Trees/Grass: Green, Green Grass of Home

(Merle Haggard version above)

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<Green, Green Grass of Home> may well be the first Trees/Grass song that comes to mind for people my age. Possibly followed by <Tie a Yellow Ribbon>. I cannot say that either of them does much for me besides bring back memories - we were severely exposed to both as they sat atop the charts for longer than I would have placed them there.

For me, Green, Green Grass was a Tom Jones hit. I've brought this next point up before, but since we are talking memories... My pop music exposure during Tom Jones' Green Green Grass period was via a short-wave transistor radio connection to pirate radio Radio Luxembourg, more than 1,500 miles away. This meant that the signal came and went such that you mostly caught snippets of the song.

In perusing the Wikipedia article for the song, I was struck by the number of known covers of the song beyond Tom Jones: Johnny Darrell and Porter Wagoner, credited with the first public exposures, and then Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Baez, Elvis, Nick Cave, Kenny Rogers - and believe it or not, the Grateful Dead.

I also had not fully focused on the lyrics - certainly registering the general melancholy, but ascribing that to an aspect of what I assumed Country music was like. And perhaps not totally wrongly - there are no few songs that lament the state of some po' boy on Death Row, for that's the story the song tells. If you hadn't noticed:

There's a guard, and there's a sad old padre,
Arm in arm, we'll walk at daybreak
Yes, they'll all come to see me in the shade of that old oak tree,
So they lay me 'neath the green, green grass of home

The Voice, Myanmar above

and the Dead, - well ... Bob Weir with ... above

Speak/Talk: Talking Heads Burning Down the House

purchase [ Speaking in Tongues ]

It seemed such a no-brainer to include Talking Heads Speaking in Tongues that I feared it had already been done here. It's been done lots of other places, but I'll bring it back from wherever in history it's been lurking for you. We're talking about 1983 here.

To start, I browsed the entire archive of Star Maker posts related to the Talking Heads over the years (of which there are about 20) and don't see that anyone has ever picked this one up.

Curiously, the Wiki tells us that Burning Down the House was their "lone top ten single on the US Billboard Hot 100." Me? I loved them and I still follow David Byrne through his mailing list/blog at http://davidbyrne.com/connect

Just about every one of their albums "went gold", so that's nothing to scoff at, and there's no denying that especially Tina Weymouth and David Byrne have written their names in the pantheon of modern music greats.

You are aware of course that their vocal style is pretty heavily built on talking imposed over a funky/new wave instrumental composition. Burning Down the House is no exception. The line itself apparently comes from a common audience chant of those years, which the band adopted/converted to their use.

And then there's the Tom Jones/Cardigans rendition of the same. One of his better outputs (unless you want to count Delilah!)

ON/OFF : Electricity

Jings, me too, this is a real toughie, scouring the interweb for songs relating "on" with "off". My initial idea had been to find equal and opposite songs. Like You Can Keep Your Hat Off as a riposte to  Tom Jones, Eat Stuff on the Sidewalk as a riposte to the Cramps, but no such luck. It's enough to make me go off on one, a peculiarly english phrase that would make a wonderful song title, meaning to lose my rag or blow my fuse. Which, like a lightbulb in my head, gave me the answer. OK, abetted by the illustration to the side of this column. A switch. The ultimate off/on being of electricity. (Let's ignore water as that would "faucet", boom boom!!)

So then, Electricity, the initial single from UK synthpop pioneers, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, back in 1979. Inspired by Kraftwerk's earlier Radioactivity, this song is a paean to the wastage of the earth's resources, truly ironic in a band who relied so totally thereupon. (OMITD unplugged would just be singing!) Over this side of the pond it seriously seemed, for a while, as if guitars may have had their day, such was the plethora of electronic keyboard bands bursting forth, from the Human League through Depeche Mode, Tubeway Army through Soft Cell. OMITD did have a bass guitar to complement the drum machines and synthesisers, but I was never sure whether this was for real, or a prop for the vocalist to fill his hands with. Suspicious at first, it wasn't long before I was converted. It was touch and go whether I preferred this band or the Human League, they were certainly the two leaders in my pack. I don't know how well, if at all, this style translated stateside, or even if any impact was felt at all. My usual sources, thanks, Wiki, suggest little.

Riding the crest of their wave, OMITD followed this single, and the album it led, with the even better Enola Gay, about the plane that dropped the initial H bombs, perhaps the ultimate on/off, before a brace of songs about Joan of Arc (both, confusingly, of the same name), no moon in june dilettantes these. Frustratingly, I think it was this arguably cod-intellectualism that pissed me eventually off, along with the expansion to include more traditional instrumentation, guitars, real drums, brass. The band split, Paul Humphreys, synths and straight hair, leaving Andy McCluskey, bass and curly hair, to lead whatever session men were about him. Even that imploded, before a chance request to do some gigs brought the original duo together and back to life in the mid noughties, a decade or so ago. How do they sound? Not a clue. I haven't had the heart since about '83. But what a heart it was then. And we are supposed to be conserving power, aren't we. Or most of us.....

Start here!

You First: You Can Leave Your Hat On

art by Michele Hyacynth

Randy Newman: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Joe Cocker: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Tom Jones: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Marc Broussard: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Let's call this post "Four Decades of Soft-Core Sexual Suggestion."

Got your attention now?

I'm going to declare Randy Newman the King of Intellectual Musical Wit (the heir-apparent, though, might be Steely Dan). Here's a test for our clearly above-average Star Maker Machine reader: did you get all OMG offended! at his epic song 'Short People' and lobby your state legislature to make playing it on the radio a crime (as Maryland attempted), or did you see it as the anti-prejudicial statement it really was? In other words, do you get Randy Newman?

'You Can Leave Your Hat On' is another in Newman's wink-wink-nudge-nudge repertoire. The title phrase seems to be the only item of clothing the narrator doesn't want removed. Newman released his version in 1972 (on 'Sail Away'); it was picked up in a big way by English blues rocker Joe Cocker in 1986 and featured in a strip scene in the film '9½ Weeks'. Tom Jones, the Welsh crooner, did the same favor in 1997 for the film 'The Full Monty'. (And he sang it live in 2002 at 'Party at the Palace', a pop concert at Buckingham Palace honoring Queen Elizabeth's 50 years on the throne. Somehow imaging Queen Liz shaking her booty to this tune keeps crawling into my brain. Bad! Bad!) Finally, blues-rock artist Marc Broussard paid homage to it on the 2006 Newman tribute album, 'Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman'.

You give me reason to live…You give me reason to live…You give me reason to live…

Clothes: You Can Leave Your Hat On

Randy Newman: You Can Leave Your Hat On

[purchase]

Apparently, there's a rich subset of headgear to be mined in this week's theme. But Randy Newman's classic isn't just about hats. Quite the opposite, in fact: it's about everything one could wear coming off sultry and slow, followed by a series of puppetmaster striptease chessmoves from a narrator obsessed with an unidentified, objectified stripper of some sort. I don't usually go for full-bore lyrics, but these read so perfectly like the mind of a dirty old man they just have to be shared:

Baby, take off your coat...(real slow)
Baby, take off your shoes...(here, I'll take your shoes)
Baby, take off your dress
Yes, yes, yes
You can leave your hat on...

Go on over there and turn on the light...no, all the lights
Now come back here and stand on this chair...that's right
Raise your arms up in to the air...shake 'em
You give me a reason to live
You give me a reason to live...

Suspicious minds are talking
Trying to tear us apart
They say that my love is wrong
They don't know what love is...

I know what love is

As a bonus, here's some great covers, from the slightly gawky adolescent fumbling of Paul Curreri and Devon Sproule to Marc Broussard's sexiest, funkiest Randy Newman cover ever. And, then, of course, there's Tom Jones, being Tom Jones. Not my bag, but apparently old ladies still throw their panties at him.

Paul Curreri and Devon Sproule: You Can Leave Your Hat On
[five free albums of covers]

Marc Broussard: You Can Leave Your Hat On
[purchase]

Tom Jones: You Can Leave Your Hat On
[purchase]

Little Black Book: Delilah

Tom Jones: Delilah

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We all know that Samson was a mighty good man, strongest in his day - until Delilah came along and clipped his wig. In 1968, this song reached #2 in the BBC charts, firmly ensconcing Jones as a nonpareil stud muffin hitmaker. Reggie Dwight sings on the chorus, his voice was a bit more front and center on the Elton John records he later worked on. Why, why, why, Delilah?