The Harvey Girls: White Wedding
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(This is from a free album that is downloadable on their website, and is not available for purchase)
I thought I'd get one more grammar-tastic song in while it's still this week.
This song combines a lot of things I love:
1) cover songs
2) 80's pop music
3) female vocals
4) acoustic/folk music
I've heard other covers done of this Billy Idol classic, but this one really impresses me, but then again I am a sucker for all the things listed above. Most of The Harvey Girls' music is available free on their website (linked above), and this song in particular is from their covers album Our History Is Your Kitsch.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Adjective Noun: White Wedding
Friday, October 24, 2008
Adjective Noun: High Water
[purchase]
Recorded live in Niagara Falls on August 23, 2003, this one´s from Tell Tale Signs, the brand new installment in the Bootleg Series. Bob really is on fire here, and so is his touring band. Definitely an improvement on the studio version from "Love And Theft", which wasn´t too shabby to begin with.
´A prime example of how honing a song on the road can completely transform it,´ says Larry ´Ratso´ Sloman in the liner notes, and he´s spot on. "I get up in the morning, I believe I'll dust my broom, keepin' away from the women, I'm giving them lots of room... Thunder rolling over Clarksdale, everything a-looking blue, I just can't be happy, love, unless you're happy too... It's bad out there, highwater everywhere."
Clearly a case of love, not theft. High Water is subtitled For Charley Patton, in honour of the legendary Delta bluesman who recorded his own High Water in two parts. "Well, backwater done rose all around Sumner now, drove me down the line, backwater done rose at Sumner, drove poor Charley down the line... Lord, I'll tell the world the water, done crept through this town." Here they are.
[purchase]
Adjective Noun: Think Tank
Prescott Curlywolf - Think Tank [purchase]
"Placated angst, what for?
The strings that tethered me
Vacated sleeves that I've worn
No foot on the brakes, no foot on the brakes for me."
As the years pass, I'm convinced that Prescott Curlywolf is the greatest band to ever come out of Austin, TX -- at least within the last 25-30 years. Granted, the Butthole Surfers have a strong argument, Scratch Acid, The Dicks, and Big Boys have the entrenched nostalgia of old-school punks on their side, Spoon gets the chicks and sells out all manner of venue, The Gourds and Bad Livers can thumbwrestle for anarcho-acoustic crown, and lest we forget, Stevie Ray & Double Trouble have the tragic mythos. I'm sure there's a dozen other bands with more luck and better PR who could leap to the top of the GOAT poll.
But, Prescott has Rob Bernard (pictured right) and thusly the discussion ends. The only guitar player I've ever heard able to successfully reconcile Eddie Van Halen with D. Boon, Bernard distills what could easily be self-indulgent wankery into :30 explosions of vicious economy, like Keith Moon on punk rock Telecaster. Combine his less-is-more genius with songwriting partner, Ron Byrd's, power-trash melodicism, and Prescott, at their best, were the perfect synthesis of The Replacements and Nirvana, as if Kurt Cobain was composing with Bob Stinson's guitar thrash in mind. Add to this the occasional Black Franciscan songwriting contributions of bassist, Tim Kinard, and you have a band ... a fearless, rat-a-tat rhythm machine of a band, no less ... that managed to reference three post-punk giants without devolving into the calculated and formulaic Red Bull jingles painfully common in the fashion-first Pitchfork Era. That's one man's think tank summary anyway. No foot on the brakes for me.
For a comprehensive summary of this great band, please visit The Adios Lounge.
Adjective Noun: Dire Wolf
Grateful Dead: Dire Wolf
[purchase]
I am a very strange example of a Grateful Dead fan. I never got to see them live. And, while I greatly admire the instrumental acrobatics of their live recordings, I often prefer the studio versions of their songs, because many of the live recordings feature the worst vocal performances you will ever hear from anyone. That said, give me a live recording of theirs with good vocals, and I’m in heaven.
Workingman’s Dead was my introduction to the music of the Grateful Dead. And Dire Wolf is my favorite song from the album. An original song by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, the song nevertheless has the quality of a folktale.
The lyrics are by Hunter, and I never tried to find out what he meant by them. I have always had my own interpretation. The song says, “the dire wolf... was grinning at my window. All I said was come on in.” Clearly, I thought, the wolf cannot enter a house without being invited in. That means the wolf represents the Devil. They sit down to game of cards. Presumably, if the narrator wins, his soul is safe from the Devil’s clutches forever. But, of course the Devil cheats. “I cut my deck to the queen of spades, but the cards were all the same.” Not what the narrator expected! And the last verse describes the Devil seeking out other souls.
In researching this post, I find no backing for this interpretation whatsoever. However, all Robert Hunter has ever said is that the song was inspired by The Hound of the Baskervilles. So I’m sticking to my story.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Adjective Noun: Malted Milk
Robert Johnson: Malted Milk
[purchase]
If you couldn’t tell, I’m having fun with this week’s theme. There are so many songs to choose from, you can just browse through your favorite artists and find one that fits. I vote for more grammar/song title-related themes.
For further proof that this theme is universal, and even timeless, here’s The King of the Delta Blues singing about one of the many vices that lead to his early departure.
Adjective Noun: True Colors
Cyndi Lauper: True Colors
[Purchase]
Not posting hit songs? Sorry, but this one's also worth it. I've been a fan of Cyndi Lauper for almost as long as I can remember. I love her voice, but I think it's always been more her persona that made me admire her. There's no one quite like her, and there's just no voice quite like hers either.
"True Colors" is just one of those songs that is so simple and touching that it seems timeless. It's been recorded by many different artists, but none seem to hit the spot quite like Cyndi's does.
Adjective Noun: Red Rain
Peter Gabriel: Red Rain
[purchase]
In general, we Starmakers tend not to post hit songs. I have never heard that it was a rule, but we tend to be drawn to artists and songs that are not as well known as, perhaps, they should be. But there are exceptions.
Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” went to #3 on the Billboard chart in 1987. The third single from the album So, it probably wouldn’t have done so well if it hadn’t followed “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” up the charts.
To my ear, “Red Rain” does not sound like a hit, even in the 1980s. The song combines electronic textures with Gabriel’s growing interest in world music. The lyrics are enigmatic; look the song up on Wikipedia and you will find three different interpretations. The closest thing to a pop element is the fact that the song has a great groove.
On the other hand, try listening to some of the 80s biggest hits today. Stripped of their newness, many of these songs prove to be interchangeable and disposable. And you’re talking to someone who thinks the 1980s were one the greatest decades for pop music ever. “Red Rain” is another story, however. Whatever it may be about, it still sounds as fresh to me now as it did then.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Adjective Noun: Simple Girl
Max Stalling: Simple Girl
[purchase]
Simple girl, but that's what Max likes about her.
Simple song, but that's what i like about it.
“Simple Girl, are you out there listening?
Simple Girl… Do You Exist?
Simple Girl, I'll bet your at the dime store,
But every time I go to shop, I forget my list.”
Adjective Noun: Dumb Fun
Juliana Hatfield: Dumb Fun
[purchase]
Hatfield's heavy indierock at its best: a proto-hipster anti-commericalist anthem turned out in low-tuned electric fuzz and feedback. This roller coaster of a song, and the amazingly potent scream that is 1995 release Only Everything, totally got me through young adulthood -- the song, and the memory of meeting Juliana Hatfield and Evan Dando wandering the halls of that same school afterhours one day near the end of my senior year, just me and these new grunge gods hanging in the hallway. They thought I was a teacher, maybe. Now I am.
Also incredible, and thematically relevant: the languid, muffled cry of rage that is Dying Proof, off the same album.
Adjective Noun: (Big) Yellow Taxi
This week's guest post comes from Susan, host of the very excellent blog Optimistic Voices
Matt Costa: Yellow Taxi
[purchase]
I “met” Boyhowdy through a Falcon Ridge post on my blog this past July… and I’ve been an avid follower of his Cover Lay Down ever since – when he asked if I’d contribute something to Star Maker Machine, I was honored, intrigued and challenged… and Matt Costa’s Yellow Taxi magically appeared in my inbox to fit the theme and give me courage…
It’s a sweet little song, by a skateboarder-turned-singer/songwriter with whom I was previously unfamiliar... and showcases a pleasant voice, a catchy beat and easy-to-sing-along-with lyrics – his music is a bit too pop for my taste (what I’d like to believe is a very diverse spectrum of folk, acoustic, rock, Americana, classic and Motown), but I’m going to pass the tip on to my 20-year-old son, who I think would very much enjoy.
However, between the title, the tempo and the words (“we shared some Conversation”), I couldn’t help but be reminded of someone who’s Been There, Done That, Received the Grammy: Joni Mitchell’s *Big* Yellow Taxi! – what’s another adjective among friends, right?
Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi (1970)
[purchase]
I’m a self-admitted Joniholic… and find it synchronistic that the title of this blog, Star Maker Machine, is from Free Man in Paris, her tune about David Geffen – the Christmas I gave my daughter the soundtrack to Practical Magic and later heard the strains of A Case of You (on repeat play) coming through the door of her bedroom was when I finally realized they had not switched babies on me in the hospital 16 years before…
Ladies of the Canyon was the first Joni Mitchell album I bought, in 1970 (also at the age of 16), at my next-door neighbor’s garage sale – I mostly absorbed the heart-based songs (For Free, Willy and Rainy Night House)…but I kept coming back to the quirky ditty about pink hotels, paved paradises and DDT, punctuated by girl-group shoo bop bop bop bops and Joni’s adorably cackling laugh at the end.
Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi (1974)
[purchase]
Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi (2007)
[purchase]
Joni rediscovered her own tune on 1974’s Miles of Aisles, this time accompanied by the jazz of Tom Scott’s L.A. Express… and again on 2007’s Shine with a Caribbean sound – the tree museum charge went from “a dollar and a half” to “twenty-five bucks” (when Amy Grant asked permission to cover the song, Joni consented, as long as Amy agreed to raise the rates) to “an arm and a leg”. In these days of climate change and pesticides: the cost of birds, bees and spotted apples? – priceless!
I find it fascinating that when the Counting Crows’ (very nice, very different) version of Big Yellow Taxi came out in 2002, most of their young fans hearing it for the first time thought it was the band’s original composition – “don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got ’til it's gone” indeed…
One of the musical highlights of my life was hearing the song as the 1997 Lilith Fair’s grand finale, enthusiastically performed by Sarah McLachlan, the Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, K’s Choice, Missy Elliott and Luscious Jackson – we in the audience were of course encouraged to sing along!
In checking the Joni Undercover site (painstakingly and passionately compiled and maintained by Bob Muller), I see there are 224 covers of Big Yellow Taxi - it’s a classic, it’s an anthem… it’s Joni (enough said… )
Amy Grant: Big Yellow Taxi (YouTube)
Counting Crows: Big Yellow Taxi (YouTube)
Submitted by Susan
Adjective Noun: Bourgeois Blues
Possessed By Paul James - Bourgeois Blues
[purchase]
Konrad Wert (aka: Possessed By Paul James) was raised in the Florida Everglades by an Amish Menonite preacher. He takes on his stage name in honor of this father and grandfather, and he now makes his home in Texas. He is known for contorting his face in pleasure and apparent pain, and subsequently shakes, convulses, stomps and yells throughout his performances. When listening to his recorded material you can feel those shakes and all but see his face.
Once, on ninebullets, I wrote that watching PBPJ play is like watching a person birth music directly from their soul. It's awe inspiring.
The Bourgeois Blues was originally recorded by Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter. It was written after Lead Belly went to Washington, D.C. at the request of Alan Lomax, to record a number of songs for the Library of Congress. After they had finished, they decided to go out with their wives to celebrate, but were thrown out of numerous establishments for being an interracial party. The song rails against racism, classism, and discrimination in general, with such verses as "The home of the Brave / The land of the Free / I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie".
Conrad's version can be found on the Hillgrass Bluebilly compilation, Hiram and Huddie. A double album tribute to Hank Williams and Huddie Ledbetter.
Adjective Noun: Silver Bell
Patty Griffin: Silver Bell
[purchase]
Patty Griffin's ill fated Silver Bell album has been mentioned here before, but I felt the need to revisit it this week.
Going into the year 2000, Patty Griffin was seemingly on an artistic high. The Dixie Chicks had recorded her song, "Let Him Fly" on their Fly album that sold 10 million copies. The Chicks then took Patty on tour with them and told anyone who would listen that she was their favorite songwriter on the planet. It seemed Patty would have a ready made audience for her third studio album when it was released later in the year. That's when things turned south.
Griffin's A&M label was swallowed whole by Universal Music Group in 1998 and she was shifted off to the Interscope imprint. She was now label mates with Snoop Dogg among others. Then, in 2000, UMG was gobbled up by Vivendi just weeks before Patty was to turn in her new album. Regardless, Griffin recorded, mixed, and mastered the songs that were to make up Silver Bell and delivered them to the new label heads. The label's response was to ask her to record a brand new album, with brand new songs, and a brand new band... something that would be more "radio friendly."
Rather than do that, Patty negotiated her way out of her contract with Vivendi/UMG. She was free... Silver Bell was not. She was unable to buy back the masters of the album. It has still never been properly released.
Fortunately, the music has found its way out into the open, as good music often will. Bootlegs of the album are openly traded on the official forums at pattygriffin.net, and several of the songs have seen official release in alternate versions. Patty rerecorded "Making Pies," "Top of the World," and "Standing" for future albums, and The Dixie Chicks released "Truth No. 2," and "Top of the World" on their 2002 release Home.
The song featured here is the title track to Patty Griffin's album that never was. It's a rocking number that really makes me wonder why the suits at her label thought no one would buy this album. It has never been released in any proper form, but I was lucky enough to see Patty perform this song live at The Ryman a few years back.
The purchase link above goes to the results of a search for Patty Griffin at amazon.com.
Adjective Noun: Blank Generation
[purchase]
My fave anthem of the ´77 punk generation, with built-in escape route. "I belong to the blank generation and I can take it or leave it each time... I belong to the - generation but I can take it or leave it each time..." Hell sings it like the devil´s hot on his heels, but the real star here is the underrated Robert Quine on guitar.
Hell based Blank Generation on a fun ditty that was the title song of a ´59 exploitation flick featuring Mamie Van Doren. "I run around in sandals, I never ever shave, and that´s the way I want to be when someone digs my grave..." The brain behind all this was none other than songwriter and self-proclaimed poet Rod McKuen, while the backing band is rumoured to be Bill Haley´s Comets. Can you dig it?
[purchase]
Richard Hell (born Myers) is still around, but apart from a short return to music in the early 90´s with Thurston Moore´s Dim Stars project, he mainly gets by as a ´vagabond art hustler´, writing novels and reviews. A few years back, he sold his extensive archives (anything from manuscripts and handwritten lyrics to gig flyers and videotapes) to the Fales Library at New York University for $50.000. Not a bad deal. You can see its fascinating contents here.
Adjective Noun: Haitian Divorce
The image above is “a zombie in a coco shell”, ie, a mug made from carved coconut shell. A zombie is, of course, the name of the drink.
Steely Dan: Haitian Divorce
[purchase]
Every so often, my wife and I have a moment that reminds us of why we are married to each other. Often, this involves one of us noting something absurd, and we start riffing on it, and the absurdity grows exponentially. Other times it can involve one of us remembering a snatch of a song lyric, and we puzzle it out together until we remember what song it comes from.
One time, we were in the car listening to Steely Dan’s album The Royal Scam. The song “Haitian Divorce” came on, and we found ourselves singing along to it at the top of our lungs, probably drawing stares from passing motorists, but if so we never noticed. We got all the way to the end of the song, turned to each other, a gave each other that look. No words were needed. The lyrics, of course, are completely inappropriate, but there it is.
So I dedicate this post to my wife, Janice. I love you.
Adjective Noun: Big Nothing
Elliott Smith: Big Nothing
[suicide prevention]
Straight from the lips of the artist: "...do what you want to - there's no-one to stop you... though it doesn't mean a thing..."
Uh-huh. I agree.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Adjective Noun: Sunny Skies
James Taylor: Sunny Skies
[purchase]
A classic folk fragment from back in the early days, before James Taylor became the elder statesman of litefolk and the poster boy for stuff white people like. This is the raw, fresh out of rehab Taylor, weary and still a bit shaken, trying to recover his sense of awe and appreciation -- less mature and polished, to be sure, but far more charming for it, and much more authentic.
For comparion's sake, since it seems to be cropping up as a sub-theme this week, here's a look at what two decades can do to a folk artist's sensibility: good stuff, to be fair, and catchy, too, but nothing so innocent as the original. Jazz it up with high production, string sections, and the works, and you get something albums with few gems, and far too much easy listening for my taste. So many good songs, lost to the lure of the studio session, the opulent sonic environment. So much power and emotion, lost at the altar to mass consumption and Contemporary Adult radioplay.
James Taylor: Frozen Man
[purchase]
Adjective Noun: Second Option
Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Second Option
[purchase]
Begonias is a collaboration album from Whiskeytown violinist Caitlin Cary and Nashville songwriter Thad Cockrell. Caitlin released a couple of solo albums after the dissolution of Whiskeytown as well as two albums with Tonya Lamm and Lynn Blakely – together known as Tres Chicas. Thad also put out two discs before the duo teamed up to make Begonias.
I’ve been meaning to say something about this album over at my place, but just can’t find the words. The album moves something inside me that is hard to explain. It’s got that classic country sound while still retaining the advantages of alt-country. And the vocals…. some of the best solo and harmony work I’ve EVER HEARD.
Second Option is the liveliest tune from the effort – mixed in with heartbreakingly sad country laments and conversational lovers’ ballads. Pick this one up.
Adjective Noun: Wandering Star
Lucero - Wandering Star
[purchase]
This song comes off Lucero's 2001 self-titled album. The opening verses of this song rang so true to me before I met my wife:
the bands are done I should go home
all my friends left a long time ago
the girl serving drinks is the only one I know
I got no good place to go
all my friends left a long time ago
the girl serving drinks is the only one I know
I got no good place to go
Man. For those that don't know...Lucero is easily one of the best bands in America right now. Having recently signed a 4 album major label deal I hope the whole country is about to know of them. Once a reviewer dispatched to review a Lucero concert penned that he thought the crowd might have been just as happy getting drunk and singing a long to a jukebox. He might not have been that far off.
Adjective Noun: Bum Leg
Cake Like: Bum Leg
[Purchase]
I'd wager to say I am one of only a few people who knew of actress/comedienne Kerri Kenney as a musician before they knew of her acting career on TV shows like Mtv's "The State" and Comedy Central's "Reno 911". As it is, Kerri Kenny's band Cake Like, released three albums before disbanding, and I always enjoyed their comedic take on rock music. That's not to say that they didn't have talent as musicians, but just that any rock band fronted by a comedienne is going to have a bit of a different perspective than someone who takes it more seriously. I also can't really imagine what theme we might come up with to be able to share this song otherwise, so I am jumping at it, despite "bum" being only a slang adjective.
This song is off Cake Like's first album, Delicious, which was only released in Japan. I must say, the album lacks quality (which is to be expected considering Kerri has admitted she only started playing bass about a month before they formed the band), but this song alone made it worth while for me because I can't seem to get through it without laughing out loud, despite it being less than two minutes long.
Despite loving this song because it makes me laugh, I don't feel it's necessarily a good sample of Cake Like's style, so I thought I'd also include a song off their last album which they took a lot more seriously, AND...for the theme's sake, I chose one that also fits.
Cake Like: Lucky One
Adjective Noun: Human Cannonball
[purchase]
Do you know a cooler name for a band? A journalist from Spin once described the Butthole Surfers as ´a gypsy commune of killer clowns reveling in their own morbid fascinations´, and that´s straight on the mark for once. What a wild bunch of acid-drenched, long-haired weirdos... Out to shock postpunk audiences everywhere, their tales of on-the-road mayhem are the stuff of legend. On the side, they produced some of the finest psychedelic noise to come out of Texas ever since Roky Erickson got institutionalized.
"Pardon me, I'm only bleeding, but you did cut me to the bone,
And tonight you're probably feeling like a human cannonball..."
And tonight you're probably feeling like a human cannonball..."
Or is that ´cannibal´? In the land of the Buttholes, nothing is ever certain. Gibby Haynes, I salute you.
Play loud.
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