Deep Album Tracks: Flamenco Sketches

Miles Davis: Flamenco Sketches

[purchase]

On my desert island, there are going to be times when I need to hear some jazz, and that means Miles Davis. Specifically, that means Kind of Blue. Davis heard music in his head that no one else did, and he found some of the best musicians in jazz history to play it. So, Flamenco Sketches has John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on saxes, and Bill Evans on piano. Of course, you can hear for yourself what a great trumpet player Miles Davis was. Flamenco Sketches comes at the end of Kind of Blue, and it is human nature that we can only remember so much information at a time. So, even though Kind of Blue only has five songs, it is the first four that people remember. Flamenco Sketches is a beautiful ballad with very subtle Spanish accents. It’s the kind of song you can get lost in, because it is so quiet and delicate. But it also rewards close listening.

Deep Album Tracks: Until I Believe In My Soul

Dexys Midnight Runners: Until I Believe In My Soul

[purchase]

In the United Sates, Dexys Midnight Runners are regarded as a one hit wonder, on account of their 1982 megahit Come On Eileen. One may charitably ascribe such a narrow view to the insularity of a society that believes its biggest sporting codes enjoy such global popularity as to justify calling their national competitions “world series”.

Of course Dexys are not a conventional one hit wonder; in most parts of the Western world they had at least one big hit before Come On Eileen. Their 1980 tribute to R&B singer Geno Washington, titled Geno, was a #1 hit in Britain, and a big hit throughout Europe (follow-up There There My Dear was a UK #7 hit). It may well be my favourite single of the 1980s.

Geno came from the outstanding Searching For The Young Soul Rebel album. For that exercise Dexys sported the shorehand look; for 1982’s Too-Rye-Ay Kevin Rowland and his fellow nocturnal joggers adopted the Irish peasant look.

Searching For The Young Soul Rebel was one of the great albums of the ’80s. My view may be anathema to Dexys fans, but I consider Too-Rye-Ay even better. Oddly, Come On Eileen was only the fourth song from the album to be released as a single. It was #1 everywhere but in North Korea (though even there the Dear Leader locked himself in the toilet and secretly had his thoughts verge on dirty). Follow up Jackie Wilson Said, a cover of the Van Morrison song, was also an international hit. Even the sixth single off the album, Let’s Get This Straight, managed to be a UK top 20 hit.

Until I Believe In My Soul wasn’t a single, but is something of a centrepiece of the album, traversing musical genres from folk to jazz, glorious horns and fiddles, impassioned vocals, whistling, coughing, orgasmic noises and angry mumbling (including a bit of swearing), plus one of the best cynical laughs in pop, and a killer chorus.

By the way, the name Dexys takes no apostrophe. It’s a reference to the drug Dexedrine (which makes you run at midnight, you see).

Deep Album Tracks: The Beat

Elvis Costello: The Beat

Purchase

When I play the desert island disc game, one of the albums that always comes to mind is This Year’s Model by Elvis Costello. Man, this is a perfect album with nary a weak track to be found. I love Costello in all of his early incarnations but This Year’s Model probably represents his highest moment. The music here is frantic. Steve Nieve’s organ is ever present and carnival-like. Costello sings with an angry vengeance. The whole album just works.

And while I'm at it, I officially nominate This Years Model as one of the greatest road trip albums in history!

Deep Album Tracks: Tennessee Jed

Grateful Dead: Tennessee Jed

[purchase]

I should probably start with an explanation. All of the posts for this theme have used album covers, so what the heck is this? As I recall, the vinyl release of the Grateful Dead’s Europe ‘72 had the words “Grateful Dead” and “Europe ‘72” printed on the shrink-wrap, but the image above is what you were left with once you peeled that off. So that is the album cover.

I had to post something by the Grateful Dead this week. They were my first favorite band. My oldest brother introduced me to them with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. My brother was a guitar player with visions of rock stardom, and he related to Jerry Garcia as a guitar god. But I heard something different. I was drawn to the warmth of Garcia’s voice, and especially to the storytelling in the lyrics. These qualities would eventually lead me to folk music. The Dead also introduced me to the blues, and probably made it easier for me to appreciate jazz much later. So, which album should I feature?

The Dead were at the height of their powers in the 1970s. This was the time when it all came together, and before it fell apart. Listen to the live performances captured in the Dick’s Picks and From the Vault series, and compare the recordings from the 70s to those from the 80s, and you will see what I mean. But Europe ‘72 is not from either of those series. Instead, it was an official release that came out when the band was still active. The Grateful Dead had one weakness, and that was that they were lazy singers. This meant that they hit lots of sour notes when they performed live, especially in the harmony vocals. So, for their official releases of live material, they would go into the studio and redo the vocals. Europe ’72 was done this way, and the results completely justify it. The vocals are as good as the Dead could get them, and the fire of a live performance is preserved. On Tennessee Jed, I particularly enjoy the interplay between Jerry Garcia’s guitar part and Pigpen’s piano work. In the lyric, the storytelling that I so love is on fine display, and the talking dog makes me smile.

Deep Album Tracks: Aja

Steely Dan: Aja

[purchase]

Music Appreciation 401: Final Exam - Counts for 25% of your final grade

Compare and contrast the previously posted "Livin' On The Fault Line" with Steely Dan's "Aja". Explain why this song would be on your desert island list.

Similarities:

Both songs were released in 1977.

Both songs were the non-hit title tracks off their respective albums.

Both songs are in the genre known as jazz-rock.

Extra credit: Both songs feature vibe player Victor Feldman.

Differences:

The Doobie Brothers exemplified the 70's laid-back California rock sound, whereas Steely Dan represented the New York City temperament: intellectual, slightly cynical, sophisticated, with a dash of sangfroid.

Aja, the song, features some of the best jazzmen around. Steely Dan (basically Walter Becker and Donald Fagan), arguably one of the best studio groups, like, ever, were known for their expertise in selecting primo sidemen. Take a look at the impressive roster for this song:

Wayne Shorter, saxophone (with Weather Report at the time)
Larry Carlton, guitar (in The Crusaders circa 1976; he was also spectacularly featured on Kid Charlemagne)
Denny Diaz, guitar Steely Dan's most consistent side member.
Joe Sample, electric piano (long-time member of The Crusaders)
Steve Gadd, drums
Michael Omartian, piano
Victor Feldman, vibes Featured in many session recordings from Frank Zappa to Miles Davis.
Chuck Rainey, bass I can't even begin to list the groups he's played with.
Timothy B. Schmit, vocals. Better known as one of The Eagles.

I'd bring Aja to any desert island exile because, well, Wayne Shorter and Larry Carlton on a Steely Dan song have got to be the pinnacle of wonderful in my eyes. And hell, they've got one of the Eagles as backing vocalists. When I wasn't listening to the Aja track, I'd be grooving on Deacon Blues because it has both Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour on guitar. Or I'd be groovin' on Peg, with Tom Scott and vocalist Michael McDonald, who is also featured on Livin' on the Fault Line, and do I get extra credit for mentioning that, too? I wouldn't be the only one with Steely Dan on an island sojourn: Rolling Stone Magazine lists it as one of their top 500 albums ever, and our very own Darius has posted 4 Steely Dan songs here, so he must love them, too!

Deep Album Tracks: Inheritance

Talk Talk: Inheritance

Purchase

A lot of albums have run through my head as I’ve considered this week’s theme, but it was Geoviki’s thoughts about the nostalgic appeal of some music that convinced me that I had to post something from Talk Talk’s 1988 album, Spirit of Eden.

What makes a great album might be a collection of great songs. But Geoviki is right that what makes a favorite album is a collection of great songs coupled with an album’s role in our personal life’s narrative.

I think Spirit of Eden is one of the best albums I’ve ever heard, based only on it’s merits as art. But it also has enormous nostalgic appeal for me. I remember driving home from the San Francisco airport having just dropped off a girl who I guessed I would never see again (I was right). This album distracted me from that pain as I left the city. I also remember long nights talking with friends while Mark Hollis’s crying vocals accompanied us in the background. There are many other times when this album has been in the background of my life.

The Spirit of Eden takes a lot of getting used to. There is nothing easy or catchy about it. It’s quiet and rarely demands your attention. It develops slowly. Many of you will probably push “play” on this post, wait 20 seconds, then move on to something else. I get that, I really do. But to me it’s beautiful.

I think all of the tracks would qualify as “deep tracks”, since there are no hits from the album, so I just chose a good song that hasn’t been posted on this blog before.

Deep Album Tracks: Livin' On The Fault Line

The Doobie Brothers: Livin' on the Fault Line

[purchase]

Underneath us all
There's a world that we always forget 'til it moves us,
Where the moon on the bay dances all alone.
Ramone, he draw the razor swift, it slice the air,
No more lovely dreams of those summer nights
Down in Santo Domingo.

Livin' on the Fault Line was the second album in the Michael McDonald era of the Doobies, and is considered a sleeper, only in that it didn't sell a bajillion copies like their next album, Minute by Minute, did. Unlike the rest of their stuff, this 1977 album saw no single hits, even with the Carly-Simon-penned "You Belong To Me" and a Marvin Gaye cover, "Little Darlin' (I Need You)".

The unheralded title song is probably the jazziest of any Doobies tune, on what is a pretty jazz-rock-y LP in toto. Written and sung (mostly) by guitarist Pat Simmons (although there's no mistaking McDonald's vocals in there, too), it features noted jazz vibraphonist Victor Feldman (of Seven Steps to Heaven fame).

I think the reason this album carries such affection with me is that I listened to it pretty much nonstop when I was road-tripping alone in SoCal in the summer of 1978. It's got that nostalgia thing going for it, you see, so if I were indeed stuck on that fabled desert island, I'd be playing this with memories of being young and cruising through California.

Dammit man, the Doobie Brothers broke up! Sheee-it! When did that happen? (Jack Colton, Romancing the Stone, 1984)

Samples and Found Sounds = > Deep Album Tracks: The Jungle Line

Joni Mitchell: The Jungle Line

[purchase]

Joni Mitchell is one of my favorite artists. Most people who say that would probably name Blue or Court and Spark as their favorite album of hers. Many would shun my choice, The Hissing of Summer Lawns. You see, Mitchell was one of the first of the singer-songwriters, and she made her name with her confessional songs and her folk-influenced sound. But Hissing was her first attempt to break away from that. The songs are written mostly in the third person, and clearly are not confessional at all. And musically, the album represents the deepening of Mitchell’s interest in jazz. Over time, the reputation of the album has improved. In France They Kiss on Main Street and especially Edith and the Kingpin are now recognized as two of Mitchell’s best songs. But The Jungle Line doesn’t usually come up in those conversations.

Joni Mitchell built The Jungle Line from a field recording of what is identified in the liner notes as the “warrior drums of Burundi”. On top of that, Mitchell added her own acoustic guitar and synthesizer parts, and of course, her vocal. The lyric contrasts the urban jungle with the lush actual jungle depicted in the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Just as Mitchell’s instrumental parts do not tame the wildness of the source music, so too does the city fail to tame the wildness in Rousseau’s heart. This is a perfect match of music and lyric.

Samples and Found Sounds: Summer’s Cauldron

XTC: Summer‘s Cauldron

[purchase]

In nature, crickets and birds do not chirp precisely on the beat. That they do here is most likely the fault of producer Todd Rundgren. This approach to music making perfectly fits this paean to the natural world. Elsewhere on the album Skylarking, Rundgren’s production gets a little heavy-handed for my taste. But here on the song that opens the album, everything works just right.

Samples and Found Sounds: If You Were Here

Poe: If You Were Here

[Purchase]

Imagine, if you will, having your beloved father pass away and having dreams of him telling you "you're forgetting my voice" which makes you go searching for old answering machine tapes that might have that voice on it. But instead, what you find are long lost recordings of letters he had written to you when you were very young. A voice from the grave.

That is what happened as Poe, aka Annie Danielewski, was embarking on writing her sophomore album. This album, "Haunted" is littered with recordings of her father and of her own voice on answer machines and these (quite literally) "found" sounds make an album which promised to be something emotional and rich into something heart-wrenching and breath-taking. This same occurrence was shared by her brother, author Mark Danielewski who was also inspired and wrote his novel "House of Leaves". Poe's "Haunted" also works as a sort of soundtrack to her brother's novel.

The song I chose is the album's closer, which, like the moral of the story, finds redemption and release for the character of the story and album and for Poe herself as she says her final farewell to her father as an adult and a child, and he answers her via his tapes from the grave.

Samples and Found Sounds: What The World Needs Now/Abraham, Martin, & John

Tom Clay: What the World Needs Now Is Love/Abraham, Martin and John

[purchase]

Few top 10 hits have featured live recordings of murder. This peace anthem, released on Motown subsidiary MoWest and a #8 US hit in 1971, includes the live coverage of John F Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and, chillingly, the sound of Robert Kennedy being murdered in 1968, including his last, optimistic words. All that, plus Ted Kennedy’s tear-choked eulogy at Bobby’s funeral and Martin Luther King’s poignant words in his last speech before he was gunned down in Memphis, is interspersed with army drill singing (the “I don’t know what I believe” stuff), and, framing the whole thing, a rather affecting interview with a child about definitions of such terms as bigotry and prejudice.

With all that, it matters little that the covers of Bacharach/David’s What The World Needs Now Is Love and Dion’s overly sentimental Abraham, Martin & John – performed by session band The Blackberries – are rather cheesy. Actually, the way The Blackberries launch into What The World Needs Now after the Ted speech compensates for the cheesiness.

Tom Clay, it seems, was a bit of an operator. In the 1950s, he was one of the radio DJs nabbed in the payola scandal (which was really an attack on rock & roll, rather than a fortification of ethical principles). At the height of Beatlemania, Clay cashed in on having interviewed the Fab Four by launching a Beatles Booster Club, which offered in exchange for a fee of a dollar an item used by the Beatles. Clay got 80,000 payments of a dollar. Allegedly, not everybody got the promised Beatles item, and the few who did received stuff like used tissues and cigarette butts.

Clay died in 1995 at the age of 66.

Samples and Found Sounds: One in Ten

808 State: One in Ten

[purchase]

This is not the post I set out to do. It’s all the fault of a reader named Leopold Stotch. Two years ago, Stotch left a comment on one of my posts. It was the second part of my survey of polyrhythm, from Tricky Beats week. I had posted Help Me Somebody, by Brian Eno and David Byrne. Byrne and Eno had created an entire album of music built around samples of talk shows, radio preachers, and other spoken word found sounds. Stotch, in his comment, let me know that some of this music was sampled in turn by a group called 808 State. In checking them out, I found One in Ten.

One in Ten is technically a remix, but I really don’t like the term. It is built on a snippet of a recognizable song, but the resulting work is something new entirely. This one takes as its starting point the old UB40 song One in Ten. I suspect that the 808 State song also contains other samples that I don’t recognize. I still love the original UB40 song, but I find 808 State’s take off from it fascinating.

Samples and Found Sounds: AM Radio

Everclear: AM Radio

[purchase]

This 2000 ode to the glories of AM radio (back when it actually featured music you wanted to hear) starts with a radio announcer from LA station KHJ, followed by the intro to Jean Knight's Mr. Big Stuff. There's a bonus TV laugh track in the middle, too.

If you're as old as Everclear vocalist Art Alexakis (and me), you'll get the lyrics to this song right away.

I'd be in bed with the radio on
I would listen to it all night long just to hear my favorite song
You'd have to wait 'til you could hear it on the AM radio…

Do you remember that sinking feeling when you turned on the radio just to hear the final chords of your favorite song you'd usually wait hours to hear…which meant you wouldn't hear it again for a while. I remember getting a little portable tape recorder and pressing the microphone to the AM radio speaker to capture that horrible, tinny sound just for the pleasure of The Monkees music on demand.

I know I too often don't appreciate the instant access of nearly any song nowadays. Look here, you can just click that little arrow in this post and hear AM Radio instantly! Enjoy…

Samples and Found Sounds: It's Only Natural

Crowded House: It's Only Natural

[purchase]

Surely, there are choices of more obvious and consistent substance for this week's theme - songs which utilize found sound throughout, and depend on them to carry the tone of a musical piece. But let us not underestimate the establishment of that tone, as evidenced here in the madcap, cartoonish, don't-blink-you'll-miss-it found sound collage which kicks off my favorite "guilty pleasure" Crowded House single, released as the last of five charting singles for Woodface (1991), a critical and popular success and the first and only Crowded House album to feature songwriter and band founder Neil Finn's brother Tim, who had previously worked with him for decades in Split Enz. The breezy artpop which follows is all the more perfect for having emerged from such a short, sweet cacophony.

Earth Day = > Samples and Found Sounds: Some Houses

Billy Jonas: Some Houses

[purchase]

In our journey through Samples and Found Sounds, we will be hearing plenty of music that uses electronically sampled sounds. But I want to start off with found sounds, specifically home made instruments. I can think of no better example of that than the music of Billy Jonas. In Some Houses, Billy Jonas takes the listener through a list of various materials that a house might be made of. But, in the end, Jonas reminds us that our most important home is this planet. Listen closely, and you will notice that the percussion in each verse corresponds to the material that house is made of. Most of the instruments used will not sound familiar; Jonas uses a percussion kit made of common household items. So there are pot lids and trash can lids, even a bicycle horn, but nothing you would normally think of as a musical instrument. All of this could be put together with samplers, but Jonas plays all of these instruments in real time. This makes his live performances wonderous events. Try to sit where you have a good view.

Earth Day: Crazy Horses

The Osmonds: Crazy Horses

[purchase]


It was one of the strange moments in pop when the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the apartheid-era cheerleaders for racist Puritanism, banned those clean-living Osmonds from its airwaves because they assumed Crazy Horses was about drugs. The song is, in fact, the rockingest environmental anthem of its day – at least among those songs of that kind aimed at the pubescent crowd or younger.

The song is, of course, not about heroin, but about the air pollution caused by automobiles. Written by Alan, Merrill and Wayne (the three older brothers), the Osmonds at other times apparently suggested it might about smoking cigarettes, one of the hundreds of things their Mormonism bans. Why in that case the single cover (and the LP of the same title) would show exhaust fumes emanating from heaps of cars copiously corrupting the air in clouds of poison, heroically breathed in by Donny and his brothers for my benefit and yours, is as unclear as the air of any urban conurbation in rush hour traffic.

Crazy Horses certainly is not your typical Osmonds number. If one didn’t know better, one would imagine the gruff lead singer to sport a beard bigger even than that of the dude in Kansas; the keyboardist not being happy young Donny, but some bespectacled evil genius whose excess consumption of hallucinogenic substances has given him the illusion that his screaming synth riff will literally blow your mind, man (and if you are under the influence of hallucinogens while listening to Crazy Horses, our putative malevolent mastermind might well be right); and the guitarist being the newly-recruited glam rocker who by sheer force of glitter and make-up infuses the old band’s hard rock sound with a pop sensibility.

Instead, as we know, the performers are not drugged dropout hippie veterans who in 1972 still coming to terms with the cold ’70s, but a gang of clones created by a mad orthodontist and his flamboyant hairdresser brother.

Earth Day: (Nothing But) Flowers

Talking Heads: (Nothing But) Flowers

[purchase]

One day some time ago, I was in New York City, and I overheard a remarkable conversation. Two young ladies, both vegan, were talking about an awful experience one of them had had recently. She had decided that she ought to get closer to nature by getting a pet. She chose a snake. She wanted to find vegan food for it, but she learned to her horror that it only ate live animals. Almost sobbing, she told her friend that she was forced to get rid of it. Now, these two young ladies might have gained from this a greater appreciation of the balance of nature and its delicacy. But no. They both agreed that snakes were immoral creatures because they ate meat.

This story gets to the heart of what makes the lyrics to so many potential songs for this week’s theme so “hippy-dippy”, as FiL put it so well. And (Nothing But) Flowers starts off this way. But then comes the line, “If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn mower.” From there, the song becomes a lament for bygone suburban sprawl and technology. I don’t think that David Byrne meant the song to be a celebration of certain parts of New Jersey, however. Rather, Byrne is using irony to say that, yes, we as humans need to change our relationship with our planet, but this does not mean renouncing every footprint of human habitation from the planet. We must find a balance. Earth belongs to whales and dolphins, but also to human beings, and none of us would know how to live without our technology. Try not using any electricity in your house for 24 hours, and you will see what I mean. I think this is also what David Byrne is saying.

Earth Day: Don't Kill the Whale

Yes: Don't Kill the Whale

[purchase]

1978's Tormato is generally considered one of Yes' worst albums, and I won't argue with that. Most of it is a mess. ("Arriving UFO", anyone?) However I always thought that this song rocked. But with it's proggy keyboards and hippy-dippy lyrics, it was probably Exhibit #1 in the case for punk rock.

Earth Day: Grazing in the Grass

The Friends of Distinction: Grazing in the Grass

[purchase]

Grazing in the Grass was a #1 Billboard hit in 1968 for the South African trumpet player Hugh Masekela. In that incarnation, it was originally an instrumental song, but in 1969 the pop group The Friends of Distinction set lyrics to it and made the top ten with it once again. And what cheerful, nature-loving lyrics they are:

The sun beaming down between the leaves,
And the birds dartin' in and out of the trees,
Everything here is so clear, you can see it,
And everything here is so near, you can feel it…

Can you dig it?

Fiddle and Violins => Earth Day: Gentle Arms of Eden

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer: Gentle Arms of Eden

[purchase]

Dave Carter gives us a lyric that offers the history of life on earth as a prayer of thanks for all that She gives us, and he manages the neat trick of not sounding at all preachy. So Gentle Arms of Eden seemed to me to be the perfect overture for our week-long celebration of Earth Day. Tracy Grammer’s fiddle enters on the second verse, and she takes a solo after the second chorus. Grammer is not a flashy fiddler, which may be why we got through all of last week without hearing her playing. But flash is not what this song needs. Her part here is the perfect complement to the mood of the song.