Knickerbockers, Lies
Eagles, Lying Eyes
Castaways, Liar, Liar
Hank Williams, Your Cheatin' Heart
Bobby Bare, Lullabies, Legends, and Lies
Category: Music
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Spencer’s Picks
Spencer Case thinks I need to expand my musical horizons. I don't disagree. He writes,
O.K. here are my five picks for good folk/rock music within the last ten years.
First, "The Wrote and the Writ" by Johnny Flynn, an artist I've just discovered. I chose it because of the syncopated guitar and the outstanding lyrics.
Second, "Right Moves" by Idaho's own Josh Ritter. Ritter been one of my favorites for about six years. He isn't instrumentally out of this world like some of the other artists here, but he's a great songwriter. It's hard to find a representative song for him for a first exposure, but this seems like a safe bet.
Third, "Simple as This" by Jake Bugg, another new discovery. Great lyrics.
Fourth, "Don't Need No" by Punch Brothers. I've seen these guys live and they are amazing.
Fifth, "Big Parade" by Lumineers. These guys are from Denver and actually, they are quite popular now. So not everything on this list is obscure.
As far as I'm concerned, these artists prove good music is alive and well, if under-appreciated. Interested to hear how you think they stack up.
It's good stuff, Spencer. I enjoyed 'em all. Here are some obscure tunes/renditions I think you'll enjoy if you haven't heard them already. I won't make any invidious comparisons. It's all good.
Fred Neil, The Other Side of this Life
Fred Neil, I've Got a Secret
Ry Cooder, Jesus on the Main Line
Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go
Doc Watson, Tom Dooley
Nanci Griffith, Boots of Spanish Leather
Kate Wolf and Don Lange, Rock Salt and Nails
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Thanks, Gladness, Joy
Beatles, Thank You, Girl
Cream, I'm So Glad
Suzi Quatro, Glad All Over
Jeff Beck, Glad All Over, same title different song, cover of old Carl Perkin's rockabilly number
Billie Holiday, Glad to be Unhappy
Hoyt Axton, Joy to the World
Ludwig van B., Ode to Joy
Ode to Joy scene from Immortal Beloved
You can't say my tastes aren't eclectic.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: I Give Chess Lesson to Father of Kim Thayil
Small world.
I met a very interesting man last Sunday, Boniface Thayil. He showed up at our little chess club wanting to learn the game. So I gave him his first lesson. He knew nothing, not even the names of the pieces, let alone how they move. Now he knows a little something. I hope he shows up again tomorrow.
We got to talking. His dark complexion prompted me to ask whether he is Pakistani or perhaps from India. He said he was from the state of Kerala in India, came to Seattle, Washington as a young man, earned a degree in chemical engineering, and had been employed in Chicago. His intelligence and wide interests prompted me to learn more about him via Google. The search pulled up one Kim Thayil. The name rang a bell. A while back I had read about Soundgarden and some Seattle 'metal' bands. So I clicked on this link.
"Kiss Alive was the second album I ever bought, and the first record that made me realize things could be a lot louder and more violent than the Beatles. It emphasized volume and guitar over harmony, melody and lyrics; all the stuff I never listened to anyway," he told Mudhoney's Mark Arm.
Assembling various facts, it seemed possible that Kim was the son of Boniface, so I e-mailed the latter and found out that the former was.
Here is a Soundgarden tune as performed by Johnny Cash, Rusty Cage. Good song. I like it. Here is the rather more 'metallic' Soundgarden version.
Here is some of Kim Thayil's guitar work. The quotation above explains why I can't relate to much of this stuff. Some examples of the guitar work that speak to me follow. It is a generational thing, no doubt. It seems to come from the heart and speak to the soul whereas the metal stuff is more akin to industrial noise. "Music to pound out fenders by." (Ed Abbey) Sorry, boys. De gustibus, et cetera. There is no arguing sensibility. Argument comes too late.
Mike Bloomfield, Albert's Shuffle
Buddy Guy, Eric Guy, et al., Sweet Home Chicago
Joe Satriani, Sleep Walk Satriani can tear up the fingerboard, but note how he restrains himself to deliver a beautiful melody and say something musically.
Steely Dan, Reelin' in the Years Amazing guitar work starting at 1:58 and at 3: 38.
Ventures, Memphis. Mighty fine guitar-slingin' by both lead players.
Addendum (11/17)
Martin e-mails:
Hi Bill. Longtime blog follower, here.
Concerning your comment on your Kim Thayil post: "It seems to come from the heart and speak to the soul whereas the metal stuff is more akin to industrial noise."
As you say, there is no arguing sensibility. Nonetheless, just for the hell of it, check out the link below, a sub-forum of reddit called "change by view", and especially the first comment at the top of the chain:
Of course, that concerns death metal, which makes Soundgarden sound very melodic.
Thanks, Martin. I forced myself to listen to the song to which the poster refers. This is music, not to pound out fenders by, but to watch the West decline by. Suppose you like this at 17, will you like it at 57? Suppose you first hear it with a girl who you go on to marry. Will you say to her 20 years later, "Hey baby, they're playing our song"? Well, nobody could accuse it of being sentimental.
To recover from the above, I listened one more time to the marvellous Embryonic Journey by Jefferson Airplane. I loved it in '67 and I love it now. I don't believe this is just generational chauvinism on my part.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Recent Dylan Bootleg Releases
Song to Woody. This version from the 1970 New Morning sessions, but not included on that album. Originally heard on Dylan's first album.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. This version too from the 1970 New Morning sessions. First heard on the 1966 Highway 61 Revisited album. Ramblin' Jack Elliot delivers a haunting version.
When I Paint My Masterpiece. Another Self Portrait, Bootleg Series. vol. 10. The Band's version.
Intro to Another Self Portrait, Bootleg Series. vol. 10.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac’s History of Bop
I told myself that, come November, I'd put Jack back in his box until next October. But Kerouac month has bled over into November probably because seeing the movie Big Sur got me all stoked up again.
Here is Herbert Gold's review of the book (Saturday Review, 22 September 1962).
And here is nastly slap at Jack from a writer not much better, Edward Abbey: "Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism."
Cactus Ed on Updike:
John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing–like a faery breath!–upon the glass.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”
Kerouac's Big Sur opens with a reference to a song:
The church is blowing a sad windblown "Kathleen" on the bells in the skid row slums as I wake up all woebegone and goopy, groaning from another drinking bout and groaning most of all because I'd ruined my "secret return" to San Francisco by getting silly drunk while hiding in the alleys with bums and then marching forth into North Beach to see everybody altho Lorenz Monsanto and I'd exchanged huge letters outlining how I would sneak in quietly, call him on the phone using a code name like Adam Yulch or Lalagy Pulvertaft (also writers) and then he would secretly drive me to his cabin in the Big Sur woods where I would be alone and undisturbed for six weeks just chopping wood, drawing water, writing, sleeping, hiking, etc., etc.
What is this song "Kathleen"? Reading on (emphasis added):
But instead I've bounced drunk into his City Lights bookshop at the height of Saturday night business, everyone recognized me (even tho" I was wearing my disguise-like fisherman's hat and fishermen coat and pants waterproof) and "t'all ends up a roaring drunk in all the famous bars the bloody "King of the Beatniks" is back in town buying drinks for everyone — Two days of that, including Sunday the day Lorenzo is supposed to pick me up at my "secret" skid row hotel (the Mars on 4th and Howard) but when he calls for me there's no answer, he has the clerk open the door and what does he see but me out on the floor among bottles, Ben Fagan stretched out partly beneath the bed, and Robert Browning the beatnik painter out on the bed, snoring… So says to himself "I'll pick him up next weekend, I guess he wants to drink for a week in the city (like he always does, I guess)" so off he drives to his Big Sur cabin without me thinking he's doing the right thing but my God when I wake up, and Ben and Browning are gone, they've somehow dumped me on the bed, and I hear "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" being bellroped so sad in the fog winds out there that blow across the rooftops of eerie old hangover Frisco, wow, I've hit the end of the trail and cant even drag my body any more even to a refuge in the woods let alone stay upright in the city a minute —
"I'll Take you Home Again, Kathleen" sounds like an Irish ballad but was actually written by an American, Thomas P. Westendorf, in 1875. Kerouac might have first heard it in the 1940s.
Josef Locke's rendition from the late '40s.
Arizona's own Marty Robbins' version
Louisiana Jazz Band version
The Platters, too, give it a try.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Beach Boys
Given the shenanigans in Washington, D. C., you would naturally expect me to begin with . . . wait for it . . . . Shut Down!
Then I Kissed Her is the Beach Boys' response to the Crystal's Then He Kissed Me. Nice job, boys, but nothing can hold a candle to Phil Spector's wall of sound.
Apparently, Brian Wilson was obsessed with the Ronette's Be My Baby, another Phil Spector production. Wilson's response was Don't Worry Baby.
Brian Wilson wrote great melodies, e.g., Please Let Me Wonder, In the Back of My Mind, God Only Knows.
And the BBs were famous for their harmonies. When I Grow Up to be a Man. I'm so Young, Help Me Rhonda.
Thanks, boys, for over 50 years of Good Vibrations.
Finally, here is Phil Spector holding forth on John Lennon, Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese, and Brian Wilson.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Couple of Suicide Songs
Tastes in music are pretty much generationally-rooted. Just to yank (tug?) Dale Tuggy's chain a bit, I said to him while we were rooming together in Prague, that the heavy metal stuff he likes is "music to pound out fenders by," a phrase that Edward Abbey (1927-1989) applied to all rock music. I claimed heavy metal has little by way of melody. Tuggy, who is 20 years younger than me, demurred and pointed me to some songs one of which is Metallica's Fade to Black. The song was released in '84 when Tuggy was 14, so maybe it had the sort of impact on him that Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone (1965) had on me when I was 15.
"Fade to Black" features a very nice acoustic guitar intro and does have a melody, but can it hold a candle melody- or lyric-wise to Tom Wait's suicide song, Shiver Me Timbers? You decide.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Days of the Week
Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday
Mamas and Papas, Monday, Monday
Marianne Faithfull, Ruby Tuesday. Moodier than the Stones' original.
Simon and Garfunkel, Wednesday Morning 3 AM
Donovan, Jersey Thursday
Easybeats, Friday on My Mind
Sam Cooke, Another Saturday
Night
Bonus cut: Jerry Lee Lewis, Lonely Weekend
September Songs
September again. A lovely transitional month leading from hot August to glorious October.
Dinah Washington, September in the Rain
Rod Stewart, Maggie May. "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school."
Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September
Frank Sinatra, September of My Years
George Shearing, September in the Rain
Walter Huston, September Song
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fruits and Vegetables
Mongo Santamaria, Watermelon Man, 1963. 1963 was one great year for popular music of all genres.
Peter, Paul and Mary, Lemon Tree, 1962
Harry Nilsson, Coconut, 1971
Chet Atkins, Orange Blossom Special
Led Zepellin, Tangerine, 1970
Little Richard, Tutti Frutti, 1956
Harry Belafonte, Banana Boat Song, 1956
……
Booker T and the MGs, Green Onions. Roy Buchanan guitar slinger version.
Dee Dee Sharp, Mashed Potatoes, 1962
The Kingsmen, Jolly Green Giant
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Beethoven, Billy Bob, and Peggy Lee
The Man Who Wasn't There is one of my favorite movies, and the best of Ludwig van Beethoven is as good as classical music gets. So enjoy the First Movement of the Moonlight Sonata to the masterful cinematography of the Coen Brothers.
Here is the final scene of the movie. Ed Crane's last words:
I don't know where I'm being taken. I don't know what I'll find beyond the earth and sky. But I am not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don't understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here.
That is the way I see death, as an adventure into a dimension in which we might come to understand what we cannot understand here, a movement from night and fog into the clear light of day. It is a strange idea, I admit, the idea that only by dying can one come into possession of essential knowledge. But no more strange than the idea that death leaves the apparent absurdity of our existence unredeemed, a sentiment expressed in Peggy Lee's 1969 Is That All There Is?
Perhaps no other popular song achieves the depth of this Leiber and Stoller composition inspired by the 1896 story Disillusionment (Enttäuschung) by Thomas Mann.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Dylan’s Civil Rights Songs
The 1963 March on Washington now lies 50 years in the past. Those civil rights battles were fought and they were won. What could be achieved by legislation and government intervention was achieved. Unfortunately, the civil rights movement gradually transmogrified into a civil rights hustle and grievance industry as the original ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr. were betrayed by race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And now look at the mess we are in. But it was a time of great and inspiring music. Here are some of Dylan's singular contributions.
They Times They Are a' Changin'. A wonderful alternate version by the man himself.
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. What ever happened to William Zantzinger? See here. The Althouse take on the case.
The Death of Emmett Till. Once again: Trayvon Martin was no Emmett Till!
Chimes of Freedom. Duet with Baez. (Or is it Joan Osbourne?) The Byrd's folk rock version.
When the Ship Comes in. Duet with Baez at the 1963 March on Washington. Clancy Bros. version.
After Dylan did his bit to change the world, the quietist and poet in him won out over the activist and he bid farewell to his past, and, like a quintessential American, moved on down the line.
Some Songs of Summer
Lovin' Spoonful, Summer in the City, 1966
Chad and Jeremy, A Summer Song, 1964
Mungo Jerry, In the Summertime, 1970.
Robin Ward, Wonderful Summer, 1963
Seals and Croft, Summer Breeze, 1972
Johnny Rivers, Summer Rain, 1967. It came out the summer we were all listening to the Beatles' Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band, and captures the mood of that summer for me.
Eddie Cochran, Summertime Blues, 1958. An early teenage anthem in rockabilly style by one who died young. Wikipedia:
On Saturday, April 16, 1960, at about 11.50 p.m., while on tour in the United Kingdom, 21-year-old Cochran died as a result of a traffic accident in a taxi (a Ford Consul, not, as widely reported, a London hackney carriage) traveling through Chippenham, Wiltshire, on the A4. The speeding taxi blew a tire, lost control, and crashed into a lamp post on Rowden Hill, where a plaque now marks the spot. No other car was involved.[11] Cochran, who was seated in the centre of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée Sharon Sheeley, to shield her, and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open. He was taken to St. Martin's Hospital, Bath, where he died at 4:10 p.m. the following day of severe head injuries.[12] Cochran's body was flown home and his remains were buried on April 25, 1960, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California.
Blue Cheer, Summertime Blues, 1968. A heavy metal version of the Eddie Cochran rockabilly number. The first heavy metal song? If you remember Blue Cheer, I'll buy you a beer.
Doors, Summer's Almost Gone, 1968
Sarah Vaughn, Summertime, early '50s
Jamies, Summertime, Summertime, 1958
Percy Faith, Theme from a Summer Place, 1960. I remember a girl complaining that this "old fogey music" was being played on the R & R station we were listening to: had to have been either KRLA, KFWB, or KHJ, Los Angeles.