Category: Music

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One of my new ways to waste time is to search for new music. At least new music to me. So I google 100 best songs and you get a lot of different people’s list of favorite songs, then I pick songs that appeal to me and listen. Lately I have been focusing on outliers, songs that aren’t on everyone’s list as opposed to the ones that are on everyone’s list (think Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen).

This is how I found Paul Weller’s “You Do Something to Me.” His name wasn’t familiar to me and so I looked him and found out he had played in the band the Jam which I was vaguely familiar with. Given I liked “A Town Called Malice,” the one song I knew by the Jam, I decided to see why someone would put it on their top 100 list.

Despite finding the lyrics kind of sappy and confusing, it is a doomed love song — she does something for him but it just isn’t working for her. His voice is soulful and sad and somehow you want to hear his silly story even though you know it isn’t going to end well. Weller transform the song by giving it an emotional wallop it doesn’t quite deserve.

Oddly enough, I read that “You Do Something to Me” is a popular song at weddings. This may be the wrong point in the marriage to play it. A far better time would be the day the divorce papers were signed and you are sitting alone with a glass of wine looking at the photo album of better times. Regardless of your timing, you might enjoy a listen. I did.

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The other night I got reacquainted to Patty Griffin’s song Let Him Fly. It is a song about a woman breaking up with a man who isn’t ready, if he ever would be, to settle down. He isn’t a bad man just a wandering man, he honestly tells her this and she had some hopes of keeping him even though he told her so but she now realizes it is hopeless so she surrenders to her fate and lets him go.

Her lyrics are filled with sadness but absent of anger which carry the heavy weight in most break up songs. There is none of this you are a rotten son of bitch and I don’t know why I put up with you so long which consume most break up songs. It is sad without being vindictive. She loves him but she needs something more than he is willing to give. Two mismatched people instead of one good one and one evil one.

The song is spare — just a guitar and Griffin singing in her clear strong voice. At times you can barely hear her guitar, it follows her singing but does not direct it. I could imagine her singing this song a cappella.

Even though her album cover is for more than one song, it really fits the mood of “Let Him Fly.” It looks like someone crumpled up photograph of Griffin and then, having second thoughts, retrieved it from the trash bin because he decided he wanted to keep it. It certainly captures the spirit of the song.

I highly recommend Patty Griffin’s “Let Him Fly.”

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When I attended the University of Kansas in the late 1970’s, a friend who was an actor got a small role in the Peter Shaffer play Equus. Equus had several nude scenes in it and he was looking forward to blowing the minds of the people in Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence was playing its own role here instead of a university town with a mostly cosmopolitan population, it was taking on the the role of a small Kansas town rife with closed minds about nudity. I also was taking a course in Modern Theater. The professor encouraged his students to see the play because he thought it would blow our minds. Using almost the exact words as my friend. Hmm.

Blowing the minds of the audience was very much a part of the purpose of this play. To ensure that the damage done to our minds was not so severe, there were warnings about the nudity in the play so everyone who entered the theater was prepared for the genital reveal which , at least to my mind, spoiled the whole shock value of having nudity in the play. I was waiting for it.

Then, the type of person who would wander into a student play at a University is just not your typical small town Kansan. They would be more academic, more cosmopolitan, and more open to nudity in the theater. By 1979, even in Kansas, most people who followed the arts already had seen their fair of nudity before Equus exposed them to some more. But how do you get them into theater to see the nudity? Oh, yeah, why don’t we create a little controversy and, lo and behold, it worked, the controversy brought people into the show.

This is what I think happened with Bad Bunny’s Half-time performance. It was meant to provoke a certain segment of the population. It successfully provoked them. They lost their minds as they do and started demanding all kinds of things which cause the Media to follow the controversy. This created a demand to see the show. It was a genius marketing ploy — hyping the first Spanish language performer at the Super Bowl. The buzz was great, a lot of people watched it because most people had no idea who Bad Bunny was or what they were about to see. The television advertisers got their audience, so the money they paid was well spent.

Everybody is happy — particularly, I imagine, Bad Bunny who got a lot of free press and millions of potential new customers for his music. For the vast majority of people, though, it was a meaningless experience in a life filled with meaningless experiences. But no one’s minds were seriously blown here. It will hardly be a memory in a year or two.

But you have to give credit to the the organizers of the show, they certainly showed they knew what they are doing. If you got something to sell, I certainly would recommend them. Buzz is their middle name.

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Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, just gave a master class on why diversity is important. He is hawking his book on the Masters of Rock and Roll — all who happen to be white men. Wenner, also, happens to be a white man and claims that Blacks and women don’t “articulate” at the same level. What this means, I haven’t the foggiest. But I am betting it is that he feels comfortable talking to them, they speak a common vernacular which he easily understands and thus is able to flesh out these ideas better when he writes. He also admits that perhaps he shouldn’t have used the word master because it sounds like he is limiting the illustrious designation of master to white men which wasn’t his intention. But he did, after all, choose the title and he now rightfully is defending the absence of a more diverse group of master musicians.

This is why diversity matters. People’s opinions about the world are influenced by where they live and who surrounds them. Since Blacks and women might articulate in a different way, people, like Jann Wenner, may not be as comfortable with their experience and what they are saying. In order to understand their experience and their influence on music, it might be helpful to sit down and have a chat with them in order to understand the music world. Wenner clearly has no interest in doing this and that is a big problem.

What is more alarming is that nobody tried to persuade him that excluding women and Blacks might be a bad idea. I am wondering who he worked with on this book and am surprised that nobody brought this omission to his attention. How could this book gone all the way to production and distribution without someone bringing this up is shocking to me. Maybe if someone would have brought this to his attention sooner, he might have had a better explanation ready when questioned about it. He is welcome to his opinion, but then so am I. As it is, he sounds like a racist sexist idiot. I hope I articulated that in a way that could be understood.

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When I am looking for new music, I have gotten into the habit of checking other people’s favorite lists. This is how I discovered Peggy Lee’s version of “Fever” . Since I saw it on several lists, I gave it a listen and was pleasantly surprised at how unique a song it was especially for the time in which Lee sang.

The song came out in the staid 1950’s and it is anything but staid. Lee is clearly singing about sex and not love. She uses the word fever for sex but any adult would know what she is actually talking about and it isn’t love. Her yearning for sex is blatant. She doesn’t hide her desire with sweet talk or some notion of a higher love. She wants to get laid and she is unafraid to say it.

She also takes an inventive approach to the accompanying music. There is only a bass player and a drummer. It is sparse group with the more modest instruments of the band during a time where most songs had a full orchestra. The smaller group gives a quieter tone to the song so that when Lee adds her snapping fingers to the mix, you feel very much like your in Lee’s head as she is pondering the fun she is going to have with her man.

It is lovely way go.

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I occasionally look for new music in Google with some key phrase like “Best Songs.” A list of songs will appear which I then listen to and buy. I thought I saw the song “Marie” by the Gleeman on one of these lists. Since I decided to write about “Marie” I tried to duplicate the search but I am somehow am unable to find it on any lists, so now I can’t really explain how I encountered Marie but I believe it was on somebody’s list of best songs.

The reason that I’m so interested in finding out how I found “Marie” is that it is not a song I would usually listen to. There are a lot of elements I don’t particularly like. The sentiment of being able to do anything you want is something I distrust and think is sometimes used destructively (see this post for more of my thoughts). The lyrics are a bit too saccharine for my taste. The singer’s voice is almost too overpoweringly good. I prefer, particularly in male singers, a more roughed voice, say like Tom Waits, then the Gleeman’s beautiful and perfect vocals.

Yet I find myself, after several listens, liking “Marie” so much that I keep repeating the song several times a day. The Gleeman sings with such vigor and excitement that I found myself enjoying it despite my reservations. I believe it will be one of the songs I will listen to so many times that I will become sick of it and stop listening to it for a long time and then rediscover it years down the road and fall in love with it all over again.All I can say is, right now, it made me feel really good for just a moment and, in the end, I think that is all you can really ask from a song. I know this is a terrible explanation because I can’t tell you why I like it, but I do like it and think that maybe some of you might find yourself in the same boat.

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I am late to Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Richman, the leader of the group has been around since the late 1960’s. He followed the siren call of the Velvet Underground and moved to New York, while still in high school, to be in a band. Which seems to confirm Brian Eno’s famous quote, “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band”

I stumbled across Richman when I went searching for new music. When I am in the mood for new music, I usually go other people’s favorite songs list. These lists remind of a song or group I liked in the past and I can add it to my collection. These lists are surprisingly diverse as everyone and their brother can create them. This how I first encountered the Modern Lovers and Jonathan Richman. I was blown away. I couldn’t understand how I missed them in the 1970’s when I was really listening to music and going to concerts on a weekly basis. Though a little stunned that I have spent 40 years unaware of Richman, I am happy to say I found him now.

Below is a video of Roadrunner

Soon after learning about Roadrunner, I came upon another Richman song while watching the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The song was I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar. At first, the song seemed a little silly but I liked it enough to investigate it further and I soon discovered that this was a Jonathan Richman song. What I like about this song is it is both fun and danceable.

So if you are ever gazing up at our house on Curlew Street and see an old man dancing wildly (or as wild as I can at this age) know that there is a good chance that Roadrunner or I Was Dancing at a Lesbian Bar is playing.