Boom, Boom
Written and recorded by John Lee Hooker.
No throat clearing here, just the hard guitar beats and roughneck singing. “I’m gonna shoot you right down/Knock you off your feet/Take you home with me.” The way he sings could get John Lee arrested today. Add the primal guitar, the insistent beat, the pounding base and his desire overwhelms. “Boom, boom, boom.” He’s undeniable.
Keep on Movin’
Written and recorded by Green on Red.
Here’s a road song that captures rhythm, joy, despair and rootlessness of roaming the interstates. From the opening strums of the guitar, this music keeps pushing the pedal, drums, piano, and propulsive guitar flying down the highway all lashed together by lead singer Dan Stuarts careening vocals. The pulse builds throughout the song until it explodes in a frenzy of ringing guitars, clashing cymbals and pounding piano. Call it cowboy rock without all the cowboy clichés: a man on the road compulsively moving. The song has a wiry and rugged sound as if putting music to the Arizona desert from where the band hailed, think rattlesnakes and endless stretches of blacktop.
Fourth of July – X
Originally performed by the band X and written by Dave Alvin.
In the relationships that matter, sometimes we need only the slightest glimmer of hope to keep trying. That glimmer can come in the oddest of ways – an off-hand conversation or the stirring of a memory. In this song, the epiphany arrives on the Fourth of July with the spark and sparkle of the Mexican kids shooting off fireworks. In that moment, which the chorus of this song captures, love becomes possible.
For us to understand the rejoicing in the glimmer of hope, we need to understand the sense of loss, the drifting apart and the failure of the relationship. Dave Alvin captures the poignancy of fading love in exquisite detail.
Hats off (To the Big Queen City)
Music and Lyrics by Phil Cody from Phil Cody’s album Sons of Intemperance Offering.
Singer-songwriter Phil Cody resides in Los Angeles, but he grew up in Cincinnati and it’s an exile’s love for his lost home that fuels this high-energy love letter of a song. You can feel the energy right from the opening big strums of the guitar joined by a raucous B-3 Hammond organ followed by some backgrounds shouts, “Hey, hey what are you doing?” Cody steps front and center to the microphone, “Hats off to the big Queens City/She is the lifeline to my heart.” No irony here, no subtlety, just joy and love. Ringing guitars, propulsive drums and that voice, full of yearning, make the case. Even the nonsense lines (“la de da…do it do it”) convey meaning and heart.
In a day when so many make sure they express their stand in the loudest way possible, a whisper can be powerful. The world is loud enough already and filled with dire arguments. Personal anecdotes become mere fodder for arguments and political stances. Sometimes we need stories that are personal and tender.
Catie Curtis delivers just such moments on her 1996 song, “Radical.” I imagine this song as the singer responding to her lover after an argument: meditative, generous and heartfelt. Arising from a lesbian relationship, the song avoids stridency and large political statements in favor of intimacy, a stripped down performance that centers on the voice and delivers lines that get to heart of this relationship.
Spell of Wheels
Performed Peter Case and written by Peter and Joshua Case.
Two beats on a bodhran sets the pulse, then the pedal steel unwinds and a Mellotroncompletes the swirling enchantment as Peter Case’s “Spell of Wheels” envelopes in a dream-like state, flowing, kinetic, drawing us forward. Images appear “Kansas City as the first snow of the year begins to fall,” and you can almost see the fat white flakes against the black sky. In the first few seconds, you understand this is a true road song, not about the idea of the road, but it puts us on the road.
Song for the Dreams
Performed by Danny and Dusty. Written by Dan Stuart and Steve Wynn.
It’s 1985 and there’s a music scene cooking in Los Angles dubbed the Paisley Underground, their sound ranging from pop to roots rock to psychedelia. The leading bands included the Bangles, Game Theory, The Long Ryders, The Dream Syndicate and Green on Red. On one particular weekend, Dan Stuart (lead sing form Green on Red and Steve Wynne (lead singer from the Dream Syndicate) pulled some band mates and some friends from the Long Ryders into a studio for a weekend. Over the next 36 hours, they consumed combustibles by the bucket load and recorded a complete album put out under the moniker Danny and Dusty with the title, The Lost Weekend.
Thankfully, the recordings were not lost. In many ways, what they laid down in that studio exceeded what any of the bands did on their own. That album features some great songs, including “The Word is Out” and “Miracle Mile,” but nothing beats “Song for the Dreamers.” A rollicking tribute to losers, hustlers, schemers an dreamers, Wynn and Stuart trade vocals as if they’ve been barnstorming roadhouses for twenty years while the band unleash a frenzy behind them that makes like a Thunderbird convertible flying down the highway.
James Connolly
Performed by Black 47. Written by Larry Kirwan, lead singer of Black 47.
If you don’t know the song or the person, in a brief listen you’ll learn that James Connolly rose to prominence as a union organizer and socialist leader in Ireland and became one of the key figures in the Easter 1916 Uprising that sparked the Irish Revolution and led to independence from England.
It’s almost quaint to hear a rock song about a historical figure who died nearly 100 years ago. It would be akin to a song about Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin. Yet the Black 47 song is no relic and no sentimental ballad about romanticized times. It’s a powerful anthem performed with great fervor and conviction, a tale of a mission and a man’s very personal plight, a tribute to one of the men who gave rise to an Independent Ireland, yet the whole point of the song is that Connolly’s work and dream didn’t die when killed by that firing squad at Kilmainham Jail. With horns, sax, crashing guitars and fist-pumping vocals, “James Connolly” calls to life the memory of the man and his cause and manages to both inspire and challenge.
Junkman
Performed by Genya Ravan and Ian Hunter and written by Joe Droukas.
It’s 1979 and singer, producer, all-around tough girl, Genya Ravan goes into the studio to cut her second solo album. By then she had evolved through every genre that would have her, beginning with her girl band roots (Goldie and the Gingerbreads). She led the New York-based rock band Ten Wheel Drive, signed with Columbia, who thought she was the next Janis Joplin, discovered and produced the Dead Boys after a night at CBGBs and sang with everyone from Buddy Guy to Ronnie Spector to Dusty Springfield and jazzman Buzzy Linhart.
She entered the studio with a song penned by Joe Droukas that called for a duet, a rock ballad with some possibilities. Van Morrison was supposed to provide the male voice, but a tour kept him from the recording session. Ravan’s manager reached out to Bruce Springsteen cause he may have been tough enough and had the swagger to match Ravan’s fierceness. While Springsteen dawdled, Mick Ronson, lead guitarist for Mott the Hoople wandered into the studio. He had a natural suggestion: Mott’s front man, Ian Hunter. Is there anyone who does the combination of jaded and vulnerable better than Ian Hunter? He’s the ultimate cad who turns out to have a heart. One listen and you know that Hunter and Ravan made the perfect pairing for this song.
Play “Junkman” now and you’ll wonder how this didn’t become a monster hit; why isn’t it a hit now? After a few listens, you’ll have the song floating round your cranium and you’ll be repeating, “Should’ve listened to the junkman.” Forget those lists of run-of-the-mill power ballads (“November Rain” indeed), cause this here’s the real thing: a song that starts small and intimate and grows to a raging wall of sound and emotion, singers who make us believe and performances the that tear the paint off the walls.
Nightly Song 