A few good times in my life
Another eclectic journey through decades of chart hits and long time not played songs for your pleasure.
1976: Stevie Wonder
1965: Crispian St. Peters
1976: Flamin Groovies
1982: The Kinks
1984: Tears For Fears
1964: The Righteous Brothers
1966: The Monkees
1975: Bob Dylan
1975: Blues Brothers
1980: The Clash
1978: The Records
Another week another journey through decades of music. Today some well known and some tracks we might have forgotten.
1966: The Four Tops
1968: The Rascals
1997: Foo Fighters
1983: The Motels
1965: The McCoys
1965: The Barbarians
1965: Barry McGuire
1971: The Doors
1979: Bob Dylan
1982: Africa Bambaataa and The Soul Sonic Force
1984: Depeche Mode
´1961: The Dovells
1967: Sam and Dave
1971: Janis Joplin
1976: The Stills-Young Band
1984: Sade
1978: The Jam
This week, we take another look back at the 70's, plus a few older and newer songs.
1965: Bob Dylan
1972: Uriah Heep
1972: Mott The Hoople
1972: Randy Newman
1977: Thin Lizzy
1991: Metallica
1971: Rod Stewart
1964: Martha and the Vandellas
1970: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
1989: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
1980: David Bowie
1959: The Coasters
1971: Cher
1973: The Velvet Underground
1987: M|A|R|R|S
As announced last week, a small series of songs with Red, Hot or Blue in their titles starts today. As always, the selection is eclectic and, apart from the color, has no further context.
Let's start with Nick Cave and a song from Peaky Blinders a British drama series set in Birmingham around 100 years ago. The song fits perfectly with the gloomy mood that this series exudes.
Nick Cave - Red Right Hand
The next one is a song from my very younger days when glam was all around and Marc Bolan was on his highest level.
T. Rex - Hot Love
We finish today with a song Bob Dylan released 1975 on his great Blood On The Tracks album. One of the songs and stories by him I love most.
Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue
Another sentimental musical journey into times long gone by.
1976: Thin Lizzy
1969: Bob Dylan
1969: Simon and Garfunkel
1986: Peter Gabriel
1972: Alice Cooper
1974: Paper Lace
1976: Steve Miller Band
1978: Elvis Costello and the Attractions
1979: Rickie Lee Jones
When I started this series, I didn't really have any great expectations as to which songs would appear on these pages. In the meantime, I really enjoy listening to these songs again after many years or even just watching the videos.
1972: At the height of glam rock, you can't get past Gary Glitter and I thought long and hard about whether I should give a pederast a forum.
Another week and another foray through the releases of new songs from the last 60 years. There wasn't much of note, but enough to fill this post.
1977 - David Bowie released Low, probably his best album from this decade and Sound and Vision was one of the highlights from this album.
1966 - From his album Blonde On Blonde Bob Dylan released One Of Us Must Know one of the best songs from this album.
1967 - A classic pop song by The Turtles was released.
1972 - Dr. Hook appeared on the scene with a one of the best songs about lost love.
1966 - The Walker Brothers released their masterpiece. Scott Walker's voice is still thrilling.
1980 - Talking Heads released Fear Of Music and showed on this song why they were one of the best bands from this time.
I recently listened to Fairport Convention's second album Unhalfbricking again and realized that I've never given this band the credit they deserve on this blog.
In 1974, I watched a World Cup match at the home of Andreas, a school friend (I can't remember exactly which one, but I suspect it was one of the Dutch team, who played the best football at the time and who we will play again tonight). Afterwards, we retired to his older brother's room, who even then had exceptional taste in music. Whilst we were still listening to glam rock, he was already playing Velvet Underground and, in total contrast, Fairport Convention.
I was so impressed by this music that I bought this record. FC was the product of the very young Richard Thompson on guitar and Sandy Denny, who sadly died far too young, with her clear and expressive voice.
The album contains many songs by Bob Dylan, taken from his Basement Tapes and introduced to the band at the time, as well as his own songs. These include A Sailor's Life, a traditional on which Thompson shows what an exceptional guitarist he is. At just under 12 minutes, it was an extremely long song even for its time, but with its gently driving rhythm it never gets boring.
Fairport Convention - A Sailor's Life
I bought my first long-playing records around 1974, after I had earned some money with my first holiday job. To be honest, I bought three albums on recommendation. Yessongs and Dylan's Before The Flood because at the time I thought live albums showed the artists unvarnished and with a double or triple album I would have got more for the money I spent. I also bought Bruce Springsteen's second album.
Springsteen wasn't the boss back then and was largely unknown. I actually only bought the album on the recommendation of the salesman in the record shop, but I have never regretted it. The album is now over 50 years old and I still listen to it from time to time. It has none of Yes's overblown organ sound but a lot of Dylan, especially the gift of telling stories in the songs.
For me, his quieter and atmospherically dense songs have always been in the foreground and here he has collected many of his best and most melancholic songs. With Rosalita he laid the foundation for his later status. A record that has stayed with me throughout Springsteen's career and shows what he was all about. A poet from New Jersey who dreamed his dream of rock ‘n’ roll.
Today I turn 65 and another year has passed far too quickly and I reflect on everything that has happened in these years. We are getting older and that is inevitable. And transience is a theme that crops up in every genre of music, from rock n' roll to country and blues. And songs that have dealt with getting older, the past and everything in between. It's impossible to pick a favourite, especially when you consider how much choice is out there. That's why I limited myself to the songs that came to me spontaneously and that have stayed with me over the years.
Until the early 80s, all I knew about Cologne was that they had a good football team and several carnival bands. That changed abruptly when German bands started singing in their native language. The Cologne band BAP rose to fame in the wake of this scene. I saw them back then in a small club in Stuttgart and thought they were pretty decent for a local band playing mainstream. At that time, the peace movement was very popular. Wolfgang Niedecken, the founder of BAP, emerged as the political conscience of an entire generation that demonstrated against the stationing of Pershings in Germany and the phasing out of nuclear energy. I could identify with many of their ideas and goals at the time, but at the same time my ambivalent relationship with Cologne developed. The reason for this was that people from Cologne have an inflated sense of self-worth and fundamentally reject everything that doesn't come from Cologne or consider it inferior. I have always found it difficult to come to terms with this attitude. But back to the music. Many of BAP's songs have long since become popular favourites. Most of them aren't even that bad, but the bottom line is that they are often banal. In 1995, Niedecken, who considers himself an avowed fan of Bob Dylan, released an album on which he performs Dylan songs in Cologne dialect. And I recently listened to this record again and thought that every artist can probably produce a highlight once in their life. All the cover versions are superbly performed and arranged, but the way Dylan's lyrics have been translated into German is sensational. They were not translated word for word, but the poetry of the songs was brought out - even if it is often difficult for me as a South German to understand. All in all, My Back Pages, Jokerman and Absolutely Sweet Marie in these versions are classics that I always return to
During my holiday I listened often to Cat Power's latest album Sings Dylan and discovered the beauty of this record. I can't explain why this album didn't appear in my end of the year list. Probably because I didn't listen intently to this versions of songs I knew for ages. The story of this record is shortly told. Chan Marshall was invited to play a concert in London's Royal Albert Hall and she decided to play the full set of Dylan's concert in Manchester where he was named as Judas because he played the second half of the set in an electric style. From this day on Dylan was free and released of the chains of pure folk music. Marshall did cover versions on several records before and made them a part of her own. And so it is on this live album. Without question she has an extraordinary voice that fits to Dylan's songs but seldom heard this songs in that emphatic and soulful way.
Back then in 1982 popular music was ruled by electronic sounds and across the Atlantic ocean many bands returned to the guitar sound of the 60's/70's. Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Rain Parade and REM interpreted their musical history in a very new and great way. Another band that played in this league were The Dream Syndicate, formed in the early 80's in Los Angeles and set with their first albums trademarks in American alternative music. Steve Wynn was the mastermind of the band which combined the energy of punk with music inspired by CCR, Crazy Horse and yes, Bob Dylan because Tell Me When It's Over has a lot of fragments of Stuck Inside Of Mobile... Their first album is still one of those that I always come back to and at every time it is a great pleasure for me to listen to their guitar sound and Wynn's voice that is sometimes very close to Lou Reed.
The Dream Syndicate - Tell Me When It's Over
The Dream Syndicate - Definetely Clean
The Dream Syndicate - Halloween
Let's start into a new month with a song that came back to my memory during the last week. Bob Dylan released Hurricane in 1975 on his album desire. t addresses the arrest and conviction of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. In the song, Dylan criticized the investigation into the Carter case and its racist acts. Carter and a man named John Artis were convicted of three counts of murder. This had occurred in 1966 at the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. After it was widely reported that the crime apparently had racist backgrounds (the victims were white, Carter and Artis black), Carter and Artis were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In the following years, the case became more and more a controversial issue. Thus, the lawfulness of the investigation and the testimony of an alleged eyewitness were questioned. Carter asserted his innocence in his biography, which eventually led to Bob Dylan's contact. Dylan and his prominent associates reached a further investigation. In the third instance, Carter was finally acquitted. Listening to this song makes me thinking that less things changed in the United States during the last decades. Desire is one of those albums by Bob Dylan from the 70's that didn't the recognition it should not only for introducing a violin into his sound but just because there were so many great songs on it.
Bob Dylan - Hurricane
I featured the other days albums that impressed me much and was played often at my place and I thought it was the time to write down the best songs of this year. Many of them you can find on the long posts and I have to admit that I am not the one that is able to finish the list because there were so many songs I heard the first time this year that made me happy once or several times. Other songs crossed my attention weeks later when I listened to them on my yearly playlist on Spotify where I collect new songs year by year. Looking at this playlist I find more than 200 songs and the more I think about it I can't decide which one would reach a top ten. So here are some songs, subjective of course and not showing the full range of music I listened too but still worth to be named when you look back on this year.
A few days ago Bob Dylan released another part of his bootleg series called Springtime in New York. It is full of outtakes from his early 80's albums like Infidels and it was the the time he hit the Christian road and I turned away from him. Not that I didn't liked him any more but it was the time he didn't have to say much to me and other music came very much closer to me. Listening to those mostly unreleased songs shows that he was still able to write and arrange great songs. Although Infidels was produced by Mark Knopfler (I like their first album but the rest is rubbish) the songs were not polished in a mainstream way and worth to give them another chance after all these years
One of the oldest American folk songs is Man Of Constant Sorrow first recorded by a blind fiddler from Kentucky. Since then many artists made versions of this song. The probably best known version was by Bob Dylan released on his first album almost 60 years ago. This song appeared on my mobile phone a few days ago on my way to the office in a version by Rod Stewart. He also made a version on his first album and I almost forgot how great his version was when he was a kind of lad next door.
Rod Stewart - Man Of Constant Sorrow
In 2000 the song appeared on the soundtrack of the Coen brothers movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thoug their homage to Homer's Greek poem The Odyssey. It is also one of my favorite movies of all time because it is one of the few movies that transports a classic poem into the time of great depression with a superb atmosphere showing the South of the United States.
In 1970 Brinsley Schwarz released their eponymous first self titled album and it is one that was a good friend to me over decades. Someone named them as a blend of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Bob Dyland and The Band, Buffalo Springfield with a heavy dose of early Yes and I can agree to this description. For me they were the unbeatable band of the pub-rock days and their songs were always a pleasure to listen to. Their debut album showed more roots in rock music before they drifted into country albums later. And it was Nick Lowe who wrote the most songs and shows his abilities on writing great songs. Maybe the reason I like this album is that they turned away from rhythm and blues and added country blues to it. It is unbelievable that this record still sounds fresh after almost 50 years.
Brinsley Schwarz - Ballad Of A Has-Been Teenage Queen
A few days ago me and a few co-workers were sent home from work because we had contact in the first degree to another fellow which was tested positive on Covid 19. As I arrived at home I got a message to come back to our office immediately to make a quick test. So I went for another hour riding on the train. As I arrived another 25 people are waiting for the test. It was very unpleasant to get the testing stick deeply into my nose and waiting 15 minutes for the result. Thank godness the result was that all of us were tested negative. We all got the news about the pandemic from television and newspapers but you think different when you could be the one taken by the illness. When I came home I thought a lot about the luck I had. Later this evening I found a show on the internet by Lucinda Williams performing the songs of Bob Dylan. Unfortunately I couldn't find a single link or video of a wonderful version of It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry so here's a link to the whole show.
Stay safe people.
During the last months Bob Dylan released beside a new album various extended versions of his albums with additional versions of his songs. A few weeks ago he also released an album with alternate versions and not released outtakes. I am not a huge fan of Dylan but he was an artist that accompanied me during the last decades and from time to time he was able to release a fantastic album. In 1989 Dylan released Oh Mercy, maybe one of his most political albums. I like this album produced by Daniel Lanois and recorded with local musicians in New Orleans. Sadly Series Of Dreams didn't appear on Oh Mercy because it shows him at his best with cryptic narrated lyrics over an floor of rhythmic guitar dominated guitars. Glad that he released this one years later
Bob Dylan - Series Of Dreams