5 Songs Friday, July 4, 2025
Maybe we should turn to music instead of fireworks today
The Kniters – “Cryin’ But My Tears Are Far Away” 1985 from Poor Little Critter on the Road. 1985 was a year of transition for X, as guitarist Billy Zoom had left the group to be replaced briefly by Dave Alvin of the Blasters and Tony Gilkyson. Alvin had aligned himself with John Doe, Exene Cervenka, and DJ Bonebrake on a side project called the Knitters, so while he was hanging around them more often anyway, they put out this record. Poor Little Critter on the Road was a gateway to country music for so many of us. Every song on the album was new to me, but this one was new to everybody. It was a cry-in-your-beer ballad written by Doe and Cervenka, and crooned beautifully by John Doe. I think it holds up nicely compared to all the material originally performed by country giants. It’s a great image of crying on the inside but keeping the tears at bay. And it’s basically three chords, except for a couple of sevenths on the bridge.
Boz Scaggs – “Full-Lock Power Slide” 1972 from My Time. My experience with Boz Scaggs records has been quite limited. I know the huge 70s hits, and I know the excellent soul influenced records he’s made this century, but I never heard this record before. It’s kind of a West Coast American take on glam rock or something. A luscious brief guitar riff then slashing guitars, long sultry organ chords, and a tom-tom heavy groove on the bottom. Scaggs is of course a fantastic singer, and he delivers this song about a guy willing to put up with a woman who annoys him because, well, “She got the moves . . . yeah yeah yeah.” The second verse implies the woman isn’t so happy with him, and one assumes that “She can take care of business like no woman you’ve ever seen” because he does alright in that department himself. I need to check out more of the early 70s Scaggs to see If this was typical or unusual.
Chica Libre – “Sonido Amazonico” 2008 from Sonido Amazonico. Bob Marley said, “Who feels it knows it,” so I guess I know this music really well. Which doesn’t mean I know much about it. The band is based in Brooklyn and has members from a variety of backgrounds. They got together to pay tribute to chica music, a sort of psychedelic cumbia out of Peru back in the 70s. I’ve never heard the original style, and their bio tells me they aren’t sticking merely to that influence, so I can’t say whether this sounds exactly like that. I can say the groove is sensuous and unstoppable, and the melody seems to fuse Latin and Arabic influences. It’s an instrumental delight.
Wussy – “Bought It Again” 2006 from Funeral Dress II. I was very enthusiastic about the Ass Ponys back in the 90s. When they broke up, frontman Chuck Cleaver formed this new band with Lisa Walker as co-leader. For whatever reason, I didn’t connect with this band despite enormous critical acclaim over the last couple decades. That probably explains why I never heard this acoustic version of their debut album until now, and woah! Maybe I did miss the boat. This song is driven by a pair of acoustic guitars, what sounds like electric bass, and light drums, but it’s the eventual mandolin riff that really grabs me. It’s about love ebbing and flowing between two people through a metaphor of a run down car that keeps getting fixed. Walker sings lead, but Cleaver echoes many lines, comments on others, and harmonizes on the chorus. I can’t imagine the rocking version being better than this one.
Harry Nilsson – “Nobody Cares About the Railroads Anymore” 1969 from Harry. I remember just a few years before Nilsson came up with this song visiting Union Station downtown either to pick up my grandfather or drop off my grandmother. At any rate, I was under ten years old, and the excitement in that station was still great, even if not anywhere near its heyday. But by 1969, Nilsson was right – nobody cared about the railroads anymore. Like the daughter in the song, people were flying everywhere, not riding the rails. Nilsson sings of a couple who got married in 1944, but the style of the music seems more like the 1920s to my ears – kind of vaudeville, I think. Nilsson was a guy who soaked up all kinds of American music, and he sings this old-timey number with grace and understanding, with ironic tinges.