I’ve been a fan of the Wallflowers since their second album, Bringing Down the Horse, the one that made them famous, the one with “6th Avenue Heartache” and “One Headlight” and “Three Marlenas.” I stuck with them, buying their next few albums, and enjoying them, but I had never seen them live. After the band took a hiatus, I moved on, and when they announced a show at the Tarrytown Music Hall in 2012, my wife and I decided not to get tickets. It was a hard call, but if we went to every show by every band that we liked, we would never be home, and have even less money than we do now.
The show was on a Saturday in September, and when we got back from the gym in the morning, both of us had urgent emails from my college classmate Heather, who lives in California and has many contacts in the music industry. She had mentioned to me at our 30th reunion earlier that year that she was friendly with Rami Jaffee, the keyboard player for the Wallflowers (and, among other bands, the Foo Fighters). The email asked us whether we could loan some bicycles to the band, and supply them with, as a fan of How I Met Your Mother, I will refer to as “sandwiches.” In exchange, we would get house seats.
This was a good deal. We loaned them our bicycles, but were unwilling (read—unable) to find any “sandwiches.” We drove the bicycles over to the theater and gave them to Rami, after which he, guitarist Stuart Mathis (now touring with Lucinda Williams) and opening act Mason Reed joined us for coffee at Coffee Labs.
Contrary to what we expected, they didn’t merely say “thanks,” buy us a cup of (excellent) coffee and send us on their way. Instead, we sat for, I’d say, close to an hour, chatting about this and that, and generally having a nice time. But then, it was time for them to actually use the bicycles before the show.
We sat in the fourth row, and they put on a hell of a show. Afterwards, we went back behind the theater with Heather’s brother Harley (who also lives in Tarrytown) to get our bicycles back, and maybe say hi (and maybe meet Jakob Dylan). Apparently, they were surprised by the hilly terrain in our area, and were tired from the ride, but it didn’t affect the show. We didn’t however, meet Mr. Dylan.
“Reboot The Mission,” which owes a debt to The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite, mentions Joe Strummer, features vocals and guitar from Mick Jones, was a highlight of Glad All Over, the album they were touring in support of, and is wildly catchy.
Although it was a good reunion album, and got generally positive reviews, it seems that Glad All Over may have been the band’s last. At least three members, including Rami, left the band in 2013, and although they did tour at least until the end of last year, no tour dates are currently listed on their website, which, along with their Facebook page, continues to promote the 2012 release.
Celebrity is somewhat relative: you probably wouldn't recognize the following as celebrities, but they are all big names over here. To help make this relevant to you/this blog, I would need to define my "scope". If you have a Turkish historical perspective, you will immediately relate. Otherwise ... you'll likely draw a blank. However, I'll hope that this wont distract from the enjoyment value of the music. Turkish or not, these guys arent at all bad, and I have brushed them all, as explained below. (You might skip the Zeki Muren clip - except that it is quite a stage(d) show. The others are fairly accessible to Western ears).
Back when I was young and un-encumbered with family, I spent many a night playing guitar/singing. I couldn't do it no longer - that lifestyle no longer fits. Some of the friends I played with have gone on to become local stars and I am left with a couple of related memories. Some have gone on to the great beyond. Fikret Kizilok passed away at a very young age and I coudn't tell you why. Here one day, gone the next. Besides being a seminal musician, I remember him as a great cook. I''ve got a dedicated/signed 33 1/3 RPM that must be worth something - and a handful of memories. I played informally with him and then, when we married, our familes got together from time to time outside the music scene.
I'll mostly steer clear of the time that Zeki Muren felt me up. (I suppose that this is one that some would gladly add to their curricula vitae). (Note: This can't be your kind of music - except that it is a classic of its type!)
Instead, I'll move on to the gents that placed me in that position. They are now the doyennes of Turkish pop. When I was single, I naturally found it easier to "hang out", and among those I hung out with were a group now known as MFO. Although I can't claim to having ever "appeared" with them, back in the 80s I regularly sat around with them and played guitar with F. I guess at one point I did play the same stage as one of their sidemen back in ... must have been '81.
I also recall a time at the airport back in the late 80s where we were in the passport line right behind Tarkan, who was on the verge of (actually international) fame. My wife remarked to my son, "Look! Tarkan!", and the celebrity turned around to receive my son's comment to his face: "I don't like that man". Ah, well -the brush paints both ways.
Hmmmm, confess to have been taken back a bit by this weeks topic, sleb brushing never having been part of my M.O., even, and I did, had I wanted it so to be. No, I know nobody of note and, give or take the odd meet 'n' greet and autographed output at gigs, none would ever acknowledge me a 2nd time. (OK, Dave Pegg, of Fairport Convention came up to me in Selfridges, Birmingham, accusing me of having been to school with him, which, as he is at least a decade older than me, hit a sensitive......) My stance was more at one with John Peel, radio DJ par excellence, who felt that a personal knowledge of his enthusiasms would assuredly hinder his pleasure, as their feet would be of inevitable clay. And usually were. Or are.
But this guy somehow made me feel different, made me feel I knew him, made me feel responsible, made me care. Have I mentioned him before?
Late to the game, my first knowledge of him was in 1993 or 4, I forget which. It was my first Glastonbury, and I was feeling quietly smug, as a mid 30s middle class professional, returning to a festival, near 20 years on from my last experience. With my then wife we were experiencing a belated rebirth to the joy of music, on hold since the orthodoxy of our careers and parenthood, but, this time, with 4 and 6 year olds in tow. As we put up our tent, Radio Glastonbury played this, and I was smitten. Not because of the song, though I knew it a good one, more the voice, and, it's true, the accent. As a 2nd generation scot, in lifelong english exile, I felt, and still do, the genetic memory of a lore more northern to my own.
I never had picked up on his earlier post-punk existence, latterly glad I hadn't, the drama of his subsequent years adding to the mystique
Over the years I gathered bits and bobs of his output, with, upon my divorce, this song becoming my avatar, an indulgence of some probable conceit, still never getting to see the man live. Finally, about 15 years ago my moment came. Jackie Leven was playing the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham. Sure, I expected more than the 20 odd in the audience, but, as the hours passed, became even more in thrall of this bear of a man, not only a reservoir of great songs, but of better stories. Over the next few years I caught him several times, eventually daring to approach him, getting the odd scrawl on a CD, finding him to be as pleased as I to be engaged in conversation. I guess the point is that he was as reliant on his audience as they were upon him, with a mutual respect, or at least, an acceptance that each required the other. I have no idea whether he ever recognised me, it didn't matter, but this was a man whose act depended and relied upon the interplay with an audience who understood that fact.I was shocked when he suddenly died. I miss him. I never knew him, but I miss him. Here he is, in conversation, in an interview.
And here he is, alone, with guitar, and his always miked up tapping foot:
I have deliberately strayed from an account of his history and output, hoping these mere snippets may encourage you to delve for yourselves. Please do, but start here. Buy good and buy plenty.
The inspiration for this theme was a bit that David Letterman used to do when he was on NBC, and his show was stranger (and Dave was nastier) than when he moved to CBS and the earlier timeslot. He called it “Brush With Greatness,” and they would have audience members discuss encounters that they had with celebrities, usually ending with a “writer’s embellishment,” that took the mostly prosaic events to some weirder place. For example—this brief story about selling Ted Koppel classical records, embellished to end with a heavy metal jam with the newsman.
My subject today, Jean Shepherd, would have, I think, appreciated the concept of the writer’s embellishment. Shepherd, who passed away in 1999, was hysterically funny, but he was really more of a humorist than a comedian. He was a raconteur who made his name telling stories on the radio. He was an author, TV personality and worked in movies. There is, if you look online, a pretty large cult of Shepherd lovers who maintain websites devoted to his work, and books have been written about him. If, though, he is remembered broadly today, it is as the writer and narrator of the movie A Christmas Story, which I have to admit, I didn’t really like. The video above is an early version of the story that later became the movie.
Shepherd’s life story is shrouded by mystery and obfuscation, so although there are many sources for information about him, it probably pays to take much of it with maybe a whole shaker of salt. For example, his obituary in the New York Times, noted that he was “believed to be at least 70.” The obituary, strangely, ends with a statement from a “friend and business advisor” that Shepherd had no survivors, followed by a quote from Shepherd’s living son Randall, mentioning that Shepherd also had a living daughter. He may or may not have been considered for the job hosting the Tonight Show after Steve Allen, but instead the job went to Jack Paar. He might have been the model for the radio host in Kerouac’s On The Road. And he occasionally made public statements that were confounding. He was a man with a huge ego, who seemed to resent the fact that perceived lesser talents were more appreciated by the public. Donald Fagen has written about his conflicted feelings about Shepherd. If this has piqued your interest about him, and I hope it has, just start Googling.
For 31 years, from 1966-1996, Jean Shepherd performed at Princeton, typically during Reunions, as a fundraiser for WPRB. As a freshman from the New York area, I was aware of Shepherd, was not really knowledgeable about his work. I guess that I considered him more of interest to my parents’ generation. But as second semester started to come to a close in 1979, people at the station started to get excited about “Shep’s” annual appearance. I was planning to stay for Reunions to perform (among other things) with the marching band, so I agreed to help out with the show, which, I was guaranteed, would be amazing.
If anything, it was better than that. Playing to a packed house of about 1,000 in Alexander Hall, in the heat, Shepherd spoke, for about 2 hours without a break, without notes. He told a long, involved story, with digression piled upon digression, before tying up neatly. And, did I mention that it was funny? Not only “ha ha” funny, but poignant, clever and thoughtful. The story was certainly based on things that happened to him, but were embellished just enough to make them amusing. It was really mindblowing.
After the show, we walked over to Holder Hall, and into our basement studio for pizza and beer (sorry, FCC), and conversation with an open mic. Shep, which I now called him, was friendly, interesting and engaging to the staff and people who called in. This was repeated at the end of my sophomore year (where I moved closer to the mic), and again, my junior year, where as program director, I was one of the discussion leaders.
By this time, it was clear to me that Shep had a photographic memory, which explained how he could deliver his shows so perfectly. He remembered my name each year and asked me about the Mets (he was an avid White Sox fan), despite the fact that I was probably one of hundreds of people he met while performing.
As a senior member of the WPRB staff who also had a car, I was tasked to take Shep to his hotel after the show and studio session (so, I didn’t drink that much beer. Really.) If you are familiar with Route 1 near Princeton, you know that it is lined with hotels of various quality, and back in 1981, it was the same, if somewhat sparser. There are nice chain hotels, and independent motels of various reputability. If the place I was supposed to drop Shep off with actually charged by the hour, I wouldn’t have been surprised. He looked at the place, looked at me, and shook his head, saying, in his sonorous voice, that he wouldn’t stay there. Instead, I drove him north on Route 1, to a nicer hotel near Newark Airport. I never heard that he sent the station a bill.
Now, if this was the old Letterman show, I’d tell you that Shep also paid for a room for me, and the next morning, the two of us flew to Vegas for a weekend of fun and excessive drinking. But it isn’t. Instead, I shook his hand and drove back to Princeton, to finish Reunions, for a weekend of fun and excessive drinking.
purchase Robert Johnson "Istanbul Grey" purchase Ella Fitzgerald "Istanbul ..." (somewhere in this link)
I can lay claim to having swum from Europe
to Asia and vice versa – several times. But that’s only one of the many, many
perks of living in Istanbul. Istanbul is a city that straddles two continents,
and the swim from one continent to the other is less than a mile in most
places. My folks used to tell a story about a dowager who claimed to her
Atlantic ocean-going companion (with her nose in the air), “I have crossed the Atlantic 5 times “, to
which her deck-mate replied, “and I cross from Asia to Europe every day”. She lived in Istanbul.
I grew up with a fortress built in 1452
literally in my back yard – well … across the street from our house (that’s the
castle in the video that accompanies this earlier SMM post). This
disconnect made it kind of hard for me to
relate – or maybe for my classmates to relate to me – when I began high school
in the US: I wasn’t particularly in tune with popular US culture (TV shows,
sports statistics …) partly because TV didn’t come to Turkey until around 1970,
by which time I was 15. My historical time frame was millennia, not the decades
of US history (think: Neolithic, Helenistic ….)
Until 1973, the only way to get from the
European to the Asian half of the city was to swim or to take a boat. Crossing the
straits meant waiting in interminable lines for a car ferry.Today, there are two 6 lane bridges spanning
the Bosphorus and another one under construction. Yes, it can still take hours
to get across the water, but that’s because Istanbul has just about the worst
traffic in the world. On the other hand, Istanbul has been rated
(more than once) as one of the best places for events/action.
Ella and Bing
A
partial list of Istanbul events for March 2015 includes many local talents
whose names would mean little to you as well as others you would know: Hugh
Jackman, Bobby McFarrin, the London Philharmonic, Julio Iglesias – but this
winter-season list doesn’t really predict the general trend. I watched Eric
Clapton and Steve Winwooda few years
back (and that’s merely my choice).
As far back as Ella Fitzgerald and Bing
Crosby, the city was attracting attention- granted, not likely the kind of attention today’s local media-rati would
prefer, but hey … they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. (Belly
dancers are not Turkish – they are Persian). While, on the one hand, there is a
major disconnect between the cultural perceptions of 21st century Turkish
youth and those of their fathers/mothers, there is also the realization that
local culture is irreplaceable and probably worth preserving – at least in a
bell jar. Something to point to, but not necessarily to aspire to. We’d rather
wear yoga pants than baggy (shalvar)pants.
Turkish popular music, for the most part
(IMHO) is formulaic: pseudo pop tinged with arabesque. That said, there are
rare examples of artists working outside the mainstream and creating melanges
of East-West synthesis: as on some of Robert Johnsons’s recordings. There is a
definite potential for cultural melange where East and West mix, and that is
the major part of the attraction of Istanbul.
As we said in "our" attempt to win the 2000
Olympics bid: “Let’s meet where the continents meet.”
I live in two places: one physically, one in my yearning
memory—Istanbul and Washington, DC.
I couldn’t be much further apart. One place is home; one
place is home, as well.
How do I reconcile that? It’s like living inside a
tinker-toy poem, constantly trying to make shapes that make sense. Love one
place unconditionally; fall in and out of love with the other depending on a
whim, troubled by the traffic and the wind…It’s confusing.
And when I’m this confused, I realize music is the thing
that soothes, and makes my hourglass soul make sense.
So, today I give you two songs that are both about home
(homes, really), and that help me make sense, in the beatific, sonically
soothing way that music helps me make sense of life (I'd be screwed without music, I promise) :
Neither song is really about the place it names—Elbow makes
a giant musical palette to throw sound at, as they do so brilliantly time after
time, using the name only, but using it beautifully well; and REM is singing
about not DC, but the suburbs, as all of us who tell you we are from DC do,
when, really, none of us are—no one is from DC; we all commute. It’s not a
city, but we keep trying.
What does that mean? Who knows…it’s a lost weekend; it’s a
strange life. I haven't been home in too long.
But, leaving home is strange: some people run; others are looking for adventure.
When I think of home, on my
better days, I feel OK about being a little lost.
When I don’t, I listen to the music, listen long, listen deep, with a truth seeking soul and hope itwill be the reliable voice that makes some kind of sense for me. It’s
never failed me before; I hope it won’t now…
The British have always, at least in the canon of popular song, been coy about referencing our towns and cities, seeming much happier to fantasise around the US, with a decades long parade of the never traveled singing about Amarillo or somesuch. True, there are exceptions, if one enjoys paeans to the joys of Durham Town., but all pretty thin on the ground, with maybe more Yanks singing about Liverpool than actual Liverpudlians. But the field of folk is different, many of the songs stemming from a time before Uncle Sam was even a glimpse in the telescope of the Plymouth Brethren, and it is here I have had to search.
I live in Lichfield, a very small city, about the size of a market town, population about 35k, based around a cathedral (see above picture) built in between 1195 and 1249 and, yes, it did take that long, making Gaudi seem somehow less of a slouch down in Barcelona. In the English midlands, a 40 minute drive northward from Birmingham, it is close to the centre of the country. I love it and, after 12 years, feel proud to call it my home. So, songs about Lichfield?
Luckily I have one that hits all my spots, as I make no secret of my awe and admiration for the family Thompson. Richard Thompson has had a near half century of muted fame, usually happily ensconced to the side of the radar, preaching to the converted, a hardcore base of staunch supporters stretching back to his actually only very brief tenure within Fairport Convention, to his duo with erstwhile wife, Linda, and beyond. RT has written many a song about his home country, perhaps most famously a hill in Surrey, and has become ever more English the longer he has lived in L.A. Well, this isn't about him. Nor indeed his son, Teddy, who has carved out a career singing such homegrown fare as this, showing apples don't necessarily always fall closest to the tree. No, this is another family member, daughter of Richard and Linda, sister of Teddy, one Kami Thompson. Her apple is perhaps slap bang right next to the trunk, as what she felt the 2014 world needed more than anything else was a folk-rock duo like, well, the comparisons are inevitable, her ma and pa. And so, with husband, James Walbourne, guitar on hire to many and varied, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Son Volt, the Pogues and the Pretenders, they form the Rails, their debut appearing last year. It is an unwritten rule that SMM avoids lifting music from under a decade old, even in these mp3 light, YouTube heavy days, but I feel I can get away with this, as it comes from an unreleased radio session. (Hell, without it, I would be scuppered for this piece as it so clearly references the city, my home.)
Trivia fans may also be intrigued to know that a frequent member of the larger live Rails band, on 2nd guitar, is one Zak Hobbs, Kami's nephew and, yes, RT's grandson. Here he is with grandpa.......
Of course, and there is always an of course with trad.arr., a slight problem is that many versions of the same song abound, each with a varied memory of who said what, living tradition and all that malarkey. So here, in memory of where my brother used to live, or, at least, relatively nearby, here's another version, by the seemingly now lost in action great folk hope of 2000, Bill Jones. Curiously, although she was born in Staffordshire, the county within which is Lichfield, her version talks of Southampton............
I live in Tarrytown, New York, a village in the Town of Greenburgh, in Westchester County. We are located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River by the Tappan Zee Bridge.
I grew up on the other side of the Hudson, in New City, which is in Rockland County. At the time my parents moved there it was the less developed side. Commuting to New York from Rockland was difficult—if you didn’t drive, you either took the bus and dealt with the tight spaces and traffic, or took the train, which had a sporadic schedule and left you in Hoboken, New Jersey, where you then transferred to the PATH train into the city. When it came time for my wife, young son and I to leave Manhattan, I strongly preferred Westchester, where Metro-North trains run regularly and pretty consistently, directly to Grand Central Station. I suggested to my wife that I would be willing to move as far north as Tarrytown, which was the first express stop north of Yonkers.
And that’s where we ended up, and boy, did that turn out to be a lucky break.
Although far from perfect, Tarrytown was at the time, and continues to be, a great little village. It has the river, a nice business district and excellent schools (don’t be fooled by the statistics—for many reasons, they really don’t tell the true story). Most of all, it has great people. Our village has a great mix, including people like me, who moved here to commute to New York, lots of people who were born and grew up here, and a large population of recent immigrants, many from Central and South America, making it a remarkably diverse and interesting town. Sure, we have our moments of conflict, but for the most part, people get along. And while some might disagree, things have even improved over the years—young families who previously might have moved to Brooklyn, or other nearby villages such as Hastings, are discovering the charms of Tarrytown, including a numberofexcellentrestaurants and shops, a great coffee shop, and a relatively new riverwalk. Not to mention, one of the great live music venues around, the Tarrytown Music Hall.
Forbes recently ranked Tarrytown as one of the 10 prettiest towns in America (which is a big country, with lots of pretty towns), and the real estate blog Movato ranked it as the second best place to live in New York State (which is a big state, with lots of good places to live). Now that I work here, I’ve come to appreciate it even more.
We also have some pretty interesting history. Tarrytown is where British spy John André was captured, exposing Benedict Arnold’s plot (yes, I have worked him into this blog again). It was also the home of Washington Irving, whose Legend of Sleepy Hollow takes place in the village just to our north (with which we share a school district and many other things, including a superb AYSO program) has turned our area into the home office for Halloween, and the fictional locale of an entertainingly insane television show (which, while shot in North Carolina, occasionally shows an establishing shot of the real thing). Abraham Lincoln's funeral train stopped here, and FDR's passed through on its way to Hyde Park.
Until the completion of the Tappan Zee Bridge in 1955, though, the area was pretty quiet (other than the occasional protest and attempted bombings at the nearby homes of John D. Rockefeller and other Standard Oil executives in the early part of the 20th century), and since then has developed like many other New York suburbs, without losing its charm. We are getting a new bridge, which is currently under construction, and the project was used as a backdrop last year by President Obama and Governor Cuomo for speeches about investment in infrastructure. I got to volunteer at the event and shake the President’s hand—although my wife’s picture made it to the front page of the local newspaper (I'm the bald guy in the back reaching out my hand).
So, yeah, we like it here.
Our song is, appropriately, entitled “Tarrytown,” although it is also called “Wild Goose Grasses.” It is based on old English (or Irish) ballads, particularly “The Butcher Boy,” which itself is based on older ballads. You gotta love folk music. It is a song about the tragic results of unrequited love, sometimes sung from the male perspective and sometimes from the female. This song is credited to John Allison, a collector of such ballads, who either wrote the words and music, or just one or the other, or neither, depending on what you read. You gotta love folk music. This version is by the Weavers, and there are others out there, including by Harry Belafonte, the Brothers Four and one from the 1970s by Pete Seeger and Ed Renehan, from an album of songs relating to the Hudson River.
For the second week in a row, I am going to bend (not break) the rules. No "south" in the title and only one use of the word in the lyrics: a single mention of the south side of Chicago. But Newman leaves no doubt about the brunt of his jibes: he's singing about "down here".
Although we probably shouldn't assume that North/South is a predominantly American theme, for many reasons - more than 100 years after the war that tried to split the South from the North - the US is still dealing with the issue (Selma ... 10 Years a Slave ...Neil Young and Lynard Skynard). For the record, and perhaps the "lite" aspect of this is all for the best, the Google prompt for a search for South leads to ... South Park. But of course.
North <> South ... East <> West ... Male <> Female ...there are too many dichotomies in life to list them all. Or to dwell on them. Too firmly believing in things has a tendency to lead folks to take sides - not just to take sides, but to try to defend one side over another when, in fact, there is always more than one (right) side to any issue. There is no South without a corresponding North. That said, some wise man once said that music soothes the savage beast - certainly it should bridge a North/South divide.
But back to American rock and our theme. We were looking for Songs South, and I suggested in the lead off prompt to my fellow bloggers (which none has yet taken up) that they might try Idlewild South/Allman Brothers. Now, there's a quintessentially southern (or is that Southern with a capital S?) band and a southern sound. I also proposed that someone take on Southern Man (see above).But those are really a bit too trite (you'll agree?)
How about Randy Newman? Now there's a musician who regards few constraints towards taking sides or soothing the savage beast. His take on the south is so "in your face", whether you agree with his perspective(lyrics) or not. Pardon my French (as my folks used to say). He describes southerners so:
we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
Ouch! But if you are taking offense, you missed the whole point above (and I lived in Greensboro, NC for years and years). What I do like about this song (typical of the man) is its irreverance. And the way it seems like "I could write that song" (but couldnt) - so simple on the surface, but so deep below. Lyrically and musically.
If you look to the left, you can see that the concept behind this theme was to write about songs that “reference warmer climes.” When we chose this theme, it was because it was freezing in the Northern United States, and we were longing for more tropical weather.
Turns out, pretty much since the day the theme started, it has been freezing cold in the American South, with snow and ice storms in places where such weather is incredibly rare, including Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. I, however, am most interested and concerned about the weather in Tennessee—Nashville, in particular, where my son and his girlfriend moved last fall. They have already seen, first hand, cold and snow that I bet they never expected, and have had to chip a layer of ice off their car. Having grown up in the Northeast, they have now experienced what it is like to live in a place that doesn’t have a fleet of snow plows standing by, or a stockpile of salt and sand, and where the drivers aren’t used to the weather conditions.
In their honor, then, is this tune from bluegrass band Lost Highway, called, appropriately, “Tennessee Snow.”
Bet you're expecting me to extol the merits of a good old Cornish burr, Devonian dipthongs or even just my home county of Sussex and it's own idiosyncratic twang, but, no, they haven't written songs about that (unless you mean this, God help us!) I refer, and you knew really, didn't you, to the 1985 song by Tom Petty. Strangely, as a band of Floridians transplanted to the West Coast, I never really think of them as "Southerners," irrespective of latitude, as "the South", in music at least, seems to reserve itself for the Deep South, the territories of Stax and Capricorn record companies, so Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, plus or minus parts of Texas. (If that's wrong, forgive me, but, just as you guys have quaint visions of Swinging London, so too do I about the seamy side of N'Awlins, with accents as stiff and impenetrable as a burnt hoggroast.)
There's a southern accent, where I come from
The young'uns call it country, the Yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talkin' but everything is done
With a southern accent where I come from
Now that drunk tank in Atlanta's just a motel room to me
Think I might go work Orlando if them orange groves don't freeze
I got my own way of workin' but everything is run
With a southern accent where I come from
For just a minute there I was dreaming
For just a minute it was all so real
For just a minute she was standing there with me
There's a dream I keep having where my mama comes to me
And kneels down over by the window and says a prayer for me
I got my own way of prayin' but everyone's begun
With a southern accent where I come from
I got my own way of livin' but everything gets done
With a southern accent where I come from
Now I just love the sentiment in those lyrics, the sheer pride in belonging, into having an identity forged and formed in geography, believing the song could hold equivalent credence to other maverick nations, clinging on to their territories. "With a Scottish accent, where I come from" somehow comes instantly to mind. And the tune, too, carries a sedate majesty, tinged with just enough melancholia for the days gone by.
For such a simple song it is certainly my favourite within the Tom Petty canon, and it covers remarkably well.
So, here's Tom:
But don't you think the song was actually made for this guy?
Though, I have to say I am also very keen on this version, by Dawn Landes:
I lived ‘down
South’ for a number of years, but I hated Southern music, or “Country” as it
should be properly named. Wouldn’t even entertain it. Granted, I was down there
when Grunge was bitch-slapping the popular music scene and Nirvana was sitting
atop a new Olympus.
Country music
was the stuff the sorority girls who wouldn’t give me a second glance were
listening to. My general impression of country music was of those girls heading
to Walnut Creek Amphitheater in straw cowboy hats, mini skirts and boots. Or
rednecks in pickups.
I defined
country music by the those who listened to it, with no understanding or knowledge
of the roots and history, the depth or multitudinous of genres and styles, and
I failed to read its influence on almost everything else I was listening to.
But, to be fair, my strongest impression of ‘country’ music
at that time was Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee”, which made brave but strange
reference to ‘hootchie coochie’, among other things my misplaced northern soul
just couldn’t cotton to…
Which is too
bad, as I feel I came to a grand tradition pretty late, and have been trying to
make-up ground for a long time.
Luckily, I found
Hank Williams, listened to more than the radio hits of the Allmans, and Lynyrd Skynyrd;I found Cash—but we all did, at some
point. I found a lot of good stuff, mostly through what I was already listening
to and following the influences of bands in the alt-country scene that I’d
learned to love, like Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and The Jawhawks. It is strange, in
retrospect, how much I loved those bands yet still took such a circuitous route
to country music.
However crooked,
or slow, I did find my way.
And I can’t
think of a better song to fit this month’s category of “South”, than Hank
Williams’ “Honky Tonk Blues”.
The song is
perfect: a strutting, ramble-rhythm, fiddles in the back pushing the melody,
the purring shimmy of the pedal steel and Williams’ inimitable lamenting
warble—I can’t call it a yodel. That voice was the veritable personification of
pain and misery, light coming though it like a half-empty whiskey bottle on the
windowsill. To say he yodeled would be to diminish the palpable spirit he
brought to song. That voice, a transcendent, plaintive howl, personifies in a
single instance, the searching earnestness of all his pain, misery, mischief,
and occasional happiness. Some might hear Williams pull that ‘country shit’ and
think, no, not for me. But, they are missing out on what amounts to pure
poetry.
“Honky Tonk
Blues” is exactly what it is: a shuffling lament of leaving the country for the
big town, and wanting nothing more than to get back home. It’s ‘country mouse,
city mouse’, a tale told and retold. It’s William’s warning about straying too
far from what you know, but then, when you take Williams’ hard luck myth and
real life blues, all of his songs are some kind of warning. Hank ‘s legend
sometimes outshines the simple, sad elegance of his music. But songs like
“Honky Tonk Blues” are pure magic, and do more than cast a spell. Rather, his
music spells out the blueprint for country music. He reminds me of all the stuff I missed when I
was down South, and make me want to get back as soon as I can. Honky Tonk
blues, indeed.
For our last theme, Jukebox, I somehow figured out a way to write about the Gettysburg Battlefield. However, the connection between this theme, Songs South, and the Civil War, not to mention the war’s continuing influence on American culture as we approach the 150th anniversary of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, is certainly more obvious. Being born in, and having lived my whole life in the North, though, I have to admit that I don’t have personal knowledge of what Southerners think, and to be fair, not all Southerners, or Northerners, for that matter, think the same thing.
But what I want to start off by discussing, and I’ll get to the music eventually, is the fact that throughout the South, Confederate politicians, generals and other “heroes” are honored with monuments, school names, and maybe most egregiously, by the Federal Government with at least 10 Army bases named for generals who took up arms against the very forces that now honor them (and in other inexplicable ways). President Obama, the country’s first African-American president (whose wife’s maternal great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Shields, was a slave) has even sent a wreath to be laid at the Confederate Memorial in the Arlington National Cemetery (on land that was formerly Robert E. Lee’s home, and which is bordered by the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway), despite a petition signed by many prominent historians urging him not to do so. To again reference petition signer Professor McPherson, “I don’t think it appropriate for a president to send a wreath honoring a group that tried to break up the United States.”
I also don’t get it. Benedict Arnold was one of the most effective American generals in the Revolutionary War until he switched sides, and did some damage for the Brits (including, interestingly, capturing Richmond, the future Confederate capital). But there isn’t a Fort Benedict Arnold anywhere, or a Benedict Arnold High School. (Yes, there are a few historical markers commemorating his pre-traitorous accomplishments, and a few that generally commemorate his achievements, but simply omit his name, but had he never turned traitor, things would have been very different.) We don’t honor Aldrich Ames or Tokyo Rose, or John Walker, Jr. or any of the Americans who have assisted Al Qaeda or ISIS. And I suspect that many of the supporters of honoring Confederate “heroes” who took up arms against Americans are the same people who still call Jane Fonda a traitor for having expressed support for the North Vietnamese government (but not actually, you know, shooting any Americans).
It’s actually pretty clear to me: Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution states:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
And while I wasn’t there, I’m pretty confident that people like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest (who likely led a massacre of black troops at Fort Pillow and was an early leader of the Klan), and the officers and men that they commanded were “levying war” against the United States. I don’t buy the arguments made by Southern apologists that secession wasn’t illegal—it was—or that no Confederate was convicted of treason—that was an embarrassing matter of political expediency, not to mention that the 14th Amendment made it clear that anyone engaged in acts of “rebellion” had certain rights taken away.
Much has been written about the Southern “Lost Cause” nostalgia, and all of that is too much to tackle in what is, really, a music blog, so let's talk about music. There are few bands that are as committed to analyzing their Southern identity as the Drive-By Truckers (who I have writtenaboutmany, manytimes). In fact, there may not be any other bands that do so to the degree that the Truckers do. They come by it naturally—the founding members, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, are from Alabama, and the band is essentially centered in Athens, Georgia. But Hood has been especially vocal about the fact that his upbringing was not traditional—his father, David Hood, is a legendary Muscle Shoals sideman and producer, who appeared on countless great records with black musicians—and his family was anti-segregation when that was not the popular thing. And Athens, where he ultimately settled as an adult and where he lives, is a liberal bastion in a conservative state.
Southern Rock Opera is considered to be the Truckers’ defining album, and while it may not be my favorite (I like a couple of the later ones with Jason Isbell a little better), it clearly is the one that not only moved the band into the public eye, it crystalized their viewpoint and, for better or worse, set them up as analysts of what Hood, in “The Three Great Alabama Icons,” called “the duality of the Southern Thing.” In an excellent essay for The Bitter Southerner website in 2013, Hood discussed the legacy (and burden) of Southern Rock Opera, and defined the “duality of the Southern thing” as
being from a region that is known for great music and literature and art and something called “Southern hospitality,” but is also known for Jim Crow laws, slavery, racism and the Ku Klux Klan. I talked about being fiercely proud of the good parts of my heritage and mortified and ashamed of the bad parts, the ones that too often define how other people perceive us.
And that’s what both of these songs are about.
“The Southern Thing,” is a song which Hood wrote to tie the whole project together. It is, stylistically, probably the most “Southern Rock” song on the album, and it describes, with some examples, the duality that he feels as a Southerner who is proud of his identity, even if he doesn’t agree with every—even most—of the stereotypes of that identity. Better you should read the lyrics, than for me to try to summarize them.
The next song on Southern Rock Opera is “Icons," a spoken word essay about Ronnie Van Zant, Bear Bryant and George Wallace, as paradigms of the duality, and points out that there were Southerners who were against segregation and racism, just as there were Northerners who supported it. But the song is mostly about Wallace, who as the song notes was an avid segregationist and racist, yet, at the end of his career, “opened up Alabama politics to minorities at a rate faster than most Northern states or the Federal Government. And Wallace spent the rest of his life trying to explain away his racist past, and in 1982 won his last term in office with over 90% of the black vote.” Despite that, Hood consigns Wallace to hell,
not because he's a racist… His track record as a judge and his late-life quest for redemption make a good argument for his being, at worst, no worse than most white men of his generation, North or South… But because of his blind ambition and his hunger for votes, he turned a blind eye to the suffering of Black America. And he became a pawn in the fight against the Civil Rights cause.
Hood notes in the Bitter Southerner piece that this song is, for the most part, written from the viewpoint of his father. He also mentions that Wallace’s grandson is a big fan of the Truckers.
Interestingly, when they perform the songs live, they switch the order, which makes sense from a performance standpoint—in essence “Icons” acts as an introduction to the more rocking “Southern Thing.” Here’s a video from a 2012 show (recorded and edited by DBT fan extraordinaire “Jonicont”) that shows this—and that Hood goes way off script, to make some topical political points, without losing the underlying message.
OK, it's BAND SOUTH in this case, but that's allowed, and is probably a pretty good opportunity to give this bigintheUK band a buzz, not least given my equivocal and almost love-hate relationship with them. Are they known of across the pond? Somehow I doubt it, except to the core of anglophile anglophone addicts whom I know exist in no small number. But their whole identity is rooted in a dingy lacklustre version of northern England, their name being wholly ironic, marrying kitchen sink reality to luscious, silky tunes and arrangements. And thereby lies my issue, as the sharpness of the lyrics may often be missed within the sheen given to the songs, sometimes leaving a faint lingering taste of saccharine where the vinegar should be.
Paul Heaton, because they were basically his band and brand, even if ably supported by a core of regulars and a float of occasionals, formed the group in 1988, along with fellow Housemartin, Dave Hemingway. Within that earlier and quirky, shortlived group, also including Norman, later "Fatboy Slim", Cook on bass, they sent a bizarre mix of marxism and christianity to the top of the UK singles charts with an acapella version of Caravan of Love. His abiding acerbic style was well characterised by the title of their first LP, "London 0, Hull 4" , Hull being, shall we say, one of northern England's less glamorous cities.
Rather than a traditional jangly guitar based quartet, The Beautiful South started life with an altogether different vibe, with shared vocal duties between the two ex-Housemartins and the first of three subsequent female vocalists, with often lush keyboards. Songwriting duties, largely Heaton's forte, were shared with Dave Rotheray on guitar, and they hit the ground running with this song, "Song for Whoever", which neatly sets out the stall for their aforementioned sweet cynicism, the theme of the "self-serving industry of lovesongs" being a recurring motif.. The front cover, above, also gave some clue to those prepared to search beyond melodies alone. In 1991, they also won the Brit award (think British Grammy) for best video, "A Little Time", their only actual number one single, reproduced below:
Following this there followed a steady stream of successful albums, with a change of female vocalist between their 3rd and 4th, and the sound increasingly embellished by added horns. However, before Briana Corrigan left, the band managed their biggest US exposure with this, "We Are Each Other" in 1992.
Jacqie Abbot, who replaced, had a slightly less astringent style and lasted for a further six years, the sound gradually becoming more influenced by country and/or soul stylisations, which her voice suited well. Here is a good example, "Perfect 10". The group called it a day in 2000, before a desultory final incarnation in 2003, with now 3rd female singer, Alison Wheeler. Whilst the thrill had largely gone, this line-up did produce a last-gasp covers record, in 2003, with "Golddiggas, Headnodders and Pholk Songs, largely successful major transformations of well-known popsongs of the past 30 odd years, and a lasting favourite of mine. Knowing we like a good cover over here on Starmaker Machine, here is a key track, Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper". Citing "musical similarities", maybe the irony of this irony being beyond them, they folded for the final time in 2007.
Interestingly, at the time of writing, Paul Heaton has reunited and put out new material with Jacqui Abbott, whilst Hemingway and Wheeler, together with some of the core erstwhile musicians, have re-grouped as The South, basically a tribute act to their old selves. One suspects that neither Heaton nor this version have each other on their respective christmas card lists..........
NightRanger—I’m not going to claim I know much about them, save for a little trivia
(their guitarist, Brad Gillis, was one of OzzyOsborne’s ever-changing stable of
guitar heroes; singer Jack Blades went on to form Damn Yankees with Ted Nugent, which made
for a large part of the soundtrack that haunted all the frat parties I went to
freshman year down in Carolina—Damn Yankees were huge in NC in the early ‘90s
and I don’t have much else to say about that). Most importantly, they wrote Sister Christian, one of
the 80s greatest rock epics. It was their most popular song, and Sister Christian
went on to reclaim its greatness as the haunting musical stage dressing
to one of the greatest scenes in modern cinema (Boogie Nights), and no one
who’s seen the film can forget the epic drums that so perfectly
suited the spring-coiled violence about to unfold.
I can't
overstate this: Sister Christian—it was their greatest song. It has worked it’s
earnest way to becoming one of your favorite rock songs. And it was such a
strange anthem, sad and yearning, set to a rumbling take off engine thrum, and
like the greatest of rock songs, can fuel not only nostalgia, but oddly slide
it’s way in as an identifying soundtrack to a lot of ‘moments’, be it a first
kiss, a drunken sing along, or a violent shootout/robbery gone terribly awry.You choose, but, you know I'm telling the truth...
NightRanger? Am I really talking about Night
Ranger? The name doesn’t even make sense, but on second thought, my original
thesis—that Night Ranger is one of those bands that it's better to not know
much about—I guess I’m proving that wrong already, and we’re barely out of the
introductory paragraph.
As
I write this, I’ve got a Night Ranger playlist going on the youtubes…and though
I started this piece with one line repeating in my head, I realize, as always, I
should let the music speak for itself. If you're so inclined to recall the 80s,
and the buzzsaw guitar and strident keyboard marches that made rock music so
infectious, Night Ranger isn’t so bad. And trying to assign a scientific or
aesthetic principal to what makes music good, what makes a particular band or
song worth the cost of nostalgia, well…maybe that doesn’t need a thesis or an
explanation. As always, let the music speak for itself and prove its own point.
When I saw the theme for this
month’s theme of jukebox there
was one line that came to mind immediately—the opening line of Night Ranger’s “You Can Still Rock in
America” from their 1983 breakout album, Midnight Madness: “Little sister
by the record machine...”
“You
Can Still Rock in America” satisfies all the check boxes a band would need to
achieve an ‘anthem’, especially for the 80s: diddley-do keyboards, cowbell and
gong driven drum march, fuzzed out, metal guitar riffs and acrobatic
soloing. And, don’t forget the audience-participation-ready drum and vocal
breakdown. This was formula driven rock, arena ready before the tour even hit
the road, but it was brilliant right out of the gate. It might have fit into a
formula then, but as I sit and listen to it now, there is an
earnestness, a driving kind of beauty to the music that, if I can look at it
from my 43 year old perspective, reminds me of all that was good—No,
divine—in what made me fall in love with rock music, which is a relationship
I’ve had in my life that has truly made all the difference.
I remember when I was 7th
and 8th grade, discovering good music for the first time, these guys
rocked, despite what I was learning in my own,
older-brother’s-record-collection-Master-Class (which, of course was the
Beatles and the Stones). I had access to good music early, and my parents were
very cool about buying me ‘boom boxes’ and ceding over to me their turntable.
My bedroom and my pawn store bought-and-borrowed record collection was my
original sanctuary, my real classroom. When I think back to my childhood, I am
lucky to have an endless amount of great memories, but my best ones are of
learning to love music to the LPs playing on my scratchy, one-speaker
turntable. And for a long while, there was good music playing. Sadly, Night
Ranger, which in my final assessment right now I will say was a great band,
gave way to Hair Metal, and the overdone silliness of the LA rock scene—for a
while I thought Cinderella, Bon Jovi and Dokken were the pinnacle of rock
greatness…What can I say: I followed trends. The late 80s were a bad time for
popular music, and my allegiance to great bands, to great music, wouldn’t be
that tight until later in life. I was over eager, and perhaps I let slip a few
times...bad decisions...what excuse can I plead-I abandoned the turntable for
cassettes, and started listening to what everyone else was listening to. I’m
not proud of a lot of what I can pull out of my old collection…
But, hang
on a minute: the more I dig into what I was listening to at the time, the
more I think maybe I can give myself a small break: I snatched up the Van Halen catalog in
1984 and it got regular rotation in my concert hall bedroom, as did AC/DC’s Back
in Black, so…I have no real excuse for delving into bad music...I just like music. And that's where Night Ranger comes in: a bridge between the silly and the not-so bad...so I ask myself now, because back then there was no question: I could definitely rock, but now can you still...?
Maybe, “You Can Still Rock in America”?
Give it a
shot. It’s cheesy, of course, in the way 80’s ‘metal’ can be, but it’s a
jukebox song, and while it might be a lesser entry into the endless and
everlasting fuck the rules, break down the walls, go nuts escapism anthem
blast creed that tattoos the glorious history of this beautiful thing we call rock ‘n
roll, it still works damn well. It’s exuberant the way rock music should be: it
drives; it puts a foot to the floor, it has girls and fast cars, it's vaguely
rebellious about something vaguely troubling, maybe being young, maybe too many
rules. Who cares. Since when has rock ‘n roll needed something specific to
rebel against, so long as you’ve got wailing guitars and a good solid beat
pushing you into doing your very worst?
It’s rock n roll. It might be
a little silly, and sometimes I think we need to feel guilty for loving
something that might come across as dated, or too much of an era, or just to
silly and earnest in what is—in this case, Night Ranger was a great rock band,
full of radio friendly hooks, sugar-sweet anthems and fist in the air, foot to
the floor rock. Sometimes you need a little Night Ranger, lest you start taking
this whole rock thing a little too seriously. Rock music is supposed to be
mindless and it should make you go a little nuts, but it should also remind you
of who you used to be, before you got too old to still rock (in America…).
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