Gemini Smackdown

So, some ass-bag broke into my car last night. They were kind enough to just break one of those little triangular windows, but then they went ahead and took my nice leather bag, which had, among other things, my cell phone, the 6-CD Complete Miles Davis On The Corner set, the excellent new Vashti Bunyon collection of early demos and singles, the Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival DVD, the new Robert Plant and Allison Krauss disc, something new from the Numero Group that I didn’t even get to crack into, a great disc of West African percussion, my tape recorder, note books, lots of odd scraps, and an excellent collection of wigged-out dub-soul doo-wop from Nathaniel Mayer called (I Want) Love and Affection (Not the House of Corrections). I’d been stewing on it for a while, meditating on the way that in a recording, over-focusing on certain details (the hand percussion in this case) can cause a peculiar kind of distortion, sort of the sonic equivalent of a fish-eye-lens effect. There’s a point of fixation, around which everything else becomes misshapen or out-of-proportion. It was also clear, after having recently watched a documentary on Stax Records highlighting the ways that Memphis soul was much more raw than Motown, their big competition. Mayer, too, was from Detroit, and while you wouldn’t mistake this for southern soul, his music had a strange raw, almost outsider art, quality to it. The disc is well worth tracking down if see it. And if you find some questionable character trying to sell you a used copy in or around Hartford, CT, let me know. They probably have lots of my other shit, too. (The mo-fos took my book-on-tape of Robinson Crusoe and my portable CD player, which had the righteous mix that Lefty had made for me for our aural travels in the Drift-o-tron this summer, too.) Lucky for me, I didn’t have much faith or hope in humanity left, so I don’t feel too terribly let down.
I just spent like 20 minutes on my knees, looking for a (should I say it?) Tower of Power record that I was gonna inflict on you all. Songs about crime and depleted oil reserves, from a record called Urban Renewal, sort of tying into Frankie Lee’s recent theme. But no luck. Couldn’t find it. There must be some sort of Gemini smackdown taking place, astrologically, these days, some moon in some planet’s house where it don’t belong.
As a fitting reflection of my dual nature, I’m posting some more John Phillips, someone about whom I have very conflicted feelings. These are from the completely mixed-bag collection of his solo outtakes and demos called Jack of Diamonds. Phillips makes me think of a sort of sexual predator version of Jim Croce - creepy right? - and there’s definitely objectionable strains of Don McLean in there, too. The list goes on – bad sax, bad scatting, bad congas, bad sentiments. But sometimes the taste transgressions get you somewhere.

"Marooned" - John Phillips

"Yesterday I Left the Earth" - John Phillips

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

     I know, I know--this is a questionable conceit.  It all started when I discovered that there was once a band called Compost.  They existed for a few seconds in the early '70s, and there's really no reason to learn anything about them or listen to their music.  But you could if you really wanted to, I suppose.  (The record sleeve says they have an "organic" sound, dig?)  I like the song because A, it's called "Country Song" (and it sure ain't country!), and 2, it sorta reminds me of Sesame Street--you can imagine one of those short films of kids running around in a field and then watching a farmer milk a cow or something, with the song playing in the background.

        I can't remember ever listening to Garbage until recently, when my slightly better half revealed that she "loved" them.  "What th'...?"  I asked myself silently.  "Oh really?  I'll have to give 'em a listen,"  I said out loud.

After doing so,  I came to the conclusion that they had one pretty good song.  You can really hear a Chrissie Hynde influence in Shirley Manson's vocal stylings, and you'll notice that she name-checks "Talk of the Town" towards the end, in case you didn't pick up on the obvious.  Nothing to write home about, but it's still an enjoyable few minutes of pop-rock.  (Now that I think about it, I probably never listened to them because I kept confusing Marilyn Manson with Shirley Manson.  Hey, it was the '90s, man).

     Of course, I had to include the Trashmen.  (Yeah, there's Edgar Winter's White Trash and Trashcan Sinatras and others I'm sure, but you gotta draw the line somewhere).  Before Prince, before the Replacements (but after the Andrews Sisters), this is what Minneapolis gave the world, musically speaking.  For some reason, it never seemed to bother anyone that this "surf" band's turf was about a thousand miles from the nearest ocean (or that the Rivingtons were eventually credited with composing their biggest hit).  It's really more amusing than anything else, I guess.  Let's face it, though, "Surfin' Bird" is great, raw fun.  The vocal break is just brilliant--profound gibberish.  If I was forced to make a top ten list of the greatest rock 'n roll songs of all time, it would probably be number 7.

"Country Song"--Compost

"Special"--Garbage

"Surfin' Bird"--The Trashmen

Is There Anybody Alive Out There?

I've been feeling guilty about something I wrote a while back about Bruce Springsteen. It's not that what I wrote was untrue exactly, but it just wasn't complete. It was based on faulty intelligence. I gave a light backhand to We Shall Overcome, the Seeger covers album. But then I saw the Seeger Sessions tour that same summer and was (ahem) weeping by the end of it. Seriously--devastated. It was essentially an old-school religious revival and anti-war rally rolled up into a big sweaty fuck you to modern times. To wit:

Jacob's Latter (Live in Dublin) - Bruce S.

So I saw him at Madison Square Garden last night and it was once again transcendent, the best possible kind of rock'n roll spectacle there is. The New York Times agrees. When you find yourself left in mystified fervor every single time -- that was No. 7 for me -- you either conclude you've got a peculiar need, a special gene, a weakness, or there's something objectively magical happening. I hereby assert the latter, with a sprinkle of the former. For me, he single-handedly redeems the idea of being an American nowadays. Again, I was ready to dismiss the new hit single, "Radio Nowhere," until I heard it live and heard the question in the chorus, posed in shout-along anthem, a plea to our ravaged times, 60,000 fists in the air: "Is there anybody alive out there?" You can imagine the response.

One of Bruce's security detail saw my 70-year-old mother-in-law and her cane-toting 80-year-old boyfriend in the back stands (they're ambitious for their age) and gave them both front row seats. My mother-in-law said "she could have reached out and touched him." At the end, Bruce's people had a wheelchair brought out for her tuckered-out boyfriend and escorted them both out of a private exit to avoid the crowds. They didn't know any of the songs, but they couldn't stop talking about the show this morning. She had that in common with a lot of people, I imagine. Like the dude standing near the mic at Bruce's recent jam with Arcade Fire.

You know the guy's onto something when not even our tawdry, shallow, right-wing, supremely lame and bottom-feeding culture can destroy his essential integrity, as much as it tries. Here's what Bruce said on 60 Minutes last week when CBS's in-house Bush family suck-up Scott Pelley questioned his patriotism: "There's a part of the singer going way back in American history that is, of course, the canary in the coal mine. When it gets dark, you're supposed to be singing. It's dark right now. The American idea is a beautiful idea. It needs to be preserved, served, protected and sung out. Sung out."

He closed with an extended version of this song last night, inspiring jigs in the aisles:

American Land (Live in Dublin) - Bruce (Lyrics here.)

If you don't listen to anything else, listen to this:

Blinded By the Light (Live in Dublin) - Bruce

The Key Horse on the Highway

Trying to explain to someone why Ween is great is probably an exercise in futility. It's like trying to tell why a joke works or analyzing why a Zen kōan makes perfect sense. They're geniuses at making songs that give you the precise feeling of hearing a song stoned, that special frisson of laughter and epiphany. Their latest record, La Cucaracha, is a catalog of brilliant cosmic weirdness, from Tijuana Brass trumpet music to mystical psych-rock to a reggae dub song about a "Black Man" and a "Chinaman" fighting over whether some fish is fresh or frozen ("The Fruit Man"). As usual, they're not just politically incorrect, they're politically incoherent, like life itself. They sort of make irrelevant Sacha Frere-Jones' fretful article on why white rock groups don't borrow from black music anymore. They exploit everybody and anybody, shamelessly and without heed. The only way to get to the marrow of great music, they seem to have realized, is to explicitly do it in character and then take it way too far.

Like I said, futile.

Anyway, I just had to shake my head listening to "Learnin to Love," a Dada take on Roger Miller that romps along until it descends into an oddly inevitable Broadway/prog breakdown with brittle White Man harmonies. The lyrics are cutup racetrack slang like something from Basement Tapes-era Bob Dylan. It's amazing, funny and perfect.

"Learnin to Love" - Ween

"The Fruit Man" - Ween

Jane Morgan Delivers the Goods

     This is from a record called Fresh Flavor, on which Jane croons the hits of the day ("Sounds of Silence",  "Monday, Monday" &c.).  It's so much better than the original, it's not even funny.

"Good Lovin' "--Jane Morgan

Songs About the Southland

As many of you probably know, the 2007 Oxford American music issue is out and on the stands, and it’s a good’n. With excellent write-ups about Van Dyke Parks, Betty Davis, Betty Harris, Fred Neil and Mayo Thompson, it’s really worth getting. The accompanying CD is excellent, almost uniformly. There’s also a deep-inside account of the recording of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz. One interesting tidbit: turns out that Joe South, who we’ve celebrated here at the Driftwood Singers Present, played bass on much of Blonde on Blonde.
And fiction writer and former drummer for the Red Crayola, Frederick Barthelme, offers the most entertaining and in-depth retelling of that mysterious band’s curious life.

Ok, so I don't want to do anything that would deter you from going out and getting the thing yourself, so I'll just drop a little "amuse" for the ear. This is Fred Neil's "Little Bit of Rain." I've been obsessed with Neil ever since I heard his song about dolphins on The Sopranos (at the close of the episode with Christopher nodding out during the church festival). I actually remember reading his obit in the NYT back in 2000 or so. He was the writer of "Everybody's Talkin," made famous by Harry Nilsson on the soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy. It's a ubiquitous song, one of those actually great songs -- like "Fly Like an Eagle" or "Brown-Eyed Girl" - that you can in fact start to hate after having heard it so many times for so long. Anyway, Neil hated us (humanity) back, evidently, but he loved dolphins. Neil has one of those crazy expressive baritones, he's like a super-charged Lee Hazlewood.

"Little Bit of Rain" - Fred Neil

Making the Fizz

Listen, I know that it’s not about some much-maligned nugget of questionable music or an overlooked pop oddity normally found on a moldy piece of vinyl, so, technically, it’s not really a fair and appropriate topic for discussion in this forum, but, at the same time, I also know that, most likely, our dozen or so regular readers, and those who drift here, are - I can just tell - fans of fizzy water, so it’s with that in mind that I recommend reading this great article about some bad-ass characters who are pioneering in the world of DIY seltzer production.
You heard right. Make your own fizz. Naturally, if I had my whole situation in proper order I’d be posting "Tiny Bubbles" or some song about seltzer or just general effervescence, or maybe I’d just put up a suitably bubbly Cole Porter tune, but I’m all doped up on cold medicine, so I’m going without. Maybe Lefty can rock some Don Ho for us.

[LEFTY SEZ: This is the best I could come up with -- but it's pretty good!]

If I Was a Carpenter

It’s pretty much accepted that there’s some sort of magical vocal alchemy, some deep genetic harmonizing, some filial vocal cord synergy, that occurs when brothers sing together. The Stanley Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, the Delmores, the Louvins, the Kinks, the Proclaimers, the Osmonds, ... Nelson. And I think we can all agree that sisters pack a comparable mojo – the Boswells, the Andrews, Tegan and Sara. But the sibling dynamic proves more mysterious when it’s brothers and sisters. Who knows what kind of chromosomal, yin/yang, Freudian business is at work. Dark struggles work their way out in the music. This came to mind when listening to the newest from the Fiery Furnaces, which is, I guess, genius, but in a thorny, get-out-your-abacus kind of way, that isn’t really, you know, actually enjoyable. And is there anything scarier than the music of brothers-sister group the Free Design? When the over-achieving kids from the choral society and the Montessori school decide that the square world of mom and dad and work and society and conformity is all a big soul-sucking plastic sham, that’s what you get, in fine multi-part harmonies and whipped-cream production, complete with thematic burlap wallhangings decorated with felt cut-out letters spelling out some deep message about togetherness. Or, all you have to do is listen to the Carpenters, like Frankie Lee says. Funny that he posted their extra-terrestrial jamboree, because I’d brought this one back from my most recent trip to the homestead, found among a stack of long neglected CDs in the basement. This is one of those songs that you don’t really want to give away its title, because some of the magic, that sure-fire Carpenters magic, is in realizing what famous song that they’re actually singing, because you surely won’t guess by the quasi-baroque piano intro. So let’s just call it "Track 7."

"Track 7" - The Carpenters

Contact, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Carpenters

     So much has been written, said, sung, thought, and acted out using Barbie dolls about Karen Carpenter that I'm hesitant to add anything to the blather.  I just have to say that she'll always be cool for three reasons: 1) She played the drums. 2) That voice.  3)  Actually, I can't think of a third reason, so the first two will have to suffice.  

     It's a little depressing to get into what eventually happened to Karen, so I'll just relate the fascinating story of how I came to recognize the greatness of the Carpenters (even though I still think Richard may be kin to the Devil).  Back in the mid-'90s, someone had the idea to put together a Carpenters tribute album...done by the "alternative" stars of the moment!  Whatta concept!  There were a few good moments on it--I remember liking the Shonen Knife cover of "Top of the World" and Sonic Youth's take on "Superstar" (though I've never really been a fan o' them).  I think Mr. Poncho sent me a mixed tape with a Carpenters song on it at around the same time, so those two things taken together made me more hesitant to dismiss them out of hand, which I had done without really ever listening to them very much.  Of course, some of their songs are sickening--there's no other word for it.  But even those are fascinating in their own way.  

     The song that made me want to write this post is "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft".  Now, I don't know how deeply Richard and Karen were into the idea of there being aliens tootling around in the heavens, and I really don't care that much.  Judging by this song they must've had some sort of fascination with it.  It was written by an obscure Canadian band called Klaatu, which had people thinking they were the Beatles reunited when they released their first album with minimal info on it in 1976.  (The name Klaatu comes from the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, and oddly enough the character takes on the alias Carpenter at one point).   From the disturbingly corny radio dj intro to 160-musician-strong orchestration to the fuzztone guitar to the long fade, it's seven appallingly great minutes of pop music.  You should probably only listen to it once a year--on World Contact Day, of course.

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft--The Carpenters

There's Something About Gordon

As we approach the second anniversary of The Driftwood Singers Present (!), I've started to suspect that this site will ultimately evolve to become a decades-long referendum on the power, glory and lyrical vision of Gordon Lightfoot. At the end of the day, a whole helluva lot may in fact come down to Gordon.

Why is that?

It's hard to articulate exactly, which is why it could take decades. He's the one folk/rock 60s/70s Hippie Enlightenment Era figure the modern hipster class have been unwilling to unearth and grapple with, the one figure none have attempted to reference for some boutique indie amalgam. That's because The Foot can't be co-opted. A folk purist, purely Canadian, vaguely Native American, aloof and prideful yet almost haughty in his humility, vocally monolithic and monotonous at the same time, there's something about Gordon that simply can't be replicated. He's sui generis. Also, his cyclical folk style makes him so lyrically verbose, he's almost a pure creation of vinyl LP's, a man whose image- and metaphor-crammed songs require a 12" inner sleeve for printed lyrics and at least an hour of free listening time (not to mention a lifetime to comprehend), a man who doesn't really emerge properly in the small-world CD-liner-note universe we've come to know, let alone in the digital age. He's Vinyl-American.

This all gelled for me while sitting down and listening to Summertime Dream, his 1976 album on Warner Bros. On the surface, this was very radio-friendly, a big, sleek production with Moog synthesizers and crystaline steel guitars, every knob fussed over by Lenny Waronker. It sounds exquisite. But here's the deal: it's one of the best folk-rock albums ever made. First off, I shouldn't have to sell you on "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Mr. Poncho will gladly set you straight in some future series of posts, as I believe he's got a fan fiction novella based on it sitting in a drawer somewhere. But there's also "I'll Do It Again," a proto-rap-rock number that predates the Aerosmith/Run-DMC collision by more than a decade.

"I'll Do It Again" - Gordon Lightfoot

What finally knocked me out is the last song on the record: "Too Many Clues in This Room." The lyrics are almost bizarrely prophetic, cryptic and mystical, so much so that I suspect William Butler Yeats, John Ashbery, Dennis Kucinich, Jesus and every participant of the Burning Man festival from 1997 to present would agree that something truly visionary is happening in this song. That's why I've included the lyrics exactly as they appear in the liner notes of the original vinyl LP, from which this mp3 is recorded. Gordon Lightfoot, we hardly know ye.

"Too Many Clues In This Room"
by Gordon Lightfoot

The space shuttle ends where the subway begins
there's a tear on the face of the moon
from dusk until dawn they have searched all day long
but there's too many clues in this room
At best it is said we've bin [sic] locked deep inside
of an old seaman's chest full of charts
where maps are contained and what's left of his brains
when his crew threw his balls to the sharks

And around the looking glass
dancing to a tune
Sweeping out the house with a fine tooth comb
which history's shown
leads to ruin

In a word it is said that at times we must fall
but the worst of it all was the lies
We died for the cause just like regular outlaws
in the dust of an old lawman's eyes
In times best forgot there was peace, there was not
in her pains mother earth came to bloom
Her children were born in the eye of the storm
and there's too many clues in this room

The pow'er that is stored in this no-man's land of chance
is there Someone who knows what they're doin'?
The old soldiers say in their own crusty way
We've got too many troops in this room
All around the looking glass
dancing to a tune
Sweeping out the house with a fine tooth comb
which history's shown
leads to ruin

The space shuttle ends where the subway begins
praise the Lord there's a train leavin' soon
From dusk until dawn they have searched all day long
but there's too many clues in this room

That Tinkling Sound

Is there an instrument less "rockin’" than the harpsichord? Maybe the flute or the accordion. That’s partly why I love the Left Banke. They were not only unafraid to dabble with a little harpsichord here and there -- like lots of late ‘60s acts -- but these guys pretty much embraced the instrument, clearly made for powered inbred funny-pants-wearing monarchs, as the essence of their sound. There’s a reason they got labeled "baroque and roll" (big points to whoever coined that one). I love the way they would do this thing of adding absurd chamber orchestra bridges, and then, rather than working their way back to the verse, they’d simply pause, maybe throw in a drum break and then start back over. The Left Banke also had a high degree of intra-band hatred going on, almost Dinosaur Jr. levels, the main songwriter had a huge crush on one of the other guy’s girlfriend, and penned some of their best songs ("Just Walk Away Renee") were basically veiled hints that she should switch boyfriends. "Barterers and Their Wives" is totally renaissance faire material. I mean, you can’t really write a song that uses the word "barterers" without having it conjure the plague.
As an added bonus, here’s "Session Man" from the Kinks’ Face to Face. You’ll be interested to know that it’s an ode to pianist Nicky Hopkins, he of those chords on "Sympathy for the Devil" as well as countless other classic Stones tunes, and the session man on this track. I worship the line: "He’s a session man, a chord progress-ian."

"I’ve Got Something on My Mind" - Left Banke

"Barterers and Their Wives" - Left Banke

"Session Man - The Kinks

It's Not Easy Bein' Ol' Blue Eyes

     I remember seeing this record somewhere, picking it up, looking at the song titles and shaking my head in disbelief (and then buying it soon after).  Frank did a version of Something, the great George Harrison song?  But then I remembered hearing that it was his favorite Beatles song, so okay, fine.  But why, oh why did he feel compelled to do a version of Bein' Green?  (Why wonder?)  Now don't get me wrong--I am a fan, I really am.  But this song just shows once again how horrible the great ones can be.  (There's a Bob Dylan outtake my brother-in-law once played for me called "Straight A's in Love" or something.  Just awful).   And this is on a greatest hits compilation, no less.  I'm a Muppet fan as well, but I never really liked Kermit very much.  I'm more of a Gonzo kinda guy.  

     I wanted to include Aretha Franklin's version of My Way because I never knew there was one until recently, and because once you hear it you'll forget all about Frank's version (and Bein' Green too, I hope).  It's as though she's saying sorry Frank but this is definitive, no hard feelings.  (Of course she would probably never say that).  There's a moment towards the end where she sings "the one" and draws it out to such an ecstatic length--three or four syllables--and the note goes sharp with an intensity that gives me chills.  (If you listen closely you can also hear some spontaneous hand-clapping, which just adds to the overall transcendence of the moment).   It reminds me of  Merry Clayton's singing on Gimme Shelter, when her voice breaks on the word "murder".

Bein' Green-Frank Sinatra

My Way-Aretha Franklin

The Sword and the Stoned

For a long while I shied away from the music of Middle Earth. Trolls and spells, hairy feet and scepters with purple crystals on top, all that twenty-sided-die one-legged-flute-solo shit, typically sung with tea-stained breath through crumbling teeth.

*Shiver*

Well, Lindesfarne cracked open the gates of Mordor for me a bit and now I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at Donovan's 1970 album Open Road, the birth of the so-called Celtic rock genre. Donovan's backed by a band called Open Road and let me here list the band members in honor of how much these guys fucking rock: John Carr on drums, Mike Thomson on bass and lead guitar, Mike O'Neill on piano. Donovan's wispy way with a folk hook is leavened by a massive folk-prog drum and bass attack that gives Don instant heft -- the Sword of the Stoned. Heh-vee, my frond.

This album didn't go over in its time and the group disbanded. Too bad. As Wikipedia describes it, "Many of the songs on Open Road ponder the negative side of industrialization and the lost peacefulness of a previous time." That's practically a mission statement here at The Driftwood Singers. It's Donovan taking a journey into the black heart of the 20th Century via Hobbitan, a preface to everything from Ronnie James Dio to Genesis to Joanna Newsom and Mastodon. Lyrics, please:

i am the juggler of fortune and fame
let me not hear facts figures and logic
fain would i hear lore legend and magic
feathers of raven
slithers of coal
armour of silver
in the mackrel shoal
sun in the west
tis ruby blood red
travelers a-weary
do make their bed

("Roots of Oak")

I'm so enthusiastic about this I'm posting half the album, combining the last three songs together, a thrilling trilogy that starts with the gorgeous proto-indie rock "Season of Farewell."

Celtic Rock - Donovan

Roots of Oak - Donovan

Changes - Donovan

People Used to - Donovan

Season of Farewell --> Poke at the Pope --> New Year's Resolution - Donovan

[Noted: Hat tip to Ms. AGV for giving me this album. It's a gem.]

"I Got a Problem"

Talk about getting blindsided by history. Is this really what 1986 sounded like? I think back on that year as being Life’s Rich Pageant and True Stories. I think of Husker Du and U2 – big sounds. Even for Neil Young completists, Landing On Water is often overlooked. It was his next-to-last record on Geffen, the one between the country-ish Old Ways and the wrong-headed Life. Listening to it now, it seems to have split the difference between the rock of Reactor and the retardo-futuristic kraut-disco robotics of Trans. But on Landing On Water the drums are turbo charged, man-made, with Steve Jordan bashing away on trashy toms. (It’s only Neil, Jordan and co-producer Danny Kortchmar, on guitars and synths). I’ve sometimes found Jordan’s playing, admirably stripped down as it is, to still be over-energetic. It’s that same hopped-up vibe that makes this interesting.
It was in 1986, in fact, that I spent a weekend at a Zen monastery in Japan, for a school project (I was in high school there at the time.) I remember thinking that maybe, instead of actually writing a paper on Zen and my experience, I might simply turn in a blank page to demonstrate how much I’d learned. It was a bad idea and I’m glad I didn’t do it. I almost succumbed to the same specious logic here, figuring that I needn’t say anything on a post of Neil’s "I Got a Problem." It speaks for itself. It’s music that has a problem. Every time I hear this song, I think of "A Love Supreme," a bonehead version as rendered by Bob the Builder.
I interviewed the frontman of French Kicks earlier this year. We started talking about what he’d been listening to, and he said that he’d been particularly into Landing On Water and that he found the production and overall aesthetic to be similar to the French Kicks approach. A lot of people got problems.

"I Got A Problem" - Neil Young

The Truth May Be Betrayal, Lies and Treason

You realize that we live in a completely Puritanical, sexually paranoid, post-AIDS-crisis world when you consider that sensitive songwriters once approached the idea of what was basically anonymous sex as a potentially sweet and romantic subject. Strangers in the night. Etc. Take "The French Girl," a song penned by Ian Tyson, of Ian and Sylvia, and issued as a previously unreleased bonus track on the Sundazed edition of Gene Clark’s 1967 solo debut, which he made just after he left the Byrds. Django West awakened me to the glories of Gene Clark in a post a while back about the excellent song "So You Say You Lost Your Baby". Not only is this anonymous sex, but the exchange seems possibly to have been accomplished without actual "verbal" communication. ("She laughed each time I asked her name/... Her friends down at the French café has no English words for me.") Words fail you in the end. I learned, from Googling the lyrics to this song, that Dylan and the Dead evidently rehearsed this tune, but never actually performed it live. I wonder if it might have been the rehearsal that Dylan alludes to in Chronicles, that almost drove him to walk out on the whole thing. But just check the poetry or the lyrics and the way the melody unfurls in unusual ways, climbing, counter-intuitive.

Listen to the little bells, the insistent "la-la-la" backing vocals, the shakers, the declamatory bass line, tambourine at the chorus, the baroque piano, (is there harpsichord back there, too?). It’s like the folk wall of sound (arranged by Curt Boettcher, who went on to work with the Association and the Beach Boys, among others), which is fitting, since members of the wrecking crew were on these sessions.

I think this whole record is pretty amazing. But just to give you a sense, check out the completely Dylan-esque poetry to the lyrics on "Echoes" and "So You Lost Your Baby." There’s a lot of elaborate orchestration on "Echoes," which is like some sort of Jimmy Webb peyote mini blowout (arranged by Leon Russell). Django West already pointed out all the marvels on "So You Lost Your Baby" – moon trolls, and whatnot. But here’s the previously unreleased acoustic demo, as devastating as the full-on production, listen for those patented self-harmonizing vocals; he’s like the ghostly half of the brother duo with himself.

"The French Girl" – Gene Clark

"So You Say You Lost Your Baby" - Gene Clark

"Echoes" - Gene Clark

Buckeye Funk

     Dayton, Ohio is the hometown of my dad, the Ohio Players, Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices), Kim Deal of Pixies/Breeders fame...and Steve Arrington.  Does this make it some kind of music mecca?  Not really, especially since my dad can't even carry a tune.  I do remember him sitting down at the piano when I was little and playing random chords while shout-singing "Come to Breakfast!" and other hits.  It was my introduction to improvisation (of a sort) though neither one of us knew it at the time.

     But back to Steve Arrington and his Hall of Fame.  I noticed this cd a while ago at the library where I work, and I finally checked it out the other day.  I really was just fascinated by the album cover--it looks like a drawing you'd see in some high school yearbook, done by the guy or gal who's considered the best artist in the senior class.  And it's so creepy the way there are no eyeballs--I know it's supposed to be a bust, but it's as though it's part marble and part flesh.  The other thing I think is so funny is the song title "You Meet My Approval".  Talk about damning with faint praise!  It's a passably funky tune, and it actually reminds me not of other funk bands but rather Gang of Four.  You can imagine them listening to this or stuff like it and then going off and recording "I Love a Man in Uniform".   (It's kind of hard to imagine them singing "The girl is hot!", however).                               Arrington was the singer/drummer for the band Slave before opening his Hall of Fame. Michael Jackson was a big influence: "He's not elaborate in terms of riffs, but he is in terms of nuance."  Hmmm... Anyway, at some point in the mid-'80s Arrington saw a sign (both literally & figuratively) on the streets of NYC, became born again, and started his own church--the Amazing Love Full Gospel Church in Kettering, Ohio.  It's a classic progression.

You Meet My Approval--Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame

I Love a Man in Uniform--Gang of Four

Fresh My Farm

Spurred by that fleeting summer feeling, JP and Sister Bernice and I bolted down to NC for a mad-dash, last-ditch surge of desperation in search of sun, familial festivities, slow-cooked meats and yet another excuse to sip on bourbon and water. What we learned, or what we already knew (having lived in the northeast now for near 10 years) and were reminded of, was that people there are simply nicer. Or, at least, they act nicer, which is basically the same thing. Flying in on Friday afternoon and out again on Sunday morning, we had a mini checklist to start x-ing off. First stop Gus Sir Beef, home of the most righteous fried squash anywhere, also the restaurant with perhaps the best Greek-redneck-argot slogan around: "Fresh My Farm." Within minutes of our convergence (sister, three nieces, grandmother, brother-in-law) the waitresses were hanging out around our table, stroking babies’ heads in a way that our Massachusetts neighbors would think a presumptuous, inappropriate, and possibly unhealthy (germs) violation of personal space (not that I don’t dig Yankee aloofness). I switched from Bud to sweet tea, which seemed like some kind of divine one-two beverage change-up/sucker-punch.

I’d been meaning to post Alan Jackson’s "Gone Country," mostly just because it’s a great, funny, funny song. I must have forgotten how caustic it is, really; I almost doubled over laughing listening back to it and realizing that one of the verses is basically a dig at Bruce Hornsby, or Bruce Hornsby types, with that patented Hornsby piano articulation flown in for full effect. It’s brutal. On the one hand, the song ridicules all the wannabe rednecks (you know who you are), and those who think that cranking out a country tune is somehow easier than anything, but at the same time, it’s also sort of understanding, too. Of course they’ve gone country, why wouldn’t they? This, I know, is fraught territory, and JP, Dewey, Lefty and I have hashed it out before. But, in keeping with Lefty’s recent endtimes jeremiad, I’ve decided that swampy, humid, new south living may be the alternate universe to my universe’s ass. I’m just waiting for the right pair of boots.

Other things learned and relearned: slow-cooking meats on the poolside grill while sipping beers, playing with the little ones and occasionally taking a dip is a sacred and preferred form of disassociation. That’s what the Bobby Bare is all about: beer, kids, cooking. Also: the cicadas at night sound like the Tarheel State version of the Balinese monkey chant.

"Gone Country" - Alan Jackson

"Singin’ in the Kitchen" - Bobby Bare

Stella Hues

Credit where credit is due: Mr. Poncho has slowly turned the stone from the cave that held what I thought was the lifeless, talentless body of Ryan Adams. I'm no moon-eyed convert mind you, but I see the basic talent and attraction after giving Easy Tiger a few spins. But what finally convinced me was hearing the new Willie Nelson album, Songbird, and how it really pops compared to the avalanche of somewhat lackluster stuff he's kicked out in recent years. Turns out Ryan Adams produced it, hedging beautiful recording fidelity with a raw, garage-y backing band (the Cardinals) and a great song selection that pulls Willie off the typical standards, feathering in a Rick Rubinesque hipster-modernist aesthetic (like Parson's "$1,000 Wedding" and Cohen's "Hallelujah"). To see what I mean, listen to Willie doing the Grateful Dead's "Stella Blue" (Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter), a magnificently aching rendition with a fantastic feedback-wheezing crud-mud guitar that adds minor-key watercolor washes where Willie might typically use more obvious acrylic lines. The guitar solo at minute 3:55 is transcendent.

Stella Blue - Willie Nelson

Life on The Bay of My Way or The Highway

Dadgummit this world is relentless! The news, the wars, the fear, the candidates, the hurricanes, the whole celebutardistic mob beating the holy hell out of anything with Good left in it! All the crap-o-lyptic horrors percolating on the crumputer screen of doom, gouging our eyes out with pop-up ads featuring dancing female aliens wearing lipstick and bikinis...

It's end times, I tell ye!

So as long as it's the End of History (and fuck you very much, Francis Fukuyama, you supposedly-reformed neocon twit), I'm cherry-picking the good shit from the old days and calling it the bedrock for a new society, starting now. (Yes, we've been down this road before -- and we'll be back no doubt!) Anyway, I don't care if Osama bin Ladin dyed his beard black last month so he looks like a younger, sexier fanatic, or if Dick Cheney is manipulating the world's oil prices on his Xbox. Me, I've got heaven in a wild flower, infinity in the palm of my hand. I'm getting alternate universe on this universe's ass. I'm tacking into a quiet cove called The Bay of My Way or The Highway and rolling up the jib and dropping anchor.

All of which is to say, "Welcome, friends! Here's some music."

1. In the Bay, most of the talk you'll hear on the beach will sound like Professor Longhair. I quoteth he: "Tipitina! Yu-la mah-la wah-la dah-la, tra la, ti na na..."

Tipitina - Professor Longhair

2. One night in 1987 I lay in bed before sleep with this song in my headphones for the first time, ears entirely virgin to reggae. Literally, no lyin': I wept the first time I heard 1975's Live!. Oh Jah! Fools filed it forever under "frat boy" after Legend saturated the dorm rooms, but lest we forget, this is perfect music. And pretty much crystalizes the New Bay Way:

Trenchtown Rock - Bob Marley

3. It came from the campfires of Brothers Wilson and Spector, back in ancient times. The Holy Drum Beat tells us a secret we must keep passing down through the ages. Heart. Beat Beat. Heart. Beat Beat...

The Bear - My Morning Jacket

Forever - The Explorers Club

4. Sometimes it's okay not to sing. Just listen.

All I Have Are Memories - The Byrds

Delfonics Theme - The Delfonics

5. In the cove, no poem is ever the same twice. Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer are poets who make up verse on the spot, trading lines in front of audiences to create spontaneous works. Here's one riffing on the word "hillbillies."

My sister
is no hillbilly
anymore.
Can you believe they built that fence
around the place where all of the hillbillies
dance?
It seemed wide open
but secretly
the hillbillies were there.
I know a hillbilly
and I love a hillbilly,
but they're not the same.

Hillbillies - Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer

6. Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald facing off against Hall & Oats in street combat? All that and more on the comedy film series "Yacht Rock," which is the best comedy film series ever made about the secret history of late 70s/early 80s soft rock. Watch and weep with laughter and joy. As I was telling Mr. Poncho, this stuff pretty much makes obsolete our blog's raison d'etre.

Click here, scroll down a bit and watch the videos now.

7. Yacht Rock's comedy is matched only by James Brown attempting Spanish. Vaya con Dios!

Please, Please, Please - James Brown

8. When you're rough and salty from a day spearing fish in the ocean, a slight chill on the skin, cocktail in hand, breeze blowing your Hawaiian shirt open to reveal your chest mat, you'll hear this streaming from a warm transistor radio as the pink and purple sunset fades into evening stars...

Gulf Shores - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

9. A suggestion: Werner Herzog as Secretary of Beauty, Department of Madness. What say ye, Lord Herzog? This is from a collection of Herzog film music called Requium for a Dying Planet and it's absolutely awe-inspiring music for meditation of the earthly divine. (Hat tip: D. Stone)

Dank sei dir Gott - Ernst Reijseger

10. Over Labor Day weekend, two visionary bald guys with guitars and a drum machine were playing Grateful Dead covers on the lawn in front of their house in Westchester County, New York. Despite the heavy amplification, there was only one person "listening" -- a woman curled up on a lawn chair reading a book. Two guys + amps + trees = love. Before I tromped down a nearby hiking trail, they were playing this:

Me and My Uncle - Grateful Dead (Winterland, 11/11/73, Set 1)

11. Here's another bald dude playing on a lawn: The Pixies, live at the Newport Folk Festival in '06, totally acoustic, totally awesome.

Wave of Mutilation (Newport Surf) - Pixies

12. Secretary of True Feelings, Department of Honesty. Purple Heart for Valor in the specific theater.

Vincent Van Gogh - Jonathan Richman

13. And don't forget the youths.

Weed - The 1990s

14. Finally, the bedrock of any society. Because they're better. Because they're stronger. "Woman, I know you understand the little child inside the man. Please remember my life is in your hands."

Woman - John Lennon

Jingling Jollies

I really just wanted to post this song because I’m having one of those revived love-affairs with both my headphones (crappy as they are) and my shuffle function on iTunes, and I happened to stumble on this most beautiful and most somber of Duke Ellington pieces - more flute than any man could bear. But since it’s the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, let’s make it in honor of New Orleans. The rolling, tribal tom-tom reminds me of Animal Collective and Panda Bear, only because that’s what I’ve been listening to and thinking about for the last two weeks. But just stop for a moment and put your head inside this arrangement. The flowing woodwinds, the punctuated muted brass, the climbing, climbing. It’s almost unspeakably beautiful. And, at the same time, if you listen sideways, it could just as easily have been the theme song to some 70s cop show.

"Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies" - the Duke Ellington Orchestra, from The New Orleans Suite