18 July 2023 - The Monkees - Porpoise Song

My sister is going to be very happy with this post.  You see, she was part of a generation in thei 1980s who were the perfect age to see The Monkees reunited (without Mike Nesmith) and a revival of their show by Nickelodeon(!), so she became a really big fan of The Monkees at an early age, and I mean a really big fan.  

It's because of her that I even know to write this post, because, before her, I didn;t know of the existence of Head, a somewhat satirical musical adventure that served as an epilogue to the band's popular television series.  Co-written by Academy Award winning actor Jack Nicholson - yes.  THAT Jack Nicholson - the movie was... well, it was a little trippy.  

It opened with this song (and accompanying visual - this is the opening of the movie, complete with mermaids saving Mickey Dolenz), written by the great songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.  It is something of a deep song - and includes not only the band playing the song, but actual porpoise clicks and clacks.  

The Monkees took a lot of shit for being a band for a television show.   Yeah.  I said it.  It was undeserved.  They were a real band, with a lot of talent, who toured together for as long as they possibly could.  Here are three surviviing members (Davy Jones having passed earlier that year) performing together - and I do mean together, and well - in 2012.  

 

Of course, at this point, three of the four Monkees have passed, but the vocalist on this song, Mickey Dolenz, has not, and still tours in tribute to the Monkees  More than fifty years after this song was originally released, he still delivers it in the same huge, theatrical, emotional manner.  

17 July 2023 - Belinda Carlisle - I Get Weak

We're eleven years into this blog - more than! - and we've never, as far as I can see, posted a song written by Diane Warren.  I'm not quite sure how that's possible - she was a huge hitmaker, especially during the 1980's and 1990's, and still writes for top pop artists to this day.

As much as we usually talk about the artists - and we'll get there - the songwriter is the hitmaker in this case.  She's written 32 top 10 US hits, been nominated for 14(!) Academy Awards (winning none but finally recieving an honorary one in 2022, during a year she was also nominated for an award), 15 Grammys (winning one), and two Emmys (winning one).  

She's a well-respected songwriter who has written a lot of hit songs you know well.  This is one of them.  Originally intended for Stevie Nicks, it was given to Belinda Carlisle, who took it all the way to #2 on the US charts, only being kept from that top spot by one of the most enduring songs of all time. 

The video was directed by Diane Keaton.  Yes, that Diane Keaton.  

14 July 2023 - PJ Harvey - 50 Ft Queenie

I've mentioned the worst show I ever saw - September 10, 1995, Hartford, CT.  Live, with special guests PJ Harvey and Veruca Salt.  I didn't have high expectations of the headliner - I was there for the two openers.  Veruca Salt were truly disappointing.

I had high expectations of PJ Harvey, and Polly Jean let me down.  I'm sure it was an off night, because she had already released three great albums of material and has consistently done so since.  

And the show wasn't all bad.  She did perform this song and it was the highlight of the show.  

This song, her third single ever, came from her second album Rid of Me. It was a huge hit in the UK, but she never got the commercial success stateside that she had enjoyed in Europe.  Is it her best song?  No.  It is a rockabilly punk masterpiece, but she's got better songs lyrically and musically.  But it's a FUN song.  It's an in-your-face, dick-measuring masterpiece by a woman who previously wrote a song about her childbreaing hips.  

I KNOW I caught her on an off night, because this performance, and other songs from this performance, rocks.  From 2003, you can see the song isn't hard to play on guitar, but it is simplicity that makes it a masterpiece.

Someday, I am going to stop being surprised at musicians who are still touring 30 years into their careers.  This is from 2016, and it STILL rocks.  Polly Jean has given up the guitar, but that makes for a more dynamic performance.

13 July 2023 - The Pandoras - Run-Down Love Battery

The Pandoras were an all-girl garage band that got their start in LA in 1982 and had a great run until 1991, when front woman Paula Pierce passed away.  The band didn't break up (they're STILL together, despite also losing bassist and background vocalist Kim Shattuck in 1991 to The Muffs (Melanie Vammen also went to The Muffs) and again in 2018 to ALS), but their glory days were behind them.

This performance, from 1990, was probably their pinnacle.  They were a garage band and a good one at that, with a bunch of great musicians who all happened to be women making great music.  

Oh, they also made a video for the song. I just wanted to feature something that WASN'T such obvious 1980s record label objectification right up front.  

12 July 2023 - Pixies - Debaser

The second you saw the name "Luis Buñuel" in yesterday's post, you should have known this was coming.

"I am un chien andalusia" is literally a line in this song.

"Slicing up eyeballs" is literally a different line in the song.

Can we look at the title of the film, though?  Un chien andalou is a mishmash of French and Spanish already.  The film is really about nothing.  It's a surrealist collaboration between Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. It was, at points, stomach-turning, debasing the standards of art and morality.

Ahhhh, there it is.  The title.  That last sentence paraphrases Black Francis a.k.a. Charles Thompson IV, the writer of this song and leader of the Pixies, the Boston-based post-punk band that broke through the US consciousness with their 2nd full length album, Doolittle, which opened with this bombastic song. 

Never released as a single in the US, this song hit #23 on the UK charts.  More personally, it's possibly my favorite song by a band that I count among my favorites.   

The Pixies did break up in the mid 90s but reformed about a decade later, and are still together and still making music.  Kim Deal did leave the band in 2013 to devote herself to The Breeders full-time, and was replaced on their 2013 tour by Muffs frontwoman Kim Shattuck - who was amazing as a fill-in.

Shattuck was replaced the next year - by most accounts, because her personality (which had been very frontwoman-y and outgoing) didn't mesh with what was a mostly introverted band, which is a shame because she was incredible.  She was replaced by Paz Lenchantin, who, to be fair, is also incredible.

11 July 2023 - White Town - Your Woman

Jyoti Prakash Mishra, White Town's sole member, famous music producer, and a guy, wrote this song as kind of a methaphor for all sorts of relations, that could be adaptable to all sorts of points of view.   He recorded the song using a sample from an old Lew Stone song (the muted trumpet), free MIDI software and a cheap tape recorder, releasing it in 1997.

He created a worldwide sensation.  

This song was a worldwide hit - top 30 in the US, top 10 elsewhere.  What's more, it carried Mishra's self-described mediocre voice and pretty good keyboard work to one hit wonder status.

No, seriously, he said this.

“I feel so privileged [because] to be 100 percent honest with you — I’m a mediocre singer, I’m a terrible guitarist, I’m a pretty good keyboardist, I’m a good producer, not amazing, but good.”

The video was partially inspired by Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou - thankfully without slicing up any eyeballs - and other surrealist artists, and has the same 20's feel that the Lew Stone sample gives to the song.

10 July 2023 - The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary

In 1985, British band - from Bradford, West Yorkshire, if we're being precise - The Cult would release what would ultimately be their best known and most widely recognized single.  It wasn't their biggest hit - although close to it in the UK - and didn't even chart in the US, although its success and endurance paved the way for their future worldwide success.  

Written by Ian Astbury - the lead vocalist - and Billy Duffy - the guitarist..... I didn't need to tell you that.  The song shows that. Astbury's haunting vocals lend an air of enigmatic charisma to the lyrics that are tuned for his voice. His raw, soulful delivery infuses the lyrics with passion and depth, drawing the listener into a realm of introspection and introspective longing. Add that to Duffy's distinctive guitar work, which merges elements of psychedelic rock with a touch of new wave, and you've got a Cult classic.

No, not that kind of cult classic.

Weirdly, the song was also a club hit - so much so that in 1993, it got some remixes and a rerelease, which ended up being a hit in its own right.

It's weird, though.

The Cult, believe it or not, are still together. There have absolutely been some lineup changes, but it has always been, unceasingly, the Billy and Ian show throughout.  This performance from 2022 shows that the song has changed a little to accomodate for the changes age brings to vocalists, but not much - and the energy is still there.