The Winter Months: December African Rain

Juluka: December African Rain

[purchase]

The well-known meteorologist Bob Geldof once noted, with uncanny prescience and unflinching confidence, that there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time. Or, indeed, any Christmas time. Unless you look for it on top of the Kilimanjaro. There will, however, be rain in some parts of Africa this Christmas time. It is not unheard of that there is some drizzle in Cape Town on Christmas Eve.

Rain is, of course, mostly welcome in Africa for agricultural reasons. And in the often unbearably humid KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa, it can bring relief from the climate’s discomforts. And that region is home to our featured band, Juluka, who in their 1984 song bid the precipitations of summer farewell — though the rain here serves as a metaphor.

The song is in fact a goodbye letter. Since it appears on Juluka’s 1984 Stand Your Ground (Greatest Hits) album — the band’s final release before it briefly regrouped in the 1990s — it probably is Johnny Clegg’s wistful send-off for his friend and Juluka co-founder Sipho Mchunu.

Like many Juluka songs, December African Rain formed part of the live repertoire of Clegg’s follow-up band, Savuka, and as such has become a minor South African classic. Both incarnations were outstanding live acts.

The Winter Months: A Long December

Counting Crows: A Long December

[purchase]

The calendar turns to December, and you suddenly realize that the year is almost over. New Years is coming, and with it, a chance for a fresh start. But first, you have all of December to think about what you would wish you had done differently. And December is one of the ones with thirty-one days, so there’s that much more time before you can start again. That is what A Long December expresses so perfectly. There is regret, but also far off hope.

Leftovers (Songwriting) -> The Winter Months: Air Of December

Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians: Air of December

[purchase]

A fluid, dreamy also-ran from Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, Air of December doesn't just provide an unusually mellow kick-off to a week of songs whose titles mention December, January, or February. It also speaks to the apocryphal origin story of the band, which involves Edie wandering up onto a bar stage to join the local folk-rock band New Bohemians on a whim, floating improvisational lyrics over their long instrumentals and proving herself worthy of frontwoman status as they moved forward into what would become, sadly, a pretty typical 80's career: a 2x platinum debut supported by a single mega-hit, followed by a slow drift into classic alt-rock obscurity.

I mean, just listen to it. The lyrics serve the tune, I suppose - one of the things I most admire about the early work which sprung from this unusual process - but all the same, the song sounds like it was an instrumental first, and one that evolved organically at that. And we can infer what we need to from the label, which lists all five of the band members as authors. My guess is, this one came out of a bunch of well-trained musicians' improvisational jam session, after which someone wrote down the best parts for sequence and structural purposes, Edie layered one of her infamous dreamscapes over it, and voila.

Leftovers (Discoveries): Eye of the Needle

Ten Wheel Drive: Eye of the Needle

[purchase]

I was busy discovering Germany during Discoveries Week and could have posted every day with ideas that came to me. This is my first Leftovers Week, too, and I can definitely see the attraction – it's pretty much guaranteed that I can match cool song to cool topic. And this song is especially cool.

I was lucky growing up with older siblings and cousins with pretty good taste. This song was hammered into my head at the tender age of 14 by my older cousin Carl, who was only in high school himself (he also introduced me to Tommy round about this time). Ten Wheel Drive was a late 60's jazz-rock group in the vein of early Blood Sweat and Tears, and with an utterly fabulous Joplin-esque vocalist—Genya Ravan. This group should've been bigger than it was, to be honest. It took several years before I got hold of a used LP of Construction #1 and managed to make a cassette tape with this wonderful song. Sadly, it went the way of most cassette tapes of the day, wrapped around the spindle, mutilated and unlistenable.

It took about 30 years for me to come across it once more. So I'm especially pleased to be able to share it with you.

Leftovers (Other People's Songs): Different Drum

The Stone Poneys: Different Drum

[purchase]

The Version of "Different Drum" that most of us know is the one released by Linda Ronstadt and The Stone Poneys in 1967, but that version was neither the original nor the first cover of the tune.  Michael Nesmith of The Monkees penned the tune in 1966, and its first release came later that year on The Greenbriar Boys album Better Late Than Never (if anyone has that version, I'd love to hear it).

Even before that, however, Nesmith managed to sneak the tune onto an episode of The Monkees' TV show (see YouTube clip below).  He finally recorded a proper version of the song in 1972 for his album And the Hits Just Keep on Comin'.  Nesmith includes the song's fourth verse that Ronstadt left out of her hit.

Michael Nesmith: Different Drum (Buy Album)

Leftovers (Retrospective: Fifty States): Your State’s Name Here

Lou and Peter Berryman: Your State‘s Name Here

[purchase]

It’s really not hard at this point to come up with songs that fit more than one of our previous themes. This one fits at least three, including Leftovers. As you read the post, you’ll see why I had to label it the way I did.

My first post on Star Maker Machine was during Songwriting week. The following week was our first Fourth of July, and our theme was Fifty States. What a rush that was! Our goal was to post one song for each of the fifty states, and there was a rule that you couldn’t use a state that was already posted. So the posts came in fast and furious, with everyone wanting to get theirs up before someone took their state. As a guest poster at the time, I had to wait for someone to put my post up for me, and I was only able to get Louisiana. At the end of the week, we were stuck for songs for New York and Washington, so we allowed extra posts to cover those. In the end, we had 58 posts in one week, (phew!). One of the last songs was Lower 48, which covered most of them in one song. Even at the time, I wanted to finish with a song that would cover all of the states at once, and I knew just the song to do it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the song at the time, and I knew nothing about how to get it. Well, now I do. The song, of course, is Your State’s Name Here.

Leftovers (Call Me): Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand

Primitive Radio Gods: Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand

[purchase]

Do kids today even know what a phonebooth is?

This song from Primitive Radio Gods was a minor hit in 1996, and looking back, it's probably one of the songs I most identify with that year. The haunting B.B. King samples, the moody piano, the subdued vocals, all combined to perfectly captured the melancholy of my life at the time.

Leftovers (Trios): With These Hands

Les McCann Trio: With These Hands

[purchase]

I was invited to SMM the week following Trios week. I bet I'd've posted this song, which is one of my all-time favorite jazz ballads, like, ever. Les McCann excels at slow piano ballads, and this time he adds his mellow vocals to this tune from 1969's Much Les. It's just a gorgeous love song. The Les McCann Trio has Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Don Dean on drums.

Leftovers (Title Tracks): The Angel In The House

The Story: The Angel In The House

[purchase]

Long before Jonatha Brooke was a folkpop star, and Jennifer Kimball a lesser-known but no less talented interpreter and craftsperson in the Boston singer-songwriter scene, the two whet their teeth on the folkscene as The Story, a duo which came together when the two discovered each other finding beautiful, oft-dissonant harmonies among the more mainstream triads while in a chorus at Amherst College in 1981.

Local buskers at first, and then struggling artists with day jobs through most of the decade after graduation, the girls were finally signed in 1989, and things looked good for a while. But sadly, artistic differences soared even as Electra Records cherry-picked 'em from lesser-known folk label Green Linnet for a debut rerelease and a second album in 1993, using their sound to leverage an entry into the fledgling AAA radio format. Though the effort was a critical success by all accounts - WXPN listeners named The Angel In The House the #1 album of the year upon its release - the band dissolved the following year, and Brooke took the name and ran away with it, only shedding "and the Story" from her band name for her own sophomore effort.

Since then, both artists have tended to avoid mention of their time together, as if to suggest that their small canon represents the best of neither. But though the duo was obscure and short-lived, thanks to a command performance as "Jonatha and Jennifer" in the library at my high school just after their first album came out on, their twenty-odd collected works still echo in my ears, surfacing on mix tapes and finding their way into the perennial lists I make in anticipation of a week's theme here at Star Maker Machine - which is where I found this one, a high-production yet no less moving also-ran worth reheating, the title track from their final release.

Come to think of it, this would have made a solid story for our recent Discoveries theme, too. C'est la vie, I guess.

Leftovers (Advice): Don’t Fear the Reaper

Unto Ashes: Don‘t Fear the Reaper

[purchase]

It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when I was not a part of Star Maker Machine. Advice week happened two weeks before my first post, so I never had the chance to share this one.

I had heard of Goth music. The goths were the ones with the dark make-up rings around their eyes, who hung out in poorly lit clubs. They shopped at Hot Topic, wore mostly black, and were obsessively morbid. I always assumed that the music was loud and dirgy, a sort of very slow metal with glam touches. But, one holiday season, my wife found herself in Hot Topic with my niece’s Christmas list. The music playing intrigued her enough to bring home a CD of music from the Projekt label, and this version of Don’t Fear the Reaper was on it. I discovered that there is a softer side to goth music, and that I like it. Here, Reaper is reimagined as a folk ballad, with beautiful vocal harmonies on top of a solo acoustic guitar. Some other instruments come in late in the song, but that’s mostly it. Elsewhere, Unto Ashes brings medieval and Renaissance classical influences into their music, and it’s a fascinating mix.

Leftovers (Magic): You Made Me Believe In Magic

Bay City Rollers: You Made Me Believe In Magic

[purchase]

The Bay City Rollers have undergone a partial rehabilitation over the past few years, with their music now unironically regarded as better than we (that is, people who grew up in the 1970s) were used to acknowledge, and their silly tartan outfits seen as a marker of their taste-challenged times rather than as the fashion disasters that they were, and the girls who screamed for them now our wives (whisper it, though, that I was a young male fan before the first public follicles fought their way to the surface).

Truth is, the music mostly was not really good, a few stand-out tracks aside. Oh, but how good these few tracks are. Saturday Night is an almost perfect pop song, but even better is the song only Americans, Germans and Japanese seemed to like. Recorded by an act with greater credibility, You Made Me Believe In Magic might have become a pop classic. Appearing on BCR’s final album with Leslie McKeown on lead vocals, 1977’s It’s A Game, it stalled at #34 in the UK charts. With David Bowie’s producer Harry Maslin at the console (which explains the bizarre cover of Rebel Rebel on the LP), BCR came up with a catchy, muscular pop song that, despite disco strings, has aged very well. A good cover version by the right act could become a huge hit.

Soon McKeown would leave the band, to be replaced by Duncan Faure, singer of the iconic South African band Rabbit (which also produced Yes’ Trevor Rabin). I’ve been told that the BCR albums with Faure were pretty good, but the band sank like a stone. Apparently there are at least two rival reincarnations of BCR touring; one of them led by McKeown.

Post by Any Major Dude. Being that he's the newest SMMer around these parts, he missed Magic week (and nearly every other week too), but we hope he's game to never miss another. Thanks again, Dude!

Kin: Cry Little Sister

Gerard McMann: Cry Little Sister

[purchase]

It's Black Friday here in the U.S., and what better music to celebrate it than a nice organ-filled, creepy-kids-choir'd goth rock tune, eh? Okay, I know it's not supposed to mean that kind of Black Friday. I remain unconvinced. Me, I'm staying home today and writing blogs like a sensible 21st century gal.

This song was the theme of the 1987 American teen horror film The Lost Boys. For benefit of us Americans, Gerard used the name "McMann" on the soundtrack, since he thought we'd have a tough time with "McMahan", his real name. It's not that we don't pay attention to these sorts of nuances; we're just seriously sleep-deprived from all this 3 AM shopping. We're zombi-i-i-e-e-es!

Kin: Your Daughters and Your Sons

Dick Gaughan: Your Daughters and Your Sons

[purchase]

The Duhks: Your Daughters and Your Sons

[purchase]

Two favorite versions of a well-covered tune by Irish folk troubadour Tommy Sands, who tends towards the political, and sure enough: its litany of international struggles for rights and recognition is capped effectively by the reminder that, though strife and hard times often follow those who fight for justice with their art, their work, and their lives, the seeds they've sown in their progeny is ample evidence of the change that they fought for. The second person delivery only serves to drive it home harder, making it clear that, though we may not see the fruits of our own labors either, the rewards of social justice are no less effective for being the beginnings of a multi-generational process of protest, absorption, acceptance, adoption, and - eventually - peace.

Kin: The Cobbler’s Daughter

Kate Rusby: The Cobbler‘s Daughter

[purchase, priced in British pounds]

Kate Rusby is surely one of the leading voices of English folk music. The Cobbler’s Daughter comes from Rusby’s 1999 album Sleepless, which was her breakthrough album. Sleepless was nominated for a Mercury Prize. The Mercury Prize is the British equivalent of a Grammy. The Mercury goes to the best album of the year, and folk albums are almost never considered. But Rusby is that good.

As far as I can tell, The Cobbler’s Daughter is a traditional song. I can not find any recording of it before Rusby’s, however, and the song seems like a modern twist on a situation that often occurs in traditional songs of the British Isles. A beautiful young maiden catches the eye of a young man who then comes to court her. In traditional songs, it is assumed that she will fall in love with him in turn, and their love will either lead to tragedy, or it will overcome all obstacles, and the song will end happily. Rusby gives the young maiden a choice in the matter, and love goes off the rails from there. I’ll let you discover the rest for yourself.

Kin: Little Mother-in-Law

Squirrel Nut Zippers: Little Mother-in-Law

[purchase used]

An odd little Hawaiian-esque acoustic number complete with slack key, uke, brush and holler from the kings of the zoot suit swing revival, recorded in their demo years, rereleased on Merge Records via a limited edition EP when the band got big in the late nineties, and now long out of print.

The titular mother-in-law actually appears to be the narrator's mother, best as I can tell - but like so much of their work, this one really isn't about the lyrics, it's about the mood.

Kin: I'm My Own Grandpa

Lonzo and Oscar: I'm My Own Grandpa

[purchase]

It may sound like material for a Jerry Springer episode, but the roots of I’m My Own Grandpa reside in Mark Twain, who once showed that it was possible to be one’s own grandfather (though he most likely lifted the idea from early sources). Twain’s story inspired one Dwight Latham, member of 1930s novelty and comedy band The Jesters, to co-write with Tin Pan Alley resident Moe Jaffe a song about the cartwheeling genealogy which would make for interesting family reunions. It was first recorded in 1947 by country-jokers Lonzo & Oscar (Oscar, whose real name is Rollin Lillian Sullivan, is still alive at 91).

Almost half a century after the song first was released, Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith and their respective son and mother tried to put the theory to the test, but in so half-assed a way that nobody really cared.

Let's give a warm SMM welcome to our guest poster, Any Major Dude With Half A Heart, whose blog I've loved for quite a while. Thanks!

Kin: Sister Madly

Crowded House: Sister Madly

[purchase]

One of the most popular bands of the 1980s was The Stray Cats, with their slightly punked-up take on rockabilly. As a result, a lot of musicians tried out a rockabilly sound, at least for a song or two. Many of these have been forgotten, as they should be. But Sister Madly was Crowded House’s take on it. The song swings appropriately, but it also has touches that sound only like Crowded House. For me, this one stands up.

Neil Finn wrote this one when he was awakened by his sister having a nightmare. The guitar solo is by Richard Thompson.

Kin: Walt Whitman's Niece

Billy Bragg & Wilco: Walt Whitman's Niece

[purchase]

As a listener and blogger, I tend to favor a focus on history, production and musicality over text. From that perspective, today's song is easy to present: penned by Woody Guthrie fifty years before it was set to music and recorded by Billy Bragg and Wilco on their Grammy-nominated Mermaid Avenue collection, Walt Whitman's Niece is a fun rockabilly stomper that recounts a based-on-fact narrative of a night with a seaman friend and some girls. Period.

But as a teacher of English and Communications, trained in poetic parsing, it's hard not to notice the concrete power of the text here. These are heavily down-to-earth lyrics, with the first two verses constructed of structurally consistent couplets of event-oriented plot lines paired with self-aware lines protecting the anonymity of the people and places involved, ad infinitum, until we reach absurdity of not even being able to know which rug they lie on, which stairs they climbed to get there, which book of poems the unnamed seaman and narrator heard from the unnamed girls of the titular lyric.

If that were all he wrote, then the song would be an interesting exercise, nothing more. But perhaps not surprisingly for those who recognize the literate poetic genius of Guthrie himself, in that it reads a bit like a Whitman poem, especially at the end, the lyrical structure belies the crypticism of the words it contains. Here's verse three of three in its entirety, a testament to both the project and the poet it pays tribute to:

My seaman buddy and girl moved off
after a couple of pages and there I was,
All night long, laying and listening
and forgetting the poems.
And as well as I could recall
or my seaman buddy could recollect,
My girl had told us that she was a niece,
of Walt Whitman, but not which niece,
And it takes a night and a girl
and a book of this kind
A long long time to find its way back

Kin: Earth to Grandma

Ass Ponys: Earth to Grandma

[Purchase]

In the grand scheme of the music world, there sure aren't a lot of homages to dear ol' Grams. This contribution from rock band Ass Ponys is mostly just a list of the kooky stuff that so many grandma's seem to like to make and give to others that makes everyone else think "what the heck is this and why would anyone want one?". So this is more an homage to the crazy kitch crafty world of dear old granny and her ilk than to the lady herself.

It makes me smile, but then again, my grandma never made me anything out of popsicle sticks.

Kin: Aunt Avis

Vic Chesnutt: Aunt Avis

[purchase]

Widespread panic w/ Vic Chesnutt: Aunt Avis

[purchase]

Left a paraplegic after a car accident in his teens, celebrated but never-famous singer-songwriter and collaborator Vic Chesnutt struggled with depression up until Christmas of last year, when he passed at the age of 45 due to complications following an overdose.

In the year since, I've delved much deeper into his work, and though his stark realism sticks to the soul if you let it, it's well worth the trip to hell and back.

Take Aunt Avis, for example, a plea to Vic's ancestors to save him from himself. The original is shaky and sparse, the jamband version with Widespread Panic eerier and dark. But both bear the self-depreciating humor and cynical grit which made Chesnutt a darling of the post-grunge underground. And the suicide-note lyrics? The plaintive cry of the vocal? Aunt Avis is dead, and so is her nephew: whether that makes the song that much more prescient, or merely a promise fulfilled, is a question best left open to discussion.