Recently, it was time again for Turntable Talk, a fun monthly recurring feature hosted by Dave who pens the great A Sound Day blog, where he invites posts from fellow bloggers on topics he picks. This time the ask was to write about an album which had cover art or packaging we dig. Following is my contribution, which first was published on Dave blog on June 18. The post has been slightly edited to fit the format of this blog.
Summer is back and so is Turntable Talk, the gift that keeps on giving! In this 27th round of the monthly feature, host and fellow blogger Dave asked us to write about the packaging of an album we like, be it the cover art, the liner notes or any inserts. Sometimes when Dave sends us a topic, I have to sleep on it. In this case, not only did I decide right away that I wanted to focus on an album cover, but I also immediately knew which cover I wanted to highlight.
My spontaneous pick may be surprising, given there are so many albums with great covers. The Beatles’Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pink Floyd’sThe Dark Side of the Moon, The Rolling Stones’Sticky Fingers, Nirvana’sNevermind and Deep Purple’sIn Rock are some that come to my mind. When making my decision which album cover to write about, I only thought of The Dark Side of the Moon as the next option after I had decided on my pick: Breakfast In America by Supertramp.
While my decision to get the album on vinyl around the time it was released in March 1979 was solely driven by the music, I’ve always thought Breakfast in America has one of the coolest covers I know, especially the front. The cover was conceived by English designers Mike Doud and Mick Haggerty. It resembles a view of Manhattan through an airplane window. In the front there’s an image of American actress and singer-comedienne Kate Murtagh as the Statue of Liberty. She’s dressed as a diner waitress, holding up a glass of orange juice on a small plate in one hand (instead of the statute’s torch) and in her other hand a menu titled “Breakfast In America.”
But the truly amazing thing to me is the depiction of Lower Manhattan in the background: an assortment of breakfast items and utensils, including a cornflake box, ashtray, cutlery, pancake syrup bottles, egg crates, salt and pepper shakers, coffee mugs, ketchup and mustard bottles, etc. The twin towers of the World Trade Center (at the time) appear as two stacks of boxes. There’s also a breakfast plate representing The Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, a public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan.
The back cover photo is less spectacular but certainly fits well. It shows the members of Supertramp, with each reading their respective hometown newspaper. Kate Murtagh makes another appearance as the diner waitress. The image was taken at a Los Angeles diner called Bert’s Mad House. I suspect it no longer exists, though I couldn’t verify that.
The cover won Breakfast in America one of two Grammys at the 1980 awards, for Best Album Package, defeating albums by Chicago (Chicago), Talking Heads (Fear of Music), Led Zeppelin (In Through The Out Door) and Joe Jackson (Look Sharp!), among others. The album also won in the category of Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording and received nominations for Album of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
Since this is a music-related post, I’m leaving you with three songs from Breakfast in America. All were written by co-founder and co-frontman Roger Hodgson (vocals, keyboards and guitars), who penned most of the band’s hits.
What you always wanted to know about…Child of Vision
It’s Wednesday and I hope this week has been kind to you. Welcome to another installment of my recurring feature that explores specific songs I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all to date. The other day, fellow blogger Dave from A Sound Daywrote about Supertramp’s 1977 album Even in the Quietest Moments…. This reminded me I had earmarked the British group months ago for Song Musings. My pick: Child of Vision.
Child of Vision primarily was written by Roger Hodgson, though it is also credited to the group’s co-founder Rick Davies. The song is the stunning closer of Breakfast in America, Supertramp’s sixth album from March 1979, which remains my favorite by the band. Among the great tracks on this album Child of Vision has always been a standout to me because of its neat piano action.
Child of Vision was an album track only, likely at least in part due to its length of close to seven and a half minutes. Of the four songs that also appeared as singles, The Logical Song turned out to be the biggest hit and Supertramp’s highest charting song in the U.S. at no. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Breakfast in America became their most commercially successful album with approximately 20 million units sold worldwide, of which the U.S. accounts for more than 4 million.
As noted above, one of the song’s great features are the piano parts. The main instrument is a Wurlitzer electric piano played by Hodgson. The grand piano including the extended solo was performed by Davies. Supertramp’s saxophonist John Helliwell played the sax solo at the end of the song. The other members on the recording were Dougie Thomson and Bob Siebenberg, the band’s bassist and drummer, respectively. Here’s a neat live version recorded shortly after the album had come out.
Child of Vision’s lyrics question a materialistic lifestyle. Wikipedia notes Hodgson stated the song was written to be an equivalent to “Gone Hollywood”, looking at how Americans live, though he confessed that he had only a limited familiarity with US culture at the time of writing. He also said there is a slight possibility that he subconsciously had Rick Davies in mind while writing the lyrics. Hodgson and Davies had very different views of the world.
“Child of Vision was an inspirational song,” Hodgson explained on Facebook in October 2015, according to AZLyrics. “It was more of a commentary, really, of what I was seeing around me. I am singing to the idealist in Child of Vision – basically buying into the American lifestyle – ‘they gave me Coca-Cola and they had me watch television’. It was maybe talking to part of myself to hang on to the vision beyond that.”
Here’s another live version by Hodgson, captured in Montreal, Canada, in October 2013. He was backed by Kevin Adamson (keyboards, backing vocals), Aaron Macdonald (saxophones, harmonica, keyboards, backing vocals), David J Carpenter (bass, backing vocals) and Bryan Head (drums).
I’ll leave you with the lyrics:
Well, who do you think you’re fooling? You say you’re having fun But you’re busy going nowhere Just lying in the sun You tried to be a hero And commit the perfect crime But the dollar got you dancing And you’re running out of time And you’re messing up the water And you’re rolling in the wine And you’re poisoning your body And you’re poisoning your mind And you gave me Coca-Cola ‘Cause you said it tasted good Then you watch the television ‘Cause it tells you that you should
Ooh, how can you live in this way? (Why do you think it’s so strange?) You must have something to say (Tell me why should I change?) There must be more to this life It’s time we did something right I said “Child of vision, won’t you listen? Find yourself a new ambition”
I’ve heard it all before You’re saying nothing new I thought I saw a rainbow But I guess it wasn’t true And you cannot make me listen And I cannot make you hear So you find your way to heaven And I’ll meet you when you’re there
How can you live in this way? (Why do you think it’s so strange?) You must have something to say (Tell me why should I change?) We have no reason to fight ‘Cause we both know that we’re right I said “Child of vision, won’t you listen? Find yourself a new ambition”
A new year means more albums hitting the big 50. Like in 2023, this preview is based on a review of Wikipedia and an initial selection of 40 studio albums that appeared over the course of 1974. From there, I narrowed it down to six favorites, each of which are briefly highlighted, followed by a Spotify playlist that captures one song from each of the 40 albums, except for Joni Mitchell. I’m planning individual, more in depth posts about the six picks and possibly a few more, all timed to each album’s anniversary date.
Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark (January 17, 1971)
Kicking off this preview is Court and Spark, the sixth studio album by singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, one of the many outstanding artists hailing from the Land of the Maple Leaf. Not only did Court and Spark become Mitchell’s most successful album, but it also marked the start of her transition from a “straight folkie” to an artist who incorporated jazz elements in her music. Court and Spark featured prominent guests from both the jazz and other music realms, such as pianist Joe Sample (co-founder of The Jazz Crusaders), jazz bassist Max Bennett, session guitarist Larry Carlton and The Band’sRobbie Robertson. Here’s Trouble Child, which like all other except for one track was penned by Mitchell.
Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic (February 20, 1974)
While my favorite Steely Dan album will always remain Aja, there’s a lot more to the Dan than their September 1977 gem. Every time I see Good Stuff, an outstanding tribute led by my dear friend Mike Caputo, I’m reminded how great their earlier music was as well. Case in point: Pretzel Logic, their third studio album and final as a standing band featuring Donald Fagen (keyboards, saxophone, vocals), Walter Becker (bass, guitar, backing vocals), Denny Dias (guitar) and Jim Hodder (drums). That said, Hodder only sang backing vocals on one track, and the album had significant contributions from many prominent L.A. session musicians, already foreshadowing the approach Fagen and Becker would take starting with the next Steely Dan album Katy Lied. Here’s the excellent Night by Night, which has become one of my favorite Dan songs pre-Aja.
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Second Helping (April 15, 1974)
With (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd), the Southern rockers had released a strong debut in August 1973, which not only charted in the U.S. and Canada, but also overseas in the UK and Switzerland. While their follow-on Second Helping included what arguably is their signature song, Sweet Home Alabama, which became their first charting single and a major hit at home and elsewhere, the album missed the charts overseas. That said, it did better in the U.S. and Canada than their debut, peaking on the mainstream charts at no. 12 and no. 9, respectively. Here’s Don’t Ask Me No Questions, a great rocker co-written by guitarist Gary Rossington and lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant. The horns by Bobby Keys, Trevor Lawrence and Steve Madaio give it a nice soul vibe!
Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Boulevard (July 1974)
461 Ocean Boulevard, one of my favorite albums by Eric Clapton, marked his triumphant return to music after a 3-year hiatus due to heroin addiction. It also represented a clear break from Clapton’s hardcore blues rock-oriented days with John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, The Yardbirds, Cream and Derek and the Dominos – all music I love as well. Sadly, his struggles with addiction weren’t over, and he would soon replace heroin with alcohol before finally getting sober in 1987. Here’s the fantastic Let It Grow, one of three tracks on the album Clapton wrote or co-wrote.
Supertramp – Crime of the Century (October 25, 1974)
Supertramp are a band I will always associate with my school days back in Germany, which in the U.S. would have been the equivalent to middle school. The English group became very popular in Germany, especially when they released their Breakfast in America album that topped the charts there and in many other countries. Crime of the Century, their third studio album, predated Breakfast in America by about 4.5 years. The song I best remember hearing on the radio is the opener School. Like all other tracks, it was co-written by Rick Davies (vocals, keyboards, harmonica) and Roger Hodgson (vocals, guitar, pianos). Typically, both alternated lead vocals, which in this case were sung by Hodgson.
Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (November 22, 1974)
This brings me to the final album I’d like to highlight in the post’s main section: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, the sixth studio album by Genesis. The British group became one of the few progressive rock acts I warmed to in the ’80s. I had always liked The Carpet Crawlers, which I had well known from the radio. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the song missed the charts everywhere, which I find hard to believe. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was a concept album telling the strange story of a poor Puerto Rican boy from The Bronx, who goes on a bizarre adventure in New York City, which ends in death. That said, musically, the group’s final album with original lead vocalist Peter Gabriel remains a gem, IMHO. Here’s the title track credited to all five members of the band: Gabriel (lead vocals), Steve Hackett (electric guitars), Tony Banks (piano), Mike Rutherford (bass) and Phil Collins (drums, bell-tree, glockenspiel, triangle, wind chimes, tambourine, timbales, backing vocals).
Here’s the above-mentioned Spotify playlist. It doesn’t include Trouble Child by Joni Mitchell who in January 2022 removed her music in solidarity with Neil Young to protest the platform for hosting Joe Rogan’s podcast, which spread dangerous misinformation about COVID-19.
i/o is Gabriel’s first studio album of new material in 21 years
“Gabriel still dazzles on sumptuous tenth solo album” (Mojo). “It is utterly mesmerizing that Gabriel can still find new and unique ways to present his art to the world “ (Glide Magazine). “There are points where his relentless utopianism can sound trite” (Uncut). “While the “Bright Side” mixes bring out the album’s more dynamic range, the lyrics lack the edge of Gabriel’s early music” (Slant). Reviews of Peter Gabriel’s new album have been pretty favorable overall, but he isn’t for everybody. If you like the British music artist’s previous work and don’t necessarily expect another hit-loaded album like So, I think you’re going to dig i/o.
Finally released on December 1, 2023, Gabriel’s 10th studio album took 21 years to come together. Factoring in that by the time i/o dropped Gabriel already had released each of its 12 tracks as singles over the past 12 months, this still leaves 20 years since Up, which came out in September 2002. While there’s no obvious hit like Sledgehammer or Big Time, the music is accessible, and some of it is pretty groovy. What struck me the most are Gabriel’s vocals, which virtually haven’t changed since So, his fifth studio album from May 1986.
Bright-Side and Dark-Side Mixes 2CD
Each song on i/o is offered in two mixes, resulting in a whooping 2-CD package of 24 tracks, translating to 2 hours and 18 minutes in total length. An additional third version is included on the 2-CD + Blu-ray format of the album. That’s a massive 36 tracks totaling more than 3 hours. I wonder how many folks are going to listen to all these different versions. Out of curiosity, I checked out the bright-side and dark-side mixes for a few tracks and couldn’t tell significant differences. There are two caveats to this observation: A measly audio setup and some degree of high-frequency hearing loss!
Here’s how the official album announcement explains the mixes: All 12 tracks are subject to two stereo mixes: the Bright-Side Mix, handled by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, and the Dark-Side Mix, as reshaped by Tchad Blake. “We have two of the greatest mixers in the world in Tchad and Spike and they definitely bring different characters to the songs. Tchad is very much a sculptor building a journey with sound and drama, Spike loves sound and assembling these pictures, so he’s more of a painter.”…A third version – the In-Side Mix, in Dolby Atmos, comes courtesy of Hans-Martin Buff “doing a wonderful job generating these much more three-dimensional mixes”.
Bright-Side Mix 2LP
Initial production work for i/o dates back to April 1995, but Gabriel ended up focusing his attention to recording Up. His original intention was to release the successor to that album in 2004. But Gabriel got side-tracked with his two orchestral albums Scratch My Back (2010) and New Blood (2011), and other projects. Not only did this result in repeated delays but also in many reworks and re-recordings. At the same time, the pool of song ideas swelled, and in 2005 Gabriel reportedly was working on a 150 songs. Gabriel kept mentioning his work in various interviews throughout the years to the point where some observers doubted he would ever finish the album.
Finally, things fell into place. Instead of releasing i/o in one shot, Gabriel in late 2022 announced his 2023 i/o Tour, which featured material from the new album. Starting from January 2023, he also began putting out one new track each month as a single. The bright-side mixes were timed to full moon, while the dark-side mixes came out on the following new moon. Thematically, the songs are about life and the universe, touching on topics like the passing of time, mortality, grief, injustice and terrorism. While that doesn’t sound exactly cheerful, i/o isn’t all doom and gloom and has its moments of joy, optimism and hope.
Time for some music! Let’s start with Panopticom, which became the album’s first single with the release of the bright-side mix on January 6. “The first song is based on an idea I have been working on to initiate the creation of an infinitely expandable accessible data globe: The Panopticom,” Gabriel stated. “We are beginning to connect a like-minded group of people who might be able to bring this to life, to allow the world to see itself better and understand more of what’s really going on.”
Here’s the album’s title track i/o, which means input/output. “You see it on the back of a lot of electrical equipment and it just triggered some ideas about the stuff we put in and pull out of ourselves, in physical and non-physical ways,” Gabriel explained. “That was the starting point of this idea and then trying to talk about the interconnectedness of everything. The older I get, I probably don’t get any smarter, but I have learned a few things and it makes a lot of sense to me that we are not these independent islands that we like to think we are, that we are part of a whole. If we can see ourselves as better connected, still messed up individuals, but as part of a whole, then maybe there’s something to learn?”
Road to Joy, co-produced by Gabriel and Brian Eno, is a groovy track and perhaps the closest to what you could call a hit. The song features the Soweto Gospel Choir, a string arrangement from John Metcalfe, as well as contributions from a number of musicians of Gabriel’s touring band. “I’m working on a project which is partly a story focused around the brain and how we perceive things and this song connects to that,” Gabriel said. “It deals with near-death experience and locked-in syndrome situations where people are unable to communicate or to move. It’s an amazingly frustrating condition. There have been some great books and films about this subject, but at this point in our story the people looking after our hero manage to find a way to wake him up. So, it’s a lyric about coming back into your senses, back to life, back into the world.”
Olive Tree, the eighth track released from i/o, is another song about connection, both how we interact with nature and the other species around us, but also a greater sensitivity to the potential for broadening human experience, explained an accompanying statement. In Gabriel’s words: “In some ways I do think we are part of everything and we probably have means to connect and communicate with everything that we often shut off. We only want to see and listen to the things that seem important and relevant to us and shut out the noise of everything else when, probably, hidden in that noise there are all sorts of things that can help us realise our place in this future world.”
Let’s do one more, This Is Home, which Gabriel called a love song. “It began with inspiration from some of the great Tamla Motown rhythm sections so we’re trying to recreate that in a modern way, complete with the tambourine and handclaps,” Gabriel said. “The groove I like a lot, Tony Levin does a great bass part there.” He added, “I did an unusual thing for me in that I tried doing this low voice / high voice thing, so you get this almost conversational voice at the beginning and the second part is a higher, more emotional voice. I thought that would be both intimate and emotive to put the two side by side.”
“I’m a tinkerer,” Gabriel toldThe New York Times when addressing the drawn-out process of making i/o. “So there’s always a diversion. I’ve never had trouble — touch wood — with musical ideas. But getting to a point where I think there’s a lyric that I’m happy with — that has been harder for me. I think the critic in me is tougher now than it used to be, for better or for worse. But part of the creative process is to feel good about lowering your standards sometimes and just, you know, letting the energy rip.”
i/o features Gabriel’s longtime collaborators David Rhodes (guitar), Tony Levin (bass) and Manu Katché (drums). In addition to co-producing the above-mentioned Road to Joy, Brian Eno also contributes musically to various other songs. Among other contributors are Richard Russell, who co-produced one of the tracks (Four Kinds of Horses), Evan Smith (saxophone on Olive Tree), Josh Shpak (trumpet on Road to Joy and Olive Tree) and Oli Jacobs (synthesizers on Panopticom, i/o and This Is Home). Gabriel’s daughter Melanie Gabriel provides backing vocals on various tracks.
i/o is available in multiple formats, which apart from the previously noted 2-CD and 2-CD+Blu ray versions include 2-LP versions of each the dark-side and the bright-side mixes. On March 8, 2024, there will also be a 4-LP, 2-CD, 1 Blu-ray box, featuring all three mixes for each track. Last but not least, here’s a Spotify link to the album (2-CD version with each the bright-side and the dark-side mixes).
Sources: Wikipedia; Mojo; Glide Magazine; Uncut; Sant Peter Gabriel website; The New York Times; YouTube; Spotify
Celebrating music with six random tracks at a time
I can’t believe it’s Sunday gain! Hope you’re spending a lovely weekend and are in the mood to accompany me on another journey through space and time to explore some great music of the past and the present. The magical music time machine is ready to take off – all aboard, fasten your seat belt and off we go!
Stan Getz/Blue Bells
To kick off today’s trip, let’s set the controls to the year 1957. That’s when Stan Getz released an album titled Stan Getz and the Cool Sounds. At that time, the jazz saxophonist, aka. known as “The Sound” because of his warm, lyrical tone, already was well into his nearly 50-year career that saw him play with Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Horace Silver and Dizzy Gillespie, among many others. Here’s the beautiful Blue Bells, a composition by Phil Sunkel. On this recording, Getz was backed by Tony Fruscella (trumpet), Lou Levy (piano), Bill Anthony (bass) and Frank Isola (drums).
Dawes/Ghost In the Machine
This next pick almost leads us right back to where we started. In July 2022, Los Angeles folk-rock band Dawes released their eighth studio album Misadventures of Doomscroller, which saw the group depart from their short, more lyrically focused tunes of the past, to longer, more instrumental songs. Here’s the incredible Ghost In the Machine, written by guitarist and vocalist Taylor Goldsmith. He formed Dawes in 2009, together with Tay Strathairn (keyboards), Wylie Gelber (bass) and his younger brother Griffin Goldsmith (drums).
The Peanut Butter Conspiracy/Turn On a Friend (To the Good Life)
As frequent travelers know, no Sunday Six can skip the ’60s, and today I’ve got a really cool proposition thanks to my longtime music buddy from Germany: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy. The psychedelic pop-rock band was formed in L.A. in 1966 and released three albums during their four-year run. The second was called The Great Conspiracy and appeared in December 1967. It kicks off with Turn On a Friend (To the Good Life), a tune with a great Jefferson Airplane vibe, penned by bassist and vocalist Alan Brackett. In fact, Airplane’s drummer Spencer Dryden had played in an earlier incarnation of the group, called The Ashes.
Semisonic/Closing Time
Time to pay a visit to the ’90s with some great melodic alternative rock by Semisonic. The band from Minneapolis, Minn. came together in 1995 from the ashes of Trip Shakespeare, another local alternative rock group. In March 1998, Semisonic scored their biggest hit, Closing Time, which appeared on their sophomore album Feeling Strangely Fine. The seductive tune with a nice R.E.M. feel was written by lead vocalist and guitarist Dan Wilson. Following a hiatus after the release of their third album in March 2001, the group has done a series of reunion tours since 2017 and just last month supported Barenaked Ladies on a summer tour.
Bob Dylan/Hurricane
Next, we shall go to January 1976 to listen to the story of Hurricane, the man the authorities came to blame, for somethin’ that he never done. I guess this was the last great protest song by Bob Dylan. The epic tune tells the tale of middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter who was framed, wrongfully convicted for a triple murder in 1966, and put in a prison cell for more than 20 years – arguably, one of the most notorious cases of police misconduct this country has ever seen. Hurricane, which Zimmy penned after he had read Carter’s autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, was included on his 17th studio album Desire. I never get tired of that song and Scarlet Rivera’s violin.
Simple Minds/Don’t You (Forget About Me)
And once again, we’re reaching the final destination of our journey. Let’s wrap up in February 1985 with a tune I’ve always liked by Scottish art rock band Simple Minds: Don’t You (Forget About Me). Co-written by producer Keith Forsey and guitarist Steve Schiff, the song first appeared as a single in the U.S. and was part of the soundtrack of the motion picture The Breakfast Club. It became Simple Minds’ biggest hit in America. Interestingly, they didn’t include it on October 1985’s Once Upon a Time or on any other of their regular studio albums.
Last but not least here’s a Spotify playlist of the above goodies, coz I wouldn’t leave you without it. As always, I hope there’s something you dig and you’ll be back for more!
A selection of newly released music that caught my attention
Happy Saturday! Are you ready to listen to some new music? The featured tunes are on brand new albums that came out yesterday (March 3), except for the first, which appeared on Thursday, and the last, released on February 24.
Daisy Jones & The Six/Let Me Down Easy
My first pick this week feels a bit like the return of The Monkees: Let Me Down Easy by Daisy Jones & The Six, a fictional ’70s band loosely modeled after Fleetwood Mac, who are at the center of a new American streaming mini-TV series that debuted yesterday on Amazon Prime Video. According to this story in Variety, actors Riley Keough (Daisy Jones) and Sam Claflin (Billy Dunne), who had no prior professional singing experience, went through an intensive three-month band camp where together with their four fictitious bandmates they learned to sing and play the original music featured in the series. Some of the songs had input from Marcus Mumford, Phoebe Bridgers and Jackson Browne. The outcome is pretty remarkable. Perhaps genes also helped a bit: Keough is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and daughter of the late Lisa Marie Presley. Here’s Let Me Down Easy, off the group’s debut album Aurora. Whether their life will continue beyond the TV series similar to The Monkees remains to be seen.
Fake Names/Don’t Blame Yourself
Unlike their name may suggest and contrary to my previous pick, Fake Names are a real band. From their AllMusicbio: An international punk supergroup, Fake Names are four musicians with long and impressive resumés who came together to play music that’s lean but full-bodied, melodic, and unpretentiously artful despite its velocity. The lineup includes former and current members of Minor Threat, Refused, Bad Religion, Embrace, Girls Against Boys, and Dag Nasty, and began as an informal collaboration between two longtime friends before it grew into a proper band who issued their self-titled debut album in 2020. While I featured them once before here in August 2021, I still don’t know all these punk bands from which they draw their members. Don’t Blame Yourself is a tune from Fake Names’ sophomore album Expendables. It’s credited to four members of the group: Dennis Lyxzén (lead vocals), Brian Baker (guitar), Michael Hampton (guitar) and Johnny Temple (bass). Brandon Canty (drums) completes the band’s line-up. Their melodic brand of punk is my kind of punk.
JAWNY/Fall in Love
JAWNY (born Jacob Lee-Nicholas Sullenger) is an indie pop singer-songwriter. Originally hailing from the San Francisco bay area, Sullenger picked up the guitar as a six-year-old and by the time he was in his early teens began writing songs. After briefly studying nursing in college, he dropped out to pursue a career in music. In 2016, the then-20-year-old relocated to Philadelphia where he started to make music under the moniker Johnny Utah. In January 2018, he released his eponymous debut EP. After signing with Interscope Records in January 2020, Sullenger changed his stage name to JAWNY and moved to Los Angeles. Fall in Love, co-written by Elie Rizek, Imad Royal and Sullenger (credited as JAWNY), is a tune from JAWNY’s first full-length album It’s Never Fair, Always True. While this song is certainly not in my core wheelhouse, it grew on me in anyway.
David Brewis/Keeping Up With Jessica
My final pick this week is new music by English singer-songwriter David Brewis. Together with his brother Peter Brewis, he is a member of English indie and art rock band Field Music, who they co-founded in 2004. To date, Field Music have released eight studio albums, two compilations, one soundtrack and one live album, in addition to more than 20 singles. During the band’s hiatus from 2007 to 2009, Brewis launched a solo music project called School of Language and has since come out with three albums under that name. His latest solo effort, The Soft Struggles, is the first to be released under his name. Here’s Keeping Up With Jessica, a laid-back lush pop tune with a jazzy vibe. Like all other tracks, it was penned by Brewis.
Last but not least, here’s a Spotify playlist of all the above tunes and a few additional songs by each of the featured artists.
Happy Wednesday and hope this week has been treating you well. I’d like to welcome you to another installment of my weekly feature, in which I’m taking a closer look at songs I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all to date. Over the weekend, I finally watched Moonage Daydream, the Brett Morgen documentary about David Bowie. While it’s not a traditional music documentary or biopic but a collage of concert and other footage from Bowie’s personal archives, I actually liked the film more than I thought. It also inspired this week’s song pick: Life On Mars?
Written by David Bowie, the tune first appeared on his fourth studio album Hunky Dory released in December 1971. It was the first record with Bowie’s new backing band featuring Mick Ronson (guitar), Trevor Bolder (bass) and Mick Woodmansey (drums), the group that subsequently became The Spiders from Mars. Life On Mars? was also released as a single in the UK, but only in June 1973 at the height of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period. It peaked at no. 3 there.
Life On Mars? has a bit of a history, which started in 1968 when Bowie was commissioned to write English lyrics for Comme d’habitude, a song by French music artist Claude François. But Bowie’s lyrics were rejected and it was songwriter Paul Anka who took the tune and turned it into My Way, which was popularized by Frank Sinatra in 1969. Apparently annoyed about the success of My Way, Bowie used the song as a template and wrote Life On Mars?, intended as a parody of Sinatra’s recording.
Wikipedia notes that Life On Mars? has been described as a “soaring, cinematic ballad.” Combining elements of glam rock, cabaret and art rock, the tune has a pretty complex structure with different chord changes throughout. The string arrangement was composed by Ronson. Rick Wakeman, who at the time was still a member of English folk rock group The Strawbs, played the piano. Soon thereafter, he would join Yes. Here’s a live version of the song, captured in Paris in October 1999.
Critics and biographers have called Life On Mars? one of Bowie’s best songs. The tune has been covered by various other music artists, including Barbra Streisand and Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. After Bowie’s untimely death in January 2016, the song entered the charts in many countries and became a frequent tribute tune for Bowie. Tributes by organist Nicholas Freestone and singer Lorde gained broad popularity.
Following are some additional tidbits from Songfacts:
The lyricism is very abstract, though the basis of this song is about a girl who goes to watch a movie after an argument with her parents. The film ends with the line “Is there life on Mars?”
Bowie has labeled the song “a sensitive young girl’s reaction to the media” and added, “I think she finds herself disappointed with reality… that although she’s living in the doldrums of reality, she’s being told that there’s a far greater life somewhere, and she’s bitterly disappointed that she doesn’t have access to it.”
The lyrics also contain imagery suggesting the futility of man’s existence, a topic Bowie used frequently on his early albums...
…In 2008, Bowie recalled writing this song to the Mail on Sunday: “This song was so easy. Being young was easy. A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand. ‘Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap.’ An anomic (not a ‘gnomic’) heroine. Middle-class ecstasy. I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn’t get the riff out of my head. Jumped off two stops into the ride and more or less loped back to the house up on Southend Road. Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise lounge; a bargain-price art nouveau screen (‘William Morris,’ so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else. I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon. Nice. Rick Wakeman [of prog band, Yes] came over a couple of weeks later and embellished the piano part and guitarist Mick Ronson created one of his first and best string parts for this song which now has become something of a fixture in my live shows.”…
…Mick Rock, a photographer who shot the covers of Lou Reed’s Transformer album and Queen’s Queen II, directed the song’s official video, which he filmed backstage at Earls Court, London, in 1973. Bowie appears in a turquoise suit and makeup, performing the song against a white backdrop.
Rock ended up producing two more versions of the video, first in the ’80s when he treated it with a bleached look, then in 2016 when the Parlophone label commissioned him to do a new edit. “The new version is my favorite, because there are all kinds of things you can do technically, including playing around with the colors and lots things,” Rock told Songfacts. [The first clip is the 2016 version – CMM]
Happy Wednesday and welcome to another installment of my desert island song challenge. Before I can head out to the imaginary island in the sun, I need to pick one song to take with me.
In case you’re new to this weekly feature, there are a few additional rules that guide my picks. The tune must be by an artist or band I’ve only rarely written about or not covered at all. And I’m doing the song selections in alphabetical order. This means the band’s or artist’s name (last name) must start with a specific letter, which this week is “v”.
Frankly, even after doing a bit of research, I only found a handful of bands and music artists whose names start with “v”: Van Halen; Steven Van Zandt, aka Little Steven; Vangelis and The Velvet Underground. Of course, there’s also the great former Lynyrd Skynyrd lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, but I’m not aware of any solo music that appeared under his name.
Applying my criteria, it came down to Vangelis or The Velvet Underground. And my pick is Sunday Morning by The Velvet Underground. While I’ve only heard a handful of the band’s tunes and as such, it was a bit of a tricky decision, I’m quite happy with my choice!
Penned by Lou Reed, the band’s lead guitarist, vocalist and main songwriter, Sunday Morning was the opener of their debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico, which appeared in March 1967. It featured German vocalist Nico (born Christa Päffgen) on three tracks, at the insistence of their manager Andy Warhol who co-produced the album with Tom Wilson. Earlier in the ’60s, Wilson had produced three of Bob Dylan’s albums as well as the debut by Simon & Garfunkel.
The Velvet Underground were formed in 1964 in New York City. By the time they recorded their above-mentioned debut, their line-up included co-founders Lou Reed (vocal, guitar, piano), John Cale (viola, bass, keyboards, vocals) and Sterling Morrison (guitar, bass, backing vocals), along with Moe Tucker (drums) who had replaced the band’s original percussionist Angus MacLise in late 1965.
By the early 1970s, Doug Yule who had joined The Velvet Underground in 1968 to replace John Cale, was the group’s only remaining member. While there was one more album released under The Velvet Underground name (Squeeze, February 1973), essentially it was a Yule solo album he recorded together with a few backing musicians. Yule subsequently did some session and touring work for Lou Reed who had left the band in 1970 to launch a solo career.
In 1992, The Velvet Underground reunited for a European tour featuring Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker. But it was short-lived and a discussed U.S. tour didn’t materialize when Cale and Reed fell out again – the old story of egos in rock & roll! In August 1995, Morrison passed away from non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 53. Reed, Tucker and Cale reformed the group one last time in 1996 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Reed died from liver disease in October 2013. He was 71. In 2017, Cale and Tucker came together at the Grammy Salute to Music Legends concert for a performance of I’m Waiting for the Man, a tune from The Velvet Underground’s first album. They remain the only survivors of the group’s original line-up.
Following are some additional tidbits on Sunday Morning from Songfacts:
Lou Reed wrote this on a Sunday morning around 6 a.m. Andy Warhol, who helped finance the album, suggested he write a song about the paranoia associated with the effects of a drug wearing off.
Reed wrote this for Nico but then decided not to let the German ex-model sing it. Instead he impersonated her himself.
The production on this song is more lavish than the other tracks on the album. It was intended for release as a single and they wanted to make it radio friendly...
…This song is all about last-minute changes. The inclusion of the track on their first album was literally penciled in, Reed decided to take over vocals at the last minute as they walked into the studio to record it, and John Cale noticed a celesta in the studio and decided to include the instrument for the song on the spot. Cale also played the viola on the song.
I can’t believe it’s Wednesday again and we’re almost in July! This would be the perfect time for a summer vacation, and a beautiful tropical island sounds like an attractive proposition. But wait, before I can leave on yet another imaginary trip to some remote island in the sun, once again, I have to pick one song to take with me.
In case you’re a first-time visitor, there are a few rules that limit my options, which make the exercise both challenging and interesting at the same time. My pick cannot be a tune by a music act I’ve frequently written about. Ideally, it should be a band or artist I haven’t covered yet. It can only be one track, not an entire album. And picks must be in alphabetical order.
This week I’m up to “r.” Bands and artists (last names) starting with that letter include Radiohead, Bonnie Raitt, Ramones, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers, Otis Redding, Lou Reed, Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt and Roxy Music, among others.
Based on the above criteria, Bonnie Raitt, The Rolling Stones and Linda Ronstadt were immediately excluded from further consideration. For some of the other artists, sadly, I had to search my own blog to refresh my memory to what extent I had covered them before. At the end, it came down to picking Radiohead or Roxy Music, and I decided to go with the latter and More Than This.
More Than This, written by Bryan Ferry, first appeared in April 1982 as the lead single of Roxy Music’s eighth and final studio album Avalon, released the following month. It’s just a gorgeous pop tune I’ve loved from the very first moment I heard the band playing it on the radio at the time it came out.
More Than This was popular, reaching no. 6 in each the UK and Australia, but it wasn’t the group’s biggest hit. The latter was their great cover of John Lennon’sJealous Guy, which they recorded and released as a non-album single in February 1981 to honor the ex-Beatle who had been senselessly killed by a deranged individual in New York in December 1980.
Art and pop rock group Roxy Music were founded by Ferry, the band’s lead vocalist and main songwriter, and bassist Graham Simpson in England in 1970. While they have been on and off ever since, their active recording period spanned 1972 to 1982. During these 10 years, Roxy Music released eight studio albums, three of which topped the UK charts: Stranded (1973), Flesh and Blood (1980) and the above-noted Avalon.
In 1982, at the height of their commercial success, Ferry who at that time was the only original member together with Andy Mackay (saxophone, oboe, keyboards, backing vocals), decided to dissolve Roxy Music and focus on his solo career, which he had launched in parallel to the group in 1973.
Roxy Music have since reunited several times for tours and are currently gearing up to be on the road again starting in September to celebrate their 50th anniversary. In addition to co-founders Ferry and Mackay, this includes Phil Manzanera (guitar) and Paul Thompson (drums), who were all part of the group’s lineup that recorded Roxy Music’s 1972 eponymous debut album. The schedule of the five-week tour, which includes dates in Canada, the U.S. and the UK, is here.
Following are a few additional tidbits on More Than This from Songfacts:
Written by lead singer Bryan Ferry, this song is about a love affair that fell apart. Asked in 2014 by Entertainment Weekly why the song endures, Ferry replied, “For some reason, there’s something in the combination of the melody and the lyric that works for people.”
…In America, this song got some traction when it featured in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film Lost In Translation in a scene where Bill Murray sings it in a Tokyo karaoke bar. When the song was first released, however, it had little impact on the charts, bubbling under at just #102 on the Hot 100. Many college radio stations played the song, but commercial stations stayed away for the most part.
Roxy Music occupied just a small niche in America, where they hit the Top 40 just once (“Love Is the Drug” – #30 in 1975), but they were far more successful in the UK.
…Ferry told The Mail on Sunday June 28, 2009 about the Avalon album: “I started writing the songs while on the west coast of Ireland, and I like to think that some of the dark melancholy of the album comes from that place.”
10,000 Maniacs covered this in 1997 on their album Love Among The Ruins. Mary Ramsey sang lead, as original Maniacs lead singer Natalie Merchant had just left the band to go solo.
Sources: Wikipedia; Roxy Music website; Songfacts; YouTube
Time again to make the tough choice to pick only one tune by a select artist or band I would take to a desert island. Hopefully, this will never happen, as it’s pretty much mission impossible. We’re up to the letter “b”, so choices include The Beatles, Badfinger, Bad Company, Chuck Berry, James Brown, David Bowie and The Byrds, to name some. I decided to go with Barclay James Harvest.
‘Who the hell is that?’ some of you may wonder, and why didn’t he take his favorite band of all time, The Beatles? Well, let me remind you one criterion for this feature is to pick an artist or band I haven’t covered yet or only a few times – call it a little twist to the exercise! This post is the first about Barclay James Harvest (BJH), a British group I was very much into during my teenage years, growing up in Germany. If I recall it correctly, they were pretty popular there at the time.
BJH (from left): Stuart “Woolly” Wolstenholme, John Lees, Mel Pritchard and Les Holroyd
BJH were formed in September 1966 by John Lees (guitar, vocals), Stuart “Woolly” Wolstenholme (keyboards, vocals), Les Holroyd (bass, vocals) and Mel Pritchard (drums, percussion). Their eponymous debut album appeared in 1970. Various configurations of the group have since released close to 20 additional studio albums, as well as numerous live and compilation records.
BJH are oftentimes classified as prog-rock and art rock. This sounds pretty accurate to me, especially for their earlier albums. I think one can also add symphonic rock, folk rock and pop rock. Currently, there are two touring versions of the group, John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest and Barclay James Harvest featuring Les Holroyd, which are each led by an original member. In case you’re interested to learn more, you can visit their respective websites here and here.
This finally brings me to the song I decided to pick: Mocking Bird, a tune that appeared on BJH’s sophomore album Once Again from February 1971. Written by John Lees, the symphonic rock tune is very reminiscent of The Moody Blues.
Six years after Once Again had appeared, Lees wrote a song titled Poor Man’s Moody Blues. But what could be viewed as an acknowledgment that the group was influenced by the Moodys apparently was an angry reaction to a journalist who had called BJH “a poor man’s Moody Blues.” The tune deliberately sounded very similar to Nights in White Satin.
Understandably, Justin Hayward, who wrote the renowned Moody Blues song, was less than pleased. Had this happened in the U.S., I think it’s safe to assume there would have been a big lawsuit. Years later, Hayward received an apology from Les Holroyd when they met each other.
Sources: Wikipedia; John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest website; Barclay James Harvest featuring Les Holroyd website; YouTube
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