August 1: Fire And Rain

JT is much maligned, and unfairly I think. Dude was a hardcore heroin addict before heroin addiction was cool. Plus he inspired the Beatles to do their best work as they were on the verge of breakup. Think of that next time you hear “You’ve Got A Friend”, and then realize that the song was actually written by a nebbish Jewish girl with a questionable voice (but the best songwriting chops this side of the Raritan Bay).

“Fire and Rain”, the previously mentioned song notwithstanding, is surely the man’s signature work. Its place in popular culture was cemented when the artist appeared on “The Simpsons”, serenading Homer and his astronaut crew while they faced certain death about “sweet dreams and flying machines flying safely through the air”.

In the time since that Simpsons reference, my thoughts upon hearing “Fire and Rain” have gone to a girl I knew in college named Suzanne, whose name is mentioned as the subject of the song. She was a fetching lass from Long Island in my freshman German class (and subsequent Deutsche klassen). We never made any plans together, but I certainly made many in my own head. Years later I was informed by my girlfriend in grad school that Suzanne had had a kid with a local boy (they were coincidentally childhood friends).

Recently though, I was driving with a sibling of mine and when this song came on SiriusXM’s The Blend, she told me a story of the time she found out that our father had died. After hearing the news, this song came on the radio and it touched her, as if our deceased Dad was sending her a message from beyond the grave. Now I can’t hear the song without that being my first thought, and it’s on my Amazon Prime mix so I hear it quite often.

Our dad died almost exactly 30 years ago. We miss you.

February 23: So Far Away

Here’s a band I hope to make a regular feature, as surely as Billy Joel and Supertramp’s “Breakfast In America” will inevitably become despite my best efforts of self-restraint.

Dire Straits. Just think about the name for a second. OK, back now? When I first heard it in 1985, I had no clue what it meant (I was 6 or 7). But could there be a more perfect name for a rock band? 99.9% of people/groups who set out to make it in popular music never succeed.

But succeed Dire Straits did, and left a legacy of fantastic music to show for it. (But you’ll never see me blogging about “Romeo and Juliet”. Forget it.) Of course my introduction to the band was “Money For Nothing”, which I instantly recognized as catchy but had no worldly experience to realize what was being insinuated. Plus those computer graphics were really friggin sweet.

Around the same time the “Walk Of Life” video (American version) was getting heavy MTV airplay, and it was full of footage of the Dallas Cowboys, so automatic win. Again, I was too tender to realize that these follies were indicative of the ineptitude of my favorite football team, but the tune was catchy!

Years later, in high school, a girlfriend extolled the virtues of the band and I eye-rollingly agreed, expecting that I’d already heard their two best songs. (Insert “Romeo and Juliet” here.) Later still during college, I heard “Sultan of Swing” on the radio and tried to guess the band; my best guess was Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. Learning the truth was an eye-opening experience.



And so we’ve ended up at this song, a gorgeous ode to the longing felt when a vital part of one’s life is missing. I’m sure it was written from the perspective of a touring rocker missing his significant other, but sanitize the lyrics a bit and it applies to the feeling that what you love most in life is missing, no matter what that may be.

And Dire Straits seriously owes some royalties to Carole King. 'Cause she wrote "So Far Away" first, and killed it. I guess Dire Straits deserves credit for writing a song of the same name that's just as good. (Well, almost as good.)

February 20: I'm Your Captain

I heard this song on the radio tonight on the way home, and it was glorious. I also heard "Captain Of Her Heart" by Double the other day, and it was also pretty nice, but I felt less inclined to share about that.

I love a good, multi-sectioned epic rock and roll song. This one certainly qualifies. After a clean electric riff, a driving baseline thrusts us into a bad trip. A grandly funky bad trip, though not on a railroad but apparently on an ocean. The narrator seems to be clinging desperately to sanity, pleading with his crew to get him back on steady ground. A formless stranger attempts to strangle him.

Then suddenly, the pleading stops, the danger dissipates, and the narrator is gently sailing towards home. Or is he? Could it be that he's finally broken and all he's left with is the delusion that he's on his way to where he wishes he could be, but can never go? Grand Funk most artistically leaves the interpretation up to the listener, and the result is a most uplifting hymn to optimism. Or delusion. Your mileage may vary.

February 13: We're In This Love Together

Are we? Are we really?

And is it OK to post a tribute to a deceased musical legend? Since last year that became unacceptable after a certain point?

Imma let Al speak for himself.



Plus Moonlighting. I worked for Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator of Moonlighting, in my first real Hollywood gig. I can’t imagine him and Al in a recording booth discussing how the song should be sung. Well, I can. It’s pretty awkward.

February 10: Our Love Is Here To Stay

Tonight PBS aired the Gershwin Prize ceremony of its latest recipient, Smokey Robinson. This is notable for many reasons, not the least of which being that this may be the last vestige of non-white culture that will ever appear on American public television.

After sitting through a questionable selection of artists plow through a selection of the greatness that is the musical catalog he helped establish, Smokey took no time in honoring the great Jewish songwriters who are the namesakes of the lifetime achievement award presented by the Library of Congress (yes, the United States Congress, as hard as it is to believe).

His selection was “Our Love Is Here To Stay”, and it was heartbreakingly epic. Smokey was eager to honor the roots of his groundbreaking Motown greatness, and he did not disappoint. It was refreshing to see him pay tribute to the forebears of his success, even as his own success was being immortalized.

Unfortunately, I can’t post that performance, but here is a timeless rendition presented by two of the all time great interpreters of song. And just in time for Valentine's Day.



And here is a 1980s new wave band paying tribute to Smokey in a last gasp of relevance. (Sorry, ABC fans.)

February 2: Waiting For A Girl Like You

God damn, this is a smooth song.

This is probably the best recorded example of the vocal talents of the Roc’s own Louis Grammatico. A ballad that combines early ‘80s atmospheric synth with soulful romance, the song was a revelation, one that eschewed the hard rock flavor the band had hitherto been associated with, and doomed its commercial futures to Adult Contemporary purgatory.

I associate this song with a day spent in Western New York not long after my sister, mother and I had returned from our own purgatory in the panhandle of Florida. It was a gloomy day fraught with rain, and we paid a visit to the Canandaigua grave of my grandfather and grandmother, who had died during our exile. The moody minor key latched onto my consciousness and I can’t separate it from the feeling of mourning something I was unable to comprehend.

This is one of the earliest memories I have of music affecting me so deeply, and there is not a day that goes by where, whether new or old, at least one piece of music speaks directly to my heart every day.

January 31: Selling The Drama

I don’t know why, but I can't stop listening to this song.

Maybe it’s because I haven’t heard it since just after it came out. I barely remember having heard it before at all.

I’m sure that the bulk of the times I heard it were either in Studio Art with Mr. Day, which I took as a senior instead of a freshman like most normal people did; or in Brent “The Diesel” Williamson’s physics class that same year; or some other indiscriminate and inappropriate time during my last year of high school.

I’m convinced it has something to do with the fact that I couldn’t appreciate it at the time. The lyrics were so obscure, and made me feel like I was walking in on the middle of a conversation I would never be able to understand.

Maybe it’s the riddle of the unabashed reverence my classmates had for this album, and its prescient attempt at armchair hipster philosophy. So familiar with it were they that they referred to the lead singer by his first name as if he were their close personal friend. “Ed.”

Maybe it’s because after so many years of listening to Los Angeles radio and not hearing it even once, it randomly played on a Sunday in the car in Florida with my mother after church when I was not feeling very good about life or myself.

Or maybe it’s because it just fucking rocks.



Naw, it’s probably just that I was able to download it to my phone for free as a member of Amazon Prime.

January 26 - TWILIGHT ZONE

First off - if you don’t want to have your face melted off, don’t click this link.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, pat yourself on the back and enjoy the face-melting.



Back before I knew anything about music, I thought Golden Earring was the band that played “Slow Ride”. But I based that upon the limited information provided to me by various Time-Life 1970s rock collections advertised as nauseam on late night 1990s television.

What my advanced and far more enlightened classmate Josh Oyer schooled me to was that the band Foghat had been the originators of the classic jam “Slow Ride”, and Golden Earring had given rise to the much weightier and more significant AOR rock classic “Radar Love”.

Well, excuse my podunk Upstate New York ass for not understanding what the hell a Slow Ride was, or how to interpret the meaning of Radar Love. But Twilight Zone? Oh, lawd. Ya speakin mah language dere.

Rod Serling grew up mere miles from where I did, on the shores of New York’s Cayuga Lake. So I don't have to reach far to imagine the terrible things he saw in the time he spent growing up there.

The imagination his childhood left him with inspired a generation of sci-fi fantasy television-- now known as “The Twilight Zone” -- while the rest of us were left to exist that area from which he drew all of his inspiration.

The circular baseline, funky guitar riff, and enigmatic lyrics are perfectly representative of a typical midnight trip through this area of upstate New York colloquially known as “The Twilight Zone”. So its perfect that I would never understand it before hearing it in LA told to me by a Dutch band for whom English is a second language.

January 19: Hallelujah

Today I had to choose between blogging about two 80s classics, "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, or "The Captain of Her Heart" by Double. Sorry, fans of rare and special music, but today I decided to go with the more commercial song that has been thoroughly exploited and left culturally bereft in the ensuing years since its release.



So yeah, Leonard Cohen! What could be more commercial? Certainly not anything more than this song that, whilst framed by a few biblical references, happens to be about SEX.

Cohen, prolific and erstwhile poet, released his original version of the song, and over the next few years adjusted the lyrics in live performances, drawing from a reported 80 verses total, to bring about a distillation of his concept that was deemed worthy of being covered by one John Cale.



Just beautiful. And this John Cale version was then heard by young Jeff Buckley, who found it in his graces to present it to the masses...



And then Buckley had the good sense to die, which forever immortalized him and this version of the song, which has become sacred. So much so that the rockapella group Petatonics (Pentatonix? whatever) decided to start peddling the song as a Christmas classic.



LISTEN TO THE LYRICS. IT'S ABOUT SEX. The version they recorded, much more than the original released by Cohen. Go back and listen, I'll wait.



Yeah, that one's about sex, too. Most good art is. Don't try to make it holy 'cause it has some holy words in it.



Love ya, Leonard.

January 15: That's What Friends Are For

Ah, 1985. You gave us so much. Marty McFly, The Goonies, Gorbachev, Calvin and Hobbes, and most importantly, the American (and far superior) version of the Celebrity Charity Song. While “We Are The World” gathered a plethora of the day’s top recording artists and Dan Aykroyd to fight African famine, the real legends gathered to sing a song of friendship and raise money for… something.


AIDS, I think. Yes, that’s right, AIDS. Thanks, Wikipedia. And look at that! “That’s What Friends Are For” was written by Carole Bayer-Sager and Burt Bacharach! Who else, of course! In fact, it was written for the 1982 film Night Shift when they were at their peak of writing legendary movie themes, such as “Arthur’s Theme” as performed by Christopher Cross, and Neil Diamond’s “Heartlight”! (The producers of E.T. sued them over the latter for unauthorized use of their intellectual property. Who cares, they still made a ton of money off that monster hit!)


These are some people who have been through some stuff. Dionne Warwick. Elton John. A Pip-less Gladys Knight. And Mr. Stevie Wonder. When they sing this saccharin-sweet pap, they mean it and make you believe it. And at the time, their friends were dying of AIDS and there was no reliable treatment yet. So Dionne gathered her friends and their combined superpowers raised $3 million for AIDS research, as well as awareness of the disease. Awesome job, you guys.


As we pass from one era to another, I can only hope that activism will be on the rise and people from the heights of celebrity and success to those less fortunate whose lives have already been compromised will take a cue from Dionne and Friends; take a stand and make a difference for the good of all people. After all, that’s what friends are for.

January 13: "Los Angeles Super Chargers" Just Won't Work

RIP this amazing song.



BONUS TRACK



Hit that hole.

January 10: Clarence Clemons

Born this day in 1942, Clarence Clemons is best known as the prodigious and powerful saxman of the E Street Band. I first was introduced to him as the large, ever-smiling friend of the guy who sang "Somebody's Baby".



Yes, Daryl Hannah was actually singing the female vocals on the track, even though her lip-syncing wasn't that convincing. (The effects applied to her voice weren't helping.) This song was Clarence's big solo moment, even if it was a duet. Springsteen was riding high at the time, and Clarence did his best to take advantage. I imagine he was smiling extra big when Bruce reformed the band after a hiatus and began their epic victory lap. He remained with the band until his death in 2011.

Blow, big man, blow.



If you're reading this, thanks. You're a friend of mine.

January 9: Say Goodbye To Hollywood

A straightforward tribute to the music of Phil Spector, which contains some of the most insightful lyrics in the Billy Joel catalog. After hiding out in LA to get out of a recording contract, he wrote this song on his way out the door. I loved it the first time I heard it, and used to insist that it be played as we were driving through the city at night, imagining what it must feel like to be the characters in the song - long before I would actually become one. This song holds a deeper level of personal meaning, as it was one of the songs my daughter latched onto in her early music listening career, and I got to hold her as we listened to Billy play it at the Hollywood Bowl. Today is her birthday. Say goodbye to Hollywood, indeed.


Bobby's drivin' through the city tonight
Through the lights in a hot new rent-a-car
He joins the lovers in his heavy machine
It's a scene down on Sunset Boulevard
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye to my baby
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye to my baby

Johnny's takin' care of things for a while
And his style is so right for troubadours
They got him sitting with his back to the door
Now he won't be my fast gun anymore
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby

Movin' on is a chance that you take
Any time you try to stay together
Whoa
Say a word out of line
And you find that the friends you had
Are gone forever
Forever

So many faces in and out of my life
Some will last
Some will just be now and then
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby

January 8: Carole King's Tapestry - Part One

Co-writing a large number of the most classic pop music hits of the 1960s would be enough of an accomplishment for most people, but not for Carole King, who left the Brill Building for Laurel Canyon and started a legendary second act that is defined by 1971's Tapestry.



Carole started off out of the box on fire, smashing the keys of the piano with a funky beat accompanied by a statement of unbridled passion. It sounds as if Carole has been holding back these feelings for a very long time and is finally able to shout them out with exuberant joy. The song builds to a crescendo of musical release giving way to a gradually slowing and calming coda, a shift in tone which sets the mood for the next section of the album.



Whether by distance both physical and emotional, or by death, separation from those we love is something that everyone has experienced at some point in their lives. Carole even admits, "can't say much of anything that's new". But she perfectly captures the bittersweet feeling that things would be better in the presence of certain people who mean the most to us.



The mournful solo flute which closes "So Far Away" segues gracefully into the melancholy groove of "It's Too Late". An admission of human failings, Carole contrasts nostalgia for the good times with the cold reality that a relationship is over. But the song, and the rest of the album, are a testament to the belief that when moving from one phase of life to the next, good things lie ahead and perhaps the change is for the best.

And that's just the first three songs.

January 5: Boogie On Reggae Woman

If Marvin's people are going to sue Robin Thicke over "Blurred Lines", Stevie should beat him senseless.

January 4: Gone Hollywood

Hollywood is a weird place, a tough place to try and make it. Supertramp knew this from experience, and led off their seminal 1979 effort "Breakfast In America" with this pastiche of how quickly fate can take a turn in La La Land. They chose this song to set the tone for the philosophical musings of "The Logical Song", and tales of the difficulty of interpersonal relationships like "Goodbye Stranger" and the title track, cementing their legacy as one of the more thoughtful acts in the rock pantheon.

January 2: Nick Of Time

A meditation on the concept that things happen in their own time. Appropriately enough, this message is delivered by the daughter of a man who was a singer when it meant to be something to be a singer, and who needed to go through her own set of trials before finding her success as the living embodiment of this concept.



A friend of mine she cries at night
And she calls me on the phone
Sees babies everywhere she goes
And she wants one of her own
She's waited long enough she says
And still she can't decide
Pretty soon she'll have to choose and it tears her up inside
She's scared, scared she'll run out of time


I see my folks, they're getting old
And I watch their bodies change
I know they see the same in me
And it makes us both feel strange
No matter how you tell yourself
It's what we all go through
Those eyes are pretty hard to take
When they're staring' back at you
Scared to run out of time

When did the choices get so hard? With so much more at stake
Life gets mighty precious
When there's less of it to waste


Scared to run out of time

Just when I thought I'd had enough
And all my tears were shed
No promise left unbroken
There were no painful words unsaid
You came along and showed me
How to leave it all behind
You opened up my heart again
And then much to my surprise
I found love, baby
Love in the nick of time



Bonnie Raitt: Composer, Guitar, Piano, Slide Guitar, Vocals
Don Was: Producer

January 1: Jerk Out

How much is a 12 year old in 1990 expected to know about funk? That was when this boy received his first lesson, and it was provided by Morris Day and The Time. Technically, it was provided by a friend of mine who on my birthday gave me a cassette single of "Jerk Out", along with a couple of random Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures. Thankfully, the music is what has stuck with me for all these years. He got a collection of Jose Canseco baseball cards from me; I'll let you be the judge as far as who made out better in the deal.


The Time were familiar to those who had seen the film "Purple Rain". I remember seeing a few racy snippets on HBO as a child, but I was young enough to not understand the power of Prince, and certainly didn't know of Morris and company as anything other than the Bad Guys. In truth, they were an alter ego of the Artist, an outlet for his most preening, narcissistic, even misogynistic urges. The character of Morris was the other side of the sexual coin; if Prince was about passion, Morris represented self-gratification.


This song began its recording life as a demo by Prince in 1981 that saw its next incarnation as a demo from a group called Maserati in 1985. Yes, I've never heard of them either. The meat of the final version is all there in the latter demo, from the fat bass line to the boastful lyrics to the inverted guitar chords cribbed from Nile Rodgers of Chic. But the catalyst to make it all work was missing, and that was the Morris touch.



Note the timing of the second demo; this was the year after "Purple Rain", which had showcased The Time at their height, and not coincidentally the year after The Time had dissolved. Surely the song was meant to be a vessel for Morris' blustering bravado. "Jerk Out" laid dormant for another 5 years until it became the centerpiece of The Time's comeback effort, Pandemonium. In the meantime, Prince certainly had plenty of classic material to exploit, from "Raspberry Beret" through "Sign o' the Times" to "Batdance", and Time members Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis made their mark as the premiere producers of the late 80s, providing their talents to game-changing tracks by Janet Jackson as well as the Human League's eponymous megahit.



Nine years from its conception to its fruition, "Jerk Out" is a monument of funk, but a testament to what could have been if everyone involved had been able to work together over sustained periods of time. Hopefully the lesson is that no matter how funky you can get, there is a limit to the powers of narcissism and misogyny. Regardless of how crowd pleasing it may be.