Some Songs Considered

“Wrapped Around Your Finger” – The Police 
(Words/music: Sting, available on Synchronicity, A&M 1983) 

Like many drummers, Stuart Copeland has an expansive drum kit with multiple sizes of tom toms and cymbals.  Unlike most drummers, Stuart Copeland finds ways to make every bit of the kit useful.  The groove through the first two thirds of “Wrapped Around Your Finger” isn’t complex – bass drum on beats one and three, rim knock on four (making it a sort of cousin to the “Be My Baby” beat alluded to in last week’s post), but Copeland makes it more than just simple timekeeping.  Instead, he embellishes with the high tom tom, open hi-hat, and even his tiny splash cymbal, all the while keeping a light touch.  Where a lesser drummer (or at least my recreation of this beat) might weight down the song, Copeland never overplays despite incorporating all of the different aspects of the kit.  What’s notable is that Copland doesn’t even touch his snare drum, a staple in rock music, until the chorus.

The restraint here eventually pays off, as the track shifts during the final verse.  While Sting’s lyrical turnaround – “now your servant is your master” – isn’t the most poetic of his career, Copeland’s drumming follows the cue anyway.  His light click on the snare’s rim becomes a full on snare hit on both beats two and four, essentially giving the track a “double time” feel.  While Copeland continues to embellish with little fills (and varies playing on both the middle and the inner bell of the ride cymbal – one of his favorite tricks), he essentially plays the rest of the song straightforward.  To be fair, Copeland’s shift to two and four follows Sting’s bassline, which slips into doubletime a few bars before Copeland moves over to his drums.  It’s this precise interplay in the rhythm section (not to mention Andy Summers’ always skillful lead guitar, but there’s only so much to target in one post) that made Sting’s songs come to life so dramatically during this era.  

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

“Kiss Me On the Bus” – The Replacements
(Words/music: Paul Westerberg, available on Tim, Sire 1985) 

Elsewhere on this blog, I wrote about how Paul Westerberg’s lyrics in many of my favorite Replacements songs drew on both adolescent spirit and the wisdom of hindsight.  Of course, this is only something that resonated with me once I reached a comfortable distance from my teenage years.  I first loved the Replacements as a teenager because these songs made a lot of sense when a lot of things stopped.  It also helped that these songs were often exciting, loud, energetic, and generally clever – all of the qualities I wanted to emulate even if I didn’t know how to go about doing that. 

My introduction to the band even ties into one of the quintessential teenage experiences.  I bought my first Replacements album the same day as my first date.

Appropriately (whether it’s based on the kind of teenager who becomes a Replacements’ obsessive or because you know me personally), I didn’t quite realize that it was a date until after the fact; a friend of mine convinced me to go to the homecoming dance with her, and I was too thick to read past “it would be fun if we went together.”  Regardless, I don’t quite remember why, but the afternoon before the dance I ended up at Circuit City and came home with Tim.  Whether I went out specifically to buy the record or that I had previously read about it and found it at a reasonable price, I came home and gave it my first listen on my boom box while I cleaned myself up for my first semi-formal dance.  I imagine that the giddiness in the first half of the album, particularly on “Kiss Me on the Bus” either resonated with me or fed into my nervousness.

It’s odd how memories and associations start to shift over the years.  A lot of the songs on Tim tie in to specific points in my life (“Bastards of Young” became the anthem of my aimless years, and “Left of the Dial” became my college radio show’s calling card), and the lingering memory of that first date (with no offense intended – it was a lovely evening) is the preparation for it, including coming home and putting on Tim for the first time.  The first half of side A, whether spinning on my turntable in my apartment or funneling through my earphones in the grocery store, always seems to find a way to bring a small part of me back to a time in my life where “lather-rinse-repeat” felt like the best idea in the world.

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

“Close (To the Edit)” – Art of Noise
(Words/music: Anne Dudley/Trevor Horn/Johnathon J. Jeczalik/Gary Langan/Paul Morley, available on (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art of Noise!, ZTT/Island 1984)

Art of Noise made plenty of jarring, engaging sound collages (including a one-off collaboration with Tom Jones on Prince’s “Kiss.”  Let that sink in for a minute), and “Close (To the Edit)” ranks with their best.  Their samples come from many different sources – a Volkswagon, a male vocalist repeating a single syllable, and a Yes song just to name a few.  The result is something that feels startiling cohesive despite moving in different directions.  The part where the synthesizer glides on top of the rest of the track in particular feels like a moment where these disparate sounds create the most unlikely harmony. 

The track is only part of the story.  The video is the rest of it.  When I used to get VH-1 Classic, I kept an eye out specifically for this video.  There isn’t too much to add to it (seriously, if you haven’t seen it, go watch it right now), except that the editing of the footage in a sort of semi-stop motion feels appropriate for a track that doesn’t try to hide its editing marks.  Even after countless plays on TV and YouTube, I’m still fascinated, amused, and slightly disturbed by the video – enough that I’m going to be quiet and let it speak for itself.

(If you’re interested in reading more about the samples used, or about how the Prodigy used the “hey” vocal sample in their “Firestarter,” the Allmusic entry and Wikipedia entry are good places to start).

More on Art of Noise: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” – The Smiths
(Words/music: Johnny Marr and Morrissey, available on Hatful of Hollow, Sire 1984)

Three mildly connected thoughts about The Smiths and this song:

1. By the time I started buying albums, the “single” served one of two purposes.  The first, more traditional version, the one where a band recorded a couple songs and put them out on a 7” (or CD, or cassette, or now on iTunes) as a completed project.  Generally, these were the punk bands that weren’t on my radar in the mid-1990s.  Then, there was the idea of a “single” as the track being promoted off the album – the one that got the video and maybe a CD single with a remix or one rarity.  I started digging into music during the era of the overstuffed album, so save for a shoebox of CD singles that I acquired for curious reasons, I didn’t buy singles until I started buying vinyl.  Thus, the notion of a band like the Smiths as a “singles band,” one who had a singles collection out the same year as their debut album, was one I had a hard time wrapping my head around at first. 
2. As lovely as it is, the definitive version of this song for me is the Dream Academy’s instrumental version during the Art Institute scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Even without words, it underscores the melancholy beneath the scene’s playfulness, whether it’s the look of silent despair that Cameron shares with the blank-faced girl in Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte or the fleeting moment Ferris and Sloane share underneath Marc Chagall’s America Windows.  I also appreciated that an oboe (I think) replaces Morrissey’s voice, even if I might have picked a lower woodwind like a bassoon to replicate his voice.
3. My favorite bit of the song comes right at the end.  Johnny Marr plays a mandolin with unexpected speed.  The quick strumming alone feels jarring, but the tone of the instrument blends well and gives the song an appropriately sweet coda.  Before it reaches the two minute mark, the whole thing gently fades away.

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

“No Surrender” – Bruce Springsteen
(Words/music: Bruce Springsteen, available on Born in the U.S.A., Columbia 1984)

This statement would probably make Bruce Springsteen’s day: I’ve largely explored Springsteen’s catalog the same way I’ve explored Bob Dylan’s output.  My most concentrated listening to both Springsteen and Dylan occurs when I want to hear a certain song, which then points me toward an entire album.  For instance, cravings for “Tangled Up in Blue” lead to an hour with Blood on the Tracks, or the desire to hear the “Meeting Across the River / Jungleland” sequence leads to an immediate play of Born to Run.  If their catalogs are a diverse, highly regarded restaurant menu, I tend to order the same dishes even though I’m confident I’ll like a lot more than what I’ve already tried.  With these records, it leads to the dual sense of embarrassment and excitement of making a late discovery.  I might feel foolish for only coming around to Blonde on Blonde recently, but it also means that it’s a new, exciting record to digest.

This is my experience with “No Surrender” a couple years ago.  Simply put, it never registered on my radar, as I spent far more time in other parts of Springsteen’s catalog.  It most likely caught my attention when I wanted to hear “I’m On Fire” and I let the album continue playing.  The driving rhythm and the quick yet effortless way Springsteen tosses off each line hooked me more than the words, but there’s still a part of me that completely understands the “we learned more from a three-minute record, baby / than we ever did in school” line.  Tonight, I’m keying in on the way Springsteen rhymes at the end of his lines – sometimes it’s every other line, sometimes it’s consecutive lines, and sometimes it’s three out of four lines rhyming.  It’s the type of rhyme that doesn’t call attention to itself.  Instead, these rhymes help link these lines together and, in a strange way, make them feel like they move even quicker.  In the context of an album with an extremely dated sound, “No Surrender” manages to convey its urgent tone and driving feel beneath the booming production.  I’ll probably keep listening to it on a semi-regular basis until I get the urge to order off a different part of the menu.  

More on Bruce Springsteen: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” – R.E.M.
(Words/music: Billy Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe, available on Reckoning, I.R.S. 1984)

The story goes that I never slept an entire night as a baby until my brother was born in October of 1984.  At that point, Pete took the crib and I moved to a bed and I started sleeping.  For those first eighteen months, my mom would sit up with me in the rocking chair in their living room and watch TV.  MTV was one of her favorites, probably because there was little else on overnight in those early days of cable, and thus even to this day claims familiarity with anything MTV played, no matter how weird or obscure, from 1983 to 1984. 

Fast forward roughly a decade and a half – I’m still watching MTV late at night (usually by choice, often through tapes of 120 Minutes the following morning) and I’ve started scouring through R.E.M.’s fairly expansive back catalog.  This includes finding a used copy of the Succumbs VHS in order to see all of the band’s videos.  Each video carried an element of familiarity (after all, I knew these songs as well as I knew anything at that age), but the visuals – often surreal, often extremely dated – were a new experience to absorb.  Except for the video for “So. Central Rain” – for whatever reason, the silhouettes of the band members behind a shaggy-haired Stipe seemed strangely familiar.  It wasn’t until a few years later that I arranged all of the pieces in a way best described as unlikely and apocryphal.

Still, it’s worth asking – did I recognize the “So. Central Rain” video from those late nights as a baby?  Was it possible that my first memory, even if I couldn’t associate it with a time, was of a music video?

I’ll be reasonable – this is wishful thinking at best.  However, the facts all align: I was already a year old when the single came out in May 1984, and if I really slept as rarely as my mom tells me, chances are we saw this video a few times during those late nights.  A decade later, in the time between New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Up, I grew to love the band, starting a life-long love and borderline obsession with music.  Is it possible that my tastes, whether specific points like R.E.M. or just general predilection for jangly, wordy, melancholy music goes back to the sounds and pictures that accompanied my newborn insomnia? 

Chances are this is a case of my brain constructing memories where there are gaps, letting “what-if” gradually twist itself until theory becomes personal folklore and personal folklore becomes history.  I accept the improbability of this chain of events and recognize that it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. 

At the same time, a tiny part of me wants to believe this version of history.  After all, how perfect would that be?

(On a historical note, Blender had a nice feature a few years ago that serves as a small oral history of the song, starting with its genesis from a weather report and including its performance on David Letterman’s Late Night before it had a title and the aforementioned video’s live vocal track.  It’s certainly worth a read!)

More on R.E.M. : Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Billie Jean” – Michael Jackson
(Words/music: Michael Jackson, available on Thriller, Epic 1982 / “Billie Jean” Single, Epic 1983)

The “Billie Jean” single came out about a month before I was born (and Thriller about a month before that).  A few months later at the Motown 25th Anniversary Special, Jackson effortlessly unleashed his signature Moonwalk during a performance of the song.  As I entered this world, Michael Jackson seized control of popular culture.  He remains the biggest pop star of my lifetime, for both the positive and negative reasons.   I say “pop star” because I only thought of him as a musician later on.  For most of my youth, I knew Jackson through his videos – ones that seemed more like mini-musicals or really short movies to a young kid.  These powerful visuals (and let’s be honest, Jackson’s shifting visage) only made Jackson seem more supernatural – more like an otherworldly character in these films rather than a real person. 

Maybe it was the larger-than-life presence behind the songs, but many of Jackson’s singles had this otherworldly feeling to them.  “Billie Jean” in particular still sounds eerie – not in the same prosthetic-creepiness of the “Thriller” video, but from all of the odd sounds in the recording.  The synthesizer hums at an eerie pitch (in the unconventional key of F# minor) while multi-tracked vocals echo in alternating speakers.  These oddities come out under this close scrutiny, yet from far away “Billie Jean” rides a flawless groove and near-perfect melody.  It’s this combination of perfect pop and tortured psyche that Jackson bounced between during my lifetime – often treading too deep in either glossiness or the grotesque – that made him compelling.  Let’s face it – at his highest moments as well as his lowest, it always felt like he was from some completely different realm. 

(Also, I don’t usually do this, but if you’re interested in some of the more interesting trivia regarding “Billie Jean,” such as Jackson recording his backing vocals through a cardboard tube or Quincy Jones’ aversion to including it on Thriller, the Wikipedia entry on the song is a great read)

More on Michael Jackson: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Blue Monday (Single Edit)” – New Order
(Words/music: Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, available on Power, Corruption, & Lies (U.S.), Qwest 1983 / “FAC SEVENTY THREE” 12”, Factory 1983)

I don’t know for sure, but I probably hated drum machines at one point in my life.  If nothing else, as a flesh-and-blood teenage drummer, I’m sure I hated the idea of a machine giving a song a pulse.  I’ve long since warmed to drum machines (and would love to own one, to be perfectly honest), and the first step toward this must have been “Blue Monday.”  I have strong memories attached toward replicating the opening drum sequence (kids – it’s a good practice warm up if you move that rhythm around the kit!) and reluctantly tolerating Orgy’s late-90s take on the song because “Blue Monday” is too good of a song to let a little Nu-Metal ruin it.  Without a doubt, it led me to the Substance collection out of the used bin, which led me deeper down the New Order / Joy Division rabbit hole. 

With no disrespect intended toward the rest of the song (I happen to love Bernard Sumner’s deadpan articulation, and the song is far more melodic than I often remember), the drum machine seizes the spotlight.  The signature fill belongs in the Drum Fill Hall of Fame (let’s talk about that another time, shall we?) and remains as memorable as any other licks – guitars and synths included – of the era.  The payoff of this fill is in its quickness – it’s quickened pace makes it feel even faster than its two bars – and the rapid return back to the song’s groove.  Where others (“In the Air Tonight” immediately comes to mind) might work better in isolation, the “Blue Monday” fill works well with its surrounding material.  For example, this summer I heard a DJ repeat this drum fill over (at least) sixteen bars without building up to anything substantial.  It was too much work with too little payoff – all he had to do was drop the needle on the fill and let the rest of “Blue Monday” spin itself and the crowd was his.

EDIT: In a reblog, morgenstern shares this interesting tidbit: 

In a recent interview Bernard Sumner stated it was a moog source on bass and a SCI Prophet V on top. Synth purists shake their head at the source, but it was a sign of the times. Personally i think the combination of moog bass and prophet leads is just perfect.

More on New Order: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Kiss Off” - Violent Femmes
(Words/music: Gordon Gano, available on Violent Femmes, Slash / Rhino 1983)

When I was in college, “Kiss Off” became one of my favorite sign-off songs on my college radio show.  The seeds for this idea probably go back to two sources – the first being a solid live version on MTV’s 120 Minutes Live compilation that I played to death in high school, and the second being Ethan Hawke’s cover of the Femmes’ “Add It Up” in Reality Bites.  I only offer that Reality Bites suggestion because I once erroneously swapped out “Add It Up” for “Kiss Off.”  “Add It Up,” particularly through Hawke’s character, wielded a more focused anger.  On a more general level, I identified more with the scattershot frustration in “Kiss Off” – the anger without a clear target.  This plus a near flawless bridge – the part where Gano counts up to ten, letting his anger build with each step – made it one of my favorites. 

It always felt right as an ending to a set of songs – not just because of the idea of a “kiss off,” but because it felt like a strange sort of relic from my past.  Maybe I’m inclined to immediately tie it to the past because it literally came out at the beginning of my life, but I suspect an easier explanation.  This song represents a feeling I could only recognize after the fact, one that “Hollywood” Steve Huey of the Allmusic guide captures in his track review:

The starry-eyed longing for popularity that’s nearly universal in teen flicks then and now is nowhere to be found here; there’s tremendous pain in rejection, of course, but the adversarial relationship between “in” and “out” is by no means one-sided. There’s sort of a justified paranoia here, in that the singer expects to be treated with undisguised contempt, and often is. Yet in the midst of all this pain and confusion, he draws a curious strength from his acceptance of (or, perhaps, resignation to) the torment. There’s a real certainty to his place in the social structure, and it provides a clear identity that can be defiantly accepted (if not quite embraced).

Looking back, that certainly captures a period of time in high school, and everything about the narrator – the raw tone, lucid articulation foiled with clumsy slips of the tongue, and the spinning of spurning as a badge of honor – brought me back to those periods of time where it was easier to demonize everyone else rather than try to fit in.  Thankfully, “Kiss Off” is more than just raw emotion – Gano had a knack for melody and composition, making it possible to enjoy this from a comfortable distance without having to get back into my fourteen year-old mindset.

More on Violent Femmes: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“And She Was” – Talking Heads
(Words/music: David Byrne, available on Little Creatures, Sire 1985)

If I asked you to ignore the audio box at the top of this post and the two lines identifying the song and album and start listing off Talking Heads songs, I’d imagine that most of you would go through a decent number before getting to “And She Was.”  I’m not condemning that because I’d be the same way.  I suppose it’s more to point out that we levy more attention toward the band’s more complex beginnings, be it the eccentricities of their first couple albums or the Funkadelic-borrowing juggernaut the band became in the early 1980s.  These recordings require effort to untie and ultimately reward this close scrutiny with new wrinkles gradually revealed over time.  Naturally, spending more time immersed in Remain in Light puts those songs in more immediate memory.

That being said, the art of “And She Was” lies in the minimal attention it demands.  This isn’t a whirlwind of Adrian Belew or a twisted string of words.  Instead, David Byrne (who started to elbow out the rest of his band by this point) put all of the pieces together with the same care that the band assembled previous records, only this time with brighter and lighter tones.  The arpeggios in the verse ring brightly, the wood block pops during the chorus, and the electric guitar turns up at just the right point at the end of the song.  Even Byrne’s vocal tics find a place in the song, most notably in the “has” and “hips” in the final chorus.  However, it’s the unbridled joy in Byrne’s voice in the repeated “hey”s in the final pre-chorus that perhaps best characterizes the song.  The band wrote plenty of simple songs (“Thank You for Sending Me an Angel,” “Heaven,” and “This Must Be the Place,” to name a few), and even if “And She Was” doesn’t rival the band’s most artfully constructed compositions, it deserves a place in the discussion of the band’s greatness.  Or, if you’re anything like me, it deserves more recognition for the number of times I turn it up in the car and sing along.

More on Talking Heads: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Darklands” – The Jesus and Mary Chain
(Words/music: Jim and William Reid, available on Darklands, Warner Brothers 1987) 

It’s a strange endeavor to approach a band’s catalog when it’s complete (or, at least seems complete – who knows with the JAMC).  There’s the compilation route – and the Jesus and Mary Chain have an excellent one titled 21 Singles that makes an incredible case for this band as a singles band – but in many ways a compilation feels like cheating.  It almost seems too easy to fall in love with a band with all of their best songs immediately put in front of you, and sometimes it makes delving deeper into the catalogue harder.  Then there’s the approach of asking for starting points.  Sometimes this is quite useful, but it also demands that you consider the source as well.  So when asking about the Jesus and Mary Chain, you’re likely going to be told to start with Psychocandy, and I’m not going to argue with that starting point.  I will, however, admit that it’s not my favorite Jesus and Mary Chain album (and, given my run of songs over the last year and a half, that probably isn’t a shock).  Based both on play count and gut instinct, Darklands comes out on top for me.

Many of my feelings about the Darklands album also explain why I love the title track.  “Darklands” captures the Reid brothers at their most tuneful.   I understand and respect the appeal of the earlier and more chaotic songs on Psychocandy, but I’m far more inclined to the gentle sweetness and tinges of melancholy in these songs.  Of course, this is easy for me to say looking at their catalog as a whole, especially considering that I’ve never seen one of their loud, chaotic, and confrontational shows.  Still, it’s hard to deny the charm in “Darklands,” whether it’s the gentle jangle or the way William Reid’s voice toes the line between gruff and brash and gently beautiful.  It may be an outlier when looked at the band’s work overall, but it’s hard to deny a guitar jangle employed so perfectly. 

More on The Jesus and Mary Chain: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Generals and Majors” – XTC 
(Words/music: Colin Moulding, available on Black Sea, Geffen 1980) 

I played the drums for a long time, and while I was pretty good, I was never great.  I spent so much of my focus staying on the beat that I never really earned a love for the off beats.  Yes, the most important part of a drummer’s job in most cases is to keep time, but so much goes on off the beat.  Whether it’s the way that the snare hits sit “in the pocket” slightly late to make the groove seem a little wider or the way a stick on the cymbal a split second before a downbeat accelerates the pulse, the much of the art of drumming occurs outside of the beat. 

So in “Generals and Majors,” a song with many wonderful parts (the whistling, the decrescendoing breakdown), the hi-hat on the upbeats grabs my attention more than anything else.  Even if the bass drum and snare make a louder and more noticeable sound, the quick flick of Terry Chambers’ wrists on the hi-hat sound light and playful.  They also create the illusion of a quickening pace; the beat remains solid throughout the entire song, but the portions with these upbeats somehow feel quicker.  These anticipatory notes lead into the expected on-beat notes.  Chambers’ beat here isn’t particularly revolutionary, but it is well executed and gives “Generals and Majors” the extra jolt of liveliness that makes it memorable. 

More on XTC: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Precious” – The Jam
(Words/music: Paul Weller, available on The Gift, Polydor 1982) 

By the end of the Jam’s run as a band, Paul Weller expanded his songwriting chops past the mod-punk of their first few albums.  “Precious” is neither the best nor the most progressive of the Jam’s late period singles, but it’s perhaps the most immediately startling.  The wah-wah drenched guitar dominates the early part of the track, and its slight delay seems strange from a band that usually draws on crispness and rhythmic intensity.  Instead, “Precious” creates a funky haze using repetition to an almost trance-like effect.  If other singles felt like they were moving quickly, this one feels like it’s settling in to a comfortable groove.

That being said, “Precious” isn’t an amorphous fog of guitar effects.  Instead, it builds on top of the funky guitar with layers of defined rhythm.  The fast hi-hats and snare on the fourth beat foil the seemingly free-floating guitar line and anchor it to the song’s pulse.  However, the most rhythmically sound elements come from unlikely sources – the horn section and the vocals.  The horns hit with the clipped precision of a big band by adding rhythmically interesting figures.  Rather than provide harmony or melody, the horn section changes up the pace with a clearly defined line on top of the hazier guitars.  Weller takes a cue from these horns by marrying his vocals to the beat as well.  He gives his lyrics the same sort of clipped turns in phrasing that the horn players give their notes, and while the melody is nothing to dismiss, my ears key in on how Weller sings it rather than what notes he sings. 

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

“Somebody Got Murdered” – The Clash 
(Words/music: Topper Headon, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer, available on Sandinista!, Epic 1980) 

There’s a lot of power in word choice, particularly in the use of the right word in the right place.  For example, one may call the Clash’s Sandinista! album eclectic and diverse while others may call it scattered and unfocused.  All four descriptors technically fit – it’s a double album that continues deeper down the band’s different stylistic fascinations – yet suggest different feelings toward the album.  Regardless, “Somebody Got Murdered” provides one of the album’s more straightforward anchors.  I thought about deeming it “pop punk,” but that term carries such strong associations today that don’t really do the song justice.  However, it’s an apt descriptor, as its melodic charms and tight arrangement put this song up with the Clash’s best work and some of the best power pop of that era.  It’s not as adventurous as some of the other tracks on this album, but it makes up for it with its infectious qualities and efficient arrangement.

This idea of word choice extends into the song as well, specifically with the word “somebody.”  Jones uses the word throughout the song rather than giving his characters names.  While this might seem like a cop-out at first, this anonymity relates directly to detachment from the anonymous deaths that fill the news daily.  By naming victims, they become real deceased people.  As anonymous figures, they dissolve into statistics.  Jones’ story evidently draws on a real experience, but the experience extends beyond the nameless victim he encountered.  Whether they remain nameless because we don’t want to know the names or because we aren’t provided them, it’s easier to move past something so horrific when an identity isn’t attached.

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

“The Waiting” – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
(Words/music: Tom Petty, available on Hard Promises, MCA 1981) 

One of my first dates with my girlfriend Jenny was to see the band Rilo Kiley in Providence.  I drove two hours to meet her there without knowing if I’d have to drive home that night or if I had a place to stay because it was so early on that assuming these kinds of things wasn’t an option.  Regardless, I got up to Providence early, in part because I over-compensate for long car trips and quite honestly I was excited to see her and got out of the house quickly that day.  Due to the erratic nature of public transportation, Jenny ran late, so I found myself parked in the coffee shop of a chain bookstore waiting for her to arrive.  This was, for several reasons, one of the few points in my life where I actively wrote in a journal, so I was in the habit of spending idle minutes writing.  So I started riffing on a napkin (my journal was elsewhere) using the title line from this song as a jumping off point.  The gist of it, from what I remember of it at least – it’s been a while, was that waiting can make the even that much better.  More specifically, I didn’t mind waiting a little longer if it meant time with Jenny.

It’s worth stressing that this line was out of context, as Petty’s song doesn’t focus on the dreadful wait.  Most of the song is on the ease of being with the person he loves.  Even if the complete spectrum of Petty’s narrator wasn’t on my brain that day, our brains were in the same place – specifically, that the eventual result made the anticipation even better.  Roughly two years after that date (and two years after our first one), it’s this ease of being with Jenny that marvels me the most.  Having her in my life makes any waiting period - whether the years I waited to meet her or just the time between seeing her again – worth it. 

It’s appropriate that Jenny gets post 501, as the first five hundred wouldn’t have happened without her constant encouragement and inspiration.  If everyone needs his or her own cheering section, Jenny’s love and support feels like a sellout crowd every night.  I hope I can return the favor for her. 

More on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm