I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better

My one and only reader informed me that the Cars tune was called simply, You Might Think and the I'm crazy bit is part of the lyric but not in the title. We can sleep more soundly knowing that, I'm sure.
I know I'm not keeping up my end of the bargain here but I'm back, for the time being anyway. It occurs to me that most of my recommendations thus far have been from bands and artists from the other side of the pond. This is only natural for me since, as far as I'm concerned, it all began with the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who etc... I'm fully aware of the American contribution to the genre. We invented it for God's sake. A bit ironic that. We invented the Devil's music for God's sake.
I hate it when people refer to Rock 'n Roll as the Devil's music. That's another topic I'll try to tackle but not in this post.
Anyway. Even though Rock 'n Roll was an American invention, I think the Brits took it much further and made it far more interesting. I'll take the Beatles over Chuck Berry any day. Or the Who over Jerry Lee Lewis or the Animals over Little Richard or the Kinks over just about anybody.
The closest we Americans came to having any serious competition for the first wave of British rockers was the Byrds who, without Gene Clark, were just a bunch of guys who sang Bob Dylan and Pete Seger songs. Which brings me to my subject today. The brilliant Gene Clark.
Although Gene left the Byrds before they released their third LP 5th Dimension his influence on the band remained with them throughout the remainder of their respective careers. For one thing he taught them that in order to make any money in the rock 'n roll game you need to write your own songs. The big money was in publishing, not the few pennies you got for units of your records sold. The story goes that Gene was the target of the bands collective green eyed monster as he was tooling around Benedict Canyon in a Porsche while the rest of the band were driving old beat up Chevys.
But, more importantly, his influence was stylistic. Genes lyrics were a syntactical nightmare at times but they always worked within the confines of his songs. The blame for such lame constructions as Americas, "in the desert you can remember your name 'cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain." falls squarely on the shoulders of Harold Eugene Clark. Without his, "the way she tells me of her love and never is she tryin' she don't have to be assured of many good things to find" from the classic She Don't Care About Time the Horse With No Name lyric would not have been possible. Looked at objectively written out on the page these lyrics might make one cringe but sung along to the bouyant melodies that carry each lyric along they seem to be quite correct, or correct enough anyway, and even linguistically beautiful in a stream of consciousness type of fashion.
The Byrds have been credited with inventing Folk Rock, Country Rock and even Psychedlic Rock, Eight Miles High being the reason for the third accreditation. And while many writers cite Gram Parsons (who joined the band in 1968) with being the catalyst for these meldings of styles, it was clearly Gene who was at the vanguard. Gram may have been responsible for Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the best Country rock album ever, Gene was testing the Country Rock waters as early as 1966 with tunes such as Tried So Hard.
As great as his output with the Byrds was, Feel A whole Lot Better, Set You Free This Time, You Showed Me, Here Without You, The World Turns All Around Her, the list goes on and on and that's from just two LPs, Gene really came into his own as a writer and a singer during his mostly unheard of and certainly unheralded solo career.
We'll pick up on Gene later, but see, I'm not a total anglophile.

I'm Still Standing...Or Sitting

I'm positive there is an Elton John song called I'm Still Standing and since that is what I've decided to entitle this post it will contain (at long last) the answers to the clues I placed in my April 27, 2005 post. I'm also sure that by now I've lost my one and only reader but try, try again I will.
"All those weeks ago," an easy one which references All Those Years Ago by George Harrison from his Somewhere In England LP. "How Do You Work This Thing," easy in that it is a direct quote and the title of the song, difficult in the fact that it is from a somewhat obscure (although he shouldn't be) artist, Robyn Hitchcock. That song from his Groovy Decay/Groovy Decoy (you Hitchcockians will know what that means) LPs.
"Oh Well Parts I & II." Sometimes called simply "Oh Well" by Fleetwood Mac. But an older, bluesier Fleetwood Mac that would probably make most Stevie Nicks fans. . . no, make that all Stevie Nicks fans, tilt their heads to the side as does Nipper when he hears his masters voice. From the 1969 LP Then Play On. Sung by Peter Green shortly before his religious conversion, drop-out-of-society-freak-out and become an obscure gardener, which I guess isn't really much worse than being an obscure white blues guitarist in a relatively unheard of white English Blues band, even if they were arguably the best unheard of white English Blues band.
And finally, "You Might Think I'm Crazy" which was the accidental reference, as I'm not a Cars fan, but I do recall that lyric in one of their songs and I'm sure it was also the title of the song. I should look that up on the internet along with the Elton John chompy.
There was a band from England (where else?) in the 80's, the 90's too actually, called the Chameleons. Because of contractual BS, namely an American band with the same name, they ended up having to call themselves the Chameleons U.K. Founder, bassist and songwriter/singer Mark Burgess' little brother has a band called the Charlatans U.K. I don't know if they had the same contractual difficilties or if they were just taking the piss out of Mark's absurd forced compromise, the latter I suspect.
Anyway, back to the Chameleons. Their first proper LP Script for the Bridge is must listening for all you introspective types out there. For all you guys who really relate to the Seth Cohen character from the O.C. but would never admit it. It strikes the chord the early Cure tried so desperately to hit but never could with efforts like Pornography, before they switched gears having given up trying to convince the public they were true doom and gloom and admitted to being the crafty, poppy outfit they were all along.
Just because you wear all black and sport smeared mascara underneath your messy do, doesn't mean you really have something to cry about. Besides, everybody knows boys don't cry.