Johnny Cash – Bitter Tears: Ballads Of The American Indian

I have to make a bit of a confession about this particular entry. Though this album is one of Johnny Cash’s best and most important, I actually forgot up until recently that I hadn’t already written about it, but in listening to and studying this album further, I’m even more aware of its importance in Cash’s catalogue, and how it represents something I hadn’t touched on much with Cash, and that’s his Indian roots, as told in his 1964 album Bitter Tears:

When it came to his ancestry, being part Irish and part Cherokee Indian was such an important thing to Johnny Cash that it colored his songwriting all throughout his career. Thus, it was equally important, in the first few paragraphs of his second autobiography (entitled “Cash“), to share his recent findings regarding his true ancestry. As it turns out, Johnny Cash’s ancestry was almost 100% Scottish, and could be traced back to the 11th century. Still, despite the truth about where Cash came from, it didn’t change where he had been, and one of those places was among his Native American brothers at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890. There, in 1968, he performed songs from this album for a crowd of the people he was speaking for, and made a comment that I always liked, “I’ve got very little Indian blood in me, except in my heart, I’ve got 100%”.

It’s interesting that this album, which to my knowledge is the first (possibly only) “Country” album by a white guy that was fully dedicated to the trials and tribulations of the Native Americans came at the time it did. The period of the mid-60′s, in America’s history, was marked by protests, division, riots, and lots and lots of folk music. It’s interesting to me that Cash didn’t do an album about civil rights or anything like that directly, instead choosing to put a spotlight on a history of genocide and rape and pillage that most people aren’t even aware of to this day.

To hear Bitter Tears is to hear the dark, austere, and almost vengeful side of Johnny Cash as he passionately speaks out in that deep voice of his about the destruction of the Seneca nation in Pennsylvania in the song “As Long As The Grass Shall Grow”, and the spite in his voice as he cackles at the defeat of General Custer in the song “Custer”. The popular “Boom Chicka Boom” sound of Cash’s albums up to this point is almost entirely missing in all but two songs (“Custer” and “White Girl”), replaced with a somber acoustic guitar and light percussion, with Cash being joined by The Carter Family on many tracks. In this way, the album lacks the fun of most of his other albums up to this point, so the thing was kind of a shock to the Country radio guys. In fact, a lot of stations refused to play the singles from this particular album, which caused Cash to throw the accusation that they “wallow in meaninglessness”, which is kind of a strange phrase when one considers the radio of today for which such a statement is one of the obvious. Really though, I can’t exactly side with Cash for blaming the radio for not playing songs from this album; the songs are just too dark for Country radio, and they only really work well in the context of this album.

The meaning behind Bitter Tears is actually two-fold. Cash was speaking the truth, as best as he could manage, with his songs about the horrible treatment of the American Indian, but on a larger scale, he was speaking to the oppressed everywhere, serving up examples of the black heart of men in power and somberly mourning the people who fell victim to that greed. Of course, history can be interpreted many different ways by many different people, so a lot of the content of Bitter Tears are kept to a fact-only basis, rather than dealing with something fictional and thus meaningless. Indeed, Ira Hayes was a real person, and so was Chief Cornplanter, the man with which a treaty was signed that guaranteed the ownership of the Seneca land between Pennsylvania and New York “as long as the grass shall grow”,  which was broken by John F. Kennedy in 1961 (yeah, Cash didn’t have to reach too far back into history at this point). The stories more or less speak for themselves, and their accuracy (at least as far as I’ve studied) is indeed respectable.

One of the reasons for the album being so “accurate” was the intense amount of study that Cash put into making the album, and the assistance he was given in writing the majority of the songs from a Hopi Indian named Peter LaFarge. Peter was an intense scholar of his tribe and all the other Native American tribes and knew just about all there is to know about their displacement. He was no slouch when it came to songwriting either, in fact he might have gotten his biggest break from his work with Cash if he hadn’t died less than a year after the Bitter Tears album was completed.

Interestingly, Cash met LaFarge through a mutual friend named Ed McCurdy, while in the throes of drug addiction. McCurdy and LaFarge were also addicts, and Ed gave Cash some pointers on how to handle himself with the drugs, though LaFarge decided to chase down some Dexedrine with too much Thorazine and took a 4 day nap. When he woke up, he and Cash became friends and started working together to create the album. Wonderful how drug-induced comas can bring kindred artists together, eh? Either way, I’m pretty sure it was party tricks like that Dexedrin + Thorazine nap that eventually killed LaFarge, I guess Cash was more fortunate in that regard.

Either way, Bitter Tears is a brilliant album, and despite Cash being nearly at his worst as far as drug use goes, the performance on the album is solid and memorable. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was Cash’s most important album, but it’s right up there, and it’s certainly one of the best examples of his dedication to quality, especially considering the rate of albums he was cranking out at that time.

On a personal note, unlike Cash, I actually am of Irish heritage with a good portion of Cherokee Indian and have studied them before. A fascinating character I ran across was Sequoyah, who single-handedly invented the Cherokee alphabet (the first system of written language in any Native American tribe) after being inspired by the English and their “talking white leaves”. Cash wrote a song called “The Talking Leaves” which tells this story, and it’s kind of a favorite of mine for that reason.

Well, this isn’t the last we’ll be hearing about Johnny Cash, but we are certainly getting close. Until then!

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin

Well, as promised, I think it’s about time to talk about Led Zeppelin this time, and what better place to start than in the beginning? So here we are, the band’s debut album:

In these modern times of half-assed, rifftastic metal, alternative, indieternative, alternametalindieternative, and pop music, it’s really easy to overlook something like Led Zeppelin. At least, that’s what I did years ago, back when the time in which albums were made meant nothing to me, and everything was judged by its own merits. Well, even by today’s standards, actually, especially by today’s standards, this album is a landmark. This album is easily one of those albums at which you can start your rock journey, and whatever direction you travel from there will invariably take you right back to it. I guess that’s what they call a “landmark” album, now that I think about it.

Either way, in putting this through my well-worn headphones or the tower speakers in the other room, it’s hard to believe that what was accomplished in this album in 36 hours for roughly £1,782 (with exchange rates and rate of inflation, that becomes somewhere between $200 and $580,000) back in 1969. From playing guitars with violin bows, to those amazing drum parts, the “accomplished” vibe in the album is hard to deny. Everything that went down in this album flows perfectly and in a very organized way, which is actually kind of odd for some of the recordings that came out in that era, when free-form experimentation was more the thing. Still, the album comes out not sounding stiff, actually the looseness of some of what’s going on here makes me further hate the recording methods used nowadays, where everything is cut up loops and Pro Tools. Led Zeppelin are from an era where you went in there and played instruments and what you did in the studio becomes the music that goes on the album, no middle man necessary. Indeed, to make sure the album went exactly as planned, Page paid for it out of his own pocket, and the result was an album that sold in the millions and helped shape rock music forever. Not too bad for a day and a half’s work!

Of course, I have a natural affinity to most of this album for its extra-bluesiness. Like any good rock band that decides to use the Blues as its cornerstone (which would be any good rock band period, actually), Zeppelin throws a lot of other sounds in the mix to distinctify their overall sound. Take the first track, for instance, “Good Times Bad Times” could be said to be a blues song, but so much awesome stuff is thrown into the mix that it stands as an amazing hard rock song that simply borrows from the blues. Still, what a song, there’s a certain drum beat in there by John “Bonzo” Bonham that is one of my favorite moves in drumming: the 16th note triplet. It’s basically where he does a really fast triple kick on the bass drum at various points between the singing lines. Just try to picture doing that on a single bass drum, it boggles the mind, even if you know how to play drums. As a bassist, I’m shocked and awed by John Paul Jones’ bass-line for this particular song, it’s stunningly difficult, and he plays it with admirable precision. Of course, Jimmy Page’s guitar solo is amazing as well, adding the perfect compliment to the circular riffs by throwing out a descending scale to simultaneously throw everything off and yet keep it going at the same time.

“I’m Gonna Leave You” takes things right out of the funky hard rock bluesy stuff and sails straight into folk music. This track is another favorite, and one particular thing I love about this song is how Page was singing so loudly (and the band was recording live) that his vocals bled into other tracks, such as the drum tracks on this particular one. For that reason, you can hear some of the vocals faintly in the background before they even happen, which gives an unintentional spooky effect, as if Plant was singing so loudly his echo would have nowhere else to go except back in time.

Another favorite of mine is “Dazed And Confused”, because like many Zeppelin tracks, it’s a song that is about 6 minutes long, where half of it is waiting for the breakdown that shatters all the windows. In this particular song, this great backwards-echoing guitar part pervades most of the song and turns into a particularly exciting solo when the song goes crazy about 3 1/2 minutes in. I just love that sort of stuff.

Like that song, the album’s finale, “How Many More Years”, goes on being slow to medium-rock for 6 minutes until the awesome kind of funk-march(?) drums come in and the song is brought out with an awesome pounding beat. Still, even those 6 minutes are rocking, because that’s the kind of stuff we’re dealing with here.

Speaking of rocking, the track that most successfully acts like a “straight” rock song in the “and roll” sense of the word is “Communication Breakdown”, which stays fast for its entire 2 1/2 minutes, and features a lovely face-melting guitar solo. Actually, now that I think about it, just about every Led Zeppelin song features a face-melting solo, I guess it would be more accurate to say that this particular face-melting solo features a Led Zeppelin song. Yeah that seems more accurate.

Still, even when presenting nothing more than an acoustic guitar, a tabla, and a vague sense of Eastern mysticism, these guys are still great. “Black Mountain Side”, though apparently stolen from an ancient folk song because people love suing Led Zeppelin, it aptly presents the trifecta of folk, blues, and rock elements to this lovely little album.

Still, as always, it’s a bit weird talking about an album that everybody knows a lot better than I do, because there’s not a lot of “new” things I can think of to say about it. Either way, I listened to the thing about 3 times today trying to pick out just what I like about this album, and kept getting distracted by the fact that I just do. I’d say that’s as good a recommendation as any.

The Beatles – The Beatles

Well since we’re nearing the end of the year and all these silly album writeups, it’s about time we finished the latter half of The Beatles’ discography with one of their most famous albums, which is self-titled but for reasons that should be fairly understandable, is also called “The White Album”:

Ok that’s really confusing since I’m typing this against a white backround…

The Beatles was an album that arrived after the puzzlingly “best album of all time” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the clearly better (well to me anyway) Magical Mystery Tour. While those two albums were born out of an era of The Beatles’ career where they had ceased touring and were only making “studio albums”, the difficult sessions they started after leaving for a trip to India, during which their manager died, was the beginning of the end of the group in general. In fact, drummer Ringo quit the group for a couple of weeks, and some reports state that the other members quit at various points too.

Still, the band carried on, and eventually recorded and released their only double album, which after 15 months of waiting from the fans (about 13 months more than usual given the speed at which most artists were coming out with albums in those days), sailed straight to #1 and remained there even after they released another album. I guess it’s not so bad to have an album at #1 and #2, if anyone would be familiar with having the gold AND silver medals, it would be The Beatles, owning 4 of the top 10 spots on Rolling Stones’ 500 Best Examples Of How Bad We Are At Making Lists.

This album, in fact, is supposedly the 10th best album ever made. I strongly contest that on the grounds that it would only be a good album in my book if half the songs were thrown away or, I don’t know, slapped onto Yellow Submarine to make that album somehow worse.

See, I love about half of this album with all my music-loving heart. It’s got some legendary songs on it, and some really interesting experiments at work, but for every “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, there’s a “The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill”.

Unlike when I attempted to deflate Sgt. Peppers some time back (which I still stand by, I still love the album but still don’t consider it anywhere near “best”), I actually took the time to read extensively about this particularly white album, and I tried to look at it based on its place in The Beatles’ career, in the world of pop music at large (which might as well had been called Variations On Beatles Music at large), and how I felt about it simply based on what I hear with my ears versus what I read with my eyes. My conclusion about this album is very genuine: about half of it would have made it the 10th best Beatles album.

The album just goes off into so many random directions. The weird thing is, each member, despite not really being that interested in working with each other (though quite interested in complaining about “not being included” as they frequently weren’t), has their own part to play in this album’s irritating bits. Even George Harrison, who is usually the most sensible guy of the group (or at least the least-prone-to-make-silly-clarinet-songs-like-McCartney of the group) wrote an especially irritating number called “Piggies” which is about as subtle as car crash. Still, on this very album, ol’ George composed “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, and “Long, Long, Long”, and “Savoy Truffle”, the last of which, perhaps, is a bit iffy but is actually a favorite of mine (not just because They Might Be Giants covered it, either).

Another oddity is a bit of a flip on the usual formula: McCartney wrote a song I really like, and Lennon wrote one I kind of slap my head about. Beatle Paul actually has a few good hits on this one, but his general style (“Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da”, “Birthday”) doesn’t sit well with me, and those are here too. The good ones are “Helter Skelter”, which despite being used as the soundtrack to some mass murders, is a really interesting and invigorating tune, considering the time period and the dude writing the thing. Sure, it’s noisy and wrong, but it feels so right.

Still, in the same album he also wrote and recorded “Rocky Raccoon”, and the less said about that, the better.

Let’s not forget that the “White Album” introduced a young fella named Yoko Ono to the mix. On top of having a vocal presence on the album for a line or two, her bat-shit insanity and total lack of musical responsibility caused something like “Revolution 9″ to happen. Based on a previous song on the album, “Revolution 1″ by Lennon, which is actually really good, “Revolution 9″ is a lot of noise and repetition and more noise, for 8 1/2 minutes straight. Now, this whole “avant-garde” thing is not something I’m strictly opposed to, you may have noticed me speaking highly of it in yesterday’s writeup, but “Revolution 9″ is non-music. Music is tone and time, it’s really hard to mess that up. You take a tone, and repeat, and that could technically be considered a song, though a really terrible one. “Revolution 9″ can’t be called a terrible song, only a terrible assortment of sounds arranged, with no real care, against the swelling sense of importance of whomever thought it would be a great idea to include this waste of time on an album that was already far too long.

The thing is, one must look hard and sternly at one’s self when it comes to deciding whether to knock an album like this that gets universally good ratings and was a huge seller for years. When I think about whether an album that sings about the U.S.S.R., then birthdays, then weird fictional characters, then doing it in the middle of the road, then making random noises at you for many minutes, and then ending with Ringo slurpingly whispering “good-night” to you against the cheesiest Wall Of Strings I’ve ever heard is a good album or bad album, I have to look at the intentions of who put this stuff together. Sure, knocking an album for being all over the place would probably make me the pretentious one here, but I am almost certain that no band of people came together and decided unanimously that this was the work they wanted to put out there for the world. I’m thoroughly convinced that the “White Album”, despite having a lot of moments I consider to be the group’s(?) strongest, is an album that was born out of compromises and conciliatory shrugging. A drugged-out band (oh yeah I forgot to mention they were on a lot of drugs. Lennon was doing heroin!) without a manager, being forced to come to a democratic consensus on what to do with their time, and this is what came of it.

“10th Best Album Ever” my eye.

Anyway, things would unfortunately get worse for The Beatles before ending in a fizzle. We already heard about Abbey Road, brilliant thing that it is, which was made when the situation was worse but everyone at least got a little wiser about it. Still, before the year’s out, we’re going to have to see what happens when The Beatles meet Phil Spector. Until then!

The Rolling Stones – Beggar’s Banquet

When we last left The Rolling Stones, they had just answered the siren call of psychedelia in making an album that was interesting, but hardly an album of “songs” or anything. Their Satanic Majesties Request was a nice experiment, but clearly it was time for one of music’s biggest, loudest blues/rock bands to get the guitars back out and rock out again, and boy did they rock out:

Beggar’s Banquet is an album I somehow missed for a long time. It is right between Their Satanic Majesties Request and my favorite Stones album, Let It Bleed, filling out the middle of their trio of albums designed to make fun of the The Beatles (the original cover to this album was apparently a plain card like title with the title and “R.S.V.P.” written on, to look like The Beatles’ self-titled and all white album). Either way, I discovered it some time last year, and hearing “Sympathy For The Devil” playing, seemingly out of nowhere, at work today made me think about this album and how I should totally write about it.

Basically, while Let It Bleed was an album, well, bleeding with creative and epic blues/rock songs, there needed to be a kind of rebirth of the band, so that people wouldn’t get too confused when they went from the confusing psychedelic stuff they had gotten into to the kind of music they’re supposed to play. First off, they had to come out with a hit single that would really showcase their hard-hitting blues finesse. That single, very unfortunately, wasn’t actually on Beggar’s Banquet, but I felt it necessary to at least mention because it is my favorite Rolling Stones song: “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. Maybe it’s something about the awesome yet simple circular guitar riff, maybe it’s the completely bananas lyrics, or maybe it’s because it’s such an integral part to one of my favorite rhythm-based video games Elite Beat Agents, who knows. I just love the song, but we’re here to talk about an album.

Now that the band had picked up their guitars and were ready to wail again, they needed to grab people’s attention. Hmm, how about a mamba song about Satan? Sure, Mick, why not. Sure enough, the lead off to this collection of jams is unlike anything else on the album (which, to me, evokes memories of Aftermath). “Sympathy For The Devil” is a grand old song, something that might belong in a musical or something, if musicals were actually good or if the song otherwise really sucked. It tells, in first person, about the Devil (in his charming, egocentric rock-star self that all the metal bands have been masturbating to since the 80′s), and some of his exploits. The song is fairly powerful, and I’d say a touch high-class for something Mick Jagger wrote:

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul and faith

And I was ’round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

Easily one of my favorite Stones song, and my absolute favorite mamba, no competition.

The rest of the album settles into taking turns between slow, bluesy acoustic ballads, making fun of Country music, and rock songs that just aren’t quite as good as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. The first slow, bluesy acoustic ballad is “No Expectations”, which is a fine song, recorded with all members of the band sitting around some open mics. The song tells a soulful story of loneliness and, uhm, being alone. Sorry, the Stones have kind of lapsed into that rushed sort of songwriting where they just put stuff together until it works, in fact they kind of work in that mode for the rest of the album.

In fact, one of the later tracks on the album, and one of the band’s biggest hits is “Street Fighting Man” (located infamously at G SEVEN if you know the movies I know). The song itself is a rocker, through and through, and probably the hardest rocking song to come out of the 60′s recorded almost entirely on acoustic instruments. The lyrics evoke thoughts of the race riots, and other general riots that were going on at the time, and you may think this is The Rolling Stones’ way of silencing all that with their proud song of the streets. In fact, nobody has been able to tell in 30 years what the song is really about, there are literally thousands of interpretations (and I know the meaning of the word “literal”, I really mean there are over 1,000) and I have not read them, but I am hoping at least one of them is “Mick or Keith got a little tired and forgot to put some kind of point to the song before falling asleep”. Either way, great song, no “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, but what is, really?

A song I quite like, though it has gotten some flack in the past, apparently, is “Jigsaw Puzzle”. It’s got this wonderful trip beat by Charlie Watts (a vastly underrated drummer), and apparently is supposed to contain some kind of Dylanesque stream-of-consciousness writing. Well, I’m not sure about all that, but I do kind of like the random imagery being tied together with Mick singing about trying to do a jigsaw puzzle before the rain starts up again, because it kind of makes each of these seemingly random ideas sort of come together to form one cohesive whole, like a damned jigsaw puzzle, see? The completed puzzle is the song, made up of all the seemingly random parts that are put together almost arbitrarily yet tied together by the very concept of ideas being joined together. Makes perfect sense, if you ask me.

Actually, I’m on some pretty trippy cold medicine so now you may know why I not only am rambling a bit in this writeup, but why I chose The Rolling Stones as the band to do it with. No matter what my state of mind, however, I will say Beggar’s Banquet is an awesome festival of bluesy rock music like what The Rolling Stones are supposed to be making, and though there are better albums, this one is at least not Their Satanic Majesties Request, and I think we can all be thankful for that.

The Beatles – Revolver

So you know how sometimes you avoid something just because you don’t like how much praise everyone lavishes upon it? All of your friends that bring it up will declare it the “best thing ever” and all kinds of superlatives, and you know that if you experience the thing for yourself, it’s likely that you’ll be disappointed and then alienated and finally depressed because you can’t see what all the dad-blamed fuss is about.

Well, there’s probably no better example of this phenomenon for me than The Beatles’ “best” (notice how about 5 albums of theirs are considered “the best album ever”?) album, Revolver:

What, you mean you aren’t like that, and you like to check out things that are supposed to be good because maybe they’ll make you happy? Psh, palpable nonsense. Anyway, today is actually the first time I ever heard Revolver, not so much because I was actively avoiding it (when I got the new “Re-mastered” collection they released this year, I made it my business to listen to every Beatles album), but because I forgot it existed. Yes, that’s right, I’ve written about 290-something albums so far this year and I forgot about the existence of what people who get paid a lot more than me are contractually obligated to call “the best album of all time”.

Well, fear not, I have rectified the situation. I listened to this album back and forth (on two different sets of high-end headphones) and have basked in its psychedelic glow, and have formulated a few opinions that, in the interest of time, will probably sound like things you’ve heard about this album before.

For one, I can see this being The Beatles’ best album, I really can. It’s extremely strong, cohesive, and though I hate to say things like this, the production is very innovative for the time (though my definition of “for the time” is the time between the invention of the phonograph and now). Really though, any other album I’ve heard that was made in 1966 doesn’t sound this good, so there is that.

I’m actually really familiar with a few of these songs already, especially thanks to that new Rockband Beatles game. Two songs from that game are available in the “demo” version of the game that is played quite a lot in my proximity. One of those songs is “Yellow Submarine”, which I went from having never heard to hearing hundreds of times, with the addition of a bunch of “chinks” from people messing up the notes (not their fault, the demo can not be calibrated and thus is perpetually off sync. Thanks, EA!) Despite this misfortune, I have grown to like the song quite a lot.

If there is at least one song that I absolutely love on this album, it’s “Taxman”, a George Harrison song that really quite pleases me, and it opens the album! The song is kind of “Eastern” influenced, even if it’s a straight blues/rock song, to listen to the harmonies and melody kind of hints at it. The lyrics to the song are the first thing that stand out, the whole thing being a really clever and articulated satirical outburst at England’s crazy tax system, which took away about 95% of its top earners’ money. Of course, only about 4 people were even in that top bracket at the time, and they’re all four performing on this song, so perhaps the direct complaints are a little specialized, but come on, who doesn’t relate to “Taxman”? Speaking of which, it’s probably about time I filed my taxes this year…

Anyway, the album is followed by a song that winds up on everyone’s “favorite Beatles songs ever” lists, and I still haven’t quite figured out why. The song is “Eleanor Rigby” and really it’s a good song, even great, but best? It’s 2 minutes of string and dirge, and lyrics that Paul McCartney has admitted doesn’t make any sense.

Nah, I much prefer the Indian stuff like “Love You To” and the wondrous “Tomorrow Never Knows”, both songs have that wonderful sitar thing going for them, and the latter has this amazing droning beat that I really quite love. Here’s the kicker: have you ever tried to play them at the exact same time, over each other? I’m doing that right now, and it’s incredibly trippy, since they’re both in the same key and roughly the same pace, they tend to overlay on each other in odd ways that almost seem intentional (seriously they’re within 5 seconds of each other in total length, it has to be intentional). Of course, this may be one of those Dark Side Of The Moon plus Wizard Of Oz kinds of things, but man I kind of love this.

The album, despite being a little more “rock” oriented than its predecessor, Rubber Soul, still has some moments of tranquility and lovely pop music. The best example is “Here, There, And Everywhere”. There’s something mysterious about this tune that kind of begs exploration, perhaps it’s the little guitar riff that occurs in parts of the song, maybe it’s the interesting, vague lyrics, maybe the biggest mystery is how it’s a McCartney tune and yet I really, really like it? I’m kidding, I like a lot of McCartney tunes, they’re just generally hit-or-miss.

Another good example of this peaceful sound is “Good Day Sunshine”, which I like for its tune (including that little 7th-ey riff in between lines that The Rutles love to steal so often, a very “Beatles” typical sound), but love for its big splashy cymbals in the chorus. Sometimes it takes very little to please me.

Anyways, I feel I’ve really gotten pretty far as a Beatles fan ever since first writing about Sgt. Peppers. Of course, when I wrote that, as a brand new fan, I feel it’s important to note that I wasn’t impressed by the album because I hadn’t heard much of the material leading up to it or following after it. For this reason, one must be careful about declaring something to be “The Best” because sometimes it’s only “The Best” within a certain context, with certain variables that a lot of people, but not everyone, shares. Indeed, when I talk about what I consider to be the best album ever made (and it’s not made by The Beatles! Shocking!), I am sure no-one will agree with me without having the same context I do, but either way, I will say that Revolver deserves its long line of perfect scores on all those journalism websites. I will add, however, that there are a lot of albums that are just as good, within certain contexts, anyway.

Maybe we’ll talk about one of those albums tomorrow! Who knows?

Pink Floyd – Ummagumma

Hey! Remember when I said, on July 30th, that I was totally going to write up my newly-acquired Ummagumma album by Pink Floyd? Me neither, apparently!

Well there’s no time like the present to start living in the past:

Here, with a couple of very cool album covers, is one of music’s most famously reviled albums. I don’t really see what the big deal is, it’s kind of like the same sound they had been going for with the last two albums, only this time completely bereft of Syd Barrett.

Syd is still on the album in spirit, at least, since half of this album is a live album that, while  not performed by Syd, is still material from albums he wrote for, including “Astronomy Domine”. Interestingly, the part is actually sung better by David Gilmour, and the song sounds a lot more “together” than in the studio version. This makes it better, but also boring in a way. Gone is the completely loose and unkempt sound of that “psychedelic” period of the band. Now it’s “progressive”, and the differences are quite subtle depending on whether or not you are trying to stall for word count on your music blog.

I mean… NOTHING

You know things have gotten “progressive” when you’ve got a full length live album with only 4 songs. It’s a cracker of a live album, though, featuring songs that probably shouldn’t have been attempted live, but are in fact not only pulled off, but pulled off quite well. The 12 or so people that seem to be in the audience may not have you think so, but I quite enjoyed hearing “A Saucerful Of Secrets” and “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” recreated live. The real interesting point of this album is the song “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”, which is not only a great title, but an interesting song. It seems to be a song that probably should have been an instrumental, with a central jam going on that everyone kind of plays around, but one thing sets this song apart from anything we might have heard from Pink Floyd up to this moment: Roger Waters. Well yes I know that he’d been playing bass all this time, but unsuspecting victims of this particular song will hear something altogether terrifying when he starts screaming. I may have complimented other English singers on their screamability, but forgot all that stuff I said up to this point and replace it all with “yes but not as awesomely horrifying as Roger Waters”. That kind of threw me the first time I heard it, I had to double-check to make sure that was a human making that noise.

Anyhoots, the live portion of Ummagumma is worth having, sure, but there’s gotta be something else to warrant the $30 price tag for this double album, right? Well, for those of you who foolishly expect so, there’s the studio portion of the album.

Now, what follows is quite simple (if indeed anything about Pink Floyd can ever be classified as “simple”). Basically, there are 4 multi-part songs, each one composed by a different member of the band, except for Roger Waters, who inexplicably gets 2 songs (if you want to call the latter of the 2 a “song”).

The first one is the four-part “Sysyphus” suite. This piano and mellotron arrangement was written (obviously?) by the keyboardist Richard Wright. Basically, it starts with some light keyboarding in part 1, which follows a bit of a distinct melody, which is kind of torn apart by the end of part 2, after which random noises in part 3 gives way to a serene passage in part 4 that makes one think all is going to be well, until a (startling, so watch out) sudden onset of chaos destroys the whole song, only to start again at part 1 again. The significance of this, of course, is the Grecian story of Sisyphus, the cruel king who was punished for eternity by having to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity, only to have it crash down again. A clever idea, to be sure, but worth listening to? To answer that question would itself be a sisyphean task!

“Grantchester Meadows”, which is Roger Waters’ first contribution to the album, is about the most quiet, complacent piece of music I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard music with no sound! It’s basically Waters with an acoustic guitar, singing in two tracks and playing guitar in two tracks (which gives me the silly mental image of just two separate Roger Waters sitting there playing the song), while a lark chirps in the background, and an occasional fly buzzing can be heard. Comically, the fly is smashed at the end of the song, which leads right into Waters’ second, far less musically sensible…. wait for it…. “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict”. “Several Species” (a wonderful title for upping the word count of music posts, just saying, SHUT UP) is a little hard to describe in any way that will suggest you should take it seriously or actually listen to it. Basically, it’s Waters again, making sped-up animal noises and tapping on the microphone and occasionally belting out a bit of poetry in a terrible Scottish accent, for 5 whole minutes. If you ever wanted to know what the inside of Syd Barrett’s head sounded like during his final days with Pink Floyd, Roger Waters has recreated it nearly to the letter.

Yeesh, nearly there, next is newcomer David Gilmour’s contribution to this Pink Floyd album. It’s called “The Narrow Way”, and he decided to build on the insanity created by his compatriots by… get this… creating real music. Yeah, what we have here is basically 4 parts of music, all of them good, with a little variety here and there. First is a kind of unusual acoustic blues jam, with some “above the frets” slide work and a little bit of organ, not too bad. This leads into part 2, which is a more “proggy” sounding guitar riff with some percussion banging away, and that brief (well 3 minutes is “brief”) interlude leads into the part with vocals, which is 6 minutes of the realization that this actually is a Pink Floyd album!

Finally, we have one more musician to… oh man… it’s the drummer’s turn. If you know your rock history, most major bands know better than to let the drummer compose the music (with exceptions, of course). Still, bands that have learned nothing from The Beatles have violated this rule time and time again, so now we get “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party”, in three parts.

In case you thought this was going to be some series of songs that the drummer, utilizing the many instruments he’s surely also familiar with, would crank out to an effect perhaps less strong than his contemporaries, well let me tell you right now that you’re wrong. Nick Mason, God bless that little man, decided to make all 3 parts entirely out of drums, with the except of the flute, played by his wife.

So, to reiterate, the drummer’s contribution to this album is 9 minutes of nothing but drums and a flute. I kind of love that, but only if I don’t have to listen to it more than once every few months.

Basically, I’m sure Ummagumma deserves all the flack it gets from people who don’t appreciate “avant-garde”, and I’m almost certain it doesn’t deserve the praise it gets from people who do appreciate “avant-garde”, but it sort of stands on its own as an interesting experiment, and for that reason (and reasons of depression/insanity), I enjoy listening to it now and again. Worth the price of admission? Certainly not, but at least worth a listen or two just to see how crazy people can get with music.

The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request

Today’s is an entry that can be considered a record breaker for “latest entry on the blog” since this is now 5am, technically the next day, but since I haven’t slept, according to my own arbitrary rules, this still counts as “today’s” entry. Since I’m breaking the rules and am pretty much out of my mind after a night of giddy (yet completely sober) fun, it’s time to talk about an album that is out of its mind with completely non-sober non-fun. It’s time to talk about an album that you’ll either hate or hate and also respect, The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request:

Of course, in a way, this is one of my favorite Rolling Stones albums, and to say so fills me with as much shame as someone who just found out it was their baby after all on the Maury Povich show. Basically, this isn’t so much an album as a collection of noises that pretends to be an album that is occasionally broken up by 2 songs that are so good that they could have just released those two songs repeated twice and I would have called it my favorite Rolling Stones album.

However, as I stated right up there, you’ll either hate this album or learn to respect it, and after a couple of listens and some supplemental reading, I have grown into the latter. The facts that helped me go from totally dismissing this drugged-up nonsense are as follows: One, the album is unique not only for the Stones, but is even quite an oddity for its time, which was already a very weird time. Two, the album was the first to be produced by the Stones themselves, which means that not only was all this madness unsupervised, but they actually did a bang-up job with the production compared to what you might expect.

The best part about this album, however, is something that I’m not even going to put into my own words, and will instead let Wikipedia do all the talking:

Begun just after “Between the Buttons” had been released, the recording of Their Satanic Majesties Request was long and sporadic, broken up by court appearances and jail terms.

That is perfect, especially considering that this is only the band’s 6th album. To put that into perspective, the 6th album in The Rolling Stones discography is like the negative 22nd album in any other band’s. That may not make any sense, but it’s pretty late and I couldn’t think of anything else in several minutes of trying, so there.

In their grand style, even in this toddler state of the band’s existence, The Rolling Stones decided to do “unique” in as big a way as they could manage. They knew that, going into an album in the same year as their Muse-to-my-Radiohead “sister band” The Beatles, who had just released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, they were going to sound like copycats coming out with a psychedelic album. So, to combat people’s vision of The Rolling Stones as a bunch of music thieves, they roll out the album with a song called “Sing This All Together”, which features John Lennon and Paul McCartney on backing vocals.

That’s all well and good, though they do bring the tune back for an 8 minute reprise to close out the A-side, and that isn’t cool. Still, between those two moments are songs that are kind of disheveled, but still good. The second song is “Citadel”, which features an actual guitar riff, which makes it kind of a unique thing in and of itself for this album. The song’s not so bad, but everything is so spaced out to the separate sides, it makes things entirely empty in the middle, as if you aren’t hearing a song at all.

“In Another Land” is much better, and is in fact a highlight of the album, perhaps not as much as the “two songs” from the album, but still solid. The vocals are fluttery, as if being sung into a ceiling fan. The song, interestingly enough, was not only written by bassist Bill Wyman, but also sung by him. This is the only song in the Stones’ catalogue sung by the man, and the story is apparently because he was the only one to show up for recording that day because no-one told him it was canceled. Just like a bassist, eh?

Anyways, after the acoustic guitar makes a brief and unsettling appearance in the hippy jam “2,000 Man”, featuring this amazing try-and-count-this beat by Charlie Watts. I actually really like this song too, I guess I must have been distracted by that extended psychedelic jam that follows right after this song.

After all that nonsense, one of my absolute favorite Stones’ songs, and in the running for “favorite song of all time” appears. It’s called “She’s A Rainbow”, and it features this flighty, fancy, yet simple piano riff that just kind of enchants the listener, in fact the song never interrupts the piano, though the piano will hide while the rest of the song, which is just this great little song with majestic lyrics about a lady that evokes psychedelic images (or perhaps vice versa?) At one point, the song does come crashing down around that little tinkly piano, with the weirdest little cello scratches and percussive rapping before the final chorus. Either way, this song, coupled with the promising album cover and title, gave me such high hopes for how this album was going to sound, and I guess being let down so hard by an album that is interesting yet does not nearly live up to “She’s A Rainbow” is what made me hate this album for so long.

I mean, the next song, “The Lantern” would be such a great song if any of the instruments were actually mixed together, but the drums(?), acoustic guitar, and bass are all so far away from the singular guitar riff and vocals that I think they actually recorded those other parts on a Beatles album somewhere else.

The other hit is right around the corner though, no it’s not “Gomper”, we’re not even going to talk about that out-of-tune disaster.  It’s the second song on the album to feature the number 2,000: “2,000 Light Years From Home”. Finally, a literal space song for the psychedlic era! This song is quite great, even if it is spaced out a bit weird, it’s at least a little more “sound field filling” than the rest of the album. It’s got this wonderful dissonant chord being played on the blessed mellotron, while the driving beat hits around somewhere in the background, and space effects are interspersed throughout, with this wonderful-yet-simple guitar riff breaking things up occasionally. Anyway, quite a lovely song, and written while Mick Jagger was in prison, which I would like to turn into some kind of “Winners Don’t Do Drugs” message but I’m too tired to do so.

The whole thing ends with this disgusting burlesque number called “On With The Show” and I guess that’s kind of cool, but perhaps taking too much advantage of that “we just spent an entire album trying NOT to copy The Beatles” attitude, so why ruin it with something that the Beatles already did? Oh well, the guys had a lot of jail taking precedent over the actual album’s production, it’s ok to let a few things slip.

So yeah, I do have a new-found appreciation for the album, it really is a unique listening experience, more weird than The Beatles or Kinks and less weird and drawn-out than the early Pink Floyd of the day. It’s kind of the best balance between great, weird songs that take advantage of the time that everyone has gotten too high or old to remember, and those spaced-out droning numbers for when you decide to get high yourself.

Album Du Jour, of course, does NOT condone getting high, and is brought to you in conjunction with William S. Sessions who reminds you that Winners Don’t Do Drugs.

Johnny Cash – Everybody Loves A Nut

Today marks kind of a first here at Album Du Jour, at least as far as I can remember (we’re on what, entry 400 here?) Though every single day I have talked about an album at length, it’s always been an album available to people just like you either through a downloading service or on good ol’ Compact Disc. Well, today we’re going to talk about an album from Johnny Cash that has become a real highlight for me, only this album has never been released digitally! Stare in horror at today’s writeup of:

So how did I get this album? Well, it was part of a collection of “vinyl rips” (copying vinyl to .mp3 via equipment) online of some lost rarities, and this is one of the best rarities in the Johnny Cash catalog. Of course, all the songs in this album, and most of the other albums in this era, are available on the equally Cash-obsessed Bear Family’s German box set release The Man In Black: 1963-1969, but holy crap check that price! Yeah sure I’m going to buy it, but that’s still a high price to pay, even for love.

So, with my crappy vinyl rip, I have burned through about 10 listens of this album or more in a couple of weeks, and I’m thinking of holding off until I wind up with a better, much more expensive copy, but not before writing about what I’ve heard so far.

The most obvious thing about Everybody Loves A Nut is that it’s a comedy album, focused on joke/novelty songs on a level that even the cover art is a cartoon (a weird cartoon at that, until you listen to the album and then it all makes sense). Perhaps less obvious are a few more elements. For one, if the album Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams, which actually contains only 4 of Hank Williams’ songs, is the criteria for naming albums, this album could very well have been called Johnny Cash Sings Jack Clement. Of course, “legendary” Memphis producer Jack Clement has always been pretty closely tied with Johnny Cash, one of his first production gigs producing Johnny Cash’s best Sun Records work. Clement wrote a lot of hits for Cash, and this album is no exception. Clement wrote 4 of the songs on the album for Johnny, who honestly was probably too perpetually high to write much of anything by ’66.

In fact, Johnny does have 3 songs to his credit on this album, and one of them is so good that it was included on many compilations, including Love, God, Murder. That song is “Austin Prison”, and it’s written in a kind of confusing way, but I just love this song so much. It’s centered around this acoustic guitar strumming that I just adore. It’s hard to describe, but is present all through the song, and is quite distinct. The other part is the actual lyrics, which are kind of a mess, but I love them anyway:

They had a warrant out for me all over the country
And I was trying to beat the raps in Idaho
I was breaking into a schoolhouse Sunday morning without warning
When I saw the sheriff coming for me slow from down below

His steel grey eyes were blazing when he saw me
His hand was on his gun when he rode up
He said you killed that woman I know you shot her why’d you do it
I’m taking you to Austin then I’m gonna lock you up

There is just one line that always cracks me up in this first couple of stanzas, and that is “He said you killed that woman I know you shot her why’d you do it”, because the way it’s written there, without any punctuation, is exactly how Johnny sing it; just this dead-pan, passionless run on sentence, and coming from a sheriff with “steel grey eyes” blazing, especially the kind of whiny “Why’d you do it?” just sort of makes me laugh at the imagery. It’s subtle, I guess.

Well he tied me with a plow line the next morning
And he had me deep in Texas the next day
A crazy screaming lynch mob waited in the streets of Austin
But he put me in the jailhouse and he threw the key away

Ok, so I lived in Austin for about 2 years, and there is nothing in that town even close to as awesome as a crazy screaming lynch mob. All they get nowadays are those lame zombie walks and indie bands.

Anyway, the one legitimately great song aside, the humorous songs are either going to weird you out or tickle you to death, or if you’re like me, some awesome combination of the two. I guess one element to “The Man In Black” is his “black humor”, as Everybody Loves A Nut is possibly his most morbid album ever, and the man’s done 2, possibly albums about his own imminent death!

It all starts with the Clement-penned “Everybody Loves A Nut”. Now, while the chorus is super-catchy:

Everybody loves a nut
The whole world loves a weirdo
Brain is in a rut
But
Everybody loves a nut

That’s a worthy set of lyrics for just about any candy bar, but the actual verses are just downright grisly:

There was a hermit named Fred
Who kept a dead horse in his cave
And everyone said to Fred
Fred how come you keep a dead horse in your cave
And he said, well… everybody loves a nut (etc.)

Wh….What?! The verses don’t even rhyme, they’re just the same words! I mean, the point of comedic songwriting is that the rhyming word is the stinger to the setup, but this is just macabre! To be honest, I actually love the line, because it’s so matter-of-fact since it’s being sung by Johnny Cash. Mind you, the guy had bigger things on his mind than what he was singing at the time, you know, since he was only a year and a half away from an attempted suicide in a cave… but still, he HAD to have known he was singing this next verse:

A Colombian man named Frank
Had a tiger named Hank
He tried to put Hank in his tank
Guess what happened to ol’ Frank
When they picked up the teeth, hair, and eyeballs
And erected a tombstone that read: Everybody loves a nut (etc.)

Th… that’s disgusting! The eyeballs are supposed to be the best part! What a lousy tiger… kidding aside, my favorite thing about the woefully clueless Allmusic review of this album is that it’s “A favorite among the younger crowd”. Yeah serial killers can often start out at a young age I guess (“excitable boy, they all said”).

So yeah, the song is grotesque and barely even qualifies as a song save for the chorus. Forget ol’ John, I’m wondering what Jack Clement was consuming when he wrote the final line of the song:

Another Columbia fella told queen Isabella
I don’t think the world is flat
And now what do you think about that
And she said you don’t
And he said
No ma’am
And she said
Hey get out of my Queendom
And he said yes ma’am
Everybody loves a nut (etc.)

I… don’t even know anymore. For one, though it might have been the joke, Christopher Columbus was not from Columbia, the country that was named after him. For two, though I can understand that his theory that the world was round (part of his extremely apocryphal and often misrepresented story) would be considered “nutty”, but no-one seems to like him in this verse. Thirdly, exactly what was the point of that dialogue? Maybe I lost something in all these lyrics because I had to transcribe them by ear, but I’m pretty sure this song is nonsense piled on top of tossycock. Of course, I love it for that.

That song is followed up by what I like to consider another “Classic” that seems to have seen the light of day on some “best of” compilations that are floating around (I guess they’re good for something): “The One On The Right Is On The Left”, which is a legitimately hilarious tune about a folk band who let “political animosity” get in the way of their music, eventually leading to a brawl and the band disbanding. The word-play (particularly the use of multi-syllabic words) is rather distinct amongst Johnny’s usual verbiage, but it works extremely well in the song. This song is definitely worth hearing just on its own merits.

Another completely (though warranted) strange song is “Cup Of Coffee”, with folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. The song is quite long, and is basically Johnny visiting Jack Elliott for a cup of coffee, though Elliott’s part for the entire song is (presumably) playing the guitar and yodeling. He has no other spoken or sung parts, it’s just Johnny Cash reaction to the yodeling and Jack about nothing. Oh, and Cash is completely drunk. So he drunkenly rambles and talks about cups of coffee (while surreptitiously slipping more alcohol into said coffee) and ramblin’ to Ramblin’ Jack. This might seem weird, but what’s even weirder is that Jack himself wrote the song. It’s a good song, mainly because Johnny Cash is kind of a hoot when he’s acting drunk, either that or he was really drunk in the studio, which itself is kind of awesome.

Some other highlights include another of Cash’s own songs called “Please Don’t Play Red River Valley”, which is another song that’s a mess lyrically, but puts forth an interesting idea of one guy who knows one song on the harmonica trying to teach another guy who just got a harmonica how to play (which hilariously involves “holding it like you were eating popcorn”), and warns him not to play the titular song, because that’s the one song the singer knows and it’s what drove his woman away. Of course, the actual harmonica playing on the song is terrible, for effect.

Another highlight is the one-and-only obligatory Shel Silverstein song, “Boa Constrictor”. Sure, this would have been the PERFECT album to unleash an actual album version of “A Boy Named Sue”, but no, that song was never to be except in the At San Quentin album. “Boa Constrictor” is just one of those “holy crap I never realized how morbid that song really is” kind of children’s song about being eaten by a snake. It’s definitely an interesting piece, and Cash’s convincing performance is not to be missed, though you likely won’t find this song on many compilations.

We also get the proper, lengthened, and considerably less funny studio versions of At Folsom Prison favorites “Joe Bean” and “Dirty Old Egg-Suckin’ Dog”, which are songs that are perhaps best kept brief. Especially in the case of “Joe Bean”, which in the live version just ends with the first bar of “Happy Birthday Joe Bean”, which is a great way to end it, but in the studio version, the entire birthday song is sung, with a comically-timed sickening crunch of someone being hung before the last bar. It’s really kind of tasteless, but again, that’s why I love it.

So, I really wonder why this album never really saw the light of day as a CD, but having just written so many words about its gruesome content, I suppose I answered my own question. It’s really too bad, because the album could otherwise be considered a gem amongst Cash enthusiasts who want to hear that different side of Johnny that we only see a glimpse of in At Folsom Prison. In fact, that live album owes a lot to Everybody Loves A Nut for at least those two songs (and the recorded-at-that-time song “Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart”) for keeping the mood kind of light in an otherwise intense prison performance. Cash could do comedy, but it (as well as most of his grand catalog) was often overlooked in favor of things like when he ripped off a musical for “Folsom Prison Blues” or a whiny teenaged Trent Reznor for “Hurt”. These were great moments in his career, sure, but it would be nice if everyone got the chance to really stop and love a nut.

The Beatles – Rubber Soul

Today is Beatles Day, there’s no denying it. For one, there’s the new Rock Band game, which if I’m to understand the marketing, is going to totally change the world. I haven’t played the game and probably won’t for a while due to money issues (but I’ll get by with a little help from my friends), but George Harrison’s son was one of the developers, so the game’s pretty legit I guess. Maybe he chose today because it’s the 10th anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast and that has to do with The Beatles somehow? I don’t know.

Better than that, the entire Beatles discography has come out, fully remastered after a pants-taking 4 years of work, and I have been listening to it all day. Not that I had any choice, the particular retail place at which I find myself employed replaced their in-store music (which up to now has included The Ting Tings every 20 minutes) with all Beatles music, so really there was no getting away from the lads today. The best part about all this is that the Beatles songs that were playing over the speaker system were all the “stereo” versions of the songs, which you may remember me complaining about them being severely panned to the left or right, well the speaker system is mono, so only the left side or right side was being played. This made things ridiculous, as one could only hear, oh say, the guitar and drums only on “Day Tripper” and there were parts of “I Am The Walrus” that disappeared completely.

So today’s album writeup is, as predictable as it may be, a Beatles album, but now it’s less because of the great deal of respect I have for the band and more because I can’t stop listening to them if I tried:

I chose Rubber Soul because it represents a few things to me. Sure I could have chosen The Beatles (White Album) because it has “Revolution 9″ in it which would fit this “day of 9′s”, as well as it being the longest album and being called simply “The Beatles”, in fact, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I should have!

I couldn’t have done my favorite album, nor The Beatles’ most popular album, because I have already written about those.

Nah, instead I opted for the album recorded smack dab in the middle of the Fab Four’s career, an album that spelled the end of the “Mersey Sound” half of the band’s existence, and helped usher in the acid-drenched “Rest of The Sound” half, that half being where all my favorite music is.

Rubber Soul, essentially, was yet another Beatles album that was “rushed in order to meet the Christmas deadline” (oh, how our stupid world revolves around that holiday) and the boys were so pressed for time in writing and recording for it that they just took an extra track from their previous album to finish the whole thing in a hurry. And people wonder why bands break up! I couldn’t even be arsed to finish this writeup before midnight because I had to take a detour over to other parts of the internet to read articles about super powers and zombies.

Mind you, even back when they figuratively had the weight of the world on their shoulders, The Beatles worked amazingly well under pressure. What they turned out in this album is the music I most closely consider to be what I think of when I think of “The Beatles”. In a sense, it’s one of their better, if not their best album as far as albums go.

Sure it lacks the trippy epic-ness of Sgt. Pepper’s, but it also lacks the wild-assed incongruity and arguments of “the best album of all time”. Nah, “Rubber Soul” strikes an amazing balance between “rockin’” Beatles and “artsy” Beatles, where Lennon’s awesome weirdness did not make McCartney’s school-boy charm songs seem like trash, and vice versa. We also get a double helping of George Harrison in “Think For Yourself” and “If I Needed Someone”, and Ringo’s song (“What Goes On”) isn’t bad! Ok that last one is a joke, I actually like Ringo’s songs.

While the album was mixed in that dreadful “voice on one side, instruments on the other” method that “stereo mixing” used to entail, the music more than makes up for what could have been a much better mix (maybe I should have purchased the remastered mono mixes?) The instrumentation is faultless and, at times, quite interesting, even by today’s standards where anything’s possible.

My favorite examples are the electric guitar and organ tandem riff that occurs after every chorus of “I’m Looking Through You”, and the “fake harpsichord” (really just a sped-up piano) on “In My Life”. I also have to give props to George Harrison for introducing the English-speaking population to the sitar on the gorgeous song “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”, which always makes me think of that Monty Python sketch with the dead parrot (“That’s a Norweigan Blue! Beautiful plumage!”)

Still, despite the interesting instrumental tricks interspersed through the album, the songs themselves stand up quite well. One move that I really like, whether intentional or not, is that the album is bookmarked by two songs that swap “gender powers” from the female-dominated “Drive My Car” to the angry male-dominated “Run For Your Life” (which, if you remember, was turned back into female-dominated territory by Nancy Sinatra).

“Drive My Car” is fantastic mainly because it’s a catchy, bluesy number that is kind of unmistakably “Beatles” to hear, but is also great for the lyrics. The story is a guy who is talking a girl who is going to be a movie star, and she offers to let him drive her car, and “maybe I’ll love you”, the guy resists at first, but finally relents, and there’s a great twist:

I told that girl I can start right away
When she said listen babe I got something to say
I got no car and it’s breaking my heart
But I’ve found a driver and that’s a start

I kind of love that. The other song I love is “Michelle”, a nice minor-to-major tune that marks kind of a rarity for me, in that it’s a McCartney tune that I really, really dig. The origins of the song are kind of interesting too, because it’s mainly derived from McCartney making fun of French people at parties, and Lennon convincing him to turn this accompanying instrumental ditty into a full song. The impassioned “I love you I love you I looove you” bit was inspired by Nina Simone’s version of “I Put A Spell On You”, which was written by THIS guy:

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. I only wish I could write cohesive songs based on the works of history’s greatest entertainer.

Anyway all 14 tracks are bubbling over with effervescent melodies and a grand mix of unusual things and usual things, and for that reason I declare it a quite-solid album without it being one of the Beatles’ early albums, which were quite solid but unfortunately not interesting enough for me to say much about them. Doesn’t mean I won’t try! Until then, happy Beatles Day!

Johnny Cash – Ride This Train

Lately I’ve been in a Johnny Cash sort of mood, which really isn’t that surprising, but it seems like the rest of the world had kind of joined me in that. For one, American VI has, to the best of Wikipedia’s knowledge, been announced for release this year, so we’ll be getting yet another final farewell from The Man In Black, and despite the fact that we’ve already got 3 of the things, I’m glad to hear it, especially since a few songs from today’s albums are on the list as remakes.

The other indication that everyone is feeling the Cash fever is that he is in the latest Guitar Hero game (which actually tracks Luther Perkins/Bob Wootton’s guitar parts, which makes it ironic considering Perkins was no “hero” on guitar).  His appearance in the game is a bit perplexing to me, since the graphic image is this horrifying Muppet-like rendering of his 60′s look (he’s dressed in black with the high white collar which actually is a look he favored around ’67 – ’71 YES I AM A NERD) but it’s a 1987 live version of the song, which itself is from the 50′s. Still, despite Guitar Hero V‘s grave-robbing of some of the best stars (Kurt Cobain, who professionally was totally AGAINST the idea of a “guitar hero”, is in the game), it’s all kind of comical and goofy because once you unlock one of these “heroes” you can put them in any song and make them the bassist, drummer, or whatever. My brother has a band made up of 4 Kurt Cobains and it’s pretty magical.

I am really digressing here, especially considering the album I’m talking about and how it’s one of my favorites. Still, it’s what blogging is all about!

Ride This Train has the distinction of arguably being popular music’s first “concept” album. You know what they say, if you’re going to invent something, it better be good, so it’s also one of popular music’s best “concept” albums. Recorded in 1960, along with his other Columbia album Now, There Was A Song! and one of his Sun Records albums, this one called Sings Hank Williams (a slight misnomer, only 4 songs on the album are Hank Williams’ songs), Ride This Train was only Cash’s 8th album, and his 4th on Columbia. Still, those 4 albums came within about a year’s time, so Cash was just building up some momentum with these early 60′s albums, but thankfully this one was recorded before Cash’s drug use became a problem, and thus has a lot of smoothness and character in it compared to the mid-60′s albums such as Sings Ballads Of The True West and Bitter Tears (the latter of which I have yet to write about but will).

The album is built around a train-ride of songs across the nation, Cash sings about some of the modest characters of the South and West, never once reaching for a topic that’s high or mighty. The album has this real “down to earth” feel about it, perhaps more than any other Cash album. In fact, the first song, “Loading Coal” is a wonderful little bouncy number about a dirt-broke (no pun intended) digger who loads coal all day, with a wonderful line for a chorus:

Loadin’ coal, loadin’ coal
I’m a double-first cousin to a dad-blamed mole
Never get rich, for to save my soul
In forty-’leven years of loadin’ coal

I just love that chorus, especially since he uses an imaginary number like “forty-eleven”. The only thing, however, is how long it takes to get to the song. Each of the 8 songs on the album have a long narration beforehand, and in fact the very first one is nearly 3 1/2 minutes long, as Johnny rattles off a bunch of place-names in a rhythmic way, and sure it doesn’t really make sense or anything, but if you’re a fan of hearing Cash just talk about stuff (note: I totally am), it won’t seem like a long wait before you get to the 2 minute-long song afterward.

It’s kind of great though, because the train going on in the background and the reverb added to Johnny’s voice kind of gives him a very god-like presence on the album.

The second song is a song about John Wesley Hardin, which you may remember from the convoluted song from Ballads Of The True West, though this song is a lot more cohesive. The tune of “Slow Rider” is so very, very close to “Dark As A Dungeon”, and in fact incorporates a little riff that Cash would use on “Dark As A Dungeon” on one of his later American albums. Still, when you’re a man who has written hundreds of songs that all have nearly the same 3-chord structure, you’re bound to repeat yourself occasionally, totally forgivable. I want to make one more note about this song, its percussion is two hollowed things being banged together to sound like a horse walking, and that evokes a very Monty Python-esque image to me.

Speaking of Monty Python, the third song is about lumberjacks, which, if you didn’t know, are an ok group of people who sleep all night and work all day and occasionally wear women’s clothing. This song, which predates Python by quite a few years, doesn’t take such a goofy look at lumberjacks, but is still light-hearted and fun. The opening lines make me chuckle:

I lived on a farm out in Ioway(?)
I pulled the corn and I worked in the hay
Got trapped by a girl, but I wiggled free
Heard the Oregon timber callin’ me…

I guess he decided to pronounce “Iowa” as “I-oh-way”, perhaps for rhyming reasons. Either way, this is the first Cash song I have heard that uses prominent finger-snapping for percussion, which must be important to someone, right?

“Dorraine of Ponchartrain” is a sullen love-lost song where a woman gets mad at Johnny for making a joke, and so she rows away down the Ponchartrain river and is never seen again (presumed dead). Well good riddance, it wasn’t even an offensive joke, jeeze.

Next is a song that is near and dear to my heart, “Going To Memphis”. I love this song, but had mainly only heard it on the Unearthed 5-disc album, sung but just Cash and his black Martin D-28 guitar. This version is constructed out of rock-hitting and grunting (much like the “John Henry” song), and features some vocal work by a deep-voiced black guy, and some cool background vocal work as the song goes into this kind of saloon-style boogie, complete with piano. It’s a song about prison, and I just love it. If prison were as fun as this song, we’d all be rapists.

The next song is also pretty awesome, “When Papa Played The Dobro”, which features some Dobro work by a dude with a very manly name: Shot Jackson. Man, that guy should have gone into action films if any existed in 1960. If you’re curious, a dobro is a guitar that looks like an acoustic guitar with a hubcap attached and sounds like a guitar only not as good, unless, of course, your name is Shot Jackson.

Next is a Tex Ritter song called “Boss Jack”, and if I didn’t mention it in my writeup of Sings The Ballads Of The True West, Tex Ritter was a man who wrote “historical” songs, especially Southern history. Well, one rather big topic about the history of the South as it was in 1960 would be the issue of Slavery, and indeed “Boss Jack” is a slave song. It might be disconcerting to hear Johnny Cash singing about slaves like it was a present concern if you’re one of those awkward white people that likes to pretend that slavery never happened. Thankfully, being an American History junkie, I have no problems with the song, especially since it’s very matter-of-factly about the actual issue of slavery, but it’s a kind song.

Finally, we get a real tear-jerker of a song, a song about one of the greatest oxymorons I’ve ever heard: a poor doctor. “Old Doc Brown” is a song about a kind-hearted small-town country doctor who couldn’t even afford an office but seemed to suffer from perpetual altruism, so he hardly ever charged anyone and, of course, went completely broke. The song is almost unbearably sad, but also very spiritually uplifting. It has a very Hank Williams-style of sound, mainly because it features fiddle prominently and is spoken-word.

The song isn’t toally heartbreaking, no the song that gets THAT distinction”Ballad Of The Harpweaver”, which is a bonus track on the CD re-release of this album. It’s… I can’t even talk about it, I will wind up crying again. It’s just SAD, ok?

Anyway that’s the album. If you’re ever feeling poor and in need of hearing an album that has some incredible songs broken up by un-skippable introductions with loud train noises in the background, this album is for you. I kind of wish the CD release separated the songs from the introductions, but oh well.

BONUS FACT: I just found out that the other guitar player besides Luther Perkins on this record is named Johnny Western. I like to think that a saloon fist-fight between Johnny Western and Shot Jackson would make the BEST WESTERN EVER.