Big Black: Jordon, MN
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Gawd, I'm torn on a couple different fronts, here... I want to be the contributor that reps' my own state, but... THIS is the tune I get to do it with? Really?!!? Sick.
Anyhum.... The story behind the song is disgusting. So is the music.
Enjoy?
John Hartford: The Boys From North Carolina
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I did a whole week of Carolina coversongs over at Cover Lay Down this April in honor of my first vacation down there. Ever since, I've been waiting for the chance to share this great original tribute to Earl Scruggs from one of the best folk/country/bluegrass musicians I know. With clawhammer banjo master Bob Carlin, who hails from Lexington, North Carolina.
Ted Hawkins: Missin' Mississippi
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The Jayhawks: Somewhere In Ohio
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Americana at it's finest...
I hope I'm not taking away from someone posting a Neil Young song, but I do hope I can turn y'all on to the Jayhawks.
John Gorka: I'm From New Jersey
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I'm from Massachusetts, actually. But since I see from the blogger back-end that someone's got that one covered already with a great tune, I'll take any excuse to post one of my favorite 80s folk revival singer-songwriters two weeks in a row.
John Gorka is indeed from New Jersey; here he addresses the stereotype head on and hilariously.
Bonus and belated: I wasn't going to post doubles this week -- rules are rules -- but because he's another male singer-songwriter who emerged from the same 80s-era NYC folkscene, let's make the first exception, eh?
Cliff Eberhardt: Summers in New Jersey [available free from WFMU]
Sonic Youth: New Hampshire
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Until Sonic Youth hipped me, I never knew B.B. King turns on New Hampshire boys.
Frank Zappa: Montana
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I'm gonna be movin' to Montana soon, gonna be a Dental Floss tycoon - yes I am!
Joni Mitchell: California
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I'm kicking off the Star Maker Machine Fifty State Challenge with my favorite Joni Mitchell song, a nice ode to America's most populous (and popular) state.
Just movin' the future theme ideas post up to the top...
Please post any ideas you have for future themes in the comment section to this post. That way they'll all be in one place. Also, feel free to discuss any questions you might have about the blog or any ideas you might have for improvement.
Thanks!
I often come across articles where the writer bemoans that nowadays, there's nothing new and original in music, that everything is a rehash of what came before when there was a regularity of fresh sounds. The new thing has always been there, but what makes it out to the mass media is based on commercial concerns. It's not like there's nothing new and original. Just go down to the small clubs spread around and you'll hear plenty of new sounds. But economic conditions keep these bands down, the average person wants something they've heard before, the safe and familiar. Captain Beefheart said it best about his own music:
Captain Beefheart Quotes
"I think nutrition is very important. If you eat bad, you feel bad. If you feel bad, you do bad things. Most of modern rock and roll is a product of guilt. People cop licks off of dead people, like stealing pennies off a dead man's eyes. The movement needs a bowel movement."
"I don't do lullabyes. I'm tired of lullabyes, like The Beatles. I heard *Lullabye of Broadway* when I was a baby, and I still hear it now, and I'm still a baby. We're the only people doing anything significant in modern music. I haven't heard anything else that gets away from mother's heartbeat. All I've heard is a rebelling against parents, and I'm tired of hearing that."
"I don't believe in time, you know, 4/4 and all that stuff. Frank Zappa believes in time and we could never get it together. He writes all his music and gets sentimental about good old rock 'n' roll, but that's appeasement music."
Open source culture is the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created content. Examples include collage, found footage film, music, and appropriation art. Open source culture is one in which fixations, works entitled to copyright protection, are made generally available. Participants in the culture can modify those products and redistribute them back into the community or other organizations.
The rise of open-source culture in the 20th century resulted from a growing tension between creative practices that involve appropriation, and therefore require access to content that is often copyrighted, and increasingly restrictive intellectual property laws and policies governing access to copyrighted content. The two main ways in which intellectual property laws became more restrictive in the 20th century were extensions to the term of copyright (particularly in the United States) and penalties, such as those articulated in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), placed on attempts to circumvent anti-piracy technologies.
Although artistic appropriation is often permitted under fair use doctrines, the complexity and ambiguity of these doctrines creates an atmosphere of uncertainty among cultural practitioners. Also, the protective actions of copyright owners create what some call a "chilling effect" among cultural practitioners.
"When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty." The line comes from Don Siegel's 1958 film noir, The Lineup, written by Stirling Silliphant. The film still haunts revival houses, likely thanks to Eli Wallach's blazing portrayal of a sociopathic hit man and to Siegel's long, sturdy auteurist career. Yet what were those words worth — to Siegel, or Silliphant, or their audience — in 1958? And again: what was the line worth when Bob Dylan heard it (presumably in some Greenwich Village repertory cinema), cleaned it up a little, and inserted it into "Absolutely Sweet Marie"? What are they worth now, to the culture at large?
In 1941, on his front porch, Muddy Waters recorded a song for the folklorist Alan Lomax. After singing the song, which he told Lomax was entitled "Country Blues," Waters described how he came to write it. "I made it on about the eighth of October '38," Waters said. "I was fixin' a puncture on a car. I had been mistreated by a girl. I just felt blue, and the song fell into my mind and it come to me just like that and I started singing." Then Lomax, who knew of the Robert Johnson recording called "Walkin' Blues," asked Waters if there were any other songs that used the same tune. "There's been some blues played like that," Waters replied. "This song comes from the cotton field and a boy once put a record out — Robert Johnson. He put it out as named 'Walkin' Blues.' I heard the tune before I heard it on the record. I learned it from Son House." In nearly one breath, Waters offers five accounts: his own active authorship: he "made it" on a specific date. Then the "passive" explanation: "it come to me just like that." After Lomax raises the question of influence, Waters, without shame, misgivings, or trepidation, says that he heard a version by Johnson, but that his mentor, Son House, taught it to him. In the middle of that complex genealogy, Waters declares that "this song comes from the cotton field."
Blues and jazz musicians have long been enabled by a kind of "open source" culture, in which pre-existing melodic fragments and larger musical frameworks are freely reworked. Technology has only multiplied the possibilities; musicians have gained the power to duplicate sounds literally rather than simply approximate them through allusion. In Seventies Jamaica, King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry deconstructed recorded music, using astonishingly primitive pre-digital hardware, creating what they called "versions." The recombinant nature of their means of production quickly spread to DJs in New York and London. Today an endless, gloriously impure, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of music.
Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work. The Recording Industry Association of America prosecuting their own record-buying public makes as little sense as the novelists who bristle at autographing used copies of their books for collectors.
As a novelist, I'm a cork on the ocean of story, a leaf on a windy day. Pretty soon I'll be blown away. For the moment I'm grateful to be making a living, and so must ask that for a limited time (in the Thomas Jefferson sense) you please respect my small, treasured usemonopolies. Don't pirate my editions; do plunder my visions. The name of the game is Give All. You, reader, are welcome to my stories. They were never mine in the first place, but I gave them to you. If you have the inclination to pick them up, take them with my blessing.
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The Beach Boys: God Only Knows (Instrumental Backing)
I realize not everybody is a musician and some of this may be Greek, but I've always wanted to point out some of these technical musical delights and this is the theme. I'll make it short. The bass line to the verse of God Only Knows, the greatest song in the world, dances around the changes, carving its own path rather than follow the root notes. When you listen to the verse, try to hear how the bass and chords move up and down independently, creating tension and climbing up to that glorious chorus. In a documentary, I think it was Terry Melcher who said the verse 'built a stairway to God'... something like that. Sorry, I should do my research.
Nobody used changes like this in pop music until Brian. The Beatles quickly followed suit. Lyrics are important but you won't hear them on this post. Just listen to those changes. And even better, the production. I love everything on Pet Sounds: the delayed wood block, the slappy bass... an orchestra of perfect sounds. (For those playing along at home, I'd recommend a piano before a guitar on this one.)
God Only Knows
music: Brian Wilson | lyrics: Tony Asher
(Bass notes denoted in bold.)
D.............Bm6
A.............B....
I may not always love you
F#m...F#m7.............B
F#......E...................A
But long as there are stars above you
E............Cdim
B............C.....
You never need to doubt it
E......................A#m7-5
B......................A#.........
I'll make you so sure about it
A...............E.....................F#m7..............E.....
A...............G#...................F#...................G#
God only knows what I'd be without you
Cisco Houston: Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie.
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Joni Mitchell is one of my favorite songwriters, but she has one big weakness. She does not know how to write a political song. This shows up especially in her later work. She certainly is passionate about some issues, but her anger gets in the way of her craft, and she winds up with rants instead of songs. In this, she is hardly alone.
Before I go any further, I should clarify my terms. I have been careful to use the term "political song", not "protest song". A political song is a song written to be listened to by people who may not even agree with the songwriter when they first hear the song; done properly, the song persuades by drawing the sympathy of the listener. By contrast, a protest song is written to energize a group of people who already agree with the songwriter: at its best, a protest song is musically simple enough to be learned by a thousand or a million people while they march through the streets. A classic example of a protest song is "We Shall Overcome".
Returning briefly to Joni Mitchell, I have discussed her works as political songs, but really the problem is that they are too lyrically simplistic to be effective political songs, but they are too musically sophisticated to work as protest songs either.
To see how a political song should work, let's look at a classic example: Woody Guthrie's "Deportee ( Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)".
Guthrie actually wrote this as a poem in 1948, and the music was written a decade later by a school teacher named Martin Hoffman. On January 29, 1948, a plane carrying a crew of four Americans and a "cargo" of 28 migrant workers being deported to Mexico crashed in Los Gatos canyon in California, killing all on board. Guthrie found the fact that the Mexicans were identified in the newspaper accounts only as deportees offensive. Hence the line, "You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane."
Guthrie tells the story of this event through eyes of an unnamed fellow migrant worker who either knew some of the victims personally, or knows plenty of others like them. He gives some of the victims names, because to him they are people, not just "deportees". This is the key to what makes the song work. Guthrie does not sloganize; he personalizes. He gives us a character we can identify with, who tells us of the pride he takes in the hard work that he and his fellows do.
Guthrie even manages to get another issue into his poem without losing his focus. As part of the farm subsidy program at that time, the government paid farmers to destroy some of their crop to support higher prices. Guthrie found this unconscionable when people were going hungry. He ties these two themes together at the very end of his poem with these lines:
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?And he doesn't need to say anything else.
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except 'deportees'?
Our goal next week is to post 50 songs, one for each state in the United States. Please post songs with the name of an American state in the title.
Here is the twist: Once a state is used, do not repeat that state. I will kick off the challenge with "California" by Joni Mitchell on Sunday morning. After that it's first come, first served.
It's a challenge because (1) 50 posts would be a new SMM record, and (2) I'm not sure there is a song for every state. We'll find out, I guess. (Since we need to post 50 songs, if possible, don't feel obligated to write long posts.)
In other news, the design committee has concluded its work and will be unveiling the new Star Maker Machine website design on Sunday.
Suzanne Vega: The Queen And The Soldier
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My wife and I compliment each other very well. When it comes to songs, I usually respond first to the music, the arrangement, and the production. I sometimes go years loving a song without knowing what it is about. My wife is the opposite: although she has more musical training than I do, she hears lyrics, sometimes to the exclusion of all else.
So when the first thing that grabs me about a song is the lyrics, it's an event. The first time I heard "The Queen and the Soldier" was such an event.
The story this song tells is fairly straight forward. A soldier goes to tell his queen that he will no longer fight in her wars. She has him killed for his disobedience. End. But it's not so simple as all that.
What sets this song apart is the description of the characters' emotions. He either is in love with the queen, or falls in love with her in the course of the story. She seems to fall in love with him, which terrifies her. So does she order his death because he defies her orders to fight, or because she fears her own emotions?
Sometimes this song for me is a literal story about two characters who are trapped in societal roles which doom their love. Sometimes it is a symbolic antiwar song. And sometimes it is a metaphor for a failed relationship. Are any of these interpretations what Suzanne Vega had in mind? I have no idea, and I wouldn't want to ask her if ever got the chance. The mystery of "The Queen and the Soldier" is what makes it a great song.
Reader submission from Darius
Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Tortoise: Thunder Road
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(On writing as a process of adaptation, part three: the extreme cover.)
One of the reasons I coverblog is that I love folk music, and many local artists need some sort of boost to be heard. Which is to say: in my experience, cover songs are an especially important vehicle for introducing audiences to new artists -- by using familiar songs, a comfort zone is created which helps us be more willing to try something new; from there, if we like what we hear, we may be more willing to try the original works of the artist. The flip side of this, of course, is that covers confront the singer-songwriter model that typifies most new music today: by changing the way a song is performed, covers generally split original performance -- as modern, post Tin Pan Alley culture experiences it -- from song-as-written, making it easier for an astute listener to consider as discrete product both the song itself and the artistic choices that went into each performance.
But every once in a while, an artistic reimagining of song is so different from the original, rather than creating comfort, it confronts our sense of the original song, calling attention to the vast difference as we strain to hear the original in the cover. I'm not just talking here about acoustic renderings of Ozzy Osborne songs, either -- what I mean to point to is more like the "recasting" Matt traces through the work of The Replacements, or something akin to the "open source" adaptation of melody, lyric, and arrangement which Dean spoke of earlier this week, though in this case, we're taking about cases where at least one of those components stays similar enough that the original is still both attributable and, further, is named by the artist performing the song -- that is the performer believes he is creating a coversong, regardless of what we might read into it. Such extreme covers transcend our usual understanding what it means to cover something, and begin to move -- ever so slightly -- in the direction of rewriting.
One great example of this is the Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Tortoise "cover" of Thunder Road, a song we've already heard evolve in the hands of its author, thanks to Paul's great analysis. (note: unless you grew up in a thrash-metal-only zone or something, you've surely heard Springsteen's original before this week, too). The cover is startlingly different, and much of this is "mere" arrangement: rock drums, pulsing, anthemic keyboards and electric guitar; seventies-era rock breaks and solos; beautiful, haunting harmonies. But there's something else happening here, too. By keeping the lyrics intact, but completely rewriting the composition -- switching it into a minor key, and displacing the melodic line entirely, though it appears again faintly in the harmony part of the chorus -- other than a faint recognition that this is a Springsteen song we know, the way we hear the song has almost no relationship to the way we have always heard the original. If chords matter -- and Brendan made that case convincingly, I think -- this isn't a new setting of a song, it's a total deconstruction of one.
Maybe my coverblogger's ears are oversensitive to such change. But I think what Tortoise and Bonnie "Prince" Billy have done here is to coversong what Jackson Pollock once was to art: by presenting us with something almost but not quite unrecognizable, it confronts our sense of what is and what is not true writing, asking us to consider more fluid the usual lines between the art of performance and song creation and the craft of arranging and interpretation. It may not be true "writing", but it's closer to it than most covers.
Elvis Costello: Tramp The Dirt Down
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Various sources of inspiration for songwriting, volume III of at least IV
Politics & War: As I've been thinking about different things that inspire songwriters this week, I have realized how often it is the case that the inspiration is a passionate feeling: love, hate, pain, joy, etc.
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Dillard & Clark: Out On The Side
It's amazing what learning an instrument will do for your appreciation of good music. I can't explain the feeling of discovering a brilliant chord progression, but when you love a song, pick up the guitar and figure out what the chords are; you just might figure out why you love it.
Gene Clark is one of my favorite songwriters (and my number one man crush). His songs get me so good because they are based on traditional folk and country progressions, but taken to the next level. The use of relative minor and II and III chords distinguishes his tunes from classic I-IV-V stuff, but they seldom feel complicated. He sticks to his roots with the perfect amount of new flavor.
Out On The Side from Fantastic Expedition just kills me... Starts on the II (F#m) chord and, interestingly, almost every line ends on the I chord (E). When they switch to the descending A - G - E (IV - bIII - I), it sounds definitively 'Gene Clark' to me. Hangs on the E to a tension-building F#m just before the classic A - B - E (IV - V - I) hook on "out on the side," providing satisfying closure to this moving progression.
Out On The Side
by Gene Clark
(Lyrics and chords available at geneclark.com)
F#m A F#m A G#m E And there could be at any moment a change F#m A E And if perhaps to put us down F#m A G#m E I won't act like I've seen something strange F#m A E Maybe I just won't make a sound A G E But when the door closes before my eyes A G E Oh, oh I will cry E F#m Just to know you are going to stay A B E Out on the side
Tim Finn: Persuasion
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Richard and Teddy Thompson: Persuasion
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In my first entry for this week's theme, I looked at an example of song creation in which found poetry was adapted into song, both through minor textual change and, more significantly, through setting that material to original music. Today's song is the reverse: an adaptation of a borrowed instrumental into a narrative song through the addition of original lyrics.
Songwriting credit is usually a pretty straightforward phenomenon; it has to be, in a world where attribution is economically relevant. When multiple authors are listed on the record label (or, more recently, in the metadata that appears in the iTunes "composer" field), those little slashes that separate their names are generally understood as a signifier that the song was written through one of two methods of collaboration:
