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.

Strawbs For The Witch

Today the nicest thing that has happened to me in months occured. A crony of mine at work complimented me on my Blog. He also pointed out that I'd received a nice comment from someone called the Witch. I hadn't realized anyone had read it yet.
I was gonna mention these guys next anyway, so this is one of those cosmic coincidences I suppose, but this recommendation goes out to "the Witch" because I remember something from her site alluding to Catholicism, and if there ever was a "Catholic" rock band, it was the Strawbs.
Their first single was a tight little rocker entitled The Man Who Called Himself Jesus and The Hangman and the Papist is just one standout tune from their (in my opinion best) LP, From the Witchwood. The title song from that album could be the soundtrack for her site. It's gorgeous and spooky all at the same time with individual notes that loosely follow the sung melody picked out on a highly processed banjo under a swirl of electric dulcimer, mellotron and various lush acoustic guitars. The lyric could send shivers down your spine as would your favorite vampire movie.
The mellotron (an early keyboard string and horn synthesizer) was played by Rick Wakeman who left the Strawbs after the Witchwood LP to join Yes. Some of his most brilliant piano and organ playing are featured on this album as on the Hangman and Papist track mentioned above and on cuts such as Shepherd Song and Sheep (it's a very pastoral LP.) He was only with the band for two records, the afforementioned From the Witchwood and its predecessor Just a Collection of Antiques and Curios, which it certainly was. A live album with a few really good tracks but for diehard fans mostly.
Who the hell puts out a live recording, of all new material, for their third album? But that's the kind of nonesense that made the 70's so much fun.
I hate to make this so short, there's lots to cover with this brilliant but overlooked band that started out as an English Bluegrass band (The Strawberry Hill Boys shortened to simply, the Strawbs) then a folk trio featuring a cellist (you read that correctly) to a Folk Rock set to an Art Rock act to a Prog Rock band and finally to a crap rock band. I really need to check my Strunk and White to see what needs to be capitalized in that last sentence.
To the Witch, nice site! Your writing is vivid and full of detail yet economically executed. I think you must be a reader of poetry to be able to distill your thoughts down to the essential. Very lyrical as well.
More on Strawbs later. They should have been much bigger than they were. I saw Fleetwood Mac open for them once at the Shubert Theater. Yes you read that correctly also. And I haven't forgotten about those clues I left in my third or fourth post. I will answer them and soon so whomever won't have to go back a million years to see what the hell I'm talking about.

Get Behind Me Jack White

In his June 7, 2005 review in the Philadelphia Inquirer of the White Stipes new CD Get Behind Me Satan, Dan DeLuca speculates the title comes from the Gospel of Mark where Jesus says to the Devil "Get thee behind me, Satan."
I would be more than willing to wager that the title is nicked from the lyrics of a song off of deceased Who bassist John Entwhistle's first solo LP Smash Your Head Against the Wall. The song is entitled either You're Mine or Everybody's Mine. I think it's the latter. C'mon, it's been over 25 years since I've heard it and as I said my record collection is in complete disarray.
Anyway, the lyric goes:
Get behind me Satan
The Devil take up those who sin
Deliver us from evil
The devil takes all those who sin
Everybody's mine
At some time
Everybody's mine
You'll enjoy your stay
'Til you're reborn someday
Until you are
You're mine
I still can't figure out how to access this site to post from home and it's really ticking me off.
Oh by the way, Michael Jackson NOT a serial child molester? C'mon. If anybody belongs to Beelezbub, it's Michael.

Home On The Strange

One of the reasons my posts have been so sparse, besides the fact that that's how everyone starts out (or so I'm told) is that I haven't been able to log into Blogspot from my home computer. I think I know why now and it is a really dumb reason. I think I was trying to log onto Boozytunes@Blogger.com and not Boozytunes@Blogspot.com.
I will test that theory today.
Another reason (and I wanted to keep this on the QT, so to speak, but what the hell) is that, at the moment, I've been a very scattered person. Like the woman in the television spot whose mind keeps changing channels and she has no control over it. Yes folks, I've a touch of the ol' ADD. Or is it ADHD? I can never keep those straight.
That was a joke.
Just the last line, not the whole ADD thing. In addition to that mental nugget I also suffer from depression (suprise, suprise! a music fan who suffers from depression) and I'm also one of those folk who believes firmly in male menopause. I know at the outset of this whole thing I mentioned somewhere that I was a bit of a geeser. Anyway, I feel a whole lot different now at 48 than I did at 42 or 32 or 22 or 28 or 38 or... you get the idea.
However this is not the place for that kind of melancholy, so I will begin another blog to discuss those issues for anyone who is interested. I will probably only mention this again at this site when I have come up with the name, the site etc... for the blues blog and not write of it again here because I want to stick to the tunes at this site.
Besides, I'm in good company with the depression thing: Ray Davies, John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln. The list goes on.

Could a Copper Catch a Crooked Coffin Maker

Could a copper catch a crooked coffin maker, could a copper comprehend?
That a crooked coffin maker's just an undertaker who undertakes to be your friend.
Some lyrics from another fellow from Tyneside. The late, great Alan Hull of Lindisfarne. That's Lindisfarne the band not Saint Aidens Holy Island off the Northeast English coast.
I am perhaps using the Tynesider epithet a bit liberally but I think it applies to the ISB, which is where I am segueing from if you can remember back that far. I don't believe it appropriate to designate all Scotsmen as Tynesiders, but surely Glaswegians and perhaps even those from Edinburgh are close enough to the border to be fitted with the moniker. What the hell? I'm a Yank. I can get away with it.
Allright, sod it! Alan Hull is definately a Tynesider but the Incredibles are simply Scottish.
Anyway, if you're a fan of good solid mid-tempo rock infused with British Isle flavour created by the use of fiddles, banjos, mandolins and squeeze boxes of all descriptions, then chances are you'd enjoy Lindisfarnes first two or three Lps.
Like John Lennon, Alan Hull had a real knack for Lewis Carrol-like wordplay wedded to melodies whose beauty kind of creeps up on you over repeated listenings as opposed to grabbing
you by the heartstrings at first hearing. His most popular song Lady Eleanore from the album Nicely Out Of Tune sounds as fresh today as it did in 1971 and would stand up easily to anything put out by Coldplay, Travis or Star Sailor, who, to my ears, are the descedants of bands like Lindidfarne, with the Fairport Convention/Steeleye Span influence tuned way down but not altogether missing.
I'll cut to the recommendations. Nicely Out Of Tune and The Fog On The Tyne (from which the lyrics that begin this post were nicked) the first two LPs by Lindisfarne are highly recommended as are Alan Hull's first solo LP Pipe Dreams and the It's Jack The Lad Lp by the band of the same name, a Lindisfarne spinoff band. In fact, as good as the first two Lindisfarne Lps are, I think I would steer you in the direction of Pipe Dreams and It's Jack The Lad first, although however you get it, you must find a copy of Lady Eleanor. It is easily one of the most beautiful songs in the entire rock and roll (in all its permutations) canon. Right up there with Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks. Yes, it's THAT good.
Ta Ta for now.

Problems Still

I'm getting very frustrated as I have not yet been able to clear the redundant post and when I click on the "edit" button I go to an area that does not list my posts in chronological order, which is what used to happen.
Now I'm deposited somewhere that says NO POSTS FOUND. Although my blog is still there and intact. Something is screwy with the edit button or the edit area and I've yet to get to the bottom of it. I've emailed Blogger support, unfortunately whatever answer they sent is on my home computer and I am currently at work. I'll have to print out their troubleshooting suggestions and bring them with me next time.
As long as we're kind of stuck, I'll stick with the subject of the Incredible String Band. There are a few discs which I could heartily recommend without too much fear of peopl getting pissed off at me. Keep in mind, this site is meant for the musically adventurous (are there any of us left?) and also for those who have an appreciation for melody, composition and experimentation. And I don't really mean crazy experimentation like the Residents or Sun Ra and his Arkestra, so most of you should feel safe with these picks.
Oh yes, and you must enjoy music from the 60's 70's and 80's. But not the run of the mill stuff, mind you.
Okay, more ISB recommendations. There is their final studio disc Hard Rope and Silken Twine, one side of which is a single composition (all by Mike Heron, I believe) which in and of itself covers a fairly large gamut of musical... I'll say influences rather than styles. Ostensibly it tells the story of a merchant seaman who loses his love to a more affluent suitor in ancient Greece circa 400 B.C. give or take a century or two. It opens with Robin Williamson working out a nice figure on the Oud, a lute like instrument indigenous to North Africa. Sounds a bit like a bass mandolin or a mandola to more exact. Then, in come the flutes and pan pipes and were off to the chariot races.
Side two consists of 5 songs, one excellent ballad entitled Glancing Love penned by the late comer (at least as a song writer, he'd been with the troupe as a Dancer for some years) Malcolm LeMaistre. Shucks! Just when it get interesting I have to go.