As our theme indicates, one million is a very large number. Thinking about it is enough to make your head hurt. There is simply no way for most people to imagine how much one million actually is. So we humans sometimes cope with the concept by resorting to humor. Here are three fine examples.
It may be tempting to think of folk music as serious business. There are all those murder ballads, for starters. And many protest songs are solemn affairs. But Tom Paxton has always made his points using humor. One Million Lawyers doesn’t protest anything. It simply a gentle poke at all of us. I offer it here, knowing that at least one of our writers at Star Maker is a lawyer himself. All in fun, I assure you.
Millionaire Blues is a slyer form of humor. Here, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is poking fun at himself. Remember, this is the same man who wrote Money For Nothing, so he knows what it is like to have far less money. He reminds himself that, no matter how hard things may get for him, he has it better than many others. The blues is the perfect musical genre to make this point. “Low as the heals of my alligator shoes” indeed!
Finally, If I Had a Million Dollars is a song I was sure would have been posted by now. Barenaked Ladies make the point here that it most of us can not even imagine what we would spend it on if we did have a million dollars. In fact, buying all of the items listed probably would spend it down in record time, but that is not the point. This is a promise of love based on a fantasy of money the singer never really expects to have.
purchase [A Day At The Races] I don't recall every having bought a Queen album. I've made it this far with the basic awareness of the big hits: Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are the Champions, We Will Rock You,, Radio Gaga ... My loss. In consolation, as Confucius is said to have said: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. (Hmmm... someone else comes to mind today.) And so, as I dug for <songs about million>, I was pleasantly surprised to come across Queen's Millionaire Waltz. If I had bought <A Day At The Races> , I might have been wiser. Then again, the album didnt have any of the hits I would have been exposed to via MSM. I was initially struck by the similarity of <Waltz> to other Queen I was familiar with. No big surprise - a band has its style and you can expect them to sound ... well ... the same from one song to another. There's the familiar piano and the well-known vocal lead. The progression (as in time line from start to finish) also comes across as ... expected. Expected but good enough. In reminiscing, I thought I recalled Queen at Live Aid. In fact, because I lived in a part of the world mostly bereft of this kind of media/culture, I had back then a collection of VHS cassettes that I had recorded the summer of 85 when I happened to be in the US of A and caught Live Aid on TV. Sure enough, there's Freddy Mercury and band doin' it from the London Stage (there were stages in the UK and the US/cities for that Geldoff event, and Phil Collins performed on both, flying across the ocean on the Concorde). A long time gone. Here it is:
I suggested this theme (or something like it), thinking that there were large numbers of songs that fit, but strangely the first thing that came to mind when I sat down to write was the name Bill Million, best known as a member of The Feelies (and, it turns out, it isn't even his real name).
Coming out of Haledon, New Jersey, The Feelies formed in 1976 around guitarist/songwriters Million and Glenn Mercer, reportedly after Million, tripping on acid, passed Mercer’s house and heard his band playing the Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” They soon gained a reputation as a live band. Ultimately, the group also included Keith Clayton on bass and Anton Fier (that guy!) on drums.
The Feelies remarkable first album, Crazy Rhythms, came out in 1980, during my WPRB days, and I remember thinking that it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. If you took the early Talking Heads’ quirkiness and twitchiness, Television’s intertwined guitars with strumming that would be made more famous in a few years by R.E.M. (who were influenced by The Feelies), add a touch of Dick Dale surf guitar, a bit of Phillip Glass/Steve Reich minimalism, some Eno drones, a heaping spoonful of Velvet Underground and back it with what is almost always referred to as “nervous drumming,” you might come close to understanding what they sounded like. And yet, it was something totally original. The Village Voice ranked it as the 17th best album of 1980, just behind X’s Los Angeles and ahead of Bowie’s Scary Monsters, The Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue, Joy Division’s Closer, and Argybargy by Squeeze, to name a few. Rolling Stone has ranked it as the 49th best album of the Eighties.
The album is many tracks deep, and we played the crap out of it. That year, the band performed at a party in a campus gym, and while their energy was evident, the bad sound and acoustics made it frustrating, because it was impossible to really appreciate the precision with which they played. Those of us who were familiar with the album enjoyed it, if with some disappointment at the sound, but I suspect that the performance failed to make many converts.
For various reasons, The Feelies splintered after Crazy Rhythms, with members leaving and starting side projects. They pretty much dropped out of sight until 1986, when Mercer and Million, with bass player Brenda Sauter, percussionist Dave Weckerman (who had returned to the band after leaving before Crazy Rhythms was recorded), and drummer Stanley Demeski released the folkier, less nervous, The Good Earth, produced by Peter Buck of R.E.M. They also appeared in Jonathan Demme’s movie, Something Wild. 1988’s Only Life was The Feelies' major label debut, and it was followed in 1991 by the somewhat harder rocking Time For A Witness.
And that was it, it seemed, for The Feelies.
But Million’s Princeton student son had been jamming with Mercer, who lived nearby, and that led to a reunion and a new album in 2011, Here Before, which simply sounds like it hadn’t been a decade since they had been together. Early this year, they released another fine collection, In Between.
Most of the band’s lead vocals are handled by Mercer, but our featured song, “Raised Eyebrows,” from Crazy Rhythms, is essentially an instrumental that features Million injecting the phrase "You get old." It is much better than my description.
1968's The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp is one of the psychedelic eras's most eccentric little treasures, full of whimsical numbers that will make you smile. Among them, the bouncy single "One in a Million", written in 1965 by drummer Michael Giles with an apparent nod to Ray Davies. Like the album itself, "One in a Million" failed to sell any copies.
The might have been the end of the story. But of course the Fripp in Giles, Giles and Fripp is Robert Fripp, one of prog rock's greatest guitarists. When the trio met multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, it was only a matter of time before they formed a new band. Out would go bassist Peter Giles for the stronger vocalist Greg Lake and McDonald's friend Peter Sinfield would also join to handle lyrics, lighting and PA. It was Sinfield who coined the name of the new band, King Crimson.
From there things would get decidedly less... cheerful.
No hard feelings between the brothers. Peter Giles would join his brother and Ian McDonald in 1971 on the magnificent McDonald and Giles album.
Rather than approaching this theme with the standard "songs with million" in the lyrics/title, I decided to educate myself just a little.
Question 1: what is the certification level given to records that sell 1 million or more? The answer is a little more complicated than I was aware of. If you know the answer to this question, more power to you. Fact is, there are different requirements for singles and albums. As a music aficionado, you likely know that <Certified Gold> requires 500K in sales, and this is true for both singles and albums (but $1 million in sales at the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price). Howsomever, <Certified Platinum> places a 1 million threshold for singles and a 2 million bottom line for albums (again, with a minimum total income based on the MSRP).
Diamond status takes the stakes up to 10 million, and then gets even more complicated when we get into Digital Downloads.
Question 2: the first <Gold> record? The first "gold" label was awarded to Glen Miller's <Chattanooga Choo Choo> back in 1942 (probably rightly so) - but it was an "in-house" award that was only later adopted across the board by other labels. My understanding is that the RIAA only came into being after this point in time. You could check out the RIAA website, but I'm not so sure I would rely on their info based on their past public performance.
But - being the powerhouse that they are, we need to pay some attention to the RIAA, and after they got on board, they awarded Perry Como and Elvis Presley some of their first "golds".
I'll go back on my word just a little by relying on the RIAA website: they say that the very first Platinum record was Johnnie Taylor's <Disco Lady>. I confess the name meant nothing to me, but adding in my experience of where music was at at that time - highly plausibly "gold".
And from there ... the rest is probably what you are already aware of .. The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd .... [I couldn't possibly list them all]
Folk seem to be suggesting there aren't that many songs about millions, so it was with some relief I tapped into my i-pod search and and found, well, over a handful, mainly to do with miles, dollars or, as this one, tears. And delighted too I was to find this song, an artist I had somehow forgotten about of late, and, indeed, seems also to have been overlooked in the wider world of fame and fortune. Time to discover!
Kasey burst on to my consciousness back in the late 90's, in her 20's, her debut coming at me with a blast of raw, gutsy heartfelt C&W pathos. Country and western australia that is, as she hailed from,(actually south) australia, rather than the West Texas Lucinda tinted tones she reminded me of, albeit a younger and more innocent Lucinda. Her first album, 'The Captain', was an absolute scorcher, if one discounts her years of active service in her 'family" band, honing her chops under the capable supervision of her father, himself a name in australiana. It probably did no harm that world famous in my world, hopefully yours, husband and wife duo, Buddy and Julie Miller, were involved. Indeed, she soon eclipsed his custodianship, a run of records alerting her to international ears, with, notably, a duet with the aforesaid Lucinda appearing on her 2nd solo outing. Hell, her first 2 tours of the USA were supporting, first, Lucinda and, secondly, Emmylou Harris. The 2nd album, 'Barricades and Brickwalls', took her further, if not a better record, getting close to the sales of another australian, sales wise. The titular song from this piece comes from said album.
I was sort of surprised, whilst researching this piece, that she has a subsequent 9 releases, many performing just as well. Somehow these didn't seem to hit the radars I rely on back in the UK. I was aware she had married, and that she had become a duo with her husband, one Shane Nicholson, but none of their material had intrigued. They have since separated. The good news is that she has this year produced a new album, 'Dragonfly', which, on a first spotify, sounds and seems well much a return to form.
I feel bad suggesting there has been a fall away from grace, as, for all I know, maybe there hasn't been, but, irrespective, she's back on my register and I commend her to yours.
For our new theme, I went to YouTube and did searches for what seemed to be likely titles for songs. I am somewhat embarrassed that I had never heard of Jim Boyd until I did that. Boyd is identified in most references to him on line as a Native American singer-songwriter. He was certainly that. His roots were on the Colville Reservation in Washington state, where he was an important member of the tribal council. But, on the strength of this song, Boyd deserved to be more widely known. True, A Million Miles Away expresses the yearning many on the reservations feel for a better life somewhere else. But the theme of the song is more universal than that.
I am reminded of a book I would like to recommend, Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. Alexie is a novelist. He has achieved a level of fame where he no longer has to be called a Native American novelist, although he gives voice to Native American concerns in the book. In fact, Alexie and Boyd became friends, and even wrote songs together. Reservation Blues is about a group of young Native Americans who form a band and try to use their music as a way off the reservation to a better life. In the end, they are unsuccessful, and they have to go back to the life they knew. There was eventually a movie version, and Jim Boyd was on the soundtrack. Boyd’s music was good enough to stand with anything ever posted here, but I’m guessing most of our readers didn’t know about him either.
Musically, someone could probably have a hit with A Million Miles Away by turning it into a power ballad. I can hear in my head just where the band would come in with drums, bass, and screaming electric guitars. Boyd doesn’t do that, and the song simmers intensely all the way through as an acoustic ballad. To me, the song is better for it, but subtlety is not how you get onto the charts.
Unlike in my last post, there is no need for make to make the case for The Golden Vanity as a folk song. Instead, the song and the versions offered here give a great example of the folk process. What are now traditional songs once served a role in society that is filled now with far less artistry by tabloid newspapers. In a culture that was mostly illiterate, songs like The golden Vanity were how the masses got their news. As stories like this got told and retold, different singers would add their own agendas to the lyrics. The Golden Vanity may have begun as a tale about a specific sea captain. The singer might have left him unnamed, secure in the knowledge that his audience would know who he was. But the song is also a tale of the unfairness of the class structure of British society. There are versions that present the tragic conclusion as inevitable, citing how impudent the cabin boy was to expect to be rewarded for his efforts. The universality of the main theme of the song assured it a long life that extended well beyond the life of the people it was written about. So the enemy is often a “Turkish Revelry”, but sometimes it is a Spanish ship. Likewise, it is important to some singers that the enemy deserves their fate, so there is a verse that describes them as sinners, playing cards and shooting dice as they sink into the sea. Rory Block gives us a lyric where the crew give the cabin boy an honorable death, as if the teller is a former shipmate struck by pangs of guilt. It is unlikely, in the actual event, that the captain would have allowed this, but it puts the blame on him alone for what happened. Gordon Bok and crew give us an exchange between the captain and the cabin boy that exposes the villainy of the captain for all to see; here, the reason the cabin boy does not take revenge is an act of class solidarity.
Another aspect of the folk process is on display here as well. All three versions here are recognizably the same song. But Rory Block and Bok, Muir and Trickett take very different approaches musically, although both are ballads. Sam Kelly turns the song into an uptempo burner, and it really cooks. As these songs pass from news items to parts of the traditional culture, each new artist uses their unique talents to put the song over the best way they can. There are times, like this one, where there never becomes an “official” way to do the song, so each artist must make it their own. I could have presented many more versions, including classic takes by Pete Seeger, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and Peter Paul and Mary, but the versions I have chosen suffice to illustrate the point.
In 1986, a year that jangly guitars were still all the rage on college radio stations like mine, Washington D.C.'s Tommy Keene released one of the year's finest power pop albums. Songs From the Film was Keene's major label debut. Produced by Beatles audio engineer Geoff Emerick, it's a collection of straight ahead tunes that grow on you ten, twenty, even thirty years later.
I caught Keene's act from the back of the 9:30 Club in his hometown a year or two earlier and I wasn't impressed. From the back of the room, he looked like Alan Thicke. In my hometown of New Orleans, the Jesuit owned TV station had replaced David Letterman with Thicke's show Thicke of the Night. We hated Alan Thicke. So that counted as strike one. Keene's reedy voice reminded me of Let's Active's Mitch Easter who seemed to be constantly replacing female bandmates taller than him. Strike two. And the songs may have sounded too straight forward to a guy like me, who considered himself a music snob. Strike three.
Then, in 1984, Tommy Keene released a pair of EPs on the Dolphin label that sounded great with the kind of songs I liked to play on my college radio show ( Back in the USA MC5, Marshall Crenshaw, the dBs, R.E.M., The Byrds, The Beau Brummels, the garage rock bands from the Nuggets Compilation, you get the idea). One of them, Run Now, produced by T Bone Burnett and Don Dixon, topped the Village Voice Pazz and Jop EP poll and is now included on the Songs From the Film CD.
Keene never made it big. But take a listen to "Gold Town" and you'll be left wondering why.
purchase [Lulu] [Un] fortuitously, this comes more or less upon Roger Moore's demise. I had already started in on this topic when I read the news this week about his passing. More than once, the James Bond series has shown its affinity for gold: the word appears in more than one film title: Goldfinger, GoldenEye, The Man with a Golden Gun. And the metal itself appears even more often - you know, the root of all evil. Ask yourself: Why does one rock dug out of the ground have such value? Go figure. Gold ... Silver... Diamonds and more. The James Bond film series is a serious production process - not least the selection of its music - both throughout each film, but more emphatically, in the film's intro section. Over the years, the honor of singing the films' intro music has fallen to the top of the pop: Paul McCartney, Louis Armstrong, Nancy Sinatra, Carly Simon, Rita Coolridge, Tina Turner ... the list goes on and on. Kind of like how the list of Bond films that include <gold> goes on and on. The Bond <gold> selection I highlight spans a number of musical genres, but there seems to be an over-arching theme to them all: lots of [studio] production. I don't mean to necessarily place this in a bad sense. In fact, the Bond music over-production is appropriate, but it's obvious. That's probably a given for anything Bond - the whole operation is tightly managed - and that's part of what makes the series classic. Herewith, 3 golden Bond theme songs:
A theme within a theme—two “Gold” related posts about 1980s Richard Thompson side projects. To follow up last week’s post about the Golden Palominos, this week we look at French, Frith, Kaiser, Thompson, a more traditional “supergroup” in form, if not sound or popularity. FFKT released two albums, 1987’s Live, Love, Larf & Loaf, from which today’s featured song comes, and Invisible Means, released in 1990.
Thompson is both a personal favorite, and a SMM regular. His cohorts in FFKT, though, are somewhat lesser known. John French is a drummer, although he contributed some vocals to the project, and is probably best known as “Drumbo” from Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. Fred Frith, best known as a guitarist, although he mostly played bass and violin in this group, was a founder of the English avant-garde rock group Henry Cow, and has played with and produced a wide variety of mostly experimental and unconventional musicians (including Golden Palomino Bill Laswell). Frith is Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills College and is also a writer. Henry Kaiser is another experimental guitarist and ethnomusicologist whose body of work stretches across the spectrum of jazz, rock, electronic and world music.
As could be expected from this crew, Live, Love, Larf & Loaf is an eclectic set of music which seems to also reflect the members’ off-kilter senses of humor. The album includes, among other things, experimental, noisy songs, an Okinawan folk song, a version of the Beach Boys' “Surfin’ U.S.A.” played in the style of Chuck Berry before descending into chaos, and a few songs that sound like slightly twisted Richard Thompson songs.
“Killerman Gold Posse” is one of these, a song about a London youth gang, in which Thompson recounts the gang’s practices of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, although he notes that “the poor are we, and the poor are we.” However, the narrative is interrupted by a chorus, which sings, “We are children, please don't take our freedom away.”
It is an odd song, and one that probably is exactly long enough at 1:47.
The Cadillac Three is a three-piece, hot-shit, slide guitar,
honky-tonk stompin’ outfit that churns out sizzlin’ hot southern-fried country
rock. The band is a showcase for lead singer and songwriter Jaren Johnston’s
considerable and prodigious talents as a hit maker. Johnston has been around
Nashville for a long time (he literally grew up at the Grand Ol’ Opry, where
his father was band drummer). But, what sets him apart is his job that has him
writing hits for everyone from Keith Urban to Tim McGraw—Johnston maintains a
publishing deal with Warner Brothers while still fronting The Cadillac
Three.Which is pretty amazing, but when
you listen to the swaggering, brawling, booze-soaked country rock of the TC3, its
hard to think of the likes of Keith Urban or any other pop country signer being
anywhere near the same league as Johnston’s band.
TC3 channels the best of all genre’s of rock: there’s the
laid back lyrical sense of breathing in deep the humid, bug filled air of a backyard
party somewhere way down south, to the hyped up giddy kind of buzz that comes
from cold beers and shots of Old # 7. Johnston’s a visual writer, who turns
phrases expertly and can delve in country clichés without being cliché in the
least. TC3 captures everything you might love, or not even realize you love,
about not just southern/ country rock, but rock ‘n roll in general: exuberant,
down and dirty, crunchy and raw.
Take a listen to “Days of Gold”, a hymn to good time
southern summers—whiskey, beers, a smoking grill—set to a quick time, hand
clapping, boot stomping lap-steel-driven beat. TC3 are kind of the best kind of
party you can find on disc: down home and all revved up. Here’s to summer and
all the parties to come!
I'll post two versions of the song: the original, and live version, so you can get a taste of what these three guys can do, which is pretty much tear it up!
Iron, actually, iron pyrites, but, given its name, not to say the myriad songs so entitled, hopefully quite worthy of a mention here. And clearly a theme of some inspiration, the age old tale of being taken in by all that glitters. Akin to buying a record unheard on the strength of a review. Or a cover.
The Stone Roses were huge for a moment at the rump of the '80s, their debut single blazing a trail that could never quite be replicated, a blend of dance and guitars, heralding the era of 'Mad'chester. For a while (that still lingers) all drums sounded like this, leading rather than riding. I found it exhilarating and still do, but the combination of management and internal rancour effectively leaves it a much better epitaph than the much delayed later product and ill-advised ongoing reformation. Lyrically this is an odd concoction, seemingly both a warning and expectation, about the discovery/dessert of riches the final lines almost apocryphal:
'Gold's just around the corner Breakdown's coming up round the bend'
Graham Parker and the Rumour are/were, in my opinion, the closest thing to Bruce Springsteen produced in the UK, Parker's gritty songs and presentation pre-dating the passion of punk by a year or two too soon, arguably then diminished by its onslaught. The Rumour were the epitome of classic bar band, grizzled pros even then, most still playing, not least when quirk and circumstance put the original line-up back on the road a few years back. Parker was the angriest man in music, spitting his words out with a venom barely believable from his slight frame. On his last tour of Britain, last year, in duo form with the exemplary Brinsley Schwarz on guitar, he seems finally to have found some mellow. The lyrics here seem to suggest a knowingness, suggesting not only is the music biz paved with fool's gold, but the searching of it is a fool's errand. Or it could be about girls:
'I'm a fool so I'm told I get left in the cold 'Cause I will search the world for that fool's gold, fool's gold'
Ryan Adams is almost frustratingly prolific and terrifyingly inconsistent, at least in live performance, previous shows often marred by his various demons. The story around Fools' Gold is almost typical of his battles. Gold was the name of his 2nd long player, to my mind his best, but not what he wanted or had intended, the idea being of a double set, thwarted by his record company. Some songs came in a limited edition extra disc, others sneaked out, like this, as a b-side for a single, the rest sneaking out as a bootlegged recording. As is so often the way with Adams, his best work is sometimes the hardest to source. The words perhaps display a well-learnt cynicism:
'Fool's gold can buy you anything you want Fool's gold, fool's gold'
What hasn't ever been said about Amy Winehouse that I could add here, the backline almost lifted from any of the recent posts about Songs From Movies About Musicians, riches and recognition to ruin. Whilst only putting out 2 records, she was prolific enough to have a swell of other material, b-sides, outtakes and more, and this is one, appearing on a later de-luxe edition of Frank. Of all the 4 songs I feature, it is lyrically the most poignantly apposite, a warning as to the falsehoods that can arise from the entrapment of a band of gold on your finger: 'For me it ain't real, it's fools gold There too many fools sold, not an excuse, oh For me it ain't real, it's fools gold I don't hear everything I'm told'
There are other songs by other artists about this shiny deceitful stone, from Thin Lizzy to One Direction, citing it both a subject and a metaphor for the desperation of hope versus the disappointment of discovery. How apt for popular music, this most fickle of industries.
So, what Fool's Gold old are you going to buy? Fill yer boots!
When I first heard Fields of Gold, I thought I was hearing a traditional English folk song that had somehow escaped my notice. I am no expert, but surely I would have heard someone’s version of a song this good before this? The song features the repetition of alternating lines “fields of barley” and fields of gold” in a way that can be found in many traditional English songs. But there was a reason I had not heard the song before. Fields of Gold is a Sting original, although it shows a strong knowledge of English folk music. This is a side of Sting he had not really shown before. We knew he loved rock and reggae from the sound of his band the Police. On his first solo album, Sting returned to his jazz roots. Since then, he has explored classical music and continued to make his own brand of what must be called pop for lack of a better term. Fields of Gold is the only original folk song of his that I have heard, but it really works. I could hear in my head a more “traditional” arrangement the first time I heard it.
In searching for such a version, my first stop was Eva Cassidy’s version. Here we can ignite a whole argument about what is and is not “folk”. Cassidy didn’t care. While she is a revered figure among folk fans, her music is not purely folk. She drew songs from a rich array of genres and sources, and her arrangements were not always what one might consider folk. But if you consider the role that folk music served in society when the songs we are most familiar with were being written, you realize that songs like Froggy Went A’Courting were the pop music of their day. On that basis, any song is fair game, and it is the job of any modern folk artist to make their choice of songs their own. Eva Cassidy did that job brilliantly.
Still, I wanted to see if I could find an even folkier version without sacrificing either quality or authenticity. Bennett’s Fields of Gold still isn’t what I heard in my head. For that I would need an Irish singer, backed by just guitar and uillean pipes. But Bennett does the next best thing, giving me a small acoustic ensemble, and featuring the cello in the role I assigned to the piper. Bennett’s voice is perfect here. Like Cassidy, Bennett takes his material from a wide range of sources, and he too makes his songs his own.
Fields of Gold has become a standard since Sting wrote it. You can find multiple versions on Amazon by looking either for wedding music or lullabyes. There are also many covers of varying quality and in various genres. So the song may have started life as a Sting original, but I would argue that the place it has taken in our culture now qualifies it as a folk song.
purchase [Heart of Gold] Sad disclosure to apologize for the quality of my research: Turkey continues to block Wikipedia - limiting my ability to access further steps related to my ideas. (It needs to be said) Crosby, Stills and Nash came out with their first album at the end of the 60s. A veritable powerhouse/Supergroup that included some of the best from Bufallo Springfield, the Byrds ... the top of the charts. (And as JDavid just said, they had their personality problems.) The album [link] they came out with in '69 includes a collection of rock classics: Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Marrakesh Express, Guinevere,Wooden Ships, Helplessly Hoping, Long Time Gone. Heck .. they're all good. The collaboration lead them to Woodstock. No small feat. It appears that it was Ahmet Ertegun (back once again to Turkey!) who convinced CSN that another Atlantic artist by the name of Neil Young might fit in with the original 3. It wasn't exactly a smooth transition, but ... the result was historical: CSNY. Neil Young brought in an element of edgy-ness, and probably some additional discord in the process: it's hard enough to get 3 musicians aligned. Adding one more only exacerbates the issues. But the roughness of Young's style took the group to a new level and arguably maintained, if not increased their appeal. Thankfully, they managed to hold it together for longer than most people predicted, and we ended up with Deja Vu and 4 Way Street as they helped lead the political voice of America into the 70's. In '71, Neil Young came out with Harvest - another rock classic that includes Old Man, The Needle and the Damage Done and Heart of Gold. The album was panned by critics but the public was of another mind - one of his most successful works to this day.
Further disclosure: 2-3 years back our blogger Andy LaRayGun, some
friends and I did a Neil Young cover at about this time of year in front
of maybe 500 students. Andy on the left, me next to him (black guitar
doing the vocals)
The legendary supergroups like Cream or Blind Faith or CSN&Y were attempts to join musicians famous from other projects into a, well, super group, but they often foundered due to the conflicting egos of the members. The Golden Palominos, often referred to as an “indie-rock supergroup,” was different, gathering changing groups of generally less famous artists for each album.
Originally founded in the early 1980s by Anton Fier, a drummer who had been an early member of, among other bands, The Feelies, the first incarnation of the Golden Palominos was filled with avant-garde musicians like Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay and Bill Laswell, many of whom were influenced by the “No Wave” movement and often had as much jazz influence as indie-rock. Their self-titled debut was experimental, noisy and even featured turntable scratching, a rarity outside of hip-hop in that era.
My introduction to the band was from their very different second album, 1985’s Visions of Excess, which was significantly more accessible. The original attraction was “Boy (Go),” featuring lead vocals from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, and guitar from Richard Thompson. The album also featured vocals from John Lydon (a/k/a Johnny Rotten) and supergroup veteran Jack Bruce, as well as the debut appearance of singer Syd Straw, who is on the list of people who should be way more famous. Despite the unusual roster of musicians, the album hangs together pretty well, and is never dull. Also, there’s a great cover of Moby Grape’s “Omaha,” also sung by Stipe.
The Golden Palominos put out albums every few years throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a few of which I own, with a constantly changing group of performers, including Matthew Sweet, T-Bone Burnett, Bernie Worrell, Bob Mould and Bootsy Collins, with Stipe, Thompson and Straw dropping by occasionally, joining core members Fier, bassist Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis for, not surprisingly, varied sounds and results. In 2012 Fier, and a different group of musicians joined Kevn Kinney of Drivin’ & Cryin’ for a new album, A Good Country Mile. That album includes a cover of a Jason Isbell written Drive-By Truckers song, “Never Gonna Change.” (Self-promoting side note—Drivin’ & Cryin’ was the band that Trucker Patterson Hood was opening for when he saw the incident that inspired the song “Opening Act,” which you can read more about here.)
Give Fier and his Golden Palominos sidekicks credit for pushing the envelope, trying new things and always making interesting music. They cannot be pigeonholed, and if that hindered them from gaining an identity and becoming a true “supergroup,” it never prevented them from following their muse wherever it took them. In a world filled with artists mining the same groove until it turns into a rut (thanks, Nick Lowe), it is refreshing, if not always easy, to listen to a project like the Golden Palominos that constantly challenges.
I already had been a fan of the Stranglers when this came out, but my appreciation went atmospheric on this release, sounding nothing like anything else around at the time, a wistful harpsichord led ballad in what seemed to be waltz time. It was also quite different to the music of the Stranglers output ahead of that, previous offerings being of a more aggressive mien, barely suppressed violence and misogyny lurking beneath the surface of not only the songs, but also their audience.
In 1981, when the song came out, I was both married and gainfully employed in my first job as a junior hospital doctor. Hardly, then, typical punk demographic, yet the UK punk explosion of 1975/6 had earlier grabbed my imagination, shortening my hair and straightening my trousers. I felt, it's true, a little too square for the Pistols and the Clash, but the Stranglers were older, uglier and, a bonus, had a keyboard sound redolent of my beloved Doors. They were the first band in that idiom I caught in a live context, on a bill with U.S. band the Dictators in support, at fabled London venue, the Roundhouse, my first and only visit. November 1977, still a student. Of course I was scared, but it was terrific, taking the opportunity to catch them whenever I could, including the infamous open air concert at Battersea Park, with a newly solo Peter Gabriel amongst the support acts. (Infamous? Well, let's say that the headline act were faithfully nice'n'sleazy......... )
But respectability and commitment had to figure in my life, so it was a couple of years before I revisited the legacy of the band, hearing the eponymous song of this piece burst out of the radio one lunchtime. I was now too 'old' for the more dance-oriented Radio 1, the youth radio of the nation, moving to the young fogey-dom of Radio 2. Lo and behold, this staider and more conservative channel had made this song, by the 'Bring on the Nubiles' hitmakers their record of the week. And they were on Top of the Pops, miming valiantly, the impossible to hum melody imprinting in my brain. What strange things could the lanky Hugh Cornwell be singing about, his voice now a croon compared to the spat out venom of yore? Well the drummer, Jet Black, one part of the melodic inspiration behind the tune, along with keyboard man, Dave Greenfield, suggested it may have been Marmite, which I have mentioned before, a yeast based spread either loved or hated. Cornwell suggested possibly a woman, but his already well-known lifestyle and habits probably gave a better idea. This was a man, after all, who had spent time in London's Pentonville prison for possession of Class A drugs, as described here. Shock and horror, Radio 2 seen to be promoting a song about the joys of Heroin.
By now the Stranglers had almost totally morphed their earlier sound into a far more refined and delicate style, described by some commentators as 'Baroque Pop', a phrase I like, and I saw them a couple of more times. Eventually the steam ran out, or possibly the elephant in the room of 'musical differences', and after a couple of lack-lustre cover versions, Cornwell left the band. The remaining 3 members lurched on, and still do, with various replacements, never quite finding their feet or their glory days. Cornwell has embarked on a solo career of mixed provenance, still the highlights of his shows being when he plays some old. Now, if one day they could patch up their differences and play together as the original band, that would be worth seeing, but the chances of that fade by the year. Somehow the spectre of notoriously spiky black belt in Karate bassist, Jean Jacques Burnel, cosying back up with Cornwell seems unlikely, not least as Jet Black, already in his 40s in their 70s heyday, has had to retire from live shows. As I said, they were already older back in the day.
But the song remains a classic and one I return to often. Remarkably, it has been covered, albeit often in spoof or post-modern ironic style, never matching the original. The version below, actually featuring Cornwell, is, however quite fun!
As a final aside, and one that gives me great pleasure, is the knowledge that Cornwell, junkie post-graduate research chemist, was actually a contemporary of Richard Thompson, guitar hero and icon, ex of Fairport Convention. Indeed, as school mates together, Thompson had included Cornwell, on bass, in his first band, 'Emil and the Detectives'. Which led to a later and somewhat unlikely reunion onstage. As Thompson regularly says, or sings, 'It all Comes Around Again'.
Are tap dancers musicians? Because, if they aren’t, making this a transition song from our Songs From Movies About Musicians theme is admittedly a stretch. The main character is a penguin from a group who are great singers, but he can not sing. Instead, his talent is tap dancing, and the movie is about him proving his value to a culture that initially rejects him. Themewise, it only makes matters worse when you know that the song Golden Slumbers/ The End was later used in a movie that definitely would fit both themes: last year’s Sing. There are two reasons why I didn’t want to use Jennifer Hudson’s version from that film: the movie and recording are too new; and k d lang’s version from Happy Feet is just so much better.
Golden Slumbers/ The End is a song that invites overblown bombastic treatments. It is all too tempting to give the song a big production, and have everything crescendo to a big finish. k d lang and producer T-Bone Burnette know better. They understand the power of subtlety here, and they know they have the singer to pull it off. So lang is backed here by piano and the percussion of Medeski, Martin, and Wood, plus very light orchestration and stand-up bass. Burnette trusts his singer to do the rest, and she does, beautifully.
Purchase Anvil, Metal on Metalfrom the documentary, Anvil:
The Story of Anvil.
OK, I’m going to start this the wrong way, like some
apologist whose nothing but guilty of the thing he’s apologizing for…what do
they call that, when someone effusively apologizes for something in order to make
it seem as if they aren’t guilty of the exact thing they are expressing shame
about… hypocrisy?
And what exactly will I be protesting? That I don’t like
Metal. I really don’t. I did. But that was a long time ago. I’d rather you not
know that. But, now that I’ve written it, let’s leave it where it is.
I’m a little embarrassed at the fact that I used to think
the likes of Poison, Cinderella, Dokken, et al were the shit. Big S Shit. I wanted desperately to be able
to grown my hair long. I wore a torn and frayed denim jacket, festooned with as
many patches as I could fit on it: Def Leppard, Van Halen, Judas Priest, et al.
The main back patch was of Iron Maiden’s Eddie, dressed a British infantryman
from their greatest song, “The Trooper.” I wore wrester’s high-top shoes (I don’t know
where that came from, but it was the metal thing to do). I wore a mullet since
my hair is naturally curly and the only part that would grow reasonably
straight was the back. I looked like a tool.
I was abruptly pulled out of my teenage haze of hairspray
and spandex and Ibanez guitars when someone introduced me to R.E.M. It was a
simple change over, like a trigger pull. I went from listening to bad music,
because that’s what everyone else was listening, to being a music snob. Someone
who listened to good music. Someone who was openly critical of other’s
musical tastes. I would hazard that a
lot of you were/are the same…you know who you are. It’s OK; music appreciation
is part intellectual, part tribal, and all an affair of the heart. My
development of said musical appreciation is a long history, of which I gone into at
varying degrees in my writing for this blog, so I won’t digress too deeply into
my own tutelage and history. Except to
say: sometimes your past isn’t at as far a remove as you’d like to think.
Exhibit A: My Spotify library has many of Iron Maidens
albums
Exhibit B: I have an ipod playlist called “Hair Metal Faves”
Exhibit C: my obsession with the documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil
Directed by their former roadie, this film is a documentary
about Anvil, a little known metal band, and, is simply put: brilliant. It is both
heartbreaking and hilarious, but in the end, as uplifting a human story as I’ve
ever seen. The “tragedy” of the band fuels the emotional drive of the story,
and in a sense proves that the tragedy need not be one that moves us to despair
to raise the spirit to a place one finds a sense of thankfulness or
self-perspective. To get a sense of the
film, you should know: Anvil are a Canadian metal outfit that put out an album
in 1982 that is considered by most metal luminaries as singularly influential.
Metallica and Anthrax, Slash, Lemmy, Slayer all fill the film with stunning
testimony to the energy and excitement that Anvil brought to the stage and how
they seemed poised to reach the very pinnacle of metal triumph.
And then…nothing. Anvil disappeared from the main stream and
seemingly into the lore of bands that “might of.” But, they never really went
away. The film details the story of how mainstays Steve “Lips” Kudlow (lead
vox) and drummer Robb Reiner toiled through decades of obscurity and all the
inglorious humiliations of being a band that had tasted success but never quite
made it. Nor ever quit. There’s a lot to this film that makes it great. It is a
meditation of youthful ambition, on failure and will. It is about friendship
and family, but mostly it’s about grit. About never giving in and never giving
up. The movie is at times heartbreaking, but in the end, it’s an important
film—the message is powerful: stick to
what you know you want and what you’re capable of, despite what happens along
the way and all the people who will tell you that you can’t.
I started off talking about how I was embarrassed to admit I
used to be into metal. I’m not saying that Anvil was an amazing band—at least
not by my standards. I don’t really see the “influence” that the people in film
talk about. But, their story, their singular story, is inspiring, fable-like, joyously
uplifting. You don’t have to like metal to hope the members of Anvil have
achieved success, finally, and the kind of happiness that would bring. You don’t
have to like metal to cheer them at the end of the film, maybe even bang your
head, if just a little. Because, despite their “tragic” career arc, what you
come away from this film is that Kudlow and Reiner are happy, are capable of
being joyful, despite the near surreal oddness and frustration of their band’s
story. And that is where the sheer brilliance of this movie, and their story,
come to the fore: rarely will you ever see a lesson of determination illustrated
and perfectly as than in the story of Anvil.
If you haven’t seen Anvil
yet, go get it now. The film will stay with you and you just might get
their signature tune, “Metal on Metal”, stuck in your head. Which will be a
good thing, especially if you need to get off your ass and do something.
Star Maker Machine does not accept music submissions from artists or promoters. However, most of the contributors here do accept submissions for our own blogs, listed below. Please visit our blogs, take the time to listen to what we post, and then feel free to contact us if you feel that your music would be a good fit.
