Discography - Week 11

We've only had one official thematic week, although I've at times tried to impose an official theme on each week (which reminds me of herding cats, the line normally associated with getting professors organized).  I think the unofficial theme this week is movement, physical, emotional and spiritual. Having said that, isn't that the theme of all music?

Oh, and special recognition to Dave Wallace this week: what a great wedding song.

Gary Beatrice

Old 97s, Four Leaf Clover

The Old 97s put the alternative in alternative country. That's not to say they aren't country. Hell, they're named after an old country classic "The Wreck of the Old 97". The wreck of the old 97 is a tale about a train wreck, and that train wreck imagery may tell you much of what you need to know about the band: in their best studio and live performances they teeter on the edge of spinning out of control into a massive train wreck without ever quite getting there.

If you like the Talking Heads or the Replacements and you also enjoy a little twang, you kinda haveta love the Old 97's.

They've been rocking for a quarter century and every album they've released has a song or two that is brilliant, but I believe their best material came from their second album "Too Far to Care" and it's rocking finale "Four Leaf Clover". I love how the drums drive this tune, seemingly speeding up as Rhett Miller and X vocalist Exene Cervenka sink into an endless depth of misery. Like so many of their best songs, the theme is the hellish, loveless life that Rhett's character experiences (which is itself hilarious given his voice, his looks and the way he shakes his ass). And like so many great Old 97 songs, the humor in "Four Leaf Clover" matches the music.

Just try to sit still while you listen to this. It can't be done.

Dave Wallace

Smokey Robinson, Cruisin'

Smokey Robinson is one of popular music's greatest writers, and a heckuva performer to boot.  He's written so many amazing songs, and not just ones that he's recorded (for example, My Girl by the Temptations is his).  I love a bunch of his stuff with the Miracles, and I may return to one of those later.  But I have always found this solo number magical.  Gliding along, Robinson sings a romantic, sensual ode to his lover.  This was what Shelly and I danced to as "our song" at our wedding.

Miranda Tavares

American Aquarium, Casualties

As a kid, I loved the hair band type rock songs about partying and living the idyllic rock star lifestyle. Kiss, with Rock and Roll All Night, Poison having Nothin' But a Good Time, Bon Jovi and 2/3 of the Slippery When Wet album. Being a rock star was The Dream, and, like winning the lottery, it was unfathomable that there was a downside, and these songs were the soundtrack for that wished-for life. 20 years later, life is a bit more complicated. I am too tired to rock and roll all night (unless night ends at midnight), and on the rare times I manage to come close, I sorely regret it the next day. My good times come at a cost. I can let it rock, but only for short periods, and whenever I get wild in the streets I find myself feeling as though I got hit by a truck. 

And it's not just about getting old and tired. On a more existential level, getting older means discovering the old adage of "be careful what you wish for" actually has some merit. You work hard year after year to realize your dreams, then discover that maybe they weren't your true dreams after all. Or they stopped being your dreams at some point, but you were too goal-oriented to notice, and now here you are, in this life that you wanted ten years ago but maybe isn't so ideal now. But not to worry! There's a soundtrack for this life, too. 

Numerous bands have addressed the notion that rockstardom is not as glamorous as those hair bands would have you believe. There's Turn the Page, one of the more well-known "poor me, I'm a rockstar" song. But seeing as how it was written by an actual rock star and then famously covered by other rock stars makes me want to move my fingers to the tune of the world's saddest song being played on the world's smallest violin. Because, come on. Bob Seger, Metallica, you guys have money, and roadies, and tour buses and planes, and fancy hotel rooms. It ain't that bad.

The Trucker's really pull it off with The Living Bubba, and The Bottle Rockets with Indianapolis, and The Old 97's with both Niteclub and Longer Than You've Been Alive. The last one is probably my favorite because it strikes me as most realistic: it captures the dreariness, the dullness, the grinding of life on the road, but also the fun, and the reason why a band would keep doing it all those years. I like balance. I find it comforting.

All of the above preamble is to say that I am aware that this pick is perhaps not the best embodiment of the contrast between dreams and reality that I am in the mood to discuss right now. But I'm picking it anyway, because it strikes me as the most heartfelt. It opens forlornly, slow and sad and just flat-out worn down from life on the road. "Breaking points and broken guitar strings." Then it gets angry. But it rocks when it gets angry. The band is mad that rock and roll has let them down...but they can't help but to rock out while they complain about it. There's the lamenting about how they give and never get, but they can't help but keep giving. "Gave my heart to the highway, she returned it full of holes; I'm a casualty of rock and roll." At then end, you just feel like some things are destiny. And it's all ok, because you didn't have a choice in the matter, anyway. It might not make sense, you might wind up with the short end of the stick, but you do what you're called to do. 

My favorite line in the song is, "I should have been a doctor or a lawyer, or a policeman on patrol, but instead I'm a casualty of rock and roll." I went the lawyer route. It's ok. It pays the bills. But it's not exciting or fulfilling, and I think back to my younger self rocking out and picturing myself onstage, and sometimes I wonder where I went wrong. It's nice to know my idols are wondering the same thing. 

Mike Kelly

Shooter Jennings, 4th of July 

I admired Miranda's post from yesterday so much that I chose a seasonally-appropriate counterweight.  4th of July captures the essence of what rock and roll also means- a world with limitless possibilities, lots of cool stuff to do and a celebration of who you are doing these things with.  Yes, there's an unfortunate line where the characters actually know the words to a Ted Nugent song and decide to sing it but if this blog ever becomes a playlist for a roadtrip, this should be the first track upon exiting the city limits.   So while you celebrate Freedom today, know that this tall-boy of Budweiser of a song is out there, just like the big world it wants you to embrace with all its complexity, richness and fun.  

Nate Bell

Larry and his Flask, Swing

I am an old metal guy from my misspent youth, and the saying goes, "If it's too loud, you're too old".  Well in 2010 or so M and I went to Van's Warped Tour, and although there were some decent bands, I cannot handle Screamo, and yes, it was too loud, and yes, I am too old.  I'm not ashamed, it is what it is.

As we were walking across the outlots between the "major" venues, we encountered this band.  Larry and His Flask.  This was an amazing experience.  It is nothing close to metal, but I must say, if you are fatigued, do NOT go to a Larry and His Flask show.

The word unique is very overused when applied to music, but I have to use it here.  LAHF is the most diverse, frenetic, bizarre mix of high octane roots influences ever to be bound in baling wire, soaked in moonshine, and set alight on a stage.  The band employs guitar, banjo, jugs, washboard, accordion, trumpet, coronet, stand up bass, trombone---somehow seamlessly blending Bluegrass melodic harmony with the harshness of a punk tempo and anti-establishment lyrics.

This clip is a paltry offering to show what the show experience is like.

When we saw the show, the band launched out into the crowd, the stand up bass being played and carried into the throng, with the trumpet player playing piggyback into the crowd on the trombone player's shoulders, never missing a beat.  It literally cannot be described.  But it was "unique".

This is my new metal, and the world of this middle aged-guy has never been the same again.  If you prefer the more mainstream and slower, more palatable version of one of their songs, I would suggest beginning with Beggars Will Ride. But for the love of all that is raucous, metal and unholy, it is imperative that you at least check this band out!

Cyndi Brandenburg

Wilco, Either Way

Keeping it short and sweet this week:

People who know me may be surprised to learn that I am a Wilco girl, but if they listen to this song, they’ll understand why.  Some things turn out to be beautiful, hopeful, simply easy, and destined to last.  This song is one of them.  I guarantee it will make you happy, even when life seems complicated. 

Dave Kelley

The Temptations, Papa Was a Rolling Stone

I think it was Peter Buck of REM who said that writing about music is like singing about architecture.  The two forms are so different that it is almost impossible for it to make sense.  (Of course, Buck said that without having had the chance to read Miranda's comments about "Smoking 100's Alone.)

My choice for this week has one of the longest and greatest instrumental intro's of which I am aware.  For over four minutes before the vocals begin, the listener is serenaded by a tremendous blend of fluid bass guitar lines, horns, strings, and wah wah pedal guitar.  Once the vocals kick in, the song is still tremendous, but it is that instrumental beginning that gets to me every time I hear the song.  Funk, R&B, and early disco sounds are blended together perfectly.  It is so well arranged that it almost reminds me of a piece of classical music.

I have been involved in trying to collect child support for most of my professional life.  Many times when I hear in court the ridiculous excuses for not financially supporting your children (I can't work because I was fatally shot, I would have paid but I caught a felony, hey I buy the kid Christmas presents and that pack of diapers that one time, I told her to get an abortion, etc.) this song plays in my head.

"Papa was a rolling stone

wherever he laid his head was his home

and when he died

all he left us was alone"      

At the end of the day though, it is the sounds and not the lyrics that makes this an all-time classic song.

I hate to cut this short but  I am singing about the Brooklyn Bridge later today, and I need to prepare my voice.  It is a very sensitive instrument after all.  Now where did I leave my Pavarotti neck towel? 

Gary Scudder

Lucinda Williams, Side of the Road

Gary Beatrice and I were chatting recently and I pointed out that I thought I could fill up half a year's posts just with Lucinda Williams songs, so it's a bit surprising that it's taken me eleven weeks to follow through on my threat.  This week I'm offering up her song Side of the Road, which may be the first, although certainly not the last, of her songs which really gripped me.  This is just one of those efforts which shows so clearly that she, like her father, is a poet.  In fact, with the exception of Words Fell (who in the rock era uses lines like, "the silence of the roses" in a song?), I find this her most poetic song.  Why I think that Side of the Road is beautifully poetic, and why I love it so much, is that like all meaningful poetry it is richly evocative.  Lines like, "did she love him and take her hair down at night?" contain worlds within worlds.  And, well, I have a pretty peripatetic nature (as my close friends say, "well, duh") and this speaks to it: I may not always be there, because I can't be, but I'm always there.   I guess this is the gentle counter-position to Dave Kelley's choice of Papa Was a Rolling Stone (one of the advantages of putting this together for the blog is that I get to see all the choices first, although I fight to not add commentary).  Finally, this song, and the obvious celebration of friendship, is the inspiration for the Schultz/Kelley/Kelly/Scudder Side of the Road Tour.  We're trekking around the South following the trail of towns that Lucinda mentions in songs.  After talking about it for a couple years I'm finally at a place where we can make this happen, so the planning is now moving forward (I've already designed the t-shirt).  We're going to fly into New Orleans, rent a car and then take off visiting, not in this order, obviously, Greenville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Lafayette, Nacodoches, Macon, La Grange, Slidell, Mandeville, West Memphis, Lake Charles, Beaumont and Algiers (and maybe some others, I need to go back and listen to all of her albums again).  Quoting a famous poster: how can it not be epic?

Oh, and apropos of nothing, this song always reminds me of Andrew Wyeth's painting Christina's World.