ONE SURE THING

Listen to ONE SURE THING by Fairport Convention.
Listen to ONE SURE THING by The Conspirators.

Friday's not usually my day, but Jason is off composing paeans to himself, so I had to step in.

Which is nice, actually, because I get to share with you a song that I had wanted to anyway. Short little backstory: Corbett had been pestering me about Fairport Convention for months (years!), saying they were the greatest folk-rock group he'd heard in years (decades!) Eventually, I broke down and got "Unhalfbricking," the first album featuring Sandy Denny, thinking that would be the one to get. I didn't dig it too much. So, to wrap this up in a sentence, Corbett told me I was wrong, and to get the first Fairport Convention album full stop, so I did last weekend, and it really is amazing!

One Sure Thing is buried down on side two, but it's become one of the group's better known songs. With justice, because it is top class. I had hesitated to include it in the "slow and moody" category, because if you just listen to the tempo, it's not that slow--quite brisk, actually--but Judy Dyble's vocal is so powerful, the accompaniment is the last thing you should focus on.

Speaking of Judy Dyble, she only just reappeared last year after thirty years out of the music business with a few songs with a group called The Conspirators. One of the songs they recorded was a remake of One Sure Thing, which I've included as a bonus (don't say we never have new music here) Quite like the guitar on this one, as I'm sure do Franz Ferdinand's lawyers! Today we'll be watching Amy's return trip to New York and waiting for the weekend. Enjoy.

Photo: Empire State Building series (9).

GIRL OF CONSTANT SORROW

Listen to GIRL OF CONSTANT SORROW by Barbara Dane.

Today is a little selection from Barbara Dane, a woman who would be extremely well known if you all lived on my street and it was 1960. Dane was one of the original Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk and blues traditionalists. Her interpretations of all the old standards were meant to be authentic and meant to educate her mostly-white audience. (Not that she was unusual in that respect--the entire folk scene in the mid-fifties through mid-sixties was organized around this principle.)

Tied up with the music was an active participation in the civil rights movement, and Dane has the distinction of being the first performer to play in Cuba after the revolution.

Sorry if this sounds all a bit academic--don't let it affect your enjoyment of the song. Girl of Constant Sorrow is of course the same tune that was made semi-popular a few years ago in O Brother, Where Art Thou? But whereas the rendition(s) in that movie is all jumpy bluegrass, this version is, well, slow and moody. It's a fine rendition.

Photo: Empire State Building series (8).

BABY, I'LL COME

Listen to BABY, I'LL COME by Mary Love.

This song has been one of my favorites for a long, long time. I recall making a mix CD about four years ago where I was really gutted I couldn't find a way to fit it on. But like they say on the label, Baby I'll Come was a little too "Slow 'N' Moody" for that, but that means it's perfect for a week like this.

The tune basically speaks for itself. What can I add to Mary's vocal performance? I mean, when she says that "All you have to do is call me and I'll come... right away," you believe her don't you? It's very moving.

One thing I don't like: I originally got this song on a Mojo sampler called "Raw Soul." Why is it that a stunning vocal like Mary Love's is considered "raw," and a stunning vocal like Mary Weiss's is considered "dramatic"? Could it be that Love's recording mic is a little overdriven? Or something else?

In other news, Amy and Martin made it to Oklahoma last night. Hee haw!

Photo: Empire State Building series (7).

DRESSED IN BLACK

Listen to DRESSED IN BLACK by The Shangri-Las.

I've discussed many times, even on this blog, the strangeness of the Shangri-Las. They're a group that was very popular in their time, but are almost forgotten now, and to the extent their remembered, it's as a bubblegum teenybopper group. A little like the Beach Boys actually, and like the Beach Boys, their reputation completely obscures how f*@#%*%g weird some of the music is.

In the case of the Shangri-Las, the disjunction is even more acute. The catalog of disturbing, unnerving, creepy, frightening tunes is quite long, and yet these same songs are beloved on oldies radio and cherished by music fans. It says a lot for the quality of the music, doesn't it?

Dressed In Black is hard to describe, except it's one of the most melodramatic performances of all time, chronicling as it does a girl's ever-growing love for... *SPOILERS* ...her dead boyfriend. And as it builds and builds, don't lie and say you were ready for how the song drops all the way out to Mary's whispered incantation, and then ends. Seriously, it's a miracle of pop music, and as an added bonus, it causes nightmares.

Photo: Empire State Building series (6).

ROSES GONE

Listen to ROSES GONE by The Ashes.

Hello again! It's good to be back after a week off, though it's a shame we had to let Stu's series go. Great stuff that was.

This week it's back to the archives. Last night I was listening to The Walker Brothers, and settled on a theme for this week: "slow & moody songs from the 60s." These are songs from a particular era of pop music, where it was okay for emotional songs to be a little theatrical, before the rock 'n' roll era made "authenticity" the key quality for any pop music performance, but also before soul music (in particular) went baroque and started putting a premium on vocal gymnastics.

Today is a good example what I'm trying to get at, even if the group is obscure. The Ashes were a West Coast folk group who recorded a couple of singles, and morphed into a group with a well-developed cult following, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy. And it's not just for the name--the music is really good!

Roses Gone, as I said, was recorded in 1965 by the group when they were The Ashes, and it's got a great 2 AM quality. I love the slight reverb on Sandi Robison's voice. It's a great performance, which is good, because her voice is basically the entire song. Won't you give it a try?

(By the way, Amy & Martin aren't contributing to the blog this week because they're on an epic (halfway) cross-country road trip this week. You can follow their progress here!)

Photo: Empires State Building series (5).

YOUR GENERATION

Listen to YOUR GENERATION by Generation X.

Your Generation is another "important" punk rock song that also happens to be fun to listen to.

Two good facts about Your Generation, one not very well known, one even less well known. One, Your Generation is sung by the lead singer of Generation X. Obviously. That lead singer's name was Billy Idol. Most people that grew up on MTV don't realize that Billy Idol was once a legit punk rocker.

The even less well known fact is that our buddy Bayou Chris once said that Your Generation was "the most important song of all time." Fact.

Photo: Empire State Building series, #4 (New Yrs Eve '07).

SAND IN MY JOINTS

Listen to SAND IN MY JOINTS by Wire.

Wire made their reputation for smart, angular post-punk rock. (Well, with my generation, they made their reputation as the band that Elastica ripped off.)

People that are at all familiar with Wire know their debut album, Pink Flag, which is strikingly concise and aggressive (and whence Three Girl Rhumba, the Elastica song, comes). Over time the band got longer and more esoteric. By the time their third album came out, 154, Wire was truly sui generis. But here at the blog, we like the fun stuff. Sand In My Joints, from Wire's second album, is about as fun as Wire gets.

In other words, it may not a party, but it's rifftastic, and it's short, so what's not to like?

Photo: Empire State Building series, #3.

AMBITION

Listen to AMBITION by Subway Sect.

If there's one thing that's been consistent in all my years of listening to music, from old skool rap, to Britpop, to Ghanaian funk rock, it's my belief in this fundamental truth of the universe: Video Game Sounds Make It Better. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ambition by The Subway Sect.

You can go other places to find the story of Vic Godard and Bernie Rhodes and why this group released so little music, but the point of this post is to reaffirm the truth: Video Game Sounds Make It Better.

What Ambition sounds like is slightly incompetent Jonathan Richman playing a Television song, with completely (completely!) incongruous Atari noises bopping along in the back. And that's what it is! It's been reported that Rhodes or somebody overdubbed an actual arcade game without the group's permission, before it was released as a surprise hit in 1978. Whoever did it, they knew this basic truth: Video Game Sounds Make It Better.

Photo: Empire State Building series, #2.

LOVE COMES IN SPURTS

Listen to LOVE COMES IN SPURTS by Richard Hell & The Voidoids.

Love Comes In Spurts is a seminal punk rock song. It's two minutes of unbridled energy, but it's also a song that has long endured with music lovers.

You see what I've done there? On first listen, Love Comes In Spurts is what you might call a single entendre song, but I think it's better to call it something like a reverse double entendre. It's not really about sex (though it is), but more about the pain and difficulty of intense adolescent relationships. As Mark Deming writes,

Hell's real subject wasn't Eros so much as the maddening search for validation through a relationship. ... [I]t's made obvious that this song isn't about sex, it's about love that arrives in measures too few and far between to ease the pain of a harsh and abrasive world.

This reading is defensible with the benefit of hindsight, as Richard Hell proved to be one of the more literate and intellectual members of the New York punk scene. Likewise, it's apparent now that the late, accomplished Robert Quine's jagged and angular guitar attack is an aesthetic choice, not garage band incompetence. A lot going on in this dumb little ditty!

Photo: Empire State Building Series, #1.