Special Projects: Coast of High Barbary

Joseph Arthur: Coast of High Barbary

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I didn’t want to let our week of special projects pass with posting something Hal Wilner was involved in. Who? you may ask. Hal Wilner is a producer who has made a career out of tribute albums and other special projects that put lesser and better known musicians in unfamiliar, and possibly uncomfortable, combinations, and get them to make amazing music that sounds like nothing they have ever done before. Wilner’s best known project was possibly the album Stay Awake, which featured a surprising mixture of artists doing Disney songs. Sun Ra’s version of Pink Elephants on Parade must be heard to be believed. One of Wilner’s more recent projects was Rogue’s Gallery, a collection of pirate songs and sea shanties. So you might expect an entire album of folk music, but not from Hal Wilner.

Joseph Arthur is known for songs that straddle the line between folk and pop. The songs are expertly crafted, and Arthur knows how to make it work. He normally surrounds himself with fine sympathetic musicians who are great at helping him realize his sound. But, for Rogue’s Gallery, Arthur showed up alone, and he was at Wilner’s mercy. The result is a version of Coast of High Barbary that sounds like some sort of mutant cabaret number. This one might have been heard in a seaside club where a hard rock band and an avante-garde jazz combo were playing, and the drinks were flowing freely. Arthur sings in a sinister baritone at the bottom of his a range, a voice I’ve never heard from him before.

Special Projects: Bangla Desh

George Harrison and Friends: Bangla Desh

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George Harrison was always my favorite of the Beatles, even at my tender age of 10 when they hit the music scene in 1964 -I loved his thoughtfulness, his playfulness, his spirituality... so imagine my delight at discovering the two-part Martin Scorsese documentary, Living in the Material World, recently airing on HBO...

It brought back memories, as I re-discovered much and learned a lot - of course I must have known, but it was surprising to realize that George's August 1, 1971 Concert for Bangla Desh (actually two shows the same day) was the first of its kind (long before Live Aid) to bring together famous musicians (Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and others) to raise global awareness as well as money for a charitable cause...

According to Wikipedia: "As East Pakistan struggled to become the separate state of Bangladesh during theBangladesh Liberation War, the tremendous political and military turmoil and the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities led to a massive refugee problem in India. This problem was compounded by the 1970 Bhola cyclone, bringing torrential rains causing devastating floods and threatening a humanitarian disaster."

In reply to a request for help from musician Ravi Shankar, Harrison not only wrote and recorded the single Bangla Desh but took Shankar's idea of a small fund-raising concert in the United States and turned it into an enormous event, organized in only five weeks, in Madison Square Garden.

The concert raised $243,418.51 for Bangladesh relief, which was administered by UNICEF. Sales of the album and DVD continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.

I recall going to the Fox Theater in Atlanta, during my senior year in high school, to watch the film with friends - I owned the album and, after watching the Scorsese tribute, just purchased the 2-disc CD. I always knew I loved George best - the documentary reinforced why...

Special Projects: Well Did You Evah?

Deborah Harry and Iggy Pop: Well Did You Evah?

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1990 saw the release of Red Hot & Blue. The album is a special project for two reasons. First, it was recorded to raise awareness of AIDS research, and some of the proceeds from the album went to that purpose. Second, Red Hot & Blue is a tribute to the music of Cole Porter. The resulting album has a mix of music that often occurs on benefit albums. It seems like more artists want participate than there are room for, so some have to double up, and some unlikely collaborations are the result. Well Did You Evah? pairs Deborah Harry of Blondie fame with Iggy Pop. It may be worth remembering that Blondie got their start playing the famed punk club CBGBs. Well Did You Evah? as rendered here is a power pop blast with a punkish disrespect for its source. But most of all, it is the sound of two artists having a lot of fun.

Special Projects: Riders on the Storm

George Winston: Riders on the Storm

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Sometimes a real genre-shift is all another artist needs to make their music sound shiny and new. In 2002 George Winston, contemporary pianist and mainstay of the Windham Hill label, took 13 songs by the Doors and transformed them to introspective and melodic solo piano songs. It took me a while to choose one because I really love the whole album, but I went with one of my favorite Doors tunes.

This week is hard for me just for the fact that I am spoiled for choice and can't decide among all the great tributes and special concerts out there. I've started several posts, only to be swayed by something even better… And yes, if you were curious, Japanese artists put out as many tribute albums as western artists do. In fact, one just showed up last month: Visual Kei Rock Tribute to Disney! But sadly it's too new to make our arbitrary year cut-off, or I'd be tempted to share a pop-punk Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Special Projects: Let's Clean Up The Ghetto

The Philadelphia International All Stars : Let’s Clean Up The Ghetto

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Always a socially conscious label, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International Records released a compilation in 1977 that called for urban rejuvenation through the call: “Let’s Clean Up The Ghetto”.

The record featured some of the label’s great names: The O’Jays, Lou Rawls, The Three Degrees, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass, Intruders, Billy Paul, Dee Dee Sharp and Archie Bell. All but four of the songs on the album were exclusive to it. Some were covers, such as Harold Melvin’s version of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talking’”, Dee Dee Sharp Gamble’s take on “Ooh Child” by The Five Stairsteps, and The Intruders’ remake of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Save The Children”. The highlight is Lou Rawls’ “Tradewinds”, which was first recorded by The Three Degrees in 1972 and in Rawls’ version also appeared on his When You Hear Lou, You've Heard It All LP, released shortly after Let's Clean Up The Ghetto.

The song here is the joint collaboration on the title track. Lou Rawls, whose “Tradewinds” preceded “Let’s Clean Up The Ghetto”, sets the scene with a spoken intro about the grime of the ghetto, backed by a funky groove created by the label’s backing band, MFSB. Then Billy Paul comes in, followed by Archie Bell, Dee Dee Sharp, Teddy Pendergrass and The O’Jays. The whole seriously funky exercise was arranged by the great Dexter Wansel, who lets the instrumentalists shine during the extended instrumental play-out.

Ghetto is our home
That’s where we live, where we live
Get some paint, fetch your hammer, your nails
If you broomed, you mop and you pails
We’re gonna wash it, polish
And make it all clean
Let's wash away all of the sins
Time for a new life to begin
In the ghetto

Special Projects: I Can't Forget

The Pixies: I Can't Forget

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  The fact that even my unknown garage band got to provide a track to a Who tribute album (called, presciently,  Who Cares) has given me insight into just how difficult it must be to enlist well known artists to team up on a special project. There will always be songs listeners will skip over and songs bands rushed into production to meet deadline.

I'm Your Fan, dedicated to the songs of Leonard Cohen,  is better than most tribute albums (even though two artists, Robert Forster and Nick Cave, contributed covers of the same song). The artists involved included R.E.M., Lloyd Cole, House of Love and The Pixies. That's all I needed to know in 1991. The Pixies rocked out on "I Can't Forget" which  features some vintage Cohen lyrics: I stumbled out of bed/ I got ready for the struggle/ I smoked a cigarette and tightened up my gut/ I said this can't be me, must be my double.

I knew some Leonard Cohen in 1991. This album helped turn me on to his 70's albums like New Skin for the Old Ceremony. I'm Your Fan was just the first Leonard Cohen tribute album ( not counting Jennifer Warnes's Famous Blue Raincoat). Bigger names like Elton John, Billy Joel and Sting would gather in 1994 for the critically savaged Tower of Song. That's one tribute album I can forget!

Religion = > Special Projects: Here I Am, Oh Lord, Send Me

Alvin Youngblood Hart: Here I Am, Oh Lord, Send Me

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Mississippi John Hurt was one of those bluesmen of the pre-war years, (1920s in this case), who disappeared from the music scene, and was then rediscovered during the folk music revival of the late 50s and early 60s. Many of these musicians tell of how, as children, they developed a love of blues music over the objections of their parents. The parents in these tellings believed that blues was the Devil’s music, and they would beat their children to teach them to resist this temptation. So Mississippi John Hurt may have written Here I Am, Oh Lord, Send Me in self defense. But it could just as easily have been religious devotion that inspired the song.

Avalon Blues is a tribute to Mississippi John Hurt that was put together by Peter Case. Hurt is one of the influences that you can hear in Case’s guitar playing, so it’s not surprising that Case would want to do the album. But some of the artists he asked to participate are certainly surprising. Alvin Youngblood Hart is not a surprise at all. His own albums are soaked in blues. Likely or not, the artists on this album all deliver strong performances, paying tribute to Hurt by making his songs their own.

Religion: Holy Now

Peter Mayer: Holy Now

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Sundown this evening marked the end of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement; twenty years ago, or even five, the day would have had me in temple, naming my sins alongside the community in a language I can speak but cannot understand, hoping that G-d would find my repentance sincere enough to inscribe me in the book of life for yet another year.

But the older I get, the more my belief system drifts away from the conservative Judaism of my birth, and towards that of the Unitarian Universalists - a humanistic practice with no common creed among its followers save that of the ongoing search, the sacredness of community itself, and the urgency of social justice. And where most religions tell us where and how to pray, the UU sense of ritual is fluid enough to allow us to celebrate in whatever way best befits our mood, our needs, and our sense of the universe and our place in it.

And so, today, I found myself home, preparing a feature for Cover Lay Down about the ways in which I have come to use blogging itself as a mechanism for writing myself into the world, by year and by day.

And so, perhaps, it is fitting to find myself finishing up here, posting the song which most clearly speaks to that growing sense of the sublime in the mundane.

Because Minnesota singer-songwriter Peter Mayer's Holy Now serves as a sort of personalized UU hymn, one which reflects my own drift from Judaism even as it describes the move many lapsed Catholics have made from their own churches to the shared table where we worship through song and story each Sunday. In lyric and tone, it reminds us that returning reverence to the totality of creation need not imply a creator, but it sure does demand mindfulness in everything.

On my best days, I aspire to his vision.

May every day of your life bring atonement and prayer, joy and solace, no matter what you believe. For there is none of us so lost that we cannot find ourself again. Happy Yom Kippur, everyone.

Religion: What About The Bond

Bruce Cockburn: What About the Bond

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In 1980, Bruce Cockburn released Humans. The album is a collection of songs about the various forms of injustice in the world. What About the Bond comes almost exactly in the middle of the album, and it makes clear that Cockburn sees testifying about these injustices as a religious obligation. Cockburn urges all of us to stop turning a blind eye to human suffering, a message that is at least as relevant today as it was in 1980. I haven’t read the whole Book, but I’m pretty sure that there is a parable about that…

Religion: Love, Devotion, and Surrender

Santana: Love, Devotion, and Surrender

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We've had a lot of Christian music this week, so I thought I'd offer up something a little more universal by Latin-jazz-rock-fusion guitarist Carlos Santana. In the years before this release, he'd been making quite a musical splash, first in late-60s San Francisco, then at Woodstock (his blazing debut), and then worldwide. But around 1973 his music took a definite turn towards jazz fusion, a blend of jazz, funk, R&B, and rock heavily dosed with complicated time signatures. Miles Davis was at the forefront of jazz fusion, releasing in short order the groundbreaking albums Miles in the Sky (1968), In a Silent Way (1969) and Bitches Brew (1970). Some of the musicians on these LPs went on to further to fusion cause: Joe Zawinil and Wayne Shorter formed Weather Report, John McLaughlin formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea, Airto Moriera, and Flora Purim became Return to Forever, and Herbie Hancock formed Headhunters, among others. Some of these artists also show up in Santana's albums around this time, but John McLaughlin in particular is a prominent influence.

Just as music made dramatic changes in the late 60s, religious ideas became more diverse and took a pronounced turn eastward. Like many trends of the era, this started with the Beatles. In 1967, the Fab Four, along with a passel of other A-list celebrities (Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Cilla Black, Donovan, Mike Love of The Beach Boys, Mia Farrow, and flutist Paul Horn) became interested in an unknown Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and his technique of Transcendental Meditation. As you might expect, fascination with all things Indian---especially Indian mysticism--- soon followed.

By 1973 John McLaughlin was a member of the Self Realization Fellowship led by Indian-cum-American guru Sri Chinmoy, and he converted Carlos Santana and his drummer Michael Shrieve to the fellowship. Sri Chinmoy taught that rapid spiritual progress could be made with divine love, divine devotion and divine surrender, which gives us our title. McLaughlin and Santana released an album with this title several months prior, but this song is from the album Welcome. Vocalists are Santana, Wendy Hass, and Leon Thomas.

"We are all seekers, and our goal is the same: to achieve inner peace, light and joy, to become inseparably one with our Source, and to lead lives full of true satisfaction.” Sri Chinmoy

Religion: Love...Thy Will Be Done

Martika: Love...Thy Will Be Done

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This song blew me away the first time I heard it on the radio (though admittedly, I was only in junior high). It's beautiful, and anthemic, but yet it is pretty much a gospel song just jammed in there among the rest of the pop schlock that was being played on popular radio in 1991. The song was written and produced by the one and only Prince, and then performed by pop singer Martika, who is best known for her hit single "Toy Soldiers". "Love...Thy Will Be Done" did well commercially though, it made it into the top 10 pop charts.

To this day it remains one of my all time favorite songs because I find it so powerful...undoubtedly because of what it stands for to me. When having a religious discussion with a friend of mine and attempting to explain how I feel on the subject the only thing I could think of was this song. I told him, "as an agnostic, the one thing I feel like I can get behind without reservations is love as a religion. To me, if you can't replace the word "Lord" or "God" with "love" and still have your beliefs make sense, then you're doing something wrong". And of course, the original phrase is "Lord, thy will be done", and the song is "Love, thy will be done". Changing two letters changes everything.

Religion: Fix It Jesus

Reverend Charlie Jackson: Fix It Jesus

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When your burden gets too heavy, sometimes all you need is a southern preacher armed with a Fender Mustang, playing and singing like a man possessed. No matter what you believe in, or don't believe in. Ain't that the gospel truth.

Religion: Church

Lyle Lovett: Church

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I like to say that mankind invented religion to answer the question, “What’s for dinner?” Think about it. The oldest religions have mythologies and rituals that are centered around hunting and farming. Even Judaism has a seasonal cycle of festivals that include a harvest festival, (Sukkos), and Passover can be seen as a ritualized tale of leading the livestock to their spring pastures. Christianity is the first one to replace the old question with a new one, “What happens when we die?” But Lyle Lovett finds the old question returning in a powerful way one Sunday. What’s for dinner? The preacher’s answer will surprise you.

Religion: Do Lord

Jane Russell, Connie Haines, Beryl Davis, Della Russell: Do Lord

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It's a fascinating bit of trivia: Sex symbol actress Jane Russell headed a gospel quartet in the 1950s. Russell, a life-long Christian who died at 90 in February this year, met her fellow group members, singers Connie Haines (a former singer in the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey orchestras) and Beryl Davis, at a Christian social in Hollywood.The three were periodically joined by Della Russell and Rhonda Fleming (another bombshell).

The story goes that during the filming of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1953, Russell tried to convert co-star Marilyn Monroe to Christianity. Monroe later recalled: "Jane tried to convert me and I tried to introduce her to Freud".

"Do Lord", in which the singers are helfully introduced individually, was a big hit in 1954, shifting 2 million copies.

Religion: Let The Mystery Be

Iris DeMent: Let The Mystery Be

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Iris DeMent didn't get to spend Sundays the same way as the other kids in her Southern California neighborhood. Her parents took her to Pentecostal and Assembly Of Life churches where she spent hour after hour listening to fire and brimstone sermons which sometimes involved speaking in tongues. As Iris told The Aspen Times recently: "There's a lot of weird stuff there that anybody could do without."

When Iris left home, she left the church. But the church didn't leave her. From her 1992 debut Infamous Angel,  "Let The Mystery Be" takes on the subject of religious uncertainty: "Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from/ Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done."

 "I've never met anybody who went to the other side," she said. "So I just don't know what's there."

Religion: There's Gonna Be A Showdown

The Rance Allen Group: There's Gonna Be A Showdown

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Some believe that when they die, there'll be nothing. Others believe that when they die, granny and gramps will wait for them, cheerfully waving in a show of welcome at the end of that tunnel. Others believe that granny and gramps are biding their time with the waving welcome on the other side of purgatory. And some believe that there's gonna be a showdown at the end of days when the righteous shall rise again (God seems to have fun missing the deadlines set for him by the rapture-tempting loons).

The Rance Allen Band, who were brilliant at fusing soul, funk and gospel, seem to be of the apocalyptic persuasion. So their advice is that you better start having God in your life now because you don't know when that showdown of rapture will happen.

"There's Gonna Be A Showdown", from their 1972 LP Truth Is Where It's At, is a cover of the song by Archie Bell and the Drells, with the lyrics entirely reworked, except for the rousing chorus, which even retains the theologically redundant phrase, "hey hey". Where the Archie Bell and his band promised a showdown of dancing, Rance Allen and his band were aiming for final days. It's interesting that the gospel version totally outfunks the dance original. The Race Allen version is exhilirating where the original is just rather good.

The Rance Allen Group released a few very good albums on the Stax subsidiary Gospel Truth, and appeared at the Wattstax, the African-Amerian Woodstock (their performance of their song "Lying On The Truth" is, in the film, intercuit with images of churches in Watts). They remain active today.

Religion: Snake-Handling Man

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer: Snake-Handling Man

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And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. - Mark 16: 17-18

I came into possession of a number of albums by Tracy Grammer, with and without her late musical partner Dave Carter, and I have lately been discovering Carter and Grammer’s album Seven is the Number. The obvious choice from it for our new theme would have been Workin’ For Jesus, but I liked Snake-Handling Man better. Snake-Handling is a real thing. Dating from at least the 1920s, it is practiced in some Pentacostal churches in Appalachia. The bible verse I quoted above is the scriptural justification for the practice, and practitioners feel that only those whose faith is strong enough should attempt it. Dave Carter portrays his narrator as a man who is filled with the awesome power of God. The turbulent guitar parts only serve to emphasize this. I am reminded of the boasting of supernatural power that is found in blues songs like Hoochie Coochie Man.

Neil Young Covers: Lotta Love

Nicolette Larson: Lotta Love

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A dear college buddy (and his wife) came into town a few nights ago for a concert... and we've had a great time catching up as well as reminiscing - last evening we invited over another couple (mutual friends from that time in our lives) and the six of us sat out on our patio until 2 a.m... eating, talking and laughing...

We also did a bit of singing, when Kathy (not having a clue as to the Star Maker Machine theme this week) asked each of us what our favorite Neil Young album was - I had to chime in with Comes a Time, which we immediately put on the CD player, followed by After the Gold Rush, which segued to Nicolette's debut album...

The story goes that "while being driven by Young in his car one day, Larson played a cassette which was the demo of Lotta Love and Young told her the song was hers if she wanted it." - her version reached #8 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart in February 1979 and #1 on the Easy Listening chart, ranking as the #10 Adult Contemporary hit of the year.

Sadly, Larson died on December 16, 1997 at the age of 45 from cerebral edema - I love that we still knew all the words to these Neil Young songs, more than 3 decades after the recordings were released...

Neil Young covers: Helpless

Patti Smith: Helpless

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doa: Helpless

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Cowboy Junkies: Helpless

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I'm squeaking under the time-wire this time…I started out this posting week in the ER (I'm okay now) and my mom is also gracing another hospital with her presence (she's doing as well as an 86-year-old can). So I think the title of my post says it all when it comes to serious health issues: they can leave us feeling helpless.

Recently, Patti Smith has been broadening her punk roots: This song's downright ballad-y. It's from her 2007 album Twelve, a great selection of a dozen cover tunes.

The second version is from a 2004 EP Deadstock, which also includes pretty faithful cover versions of CSN-and-sometimes-Y tunes Ohio, Woodstock, and Find the Cost of Freedom. Will you hate me when I mention that doa are Japanese?

Finally, I've included my favorite version featuring a live Margo Timmons' soulful croon.

Aaaaand...looks like I made this week's deadline!

Neil Young Covers: After the Gold Rush

k d lang: After the Gold Rush

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One thing that has become clear to me this week is that Neil Young’s songs have layers of meaning, with different aspects calling to different listeners. Dolly Parton once asked Neil Young about the meaning of After the Gold Rush. Here is the story:

“…when we were doing the Trio album, I asked Linda and Emmy what it meant, and they didn't know. So we called Neil Young, and he didn't know. We asked him, flat out, what it meant, and he said, 'Hell, I don't know. I just wrote it. It just depends on what I was taking at the time. I guess every verse has something different I'd taken.”

To me, the song has a structure, with one verse each for past present, and future. And there is an environmental theme, with the last verse having a few humans selected to travel to a new, clean, planet and a fresh start, while the unlucky ones left behind look on in envy and sorrow for what has happened to their world. K d lang latches on to this sense of loss, and delivers one of her most subtle vocals in her version of the song. Lang can belt out a ballad with the best of them, but she knows that a quieter performance serves this song better.