2001: Joy

Silverbullit: Joy

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Silverbullit - one of all of those great bands destined to die in obscurity. Though they partly have themselves to blame for that; not only are they unproductive (three albums in fourteen years, and not a new album since 2004), they're also notoriously reluctant to do anything that might be considered crowd-pleasing.

The first album Silverbullit, released in 1997, was a hell-raising, high octane rock 'n' roll juggernaut inspired by The Stooges, MC5 and The Doors. After much turmoil, the follow-up Citizen Bird was released in 2001. Despite being recorded on and off for several years in a few different studios and with six different drummers, Citizen Bird has no problem holding together like one cohesive and mightily impressive album.

While it in parts retained the all American Detroit-tinged boogie r'n'r' energy, the band now took most of its cues from Spiritualized/Spacemen 3, The Velvet Underground, Suicide, DAF, Joy Division/New Order, krautrock and old school computer game music, creating something wholly unique and endlessly fascinating.

No doubt one of my favorite albums of all time. Get your copy today.

2001: The Wedding Song

Charlie Robison (with Natalie Maines): The Wedding Song

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The Wedding Song is a duet, and it came out on a major label from their Nashville division. So you would expect a lush production with a wall of strings, and you would expect to hear a couple proclaiming their undying love for each other. What you get is evidence of why Charlie Robison probably should never have been on a major country label, despite the fact that the album made a respectable showing on the country charts.

At the time of this song’s release, Charlie Robison had been married to Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks for two years, but his duet partner here is Emily’s bandmate Natalie Maines. To the ear, The Wedding Song is indeed a love ballad, based on an acoustic guitar, and sweetened with pedal steel. Other than that, the production is refreshingly low key. But then there are the lyrics. Robison and Maines each sing one of the first two verses, and each of those verses starts with these lines:

“Well, you are still here,
And I am still here,
Whether I ever loved you is
Not perfectly clear.”

Hardly the stuff of romance. As I see it, there are two ways to read this. Maybe the song is about a couple whose lack of romance means that they are realistic about what they have, and therefore their marriage is likely to endure. Or maybe the song is a droll send-up of romantic love ballads. I have always felt that this kind of ambiguity is a mark of great songwriting, and I stand by that here.

2001: Baby, You're My Light

Richard Hawley: Baby, You’re My Light

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Richard Hawley, a former member of Britpop groups Longpigs and Pulp, has produced a series of delightful and always affecting albums that started with his full debut in 2001, Late Night Final (it was preceded by a self-titled EP in 2000), and culminated in a masterpiece with 2009’s Truelove Gutter. The gorgeously melancholy, late night mood of that great triptych of Hawley albums — Coles Corner, Lady’s Bridge, Truelove Gutter — is already evident on the debut, from which the lovely ‘Baby, You’re My Light’ comes. His voice has now dropped a register and the arrangements have become more intricate since Late Night Final, but the basics of the Hawley sound, and the quality, are already there.

Most Hawley songs that address the fancies of romance are downbeat, speaking of loneliness, longing or disappointment. ‘Baby, You’re My Light’, as the title suggests, takes a more upbeat direction as we follow the narrator’s through three stages. First we meet the young man who is awkward in matters of the heart, then the more confident adult who allows himself to take the risks of a broken heart, and finally the seasoned campaigner in romance who yields to love. The opening line is quite wonderful: “First time, the longing in you wears the girl that grows it.”

2001: Angeldust (Please Come Down)

Jump, Little Children: Angeldust (Please Come Down)

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Jump, Little Children was an alt-rock band made up of students studying classical music at North Carolina's School of the Arts. They started by playing live traditional Irish music, then added a dash of Delta blues before switching (mostly) to their own stuff. The group's vocalist, Jay Clifford, wrote all of the songs on this, their sophomore release. Yes, his voice reaches some pretty high ranges, isn't that cool? Are you surprised, given my affinity for falsetto, that I love this band? Most people who have actually heard them did, too, but unfortunately not enough of us existed, so sadly they called it quits after album #3 in 2004.

The islands off the coast are on fire
Orange and violet,
Standing on a thundering beach
Frozen in silence.
The rising sound of burning ground
Is like a carbon echo of a smoking gun.

2001: Broken Things

David Byrne: Broken Things

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By 2001, new wave music had happened twenty years earlier. Talking Heads had made some of the most original music of the 80s, but now leader David Byrne was well into his solo career. Byrne had always thrived on defying expectations. By 2001, that could mean making heavily produced music, with live strings and other orchestration. In Byrne’s hands, this evoked the sounds of Brazil, and that was the basis for much of his 2001 album Look Into the Eyeball. Broken Things is something of a throwback to Byrne’s earlier sounds. Yes, there is a horn section, but it is used with great subtlety. This one has real bite, more so because of the music that surrounds it on the album. As for lyrics, Byrne has always been an elliptical writer, but the most important repair to be made in this song is emotional rather than physical.

Useful Numbers: 3

Bob Dorough: Three Is A Magic Number

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De La Soul: Magic Number

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Jack Johnson: The 3 R's

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My first choice for this theme has already been blogged, and Anne described my attachment to it so well. But this eleventh-hour 3x3 submission, while a bit minimalist and tongue in cheek, is nonetheless as important as a phone number. And the song tells you why.

Bob Dorough is a great Jazzman, but he's best known as composer and occasional vocalist for the Schoolhouse Rock series, from whence this came. Playful hip hop pioneers De La Soul sampled and remade for their 1991 seminal 3 Feet High...and Rising. Jack Johnson transforms, rewiring the lyrics for a modern, green society.

There's good covers out there from Elizabeth Mitchell (gentle) and Blind Melon (grungy), among others. But then our numbers would've come out all wrong.

3. It's the magic number. No more, no less.

Useful Numbers: # 807

Pieta Brown: # 807

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Number 807 is a street address, and Pieta Brown takes us to the front door, and then opens it. This begins a series of slides which show a man living on the bad side of town. The song may present one character or a series of different men, and the ambiguity is deliberate. We the listener see their poverty, but also their humanity. The slides are in black and white, but are no less real for that. The bluesy groove that accompanies this slide show is perfect.

Useful Numbers: 1865 (96 Degrees In The Shade)

Third World: 1865 (96 Degrees In The Shade)

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This song has both date and temperature – a twofer! It describes the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica, a protest turned riot turned massacre, in which over 400 black citizens were killed and a further 300 executed without trial by the English colonial government.

Reggae band Third World, riding the wave of reggae-love beyond their Jamaican shores, released the title track of their second album in 1977, and it became one of their most popular songs.

Useful Numbers: 853-5937

Squeeze: 853-5937

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853-5937 is one of those songs I liked as a child and I can look back on and say I am proud of childhood me for choosing Squeeze (I liked their other single "Hourglass" from their 1987 album Babylon And On even better) over a lot of the other stuff they were playing on the radio. I remember thinking back then that when I was older and had my own phone I would want to sing the chorus of this song as my answering machine message. Oh, how things change, but this song is still fun to sing along with.

Squeeze is a pop rock band from England that was making music from the late '70s, so when Babylon and On came out they weren't a new band, but new to most American ears, as this song and the previously mentioned "Hourglass" became their only hits in the U.S. The song is cute and catchy. A cute little story of a guy freaking out because he keeps calling his girlfriend's number and she never answers, and then he calls his best friend and he doesn't answer either and he starts getting paranoid that they were off somewhere together. They just don't make songs like this anymore.

Useful Numbers: 14th Street

Laura Cantrell: 14th Street

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The picture above says it perfectly. You are looking down the middle of 14th Street in New York City. On one side of the street, the buildings are all a washed out brown color. On the other side, the buildings look vibrant and alive, decked out in that rich reddish brown. 14th Street marks the northern border of Greenwich Village, the famous Bohemian enclave. In Laura Cantrell’s song 14th Street, her narrator seemingly comes from the brown side of the street, while the man she walks behind is from the reddish side. Most of Cantrell’s songs are on the folk or country side of things, but this one is pure timeless girl-pop bliss. That works perfectly for this tale of a woman who is trying to find the courage to act on a crush.

Useful Numbers: 2541

Robert Forster - 2541

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  When Husker Du broke up at the end of 1987 it was drummer Grant Hart who released the first solo recording, an EP named "2541". The following line pretty much sums things up:
 "Now everything is over /Everything is done/Everything is in boxes/ at 2541"


  A little googling identifies 2541 as the street address of the old Husker Du office and practice space, but Grant Hart told Spin Magazine that, coincidentally, it was also the number on a house he shared with a lover.

   "I wrote the song while waiting for the truck to move me out of this apartment where me and this person had just split up. And there were so many parallels with the dissolvement of (Husker Du)'s office and our being a  band."

   Must have been some place: "Billy put down the money and I picked up the keys/We had to keep the stove on all night long so the mice wouldn't freeze".


   As you've probably already noticed, I'm not offering Grant Hart's version . (You can hear it here.) I have a soft spot for a cover version by The Go-Betweens' Robert Forster. It's from an album of mostly obscure covers called I Had A New York Girlfriend.

Useful Numbers: 24-7-365

Keni Stevens: 24-7-365

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24-7-365 is the number that “gets you on the loveline” with Keni Stevens (except, presumably, in Olympic years). It’s the sort of lyric one might expect from a 1980s soul song. But don’t let this slive of cheese mislead you about the soul stylings of the sadly underrated Keni Stevens.

The British soulster of distinctive style and voice released only three albums of sophisticated, cool soul. The debut, 1987’s Blue Moods is the best-known of them. The song here comes from the 1988 follow-up, You, which I consider to be the better album. Indeed, the first side of You is absolutely exquisite (when Stevens sings about the pain of heartbreak in 'Hurt This Way', you feel it with him), as good as any soul LP first side released in the 1980s. It's a superb laid-back soul album by a self-assured independent singer who never got his due.

Things could’ve gone better for the son of a US serviceman. Two singles he released on the independent Elite label in 1985 attracted interest from a few majors. Polygram reportedly offered him an £2,5 million contract. Stevens turned it down in favour of maintaining artistic independence. He became something of a favourite among British soul fans. Though he never bothered the UK Top 75 singles charts, Blue Moods sold 150,000 copies in Britain, and a reported million worldwide.

The saxophone on '24-7-365' is by Mike Stevens, who also did guitar duty. I presume that this is the same Mike Stevens who served as musical director for Take That and released a jazz-fusion album.

Useful Numbers: October 26

The Pretty Things: October 26


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This 1971 single sounds like one terrific hangover from a party so "happening" it must have been revolutionary.

   October 26, 1917 is the day after the Bolsheviks took over Russia and began spreading Communism in the 20th Century. The plan was to implement worldwide revolution. It didn't quite happen that way.

   But aside from the date, this song appears to be about the end of another revolution. This one was orchestrated by hippies and it ended after a ten month span in which The Beatles broke up and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Altamont concert-goer Meredith Hunter all died.

   For The Pretty Things "October 26" ends a string of remarkable albums ( S.F. Sorrow, Parachute) and singles cut at Abbey Road. At this point vocalist Phil May was the only original member of the band left. The single made no impact in the UK but broke the Top 30 in The Netherlands. You can find "October 26" on the re-issued Parachute album.

Useful Numbers: Dayton Ohio 1903

Randy Newman: Dayton Ohio 1903

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Randy Newman has become known for full band pop and lushly orchestrated soundtrack music. He does both things with wonderful artistry. His songs in recent years, especially the ones used in the Pixar films, display a tenderness that very few songwriters can match. But I first heard Newman in ballads like this one, arranged for just voice and Newman’s piano playing. All of the tender emotion of his later work is here as well. This is a sepia-toned song, with a wonderful nostalgic feel. The song is short, under two minutes in fact, but that’s all Newman needs to set the mood.

Tom Waits Covers: Come On Up to the House

Sarah Jarosz: Come On Up to the House

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God and heaven are never mentioned in the song, but Come On Up to the House has the fervent quality of a gospel prayer nonetheless. This is true in Tom Waits original version, but perhaps even more so in Sarah Jarosz’ cover. Jarosz uses bluegrass instrumentation, but also gives the song a jazzy feel. It all adds up to that rare cover that actually improves on the original. And I say that from the point of view of a Tom Waits fan who feels that covers rarely even do his songs justice. This one does.

Tom Waits Covers: Big Black Mariah

John Hammond: Big Black Mariah

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I can understand why no one has posted Big Black Mariah this week. The song is one of Tom Waits’ most menacing works. The band on the original sounds like an ancient steam engine, threatening to shake itself apart at any moment. On top of that, Waits adds his signature growl. The song also has a mystifying lyric. Tom Waits can be coy about his song meanings, but “big black mariah” can be a slang term for either a paddy wagon or a hearse. So the song could be about a man being taken away by the police, who expects to wind up on death row. The ambiguity is deliberate on Waits’ part. You can find notes on the meaning of the song here.

But Big Black Mariah is an emotionally powerful song. Love it or hate it, you can not be unmoved. And that is probably what inspired John Hammond to include the song in his collection of Tom Waits covers, Wicked Grin. Hammond has remade the song as a Chicago blues number. Now it sounds like the original artist might have been Howlin’ Wolf, and it suits the song perfectly. Tom Waits apparently agreed; he produced Wicked Grin.

Tom Waits Covers: (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night

Shawn Colvin: (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night
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Madeleine Peyroux: (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night

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Shawn Colvin's mostly-live 1994 covers album Cover Girl marked a key moment in my evolution as a cover fan; it also introduced me to one of Tom Waits' most hopeful, beautiful songs. It's not the strongest cut on the album - a privilege shared by songs originally by The Band, John Prine, Talking Heads and others - but I found Colvin's version of Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night a gem nonetheless, with that little girl voice and a light acoustic swing offering a nuanced, wistful exploration of the eternal pursuit of the nirvana moment, the perfect meeting of place and time and company of which every barfly dreams.


Then, in 2006, Madeleine Peyroux released her own version - a slow, low cowboy ballad of a song, utterly gorgeous and dripping with late-night drowsiness - and my life was transformed again. And so we see through this, and a thousand other takes from a thousand other jazz-bent female vocalists, how Tom Waits compositions translate so well to the female chanteuse. Writ large, it is a near-universal truth of musical performance: the inevitable feminine counterpart to gruff and gravely was, is, and always has been sultry and smooth. But nowhere does this play out better than in Tom Waits coverage, in this coverblogger's opinion.

Tom Waits Covers: Downtown Train

Moneybrother: Tåget Som Går In Till Stan

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After ska rockers Monster parted ways in 2000 frontman Anders Wendin started his solo project Moneybrother.

Everything he has even done under this name has gotten pretty much rave reviews in his native Sweden, but his biggest commercial success to date was the 2006 album Pengabrorsan, on which he covered songs by everyone from My Morning Jacket and Wire to Ron Sexsmith and Donna Summer, all translated into his native tongue.

The best of the bunch though was this one, Waits' Downtown Train.

Tom Waits Covers: The Piano Has Been Drinking

Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks: The Piano Has Been Drinking

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Dan Hicks' delightfully weary "cowboy jazz" take on this old Tom Waits tune lurches around like its unreliable narrator's attention span: it's a different bar, of a different type, than the woozy original - better populated, too - but it still spins like a wobbling top in its own way. It's also the cover which finally turned me on to the Tom Waits songbook in its entirety in the first place, way back at the turn of the century, despite a few others which had already come my way with their own power and potency, so I'm getting this one out of the way today, as our week begins.

Those unfamiliar with Dan Hicks should know he's a musician's musician, a critical success who never sold much in the way of albums even though he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone way back in - gulp - the year I was born. Beat The Heat, his 2000 comeback album as bandleader of the Hot Licks, features this and numerous other gleefully sly, silly tunes, and special guest spots from Bette Midler, Elvis Costello, Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Waits himself, and other well-known luminaries who came out of the woodwork for Hicks when he called, proving his continued relevance after a few decades piddling around off the charts entirely as an ensemble member and solo artist.

Circuses and Carnivals => Tom Waits Covers: Table Top Joe

Neptune Quartet: Table Top Joe

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Tom Waits is an interesting subject for a week of covers, because his art is almost impossible to duplicate. Waits has a knack for portraying vagabonds, drunkards, and freaks in a way that is honest but sympathetic. Waits shows these characters with all of their warts, but he gives them their dignity. This delicate balance comes as much from Waits’ performance as his writing, so this quality is often lost in cover versions. But artists are drawn to his writing, so they must make these characters their own. Reinvention is almost always required, as we shall probably see for most of this week. But I keep hedging. That’s because I found this remarkable performance of Table Top Joe that largely preserves the feel of Waits original, while filling out the arrangement.

In fact, for all of the reasons I mentioned above, Table Top Joe is one of the most unlikely Waits songs for anyone to cover at all. The title character is based on the life of Johnny Eck, who was born with the lower half of his body missing. That’s a picture of Eck above. Even the thought of it is enough to make a person uncomfortable. Eck appeared in the notorious cult horror film Freaks, and he wanted to appear in another film as a mad scientist’s monster. Yet, Tom Waits focuses on Eck’s hopes and dreams, and finds his essential humanity The real life Eck accomplished many things that most people would have considered impossible for him, including conducting an orchestra. He also spent most of the Great Depression working in circus and carnival freak shows. By all accounts, Eck never lost his optimism until a robber took advantage of his physical limitations when Eck was in his seventies. He never seemed to accept the word impossible, and that is what Tom Waits sees in him.

Neptune Quartet is normally an instrumental group, but, for their version of Table Top Joe, they added singer Wes Ivankovich. Neptune Quartet arrange the song for guitars, mandolin, bass, and accordion, in a way that Tom Waits might have done if he thought of it. Ivankovich delivers a vocal that is somewhere between Tom Waits and Dr John, if you can imagine, and it all works beautifully.