Pick
of the Week #7
Storytellers
—————-
By Beppe Colli
Jan.
8, 2021
Mose Allison
Your Mind Is On Vacation/What Do You Do After You Ruin
Your Life
I
have to admit I haven’t the slightest idea about how many people have ever
heard the name Mose Allison (1917-2016), or listened to his music. Something
which I regard as puzzling, now that the Web makes it possible for one to
explore every stimulus without any intermediaries needed, in a day and age when
"popular" music is a topic of interest on newspapers and
"general interest" magazines – and what about obituaries? – in so
differently from the past, when music was the sole province of
"specialized" publications.
I
have to confess that, once in a while, I’ve wondered if Mose Allison’s politics
and beliefs – I think he could be said to be a "socialist" à la Bernie
Sanders – may have contributed to the "selective" coverage given to
him by various media. As a chronicler of the modern world, I have to register
the "canonization" of such figures of country music – the obvious
example being, of course, Johnny Cash – that once upon a time the "rock
world" used to regard… with a certain amount of suspicion. I’ll also
mention Willie Nelson, an "atypical" musician that the "rock
world" does not appear to recognize as "one of us", in so
differently from "the man in black".
These
are complex (but unavoidable: did anyone ever think about the mere possibility
of James Hetfield having any "roots", before the release of the
"black album", or consider as a possibility the fact of Metallica doing
a cover of Bob Seger’s Turn The Page?) issues, about which one can be seriously
wrong, especially when looking at facts from a great distance, both
geographically and culturally.
There’s
also a much simpler (and somewhat paradoxical) explanation, of course: the fact
of Mose Allison being filed under "jazz", appearing at
"jazz" Festivals, being talked about on "jazz" magazines,
and placed in the "jazz" section of record shops. Which, as we all
know, is something like "the kiss of death".
The
paradox being that in the 60s famous rock groups such as the Kinks and the Who
saw Mose Allison as an important figure for the development of their music;
while important figures of the "British Blues" used to cover his
songs – just think about John Mayall recording a cover of Parchman Farm on the
highly celebrated album titled Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton (1966), the album
that’s commonly known as "The ‘Beano’ album".
Meanwhile,
the cover of Parchman Farm recorded by Cactus (a group that, trying to be of
help, I’ll say "featured the ace rhythm section of Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice,
fresh off Vanilla Fudge", something that I’m sure won’t be of any help to
the majority of readers) and featured on their first album of same name (1970)
is pure dynamite.
But
the most celebrated cover of a Mose Allison song is still Young Man Blues as
recorded by the Who, appearing as the opening track of their (still?) legendary
Live At Leeds (1970).
Born
in Tippo, Mississippi, Mose Allison studied the piano (and read a lot)
listening to many forms of blues and jazz. Went to New York, recorded a few
albums for Prestige. But though he was well regarded as a pianist, it was his
singing – at first, covers of such classics as The Seventh Son, Eyesight To The
Blind, Rollin’ Stone; then, originals such as Young Man Blues) that received
the wider acclaim, in time becoming a credible model of a white artist playing
the blues for the aforementioned British musicians.
So
Prestige released a "best of", Mose Allison Sings (1963). And in a
short time Mose Allison got even better on those albums recorded for Atlantic. There
are quite a few fine albums from this period, but for a first-time listener I’d
suggest The Best Of Mose Allison, which I found in the second-hand bin of a record
store, as a fantastic way to spend an hour.
(Funny
to notice that sometimes, in his most ruminative moments, I seem to detect a
few passages that here and there seem to remind me of The Doors’ Ray Manzarek, something
which I assume could be the effect of some shared classical influences.)
Mose
Allison’s repertory is vast. However, one can find that in his discography some
of his pieces – both famous and obscure – appear more than once, in quite different
versions.
Mose
Allison’s songs are sometimes funny, while at other times they present profound
meditations in a simple, direct, language. Mose Allison’s songs have also been
called "homilies": a word that nowadays may also have a negative
connotation. But if one just thinks about the deep link between gospel, blues,
and the pulpit, everything will be alright.
Pragmatically,
I have a soft spot for the album called Your Mind Is On Vacation (1976), which
in the distant past was also released on CD by Koch (2000).
The
album features excellent renditions of such Mose Allison classics as No Matter,
One Of These Days, I Feel So Good, Swingin’ Machine, Your Molecular Structure. Opening
track Your Mind Is On Vacation (And Your Mouth Is Working Overtime), ebullient
and funny, is one I sometimes sing to myself while in front of a mirror.
The
other side of the coin being What Do You Do After You Ruin Your Life: quite
sad, deep, and, in a way, sympathetic. "Can you tell your friends, can you
face your wife?" (…) "Do you seek the truth in times when lies are
ripe?"
One
last thing: Mose Allison was never "cynical". Whatever the times,
this is what I’d define as an "essential" quality to have.
Lyle Lovett
I’ve Been To Memphis/Baltimore
I
guess that nowadays Lyle Lovett is maybe more known for his being an actor than
a musician. What’s true is that while the list of movies in which he appears
grows longer every year, his most recent album was released in 2012. It goes
without saying that most people appear to know him (only, or especially) for
being Julia Roberts’s (former) husband.
Lovett
has often been presented to the public as a "country singer". His
public figure does not appear to avoid the usual traits of the stereotype: hat,
boots, ranch, pick-up, horses, and bulls (and a broken leg, as reported in a
long, detailed, portrait that appeared long ago in the pages of the New Yorker.
My
quite tepid interest when it comes to most things country was the reason I took
no interest in what the first articles I saw about him had to say. Until one
day, in the year 2000, I happened to read an interesting discussion on the
music Forum of which I was a member (first and only time in my life): the Forum
moderated by producer, engineer, and inventor George Massenburg.
The
album that was discussed, Joshua Judges Ruth (1992), appeared to be a very
interesting work for a whole series of reasons, not least because Massenburg himself
had co-produced, recorded, and mixed it, so I decided to buy it.
How
an album like that could be ever presented as a "country" album? One
had to get at track #10, She’s Leaving Me Because She Really Wants To, in order
to find a song that appeared to be there just to give "country radio"
something to add to their playlist (it was also the worst song of the album, as
a song, regardless of "style").
Lovett
sounded as a versatile singer and as a mature songwriter, the album was quite varied.
A lot of very fine musicians appeared on the album, among them: Leland Sklar
(bass), Russ Kunkel (drums), Dean Parks (guitar), and the incredible Matt
Rollings (piano), not to mention those "special guests".
The
sound of the album was something else: a DDD that sounded "full
analogue", a CD that made a humble system sound like a million bucks, lotsa
details and precision in the sound of the individual instruments, and the whole.
The
"style" of the music was quite unusual to me – a simple narration
like the one in North Dakota was quite difficult for me to decipher, culturally
– but in time Joshua Judges Ruth became one of those "classic" albums
that every time offer a different side, starting with the sound of the guitars.
Opening
track, I’ve Been To Memphis is a funny portrait that’s not a million miles from
something penned by Randy Newman. Great grand piano performance, hot rhythm section,
two false endings.
Choosing
a particular song is quite difficult, but in time I found myself returning to
the one called Baltimore, a sad story with sinister implications (but it’s the
whole album that inhabits gospel, blues, and country, climates) whose main
elements appear to be the singer’s breath, throat, and saliva (wonder how they
did?); while the mix, which at first has the voice as its main ingredient,
progressively envelops the main character-narrator in ways that are bound to
involve the listener.
Fun
fact, every time I tried to listen to another Lyle Lovett album – the last time
being at the time of It’s Not Big, It’s Large (2007) – I wasn’t particularly
impressed. And since this was not a priority for me, I decided to file the whole
thing under "another of life’s mysteries".
‘Til
one day I happened to find online, in another Forum, this passage by George
Massenburg from 2005:
"That
was a tough record to make. I felt like I was the only one who heard it that
way, other than the brilliant musicians on the record. I fought with no one
more than with Lyle Lovett himself. Not sure why… maybe insecurity, madness,
during the making of this record Lyle treated me and every idea I had with
suspicion and distrust. Every word I said, every move I made, had to be
justified and defended (think your worst nightmare of a control freak in the
recording studio). Overall, the feeling I was left with was that I was taking a
very great deal of his money for doing nothing but interfering with his
artistic vision. He has not made a better record since."
And
so the story goes…
Ani
DiFranco
Lag
Time/Minerva/Recoil
I
was having a look at a video of Taylor Swift’s performance taped not too long
ago at US "public" radio npr, as part of their famous series Tiny
Desk Concerts, when I saw Taylor Swift starting to sing a voice-and-guitar
version of her famous hit The Man, whose video I had watched a few times. But
with no video, as played on a naked guitar, the song showed quite a few
similarities to the work of a singer I know quite well, and I heard myself
think: "This sounds just like a song by Ani DiFranco!". Hence, my
question: Why nobody talks about Ani DiFranco?
It
goes without saying that "nobody" is a variable quantity. I bet
readers won’t be surprised to know this is a question I have asked myself a few
times in the past, and I also asked a few people "in the know" who
live in the States.
At
the time of her mid-90 "explosion" – I still remember the Spin cover
story, DiFranco dressed in leather, appearing at quite a few newsstands in my
town – DiFranco seemed destined to become a superstar.
"It’s
not her", said the competent guy I had questioned about the reasons why
music magazines appeared to give her a lot less ink than what in my opinion she
deserved, according to such "objective indicators" as album sales and
concert attendance. "It’s the audience she talks to and that follows her
that’s regarded as being "niche", of "special interest",
compared to the audience in general."
The
story went on, there were a few more beautiful albums released, but the
publication of her autobiography – No Walls And The Recurring Dream (2019) – had
me puzzled. I hadn’t heard about it, and those reviews I read last year were
few and not particularly interesting. Then, I watched a few video interviews
that all shared the same qualities: i.e., they all looked like "cultural
programs". Which in a way it’s fantastic, the only inconvenient factor
being their audience, whose main characteristics appear to be: a) an age way older
than the average; and b) a level of consumption that very often starts and stops
with watching such programs. Many of these people don’t even seem able to
remember the title of the last album they bought.
All
this, right at the moment when new singers-songwriters appear to mention many
female musicians as an influence, but never Ani DiFranco. While "female
groups" such as Sleater Kinney and Bikini Kill are about to tour, Covid
permitting, on a scale they never saw in their prime.
Maybe
because Ani DiFranco is not "rock", but "folk"? Too many
political speeches? Maybe because she didn’t try for "the prize",
"selling out"? Maybe because she’s fifty?
There
are two albums I always mention as "required listening" to the
uninitiated: Evolve (2003), featuring her old, great, group, winds, her piano,
and jazz; and Knucke Down (2005), co-produced by Joe Henry, featuring double bass,
strings, the chamberlain, and a certain "alt-country" flavour; or, if
one so prefers, not too far from climates that are often referred to as
"Americana". (Interested readers will find my reviews of said albums
in the dusty old pages of this webzine.)
After
having to confront some serious personal traumas, Ani DiFranco asked Joe Henry
to act as a kind of "objective ear", and musical coordinator. And so,
this album features the artist as more of a "singer" than in the
past, while the music "frames" her in ways that maybe sound a tiny
bit more "conventional", but not at the expense of beauty and
believability.
Lag
Time is an "almost bossa nova" that shows the singer
"stretching" the spaces of the phrase that acts as the song’s chorus.
Minerva inhabits chilly spaces, with the lonely accompaniment of a
sinister-sounding melodica. The album closer, Recoil, stresses a spirit of
survival, all notwithstanding. "Empowering"? "Life-affirming"?
Simply excellent anyway.
Godley & Creme
Cry
The
"artistic" half of 10cc (who else could have written "Does
getting into Zappa mean getting out of Zen?", off Art School Canteen)
always cultivated irony, wordplay, movie-like song sceneries (from Somewhere In
Hollywood to One Night In Paris), with an unconventional attitude when it comes
to music-making for (almost) everybody, starting with the album released under
the name Hotlegs – Thinks: School Stinks (1971) – coming after the strange and
impossible-to-categorize hit that the previous summer had become an ear-worm
(in different ways, sure) for just everybody: Neanderthal Man.
While
remaining 5cc soldiered on under the same moniker, Kevin Godley & Lol Creme
went on putting "quotation marks" everywhere, with results that at
first sunk them commercially (a triple album featuring spoken parts,
Consequences, released at the peak of punk fever), while later making it
possible for them to survive releasing albums forgotten by fashion that can be
safely re-discovered today (L, Freeze Frame, ISMISM, Birds Of Prey), at not
much of a price, without dangerous counter-effects.
But
with the passing of time their record contract proved to be a burden, not an opportunity.
Hence, a new life and a new career: film-makers. Or at least, the version of
the job that found greener pastures in the field of video-music and on MTV (the
list of videos conceived and directed by the duo is almost endless, and quite
easy to find).
Cry
(1985) is the kind of track that a quarter of a century earlier could have
charted alongside Stand By Me, a perfect example of a classic "quotation
mark" song by Godley & Creme.
The
genial move being the concept for a video – the word "morphing" being
used, the technique really being the quite more usual, but very skillfully
employed, "analog cross-fading" – that’s impossible to forget.
Maybe
music had lost the possibility to tell a story without the use of images? Cry
is a fine way to ask the question.
©
Beppe Colli 2021
CloudsandClocks.net
| Jan. 8, 2021
