Welcome back. Hurricane Irene took you out of my life for 78 hours or so. But in that time, I realized that spiritually, I had been living in darkness my whole life. Now I have seen the light, literally and figuratively, and I will never take you for granted ever again. To that end, please accept this heartfelt musical tribute to your bold, beautiful current which powers my toaster, charges my iPod, brews my coffee and keeps my precious beer so frosty and cold. Don't Go Changin.' Sincerely, Rock Turtleneck
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), "Electricity"
That's great, it starts with an earthquake,
birds and snakes, an aeroplane
and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn,
world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs
If R.E.M. singer/lyricist/master of pretense Michael Stipe was correct that the end of the world "starts with an earthquake," then he is sure to go down as a rock & roll prophet on the level of Bobs Marley and Dylan.
(I don't want to alarm anyone, but my son found a snake in the front yard this afternoon.)
"It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" was the second hit off R.E.M.'s 1987 commercial breakthrough Document, following "The One I Love."
Document was a creative breakthrough as well, with hard edged singing, lyrics and playing that was miles away from early records like Murmur and Reckoning, but with every bit of brilliance.
A famous verse in the song describes a dream Stipe had about a birthday party where jelly beans were served and the guests all had the initials LB:
The other night I dreamt of knives, continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line
Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev. Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right
"ITEOTWAWKI(AIFF)." prophecy or not, is a classic party record that serves a valuable lesson: if the world is indeed going to end, might as well keep your spirits up. As a friend said to me tonight, make sure you have plenty of celery on hand for your Bloody Marys.
Here's Hurricane Irene comes and goes with minimal interruption and destruction. In the meantime, here's Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe doing a fun version on their magnificent 1991 appearance on MTV's Unplugged.
The 5.8 magnitude earthquake that was felt from North Carolina to the Obama compound in Martha's Vineyard appeared to have no significant impact whatsoever on anyone - in fact, in New York City, there was a palpable sense of disappointment. The earthquake, did, thankfully, stir up a new post on Rock Turtleneck.
Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move" is a song about earthquakes of the romantic variety; the seismic shifts and tremors that new love can stir in a person.
"I Feel the Earth Move" was the first song on Tapestry, the LP that was King's coming-out party as a singer-songwriter after many years of success as one of the great songwriters-for-hire of the 1960s.
As part of the Brill Building staff, she and her partner Gerry Goffin were behind such hits as "The Loco-Motion," "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," "Some Kind of Wonderful" and personal favorite "Up on the Roof." But Tapestry showed that her singing and fierce piano playing were on par with her songwriting gifts. It remains one of the best selling LPs of all time.
As long as we're on the subject of professional songwriters par excellence, the world lost two of the greats yesterday: Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford.
Jerry Leiber (right) of the legendary Leiber & Stoller team wrote the words for "Stand by Me," "On Broadway," "Kansas City," "Yakety Yak" and many Elvis Presley (center) classics including "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog."
Talk show host and amateur songwriter Steve Allen, who despised rock & roll, tried to humiliate Elvis by making him sing "Hound Dog" to an actual hound, but Elvis was totally game and showed Allen and the world why he's the King.
Nick Ashford of the husband and wife songwriting/performing team of Ashford & Simpson, wrote a slew of classics as part of the Motown songwriting stable. The best of these were performed by the duo of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, including "You're All I Need to Get By" and the immortal "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."
At Rock Turtleneck we rock hard, blog hard and play hard. And this year that meant a family vacation to the truly awe-inspiring South of France. It was a whirlwind of baguettes avec jamon, crisp, cool rose at the local vineyard, beaches full of smoking frenchmen and women, over-the-top yachts docked in St. Tropez and mirth and merriment with friends and family.
The unofficial soundtrack to the trip consisted of one song: “Les Champs-Elysees,” a 1969 French Pop classic by a cat named Joe Dassin. From what I can tell it is more or less the “Sweet Caroline” of France - the guaranteed, all-ages-welcome singalong.
And though the song celebrates the Parisian equivalent of Fifth Avenue, one need not be near it to be seduced by its charms.
I first heard the tune when my friend Ivan's son was singing it to himself repeatedly. That night, Ivan and I caught a set by a Spanish guitar playing vagabond at a campsite/nightclub. The show was relatively docile until he pulled le trumpe carde: "Les Champs-Elysees."
I am hardly the first American to fall under the spell of "Les Champs-Elysees" - the song was also featured in the Wes Anderson film The Darjeeling Express. And a glance around YouTube shows it's been covered more times than "All Along the Watchtower."
Let us bid au revoir with Dassin doing his signature tune in a tres bon live TV version in 1979. Cheers.
Get Joe Dassin's Les Champs-Elysees on iTunes here
This week's tribute to MTV’s 30th birthday got me thinking some more about my favorite classic MTV videos, so here's another one - Robert Palmer’s "Addicted to Love" from 1986.
I remember reading in some sort of Rolling Stone Celebrates the 80s type of magazine Michael Stipe of R.E.M. saying that “Addicted to Love” was the defining song of the 80s and I think he’s right. (Of course, now I'm sure, Stipe would renounce that accolade in favor of an unreleased song-haiku by his dear friend and mentor Patti Smith.)
With its huge drum sound, disco bass groove and work-hard-play-hard ethos, "Addcited to Love" embodies the coke-fueled, power-mad Gordon Gekko 80s to the T. But the song also feels very tongue-in-cheek, and judging by the video, I have a feeling that Mr. Palmer thought the whole thing was kind of a joke.
The "Addicted to Love" video, with its wall to wall band of living female manequins, caused many women's studies majors around the world to pull the sexism card, but I think it’s really a satire. I think the concept is really as simple as "Hey I know a way to get people to watch our new video - let’s fill the screen with beautiful women instead of the pasty, homely session musicians who played on the tune."
Yes they may be dressed identically and have no singing parts, but the women are all playing their insturments and are making active contributions. They are not groupies, roadies or caterers, servicing or cleaning up after the man, etc. You go girlfriends!
Robert Palmer passed away before his time in 2003. He was an underrated artist who was never taken all that seriously, perhaps because, unlike all rock critics,he was handsome and lived a playboy lifestyle in Barbados. Before "Addicted to Love," Palmer was a well-established R&B artist with a penchant for New Wave, as in one of my favorite songs of his, the mime-infused "Johnny and Mary."
RIP & TCB RP. Get your Robert Palmer on iTunes here.
MTV Music Television debuted 30 years ago today by famously playing The Buggles' “Video Killed the Radio Star."
Looking back, 'twas not video that killed the radio star, but digital file sharing many years later. In fact, MTV made many radio stars, including Madonna, Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel and Dire Straits.
If you are younger than 40 it would be hard to understand what MTV was like back in the day. It was a huge deal when it joined your cable lineup and you couldn’t stop watching it. It was sort of like the dawn of TV itself. Before that, the only way to see an artist would be if they showed up on a talk show or something late at night like SNL or the Midnight Special. And there was much more mystery about the artist as a result.
Someone like David Bowie, for example seemed super exotic and enigmatic because he rarely mingled with mainstream entertainment. So when he shared the couch on the Dinah Shore show with The Fonz and Nancy Walker in 1975, he really was like the man who fell to earth.
I was thinking about my favorite videos from the MTV glory days and I immediately thought of "Close to the Edit" by the Art of Noise. This band was a project by Trevor Horn, the uber-producer behind Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Yes comeback of "Owner of a Lonely Heart." He had even sang for Yes for one record called Drama in 1980. But beefore that he was in, you guessed it, The Buggles.
The "Close to the Edit" video, directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski, portrays some sort of postapocalypitic, subterranean landscape populated with angry little people and chainsaw wielding maniacs dressed in black tie. It creeped me out in the Reagan era and it still does today. Happy Birthday MTV - you suck now but you were great back then.
What is your favorite MTV video of all time? RT wants to know - leave a comment below.
