Leftovers: Break/Broken: Bad Liver and a Broken Heart

 

purchase [Small Change]

SMM has done a fair number of posts of Tom Waits' songs, but to the best of my search-ability, never this one. From the Small Change album, this is classic Waits: sung (if you can call it that) in the rapsy voice with his own piano accompaniment. 

Small Change, in my opinion is by far the best of his albums. Just about every track is a winner and SMM has done something about many of them over the years. But never this one - if my searching is right. One online source defined Waits' songs as singing about the "underbelly of society". Love it! The song titles from Small Change are all about the people you see on the street and then cross over to the other side to avoid.

Some folks point to Dylan as a poet. For Waits, the better definition of his word choice is "lyrical poetry". I would agree: Waits' lyrical genius involves the use of known phrases and others that are politically incorrect to the Nth degree: Tom Traubert's Blues/Waltzing Mathilda with its clear uses of the original mixed with Waits' ? perversions? of the lyrics. He says/sings something and you hear something else - he splits the syllabication so that at first you hear one thing and then it resolves to something surprisingly else

Waits's lyrics are  often irreverent -or politically incorrect : "the owner is a mental midget", but WTF - that is how he communicates his message

Small Change includes from SMM

I Cant Wait to Get Off Work

http://www.mediafire.com/file/oy8qw74r8mj9prq/Tom_Traubert%27s_Blues_Tom_Waits.mp3

Step Right Up

https://sixsongs.blogspot.com/2017/07/right-tom-waits-step-right-up.html

The One That Got Away

https://sixsongs.blogspot.com/2012/02/spoken-word-one-that-got-away.html

The Piano Has Been Drinking

https://sixsongs.blogspot.com/2011/07/tom-waits-covers-piano-has-been.html

and also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKK2OykL9hg

Break/Broken: Broken Hearts and Auto Parts

Kevn Kinney: Broken Hearts and Auto Parts
[purchase] 

Somehow, I almost completely missed Drivin’ N Cryin’, a band that emerged from Atlanta in the mid-1980s. Probably because they started after my college radio days, and because I don’t think they got much airplay in the northeast. But at some point, I heard the song, “Broken Hearts and Auto Parts,” by Kevn Kinney, who was the lead singer of the band, and I really liked it. (Which led me to investigate some of their music). 

It’s a profoundly sad song, and the title is explained by the very first line: “Ain't been the best year so far...I lost my girl, I lost my car.” And the song continues with a litany of loss and sadness, leading to a remarkable catchy chorus, despite its wistfulness: 

It's been broken hearts and auto parts and everything between.
I was on the move and in a suit, and on the silver screen.
Where I could hide for days, and live inside my dreams.
It's been broken hearts and auto parts this year.

Drivin’ N Cryin’ put out music through the nineties before taking a break, reforming in the late 2000s and releasing an album in 2009 and a series of EPs in 2012-2013. At that point, guitarist Sadler Vaden joined the band for a spell, before leaving to join Jason Isbell’s band, the 400 Unit, and a new album was released in 2019. Kinney’s solo career also continued through the 90s and 2000s, and his most recent release, with a version of Golden Palominos, A Good Country Mile, featured a cover of Isbell’s “Never Gonna Change,” (which was mentioned in a piece I wrote about Golden Palominos a few years back). 

As most of you who’ve read my work know, I’m a big fan of Isbell’s (and if you didn’t know it, the number of references to him in this piece about a Kevn Kinney song should clue you in a little). Back when the Georgia Senate races were the big political news, Isbell promised on Twitter that he’d do an album of covers of songs by Georgia artists if both Ossof and Warnock won. They did, and Isbell and his band, and a number of guests, actually made good on their Twitter promise (unlike the many people who have promised to leave the US if one or the other candidate won the presidency), recently releasing Georgia Blue. One of the tracks on the album is Drivin’ N Cryin’s “Honeysuckle Blue,” sung on the album by Vaden (who was not in the band when that song was released). And I was lucky enough to see him sing it the other night during a great set by Isbell and the 400 Unit: 

It will be interesting to see if the inclusion of “Honeysuckle Blue” on Georgia Blue leads to a revival of interest in Drivin’ N Cryin’ and Kinney, who have flown somewhat under the radar (although they are members of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame). 

FWIW, Isbell has promised to do an album of Texas covers if Beto O’Rourke wins the governorship. Which is another reason to hope that happens.

BREAK/BROKEN: BREAKDOWN

Hmmm, possibly straying to close to the bone with this one, given I am currently "unwell" and away from work. Let's just say the NHS is a tough frontline to be patrolling at present, as we balance the (I wish!) post-plague demand with the ongoing per-plague issues, with much less than pre-plague resources or manpower. I'm OK, no walls hit, being able to recognise the signs and to get the help, but it set me thinking about how popular music tackles this phenomenon. Sure, I need to call it stress and burn-out, but it is, is it not, as much a cipher as was/is nervous breakdown. (And I'm sorta guessing, that the myriad breakdowns in bluegrass are probably a whole different kettle, if a shame, as there are so many good ones.....)

19th Nervous Breakdown/Rolling Stones

Clearly the template was the Stones. Far from number 19 myself, it is a cracking little number, prescient and surprisingly forthright for its day, when Jagger was singing about more than just chicks and whips. Indeed, it was, almost, a subject they stuck with for a while, but I'm eschewing the mother's little helpers for now. But that's enough about me. Where else can we find psych advice?

Breakdown/Grace Jones

I am uncertain if, in the the original Tom Petty version, this was a song that fits this concept/conceit, with the lyric sounding an almost passive aggressive exhortation to a possibly soon to be ex, but I so much like the idea of Grace Jones imparting wellbeing advice. I think she might, too. So, that being sufficient, Dr Jones is yer girl. Mind you, she has form in this arena. And her remedy, is it not, actually half the battle. 

Breakdown/Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

Kris Kristofferson strikes me as a fella who knows a demon when he sees one, and he certainly captures the sense of oft accompanying melancholia that can sit alongside anxiousness, shame and guilt. He wrote the above song, arguably better known in the version by the Everly Brothers, but I like this one, the poignant pairing of vocals as evocative as the siblings, maybe, courtesy Oldham/Billy, that little bit more. 

Breakdown/Jack Johnson

I think this is probably allegorical, a characteristically bouncy song from the onetime surf dude. I think he is better than he usually gets credit for, and if he can't say stop, I want to get off, well, who can? It is an insightful lyric, actually, and one that heightens my opinion of him all the more. For perspective, however, i offer the below, a truly ludicrous song that has my tongue as far in my cheek as it goes. If I were ever to worry, ol' Eddie has me convinced I ain't. Which makes this indulgence totally therapeutic, don't it?

Nervous Breakdown/Eddie Cochran

So much better am I now feeling, care of the healing power of rock and roll, here is something that also popped up, something I have on an odd compilation, Beginners Guide to Asian Lounge, which is actually pretty good. The mix of instrumentation and internal rhythms are quite a good representation of the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that congress when the candle has burnt too hard. Unless I am just hearing that as I need, but, either which way, all things being equal, normal service to be returned sooner or later

Emotional Breakdown/Mo Magic

(You liked the Earl Scruggs at the beginning too, did you?)

Break/Broken: Convoy

 

purchase [  The Best of CW McCall ]

I would not have thought so, but apparently trucker CB radio is still a thing - even in this day of digital phones that do the same and more than Citizens Band radio. One source of internet information claims that CB use is fading. Another says that 90% of professional drivers call it a critical tool with about 6 million CB radios still in use in the US.

CB culture of the 1970s developed its own language, including the classic <Break> or sometimes <Breaker>: the code to interrupt all other comms on a channel and insert one's own message atop all others. A number of songs and movies dealt with the American fascination with trucker issues, many related to protests over the 55 MPH speed limit imposed to deal with rising oil prices during the 1973 energy crisis.

We got Smokey and the Bandit (Burt Reynolds), Steel Cowboy (James Brolin) and Over the Top (Sylvester Stallone). We got On the Road Again (Willie Nelson), Truck Driving Man (Buck Owen) and CW McCall's 1975 top of the charts hit Convoy:

The song starts, appropriately for our purposes with "breaker one-nine" and is peppered throughout with trucker-speak that might send you searching for a translation tool. The video here is scenes from the film of the same name based on the story in the song. IMDB rates the film a 6.3/10 with the comment "... the shallowest of Sam Peckinpah's films, but by no means the worst." Wikipedia says it was the most commercially successful of his films. C.W. McCall wrote a new version with "saltier" lyrics specifically for the film. Other musicians in the film's soundtrack include a veritable who's who of country: Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers and Doc Watson. There's also various other - some politically incorrect - versions of the song