DAVID BERTHY POSTS

The Tom Robinson Band had a huge hit with his EMI single “2-4-6-8 Motorway” in 1978, a jumpy, irresistible radio confection that conquered the charts despite the fact that the openly gay, politically outspoken Robinson made for an unlikely pop star. When successive sales dwindled, Robinson was dropped by EMI. In 1982, he signed with IRS as a solo act and released the album North By Northwest. My favorite song from the record is the first song on the B-side, “Those Days.” The song pairs apocalyptic imagery and a palpable sense of foreboding with an eminently danceable disco-sleaze groove. The result, as with Gang of Four’s “I Love a Man in Uniform” and Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug,” is smart, bizarro disco of the best sort.

THOSE DAYS

My Alma Mater

Rufus Wainwright and I went to the same High School (different times)-Millbrook in upstate New York. He wrote a song about the place, which appears on his first album. Our man Jon Brion produced the record, and handled the incredibly strange and elaborate string arrangements. The song is a personal gem to me...capturing as it does some intimate aspects of the place...the feel of the train ride up from New York City, the steeple rising above the pine forests... and my favorite:

And all the evening breakdowns
will soon be washed from their hands
the next very day
as they make way
eating the apple to the chapel

which describes perfectly the feel of walking to assembly each morning in the chapel,
gossiping with classmates about nightime travails and adventures, which of course run rampant at boarding school.

MILLBROOK

Another song that makes good use of the vocoder, the title track from Houston rapper Devin The Dude's 2005 album To Tha Extreme has become my 2008 Summer anthem.

TO THA EXTREME

Billing themselves as the world's only successful Arab/Jew partnership since the beginning of time, Electro Funk duo Chromeo are back with a newish album, Fancy Footwork. To be honest, though, despite collaboration with Hall & Oates, nothing on it can touch the club hit "Needy Girl" from their 2004 debut album She's in Control.

Do yourself a favor and take the time to download it and start your weekend right with a hilarious gem of a song, featuring early 80's electronic drums, vocoder, squiggly synth, stutter vocals, scratching, and more!

NEEDY GIRL

David Berthy Posts:

I never gave Smokey Robinson his proper due until recently, something that likely stems from overexposure to The Big Chill soundtrack as a child. Despite an inordinate fondness for traveling by car, my parents owned exactly three cassette tapes in the 1980’s. Since the other two were Silk Road Volumes 1 & 2 by Kitaro and Abba’s Greatest Hits, I didn’t have much room to maneuver on the request front, and The Big Chill soundtrack won out again and again. In recent years, I’ve recovered enough to appreciate what an amazing singer Smokey is. My favorite track of his comes from his 1973 self-titled solo effort, Smokey’s first without the Miracles. “Just My Soul Responding” is notable for possessing a harmonious mix of seemingly disparate elements. Native-American chanting, a shifting narrative device, violins, saxophone, and socially conscious lyrics are all pulled together by Smokey’s truly singular vocal performance. After repeated listens, I can go back to “Tracks of My Tears” and “I Second That Emotion” with fresh ears, provided “Joy to the World” and an interminable journey to a distant national park aren’t a part of the experience


JUST MY SOUL RESPONDING

Skate Anthems

Back in 1981 I spent most evenings hanging out in our rec room basement listening to Magic 108 on the radio and talking with Margot D. on the phone. I had a huge crsuh on Margot, who I knew from Hebrew School, and since we went to different schools, my only chance to see her and the rest of the Shaere Emeth crew outside of class was Friday nights at Saints Roller Skating rink, where we would skate to the soul jams we knew from Magic.

Todays post is one of those jams. Commonly misattributed to The Gap Band, Double Dutch Bus was actually a one-hit wonder from Frankie Smith. It was made famous for its extensive use of the "izz" form of slang, and was used by Missy Elliot and Snoop Dog in later hits. According to the wiki "The song title represents a portmanteau of two institutions in Smith's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania neighborhood: the double dutch game of jump rope played by neighborhood kids, and the SEPTA bus system that was a backbone of the local transportation network (and for which Smith had unsuccessfully applied for a bus driving position. The song spent 8 weeks at #1.

DOUBLE DUTCH BUS

Great Debuts-Chicago's Own John Prine

Here's a melancholy ditty from John Prine's self-titled 1971 debut album. A bonus track here is Prine's "Lets Talk Dirty in Hawaiian", which Pinapple Jack performed at the first Ukulele Cabaret.

Hello In There

Lets Talk Dirty in Hawaiian

Transformer Man

In 1984, two years after signing Neil Young, Geffen records sued Young for intentionally not sounding like himself by making "uncharacteristic and uncommercial music". During his five brutal years at Geffen, Young made back to back forays into different genres including rockabilly on Everybody's Rockin' and electronic music on Trans. Young responded to Geffen's 3 Mil suit with his own 21 mil countersuit and both were eventually dropped. He returned to Reprise and his senses as the decade drew to a close.

"Trans was about all these robot-humanoid people working in this hospital and the one thing they were trying to do was teach this little baby to push a button. That's what the record's about. Read the lyrics, listen to all the mechanical voices, disregard everything but that computerized thing, and it's clear Trans is the beginning of my search for communication with a severely handicapped nonoral person. 'Transformer man' is a song for my kid. If you read the words to that song - and look at my child with his little button and his train set and his transformer - the whole thing is for Ben."-Neil Young


TRANSFORMER MAN

Before Midnight Scholar

db posts a day early so's I can get on up to Door County for my vaca. Two tracks to carry you through til we meet again on Monday


My friend Japeth gave me the record Before Midnight Scholar a few weeks ago, which comes courtesy of his roommate's band and sometime solo project Judson Claiborne. Before Midnight Scholar has been on heavy rotation since I got it, and when the band played at Empty Bottle last Monday I headed out to see them. When "Bloody Holiday" came on, Japeth told me the song is based on a true story about his roommate's grandparents. I never paid attention to the title, and I'd been so lulled by the song's lilting charms that I didn't realize how violent a tale it tells, but it makes me like the song all the more to realize it's about a fantasy of escape gone terribly wrong. Especially compelling is how "Bloody Holiday" is followed on the album by the fall-from-grace song "In the Sun." The latter feels bright and fragile, the natural result of the events suggested in the former. I don't know if "In the Sun" is also based on a true story, but tonally, I love the way these songs are paired. If you like the music, there's a link on the myspace page where you can buy a special vinyl edition of Before Midnight Scholar that comes with a cd in addition to the record.

http://www.myspace.com/judsonclaiborne

BLOODY HOLIDAY


IN THE SUN

Unlikely Number Ones

Who says you need a beat, hooks, and a catchy chorus to have a number one single? In 1975, 10CC released "I'm Not In love", an ethereal ode to denial which includes an extended section between verses that breaks down to nothing but synth washes and whispering. The song went to #1 in the UK and #2 in the US, where it was kept from the top spot by three different songs in consecutive weeks-"The Hustle", "One Of These Nights", and "Jive Talkin".

The production on the song was incredibly innovative for its time, with the group laboriously building up multiple overdubs of their voices singing a single note in unison. The multi-track was then mixed down and dubbed down onto 16-track tape. This process was repeated across all sixteen tracks to create a lush 256-voice "virtual" choir that could "sing" chromatic chords. A number of these prepared multi-tracks were then cut into several endless loops, each of which contained the basic notes of the main chords used in the song. The chorus loops could then be played by using the mixing desk rather like a keyboard -- each chord could be sounded by bringing up the fader for that loop. The instrumental break featured the whispered words: "Be quiet, big boys don't cry...", which was spoken by Kathy Warren, the receptionist of the Strawberry Studios where the band recorded the track.

I'M NOT IN LOVE

In the same way that I hear a little West Side Story latino protagonist in Tom Petty,
I hear an obsession with The Wizard of Oz all over ELO's music. Listen to Mr. Blue Sky and its all there- The swelling munchkinland choral sounds, quickly descending tornado string flourishes, and sacharine orchestral arrangements. Jeff Lynne & Co. acknowledge the influence with the Eldorado album cover shown here. Can't Get it Out of My Head, from that album, features some major Land of Oz backing vocals during the bridge and last verse/chorus.

CAN'T GET IT OUT MY HEAD

Chicago's Own

David Singer Joins us today:

Chamber Strings is the brainchild of one Kevin Junior, whose sartorial splendor and Anglophile musical taste belie the fact that he is, in fact, a Chicagoan. Their music is an impossibly beautiful hybrid of English pub rock and American soul - the same genealogy that gave us the Kinks, The Faces, and, truth be told, the Beatles. They released two albums, 1999's Gospel Morning and 2001's A Month Of Sundays before disappearing into a stylistically appropriate but still depressing haze of drug abuse. Last year, after cleaning up, Kevin got the band back together and they sound as if they haven't missed a beat - and word is that a new record may be in the works. This is my favorite of their songs, and synthesizes everything that makes them tick: beautiful songcraft, chiming guitars, lovely harmonies. As it happens, they're playing tonight at the Bottom Lounge after some band I never heard of.

DOWNLOAD TELEGRAM

Admin Note- Chamber Strings play with David Singer tonight at the Bottom Lounge

David Berthy Posts:

This, to my knowledge, is the nastiest piece of bubblegum pop ever written. Close competition can be found in Bread’s “The Last Time,” but I’m going to go with “Pie in the Sky.” This song was the second single from Skyband’s self-titled 1974 debut. Maybe because of the ill-advised choice to photograph themselves in astro-tribal headgear for the album's cover, or perhaps because their sound was too poppy for rockers and too rock for the teenagers who ensured the members of Bread a lifetime of yachts and redwoods; Skyband never released a second album. After the first record flopped, they tried to rename themselves Zed and change their sound, but disbanded when a deal failed to materialize. It’s a shame, because the world could have used more songs like “Pie in the Sky.” I would like to see Muppets sing it in a yet-to-be-made Muppet movie about 1970’s Malibu, with the object of the song’s derision passed out on the couch next to a blender full of daiquiris and a small mountain of Quaaludes, but maybe that’s just me. If you know any other acerbic pop songs, please post them in the comments section.



PIE IN THE SKY

BONUS TRACK! The Last Time by Bread

Its Uke time again! Join us this Saturday, July 12th at Silvies for Uke Mondo, The Chicago Ukulele Cabaret's musical journey around the world. Grab your uke or just come to watch and listen at the most eclectic open mic in the city, heck, in the world!

To commemorate the occcasion, we offer up the lead and title track from Prince's follow-up to Purple Rain, his own Sgt. Peppers style opus, 1985's Around the World in a Day. Its one of my favorite albums to re-arrange furniture to. Others are Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, Never Mind The Bullocks by The Sex Pistols, and Earthling by David Bowie.



AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY

Acony Bell

Here's a pretty tune that Lozier brought in to Hayward rehearsal last night


Acony Bell

The Dukes of Stratosphere

With the market on psychedelic beatlesque already cornered, XTC took it further in 1985 when they became The Dukes of Stratosphear for two records. The DOS were thanked in the liner notes of XTC's 1986 album Skylarking, for the loaning of their guitars.

Twenty-Five O'Clock

Halfcaste

David Berthy Posts Weekly On Thursdays:



Thin Lizzy, "Halfcaste" This 1975 b-side to the "Rosalie" single deals with Phillip Lynott's mixed-race upbringing in Ireland. For me, the most interesting thing here is how wistful the tone of the song is. The reggae beat works to reinforce this, and the result is a song with a slow-tempo and laid-back defiance. The final result, I think, is that the narrator takes ownership of the epithet that's been hurled at him.

HALFCASTE

TB's comment yesterday about the world's worst album covers got me searching for some.

I found this one :



and this one:



and then I came upon this:



I decided I just had to hear it, and now, unfortunate listener, so will you.

Yes, thats right! In 1979 Ethel went disco on this camp classic which, apparently is highly sought after by vinyl collectors. According to the wiki, all the songs were recorded in just one take each. Gee, ya think?

THERES NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

As a major Neil Young Fan, its hard to understand how I missed Zuma all these years.
Up at a friend's cabin this past weekend, someone put the record on and I was struck by the raw organic feel of the record, akin to Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, one of my favorite Young albums and the debut of Crazy Horse.

Zuma was released in 1975, just after his so called "Doom Trilogy", a dark and depressing trio of albums put out on the heels of the mass success of Harvest.
Time Fades Away, On the Beach, and Tonight's The Night, embodied Young's reaction to sudden success coupled with the loss of his compadre Danny Whitten to Heroin addiction. To my taste, Young's music is at its best on the dark side, and On The Beach, which Young claims not to have listened to once since its release, is one of the greatest "music to slit your wrists by" albums of all time. I go back to it again and again.

In contrast, Zuma is more upbeat, just a bit though. Here's my favorite track, Barstool Blues, pretty much a treasure map songwriting blue print for Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy to dig up twenty years later.

Barstool Blues