#294: "I'll Roll with You" (2008) - Eli "Paperboy" Reed ...and after they shag and shake their tailfeathers, they'll grab their honey, get him out on the dancefloor, hold him tight, close their eyes and sway to the sweet tender-hearted tenor stylings of this Stax-music soundalike from Clarksdale (and Boston) and his crackerjack soul band The True Loves. Their children may wonder why they're dancing to this old-fashioned music, but just because it's old-fashioned doesn't mean it's old, as music this soulful and heartwarming never ages.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to present to you this year's Holland Doziers, returning champion of the Rotisserie Gold fantasy football league (RoGold for short):
Starters
QB - Tom Brady
QB - Jeff Garcia
RB - Willie Parker
RB - Fred Taylor
RB - Chris Perry
RB/WR - DeAngelo Williams
WR - Reggie Wayne
WR - Santonio Holmes
WR - Reggie Williams
TE - Kellen Winslow
K - Robbie Gould
DEF - Green Bay
DEF - Indianapolis
Bench
QB - Tavaris Jackson
RB - Andre Hall
RB - Warrick Dunn
WR - Derrick Mason
WR - Antwan Randel El
Barring any major injury to my top players at each position, as long as Fred Taylor isn't suspended for his recent arrest and as long as DeAngelo Williams logs the majorty of carries at Carolina, then I should be set for at least a return to the playoffs. Holland Doziers--to the top!
The weekend before last, I dee-jayed at a surprise sixtieth birthday party for one of my father's friends. My father was supposed to DJ, but he had a prior engagement, so I took his spot. The birthday boy's wife wanted sixties music, so my father made me a couple of mixed CDs containing a type of music he knew I didn't have much of: beach music--Myrtle Beach music.
You've all probably heard at least some passing mention of the rap rivalry of about a decade ago: East Coast vs. West Coast--2-Pac vs. Biggie Smalls. Well, four decades ago, this East/West pop-music feud began over beach music: The Beach Boys vs. The Tams. The Californians surfed, but the Carolinians shagged.* Over the course of the subsequent forty years, one side can now clearly claim victory. Many bands across the nation still play surf music, and one can still find modern incantations of it in scatterings across some (mainly college) radio stations, and Californian pop has not only been far more influential, it's also nationally much more popular. Brian Wilson may have lost his mind, but he won the war.
Most people my age and younger have never heard of Carolina/Myrtle Beach music. What is it anyway? Based on what I've records I've heard (that my dad and others have termed as beach music) since I was wee, Myrtle Beach music is mostly uptempo, containing catchy melodies, effervescent (sometimes flighty) lyrics centered around good-natured flirtation and the lighter aspects of love (l-u-v); a driving, popping, bouncy beat; punctuating horns; an organ or synthesizer (often a Moog); and ever-so-slightly muddled, let's-all-sing-together-now-and-try-to-stay-in-key background vocals that always seemed dangerously close to clipping. It was music designed for dancing (or shagging, depending on what part of the South you're from) and fun; it was frat-house music.
By the tail end of the sixties, rock & soul began to splinter, and beach music's frivolity descended into bubblegum pop; it's best songwriters either dropped out literally or figuartively, making politically & socially-concious pop folk (which would soon slip into the singer-songwriter movement); it's beat and it's horns left to mutate into the beinnings of disco and funk; and its organs stopped functioning altogether, and when organs fail, then the body dies, and that is what happened to (Carolina) beach music. It lay dead and buried for thirty years--till earlier this decade, when a few scattered bands--from the strangest of musical places--started trying to revive it (or at least some of its components). One of those bands is the British group A Band of Bees (once known simply as The Bees).
In 2004, they released their album Octopus, and the Bees filled it front to back with deliberately (though not ironically) retro American party music--Myrtle Beach music. The first single--and best song--from the album is the sublimely silly but incredibly infectious, "Chicken Payback." The song sounds as if it were recorded on analog tape and played back on a low-fi turntable. The song's lyrics are absurdly goofy, similar in structure to "The Name Game," each subsequent word playing a derivation on the previous one. The words in this song, though, use animal names, some based on actual dances ("The Monkey"), some based on imaginary ones (as I wonder how you do the donkey? Okay, please don't answer that). The lyrics are so ridiculous and childlike, that you'd immediately assume this as a novelty record if you took one glance at the words; but if you hear the music, then you'd know that these Bees take their tune seriously, and that the words here are just notes, created more for sound than for meaning, 'cause the sound is the meaning. These British Bees aim to shag--American style. On the beach. With the big honking flaming birthday cake. Sixty candles, indeed.
Oh, by the way, I know somebody else who is having a 60th birthday soon...a week from today, even. Wonder who that is?
NOTES* - The shag is the official dance of both North Carolina and South Carolina.
#296: "When Did Jesus Become a Republican?" (2007) - Cindy Lee Berryhill
This rollicking song (with the fantastic drum sound and Berryhill's humerous attempt at a Texas drawl) would have been more prescient four years ago, but with the GOP convention now in full swing, it's message is still highly apropos.
P.S. The answer to the titular question is 1980, but apparenty, former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Powler thinks God has switched sides, because, as you know, God loves to play politics.
This past Saturday, my family and I were honored to attend the wedding of one of our friends (and former student) Christy Ellis-Say Zombie Comby to some dude I don't know named Warren Ketcher. He's military of some sort, and apparently he likes to hit the links, as the wedding was held at the Dancing Rabbit Golf Course. We arrived there about five minutes before the ceremony was to begin, and we were worried we were going to be late, but our worries were abated when we happened to see Christy,
who told us that the ceremony had been delayed because somebody was still playing golf and thought that the grassy knoll behind the clubhouse was part of the course itself. We asked her if she knew the guy, and she told us that he said his name was Bob Hope.Bob Hope? Really? "Yeah," she said. We asked her what he said, and she told us that he just asked, "Mind if I play through?" She told us that she told him sure because she still needed time to wipe the sepia tone from off her dress and body. We walked through the clubhouse and out the back door quickly so that I could catch a glimpse of Mr. Hope, but alas, he was nowhere in sight. We sat down on the elegant wooden white chairs in the knoll, and we asked another guest about Mr. Hope, and she told us that he didn't tarry long. Apparently, he moves pretty sprightly for a guy who's been dead for five years.
We sat and waited, but after twenty minutes our children grew antsy, especially Georgia. Penny decided that she'd walk Georgia around to keep her occupied and to tire her out, but that didn't work; after Penny took her around the front nine, I took her walking around the back nine, and she was still wild as a tiger in the woods. Penny and I were both now exhausted, so we pawned Georgia and her big smile (see picture below) off on Nicholas.
Nicholas complied, but I don't believe he was too happy about it, as Georgia began to roar and yell, "Bob-oh! Bob-oh!" (her nickname for her brother). This embarassed him, and so he led her away from the slowly-gathering congregation. About a half hour later (not long before the ceremony began), he and Georgia returned, and Nicholas was a bit discombobulated. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that when he and Georgia were standing on the green of the third hole about to putt, a strange-looking, decrepit old man walked up to them and said, "You called?" Nicholas told the man that he didn't call him, but the man said, "Well, the little girl did. She's been shouting my name for about thirty minutes now." Nicholas asked him if his name was Bob-oh, too, and the old man told him, "Close enough."
Nicholas told me that he then asked the man how old he was. The man told him, "I don't feel old. I don't feel anything till noon. That's when it's time for my nap." He said the man's jaw then fell from his face as he started to laugh. Nicholas tried to grab Georgia to run, but Georgia grabbed the man's jaw and stuffed it down the hole. She stood over it, clapped, and said, "Bogey!" The old man stooped down, picked up his jaw, re-attached it, and said, "He's about to tee off over on the fifth--of gin!" He laughed--though Nicholas said he didn't know why--and his jaw fell off again. This time, though, Nicholas said he didn't hesistate, that he grabbed Georgia's hand and started running. He said that the old man tried to follow, moaning something about brains, but the old man finally fell into a sand pit and couldn't get up.
About this time, the wedding ceremony was set to begin, and my wife said, "I want a picture--of me!" So she did. After fifteen snapshots, she sat down, and the wedding music began (click on the play button below to hear the bridal march).
The three little flower girls--one of which was the bride's and groom's daughter--pranced up the walkway, distributing flower pedals for the bride to try not to slip on. The first half of the ceremony was short, about four feet, ten inches tall. The preacher read from the Bible, and the couple responded, but I don't know what was said, because Georgia was tugging at my hand, telling me again and again she was ready to go home, that she didn't like the Bogey man. I wasn't quite sure exactly which Bogey man she meant, but I decided to run with the idea of the threatening person lurking in the shadows to scare Georgia into staying. I told her to look all the way up at the top of the clubhouse, where loomed a solitary dormer window. I told her that inside that room was the jail, and inside that jail lurked a monster that loved to eat little children, and that those people behind the windows inside the clubhouse--did she see them now? she did--were the clubhouse police who overlooked the knoll, keeping an eye out for any child that might misbehave, so that they could lock the child in the jail and feed it to the monster.
This idea of mine worked, but it worked too well, as Georgia started crying again, this time scared of the monster inside the jail, forget about the Bogey man. I'd about had enough, so I told her that if she didn't quit crying, that I was going to feed her to the monster myself, and he would rip her apart with his teeth. She stopped her crying and started to whimper, but I think I must have spoken too loud, for when I turned to look back at the ceremony, others were looking at me, and they seemed frightened, too. Even the bride started to whimper.
In fact, Christy was so scared that her fiancee had to hold her hand to go down the stairs to light a candle, for apparently the natural sunlight wasn't enough to ward off the dormer monster.
The couple then proceeded back up the stairs, and they finished their vows, but they seemed to whisper them because they were afraid the clubhouse police would take them away to...you know who. Once the preacher pronounced them man and woman, the two sucked face
and the audience erupted in cheers and in other bars in and around the Boston area. It was like a fairy tale--kinda like Shrek, in that the wedding kiss dispelled whatever charm evil held over whomever, because no one seemed to be scared anymore of the dormer monster, and that's why they all applauded. Well--almost all of them applauded. The groomsmen didn't; they cried like litte gir...uh...little babies (see, honey, I didn't say girls).
Why the tears from the dapper dons? I'm not sure, but I expect it's because Mr. Ketcher would soon be leaving for basic training somewhere in the Carolinas, and they won't be there to see their buddy off. Christy will, though, as she's traveling to the Carolinas with him. Yee-haw!
A few minutes later, my wife broke a nail trying to take another picture of herself. "Out, out damned nail!" she exclaimed, as her shutter-finger nail broke off and torpedoed into her mouth and lodged in-between her two silver-lined molars (ladies just love the bling). I caught the camera she reflexively dropped, and she told me to go take pictures of the bride and groom since she was occupied with both fingers in her mouth, looking as if she was trying to pop a zit on the back of her tongue. The bride and groom were being swarmed with talking donkeys, little wooden boys, fencing cats, and gingerbread men; so, I decided to take some pictures of my friends (and former students) that were in attendance.
First we have Angelina Mattera and Brittany Ferguson:
Next is the cutest little nuclear family (other than mine) in attendance--Drew Tubby, Denisa Isom and Child:
Then, we have the East Central Community College soccer star, Shandahl Hickman:
Finally, we have my pal and yours, the 2008 Choctaw Indian Princess, Miss Tia Faye ANDERSON:
Another friend (and former student) Bradley Isaac was also there, but my wife told me not to take any of him, since he's her most fierce rival, her arch-enemy; so, I didn't. I did manage to part the sea of woodland creatures flocking the newlyweds by shouting, "Dormer monster! Dormer monster!" long enough for to take this shot: ain't they cute!
We were all invited to the reception, but by then Georgia was fit to be tied, so we put her in the Jeep, and Nicholas tied her to her car seat. She was happy. On the way home, we asked her if she liked the wedding, and she said that she did. Once at the house, she told me she wanted to get married, that she wanted a family. I asked her if she really wanted to be a mommy, and she said she did. I asked her what mommies did, and so she went to her room, took off her dress, put on a ratty shirt, and told me to go. Oooo-kay. A few minutes later, she called me to come there. I walked in the living room, and I found her like this:
She said, "Daddy look! I'm a mommy!" I told her that was so sweet, and she said, "Daddy! Fix me juice! And when you get back--here! Rub this lotion on my feet! And turn the TV to House Hunters!"
#297: "I'd Follow You Anywhere" (2000) - Jim Lauderdale
After my weekend bender of metal, I need a breather. You know the old drunk's tale about using the hair of the dog to overcome the previous night's binge? Bunk. That only works if you were ever a member of Nazareth; for everyone else, it's just an excuse to further imbibe. I don't believe I'll fall for that old trick, and I don't feel the need to intoxicate my bloodstream with more metal right now, so I'm going to pour myself a nice long drink of country music and sip it slowly, just like Jim Lauderdale--the most prolific and most consistantly solid (and maybe even the best) country artist of the past decade--does here in "I'd Follow You Anywhere," where he concocts the perfect metal hangover cure by dropping a dedicatory ode into one of his ruggedly prettiest melodies, and surrounds the potion with a carefully galloping production of lazily-drawled vocals, reverberating electric-guitar strumming, and the curative powers of a shimmering steel guitar. It's a home remedy, and most people haven't heard of it, but it sure works just swell.
My metal mood has carried over from Friday, so much so that--for the first (and I hope only) time--I decided to add a song to the list (which meant, of course, that I had to take one off as well; so, sorry Fergie, I had to bump your humps), a song I included on my list's original incarnation last summer but excised because I felt it wasn't truly a pop song (in structure), that--while great--it's classification (though I'm usually loathe to classify music) lied elsewhere.
This weekend, after listening to the Probot album a couple or ten times, I started jonesing for more metal, and I re-discovered "Capillarian Crest" by the progressive heavy metal outfit Mastodon (whose music is sometimes as lumbering--and always as heavy--as its namesake). I played it once, and boy, I'd forgotten how loud it was, how the song just assaults the ears and the mind; it's not designed for passive listening--it demands you either pay attention or turn it off. The record runs through about a dozen changes in chord, key, time signature, and tempo. The song so rapidly and abruptly paces through these various changes that for those not used to listening to heavy metal on a regular basis, initial listening isn't completely pleasurable. It took me a couple of listens before I became comfortable enough with the song that I could discern a pattern--and that pattern--that structure*--is pop.
Most of the other songs Mastodon have recorded either don't have this pop structure, or they simply aren't as good (or as accessible, possibly meaning my listening isn't as good). Not that "Capillarian Crest" is music for the massess--it's certainly not--but once the method Mastodon employs here becomes apparent, then the subtle nuances of the song become apparent, then Mastodon's concession to pop-music structure pays off powerfully, when after two-and-a-half minutes of tough, fast, frenetic, difficult metal, the song rewards patience as it suddenly drops tempo by half and settles into a melodic, 4/4, Alice-in-Chains-style dirge, the tension immediately released, resulting in a refreshing sway...for about thirty seconds, wherein the guitars start chugging double-time and yanking the listener back up by the lobes.
"Capillarian Crest" offers a few more pop (in the broadest sense) sonic nuggets to the discerning listener: in addition to the aforementioned Alice-in-Chains bit, there's a bit of the old Kurt Cobain distortd growl in the vocals (which includes actual singing, not the nigh-inaudible screeching, gutteral, sotto voce bellows so typical of heavy metal today), a bit of the Smashing Pumpkins' layered-guitar sound, more than a bit of Rush's time-signature guitar-noodling, and for all the headbangers, there's Metallica and Megadeth-inspired guitar chugging (and the lyrics--what few I can comprehend, cop from Metallica as well).
For the serious musician, there's much to admire, as these guys--well, if my band ever grew this adept at our instruments, we'd just quit. I don't know why, but we would. Anywho, the song's not too dissimilar from hard bop/free jazz, Mastodon vamping on their guitars and drums much like Coltane did on his sax. The production--especially for a heavy metal record--is both clean and meaty, allowing for all the precise licks to come through clearly while still giving the music the crunch to knock your socks off. After a few minutes barefoot, you might decide to toss them back to the shore and come out and wade in the waves of Mastodian metal. I did. I hope to come up for air soon. If I'm not back by tomorrow, send a search crue.
NOTES*
Here's the song's structure:
Opening guitar lick
Refrain
First verse
Chorus
Solo
Second verse
Chorus
Solo
Coda 1
Coda 2
Other than the two codas, that's pretty much (give or take a solo here or there) every song on this list.
...and after they shag and shake their tailfeathers, they'll grab their honey, get him out on the dancefloor, hold him tight, close their eyes and sway to the sweet tender-hearted tenor stylings of this Stax-music soundalike from Clarksdale (and Boston) and his crackerjack soul band The True Loves. Their children may wonder why they're dancing to this old-fashioned music, but just because it's old-fashioned doesn't mean it's old, as music this soulful and heartwarming never ages.
Bob Hope? Really? "Yeah," she said. We asked her what he said, and she told us that he just asked, "Mind if I play through?" She told us that she told him sure because she still needed time to wipe the sepia tone from off her dress and body. We walked through the clubhouse and out the back door quickly so that I could catch a glimpse of Mr. Hope, but alas, he was nowhere in sight. We sat down on the elegant wooden white chairs in the knoll, and we asked another guest about Mr. Hope, and she told us that he didn't tarry long. Apparently, he moves pretty sprightly for a guy who's been dead for five years.
Nicholas complied, but I don't believe he was too happy about it, as Georgia began to roar and yell, "Bob-oh! Bob-oh!" (her nickname for her brother). This embarassed him, and so he led her away from the slowly-gathering congregation. About a half hour later (not long before the ceremony began), he and Georgia returned, and Nicholas was a bit discombobulated. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that when he and Georgia were standing on the green of the third hole about to putt, a strange-looking, decrepit old man walked up to them and said, "You called?" Nicholas told the man that he didn't call him, but the man said, "Well, the little girl did. She's been shouting my name for about thirty minutes now." Nicholas asked him if his name was Bob-oh, too, and the old man told him, "Close enough."
So she did. After fifteen snapshots, she sat down, and the wedding music began (click on the play button below to hear the bridal march).
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