Walls/Obstructions: The Walls Came Down

The Call: The Walls Came Down
[purchase] 

If we were playing a game where I asked you to guess what band I was talking about, and the clues were: This band released their first album in the early 1980s. They wrote powerful rock anthems, with meaningful lyrics, sometimes with Christian themes, and performed them passionately and well, you very well might think I was talking about U2, which went on to become one of the biggest, most successful bands of all time. But of course, you saw the picture and read the title, so you know that I am talking about The Call, which, despite some success, did not go on to become one of the biggest, most successful bands of all time. 

OK, were they as good as U2? Not in my mind. But were they better than a lot of their contemporaries who went on to more fame and fortune? Definitely. 

The Call was formed in 1980 in Santa Cruz, and the leader and lead singer was Michael Been, who was born in Oklahoma, but moved to Chicago after high school. A performer from an early age, Been entered the Illinois state comedy competition (who knew that was a thing), coming in second, ahead of his friend John Belushi. 

After attending the University of Illinois in Chicago and playing in local bands, Been moved to the Los Angeles area in 1972, played in some bands, was a session musician, including on some Christian music albums, before relocating to Santa Cruz and, eventually forming The Call. Their first, self-titled, album was on a major label, was produced by Hugh Padgham, and had the Band’s Garth Hudson on a few tracks. I remember liking it a lot, and playing some tracks from it on WPRB. I wasn’t the only one. Peter Gabriel referred to the band as “the future of American music,” and recruited them to open for him. Gabriel later played on The Call’s third album, as did Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr and Robbie Robertson, and Bono appeared on their 1990 album Red Moon, as did T-Bone Burnett. Martin Scorsese cast Been in The Last Temptation of Christ, as the apostle John. Despite this appreciation, their success was limited and fleeting. 

The second album, Modern Romans, was released after I graduated from college, but I listened to it often, and loved our featured song, “The Walls Came Down.” A stridently anti-war song, it was inspired when Been saw the idealism of the '60s give way to more materialistic and militaristic mindsets of the Reagan years, including the Grenada and Lebanon conflicts. It uses the biblical imagery of Jericho’s walls coming down (without ever mentioning Jericho), and ends, though with the modern sentiment: 

I don't think there are any Russians
And there ain't no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin' with tanks 

The band broke up after releasing Red Moon in 1990, and put out a reunion album in 1997, but that was it. Been played as a sideman for others, including Harry Dean Stanton, but for years acted as a sound engineer for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, which featured his son, singer and bassist Robert Levon Been. (I haven’t been able to determine whether he was named in honor of two members of The Band, but it certainly makes sense). Been died of a heart attack in 2010, backstage at a music festival in Belgium, where BRMC was appearing. 

So, why did The Call not reach even half of U2’s fame? Were they too strident and angry? Was front man Been’s lack of classical good looks part of the issue? Read some of the tributes to Been and The Call here, and you get a sense that they were one of those bands that should have been bigger, but just never got there, and no one can really explain why.

WALLS/OBSTRUCTIONS: BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS OF HEARTACHE

I actually remember this song as being a banger from the minute I first heard it. It's true, quite when that minute was I don't recall, but it must have been sometime in 1968, that being when it was a one-hit wonder in the UK charts. Or possibly in 1975, when it was re-released, but I like to think it the former. I even remember who it was by, the name Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon indelibly inked on my consciousness. And no, it wasn't that Johnny Johnson, it was another one, whose real name was actually Johnny Mathis. And no, not that one either.

So what was the 11 year old me doing, grooving to Northern Soul? Well, I wasn't, no sir, I didn't even know what that was then. And I dare say a few readers may not now. No relation to Southern Soul either, not really. In 1968 I didn't even like soul music full stop, at least not the sort on Top of the Pops, which tended all to be Tamla Motown-ers, twirling and crooning in identical suits, with lots of crimplene and carefully asynchronised dancing. But I liked a good tune, with a good beat, this having both.

Some bio. Johnny Johnson/Mathis was a Floridian, raised in New York State. With three of his chums, BDtWoH was their first record, and it was a bigger hit over here than in his home, a creditable number four. Before long he and the Bandwagon had upped sticks and relocated, coming under the wing of the McCauley-Cook-Greenaway team, responsible for so many UK pop hits of that era.I say he and the Bandwagon, but the original Bandwagon stayed put, Johnson calling whomsoever present for shows and recordings as the Bandwagon, or even his Bandwagon. I also learn he/they weren't a one hit wonder, having a fair few lesser hits, lurching on for some time.

Meanwhile, in Wigan, and surrounding towns in the north west of England, a strange dance floor phenomenon was kicking off. I read about it in the music press, bemused by tales of all-night dances, boys in very baggy pants, shirtless and sweaty, performing extravagant dance routines from the minute they left work and until they returned back to work in the morning. Or so it seemed. This was Northern Soul, with playlists culled largely from obscure records of a decade before. The tendency was for a heavy backbeat and a fast tempo. Again, not quite my cup of tea then, although I see some greater appeal now, in my dotage. BDtWoH hit that bill just fine, and it's time came around again. Rather than this becoming a treatise, and rather than my awkwardly trying to explain the appeal of a movement I didn't understand, and movements I certainly couldn't do, here's a good song by Clive Gregson (with Christine Collister), describing and entitled Northern Soul. Gregson, the erstwhile singer and leader of band, Any Trouble, featured here, grew up in that neck of the woods, aware first hand of the subculture.

But, and there's always a but, the curtain didn't come down on the song then, it earning a well deserved pirates of encores in the 80s, first of all by SMM faves, Dexys Midnight Runners, themselves often and mistakenly labelled as one hit wonders as well. Actually, they had a slew of British his, both at 45 and 33rpm. And what better to put on the b side of their debut single than this song. Full of cheesy organ, brassy parps and strangled vocals, it is a corker. As an added bonus, feel free to grab a slice of this, from a solo covers album Dexys frontman Kevin Rowland, put out between iterations of the band. Concrete and clay being common staples of wall building.

Finally, from a similar time, ex-Motor Bram Tchaikovsky put out a somewhat power pop version with his eponymous band. If it starts a little anodyne, it is purely preparing you for the glorious chorus.

Bandwagon, Dexy's, Bram.

Walls/Obstructions: Crown of Creation

 

purchase [Crown of Creation]

Digging around for a possible alternative using the obstruction co-theme, what to my surprise but ... the Airplane again. Actually, it shouldn't be much of a surprise: For the most part, much of the 60's music scene was a process of breaching  the walls of "the establishment", and that establishment being an obstruction to peace, love and understanding. 60's music was a veritable cabal of mop-heads and irreverent protesters determined to undermine through music, to exhort the pop music masses to follow the evil ways of rock and roll.  Near the forefront of this rebellious movement was Jefferson Airplane. They were not alone: certainly CSNY, SDS, the Black Panthers .... heck MLJ ... but the Airplane certainly pushed the limits with their cry to Break Down the Walls... 

The song Crown of Creation is pre-Volunteers, the album/song of <break down the walls>), but the energy is clearly building even as early as  the Airplane's first "JA Takes Off". Jeff Tamarkin's "Got A Revolution" is an entertaining and informative history of JA if you want to dig deeper.

Written by Kantner, the lyrics are inspired by and their use officially approved by John Wyndham is his book The Chrysalids, a 50s sci-fi novel about a post-apocalyptic civilization that survives after the destruction of a sinning technologically advanced culture. Although this came out a year or so before Volunteers, the not-so veiled messages that society is out of tune with reality is present.

Z-Man's review remarks at Allmusic note that Crown is "unnerving ... a portentous forwarning of what mankind's enmity could someday provoke" while rating the song a B+ (Triad and The House at Pooneil Corners from said album get A's). Tamarkin says "The song pulsates with a martial rhythm ... the agitated energy reflects its time .."

The qualifying lyrics: "... they cannot tolerate our minds ... we cannot tolerate their obstruction"

Coincidentally, as happened in my last post, there is also a band of the same name, this time from Germany.

Walls/Obstructions: If Walls Could Talk

 

purchase [ Paradise and Lunch  ]

I find myself pre-disposed to prefer the Ry Cooder version of this because that's where I first heard it (and the version I, myself, play in open-D tuning). And because I have posted again and again and again and ... songs by Ry Cooder. My first SMM guest post as a possible SMM writer included a reference to Ry.

Ry Cooder fully credits Bobby Miller (of course he would) on his '74 album Paradise and Lunch, but I never dug deeper into the story of the song. Now that I have, I see that there was much that I missed. I knew that Ry regularly focuses on music that is at the roots of contemporary pop/rock. But without that exploration, I have been missing some great music.

Miller, known as a producer and songwriter, doesn't appear to have left a recording of himself performing the song. Me, I find it hard to imagine that a songwriter didn't also play the song in some version himself, but we'll have to rely on the version he first produced for/with Little Milton back in the '60s. I assume it was what he himself might have played - if in fact he played an instrument. I can also see what might have attracted Ry Cooder to come up with his own rendition. "It's the same old song .." but with a different beat. The original Little Milton version was released on the Checker label, a subsidiary of Chess records.

The notion behind the lyrics is certainly not new. What goes on behind closed doors that the walls could tell us about if only they could speak is a theme as old as ... well... the hills that could also tell a lot of stories. There's a peepin' tom side to it as well as an element of eternal truth about the human condition.

Geraint Watkins and the Dominators have a version

as does Koko Taylor

Here's a version by Dr Feelgood

And another from Duke Robillard that harkens back kind of to the original by Little Milton (at least in the strumming intro)

Oh, yes, and there's also a band of the same name

WALLS/OBSTRUCTIONS: HONKY TONK/SON VOLT

 Hang on, what the bejasus has this to do with walls, I hear you say, the perfectly decent back to Bakersfield project by Jay Farrar and his revolving door of troubadours? More about building bridges, surely, between the goddam longhair americana hippies and the more trad what Hank did iterations of a redder necked country. Yebbut, but go check out the track listing, with at least three tracks referencing walls and barriers. See? That's good enough for me.

Big fan of Son Volt, as much as for Jay Farrar being there to assist at the birth of No Depression/Alt Country and all the many myriad names to try and disguise the solid bloodline of, or the musical origins and forbears of the style. Country rock was good enough for me in the 70s, but I guess that name suggests the need and presence of a drum kit, so fair play. Farrar and his for-a-while buddy, Jeff Tweedy had been the impetus within the band Uncle Tupelo, a honey of a group that, ahead of clashes of personality, produced some glorious music. Did they do any songs around walls or obstructions? Not as such, but this one acknowledges the truth that most doors have a need for surrounding masonry.....

Screen Door

Anyhow, moving on, and with Farrar moving out of Tweedyshot, and with Uncle Tupelo essentially having become Wilco, Farrar needed gainful. Son Volt began as a band in 1994, Farrar hooking back up again with Tupelo original member and drummer, Mike Heidhorn, himself also having, some time before, fallen out of step with Tweedy, recruiting the Boquist brothers. Hitting the red dirt ground running, their debut, Traces, was well received if not so well bought. That line up, plus additional instrumentation, produced three albums before Farrar called quits; as the principal writer, it was effectively his band. A wall link? Well, I believe that creosote is sometimes applied as weather proofing to wooden walls?

Creosote

Five years later and Farrar seemed ready to pick up the brand again, initially with the same members. However, following a solitary appearance on an Alejandro Escovado benefit/tribute album, this was not to be, and a near totally new set of sidemen were recruited. This version, shedding and adding as required, have since pursued a somewhat erratic course, careering from style to style. You want some Dylanesque ballads? Tick. Barroom brawlers? Likewise. But, for me it was and is Honky Tonk that hits their lodestone. Perhaps this is because that is the style of music I like best within the broad church of country, with, here, the sounds and influences of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens spilling through into this recording with affection and respect. Predominantly acoustic of guitar, bar the essential wail of pedal steel, with twin fiddles and the never more mournful vocal of Farrar, this format ideal for his world weary tones And, add the premium of three songs based around walls, there is nothing to obstruct the right of this album to lead this thread.

Brick Walls

Seawalls

Barricades

Beautiful stuff! OK, the lyrics may be a little hokey, but, hell, that's the M.O., they have to be; an effortless recreation of the fabled Bakersfield sound, that must even had Dwight Yoakam eating out his own heart. The steel, variously by Mark Spencer and Brad Sarno, is just exquisite. Given Farrar has now embarked on a 25 years later revisioning of his Son Volt output, with last years re-released Traces, with additional unreleased material, I can't wait for, gulp, 2038.

Build it up!