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

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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.

Kin: Daddy

Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Daddy

[purchase]

If there were a more disturbing song recorded by ELP I haven't heard it yet. In Daddy, we hear the story of a father's worse nightmare: the loss of a child. The song was written in 1993 in memory and to raise awareness of Sara Anne Wood who went missing riding her bike home from summer Bible School less than one mile from her home in Frankfort, New York on August 18 of the same year. Her body has never been found. Three years after Sara was last seen, a suspect was brought to trail and was convicted, even though after his confession he recanted. He was also a suspect in the disappearance of at least four other children. I don't think his name is worth mentioning here because this is for Sara and for anyone else who has been touched by such a horrible crime.

Other People’s Songs/ Kin: Me and My Uncle

Judy Collins: Me and My Uncle

[purchase]

An entire day went by with our new theme, and no one posted. I wanted to, but I was waiting to see if anyone had a transition song for us. That’s where a song fits both our old theme and our new one. I was drawing blanks. Well, life goes on. After a full day, I decided to get things started with one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs, Me and My Uncle. Just for the heck of it, I decided to make sure that I knew who wrote it. I got quite a surprise, and a great story, which comes from the Grateful Dead Lyric & Song Finder. It turns out that Me and My Uncle was written, kind of by accident, by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. How do you write a song by accident? Here’s the story:

John often used to tell the story behind "Me and My Uncle." Years ago he began receiving publishing royalties from a song on a Judy Collins record with which he was unfamiliar. It was titled "Me and My Uncle". He called Judy to let her know of the mistake because he hadn't written any such song. She laughed and told him that about a year before, in Arizona after one of her concerts, they had a 'Tequila Night' back at the hotel with Stephen Stills, Neil Young and a few others. They were running a blank cassette and John proceeded to write "Me and My Uncle" on the spot. The next day, John woke up to the tequila sunrise with no recollection of the songwriting incident. Judy kept the cassette from that evening and then, without informing John, recorded the song for her own record. Over the years the song was recorded by several people, and eventually became a standard of the Grateful Dead. John used to joke that, little by little, with each royalty check, the memory of writing the song would come back to him.

And that’s also why I wound up with Judy Collins, and not the Grateful Dead.

Other People's Songs: A World Without Love

Peter & Gordon: A World Without Love

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You know you're a top-drawer songwriter when even your rejects make #1 hits for someone else. This someone else was lucky enough to be the brother of the songwriter's girlfriend. The songwriter was Paul McCartney, who deemed this song not quite good enough for the Beatles. Lucky Peter. He also got "Nobody I Know" from Paul as well.

Other People’s Songs: Mercy Mercy Mercy

Cannonball Adderley: Mercy Mercy Mercy

[purchase]

Joe Zawinul started his recording career as a bandleader in 1959, but he was soon working as a sideman. By 1966, Zawinul had been with Cannonball Adderley for five years. That was when he wrote Mercy Mercy Mercy. This was the rare jazz song to hit the pop charts, peaking at #11. Zawinul was a pioneer in the use of electronic keyboards in jazz; in this case, it is the electric piano.

The song became a jazz standard. But something else happened as well. The song acquired words somewhere, and was recorded by such artists as The Buckinghams and, later, Phillip Bailey of Earth Wind & Fire. Queen Latifah recorded a version with a different set of lyrics. And finally, Joe Zawinul, coming off a highly successful tenure in Weather Report, recorded a version as a leader, also with vocals. But, for me and many others, the original recording of Mercy Mercy Mercy will always be the real one.

Other People's Songs: Superstar - Delta Lady

Rita Coolidge: Superstar

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Joe Cocker: Delta Lady

[purchase]

This explanation will read more like Six Degrees of Separation than a normal musical post. Let's see if I can get us through the maze.

Leon Russell began his career as a 60's session musician and songwriter. Sometime around 1969, he was an integral member of Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, a transient group made up of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett plus or minus George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Dave Mason, Booker T. Jones, Isaac Hayes, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Keltner, Rita Coolidge, and a boatload of other musicians. Together Russell and Bonnie wrote "Superstar," an unnoticed B-side single for Delaney and Bonnie in 1969.

In early 1970, Russell went on to produce Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, and he's featured soloing on several tunes on the very successful live album. As was Rita Coolidge, who does a bust-up job on "Superstar". Even so, you are probably most familiar with The Carpenters' 1971 version. Richard Carpenter, though, had heard neither Bonnie's or Rita's version, but instead caught it on a TV show performance by a then-new vocalist, Bette Midler.

Meanwhile, in this fertile period of cross-collaboration, Leon Russell also wrote a song about the aforementioned Coolidge, at the time nicknamed "Delta Lady". Cocker picked up that song and made it a hit in 1969. Leon recorded his own version a year later.

Other People's Songs: You Don't Know Like I Know

Sam & Dave: You Don't Know Like I Know


[purchase]

Before Chef, before Shaft, and before his 18-minute version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", Isaac Hayes was half of a potent Stax songwriting/producing duo with David Porter. Soul singers Sam & Dave were the prime beneficiary of their talents, having been gifted with classics like "Hold On, I'm Comin'", "When Something is Wrong with My Baby", and most notably "Soul Man". The first hit the duo had with Hayes & Porter was "You Don't Know Like I Know", which went to #7 on the black singles charts in March of 1966. It started a string of ten consecutive Top Twenty R&B hits for them.

In 1968 Hayes recorded his first album, which bombed. But his second album, Hot Buttered Soul (the one with the 18-minute version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix") was the first in a series of hit albums that made him a star in his own right.

Incidentally, Porter also became a recording artist, but never achieved anything approaching Hayes' success.

Other People’s Songs: Spoonful

Howlin‘ Wolf: Spoonful

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Here is my audacious statement of the week: Willie Dixon was as important to the classic sound of Chicago blues as Muddy Waters. That’s because you can’t look at the best work of any of the Chicago greats without finding a song that Willie Dixon wrote, and possibly produced. We heard Wang Dang Doodle here during nonsense week; that’s a Dixon tune. Willie Dixon became a house songwriter, producer, and studio musician, at Chess Records in the 1950s and early 60s. So just about anyone who went through Chess played some of his tunes. Some, like Spoonful, became signature tunes for the first artist who recorded them, in this case Howlin’ Wolf.

I’m stretching the definition of our theme a bit with this one. Yes, Howlin’ Wolf was the original artist, and yes, the song’s author, Willie Dixon, would later record the song under his own name. But Willie Dixon also plays bass on Howlin’ Wolf’s original version. So, even though Dixon’s later recording has him singing the song for the first time, he was more than just a bystander here. But I wanted to pay tribute to Dixon this week, and I don’t have a complete discography for all of the songs he wrote for others. So this is my solution. I hope nobody minds.

Other People's Songs: All The Young Dudes

Mott The Hoople: All The Young Dudes

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David Bowie wrote All The Young Dudes for Mott The Hoople when Mott was struggling to place something on the charts. It was to the point of them throwing in the towel but Bowie and Hoople bassist Peter Watts got to talking and Bowie offered them Suffragette City. Mott rejected that so Bowie came up with All The Young Dudes. The song became a signature glam rock tune but Bowie later said the song was intended to speak to the coming apocalypse, much in the same way as Bowie's song Five Years. Rolling Stone rated the song as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and it is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Other People's Songs: It's A Shame

The Spinners: It's a Shame

[purchase]


Some week's theme's are pretty binary, and a song pretty clearly falls in or out of the box – songs from 1991, songs beginning with "you", songs with handclaps. This week is a little more challenging and the box has very fuzzy boundaries, so I'm playing it safe. Stevie Wonder, Syreeta Wright and Lee Garrett, all three artists in their own right, co-wrote and produced this song for label-mates the Spinners. After seven years plugging away for Berry Gordy's Motown label, the Spinners finally had their biggest hit to date. Two years later, they switched to Atlantic records, and producer/songwriter Thom Bell (remember him from the Delfonics post?) helped them achieve a string of 70's R&B/soul hits.

Other People’s Songs: Crazy

Patsy Cline: Crazy

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In 1961, Willie Nelson was hardly a household name. He was one of any number of Nashville songwriters who labored anonymously behind the scenes, hoping for a hit. Writing a hit single could often be the only way to get the chance to record an album of your own. Early 1961 found Nelson working on a song called Stupid. Nelson had the song in mind for a male singer. As he got close to finishing the song, Nelson changed the name to Crazy. One more thing had to fall into place. The singer Nelson had in mind turned the song down, and someone got it to Patsy Cline. Not only a hit, but a classic song was born, and Nelson was one his way to having his own recording career. But it would still be many years before Nelson would record his own version of Crazy, and Cline’s version has never been matched, not even by the song’s author.

Mononymic Artists -> Other People's Songs: Nico's These Days

Nico: These Days

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Though I have it listed in my archives as a Jackson Browne cover, this 1967 song is actually the original recording, written by a sixteen-year-old Browne for the mononymic Nico to record, with Browne on acoustic guitar and Velvet Underground chums Cale and Reed on everything else...and only later taken back by the songwriter, as his stature as a performer began to truly take off. As such, as I noted over at Cover Lay Down back in May of 2008,

cover versions of These Days tend to fall into two camps: those that cover Nico, and those that cover Jackson Browne. The former seem more popular among a certain indiefolk crowd, especially after her version lent hipster cred to the soundtrack for The Royal Tannenbaums, calling us back to its fragile, anxious, somewhat spacey sound; you can hear the secondhand influence of Nico in more recent covers from fringefolkers Kathryn Williams, St. Vincent, and Mates of State. Meanwhile, fellow seventies icons Gregg Allman and Kate Wolf clearly have Browne’s slow, simple poetics and clear, open-hearted delivery in mind; so, a generation later, do relative newcomers Denison Witmer, Fountains of Wayne, and Tyler Ramsey.

But as others have pointed out long before me, the bifurcated trunk of the musical tree that is These Days versions is relevant to an evolution of song not only because of the curious history, but because the choices made in each version affect the meaning of the song. And here we are not just talking musical interpretation, either: Nico’s version is lyrically different as well as musicially distinct, and the lost second-person subject of the penultimate line, the focus on belief (I don’t think I’ll risk another) over feeling (It’s so hard to risk another), changes the narrator into someone more narcissistic, less historied, and — some believe — less believable overall.

Our new theme this week is a bit tricky to define precisely - we're not looking for cover songs; we're looking for songs written by recognizable songwriters, artists known as performers in their own right, but which were originally recorded by others - but more common than you might imagine, given the tendency of many artists to start their careers as songwriters and small-scale performers, famous within the music community before they record their first record, not to mention the wont of some famous artists to pen songs for other voices as a sort of side-project. Not all thematic entries will have as rich a history of coverage as These Days, of course - some songs that fall into this theme are never recovered by the original artist; others are, but don't end up standing on their own as well in the hands of others. But it can be a delightful surprise to uncover authorship in these cases. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what the Star Maker community comes up with.

Mononymic Artists: Morrissey & Siouxsie

Morrissey & Siouxie: Interlude

[purchase]

Our mononymic week is quickly coming to an end (and I finally learned how to type mononymic at the first try). I thought it was a brilliant topic, don't you? We managed to get quite a few j-rockers in there, but we missed a boatload of other worthy artists.

We missed the rappers and hip-hop dudes like JayZ, Coolio, will.i.am, and Eminem. We missed the tough chicks like P!nk and Peaches, the pop princesses like Jewel, Tiffany, and, er, RuPaul, the rock stalwarts like Bono and Sting, the soulful sounds of Ne-Yo, Duffy, and Sade, and the quirky guys like Jonsi, Mika, Moby, and Beck. So here's my last stab at a final two-fer. I can't say it's a stellar duet---to me it sounds like two pretty unique voices that aren't trying at all to blend as one. Actually, these two had a falling out over the making of the video and haven't spoken since, which surprised no one given Moz's record of taking himself way too seriously, not to mention slagging off other vocalists. Still, they're both indie icons of a generation (he of The Smiths, she of The Banshees), and getting them to record this Timi Yoru cover together was a 1994 event.

Mononymic Artists: Mariza

Mariza: O Gente Da Minha Terra


[purchase]

Amalia Rodrigues was the queen of Fado music until her death in 1999. In 2001, Mariza made her debut, and arguably took over Amalia’s old title. In Portugal to this day, Rodrigues is still referred to by her first name, and everyone there knows who you mean. O Gente Da Minha Terra represents a passing of the torch; the lyric is by Amalia Rodrigues, but it was Mariza who finally wrote a tune for it. But what is Fado? Let’s let some Portugese musicians answer that question:

The man that sings Fado usually does it in a black suit. He sings his love affairs, his city, the miseries of life, criticizes society and the politicians. He often talks about the bullfighting’s, the horses, the old days and the people already dead, and talks, almost every time, of "saudade" (longing). But where did the word Fado came from? It came from the Latin fatum, which means fate, the inexorable destiny that nothing can change. That is why Fado is usually so melancholic, so sad: as it sings that part of destiny that was opposite to the wishes of its owner. The woman sings always in black, with a mournful voice, and usually with a shawl on her shoulders. She sings the love and death: the death from the loss of love, the love lost to death...

This way of singing shows, in a certain way, the spirit of the Portuguese people: they believe in destiny as something that overwhelms them and to which they can't escape, the domination of the soul and heart over reason, that leads to acts of passion and despair, and reveal such a black and beautiful sorrow.

From: "Fado: the people's soul", by César Silva, Fernando Jorge, Paulo Reis, Sandra Franco and Vítor Carvalho

So it would be a gross oversimplification to call Fado Portugese blues, but it is a folk style that covers some of the same emotional territory. I don’t speak Portugese, so I don’t know what this song is about, but the emotion comes through loud and clear.

Mononymic Artists: Lulu

Lulu: Feelin' Alright

[purchase]

Raspy-voiced Scottish Britpop soul singer Lulu had already recorded a couple of albums by the time she made her film debut in To Sir With Love at the tender age of nineteen, playing the rebellious Barbara "Babs" Pegg to Sidney Poitier's inspirational inner-city teacher. Lulu's memorable delivery of the film's title song charted at number one in the US, but her career neither began nor ended there; the woman has released scores of hit singles in her long, rich career, won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969*, appeared as a judge and TV host for plenty of programmes since, and was named an OBE in 2000 in recognition for her contributions to British music.

To prove her prowess, here's one of many favorite funky coversongs she took on during her peak as a name-brand musician, from a 1970 major-label release spawned, in part, by her engagement to first husband Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees. The Memphis-style horns, actually recorded in Alabama's Muscle Shoals, really drive the song forward, though the song could really use a bit more cowbell. And if you like this, you really should check out her takes on Dylan's The Mighty Quinn and Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World.

*Bonus points: Lulu's winning Eurovision Song Contest entry, Boom Bang-a-Bang, was only the second Nonsense Song to win the contest; the following year, it would be succeeded by a song from another Mononymic Artist, Irish singer-songwriter Dana

Mononymic Artists: Hakuei

Hakuei: Kyou wo Ikiyou (Let's Live for Today)

[purchase]

Just a quick drive-by post, in case you were thinking that J-Rock's all about death and mourning (my last two posts happened to pick up that theme).

I mentioned Hakuei (pronounced "Hawk-way") and his voice that's so much like Kiyoharu's. Here's a fun little song of his, a cover that maybe some of you know as a 1967 hit for the Grass Roots.

It's fun to check out this guy's photos, 'cuz he's also a model for Black Peace Now, a Japanese gothic clothing line. He's got more looks than Lady Gaga. In his spare time, he also produces a YouTube advice column, "Ask Dr. Hakuei ". I don't know about you, but when I'm having serious life issues, the first person I think of to turn to for advice is...the lead singer of the Visual Kei band, Penicillin.

You know what, though? He seems to do as well as any of the other agony aunts I obsessively read.

Mononymic Artists: Odetta

Odetta: How Long Blues

[purchase]

Odetta had one of the most remarkable voices I ever heard. I talked about that in my tribute to her during our In Memorium week two years ago. I wanted to present her again for this week’s theme, so I went shopping in Amazon’s mp3 store, not knowing what I would go with. How Long Blues shows a side of Odetta I hadn’t been aware of before. Here she is as a jazz singer. The reviewers on Amazon are roughly split on whether this was a good idea for her; I think it was. Odetta would return to the idea shortly before her death. She made another album with a jazz combo in 2006, and it too sounds great.

Mononymic Artists: Kiyoharu

Kiyoharu: Note

[purchase]

Last time in J-Rock 101, we were treated to the mellow tones of Hyde and Gackt. I think you all are ready for someone a little bit more challenging (just a little bit, though---I'm not sure we're ready for the screamo artists yet, like Kyo from Dir en grey).

Kiyoharu's voice can be a bit of an acquired taste. Whereas in western music, any vocalist who sings with such a pronounced nasal tone and quirky vibrato would find it hard to find a recording contract, that sound's not uncommon among Japanese rock singers (Hakuei is another one with the same sound – they're hard to tell apart sometimes). And yet Kiyoharu's wildly popular in Japan both as lead vocalist for the bands Kuroyume and SADS and as a solo artist (yeah, he's older than he looks - he's 42).

I've avoided any of his rock-y songs in favor of this ballad that starts out more like something by Gordon Lightfoot or Jeffrey Foucault. The more I listened, understanding none of the lyrics but hearing that intensity, the more I was sure that this song wasn't some simple boy-meets-girl tale. So I poked around and found out my impression was right. According to Kiyoharu, his father was diagnosed in the final stages of pancreatic cancer so while he worked on this album (Forever Love), he often returned home to take care of him. He stated, "Because my father was the only one who approved of me becoming a musician, this is a work packed with my thanks, and I'll never forget it." I found the translated lyrics by Cayce on NotGreatestSite.net, and I have to say that after I read them, I was so moved by Kiyoharu's grief for his dying father that I cried.

I read the notebook that chronicled our days together,
I’ll break away from the grey sky, ah,
Your hand was weak holding mine,
You left me, saying “I’ll come again”… bye bye.

“The end was faster than we are,
Was it just that I wanted more time?”
I said, “I think I just gave up a little,”
I wanted to stop it, but it didn’t change.

complete lyrics here

Mononymic Artists: Bjork

Bjork: It's Not Up To You

[Purchase]

With a first name like Bjork there's not much need for a last name. But when your last name is a mouthful like Guðmundsdóttir, your fans will thank you for shortening it for them. As it is, she is known the world over by her first name, and has singularly put her homeland of Iceland on the map for many people.

The song I chose is from her 2001 album "Vespertine". It's a little after our 2000 cut-off for this blog, but it was an important year for my love of Bjork, and I really love this song. It was the year that I saw her in the Lars von Trier film "Dancer in the Dark", and showed the movie to a number of friends, and also my parents. Later that year I received an excited call from my mother while she was on vacation to tell me that she has sat next to Bjork on the flight into New Mexico that afternoon. I of course didn't believe her, but all signs point to it being true at this point. Figures my mother who only knew of her because I showed her that movie would sit next to her and make small talk about ginger ale and I'd be sitting at home, because I had decided not to join my family on their trip to New Mexico. Silly me.

Mononymic Artists: Donovan

Donovan: Wear Your Love Like Heaven

[purchase]

Donovan's dreamy psychedelic folk rock doesn't age that well - this 43 year old hit single, for example, has a retro, slightly sluggish feel in a world of crisp pop production. But it's still sunny enough to fit nicely on the odd folk-and-then-some mixtape. And it made for a great moment in Season 13 of the Simpsons, where it served as soundtrack to Homer's experiment with medical marijuana.

Mononymic Artists: Falco

Falco: Rock Me Amadeus

[purchase]

I thought I'd give you something non-Japanese today as a bit of a palate cleanser. It's still foreign, though, so there's that.

Falco, an Austrian New Wave singer, gave the world this funky ode to the awesomeness of his fellow countryman, Mozart. (He was a virtuose, was a rock idol, and everyone shouted: Come on and rock me, Amadeus…) It became a worldwide hit in 1986, even reaching #1 in the US, a country notoriously tough on songs without English lyrics. In fact, Falco's first hit, Der Kommissar, only made it to the US charts as an Anglicized cover by the one-hit band, After the Fire.

I now feel properly rocked!

Mononymic Artists: Ferron

Ferron: Shadows on a Dime

[purchase]

Ferron is one of those songwriters that more people should know about. I’ve never known her to resort to clichés in her writing. Shadows on a Dime is a fine example of her artistry. Here, a train ride becomes a metaphor for a string of memories. People the narrator has known are deftly sketched in just a few lines. Ferron’s voice perfectly conveys the layers of emotion that memories can involve, as fond nostalgia mixes with regret in the same line at times. And the arrangement of this song is perfect, with the interplay between the acoustic guitar and bass just enhancing the overall effect. So, if you haven’t heard Ferron before, explore her music further. There are many more gems in the mine this came from.

Mononymic Artists: Gackt and Hyde

Hyde (left) and Gackt bask in their hotness...ah, of the Orange Sun, I mean.

Gackt & Hyde: Orenji no Taiyou (The Orange Sun)

[purchase]

Gackt: Freesia ~op.1~

[purchase]

At dusk, I beheld the orange sun with you.
With a tear-streaked face, you bid an eternal farewell.

I can’t love you any more than I do, and just by that, I feel complete.
So don’t cry, we can always meet again whenever we close our eyes...

Could you hear me squee when boyhowdy announced this week's theme? 'Cuz guess what, SMM fans? J-rockers, bless their hearts, rival western rap/hip-hop musicians in that nearly all of them go by single names. That means either you're gonna get an earful of new j-rock music this week, or your finger's gonna get some fruitful exercise looking for that scroll key. Win-win, right?

Gackt, aka Gakuto Kamui, is one of the most successful J-Pop/Rock singers in Japan. Hyde, born Hideto Takarai, is the vocalist for the hugely popular band L'Arc~en~Ciel. Together they wrote and starred in a pretty strange 2003 film, Moon Child (that I actually own), in which all of the cast but one ends up dead or, well, undead. Orenji no Taiyou is the film's theme song.

And you know what? I think it's utterly gorgeous. It's unusual in any genre to have two guys sing a stunning ballad like this. Check out how well matched their voices are, especially at the climax around the 5-minute mark. I know both of their tones pretty well, and even then I have a hard time working out who's who (Gackt takes the high part). You can hear his beautiful baritone strutting its stuff in the second song, from his 2000 album, Mars.

Nonsense -> Mononymic Artists: Feist's Mushaboom

Feist: Mushaboom (live on KEXP)

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Unless you're still a pre-teen, or a cultural hermit of some sort, you've probably heard this week's transition song on the radio plenty of times in its original form, as released in 2004 on major label debut Let It Die. But there's actually five or six different versions of the song that came floating around the blogs in the year or two after its release, as Canadian singer-songwriter Feist (legal name: Leslie Feist) made the radio station rounds solo, without the backing of similarly mononymic artist Gonzales, the fellow Broken Social Scene collective member who Feist supported on tour when she was first emerging as a solo artist, and who provides much of the instrumentation on the album.

And with just her quiet, almost-drowned vocals and a simple electrified guitar, under the poppy beat and the silly title, in live performance, Mushaboom turns out to be a sweet song of struggling middle-class longing, offering both self and partner a promise for a better, more rural life, with all the concrete trappings of kids and a flower garden, once the day comes where her "dreams...match up with her pay." Maybe it's just me - and certainly, losing the determined beat of the original recording is a trade-off here - but I think you can hear the dream that much better without all the layers and horns.

*Note: though it's clearly used here for its "sh-boom" sound, technically, "Mushaboom" isn't a nonsense word - it's the name of a sleepy rural seaside community in Nova Scotia, which aptly embodies the dream Feist longs for. But since most people have never heard of the place, or the harbor it was named for, the song title is effectively nonsensical for the vast majority of its audience.

Nonsense: The Jabberwocky

Jennie Avila: The Jabberwocky

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I can’t let this week end without posting a version of Jabberwocky. After all, what other nonsense poem wound up contributing new words to the English language? But the problem is how to do it. The poem tells a tale of a terrifying monster, so a heavy metal version could make sense. Or perhaps, a sort of ren-fair folk rock approach? Those have been done, but I wanted something else. Lewis Carroll certainly wasn’t being very serious when he included the poem in Through the Looking Glass, or when he had Tweedle Dum explain what some of the words meant. So Jennie Avila took the poem and made a kid’s song out of it, and she didn’t have to change a word. Her light touch is just perfect here.

Nonsense: Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding

Jesse Winchester: Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding

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The CD this song is on was released in 2009... so it's technically too new, according to our blog guidelines of 2000 and older - however, the story is the oldest in the world (boy meets girl, falls in love and vows to stay together forever)... as is the sweet-and-wise tone of the voice of the man singing...

I'd heard lots about Jesse Winchester over the years but hadn't paid too much attention - when LD at The Adios Lounge (also a Star Maker Machine contributor) posted about this song last New Year's Eve, I had my epiphany moment...

The tune is gorgeous unto itself... but the proverbial icing is during the YouTube video of the Spectacle (hosted by Elvis Costello on the Sundance channel) segment, when a single teardrop courses down the cheek of Neko Case - that, my friends, is the power of music...

P.S. This only whetted my appetite for Spectacle, and I made a point to catch up on all the back episodes as well as watch from that time forward - boyhowdy also had his eye on posting this song this week, but chivalrously bowed out (thanks, bh... and LD!)...

Nonsense: Radio Ga Ga

Queen: Radio Ga Ga

[purchase]

I nearly blew off posting this until I checked if this song had been featured here before. I discovered that SMM has never showcased a single Queen song! Eeeeek! Now I have to admit that I didn't jump on the Queen bandwagon for a couple of decades, but once I did, I became a wholehearted enthusiast.

The "Ga Ga" in this song refers to the pointless prattle infesting the airwaves by 1984. That period was well before the advent of AM talk radio and the subsequent decline and fall of western civilization as we know it. Radio has only become more and more a shadow of itself. I finally pulled the plug about 5 years ago when our (and by "our" I mean some faceless production studio in Large Metropolis, USA) best station morphed into all-Dave-Matthews-and- Matchbox 20-all-the-time, with a little Rolling Stones played for the oldsters. Now I hear all my music on the internet, where the variety is astonishing.

The "Ga Ga" is also the source of Lady Gaga's moniker. She's another Queen fan.

Nonsense: Bli-Blip / Ts Tsa Cha

Skavoovie and the Epitones: Bli-Blip

Skavoovie and the Epitones: Ts Tsa Cha

[purchase]

Two nonsense songs from from Ripe, the out-of-print 1997 sophomore outing from a primarily instrumental swing/ska band Skavoovie and the Epitones: a delightful cover of an old Duke Ellington big band tune, done up right with horns, funk, and a slight caribbean lilt, and a pretty crazy original jam named after the scatsinging produced by the band's "singer".

For full disclosure, I should note that my brother is on lead trumpet here, but that's no reason to sell the music short: the boys were signed to Moon Ska Records before they graduated high school, recorded three strong selling albums and toured the US and Japan at the peak of the nineties third-wave ska revival, and after a ten year hiatus, have been slowly working on their fourth album since February.

Nonsense: iieee

Tori Amos: iieee

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When it comes to nonsense songs usually they're a bit silly, or at least perceived that way. This song doesn't fit that category. It appeared on my favorite album of all time, Tori Amos' "from the choirgirl hotel". The album is quite dark, having been written in the aftermath and depression of having had three miscarriages.

In the song, Tori takes on God and religion as she is wont to do and asks why people must be made to sacrifice so much for him, and questioning the whole "God has a bigger plan for us" thing, as she can't see what the plan for losing a child could possibly be. The title of the song is actually a sort of chant. In interviews she has said that a small Native American boy's spirit visited her in the wake of her miscarriages and he often chanted this. But I take such things with a grain of salt, as she tends to get pretty outlandish in interviews. Regardless, it is certainly a chant and sounds somewhat Native-American in nature.

Nonsense: Ooh La La

Faces: Ooh La La

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Poor old Granddad, I laughed at all his words...

Confession time: the first time I heard this song, I thought it was a Rod Stewart cover. And I suppose that's true, in an odd sort of way, though not in the way I meant it. Because 25 years before Rod Stewart turned this song into a cheesy pop hit, his band Faces recorded it as the title track to their last album.

Or perhaps I should say that it was technically his band. Because ironically, Rod's not on the track at all. Indeed, though the Wikipedia page for the song claims that both Stewart and songwriter Ronnie Lane laid down vocals for the track, there's a distinct possibility that Rod was missing during the original recording session, as he was for the vast majority of the sessions for this last-gasp record from a band that was, for all intents and purposes, already splintered to the core, primarily due to the way Stewart had alienated his bandmates, thanks to a bit of smugness from a rising-star solo career.

Instead, we get a one-shot combo that turned stress and disaster into gold: co-writer Ronnie Wood in his first-ever turn on vocals, sweet seventies folk-rock bass and drums, barrelhouse piano flourishes, and Ronnie Lane jammin' on an acoustic guitar. And though I claim age for my original error - after all, I was born in '73 - and though the song has been covered by plenty of others in its long life, in this case, at least, it turns out there's nothing like the original...as a number of commercial-producing advertising agencies, and the producers of Rushmore, who used it as a credit roll, know well.

Nonsense: Wiggy Waggy Woo

Barrence Whitfield & the Savages: Wiggy Waggy Woo

[purchase]


Before Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings brought classic R&B and soul back to the hipster mainstream, there was Boston's Barrence Whitfield & the Savages, who ripped it up through a half-dozen albums from the mid-'80s to the mid '90s. As such, they were both born too late and ahead of their time.

"Wiggy Waggy Woo" comes from their final album, Ritual of the Savages. It's a cover of a song originally recorded in 1956 by the Cadets, under the pseudonym the Jacks. And it's as much fun as the title suggests. It's the adrenaline rush of love set to music. If you need a mid-afternoon pick-me-up at the office, ditch the coffee, download this track, and crank it up.

Nonsense: Wang Dang Doodle

Hindu Love Gods: Wang Dang Doodle

[purchase]

In 1984, vocalist Bryan Cook along with Bill Berry, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills of R.E.M. played three shows in Athens, Georgia under the name Hindu Love Gods.  At one of those shows, the original quartet was joined on stage by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and singer songwriter Warren Zevon. The group recorded two songs with Cook and Zevon in 1984 and played one more gig in 1986 with Cook and Stipe. That was pretty much it.

Then, in 1987, Berry, Buck, and Mills joined Zevon in the studio to serve as the backing band on his 1987 release Sentimental Hygiene.  One night during the Hygiene sessions, the band stayed late in the studio and recorded a collection of blues standards and one Prince smash ("Raspberry Beret").  Ten tracks from that late night recording finally surfaced in 1990 as a self-titled release from The Hindu Love Gods.

This track is a rollicking reading of Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle." It's a fitting song to have come from an all night recording binge.