One of the true joys of being a music fan is hearing something wonderful and totally unexpected for the first time. Back in the 1970s, particularly in the heyday of WNEW-FM and WLIR/WDRE, the DJs, who had access to new music before any of us listeners, would spin something new, maybe by a brand new band, or even by a known artist, and you would get that feeling in your gut, or the hair would stand up on the back of your neck.
I was lucky to be in that situation myself for the 3 and a half years that I worked at WPRB while in college. As a DJ, and then, even better, as assistant program director and program director, I often got to hear records immediately after they were taken out of the boxes they were shipped in. And before the Internet, it was much rarer to hear music before it was released.
I can’t remember exactly the first time I heard Bram Tchaikovsky’s album Strange Man, Changed Man, but it grabbed me immediately, and became something that I played on the air regularly. It was a record that came directly out of left field. Tchaikovsky (It took a little while to determine that, in fact, Bram wasn’t related to Pyotr Ilyich, although it wasn’t until many years later that I learned that his real name is Peter Bramall) was a member of The Motors, an English band that I was aware of, but he, personally, had not made any impression on me. The incredible power pop of SM,CM was a revelation, even overlooking the fact that Bram’s voice wasn’t great, or that the sound on the album was kind of muddy. It is one of those albums that I will always love, even if I rarely play it anymore.
Although SM, CM is strong from start to finish, the standout track, which was a minor hit, was “Girl of My Dreams,” a pretty love song to an inflatable sex doll. It is one of the great songs of that oft-maligned genre, right up there with, if not quite equal to, The Records “Starry Eyes.”
Bram and his band, with a revolving door of members, put out two more good records, but never quite hit the heights of the debut. By all reports, he retired from the music business in 1981, possibly opening up a recording studio. Lately, though, it appears that he may be gigging in England again.
I'm going to conjecture that I am not the only one who feels that I didnt "do [enough] right" by my mother for Mother's Day. Flowers dont quite cut it, eh? It's a debt you can never really re-pay. And I would like to think that the debt we feel (ought to feel) goes well beyond a commericial prompt from flowers.com.
Next theme question: if your mom a girl? vice.com had an interesting take on this thought this past week... All the same... me thinks it is part of human nature to rebel - to rebel against our mothers (and fathers)... to rebel against the powers that be: be it your recording company , be it the headmaster of your school, be it the law makers who define the conditions under which we co-exist. And in this, Frank Zappa excelled: with or without "The Mothers of Invention" - he pushed the limits of the acceptable. Lewd at times? maybe - depends on your interpretation of his lyrics. Irreverant to his mother? No that I know of. Pro-active regarding our legislative rights - most certainly! Sad to read that Frank Zappa's son (who has taken on some mantle of his father's legacy) is embroiled in legal issues regarding the "Mothers" appelation. Granted: the name/rights likely never belonged to the Zappa family, but I can't imagine many who dont see "the Mothers of Invention" associated with the Zappa name. What [social] value in litigating? None. Monetary ... perhpas some. So... Sons of mothers and fathers. Children... Someone ought to take on the Frank Zappa brand, and who better than his progeny? Dweezil has been working at it for some time now. I would give him a vote of confidence - but maybe not because of his "chops".
This theme came at a very difficult time for me. There has been something going on in my family that I haven’t written about, and lately, thinking about it and dealing with it has taken up most of my otherwise unoccupied time. I write for three music related blogs, and I know that my readership isn’t exactly huge. While I hope that those of you who do read my writings find them worthwhile, in reality, I mostly do it for myself. I enjoy having an excuse to write, even if it is mostly ignored, because it is the writing itself that is the most rewarding to me. Although I do like it when I find out people are actually reading it, and even better, when they think it is good.
I’ve held off writing about the fact that my father is dying because it is hard. He’s been fighting metastasized lung cancer for a few years now, going through surgery and cycles of chemo and radiation therapy. Gradually he has wasted away from a man who, in his seventies, would play tennis as a warmup to 18 holes of golf, to where he is as I write this, unable to get out of bed. From a smart, funny, strongly opinionated man to someone who rarely speaks and often seems confused.
The fact that I’m dealing with a dying parent is not anything particularly unique, especially among my contemporaries. In fact, my wife and I consider ourselves lucky that this is the first of our parents for whom this has become an issue. So not writing about it (although I have not been hesitant to discuss it with friends) has been partially an attempt not to make it seem like I think my situation is anything special. But since writing to me is therapeutic, and because Star Maker Machine wants me to write about Moms, and I can’t write about my Mom now without writing about how my father’s condition has affected her, I decided to start typing. Dad’s decline and impending death has had a profound effect on my mother, to say the least. And I am so proud of her for the way that she is handling everything.
My parents have been a couple since high school. They stayed together through college and married shortly after graduation. I was born not too long after that, while my father was in law school. They were kids then and they have been married, happily, I believe, for nearly 57 years. My parents were best friends, did virtually everything together, and I cannot ever remember hearing either of them say anything negative about the other. It was, by all accounts, a true partnership and a true love affair.
As was the norm then, and is still common today, my parents worked as a team, but with different domains. Dad went to work, dealt with the finances, and was involved in big family decisions. Mom ran the house and dealt with most of the kid-related and family issues. Her quiet strength was the hub around which our family revolved, even as we married and had our own children, even as in many ways, she revolved around Dad.
But my father’s retirement, then illness, began to shift the paradigm. Although they continued to do most things together, Mom started to do things to get herself personal time. She continued to play golf and tennis. She lunched and shopped with friends. She took up bridge and signed up for adult education courses (sometimes with Dad). All the while, she took care of Dad, gradually having to do more and more as he was able to do less and less.
It finally got to the point where Dad couldn’t easily walk up and down the stairs, and for that, and other, reasons, my parents prepared to sell their house and buy a smaller one on a single level, expecting that it would be easier for both of them. Mom, and to the extent possible, Dad, started to pack up their stuff and begin purging years of accumulated possessions. Mom began to assume the job of dealing with their bills, for the first time, and I spent time with her working through how to pay things online, so that she didn’t need to save piles of papers or write and mail checks. My wife and I helped to organize their files, arranged for shredding of boxes of documents, and the whole family pitched in to help get rid of unneeded items. It took a while to arrange both the buy and the sell, and closings were planned, tentatively, for late April or early May.
I was so impressed by how my mother just did what needed to be done. She took an increasingly large role in dealing with Dad’s doctors, and with the real estate agents, movers, bankers, mortgage brokers, contractors and lawyers involved in the sale of her old house and the purchase and renovation of her new house. I have tried to help as much as I could, but she was in charge, doing many things she had never done before.
Earlier this month, Dad took a turn for the worse, and over the past few weeks, his decline has snowballed to the point that we aren’t even sure if he will survive to the move date, next week, my 55th birthday. Two days ago, I sat with Mom at the closing, signing my father’s name to the sheaves of papers, under a power of attorney, and she stoically and repeatedly signed her name. Afterwards, we went back to the house that she no longer owns, so I could see my Dad, who was, with his aide, watching the Mets rout the Braves in a day game. He was awake, acknowledged me with a smile, but I have no idea whether or not he really knew who I was, understood that we had come from the closing, or appreciated the power display our favorite team had unleashed. Meanwhile, Mom simply took care of what needed to be done.
These days, when I cry, it isn’t because I’m sad that my father is dying, although I am, because at this point, I think that death is preferable to the life he has. I cry for my Mom, who will be without her best friend, living in a new house alone, and forced to take on unexpected responsibilities. But I know that she can, because she is such a strong person, and even in her late seventies has untapped personal resources to draw upon.
Lucero is a band that is mostly known for exuberant rocking songs about various forms of debauchery, misbehavior and lost love, often tinged with regret. But they also write slower, gut wrenching personal songs. “Mom,” which closes their great album 1372 Overton Park, is one of those—a song that both apologizes to a mom for the singer’s misdeeds, but also thanks her for what she has done for him. It isn’t the most appropriate song for this piece, but it is a good one, by a band that should be better known.
Being a mother may not be the first thought about Sinead O'Connor. Indeed, many may go further and say maybe more a mother-something than a mother, such is her ability to annoy and antagonise so many groups in society, whether the catholic church or the estate of one Prince Rogers Nelson. But she strikes me a someone who deserves some recognition of this aspect of her life, most of her 4 children having songs in overt dedication to them in her discography. Let's also not forget her own turbulent childhood, with her mother taking most of the blame for myriad accusations made of abuse toward her, and possibly thus, I wonder, the catalyst to her maverick talent. Motherhood seems to hold very mixed emotion for her, struggling to avoid her experience of her own mother colouring the experience her children have of her, through all of this gaining some sort of skewed acceptance of what seems to have been a fractured childhood. This piece is not to stare goggle-mouthed at her sideshow, but to accept and to celebrate her songs about this no small part of her life and her muse.
Universal mother was her 4th album, it's title playing on a matriarchal deity and her own motherhood, several of the songs being near lullabys to her eldest child, John, including this one, below, 'John, I Love You,'
and 'My Darling Child.' (Here let me advocate breaking a rule of mine and actually reading the Youtube comments made under the clips, being nearly all words of praise and amazement for these simple hymns, with seldom a troll in sight.)
In 1997, 3 years after 'Universal Mother' came the EP, 'Gospel Oak', from which the title song of this piece comes. Here the lyric is more ambiguous, uncertain whether addressed to a child or a lover. Or even to her own mother, killed in a car crash some 10 years earlier? It sounds a song of a bitter forgiveness to me.
Flash forward several years, to 2012, and there comes this further confessional, 'I Had a Baby', the lyric marveling the outcome of the relationship that led to that child, now appreciating a greater insight as to how the child has to deal with the manner of their procreation, and creators. I can't think of any other artist laying open their life so honestly in song.
I have no way of knowing how "good" a mother is Sinead, or even, frankly, quite what that means. It isn't my concern, either. What I do know, however, is that, as a parent, most of us muddle through and do our best, and I am sure she is no different. But, should her 4 ever doubt their mothers love, these songs surely give a greater power and demonstration than many of us get to ever keep. Keep well, Sinead, keep strong.
Buy I Want to Mother You, noting, with irony, that the hard copy starts at a cent and runs to near $90. So how do you define the worth of motherhood?
Not too long back, I noted that the Kingston Trio (and others of their ilk such as Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel) helped pave the path to Rock music.
Simon & Garfunkel eventually went their own ways and they both began producing separate/solo works. Garfunkel (with fewer efforts: apropos our theme: Songs from a Parent to a Child, Watermark ..) And Simon, with Still Crazy After All These Years, There Goes Rhymin' Simon ...)
In among Simon's works is the "solo" <Mother and Child Reunion>. Solo? Yes - in that Garfunkel is no longer his main man. Not so solo in that Simon has lots of help.
Like most any other major musicians from the 60s still with us (RIP: too many to name), Paul Simon has provided us with an eclectic collection - see Graceland. Occasionally reuniting with Art Garfunkel (See My Little Town).
In the original Paul Simon version of Mother and Child Reunion, the song hints at its reggae roots. In the Marley take here, the reggae is front and foremost. Of course.
I have loved Neil Young ever since I was a child myself, the problem often being as to which Neil I like the best, the melodic acoustic troubadour or the feedback-drenched electric maverick, let alone all the shorter term infatuations he has dabbled in, from brass-heavy blues to wacky contract-breaking electronica. I guess like so many I came in around Heart of Gold, backtracking then to the glory of the After the Goldrush album, destroying many a pair of jeans to evoke the multi-patching of his distressed denim. I was at a single sex boarding school at that time, all short hair and uniforms, with Young, all straw hair, sideboards and the scruffiest wardrobe ever, being the man I most wished to be. Indeed, I fear this version of basse couture has remained the template for me, even now, to the despair of wives and partners to this day. (Hell, if ol' Shakey still dresses like a derelict in the dark, why shouldn't I?)
As stated often here before, I was an odd boy, and one of my eternal quests has always been the whys and the hows of music, with a liking to burrow back into the beginnings. This led me to my hardly original theory that all (white) popular music arose from the 4Bs: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. What about the Stones, I hear you say, to which my response is that they are black music, or the Blues. Jazz? That's Blues too. And I will allow the B of Bluegrass to encompass the whole of Country music, itself morphing into some of the style of the Byrds and the Buffalo, anyway, which is where I began. OK, it's trite and simplistic but I will defend it defiantly and devoutly (until some smartass says so what about Kraftwerk then?) But my point is that I thus obtained a copy of a Buffalo Springfield best-of in about 1973, hearing a whole different Neil. This was how he sang pre-whine, and I here mean whine as a compliment, being unable to think of a less damning description of his style, unless anyone can come up with a better name. Almost angelic, clear and smooth at this stage, as much a shock as it was later to hear his strangely low speaking voice. And, on this song, surprisingly or, probably, intentionally childlike, with only rudimentary guitar. This was a trick he was able to later return to, on Sugar Mountain, similarly faux-infantile and just as fetching.
So, how is the child now? Roll forward from 1968, the Buffalo Springfield recording, a full 46 years to 2014, his annual Bridge School concert, the school he set up for his own, now deceased beloved child. The clothes remain the same, the hair, well, a bit thinner on top, but the voice, less childlike but unmistakeably his, present and correct. And the child, listening in 1973, is still listening now.
There are a dozen or so recordings available over the decades: go buy!!
Kids Don’t Follow
is the first track off the Replacement’s first release, the EP Stink.It’s a bold statement from a band that would go on to make many
statements. The Replacements are a band that took on a far greater prominence
than the drunken shenanigans of Stink
would promise.But, then, this is the
Replacements and their influence, lazy ambition, sneaking brilliance, and pure,
astounding genius and capacity to bring the shock and awe (or one good dose of
thunder) made them one of the greatest bands ever to never really make it.
Starting with Stink, and hopping
along like an exposed electric wire for a total of 6 more albums and a few lifetimes
of madness, what the ‘Mats did for music is almost
immeasurable. Even if they would deny it. Then or now. Which they do.
I like to talk a lot about firsts in music. First tracks,
first times a song was played, first time one heard a band, what must it have
been like to see a legend in the making when they first started out. Kids Don’t Follow is another first, an
opening shot of punk muscle that would start a career that would morph and go in unexpected directions, but never lose that ‘fuck you’ attitude
that in retrospect was so essential.
One of the best parts of Kids
Don’t Follow is the opening recording of a party being broken up by the
Minneapolis Police. Amid the ambient noise comes out a clear, angry, “Hey fuck
you, man!” to the otherwise kindly, Barney Fife-kind of sounding cop politely
asking everyone to please disperse. It’s such a visual moment. Supposedly it
was recorded at First Avenue. Supposedly, the kid who yells the expletive is
Soul Asylum’s Dave Priner. Supposedly the cop was Danny Murphy’s father.
Supposedly, the Replacements put their original demos in the river and set them
adrift, hoping Prince would discover them, ala the infant Moses in the Nile in
a reed basket…There are a lot of what ifs with a band like The ‘Mats. And a lot
of could have been...But what they left behind is like a great promise that
might still come true.
...The Replacements, one of rock’s closest near-miracles...Kids Don’t Follow. A song like this makes sure they never
will…
From their first album, and though it wasn’t a hit when it came out, it is now a title that has become ubiquitous with the band. They are the
kids. Were the kids. But, if you love them, they still are the kids. The
original punks, angry, playful, bombastic. Revolutionaries in stripes and
sneakers, dippity-doed hair, mod before mod was a thing.
Who? The Who.
The Kids are Alright set a great standard. The standard for rock greatness. Greatness
was Keith Moon’s frenzied, nuclear motored drumming. It is still the greatest
drumming I’ve ever heard. Townshed’s spectrum spanning guitar, crunching,
driving, melodic, a full on range of sound from a mere six strings.He wielded chords with an orchestral strength. Daltry sang like
he had a brass pair. Entwistle rolled thunder like a Greek god.
1965. They looked so clean cut, so reserved. Yet in this
amazing song one finds their personas of greatness, rock gods in waiting, like Clark Kent
behind his glasses - almost there, bursting at the seams to do what they were
destined to do. There are two versions, but the UK album version has a glorious
instrumental break that personifies Townshed’s ability to spin melodic gold.
The original promo video was filmed in Hyde park at the water’s edge, while
holiday makers rowed past. A number of them have stopped to watch the band play,
unamplified and lip-synching to a pre-recorded track. Moon is his usual self—a
ball of energy, barely able to stay in his seat. Entwistle is straight
knife-fight nonchalant, playing his bass with fingers the defied the limits of
the bones under the skin. Townshed is reserved, but breaks into a genuine
smile, a goofy grin that is unmistakable joy, then he throws in his classic
windmill, forever changing the way we would all play guitar thereafter. Daltry
is sullen, looking away from the camera rather than giving any of himself to
it. He looks off to the side, this way and that—later you see all the girls
that had gathered just the side of the band, and the boys on their bikes.Do you think they knew what they were
watching? The very evolution of rock ‘n roll…the kids were definitely alright.
The song is still as fresh as it was in 1965, still packs
the same raw, punchy joyous power. It’s a retrospective on youth now, but the
song itself is still young, still invokes and evokes the joyousness of abandon
and the joy of not knowing any better and not needing to. T
he assured swagger that comes with knowing everything will be fine.
In 2000, at the Royal Albert Hall, they extended the song,
and Townsend took the opportunity to sing a new interlude:
"When I wrote this song I was
nothing but a kid, trying to work out right and wrong through all the things I
did. I was kind of practicing with my life. I was kind of taking chances in a
marriage with my wife. I took some stuff and I drank some booze. There was
almost nothing that I didn't try to use. And somehow I'm alright."
Back in the bushes we find a cat Beat him up with a baseball bat And grandma says we’ll turn out bad And go straight to hell just like dad
I grew up in a sweet neighborhood where I could almost touch the window of the house across from me. But when you live that close, you can hear all the fighting and crying on the block. The loudest kids are seen as the worse. I remember listening to my quiet and boring neighbors next door try to make my mom crap on the loud boy across the street who ran out of his housescreaming at his parents. Shouldn’t we be more curious about the quiet houses where nothing seems to happen?
In “Kids’ Alright” Bettie Serveert has some fun with adults who get off on predicting doom for kids. Well these kids ain’t so nice actually, beating up cats and all with Louisville Sluggers and yet you cheer for them against their grammie through the line “But don’t you (grandma) get your hopes up high, The Kid’s alright.”
Bettie Serveert is from the Netherlands but played a lot more like an alt-country act from Missouri with some Dinosaur Jr guitar worship thrown in. Carol Van Dijk’s mumbles and snarls, the guitar twangs. “Kids’ Alright” is the fastest tune off their 1991 debut Palomine. In fact, you have trouble listening to this slow album straight through because “Kid’s Alright” is so catchy you want to hear it again and again. Yeah, maybe like a nude scene in a slightly above average film.
Bettie Serveert caught a good buzz early on, even opening up for Counting Crows on a leg of their tour (which made me respect Counting Crows a lot more) and then they fell. I thought Bettie Serveert had broken up shortly after their second album “Lamprey” and the Crows tour but I learned they made another 8 albums. So I dove into Youtube and came across a lot of playful pop which is pretty good but neglects the guitar chops of Peter Visser. Listen to them live and Visser’s work comes through.
Living in Istanbul where you can reach into the house next to you and grab the spoon out of a person’s hand, I always find it eerie how few kids I hear and see.
From the beginning, what made Steve Martin great was the way he turned expectations on its head. Martin first burst into public consciousness at a time when comedians were moving away from the buttoned-up look to a more 60s counterculture appearance. Yet, he was known for performing in white suits, virtually the dictionary definition of “uncool.” His routines were based on unexpected juxtapositions, and ironic goofiness, like putting a fake arrow through his head. Or interrupting his set with some banjo playing. He is a true comic genius, and isn’t bad as an actor, playwright, musician, author, and art collector.
For some reason, despite the huge number of possible songs that I could have written about, this routine from the 1986 holiday episode of Saturday Night Live immediately jumped into my head. It is a classic example of Martin’s way of twisting expectations. It starts off with Martin, in a stereotypical “sincere television” Christmas setting, with soft music playing behind him, stating that if he had one holiday wish, “it would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.” A beautiful sentiment, but not particularly funny, and we know that SNL at least tries to be funny.
Of course, Martin actually has other wishes, and by the end, “the crap about the kids” gets shunted behind what people would really want for the holiday, even if they wouldn’t ever admit it, and certainly not as part of a sappy ‘holiday wish” TV segment, including a month-long orgasm, unlimited power over every living being in the universe, $30 million a month, and that his enemies “should die like pigs in Hell!”
Then, of course, the children joining hands and singing.
Without children ... we don't continue. I've got one, only one, and that's not "replacement" level. At my reproductive level, if we all do this over time, we'll end up with no one on earth. Without children ... well ... you know.
But, to zoom in on this week's theme: Here's a trivia question for you to answer: What is the B side of Jumpin Jack Flash? Of course, to answer that, you need to know what a B side is. But if you're following SMM, you already know. That would be the flipped side of the Jumping Jack Flash 45 RPM vinyl disk that came out in 1968. (The "hit" went on the A side, and the B side had some kind of filler.) So ... Child of the Moon is "filler". Of sorts. The song "backing" Jumping Jack Flash.
Among my limited collection of early LP albums were two from the Rolling Stones. The year being about 1967, the albums would have been <Between the Buttons> and <Aftermath>. Whereas Jumping Jack Flash appeared on album in the late 60s, Child of the Moon was left for later albums - kind of an obscure Stones song. Interesting to me is the fact that a Google search of <Child of the Moon> brings up a multitude of other references. I would have thought that "Child of the Moon Wikipedia" would resolve/result in the Stones as the first link. (They are - after all - the first) Not so. Child of the Moon, while not a major musical hit, has taken on a life of its own beyond the song: TV episodes and such riding on the name/fame.
Someone else said: ... [the song] actually feels closer to pagan curse than lyric poem, a mixed-bag mojo potion invocation of a dream lover pushed to ritualistic nightmare by the hoodoo “Rain” beat of Charlie Watts’ drums, Brian Jones’ hypnotic saxophone drone, Jagger’s own fixed-pitch chant vocals and Jimmy Miller’s deeply unsettling shouting in those murky opening moments. [www.mojo4music.com/11843/rolling-stones-child-moon] OK. Wow.
The song does appears to be a part of the Stones' acid journey - belonging more to the late 60s Satanic Majesty or Beggars Banquet than the mid 60s, when it came out. Must have been fast-lanes/ fast times in 1967-8.
As for lyrics:
Give me a misty day, pearly gray, silver, silky faced, Wide-awake crescent-shaped smile
... child of the moon
Fairport Convention are way more than a mere convention, being more an british institution, now a year shy of their half-century. Some may be surprised to hear they are still going, seeing them as a band time locked in the late 60s and cusp of the 70s, others stalwart fans of their ever changing line-ups. I am sort of within the latter camp, but my custom and appreciation has flagged and faltered over the years. Of course, the received wisdom is that they are a mere shadow of their earlier glories, but I am uncertain they were ever much more than a well thought of cult niche. A highly regarded cult niche, maybe, but it is the eye of retrospect that is needed to see that, and if all the people who so now highly rate the Sandy Denny/Richard Thompson years had done then, well, maybe the story would have been different. But it isn't their history I have come to discuss, more their penchant for a good historical narrative.
Starting as the UK's answer to Jefferson Airplane, they reasonable swiftly moved folkwards, arguably inventing folk-rock. The folk canon is full of tales of derring-do, real and imaginary, and the band have littered their output with historical narrative from the english civil war to WW1, from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Napoleon. But the most ambitious historical set-piece was Babbacombe Lee, the 1971 concept album, telling the true story of John "Babbacombe" Lee, the man who could not be hung. Lee was an ex-navy ne'er do well and petty criminal, who, in 1885, was convicted for the murder of one Emma Keyse, his then employer. Sentenced to hang in Exeter prison, the trapdoor bizarrely refused to function, despite testing, 3 times leaving him standing not dangling. As a result his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, the story building up layers of mystic significance year on year. He was actually released in 1907, for a while sustaining himself on the strength of telling his story, but later years, between the wars, are somewhat shrouded in uncertainty, he seemingly having died in the USA, during the mid 1940s, giving him a lucky bonus of extra 50 odd years longevity.
1971 had seen Fairport lose most of their more celebrated band members, shrunk to the quartet of Dave Swarbrick (fiddle/vocals), Simon Nicol (guitar/vocals), Dave Pegg (bass) and Dave Mattacks (drums). Swarb had found some old newspaper stories extolling the tale and the idea for an album was born. It is actually not a half-bad LP and has stood the test of time, perhaps better than some of their later output, possibly the reason why the current band, still including Nicol and Pegg, resurrected it for both a tour and a live recording, released in 2012. Here is the high point, the failed execution, in song, the 2 versions near 40 years apart. See which you prefer.
1971:
and 2012 (filmed in 2009):
Next year is Fairport Conventions 50th. They hold a yearly festival, Cropredy, in Oxfordshire. I was there for the 20th, 25th and the 30th birthday celebrations, unable to quite believe that last was nearly 20 years ago. I hope to return in 2017. Any of you be there? It will be history unfolding in itself. Again.
Back in high school, I lived in Northern Virginia. When I
got my driving license, in addition to cruising the McDonald’s parking lot and
feeling full-on superior to everyone without a license, I started making long
drives to various Civil War battlefields. Not the hippest thing for a 16 year
old to do, but there was so much history, so close, I didn’t see it as strange.
It was an easy way to get on the road and feel that ineffable sense of freedom that
comes with being behind the wheel. I was Kerouac, but, I didn’t have that far
to go. Of course, I went a lot of places I shouldn’t have (Washington, DC in
the late ‘80s was like a lurid, dangerous movie set), but getting out into the
‘country’, on my own, driving back roads, seeing America (I’d read On the Road
early in my teens, so I was ready to roll)…it was an amazing experience to
disappear from the suburban safety of my parent’s home and into the reverie of
history and my own romantic notions of being on the road. There were a lot of places
to go: Fredericksburg. Bull Run. Harper’s Ferry. Winchester. Further afield,
Antietam and even Gettysburg. I was into
Kerouac, but I was also into history, so proximity to the remnants of history was
exciting.
I was on my own particular beat extravaganza. One chapter in
the tale of my own history, personal, but epic (in the small sphere I walk).
About the same time as all this was going on, my musical
education was expanding exponentially due to a radio station out of Lanham, Maryland,
called WHFS. 99.1. If you’re from DC , Maryland or Virginia (the DMV) and are
of a few certain generations, “ninety-nine-one”
is a phrase that brings up many memories, both at once warmly nostalgic and sad.
But, mostly sad in a way that something great is gone.
‘HFS has been around since the 1960s and has spanned multiple
genres over at least three different FM frequencies and digital platforms. It
still exists, but, not as the traditional ‘HFS
I grew up with—the weak signaled (it came it good at night) humming little
broadcaster of funky, alternative musical oddities. ‘HFS was the place to tune into to hear everything from Springsteen
to P-Funk to Dylan to punk - beautiful sounds. Back then, we called it college
rock, or progressive, and ‘HFS was
amazing because it brought into tune a musical world that was bubbling on the
horizon of my budding musical tastes. Strange sounds from the ether, pointing
me in great new directions. I could do a lot of posts of bands I heard first on
99.1’s golden airwaves. A few? REM, The Cult, The Plimsouls, Chuck Brown,
Fugazi, The Feelies.
And there were lesser known, one off bands, half-a-hit
wonders that while they weren’t making musical history, were laying down a
solid foundation for what would become my musical pedigree, my own personal
musical history.
One of those unique bands that ‘HFS brought me into contact with was called The Brandos. The
Brandos are a New York rock outfit that worked in a interesting nitche: dudded
out in bolo ties, high collared shirts, sharp black suits, they played a
gritty, guitar driven, late 80s rock with a historical flavor. Their 1987 album Honor Among Thieves had a sound
appeal that was at once college-rock guitar but also grounded in historical
theme and detail.
Their highest charting track was “Gettysburg”, a smoldering,
first-person account from a long dead soldier, looking back on the battle and horror
that took place there. The song is
structured around the narrator seeing his name on a plaque, and at Gettysburg,
the names of the dead are endless. It’s not clear if it’s a ghost, or someone
having a visceral experience from standing on hallowed, horrored ground. The song
spirals back on an image-laden tour of the nightmare that battle was, and it is
full-throated and angry. As any song about the horrors of war should be. When I
was a kid, first hearing this, there was no irony, no wonder at how a great
rock song could be about a Civil War battle. The Brandos probably never took
off because their dead serious take on historical themes (with matching sounds)
made them seem like a gimmick. There was something strident and serious in
their presentation of themes concerned with the past, going so far as to make
the whole of their look, sound and feel to be a living recreation, and not in a
way that celebrates the anachronistic, but a truly informed embodiment of the
past.
The Brandos struck me as band that presented the same
strident energy and raw emotion of self-serious bands such as U2 or the Alarm,
but sang about hundred year old battles, factory fires, and the immigrant
experience. I think perhaps they didn’t take off because people sought the
irony, waited for the Brandos to take of the bolo ties and start singing about
contemporary problems. Maybe they came across as a band your history teacher
would like? There is something about a band with such an intense thematic focus
that makes them seem odd. Or perhaps, worse, uncool. But, what is it that kept
the Brandos, with their intense, historical bent, from making it big, when
other bands, like say, KISS, with their whole…thing…get huge. Or Motely Crue
and their post-apocalypse leather and fire and Satan motif, or Slayer’s Hell
come to Earth appeal? Some bands with an overwhelming motif seem to work, while
others don’t. Most bands with a gimmick – be it subtle or over the top – make
it, somehow. Gwar? No…they are a thing unto themselves. What to call the
brilliant Brandos? Did they make genre music? Is it reenactment? I don’t really
know. They are more akin to a band like the Pogues, who invoke old forms and traditional structure, mix it with modern sounds and instruments, and present it without...again, I use the word, becuause I think it fits - irony. It’s interesting. And damn good. The kind of music you’d hear and say,
“Whoa – who is that?” I don’t know why they weren’t more popular.
I do know that the Brandos, like a lot of bands, were far
more popular in Europe than the States. I wonder if that is because in Europe,
the focus on nostalgic ideas and sounds didn’t come across as an anachronism,
but was more appealing in that way that American cultural exports are so
meaningful in foreign culture. Think about: the Western, the Yankee symbol, NBA
jerseys, Marilyn Monroe, old school military garb, even the Stars and
Stripes…these are images and ideas that have taken on symbolic resonance well
beyond their original meaning. Historical symbolism invokes notions, romantic
ones often, about another culture, about a history that we may not be connected
to, but are fascinated with nonetheless. Here’s an example: cowboys are cool.
Clint Eastwood made sure the world would always think that. The Brandos and
their focus on the Civil War and the era of immigration were perhaps focusing
in on a part of history that had a shared aspect to it. They wrote about an era
when a lot of people from Europe came to America. But, more so, The Brandos
sound was seriously, unequivocally American. So, it’s not surprising they took
on a life and found a fan base in Europe.
The Brandos’ most recent release was 2010’s Live
in Europe, which was
recorded in 2004. It’s a great showcase of their ferocious, guitar-driven
sound, but also highlights their equally distinctive mandolin-fronted folk pedigree.
Equally brilliant, sonically and otherwise, is Town to Town, Sun to Sun,
which can be heard of Spotify – and serves as the band’s sole entry in the
Spotify database.
The album is interesting. From a musical standpoint, it is a
document of a tight, hard-driving rock band, and one that makes you wonder how
you haven’t heard of them before. And yet, it works to showcase the unique,
near museum-like sound The Brandos created. Perhaps it is here, more than
anyplace else, that you can kind of get why the band never made it - the niche
they worked in just didn’t have a broad enough, or universal enough appeal.
But, it doesn’t make it any less sad when you realize what a great band they
are. That gritty, decidedly un-modern sound was never really able to find
purchase, but perhaps that has more to do with trends than with talent. I’m
sure it does, actually…
I was a history major in college, and continue to enjoy reading about and discussing historical topics, so this theme is a natural for me. Over at my new blog, I’ve recently written about Civil War and Revolutionary War related things, and my wife’s family’s genealogy, and have occasionally plumbed the historical record in writinghere. So, I didn’t want to repeat myself (again) despite the apparent invitation to do so in the theme. Instead, I thought, how about writing about World War I, which seems to have been overshadowed by its more recent and more horrifying sequel. However, beyond the trying effect of the war on the Crawley family, I think it is fair to say that most people don’t recognize how much that war, which ended nearly a century ago, still has a profound influence on the world today.
To the extent anyone thinks of the First World War, you probably have in your head an image (probably in black and white) of trenches, or pointy German helmets, or maybe poison gas, or those cute, if deadly, airplanes. Turn on any of the TV channels that have history shows, and it seems to be about 80% about Nazis, with a smattering of Civil War and American Revolution programming, and maybe a rare Vietnam show. Not much about the War of 1812, for some reason. In a recent listing of the top news stories of the 20th Century, the outbreak of WWI only placed 8th, behind both the assassination of President Kennedy and Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Both of these were important, but as important as WWI? I don’t think so.
According to Wikipedia, more than 17 million people died, and 20 million people were injured during the war, making it one of the deadliest conflicts ever. More remarkably, the war, and its aftermath, resulted in social and political changes that echo to this day. You can trace much of the turmoil in the Middle East, for example, to the arbitrary borders that were drawn after the war as well as the promise made to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The wars in the Balkans were a delayed reaction from the post-war breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Bolshevik Revolution was certainly abetted by the war’s turmoil. The rise of the United States as a predominant world actor stemmed from its relatively unscathed position after the war, while the British Empire’s decline was accelerated. And of course, the short-sighted and punitive Versailles Treaty led to chaos in Germany, and was used as a rallying cry that helped vault the Nazis into power. That’s just for starters. Add the Armenian Genocide, the Great Depression, an influenza epidemic, the decline of hereditary aristocracy, weakening of colonialism, the League of Nations, the increase of the use of technology in war, improvements in medicine and surgery, and the expansion of the franchise to women in some countries, and you begin to see how the 21st Century is, in many ways, the product of the War to End All Wars (That Didn’t Even Come Close). And there are even more effects, but this is a music blog, not AP European History.
On a human level, though, it was the death of an entire generation of (mostly) young (mostly) men, and the disillusionment of the survivors that led to the dubbing of this period as the “Lost Generation.” (Compare that to how the WWII era is recalled—as the “Greatest Generation.”) Never before had so many been killed in so many countries in such a wide swath of the world. Huge cemeteries were created, or existing ones expanded, to provide resting places for the dead and memorials for the missing. Eric Bogle, a Scottish folksinger who emigrated to Australia in 1969, visited one of these cemeteries in Northern France, and wrote a song, “No Man’s Land,” reflecting on the (apparently fictionalized) gravestone of one soldier, and the pointlessness of war. Bogle, who likely was also reacting to the futile conflict in Vietnam, also wrote another famous WWI song, “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,”
The song owes much to the American song, “Streets of Laredo,” which itself is derived from earlier English and Irish songs (gotta love folk music!), particularly in the use of the line “Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the pipes lowly?” (Also the source of the title of the baseball novel, Bang The Drum Slowly). It has been often covered (and modified), sometimes under the title “Green Fields of France,” or “Willie McBride.” The lyrics are clear and unsparing in their sentiment:
And I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride, Do all those who lie here know why they died? Did you really believe them when they told you "the cause?" Did you really believe that this war would end wars? Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame, The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain, For Willie McBride, it's all happened again, And again, and again, and again, and again.
The featured version is by Dropkick Murphys, best known as a rollicking Celtic punk band from Boston, who don’t do the expected thing and speed up the song. It is from their excellent album The Warrior’s Code which also included “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” which featured lyrics written by Woody Guthrie (who wrote his share of anti-war songs), and was used in the movie The Departed (and in beer commercials, at sporting events, and on TV shows, including The Simpsons), and strangely, by two Republican candidates in Wisconsin, leading to denunciations by the band.
Since the armistice that ended the fighting of World War I, at 11:11 am on 11/11/18, and the subsequent treaties that formally ended it, there have been more than a few more wars—way too many more, unfortunately, some of which are happening even as you read this. Bogle was, tragically, right.
Gil Scott-Heron sang, rapped and read
poetry about history and history in the making. In the music industry, he was
history, literally for his groundbreaking work in the 70s and figuratively
because he disappeared for long spells.
Heron is most famous for “The Revolution
Will Not Be Televised”, a sardonic spoken word piece (with congos) that takes
shots at politics and media during the Nixon era (The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Jackie Onassis, Glen Campbell
among others). Written in 1970, it has been sampled by many artists including
Common, Kanye and Queen Latifah. Listen to Chuck D’s barking delivery and anything
by Michael Franti and you can guess they both spent a lot of time listening to
Heron.
After disappearing for at least a decade, in
1992, Gil Scott-Heron surprised the industry with the outstanding Spirits.Fans of Heron might have expected something musically nostalgic or old-fashioned,
but Spirits was surprisingly in tune
with contemporary musical trends without at all putting Heron in uncomfortable,
insincere territory. Actually, Spirits
was beyond contemporary: it was visionary, looking back and forward lyrically
and musically.
Spirits was oddly distributed by TVT, an underground label which up to that
point in 1994 had mostly featured industrial artists such as Nine Inch Nails,
KMFDM and Gravity Kills.
On Spirits,
Heron is so sharp, funny and moving. He also seemed more at peace with himself
than before. It’s no secret he suffered through heavy drug abuse for many
years, and so for me it was stunning at how cognizant Spirits was of the modern musical world. As a college dj in 1994,
the only albums crossing my path, which were as important as Spirits,were Jeff Buckley’s Grace, Portishead’s Dummy and Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted. Beck’s Mellow Gold also came out this year but
few would argue that it wasn’t a complete album.
On a few songs on Spirits, Heron experiments with hip-hop beats and synths and for
other tunes he just flows with live, jazzy accompaniment. The three-part “Other
Side” will leave you an emotional mess. It’s a sweeping live rearrangement and
expansion of his seminal 70s tune “Home is Where the Heartbreak Is.” In “Work for Peace” Heron breaks down the
endless relationship between “the military and the monetary”, going back to
take pot shots at President Eisenhower (“Back
when Eisenhower was president/golf courses were where most of his time was
spent”) and coming back to the present to muse over the confusion of the
war in the Gulf.
“The Military and the Monetary
from thousands of miles away in a Saudi
Arabian sanctuary,
had us all scrambling for our dictionaries,
cause we couldn’t understand the fuckin
vocabulary.
Yeah, there was some smart bombs,
But there was some dumb ones as well.”
Continuing what isn’t singing but isn’t
exactly spoken word either, Heron gives a one-line explanation for the history
of war: “The only thing wrong with
Peace/is that you can’t make any money from it.” For a naïve kid at
university looking for some sense, this line became canon.
As a dj at our radio station and director
of the concert committee at my university, I obsessed over bringing Heron in
concert, though I was sure that even with the best promotion (non-stop radio
airplay, spotlight articles and a forum on the content of his lyrics), we’d
probably get about 75-100 people to show up. Still, I skimped on several shows
early in the year to save up the money to the point where my advisor gave me a
Budget 101 lesson: “The point is to spend the school’s money so you get more
for next year. You’re making a profit! Get rid of it.” No problem. I was
working on it.
I think the initial quote was 1000 dollars
for spoken word and 4500 dollars for a concert with his live band. After a lot
of phone tag with his agent, we had basically come to an oral agreement (I
wondered if she wondered why this kid from Wisconsin was so fervent about
bringing Gil to a small university town). It was one of the few times I didn’t
negotiate the initial price. Another was when I booked Mudhoney for a measly
4000 dollars.
Of course the deal fell through and I
missed out on booking a legend and making history for my small university.
I heard little of Heron for the next 15
years. I had noticed he had played a few shows in Europe but I always came upon
these too late. Coachella brought him in for a 2010 (he was 61 at the time)
show which was shortly followed by his last studio album “I’m New Here”,
produced by Richard Russell and put out on XL Records, a label famous for rave
and electronica. Strange that it took an industrial label and then a techno label
to twice bring Heron back from the dead when a few high profile rappers have
pointed to Heron as the father of rap. (Even LCD Soundsystem references Heron
on “Losing My Edge”). “I’m New Here” is innovative and dark –sitting under the
turnpike homeless, lonely and strung out at 2am dark. “New York is Killing Me”
uses claps for rhythm; a dark industrial synth line fuels the frightening,
crackling “Me and the Devil”; Bill Callahan plays acoustic guitar on the sparse
and sobering title track. The album is also uneven and just needed more time.
Heron’s history is complicated and if not
for run-ins with the law, addiction and his dissolution with the recording
industry, we might have been treated to a richer evolution with more output in
between those 10 and 15-year gaps. In the meantime, Spirits has aged well, arguably more than anything he ever did.
Some artists clearly love a true story, if only and at least as a template from where to launch into fanciful forays of imagination. Knopfler is someone who seems forever digging around in the past as inspiration, uncertain whether he likes to research or has just a vast accumulated knowledge. Probably a bit of both, having trained and worked as a journalist, before a degree in english and working as a college lecturer, his career in music on a slow side simmer until the relatively advanced age of 28. Of course, Dire Straits became huge and possibly so ubiquitous that they and he became an easy target for the taste police, deeming him dull and anachronistic bombast, an irony given the majority of their/his songs retained a virtue of their lack thereof. I like him and always did, an early adopter, as Sultans of Swing soundtracked my student years in London. (Come to think of it, it's now so long ago it probably counts as history in its own right!) While Dire Straits dabbled in ye olde historical, meaning more WW1 than Italian familial vendetta, it is in his less acknowledged and still smouldering solo career that this side of his songwriting style has really found wings, now 9 albums strong, along with collaborations with, amongst others, Emmylou Harris and Chet Atkins.
Does the legend of Imelda Marcos' shoe cupboard count as history? I think it does, even if the song is a retread of that song indirectly referred to above. Arguably one of the weaker cuts from his first post Straits non soundtrack output, it wasn't until his 2nd record that he really found his narrative skills. The title track from that record follows, and I like to feel it alerted many a listener to the hitherto untapped world of cartography. A beautiful duet with James Taylor, himself no stranger to a shot at history*, it remains the high point of live performance.
Whilst his next record was largely a paean to his Northumbrian roots, it was 2004's Shangri-La that really outed his love of the biographic, with songs inspired by Elvis, by Sonny Liston and the UK King of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan. And this one, about the developer of McDonalds, yes the meat patty people, Ray Krocs, with many of the lyrics, included below, lifted directly from his autobiography.
A distinct feature of successive output has been the greater immersion in traditional and rootsy forms, whether an anglo-celtic folk tradition or from country music. Lyrics increasingly based upon folklore perhaps, than hard evidence, but no less cinematic, like this whimsy around the Reivers, cross-border bandits really, who flitted between the english north and scottish south, sheep stealing, cattle rustling and generally causing havoc. (Hence the derivation of the word bereaved, meaning the fate of those who had been "reived".)
His next work substituted border cowboys for pirates, again using the metaphor of a band of marauding rogues for, maybe, the lifestyle of an itinerant rock and roll band. By this stage I fear the lyrical conceits get the better of his tune smithery, but it continued to add to his reputation as a reliable and authentic musician, selling respectably.
Finally we come up to date with last years 'Tracker', more confirmation of his comfort zone, but again featuring songs relating to real-life individuals, one to little known poet, Basil Bunting, and another musing on the legacy of novelist Beryl Bainbridge and her attempts at the Booker prize, the prestigious UK grail for novelists, and in style a tip of the hat to earlier musical memes.
So this is but a mere dip into the historical sources put to use by this gifted and self-effacing Northumbrian, clearly a well-read man, usually issuing these songs as either the title track or lead single. In concert he can seem embarrassed by his earlier successes, oft dashing off his hits with a grimace before another earnest folk-hued story unfolds. I suspect the audiences still come mainly for those hits, but overall, given the choice, I think I prefer the best of his solo work.
(*Machine Gun Kelly was written by Taylor guitar to go, Danny Kortchmar.)
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