Discography - Week 50

We've now reached Week 50 of our soon to be completed year-long Discography discussion.  While the conclusion of the discussion fills me with some sorrow, it is, at least for this week, overwhelmed by my excitement to be returning to my old stomping grounds of Cincinnati.  Jack and I will be hanging out at Dave Kelley's house, which means the boys are back in town - the girls are safe and the goetta is endangered.  Saturday night brings dinner at Gary Beatrice's mansion.  And somewhere along the way there will doubtless be a trip to Skyline for some legitimate Cincinnati chili.  This is about as sweet as it gets.

Gary Beatrice

Modern Lovers, Roadrunner

Some argue that The Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" is the first punk rock song, and the Sex Pistols clearly stole the "Bye-Bye" ending. And while this sounds much different than anything I remember listening to in 1972, I find it to be the antithesis of punk. It's downright joyous.

"Roadrunner" features a driving jangly lead guitar that I am always a fool for (Tom Petty, REM, The Byrds, Waylon Jennings, early Talking Heads), and like so many great songs, it's about the radio.

I don't care what the government is doing. If you're driving around with the AM radio on and this song comes over your speakers, you'll be in love with the modern world, too.

Dave Wallace

Sleater-Kinney - Turn It On

Sleater-Kinney is probably the best-known and most enduring of the riot-grrrl acts from the 90s.  (Although, oddly, guitarist-singer Carrie Brownstein is now better known for starring on Portlandia.)  A killer live band, Sleater-Kinney put on a couple of the best concerts that I've ever attended.  After taking a hiatus for about a decade, I was delighted when they re-formed last year and put out a terrific album (a rare example of coming back as strong as in your heyday).  Turn It On is an earlier song from their classic album, Dig Me Out, and one of my favorites by them. They're not everyone's cup of tea, but I think they're great.

Phillip Seiler

My Dad is Dead "Nothing Special"

It's a little weird to think how it was easier to listen and like Mark Edward's band My Dad is Dead before my father actually died. I cringe just a bit whenever I see the band name appear in my random playlists now. But I would be remiss to not mention them in this project and despite a great catalog of mostly unknown songs, I will go with their/his most prominent.

The jangle, garage guitar kicks us off with a lovely little infectious riff, backed by unrelenting tick tick tick of drum sticks banging together. Although most likely a drum machine, Mark Edwards did start out as a drummer before teaching himself guitar. But his early career performances was just him and a drum machine which in the late 80s and early 90s would have been fairly unusual, I think. But back to the point, that tick tick tick is relentless, unending, mechanically precise and gives us a clue as to what is to come when Mark utters his first words:

"She killed that boy

Threw his body in the garbage

down the hall"

Oh.

It doesn't get better.

Mark captures the reality of a group of throw away people in our throw away world with no sentimentality. Word choice is so excellent here. People exist without relationships (boy, man, herself.) The supreme indifference of our subject hints at mental illness or is it substance abuse or is it the hopelessness of poverty in our current (1989!) world. I have been struck, reading back through the posts, the number of songs that have dealt with the poor and disaffected. Consider this my contribution to the pile: a pile of bodies left behind, unmourned, nothing special.

Dave Kelley

Inspired by DW's month long trip through the glorious days of fifties and sixties soul music, as well as my own love for that genre, I am devoting my post this week to:

"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted"   Performed by Joan Osborne and The Funk Brothers    

Jimmy Ruffin did the original version of this song, and it is fantastic, but I am choosing the version performed live by Joan Osborne from the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" backed by members of The Funk Brothers.  I cannot think of a word better than "sublime" to describe their cover of this classic tune.

Anyone who has not seen "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" should do so at your first opportunity.  It is about The Funk Brothers who were a rotating group of musicians that served as the backing band for all of the great Motown singers.  They played on far more number one songs than The Beatles.  Amazing players all whose names should be better known.  One of the sadder moments in the film is when a surviving Funk Brother relates that the band's legendary bass player James Jamerson (The guy playing the amazing bass throughout Marvin Gaye's classic "What's Going On record) had to buy a ticket to see the 25th anniversary of Motown special aired live on TV.

Although most of The Funk Brothers were black, there were a number of white musicians as well.  The band was sort of a model of integration in a city that was marked by racial strife and conflict during the time of their great success. 

The song itself is the classic tale of someone trying to keep going after the loss of his or her love.  Whether that loss is due to death or being dumped is not clear.  It is pointless for me to continue.  The sooner you can stop reading my inane ramblings, the more quickly you can listen to the amazing performance of this great song.  

Gary Scudder

Walter Coleman, I'm Going to Cincinnati

"Because I'm goin' to Cincinnati, the times is good,
I'm goin' to Cincinnati where they eat fried food,
And I'm go'in to Cincinnati, boys, where the bottle is good . . .

Now when you come to Cincinnati, stop at Sixth and Main,
That's where the good hustlin' women get the good cocaine.
Now when you come to Cincinnati stop at Hoghead Joe,
Where you get your turnip greens and your good hog jowls."

Truthfully, what more needs to be said?  By the time the dutiful nano-overlords release this week's Discography discussion I'll be back in the Natti "where the bottle is good," and spending time with most excellent friends, including some that dominate this music thread.  Truthfully, I didn't know what a rich blues history Cincinnati has, although it makes perfect sense.  Years ago I stopped in an old used store in some town in central Vermont and stumbled across a pile of used copies of Steven Tracy's Going to Cincinnati.  Sadly, I think I lost it in my divorce.  While I don't lament it's disappearance like I do my collection of hard-bound Dickens, if I had it over to do again I wish I would have had the wisdom to buy the whole pile.