February 06, 2008 Earworm

Shoot! I forgot to rude...

So often during my time with my previous company I was asked questions like, "If you won the lottery you'd run threw the halls of this place screaming "f#ck you", right?" or "When you finally leave, you're going to really give people a piece of your mind, right?". While the thought had often crossed my mind and put a smile across my face, I could never think of myself as the sort of person who would do such thing. I liked, and in some cases loved, my co-workers too much to subject them to that sort of negativity because, no matter how much they might enjoy hearing my rawest feelings at the time, reality would eventually dull the brief euphoria and they would look around and realize that they were still facing the very things about which I no longer had to be concerned.

However...

The times that I have decided not to use a certain song as an earworm are many - wanting to save it for the day which brought about my final exit. A bird flipping, fiery kiss off, from a seventeen year old girl who never sounding this over it again. The song to which I refer was the first charting single for the young Motown label, originally written by its young singer with the hope of hearing it recorded by Jackie Wilson, and finally deemed worthy of release on the twenty-sixth try. It is, of course, "Bye Bye Baby" by Mary Wells. If you do not know it, do not confuse it with the 4 Seasons track because it will slap you across the face as soon as the needle hits the groove.

In so many ways, I wish I'd done this earworm earlier but, better late than never. Right?

Right.

Have a great weekend.

February 05, 2009 Earworm

Erick Lee Purkhiser aka Lux Interior
(October 21, 1946 – February 4, 2009)

The Cramps were everything but subtle and Lux Interior was everything a front man should be; over the top, lewd, sexy, and frightening as hell. His passing yesterday of a "pre-existing heart condition" is shocking because he always seemed to be a rock and roll zombie, long dead, always a young punk, and unstoppable. When a peer pointed out that he was the same age as her father - 62 - I felt as though I was hit with a reality pipe.

The Cramps starting making records in 1977 under the guiding hand of Alex Chilton and describing them is nearly impossible but the self proclaimed psychobilly is probably the most apt description of their perfect soundtracks to un-filmed slasher beach party porno flicks. The highlights of their first ten years, before the kitsch and camp began to become redundant self-parody, are too numerous to mention or to whittle down to just one so it has to be a two-fer Thursday and I'll have to go with the sophomoric and butt kicking "Can Your Pussy Do The Dog" because I can not hear it without remembering my friend, Renee, doing the lewdest dance to it one night and "Kizmiaz", a rare ballad in their catalog, which is absolutely hysterical and reminds me of yet another crazy female.

Their later albums often lacked punch as the joke wore thin and I grew older but their late seventies/early eighties output was as essential to my growing up as was high school. I wouldn't be the same without either even though both experiences were equally juvenile at times.

Rest in pieces, Lux.

February 04, 2009 Earworm

Couldn't let the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly and the always behind a comma Richie Valens and Big Bopper go by without mention. Fifty years seems so far away and I wonder how much Buddy's music means to musicians of today and just how long we'll have to wait for the next wave of guitar pop-meisters like Marshall Crenshaw to come along and make Holly's music relevant again.

While we wait, the guitars of "Maybe Baby" jangle through my head even though it's the sound of Jerry Allison's drumming that I love the most.

February 03, 2009 Earworm

Children, I got it bad for R. Dean Taylor lately. It's moved beyond
my love it longtime worship of "There's A Ghost In My House" and I've
found myself listening to a homemade cd that includes all the
different mixes of "Gotta See Jane" - there were four - and "Indiana
Wants Me" - only two repeatedly in the car as though the gas pedal
won't work without it. I'm even listening to the deemed to weak for
release first Motown produced single, "My Ladybug (Stay Away From That
Beatle)" from 1964.

Motown's faith in Taylor may not seem logical on the surface, but what
allowed him to linger for six hit-less years in this hallowed halls
has recently been brought to light ever so slowly: he worked,
uncredited, with Holland - Dozier - Holland on many of the hits we all
know as classic H-D-H. Merely mentioned as a rumor when his name
finally came up in Vol. 4 of The Complete Motown Singles, his song
doctoring finally became noted as fact in Vol. 7 which contains all
the singles released in 1967 and the first hits to include his name
in the writing credits - "All I Need" by The Temptations and The Four
Tops' "I'll Turn To Stone" and the aforementioned "There's A Ghost In
My House" which anyone with an ear can recognize as a Four Tops record
done by a very talented garage band.

Between the ill-fated Beatles novelty and the pay-off of "Indiana
Wants Me", Taylor released "Let's Go Somewhere" in '65 which went
nowhere except in Canada where it went top 40, "Ghost..." which
flopped in '67, and then, following the departure of H-D-H in 1968,
"Gotta See Jane", which he produced on his own. Rain, tires
screeching, a filtered vocal, a discreet harpsichord, and a string
arrangement that makes me weak, all should have added up to a hit but
it failed everywhere but the UK, where it went top 20. Berry Gordy,
sure that he had a US smash on his hands, remixed the single for a
second pressing but still it failed to take off. Songwriting duties
with what became known as "The Clan" kept Taylor off the release
schedule for all of 1969.

"Indian Wants Me" became a pop phenomenon when radio listeners began
freaking out over the sirens that opened the song and it became a top
five hit because it is an excellent record. Again, strings pay a
major part in its charm but this time, they are more discreet.
Lyrically, it's a perfect follow up to "Somewhere They Can't Find Me"
if you choose to end that story in a certain way, and it's a perfect
follow up or prequel to "Gotta See Jane", depending on how you let
either story play out. Always looking for the happy ending, I prefer
Jane as a sequel and apparently Motown did, too.

Having pulled "Gotta See Jane" out of the vaults in 1969 to launch the
Rare Earth label in Canada, it was remixed again and stereo promo
singles were sent out but, again, it failed to catch on. After the US
follow up to "Indiana Wants Me", "Ain't It A Sad Thing", failed to
live up to its predecessors success, "Gotta See Jane" was pulled out
again and the Canadian stereo version was mixed back down to mono and
re-released in Canada where it made the top twenty, and in the US,
where it actually peaked lower than "Ain't It A Sad Thing" and set the
pattern for ever diminishing commercial returns.

February 02, 2009 Earworm

Considering the slapdash rush to capitalize on the sudden success of the tampered-with "Sounds of Silence", its surprising that the step-parent album came out as well as it did. It helped that six of the songs had been written for earlier albums but it's not any of those songs that is my favorite: that honor goes to "Somewhere They Can't Find Me". It's probably the worst song on the album, saddled with dated sixties guitar noodling on the chorus, clumsy vocals, no finish, and one of the more excruciatingly awkward lines in pop music - "I held up and robbed a liquor store" - that, even as a child, I recognized as embarrassingly weak. However, it is thsse shortcomings that keep it from sliding into the fake desperado outlaw crap that has made me hate The Eagles for so many years. While his feelings for his girl may be romantic, he never romanticizes his situation, and rejects any chance of posturing by admitting that his life has become "a scene badly written in which I must play" and that it is not right for him to leave this girl behind knowing that she will eventually be forced into his sordid story through no fault of her own. That the song ends before he takes his leave allows us all to write the ending of our choice and it is that weakness that I appreciate the most.