Dar Williams is another artist who is always guaranteed a shot at Top Ten Towers - indeed, I have 7 of her CDs on the shelf, and not a dud among them.
Her latest album, I'll Meet You Here, contains her usual brand of top quality Americana, touching on familiar subjects of small town life, growing old and ecological concern. And her voice is as mesmerising as ever, especially on the closing track which feels like a fine tribute to Joni Mitchell... with added Grumpy Old Woman vibes.
Why is it that as we grow older and stronger
The road signs point us adrift and make us afraid
Saying "You never can win, " "Watch your back, " "Where's your husband?"
Oh, I don't like the signs that the sign makers made.
Yesterday's link, to be specific, was not just songs with colours in the title... there are millions of those. No, the link was songs whose title is just a colour, nothing else. Far fewer of those to choose from, but here are the ten I found...
10. The Iceman Cometh, perhaps?
"The Iceman Cometh" is a play. A cold one, presumably.
Sadly, the coronavirus has claimed its first big musical casualty - from my record collection, at least.
(And as I was finishing this post, it claimed its second. A tribute to that gentleman, nay legend, will follow shortly.)
Fountains of Wayne were one of my favourite guitar bands of the late 90s / early 00s, bringing fun, storytelling lyrics, Beach Boys harmonies and chunky power pop chords back to the charts as a welcome reprieve from the darkness and self-destruction of the last days of Britpop. Most of the band's biggest songs were written by lead singers Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood... and last week, one half of that songwriting duo fell victim to Covid-19.
Adam Schlesinger was a multi-talented musician, singing, songwriting and playing bass, guitar, keyboards and drums. As well as being a co-founder of the Fountains of Wayne, he also wrote a number of songs for movie soundtracks, musicals and TV shows. He worked with everybody from Nicki Minaj to the Monkees, so I guess he packed quite a lot into his 52 years... but damn it, 52 is way too young to be taken by this bloody disease.
The Fountains of Wayne drifted apart following their 2011 album Sky Full Of Holes and began working on separate projects. Here are ten of my favourites from a much-missed band that I was fortunate to see live around the turn of the millennium. A really difficult Top Ten to put together for me, and I had to leave out some of their biggest "hits". I'll be honest, I don't know exactly which of these were written by Schlesinger and which were penned by Chris Collingwood, but there are plenty more great tunes where these came from...
The band's eponymous debut album was packed full of gems, many of which were released as singles and enjoyed a fair bit of UK airplay back in 1996. Songs like Sink To The Bottom, Survival Car and Radiation Vibe (which even cracked the Top 40)... although my two favourites are this one... and this one:
Another lesser-known treat from their debut album, this one is a classic in the jealous loser geek songwriting genre. Stick around for the ELO chord right at the end too.
The one that everybody knows, and familiarity may breed contempt. The video also causes problems for some people, though I see it as a humourous parody of a certain kind of 80s teen movies.
The song, though, is power pop perfection - up there with My Best Friend's Girl by The Cars and Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield. I won't hear a word said against it.
1. Someone To Love
Not the Queen song, just a heartbreaking "what might have been" love story about two lonely people who might have been perfect for each other... if fate had smiled on them.
Seth Shapiro got his law degree
He moved to Brooklyn from Schenectady, '93
Got some clients in the food industry
He says it's not the money, it's the recipes
He calls his mom, says he's doing fine
She's got somebody on the other line
Puts Coldplay on, pours a glass of wine
Curls up with a book about organized crime
Beth McKenzie got the job of her dreams
Retouching photos for a magazine aimed at teens
It's Thursday night, she should be out on the scene
But she's sitting at home watching "The King of Queens"
Not the 31st. Not Halloween, but two days earlier.
Over the years, October 29th became notorious as the night when the ghost was most likely to make its presence known and really weird / scary thing were likely to happen.
It was October 29th when the studio ceiling collapsed (as described in an earlier post). In the days leading up to October 29th, the temperature in the studios dropped significantly and there was an increase in machinery going wild, turning itself on or off, volume going up and down and lights flashing or dimming as though there'd been a power surge.
Here's my notebook entry for October 29th, 1992.
"The ghost has appeared to us again and the infamous October 29th was no disappointment."
(What a pompous writer I was back then.)
"Apart from the fact that the phone lines went crazy, with lights flashing when nobody was actually calling and ringing in long, continuous bursts rather than normal ring rings (having turned themselves on from underneath the switchboard!), the real excitement happened after P. and I left for the night.
When staff arrived the following morning, two sections of ceiling in the corridor near the Engineering Room [that's the Racks Room I've previously written about] had collapsed due to a radiator on the floor above exploding. Various explanations followed, but the plumber called out couldn't really put his finger on why it had happened.
A few days before, the engineer had been working alone in the building when he heard what sounded like chains being dragged down the corridor. We all had a good laugh at him... until P. too found himself alone in the building and heard the same thing.
The same night, at the end of the evening, we shut up the record library, turned off the stereo and switched off the lights, then went out to the courtyard to open the shutters and get our cars out. When we came back in to set the alarm, the door to the library was still closed but the light was back on and the stereo had been turned onto gram with the volume up to full. No record on the turntable, so just a loud static hum."
The weird thing was, nothing ever happened on Halloween itself. Then again, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they established that "real" ghosts hated Halloween and generally kept well away from any spooky activity on that night...
Picture this - a Sunday morning without any answers to Saturday Snapshots. No need to Call Me OR go Atomic... they're here!
I'm going to call this one a draw between Charity Chic and Lynchie, because even though Lynchie got half a point more than CC, Charity Chic was typing his answer to Number 4 at the same time as Alyson, who beat him to it by seconds. (To be fair, he then beat her to Number 2 by seconds. What a close match!) Plus, CC got Number 9 and Number 5, which were definitely the hardest to identify this week.
Lynchie called this "one of the most horrible songs to grace the pop charts", but it's one I remember Terry Wogan playing in my youth (with his own little wink as he did it) and I'll always have a special fondness for it, despite... or perhaps because of... the supreme cheese. I even found myself listening to a whole album of Wink's earnest talky songs the other day...
"And friends, the story is true. I know... I was that soldier."
9. Put your tongue between your lips and blow - you'll be a star by tomorrow!
The opening track to the new Okkervil River album does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a song about famous people who've had tracheotomies. No, wait, it's a hell of a lot better than that sounds!
No, Aretha never had a tracheotomy. However...
Mary Wells, she was known as Motown's Queen
But laryngeal cancer left her unable to sing
They tried radiation, multiple surgeries
But she didn't have insurance and lost almost everything
Poor thing
But Diana Ross helped with her bills
Aretha Franklin tried her very best to help out Mary Wells
After Tuesday's Top Ten Chuck Berry Songs, The Swede asked if there was any danger of a Volume 2. I'm sure this isn't quite what he meant, but hopefully it'll do...
It was inevitable Chuck would find his way into the lyrics of some of the musicians he influenced. Here are ten of the best Chuck references I could find...
Jeffreys had been making music for over 20 years when a racist insult led him to record this track asking for a little acceptance, reminding the bigots that the black fathers of rock 'n' roll such as Chuck, Little Richard, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino paved the way for Elvis, Gene, Buddy and Jerry...
Hey - remember the Rainmakers? Let My People Go-Go? Those guys. They didn't just have one record, you know.
Well, we're rounding St. Louis and heading for the coast When we pick up Chuck Berry in a little rowboat With one oar in the water and one in the air A lightning rod for a white guitar And lightning struck once, and lightning struck twice And I said "If there's a God, He sure ain't nice" And Chuck said "God is an Indian giver I don't trust nothing but the Mississippi River"
Obviously more a song about John Lennon than Chuck Berry ("I could sell your songs to Nike"), but Chuck does play a very important part...
When John called the wind an opera Making love with every chakra When he said her voice would carry And when he whispered old Chuck Berry Only then would Yoko set him free
They came this mornin' with a dog on a chain They came and took my little brother away His generation never even got a name My momma was a rocker way back in ´53 Buys them old records that they sell on T.V. I know Chuck Berry wasn't singin' that to me
Dar Williams and Amy Rigby in the same post... that's the power of Chuck Berry. Wreckless Eric fans, you'll find Mr. Rigby accompanying here too.
I saw my baby sitting there at the breakfast table His hair a mess and he forgot to shave And I wished that he would get up, make it all better Stop drinking so much, learn how to behave Then the radio was playing a Chuck Berry song And he was looking at me asking what was wrong I made a list of the things I could say But he gave me a wink and it all went away, I told him Hey I love you, you're perfect, don't ever change Don't ever change
First person to point out that Don't Ever Change was a Crickets song loses a point.
The greatest guitarist I've ever seen play live is Richard Thompson. It was a solo show, but I swear it sounded like there were three of him. I've seen some amazing guitar players before and after, but nothing that quite matched RT.
Here he is showing his chops, playing tribute to some of his own guitar heroes... including Les Paul, Django Reinhardt, The Shadows and Chuck Berry.
Jim Steinman is, officially, as mad as ten lorries, so when I say to you that this spoken word story, first featured on his ill-fated solo album and then rechristened and reused many years later on Bat Out Of Hell II... when I say to you that this is Jim's greatest moment of pure insanity... that's saying something. Obviously inspired, in part, by Jim Morrison's lyrics to The End, this features Young Jim S. bashing the shit out of his guitar till it bleeds the colour of wild berries... yes, it's "Chuck Berry red"... before taking the poor guitar upstairs to his father's bedroom to bash the shit out of his old man.
The story doesn't end the way you expect.
1. ELO - Rockaria
Jeff falls for an opera singer....
She's sweet on WagnerI think she'd die for BeethovenShe loves the way Puccini lays down a tuneAnd Verdi's always creeping from her room
And she ain't gonna rock 'n' roll. How will he convert her?
Well we were reelin' and a rockin' all through the nightYeah, we were rockin' at the opera house until the break of lightAnd the orchestra were playin' all Chuck Berry's greatest tunes...
More Dar Williams today. I make no apologies for that: some bloggers write about the same artists week after week. Why do we blog about music we love? Because we love it. Because we want to grab you by the lapels and say: "Hey, listen to this. This is good." Because whenever we hear a really good song, we want to share it and help it find another pair of ears that will love it the same way we do. Because maybe we don't have anyone in our real lives who loves music in quite the same way we do, who values it quite the same way we do... but out there in the blogosphere, we might just find a like-minded soul.
And finding a like-minded soul is kind of what today's song is all about... 8. Dar Williams - Mortal City
Up until just a few years ago, I used to love writing short stories. I enjoyed writing longer works of fiction to, as you'll see in the sidebar, but they took a lot more time, blood, sweat and tears. A short story, I could write in a day. I think I got quite good at it. Maybe not "publish my collection" good, but good enough to be shortlisted for a few prizes. Ha... at this point I can't help but remember a cartoon that appeared in the Guardian Review section a few years back. I remember it because it's pinned to the noticeboard at the side of me as I write this...
Anyway, the point is: I liked writing short stories, and I like reading them. It's a different skill to writing a novel, a different art form. There are different rules, different pleasures. You don't get to use as much repetition of a word like different in a short story as you might do in a novel. You'd get pulled up on that.
I realised something the other day. Out of all the music blogs I read, mine is the one which focusses the most on song lyrics. The only other blogger I can think of who regularly quotes song lyrics is Alyson at What's It All About? But for Alyson, the lyrics are there because (often) they remind her of something in her own life, and those memories are her blog's reason for being. I'm the only blogger I can think of who obsesses over lyrics, who makes whole Top Tens out of obscure lyrical references to toasters, who raves about the working man's story songs of Bruce; the cleverly worded puns of Elvis Costello; the mordantly witty couplets of Morrissey; the everyday woodchip-on-the-wall minutiae of Jarvis; the self-deprecating romanticism of Billy Bragg; the ludicrously exaggerated melodrama of Jim Steinman...
I like a lot of different types of music for a lot of different reasons. But if I were to list my all-time favourite artists (a list I started, but by no means completed, in the previous paragraph), they'd all have something in common. Their words are as strong... if not stronger than... their music. I realise I may be somewhat in the minority when it comes to this. I'm not saying you lot don't like the lyrics of your favourite songwriters, don't pore over them, didn't spend hours as a teenager transcribing them because there was no lyric sheet in the album sleeve... I'm sure many of you did. I just don't think the lyrics are paramount, the main reason behind your choice of favourite artists. I doubt any of you have found yourself giving a pass to Gary Barlow... or James Blunt... or even Coldplay in the last week or so because, you know what, their latest singles have some interesting stuff going in the words, even if their music still sounds like their same old tat. (Actually, the Gary Barlow song has better music than usual too, mainly because he's nicked a load of ideas from Jeff Lynne... but I digress.) The point is, good lyrics will always sway me to a song, even by an artist I would normally cross the road to avoid. I'll even throw Bono a bone... if he ever writes a lyrically interesting song, I will buy it and sing it proudly at the top of my lungs. Go for it, Bono!
(By the way, I may be wrong about much of the above. You may value lyrics as much as I do. If so, I'll be happy to start up a club and we can get together on the third Tuesday of every month in an abandoned bus shelter on the edge of town to discuss whether Ben Folds has written a funnier song than John Grant. The invitation's there.)
The point... I was getting to the point a few paragraphs back, wasn't I? The point is, I like a good short story. And today's offering, the title track of Dar Williams's second album, from way, way back in 1996, is a great short story. You may decide it's not a great song... but I can't really tell the difference. No, as far as I'm concerned, there's no difference at all. Musically, I suppose it sounds a little bit Joni Mitchell, but... oh, just give it a listen.
Dar Dar Dar, as Trio once sang. No, I don't think the German band (part of the New German Cheerfulness wave, apparently) were singing about Dar Williams back in 1982. She'd have only been 15 then. A teenager... I wonder whose butt she was kicking?
I've been working my way slowly through the Dar Williams back catalogue; as she's such an amazing songwriter, I don't want to rush it. Currently listening to her 1997 album End Of Summer which features lots of great tunes I could post here, though my favourite is probably this one, which I'll play for anyone with teenage children... or anyone who has teenagers in their class, and struggles to understand where they're coming from.
When I grew up, well it felt great I watched how others took their fate Some felt afraid and undefended, so they got mean And they pretended what they knew made them belong more than you. I'm sure you know there's lots to learn But that's not your fault, that's just your turn, yeah, yeah
It's a song about growing older and forgetting what it's like to be an adolescent. And remembering that our future is in their hands. Let's face it: very few of them would have voted for Brexit or Trump...
And when the media tries to act your age Don't be seduced, they're full of rage Find your voice, do what it takes Make sure you make lots of mistakes And find the future that redeems Give us hell, give us dreams And grow and grow and grow And someday when some teenagers come to kick your butts Well then like I do try to Love Kick our butts! Love Kick our butts! Oh I love Kick our butts!
I haven't done one of these posts for awhile. Mainly because, when I did them in the past, they were always the posts which received least response. But the raison d'etre of this blog is to allow me to write about music I like, and sometimes it's very difficult to shoehorn a lot of those songs into (even loosely-connected) categories. So to get all these off my chest... here's ten songs I've been listening to for the last month or so. Give 'em a listen and you might come to love them too...
What the guy from The National does when he's not in The National. A bit funkier than his main band, but still very intriguing.
I picked this up in the library near work, which was a good source of new music to me until the end of last year... when council budget cuts appear to have caused the supply of new CDs to dry up. Look after your local library, people!
When
you're a true music fan, you find new things wherever you go. A couple
of months ago we were having lunch in a Manchester cafe and I picked up a
copy of one of those free City Life style magazines (a very badly
produced one in serious need of a proofreader...but such is life in the
21st Century). Anyway, amid all the ads for nights out and kebab shops
was an interview with this new band who were appearing in Manchester at
the time. I was intrigued by the fact the interviewer said they'd been
compared to Springsteen (though rather miffed when the lead singer
admitted he'd only started listening to the Boss when someone made that
comparison). Anyway, I made a mental note to give them a listen...
...and
while they don't have an album out as yet, this early single does show
promise. Sounds as much like Bruce as The Killers do, to be honest, but
it's still nice to hear guitar bands embracing chrouses these days when
so many of them appear to have abandoned such pleasantries.
I did think about doing a Top Ten Drowning Songs to shoehorn this one in, but it seemed a little morbid. Can't remember which of my favourite bloggers turned me on to Son Volt a year or so back, but I'm extremely grateful. They're one of many bands to come out of the break-up of the legendary Uncle Tupelo. While Jeff Tweedy went all Wilco, Jay Farrar turned Son Volt. Only tracked down one album by them so far, but this was by far the stand-out track.
I'll admit that I never paid much attention to EBTG back in the day, largely because their biggest hits involved flirtations with dance producers like Todd Terry and wat da kidz call beatz. Turns out I should have listened a bit more carefully to their albums, much of which are completely dance free. This is just gorgeous, a mournful (yet joyous) piano-led ballad about a father-to-be haunted by the true horrors of the 1980s. When that trumpet comes in, you could almost be listening to Shipbuilding...
Welcome to Metamodern Sounds In Country Music. Nothing to do with turtles, as far as I can see, but when was the last time you heard a country song with lyrics like this...?
There's a gateway in our mind that leads somewhere out there beyond this plane
Where reptile aliens made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain
Tell me how you make illegal something that we all make in our brain
Some say you might go crazy but then again it might make you go sane...
David Icke is obviously a fan. (Another topical reference there, for the kids.)
(But, in Sturgill's defence, the song's about doing too many drugs. So that makes it all OK.)
Having owned every Simon & Garfunkel album since I was in my mid-20s, I thought I knew everything they'd done. Imagine my confusion then when I heard this on the soundtrack to Martin Scorcese's Vinyl (well, I enjoyed it even if the critics didn't: no second series though). I recognised it immediately as Paul and Art (with those harmonies, it couldn't have been anyone else), but it turned out to be a bonus track only included on the 2001 reissue of Sounds of Silence... serves me right for buying an earlier version!
Anyway, I finally tracked it down on a reasonably priced second hand compilation. Turns out it's not a Paul Simon, but a cover of a song by Jackson C. Frank (a guy with a pretty interesting story who I'm determined to investigate further). His version's pretty cool too (and produced by Simon, to boot)... but it doesn't have those harmonies.
There's not many guitar bands you were into in the early 90s who are still producing records that stand up favourably against their earlier material (especially now that Fountains of Wayne have called it a day). Thank God for Weezer then, whose latest album (The White One) contains possibly some of their best songs ever... of which this leads the charge.
Amy Rigby: where have you been all my life? Like Dar Williams (who we'll get to in a moment), Amy Rigby is an artist who's been in my peripheral vision for awhile now, but I'd never taken the plunge. How I wish I'd done so sooner if the material on her 18 Again collection is anything to go by: sharp, witty songs that rock and under your skin because they have lots to say and come straight from the heart.
Cynically Yours could be a Tom Waits song: in fact, if you played this on vinyl and held your fingertip on the disc to slow it right down, it'd probably sound just like one. It's a realistic love song for everyday folk... forget the "hearts and flowers, you're my everything" bullshit, if the most you can ask from a partner is "you don't suck"... this is the song for you. I especially like it when Amy gets her other half to sign a pre-nup...
I, YOUR LOVING (BLANK), TAKE YOU (INSERT NAME HERE) BECAUSE FRANKLY I'M JUST TOO TIRED TO LOOK AROUND ANYMORE YOU DRIVE REASONABLY WELL, HAVE MOST OF YOUR OWN TEETH AND NOT MUCH OF A PRISON RECORD SO THAT'S GOOD...
OK, here's one to cause a commotion. I've written a number of times about my deep and abiding respect for the Jim Steinman / Meat Loaf combo, and this was one of their biggest hits (with Free Cher, while stocks lasted). I generally don't think it's a wise idea to cover a Meat Loaf song written by Jim since the definitive version already exists and you're only going to come off second rate.
Fortunately, the Indelicates are well aware of this. The above lo fi demo was recorded by request for one of the special editions of their last album, 2015's Elevator Music. The deal was, huge fans of the band (or those with enough money) could buy not just the album, but a bunch of other stuff too... one being: Simon & Julia Indelicate would record a cover version of any song you requested. Sadly, I couldn't afford to buy anything but the CD myself, but enough people did go the Special Edition route, and one of them was their mate Keith Top of the Pops, who requested this particular cover... knowing that Simon & Julia were also Steinman fans. Sometime later, the band collected all these covers together and made them available FREE to anyone who'd bought a copy of Elevator Music... which is how I ended up hearing this...
Why I ended up listening to it over and over again, on a loop, basically filling an entire 45 minute commute with the same song...? Well, you'll have to give it a listen to find out. As I said, it's a raw, off-the-cuff live recording - about as far from the whistles and bells production number of your average Steinman song as you could possibly get. And Simon even forgets the lyrics halfway through, so polished is not a word you'd use to describe it. But it's infectious fun. If you like that sort of thing...
Their version of Romeo & Juliet is sublime too...
1. Dar Williams - FM Radio / Mad River
Dar Williams is someone I've been meaning to check out in more depth for a while now. She's been buzzing round my radar, occasionally popping up on compilation albums, tribute albums, other people's blogs and Bob Harris's 3am radio show, which I still catch via the iPlayer. But I've never bought an album by her until recently... when I bought two!
Both the above come from her most recent album, last year's Emerald, another one of those records which definitely would have been in in Best of 2015 list... if I'd heard it in time. The first is pure 80s pop: a homage, if it makes you feel better, but this is as good as the Bangles at their best. You know, the sort of song they don't make anymore? I was intrigued to discover it was co-written by Jill Sobule - I can hear her quirky humour here, but that could be Dar, I don't know who wrote what.
The thing I love about FM Radio, beyond it's insane catchiness (Radio 2 should have A-listed it!) is the way it tackles the whole "kids who want to be pop stars" idea...something you'd be forgiven for thinking is a post-X-Factor invention. Dar knows better, remembering her own youth in the 70s when all she wanted was to hear her own songs coming out of that FM Radio. The song starts out as hero worship (Every night I do stuff with my hair. Maybe Queen needs a clarinet player!") but turns into a rallying cry for young women to start writing and performing their own songs...with a tongue-in-cheek coda...
Hey little sister, take off your head phones.
Don’t try to scrutinize, it’s just a dead zone.
Wake up the neighbors, tell me how you do feel.
And live the fantasy that makes your life real
So if you wanna play, follow your glory,
And if some guys says that’s not your story...
Take a lesson from the FM that I knew then....
It’s like a public pool, you decide where to jump in
To feel the sexiness, the passion, the fusion and the fission.
Remember Bruce Springsteen divorced a model and married a musician!
Mad River, on the other hand, is less pop, more serious songwriting...with just as much of a hook once you give it a few listens. Considering Dar's flirtatious mention of the Boss above, this comparison might seem obvious... but Mad River is the best River song I've heard since the one Bruce wrote. It's a great story that touches on much deeper issues than just jumping into a river... I can't get it out of my head.
More Dar Williams, please... luckily, she's been at this since the early 90s, so there's much for me yet to discover...
If you have any further recommendations for August listening, you know where to leave them...
Dar Williams wanders around a gallery with a friend, admires the Renoirs and muses on the sad death of Mark Rothko. Some folks were born with a foot in the grave...
And I dream of Michelangelo when I'm lying in my bed
I see god upon the ceiling I see angels overhead
And he seems so close as he reaches out his hand
But we are never quite as close as we are led to understand
Manchester's most beloved artist, L S Lowry, gave local lads Brian & Michael (aka Michael Coleman and... erm... Kevin Parrott) an unexpected Number One at the height of punk in 1978. The charts used to be SO much more unpredictably interesting than they are now.
I make no secret of the fact that I consider Jimmy Webb one of the greatest songwriters to ever walk the earth, although his songs are usually more famous when performed by others. This one's all Jimmy though. Lovely.
In which Mr. Richman finds a truly wonderful rhyme for the name of one of the art world's most famous sons...
Well some people try to pick up girls
And get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare and
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Jonathan Richman also wrote a song about Van Gogh. But someone else beat him to that...
1. Paul Simon - Rene & Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War
I always thought that was a funny name for a dog.
A beautifully evocative tribute to not only the Belgian surrealist painter, his missus and their dog... but also a host of 50s doo-wop bands Simon imagines might populate the Magritte's record collection.
I also found songs about Dali, Hopper and Toulouse Lautrec... but which one is hanging on your wall?
