5 Songs Friday, Dec. 6, 2024

All these would be filed in the Rock bins of your local record store

Doug Sahm – “Miller’s Cave” available on the 2004 release The Genuine Texas Groover. As the album title says, Doug Sahm was a Texan through and through, and all his best music stems from that fact. (Even when he pretended to be British in the Sir Douglas Quintet, the music was straight up Tex-Mex rock’n’roll.) So what’s he doing singing this folk song from Georgia? (I actually don’t know if it’s a traditional song or a country song, or if he wrote the dang thing – it is clearly folk-derived.) I don’t care, really, because he does a great job singing about the highlights of the cave, and then the woman he loves, and then her stepping out on him with some tough guy on a Sunday morning, and then committing murder, and then going to prison, but then finally ending up lost in the cave. And, of course, there’s a nice groove to the band’s performance, too. I was lucky enough to see Doug Sahm once, though at the time I only really knew a small percentage of what made him so special.

The J. Geils Band – “Stoop Down #39” 1974 from Nightmares . . . And Other Tales From the Vinyl Jungle. Holy moley! The J. Geils Band could be so great! This cut showcases everything I love about these guys. It starts with the band going balls to the wall with Magic Dick blowing up cyclones on the harp. I think Magic Dick was the best rock harmonica player, as he took from the blues but made it pop in a different way. Then the music slows down and gets quiet, turning into a sort of Little Feat-ish funk’n’roll thing. Peter Wolf starts extolling the virtues of the woman in question, pulling metaphors from a whole bunch of old blues songs – she’s a solid sender, an all night mover, you know. The groove intensifies before you even know it, like sticking a frog in boiling water. Halfway through, Wolf shouts, “Oh, crank it!” and we get another Magic Dick solo followed by a stab-through-the-heart blast from Geils on guitar. That’s the cue to get wild, and after one more verse, there’s like two minutes of coda getting louder and faster, with horns coming in out of nowhere. It’s a magical cut, for sure.

X – “Goodbye Year, Goodbye” 2020 from Alphabetland. If ever there was a year with enough shit to make the title sentiment appropriate, it was 2020. But, of course, X wasn’t singing about that year – they didn’t know they were going to drop the first album with the original line-up since 1985 at a time we were all hunkered at home so scared and confused about Covid we were wiping down our groceries. The record sounded great, though, and this song holds up well. It’s a blistering punk rock attack, without even any signature Billy Zoom rockabilly licks to moderate it. John Doe and Exene rattle out the lyrics about an overblown celebration amid feelings of sorrow and fear. Of course, after a dozen hearings, I had to finally look up the lyrics online to understand how the words work so well. Until then, it was just a feeling of urgent exuberance.

The Windbreakers – “You Never Give Up” 1982 from Any Monkey With a Typewriter and collected on Time Machine (1982-2002). I’m trying to hop into my own time machine and remember details. My friend Dana came back from a trip to Mississippi in 1981 with love for a new band featuring her cousin Tim Lee, the Windbreakers. Maybe that wasn’t the best choice of a name, but Tim Lee and his friend Bobby Sutliff had a nice little power pop thing happening. This song, one of Tim’s, is a delightful example. The band had headed to North Carolina to record with Mitch Easter, not yet of the band Let’s Active. Somehow, the great Richard Barone (of the Bongos) stopped in to play his trademark e-bow guitar for a great solo break. It’s the kind of lyric a man around 21 years old might come up with – the girl he won’t give up on likes girls better than him. But the tune is sharp, the guitar hooks and chorus line are indelible, and the energy is fun. Sadly, Bobby Sutliff died a couple years back, but Tim Lee is still out there making terrific music, most recently in the duo Bark with his wife Susan. Also, for a great look back at the world of indie rock in the 80s, pick up Lee’s memoir I Saw a Dozen Faces.

Talking Heads – “The Great Curve” 1980 from Remain in Light. When this fourth Talking Heads album appeared late in the year, I was thrown for a loop. I had seen the band in October, 1979, when they were still a four-piece, and while they did some songs from Fear of Music which tentatively pointed in this direction, it was still unexpected that they would expand the group and go all-in on African-derived grooves. For the next year or so, I heard this record at many, many parties. This song is dense, with as many as three vocal lines going on at once. The groove is relentless, with Afrobeat polyrhythms and synthesizer vying with guitar for hooks. And then there’s Adrian Belew’s sonic whatzit of a guitar solo – rather two solos, since he comes back for the last minute of the song. It’s all mind-blowing out of body dance music, and I’ve never gotten tired of hearing it these past 44 years.