part, and other additional production that doesn’t add to the song. I suspect that if I hadn’t heard the original, I’d love the remake, but I have, and the remake is kind of superfluous. When the whole band plays the song live, they still keep it simple, but sometimes Rhett gets fancy and sings some of the song in French, which I guess is the language of romance, but kind of makes Miller look like a show off.

Scrabble Value Letters (Z): Zawinul/Lava

Brian Eno: "Zawinul/Lava"
[purchase]

Brian Eno has been an influence on me since before I even knew who he was. As an extremely amateur high school hard rock musician, I sought early exposure through the freshly founded GarageBand.com (which later licensed its name to Apple for use on recording software). At that time, one feature the site offered musicians was to have uploads critiqued by professional musicians. During the registration process, users scrolled through an extensive list of names to choose from. Being the ignorant, malleable ball of brain clay that I was at the time, I only recognized one name on the list, and I couldn't quite put my finger on where I had heard it before: Brian Eno.

That was the name I picked, and it went absolutely nowhere. In truth, I couldn't tell you if I even ever got around to uploading any music for Eno to theoretically review. If that had happened, who knows what interests I would have taken in music. My grunge-inspired teen angst would certainly not have been received well by the god of ambient music. And negative feedback at that volatile time in my life could have instilled in me a permanent aversion to Eno's snooty sounds.

Thankfully, nothing went down that way. My tastes in music have continually evolved, and my appreciation for John Cage's aleatoric music and Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies methodologies have rooted my endless fascination with new sounds. The ambient and minimalist compositions of Eno, Harold Budd, Erik Satie, Moby, Steve Roach, and Klaus Schulze are now the regnant (though often unnoticeable) backdrops to my daily activities.

By the time he released Another Green World in 1975, Eno had already established himself as a musician through Roxy Music and two other solo albums, but with each album, he further explored the ideas of ambient music. This single song, appearing near the end of side two of the record, was a landmark experimentation in minimalist soundscape, standing distinct from the other upbeat, funky riffs surrounding it.

Scrabble Value Letters (Q): Questions 67 & 68

Chicago: Questions 67 & 68
[Purchase]

I actually bought this album when it first came out. I was in a boarding school just north of Philly in the early 70s, and my friends and I would ride the train into Philadelphia and .. buy records and stuff. It's a long time back, but my recollection is that there was this place called Tower Records, not far from the train station downtown, and LP costs were something like $7.99, $8.99 ...

Chicago Transit Authority came into being during that period in American history when youth protest was almost the norm (was it only me and my friends? Is the thought of acceptable protest worth a pause in your view of history?). For various reasons, their message and sound mellowed relatively quickly. They ran into legal issues related to their use of the Chicago train system's name, and their musical sound turned more towards their harmonied horns than piercing guitar solos. However, more than one of their original songs made the "Top" lists (and obviously enough money to keep the brand name running to this day.)

There are better versions of the song out there, but I wanted one that was close to the original: "Chicago" is still touring - in one iteration or another, but it isnt the same. At least not to me.

In the linked clip above, we've got the original band including lead guitar by Terry Kath, who sadly died quite early and - if I am not mistaken - Peter Cetera doing the vocals. If the YouTube credit info is accurate, it is from their earlier days: the dancing in front of the stage as well as the costumes seem to support the time stamp!

This wouldn't normally be my first choice for a Chicago tune, but it fits the Scrabble Theme running for the next two weeks: starts with Q.