It's been a tough couple months for several members of the Discography crew: Kathy (knee), Cyndi (hamstring), GS (well, everything), Alice (skunk madness), etc. Happily, the Discography provides a joyous break from the challenges of life. I like the selections this week, typically eclectic, especially those of our newest contributors, Lynette and Bill, who are clearly feeling a cool, happy, spring-like vibe that we aren't in the #YankeeHellhole (TM pending), while we await 3-5 inches of snow on 1 April (UTKR).
Bill Farrington
I stumbled on to a HBO music series
called Sonic Highways. It was hosted by Dave Grohl, and I watched the
first episode on a flight to Seattle on a 7 inch screen on the seat back in
front of my seat. I binged the rest of the series soon after. It is
very much worth a look - if you have not seen it.
The episode, centered around
Washington DC, introduced Go Go music. It mentioned a number of artists,
but focused on Chuck Brown (and the Soul Searchers). I was not familiar
with Go Go prior to this. I built a pandora channel around Chuck
Brown. Pandora suggested funk, motown, and soul as comps.
I am offering 2 Chuck Brown songs
for this installment of the discography. If this is against the rules, I
will endure, without complaint, the duration of my double secret probation.
Bustin' Loose is Chuck Brown's most commercially successful single (circa the late 70's).
It don't mean a thing - if it don't have the go go swing is the default example of go go music.
If you are still interested check out Run Joe live - it has a strong call and response aspect which is characteristic of go go music (did I just go to 3?).
Dave Kelley
"By the end of the set, we leave
no one alive."
Well, the damn blog is named after my
dear departed brother in arms Gary Beatrice, so I guess it only makes sense for
me to make my choice this month a song inspired by his memory and dedicated to
him. Of course, if I was a real friend I would make my selection a Bob
Dylan or Lou Reed song ( his two favorite artists), but since Gary isn't here
to give me shit, I will roll a different way.
Much of Springsteen's excellent 2020
release "Letter to You" was inspired by the death of his last
surviving bandmate from his teenage band. This song "Ghosts"
very much is. The echoes of the dearly departed are with us
constantly. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes in memory, oftentimes inspired
by something totally random that happens during our day. Every
interesting baseball trade, musical release, or movie makes me think of him and
want to discuss it to get his take. I ran into his Dad at the grocery
store recently, and we got misty eyed in the frozen food section discussing
what Gary would make of the Reds' offseason and chances in the coming year.
Inevitably we will all be someone
else's fond memory someday. We all make our vows to the ones who came
before in one way or another even if it is not as romantic as taking the stage
to play before thousands of people. I sometimes imagine death as being
the past, the present, and the future all combining into a point of
singularity. In any event, when I have the chance to see the E Street Band
on the other side of the pandemic, I know I will have a smile on my face and
tears rolling out of my eyes when they play this one. I am confident that
when he sings "I'm Alive" during this song, the houselights will come
up and there will be a communal moment of knowing that everyone there lived
through this calamity.
I also included "House of A Thousand Guitars" for no reason other than I love it.
Lynette Vought
Mark
Murphy
Apparently, just
about every vocal artist around has covered this song. There are all kinds of
versions, from Frank Sinatra’s smooth and uneventful cruise to Lena Horne’s
exaggerated theatricality. One of my favorites is Ray Charles’ exhibition as a
master of soul at work.
In this
performance, the late, great Mark Murphy, backed by a fine ensemble and
featuring a notable solo during the bridge by trumpeter Till Bronner, adds
another element. It is one that allows us to feel the wistfulness, struggle and
joy that comes with understanding oneself.
Murphy adds a
special dimension to this version through his expressive improvisation. The
lyrics tell us about how green can be found in the oceans and the mountains,
and Murphy paints the image for us as he scales the peaks and dives the seas
with his voice. He creates a vivid tone
poem of these grand green elements, and manages to communicate the effort it
takes to grasp their scope and the desire to contribute to their success. There
is a struggle in his vocalizations, like he is working hard to explain how
wonderful and monumental these things are and how difficult it is to bring them
to life. Kind of like everything around us in spring time.
Please enjoy it, and Happy Spring.
Alice Neiley
Oh would you calm down, Scudder.
It's right here. ;) I think 7:42 still counts as MORNING. And yes I will blame
skunks. I will blame all the skunks.
My choice for this week was not
difficult at all, for a change, as I haven't been able to stop listening to the
Wailin Jennys for a month, and somehow Spotify just decided to include their
cover of Dolly Parton's Light of a Clear Blue Morning. I confess,
as much as I love Dolly Parton, I haven't even listened to the original. I just
knew somehow that the Wailin Jennys hadn't written it -- the lyrics aren't
quite like them, mainly -- in fact, I thought they might have been covering a
slave spiritual, in which case I was going to have to discuss in this post
whether it was appropriation or not. I'm glad I don't have to head that
direction at the moment, as covering a Dolly Parton tune is completely within
bounds. Anyway, I digress. The most notable thing about this song is the lack
of instruments -- it's entirely acapella, which serves as the first of many
calming elements in this arrangement. It begins beautifully enough, with a low
background of voices and one soloist, but where I actually started crying was
0:46-0:48. Holy harmony Batman -- and the arrangement just continues its
perfection from there. The lyrics are nothing to sneeze at either, and though
Parton wrote them long before the pandemic arrived, after feeling
restricted--whether by peers, or society, or illness, or family, or age--the
feeling of freedom can come in many packages, all equally welcome and
sweet.
Cindy Morgan
OK FINE.
I have to admit that during the
last year of Covid music has not really been my go-to medium for
solace, strength, or esacpe. My go-to cultural artifacts have been
podcasts, Netflix dramas (give me ALL the foreign crime series you can please!
I will watch them all), and books. So when the senior faculty who runs this
blog kept nagging me about writing about music, I felt terrible because I
just haven't listened to much other than some classical and a lot of
"Bohemian Rhapsody" when I used it for class back in October.
But the other morning I had VPR
on (as one does) and heard an ad for a new show called "It's a Sin."
(HBOMAX) What caught my ear wasn't anything about the show at all but that
they lifted the Pet Shop Boys' song for the theme. I likely won't watch the
show because: HBOMAX, so I don't know if this is a good use of the song.
Frankly I was pretty horrified when Mrs. America used Beethoven's 5th but
turned it into. . .well whatever they turned it into. Like there aren't
plenty of good songs about. . .women? But I digress.
A few things to remember about
my highly idiosyncratic taste in music:
1) I have a real thing for Brit
pop from the mid-80s through the early 90s. Depeche Mode, Erasure, ABC, New
Order ..I am there for ALL. OF. IT. I'm STILL PISSED a year later that Phil
Seiler CRUSHED Valentine's Day discography 2020 with ABC's
"Valentine's Day." IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME! HOW DID I MISS
THAT???
2) My ideal male vocalist
usually sings in the tenor range--I'm a Martin Gore not a Dave Gahan
3) I love good lyrics as much as
the next person, but they aren't strictly required
4) Synthesizers do not bother me
AT ALL. Sure, I enjoy a more traditional guitar/bass/drums arrangement, I LOVE
a full classical orchestra, but I'm also ok with digital sounds (as long as
there are discernable vocals)
Pet Shop Boys "It's a
Sin" (1987) checks all these boxes. I couldn't NOT like it. While the
lyrics aren't super profound, I think they speak really powerfully to shame
culture, and how so many of us carry baggage because of cultural/religious
ideas that were imposed on us. Tennant didn't come out as gay until 1997
but it's hard not to read conservative sexual mores as the underlying theme of
the song. It reminds me a bit of Bronsky Beat's "Smalltown Boy"
(1984), and also Erasure's "Chains of Love" (1988) which were
more obviously about the shaming of homosexuality in the 80s.
Listening to "It's a
Sin" in the time of Covid restrictions felt very appropriate. It feels
like every damn thing right now is a sin. I just saw two Core adjuncts for an
outdoor distanced gathering and when they left they both double-masked. And now
I'm feeling like, "Shit. Am I a bad Vermonter if I don't also double
mask?" Scudder and I met for coffee recently and when we discovered Klingers
had taken away the few indoor seats they had, we ended up sipping lattes in his
car and it felt so.. .ILLICIT. I ate an avocado toast eighteen inches
from another human and the WORST part of that wasn't that the girl who grew up
in California was reinforcing EVERY cliche about Californians, but the eighteen
inches apart with no mask part. Like we were definitely committing some grave
sins. It's not that anyone knows that we are breaking rules. It's that the
culture around us has set up these rules and we are all such good rule
followers that it feels shameful when we deviate the tiniest bit.
Back to the song: it's just
everything I want in a Brit-pop song. Upbeat, synth loaded, Neil Tennant with a
voice that no one ever is going to describe as great, but squeezing every bit
of pathos out of it that he can--in a song you can still dance to. This is no
mean feat and is the real accomplishment of good Brit-pop.
The video is so... .awful I
cringe to put it in here. It is everything a bad 80s video should be. Monks in
hooded robes, dungeons, an incense boat, seven deadly sins, they left
NOTHING to imagination. So maybe just listen to it. Someone who has HBOMAX
can tell me if the show deserves the song or not. Somehow I doubt it.
Gary Scudder
girl in red, 4 am
I chose this song mainly for Cyndi Brandenburg. CB is infamous for waking up in the middle of the night and fretting for hours, until her mind slows down - and it's time to get up. Now that she's recovering from her own dreadful surgery I'm sure it's not any better. I discovered this song after going down a BBC rabbit hole, which started out as a review of girl in red's song serotonin and her upcoming album. girl in red is Norwegian singer-songwriter and record produce Marie Ulven, who has become a queer icon, and with songs like i wanna be your girlfriend and two queens in a king size bed, you probably wouldn't find that surprising (apparently the line "So, do you listen to girl in red?" is an appropriate pickup line). I think my favorite is i'll die anyway. Now, Cyndi, get some sleep!
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