Metal Box

Finally got it. This thing even looks cool in iTunes.

Cardinal Reunion On Again?

Eric Matthews was recently interviewed by Stereogum, and it appears his on again, off again collaboration with songwriter Richard Davies is on again for the moment:

"With Richard and I, there are always ups and downs. But, where we are currently is pretty much in a up," Matthews says. "And things are friendly. Often with us things can be tense. So this is a nice buffer, the space between us."

Plans for a new Cardinal album (their first since the 1994 debut) appear to be back on track. Matthews had previously posted a few demos online at a point when it looked like the collaboration would fizzle out, but those are now gone. You can download one new in-progress track, "Carbolic Smoke Ball," over at Stereogum.

Without any insult intended to anything either Matthews or Davies has done since Cardinal's demise, I think their individual talents complement each other very well, and it is good to see them working together again.

Kinks Kovers

I know this post will probably come off the wrong way to many Kinks fans, but I am struck by how many covers of Kinks songs I prefer to the original versions. Below is a list of some of the covers that I prefer to the Kinks' original versions:

"Lola" - The Raincoats
"David Watts" - The Jam
"Oklahoma U.S.A." - Yo La Tengo
"Big Sky" - Yo La Tengo
"Stop Your Sobbing" - The Pretenders
"I Go To Sleep" - The Pretenders
"Days" - Elvis Costello
"Fancy" - Redd Kross
"I Need You" - The Rezillos
"I'm Not Like Everybody Else" - The Chocolate Watchband
"I'm Not Like Everybody Else" - Camper Van Beethoven
"Love Me Till The Sun Shines" - Lyres
"Tired Of Waiting" - Lyres
"Victoria" - The Fall
"Where Have All The Good Times Gone" - David Bowie
"Waterloo Sunset" - Def Leppard

Okay, just kidding about that last one, I don't think anyone can touch the Kinks' version of "Waterloo Sunset" and they probably shouldn't try. Obviously, "You Really Got Me" has been covered at some point by every band to ever practice in a garage. There have been many worthy covers of the song, but for me none top the original.

Still, I'm struck by what a long list this is, as I'd be hard pressed to think of a single cover of a Beatles or Rolling Stones song that I prefer to the original. (Actually, I like Devo's version of "Satisfaction" better than the Stones', but that's the exception that proves the rule).

I'm at a bit of a loss to explain this, as generally I do like the Kinks' versions of these songs a lot, it's just that I prefer the covers for a variety of reasons that differ from song to song.

The Velvet Monkeys - "Everything is Right" Arlington, VA Public Access TV, 1981

I'm trying to put together a new post on The Velvet Monkeys, a band I have written about before. While doing some research (and beyond the basics, actual information on the internet is relatively scarce) I came across this clip on the YouTube channel of Malcolm Riviera. It's The Velvet Monkeys "playing" on an Arlington, VA public access cable channel back in 1981. Unless my eyes deceive me, I believe this clip pre-dates Riviera's own tenure in the band, as it appears to be Elaine Barnes pretending to play keyboards. It's certainly Don Fleming on guitar and vocals and Jay "The Rummager" Spiegel on drums. Based on the date, I assume the bass player is Steven Soles (although to be honest, I wouldn't know him from Adam). (I just noticed Riveria's notes confirm this is the line-up.)

Anyway, I thought this clip was just too cool not to share right now, while I work on a proper post. Riviera has lots of other cool videos up, including live recordings made at the old 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C.

Deluxe Shoot Out The Lights Coming From Rhino Handmade

Rhino Handmade has announced plans to release a Deluxe Edition of Richard And Linda Thompson’s legendary swan song, Shoot Out The Lights, with previously unreleased live performances from their "emotionally charged" final U.S. tour. "Emotionally charged" is actually quite the understatement here. The tour coincided with the ugly breakup of the Thompsons' romantic and artistic partnership. The set includes a 40 page book that details such fun anecdotes as the time Linda kicked Richard in the shins during a solo at a show in Providence.

The live tracks were mostly recorded in San Francisco and Santa Cruz and include the following eleven tracks: "Dargai," "Back Street Slide," "Pavanne," "I’ll Keep It With Mine," "Borrowed Time, "Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?," "I’m A Dreamer," "Honky Tonk Blues," "Shoot Out The Lights," "For Shame Of Doing Wrong," "Dimming Of The Day."

It would have been nice if this edition included an official release of the much bootlegged version of the album recorded by Gerry Rafferty and the B-side "Living In Luxury" that was included on early CD pressings, but alas that is not the case.

I already own Shoot Out The Lights on LP, CD (with "Living In Luxury") and SACD. Do I need another version? No. Will I buy it again? Yes. I really do want to hear those live tracks. By all accounts the personal turmoil resulted in some of the most intense and committed performances of either artists' career.

Blockbuster

The only thing I find surprising about today's news that Blockbuster is preparing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy is that they still have 3,425 retail locations, and that they are planning to close only around 500 of those stores during their restructuring. In my part of the country, Blockbuster went from being omnipresent to virtually invisible, seemingly overnight.

This video from The Onion feels all too right. It's strange to me how huge Blockbuster was just a short time ago, and yet now it feels like they never existed at all, or are at most a relic from a dimly remembered past. Paradigms shift quickly.

It is a reminder of the impermanence of all things in life.


Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Different Drum

I remember hearing "Different Drum" by The Stone Poneys (featuring a young singer named Linda Ronstadt) on AM radio a lot when I was a kid. Released in 1967, the Stone Poneys' version of the song would not have been new at the time, but it would not have been old enough to be an "oldie" either. As far as I can remember our local AM station (WNAV in Annapolis) did not change their heavy rotation very often. When they found a song they liked, they stuck with it for ten to fifteen knots years.

I have a specific memory of hearing the song in my Mom's old Rambler station wagon (the Rambler only had AM radio) and being intrigued enough by it to ask what the lyrics were about. My Mom explained the meaning of the saying "marching to the beat of a different drummer," and told me the song was about two people who had different outlooks on life so their relationship couldn't work. The concept made an impression on me, and although I think I understood the metaphor, somewhere in my childhood mind I still had a vision of two people marching in different directions followed by two different drummers playing a different beat.

"Different Drum" was penned by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, but never recorded by his band (although I have the feeling some knowledgeable Monkeeologist will chime in to tell me that in fact the Monkees recorded an unreleased demo of the song during the Pool It sessions). The first recording of the song to be released was by folk revivalists the Greenbriar Boys for their 1966 album Better Late than Never! on the Vanguard label.

Written and sung from the male perspective, the song is a gentle kiss off with an age old theme; boy meets girl, girl wants to settle down, boy wants to sow his wild oats, relationship ends. This is not to say that in this form it's not a good song; the lyrics are well constructed and the melody is highly memorable. But in this first version it's not a zeitgeist capturing song as it would be when Ronstadt interpreted it, and it wasn't a hit. Nevertheless, "Different Drum" in its original version (or as sung by Ronstadt or later Nesmith himself in a country-rock style) is as good a riposte as any to the critics who claimed the Monkees had no "real" talent of their own. "Different Drum" is as good as, or better than, the tunes the hired Tin Pan Alley guns were writing for the Monkees at the time.

There are some songs where the gender of the singer doesn't make much difference. You can change a "she" to a "he" or a "boy" to a "girl" and the meaning of the song doesn't change dramatically. "Different Drum" is not one of those songs. The gender of the singer (and the gender pronouns they chose) is central to the song's meaning.

As such, an interesting dynamic has evolved as the song has been interpreted and re-interpreted by different artists over the years. As previously noted, in the versions by the Greenbriar Boys and later Nesmith, the song has what you might call a traditional gender dynamic; it's sung from the perspective of a male who doesn't want to commit to a female who is looking for stability.

But it's a totally different song when a woman sings it. Ronstadt turns the tables on the boy, and now it's the girl who wants to sow her wild oats while the boy just wants to settle down. Further, the object of Ronstadt's lack of affection ends up being feminized by the gender shift; he's "pretty," and he "cries" and "moans" over the end of the relationship. But at the same time, there is a slightly more sinister connotation to the lines about trying to "pull the reins in" then when it was sung by a male lead. As sung by Ronstadt, "Different Drum" implicitly becomes a song about casting off the shackles of traditional gender roles.

This sexually liberated female perspective was not often heard in popular music up to that point, and the song makes Ronstadt something of an archetype shattering figure. Neither virgin nor whore, she's simply not ready to settle down and sees no reason why she shouldn't enjoy herself until she is.

It should be noted that this shift in popular culture was made possible to a large degree by the introduction of oral contraceptives to the U.S. market in 1960, which for the first time in human history made it possible for choices about reproduction to be easily and reliably made solely by the woman. Female contraception (despite repeated attacks on it by reactionary forces) is so taken for granted today that it is easy to forget the extent to which "the pill" helped revolutionize gender relationships in the later half of the twentieth century. It is within that context that in Ronstadt's hands "Different Drum" becomes more than just a break up song, but also a celebration of liberated female sexuality.

For my money the most interesting of the later covers of the song is the 1990 version by the Lemonheads off their Favorite Spanish Dishes EP. Evan Dando sings the lyrics exactly the way Ronstadt did in her 1967 hit version, declining to shift back to the traditional male gender role as most male singers do when covering it. It's an interesting decision, and it creates layers of gender ambiguity in the song. By addressing the song to a "boy" is Dando singing the lyrics from the female perspective? Is he singing it one gay man to another? Or is it sung from the perspective of a straight man declining the advances of a gay man (maybe that's what he means by traveling to the beat of a different drum)? All these things are left ambiguous by Dando's choice of gender pronouns. These qualities are amplified by the the image Dando projected during the early 90s: Young. Pretty. Self-destructive. Sexually ambiguous. All of these elements collide in the song to create a fabulous artistic tension that is missing from other later-day covers such as the very nice versions by The Pastels and Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs (who stick pretty closely to Nesmith's and Ronstadt's interpretations respectively).

I'm sure all of these thoughts were far from my mind as I enjoyed listening to the song in the back seat of my Mom's Rambler sometime during the early 70s. But there is little doubt in my mind that it was AM radio staples like "Different Drum" that sparked my life-long love of popular music.

Forever In Blue Jeans

Michael Tomasky at The Guardian asks his readers to "Name us a song or two that all "right-thinking people" would dismiss as sentimental but that you love. And be bold and unapologetic!"

I'll start off with Neil Diamond's "Forever In Blue Jeans" a top 20 hit from 1979, seen here performed in concert for a CBS special in 2009. I could list you hundreds of reasons why all "right thinking people" should not only dismiss this bit of sentimental drivel, but should actively hate it. Instead, I'll limit myself to eight very compelling reasons:

1) This is not a track by the (relatively) cool, early, "Jewish Elvis" Neil Diamond. Nor is it by the Rick Rubin rehabilitated Neil Diamond either. No, this is the by the full-on, rhinestone-jumpsuit-wearing, 70s schlockmeister, Neil Diamond.

2) The fact that the track appears on the You Don't Bring Me Flowers LP should be enough for anyone with even a modicum of "taste" in music to write the song off without even hearing it.

3) The song was used to advertise actual blue jeans. By the Gap.

4) It's been performed on American Idol (by a white guy with dreadlocks no less).

5) It was produced by Bob Gaudio (of The Four Seasons, who is largely to blame for foisting the reactionary Jersey Boys on an unsuspecting world).

6) It features one of those awful disco-synth string arrangements that were already passe by 1979.

7) Oh my God. Look at those middle-aged white people in Diamond's audience try to dance. They probably paid over $500 a head and got all dressed up to sing along to a song about...

8) Most damning of all, this song belongs to the hideous musical sub-genre that features fabulously wealthy people singing about how great it is to be poor. Like John Lennon asking us to "imagine no possessions," Diamond's own life is so far from the simple, happy existence he celebrates in the song, it's laughable.

"Money talks,
But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk,
And long as I can have you here with me,
I'd much rather be,
Forever in blue jeans"

Look Neil, if money is so bad (or at the very least inessential to happiness) I'd be happy to take some of your many millions off your hands for you. Seriously.

I could probably make a relatively compelling argument that songs like this are foisted on us by the entertainment industry to keep the resentment of society's "have-nots" from boiling over into something like a revolution (or at the very least a less regressive tax code). After all, if Hollywood movies, hit pop songs and tabloids teach us nothing else, it's that the rich are never as happy as us simple folk. So maybe I shouldn't even bother to notice that the top 5% in the United States own something like 60% of the country's wealth, while the other 95% of us fight it out over what's left over. After all, all that money hasn't made those fancy rich folks happy, so why should I care? I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans. Yeah, right.

And yet, I love this song.

"Honey's sweet,
But it ain't nothing next to baby's treat,"

First of all, it's hard not to love a song that slips lyrics so casually obscene and vulgar into a tune that gets airplay on easy listening stations and CBS television specials. There's just something about that I respect.

I'm not stupid. I know Neil Diamond doesn't remotely live the lyrics to this song. He's an artist. A performer. An entertainer. A showbiz personality. But the fact is, I really can relate to the song's sentiment. I've made certain decisions in my life that have likely minimized the amount of money I earn, but maximized the amount of time I get to spend with my wife and kids. I wouldn't have it any other way. I was listening to this song on my iPod earlier today waiting for my wife and kids, thinking about the role of sentimentality in music. Just as the song ended I spotted my kids running towards me, just genuinely and totally happy to see me. I feel like I've done okay for myself. I really would much rather be forever in blue jeans.

Other sentimental songs I love:

"Giddy Up Go" and "Teddy Bear" by Red Sovine
I don't think music gets much more sentimental than Red Sovine's signature trucking songs. Both songs feature spoken-word vocals and it sounds like 'ole Red might choke up at any moment. "Giddy Up Go" tells the story of a trucker who discovers that his long-lost son is also a trucker now. "Teddy Bear" is about how a young paraplegic boy whose truck drivin' father has perished in an accident finally gets his wish to ride in a truck thanks to CB radio and some big hearted truckers. You would be hard pressed to find more blatantly emotionally manipulative music than these two songs, and yet I find them strangely sublime.

"Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro
This makes "worst song ever" lists about as often as any other song I can think of. It's a totally maudlin song about a guy who loses his girl to suicide. It even features a Christmas puppy. And yet it is so totally over-the-top and excessive in its sentimentality that I can't help but love it.

"Little Green Apples" by Roger Miller
Written by Bobby Russell (the same guy who wrote "Honey"). This song actually chokes me up. It's about a guy whose wife is tolerant of his flaws, and if that ain't lovin' him, "God didn't make little green apples and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime." It would be easy to dismiss the song as sexist, except that it is so clear that the protagonist really appreciates everything his wife does for him. It's about feeling like you don't really deserve the love your significant other gives, but being grateful for receiving it anyway. It's another sentiment I can relate to. Also, Roger Miller was a genius.

"The Most Beautiful Girl" by Charlie Rich
Everybody's supposed to hate the sappy "Countrypolitan" sound of the 70s, but I've always loved this song. And as you can see I have a soft spot for sappy country music.

"Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney and Wings
I understand why a lot of people hate McCartney, I really do. Still, I find this answer to his critics pretty convincing. That throbbing Macca bassline helps.

"A Tiny Broken Heart" by The Louvin Brothers
It's about a little boy who gets his heart broken because his his playmate's parents are too poor to stay in town. Frankly, The Louvin Brothers could have harmonized to the phone book and I would find it incredibly moving.

"Now Is Better Than Before" by Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Jonathan Richman has created his own unique musical and artistic aesthetic by refusing to be afraid of being corny and sentimental, and by rejecting even the slightest hint of "coolness" or cynicism. He is one of the bravest artists I can think of. I find this to be one of his most moving songs.

More:

"Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain" by Willie Nelson

"Just An Old Fashioned Love Song" by Three Dog Night

"What A Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke

"A Good Year For The Roses" by George Jones

"Then Came You" by The Spinners with Dionne Warwick

"A Place In The Sun" by Stevie Wonder

"You Are Everything" by The Stylistics

"Beeswing" by Richard Thompson

"All The Right Reasons" by The Jayhawks

I could go on...these are just some of the first ones to pop into my head. What sappy, sentimental songs do you love?

Phil Ochs - Kansas City Bomber

You might expect a song called "Kansas City Bomber" by leftist troubadour Phil Ochs to be a sympathetic take on the plight of a wrongly accused Union Activist, or a scathing rebuke of a right-wing terrorist, or at least topical in some way. Instead it's a portrait of a Roller Derby Queen who finds success in love more difficult than victory in the ring. Ochs wrote the song for the 1972 Raquel Welch film of the same name, but the film's producers ended up not using it.

It's hard to listen to this song and not hear the pathos and desperation in Ochs' voice. As a committed protest singer, he had become a fish-out-of-water by the 1970s, and was struggling to remain relevant. He was battling an epic case of writers block. He was clinically depressed over the collapse of 60s idealism. His public behavior was becoming more and more erratic. So when producer Lee Housekeeper approached Ochs with the idea of writing the theme song for the upcoming Raquel Welch vehicle, he jumped at the opportunity, hoping it might re-ignite his diminished creative spark. After all, he enjoyed watching Roller Derby on TV, and a song about the sport probably seemed like as good an idea to him as anything else at the time.

Given the depressing (heartbreaking really) backdrop against which the song was composed, it is a wonder that it is listenable at all. But to my ears "Kansas City Bomber" is a catchy and--dare I say it--fun song. There's no deep meaning to be found in the song itself any more than there is in the movie. But like Ochs' best protest songs, it's about struggle and the will to persevere in the face of adversity. When Ochs sings "But now she is trapped on the track, on the track, And God help the lady in her way," I can't help but smile. Perhaps he's reaching for some grand metaphor here; if so, the fact that it doesn't really work only makes the song more appealing in its modest way.

Ochs' back up band on the track is the Australian retro-rock band Daddy Cool, who are apparently still active (you can become friends with them on Facebook). According to Wikipedia, Ochs also cut a demo of the song with The Monkees' Mickey Dolenz on backup vocals. I would love to hear that version someday.


The B-side to "Kansas City Bomber" is "Gas Station Women" a song featured on Ochs' light-selling final studio album, Greatest Hits (which was not a greatest hits compilation, but a collection of new album tracks). The fact that Ochs had to resort to using a song that had been released two years previous as a B-side suggests the depth of his writers' block at the time.

Nevertheless, "Gas Station Women" is another interesting songwriting experiment for Ochs. In form and content it is a straight ahead country number. Listening to it, I am reminded of just how closely Ochs' voice resembled that of one of his formative influences, the great honky-tonk singer Faron Young. Ochs crams as many honky-tonk clichés as he can into the lyrics. There's the mistake of leaving the farm for the city, then falling for the wrong kind of girl. There's the heartbreak that inevitably follows and turns the protagonist to drink. But then there's the chorus ("Fill 'er up with love, Please won't you, mister? Just the hi-test is what I used to say, But that was before I lost my baby, I'll have a dollar's worth of regular today") that takes the song well out of the range of generic country music and into the realm of the surreal. It is a very strange, but compelling song, and I always want to sing along to the chorus, even when I'm not drunk.

Speaking of Roller Derby, the sport seems to be making something of a comeback. Here in Rhode Island we have a highly active league that Providence Mayor David Cicilline has declared "the pulse of the city." The nice young lady who teaches my kids' sport classes at the YMCA is one of the Providence Roller Derby's biggest stars ("Crazy Dukes" of the Sakonnet River Roller Rats)... "And God help the lady in her way."

Sky Rockets In Flight

On his blog at The Nation, Eric Alterman has listed the "World’s Worst Songs: The Top Twenty." (I have added artist names and the year performed in parentheses):

"Imagine" (John Lennon, 1971)
"Afternoon Delight" (Starland Vocal Band, 1976)
"The Night Chicago Died" (Paper Lace, 1974)
"Billy Don’t be a Hero" (Paper Lace, 1974)
"You Light Up My Life" (Debby Boone, 1977)
"Mary Queen of Arkansas" (Bruce Springsteen, 1973)
"The Angel" (Bruce Springsteen, 1973)
"Wildfire" (Michael Murphy, 1975)
"Playground In My Mind" (Clint Holmes, 1973)
"Seasons in the Sun" (Terry Jacks, 1973)
"Ebony And Ivory" (Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder, 1982)
"My Love" (Paul McCartney & Wings, 1973)
"Let ‘Em In" (Paul McCartney & Wings, 1976)
"Sometimes When We Touch" (Dan Hill, 1977)
"Baby I'm-A Want You" (Bread, 1972)
"'Arthur's Theme' (Best That You Can Do)" (Christopher Cross, 1981)
"One Tin Soldier" (Original Caste, 1970; Coven, 1971)
"You May Be Right" (Billy Joel, 1980)
"We Built This City" (Starship, 1985)
"Kumbaya" (Traditional African American spiritual, popular versions recorded by Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Joan Baez, The Seekers, and others)
"Who’s Ruling Who?" (I have to confess I'm not sure what song Alterman is referring to here, but he might mean Aretha Franklin's "Who's Zooming Who" from 1985)

Alterman's friend Michael Tomasky at The Guardian has taken Eric to task for his bias against sentimentality. By and large I agree with Tomasky, although it seems to me that what Alterman objects to is earnestness as much as sentimentality per se, but that's not really what I wanted to talk about.

Looking at the years these songs were written and recorded reminds me of what generated Richard Thompson's 1,000 Years of Popular Music project. When Thompson was asked to list the "Greatest Songs of the Millennium" by Playboy Magazine, he knew they were really asking for a list of his favorite songs from the past 50 years or so. Thompson, being the clever man that he is, instead prepared a list that began with "Sumer Is Icumen In" (written circa 1260) and ended with Britney Spears' Y2K smash, "Oops!… I Did It Again." This is just one of the many reasons Richard Thompson is far more brilliant than the rest of us. Of course Playboy didn't print his list.

I imagine Alterman doesn't want us to take his list too seriously (after all, he didn't even bother to tell you who did the songs), but what are the chances that all of the top 20 worst songs in human history (with one sort-of exception) were written between 1970 and 1985? Further, what are the chances that 18 of 20 would be written in the U.S. and U.K. ("One Tin Soldier" was written in Canada and "Seasons In The Sun" is an adaptation of a Jacques Brel song)? That just doesn't seem likely to me.

Looking at the list tells me more about its author than the history of music. Even if I knew nothing about Alterman (and I don't know much), I could tell from his list that he was likely born in the United States between 1958 and 1965, probably grew up on the East Coast in a politically liberal family, and likely resented the time he had to spend singing "Kumbaya" at sleep away camp.

All of which is to say that lists like this are inevitably subjective. I don't mean "subjective" in the clichéd "there's no such thing as good or bad music" sense, but rather in the sense that one's experience of the world (where and when you are born, cumulative life experiences, etc.) shapes our understanding of the world, as well as what we value and what we disregard.

Maybe that is just a fancy way of saying "there's no such thing as good or bad music." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but at the very least--even if you are committed to the idea that there is an objective set of criteria that allows us to distinguish between good and bad music--it is undeniable that we can only make these kinds of value judgments about music we have been exposed to.

Frankly, I have never seen an argument that there is some objective standard for making judgments about music (or any other art) that isn't hopelessly tortured. I lean more toward the position that it is only through the power wielded by particular institutions that matters of preference (say a bias against sentimentality) become legitimized as criteria for making aesthetic judgments, and these criteria are subject to change across time periods and cultures.

Personally, I am not at all committed to the idea that there is a set of objective criteria for "good" music, although Starship's "We Built This City" does badly make me want to believe that there are objective criteria for what constitutes bad music, even if its postulates and axioms are elusive to my feeble mind.

**Full disclosure: I actually like a lot of these songs, even if they are bad.

**UPDATE: Alterman responds (and calls me a "really smart guy"). Also, it appears "Who's Ruling Who" is not one of the worst songs of all time, but an editing error. (If I was actually a really smart guy, I might have noticed that Alterman's list of 20 worst songs included 21 titles.)