We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: In Color.
Year: 1977.
Let’s talk about The Handclap Rule. The Handclap Rule – which was handed down by the gods of rock ‘n’ roll – goes like this: “Handclaps always make a good song great and a great song immortal.” And there may not be a song that invokes The Handclap Rule as well as Cheap Trick’s “Southern Girls.”
So when “Southern Girls” launched into its chorus:
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #188: Cheap Trick – “Southern Girls”
Album: Cheap Trick.
Year: 1976
I’m not a particularly big fan of Steve Albini. While he’s produced several records that I’ve loved, and came across as thoughtful – and walking it like he’s always talked it – in Sonic Highways, purists of any stripe have always been anathema to me. The world is compromise (and carnage.)
That said, there is one thing on which I would for sure agree with Mr. Albini: the awesomeness of Cheap Trick’s “He’s a Whore,” which Big Black covered relatively straight (and relatively awesomely) in the mid-1980s.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #187: Cheap Trick – “He’s a Whore”
Album: Famous Graves.
Year: 2014.
There are quite a few scenarios for opening acts:
1) Someone you love. When someone you love opens for someone else you love is the best case scenario, of course. . Last year, when The Hold Steady opened for The Replacements in MInneapolis, it was my favorite pairing since The Clash opening for The Who.
Other notable parings I’ve seen: Van Halen opening for Black Sabbath; the dBs opening for R.E.M.; Robyn Hitchcock opening for R.E.M.; Sonic Youth opening for Neil Young; Sonic Youth opening for R.E.M; Sonic Youth opening for Wilco. Oh, I almost forgot, Sonic Youth opening for Pavement.
2) An Artist you like but don’t know all that well. A couple of years ago, I saw Deerhunter open for The Breeders and it crystallized just how much I liked the Deerhunter albums I’d heard and how I needed to find all of their material. That also happened to me when I saw Spiritualized open for Radiohead.
However, this can go in the other direction. I liked the AC/DC songs I’d heard on the radio, but when I saw them open for Aerosmith back in 1978, I couldn’t stand them, and it soured me on them for years.
3) An Artist you hate. You skip them.
4) An artist you’ve never heard: Ah yes, the dreaded “who the fuck is that?” opening act. Nowadays, no one is truly anonymous – information via YouTube or Spotify is nearly always available – but it wasn’t always thus. So while the most common response is – of course – skipping the opening act, sometimes circumstances require you to listen to an artist you’ve never heard before.
Of course I’m in favor of this, and have enjoyed just about every possible outcome when confronted with an artist I’ve never heard before: from utter and complete hatred– like when I saw Third Eye Blind open for Oasis a short while before “Semi-Charmed Life” was released – to just last year when I saw Cheap Girls open for The Hold Steady and went and bought their album the very next day.
Yes, of course I could have done the research, but I didn’t, and so I was pleasantly surprised when I really enjoyed their set, and in fact, the moment that I knew I was going to buy their album was the moment they did “Knock Me Over.”
You don’t always get to remember the exact moment you fall in love with a song, but in the case of “Knock Me Over” it was about halfway through the song, and I’m pretty sure that I even told Kirk at that moment how much I liked it.
A song about how weak and in pain singer Ian Graham felt after a knee surgery, it has the simplest and catchiest of choruses:
And I let the world just knock me over
I let the world just knock me over
I let the world just knock me over
I let the world just knock me over
Which, of course, derives its power from being both literal and metaphorical. And therefore universal. Like the problem of dealing with the opening act.
Fan-made video for “Knock Me Over”
Album: Three Sheets to The Wind.
Year: 1985.
A blistering blast of guitars, guitars, angst and guitars, The Chant’s “ … For You” was a helluva way to start off their debut album Three Sheets to The Wind. It also pretty much overshadowed the rest of their debut album, and pretty much became the only thing I ever played from it.
That’s on me, but to be fair, there were very few musical moments in the 80s I loved more than when lead singer Walter Czachowski incants:
No rhyme no reason no sleep no tears no easy way out of here
And I knowww it’s not your fault
So I wrote it all down for youuuuuuuuu
Ohhhhhh hooooooo ohhhhhhhhhhh
And as at least two guitars take very long, very indie solos, It would have been fine if the song just ended after the guitarists had run out of steam, but Czachowski has more he needs to say, so after breaking the song down into a Peter Buck jangle, he continues:
And IIIII knoww that I’m not the one you’ve been looking for
And I know oh yes I know that I’m never gonna be the one
You come running to
I knowI know
I know
I know
I know
I know
I know
I knoww
And I’m finished now, so I wrote it all down for youuuuuu
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh hooooooooo ohhhhhhhhhhh
Cos I splattered my brains all over the wall for youuuuuuuuu
For youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
And as the guitars come back into their sloppy solos. This time one, two, three, four lord knows how many all I know is that it goes on and on for the last two minutes of the song and it could go on for two hours or days or centuries and it wouldn’t be long enough.
In 1985, a year where I nursed two or three (or a million, it’s hard to keep track) unrequited crushes, this kind of self-pity anchored to scorching guitars was perfectly up my alley. This wasn’t a song that I loved because of the lyrics – I mean they could have been singing about space people or jesus or food and I would have loved it a ton – but the words, and the intensity of the singing put it over the top.
Extra added trivia: I don’t think he played on this track, but internet research on The Chant indicates that one of their later guitarists was a guy named Gregory Dean Smalley, who was the inspiration for a song that I’ll definitely be writing about in the future, The Drive-by Truckers’ “The Living Bubba.” And speaking of Drive-by Truckers, it’s too bad that Smalley didn’t play on “… For You,” because that would a helluva reason for them to cover it.
Fan-made video for “ … For You”
Album: Script of the bridge.
Year: 1983.
With its giant big guitar recontextualization of the “Peter Gunn Theme” riff and lead singer Mark Burgess singing from on top of the incredibly high ledge from which he was worried about falling, “Don’t Fall” was a helluva way to kickoff The Chameleons debut album Script of the bridge.
Or it would have been, except for the fact that – here in the Colonies – “Don’t Fall” was the lead off track to the second side. For whatever reason, their U.S. record company – MCA, quite possibly the worst major label ever – completely reconfigured Script of the bridge to lead with the “Up The Down Escalator” single and while that’s a fine song, it’s in no way as dramatic, catchy or distinctive as “Don’t Fall.”
That said, I’m not sure if The Chameleons would have fulfilled their short-lived “Next Big Thing” status even if Script of the bridge had been completely intact here. None of the other songs had moments even remotely as thrilling as when in the the first verse, the music quiets for a couple of measures and it’s just Burgess on the ledge singing for his life:
I hear my name above everything else
Mark! Mark! Above everything else
Don’t faaaallllllllll!
And the way he sings it, it feels the most important thing in the history of things. By the time the song is over, you get the impression that just being able to sing this huge huge song was good enough to save him from the fucking mess he’d gotten himself into.
And by the way, while I never completely got into The Chameleons, they were big and intense enough that I’m guessing that some of you still love them fully and unreservedly.
Fan-made video for “Don’t Fall”
Album: Sun
Year: 2012.
At first, the greatest song on Cat Power’s greatest album (from the standpoint of someone who respects her more than loves her) starts off kinda slowly, with squealing synths over a John Cale piano while Chan Marshall gives encouragement to what she’s probably always imagined as her fan base: a weary kid alone in her room.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #183: Cat Power – “Nothin’ But Time”
Album: Our Frisco.
Year: 1990.
I guess that The Cat Heads were too volatile to stay together, so they split apart and got even more obscure. Melanie Clarin & Mark Zanandrea formed the still unheard by me It Thing, and Sam Babbit & Alan Korn released an album under the moniker The (ex) Cat Heads, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t even find for a couple of years.
While not as great as its predecessors, Our Frisco has a lot of good-to-great-songs – especially Korn’s “Something in the Way” and Babbit’s “Nothing” – and one that should have at least been a college radio hit, Alan Korn’s way clever “Anti-Song.” With Melanie Clarin singing harmonies over a bouncy beat and classic I-IV-V chord changes, “Anti-Song” spends 3:40 telling you exactly what kind of song it isn’t:
This song doesn’t want to be a music video
This song doesn’t want to sell you some deodorant
This song isn’t scientifically formulated
This song doesn’t have a lot of hit potential
The incredibly catchy chorus goes:
This song doesn’t have a chorus you can sing along
It doesn’t rhyme or say the word “love”
As the song goes on, they list even more things that the song isn’t:
This song doesn’t fit the proper demographics
This song doesn’t make you wanna dress up all in black
This song doesn’t help you forget about your problems
This song doesn’t even sound a lot like R.E.M.
This ain’t another A.O.R., D.O.R. alternative new wave hit
This song ain’t getting any airplay on the radio
Cos this song said the word “shit”
Shit
You get the picture. It would would be just one more piece of Gen-X cynicism, but of course at the end, when they song that “this song ain’t no good,” you know that they know that you know that they don’t believe it.
Our Frisco holds a weird distinction in my life: it was the last time I ever bought a vinyl album as a medium to listen to music. When I made the transition to CDs, I dove in hard, almost instantly attracted to not having to get up and turn the record over every 20 minutes, and with the advent of the multi-disc CD changer, not for hours!!!
So, naturally, Our Frisco probably got short shrift – only the catchiest songs got my attention as they were funneled to various mix tapes I was making for my car and afternoon runs. It wasn’t until I was able to buy the CD reissue – yes, this is the only Cat Heads-related album that has ever had a reissue – that I realized just how much I enjoyed the whole album.
Fan-made video for “Anti-Song”
Album: Submarine
Year: 1988
Because Submarine didn’t have a lyric sheet and in the grandest indie rock tradition – or like a radio station that’s too far away to tune in properly – Alan Korn’s vocals are buried deep in the mix, I’m just going to make an educated guess that this song is a about a DJ that they love to listen to.
Alice stands her ground
And plays a melody so sweet as if from above
Broadcasting a symphony
That speaks to her autonomy
Destiny’s impossible to know
I think. The lyrics are not found anywhere, and that includes on the original album, one of the couple dozen or so that I still own from my once-massive vinyl collection, which sold off a few years ago because I am a stupid fucking idiot. Anyways.
Alice broadcasts all night long
So, not just a DJ. But a college radio DJ, naturally. And therefore I’m going to declare that “Alice on the Radio” is the perfect spawn of “Clap For The Wolfman” and “Left of the Dial.” After all, while the words are hard to figure out, it’s easy to suss out the joy as they all chime in on the chorus:
Alice on the raaaaaadiooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Alice on the raaaaaadiooooooooooooooooooooooo!
At the beginning of that chorus, Melanie Clarin joins in, but by the last syllable of it, all four Cat Heads are singing in glorious unison. Meanwhile, Sam Babbit & Mark Zanandrea’s guitars are just killing it, especially the choppy rhythm guitar that sneaks in behind the verses and the long solo after the second verse.
Alice doesn’t understand
Why she cannot talk to everyone
Weird postscript: in 1995, seven years after this song came out, San Francisco radio station KRQR changed formats from Rock to Adult Contemporary, and in doing so, decided to brand themselves as “Alice,” which they remain as this writing.
Giving voice to everything we know
Since The Cat Heads were a San Francisco based band, this seemed like more than a weird coincidence, but given that the same sort of folks who would give a radio station a person’s name were probably not the same sort of folks who would ever listen to The Cat Heads, it was probably just a weird coincidence.
Fan-made video for ”Alice on the Radio”
Album: Submarine.
Year: 1988.
The second album by The Cat Heads, Submarine, wasn’t quite as great as their debut Hubba! – there were a couple of generic genre experiments into hard rock that didn’t quite work – but the overall sound (as produced by Camper Van Beethoven’s David Lowery) was fuller. Furthermore, Submarine featured the two best songs in their canon: “Alice on the Radio” and “Apologize.”
In fact, not only is “Apologize” the best Cat Heads song, it’s one of the best songs that 1980s indie rock produced, and I don’t know how many times I played it in a set with
Hüsker Dü’s “I Apologize” on KFSR, but let’s just say a whole hell of a lot. And no wonder: “Apologize” is a little-known indie anthem.
Over an absolutely roaring rhythm guitar, a lead guitar that never stops finding a new hook to play and her own distinctive drum beat, Melanie Clarin goes off on an Alan Korn-written rant:
Sorry for the things I’ve done
Sorry for the words I’ve spoken
I’m so tired of wasting all my time
Saying everything is going to be all right
And I don’t want to apologize
Thought by now you’d realize that
Don’t believe in what you’re saying
Don’t believe in anything
I know it’s not funny anymore
And I know that I’ve made that mistake once before
And I don’t want to apologize
I don’t want to apologize
And I don’t want apologize
I don’t want to apologize
All of this has just come out in a rush, like she’s been saving it up for years and years and now, finally it’s her time to say to to her lover or friend or parent or whomever is at the other end of this. On paper, “Apologize” might read as arrogant, but as sung by Clarin, it’s anything but. It’s clear that she’s at the end of her rope.
The dreams that can’t come true
Still are haunting you
You believe in every single lie
I’d tell you that I’m sorry, but never mind
Cos I don’t want to apologize
I don’t want to apologize
And I don’t want to apologize
I don’t want to apologize
In the end, with guitar after guitar after chiming in support, it’s clear that her refusal to apologize comes from a place of acceptance, because she knows that it wouldn’t do any good anyways. It’s harrowing, because you get the impression that the song could break apart at any second if it wasn’t so damn sure it was in the right.
In the horrible summer of 1988, the strength of “Apologize” was one of the things that I needed, but not because it was one of those songs that I could cry sing along with, but rather the because of strength I gained by singing along with “I don’t want to apologiiiiiiiiize” at the top of my lungs.
Fan-made video for “Apologize”
“Apologize” performed live in Oregon, 1989
Album: Hubba!
Year: 1987.
When I made the decision in 1989 to start replacing my favorite vinyl with CDs, obviously both Cat Heads albums – Hubba! and its successor, Submarine, were on my list, but they proved elusive. Neither album sold all that much, and Restless Records – whose primary audience was mostly indie-rock kids still suspicious of CDs – probably didn’t make all that many CDs of Hubba! to begin with.
In fact, according to Discogs, they didn’t make any CDs of Submarine at all. I feel like there is some weird record-company reason for that that I used to know behind that, but I can tell you that in the 27 years since Submarine came out, I’ve never found a CD of it at all. I still have my original vinyl, of course, but no turntable.
Anyways, for awhile in 1994 – 1995, I was working for a boutique ad agency in Lafayette, California, which was just on the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel from Oakland, which was where I was living after I escaped Fresno. Lafayette was a small bedroom community that had a pretty cool grocery store – with meat they sold from a counter and everything! – a pretty cool movie theatre and tiny tiny indie record store.
Naturally, since Amoeba Music in Berkeley was now only a 15-minute drive from my apartment, that was where I did the vast majority of my record shopping. (At least until Rox moved to Hollywood and I started visiting her and scouring LA record stores.) Because Amoeba. I’m sure I tried that tiny store once or twice; never found anything, and didn’t bother again until they posted a “Going Out of Business” sign.
I figured I’d go once last time, because you never know, and – sure enough – somehow I stumbled across a CD copy of Hubba! which by that time I was pretty sure didn’t even exist. So score!
Absolutely none of this has to do with “Need to Know,” the ragged acoustic jam that is probably my favorite song on Hubba! Using a melody line that you’ve heard before and will love to hear again, all four members of the Cat Heads sing in unison:
How come you don’t wanna see me when I wanna see you?
How come you’re always busy when I got nothing to do?
You said that you’d be coming round
You said you were on your way
You told me I shouldn’t make any plans
You said that I should wait.
Lyrically, this is pretty standard stuff, I know, but the charm isn’t in what they’re singing, but how they’re singing it. You can imagine all of them huddled around a mic in the studio holding acoustic guitars (with Melanie Clarin banging on a floor tom) while singing this, grinning at each other throughout the take.
To me, that kind of fellowship is as important to my conception of great rock ‘n’ roll as screaming guitars and pounding drums. Music should be fun to play and fun to listen to. Not always, of course, but I’m always going to gravitate to songs that sound like everybody was enjoying the fuck out of themselves in the studio.
Fan-made video for “Need to Know”