Illustration from The History and Manual of Odd Fellowship by Theodore Ross and Jay Crawford, 1900
I hope it doesn't sound like I'm bragging when I say I never really fell for the Dandy Warhols' schtick. I thought that "Not If You Were the Last Junky on Earth" was an okay song at the time, but I probably wouldn't ever have listened to them much if I hadn't had a friend working at Capitol Records who was more than willing to get me free CDs of all kinds. "Cool as Kim Deal" is one of their songs that I'll always have a soft spot for because (a) it has Kim Deal's name in the title, and she rules all day long, and (b) it has some cool handclaps in it. This song is almost good enough to make me forget the image of Zia McCabe's boobs bouncing around in that atrocious "Boys Better" video. But not quite.
Frontispiece by Oscar Wilson for W.E. Norris's Clarissa Furiosa, 1900
I know that the point of these "Probabilistic Jukebox" entries is that they are completely random, but I like it when something pops up that I've been thinking about, for the obvious reason that I then have something to say when I post it. The Shins have resurfaced recently with James Mercer's new post-Broken-Bells lineup - they've been playing some gigs and performed a Pink Floyd cover on Jimmy Fallon's show. I thought I might be totally done with the Shins at this point, but that cover of "Breathe" was pretty impressive, especially once I noticed that the new Shins lineup includes Richard Swift and Jessica Dobson, two pretty impressive and underrated singer-songwriters. And then, when I hear a song like "When I Goose-Step", one of the Shins' very first compositions as a band, I remember that James Mercer has been writing nice indie-pop songs for a long time and may still be able to put together an album worth checking out.
Illustration titled Randy and Tootser Perry-Bus from the Cobblestone annual of Virginia Commonwealth University, 1972
I'm on a bit of a Paul McCartney kick lately - I've been reading Jonathan Gould's Can't Buy Me Love and enjoying the recent McCartney reissues, so I decided to take a chance on a copy of Back to the Egg I spotted gathering dust in a used CD store. I know that this 1979 album is supposed to be Wings' weakest - McCartney's Wingspan collection doesn't include any of the albums' singles, taking only a single instrumental track ("Rockestra Theme") for the set's "non-hits" disc. I was surprised, though, to find that this supposedly highly-contrived arena rock album is a quite enjoyable listen. Songs like "Old Siam, Sir" and "Getting Closer" have the hook-y quality of Wings best uptempo numbers, and the revved-up rockabilly of "Spin It On" sounds just like a Rockpile track (right down to the Nick-Lowe-style reverb on McCartney's vocals).
The album does have some issues, though - the second side of Back to the Egg is weighed down quite a bit by two multi-section ballads (""After The Ball/Million Miles" and "Winter Rose/Love Awake") that are placed back to back for some reason, and it doesn't really work. And then you have McCartney's "Rockestra" experiment, in which he assembled a lot of his talented music friends (including David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Ronnie Lane, Bruce Thomas, and Gary Brooker) to form an ensemble that could deliver a really big "ROCK" sound. But I'll admit that the Rockestra's big number, the aforementioned instrumental "Rockestra Theme" doesn't really do anything for me - it sounds like it could have been performed by any competent arena-rock band of the late '70s. I don't know why it's the best-known number from Back to the Egg - I much prefer the Rockestra's other number, the equally bombastic but catchier "So Glad to See You Here".
Postcard illustrating the Blind School of Foochow, 1900
There's something so alluring about the cover of Microminiature Love, a red-tinted photo of Michael Yonkers holding a homemade double-necked guitar, standing in front of a wall of primitive-looking electronics. I don't know if this was the original cover Yonkers intended for the album when it was recorded in 1968 and then shelved by Sire Records, but it was the cover that went on the Sub Pop reissue of Microminiature Love that came out in 2003. When I saw a used copy of the CD at the store, I felt compelled to picked it up.
I guess I had a definite set of expectations about what the Michael Yonkers record would sound like because I was a little disappointed right away. The first thing that I noticed was the odd guitar tuning, which gives the songs on Microminiature Love a unnerving, clanging sound that is quite unlike other '60s rock records. Together with the homemade effects that Yonkers used like his "Fuzz'n'Bark" distortion box, the guitar sound is distinctive, unusual and attention-grabbing. The problem I have is that the alternate guitar tuning on every song makes the record a little monotonous after a while. And then there's Yonkers' voice, a theatrical, stentorian baritone that gives the songs a sense of unnecessary melodrama - from the moment Yonkers starts singing on "Jasontown", the album's opening track, I cringe a little. Some of the songs on Microminiature Love are really cool sounding, but I can never really get past these issues. And one last quibble I have is that Yonkers' original album was only seven songs long, and the six bonus tracks added to the reissue are inferior enough that they drag the whole thing down a bit.
Still, though - it's got a great cover, and that's worth something, right?
Cover illustration of the Queenslander magazine, April 2, 1931
I'll always have a special place in my heart for Mates of State for two reasons: (1) 2003's Team Boo is close to (if not at) the pinnacle of post-2000 indie-pop and is one of the most underrated albums of the 2000s, and (2) I once went to a Mates of State gig where they stopped playing after a couple of songs and took the whole crowd to the Lightning Bolt gig next door because it was killing them that they were missing it. The Mates of State (Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel) have gotten some flak over the last two albums they released on Barsuk (2006's Bring It Back and 2008's Re-Arrange Us), but I found quite a few things to like about those records. But I was pretty psyched when the new Mates of State album started getting some good reviews - could it be as good a comeback record as everyone says, to a guy who didn't think they needed a comeback?
Yeah - Mountaintops is really good. It starts with three songs in a row that have more fun packed into them than anything the Mates of State have done since 2003 ("Palomino", "Maracas", and "Sway"). The next song, a leaden ballad called "Unless I'm Led" drags the album down a bit - the band's always had trouble with its down-tempo numbers, although the album's other ballad "Desire" fares quite a bit better. The album's only other weak track is "Change", which skews too far in the other direction, with all the shrill, shouty energy of a pre-schooler. The album's got plenty of other worthy tracks, though, the bouncy "Total Serendipity" and the spy-theme-guitar-inflected "At Least I Have You" being among the best. My official stance is that they were never really fading, but I'm hearing more interesting musical ideas from the Mates of State on Mountaintops than I've heard in quite some time, and I can practically see them smiling as they sing.
Illustration from the cover of the Fort Wayne Bible College catalog, 1968
On Wednesday, shortly before R.E.M. announced their dissolution, another big (big to me, anyway) piece of music news surfaced. The classic lineup of Guided By Voices, fresh off their reunion tour, has recorded an album titled Let's Go Eat the Factory that will come out on New Year's Day of 2012 (with a second album set to be released later in the spring). As a huge Guided By Voices fan, this was great news, so I'm pretty pumped up about the whole thing right now. How excited am I? Here's a good test - let's put an obscure GBV outtake up against a song from one of my favorite 2010 releases to see which one sounds better to me!
I'll admit, though, that even though School of Seven Bells' Disconnect From Desire album was my fifth favorite album of last year, the track "Dust Devil" was never an album highlight for me. I like the jet-exhaust synth intro, but the melody never really has anywhere interesting to go and takes over six minutes getting there - decent for dancing to, but it's not the most compelling listening experience.
The Guided By Voices called "Dust Devil" is actually a pre-classic-lineup track, recorded around 1988 (it was slated at one point to appear on the aborted Learning to Hunt album of that year). The verse is built around a twiddly guitar riff and an inert vocal melody sung liltingly by Robert Pollard - this flat verse melody explodes into an anthemic chorus hook that sounds awesome in spite of some sloppy drumming. Right now, I could listen to this song on repeat for at least an hour. I think that this means my official level of excitement about new GBV LPs is "High".
Image from the cover of Litterature Chinoise by Pai Wan Chuang, 1959
I may not think of R.E.M. as my "favorite band these days", but there's no denying that they are the group that had the single greatest formative influence on my musical tastes, the primordial ooze from whence my love of music sprang. For example, would I be listening to a newly-acquired copy of the Go-Betweens' Spring Hill Fair today if not for R.E.M.? I don't think I would.
I'm not going to indulge in commentary on the good or bad timing of R.E.M.'s announcement yesterday that they are breaking up, the comparative quality of their early and recent works, or the inevitability of Michael Stipe's solo career. Today, I just want to say "Thanks" to Michael, Mike, Peter, and Bill for making some great music. Here's "Wall of Death", a Richard Thompson cover that I discovered on the "E-Bow the Letter" CD-single (originally recorded for the tribute album Beat the Retreat).
Panel from Cookie comic book issue #23, February 1949
I don't have an easy explanation for why I purchased a new They Might Be Giants record in 2011 - it just happened, so deal with it. Join Us is the first new TMBG album I've bought since 1994's John Henry. What's changed in the intervening 17 years? What I notice with this album is that one of the two songwriters named John in the band (Linnell) is emphasizing the goofy-but-catchy, whimsical, light-humor aspect of their flavor of indie rock, and the songs of the other John (Flansburgh) are the plastic-novelty, tossed-off-sounding, grating/annoying variety. It's kind of discouraging to see this big disparity between the two Johns - until now, I've always seen them as a united front.
Nevertheless, there are a few Flansburgh songs on Join Us that are the good kind of novelty tunes, using curveball elements and arrangements in cool ways. My favorite of these is "Old Pine Box", which employs the underutilized clapping-and-stomping break quite well. We need more songs like this - why should "We Will Rock You" have all the fun?
Photo illustration from an advertisement for Beech-Nut Gum, 1958
As someone who "just f***ing hates the Eagles, man," I don't think I can be blamed for not knowing what the Mellow Mafia was. Apparently, it was a group of like-minded musicians in the LA area in the mid-70s, sharing a penchant for smooooooth sounds and (I'd assume) large quantities of cocaine. The informal lineup of the Mellow Mafia included the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac, the post-Brian Beach Boys, and the post-everything Everly Brothers. And Warren Zevon, of course - his major-label self-titled debut of 1976 is practically a showcase of the Mellow Mafia's collective talents. With Zevon's songwriting talent already razor-sharp from working behind the scenes for acts like the Turtles and the Everlys, Warren Zevon is unusually polished and fully formed.
However, my first impression of Warren Zevon was significantly hindered by a knee-jerk dislike of the album's opening track, the cloying faux-outlaw-ballad "Frank and Jesse James". On subsequent listens, this tracks is still not a favorite, but there are plenty of great songs that come after it on the album. Jackson Browne's harmonies on the similarly country-inflected "Mama Couldn't Be Persuaded" elevate that song considerably, just as Glenn Frey and Don Henley give some depth to the creepy pimp narrative "The French Inhaler". Beach Boy Carl Wilson assembles a heavenly-sounding chorus for album closer "Desperados Under the Eaves", and you get nice vocal contributions from Stevie Nicks, Phil Everly, and Bonnie Raitt on other tracks. My favorite song on the album, though, is the underrated and Cat-Stevens-esque "Backs Turned Looking Down the Path", which features some nice guitar parts by Lindsey Buckingham. With its coke-fueled all-star cast and some first-rate songwriting, Warren Zevon is definitely a nice primer on the strengths of the Mellow Mafia if you're looking for one.
"Backs Turned Looking Down the Path" by Warren Zevon
Illustration detail from the cover of The Thrill Book of Escapes, September 1937
As much as I like way-off-the-radar bands, it can be hard to keep up with them. If I don't go to their website on a regular basis, their name isn't going to be brought to my attention by any of the major media outlets. That's how I missed out on two years of James Rabbit releases - the Santa Cruz indie-pop band has been a favorite of mine for some time, and I wore out my copy of 2009's Perfect Waves, but I just didn't check in for a while. In the meantime, the unarguably exuberant James Rabbit crew, led by Tyler Martin, released four (!) full length albums. The most recent, Splendor, came out last month, and I'm acquainting myself with this one with the plan of working backward through the albums I missed out on.
The good news is that, four albums on, James Rabbit's charm hasn't diminished. When it comes to kitchen-sink-arrangements-and-pep-club-vocals indie-pop, maturity isn't always a good thing - luckily, James Rabbit is still gleefully mixing genres and piling pop hooks on top of each other with Splendor. Elements of funk, reggae, soul, and hard rock carom off of each other on the album's longer tracks like the title track "Splendor!" and the synth-fest closer "Spectrum Blue" in a messy way, but each track has at least a few memorable, singalong moments. And the shorter songs focus on one of Martin's many influences to good effect - "Winter From Now On" is homemade doo-wop, and "Dancing on the Water" is melodic, early '80s power-pop. My favorite track is probably "XSOS", which splits the difference between the sprawling longer tracks and the focused shorter ones, with acoustic folk morphing into a Sign-o-the-Times jam and back again before ending with a big baroque-pop finale.
Cover illustration of Spectrum 4, a science fiction anthology edited by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest, 1966
It's no surprising to hear handclaps in a Spoon song - the band's stripped-down sound has long been based strictly on the interface between drummer/producer Jim Eno's always-interesting drum/percussion arrangements and Britt Daniel's gruff vocals and slashing guitar-playing. "Finer Feelings" has one of the more ambitiously full arrangements from Spoon's 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, incorporating oddball samples, an ambient field-recording section in the middle, an extended outro, and a variety of percussion sounds, including handclaps.
What's interesting about the handclaps in this particular Spoon song is the use of the punctuating quick-double-clap at certain key points. This kind of clap is commonly known as the "disco clap", and (needless to say) you don't hear a lot of disco claps in indie-rock songs. It sounds pretty good to me here, though, even if I'm iffy on other aspects of "Finer Feelings" - for me, it never quite broke into the top tier of songs from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, like "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" and "Black Like Me".
Panel from Wonderworld Comics issue #22, February 1941
[I discovered today that one of the Wires and Waves partners is experiencing technical difficulties that may be making the streaming music player unavailable to some visitors - I'll get things back up and running as soon as I can.]
Not much is known about the Rollers, a group that was recording (and presumably performing) in the Miami area in the '60s and early '70s. "Knockin' on the Wrong Door" probably dates from that later period because the song "borrows" more than a little from the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back". Found by music archivists in a moldering box of old tapes in someone's closet, the song was spliced into a longer tape of instrumental demos, but it's a fully-formed soul-pop number that could have been the Rollers first release (they never even put out a single while they were together). It's a fun song - I just hope that the title is not the euphemistic reference it would be if recorded today. There's something about how the nameless lead singer delivers the line, "You're knocking on the WRONG DOOR, if you can dig what it is!"
Illustration from an advertisement for Sanforized cotton, 1953
A few years ago, I made a compilation of non-album tracks by Stephin Merritt, collected from his various bands and projects (e.g. the Magnetic Fields, the Gothic Archies, the 6ths, the Future Bible Heroes). I called it Stephinsongs - it had twenty-four tracks, and it revealed that I had reached unhealthy levels of affection for Merritt's songwriting. Now, Merritt has released his own collection of rarities called Obscurities, and it only has one track in common with my own compilation, meaning that these tracks are really (as the title suggests) pretty obscure. But that doesn't mean that they are inferior cast-offs, necessarily.
In fact, there's a good argument to be made that Obscurities is the best overview of Merritt's oeuvre that's been released to date. The songs cover the entire span of his songwriting career, from recent solo tracks going all the way back to early Magnetic Fields recordings with Susan Anway ("Take Ecstasy With Me") and even earlier ("Beach-a-Boop-Boop", which dates back to Merritt's teenage years). There are first-rate songs representing the 6ths (the Stuart-Moxham-sung "Yet Another Girl"), 69 Love Songs-era Magnetic Fields ("The Sun and the Sea and the Sky"), and the Gothic Archies ("You Are Not My Mother and I Want to Go Home"). Only a few tracks here rank up there with Merritt's very best but, even though Obscurities doesn't sound anything like a coherent album, it does a good job of showing the breadth of his songwriting prowess. Take the brief ballad "Forever and a Day" - like several of the tracks on Obscurities, it is a rough draft written for the never-finished musical The Song From Venus, but it doesn't sound like a disposable demo. With a songwriter of Merritt's caliber, even the obscurities are highly listenable.
Sometimes a veteran band puts out a new album and, even though I don't really have any interest in that album, it reminds me that I need to pick up something from the band's back catalog. This is how I ended up grabbing Fountains of Wayne a couple weeks ago - having missed the hype around the band's 1996 debut, I was curious about how it would sound fifteen years later. I've long assumed that "Radiation Vibe" (the track I was most familiar with) was the clear standout on the album, but my special lady friend was not familiar with that one even though she knew "Sink to the Bottom" and "Leave the Biker".
Hearing the album all the way through, the thing that surprises me about the pop songs on Fountains of Wayne is how many of them are built on drone-y loops. The melodies and vocals on the album are straight out of the Records' playbook, but there's something interesting and not really power-pop going on with the layered guitars on these songs. "Radiation Vibe" starts with an oscillating one-chord riff that plays throughout the whole song. A similar hollow, reverb-laden riff provides the foundation of "She's Got a Problem", and you get the same effect from the four-note keyboard riff on "I've Got a Flair" (two of my new favorites on the album). I don't remember much of this kind of thing on the second Fountains of Wayne album, Utopia Parkway (which I've owned for years) - I should probably go back and listen to that one with fresh ears.
Painting titled The Magus Hermogenes Casting his Magic Books into the Water by Lorenzo Monaco, c. 1400
Sticking to his "every three years" album release schedule, Stephen Malkmus and his Jicks are back with their first LP since 2008's Real Emotional Trash. Mirror Traffic is a solid collection of songs, maybe his best since his self-titled "solo" debut record of 2001. For a lot of casual fans, Stephen Malkmus is still the measuring stick of Malkmus's post-Pavement records (hardcore fans prefer Pig Lib, but they are kuh-kuh-kuh-krazay!) This one compares fairly favorably - with its emphasis on elastic, loping melodies and chill vibes, it's like a hidden-in-the-attic deformed twin to Terror Twilight. And celebroducer Beck adds a variety of nice, subtle touches to the songs to give them some depth - the echoey horns lurking in the background of "No One Is (As I Are Be)", the echoey tambourine lurking in the background of "Asking Price", the echoey "aah-aah" vocals lurking in the background of "Spazz"... okay, maybe that's not really a "variety" of embellishments, but the songs sound pretty good.
A problem with Malkmus's records has long been his mistaken impression that people are interested in him as a guitarist, leading him to try too hard to incorporate a variety of playing styles into his records while short-changing his lyrical contributions. That is still somewhat of a problem on Mirror Traffic, although the noodle-y jam quotient is lower here than its been in ages. Still, the longest songs are predictably my least favorites ("Brain Gallop" is passable, but don't get me started on the other two five minute tracks), and the lyrics could have been thought through a little better in some places. But there are plenty of great slack-pop moments to enjoy - the one-note riff of "Stick Figures in Love", the hooky chorus of album-opener "Tigers", and the sweet, sing-song melody of "Fall Away", to name a few. And then there's "Senator", where Malkmus tells us about the universality of man's desire for - uh - a corndog or something.
Photo from the cover of International Photographer magazine, April 1937
British psych-pop producer Mark Wirtz moved to Los Angeles in the early '70s, and his own recordings from this period became progressively weirder, always maintaining a glossy pop sheen but conveying a sense of being "not quite right". A sunny instrumental might be titled "Satan Took a Tramride", for instance. For my money, though, the weirdest thing that Wirtz released during this period, the "Love Is Egg-Shaped"/"Maniac vs. Brainiac" single that Bomp Records put out in 1982. It was his last release before putting music on hold in favor of spending time with his daughter. These songs are fun sunshine-pop on one level, but there's a manic, cartoon-soundtrack feel to them that makes my skin crawl. In a good way? Sure - kinda.
Here's another unassailable classic album that deserves better than a sloppy "first impressions" review from me. I've been thinking about Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) a lot in the weeks since I picked it up, though, so I'd like to share a couple thoughts:
1. Taking Tiger Mountain is undeniably the most "pop" of Eno's four pop/non-ambient albums from the mid-70s, less quirky than Here Come the Warm Jets and with more immediate hooks. However, the production of the album has a weird wooziness to it that makes it less accessible than Before and After Science, which is presented in a more straightforward way.
2. One of the most impressive things about Taking Tiger Mountain is the mix of poppy songs and very dark and sinister undertones. This mix is maybe the most potent on "Back in Judy's Jungle", which comes across as a goofy novelty tune if you're not paying attention to the lyrics. This duality, combined with the song's oom-pah horn break, make this take a direct progenitor of the They Might Be Giants songwriting formula.
3. Eno fans love "Third Uncle", which sounds like the Velvet Underground on speed (or on more speed?), and the song is often cited as a predecessor of punk, but the song honestly doesn't do anything for me. On the contrary, I think it's part of the album's only weak patch, as it comes between two other fairly uninteresting tracks, "The Great Pretender" and "Put a Straw Under Baby".
4. It's interesting that this album was followed by Another Green World, an album that instrumentals for half of its tracks. I think Eno may have underestimated his potency as a vocalist and composer of vocal melodies, because I really miss his vocals on Another Green World.
5. Eno's skill with vocal melodies is best exemplified by my favorite track on Taking Tiger Mountain, the epic "Mother Whale Eyeless" (yes, I like this track better than "Burning Airlines" and "The True Wheel"!) After a verse and great guitar break (by Ray Manzanara, I think), a female vocalist sings a gorgeous bridge melody that is on par with some of Eno's most breathtaking moments on the Wrong Way Up album. This melody is not repeated in the track, but the melody stays with me long after the album is finished. Also, Phil Collins plays on this song.
Illustration from the Crane Sketchbook of Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning Ideas, c. 1950
The Spongetones' debut LP, 1982's Beat Music, is as faithful a recreation of the British Invasion sound as has been made since 1968 - however, by virtue of showing up fifteen years too late, it was deemed "just another power-pop record" and was told to go sit in the back of the bus with the Flaming Groovies. Now, I tend to think of power-pop as a genre with a deep understanding of the craft of pop music (although sometimes this works to the genre's detriment, sacrificing distinctiveness in the process). As a result, I associate handclaps with power-pop. It's funny, though - I have trouble naming a lot of power-pop songs with prominent claps. Maybe it's not as much of a thing as I thought it was.
In listening so some of my favorite power-pop songs, though, I notice one use of handclaps that pops up a lot in late-70s/early-80s tracks - doubling the drumbeat with claps on the final chorus. The Spongetones did this on Beat Music's "Every Night Is a Holiday", a classic track that is overshadowed on the album because it follows the band's best song ever, "She Goes Out With Everybody". The song's last chorus starts without any guitar, just drums, claps, and harmonies, and it works just right. I love songs that can pull off this kind of moment.
Cover illustration of Naylor Pluming and Heating's Nationaline Planalog, c. 1947
I like it when musicians decide to "go country" for a minute - I'll admit that I prefer songs like the Magnetic Fields' "Fear of Trains", the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers", REM's "(Don't Go Back to )Rockville", and the Field Mice' "Canada" to a lot of legit country classics. But I was skeptical about the idea of the Green Pajamas making a country album - their potent mix of late-60s psychedelia, urgent pop hooks, and Victorian-lit fetishism is just right for the kind of psych-rock material they've churned out since the mid-80s and "Kim the Waitress", but how does that style adapt to country music? I was surprised how well it works - one key thing is that Jeff Kelly's penchant for Victorian melancholy is only a few degrees separated from the gin-soaked sadness of a country singer.
The other key is in something that producer Tom Dyer has said: "I don't think [Jeff Kelly] was so deliberately trying to be psychedelic, he was just making cool records." With a few tweaks, the songs on Green Pajama Country! could be squeezed into any Green Pajamas record without note - they're not that far from the band's psych-rock wheelhouse. But the arrangements and certain new lyrical imagery (the songs are festooned with whiskey glasses, truck stops, and smoldering cigarettes) put these songs into territory of their own, with Kelly's yearning voice and fluid guitar parts fitting to the new style perfectly. Songs like "Dark Water (in the Wires)" and "Last Night Was Like the End of the World" are already Green Pajamas classics in my estimation, and the rest of the album isn't far behind. The album's first single is "Pass Me Another Whiskey" - it has a few spots where the rhyme scheme annoyingly breaks down, but it'll give you a good sense of the sound the Green Pajamas are going for with their foray into country.
Puzzle from an advertising card for Ivory Soap by Proctor & Gamble, 1896
This is a cop-out holiday post, but I'll try at least to make it educational. I've chosen the song "Laborer" by the 49th Parallel to celebrate the fact that today is Labor Day - the hidden significance of this choice (beyond the song title, of course) is that the 49th Parallel was a garage-rock band from Calgary, and Labor Day comes from Canada as well. Americans visiting Canada in the late 19th century witnessed the country's autumn Labour Festival and had the idea to create an analogous holiday stateside. So there you go - enjoy this slice of oddly compelling and highly repetitive Canadian garage rock from 1967 in honor of the day and its heritage.
Illustration from the Entre Nous annual of Howard College, 1959
Here we have three oldies called "Come to Me" by three very different artists. First, there's the Association, that underrated harmonizing sunshine-pop group that did "Along Comes Mary" and "Cherish". Their "Come to Me" is a characteristically harmony-heavy track from their second album Renaissance - a title that seems to allude to the record's baroque touches,like the post-chorus "ba-ba-ba" break in "Come to Me".
Next we have the obscure Indiana garage band the Black & Blues, who released a song called "Come to Me" on a United Artists single in 1968. The only fact I can find about this band online is that Steve Miller wrote the song "Fandango" about their drummer Kim Kopko. It's a little rough-sounding, but the buzzing guitar leads have a nice "druggy" feel and quirky style to them, and the second vocal that comes in on the chorus shows a level of vocal competence that was missing from a lot of the garage-rock combos of that period.
My other favorite "Come to Me" is the 1959 debut single by early Motown solo artist Marv Johnson. Co-written by Barry Gordy, the song features a lot of girl-group/doo-wop style backing vocals by the Rayber Voices and a great flute break in the middle. It's hard to compare an early R'n'B hit like this with songs in the sunshine-pop and garage-rock categories, so I'm going to call this a three-way tie for first place and start my holiday weekend early.
Dear Nora's second album must have confused fans - the indie-pop band that had written twee classics like "Rollercoaster" had somehow turned into the spare, acoustic solo project of band frontwoman Katy Davidson. Mountain Rock is a an odd album of lo-fi song sketches and aimless instrumental interludes, and the songs have names like "The Lonesome Border" and "Suicide Song". In the middle of the album, though, the clouds part for 59 seconds and you get "Give Me Some of Yr Love", a peppy number with a warm electric-guitar strum and sweet harmonies. In the context of the album, though, this song is like Davidson is faking a smile, and I get a little queasy when the "cheery" handclaps come in on the song's brief bridge. Unsurprisingly, she can't keep the act up for long, and the song abruptly cuts off one word short of the chorus's end. It's an effective use of handclaps, a way to say, "Remember when we were a bubblegum pop band?"
Wires and Waves is a daily music blog by Nathan J. All songs featured on the blog are presented temporarily for preview and promotional purposes only. If you hear something you like, go buy the thing. Or, better yet, go to a show and buy an overpriced T-shirt. Or send a big envelope of unmarked bills to an artist you feel a special spiritual connection with.
If you represent the copyright holder of a song posted here and you would like the song to be removed, please leave a comment and it will be yanked forthwith. If you are upset because your song has not been featured yet at Wires and Waves, feel free to contact me, and I'll see what I can do.
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