018 Sir Paul McCartney, ‘Distractions’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Beatles, 40 years in the grave, made a major media brouhaha on 09.09.09 (wow, how cosmic!–just like ‘Revolution #9, how, how—how—meaningless?), releasing lots of old tapes remastered, remixed, repackaged, and (most importantly) remarketed. I saw there’s also a really exciting (and expensive) new Beatles video game (which Paul admitted he hasn’t seen, so I’m not quite clear in what sense it’s a Beatles product).

From the little I read, I saw that George Martin’s son was responsible for some remixing, as he was for the ‘Love’ travesty (which I’m proud to say I haven’t heard more than 10 seconds in passing on the radio). Young Giles Martin said about ‘Love’, “What people will be hearing on the album is a new experience, a way of re-living the whole Beatles musical lifespan in a very condensed period.”Really, what is this world coming to? What ever happened to ‘an artist creates his thing, puts it out for the public, and THAT’S IT‘. He dies. The work stays. Either stays interesting or not. But as for the creative act, it’s over, folks. LET IT BE. The Beatles are dead. They made some 12 and a half albums. Go listen to them and shuddup.

You want to be part of a living audience responding to great popular music? Create your own idols. Leave ours alone!
You don’t have any that good? Tough. Enjoy what you have.
You want to listen to ours? Please, feel free. It’s a wonderful thing to go back in time and become acquainted with the masters. But don’t fiddle with them. Don’t try to recreate them. Respect what they did and leave their legacy as they left it.

And for God’s sake, don’t try to resurrect the pitiful, withered old farts that are still touring. Is there someone who really prefers this guy to this one?

I don’t enjoy bashing Paul McCartney. Or John Lennon, for that matter. But with Paul it’s more of an issue. Because every time he releases a new CD and the kids and DJs and writers start with their “great, stunning, landmark, comeback though he’s never been away” litany, I get that fingernails-on-the-blackboard feeling. But I control myself, usually. I don’t go running down the block shouting “The new CD is crap, Paul is Dead, all you teenie-jerks don’t know what you’re talking about, the end of the world is coming.” It’s not until the eager-faced wannabes shove the CD at me and say, “Oh, you have to hear this, it’s as good as the Beatles” that I start to lose it.

That’s why I got such a snotty, perverse pleasure when asked last summer if I was going to spend a small king’s ransom (a full ransom for a small king, that is) to actually really be in the live presence of the 66-year old Sir Paul and his betty-boop boys singing “Band on the Run” just like it sounds on the CD, I tersely responded, “No, I’ve already seen him. With his original band.” And their jaws would drop open, and they would ask in awe, “You mean you saw Wings??” And I would let my eyelids droop just a little, to show the anguish their ignorance was causing me, “No, with The Beatles. And the show was crap then, 20,000 teenie-boppers screaming and drowning out a primitive sound system half a mile away, somewhere between the pitcher’s mound and second base. And I sure ain’t going back now to see a pitiful self-mockery of it.”

I had my Beatles. It was a private issue. I wouldn’t go see the movie “Hard Day’s Night” for months, till the theater emptied of the little girls, and I could commune with The Guys in private, in the dark. “No, actually we’re just good friends.” I loved my Paul, not theirs.

Which is why I don’t enjoy bashing him. And it’s also why I avoid listening to Paul’s CDs (and John’s). Because the best of it is so painfully 3^rd rate in comparison to the worst of the Beatles. Almost without exception, excluding the aberrations such as ‘Birthday’ and ‘I Dig a Pony’. The only John song I know worth remembering is ‘Instant Karma’; and, of Paul’s ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ and ‘Junk’. All three are, of course, essentially Beatles songs recorded after the split.

With one exception. Out of Paul’s 30something post-Beatle CDs, there’s one song and only one I know that deserves to be visited and revisited. So that’s just what SoTW is doing.

“Distractions”, from the utterly forgettable 1989 LP cassette CD “Flowers in the Dirt”. It was a tragic failure, that album. A number of the songs are collaborations between McCartney and Elvis Costello. I remember thinking back then that if anyone could retrieve Paul from his mawkish oh-so-cuteness, it was the cynical, strident, brilliant Elvis C. Remind you of another ex-partner of Sir Paul? But the album was a lot more dirt than flowers. Just the one rose, “Distractions”, and that’s all Paul.

Paul’s musicality is legendary, at times divine. “All My Loving”, “And I Love Her”, “Another Girl”. And that’s just the A’s up through 1965. But honesty, depth, soul-searching, have never been his fortes, to put it mildly. At his worst, the Prince of Plastic, the Sheikh of Shallow. At his best, a modern-day Mozart. Even the brilliant “Penny Lane”, a nostalgic trip back to childhood, leaves your heartstrings unplucked (compare it to the flip side of the single, “Strawberry Fields”). It’s just not what Paul does. Which is what makes “Distractions” so unique. It’s mature, it’s straightforward and honest, heartfelt. More than ‘All My Loving’ ever was. And, in addition, it’s beautiful. It’s what all of us adults feel so often in real life:

Distractions, like butterflies, are buzzing ’round my head.
When I’m alone, I think of you,
And the things we’d do if we could only be through
With these distractions.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:

Tags: Distractions, Flowers in the Dirt, Paul McCartney

008: ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’, Fairport Convention (Bob Dylan)

Fairport Convention – ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’
Bob Dylan – ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’

Young Bob Dylan didn’t often write gentle songs. Those addressed to a girl were usually angry, critical, upbraiding, if not down-right mean. Hate songs more than love songs. The one that pops to mind is, of course, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, but you don’t have to think hard to come up with a whole string of them through his golden period of the mid-60s: ‘Don’t Think Twice’, the stunning ‘One Too Many Mornings’, ‘I Don’t Believe You’ (She acts like we never have met), ‘She Belongs to Me’ (She’s got everything she needs), to pick one from each of the masterpiece albums that preceded “Highway 61″.

But there are, hidden here and there, chinks in the armor, fleeting glimpses of vulnerability. They’re the soft underbelly of the list above – she did, after all, get to him. And there are a few songs in which the chip slips off his shoulder, his guard down, his sunglasses in his pocket, his heart open. The well-known ‘Girl from the North Country’; the gentle, vulnerable ‘One Too Many Mornings‘; the wrenching, under-appreciated ‘Boots of Spanish Leather‘; and this week’s SoTW, ‘I’ll Keep It with Mine’.

‘I’ll Keep It with Mine’ is notable for at least three reasons:

It’s a fine song, and a relatively obscure one. (That’s two reasons right there.) He never recorded it himself for an official album, just a piano bootleg that appeared years later on the (official) Dylan Bootlegs series. (Quick, name two other major non-love relationship songs from the same period that he didn’t record officially! That’s right – ‘Love is Just a Four-Letter Word‘ and ‘Mama, You’ve Been On My Mind‘, both taking a hilarious and cynical look at male/female relationships.)

‘I’ll Keep It with Mine’ is enigmatic and flawed. What the heck does the title mean? Why is he ‘loving you not for what you are but for what you’re not’? What isn’t she? What’s the subject of the song, anyway? Where the heck did the train engineer come from in the third verse?? But Dylan is Dylan, and somehow it all hangs together on a level I can’t and don’t care to try to ‘explain’. Fact is, 45 years later I’m still rolling it around my brain and over my palate. As Dylan himself said recently on his Theme Time Radio Hour show with so much disarming charm, “You can never tell why someone’s gonna stick something in a song. You just gotta remember that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. You can’t expect to understand everything in every song.”

Oh, right, there’s a third reason to take a listen to this song. It’s the only Dylan song I can think of from the 1960s that he misrecorded. Just flat out missed the point of the song. He bangs away at the piano and shouts the lyrics at way too fast a tempo. (Of course, ten years later he began several decades of rapid-fire shouting of what should have been whispered slowly). One of the several early cover versions our SoTW, though, came close to hitting it on the head, that of Fairport Convention.

They’re a leading voice of the English folk movement transmogrifying towards rock in the mid-60s, along with Pentangle and John Martyn. Their lead singer is Sandy Denny, a British Judy Collins, and I sure like Richard Thompson’s acoustic guitar leading a rock setting. Their treatment here really isn’t anything spectacular, just a tastefully wistful, properly laid-back rendition of a lovely and puzzling song.

I guess when all the sound and fury and high-falutin’ talk is over, what we’re left with is one darn pretty song.And if anyone out there understands it, please let me know.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:

Tags: Bob Dylan, Fairport Convention, I'll Keep It With Mine

171: Jackson Browne (with David Crosby), ‘Something Fine’

Nicky & Sheina – My Grandkids

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It’s 42 days after Valentine’s Day, the perfect time to talk about couplehood. Pas de deux. Aural symbiosis. Harmony.

I could talk about what’s wrong with being alone – like Nilsson’s One.
Or I could talk about the pleasure of being together – ‘Two of Us’ of course pops into mind.
Or I might try to distill ‘twoness’. Then I’d fo’ sure share Jack Bach showing off what he can do with two lines (Invention for Piano 13 in Am, , BWV 784). And if you’d like a demonstration of how that works in human terms, here are the ladies from The Real Group singing the same piece.

Margareta & Katarina — The Real Girls

Still not convinced?
Here’s one person tangoing.
And here are two.
Ok, I can’t resist. The bustiest Beach Bingo belle went to that mouseketeertrap in the sky the week before Valentine’s day, so here’s Annette Funicello overstating the obvious.

What’s the point? David Crosby, of course. Or more precisely, “Ooh-ooh-ooh, what a little harmony can do-oo-oo.”

Jackson Browne & David Crosby — in harmony

I’m not talking holistic harmony. Take for example ‘Claudette’, written for his wife and originally sung solo by Roy Orbison, then made a hit by the sultans of symphony, Don and Phil Everly. It’s great, but it’s obvious.
I’m talking about nuance. How you can have a perfectly lovely song, just a singer and his guitar and his song and his singing, ostensibly an autonomous whole. And then along comes David Crosby (the greatest of harmony singers in rock, alongside James Taylor), adding just a pinch of a hint of an oblique juxtaposition, and– voilà–magic.

David Crosby & some other cat

The easiest harmony is for the second voice to ride on top of and parallel to the melody line, either a third or a fourth or a fifth above it. Graham Nash does that very well. David Crosby slips underneath the melody line with a disembodied voice that seems to have no presence of its own. It’s just in the air, enhancing the soloist and entrancing the listener.

He did it for The Byrds.

He did it for Crosby, Stills & Nash.

And he did it for Jackson Browne in a little gem, ‘Something Fine’.

Here’s Jackson doing the song solo (from Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2).
And here’s the original version from his eponymous album, 1972. With a little help from his friend.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like (in order of appearance here):

Something Fine

The papers lie there helplessly in a pile outside the door.
I’ve tried and tried, but I just can’t remember what they’re for.
The world outside is tugging like a beggar at my sleeve–
Oh, that’s much too old a story to believe .

And you know that it’s taken its share of me
Even though you take such good care of me.
Now you say “Morocco” and that makes me smile–
I haven’t seen morocco in a long, long while.
The dreams are rolling down across the places in my mind
And I’ve just had a taste of something fine.

The future hides and the past just slides, England lies between
Floating in a silver mist so cold and so clean.
California’s shaking like an angry child will
Who has asked for love and is unanswered still.

And you know that I’m looking back carefully
‘Cause I know that there’s still something there for me.
But you said “Morocco” and you made me smile
And it hasn’t been that easy for a long, long while
And looking back into your eyes I saw them really shine
Giving me a taste of something fine – something fine.

Now if you see Morocco I know you’ll go in style
I may not see Morocco for a little while
But while you’re there I was hoping you might keep it in your mind
To save me just a taste of something fine.

170: Laura Nyro, ‘Luckie’ (“Eli & the 13th Confession”)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Laura Nyro

Today we’re going to track the evolution of the first two measures of ‘Luckie’, the ebullient opening track on Laura Nyro’s masterpiece. “Eli & the 13^th Confession”. I can’t promise that next week we’ll track the next two bars, although the entire album does deserve such reverential attention.

Once upon a time, there was a gospel singer named Curtis Mayfield, who snuck out the back door of his Chicago church and formed The Impressions (‘People Get Ready’, ‘It’s All Right’). Curtis wrote and arranged all the songs, a veritable one-man Motown. He had such a surplus of talent that he wrote and produced hits for his Impressions bandmate Jerry Butler, (‘For Your Precious Love’, ‘He Will Break Your Heart’) and for a two-hit wonder, Major Lance. ‘Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um’ (1964) was a charmer, but it was ‘The Monkey Time’ (1963) that made Major’s name and Curtis a pile of dough. I can’t think of a more infectious Top 40 song.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Curtis Mayfield

Here’s an instructional video about how to do The Monkey (as opposed to The Jerk), should you be so moved. (After locking the door) I just tried it together with Major Lance and the Shindig dancers, and it went pretty well. Maybe not as well as in this gambol of that other great Monkey hit, ‘Mickey’s Monkey’ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Chalk it up to my pigmental predilections. At least the Monkey’s off my back.

Listen again to the end of each verse of ‘The Monkey Time’: ‘…and then the music begins to play/You’re automatically on your way./Are you ready? (Are you ready?)/Well, you get yours, ‘cause I’ve got mine/It’s the Monkey Time!’Stop dancing for a minute, and bookmark that phrase!

Now let’s hop ahead to 1965 to Barbara Mason, a lass of 18 from Philadelphia: “I was a huge Curtis Mayfield fan, and I heard a record he had produced, Major Lance’s ‘The Monkey Time’ and he sings, ‘Are you ready?’ and I just thought, there’s my record. It only took me 10 minutes to write, and then we recorded it live in one take.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Barbara Mason

‘Yes, I’m Ready’ was a giant hit, a harbinger of the Philly Soul sound which would achieve fruition in the 1970s. Her song was covered numerous times (Gladys Knight & the Pips, Carla Thomas), and became a hit again in 1979 for Teri DeSario & K.C. Interestingly, the only significant cover of ‘The Monkey Time’ was by Laura Nyro herself, backed by Labelle, on her knockout 1971 cover album, ‘Gonna Take a Miracle’. I guess The Monkey beat was pretty daunting. But check out the opening cut, ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’. Here’s the original, by The Shirelles. 1:0 for the white girl!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

That brings us up to March, 1968, the release of Laura Nyro’s “Eli & the 13^th Confession”. Listen again to how ‘Luckie’ starts.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Bum-bum-bum, “Yes, I’m ready!!” Recognize that phrase?

Laura Nyro

Whoa, Laura! Not too much ambiguity there, is there folks? Ready for what? Well, mister, you just name it. You have to remember this was written in 1968. Girls didn’t talk like that in 1968. They certainly didn’t shout such things.

And that’s just the first two measures. In the rest of the song, she wrestled with the Devil and won. Jacob did that and got appointed a forefather! Here, let me show you.

Yes, I’m ready, so come on, Luckie
Well, there’s an avenue of Devil who believe in stone
You can meet the captain at the dead-end zone
What Devil doesn’t know is that Devil can’t stay
Doesn’t know he’s seen his day

Oh, Luckie’s taking over and his clover shows
Devil can’t get out of hand
‘Cause Luckie’s taking over
And what Luckie says goes

Laura Nyro Fighting the Devil

Dig them potatoes
If you’ve never dug your girl before
Poor little Devil, he’s a backseat man
To Luckie forever more

It’s a wrestling match, Good Vibrations vs Sympathy for the Devil. And this 21-year old banshee takes her grand piano and bashes old Lucifer on the noggin. You ain’t bringing me down, mister! It’s not luck, it’s an act of will. My friend MB from Back Then: “I took my first LSD trip alone in my parents’ house in the middle of the night, and was scared shitless. I put on “Eli & the 13^th Confession”. Laura walked me through that night, and I’ve never let go of her hand since.” Laura got me through a missile attack with a similar act of no-holds-barred optimism. You gonna get in my face? Yes, I’m ready.

Laura Nyro Fan

I’m starting to feel like The Ancient Mariner – accosting unsuspecting revelers, grabbing them by the lapel, sticking my nose right up in their face, my feverish eyes gaping unblinking into theirs, to force upon them The Question: “Do you adequately appreciate Laura Nyro’s musical accomplishments?” I have no idea why, but I sometimes feel people shrinking back from this sort of engagement. With Laura, I mean. If she’s that good, why isn’t she famous?

One reason is that she effectively removed herself from the music business at 24. Others? She was quirky, personally and musically. She was seriously intense, intensely joyous. Demanding, over-the-top. She was divine, spiritual, fearless, unblinking in the face of any and every passion. An ancient mariner for our times.

I really am getting tired of quoting the litany of her praises. How Elton John and Elvis Costello and Bette Midler and Bonnie Raitt and Rickie Lee Jones and Susan Vega all recognize her as a major voice in the days when rock music was asserting itself as the torchbearer of popular culture. Even Joni Mitchell, a person known to be stingy in crediting her peers, said “Laura Nyro you can lump me in with, because Laura exerted an influence on me. I looked to her and took some direction from her.”

Joni Mitchell (l), Laura Nyro

A revolution in women’s self-image began in the 1960s. Today it’s easy to relegate The Music to the status of soundtrack. Those of us who were there know it was the inspiration. With all due credit to Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, and even Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, there were two women who forged this new awareness – Laura and Joni. Carol King came along a few years later.

Laura Nyro

I grant that Joni is the more compleat artist. She had a long, variegated, accomplished career. She was a mistress of craft par excellence, a singularly soulful voice, musically courageous, a trailblazer of unparalleled achievement. It diminishes her not one whit to point out that where Joni was an artisan, Laura was wild. Joni was analytical, Laura was spontaneous. Joni was in control of her material, her voice, her compositions. Laura was an unfettered inspiration in all. Joni dismounted walls brick by brick. Laura detonated them. It was she who inspired rock musicians, male and female, to heed no boundaries of tempo, genre, or superego. She was the natural snow, the unstudied sea, a cameo, born for the loom’s desire. She still ornaments the earth. For me.

Yes, I’m ready, so come on, Luckie

 Well, there’s an avenue of Devil who believe in stone
You can meet the captain at the dead-end zone
What Devil doesn’t know is that Devil can’t stay
Doesn’t know he’s seen his day

Oh, Luckie’s taking over and his clover shows
Devil can’t get out of hand
‘Cause Luckie’s taking over
And what Luckie says goes

Dig them potatoes
If you’ve never dug your girl before
Poor little Devil, he’s a backseat man
To Luckie forever more

Yes, I’m ready, so come on, Luckie
Luckie inside of me, inside of my mind, inside of my mind

Don’t go falling for Naughty
Don’t go falling for Naughty
He’s a dragon with his double bite
Sure can do his shortchanging out of sight
An artist of a sort but a little bit short of luck, this lucky night

Oh, Luckie’s taking over and his clover shows
Devil can’t get out of hand
‘Cause Luckie’s taking over
And what Luckie says goes

Dig them potatoes
If you’ve never dug your girl before
Poor little Naughty, he’s a backseat man
To Luckie forever, a backseat man
To Luckie, hey, hey, hey
It’s a real good day to go get Luckie, go get Luckie

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like: