Religion: What About The Bond

Bruce Cockburn: What About the Bond

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

Religion: Love, Devotion, and Surrender

Santana: Love, Devotion, and Surrender

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

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

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

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

Religion: Love...Thy Will Be Done

Martika: Love...Thy Will Be Done

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

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

Religion: Fix It Jesus

Reverend Charlie Jackson: Fix It Jesus

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

Religion: Church

Lyle Lovett: Church

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

Religion: Do Lord

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

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

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

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

Religion: Let The Mystery Be

Iris DeMent: Let The Mystery Be

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

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

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

Religion: There's Gonna Be A Showdown

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

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

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

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

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

Religion: Snake-Handling Man

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer: Snake-Handling Man

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

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

Neil Young Covers: Lotta Love

Nicolette Larson: Lotta Love

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

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

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

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

Neil Young covers: Helpless

Patti Smith: Helpless

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doa: Helpless

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Cowboy Junkies: Helpless

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

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

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

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

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

Neil Young Covers: After the Gold Rush

k d lang: After the Gold Rush

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

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

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

Neil Young Covers: Harvest Moon

Cassandra Wilson: Harvest Moon

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I can't imagine this week going by without offering up jazz diva Cassandra Wilson's beautiful interpretation of "Harvest Moon", the closing track to her critically acclaimed 1996 album New Moon Daughter. The entire album sounds like it was recorded on a midsummer night among ancient oak trees draped in Spanish moss.
Her version of "Harvest Moon" is gilded with melancholy and is a "must hear".

Neil Young Covers: Ohio

Dala: Ohio

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I would like to believe that I can write the words “Kent State Massacre”, and everyone would know what I was talking about. But it probably isn’t the case. When it happened in 1970, it was easy to believe that no one would ever forget it, and that was what Neil Young wanted to make sure of when he wrote Ohio for Crosby Stills Nash and Young. I was nine and a half at the time, but I had an older brother who was in high school, and therefore very aware of the draft. Nowadays, it is the law here in the United States that you must register for the military draft when you turn 18. But there hasn’t been an actual draft in wartime since the Vietnam War. Our young people today take it for granted that they would only serve in an American war if they volunteered. And, partly for that reason, none of the wars the United States has fought in since Vietnam has given rise to the kinds of widespread student protests that were common in those days.

On April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced that he had expanded the war to Cambodia. Students at Kent State University in Kent Ohio quickly organized a series of protests. By May 4, the decision had been made to bring in the National Guard to force the students to disperse. It’s hard to say why things got out of hand the way the did. The students had been throwing rocks, first at the police, and then at the Guardsmen when they arrived. But, none of the students got closer than about 100 yards from the Guardsmen. You would have to have a pretty good arm to be much of a threat at that distance. Whatever the case, some of the Guardsmen opened fire. In 17 seconds, 67 rounds of ammunition were fired at the unarmed students. When it was all over, four students were dead or dying, and nine others were wounded. Two of the students who died weren’t even part of the protest; they just happened to be in the wrong place, on their way to their next class.

Those were the events that shocked a nation, and inspired Neil Young to write Ohio. The song was released as a single a couple of weeks after the event, and came out on a live CSNY album the following year. CSNY recorded the song as a rock anthem, and it worked as a powerful protest song at the time. But, as I noted in my introduction, these are very different times than those. There is no anti-war movement to rally, not like there was then. So how should a contemporary artist cover the song? Dala has answered that question brilliantly. Instead of a protest anthem, they render the song as a cry of mourning. The slow it down, and remove the wailing of the electric guitars from the original. Neil Young and Co made Ohio a rallying cry, and the victims of Kent State martyrs to the cause. Dala finds the humanity in the song, and reminds us that the victims were somebody’s sons and daughters. Young’s writing allows both approaches, and each one is or was utterly right for its time.

Neil Young Covers: Burned

Wilco: Burned

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For the soundtrack to the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol, Wilco covered "Burned", a song Neil Young wrote and sang on the first Buffalo Springfield album thirty years earlier. While the original had that "vintage whine" of Neil's, we get Jeff Tweedy's stoner-drawl and some far out guitar feedback--which may actually fit the lyrics better. Many cuts on the Warhol album have 90's era bands (R.E.M, Luna, Bettie Serveert) knocking out 60's covers. As with most soundtracks, it's a mixed bag.

Teenage Fanclub also covered an uptempo version of "Burned" as a B side to their 1995 "Sparky's Dream" single. I don't have it but you can check it out here .

Neil Young Covers: Cortez The Killer

Marissa Nadler: Cortez The Killer

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Carrie Rodriguez: Cortez The Killer

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Built To Spill: Cortez The Killer

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Clem Snide: Cortez The Killer

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There's been a lot of great Neil Young coverage released since the turn of the millenium; of the 200 covers in my private stash, over half were released in the last decade alone. But no single song has caught my fancy more effectively than Cortez The Killer.

Originally released in 1975, with a crying guitar riff that ranked #39 on Guitar World's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos, and later named one of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, Cortez is a somewhat pensive, almost wistful, eminently political, entirely accurate historical recitative for the bulk of its journey.

In the last verse, though, the narrator switches into first person, describing a woman he knows, who's "living there today".

Wikipedia writers cite temples and Cortez' mistress La Malinche (Doña Marina) as the possible subject of these lines. Personally, I think that's a grave misinterpretation of how Young writes.

Instead, I think the woman is real - that the whole story of conquest is revealed as a metaphor in the last few lines, wherein the whole thing collapses back on you like a brick wall, placing the personal in the political in a way that only true genius can. Try it, up against Carrie Rodriguez' alt-country, Clem Snide's angsty whine, Marissa Nadler's echoey nufolk, the heavy jamband rock of Built To Spill - four vastly different takes on the emotional core of the piece - and see what I mean.

Neil Young Covers: Cinnamon Girl

Replicants - Cinnamon Girl

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I saw Neil Young once. It was the Ragged Glory tour.

It was a total spur-of-the-moment thing, and the nose-bleed seats were testament. My brother and I were waaay up in Cloud City, but I didn't care. It was a Big Rock Show and I was excited. Sonic Youth was a support act.

All during Sonic Youth's set, a drunken, long-haired man in a very unwashed Neil Young tour tee-shirt stood - in the row before us - screaming his throat to shreds: "Get off the stage!!! Neil!!! Whoo!!! Get off the stage!!!"

After the break, once Neil did take the stage, the fine fellow slumped into his seat, passed out, and only barely vomited all over his shirt... ah, good times.

Neil Young Covers: Old Man

The Boxcar Lilies: Old Man

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There are three ways that I can think of to interpret the song Old Man. The narrator could be addressing an imaginary old man, who represents what he thinks he will be like in quite a few years, looking back at his life. The narrator could be addressing an actual old man, but not one that he knows well; in that case, the narrator is simply projecting his own concerns onto a relative stranger, seeking to reassure himself that there is a future for himself. Or the narrator could actually know the old man well enough to compare himself; in this case, the narrator is seeking common ground with someone from another time. I find all of these possible meanings in the original, and The Boxcar Lilies preserve them beautifully. I want to reassure the 24 year-old narrator that there is indeed a future to look forward to, and more love to be won and lost and won. I’m a bit older than that, as you may have guessed.

Nine Lives: The Lovecats

The Cure: The Lovecats

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When The Cure released The Lovecats in 1983, the song rose to number seven on the British singles chart. So it’s kind of hard to believe that the album it appeared on at the end of that year, Japanese Whispers, was a holding action, a single and flip sides compilation to keep the fans happy until the next official album came out. At that time, The Cure had just changed bass players, and they or their label seem to have decided to release Japanese Whispers because they weren’t sure when the next album would be ready. Even more remarkable: nowadays, Japanese Whispers is only available as an import.

As for the song, The Lovecats may be described as a love song where the lovers are feral cats. Or maybe fans of The Cure really did court each other this way in 1983. Either way, the song sounds like cats, and not just because of the feline vocalizations. It also has a great beat.

Nine Lives: Big Cat

The Clean: Big Cat

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How do you know if your cat is overweight? You should be able to feel the backbone and ribs. If you can't feel the ribs without pressing, you may have a fat cat. If , viewed from the side, your cat has no noticeable waist but just a mass of belly fur sweeping the floor, you may have a fat cat. Finally, if you wake up each night wondering if someone is pushing a large boulder down the stairs -THUD THUD THUD--only to discover that it's your cat seeking a midnight snack, you may have a fat cat.