Some Songs Considered - Posts Tagged '1966'

July 10, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“96 Tears” - ? and the Mysterians
(Words/music: Rudy Martinez, available on 96 Tears, Cameo 1966)

Some characters come to us completely formed and require little to no embellishment. Rudy Martinez is one of those characters that seems too ridiculous to be true. Twenty five years before Bono created his “Fly” character on the Atchung Baby tour, Martinez bopped around stages in similar wraparound sunglasses. He’s made repeated references to being born on Mars and having lived with the dinosaurs in a past life. He legally changed his name to “?” - not the phrase “question mark,” but the actual typographical mark. He also wrote and performed one of the singularly most infectious songs of the garage rock era.

For a man with as many interesting biographical points (being diplomatic about it), “96 Tears” is a fairly mundane song about heartbreak. There’s a brief moment where he declares that he’ll “be on top [and] you’ll be way down there,” but he only threatens to turn his heartbreak around on his former sweetheart. Honestly though, he could sing about anything – even drawing on his memories with the pterodactyls – and it would take a back seat to that organ riff. It’s a terrific melody (even Smash Mouth couldn’t ruin it when they stole it in the late ’90s) on its own but benefits from the Farfisa organ sound. The organ player alternates between a quick series of staccato stabs and longer notes that seem to float along ?’s vocals. If he’s right about being a Martian (and I can’t prove that he isn’t, I guess), I hope his spacecraft sounds like that organ. Don’t get me wrong – I love the theramin as much as the next blogger, but I’d prefer my UFOs to sound ebullient and bubbly as The Mysterians sound.

More on ? and the Mysterians: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

May 3, 2009

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“In the Midnight Hour” – Wilson Pickett
(Words/music: Steve Cropper and Wilson Pickett, available on The Exciting Wilson Pickett, Atlantic 1966)

Previously, I’ve owned up to the gap in my musical knowledge about soul music and 1960s/1070s R & B music, and it hasn’t changed much over the past few months. It’s still on my “to do” list because I enjoy the few things I know (I’d be game for any and all starting places you might offer me as well). I first came across Wilson Pickett when my high school band played “Land of 1000 Dances” at football games. Years later, “In the Midnight Hour” would be the first of his songs that caught my attention. It’s a fairly simple arrangement – even the instrumental break (where one might expect a solo) sticks to the written part faithfully. There really isn’t much of a hook – there’s a contrasting section like in a twelve bar blues progression, only there are more than twelve measures. Instead, it’s mainly an instrumental vamp to set up Pickett’s vocal performance. Pickett’s voice isn’t as smooth as someone like Otis Redding, but this rough-around-the-edges performance gives his songs a grittier feel. When he sings the line “you’re the only girl I kno-oh” at the end of the second “verse,” his voice cracks perfectly as he’s reaching just out of his comfort range. I hear this like a saxophone player who plays a note slightly out of tune on purpose – it’s a deliberate gesture that calls attention to the performer rather than a “mistake.” I think Picket could croon if he wanted to croon, but instead his songs thrive on this raw energy.

It’s this paradox – the calmly paced soul vamp fueled by “raw energy” that makes the song so compelling to me. Often, we think that energetic music has to be fast (or, in some cases, rushed), and while it’s often the case, but one doesn’t require the other. Just as we can have “lazy” punk song, we can have moderately paced, high energy songs. Pickett’s vocals ooze energy, yet his band keeps the tempo from speeding up. Perhaps this only encourages him, daring him to improvise and create those vocal flourishes rather than just trying to keep up with his accelerating backing band.

On a (semi) related note, I chose “In the Midnight Hour” as a slight reference to my tendency to post my entries in the hour just before midnight (and as I write this, it’s 11:13 PM). I’ve also found at the end of this post that the song’s “paradox” applies to my writing process as well – I often find it takes longer to write than I’d like, and even when a deadline approaches (the end of the day, in my case), I can’t write any faster, no matter how energized I am. Sometimes, this is a good thing – it forces me to think through an idea rather than spew out whatever I’m thinking at that moment. Other times, however, it’s frustrating when I want to finish but can’t find the words fast enough. So as I continue to scratch out these late night posts, I’ll take a cue from Mr. Pickett and follow my band’s pace, letting my energy come out through the keyboard rather than changing up the tempo.

More on Wilson Pickett: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

TAGGED UNDER: wilson pickett | 1966 | 1960s | soul | track analysis | adm | admissions of genre-sized gaps in my personal knowledge of music |

April 17, 2009

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“Dirty Water” – The Standells
(Words/music: Ed Cobb, available on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965 – 1968, Sire Records 1972)

Before I discovered music, I consumed sports voraciously. During middle school – those awkward years in the lonely gap between the childhood friends I grew apart from and the teenage friends I was yet to meet – I watched a lot of SportsCenter replays. I used every opportunity in school to study sports. I remember carrying an oversized NBA history book in my backpack in sixth grade and writing my eighth grade research paper on the baseball strike. Even though I lost track of sports for a while in high school (yes, around the same time I started obsessing over music – my in-school reading changed from the 1980s San Francisco 49ers to Sonic Youth’s Confusion is Next biography), I eventually came back around in a more moderate way. I still have a few moments where music and sports cross paths – I remember going to my first game at Yankee Stadium in high school with my Dad and being excited because I could listen to K-ROCK on my walkman on the bus and in the stands. Even now that the baseball season’s started back up, I’ll find that during commercials of Mets games on TV, I’ll mute the sound and open up iTunes for a couple songs.

While the Mets have a few solid musical connections (Yo La Tengo, Belle and Sebastian’s song about Mike Piazza, and even Piazza’s affinity for metal), the Boston Red Sox have music woven into the Fenway Park experience. First, there’s Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” that leads the Sox fans to sing out the “bah bah bah” part in unison (a tradition that the Mets woefully tried to steal). There’s also the Dropkick Murphys’ “Tessie,” referencing a song that fans of the Boston Americans (later the Red Sox) sang while rooting for their team in 1903. The Dropkick Murphys wrote the new “Tessie” in 2004 – the same year the Sox made their improbable playoff comeback.

The most interesting of the Fenway music selection, at least to me, is the garage rock classic “Dirty Water,” a song by the Standells. I don’t know the history of the Standells’ song being played at Red Sox games (let me know in the comments if you do), but I’d like to think someone upstairs at Fenway spins the Nuggets box set of “lost” 60s rock gems. Aside from it’s obvious lyrical content (“Boston, you’re my home” probably earned this song its place in the Red Sox’s postgame playlist), “Dirty Water” plays as an archetype for the garage rock genre. The song contains two key elements – the slow moving riff that snakes its way into our brains, and vocalist Dick Dodd’s charismatic performance. Sure, he’s a little over-the-top, but with such a simple foundation, Dodd has the space to steal the spotlight. This is the part that many of garage rock’s revivalists missed – most can replicate the straightforward riffs and the aesthetic feel, but too many mistook the idiosyncratic vocals by Dodd and others to mean that they don’t need to sing. Even if Dodd goes a bit too far (and if the song topped three minutes, I’m not sure I’d let it continue), he deserves credit for charming his way into Boston’s hearts (even though the band was from Los Angeles). As a song for a specific moment (I’m going up to Fenway for a game tonight), “Dirty Water” serves its purpose and lets the crowd revel in the team’s victory.

More on The Standells: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

February 11, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“I’m Not Like Everybody Else” – The Kinks
(Words/music: Ray Davies, available on Kinkdom, Reprise 1966 & Rhino reissue 1988)

Many times, when talking about music, we throw around “subtlety” as a prerequisite for being a masterful piece of art. Many times, subtle art yields a deeper appreciation because we need to spend more time engaging it to learn all of the nuances. Many of us (and I know I’ve done this more often that I’d probably admit) make the mistake of gravitating towards something difficult over something that looks easier, in part because many of us hold the false notion that something that looks chaotic or dense requires more skill or effort. Sure, a masterpiece requires the utmost precision and skill, but it takes a masters’ touch to make something difficult look easy. Sometimes we’re duped by genius into thinking something is easier than it looks, and I think this holds true for many songs. Writing a short, “simple sounding” song requires discipline and self-editing, not to mention a moment of inspiration and the ability to act on it.

Some things are best presented directly as well. Take Ray Davies’ ode to eccentricity – “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” reveals itself in one listen – Davies proudly (and repeatedly) asserts that he’s not like everybody else. It’s not so much about what he’s saying as how it’s presented; Davies’ vocals start off like he’s having a conversation with a friend – the kind of discussion where it’s more about hearing your own ideas out loud to make sure they make sense outside of your own brain. When Davies convinces his friend (or himself), his voice swells as we proudly declares his mantra. His bandmates echo this feeling too, as the ringing guitars in the verse give way to the more forceful, tightly-arranged stomp in the chorus. As Davies gets more comfortable with his personal acceptance, the band encourages his emotional outburst, climaxing during the outro. The guitars strum frantically as Davies and his brother Dave echo each other. There might not be new wrinkles to discover after several years of listening to the song, but it’s so well put together that I’ll never get sick of hearing it.

More on The Kinks: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

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