Remember when rock music was kinda bad & dangerous? Of course, at its best, it still can be. But, for better or worse, much of what’s now marketed as “classic rock” has become an institution—a strange twist, because so many of the classic rockers railed against institutions.
One of the ways this change seems most apparent is the trend to use rock songs in commercials. Now, I don’t begrudge someone trying to make a buck off his/her music— I certainly try to do so!—but can you hear a song the same way after hearing it in an ad? At that point, has a good song become a “jingle?” Has it been somehow triviliazed & sanitized, or does it still retain its original power?
Seems like a fair question, especially as the boomers age & their music—60s && 70s rock—becomes a sort of cultural soundtrack. As a cultural soundtrack, those songs have a lot of mojo, but in many cases, that mojo seems to be put to “commercial” use (pun intended). Here’s a very short & select list of “classic rock” songs that have been put to the use of making “the man” (in the man’s guise as corporation) more bucks:
Come Together-The Beatles: AT & T Wireless Rock & Roll-Led Zeppelin: Cadillac Pink Moon-Nick Drake: Volkswagen (admittedly, a special case, as Mr Drake has been gone for a number of years—& the fact that in the month following the commercial's first airing more Drake records sold than in the previous 30 years is not a bad thing) Young Americans-David Bowie: Fidelity Investments Baba O'Riley (aka Teenage Wasteland)-The Who: Hewlett Packard (this seems particularly ironic) Sunshine of Your Love-Cream: Touch of Gray Hair Color You Can't Always Get What You Want-The Rolling Stones: Coca Cola Speaking of the Rolling Stones—like the Who, bad boys par excellence in their heyday—we also have the Ruby Tuesday chain of restaurants. Now I actually like that song —at times in my life, the song has had meaning that is quite separate from associations with buffalo wings or burgers. Is there any way for a song to come back after its title is used for a restaurant franchise?
Apparently so: check out the video below, in which the late Vic Chesnutt restores heart, soul, guts, lungs & other vital organs to “Ruby Tuesday,” a song he covered often in his career. Mr Chesnutt’s version won’t appeal to everyone, but to my mind it’s transcendent. By the way, the volume is very low thru the first verse but comes up to normal when the whole band enters for the first chorus.
The photo of a Ruby Tuesday restaurant is by Wiki Commons user Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. & is published under the Creative Commons
Happy Musical Monday, all! I’m here today to tell you about a band you may not be familiar with but one I think you really should give a listen—it’s the Mad Tea Party out of Asheville, North Carolina, Ami Worthen & Jason Krekel.
First, I must say: I like duos; I spent several years as a musical duo with my wife Eberle & we still perform together some; & I like the uke, & I like good guitar; & I like a band that can go from grungy surf-rockabilly to a lovely, lyrical country waltz in the blink of an eye without anything seeming forced or out-of-place. & I love bands that are impossible to pin down in terms of “genres”—a marketing tool, after all, & not too much more.
The Mad Tea Party doesn’t rely on any one kind of music to get their message across—& more on that message in a paragraph or three. They do use the term “rockabilly” in their self-descriptions, & it’s certainly apt in that rockabilly seems to be their default mode. Also, Jason Krekel, a guitarist who can flat out shred, seems particularly at home with the musical vocabulary of rockabilly. But Krekel is versatile—he’s a virtual one-man band, as he also plays kick drums rigged with special pedals to drive the band; as a guitar player myself, I can assure you this is not easy to do adequately—to do it with the kind of driving pulse Krekel creates is amazing. But his talents go beyond the guitar & drums, because he also plays a mean fiddle—just check out the Mad Tea Party’s rave up version of the old-timey standard “Polly Put the Kettle On” on their most recent full-length release, Found a Reason. This tune is one of the (many) high points of the album: you will never hear the song the same way again & I do mean that in the very best way possible.
Both Ami Worthen & Jason Krekel are composers & singers with talent to spare. Krekel’s voice is strong & resonant (just check out the “Every Way” video below), but he can also deliver a quieter side in a song like Worthen’s composition “Yellow Trees,” where they duet very sweetly on the chorus. “Yellow Trees” may in fact be my favorite song on Found a Reason, but picking just one song & sticking to it after hearing the rest would be hard.
Ami Worthen plays uke (& some acoustic guitar) in addition to singing. “On paper,” as it were, the mix of a soprano uke with Krekel’s heavy guitar sound might not seem promising, but it sure works. Worthen’s a very good uke player who adds all sorts of rhythmic accents to the overall driving pulse.
Photo by Sandlin Gaither
& both Worthen’s songs & singing are delightful & strong. In the press clippings I’ve read, she’s often compared to Wanda Jackson, & there's some validity to this—if you listen to “I Went Out” on Found a Reason, it actually seems spot on. I also hear a bit of Mary Ford, especially on the Mad Tea Party’s amazing 2006 release, Big Top Soda Pop—but, whatever comparisons you might make, the long & the short of it is this: Worthen’s voice is her own, & that’s what makes her a great singer; she can inhabit her voice—it fits her & it fits her music. She has great range & tone, but perhaps most importantly, she has that “other dimension” that some technically proficient singers lack: personality & heart.
In fact, this could be said of the Mad Tea Party itself, which is certainly even more than the sum of its considerable parts. I spoke earlier about “message.” It’s true—& a good thing at that—that much of the Mad Tea Party’s music is about rocking out & having a good time—I imagine they must be a very fun band live (sadly, their tour of the Northwest was in 09 before I knew about them!) But there’s more to their songs. I mentioned “Yellow Trees” before; there’s a mystical turn in that lyric—a love song set in the framework of contemplating death. Now that sounds heavy, doesn’t it? But it’s not, at least not in any pretentious or off-putting way. Also in this vein is their song “Do You Have What It Takes” from Big Top, Soda Pop. Please follow this link to hear this song because I think it’s important to experience this more lyrical side of the Mad Tea Party—both the video songs are upbeat rockers—& also because it may be my favorite song of theirs. It reminds me of something my dear friends in Ed’s Redeeming Qualities might have written—not not so much that it sounds like ERQ, but just in the way that apparent simplicity & light-heartedness can actually get pretty doggone profound. The band's message is a coherent one, it seems to me—perhaps: “life is too serious to be taken seriously,” with full weight on both sides of that statement.
Photo by Scott McCormick
The Mad Tea Party has four full-length albums: Found a Reason (08), Big Top, Soda Pop (06), Flying Saucers (05) & 73% Post Consumer Novelty (all the links are to CDBaby, but the albums are also available thru Itunes—see the band's website). They’re all worth having—the two earlier releases showcase a lot of the band’s roots—which are eclectic & really give an understanding of their sound: everything from 30s novelty tunes to old-time music & more. In fact, they still do some beautiful cover songs—how about a rockabilly send-up of Melanie’s “I’ve Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates” on Big Top, Soda Pop! If you want to buy one for starters—geez, that’s tough. I really like Big Top, Soda Pop a lot, but there’s a lot to like about Found a Reason. I say, you decide—you can’t go wrong either way.
Here’s hoping there’ll be many more releases from this really talented duo—& I hope they make it back to the Pacific Northwest someday—or perhaps somewhere near you! In the meantime, you can follow them, as I do, on Ami Worthen’s blog, Ukulele Rockstar or on Twitter as @themadtea.
Enjoy!
Pix from the Mad Tea Party's Web Site, used with their kind permission
Think back to the days of rock instrumentals: the late 50s to the mid 60s—the sounds of Link Wray, Dick Dale, the Ventures, Booker T & the MGs, the Surfaris. Now imagine that music brought forward some 50 years thru the filter of metal & punk & electronica (not to mention bebop & baroque). If a sound begins in your ear, you may begin to have an inkling of the music of Matt Stevens.
A music of sonic landscapes—like landscapes, comprised of layers & textures—like landscapes, a place where you can lose yourself or a place where you can discover the unexpected—landscapes that seem both unique & strangely familiar—like the music you hear in a dream, & wake trying to recall— music as the soundtrack for a movie that hasn’t been filmed, & yet you know the story.
The story of how I’ve come to write about Matt Stevens’ music is in itself unexpected; Mr Stevens, who lives in the UK, contacted me not so very long ago with a link to the music on his soon-to-be-released cd Ghost (release date is June 1st) & asked if I’d consider reviewing it here on Robert Frost’s Banjo. After giving the music a listen, I was delighted to oblige.
The music itself—beyond my somewhat lyrical descriptions in the first couple of paragraphs—is genre defying: one hears rock (in several of its incarnations) & jazz & funk & classical & Latin. Yet Stevens, whose guitar artistry is matched by his compositional skills, welds these disparate elements into a coherent whole. He lists diverse influences: John McLaughlin of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Robert Fripp (one commentator described his music as sounding like a jam session involving Fripp & Tom Verlaine—a very apt characterization!), & in Stevens’ own words “"Loads of stuff from metal to soundtracks to jazz and 60's pysche stuff. Carcass to Todd Rundgren to John Coltrane.”
How does Stevens make this music? He plays mostly acoustic guitar, but makes liberal (& astute) use of looping technology & effects. In this way, he creates what has been called a “wall of sound”—& in the typical musical use of that term it’s appropriate. However, a “wall” is a flat surface that defines space in squares & rectangles; to my ear, Stevens’ music opens out, & thus I’d find “layered” a more apt description. Using this technology & his acoustic guitar, Stevens is credited with being able to reproduce the multi-layered sound of his studio work onstage. You can check out his website for future gigs here. According to the site, he’s scheduled to play at the Strongroom in London at 8:00 p.m. on July 14th 2010.
Ghost will be released on cd in an edition of 100; you can pre-order the cd here on Stevens site. The tracks are also available as electronic downloads on a “pay what you want” basis. Mr Stevens has a formidable web presence: in addition to his website, he has a YouTube channel, blog & Facebook page; you may also purchase his music at the latter site.
To give you some idea of Stevens’ music, I’ve embedded his video for his song “Big Sky” from Ghost. I would note, however, that while the album is most certainly “of a piece,” no one track is going to tell the whole story—there’s also the Latin jazz of “Into the Sea,” the “deformed” classical riffs of “Glide,” & the very soundtrack-like “Lake Man” & “Ghost.” This is an album that rewards listening to as a whole.
If you’re interested in an original, intriguing album of guitar work by a musician whose playing & composition (which he figures to be 50% arranged & 50% improvisation) display a high degree of musicality, then Ghost will be for you. Please check it out!
A beautiful song for your Friday, & one that has played—& continues to play, if now mostly just inside my head—as part of my “poetic soundtrack.” To read some of my thoughts about Tom Waits’ song time, shuffle on over to Just a Song!
Alex Chilton, the great singer of the Box Tops & Big Star, died yesterday at the age of 59—Chilton's music was such a big part of my life in the 1980s, as I discussed several months back in my review of the Big Star box set. That music could be dark & heartbreaking or sweet in a way that almost unavoidably led to a different sort of heartache—a fond memory perhaps, a smile for someone cared about deeply in youth, a glimpse of morning sunshine after a long dark night.
From what I understand, Chilton's life was difficult & perhaps filled with demons at times—still, his legacy in the field of pop/rock music is enormous, even among people who don't know him, simply because his influence on the indie bands of the 1980s was so pervasive.
I'll be "on the move" today & won't have the time necessary to write a more full appreciation—but I must say that Chilton's music was a huge influence on me in the mid to late 80s, & most certainly crept into the poetry I wrote at that time—especially the music from Big Star's Third Album (AKA Sister Lovers). I'll let Alex sing for himself: "Stroke It Noel," from Big Star's Third:
[First bubblegum pop—now Rock Band! What’s RF Banjo coming to? Fear not, folks, I’m still playing guitars with strings & no buttons, & Eberle hasn’t ditched her array of instruments either. While I admit I still find the Rock Band phenomenon perplexing, I find Eberle’s take on her experience fun & fascinating. Hope you do too!]
Menopause is a fascinating experience—or rather, the two years of peri-menopause that I have known. I don’t think anything else could have brought me to drive up into the piney mountains on Hallowe’en to spend an evening playing Rock Band when I’ve never played a modern video game and my feelings about rock music are ones I generally mask in public out of politeness to friends and students—who probably really don’t want to hear that I find 4/4 downbeat-driven music a hideous affront to my own sense of rhythm and that the cult of celebretism associated with rock really pains me by turning the individual expression of art into a commodity and a substitute for truly exploring one’s own individuality….
Later that evening I began to wonder what John, who has heard me elaborate quite endlessly on my theories about rock music, would say if I told him that I was totally getting off on playing along with Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”? I had a feeling that confessing this was going to be kind of a humbling experience; but I didn’t care, with the lights pulsing intoxicatingly into my eyes, and my thumb on that thrilling trigger of the Rock Band fake guitar…
An aunt of mine once told me that menopause was in a way a return to adolescence and I really didn’t have a clue what she meant by that. But I’m starting to get it. In the midst of overwhelming hormonal waves and the confusion of a self who sometimes feels cut adrift from familiarity, there is a sense of adventure and surprise—an epic journey—being the traveler of one’s own mythic sense of reality. Five years ago if someone had invited me to play a game like Rock Band I would have said no without question. But I was curious—I told myself that it would be a good thing for me to find out how to talk to my music students about games like this—but in reality I thought it would be an adventure.
So, after finding my way to the lovely collection of hand-built and salvaged buildings that makes up the homestead of my Rock Band friends in the company of a hillside of tall pines, and after a trip to the outhouse in the light of an almost-full moon, I walked up a flight of stairs on the outside of the largest building and into the Rock Band room. This was another world. A movie-screen on the wall displayed the video-projection of the game hugely in the darkened room and an electronic drumset filled up one whole corner. My heart sank as I realized I had to choose a “character,” choice being apparently limited to skinny, sexy, and young. (Someone should add an aging Medusa and a hefty Toad Goddess to the options, in my opinion.) I had a strong feeling this was going to be even worse than I had feared.
But I loved the game. First of all the visuals. As I tried to explain to John when I got home late that night, it’s like there’s a moving fret-board coming at you very fast all the time, only the frets are the measure-bars, and colored dots in the five-laned fret board on the screen tell you which button to “fret” with your left hand and when to activate the note by strumming the sound bar-trigger with your right. Some of the rhythms for the guitar are actually very interesting. And since I didn’t know most of the songs we played, there was the thrilling feeling, similar to what I love about improvisation, of not having time to conceptualize the rhythm before actually playing it—the feeling of discovering a rhythm in your body as you go along rather than having your mind tell your body to try a rhythm that it has created in the abstract. I realized that the way I approach the drums is to find a rhythm, internalize it until I can get into trance mode with it, then complicate it. Like: OK, I can play a 7 and a 5, so can I alternate them and still have them sound like groups of 7 or 5? Or: I can play a duple and a triple simultaneously, so how about trying a two against a five?
With Rock Band, my mind didn’t have time at all to imagine ways of complicating things. Plus the music was really loud. And the fret board sometimes lights up with different decorative patterns! And the note-dots sort of explode and splash if you hit the button and the trigger at the same time! Then they are throbbing white sometimes! For someone whose passive visual experience is limited to old movies, who has been to a movie theatre only a handful of times in the past two decades, does not play video games or watch television, I can say it was genuinely intoxicating. That makes sense to me—what I didn’t expect is that I would feel like it was a good thing to be intoxicated in this way—passively—not particularly creatively in the way I define it—through a machine—not playing real instruments—not playing songs you made up yourself—not really interacting with your sister and fellow musicians. But it was great.
I did invite my friends to come play Rock Band “unplugged” with a hands-on group improvisation session at my house—and I’m looking forward to turning them on to this form of musical game. But as I drove home with floods of moonlight flashing between the trees, down the highway that seemed to resemble the “lanes” of the Rock Band visuals, music echoing in my head—I knew I was looking forward to going back and playing Rock Band again. I really want to see if I can get to the “Hard” level of guitar and the “Medium” level of the drums. I’m thinking about it now, strategizing how to make those lighted patterns move more quickly from my eyes to my fingers.
[Betcha never thought you'd se the name Miley Cyrus on Robert Frost's Banjo! Check out Audrey's rollicking account of her early life as a bubblegum queen! Be sure to stick around to watch Audrey's hand-picked bubblegum vids, too.]
Virtually every significant romance in my life has revolved around music. My first boyfriend was a singer/songwriter, my first girlfriend was in a band with me, and my wife rocks my world on a daily basis (they were/are all guitar-players, but I’m sure that’s beside the point!). Each relationship has had its soundtrack, the sharing of tunes, and much musical exploration.
But my earliest loves were those bubblegum boys with their bright pop melodies, who made me long for who knows what when I was seven-to-twelve years old. At that time, in the 1960s, there was no shortage of amazing music on the radio and in the air. You could turn on a local station and hear Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and The Stones side by side with Frank Sinatra, Dusty Springfield, and Tom Jones, followed perhaps by Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, and The Supremes.
The Beatles were a band my older cousins listened to, and I really dug their songs. I twirled my hips as a toddler to “Twist & Shout,” and at four, I could sing along to “She Loves You” (I liked the “yeah, yeah yeah” part). Even as a kid, though, I felt that there was something edgy and adult about their material. I couldn’t believe they were singing to me, and images of Beatlemania on TV were worrisome. Why were those girls screaming? Bands like The Doors actually scared me, with their moody organ riffs and sensual vocals. “Riders On The Storm” seemed to come into my head whenever my family was on a camping trip. I’d worry about that “killer on the road,” whose brain was “squirming like a toad.” I think the lines, “Take a long holiday/Let your children play” that followed must have fused the idea of camping and this psychopath in my mind, and Jim Morrison sounded like he sided with the bad guys. Don’t even get me started on “Paint It Black”!
I can’t remember when I first heard Davy Jones singing “Daydream Believer,” but I know that by second grade, I was a dedicated Monkees follower. I watched the show—even though I had no idea what those madcap fellows were up to. Innuendos, drug references, criticism of the Vietnam War—I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted to hear that soft English accent and get to the part where they played a song. I’d shut myself up in my bedroom and play their music on my portable turntable with its lift-up lid and pull-out speakers. I’d stare at their pictures on the record covers. I’d even make up scenarios in which I was included in those tangled story lines. Even though I now know many devoted Monkees admirers (and am even friends with the person who wrote the definitive day-by history of the band, which you can check out here), I have to confess that in my single-digit years, I never questioned whether they were real artists or not, all I wanted was more of those sugary pop songs.
In 1968, I discovered Bobby Sherman on the TV show Here Come The Brides, and later I swooned over his hit “Julie, Do Ya Love Me?” He wasn’t as deep a crush as Davy Jones had been, and I’d like to think this had something to do with their relative merits, but that’s definitely my adult self talking (and I know there are those out there who would fight me on this). When I looked this song up on YouTube to refresh my memory, I couldn’t quite believe that this sort of song appealed to a fourth-grader. It sounds incredibly schmaltzy and like it’s aimed at bored middle-aged housewives, so I’m just guessing there must have been a crossover audience. Suffice it to say, this infatuation faded fast.
1970 was also the year that launched another TV music sensation, and this time I was the perfect age for the both the show and its tunes. By the end of the year I turned ten, “I Think I Love You” by The Partridge Family was at the top of the charts, and I was, to put it mildly, obsessed. For two years I practically embraced the television set on Friday nights. David Cassidy was dreamy. Those eyes! That smile! The shag haircut! I wore out their records. I studied the lyrics. Every word was, I felt in the deepest fiber of my being, meant for me. I read in Tiger Beat that David was moody, and I took that to mean he was thoughtful and sensitive (I wouldn’t have thought then that moody meant he didn’t want ten-year old girls to be his major fan base, but apparently that was closer to the truth).
I don’t remember how I fell out of love with David. I only know that when, for my 12th birthday, my parents gave me a life-sized poster of him, I felt awkward and embarrassed by it. I’d moved on by then. The last of my bubblegum crushes was already underway. Donny Osmond’s “Puppy Love” had set my heart pounding. Like my former idols, he was soft-featured and sweet-voiced (effeminate?). I resented my mom’s references to the Annette Funicello version that, coincidentally, charted the year I was born. That was then, Donny was now. Not yet there myself, I nonetheless felt the pain of being mocked, as the song put it, “just because we’re in our teens.”
Times had changed for me by this point, though. I didn’t obsess over Donny. Maybe I recognized that the magic window was closing. What might at first have seemed like an advantage—he was only a few years older than me—was actually a liability. In retrospect, I think I could see him more clearly as not fully genuine. By 1972 I was listening to The Carpenters, Elton John, Neil Diamond, and even Janis Joplin. I made mix tapes off the radio with songs like Melanie’s “Brand New Key,” Three Dog Night’s “Joy To the World,” and Paul Simon’s “Me And Julio Down By the Schoolyard.” I started actively working to cultivate taste and became acutely aware of what was considered cool and what wasn’t.
In spite of the four decades that have passed since I last gave my heart to a teen idol, I still can’t resist a strong melody, a solid hook, and soulful pop vocals. Long before the Spice Girls co-opted girl power as a PR slogan, at a time when the real teens were turning on and tuning out, female preteens became a powerful force to be reckoned with. Speaking as one of those girls grown up—and this probably holds true for those who love Miley Cyrus and, you know, whoever else it is that kids listen to these days—bubblegum introduced me to the basic way music can move and validate you. Rather than feeling embarrassed by my early addiction to silly love songs, I like now to think back to when I danced around my room with the volume up high, singing at the top of my lungs, my heart an open book and my spinning turntable the center of the universe. To blow another bubble from those bygone days, “Sugar…Oh, honey, honey”!
This doesn’t do justice to the truly lovely production quality of the album version, but it’s the only clip I could find that shows young Davy performing it.
They seem to be at a feminist rally in this clip from the show, check out the POWER OF WOMEN sign over the stage.
[Check out Audrey's latest foray, this time into another of her great passions: pop music! Many thanks to Audrey, & also to Joseph Davis of Ardent Studios for asking Robert Frost's Banjo to review Star & Micey!]
Up to this point my appearances on RFB have primarily focused on early women writers. Today, in keeping with the miscellany spirit of this remarkable blog, I’m writing from a different place altogether—as a huge fan and voracious consumer of pop music. When I was a graduate student at the University of Virginia—where I met John and Eberle for the first time—I DJ-ed at the UVA radio station, WTJU (get it? “TJ” for Thomas Jefferson). There, I got to spin actual vinyl records in the mid-1980s until we were forced to transition to CDs as the decade wore on (not as good for those slick segues). I used to troll through the current bin, checking out the latest treasures and oddities that appeared during that golden age when college radio prided itself on “breaking” bands like Camper Van Beethoven, R.E.M., and Nirvana, to name a few. These days I mostly play music to please myself, and I have a customized current bin. My wife, Cheryl—record collector extraordinaire, label executive, and star producer—picks out whatever new things she thinks might appeal to me and leaves them in a box for me to listen to at my leisure. I keep my ears open and love to hear whatever comes my way.
So when John invited me to write about the debut record of Memphis-based band Star & Micey, I checked out a few sample tracks and jumped at the opportunity. They made it onto the RFB radar because of the piece John wrote on the Big Star boxed set last month. Like Big Star, the group Star & Micey belongs to the legendary world of Ardent. They recorded the album at Ardent Studios, and they’re signed to Ardent Music, who will be releasing their album tomorrow.
In their bio, Star & Micey memorialize the event that gave them their quirky-sounding name—an encounter between the band’s founder, Joshua Cosby, and a homeless man named Star who had written a song about his ex-wife Micey. The true origin of this record, however, is another even more fortuitous meeting between Cosby and Ardent engineer Nick Redmond. Redmond caught Cosby’s performance at an open-mic night and liked what he heard so much that he joined forces as Star & Micey’s lead guitarist and brought the group to Ardent. Geoff Smith is the third core member of the group, playing bass and percussion on the new record.
Ardent Studios have a reputation not only for state-of-the-art recording facilities and equipment, they’re also renowned for nurturing talented musicians. From what the members of Star & Micey have to say about their experience there in interviews, they benefited greatly from that tradition. Crosby calls their recording sessions “a dream come true” and says that working there, “you feel like a kid, you feel like you can do anything.” As you can see from their pictures and in the interviews, these guys are young and brimming with optimism, and that’s what makes their gorgeously produced album such a fresh surprise. It has an old school sound and vibe with a 21st-century alt-folk-rock sensibility.
On the self-titled record, Star & Micey sound like they’re having a great time. They lead off with a swampy, southern-rock flavored track, “Salvation Army Clothes,” a reproach to someone who’s made a habit of casting off “all the good people” and is about to do it again. From there, they move into a cheerful old-time gospel praise track, incongruously titled “So Much Pain.” Although songwriter/lead vocalist Joshua Cosby sings about how much grief he has caused those he loves, the tone is relentlessly perky because it’s ultimately a tune about forgiveness and transcending the pain one has caused, concluding with the simply expressed lines:
I just feel so grateful, I just feel so grateful, I just feel so grateful About everything.
The tracks that follow are unified by Crosby’s smooth, confiding vocals, which are nicely complemented by harmonies from Smith and by flawless arrangements. Guest musicians include Jody Stephens, the drummer from Big Star (and Ardent studio manager), on “Nelson” and Luther Dickinson, of The North Mississippi Allstars and The Black Crowes, on “So Much Pain.”
One of my favorite songs on the album, “My Beginning,” has a sweet soul flavor and congeniality that typifies this band’s overall personality. They’ve been sporadically keeping a blog of their current tour at starandmicey.com, and if you read some of their entries, you can tell they’re having a blast out on the road. They write about playing house parties, busking in front of fraternity houses, and getting invited home by kind folks for tasty meals and places to stay.
After spending some time getting to know this band, I found myself rooting for them to do well. If these guys come to your town, go see them. And if they need a place to stay, let them sleep on your couch!
It was a long time ago now: Charlottesville, VA in the mid 80s. I’d been introduced to the music of Big Star by a girlfriend who was, by the time this particular story begins, an ex. Some time after the break-up, I was in a record store, & I picked up an album called Big Star’s 3rd: Sister Lovers. The cover showed a portrait of the band’s lead singer, Alex Chilton, in contrasting blue & black tones. If my memory is faithful, I believe I knew one or two songs from the album before I took it back to my little cottage apartment to play it—I’m almost positive I knew “Nighttime.” But even that small amount of familiarity really didn’t prepare me for what I was about to hear.
To this day, I don’t know that I’ve ever been obsessed with a record album quite the way I was with Sister Lovers—the title I always identified with it. I listened to music differently then, it’s true: music created a whole world that I was able to walk into & inhabit. Since I began playing music more seriously in the 90s, I’ve lost that ability—I don’t mourn its loss, because now I hear something different & wonderful in a different way when I listen to music. But it’s true that at the time, music almost had the world-altering potential of a new love. Coincidentally (or not coincidentally, as I believed then), my obsession with Sister Lovers began at almost the same time as a new love entered my life, & at the same time as I began to write a series of poems that were probably the best I wrote during my Charlottesville days. To me, the music from Sister Lovers was a backdrop to those poems, just as it was a backdrop to my life.
Things, as they sometimes do when we are young & prone to intense poetic passions, went from wonderful to devastatingly horrible—I say this in a detached way—after all, it’s many years ago now. But I think it’s important for me to say, because I’m trying to convey something about a terrific box set, Big Star: Keep on Eye on the Sky (Rhino), & because my association with Big Star’s music is intensely personal, I think I should be clear about that up front. In the interest of full disclosure, I also should say that while I like the first two Big Star albums quite well—#1 Record & Radio City—they never completely captured my imagination in the way Big Star’s 3rd did (some of Chilton’s post Big Star material, particularly Like Flies on Sherbert & Bach’s Bottom also intrigued me a lot). For those who aren’t familiar with Big Star, the group formed in Memphis in 1971, & included Alex Chilton & Chris Bell as a sort of southern Lennon-McCartney, backed by Andy Hummel on bass & Jody Stephens on drums. That particular configuration (more or less) recorded #1 Record for Stax in 1972 & Radio City for Columbia (which had bought Stax out) early in 1974. The band name “Big Star” was ironic—besides the obvious, there was also a supermarket chain in Tennessee called Big Star; Chilton had already had the experience of a #1 record at age 16 when he sang “The Letter” with the Box Tops—& had turned down a chance to sing lead with Blood, Sweat & Tears. Of course, the first album, #1 Record also had the same irony.
But back to the box set—first, the obvious: this is a collection of some seminal rock music. Big Star’s influence on many of the 80s' alt rock bands was huge & freely acknowledged—R.E.M’s Peter Buck put Big Star’s 3rd on a par with Highway 61 Revisited, Revolver, & Exile on Main Street, & the Replacements—among others—also credited Chilton & Big Star as shaping influences. But there’s more to this box set than simply being a compendium of Big Star’s songs.
Tho I may not have put this into words, I believe one thing that’s always appealed to me about Big Star & Alex Chilton is the sense of a music in process. Chilton carried this to extreme levels on Bach’s Bottom (an obvious take-off on Box Tops), where he deconstructs his own (& other people’s) songs in the studio in a fascinating act of creative destruction. While Big Star never went to such extremes, the demos & alternate & unreleased tracks reproduced here are far more intriguing & provocative than the usual collection on compilations. In the case of Keep an Eye on the Sky there is a real sense both of evolution & of the fluidity of creation—not simply that the song started as this & ended as this, but an examining of various & even disparate possibilities for each song. The insight into the process for all three albums is fascinating, but the window this box set opens onto Big Star’s 3rd: Sister Lovers has provided me with quite remarkable food for thought.
The box set contains two versions of almost every song from 3rd; both a demo & the actual recorded version—actually there are demos for all the songs on the original lp version, but Rykodisc re-issued 3rd in the early 90s in the form—as I understand—Chilton originally intended, & this added five tracks to the lp. Interestingly, the five tracks that were added have always seemed to me to muddle what otherwise seemed a clear concept album—to this day, I don’t know what Chilton meant by including “Whole Lotta Shaking Going On”—but the box set probes the question more deeply by including two versions of the previously unreleased “Lovely Day,” a buoyant pop song that plays in stark contrast to some of the albums very dark moments, such as “Holocaust” & “Big Black Car.” “Lovely Day” at some point morphed into “Stroke It Noel,” the lead off song on the vinyl version (check it out in the video below). We see the gorgeous song “Nighttime” transformed from the sweet love song of the demo to something else—a sweet love song tinged with a distinct air of darkness—for more on "Nighttime," please check out my post on Just a Songright here.
I’ve had an interesting email exchange with Audrey Bilger, who regular Robert Frost’s Banjo readers know for her contributions to the blog, about Big Star’s 3rd. Audrey tells me she’s always seen the album as being suffused with light, & there’s certainly a lot to be said for that position—plus I always respect Audrey’s opinion when it comes to music, because she’s one of the sharpest music critics I know. For me, the album’s light has always been set off by an underlying darkness—consider “Kanga Roo” & “Big Black Car” below. While the box set doesn't answer the questions about underlying intent, it certainly enriches & enhances an examination of the album's themes. Oh yes: I should point out that Audrey's spouse, Cheryl Pawelksi, co-produced the box set. Ms Pawelski has had a successful career in the recording industry, producing compilations & re-issues of groups ranging from the Beach Boys & the Band to Vince Guaraldi & Sonny Stitt. Keep an Eye on the Sky is a 4-disc set; the sound is superb. Discs one & two cover #1 Record & Radio City—including precursors to Big Star, like Chris Bell’s earlier band, Icewater, performing “All I See is You.” The demos for 3rd begin on disc two—& these are gems in themselves, especially ones like “Blue Moon” & “Femme Fatale” (yes, the old Nico song by the Velvet Underground) with Chilton accompanying himself on acoustic guitar—while disc three is all Big Star’s 3rd. The fourth disc contains a live performance from 1973—since Big Star was more of a studio outfit than a live band, this is a rarity, & a welcome one at that. The set is rounded off with a 100-page book (I’m thinking 100 pages is more than a booklet) containing essays about Big Star & lots of pix.
If you’re interested in music from the 70s, or alternative rock music—or simply in uniquely powerful music, you really must check this box set out.
Thanks everyone for the positive response to Moon June Spoon! It makes me realize I’d waited a while to do one of these series—Songs 4 Foodies also was quite popular—so I’ll try to make sure the next song list series isn’t so long in coming.
When I started the series I mentioned that I was going to confine the lists to music I currently listen to. There was one song, however, that I debated including even tho I haven’t listened to it in ages. Interestingly, our very own SoCal Correspondent, Audrey Bilger, wrote me an email yesterday making a case for including that very song. So…..
Blue Moon: “But wait,” you say, “you did include that.” But no, I don’t mean the Rogers-Hart tune, which turned up in the very first Moon June Spoon installment; I mean Alex Chilton’s song “Blue Moon” from the Big Star album sometimes referred to as Big Star’s Third & sometimes referred to as Sister Lovers (& occasionally called Beale Street Green). Talk about a soundtrack to my life. I was completely obsessed with this album in the mid 80s, & particularly with such haunting tunes as “Blue Moon,” “Nightime” “Take Care” “Kangaroo” & “Holocaust.” These songs seeped into my poetry & into the way I saw the world. Please check out the video of “Blue Moon” below—in my opinion the animation doesn’t fit the song, but just close your eyes & listen. This is a fantastic song from a truly great album, & one that I recommend highly. I have it on vinyl & also on a cassette—the two versions vary (there’s more material on the cassette, including Chilton singing “Nature Boy”). The “cassette” version is the one available on CD from Rykodisc. Big Star:Third/Sister Lovers (Rykodisc)
Audrey’s suggestion made me consider further that there have been other suggestions of Moon Songs—so here we have other readers’ choices, communicated either thru comments or email. I’ve included a couple of other videos, too.
Alleghany Moon – Patti Page (et al.) Moon of Manakoora – Dorothy Lamour (et al.) Moon Over Miami-The Platters (ditto) When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain (Kate Smith) Pink Moon (Nick Drake)
Special thanks to Jacqueline T. Lynch, as well as Audrey, for making suggestions. I also remembered that I meant to link to a site suggested by Dominic Rivron—the link is here, & while this doesn’t have to do with music, it has a lot to do with the moon. Check out the atlas section!
(As announced yesterday, today’s guest blogger is Audrey Bilger, who conducted the following interview with pop star Lesley Gore. The interview’s great, & be sure to check out the video of Gore performing “You Don’t Own Me.” Thanks so much Audrey—& without further ado: Audrey Bilger & Lesley Gore):
This is an interview I conducted in the summer of 2005, right after the release of Lesley Gore’s most recent album Ever Since. It was originally supposed to appear in Rockrgrl magazine, a venue dedicated to celebrating women in music, but when that amazing publication folded, I put the interview aside. I feel privileged to have been able to talk with Ms. Gore. She was frank and funny, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to share it here.
In the 1960s, Lesley Gore rose to fame as the good girl’s bad girl with a string of hits, including “It’s My Party,“ “Judy’s Turn To Cry,” and “You Don’t Own Me.” Whether standing up for her right to throw a full-on tantrum or even more defiantly proclaiming her independence, Gore’s songs became anthems for women of all ages. The 1996 film First Wive’s Club paid tribute to the durability of Gore’s brand of girl power when stars Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn sing “You Don’t Own Me” in the final scene.
Gore has spent the last decades touring, writing songs, and as she modestly puts it, “practicing.” Her new album Ever Since is the first she’s recorded since 1976, and it’s unlike anything she’s done before. Released on indie label Engine Company Records, Ever Since contrasts starkly with her slick, Quincy Jones produced chart hits. The mood is intimate, wise, and frequently dark. She recasts “You Don’t Own Me” as a slow torch ballad and renders her own, ripened version of the Academy Award-nominated song “Out Here On My Own,” co-written by Gore and brother Michael and first performed by Irene Cara in the 1980 film Fame.
Unlike many former teen idols, Gore happily performs her early songs on tour and doesn’t seem to resent having to do so. Ever Since will introduce fans to Gore’s serious side. The mood on this record is much less sing-along-with and more been-there-done-that. Either way Gore plays it, we can all relate.
What was it like to have a hit single when you were 16 years old?
It was fascinating, it was exciting, it was adventurous, it was scary, it was a little nerve-wracking. It was all those things, simultaneously usually. A lot of work, a lot of good times, a lot of really wonderful, special memories, and there were a lot of things that also went wrong. Whenever anything happens to you, there are usually good results and not such good results, and I find that’s true of pretty much everything, even a really good relationship. It’s got its ups, its downs, its ins, its outs. It was difficult at 16 becoming so famous and having to learn how to deal with it.
You had a series of hits in pretty quick succession. Were you constantly touring then? Actually, I was really fortunate because my parents and I both believed in an education, and I didn’t spend a lot of time on the road. I really stayed in school for the most part and only traveled during the holidays like Christmas or summer, and very often I could take off a day or two for a television show like Ed Sullivan or Hullabaloo, but at the time, those shows were being recorded in New York, so I didn’t have to take off too much time. Every now and again I’d come out to L. A. and do a Shindig or one of the local shows there, but there was plenty of exposure then, and I pretty much stayed in school.
When did you start touring heavily?
After I finished college.
When did you start writing songs?
Come the ‘70s by the time I got out of college, I really had no recording career left. I kind of had to start from the beginning again. Mercury had let me go. The English sound was pervasive on American radio. I had to find a way to wake up in the morning and be a musician, so I started writing songs so I could at least be involved in the music industry.
How do you think you’ve evolved as a songwriter?
I think my songwriting has gotten better. I think I’ve only just begun. I think there are a lot of songs in me yet. This album is the first album in a long time I’ve gotten an opportunity to show some of those skills. And I’ve already begun, because it’s been such a good experience, writing some new stuff for the next album. The songs you wrote on Ever Since are wonderful. I like the humor and wisdom of “Not The First.” How did you come to write it?
It’s meant to be a little sardonic. It’s an older woman telling a younger woman what it’s really like, it’s about relationships, it’s about life.
Two of the other songs you co-wrote on the record, “Words We Don’t Say” and “We Went So High,” seem very poignant, even melancholy.
“So High” came out of a very specific relationship, and I always think of one human being when I sing that. “Words We Don’t Say” was more of a group effort as you can see. Two of the musicians on the album wrote the song, as well as two of my background singers, so it was less personal, although it was something personal I wanted to say. It’s not as heart-rending as “We Went So High.” Engine Company Records seems very committed to that kind of collaboration. Do you enjoy that?
Well, they certainly are. They are the model of indie. It was basically them coming to me suggesting that we do an album this way that got me interested in recording this album. I’ve found an incredible collaborator in Blake [Morgan—founder of Engine Company Records]. It’s been an incredible experience, very creative, very inspiring, very invigorating. You spent most of your early career working with major labels. How does this experience compare to that?
It’s very much more hands-on, very much more collaborative, and it’s very grass roots. It’s exactly the antithesis of everything I’m used to. But it’s kind of wonderful, it’s fun, you see everything as it’s going down, and it’s very exciting to watch it happen.
Did you set out to make a record that would have such a jazz- influenced sound? We set out to make as honest a record as we could and be as honest to my voice as humanly possible. I think because of so many of the singers I was raised on as a young person, that some of those jazz influences are there, whether I’m conscious of them or not. It comes from a music I loved so much and from so many wonderful female artists that I followed, like Dinah Washington, and Anita O’Day, Julie Christie and Sarah Vaughan. It was Blake who brought those to the forefront.
Did Blake write the songs “Better Angels” and “It’s Gone” for you?
He didn’t write them for me. He presented them to me, and I fell in love with them.
The new version of “You Don’t Own Me” is amazing. You’ve said elsewhere that you treasure this song the most of all your hits.
I do. You know, “It’s My Party” is a wonderful song. It was a really great record, but looking back at it some years later, it’s easy to see how that song is somewhat dated. We talk about “going steady,” which I don’t think kids even know about today. “You Don’t Own Me,” on the other hand is a song that kind of grows every time you sing it. So I feel as though I was really fortunate to have that song in my repertoire because “It’s My Party” is not that serious a song, and “You Don’t Own Me” is a serious song. It’s a song that’s been taken up by many women as a kind of anthem. There’s no question that women have taken that song and made it theirs. Of course, the last scene of First Wives Club also said the same thing. Here were these women, who, after you’ve seen this whole movie, what do they do? They belt out “You Don’t Own Me.” It doesn’t necessarily have to be women. It can be men, too. But I think a lot of women have taken it as theirs, which is fine. I’m very proud of that.
Do you feel in other ways that you’ve been a role model for women and particularly for young women?
I hope so. I didn’t consider myself one, but as some of the responses come in and so many people have an opportunity to write you because email is so easy to get today, a lot of young people are telling me that they picked up a bass because they saw me singing on Bandstand, and it’s very nice to hear. I’m very glad if I’ve influenced even one little human.
Do you have any advice for women who are trying to make it as musicians?
I just think that everyone should just continue rocking, especially the girls. We need more rock women. We need more rock women in the record industry. We need more executive women. That’s what I’d like to see. It seems to be happening in the film world, but it’s taking its time in the record industry. So you haven’t seen much improvement over time for women in the record industry? I’ve seen virtually no improvement, very little improvement in the record industry, and I find it still the most homophobic of all the industries, as well. It’s unbelievable. It’s 2005, and we’re still fighting some of the same fights I was trying to fight forty years ago.
It’s a tough business.
It is, especially for women. I’m sorry to say that, but we’ve got to make that better.
Remember when rock music was kinda bad & dangerous? Of course, at its best, it still can be. But, for better or worse, much of what’s now marketed as “classic rock” has become an institution—a strange twist, because so many of the classic rockers railed against institutions.
Speaking of the Rolling Stones—like the Who, bad boys par excellence in their heyday—we also have the Ruby Tuesday chain of restaurants. Now I actually like that song —at times in my life, the song has had meaning that is quite separate from associations with buffalo wings or burgers. Is there any way for a song to come back after its title is used for a restaurant franchise?
