If you think you already know this song, you were thinking of O Little Town of Bethlehem. This one is called Little Star of Bethlehem. Can's song is a great ramshackle clanking funky creation that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Xmas classic. We could go all Laura Ingalls on this and talk about Little Woods of Bethlehem and Farmer Boy of Bethlehem. If we wanted to.
Here are a few things Malcolm Mooney really wants you to remember (number of times mentioned):
1) Silent (invisible) conversation (11)
2) Correction: the coathanger should be upside down (5)
David Gilmour plays possibly my favorite guitar solo of all-time, the part from 3:31 - 4:27. It goes straight to my bloodstream. If only those dang alarm clocks would have been left out...huh, I suppose I could edit them out, hmm...anyhow, yeah how many times have those alarm clocks freaked me out? I doubt I can count that high, I really do. I tend to forgive them because I know it gets better in a couple minutes. Never crazy about the clip clop drummies either, never a fan of Nick Mason period, just get to the frickin solo already!!!
The lyrics of Time warn about regretting things you didn't do in life. (Or did do, like anyone who voted for that a-hole last night). Shut up about that, you mopey dirdir, let's just bliss out on the solo already.
Astral Weeks is a song (and album) that Van Morrison created while vacationing in the astral plane of existence in the early fall of 1968. I mean, he got out there:
If I ventured in the slipstream Between the viaducts of your dream
Go on, Van, lead on...but I think I will ride along with the musicians, you seem to be in a trance, Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter.
The music starts up all floppy hat dusty road minstrels, improvising their way through time and space, kinda bluesy guitar, folk, jazzy bass, light percussion. Then magic strings shimmer to the side, bring in some vibes, and a flute lifts us gently off the ground into the air around us. A perfect blend of mystic and organic. The whole universe is here. Ebbing and flowing within you and without you. Even the last few seconds of the song are trippy.
Blinded By the Light is another magical childhood memory of nighttime car rides through suburban Chicago in 1976, the street light passing over the back seat window of the family truckster as I lay there listening to the radio and feeling hypnotized by the sounds coming from it.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band (frickin long type-twisting name) took one of those early Bruce Springsteen 'zillion rhymes per second' speedfreak tales of the streets and tricked it out as a groovy shag carpeted spaceship bound for the cosmos and beyond.
It starts up with one great blast, the way a spaceship should, right? Spontaneous guitar bass keys drum beat right into solo keyboard as the ship is wrappedrevved up like adouchedeuce ...twin rocket engine (? I'm reaching) and shoots off through the stratosphere at about 140 beats per minute. When can we start drinking the tang or, if it's on the menu, tranya? How about now? OK. At 0:26 everyone drinks the tranya with little Richie Cunningham's brother, Ron? no Clint Howard? I think that's right. Some guy starts rambling on about a teenage diplomat and drummer bummers and a calliope. Hey, hey he stopped, someone play a jammin electric guitar solo here at 1:06 before he starts up again...nice. Argghhh!!! He turned on the ship's atomic siren! My ears! Ok Ok, we understand...the calliope crashed to the ground already. Geez, did someone over-caffeinate this guy's tranya or what? Let's try some herbal tranya. (everyone partakes)
Dang, he's running through another verse...well, maybe this new stuff will kick in...now
2:36 and he's finishing up what he has to say, I don't know something about a girl, and at 2:52 ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space....on one giant comfy pillow. The guitar solo is by Dave Flett, and it is the sweetest kind of sonic candy. The bass and drums have that rock bottom 70s tone. Wow, OK, listen to Flett absolutely mangle that wah wah at 3:45, and it's like we are flying. into. the center. of. the sun? Didn't mom say something about this being something we shouldn't do? Who cares, that's where the fun is.
Wow, that WAS fun, thanks Dave Flett!...we passed all the way through the sun, and now we understand what that guy was saying and we join him in his musings about being in the dumps with the mumps, hey we get it now, about the girl...I guess we all got messed up a bit from the tranya. Maybe you will see her again, we think she's gonna make it through the night. ... and the ship continues on its adventure to the great beyond the sun.
Midnight Rambler is the Rolling Stones, particularly Mick and Keith, showing exactly how much they loved and were influenced by American blues. Both lyrically and musically, this song reflects the evolution of the blues from Mississippi to Chicago to across the pond...even if they did write this song in Positano, Italy. Bastards.
It starts off like a train from the South, classic blues riff and lonesome harmonica, ready to embrace the city and the late night Chicago blues scene. Mick sings about a killer, the one you never seen before. You won't see him until it's too late. He prowls the streets at night, hunting for blood. At around 1:30 the tempo increases into a short verse that stresses the reality of the danger...Well, honey, it's no rock 'n' roll show. The is seriously bad, you do not want to meet this guy. You need to be home, not out in the urban jungle.
The tempo really builds after 2:25, when the killer sees a potential victim and his heart beats faster with excitement. The slide guitar and harmonica ride along side by side, as Mick implores 'don't you do that' over and over, either his feeble conscience trying helplessly to get him to stop, or willing his victim not to go a certain way. At 3:57 he is getting ready to strike, waiting for the right moment. Time stands still. I love Keith's guitar from 4:07 - 4:26, this hold your breath section, walking the razor's edge. Mick at 4:27 - Well you heard about the Boston...(whomp!), It's not one of those...(whomp!). I'm called the hit-and-run raper in anger The knife-sharpened tippie-toe...Or just the shoot 'em dead, brainbell jangler You know, the one you never seen before.
The deed is done and the killer must temporarily confront his own horror and self-loathing before the music starts to pick up again at 6:10. His twisted braggadocio has won out and sends him striding off to ponder the next cycle. Don't try to catch him, for if you do...I'll stick my knife right down your throat, baby and it hurts!
The version of Papa Was A Rolling Stone I'm posting today is the 6:54 single edit, as opposed to the 12:02 album version.
Recorded entirely in Bb minor, we are treated to a myriad of voices and instruments as the mystery of who exactly 'Papa' was is asked of 'Momma' by her children. The opening 1:55 is the musical introduction - three bass notes, cymbals, glistening strings, wah guitar, horns, harp, handclaps...the whole orchestral shebang, a la Isaac Hayes's Shaft and Walk On By.
It's a sad story...It was the5th of November3rd of September, that day I'll always remember, yes I will...that was the day Papa died. Who was Papa? The first singer says he never knew him and never heard nothing but bad things about him. He decides to ask Momma. Throughout the song it's obvious that she has no idea what to say - she hangs her head and say he was a guy who wandered around, wherever he laid his hat was his home. This answer is insufficient for the kids, who keep pestering her in verse after verse:
- was he a deadbeat? a polygamist? a false preacher? a common thief? a boozer? Come on, Momma, didn't you know this guy at all? Nope. My favorite verse is the one sung by Melvin Franklin at 3:38: And, mama, some bad talk goin' round town sayin' that papa had three outside children and another wife, And that ain't right.
Well, he obviously took advantage of people, knocking up women then leaving them with hungry mouths to feed. He was a big zero, not a hero. All he left us wasalone. (Or a loan, for a used 1970 Chevy Impala?) He would have probably blamed it all on 'the man', or his circumstances. But who knows what sort of trouble Papa went through in his life, he probably didn't have many opportunities to succeed.
I like to sing 'papa was a rolling stone, (Mick Jagger), wherever he played a gig was his home.'
A few days ago I watched a film called Wake In Fright (Australia, 1971). It is a psychological thriller about a guy who descends into madness after losing himself among a group of Outback townsfolk living on the extreme edge of civilized society. It's a place where the beer flows like water and people are permeated with an edgy, lost desperation. A brutal, hard existence. And it features Donald Pleasence, who is nothing short of amazing.
As I listen to the agitated industrial music of Horizontal Hold by This Heat, I am reminded of the anxiety and distress I experienced during parts of Wake In Fright. The music starts off like some kind of messed up washing machine grinding and thrashing against a basement wall. At 0:41 there are these little picked guitar noises accompanied by a low hum, then at 1:00 the whole noisy washer thing starts and stops over the next 30 seconds. At 1:37 a clanging aluminum shard rattles away and the dryer tries to start up. There are skeletal guitar notes, and brief periods of respite, like after the 4:30 mark. From around 4:54 until the end, we are dealing with a big ball of screechy mousetraps and teeth-gritting scrapes. Fuzzy static humming...I think someone needs to call an electrician.
I don't quite know what it all means, but it also reminds me of trying to watch channel 44 on the old tv and having to hold the vertical knob in order to try to keep the screen from flipping. Maybe these guys had a problem controlling the horizontal hold on their tv and this music expresses their frustration.
Like Venus in Furs, Foggy Notion is another twisted excursion into the freaky world of S&M, compliments of the dark imagination of Lou Reed. The pain/pleasure idea. In spite of the subject matter, there are some great sing-a-long lines, like I got my calamine lotion, baby.
The lyrics are pretty sparse for a six and a half minute song. It's mostly about the music, the groove. Hyperkinetic rhythm, pounding beat, guitars flying all over the place. There are five guitar solos:
I had to choose between two youtube videos for Run Run - I ended up choosing the synchronous dancing quasi-Sims couple posted by TheAchlessWarrior over the static image of one D.J Rabbit. This is the fourth song I've posted from the Respect to Studio One compilation celebrating Jamaican record producer Coxsone Dodd.
Over a classic rocksteady groove, Delroy Wilson sings:
a) a stalker song, like Every Breath You Take, One Way or Another, I Will Follow Him.
b) a hide and seek song. Just a playful game.
c) both b and c
d) all of the above except for a and d
Is this guy a stalker? Nah, he's more like the hide and seek farmer in the Schoolhouse Rock video about five, but whereas that guy is propelled along by a snappy tune, the music in Run Run is like a clankety old jalopy, rattling out pieces of metal as it bounces along the streets of Kingston. It finally breaks down on the side of the road, so Delroy gets out and lays down by the hide and seek tree. From 3:06-5:15 we hear a dub section of the song, while Delroy naps. At 4:03 and 4:27 he wakes up just long enough to
let us know that we had still better run, but by now the jig is up. We
stand over him smirking. At 5:16 he starts up with his games again, but
by now we are no longer around. With 20 seconds left in the song, he is
mumbling in his sleep, his arms wrapped around the tree trunk.
The double-tracked vocals align perfectly, kind of like rocksteady Everly Brothers. It's fun to kind of go 'crosseared' if you will and let one vocal line take the lead over the other, you know? Listen to the vocals together or focus on one over the other, since neither one really dominates. (what's up with the phrase 'if you will' anyhow? does it matter if you will or won't? Not to me)
Weissensee translates as White Lake, and it is also a locality in the borough of Pankow in Berlin. It is track three on the self-titled debut album from Neu!, formed in 1971 by two guys from Düsseldorf.
This is an instrumental. Picture yourself in a boat on a river lake, enjoying a nice leisurely outing. The bass and drums guide you along gently as little waves lap against the side of the boat. Little breezes dance around the lake. At 1:34, 4:15, and 5:30, a gust of wind passes through and rocks the boat, causing everyone to grab onto something.
The beauty of this sort of music is in the restraint shown by the musicians. Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother rarely veer from the minimalist center, so once we are lulled into daydreams they are able to surprise us with the gust of wind guitar breaks.
