Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies (1974 & 1975)

An old elementary school classmate of mine died a couple of weeks ago. I can't call him a "friend", per se, but he was an essential presence in my childhood experience.

I've mentioned in previous postings that my Navy officer dad's next duty station after the conclusion of our time in Wisconsin was serving as a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. We arrived there that summer, and settled into a two-story townhouse in military housing across from one of the main academy gates, directly behind the neighborhood pool and adjacent to the neighborhood of West Annapolis.

West Annapolis is about a forty square block area, bounded by Rowe Boulevard to the south, Weems Creek to the west, the Severn River to the north, and government property along its eastern edge. The neighborhood is pretty much cut off from the rest of the city of Annapolis proper due to its proximity to said "government property" - namely, the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy and the adjacent housing areas for officers and their families stationed there, where I lived. As such, West Annapolis has over the decades developed a somewhat insular, go-it-alone stance among the longtime residents there, not mixing much with regular Annapolitans and maintaining a cool attitude towards the "interloping" military families living just on the other side of the old wooded Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad right-of-way.

However, the young children of area officers had to go to school somewhere. And since the Naval Academy Primary School, a K-through-5 private school located across the Severn at the Naval Station, had limited enrollment, for many years the majority of kids living in Arundel Estates and Perry Circle (the military housing areas) were required to attend local facilities, the first and closest one being West Annapolis Elementary School (WAES). So in 1974, that's where the majority of my siblings and I began our latest academic year.

For the most part, relations between the local youngsters and the relatively more transient military offspring at the school were tranquil. I know that some of the West Annapolis boys and girls considered many from my area as "rich kids" and elitist snobs (believe me, we were most decidedly not!), while some of my Navy acquaintances thought many of the locals were lower-class lowlifes (again, not remotely true). But in those years, that tranquility was constantly being roiled by one boy, Frederick, the Terror of West Annapolis.

Frederick (or "Freddie" as he was more commonly known) was a short, wiry redhead with a fiery temper and rock-hard fists that he seldom hesitated to make use of, if the situation called for it. He was a year behind me in grade; however, for a few years in the early/mid '70s, WAES administration decided to experiment with a new teaching approach whereby instead of having the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades in four separate classrooms, each classroom would contain a combination of ALL FOUR GRADES. So each individual teacher was were forced to provide instruction to all of the learning levels simultaneously, every day - which must have been a nightmare for them. In hindsight, it was a nutty idea, and I don't recall learning very much that year. WAES finally abandoned that practice before the 1970s ended, segregating the grades into separate classrooms, like most other schools in the nation do. But I went to school there through the brunt of this experimental period... and as 'luck' would have it, Freddie was one of my classmates.

Freddie's fearsome reputation, cultivated by classroom and schoolyard incidents that landed him in the Principal's office several times that year, and nurtured by juvenile word-of-mouth, was such that he became, in many of our minds, the pre-teen 'crime boss' and 'bete noire' of West Annapolis. Outside of attending school there, most Navy kids avoided the neighborhood, especially the area close by Freddie's house, lest they run afoul of "Freddie's gang" of area kids he reportedly controlled.

There used to be a little neighborhood store directly across the street from WAES, on the corner of Melvin Avenue and Annapolis Street about a block away from his home, called Waxman's Grocery. Mr. Waxman was the sour and crotchety proprietor of this old-fashioned one-room store, and he seemed to hate kids (many years later, I learned that Mr. Waxman's son, a WAES graduate, had been killed in Vietnam in his teens shortly after arriving over there as a new enlistee in the late 1960s... so it was then I began to understand Mr. Waxman's demeanor and feel some sympathy for him). Despite his cantankerous nature, children flocked to his shop after classes ended for the day, as Mr. Waxman stocked every brand and variety of popular candy then available - Atomic Fireballs, Mike & Ikes, Lemonheads, Pop Rocks, Marathon bars, Chunky Bars, you name it. The store owner was well aware of the individuals who kept him in business. The market was Ground Zero for the local Wacky Packages craze of the mid-70s; students would buy the packs by the dozen, trading the adhesive parody renditions of popular consumer products with others in the school or otherwise sticking them to their school folders and lockers.

Bubble Yum, the first soft chunk bubble gum, was released by LifeSavers (in limited quantities) in the Western U.S. in late 1974, and the company began a gradual national rollout later that year, with the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area serving as an early East Coast test
market. When it initially appeared, it was shipped to only a few stores in our area in very small quantities, and Waxman's Grocery, with its proven track record of moving vast amounts of confectionery product, was one of the stores selected. When Freddie and his boys discovered this, they staked out Waxman's for hours on end, watching for the delivery trucks and, by their presence, "discouraging" (so to speak) non-neighborhood kids from going there. Freddie's gang would buy up every pack of Bubble Yum available, at 30 cents for a pack of five pieces, then take them to school and resell them to children craving the new gum for upwards of fifty cents to a dollar for each individual chunk. Those guys ended up making a small fortune that winter and spring, until increased product distribution and availability put Bubble Yum in more local stores. But for a long while, they were the preteen Gum Mafia.

As much as I've detailed the fearsome, threatening antics and actions of Freddie and his gang here, I did have some normal interactions with him from time to time. More that once, I recall heading over to West Annapolis to hang out and play with him and his friends, and during the winter he and his crew gathered with the Navy kids sledding down Suicide Hill directly adjacent to Perry Circle, the only decent place to slide in the immediate area. In our few playtimes, a sort of detente existed between us, as it does between kids. Still, Freddie would sometimes suggest we do activities that I wasn't comfortable with, such as shoplift sweets at the local 7-11. In those situations, I would demur, then try to quickly and quietly remove myself from his presence and head back home, as the unspoken threat of drawing the ire of "Freddie's gang" was always present.

The mid-70s period was a transitional period for music. AM radio fare, consisting of lite rock, novelty songs and other lightweight fare, still ruled the airwaves, but harder-edged punk, reggae and hard rock music was bubbling just below the surface, ready to break out. Songs that were giant hits and schoolyard favorites during that time included "Up In A Puff Of Smoke" by an obscure (for the U.S.) British singer named Polly Brown:

For some reason, this song was HUGE as WAES - never did much for me, though (in a related story, Polly Brown never had another charting song in America...).

Another massive song from that time was "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" by Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods:

Although the premise was hokey and overly sentimental (a young woman begs her love not to go off to war, but stay and marry her; he goes anyway and, of course, buys the farm in his first battle), this song still went to #1 in America in the summer of 1974, selling nearly four million copies. However, it was hated as much as it was loved, voted No. 8 on Rolling Stone magazine's readers' poll of "10 Worst Songs of the 1970s".

What I didn't know at the time was that this song was a remake of a British hit from earlier that year. Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods were an obscure group of journeymen from Ohio who hadn't had much success in the prior ten years of their music career, until they glommed on to "Billy, Don't Be A Hero", originally penned by a British group, Paper Lace, who took their version to the top of the UK charts just three months prior. Understandably pissed at seeing their thunder and stateside glory stolen by Bo Donaldson et al., Paper Lace quickly released their follow-up single, which made it to US #1 six weeks later that midsummer, the group's first (and only) American hit - "The Night Chicago Died":

Children couldn't get enough of songs like this back then!

The potential menace of Freddie and his gang overall did little to affect the fun times I had living there in Annapolis.  There was a great group of kids on my street and up the hill in Perry Circle, and we were a close-knit bunch.  We would all hang together at the pool on warm days, playing Marco Polo and basking in the sun.  The winters were marked by building huge snow forts, from which we would choose sides and have intense snowball fights.  There were birthday parties, slumber parties, football games, and expeditions into the restricted areas near Shady Lake or through the old Civil Defense tunnels and shelters under the apartments.  During the holiday season, we would practice Christmas carols together, then put together a chorus and go door to door singing to our neighbors.  Or we would head over across the street through the Naval Academy gates, to play baseball on the diamonds there, hang out on the platforms and structures of the old Academy obstacle course on Hospital Point, or try to sneak into the "Midshipmen/Authorized Staff Only" areas throughout the Yard.  

After years of requests, I was finally awarded the paper route in my neighborhood, delivering the Evening Capital each night after I got home from school (I was one of the paper's youngest newsboys).  I worked that route like a dog, doubling the subscriptions on my street inside of a few months, and by Christmas that year I was making a fortune (well, a relative fortune for a preteen in the 1970s).  The Evening Capital provided me with a few extra over-the-shoulder newsbags, and there were always a few extra papers in my stack each day.  So with them, my friends and I devised a game called Dogfight: each of us would have a bag filled with newspapers tightly wrapped with rubber bands, then we would get on our bikes and ride circles around each other in a big field, whipping papers at other riders to see who we could knock off!  Sounds kinda brutal now... but it was a very fun, looked-forward-to activity, and I never recall anyone getting seriously hurt.

Great memories. 

Freddie and I weren't close friends, only casual acquaintances at best, and I didn't keep in close contact with him after I left elementary school and moved on to Bates Junior High across town the next year. I would, however, continue to hear stories about him from some of my younger friends who still attended WAES - from all reports, his attitude and demeanor didn't change an iota. And after my family left Maryland in the late 1970s, he all but completely faded off of my radar. I learned more about him in recent years through my contact via Facebook with his older brother, who I didn't know at all back during my Annapolis childhood but got to know later. Through him, I learned that after Freddie left high school, he served a short stint as an enlisted Navy man, then quickly returned to the Annapolis area, where for decades he worked as a local handyman and house painter.

My lone interaction with Freddie since the end of our school days together occurred a couple of years ago, when I repeated to his brother a funny (and probably apocryphal) story about a practical joke Freddie reputedly played on one of his West Annapolis cronies, that quickly made the schoolyard rounds. Freddie fired off a blistering response through his brother's thread, angrily denying the legend and castigating me up and down for even INSINUATING that it was true. Mind you, I was retelling the tale of a harmless and minor childhood prank that allegedly occurred... but still, almost fifty years later, it managed to set him off. Apparently, some things - and some people - never change. Freddie's brother is friendly, stable and accomplished, and managed to put together a pretty good life for himself and his family - in other words, the complete opposite of Freddie.

So, as such, I don't have any particularly deep feeling of loss regarding Freddie's demise - he was a bully, and sort of a dick, and from all reports and indications remained so up to his dying day.  I wasn't the only one with this reaction; for decades, I've remained in close contact with several of my old Arundel Estates childhood friends. Their feelings on Freddie's death can be summarized in a single comment one of them made to me: "He was the 'bogeyman' for a lot of kids back then." Can't really refute that assessment.

With that being said, Freddie was an integral part of that fondly remembered time and place in my life, and his presence and actions have done little to obscure the happy times I recall living in Annapolis as a child (prior to my return there as a Naval Academy midshipmen almost a decade later). If anything, Freddie was like a grain of sand in an oyster shell - an irritant whose presence still ended up creating something lasting and cherished.

So, in honor of his passing, and in homage to that time, here are a few music compilations from that period that will give you a sense of what was being listened to in the mid-70s. These are part of a forty-volume(!) series of recordings released by Time-Life Music between 1989 and 1999, covering the entirety of the 1970s. I only picked up a few of these, since I had other compilations that covered this same general time period. But the ones provided here, covering 1974 and 1975, are an excellent summation of music from that time.

In case you're wondering, here's the lineup:

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974:

1. Can't Get Enough – Bad Company
2. Show and Tell – Al Wilson
3. Come and Get Your Love – Redbone
4. I Shot the Sheriff – Eric Clapton
5. Help Me – Joni Mitchell
6. I Can Help – Billy Swan
7. Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy) – Al Green
8. Rock the Boat – The Hues Corporation
9. Bennie and the Jets – Elton John
10. Midnight Rider – Gregg Allman
11. Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
12. The Loco-Motion – Grand Funk Railroad
13. Smokin' in the Boys' Room – Brownsville Station
14. Rikki Don't Lose That Number – Steely Dan
15. Rock On – David Essex
16. Midnight at the Oasis – Maria Muldaur
17. Kung Fu Fighting – Carl Douglas
18. Keep on Smilin' – Wet Willie
19. Then Came You – Dionne Warwick & The Spinners
20. The Bitch Is Back – Elton John

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974 - Take Two:

1. Lookin' for a Love – Bobby Womack
2. You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
3. The Joker – Steve Miller Band
4. Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do) – Aretha Franklin
5. Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe – Barry White
6. Mockingbird – Carly Simon with James Taylor
7. I've Got to Use My Imagination – Gladys Knight & The Pips
8. Sundown – Gordon Lightfoot
9. Everlasting Love – Carl Carlton
10. Shinin' On – Grand Funk Railroad
11. Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer
12. Takin' Care of Business – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
13. Rock Your Baby – George McCrae
14. Sideshow – Blue Magic
15. Haven't Got Time for the Pain – Carly Simon
16. Tin Man – America
17. Dancing Machine – Jackson Five
18. Jungle Boogie – Kool & the Gang
19. Nothing from Nothing – Billy Preston
20. I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song – Jim Croce
21. Radar Love – Golden Earring

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975:

1. You're No Good – Linda Ronstadt
2. Jackie Blue – Ozark Mountain Daredevils
3. That's the Way (I Like It) – KC & the Sunshine Band
4. Must of Got Lost – J. Geils Band
5. Why Can't We Be Friends? – War
6. Sister Golden Hair – America
7. Philadelphia Freedom – Elton John
8. Black Water – Doobie Brothers
9. Love Is a Rose – Linda Ronstadt
10. How Long – Ace
11. Dance with Me – Orleans
12. Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd
13. You Are So Beautiful – Joe Cocker
14. Feel Like Makin' Love – Bad Company
15. Lady Marmalade – Labelle
16. Pick Up the Pieces – Average White Band
17. Island Girl – Elton John
18. Some Kind of Wonderful – Grand Funk Railroad
19. The Hustle – Van McCoy & Soul City Symphony
20. Let's Do It Again – Staple Singers

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975 - Take Two:

1. When Will I Be Loved – Linda Ronstadt
2. Bad Time – Grand Funk Railroad
3. Roll On Down the Highway – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
4. Movin' On – Bad Company
5. Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While) – The Doobie Brother
6. They Just Can't Stop It (The Games People Play) – The Spinners
7. L-O-V-E (Love) – Al Green
8. Shining Star – Earth, Wind & Fire
9. Get Down Tonight – KC & the Sunshine Band
10. I'm on Fire – Dwight Twilley
11. SOS – ABBA
12. Shame, Shame, Shame – Shirley & Company
13. Cut the Cake – Average White Band
14. You're the First, the Last, My Everything – Barry White
15. Low Rider – War
16. Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2) – Isley Brothers
17. Bungle in the Jungle – Jethro Tull
18. Only Women Bleed – Alice Cooper
19. Can't Get It Out of My Head – Electric Light Orchestra
20. Poetry Man – Phoebe Snow
21. I'm Not in Love – 10CC

Enjoy these discs, released in 1990 and 1991 (for the "Take Two" versions), and as always, let me know what you think.

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• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974 - Take Two: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975 - Take Two: Send Email

Various Artists - Until The End Of The World (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I was saddened to learn of the death in Pittsfield, Massachusetts last week of singer and actress Julee Cruise. About four years ago, she announced that she was suffering from systemic lupus, a painful autoimmune condition that left her depressed and unable to move and walk. Reports state that she took her own life at her home, with The B-52's song "Roam" playing as she died (Cruise was a touring member of The B-52's in the early 1990s, replacing Cindy Wilson who took a few years off to raise her children; I remember seeing her on stage at a band show I attended in Washington, DC during that period).

In a post I wrote almost a dozen years ago, I detailed how I first came across Cruise's music and my impressions regarding it - the melancholy, haunting quality that both repels and attracts the listener. After the release of her debut album Floating Into The Night in 1989, Cruise issued a follow-up, The Voice Of Love, four years later. As with the first album, almost all of the songs on her sophomore release were written by director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti, so the sound and atmosphere are remarkably similar to Floating Into The Night. The Voice Of Love is more of a continuation of her debut, rather than a stand-alone entity. If you liked the first, than this one will be right up your alley as well.

Between these two albums, Cruise recorded a Lynch/Badalamenti-modified cover of an old Elvis Presley song, "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears", for the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' scifi drama Until The End Of The World, starring William Hurt. The plot of the film had something to do with in a finding and using a device that can record visual experiences and visualize dreams... but the end result was so confusing and convoluted that the few people who DID go to see the movie were left flummoxed by it. Cashing in on his success with small, cerebral films like Paris, Texas and Wings Of Desire, Wenders managed to secure a budget of $22 million for this latest film, an amount more than the cost of all of his previous films combined. And he proceeded to spend every penny of that money, spreading his production over almost half a year with setups in 11 countries.

While Graeme Revell (co-founder of the Australian industrial band SPK) was commissioned to compose the movie theme and other incidental music for the film, Wenders asked a number of his favorite recording artists (including Cruise) to contribute songs as well for inclusion. For their selections, he asked them to anticipate the kind of music they would be making a decade later, when the film was set. It was Wenders' desire to use every song he received to its fullest extent that ultimately contributed to the overall length of the film. The initial cut was reportedly TWENTY HOURS long, from which the director and producer whittled down to a more standard running time versions of 2 1/2 and 3 hours (which Wenders called the "Reader's Digest" versions). There is also reportedly a five-hour "director's" cut of this film which has been screened at various festivals over the years.

...Not that any of that mattered. The truncated versions of Until The End Of The World were released to theaters, first in Germany in September 1991, and later in the U.S. that December, and overall the flick was a commercial failure, managing to gross only about $830,000 against its $22 million budget.  Critics at the time savaged it; Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars out of 4, describing it as lacking the "narrative urgency" required to sustain interest in the story, and wrote that it "plays like a film that was photographed before it was written, and edited before it was completed". He went on to say that a documentary about the globe-trekking production would likely have been more interesting than the film itself.  Other reviewers were even less kind.

But while the film flopped, the soundtrack was, frankly, amazing, featuring great songs by some of the top alternative performers of the day.  Wenders chose well.  Here's the soundtrack lineup:

1. "Opening Title" – Graeme Revell
2. "Sax and Violins" – Talking Heads
3. "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" – Julee Cruise
4. "Move with Me (Dub)" – Neneh Cherry
5. "The Adversary" – Crime & the City Solution
6. "What's Good" – Lou Reed
7. "Last Night Sleep" – Can
8. "Fretless" – R.E.M.
9. "Days" – Elvis Costello
10. "Claire's Theme" – Graeme Revell
11. "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World" – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
12. "It Takes Time" – Patti Smith (with Fred Smith)
13. "Death's Door" – Depeche Mode
14. "Love Theme" – Graeme Revell
15. "Calling All Angels" (Remix Version) – Jane Siberry with k.d. lang
16. "Humans from Earth" – T Bone Burnett
17. "Sleeping in the Devil's Bed" – Daniel Lanois
18. "Until the End of the World" – U2
19. "Finale" – Graeme Revell

Personal favorites on this disc, in additon to the Julee Cruise song, include R.E.M.'s "Fretless", Depeche Mode's "Death's Door" and the Jane Siberry/k.d.lang collaboration "Calling All Angels".  At the time, most of these songs were unavailable anywhere else, making the compilation a gold mine of rarities. All in all, the soundtrack did better than the movie, eventually reaching #114 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 Albums chart in 1992.

So, in honor of the life and art of Julee Cruise, I proudly offer to you all Until The End Of The World (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), released on Warner Brothers Records on December 10th, 1991.  Enjoy, and as always... well, you know.

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2021 In Memorium - #2: Everett Morton (Born 1950)

RIP to Everett Morton, drummer for the classic '80s ska revival band The Beat (known more familiarly in the States as The English Beat), who died last October 8th at the age of 71.  His innovative, syncopated drumming anchored the band through three studio album releases (1980's Special Beat Service, 1981's Wha'ppen, and 1982's I Just Can't Stop It) and innumerable live appearances up to the group's breakup in 1983.  Afterwards, Morton teamed up with former group member Saxa (on saxophone, obviously) and new vocalist Tony Beet to form The International Beat, releasing a album, The Hitting Line, in 1991, followed by Dance Hall Rockers in 1996.  Even after the demise of his original band, Morton stayed friendly with former Beat frontman Ranking Roger (Roger produced and participated on The International Beat's first album), and in later years the two performed as a version of the original Beat all across the UK, up until Roger's death in 2019.

Back in the day, The English Beat was one of my mainstay ska revival bands (along with The Specials and Madness).  I aurally devoured any and everything they put out, and recall being bitterly disappointed when I heard of the group's demise... so much so that for years afterward, I avidly followed the former members of the old band in their new projects.  For a while in the mid-80s, I was a fan of Fine Young Cannibals (guitarist Andy Cox and bassist David Steele's pop/rock/jazz project with vocalist Roland Gift), whose music was a far cry from the Beat's ska beat.  In 1984, I bought All The Rage, the debut album of General Public, vocalists Ranking Roger and Dave Wakeling's post-breakup band (with Mick Jones from The Clash and Horace Panter from The Specials).  And in the early 90's, I never missed an opportunity to see Special Beat, an amalgamation of members of the two ska revival giants, whenever they played Washington, DC (as I've mentioned long ago...).

But somehow, I missed out on The International Beat's music until long after its release.  I must say I enjoy this album very much.  Its sound is closer to the softer, poppier Wha'ppen-era Beat music, rather than the harder, straight-ahead ska sound of the band's debut album.  But that is not to say that The Hitting Line is without merit.  In my opinion, of all the post-breakup releases, Morton and Saxa's album comes the closest to replicating the old English Beat vibe.

But here - judge for yourself.  In honor of the life and work of Mr. Everett Morton, I proudly offer you all The Hitting Line Crosses The Border, Dojo Records' 1992 rerelease (with bonus tracks) of The International Beat's original debut album, The Hitting Line, from the prior year on Triple X Records.  This will be a welcome addition to your ska revival collection!  

In any event, have a listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Clash - Clash On Broadway (The Interviews)

Here's a Leap Day quickie (and a way for me to keep up my monthly quota of posts as well . . .): a disc of interviews of various members of The Clash, put together as a promotion for the 1991 release of the Clash On Broadway compilation. These interviews, conducted by former band manager/associate Kosmo Vinyl in New York City and London in late 1991, provides info on the origins and operations, stresses and successes of the group from the 'horse's mouths' themselves. Mick Jones, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon detail their thoughts and inspirations behind some of the most important and popular Clash songs. While there is mostly just talk on this disc, there IS some music on here as well.

Here's the track lineup:

1. Interview (Mick Jones on the beginnings of The Clash)
2. Interview (Joe Strummer on the beginnings of The Clash)
3. Interview (Mick Jones on the beginnings of The Clash)
4. Interview (Paul Simonon on the beginnings of The Clash)
5. Interview (Mick Jones on the beginnings of The Clash)
6. Interview (Paul Simonon on the beginnings of The Clash)
7. Interview (Joe Strummer on the beginnings of The Clash)
8. Interview (Mick Jones on the beginnings of The Clash)
9. Interview (Joe Strummer on the beginnings of The Clash)
10. Interview (Mick Jones on the beginnings of The Clash)
11. White Riot
12. Interview (Paul Simonon; Joe Strummer; Mick Jones; on the transition from Terry Chimes to Topper Headon as Clash Drummer, and the writing of the song Complete Control)
13. Complete Control
14. Interview (Mick Jones; Joe Strummer on writing (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais)
15. White Man In Hammersmith Palais
16. Interview (Joe Strummer on the inspiration for Julie's Working For The Drug Squad)
17. Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad
18. Interview (Paul Simonon; Joe Strummer on writing One Emotion)
19. One Emotion
20. Interview (Joe Strummer; Mick Jones on covering the song I Fought The Law)
21. I Fought The Law (Live)
22. Interview (Mick Jones; Paul Simonon; Joe Strummer on writing the song and album London Calling)
23. London Calling
24. Interview (Joe Strummer; Mick Jones on writing Lost In The Supermarket)
25. Lost In The Supermarket
26. Interview (Paul Simonon on writing The Guns Of Brixton)
27. The Guns Of Brixton
28. Interview (Paul Simonon; Mick Jones on writing Train In Vain)
29. Train In Vain
30. Interview (Joe Strummer on writing Rock The Casbah)
31. Rock The Casbah
32. Interview (Mick Jones; Joe Strummer; Paul Simonon on writing Should I Stay Or Should I Go)
33. Should I Stay Or Should I Go
34. Interview (Paul Simonon, Mick Jones; Joe Strummer on recording Every Little Bit Hurts)
35. Every Little Bit Hurts
36. Interview (Mick Jones; Paul Simonon; Joe Strummer on the legacy of The Clash)

I ran this one down only a couple of years back, in my constant search for any and all noises related to The Clash. I had no idea it existed prior to then, else I would have acquired it at the same time I bought the compilation all those years ago. This mostly-interview disc may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I always find it interesting to know a band's roots, and how/why they came up with their hit songs. This album is a great complement to the original box set and the Clash On Broadway (The Outtakes, a.k.a. Disc 4) I posted earlier. If you have any interest in the history of The Clash, this is a must-have.

So here for your edification and listening pleasure, is Clash On Broadway (The Interviews), released by Epic Records in late 1991.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Happy Leap Day!

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Billie Holiday - The Complete Decca Recordings (2-Disc Set)

What can purge my heart
Of the song
And the sadness?
What can purge my heart
But the song
Of the sadness?
What can purge my heart
Of the sadness
Of the song?

Do not speak of sorrow
With dust in her hair,
Or bits of dust in eyes
A chance wind blows there.
The sorrow that I speak of
Is dusted with despair.

Voice of muted trumpet,
Cold brass in warm air.
Bitter television blurred
By sound that shimmers–
Where?

- Langston Hughes, Song For Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday would have turned 100 years old today.

Holiday lived a life filled with degradation, suffering, harassment, tragedy and abuse of body and mind (by others and herself), and died of cirrhosis of the liver and pulmonary edema, nearly flat broke and handcuffed to her bed (she was arrested by the New York City police for drug possession as she lay dying) in a Harlem hospital on July 17th, 1959, barely 44 years old. Despite her short life, she left an incredible body of work. And even more than half a century after her death, she is still considered one of the most innovative and influential voices ever in popular music.

Billie recorded her last sides with Columbia Records in late 1942. By the fall of 1943, the label had dumped her, failing to renew her contract and ending a decade-long partnership that made Columbia a lot of money and Holiday a star. Despite the mutual benefits of their business relationship, relations between Holiday and the label had been strained since 1939, when Columbia refused to let her record her then-current show-stopper during her residency at New York's Cafe Society, the anti-lynching protest song "Strange Fruit". The best the label would do was allow Holiday to record the song on Milt Gabler's Commodore Records

label. The record, released with "Fine and Mellow" on the flip, was a huge hit for her and Commodore, and Billie and Milt became fast friends.

Gabler joined Decca Records as an A&R man in late 1941, but continued to run Commodore under a special arrangement he made with the head of Decca, Jack Kapp - as long as Commodore stuck to jazz records and didn't try to encroach into Decca's market with pop recordings, Milt was good to go. After Holiday got dropped by Columbia, she went to Gabler to see if she could record again with him on his jazz label. Milt quickly agreed, recalling the success they had with "Strange Fruit". He was looking forward to recording another half-dozen jazz singles with her over the next year.

But one night soon after their agreement, Gabler walked into the New York club where Billie was performing, and heard her belting out "Lover Man (Where Can You Be)?" He said later that he knew instantly that the song would be a smash hit, but he also knew that if he recorded it on Commodore, he would lose his job at Decca, since the tune was clearly more pop-oriented than most of Holiday's Columbia releases. In a bind, he did what he thought was the best thing for the song and Holiday's career - he convinced Decca to sign her as a pop artist.

Billie signed on with the label on August 7th, 1944, an exclusive one-year contract for a minimum of twelve sides, with an additional one-year extension option by the label. Holiday got plenty in return for this contract. At that time, Decca was the only major label still producing commercial recordings (In 1942, the American Federation of Musicians, led by their union president James Petrillo, had gone on strike against all of the other major American labels over royalty payments - the final label holdouts, RCA Victor and Columbia, didn't settle with the union until late 1944). In addition, for the first time Billie Holiday was treated as an artist of stature; the symbol of that stature was something that few recording artists at the time were provided - for her first sessions at Decca on October 4th, 1944, Holiday was backed by a full string ensemble. She was so overwhelmed with joy by the sight of them when she walked into the studio that day that she immediately walked out to compose herself. "Lover Man" was the first side she and her new label cut.

Holiday had several recording sessions with Decca from late 1944 to early 1947, recording mostly torch songs and pop standards that were very well received. By 1947, she was one of the most popular and celebrated recording artists in America, with an income from royalties (for the first time in her career, Holiday would receive royalties for her recordings with Decca) exceeding $100,000 in 1946. However, in May 1947, Billie was busted for narcotics possession in New York City. The trial shortly thereafter was a farce - she was sick and dehydrated, and discovered as she stumbled into the courtroom that the attorney she hired to represent her had abandoned her. Even the prosecuting attorney came to her defense. Even so, Holiday was sentenced to a year in federal prison in West Virginia.

When Billie was released from prison in early 1948, she and others were worried that her career was over. Her manager arranged a comeback concert for her at New York's Carnegie Hall, but no one was sure if people would turn out to hear a convicted drug felon who hadn't had a huge hit since "Lover Man" more than two years earlier. But the Carnegie Hall concert,

held on March 27th, 1948, was a tremendous success, and reestablished Holiday as a major artist. She continued recording with Decca through 1950; a number of her songs were minor hits during that time in terms of sales, but, due to her unsavory reputation in some quarters, were little heard on the radio. Holiday's relationship with Decca ended later that year.

I purchased this set at the same time I bought Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-1944, at the record store in Newark, Delaware all those years ago. Some music critics have tended to disparage Holiday's Decca output, considering her body of work there syrupy and lacking the power or nuance of her jazz and blues recordings with Columbia. But I tend to disagree. The Decca recordings show a different, more accessible side of Holiday's artistry, and prove that she was strikingly adept at more than one genre of music. Several of her Decca tunes, including the aforementioned "Lover Man", "Good Morning Heartache", "Big Stuff", and "You Better Go Now", are just as classic and celebrated today as her Columbia sides.

In all of her recordings, Billie Holiday imparted the joy, heartbreak, elation and sadness of love and life, and found ways to express the inexpressible, time and time again. She remains a towering figure in popular music.

Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

- Rita Dove, Canary

Here, on the centennial of the birth of the great Billie Holiday, one of my all-time favorite artists, I proudly offer to you The Complete Decca Recordings, released October 1st, 1991 by Decca Records, a two-disc set containing all fifty sides and alternate takes of songs she recorded with the label from 1944 to 1950. Have a listen and remember this great lady. And as always, let me know what you think.

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Spin Doctors - Pocket Full Of Kryptonite

I hate Labor Day.

I'll just let everyone know that right up front - I can't STAND this holiday. Yeah, yeah - I'm all for the "working man's day of rest" (the reason this day was founded in the first place), Jerry Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon (that used to be a big deal when I was a kid - tell me, when was the last time you remember watching it?), big parades and county fairs and all of that. And Lord knows, any day away from my job is most welcome.

The thing I hate about Labor Day is the seeming finality of it all, hammered into our heads for days in advance by local and national newscasters, endlessly prattling on about the upcoming "End of Summer". As such, Labor Day Weekend usually ends up as a frenzied whirlwind of disjointed activity, as people who are already dissatisfied with the amount and use of their leisure time since Memorial Day (aka "The Beginning of Summer") make one last dash to gainfully use the very last minutes of weekend pleasure available to them, to squeeze the last pitiful few drops of fun out of the bone-dry lemon of their summer months, apparently before the thermometer suddenly plunges 40 degrees during the first week of September.

The exploitation surrounding this weekend is incredible. Seaside hotels jack up the rates to astronomical levels. Gas companies suddenly report "shortages" and "refinery issues", in an excuse to nudge the unleaded prices up a couple more cents. Restaurants advertise "Labor Day Specials", charging big money for the same meal you could have had for 40% less the weekend before. Dance clubs increase the cover charge, but still play the same old music as before. Local cops leave the ticket books sitting in their cars where they can reach them and chuckle gleefully to themselves, knowing that their speeding ticket quota problems will all be solved during this three-day period (I understand that a couple of years ago in Virginia, they increased the penalty for speeding just before the holiday weekend to a MINIMUM of $1,000 - so long, budget deficit, eh, guys?).

It's all a bunch of crap. Last time I checked, summer ends on the vernal equinox, sometime around September 23rd. Yes, yes - I know that school starts this week, and you allegedly don't have as much free time to do stuff with the kids after they head back to school. But if you're working, how much free time did you have with them at all this summer? A week? Possibly two? I would wager that over the summer, just as during the other seasons, most of your leisure activities took place on Saturday and Sunday. So what's the rush with doing a bunch of stuff this particular weekend? Unless you live in northern Manitoba or Narvik, Norway, there are still going to be a few more gorgeous weekends available this year. Just relax, pace yourself, and enjoy.

The upcoming "end of this summer" puts me in mind of the end of another summer, twenty years back. Ah, the good ol' Summer of '92, at that point the best summer I ever had. In the spring of that year, I had left my ship, the USS Hayler, after three years aboard, and transferred from Norfolk, VA to Arlington, VA, where I was a finance officer in a department of the Navy Recruiting Command. I liked my new job and the Washington DC area, but I left a lot of friends down in Hampton Roads, mainly guys who I had served aboard the ship with. One guy, an officer and fellow shipmate, was still aboard the Hayler; he lived in Virginia Beach in a house he shared with two other officer friends of his who were stationed aboard other local ships.

Now this dude (nicknamed "Doogie", as in Doogie Howser M.D., since he looked much younger than he was) was a friggin' wild man, a hard-partying boy who was still running off of the pent-up energy of his fairly recent college days (he went to a very reputable Midwestern university, where his antics were legendary, and legendarily filthy - his nickname in college was "Dirtman"). His housemates were just as nutty as he was. So they were all a great bunch to hang out with. Although by the spring of 1992, many of the old Hayler gang had been transferred to other parts of the country, we all were loath to end the party.

So on Memorial Day Weekend that year, Doogie and his boys got on the phone and invited everyone down to Virginia Beach to crash and hang out. Most of the gang made it, many travelling from far and wide to make it to Chez Doogie - DC, Charleston, and as far away as Jacksonville and Boston. It was a great weekend. One of the housemates had a boat docked near Little Creek, so we spend the afternoons water-skiing or tubing (I was horrible, and kept falling off), and of course knocking back a few 'refreshments' onboard. Or we would head down to the beach for the day, chilling and chatting with the beach patrol, all of whom were friends with Doogie and his boys. Friday and Saturday nights were spent at various clubs in Virginia Beach - Peabody's and a couple of other frat-type beer joints downtown, TCC's in Lynnhaven, and a few others whose names I've long since forgotten. We'd usually grab a quick bite to eat at Taco Bell or the Jewish Mother before heading back to the house to fall asleep haphazardly wherever we could find a place to snooze. And the highlight of the weekend was on Sunday nights, when the beachside club at the nearby Fort Story army base would open up for anyone who wanted to come, military or civilian, and they'd pump great music (i.e,, Jesus Jones, EMF's "Unbelievable" and Nine Inch Nail's Pretty Hate Machine were HUGE that summer) and dispense cheap beer well into the night (those were the pre-9/11 days, of course, when they'd let anyone through the base gates for the party; needless to say, they stopped doing that long ago).

It was a lot of fun - so much so, that during that summer, the trek to Doogie's house in Virginia Beach became a nearly-every-weekend pilgrimage. It seemed like I was down there all the time, partying with the boys. And I wasn't the only one - everyone came there, practically every weekend (one guy made the trip from Boston multiple times that summer - I still don't know how he did it and managed to remain upright). And every time I was there, it was just as fun as that first weekend. It never got old, no one fought or made asses of themselves, and everyone just laughed and had a good time. I got a little better on the water skis, and I was always one of the first ones into the pit during the slam-dance songs at Fort Story (once, during a particularly high leap, some Air Force jerk tried to 'submarine' me, taking me legs out from under me - fortunately, I recovered before hitting the ground. That was the only unpleasant incident of that summer that I recall). By the time Labor Day rolled around, I was sure that the summer of 1992 was the best summer I ever had. And up to that point, it was.

You know how every summer seems to have a theme song? In a year full of great music played to death in every city and club I was in (including Kriss Kross's "Jump", Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back", "Jump Around" by House of Pain, Tom Cochrane's "Life Is A Highway", Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" . . . and of course "Smells Like Teen Spirit", among many, many others), for me, 1992 was the summer of The Spin Doctors, and their two huge hits "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Two Princes". It seemed that these songs and this band sprung up seemingly from out of nowhere, but The Spin Doctors' roots go back further than you might think.

The origins of The Spin Doctors can be traced to the mid-80s New York City club scene. The band evolved from an earlier group called Trucking Company, featuring guitarist Eric Schenkman and vocalist Chris Barron backing the then-front man, none other than Mr. John Popper. Popper never fully committed to Trucking Company, preferring to focus most of his musical efforts on his main band, the up-and-coming Blues Traveler. So when he quit Trucking Company in the spring of 1989, Schenkman and Barron recruited bassist Mark White and Dallas drumming legend Aaron Comess, and changed their band name to The Spin Doctors.

The band spent the next couple of years gigging in the NYC area and building an audience. Despite their split with Popper, they all remained friends, so much so that The Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler regularly appeared together on double bills in the city. Their growing buzz brought them to the attention of Epic Records, which signed them in the winter of 1991. The label quickly released the band's debut EP, Up For Grabs . . . Live, in January 1991, followed by their debut album, Pocket Full of Kryptonite, that following August.

Pocket Full of Kryptonite was initially greeted, both critically and commercially, with resounding . . . crickets. Basically, it was ignored by the record-buying public, and considered a failure by the label. In their efforts to build an nationwide audience, The Spin Doctors undertook an extensive national tour schedule during the fall/winter of 1991/92, travelling on the cheap and playing tons of small colleges and one-horse towns, trying to make themselves heard. From all indications, the gigs were generally well received, but didn't exactly make the band household names.

By the late spring of 1992, the band was exhausted from making the club circuit rounds; despite their herculean efforts, their national profile hadn't increased significantly. At this juncture, their old friend John Popper came to their rescue. He too was tired of the club scene, and wanted to avoid those small, dark, hot and sweaty clubs during the upcoming summer. Inspired by the successful Lollapalooza Festival from the year before, Popper figured he could do the same sort of thing - a nationwide outdoor amphitheater tour - with bands that shared a similar approach to music as Blues Traveler. He invited Widespread Panic, Phish, The Samples and The Spin Doctors to join him that summer on what became known as the H.O.R.D.E. ("Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere") Festival.

The H.O.R.D.E. tour was a critical and financial success from the very beginning, and it made the Spin Doctors; due to it, the band's star immediately began rising. Due to popular demand generated from those shows, "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" suddenly went into heavy rotation on radio stations across the country (eventually making it into the U.S. Top Twenty), and MTV began airing the song's video practically around the clock.

The second album single, "Two Princes", was released on the heels of the first song that summer, and did even better than its predecessor, entering the U.S. Top Ten by mid-August. And the album that no one noticed or wanted the year before began flying off the shelves. Pocket Full of Kryptonite was certified Gold by the end of the summer, and by the end of the year went multi-platinum, eventually selling over 5 million copies in the U.S. alone and peaking at #3 on the national charts.

These Spin Doctors songs were always guaranteed to fill up a dance floor the moment the DJ dropped the needle - everyone out there gyrating, laughing and singing along. I danced to these tunes at Fort Story, in Virginia Beach, at Lulu's in DC (damn, I miss that place), and a score of other clubs up and down the East Coast that summer. The band wasn't hugely innovative, but they had a sound that was accessible to a lot of people back then - sort of like a frat house band that made good. And that was all right with me at that time.

Sadly, The Spin Doctors couldn't sustain their momentum. The band put out its follow-up release, Turn It Upside Down, in 1994. While it sold over 2 million copies worldwide, it was considered a disappointment of sorts, by both the band and Epic. At that point, things began to fall apart very quickly. During their tour that summer, Schenkman quit the band in the worst possible way, walking offstage during a show in California. The group hired a replacement and recorded You've Got To Believe In Something in the spring of 1996, but the album was a huge bomb, selling less than 100,000 copies. Epic dropped The Spin Doctors like a hot potato shortly thereafter, and gradually the band fell apart, all but defunct by 1999.

Just like the band, my life and the lives of my summer friends were quickly changing as well as the summer of 1992 came to a close. Doogie got married a few months later, along with a couple of other guys from our group. Other guys transferred to far-away locations, or just drifted away - I have no idea where most of them are now. As for myself, I got transferred to Christchurch, New Zealand in the spring of 1993, so I wasn't going to be around for that upcoming summer anyway. I was sad about it for a little while . . . but I sort of knew that there would be no way to repeat the epic experiences and good times we all had from the year before; it would have been futile to even try. Life moves on, and you enjoy it as it comes. I never thought I would ever have as good a time in my life ever again . . . until I settled into my new home in New Zealand, and the days I would spend in that country were to become the best period of my life, even better than those storied three months in 1992.

But that's another story . . .

So, anyway, at the "end" of another summer, I raise my bottle of Sam Adams and salute a long-ago time and place, the friends I had back then and the fun we all shared. The Spin Doctors were an integral part of that great period in my life, and I salute them as well. To Doogie, guys, all the ladies we encountered and everyone else involved in my Summer of '92 (all of whom, for purposes here, shall remain nameless) - thank you, and all the best to you in your current lives.

Here's the album, released by Epic Records in 1991. Enjoy, let me know what you think, and if you have the chance, tell me about your best summers as well.

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Big Audio Dynamite II - Ally Pally Paradiso

Wow . . . I didn't know this one was so rare. I've had this disc for forever; I picked it up in early 1992 at either Phantasmagoria Records or Vinyl Ink Records, two legendary Washington, DC-area music stores that sadly are no longer with us. From what I've read, this album was a promo, attached to a limited edition version of Big Audio Dynamite II's 1991 album The Globe, or available through mail order from NME magazine. The place I bought it from had it out separately for sale from the main album. I recall acquiring it in the run-up to the band's scheduled 1992 concert in DC as part of their international Globe tour.

The group was slated to play the Citadel Center, which back in the day was a great place for Washington-area concerts. It was located on Kalorama Road in the heart of the Adams Morgan neighborhood of the city, and from what I understood was a former roller skating rink. As such, the place was a cavernous barn; a huge room with a stage at one end and no seats - just standing-room only. But it was simply an outstanding venue for seeing bands . . . although you took your life in your hands if you stood too close to the stage - not due to flailing mosh pit idiots or aggressive bouncers, but because of the constant crush of people behind you surging forward. I saw The Pixies there (with Pere Ubu opening) in November 1991 with my sister, and being huge Pixies fans, we wanted to be right up front for the show. Well, I spent the entirety of The Pixies' set with her in front of me, while I held my arms locked rigidly on either side of her against the stage barrier, trying to keep both of us from being squashed. It was a great show, mind you, but my arms were so sore afterwards that I couldn't lift them to drive; my sister had to take the wheel to get us home.

Despite the drawbacks of this concert hall, I saw a lot of bands there. When I heard that BAD II was going to be at the Citadel Center over the summer, I was completely jazzed. I'd been a fan of Big Audio Dynamite from the get-go; I regard the original band lineup (featuring The Clash's Mick Jones on guitar and vocals, the vocals and found sound additions of Don Letts, Dan Donovan on keyboards, Leo Williams on bass, and drummer Greg Roberts) as the best, 'classic' lineup. When Mick Jones & Co.'s first album (This Is Big Audio Dynamite) was released in 1985, I acquired it practically the moment it came out. In subsequent years, I purchased and enjoyed the follow-up albums by the original band as they appeared - No. 10 Upping St. in '86, Tighten Up Vol. '88 (in . . . well, guess what year), Megatop Phoenix in '89 - but I could tell by the end of the decade that there was a definite lack of spark and originality remaining within Big Audio Dynamite. If there was, it certainly wasn't making it onto the albums. So there was disappointment in some quarters, but I don't think anyone (including me) was really surprised when the original BAD lineup dissolved in 1990.

When I heard that Mick Jones was putting together a brand new lineup and planning to record/tour under the name "Big Audio Dynamite", I must admit that I was more than a bit concerned. To me, it sounded as though Jones was making the same mistake that Joe Strummer made back in the mid-eighties, when in the wake of Jones' acrimonious departure from The Clash, Strummer gathered up a group of nobodies and recorded the embarrassing, widely-panned and vilified Cut The Crap under the 'Clash' moniker. I figured Jones would have learned his lesson after witnessing that debacle - but apparently not.

When The Globe was released in the summer of 1991, I forced myself not to pay attention to it - I just didn't want to be disappointed. But songs from the album began appearing in heavy rotation on some of my favorite radio stations, including DC's WHFS, and to my happy surprise I discovered that the replacement band (now dubbed "Big Audio Dynamite II") had risen to the challenge, and had actually put out a pretty good record. The new guys brought an infusion of energy and new ideas, which was basically what the group needed. I greatly enjoyed songs like "Rush" and "Green Grass", and looked forward to their upcoming show.

But alas, to my intense dissatisfaction, the show was cancelled at the last minute, for reasons that were unclear to me at the time. From what I heard later, the homeowners who lived near the Citadel Center were up in arms about having a concert venue all but on top of their houses, and were ticked off about dealing with the noise, rowdy crowds and incidental property damage that occurred during show nights. So eventually, the city shut the place down. In recent years, the location has been converted into a Harris-Teeter supermarket. Too bad - for a while there, the Citadel Center was THE place to see a show in DC.

The songs on this live album were recorded at two European shows Big Audio Dynamite II played in 1990, at the Alexandria Palace in London and at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, Holland (hence the name, Ally Pally Paradiso). On this album, some of the live song names were changed from the names of the original songs on the BAD albums; when necessary, I've noted the 'real' names below:

1. "Ritual Idea" [aka "E=MC2", off of This Is Big Audio Dynamite]
2. "Babe" [aka "Baby, Don't Apologize", off of Megatop Phoenix]
3. "Free"
4. "Messiahs of the Milk Bar" [aka "Hollywood Boulevard", from No. 10 Upping Street]
5. "City Lights"
6. "Situation No Win" [aka "Rush", from The Globe]
7. "All St.'s Rd" [aka "The Battle Of All Saints Road", from Tighten Up Vol. '88]
8. "I'm On the Right Track" [aka "Contact", from Megatop Phoenix]
9. "1999" [Prince cover]

I think that this album catches much of the energy, excitement and sound of a live BAD concert in the early '90s. Listening to it now, you can also hear a huge dollop of the then-current rave/Madchester sound contained in what BAD II was doing back then. But in my mind, it doesn't really date the album all that much. As a standalone disc, I think that it holds up pretty well, and as part of the overall Big Audio Dynamite I/II oeuvre, it's not essential . . . but neither is it a frivolous or unnecessary album to own.

Anyway, you decide. For your listening pleasure, here's the only live album ever put out by any iteration of Big Audio Dynamite, Ally Pally Paradiso, released in 1991 on Columbia Records (then a subsidiary of CBS). Enjoy, and let me know what you think:

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Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - 'So You Think You're In Love' EP

[Sorry that I've been kind of slow in posting stuff this month - it's been pretty busy here, which has sort of limited my time to put together the erudite, pithy writeups on this music that I know you all love so well (ha ha!) . . . I'm trying to make an end-of-month push here, and get a few more posted to at least meet my monthly average of 10-12 albums/EPs (you might have noticed that the number of posts has increased in the last week - or then again, maybe you haven't . . .). So on that note, here's another one:]

I should probably be a bigger fan of the music of Robyn Hitchcock than I am, but I simply have trouble fully getting into his music. He's just too quirky and inconsistent for me. I was never a fan of The Soft Boys, his first post-punk/psychedelic-punk group, so I have no nostalgia for his early work. And it seems that every time he puts out something that catches my interest, he follows up with something that I can't stand, putting me back to Square One with him once again.

For example, I loved the song "Balloon Man" (off of the great Globe Of Frogs album) when it came out in 1988, and figured the guy had finally found a sound that appealed to me. But his follow-up, 1989's Queen Elvis, was terrible, and I found the lead single off of that album, "Madonna Of The Wasps", to be weak and somewhat whiny. Once again, he lost what little goodwill he had with me.

With that being said, I paid little attention to his next release, 1990's acoustic solo outing Eye, and by the time he reunited with The Egyptians for his 1991 album on A&M Records, Perspex Island, I was all but completely ignoring his output. However, that perspective changed once I began hearing cuts from the new disc on the radio. I was living in the Washington, DC area at the time, and WHFS there put the lead single, "So You Think You're In Love", in heavy rotation. I thought to myself, "Pretty good song."

But it was another Robyn Hitchcock single from that time period played on 'HFS that really caught my attention and interest. They played it less frequently on the station, which was too bad, as it was a MUCH stronger song than "So You Think You're In Love". It was a gentle acoustic duet between Hitchcock and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., called "Dark Green Energy" (Stipe and other members of R.E.M. collaborated on other songs on Perspex Island).

 The song was just outstanding, so much so that I decided to become a Robyn Hitchcock fan once again, and went running full-bore to Tower Records to pick up the disc. But when I got to the record store, I found that the song I loved so much wasn't on the album track list.

I had to hunt around for a while to actually find the recorded tune; I finally tracked it down on an EP, So You Think You're In Love, offered at a small record store I used to go to in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Although the EP featured the title cut, the song that A&M was pushing to be the 'hit' off of this album, the EP was woefully obscure and hard to find, which made absolutely no sense to me at all - it stands to reason that if you want to sell something, it helps to have it readily available in large quantities.

And, of course, after drawing me back into the fold, Hitchcock drove me away again with his next release, Respect, which was his last with The Egyptians. Respect sucked so bad that even Hitchcock himself has been quoted as saying he himself didn't like the record. And there you go.

For me, Robyn Hitchcock hasn't put out anything as good as this EP in the last 20 years. He's still plugging away at it, though - God bless him, and I wish him all the luck and success in the world.

Here you are - enjoy, and let me know what you think:

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