DON'T: GO (HOTHOUSE FLOWERS)

Me, I bloody loathe Eurovision. Eh, say a whole continent across the pond, Eurovision? OK, the Eurovision Song Contest, to give it the full title, that yearly schmooze through all that's camp and kitsch, all the pop you can possibly bear, the pop that puts the pap in europop. It, like Strictly Come Dancing, a TV show about celebrities learning to dance, is now a very big thing in the UK, as we devolve further and further away from the continent. It hasn't always ben this way: a respectable and somewhat middle of the road song competition, wherein the countries of Europe compete for the honour of the best popular song their best writers can come up with, ballgowns and tuxedos required, an orchestra de rigeur. Pop music, 1950's style, that is. (Mind you, in those days Britain was far less the scourge it is seen by the rest of the continent, even winning from time to time.)

We used to watch it home, en famille, as a child, it's true, so I know all the smash hits from Cliff, Lulu and that ilk. Even good old Clodagh. It went on for hours, as the individual nations, "Good Evening from Helsinki", took ages to deliberate over the selection of tawdry songs. But one year I remember well. 1998. Hosted by the Irish in Dublin, as Johnny Logan had won the previous year, and they put on some craic for  the viewers waiting for the scores. A raggle taggle of ne'er-do-wells lurched onstage and played the best song of the night, a prime example of Celtic soul, with a pounding piano, some raw sawbones sax and a rousing chorus. "Don't Go", the singer pleaded and I didn't. I was glued.

Hothouse Flowers were already a thing in their homeland by that time, their debut release having been the then swiftest selling album in Irish chart history. I confess that, back then, I was too busy with Cowboy Junkies and The Men They Couldn't Hang to notice them at first. (Although, with it being also the year of Van working with the Chieftains and Mike Scott relocating to Spiddal for Fisherman's Blues, I should have had my ear closer to Irish turf.) But, once I heard them play that song at Eurovision, the second single from that first album, I was in. The band, based around singer and pianist, Liam Ò'Maonlai and guitarist, Fiachna Ò'Braonàin, two schoolfriends from an Irish speaking school in Dublin, and Peter O'Toole, not that one, a busker they met in the city and busking is how the band started their career.

For the next year or so they were everywhere, no summer music festival complete without their presence. A second album, not as successful but still worthwhile. Despite no shortage of original material, the best known song from it was a cover, a well received version of the Johnny Nash song, I Can See Clearly Now. They also, unbeknownst to many, contributed to and featured on the Indigo Girls' Closer To Fine. (Unbeknownst? Read uncredited!)

A third record and a bruising touring schedule had them pause for breath, in 1994, taking a collective year out. Or that was the plan, that year extending into four, the band shedding manager and additional members, the core three regrouping in 1998 for a different style, incorporating elements both of electronica and effects to an overall more organic and folkie based feel. 

Since then, and like many bands, they have never formally dissolved, reconvening sporadically, whilst undertaking separate projects apart, Ò'Maonlai having some solo success, particularly with more traditional fare. O'Toole officially left and later rejoined the band, and all three were present, in 2015, when I caught the band at Birmingham's Symphony Hall,  on a tour that took in the UK. Their distinctive tone was all the more characteristic as O'Toole, now playing as much guitar and bouzouki as bass, necessitated the addition of a second bassist, this time on stand up double bass. When both bassists play alongside, the assault is wonderful, as audiences at various festivals this summer, Glastonbury included, were able to affirm. Below is an interesting interview that gives an idea of their modus operandi.

And a taster for how they now sound. And look.

Don't go!!

WOODWINDS: KATE ST.JOHN

Woodwinds seem often made of brass, which is confusing, but don't include horns, except the english horn, which seems to be a form of clarinet. And, even more extraordinarily, that includes bagpipes and accordions, but don't panic, I'm not going there, at least not this week. So, choices, choices and I think I'm going for oboe, as it looks so darn difficult, like trying to blow a hard-boiled egg down a curtain rod. And because the list of greatest oboe player in rock is a short and exclusive list. To be fair most people falter after Andy Mackay

I'd like to show you and explain how Kate St. John has a better claim to that title. And, as I write this down, I find myself suddenly panicking, realising she is probably playing cor anglais, or some such, in the songs I use to apply my thesis. Luckily, hardly any reader will be capable of telling the difference; it seems it is all to do with available pitch, the cor anglais (or english horn, see above, who knew) having access to the lower notes.

So, that exquisite sound on Julian Cope's 'World Shut Your Mouth' album is oboe/cor anglais and is played by Kate St John. Originally classically trained, well, you'd have to be, she will be familiar to older readers as being a core member of those fey purveyors of winsome pop, The Dream Academy, who, for some strange reason I confuse with the nothing like them at all Dream Syndicate, who never knowingly branded woodwinds at all, in love or warfare. (OK, I lied.....). I like the video below as it actually shows off Ms St. John on active service, the Smith's cover version being the one from the film, 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'.

At this time she was married to Sid Griffin, the all americana leader of the Long Ryders, who actually were label mates of Dream Syndicate, adding to the confusion. The oboe never comes to mind often in country tinged music, but, hey, she gets there, not until his next band, the Coal Porters. (And it is cor anglais here, nitpickers!!) A Gram Parsons song, too, no less.

Later, in the 1990s, she worked with a lot withVan Morrison, often on saxophone but still managing to to get her chosen out for when Van needed to go his most transcendental. A lovely, evocative sound, it also transfers well into new age music. In the short lived band Channel Light Vessel, she hooked up with Roger, brother of Brian, Eno, Bill Nelson and Laraaji. I suspect I was one of the few who bought anything by them, with it being, it's true, seldom the record I need to hear too much of, but it has its moments.

 

Other contributions have included playing with the Waterboys on their 2011 'Appointment With Mr Yeats'; if she could do Donne with Van, she could certainly do Yeats with Scott!! Whether it all works is arguably up for grabs, but it has the song below is worth it for the burst of play that comes after Scott's doleful sing song recital.

In more art imitating life, she got also to tour with Morrissey, perhaps getting to play her oboe part for 'Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' with one of the songwriters. Other folk who paid up for her live contributions have included Marianne Faithfull and Damon Albarn. And she has been credited to discs for those as varied as the Pet Shop Boys, XTC and Boyzone. However, by now married to Neil MacColl, son of Ewan and half-brother of Kirsty, she has found a niche as the musical director for a number of big production shows and projects. These have included Joe Boyd's Nick Drake tributes, some of the late Hal Willner works, like his Rogues Gallery Sea Chanteys project, and various collective performances of the Richard Thompson and extended family performances. Husband and wife have also worked together on a number of film and TV scores. Whilst this means she is now more often arranging and on keyboards, like the song below, it is too good not to include, her link with MacColl drawing her into folk networks and the songs of her late father-in-law, had he ever been alive to meet her.

Busy, busy woman, and, now you know, I dare say there is way more of her you have heard than earlier you ever knew. 

Take a chance?

OVER: SHAKIN' ALL OVER

Can there be a more evocative intro to a song? The pizzicato guitar plucks, with then the rolling riff of the lead guitar, sounding exactly how a shiver feels, creeping up your back(bone), standing all the hairs up on end. It's glorious. But the version you know is possibly not the version I know, the original failing to cross the atlantic at the time. Which is a pity, as it that rarity, a song of the early pre-Beatle 60s that can still hold its head up, undrenched in the syrupy strings that would spoil most of the UK's rock'n'roll output, often a tawdry and anodyne bowdlerisation of the real thing.

Johnny Kidd and the Pirates were huge during that short period of homegrown rockers, their calling card being their appearance, always in pirate costume, Kidd sporting an eyepatch and a cutlass. With the line up including the now legendary session man on drums, Clem Cattini, the guitar motif, both bits, was provided by one Joe Moretti, a Scot who also played on Vince Taylor's Brand New Cadillac. Number one in 1960, Kidd and his band couldn't hold on to that momentum, each further follow-up bringing diminishing returns, the line-up frequently changing until Kidd was killed, in a car accident, in 1966. For trivia lovers, also injured in that same crash was then Pirate, Nick Simper, later to be a founder member of Deep Purple. The Pirates weren't finished though, and I saw a revived version perform at the famous London pub venue, The Hope and Anchor, in the late 70s. A trio including the dynamic guitarmanship of Mick Green, he was one of the first players to play in a hybrid lead/rhythm style. Somehow, despite their age and portliness, they were lumped into the punk movement, mainly due the speed and precision of their sonic assault. Green was a key influence on Wilko Johnson, who picked up and ran with that style in first Dr Feelgood and then is his own band and with Ian Dury. I remember they did play Shakin' All Over that night, and I was bemused, knowing the song but not why they were playing it, other than the fact it was fast and ferocious. Green later became an integral part of Van Morrison's band, in the days when fellow 60's survivor, Georgie Fame was musical director and organist supreme. He died in 2010.

Wilko Johnson is then a link to the next version, courtesy his still fairly recent album with Roger Daltrey, the excellent Going Back Home, from 2014. Daltrey, of course, the then, the very much earlier and the still vocalist of the Who. Often cited as one of the best live albums of all time, their Live At Leeds, their version is a little slower and has a harder rock sound, with less roll. Legend has it that the only reason they played the song, was to get over the sometime confusion between themselves and Canadian band, the Guess Who, who had had a big North American hit with the song, in 1965. If a confused section of the audience were to muddle them up, and to call out for the song, it was easier to just play it, rather than have to explain. 

(By coincidence, and possibly for the same reason, guess what song the Guess Who played on their possibly less well remembered 1967 Live in Winnipeg opus? Good stuttering practice for a  later collaboration, too.)

Another noteworthy version was by from veteran rockabilly shouter, Wanda Jackson, who possibly shared a stage with Kidd at some time in the late 50s or early 60s. Better perhaps known for another song about shaking, she gave it a delightfully retro twang, including it on her 2011 collaboration with Jack White, The Party Ain't Over.

Quite why the emerging country and blues singer Eilen Jewell included it in her repertoire, on Sea of Tears, I do not know, other than that the idea was to reproduce the twangy tone of that time period, it suiting well her own material, if written nearly a half century later. But I'm glad she did. Still then an avid mix-tape maker, quirky covers were always a welcome discovery to slip alongside other songs I was trying to impress upon friends and family. It meant, in her case, I got to hear more of her own work, liking them and keeping up with her continuing career. Again, her cover is not a radical rewrite, but offered a little more of a western swing to it, with a decidedly more touchy vocal.

Johnny, Rog, Wanda, Eilen.

MASKS: DOMINO

By now you know the score, I type the theme into search on my i-tunes and snarf up anything applicable. Mask wasn't so great, masque slightly better, but nothing that grabbed me or enough. Maybe if I do a second post. So it was to synonyms I sauntered, learning a bit along the way.

No, me neither, I had no idea the sort of mask as above is actually called a domino. Sure, no use against the virus, and pretty damn poor as a disguise, but it is what is is. Very popular in the Venetian Carnival, it seems, whereby folk could get up to all sorts of malarkey, being entirely unrecognisable to one and all, as they spread, no doubt, a good deal more than aerosol droplets.

Damn right, it's Sir George (Ivan) Morrison at the front, with Domino,  his exuberant paean to inscrutability, the meaning, as ever, as clear as murk. If you don't believe me, go check out the lyrics. They are unlikely to be about the board game beloved of the old and simple, so who's to say there isn't some mystical reference to masking up. Cos' Van is always mystical, or was 1980 to about 2000. Now he's just plain grouchy. But, back then, this track from 1970's His Band and the Street Choir, he was on fire, the musicianship and sassy play exemplary. (I read the song was actually a tribute to New Orleans legend, Fats Domino, exquisitely proving my point about it being nothing to do with dominoes. How could you possibly line up 1000 Fats Dominoes and see them tumble as anything wholesome to watch.)

Those nice boys from Squeeze provide our next tribute to limited disguise. In their later days, as glory began to dissipate, this is a fairly typical construction of their very well put together magpie pilfering of styles, built to carry the vocal and lyrical chicanery of Tillbrook and Difford. The title track from 1998 album, Domino. Here there is a mention of tumbling pieces, presumably in reference to the amount of drinking going on, itself another staple of their storybook songs. They play on to this day, I'm pleased to say, perhaps more heritage now than cutting edge, but all power to that.

The Big O, then, and a cat called Domino. Another reference to the big fella from N'Awlins, actually and really called (Antoine Dominique) Domino? I think not, the feline being the factor here, as many a cat has markings evoking a domino. None of this hipster slang, man, as those cats in the Cramps can confirm. From when Orbison was just amongst a cluster of rockabilly rebels trying to catch the crown of the King (Creole), perhaps that is why it seems so reminiscent.

I don't actually think much of this song, a slimmer effort, Domino Dancing,  by the sometimes wonderful Pet Shop Boys. Picking up on the Squeeze song, this again has the masked revellers all falling down as the absinthe hits. (Probably beer in the Squeeze world, but I can't quite ever see the PSB with anything quite so common.)

All in all I feel I have made a sound and sturdy case for my thesis. No more will you think of the Lone Ranger without remembering his mask and its name.

 Quickly before signing off, time again to return to the Belfast Gypsy and his imagery. Sticking to his theme, here is another in the same vein. And this his time truly about Kemosabe.

Go, Domino!

Listen: Listen to the Lion

Purchase Van Morrison's "Listen to the Lion" or from the masterful St. Dominic's Preview

Van Morrison's "Listen to the Lion" is an 11 minute epic, a magisterial hymn. Orchestral, blooming with strings, a shower of cymbal and piano trills and delicately teetering guitars that flash like lightning over the seesaw vocal line, where words and utterances of grunts, guttural inflections and non-verbal cadences and tones--so much more than "ohs" and "ahs"--sound equally poetic.

No one but Van Morrison could deliver a song like "Listen to the Lion." For all that I said above, hallmarks of Van's music from the 60s and 70s, plus the poetic vibe of a transcendental troubadour delivering soulful, heartfelt reflections on one's place in the mystic lacework of the universe, there is something special, yet utterly intangible, about his music.

"Listen to the Lion" shouldn't really work--it has none of the snap jazz kick of say "Moon Dance" or the dirty swagger of Them's "Gloria" or "Here Comes the Night". But, like much of what he did on that incredible string of 1968's Astral Weeks to 1973's Hard Nose the Highway, the music doesn't so much defy as transcend classification. There's pop, soul, jazz, folk--a veritable jukebox of genre and sounds. (Van Morrison was--is--if nothing else, a master of soul.) Yet, to me, there was always something indefinable in Van Morrison's music. How did he create such off-center harmonies, singing with a vocal delivery like the rise and fall of a mad hatter on the run?

Van Morrison's music, from a certain period, is like the amalgamation of everything good about music, perhaps what God would have envisioned when He invented the idea of music. Everything is there: a fleet of musicians playing an array of instruments that only rarely make it on to a rock record. The vocalizations are incantation, repetitive like a grand soul singer, and he always manages to cast a spell with that stuttered, off-track floating delivery.  He rises from despair to joyousness, carrying emotion on a wing in the air, and while a phenomenal writer, he needs little more than a few repeated phrases to create a poetic image rich in tone and as colorful as a painted masterpiece. The brilliance in "Listen to the Lion" is in it's breathlessness. A hushed masterpiece; an epic ballad of an imagined diaspora, a payer to a higher being, calling the soul to a journey that has no true destination. An evocation of something spiritual and beautiful that is unnamable. An invocation of the animal soul inside us, growling to be released.

"Listen to the Lion" is visceral, beautiful, a prayer sung rather than spoken.  Proof of a thesis I didn't know even existed: That vocals are far more important than words.             

The Accordion: 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

Purchase: The Wild, The Innocent, The E Street Shuffle

" 4^th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)", better known as "Sandy," is early Springsteen and the E Street Band at their poetic best, a beautiful image-laden tone poem about Asbury Park, New Jersey, where Springsteen cut his teeth as a young musician, the place that made him, in many ways. Or perhaps his legend—it’s hard to separate the two.  "Sandy" is a wistful, fairy-tale ode to ‘home’, or at least a place that is home in the heart, much like The Clash's tribute to London in London Calling and Van Morrison's Belfast in Cyprus Avenue, evoke more than just a sense of a place.

"Sandy," from Springsteen’s second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, is a beautiful little ballad that shuffles and skips along, mostly due to dearly departed accordionist Danny Federici's lilting and elegant accordion line. Federici, a founding member of the E Street Band, passed away in 2008. The song is a love song, for a girl, for a lifestyle, for a certain place in a certain time, destined to never really come back again, thanks to the way youth speeds away from us and leaves us with just memories. Hopefully, good ones—and the best part of good memories is how much better they get with time.

Robert Santelli, in Greetings From E Street:The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, describes the song as “the perfect musical study of the Jersey Shore boardwalk culture.” The song is populated with the eccentric, vibrant characters that populated many of Springsteen’s youthful, Dylan-inspired street epics: switch blade kids, tramps, factory girls…all those faces that made Springsteen’s street-scene operas such wonderful pieces of not only music, but poetry as well.

His greatest work in regards to the neon, asphalt and brick fables is Jungleland, but it is "Sandy" that invokes a sense of nostalgia, even for places an times that the listener might have no claim on at all. Springsteen is that kind of writer: universal in the experiences he relates.  But, here it is Federici’s accordion that makes "Sandy" such a beautiful song, that as the major aural element works to emphasize the sadness that sits underneath the bright sun and the brash joking of the narrator, trying to get right, but just not making it. The accordion here sounds like youthfulness, it sounds like the carnival. It sounds, truly, like a a whole soundtrack to memory.

The E Street Band still brings this tune out, as a tribute to Federici, much as 10 Avenue Freeze-out is done now as tribute to the Big Man, Clarence Clemons. That’s a hell of a thing: a song that comes to serve as a monument to one who made it sound so distinctive.  "Sandy" has always a special place for E Street Band fans, and will now stand not only as memory of Danny Federici, but as a hat tip and a wink to youthful days, long gone by…

Beginnings: Brand New Day

Purchase: Brand New Day

While certainly not his finest hour as a lyricist, Van Morrison’s Brand New Day, from Moondance (the album every one you know has in their collection), fits the bill for our theme this month. It’s a simple song, both hopeful and soulful. The mellow groove is pure Van Morrison blue eyed soul, with his lush and plaintive vocal styles, wavering piano and guitar lines and gospel chorus. Van Morrison crosses genres with grace—balladeer, soulster, mystic poet, party hound. Brand New Day is a small blip in the catalog he’s created, but it’s a beautiful song, in its own sense. The man himself explains the origins of Brand New Day as:

"Brand New Day" expressed a lot of hope. I was in Boston and having a hard job getting myself up spiritually...Then one day this song came on the FM station and it had this particular feeling and this particular groove and it was totally fresh. It seemed to me like things were making sense....I didn't know who the hell the artist was. It turned out to be The Band. I looked up at the sky and the sun started to shine and all of a sudden the song just came through my head. I started to write it down, right from "When all the dark clouds roll away…” (Wikipedia)

What song do you think it was? Have to be The Weight? Perhaps I Shall be Released?

For good measure, we should also mention Morrison’s Into the Mystic, itself a soulful meditation on a new beginning of sorts, magical and supernatural, and of heading into new and unknown places, concerning love and other delights…

Happy New Year to all our readers—I hope history proves 2016 to be a far better year than all the doomsayers are predicting. Starting out a year with forecasts of our guaranteed destruction before the next one begins gives me all the more reason to listen to good music and try to see the brighter side of sun. Harmony!

Summer Clearance: 1965

The year, 1965. It’s a magic charm of sorts. Say the year, summon the mystical brilliance of one of the greatest years in musical history—great in the sense that so many bands and songs that would become contributors to the canon were born in these 12 fortuitous months. So many great entries, so many great authors, at the forefront of this beautiful revolution that keeps turning, keeps revolving, keeps innovating, despite the modern trends that seem so bent on working against its progress. Rock is dead, they say? Daltrey sang it so in 1972—he wasn’t the first; he won’t be the last.

If rock survives, it should be in spite of all those whole take such joy in declaring it flat lined while celebrating the latest trend and innovation that take music in some new, misguided direction. If rock survives—and seriously, stop bitching about it—it will be by virtue of a strange alchemy of swagger, sex, rebellion and a whole host of attitudes and behaviors. It will not depend on the older generation's disapproval and the sneering reaction of the younger one--rock will always be frowned upon by ‘polite’ society. How many times has the press declared rock’s heartbeat to have ceased and insisted on putting it in the ground, ignoring the funky, beautiful rhythm of the dirt falling on the casket? Rock dies and comes back to life in the same ragged breath. How many times? Too many. And none of them have ever been right. Look at this year, look 5 years, 10 years, 20 years back. Rock is rebellion, rock is pure eff you attitude, rock is refusal to be labeled, dead, alive, whatever.

Look back as far as you want--rock music thrives off being the anti. But look at the year 1965 if you want to get a historical frame of perspective—so many songs that would be exemplars for what was to come, and what the rest of rock ‘n roll history would always have to live up to came out in one simple year. It’s hard to believe. It’s a bit of magic, and with that kind of mojo working in it's favor, you have to admit, rock ‘n roll has got all the odds beat, and while it might go through fits and spurts and change its appearance, maybe get a little silly, a little bitchy, and little funny at times, might even need a smack to set it right, it will never die.
Not with this kind of pedigree…

Rather than linger any longer on this sermon I present a small sampling of a few of the sacred verses from that blessed year, of 1965. Imagine hearing these songs for the first time? Did those kids have any idea of the history making moment they were listening to?

Dominus Ominous, pass the wine, hit the chords, turn it up, Long live rock…




In 1965, The Who released I Can't Explain, from their debut, My Generation. Power chords and madman drummers. The Who is rock 'n roll. pure, simple. Rock 'n roll.














Bob Dylan abandoned his acoustic, to a very well-documented collective howl of betrayal from his folk-purist fans and put out Highway 61 Revisited . the lead track? "Like a Rolling Stone What else can you say? Nothing has been the same since.












The Tracks of My Tears, by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles has always been one of my favorites. Immortalized in Oliver Stone’s Platoon, “Tracks” is soul at it’s best: smooth vocal harmony, bittersweet lamentation, pure groove, all all right.








Van Morrison defined badass cool so much better, and earlier, than anyone else with his band, Them.  Baby Please Don't Go" still sounds like the toughest tough guy you know showing just a little bit of vulnerability in the face of losing the hottest girl you’ve ever know. Or wish you did. Switchblades included with purchase of this 45.

("I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones. Seriously. If you don’t understand the absolute holy place this Keith Richard’s riff holds in the very echelon of rock’s greatest, absolutely greatest, moments, than you’ve missed the whole point. A few notes, a bit of fuzz, and everything—EVERYTHING—changed. Amazing what a hard snare-driver beat, a thumping base, and repeating riff can do to stir the soul of a few million kids looking for a brand new way to give the finger to the generation before, and the one to come.

Oh yeah, and there was also this little group called The Beatles. They released a lot of music between 1964 and 1965. Help, Ticket to Ride, Eight Days a Week—The Beatles. What else can you say?

Rubber Soul…Released December 3, 1965. One of the greatest pop/rock albums ever recorded. Nice way to end one of the greatest years rock will ever know…
1965—what would rock be without it?

Radio:Wavelength

[purchase]

I don’t really remember listening to the radio when I was really little. It just wasn’t a big deal to my parents. I guess I have some memories of the standards that played on their clock radio when they woke up to WNEW-AM in the mornings. It wasn’t until the summer of 1969, when I was picked up in the mornings to go to day camp, that I remember listening to the top-40 station, WABC, and for the first time really being captivated by rock music. I think my life-long obsession with music and radio truly began during the summers of 1972 and 1973 when I worked as a DJ at the radio station at Timber Lake Camp, WTLC (which appears no longer to exist). Somehow, my 11 and 12-year old self understood the mystery and power of broadcasting, even on a tiny, closed circuit station in a sleep away camp in Phoenicia, New York. I learned that radio was best for allowing imagination to fly. You didn’t know who the DJ was, you didn’t know what the studio looked like, and you could envision anything you wanted about the songs. Also, it was fun to play music that you liked (although we had very few records at camp), and talk about them.

My musical tastes moved from pop hits on tinny AM stations to the more interesting FM dial not too long after, and again, there was a progression from the more commercial outlets, like WPLJ to the then free-form “progressive” WNEW-FM. I remember during high school spinning the dial on the stereo in my room, looking for good music, on all of the rock stations in the New York area, and even discovering the wild world of college radio stations at, what the Replacements later referred to as the “Left of the Dial.”

By the time I went to college, I was hooked on music, and I’m pretty sure that my father still has nightmares about helping me carry box after box of heavy vinyl records up the four flights to my freshman year room. I considered joining the college station, WPRB, but held off until second semester, when I had gotten my feet wet academically, and my first extracurricular activity, the marching band, wound down a bit after football season. Working at WPRB was a transformative event in my life, much of which I’ve discussed in other pieces here and elsewhere. It exposed me to all sorts of music, it gave me a peer group of similarly minded people with strong opinions about music and the willingness to argue about it, it gave me ability to think on my feet, speak publicly and educate others. It exposed me to the music business, gave me the chance to interview musicians and humorists and allowed me to introduce acts from the stage. It gave me some experience with running a business, dealing with both managers and volunteer workers and taught me something about leadership. And it conditioned my brain to think of musical themes.

Each of these things has, in some way, affected my subsequent life—school, work, relationships, raising children, volunteer work and music blogging. So, yeah, radio has been important to me. Even with the options of CDs, iTunes, streaming services and satellite radio, I still listen to radio regularly (both in the car, and streaming on my computer), mostly to WFUV-FM, whose DJs clearly have a similar love of the medium (and more so, I guess, because they have been willing to take the risks inherent in making radio a career). But outside of WFUV, I find most radio around here unlistenable for long periods, either because of dullness of their playlists, or their commercials, or their lack of intelligent DJs, which is, ironically, the result of the success of the medium in making money.

Van Morrison has clearly been deeply affected by radio, although in his case, it has influenced the creation of his music. I’ve often joked that every Van Morrison song mentions radio, and while that is a bit of hyperbole, other than “Wavelength,” which I feature above, there are, at least, “Caravan,” “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Domino,” “In The Days Before Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Call Me Up In Dreamland,” “Take Me Back,” “On Hyndford Street,” “T.B. Sheets,” “Real, Real Gone” and “The New Symphony Sid."

There is an argument to be made that I should have written about “Caravan,” which I think is a consensus pick as a better song, in general, and a better song about radio, but I decided to go with “Wavelength,” in part because of its title. But the song is cleverly about radio in two different ways. Morrison starts the song off by making it clear that, at least initially, he is talking about “wavelength” metaphorically as the connection between a couple—

This is a song about your wavelength 
And my wavelength, baby 
You turn me on 
When you get me on your wavelength 

But later, the song segues into a reminiscence listening to music on the Voice of America, particularly Ray Charles, and then Van throws in a little reference to hearing his own “Brown Eyed Girl.”

The version in the video above (I recently got a “take down notice” for posting “Come On Eileen,” and I am concerned that posting a downloadable version of another mainstream hit like “Wavelength” might lead to another) is the original, featuring the distinctive synthesizer part (played by Peter Bardens, best known, I guess, as a member of Camel), which is reminiscent of radio waves. Here’s a live version, from a 1980 performance in Montreux that downplays the synths for horns and a bit more soul.

The power of radio has stayed with me since I was a child, which has been great for me, and clearly has influenced Van Morrison to create his brilliant body of work, which is even better for the world.

Street Names: Bright Side of the Road Edition

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer: Highway 80 (She's a Mighty Good Road)

[purchase] scroll halfway down to Drum Hat Buddha CD


Dar Williams: Spring Street

[purchase]


Buddy Mondlock: Magnolia Street

[purchase] - Poetic Justice CD


"From the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road" - those dirt, gravel and paved roads can be literal, but they are bound to be metaphor... of leading somewhere, running away from something or the journey itself...

All the songs above work through their darkness to a happy ending... of reunion, renewal and redemption, in that order:

The structure of Dave Carter's Highway 80 is unusual, as it has a repeating chorus, rare if you are familiar with his work - he also joked about it being a sing-along, hysterical when you read/listen to the lyrics fraught with names of towns that do not roll trippingly off your tongue. The song tells the story of a guy who allowed himself to be lured to California, looking for adventure, and found it lacking ("the water was cold and the beer was hot") - he talks to his woman on the phone, and she reassures (twice, in Tracy's twangiest voice) that she's waiting patiently on the other coast for his return...

Dar Williams' Spring Street finds our female protagonist experiencing an epiphany, realizing that she has to "walk the talk" to free herself from her stuck place ("but I'll push myself up through the dirt and shake my petals free, I'm resolved to being born and so resigned to bravery") - Spring Street is a state of mind, and she's already there...

Buddy Mondlock's Magnolia Street opens with the narrator in deep dilemma... he loves her, he loves her not... attempting to quantify the most complicated of all emotions - he soon understands, with the help of the wind and the mockingbird (adorably whistled in this live version by Jonathan Edwards; on the recorded version, it's a pennywhistle) that "we carry all this stuff around,we're not so deep we're just weighted down" (i.e., who needs to think when you can dance?)...

To hear/see the Van Morrison song I reference in my title, check out this video -"let's enjoy it while we can"...

The Moon: Moondance

Van Morrison: Moondance

[purchase]


I've already asserted that Van Morrison is Rock's High Priest. Unfortunately, the Shaman also has produced lots of dreck. But when he hits it out of the park, it's one for the record books (don't you just hate sports analogies?). Moondance is a monster composition and an exquisite recorded performance - it even has a flute solo non-Jethro Tull fans can appreciate.

Oddly, though the Moondance album was released in 1970, the single didn't come out until 1977. Morrison has referred to it as a sophisticated song - if for some reason you've never heard Moondance before, you owe yourself a listen.