A week late for the Platinum Jubilee weekend, but hey-ho - 'Get A Job' by the Silhouettes is nonetheless pretty apt when the British royal family are at the forefront of the mind. However, I submit that 'Get A Job' can be enjoyed at almost any occasion (bar funerals, maybe?), not just those moments when you're ruminating as to why a nation kowtows to a bunch of inbred ne'er-do-wells.
I don't know much about doo-wop - next to nothing, really - so I cannot pretend to have any great insights. To me, there's an appealingly loose feel to the harmonising; whether that's due to the relatives prowess of each Silhouette or the imbalance in dynamics (the bass voice sounds overpowering) I can't say. Whatever the case, this slightly ramshackle feel is to the song's advantage, marrying up nicely with the hard luck story of the narrator.
On the one hand 'Get A Job' feels reasonably conventional; a three-chord trick punctuated with a bombastic saxophone solo, as was de rigueur. There are glimmers of something else shining through, though - the refrain of "Dip dip dip dip dip dip dip / Mmm-mmm-mmm" stands out, even in an age of zany vocal effects. The "Sha-na-na-nah" backing the underpins each verse might even be more revolutionary; not only is this possibly the origin of this oft-imitated (in doo-wop) hook, but it also inspired the name Sha Na Na. Consequently, a straight line can be drawn between the Silhouettes and the third president of East Timor.
Another touch that feels modern is the dropout, leaving the vocals backed by nothing more than drums and handclaps. A slightly more wonky line, the, could be drawn between 'Get A Job', the 'Amen Brother' drum break and modern hip-hop. Am I reaching here? Perhaps, perhaps, but I'm hearing something potent going on.
That, for me, is the crux of what makes 'Get A Job' so exciting; it feels like the moment one river begins to flow into another, a mingling of currents. One one level it's simply a fun, wry pop track delivered in a fairly gusty manner, but between the lines you can hear the future calling out. Grand stuff.
Provenance: I have mentioned before that my dad's Zappa fandom continues to echo through my musical tastes. What I probably haven't mentioned so much is where we diverge. Although my dad's favourite albums are probably mine, too (we're talking Overnite Sensation, Hot Rats, Apostrophe here), I certainly have more patience for the jazz-oriented stuff. Oh, and I really like 1950s doo-wop and rock 'n' roll, which makes me the perfect mark for Cruising with Ruben and the Jets.
Review: For those not up to speed, this is the Mothers of Invention playing dress-up - in 1968 - as a 1950s combo. It's the music they grew up listening too, but the passage of a decade must have seemed remote enough, in musical terms, that there was mileage in the notion. And the Mothers weren't alone - a year later Sha Na Na would debut with a schtick entirely around recreating the doo-wop phenomenon. In the 1970s, perhaps as a bastard offshoot of glam rock, the UK caught the bug with bands like Darts and Showaddywaddy. And what is the Rubettes' 'Sugar Baby Love' if not a hyperreal recreation of the doo-wop sound? Were Mud, with their matching wide lapels and spoken-word middle eights, a thousand miles away?
Still, arguably, Frank Zappa and his mates were the first to breathe life back into the 1950s, but Cruising... is a peculiar record. One leaves with the impression that Zappa loved the music, but can't quite come down off his perch to play it straight. That would be too earnest, too po-faced by half. Which is a great shame, because it feels like every time the Mothers get close to producing something heartfelt and beautiful, there's a discordance or sneering that sours the deal.
As a consequence, the full effect of swooning slow burners like 'Love of My Life', 'Fountain of Love' and the wonderful 'Anyway the Wind Blows' are undermined with a mocking condescension, usually with some silly falsetto or bass vocal. Sadly, these aren't the only crimes to report.
To prepare Cruising... for release on CD in 1984, Zappa (in full control of the Mothers catalogue) decided to re-record the rhythm parts with Arthur Barrow and Chad Wackerman providing new bass and drum tracks respectively. Well, it sounds shit - farty, rubbery bass tones and crispy, plastic and utterly unsympathetic percussion. For an album that sets its stall out to recreate a particular era, to have these anachronistic sounds pulsing through the mix takes you as listener right out of the moment. Bring back Jimmy Carl Black (but not Roy Estrada).
(Incidentally, pre-everything being available on the internet, I saw the Grande Mothers whilst a university student. I would hazard that the Grande Mothers are probably the Zappa tribute act with the highest convicted sex-offenders-to-band-members ratio going. Probably. I even got a photo with Estrada. Sheesh.)
A pity, a pity. There are moments where everything works - 'Cheap Thrills' is fun, bouncy and irreverent in a way that bespeaks fondness, and 'Jelly Roll Gum Drop' is a fizzy showstopper that celebrates the inane potential of doo-wop lyrics in exactly the right way. And hey, it's nice that Zappa cuts loose with an outro guitar solo on closer 'Stuff Up the Cracks', just to remind you that you're not listening to an authentic forgotten relic from the Golden Age (a gag that would've flown better without the terrible 1980s overdubs).
Hey, it's still a decent listen and a bit of a curio, if somewhat ephemeral. Ray Collins' voice is great. Shame that, in places, it's utterly hamstrung by its creator. On purpose! You get the impression that Zappa hated pop music, deep down - and so, that being the case, why should the listener care either?
Provenance: Yet another from my Toronto haul. Never been a huge fan of Stray Cats but this was cheap and I'm partial to a little rockabilly now and then.
Review: Stray Cats fall into that weird category of purist revivalist music that saw acts like Sha Na Na and Showaddywaddy gain footholds in the culture at various times, despite no real explanation for it. True, the 1980s did see some of the OG rock 'n' rollers hit chart gold as their music was exhumed for movies and adverts; am I underestimating the power of nostalgia?
Unlike their near contemporaries The Cramps, Stray Cats play it straight. Which, on the one hand, is admirable, but on the other makes for a fairly monochrome listening experience. The vast majority of the tracks on Best of... are built from a foundation of bass, drums and guitar; I almost punched the air when, two-thirds of the way through, I heard a fucking saxophone. Oh, and Slim Jim Phantom (top tier name by the way) plays a drum kit consisting of snare, bass, hi-hat and crash cymbal, a minimalist approach that no doubt played well to the greasers and ensured no Neil Peart style histrionics.
This short, ten track compilation kicks off with the Stray Cats' most recognisable, and arguably best, song, 'Rock This Town', which is a genuine shack-shaker that makes all the right moves. The next track though - '(She's) Sexy & 17' (gender in parentheses, presumably so nobody gets the wrong idea) is a little noncey, in a Chucky Lee Byrd way. Also, two tracks in and I'm bored of Brian Setzer's weedy voice. I'm almost bored by his guitar playing, which trades creativity for period fidelity. Luckily, numero tres is a great doo-wop number called 'I Won't Stand In Your Way', which reveals that Setzer is much better playing the sap than the tough.
A shame, then, that a chunk of the Stray Cats oeuvre which appears here is predicated on them being a bunch of flick-knife wielding alley bruisers. Setzer's lapdog yelp doesn't cut it on 'Stray Cat Strut' or 'Rumble In Brighton', not even when backed up by his two goons, who look like they have acromegaly or rickets or perhaps both.
The collection reaches a nadir on 'Gene & Eddie' (that's Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochrane to you plebeians), a song that both quotes from and utterly mangles the work of those two doomed genii. It's the kind of concept I tend to despise, with the exception of ABC's 'When Smokey Sings' and maybe Nils Lofgren's 'Keith Don't Go' (depending on which way the wind is blowing at the time). Both hagiographic and tautological, just once I'd like one of these 'tribute' songs to give their subject a proper shoeing. Actually, Stray Cats shouldn't have bothered at all, considering that a few years beforehand, Ian Dury & the Blockheads had produced the far superior 'Sweet Gene Vincent', which deals with the legend in a much more interesting and playful way.
There's not a huge amount that's wrong with this, especially if you like wearing leather jackets, fashioning your hair like a duck's arse and pretending that slapback echo is the pinnacle of music production. Sure, at one point they nick a line from a Lazy Lester tune, but that's the business. Sometimes Lee Rocker walks up the neck of his upright bass, sometimes down it. Slim Jim speeds it up and slows it down. Brian Setzer plays his Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore riffs with aplomb. The Best of... is a slick, adroit bit of graverobbing, which has its moments but is too in thrall to rock 'n' roll's golden age to be more than a curio.
Provenance: My brother bought this for me as part of a three-album set of Todd Rundgren's Warner Brothers releases.
Having dwelt a fair bit on some pretty straightforward classic rock releases, I asked my brother what I should review next. His suggestion was A Capella, which certainly fits the bill of being a wee bit left-field, because...
Review: ...every sound on this album was created using Todd Rundgren's own voice. It's not entirely free of instrumentation - the liner notes of this release note the use of the Emulator sampling keyboard, which was deployed to manipulate those sounds into chords or percussive noises. On the other hand, this was put together back in 1984 and used entirely analogue recording techniques.
Of course, a capella performances are nothing new. The phrase 'capella' derives from the Italian 'chapel', and so the root of unaccompanied singing in western tradition is linked to sacred choral performance. This gives me a good excuse to embed the following video, which I regard as rather remarkable:
In African-American traditions there is, of course, gospel; its own overt religiousness hardly proving a barrier to becoming popular, both in the past and epitomised by modern ensembles such as Sweet Honey in the Rock. (NB - for a provocative take on the origins of gospel, jazz musician and academic Willie Ruff has got you covered, claiming that its roots can be found in Hebridean line-singing.)
Cutting across ethnic lines, although again beginning in African-American communities, the doo-wop explosion of the middle of the 20th century began with corner singing, though instrumentation was often added in the studio. Typically, doo-wop groups would feature a lead tenor taking the melody, a bass voice to provide rhythmic underpinning, and a combination of high tenor leading down to baritone to fill out the backing sound, going 'top to bottom' in range. Hit up groups such as the Orioles, the Moonglows and early Drifters if you want a taste. I haven't even gotten onto barbershop quartets, floor singing in folk music, field hollers, or non-Anglo ensembles such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo - but the world of vocal performance is rich and varied.
However, what Todd Rundgren has done here feels almost ridiculous. My first reaction, when my brother told me about the concept behind A Capella, was "why go to all the bother?". Especially if you're going to mash and twist your vocals through a series of electronics just to produce the desired effect. On reflection, I have an inkling that it was precisely this ability to manipulate sound in such a way that appealed to Rundgren; that, and the sheer challenge of creating such a weird album. For someone who has genre-hopped his entire career, it does seem of a piece.
The best thing about A Capella is how damn fun it is. Opener 'Blue Orpheus' is absolutely stunning; the audacity to produce something that sounds so startlingly odd still has me laughing every time I hit play. I can't easily describe it; perhaps like a cut from Yes' 90125 album, if Trevor Horn made the band ditch their instruments. It's all the more remarkable that it has such a strong melodic sense, the lead vocal soaring over a backing more multi-layered than anything Queen or 10cc ever managed to conjure up.
Indeed, even after repeated listens, the sounds leaping from the speakers can still surprise; the chorus to anti-war paean 'Johnny Jingo', on its last pass, is overwhelming in its immensity. The effect is dimmed a little on the ballad 'Pretending to Care' and the only cover in the collection, if only because it's are the kind of song one can imagine performed on piano in a nightclub or cocktail lounge; low-key, and only a slight shuffle away from being sung unaccompanied. Nonetheless, the curtain of wordless 'oohs' and 'aahs' Rundgren stitches together to recreate what might've been a lush string arrangement is killer.
My personal favourite on A Capella is 'Hodja', a dizzying admixture of doo-wop and gospel, its meticulous creation shot through with a lively sense of spontaneity thanks to some delightful scat singing. Some of the joints on this piece are pretty tough to categorise - 'Lost Horizon' is Sensual World era Kate Bush meeting So's Peter Gabriel crossed with the shiny white soul romanticism of Hall & Oates. Meanwhile, 'Something To Fall Back On' sounds like one of Kenny Loggins' dancier numbers, if he had the Bee Gees backing him up. I'm at a complete loss as to how Rundgren was able to recreate the organ on this track, given the technical limitations he was dealing with at the time (though, of course, actually at the time, Rundgren probably found the Emulator to be an incredible, labour-saving piece of kit).
As each track unrolls, one can't help but be awed at Rundgren's facility and expertise, even if the song doesn't quite strike home. I'm not overly keen on either the Bloody Mary fable 'Lockjaw' or 'Miracle in the Bazaar' and its cod-Orientalism but these are rare moments of filler, and in fairness 'Lockjaw' did sound like fun to put together (but - if it was just a few notches less goofy it could easily have been a cut from a late-era Tom Waits cut). 'Honest Work' is a touching and poignant folk ballad, that's the 'straightest' thing on A Capella and I can't figure out whether it would benefit from a more maximalist approach or whether it would ruin the sentiment. The confection ends on a high, the bouncy, joyous 'Mighty Love' (originally by the Detroit Spinners, the only cover here) taking us home with gospel-inflected soul power.
What a peculiar artefact A Capella is. It certainly stands out as unique in my collection, if only because nobody else that I rate would be bonkers enough to put in the Stakhanovite effort. In any other hands this would be 'experimental' (=unlistenable) but Rundgren has too keen a pop ear to fall into that trap. A dazzling, baffling testament to a singular and restless genius, I can't recommend A Capella enough.
I imagine that we've all been asked for our top five - or ten - favourite songs at one point or another. It's a fun, twisty little question that allows you to reveal something about yourself by degrees. It's also one that I associate with my younger days, simply because I haven't been asked that question for years. That is, until my friend Helen put it to me this week.
Although we have convergent tastes in the realm of rock 'n' roll and 1960s pop, Helen and I seemingly differ on a whole lot. So, in order to really dig into what tickles each other's vental tegmental areas we swapped our favourite five (soon expanded to ten) songs and agreed to listen to them critically. Now, we all know that ten 'favourite' songs is an impossibility, as environment, mindset and memory all come to bear on making one's choices. Nevertheless, a selection of ten or so well-regarded songs is, in my estimation, more than a glimpse through the window to a person's soul - so without further ado, here are the first five tracks Helen chose, and my commentary.
Smile - Nat King Cole
I was more familiar with this song's backstory - that the music was written by Charlie Chaplin, and it was one of Michael Jackson's favourites - than the tune itself. The first thing to say is that it is the perfect match for Nat King Cole's effortless crooning, his warm, sad voice perfectly matching the bittersweet lyrics. In that sense, 'Smile' is a triumph - the concept being matched exquisitely by its execution.
To modern ears the instrumentation might sound a bit slushy, but to me it evokes a golden age where it was commonplace for three-minute pop to be treated with the utmost care and respect. So strings swell, woodwinds trill and swoon and a drummer brushes away unobtrusively in the back, providing Cole with a lush backdrop for his inimitable baritone. Sumptuous.
You Don't Know Me - Ray Charles
On to the second song of Helen's selection, and there are similarities with 'Smile' inasmuch as it features yet more baroque orchestration, this time with the addition of a mixed-voice choir. An unhurried torch song, 'You Don't Know Me' is distinguished from Cole's song by the vocal delivery. Where Cole's voice, untutored as it was, nevertheless came from the jazz clubs, Charles' vocals went to church (NB: it's never that simple though, is it? Cole's father was a Baptist minister).
As with much of Charles' oeuvre, that standout element of 'You Don't Know Me' is the barely restrained passion in the delivery of the lyrics. Despite being written by outside writers, the way Charles is able to get inside the viscera of the song is a minor marvel in itself.
George On My Mind - Ray Charles
Wow - even better than the other Ray Charles song in this list. It's one of those tracks, like those cut by Brooke Benton, Glenn Campbell and latterly Tony Joe White, that feel so big and widescreen that you're surprised to find it's only three or four minutes long.
That easy roll of the piano, the way he switches moves between major and relative minor keys, the vocals cracking with emotion - let's just say this is how the big boys do it. The string arrangement in 'George On My Mind' is something else too, intricate without being fussy, blossoming in peaks of high emotion one moment, dying down to allow the piano to breathe in the next. Pop music has rarely sounded this sophisticated since.
Runaround Sue - Dion
If your hearing faculuties are fine and you don't like this crackerjack my suspicions are that you don't possess a pulse. It's got all the stuff I like - five fucking chords, saxophone squalling away in the background, backing vocals that take a cue from doo-wop and a guy that knows how to belt it out. Helen called this a 'slut-shaming classic' half-jokingly, and I imagine if it were released today there'd be an article on medium.com within five minutes decrying it as 'problematic'.
I don't care. Songs like 'Runaround Sue' form one of the main arterial routes away from the beating heart of rock 'n' roll; the smoother, citified version hustled away from its southron birthplace by a bunch of inner-city punk Italian kids. It's an absolute gas. The opening lines speak of a story "sad but true", but nothing sounds further from the truth, given the sheer, giddy ecstasy of its delivery. 'Runaround Sue' is scintillating.
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do - Neil Sedaka
Oh, I know this one! Yeah, this is cool. 'Breaking Up Is Hard To Do' adheres to a template for a certain kind of song produced during this era - speed it up and there's 'The Night Has a Thousand Eyes' by Bobby Vee, slow it down and beef up the strings and there's Gene Pitney's 'Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart'. Like 'Runaround Sue', 'Breaking Up...' glories in a doo-wop schooled backing vocal that's every bit as irresistible as it is moronic. The handclaps that accentuate the rhythm are delicious, and herald the latter-day self-conscious bubblegum of a song like 'Sugar, Sugar' by the Archies.
For all the crushing heaviness of Electric Wizard or Sleep, I'm never not going to be a sucker for the unadulterated head-rush of 1960s pop music. I can see why 'Breaking Up...' would be on a list of favourites - it does nothing particularly brilliantly, and does it brilliantly. There's a strange kind of virtuosity in turning out a song so simple and yet so addictive. If this is the musical equivalent of junk food, I want to gorge until I get a coronary.
Well, that's the first five! I'll probably do another album review or two before I tackle the second half of Helen's selections. I've enjoyed this so far, and I look forward to - let me just get my phone out - New Found Glory and, er, McFly, amongst others!
