Double Entendres: Squeeze Box

 

purchase [ The Who By Numbers]

When I purchased my own first "stereo" back in '71, the merchant included a copy of "Who's Next" in the deal. I have mentioned this before here. Andy La RayGun has also brought it to our attention

Always a fan of the Who/Pete Townsend, I have tried to keep up as he has done side gigs, the NFL Superbowl (however difficult with the group at that age) and more.

The album <The Who By Numbers> includes this piece that might fit the current theme: Squeeze Box.

Ostensibly, a squeeze box is an accordion: you know, the player pulls and pushes/squeezes the box to produce the musical sounds. That doesn't  appears to be the actual subject of the song:

Mama's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest

 .. [daddy] never gets no rest

Yes, the accordion usually rests on the players chest. But more:

She goes in and out and in and out ... [Hmm...meaning what?]

... Come on and squeeze me ...come on and tease me ... [Hmm.. tease the accordion?]

The album studio version is a lot better:

Sheryl Crow does it too

Burn/Fire: Crash and Burn

Crash and Burn is a pretty popular phrase (Wikipedia says it's a "euphemism" for fail utterly, often with spectacle.) It's the title of several movies, some video games, and numerous songs - many of them unrelated except in title.

I had originally picked out the song by Yngwie Malmsteen, partly because I hadn't listened to him in a long time and recalled that I thought he was pretty good. But a little deeper digging revealed all the other songs with the same name. (I confess I am left a little confused about the role of copyright when so many can use the same without infringement.)

Starting with Yngwie [purchase]: the name immediately places us somewhere north or Europe (at least originally), and, yes if for some reason you never picked up on him, he's a hard rock guitarist with a classical background who hails from Sweden. And he's got lots of accolades dating back to the 80s. Apparently, if you can hit 1000 notes in succession in Guitar Hero II, you achieve the Yngwie Malsteen award.

Moving on: I linked to Sheryl Crow a few posts back and now again. Her "version" of Crash and Burn [purchase] has essentially no relation to the Malsteen song. To me - it's much nmore accessible (I don't really care for pyro-technic guitar behind Malsteen's style although I appreciate the skill involved). Sheryl Crow's more <Clapton> style is what I generally look for.

And then there's Thomas Rhett, country singer who has piled up a few hits, including Crash and Burn from 2015. You keep waiting for the girl in the video clip to change her mind, but then ... it is called Crash and Burn [purchase], so ... not.

And finally Savage Garden, another band whose name I know but am confessedly pretty ignorant of except for what I found online: to my loss. Like the above, they've got a Crash and Burn [purchase] song off their second and last album before they disbanded.

The End: Surrender

Cheap Trick: Surrender (live)
[purchase the full concert—it’s cheaper than the original version!]

When you Surrender, it is The End, right?

I’m willing to bet that the first time that most of us heard the word “Budokan,” it was because of the release of Cheap Trick’s 1978 album, Cheap Trick at Budokan.” There was a slightly earlier release, Live at the Budokan by the Ian Gillan Band, so if you were a metal head or Deep Purple fan, you might have heard of that one first (John Gustafson, the bass player in the Ian Gillan Band, also played on Roxy Music’s “Both Ends Burning,” the subject of my last piece, which is a total coincidence.)

The Budokan is, according to Wikipedia, “an indoor arena located in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan.. . .originally built for the judo competition in the 1964 Summer Olympics, hence its name, which translates in English as Martial Arts Hall.” The Beatles were the first rock band to play there, in 1966. Also according to Wikipedia, a couple of dozen or so live albums have been recorded there, by artists including Bob Dylan, Dream Theater, Quincy Jones, Avril Lavigne, John Hiatt and Sheryl Crow.

But I think that Cheap Trick’s album is the most well-known, and it is the only one that made Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 greatest live albums of all time (#13). Like 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive (Rolling Stone’s #41), the live set helped to break an act that had not really clicked with the public into the big time.

“Surrender” is a great, anthemic song, that appears to be about teenagers discovering that their parents aren’t as “uncool” as they believe—and, in fact, may even be cooler than they are. It is sort of an illustration of that point in your life when you realize that your parents actually are people, with experiences, who might have some wisdom that is worth listening to. What you are supposed to be surrendering to is, I think, unclear, especially since the chorus is:

Surrender, Surrender, but don’t give yourself away.

Away to what?

It really doesn’t matter, does it?

"Surrender" is a song that you can listen to over and over and over, and the live version has that little edge of excitement that the best live performances add to a song.

I remember listening to this with my kids when they were young, and bouncing around and singing at the top of our lungs:

Mommy's all right 
Daddy's all right 
They just seem a little weird 

Are we, though?

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.

70s Motown: I Want You Back

Graham Parker & The Rumour: I Want You Back (Alive)
[purchase]

“I Want You Back” was recorded by the Jackson 5 as the first single the band released on Motown, on October 7, 1969, so I’m kind of pushing the theme a bit. But it became a Billboard No. 1 single for the week ending January 31, 1970, so there’s that.

By the time that Michael Jackson died in 2009, he had gotten pretty strange, what with the skin lightening, the nose, the glove, the monkey, the Neverland ranch and the sexual molestation allegations. But as a child myself when “I Want You Back” was released (MJ was born three years before me), it never struck me how strange it was that the Jackson Five songs about love and loss were being sung by an 11 year old child.

And yet, it is hard to deny that “IWYB” is a great song, with an incredible riff. It was ranked 121 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, and the notoriously picky Pitchfork listed it as the second best song of the 1960s (sorry, theme maker). Apparently, the Daily Telegraph said that it was “arguably the greatest pop record of all time.” As a lawyer in my non-blogging time, I’m always wary when someone uses the word “arguably,” but it is certainly in the conversation.

Not surprisingly, it has been covered many, many times. My favorite version is by Graham Parker & The Rumour, who regularly began performing the song on their 1979 tour supporting Squeezing Out Sparks, the album that briefly catapulted them to fame. It was originally released as a single, with “Mercury Poisoning,” one of the great record company “fuck you” records of all time, and later as part of the Live Sparks radio station promo disc (ultimately released to the public as a bonus CD with Squeezing Out Sparks). Parker’s version is, predictably, intense. That it is being sung by an angry adult seems way more appropriate than the pre-teen fronted original. But who says rock ‘n’ roll needs to be appropriate?

Proof that “I Want You Back” is a great song is demonstrated by the fact that it works in pretty much any genre. My friend Patrick wrote about Five Good Covers of the song, including the Parker version, here, and it also is successful in jazz instrumental and vocal versions, Brazilian versions, performed by a steel drum band (hey--that fits the last theme!), as an emo song, in Japanese, by former Michael Jackson backup singer Sheryl Crow (here, inaccurately, but more theme-appropriately, introduced by Jamie Foxx as a “1973 hit”) and, predictably, if excellently, by Bruno Mars.. Although, I’m not liking this version.

But if you want to see something incredible, again, thanks to Patrick, here’s a version with just Michael Jackson’s vocals.

Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse: Strong Enough

Sheryl Crow: Strong Enough

[purchase]

On the face of it, Sheryl Crow's 1993 triple-Grammy debut doesn't seem to speak explicitly to this week's theme. But as I alluded to at our week's beginning, the threat of domestic violence lurks constantly in the way society portrays gender relationships.

As evidence, I note that I have always wanted to hear a male voice cover Strong Enough, with no other changes to the lyrics save one: changing the repeated refrain "Are you strong enough to be my man?" to "Am I strong enough to be your man?"

It's a different song, to be sure, when the roles are reversed - a song of masculinity, sarcastic and sensitive all at once, with undertones of anger against so many women's acceptance of violence as strength. But as an exercise, it also reveals the violence Crow's original narrator owns throughout. That it requires re-thinking the song to see this reveals how easily we overlook or excuse violence as just part of the gender dynamic of modern culture. We are all, in the end, part of the problem.

Which is to say: although my own gender-transformed lyrics reveal an interesting sense of self-as-perpetrator, aware and unapologetic, just under the surface, until someone with a strong, sensitive baritone takes on my challenge to cover the song, Strong Enough already contains its particular violence. Specifically, it is one of those rare songs which positions the female as offender, thus showing that domestic violence is not, in the end, a "woman's issue", but a human one.

Here's the lyrics, as modified for a male delivery.

God, I feel like hell tonight
Tears of rage I cannot fight
I'd be the last to help you understand
Am I strong enough to be your man?

Nothing's true and nothing's right
So let me be alone tonight
Cause you can't change the way I am
Am I strong enough to be your man?

Lie to me
I promise I'll believe
Lie to me
But please don't leave

I have a face I cannot show
I make the rules up as I go
It's try and love me if you can
Am I strong enough to be your man?

When I've shown you that I just dont care
When I'm throwing punches in the air
When I'm broken down and I can't stand
Will I be strong enough to be your man?

Lie to me
I promise I'll believe
Lie to me
But please don't leave...

Millions of men both gay and straight become victims of domestic violence each year, though numbers are hard to collect, as men are notoriously shy of reporting. For help and more information, online resources for and about battered men are available at MenWeb.

Hope and Change: I Shall Believe

Sheryl Crow: I Shall Believe

[purchase]

Since it seems to be guilty pleasure day here at Star Maker Machine, I'm offering up Grammy goddess (and toilet paper nazi) Sheryl Crow's bittersweet ballad of hope tinged with self-doubt and what appears to be a bit of guilt on the side.

I know, I know; you stopped listening to Sheryl when she started her own line of denim apparel and started winning awards for covering James Taylor. But musically speaking, I Shall Believe is what I always imagined opium to be like: dreamy, vaguely hopeful, hazily historied and languid as all get-out -- the perfect closer to Crow's 1993 pop-confessional folk rock debut Tuesday Night Music Club, which still holds up after all these years.

Horns: Two Tributes to Trumpeters

David Wilcox: Chet Baker's Swan Song

[purchase]

Sheryl Crown: We Do What We Can

[purchase]

Two smooth, moody bittersweet ballads of talent lost to the ages -- one nominally folk, the other pop -- which adopt jazz trope and trumpet as a mechanism for paying tribute to beloved jazz trumpet players.

David Wilcox' first person paean to Chet Baker, who struggled with drug addiction for much of his career, paints him as helpless and desperate; the sweet jazzfolk approach effectively evokes both Chet's typically sultry sound and the languid, surface-smooth heroin dreams which many believe prompted him to end his life by leaping off the balcony of a Amsterdam hotel room.

Meanwhile, popster Sheryl Crow dwells in the memory of her father as a frustrated jazzman and lawyer; the faint, high trumpet notes which underscore the arrangement are a subtle wail of lost promise, but the way they waft through the song like the tendrils of memory is perfect for the neo-noir subject treatment.

Interestingly, in addition to similarities of trumpet, trumpeter, tone and tempo, both of these songs are their respective albums' penultimate track; in each case, they are followed by a simple, equally slow song of hope and faith. Coincidence?