Surprise! Sussex Ghost Story

John Wesley Harding: Sussex Ghost Story

[purchase]

There are many things to like about John Wesley Harding's "Sussex Ghost Story." From Harding's 2004 Adam's Apple, the instrumentation sounds almost like you would expect a Poe story to sound: A gloomy, almost foreboding string arrangement, Harding's off-kilter narrative and an interesting story twist at the end. It's also one of those rare story songs that holds up well after repeated listening. I've had it on my iPod for seven years no, and I never skip it when Shuffle selects it.

Surprise!: Conversations

Andy Robinson: Conversations

[purchase]

Writing and recording music "Conversations" was an extended series of surprises, some with the creative process, and others with relationships in my life.

The song was born in a haphazard way. One night I felt like recording, but I didn't have a song to work on. I pulled out a snare drum, some brushes, and other percussion instruments. I set about recording a groove. Since I had no preconceived idea of what I was doing, on each track I’d stop, start and change my parts at random. By night’s end, I had eight or nine tracks of messy percussion. I gave the session a non-descript working title, then I shut down my machine and forgot about it.

Sometimes it's as if you subconsciously plan little surprises for yourself. Months later, I saw that title, had no idea what it was, and I opened the file. "Oh, yeah, it's that weird percussion jam…" I decided that I liked parts of it, so I picked up my dulcimer and recorded the first chord progression that came to mind. Now it sounded sort of like a song, so I ended up spending quite a bit of time editing the percussion to make it sound like a real jam. It took…ahem…a surprising amount of editing, that's for sure.

Like most people who record, I listen to my works-in-progress while I drive, and I sing along with them. I decided I wanted a flute to play a melody on this thing, so I was driving along, singing a high part, trying to approximate what a flute might do.

The part was actually too high for me to sing comfortably. When I got home, I experimented with electronically changing the pitch of my voice, and I recorded an interesting, weird-sounding reference track for my future flautist. I wasn't too careful, because I assumed the track was going to be replaced with a lovely-sounding flute.

When I played the new mix for my brother with no explanation, it certainly surprised him. His head snapped around when the vocal came in. "Who is that?" I told him it was just a temporary guide track for a flute part, and he almost hit the ceiling. He said, "It sounds amazing - don't re-do it! I thought it was a little old Chinese lady!"

I can't say I was entirely sold on the concept of sounding like an elderly Oriental woman, but I promised Doug that I'd think about it. In retrospect, perhaps it's not that surprising that I took his advice and used the track. His instincts are usually pretty good.

But the biggest and best surprise was that I got to use my mother-in-law's joyful laughter as a lead instrument on this song. Around this time, I'd begun to carry a hand-held digital recorder everywhere I went, recording stuff for fun. One night, we'd finished dinner with the in laws and were hanging out, drinking wine and talking. I had my little recorder running. Otto made a joke and Diane apparently thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. She began laughing, and she laughed until tears came. Whenever she stopped, it was only a shaky moment before she started up again. Otto began imitating her, which only made her laugh harder.

I had already recorded various other conversations, because I'd been thinking of turning the song into a mellow folk version of those Sixties pop records which sound like a party going on during the session. There was one by Marvin Gaye. "Here Comes My Baby," and "Rainy Day Women Numbers 12 and 35," and various Beatles recordings also had that party vibe.

I took all these conversation tracks into my studio, and I mixed them into the arrangement. I got yet another surprise. Diane's laughter was obviously the magic ingredient in my mix. You couldn't possibly rehearse or plan such a great "performance." I knew she had to be featured, so I rode the fader and had her rise up in the mix, as if she were an instrument playing a solo during one section of the song.

I didn't tell anyone except my wife what I'd done. When the Exotic America album was released in 2004, I played "Conversations" for Otto and Diane, as a surprise. Otto cried when he heard it.

Today, Diane is in the final stages of dementia. She still occasionally shows traces of her loving personality and free spirit. Most people capture moments that honor their loved ones in home videos and photos. I make instrumental music, which is a little more open to interpretation, but in this case, causes and conditions in my life allowed me to create a loving tribute to the exceptional mother of my wonderful wife. I'm very grateful that I could do it, and I'm very proud of "Conversations."

Guest Post by Andy Robinson

Surprise!: April Fool

Brave Combo: April Fool

[purchase]

Imagine my awe and dismay when I was once asked to review an album by Brave Combo called Holidays! on the reputable Rounder Records label. Brave Combo surprised me well when I listened to the cut identified for April 1st. “I got you good. You had no clue. What a joke! I’m so cool. You got fooled. April Fool!”

When formed in 1979 in Denton, Texas, Brave Combo called themselves a New Wave polka band. Three decades later, they've proven they’re much more with influences of country, jazz, rock ‘n' roll, surf, blues, Celtic, Tex-Mex, Latin, Klezmer, big band, and salsa. And, of course, there’s plenty of shock, disbelief and novelty in their music too.

That explains Brave Combo's moniker and cryptic genre, but it's really not all that baffling. Behind the scenes, the band is very serious about their tunes. It shows in their arrangements and musicianship. For us, music is a rather personal thing, and we usually listen to it for enjoyment and stimulation. Holidays! succeeds because there's something for everyone, and the album reminds us to lighten up and not take life too seriously. Just like “April Fool,” the entire album is playful, foolish and often frenetic festivity.

Brave Combo's prime directive is to "break down people's perceptions about what's cool to like in music…. to shake up people's ideas about what they label hip, or right or wrong." They also say that acceptance of polka and other dance rhythms can help bring about world peace. If people start dancing together, they'll also learn to respect each other's cultures too. So put your inhibitions and restraints aside…Get up and cut a rug.

Let Brave Combo’s music surprise you. Their Holidays! album gives us reason to pull the album out at 19 different festive occasions throughout the year. It’s a fun, chronological journey. They begin with "Auld Lang Syne" and "New Year's Polka," then take us through to "Mambo in a Brand New Year."

So how did their Holidays! album come about back in 2004? It seems that Larry King, producer of the TM Comedy Central Network, was on the lookout for good original songs that met their criteria for morning radio shows. With over a dozen albums out on the Rounder label, Brave Combo (Jeffrey Barnes, Alan Emert, Carl Finch, Bubba Hernandez, Danny O'Brien) took on the challenge. Guests on Holidays! include Rob Avsharian, Joe Cripps, Milo Deering, and a whole host of background singers.

While definitely eccentric, Brave Combo has built a legion of fans who like their outlandish song surprises with a grooving, danceable beat. Dr. Demento would appreciate them too.

Surprise!: Save Your Kisses For Me

Brotherhood Of Man: Save Your Kisses For Me

[purchase]

ABBA’s victory in the Eurovision Song Contest on 6 April 1974 changed the contest. Whereas in the past, the national judges broadly favoured chanson type tunes (even Sandie Shaw’s delightful “Puppet On A String” sounded continental), they now liked their groups poppy and, importantly, co-ed. In 1975, Dutch outfit Teach-In won with the “Ding-A-Dong”, an ironic deconstruction of Hegel’s epistemological proposition (“In order to understand [and possibly accept] the Phenomenology of Spirit, one must except the notion of the self-sublating nature of finitude” etc).

The following year, Great Britain dispatched to The Hague an uglier version of ABBA in the form of Brotherhood of Man. Their entry, “Save Your Kisses For Me”, was already a big hit in Britain, so it was not unknown when BoM, as the band’s ultra fans possibly called the group, put themselves at the mercy of the international juries, with their bouncy tune, lazily conceived and vaguely bouncy choreography and a frontman who most likely couldn’t bounce, but did look vaguely creepy.

BoM (although I’m not an ultra fan, I prefer the abbreviation) won with 164 points, ahead of France’s entry, “Un, deux, trois” by Grade 1 maths teacher Catherine Ferry, with 147 points. Seven countries out of 17 gave BoM the top score of 12, four the next highest score of 10. France, always ready to spot a rival, contributed a measly seven (the UK gave their entry eight points). Italy didn’t dig BoM, and offered four points. And Ireland virtually urinated on HRH Queen Elizabeth herself, giving BoM a disdainful three points.

So, where’s the twist in the lyrics of “Save Your Kisses For Me”? Well, and here I better issue a ***SPOILER ALERT***, the person whom the singer asks to save all their kisses turns out to be only three. Charity of thought dictates that the song’s narrator is intended to represent the little girl’s dad.

The idea for the surprise denouement was borrowed from a 1954 song by The Ames Brothers, “The Naughty Lady Of Shady Lane”, in which the eponymous female turned out to be just nine-months old.

Surprise!: Imagine/Walk on the Wild Side

The Party Party: Imagine-Walk On the Wild Side

[locate]

Here's probably one of the most complex mashups I've ever listened to, created in 2007 by the artist(s) The Party Party. I don't want to say too much about it and spoil the surprise. I will mention, though, that perhaps we're going about American elections the wrong way and instead we should shift the whole mess over to American Idol.

Surprise!: Lovely Day

Lovely Day

(Previously unreleased)

"Surprise!"  Well, probably not: on April Fools' Day we steel ourselves against believing anything.  If aliens were ever to invade they would be wise to pick April 1st as their day of attack: we'd collectively refuse to believe that anything was happening up until their tentacles were firmly wrapped around our throats.  We probably wouldn't even believe it then!  It's hard to surprise people at the best of times, but once you essentially tell someone in advance that surprises are in store it becomes more than impossible.

One thing that never fails though: when I tell people I used to be a rapper. I mean, I don't look the part for one thing.  For another, I don't really listen to Hip-Hop anymore.  All said, it always seems to sound entirely unlikely to people.  And rightly so: it sounds unlikely to me, and I was there at the time!

So in the spirit of our magical day of surprises, here's my special gift to you: an unreleased track from more years ago than I care to remember.  There's a voice on there that may well be mine, but refusing as I do to believe that I was ever actually that young, you may all consider yourselves free to go ahead and think of some witty pseudonym for the guy.  Meanwhile, I hope that today finds you all as unscathed and un-pranked as humanly possible.

Surprise!: The Stranger

Bobby Bare: The Stranger

[purchase (CD only)]

I have no idea how "The Stranger" came to be written (by Shel Silverstein), recorded (by Bobby Bare) or released by RCA Victor, the same label that brought us Elvis, Sgt. Barry Sadler and the soundtrack to The Sound of Music.

It is the weirdest song Bobby Bare ever recorded. And that's saying something, because he recorded a lot of weird songs. "Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life." "Bathroom Tissue Paper Letter," about a Dear John letter composed on Charmin. "Quaaludes Again," in which the protagonist makes love to furniture. "The Jogger," in which a truck driver gets ticked at Jesus for running along the road. Those are nothing compared to this one.

Adding to the strangeness: "The Stranger" appeared on an album called Cowboys and Daddys, the title track of which is a cuddly duet between Bare Sr. and the loveable lad who became the artist known as Bobby Bare Jr., about how much a divorced father loves his only boy. Awww.

Then, after that sweetness, comes this one. With a surprise...well, more like a shock...right there in the middle. Even after the song gets started, I don't think you can imagine what's going to happen. Go ahead and listen, you little ol' brown-eyed darling, you.

Surprise!: The Mariner’s Revenge Song

The Decemberists: The Mariner’s Revenge Song
[purchase]

I wrote previously about seeing Richard Thompson in England with my family. A few years later, we took our second, and to date, last, family European trip to Amsterdam. One of the highlights was seeing The Decemberists at the Paradiso, a legendary club that holds about 1500 people, standing, in a former church. The Stones, U2, Prince, The Police, Bowie and Pink Floyd have all played this relatively small, but wonderful, venue.

The Decemberists were a band that we were just getting into. I love them because of the complexity of their music, their literate lyrics, often based on myth, folklore or historical themes, and their willingness to embrace being pompous. Others, I know, hate them for exactly the same reasons. You know a band is a bit pretentious when their most recent album of new material is hailed as a move toward simplicity, but still contains lyrics such as “Hetty Green/Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab/(Know what I mean?)”

It was an excellent show, even though the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, making it a bit hard to see the stage, even for me, who is 6’ 1”. In addition to the great music, they are just fun to see. At one point, Colin Meloy, the lead singer, led the crowd in “mid-show calisthenics”. And later, the band and audience reenacted the 1667 Battle of Chatham, a successful Dutch attack on the British Navy. For me, that show turned The Decemberists from a band I liked into one of my favorites. And it was another musical experience that my whole family enjoyed together.

Despite the nautical theme, the band didn’t play “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” that night. Apparently, they had put it on hiatus for a while. It is, in many ways, the prototypical Decemberists song. It sounds like an old shanty, it is about adventures on the seas, takes place in the belly of a whale, and concerns violence and revenge. And it uses language not common in rock music, such as “rake and roustabout,” “consumptive,” “privateer,” “priory” and “magistrate.”

The song is sung by a young seaman to an older captain, in the belly of a whale. The captain doesn’t recognize the younger man, who reminds the older man of how he had taken advantage of the younger man’s mother, caused her to lose all her property and die. He tells the captain how the mother swore her son to obtain revenge on her deathbed. The younger man explains how he bided his time until he found the object of his revenge and hired on with a privateer to track down and avenge his mother. But just as he was about to be able to kill the evil doer, a whale attacked the ships and killed everyone except the narrator and his nemesis. At the end of the song, the narrator informs his companion:

It gives my heart great joy
To see your eyes fill with fear
So lean in close
And I will whisper
The last words you'll hear

I suspect that that the captain was pretty surprised.

Surprise!: Surprise, Surprise

Chris Smither: Surprise Surprise
[purchase]
Chris Smither is one of those musicians I learned about on account of my love for Bonnie Raitt's music. On her Give It Up album, she covers Love Me Like a Man from Smither's 1970 album I'm a Stranger Too. On Takin My Time, she does I Feel The Same. I know that bowhowdy has posted about him more than once and there is plenty you can learn from there.

Smither has been doing his thing since some time in the 60s and it shows. It's apparent in the sparse guitar that does all it needs and a little more. It's there in the way his vocals are right on: gritty, sort of like Dylan from the 70s with a touch of John Prine mixed in.

Here we've got Smither in a 2009 trio with Zak Trojano doing the percussion and David Goodrich on 2nd guitar. It's a song for our times that deals with the theme of our current financial woes:

just when things were looking up, they arent looking so good
they told you they would fill your cup ...
the trickle down will float you up
surprise, surprise, it ain't so

The album, Time Stands Still is perhaps his best. There is a cover of It Takes s Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry that is the best I have ever heard. The rest of the album is just as good.

Surprise!: Karen by Night

Jill Sobule: Karen by Night

[purchase]

Prepare to be surprised. If you look on the sidebar to your left, you will see that our new theme is Surprise!. It’s pretty vaguely defined, so it should be all the more surprising. Pretty much anything can happen here for the next 24 hours. The surprise may be a feature of the music, a narrative turn in the lyrics, a cover song that you always thought was the original, or something else. Even I don’t know all of the surprises in store, but I can’t wait to find out.

Consider our first example. This one is all about the lyrics. Karen is nice, if somewhat mousy. She runs a shoe store, and all of her employees agree on this point. But they have never seen what happens after dark… The surprise actually comes fairly early in the song, and then only deepens. Jill Sobule displays here the odd sense of humor that made her song I Kissed a Girl, (what I call the real one), a novelty hit. Sobule can also get serious, and is a fine songwriter either way, so I am doing her something of a disservice in sharing another of her “funny” songs. I encourage you to learn more about her work.

Richard Thompson Covers: Beeswing

Mary Lou Lord: Beeswing

[purchase]

1952 Vincent Black Lightning and Beeswing both stand out on the Richard Thompson albums on which they originally appeared as acoustic ballads amidst mostly electric full-band songs. Mary Lou Lord covers both on her solo acoustic album Live City Sounds, but with very different results. She pushes her delivery of Vincent Black Lightning, and instead of sounding passionate, it sounds strident and forced. But Lord’s version of Beeswing is another matter. She sings this one with a restraint that perfectly conveys the sense of fragility that Thompson wrote about. The song seems to be set in modern times, but the female protagonist might as well be a gypsy girl from an old English folk song. Lord sings, “She was a rare thing/ Fine as a beeswing”, and you utterly believe her. The romance in the song must end, and Lord adds to her version some tolling chords at the end that bring out this sense of finality perfectly.

Richard Thompson Covers: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

Del McCoury Band: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

[purchase]

Here we are again, at the altar of the "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." J. David wrote a great essay about the song earlier this year. But it wouldn't be right to let a week of Richard Thompson music race by without including the quintessential song about "an object that's British and romantic and mythological," as Thompson described it.

By virtue of composing "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," Thompson has been called "the man who wrote the best song about a motorcycle, despite never having owned one." It's hard to imagine the song played or sung by anyone else. Yet somehow, ten years after the original appeared on Thompson's 1991 album Rumour and Sigh, the Del McCoury Band managed to transform "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" from British ballad to a bluegrass standard. Mandolin, banjo and fiddle breaks replace sophisticated finger picking, and McCoury's bluegrass tenor supplants Thompson's British Isles baritone. There's also a minor lyric tweak -- the town down to which James and Red Molly did ride changes from Box Hill to Knoxville.

Like so many bluegrass legends, Del McCoury started his career as a sideman for Bill Monroe, but he didn't stay with the Bluegrass Boys for long. McCoury largely left music behind in the 1960s, occasionally playing mid-Atlantic bluegrass festivals while working fulltime in construction. McCoury shifted back to music fulltime in the 1990s, forming a band with his sons. As the group's popularity grew, Del and the boys collaborated with Steve Earle on his bluegrass CD, The Mountain. McCoury and Earle famously fell out, as McCoury tired of Earle's constant use of profanity -- "There's no room for vulgarity in bluegrass," McCoury reportedly complained. After The Mountain, McCoury's career took off. He was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry and became recognized as a standard bearer of modern bluegrass music.

"Black Lightning" is from the McCoury Band's 2001 album, Del and the Boys. "It's a song I really like to do," McCoury told a reporter. "It paints a picture." In 2002, the International Bluegrass Music Association's named it the Song of the Year, a feat Thompson celebrated on his website.

Richard Thompson Covers: The Great Valerio (II)

Maddy Prior/Martin Carthy: The Great Valerio

[purchase]

To offer up a decent Richard Thompson cover, I had to put on my thinking cap to recall a few songs that were at least as good as the originals from the triple threat (songwriter, guitarist, vocalist). So let’s first revisit 1974 when Richard and Linda Thompson released their first album together. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is now considered essential listening by the cult like fans who revere the Thompsons’ music. When it comes to music of inimitable beauty, they totally get it. That masterpiece album gave us plenty of great cuts that have been covered by many over the years, even though it arguably had some of the darkest music of their Thompsons’ career.

For an excellent cover of a song from that original album, I chose “The Great Valerio” as done by Maddy Prior and Martin Carthy (co-founders of the classic British folk-rock band, Steeleye Span). I looked for a cover where the covering artists make the song their own, adapt it to fit their style, and sculpt it into a rendition that might even perhaps surpass the original. The Great Valerio, of course, is a tightrope walker, and acrobat, and a great hero. But, Thompson in his unique way of crafting a song, draws us in when he wrote:

Fools who think they see the light,
Prepare to balance on the wire,
But we learn to watch together,
And feed on what we see above.

For an excellent tribute album with this and other great covers, check out the 1994 release called “Beat the Retreat: Songs by Richard Thompson.” There are many super covers on this project from the likes of R.E.M., Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, Graham Parker, Bob Mould, Blind Boys of Alabama, June Tabor, Dinosaur Jr., and others. You may actually discover some covers that you feel are rendered better than the originals, but I don’t want to get into that. However, let us know what you think of the album’s closer, Maddy and Martin's version of “The Great Valerio.” Do they truly get it too, or is it just another imitation?

Richard Thompson Covers: The Great Valerio

June Tabor: The Great Valerio

[purchase]

June Tabor’s arrangement of The Great Valerio has no rhythm track. Tabor sings the melody over a near-drone played on diatonic accordion, fiddle, and viola. So she gets very little help with the melody, and none with keeping time. For a singer, this is the equivalent of working without a net, and that is the point. The Great Valerio is about a tightrope walker who represents the courage in life that the watchers in the seats cannot find in their own lives. The song expresses a combination of wonder at his talent and sorrow at the failings of those on the ground. Tabor’s arrangement and her vocal capture this tension beautifully.

Richard Thompson Covers: Tear-Stained Letter

Patty Loveless: Tear-Stained Letter

[purchase]

Patty Loveless is an unlikely artist to cover Richard Thompson. For most of her career, Loveless has stuck to traditional country music fare -- not surprising given her classic country pedigree. She’s a distant cousin of Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle, and counted Porter Wagoner and the Wilburn Brothers as early career mentors. Loveless emerged as a hitmaker in the mid-1980s, part of the neo-traditionalist movement that also spawned Randy Travis, Ricky Skaggs and Dwight Yoakam, among others.

Her recording of “Tear-Stained Letter,” the opening track on her eighth release The Trouble with the Truth, represented the first time Loveless ventured outside the country mainstream for material. Thompson introduced "Tear-Stained Letter" on his 1983 album Hand of Kindness, his first post-Linda solo record. Five years later, Cajun singer Jo-El Sonnier scored an improbable country music hit with the song. Loveless's version was released in 1998, adding twang Sonnier's version lacked. Apparently in an attempt to further countrify the song, Loveless and her producer/husband Emory Gordy Jr. changed one of the song’s wittiest and most essential lines. Thompson's “My head was beating like a song from the Clash” became “My head was spinning just a little too fast.” It's not clear why that revision was made; Sonnier's version made the country top 10 with the Clash name check intact. Country fans who didn't know the Clash were just as unlikely to get the Arthur Murray reference, yet that remained. For those familiar with the original, the lyric update mars Loveless's interpretation.

Loveless returned to the Thompson songbook seven years later, covering “Keep Your Distance” on 2005's Dreamin' My Dreams. Loveless has put her recording career largely on hold the past few years, and the twin Thompson tracks remain the only non-country music songs in her catalog.

Richard Thompson Covers: When I Get To The Border

M. Ward & Zooey Deschanel: When I Get To The Border
[purchase dvd]

I’m a huge Richard Thompson fan, but I was surprisingly not excited about this theme. Maybe it is because I haven’t found a Thompson cover that I love as much as the original. Which is not to say that there aren’t many, many good ones. I found an article in which Thompson listed his 5 favorite covers of his songs, and he chose Bonnie Raitt’s cover of “Dimming of the Day” as his favorite—and it is good. Number 3 was Dinosaur, Jr.’s cover of “I Misunderstood,” which is very different from the original, and I almost wrote about that.

Instead, I picked this one, M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel’s version of “When I Get To The Border.” Deschanel was starring in a now forgotten movie called The Go-Getter, and Ward was doing the music. The director suggested that they sing a duet for the end credits, and they decided to do this cover. Ward and Deschanel apparently enjoyed themselves so much that they formed She & Him, released two albums and a Christmas album, and have toured together. I don’t think this song is commercially available, so the link above is to the DVD of the movie.

Apparently, Zooey Deschanel is a very divisive figure. Google her name, and you find as many sites hating her as you do fan sites. I’m a fan. I loved her in Elf and (500) Days of Summer, and I really enjoy her sitcom, New Girl. I understand those who find her cutesy and affected, but I’m charmed.

Her singing isn’t amazing, but it is similarly charming, and I like her voice and style more than a lot of artists that get more respect. And Ward does a pretty good job, too. So, their version of the song is enjoyable. But let’s be fair—Ward is no Richard Thompson, and Deschanel is no Linda Thompson. And the arrangement and instrumentation isn’t as interesting as the original, and the guitar playing isn’t as exciting, despite the fact that Nels Cline, the innovative guitarist from Wilco (and more experimental solo/group recordings) is credited on the track. It is, in the end, a good cover, not a great cover, of a great, generally unappreciated song.

Of course, great, unappreciated songs are pretty much all that Richard Thompson writes. This one, from 1974, is the first song on the first album credited to Richard and Linda Thompson, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight. It is an incredible album, and the song discusses a pretty bleak life, with hope existing at the border, which, I think, but am not sure, is the edge of heaven. When the narrator gets there he finds a “dusty road that smells so sweet/ Paved with gold beneath my feet” and states, “I’ll be dancing down the street.” My interpretation fits with this quote from Thompson--"If you don't believe in anything beyond the solidity of this world, then the world is a terrible place...There's no victory in this world in the end; all you can do is get out of it." (Rolling Stone -- April 5, 1979). Personally, I don’t agree with this philosophy, but I also don’t think that you need to agree with a song to like it.

Richard Thompson Covers: House of Cards

Robert Plant: House of Cards

[purchase]

Richard Thompson and Robert Plant were born about a year apart (Plant being slightly the older – ’48 & ‘49). At first blush, one wouldn't likely group them together. In popular memory, Robert Plant, through his association with Led Zeppelin, calls up images of the rough and tumble rock scene. Thompson may date to the same era, but the popular image of Thompson/Fairport Convention is of a softer aspect of the rock scene of the late 60s/early 70s.

Granted, Richard Thompson certainly earned acclaim for his electric guitar work early on, but – as boyhowdy has noted – his religious conversion and his “sheik’s” influence did tone down his proclivity toward heavier rock. All the same, both are products of the same British rock scene.

For my part, I see trends in Plant’s authoring of Stairway to Heaven that pre-sage an affinity to the softer music of Thompson’s House of Cards. Band of Joy, Plant’s off and on ensemble, provides a great hard-hitting balance to this song –it causes one to think about the lyrics, yet cuts through the folk to the rock. The song has been interpreted in folk style by many, but the lyrics deserve the roughness of Plant’s (and Band of Joy’s) interpretation.

Shake your windows/ rattle your doors . . .

Cracked and shaking/ days are numbered . . .

Curiously, there are numerous others who have penned songs of the same name, generally with the same conceit – after all, what is a house of cards made of?

Richard Thompson Covers: The Dimming Of The Day

Mary Black: The Dimming Of The Day

[purchase]

I'm cheating a little here, posting a cover which I've handled recently. But I suppose sharing it is a sort of penance, at that. Because although Mary Black's sort of folk music once turned saccharine in my ears, I've recently come around to the Irish siren, even posting a full-fledged feature on her long career at the top of the Irish trad-pop scene over at Cover Lay Down.

And now that I've come around, of all the covers of this song I carry in a coverblogger's collection, this one stands out, even among classic takes from Bonnie Raitt and, more recently, a Grammy-winning Alison Krauss. Something about the purity of Black's voice at the height of its potency, and how perfectly the full orchestral ebb, sway, and pulse of her everpresent production carries it into the depths of the universal core. Something about how the fluid calm builds into the emotional storm, crashing like thunder, flashing like rain. Something about the sadness of a song of longing, written and first performed by a married couple whose narrative of commitment belied a storm of their own, once which would eventually tear them apart.

The Dimming of the Day has always been one of my favorite songs from Richard and Linda Thompson. And it's especially poignant if you consider that it springs from a time when they were both deeply searching for themselves, their relationship already fracturing, held together mostly by the power of their own music.

Richard Thompson Covers : Withered And Died

Elvis Costello : Withered And Died

[Purchase]

It is believed that Elvis Costello recorded "Withered And Died" as an apology to Richard Thompson. He had Thompson waiting in the wings to play on his 1984 album Goodbye Cruel World but it never happened. So before the album was released Costello, credited as "The Imposter", released his cover of the I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight track as a B-Side to his UK #48 single "Peace In Our Time". That single was probably the best thing Costello did all year. Seriously. To those who purchased the 1995 Rykodisc reissue of Goodbye Cruel World, Costello wrote in the liner notes : "Congratulations! You just bought the worst album of my career!"

Richard Thompson Covers: Crazy Man Michael

Three Quarter Ale: Crazy Man Michael

[purchase]

Richard Ruane: Crazy Man Michael

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So here we are in a week of Richard Thompson covers, and the first song is Crazy Man Michael. Some of you may be thinking, “Wait, isn’t that a traditional tune?” And my answer is, not anymore. The melody certainly reflects Fairport Convention’s devotion to the traditional music of Britain, and the text shows just how well steeped in traditional lore Richard Thompson was in 1969. But what happened was this. Fairport was always on the lookout for interesting songs, and Thompson was inspired to create a new lyric to a traditional melody. That lyric was the one you hear in this post. But, when Thompson brought the resulting song to the band, David Swarbrick thought the song needed a new melody, and that is the song we hear now. So, born of a traditional melody, Crazy Man Michael wound up being an entirely original work.

The next question is, “is Michael really crazy?” A literal reading of the lyric would seem to indicate as much, but there is a suggestion of sorcery. Perhaps, Michael is under a spell, or perhaps his lover is. The words of the raven would seem to belong to a third party, a vengeful sorceror or a wronged goddess perhaps. I’m sure Richard Thompson knew the lore of ravens when he wrote the lyric; the raven in British lore represents a goddess or spirit who collects the spirits of warriors slain in battle. These ambiguous elements in the lyric probably explain the song’s appeal to other artists. Three Quarter Ale performs it in a way that emphasizes the magical elements, and brings a dark fairy tale quality to the song. Nature, in this reading, is an emotional funhouse mirror, twisting and distorting the intent of the human heart. Richard Ruane, who now leads the band Bread and Bones, focuses on Michael’s state of mind. At times, the background vocal and the bass line seem almost out of synch with the rest of the song, as Michael’s sanity waxes and wanes. Ruane also perfectly captures the haunted quality of both the lyric and the melody.