Organ Wars

It's obvious that the Big Bang of rock and funk is the introdction of the electric guitar: the amplified beat of early delta blues, the percussive sounds of power chords, yadda yadda yadda. Often overlooked is what the electric organ added to the mix.

Specifically, the Hammond organ, popularized by Bob Dylan. I mean, think back, what one sound is the signature of "Like A Rolling Stone"? Right, Al Kooper's one-fingered waves. Then, of course, bands like Procul Harum picked up on it, not to mention the various bands Al Kooper and Stevie Winwood (I still think they're the one and the same person harharhar) were involved in. Because it lent itself very well to the church drive of Gospel call-and response, it became a staple of soul music, while, on the other hand, because it's a very dramatic sounding instrument, I think its sound also had a big influence on progressive rock. The way I see it, prog rock musicians wanted to bring class to rock and roll and blues (and never caught on to the fact these genres had plenty of that to begin with) so what they wanted to put in were classical and jazzy keyboard runs. But they didn't want to play like their daddies so that meant, make the sound big and electric. And the way to resolve that little difficulty was the Hammond. Of course, they later went on to the mellotron and the Moog but the way they played them was informed by the inherent drama of the Hammond.

Meanwhile, on the trashier side of the spectrum where garage bands thrived, the leading keyboard instrument was another organ - namely, the Farfisa organ, with its cheesier sound recalling a carnival merry-go-round, cf. "96 Tears". Now, I don't think anyone can play the Farfisa organ with quite the same dramatic weight as the Hammond (though Elvis Costello, tight-assed wannabe artiste that he is, often tried that approach in his later albums, though if he'd had half the brains that he thinks he does, he'd have realized the cheesy sound Steve Nieve gave him on This Year's Model was what saved EC's parsimonious ruminations from imploding) which is just the point. There's an entire - and important - bedrock of music whose sensibility is rooted in a sort of lunacy that would collide with the kind of music played by self-important Hammond musicians north of the Mason-Dixie line and east of the Atlantic Ocean.

I started out writing this wondering what our musical world would have sounded like if the Farfisa organ had won this imaginary war with the Hammond but on second thought, I'm not sure it didn't, because the two important keyboard styles of the late seventies and early eighties had nothing to do with the progressive rock. One style is the rubbery synth voicing of funk, which really is the brainchild of one man, P-Funk's Bernie Worrel, and God knows where he came up with the sound. After years of listening to all the various P-Funk permutations, it still seems to me that Worrel's style was born out of nowhere, fully fleshed out, with no previous intimations, on Chocolate City and The Mothership Connection. The other style was the British New Wave Synth-Rock, which can sound dramatic enough to reach for the Hammond but works in another musical mode. It's probably a matter of sheer incompetence, I think the Brits wanted to sound like Yes and Tangerine Dream but simply didn't have the chops.

Ian Hunter - "Once Bitten Twice Shy" (1975)

Great, simple rock and roll and ex-Mott The Hoople frontman's biggest solo hit (though "Cleveland Rocks" is better known due to The Drew Carey Show). He updates "Sweet Little Sixteen" with a regurgitated version of the Chuck Berry beat married to Mick Ronson's glam guitar. The joke here is that "his" groupie finally ditches him for another singer but perhaps the best bit comes at the top, when he introduces the song with the most British "hallo" anyone ever came up with.

And the way he combines his arch vocals with sly humor makes mincemeat of both David Bowie and Brian Ferry. This is Ziggy Stardust come down to earth and playing with the chicks.

Carl Perkins - "Lend Me Your Comb" (1957)

There is a reason why Sun owner/producer Sam Phillips thought he was as great as Elvis, a reason why the Beatles admired him and covered so many of his songs. At his best, he was as good a songwriter as Chuck Berry or Lieber and Stoller, while as weird and outrageous as Little Richard. A soulful, country-inflected songer, he was one of those original rockabilly guitarists who sounded like they had used barbed wire for guitar strings and like all originals, no one really managed to top his original versions.

He was a rebel, outlaw roackabilly and his songs were among the first the portray and address that image. Which is what set him apart from his peers in the original pantheon of fifties rock and roll greats. Little Richard was too much of a sexual deviant to be a rebel in that same mold while Chuck Berry just minded his commercial base too much so his approach was to portray rock and roll as the secret language of the entire teenage generation instead of a few select outsiders (not that his cocky guitar riffs didn't inspire thousands of rebels anyway). Jerry Lee Lewis came close but he didn't write any songs. Buddy Holly worked more within the mold and Elvis was, well, Elvis.

Having said that, there is a certain sense in which even songs like "Blue Suede Shoes", "Dixie Fried" and "Put Your Cat Clothes On" just shy away from the rampifications of taking the rebellion to the edge (in a way Richard would never hold back) which just adds to their power in the same way Perkins' guitar flashes like a pocket knife that is displayed but never actually used.

So you all just need to pick up a good anthology of his Sun Years to discover the true predecessor of Taking It All Back Home and while you're at it, listen to "Lend Me Your Comb", which isn't one of his greatest performances and which Perkins didn't even write it. But I think it's about time someone noticed that those chord changes at the end of the verses are the grandaddies of Merseybeat.

Archers Of Loaf - "Web In Front" (1993)

Great rock and roll has a history of undecipherable lyrics, predating even Dylan - say, Little Richard. You don't need to understand the lyrics of this one from the Archers' debut Icky Mettle to get the sheer youth exuberance. Which is what this kind of music is all about, right?

It boasts Pixies/Pavement angular guitars, let's just call it the Television influence and get it over with. And college-rock emotionally-distant-yet-energetically-driven vocals. But why analyze it to death? This song will just make you feel great about your present hangups and make you wish you had enough drive and talent to form your own band just so you could rip them off. Something I'm sure happened a lot during their heyday (which I admit I missed - 1993, I was coming off Lou Reed and rediscovering fifties rock and roll and sixties soul).

Mott The Hoople - "Ballad Of Mott" (1973)

You might remember them as a one hit wonder, but "All The Young Dudes" defined its short-lived era of glam-rock teenage rebellion and still gets airplay thirty years later. And though "Dudes" was presented to the band by David Bowie, with "Ballad Of Mott", Mott head honcho Ian Hunter proved he could write an anthem just as good - and from my tunnel-visioned eyes, even better. And what's more, according to the album credits, he probably wrote it before Mott The Hoople even recorded "All The Young Dudes".

There is a sort of a history of self-referential songs in rock and roll. I guess the Beatles started it with John Lennon quoting his own lyrics on "I Am The Walrus" and "Glass Onion" but these pale beside other ancendents such as the Rolling Stones' "Jigsaw Puzzle" and "Torn And Frayed". Though my favorite moment in this obscure genre is the Mekons' Rock 'N' Roll, which included not only an obvious candidate like "Club Mekon" but lines like "the battles we fought were long and hard - not to be consumed by rock and roll". But "Ballad Of Mott" is the best because it cuts to the bone while retaining a sense of rock grandeur only the early seventies Stones could have matched.

Musically, it's just a rock ballad with a few touches that date it, f'rinstance that fat, dramatic guitar. But what's behind the surface embellishment is Ian Hunter picking at every scab the band had ever picked up during its ever-stalling career. He's bitter and pissed off and embellishes his failures with every verbal taunt and dramatic flair he can think of. And it works because his bitterness and sense of resigned loss have a way of cutting through his literary pretensions. Not to mention, it helps that his pretensions have sense of poetic rhythm to them and that the music has a lolling, dramatic beat that captivates and lives up to his scathing flatullence.

The Rolling Stones - "Jigsaw Puzzle" (1968)

This is the epitome of Mick Jagger's effected, manneristic 1960's singing style (as opposed to his over-the-top, manneristic of the late 80's and on). Also, his most Dylanesque lyrics, as though, after several years of trying to rip off the Beatles, he'd been listening too much to Blonde On Blonde.

But if the Rolling Stones would not have been quite as successful with a less flamboyant frontman, Jagger himself would never have made it if he wasn't backed by such a stellar band, laid back enough to offset his extroverted tendencies on stage and in the studio. And it's the music that that makes this one of the best tracks of their career.

Forget any notions of the Stones being merely purveyors of elemental three chord, blues based rock. "Jigsaw Puzzle", like all of the Stones greatest recordings, may be raw, but it is magnificent music that turns country blues into a space age symphony with no pretensions barring the lyrics. And actually, as is often the case with the Stones, the music redeems the lyrics, turning the line about the guitar players being "outcasts all their lives" into an obituary for Brian Jones before the fact.

Like all of the music on Beggars Banquet, "Jigsaw Puzzle" is based on Keith Richards' explorations of open chord tuning, which is widely documented in interviews and which I admittedly don't understand much about, not being a guitar player myself. But you don't have to be a musician to feel the creative boost these explorations injected in him and you only need to have any ears at all to get the laid back groove of Charlie Watts' drumming or the fat sound of the bass - one of their best recorded parts and rumored to be Keith and not Bill Wyman. But best of all are lilting, almost surrealistic bottleneck guitars, which literally turn into a tribal drone by the time we get to the verse about the twenty thousand grandmas and the queen (see what I meant by Dylanesque?).

With all that going on, Jagger himself sounds quite good, actually.

Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughn - "Pipeline" (1987)

Two grand myths of surf music cross paths with blue-eyes blues.

Dick Dale was a ground-breaking innovator on guitar, largely forgotten today due to surf music's lowly image. He was actually an avid surfer and he tried to make his music depict the physical sensatons of riding the waves. That physicality, combined with the electronic and studio possibilities of the instrument that he explored are his unique contributions. And honorable mention is due his use of exotic, eastern motifs, which might make him the first world musician, cf. "Misirlou" (the instrumental track from the opening credits of Pulp Fiction), which borrows the melody from a Lebanese song.

Stevie Ray Vaughn is more famous but he really never intersected with my interests so you'll just have to look him up yourself.

"Pipeline", originally a hit for the Chantays in 1962, is one of the classic surf instrumentals, which doesn't so much convey the act of mastering the board as much as being pulled down by an undertow, with the eerie threat of the melody carried on guitars played and mixed almost like a bass guitar, all bottom. Dale and Vaughn's version, on the other hand, sounds like a tidal wave, with Dale supplying the muscle and effects and taking off for the stratosphere while Vaughn plays the bluesy licks that bring it down to earth again.

Rod Stewart - "Cut Across Shorty" (1970)

I'm a huge fan of prime Stewart, by which I mean his first four solo albums. A cocky, womanizing mod out to conquer the world, with a sensitive eye for detail and that famous, grainy voice as well as the intelligence and intuition to apply it and sound knowing, wily and vital, as soulful as his idol Sam Cooke. Not to mention, he put together this amazing band. Not the Faces, which were okay but somehow never excited me, but the band he built around Ron Wood, Martin Quittenton and Mick Waller for his solo albums. Like Cooke, what he was really after was fame, fortune and pussy - which he eventually got - and like Cooke, he sang his heart out on the way and for a while, it seemed he could do no wrong.

He was an underrated songwriter in those days, sometimes on his own, usually in musical collaboration with Wood or Quittenton but he also had a penchant for either choosing unlikely songs to cover or going after a classic and making it his own. Even when he covered Dylan he reinvented forgotten gems, and how many singers could have eked out meaning and class out of an Elton John song (cf. "Country Comfort")?. Here he covers an Eddie Cochran oldie though in his hands and mouth it sounds like a re-discovered folk song, a hairy dog story about a rich dude racing a poor guy for the right to marry the woman both men covet, who of course proceeds to help the poor guy cheat and win the race.

As usual, Rod sings the song with a merry cackle that invests the story with far more meaning than it rightfully deserves. It's as obvious as a sledgehammer who he's bet his shillings on but there's really no reason to search for any deeper meaning beyond his sly delivery edging the band towards an acoustic-rock majesty as he rides their groove as effortlessly as Cooke and Elvis did in their heyday.

Despite the presence of bass, acoustic guitars, mandolin and a fiddle, it is Mick Waller's drumkit that somehow winds up being the lead instrument, sort of like Keith Moon in the Who, except Waller's drumwork has a sense of space and timing that owes a lot more to California sessionman Hal Blaine. Here he sounds like he's keeping time with an internal clock no one else can hear but him, raw, tribal thumps booming out of his subconscious in the most unlikely moments. It's one of my favorite drum parts of all time and is the key ingredient in Stewart's magical stew.

Lou Reed - "Hooky Wooky" (1996)

Lou Reed's albums have been too wordy since 1988's New York (which at least was more than redeemed by the guitar work) but once in a decade he can come up with a catchy pop number which recalls his early days as a sweatshop songwriter. Here he mixes 50's rock and roll and doo-wop to capture the essance of Manhatten street life in a song wrongly overlooked in 1996's Set The Twilight Reeling. It's the album's loosest and best track and Lou probably hasn't had this much fun since the days of "Sweet Jane".

Van Morrison - "Crazy Love" (1970)

I hadn't listened to this song in years but it was a favorite of mine some twenty years ago and it was always fairly successful for me in romantic situations. It comes from 1969's Moondance, y'know, the album with the schmaltzy, jazzy title track, which was one of Van's few commercial successes.

Morrison usually sings in a gruff, soulful voice but here he is actually reminiscent of Smokey Robinson more than anything else, crooning softly in falsetto, which is an approach he didn't attempt very often. Despite the acoustic guitar settings, somewhere between folk and country blues, the changes and atmosphere recalls late sixties Motown ballads, especially the inventive, melodic bass part and the subtle vibes.

What I really love about the performance - and this is something I wasn't sensitive enough to notice in my early twenties - is how despite the crooning, laid back, relaxed vocals, Van can hardly contain his excitement and enthusiasm as he describes his woman's love.

Jerry Lee Lewis - "Money" (1964)

This was already a classic when Jerry Lee Lewis cut it live in 1964 in Germany (on Live At The Star Club, Hamburg, you can thank me later for the recommendation). Since the Barrett Strong's original single kicked off Berry Gordy's Motown empire in 1960, just about everyone covered it from the Rolling Stones to the Kingsmen to the Beatles, who cut the definitive version. Until Jerry Lee came along, anyway. I still think the Beatles' version is the classic, but Lewis manages to dig a new groove and drenge new meanings and transforms into it into virtually a new song by making the familiar piano riff even more desperate, every drawl and lewd breath describing exactly what kind of freedom he seeks.

Now you could call him a showoff when he goes into his patented stomps on the piano, bullheaded, orgasmic, flashing piano keys like jacknives, confident his talent and charisma will win him the world. Yeah, it's true he tried to transform every song he performed in the fifties and early sixties into "Whole Lotta Shaking" and that not every song could withstand that treatment. But when it works it's because he manages to find Jerry Lee inside the song and his utter self-belief wore true: others mastered the style, even the swagger, none could muster quite the same self-confidence.

Big Star - "September Gurls" (1973)

Alex Chilton's story is one of the off-beat tales of the Deep South. As a gravel-voiced teenager, he fronted the Box Tops, a blue-eyed soul group that hit with "The Letter", "Soul Deep" and "Cry Like A Baby". When the Box Tops broke up, Chilton formed Big Star with Chris Bell, Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens. And his voice, whether by nature or cunning design, lost its soulful, hoarse overtones.

As Big Star's story is often recounted, they were an oddity on the faltering Stax label by being a throwback to British Invasion pop harmonies and power chords. Except that, to my ears, tracks like "Feel" and "O My Soul" show a brazen, rebel assault whose accent is Southern on the fringes. Their local roots were more obvious on their their album, Sister Lovers, which is really an Alex Chilton solo project which featured the likes of Steve Cropper as guest musicians. Sister Lovers would later indirectly resusciate Alex Chilton's cachet (which he single-handedly destroyed with willful, ornery acts of self-loathing and destruction) when British New Wave super-group This Mortal Coil covered "Kangaroo" and "Holocaust". Although Big Star's best known song these days is "In The Street" from their first album, which served as the theme song for "That 70's Show".

Halfway in Chilton's erratic odessey comes this perfect pop song, from Big Star's second album, Radio City. The melodic hooks, chord changes and harmonies are all Beatles, "I Feel Fine" married with Abbey Road polish, though the instrumentation owes a lot of to early Kinks singles, albeit slowed to a jog rather than a sprint. But the crisp snap of the lead fills recalls Steve Cropper and his Memphis brethern while Jody Stephens' drumming sounds like Keith Moon auditioning for a session gig at Muscle Shoals Studios.

The Rolling Stones - "Stuck Out All Alone" (1969)

Between 1968 and 1972, the Stones were greater than the Beatles had ever been. Who else could have come up with a bluesy soul groove as deep as this outtake bootleg and never release it. But then the Stones were quite notorious for throwing away beautiful unfinished tracks, such as "Waiting On A Friend", which they apparently never got around to completing for Goat's Head Soup in 1973 ,when the original backing tracks were cut, where it might have offended such stellar songs as "Dancing With Mr. D".

But "Stuck Out All Alone" is fully realized, an almost perfect cut. Keith Richards plays like he heard "(Sitting On The) Dock Of The Bay" in a dream, woke up, went out to find Steve Cropper's muse and found the ghost of Robert Johnson instead. Bill Wyman supplies a fat bass line that guards Keith's heels, while Charlie Watts does just what he does so well, swinging and tapping modestly and winningly.

To make a case for the Stones editorial wisdom, the fragile angularity of the song might have just barely fit on Let It Bleed and I have to admit it would have been out of place on Sticky Fingers. Yet Mick Jagger sings so soulfully you have to wonder whether the real reason this track was never released because it plain scared the shit out of him.

The Minutemen - "King Of The Hill" (1985)

This is a great political song that served as my soundtrack during the early days of the second Intifada. D. Boon's mini-parable may seem naive at first but in the end, all wars and political struggles are just a bunch of bullies playing king of the hill.

But the song wouldn't have worked at all if Boon hadn't come up with a terrific, quirky riff and wacky little solos that ended as soon as his restless mind moved on to a new idea. And the trumpet part seamlessly takes the Minutemen sound on an unexpected tangent.

Ah, progress. It warmed my heart to learn there are actually Minutemen videos on YouTube. Check out the clip for King Of The Hill. The visualization of the song may too obvious but there is great charm in its silliness.

The Go-Betweens - "It Could Be Anyone" (1981)

I don't like any of the Go-Betweens albums all the way through, as they lean too much towards a singer/songwriter-y confessional style. But there are plenty of their songs with pop sensibilities that I adore, and "It Could Be Anyone" is just about my favorite.

The choppy, New Wave rhythm guitar is not terribly original and the estranged vocals are early eighties readymades and could be, well, anyone. But they do work togther much better than the sum of their parts and the song is captivating and moving in a detached way, as is the best of the Go-Betweens' material. And it obviously meant a lot to its chief writer and singer, Grant McLennan (McLennan and partner Grant Forster had a Lennon-McCartney professional relationship) because he came up with a beautifully economical bass solo that gains a classic stature even before it hits the eardrums.

One light
One light's all you need to keep the dark out

Copyright 1981 Robert Forster and and Grant McLennan

Sleater-Kinney - "Sympathy" (2002)

Sleater-Kinney's modern blues about a mother pleading for the health and life of a sick child is something I can relate to on a personal level. My mother-in-law was severely injured in a car accident five years ago so I know what Corin Tucker feels like when she sings

I don’t like the doctor with the deep long face
Only wants to give us the very worst case

The story is very much told from a female point of view but Tucker's gift is telling the story in such a way that even an insensitive male lout can understand and identify with.

We're all equal in the face of what we're most afraid of
And I'm so sorry for those who didn't make it
And for the mommies who are left with their heart breaking

The powerful, personal lyrics require either understated musical support or one powerful enough to match. What they get is Janet Weiss' powerful, yet precise drumming ,which captures the sound and timing of Ringo Starr's later sixties work, aided by a few technical licks that Ringo lacked, and a bluesy lick supplied by Carrie Brownstein that sounds like the ground is rumbling beneath Corin's best vocal performance, which comes across as an unlikely amalglam of Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton and P. J. Harvey. And the "woo-woo" backup vocals, lifted straight from the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil", offer the same promise that group harmonizing always does: support, faith and well, sympathy.

Lyrics copyright Sleater-Kinney 2002

Bob Dylan - "Tears Of Rage" (recorded 1967, released 1975)

Twenty years. That's how long I've been trying to figure it out.

"Tears Of Rage" was recorded with the Band, still known at the time as the Hawks, while Dylan was ensconced with them in Woodstock in 1967, recovering from his motorcycle accident. History has it that this was one of the first songs Dylan wrote to someone else's music - the Band's pianist Richard Manuel - but actually, that's a lot of crap because Dylan ripped off dozens of melodies in his day, it was just that this time he had to give proper credit because the Band released their own version years before his saw the light of day. And anyway, that's all besides the point because his singing style makes the specifics of melody superfluous.

In the version released by the Band on Music From Big Pink, Manuel sings as though waking up from a bad dream. Dylan, however, stared the nightmare down and what he sees is his own private version of King Lear.

Oh what dear daughter 'neath the sun
Would treat a father so
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him, "No"?

There is every indication that Dylan never fully planned out song topics in advance (until "Hurricane" anyway) and the way I always heard this song, I suppose Dylan came up with a few choice images and a few catchy lines and using them, built up this impressionistic tale as a metaphor for rejection and loss of direction (much like many other songs on the Basement Tapes).

We pointed out the way to go
And scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand

Dylan almost always keeps a certain emotional distance from his best songs, jabbing with a snarl or a leer, then moving in close, bearing down on a few choice words and backing off to circle again. That's what we love best about him, after all. But there's a line at the emotional heart of this song where he's about as naked as he ever was, and you can feel him rasping against the microphone as he sings

But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?

Though there's still an echo of the sarcastic hipster of Blonde On Blonde in the way he starts to sneer on "worse", the ache and fear in that short couplet forecast the long road from John Wesley Harding through Blood On The Tracks all the way to Modern Times. And that fear is worth spending twenty years trying to understand and come to terms with.

Lyrics copyright 1967 Bob Dylan

The Georgia Satellites - "Another Chance" (1989)

This song gnawed at my subconscious a few days ago and after scratching my head for several hours, until I managed to place the chorus, I've been listening to it quite a lot lately.

It comes off like the Band covering "Maggie May", especially the call and reponse vocals. There's not a lot of deep meaning to it besides those rough, country vocals elevating another tale of unrequited love to inspired heights. Except that any song that struggled so hard to rise to be remembered must be very important indeed.

X - "The Have Nots" (1982)

The early 80's was a fertile time for American hardcore and while some bands rocked harder than L.A.'s X, none grooved deeper, thanks to guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake. Which is not to underrate bassist/singer John Doe and singer Exene Cervenka's drunken brawl of off-key harmonies nor their intelligent, catchy lyrics. But you gotta give due credit to the twin engines powering the band's funky punk.

Bonebrake is easily summed up as a Cro-Magnon powerhouse, all beat and no frills. Zoom on the other hand is a minefield waiting to be properly defused by present and future historians. At his best, he sounded like an amphetymine fed, disco era Carl Perkins. He played sleazy, electrifying licks with an ultra-cool composure and perfect timing, especially at medium-high speed and no matter how many notes he played, he managed to sound economical. His modernized rockabilly extravaganza powers this catchy punk-rocker, which is mostly a catalog of zany bar names, with one of the band's catchiest anthems of blue-collar life, "dawn comes soon enough for the working class".

The song's big drawback is that at 4 minutes and 43 seconds, it's just plain too short. I usually play it four-five times in a row, so I figure it could easily have gone on for fifteem minutes.

Sam And Dave - "Soul Sister, Brown Sugar" (1968)

This isn't as well known as, say, "Soul Man" or "Hold On I'm Coming", and very rarely commented upon, but it boasts one of the weirdest romantic triangles in the annals of soul music.

I will always be with your man
It's about time he took your hand
I was goin' proud, so now I'm sailing now
Keep on givin' it to me

I keep looking for strands of connections in the world of music and the one I hear is in the bridge, which could well have come from The Band's Music From Big Pink. Which is not surprising considering the Band's musical beacon shone from south of the Mason-Dixon line. There is a warmth and sense of camaraderie, echoed in Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel's various hamronizings and which belies the duo's famous ill relationship, when they sing

Somebody said what's in the dark
Will surely come to the light
All your days are brighter and your burden is lighter

Lyrics copyright 1968 I. Hayes and D. Porter

Elvis Costello - "Welcome To The Working Week" (1977)

For the last fifteen years, Evlis Costello has seemed intent on annoying his longtime fans enough to make them forget he was ever any good. But I've got a good memory and he can't really eradicate the worth of his early achievments. And I especially remember the wonder and thrill of hearing this, the opening track from his debut, My Aim Is True.

I've always been a sucker for pop hooks, and this this uptempo number manages to cram in a lot in its short playing time: Beatles-like harmonies and changes over a vaguely early Kinks backdrop, with enough poison to feed a dozen "Positively Fourth Street"s.

In the old days, with no internet, if an album didn't come with a lyric sheet, you could spend a lifetime deciphering the meaning of your favorite songs. Which is especially cruel with a clever, wordy writer like Costello (not that it seems like a particularly worthy endeavor in the case of something like All This Worthless Beauty, mind). Now we have the internet and a long time personal Sphinx has been solved:

Why do you want to be my friend
When I feel like a juggler running out of hands?

Copyright 1977 Elvis Costello

Dave Edmunds - "Girls Talk" (1979)

I remember buying Repeat When Necessary in London eleven years ago and playing "Girls Talk" to my wife when we got back home. She recognized it which was very strange to me. I had known the Elvis Costello demo for about ten years but I hadn't realized that once upon a time Dave Edmunds was something of a minor star and even got radio play in Israel.

I really own too many Dave Edmunds albums. I started buying them because of the Nick Lowe and Rockpile connection, always looking for a clincher to decide what the man was searching for and whether he ever found it. I mean, he's a great performer but the kind of music he wanted to play seemed to have vanished almost as soon as a Colonel Parker bought out Elvis' contract.

There's always three or four great tracks in any of his albums and he always seems to find an obscure song to cover that no one else would have made sense of. Like "Girls Talk" or Bob Seger's "get Out Of Denver" or Bruce Springsteen's "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)". But you always want to just shake the guy loose of his tightass formal mannerisms and hope he'll one day try to point at the future instead of the past.

Though God knows, his version of refried history can be awful fun sometimes.

The New York Dolls - "Subway Train" (1973)

A tall tale of romance flying high in the face of urban desolation.

David Johansen rides the subway, trying to talk with the girl of his dreams but she keeps ignoring him, so he keeps on riding and riding the train, trying to corner her. Eventually he realizes her daddy is pimping her but though he embellishes the situation with a clever turn of phrase, he still finds it hard to fully elucidate the whole truth:

Ya gotta get on back to daddy
That's all its gonna be
He got the poison black arts of the pimps
But don't ya st- st-

Though I can always hear the narrator's stark paranoia, the Dolls manage to imbue the song with a great sense of fun. For one thing, Johansen and Johnny Thunders are smart enough to acknowledge the great tradition of train songs with the song's best verse:

I think ah see the train
I see ya got an open track
I'm hopin
One of those gonna bring my baby back

And even the lines where Johansen's worst fears have been realized are simply catchy and thrilling:

Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah
I know whoa whoa whoa

Of course, the best part of the song is the sheer sonic whoosh of Thunders' and Syl Sylvian's guitars, with Johnny slowing down his usual sawmill style only to reach an even greater emotional intensity.

Lyrics copyright Johansen/Thunders.

The Rolling Stones - "Brown Sugar" (1971)

I've been listening to them for over a quarter of a century, ever since I was sixteen years old, and I still think they're the greatest thing I ever discovered. They're never ever far away from my heart and mind. I love the good stuff and I even kinda like the bad stuff, because when you get right down to it, even their most awful crap still has Keith and Charlie playing on it.

No need to apologise for loving "Brown Sugar", though, as it is the Rolling Stones' most perfect group effort and one of their hottest tracks, literally sizzling off the speakers every time I play it.

It took me twenty years to learn that Mick Jagger wrote the riff here and while it seems that it's Keith Richards' brash guitar powering the song, this is actually the one time during the Mick Taylor period that the Stones really lived up to their original "two guitar, one sound" aesthetic. Just listen to how Taylor's guitar answers Keith's on the opening riff or how his fill hangs in the air for a split second on the chorus before being joined in and commented upon by Keith.

Then there's also Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts at their understated, efficient best, Bobby Keys' greatest sax solo and one of Mick's least effected vocals. Keith turns in his usual off-key harmonies which can be as amazing as his guitar work and, like the myriad wrinkles on his face, define rock and roll. And probably because it was recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, it throbs with the heat of southern soul, even though it owes more to Sun and Chess.

Tastes so good...

The Minutemen - "History Lesson Pt. 2" (1984)

There are plenty of love songs around, but how many artists have pulled off a love song to their audience?

The Minutemen's "History Lesson Pt. 2" gets away with it because it's also a song about the love between D. Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley and the dreams that pulled them together and made life on the road endurable and even enjoyable. What sets it apart from similar songs and where it addresses their audience directly is the opening line, "our band could be your life".

Think about it, how many bands have ever broached such a promise? You certainly would not expect it from the weirdest trio in American hardcore. Who weren't even weird in any way guaranteed to have even a niche appeal among the more common brand of social outcasts. Just brainy guys who might have turned to prog rock or jazz if they hadn't fallen in love with punk.

Which is what the song is all about.

What's most obvious about the song is how un-punk it is. It actually sounds like a slowed down variation on the Creedence Clearwater Revival style (which is appropiate, given how great an influence CCR were on the Minutemen, who sound up covering three of their songs). The Minutemen were always a very fast, hardcore band, complementing an extreme willingness to experiment with an ability to swing that was unknown in hardcore at the time or since. And they always featured the bass as a melodic contrapoint and sometimes an extension to the guitar. Which is what they do here, only slower than usual.

Good thing too, as the lyrics would be too cryptic and full of private jokes to make out at full speed. Except for the line that goes "I was E. Bloom, Richard Hell, Joe Strummer, and John Doe". But the lyrics are not terribly important, because the warmth in D. Boon's voice and his slow, melodic guitar fills tell the story of a love and friendship that can't be described in words anyway. And the fat, dropping bass line seems to fortell D. Boon's tragic death in a car accident a year later.

(One of the most wasteful deaths ever. To put things in perspective, imagine if Bob Dylan had died in that motorcycle accident in 1967, leaving us Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde but depriving us of The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Blood On The Tracks and everything he's done since the 90's.)

The Mekons - "Chivalry" (1985)

How much can a man spiritually abuse himself before he falls apart? This seemingly lilting country-punk song tries to answer the question with stark, bare words that would fall apart if only the Mekons didn't answer their own desparation with big drums and a swinging fiddle that shines like a ray of light across a gray, winter sky (courtesy of Steve Goulding and Suzie Honeyman).

Ah, the Mekons. The longest running punk band, maybe because they preserved the punk ideal while expanding upon its musical form. The greatest band you've never heard of.

Singing about spritual demise came naturally to a band that played on for years without ever breaking through, making music of (high) consistent quality. The only song I love as much written out of similar straits is Mott The Hoople's "Ballad Of Mott", but at least Mott hit with "All The Young Dudes", whereas the Mekons barely managed to sign with a major label for one album and never charted.

But the Mekons never quite gave up and they had an aptitude for writing about the gray towns in the underbelly of England, the broken aspirations - the people who came out for one last rally, gave up, crawled home only to come back for one last last rally the day after. They romanticised the situations enough to find folk-pop hooks to inspire them but they never sanitisized the fear that lurked just below the surface of their best songs. In fact, that fear informs all of their songs.

It's that fear that keeps me coming back for more. Because the way the Mekons portray fear doesn't drive me shivering under the covers. Instead, because they choose to face that fear while celebrating the human condition, they allow me to experience that fear with people who chose to face their own fears and live out a life doing something they deemed worth fighting for.

No matter how much you love a song, you will eventually hear it when you need it more than ever and it will come to you and show things within itself and within yourself that will make your skin crawl.

My most poignant moment with "Chivalry" came in January 2006. I was on a business trip in New Hampshire, the company I was working at seemed to be folding and I had no idea what I was going to do next. Over the weekend, I took the rental car and drove into the New Hampshire hills to a wine store in Massachusets, three hours away. It wasn't a very cold winter day for New England but it was raining all day and it didn't seem like there was a soul in sight. I recall driving down a hill and taking a slight turn as the song came on the CD player.

I was out late the other night
Fear and whiskey kept me going
I swore somebody held me tight
But now there's just no way of knowing

I saw your face in a crowded bar
"Excuse me please!"
At least I thought it was you
Now I just don't know where you are

My suit was smart when I put it on last week
All I could remember as I walked down the street
Was the rain and tears on your face
Oh gee, I guess I'm just a disgrace

Copyright 1985 The Mekons

I remember thinking as the rain swept across the front window, "I don't want to be here, I want to be where things make sense like they did five years ago". So I played the song again. And again. Kept punching the damn button over and over. Eventually the rain cleared and the moment was gone and I kept driving, got to the store, bought some very nice wines and drove back. It was probably the best day I ever spent on the road.

That's catharsis for you.

Nick Lowe - "Marie Provst" (1978)

My wife keeps asking me, how can you love a song about dogs eating up the body of a dead woman?

Well, I can discourse all night about why rock and pop matter so much they can encompass any subject, but the truth is, the real reason I love "Marie Provst" is, it's just so catchy. Which is why rock and pop can be so encompassing in the first place.

This song comes from Jesus Of Cool, Nick Lowe's debut album after his pub-rock band, Brinsley Schwartz, broke up. Also known in the US as Pure Pop For Now People, both titles very witty, telling the same joke with a different punchline. The album is, like the US title implies, a pop masterpiece, full of sharp hooks that the more progressive musicians of the 70's had long since discarded and forgotten.

It's that love of the pop hook and the witty rhyme, complete in themselves and requiring no profound meaning, that make "Marie Provst" one of my favorite songs. Having said that, taking it to extreme gets you to "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" (actually, I consider Lowe one of the few good musicians to have been influenced more from McCartney than from Lennon) so I need to address a few more elements that separate the men from the boys: a big beat, a sharp guitar and wry vocals that make no concession to cuteness. Plus, unlike "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da", "Marie Provst" totally absorbs all its musical antecedents and sounds totally fresh. It will never sound outdated.

The final measure of the song's greatness comes from this, my favorite verse:

The cops came in and they looked around
Throwin' up everywhere over what they found
The handiwork of Marie's little dachshund
That hungry little dachshund

Copyright 1978 Nick Lowe

Because no one else in human history had ever found a rhyme for "dachshund". Or even bothered to try.

1992 - Bob Dylan Reclaims His Voice

Bob Dylan's 1997 Out Of Time is widely regarded as the comeback album that heralded a return to form that Dylan has managed to maintain ever since. But the truth is, the comback trail started in 1992 and 1993 when he cut a pair of acoustic sets comprised of old folk and blues covers.

Look, when people talk about Dylan's contributions to rock's vocabulary of expression, they usually discuss his use of language and then they might note that the impact of his rough voice emancipated other so-called limited singers to perform their own material. But that's just skimping the surface and not giving enough emphasis on what his Dylan's use of language and his voice really mean.

At his best, Dylan is a great performer and I don't care what his voice sounds like. Even today when the phlegm just hisses off the speakers. He's a great performer because his phrasing, the subtle pauses, the way he hangs on to certain words and syllables, bring meanings to the words that just aren't there on paper. And that's something he took from a largely unremarked-upon substrata of the American folk and blues tradition, that way of leaning into the microphone and making cryptic remarks sound like God given truth.

That tradition also informs his use of language. The reason even his more arcane and surrealistic songs sound so convincing and knowing is they draw upon a huge bed of images fostered by that tradition. His voice and his deep understanding of the American psyche as revealed through hundreds of old folk and blues songs are the reason Dylan, even in his early twenties, managed to sound much wiser than he might have actually been. But somewhere along the way, in the course of a myriad of personal changes, he lost touch with that tradition and wandered in a creative wilderness for a decade and a half. Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong are the albums where he went back to the well and found his voice again.

And you know what, these albums are even proof of his underrated guitar playing. But maybe it's easy singing and playing great when you're going back to songs you've loved all your life. Whatever drove Dylan to fame, then recluse, then stardom again and finally various religious re-births, he finds meaning for that drive in these songs. They give him solace and peace of mind, which is what the blues is supposed to do for you, and in doing so, rediscovers himself.

My favorite track from the two aforementioned albums is actually a minor song from Good As I Been To You, "You're Gonna Quit Me", which is almost too catchy to be a great song. It does, however, highlight all of what I've said above: the knowing warmth of the voice, the way his voice cracks, the way he seems to be singing to himself, the little whispers that crackle in the echo chamber. But the greatest moment in that song is not on record, nothing that anyone but me ever heard, nothing Dylan himself could ever have imagined. The greatest moment came the other day when I was listening to it. When it was over, my ten year old daughter, who usually listens to stuff like Avril Lavigne, came out of her room and asked me to play it again. Now that's good upbringing.

Marvin Gaye - "Let's Get It On" (1973)

OK, this is a fairly well-known song, but what's it about? Marvin Gaye doing his best to get a girl into bed, spewing every cliche know to males. We're both sensitive people, with so much to give. Yeah, right. But despite his smooth crooning and the care with which he wraps the words around the catchy melody, the only reason he's going to be successful tonight is because of the hot drums track.

Which proves one thing: it's not what you say but how you say it.

The Beach Boys - "Wild Honey" (1967)

The Beach Boys rode a treacherous emotional and creative roller-coaster throughout their career. At first, they were deemed to be merely a surf-band. But they had two secret weapons at their disposal: their gorgeous harmonies and genius Brian Wilson at the musical helm. To put things in perspective, Brian was a step ahead of the Beatles right from the start, until, as is well known, he self-destructed during the recording of Smile, an ambitious, would-be masterpiece to follow up acknowledged masterpiece Pet Sounds. After allegedly destroying the master tapes (bootlegs would crop up throughout the following decades), the band hastily re-recorded the album in a wildly inferior version released as Smiley Smile. But the psychic damage was already done and it would take Brian Wilson almost four decades to recover and finally re-record and release his lost masterpiece. Which, by the way, I liked rather more than I'd expected.

Until then, he had one album left in him. The Beach Boys reconvened to record Wild Honey, a relatively short, back-to-basics album with pared-down instrumentation and little group vocals. It seemed as though Brian was either scared of digging in too deep inside his creative well of production effects or he was just content to let the songs speak for themselves. And while many might have been disappointed at what seemed like limited reach and scope, this is an album full of haunting melodies and little brushstrokes, perhaps the true heart of a very fragile soul.

The defining track is the title song. "Wild Honey" is a joyous blast of blue-eyed soul that seems like a once in a lifetime lunge at true happiness. Carl Wilson is said to have danced while singing it and it is a rapture of bitter-sweet soul-inflected melody. But the payoff comes in the instrumental break, where Brian plays a dementedl organ solo, creaking with static electricity that tells it all: at the end of his tether, discarding the intricate production values of his previous studio albums, he bares his soul, but for a few bars he's still intent on showing the world what brand new sounds his mind his capable of conjuring. I still don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it.

The Temptations - "Loneliness Made Me Realize (It's You That I Need)" (1967)

The Temptations had four or five hits that are firmly embedded in the public consciousness and about ten or so more that would be recognized by anyone with more than a passing love and interest for Motown. "Loneliness Had Made Me Realize" is probably overlooked by both crowds.

It comes from the transitional period when Norman Whitfield was taking over Smokey Robinson's role as the Temptations' producer. Whitfield was already taking the Temptations in a tougher direction than witty, bitter sweet confections laden with strings and harmonies of the Robinson period, so inasmuch as this is probably Whitfield's only true pop song, it is somewhat of throwback. But that is probably the only comment resembling a that critical note I can mention.

It is a song I've loved dearly for over fifteen years and it never fails to make me shiver. What distinguishes it from the Smokey Robinson songs is its syncopated dynamics, how it builds up to a series of climaxes and how the lead and backup vocals comment on each other. What makes it tick emotionally is lead singer's David Ruffin's patented growl, with its rough, yet suave sense of yearning. What defines its pedigree stature is a series of "it's you that I need" near the end where every Temp gets his lick, that is a modernized variation on the doo wop theme.

Defining Moments

My love for rock and roll in the very broadest sense - from ah, Robert Johnson to Brian Eno - is what defines me. One of my objectives in this blog is to write about the defining moments of my life. And the best example of that, at least the one that's freshest in my memory, actually comes from jazz.

The first time I really got jazz, it hit me like a left hook to the belly.

I was listening to Miles Davis' rendition of "Around Midnight" a few years ago. Now, I always loved Miles, for years, since I was about twenty, even when a lot of of the nuances and moves went over my head. Now, fifteen years later, I wasn't listening with a particularly more open mind, but something managed to get inside.

You know that slow, soulful, sexy style Miles had in the fifties, it's in full force on "Around Midnight", just one man and a trumpet, all alone in the cold, dark night. If you listen to it with even casual appreciation you just know this is as deep as any musician ever gets. Forget theory, forget Miles' great intellectual presence and all the great leaps of intuition and invention he brought into all of his great records, this solo takes you back to Africa, slavery, the Civil War and then just shoves you straight out, bare naked, into the future.

Then it's over and there's a drumroll. And John Coltrane walks in and demolishes everything Miles had done.

Coltrane, great as he was, was never as great on his own solo efforts as he was with Davis and Thelonious Monk. Just my opinion but... the way I see it, the guy just begged for a foil. With Monk, he was offered those weird spaces between the piano chords that he just thrived in and accented his sort of rusty sounding playing. With Miles it was different kind of foil because Miles was a totally different personality, more urbane and restless than Monk, and always drove his musicians toward a vision only he could perceive. According to his autobiography he'd been trying for years to get "Around Midnight" right. And when he finally got it right, his protege outshone one of his greatest trumpet solo of the fifties, turned it inside out and upside down, his "sheets of sound" style picking up all of Davis' ideas and regurgirating them, all drenched in acid and snot.

For a guy who always felt he was "saved by rock and roll", the performance was a revelation.

I woke up, sweating, out of my reverie and went out and bought all the Miles Davis and John Coltrane albums I could find and from there on it was a straight line to Mingus, Monk and Parker.

Sometimes life is truly what happens when you're busy making other plans.