Late: Is It Too Late

Squeeze: Is It Too Late

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Our narrator has burned bridges galore, stealing money out "her" purse, getting drunk and stupid, and only then realizing that he was in love. Is it too late to "unload that gun" and get into her favor? Unless our unnamed foil is a complete idiot, the answer is probably "yes", but honestly, with such gleeful delivery, such cheerfulness, such breakneck uptempo presentation, it hardly seems like he cares.

You've never heard Squeeze like this, in full-blown barrelhouse rockabilly mode. But then, hardly anyone has heard Frank, in part because the piano-led album was overall such a diverse departure from their signature sound, in part because a label change at the wrong time buried sales despite critical celebration, and in part because by the tail end of the eighties, their greatest hits were already an essential part of the classic rock canon, so boldly that very little of what happened afterwards made a difference to the world. Still, there's joy here, if you're up for the risk.

Late: Late For the Sky

Jackson Browne: Late For the Sky

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This week is for songs about being late. For much of the week, I suspect that that will mean late for an appointment or late for work. I have some songs I’m considering that would fit that way. But being late doesn’t have to mean that. For Jackson Browne in Late For the Sky, being late isn’t about arriving behind schedule; it’s about staying too long. Not all relationships are meant to be, and there can be a time when neither partner can bring themselves to break it off, but the relationship has been over for a while. I could go on, but Browne puts it far more eloquently than I could.

Late / 1991: Come Down In Time

Sting: Come Down In Time

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1991 Elton John/Bernie Taupin tribute album Two Rooms is a popstar throw-away, for the most part, though it has a few high points if you like Jon Bon Jovi, Kate Bush, Wilson Phillips and/or Sinead O'Connor. But I have a soft spot for Sting's smooth jazz period, and his short, bluesy pianobar take on Come Down In Time is well worth sharing. And the sparse ambiguity of the original lyrics here has always captivated me: is our narrator at fault for waiting to long, or did he come down in time after all, only to find that his planned rendezvous was never in the cards to begin with?

Oh, and if possible, I'd like to ask for a bonus point for posting a song that fits in all three of our most recent themes: Late, 1991, and Torch Songs.

1991: I Misunderstood

Richard Thompson: I Misunderstood

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I remember reading a review of Richard Thompson’s album Amnesia in 1988. I had never heard of him before, and here was this review that talked about this brilliant guitar player who could also write songs pretty well. Now, I knew all about brilliant guitar players. They were the guys who played these amazing solos, really ripped it up. The best ones never lost track of what song they were playing, always wandered far afield but found their way back. So, I put Amnesia on the turntable, and prepared to be transported. Didn’t happen. There really weren’t any solos. Sure he played loud, but Thompson never went anywhere. There were a couple of great quiet songs, but they had nothing to do with great guitar playing as I understood it then. So I was disappointed, and I resolved to regard the music of Richard Thompson with suspicion from then on.

Fast forward three years. Now it was 1991, and Richard Thompson had a new album out, Rumor and Sigh. More to the point, I was no longer an I, but rather part of a we, about to be married. We heard 1952 Vincent Black Lightning on the radio. Now that is a brilliant song, no doubt. But it’s also the only song like it on the album. Soon enough, we were hearing Feel So Good, Read About Love, and of course I Misunderstood as well. These were more like what I remembered, and I wasn’t that impressed at first. But my now-wife latched on to the lyrics. And Thompson is a wonderful writer. So, being in the same car, Thompson stayed on. And his music grew on me. And grew. Just like in Where the Wild Things Are.

So here’s how I see it now. Richard Thompson is indeed a great guitarist, but in ways I didn’t understand at first. His talent has as much to do with what he doesn’t play as what he does. His playing can carry a song, as it does on Vincent Black Lightning. But he can also pull back and be part of the band. And, when Thompson writes, he knows which approach will be better for the song. I thought I didn’t like him at first, but I misunderstood.

1991: Visual Kei

Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?

X Japan: Joker

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Buck-Tick: Sakura

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Luna Sea: Moon

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So far we've mostly talked about what Americans were up to in 1991, until David just highlighted a Swedish group in the last post. Many of you have asked me what the Japanese crowd were busy with that year. By "many," of course, I mean "none." Still, I remain convinced you lot are undoubtedly wondering about it, but an unusual shyness has come over you.

X Japan, the premier Visual Kei group, was at their peak. The term Visual Kei was somehow derived from one of X Japan's catch-phrases, "Psychedelic violence crime of visual shock." It is probably more accurately translated as, "Your parents are gonna have (Hello) kittens when they find out that you fangirl us." The tune here, "Joker," is from their 1991 CD, Jealousy. Have fun playing "guess the English words" with this song. It's a pretty straightforward speed-metal rocker and showcases Yoshiki's intense drumming style that led to neck surgery last year and a bunch of cancelled concerts. At the end of this month, X Japan will finally play their long-delayed US tour, hitting Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, Chicago, Vancouver, Toronto, and New York City. You lucky stiffs!

Buck-Tick (from "bakuchiku", or firecracker), another mover and shaker in the VK scene, released their sixth major album that included Sakura (Cherry Blossom). This is not to be confused with the classic Sakura I posted during Public Domain week. I get all tongue-tied trying to express the awesomeness that is Atsushi Sakurai, their lead singer. I'm clearly not the only one who thinks so, if the fanvid on YouTube is anything to go by – it's set to Tom Jones' Sex Bomb.

Luna Sea makes for a nice end to our threesome. Moon is from their eponymous first album. They, too, are reuniting this fall with a "20th Anniversary World Tour Reboot -to the New Moon-", slated to show up in LA, Germany, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Tokyo in November. Luckily for Sugizo, one of Luna Sea's guitarists, this doesn't overlap with X Japan's tour – he's in both bands at the moment.

1991: Golden Age

Union Carbide Productions: Golden Age

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Union Carbide Production was a hellraising group of young men from Gothenburg, Sweden who quickly became known as the roudiest bunch in town, both for their chaotic live shows, but also for their arrogant attitude.

Early U.C.P. may have sounded a lot like The Stooges, but these were no thugs, junkies and petty criminals from Ann Arbor. These were snotty upper class kids with money to burn, straight outta da fancy suburban neighbourhoods. They talked in interviews about how much they loved playing tennis, spening obscene amounts of money, driving expensive cars their dads bought for them, and chilling in the tanning bed. And how they only played rock 'n' roll because their decadent livestyle was boring.

Throughout the gigs, frontman Ebbot Lundberg would insult the audience, especially during shows in America where he would spend more time talking about how fat and disgusting everyone was than actually singing. Wherever they went they got on everybody's nerve, just as intended.

It's interesting how punk rock was supposed to be provocative and against the grain, but once you provoke the punks and the rockers themselves and go against their grain, they couldn't hate you more if they tried. When they really should appreciate it. When punk and its aesthetics become generic and evolve into little more than rules you must follow in order to be punk... That's the moment the polar opposite becomes punk.

That's when you need spoiled rich kids telling crusty drunks with a mohawk living in a dumpster just how pathetic they are. Those who don't get that, don't know what punk was supposed to be in the first place.

U.C.P. knew this perfectly well and stopped playing raunchy Stooges rock the moment they realised that's what people expected them to do. Instead they mellowed out and embraced darker and more psychedelic sounds on the 2nd album, and by the third one (from which the song Golden Age is taken) they were downright folksy and Rolling Stones-y.

After recording their fourth album Swing in Chicago with Steve Albini (during which time they got a fan letters from everyone from Sonic Youth to Kurt Cobain), U.C.P. called it quits in 1993. Several members, including singer Ebbot Lundberg and guitarist Björn Olsson, would go on to form The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. Another excellent band worth your time.

1991: Big Sky Country

Chris Whitley: Big Sky Country

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We’ve heard from some of my fellow Star Makers that 1991 was a distracting year. Me, all I was doing was getting married. So I didn’t have time to watch videos on MTV all day, and find new music that way. MTV was moving away from music anyway, and they were also starting to feature music I didn’t like. I also had less time to read music magazines. So how was I to find music? In the first part of the year, what I did have was a lot of time in the car with my fiance. And after we got married, we still spent a lot of time in the car. We live close enough to Philadelphia to hear their radio stations, so we listened to a lot of WXPN from the University of Pennsylvania. Maybe you’ve heard of the station, because of a program that is now nationally syndicated: The World Café with David Dye. 1991 was the year that the World Café first went on the air.

It was on WXPN that I first heard Big Sky Country. There was no heavy beat, the synthesizers were subdued and joined by “real instruments”, the singer sounded like a human being rather than a processed electronic something… In short, the 80s were over, musically. Now I enjoyed much of the music of the 80s, but I was ready for something new. Big Sky Country had passion without screaming vocals or guitars. There was subtlety, and there was an instrument I had never heard before, the resonator guitar. This was my something new.

Chris Whitley was a late bloomer. In 1991, he was my age, 31. And this was his debut. In my married life, I have found it harder to keep track of an artist’s career than it used to be. So I lost track of Chris Whitley, and, in fact, I got this album long after the fact. In researching this post, I found out why I haven’t heard anything about Whitley recently. Lung cancer took him in 2005, at age 45. I hope his music does not get forgotten.

1991: Girlfriend

Matthew Sweet: Girlfriend

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1991 was a weird year for me. I finished college December of the previous year, and was out on my own for really the first time. I moved into a depressing attic apartment, and spent a lot of time feeling lonely and sorry for myself.

As others have mentioned, 1991 was the year grunge broke. But for me, it was the year popular culture started to pass me by. I never got into grunge, and a look through my 1991 releases shows a lot of boxed sets, best-ofs, and a few new albums from "established" artists.

One album, however, was a breath of fresh air for me: Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend. It had melodies and harmonies, but it also rocked when it needed to. And with guitarists Richard Lloyd (Television) and Robert Quine (The Voidoids) on board, how could it not?

In retrospect, it was probably the album that hooked me on power pop.

It was hard for me to pick just one song to represent it. While the ballad "Winona" is probably my favorite song on the album, I'm going with the title track, a first-rate rocker.

1991: Elmira St. Boogie

Danny Gatton: Elmira St. Boogie

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For this weeks theme I've chosen an instrumental. 1991 saw the beginnings of the grunge era but this isn't about that. Danny Gatton comes in at 63rd on Rolling Stone magazine's '100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time'. Sharing a place in Nashville in the mid 60s with Roy Buchanan, they also shared the title, 'The World's Greatest Unknown Guitarist'. His most common nickname 'The Humbler' was given to him by Amos Garrett, the guitar player on Maria Muldaur's 'Midnight at the Oasis', due to Gatton's ability to out play anyone in a jam session. Gatton even mentored an 11 year old Joe Bonamassa, coaching him on various styles of guitar playing, including jazz, rock and country. In 1992 '88 Elmira Street' received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. That might have been his best shot at receiving the recognition he so greatly deserved but it was not to be. The award was won by Eric Johnson for 'Cliffs Of Dover'. Gatton was appreciated by his musical peers however. Admirers include folks like Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Les Paul, Steve Earle, Albert Lee, Steve Vai, and Slash from Guns N' Roses. I find it very troubling that Gatton and Buchanan shared one last similarity; they each took their own lives. That is the official position; in Buchanan's case, friends and family have disputed that. Over a three day period in January 1995, $25,000 was raised for Gatton's widow and daughter in a series of tribute shows at Tramps club in New York. Capping the three day event with Les Paul, Albert Lee and James Burton all on stage together for a twenty minute jam. So, from 1991 and the Grammy nominated 88 Elmira Street, here is Elmira St. Boogie.

1991: Brothers Unaware

Live: Brothers Unaware

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I think for this round, boyhowdie has chosen one of the strongest years in music. (Not that I was much aware of it at the time with a new baby---let's just say I had to make up for lost musical time somewhat later.) Grunge, which gave us arguably the year's top album in Nirvana's Nevermind, was gradually giving way to Post Grunge, an odd categorization that defines a genre by what it came after rather than what it is.

A whole bunch of bands who would become huge in the 90's released strong, memorable albums in 1991 (and I'm guessing we'll see some of these here this week). R.E.M.'s flagship Losing My Religion showcased Out of Time. Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger and Pearl Jam's Ten kept the spotlight on the Seattle scene, while Toad the Wet Sprocket's Fear and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik represented southern California.

Live, a band from Pennsylvania with a particularly craptastic name (one that's fairly hard to track in a database, at least), debuted their first major-label album, Mental Jewelry. Many of the songs are based on the writings of an Indian philosopher. These quasi-religious themes continued in their later music. Sadly (perhaps predictably), the positive introspection they embraced in their songs is nowhere to be found these days among Live's band members – they're currently caught up in a rather nasty lawsuit over songwriting credit and royalties owed.

1991: Night Parade

Robbie Robertson: Night Parade

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Once upon a time, Robbie Robertson was in a band called, eh, The Band. They got their first gig backing Bob Dylan, and then went on to invent what we now call Americana music. Then Robertson went solo, and all of that went out the window. I can’t think of anyone who reinvented their sound more completely as a solo artist. On Robertson’s second solo album, Storyville, from 1991, that meant atmospheric music with a great groove. Night Parade leads off the album, and sets the tone perfectly.

Torch Songs: Torch Song Trilogy

I couldn’t resist using the title of this post this week. I knew it had to be a three-song post at week’s end. Fortunately, there are plenty of great songs available.

k d lang: Black Coffee

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We’ve been hearing the name Peggy Lee a lot lately, and yes, Black Coffee was one of her signature tunes. It was also recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, so it certainly qualifies for our theme. K d lang did this wonderful version with the legendary Nashville producer on her album Shadowland. Lang’s voice is perfect for this or any torch song. If she ever does an album of torch songs with a small jazz ensemble, I’ll be the first one in line to get it.

Lyle Lovett: All My Love is Gone

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Lyle Lovett is known for not-quite country music, as well as his later large band experiments. His songs are often quirky, with his droll sense of humor and taste for bizarre and absurd scenarios coming through. But All My Love Is Gone is a fine example of torch song purity, and Lovett nails it with his performance. He plays it straight here, and it really works.

Was (Not Was) featuring Mel Torme: Zaz Turned Blue

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Not that I have anything against the bizarre and absurd. Mel Torme, in his heyday, was known as the Velvet Fog for his silky smooth vocal delivery. In the early days of Was (Not Was), David Was was working as a jazz reviewer, and he wrote a glowing review of a Mel Torme concert. Torme, in gratitude, reached out to Was (Not Was) and offered his services. A hasty decision, perhaps. The result was Zaz Turned Blue. The Wases wrote it as a spoof of the crooner genre, setting a strange tale to a melody and arrangement that sound like torch song heaven. This one fits right in with our theme, until you catch the words. But a funny thing happened. Mel Torme not only performed the song on the album, he also added it to his concert repertoire. So in the eyes of Was (Not Was), this one may have started as a practical joke or Torme, but if so, it backfired.

Torch Songs: A Long Way Down

Driver Quartet: A Long Way Down

[out of print]

I've written about Driver Quartet before, but when I saw what this week's theme was, I knew I had to post another song from them.

"A Long Way Down" is another Adam Bernstein original, recorded for both their EP and their album. This time I went with the earlier, EP recording.

Those of us who have been there know: It is indeed a long way down.

Torch Songs: You Don't Know What Love Is

image by Roy Lichtenstein, 1963

Karrin Allyson: You Don't Know What Love Is

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John Coltrane: You Don't Know What Love Is

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You don't know what love is
'Til you’ve learned the meaning of the blues,
Until you’ve loved a love you've had to lose,
You don't know what love is.

Here's a classic jazz torch song from the Great American Songbook. But who torches it better? Gal, guy, or… Well, can you have a torch song without lyrics? I think so.

Representing for the women is Karrin Allyson, from her 2001 Grammy-nominated album, Ballads: A Tribute to John Coltrane. A nice, church-going girl from Kansas, she skipped around the midwest before settling in New York City and releasing 12 albums (and counting).

Saving the best for last, we have a classic take by John Coltrane (yet another heroin addict, but one who kicked his habit after several firings by Miles Davis, another—you guessed it—reformed addict. The smack-filled 50s were especially hard on jazz musicians). From 1962's Ballads, a gem of an album if you like your Coltrane mellow. That's McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. This version has my vote. If you don't think that listening to Coltrane is a religious experience, maybe you should visit San Francisco and check out a service at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. From their website I learned that the weekly service features "the Coltrane Liturgy, which combines the Divine Liturgy of the African Orthodox Church and the Twenty-third Psalm, with the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms of Saint John Coltrane's masterpiece: A Love Supreme."

Torch Songs: Beulah The Good

James Jackson Toth: Beulah the Good

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I've wanted to post this song for quite sometime now but have been patiently waiting for a theme that it would fit. When I first learned of this song by James Jackson Toth, I didn't know that he was the front man for Wooden Wand And The Vanishing Voice. He has also recorded under the name WAND. On this track his former wife, Jessica Bowen, serves up the background vocals. Dylanesque in sound, Beulah The Good is a surreal take on a tale of lost love with lines such as 'It was like I lost my favorite hair between the bristles of a broom'. That said, I'll let the song take it from here.

Torch Songs: Nothing Compares 2 U

Sinead O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U

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These days torch songs don't often make the charts, or at least the ones that sound as melancholy as the subject matter within them don't. But one of the saddest and most beautiful torch songs to have made it to #1 in the last few decades was Sinead O'Connor's fantastic cover of the Prince-written "Nothing Compares 2 U".

Back in 1990 when this song came out people were blown away by not only the beauty of the song, but by the simplistic and emotional video that went with it. A video mostly of O'Connor staring at the camera and singing, and at one point a single tear rolls down her cheek as you know she's feeling the words she's singing. If you ask me, Nothing Compares 2 this song.

Torch Songs: Why Don’t You Do Right?

Jessica Rabbit (sung by Amy Irving): Why Don‘t You Do Right

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As we have seen this week already, “torch song” is a slippery term, hard to define. But I know a definition that captures it exactly. A torch song is that moment in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? where we first meet Jessica Rabbit. Jessica’s speaking voice was done by Kathleen Turner, who used a Lauren Bacall kind of voice that was perfect. So I was surprised to learn that Turner didn’t do Jessica’s singing voice. That was Amy Irving, who I never knew could sing. The song, of course, was Why Don’t You Do Right?, and here it is. The song was originally a signature song for Peggy Lee, but I would have to say that Jessica more than does it justice.

Torch Songs: Motown

The Four Tops: Standing in the Shadows of Love

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Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: The Tracks of my Tears

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The Temptations: Since I Lost My Baby

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I wonder what was going on in the love lives of Motown's hit makers circa 1965-66? These three songs from that seemingly woeful year were huge successes for their biggest names, and they're all torch songs by men (yeah, Darius, I agree: guys sing this genre quite well!) Standing in the Shadows of Love was written by the noteworthy and prolific trio of Holland-Dozier-Holland (they wrote nearly everything Motown produced), and the last two songs were penned by Smokey Robinson (who, along with Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, wrote most of the rest).

Looks like the Motown bunch were crying all the way to the bank.

Torch Songs: One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)

Lou Reed: One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)

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From the album simply entitled Duets, Lou Reed and bassist Rob Wasserman have produced a great cover of this fine old standard. But it's is a departure from most of the other versions I'm familiar with. You might say this isn't your father's 'One For My Baby'. Written for the musical comedy film 'The Sky's The Limit', starring Fred Astaire, Reed and Wasserman take this song to a new level. Interestingly the word torch was added in a line that replaces one from the original and that seems to be tailor made for this weeks theme. For the sake of comparison I've included the Johnny Mercer track as well.

Johnny Mercer: One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)

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Torch Songs: Faded Love

Patsy Cline: Faded Love

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One of the most influential singers to ever come out of the Nashville sound was Patsy Cline (Virginia Patterson Hensley). Her career lasted only five-and-a-half years before the fateful plane crash that took her life. During those five years she recorded the classic Walkin' After Midnight, I Fall to Pieces, She's Got You, Crazy , and Sweet Dreams. In 1963 she covered the Bob Wills song Faded Love. Her version became a hit on the country charts reaching number seven, but it wasn't released until after her death. It is the title track of her fourth album which was to become her final recording session. It was reported that she cried through most of the session, being taken by many of the song's lyrics. The emotion was carried into most of the songs on the album, but can be heard especially on Sweet Dreams and Faded Love. I first became acquainted with Faded Love, not by Patsy Cline, but by Micky Gilley. It wasn't until years later that I heard Patsy's cover, but as much as I liked Gilley's, I realized then and there that I had been missing out.