5 Songs Jan. 19 2024
I'm betting there aren't many out there who have heard all five of these songs before - Two of them I just discovered this week myself!
The Hollies – “You Need Love” 1967 from Evolution. I return to the Hollies for a song from one of their most fascinating albums. The American edition of this record omitted three tracks from the British, and added a single, “Carrie Anne.” The British version, however, had no singles, and was entirely an attempt to go for the more sophisticated rock marketplace. This was a co-write between Allan Clarke and Graham Nash, and it’s a wonderful blend of their pop savvy – that soaring harmonized hook digs deep into the brain – and a more powerful push in instrumentation – that bass part serves as a second hook itself. (Drummer Bobby Elliott got appendicitis and only played on three songs – none other than Mitch Mitchell filled in on some tracks here, though I’ll be damned if I can tell you which ones has him; if it’s this one, he’s pretty subdued.) The guitars jangle and reverberate like a cross between the Byrds and Tommy James & the Shondells; Nash sings a nicely constructed bridge leading into a lovely horn part that sounds like a nod to Sgt. Pepper. One of my favorite things about this period of music is the way everybody was listening to everybody else and challenging themselves to compete.
The Memphis Jug Band – “K.C. Moan” 1930 available on The Best of the Memphis Jug Band. I really haven’t spent enough time with this group (or any jug band of the time, really.) This record is irresistible. With just two guitars, jug, harmonica, and kazoo backing three raggedly harmonizing singers, the band sets a mood of melancholy and hopes for the return of the lover who has just left. It’s easy to dismiss this as quaint – the jug band sound, despite a brief revival in the 60s, is one of the least familiar to modern ears. But I find this at least as enthralling as a lot of blues from the time. The harmonica and kazoo sound great together, playing their melodic commentaries around the guitar and jug rhythms. And those vocals! One man sings the first line, and then the harmonies join in for its repetition. It’s thrilling even through 94-year-old technology. I can only imagine what it must have sounded in person. The last verse features the three voices moaning in harmony, a neat effect which leaves us wondering if the optimism in the second verse is misplaced.
Bill Fay – “Fill This World With Peace” 2010 from Still Some Light. Bill Fay released a couple of records back in 1970 and 1971 – I’ve spent over 40 years working in used record stores and never seen either one of them. They got reissued in the late 90s, and this spurred Fay to record some new material. This particular song is from a double disc collection of home demos, the second disc (starting with this cut) recently recorded. “Fill This World With Peace” is haunting and beautiful in its simplicity. The background is what sounds like a mellotron or some other string machine synthesizer playing chords, and a very quiet meditative single note piano line. Fay’s vocals are drenched in reverb, and he sings close to the microphone with a single overdubbed part. “Fill this world with peace / Take the driver’s seat.” If only it were that simple, but this is no hippy dippy dream. It’s a desperate prayer to a god who has watched without action for too long. “Let your kingdom be revealed / On every window sill” is one heck of a great lyric in its own weird way.
Tom Verlaine – “Miss Emily” 1984 from Cover. After Television split up in 1978, Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd went their separate solo routes (though bassist Fred Smith stayed loyal to each of them). Cover was the fourth of five excellent Verlaine albums in a row. It’s got a more mechanical sound, considering Verlaine programmed drum machines on some tracks, and I suspect the live drummers on others were playing to click tracks. “Miss Emily” is a creepy little song about a handyman who falls in love with a (potential?) client – a typical asymmetrical relationship in Verlaine’s world of songwriting. There are no exhilarating guitar solos, but there is a hint of funk courtesy of Bill Laswell sitting in on bass here. Lots of overdubbed guitar parts show up at odd angles. Every time the major chords come in, there is a brightness that soon gets closed off. Verlaine chokes out the words, “You don’t know me or my face.” But it gets dark as he sings “When the sun goes down I’ll be your handyman.” Verlaine adds a synthesizer part near the end that sounds something like a male wordless chorus, making the whole thing even more eerie.
The Matta Baby – Do the Pearl Girl Part 2, 1967 single available on Chess Sing a Song of Soul 3. In all the 1500 or thereabouts radio shows I did, I only used a music bed once, and didn’t like it. Many of my colleagues loved to put old instrumentals down under their announcements, and it worked, though I have to say I would frequently get frustrated wanting to hear the music more clearly. This one-off single by a group virtually unidentifiable on the internet, is the kind of record that would make a perfect music bed, but which I love to turn up loud to really enjoy its groove. It’s a nice cross between Motown and Stax approaches, but with a definite Chicago jazz funk to it, too. Nothing much happens – and Part 1 is virtually the same as Part 2, but I first heard the song on this compilation which only has the b-side – but the party atmosphere never lets up. I always love the soul trope of having lots of voices in the background at the beginning of a record, and this one is a great example.