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Certain Songs

Certain Songs #54: Billy Bragg – “Levi Stubbs’ Tears”

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Album: Talking With The Taxman About Poetry
Year: 1986

Billy Bragg has always been pigeonholed as “that political guy,” but from the very start, he’s also written great songs about the lives of ordinary people. And his absolute peak was the utterly sublime “Levi Stubbs’ Tears,” one of my top 5 singles of the 1980s, and quite possibly the greatest song ever written about the healing power of music.

Like the vast majority of early Billy Bragg songs, it starts off with just Billy and his electric guitar, and in this case, he’s singing a defcon 5 level of sad about a woman who’d made all of the wrong choices in her life:

She ran away from home with her mother’s best coat
She was married before she was even entitled to vote
And her husband was one of those blokes
The sort that only laughs at his own jokes
The sort that war takes away
And when there wasn’t a war he left anyway

But like all of us, she found solace in the music, so when things were utter shit, she put on a tape of The Replacements R.E.M.  U2 The Four Tops, and maybe felt a little better for awhile. So with just a couple of guitar chords behind him, Billy explains how a great song remains a great song no matter the circumstances under which you’re hearing it.

When the world falls apart
Some things stay in place
Levi Stubbs’ tears run down his face

Like, like, like I can remember actual specific incidents where I was in a terrible place, and the right music the right time made me feel better. There was a period in late 1985 where I didn’t even wanna get out of bed in the morning without having listened to The Unforgettable Fire and/or Tim and/or Fables of The Reconstruction of the Fables. 

It’s like Pete Townshend said: “Rock & roll might not solve all your problems, but it does let you dance all over them.” That’s what Billy Bragg is tapping into here, and it’s beautiful and powerful and sad all at the same time.

In the bridge, Bragg breaks from his sad story and makes it explicit:

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
Are here to make right everything that’s wrong
Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier too
Are here to make it all okay with you

In the end, living alone in the mobile home she bought with the money from her “accident,” she puts away her Four Tops tape, as if things are now so bad that even music can’t help. Though as the mournful tear-making trumpet comes in, I’d like to think that she immediately grabs a Temptations tape …

Billy Bragg performing “Levi Stubbs’ Tears”

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Certain Songs #53: Bill Withers – “Lean on Me”

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Album: Still Bill
Year: 1972

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to have a big big sound to create an anthem. Sometimes, you need little more than just a piano, a voice and a great great song with a universal theme.  And contrary to hipster belief, sometimes great art is also incredibly popular.

Exhibit A for both assertions: “Lean on Me.”

After all, there’s not a sentiment that’s much more universal  than “we all need somebody to lean on,” which is what Bill Withers tapped into when he took “Lean on Me” to #1 on the Billboard charts in 1972.

And while some #1 songs don’t deserve to be there, and just happen to be in the right place at the right time, while others should be, but never even come close, “Lean on Me” is that rare example of a #1 hit single that deserved every ounce of its success. In the years since, it has inarguably become a standard.

On the day I’m writing this, it was announced that Bill Withers is going to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Piano-based, gospel-tinged, and a bit of a slow burner, “Lean on Me” takes its sweet time to get where its going, but once Withers breaks through with that first “Lean on meee, when you’rrrrr not stronng,” he spends the rest of the song gliding from strength to strength, ending it with an everlasting reminder to call him, if you need a friend.

As someone who started listening to the Top 40 in 1973, I got pretty used to hearing “Lean on Me,” over my various AM radios, and fell in love with the unfussy arrangement, call-and-response chorus and that dreamily drifting fade-out.

“Lean on Me”

“Lean on Me” (Live 1973)

Certain Songs #52: Big Star – “Kangaroo”

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Album: Third.

Year: 1978.

When people talk about the madness and disintegration of Big Star’s Third, they’re really mostly talking about this song and “Holocaust,” twin sisters of desolation and despair, and – at least in the version of this album I originally had – back to back near the end of the record, sealing it in people’s minds for all time as a masterpiece of sadness and weirdness.

And they have a point: “Kangaroo” is a meandering soundscape chalk full of acoustic guitar feedback, ghostly strings, and drums that sound like a distant battlefield getting ever closer.

It’s really more of a mood than a song, and that mood is “Holy mother of god, am I depressed!”  And while it’s arguably not as depressed as the piano-based “Holocaust,” I like it more because it’s less on-the-nose lyrically, and it’s constantly changing – like the cowbells that come in near the end of the song, just for the sheer fuck of it.

Fan-made video for “Kangaroo”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #51: Big Star – “Stroke It Noel”

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Album: Third.

Year: 1978.

While the first two Big Star albums were basically unheard mysteries when I first encountered them, by the time I bought the 1985 PVC reissue of Third, I was well aware of the tales of madness and disintegration that surrounded its recording. So it’s kinda ironic that side one, track one of this record that is supposed to experimental and off-putting is this perfectly composed, meticulously arranged pop nugget.

Not much more than Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens and a simple string arrangement, “Stroke It Noel” might be the least raucous song in rock history that features a chorus of “Do you wanna dance?”

Of course, it was a feint: there was plenty of madness and disintegration on Third, so “Stroke It Noel” served as the same kind of palate cleanser / misdirection as “Sunday Morning” did on The Velvet Underground & Nico.  

It was also an indicator of one of the types of songs on the record, which I would roughly classify as Acoustic with Strings (“Stroke it Noel,” “For You” “Nighttime); Big Offbeat Rock ("You Can’t Have Me,” “Thank You Friends,”  "Jesus Christ" and, of course, Madness and Disintegration (“Holocaust,”  "Kangaroo").

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When I saw the Big Star’s Third concert in Los Angeles earlier this year, not only did they have Ken Stringfellow do the lead vocals on “Stroke It Noel,” (which made sense, as it would have fit in on any Posies album)  they had the legendary Van Dyke Parks do the string arrangements.  Like so much of the rest of that evening, it was equal parts sad, joyous and sublime.

Fan-made video for “Stroke It Noel)

My Certain Songs Playlist on Spotify

Every "Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #50: Big Star – “September Gurls”

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Album: Radio City
Year: 1974

…

While my favorite Big Star album has always been #1 Record (just in case you couldn’t tell), I can’t argue against anybody who prefers the raggedness of Radio City to the more pristine predecessor – or the unprecedented follow-up.  And a lot of that rests on the eternal charms of “September Gurls.”

With the 12-string rhythm guitar ringing ringing ringing ringing in one channel like the fucking 1966 Beatles, and Chilton contrasting the hope of summer with the despair of winter while Stephens and Hummel ooh and ahh at strategic points, what can you even say about this 2:47 of bliss that hasn’t been said before?

That its opening riff is not only sacred and profound, but a promise that is kept by the rest of the song?

That Paul Westerberg stole its “Riff-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Solo-Verse-Chorus-Chorus-Coda” structure for some of his greatest songs, including “Alex Chilton?”

That while the three Big Star songs I’ve previously posted were what initially drew me into them way back in ‘84, but it was instant classic familiarity of “September Gurls” that sealed the deal?

That The Bangles version was pretty great, totally inferior to the original, and the best song on Different Light?  And incredibly important because it was probably the first time that millions of people heard the song?

That when I made any kind of Big Star mixtape at all – for me, for a friend, for the fucking universe – the last song was always “September Gurls?”

“September Gurls”

Certain Songs #49: Big Star – “Thirteen”

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Album: #1 Record
Year: 1972

. . .

And so, after the three-song opening gut punch of “Feel,” “The Ballad of El Goodo” and “In The Street” we suddenly hear an insanely well-miked acoustic guitar over which a totally vulnerable-sounding Alex Chilton inhabits yet another teenager.

Won’t you let me walk you home from school?
Won’t you let me meet you at the pool?
Maybe Friday I can
Get tickets for the dance
And I’ll take you, ooh-oh

Unlike “In The Street,” which is chock full of verisimilitude and incident, I think that “Thirteen” is more a mystery. It’s basically a series of questions to Alex Chilton’s love object, but it’s unclear whether or not she ever answer those questions. Or that he ever even asked them of her face to face.

Won’t you tell your dad get off my back?
Tell him what we said ‘bout “Paint It Black”
Rock and roll is here to stay
Come inside where it’s okay
And I’ll shake you, ooh ooh

And really, what teenage girl is going to use the awesomeness of “Paint it Black” and the permanence of rock and roll as a reason for her father to hang out with a teenaged Alex Chilton? (I mean, honestly, using “The Letter” might be a way better strategy. “Dad, he’s going to get money from that song for a long time!”)

Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of?
Would you be an outlaw for my love?
If it’s so, well let me know
If it’s no, well I can go
I won’t make you, ooh ooh

So what ends up happening? We never find out.

And of course, the only reason that we’re even wondering about the words at all is because of how this song sounds, anchored by those amazing acoustic guitars.

One of the many things that makes #1 Record so special is the acoustic guitar sound.On “Thirteen” (and also “Watch The Sunrise”)  it feels like Alex Chilton and Chris Bell are sitting in your living room (or your car, or your bedroom, or wherever you happen to be when those songs come up) (which should be anywhere, because it’s Big Star), staring eye to eye, playing off of each other.

Add that guitar sound to the mysterious lyrics, Chiton’s tender singing, and the spacy backround vocals, and you get one of the more achingly gorgeous songs ever recorded. 

“Thirteen”

Certain Songs #47: Big Star – “The Ballad of El Goodo”

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Album: #1 Record
Year: 1972.

I’ve told the story before about how Kirk & I discovered a two-disc reissue of the unheard but not unknown Big Star’s #1 Record and Radio City languishing in the Record Library in CSUF Speech Arts building, rushed back to our condo and put it on.

What sealed the Big Star deal for me — besides “September Gurls,” which was instant and eternal — were the three songs in the middle of side one of #1 Record, which for decades have drawn me into listening to the whole album, which was a combination of incredibly weird and amazingly tuneful. Or maybe it was incredibly tuneful and amazingly weird.

Like, for example, “The Ballad of El Goodo,” which is chock-full of ringing 12-string guitar, heavenly backing vocals, perfectly placed drum fills and the chants of:

And there ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Aint no one going to turn me ‘round

and later in the song

Hold on 
Hold on
Hold on
Hold on

In 1984, this was like discovering The Velvet Underground for jangly guitars. Clearly an influence on so many things I loved, and yet not sounding like an influence at all — like say, The Who or The Beatles or even Dylan — but rather completely out of the time and place from where it supposedly came.

Also: I have always thought that maybe one of the best ways to illustrate the endearing idiosyncracies of Alex Chilton as a songwriter was in the lyrics to this song.  In the first verse, he sings:

I’ve been trying hard against unbelievable odds

And in the last verse, he sings:

I’ve been trying hard against strong odds

This is so weird! Every other songwriter ever when writing words about a personal struggle would put “strong odds” in the first verse, and as the song went on, up the ante, until he was facing the “unbelievable odds” at the end. If’d I’d ever gotten the chance to interview Alex Chilton, my first question would have been about this choice.

Which probably also would have been my last question, I’m sure.

“The Ballad of El Goodo”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #46: Big Country – “Chance”

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Album: The Crossing

Year: 1983.

At the time, Big Country was held up as one of the exemplars of what I think was briefly called “The New Positivity” or “The Big Music,” alongside U2, The Alarm, The Waterboys and others, but to me, there was always just a tinge of sadness in their music. Even their biggest hit wanted nothing more than for you to “stay alive.”

So while many of their songs were big and uplifting (and had those guitars that sounded like bagpipes, a sound that very few bands – even other big-sounding Scottish ones – have ever tried to emulate), the one that has stuck the most with me over the years is the saddest one of all.

Not so much for the sadness, but rather for the echoing guitars that didn’t really sound like much of the rest of the album. Most of the other songs typically featured Stuart Adamson & Bruce Watson’s guitars intertwining with each other, but “Chance” featured them bouncing off of each other, to great effect, especially in the end, as they echoed off into infinity.

“Chance” live in Glasgow in 1983

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #45: Biff Bang Pow! – “She’s Got Diamonds in Her Hair”

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Album: Oblivion.

Year: 1987.

While Alan McGee is probably best known for founding ur-indie label Creation Records in the mid-80s (and subsequently releasing key early singles and albums by such worthies as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub, My Bloody Valentine and Oasis), he was also a singer and songwriter, to boot.

Naturally, his band, Biff Bang Pow!, was on Creation, and naturally, they sounded very much like a Creation band, just not one of the greatest ones. Which is why “She’s Got Diamonds in Her Hair” jumped out at me the first time I heard it in 1987.  It doesn’t really sound much like the other Biff Bang Pow! (which admittedly is only about half of their catalog, even now) I’ve ever heard.

Anchored by a “jazzy” walking bassline (which could never be mistaken for Jazz) and a melancholy lead guitar, “She’s Got Diamonds in Her Hair” is bittersweet — and somewhat mysterious — in both words and music.

You’d think that a song with that title would feel more celebratory, but it really doesn’t. If anything, it feels resigned. In any event, I’ve never quite gotten to the bottom of it, which is probably one of the reasons it’s remained one of my favorites.

Fan-made video for “She’s Got Diamonds in Her Hair”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever