occasional dream, one

On my just completed trip back to New York City for the Thanksgiving holiday, I had occasion, once again, to contemplate the magnificence of David Bowie, from his early days as Davy Jones, a maker of somewhat canned sounding Mod pop, up through songs and albums released within the past ten years. I wrote somewhat extensively (and turgidly, truth be told) about Bowie on my previous blog, which I discontinued in the midst of my 19th nervous breakdown. I was focused back then on albums, but in the time since then I’ve become much more interested in thinking about specific songs apart from the albums on which they appear, so I think I might occasionally post a few thoughts on Bowie songs that continue to capture my imagination, even after all these years of hearing them again and again and again. …Bowie is one of the few artists for whom I will make exceptions to my growing intolerance for explicitly conceptual music, progressive rock, and songs that are hard, heavy, and/or stretched out and windy. …Nowadays when people meet me and ask me what kind of music I like, I tell them that I like guitar-driven pop, and David Bowie. And in a strange twist of taste, it’s precisely when Bowie is at his poppiest that his music is least compelling to me. I’m thinking here of what I regard to be his roughly decade-long ‘lost period,’ spanning from Let’s Dance up to but not including Black Tie, White Noise. I would also include his Tin Machine albums with the lost period. I don’t know why he ever thought it would be a good idea to go grunge. …I had an opportunity to speak with my sister at some length about Bowie while I was staying with her in the Big Apple, and one of the things we both marveled at is that, in spite of the dizzying diversity of musical styles that Bowie has either adopted and made his own or, in some cases, pioneered, there’s an overarching unity to the body of work as a whole. I’m talking here about a David Bowie sound, as it were, a distinct musical thrust that glues together everything from his earliest Swinging London recordings onward. I gave a lot of thought on the flight home Monday to how to articulate the nature of this sound more precisely. More than anything else, I think it comes down to common melodic structures. I looked up a bunch of Bowie guitar tabs on the internet the other night and, sure enough, there are certain things he’s done repeatedly from the very beginning to his most recent recordings. I’m not a musician, so I can’t really describe what he’s doing technically except to say that he’s quite fond of Major 7th chords, and he often likes to substitute a minor chord for a major chord even though the latter would be more conventionally appropriate. I think these compositional tendencies are what give the music its distinct feel, one that’s at once forlorn and ethereal. His songs generally have very unusual progressions with plenty of weird chords or little surprises that take things off the beaten path, much in the same way that you tend to get with the Beatles. And it’s the strangeness of the music, it’s flair for the unexpected, that makes it so enduring. It occurred to me yesterday that the David Bowie sound is generally dissonant, but perhaps part of his genius lies in his capacity to make dissonance sound catchy and infectiously tuneful. …Much of this is, of course, merely mental masturbation on my part, but what else would you expect? I am and always will be Bowie’s biggest fan, not least because his music is so rich and meaningful and thought provoking both in form and content. I just wanna know everything there is to know about how the songs are conceived and executed, what the approach is, who the players are, what the vibe is like in the studio, and how it all reflects some larger social, cultural and/or historical context. I’ll see if I can get at some of this in a weekly feature, an occasional dream, at least for as long as I have the energy.

Originally, I wanted to start out with a few Davy Jones recordings, but I couldn’t find any on Youtube, nor could I find any from Bowie’s 1967 debut as Bowie, so the first one comes from Space Oddity, which is actually a very interesting collection of songs. The music is undeniably based in folk, and there are quite strong hints of the direction he’ll go in for The Man Who Sold the World. The recurrent melodic tendencies I alluded to just now are already in place. The song is the work of an exceedingly English, somewhat posh space hippy, searching for a stable identity and perhaps coming to the realization that stability is far too ordinary for someone with his talent and predisposition…

c'est moi

Phil Seymour’s reinterpretation of Looking for the Magic is the complete power pop package. It’s punchy, perky, androgynous, tart ‘n fruity, and has a deceptively driving beat that makes the whole thing feel coked up, 80s style, but which also gives the song a teenybopper vibe that conjures up images of young girls having a squealing pillow fight. I love the original version of the song, but I think I love Seymour’s rendering more, even though there’s something a bit chipmunkish about it, no doubt an effect created through varispeeding the tape up a few tones. I think what keeps the song from sounding wimpy is that, along with having a great voice – one that manages to sound simultaneously from the Heartland and from the heart of Hollywood Boulevard – Seymour is also a fantastic drummer, not in the ostentatious sense of Neil Peart or Phil Collins, but more along the lines of Charlie Watts or Phil Rudd, guys who just get a full, resonant sound that makes it ok to place the drums very prominently in the mix… As always, there’s also the song’s sentiment, which when combined with its sound makes it just about as irresistible as music can get. The opening line sucks me in right away. All my life I been lookin’ for the magic. Yes. That’s me. It’s my fatal flaw, perhaps, but that’s me! And I have to believe that I’ll ultimately find the magic, because the alternative is simply too dreary. You can’t look for something your whole life and never find it, can you? Or maybe looking for it – for meaning, for redemption, for love, for completion – is enough. Maybe the magic lies simply in the faith that it exists and can be found…

remembering

I know it probably seems sometimes like my blog is little more than a Dwight Twilley fan site, but I just uncovered some footage I’d never seen before of the band (featuring Tom Petty on bass) pretending to play one of my favorite songs. …I think it’s Twilley’s innate grasp of the relationship between pop and heartbreak – the former tending to have the latter built into it – that explains why his music moves me on such a deep level. The theme of tonight’s song is memory. We spend so much of our lives reflecting on the life we’ve already lived. Or at least I do, especially of late as I try to make sense of a short but particularly intense and strange chapter in my life’s journey. When Twilley and Phil Seymour hit the song’s climactic high note, I remember you, it puts me in touch with the way loss can turn what were life’s tender moments into painful memories. The thing that made you so happy is gone, so remembering it leaves you with a chilly emptiness. You get over it eventually. Time heals and gives the clarity that comes with perspective. You come to understand that maybe you weren’t so happy after all. But tonight’s song is sung from the point of view of someone who’s not yet healed. The memories haunt him. If only he could step into a time machine and get a do-over. He’d do a few pivotal things differently, say things he didn’t say the first time around, and not say things he did say but shouldn’t have. But there’s no time machine, no do-over. There’s only memories, which with some distance lose their jagged edges. The events and the people you experienced them with fade away, much in the way the song fades, the main difference being that you can play the song over again. And you will…

elevator going up...

I’m not among those who dismiss the Association as muzak. It’s not that they’re not muzak but rather that muzak needn’t be rejected out of hand. The stuff serves a useful purpose. It calms you down as you anticipate the pain and then dulls the pain when it finally arrives. What’s wrong with that? I think of stuff like the Association and Burt Bacharach as music for folks who were in their 40s and 50s during the 60s, guys like my dad, hip enough to have his finger on the pulse of the now, somewhat, and who might even take a puff off a reefer if it was passed to him at an au courant party, but who would be totally out of place at a love-in. …When the Association are waved off, it’s usually on account of this, but also this, as well as this, and even this. I think all those songs are terrific. Each of them are quasi-muzak tunes, but they’re distinguished by their intricate production and arrangements, their sweet ‘n sticky melodies, and harmonies that are among the most perfect I’ve ever heard. And a lot of their music does indeed put you into a numb trance, awake yet asleep, a state that can be quite soothing under the right conditions. You might just find that you want the elevator to keep going up, up, up, past the second floor (ladies accessories and apparel); past the third floor (menswear); past the fourth floor (linens and cookware); then through the roof and into outer space. Keep the elevator door shut and the compartment ascending higher and higher, up up and away in my beautiful balloon… What’s interesting about the Association is that they eventually assimilated psychedelic motifs. And when psychedelia meets elevator music, the result is sunshine pop. Tonight’s song attests to the excellence of this fusion. It’s certainly one of the more psychedelic songs the Association ever performed, yet it maintains the morphine-like affect that so much of their music offers. It’s the dreamy harmonies that’ll stay with you more than anything, like the first brilliant rays of the early morning sun slowly burning off the overnight fog…

open wide

I found Nick Decaro’s cover of I’m Gonna Make You Love Me on a sunshine pop compilation I bought a few years back. I thought it was so completely wrong the first time I heard it, but now I’ve come around to thinking that it’s actually on par with the original. The two versions are very different in tone and execution. Decaro gives the song a lounge/muzak interpretation. It's strange for sure, but somehow it works, though I could swear I hear the high-pitch whir of a dentist’s drill squealing ever so slightly in the background. The affect is casual and blurry, almost narcotic, and it makes you feel the way you do after the first gin and tonic kicks in. And then there’s the song’s sentiment, the force of will one tries to impose when in the throes of total infatuation. In Diana Ross' hands, you truly believe that she’s gonna make him love her, yes she will, yes she will. But when Decaro sings it, you’re not so sure. You wonder if it’s the liquor talking, expressing the brazen self-assuredness on the way up that, on the way down, will inevitably turn back on itself and become little more than the empty wish it really is...

"sunshine" pop

I'm fascinated by guys who continued to craft great pop music after the tide had turned decisively to rock. That they did this, though, doesn't always mean that elements of rock were eschewed altogether. Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul both have thematic strands that unify the songs, which to me is a sign of the onset of the self-important rock mindset, but they're both also great pop records... My taste is such that the music's meaning gets lost if it's dragged out for too long. Can you think of any song that conveys its meaning more effectively and directly than I Want to Hold Your Hand? I sure can't. ...Curt Boettcher is one of those 60s figures who stayed true to pop. There's not a great deal of information available on him, but he's another guy I would credit with inventing sunshine pop. Along with producing some of the Association's greatest singles, he released two amazing albums of his own, one called Begin under the heading of the Millennium, and the other called Present Tense, released under the name Sagittarius. The latter album, produced by Gary Usher, is tragically under appreciated. I would characterize it as archetypal sunshine pop, yet it has some of the conceptual unity I was talking about just now. I suppose that in the wake of Sgt. Pepper's it would have been almost impossible to make a record where the focus was on the parts instead of the whole. But if you break Present Tense down into its parts, it has four or five bona fide classic pop songs, all replete with lush orchestral textures and lovely multi-layered vocals. The session players are not credited on the album sleeve, which is frustrating because the playing is outstanding. ...What I've started to realize about sunshine pop is that the name can be quite deceptive. Often times the stuff's actually pretty sad. Maybe it's just because of where I'm at right now, but today's song really got to me this morning, especially when Boettcher sings but you'll understand another time, so I guess I'll save my breath. It's the kind of line that seeps into your chest and moves up into your temples, and then you have to struggle to hold back the tears. It's such sweet pain, and I can't make up my mind right now whether to embrace it carefully or run from it as fast as I can...

go and beat your crazy head against the sky

If you pressed me on my favorite 60s pop bands, the Lovin’ Spoonful would be right up there with the Beatles, Beach Boys, Byrds, and Left Banke. I think it’d be fair to say that the Spoonful laid down the initial prototype for what became known as Sunshine Pop, which is self- explanatory, I think. Even the most cynical, miserable, beaten-down person in the world can’t help but smile when Do You Believe in Magic comes on the radio. It's magic if the music is groovy, it makes you feel happy like an old-time movie... The great thing about the Spoonful, though, is that they evolved, adopting a slightly more serious vibe as the 60s progressed with songs like Summer in the City and Younger Generation, but they never crossed over into rock, insisting instead on keeping the music and the arrangements pleasingly nimble. John Sebastian later became a little more pretentious and ‘heavy’ as a solo artist, but that’s what people were doing at the time, so it’s hard to fault the guy too much. I give him the benefit of the doubt if only because he was such a gifted songwriter and performer. …Tonight’s song is my favorite Spoonful song. I love the way the horns and strings build, but the climax owes more to Burt Bacharach than it does to Sgt. Pepper’s. Like I said, the Spoonful never got overly serious or self-important. But this doesn’t mean the song can be dismissed as disposable, middle-of-the-road trash. Not at all. Its tone is at once, wistful, wise, and compassionate, expressing a degree of human understanding and connectedness that’s rare in music of any kind. It’s lovely in at least a dozen different ways, and it’s just the kind of thing I need right now…

chasing the dragon

Undiscovered pop gems are a double-edged sword for me. Few things in life give me more pleasure and satisfaction than turning someone I care about on to something they’ve never heard before, especially if they really dig it. But it’s also frustrating when it’s so clear that an artist deserves so much more than cult status amongst a small handful of maladjusted pop geeks who live for nothing so much as familiarity with things that are otherwise hopelessly esoteric and obscure. This is precisely how I feel about the late Tommy Hoehn. I love it when his great LP, Losing You to Sleep, is playing in the background and a friend says, ‘wow, who is this?’ It’s happened on more than one occasion. But then I feel sad for poor Tommy. If only things had played out a little differently, he might have received the love and respect and adulation he so richly deserved. He’s another one of those artists with whom I have to tread very carefully at the moment. He has a beautiful if also quite unusual voice, high and magnificently expressive. His songs are tuneful and hooky as can be, but the hooks convey an undeniable pathos, and when you combine them with his voice in that upper, yearning register, it leaves you with a sense of unrealized dreams and deep, painful sadness. His work is another example of beautifully tragic music, and putting this type of thing within my grasp right now – and perhaps at any time – is akin to giving a junkie a roll of tin foil, a lighter, and a two-pound bag of Persian White. Chasing after that elusive moment of transcendence is a risky proposition, one that’s bound to lead you down some dark corridors and potentially into the abyss. And yet on some level Hoehn’s music is reassuring. It’s likely to make you sad, but in doing so it confirms that you’re alive, that you’re not sleepwalking through life, and that you’re not a member of the living dead. Its music for those who are blessed with the capacity to feel, to love, to put it all on the line and maybe get hurt, yet who also know that at some point they'll draw the Ace that makes all the bets that didn’t pay off completely worthwhile. OK, with all this talk of Persian White and pulling Aces, this is starting to sound like some Garcia-Hunter dreamscape, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, just not quite the vibe I’m going for here….The Tommy Hoehn selections on Youtube are quite limited. It gets to that negative aspect of undiscovered pop gems I was just talking about. So I hope you’ll forgive me for re-posting a tune I already talked about a few months back. On the plus side, it’s a fantastic song, with its big, dramatic sound and intense emotionality. When the tambourine kicks in and Hoehn sings ‘say goodbye’, you might feel a little overwhelmed if you’re at all like me. But be brave. Collect yourself and let yourself feel. It’s life. It’s worth it…

pop rock

Pop will get you through the bad stuff life throws at you. For me it’s pop, and friends, and writing, and playing the guitar, and my beloved cat, Vito, who’s put up with a lot from me lately but remains just as loyal to me as he ever was. …The other day I pointed out that Substitute is a nearly flawless song, and it got me to thinking about my favorite pop songs of all time, not in a Top 100 kind of way, mind you, but more free form. That’s where my mood is taking me to now, with my net cast widely so as to catch anything that makes me feel good, and whole, and connected… A few months back, when I was in an entirely different frame of mind, I wrote a few words about Blue Ash, one of the great, unheralded bands of the 70s, but I was so wrapped up in other stuff at the time that I gave them short shrift. Like Vito, they deserve so much better. They’re a remarkable band. The sheer volume of delightfully tuneful songs they recorded - songs with incredible melodies, great guitars, soaring harmonies, and generally groovy vibes - will make your head spin. When Blue Ash are at their best, it’s obvious that they love what they do, almost as much as I love hearing it, and you just wanna make ‘em a part of your life because their songs leave you feeling so young and free and energized, even when they’re about heartbreak. And believe me when I tell you that they have a few songs, like the one I’ve posted tonight, that you need to be careful about playing if you’re not in an entirely good way. I was listening to tonight’s song on my way to work this morning, and when Jim Kendzor sings, ‘And I don’t know why, but you really sent me a-reelin’… I mean, jeez, I dunno. Lines like that may not be the best thing for me at the moment, but I can’t help myself because hearing it feels so fucking good somehow. But it hurts, too. A friend asked me last weekend if I’m in love with the pain. I’d hate to think this about myself, but maybe. Maybe there’s a masochistic side to living the pop life. Pop is intrinsically tragic, after all, though it also offers redemption and rebirth. Around Again has an unmistakably tragic vibe. There’s something about the way the piano carries the melody that really gets to me. It’s pretty subtle but, man, it has me teetering on the razor-thin line separating ecstasy and abject sorrow. It’s not an emotional space I care to dwell in for too long. It’s ok for short visits. But the song is also sung from the point of view of a guy who loves again after having been convinced he’d never be able to. I find that comforting and hopeful, even if the song’s overall ethos leaves you with the impression that, in the end, things will turn out the same way this time as they have all those times before. At least he’s capable of going around (and around) again. The accumulated disappointments never completely snuff out his capacity to love, his willingness to take a chance and to dream. That’s the part of the song I really clutch onto and savor. It brings a smile to my face at a time when the smiles aren’t coming so easily. …Blue Ash are a bit of an anomaly in that they’re a pop band, but there’s a smidge of Southern Boggie that creeps in here and there. It’s weird because they’re from Youngstown, Ohio, which I don’t think is even considered to be in the region of the state that most resembles the South. (The last few elections have imbued me with an appreciation for the ‘two Ohios’, one part of the state where the cool people live, like the guys in Blue Ash, and one part where the redneck Bible thumpers live). I mention this because I like Blue Ash least when they ‘lapse’ – for lack of a better word – into the R&B boogie thing, and I like them most when they sound like Ohio’s answer to the Beatles. Had I produced their records I would have advised them to be less Stonesy, less bloozey. Dispense with the meatheaded shit. Accentuate the pop, even if you can’t help straddling the divide between pop and rock. I guess that’s the thing. Blue Ash make pop rock, and when they lean heavily towards the former, there’s very little else that’s as lovely, affecting, and inspirational…

PS - Wouldn't you know it. The song I just rhapsodized about so passionately is not available on Youtube, and I don't possess the technical skills to figure out how to upload the song from my computer. So instead I've posted Bad Actor, another great Blue Ash gem that basically traverses the same emotional terrain as Around Again. If you're curious about Around Again, it's available on the iTunes store for less than a buck. A dollar might change your life. Do it!

the simple things you see are all complicated...

After a long period of dormancy, I've started playing the guitar again. I find it very soothing, something to help mend my broken heart. I only wish I'd develop emotional calluses as hard as those that have re-emerged on my finger tips. I mention this only because I’m currently teaching myself the main riff from Substitute, and my efforts have reawakened me to what a great song it is. I think it might be the best thing the Who ever did, next to Eminence Front... But all kidding aside, Substitute is about as close as the Who ever came to recording a flawless pop song. If the received wisdom is true and Pete Townshend was the first to coin the term power pop, then I think it's fair to say that Substitute is the prototype. The song's riff is so perfect in its simple, direct immediacy. And I like the way the main guitar in the song is acoustic, which gives things a lovely mid-60s folk rock vibe. ...I’m not usually a fan of Keith Moon’s drumming – it’s generally too frantic and wild for my taste - but the layers of percussion in Substitute, and especially the prominence of the tambourine, are wonderfully satisfying. I know it’s a song everybody’s heard like a gazillion times. But if you really listen closely, unpack the song's component parts, and then reassemble them in your mind with newfound appreciation, you can almost get back to the amazing feeling that overtook your body the very first time you heard it…

the world's greatest rock 'n roll band...

It's a cold and wet Sunday evening here in the Southland, but I'm keeping warm with some luscious music directly from the heart of the pop life: Mark Johnson... Orange Humble Band... Utopia....Tommy Hoehn...the Rubinoos... Those who say that the Rolling Stones are the world's greatest Rock 'n Roll band have obviously never spent any quality time with the Rubinoos. I've never been able to figure out why they weren't huge. It's an injustice. If Pop Life Unlimited were in charge, the Rubinoos would be living in a mansion at the top of Mulholland, Platinum Records lining every wall, and a view out over the expansive electricity of the greatest city in the world. It's weird that they're from Berkeley. Their sound has a light finesse I don't associate with the Bay Area at all. The harmonies are so tragically pretty and affect me in the same way as the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys, except that the songs have the tiniest bit more of an edge. Maybe it's that edge that kept them out of the charts, but it's what draws me in and makes me wanna hear their songs over and over again... I can't recall whether I posted The Girl earlier, but it's from Party of Two, a five-song EP produced by Todd Rundgren and with the guys from Utopia serving as session players. I especially dig the bottom end of the harmony in the chorus and the House of Mirrors-esque synth, but the best part is the pleading in Jon Rubin's voice when he sings, 'but if you knew her you'd understand...' It's great stuff, and it's a great way to get back into the swing of things. Enjoy...