THE PLAYLIST (PART 17):
California Scheming
PHIL MERSHON
Little Feat. Dixie Chicken. Warner Bros. 1973.
Maybe it was this kind of self-exploration that helped send Lowell George to his grave. After the very good and very Allen Toussaint-influenced Dixie Chicken, and the not nearly as good Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, George’s participation in the recordings slipped easily and Bill Payne took long-wanted control of the band. Nothing they recorded after that was half as good as the first four albums. Hoy Hoy was a fine swan song album and contained many rare recordings.
However messed over George may have been on Sailin’ Shoes, he seemed just as committed to surviving on Dixie Chicken. That change gives these two albums the combined punch of a great novel. When revealing the punch line in the title track, for instance, he doesn’t bemoan the heartache and money he’s wasted on his beloved. On the contrary, he admits that everyone is justified in laughing at him and joins them in doing just that. On "Roll 'em Easy" he celebrates the feeling of helplessness his passions fill him with. Even during "On Your Way Down," the closest thing to bitterness this album offers, the singer is quick to show that he himself is standing at the bottom of that ladder, looking up, albeit, smiling. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had recorded an album, it would have sounded just like Dixie Chicken.
Gram Parsons. Live 1973. Rhino. 1997.
If any one person ever crammed more successful work into so few years, I’d sure like to hear about it. His first recorded work was in 1967 with The International Submarine Band. That album, Safe at Home, blended populist country music with primitive upbeat blues and was termed by some smart aleck as “country rock.” The next year Parsons accepted an invite to join Roger McGuinn’s group, saving the Byrds from extinction and creating their best album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Restless spirit that he was, Parsons quickly left and helped form the Flying Burrito Brothers, making that band’s brilliant The Gilded Palace of Sin. To support a pair of his own modest solo efforts, he, Emmylou Harris , N.D.
The Beach Boys. Endless Summer. Capitol. 1974.
1974 was just about the last moment anyone would have expected a Beach Boys’ greatest hits package to be released. Rock was in one of its frequent transitional periods. The only thing that the various styles on the radio had in common was a relative slickness. Production—or the rejection of the idea—was the temporary godhead.
Bam! Outdoor concerts, girls in halters, boys with beards and the smell of perpetual July Fourth weekends came out of the sky, landing at a venue near you. This album’s initial appeal was a bit reactionary, coming at a time when the stability of the union was in considerable question. Still, there is no denying the beauty of these arrangements, Brian Wilson’s depraved falsetto and the more cosmic concerns in tunes such as "Don't Worry, Baby," “Wendy” and "In My Room." Escapism may have been the last thing a self-deluded populace needed. Still, it is hard to argue with the bourgeois bullshit of “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” or any of the other hits here.
Ry Cooder. Paradise and Lunch. Reprise. 1974.
Cooder is a wild eclectic who used to tour with The Rolling Stones, years later played with Little Village, and still reinvents American music by jazzing it up, giving it life, and building upon songs hardly anybody knows at all. These songs—all but one a cover version—have a remarkable looseness that suggests they could go on forever and yet there is no wasted time here. The playing is extraordinary, Cooder mainly doing slide guitar, an every deep moment is offset by a lilt, a wink, or an amused sneer.
Jackson Browne. Late for the Sky. Asylum. 1974.
In its day this album was not the mania totem is has since become. In fact, as the third album in a series of four that made up the first phase of the singer’s career, this was the one people at the time seemed to like the least. There were few upbeat melodies, almost no attempts at rocking out, and the lyrics no longer reflected the idea that the performer had that Crazy Til I Die tortured life of the self-obsessed James Taylors of our time. As it turned out, this album did rock, but on a much deeper level than most of the audience could fathom. Truth be told, this is my own personal favorite album by anyone or anything. While happily lacking the pretensions of a “concept” LP, these eight songs are all of a piece, of a part, telling stories of a man who may be in this world but who is certainly not committed to being of it. This was not some romanticized version of the outlaw as misogynist (Eagles) or as self-destructive humorist (Zevon). This was the outlaw as Walt Whitman. "For a Dancer," incidentally, may be the best song Browne ever recorded.
The Eagles. One of These Nights. Asylum. 1975.
It is funny that The Eagles came to embody the concept of 1970s Southern California rock. After all, neither Don Henley nor Glenn Frey were from California and the band’s first three albums were recorded in Great Britain California than Cleveland , Ohio Hollywood despicable, “One of These Nights” still maintains its modern sound without sacrificing any of its theatrical ambiances. And "Take it to the Limit" is sheer challenge, an opening, a crack in the door through which the listener may bravely go where only rock stars have gone before. The whole affair is patty-cake precious as hell, but it’s certainly preferable to the moronic Hotel California.
The big deal about this album was supposed to be that Marty Balin had rejoined Paul Kantner and Grace Slick with a new group of musicians and that the Airplane sound would be updated or even pushed into the future. Well, to whomever it was who coined the phrase “Change is good,” I would respond that change is neutral; results are either good or bad. And while Grace Slick probably would have liked a harsher and less commercial sound, Balin won out most of the time and this album became a commercial success surpassing the combined efforts of Jefferson Airplane. Sometimes that was to the artistic good, as with the opening slasher and even “Miracles.” But anyone who thinks that Papa John Creach could play violin better than Jorma Kaukonen could play guitar is simply making an error in judgment.
Linda Ronstadt. Prisoner in Disguise. Asylum. 1975.
This was the first Ronstadt album to combine the manifest range of the singer’s reach with full instrumentation, united with Peter Asher’s production, best described as punching up the better qualities of Lou Adler and Richard Perry. Drums and guitar are out front on rockers, backing off only when Linda sings. The bass and punched-in guitars simply roll the tunes along, flowing the singer, rather than the other way around. This style allowed Linda Ronstadt to use her voice to dent each song with her own unique imprint. In other words, she went far beyond covering tunes by Neil Young, James Taylor, Lowell George, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson and Jimmy Cliff. While adding nothing to the melody, she rearranged the phrasing to suit some indecipherable design, and while that tactic was not always successful—and often backfired—here it was a grand success. "I Will Always Love You" is the best vocal performance of her career.
Linda Ronstadt. Hasten Down the Wind. Asylum. 1976.
While her voice was rich, full and as beautiful an instrument as anyone has had at their disposal, the singer’s covers of well-known hits such as “That’ll be the Day” and “Rivers of Babylon” seemed to be robbed of their original emotional enthusiasm, mostly because of Linda’s phrasing, which was always better suited to crossover country ballads and hard country numbers. But Ronstadt also exposed her public to the songs of lesser-known composers such as Karla Bonoff, Ry Cooder, Warren Zevon, and Anna McGarrigle. It is immeasurable the boost her versions did for those young talents. And yet she did have a tendency to rock out in the wrong places and misplace emotion. At times she did not know what she was singing about, as in the case of her later versions of Warren Zevon songs. But this album deserves its stature because of the three Bonoff numbers, especially the riveting album closer, "Someone to Lay Down Beside Me."
Warren Zevon. Warren Zevon. Asylum. 1976.
My father used to refer to various things as being colder and blacker than a well digger’s butt. That such an expression could belie a compliment may seem unlikely, at least until listening to this splendidly cold and dark album. That it packs a wicked attitude and rolls in the bleak cesspools of everyday life hardly takes away from its strength. It is also accompanied by a savage wit, a hopelessly compelling sense of melody, and an ability for metaphor that have never been bettered by his contemporaries. Add to that the production of Jackson Browne and the participation of a Fleetwood Mac, an Eagle, one Beach Boy and half of the Everly Brothers, and you have the best sounding album ever to come from the Southern California Hiatus Launch Pad.
Karla Bonoff. Karla Bonoff. Columbia
Bonoff’s songwriting fir in perfectly with the new hedonism of the Southern California smarminess of Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles, as well as with the studio musicians who were always turning up on what was then a new emotional slickness. That does not mean these songs are not good. Most of them are excellent. It’s just interesting that misogynists such as Glenn Frey and Linda Ronstadt saw paeans to anonymous sexual encounters as an opportunity to avoid the complications of commitment, whereas when Bonoff sings these songs, it is obvious she is actually singing about the painful emptiness that desperately needs filled with something human, even if it’s not as real as the love she still hopes to find.
Jackson Browne. Running on Empty. Asylum. 1978.
In the early 1970s Jackson Browne was the most significant sperm donor of the mutation that came to be named California Rock. Two other acts whose names often arise in such paternity discussions are Little Feat and Ry Cooder. Granted, either of these might have been more technically proficient while devoutly wed to the in-group exclusivity inherent in the cult ideology from which all myths are born. But Little Feat’s vision, for all its ambition, was focused on blurring out the pain their very exclusivity generated. Cooder was more inclined to redevelop other musical forms than to transform himself from purveyor into myth-maker. It took the Heidelberg-born Browne to see through the American maze of unfinished dreams of kids too young to recall the Beach Boys, or of those too smart to think that Brian Wilson knew his 409 from the hole in his surfboard. From that maze, Browne created an Outlaw Myth so successfully refined by lesser talents. Now I am not suggesting that Browne is a founding father in the way of Chuck Berry or Brian Wilson. However, he has managed to release thoughtfully intense and introspectively outreaching music over a span of more than four decades, while such California Shaky Town
Ry Cooder. Bop Til You Drop. Warner Bros. 1979.
Cooder may have learned to hate this album, but that doesn’t stop it from having some incredible moments. Now, I wouldn’t have done the bashing bullshit on “Hollywood
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Damn the Torpedoes. Backstreet. 1979.
No matter how many levels of audial putrification regurgitate from the record companies, there is always some schmuck determined to put things right. Sometimes that means making new sounds. Sometimes it means digging up some old gripe. In Petty’s case, it’s a bit of both. Depending on his inspiration, he may be as derivative as people claim, but who great is not? It isn’t the fact of stealing influences that counts. It is the quality of the influences stolen and what you do with them that matters. Every song here is tight as the head of a snare drum and twice as jangly.
Warren Zevon. Stand in the Fire. Asylum. 1980.
This is the great live album. Warren Zevon introduced two new originals here that were so strong they made you wonder what the studio versions might sound like, a cover of Bo Diddley songs that completely raised the tent, and ever-so-slight revisions of some of his best earlier work. Of these latter, especially good are "Werewolves" and "Mohammed'a Radio." But even the least of these ten songs are hilarious, frightening, loud and pounding. Guitarist David Landau and a group of unknowns play as if failure meant death. This and the eleven songs on Zevon’s debut LP are the true greatest hits by this performer.
Warren Zevon. “A Certain Girl.” Asylum. 1980.
Warren Zevon wrote, sang and performed some of the most exciting music of the second-half of the 1970s. His music dug up the oozy flipside of the Beach Boys idealism in grand metaphors and in straight-on contemporary skin-blazers. His creative insight, intelligence and intensity were soothed by the juices of alcohol, resulting in songs that perfectly conveyed the dank side of Hollywood dreams. By the early 1980s, the damage inherent in such self-abuse threatened to overrun its own conduit, and so albums such as Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, from which this song was the non-hit single, lacked any unifying quality, including humor, anger or even artistic ambition. The sole exception on that album was this cover version of the Neville Brothers non-classic recording. Zevon enlivens this simple song with frustration, coyness, hysterics, and even a self-absorption that shadows everything else of the album.
Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty. "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." Modern. 1981.
These two singers share only two things. First, in their respective bands they have both employed a musical device which I call the “hum.” The hum is a sound created by an organ or synthesizer. It lies steady in the background, usually rising and falling with chord progression. Its purpose and effect is to make the music sound full by eradicating all background silence. It is a common gimmick that’s occasionally effective. The second thing Nicks and Petty share is that they sound great together because Petty’s world-weary gravel tones mute Nicks’ soft and silly post-hippie mysticism. In other words, Nicks sounds as if she’s been experiencing the pain suggested by the song’s title. And Petty sounds like a very compelling cure for that pain.
Don Henley. I Can’t Stand Still. Asylum. 1982.
This Eagles’ drummer had a great start on a solo career until he decided he was VH1’s answer to Elvis. His early singles shattered stained glass social pomposity. “Dirty Laundry” was every bit as mean-spirited as the topic required and “Johnny Can’t Read” avoids cribbing the easy answers. Over all, the album remains refreshing, sounding as if it was made on one soft summer evening while the city burned.
By the time Phil Ochs was recording Pleasures of the Harbor with producer Larry Marks in 1967, the singer had transformed from a gentle writer of fierce topical songs into a poet whose mind reinvented what his senses passionately explored. It was his first time working with Marks. The producer was determined to desert the barren and stark non-production Paul Rothchild had provided Ochs' first three albums, which had been recorded for Elektra. The new label, A&M, as well as the singer himself, sought to make the music relevant to the lyrics. With only a few exceptions, this resulted in an unfortunate swash of strings and waves of swirling orchestration that buried the singer in a typhoon of cacaphony. Some of his best songs were rendered unlistenable. And yet the album did have its strong moments. Phil had heard the story of Kitty Genovese, the New York woman who had screamed and pleaded for life while her neighbors watched in the shadows as she was brutally raped and murdered. Some of the more than two dozen people who witnessed her destruction even admitted to turning up their televisions to drown out the disturbing sounds. Ochs responded with "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends." Lyrically, the song's verses set up opportunities to exercise social responsibilities and provided one-line rationalizations for ignoring them. Musically, happy ragtime piano mocked those excuses while giving the song commercial hooks. Lacking heavy guitar riffs, it was ignored by the rock audience just as folkies found it too musical for their standards. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," released as a single, still managed to chart in Los Angeles, Sacramento and especially New York, where Phil's fan base had always been its strongest.
His second home, though, was Los Angeles. His brother Michael had already moved there to work on photography and music promotion, and Phil hired him to be his manager. Just east of Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Boulevard was a club called The Troubadour. It was owned and operated by a tall, skinny longhair named Doug Weston. Phil played The Troubadour regularly and became friends with the lanky owner. Weston wanted to produce a Phil Ochs concert in Los Angeles. The singer was ecstatic. Back in New York he'd played everywhere from Gerde's in the Village right up through Carnegie Hall. But doing a concert in L.A.? That was a new level. Having already toured in support of the album, Phil was sure he could fill the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Michael and Weston weren't so sure. Wouldn't it be better to play a smaller venue? they asked. Better to turn away a few people, they reasoned, than stare at rows of empty seats.
Phil got his way. His manager and producer had been right. The auditorium was less than twenty-five percent capacity.
In those days, before the Chicago riots, defeats could still leave him optimistic about both his career and about America. To that end, he behaved and reacted as if the success of his career and the health of his country were inexorably connected, perfectly correlated.
The former Ohio State University journalism student dropped out and moved to New York City in 1960 with designs on becoming a guitar-playing singing sensation. If Bob Gibson, Faron Young, Johnny Cash and Buddy Holly could become stars, there was no reason why the young Ohioan couldn't do the same. Mike Porco, who ran Gerde's Folk City, gave him his first paying job opening for John Hammond. To make the best use of the opportunity, Phil wrote and performed a song specific for the occasion. "The Power and the Glory" could have been written by Woody Guthrie, except that the set up of the final verse was more strategic, the delivery more impassioned and the pace more compelling than was accepted in Guthrie's day. After describing all the Whitman-like details of his beautiful country, a shadow of stern caution warned, "Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor/Only as free as a padlocked prison door/Only as strong as our love for this land/Only as tall as we stand!"
Having developed by now a bit of a reputation, Phil managed to get other work in the city, primarily at The Third Side and at Sam Hood's The Gaslight. But where he fell under the gaze of the larger audience for folk music was in the pages of a mimeographed magazine called Broadside. In addition to articles, editorials and profiles, the magazine, published by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, printed the words and music of folk and topical songs written by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and--suddenly--Phil Ochs. This recognition landed him an invitation to perform at Newport '63. Newport was far and away the premier showcase for folk singers. Phil would be in the company of Dylan and Seeger, as well as Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, The Freedom Singers and lesser luminaries. Phil's performance--throughout which he was battling terror and nausea--included the aforementioned "The Power and the Glory," as well as "The Ballad of Medgar Evers" and "Talking Birmingham Jam." An album of the festival was released the following year and featured two of Phil's songs. Mainstream newspapers announced a new sound in folk music.
The two major record labels that handled folk acts at the time were Vanguard and Elektra. Vanguard had a good roster that included Baez, Eric Andersen, The Weavers and Pat Sky. But Jac Holzman's Elektra offered Phil a zero dollar signing bonus. And if that wasn't flattering enough, he would be label mates with Judy Collins, Tim Hardin, and Tom Rush.
The first album, All the News That's Fit to Sing, was evocative of its title, a virtual What's What of headline stories and young smiling radical analysis. Topics included U.S. involvement in Vietnam after the death of President Diem, a social worker named Lou Marsh, the separation of a Hazard, Kentucky coal miner from his wife, a reporter named William Worthy who ran into trouble with the State Department for visiting Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. There was even a lovely musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells." Future Blues Project member Danny Kalb filled out the sound on second guitar. In between promotional appearances and concerts in support of the album, Phil began what would become a life-long involvement in social activism.
It began with a number of benefit concerts for striking miners in Hazard. From there he was on to the Mississippi Caravan of Music, a consortium that staged concerts to encourage blacks to register to vote, which just happened to coincide with the discovery of the bodies of three civil rights workers slain by the Ku Klux Klan. Soon after his second album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, was released, he hooked up with Jerry Rubin and participated in the Berkeley teach-ins by singing between speeches. This was Ochs' first association with the anti-war movement that was by that time eclipsing civil rights as a national issue.
His greatest force for social change, however, remained his music. With a few exceptions, the liner notes to the second album were more insightful and entertaining than the songs themselves. Not so with the follow-up, Phil Ochs in Concert, recorded at Carnegie Hall. It was and remains among the greatest acoustic live albums of all time (despite the fact that much of the music was re-recorded elsewhere to make up for the taping defects). In addition to songs about book burnings and invasions of Latin American countries, there was the self-described "cinematic" "Ringing of Revolution." Ochs even named the actors. "John Wayne plays Lyndon Johnson. And Lyndon Johnson plays God. I play Bobby Dylan. A young Bobby Dylan." There was even one hysterical satire called "Love Me, I'm a Liberal," wherein Ochs exploded every cliché the near Left ever used. "In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it effects them personally. Here then is a lesson in safe logic." The album even contained a first: a Phil Ochs love song--"Changes." Amid a context of philosophy, politics and movies, that song lifted the performance to the level of Art.
It was a level he would either approximate, maintain or excel for the next few years. Despite the nearly grotesque overproduction of Pleasures of the Harbor, beneath all the noise was a song called "Crucifixion," which the sailor from the sea described as his greatest achievement. Indeed, it was high art, easily on a par with the best of Dylan's work. It was also ambitious, abstractly symbolizing political assassinations from Jesus Christ to John Kennedy. Alliterative, imagistic, accurate and terrified in tone, it is heard to better effect on the retrospective Chords of Fame in a crisp acoustic version.
And the night comes again to the circle-studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
Till the universe explodes as a falling star is raised
The planets are paralyzed, the mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity--then he dies!
The combined total sales of the first three albums had been less than 50,000 units. Phil Ochs and his new label--A&M--were optimistic that a change was needed.Pleasures' orchestration was chosen. A&M publicist Derek Taylor sent a copy of the album to President Johnson. Time, Billboard and Variety all conceded that the recording had its positive moments. Broadside, naturally, gutted the recording as a sellout, which was silly. The only thing the singer was selling out was concert tickets. The publicity worked. Phil's first A&M album outsold all three of his Elektra recordings combined.
While on a promotional tour for the album, Ochs became even more active in his opposition to the Vietnam War. One such manifestation was his organization of a "War is Over" celebration in New York's Washington Square Park. The idea behind the rally was that if enough people could come to believe the war was over, it actually would be so. It was also an opportunity to mobilize people through tactics of street theatre, tactics that were also being used to some effect by his friends in the newly formed Yippie community. By now Jerry Rubin and occasional collaborator Abbie Hoffman had learned how to use the media against itself. Aware that photographers had a tendency to focus on anyone with long hair and bare feet, the Yippies used humor and charm on reporters to ensure their media contacts wouldn't find the parades and marches altogether unacceptable. And so the "War is Over" celebration attracted thousands and allowed the Yippies to promote their upcoming gathering in Chicago. Phil did the same at all his public performances, while at the same time campaigning and playing benefits for the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy.
In between charity benefits and political obligations, Phil found a free week in which to make the album Tape From California. Again Larry Marks produced. But this time the lush orchestration was harnessed, when it was used at all. The title track actually had electric instruments and sounded suspiciously like rock and roll, albeit old time rock and roll. Unquestionably the best thing on the album, though, was "When in Rome," a song inspired by film director Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata. Calling the song brilliant, critic Bart Testa wrote "The song does nothing less than symbolically rewrite the entire history of the United States as a chaotic and apocalyptic epic, with Ochs playing all the lead parts in the first person."
Back through the ashes and back through the embers
Back through the roads and ruins I remembered
My hands at my side I sadly surrendered
Do as you please.
The setting for the disaster that Chicago would become seemed nearly preordained. On March 12, 1968, Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for President. His platform was "Get Out Now." Four days later, Robert Kennedy announced his own candidacy on an anti-war ticket. Together the two men captured sixty-nine percent of the popular vote in the Democratic primaries. Lyndon Johnson's heir apparent, Hubert Humphrey, achieved a mere two percent. Before the primaries were over, Kennedy was assassinated. Abbie Hoffman suggested the Celebration of Life form a counter-convention where their attendees would all wear VOTE FOR ME buttons and each person would nominate himself. The aims of the Celebration were a blending of the philosophies of the Old and New Left, a gathering of radical organizations, a model of an alternative society, the politics of ecstacy. As Phil Ochs put it, the Yippies "wanted to be able to set out fantasies in the street to communicate their feelings to the public." A number of memorable slogans were coined, mainly as a way of publicizing the upcoming event. Sure that the more outrageous the phrase, the more likely the media would be to repeat it--and hence bestow the gift of free publicity--the Yippies declared they would "Burn Chicago to the ground! Acid for all! Abandon the creeping meatball!"
A few days before the Democratic Convention began, Phil Ochs, Stew Albert and Jerry Rubin found an Illinois farmer willing to sell a large sow for twenty dollars. Since Phil was the only one with any money, the honor of the purchase went to him. The Yippies had found their own candidate. On August 23, 1968, they held a press conference outside Chicago's Civic Center and announced their "Pigasus for President" campaign. The press was duly amused and the police hauled the group in, charging them with disturbing the peace and bringing livestock into the city.
What Phil witnessed over the next few days would forever alter the attitude he brought to the creations of his songs. It would in fact alter the very thought processes that went into writing altogether. His hope and optimism were shot full of holes. His faith in his childhood visions of America were destroyed, leaving him with the gut pains of introspection.
The night of August 24 brought 7,500 demonstrators to town, all of whom needed some place to stay. Many had plans to sleep in Lincoln Park. The police had other ideas. They attacked the Park with tear gas and beat the revelers as they left. The following night, the cops removed their badges to avoid easy detection, following Mayor Richard Daley's admonition: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder. He is there to preserve disorder." The message was understood. The police force attacked the press, local residents, paramedics and protestors with equal fervor. Plenty of network TV cameras filmed the massacre, but the rest of the nation wouldn't see it until days later because of sabotaged transmissions.
Humphrey accepted his party's nomination on August 28, as the day ended and the scent of tear gas wafted up Michigan Avenue to the nominee's suite at the Conrad Hilton. The worst violence was about to begin. And the New York folk singer would be right in the thick of things. The protestors had gathered in Grant Park to hear a series of speeches before marching to the Convention Center. The Chicago Police attempted to contain the group by surrounding the Park. One after another speaker addressed the crowd. In between speeches of men like activist Dave Dellinger, poet Allen Ginsberg, and comedian Dick Gregory, Phil would stand in the back of a pick-up truck and sing for the crowd. Shortly after he sang a rousing version of "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he saw a young boy climb the Park's flag pole and pull down Old Glory. The was all the provocation the police required. They grabbed the kid, beat him with their nightsticks, and tossed him into the back of a squad car while the more agitated onlookers threw rocks at the arresting officers. Press cameras filmed all this for posterity and even broadcast one cop commanding "Make sure you show them throwing rocks!" While Dave Dellinger attempted to lead a nonviolent march to the Convention Center (and was blocked from doing so), others took advantage of an opening in the quarantine and thousands of young people marched toward the Hilton. Enraged at being distracted, the police charged up Michigan Avenue, firing tear gas canisters and clubbing everything in sight. When clubs failed to subdue, they stomped. And when that proved ineffective, they kicked, shoved, punched and beat. The crowd shouted "The whole world is watching!" As Phil Ochs and the others would soon come to realize, most of the whole world didn't care and among those who did, many felt the cops hadn't gone far enough.
Back in Los Angeles, Phil began to question his own approach to politics in America. While the Yippies and other radicals had been creating and recreating their own counterculture, they had alienated the American working class along with Middle America. People who were already involved, Ochs reasoned, didn't need to be converted. Nixon--who would ride to victory above the shattered remains of a splintered Democratic Party--called these frightened Americans 'the Silent Majority.' Ochs knew that if this majority rejected the members of the New Left, they would in turn embrace the solutions of men like Nixon and George Wallace. Frightened by those prospects, the songwriter began to detach himself by degrees from the journalistic approach to his craft. The resulting music spoke with broader, more universal tones. As he's done in "Crucifixion," two or three lines could speak entire chapters while a whole song could fill libraries. One last time, Larry Marks would produce. This time they both got it exactly right.
Rehearsals for Retirement is among the most beautiful and powerful recordings in any musical genre. Backed by a real band, featuring Lincoln Mayorga (whose piano had been the stand out feature of the Pleasures album), Bob Rafkin on bass and guitar, and (probably) Kevin Kelly on drums, Ochs delivered the performance of a lifetime. The cover itself was a photograph of a tombstone Phil had had made for the occasion. The headstone bore an oval picture of Phil standing in front of the flag with a Revolutionary War rifle slung over his shoulder. Beneath the image were the words: Phil Ochs (American). Born: El Paso, Texas 1940; Died: Chicago, Illinois 1968.
The album led off with "Pretty Smart on my Part" which in four crisp verses not only gave an hysterically funny analysis of the reactive behavior of the machismo mentality, it tied the vignettes together with a pair of lines--twenty-four years before Oliver Stone would do the same--asserting that John Kennedy had been assassinated to allow the U.S. military the pleasure of frying the people of Vietnam. Before the impact of that assertion could sink in, Mayorga's piano introduces "The Doll House" with a sound of someone lost and wandering in a surreal environment of someone else's making. The singer himself is lost amid this ambience, a world of soft confusion and amazing pressure. It all unspins with the plateau: "The ballet master/Was beckoning ‘faster'/The ballerina was posed/In the fragile beauty she froze/Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go!" After that uncommercial interruption, Ochs is back in a narrative that begins and ends in the third person and yet clearly is also the first person narrator in between, a police officer, defensive about his responsibility to "keep the country safe from long hair," hateful of the students and minorities he brutalizes, yet unable to understand what it is that his enemies don't understand about him. Ultimately he can only utter a variation on Descartes: "I kill, therefore I am." The song "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is possibly more worthy of praise for its inventive title than its descriptions of Convention Week. The same cannot be said for the album's centerpiece.
Smack dab in the middle of Rehearsals for Retirement is "My Life." In the same way The Beatles permanently altered the way they would be understood by their audience with Rubber Soul, Phil Ochs made his breakthrough with this song. The Beatles' album took the public perception of their product from dance music and love songs into a perception of themselves as a highly complex group involved in the process of creating some mighty fine artwork. Ochs' album, and this song in particular, revealed the artist as a culmination of all the characters he'd created, each the victim of its own vulnerabilities but not necessarily hugable and endearing.
The intensity does not lessen with "The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns," explicitly a song about the missing nuclear submarine but implicitly a strong metaphor for the performer's view of his own position in society.
Sounding bell is diving down the water green
Not a trace, not a toothbrush, not a cigarette was seen
Bubble ball is rising from a whisper or a scream
But I'm not screaming, no I'm not screaming
Tell me I'm not screaming.
Perhaps sensing he'd revealed enough for the moment, Ochs took his audience on a brief road trip from Eden to Los Angeles--"city of tomorrow." Then soon enough, we're back, engulfed in the personal drama of "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore," a song that was not only obviously inspired by Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," but could easily be the long awaited response from the unseen character Dylan had been lecturing. Peppered with spicy lines like "You love your love so much that you'd strangle her gladly" and "You search the books in vain for a better word for lonely," the song climaxes with the narrator coming upon an ex-lover's emotional suicide in process. The galloping horseback rhythms of "Another Age" unite Tom Paine, Jesse James and Robin Hood in search of a stolen election. Then suddenly the horse can run no more and the title track walks the final lap of the course. The end is near. Though still tinged with vibrato, his voice struggles to contain the moan beneath it. With a fade of piano and bass, he is gone.
He lies on his back on the couch in the Canyon house. Awake, he closes his eyes and imagines he is dreaming. He sees his paternal grandfather lip-locked beside the radio, listening to FDR speak reassuringly, while his grandmother fries eggs in the kitchen. His father comes in, wide-eyed and despondent from days without sleep. He sees himself hiding beneath a desk in Miss Jocelyn's classroom during an air raid drill, teasing his younger brother, being softly scolded by his older sister.
A chill comes in through the living room window, so he pulls the remembered images over himself like a patchwork quilt. A match flame of exploration in the dark; a faint smell that never leaves the walls; the taste of buttered popcorn at the movies; mastering scales on the clarinet; his father staring at the newspaper without reading it; shooting himself in the leg while showing off for a friend; a green sign welcoming the world to Columbus, Ohio; James Dean's red jacket; Fidel Castro marching into Havana; a pencil snapping between tight fingers; the strum of a guitar he'd won in a bet; a belt tied in a loop with a buckle supporting his own weight.
The idea of the gold suit came to him after seeing Elvis Presley perform in Las Vegas. The only hope for America, Phil decided, was a revolution, and the only hope for a revolution in America was for Elvis to become Che Guevara. Since the young man from Tupelo was unlikely to make such a conversion, Phil Ochs would have to become Elvis as Che himself. The first step was having Nudie the tailor make him a gold suit. That was the first mistake.
The second mistake was his next album. The songs themselves were fine, but if Larry Marks had buried Ochs' tunes under a sea of swash, new producer Van Dyke Parks placed some very good tunes behind a Spectorian Wall of Sound, with timpani drums and backing choruses that would have been more at home on a Ronettes album than on Phil Ochs' Greatest Hits. That title was his third mistake. Intended sarcastically, the title (and the reverse legend declaring "50 Phil Ochs' fans can't be wrong!") was easily misunderstood as being what it purported to be.
His last mistake was in the way he chose to promote the album. He was scheduled to play Carnegie Hall again. He showed up, but this time he was wearing the gold suit and had his band with him. He might reasonably have expected to be about as welcome as Dylan had been when the latter had gone electric at Newport. As if to guarantee a hostile reaction, his set was weighted with other people's songs. After beginning with a up version of Conway Twitty's "Mona Lisa" and his own obligatory "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he introduced his rendition of Merle Haggard's "Okie From Meskogee." Everyone assumed that gesture was intended as irony, but how could anyone tell for sure? The real trouble, though, came when he performed medleys of hits first by Buddy Holly and later by Elvis. The first set received such a hostile response that the singer gently lectured the crowd. "Let's not be narrow-minded Americans- You can be a bigot against blacks, you can be a bigot against music." After another pair of his own songs--neither from the new album that needed promoting--he did the Elvis medley. Although his voice was heavy with reverb, he still sounded magnificent and just as the crowd was won over, Carnegie Hall cut the power. The audience shouted "We want power! We want power!" Electricity was restored and the concert was completed.
Phil begged A&M's Jerry Moss to release the tapes of the concert as an album. Moss politely declined. Eventually A&M did issue the album--in Canada. It would be more than twenty years before it was available in the United States.
Over the next few years, Phil became more isolated from his friends and spent most of his time drinking, watching TV and traveling to other countries. In South Africa, he was robbed by three men. In the process, his vocal cords were ruptured and he lost his upper register. Convinced he would never sing professionally again, he fell deeper into bouts of manic depression and paranoia.
Does anybody know my name or recognize my face?
I must have come from somewhere but I can't recall the place
They left me at the matinee and left without a trace.
Ticket home--I want a ticket home!
His nephew David found him hanging from his own belt in his sister's bathroom. He was thirty-five years old. I can make no case for martyrdom here. There is nothing noble about suicide, regardless of how that suicide may have been the result of social forces or diminished expectations. Had he lived, I doubt Phil would have made any new songs, and if he had, they probably would not have compared favorably with his best work. But it remains a fact that whenever I read about some ludicrous injustice or monumental hypocrisy, I wonder what Ochs would have said about it, how he would have summed up the situation with an acerbic line or two. And I wonder who the next dead hero will be.
Born and raised in Ohio, I had not ventured from Arizona to the Buckeye state in twenty-one years, despite near constant longing for my artificial boyhood paradise. I already missed this year’s World Famous Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show, but there remained plenty to see and do in Central Ohioan bohemia, so I mapped out a rough outline of a route, threw three sweat shirts and a pair of jeans in an old suitcase and psyched myself up for the journey, mostly focusing on question number two: what would be the perfect sounds for this mid-life road experience? I immediately abandoned obvious selections, such as The Ramones’ Road to Ruin, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, and Dion’s The Wanderer, classics all, but a tad too predictable for my forthcoming nervous collapse. No, I needed music for both the general between-city-tedium, and locale-specific sonics, music and noise that would propel my traveling companion dog Molly and me through the stratosphere of interstate highway ecstasy. This was gonna be fun.
Remember that jive by Elton John about “Get back/Honky cat/Better get back to the woods”? Well, from my personal point of view, that notion stinks and EJ too. The high point of my trip, as it turned out, was when having hooked up with my friend Ruth Ann, she and I motored stately into my old neighborhood--Jefferson Addition--for the narrow and specific purpose of taking a few pictures of my old house. The place looked pretty much the same, despite the thin and fractured roadways which had seemed so much wider before, and we pulled over alongside my former abode, the morning rain yielding to a brisk pre-winter cloud sulk, and I hopped out with my camera. There I stood, in awe of my former home, located at 367 Ludwig Drive, in case anyone wants to visit. Just as I was lining up the exposure, this craggily retiree came bounding out from my old living room and threw open the door. “Hey!” he hollered, for that is what one does to get attention in Circleville. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Looking over my shoulder, I noticed Ruth Ann slouching low in the passenger seat. Ah, the things friends must endure. “I used to live here and I’m taking some pictures of the house. Could you step out of the frame please?” The old guy was having none of this, but to my surprise, he did move out of the way so I could snap my photos.
“I don’t like people taking pictures of my house. Who are you?”
I explained that this had been my house long before he owned it and that I was indeed going to take pictures and thank you very much. He displayed a lot of flag decals on the garage, so he probably thought we were terrorists, staking out the structure of the house, all the better to position our surface-to-air rocket launchers. By the time I’d shot the third exposure, his glazed eyes were steaming, so I said “I suppose a tour of the place is out of the question” and hopped back in, spraying mud while Ruth Ann laughed herself silly. She is a good egg, that girl.
My trip from Phoenix began well enough. Having mapped out my destination and estimating my overnight cities, I popped the CD’s burned especially for the occasion into the compact storage case and plunged ahead down I-10 toward Tucson en route to the first night’s stop in El Paso, a mere 650 miles away.
The proper musical accompaniment not only provides a much needed surcease in the audial road burn; perhaps more importantly, it imposes upon the driver a vivid soundtrack with which to recall the trip, possibly many years later. And so I divided the CD’s into the general category--for those long stretches of interstate where nothing much more than tumbleweeds and rusted-out cricket pumps decorate the landscape--and the specific category--songs which made some implied or overt reference to the city or region through which I was passing. Sometimes those references boasted the glories of the area and sometimes they made their point with a bit less reverence. In either case, volume was key and the top was definitely down.
Just out from the biospheres of Tucson, as the road straightens and clocks its hours of monotony, I plugged in the ideal tune to launch the trip: "Highway Star" by Deep Purple. As the dust devils swirled up and above the copper-coated dirt fields, threatening to transplant dog, car and self into Oz the hard way, Ian Gillan’s counter-twister scream wail strangled up with Ritchie Blackmore’s controlled adrenaline guitar boxing match and propelled the Audi’s contents forward with such velocity that “airborne” fails to capture the sensation. My hair straightened, the hat I was wearing is now attached to some motorist’s CB antennae, my cheeks went taut and the feeling is just now beginning to return to my gums. There was nothing much to see along the southern border of Arizona anyway, except a few rattlesnake pits and the bursting tires of eighteen wheelers. Just as my heart palpitations yielded to police-induced paranoia, the irony of the next song’s title took hold: The Byrds’ version of Dylan’s "You Ain't Goin Nowhere." There remains something about the line, “Strap yourself to a tree with roots,” that perfectly encapsulates the cartoon futility of the trip ahead.
The Sweetheart of the Rodeo album from which the aforementioned number came provided the ideal transition into the Flying Burrito Bros’ take on Dave Dudley’s "Six Days on the Road," the most often repeated tune here. From this, it was a cold water crash directly into the instrumental abutment of The Ramones’ "Durango 95," the song that crashed down just as twilight warned that it was time to get specific.
The southern leg of New Mexico hasn’t lent itself to an overabundance of name-place musicality, primarily because nothing much between Deming and Las Cruces jumps up and demands attention, other than the occasional patch of fallen cattle, apparently either the victims of underground nuclear testing or a simple lack of imagination. Las Cruces itself was clearly a bi-pass town, although I did come up with a Geronimo’s Cadillac song called “Crack Up in Las Cruces” to get me over the hump.
About seventy miles beyond Las Cruces is the Southwest Texas town of El Paso, which presented more problems of an overnight nature than of musical. I flipped in the CD marked EP and charged up the intro mariachi slash flamenco chords of Marty Robbins’ classic, a tune local town folk were quick to point out they are so tired of hearing, a stay in the local jail is the proscribed punishment for blaring it past eight pm. Heeding this timely advice, I skipped forward to "El Paso" by the Gourds, from their Bolsa de Agua LP. This choice meeting with some favorable nods, I inquired where might be a nice place to stay the night. The look of alarm on the kids hanging outside the Dairy Queen spoke volumes. “You’re not gonna park that car outside a motel, are you?” one of them asked.
“Oh, no!” I assured him. “This thing disassembles in just a few minutes. Hey, you guys ever heard of Kinky Friedman?” Having not, I played them the classic "Asshole From El Paso," which cheered them up so much that one young honey with a waistline tattoo offered directions to the local Holiday Inn.
I had not much more than checked in, watered, fed and walked the cocker spaniel, when the look on that one kid’s face started giving me the jitters. My room leaned on the first floor, the car rested right outside the window, and the alarm system screeched loud enough to unhinge arms from their sockets. But darned if I could sleep for fear of getting stuck for God knows how long in a Holiday Inn this far from home. Insurance is fine, but how long would it take for them to wire me the funds, get the check cashed, and hop a plane the hell out of here? Nope, better to take a quick shower and shave, grab a burger and get on down the road a ways.
This jittered-out paranoia settled into a warm place in my mind, becoming a defining element of the rest of the journey.
Just outside of Van Horn, I jotted up to I-20, climbing steadily on the overnight drive to Dallas, a little more than 600 miles in the distance. On past Pecos, Odessa, Midland and Big Spring I drove, a confused cocker trying to get comfortable on her small leather seat, constantly insisting on inspecting the exterior of every semi we passed. Between Big Spring and Abilene, I entertained my passenger with a variety of general Texas tunes, like the bassist Randy McDonald’s “Texas Flower,” Elton’s Merle Haggard parody "Texas Love Song," Louis Armstrong and King Oliver’s “Texas Moaner Blues,” and Lester Young’s “Texas Shuffle.” It was the situationally appropriate "Texas to Ohio" by Damien Jurado that actually introduced me to trouble. I’d cranked those ghost guitars and gravel road vocals so high that my gaze wired itself to the highway and I didn’t detect the friendly Texas State Trooper until long after he’d seen me.
“Is your dog gonna bite me?” the friendly trooper inquired with what appeared to be genuine concern for his own safety.
“Not if you don’t bite her first,” I responded, all bleary-eyed with good humor.
He turned out to be a very nice guy, letting me off with a warning, all of which made what happened less than an hour later moderately embarrassing. Having stopped briefly at a McDonald’s drive-thru for a freshening cup of coffee, I revved the midnight beast up just past 115, the hazel stars sparkling in admiration at my inability to learn a simple lesson about local law enforcement. Somewhere between a replay of The Ramones’ instrumental “Durango 95” (the title lifted from a late-night drive in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange) and the Collins Kids’ "Hot Rod," the unhappy contra flash erupted over the oncoming crest, a flash I passed as fast as it approached from the other side of the median. A quick glance in the tiny rearview assured me of my toast status: the trooper-mobile spun across that divider and sprayed angry gravel in the air as it yearned for sufficient traction to end my careless ways. I eased off the gas, found a strip of shoulder, and reined the Audi in for a graceful stop.
It felt like a scene out of Les Miserables as the same trooper sauntered up, flipping the pages in his ticket book.
He explained that at the speed we’d been traveling, he had every right known to God and Man to throw my skinny ass in the pokey, but since that might not bode well for Molly the wonder dog, he would record the pace at 98, just low enough to keep the Spaniel from having to seek out food and shelter on her own. I admitted that I found his actions quite generous and wondered aloud if he’d be interested in taking the Roadster for a spin. I figured he wanted to, and the pause between my question and his answer confirmed my suspicions. He politely declined despite my offer to keep an eye on his short. As a result of this fine officer’s manners, I did indeed learn my lesson and that was my final speed infraction in the state of Texas.
After an upright two hour nap at a breezy roadside rest, Molly and I greeted the dawn with the multi-level hyper speed ping pong attack of The Who’s "Going Mobile." The beyond perfect production from Glyn Johns--the most incredible separation in all of rock--in harmony with grand musical ambitions and acid-accurate lyrics that shot out like Kerouac, reminded me of something my friend Paul Hormick had told me years and years earlier: “The more you listen to Who’s Next, the better it gets. Forever.” Better advice I have never received.
As we roared on in search of our next major stop in Dallas, we punched up Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s teenaged eight-track classic "Roll on Down the Highway." The song’s mechanical rhythm section, indecipherable vocals and moderately inspired lead guitar encouraged the dog and I to shoulder dance even as BTO faded and the Rolling Stones dirged into all eleven plus minutes of "Going Home."
Neither Molly nor I had Mick Jagger’s baby waiting for us back home, but despite this social inadequacy, we were both dying to get back there, even though Molly had never heard of the place and the only thing I knew for certain was that I believed I had been happy living there. I did in fact have some splendid specific recollections, most of which centered around various bicycles I had owned and the places they had taken me. One of those places was The Blue Drummer Steak House. I was a frightened yet brash sixteen year old anticipating college with about as much clarity as I was old age pensions and my parents insisted I take the job not only to defray up and coming educational expenses but mostly as a way of guiding myself along the path toward some infantile form of maturity. And so for nearly two years I rode my ten-speed racer the two miles from our garage to the Bicentennial-appropriate steak emporium.
My friendships there weren’t lifelong, but they were deep. As The Beatles’ "Get Back" bled into Elvis Presley’s version of Hank Snow’s "Moving On," some of those memory images came rolling back. Most stark was a kid about my own age at the time, just an average friendly kid named Jamie Welliver. One night Jamie and I were toking up in his Duster, listening to the soundtrack from the new Tommy movie, and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. It was cold as a shit storm out, and I was already in enough trouble for one night, so I passed. The next morning, a Sunday, if memory serves, I came back to work at eleven, just a few minutes before the lunch crowds emerged from the various church services. I walked in, bebopping a whistle to some self-composed tune, when the look another co-worker delivered stopped me cold. “Jamie Welliver’s dead. He wrapped his car around a telephone pole.” Before I even had a chance to register the horror of this, our manager, Pat Bevan, charged in through the big metallic doors and ordered us to get ready for the lunch rush. Ms. Bevan knew what had happened. She knew that we knew. But she had an insignificant job to perform and nothing was going to get in the way of that.
The most peculiar aspect of the entire experience was that when I had first begun working there, my number one concern, fear, obsession, was that by earning an insubstantial living there I might lose the young kid in me that I so cherished. Every man in the world frets about this constantly. Lose that internal boy and prepare to crawl inside a box and pile on the dirt. I never did completely lose him, of course, but that Sunday morning, a little part of him died for the first time.
On the outskirts of Dallas, the pre-encore take of Gram Parson’s live version of "Six Days on the Road" filled the air for miles and my heart muscles tightened for the first time since the trip had begun. An ominous cloud clings over Dallas and always will. A lot of that, naturally, stems from the Kennedy assassination, and a lot of it sprouts from social conditions that could allow something like that assassination to take place. There was a lot I wanted to see in Dallas, but there was only one song I wanted to hear: "Willin'" by Little Feat. Sadly, the story of Alice--Dallas Alice--was nowhere in my collection. So sitting in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, I rolled up the windows and sang the damn thing myself. Molly wept.
By the time we checked into our room, we had been on the road exactly twenty-four hours. We had driven thirteen hundred miles. Giddy with exhaustion, I plopped Molly back in the shotgun seat and we set out to discover Dallas.
About a mile and a half from the hotel we found ourselves so hopelessly lost it took the better part of three hours just to stream our way back. We never unearthed Dealey Plaza. We did learn, however, that Dallas sports a lot of road construction that only slows down the out of towners. Prior to motoring along freeways reduced to one lane with unyielding SUV psychos and crypto-tank drivers both fore and aft, I would have sworn that Phoenix drivers are the most hateful pack of self-absorbed sons of bitches who ever lived. After three hours sweltering and choking in the blood pools of Dallas congestion, I can honestly report that Phoenicians are among the most polite motorists in the world. If I ever return to Dallas, it will not be unarmed.
One of the primary reasons for my purchase of the Audi TT was that it is the ultimate anti-SUV. Despite the fact that every one of my current friends drives one, I do not like SUV’s. Perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this story, many people who drive the rough-riding death traps do not like the occasional little sports cars that punctuate the road like dots at the end of exclamation points. In particular, they do not like Audi’s, probably because SUV drivers recognize that there are only three or four non-Audi’s that can outrun the Roadster and none that can are the modern day urban tanks that in reality have nothing to do with either sports or utility. They are, in fact, only marginally vehicular. They do, however, serve as excellent tools for committing interstate homicide. Just ask the guy in the onyx black Denali a few miles south of Little Rock who tried to stampede his moon-roofed marauder up and across my roll-over bars, or the tailgating Esplanade, both of whom endeavored to careen their armored kill machines up and over my back just because I had the audacity to mouth the words “stupid twat” in their directions as I passed them merging back onto the freeway. Like a breath of fresh air irony, George Harrison’s "All Things Must Pass" filled the Audi and I switched lanes just as the mini-convoy barreled boldly by.
Arkansas is the most beautiful state, blessed as it is with miles of aisles of cotton, soybeans, wheat, corn and stacks of flax. The unsettled purr of idling semis spills a churn of its own kind of symphony. Strangely, a lot of great music comes from Arkansas but there’s not tons of tomes about it. That may be because in the early autumn, the scenery is so splendid, nearly nothing could approximate the grandeur. The fading foliage from the Ozarks announce themselves modestly and the timber trembles in awe of its own multihued gorgeosity. If there were ever a region in which it is manifestly appropriate to put the top down on the car, this is most definitely that place. The dying allergens kissing tightly to forsaken cotton balls, the colliding spruce and pine perfumes, the lust grip of cones and cinders: the sights and smells alone make a majestic visual-olfactory orgy that mere music cannot replicate. So I settled--if one can call it that--for a smorgasbord of CCR’s "Cottonfields," “Arkansas Hop” by Boz and the Highrollers, "Joan of Arkansas" by Dorothy Shay, Big Medicine’s “My Ozark Mountain Home,” Black Oak Arkansas’ "Jim Dandy," "Sweet Little Rock and Roller" by Chuck Berry, the American Gypsies’ “Bottle of Hope” (get it?), and--may God have mercy on my weary soul--Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell’s duet of "A Little Girl From Little Rock." Hell, I’m no snob. I played the latter ditty three times as I wound my way around and through LR (as the local signs refer to it) on my way northeast to Memphis.
No city on our trip boasted a greater selection and variety of place-specific songs than did Memphis, Tennessee. About twenty miles out from this remarkably friendly border town, I snapped in the first four versions of Chuck Berry’s classic: the first was by Chuck, of course; then came the slightly hokey rendition by Flatt & Scruggs (recorded, no doubt, because of its title), followed by the rave up instrumental take by Lonnie Mack and the sloppy but transcendent cover by Sandy Denny. “Long distance information,” I sang as loud as my frayed vocal cords would permit. “Give me Memphis, Tennessee!”
Flipping from manual back into automatic as I stretched my neck to find a place to eat that wasn’t part of the burger axis of indigestion, Dan Bern’s “Graceland” whupped me upside the head:
Well look at me, Lord
I’m at Graceland
On a Saturday afternoon
I threw up last night
At a rest stop
From eating cheese grits
At the Waffle House
The Memphis horns hit me like a Gospel brick house as the late Dusty Springfield cued herself up on "Laura and Laura Mae Jones," another place and another time belting out as real and immediate as front porch lemonade. Memphis Minnie sashayed in shout-singing the “Killer Diller Blues,” the guitar sounding just like a banjo. King Curtis spooned up today’s special of "Memphis Soul Stew," and when those fat back drums strolled in, I swear the trees along the roadway actually bowed. The obvious Mott the Hoople number bleated like a dying calf, but that memory quickly faded with the authentically ridiculous "Memphis Train" by soul papa Rufus Thomas. “Whoo! Aw, shucks now!” And before I knew it, I was leaving Memphis behind, the tires twirling and oblivious as the steady country rhythm of Rosanne Cash’s version of daddy John’s "Tennessee Flat Top Box" battered down on Molly and I like rain on the roof of a caboose.
Along I-40 East and slightly north toward the former country music capital, as the winds whipped and the sun brayed in harmony, the first genuine scenic rhythms of recognition gripped me like a corpse. Tennessee houses a thousand tiny towns, most of which are thoroughly ignored by the grand interstates that double-X their arms across the expanse. Jackson--one of the biggest names in all the South--retains a bear’s share of promotion, but real people also live and die in Brunswick, Rosemark, Gallaway, Braden, Keeling, Stanton, Shepp, Leighton (I been everywhere, man, I been everywhere): God, so many towns and people Molly and I will never meet, many of whom may well someday be doomed to course their ways on wheeled rafts between the banks of paved pathways, fishing for legal fireworks and dreading the oncoming hug of familiarity. That familiarity spooked me like a slime monster peeking from a hollow log as we neared Nashville, the world’s most down home town. As we strained our eyes for yet another Holiday Inn, we got caught up in the porcine okey-doke of "Nashville Cats" by the Lovin’ Spoonful, melted into the leather buckets with "Nashville Radio" courtesy of Jon Langford, self-paralyzed with nostalgia during a dose of Waylon Jennings’ "Nashville Bum," damn near cried from the pain of Ringo’s "Nashville Jam," received scads of curious looks throughout the playing of Godhead’s “Nashville Bust,” and felt like genuine cowboy punks as we blared Hank Williams Jr.’s “Nashville Scene.” I awoke a little after three the next morning, sweating like a fever blister, completely unaware of where I was. Molly jumped away from the wet foot she’d been aimlessly licking and stared at me as if I’d suddenly become real. “Nashville!” one of us said to the other, or maybe the word came from the radio alarm clock that some fool before me had set. Over that tinny radio transmission, Mississippi Fred McDowell, who surely don’t play no rock ‘n’ roll, reminded us we had to move, so after a quick run through the shower we did just that, with all the haste of unrepentant sinners fleeing the wrath of a jealous God. I dropped Molly a packet of dog glop and chugged my own magic milkshake as Chris Knight serenaded us with his eerily appropriate "Devil Behind the Wheel," that Mellencamp impression never sounding better. We’d be in Circleville sometime within the next twenty-four hours and despite the dark thumb tapping its warning against my heart, I hastened us on, my own internal cruise control as unyielding as time itself.
Running on I-65 North en route to Louisville, the next major stop, we passed a sign that said “White House 18 Miles Next Exit.” We also passed a Tennessee State Trooper who was himself somewhat exceeding the speed limit, and both Molly and I realized that another citation lay in our progress.
This guy stayed parked behind us for at least five minutes--no doubt staring us down from the rear to see if we’d run--during which time I searched vainly for Springsteen’s "Mr. State Trooper." The best I could come up with was Randy Newman’s "Rednecks," but by the time the cop swaggered up to our car, that song had come and gone. I smiled and killed the engine.
“You come up here from Air-ee-zonaw,” he began. “So I know you seen the sign at the state crossing that admonishes you to obey Tennessee speed limits, right? Zat your dog?”
When we come to the place where the road and the sky collide
Run me over the edge and let my spirit glide
They told me I was gonna have to work for a livin’ but all I wanna do is ride
I don’t care where we’re goin’ from here, honey, you decide.
Jackson Browne, “The Road and the Sky”
Somehow wedged in between Deep Purple’s heavy lunged version of Neil Diamond’s "Kentucky Woman" and Elvis Presley’s maudlin as hell “Kentucky Rain,” the song excerpted above trumpeted itself, one of a handful or two of which it is quite fair, balanced and accurate to say: “That there song, well, it just came along at a time in the boy’s life when something was bound to change him forever. In this case, it happened to be a song about a car thief who prophesizes--correctly--the apocalypse. There ya go.”
Not to give a false impression, I should clarify: I do not steal cars; I’m not prone to prolonged lethargy; and while some may say the world will end in fire, some in ice, and with all due respect to Robert Frost, I’ve always assumed it would terminate in a more abstract way, probably as a result of a lack of imagination. In other words, Browne’s centerpiece from Late for the Sky influenced me more in terms of sensibility than in terms of prophesy. And that sensibility occasionally leans toward a studiously pronounced gloved sweat of dread. So there I was, riding along with Molly the wonder dog, the top down on the Audi, the northern Kentucky hill winds straightening back my lengthy blond hair, an absurd set of aviator goggles swatting away stray flying insects, lamb skin leather jacket insulating my torso, and matching black Kenneth Cole boots against the pedal, pretentious as hell, when along comes Jackson Browne, declaring, “Hold on steady/Try to keep ready/Everybody’s gonna get wet/Don’t think it won’t happen/Just because it hasn’t happened yet.”
A reasonable person might, at this point (if not sooner), wonder aloud at what it was exactly that I was so dreading about the approaching denouement to a trip that I had, in all fairness and accuracy, undertaken freely and without apparent coercion. The answer to that requires the most difficult degree of self-discovery it has ever been my misfortune to explore. And I only bring it up because I believe (or perhaps, need to believe) that my personal revelation will resonate with others. God, I hope it does.
My high school graduation was the Class of 1976. For the benefit of those of you who weren’t around at the time, 1976 was a year of much ballyhoo in the United States. After decades of involvement in Vietnam and what seemed like decades of Watergate-related embarrassments, America poised itself to celebrate 200 years of Independence. Special coins were minted, CBS launched sixty-second spots featuring various luminaries recounting historic tales of bravery and the overcoming of adversity, banners and plaques and monuments sprang up out of our blood-drenched soil heralding the good life we had created. “We must be doing something right,” Henry Gibson sang in Robert Altman’s Nashville, “to last two hundred years.” And in that year of justifiable (if enforced) patriotism, my graduating class, like doubtless hundreds of others throughout the country, came to believe that, perhaps by association, perhaps by divine decree, we were something special.
No. That’s not right. We did not just believe it. We knew it.
My graduating class at Logan Elm High School boasted a whopping eighty-three students. Just like many classes before and after, there and elsewhere, we had our share of jocks, leaders, hoods, followers, brains, dopes, beauty queens, sluts, and a hefty percentage of kids too bland for classification. But regardless of whatever in-group or out-group to which each of us belonged, the one immutable fact to which we clung was that as a reigning member of the graduating class of 1976, we were somehow imbued with the ability and even responsibility to make something big of ourselves. This state of affairs existed, as I’ve said, in large part because of our chronological connection to the Bicentennial. Part of it emerged as a consequence of being subjected to well-intended propaganda from the staff and teachers. And some of it developed simply as a result of what then sure seemed like reasonable expectations.
Of course, I knew all of this before ever launching my adventure. I knew all this just as I knew that I’d been willfully repressing memories of the genuinely horrible experiences that befall most high school kids, elevating in my forebrain only those half dozen or so good times at the expense of the thousand or more rotten things that had been banished from my recollections. That’s why it’s no mere coincidence that the majority of the songs I culled for the Mid-Life Nervous Breakdown came from approximately the time that I graduated. May the roar help me ignore what a bore I am to explore!
It is likewise no coincidence that I chose to drive to Ohio, rather than to avail myself of this nation’s vast air transportation network. You see, although I am capable of being a very fine driver, proving that statement requires a great deal of concentration on my part. So there I was, still mastering the various idiosyncrasies of a new car, operating on damned little sleep, trying to keep a newly acquired dog entertained, and playing my self-burned CD’s so loud that I am certain to have violated several local noise ordinances. Simply put, anything I could do to distract myself from the abject horror of recognition that awaited me--well, I was ready, Freddie. I was ready, that is, until that fucking Jackson Browne song came on, a song I myself had sequenced for selective self-sabotage.
An hour later I crossed a bridge and suddenly gazed down the descent into Cincinnati. Jesus, I was in Ohio. Long time, no think.
“I’m living on the air in Cincinnati,” I sang to the dog. “Cincinnati WKRP!” Molly thought that was hilarious.
Riverfront Stadium, sometimes recalled as Cinergy Field, met with a purposeful and violent demolition on December 29, 2002, an act of domestic terrorism committed by people with every legal right to do so, an act transgressed without moral twinge or beleaguered conscience. Teamed up, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden could not have done a better job of crucifying testaments to those things that make America great. The aptly named Riverfront had been the home to both the Reds (Redlegs, originally) and the Bengals. The stadium accommodated a capacity of 60,400. The website “Stadiums of the NFL” calls the former landmark “boring,” but a packed house on a Saturday afternoon, smelling the cold hotdogs and warm beer with The Big Red Machine of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo and other local luminaries activating something unconstrained inside those of us in attendance--bliss personified, I assure you. What became “boring” to the Bengals, and maybe even to the latter-day Reds, I suspect, was the consistency with which it became impossible to fill a stadium so large. It would have taken time and money and effort to rid society of its virus of CheapFastEasy, so they destroyed the medicine rather than the disease. “I went back to Ohio,” sang Chrissie Hynde. “But my city was gone.” My father took me to games at Riverfront. The stadium and my father may be gone, but the mindless wheels of professional progress cannot topple the memories, one-sided as they may be.
Molly and I tattooed our minds to the amplified pop blues of Delaney and Bonnie’s "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad" and "Comin Home."
The Ohio River demarcates the state named by the Iroquois from both Kentucky and West Virginia. Route 52 stays just barely on the Ohio side of the River, ushering a gateway, as it were, to such small Buckeye towns as New Richmond, Ripley, Aberdeen, Rome, and Portsmouth, the latter being a smartly named burg that also happens to be the city of my birth, although, again, I grew up in Circleville. Once in Cincinnati, I considered following the River toward my birthplace, recalling how, as a child raised on Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac, I’d often fantasized about modern day explorers traversing the wide and winding River in search of nothing more economic than adventure. But there were people living in Portsmouth who claimed me as a relative (although not quite family) and I thought it best to get my strength back before meeting up with that particular tribe. And so we selected Interstate 75 Northeast, a direct path right into the capitol city of Columbus.
Twenty-one years. The lifetime of a young adult. That much trivia had urinated into the streams of my soul since I’d last laid eyes on this route, its preexisting landscape increasingly familiar with every accelerated rpm. About fifty miles out from Cinci, the state levels off and the farms flourish. October held court now, so the main remnants of agronomical decline were weather-beaten signs proclaiming that delicious hybrids of silver queen sweet corn could indeed be picked by hungry customers for two dollars a dozen: from our fields to your pot in only minutes! Most of the remaining forestry lay off deeper into the heart of the state, but mountainous wrecking yards and a panoply of country kitchens hyphenated the compelling monotony of our final miles. Gillian Welch squeaked out "Look at Miss Ohio" and Lucinda Williams soul-crooned “American Dream.” As we approached the exit for Grove City, Roger Miller sang-spoke “Trailer for sale or rent/Rooms to let fifty cents,” and I knew we had to park immediately. Another night in a low side of corporate Holiday Inn and the vet might have had to autopsy Molly. Jackpot Road brought us quickly to the Cross Country Inn, a fitting temporary reprieve for we two road weary wanderers.
We weren’t quite home. But, damn, we were close.
With less than six hours of legitimate sack time under my belt in the last three calendar days, I needed sleep. And inviting as the huge queen-size bed appeared, I knew that such an idea was a goofy distraction. I dove into a suitcase for my personal address book and flipped to the page marked Greg Howard. Living now in the Worthington section of Columbus, he worked in the party store his wife had inherited, and that was where I reached him. Greg and I had talked on the phone a few times about the possibility of my visiting, and since it had never happened, I figured he’d pretty much written off the notion as one of wistful fantasy on my part. When he answered and I told him where I was, he cried “Grove City! What are you doing there? Let me give you directions! Whoo-ee!” That was exactly the kind of welcoming I’d always hoped for myself.
Yankee Trader, the party store in question, occupies five stories in downtown Columbus, a city where people still walk around to do their shopping, not for any absence of alternative shopping malls, but rather because of the concentrated and gregarious nature of life in a Midwest capital town. Parking is plentiful, if a little awkwardly contrived. And despite a decidedly “old world” ambience to the downtown architecture, local government takes a dim view of crimes against property, insuring that parking, walking, strolling, window shopping and harmless carousing can all occur with a modicum of safety. I parked less than half a block away, proudly jaywalked across the street, and climbed up the loading platform just as the gate opened. A guy with a moustache who looked to be in his mid-forties stood on the other side of the passageway, bearing a wide-open smile I could have picked out of a stranger’s dream.
Greg was the kind of kid you’re delighted to know, and as my best friend, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world.
Greg Howard transferred to our township when we were both in sixth grade. It had been, then as now, October, so the school season was a month old when he joined us, and since it was a small school in the central Ohio suburbs, my friend Roger and I didn’t know any better than to approach the short new kid during recess, as a way of making him feel welcome. He asked us what we did for fun during recess and of course we said we didn’t know, being a little embarrassed about our surroundings, what with him coming from Florida and all. This was during the time of the Apollo moon missions, and all I knew about Florida was that Cape Kennedy was there, so I asked him if his father was an astronaut. Greg said he didn’t think so and pulled himself up onto the chin-up bar we had on the playground. He sat up on it as Roger and I struggled between the desire to look away and at the same time just surreptitiously gawk. Greg shifted and crawled on that bar until he managed to hook it between the bend of his knees. “Can you guys do a dew drop?” he asked as he swung back and forth upside down, gaining momentum with his hands clasped in front of him in a praying grip. We shook our heads. “It’s easy,” he said, and propelled his body forward as his knees straightened and his legs arched around, landing him perfectly flat on his feet.
By the time Greg had performed this miracle three more times, he’d attracted a considerable audience away from the twenty-minute football game that typically held top billing. One bystander claimed the dew drop wasn’t all that hard to do, and Greg agreed as he swung through yet another one perfectly. But nobody climbed up on that bar with him. Most of us just stared and whispered among ourselves. When the first bell rang, Greg added a twist by drawing up enough momentum to spin all the way over the top, unfold his knees, leap out and land. Several lips mouthed the word “wow.”
“You got a bike?” Greg asked me as we ran back to class.
I did have a bike. I had a terrific bike. I had the coolest bike in the world, even though it was a Huffy. The model was called a Spider. It was bright yellow with black racing stripes, and it had a banana seat, a sissy bar, monkey handle bars, caliper brakes and a three-speed gear box right along the universal join. The front wheel was a low sixteen inches and the rear was twenty. I’d also installed an odometer on the front wheel and a speedometer sat right below the handlebars. I had a rearview mirror aligned along the right side of the front wheel. I’d been clocked at 44 miles per hour downhill and the Spider had neither shook nor shimmied. Plus I could rare back on that sissy bar and do wheelies all afternoon.
Greg rode his bike over to my house after school that day. He had a much more traditional bike, but it was still pretty sharp: black with lots of chrome. Besides, his had a transistor radio affixed to the handlebars. He asked if I wanted to ride over to the garbage dump. I didn’t even know there was a garbage dump. Once again he showed not the slightest sign of dismay at my evident inadequacies. As for me, I suppose the thought of seeing something different drew more appeal than any wonderment about how limited our chances for fun could be at such a place. So I said sure.
We rode up my street and out of that subdivision, across the highway and into his subdivision. The street his house was on was called Chippewa, and it had a swerving descent that allowed us to tilt our bikes down low as we crossed Sioux Drive and Tonopah Circle while WCOL-AM crackled out the Top Ten hits of the week. At the end of the street lay acres of thick, loose, recently upended clogs of dirt from the perpetual residential development. We struck the dirt doing just under forty at a slight lean and rolled about thirty feet out before we realized the earlier October snow had moistened the dirt, made it soft, and as a result our wheels transformed into mud pies. We had to push our bikes a mile to the dump and on the way more snow fell, which was nice except that as the temperature dropped, the mud froze into our wheels so they wouldn’t turn. A song called “Candida” came on the radio and before I could even beg, Great snapped it off.
We climbed up on top of the mountain of new suburbanites’ discards, and in addition to bottles, cans, paper, undigested food stuffs and other visual noises, we discovered unopened boxes of packs of baseball cards, mangled metal, bent wood, large rubber tires, and busted eight track tapes. And even in Ohio, even in October, even in the snow, we found furry little rats. They darted and tore and squealed, but they left us alone.
Mr. Mays was much larger than the rats and he did not leave us alone. His first name was Clarence, but all the kids called him Willie, which made him angry since he hated black people, and so we continued to call him Willie. Apparently it had fallen to Mr. Mays--who as far as I knew was a farmer whose farm was miles away--to prevent eleven-year-old boys from frightening the rats away from whose ever garbage dump this was. He had pulled up in his old black farmer’s pick-up truck with commercial plates before we’d realized he was there. Greg and I were trying to see if any of those eight-tracks could be salvaged when the first rock plunked behind Greg’s feet.
Once we realized that Willie’s aim was to conk us on the heads with his hurling rocks, Greg yelled, “Let’s split!” (which was pretty cool talk, I thought, for a kid his age) and used his frozen-wheeled bike to slide down the far side of the dump. I reached down to pick up something to throw back and came up with only an eight track, but this one didn’t appear to be busted, so I jammed Stormy Weather (how perfect is that?) into my jacket pocket and followed Greg down the far side of garbage mountain. Willie climbed up onto the icy bank of trash, but by that time we had pushed our sleigh-bikes back around front and were smacking glop out from between our spokes so we could escape. We heard him yell something about “heathens,” and through nothing but sheer boyhood strength we stood up on our pedals and forced those wheels to turn, leaving twin thin trails of trash mud behind us.
Greg and I parted at his driveway as he hurried to hide his bike in the garage and I sped on like Clyde Barrow running from a Texas Ranger, oblivious to the fact that we’d done nothing wrong. The feeling of being a big time criminal was exhilarating and I filled my lungs with cold October air.
About halfway down my street, Ron Kitchen--who years later would tell me that Jamie Welliver got killed in a car crash--and his younger sister Missy--who everybody called Messy--waved me down. “Have you seen your mother?” Messy asked, eyes tall with barely restrained panic. The cold in my lungs lifted to my brain. I said no. Ron told me my mom was out looking for me, driving around in our family car, hyperventilating as she asked any kids she could find if they’d seen me. I checked my watch. It was about six-thirty and darkness was about to control the sky.
After a lengthy, well-intentioned and bitter lecture about me being a sickly child who had to remember that his mother wasn’t in very good health either and certainly shouldn’t have to be driving up and down the snowy roads searching for a young boy no one had seen, I was sent to my room, which was just fine with me. I had been feeling so great there for a while, I should have realized the great cosmic equalizer would come along and pound my high spirits back into their basement. In my foolishness I had forgotten all about being sick with whatever horror this week’s favorite was and instead had gone crazy with happiness at being out with Greg and actually doing something.
So I stood there on that platform more than thirty years later, seeing the boy within the man who now had responsibilities. He and his wife Lynette had a young teenaged daughter, they had this remarkably large store with twelve employees, and as I endeavored to take in the physical changes that threatened to engulf the child within my friend, I realized that in a few hours it would be All Hallows’ Eve, a night when the sycophants of Satan don their masks and scare hell out of one another. It was, as it turned out, the Yankee Trader’s busiest day of the year.
Greg didn’t care. He couldn’t have been more gracious--to me. His wife, Lynette, was clearly getting pissed. The store needed his help. I let him off the hook by telling him I needed to get some sleep, which was true enough. I’ll call you in a few hours, I said, which was a lie. I never talked to him again.
That evening I went over to Ruth Ann’s house.
Ruth Ann and I were great friends in college despite my not infrequent efforts to take her to bed, a highly unlikely situation given her disposition toward--oh, how to say it? She’s gay. She’s also brilliant, beautiful, strong, deep, hilarious. She was then and she remains the same. She’s also a great hostess, allowing a silly road-weary bumpkin to join her for pizza on Halloween Eve, when what she obviously wanted was to serve treats to the stream of decked out children beggars. We sat on her porch steps smoking M Lights, filling in for each other the missing connections in the past twenty-odd years. I often make it difficult for people to like me. Nothing in the last two decades has meant more to me than the fact that Ruth Ann still did.
As I mentioned, a couple days later she and I drove by my old house. Undiscouraged by being chased away by the present tenant we motored off down Tarlton Road to Logan Elm High School. Being a Saturday, no one stood sentry to scare us off. Dave Dudley sang, “My home town’s a-coming in sight/If you think I’m happy, you’re right!” How many times had I ridden my ten speed up and down these waves of narrow two-lane spirals, some goofy-ass tune in my head, sublimating God knows what into super-human strength I’d never feel again? Ruth Ann and I road those waves and bellied those curves at ridiculously high speeds, nervous as kittens but safe as angels. Anna McGarrigle declared in the voice of Linda Ronstadt: “Some say the heart is just like a wheel/When you bend it you can’t mend it.” For that four mile drive to my old school, our wheels never so much as threatened to bend.
Except for a refreshment center near the rear exit, the school hadn’t changed a bit. Hysteria bubbled up in my neck. I’m amazed still to have survived that sight.
I’ve been swimming in a sea of anarchy
I’ve been living on coffee and nicotine
I’ve been wondering if all the things I’ve seen
Were ever real--were ever really happening.
--Sheryl Crow, Brian MacLeod
I spent fifteen minutes with my Aunt Jean, then hopped back in the Roadster for the final exploration. The two hours of wandering around Marshall University in search of something familiar--something besides architecture--served its useless purpose. The time had come to go home.
Home! For the first time in twenty-one years, I actually thought of Phoenix as home. It took coming back to Ohio to awaken me to the fact that home is where the driveway is. Or something. And with all due respect to the saintly Johnny Cash, the green, green grass of home can turn brown and burn, for all I care these days.
The music took on an amusing, ironic tinge. The Shangri-Las admonished "You Can Never Go Home Anymore." And that’s called glad.
Clarence “Frogman” Henry, who indeed sang like a frog and like a girl, gutter-chirped "Ain't Got No Home."
Randy Newman croaked his version of his very own "I'll Be Home," followed close and tight by Harry Nilsson’s take on the same tune. A bit more Harry? Thank you, no problem. “Driving along at 57,000 miles an hour/Look at those people standing on the pedals of the flower.” Do I know what those lines mean? Nope. Do I care? Even less.
A-huh huh/ Oh yeah. So glad to be back in the USA. Now if only those patrols would leave us alone.
The car’s owner’s manual makes a subtle point about the tires being guaranteed for speeds up to 130 mph. Then in tiny italics it states: This is not the maximum speed of your vehicle. And that is quite true. Barreling through Big Bone Lick Kentucky bluegrass like a B-52 above a napalmed field of rice paddies, I shot the Audi up the 150, click clock, then 155, no problem, no shake, no shimmy, what’s next? Lord, it’ll never stop, let’s hit the mark. 160 proud and bold and free on winding roads built to accommodate slow moving horse trailers. It was every amphetamine dream without a trace of sediment in the bloodstream. Each fraction of doubt in my steering could roll us sideways to Tennessee and yet that vile spark in my eyes shining back from the rearview mirror kept the road hug just as tight as the lid on Aunt Mabel’s jam. “Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday…” chanted The Clash’s "Police on my Back," and like an aerial target ignited for my inconvenience, three Kentucky State Police vehicles damned near skyjacked us over to the side of the road, and “angry” does not do their collective mood any justice.
“Put your right hand on the wheel and open the door with your left! Do not step out of the car! Put your left foot on the pavement! Move!”
My advice: if you’re ever in a similar situation and have access to an adorable if somewhat simple-minded cocker spaniel, utilize your affection for that dog to the utmost bounds of bad taste. No matter how big and hostile the nature of the police officer, he or she does not much fancy developing a mental image of an other than normal affection between a boy and his dog. And it doesn’t play well at the station house. “Yeah, Sarge, we caught this guy doing 160 down the Interstate--”
“160! Jesus Joseph and Mary! Throw the bastard in the cage and mess him up for fun!”
“Yeah, but Sarge, he’s got this dog and there seems to be some hanky-panky goin’ on here.”
“You mean…?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Get his goddamn perverted ass the hell out of here. Follow him to the border. Let Tennessee handle him. Ain’t gonna have no goddamn dog-sniffers in my station house.”
On the subject of social interactions, except for my all too brief visit with Ruth Ann, I hadn’t spent much time with any women on this visit, and I felt my social skills beginning to slip. Back in Phoenix, I spend as much time as possible in either of the two major strip clubs, and I had a clear sensation that the withdrawal I now felt did not bode well for my continued sanity. Conclusion firmly in place, when I got back to Memphis, I made a point of finding a madhouse called the Platinum Rose.
Taking a slightly alternate trip back home, specifically one that avoided my earlier nightmare in Dallas, I departed Memphis and motored through central Arkansas, and onward through the long stretch of Oklahoma. I only had four Oklahoma-specific songs with me: The first two were actually the same song, “Okie From Muskogee,” one by Merle Haggard and the other by Phil Ochs, diametrical opposites if such things ever existed. I even forgot I had these two with me until I came upon a road sign that declared: SOME CALL IT ABORTION. GOD CALLS IT MURDER. I actually had to circle back and take that one in again. Snapped a picture just so the folks back home would believe it. “We don’t take our trips on LSD,” crooned Merle, and I realized he was right. All you had to do was read the signs on the road and your genetic make-up would never be the same again. “Living on Tulsa time” indeed.
The only other Okie song I could come up with was The Raiders’ “Indian Reservation.” Oklahoma means “Indian Territory,” according to the history books, and the song seemed appropriate to the trinket factories and refurbished fallout shelters that housed much of the indigenous population. My mind was clearly no longer the boss.
Early November in northern New Mexico is cold. Stark, beatific, radiating splendor and holly jolly, but windy and exceedingly cold. Cold, in a religious sense. I yearned for a full-service filling station and nevertheless had to pump my own. No one owns a coat warm enough to stave off the fruit-juice thick winds of northern NM. No one. That kind of cold seeps through the emptiness in a man and magnifies the hollow passages. Had I become the kind of man whose idea of engaging entertainment was to receive a world class grind from professional lap dancers? Had my perceptions deteriorated so sufficiently that my faith in a dream that hadn’t been more than bullshit twenty years ago would be all that sustains me? Was it possible that this nice little sports car represented a motorized phallus, a wheeled libido, its turbo engine so roaring and fragile that even the soft breath of something real would shatter it, scatter it to the winds, and damned cold winds at that? Were my quick wits and sparkling humor a way of disguising me from myself? Chances are.
Five hours out of Albuquerque I recognized the familiar, the formerly despised, the ridiculously comfortable. I’d been out of songs for the last couple hours. For entertainment, I watched Molly drool on the inside glass each time we passed a semi. “Bet there’s a lot of dog food in that truck,” she must have been thinking.
I’ve been back home for a few months now. Nothing here is either better or worse. I am both better and worse. Worse for confronting self-delusions that most of us get to ignore, blissfully. And better for knowing that about myself.
Gotta go now. There’s some new CD’s that just arrived in the mail…
When Berry Gordy Jr. moved the Motown empire to Los Angeles in 1971, his plan was for the world's premier record company to go into the movie business. If you have a hard time thinking of any Motown-produced pictures other than Mahogany and Lady Sings the Blues, perhaps that fact best sums up the wisdom of Gordy's decision. In a 1994 interview with Detroit Free Press writer Gary Graff, the one-time mogul admitted his lapse in judgment. "We would have been better off with the record thing," Gordy acknowledged, "if we had stayed in Detroit."
There's no telling what pop music would be like today had Motown stayed where it belonged. But there can be no denying that once "The Sound of Young America" (as Motown was often known) headed west, some outstanding new sounds popped up, almost in direct reaction to Motown's departure. Indeed, Motown's stellar writing-production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland had a few years earlier left the stable and formed their own label: Hot Wax/Invictus. But until Gordy took his troops to Hollywood, nothing HDH created prospered at all. Exit Motown and--wham! Freda Payne, The Chairmen of the Board, Flaming Ember, Laura Lee, Honey Cone, 100 Proof. The vast majority of the entries here instantly hit the charts in waves! A middle-aged Detroit music fan named Armen Boladian launched Westbound (pun definitely intended) Records at the same time Invictus began taking to the hit parade, and in the process gave much needed career breaks to the Ohio Players, Funkadelic, and the Detroit Emeralds. Even the staid and stubborn Stax and Paramount labels branched northward with, respectively, The Dramatics and Detroit. So for two to three years, nobody really much noticed that Motown was gone. The hard-edged and gritty tracks that followed weren't the Motown forte anyway, and by the time these acts petered out, Motown itself was in such artistic disarray that only the inestimable power of its 1960's artists allows it to retain credibilty.
By 1970, the false consciousness trappings linking the economic ideologies of capitalism and communism ceased to exist. In their place stood the finger-pointing polar opposites and sworn enemies of Conflict Theory and Realpolitiks. The first of these was so weighed down in academic armor that no self-respecting urban guerrilla could relate to it, and the latter dressed itself so thoroughly in ethnocentrism that its very devisiveness made its stone cold logic infinitely illogical. These inherent flaws did not stop ideologues from carrying out very real oppression against millions of people, a state of existence with us to this day. The artists whose songs appear below may not have known or specifically cared about theories of economic hegemony or creeping decimalism, but their music clearly responded to the leaden conditions around them. Revisionists claim the 1960s as a time of substantial musical protest, but the reality is that the oft-ridiculed 1970s embraced far more rebellion against the status quo than anytime in the Twentieth Century.
The centerpiece of this period--musically, if not chronologically--is Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On. Thirty-plus years later, absolutley nothing even approaches this album in its ability to convey the feel of being clubbed senseless by the unwashed hatred of imbecilic leaders and dog-lapping followers alike. To further convey a sense of manifestly dangerous outrage in such a numbed out condition elevates this album above all but a handful ever recorded.
At the same time we had Marvin Gaye asking--more politely perhaps; I mean, he was asking--how and why things had come to be so screwed up. His demeanor, like that of Sly Stone, was heavily drugged, somewhere between being punch drunk and totally narcotized, yet still warring with an inner frustration and churning, bubbling hostility. No sooner had the shock waves subsided than Curtis Mayfield, the lovely and sensitive man who a few months years had bored us to near-death with "Gypsy Woman," shot up from under the manhole cover and connected the drug-disease with the inherent corruption in our power systems, and still made us want to dance to it! This all-too-brief period of Black Power Renaissance still occasionally echoes in the early songs of Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, and Tupac.
The Glass House. "Crumbs Off the Table." Invictus. 1969.
Holland-Dozier-Holland's first single on their own label kicks loose with a wailing blues harmonica and curly-cew guitar figure, announcing something big was barreling down the pike. Sherrie Payne's hungry housewife blues chick-a-booms as she berates her man (who works twelve hours a day, by her own admission) for being too tired to love her when he gets home. The nagging might be one reason for his lack of attention, but her voice (funkier, if not richer, than sister Freda's) should fire him up no matter how hard his day.
Five Stairsteps. "O-o-h Child." Buddah. 1970.
The Burke children had over a dozen soul and R&B hits on Curtis Mayfield's various labels before signing with Buddah and releasing their sole pop hit. Along with the early singles of the Jackson Five, the Five Stairsteps were responsible for a resurged interest in black group pop. The striking and absolute paranoia in the falsetto-to-tenor lead as he assures his love that "things are gonna get easier" is among the most unsettling in all pop music. There's no doubt he doesn't believe a word he's saying; he simply has to say something, and chooses these words as carefully as possible. Anyone who only knows the remakes of this by Lenny Williams or Valerie Carter should discover the real thing. And the simultaneously restrained and unleashed drumming on the Stairsteps' version dispels any suggestion that this was soft rock.
100 Proof Aged in Soul. "Somebody's Been Sleeping." Hot Wax. 1970.
Back when one of radio's prime contributions was to introduce listeners to music before they heard it on TV, in nightclubs or record stores--in other words, back when radio was the essential source of new music--"Somebody's Been Sleeping" sounded almost nothing like the other songs emanating from the new H-D-H headquarters. The flavor of the arrangement, the laconic urgency of the vocals, and the take on the subject matter all shouted Memphis, or possibly even Macon, Georgia. But by the second or third time through, those telegraph guitars hinted that something a bit more Motown-oriented was going on. That can only be because of the producers' earlier connection to that same exact style on the Supremes songs they'd invented years before. It couldn't have hurt that backing singer Joe Stubbs was blood brother to the Four Tops' Levi Stubbs. Whatever the source of the connection, this remains one of Hot Wax's idealized blends of Stax-era soul with the producers' legitimate roots.
Freda Payne Greatest Hits Invictus/Fantasy. 1991
As the 1970s began to roll, one of the changes happening was that Motown lost Holland-Dozier-Holland. Eddie, Lamont and Brian formed their own label, Invictus Records. One of their first singers was Freda Payne, a Detroit girl who had sung in the chorus of The Pearl Bailey Show, served as an understudy for Leslie Uggams, sung for Quincy Jones, and most especially had sung lead for Duke Ellington's band. Eddie Holland persuaded Payne to join the label and shortly the four of them released three mighty fine post-Motown marvels. "Band of Gold" had everything a Supremes record ever had, except it had a gutsier singer than Diana Ross and none of the infuriating slickness of a Motown record. The particular mix of singer, songs and arrangements was still glitzy show-biz, but abrasive show-biz, superficially the kind of apparent dreck the Wayne Newton's of the world would love, then on second glance, the very kind of emotionally raw unveiling that his ilk detests. Even the trendy "The Unhooked Generation" was pop, no question, but it was also soul. And it was dance music. It had swing and a lot of rhythm. The autumnal "Deeper and Deeper" didn't do as well, but "Bring the Boys Home" was the first anti-war hit song by a black woman, sort of the flip side to Edwin Starr's "War." Though Payne continued to record throughout the decade, her other releases only made the R&B charts. "Cherish What is Dear to You" and "You Brought the Joy" are particularly fine.
MC5. "Kick Out the Jams." Elektra. 1970.
The first generation of legitimate rock critics united loosely at Detroit's famed Creem magazine. The self-described "only rock ‘n' roll magazine" featured the seminal writings of Dave Marsh, Jaan Uhelzski, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith and others who accomplished nothing less than defining (rather than reciting) the actual language of the music. The very fact of the magazine contained a slight subordination of political challange to that of cultural upheaval. Politics, in fact, were seen as one of the evils that the culture being created would inevitably destroy. The music of the MC5--and of this song in particular--was precisely the sound of that upheaval. And while there was a tenuous connection between Creem and the band (the leader of the White Panther Party, John Sinclair, the band's manager, had connections at the magazine), the more significant relationship between the two was in the passion that each entity brought to their respective tasks. Both also made an awful lot of noise, a term once used in derision, ever after one of affection.
A couple years before this album's release, Sinclair developed the ten-point program for the MC5 and any other guerrilla bands interested in joining the fold.
With the consolidation of the recording industry and studios in Los Angeles and New York, it may seem peculiar to many readers that not so long ago a lot of cities between the coasts hosted music as good or better than that being cut in LA or NYC. Muscle Shoals, Nashville and Memphis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and of course Detroit: these and other music meccas throughout the country generated far more than style-specific sounds; they indulged the wildest impulses of their creative genuises and in the process produced some genuine crap, along with gutsy gems like "Westbound #9," one of Detroit's hardest-rocking white-r&b treats. Listening to the singer rail about the hypocrisy of Deacon Jones in a voice that sounds like Alex Chilton (of the Box Tops) after somebody woke him up with a nose full of coke, nearly outclassed by the ravaging rhythm section, the easy assumption is that this group was a hard-ass band of Chairmen of the Board wanna-be's. A closer listening to the words tips the scales nearer the Temptations though, especially when singer/drummer Jerry Plunk explains that his mind "hitches a ride on the westbound number nine" every time he thinks about the magnitude of the local spiritual leader selling out. This number may not have been quite as transcendent as most of the Hot Wax/Invictus singles, but the hyper-drive of its basement grit groove sure makes the temporal plane attractive.
The Chairmen of the Board. Everything's Tuesday. Invictus. 2000.
Carolina Beach Music is hard-edge rhythm and blues with a bass line that by turns raises and dips. As the lead singer and composer for a Tidewater gang called The Showmen, "General" Norman Johnson discovered that his group's R&B sound fit the bill when they played their first North Carolina Beach gig. Prior to that success, his most laudable achievement was an homage to rock 'n' roll called "It Will Stand." While the demand for Beach Music continued strong as ever, by the late 1960's the crack songwriting team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland were fed up with the Motown hegemony (and hedging money) in Detroit and decided to impose with their own label. One of their two biggest stars was the Chairmen of the Board (Johnson, Harrison Kennedy, Danny Woods and Eddie Curtis). Unlike the slick sheen of Motown, this music was porous. It didn't sound fractured; it sounded as if it could fracture. Even though the Chairmen found their biggest commercial success while working out of Detroit, their sound was precisely what the North Carolina crowds had been waiting for. Johnson sang as if he had just dislodged a wad of latex from his throat and was freely toying with all the wonders his voice could suddenly convey. Plus it was danceable soul music. The Chairmen even had the nerve to release a great hit single named after themselves! At the time, panoramic paranoia was all the rage in soul music. Yet here these four were, just wanting to get everybody down on the floor--er, beach. Oh, it was glorious: stuttering, swaggering, chewing on the words and giving them the sweet roll out, like Italian rock of the 1950's in reverse and twice as fast. If this doesn't fit your idea of Beach Music, maybe you haven't been to the Atlantic Ocean lately.
The Detroit Emeralds. "You Want It, You Got It." Westbound. 1971); "Feel the Need." Westbound. 1972.
Early Seventies soul outfit led by Abrim and Ivory Tilman. Moving up north from Little Rock, the Detroit Emeralds arrived just in time for Motown to relocate to Los Angeles, thereby allowing the brothers to briefly fill an enormous soul gap in the Motor City. "You Want It, You Got It" was the hit. "Feel the Need" was the vision. It's more than a tad ironic that A&R man, producer and entrepreneur label executive Armen Boladian named his organization Westbound, because while Motown moved west, Boladian brought a southern musical accent to the great Midwest. Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, the Five Stairsteps all recorded for Westbound. But this small Little Rock funky soul outfit stirred up more of a traditional southern stew than any of their label-mates.
Laura Lee. "Women's Love Rights." Hot Wax. 1971.
At the exact moment when the women's liberation movement first threatened to descend into the banalities of middle class enlightenment (as it eventually did), Detroit-born Chicago-bred Laura Lee erupted on the R&B charts with this hard-boiled, exploitive, round-house punch. The arrangement is strictly Honey Cone pop-rock. What gives this song its edge is the gutsy yelp she picked up from Aretha Franklin when both were working at Rick Hall's Hall of Fame in Muscle Shoals. "Love who you wanna," she cries. "Cause a man's sure gonna." After suggesting a litany of demands (including weekly dinners at fine restaurants, a set of her own car keys, and regular shopping sprees--all at the man's expense, mind you), Lee cracks the arrangement down the middle as she barks out her justification for such an attitude: the man's probably got three other girls he's supporting across town, so why shouldn't you get as much as you can? None of this may bode accurately for male-female relationships then or now (personally, we'll take Loretta Lynn's more durable and action-oriented hostility any day), but just for the guts required to raise such a rucuss, this song is worth coveting.
Marvin Gaye. What's Going On? Motown. 1971.
Maybe because he had been everywhere and done everything; maybe because the instinct of middle age was fast approaching; maybe because he intuited that black music was about to experience an opportunity to do things the brain-damaged leftovers from late 1960's psychedelic misanthropy never could--for whatever reason, Marvin Gaye ran the ultimate risk of alienating himself from brother-in-law and tyrannical boss, Berry Gordy Jr. Then again, if the hit-obsessed Gordy considered gambling on anything, this album of pained, funky-town slow down slap back had to be the most convincing long shot of either man's career. It is nothing less than the ideal, if unintentional, answer record to John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. There may be some autobiography in a few places ("I can't pay my taxes," for instance), but mostly this is Marvin drawing a sound scape of world misery and confusion that all the parties and exhortations of "brother, brother" won't rectify, while only referencing himself as a frustrated observer to an apocalypse he'd like to avoid if only he had the energy.
The Dramatics. "Whatcha See is Whatcha Get." Stax. 1972.
Stax Records carried on into the 1970s with this Ron Banks quintet who, no matter what they earned for the title track, it wasn't nearly enough. In the midst of a wall-banging festival where points are earned for chewing up words and fracturing them joyously as they leave the mouth, Banks interplays with the other singers in a way that would be comedic if it weren't so damned convincing: "Some people/are made of lies (ooh-ooh ah-ah)/They'll bring you down/and shame your name/(ooh-ooh ah-ah)." Writer/producer Tony Hester knew he had a great danceable funk-ready vocally acrobatic fivesome on his hands and did not let their talent waste. Who but the Dramatics could pull off a parody of a fashion trend and a Sly Stone single all in the same song, much less expose dancing for the sexual prelude it had always been?
The Undisputed Truth. "Smiling Faces Sometimes." Gordy. 1972.
In the words of Blue Oyster Cult, this ain't the Summer of Love. Producer Norman Whitfield linked up singers Joe Harris, Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Jorce Evans, forming this loosely tight single that went Top Five at a time when people were suspecting that all those hippie aphorisms were just some corporate lackey's idea of soup in rubber pockets on a food line. The Undisputed Truth said that people who smile in your face just might be looking out for Number One. And as Frank Zappa would soon point out, "You ain't even Number Two."
Detroit. "Rock 'n' Roll." Paramount. 1972.
For all those who felt that Lou Reed's original version of this song sounded like it was sung and played by a band of sedated toads (not that that was a bad thing), this is what you were waiting for: Mitch Ryder reunited with bad ass drummer John (Johnny Bee) Badanjek, and with some rave up guitarists they formed this one-album wonder combo that sounded like the life the radio had saved was worth the bother. This wasn't the Detroit Wheels, but it was the last great leap of a local legend.
Honey Cone. "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" and "Want Ads." Invictus. 1972.
When the crack songwriting and production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown to form their own record company, they wanted a harder sound that retained the pop whistle of their former label. That may be why both of these songs sound very much like the Jackson 5. Lead singer Edna Wright proves talent's in the genes (Darlene Love is her sister), and so is enthusiasm. We absolutely guarantee that Katrina and the Waves learned everything they'd ever know from "Monkey," including between-line vocal trills. The absolute golden age of black pop music was never better than in the 1971-73 period, when a none-too-friendly competition existed between Invictus, Stax, and Motown, all aiming to be the sound of young America.
So here comes twenty-one (yes!) versions of the great (excellent) song!
Richard Berry
The Kingsmen
Motorhead
Toots and the Maytals
Iggy Pop
The Sonics
The Kinks
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Beach Boys
Stanley Clarke and George Duke
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
John Belushi
Smashing Pumpkins
The Clash
The MC5
Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers
The Troggs
LMS Jazz Band
The Swamp Rats
The Sandpipers
The Three Amigos
bonus
The emotional and legal termination of The Beatles working relationship struck the music world and the listening public like a cold wet salmon across the face. Our collective dependence upon the group for the best rock music, the most imaginative sounds, and the most significant indications of the sonic future--our near total reliance upon these four young men for rock and roll sustenance positioned us to greedily accept whatever barn swill and monkey pus came our way, be it on one extreme the overblown lumbering sloths who made up Led Zeppelin or on the other timid introspective psychological doodlings of James Taylor. Neither extreme, it turned out, was particularly healthy, and neither, it turned out, benefited the music of future generations, other than as something to rebel against. And so an intellectual, emotional and spiritual degeneration ensued as even the best sounds were a lot less happy, a lot less optimistic, and a lot more stoic in their acceptance of impending doom. Even The Beatles themselves presaged this disappointing trend as far back as their 1968 self-titled release. The Beatles might have been imaginative, or even relevant to future generations, but it sho nuff weren't happy.
Yet an awful lot of good stuff continued to come from the British Isles, albeit from unexpected places. Despite the utopian and mercantile ambitions of The Beatles' Apple Corp, only one commercially successful band emerged, but it was a great one: Badfinger. Of course, associations needn't always be economic. In the case of Harry Nilsson, his acquaintance with the Fab Four was as much social as artistic. The result was one fine album and a number of decent singles. Then, of course, there was Elton John, the most commercially successful star of the 1970s, a man whose initial cynicism was only matched by his ability to set to music the most ridiculous lyrics in the pantheon of literary pop slop. So while one cannot help but praise this period with more than a trace of damnation, there are nevertheless elements of this peculiar period which still resonate with glory.
The Beatles. The Beatles. Apple. 1968.
Released on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of JFK, the White Album, as The Beatles became known, showed what the individual members of the group were capable of at a time when they didn't much care for one another and yet could not help but be influenced by one another, even if it were in a reactive way. After all, no matter who you were in The Beatles, there was still nobody outside your group who could touch your band mates. With the recent death of Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, no one remained with enough clout to tell the group "no" about anything, particularly about artistic decisions. And so, less despite than because of the fact that at least half the songs here represent solo projects for the specific members, this album is a work as complex and animated as Picasso's Guernica. Although everyone had tremendous moments, the best of the best belonged to John Lennon, particularly the one song that most people who are not named Charles Manson dislike, that being "Revolution 9." It may have been a mindless lark, but given the title, the context, the times and the way the song sounds, it is hard to imagine a mass upheaval of any society's populace sounding other than precisely like this. The artwork on the cover was also first rate.
If you listen to this album from beginning to end, you will experience parody, ball room blitz, sound effects, shattering guitar jams, the lamentable absence of Ringo's drumming on the songs where Paul sings lead, a mobius strip of sound device tape manipulation, heavy metal, a brief spelling lesson, open hostility, reggae, warmth and an enormous sense of relief when the whole thing is over, a relief which will last about thirty seconds, after which there will be a compulsion to play the whole thing over again.
The Beatles. Abbey Road. Apple. 1969.
The last Beatles album to be recorded veers close to being too slick for its own good. The magic of their final album lay in producer George Martin's ability to work a compromise between the two principal songwriters and creative forces, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. For their last trip into the studio, McCartney convinced the others that a monument to their career together was required. Reluctantly, the band delivered. Up-to-date Chuck Berry feel goods, odes to classical music, numbing depth of synthesized passion walls, cosmic humor--and that was just Lennon. Once Paul seized the spotlight, there were Little Richard rave ups, cartoon imagery, and blazing guitar work. The band came together after the concept seemed complete to encore one last time. Ringo did an instantly identifiable solo, then the other three pulled out their razors and slashed their guitars to shreds. It was a fair-well to which only The Beatles themselves were worthy.
Fairport Convention. Unhalfbricking. A&M. 1969.
Although this wonderful British folk rock institution has survived multiple incarnations, the only one that matters much is where the members were Sandy Denny and Ian Matthews on vocals, Richard Thompson singing and guitaring along with Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings on bass and Martin Lamble on drums. On the one hand, it may seem that all they did was cover songs from folkies like Bob Dylan, the Everly Brothers, Joni Mitchell and Eric Anderson. On the other, they introduced vocal nuances, meter changes, added intensity and a distinctly Hands Across the Water resistability to "Percy's Song," "I Don't Know Where I Stand," "Gone Gone Gone," especially the severely intense "A Sailor's Life," and actually sounded as if they got the jokes in "Million Dollar Bash." You can listen to any of these songs inside or out, in any city or country, eyes opened or closed, and your mind will pry loose your senses to things you had forgotten by the time your were nine but couldn't have appreciated until at least your mid-thirties.
Plastic Ono Band. "Cold Turkey." Apple. 1970.
This almost never turns up on oldies stations or those that call what they feature "classic rock." No doubt the same narrow mindedness that prevents these stations from playing music by artists whose race was an integral part of their music likewise prevents them from appreciating guitar work and drums far more interesting than anything Pink Floyd ever imagined, and sandpaper vocals far more unsettling and passionate than a thrice-removed outtake bass pattern from ELO. "Cold Turkey" is a sound about what it feels like to go through heroin withdrawal. If you cannot relate to that, maybe the loss of someone who was not good for you might conjure similar sounding agony.
The Who. "The Seeker" and "Summertime Blues." MCA. 1970.
The rock opera Tommy was ambitious as can be. It had a number of fine songs. And it annoyed stuffed shirts at the time less because of its content than by virtue of the fact that hooligans were deigning to conceptualize heathen music. truth to tell, that always bothered me too. I like heathen music; I just don't care for conceptualization. So when these two songs came out a year and a half later, I up and danced til dawn. With one of the most distinctive and gripping guitar intros since Chuck Berry played "Johnny B. Goode," "The Seeker" comes roaring through the room looking for some kind of answer to who knows what question. If the none too subtle put downs of Dylan, Timothy Leary and The Beatles don't hook you, then Roger Daltrey's complete anxiety at not finding whatever he's looking for will surely pull you in. "Summertime Blues" showed what the band could do to other people's songs. When Eddie Cochran sang the song, it was just a lazy kid trying to get away with as much as he could. When The Who played it, with sonic distortion flooding the sky, it was a good-natured act of total oblivious defiance of anything that had come before it.
The Beatles. Hey Jude (The Beatles Again). Apple. 1970.
For those too snotty to ever deign to buy mere singles, the penalty for such highfalutin non-behavior was a deficit in the ownership of certain great Beatles music. So while the existence of this album is simply manager Allen Klein caught in the act of raising capital, the cumulative effect of so many great singles in one place left the public gasping. This was also the last official recording to bear the odd triangulated I AM logo directly on the run-out groove.
Eric Burdon and War. Eric Burdon Declares War. MGM. 1970.
Because he was a proud clown, Eric Burdon was sometimes a great notion. As with the early incarnations of the Animals, with War Eric Burdon went as far as possible toward eradicating the musical distinctions between black and white. Before the musicians un-Burdoned themselves, they released three chrome-dented singles, one of which is here, being "Spill the Wine," a song about nothing in particular, yet conveyed as if it were about the great riddles of life. Eccentric, slim slow low rider slider funky, too energized to show it and tighter than the lid on Aunt Mabel's jam, this band was a refreshing entree to the 1970s.
Hotlegs. "Neanderthal Man." Capitol. 1970.
Hotlegs was comprised of Lol Creme, Eric Stewart and Kevin Godley. This formation create the mantra dirge which, according to me, is a song similar to "Pictures of Matchstick Men," meaning it is catchy only when you're listening to it, sounds vaguely familiar but only aficionados of the bizarre can ever place it, and you immediately forget it once it's over. 10cc without the spoon.
The Kinks. Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. Reprise. 1970.
Ray Davies was always just a little bit nuts. Imagine a band of Victorian-dressed finery-fanatics slamming out the "Louie, Louie" riffs (almost) of "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night." Of course, that lunacy was carried onto a new plane with such socially aware songs as "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "A Well Respected Man." However, aside from the success of "Lola," the Kinks have never been all that big in America and that is because they are so blatantly British. God knows they've made some great songs: "Victoria," "Waterloo Sunset," and this album's "Apeman" immediately come to mind. However, Ray and broher Dave do keep on trying. With Mick Avory and Pete Quaife filling out the original line-up, it must be observed that they were fun, if little else.
Except here. Lola was one angry set of tunes. The fury must've done Ray some good because this holds together well enough to make us ask all these years later: "Where's Part Two"? If you recall the frustration Terry Maloy brilliantly stuttered out at his brother Charlie in the cab scene in On The Waterfront, the similarities with Ray Davies' view of himself are eerie. Terry tells Charlie that if only he, Charlie, had looked out for him and not made him take that dive that night at the Garden, then he would have amounted to something more than what he had become. Davies didn't blame his brother, who was, after all, in the band. But on this album, he takes the opportunity to blame every phony slime wad parasite who ever did him wrong. As with Terry's speech, we realize suddenly that the ability to articulate such strangled feelings is an act itself that dispels the idea that we're listening to a loser. By the time "Powerman" explodes with its vitriolic history lesson, even the dead understand that this album succeeds precisely because of all that pent up frustration initiated by the more mercenary aspects of show business.
Badfinger. No Dice. Apple. 1971.
If The Beatles had the addictive power of heroin, then Badfinger was methadone. No one who loved The Beatles wanted to live without renewed and even more powerful doses of their music. When the recording days of Liverpool's living legends ended, Badfinger made the pains of withdrawal easier to take. Like methadone, Badfinger's music itself had addictive properties. "No Matter What," the big hit single from this album, made a nice transition from a time when The Beatles dominated everything, while "Without You" sounded as good as the version done by Nilsson the following year. Every song here has a warmth that happens as a consequence of the act of confiding an understanding of personal experience. The song structures again drew comparisons to The Beatles, because those songs seemed so effortless while being deceptively complex. Mike Gibbins (drums), Joey Molland (guitar), Pete Ham (guitar and piano), and Tom Evans (bass): they had the same instrumentation as the act the public wanted them to replace. Like The Beatles, they had a slight mystique simply by virtue of being British. They recorded for The Beatles record company. Beatle George harrison named them. They became the first post-Beatle casualty of a disease known as "The New Beatles Syndrome." Ultimately, Evans and Ham committed suicide, acts of intense despair that came from being experienced as successful imitators rather than from being appreciated as the genuine talents they were.
Paul McCartney. Ram. Apple. 1971.
The song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," which is not on this album but should have been, wastes every politico-musical diatribe ever written on the subject of Irish independence. Against a traditional, folkie tune, McCartney posits in his most intriguing tone, "Tell me how would you like it if on your way to work you were stopped by Irish soldiers? Would you lie down, do nothing?" A social situation imposed itself on McCartney's world and he responded in the only way an artist can. Whatever his motivation, Paul could not simply do nothing. This album is another case in point. After taking so much vitriol about his previous one man show's amateuristic ambiance, he produced a much more sophisticated version of the same general concepts that a lot of people said sounded more like a Beatles album than had Abbey Road.
Jethro Tull. "Hymn 43." Chrysalis. 1971.
As the king daddies of stumble-bum heaviness, Jethro Tull were quite a self-important lot. The conceptual album Aqualung was about Christianity, or rather, man's relation to the Christian religion. Those who find it a deep thought that just possibly man has used religion to oppress others, well, then, please become a Tull freak pronto. But if you're just looking for a clever rhythm with indecipherable lyrics, then this is a fine place to get your kicks.
John Lennon. "Power to the People" and "Imagine," 1971. "Stand By Me," 1975. Apple.
It used to take guts to be this good. With Elephant's Memory Band blowing off the roof, Lennon marches down the street, singing, or chanting, or bawling, his most politically incendiary single, "Power to the People." Natch, the most covered and oft-played Lennon tune is "Imagine," which, regardless of its approximation to poetry, remains a bit too subtle for its own good. "Stand By Me," the cover of Ben E. King's classic, united John with producer Phil Spector, both of whom needed a walk down memory lane. Lennon crawled inside the song, slept with it, and emerged with a voice as strong and desperate as anything he'd recorded since "Twist and Shout."
Paul McCartney. "Oh Woman Oh Why." Apple. 1971.
This song is probably only familiar to those who bought "Another Day." This is a tremendously scabrous rocker that is the exact opposite of the soft and light stuff McCartney would spend most of the rest of his life recording. It's also the only known recording of McCartney being shot to death.
Led Zeppelin. IV. Atlantic. 1971.
It was either Keith Moon or John Entwistle who quipped that Jimmy Page's new Yardbirds would go over like a lead zeppelin, thereby furnishing at least a great band name, if not an historically accurate prediction. In fact, the bombast that Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham first created was, well, bombastic. The music wasn't merely loud; it evoked shudders. They didn't simply play the blues; the gouged them. Being stoned didn't assist the listening process; it was central to it. Laborious thunder, tedious tsunamis, overpasses demolished by earthquakes and a double bass drum attack that suggested the sky had already fallen: at the time a lot of critics saw all this as less than a good thing. That view did not prevent LZ from becoming the largest selling album act of their day.
Revered by fans for their powerhouse album tracks, Zep's best songs were almost always their singles. "Immigrant Song," "Whole Lotta Love," "Rock and Roll," "Black Dog" and "D'Yer Maker": who cared what they were about? They rocked as hard as anything on the radio and the louder you played them the better they sounded. Nevertheless, there can be no denying that "Stairway to Heaven" was their biggest success, mostly because you can substitute the words to "Gilligan's Island" and the song makes sense.
Harry Nilsson. Nilsson Schmilsson. RCA. 1971.
I actually had the privilege of speaking with Harry Nilsson once. It was the early 1980s and I stuttered out something about being a fan. As he contemplated a purchase in the clothing store, he seemed pleasantly distracted by the point and softly hummed a few bars from a song he'd once recorded. How odd, I thought, that he should even bother with me, because just a few years earlier Nilsson had been one of the great undeveloped talents of the first half of the 1970s. After releasing a terrific album of Randy Newman covers, he painted this aural fun fest. Schmilsson has it all: Badfinger's "Without You," the merrily idiotic "Coconut," the stilted rocker "Jump into the Fire," a few songs about the pleasures and frustrations of driving early in the morning, and "Moonbeam," an hilarious parody of stupid songs of whimsy. What this album did to earn its stripes was to musically personify fleeting experiences that seem vital when they're happening, even as we suspect their intransigence. Nilsson's songs become those experiences. That act of personification legitimizes every dead brain cell, every sad laugh, and every ruptured irony.
The Rolling Stones. Probably the Best Album We Ever Made, Actually. Santa Fe Records. 1971.
With political disillusionment a worldwide phenomenon, folks with enough energy to do so wondered if the Stones could carry on into the 1970s. The group responded with an album that was only released in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where renegade Navajos still consider it a symbolic totem. Simply titled, it contains the best of what later became both Sticky Fingers and Exile of Main Street. Had businessmen not decided that it was better to have these twelve songs on two-and-a-half albums rather than one LP, young people today would understand what all the fuss was about. Sadly, Jagger was killed while attempting to swallow a bottle of champagne without first uncorking it and, because Mick Taylor had exploded the top of his own head off in an awkward attempt to perform the Heimlich on himself, both Micks had to be replaced. Taylor's fill-in was Ron Woods of the Faces. Jagger's was Mel Brooks, resulting in one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the record-buying public. Ironically, nothing the group released from 1973 on has been worth hearing, except for cheap laughs.
The Who. Who's Next. MCA. 1971.
Daltrey's singing was never less hyperbolic and Townshend's songwriting has never been more grounded and sincere. Add to that John Entwistle's scat bass and Moon's ability to play rolls that overlapped measures without ever precisely losing the beat and you have one of the greatest albums ever disparaged by the term "classic."
Ashton, Gardner & Dyke. "Resurrection Shuffle." Capitol. 1971.
It is one of those shames that used to happen every so often that a great group like this would release a spectacular single, only to have its popularity sidetracked by a more popular yet inferior performer releasing his own version of the song at the same exact time. That's what happened here. Tom Jones, of all people, released his version on the same exact day that these Englishmen released theirs, effectively confusing the public about whose version was the good one. A few more hits like this and there would have been no misunderstanding.
Rod Stewart. "I Know I'm Losing You." Mercury. 1971. "You Wear It Well." Mercury. 1972.
Rod Stewart is a remarkably talented singer, songwriter and interpreter who has on occasion made some remarkably horrible recordings. He has been the lead singer for some of the most passionately inspired hard rock acts in history and has also strutted amid a myriad of hack session players. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect is that he has displayed an internal conflict between being one of the sharpest, most insightful performers of our time and being a celebrity who loves to wile away the hours with fashion models, no doubt for the conversation. Before he had become so reprehensible that nothing he could do afterwards would ever compensate, he recorded several fine albums for Mercury, the two supreme highlights of which are these sensitive yet willful singles.
Harry Nilsson. "Spaceman." RCA. 1972.
There were three big deal space program hits in the 1970s: David Bowie' "Space Oddity," Elton John's "Rocket Man," and this, the best of the bunch. The story isn't just sad; it's downright depressing. After quickly and eloquently summing up space exploration as just another extension of Manifest Destiny that the astronaut had bought into, he discovers to his horror that the public no longer cares about such lunacy. Within a controlled swirl of Richard Perry orchestral production, this song conveys the hopeless inevitability of the ideology that leads to such consequence.
Elton John. Honky Chateau. Uni. 1972.
Elton John was far and away the most commercially successful artist of the first half of the 1970s. He came on a whole lot like the way he went out: a bit cocksure, a bit timid, kind of geeky, kind of sleek. Cool, then, in a nerdish way. And that was the initial reason for his success. "Your Song" was his first charter. It was simple, much like the singer, who then emoted the way old people do. "It's a little bit funny," Bernie Taupin wrote and Elton sang, "this feeling inside." The only feeling conveyed was of someone either too shy or too bored to be committal and because it was the 1970s, that was exactly what was needed.
Despite his success as a singles act, EJ was ultimately an album artist. Elton John, the U.S. debut, started a trend of singing the words to songs with a deliberate disregard for the music. One such grand example on Honky Chateau is "I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself." The song captures Elton bopping along merrily about how what he really needs deep down is to snuff it, while the piano trills and someone else is tap dancing. In the meantime, the hits just kept on coming. This album featured two: "Honky Cat," about about a city boy needing to return to rural heartache, and "Rocket Man," the first great song about the space program. Best of all, this album rocked the way not much else was doing at the time and "Hercules" shimmered. When some people insist that Elton opened up their minds, this album is why.
Ringo Starr. "Back Off Boogaloo." Apple. 1972.
At the time of this single's release, most of my friends tried to convince me that something dirty was happening here. Twas no such thing. What they didn't know then, but what I discovered later, was that this slaughtering song for guitar and drums was actually a coded attack upon Paul McCartney. "Wake up meathead, don't pretend that you are dead" is just one of the clever remarks that Ringo slips in between George Harrison's angry guitar assaults. The irony is that McCartney would contribute to Stop and Smell the Roses' best song, one that featured a medley that included a redone version of this very tune.
Thunderclap Newman. Hollywood Dream. MCA. 1973.
By the time this album hit the States, the band that made it had ceased to exist. Originally recorded between late 1969 and early 1970 by John "Speedy" Keene, Jimmy McCullough and Andy Newman, Hollywood Dream shocked as it coerced. arranged and organized by the who's Pete Townshend, Thunderclap Newman's portrait of the world in transition between flower power and armed insurrection is simultaneously mellow, surreal, conventional and cataclysmic. Released as a single years before the U.S. appearance of the album, "Something in the Air" freshens as it frightens, especially with its melodic call to fetch the arms and ammo. The various Hollywood tunes ambiguously tease the superstar motif these guys never came close to experiencing for themselves. Everything else maintains a pastoral militancy that's more rare than commonly believed about the presumably enlightened 1960s.
Paul McCartney. Band on the Run. Apple. 1973.
After the artistic and commercial success of Ram, McCartney was positioned to create anything he wanted and his credibility was assumed before the first song began. Unfortunately, he gave us trash. But after wading in a kiddie-pool of lame albums, he fired back with Band on the Run, complete with three rocking hit singles, some very pleasant pastoral meanderings, a soft parody of his one-time creative partner, a damned fine drunken ode to Picasso, and an over-all production feel that suggested the act of being freed from The Beatles unleashed opportunities for creativity that someone outside his immediate family might actually enjoy hearing. Band on the Run has come to bethought of as Paul's testament, his sole proof that he could produce something artistically solid without John Lennon.
Ringo Starr. Ringo. Capitol. 1973.
After a few shoddy albums, it appeared that Ringo might be the exception among the ex-Beatles in not releasing a single album that spoke of his triumph. Then he met producer Richard Perry, a man who had already made his bones with both Carly Simon and Harry Nilsson, capitalizing on those artist's best qualities and yielding their most successful albums. So when he and Ringo joined forces, the producer's confidence balanced with the drummer's frustrated ambitions to assemble the album of a lifetime. A big part of this success was due to the accompaniment, which included Messrs. McCartney, Lennon and Harrison. Still, this is Ringo's show, leading off with the realistically boastful chant "I'm the Greatest," and carrying through with sprite pop songs that didn't require long-held notes, allowing the singer to emphasize the percussive aspects of his voice. Apple released three of these ten songs as singles, each of which hit the Top Forty, two of them taking over at Number One, a feat unmatched by his former band mates.
Kiki Dee. "I've Got the Music in Me." Rocket. 1974.
Talking about Kiki Dee without mentioning Elton John would be like talking about the Ronettes and neglecting to say something about Phil Spector. After all, Rocket was the record company Elton formed to record Kiki, Neil Sedaka, and the Hudson Brothers, among others. And that list is important because aside from whatever degree of talent they may have possessed, their public personas stipulated that show business was as much their lives as their art. This bears mentioning because while "I've Got the Music in Me" was one of Rocket's first cuts and one of its best, it also exudes the spirit of Everything Is Subordinate To This Song I'm Singing Right Now. Or so it seemed at first. But listening again it is possible to hear the lie between the stated facts of having no trouble in her life and the tension in the music and vocals. After all, how can you dismiss dreams as foolish unless you've had some of your own thwarted?
Paul McCartney. Venus and Mars. Capitol. 1975.
While the fans and critics may have agreed about the success of Band on the Run, the time of universal acclaim for McCartney soon ran out. The abundance of romantic music on Venus and Mars was met by such vitriol by the music press that Paul fought back with "Silly Love Songs," a soft-spoken yet direct and powerful response. While his artistic credibility started sliding with Venus, as an album it gives us some of the ex-Beatles' best music. The sound is separated and mixed better than any effort he made before or since, and the songwriting is tremendous. There are the unfortunate attempts to conceptualize the work into some kind of male/female strength/love arena thing that fortunately doesn't take away from the overall feel. Despite the success of the single "Listen to What the Man Said," the best tune is actually "Call Me Back Again," with its sloppy link back into and out of the verses and its Little Richard on amyls vocals and song construction.
Roxy Music. Siren. Atco. 1975.
The original line-up of Roxy Music was nothing more than Art Rock, which is to say avant garde, which in turn is reactionary, the antithesis of good music and good times. But leader Bryan Ferry was too smart and talented to become a bad joke, an easy thing to do when you are the opening act for Jethro Tull. The group's luck changed when Brian Eno left in 1973. when Eno's eccentricities no longer clashed with Ferry's, the group was ready to paint its masterpiece. Instead, they released Country Life, an album notable mainly for the smidgen of pubic hair shown on the cover. Siren was the real gem. Still Art Rock in the sense that it had sounds washing all over like waves against a Malibu ranch house and songs that blended into one another, Siren managed to remain rock. You could dance to it, stomp, bang your fists and even sing along. Ferry let himself go wild here, exploring his own sarcasm, his own internal debates, his life-enhancing self-destruction.
Faces. Snakes and Ladders. Warner Bros. 1976.
Some people prefer A Nod is as Good as a Wink. But for this incarnation of the band, the click clock punch of the more commercial sound strikes me as highly appropriate. In addition to Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, the Faces featured Ian MacLaglan, Ronnie Lane and Kenny Jones. Together they made some of the best stumbling rock ever recorded. "Stay with Me," the group's closest thing to a U.S. hit, was indicative of the good-natured macho swagger style that laughed at itself more than at anyone else. Also outstanding here are "Miss Judy's Farm" and "Had Me a Real Good Time."
The Rutles. All You Need is Cash. Warner Bros. 1978.
Monty Python meets the Bonzo Dog Band and demystifies the Beatles while making one album that contained everything the Fabs ever did, hilariously.
Take two parts post-Blonde on Blonde neo-folkie sensibility, stir in one part Aretha Franklin Gospel spirit, sprinkle in a few pinches of an attitude that endorses "love at first sight," beat with highly amplified country blues, and you have the essence of what Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett wraught. But beyond that essence, they and their ever-changing band of musical cohorts inflected and infected pop-rock on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for the first few years of the Me decade. This recipe for artistic success was so readily accepted by both heretofore unknowns and genuine superstars because in the wake of the burgeoning singer/songwriter movement and simultaneous heavy metal hysterics, it was downright refreshing to be lifted up by a distinct style of music that respected its traditions as well as its own innovations. That this music's very reach sowed the seeds of its own destruction--that is, as the demand for this music tore apart the musical and matrimonial partnership of Delaney and Bonnie--in no way detracts from the power and relevance of that axis of bliss.
Here, then, are the greatest recordings made either directly by, or tangentially connected to, that most glorious of pop duos, Delaney and Bonnie (and Friends).
Joe Cocker. Mad Dogs and Englishmen. A&M. 1970.
Derek and the Dominos. Layla. RSO. 1970.
Eric Clapton. Eric Clapton. Polydor. 1970.
Contemporary rock music denies through its attitude, format and style the influence of Country and Western music. This denial leads directly to a recreation of Contemporary Country, a style far more selective in its musical acculturation than mid-Sixties through mid-Seventies C&W could afford. Travis Tritt, to cite an easy example, may model himself after the more overblown aspects of Elvis Presley, but he absorbs none of the vocal nuances or unintentional humility that Presley himself borrowed from --among others--Bill Monroe. No value judgment is implied in this observation. Just as current hip hop and hard rock aspire to spring from an origin that never existed, so Contemporary Country yearns to display a freshness that owes nothing other than to the image of whichever soul-patch sporting ten-gallon hat-wearing original has sped up Hank Williams songs to make them unrecognizable. The point is that while new country music strives to negate its heritage, C&W made little if any effort to deny its past. This fact does not make one period's music inherently better than the other. It does, however, make an unmistakable distinction between the two styles of country.
Bill Doggett. "Honky Tonk." King. 1956.
Doggett, along with pals Clifford Scott, Shep Sheppard and Billy Butler, not only made a great instrumental with this, they made the best ever strip joint song of all time. Shuffle, bump, sproing has never sounded so appropriate on a country single. Not that public disrobing was the only effect of this song. Dressed or undressed, "Honky Tonk" awakened more than just the loins. And that's kind of funny because Bill actually believed his Hammond organ to be the source of sacred delights. The idea that being associated with such earthly pleasures could defile such an instrument was anathema, at least, to him.
Ernest Tubb. "I'm Walking the Floor Over You." Decca. 1956.
My father introduced our household to this song. My Dad's obsession with Country and Western was as boundless as my own rock-mania would soon become. This song played a lot in our house, and for good reason. Tubb's voice was a little flat, but he packed an innate charm. You could hear the thoughtful smile enliven tales of heartache and yearned-for revenge. When he sings "I hope and pray that your heart breaks right in two," you know he means it despite the fact that he'd take the woman back in two seconds. Curiously, I had forgotten all about this song until a few years ago when I heard a version by Fairport Convention. Sandy Denny's lead and the almost studious dedication of the band awakened long dormant recollections. I raced home and found what I at first took to be two different versions of the Ernest Tubb original, one dated 1943, the other 1956. Any distinction turned out to be the result of my hopeful imagination. The song was simply released twice. That answered another question that had been troubling me: Where did Bill Doggett learn the honky-tonk style he came to despise?
Dave Dudley. "Six Days on the Road." Golden Wing. 1963.
Dave Dudley never had another crossover hit, but his cowboy ode to getting back home warrants a shrine to this Wisconsin boy for single-hendedly kicking off the truck driving song. "Six Days on the Road" may not have introduced the sub-genre, but it stripped the rubber from any tires that Red Sovine ever owned. Not only did the baritone Dudley capture the ambiance of what the good man will and won't do while eighteen-wheeling it--white crosses, si; cheating, no--his driving rhythms and command of the vernacular made country music embraceable to the young rockers who would later reinvent themselves as The Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Eagles.
Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire. Columbia. 1963.
Johnny Cash could sing anything. I was in a music store a few years back and heard him doing a cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" followed by "Damn Your Eyes," the most stunning experience I'd had in months. So when Johnny does a somewhat ornate version of Merle Travis' wondrous "Ring of Fire," I just shrug and dig it, thinking how surprised I am that we never had Disco Johnny. Even the album cover here is a blast.
Sandy Posey. "Born a Woman." MGM. 1966.
Because Posey was a country singer and because the words "I was born to be stepped on, lied to, cheated on and treated like dirt" came out of her mouth on this crossover hit, a lot of people found the tune vaguely insulting. That opinion says a lot about the limited minds of many people who act as if they are liberated but who are just as chained to the past as Newt Gingrich. Posey was singing about a condition that some women accepted for themselves, a condition that goes far beyond mere servitude, a condition of reaping a few moments of psychological satisfaction from one's own misery. So when she cries out "and I'm glad," she's making a statement as bold as James Brown asserting "I'm black and I'm proud." Besides, Sandy Posey had the chops to be a poor woman's Tammy Wynette.
Loretta Lynn. Loretta Lynn's Greatest Hits. MCA. 1968.
To be a traditionalist by vocation and a rebel by temperament is one sure-fire way to reconcile the most despicable aspects of the middle class with the more refined tastes of people who actually work for a living. That sense of reconciliation is more than apparent on this collection as Loretta tells everyone from her whiskey-guzzling paramour "Don't Come Home a-Drinkin'" to the federal government "Dear Uncle Sam" that she's far too tired to put up with anymore foolishness. Had any such shenanigans been proffered from the more pompous pop stars, they would have been properly ridiculed as pseudo-enlightened bourgeois balderdash. Coming as these songs do from someone who has actually known pain and who has developed the ability to sing convincingly about it, Loretta Lynn shares a dignity with that part of our population often dismissed as White Trash.
Johnny Cash. At Folsom Prison. Columbia. 1968.
This album frightens.
By giving hope and happiness to the incarcerated multitudes at Folsom through prison songs rife with images of the American bedrock of lovers, mothers, thieves and friendship, Cash galvanizes faith that those prison walls may ignite, freeing the confined spirits housed in their mortal shells. Even the corn-pone humor of "Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog," or the over-inflated metaphors elevate from the heat, he reawakens the pain that daily survival has numbed, leading captive and captor to recognize the tremendous power the many hold against the few ("I Got Stripes," "Busted," and of course "Folsom Prison Blues.).When the warden makes his appearance, he sounds just as frightened as the prisoners sound confident.
And Cash is clearly loving it.
Ray Stevens. "Mr. Businessman." Monument. 1968.
For a musical novelty record to have any long term impact, it must have three components. It must be funny. It must have a compelling melody or hook. And it must be performed as if the artist comprehends the humor in the recording, even if the joke is on him or her. Ray Stevens typically violated one or more of these three criteria on his early releases. "Ahab the Arab," "Butch Bavarian," "Speedball," and "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills" were musically indistinguishable and about as funny as dental surgery. Curiously, his serious works hold up far better than the screwball efforts for which he is more well known. Of those serious songs, "Mr. Businessman" remains the best because for once Stevens puts the same passion into a protest song as one normally finds in his alleged novelties. After looking at the world through the eyes of the all-powerful, the singer admonishes the subject to "take care of business" in a tone of genuine sympathy for anyone too self-consumed to appreciate the best things in life this side of a balance sheet.
Charlie Rich. The Fabulous Charlie Rich. Epic. 1969.
Charlie Rich is yet another under-appreciated super talent who passed through the gates of Sun Records in the late 1950s. No Sun's "Best Of" would be what it claimed without Rich's "Lonely Weekends." And though he recorded many great tunes for the country audience throughout the 1960s, Charlie's talents and ambitions went beyond the limits of genre. Able to croon as well as bop, his jazzy piano playing was the perfect match for his greatest instrument, his voice. So it was fortunate that he hooked up with producer Billy Sherrill, who had become quite adept at making the Patsy Cline style of countrypolitan music fit in with the abilities of Tammy Wynette, among others. This was Sherrill's first real collaboration with Rich, and it remains the best. Charlie's wife Margaret-Ann wrote "Life's Little Ups and Downs," a song that isn't precisely about the singer, but it's easy to believe otherwise. He also excels on "Love Waits For Me," written by Dallas Frazier, who had already written a big hit for Rich called "Mohair Sam." Jimmy Reed's "Bright Lights, Big City" is also a marvelous stand-out. Matter of fact, there's nothing here that's less than excellent.
Anne Murray. "Snowbird." Capitol. 1970.
Anne Murray has a great throaty contralto that sails as it prevails. This was her first hit. She was perfectly positioned at that exact second to join the SoCal nonsense movement. But, bless her high-flying heart, she had principles as well as talent, and recorded what made her happy rather than opting to be a mere star.
Michael Nesmith and the First National Band. "Joanne." RCA. 1970.
Mike Nesmith had musical and lyric capabilities that went about as far as they were allowed in The Monkees. But on his solo albums and sporadic singles, especially here, he brought an intelligence and insight to the high lonesome sound of traditional bluegrass and pop-country music.
Joe South. Greatest Hits. Capitol. 1970.
"Oh the games people play now every night and every day now," begins the caustic singer, accompanying himself with light touches of solemn acoustic guitar. "Never meaning what they say now and never saying what they mean." Joe is in fact from the South and worked as a session guitarist in Tennessee and Alabama before recording his own work. "Games People Play" is a slight bit more lush than most of the C&W that crossed the Mason-Dixon and its attacks on self-delusions and hypocrisy have seldom been bettered.
Most of the other material here was already or soon became hits for others. Deep Purple already charted with a scary rendition of "Hush," and Lynn Anderson sweetened up "Rose Garden," both of which are at a minimum fascinatingly portrayed by South. The only thing missing--and it's easy to understand why--is "Yo-Yo," a song recorded by the Osmond Brothers.
Johnny Cash. "What is Truth?" Columbia. 1970.
This tender and angry song about sorting out the lies from the rest of perception never made it to an official album, although it was a regional hit in 1970. Cash sings from the witness stand about skin color, hair length, and other means of misunderstanding. Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts did a fine version in the mid-1990s, but it's Cash's wise-as-Solomon reading that lasts.
Ray Charles. "Don't Change On Me." ABC-Paramount. 1971.
Recorded during one of Ray Charles' C&W fixations, "Don't Change On Me," as much as any of his forays into the forbidden world of predominantly white working class domains, eclipses the emotional connection such songs usually aspire to make with their market slot. This song was not commercial, it did not score on any charts, and was only floating around in record stores for about five days. Charles is totally relaxed and self-assured. His piano plays him as much as the other way around. And his mood is so focused it's easy to suspect he's wrapped this tight out of fear of breaking down and weeping at any moment.
Sammi Smith. "Help Me Make it Through the Night." Capitol. 1971.
Maybe having four kids before you turn twenty-one will make a woman a bit prone to stoicism. But the way Sammi Smith voices her sense of need for someone even halfway nice to just be there--no expectations other than being gone by the butt crack of dawn--is more definitive of country soul than Mutt Lange's pet poodle Shania Twain ever dreamed.
B.J. Thomas. "No Love At All." Sceptor. 1972.
For far too many years, the only song AM radio would play under Thomas' name was "Raindrops." Well, that song was okay, but come on! The man sang other songs, some of which were first or second rate pop numbers. This, his finest song, accompanies a dramatic melody with its tales of lives that are truly tragic, however commonplace they may be.
Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. "Hot Rod Lincoln." MCA. 1972.
San Francisco bar band by way of Ann Arbor. Alone and with the Airmen, Commander Cody frequently captured the sound and feel of a jump blues Saturday night. Here, on their only hit single, the live feel is true and the subject is a wild ass car chase to inspire future hot rodders for decades.
Donna Fargo. "Funny Face." MCA. 1972.
The nature of any period of time that is stored by whatever means is that those who inhabit that time piece are not impervious to death and destruction. And so it is with the glorious Donna Fargo. hen listening to this or even 2008's "We Can Do Better in America," it was easy to get a sense of some religious commitment, a small trace of innocence and a mighty strong hankering for success. Her voice is just as beautiful today and here's hoping she puts out even more great hits.
Bill Monroe. Bean Blossom. MCA. 1973.
Bluegrass is pre-Country and Western music, typically played by natives of Appalachia. It places primary musical emphasis on banjo, fiddle and mandolin. Often more praised for its influence than for its existence, it has suffered unconscionable abuse while remaining one of the most spiritually inspiring first cousins of country music. The true Big Daddy in this Appalachian enclave is Bill Monroe and if only a few songs could be used to exemplify the form, this album has a bunch: "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Uncle Pen," and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" among them. By the time this recording hit the shelves, Big Bill began receiving the mass popular acclaim that had long been his due. His band is tight and wholesome and his singing will make you yearn for a jug of your favorite illegal elixir.
Loudon Wainwright III. "Dead Skunk." Columbia. 1973.
Loudon Three Sticks had a fine way with a simple tune, his voice suggesting an educated drunk looking to charm his way into yon fair maiden's trousers post haste. The suddenly there was this song: freed up, wild abandon, and the word "olfactory" all in a pop banjo song about the satisfyingly unpleasant sensations one can expect when inadvertently smashing a rodent with a station wagon.
Dolly Parton. The Best of Dolly Parton. RCA. 1975.
This is Dolly Parton before she met Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers or Jane Fonda. This is Dolly before disco and the Bee Gees, and immediately before her crossover from the country charts. This is the Dolly who grew up on "The Porter Wagoner Show," the Dolly often teased for her mammoth mammaries, the Dolly who could write songs so well and so good that neither Linda Ronstadt nor Whitney Houston could outdo her (check out "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene" for proof). The vocals twang, but there's operaic power here, along with storytelling that may be sentimental but never sappy.
Tanya Tucker. Tanya Tucker's Greatest Hits. Columbia. 1975.
Boy, I used to get so angry when early-to-mid 1970s country stars ripped off what I considered legitimate pop songs. Whether it was Buck Owens twanging down a Rolling Stones classic or Conway Twitty vibrating hell out of the Pointer Sisters, it used to just kill me, the effrontery of those hicks thinking they could validate for C&W what real musicians had already made uniquely their own. All of which just goes to show how incredibly wrong a person can be. The truth of the matter is that thirteen-year-old Tanya Tucker grabbed the pop song "Delta Dawn" and made it her own. With almost too slick production from Billy Sherrill, she stripped the song of all its niceties and laid it in the middle of the sidewalk where people had to step over it, inconveniently. "Would You Lay with Me" is every bit as in-your-face bold, with the singer's developing confidences a string of fascinating nuances that even her later, more mature work could not touch. After the pleasures of some youthful soul-country, this album also reminds the listener that rock borrowed at least as much from country as the latter did from the former.
George Jones. The Battle. Epic. 1976.
It has been claimed by some more knowledgeable about country music than me that this album documents the break-up of Jones' marriage to Tammy Wynette. All I know about that part of things is that if it is true, this is not the C&W version of Marvin Gaye's Hear, My Dear. What it is, however, is some gloriously bitter reflections on love destroyed, all of them sung by a man who never wanted much more out of life than simple things like a nice home, a job picking guitar, a couple dogs sniffing each other on the back porch, a few lines of cocaine, and a fine woman, pretty much in that order. There's some countrypolitan frills here, but on the title track and "Billy Ray Wrote a Song", in particular, you just want to fall back and groove on that gorgeous voice bleeding all over the juke box.
The Kendalls. "Heaven's Just a Sin Away." Ovation. 1977.
Royce and Jeannie Kendall were and remain the great father-daughter team in country. This song makes some people (including my mother) a tad uneasy, with Jeannie's slightly lilting bend on the high notes. But I'd say it was one of the highlights of that period when country music was losing its Western swing as it progressed (or degenerated) from the farmhouse into the office. The Kendalls inflected with Ozark drawls an awareness of temptations more commonly found near big city smokestacks.
Emmylou Harris. Profile. Reprise. 1978.
It's staggering to think how restrained is the work of Emmylou Harris. There are extended moments--like on her duets with Gram Parsons and on her pork rib charred version of "You Never Can Tell"--where the sweet soprano seems to ski on air over and under unimagined obstacles without a blink. You hear it again on "Two More Bottles of Wine." So it's obvious she can be a powerhouse when she wants. But the discipline that she brings to the bulk of the rest of her recorded work is what stuns. Mixing anything here with the other pop world spurs on visions of rapture. Some people sing country because that's all they can. Others, like Harris, sing it because it's what they love.
Flatt and Scruggs. Don't Get Above Your Raisin'. Rounder. 1978.
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs were first rate guitar and banjo players ever since being discovered in the mid-1940s by no less than Bill Monroe. As the Foggy Mountain Boys they often played the "Grand Ol' Opry" and "The Porter Wagoner Show." But it was together that the humor, talent and seriousness of their sound best merged and this album has all the thrills of a live performance even though it was a studio production. This is very traditional, very pure, and good as can be.
Lone Justice. Lone Justice. Geffen. 1985.
Lone Justice rips open the speakers with indignant and twangy electric country-rock. The driving background beat overpowers and herds the tinny music forward. The lyrical importance of each song twists around the title phrase. "Don't Toss Us Away," for instance, balances the album by completing the feeling of a cowpoke bar out of town where all the lonely hearts individually gather. Early bar hours, hanging onto life with the beer in hand and the sound of this group melting into the nonexistence of time during the night: the piano loosely in the background is the saving grace of the melodic song structures as the under-dubbed guitars hammer the sense of loneliness.
Maria McKee and her musical boyfriends appeared in the mid-1980s in a worthy attempt to fill a perceived void in the cowpunk industry. Mike Campbell wrote their best song, "Ways to be Wicked," a great song even if it does make some people imagine what Tom Petty would sound like if he were a woman.
Plus, the songs it would be a shame to omit even though the author hasn't anything revelatory to say about them, which is fine since these songs are quite capable of speaking for themselves.
The Carter Family: No Depression in Heaven
Jimmie Rodgers: Blue Yodel.
Jimmie Rodgers: Long Tall Mama Blues
Jimmie Rodgers: California Blues
Jimmie Rodgers: Yodeling My Way Back Home
Hank Williams: I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.
Hank Williams: Alone and Forsaken
Hank Williams: Ramblin Man
Hank Williams: Angel of Death
Hank Williams: Cold Cold Heart
Carl Perkins: Big Bad Blues
Carl Perkins: Boppin the Blues
Carl Perkins: Dixie Fried
Carl Perkins: Put Your Cat Clothes On
Warren Smith: Black Jack David
Warren Smith: Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache
Warren Smith: Ubangi Stomp
Dolly Parton: Bloody Bones and Scratchy Eyes
Dolly Parton: My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy
Bill Monroe: Blue Moon of Kentucky
Leadbelly: Bourgeois Blues
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys: Brain Cloudy Blues
Jerry Lee Lewis: Deep Elem Blues
Charlie Rich: Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave
Charlie Rich: Down and Out
Charlie Rich: Everything I Do is Wrong
The Handsome Family: The Giant of Illinois
Billy Lee Riley: Flying Saucer Rock and Roll
Billy Lee Riley: Red Hot
Chuck Willis: I Feel So Bad
Eddy Arnold: I'll Hold You in My Heart
Conway Twitty: It's Only Make Believe
Rosanne Cash: Black Cadillac
There can be no greater misnomer than the term "singer songwriter." Some singers write songs and some do not. Some do sometimes and others do all the time. The term, which popped up around the time Carole King released Tapestry, is intended to convey just an ever so slight disdain for minimally arranged music that evokes the composer's unique interpretation of this moment in his life, a cognition which will undoubtedly benefit no one except said artist, but my, ain't it fine being in proximity to such insight? Well, this here blog you're gazin' on is not no way the place to find rapturous odes to the presumed brilliance of James Taylor or Paul Williams or--God forbid--Mac Davis, the latter bein' a man who never did nothin' of consequence except to write "In the Ghetto" for Elvis Presley. Even though I do not know why it is that I am writing these words as if I were a moron, what this is is the place to find actually excellent music by the spiritual sons and daughters of Buddy Holly, a guy who could also be super sweet sensitive when it suited him to be such, or loud, brash and abrasive as dawn on a Sunday morning wino. So maybe one fine day we will all wake up and find that the misnomer "singer-songwriter" has evolved into a nomer, and a grand one at that. Until that day, I'll keep playing Jackie DeShannon until the cough syrup wears off.
Jackie DeShannon. "What the World Needs Now." Imperial. 1965.
Jackie DeShannon is certainly well celebrated for her enormous songwriting potential, particularly after the success of Kim Carnes' version of "Bette Davis Eyes." But she could also endear and persuade with numbers like this, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, as well as her own "When You Walk in the Room" (a song covered by everyone from Karla Bonoff to the Ventures) and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." Beauty, brains, and a lot of talent--it all seems somehow under-appreciated. between 1963 and 1985 DeShannon released twenty-one albums, all with some combination of original material and cover versions. In the strictest sense, Jackie is the penultimate singer-songwriter in that her sparse productions invariably sound ornate, despite the enviable simplicity of the arrangements. Whether singing, writing, or both, her vocals and compositions, the optimistically mournful "awww" creeps out from her voice and connects with as much soul as any blue-eyed blonde from Hazel, Kentucky who ever lived.
Lovin' Spoonful. "Darling Be Home Soon." Kama Sutra. 1967.
Named after the equivalence of one male ejaculation, the Lovin' Spoonful were what folk rock aspired to when it didn't aspire to be pale imitations of the Byrds. The Spoonful, featuring Jon Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky, were lighter than Roger McGuinn, seeming to have a less-encumbered time with life. "Do You Believe in Magic," "Summer in the City" and "Daydream" retained more popularity, but it is "Darling Be Home Soon" that is their most enduring classic. "And now," sings Sebastian, "A quarter of my life is almost past, I think I've come to see myself at last and I feel myself in bloom." If you're going to risk moving beyond the importance of mindless frivolity, you'd better be able to convey your message succinctly or risk sounding like a putz. The great achievement in this song is in exposing the singer's narcissism while leading us to care about the fact that he is standing on the edge of shattering his precocious past and truly accept the responsibilities of commitment.
Donovan. Donovan's Greatest Hits. Epic. 1969.
While I would be the last guy to risk losing teeth in an argument about Donovan's supposed artistic strength, I would be the first to admit that at least half of these songs retain some of their initial hippie dippy appeal. And of those, about half were fairly decent rock numbers, especially "Hurdy Gurdy Man" (rumored to feature guitar by Jimmy Page) and especially the eerie "Season of the Witch." Donovan Leitch began his career as a Woody Guthrie imitator and would-be Dylan protege. While wildly popular in Britain, the big bucks were waiting in the U.S. market, where there was room for only one dust bowl balladeer. Aside from the two gems above, Donovan also had somewhat worthy success with the trippy "Sunshine Superman" and the banana-hoax anthem "Mellow Yellow."
Randy Newman. Twelve Songs. Reprise. 1970.
Although he was never a major commercial star, for nine years Randy Newman was among the best singer-songwriters. What set him apart from other bright folks like Jackson Browne and Jackie DeShannon was that while his songs were nearly all told from the point of view of a specific narrator whose persona he temporarily inhabited, that point of view often belonged to a person far more interesting than that of a mere rock star. Sometimes Newman was a telephone stalker, sometimes a beach cleaner curling up with a dead woman in the sand. He might be the captain of a slave ship chanting the virtues of the New World or an old fart inviting his neighbors to trip back to the days before flight. Occasionally he was himself, usually when a Deity needed critiquing. But he was at his most offensively funny when he played the psychotic redneck, shooting off birds on the telephone line in "Old Kentucky Home," or the fan of Lester Maddox getting mad at Dick Cavett in "Rednecks," or on his only hit, "Short People," a song which is a great litmus test for bigotry--if you laugh, you are probably less prejudiced than most.
The arrangements on Twelve Songs and the album's production merge in a density of sound that Newman would abandon, probably because the sense of genuine terror lurking within the shadows of this mirror may have been too intense for even this singer to withstand. That terror comes less from the admittedly peculiar subject matter than from those same shadows being cast as the music shines on the singer while he is constantly searching behind himself to squint out what's moving in the darkness of his own silhouette.
Bread. "Make it with You." 1970.
"Baby I'm a-Want You." 1971.
"Everything I Own." 1972. All on Elektra.
One of the top pop slops in the early years of the 1970s, Bread vastly outranked most of the other smooth romantics due to tight arrangements, conscientious production and, in singer David Gates, a top rate songwriter. Any of these songs could have been hits in altered versions by the heavy cock rockers (Free comes to mind) of the day. Bread proved that breathy grunting and Carpenters schmaltz were not the only ways to book a room for two.
Original Caste. "One Tin Soldier." Vanguard. 1970.
Dixie Lee Innis became the lead singer of this mostly Canadian quartet for no other reason than to sing lead on a tune that Coven would re-do much better for the theme from the motion picture Billy Jack. Originally called The North Country Singers, Original Caste actually did a respectable job, although they faired no better afterwards than did Jinx Dawson.
Mark Lindsay. "Arizona" and "Silverbird." Columbia. 1970.
As lead singer and saxophonist for Paul Revere and the Raiders, Mark Lindsay always insured that that band had plenty of rough edges to go along with the teen appeal of the song structures. These two solo outings were a lot less rough but still had an understated intensity and clever build-ups that made them far more than standard AM fodder.
Simon and Garfunkel. "Cecilia." Columbia. 1970.
Paul and Artie made super-sensitive silliness for the folk-starved would-be enlightened masses. Mostly their work was inoffensive. Occasionally it was good, as with "The Boxer," "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "America," all of which picked up little nuances from daily life, although about the closest Simon ever got to the real world in those days was watching it from the back of his limousine. "Cecilia" remains the duo's best song, mostly because it's one lone occasion where they have fun without sounding smug.
Dion. "Your Own Backyard." Warner Bros. 1970.
This is the first great modern confessional, written and sung by a man whose good-natured tough guy singles gave absolutely no hint that within a few years a heroin addiction would sidetrack a potent career. "Daddy Rollin'," the flipside of "Abraham, Martin and John," moaned horribly indecipherable agonies, but it was the more clearheaded "Your Own Backyard" (a song fittingly covered by both Elvis Presley and Ian Hunter) that rings of the situational sincerity of the pledge at an AA meeting. And while there's a certain naive optimism that any devotee of Bill Wilson would recognize instantly, the singer wallows neither in self pity nor sentiment. His voice is just this side of fragile but his own crisp guitar accompaniment stabilizes the connection between the singer and the song.
Carole King. Tapestry. Ode. 1971.
To call Carole King a prolific songwriter is to call the destruction of Hiroshima a considerable explosion. Along with her then-husband Gerry Goffin, she wrote songs that solidified the careers of singers and groups as diverse as The Drifters, The Shirelles, Little Eva and The Monkees.
King flirted off and on with a solo move. Her "It Might as Well Rain Until September" was so lame it may have killed Alan Freed. It took a long time before any kind of decent recording opportunities came along after that. Lou Adler finally opened the door and in she strolled, pushing her piano ahead of her. Tapestry, the album almost everyone in America above the age of forty owns, stayed on the charts for years, and although some of it does sound sickly sweet, most of the tracks are still riveting. "It's Too Late" is one of the most moving and accurate kiss-offs ever put to music. "I Feel the Earth Move," the B-side, proved that King could rock out on her own. "Smackwater Jack" and "So Far Away" kept the album's sales going through 1975, not bad for an album released in 1971. Unfortunately, this album contributed to the solidification of the ghastly singer-songwriter movement. James Taylor recorded "You've Got a Friend," which was only fair since he'd done backing vocals on the original version. And Barbra Streisand covered "Where You Lead," which showed Babs' good taste as well as her tendency towards over-emoting.
John Denver. "Country Roads." RCA. 1971.
When I was sixteen, I worked as a cook in a local steak house. I was surprisingly good at it. I did not make a career of it, however. It is a shame that John Denver felt the need to make a life-long career with his music. The fact is that had he been satisfied with writing "Leaving on a Jet Plane," plus recording "Country Roads" and "Rocky Mountain High," he would be much more fondly remembered today. This song movingly describes the west Virginia landscape that Denver had never visited until after writing about it. Here his music didn't get snagged with the annoying artifice that would plague too many of his more genuine moments and it also happily lacked the absence of a catchy tune that plagued the other half of his recorded output. "Country Roads" proved its power as a song by being successfully covered and reconstructed by Toots and the Maytals in a magnificent reggae version.
Graham Nash. "Chicago." Atlantic. 1971.
For a guy who made his bones with The Hollies and who would leave that group to play with any conceivable variation of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young group thing, Graham Nash made an excellent pop-rock turbo with this admonition to participate in the counter-convention three years after the event. The lyrics don't bear any particular relation to the events in August 1968, but they had a lot to do with the trial that followed. The best part of the song was the inspired chorus, and not for the words. Nash threw out the peace and/or hash pipe and wailed like a lunatic with a great sense of melody.
Rick Nelson. "Garden Party." MCA. 1972.
I always felt Rick Nelson was disparaged with the title "Teen Idol," a term that suggests more of a Frankie Avalon type than that of a true talent. Nelson was a great writer and singer and his story of one concert where the fans treated him rather badly is perhaps the best testament to going your own way ever written. This remains the all-time best kiss-off song to fickle fans and celebrates the patronage of John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry.
Chi Coltrane. "Thunder and Lightning." Columbia. 1972.
This is such a splendid rock and soul single, it was tempting place it in some other category. I would have, too, had it not been for the fact that such a gifted pianist, songwriter and singer seemingly chose not to come back with anything quite this strong again. Instead she opted for a kind of Art Rock, European Style. But on this one and only hit Chi (no relation to John or Alice) Coltrane sounded like Carly Simon overcome with a severe case of soul.
Randy Newman. Sail Away. Reprise. 1972.
Randy Newman is one of the most intelligent people to ever record more than three albums. His first ventures into songwriting positioned the arrangements and instrumentation in the background, although there were occasional yet subtle trills here and there. Following the success of Twelve Songs, musical sophistication and paired-down instrumentation gained importance. At this pivotal instant where each decision could be his last, Newman chose to not underestimate the pop sensibilities of his audience, one of the surest signs of intelligence any performer can possess. Even if the lyrics are deceptive in their very directness, the songs have clues of the sinister lurking between the bars. That's deliberate, of course, because being hustled is what this is all about. Whether you are an African fleeing through the brambles, the bozo listening to the rant of destruction in "Political Science," the ingenue being tempted to perversity in "You Can Leave Your Hat On," or the wide-mouthed erstwhile lover in "Last Night I Had a Dream," you are being hustled in a language every con man would understand immediately. The funny thing is that this album satisfies even if you reject or never even consider everything I just wrote. Each of these twelve songs is simple and catchy, sung in a soft and unique, pretty style. Newman doesn't intrude on your evening. He just wheels in the piano and smiles politely as you drop a coin in his jar. His nod as you pass is not the least sarcastic. These are songs, first and foremost. He treats those in the crowd who get the deeper meanings with no more deference than anyone else, probably because the surest way to ruin the con game is for the hustler to see himself as anything but an honest man.
Carly Simon. No Secrets. Elektra. 1972.
When frequent co-writer Jacob Brackman teamed up with the well-to-do urbanite Carly Simon, producer Richard Perry knew a great thing had come his way. While there are a cojple songs here that sound like Joni Mitchell outtakes, the remainder is top of the line 1970s pop rock. "The Carter Family" may have nothing to do with a President from Georgia, but it's a fairly accurate telling of how we can become bored and disgusted with the people we will end up missing the most. "Night Owl" is a fantastic slab of subterranean tenderloin, with backing vocals by Paul and Linda McCartney. And both innocence and naivete are bid farewell on most of the rest of the recording. But let's not kid ourselves. "You're So Vain" is the best thing Carly Simon ever recorded, and here it is in all its mysterious glory. Hint: The song was about Warren Beatty, but James Taylor still probably thinks the song is about him.
The Hollies. "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." Epic. 1972.
The Hollies were always too dependent upon production and high harmonies to ever capture the rawness that made the best of the British Invasion groups so appealing. But here we have one of the very few exceptions: "Brother" is sung with such total unaffected conviction that when it does come at you on the radio, you don't know whether to duck or let it take you right in the chest. Having by this time perfected a certain level of pop virtuosity ("King Midas in Reverse" and "Pay You Back with Interest") as well as a fine rip off of Creedence swamp ("Long Cool Woman"), the boys were finely positioned to do something real. This remains the perfect answer to the idiotic question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" The answer, after all, is supposed to be yes.
Elton John. "Friends." ABC-Paramount. 1971.
"Levon" and "Tiny Dancer." UNI. 1972.
"Saturday Night's Alright for Fightin'." MCA. 1973.
If you add these to the Honky Chateau album, you have excellent justification for Elton John being the idol of a lot of kids growing up in the early 1970s. "Friends" was the title track for a movie my then-girlfriend referred to as "the dirtiest film ever made." All I know for sure is that the soundtrack had four great tunes, the title being the most radio-friendly, but "Can I Put You On" is infinitely better here than on the live album. "Levon" and "Tiny Dancer" were singles from the Madman LP. For the first time since the days of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, important sounding piano strokes introduced hit singles. This was at a time when the guitar was ALL. The sound was lilting and pretty and not as stupid as the lyrics suggest. Who knew what "Levon" was about? Who really cared? Lines like "Jesus blows up balloons all day" simply sounded like they had to mean something and because the music gathered to a huge rush and descent, whatever it meant must have been beyond the depth of most; ergo: glory. You could make similar claims for any of these others. The bottom line fact of the matter is that these were lightweight pop songs sung and played heavy by people who loved what they were doing.
Melanie. "Brand New Key" and "Ring the Living Bell." Buddah. 1972.
"I'll bet she has a weight problem," a friend told me when I showed him a picture of Melanie taken at Woodstock. "Thin, long hair, and idealistic. Yep, she's fat now," he said matter-of-factly. I must admit I have no idea about Melanie Safka's alleged girth. But I know what my friend meant. Here was a precious flower girl singing about lighting candles in the rain and begging her mother to look what they done, not to mention making a sexual play for a neighbor boy, using roller skates as a metaphor and hoping he'd figure it out. Innocence is not the same as naivete, but people as innocent in their approach as Melanie tended to be battered by the 1970s and 1980s. Failing that, they often battered themselves, frequently with food. That may not seem relevant to the songs under discussion, but it is. "Brand New Key" frequently makes critics all-time most hated songs lists, mostly because they haven't the perspicacity of the millions who quite properly bought that single because they liked the tinny sound, the piano playing that makes you think "Chop Sticks" is complicated, and because Melanie was thoroughly convincing in the role as the most sexually frustrated teenager who ever lived.
Joni Mitchell. "You Turn Me On I'm a Radio." Asylum. 1972.
Joni Mitchell has always been determined to challenge both herself and her audience. I say that because the type and style of her music is often wildly different from one recording to the next. Her pop-oriented stuff strikes me as her best, mostly because when her songs are more accessible, the intent is easier to fathom, which must mean I'm lazy. But this song stretches the metaphor of the airwave experience to its illogical extreme with chord phrasings that perfectly match the wisdom of the words.
Neil Young. "Heart of Gold." Reprise. 1972.
I think it's a shame that Neil Young saw fit to criticize himself on the liner notes of Decade for having written and played this song. I mean, if he wants to apologize for something, I can think of lots of reasons. But "heart of Gold" needs no mea culpa. It's just a tune so lazy and simple that it's tempting to delude oneself that anyone could have done the same. But there's a confidence to the strumming, a world-weary effect on the vocals, and the most endearing harmonica work ever on a hit record.
Paul Simon. "Mother and Child Reunion." Columbia. 1972.
"Kodachrome." Columbia. 1973.
These two songs, along with "me and Julio," are first rate minor masterpieces, perfect for nearly any age and relatively meaningless, an important factor simply because the very absence of meaning is what Simon does best.
Stealers Wheel. "Stuck in the Middle with You." A&M. 1973.
Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan couldn't have made a better Dylan knock-off if they'd tried. What with nasal cow-in-a-fence braying and references to jokers amidst a lyrical melange, this peppy, driven roller-rama scattered competition like a pit bull in a room full of poodles.
Dobie Gray. "Drift Away." Decca. 1973.
The world in which The Playlist exists spurns laidback escapism. What's nurtured in this solar social system is the power of righteous defiance. Here we value music's ability to liberate through the trembling radiance of its very essence. The notion of donning mental wings and soaring is anathema. One key article of faith is that eternal vigilance is the price of art. Okay, so then what the hell is "Drift Away" doing here? We're hopelessly addicted to great riffs. Leonard Ainsworth (Dobie himself) whispers through these pompous platitudes just loud enough to remind us all that the occasional celebration of rock's inherent ability to dance all over our problems reinvigorates us for success in future battles. He also invokes the images of harmonious tranquility that are the only legitimate aim of any social or artistic revolution.
Gunhill Road. "Back When My Hair was Short." Kama Sutra. 1973.
This is not to be confused with Gun Hill Road. The originals were Glenn Leopold, Steve Goldrich and Gil Roman, plus a few session musicians. This was their only hit and it's often labeled a novelty, which is silly. The song is simply an accurate piece of nostalgia about growing up in the Fifties and Sixties. Playing pinball all night, chain smoking, and trying to figure what love is all about: the quintessential golden youth experience in less than three minutes.
Loggins and Messina. "Your Mama Don't Dance." Columbia. 1973.
Too old for the Fifties and not serious enough for the Sixties, this song by Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina could only have been a hit in the early 1970s. Light-hearted vocal fills, nice boy rebellion and moderately inspired guitar work all converged to make this an acceptable pop pleasantry.
Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark. Asylum. 1974.
The Emily Dickinson of singer-songwriters.
Paul Simon. Still Crazy After All These Years. Columbia. 1975.
Here is Simon best work and also the beginning of his artistic decline, containing the seeds of his most bathetic music. "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" was meaningless in a most clever way and "My Little Town" summed up the bleakness of city living without much passion. "Gone At Last," a duet with Phoebe Snow, even approached a good rock and soul combination. But there were moments, particularly a song about baseball and a tune originally written for a Warren Beatty movie that attempted to be about something, evoking Simon's sophomoric sensibilities. Nearly everything he has recorded since has suffered from a struggle to attain substance, a shocking mistake from a man whose trash was second to no one's.
Neil Young. Tonight's the Night. Reprise. 1975.
To turn once more to critic Greil Marcus, he said of this album, "Clattering sounds of teeth in a skull as the connection is made and the connection is broken." That assessment cannot be bettered. Just listen to the title track here.
Dean Friedman. "Ariel." 1977.
This song has more cliches than a Dean Martin joke book, the humor defines sophomoric, and the singing is flat as cardboard. The sole redeeming quality the tune possesses is that it perfectly captures every last detail of the singer's date with the woman named in the title--so perfectly, in fact, that I'll bet the whole story was invented.
Judy Collins. Times of Our Lives. Elektra. 1982.
Of all the wispy folksingers who have posed nude on the inner jackets of their albums, Judy Collins looked the best. This isn't that album. But this fine interpreter has waltzed back and forth between folk and art songs since her 1962 debut. Her strength lies in the judgment she displays in whose songs she covers. Usually that means she shines when doing songs by Joni Mitchell, Lennon-McCartney and Sandy Denny. But here, better than half the work is her own and it really works, possibly because she has always sounded more confident when hiding behind orchestration rather than bare with just a guitar. And so, instead of appearing naked here, she simply gives credit on the album to her hair stylist.
Of all the despicable and overused words in the ahistorical contemporary pop music lexicon, none approximate the unwavering stupidity of the term "diva." What these know-nothing media pundits actually mean when they utter that twice-the-normal-syllables expression is a would-be strident female soul singer who dips her Wonder Bread in Ovaltine. What I mean by the expression "queens of soul music" is that unconnected, historically significant coterie of women who have the vocal versatility of a saxophone, the emotional confusion of a person mere inches from adulthood, and the lungs of a lumberjack. The distinction lies in the difference between, say, Celine Dion and, say, Aretha Franklin. Which school would you rather attend?
The Teen Queens. "Eddie My Love." RPM. 1956.
Betty and Rosie Collins, a wind-up piano and enthusiastically smooth sax: this song built the essential bridge between the best elements of old style schmaltz a la Patti Page and (then) contemporary pop rock.
Kathy Young and the Innocents. "A Thousand Stars." Indigo. 1961.
"Each night I count the stars in the sky," Kathy Young sings, reaching with every goosebump on her flesh. "Hoping that you aren't telling me lies." An awareness of that possibility suggests its own solution, but perhaps because Young was only fifteen at the time, or maybe because suspending one's disbelief is precisely the basic trust onto which true love secretly clings--it's hard not to pull for her, to share her faith in this guy who, she admits, has stars in his own eyes. The three Innocents who "doo doo doo doo" behind Young are a bit too stiff to be considered musical, but that only serves to accentuate the stark raving need in the singer's pleas.
Carla Thomas. "I'll Bring it on Home to You." Atlantic. 1962.
The ideal answer song to the ultimate idealist.
Betty Everett. "You're No Good" and "The Shoop Shoop Song." Vee-Jay. 1964.
The recently deceased Ms. Everett was a gutsy, gritty, mind-melting and rapturous hard soul singer who somehow evoke a career's worth of such qualities on these two singles. Linda Ronstadt covered the former and Cher the latter. But the originals emphasized just a hint more mystery. Why, after all, was the man no good? Knowing that all along, how could she have been drawn in? And what was it exactly that Wright was getting frustrated about when trying to explain to her friends about the power of the kiss?
Aretha Franklin. I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You). Atlantic. 1967.
"Respect" licked off Aretha's Atlantic career perfectly. Columbia Records simply did not know what to do with her, so once she hooked up with Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler, the boom was on. All she demanded was a little respect when she got home, a forty-five degree flip from Otis Redding's original. In Aretha's version, she was the one breaking her back for the guy who apparently stayed home all day. There's never been a more eloquent or desperate plea for sexual parity. With King Curtis on sax, Chips Moman wrangling his guitar, Tommy Cogbill's bass, sister Carolyn on backing vocals and Aretha herself on piano, this album began and ended with enormous might. The title track absolutely defines the hot breathy tension between what you have and what you want, "Doctor Feelgood" does the same and seems to laugh at the idea, and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" completes the list of songs on this album that collectively could be used to display where hard soul had been (Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex) and what it would be measured against from here on out. Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye were the only serious competition she had.
Linda Ronstadt. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow." Capitol. 1970.
Ronstadt had just a few seconds earlier left her group, the Stone Poneys, when Capitol released this single. An incredible take on the beautiful Goffin/King song, Ronstadt doesn't sound as if she cares that much whether she retains the boy's respect; she just wants to get the evening over with and move on with her life. That quirky impression of the song may simply be due to the singer's all too frequent misunderstanding of the material's intent. But so what? In this case, her unusually sedate reading thoroughly enamors all but the most unyielding of hearts.
Smith. "Baby, It's You." Dunhill. 1970.
Lead singer Gayle McCormick took the Bacharach/David song immortalized by The Shirelles and transmogrified it into a song Janis Joplin would have loved to have sung. The beat is slow and steady, but nervous. The bass waivers like the wind swinging a set of Western saloon doors instants from a shootout. The Hammond organ percolates like a rusty coffee pot. And suddenly there's McCormick, burying her voice in the mud and just as quickly leaping up like Carrie's arm extending from the grave. "Don't want nobody, nobody--cause baby, it's you!" She leaves the "sha na nas" to our imagination.
Laura Nyro. Gonna Take a Miracle. Columbia. 1971.
Before the versions of her own songs came in for consumer demand, Laura Nyro had earned stripes for her fine songwriting, notably "Wedding Bell Blues" (a hit for the Fifth Dimension), "Stoney End" (covered by Barbra Streisand), and "And When I Die" (massacred by Blood, Sweat and Tears). As a singer, she maintained a high range underlain with a rich soul vibrato. She phrased cleverly, with an implied rather than overt wink. So when she partnered with the still unleashed talents of LaBelle, the sonic affect simulated a brisk ride through the tunnel of love without a man in sight. This album sounds like exactly what it is: four young and infinitely inspired talents harmonizing mid-Sixties classics with nothing to prove, concerned only with capturing the essence of each song's percolating thrills.
Aretha Franklin. Young, Gifted and Black. Atlantic. 1972.
Super producers Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd must have had an insight that this would be Aretha Franklin's final visit to heaven while still a mortal. For this celestial occasion, they beckoned a curious mix of saints and sinners so amplify Sister Re's abundance. Dr. John abandoned the usual role of unrestrained pianist and assumed the unlikely role of tempered percussionist. Donny Hathaway and Billy preston tooted bellows of steam from their organs. Meanwhile the Memphis Horns blew out the lighgts while lifting the moon, touring band member Cornell Dupree shuffled guitar, Bernard Purdee drummed, sisters Emma and Carolyn sang back-up, and about a hundred other friends dropped in just to make sure they didn't miss the recording sessions of a lifetime, what with Aretha singing her best ever music. She covered The Beatles, Otis Redding, Elton John and the Delfonics to fine effect. But it was her own "Rock Steady" that reverberates to this day.
Carole King. "Believe in Humanity." Ode. 1973.
One of the definitions of the unctuous word "diva" is: prima donna. That term typically describes a vain and temperamental woman. But the original meaning of prima donna more accurately applies to the principal female vocalist in an opera. Colloquially, it's taken to be a woman who takes the lead by force of will; someone who really belts out a tune. Nothing in any of these passages applies to Carole King's massive body of work--except on this song, where she cuts loose with a decidedly sinister piano and bass intro that winds up supporting what can only be described as an ideological self-raping. "I believe if I really looked at what's going on I would lose faith and never could recover." There isn't an idealist alive who hasn't feared that reality would knife his optimism in the back. Carole King belts out that fear.
LaBelle. Nightbirds. Epic. 1974.
"Lady Marmalade" was one of the hottest R&B tracks of the 1970s. Its rhythm and lingo was pure pop New Orleans style, meaning you can think Allen Toussaint once again. Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendrix and Sarah Dash made lots of sultry rockers, particularly their cover of "Something in the Air," and "The Revolution will not be Televised," the latter released before anyone had ever heard of Moron TV. Also exciting are their versions of The Rolling Stones "Wild Horses" and The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again." The tendency is to focus on Patti LaBelle's charming vocals, but it'd be a mistake to neglect Nona Hendryx's songwriting: far and away the sexiest stuff of the Seventies. People who consider "A Natural Woman" to be a condensed opus of sudden sexual satisfaction should be ready to jump out the window with the layers of lines like "I come like the pouring rain" from "You Turn Me On," a song whose maturity reigns it in just enough to keep it from pandering to the puerile tastes of smug debutantes while still conveying the pleasure of finally meeting someone who knows how to satisfy a woman complicated enough to know the difference between lust and longing.
Suzi Quatro. "All Shook Up." 1974.
Femme butch personified, Suzi Quatro experienced vastly more popularity in england than in the States, again proving how often we don't know what we've got til it's gone. This single, from her debut album, was biker tough and Barbie sweet, without ever sacrificing the instant head paralysis of the hook writer Otis Blackwell handed Elvis Presley. Fun while it lasted.
Joni Mitchell. "You So Square baby I Don't Care." Geffen. 1982.
By covering a Leiber/Stoller song that's instantly associated with Elvis, Joni demonstrated not only her excellent taste in material, but solidified her often neglected image as a splendid interpreter of other people's songs, no small feat for a performer who is best known for her own compositions. In the midst of her progression from sensitive primitivist to introspective jazz maven, Mitchell builds the song from the bottom up and very calmly injects a snide solemnity to a song too often trivialized.
'Til Tuesday. "Voice Carry." Epic. 1985.
A little synth-heavy for rocker tastes, this song highlighted not only the Boston quartet's formidable songwriting but also showcased the suppressed genius of lead singer Aimee Mann. Her voice remains tender with an underlying rasp that sets up am ambivalent tension to a sound that's already rich as Mountain Grown Coffee.
Because technical proficiency in pop music is the least essential element in connecting with the universe, merging the music with synthetic vocal pageantry yields infectious yet (usually) disposable results. Upon the birth of a two-headed calf, however, something a bit more enduring materializes, its contemporary impact dependant upon placement between passionate and less stylized arrangements, meaning that if one sequences the Disembodied Vocalists’ métier (the hit single) between, say, Ted Nugent and Soundgarden, the perkiness becomes quite charming.
Abba: This Swedish combo’s hits of the 1970s somehow resonated enough to yield a Broadway musical and even a major motion picture. After all, this bi-gendered quartet did at one time outsell every other recording group on the planet. That their songs are indistinguishable is irrelevant. They remain shimmering, flavored ice cubes, and just as substantial. It turns out the songs even have titles, the best of which are “S.O.S.,” “Mamma Mia,” “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen,” and “Fernando.”
Brass Construction: This group created very simple, catchy, harmless funk epitomized by “Movin’,” “Message,” “Partyline” and “Changin’.” The band favored one-word titles and gave them each a rhythmized, rollicking intensity, just as one might expect from mid-1970s Brooklyn troglodytes. This was third generation recycled Sly Stone outtakes, but still fun in the scheme of things.
Can: Malcolm Mooney did the singing on 1969’s Monster Movie, a West German inner space vehicle for slurping up Deutschmarks on the basis of tracks such as “Father Cannot Yell” and “Yoo Doo Right.” Despite the band’s composition of drums, “vocals,” guitar, and keyboards, the sound the group sought was of a subterranean quality, not uncharacteristic of Martians chewing spider webs when the bubblegum runs out. Not that that’s a bad thing.
Chic: New York session musicians Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards tired of being the town’s whipping boys and so put together the magical Chic, whose heyday was 1976 – 1980, and one that saw massive hits with “Dance, Dance, Dance” and “Good Times.” The rhythm was the main attraction, but the group knew it needed frosting and so enlisted singers Norma Jean Wright, Luri Martin, and Alfa Anderson to dress up the sound cake. It was all soul-based disco, but the most captivating in memory, and every bit as useful as Sister Sledge, who Rodgers and Edwards also produced. “Le Freak” in particular holds up with its fine tension and release workout. The story goes that the “lyrics” derived from a rejection of the band at the door to the celebrity nightclub Studio 54 wherein the house DJ was playing the band’s own music.
Phil Collins: “In the Air Tonight,” with its Michelob ambiance, sounds as if it were recorded through a high-tech vacuum cleaner hose. It turned out that this former Genesis drummer sounds that way even in normal, puerile conversation, which must save his producers a great deal of time. This song works well at scaring four-year-olds, and yet is not without a certain Merry Olde panache.
Electric Light Orchestra: For those who preferred “Penny Lane” over “She Loves You,” ELO was the presumed antidote for post-Beatles withdrawal. Move guitarist Roy Wood and producer Jeff Lynne built cellos, horns and woodwinds around Beatle-esque harmonies and a rock and roll base, with classical aspirations none too well hidden. Wood left after a lukewarm first album and Lynne struck back with a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” that sounded like it belonged in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure ten years early. Straying further from human music, Lynne added an orchestra and choir. “Evil Woman,” Strange Magic” and “Turn to Stone” blurped out in the form of high speed, discofied dirges. But it was 1979’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” that showed what ELO could do once every millennium: amidst a thorny mix of “Disco? Very!” on Discovery (get it?), the band finally rocked out as never before or since. The floating, spinning vocals twisted their way through hilarious backing calls (“ooo-wee-ooo” and “Bruce,” among others), almost making up for the group’s later association with Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu.
Giorgio and Chris: Giorgio Moroder was the Italian cum German fuehrer of disco bass and drum synthetic oppression in the form of early Donna Summer and late David Bowie. Both of those performers had too much talent to be subjugated by the likes of this Casablanca Records auteur. The same cannot be said for the anonymous “Chris,” a ripe set of pipes sent twirling like an animated disco ball on “Love’s in You, Love’s in Me” and “Love Now, Hurt Later.”
Lipps Inc.: “Funkytown,” possibly the most hook-heavy tune here, is a total creation of the studio, meaning that producer Steven Greenberg played all the instruments and twiddled all the knobs, while lightweight chanteuse Cynthia Johnson provided the requisite squeals. The group never recovered from this song’s success and it remains their sole claim to stardom.
People’s Choice: This seven-piece Philly outfit started out under the tutelage of Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International organization. The vocals, beats and instrumentation were all identical until they inadvertently clanged a winner with “Do It Any Way You Wanna,” the least grammatically incorrect of all their early work. With money in the bank, they figured they must be stars. That being the case, stars need cocaine and there was no bigger mound of the stuff stateside than at Casablanca Records, where president Neil Bogart sent their career into a nosedive, as it were, with “You Ought to be Dancin’.”
From the mid-1970s until the very early 1980s, pop music on the radio was bad. Horribly bad. Putrid, one might say. Disco gained legitimacy. Hard rock donned faceless metal androgyny. Country crossed over into ultra slick banalities. And because at that time radio airplay led the way directly to sales, and since Awful was the name of the game, nothing good got marketed to radio stations. (For an excellent analysis of the seamier motives behind this condition, check out Fredric Dannen's Hit Men.) That's one of the main reasons that punk and new wave struck people's senses awake like clean beach morning air. But no stations outside of college radio ever played The Clash, the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Adverts, The Slits, X, Richard Hell, Elvis Costello, or any of a thousand loud and lesser known talents. So people in America who wanted good music enough to listen hard for it found the punk and new wave tunes at the homes of friends, in nightclubs, and in the few record stores that carried them. Such efforts built a tight and regrettably insular community of fanzine writers, groupies, and aspiring band members. It did not build an overwhelming array of great music. When Blondie becomes the new wave's claim to break-out glory, then the cure for music's ills may not outlast the larger system's ability to mutate.
Or so I thought until I heard the first Pretenders' album.
Michael Jackson. Off the Wall. Epic. 1979.
The cognomen "King of Pop" is as appropriate to Michael Jackson as to anyone. He was around on the charts as long as was Elvis, and, like the other King, he got in trouble for the way he danced. Like the other King, Jackson was accused of not knowing whether he was black or white. There were bizarre rumors of liaisons with celebrities, accusations indicative of a love-hate thing with the media. There were suspicions that the people close to him might be pulling the strings or the triggers, manipulating the image, if not the talent. If that wasn't reminiscent of Presley, then dying certainly was.
After the goose-bump water slide of "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" and the tingling shadow punch dance moves of "Rock with You," even the "light rock" ecstasy of "She's Out of my Life" feels not only appropriate but perfectly natural--essential to this album's intentional formula. If you're looking for dance music that'll make you forget how much you hate disco, or simply an album that sounds as if it was recorded last week, this is the one to get.
Joan Jett. Bad Reputation. Boardwalk. 1980.
Imagine a teenage fossil unearthed by seismic fissures just as its remains have mutated to heave forth volcanic spew. Jett must have known it, too. Why else would she have paid for the domestic pressings herself after failing to grab a major contract? The first song here was a brilliant and sneaky reworking the The Angels' otherwise horrible "My Boyfriend's Back." "I don't give a damn bout my bad reputation," Jett growls, and we believe her, despite the sound of "Hey lah, hey lah, my boyfriend's back," a sound that isn't actually there, but it's impossible not to hear it. Despite author credits on the title track and four other songs, Jett started out the way she ended, covering lots of youthful favorites, breathing new life into worn cliches, trading gender roles, paying homage. Leslie Gore's "You Don't Own Me" sounds at least as good as the original, especially since it's obvious that Joan isn't talking to some Junior Prep College Nerd; she's talking to someone who looks a lot like David Lee Roth, except with no sense of humor. Ditto the Isley Brothers' "Shout" and Sam the Sham's "Wooly Bully"--she's so happy to be singing these tunes, you just know she's got her legs in the air and her fingers reaching for the ceiling. On Gary Glitter's "Do You Wanna Touch Me," she out-stomps the greasy fat man and for one brief, miraculous moment comes on to both boys and girls without sounding specifically like either. Just standing on a stage, motionless, Jett glowed like a radioactive statue. On this album, she dressed her femininity in tough guy attitude that even today would terrify would-be ingenues like Mariah Carey, but sure does rivet real life singers like Lady Gaga.
Kurtis Blow. "The Breaks." Mercury. 1980.
The outre hip and miserably young critics plying their flattery these days refer to Blow as old school, a condition that says more about their mental programming than it does about the synthetic drums used to propel this number. Even though I'm assured this is actually a compliment, it's still irritating because the best thing about early rap was its primitive arrangements. I'll take someone who can scratch and toast like Blow over the far less musical Kid Schlock any day. So, fine. Call it whatever. But don't call it the first rap single, because you'd have to go back a lot farther.
The Pretenders. The Pretenders. Sire. 1980.
Despite some very strong music on and off the airwaves, a colossal wreckage of pubescent pap and even mature music lacking both form and substance throbbed and croaked with less effort than a dead frog. My copy of K-Tel's compilation Power Play, released at the same time as this album, indicates the sad state of affairs. Pat Benetar, Journey, Little River Band, Cliff Richard, The Knack, Andy Gibb, The Brothers Johnson--if you can imagine how horrible it is to have all these people together on one album, then you have a pretty fair idea of what early Eighties radio kept trying to sound like.
Thankfully, a few gifted enthusiasts, such as The Pretenders, refused to bow out gracefully. This debut album may have lacked the emotional sophistication of Learning to Crawl, but it lacked nothing in the way of nerve and dog collar excitement. While every song here kicks somebody's ass, the most bruising are "Precious" (wherein Ms. Hynde rebukes herself for telling people to fuck off), "Stop Your Sobbing" (heartfelt encouragement for the betterment of the singer rather than the crier), "Space Invader" (an anachronism today, but still the only song I've ever heard that sounds like a video game while remaining enjoyable), and, of course, "Brass in Pocket" (a song so desperate in its attempt to convince itself of worthiness that only someone lacking a pulse could resist it).
Blue Angel. "Maybe He'll Know." Polygram. 1980.
Blue Angel is memorable as Cyndi l
Lauper's first band and for their infectious near-hit, which Lauper turned around and recorded all over again as a solo artist. The remake shimmered like the compressed after-effects of a struck gong. The first time around was better, though, because with her musicians, Lauper created a song that was still heavy with low-tech synths, meaning it packed a serious homemade track that jumped right out in the room and spun everyone within earshot onto a trampoline.
The Bus Boys. Minimum Wage Rock 'n' Roll. Arista. 1980.
These guys were one of the real treats of what was then the new decade. Five African Americans and one Hispanic who together bounced out an R&B influenced assault that was occasionally hilarious. "Johnny Soul'd Out" is one of the greatest modern revamps of Fifties stereotypes, accusing a brother of selling out for leaving the church and making a big $75 a week in the secular world of rock. Also grand is "There Goes the neighborhood," offering up paranoia about the problems they'll encounter when Whitey moves next door. By the early 1980s, other nouveau r&b acts softened their sonic edge and applied whatever toughness they feigned to their image. Along with another great group, Fishbone, the Busboys never made the mistake of underestimating their audience. And it cost them.
REO Speedwagon. "Keep On Loving You." Epic. 1980.
I'm just as surprised as anyone to find an REO song here. At their inception, the Speedwagon played long-winded power chords without enough enthusiasm to compensate for the overblown pretensions of their conceits. By the time their tires exploded from excessive wear on the concert circuit, REO was exploiting the least appetizing aspects of the metal ballad genre: faceless and simpleminded edgy crooning with boring slick guitar waves. Maybe the transitional position of this song gives it a durability their other recordings lacked. Maybe it was just the one time their vocalist sang with conviction. Whatever the spark, and however contrived, "Keep on Loving You" builds a great argument in favor of foregoing every activity that could possibly take time away from the singer's obsession with his woman. The guitar solo that segues back to the bridge makes the next vocal lines infinitely more potent than they could ever be on the printed page. This song, this one moment of transcendence, is nearly sufficient to wipe out memories of previous and future transgressions.
Donna Summer. The Wanderer. Geffen. 1980.
Initially the queen of disco, Donna Summer tired of being a girl toy for producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. When future mogul David Geffen announced he was starting up his own label, Summer brought her team's track record to the rescue, becoming Geffen's Records first signed artist. Bored with side-long synthetic orgasms and quite accurately suspecting disco was dead, Summer took charge of her own career. The Wanderer is the result of that decision. This album hangs together as a collection of dance rock songs as well as anything released in 1980. The producers still made their presence felt with fuzzy synthesizers and the aural equivalent of spinning mirrored balls, but this album has a muscularity that comes from doing push ups with actual guitars and drums. Best of all, of course, is the high-ride soul voice of Summer, tripping with Alice in Wonderland on the title track, chipping through emotional force fields on the single "Cold Love," and bringing out and drowning out the congregation in the high-tech Pentecostal rave-up "I Believe in Jesus." While someone like Prince employed muddleheaded religiosity as nothing more than a rationalization for--and enhancer of--hot and cold running sex, Summer sought some form of expiation for the most hedonistic aspects of a musical-life soundtrack that she herself helped create.
AC/DC. For Those About to Rock, We Salute You. Atlantic. 1981.
This band always played a steady, loud and self-destructive brand of hard rock which was at least as much due to the occasionally monotonous drumming of Phil Rudd as to the rusty thunder of guitarist Angus Young. With the death of lead singer Bon Scott in 1980, Brian Johnson's never tuneful vocals became the focal point. Mildly ambiguous references to the darker side of the afterlife and an unending slew of sexual innuendo and double entendres, punctuated by a naughty school kid glee put these shakers on the table in countries the world over. The title track may well be the best thing they've ever done.
Kim Carnes. "Bette Davis Eyes." EMI America. 1981.
Oh, to be young, smart and beautiful, and have your voice around a great lyric as you sit next to a wise producer. Deep down you might hope that you get more great Jackie DeShannon/Donna Weiss tunes, because if you don't, no one will care about the rest.
Joan Jett. I Love Rock 'n' Roll. Boardwalk. 1982.
Joan Jett followed the artistic success of her first album with a fine commercial success. This album made it clear that the title did more than inspire: it told the truth. So did the rest of the record. There were the by-now obligatory cover versions, notably of the Halos' "Nag," redone with Jett's butch vulnerability, and Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover," made far more psychedelic druggy than the original. But as Blackhearts Gary Ryan, Lee Crystal and Ricky Bird cranked out their recycled Seventies riffs ala Chuck Berry, the slightest hint of tedium crept within earshot. So did a marketing gaff. The earliest versions of the album included a killer version of "Little Drummer Boy" while later issues substituted "Oh Woe is Me."
Bob Seger. "Makin' Thunderbirds." Capitol. 1982.
By 1982 Seger had long abandoned the commercially unsuccessful strides at becoming the Detroit version of John Fogerty. Instead he aimed for a vision of Atlantic City Pat Boone with soul, a wide net that caught a lot of mixed listeners, but which alienated the stalwarts, the critics, and anyone with the foresight of a Magic 8 Ball. Then from the clearing mist of his album The Distance poured the knife sharp headlights of this song. It sounded, in 1982, like exactly what it was: a defiant look back at a time when life made sense, if only in the most reactionary of ways. Against a fine grain of pent up ferocity Seger let roar with perfect descriptions of the Ford assembly line, missing not one instant of the agony of the process. Then before returning to the chorus and fade-out, he stared modern-day existence right in the eye with a gutter-loving blues snarl that was every bit as frightening as it tried to be: "Now the years have flown and the plants have changed and you're lucky if you work."
Prince. 1999. Warner Bros. 1982.
Sometimes even more than Madonna, Prince reintroduced the public to sex. Two things kept him protected from the level of scrutiny that served Madonna so well. First, the man appeared to have no use for his fans. Second, he made such dense and yet accessible recordings that it was easy to dig the music without getting too concerned about him personally. 1999 took the more musically cosmic aspects of Sly Stone and George Clinton, stripped off whatever subtlety may have remained, and jammed up the wattage with code words, peculiar spelling, and layers of sound that more than twenty-five years later it is still impossible to sort out.
Bruce Springsteen. Nebraska. Columbia. 1982.
This album speaks of what happens to people in America whose faith in what they are taught comes from a dire need that those lessons be absolutely true. More precisely, Nebraska speaks to the emotional and physical violence that erupts when that faith is shattered. This is spooky stuff, songs about lives stripped of all hope and reason. Like a beaten, somnambulant wolf, Springsteen unemotionally welcomes us: "I saw her standing on her front lawn," he begins, "Just a-twirling her baton. Me and her went for a ride, sir, and ten innocent people died." Whether it's the last writings of mass murderer Charles Starkweather or Johnny 99 begging the judge to execute him, the patrolman watching the fading taillights of his incorrigible brother or the brother himself hoping not to be stopped for fear of what he'll have to do about it, or even the milder frustrations of a guy just getting off the nightshift on his way across Jersey to see his girl--everything here is raw, bitter and frightening. It is the equivalent of watching yourself being eaten alive by a lie you once told in the interest of helping mankind.
Stevie Nicks. "Edge of Seventeen." Modern. 1982.
What's best about this solo recording from Fleetwood Mac's premiere chanteuse is that Stevie Nicks drops the mystical good-witch persona and belts out the song of her life about nothing more or less complex than a female on the brink of womanhood. And while I have no idea who her musical accompaniment were, I'm sure these folks rocked too hard and well to have been Mac alumni.
Dolly Parton. "I Will Always Love You." RCA. 1982.
Dolly Parton wrote this song more than a decade before she recorded it. What makes her own version of the song not only superior to others but a genuine classic track is its utter lack of show business feel. When Linda Ronstadt sings it, we can be impressed with the strength of the vocal while recognizing that once again she hasn't the slightest idea about what the song is saying. Whitney Houston's version is all gloss and sickly sentimental histrionics that couldn't stir a vampire in a room of redheaded virgins. Dolly lets the blind faith testament of the lyric sail out like the Space Shuttle, her voice laced with timber and vibrato, the only country residue the song possesses. Any statement worthy of the conviction expressed in the words would have to be masking fear that nothing of the sort would be returned. That sense of terror quivers in every note.
Richard and Linda Thompson. Shoot Out the Lights. Hannibal. 1982.
If there's anything duller than a rock star's personal life, I don't want to know from it. That said, some people have found it fascinating that this album came out just as the twilight deserted the marriage of the two principals who recorded it. I say, ho-hum. I also say that the songs on this album are spooky, intricate, and in a couple cases downright frightening. The title track, for instance, tells about a psychopathic homicide in process, while "Did She Jump" reveals a murder mystery in action. None of this would bare mentioning were it not for the slow gallop of Richard's multi-dimensional guitar and Linda's reedy, bravely fragile voice, two highlights that encourage the listener to look closer.
Toni Basil. "Mickey." Chrysalis. 1982.
The first time I ever heard of Toni Basil was during the credits for the film Five Easy Pieces. Twelve years later this actress, choreographer and singer came out with "Mickey." You should have heard people talk. Oh, that song is so dirty, they said, knuckles at their lips. I still fail to find even a hint of the scatological in this song, blow my mind notwithstanding. What I do still find is the only cheerleader stomp set to music that works. It lacks sophistication, it reeks of youthful jubilation, and it has a snappy beat. That's good enough for me.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. "The Message." Sugar Hill. 1982.
Don't
push
me
cause I'm
close to
the
edge.
I'm
Tryin'
not to
lose
my
head.
Just like that, scratchers and rappers Grandmaster Flash, Duke Bootee, Melle Mel and producer Sylvia Robinson conveyed what it's like to walk around full of so much pressure that even one minor affront could send the singer off into a murderous rage. By the early 1980s, the injustice of the black experience was reduced to passe satire--until "The Message" made satire unthinkable. Rattling off his kid's disaffection, his mother's phosphor-dot tranquility, and the prison hanging that awaited anyone unlucky enough to try to escape this life, Flash and company put on a bit of theatre reminiscent of Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City." Sugar Hill Records specialized in synths and beats that left it for the mind to fill in the rest. This was polished rawness, sparkling overdose, and glimmering doom, all of which united for the sole purpose of yanking listeners out on the dance floor to think while they partied.
Wall of Voodoo. "Mexican Radio." IRS. 1983.
I have nothing to say about this song.
The Bangles. "Going Down to Liverpool." Capitol. 1983.
Katrina and the Waves gave the bangles their best moment and one of their most popular non-hits. The irony is that the Waves were every bit as American as the Bangles were British. So it was odd hearing Katrina Leskanich singing about UB40s, but it made perfect sense for the Bangles to sing it. The Bangles went on to wet dream stardom and became one of the great girl bands.
By 1970 the false consciousness trappings of the linked economic ideologies of capitalism and communism ceased to exist. In their place stood the finger-pointing polar opposites and sworn enemies of Conflict Theory and Realpolitiks. The first of these was so weighted down in academic armor that no self-respecting urban guerrilla could relate to it and the latter dressed itself so thoroughly in ethnocentrism that its very divisiveness made its stone cold logic infinitely illogical. These inherent flaws did not stop ideologues from carrying out very real oppression against millions of people, a state of existence with us to this day. The artists whose songs appear below may not have known or specifically cared about theories of economic hegemony or creeping decimalism, but their music clearly responded to the leaden conditions around them. Revisionists claim the 1960s as the time of substantial musical protest, but the reality is that the oft-ridiculed 1970s embraced and evoked far more rebellion against the status quo than any time in the twentieth century.
The centerpiece of this period--musically, if not chronologically--is Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On. Forty years later absolutely nothing even approaches this album in its ability to convey the feel of being clubbed senseless by the unwashed hatred of imbecilic leaders and dog-lapping followers alike. To further convey a sense of manifestly dangerous outrage in such a numbed-out condition elevates this album above all but a handful of selections in The Playlist.
At the same time we had Marvin Gaye asking how and why things had come to be so screwed up. His demeanor, like that of Sly Stone, was heavily drugged, somewhere between being punch drunk and totally narcotized, yet still warring with an inner frustration and a churning, bubbling hostility. No sooner had the shock waves subsided than Curtis Mayfield, the lovely and sensitive man who only a few months earlier had bored us to near-death with"Gypsy Woman," shot up from under the manhole cover and connected the drug-disease with the inherent corruption in our power systems, and still made us want to dance!
Joe South. "Redneck." Capitol. 1969.
One line says it all: When God said brain you thought he said rain and you ran for cover."
Paul Kelly. "Stealing in the Name of the Lord." Happy Tiger. 1970.
The Five Stairsteps. "O-o-h Child." Buddah. 1970.
The Burke children had over a dozen soul and r&b hits on Curtis Mayfield's various labels before signing with Buddah and releasing their sole pop hit. Along with the early singles of the Jackson 5, the Stairsteps were responsible for a resurged interest in black group pop. The striking and absolute paranoia in the falsetto-to-tenor lead as the singer assures his love that things are gonna get easier is among the most unsettling in all pop music. There's no doubt he doesn't believe a word he's saying; he simply has to sat something and chooses these words as carefully as possible. Anyone who only knows the remakes of this by Lenny Williams or Valerie Carter should discover the real thing. And the simultaneously restrained and unleashed drumming here dispels any suggestion that this was soft rock.
Marvin Gaye. What's Going On? Motown. 1971.
Maybe because he had been everywhere and done everything; maybe because the instinct of middle age was fast approaching; maybe because he intuited that black music was about to experience an opportunity to do things the brain damaged leftovers from late 1960s psychedelic misanthropy never could--for whatever reason, Marvin Gaye ran the ultimate risk of alienating himself from brother-in-law and tyrannical boss, Berry Gordy. Then again, if the hit-obsessed Gordy considered gambling in anything, this album of pained, funky-town slow down slap back had to be the most convincing long shot of either man's career. It is nothing less than the ideal answer record to Plastic Ono Band. There may be some autobiography in a few places, but mostly this is Marvin drawing a sound scape of world misery and confusion that all the parties and exhortations won't rectify, while only referencing himself as a frustrated observer to an apocalypse he'd like to avoid if only he had the energy to run. Particularly splendid are "What's Going On," "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)," all of which were huge hits.
Sly and the Family Stone. There's a Riot Goin' On. Epic. 1971.
If this is a party album, then mama told me not to come. Splinters in the veins, rubber in the mouth, erotic rust, and the ache of a lonesome mind: there's a point when the drugs wear off and you still feel stoned because your mind has been changed, either by the drugs themselves or by the things that happened under their influence. You fear you will always feel that way, or you would fear it if only you had the ambition to care. In a way Sly is at peace. He had gotten the message while wrestling with the devil that regardless of who's on top, the match is never over, a condition all too apparent in "Thank You for Talking to Me, Africa." That understanding robbed the life from him, but it also removed the pressure. This album is the sound of that realization ion process. This album walks slow and swings wide. This album is the essence discovered after what may be the final exhalation.
The Impressions. "We're a Winner." ABC. 1967.
The Impressions. "Choice of Colors." ABC. 1969.
Curtis Mayfield. Soundtrack from Superfly. Curtom. 1972.
I can count on the one hand of any one-fingered cartoon character the number of exceptionally fine original score soundtracks to blaxploitation films. The movie Superfly shared with its brethren films a nearly histrionic feel for the least savory aspects of the filmmaker's views of black urban life: drugs, hookers, abusive white cops, and rats in the kitchen. Where this movie excelled was in utilizing a soundtrack that evoked the feeling of these aspects better than did the motion picture itself. "Freddie's Dead" and the title track were impossibly brilliant testimonies of underclass experience, black and otherwise. The fact that they rocked, souled and funked harder than anything Mayfield's white brothers were making was, nevertheless, the key to the movie's success.
The Chi-Lites. Greatest Hits. Brunswick. 1971.
Eugene Record led this fabulous soul rock group who brought us some of the best non-drug-related black pop of the early 1970s. In a sense, they were simply the best group to be inspired by the Temptations' song, "Just My Imagination." These guys didn't fear the idea of showing vulnerabilities. Hell, they reveled in the opportunity, which is okay because unlike a lot of other groups from Chicago who would have pissed down your leg while they were moaning sentimental swill, these guys were even sensitive to the fact that much of their audience probably didn't care. The album's best moments are "For God's Sake Give More Power to the People," "Oh, Girl," "Have You Seen Her," and "The Coldest Day of My Life."
The Undisputed Truth. "Smiling Faces Sometimes." Gordy. 1972.
Producer Norman Whitfield linked up singers Joe Harris, Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Joyce Evans, forming this loosely tight single that went Top Five at a time when people were suspecting that all those hippie aphorisms were just some corporate lackey's idea of soup in rubber pockets on a food line. The Undisputed Truth said that people who smile in your face just might be looking out for Number One.
Stevie Wonder. "Superstition." Motown. 1971.
Stevie Wonder. "Higher Ground." Motown. 1973.
Stevie Wonder. "Living for the City." Motown. 1973.
Marvin Gaye. Here, My Dear. Tamla. 1978.
Marvin Gaye and his wife Anna split up. Part of the terms of their divorce was that the profits from Marvin's next album would go to Anna. In that same situation, I would have jack-knifed together an album so full of degenerate bile that people would have compared it unfavorably to Metal Machine Music. Made of better stuff as he was, Marvin devised a way to express his feelings without ripping off his fans. He decided to transform this court-ordered penance into one of his best albums. The recording would be about something Anna (whose brother owned the record company) could enjoy. It would be about their divorce. He made it a double album. This is fascinating stuff, even before you listen to the lyrics. The separation between the vocals and music is tenuous. It sounds like an album played by someone who has been denied the relief of suicide. Once you pull apart the sheets of semi-conscious rage, the breadth of the singer's frustration burbles out and you feel just a bit squeamish knowing anyone this intimately. That Gaye puts no effort at all in trying to make himself look like the victim is just as compelling. The album dares offer a rare glimpse into the soul of one of the world's best and most lamented popular singers and songwriters. The only unanswered question is how could someone who sounds so numbed still create such a rhythmic modern masterpiece? Might as well ask why the best ideas come at three in the morning.
By the time Phil Ochs was recording Pleasures of the Harbor with producer Larry Marks in 1967, the singer had transformed from a gentle writer of fierce topical songs into a poet whose mind reinvented what his senses passionately explored. It was his first time working with Marks. The producer was determined to desert the barren and stark non-production Paul Rothchild had provided Ochs' first three albums, which had been recorded for Elektra. The new label, A&M, as well as the singer himself, sought to make the music relevant to the lyrics. With only a few exceptions, this resulted in an unfortunate swash of strings and waves of swirling orchestration that buried the singer in a typhoon of cacaphony. Some of his best songs were rendered unlistenable. And yet the album did have its strong moments. Phil had heard the story of Kitty Genovese, the New York woman who had screamed and pleaded for life while her neighbors watched in the shadows as she was brutally raped and murdered. Some of the more than two dozen people who witnessed her destruction even admitted to turning up their televisions to drown out the disturbing sounds. Ochs responded with "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends." Lyrically, the song's verses set up opportunities to exercise social responsibilities and provided one-line rationalizations for ignoring them. Musically, happy ragtime piano mocked those excuses while giving the song commercial hooks. Lacking heavy guitar riffs, it was ignored by the rock audience just as folkies found it too musical for their standards. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," released as a single, still managed to chart in Los Angeles, Sacramento and especially New York, where Phil's fan base had always been its strongest.
His second home, though, was Los Angeles. His brother Michael had already moved there to work on photography and music promotion, and Phil hired him to be his manager. Just east of Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Boulevard was a club called The Troubadour. It was owned and operated by a tall, skinny longhair named Doug Weston. Phil played The Troubadour regularly and became friends with the lanky owner. Weston wanted to produce a Phil Ochs concert in Los Angeles. The singer was ecstatic. Back in New York he'd played everywhere from Gerde's in the Village right up through Carnegie Hall. But doing a concert in L.A.? That was a new level. Having already toured in support of the album, Phil was sure he could fill the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Michael and Weston weren't so sure. Wouldn't it be better to play a smaller venue? they asked. Better to turn away a few people, they reasoned, than stare at rows of empty seats.
Phil got his way. His manager and producer had been right. The auditorium was less than twenty-five percent capacity.
In those days, before the Chicago riots, defeats could still leave him optimistic about both his career and about America. To that end, he behaved and reacted as if the success of his career and the health of his country were inexorably connected, perfectly correlated.
The former Ohio State University journalism student dropped out and moved to New York City in 1960 with designs on becoming a guitar-playing singing sensation. If Bob Gibson, Faron Young, Johnny Cash and Buddy Holly could become stars, there was no reason why the young Ohioan couldn't do the same. Mike Porco, who ran Gerde's Folk City, gave him his first paying job opening for John Hammond. To make the best use of the opportunity, Phil wrote and performed a song specific for the occasion. "The Power and the Glory" could have been written by Woody Guthrie, except that the set up of the final verse was more strategic, the delivery more impassioned and the pace more compelling than was accepted in Guthrie's day. After describing all the Whitman-like details of his beautiful country, a shadow of stern caution warned, "Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor/Only as free as a padlocked prison door/Only as strong as our love for this land/Only as tall as we stand!"
Having developed by now a bit of a reputation, Phil managed to get other work in the city, primarily at The Third Side and at Sam Hood's The Gaslight. But where he fell under the gaze of the larger audience for folk music was in the pages of a mimeographed magazine called Broadside. In addition to articles, editorials and profiles, the magazine, published by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, printed the words and music of folk and topical songs written by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and--suddenly--Phil Ochs. This recognition landed him an invitation to perform at Newport '63. Newport was far and away the premier showcase for folk singers. Phil would be in the company of Dylan and Seeger, as well as Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, The Freedom Singers and lesser luminaries. Phil's performance--throughout which he was battling terror and nausea--included the aforementioned "The Power and the Glory," as well as "The Ballad of Medgar Evers" and "Talking Birmingham Jam." An album of the festival was released the following year and featured two of Phil's songs. Mainstream newspapers announced a new sound in folk music.
The two major record labels that handled folk acts at the time were Vanguard and Elektra. Vanguard had a good roster that included Baez, Eric Andersen, The Weavers and Pat Sky. But Jac Holzman's Elektra offered Phil a zero dollar signing bonus. And if that wasn't flattering enough, he would be label mates with Judy Collins, Tim Hardin, and Tom Rush.
The first album, All the News That's Fit to Sing, was evocative of its title, a virtual What's What of headline stories and young smiling radical analysis. Topics included U.S. involvement in Vietnam after the death of President Diem, a social worker named Lou Marsh, the separation of a Hazard, Kentucky coal miner from his wife, a reporter named William Worthy who ran into trouble with the State Department for visiting Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. There was even a lovely musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells." Future Blues Project member Danny Kalb filled out the sound on second guitar. In between promotional appearances and concerts in support of the album, Phil began what would become a life-long involvement in social activism.
It began with a number of benefit concerts for striking miners in Hazard. From there he was on to the Mississippi Caravan of Music, a consortium that staged concerts to encourage blacks to register to vote, which just happened to coincide with the discovery of the bodies of three civil rights workers slain by the Ku Klux Klan. Soon after his second album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, was released, he hooked up with Jerry Rubin and participated in the Berkeley teach-ins by singing between speeches. This was Ochs' first association with the anti-war movement that was by that time eclipsing civil rights as a national issue.
His greatest force for social change, however, remained his music. With a few exceptions, the liner notes to the second album were more insightful and entertaining than the songs themselves. Not so with the follow-up, Phil Ochs in Concert, recorded at Carnegie Hall. It was and remains among the greatest acoustic live albums of all time (despite the fact that much of the music was re-recorded elsewhere to make up for the taping defects). In addition to songs about book burnings and invasions of Latin American countries, there was the self-described "cinematic" "Ringing of Revolution." Ochs even named the actors. "John Wayne plays Lyndon Johnson. And Lyndon Johnson plays God. I play Bobby Dylan. A young Bobby Dylan." There was even one hysterical satire called "Love Me, I'm a Liberal," wherein Ochs exploded every cliché the near Left ever used. "In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it effects them personally. Here then is a lesson in safe logic." The album even contained a first: a Phil Ochs love song--"Changes." Amid a context of philosophy, politics and movies, that song lifted the performance to the level of Art.
It was a level he would either approximate, maintain or excel for the next few years. Despite the nearly grotesque overproduction of Pleasures of the Harbor, beneath all the noise was a song called "Crucifixion," which the sailor from the sea described as his greatest achievement. Indeed, it was high art, easily on a par with the best of Dylan's work. It was also ambitious, abstractly symbolizing political assassinations from Jesus Christ to John Kennedy. Alliterative, imagistic, accurate and terrified in tone, it is heard to better effect on the retrospective Chords of Fame in a crisp acoustic version.
And the night comes again to the circle-studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
Till the universe explodes as a falling star is raised
The planets are paralyzed, the mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity--then he dies!
The combined total sales of the first three albums had been less than 50,000 units. Phil Ochs and his new label--A&M--were optimistic that a change was needed.Pleasures' orchestration was chosen. A&M publicist Derek Taylor sent a copy of the album to President Johnson. Time, Billboard and Variety all conceded that the recording had its positive moments. Broadside, naturally, gutted the recording as a sellout, which was silly. The only thing the singer was selling out was concert tickets. The publicity worked. Phil's first A&M album outsold all three of his Elektra recordings combined.
While on a promotional tour for the album, Ochs became even more active in his opposition to the Vietnam War. One such manifestation was his organization of a "War is Over" celebration in New York's Washington Square Park. The idea behind the rally was that if enough people could come to believe the war was over, it actually would be so. It was also an opportunity to mobilize people through tactics of street theatre, tactics that were also being used to some effect by his friends in the newly formed Yippie community. By now Jerry Rubin and occasional collaborator Abbie Hoffman had learned how to use the media against itself. Aware that photographers had a tendency to focus on anyone with long hair and bare feet, the Yippies used humor and charm on reporters to ensure their media contacts wouldn't find the parades and marches altogether unacceptable. And so the "War is Over" celebration attracted thousands and allowed the Yippies to promote their upcoming gathering in Chicago. Phil did the same at all his public performances, while at the same time campaigning and playing benefits for the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy.
In between charity benefits and political obligations, Phil found a free week in which to make the album Tape From California. Again Larry Marks produced. But this time the lush orchestration was harnessed, when it was used at all. The title track actually had electric instruments and sounded suspiciously like rock and roll, albeit old time rock and roll. Unquestionably the best thing on the album, though, was "When in Rome," a song inspired by film director Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata. Calling the song brilliant, critic Bart Testa wrote "The song does nothing less than symbolically rewrite the entire history of the United States as a chaotic and apocalyptic epic, with Ochs playing all the lead parts in the first person."
Back through the ashes and back through the embers
Back through the roads and ruins I remembered
My hands at my side I sadly surrendered
Do as you please.
The setting for the disaster that Chicago would become seemed nearly preordained. On March 12, 1968, Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for President. His platform was "Get Out Now." Four days later, Robert Kennedy announced his own candidacy on an anti-war ticket. Together the two men captured sixty-nine percent of the popular vote in the Democratic primaries. Lyndon Johnson's heir apparent, Hubert Humphrey, achieved a mere two percent. Before the primaries were over, Kennedy was assassinated. Abbie Hoffman suggested the Celebration of Life form a counter-convention where their attendees would all wear VOTE FOR ME buttons and each person would nominate himself. The aims of the Celebration were a blending of the philosophies of the Old and New Left, a gathering of radical organizations, a model of an alternative society, the politics of ecstacy. As Phil Ochs put it, the Yippies "wanted to be able to set out fantasies in the street to communicate their feelings to the public." A number of memorable slogans were coined, mainly as a way of publicizing the upcoming event. Sure that the more outrageous the phrase, the more likely the media would be to repeat it--and hence bestow the gift of free publicity--the Yippies declared they would "Burn Chicago to the ground! Acid for all! Abandon the creeping meatball!"
A few days before the Democratic Convention began, Phil Ochs, Stew Albert and Jerry Rubin found an Illinois farmer willing to sell a large sow for twenty dollars. Since Phil was the only one with any money, the honor of the purchase went to him. The Yippies had found their own candidate. On August 23, 1968, they held a press conference outside Chicago's Civic Center and announced their "Pigasus for President" campaign. The press was duly amused and the police hauled the group in, charging them with disturbing the peace and bringing livestock into the city.
What Phil witnessed over the next few days would forever alter the attitude he brought to the creations of his songs. It would in fact alter the very thought processes that went into writing altogether. His hope and optimism were shot full of holes. His faith in his childhood visions of America were destroyed, leaving him with the gut pains of introspection.
The night of August 24 brought 7,500 demonstrators to town, all of whom needed some place to stay. Many had plans to sleep in Lincoln Park. The police had other ideas. They attacked the Park with tear gas and beat the revelers as they left. The following night, the cops removed their badges to avoid easy detection, following Mayor Richard Daley's admonition: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder. He is there to preserve disorder." The message was understood. The police force attacked the press, local residents, paramedics and protestors with equal fervor. Plenty of network TV cameras filmed the massacre, but the rest of the nation wouldn't see it until days later because of sabotaged transmissions.
Humphrey accepted his party's nomination on August 28, as the day ended and the scent of tear gas wafted up Michigan Avenue to the nominee's suite at the Conrad Hilton. The worst violence was about to begin. And the New York folk singer would be right in the thick of things. The protestors had gathered in Grant Park to hear a series of speeches before marching to the Convention Center. The Chicago Police attempted to contain the group by surrounding the Park. One after another speaker addressed the crowd. In between speeches of men like activist Dave Dellinger, poet Allen Ginsberg, and comedian Dick Gregory, Phil would stand in the back of a pick-up truck and sing for the crowd. Shortly after he sang a rousing version of "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he saw a young boy climb the Park's flag pole and pull down Old Glory. The was all the provocation the police required. They grabbed the kid, beat him with their nightsticks, and tossed him into the back of a squad car while the more agitated onlookers threw rocks at the arresting officers. Press cameras filmed all this for posterity and even broadcast one cop commanding "Make sure you show them throwing rocks!" While Dave Dellinger attempted to lead a nonviolent march to the Convention Center (and was blocked from doing so), others took advantage of an opening in the quarantine and thousands of young people marched toward the Hilton. Enraged at being distracted, the police charged up Michigan Avenue, firing tear gas canisters and clubbing everything in sight. When clubs failed to subdue, they stomped. And when that proved ineffective, they kicked, shoved, punched and beat. The crowd shouted "The whole world is watching!" As Phil Ochs and the others would soon come to realize, most of the whole world didn't care and among those who did, many felt the cops hadn't gone far enough.
Back in Los Angeles, Phil began to question his own approach to politics in America. While the Yippies and other radicals had been creating and recreating their own counterculture, they had alienated the American working class along with Middle America. People who were already involved, Ochs reasoned, didn't need to be converted. Nixon--who would ride to victory above the shattered remains of a splintered Democratic Party--called these frightened Americans 'the Silent Majority.' Ochs knew that if this majority rejected the members of the New Left, they would in turn embrace the solutions of men like Nixon and George Wallace. Frightened by those prospects, the songwriter began to detach himself by degrees from the journalistic approach to his craft. The resulting music spoke with broader, more universal tones. As he's done in "Crucifixion," two or three lines could speak entire chapters while a whole song could fill libraries. One last time, Larry Marks would produce. This time they both got it exactly right.
Rehearsals for Retirement is among the most beautiful and powerful recordings in any musical genre. Backed by a real band, featuring Lincoln Mayorga (whose piano had been the stand out feature of the Pleasures album), Bob Rafkin on bass and guitar, and (probably) Kevin Kelly on drums, Ochs delivered the performance of a lifetime. The cover itself was a photograph of a tombstone Phil had had made for the occasion. The headstone bore an oval picture of Phil standing in front of the flag with a Revolutionary War rifle slung over his shoulder. Beneath the image were the words: Phil Ochs (American). Born: El Paso, Texas 1940; Died: Chicago, Illinois 1968.
The album led off with "Pretty Smart on my Part" which in four crisp verses not only gave an hysterically funny analysis of the reactive behavior of the machismo mentality, it tied the vignettes together with a pair of lines--twenty-four years before Oliver Stone would do the same--asserting that John Kennedy had been assassinated to allow the U.S. military the pleasure of frying the people of Vietnam. Before the impact of that assertion could sink in, Mayorga's piano introduces "The Doll House" with a sound of someone lost and wandering in a surreal environment of someone else's making. The singer himself is lost amid this ambience, a world of soft confusion and amazing pressure. It all unspins with the plateau: "The ballet master/Was beckoning ‘faster'/The ballerina was posed/In the fragile beauty she froze/Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go!" After that uncommercial interruption, Ochs is back in a narrative that begins and ends in the third person and yet clearly is also the first person narrator in between, a police officer, defensive about his responsibility to "keep the country safe from long hair," hateful of the students and minorities he brutalizes, yet unable to understand what it is that his enemies don't understand about him. Ultimately he can only utter a variation on Descartes: "I kill, therefore I am." The song "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is possibly more worthy of praise for its inventive title than its descriptions of Convention Week. The same cannot be said for the album's centerpiece.
Smack dab in the middle of Rehearsals for Retirement is "My Life." In the same way The Beatles permanently altered the way they would be understood by their audience with Rubber Soul, Phil Ochs made his breakthrough with this song. The Beatles' album took the public perception of their product from dance music and love songs into a perception of themselves as a highly complex group involved in the process of creating some mighty fine artwork. Ochs' album, and this song in particular, revealed the artist as a culmination of all the characters he'd created, each the victim of its own vulnerabilities but not necessarily hugable and endearing.
The intensity does not lessen with "The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns," explicitly a song about the missing nuclear submarine but implicitly a strong metaphor for the performer's view of his own position in society.
Sounding bell is diving down the water green
Not a trace, not a toothbrush, not a cigarette was seen
Bubble ball is rising from a whisper or a scream
But I'm not screaming, no I'm not screaming
Tell me I'm not screaming.
Perhaps sensing he'd revealed enough for the moment, Ochs took his audience on a brief road trip from Eden to Los Angeles--"city of tomorrow." Then soon enough, we're back, engulfed in the personal drama of "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore," a song that was not only obviously inspired by Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," but could easily be the long awaited response from the unseen character Dylan had been lecturing. Peppered with spicy lines like "You love your love so much that you'd strangle her gladly" and "You search the books in vain for a better word for lonely," the song climaxes with the narrator coming upon an ex-lover's emotional suicide in process. The galloping horseback rhythms of "Another Age" unite Tom Paine, Jesse James and Robin Hood in search of a stolen election. Then suddenly the horse can run no more and the title track walks the final lap of the course. The end is near. Though still tinged with vibrato, his voice struggles to contain the moan beneath it. With a fade of piano and bass, he is gone.
He lies on his back on the couch in the Canyon house. Awake, he closes his eyes and imagines he is dreaming. He sees his paternal grandfather lip-locked beside the radio, listening to FDR speak reassuringly, while his grandmother fries eggs in the kitchen. His father comes in, wide-eyed and despondent from days without sleep. He sees himself hiding beneath a desk in Miss Jocelyn's classroom during an air raid drill, teasing his younger brother, being softly scolded by his older sister.
A chill comes in through the living room window, so he pulls the remembered images over himself like a patchwork quilt. A match flame of exploration in the dark; a faint smell that never leaves the walls; the taste of buttered popcorn at the movies; mastering scales on the clarinet; his father staring at the newspaper without reading it; shooting himself in the leg while showing off for a friend; a green sign welcoming the world to Columbus, Ohio; James Dean's red jacket; Fidel Castro marching into Havana; a pencil snapping between tight fingers; the strum of a guitar he'd won in a bet; a belt tied in a loop with a buckle supporting his own weight.
The idea of the gold suit came to him after seeing Elvis Presley perform in Las Vegas. The only hope for America, Phil decided, was a revolution, and the only hope for a revolution in America was for Elvis to become Che Guevara. Since the young man from Tupelo was unlikely to make such a conversion, Phil Ochs would have to become Elvis as Che himself. The first step was having Nudie the tailor make him a gold suit. That was the first mistake.
The second mistake was his next album. The songs themselves were fine, but if Larry Marks had buried Ochs' tunes under a sea of swash, new producer Van Dyke Parks placed some very good tunes behind a Spectorian Wall of Sound, with timpani drums and backing choruses that would have been more at home on a Ronettes album than on Phil Ochs' Greatest Hits. That title was his third mistake. Intended sarcastically, the title (and the reverse legend declaring "50 Phil Ochs' fans can't be wrong!") was easily misunderstood as being what it purported to be.
His last mistake was in the way he chose to promote the album. He was scheduled to play Carnegie Hall again. He showed up, but this time he was wearing the gold suit and had his band with him. He might reasonably have expected to be about as welcome as Dylan had been when the latter had gone electric at Newport. As if to guarantee a hostile reaction, his set was weighted with other people's songs. After beginning with a up version of Conway Twitty's "Mona Lisa" and his own obligatory "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he introduced his rendition of Merle Haggard's "Okie From Meskogee." Everyone assumed that gesture was intended as irony, but how could anyone tell for sure? The real trouble, though, came when he performed medleys of hits first by Buddy Holly and later by Elvis. The first set received such a hostile response that the singer gently lectured the crowd. "Let's not be narrow-minded Americans- You can be a bigot against blacks, you can be a bigot against music." After another pair of his own songs--neither from the new album that needed promoting--he did the Elvis medley. Although his voice was heavy with reverb, he still sounded magnificent and just as the crowd was won over, Carnegie Hall cut the power. The audience shouted "We want power! We want power!" Electricity was restored and the concert was completed.
Phil begged A&M's Jerry Moss to release the tapes of the concert as an album. Moss politely declined. Eventually A&M did issue the album--in Canada. It would be more than twenty years before it was available in the United States.
Over the next few years, Phil became more isolated from his friends and spent most of his time drinking, watching TV and traveling to other countries. In South Africa, he was robbed by three men. In the process, his vocal cords were ruptured and he lost his upper register. Convinced he would never sing professionally again, he fell deeper into bouts of manic depression and paranoia.
Does anybody know my name or recognize my face?
I must have come from somewhere but I can't recall the place
They left me at the matinee and left without a trace.
Ticket home--I want a ticket home!
His nephew David found him hanging from his own belt in his sister's bathroom. He was thirty-five years old. I can make no case for martyrdom here. There is nothing noble about suicide, regardless of how that suicide may have been the result of social forces or diminished expectations. Had he lived, I doubt Phil would have made any new songs, and if he had, they probably would not have compared favorably with his best work. But it remains a fact that whenever I read about some ludicrous injustice or monumental hypocrisy, I wonder what Ochs would have said about it, how he would have summed up the situation with an acerbic line or two. And I wonder who the next dead hero will be.
The visual component of rock n roll all too often overrides the less transitory and more deeply aesthetic qualities which mandate the eternal nature of the best of that music. In the present age, when irony exists for its own sake and fashion begets substance, the temptation is to view the history of rock as a broken strand of shocking visualities that previous generations of fans thought of in some quaint way as "cool." Such a viewpoint imagines only four significant trends in the music, each of which constructed a soundtrack to accompany the more immediate concerns of their appearance. So, Elvis was about swiveling hips and understate personal charm; The Beatles were about pageboy haircuts and cute Liverpudlian accents; the punks of the late 1970s were about safety pins and spiked haircuts; and hip hop is about obsessive-compulsive hand gestures and baggy trousers. By now the Reader has caught on that in the universe of The Playlist, such ironies do not exist. Here, the visual components of a performer's ouveure and the extent to which they are commented upon or copied demonstrate only that the artist has captivated so successfully through the stated means of expression that his or her legion of fans, admirers and critics cannot help but take substantial note of such tertiary concerns as stage persona, body language, physical deformities, and fashion.
Punk rock, in this regard, is problematic. The best of it merged a very broad scope of musical ambition with an explicit urge to wash away the chalk mark boundary between star and fan. At precisely the moment when such superstar acts as the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart hired other people to prevent them from coming into unwelcome contact with the very fan base who bought tickets to their shows and worked in fast food to pay for their albums, thousands of young people in the U.S. and Europe turned the machinery upside down and formed their own bands, most of which weren't especially great, some of which were inconceivably magnificent.
The Stooges. The Stooges. Elektra. 1969.
Ever since Patti Smith first told an interviewer that she'd been influenced by Rimbaud's A Season in Hell, the rock critic literati has hailed the conquering anti-heroes The Velvet Underground as the seminal punk rock band. To that I can only reply: balderdash. To the extent that there ever was such a thing as the definitively original purveyor of an anarchistic and dada-esque sound aesthetic, The Stooges were most certainly it. Ron Asheton's two-chord guitar intro to "1969" sounds exactly like the contractions of nausea. Scott Asheton's drumming replicates purgatory in a mine field, and Dave Alexander's bass--rather than turning up the heat from down below--actually keeps things from getting any wilder than they already are. Then in struts Iggy Pop, both the penultimate leer of confusion and the swagger of disdain sonic-visible as he awakens from the disturbance to explain to novices exactly what is going on here. "Well, all right." If we were at an amusement park, this ride would be the Wall of Death. The words are just vehicles to carry the instrument of Iggy's voice, their meaning almost but not quite subservient to the passion of boredom this album shatters. Indulgent jams, drugged intellect, lethargic delivery, and the perfect kick in the nads to every complacent megastar noodling his wank fantasies into reams of teenybopper significance and to every music fan stoned less on dope than on the sheer self-alienating drivel disgorged by A&R hacks trying to manufacture the next Beatles or Stones. The Stooges playe beyond metaphor, beyond sensibility, beyond all reason. Their sound tightened and became even more abrasive on their two succeeding albums. It never did a better job of illuminating dread.
Patti Smith. Horses. Arista. 1975.
What an experience! Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye came closer to Jim Morrison than to Van Morrison with their version of "Gloria," but it sounds better than either, particularly with the religious affectations that bookend the party in her pants. That's as happy as any of this gets. The rest is a beat poet's sleigh ride through lives where awareness of futility exists alongside the spit of disregard. Even the reggae of "Redondo Beach" tells of suicide. By the time we get to "Land," we're almost relieved to experience the assault at the end of the catharsis, punctuated by refrains from Chris Kenner's buoyant dance classic. This album drills into your head and infects your mind's blood. It is committed poetry.
Graham Parker. Howlin' Wind. Mercury. 1976.
Comedian Mort Sahl observed that the enemy is always fascism. There was a time, not that long ago, when nearly every white person I knew used the word "nigger" quite effortlessly. Recently I listened while a friend of mine criticized her husband for his verbal attacks on African Americans, and once she saw that lots of other people were listening to her, quickly added that she wouldn't want her daughter to marry one. I was drinking with a woman the other day who told me that the only group she couldn't stand were the Jews. A guy sitting near us chimed in that he felt the same way about Jehovah's Witnesses. There are protons of ugliness that bash into us constantly, everyday evils that bombard our senses so relentlessly that we want to curl up and shiver. That's the time for Graham Parker music. Parker doesn't leap out of the speakers ranting about evil in our times. He's far too much the artist for such blatant politicizing. What he does do is shred and torch all artifice, even to the extent that metaphor and other devices are rejected as ornate semblances of what they represent. All potentially oppressive systems use artifice to suggest things that can be interpreted in different ways, which is why there's something insidious about a lot of popular literature. Parker reprieves us from such ambiguity without even calling attention to the fact that he is doing anything of the sort. He also sings like a cross between Bob Marley and Sam Cooke, while leading his band like the most determined pub rocker in the world.
Graham Parker. Heat Treatment. Mercury. 1976.
Right this minute I am so weary with the constant barrage of blind hatred that I need the sound of a web of fingers working up a guitar neck while the other hand weaves and strikes out. I need someone to shoot a hole in the sun, and if it doesn't happen soon I may just have to do it myself. Or, as Graham Parker puts it: "It's not the knife in the heart that tears you apart. It's just the thought of someone sticking it it." GP has been making great albums since 1976 and yet chances are you have never heard of him. That may be symptomatic of those earlier declarations, because in a world where evil prevails, there is little room for a spunky fighter like Parker, which, in turn, makes his presence in that world all the more essential.
The Patti Smith Group. Radio Ethiopia. Arista. 1976.
"Ain't it Strange?" Most people would not have this album on their list. I, however, prefer this to anything Patti ever did. In addition to three rockers that could easily have come from Horses, this album's ten minute title track is the rock version of Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz. I don't even care if the whole album was done just to irritate the record company. To misquote Sam Cooke, I don't know much about poetry, but the music here is more poetic than the lyrics. Violence, which also has a poetic quality, does not require muscle. It only requires will. This album violently implodes to an inner hell and lets you hear what it looks like.
The Ramones. The Ramones. Sire. 1976.
Aggressively stupid, charged up on Preludin, loud as a confusion factory, and raised on stealing beach music, The Ramones count off "Blitzkreig Bop" "One two three four" and never stop except for the next count. This is exponential decadence chopped with fractions added to a heavy-duty subset of hilarious experiences that none of the band members actually ever had.
The Ramones. Rocket to Russia. Sire. 1977.
More anthems to cosmic confusion by four very bright guys obsessed with pretending to be sociopaths of cultural depravity. As with their first album, the musical emphasis is on cutting all the superficial elements out of surf music, take that and still triple the speed, sing like Robert DeNiro on reds, and at the risk of death maintain the strongest sense of harmonies in all of punk rock. "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" may well be the best thing they ever recorded.
The Adverts. "One Chord Wonders." Stiff. 1977.
Back in the days when it was still socially acceptable to have musicians making albums, these two women and two men barely knew how to play their own instruments, thereby proving once again that passion supersedes technical competency.
Elvis Costello. My Aim is True. Columbia. 1977.
Being angry, clever, and occasionally correct is extremely rare, almost as rare as a debut album this good. Backe here and only here by the band Clover, this recording is simply a thoroughly committed rock n roll album. But such a concept, much less that of a good album, was as alien in 1977 as high gas mileage from a Cadillac. The album was brief enough to sustain the attention level, each song seduced the listener's emotions through its hammerhead assault, and even when broken down into pieces, the lines spoke volumes. They jump out at you before you have time to figure out what the songs are about. Once you think you know, you can only stagger: suicide prevention on Mondays, a confusing bully boy name Oswald Mosley, an examination of a previous lover who has become inconsequential, and a chilling finale. This album slays fascists.
The Vibrators. Pure Mania. Columbia. 1977.
"Into the Future" and out the other side. Frantic for a fun time on the downward spiral? Stepping up by falling down face first into your own warm vomit? Slurp it up here first, boys and girls, then shake like there's no reason to keep that heart monitor on, no matter what the doctor said. Throb those clean times into the next wave and crest just below the tides on the moon, remembering that this group's name isn't entirely an innuendo; it's mostly just the sound of feet on the pogo stick.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Blank Generation. Sire. 1977.
The story runs about Hell's anti-anthem, "Blank Generation," that the point of the song allowed new wavers to insert anything they wanted in the blank. Even though Richard Hell himself told that story, I think he was too much of a wordsmith for it to be completely true. Besides, it was more fun to believe in the obvious nihilistic connotations, unless you were too busy thinking about Robert Quine's guitar playing, his liquid strings being kerosene, his fingertips flickering candles.
The Sex Pistols. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Warner Bros. 1977.
For a band that is so revered, it's curious just how little airplay these guys receive. I'd love to be listening to the local oldies station and find them pulsating between Lesley Gore and Herman's Hermits. "Now for some real gore," the DJ'd say, as drums, guitar and bass fly down the stairs and Johnny Rotten's whine commands, "Ah-right--Now!" Then the laugh gurgles up from the basement as the shutters band and outside the fireworks explode the bubble tops on every prowl car in town. The stars have eyes and the man in the moon is aghast.
While it was around, that's just how exciting it was. When the Midwestern clod hats tried to think of punk rockers, it was clear the Pistols were just a bit of sweat from a raw nerve, said sweat personified by Rotten's disgusted leer and Cook and Jones' metallic cloud ramming. It was anti-fashion, anti-attitude, anti-sacred Cowsills. When the singer snarled "Destroy," he sounded like a pissed off kid who's stumbled across the world's most dead virus. Sometimes, even now, there's no excuse for playing anything else.
Elvis Costello. Armed Forces. Columbia. 1978.
Speaking of slaying fascists, Armed Forces has been known to do the same. With the Attractions firmly in place, Costello had already rumbled with the between-masterpieces-album, This Year's Model. But here Costello gave us nothing but layers of sound surrounding hate for everything bad and admiration for everything potentially good. And yet nothing was as it seemed. Was "Oliver's Army" about Cromwell or the skinheads just looking for a job? Was "Senior Services" about what happens when they put you out to pasture? Almost every song here was a metaphor for simple emotional raping. And then the finale, the elephant herd stampeding, wiping out everything that had been built in its path. Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding" became--in Costello's version--an unleashed fury of remorse for all the greatness in the world lost through the napalming and carnivorous actions of the very people who surrendered their possession of that greatness.
Nick Lowe. Pure Pop For Now People. Columbia. 1978.
While Nick Lowe is recognized as a co-founder of Stiff Records as well as an outstanding record producer, he made his most significant contribution to rock n roll by taking the basic line-up of two guitars, bass and drums, sticking with traditional chord progressions, and yet inventing some of the most distinctive, infectious, angry and hilarious songs of the late 1970s. Both as a member of Rockpile and as a solo act, Lowe has created tunes with powerful hooks and catchy rhythms. Pure Pop was indeed a pop masterpiece, covering nearly every style except disco. "Music for Money" was scathing heavy metal, "Marie Provost" was an hysterical ballad about a silent screen actress, and "Rollers Show" was an ode to the Bay City Rollers in that group's own style.
The Clash. The Clash. Epic. 1979.
It seems more palatable to speak of The Clash as a rock band than to hang any of the other labels that never quite seemed to stick in their time. What instantly distinguished their music from their thousands of imitators was the combination of ferociously brittle guitar attack married to an amazing ability to speed up and reconstruct traditional rock format. "Clash City Rockers," to cite an easy example, brings the backing singers into the front during the bridge and yet deliberately uses that bridge--not to segue in and out of the verse--but to add to the song's dynamics. This, their first LP officially released in the States, is a grand assault on the senses and remains just as thrilling as the day it was released. The first crowds to hear the band play the songs that would later comprise this album use to pogo up and down while Jones, Strummer, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Tory Crimes physically bounced and weaved about the stage, simulating the songs in process. The Clash has that same live feeling. All but one of the songs has a quality of production that "murky" cannot begin to describe. At least half the lyrics are snarled, although not with any sense of misanthropy. On the contrary, Mick Jones and Joe Strummer stumble out their snarls with soul and sensitivity. The playing is relentless--like a million ball bearings released to fly after eons of resisting pressure. Even so, the band was tight. There are no wasted jams or mindless rants. Even the club-mix sound of "Police and Thieves" retains a punk feel that would be just as comfortable on a Nuggets album. These guys were not happy. They were, however, loving every minute of their misery.
The Clash. London Calling. Epic. 1979.
The form, expansive and widely encompassing as it is, is rock. The Clash transformed the banalities of that dying form back into rock n roll without even having a hit record. The energy and insight of songs like "London Calling" and "The Clampdown," the humor and stuttering pinball rhythms of "Wrong Em Boyo" and "The Right Profile," the sheer beauty of "Rudie Can't Fail," "Hateful" and "Death or Glory": these are not simply great punk songs. These are great when standing up against Beethoven and Chuck Berry and The Beatles and even Francis Scott Key because of the unending horizons within which such intense musicality could never be confined.
Graham Parker. Squeezing Out Sparks. Arista. 1979.
I don't mean to give the impression that this former gas station attendant sings songs against fascism. But he knows that while evil takes a political form, it actually begins in the heart. Meanness justifies the means. Cruelty exists because it can. Anyone who expresses hope is publicly assassinated. It's the last round, boys and girls, and Evil's got blood up to his shoulders and a menacing grin. I'm not talking about anything particularly mystical here. I'm talking about tangible things we've chosen to laugh about when we aren't busy pretending they don't exist. For instance, on "Waiting for the UFOs," Parker doesn't ridicule people for believing in the existence of something a lot of other folks find silly. He doesn't attack people who have already been clubbed senseless. Instead, he sings of what it is about their lives that makes sky watching so necessary. "Is that a light in the sky or just a spark in my heart? Can I accept this for evidence or will that tear the whole thing apart?" Every song here sings of that spark and of the chances it will be extinguished.
Marianne Faithful. Broken English. Island. 1979.
As Mick Jagger's girlfriend, Marianne Faithful was a somewhat atypical songstress. She recorded "As tears Go By" and "Sister Morphine," both of which conveyed a quasi-mystical and fleshed-out sound. Her version of The beatles' "Yesterday" wasn't even that good. A few years and three lifetimes later, she emerged Jagger-less and much improved. Broken English was the most brittle album released during the 1970s version of punk. Lennon's "Working Class Hero" sounded like it had been swallowed hard. The title track was crushed beneath Nazi marching boots. And the meanest song ever recorded by anybody ever, "Why'd Ya Do It?" was pure poison, with sweet little Marianne telling the betraying boyfriend precisely what women should say when they catch their guy with some stupid tramp.
Genya Ravan. . . . And I Mean It! 20th Century. 1979.
This Polish deportee formed The Escorts, Goldie and the Gingerbreads, and Ten Wheel Drive while still in her late teens. After several years in a not entirely professional relationship with producer Richard Perry, Ravan went solo. This, her hardest-hitting album, reveals the climax of real liberation. "Pedal to the Metal" sprays a harsh acid mist, "I Won't Sleep on the Wet Spot No More" defines sexual parity, and "Wired" captures every last aspect of a high octane lifestyle with a blues harp coda that is so good it kills. None of this electrified bantering prepares the listener for her hard-folk duet with former Mott the Hoople front man Ian Hunter. "Junk Man" justifies every dream, aspiration and drunken suicide that rock n roll ever inspired. Bad times never felt so good.
Buzzcocks. Singles Going Steady. IRS. 1979.
This manchester punk band toured with the early Sex Pistols, but there the similarities end. Lead singer/guitarist Pete Shelley, the only constant in this retrospective, developed songs far more melodic and apolitical than anything Johnny Rotten ever imagined or desired. It's easy to dismiss these songs as sophomoric or willfully crude, but with even a modicum of deeper attention, the early-Who harmonies elevate the minimalist instrumentation. The best example is "Everybody's Happy Nowadays."
The Dead Kennedys. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. Alternative Tentacles. 1980.
The very notion of what today is called hard core originated with this San Francisco post-punk band of pissed off anarchists spurred on by the never-charming Jello Biafra. These guys were not posing. They sincerely despised the oppressive results of cultural imperialism and societal engineering, shooting back with the most abrasive sound they could muster while still maintaining about half a gram of actual song structure. The album opener, "Kill the Poor," is a classic example.
In a land so vast that Walt Whitman could entertain in a barn, there are always pockets of salvation waiting to be explored. One such has been the Mississippi Delta, just east of where Highway 61 curved down from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and just west of Mobile. Hundreds of sons and grandsons of plantation slaves picked up guitars and milked a rapturous country blues from their own throats.
One of the first of these to record was Tommy Johnson, whose "Canned Heat Blues" and "Maggie Campbell Blues" stirred up the Delta. Tommy J's first recordings were in 1928, but Charley Patton--who did not record until the following year--is usually considered the founder of Delta blues, less because he sounded good--which he did--than because of his attitude. He was the kind of guy who scared white people. Beaten mean by his preacher daddy, Charley was good looking and knew it. He took on as many women as he could and beat his share as well, as befits a smooth talking lazy illiterate headed for Calvary with a guitar instead of a cross. Patton arranged for the first recording sessions of another key figure in Mississippi blues, a man named Son House.
A stunningly soulful singer in his own right, Son House told an interesting story about a man whose connection to Delta music was more gripping than could be conveyed by the word "founder." A very young Robert Johnson was hanging around the veteran players. House was showing off his ringing open-tuned bottleneck guitar style (check out "Death Letter Blues") when Robert asked the men how it was that they played so well. The vets scared the kid off and never expected to hear from him again. The story goes that Johnson ran all the way home to his childhood in Hazelhurst where he met a creature named Ike Zinneman who claimed to have learned guitar while visiting graveyards at midnight. Zinneman taught Johnson how to play. When the kid came back to play for the Delta champs, even the swamp frogs fell silent. Everyone understood an unsavory alliance had been formed with something very dark and everyone agreed that Robert Johnson was the king. Thirty-three songs on two albums, both called King of the Delta Blues Singers, both recorded between 1935 and 1937, at a time when Mississippi had first caught wind of the Crash of '29, both among the most eerie, magical and beautiful things ever imagined: and yet the power of the songs' twisted salvation is never mentioned by the producers of white boy art of the time, not even by great writers such as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or even Faulkner, who might have been writing about Johnson when he said, "You run without moving from a terror in which you cannot believe toward a safety in which you have no faith."
During the Great Depression, music did not sound effected by the hard times. It sounded as if it was hard times. It sounded like someone smashing his head into granite walls at 185 mph as far back as the early 1920s, before country music even existed. There was, of course, Uncle Dave Macon. The former Teamster used to banjo his songs in a funny hat, dressed up in blue jeans, singing "Carve That Possum," "Fox and Hounds," or "Way Down the Old Plank Road," the latter containing an invitation to the audience to kill themselves. With over 200 happy-go-psychotic songs to his credit, he was a staple of radio's "Grand Ole Opry" for twenty-seven years.
As if to prove in advance that, yes, even cowgirls do get the blues, there was Ma Rainey, who, according to Bob Dylan, along with Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll. More certain is that with the wildly sinning pianist Georgia Tom Dorsey and guitar-bowler Tampa Red, Ma recorded one of the earliest versions of the Stagger Lee tale, this one dated 1925 and called "Stack O' Lee Blues." But her most famous song was "See See Rider," a song done at one time or another by most everyone, but especially by Chuck Willis, Mitch Ryder, and The Animals. You can hear Big Memphis Ma in between the rainfall on the roof of the suicide ward listening to Bessie Smith. Between 1923 and 1933, when Smith's recordings were made, her aim was clearly more broad than the blues singer genre could hold. For this reason, along with the specif caliber of accompanists she chose, her work is just as often found in jazz listings as blues.
It's doubtful anyone except four-eyed south-paw musicologists would have known who any of these people were had not British bands like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds reintroduced the styles and in some cases the same actual songs back to American audiences who were about as familiar with people such as Robert Johnson in the early 1960s as people such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson were when Johnson was still alive. Still, perhaps when one is Mick and Keith and it is the 1960s and directors such as Jean Luc Godard are making movies about you, it isn't necessary to give credit--much less royalties--to Gospel or blues performers whose work you admittedly perform better than they did. The story of "The Prodigal Son," for example, is one of the most frustrating in the Bible. A man has two sons. The younger becomes impatient and tells Dad he wants his inheritance before the old man kicks off. Upon receipt of same, the kid turns the land into cash and heads for Vegas to blow it all all cocaine, show girls and slots. Well, Pop and the older brother are working their brains out when one fine day the kid returns penniless and hungry, stinking of gin, dried lipstick on his collar, toothily grinning, "I'm back!" The brother says he knew it would happen, but the old man drops everything, slaughters the fatted calf and tosses back some imported Israeli whiskey he'd been saving just for such an occasion. The responsible son is horrified. After all, the old guy never gave a party to celebrate being responsible. It is not much of a stretch to see the spoiled industrialists who squandered everything and then expected to be welcomed back through the loving arms of the New Deal. Would the government respond by killing the calf? Or would the urbane bankers return to their cities and find rank strangers?
It is a coincidence that direct involvement by the United States in Vietnam occurred in the same year, 1954, that Elvis Presley recorded his best singles with Sun Records. It is also a coincidence that armed U.S. soldiers began actively assaulting Vietnam the same year, 1964, that the Beatles landed in America. It is even a coincidence that the final withdrawal of U.S. troops happened in 1975, just as disco popped up on the charts. And finally, it is an incontrovertible fact that three gloriously salacious songs could have prevented the whole thing.
"Sixty Minute Man." Recorded by Billy Ward and the Dominoes. Produced by Ralph Bass. Written by Billy Ward and Rose Marks. Released 1951.
"One Mint Julep." Recorded by the Clovers. Produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Written by Rudolph Toombs. Released 1952.
"Money Honey." Recorded by The Drifters. Produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Written by Jesse Stone. Released 1953.
The reason for the above claim is simple. All three songs to some extent share an evocation of good-natured humor in relation to romance. Fascists are totally foreign to good-natured humor of any type, are typically repulsed by any style of romance that excludes barbed wire and cattle prods, and certainly perceive nothing amusing about sex with anyone other than the maternal parent. To put it simply, had America embraced these three songs with a fraction of the enthusiasm the singers demonstrated, no one would have had the time or inclination to fire bomb anyone.
Chapter Eighteen
By the time Phil Ochs was recording Pleasures of the Harbor with producer Larry Marks in 1967, the singer had transformed from a gentle writer of fierce topical songs into a poet whose mind reinvented what his senses passionately explored. It was his first time working with Marks. The producer was determined to desert the barren and stark non-production Paul Rothchild had provided Ochs' first three albums, which had been recorded for Elektra. The new label, A&M, as well as the singer himself, sought to make the music relevant to the lyrics. With only a few exceptions, this resulted in an unfortunate swash of strings and waves of swirling orchestration that buried the singer in a typhoon of cacaphony. Some of his best songs were rendered unlistenable. And yet the album did have its strong moments. Phil had heard the story of Kitty Genovese, the New York woman who had screamed and pleaded for life while her neighbors watched in the shadows as she was brutally raped and murdered. Some of the more than two dozen people who witnessed her destruction even admitted to turning up their televisions to drown out the disturbing sounds. Ochs responded with "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends." Lyrically, the song's verses set up opportunities to exercise social responsibilities and provided one-line rationalizations for ignoring them. Musically, happy ragtime piano mocked those excuses while giving the song commercial hooks. Lacking heavy guitar riffs, it was ignored by the rock audience just as folkies found it too musical for their standards. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," released as a single, still managed to chart in Los Angeles, Sacramento and especially New York, where Phil's fan base had always been its strongest.
Phil got his way. His manager and producer had been right. The auditorium was less than twenty-five percent capacity.
In those days, before the Chicago riots, defeats could still leave him optimistic about both his career and about America. To that end, he behaved and reacted as if the success of his career and the health of his country were inexorably connected, perfectly correlated.
Having developed by now a bit of a reputation, Phil managed to get other work in the city, primarily at The Third Side and at Sam Hood's The Gaslight. But where he fell under the gaze of the larger audience for folk music was in the pages of a mimeographed magazine called Broadside. In addition to articles, editorials and profiles, the magazine, published by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, printed the words and music of folk and topical songs written by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and--suddenly--Phil Ochs. This recognition landed him an invitation to perform at Newport '63. Newport was far and away the premier showcase for folk singers. Phil would be in the company of Dylan and Seeger, as well as Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, The Freedom Singers and lesser luminaries. Phil's performance--throughout which he was battling terror and nausea--included the aforementioned "The Power and the Glory," as well as "The Ballad of Medgar Evers" and "Talking Birmingham Jam." An album of the festival was released the following year and featured two of Phil's songs. Mainstream newspapers announced a new sound in folk music.
The two major record labels that handled folk acts at the time were Vanguard and Elektra. Vanguard had a good roster that included Baez, Eric Andersen, The Weavers and Pat Sky. But Jac Holzman's Elektra offered Phil a zero dollar signing bonus. And if that wasn't flattering enough, he would be label mates with Judy Collins, Tim Hardin, and Tom Rush.
It began with a number of benefit concerts for striking miners in Hazard. From there he was on to the Mississippi Caravan of Music, a consortium that staged concerts to encourage blacks to register to vote, which just happened to coincide with the discovery of the bodies of three civil rights workers slain by the Ku Klux Klan. Soon after his second album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, was released, he hooked up with Jerry Rubin and participated in the Berkeley teach-ins by singing between speeches. This was Ochs' first association with the anti-war movement that was by that time eclipsing civil rights as a national issue.
His greatest force for social change, however, remained his music. With a few exceptions, the liner notes to the second album were more insightful and entertaining than the songs themselves. Not so with the follow-up, Phil Ochs in Concert, recorded at Carnegie Hall. It was and remains among the greatest acoustic live albums of all time (despite the fact that much of the music was re-recorded elsewhere to make up for the taping defects). In addition to songs about book burnings and invasions of Latin American countries, there was the self-described "cinematic" "Ringing of Revolution." Ochs even named the actors. "John Wayne plays Lyndon Johnson. And Lyndon Johnson plays God. I play Bobby Dylan. A young Bobby Dylan." There was even one hysterical satire called "Love Me, I'm a Liberal," wherein Ochs exploded every cliché the near Left ever used. "In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it effects them personally. Here then is a lesson in safe logic." The album even contained a first: a Phil Ochs love song--"Changes." Amid a context of philosophy, politics and movies, that song lifted the performance to the level of Art.
It was a level he would either approximate, maintain or excel for the next few years. Despite the nearly grotesque overproduction of Pleasures of the Harbor, beneath all the noise was a song called "Crucifixion," which the sailor from the sea described as his greatest achievement. Indeed, it was high art, easily on a par with the best of Dylan's work. It was also ambitious, abstractly symbolizing political assassinations from Jesus Christ to John Kennedy. Alliterative, imagistic, accurate and terrified in tone, it is heard to better effect on the retrospective Chords of Fame in a crisp acoustic version.
And the night comes again to the circle-studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
Till the universe explodes as a falling star is raised
The planets are paralyzed, the mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity--then he dies!
The combined total sales of the first three albums had been less than 50,000 units. Phil Ochs and his new label--A&M--were optimistic that a change was needed.Pleasures' orchestration was chosen. A&M publicist Derek Taylor sent a copy of the album to President Johnson. Time, Billboard and Variety all conceded that the recording had its positive moments. Broadside, naturally, gutted the recording as a sellout, which was silly. The only thing the singer was selling out was concert tickets. The publicity worked. Phil's first A&M album outsold all three of his Elektra recordings combined.
While on a promotional tour for the album, Ochs became even more active in his opposition to the Vietnam War. One such manifestation was his organization of a "War is Over" celebration in New York's Washington Square Park. The idea behind the rally was that if enough people could come to believe the war was over, it actually would be so. It was also an opportunity to mobilize people through tactics of street theatre, tactics that were also being used to some effect by his friends in the newly formed Yippie community. By now Jerry Rubin and occasional collaborator Abbie Hoffman had learned how to use the media against itself. Aware that photographers had a tendency to focus on anyone with long hair and bare feet, the Yippies used humor and charm on reporters to ensure their media contacts wouldn't find the parades and marches altogether unacceptable. And so the "War is Over" celebration attracted thousands and allowed the Yippies to promote their upcoming gathering in Chicago. Phil did the same at all his public performances, while at the same time campaigning and playing benefits for the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy.
In between charity benefits and political obligations, Phil found a free week in which to make the album Tape From California. Again Larry Marks produced. But this time the lush orchestration was harnessed, when it was used at all. The title track actually had electric instruments and sounded suspiciously like rock and roll, albeit old time rock and roll. Unquestionably the best thing on the album, though, was "When in Rome," a song inspired by film director Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata. Calling the song brilliant, critic Bart Testa wrote "The song does nothing less than symbolically rewrite the entire history of the United States as a chaotic and apocalyptic epic, with Ochs playing all the lead parts in the first person."
Back through the ashes and back through the embers
Back through the roads and ruins I remembered
My hands at my side I sadly surrendered
Do as you please.
The setting for the disaster that Chicago would become seemed nearly preordained. On March 12, 1968, Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for President. His platform was "Get Out Now." Four days later, Robert Kennedy announced his own candidacy on an anti-war ticket. Together the two men captured sixty-nine percent of the popular vote in the Democratic primaries. Lyndon Johnson's heir apparent, Hubert Humphrey, achieved a mere two percent. Before the primaries were over, Kennedy was assassinated. Abbie Hoffman suggested the Celebration of Life form a counter-convention where their attendees would all wear VOTE FOR ME buttons and each person would nominate himself. The aims of the Celebration were a blending of the philosophies of the Old and New Left, a gathering of radical organizations, a model of an alternative society, the politics of ecstacy. As Phil Ochs put it, the Yippies "wanted to be able to set out fantasies in the street to communicate their feelings to the public." A number of memorable slogans were coined, mainly as a way of publicizing the upcoming event. Sure that the more outrageous the phrase, the more likely the media would be to repeat it--and hence bestow the gift of free publicity--the Yippies declared they would "Burn Chicago to the ground! Acid for all! Abandon the creeping meatball!"
A few days before the Democratic Convention began, Phil Ochs, Stew Albert and Jerry Rubin found an Illinois farmer willing to sell a large sow for twenty dollars. Since Phil was the only one with any money, the honor of the purchase went to him. The Yippies had found their own candidate. On August 23, 1968, they held a press conference outside Chicago's Civic Center and announced their "Pigasus for President" campaign. The press was duly amused and the police hauled the group in, charging them with disturbing the peace and bringing livestock into the city.
The night of August 24 brought 7,500 demonstrators to town, all of whom needed some place to stay. Many had plans to sleep in Lincoln Park. The police had other ideas. They attacked the Park with tear gas and beat the revelers as they left. The following night, the cops removed their badges to avoid easy detection, following Mayor Richard Daley's admonition: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder. He is there to preserve disorder." The message was understood. The police force attacked the press, local residents, paramedics and protestors with equal fervor. Plenty of network TV cameras filmed the massacre, but the rest of the nation wouldn't see it until days later because of sabotaged transmissions.
Humphrey accepted his party's nomination on August 28, as the day ended and the scent of tear gas wafted up Michigan Avenue to the nominee's suite at the Conrad Hilton. The worst violence was about to begin. And the New York folk singer would be right in the thick of things. The protestors had gathered in Grant Park to hear a series of speeches before marching to the Convention Center. The Chicago Police attempted to contain the group by surrounding the Park. One after another speaker addressed the crowd. In between speeches of men like activist Dave Dellinger, poet Allen Ginsberg, and comedian Dick Gregory, Phil would stand in the back of a pick-up truck and sing for the crowd. Shortly after he sang a rousing version of "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he saw a young boy climb the Park's flag pole and pull down Old Glory. The was all the provocation the police required. They grabbed the kid, beat him with their nightsticks, and tossed him into the back of a squad car while the more agitated onlookers threw rocks at the arresting officers. Press cameras filmed all this for posterity and even broadcast one cop commanding "Make sure you show them throwing rocks!" While Dave Dellinger attempted to lead a nonviolent march to the Convention Center (and was blocked from doing so), others took advantage of an opening in the quarantine and thousands of young people marched toward the Hilton. Enraged at being distracted, the police charged up Michigan Avenue, firing tear gas canisters and clubbing everything in sight. When clubs failed to subdue, they stomped. And when that proved ineffective, they kicked, shoved, punched and beat. The crowd shouted "The whole world is watching!" As Phil Ochs and the others would soon come to realize, most of the whole world didn't care and among those who did, many felt the cops hadn't gone far enough.
Back in Los Angeles, Phil began to question his own approach to politics in America. While the Yippies and other radicals had been creating and recreating their own counterculture, they had alienated the American working class along with Middle America. People who were already involved, Ochs reasoned, didn't need to be converted. Nixon--who would ride to victory above the shattered remains of a splintered Democratic Party--called these frightened Americans 'the Silent Majority.' Ochs knew that if this majority rejected the members of the New Left, they would in turn embrace the solutions of men like Nixon and George Wallace. Frightened by those prospects, the songwriter began to detach himself by degrees from the journalistic approach to his craft. The resulting music spoke with broader, more universal tones. As he's done in "Crucifixion," two or three lines could speak entire chapters while a whole song could fill libraries. One last time, Larry Marks would produce. This time they both got it exactly right.
Rehearsals for Retirement is among the most beautiful and powerful recordings in any musical genre. Backed by a real band, featuring Lincoln Mayorga (whose piano had been the stand out feature of the Pleasures album), Bob Rafkin on bass and guitar, and (probably) Kevin Kelly on drums, Ochs delivered the performance of a lifetime. The cover itself was a photograph of a tombstone Phil had had made for the occasion. The headstone bore an oval picture of Phil standing in front of the flag with a Revolutionary War rifle slung over his shoulder. Beneath the image were the words: Phil Ochs (American). Born: El Paso, Texas 1940; Died: Chicago, Illinois 1968.
The album led off with "Pretty Smart on my Part" which in four crisp verses not only gave an hysterically funny analysis of the reactive behavior of the machismo mentality, it tied the vignettes together with a pair of lines--twenty-four years before Oliver Stone would do the same--asserting that John Kennedy had been assassinated to allow the U.S. military the pleasure of frying the people of Vietnam. Before the impact of that assertion could sink in, Mayorga's piano introduces "The Doll House" with a sound of someone lost and wandering in a surreal environment of someone else's making. The singer himself is lost amid this ambience, a world of soft confusion and amazing pressure. It all unspins with the plateau: "The ballet master/Was beckoning ‘faster'/The ballerina was posed/In the fragile beauty she froze/Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go!" After that uncommercial interruption, Ochs is back in a narrative that begins and ends in the third person and yet clearly is also the first person narrator in between, a police officer, defensive about his responsibility to "keep the country safe from long hair," hateful of the students and minorities he brutalizes, yet unable to understand what it is that his enemies don't understand about him. Ultimately he can only utter a variation on Descartes: "I kill, therefore I am." The song "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is possibly more worthy of praise for its inventive title than its descriptions of Convention Week. The same cannot be said for the album's centerpiece.
The intensity does not lessen with "The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns," explicitly a song about the missing nuclear submarine but implicitly a strong metaphor for the performer's view of his own position in society.
Sounding bell is diving down the water green
Not a trace, not a toothbrush, not a cigarette was seen
Bubble ball is rising from a whisper or a scream
But I'm not screaming, no I'm not screaming
Tell me I'm not screaming.
Perhaps sensing he'd revealed enough for the moment, Ochs took his audience on a brief road trip from Eden to Los Angeles--"city of tomorrow." Then soon enough, we're back, engulfed in the personal drama of "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore," a song that was not only obviously inspired by Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," but could easily be the long awaited response from the unseen character Dylan had been lecturing. Peppered with spicy lines like "You love your love so much that you'd strangle her gladly" and "You search the books in vain for a better word for lonely," the song climaxes with the narrator coming upon an ex-lover's emotional suicide in process. The galloping horseback rhythms of "Another Age" unite Tom Paine, Jesse James and Robin Hood in search of a stolen election. Then suddenly the horse can run no more and the title track walks the final lap of the course. The end is near. Though still tinged with vibrato, his voice struggles to contain the moan beneath it. With a fade of piano and bass, he is gone.
He lies on his back on the couch in the Canyon house. Awake, he closes his eyes and imagines he is dreaming. He sees his paternal grandfather lip-locked beside the radio, listening to FDR speak reassuringly, while his grandmother fries eggs in the kitchen. His father comes in, wide-eyed and despondent from days without sleep. He sees himself hiding beneath a desk in Miss Jocelyn's classroom during an air raid drill, teasing his younger brother, being softly scolded by his older sister.
A chill comes in through the living room window, so he pulls the remembered images over himself like a patchwork quilt. A match flame of exploration in the dark; a faint smell that never leaves the walls; the taste of buttered popcorn at the movies; mastering scales on the clarinet; his father staring at the newspaper without reading it; shooting himself in the leg while showing off for a friend; a green sign welcoming the world to Columbus, Ohio; James Dean's red jacket; Fidel Castro marching into Havana; a pencil snapping between tight fingers; the strum of a guitar he'd won in a bet; a belt tied in a loop with a buckle supporting his own weight.
The idea of the gold suit came to him after seeing Elvis Presley perform in Las Vegas. The only hope for America, Phil decided, was a revolution, and the only hope for a revolution in America was for Elvis to become Che Guevara. Since the young man from Tupelo was unlikely to make such a conversion, Phil Ochs would have to become Elvis as Che himself. The first step was having Nudie the tailor make him a gold suit. That was the first mistake.
The second mistake was his next album. The songs themselves were fine, but if Larry Marks had buried Ochs' tunes under a sea of swash, new producer Van Dyke Parks placed some very good tunes behind a Spectorian Wall of Sound, with timpani drums and backing choruses that would have been more at home on a Ronettes album than on Phil Ochs' Greatest Hits. That title was his third mistake. Intended sarcastically, the title (and the reverse legend declaring "50 Phil Ochs' fans can't be wrong!") was easily misunderstood as being what it purported to be.
His last mistake was in the way he chose to promote the album. He was scheduled to play Carnegie Hall again. He showed up, but this time he was wearing the gold suit and had his band with him. He might reasonably have expected to be about as welcome as Dylan had been when the latter had gone electric at Newport. As if to guarantee a hostile reaction, his set was weighted with other people's songs. After beginning with a up version of Conway Twitty's "Mona Lisa" and his own obligatory "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he introduced his rendition of Merle Haggard's "Okie From Meskogee." Everyone assumed that gesture was intended as irony, but how could anyone tell for sure? The real trouble, though, came when he performed medleys of hits first by Buddy Holly and later by Elvis. The first set received such a hostile response that the singer gently lectured the crowd. "Let's not be narrow-minded Americans- You can be a bigot against blacks, you can be a bigot against music." After another pair of his own songs--neither from the new album that needed promoting--he did the Elvis medley. Although his voice was heavy with reverb, he still sounded magnificent and just as the crowd was won over, Carnegie Hall cut the power. The audience shouted "We want power! We want power!" Electricity was restored and the concert was completed.
Phil begged A&M's Jerry Moss to release the tapes of the concert as an album. Moss politely declined. Eventually A&M did issue the album--in Canada. It would be more than twenty years before it was available in the United States.
Over the next few years, Phil became more isolated from his friends and spent most of his time drinking, watching TV and traveling to other countries. In South Africa, he was robbed by three men. In the process, his vocal cords were ruptured and he lost his upper register. Convinced he would never sing professionally again, he fell deeper into bouts of manic depression and paranoia.
Does anybody know my name or recognize my face?
I must have come from somewhere but I can't recall the place
They left me at the matinee and left without a trace.
Ticket home--I want a ticket home!
His nephew David found him hanging from his own belt in his sister's bathroom. He was thirty-five years old. I can make no case for martyrdom here. There is nothing noble about suicide, regardless of how that suicide may have been the result of social forces or diminished expectations. Had he lived, I doubt Phil would have made any new songs, and if he had, they probably would not have compared favorably with his best work. But it remains a fact that whenever I read about some ludicrous injustice or monumental hypocrisy, I wonder what Ochs would have said about it, how he would have summed up the situation with an acerbic line or two. And I wonder who the next dead hero will be.
Chapter Nineteen
There’s been no gray and only the slightest signs of a waistline spread, but the sensibilities of middle age mutate sufficiently these days, enough so that the time came to make a substantial adjustment. I bought a sports car: an Audi TT Roadster. Moro blue with vanilla interior, convertible, turbo engine, two seater, automatic with a secret “S” gear for aggressive driving purposes, and a remarkable stereo system with a volume that goes up to thirty, ignoring the fact that my ears bleed somewhere around twenty-two. The only unanswered questions remaining: (1) Where do I go; (2) What music do I take?Born and raised in Ohio, I had not ventured from Arizona to the Buckeye state in twenty-one years, despite near constant longing for my artificial boyhood paradise. I already missed this year’s World Famous Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show, but there remained plenty to see and do in Central Ohioan bohemia, so I mapped out a rough outline of a route, threw three sweat shirts and a pair of jeans in an old suitcase and psyched myself up for the journey, mostly focusing on question number two: what would be the perfect sounds for this mid-life road experience? I immediately abandoned obvious selections, such as The Ramones’ Road to Ruin, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, and Dion’s The Wanderer, classics all, but a tad too predictable for my forthcoming nervous collapse. No, I needed music for both the general between-city-tedium, and locale-specific sonics, music and noise that would propel my traveling companion dog Molly and me through the stratosphere of interstate highway ecstasy. This was gonna be fun.
Remember that jive by Elton John about “Get back/Honky cat/Better get back to the woods”? Well, from my personal point of view, that notion stinks and EJ too. The high point of my trip, as it turned out, was when having hooked up with my friend Ruth Ann, she and I motored stately into my old neighborhood--Jefferson Addition--for the narrow and specific purpose of taking a few pictures of my old house. The place looked pretty much the same, despite the thin and fractured roadways which had seemed so much wider before, and we pulled over alongside my former abode, the morning rain yielding to a brisk pre-winter cloud sulk, and I hopped out with my camera. There I stood, in awe of my former home, located at 367 Ludwig Drive, in case anyone wants to visit. Just as I was lining up the exposure, this craggily retiree came bounding out from my old living room and threw open the door. “Hey!” he hollered, for that is what one does to get attention in Circleville. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Looking over my shoulder, I noticed Ruth Ann slouching low in the passenger seat. Ah, the things friends must endure. “I used to live here and I’m taking some pictures of the house. Could you step out of the frame please?” The old guy was having none of this, but to my surprise, he did move out of the way so I could snap my photos.
“I don’t like people taking pictures of my house. Who are you?”
I explained that this had been my house long before he owned it and that I was indeed going to take pictures and thank you very much. He displayed a lot of flag decals on the garage, so he probably thought we were terrorists, staking out the structure of the house, all the better to position our surface-to-air rocket launchers. By the time I’d shot the third exposure, his glazed eyes were steaming, so I said “I suppose a tour of the place is out of the question” and hopped back in, spraying mud while Ruth Ann laughed herself silly. She is a good egg, that girl.
My trip from Phoenix began well enough. Having mapped out my destination and estimating my overnight cities, I popped the CD’s burned especially for the occasion into the compact storage case and plunged ahead down I-10 toward Tucson en route to the first night’s stop in El Paso, a mere 650 miles away.
The proper musical accompaniment not only provides a much needed surcease in the audial road burn; perhaps more importantly, it imposes upon the driver a vivid soundtrack with which to recall the trip, possibly many years later. And so I divided the CD’s into the general category--for those long stretches of interstate where nothing much more than tumbleweeds and rusted-out cricket pumps decorate the landscape--and the specific category--songs which made some implied or overt reference to the city or region through which I was passing. Sometimes those references boasted the glories of the area and sometimes they made their point with a bit less reverence. In either case, volume was key and the top was definitely down.
Just out from the biospheres of Tucson, as the road straightens and clocks its hours of monotony, I plugged in the ideal tune to launch the trip: "Highway Star" by Deep Purple. As the dust devils swirled up and above the copper-coated dirt fields, threatening to transplant dog, car and self into Oz the hard way, Ian Gillan’s counter-twister scream wail strangled up with Ritchie Blackmore’s controlled adrenaline guitar boxing match and propelled the Audi’s contents forward with such velocity that “airborne” fails to capture the sensation. My hair straightened, the hat I was wearing is now attached to some motorist’s CB antennae, my cheeks went taut and the feeling is just now beginning to return to my gums. There was nothing much to see along the southern border of Arizona anyway, except a few rattlesnake pits and the bursting tires of eighteen wheelers. Just as my heart palpitations yielded to police-induced paranoia, the irony of the next song’s title took hold: The Byrds’ version of Dylan’s "You Ain't Goin Nowhere." There remains something about the line, “Strap yourself to a tree with roots,” that perfectly encapsulates the cartoon futility of the trip ahead.
The Sweetheart of the Rodeo album from which the aforementioned number came provided the ideal transition into the Flying Burrito Bros’ take on Dave Dudley’s "Six Days on the Road," the most often repeated tune here. From this, it was a cold water crash directly into the instrumental abutment of The Ramones’ "Durango 95," the song that crashed down just as twilight warned that it was time to get specific.
The southern leg of New Mexico hasn’t lent itself to an overabundance of name-place musicality, primarily because nothing much between Deming and Las Cruces jumps up and demands attention, other than the occasional patch of fallen cattle, apparently either the victims of underground nuclear testing or a simple lack of imagination. Las Cruces itself was clearly a bi-pass town, although I did come up with a Geronimo’s Cadillac song called “Crack Up in Las Cruces” to get me over the hump.
About seventy miles beyond Las Cruces is the Southwest Texas town of El Paso, which presented more problems of an overnight nature than of musical. I flipped in the CD marked EP and charged up the intro mariachi slash flamenco chords of Marty Robbins’ classic, a tune local town folk were quick to point out they are so tired of hearing, a stay in the local jail is the proscribed punishment for blaring it past eight pm. Heeding this timely advice, I skipped forward to "El Paso" by the Gourds, from their Bolsa de Agua LP. This choice meeting with some favorable nods, I inquired where might be a nice place to stay the night. The look of alarm on the kids hanging outside the Dairy Queen spoke volumes. “You’re not gonna park that car outside a motel, are you?” one of them asked.
“Oh, no!” I assured him. “This thing disassembles in just a few minutes. Hey, you guys ever heard of Kinky Friedman?” Having not, I played them the classic "Asshole From El Paso," which cheered them up so much that one young honey with a waistline tattoo offered directions to the local Holiday Inn.
I had not much more than checked in, watered, fed and walked the cocker spaniel, when the look on that one kid’s face started giving me the jitters. My room leaned on the first floor, the car rested right outside the window, and the alarm system screeched loud enough to unhinge arms from their sockets. But darned if I could sleep for fear of getting stuck for God knows how long in a Holiday Inn this far from home. Insurance is fine, but how long would it take for them to wire me the funds, get the check cashed, and hop a plane the hell out of here? Nope, better to take a quick shower and shave, grab a burger and get on down the road a ways.
This jittered-out paranoia settled into a warm place in my mind, becoming a defining element of the rest of the journey.
Just outside of Van Horn, I jotted up to I-20, climbing steadily on the overnight drive to Dallas, a little more than 600 miles in the distance. On past Pecos, Odessa, Midland and Big Spring I drove, a confused cocker trying to get comfortable on her small leather seat, constantly insisting on inspecting the exterior of every semi we passed. Between Big Spring and Abilene, I entertained my passenger with a variety of general Texas tunes, like the bassist Randy McDonald’s “Texas Flower,” Elton’s Merle Haggard parody "Texas Love Song," Louis Armstrong and King Oliver’s “Texas Moaner Blues,” and Lester Young’s “Texas Shuffle.” It was the situationally appropriate "Texas to Ohio" by Damien Jurado that actually introduced me to trouble. I’d cranked those ghost guitars and gravel road vocals so high that my gaze wired itself to the highway and I didn’t detect the friendly Texas State Trooper until long after he’d seen me.
Imagine if you will: you’re a cop and you see a dark blue sports car speeding through the night at somewhere between 85 and 90 mph, temporary tags and out of state ones at that, plus the driver doesn’t even slow down when he passes you. The red white blue bubble lights did compel my attention, however, and I pulled over, lecturing Molly to be on her best behavior.
“Is your dog gonna bite me?” the friendly trooper inquired with what appeared to be genuine concern for his own safety.
“Not if you don’t bite her first,” I responded, all bleary-eyed with good humor.
He turned out to be a very nice guy, letting me off with a warning, all of which made what happened less than an hour later moderately embarrassing. Having stopped briefly at a McDonald’s drive-thru for a freshening cup of coffee, I revved the midnight beast up just past 115, the hazel stars sparkling in admiration at my inability to learn a simple lesson about local law enforcement. Somewhere between a replay of The Ramones’ instrumental “Durango 95” (the title lifted from a late-night drive in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange) and the Collins Kids’ "Hot Rod," the unhappy contra flash erupted over the oncoming crest, a flash I passed as fast as it approached from the other side of the median. A quick glance in the tiny rearview assured me of my toast status: the trooper-mobile spun across that divider and sprayed angry gravel in the air as it yearned for sufficient traction to end my careless ways. I eased off the gas, found a strip of shoulder, and reined the Audi in for a graceful stop.
It felt like a scene out of Les Miserables as the same trooper sauntered up, flipping the pages in his ticket book.
He explained that at the speed we’d been traveling, he had every right known to God and Man to throw my skinny ass in the pokey, but since that might not bode well for Molly the wonder dog, he would record the pace at 98, just low enough to keep the Spaniel from having to seek out food and shelter on her own. I admitted that I found his actions quite generous and wondered aloud if he’d be interested in taking the Roadster for a spin. I figured he wanted to, and the pause between my question and his answer confirmed my suspicions. He politely declined despite my offer to keep an eye on his short. As a result of this fine officer’s manners, I did indeed learn my lesson and that was my final speed infraction in the state of Texas.
After an upright two hour nap at a breezy roadside rest, Molly and I greeted the dawn with the multi-level hyper speed ping pong attack of The Who’s "Going Mobile." The beyond perfect production from Glyn Johns--the most incredible separation in all of rock--in harmony with grand musical ambitions and acid-accurate lyrics that shot out like Kerouac, reminded me of something my friend Paul Hormick had told me years and years earlier: “The more you listen to Who’s Next, the better it gets. Forever.” Better advice I have never received.
As we roared on in search of our next major stop in Dallas, we punched up Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s teenaged eight-track classic "Roll on Down the Highway." The song’s mechanical rhythm section, indecipherable vocals and moderately inspired lead guitar encouraged the dog and I to shoulder dance even as BTO faded and the Rolling Stones dirged into all eleven plus minutes of "Going Home."
My friendships there weren’t lifelong, but they were deep. As The Beatles’ "Get Back" bled into Elvis Presley’s version of Hank Snow’s "Moving On," some of those memory images came rolling back. Most stark was a kid about my own age at the time, just an average friendly kid named Jamie Welliver. One night Jamie and I were toking up in his Duster, listening to the soundtrack from the new Tommy movie, and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. It was cold as a shit storm out, and I was already in enough trouble for one night, so I passed. The next morning, a Sunday, if memory serves, I came back to work at eleven, just a few minutes before the lunch crowds emerged from the various church services. I walked in, bebopping a whistle to some self-composed tune, when the look another co-worker delivered stopped me cold. “Jamie Welliver’s dead. He wrapped his car around a telephone pole.” Before I even had a chance to register the horror of this, our manager, Pat Bevan, charged in through the big metallic doors and ordered us to get ready for the lunch rush. Ms. Bevan knew what had happened. She knew that we knew. But she had an insignificant job to perform and nothing was going to get in the way of that.
The most peculiar aspect of the entire experience was that when I had first begun working there, my number one concern, fear, obsession, was that by earning an insubstantial living there I might lose the young kid in me that I so cherished. Every man in the world frets about this constantly. Lose that internal boy and prepare to crawl inside a box and pile on the dirt. I never did completely lose him, of course, but that Sunday morning, a little part of him died for the first time.
On the outskirts of Dallas, the pre-encore take of Gram Parson’s live version of "Six Days on the Road" filled the air for miles and my heart muscles tightened for the first time since the trip had begun. An ominous cloud clings over Dallas and always will. A lot of that, naturally, stems from the Kennedy assassination, and a lot of it sprouts from social conditions that could allow something like that assassination to take place. There was a lot I wanted to see in Dallas, but there was only one song I wanted to hear: "Willin'" by Little Feat. Sadly, the story of Alice--Dallas Alice--was nowhere in my collection. So sitting in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, I rolled up the windows and sang the damn thing myself. Molly wept.
By the time we checked into our room, we had been on the road exactly twenty-four hours. We had driven thirteen hundred miles. Giddy with exhaustion, I plopped Molly back in the shotgun seat and we set out to discover Dallas.
About a mile and a half from the hotel we found ourselves so hopelessly lost it took the better part of three hours just to stream our way back. We never unearthed Dealey Plaza. We did learn, however, that Dallas sports a lot of road construction that only slows down the out of towners. Prior to motoring along freeways reduced to one lane with unyielding SUV psychos and crypto-tank drivers both fore and aft, I would have sworn that Phoenix drivers are the most hateful pack of self-absorbed sons of bitches who ever lived. After three hours sweltering and choking in the blood pools of Dallas congestion, I can honestly report that Phoenicians are among the most polite motorists in the world. If I ever return to Dallas, it will not be unarmed.
One of the primary reasons for my purchase of the Audi TT was that it is the ultimate anti-SUV. Despite the fact that every one of my current friends drives one, I do not like SUV’s. Perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this story, many people who drive the rough-riding death traps do not like the occasional little sports cars that punctuate the road like dots at the end of exclamation points. In particular, they do not like Audi’s, probably because SUV drivers recognize that there are only three or four non-Audi’s that can outrun the Roadster and none that can are the modern day urban tanks that in reality have nothing to do with either sports or utility. They are, in fact, only marginally vehicular. They do, however, serve as excellent tools for committing interstate homicide. Just ask the guy in the onyx black Denali a few miles south of Little Rock who tried to stampede his moon-roofed marauder up and across my roll-over bars, or the tailgating Esplanade, both of whom endeavored to careen their armored kill machines up and over my back just because I had the audacity to mouth the words “stupid twat” in their directions as I passed them merging back onto the freeway. Like a breath of fresh air irony, George Harrison’s "All Things Must Pass" filled the Audi and I switched lanes just as the mini-convoy barreled boldly by.
Arkansas is the most beautiful state, blessed as it is with miles of aisles of cotton, soybeans, wheat, corn and stacks of flax. The unsettled purr of idling semis spills a churn of its own kind of symphony. Strangely, a lot of great music comes from Arkansas but there’s not tons of tomes about it. That may be because in the early autumn, the scenery is so splendid, nearly nothing could approximate the grandeur. The fading foliage from the Ozarks announce themselves modestly and the timber trembles in awe of its own multihued gorgeosity. If there were ever a region in which it is manifestly appropriate to put the top down on the car, this is most definitely that place. The dying allergens kissing tightly to forsaken cotton balls, the colliding spruce and pine perfumes, the lust grip of cones and cinders: the sights and smells alone make a majestic visual-olfactory orgy that mere music cannot replicate. So I settled--if one can call it that--for a smorgasbord of CCR’s "Cottonfields," “Arkansas Hop” by Boz and the Highrollers, "Joan of Arkansas" by Dorothy Shay, Big Medicine’s “My Ozark Mountain Home,” Black Oak Arkansas’ "Jim Dandy," "Sweet Little Rock and Roller" by Chuck Berry, the American Gypsies’ “Bottle of Hope” (get it?), and--may God have mercy on my weary soul--Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell’s duet of "A Little Girl From Little Rock." Hell, I’m no snob. I played the latter ditty three times as I wound my way around and through LR (as the local signs refer to it) on my way northeast to Memphis.
No city on our trip boasted a greater selection and variety of place-specific songs than did Memphis, Tennessee. About twenty miles out from this remarkably friendly border town, I snapped in the first four versions of Chuck Berry’s classic: the first was by Chuck, of course; then came the slightly hokey rendition by Flatt & Scruggs (recorded, no doubt, because of its title), followed by the rave up instrumental take by Lonnie Mack and the sloppy but transcendent cover by Sandy Denny. “Long distance information,” I sang as loud as my frayed vocal cords would permit. “Give me Memphis, Tennessee!”
Flipping from manual back into automatic as I stretched my neck to find a place to eat that wasn’t part of the burger axis of indigestion, Dan Bern’s “Graceland” whupped me upside the head:
Well look at me, Lord
I’m at Graceland
On a Saturday afternoon
I threw up last night
At a rest stop
From eating cheese grits
At the Waffle House
The Memphis horns hit me like a Gospel brick house as the late Dusty Springfield cued herself up on "Laura and Laura Mae Jones," another place and another time belting out as real and immediate as front porch lemonade. Memphis Minnie sashayed in shout-singing the “Killer Diller Blues,” the guitar sounding just like a banjo. King Curtis spooned up today’s special of "Memphis Soul Stew," and when those fat back drums strolled in, I swear the trees along the roadway actually bowed. The obvious Mott the Hoople number bleated like a dying calf, but that memory quickly faded with the authentically ridiculous "Memphis Train" by soul papa Rufus Thomas. “Whoo! Aw, shucks now!” And before I knew it, I was leaving Memphis behind, the tires twirling and oblivious as the steady country rhythm of Rosanne Cash’s version of daddy John’s "Tennessee Flat Top Box" battered down on Molly and I like rain on the roof of a caboose.
Along I-40 East and slightly north toward the former country music capital, as the winds whipped and the sun brayed in harmony, the first genuine scenic rhythms of recognition gripped me like a corpse. Tennessee houses a thousand tiny towns, most of which are thoroughly ignored by the grand interstates that double-X their arms across the expanse. Jackson--one of the biggest names in all the South--retains a bear’s share of promotion, but real people also live and die in Brunswick, Rosemark, Gallaway, Braden, Keeling, Stanton, Shepp, Leighton (I been everywhere, man, I been everywhere): God, so many towns and people Molly and I will never meet, many of whom may well someday be doomed to course their ways on wheeled rafts between the banks of paved pathways, fishing for legal fireworks and dreading the oncoming hug of familiarity. That familiarity spooked me like a slime monster peeking from a hollow log as we neared Nashville, the world’s most down home town. As we strained our eyes for yet another Holiday Inn, we got caught up in the porcine okey-doke of "Nashville Cats" by the Lovin’ Spoonful, melted into the leather buckets with "Nashville Radio" courtesy of Jon Langford, self-paralyzed with nostalgia during a dose of Waylon Jennings’ "Nashville Bum," damn near cried from the pain of Ringo’s "Nashville Jam," received scads of curious looks throughout the playing of Godhead’s “Nashville Bust,” and felt like genuine cowboy punks as we blared Hank Williams Jr.’s “Nashville Scene.” I awoke a little after three the next morning, sweating like a fever blister, completely unaware of where I was. Molly jumped away from the wet foot she’d been aimlessly licking and stared at me as if I’d suddenly become real. “Nashville!” one of us said to the other, or maybe the word came from the radio alarm clock that some fool before me had set. Over that tinny radio transmission, Mississippi Fred McDowell, who surely don’t play no rock ‘n’ roll, reminded us we had to move, so after a quick run through the shower we did just that, with all the haste of unrepentant sinners fleeing the wrath of a jealous God. I dropped Molly a packet of dog glop and chugged my own magic milkshake as Chris Knight serenaded us with his eerily appropriate "Devil Behind the Wheel," that Mellencamp impression never sounding better. We’d be in Circleville sometime within the next twenty-four hours and despite the dark thumb tapping its warning against my heart, I hastened us on, my own internal cruise control as unyielding as time itself.
Running on I-65 North en route to Louisville, the next major stop, we passed a sign that said “White House 18 Miles Next Exit.” We also passed a Tennessee State Trooper who was himself somewhat exceeding the speed limit, and both Molly and I realized that another citation lay in our progress.
This guy stayed parked behind us for at least five minutes--no doubt staring us down from the rear to see if we’d run--during which time I searched vainly for Springsteen’s "Mr. State Trooper." The best I could come up with was Randy Newman’s "Rednecks," but by the time the cop swaggered up to our car, that song had come and gone. I smiled and killed the engine.
“You come up here from Air-ee-zonaw,” he began. “So I know you seen the sign at the state crossing that admonishes you to obey Tennessee speed limits, right? Zat your dog?”
“Yes sir, Arizona. On our way to Ohio. Haven’t been there in over twenty--”
“Ohio?” he queried, although when he said it, the state name sounded like “Ah-hi-ya.”
“Yes sir, Ohio. That’s where I’m from. Looking forward to--”
“I don’t have all day to hear about that. Sign this and answer my question. Zat your dog?”
I signed the receipt of citation without even looking at it. “Right, my dog. Molly.”
“She obstruct your view in that little thing you’re driving?”
I desperately needed a drink or a drug or something to blur out the shades of simmering paranoia.
“No. She sits still. Rides low. Rarely moves. No trouble.”
“This here ticket’s going on your driving record, boy. You’re almost out of Tennessee. You make sure you pay this when you get to Ohio or wherever you’re going. You make sure that dog of yours don’t obstruct your view. And you better make sure you don’t get no more tickets in this state. You follow me?”
“Assured clear distance,” I replied as I hummed up the engine and rolled on toward Louisville.
My ears popped and clogged steadily as we climbed the road altitude that glides one almost unconsciously into northern Kentucky. Late in October, the trees coughed out crackling colors like daytime fireworks, each leaf a silent harbinger and leaden weight. Law enforcement warnings and penalties to the contrary, I shot us up to ninety just after we crossed the Kentucky line and the music took over for the next hundred miles. The deranged banjo stomp of Danny Barnes’ "Life in the Country," The Byrds’ "Goin Back" (with its self-referential and irreverent line: “a little courage is all we lack”), the unsolemn roll of BTO’s "Freeways," Joe South’s high strung "Don't It Make You Want to Go Home," the heavy-light xylophone of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s "Reunion Blues," the harmelodic majesty of Ornette Coleman’s "Skies of America," the power and the glory of Phil Ochs’ “Power and the Glory,” the pop up grind and slash of Tom Petty’s "Runnin Down a Dream": aw, it was somnambulant, it was invigorating, it was a bunch of purple mountain majesty, it was pure and fleshy, and my terror finally backed off. We truly were, as Funkadelic promised, "One Nation Under a Groove." A zombied-out nation in our protective shells sealed for our own sanity, but one nation nevertheless. “Here’s my chance/to dance my way/out of my constriction.” Rat own.
“Ohio?” he queried, although when he said it, the state name sounded like “Ah-hi-ya.”
“Yes sir, Ohio. That’s where I’m from. Looking forward to--”
“I don’t have all day to hear about that. Sign this and answer my question. Zat your dog?”
I signed the receipt of citation without even looking at it. “Right, my dog. Molly.”
“She obstruct your view in that little thing you’re driving?”
I desperately needed a drink or a drug or something to blur out the shades of simmering paranoia.
“No. She sits still. Rides low. Rarely moves. No trouble.”
“This here ticket’s going on your driving record, boy. You’re almost out of Tennessee. You make sure you pay this when you get to Ohio or wherever you’re going. You make sure that dog of yours don’t obstruct your view. And you better make sure you don’t get no more tickets in this state. You follow me?”
“Assured clear distance,” I replied as I hummed up the engine and rolled on toward Louisville.
My ears popped and clogged steadily as we climbed the road altitude that glides one almost unconsciously into northern Kentucky. Late in October, the trees coughed out crackling colors like daytime fireworks, each leaf a silent harbinger and leaden weight. Law enforcement warnings and penalties to the contrary, I shot us up to ninety just after we crossed the Kentucky line and the music took over for the next hundred miles. The deranged banjo stomp of Danny Barnes’ "Life in the Country," The Byrds’ "Goin Back" (with its self-referential and irreverent line: “a little courage is all we lack”), the unsolemn roll of BTO’s "Freeways," Joe South’s high strung "Don't It Make You Want to Go Home," the heavy-light xylophone of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s "Reunion Blues," the harmelodic majesty of Ornette Coleman’s "Skies of America," the power and the glory of Phil Ochs’ “Power and the Glory,” the pop up grind and slash of Tom Petty’s "Runnin Down a Dream": aw, it was somnambulant, it was invigorating, it was a bunch of purple mountain majesty, it was pure and fleshy, and my terror finally backed off. We truly were, as Funkadelic promised, "One Nation Under a Groove." A zombied-out nation in our protective shells sealed for our own sanity, but one nation nevertheless. “Here’s my chance/to dance my way/out of my constriction.” Rat own.
When we come to the place where the road and the sky collide
Run me over the edge and let my spirit glide
They told me I was gonna have to work for a livin’ but all I wanna do is ride
I don’t care where we’re goin’ from here, honey, you decide.
Jackson Browne, “The Road and the Sky”
Somehow wedged in between Deep Purple’s heavy lunged version of Neil Diamond’s "Kentucky Woman" and Elvis Presley’s maudlin as hell “Kentucky Rain,” the song excerpted above trumpeted itself, one of a handful or two of which it is quite fair, balanced and accurate to say: “That there song, well, it just came along at a time in the boy’s life when something was bound to change him forever. In this case, it happened to be a song about a car thief who prophesizes--correctly--the apocalypse. There ya go.”
Not to give a false impression, I should clarify: I do not steal cars; I’m not prone to prolonged lethargy; and while some may say the world will end in fire, some in ice, and with all due respect to Robert Frost, I’ve always assumed it would terminate in a more abstract way, probably as a result of a lack of imagination. In other words, Browne’s centerpiece from Late for the Sky influenced me more in terms of sensibility than in terms of prophesy. And that sensibility occasionally leans toward a studiously pronounced gloved sweat of dread. So there I was, riding along with Molly the wonder dog, the top down on the Audi, the northern Kentucky hill winds straightening back my lengthy blond hair, an absurd set of aviator goggles swatting away stray flying insects, lamb skin leather jacket insulating my torso, and matching black Kenneth Cole boots against the pedal, pretentious as hell, when along comes Jackson Browne, declaring, “Hold on steady/Try to keep ready/Everybody’s gonna get wet/Don’t think it won’t happen/Just because it hasn’t happened yet.”
A reasonable person might, at this point (if not sooner), wonder aloud at what it was exactly that I was so dreading about the approaching denouement to a trip that I had, in all fairness and accuracy, undertaken freely and without apparent coercion. The answer to that requires the most difficult degree of self-discovery it has ever been my misfortune to explore. And I only bring it up because I believe (or perhaps, need to believe) that my personal revelation will resonate with others. God, I hope it does.
My high school graduation was the Class of 1976. For the benefit of those of you who weren’t around at the time, 1976 was a year of much ballyhoo in the United States. After decades of involvement in Vietnam and what seemed like decades of Watergate-related embarrassments, America poised itself to celebrate 200 years of Independence. Special coins were minted, CBS launched sixty-second spots featuring various luminaries recounting historic tales of bravery and the overcoming of adversity, banners and plaques and monuments sprang up out of our blood-drenched soil heralding the good life we had created. “We must be doing something right,” Henry Gibson sang in Robert Altman’s Nashville, “to last two hundred years.” And in that year of justifiable (if enforced) patriotism, my graduating class, like doubtless hundreds of others throughout the country, came to believe that, perhaps by association, perhaps by divine decree, we were something special.
No. That’s not right. We did not just believe it. We knew it.
My graduating class at Logan Elm High School boasted a whopping eighty-three students. Just like many classes before and after, there and elsewhere, we had our share of jocks, leaders, hoods, followers, brains, dopes, beauty queens, sluts, and a hefty percentage of kids too bland for classification. But regardless of whatever in-group or out-group to which each of us belonged, the one immutable fact to which we clung was that as a reigning member of the graduating class of 1976, we were somehow imbued with the ability and even responsibility to make something big of ourselves. This state of affairs existed, as I’ve said, in large part because of our chronological connection to the Bicentennial. Part of it emerged as a consequence of being subjected to well-intended propaganda from the staff and teachers. And some of it developed simply as a result of what then sure seemed like reasonable expectations.
Of course, I knew all of this before ever launching my adventure. I knew all this just as I knew that I’d been willfully repressing memories of the genuinely horrible experiences that befall most high school kids, elevating in my forebrain only those half dozen or so good times at the expense of the thousand or more rotten things that had been banished from my recollections. That’s why it’s no mere coincidence that the majority of the songs I culled for the Mid-Life Nervous Breakdown came from approximately the time that I graduated. May the roar help me ignore what a bore I am to explore!
It is likewise no coincidence that I chose to drive to Ohio, rather than to avail myself of this nation’s vast air transportation network. You see, although I am capable of being a very fine driver, proving that statement requires a great deal of concentration on my part. So there I was, still mastering the various idiosyncrasies of a new car, operating on damned little sleep, trying to keep a newly acquired dog entertained, and playing my self-burned CD’s so loud that I am certain to have violated several local noise ordinances. Simply put, anything I could do to distract myself from the abject horror of recognition that awaited me--well, I was ready, Freddie. I was ready, that is, until that fucking Jackson Browne song came on, a song I myself had sequenced for selective self-sabotage.
An hour later I crossed a bridge and suddenly gazed down the descent into Cincinnati. Jesus, I was in Ohio. Long time, no think.
“I’m living on the air in Cincinnati,” I sang to the dog. “Cincinnati WKRP!” Molly thought that was hilarious.
Riverfront Stadium, sometimes recalled as Cinergy Field, met with a purposeful and violent demolition on December 29, 2002, an act of domestic terrorism committed by people with every legal right to do so, an act transgressed without moral twinge or beleaguered conscience. Teamed up, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden could not have done a better job of crucifying testaments to those things that make America great. The aptly named Riverfront had been the home to both the Reds (Redlegs, originally) and the Bengals. The stadium accommodated a capacity of 60,400. The website “Stadiums of the NFL” calls the former landmark “boring,” but a packed house on a Saturday afternoon, smelling the cold hotdogs and warm beer with The Big Red Machine of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo and other local luminaries activating something unconstrained inside those of us in attendance--bliss personified, I assure you. What became “boring” to the Bengals, and maybe even to the latter-day Reds, I suspect, was the consistency with which it became impossible to fill a stadium so large. It would have taken time and money and effort to rid society of its virus of CheapFastEasy, so they destroyed the medicine rather than the disease. “I went back to Ohio,” sang Chrissie Hynde. “But my city was gone.” My father took me to games at Riverfront. The stadium and my father may be gone, but the mindless wheels of professional progress cannot topple the memories, one-sided as they may be.
Molly and I tattooed our minds to the amplified pop blues of Delaney and Bonnie’s "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad" and "Comin Home."
The Ohio River demarcates the state named by the Iroquois from both Kentucky and West Virginia. Route 52 stays just barely on the Ohio side of the River, ushering a gateway, as it were, to such small Buckeye towns as New Richmond, Ripley, Aberdeen, Rome, and Portsmouth, the latter being a smartly named burg that also happens to be the city of my birth, although, again, I grew up in Circleville. Once in Cincinnati, I considered following the River toward my birthplace, recalling how, as a child raised on Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac, I’d often fantasized about modern day explorers traversing the wide and winding River in search of nothing more economic than adventure. But there were people living in Portsmouth who claimed me as a relative (although not quite family) and I thought it best to get my strength back before meeting up with that particular tribe. And so we selected Interstate 75 Northeast, a direct path right into the capitol city of Columbus.
Twenty-one years. The lifetime of a young adult. That much trivia had urinated into the streams of my soul since I’d last laid eyes on this route, its preexisting landscape increasingly familiar with every accelerated rpm. About fifty miles out from Cinci, the state levels off and the farms flourish. October held court now, so the main remnants of agronomical decline were weather-beaten signs proclaiming that delicious hybrids of silver queen sweet corn could indeed be picked by hungry customers for two dollars a dozen: from our fields to your pot in only minutes! Most of the remaining forestry lay off deeper into the heart of the state, but mountainous wrecking yards and a panoply of country kitchens hyphenated the compelling monotony of our final miles. Gillian Welch squeaked out "Look at Miss Ohio" and Lucinda Williams soul-crooned “American Dream.” As we approached the exit for Grove City, Roger Miller sang-spoke “Trailer for sale or rent/Rooms to let fifty cents,” and I knew we had to park immediately. Another night in a low side of corporate Holiday Inn and the vet might have had to autopsy Molly. Jackpot Road brought us quickly to the Cross Country Inn, a fitting temporary reprieve for we two road weary wanderers.
We weren’t quite home. But, damn, we were close.
With less than six hours of legitimate sack time under my belt in the last three calendar days, I needed sleep. And inviting as the huge queen-size bed appeared, I knew that such an idea was a goofy distraction. I dove into a suitcase for my personal address book and flipped to the page marked Greg Howard. Living now in the Worthington section of Columbus, he worked in the party store his wife had inherited, and that was where I reached him. Greg and I had talked on the phone a few times about the possibility of my visiting, and since it had never happened, I figured he’d pretty much written off the notion as one of wistful fantasy on my part. When he answered and I told him where I was, he cried “Grove City! What are you doing there? Let me give you directions! Whoo-ee!” That was exactly the kind of welcoming I’d always hoped for myself.
Yankee Trader, the party store in question, occupies five stories in downtown Columbus, a city where people still walk around to do their shopping, not for any absence of alternative shopping malls, but rather because of the concentrated and gregarious nature of life in a Midwest capital town. Parking is plentiful, if a little awkwardly contrived. And despite a decidedly “old world” ambience to the downtown architecture, local government takes a dim view of crimes against property, insuring that parking, walking, strolling, window shopping and harmless carousing can all occur with a modicum of safety. I parked less than half a block away, proudly jaywalked across the street, and climbed up the loading platform just as the gate opened. A guy with a moustache who looked to be in his mid-forties stood on the other side of the passageway, bearing a wide-open smile I could have picked out of a stranger’s dream.
Greg was the kind of kid you’re delighted to know, and as my best friend, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world.
Greg Howard transferred to our township when we were both in sixth grade. It had been, then as now, October, so the school season was a month old when he joined us, and since it was a small school in the central Ohio suburbs, my friend Roger and I didn’t know any better than to approach the short new kid during recess, as a way of making him feel welcome. He asked us what we did for fun during recess and of course we said we didn’t know, being a little embarrassed about our surroundings, what with him coming from Florida and all. This was during the time of the Apollo moon missions, and all I knew about Florida was that Cape Kennedy was there, so I asked him if his father was an astronaut. Greg said he didn’t think so and pulled himself up onto the chin-up bar we had on the playground. He sat up on it as Roger and I struggled between the desire to look away and at the same time just surreptitiously gawk. Greg shifted and crawled on that bar until he managed to hook it between the bend of his knees. “Can you guys do a dew drop?” he asked as he swung back and forth upside down, gaining momentum with his hands clasped in front of him in a praying grip. We shook our heads. “It’s easy,” he said, and propelled his body forward as his knees straightened and his legs arched around, landing him perfectly flat on his feet.
By the time Greg had performed this miracle three more times, he’d attracted a considerable audience away from the twenty-minute football game that typically held top billing. One bystander claimed the dew drop wasn’t all that hard to do, and Greg agreed as he swung through yet another one perfectly. But nobody climbed up on that bar with him. Most of us just stared and whispered among ourselves. When the first bell rang, Greg added a twist by drawing up enough momentum to spin all the way over the top, unfold his knees, leap out and land. Several lips mouthed the word “wow.”
“You got a bike?” Greg asked me as we ran back to class.
I did have a bike. I had a terrific bike. I had the coolest bike in the world, even though it was a Huffy. The model was called a Spider. It was bright yellow with black racing stripes, and it had a banana seat, a sissy bar, monkey handle bars, caliper brakes and a three-speed gear box right along the universal join. The front wheel was a low sixteen inches and the rear was twenty. I’d also installed an odometer on the front wheel and a speedometer sat right below the handlebars. I had a rearview mirror aligned along the right side of the front wheel. I’d been clocked at 44 miles per hour downhill and the Spider had neither shook nor shimmied. Plus I could rare back on that sissy bar and do wheelies all afternoon.
Greg rode his bike over to my house after school that day. He had a much more traditional bike, but it was still pretty sharp: black with lots of chrome. Besides, his had a transistor radio affixed to the handlebars. He asked if I wanted to ride over to the garbage dump. I didn’t even know there was a garbage dump. Once again he showed not the slightest sign of dismay at my evident inadequacies. As for me, I suppose the thought of seeing something different drew more appeal than any wonderment about how limited our chances for fun could be at such a place. So I said sure.
We rode up my street and out of that subdivision, across the highway and into his subdivision. The street his house was on was called Chippewa, and it had a swerving descent that allowed us to tilt our bikes down low as we crossed Sioux Drive and Tonopah Circle while WCOL-AM crackled out the Top Ten hits of the week. At the end of the street lay acres of thick, loose, recently upended clogs of dirt from the perpetual residential development. We struck the dirt doing just under forty at a slight lean and rolled about thirty feet out before we realized the earlier October snow had moistened the dirt, made it soft, and as a result our wheels transformed into mud pies. We had to push our bikes a mile to the dump and on the way more snow fell, which was nice except that as the temperature dropped, the mud froze into our wheels so they wouldn’t turn. A song called “Candida” came on the radio and before I could even beg, Great snapped it off.
We climbed up on top of the mountain of new suburbanites’ discards, and in addition to bottles, cans, paper, undigested food stuffs and other visual noises, we discovered unopened boxes of packs of baseball cards, mangled metal, bent wood, large rubber tires, and busted eight track tapes. And even in Ohio, even in October, even in the snow, we found furry little rats. They darted and tore and squealed, but they left us alone.
Mr. Mays was much larger than the rats and he did not leave us alone. His first name was Clarence, but all the kids called him Willie, which made him angry since he hated black people, and so we continued to call him Willie. Apparently it had fallen to Mr. Mays--who as far as I knew was a farmer whose farm was miles away--to prevent eleven-year-old boys from frightening the rats away from whose ever garbage dump this was. He had pulled up in his old black farmer’s pick-up truck with commercial plates before we’d realized he was there. Greg and I were trying to see if any of those eight-tracks could be salvaged when the first rock plunked behind Greg’s feet.
Once we realized that Willie’s aim was to conk us on the heads with his hurling rocks, Greg yelled, “Let’s split!” (which was pretty cool talk, I thought, for a kid his age) and used his frozen-wheeled bike to slide down the far side of the dump. I reached down to pick up something to throw back and came up with only an eight track, but this one didn’t appear to be busted, so I jammed Stormy Weather (how perfect is that?) into my jacket pocket and followed Greg down the far side of garbage mountain. Willie climbed up onto the icy bank of trash, but by that time we had pushed our sleigh-bikes back around front and were smacking glop out from between our spokes so we could escape. We heard him yell something about “heathens,” and through nothing but sheer boyhood strength we stood up on our pedals and forced those wheels to turn, leaving twin thin trails of trash mud behind us.
Greg and I parted at his driveway as he hurried to hide his bike in the garage and I sped on like Clyde Barrow running from a Texas Ranger, oblivious to the fact that we’d done nothing wrong. The feeling of being a big time criminal was exhilarating and I filled my lungs with cold October air.
About halfway down my street, Ron Kitchen--who years later would tell me that Jamie Welliver got killed in a car crash--and his younger sister Missy--who everybody called Messy--waved me down. “Have you seen your mother?” Messy asked, eyes tall with barely restrained panic. The cold in my lungs lifted to my brain. I said no. Ron told me my mom was out looking for me, driving around in our family car, hyperventilating as she asked any kids she could find if they’d seen me. I checked my watch. It was about six-thirty and darkness was about to control the sky.
After a lengthy, well-intentioned and bitter lecture about me being a sickly child who had to remember that his mother wasn’t in very good health either and certainly shouldn’t have to be driving up and down the snowy roads searching for a young boy no one had seen, I was sent to my room, which was just fine with me. I had been feeling so great there for a while, I should have realized the great cosmic equalizer would come along and pound my high spirits back into their basement. In my foolishness I had forgotten all about being sick with whatever horror this week’s favorite was and instead had gone crazy with happiness at being out with Greg and actually doing something.
So I stood there on that platform more than thirty years later, seeing the boy within the man who now had responsibilities. He and his wife Lynette had a young teenaged daughter, they had this remarkably large store with twelve employees, and as I endeavored to take in the physical changes that threatened to engulf the child within my friend, I realized that in a few hours it would be All Hallows’ Eve, a night when the sycophants of Satan don their masks and scare hell out of one another. It was, as it turned out, the Yankee Trader’s busiest day of the year.
Greg didn’t care. He couldn’t have been more gracious--to me. His wife, Lynette, was clearly getting pissed. The store needed his help. I let him off the hook by telling him I needed to get some sleep, which was true enough. I’ll call you in a few hours, I said, which was a lie. I never talked to him again.
That evening I went over to Ruth Ann’s house.
Ruth Ann and I were great friends in college despite my not infrequent efforts to take her to bed, a highly unlikely situation given her disposition toward--oh, how to say it? She’s gay. She’s also brilliant, beautiful, strong, deep, hilarious. She was then and she remains the same. She’s also a great hostess, allowing a silly road-weary bumpkin to join her for pizza on Halloween Eve, when what she obviously wanted was to serve treats to the stream of decked out children beggars. We sat on her porch steps smoking M Lights, filling in for each other the missing connections in the past twenty-odd years. I often make it difficult for people to like me. Nothing in the last two decades has meant more to me than the fact that Ruth Ann still did.
As I mentioned, a couple days later she and I drove by my old house. Undiscouraged by being chased away by the present tenant we motored off down Tarlton Road to Logan Elm High School. Being a Saturday, no one stood sentry to scare us off. Dave Dudley sang, “My home town’s a-coming in sight/If you think I’m happy, you’re right!” How many times had I ridden my ten speed up and down these waves of narrow two-lane spirals, some goofy-ass tune in my head, sublimating God knows what into super-human strength I’d never feel again? Ruth Ann and I road those waves and bellied those curves at ridiculously high speeds, nervous as kittens but safe as angels. Anna McGarrigle declared in the voice of Linda Ronstadt: “Some say the heart is just like a wheel/When you bend it you can’t mend it.” For that four mile drive to my old school, our wheels never so much as threatened to bend.
Except for a refreshment center near the rear exit, the school hadn’t changed a bit. Hysteria bubbled up in my neck. I’m amazed still to have survived that sight.
I’ve been swimming in a sea of anarchy
I’ve been living on coffee and nicotine
I’ve been wondering if all the things I’ve seen
Were ever real--were ever really happening.
--Sheryl Crow, Brian MacLeod
I spent fifteen minutes with my Aunt Jean, then hopped back in the Roadster for the final exploration. The two hours of wandering around Marshall University in search of something familiar--something besides architecture--served its useless purpose. The time had come to go home.
Home! For the first time in twenty-one years, I actually thought of Phoenix as home. It took coming back to Ohio to awaken me to the fact that home is where the driveway is. Or something. And with all due respect to the saintly Johnny Cash, the green, green grass of home can turn brown and burn, for all I care these days.
The music took on an amusing, ironic tinge. The Shangri-Las admonished "You Can Never Go Home Anymore." And that’s called glad.
Clarence “Frogman” Henry, who indeed sang like a frog and like a girl, gutter-chirped "Ain't Got No Home."
Randy Newman croaked his version of his very own "I'll Be Home," followed close and tight by Harry Nilsson’s take on the same tune. A bit more Harry? Thank you, no problem. “Driving along at 57,000 miles an hour/Look at those people standing on the pedals of the flower.” Do I know what those lines mean? Nope. Do I care? Even less.
A-huh huh/ Oh yeah. So glad to be back in the USA. Now if only those patrols would leave us alone.
The car’s owner’s manual makes a subtle point about the tires being guaranteed for speeds up to 130 mph. Then in tiny italics it states: This is not the maximum speed of your vehicle. And that is quite true. Barreling through Big Bone Lick Kentucky bluegrass like a B-52 above a napalmed field of rice paddies, I shot the Audi up the 150, click clock, then 155, no problem, no shake, no shimmy, what’s next? Lord, it’ll never stop, let’s hit the mark. 160 proud and bold and free on winding roads built to accommodate slow moving horse trailers. It was every amphetamine dream without a trace of sediment in the bloodstream. Each fraction of doubt in my steering could roll us sideways to Tennessee and yet that vile spark in my eyes shining back from the rearview mirror kept the road hug just as tight as the lid on Aunt Mabel’s jam. “Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday…” chanted The Clash’s "Police on my Back," and like an aerial target ignited for my inconvenience, three Kentucky State Police vehicles damned near skyjacked us over to the side of the road, and “angry” does not do their collective mood any justice.
“Put your right hand on the wheel and open the door with your left! Do not step out of the car! Put your left foot on the pavement! Move!”
My advice: if you’re ever in a similar situation and have access to an adorable if somewhat simple-minded cocker spaniel, utilize your affection for that dog to the utmost bounds of bad taste. No matter how big and hostile the nature of the police officer, he or she does not much fancy developing a mental image of an other than normal affection between a boy and his dog. And it doesn’t play well at the station house. “Yeah, Sarge, we caught this guy doing 160 down the Interstate--”
“160! Jesus Joseph and Mary! Throw the bastard in the cage and mess him up for fun!”
“Yeah, but Sarge, he’s got this dog and there seems to be some hanky-panky goin’ on here.”
“You mean…?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Get his goddamn perverted ass the hell out of here. Follow him to the border. Let Tennessee handle him. Ain’t gonna have no goddamn dog-sniffers in my station house.”
On the subject of social interactions, except for my all too brief visit with Ruth Ann, I hadn’t spent much time with any women on this visit, and I felt my social skills beginning to slip. Back in Phoenix, I spend as much time as possible in either of the two major strip clubs, and I had a clear sensation that the withdrawal I now felt did not bode well for my continued sanity. Conclusion firmly in place, when I got back to Memphis, I made a point of finding a madhouse called the Platinum Rose.
Taking a slightly alternate trip back home, specifically one that avoided my earlier nightmare in Dallas, I departed Memphis and motored through central Arkansas, and onward through the long stretch of Oklahoma. I only had four Oklahoma-specific songs with me: The first two were actually the same song, “Okie From Muskogee,” one by Merle Haggard and the other by Phil Ochs, diametrical opposites if such things ever existed. I even forgot I had these two with me until I came upon a road sign that declared: SOME CALL IT ABORTION. GOD CALLS IT MURDER. I actually had to circle back and take that one in again. Snapped a picture just so the folks back home would believe it. “We don’t take our trips on LSD,” crooned Merle, and I realized he was right. All you had to do was read the signs on the road and your genetic make-up would never be the same again. “Living on Tulsa time” indeed.
The only other Okie song I could come up with was The Raiders’ “Indian Reservation.” Oklahoma means “Indian Territory,” according to the history books, and the song seemed appropriate to the trinket factories and refurbished fallout shelters that housed much of the indigenous population. My mind was clearly no longer the boss.
Early November in northern New Mexico is cold. Stark, beatific, radiating splendor and holly jolly, but windy and exceedingly cold. Cold, in a religious sense. I yearned for a full-service filling station and nevertheless had to pump my own. No one owns a coat warm enough to stave off the fruit-juice thick winds of northern NM. No one. That kind of cold seeps through the emptiness in a man and magnifies the hollow passages. Had I become the kind of man whose idea of engaging entertainment was to receive a world class grind from professional lap dancers? Had my perceptions deteriorated so sufficiently that my faith in a dream that hadn’t been more than bullshit twenty years ago would be all that sustains me? Was it possible that this nice little sports car represented a motorized phallus, a wheeled libido, its turbo engine so roaring and fragile that even the soft breath of something real would shatter it, scatter it to the winds, and damned cold winds at that? Were my quick wits and sparkling humor a way of disguising me from myself? Chances are.
Five hours out of Albuquerque I recognized the familiar, the formerly despised, the ridiculously comfortable. I’d been out of songs for the last couple hours. For entertainment, I watched Molly drool on the inside glass each time we passed a semi. “Bet there’s a lot of dog food in that truck,” she must have been thinking.
I’ve been back home for a few months now. Nothing here is either better or worse. I am both better and worse. Worse for confronting self-delusions that most of us get to ignore, blissfully. And better for knowing that about myself.
Gotta go now. There’s some new CD’s that just arrived in the mail…
There's no telling what pop music would be like today had Motown stayed where it belonged. But there can be no denying that once "The Sound of Young America" (as Motown was often known) headed west, some outstanding new sounds popped up, almost in direct reaction to Motown's departure. Indeed, Motown's stellar writing-production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland had a few years earlier left the stable and formed their own label: Hot Wax/Invictus. But until Gordy took his troops to Hollywood, nothing HDH created prospered at all. Exit Motown and--wham! Freda Payne, The Chairmen of the Board, Flaming Ember, Laura Lee, Honey Cone, 100 Proof. The vast majority of the entries here instantly hit the charts in waves! A middle-aged Detroit music fan named Armen Boladian launched Westbound (pun definitely intended) Records at the same time Invictus began taking to the hit parade, and in the process gave much needed career breaks to the Ohio Players, Funkadelic, and the Detroit Emeralds. Even the staid and stubborn Stax and Paramount labels branched northward with, respectively, The Dramatics and Detroit. So for two to three years, nobody really much noticed that Motown was gone. The hard-edged and gritty tracks that followed weren't the Motown forte anyway, and by the time these acts petered out, Motown itself was in such artistic disarray that only the inestimable power of its 1960's artists allows it to retain credibilty.
By 1970, the false consciousness trappings linking the economic ideologies of capitalism and communism ceased to exist. In their place stood the finger-pointing polar opposites and sworn enemies of Conflict Theory and Realpolitiks. The first of these was so weighed down in academic armor that no self-respecting urban guerrilla could relate to it, and the latter dressed itself so thoroughly in ethnocentrism that its very devisiveness made its stone cold logic infinitely illogical. These inherent flaws did not stop ideologues from carrying out very real oppression against millions of people, a state of existence with us to this day. The artists whose songs appear below may not have known or specifically cared about theories of economic hegemony or creeping decimalism, but their music clearly responded to the leaden conditions around them. Revisionists claim the 1960s as a time of substantial musical protest, but the reality is that the oft-ridiculed 1970s embraced far more rebellion against the status quo than anytime in the Twentieth Century.
The centerpiece of this period--musically, if not chronologically--is Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On. Thirty-plus years later, absolutley nothing even approaches this album in its ability to convey the feel of being clubbed senseless by the unwashed hatred of imbecilic leaders and dog-lapping followers alike. To further convey a sense of manifestly dangerous outrage in such a numbed out condition elevates this album above all but a handful ever recorded.
At the same time we had Marvin Gaye asking--more politely perhaps; I mean, he was asking--how and why things had come to be so screwed up. His demeanor, like that of Sly Stone, was heavily drugged, somewhere between being punch drunk and totally narcotized, yet still warring with an inner frustration and churning, bubbling hostility. No sooner had the shock waves subsided than Curtis Mayfield, the lovely and sensitive man who a few months years had bored us to near-death with "Gypsy Woman," shot up from under the manhole cover and connected the drug-disease with the inherent corruption in our power systems, and still made us want to dance to it! This all-too-brief period of Black Power Renaissance still occasionally echoes in the early songs of Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, and Tupac.
The Glass House. "Crumbs Off the Table." Invictus. 1969.
Five Stairsteps. "O-o-h Child." Buddah. 1970.
The Burke children had over a dozen soul and R&B hits on Curtis Mayfield's various labels before signing with Buddah and releasing their sole pop hit. Along with the early singles of the Jackson Five, the Five Stairsteps were responsible for a resurged interest in black group pop. The striking and absolute paranoia in the falsetto-to-tenor lead as he assures his love that "things are gonna get easier" is among the most unsettling in all pop music. There's no doubt he doesn't believe a word he's saying; he simply has to say something, and chooses these words as carefully as possible. Anyone who only knows the remakes of this by Lenny Williams or Valerie Carter should discover the real thing. And the simultaneously restrained and unleashed drumming on the Stairsteps' version dispels any suggestion that this was soft rock.
100 Proof Aged in Soul. "Somebody's Been Sleeping." Hot Wax. 1970.
Freda Payne Greatest Hits Invictus/Fantasy. 1991As the 1970s began to roll, one of the changes happening was that Motown lost Holland-Dozier-Holland. Eddie, Lamont and Brian formed their own label, Invictus Records. One of their first singers was Freda Payne, a Detroit girl who had sung in the chorus of The Pearl Bailey Show, served as an understudy for Leslie Uggams, sung for Quincy Jones, and most especially had sung lead for Duke Ellington's band. Eddie Holland persuaded Payne to join the label and shortly the four of them released three mighty fine post-Motown marvels. "Band of Gold" had everything a Supremes record ever had, except it had a gutsier singer than Diana Ross and none of the infuriating slickness of a Motown record. The particular mix of singer, songs and arrangements was still glitzy show-biz, but abrasive show-biz, superficially the kind of apparent dreck the Wayne Newton's of the world would love, then on second glance, the very kind of emotionally raw unveiling that his ilk detests. Even the trendy "The Unhooked Generation" was pop, no question, but it was also soul. And it was dance music. It had swing and a lot of rhythm. The autumnal "Deeper and Deeper" didn't do as well, but "Bring the Boys Home" was the first anti-war hit song by a black woman, sort of the flip side to Edwin Starr's "War." Though Payne continued to record throughout the decade, her other releases only made the R&B charts. "Cherish What is Dear to You" and "You Brought the Joy" are particularly fine.
MC5. "Kick Out the Jams." Elektra. 1970.
A couple years before this album's release, Sinclair developed the ten-point program for the MC5 and any other guerrilla bands interested in joining the fold.
- Full endorsement and support of Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program
- Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock n' roll, dope and fucking in the streets.
- Free exchange of energy and materials -we demand the end of money!
- Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care - everything free for everybody!
- Free access to information media -free the technology from the greed creeps!
- Free time and space for all humans -dissolve all unnatural boundaries.
- Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule - turn the buildings over to the people at once!
- Free all prisoners everywhere - they are our brothers.
- Free all soldiers at once - no more conscripted armies.
- Free the people from their "leaders" - leaders suck - all power to all the people freedom means free everyone !We print this "program" here because--better than anything any critics could ever hope to write--because it precisely conveys the sound and impact of the MC5. If it seems moronic or dated, well, that's the point, isn't it? The most musically significant item is number 6. Although we're not quite certain how one goes about freeing time and space, the idea of eradicating boundaries between performers and fans remains a central issue in popular music.
The Chairmen of the Board. Everything's Tuesday. Invictus. 2000.Carolina Beach Music is hard-edge rhythm and blues with a bass line that by turns raises and dips. As the lead singer and composer for a Tidewater gang called The Showmen, "General" Norman Johnson discovered that his group's R&B sound fit the bill when they played their first North Carolina Beach gig. Prior to that success, his most laudable achievement was an homage to rock 'n' roll called "It Will Stand." While the demand for Beach Music continued strong as ever, by the late 1960's the crack songwriting team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland were fed up with the Motown hegemony (and hedging money) in Detroit and decided to impose with their own label. One of their two biggest stars was the Chairmen of the Board (Johnson, Harrison Kennedy, Danny Woods and Eddie Curtis). Unlike the slick sheen of Motown, this music was porous. It didn't sound fractured; it sounded as if it could fracture. Even though the Chairmen found their biggest commercial success while working out of Detroit, their sound was precisely what the North Carolina crowds had been waiting for. Johnson sang as if he had just dislodged a wad of latex from his throat and was freely toying with all the wonders his voice could suddenly convey. Plus it was danceable soul music. The Chairmen even had the nerve to release a great hit single named after themselves! At the time, panoramic paranoia was all the rage in soul music. Yet here these four were, just wanting to get everybody down on the floor--er, beach. Oh, it was glorious: stuttering, swaggering, chewing on the words and giving them the sweet roll out, like Italian rock of the 1950's in reverse and twice as fast. If this doesn't fit your idea of Beach Music, maybe you haven't been to the Atlantic Ocean lately.
The Detroit Emeralds. "You Want It, You Got It." Westbound. 1971); "Feel the Need." Westbound. 1972.
Laura Lee. "Women's Love Rights." Hot Wax. 1971.At the exact moment when the women's liberation movement first threatened to descend into the banalities of middle class enlightenment (as it eventually did), Detroit-born Chicago-bred Laura Lee erupted on the R&B charts with this hard-boiled, exploitive, round-house punch. The arrangement is strictly Honey Cone pop-rock. What gives this song its edge is the gutsy yelp she picked up from Aretha Franklin when both were working at Rick Hall's Hall of Fame in Muscle Shoals. "Love who you wanna," she cries. "Cause a man's sure gonna." After suggesting a litany of demands (including weekly dinners at fine restaurants, a set of her own car keys, and regular shopping sprees--all at the man's expense, mind you), Lee cracks the arrangement down the middle as she barks out her justification for such an attitude: the man's probably got three other girls he's supporting across town, so why shouldn't you get as much as you can? None of this may bode accurately for male-female relationships then or now (personally, we'll take Loretta Lynn's more durable and action-oriented hostility any day), but just for the guts required to raise such a rucuss, this song is worth coveting.
Marvin Gaye. What's Going On? Motown. 1971.
The Dramatics. "Whatcha See is Whatcha Get." Stax. 1972.
Stax Records carried on into the 1970s with this Ron Banks quintet who, no matter what they earned for the title track, it wasn't nearly enough. In the midst of a wall-banging festival where points are earned for chewing up words and fracturing them joyously as they leave the mouth, Banks interplays with the other singers in a way that would be comedic if it weren't so damned convincing: "Some people/are made of lies (ooh-ooh ah-ah)/They'll bring you down/and shame your name/(ooh-ooh ah-ah)." Writer/producer Tony Hester knew he had a great danceable funk-ready vocally acrobatic fivesome on his hands and did not let their talent waste. Who but the Dramatics could pull off a parody of a fashion trend and a Sly Stone single all in the same song, much less expose dancing for the sexual prelude it had always been?
The Undisputed Truth. "Smiling Faces Sometimes." Gordy. 1972.
Detroit. "Rock 'n' Roll." Paramount. 1972.
Honey Cone. "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" and "Want Ads." Invictus. 1972.When the crack songwriting and production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown to form their own record company, they wanted a harder sound that retained the pop whistle of their former label. That may be why both of these songs sound very much like the Jackson 5. Lead singer Edna Wright proves talent's in the genes (Darlene Love is her sister), and so is enthusiasm. We absolutely guarantee that Katrina and the Waves learned everything they'd ever know from "Monkey," including between-line vocal trills. The absolute golden age of black pop music was never better than in the 1971-73 period, when a none-too-friendly competition existed between Invictus, Stax, and Motown, all aiming to be the sound of young America.
DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH:
HARD ASS ROCK AND ROLL
Since the high wattage days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the distinction between hard rock music and heavy metal thankfully blurred. The only remaining aesthetic elements separating the two is that, first, metal tended to employ vocalists who sounded as if they had inhaled helium while suffering the throes of strychnine poisoning, and second, hard rock rarely if ever ventured into pseudo-satanic concepts, whereas heavy metal recognized the commercial value of suggesting a connection to the Underworld. Nevertheless, sometimes hard rock groups such as Deep Purple did capitalize on vocal theatrics reminiscent of emasculation in process, just as certain HM bands--Cinderella comes to mind--shunned flirtation with demonic possession. This lack of clarity may leave the reader unclear as to what exactly hard rock is. I hope the list that follows makes the connection less murky, although it probably won't.
Jimi Hendrix. Axis: Bold as Love. Reprise. 1967.
Funny, isn't it, how supposedly enlightened radio programmers who always talk a good game about what a monumental influence Hendrix was never quite feel comfortable playing anything from this album? I can't help but wonder if that might be because this album, more than any other in the Hendrix archives, sounds precisely and uncompromisingly black. Far be it from me to suggest that the programmers at classic rock stations are racist. I'm just intimating that they apparently think their audience is. And what a pity. Because everyone misses out on the first recorded evidence that Hendrix and the Experience had discovered high technology. Click here please.
Jimi Hendrix. Electric Ladyland. Reprise. 1968.
The idea of using the studio to create specific textures and sounds was in its relative infancy in 1968. A lot of people had been doing it, but none for more than a few years. Electric Ladyland appeared and completely changed the way guitar, bass and drums would ever be understood again. Always big, always booming, this time out Hendrix laid in a deliberate stoned sentience intended to transform the accepted levels of and limits to the musical imagination. "Crosstown Traffic," to site an obvious example, is jazz-like in its ability to replicate the sound and feel of its subject matter. There was still plenty of hokey-pokey mysticism on the album, but this time it was at least interesting, especially in the "Slight Return" version of "Voodoo Child" and the implied funk of "Long Hot Summer Night." The CD reissue of this recording loses the original cover and gloms it all onto one disc. Still, this is worth owning for waking up Bob Dylan with the version of "All Along the Watchtower."
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. We're Only in it for the Money. Verve. 1968.
People who listened to early Zappa albums tend to respond in one of two generalized ways. They find his band musically interesting, sophisticated and dense and yet are put off by his occasional vulgarity, or they declare the montage approach to his layered albums to be the greatest technique in existence for conceptualizing the varied and disconnected themes that run through his occasionally sophomoric satires of contemporary society. What both extreme points share is that Zappa's humor may be lame, but his band-leading skills, his guitar virtuosity, and his technical studio innovations compensate for it. That union of overlapping ideas lands squarely where I would assess the greater part of his 1960s output. The sole exception is We're Only in it for the Money. The only reason this album is so vastly superior to his earlier work is because here he was seriously pissed off and that state of affairs worked to his artistic advantage. Zappa's message appears far more pertinent today than any hippie interpretations of the Beatles so-called masterpiece. Zappa ripped open every limb of presumed hipness being shoved down our throats and exposed the insidious commercial bacteria driving the whole process. His studio technical proficiency and musical artistry made his argument all the more convincing.
Led Zeppelin. "Immigrant Song." Atlantic. 1970.
Welcome back my friends to the pseudo-mystic bullshit that never ends. Robert Plant announces the journey with a pair of drawn out banshee wails before he tears off singing about Norwegian explorers on their way to conquer new worlds. "We come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow." If that is your idea of deep and meaningful, please pass the belladonna. If, on the other hand, you just like the bass and drum collision reminiscent of a thundering horde ascending from hell, then this should feel just about right.
Three Dog Night. "Eli's Coming." Dunhill. 1970.
Once this seven-man-band with three lead singers released "Joy to the World," I lost what little respect for them I had ever had. Prior to that, the Dog put out quite a few melodic yet haunting numbers, many of which fit in nicely amidst other turn of the decade drool: "Out in the Country," "One Man Band," "Nobody," "One" and especailly "Eli's Coming." Their version of this Laura Nyro song frantically stomped all over the excellent original and for the first time actually utilized the power of their three lead vocalists. In, out and around they spin, encircling one another and zapping right through the center of the speakers about the fact that Eli is indeed coming and so you had most certainly better consider hiding your heart, girl.
Blue Cheer. "Summertime Blues." Philips. 1970.
Named after a highly potent brand of lysergic acid, Blue Cheer is reputed to have been the favorite band of the Oakland Hell's Angels. Personally, I can think of nothing more unpleasant than reeling from acid in an Angels house with Blue Cheer clogging up the air passages. But in the safety of one's own home, in a state of relative clear-headedness, the tear gas bombast of these three lunatics is just this side of fun. The song begins and ends with the loudest (in the sense of striped shirts with plaid pants) version of "Purple Haze" intro ever recorded, and then with bouldering guitars turns Eddie Cochran's original ode to laziness into a total defiance of the complete Protestant work ethic. It takes your breath away, like the propulsion of a cork screw rollercoaster without the inconvenience of waiting in line.
Ides of March. "Superman." Warner Bros. 1970.
Those who balked at the idea of horns in rock were, for the most part, reactionary porcine fornicators. The saxophone was as integral to the music of Little Richard and Gary Bonds as any instrument on their recordings, so no one needed to introduce horns to rock and call it a new thing. What these non-Kosher copulaters should have railed against was the notion of fusing the most indulgent aspects of rock and jazz and foisting that upon the public as some grand aesthetic gesture. Jazz and rock certainly do have overlapping musical compatibilities, as genuine talents such as Carla Bley in the one field and Al Kooper in the other have proven. The problem endemic to the fusion movement was that most of the people popularizing it had learned trumpet or sax in high school marching band, probably gobbled up one or two tracks from Miles or Coltrane, came up with an idea they were positive no one ever had before, and puked up groups like Chicago and BS&T, two of the most scarring poxes on the face of either genre.
One horn-heavy band that just barely managed to skirt the fusion travesty was the Ides of March. These guys not only snagged a keen doom-laden literary reference, their original mid-1960s sound was all pseudo-British Invasion by way of Illinois. But by 1970, lead singer, guitarist, chief songwriter and future Survivor leader Jim Peterik tired of people mistaking his group for The Buckinghams and so added horns to the group's line-up, resulting in people mistaking his group for Chase.
"Vehicle," with its inexplicably enthusiastic blasphemies, is the song most people know. Far better was the nearly identical follow-up, "Superman," with its comic book blasphemy, "Great Caesar's Ghost I'll be yer Superman!"
Free. "Alright Now." A&M. 1970.
That singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kurke went on to form the excruciatingly boring Bad Company is no reason to hate them for the mindlessness of Free's biggest and best hit. Intended as ome kind of sick twisted sexual political anthem ("Let's move before they raise the parking rate"?), "Alright Now" is nothing more or less than Rodgers trying to get what he wants without much effort and being stunned by the rebuke he gets in return. It's a fairly simple sentiment matched by the guitar refrain and even simpler drum pattern. But in its abbreviated radio version, timed to be about three minutes long, it was glorious pop that didn't stick around long enough to be tedious.
Elephant's Memory. "Mongoose" and "Skyscraper Commando." Metromedia. 1970.
Singers Rick Frank (drums) and Stan Bronstein (sax) put together this great band with the ever-changing line-up. The idea that a band could play unnervingly hard rock that challenged while it shook without being in the heavy metal camp was one that didn't meet with much favor among promo men at the time. That didn't stop these loonies. They knew they were great and played just that way. Initially an experimental jazz band, they tried in vain to make the strip clubs where they performed into exercises in Art. When that failed, they took the energy in their sound and turned the beat around with these, two of the most caterwauling calls to anarchy ever to make the Top Ten (regionally) and that's before you even realize that the former is only a tune about a mongoose in a village trying to protect the people from millions of hatching cobra eggs.
Crabby Appleton. "Go Back." Elektra. 1970.
Michael Fennelly led this outstanding L.A. band, notable for Fennelly's way with a simple song and Phil Jones' amphetamine teeth grinding wind tunnel way with a drum set. "Go Back" was one big rollercoaster ride in anticipation of the ultimate exhale. Fun for the whole family, if they can withstand the trip.
Santana. "Everybody's Everything." Columbia. 1971.
Since everyone and his Uncle Henry want to rave on about how Carlos Santana and band have been the biggest influence of Latin heritage, style and form, let me present this, far and away their greatest recording and best song. From the unimaginatively titled Santana III album, "Everybody's Everything" is a stampeding busload of well-dressed migrant workers looking for a place to do a hyperactive cha-cha. The words are the least important part of the fray, although when Carlos mumble shouts "Time for you to all get down," you are more than ready to accede. No, the key here is the avalanche of drums, congas and trashcans that come tumbling like boulders on a mission from God.
Lee Michaels. "Do You Know What I Mean." A&M. 1971.
Lee Michaels was one of the most encouraging acts to emerge in the early 1970s, only to disappear after working hard to attain popular acclaim. With lines such as "Been fourteen days since I don't know when," the song's title was appropriate. The real joy, however, was less in silly word games than in the sound that felt like an intoxicated basketball descending several flights of stairs. The music itself was Michael's inspired one-finger organ work and the glorious stumbling drums of Bartholomew Smith-Frost, aka Frosty. Following the commercial success of this song and a cover of Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness," Michaels stopped releasing unpunctuated question songs and teamed with future Doobie Brothers drummer Keith Knudsen. This partner lacked the ability to replicate the sound of drunken athletic equipment. The result was a permanent retirement to Hawaii.
Fanny. "Charity Ball." Reprise. 1971.
There had been all-female rock bands before, but few that sounded like Fanny. June and Jean Millington, with Alice DeBuhr and Nicky Barclay, didn't put any special effort into denying their sex. They just played and sang with a joyous and sweaty ferocity that had more to do with their love for what they were doing than did their specific femininity.
The James Gang. Rides Again. MCA. 1971.
Crashing down like a calculated stuttering mudslide, the electric guitar introduction to "Funk 49" begins what at first seems like nothing more or less than the perfect eight-track soundtrack to adolescent madness. Halfway into the instrumental "Asshtonpark," such assumptions fall by the wayside, as technical proficiency joins the most sophisticated musical concepts this side of Pete Townshend, with whom the James Gang's lead guitarist shares substantial affinity.
Redbone. "Witch Queen of new Orleans." Epic. 1972.
It is hard to believe that Pat and Lolly Vegas, the two main principals in Redbone, made this, the hardest rocking and most complex song of their career, and also made the sweet disco-oriented "Come and get Your Love." That's about it.
Steppenwolf. Sixteen Greatest Hits. Dunhill. 1972.
Growing up in small town suburban Ohio, most of us had to take our fun where we found it. The tape that most visitors to my lair demanded was this one. The album had all the ingredients to reinforce our collective personality disorders: guitar-oriented hard rock, motorcycle ambiance, a disdain for hard drugs, and an image that none of our parents would have liked at all, had they known Steppenwolf from Roy Rogers.
T. Rex. "Bang a Gong (Get it On.)" Reprise. 1972.
Of all the different silly trends in rock and roll, few came under as much unwarranted attacks as the glam rock movement. Which would you rather have your barely pubescent kid bopping to: the relatively hilarious longhaired gyrations of diminutive Marc Bolan or equally so Suzi Quatro, or the bastardizations of classic soul songs by Michael Bolton or Mariah Carey? Hey, at least Marc Bolan knew his limitations.
Gary Glitter. "I Didn't Know I Loved You Til I Saw You Rock 'n' Roll." Bell. 1972.
If one were to believe the astoundingly uncritical sycophancy of VH1, one might accept the idea that Glitter was some kind of major star. The reality is that even in the UK he was always a sort of self-parody who, probably through inadvertence, happened to construct a fuzz hook and lumbering drum sound that went well with large consumptions of heavy beer. That his work has been celebrated by his betters in no way elevates his slimy status. This song is interchangeable with any of his other trash glam classics, any one of which are heard to better effect by Joan Jett or Brownsville Station.
Jo Jo Gunne. "Run Run Run." Asylum. 1972.
This early-1970s spirited power pop band rolled over Beethoven with their Chuck Berry-inspired name and tune. Jangling power chords, drum rolls a-plenty, and faceless vocals galore. Not a great dietary lifestyle, but a darned refreshing snack.
Mott the Hoople. "All the Young Dudes." Columbia. 1972.
While David Bowie is the most self-important nonentity ever to become a moderate commercial success in any genre, he did one good thing in his all-too-long career and that was to write and produce this brazenly avant-homosexual anthem, a U.K. hit by a band of straights.
Steely Dan. "Do It Again" and "Reelin' in the Years." 1972 and 1973. MCA.
These two singles are here specifically because they are not as sophisticated as the songs that would transform Steely into a national critics convention. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, for all intents and purposes, were Steely Dan and they were determined to be obscure, a fact made clear by the unlistenable albums that would follow. But these two excellent singles worked in spite of lines like "You been telling me you were a genius since you were seventeen," because the music actually goes somewhere--mostly up.
Focus. "Hocus Pocus." IRS. 1973.
To my knowledge, this is the only primarily instrumental number to feature yodeling and still crack the U.S. Top Ten. Jan Akkerman's walls of falling guitar lava prevented all of this from descending to the level of novelty.
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. "You Got Me Anyway." Columbia. 1973.
Ever notice how a lot of the time so-called one-hit wonders announce that fact about themselves? Sure, either the one hit is so transitory that it bespeaks an abbreviated career for the group or else the song itself is so good that only a fool could fail to realize there will be no more hits coming from this group or person. Well, the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver fooled everyone. Iain and Gavin Sutherland, two experimental folkies, hooked up with Quiver, a real rock band, gelling with an all-out assault, replete with cannon drumming and leer jet guitars, yielding the sound of the invasion of Grenada set to music. Naturally, they never charted again in the U.S.
Fancy. "Wild Thing." Big Tree. 1974.
Right up there with Sylvia's "Pillow talk," the sound of the female orgasm instants from happening in the pre-Donna Summer world was a thing never much considered outside of this glorious version of the Troggs' hit. Fancy was thoroughly an invention of the studio, but that didn't stop the body-rubbing guitar from accentuating the moans of fake ecstasy from the frequently naked Helen Court.
Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits. Warner Bros. 1974.
Having always experienced and interpreted rock and roll as an essentially auditory medium, I place less importance on the visual component and therefore judge groups such as Kiss, the Stooges, the New York Dolls and others known for stage silliness almost entirely on their sonic appeal. In fact, the more an act tries to pick my pocket while distracting me in some way other than assaulting my sense of sound, the more I will resist experiencing them in that other way. Breathe fire, strangle chickens, chain saw sheep, light a fart: it's all wasted on me. So when the group known as Alice Cooper emerged at the end of the 1960s as the answer to Sominex, I didn't give much of a damn. As the years tumbled by, I noticed that every album had one or two truly fine songs while the rest pandered to those who responded best to ambiguity.
But the singles were a different story. "Be My Lover" captures the rock star sitting in a bar checking out the debutante scene perfectly, "School's Out" is a raucous anthem to anarchy, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" is quite hilarious, and best of all is "Teenage Lament '74" which not only has the best backing vocals of any Cooper song, it also has the most humane lyrics.
The Who. By Numbers. MCA. 1975.
This was a great rock album with the misfortune of being released when most people wanted an outstanding one. "Slip Kid" is a funkier and non-synthesized version of the band's "Baba O'Riley." "Squeeze Box" is a genuinely dirty pop single. "Success Story" is John Entwistle's hilarious view of life with the band and one of the best songs of the group's career. "How many Friends" is one of the most narcissistic, paranoid, and poignant songs ever recorded. The Who takes us from flattered joy to suspicion to out and out hostility in less than twenty seconds without seeming anything but natural. The whole album is big, bold, stadium bombast that does not suffer from the heavy-handedness such descriptions would later imply.
Led Zeppelin. Presence. Swan. 1976.
A lot of people bashed this album on its initial release. After many reflective years during which time I never played this recording more than twice, I have at last reconsidered. Whatever that odd monolith on the cover may suggest, the music here is actually among the least idiotic of the group's massive offerings. The trick, perhaps, lies in not worrying about what any of these songs mean. Just thrive on Bonham's mistimed drums and Jones' bass and wonder why Plant is shrieking, especially on "Candy Store Rock."
Blue Oyster Cult. Agents of Fortune. Columbia. 1976.
Intelligent people do occasionally make good music. Buck Dharma got pesky management rock critics Richard Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman out of the way and let himself and occasional contributor Patti Smith focus on sound texture and meaning. The opening track creates a texture of wet wool and a tone of lead anvils, a tone which the intelligence of the lyrics transcends. This band was a serious attempt to look, sound and act like a metal band in the best ways without any of the lumbering "daisies gone a-melting" of twittery twats like Led Zeppelin.
Kiss. Destroyer. Casablanca. 1976.
I was fired from a radio station for making a disparaging remark about the fans of one of the songs on this album, an opinion I have yet to retract, and so my critical judgment should be evaluated with that built-in bias in mind. I will say that "Detroit Rock City" has interesting sound affects and one of the more challenging rhythms the group ever created. "Shout It Out Loud" is a fine aspiring anthem in the vein of Slade, among others. The rest, sadly, is simple pandering to affection for glam over substance.
Cheap Trick. Live at Budokan. Epic. 1979.
This group defined the distinctions between standard rock and metal by being the most clever of the late-1970s hard rock bands. One of those distinctions is that it is possible to whistle to hard rock. Cheap Trick also had a non-malicious sense of humor, something their tattooed brothers seldom displayed. Guitarist Rick Neilson and drummer Bun E. Carlos were slaughterhouse musicians who gave geek class. Bassist Tom Peterson stood there looking great and singer Robin Zander had an authentic Peter Frampton throat. Their best song, "Surrender," is caught live and ideally on this album.
Frank Zappa. You Are What You Is. Barking Pumpkin. 1981.
Here the perpetual misanthrope attacks fans of the Grateful Dead, C&W cheating songs, a perfume called Charlie, the callousness of people cheering a cokehead on what turns out to be a fatal overdose, the L.A. nightclub scene, tele-evangelists, and people who attempt suicide. If that sounds about as uplifting as Nathaniel West, that's only because I haven't told you about the music. While it's a bit more conventional than his early Edgar Varese impressions, it still challenges through the keen approach to editing, through the discomforting and abrupt time changes, through the sheer density of much of the production, and especially through the vitality Zappa brings to these subjects. The singer-composer on this album is not only self-righteous. He calmly accepts his self-righteousness as the tribute due one who is so obviously correct. That knowledge gives every song here a ferocity that would surely terrify any of the meek that Zappa claims will inherit nothing. It is tough to argue with the best album of his career.
I said to myself, "Let's give it to em, right now!"Jo Jo Gunne. "Run Run Run." Asylum. 1972.
Mott the Hoople. "All the Young Dudes." Columbia. 1972.
Steely Dan. "Do It Again" and "Reelin' in the Years." 1972 and 1973. MCA.
Focus. "Hocus Pocus." IRS. 1973.
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. "You Got Me Anyway." Columbia. 1973.
Fancy. "Wild Thing." Big Tree. 1974.
Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits. Warner Bros. 1974.
But the singles were a different story. "Be My Lover" captures the rock star sitting in a bar checking out the debutante scene perfectly, "School's Out" is a raucous anthem to anarchy, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" is quite hilarious, and best of all is "Teenage Lament '74" which not only has the best backing vocals of any Cooper song, it also has the most humane lyrics.
The Who. By Numbers. MCA. 1975.
Led Zeppelin. Presence. Swan. 1976.
Blue Oyster Cult. Agents of Fortune. Columbia. 1976.
Kiss. Destroyer. Casablanca. 1976.
Cheap Trick. Live at Budokan. Epic. 1979.
Frank Zappa. You Are What You Is. Barking Pumpkin. 1981.
So here comes twenty-one (yes!) versions of the great (excellent) song!
Richard Berry
The Kingsmen
Motorhead
Toots and the Maytals
Iggy Pop
The Sonics
The Kinks
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Beach Boys
Stanley Clarke and George Duke
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
John Belushi
Smashing Pumpkins
The Clash
The MC5
Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers
The Troggs
LMS Jazz Band
The Swamp Rats
The Sandpipers
The Three Amigos
bonus
The emotional and legal termination of The Beatles working relationship struck the music world and the listening public like a cold wet salmon across the face. Our collective dependence upon the group for the best rock music, the most imaginative sounds, and the most significant indications of the sonic future--our near total reliance upon these four young men for rock and roll sustenance positioned us to greedily accept whatever barn swill and monkey pus came our way, be it on one extreme the overblown lumbering sloths who made up Led Zeppelin or on the other timid introspective psychological doodlings of James Taylor. Neither extreme, it turned out, was particularly healthy, and neither, it turned out, benefited the music of future generations, other than as something to rebel against. And so an intellectual, emotional and spiritual degeneration ensued as even the best sounds were a lot less happy, a lot less optimistic, and a lot more stoic in their acceptance of impending doom. Even The Beatles themselves presaged this disappointing trend as far back as their 1968 self-titled release. The Beatles might have been imaginative, or even relevant to future generations, but it sho nuff weren't happy.
Yet an awful lot of good stuff continued to come from the British Isles, albeit from unexpected places. Despite the utopian and mercantile ambitions of The Beatles' Apple Corp, only one commercially successful band emerged, but it was a great one: Badfinger. Of course, associations needn't always be economic. In the case of Harry Nilsson, his acquaintance with the Fab Four was as much social as artistic. The result was one fine album and a number of decent singles. Then, of course, there was Elton John, the most commercially successful star of the 1970s, a man whose initial cynicism was only matched by his ability to set to music the most ridiculous lyrics in the pantheon of literary pop slop. So while one cannot help but praise this period with more than a trace of damnation, there are nevertheless elements of this peculiar period which still resonate with glory.
The Beatles. The Beatles. Apple. 1968.
If you listen to this album from beginning to end, you will experience parody, ball room blitz, sound effects, shattering guitar jams, the lamentable absence of Ringo's drumming on the songs where Paul sings lead, a mobius strip of sound device tape manipulation, heavy metal, a brief spelling lesson, open hostility, reggae, warmth and an enormous sense of relief when the whole thing is over, a relief which will last about thirty seconds, after which there will be a compulsion to play the whole thing over again.
The Beatles. Abbey Road. Apple. 1969.
Fairport Convention. Unhalfbricking. A&M. 1969.
Plastic Ono Band. "Cold Turkey." Apple. 1970.
The Who. "The Seeker" and "Summertime Blues." MCA. 1970.
The Beatles. Hey Jude (The Beatles Again). Apple. 1970.
Eric Burdon and War. Eric Burdon Declares War. MGM. 1970.
Hotlegs. "Neanderthal Man." Capitol. 1970.
The Kinks. Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. Reprise. 1970.
Except here. Lola was one angry set of tunes. The fury must've done Ray some good because this holds together well enough to make us ask all these years later: "Where's Part Two"? If you recall the frustration Terry Maloy brilliantly stuttered out at his brother Charlie in the cab scene in On The Waterfront, the similarities with Ray Davies' view of himself are eerie. Terry tells Charlie that if only he, Charlie, had looked out for him and not made him take that dive that night at the Garden, then he would have amounted to something more than what he had become. Davies didn't blame his brother, who was, after all, in the band. But on this album, he takes the opportunity to blame every phony slime wad parasite who ever did him wrong. As with Terry's speech, we realize suddenly that the ability to articulate such strangled feelings is an act itself that dispels the idea that we're listening to a loser. By the time "Powerman" explodes with its vitriolic history lesson, even the dead understand that this album succeeds precisely because of all that pent up frustration initiated by the more mercenary aspects of show business.
Badfinger. No Dice. Apple. 1971.
Paul McCartney. Ram. Apple. 1971.
Jethro Tull. "Hymn 43." Chrysalis. 1971.
John Lennon. "Power to the People" and "Imagine," 1971. "Stand By Me," 1975. Apple.
Paul McCartney. "Oh Woman Oh Why." Apple. 1971.
Led Zeppelin. IV. Atlantic. 1971.
Revered by fans for their powerhouse album tracks, Zep's best songs were almost always their singles. "Immigrant Song," "Whole Lotta Love," "Rock and Roll," "Black Dog" and "D'Yer Maker": who cared what they were about? They rocked as hard as anything on the radio and the louder you played them the better they sounded. Nevertheless, there can be no denying that "Stairway to Heaven" was their biggest success, mostly because you can substitute the words to "Gilligan's Island" and the song makes sense.
Harry Nilsson. Nilsson Schmilsson. RCA. 1971.
The Rolling Stones. Probably the Best Album We Ever Made, Actually. Santa Fe Records. 1971.
The Who. Who's Next. MCA. 1971.
Ashton, Gardner & Dyke. "Resurrection Shuffle." Capitol. 1971.
Rod Stewart. "I Know I'm Losing You." Mercury. 1971. "You Wear It Well." Mercury. 1972.
Harry Nilsson. "Spaceman." RCA. 1972.
Elton John. Honky Chateau. Uni. 1972.
Despite his success as a singles act, EJ was ultimately an album artist. Elton John, the U.S. debut, started a trend of singing the words to songs with a deliberate disregard for the music. One such grand example on Honky Chateau is "I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself." The song captures Elton bopping along merrily about how what he really needs deep down is to snuff it, while the piano trills and someone else is tap dancing. In the meantime, the hits just kept on coming. This album featured two: "Honky Cat," about about a city boy needing to return to rural heartache, and "Rocket Man," the first great song about the space program. Best of all, this album rocked the way not much else was doing at the time and "Hercules" shimmered. When some people insist that Elton opened up their minds, this album is why.
Ringo Starr. "Back Off Boogaloo." Apple. 1972.
Thunderclap Newman. Hollywood Dream. MCA. 1973.
Paul McCartney. Band on the Run. Apple. 1973.
Ringo Starr. Ringo. Capitol. 1973.
Kiki Dee. "I've Got the Music in Me." Rocket. 1974.
Paul McCartney. Venus and Mars. Capitol. 1975.
Roxy Music. Siren. Atco. 1975.
Faces. Snakes and Ladders. Warner Bros. 1976.
The Rutles. All You Need is Cash. Warner Bros. 1978.
Bonnie, Delaney, Gregg
Here, then, are the greatest recordings made either directly by, or tangentially connected to, that most glorious of pop duos, Delaney and Bonnie (and Friends).
Joe Cocker. Mad Dogs and Englishmen. A&M. 1970.
While I would give the movie of which this album is the purported concert soundtrack the worst of all possible ratings, the music itself is quite exciting stuff. Cocker was an interpreter of other’s songs, and his versions definitely go through the processor of Ray Charles on an eight ball, but there’s no arguing with his selections. Represented are the Rolling Stones, Big Joe Turner, Julie Driscoll, Leonard Cohen, Dave Mason, Ray Charles, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, the Box Tops, and even his musical director Leon Russell. While it remains annoying that most of the Friends who were touring with Delaney and Bonnie deserted that couple to hook up with gyrating Joe, the fact is that for such a horribly big band, they were very tight, and so songs like "Feelin' Alright," "The Letter," "Bathroom Window" and especially "Cry Me a River" could certainly be used as arguments in favor of drug abuse in the right minds. All of the 729 million smiling lunatics who appear on this album make some contribution, mostly as a backing chorus. That’s what gives the album punch. The glorious Ray Charles-style call and response is everywhere, but it teeters constantly, creating a double tension because you expect each song to break down at any second--although none of them do. But subsequent recordings were so bad that maybe such rollicking self abuse insures a limited artistic span.
Delaney and Bonnie. "Free the People" and "Only You Know and I Know." Atco 1970.
Delaney and Bonnie. "Free the People" and "Only You Know and I Know." Atco 1970.
Duets aren’t always horrible. Oh, I know you’ve had to endure the great Dolly Parton with the obnoxious Kenny Rogers, the histrionic Cher with the estimable Sonny, and Patti Smith with Leon Russell--naw, I just made that one up--but that doesn’t mean that sometimes the man+woman sound isn’t magnificent. With Delaney and Bonnie, it was heaven. Each had enough understanding and experience in the fundamentals (Bonnie had been a back-up singer for Aretha, among others, while Delaney had developed pop-rock appreciation by playing with the decidedly non-rock Shindogs) to work with the other’s strengths and around his or her weaknesses. These two singles were studio versions of the songs that most are more familiar with in a live context. "Only You Know" is brown-eyed rock’n’roll, while "Free the People" sounds like a drunk falling down the fire escape, but doing so musically. Both of these songs represented a step up for the duo from their Elektra-era love songs (of which "Never Ending Song of Love" was typical), most of which boasted a decided lack of production sophistication and nearly minimalistic song construction. These two tracks, however, asserted social as well as personal commitment through the time-honored process of rocking out.
Dave Mason. "Only You Know and I Know." Atlantic. 1970.
Dave Mason. "Only You Know and I Know." Atlantic. 1970.
This former Traffic guitarist, solo artist and occasional record producer is perhaps better known for his late-Seventies easy listening hit, "We Just Disagree," a song that would never make any connection to his earlier work. "Only You Know and I Know" is not only a great song; Mason's performance lurks only a notch or two beneath the rendition in the preceeding listing. His guitar work is arguably sharper and certainly more strident than Delaney's. The more limited vocal Mason offers balances the instrumentation smack dab in the supine position.
Delaney and Bonnie On Tour. Atco. 1970.
Delaney and Bonnie On Tour. Atco. 1970.
Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett met in Los Angeles and seven days later married in a bowling alley. Over the next five years they would release four charming and invigorating albums of updated rock ‘n’ roll wedged between soul music on the left and country on the right. This perfect progression of their musical acculturation bubbled up from unlikely pre-matrimonial experiences. Delaney worked as a Mississippi sideman for Elvis Presley before tuning up on TV’s Shindig (he played guitar in the house band, The Shindogs). Bonnie’s singing career began at age fifteen when she belted back-up for the likes of Count Basie and Dexter Gordon. She also gained recognition as the first white member of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes. Together the Bramletts found a strength that was greater, yet lighter, than the sum of their parts. Others heard it too. Eric Clapton invited the duo to be the opening act on the tour for Blind Faith. By the time that tour was over, Delaney and Bonnie headlined. The associations made on the tour linked together a sound and style quite popular in the early 1970’s. After dissolving Blind Faith, Clapton formed Derek & the Dominos, which included bassist Carl Radle, who became part of the Friends who would support D&B on On Tour. This association also introduced the pair to Duane Allman and George Harrison--the former played slide guitar on this album’s "Poor Elijah," the latter let Delaney play on "Apple Jam" (from All Things Must Pass). And by the time the tour from which this album came was over, most of the 'Friends' who played, sang and gave the sound such vibrancy, abruptly departed to tour with Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. That was bad news for Mr. and Mrs. Bramlett. The good news for the public was that many popular performers had absorbed the Delaney and Bonnie feel, yielding music which sprinkled down through a bleak winter the warm sensations of intoxicated butterflies, rejuvenated Lazarus, and the St. Vitus Dance shaking with the righteousness of "Soul Train" and the tradition of the "Grand Ole Opry." You can hear all this and more on the Allman’s Live at Fillmore East, Eric Clapton’s first solo album, Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, the aforementioned Cocker LP, and certainly On Tour conjures the same sensations.
Derek and the Dominos. Layla. RSO. 1970.
Eric Clapton playing electric diving to the center of the earth guitar, Bobby Whitlock stretching elastic keyboards, Jim Gordon pounding cascading lava drums, Carl Radle churning undersea bass, and Duane Allman melting overdubbed electric and slide guitar: producer Tom Dowd layered these individual yet unified performances like shifting levels of total agony. If Eric Clapton had never been with any of his previous groups, if Duane Allman had been an only child, and if the other session players had done nothing before or after recording this LP, their names would still live forever as the temporary purveyors of the greatest of all living rock and suicide blues albums. And while biography is usually superfluous, here it matters. Eric Clapton and George Harrison had been friends for years, a fact that benefited both artistically. A downside attacked these two men when Clapton fell in love with Harrison’s wife, Patti Boyd. This album’s centerpiece and title track begins like a deranged "Batman Theme," pleading for the removal of the five-prong fish hook embedded in the singer’s heart. Just as riveting and arguably as cathartic is their version of Buddy Myles’ (and Freddy King’s) "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" ("even though she belongs to your very best friend"), its ironic links to Clapton’s friend Harrison being lost on no one who had access to the current issue of any pop music magazine of the day. If music really possesses cathartic potential, it must’ve taken an album this powerful to woo the young Ms. Boyd. Friend Harrison took his wife’s departure in stride, saying at least she was with someone he liked and admired. Maybe George simply couldn’t argue with a declaration this manifest.
George Harrison. All Things Must Pass. Apple. 1970.
George Harrison. All Things Must Pass. Apple. 1970.
Dave Marsh called this recording a monumental album that makes a nice signpost for the Seventies, and he was right. After this one extended moment of glory (which featured incredible playing by Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and Eric Clapton), lonesome George saw his commercial career drop notch by notch, from concerts for starving people, to half-baked politico-religious noodlings, through inspired songs about dead friends. He finally tired of public indifference to his oft-threatened retirement and --sproing!--created his best work in years, Cloud Nine, then turned right around and made his best songs in years with the Traveling Wilburys. As far as this album goes, All Things Must Pass has a calming effect on laboratory mice, although "Wah-Wah" and "Apple Scruffs" retain some of the magic from his days with the Beatles. Far and away the best songs on the recording are on the often condemned third "bonus" disc, which was actually nothing more than five heavily edited jam sessions. There, instead of the overly polished production (courtesy of Phil Spector), we get Raw George, wailing away with his friends and neighbors where everyone is clearly having a great time escaping the rather heavy-handed philosophizing that preceded it.
Eric Clapton. Eric Clapton. Polydor. 1970.
In the same way that Layla reached transcendence through its weight, Eric Clapton transcended through a spiritual levity. In the same way that the political and social explosions of the Fifties and Sixties resonated real Art through Seventies cinema, the excitement and freedom of the previous decades shook out a tempered discipline--at least in the early 1970's--of which this album is perhaps the most striking example. After The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, et al., and their concomitant excesses, Eric Clapton then as now possesses confidence, as if it were the first time Clapton had relaxed in his entire life. With guitar, songwriting and production assistance from Delaney, the core of the Derek and the Dominos musical line-up, and the first real sense of commaraderie he'd known in years, Clapton popped out the poppiest album of his career, one that even managed a great Top Forty single with a cover of J. J. Cale's "After Midnight."
Leon Russell. Leon Russell. Shelter. 1970.
Leon Russell. Leon Russell. Shelter. 1970.
As the prime mover behind the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour (and consequently the driving force in relocating the core of the Friends who backed the Bramletts), Leon Russell's career appeared to be ripe for a massive solo excursion. And this solo effort--which was about as solo as any of the other recordings here, since it featured two Beatles, a pair of Rolling Stones, a former Yardbird, most of the Mad Dogs and about two dozen backing singers of varying renown--was powerful enough to permanently enshrine the idea that Russell was a major talent. His prematurely silver hair, Oklahoma inflections, train whistle voice, and tight yet unpredictable arrangements all merged on this recording and wafted down through our depleted lungs like fresh air in a coal mine. While "Prince of Peace" and "Pisces Apple Lady" suffer somewhat from the "cosmic consciousness" that would mar much of the singer's later work, "Give Peace a Chance" (not a cover of the Lennon song), "Delta Lady," and particularly "I Put a Spell on You" (not a cover of the Hawkins song) retain their power to this day.
Delaney & Bonnie. To Bonnie From Delaney. Atco. 1970.
Delaney & Bonnie. To Bonnie From Delaney. Atco. 1970.
After a pair of nice (as in merely nice) albums for Elektra, this dynamic duo switched to the preeminent soul label, Atlantic, where they'd always belonged in the first place. With at least two eyes searching for pop success, and the disappointing sales of their earlier work (their only hit to this point had been "Never Ending Song of Love," which was, well, uh, nice), D&B mustered the frustration, inspiration and intelligence to blend their R&B and soul roots and evolve their past into the strongest set of pop songs recorded by mortals, at least within a month or two of this album's release. In addition to the aforementioned "Free the People"--a minor hit--To Bonnie From Delaney is a virtual update of the best sounds of the previous fifteen years. From the Gospel glory of "Lay Down My Burden" and the early live wire mania of "Miss Ann" (featuring piano by Little Richard himself), to the strong originals like "Hard Luck and Troubles," "They Call It Rock & Roll Music," and "Living on the Open Road," the album could hardly have missed. 'Course, it didn't hurt that prime soul and blues pros like Duane Allman and King Curtis were also on hand to fill out the sound.
The Allman Brothers Band. Allman Brothers Live At Fillmore East. Capricorn. 1971.
The Allman Brothers Band. Allman Brothers Live At Fillmore East. Capricorn. 1971.
Many of us who suffer a terminal fascination about such things have claimed that the honor of best in-concert recording rightfully belongs to Live At Fillmore East. One consequence of researching the axis of D&B is that we can now name at least two other contenders for that title. Nevertheless, this is the best live recording by a band whose subsequent work failed to live up to the expectations generated by one specific recording. The improvisational components to this album are a lot like the best post bop jazz sessions of John Coltrane or Miles Davis. Artistic success only exists when such improvisation reveals an inherent respect among the players. While no one crowds anyone during the solos, no one leaves the stage for a smoke break, either. When one musician senses the moment for his contribution arriving, the others recognize the same instant for what it is, and, rather than battle it out, they support the soloist. That’s because a community of blues is at the root of all these songs, and for a bunch of southern longhairs, this album was a wave as deep as it was tall. The only thing that's truly rock ‘n’ roll about Live At Fillmore East is the obvious amplification, a facet that isn’t lost when you play it loud at home. With Gregg Allman on keyboards and vocals, brother Duane on killer slide, drums by both Butch Trucks and Jai Johanson, plus bassist Berry Oakley and Dickey Betts on guitar, southern rock was reinvented by bluesing down the rhythm and inserting what would come to be thought of as boogie (in the hands of lesser talents). With the loss of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley in separate motorcycle fatalities, it became clear that the remainder of the Allmans accepted the role of practitioners rather than continuing to aspire as innovators.
Joe Cocker. "Feelin' Alright." A&M. 1972.
Joe Cocker. "Feelin' Alright." A&M. 1972.
We never had all that much use for this song until years later when we heard it sung by Lulu. Suddenly we were able to make out the words. At that point we got it: even though Dave Mason wrote the song, this was always a Cocker tune, the last big body spasm that predicts the hastening of his performance demise. Who are we to reject such prescience? After all, who could have predicted Cocker's artistic demise better than the man himself as he sang: "Don't you get too lost/In all I say/...I can't get straight/So I guess I'm here to stay/'Til someone comes along/To take my place/With a different name/And a different face."
Leon Russell. "Tightrope." Shelter. 1972.
Leon Russell. "Tightrope." Shelter. 1972.
What’s good about this song is the combination Bohemia-amusement park melody and the fact that Leon Russell sounds almost exactly like Dr. John the Night Tripper. What's embarrassing lo these many years is the image of Russell on the cover of his album Carney with clown make-up, the ugliest shirt ever made, and a dingy dressing room right behind him. After recording a few good albums with the Shelter People, playing on The Concert for Bangla Desh, and recording the Top Forty single "Watching the River Flow" with Bob Dylan, Russell thought he was invincible. He wasn't. But this song captures the ambience of its title as well as any song ever recorded. It also made for a gentle end to the time when Del and Bon wielded influence on pop radio.
Duane Allman. Anthology. Polydor. 1972.
Duane Allman. Anthology. Polydor. 1972.
While most anthologies suffer from a certain lack of substance, this, the first of two retrospectives to successfully encapsulalize Duane's status as the premier white Southern blues aficiando, locks horns with the essence of pain and never lets up. Beginning with a devastating medley of B. B. King numbers recorded with an early incarnation of the Allman Brothers (back then they were called The Hour Glass, and before that, the Allman Joys), this two disc set reinvents slap back soul with Wilson Pickett's version of "Hey Jude" and Aretha Franklin's interpretation of the indecipherable "The Weight." Of course, the album would be worth owning if it contained nothing but Duane's work with the Allman Brothers. But here we are blessed with his steaming slide work on Boz Scagg's "Loan Me a Dime" (later popularized by Fenton Robinson) and the essential "Layla." It's tempting to wonder how any one man could devlopment, much less convey, such a wide girth of style in less than three years of professional recording. But with talent like this all around him, the real question is: how could he not?
Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. D&B Together. CBS. 1972.
Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. D&B Together. CBS. 1972.
If not quite the end of an era, this album certainly served as the culmination of a musical relationship, but without the eerie pseudo-implications of Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights. Unfairly dismissed as a bad idea gone wrong, D&B Together is a good album that suffers only from not being a great one. The studio version of "Only You Know and I Know" is here, as are two of Bonnie's best signature pieces, the Gospel call out "Wade in the River Jordan" and "Groupie," which most people know better either from the Rita Coolidge and/or Carpenters version called "Superstar."
While neither Delaney nor Bonnie ever quite captured the commercial or critical majesty their wedded bliss produced, both have continued to record and perform right on into the new millenium, and even appeared together in a rare collaboration as recently as March, 2003. Bonnie's most recent album is called I'm Still the Same, and Delaney's is Sweet Inspiration.
While neither Delaney nor Bonnie ever quite captured the commercial or critical majesty their wedded bliss produced, both have continued to record and perform right on into the new millenium, and even appeared together in a rare collaboration as recently as March, 2003. Bonnie's most recent album is called I'm Still the Same, and Delaney's is Sweet Inspiration.
C&W
Contemporary rock music denies through its attitude, format and style the influence of Country and Western music. This denial leads directly to a recreation of Contemporary Country, a style far more selective in its musical acculturation than mid-Sixties through mid-Seventies C&W could afford. Travis Tritt, to cite an easy example, may model himself after the more overblown aspects of Elvis Presley, but he absorbs none of the vocal nuances or unintentional humility that Presley himself borrowed from --among others--Bill Monroe. No value judgment is implied in this observation. Just as current hip hop and hard rock aspire to spring from an origin that never existed, so Contemporary Country yearns to display a freshness that owes nothing other than to the image of whichever soul-patch sporting ten-gallon hat-wearing original has sped up Hank Williams songs to make them unrecognizable. The point is that while new country music strives to negate its heritage, C&W made little if any effort to deny its past. This fact does not make one period's music inherently better than the other. It does, however, make an unmistakable distinction between the two styles of country.
Bill Doggett. "Honky Tonk." King. 1956.
Ernest Tubb. "I'm Walking the Floor Over You." Decca. 1956.
Dave Dudley. "Six Days on the Road." Golden Wing. 1963.
Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire. Columbia. 1963.
Sandy Posey. "Born a Woman." MGM. 1966.
Loretta Lynn. Loretta Lynn's Greatest Hits. MCA. 1968.
Johnny Cash. At Folsom Prison. Columbia. 1968.
By giving hope and happiness to the incarcerated multitudes at Folsom through prison songs rife with images of the American bedrock of lovers, mothers, thieves and friendship, Cash galvanizes faith that those prison walls may ignite, freeing the confined spirits housed in their mortal shells. Even the corn-pone humor of "Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog," or the over-inflated metaphors elevate from the heat, he reawakens the pain that daily survival has numbed, leading captive and captor to recognize the tremendous power the many hold against the few ("I Got Stripes," "Busted," and of course "Folsom Prison Blues.).When the warden makes his appearance, he sounds just as frightened as the prisoners sound confident.
And Cash is clearly loving it.
Ray Stevens. "Mr. Businessman." Monument. 1968.
Charlie Rich. The Fabulous Charlie Rich. Epic. 1969.
Anne Murray. "Snowbird." Capitol. 1970.
Michael Nesmith and the First National Band. "Joanne." RCA. 1970.
Joe South. Greatest Hits. Capitol. 1970.
Most of the other material here was already or soon became hits for others. Deep Purple already charted with a scary rendition of "Hush," and Lynn Anderson sweetened up "Rose Garden," both of which are at a minimum fascinatingly portrayed by South. The only thing missing--and it's easy to understand why--is "Yo-Yo," a song recorded by the Osmond Brothers.
Johnny Cash. "What is Truth?" Columbia. 1970.
Ray Charles. "Don't Change On Me." ABC-Paramount. 1971.
Sammi Smith. "Help Me Make it Through the Night." Capitol. 1971.
B.J. Thomas. "No Love At All." Sceptor. 1972.
Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. "Hot Rod Lincoln." MCA. 1972.
Donna Fargo. "Funny Face." MCA. 1972.
Bill Monroe. Bean Blossom. MCA. 1973.
Loudon Wainwright III. "Dead Skunk." Columbia. 1973.
Dolly Parton. The Best of Dolly Parton. RCA. 1975.
Tanya Tucker. Tanya Tucker's Greatest Hits. Columbia. 1975.
George Jones. The Battle. Epic. 1976.
The Kendalls. "Heaven's Just a Sin Away." Ovation. 1977.
Emmylou Harris. Profile. Reprise. 1978.
Flatt and Scruggs. Don't Get Above Your Raisin'. Rounder. 1978.
Lone Justice. Lone Justice. Geffen. 1985.
Maria McKee and her musical boyfriends appeared in the mid-1980s in a worthy attempt to fill a perceived void in the cowpunk industry. Mike Campbell wrote their best song, "Ways to be Wicked," a great song even if it does make some people imagine what Tom Petty would sound like if he were a woman.
Plus, the songs it would be a shame to omit even though the author hasn't anything revelatory to say about them, which is fine since these songs are quite capable of speaking for themselves.
The Carter Family: No Depression in Heaven
Jimmie Rodgers: Blue Yodel.
Jimmie Rodgers: Long Tall Mama Blues
Jimmie Rodgers: California Blues
Jimmie Rodgers: Yodeling My Way Back Home
Hank Williams: I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.
Hank Williams: Alone and Forsaken
Hank Williams: Ramblin Man
Hank Williams: Angel of Death
Hank Williams: Cold Cold Heart
Carl Perkins: Big Bad Blues
Carl Perkins: Boppin the Blues
Carl Perkins: Dixie Fried
Carl Perkins: Put Your Cat Clothes On
Warren Smith: Black Jack David
Warren Smith: Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache
Warren Smith: Ubangi Stomp
Dolly Parton: Bloody Bones and Scratchy Eyes
Dolly Parton: My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy
Bill Monroe: Blue Moon of Kentucky
Leadbelly: Bourgeois Blues
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys: Brain Cloudy Blues
Jerry Lee Lewis: Deep Elem Blues
Charlie Rich: Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave
Charlie Rich: Down and Out
Charlie Rich: Everything I Do is Wrong
The Handsome Family: The Giant of Illinois
Billy Lee Riley: Flying Saucer Rock and Roll
Billy Lee Riley: Red Hot
Chuck Willis: I Feel So Bad
Eddy Arnold: I'll Hold You in My Heart
Conway Twitty: It's Only Make Believe
Rosanne Cash: Black Cadillac
The opportunity for sub-genre overlap is huge. That is one of the things that's so screwed up about modern radio. While its programming can and should frequently overlap, it seldom does. Even in this section of The Playlist, I purposefully omit numerous and obvious selections such as Live at Fillmore East and Layla not because they aren't blues--which they are--but because they fit better in some other section. The selections in this chapter appear here because their very essence is nothing else so much as it is the blues. That is the case because outside technical parameters, the blues hasn't changed much over the last fifty or more years. Die hard fans of Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jeff Healey may react violently to such an assertion, but go to a show at the nearest blues club in your town, or listen to National Public Radio some Sunday evening (while you still can) and then play any of these albums. The essence maintains continuity. Oh yeah. And you can dance your brains out if you like.
Big Joe Turner. The Best of Joe Turner. Atlantic. 1963.
Kansas City's Joe Turner used his considerable physical and vocal presence to yalp out a forcefully good-natured uptempo jump blues conversion into a saxophone-dominated style of early disciplined rock and roll. In at least half of these songs, the words sound as if they are running away from the singer out of a sense of self-preservation. In the other half, the words sound too stunned to flee. "Shake, Rattle and Roll" is rife with classic bizarre images, such as a one-eyed cat peekin' in a seafood store and the sun shining through a woman's dress. "Flip, Flop and Fly" cartwheels--but wait. Let's not turn this into one of those predictable song-by-song analyses. Turner desrves better. He certainly deserves better than being referred to as a big fat fuck. Turner pumped, pulled, kicked and cracked up all over the place--no restraint, nothing held in reserve. Just gusto deluxe leaping off the pyramid with keyboards strapped to his waist and a shout of jubilation rolling behind his eyes.
Holwin' Wolf. The Real Folk Blues. Chess. 1966.
Listen to "Killing Floor," please. Chester Burnett ws forty-one when Sun Records impresario Sam Phillips first heard him on Memphis' KWEM reading farm reports and commercials in between his blues numbers. Middle-age suited Wolf just fine, as The Original Sun Recordings amply prove. Fourteen years later he had already established himself with Chicago's Chess label. In no sense a "best of," this collection of very specific numbers ("Tail Dragger," "Built for Comfort," "The Natchez Burning") recorded between 1956 and 1964 reinvents blues songs that were never precisely folk at all. The real folk referenced in the title means real people, not any particular variant of music. And real people, this music demands, suffer from the vagaries and vicissitudes of love and lust. Hubert Sumlin's electric guitar, Willie Dixon's piano and Wolf's harp and howl lay down testimonial allocutions clear, clean, honest and scathing as radiator heat.
Holwin' Wolf. More Real Folk Blues. Chess. 1967.
Listen to "Devil Got My Woman, please. While this collection hit the stands a year after its predecessor, the songs were recorded three years earlier, which may explain why theu sound so different. Just a shade more acoustic and a fraction more superficially subdued, their intensity vibrates like a radioactive statue brought to life ("No Place to Go," "Rockin' Daddy"). What they share with the previous album is the thrust involved in grasping to the pain of loss even in the best of times because the scars never fade.
Skip James. Devil Got My Woman. Vanguard. 1968.
After everything I had heard about Skip James, I expected his albums to vibrate and moan down the house. But this, his greatest work, shares a common thread in imploding rather than blowing up. While there are some purposefully absurd structures here, the real blow comes from the inner tension, the fragile singing, and the strain James creates between what has happened and what will. The song titles ("Devil Got My Woman," "Worried Blues," "Sickbed Blues") are the first clue that this will not be a happy experience. Once the songs begin, you know for sure. By the time it's over, you won't know whether to kill yourself or play the album over again, just to make sure. James pops in from just around the corner, self-absorbed like an autistic, brandishing nothing but the ability to transform every fear you've ever known into a child's joke. It is also the greatest blues album ever made.
John Lee Hooker. The Very Best of John Lee Hooker. Buddah. 1969.
It would seem that John lee Hooker cared less for the traditions of the blues than he did for the way his abbreviated form of music described the way he felt while composing these songs. For proof, check out "Dimples," "Crawlin' Kingsnake," "Boom Boom". Hooker had shorter, choppier lines and highly accentuated rhythms that were in many ways far more complicated than his predecessors and contemporaries in the twelve bar tradition. In fact, his songs were truer to the rhythms of everyday Detroit speech than Chicago bluesmen's were of windy city patois. All this made him a great source for every young wannabe from Big Bear Hite to Eric Burdon. But even before you get to seeking out who he influenced, it is important to recognize that these songs are good in and of themselves, though not for the faint of heart.
Captain Beefheart. Trout Mask Replica. Reprise. 1970.
If there were ever an album about which it was eternally reasonable to say, "This is not for everyone," then this is most certainly that album. Indeed, it may seem odd to even find this listing here in the blues section, if at all. But if time and space truly are, as I believe, infinite continuums, then it is possible to place Beefheart's album anywhere, and no matter where it is placed, it does not quite fit. Time changes had not yet been established because consistency did not yet exist. And so it isn't important that the rhythms of songs like "China Pig" are impossible to tap out with your pencil on your desk. It isn't important that the singing on "Orange Claw Hammer" sounds more like a wild animal than that of a human being. It isn't even exactly important that the lyrics of "The Blimp" are a cross between dada poetry and the pain scrawling of imprisoned Neanderthals. What is important is that after a few admittedly challenging attempts at understanding this music, the listener may be able to pretend to have never heard pop songs before and imagine numbers like "Hair Pie: Bake 1" not so much as a rejection of conventional sound as an immersion in a lyrical and musical language of its own. In other words, if you can forget anything you've heard before and think of this as the first music, then and only then are you ready to savor and carefully digest the Captain's creation. That creation is the assaulting rage of a child who looks back, knowing he was right, despite being wronged. It is a world of its own, a world that others have felt, and a world that posits happiness next to sour psychology.
Etta James. Peaches. Chess. 1971.
Etta James has performed songs made famous by Bo Diddley ("W-O-M-A-N"), Randy Newman ("God's Song"), Otis Redding, The Eagles, and even Alice Cooper. For any one--much less a black, blode-haired woman--to be able to do this without seeming funny is a major event. To capture the blues essence of such songs, making and remaking them as good or better than the originals, is tantamount to glory. And while most of her recordings have at least two excellent versions to recommend them, this is the only one in the last thirty-odd years that can boast every song a winner.
B. B. King. Live at the Cook County Jail. ABC. 1971.
This album answers the question: "How Blue Can You Get?" This is the hard ass blues equivalent of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison LP. Frightening, compelling, revelatory, riot inspiring, and potentially deadly.
Janis Joplin. "Me and Bobby McGee." Columbia. 1971.
Of all the great singers of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was most mismatched to the musicians at her disposal. She left Port Arthur to join Big Brother and the Holding Company in time to play the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and to record Cheap Thrills with a band legendary for their concert work and horrendous on their recordings. Realizing that they were in the recording business, Elektra's Paul Rothchild tried to lure Janis sans band to his label. Typical of the singer's judgment, she declined and the next album was released without producer John Simon's name on it. Going from bad to worse, Joplin joined the Kosmic Blues Band in late 1968 and though the public was by now hooked on her feelings, j\Janis herself was high on believing in nasty habits like drinking too much and dabbling with heroin the way a more innocent generation had dabbled with mutilating Barbie dolls. Her last group, The Full Tilt Boogie band, finally had what it took to shake it up baby, which is why her posthumously-released Pearl is her best work despite the fact that be then her own talents had been worn away by substance abuse. By October 1970, she was dead from an overdose.
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. San Antonio Ballbuster. Red Lightnin'. 1975.
As the lovely and brilliant Elizabeth Fritze reminded me, it was Shakespeare who wrote, in The Merchant of Venice, "The quality of Mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. Upon the place beneath it is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." That moving sentiment reminds me of Clarence Brown. The multi-instrumentalist and blues stylist known affectionately as Gatemouth has been blessed and blesses in return with one significant album. Here you will hear a squawking guitar that sounds as if somebody crumpled up a saxophone and stuffed it in the hole to make the instrument sound like a newspaper. These songs ("Okie Dokie Stomp," "Win with me Baby," "Boogie Uproar") have a loud and grittiness that adds at least one other dimension. "Just Before Dawn" is almost rock, but all of this has a kick and punch that id far more than just a standard blues moan.
Elmore James. One Way Out. Charly. 1980.
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Of all the Mississippi kids who came up the famous Highway 61 to Chicago, looking to exhale what they'd breathed in from Robert Johnson and others of the Delta, Elmore James was the greatest slide guitarist. It wasn't merely the distortion he let loose or the possessed vocals. Elmore James had so much emotional passion when he played that most other singers and guitarists looked like poseurs by comparison. Even on such apparently light dance numbers as "Shake Your Moneymaker," James played as tough as he did on the presumably more serious "The Sky is Crying." Robert Johnson may have been the King of the Delta Blues singers, but Elmore was the King of the Chicago Blues guitarists. The best of the songs he recorded between 1952 and his death in 1963 are offered here.
Joe Williams: Baby Please Don't Go
Irma Thomas: Backwater Blues
Blind Lemon Jefferson: Bed Springs Blues
Jimmy Reed: Big Boss Man
James Cotton: Cotton Crop Blues
Robert Johnson: Crossroad
Dion: Crossroads
Buckwheat Zydeco: Crying in the Streets
Howlin Wolf: Down in the Bottom
Muddy Waters: Feel Like Going Home
Robert Johnson: Four until Late
Robert Johnson: Hellhound on my Trail
Howlin Wolf: House Rockin Boogie
Howlin Wolf: How Many More Years
Robert Johnson: If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day
Irma Thomas: It's Raining
Robert Johnson: Last Fair Deal Gone Down
Robert Johnson: Love in Vain
Robert Johnson: Me and the Devil Blues
Smiley Lewis: One Night of Sin
Robert Johnson: Phonograph Blues
Robert Johnson: Stop Breaking Down Blues
The Rolling Stones: Stop Breaking Down
White Stripes: Stop Breaking Down
Dion: Travelin Riverside Blues
Big Joe Turner. The Best of Joe Turner. Atlantic. 1963.
Holwin' Wolf. The Real Folk Blues. Chess. 1966.
Holwin' Wolf. More Real Folk Blues. Chess. 1967.
Skip James. Devil Got My Woman. Vanguard. 1968.
John Lee Hooker. The Very Best of John Lee Hooker. Buddah. 1969.
Captain Beefheart. Trout Mask Replica. Reprise. 1970.
Etta James. Peaches. Chess. 1971.
B. B. King. Live at the Cook County Jail. ABC. 1971.
Janis Joplin. "Me and Bobby McGee." Columbia. 1971.
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. San Antonio Ballbuster. Red Lightnin'. 1975.
Elmore James. One Way Out. Charly. 1980.
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In a land so vast that Walt Whitman could entertain in a barn, there are always pockets of salvation waiting to be explored. One such has been the Mississippi Delta, just east of where Highway 61 curved down from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and just west of Mobile. Hundreds of sons and grandsons of plantation slaves picked up guitars and milked a rapturous country blues from their own throats.
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| Son House |
One of the first of these to record was Tommy Johnson, whose "Canned Heat Blues" and "Maggie Campbell Blues" stirred up the Delta. Tommy J's first recordings were in 1928, but Charley Patton--who did not record until the following year--is usually considered the founder of Delta blues, less because he sounded good--which he did--than because of his attitude. He was the kind of guy who scared white people. Beaten mean by his preacher daddy, Charley was good looking and knew it. He took on as many women as he could and beat his share as well, as befits a smooth talking lazy illiterate headed for Calvary with a guitar instead of a cross. Patton arranged for the first recording sessions of another key figure in Mississippi blues, a man named Son House.
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| Charley Patton |
A stunningly soulful singer in his own right, Son House told an interesting story about a man whose connection to Delta music was more gripping than could be conveyed by the word "founder." A very young Robert Johnson was hanging around the veteran players. House was showing off his ringing open-tuned bottleneck guitar style (check out "Death Letter Blues") when Robert asked the men how it was that they played so well. The vets scared the kid off and never expected to hear from him again. The story goes that Johnson ran all the way home to his childhood in Hazelhurst where he met a creature named Ike Zinneman who claimed to have learned guitar while visiting graveyards at midnight. Zinneman taught Johnson how to play. When the kid came back to play for the Delta champs, even the swamp frogs fell silent. Everyone understood an unsavory alliance had been formed with something very dark and everyone agreed that Robert Johnson was the king. Thirty-three songs on two albums, both called King of the Delta Blues Singers, both recorded between 1935 and 1937, at a time when Mississippi had first caught wind of the Crash of '29, both among the most eerie, magical and beautiful things ever imagined: and yet the power of the songs' twisted salvation is never mentioned by the producers of white boy art of the time, not even by great writers such as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or even Faulkner, who might have been writing about Johnson when he said, "You run without moving from a terror in which you cannot believe toward a safety in which you have no faith."
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| Robert Johnson |
During the Great Depression, music did not sound effected by the hard times. It sounded as if it was hard times. It sounded like someone smashing his head into granite walls at 185 mph as far back as the early 1920s, before country music even existed. There was, of course, Uncle Dave Macon. The former Teamster used to banjo his songs in a funny hat, dressed up in blue jeans, singing "Carve That Possum," "Fox and Hounds," or "Way Down the Old Plank Road," the latter containing an invitation to the audience to kill themselves. With over 200 happy-go-psychotic songs to his credit, he was a staple of radio's "Grand Ole Opry" for twenty-seven years.
As if to prove in advance that, yes, even cowgirls do get the blues, there was Ma Rainey, who, according to Bob Dylan, along with Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll. More certain is that with the wildly sinning pianist Georgia Tom Dorsey and guitar-bowler Tampa Red, Ma recorded one of the earliest versions of the Stagger Lee tale, this one dated 1925 and called "Stack O' Lee Blues." But her most famous song was "See See Rider," a song done at one time or another by most everyone, but especially by Chuck Willis, Mitch Ryder, and The Animals. You can hear Big Memphis Ma in between the rainfall on the roof of the suicide ward listening to Bessie Smith. Between 1923 and 1933, when Smith's recordings were made, her aim was clearly more broad than the blues singer genre could hold. For this reason, along with the specif caliber of accompanists she chose, her work is just as often found in jazz listings as blues.
It's doubtful anyone except four-eyed south-paw musicologists would have known who any of these people were had not British bands like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds reintroduced the styles and in some cases the same actual songs back to American audiences who were about as familiar with people such as Robert Johnson in the early 1960s as people such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson were when Johnson was still alive. Still, perhaps when one is Mick and Keith and it is the 1960s and directors such as Jean Luc Godard are making movies about you, it isn't necessary to give credit--much less royalties--to Gospel or blues performers whose work you admittedly perform better than they did. The story of "The Prodigal Son," for example, is one of the most frustrating in the Bible. A man has two sons. The younger becomes impatient and tells Dad he wants his inheritance before the old man kicks off. Upon receipt of same, the kid turns the land into cash and heads for Vegas to blow it all all cocaine, show girls and slots. Well, Pop and the older brother are working their brains out when one fine day the kid returns penniless and hungry, stinking of gin, dried lipstick on his collar, toothily grinning, "I'm back!" The brother says he knew it would happen, but the old man drops everything, slaughters the fatted calf and tosses back some imported Israeli whiskey he'd been saving just for such an occasion. The responsible son is horrified. After all, the old guy never gave a party to celebrate being responsible. It is not much of a stretch to see the spoiled industrialists who squandered everything and then expected to be welcomed back through the loving arms of the New Deal. Would the government respond by killing the calf? Or would the urbane bankers return to their cities and find rank strangers?
And so as we end another broadcast day, we'd like to say that here are quite a few more songs that didn't quite fit in anywhere else, mostly because they were just too good. There is a sense to their order of appearance, although I don't remember at the moment precisely what that is.
Irma Thomas: Backwater Blues
Blind Lemon Jefferson: Bed Springs Blues
Jimmy Reed: Big Boss Man
James Cotton: Cotton Crop Blues
Robert Johnson: Crossroad
Dion: Crossroads
Buckwheat Zydeco: Crying in the Streets
Howlin Wolf: Down in the Bottom
Muddy Waters: Feel Like Going Home
Robert Johnson: Four until Late
Robert Johnson: Hellhound on my Trail
Howlin Wolf: House Rockin Boogie
Howlin Wolf: How Many More Years
Robert Johnson: If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day
Irma Thomas: It's Raining
Robert Johnson: Last Fair Deal Gone Down
Robert Johnson: Love in Vain
Robert Johnson: Me and the Devil Blues
Smiley Lewis: One Night of Sin
Robert Johnson: Phonograph Blues
Robert Johnson: Stop Breaking Down Blues
The Rolling Stones: Stop Breaking Down
White Stripes: Stop Breaking Down
Dion: Travelin Riverside Blues
Bubblegum music may be the ultimate in manufactured swill, but if you sweeten up the chunks and sanitize the singing beyond all recognition, about one time out of a hundred something infuriatingly infectious and horrendously hook-laden will embed itself in the consciousness of a nation, or at least a neighborhood. And so bubblegum was a bastion of innocence, a temporary hideaway for pre-teen boppers scared off by the heaviness of Steppenwolf. The best of it did in fact cause cavities in lab mice, but still made a period of time when intense youth was mandated a whole lot more tolerable.
The Monkees. More of the Monkees. Colgems. 1967.
A&R man and musical director Don Kirshner craved something very pop with enough frayed edges to appeal to a wide variety of musical tastes. He realized that ideal with this album. Dance club guitar jump sounds fall hard from the sky with the opening ka-bang of "She," a little schmaltz from Davy, a Michael Nesmith modernized dowboy pogo, a little schmaltz from Davy, a noisy and infuriating goof by Peter, "Steppin' Stone" (a song so good it was covered by the Sex Pistols), a little schmaltz from Davy, cowboy hard rock, a horrible piece of tripe by Davy, on and on, ending with another sure-fire hit called "I'm a Believer." While their TV show was a blatant and successful rip off of A Hard Day's Night, quite a few of their songs were first rate. With supporting songwriting from Nesmith, Carole King, Neil Diamond, and Boyce and Hart, they managed to record some of the most memorable songs of that artificial phase of pop.
Boyce & Hart. "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight." A&M. 1967.
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote some of The Monkees' more meorable hits, the best of which was "Last Train to Clarksville," an anti-war song of sorts. Together, they released three singles, this one being the pinnacle, a song that sounded exactly like the Monkees. Six years later they teamed up with Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones to form the forgettable Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart. Pete Tork had the best line: "I guess they didn't want any musicians in this group."
Ohio Express. "Yummy Yummy Yummy." Buddah. 1968.
In the words of the singer for the Double Bubble Trading Card Company of Philadelphia PA 19401, "The Grateful Dead just leaves me cold and Herbie Alpert makes me feel too old." That song provided a great rationale for enjoying this one, with which it shared more than a genre affiliation. At a time when so many people created extremely serious music, "Yummy" offered a pleasant reprieve. Besides, the choppy power strokes of the guitar and singer Joey Levine's nasal spits captured an attitude and feel you didn't have to be a teenybopper to enjoy.
Tommy James and the Shondells. "Mony Mony." Roulette. 1968.
Of all the bubblegum rockers to dent and damage the charts, Tommy James was the one who best captured the spirit of hopping on the floor, flinging arms from side to side and snapping whatever you happening to be chewing with manic intensity. And what diversity! He also hit with "Hanky Panky," "I Think We're Alone Now," the speed addict confessions of the vastly overrated "Crystal Blue Persuasion," the psychedelic meandering heat of "Crimson and Clover," and the goofy glory of "Mony." If someone came along today covering this wide a girth he would be banished to the Catskills for failing to be a genre artist.
Neil Diamond. "Holly Holy." UNI. 1970. "Cherry Cherry." UNI. 1973.
I'll admit that Diamond turned into such a smarmy type that it would have been quite impossible to stand to even be around him. But the brilliant pop hooks he developed working for Aldon Music and Bang Records had not yet deserted him. The merger of white Gospel solemnity in the vocal delivery with kindergarten party-time music hooks was never better than on these two Diamond gems.
Robin McNamara. "Lay a Little Lovin' on Me." Steed. 1970.
This member of the original cast of Hair had a full red mane of the stuff, which did not assist his career of singing on Jeff Barry's Steed label. This was his only real hit. The other day I played this song for my friend Marcy. After listening politely, she observed that she had never heard of that woman before. I pointed out that Robin was a guy. Her confusion may indicate something about the quality of the vocal. But none of that should detract from the perky pleasures of this bubblegum delight. After pledging varying degrees of clearly insincere dedications to his undying and desperate needs for the girl's attentions, he suddenly erupts with a surprised "Hey" and gets down to the point he'd been working toward: "Honey doggone it I'm depending upon it so lay a little loving on me."
Bobby Sherman. "Julie, Do Ya Love Me?" Metromedia. 1970.
Just how bubblegum was this guy? You used to be able to cut his singles off the back of boxes of Honey Comb cereal.
Tommy James. "Draggin' the Line." Roulette. 1970.
While I have absolutely no idea what this song means, I do know a catchy unison choir type sound when I hear it, especially one backing the greatest of all cartoon vocals. This song pre-dates the slander ecology enthusiasts would endure by about twenty years.
The Osmonds. "Yo-Yo." MGM. 1971.
This five-brother band epitomized the most unctuous and bleached-out characterists of the Jackson 5, which just goes to prove it's not that far from Ogden to Gary. Young brother Donny's voice was in the midst of changing, yielding a sound that a certain depraved kind of person finds strangely endearing. The fact is that, aside from some sadistic novelty appeal, 99% of their collective recorded output is ignobled b y the word "putrid." Their version of the song is moderately spectacular, harnessing all the positive aspects of the Jacksons and with a real band kicking out a thoroughly life-like performance.
The Sweet. "Little Willy." Bell. 1972.
Originally heralded as an early 1970s bubblegum band, singer Brian Connolly and the boys were pink and chewy and you could blow bubbles with them. They were also a Super Ball: a dangerous toy. "Barroom Blitz" was a ferocious scream and more inspiring than anything Kiss ever dreamed. "Fox on the Run" ever showed the boys had a sensitive, edgy side. The group then faded before coming back one time with "Love is Like One of the Elements on the Periodic Table," or something of that sort.
Reunion. "Life is a Rock." RCA. 1974.
Don't take a breath because the chorus kicks in before you can and that's where Joey Levine, who sang lead on any number of classic bubblegum hits drops the litany and tells the truth: "Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me."
The Monkees. More of the Monkees. Colgems. 1967.
Boyce & Hart. "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight." A&M. 1967.
Ohio Express. "Yummy Yummy Yummy." Buddah. 1968.
Tommy James and the Shondells. "Mony Mony." Roulette. 1968.
Neil Diamond. "Holly Holy." UNI. 1970. "Cherry Cherry." UNI. 1973.
Bobby Sherman. "Julie, Do Ya Love Me?" Metromedia. 1970.
Tommy James. "Draggin' the Line." Roulette. 1970.
The Osmonds. "Yo-Yo." MGM. 1971.
This five-brother band epitomized the most unctuous and bleached-out characterists of the Jackson 5, which just goes to prove it's not that far from Ogden to Gary. Young brother Donny's voice was in the midst of changing, yielding a sound that a certain depraved kind of person finds strangely endearing. The fact is that, aside from some sadistic novelty appeal, 99% of their collective recorded output is ignobled b y the word "putrid." Their version of the song is moderately spectacular, harnessing all the positive aspects of the Jacksons and with a real band kicking out a thoroughly life-like performance.
The Sweet. "Little Willy." Bell. 1972.
Reunion. "Life is a Rock." RCA. 1974.
THE PLAYLIST 28:
REGGAE! THE NEW BREED THING
Rock and reggae share a birth in rhythm and blues. Reggae's origins combine ska (which I pronounce SKAY, but which everyone else pronounces SKAW)--itself a transistor-oriented blend of electric guitar and horns shifted through a stack of Professor Longhair records--with a somewhat slower, guitar-fixated and definitely bluesier sonic ambience. Since the mid-1960s, when Desmond Dekker broke through with "Israelites," approximately twenty-nine million subgenres of reggae have surfaced: dub, dread, Gospel reggae, roots, rocksteady, mento, bluebeat, turntablism, and--one could easily argue--very early rap music. As a commercial entity in the United States, the heyday was 1973-1976, when crappy singles by Johnny Nash were actual hits. Regarded as too sophisticated for pop radio, the music's adherents invariably sought albums by Bob Marley and the Wailers as well as Peter Tosh. Little did most of us know then that some of the most powerful and exciting music of our lives had long been released by a Jamaican hipster and occasional jailbird named Toots Hibbert who, amazingly, had a fondness for both the Kingsmen and John Denver! But reggae's political razor continued to sharpen on or off the charts, as artists like Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, and especially Linton Kwesi Johnson would prove throughout the 1980s. Is reggae dead? Not as long as it remains available in your local music shop or in your memory.
Desmond Dekker. Sweet 16 Hits. Trojan. 1978.
Rude boys or "rudies" were politicized street gangs, angry bulldozers whose crimes were against society and rarely indiscriminate, as opposed to some U.S. street gangs who--as everyone has been programmed to understand them--are just a bunch of baby-killing armored-up parasites looking to do as much damage and make as much loot as possible before they die at age twenty-five. Jamaican and British rudies were tough guys with the proverbial hearts of gold. To judge based on the album covers, you'd think Desmond Dekker had been the king of the rude boys. Well, the gang kids may have indeed loved the music of the Beverly All Stars, Dekker and the Aces, but that didn't mean Dekker was one of their own. Naw, he was just a lonely kid who finally found the right producer in Leslie Kong, and together the two wrote and produced the first ska hits to make it big in both Britain and the States. All sixteen of these are bursting with pop and mento and reflect the occasional New Orleans sound of the late 1950s with what was by the late 1960s a more contemporary sound. "Israelites" was, in fact, the first reggae song to chart in the U.S.
Toots and the Maytals. Funky Kingston. Island. 1972.
Toots Hibbert is certainly one of the great reggae vocalists. His singing is the most distinctive and instantly recognizable in the genre. The melodious baritone wobbles and weaves while maintaining its power throughout some of the most bizarre selections and originals any Jamaican ever sang. His cover of "Louie, Louie" is a funky goof with an inverted vowel emphasis and he straps TNT to John Denver's chest, dancing ever-tightening circles around the plunger on "Country Roads," a song Toots makes far more convincing because of the passion evoked for his West Jamaican roots. Except for a few Otis Redding covers, most of Hibbert's work is unknown in the United States, a dirty shame because "54 26 Was My Number", "Pressure Drop" and "Time Tough" are better reggae than Bob Marley ever imagined.
Jimmy Cliff. "The Harder They Come." Mango. 1972.
The political fact of reggae is a given. Perhaps that's why, as a Muslim rather than Rastafarian, Jimmy Cliff could compel and amplify lines like "I'd rather be a free man in my grave than living as a puppet or a slave" with such apparent ease. After all, the song itself is not especially sophisticated. Beginning with the standard double flam drum intro and rollicked along with carousel organ, the melody is just as perky and cheery as the standard Johnny Nash tripe popular stateside. The joy of "The Harder They Come" comes from the straight-on yet gentle passion the singer delivers. And when he forgives the officers in the New Testament manner, no one could doubt the sincerity of his heart.
J. Geils Band. "Give It To Me." Atlantic. 1973.
It's truly amazing just how uniformly bad their albums were. They could play, write and even sing. The problem was that for every great single, they released two that weren't half as energized and exciting. "Give it to Me" has a depraved neo-reggae rhythm that accentuates the friendly leer of wild man Peter Wolf and remains their best song.
Bob Marley and the Wailers. Live! Island. 1975.
The attentive reader may have gleaned that your humble narrator considers rock lyrics to be secondary in importance to the sound and consequent feel of the recording. So much do I subordinate the notion that rock lyrics are typically anything more than gibberish that I attempt with varying degrees of success to imbue the sensibilities of these commentaries with a sound and feel that is often more important than the specific literal meaning of the words I use. The judgment of my success lies with you. The artistic success of Live! is exemplary in conveying just such an idea. The words, whether spoken or appearing on a sheet, unlock a certain revolutionary zeal. But their actual power to get someone to do more than listen emerges only as they merge with the urgent frustration of the vocals and the tumbling boulder assault of the rhythm section. What might have been mere sloganeering in the hands of lesser talents becomes a bright and shining danger against the government in Trenchtown.
Augustus Pablo. "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown." Clocktower. 1975.
This may not only be the greatest reggae single of all time, it is likely the very best example of dub. This semi-instrumental version of Jacob Miller's "Baby I Love You So" features a young Pablo playing his trademark melodica, the hardest drumming on a set that couldn't have cost more than fifty dollars, and some otherworldly sound washes from King Tubby himself--plus the most forlorn and haunting chants Pablo (or anyone) ever recorded. Other artists may have taken dub farther. No one took it deeper.
Burning Spear. "Marcus Garvey." Island. 1975.
For all intents and purposes, Winston Rodney is Burning Spear. Marcus Garvey, whom this single celebrates, was the 1920s leader of the Back-To-Africa movement, one that came to be embraced by Malcolm X, among others. Rodney chant-moans lines like "Can't get no food to eat, can't get no money to spend" as if he's humming a mantra guaranteed to unite all of Kingston on its journey back to Ethiopia. Even more effective is the fact that producer Jack Ruby brought in the twelve-piece instrumental combine Black Disciples to bass and toot the mood along with such willful abandon or lackadaisical determination that an endless loop of this song might provide the entry ticket to Paradise.
Bob Marley and the Wailers. Rastaman Vibration. Island. 1976.
Brother Bob was never much of a guitarist, but he sure did have a way with a song. "Roots, Rock, Reggae," "Crazy Bald Heads," "Rat Race," not to mention lines like "Your enemy could be your best friend and your best friend your worst enemy" are among his most powerful performances. Because of the quality of his original group, The Wailers (featuring Marley, Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh), there are folks who claim nothing Marley recorded after 1974 is worth a damn. But as it turns out, bassist Aston Barrett, drummer Carton Barrett and keyboardist Tyrone Downie were a bit looser together than the original group and that often worked to everyone's advantage. Even though Marley died in 1981 of cancer, for the better part of the following decade it was nearly impossible to find a juke box that didn't carry the live version of "No Woman No Cry." But Rastaman maintains that merger of commercial spirit and radical invention that no other set of his captures quite as well. That's because while some performers use the studio to distance themselves from their audience, Marley used it to connect his passion with our own.
Junior Murvin. "Police and Thieves." Mango. 1976.
To those who only know the excellent Clash version of this song, I recommend imagining the grittier falsetto moments of Curtis Mayfield applied to a tricky reggae mix with a hookah and two pounds of sacramental cannabis. The Clash version cuts this to shreds, and even though Murvin never sang anything this strong again, producer and sonic madman Lee "Scratch" Perry fills the box with organic creaks and pops enough to make this a near-essential classic.
Max Romeo. "War Ina Babylon." Mango. 1976.
Babylon is everywhere that is not Jamaica and Ethiopia. So it is a little bit confusing how this story about the 1972 Jamaican election in which the pro-Romeo socialist party came to power is intended to jive with the facts. Oh, well. The best thing about the single is the music. After five years of recording naughty singles that the UK wouldn't play, MAx got down with Lee Perry and made this up-dripping background-heavy testament to something non-lascivious that the Brits still wouldn't air because--even though the lyrics were indecipherable--with that title it simply had to be bad news. The good news is they were right!
Linton Kwesi Johnson. Dread Beat An' Blood. Virgin. 1979.
At the conclusion to the liner notes to this album, writer Vivien Goldman exclaims, "The weak heart shall drop. The righteous heart will buy this record." I can make no claim for the relative morality of consumerism. I can tell you that a more musically militant reggae recording has never been made. This album pumps with the force of its title. The vocal is scrunched up like a closing fist. And this is one of the few albums where the piano is a true percussion instrument, just as God intended.
Johnson pursued a degree in Sociology while writing the bass-based poetry. While involved with the Black Panthers he organized a poetry workshop that developed into a band called Rasta Live. Dread, his first album, is the political and poetic base of all contemporary music, except it's good. Johnson took some very stripped down dub tracks, overlaid them with added bass and beat, tripled the weight, and toasted his own real poetry and politics right up Margaret Thatcher's snatch. The sensibility is of a young man watching Afro Brits getting their heads bashed in by the Oswald Mosley's of the United Kingdom. Aware that as a Jamaican he was in fact an Israelite, the unity with historical oppression is never out of touch here. When the oppressors are liberated of their means of tyranny, this is the album they must hear for the first 100 years. Smooth as broken glass.
Black Uhuru. Red. Mango. 1981.
Check out "Youth of Eglington."
Dub reggae differs from roots in that dub often strips off most of the words for the benefit of audiences who already know them and want to do their own vocals, or for disc jockeys who want to yak over the music without lyrical interruption. Producers up the bass and beats while paying some degree of respect to the melody. That is not quite what Black Uhuru does here, but because of the patois and dialect, the lyrics become more sound than substance unless and until the listener stops jamming along long enough to catch it all. Simply put, this album has more dimensions than the Twilight Zone, a condition that rewards repeated listening. Singers Michael Rose, Puma Jones and Duckie Simpson made one of the most militantly radical reggae albums to come from Jamaica. The music is prominent, as with dub, yet lacks the contrivances of such a subgenre. This album invigorates, it provokes, and I suspect it even goes well with the sacrament. Against the front drop of omnipresent Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakepeare's rhythm section, the backdrop trio suggests that picking up a Remington with more edge than a razor might be an acceptable solution.
Culture: Two Sevens Clash
Culture: Free Again
Culture: Cumbolo
Ijahman: Are We a Warrior?
I Roy: Peace
Judy Mowatt: Black Woman
Hugh Mundell: Africa Must Be Free by 1983
Cedric Myton: Heart of the Congos
Augustus Pablo: Pablo Satta
Augustus Pablo: East of the River Nile
Prince Buster: My Girl
Prince Buster: Shaking Up Orange Street
Prince Far-1: Message From the King
Bunny Wailer: Rule This Land
Certainly by the mid-1970s the musical segregation this blog rails against was successfully entrenching itself all over the radio dial. AM didn't even try to keep up with trends and instead gave into marketing directors who directed program managers toward all-news and/or talk formats still with us today. FM, simultaneously, splintered into first white-oriented versus black-oriented, then subgenre styles such as hard rock, disco, AOR, and the like. Much of this entrenchment began with the Seventies Southern Wave, an unintentional yet decisive swing into occasionally indulgent and invariably boogie-based, specifically Caucasian brand of amplified, elongated and sped-up blues. The best of this music was far more than a response to a perceived marketing niche. It was imaginative, freed-up opportunism in the best sense of that word. But much of it never aimed for more than an image of beer-guzzling bozos with longwinded guitar jams and nothing much to say. There was no way any self-respecting urban dweller raised on Motown and Philly Soul would belly up to that particular bar, so he or she or they went where the sounds were more inviting--about as far from the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section as one could get. Dammit.
The Allman Brothers Band. Eat a Peach. Capricorn. 1971.
Check out "Little Martha."
This is Fillmore East, Part Two, or at least half of it is. And that half is just as good as its namesake. Most of what remains is a combination of tracks recorded before Duane Allman died. The rest is the band trying very hard to be just as good as it had been. Dickey Betts understood the pop imperative better than the others and lays the groundwork for what would become the band's only hit single, not included here. But this album is perhaps most remarkable for sounding so united in the face of tragedy. Even thirty plus years later, the group cohesion remains astounding.
Edgar Winter. "Keep Playing That Rock n Roll." Epic. 1972.
"Frankenstein." Epic. 1973.
Here's a comparison/contrast with Johnny Winter that you don't hear much: Edgar was a lot more fun. While Johnny was out there screching up the hills with the loudest roar this side of the Screamin' Demon, Edgar was putting together some fine bands, like White Trash, who did the first of these, and The Edgar Winter Group, who did the second. Both these dead-raisers have maintained the ingenuity that the youthfulness of their creators' fascinating studio concoctions ever brought together for the enjoyment of teenage dope smokers.
Wet Willie. "Keep On Smilin'." Capricorn. 1974.
Ever notice how the Confederacy has yet to reunite with the United States? That's not entirely the fault of the former separatist union. More often than not, when people speak intelligently about groups like The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd or Wet Willie, they refer to them as Southern bands, a distinction rarely voiced about groups north of Mason-Dixon. So with the presumption of northern snobbery still firmly in place, a lot of Southern bands played what they wanted anyway. Usually that was a rock version of the blues. In the case of Wet Willie, they rocked up rhythm and blues that sounded like the locale where it was recorded had a pool room fight a few seconds from imminent. That effect enlivened their sound, shifting that emphasis in favor of rhythm over blues, and self-control over purposeless freewheeling. All this shouts out to magnificent results on "Keep on Smilin'," the best song ever made on the subject of defying your enemies by laughing right in their faces. And that suggests a sensibility that is uniquely southern.
Ozark Mountain Daredevils. "If You Want to Get to Heaven." A&M. 1974.
With a tight, sprawling jew's harp, guitars straight out of The Eagles songbook, and vocals that could only be from Missouri, the Daredevils sprang into action on their first single from their first album and never looked back. "I never read it in a book, I never saw it in a show, but I heard it in the alley on a weird radio." Their long-awaited follow-up, "Jackie Blue," was truer to what OMD favored. And so "Heaven" is a glorious anomaly, a little slice of backwoods lunacy driven more by ambition than brains, just as it should have been.
Elvin Bishop. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love." Capricorn. 1976.
This one-time member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band moved from Oklahoma to Chicago in the early 1960s, where he learned to blend jazz and blues with highly amplified rock and roll. By the mid-1970s, he was fronting his own band, and his record deal with Capricorn led most critics to label him a southern rocker. But as this gravy-thick and full-of-wit song proves, his true love was for free-tight guitar-oriented Chicago blues. This was one of the biggest non-disco hits of the year.
The Atlanta Rhythm Section. A Rock and Roll Alternative. Polygram. 1977.
This five man southern electrical band was a combination of one of Roy Orbison's earlier backing groups and the Classics IV. Consequently, the sound was self-consciously less bluesy and certainly a bit less totalitarian than their big deal equatorially-challenged brethren. Their conscious decision to be more widely accessible than most of the harder rocking southern rebels worked against their long-term reputation, but amidst all the choogling, womanizing, and odes to self-destruction, ARS' more modest, homespun and sedate recordings accentuated their unaffected musical maturity. The single from this album, "So Into You," became a rare delight in 1977, as did the non-charting "Sky High." Although they never garnered the status of Allman or Skynyrd, much less that of the perpetually lame Charlie Daniels, they did provide a sensuous swirl of home style slow swing that makes this album essential.
Lynyrd Skynyrd. Gold and Platinum. MCA. 1979.
Right after the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd was souhern rock's greatest band. Producer Al Kooper kept things nice and murky, which served Ronnie Van Zant's troupe well on hits like "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Workin' For MCA." Tom Dowd replaced Kooper on succeeding sides and naturally the sound tightened, but for the better. This music was loud, murky and troubled, yet captivated a legion of die hard fans who often acted as if dying hard was what life was all about. This was all firmly entrenched in the frequently mindless ethos of endless boogie, a mentality that clearly set the band apart from their followers. A song like "I Know a Little," to cite an unheralded example, exploits its colliding rhythms at the expense of its deeper meanings, typically lost on everyone except wide-eyed rock critics. In October 1977, a plane crash took Ronnie away, along with guitarist Steve Gaines and singer Cassie Gaines. After all these years, their artistic imagination may be more suspect than before but their ability to kick out hard-hitting southern boogie with soul and sympathy remains unmatched.
Culture: Free Again
Culture: Cumbolo
Ijahman: Are We a Warrior?
I Roy: Peace
Judy Mowatt: Black Woman
Hugh Mundell: Africa Must Be Free by 1983
Cedric Myton: Heart of the Congos
Augustus Pablo: Pablo Satta
Augustus Pablo: East of the River Nile
Prince Buster: My Girl
Prince Buster: Shaking Up Orange Street
Prince Far-1: Message From the King
Bunny Wailer: Rule This Land
The Seventies Southern Wave
Certainly by the mid-1970s the musical segregation this blog rails against was successfully entrenching itself all over the radio dial. AM didn't even try to keep up with trends and instead gave into marketing directors who directed program managers toward all-news and/or talk formats still with us today. FM, simultaneously, splintered into first white-oriented versus black-oriented, then subgenre styles such as hard rock, disco, AOR, and the like. Much of this entrenchment began with the Seventies Southern Wave, an unintentional yet decisive swing into occasionally indulgent and invariably boogie-based, specifically Caucasian brand of amplified, elongated and sped-up blues. The best of this music was far more than a response to a perceived marketing niche. It was imaginative, freed-up opportunism in the best sense of that word. But much of it never aimed for more than an image of beer-guzzling bozos with longwinded guitar jams and nothing much to say. There was no way any self-respecting urban dweller raised on Motown and Philly Soul would belly up to that particular bar, so he or she or they went where the sounds were more inviting--about as far from the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section as one could get. Dammit.
The Allman Brothers Band. Eat a Peach. Capricorn. 1971.
This is Fillmore East, Part Two, or at least half of it is. And that half is just as good as its namesake. Most of what remains is a combination of tracks recorded before Duane Allman died. The rest is the band trying very hard to be just as good as it had been. Dickey Betts understood the pop imperative better than the others and lays the groundwork for what would become the band's only hit single, not included here. But this album is perhaps most remarkable for sounding so united in the face of tragedy. Even thirty plus years later, the group cohesion remains astounding.
Edgar Winter. "Keep Playing That Rock n Roll." Epic. 1972.
"Frankenstein." Epic. 1973.
Here's a comparison/contrast with Johnny Winter that you don't hear much: Edgar was a lot more fun. While Johnny was out there screching up the hills with the loudest roar this side of the Screamin' Demon, Edgar was putting together some fine bands, like White Trash, who did the first of these, and The Edgar Winter Group, who did the second. Both these dead-raisers have maintained the ingenuity that the youthfulness of their creators' fascinating studio concoctions ever brought together for the enjoyment of teenage dope smokers.
Wet Willie. "Keep On Smilin'." Capricorn. 1974.
Ozark Mountain Daredevils. "If You Want to Get to Heaven." A&M. 1974.
Elvin Bishop. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love." Capricorn. 1976.
The Atlanta Rhythm Section. A Rock and Roll Alternative. Polygram. 1977.
Lynyrd Skynyrd. Gold and Platinum. MCA. 1979.
Door Hinge Rhymes with Orange?
The Singer-Songwriters
There can be no greater misnomer than the term "singer songwriter." Some singers write songs and some do not. Some do sometimes and others do all the time. The term, which popped up around the time Carole King released Tapestry, is intended to convey just an ever so slight disdain for minimally arranged music that evokes the composer's unique interpretation of this moment in his life, a cognition which will undoubtedly benefit no one except said artist, but my, ain't it fine being in proximity to such insight? Well, this here blog you're gazin' on is not no way the place to find rapturous odes to the presumed brilliance of James Taylor or Paul Williams or--God forbid--Mac Davis, the latter bein' a man who never did nothin' of consequence except to write "In the Ghetto" for Elvis Presley. Even though I do not know why it is that I am writing these words as if I were a moron, what this is is the place to find actually excellent music by the spiritual sons and daughters of Buddy Holly, a guy who could also be super sweet sensitive when it suited him to be such, or loud, brash and abrasive as dawn on a Sunday morning wino. So maybe one fine day we will all wake up and find that the misnomer "singer-songwriter" has evolved into a nomer, and a grand one at that. Until that day, I'll keep playing Jackie DeShannon until the cough syrup wears off.
Jackie DeShannon. "What the World Needs Now." Imperial. 1965.
Lovin' Spoonful. "Darling Be Home Soon." Kama Sutra. 1967.
Donovan. Donovan's Greatest Hits. Epic. 1969.
Randy Newman. Twelve Songs. Reprise. 1970.
The arrangements on Twelve Songs and the album's production merge in a density of sound that Newman would abandon, probably because the sense of genuine terror lurking within the shadows of this mirror may have been too intense for even this singer to withstand. That terror comes less from the admittedly peculiar subject matter than from those same shadows being cast as the music shines on the singer while he is constantly searching behind himself to squint out what's moving in the darkness of his own silhouette.
Bread. "Make it with You." 1970.
"Baby I'm a-Want You." 1971.
"Everything I Own." 1972. All on Elektra.
One of the top pop slops in the early years of the 1970s, Bread vastly outranked most of the other smooth romantics due to tight arrangements, conscientious production and, in singer David Gates, a top rate songwriter. Any of these songs could have been hits in altered versions by the heavy cock rockers (Free comes to mind) of the day. Bread proved that breathy grunting and Carpenters schmaltz were not the only ways to book a room for two.
Original Caste. "One Tin Soldier." Vanguard. 1970.
Mark Lindsay. "Arizona" and "Silverbird." Columbia. 1970.
Simon and Garfunkel. "Cecilia." Columbia. 1970.
Dion. "Your Own Backyard." Warner Bros. 1970.
Carole King. Tapestry. Ode. 1971.
King flirted off and on with a solo move. Her "It Might as Well Rain Until September" was so lame it may have killed Alan Freed. It took a long time before any kind of decent recording opportunities came along after that. Lou Adler finally opened the door and in she strolled, pushing her piano ahead of her. Tapestry, the album almost everyone in America above the age of forty owns, stayed on the charts for years, and although some of it does sound sickly sweet, most of the tracks are still riveting. "It's Too Late" is one of the most moving and accurate kiss-offs ever put to music. "I Feel the Earth Move," the B-side, proved that King could rock out on her own. "Smackwater Jack" and "So Far Away" kept the album's sales going through 1975, not bad for an album released in 1971. Unfortunately, this album contributed to the solidification of the ghastly singer-songwriter movement. James Taylor recorded "You've Got a Friend," which was only fair since he'd done backing vocals on the original version. And Barbra Streisand covered "Where You Lead," which showed Babs' good taste as well as her tendency towards over-emoting.
John Denver. "Country Roads." RCA. 1971.
Graham Nash. "Chicago." Atlantic. 1971.
Rick Nelson. "Garden Party." MCA. 1972.
I always felt Rick Nelson was disparaged with the title "Teen Idol," a term that suggests more of a Frankie Avalon type than that of a true talent. Nelson was a great writer and singer and his story of one concert where the fans treated him rather badly is perhaps the best testament to going your own way ever written. This remains the all-time best kiss-off song to fickle fans and celebrates the patronage of John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry.
Chi Coltrane. "Thunder and Lightning." Columbia. 1972.
Randy Newman. Sail Away. Reprise. 1972.
Carly Simon. No Secrets. Elektra. 1972.
The Hollies. "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." Epic. 1972.
Elton John. "Friends." ABC-Paramount. 1971.
"Levon" and "Tiny Dancer." UNI. 1972.
"Saturday Night's Alright for Fightin'." MCA. 1973.
Melanie. "Brand New Key" and "Ring the Living Bell." Buddah. 1972.
Joni Mitchell. "You Turn Me On I'm a Radio." Asylum. 1972.
Neil Young. "Heart of Gold." Reprise. 1972.
Paul Simon. "Mother and Child Reunion." Columbia. 1972.
"Kodachrome." Columbia. 1973.
Stealers Wheel. "Stuck in the Middle with You." A&M. 1973.
Dobie Gray. "Drift Away." Decca. 1973.
Gunhill Road. "Back When My Hair was Short." Kama Sutra. 1973.
Loggins and Messina. "Your Mama Don't Dance." Columbia. 1973.
Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark. Asylum. 1974.
Paul Simon. Still Crazy After All These Years. Columbia. 1975.
Neil Young. Tonight's the Night. Reprise. 1975.
Dean Friedman. "Ariel." 1977.
Judy Collins. Times of Our Lives. Elektra. 1982.
Please Don't Say Divas: Queens of Soul Music
Of all the despicable and overused words in the ahistorical contemporary pop music lexicon, none approximate the unwavering stupidity of the term "diva." What these know-nothing media pundits actually mean when they utter that twice-the-normal-syllables expression is a would-be strident female soul singer who dips her Wonder Bread in Ovaltine. What I mean by the expression "queens of soul music" is that unconnected, historically significant coterie of women who have the vocal versatility of a saxophone, the emotional confusion of a person mere inches from adulthood, and the lungs of a lumberjack. The distinction lies in the difference between, say, Celine Dion and, say, Aretha Franklin. Which school would you rather attend?
The Teen Queens. "Eddie My Love." RPM. 1956.
Kathy Young and the Innocents. "A Thousand Stars." Indigo. 1961.
Carla Thomas. "I'll Bring it on Home to You." Atlantic. 1962.
Betty Everett. "You're No Good" and "The Shoop Shoop Song." Vee-Jay. 1964.
The recently deceased Ms. Everett was a gutsy, gritty, mind-melting and rapturous hard soul singer who somehow evoke a career's worth of such qualities on these two singles. Linda Ronstadt covered the former and Cher the latter. But the originals emphasized just a hint more mystery. Why, after all, was the man no good? Knowing that all along, how could she have been drawn in? And what was it exactly that Wright was getting frustrated about when trying to explain to her friends about the power of the kiss?
Aretha Franklin. I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You). Atlantic. 1967.
Linda Ronstadt. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow." Capitol. 1970.
Smith. "Baby, It's You." Dunhill. 1970.
Laura Nyro. Gonna Take a Miracle. Columbia. 1971.
Aretha Franklin. Young, Gifted and Black. Atlantic. 1972.
Carole King. "Believe in Humanity." Ode. 1973.
LaBelle. Nightbirds. Epic. 1974.
Suzi Quatro. "All Shook Up." 1974.
Femme butch personified, Suzi Quatro experienced vastly more popularity in england than in the States, again proving how often we don't know what we've got til it's gone. This single, from her debut album, was biker tough and Barbie sweet, without ever sacrificing the instant head paralysis of the hook writer Otis Blackwell handed Elvis Presley. Fun while it lasted.
Joni Mitchell. "You So Square baby I Don't Care." Geffen. 1982.
'Til Tuesday. "Voice Carry." Epic. 1985.
A little synth-heavy for rocker tastes, this song highlighted not only the Boston quartet's formidable songwriting but also showcased the suppressed genius of lead singer Aimee Mann. Her voice remains tender with an underlying rasp that sets up am ambivalent tension to a sound that's already rich as Mountain Grown Coffee.
Almost Halloween:
Disembodied Vocalists of the 1970s
Abba: This Swedish combo’s hits of the 1970s somehow resonated enough to yield a Broadway musical and even a major motion picture. After all, this bi-gendered quartet did at one time outsell every other recording group on the planet. That their songs are indistinguishable is irrelevant. They remain shimmering, flavored ice cubes, and just as substantial. It turns out the songs even have titles, the best of which are “S.O.S.,” “Mamma Mia,” “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen,” and “Fernando.”
Brass Construction: This group created very simple, catchy, harmless funk epitomized by “Movin’,” “Message,” “Partyline” and “Changin’.” The band favored one-word titles and gave them each a rhythmized, rollicking intensity, just as one might expect from mid-1970s Brooklyn troglodytes. This was third generation recycled Sly Stone outtakes, but still fun in the scheme of things.
Can: Malcolm Mooney did the singing on 1969’s Monster Movie, a West German inner space vehicle for slurping up Deutschmarks on the basis of tracks such as “Father Cannot Yell” and “Yoo Doo Right.” Despite the band’s composition of drums, “vocals,” guitar, and keyboards, the sound the group sought was of a subterranean quality, not uncharacteristic of Martians chewing spider webs when the bubblegum runs out. Not that that’s a bad thing.
Chic: New York session musicians Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards tired of being the town’s whipping boys and so put together the magical Chic, whose heyday was 1976 – 1980, and one that saw massive hits with “Dance, Dance, Dance” and “Good Times.” The rhythm was the main attraction, but the group knew it needed frosting and so enlisted singers Norma Jean Wright, Luri Martin, and Alfa Anderson to dress up the sound cake. It was all soul-based disco, but the most captivating in memory, and every bit as useful as Sister Sledge, who Rodgers and Edwards also produced. “Le Freak” in particular holds up with its fine tension and release workout. The story goes that the “lyrics” derived from a rejection of the band at the door to the celebrity nightclub Studio 54 wherein the house DJ was playing the band’s own music.
Phil Collins: “In the Air Tonight,” with its Michelob ambiance, sounds as if it were recorded through a high-tech vacuum cleaner hose. It turned out that this former Genesis drummer sounds that way even in normal, puerile conversation, which must save his producers a great deal of time. This song works well at scaring four-year-olds, and yet is not without a certain Merry Olde panache.
Electric Light Orchestra: For those who preferred “Penny Lane” over “She Loves You,” ELO was the presumed antidote for post-Beatles withdrawal. Move guitarist Roy Wood and producer Jeff Lynne built cellos, horns and woodwinds around Beatle-esque harmonies and a rock and roll base, with classical aspirations none too well hidden. Wood left after a lukewarm first album and Lynne struck back with a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” that sounded like it belonged in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure ten years early. Straying further from human music, Lynne added an orchestra and choir. “Evil Woman,” Strange Magic” and “Turn to Stone” blurped out in the form of high speed, discofied dirges. But it was 1979’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” that showed what ELO could do once every millennium: amidst a thorny mix of “Disco? Very!” on Discovery (get it?), the band finally rocked out as never before or since. The floating, spinning vocals twisted their way through hilarious backing calls (“ooo-wee-ooo” and “Bruce,” among others), almost making up for the group’s later association with Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu.
Giorgio and Chris: Giorgio Moroder was the Italian cum German fuehrer of disco bass and drum synthetic oppression in the form of early Donna Summer and late David Bowie. Both of those performers had too much talent to be subjugated by the likes of this Casablanca Records auteur. The same cannot be said for the anonymous “Chris,” a ripe set of pipes sent twirling like an animated disco ball on “Love’s in You, Love’s in Me” and “Love Now, Hurt Later.”
Lipps Inc.: “Funkytown,” possibly the most hook-heavy tune here, is a total creation of the studio, meaning that producer Steven Greenberg played all the instruments and twiddled all the knobs, while lightweight chanteuse Cynthia Johnson provided the requisite squeals. The group never recovered from this song’s success and it remains their sole claim to stardom.
People’s Choice: This seven-piece Philly outfit started out under the tutelage of Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International organization. The vocals, beats and instrumentation were all identical until they inadvertently clanged a winner with “Do It Any Way You Wanna,” the least grammatically incorrect of all their early work. With money in the bank, they figured they must be stars. That being the case, stars need cocaine and there was no bigger mound of the stuff stateside than at Casablanca Records, where president Neil Bogart sent their career into a nosedive, as it were, with “You Ought to be Dancin’.”
The Eighties Renaissance
From the mid-1970s until the very early 1980s, pop music on the radio was bad. Horribly bad. Putrid, one might say. Disco gained legitimacy. Hard rock donned faceless metal androgyny. Country crossed over into ultra slick banalities. And because at that time radio airplay led the way directly to sales, and since Awful was the name of the game, nothing good got marketed to radio stations. (For an excellent analysis of the seamier motives behind this condition, check out Fredric Dannen's Hit Men.) That's one of the main reasons that punk and new wave struck people's senses awake like clean beach morning air. But no stations outside of college radio ever played The Clash, the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Adverts, The Slits, X, Richard Hell, Elvis Costello, or any of a thousand loud and lesser known talents. So people in America who wanted good music enough to listen hard for it found the punk and new wave tunes at the homes of friends, in nightclubs, and in the few record stores that carried them. Such efforts built a tight and regrettably insular community of fanzine writers, groupies, and aspiring band members. It did not build an overwhelming array of great music. When Blondie becomes the new wave's claim to break-out glory, then the cure for music's ills may not outlast the larger system's ability to mutate.
Or so I thought until I heard the first Pretenders' album.
Michael Jackson. Off the Wall. Epic. 1979.
After the goose-bump water slide of "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" and the tingling shadow punch dance moves of "Rock with You," even the "light rock" ecstasy of "She's Out of my Life" feels not only appropriate but perfectly natural--essential to this album's intentional formula. If you're looking for dance music that'll make you forget how much you hate disco, or simply an album that sounds as if it was recorded last week, this is the one to get.
Joan Jett. Bad Reputation. Boardwalk. 1980.
Kurtis Blow. "The Breaks." Mercury. 1980.
The Pretenders. The Pretenders. Sire. 1980.
Thankfully, a few gifted enthusiasts, such as The Pretenders, refused to bow out gracefully. This debut album may have lacked the emotional sophistication of Learning to Crawl, but it lacked nothing in the way of nerve and dog collar excitement. While every song here kicks somebody's ass, the most bruising are "Precious" (wherein Ms. Hynde rebukes herself for telling people to fuck off), "Stop Your Sobbing" (heartfelt encouragement for the betterment of the singer rather than the crier), "Space Invader" (an anachronism today, but still the only song I've ever heard that sounds like a video game while remaining enjoyable), and, of course, "Brass in Pocket" (a song so desperate in its attempt to convince itself of worthiness that only someone lacking a pulse could resist it).
Blue Angel. "Maybe He'll Know." Polygram. 1980.
Lauper's first band and for their infectious near-hit, which Lauper turned around and recorded all over again as a solo artist. The remake shimmered like the compressed after-effects of a struck gong. The first time around was better, though, because with her musicians, Lauper created a song that was still heavy with low-tech synths, meaning it packed a serious homemade track that jumped right out in the room and spun everyone within earshot onto a trampoline.
The Bus Boys. Minimum Wage Rock 'n' Roll. Arista. 1980.
REO Speedwagon. "Keep On Loving You." Epic. 1980.
Donna Summer. The Wanderer. Geffen. 1980.
AC/DC. For Those About to Rock, We Salute You. Atlantic. 1981.
Kim Carnes. "Bette Davis Eyes." EMI America. 1981.
THE BEST OF THE REST OF THE EIGHTIES
Joan Jett. I Love Rock 'n' Roll. Boardwalk. 1982.
Joan Jett followed the artistic success of her first album with a fine commercial success. This album made it clear that the title did more than inspire: it told the truth. So did the rest of the record. There were the by-now obligatory cover versions, notably of the Halos' "Nag," redone with Jett's butch vulnerability, and Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover," made far more psychedelic druggy than the original. But as Blackhearts Gary Ryan, Lee Crystal and Ricky Bird cranked out their recycled Seventies riffs ala Chuck Berry, the slightest hint of tedium crept within earshot. So did a marketing gaff. The earliest versions of the album included a killer version of "Little Drummer Boy" while later issues substituted "Oh Woe is Me."
Bob Seger. "Makin' Thunderbirds." Capitol. 1982.
Prince. 1999. Warner Bros. 1982.
Bruce Springsteen. Nebraska. Columbia. 1982.
Stevie Nicks. "Edge of Seventeen." Modern. 1982.
Dolly Parton. "I Will Always Love You." RCA. 1982.
Richard and Linda Thompson. Shoot Out the Lights. Hannibal. 1982.
Toni Basil. "Mickey." Chrysalis. 1982.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. "The Message." Sugar Hill. 1982.
push
me
cause I'm
close to
the
edge.
I'm
Tryin'
not to
lose
my
head.
Just like that, scratchers and rappers Grandmaster Flash, Duke Bootee, Melle Mel and producer Sylvia Robinson conveyed what it's like to walk around full of so much pressure that even one minor affront could send the singer off into a murderous rage. By the early 1980s, the injustice of the black experience was reduced to passe satire--until "The Message" made satire unthinkable. Rattling off his kid's disaffection, his mother's phosphor-dot tranquility, and the prison hanging that awaited anyone unlucky enough to try to escape this life, Flash and company put on a bit of theatre reminiscent of Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City." Sugar Hill Records specialized in synths and beats that left it for the mind to fill in the rest. This was polished rawness, sparkling overdose, and glimmering doom, all of which united for the sole purpose of yanking listeners out on the dance floor to think while they partied.
Wall of Voodoo. "Mexican Radio." IRS. 1983.
The Bangles. "Going Down to Liverpool." Capitol. 1983.
By 1970 the false consciousness trappings of the linked economic ideologies of capitalism and communism ceased to exist. In their place stood the finger-pointing polar opposites and sworn enemies of Conflict Theory and Realpolitiks. The first of these was so weighted down in academic armor that no self-respecting urban guerrilla could relate to it and the latter dressed itself so thoroughly in ethnocentrism that its very divisiveness made its stone cold logic infinitely illogical. These inherent flaws did not stop ideologues from carrying out very real oppression against millions of people, a state of existence with us to this day. The artists whose songs appear below may not have known or specifically cared about theories of economic hegemony or creeping decimalism, but their music clearly responded to the leaden conditions around them. Revisionists claim the 1960s as the time of substantial musical protest, but the reality is that the oft-ridiculed 1970s embraced and evoked far more rebellion against the status quo than any time in the twentieth century.
The centerpiece of this period--musically, if not chronologically--is Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On. Forty years later absolutely nothing even approaches this album in its ability to convey the feel of being clubbed senseless by the unwashed hatred of imbecilic leaders and dog-lapping followers alike. To further convey a sense of manifestly dangerous outrage in such a numbed-out condition elevates this album above all but a handful of selections in The Playlist.
At the same time we had Marvin Gaye asking how and why things had come to be so screwed up. His demeanor, like that of Sly Stone, was heavily drugged, somewhere between being punch drunk and totally narcotized, yet still warring with an inner frustration and a churning, bubbling hostility. No sooner had the shock waves subsided than Curtis Mayfield, the lovely and sensitive man who only a few months earlier had bored us to near-death with"Gypsy Woman," shot up from under the manhole cover and connected the drug-disease with the inherent corruption in our power systems, and still made us want to dance!
Joe South. "Redneck." Capitol. 1969.
One line says it all: When God said brain you thought he said rain and you ran for cover."
Paul Kelly. "Stealing in the Name of the Lord." Happy Tiger. 1970.
The Five Stairsteps. "O-o-h Child." Buddah. 1970.
The Burke children had over a dozen soul and r&b hits on Curtis Mayfield's various labels before signing with Buddah and releasing their sole pop hit. Along with the early singles of the Jackson 5, the Stairsteps were responsible for a resurged interest in black group pop. The striking and absolute paranoia in the falsetto-to-tenor lead as the singer assures his love that things are gonna get easier is among the most unsettling in all pop music. There's no doubt he doesn't believe a word he's saying; he simply has to sat something and chooses these words as carefully as possible. Anyone who only knows the remakes of this by Lenny Williams or Valerie Carter should discover the real thing. And the simultaneously restrained and unleashed drumming here dispels any suggestion that this was soft rock.
Marvin Gaye. What's Going On? Motown. 1971.
Maybe because he had been everywhere and done everything; maybe because the instinct of middle age was fast approaching; maybe because he intuited that black music was about to experience an opportunity to do things the brain damaged leftovers from late 1960s psychedelic misanthropy never could--for whatever reason, Marvin Gaye ran the ultimate risk of alienating himself from brother-in-law and tyrannical boss, Berry Gordy. Then again, if the hit-obsessed Gordy considered gambling in anything, this album of pained, funky-town slow down slap back had to be the most convincing long shot of either man's career. It is nothing less than the ideal answer record to Plastic Ono Band. There may be some autobiography in a few places, but mostly this is Marvin drawing a sound scape of world misery and confusion that all the parties and exhortations won't rectify, while only referencing himself as a frustrated observer to an apocalypse he'd like to avoid if only he had the energy to run. Particularly splendid are "What's Going On," "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)," all of which were huge hits.
Sly and the Family Stone. There's a Riot Goin' On. Epic. 1971.
If this is a party album, then mama told me not to come. Splinters in the veins, rubber in the mouth, erotic rust, and the ache of a lonesome mind: there's a point when the drugs wear off and you still feel stoned because your mind has been changed, either by the drugs themselves or by the things that happened under their influence. You fear you will always feel that way, or you would fear it if only you had the ambition to care. In a way Sly is at peace. He had gotten the message while wrestling with the devil that regardless of who's on top, the match is never over, a condition all too apparent in "Thank You for Talking to Me, Africa." That understanding robbed the life from him, but it also removed the pressure. This album is the sound of that realization ion process. This album walks slow and swings wide. This album is the essence discovered after what may be the final exhalation.
The Impressions. "We're a Winner." ABC. 1967.
The Impressions. "Choice of Colors." ABC. 1969.
Curtis Mayfield. Soundtrack from Superfly. Curtom. 1972.
I can count on the one hand of any one-fingered cartoon character the number of exceptionally fine original score soundtracks to blaxploitation films. The movie Superfly shared with its brethren films a nearly histrionic feel for the least savory aspects of the filmmaker's views of black urban life: drugs, hookers, abusive white cops, and rats in the kitchen. Where this movie excelled was in utilizing a soundtrack that evoked the feeling of these aspects better than did the motion picture itself. "Freddie's Dead" and the title track were impossibly brilliant testimonies of underclass experience, black and otherwise. The fact that they rocked, souled and funked harder than anything Mayfield's white brothers were making was, nevertheless, the key to the movie's success.
The Chi-Lites. Greatest Hits. Brunswick. 1971.
Eugene Record led this fabulous soul rock group who brought us some of the best non-drug-related black pop of the early 1970s. In a sense, they were simply the best group to be inspired by the Temptations' song, "Just My Imagination." These guys didn't fear the idea of showing vulnerabilities. Hell, they reveled in the opportunity, which is okay because unlike a lot of other groups from Chicago who would have pissed down your leg while they were moaning sentimental swill, these guys were even sensitive to the fact that much of their audience probably didn't care. The album's best moments are "For God's Sake Give More Power to the People," "Oh, Girl," "Have You Seen Her," and "The Coldest Day of My Life."
The Undisputed Truth. "Smiling Faces Sometimes." Gordy. 1972.
Producer Norman Whitfield linked up singers Joe Harris, Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Joyce Evans, forming this loosely tight single that went Top Five at a time when people were suspecting that all those hippie aphorisms were just some corporate lackey's idea of soup in rubber pockets on a food line. The Undisputed Truth said that people who smile in your face just might be looking out for Number One.
Stevie Wonder. "Superstition." Motown. 1971.
Stevie Wonder. "Higher Ground." Motown. 1973.
Stevie Wonder. "Living for the City." Motown. 1973.
Marvin Gaye. Here, My Dear. Tamla. 1978.
Marvin Gaye and his wife Anna split up. Part of the terms of their divorce was that the profits from Marvin's next album would go to Anna. In that same situation, I would have jack-knifed together an album so full of degenerate bile that people would have compared it unfavorably to Metal Machine Music. Made of better stuff as he was, Marvin devised a way to express his feelings without ripping off his fans. He decided to transform this court-ordered penance into one of his best albums. The recording would be about something Anna (whose brother owned the record company) could enjoy. It would be about their divorce. He made it a double album. This is fascinating stuff, even before you listen to the lyrics. The separation between the vocals and music is tenuous. It sounds like an album played by someone who has been denied the relief of suicide. Once you pull apart the sheets of semi-conscious rage, the breadth of the singer's frustration burbles out and you feel just a bit squeamish knowing anyone this intimately. That Gaye puts no effort at all in trying to make himself look like the victim is just as compelling. The album dares offer a rare glimpse into the soul of one of the world's best and most lamented popular singers and songwriters. The only unanswered question is how could someone who sounds so numbed still create such a rhythmic modern masterpiece? Might as well ask why the best ideas come at three in the morning.
By the time Phil Ochs was recording Pleasures of the Harbor with producer Larry Marks in 1967, the singer had transformed from a gentle writer of fierce topical songs into a poet whose mind reinvented what his senses passionately explored. It was his first time working with Marks. The producer was determined to desert the barren and stark non-production Paul Rothchild had provided Ochs' first three albums, which had been recorded for Elektra. The new label, A&M, as well as the singer himself, sought to make the music relevant to the lyrics. With only a few exceptions, this resulted in an unfortunate swash of strings and waves of swirling orchestration that buried the singer in a typhoon of cacaphony. Some of his best songs were rendered unlistenable. And yet the album did have its strong moments. Phil had heard the story of Kitty Genovese, the New York woman who had screamed and pleaded for life while her neighbors watched in the shadows as she was brutally raped and murdered. Some of the more than two dozen people who witnessed her destruction even admitted to turning up their televisions to drown out the disturbing sounds. Ochs responded with "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends." Lyrically, the song's verses set up opportunities to exercise social responsibilities and provided one-line rationalizations for ignoring them. Musically, happy ragtime piano mocked those excuses while giving the song commercial hooks. Lacking heavy guitar riffs, it was ignored by the rock audience just as folkies found it too musical for their standards. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," released as a single, still managed to chart in Los Angeles, Sacramento and especially New York, where Phil's fan base had always been its strongest.
Phil got his way. His manager and producer had been right. The auditorium was less than twenty-five percent capacity.
In those days, before the Chicago riots, defeats could still leave him optimistic about both his career and about America. To that end, he behaved and reacted as if the success of his career and the health of his country were inexorably connected, perfectly correlated.
Having developed by now a bit of a reputation, Phil managed to get other work in the city, primarily at The Third Side and at Sam Hood's The Gaslight. But where he fell under the gaze of the larger audience for folk music was in the pages of a mimeographed magazine called Broadside. In addition to articles, editorials and profiles, the magazine, published by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, printed the words and music of folk and topical songs written by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and--suddenly--Phil Ochs. This recognition landed him an invitation to perform at Newport '63. Newport was far and away the premier showcase for folk singers. Phil would be in the company of Dylan and Seeger, as well as Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, The Freedom Singers and lesser luminaries. Phil's performance--throughout which he was battling terror and nausea--included the aforementioned "The Power and the Glory," as well as "The Ballad of Medgar Evers" and "Talking Birmingham Jam." An album of the festival was released the following year and featured two of Phil's songs. Mainstream newspapers announced a new sound in folk music.
The two major record labels that handled folk acts at the time were Vanguard and Elektra. Vanguard had a good roster that included Baez, Eric Andersen, The Weavers and Pat Sky. But Jac Holzman's Elektra offered Phil a zero dollar signing bonus. And if that wasn't flattering enough, he would be label mates with Judy Collins, Tim Hardin, and Tom Rush.
It began with a number of benefit concerts for striking miners in Hazard. From there he was on to the Mississippi Caravan of Music, a consortium that staged concerts to encourage blacks to register to vote, which just happened to coincide with the discovery of the bodies of three civil rights workers slain by the Ku Klux Klan. Soon after his second album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, was released, he hooked up with Jerry Rubin and participated in the Berkeley teach-ins by singing between speeches. This was Ochs' first association with the anti-war movement that was by that time eclipsing civil rights as a national issue.
His greatest force for social change, however, remained his music. With a few exceptions, the liner notes to the second album were more insightful and entertaining than the songs themselves. Not so with the follow-up, Phil Ochs in Concert, recorded at Carnegie Hall. It was and remains among the greatest acoustic live albums of all time (despite the fact that much of the music was re-recorded elsewhere to make up for the taping defects). In addition to songs about book burnings and invasions of Latin American countries, there was the self-described "cinematic" "Ringing of Revolution." Ochs even named the actors. "John Wayne plays Lyndon Johnson. And Lyndon Johnson plays God. I play Bobby Dylan. A young Bobby Dylan." There was even one hysterical satire called "Love Me, I'm a Liberal," wherein Ochs exploded every cliché the near Left ever used. "In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it effects them personally. Here then is a lesson in safe logic." The album even contained a first: a Phil Ochs love song--"Changes." Amid a context of philosophy, politics and movies, that song lifted the performance to the level of Art.
It was a level he would either approximate, maintain or excel for the next few years. Despite the nearly grotesque overproduction of Pleasures of the Harbor, beneath all the noise was a song called "Crucifixion," which the sailor from the sea described as his greatest achievement. Indeed, it was high art, easily on a par with the best of Dylan's work. It was also ambitious, abstractly symbolizing political assassinations from Jesus Christ to John Kennedy. Alliterative, imagistic, accurate and terrified in tone, it is heard to better effect on the retrospective Chords of Fame in a crisp acoustic version.
And the night comes again to the circle-studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
Till the universe explodes as a falling star is raised
The planets are paralyzed, the mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity--then he dies!
The combined total sales of the first three albums had been less than 50,000 units. Phil Ochs and his new label--A&M--were optimistic that a change was needed.Pleasures' orchestration was chosen. A&M publicist Derek Taylor sent a copy of the album to President Johnson. Time, Billboard and Variety all conceded that the recording had its positive moments. Broadside, naturally, gutted the recording as a sellout, which was silly. The only thing the singer was selling out was concert tickets. The publicity worked. Phil's first A&M album outsold all three of his Elektra recordings combined.
While on a promotional tour for the album, Ochs became even more active in his opposition to the Vietnam War. One such manifestation was his organization of a "War is Over" celebration in New York's Washington Square Park. The idea behind the rally was that if enough people could come to believe the war was over, it actually would be so. It was also an opportunity to mobilize people through tactics of street theatre, tactics that were also being used to some effect by his friends in the newly formed Yippie community. By now Jerry Rubin and occasional collaborator Abbie Hoffman had learned how to use the media against itself. Aware that photographers had a tendency to focus on anyone with long hair and bare feet, the Yippies used humor and charm on reporters to ensure their media contacts wouldn't find the parades and marches altogether unacceptable. And so the "War is Over" celebration attracted thousands and allowed the Yippies to promote their upcoming gathering in Chicago. Phil did the same at all his public performances, while at the same time campaigning and playing benefits for the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy.
In between charity benefits and political obligations, Phil found a free week in which to make the album Tape From California. Again Larry Marks produced. But this time the lush orchestration was harnessed, when it was used at all. The title track actually had electric instruments and sounded suspiciously like rock and roll, albeit old time rock and roll. Unquestionably the best thing on the album, though, was "When in Rome," a song inspired by film director Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata. Calling the song brilliant, critic Bart Testa wrote "The song does nothing less than symbolically rewrite the entire history of the United States as a chaotic and apocalyptic epic, with Ochs playing all the lead parts in the first person."
Back through the ashes and back through the embers
Back through the roads and ruins I remembered
My hands at my side I sadly surrendered
Do as you please.
The setting for the disaster that Chicago would become seemed nearly preordained. On March 12, 1968, Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for President. His platform was "Get Out Now." Four days later, Robert Kennedy announced his own candidacy on an anti-war ticket. Together the two men captured sixty-nine percent of the popular vote in the Democratic primaries. Lyndon Johnson's heir apparent, Hubert Humphrey, achieved a mere two percent. Before the primaries were over, Kennedy was assassinated. Abbie Hoffman suggested the Celebration of Life form a counter-convention where their attendees would all wear VOTE FOR ME buttons and each person would nominate himself. The aims of the Celebration were a blending of the philosophies of the Old and New Left, a gathering of radical organizations, a model of an alternative society, the politics of ecstacy. As Phil Ochs put it, the Yippies "wanted to be able to set out fantasies in the street to communicate their feelings to the public." A number of memorable slogans were coined, mainly as a way of publicizing the upcoming event. Sure that the more outrageous the phrase, the more likely the media would be to repeat it--and hence bestow the gift of free publicity--the Yippies declared they would "Burn Chicago to the ground! Acid for all! Abandon the creeping meatball!"
A few days before the Democratic Convention began, Phil Ochs, Stew Albert and Jerry Rubin found an Illinois farmer willing to sell a large sow for twenty dollars. Since Phil was the only one with any money, the honor of the purchase went to him. The Yippies had found their own candidate. On August 23, 1968, they held a press conference outside Chicago's Civic Center and announced their "Pigasus for President" campaign. The press was duly amused and the police hauled the group in, charging them with disturbing the peace and bringing livestock into the city.
The night of August 24 brought 7,500 demonstrators to town, all of whom needed some place to stay. Many had plans to sleep in Lincoln Park. The police had other ideas. They attacked the Park with tear gas and beat the revelers as they left. The following night, the cops removed their badges to avoid easy detection, following Mayor Richard Daley's admonition: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder. He is there to preserve disorder." The message was understood. The police force attacked the press, local residents, paramedics and protestors with equal fervor. Plenty of network TV cameras filmed the massacre, but the rest of the nation wouldn't see it until days later because of sabotaged transmissions.
Humphrey accepted his party's nomination on August 28, as the day ended and the scent of tear gas wafted up Michigan Avenue to the nominee's suite at the Conrad Hilton. The worst violence was about to begin. And the New York folk singer would be right in the thick of things. The protestors had gathered in Grant Park to hear a series of speeches before marching to the Convention Center. The Chicago Police attempted to contain the group by surrounding the Park. One after another speaker addressed the crowd. In between speeches of men like activist Dave Dellinger, poet Allen Ginsberg, and comedian Dick Gregory, Phil would stand in the back of a pick-up truck and sing for the crowd. Shortly after he sang a rousing version of "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he saw a young boy climb the Park's flag pole and pull down Old Glory. The was all the provocation the police required. They grabbed the kid, beat him with their nightsticks, and tossed him into the back of a squad car while the more agitated onlookers threw rocks at the arresting officers. Press cameras filmed all this for posterity and even broadcast one cop commanding "Make sure you show them throwing rocks!" While Dave Dellinger attempted to lead a nonviolent march to the Convention Center (and was blocked from doing so), others took advantage of an opening in the quarantine and thousands of young people marched toward the Hilton. Enraged at being distracted, the police charged up Michigan Avenue, firing tear gas canisters and clubbing everything in sight. When clubs failed to subdue, they stomped. And when that proved ineffective, they kicked, shoved, punched and beat. The crowd shouted "The whole world is watching!" As Phil Ochs and the others would soon come to realize, most of the whole world didn't care and among those who did, many felt the cops hadn't gone far enough.
Back in Los Angeles, Phil began to question his own approach to politics in America. While the Yippies and other radicals had been creating and recreating their own counterculture, they had alienated the American working class along with Middle America. People who were already involved, Ochs reasoned, didn't need to be converted. Nixon--who would ride to victory above the shattered remains of a splintered Democratic Party--called these frightened Americans 'the Silent Majority.' Ochs knew that if this majority rejected the members of the New Left, they would in turn embrace the solutions of men like Nixon and George Wallace. Frightened by those prospects, the songwriter began to detach himself by degrees from the journalistic approach to his craft. The resulting music spoke with broader, more universal tones. As he's done in "Crucifixion," two or three lines could speak entire chapters while a whole song could fill libraries. One last time, Larry Marks would produce. This time they both got it exactly right.
Rehearsals for Retirement is among the most beautiful and powerful recordings in any musical genre. Backed by a real band, featuring Lincoln Mayorga (whose piano had been the stand out feature of the Pleasures album), Bob Rafkin on bass and guitar, and (probably) Kevin Kelly on drums, Ochs delivered the performance of a lifetime. The cover itself was a photograph of a tombstone Phil had had made for the occasion. The headstone bore an oval picture of Phil standing in front of the flag with a Revolutionary War rifle slung over his shoulder. Beneath the image were the words: Phil Ochs (American). Born: El Paso, Texas 1940; Died: Chicago, Illinois 1968.
The album led off with "Pretty Smart on my Part" which in four crisp verses not only gave an hysterically funny analysis of the reactive behavior of the machismo mentality, it tied the vignettes together with a pair of lines--twenty-four years before Oliver Stone would do the same--asserting that John Kennedy had been assassinated to allow the U.S. military the pleasure of frying the people of Vietnam. Before the impact of that assertion could sink in, Mayorga's piano introduces "The Doll House" with a sound of someone lost and wandering in a surreal environment of someone else's making. The singer himself is lost amid this ambience, a world of soft confusion and amazing pressure. It all unspins with the plateau: "The ballet master/Was beckoning ‘faster'/The ballerina was posed/In the fragile beauty she froze/Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go!" After that uncommercial interruption, Ochs is back in a narrative that begins and ends in the third person and yet clearly is also the first person narrator in between, a police officer, defensive about his responsibility to "keep the country safe from long hair," hateful of the students and minorities he brutalizes, yet unable to understand what it is that his enemies don't understand about him. Ultimately he can only utter a variation on Descartes: "I kill, therefore I am." The song "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is possibly more worthy of praise for its inventive title than its descriptions of Convention Week. The same cannot be said for the album's centerpiece.
The intensity does not lessen with "The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns," explicitly a song about the missing nuclear submarine but implicitly a strong metaphor for the performer's view of his own position in society.
Sounding bell is diving down the water green
Not a trace, not a toothbrush, not a cigarette was seen
Bubble ball is rising from a whisper or a scream
But I'm not screaming, no I'm not screaming
Tell me I'm not screaming.
Perhaps sensing he'd revealed enough for the moment, Ochs took his audience on a brief road trip from Eden to Los Angeles--"city of tomorrow." Then soon enough, we're back, engulfed in the personal drama of "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore," a song that was not only obviously inspired by Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," but could easily be the long awaited response from the unseen character Dylan had been lecturing. Peppered with spicy lines like "You love your love so much that you'd strangle her gladly" and "You search the books in vain for a better word for lonely," the song climaxes with the narrator coming upon an ex-lover's emotional suicide in process. The galloping horseback rhythms of "Another Age" unite Tom Paine, Jesse James and Robin Hood in search of a stolen election. Then suddenly the horse can run no more and the title track walks the final lap of the course. The end is near. Though still tinged with vibrato, his voice struggles to contain the moan beneath it. With a fade of piano and bass, he is gone.
He lies on his back on the couch in the Canyon house. Awake, he closes his eyes and imagines he is dreaming. He sees his paternal grandfather lip-locked beside the radio, listening to FDR speak reassuringly, while his grandmother fries eggs in the kitchen. His father comes in, wide-eyed and despondent from days without sleep. He sees himself hiding beneath a desk in Miss Jocelyn's classroom during an air raid drill, teasing his younger brother, being softly scolded by his older sister.
A chill comes in through the living room window, so he pulls the remembered images over himself like a patchwork quilt. A match flame of exploration in the dark; a faint smell that never leaves the walls; the taste of buttered popcorn at the movies; mastering scales on the clarinet; his father staring at the newspaper without reading it; shooting himself in the leg while showing off for a friend; a green sign welcoming the world to Columbus, Ohio; James Dean's red jacket; Fidel Castro marching into Havana; a pencil snapping between tight fingers; the strum of a guitar he'd won in a bet; a belt tied in a loop with a buckle supporting his own weight.
The idea of the gold suit came to him after seeing Elvis Presley perform in Las Vegas. The only hope for America, Phil decided, was a revolution, and the only hope for a revolution in America was for Elvis to become Che Guevara. Since the young man from Tupelo was unlikely to make such a conversion, Phil Ochs would have to become Elvis as Che himself. The first step was having Nudie the tailor make him a gold suit. That was the first mistake.
The second mistake was his next album. The songs themselves were fine, but if Larry Marks had buried Ochs' tunes under a sea of swash, new producer Van Dyke Parks placed some very good tunes behind a Spectorian Wall of Sound, with timpani drums and backing choruses that would have been more at home on a Ronettes album than on Phil Ochs' Greatest Hits. That title was his third mistake. Intended sarcastically, the title (and the reverse legend declaring "50 Phil Ochs' fans can't be wrong!") was easily misunderstood as being what it purported to be.
His last mistake was in the way he chose to promote the album. He was scheduled to play Carnegie Hall again. He showed up, but this time he was wearing the gold suit and had his band with him. He might reasonably have expected to be about as welcome as Dylan had been when the latter had gone electric at Newport. As if to guarantee a hostile reaction, his set was weighted with other people's songs. After beginning with a up version of Conway Twitty's "Mona Lisa" and his own obligatory "I Ain't Marching Anymore," he introduced his rendition of Merle Haggard's "Okie From Meskogee." Everyone assumed that gesture was intended as irony, but how could anyone tell for sure? The real trouble, though, came when he performed medleys of hits first by Buddy Holly and later by Elvis. The first set received such a hostile response that the singer gently lectured the crowd. "Let's not be narrow-minded Americans- You can be a bigot against blacks, you can be a bigot against music." After another pair of his own songs--neither from the new album that needed promoting--he did the Elvis medley. Although his voice was heavy with reverb, he still sounded magnificent and just as the crowd was won over, Carnegie Hall cut the power. The audience shouted "We want power! We want power!" Electricity was restored and the concert was completed.
Phil begged A&M's Jerry Moss to release the tapes of the concert as an album. Moss politely declined. Eventually A&M did issue the album--in Canada. It would be more than twenty years before it was available in the United States.
Over the next few years, Phil became more isolated from his friends and spent most of his time drinking, watching TV and traveling to other countries. In South Africa, he was robbed by three men. In the process, his vocal cords were ruptured and he lost his upper register. Convinced he would never sing professionally again, he fell deeper into bouts of manic depression and paranoia.
Does anybody know my name or recognize my face?
I must have come from somewhere but I can't recall the place
They left me at the matinee and left without a trace.
Ticket home--I want a ticket home!
His nephew David found him hanging from his own belt in his sister's bathroom. He was thirty-five years old. I can make no case for martyrdom here. There is nothing noble about suicide, regardless of how that suicide may have been the result of social forces or diminished expectations. Had he lived, I doubt Phil would have made any new songs, and if he had, they probably would not have compared favorably with his best work. But it remains a fact that whenever I read about some ludicrous injustice or monumental hypocrisy, I wonder what Ochs would have said about it, how he would have summed up the situation with an acerbic line or two. And I wonder who the next dead hero will be.
Punk Rock, Pub Bands, New Wave,
and Keen Stuff
Punk rock, in this regard, is problematic. The best of it merged a very broad scope of musical ambition with an explicit urge to wash away the chalk mark boundary between star and fan. At precisely the moment when such superstar acts as the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart hired other people to prevent them from coming into unwelcome contact with the very fan base who bought tickets to their shows and worked in fast food to pay for their albums, thousands of young people in the U.S. and Europe turned the machinery upside down and formed their own bands, most of which weren't especially great, some of which were inconceivably magnificent.
The Stooges. The Stooges. Elektra. 1969.
Patti Smith. Horses. Arista. 1975.
Graham Parker. Howlin' Wind. Mercury. 1976.
Graham Parker. Heat Treatment. Mercury. 1976.
The Patti Smith Group. Radio Ethiopia. Arista. 1976.
The Ramones. The Ramones. Sire. 1976.
The Ramones. Rocket to Russia. Sire. 1977.
The Adverts. "One Chord Wonders." Stiff. 1977.
Elvis Costello. My Aim is True. Columbia. 1977.
The Vibrators. Pure Mania. Columbia. 1977.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Blank Generation. Sire. 1977.
The Sex Pistols. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Warner Bros. 1977.
While it was around, that's just how exciting it was. When the Midwestern clod hats tried to think of punk rockers, it was clear the Pistols were just a bit of sweat from a raw nerve, said sweat personified by Rotten's disgusted leer and Cook and Jones' metallic cloud ramming. It was anti-fashion, anti-attitude, anti-sacred Cowsills. When the singer snarled "Destroy," he sounded like a pissed off kid who's stumbled across the world's most dead virus. Sometimes, even now, there's no excuse for playing anything else.
Elvis Costello. Armed Forces. Columbia. 1978.
Nick Lowe. Pure Pop For Now People. Columbia. 1978.
The Clash. The Clash. Epic. 1979.
The Clash. London Calling. Epic. 1979.
Graham Parker. Squeezing Out Sparks. Arista. 1979.
Marianne Faithful. Broken English. Island. 1979.
Genya Ravan. . . . And I Mean It! 20th Century. 1979.
Buzzcocks. Singles Going Steady. IRS. 1979.
The Dead Kennedys. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. Alternative Tentacles. 1980.
In a land so vast that Walt Whitman could entertain in a barn, there are always pockets of salvation waiting to be explored. One such has been the Mississippi Delta, just east of where Highway 61 curved down from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and just west of Mobile. Hundreds of sons and grandsons of plantation slaves picked up guitars and milked a rapturous country blues from their own throats.
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| Son House |
One of the first of these to record was Tommy Johnson, whose "Canned Heat Blues" and "Maggie Campbell Blues" stirred up the Delta. Tommy J's first recordings were in 1928, but Charley Patton--who did not record until the following year--is usually considered the founder of Delta blues, less because he sounded good--which he did--than because of his attitude. He was the kind of guy who scared white people. Beaten mean by his preacher daddy, Charley was good looking and knew it. He took on as many women as he could and beat his share as well, as befits a smooth talking lazy illiterate headed for Calvary with a guitar instead of a cross. Patton arranged for the first recording sessions of another key figure in Mississippi blues, a man named Son House.
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| Charley Patton |
During the Great Depression, music did not sound effected by the hard times. It sounded as if it was hard times. It sounded like someone smashing his head into granite walls at 185 mph as far back as the early 1920s, before country music even existed. There was, of course, Uncle Dave Macon. The former Teamster used to banjo his songs in a funny hat, dressed up in blue jeans, singing "Carve That Possum," "Fox and Hounds," or "Way Down the Old Plank Road," the latter containing an invitation to the audience to kill themselves. With over 200 happy-go-psychotic songs to his credit, he was a staple of radio's "Grand Ole Opry" for twenty-seven years.
As if to prove in advance that, yes, even cowgirls do get the blues, there was Ma Rainey, who, according to Bob Dylan, along with Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll. More certain is that with the wildly sinning pianist Georgia Tom Dorsey and guitar-bowler Tampa Red, Ma recorded one of the earliest versions of the Stagger Lee tale, this one dated 1925 and called "Stack O' Lee Blues." But her most famous song was "See See Rider," a song done at one time or another by most everyone, but especially by Chuck Willis, Mitch Ryder, and The Animals. You can hear Big Memphis Ma in between the rainfall on the roof of the suicide ward listening to Bessie Smith. Between 1923 and 1933, when Smith's recordings were made, her aim was clearly more broad than the blues singer genre could hold. For this reason, along with the specif caliber of accompanists she chose, her work is just as often found in jazz listings as blues.
It's doubtful anyone except four-eyed south-paw musicologists would have known who any of these people were had not British bands like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds reintroduced the styles and in some cases the same actual songs back to American audiences who were about as familiar with people such as Robert Johnson in the early 1960s as people such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson were when Johnson was still alive. Still, perhaps when one is Mick and Keith and it is the 1960s and directors such as Jean Luc Godard are making movies about you, it isn't necessary to give credit--much less royalties--to Gospel or blues performers whose work you admittedly perform better than they did. The story of "The Prodigal Son," for example, is one of the most frustrating in the Bible. A man has two sons. The younger becomes impatient and tells Dad he wants his inheritance before the old man kicks off. Upon receipt of same, the kid turns the land into cash and heads for Vegas to blow it all all cocaine, show girls and slots. Well, Pop and the older brother are working their brains out when one fine day the kid returns penniless and hungry, stinking of gin, dried lipstick on his collar, toothily grinning, "I'm back!" The brother says he knew it would happen, but the old man drops everything, slaughters the fatted calf and tosses back some imported Israeli whiskey he'd been saving just for such an occasion. The responsible son is horrified. After all, the old guy never gave a party to celebrate being responsible. It is not much of a stretch to see the spoiled industrialists who squandered everything and then expected to be welcomed back through the loving arms of the New Deal. Would the government respond by killing the calf? Or would the urbane bankers return to their cities and find rank strangers?
It is a coincidence that direct involvement by the United States in Vietnam occurred in the same year, 1954, that Elvis Presley recorded his best singles with Sun Records. It is also a coincidence that armed U.S. soldiers began actively assaulting Vietnam the same year, 1964, that the Beatles landed in America. It is even a coincidence that the final withdrawal of U.S. troops happened in 1975, just as disco popped up on the charts. And finally, it is an incontrovertible fact that three gloriously salacious songs could have prevented the whole thing.
"Sixty Minute Man." Recorded by Billy Ward and the Dominoes. Produced by Ralph Bass. Written by Billy Ward and Rose Marks. Released 1951.
"One Mint Julep." Recorded by the Clovers. Produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Written by Rudolph Toombs. Released 1952.
"Money Honey." Recorded by The Drifters. Produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Written by Jesse Stone. Released 1953.
The reason for the above claim is simple. All three songs to some extent share an evocation of good-natured humor in relation to romance. Fascists are totally foreign to good-natured humor of any type, are typically repulsed by any style of romance that excludes barbed wire and cattle prods, and certainly perceive nothing amusing about sex with anyone other than the maternal parent. To put it simply, had America embraced these three songs with a fraction of the enthusiasm the singers demonstrated, no one would have had the time or inclination to fire bomb anyone.
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| Billy Ward and the Dominoes |
It was Bill Brown who sang lead on Billy Ward and the Dominoes' hit. "There'll be fifteen minutes of lovin and fifteen minutes of huggin and fifteen minutes of blowing my top." Do I sense a new euphemism for oral sex here, or is this just a reference to a very extended ejaculation? Better we contemplate this, my argument goes, than having dead baby jokes materialize upon red and green rice paddies.
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| The Clovers |
The Clovers were a five-man singing combo featuring Bud Bailey on lead vocals. They had R&B hits with "Love Potion Number 9," "Blue Velvet," "Devil or Angel" and "One Mint Julep." Aside from being a bopping slice of black troubleshooting harmony, the latter song put the blame on alcohol for everything, including the singer's six children. A struggling record company called Atlantic released the tune.
Atlantic Records--which became the greatest record company of all time--was formed in 1947 by Herb Abramson and the Ertegun brothers, Ahmet and Neshui. Wrong as it may be to reduce the company's artistic achievements to a mere list of performers, that list is nevertheless most impressive: Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett, King Floyd, Percy Sledge, The Spinners, The Drifters, LaVern Baker, Brook Benton, The Bobbettes, Booker T and the MGs, Ruth Brown, Solomon Burke, Clarence Carter, The Chords, The Clovers, Ivory Joe Hunter, Sam and Dave, Betty Wright, Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Stick McGhee, Texas Johnny Brown, T-Bone Walker, Guitar Slim, Cornell Dupree, Al King, Mickey Baker, and Led Zeppelin.
Clyde McPhatter had left the Dominoes to record a solo single called "Money Honey," produced by Jerry Wexler. The song didn't quite have what Wexler was looking for and he told this to Clyde. The singer said okay and came back with Andy and Gerhart Thrasher and a young man named Billy Pinkney. The four called themselves The Drifters. They re-recorded "Money Honey" and the song hooked Number One on the R&B charts. The group recorded more classics over the next year and a half, the best of which, "White Christmas," would have scared Bing Crosby to death. The military got hold of McPhatter around this time, though, and the Drifters slumped commercially for the next five years.
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