Well, this was a link-up too good to miss, Human League-r Phillip Oakey's Together in Electric Dreams with Giorgio Moroder, and, now, the ones that got away with their own side project. I'm not going to revisit the League backstory two posts in a row, but, take it from me, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were the two to watch on their escape from that band, being the musical brains to Oakey's brawn. And the B.E.F., for a while, were their only project, the only release coming out of cassette, in 1980. This was Music for Stowaways, the "stowaway" being the original name given Sony's Walkman in the UK, listening to music on the move being then a novelty and in its infancy. Tell me then about mp3 streaming on a telephone, which doubles as a camera, and I'd laugh in your face.
Decline of the West/B.E.F. (Music for Stowaways)
Heaven 17, the band, were initially just part of B.E.F., Glenn Gregory merely one of the circus of singers used for their next record, Music of Quality and Distinction, Volume 1, although, confusingly, H17, the band, had hit the ground running first. Music of Quality and Distinction was an ambitious covers project featuring a mix of singers drawn from disparate backgrounds, tacked to the electronic production techniques Marsh and Ware were also liberally applying to individual recordings by such as Tina Turner and Terence Trent D'Arby. Gregory was a photographer friend who had been involved with an early incarnation of Wang Chung, and had the sort of voice they were looking for, ironically not a million miles removed from that of Phil Oakey. Other participants were 60's popstrel Sandie Shaw, the yet to be disgraced and denounced Gary Glitter and the aforesaid Tina Turner, alongside more contemporaneous names as Billy McKenzie and Paula Yates, the now deceased ex-wife of Bob Geldof, better then known as a TV face on breakfast television.
Perfect Day/B.E.F. feat. Glenn Gregory (MoQaD V1)
The project seemed to be then put aside, as H17 built themselves a sturdy and reliable name. But, following a nine year gap, a second volume appeared, reprising the appearances of Gregory, McKenzie and Turner, and introducing the likes of Green Gartside (Scritti Politti), Mavis Staples and Lalah Hathaway to the team, the latter providing them with a welcome hit single.
Family Affair/B.E.F. feat. Lalah Hathaway (MoQaD V2)
You would think that would have been that, not least as Marsh formally quit working with Ware in 2006, surely signifying the end of both H17 and B.E.F.. However, both projects continued, but given Heaven 17 were also using additional vocalists, notably Billie Godfrey, and performing cover versions, it would sometimes now become difficult to see where one project began and the other ended. This schizophrenia expanded further as a third B.E.F. project slipped out, Volume Three (aka Dark), in 2013, with the likes of Boy George and Kim Wilde entering the fray, each long after their 80s heydays. In 2016 the two projects even toured together, an array of guests plumping out the B.E.F. catalogue ahead of an array of guests plumping out the H17 catalogue. Confused? Here's their website to explain it all again.
God Only Knows/B.E.F. feat. Shingai Soniwa (MoQaD V3)
As of 2020, lockdown has significantly hampered their 40 years anniversary tour, although dates are rescheduled for late in the year, all things equal. I am planning to catch Ware and Gregory as whomsoever/whatsoever they are in December, hoping for some B.E.F. to slip into a nominally H17 celebration.
Maybe we have had enough of the rain. Maybe some of the news pundits are right about how the main stream media tried to make the most of the Carib weather - to the extent that it has surpassed overload and caused unnecessary fears. And maybe J David is right that we have exceeded the "Can't" threshold when we could have been looking at other aspects of the Incompetence/Can't theme.
If you are a regular here, you likely know I have an enduring affinity for the slide guitar, as embodied in such impresarios as Mr Ry Cooder, Ms Bonnie Raitt, Mr Duane Allman and Mr Lowell George. (There are others, but these are among my main staples)
As JDavid pointed out, there are various avenues one can pursue from a theme of Can't - primarily personal incompetence. I don't think that <I Cant Stand the Rain> falls into this category - the weather is beyond our control, and most likely the lyrics transcend the weather, rather, here, a metaphor for other aspects of the singer's life. You know ... rain is wet and sad and brings you down, especially if you get caught out in it unprepared like...
In my ignorance, I had assumed that this was a Little Feat original. No small amount of their output was original. However, not this.
The song is credited to someone I had never heard of before: a certain Ann Peebles. And while I was only aware of the Little Feat version, there are all sorts of others who have done theirs and you can find many of them at YouTube.
purchase [Lulu] [Un] fortuitously, this comes more or less upon Roger Moore's demise. I had already started in on this topic when I read the news this week about his passing. More than once, the James Bond series has shown its affinity for gold: the word appears in more than one film title: Goldfinger, GoldenEye, The Man with a Golden Gun. And the metal itself appears even more often - you know, the root of all evil. Ask yourself: Why does one rock dug out of the ground have such value? Go figure. Gold ... Silver... Diamonds and more. The James Bond film series is a serious production process - not least the selection of its music - both throughout each film, but more emphatically, in the film's intro section. Over the years, the honor of singing the films' intro music has fallen to the top of the pop: Paul McCartney, Louis Armstrong, Nancy Sinatra, Carly Simon, Rita Coolridge, Tina Turner ... the list goes on and on. Kind of like how the list of Bond films that include <gold> goes on and on. The Bond <gold> selection I highlight spans a number of musical genres, but there seems to be an over-arching theme to them all: lots of [studio] production. I don't mean to necessarily place this in a bad sense. In fact, the Bond music over-production is appropriate, but it's obvious. That's probably a given for anything Bond - the whole operation is tightly managed - and that's part of what makes the series classic. Herewith, 3 golden Bond theme songs:
Most of us would prefer to learn things the easy way, but life often doesn’t cooperate. As Tina Turner, a clear influence on Sharon Jones, memorably said in “Proud Mary,”
You see we never ever do nothing Nice and easy
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, in our featured song, recognize that sometimes you end up learning important things the hard way.
Jones and her band play music that is characterized as funk, or soul, or R&B, in a retro style that would not be out of place in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and they do it quite well. And “I Learned The Hard Way,” is a story as old as stories, about a woman learning about the hidden infidelity of her man. Some reviewers appreciate their talents and uncanny ability to evoke the sound of that era, while some others criticize them for supposedly lacking new ideas. But it is impossible to listen to their music without acknowledging its quality, the tightness of the band, and most of all, the powerhouse that is Sharon Jones.
Jones’ story is pretty well-known—Born in North Augusta, South Carolina to a mother who was acquainted with James Brown (who Jones would later be compared to because of the energy and power of her live shows), her family moved to Brooklyn when Sharon was a child. Jones, like my parents twenty years before, graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School, and like my father, attended Brooklyn College. A gospel singer from an early age, Jones performed and recorded secular music in the 1970s, with limited success, sang in wedding bands and worked as a Rikers Island corrections guard and armored car guard for Wells Fargo. Jones learned the hard way that major labels were not interested in her, not because of her singing, but because she was, as one executive reportedly informed her, "too fat, too black, too short and too old."
But she pressed on, and in 1996, she sang at a session for Lee Fields, run by Gabriel Roth and Phillip Lehman, who after recording Jones’ background vocals, recorded a couple of songs with Jones singing lead. These songs were later released on an album credited to the Soul Providers, members of which would ultimately comprise the Dap-Kings. Roth and Lehman went on to create Desco Records, which recorded and released more of Jones’ work, before the label shut, and its principals split. Roth then formed Daptone Records with musician Neal Sugarman.
At Daptone, Jones and the newly formed Dap-Kings, released two well-received albums, before her commercial breakthrough, the 2007 album 100 Days, 100 Nights, and its title track. I Learned The Hard Way, another critical and commercial success, followed in 2010 (in the interim, she worked with Lou Reed, David Byrne, Phish and Michael Bublé).
But then, just as the late-bloomer was at the peak of her career, and with a new album essentially ready to be released, in 2013, Jones was diagnosed with first bile duct cancer and then pancreatic cancer. Jones underwent surgery and chemotherapy, resulting in the usual sickness and hair loss.
During this time, legendary documentarian Barbara Kopple filmed a documentary about Jones and her fight against cancer, Miss Sharon Jones!, which premiered at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival. My wife and I had a chance to see the film this summer as part of a music documentary series at the Jacob Burns Film Center, and it is really incredible (and we got to hear a Q&A with Koppel). Not only is Jones’ story amazing, and her strength and courage remarkable, the film addresses issues like the effect on the Dap-Kings, who were losing their main source of income while Jones fought her cancer. There’s a great scene where Roth recounts his difficulty in getting a mortgage because of the publicity about Jones not performing, and other members of the band discuss the effects on them. Included in the film are scenes that show Jones, at her peak, showing her dynamic stage presence, along with more somber scenes filmed during her treatment and recovery. The movie ends in triumph, with the new album, Give The People What They Want, released, and Jones, weak, but unwilling to concede much to her limitations, performing at New York’s Beacon Theater before a packed house of ecstatic fans.
The soundtrack to the film is filled with older songs, but there is a great autobiographical new song, “I’m Still Here,” which I have posted at the end of this piece, because if you listen to it, you really didn’t need to read most of what I wrote:
Unfortunately, though, that isn’t the end of the story. Jones learned, presumably the hard way, that her cancer has returned, and she is again undergoing chemotherapy, while continuing to perform and record as best as she can. She remains undaunted, saying, "I have this saying: I have cancer; cancer don't have me. I'm gonna keep on going. I'm gonna take this medicine, and it'll be alright."
We were excited to see Jones and the band at the 2013 Clearwater Festival, but the appearance was cancelled due to her illness, and for some reason, we passed on seeing them at the Tarrytown Music Hall in late 2015. I do hope that her health improves, and that I someday get a chance to experience her live show, not only because it would be a great experience, but because it would mean that Jones, once again, triumphed over her cancer.
As a middle-school youngster, I used to listen to Harry
Chapin’s Greatest Stories Live like
an addict—sometimes multiple times per day. The second track, “W.O.L.D.,” was
never my favorite on the album, but that didn’t stop me from memorizing every
word of it by heart. Regardless, fellow poster Retropath has already
contributed more commentary about the song that I would have, so I’ll move on
to another radio tribute.
“Midnight Radio” is a song from the rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, written by
Stephen Trask. The version above was first covered by pop-folk artist Dar
Williams a decade after Hedwig’s
premiere as the penultimate track on her 2008 album Promised Land. It’s a moving song of reminiscence for those who
have sentimental emotional memories of feeling connected with the world in a
new way because of the radio (which, it would seem, applies to most people who
read and write about music).
The lyrics illustrate the narrator becoming a star
vicariously through the strong female voices on the radio: “Here’s to Patti /
and Tina / and Yoko / Aretha / and Nona / and Nico / and me.”
Herbie Hancock and Tina Turner: Edith and the Kingpin
Herbie Hancock and Melody Gardot: Edith and the Kingpin
Herbie Hancock and Elvis Costello: Edith and the Kingpin
[purchase]
I don‘t know why it took me so long to settle on something to post for this theme. I landed on one of my favorite songs in the world, so it shouldn‘t have been so hard. Long time readers of Star Maker Machine are aware of my love of the music of Joni Mitchell. It‘s hard to consider anything on her own albums an unusual collaboration, because Mitchell was always a restless artist, always changing her sound, always searching, and that meant that the make-ups of her bands were always changing as well. But tributes to her have certainly resulted in some odd pairings. In 2007, Herbie Hancock released his tribute, River: The Joni Letters. This one surely had Mitchell‘s blessing, considering that she sings The Tea Leaf Prophecy on it. But elsewhere, Hancock worked with some surprising partners indeed. Tina Turner strikes me as one of the most unusual, but the result sounds like they have worked together for years.
To back up for just a moment, Herbie Hancock is one of the biggest names in jazz today. His career began in the 1960s, with fairly straight ahead accoustic jazz albums, although very fine ones. He soon caught the attention of Miles Davis, and was with Davis for the birth of fusion jazz on the Bitches Brew album. Hancock then went on to make some of the best music fusion jazz had to offer with his Headhunters band. Later, Hancock collaborated with Bill Laswell on the hit Rockit. So it’s safe to say that Hancock is also a musical explorer, which may be what drew him to Joni Mitchell’s music in the first place.
Meanwhile, I can’t say that I ever followed Tina Turner’s career at all closely, but this is the woman who went from the R&B powerhouse performance of Proud Mary to the much mellower Private Dancer, (the result, by the way, of another interesting collaboration, with producer Mark Knopfler). Nothing there suggests that Turner would be a good jazz singer, but she nails Edith and the Kingpin.
I needed a video for this post, and unfortunately, that meant using the one above, where you stare at the album cover while the song plays. I did find a fan-made slide show, but I thought the choice of images showed a complete cluelessness about the meaning of the song. But looking for the video led me to the two live versions I have also included. Hancock was able to get the singers he wanted for the River album, but they were not necessarily available when he went out on tour in support of the album. That is what must have led to the version with Melody Gardot. Gardot is a young jazz singer who has already made quite a splash, three albums into her career. She is influenced to some extent by country, folk, and blues. Her performance with Hancock here uses the same arrangement as the album version, but the results are quite different. Where Turner is rueful and knowing in her performance, the younger Gardot is sassy and maybe a bit defiant. Gardot also is a bit freer with her timing, and that loosens up the band somewhat as well. The version with Elvis Costello (!), comes from a show called Spectacle that Costello hosted on the Sundance Channel. Costello had recorded his own version of Edith and the Kingpin for a multi-artist compilation called A Tribute to Joni Mitchell earlier in 2007. This version slowed the song down, and featured a lush arrangement that featured Costello in his crooner mode. But the version here is a stripped down arrangement that restores the songs original tempo, and leaves Costello less room to hide as a singer. I am afraid that Costello shows here why he is not a jazz singer. His performance is somewhat stiff, and he has trouble when he tries to bend some of the notes. But this version does have heart, and it shows that Costello gets the song.
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