Of course, the musically knowledgeable readers of Star Maker Machine know who Paul Carrack is. But, on the off chance that you’ve stumbled across this blog and don’t think you know who Paul Carrack is, I bet that you do.
That great song by Ace, “How Long”? Sung by Carrack. “Tempted,” one of Squeeze’s most well-known songs? Carrack on lead vocals. Remember Mike + the Mechanics? Their songs “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” and “The Living Years,” among others? Paul Carrack is the singer. Did you like Roger Waters’ albums Radio Kaos and The Wall—Live in Berlin? Carrack sang lead on some of the tracks. And he’s released a bunch of solo albums.
In 2013, Record Collector magazine stated that “if vocal talent equalled financial success, Paul Carrack would be a bigger name than legends such as Phil Collins or Elton John.” Clearly, it doesn’t, and he isn’t.
Oh, Carrack also plays keyboards well enough to have been briefly in Squeeze, mostly to play, not sing, and also in Roxy Music (which was a surprise to me), and has backed Nick Lowe. He’s been a studio or touring musician for acts as diverse as Elton John, The Smiths and B.B. King, and has had songs recorded by artists as different as Diana Ross, The Eagles and Jools Holland. Check out his Wikipedia page for more details.
In 1981, after his stint in Squeeze, Carrack joined up with Nick Lowe, former (and future) Rumour guitarist Martin Belmont, bassist James Eller and drummer Bobby Irwin, to form Noise to Go, which, like how Rockpile backed both Lowe and Dave Edmunds, was created to back Carrack and Lowe on solo albums. The band also played on one album by Carlene Carter, Lowe’s then-wife (and June Carter’s daughter and Johnny Cash’s stepdaughter).
Carrack’s 1982 solo album, Suburban Voodoo, featured this group of musicians, and was produced by Lowe. It is a very good album, was a modest chart success and got fairly good reviews at the time. Most reviews of the album fail to mention “Lesson In Love,” which is a song that I’ve enjoyed since I first heard it back in the day (and it did hit the Billboard Rock Chart). It’s got a bouncy feel, great organ playing by Carrack, and features his clearly underrated blue-eyed soul vocals. “I Need You,” a soulful ballad from the album, was a minor hit, but I like our featured song better.
Noise to Go backed Lowe on 1982’s Nick The Knife, and after Eller departed, were renamed “Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit,” releasing two albums (and also backing John Hiatt on part of Riding With The King). After that, Carrack joined up with Roger Waters, then Mike + Mechanics, worked as a session musician and as part of a number of different collaborations (not all of which led to recorded music), with musicians from many genres, including King Crimson's Tony Levin, Timothy B. Schmidt and Don Felder of the Eagles, Ringo Starr, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Eric Clapton. And he even jumped back into Squeeze briefly.
Carrack periodically released solo albums, with occasional, limited, chart success, and the fact that in 2012 he was the subject of a BBC Four documentary called Paul Carrack: The Man with the Golden Voice, indicates that despite his relative anonymity to the general public, Carrack is respected by critics and his fellow musicians, across a wide spectrum of styles.
So, if you knew who Paul Carrack was, maybe you learned more about him. And if you didn’t think you knew who he was, did I win my bet that you actually did?
A few years back, we did an “Unusual Collaborations” theme, and had Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets been working together back then, it would have seemed to fit right in. But what is more surprising is that their collaboration actually has worked so well and so seamlessly.
Lowe, of course, has proven to be an incredible musical chameleon. He’s done pub rock, punk, new wave, power pop, country, roots music, standards, holiday music and more. He’s a songwriter, a producer, a singer, a leader, a sideman, and instrumentalist. Los Straitjackets, since their formation in the late 1980s, have been an instrumental band playing rockabilly influenced surf-rock. But beyond the quality of their music, what most people know about Los Straitjackets, if they know anything about Lost Straitjackets, is that they perform in Mexican wrestling masks. Why, you ask? Apparently, they wore them at their first gig, and the crowd loved it, so they just kept doing it.
A few years back, Lowe was performing shows focusing on his more country crooner songs, but after the death of drummer Bobby Irwin in 2015, he broke up that band. When Lowe wanted to tour behind his holiday album, his record company suggested label mates Los Straitjackets as a touring band. Eventually, Lowe insisted that the band play his songs as if they were their own, and he’d just fit in. This collaboration allowed Lowe to pull out some of his old rockers again for subsequent tours, and they have released a bunch of songs together. And in 2017, Los Straitjackets released an instrumental album of Lowe covers, entitled, What's So Funny About Peace, Love And Los Straitjackets.
I got to see them perform together last year at the great Tarrytown Music Hall, and it was a great show. The video above, of the whole show was taken by someone in the audience (not me), and you can see how it was structured—A set with Lowe leading the masked Los Straitjackets, a set with just the band, ending with a Lowe cover, and another set together. For the encore, the band returned first, playing tribute to their fellow masked man, Batman, before Lowe rejoined, and then a final encore of a solo Lowe covering his friend Elvis Costello.
John Hiatt is just terrific, one of the best, if not in sales, certainly in terms of influence and output, up there, in my book, with Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. When he's good, he's very, very good and when he's bad, well, I haven't encountered that yet. And Bring the Family, the album from which this song comes, is possibly one of his best, positively enhanced by the backing band on hand. Backing band? O, just Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner. And yet it was born out of near desperation, a banknote or so away from ruin. Alone in the Dark, the feature song of this piece, epitomises the tight but loose feel of the disc, and is often overlooked amongst some of the other goodies on board. The lyrics may reflect a differing loneliness and a differing dark from these dangerous days, but the mood sure fits.
Ahead of this time, Hiatt had been a slogging workaday singer-songwriter, starting his career as a pen for hire. When Three Dog Night hit the top 40 with one of his, a recording contract beckoned, although, over the ensuing seven discs, scattered across various labels, more money came from royalties recouped, as the likes of Roseanne Cash and Willie Nelson recorded his songs, than he made from his own originals. Even the mighty Geffen label tried and failed to break him. This was arguably not helped by Hiatt being a drunken cuss who hadn't endeared himself to label bosses. So, newly sober, with a bunch of songs he had lost faith in, straits were indeed dire. Luckily the maverick UK label Demon still believed in him, and could offer a threadbare budget to record them. (The story of Demon makes for interesting reading, established by the earlier team behind Stiff records, Radar and F-Beat.)
Bring the Family, released in 1987, is a joy, from start to finish, the four musicians laying down a lean muscle honed from their collective road and studio experiences, Hiatt's holler a celebrant to his limited range: who needs more notes when you can do this much with these? Plus the songs, ten gems that can crack open a smile just from memory. Even if you don't know them, you know them, and even if you do, even over know them from the myriad cover versions of many, the freshness and vitality of the originals stand head and shoulder over most of those. It is hard to believe the whole project took only four days, Lowe sharing a motel room with Hiatt to keep costs down, Cooder delaying his departure a few hours as the final song was hastily written.
Neither the schedules of the four musicians, nor, then, the budget could allow this line-up any time on the road. True, Hiatt rounded up some likely culprits, including perhaps the only man who could reasonably ever deputise for Cooder, bayou slide master, Sonny Landreth, and they hit the trail. Following in the slipstream of Bring the Family, this crew, the Goners, produced a second deal breaking LP for Hiatt, Slow Turning, only a whisker away from being as good as its predecessor, being merely excellent. Hiatt was on a roll, with these and his next seven records all making substantive waves in the Billboard chart.
But the dream team were not done. In 1992 the diaries of Hiatt, Lowe, Cooder and Keltner finally realigned, and they went back into the studio. This time a band, Little Village, also the name of the sole studio offering, having ditched the earlier, and better, working title of Hiatus, and this time a pooling of resources, rather than just a backing band for Hiatt. The songs were all co-writes between the four, and whilst Hiatt sings the majority, Lowe took lead on two, Cooder on one. Perhaps there was too much hope, but the lightning failed to strike twice, and it was a deeply disappointing set. Nick Lowe later said they were given too much time. The subsequent tour was a little better, live sets testifying to that, allowing a presentation of some Bring the Family favourites, as well as scattering of Cooder's solo repertoire. One could sense a simmer of "sibling" rivalry, maybe some resentment that Hiatt was drawing more focus over Cooder's own sense of entitlement. It all ended, apparently, in tears.
Hiatt remains on the road, as do his former compadres, occasionally sharing a bill with one or another, all now senior statesmen and rightly so. Hiatt's recent work is, in my opinion, still of top quality and can stand close to the height of this period. Give him a go.
It is the early to mid '70s, an awkward time for the awkward young men with a penchant for the music of the day and earlier. Probably a bit young for prog and still at school when the full hippie vibe was the freak flag of the day, earnest young men with spotty faces and serious record collections already under their belt. With developed tastes already embracing country, folk and other roots genres, they were a large and restless tribe, seeking a brand, seeking a label. No, I am not talking about the assault of punk rock; they were already just a tad too old and learned for that. And, anyway, we are ahead of ourselves, it being yet to ignite. I was there. I was (am) one of those boys wanting to be men. And pub rock was our saviour, whether we were old enough to go into pubs or not.
This is not the place for a discourse in this overlooked yet influential musical movement, beyond an understanding that it provided the loosening of the established masonry that punk would later pull down, if for however briefly. But, via Brinsley Schwarz, Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, Dr. Feelgood and many others, a melting pot of styles and influences were put into the mix, thrown up in the air and allowed to land, with a ramshackle 4/4 beat and a cheeky smile, short and tuneful songs to put you on your feet. Out of the movement came many of the now established names of current music, Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello being probably the best known, as well as the germination of what then did beget punk, Joe Strummer being a member of the 101ers ahead of forming the Clash. Resolutely tending to be avoidant and ambivalent of style or uniform, pub rockers were of all shapes and sizes, fashion often thrift shop, hair allowed to be long or short, styled or merely as nature intended, facial hair optional rather than a then spurned accessory. Proudly uncool, even. Eddie and the Hotrods fitted well that template. But, in front of the motley bunch of urchins on instrumental duties, they had a cataclysmic and archetypal angry young man in singer, Barrie Masters. They had been around for a while by the time of their break through, chugging out covers of 60's garage rock.
Do Anything You Wanna Do
I was too young to go into pubs, and whilst, yes, occasionally I did, these were not the London pubs that celebrated and created the movement. That came later. I had to rely on the inkies, the musical press, NME and Melody Maker, and the TV, Top of the Pops and Old Grey Whistle Test. And they provided me plenty. TOTP was the weekly chart show, Whistle Test more for the serious (and insomniac) polymath. I devoured both. I remember my first sight of the Hotrods, probably at home, half past seven on a thursday night. Crammed between dross like David Soul, I recall being so bloody excited. They were fast, they were passionate, they were exciting, making my head whirl. Instantly my favourite band, I bought not only the single, 'Do What You Wanna Do', but the album, 'Life on the Line', too. It being 1977, punk had begun, and whilst they certainly sounded punky, there was a touch more melodicism in the undercurrent of bass and the choppy rhythms. But they didn't look it, flared trousers may even have been involved, plus they had a singer called Barrie. Apart from Clive, there can be fewer less rock'n'roll names. And that, I guess, became the problem. A flourish of singles and they were gone, overtaken and subsumed by altogether rougher looking lads. Like the Damned and the Clash. The Sex Pistols, to all intents and purposes, had, by then, been and gone. (Although, for their infamous near debut, in February 1976 at the Marquee Club, guess who the Pistols were supporting? Yup, the Hotrods.) Because of all this and despite all this, for those brief moments and for that summer they were my favourite band.
Ignore Them
Of course, the band never went away. Sure, they broke up, reformed, broke up, reformed, Masters the only constant, and looked to be going on forever, the oldest teenager in town, and still looking good. (Well, quite good.) So it was a shock when, suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly, he died, probably a heart attack, aged 63. 2019 had been an eventful year, with a successful tour in support to similar 70s refugees, Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers, followed by a celebratory gig, drawing back a legion of ex-members to play a "Done Everything We Wanna Do" concert in April. Was this a warning that the show couldn't go on forever? I don't know, but should anyone even be surprised that it probably will, the residual members of the last band, continuing into this year, first performance tonight? Somehow the Hotrods, as they will be, won't be quite the same without Eddie. And completely different without Barrie.
I took some time off from this blog over the summer, so for the Leftovers theme I’m trying to hit some of what I missed--and this post covers three in one!
I have to believe that more food is eaten from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day than any other similar period during the year. At least in my family, this period is filled with big family meals, parties, dinners out, and many, many cookies, thanks mostly to my wife, the master baker. As someone who struggles with weight and diet and the related health issues that this has caused, it seemed appropriate to write about this song, a cautionary tale about overeating.
My introduction to the song came from its inclusion on the only studio album released under the Rockpile name, Seconds of Pleasure, despite the fact that the musicians (Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner, and Terry Williams) acted as the band for both Edmunds and Lowe on a number of solo releases. At the time of the album’s release, I remember being a little disappointed, despite the fact that there were a number of strong tracks, but as a fan of both Edmunds and Lowe, maybe I expected too much. I think that the critical opinion of the album has improved over the years, though.
What I didn’t realize until I started writing this was that “A Knife and Fork” is a cover—which is a little embarrassing for someone who sporadically contributes to a cover blog. It was originally written and performed by a mostly forgotten performer, Kip Anderson, back in 1967. The song was recorded at the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama (hey—that’s another theme that I missed), and was produced by Rick Hall. Check out the original version:
Look, I’m a big Dave Edmunds/Rockpile fan—ask my college roommates—and their cover of the song is good—I liked it then, and I like it now, although I was never a huge fan of when Edmunds’ voice sounds processed. But if you compare it to the more soulful, horn-filled original, the Rockpile version feels restrained. So, I have to say, the original is better. Because, in part, everything is better with a horn section.
Edmunds, to his credit, often covered obscure songs, giving them a new life—on Seconds of Pleasure, for example, in addition to giving Kip Anderson some royalties, he covered a lesser known Chuck Berry song.
Although I do expect to indulge during this festive period (and I already have), I hope that the situation isn’t as dire as the song portends.
Week 3 of cutlery, the title now revealing the true needs of our admin guy: he didn't want posts about the transmission of food from plate to mouth, he wanted gore, guts and gristle, spoons eviscerating eyes, forks tining tongues and knives, well, knives carving, cutting, stabbing, slashing. I think.
This hit the spot? Buoyed by my recent referencing them here, I thought it not unreasonable to again revisit cartoon punksters, the Damned. The featured song, to my mind epitomises the glory and spirit of punk, a noisy, rudimentary canter through a couple of chords, short and to the point, waxing lyrically, if not that melodiously, about anything other than the moon in June. And, in the case of the Damned, more with a broad grin and a swagger than the sneer and spit of the Sex Pistols. OK, maybe not the peak cut from their career, but unarguably a synopsis of their sound and modus operandi. Mudhoney certainly thought so.
The Damned were in the right place and at the right time, London, the mid 1970s, all the original members part of the evolving scene that smashed, if but briefly, the reign of the older rock pantheon. Dave Vanian, vocals, Captain Sensible, bass, and Rat Scabies, drums, had performed together, along with future Pretender in chief, Chrissie Hynde, in the subtly entitled 'Masters of the Back Side'. Sadly, or perhaps for the best, no recordings were ever made, let alone live gigs performed. Brian James, the guitarist, had been in 'London SS', another not quite ever making it band, again with other alumni later to make names for themselves elsewhere, as members of the Clash and Generation X. (This I can't resist, Brian James then, the only one with the name his mother called him, right? Wrong, real name Brian Robertson, engaging possible confusion with this fella. Or worse.)
New Rose
So, 'New Rose', October '76, their first single and, more momentously, THE first UK punk single, beating the Sex Pistols to it by a week or five, credit being due to the savvy chutzpah of their record label, 'Stiff', and the no-nonsense, get on with it approach of then house producer, Nick Lowe. The parent album, 'Damned Damned Damned', swiftly following, it too the first in the field, the band joining the Pistols of the infamous 'Anarchy' tour of more cancellations than performances. A 2nd album, 'Music For Pleasure', followed hot on it's heels, adding 2nd guitarist, Lu Edmonds, currently in John Lydon's PiL. This wasn't any huge success and the band disintegrated.
Three years they were back, minus James and Edmonds, Sensible switching to guitar, adding aussie ex-Saint, Algy Ward on bass. As punk begat new wave, so the tone mellowed slightly, with cover versions appearing perhaps a little more necessarily, James having largely written the first 2 albums.
White Rabbit
In fact, if anything, as Vanian's image became increasingly vampyresque, it was the Goths to whom they were leaning. This became more overt as they moved forward, shedding and acquiring new bassists and additional keyboards along the way. Sensible gained a sudden unexpected UK number 1 hit single, 'Happy Talk', maintaining dual band and solo careers for a while, until he elected to leave the group, in 1984. This actually gave the band a boost, whilst he never quite stood the trajectory he had found himself on.
Grimly Fiendish
This song is, I feel, very redolent of Syd Barrett, and clearly fits in with the band trying, and failing, for their 2nd LP, to engage him as producer. (Erstwhile Pink Floyd bandmate Nick Mason did it instead.) Meanwhile, despite a top 3 single and their version of Alone Again Or, the band again fell apart in 1987. A short lived version built around residual duo, Vanian and Scabies, lurched into gear in the mid '90s, before they too fell out with each other. Then there was one.
In 1997 Captain Sensible and Vanian decided to relaunch the b(r)and, Sensible moving up to guitar, spending the next decade with various accomplices and little success. However, in the flurry of interest around the 30th anniversary of Punk, enthusiasm was re-awakened, together with back to back touring, and suddenly, in 2008, they were everywhere. In 2015 a documentary, 'Don't You Wish we Were Dead', was made, with a small clip here. It is worth the whole watch, if you can find it.
Evil Spirits
So, here we are, 2019, and, again, it is anniversaries that are keeping the Damned extant. With a crowd-funded 2018 album,'Evil Spirits', produced by Tony Visconti, and a tour of 1979's 'Machine Gun Ettiquette' doing the rounds, it is, indeed, neat, neat, neat.
I’m sort of doctrinaire about the creeping expansion of holidays. I’ve accepted President’s Day in lieu of Lincoln and Washington’s Birthdays but reject the concept of “Presidents’ Month,” which seems to be the creation of car companies. Seeing Halloween candy in the stores in August is wrong. Christmas decorating and the like should start after Thanksgiving, and your decorations should be stored away not too long after New Year’s Day. And although I am happy to listen to holiday music in December, after the gifts are opened, it is basically time to move back to secular tunes.
But Un-Sainted Nicks is our holiday theme, so I’m going to ask you to disregard my guidelines, and listen to one more Christmas song, the amusing, original “Christmas At The Airport” by Nick Lowe.
If any musical Nick should be considered for sainthood, I’d suggest that Mr. Lowe could be the one. He’s already performed a number of miracles—writing “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” which has been magically transformed into an Elvis Costello song, producing, among other things, said Costello’s first five albums and Graham Parker’s first three, being part of Rockpile, whose best work was released without their name on the albums, and still became legendary, and having a late-career transmogrification into a pop crooner. And if that isn’t enough, his first, incredible, solo album was named Jesus of Cool. At least in England, originally.
“Christmas At The Airport” was inspired by Lowe’s experience, waiting in an airport in Geneva, nursing a hangover from a long night drinking with Mavis Staples’ staff and band—not the American treasure herself, as Lowe is quick to declare. He thought that a jaunty pop song about someone snowed into the airport at the holidays would be interesting. You can hear him discuss this story here.
The video for the song, above, is also a gift. It tells the story of an elf’s thwarted attempts to get to the North Pole in time for Christmas, and includes most of the typical indignities that air travelers must endure, including the forced removal of shoes, having your bags rifled through, and sitting on the floor to charge your phone, along with a few particular to magical creatures. But it ends with the promise of an airport romance. And a snowman being decapitated.
Although the animation styles (and studios) are different, the video reminded me of Bojack Horseman, which as you may know, Ilove. Not only does the video include humans with elves, snowmen, and what may or not be human/animal hybrids, the airport stores have amusing names that would not be out of place in Bojack’s Hollywoo, such as Snakes For Your Plane Petshop, or Downward Spinal Massage.
Aaah, synergy! Over at Cover Me, I have a piece about early Stiff Records artist Wreckless Eric, featuring covers of his most famous song, “Whole Wide World” (although maybe not so famous, because my wife claims never to have heard the song before reading my post). In the course of that article, I mentioned the “Live Stiffs” tour from 1977 which featured Wreckless Eric and other Stiff artists of the era. (I’ve written about the tour here, too.)
Originally, the plan was for all of the acts to rotate in the running order, but it soon became clear that the clear choice for ending the show was Ian Dury & the Blockheads, and the obvious choice for the encore would be their anthem, “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll,” which would include the other members of the tour.
The version that appeared on the Life Stiffs album was titled “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Chaos,” because, well, it pretty much devolves into chaos. The song begins with Dury introducing the performers while the band vamps, before he yells out “Cut out the fucking spitting,” presumably to the audience, but it might have been to his fellow musicians, I guess. He brings on a few more people, apparently calling for more cables, before saying, “OK, we’ll bring a few more out in a minute, we’re going to start the fucking thing.”
Dury starts singing the song, occasionally ceding lead vocals to others. At one point, he yells out “Nick Lowe, Nick Lowe,” presumably because the Basher came on stage, but another singer, maybe Wreckless Eric, echoes it, as if it was a call and response lyric. (Sort of reminds me of one of my favorite moments from Life of Brian). Dury then changes the lyrics to replace the phrase “cake of liberty” with “cake of Wreckless Eric,” before a wailing sax solo by Davey Payne. At which point, the song turns into a jam, with the singers basically chanting the title, before a big finish.
There were probably 4 drummers, a bunch of guitarists and singers, one sax player, and some keyboard and bass players, all packed on what is likely a small club stage. In a word, it was probably chaos. And probably an enormous amount of fun, except for the fucking spitting.
The song was, not surprisingly, popular, when I was at WPRB in the late 1970s-early 80s. One Saturday morning, my parents were driving down to Princeton to go to the football game, so I arranged to be on the air so that they could hear me. Being the cheeky lad that I was, I made sure that “S&D&R&R” was played, and I wished that all my listeners would partake in the titular items. My father never let me forget that.
Last week, I stretched our Hard theme as a way to discuss the founding of a new jazz club in my hometown. Today, I’m going to stretch it again to write about what I did last weekend—listening to great music outdoors at Clearwater’s Great Hudson Revival, or, as I think most people call it, the Clearwater Festival. Because not only is it hard to put on a two day, multi-stage outdoor music, environmental and progressive festival, it is actually pretty hard to attend—but well worth the effort.
I’ve written about Clearwaterexperiencesbefore, but I’ve never really focused on the whole experience. The event started in the mid-sixties, as Pete Seeger held fundraising concerts to raise money to build a boat, to highlight the need to clean up the Hudson River. The sloop Clearwater was launched in 1969, and began its educational mission, as part of a larger charitable organization.
In 1978, the first large-scale event was held at Croton Point Park, right on the river, and the “Great Hudson River Revival” name was coined.
Unfortunately, ten years later, pollution from the park’s landfill forced a move to a nearby, inland college campus. My wife and I went to the festival one year during this period, with our young children, and my two strongest memories are that the one musical act we wanted to see was Dar Williams, and that while we were at a playground with the kids, Pete Seeger appeared with his banjo and just started playing.
The festival returned to Croton Point in 1998, but soccer obligations and the fact that the festival is usually on Father’s Day, kept us from returning. In 2010 Steve Lurie began booking the festival, and started to bring in bigger names to perform. When the 2011 lineup was announced, including many favorites including the Drive-By Truckers, Martin Sexton, Indigo Girls, Josh Ritter, Suzanne Vega, Jorma Kaukonen, Billy Bragg, and Dar Williams, among many other great acts, we got the courage to tell my mother that we were not coming for the traditional Father’s Day family event, and instead went to the festival. We’ve gone every year since, except for last year, when they cancelled it to focus the organization's efforts on rebuilding the sloop.
I can only imagine how hard it is to get this event off the ground. Acts need to be booked to fill as many as eight stages, in genres ranging from the traditional folk that is at the root of the festival, to rock, dance and folk music from cultures around the world, story tellers, and other performers. There are lots of jugglers. The site needs to be set up, vendors engaged, employees and volunteers trained, and the various activist booths and environmental education booths that are a hallmark of the festival have to be set up and staffed. The organizers need to make sure that the attendees can get to and from the site, there’s a campsite that has to be organized, the performers need to be taken care of, and the sound systems have to deal with the vagaries of outside shows, including heat, rain and dust. There’s a huge group of “access” volunteers to make sure that people with mobility issues are able to enjoy the weekend, and, I think, an even larger group of “Peacekeepers” to make sure that the thousands of people all get along. Then, there is breakdown and clean up. And I’m sure I’m leaving something important out.
But, as I noted, it is also sort of hard to attend this, or I suspect, any outdoor festival (my experience in the torrential rain at the Newport Folk Festival is discussed here). First, you have to get there. Our first year, we drove the 10 miles from our house to the site, only to sit in horrible traffic. We started taking the train after that. You need to bring in chairs, a cooler with food and beer, blankets and other items. Then you have to load all of this onto a school bus not designed for large adults, unload it at the end, then schlep everything to the stages.
As I mentioned above, the festival now has eight stages, but we usually spend most of our time at two-the largest Rainbow Stage, and the second largest, Hudson Stage, which literally abuts the river. The Sloop Stage also often has good music. I’ve rarely, if ever, ventured to the Dance Stage, Story Grove or Family Stage, and skipped the new Workshop Stage this year (despite the fact that there was some good stuff there). Last year, I visited the Circle of Song to support my wife’s decision to join in the singing, but not this year. So, you are often forced to make hard choices as to which of the many simultaneously performing acts you will see. Sometimes we run between the stages catching partial sets.
Then, there is the weather. Usually, it is hot, and there isn’t much shade at the Rainbow Stage. That’s what we got on Sunday. Often it rains, sometimes torrentially, like two years ago, or steadily, like this year’s Saturday in the early afternoon. By Sunday evening, I’m usually beat, and my wife sometimes leaves earlier than me.
But it was well worth it. Here’s what I saw this year: On Saturday, we arrived early, got ourselves a nice spot at the Hudson Stage, then wandered around checking out the activist and vendor booths. At 11, we were back in our seats for a tribute to Pete and Toshi Seeger by mostly older folk and blues musicians, including David Amram, Tom Chapin, Guy Davis, Holly Near and Tom Paxton.
The great Nick Lowe was next, in the rain. (Note—all videos were taken from YouTube, and not by me)
Next up on the Hudson Stage was Joan Osborne, performing Bob Dylan songs, in advance of her soon to be released album of Dylan covers. During her version of “Tangled Up In Blue,” when she sang the line “Some are mathematician,” someone up the hill to my left, presumably a mathematician, gleefully cheered. No carpenter’s wives did the same.
After Osborne was done, we walked over to the Sloop Stage to catch a little of Guy Davis’s excellent folk/blues set.
But then it was time to see Toshi Reagon and Big Lovely, one of the true highlights of the weekend. Reagon, who is Seeger’s goddaughter, and named after Toshi Seeger, has performed at most, maybe all, of the festivals. She is the daughter of civil rights activists and former Freedom Singers Bernice Johnson Reagon (also a founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock) and Cordell Hull Reagon, and comes by her musical chops and political activism naturally. I can’t find a video of her from this year, but here’s one from 2012, also on the Hudson Stage, that gives an idea of how powerful a performer she is.
I got a nice picture of Joan Osborne watching the performance from backstage
Then came Los Lobos, who I have seen great, and I have seen not so great, and when they took the stage without singer/guitarist Cesar Rosas, I was worried. But they did a fun, rocking set.
The cool night ended with the hot sounds of Lake Street Dive, who are just an incredibly talented band. Great songwriting, strong musicianship and powerful, charismatic singing. It was an exhilarating way to end the long, wet day.
Then, back on the school bus, to the train, to Tarrytown and a well-deserved hot shower.
We were up again early on Sunday, packed our cooler, and decided to drive up, hoping that we wouldn’t get caught in traffic on the way up. We didn’t, and again schlepped our stuff onto the school bus which took us to the site. It looked to be a nice, hot day, but the forecast was calling for a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. We set up at the Rainbow Stage, walked around some more, until the music started at 11. Although I enjoy going to Clearwater to see musicians that I am familiar with, some of the fun is discovering someone new. Sunday, we started at the Hudson Stage to hear Jerrod “Blind Boy” Paxton, who is part African American, part Native American, of Cajun descent, and who is a practicing Jew (he has one Jewish grandmother, who he discussed during his set). Performing on piano, fiddle, banjo, guitar and harmonica (and the spoons), Paxton focuses on blues and jazz from the 1920s and 30s. I don’t have a video from his set, but here’s a video of part of a Black Banjo Music workshop he gave later in the day.
I stuck around for a 50th Anniversary tribute performance of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by Brother Joscephus and The Love Revolution, a New Orleans style band. It was great fun, all the songs were well-played, but they didn’t try to sound like The Beatles. My wife ran over to the Circle of Song to sing a little, but came back to see most of the set.
By this time, it was very hot, and the occasional clouds only briefly gave some respite, so we killed time in the shade until it was time for Tommy Emmanuel, who I only knew was supposed to be a great guitarist. Wow! His fingerpicking was unbelievably fast and it often sounded like two or three guitarists were playing. Here he is doing “Classical Gas:”
Then it was back to the Hudson Stage for one of my favorites, Alejandro Escovedo, who started out rocking hard, before doing a bunch of acoustic numbers, including “Five Hearts Breaking,” his tribute to late Austin musician Billy Smith:
As he was trying to decide what to end with, someone in the audience yelled out “Castanets,” which he decided to play, and then joked that they were becoming a request band, “and you can catch us at the Holiday Inn.” During his set, the crew began to cover the speakers and other equipment, as the skies darkened. But, mercifully, it didn’t rain.
We moved back to the Rainbow Stage, for the end of Valerie June’s performance—she was wearing a skin-tight gold dress that must have been very uncomfortable. It was time to get out of the sun for a bit, so I got a banana-strawberry ice pop to cool down, and sat in the shade watching little kids play on the swings. But then it was time to go back and see another favorite, Richard Thompson, who, as always, was amazing:
We beat a retreat to the shade to listen to a few minutes of The Kennedys at the intimate Sloop Stage—They are so good, and I would have liked to see their set at the Hudson Stage on Saturday, but they were up against Los Lobos. Here’s something from that performance:
Finally, we returned to the Hudson Stage for the much-anticipated reunion of Cry, Cry, Cry, the trio of Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell, who had not performed together in 18 years. Which kind of blew me away—it didn’t seem like that long ago. They were clearly having fun on stage together, and while they definitely could have used a bit more rehearsal, and they weren’t in the best voice, it was special:
They’ve announced a mini-tour (and I have tickets for the Tarrytown Music Hall show in October!), and indicated that there might be a new album in the offing. During the show, the clouds rolled in and it looked like we were going to get, as Dar Williams noted, “the apocalypse.” But, again, we dodged the bullet.
After the long weekend, and knowing that Monday was a work day, we reluctantly skipped out on Arlo Guthrie’s closing set (as well as Brother Joscephus’ performance at the Dance Stage) to load back on the bus, to our car. About halfway home, we noticed that the road was soaking wet, so it looks like the apocalypse passed just south of Clearwater.
So, was it hard? It was. Was it worth it? Undoubtedly. Do I expect to be there next year? Yup.
It was hearing this on the radio today that gave me the prompt, on a request show fronted by, of all people, Kim Wilde, adding to the 80s exotica of it all. I should add that I hadn't sought to seek this radio station, it was being played in the cab I was traveling in, as most of the other selections were shite. In respect of the station concerned, I won't mention its name, other than to say it was neither Liver FM nor Lungs FM, but in that general territory. I don't even know whether the song(s), the parent film, or the actress/singer, Hazel O'Connor, is known outside of the UK. I suspect not, somehow, give or take the parts of europe she has variously lived in. And even then, again outside this film, her appeal has been somewhat limited. A bit like a substitute Toyah Wilcox, whom she interestingly beat to get the part in the film. (Toyah Willcox? That's a whole other post, preferably by someone who can stand her.)
So, like the majority of films about musicians, it is a fame to fortune fairy tale, this time with sufficient Brothers Grimm downside to add some grit, as her subsequent fall from fame is graphically displayed as well. Scarcely original, but entertaining. "Breaking Glass" it is called, nothing to do with Nick Lowe, and contains enough of the stereotypes to allow those who lived through the music scene of the late 70s to feel comfortably at home. Austerity had real balls in those days, so this is the world of power cuts and strikes, of anti-establishment benefit gigs being big business, of the emergence of a neo-nazism, blunt and crude enough as to make the current versions seem pussies, if no more or less dangerous. There are drugs, drink, violence, mental breakdown, crooked promoters, crooked managers and a shedload of cameos from musos and thesps a little ahead of their current ubiquity. Likewise some behind. So, as well as O'Connor, there is Phil Daniels, of Quadrophrenia and Park Life fame, erstwhile Roxy and Adam Ant bassist Gary Tibbs and, most notably, Jonathan Pryce, the Jonathan Pryce, in an extraordinary exposition of the bleeding heart cliche of damaged goods musicianship. Also, blink and you miss them, 60s legend, George "Zoot" Money, and the late "Rock and Roll Kids'" Gary Holton. No further spoilers as I actually commend the film as being worth a watch, almost as documentary.
Although there is quite a lot of music in the film, not a lot cuts the mustard, somewhat bombastic 80s, just, glam-punk. But the song I feature is quite different, a delightful ballad, notwithstanding the mawkish lyric, with one of the saxophone riffs of the day, the other being on "Baker Street". Played by the magnificently named Wesley Magoogan, scroll down, it lifts the song and makes it immediately memorable. For this one song alone I forgive all the excesses poured forth elsewhere. And it is still the highlight of her set.
Get the film or get the song, but you will have to get the whole album.
I have writtenaboutthe trip that my wife and I took to the Newport Folk Festival back in 2012 a few times. It was our first time there, and it was a great experience, despite the fact that we got rained on both days. At a festival often identified with Bob Dylan, it was fitting that a hard rain did fall, and we unsuccessfully sought shelter from the storm, as we waited for our ship to come in and take us back to our hotel.
But I haven’t written about the moment at the festival that I remember most strongly. It was not a pleasant moment, and I’m willing to bet that my wife will be surprised when she reads this.
I’ve been a lawyer for a long time, and for a while before our Newport trip, I had not been happy at my job. Despite that, I stuck through it, because the pay wasn’t bad, and I had settled into somewhat of a rut—sort of like the one that Nick Lowe wrote about in “Rocky Road” (“The rut I was in had once been a groove”). By the time we went to Newport, the end was in sight, and I was looking for a new gig. I actually spent a good portion of my post-festival Newport vacation reviewing deposition transcripts using the Panera Bread’s free wi-fi (which was better than the hotel’s) for a summary judgment motion to try to stay in the senior partner’s good graces, to keep the paychecks coming in. I did a good job, I think, and I ended up creating a 45 page statement of undisputed facts from my Newport work. We lost the motion, and the trial (which I helped prepare for, but which took place as I was basically out the door.) So, as we were enjoying our time in Newport, I was very uneasy, because I didn’t know how long I would be staying at the firm, and had no alternatives, other than the risk of starting my own law practice.
One of the bands that I was excited to see at the festival was Dawes, a band that seems to have recently evolved into essentially the Newport Festival house band—supporting other musicians who don’t always travel with backup musicians, and often having other performers sit in with them. In fact, that is one big way that Newport differs from the other festival that we have gone to (and which I have written about), the hopefully-returning-in-2017 Clearwater Great Hudson River Revival. Although it does happen at Clearwater (seeing Jason Isbell and Patterson Hood sit in during each other’s solo set was a highlight, and there are other examples), it seems like more of a regular thing at Newport for people to play with each other. This adds a feeling of camaraderie and friendship to the music, and you get to hear interesting, often unique, combinations (like this great version of The Band’s “It Makes No Difference” by My Morning Jacket, with Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, from the 2012 festival, that I missed waiting for a ferry to get us out of the rain).
Dawes’ sound is often compared to the Laurel Canyon sound of the 1970s—CSNY, Joni Mitchell, The Byrds, etc., with a bit of Band thrown it. And I also have to believe that they also were influenced by the Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt/Jayhawks alt-country sound and artists like Ryan Adams. In keeping with their debt to the great confessional singer-songwriters, their lyrics often plumb emotional topics, which is certainly true about one of my favorite Dawes songs, “A Little Bit of Everything.” The song has three vignettes: the first, focusing on a man planning to jump from a bridge, not for any one reason, but for an accumulation of things, the second about an older man in a buffet line, musing over his life’s disappointments while deciding what to eat, and the third features a woman writing invitations to her wedding, and explaining to her fiancé why she was working so apparently humorlessly on the wedding planning. As the song’s writer, Taylor Goldsmith, explained in an interview, “each verse would provide the phrase with new meaning. In the first verse, it’s used to describe why life’s unlivable, in the second, what it takes to forget, and finally, what matters most about love.”
So, I’m sitting there, watching Dawes, getting toward the end of a great first Newport day, very much enjoying their set, when they launch into “A Little Bit of Everything,” in the version you can hear above. And the next thing I know, tears are streaming down my face. Was I identifying with the suicidal guy who was feeling overwhelmed? With the old guy at the buffet thinking about “when his bright future had left him”? Or the woman who reassured her fiancé about the power of finding the person you truly love? Clearly, it was a little bit of everything, but it affected me so profoundly.
I recovered, though, both at the festival, where we went on to see Amy Helm, Patty Griffin and the beginning of My Morning Jacket before we evacuated, but also professionally. I played out the string at my old job, and in March of 2013, I opened up my own practice. It hasn’t been easy, and there have been struggles, but I’ve learned an enormous amount and have never enjoyed being a lawyer as much.
That all being said, I still get emotional when I hear this song, which, I guess, shows that Mr. Goldsmith knows what he is doing.
It is a post-Thanksgiving tradition at SMM to have a “Leftovers” theme, which allows our writers to look back and post something on prior themes that, for whatever reason, we couldn’t or didn’t do at the time. As the most prolific writer here recently, I pretty much have posted twice on every theme, although there are a few that I only got around to a single piece. One of those was back in March, when the theme was “Lies/Liars,” and I wrote about a great, rocking blast of Southern rock from Jason and The Scorchers. There are so many songs in the rock canon about liars and lying that it is almost hard to narrow down the choices. But I did, and thus we have today’s feature song, by the great Nick Lowe.
Since this theme is all about looking back, I did write about Lowe back in January, so I won’t repeat what I wrote there, and instead focus on this tune. Lowe has said that the idea came to him while watching, believe it or not, Oprah Winfrey. According to Lowe:
"When I was over here once I was watching an edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show. They had some poor sap sitting there who'd run off with a maid or something like that, and the audience was extremely upset with this guy. I remember this large black lady standing up and shouting at the top of her voice, 'All men are liars! All men are liars! All men are liars!' She just was chanting it. And I thought, 'Yeah, you know what? You've got a point there, darling.' And along came that song."
The song is a fun, bouncy pop tune, with Lowe's typical clever wordplay. The other thing that the song is remembered for, to the extent it is remembered at all, is for its somewhat gratuitous insult of English singer Rick Astley. Astley had a massive, annoying hit with the song “Never Gonna Give You Up,” which led to the phenomenon of “rickrolling,” defined by the Urban Dictionary as:
To post a misleading link with a subject that promises to be exciting or interesting, e.g. "World of Starcraft in-game footage!" or "Paris Hilton blows Busta Rhymes' dick" but actually turns out to be the video for Rick Astley's debut single, "Never Gonna Give You Up". A variant on the duckroll. Allegedly hilarious.
Well, do you remember Rick Astley? He had a big fat hit, it was ghastly. He said I'm never gonna give you up or let you down. Well I'm here to tell ya that Dick's a clown.
Which is more than “allegedly” hilarious, but which Lowe, as time went on, regretted. He has commented:
At the time, he was everywhere. “Never Gonna Give You Up” was just on all the time. It drove me mad. [Impersonates Astley.] That constricted voice. And so I put that rather barbed line in, which I regret now. I hardly ever do the song. I went through a phase of doing it fairly recently, but it sort of went off the boil and I stopped doing it. But when I used to do the Rick Astley line, people used to fall about, rolling in the aisles, clutching their sides laughing, and I thought, “This is rather a shame to do this. Poor old Rick. He’s not exactly in the public eye much anymore. It seems a little unfair to kick him when he’s down.”
One of the many fun things about writing these pieces is that I actually research what I write and learn things about songs that I like. Which is how I found the interview that I have quoted from at length. But it is also interesting to read reviews of the music I post. The album that “All Men Are Liars” comes from, Party of One, is a pretty good one, in my estimation. Lowe, of course, was originally best known as a producer, but also created one of the all-time great albums, Jesus of Cool (and its slightly different American version, Pure Pop For Now People), not to mention the fine follow up, Labour of Lust. After that, he released a bunch of albums, all of which had moments, some more than others, until his recent critically acclaimed reinvention as a crooner.
But, if you read the Allmusic review of Party of One, you might be dissuaded from listening to it—it refers to the album as “stilted,” and “an unwelcome surprise” filled with “forced humor and bland support,” and “stiff, colorless performances.” (I suspect that the reference to “stiff” in that review was not meant as a reference to Lowe’s days producing for the legendary Stiff label).
Instead, I commend you to read Robert Christgau’s review, who hears things quite differently, and more in accord with my opinion:
Nick the Knife is a writer again, every song honed and there for a reason. With the likes of Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner spiking his wry cool, he yearns for yen, makes Boeing a modest proposal, spins off pungent epithets ("Refrigerator White"), nonsense syllables ("Shting-Shtang"), sexual metaphors ("Honeygun"). In a shameless bid for the rockcrit vote, he also finds the perfect rhyme for "ghastly" (starts with "Rick," lest you already forgot). And just like with Labour of Lust in 1979, he makes it sound so easy you expect a reprise a year for the rest of his life. A-
Not being a Yank I find it difficult associating fireworks with a summery and bright night sky, my sympathies lying more with Aimee Mann, in her wonderful 4th of July "celebration", a waste of both gunpowder and sky. But I am here to be no party-pooper. I guess I could post some wintery pyromania, to utilise our own UK-centric firework feast, commemorating the day one Guido 'Guy' Fawkes failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament, remaining a hero to this day, more, I feel, for his intent than its thwarting. (Given I was raised in Lewes, near the south-east coast of England, where this achieves some notoriety and fame; remind me nearer the time and I will.)
So my fireworks today are arguably tamer, being of the indoor variety. And you can indeed get such a thing once more, a throw back to simpler times, aka pre-HBO box sets. Deemed safe and sedate, it is hard to see the attraction now. However, back in 1986, Elvis Costello penned my featured song, the lyrics of which contain their evident danger, albeit by way of allegory, below in solo demo starkness:
Undoubtedly one of his finest, or, to detractors, finer lyrical outlays, the conveyed poignancy suits the less frantic setting, the Attractions laid off, by and large, at this stage of his career, replaced by the Confederates, an amalgam of some of the cream of U.S. session men. Here's the studio version, to demonstrate that claim.
Costello has arguably been too wordy and, possibly, too misogynistic to attract as many covers as similarly prolific writers. (Or, decent covers, let's say, as no shortage of karaoke kopyists, spitting his words out in ever more faint mimeograph.) But there are some artists who can catch his drift, intriguingly often female. Laura Cantrell, (yet another) favourite of late UK DJ provocateur John Peel, so possibly even better known in my country than in her own, succeeds with ease and aplomb, wreaking yet more angst in her mournful, keening delivery. Astonishingly, not on YouTube, so I had to make my own, with apologies for the less than galling vid.
If only for completeness, eternal/occasional E.C. buddy, Nick Lowe covers it as well, his way, with a good deal less charm.
Finally for those who are intrigued by Ms Cantrell covering Costello, here's the logical next step. the pair together, covering James Taylor:
I’m pretty sure that Elvis Costello was my gateway drug to Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds and Rockpile. I suspect that I started exploring Lowe’s music very early into my WPRB career as a result of seeing that he had produced Costello’s (and Graham Parker’s) early albums. Of course, Pure Pop for Now People was genius. I can’t recall exactly when I connected up Dave Edmunds, or where I found out that essentially all of the Lowe and Edmunds albums were really just releases by a band called Rockpile that couldn’t record under that name for some contractual reason. But I do remember playing their music over and over. Ask my roommates. At that time, it did seem a bit odd—Lowe was considered part of the new wave movement, although his records in those days were more power pop, and Edmunds sounded like a throwback to Sun Records and rockabilly. In retrospect, all of this was part of an attempt by musicians to get back to their roots, simplify things and strip down the sound, as a reaction to what was seen as the excesses of the Classic Rock Age of the Dinosaurs. At times in their careers, though, both Lowe and Edmunds fell prey to the apparent requirement that musicians who start simple, but record for a long time, have to experiment with adding layers of instruments, effects and sound.
“I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock 'n' Roll)” is a fun song, in which the singer, somewhat wistfully, discusses how he remembers when the bride at issue, who is now all posh and proper, and marrying a rich stuffed shirt, used to hang out in her jeans at the bar, drinking and flirting and dancing and having fun. And, because our theme is Jukebox, it is important that she was always “Pumping all her money in the record machine.”
The first version of the song was released in 1977 by Edmunds on his Get It album, and it is a typically rootsy rocker. (Edmunds’ next disc, Tracks on Wax 4 featured a song called “A.1. on the Jukebox,” by the way.)
But my favorite version is the one downloadable above which came out a year later, on the Live Stiffs album, from a Stiff Records European tour that also featured Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, and Larry Wallis. Billed to “Nick Lowe's Last Chicken in the Shop” (although introduced at the show as “Nick Lowe’s Led Zeppelin”), which included Edmunds on guitar and Rockpile’s drummer Terry Williams, drummer Pete Thomas from the Attractions and others, they rip through the song in a messy, 70’s punk way.
It appears that when Rockpile appeared live, though, they kind of split the difference in versions—there’s both punk and twang in this version from 1980:
I remember reading once that Lowe said that he was going to keep releasing this song until it became a hit, and in 1985 he tried again, with very dated sounding production by Huey Lewis, who also plays the harmonica and sings background. (Lewis’ early band, Clover, was brought to England by Lowe, and achieved little success there, although its members, minus Lewis, but including future Doobie Brother John McFee, were the backup band on Elvis Costello’s Lowe-produced debut, My Aim is True).
I’ve kind of lost track of Edmunds’ career over the past few years, but Lowe had reinvented himself again as sort of a crooner. And yes, he still drags out this old tune to play, despite the fact that (or maybe because) it is hard to find a “record machine” anywhere. Although he now plays it with more of Edmunds’ rockabilly tinged sound than his Stiffs Live energy.
It’s still not a hit, but it was covered by The Knack.
In the early days, Elvis Costello covered Nick Lowe ("What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding"). Nick Lowe was the bigger name. By the time Lowe's Rose of England came out in 1985, the tables had turned. Lowe recorded his first Costello cover on that album, "Indoor Fireworks."
Lowe and Costello have collaborated for decades, beginning with Lowe serving as producer for Costello's first five albums. Earlier this year, while promoting his latest CD, That Old Magic, Lowe appeared on Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast. He spoke of his relationship with Costello with affection and a dollop of good humor.
Maron: Did you find Elvis Costello?
Lowe: No, not really. He used to come and see our group, Brinsley Schwarz, especially when we played in the northwest toward Liverpool....We always used to notice him at the gigs....[I] thought "Well, he turns up all the time." So I went and said hello to him. A few years later he went into Stiff records...and I was sort of the house producer...
I thought his songs were too complicated, too many words, too many chords. When I was doing [My Aim Is True], I was sort of in charge. He did what I said, I was the producer. It didn't take very long for slowly the scales to tip, until I found myself tugging the forelock and saying, "Um, Mr. Costello what do you got in mind for today, sir?"...
Elvis's stuff was always very sophisticated. As I said, it was chord-y. But if you corralled it, it was fantastic. He's written some sensational songs....I can't really remember what I did [as Elvis's producer]. He kept on asking me back, and I would always turn up and say, "Oh yeah, very nice."
Maron: ...Would you put him in the same arena as Bob Dylan?
Lowe: Well...he certainly puts himself in the same arena as Bob Dylan. Don't get me wrong. I'm very fond of him. We get along great. I always feel with him, as I describe it, as rather like a slightly disapproving elder brother. He works so hard, and whenever I see him, he always comes up come up to me and says something like..."Oh yeah, well Bobby DeNiro and I went out with so and so." And, I find myself saying, "Well, Robert DeNiro. He hasn't really made a good film for quite a long time, now has he?" I find myself slagging off whatever he says. But I really am ever so fond of him. He's a great fellow.
Here we are again, back at the story of Noah's Ark -- a tale that, for the non-believers among us, often serves as Exhibit A in the case against literal interpretation of the Bible. Two of every kind of animal. On an ark. After a rainstorm flooded the entire earth. To quote Bill Cosby: Riiiiiight.
Nick Lowe's "Jumbo Ark" puts a modern spin on the story, for surely if God called on Noah today, He would expect a vessel more sophisticated than what Noah offered up. Not only does Lowe propose an aerodynamic alternative for riding out the storm, he also seems to understand animals better than Noah, and he's thinking ahead: Lowe will take "extra cattle and swine, because the beasts on each other do love to dine."
Bonus track: Here is Bill Cosby's classic take on the whole ark thing.
The album Rose Of England by Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit may best be remembered for I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock And Roll). But the entire LP was a gem. So much so that we nearly wore it out. Among the tracks was a great cover of Moon Mullican's Seven Nights To Rock. Also, Long Walk Back, Darlin' Angel Eyes and Lucky Dog, fast became other must play favorites. And while many times the title song of an album isn't always one of the high points, for us at least, that was not the case with The Rose Of England. The Amazon link is for an import release.
According to the liner notes for his rarities and covers compilation The Wilderness Years, pivotal pub rock and new wave icon and sideman-to-the-stars Nick Lowe recorded this wonderful tongue-in-cheek, utterly too-perfect pop song about label love in the mid seventies, somewhere between leaving Brinsley Schwarz and recording his first solo album Jesus of Cool (originally released in the US by Columbia Records under the title Pure Pop For Now People), in order to get out of his major label contract with United Artists.
The song was released as one of the very first singles from the newly-formed Stiff Records, where Lowe was in-house producer; both Lowe and the fledgling indie label he worked for would go on to become powerful forces behind the early punk and new wave sound of Elvis Costello, Dave Edmunds, and others in the late seventies and early eighties. Thought the single is long gone for all but the most fervent of collectors, the song is newly available on the reissued version of Jesus Is Cool, where it probably makes current re-issuing label Yep Roc Records proud, in a hipstery, ironical sort of way. And you thought the indie movement was something new, didn't you?
I love Half A Boy Half A Man for two reasons: the cheezy vox organ and the especially wry lyrics, Nick's knife is sharper than usual. The rest of Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit isn't that strong, but it features the backing of perhaps Nick's best road band - Martin Belmont and Billy Bremner on guitars with the excellent Paul Carrack on keyboard and backing vocals.
If you dig Nick Lowe, you should check out my three part retrospective of the Basher's career:
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