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Musings on Songs that Strike a Chord Tonight

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You Gotta Sin to Be Saved by Maria McKee

May 20, 2010

You Gotta Sin to Be Saved

Written and performed by Maria McKee

There’s going to be a lot of saving going on cause if you listen to this song, you know there’s a lot of sinning happening. Full of gusto and heart, this raucous song puts forth a clear proposition: someday I may be saved, but before I get there, I’ve got some living to do. Think gospel song only this one marches down a different aisle.

Maria McKee’s voice – full-throated, even full-bodied – makes the case and the carousing band offers the full support with saxes, a Hammond organ, guitars and rousing vocals. No doubting the conviction of McKee’s singing, the song captures the spirit of an amuck Vegas weekend and you want to go along for the sheer fun of it.

The gambit offered is simple enough. McKee turns to her fiancé (“ya been my Romeo ever since we was in school”), reaffirms her love (“”I’ll love you till I die), then lets him know her predicament: “I could never be your bride ‘til I tame my wicked side.” She swaggers, she vamps, but this is no tease; she’s pure lustiness, you can just picture the wicked grin.

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I Pity the Fool by Bobby Blue Bland

May 19, 2010

I Pity the Fool

Performed by Bobby Blue Bland. Written by Deadric Malone.

If you don’t play an instrument and you don’t write songs, you better be able to sing. Bobby Blue Bland is a singer who more than earns his keep with his voice. He recorded “I Pity the Fool” on his seminal album from 1962, Two Steps from the Blues; the song rose to number one on the R&B charts and even made a dent on the pop charts.

What mastery we hear on this song: the production, the musicianship and the singing blend to form a sonic dynamo. The drums set the beat matched by a pulsing bass and masterful guitar work provided by Wayne Bennett who carries a BB King-influenced riff throughout the song. The performance starts quiet and small, as if the singer is curled up within himself, though as he goes on, the voices opens out and the music grows. We get horns (trumpets, tenor and baritone saxes and a slide trombone) and the tinkling of a piano. And that voice, soaked in hurt and maybe bourbon, raised on gospel and the blues, but now it’s something new altogether, call it soul or rhythm and blues, “I pity the fool that falls in love with you.”

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Beer and Kisses by Amy Rigby

May 18, 2010

Beer and Kisses

Written and Performed by Amy Rigby.

Amy Rigby traces the arch of romance in a tightly crafted 3:41 seconds from when “we loved like it was something new” to “It’s sad how we both forget/The thing we had for each other/Way back when we first met.” “Beer and Kisses” is a pop-song for grown-ups, wry and subtly structured lyrics knitted to a winsome melody.

The ex-punk singer living in the East Village turns out this country-tinged duet with John Wesley Harding as if they are the second coming of Tammy Wynette and George Jones. The tale opens in the first glimmers of new love, the couple meeting in the supermarket and though boy-meets girl has reoccurred forever, Rigby knows that for those inside the love, it’s like a new world. Thus the lines:

We loved like it was something new
From day one we could not be parted
You had me and honey I had you

In recording Diary of a Mod Housewife, Rigby says she wanted to “balance being a mother and a wife and still being a rocker at heart.” She hits the target in this song: no subordination here, two equals madly in love.

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All My Ex’s Live in Texas by George Strait

May 17, 2010

All My Ex’s Live in Texas

Performed by George Strait

Written by Sanger D. Shafer and Linda J. Shafer

There are plenty of downhearted songs about past loves, but not this gem from George Strait. It’s as breezy, graceful and fun as a spring day on the porch with a cold beer. Everything works together to create a gem of a country song: the well-honed craftsmanship of the songwriting, the consummate musicianship that skips the flash in favor of playing in service to the tune and George Strait’s honeyed and laconic voice that fits the song so well.

This track provides another example of how George Strait finds popularity in the too-often derivative and bland contemporary country music market while keeping true to his country music touchstones and country-swing roots. You can hear Bob Wills, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams loud and clear in his music. Strait has the knack for picking songs right for his voice and style and his performances all contain an organic integrity: the pedal steel and fiddle open this song not because of some formula, but because they are absolutely perfect for opening the song.

Play “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” and you know you’re in the hands of a master when Strait sings the opening chorus with its irresistible hook:

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Boom Boom Mancini by Warren Zevon

May 16, 2010

Boom Boom Mancini

Written and performed by Warren Zevon.

“The name of the game is be hit and hit back”

Write a line like that and you can go home knowing you’ve done your job. It comes from Warren Zevon’s song “Boom Boom Mancini,” as tough and hard a song as you will ever hear. His voice – direct, insistent, in your face, singing from a place that has learned some hard lessons – finds its match in the pounding and furious rhythm laid down by Bill Berry and Mike Mills of R.E.M. No jingle-jangle here as Berry pounds the drumheads. Peter Buck fills out the sound with wailing guitar riffs. This is not background music.

Zevon tells the tale of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, a true story, but the art comes in selecting the facts and telling them right. Zevon’s paean succeeds with the sparseness and incisiveness of a Raymond Carver story. In the first verse, we glimpse an entire life:
From Youngstown, Ohio, Ray Boom Boom Mancini
A lightweight contender, like father like son
He fought for the title with Frias in Vegas
And he put him away in round number one

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Metal Firecracker by Lucinda Williams

May 16, 2010

Metal Firecracker

Written and performed by Lucinda Williams, originally released on the album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. You can listen to the song here.

“Metal Firecracker” is a grown up break-up song that shimmers with guitars, loss and vulnerability. The metal firecracker of the title is a tour bus and the song concerns a love gone bad. The song avoids the moaning and self-pity that saps too many break-up songs as it both recalls the passion of the affair and finds a way forward.

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Dyslexic Heart by Paul Westerberg

May 13, 2010

Originally released on the soundtrack for the movie Singles, you can also find it on Besterberg: The Best of Paul Westerberg. You can see/hear the official video here. Click here for a good live version. Here’s another live version.

Paul Westerberg’s first effort after the demise of The Replacements, “Dyslexic Heart” is a nearly pure pop rendition of boy meets girl and boys winds up confused as hell. Of course, no pop is pure after you run it through the blender that is Paul Westerberg. We get a sweet harmonica, clever lyrics, fun puns, a hook almost good enough to have you humming it, rhythms that will have you tapping your foot, a few smart alack shots and a brilliant title phrase all spun together in a shiny concoction replete with waves of nanana.

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A Fairy Tale of New York by the Pogues (with Kirsty MacColl)

May 13, 2010

Performed by the Pogues with help from Kirsty MacColl. You can hear the recorded version here. You can hear live versions here, here and here. Here’s a live version with Sinead O’Connor singing the female part (not a great recording).

A sad tale saved from pure sentimentality by some gritty lines and gutty singing, the song opens on a snowy Christmas Eve in the New York City drunk tank. A mournful piano plays in the background. An old man declares it will be his last (“won’t see another one”), then breaks into a version of “The Rare Old Mountain Dew,” an old time Irish ballad (click here for a version by the Dubliners). Here’s our Irish boy stuck in jail on Christmas Eve a long way from home. The combination of the drink, the old man’s singing and the Christmas holiday send the singer into reverie thinking about his love.

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I Killed Sally’s Lover by the Avett Brothers

May 12, 2010

I Killed Sally’s Lover

The Avett Brothers From Live, Vol. II You can hear a live version here, here and here, .

You’re in a beer-soaked, sweaty North Carolina bar, three guys on the stage and wham: One-Two-Three-Four, guitars, banjo and upright base blast off like the amuck off-spring of speed metal and bluegrass, think Appalachian Ramones.

In one breath, we get the whole story: “Somebody get my shot got/Somebody get my blade/Sally’s been laying with another man/And he’s sleeping in my place.” No qualms, no equivocating, the singer relishes the moment, “Gonna shoot him sure as rain/You can run as fast you want to boy/I’ll kill you just the same.” They play with such reckless abandon, such joy. No moaning in a corner over betrayed love, no deep thoughts; it’s a song making lust tangible: “You can try to hide all you want boy/There ain’t nowhere to go.”

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Stuck Between Stations by the Hold Steady

May 11, 2010

Crank this tune and enter the mess of whirling images and thoughts of fame, poetry, drinking, art, depression, Minneapolis winters, Catholicism, guilt, lust, and longing, most of all, longing for the promise and clarity offered by a girl. The song sometimes sounds bizarrely upbeat given that the core of the lyrics tell of John Berryman – the great American confessional poet – and his demise: jumping off the Washington Street Bridge in Minneapolis and drowning in the Mississippi River.

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