What you may not know about Joe Jackson’s A Cure for Gravity, in case you’ve thought about reading it, is that it only covers his formative years up to Look Sharp (1979), his first LP. Any insights we get into his later years as an established recording artist – of which there are generous helpings, actually – come only in support of this earlier part of his story.
This is fine because his book’s main idea is that his own self-discovery as a musician is just one phase, however significant, of an ongoing process, and you get the clear sense that Jackson hasn’t written the book so much to memorialize himself but to do something useful – even charitable – for his audience. Most of us are likely going through similar processes, he suspects, and his own experiences, however music-specific they may seem, are applicable to anyone who may be feeling the urge to reach a bit higher than usual or let loose some essential aspect of inner self.
He’s not ever saying he’s “made it” – just that he’s reached a level of satisfaction in his line of work that has mostly come through sticking to his guns. Certain drive-by critics have accused Jackson of elitism, acerbity and dilletantism (each of which he is quite aware of), but these are easy misinterpretations of idealism, intelligence, and curiosity; or, in one sweeping stroke, simple determination. It’s perhaps easy to forget, amid all of his own recorded sarcasm, how full his catalog is of positive messages (“Go For It” and “The Wild West” kept ringing in my head as I was reading). I guarantee that if you make it to the end of the book, where he declares himself an optimist, you’ll believe him.
The Dells are one of Chicago’s very finest, best known for “Oh What a Night” and “Stay in My Corner,” two late sixties smash hit updates of songs they’d done earlier (1956 and 1965 respectively). These wondrous doo wop revamps showcased the group’s pleading, seamlessly interchanging vocals and featured hip instrumental arrangements noted for their airy guitars and weeping, shimmering strings (the string arrangements in the best of late-sixties and early-seventies soul: another subject worthy of a book). “Stay in My Corner” is the ultimate Dells song in my opinion, in which they milk all they can out of six emotional and indispensible minutes.
“O-O I Love You,” though, another one of their chart hits – albeit a forgotten one – predates those two songs but at once serves as 1) a preview of the highly-charged, emotionally drawn-out direction they were headed and 2) an assurance that they were still able to pack an emotional wallop into three standard pop song minutes when they wanted to. The song kicks off with a corny basso recitation by Chuck Barksdale, making us hair-trigger types think we’ve got the whole song all figured out (“the pen writes and, uh, words are born”). But then lead tenor Johnny Carter takes over and we start to melt. After which we’re completely blown off our seats by the aching, majestic bridge. Then comes a burst of fireworks from lead baritone Marvin Junior, a final recitation by Barksdale, who now sounds completely seductive, and even more dueling fireworks for the glorious finale, courtesy of Junior and Carter. Fade into stunned silence.
I hope nobody minds seeing a Sunday service post by Rev. Religious Dodo, ie, myself. Never been to church (except as a tourist), never prayed, not even as a child, not too familiar with the concept of god or God, simply never really cared… but some weird energy creeps through when I listen to the Mercy Seat, an 80s album by Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes and his super hot girlfriend Zena Von Heppinstall. The whole album is filled with religious topics. Some songs are pensive and reflective but most are fanatical baptist-style gospel stomps. I can totally see myself in a religious trance in some Southern church without air-conditioning, my sweat pouring in heavy drops as the church rolls on and on. If the Mercy Seat is the ticket then Lord let me ride!
The Mercy Seat – “Let The Church Roll On / I Won’t Be Back”
Just found an image of the scarce Golden Harmonies compilation I asked about earlier. I recognize the pic as an outtake not from an 80’s photo session, but a late 60’s Wild Honey-era one I’ve seen other stuff from (Dennis’s orange terrycloth pants are the giveaway). The funny image I had in my head, though, based on Golden’s description in Southern California Pastoral, isn’t too far removed from what’s here. What a strange compilation this Golden Harmonies is, incidentally: two records with four songs on each side with nothing from beyond 1965 except one – the Pet Sounds title track.
Music journalist John Milward’s The Beach Boys: Silver Anniversary is a coffee table book full of glossy photos which outnumber the pages of large-font text. Notwithstanding this, or the fact that he offers up no new raw material, it’s in the upper echelon of Beach Boys books because he’s managed to string together all the familiar quotes and anecdotes from previous publications with artful, personally invested prose. The mid-80s were a significant checkpoint for the Beach Boys: they turned 25; they had a hit single (“Getcha Back”); they bounced back from Secretary of the Interior James Watts’s 1983 refusal to allow them to play a concert on the Washington DC Mall by returning triumphantly the following year with full support of both the public and the president (Watts ended up losing his job); and a couple of crucial books about the group saw publication – David Leaf’s heartfelt 1985 revision of his Beach Boys and the California Myth and Steven Gaines’s leering tell-all, Heroes and Villains. Milward’s book appropriately walks the middle ground between the two and the result is a highly accessible relic from this era, not only in terms of readability but also availability on library shelves.
This isn’t to say that Milward doesn’t let his own discomfort with elements of the Beach Boys’ then-current state of affairs show. This is evident in the book’s appendices, in which he insists on mapping out his discographical essays according to the jumbled availability of the group’s recordings circa 1985. Even less happily, Milward reveals himself as a Brian cultist who’s more or less given up hope. “The Beach Boys devotee is innocent by nature,” he writes, “and is glad to grab at straws while imagining the band’s return to full glory.” He passes my own personal Friends and Love You tests with flying colors simply because he gives them their due, but he does so in an unmistakably bummed out, straw-grabbing manner. Friends: “A wholly likable record that has aged remarkably well; the seed of its amiability, however, is that it had nothing to do with ambition.” Love You: “Fans of Brian heard their old friend, and if he wasn’t the aural sophisticate he once was, there was a chilling charm to these simple songs.” (Dare you to try playing any of these “simple songs” at the campfire, Mr. Milward.) And I do have to take issue with his understandably Brian-cultist decision to dismiss the Carl and the Passions and Holland albums altogether as “abysmal.” Perhaps most revealing of his discouraged outlook, though, is the picture he paints in the book’s final paragraph, an almost macabre fantasy scenario in which a creatively spent Brian reunites with dead father Murry among monuments to glorious musical achievements of his which, although never to be forgotten, have long since passed. Recommended all the same.
When Kim started a series of posts about medleys, I immediately thought of one that was a moderate hit in Yugoslavia, but I had trouble finding it until now. Poslednja igra leptira (“last dance of the butterfly”) was one of the groups that appeared on the tail end of the punk and new wave period of Yugo rock. They were basically a parody band, but I’m not so sure if their humor still holds water. They were often played on a popular radio show “Zeleni megahertz” which was aired every Saturday morning. In true Yugoslav spirit, the show was produced in simulcasts from two studios – one in Belgrade and other in Zagreb. Lacking a good hit for their second album, PIL’s “Kiksmix” gave them an opportunity to reiterate their huge first hit “Natasa” along with several other folk and rock hits in a typical “Stars on 45” fashion.
I always assumed the Whisky a Go Go live albums Johnny Rivers released were, in truth, of the Beach Boys Party variety, where a “live” setting was re-created in the studio. It’s a non-issue, but I still sometimes wonder. (“Memphis” was Johnny’s Chuck Berry-via-Lonnie Mack breakthrough hit.)
I’ve also always thought that Rivers’ voice sounded identical to the Yardbirds’ Keith Relf.
A few more sentimental/ potentially fetishistic words on the virtues of dead media. Until recently, I’d always heard this record three important ways:
1 – As a cassette from the strip mall library close to where I grew up. The tape was horribly muddy-sounding, and it came packaged in a hard shell that the librarian would toss in one of those big brown folders with the string that wrapped around a brad under the flap. A photocopy of the freaky cover had been glued onto the shell but it was all bubbly and on the verge of peeling off. The album sounded mysterious indeed as I listened on my shoebox tape recorder with the Graeme Edge recitations and all and I checked it out many times.
2 – As an 8-track in 1981, when I was somehow roped into a ride to the dump with my friend and his ancient brother in their parents’ Oldsmobile Toronado. Sitting in back, I found the tape under the passenger seat, and it looked much like that library cassette, with the cover picture starting to peel off. I showed it to my friend who stuck it in the 8-track player. It played uninterrupted and had our undivided attention. So there we were, wind blowing through our hair, garbage-scavenging seagulls frolicking above us in the sun, and “Voices in the Sky.”
3 – As a vinyl LP in terrible condition which I bought at the Deseret Industries shortly after the spectacular ride to the dump. The DI was a thrift store near our house in which it was, in the early eighties, always 1968. I always got very contemplative and even a bit reverent whenever I went to this particular location. (It always smelled vaguely of mothballs and vegetable soup, which is certainly how 1968 must have smelled.) I bought it for a quarter. The group’s name has been traced with pen on the front. In the gatefold it says “from John to Franklin on a Saturday night!!” and “wild dreams with Chuck.” It’s also got a crude drawing of an eagle with the words “some bird” next to it, and someone started to treat the Hindu Om design as a color-by-numbers project. I recently bought a remastered CD version of this, and it’s great, but it’s a completely different album. Needless to say, I’ve gotten accustomed to hearing my mellotrons under a layer of crackling murk, so I prefer my DI version.
The Moody Blues – “Voices in the Sky” (DI vinyl version)
Bruce Golden’s Southern California Pastoral, one of the earlier Beach Boys books (the version pictured is the 1991 update), is an artifact from an era when laid back English professors were the primary academic curators of pop music studies. (A favorite from that era is David Pichaske’s A Generation in Motion from 1979, a unique, “rock lyrics as poetry” social studies exercise on the sixties.) Golden, recently retired, worked the English beat at the University of California-San Bernardino, and his book was the first volume in a Borgo Press projected series of pop music analyses. (Vol. 2 was a 1997 treatment of Rush, so watch for vol. 3 in 2018 or so.)
Golden’s main purpose is to tie the BB’s into the ancient Greek pastoral poetic tradition in which simple methods of expression, prompted by longings for peace and tranquility, were frequently used to communicate a wide range of complex emotions. Fine with me, and frankly, so is his decision to skip too many details on the ancient side of things and to present us with a manageable 50 pages (fewer than the 54 pages of discography, notes, bibliography and index).
Some things to keep in mind: 1) Golden is writing to an audience that has perhaps heard of the Beach Boys but knows little about them; 2) this is not a biography so much as a rumination on their cultural significance, and may therefore be the only Beach Boys book not to mention Murry Wilson; 3) He sets a world record even in this small book for words written about the Still Cruisin’ album (but he skips altogether Carl and the Passions as well as everything between Holland and Still Cruisin’); 4) He utters, in the beginning, what may sound like sinister words to those who have always yearned for Brian to break down barriers and to never stop reaching for the heavens: “Learning to operate freely within one’s limits is the first sign of professionalism in the arts.” But don’t worry, that’s as sinister as it gets.
(Passage spotlight: “Perhaps the most interesting aspect of 1985’s Golden Harmonies compilation is the cover. Set in a golden frame, it shows a postcard-like picture of ‘today’s’ Beach Boys running along the shoreline. Most prominent is Brian, running in the middle of them all, his large, white, untanned stomach thrust forward and bearded head tilted back. He seems to be enjoying himself, as does the rest of the band.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen this album before, and the picture Golden paints in my mind is kind of hysterical. Does anyone have it?)
Sad news comes to us that Krešimir Blažević has died. Krešo played guitar, sang and wrote songs for his band Animatori in mid ’80s Yugoslavia. Although his band was based in Zagreb, Krešo was born in Slavonski Brod, a provincial town some 110 miles down the Sava river. Perhaps this was why Blažević and his Animators sounded so much more humble than any other band in Yugoslavia at the time. But that was not an obstacle for them, who had huge regional success with their first album Andjeli nas zovu da im skinemo krila. The album had a disarming summertime feel to it and revealed Krešo’s and the other band members’ influences, especially British pub rock and Americana. Their beach rock vibe was similar to that of Djavoli (who appeared a few years later) from the coastal town of Split, which was not surprising since the album was actually recorded there with producer Željko Brodarić Jappa. Animatori recorded two more LPs before Yugoslavia dissolved. These didn’t sell quite so well, but were far from embarrassing, and established Blažević as one of the region’s most consistent songwriters.
Animatori – “Andjeli nas zovu da im skinemo krila”
