DAY 323.
Randy Newman..................................Good Old Boys   (1974)










PISH, nearly every track sounds like something off of "Toy Story,"  Newman is quite the wordsmith, but his arrangements all seem to be a bit tired and samey for this listener, he also seems to want to tell you "how it is," like the bloke at a smoker/works night oot who keeps on pontificating all night, the boy while he's telling the barmaid/barman how he would put the world to rights, everybody fucks off to another boozer and maintains radio silence, hoping the cunt wont find us, that's yer boy Newman fir me.



Can't say I enjoyed that in any shape or form, this will definitely no' be going into my vinyl collection.



Bits & Bobs;


Have written already about this boy (if interested)

Where does one begin a review of Randy Newman's 1974 classic Southern concept album Good Old Boys? With the naked man and his dark secret? With the distraught bridesgroom of Cherokee County who cries out, “Why must everyone laugh at my mighty sword?” With Birmingham’s Dan, “the meanest dog in Alabam'”? With the mental patient and his fantastic story of his stripper sister, who runs off with a black man only to discover he’s a white millionaire? With the great 1927 Louisiana flood? With the legendary Louisiana politician “Kingfish” Huey Long? With the lovely and sad “Marie”? Or with the great “Guilty,” the confession of a man who “takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend that I’m somebody else”?



 Too many folks nowadays tend to dismiss Newman as the fellow who writes all those soundtracks for rug rat flicks, or know him only as the guy who wrote the tempest-in-a-teapot toss-off “Short People,” but Newman could write soundtracks for midget porn and I would still respect him every bit as much–the guy’s a genius. Newman was and remains (check out 2008’s “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country”) probably the funniest, most sardonic–and yes, serious–pop songwriter ever to plop his ass in front of a piano. No one–with the possible exception of Bob Dylan on The Basement Tapes–has ever written songs that are as funny or as deep, and the amazing thing about Newman is that, unlike the Dylan of Big Pink, he possesses the ability to do both in the same song. And who else would think to write a hilarious ode to ELO (“The Story of a Rock and Roll Band” off 1979’s Born Again), or question his own sexual prowess in “Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong?”


 A concept album about the Deep South might seem like an odd choice for a Jew who resides in Los Angeles, but Newman either lived or summered in New Orleans until he was 11–a childhood he recounts in “Dixie Flyer” off 1988’s Land of Dreams–and it left an indelible stamp upon him. You can hear it in his masterful command of southern dialect, and detect it in his understanding of Dixie resentment in title track “Rednecks” and other songs, and I think it’s these things that make Good Old Boys the best of Newman’s LPs, which is saying a lot given he’s the same very guy–perhaps the least unlikeliest looking rock star in history–who bequeathed us 1970’s brilliant 12 Songs and 1972’s Sail Away, not to mention the underrated 1977 record Little Criminals.


  Good Old Boys–which was originally intended to be a concept album about a Southern Everyman named Johnny Cutler–is many things: a farce-laden classic larded with hilarious songs and brilliant one-liners, a thoughtful examination of race relations and the yawning gulf that separated North and South during segregation, and–this is perhaps its greatest achievement–a solemn meditation on the pain of being human. Living hurts, and causes us to hurt one another, and in such songs as the dark and beautiful “Marie,” the amazing “Guilty,” and even the hilarious ditties “Naked Man” and “Back on My Feet Again,” Newman doesn’t let us forget it.


 So where does one begin a review of Good Old Boys? Right where Newman starts, with the scathing “Rednecks,” a sly condemnation of Northern hypocrisy sung by a character who knows exactly what his Yankee neighbors think about southerners: “We talk real funny down here/We drink too much and we laugh too loud/We’re too dumb to make it in no Northern town/And we’re keepin’ the niggers down.” Then comes the chorus: “We’re rednecks, rednecks/And we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground/We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks/And we’re keeping the niggers down.” But then the “dumb redneck,” who may be bigoted but obviously knows his ass from a hole in the ground, cannily turns the song on its head: “Now your northern nigger’s a Negro/You see he’s got his dignity/Down here we’re too ignorant to realize/That the North has set the nigger free/Yes he’s free to be put in a cage/In Harlem in New York City/And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago/And the West-Side/And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland/And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis/And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco/And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston/They’re gatherin’ ’em up from miles around/Keepin’ the niggers down.” It’s a clever song, condemning North and South alike, and I can’t imagine anyone but Newman pulling it off.


 “Rednecks” is followed by “Birmingham,” a seemingly innocuous but deeply ambiguous tune if ever there was one. Its narrator sings the praises of his home city (“Birmingham, Birmingham/The greatest city in Alabam’/You can travel cross this entire land/There ain’t no place like Birmingham”), then goes on to extol home, wife, family, and even his dog Dan (“He’s the meanest dog in Alabam’/Get ’em, Dan”). Nothing happens in the song, it’s a paean pure and simple, and the listener is left in a quandary; are we supposed to look down with contempt on the singer as a small-minded fool, especially given the fact that the town he so loves just happened to be a lightning rod for violence against blacks seeking equal rights, home to the likes of the infamous racist and Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, and the site of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four little girls? Or are we supposed to grant him the simple respect we’d grant any human being doing his best and proud to live where he lives? In short, is the singer a racist or just clueless and imbued with an excess of misplaced civic pride? I can’t say, but I’ve always thought the seemingly innocuous “Get ’em, Dan” was loaded with meaning and the key to the whole song. Just who does the narrator want Dan to get, anyway? And does anyone want to take a bet on the color of their skin?


 Meanwhile, “Marie” is one of the darker love songs you’ll ever hear, both a poetry-laden declaration of love and a confession of shitty behavior and gross indifference sung by a guy who’s “drunk right now baby/But I’ve got to be/Or I never could tell you/What you meant to me.” He sings, “You looked like a princess the night we met/With your hair piled up high I will never forget,” then undercuts the romanticism by admitting, “Sometimes I’m crazy/But I guess you know/And I’m weak and I’m lazy/And I’ve hurt you so/And I don’t listen to a word you say/When you’re in trouble I just turn away,” before returning to romantic mode in the lovely chorus, “I loved you the first time I saw you/And I always will love you Marie.” It’s the saddest and loveliest song on Good Old Boys, especially when one knows that its being sung by a maudlin drunk unlikely to ever change his ways, and it never fails to make me think of Neil Young’s lines in “Tired Eyes”: “He tried to do his best/But he could not.”


 Which also applies to “Guilty,” which is my favorite song on the album and in fact one of my favorite songs in the world. “Guilty,” like “Marie,” is a confession of worthlessness so nakedly candid that, in its own way, it possesses a certain kind of dignity. I would quote the song in full, that’s how much I like it, but to paraphrase it’s about a guy who shows up drunk and stoned (“Got some whisky from the barman/Got some cocaine from a friend”) at an old lover’s place because he’s fucked up somehow and has “nowhere else to go.” The chorus goes, “I’m guilty baby I’m guilty/And I’ll be guilty all the rest of my life/How come I never do what I’m supposed to do/How come nothin’ that I try to do ever turns out right?” The feckless narrator goes on to answer his own question: “You know how it is with me baby/You know, I just can’t stand myself/It takes a whole lot of medicine/For me to pretend that I’m somebody else.” As somebody who’s taken a whole lot of medicine in his life for the exact same reasons, I can relate. I sometimes think of putting the word “Guilty” on my tombstone, because Lord knows I am. As are you for that matter, and everyone, with the possible exception of that Indian guy whose idea of casual wear was a pair of diapers.


 I originally thought “Mr. President” was set in the Great Depression, but as it turns out it’s a plea for Good Old Boys-era President Richard M. Nixon to “have pity on the working man.” The song begins in a fawning tone (“”We’re not asking you to love us/You may place yourself high above us”) but as it moves along, pleading turns to contempt (“Maybe you’ve cheated/Maybe you’ve lied/Maybe you have finally lost your mind/Maybe you’re only thinking ’bout yourself”). It’s an uptempo tune, and its perky melody serves as an ironic counterpoint to its sentiment, which the adamantine cynic H.L. Mencken summed up best when he said, “A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”



This theme of the indifference of the high and mighty to the troubles of the downtrodden continues in “Louisiana 1927,” a seemingly dispassionate recounting of that year’s great flood (“The river rose all day/The river rose all night/Some people got lost in the flood/Some people got away alright”). That is until one listens to the chorus, which hints in a paranoid manner at outside forces being responsible (“Louisiana, Louisiana/They’re trying to wash us away/They’re trying to wash away”) and the great and hilarious final stanza, which underscores the callousness of Washington (sound familiar? as in 2005?) towards the tragedy: “President Coolidge came down in a railroad train/With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand/The President say, “Little fat man isn’t it a shame what the river has done/To this poor crackers land.” That “Little fat man isn’t it a shame” always cracks me up, but Newman’s outrage, albeit veiled in saturnine humor, is very real, as is his compassion for the “poor crackers” who have run out of money or find their whole world being swept away by a great flood.


 Those “poor crackers” finally found a savior of sorts in Huey “Kingfish” Long, the populist demagogue and governor and later senator of Louisiana, who while not busy exploiting the rural poor’s resentment of New Orleans and its rich powerbrokers found the time to write “Every Man a King,” a share-the-wealth bromide (“With castles and clothing and food for all/All belongs to you”) which Newman sings accompanied by, uh, the Eagles. (I have a simple philosophy that I live by. Namely, never judge a man by the company he keeps. Unless that company happens to be the Eagles.) Sure it’s a bad song, but Newman and Company sing it with the same gusto the poor must have sung it with back in the day. “Every Man a King” serves as the perfect prelude to “Kingfish” (later covered by the great Levon Helm), which has Newman playing Huey Long as he damns the “Frenchmen” (“Your house could fall down/Your baby could drown/Wouldn’t none of those Frenchmen care”) who run the state and tells his constituents, “Everybody gather round/Loosen up your suspenders/Hunker down on the ground/I’m a cracker/You are too/But don’t I take good care of you?” He then goes on to boast of his achievements: “Who gave a party at the Roosevelt Hotel?/Invited the whole north half of the state down there for free/The people in the city/Had their eyes bugging out/Cause everyone looked just like me.” Of course the Kingfish wound up being assassinated (hey, I read half of All the King’s Men just like you) and maybe even had it coming, but you can’t help but feel some admiration for anybody who “took on the Standard Oil men and whipped their ass/Just like he promised he’d do.”


 As for the great “Naked Man,” it’s a mystery story of sorts about an unclothed gentleman running around an unnamed city on “the coldest night of the year.” It begins with an “old lady lost in the city,” who is scared and doesn’t know “but in a minute or so/She will be robbed by a naked man.” The chorus goes, “Beware beware beware/Of the naked man” but no explanation of why he’s naked or someone to beware of is provided, that is until little old lady and naked man meet and the latter explains, “They found out about my sister/And kicked me out of the Navy/They would have strung me up if they could/I tried to explain that we were both of us lazy/And doing the best we could.” Then he snatches her purse and runs off into the sleety night, crying, “Won’t nobody help a naked man?/Won’t nobody help a naked man?” And once again Newman has pulled off the seemingly impossible–I never fail to laugh during the Naked Man’s confession of incest performed out of sheer laziness, but the song possesses a certain poignance; the poor fellow is as naked as Adam, and like Adam has eaten from the Tree of Life and found it has brought him nothing but disgrace, disaster, and ignominy. Why, it’s so great it was covered by The Grass Roots!


 “A Wedding in Cherokee County” may be the most hilarious song on a very funny album, what with its love between an impotent man and a seemingly comatose woman, of whom her bridegroom-to-be sings, “Man, don’t you think I know she hates me/Man, don’t you think that I know she’s no good/If she knew how she’d be unfaithful to me/I think she’d kill me if she could.” But he loves her anyway, despite her mangy assortment of relatives (“Her papa was a midget/Her mama was a whore/Her grandad was a newsboy til he was eighty-four/What a slimy old bastard he was”) and the fact that she “She don’t say nothin’/She don’t do nothin’/She don’t feel nothin’/She don’t know nothin’.” His declaration of love is actually touching: “I’m not afraid of the grey wolf/That stalks through the forest at dawn/As long as I have her beside me/I have the strength to carry on.” As is, in a sublimely ridiculous way, his imagining of their coming wedding night, a fiasco of fecklessness and pure humiliation that constitutes perhaps the funniest set of lyrics I’ve ever heard: “I will carry her across the threshold/And make dim the light/I will attempt to spend my love within her/Though I try with all my might/She will laugh at my mighty sword/She will laugh at my mighty sword/Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword?/Lord help me if you will/Maybe we’re both crazy, I don’t know/Maybe that’s why I love her so.”


 Newman continues in this absurdist vein on “Back on My Feet Again,” a conversation between a most likely delusional mental patient and his psychiatrist. It opens with the patient saying, “Doctor, let me tell you something about myself/I’m a college man and I’m very wealthy/I’ve got no time to trifle with trash like you/Cause I must be ’bout my business.” Done bragging, he proceeds to regale the doctor with a wackily implausible story about his sister, “a dancer from Baltimore” who “ran off with a negro from the Eastern Shore/Dr., she didn’t even know his name.” Her new boyfriend takes her by train to the “Hotel Paree,” where he goes into the washroom, and reemerges “as white as you or me.” He explains himself by saying, “Girl, I’m not a negro I’m a millionaire/As you can plainly see/So many women love my money/But you have proved that you love only me.” The patient then says, “Doctor, doctor/What you say/How ’bout letting me out today/Ain’t no reason for me to stay/Everybody’s so far away,” and that final line is so sad, and so hopeless, that it undoes all of the singer’s earlier braggadocio and turns what is essentially a farce of a song into a kind of tragedy.


 The album closes on a seeming up note with the easy-going “Rollin’,” which is sung by a man who has discovered in alcohol the answer to all his problems, or so he says. He sings, “Let me tell you what I do/I sit here in this chair/I pour myself some whiskey/And watch my troubles vanish into the air.” All the things he used to worry about he doesn’t worry about anymore, and he concludes by singing, like a true survivor, “But I’m alright now/I’m alright now/I never thought I’d make it/But I always do somehow/I’m all right.” Well, maybe he is or maybe he isn’t; and it’s just like Newman to end the album on a note of ambiguity, as it’s impossible to know whether the singer has achieved some real sense of peace or just plain given up. Regardless, the chorus sure is catchy, and I’ve sung it dead drunk more than once: “Rollin’ rollin’/Ain’t gonna worry no more/Rollin’ rollin’/Ain’t gonna worry no more.”


 I realize only now that I’ve just managed to write a record review without once mentioning the music, which is rather like writing 2,000 words on steak without once mentioning you can eat it. So for you folks who care about such things, here’s a handy-dandy mini-description of how each song sounds:“Rednecks”–Starts slow, then kicks into an uptempo gumbo with a horn section tossed in for flavoring. I’ll bet you two Hurricanes (the drink, which I drank a bunch of in the French Quarter once then found I couldn’t stand up, not the rapidly rotating storm system) Russ Kunkel plays on it, even though I have no idea who Russ Kunkel is. “Birmingham”–Lilting piano, strings and horn section, mid-tempo. .irmingham”–Lilting piano, strings and horn section, mid-tempo. There’s even a cool country lick, and by that I mean one single solitary guitar lick, thrown in. My bet it was played by Russ Kunkel.


 “Marie”–Very slow, some nicely orchestrated strings, but often it’s just Randy and his piano. This is not a rock song in any way, shape, or form. It’s pure sadness in sound, and if it doesn’t move you, you deserve to have the really fat guy from Bowling for Soup fall out a window onto your head.


 “Mr. President”–Starts with drums and piano, then kicks into spritely mode. Take away the words, and Tricky Dick Nixon himself probably would have dug it.


 “Guilty”–Slow as sin, which is what, after all, the song’s about. It’s just Newman, piano, and some lugubrious strings, and I forgot to mention that the late John Belushi once did a version of it that hurts every bit as much as Newman’s.


 “Louisiana 1927”–Slow as the rise of the flood waters in the streets of Evangeline. Big chorus, lots of strings, and if you think this song is “historical” just talk to some of the folks who found themselves trapped in the Superdome back in 2005.


 “Every Man a King”–Jolly and dumb. Just Randy and a piano and The Eagles, who though they stab it with their steely knives, still can’t kill their lack of talent.


 “Kingfish”–Starts slowly with an oddly discordant piano figure and strings coming out of the woodwork, then picks up in tempo as the Kingfish brags and brags and brags.


 “Naked Man”–By far the pluckiest, most fast-paced song on Good Old Boys. Why, it literally bounces like a superball before hitting you in the eye with its message, which is to be merciful because when all is said done we’re all of us naked and freezing, and there isn’t a Boy Scout in sight.


 “A Wedding in Cherokee County”–Very slow. Opens with piano and a simple drum beat, most likely played by Russ Kunkel. And remains slow, with no strings or horns, and I wish I could have been at the sessions because even I could have played that drum part, though I have all rhythm of a hair net.


 “Back on My Feet Again”–Slow starter that perks up thanks in part to some nifty slide guitar by Ry Cooder. The chorus is downright feisty. I’m so glad I no longer have to pretend to be a Negro from the Eastern Shore.


 “Rollin'”–Laid back but rollicking. Starts with piano, some strings come in, and we’re rollin’, rollin’, ain’t gonna worry no more.

 Footnote: I just did some research, and Russ Kunkel does not play on Good Old Boys. According to Wikipedia, he is a top-notch sessions drummer who has worked with the likes of Bob “Why did my sense of humor disappear in 1967?” Dylan, Jackson Browne, Carole King, and Adolf Hitler (on his 2004 album, Hitler Sings Randy Newman.) Perhaps the last-named LP accounts for my confusion.


 In the end, what can I say? Good Old Boys is a dark work, as dark as Neil Young’s brilliant Tonight’s the Night, but leavened with a wit as sharp as one of those ginzu knives you used to see advertised on late-night television. Which is why I love Randy Newman. He can write a song as funny as “A Wedding in Cherokee County” or as unremittngly bleak as “Baltimore” (off Little Criminals) with its poignant chorus, “Oh, Baltimore/Man, it’s hard just to live.” And it is. It’s hard to live. There’s a darkness that surrounds us, and we’re all guilty and naked and alone on the coldest night of the year, and there’s a grey wolf that stalks through the forest at dawn, and without love, even for a woman who would kill us if she could, that wolf, which is our own dark nature, could just devour us. And what’s worse, Russ Kunkel is missing and nobody seems to knows where he is.



 

Not my favourite Randy Newman album that one.

But 'Marie' is a beautiful and haunting song.

DAY 324.
Bob Marley And The Wailers...............................Natty Dread   (1974)









Thank fuck, a chink of light in the shitstorm that has been the books selections of late, I've always had a saft spot for Bob, the ultimate anytime music, whatever your mood sad or happy it's always guaranteed to boost you up a notch.


Kickin' off with "Lively Up Yourself," if this doesn't get you on your feet, you need a fuckin' check up, and I've heard the single version of "No Woman No Cry" that much, I forgot about the version on this album, far superior in my humbles, nice and raw, just the way it should be. "Natty Dread" was another standout, but "Bend Down Low" was probably my favourite track, allegedly it's about the old "in and out."



This album will be joining my vinyl collection, after all it is barbecue season and no self respecting barbecue would be complete without a bit of Bob.




Bits & Bobs;



Wrote about Bob earlier  (if interested)


Even a godlike genius can use a helping hand from time to time. As part of the Wailers and before the release of Natty Dread, Bob Marley had already put in a considerable effort to break into the charts with his first international album releases Catch A Fire and Burnin'. Those albums, both released in 1973, would eventually be recognised as classics, but neither of them reached the Top 100 in either the US or the UK. The problem which Chris Blackwell and Island Records had to address was not merely that of trying to launch a “new” artist. They were attempting to introduce a whole genre that was still quite alien to the mainstream music media.



 It would be overstating the case to say that Eric Clapton’s version of ‘I Shot The Sherriff’ changed everything. But it certainly encouraged a sea change in the popular perception of reggae. Clapton, at this point, was the voice and sound of the mainstream rock establishment. ‘I Shot The Sherriff’ became a US No.1 hit (still Clapton’s only such success) and his enthusiastic endorsement of a Marley song, with an arrangement that did not differ hugely from the original (on theBurnin' album), was a considerable spur to popular acceptance of reggae music in general and Marley in particular.


 The timing of Clapton’s hit could not have been better. It reached the top of the US chart in September 1974, a month before the release of Natty Dread, the first album to be credited to Bob Marley and the Wailers. With Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer now departed from the group to establish solo careers of their own, Marley took hold of the reins with new confidence and stunning results. Listening now to the opening run of tracks it almost sounds like a Greatest Hits collection – ‘Lively Up Yourself’, ‘No Woman, No Cry’, ‘Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)’ – before you even get to the celebrated title track. ‘Natty Dread’ was a soubriquet Marley had recently acquired on the streets of Jamaica thanks to his lengthening locks which, as could be seen in the cover photograph, were beginning to flow as freely as his music.



 The songs were notable not only for the richness of the melodies and wordplay but also for the vitality and imagination of the harmony arrangements which were supplied by a newly-recruited vocal section the I-Threes, featuring Rita Marley (Bob’s wife), Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt. Anyone who feared the departure of Tosh and Wailer might result in a decline in the group’s vocal firepower would have been quickly disabused of the idea by tracks such as ‘Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Roadblock)’ and ‘Talkin Blues’, both of which featured the blues-wailing sound of Lee Jaffe’s harmonica threaded between the haunting vocal chants and call-and-response arrangements.


 Another sense in which Natty Dread might have been mistaken for some kind of hits compilation – even in 1974 – was Marley’s and co-producer Chris Blackwell’s continuing policy of re-recording songs that had already been released in previous incarnations of the Wailers. ‘Lively Up Yourself’ had been a single in 1971; ‘Bend Down Low’ had been a hit for the Wailers in Jamaica as long before as 1967, and ‘Them Belly Full’ had appeared earlier as a single called at different times ‘Bellyfull’ and ‘Belly Full’. It didn’t matter a jot to the great majority of fans who were hearing these amazing tunes for the first time, but most definitely not the last.



 The rhythm section of the Barrett Brothers, Aston on bass and Carlton on drums, remained gloriously intact and there was a horn section on hand, which arrived like the cavalry to take several of the songs romping home to the finishing post. The melodies were never less than beguiling and if Marley’s voice didn’t get you, his lyrics surely would. ‘Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)’ was one of the several songs that summed up the incredible power of Marley’s music to identify a deep spiritual sorrow or injustice and turn it into the most joyful song. “Forget your troubles and dance” was the kernel of this philosophy. And in ‘No Woman, No Cry’, a reverie about the hardships and emotional bonds forged when growing up with his friends in Trenchtown, he created a song of timeless, evocative power. Or did he?



 The songwriting credits on Natty Dread have long been the subject of conjecture. At the time of recording the album, Marley was at loggerheads with his publisher, Cayman Music, a company owned by Danny Sims, who had also been his manager for a while in 1972. In order to avoid any more of his royalties finding their way into the hands of Sims while the dispute remained unresolved, it is thought that Marley assigned several of his own songwriting credits on the album to other people. Thus we find ‘So Jah Seh’ a song that reflected the singer’s growing commitment to the Rastafarian faith, formally credited to Willy Francisco – better known (though not much) as the percussionist Francisco Willie Pep. ‘Natty Dread’, a song in which Marley stood absolutely centre stage as the narrator, was credited to Rita Marley and Allen Cole. Most controversial of all was ‘No Woman, No Cry’, the provenance of which became the subject of a long, ugly legal battle that lasted long after Marley’s death.There is a school of thought which puts Natty Dread as Marley’s finest album, thus making it “the ultimate reggae album of all time” according to Jim Newsome of allmusic.com. And yet it barely dented the charts, reaching a peak of No.43 in the UK and just scraping in at No. 92 in the US. The truth is, despite Natty Dread’s unarguable classic status, Marley was still only just getting started.




"No Woman No Cry"

 
This became Marley's first hit when it was released as a single from his album, Live!, which was recorded at the Lyceum in London in 1975. It was a hot July night, and they gave a rousing performance. This tour was a breakthrough for Marley and The Wailers. Their previous tour went horribly, as audiences outside of Jamaica did not appreciate his pure Reggae. He polished and tightened his sound for this tour in order to compete with the slick arena acts that were popular at the time, and got a great response. Glowing reviews led to sold out shows in the US, and by the time the tour hit London, they were a huge success.


 
Marley developed a powerful stage presence on this tour, and added musicians like Family Man Barrett and Al Anderson to sweeten the sound. The audiences on the tour where the live version was recorded were evenly mixed between black and white people. Marley was one of the few artists to have mass appeal that transcended race. The song became a highlight of Marley's concerts as the crowd always joined in. It is very easy to sing along to.


 
The original line of the song is "No, Woman, Nuh cry." Nuh is Jamacian for "don't," so what is meant by the lyric is No, Woman, Don't cry... He's leaving and reassuring her that the slum they live in won't get her down, that everything will be alright and "don't shed no tear."


 
The original version on Natty Dread was nothing like the live performances. It was shorter and sped-up, with little of the energy Marley brought to it in concert.



 
According to Rolling Stone magazine, the "Government yard in Trench Town" refers to the Jamaican public-housing project where Marley lived in the late '50s



.Marley wrote this, but gave a composer credit to Vincent "Tartar" Ford, one of his friends from Jamaica who helped him out when he was very poor and ran a soup kitchen in Kingston. By giving Ford the credit, Marley was helping out an old friend by trying to divert royalty checks his way. This was common practice on Marley's later output, as he listed friends and band members as composers, since murky contracts would have made it very hard for him to collect his own royalties (it's unclear how much money ever made it to his proxies). Ford is also listed as the songwriter of "Rastman Vibration."



 
The female vocals were by backing group the I-Threes, made up of Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths, and Bob's wife, Rita Marley. Griffiths went on to sing "Electric Boogie," which became a line dance favorite in America.


 
Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer left the group the year before this was released. They were upset at the way Marley was given top billing.



 
This was included on Legend, a compilation album released three years after Marley's death. It was a #1 album in the UK.



  
The Brazilian Tropicalia singer Gilberto Gil recorded this for his 1979 album Realce, putting a Bossa Nova twist on it. Gil later became Brazil's Minister of Culture.



 
Aston "Family Man" Barrett, bass player of the Wailers, told NME June 30, 2012: "The song is about the strength in the mama of course, strength in the ladies. And we love a woman with a backbone. Something like a wishbone! They have to be like a she lion! Woman strong, you know, not depending on the man. Of course the man is there to help you, then for every successful man, there is a good woman."



 
In his book Lyrics By Sting, the singer admitted he borrowed the chords to this song for The Police's debut album track "So Lonely"




 

DAY 325.
Robert Wyatt...........................Rock Bottom   (1974)









This really isn't my bag, unadulterated pish if you ask me, or the meanderings of a fuckwit. This album seems to me at least a mish-mash of rabbid mumblings topped off with notes, chords and rythyms that in my humbles, have never been formally introduced to each other.


This album had no decent tracks for this listener, just ear-melting noise, this album will not be going into my collection.




Bits & Bobs'


Have posted previously about this joker (if Interested)



Rare and wonderful occasions they are when the hidden hands guide you into contact with music that you never knew you couldn't live without; when you know you've never heard a note of this stuff before but there's a tiny yet proud flame of recognition just sparked off in your innermost; when the way you look at life changes ever so slightly but irrevocably. And of course I cannae guarantee it, but I'll wager there's just a chance that your first experience of Rock bottom might prove to be one such occasion.



The dark backdrop to the creation of Rock Bottom's probably far better known than the record itself: Robert Wyatt finds himself lying in a recovery ward after a drunken fall from a bathroom window at some party or other, faced with a couple of four-pipers that Holmes himself would struggle with, namely; how do i get through this? and pertinently, what does a newly-paraplegic drummer do now?




Not that I'm trying to be at all flippant about such a personal catastrophe, but Wyatt's own recollections of the period are, with his charcteristic tendency to underplay the hand, far from anguished. At this remove, he's more of the opinion that the tragedy opened doors for him, freed him in many ways from certain hidebound views and behaviours. His notes to the 98 Ryko reissue of Rock Bottom make it clear that the key to his convalescence was a deliberate drift into reverie - allowing the dreamlife to sculpt the music and lead towards new ways of things. Via the ether, sea-change.




There's real hurt and anguish in Rock Bottom, the hurt of frayed relationships, the ache of dependency. In a fascinating detail in his notes, Wyatt recalls the initial writing period (pre-fall) in Venice, whilst accompanying his partner Alfie as she worked on Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now, Roeg repeatedly recanting the film's message -"We are not prepared". And that's in Rock Bottom too; the terror of your known world simply washing away.




But ultimately, the album glows of rebirth, illustrates the sometime-necessity of surrender if we're to truly overcome - the sea of possibilities behind this first-level world we troll. It's about the pull of the tides, the waters we come from (the geographical and the female), the changeling nature of things under the influence of the full moon (in a recent mag interview, John Balance called Rock Bottom "the most lunar album ever made" and he may well be right).




It's also about the relinquishing of the strictly masculine, the schematic, and instead embracing the feminine and the other; Alifie/Alifib (the album's astonishing centrepiece, a babel of babytalk) is one of the bravest, most open-hearted lovesongs you'll ever encounter, honest injun.




Perhaps most of all, the album's an open channel, a balm - healing music. Not some new age bubblebath, but a tough succour; no easy answers or convenient resolutions, but still a clear message from somewhere that, yeah, you're not crazy, there is more to it all than just this.




In a parallel world, everybody flooded down the shops and bought this instead of Tubular Bells. Not that I've any axes to grind as regards Mike Oldfield - I couldn't name anything he's done in a pepsi challenge, and he crops up with some marvellously spidery and enervated guitar on Rock Bottom's finale Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road - but rather I've distinct reservations about Saint Richard Branson, and I'd have been far happier if the heft of his coffers had arisen because he helped this magical invocation of an album into millions of homes. But how sad can you be when Rock Bottom's still out there waiting for you to discover and cherish? One full moon, treat yourself to a copy and take a little refreshing nightswim back in your mind. Come home for a bit. Drift and revive.


 

Agree about most of the albums of late. Robert Wyatt has done some interesting stuff, but not that album.

The Eno lp, though, I love, especially tracks one and three.

DAY 326.
Gram Parsons.................................Grievous Angel   (1974)









Country or country-rock, is for the most part no' for me. this album although better than previous offerings from this boy (maybe Emmylou Harris influenced) but was a bit "bring you down" type of music, with the notable exceptions of "I Can't Dance," "Cash On The Barrelhead" and if I had to pick out a best track it would be "Ooh Las Vegas"


This album was well arranged and produced, and if country-rock, "rocks your boat" this could be your thing, but this album wont be going in my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


 Already written about this boy (if interested, there's a great story about his funeral)



Gram Parsons is an artist with a vision as unique and personal as those of Jagger-Richard, Ray Davies, or any of the other celebrated figures. Parsons may not have gone to the gate as often as the others, but when he has he’s been strikingly consistent and good. I can’t think of a performance on record any more moving than Gram’s on his “Hot Burrito No. 1,” and the first album of his old band, the Flying Burrito Bros.’ Gilded Palace of Sin, is a milestone. The record brought a pure country style and a wrecked country sensibility to rock, setting a standard that no other country-rock effort has begun to challenge.
Parsons is a south-Georgia boy with a Harvard education, a big inheritance, and a tendency to melancholy. His central theme has always been that of the innocent Southern boy tossed between the staunch traditions and strict moral code he was born to and the complex, ambiguous modern world. He realizes that both are corrupt, but he survives by keeping a hold on each while believing neither. Lurking in the innards of all those tunes about how the city is full of temptations for a good old boy, and how his girl has left him, lured away by Satan, is Gram’s ongoing preoccupation with loss and despair, much more personal and powerful than the banal sentiments that make the songs so enjoyable initially.


 This use of stock country elements to enclose personal expression is as central to GP, Gram’s first recording in two and a half years, as it was to his work with the Burritos. The album is just what Gram’s devotees have been waiting for. But there are a few surprises here, like the hot, smoky, Jimmy Clanton-ish rock and roll ballad, “Cry One More Time,” which turns out to be a J. Geils Band original, and the heavy use of Emmylou Harris, a singer from Alabama who’s been traveling the folk circuit for the past several years. Together, Gram and Emmylou form a duo that’s right up there with George-Tammy and Conway-Loretta in style, but with that added principle of moral uncertainty. A country chestnut, “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning,” is their most successful joint effort; it would make one half of a great twosided country single, with the formally written and arranged Parsons-Rick Grech original, “Kiss The Children,” taking up the other half. Emmylou’s singing is just about as sweet, hot-genteel, and forceful as Ronstadt’s, and it sets off Gram’s mournful voice nicely.





The rest of Parsons’ backup is made up of L.A.-country stalwarts, including the always fine Byron Berline and Al Perkins on fiddle and steel respectively, and the backbone of Presley’s touring band, including James Burton, is also on hand.



 GP sounds anachronistic for the most part; the bulk of the tracks have a more classic C&W feel to them than anything that’s come out of either Nashville or Bakersfield recently, with the notable exception of Merle Haggard’s better efforts (and it’s no surprise that Merle was interested in producing Gram after hearing him). The dimension of rustic authenticity is essential if Parsons’ songs are to work dramatically. He’s got the right people back there for that.


 The other important dimension is the innuendo supplied by Gram’s voice and delivery. He may not be old or tough enough to be a Haggard or a Cash, but he gets another kind of worldliness, a quieter kind of strength out of his singing. That amazing voice, with its warring qualities of sweetness and dissipation, makes for a stunning emotional experience on the key song of GP, “The New Soft Shoe,” and “A Song for You.” These two, and the related “She,” separate themselves from the classic country style of the other eight songs in much the same way the two “Hot Burrito” numbers stand apart from the other tunes on Gilded Palace of Sin. “The New Soft Shoe” tumbles together images of the old and new South (shoeshine boys and shopping malls, old-time hucksters on color TV) into an indecipherable but affecting heap. “A Song for You” is practically confessional in its honesty: “Some of my friends don’t know who they belong to/And some can’t get a single thing to work inside.” When he says later in the song to the girl he’s about to leave, “I hope you know a lot more than you’re believin’,” that clinches it. The song is absolutely hopeless, beyond despair. It’s the saddest song I’ve ever heard.



 I don’t know what more he can possibly say after that. And yet, there he is just a few tunes later, ending the album with one of those Burrito-style chuggers, as if it were all a big hoedown. He gets away with it, of course. To borrow loosely from one of his lyrics, boy, but he sure can sing.

  GRIEVOUS ANGEL



 Mick Jagger wrote “Wild Horses” for and about the late Gram Parsons and its chorus describes the paradox that fueled Parsons’ life and vision. “. . . Wild horses couldn’t drive me away/Wild horses, we’ll ride them someday.” Unable to choose between devils and angels, he broke the rules and welcomed both. It was, as Jesse Winchester once put it, dangerous fun. The musical results made Gram Parsons the most convincing singer of sad songs that I’ve ever heard.


 After leaving the Byrds, Parsons made a series of albums; Grievous Angel completes the cycle. Beginning with the Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin, the work progressed through Burrito Deluxe and Parsons’ earlier solo effort, GP. The quartet comprises an autobiography both faithful to traditional musical forms and themes and orginal in its use of them.


 As on Parsons’ earlier GP, Emmylou Harris sets off Gram Parsons’ quavery vocals with her cowgirl-angel voice. Their traditional country duets reach a zenith on two old love songs, “Hearts On Fire” and “Love Hurts.” The first deals with passion and guilt, the second with the anguish of romantic love. I find both cuts staggeringly powerful.


 Aside from a pair of party footstompers (Tom T. Hall’s “I Can’t Dance” and Parsons’ and Rick Grech’s “Las Vegas”), Grievous Angel is Parsons’ most serious album. His firmer-than-usual (but no less plaintive) voice, Emmylou’s buoyantly lovely singing, the sensitive playing of the Elvis Presley band members and others, all contribute to the music’s sense of solemn purposefulness.



 On the eerie “Medley Live From Northern Quebec,” Parsons gives a make-believe live performance before an imaginary crowd of bottle-breaking country boys who recognize his tunes from the first note. Parsons seems to be saying that this is where he might have wound up if he had followed the traditional path. His treatment of the imaginary scenario might be interpreted as disdainful, but as he and Emmylou convincingly sing “an old song from a long time back” (his own “Hickory Wind”), there’s a suggestion of regret as well.


 Parsons employed country conventions in his songwriting as well as his singing, and it’s often hard to separate his originals from the Harlan Howard and Boudleaux Bryant tunes he recorded. His best writing combined country elements with a personal style both openly emotional and filled with ambiguity. Grievous Angel includes four of his own songs.


 “The Return of the Grievous Angel” describes the vision of home and love that haunts a wanderer through his travels across America: “. . . 20,000 roads I went down/And each one led me straight back home to you.” The immaculately simple “Brass Buttons” draws a picture of a lost love by cataloging the things that surrounded her: “Brass buttons, green silks, and silver shoes/Warm evenings, pale mornings, bottle blues. . . .”In “Thousand-Dollar Wedding” a bridegroom who is deserted on his wedding day laments: “. . . And why ain’t there one lonely horn with one sad note to play/Supposed to be a funeral/ It’s been a bad, bad day. . . .”


 Parsons’ final composition, and the album’s last cut, reads almost like a prayer. “In My Hour of Darkness” evokes an agonizing struggle between faith and despair. It can serve as Gram Parsons’ epitaph as well:

 In my hour of darkness,
In my time of need,
Oh, Lord, grant me vision,
Oh, Lord, grant me speed.


Return Of The Grievous Angel & $1,000 Dollar Wedding
It might be cheating to lump these two songs together on one entry, but in my mind they are paired together: in these few minutes is located the road map of Gram Parsons’s mind, the America in which all of history happens all at once, all the time, where “billboards and truck stops pass by the Grievous Angel” even as “I thought about a calico bonnet from Cheyenne to Tennessee”.


 It’s a persuasive world, one in which cowboys and truckers are one and the same, and the cop on the street corner is a direct descendant of the army captain in the frontier fort. You might have been drinking moonshine in 1870; you might have been taking acid in 1970 – it’s all the same thing. It’s all America. And it’s all cut with equal parts sunshine and foreboding. The foreboding is more to the fore in $1,000 Wedding, a song that gets less and less straightforward the more you look at it. At first glance, it’s about a man who’s been left at the altar – or has the bride died? Are we seeing the wedding through the eyes of the groom? Or the guests? Maybe the hero of the song isn’t the narrator, but the disappeared bride: “And why ain’t there one lonely horn / And one sad note to play?” Parsons sings. Maybe it’s because she’s escaped the wretched fate of an unwanted marriage; maybe sadness isn’t the appropriate reaction.


 The power derives from the performances: not one note, from musicians or singers, is misplaced or misjudged, and they are what make the meaning of the song, when you hear it, perfectly clear: love and death are inextricably entwined and cannot be separated. In relationships, as in life, memento mori. And so it came to pass for Parsons, too. After completing work on Grievous Angel, before heading out on tour, he headed up to Twentynine Palms Motel in Joshua Tree National Park to party a little. He took with him morphine and alcohol. On 19 September 1973, he lost consciousness in his room, and could not be revived. The short life of Gram Parsons was over, yet, in barely five years, he had altered the shape of American music.
 

DAY 327.
Eno..............................Another Green World   (1975)










I really wasn't looking forward to listening to this album, I seem to recall the tracks on "Here Comes The Warm"Jets" seemed to go forever, but that could just because I didn't particularly like them, but on this album he had the good grace to keep them down to wholly acceptable time frames (nothing over 4:01.) having only listened to one Eno solo album, this is by far my favourite.


I have to admit, I do prefer the five tracks with vocals, but that is a recurring theme with me, I don't mind instrumentals but given the choice I'd rather have a track with vocals, most of the time, "Golden Hours" was probably my favourite track, but although I wasn't left disappointed after hearing this one, this won't be going into my collection, but surprisingly for this listener the is a few tracks which be finding there way onto my shuffle for future listening.


Bits & Bobs



Already written about Brian Eno  (if interested)

Eno’s eccentric music doesn’t stray beyond rock’s accustomed borders so much as it innovates within those parameters. Another Green World‘s five vocal numbers generally represent his most conservative approaches, but its nine instrumentals are among his most radical reshapings of the genre. Together, they make perhaps the artist’s most successful record.


 The vocal selections could almost be outtakes from the earlier Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), although that record’s dada lyrics are mostly absent here. Eno demonstrates on these cuts his striking and conventional sense of melody and rock chord structures, as well as a smooth, pleasant singing style. What separates him from the merely pedestrian is his imaginative, even queer arranging — his presentation carries more import than his original compositions. (An interesting sidelight is the album’s use of fretless, fretted, pedaled, synthesized and acoustic basses.) “St. Elmo’s Fire” sets a hauntingly infectious refrain amidst an exotic array of synthesizers, bass pedals and guitars (or, as Eno mysteriously characterizes them, “desert” guitars). “Everything Merges with the Night” is a clever disguise of an orthodox I-IV-V chord sequence. “Sky Saw” bridges the vocals with much of the rest of the record; it begins as an instrumental but ends with singing. There are two basses and an eerie measure from John Cale’s weeping viola, but it’s Eno who carries the piece. Playing alongside their not unusual chord pattern, his guitar indeed sounds like a saw — harsh, grating, raspy tones, totally unmusical if taken alone.



Such a musical adaptation of electronically generated noise, coupled with a steady rock pulse, is a foundation of Another Green World. Mechanical sound is not, of course, new to rock — feedback and synthesizers have been staples for some time. Eno’s tack, however, differs by its fuller realization. It’s beyond gimmickry and, to a degree, more than just experimentation. “Over Fire Island” features Phil Collins’s (of Genesis) unwavering drumming while Eno darts in and out with sliding synthesizer notes and a prepared tape. A tremoloed hiss quickly comes and goes, like radio static. But this is not a perfected approach: synthetic percussion always seems like a cocktail-lounge drum machine — a frustrating, though by no means disastrous, distraction on several cuts.

   The wordless pieces tend also to avoid melodies but they aren’t unmelodic. Instead of tunes, they rely on broad chord washes. “Becalmed” and “Spirits Drifting” work this way, pursuing melancholic, pastel-shaded atmospheres unaccompanied by the decisive quality of a melody. Interestingly, almost all of the instrumentals (“Becalmed” is the sole exception) are shorter than the vocals — three of them last less than two minutes. The title track — it may be only a fragment — simply repeats a few short phrases which gradually gain in volume. But this shortness is more likely a concision, one possible only when there are no lyrics to prescribe any specific duration to a piece or a portion of a piece. Moreover, Eno is acutely aware of form. Although long numbers are certainly no rarity in rock, the music was weaned on two- or three-minute performances. This artist is quite comfortable with this structure and content to stay with it.



Eno insists on risks, and that they so consistently pan out is a major triumph. I usually shudder at such a description, but Another Green World is indeed an important record — and also a brilliant one.

Another Green World: peculiar array of musicians on here, and as a pretentious teenager, the made up instrument names were appealing (Wimshurst Guitar, Castanet Guitar, etc).

But being a Robert Fripp fan, some tracks I enjoyed much more than others. Never had this album, and as I mentioned before, Sky Saw (John Cale is on this track, a/c) and St. Elmo's Fire (blinding Fripp solo) are my favourite tunes.

DAY 331.
Keith Jarrett................................The Koln Concert   (1975)









Musical lightning in a bottle.. The Koln concert is one of the great jazz albums, and one of the greatest pieces of extended improvisation, of any kind, ever recorded.

Cant F'kn wait   but will give it a go 

DAY 329.
Neu!...............................................Neu!    (1975)









Neu! '75 was another album that I was sort of stalling to listen to, but to be fair it wasn't to bad, if only they had shortened the tracks I may well have bought it, 3 to 4 minutes of the type of music supplied in tracks 1&2 would have been quite sufficient, I found these 2 to be very much of a muchness, track 3, "Hero" I really liked and the next two tracks of which one is an instrumental' liked also.


This album wont be going into my collection, the only reason being, if they had stuck to 3/4 minute tops for tracks
this listener may well have bought the damn thing, my thirst would have been well and truly slaked, knowing when to ca canny with the over indulgent lengthy tracks, should be the first thought from band members. 



Bits & Bobs;



  Neu! (the German word for “new”, pronounced “noy”) a band from Germany, were probably the archetypal example of what the UK music press at the time dubbed krautrock. The band had minimal commercial success when active, but are credited with being a huge influence on a diverse group of artists, including The Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd., David Bowie, Gary Numan, Ultravox, Simple Minds, Devo, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Stereolab, Wilco as well as the current electronic music scene.   The group were formally a duo consisting of Klaus Dinger (1946-2008; drums) and Michael Rother (*1950; guitar). Both played a variety of other instruments, notably Dinger sang and played guitar on ‘Hero’ and ‘After Eight’ from the third album “Neu! 75”, his brother Thomas Dinger and Hans Lampe both played drums for this version of the line up. All three of the group’s official albums were produced by the famous Krautrock producer Conny Plank. After Neu!, Klaus Dinger would form La Düsseldorf and La! Neu?. Michael Rother performed as a solo artist and between “Neu! 2” and “Neu! 75” performed as part of a supergroup called Harmonia with members of Cluster, and occasionally Brian Eno.


 And so we reach endgame. Sure, the Düsseldorf duo of Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother would release subsequent material after Neu! '75: a handful of compilations, one live album, and the fruits of the duo's half-hearted mid-80's studio reunion (both of the latter two releases being bitterly contested by Rother). But there can be little doubt that Neu! '75 serves as the group's final statement. So what happens when the new starts to grow old, when a band whose very name was an exclamation of novelty, begins to age? It's a curious fold of thought: a visionary band in the process of maturation, but an old band that has become new to us.


 Perhaps Neu never grew old; perhaps the world simply got wise to their sound. By 1975, Kraftwerk-- the group that spawned them-- had released Autobahn and gained international pop celebrity; Can had already mastered the music of propulsive ambience on Future Days; Faust had recorded the track that would give the entire genre its name; and punk was fomenting in the dives of England and America. 1975 was the year of Eno's Another Green World, and the year David Bowie began departing from his plastic soul phase in search of a synthetic futurism. Neu had been in hibernation for three years since the budget crisis-turned-serendipity of their tweaky sophomore effort.


 Neu! '75 may have marked a personal reunion for Dinger and Rother, but there's little union to be heard. The record's lush ambience masks a primal tension at the heart, as if Neu were unsure to whom they would be leaving their legacy: new age or punk. "Isi" is propelled by Dinger's signature "motorik" percussion, but where we expect Rother's deft, industrialized guitar, we hear undulating synths and piano lines expanding out in concentric circles. It's not an engine; it's an ocean.



"Hero"


 Since its release, “Hero” has become one, if not the most influential song in Neu!’s oeuvre. It directly inspired David Bowie 1977 song “Heroes” and listening to Klaus Dinger’s sneering and barely comprehensible vocals, one knows where Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols got some inspiration from. The ostinato drum pattern, mostly described as Mototoric by music journalists, and the aggressive guitar sound also inspired the UK punk rock scene.Hero starts off the Side B of Neu!’s third album, Neu ‘75. While Side A rather explores Krautrock and Ambient sounds, Hero’s proto-punk suddenly paces out of the nothing. Or as Pitchfork’s Brent S Sirotad describes it in his subsequent review:
And just when you’ve resigned yourself to this new ethereal Neu, the industro-punk “Hero” snarls in with all the dirt and blues of the early Stones. Dinger growls out indecipherables somewhere between Jagger and Rotten, while Rother’s burning guitar is finally emancipated from the benign oppression of the synths. It’s the motorik of the world on the verge of a fuel crisis.


 



 

Last edited by arabchanter (07/7/2018 6:23 am)

DAY 332.
Aerosmith.................................Toys In The Attic   (1975)









With their Third album, Aerosmith sprang forth as the progenitors of"cock rock", a sub genre that reveled in sex,drugs and double entendre to a level that made Led Zeps "The Lemon Song" sound like something from the church hymnal. It also won the band an international audience.

DAY 333.
David Bowie..........................Young Americans   (1975)









Released in 1975, Young Americans represents the zenith of David Bowie's flat-pack soul period. A frequently overlooked record, it nestles in the valley between the twin peaks of Ziggy Stardust and Berlin.