Chocolate Burt Bacharach velvet Scott Walker cream with a light side of Tindersticks and dark Hipswaying Love and Money: it's Cousteau's "The Last Good Day Of The Year". Best known in the states as a car commercial hook, the other four minutes and thirty seconds deserve a spin.
The good, and the bad, thing about a group of friends is that when something is wrong with one, the matter seems to reverberate across the ether. As we begin trying to redefine normal, to figure out what life is without one of us, I wonder if a widow's snapping suddenly from a reverie is the reason he popped into my thoughts out of the blue. Or if one us is looking at a picture or wondering why or just wondering.
In the wake of what would commonly be called a senseless tragedy (if only in the figurative sense ;-{ ), I find myself getting on stuck on the word "good". Every time that I say it, type it, think it, I find myself pausing. I'm not sure what good means anymore. I don't know if that's normal in times like this but it's what I'm experiencing and it's made me addicted to Matchbox 20's "Back 2 Good" today.
Like most sane people, the endless parade across the airwaves of songs like "3A.M." and "Push" made me wish Matchbox 20 would go away and want to cut my own ears off. Too enamored of the Cobain/Vedder growl and scream, Rob Thomas' vocal had a tendency of beating undeniable pop hooks over the head like a bad muppet dream. But "Back 2 Good" was different. For one, the arrangement borders on Bacharach, with horn charts that act as lyrics and guarantee their existence on any decent idea of a cover version. Second, there is a depth of maturity that is sorely lacking in the rest of the tracks on their debut album. Wikipedia offers several examples of what the song is about but they all amount to fucking up in a big way. That's over simplified, perhaps, but true nonetheless.
Because it's what we do when friends fuck up, we'll all be here to pick up the pieces; to try to get it back to good even if we're not quite sure what good is anymore.
For the US release of "Alfie", it was not Dionne Warwick who was chosen to sing the Bacharach/David penned theme song, but Cher. While a modest hit for her, Dionne would ultimately be identified with the song, and Cher's version but was all but forgotten. The flipside of that single, Sonny Bono composition called "She's No Better Than Me", had an even bigger date with obscurity. It was not inclused on any of her albums and didn't surface until her installment of the EMI series, "The Legendary Masters". The masters having been long lost, the liner notes warned that it transferred from a "battered mono mixdown" tape.
In a light cocktail party arrangement, Cher sits alone watching her dream baby courting someone else and wonders what's so special. An air of adolescence hangs and it is probably the closest she ever came to capturing vulnerability on tape. It's all very classy and restrained and maybe a little past her bedtime which adds a pinch of weariness that we've seldom heard in her voice since.
"She's No Better Than Me" failed to be included in the recent re-issue campaign of Cher's Imperial catalog, done by BGO in the UK, and her "Legendary Masters" installment is now out of print. "She's No Better Than Me" is again left to languish, just like the songs narrator.
