Television – “Call Mr. Lee” 1992 from Television. It has become common parlance that the debut album by Television, Marquee Moon from 1977, is among the most remarkable records ever made. This has served to keep their second album, Adventure from 1978, and their reunion record, Televison, way under the radar. But Television was a perfect blend of euphonious personalities. Tom Verlaine wrote the songs, carefully structured musically and mysteriously abstract lyrically. He and Richard Lloyd traded off intricate guitar solos and crunchy riffs. Fred Smith and Billy Ficca combined on bass and drums respectively, throbbing and pulsating and spacious in the rhythms. “Call Mr. Lee” is one of the best songs they ever did as a group. It’s some sort of spy thriller setting, where an agent is trapped but he thinks another can get away and call the fixer of the organization. And those guitars ripple and cascade when it’s time for solos, first by Verlaine, and at the end by Lloyd (my best guess, anyway – the two were often good at fooling me.) I finally got to see this beloved band when they toured behind this album, which remains an all-time concert experience highlight of my life.
Dion – “Donna the Prima Donna” 1963 single, available on Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings 1962-1965. When I was five or six years old, my mom ordered from the Montgomery Ward catalog store a box of ten 45s for some low, low price to give me for Christmas. By mistake, she wound up actually getting ten boxes of ten 45s, which she doled out to me once per month over the following year. There were some pretty forgettable records in there, but some I still cherish. This was one of them. At the time, I loved it because of the novelty that Dion was singing about a girl with the same name as my cousin. When I grew up, I realized both that Dion DiMucci was (and presumably still is) one of the most expressive and technically brilliant singers in rock’n’roll, and that this song is just so damned clever and fun. Yes, fun, even though he’s bewailing the fact that Donna broke his heart. There are those insistent male background singers chanting “Donna Donna the prima donna,” and the regular woodblock beats over the shuffling drum kit, and lyrics like “She always wears charms, diamonds, pearls galore / She buys them at the five and ten cent store / She wants to be just like Zsa Zsa Gabor / Even though she’s the girl next door.” And of course, we can’t forget Dion’s wailing cries, a last gasp of his doo wop roots, or the upper register bridge with its matter of fact declaration, “Without any money, there goes our romance.” A pop music gem!
The Hollies – “Survival of the Fittest” 1970 from Moving Finger. The Hollies had always been a pop group, singing richly melodic and infinitely catchy songs about love sprouting under umbrellas and looking in at windows. Graham Nash had been itching to change that, and in fact had given them one of their most interesting songs, “King Midas in Reverse” back in 1967 to try to compete with the changes the Beatles and the Stones and the Kinks were going through. That didn’t hit, and by the end of 1968, he was out of the band, on his way to America and a group with the initials CSN you may have heard. Before he left, though, he co-wrote this song with mainstays Allan Clarke and Tony Hicks. Apparently he even sang on the original recording, but his vocals were replaced by newcomer Terry Sylvester. It’s a song about the emptiness of fame, sung about a female pop star but probably reflecting Nash’s own feelings about the songs his band was singing. The record strikes a nice match between the familiar Hollies harmonies and a somewhat funkier rhythm section and lead guitar. There’s a great drum break featuring a cowbell, which always makes a record better.
Jenny Lewis – “Acid Tongue” 2008 from Acid Tongue. Somehow sixteen years have elapsed since I heard this record all the time at my day job. That was my introduction to Jenny Lewis, and still my favorite album by her. This sparse song takes an insistently strummed guitar and pulsating bass, and lets Lewis reveal her truths (despite the fact that the first use of the hook, which changes words with each verse, is “You know I am a liar”). I love the way the male chorus responds to her calls, repeating key words and phrases here and there. She sings of the differences between repairing a hole in a shoe and a hole in a soul, of the difference between dropping acid and finding a lover, and of the similarities between the habits of loneliness and of cigarettes or drugs. When she sings the hook – second verse it’s “We built ourselves a fire” and third verse it’s “And now I am tired” – she manages to soar and break at the same time, no mean feat.
Mary Lou Williams – “Praise the Lord” 1964 from Black Christ of the Andes. Mary Lou Williams is one of the most underrated figures in jazz history. She was a woman who could play piano and compose as well as the best of her male peers at a time when women in jazz were primarily relegated to singing. This album in 1964, like many of her records, is a one of a kind work of “sacred jazz” released on the Folkways label. I imagine the hard swinging and dense gospel patterns of some of this record might have thrown off the Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly fans who bought whatever they saw on the imprint. The lyrics, which she speaks with a righteous and inflamed spirit over the propulsive piano, bass, and drums, are pulled from a variety of ancient hymns and psalms. You can feel her belief even if you don’t share it, and either way, you can dance to this.