Happy hump day and I hope everyone’s feeling groovy. Wednesday means it’s time to take a deep dive into another song I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all to date. In this case, it’s the latter. And it’s also a wonderful one-thing-leads-to-another situation: 4th of July, by Los Angeles group X who blend punk rock with other genres like blues, country and rockabilly.
Before I go any further, I need to give a shoutout to fellow blogger CB, aka Cincinnati Babyhead, who listens to a ton of great music and recently suggested that I check out Dave Alvin’s Boss of the Blues. All I needed to hear were the first two lines of the song, and I knew I loved it. Then I wondered what songs by Alvin may be on Songfacts, my go-to source for this feature. I was somewhat surprised to see only one track showed up: 4th of July, but it was another song that immediately spoke to me!
What do X and Dave Alvin have to do with each other? After Alvin quit The Blasters in October 1985, the result of repeated fights with his 2-year-older brother and bandmate Phil Alvin, Dave had a short stint with X. It lasted long enough for one album, See How We Are, released in 1987. One of the 11 tracks is 4th of July, the only song on the album written by Dave Alvin, though like with songs he wrote when he was in The Blasters he didn’t get to sing 4th of July.
According to Wikipedia, 4th of July was also released separately as a single in 1987. Like almost all of X’s other singles, it missed the charts. That’s a shame! See How We Are did make the U.S. pop albums chart Billboard 200. Peaking at no. 107, it became the band’s second-lowest charting album – not exactly overwhelming either. Here’s a great live version of Fourth of July by Dave Alvin, captured in January 1999 on live TV music program Austin City Limits in Austin, Texas, and released on CD and DVD in May 2007. And here, Alvin also gets to sing his song!
For the remainder of this post, let’s hear it directly from Dave Alvin’s mouth, as captured by Songfacts:*
“What I’ve always tried to do is be a combination of my musical and my literary heroes. When I started writing songs for the Blasters, I felt the music I really love and listen to was slowly disappearing as far as being a cultural force. I felt there were a lot of bar bands or even some national acts that were playing, we’ll call it traditional electric roots music, whether it was blues or rockabilly or R&B. But the one thing I always felt was lacking in a lot of them was the Dylan influence. And one of the things Dylan was great at, and still is, is basically taking Elmore James and making “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” out of it. So my feeling was to take, say, Little Junior Parker or Howlin’ Wolf or Jimmy Reed or Carl Perkins or Chuck Berry and write my own lyrics.”
“In college, one of my poetry teachers was a guy by the name of Gerald Lockland, who really enlightened me as to the beauty of the mundane. You drive through a neighborhood of tract homes and all the houses look the same and you can just see there’s nothing going on there. But inside all of those friggin’ houses is a poem, maybe a short story, maybe a novel, maybe a song. A lot of my songs in those days came out of free verse prose poems, which I would shape into songs if I found a good image.”
“‘4th Of July’ started as a three page prose poem. It was written about a year or two before the song. There’s only one or two lines from the prose poem that are actually in the song. “Mexican kids are shooting fireworks below,” and “She turns out the lights and lays in the dark.” It also had 4th of July in it, but it wasn’t a chorus.”
“I think the poem was called 4th of July in the Dark. It was about a previous girlfriend and I living in a neighborhood in our hometown in South Downey. We were living in a little duplex apartment and both working day jobs and I considered myself old and done at the age of 21. There’s a line in the song, ‘On the lost side of town.’ When I sing it what I’m thinking about is where I come from. It’s a part of town where great things don’t come out of it. It’s the kind of place where your job in life is just to work, eat something, sleep, and pay your bills. I think any relationship in that kind of situation has its difficulties, where you’re sort of transitioning from your youthful dreams into possible adult disappointments. That can put a lot of stress onto a relationship.”
“When X wanted to record the song and we recorded a couple of demos for Elektra, one of the producers, who is a notable musician who shall remain nameless, said, ‘I’m not getting enough. It needs more.’ So, I thought, well, maybe I should pull that third verse back into it? But then I thought, no, it’s getting the point across. They’re either breaking up or they’re staying together.'”
“So Nick Lowe [who The Blasters’ label at the time ca. 1985 wanted to produce their next album that never materialized- CMM] flies over from England and we get together. I’d written “4th Of July” and I’d written another song. I sat down with Nick, played him the one and then played him “4th of July.” And then he said something that changed my life, which was, “Your brother can’t sing this.” I said, “What are you talking about?” Although I knew kind of what he was talking about, because structurally it was different from anything the Blasters had ever done. He said, “It doesn’t fit his voice. Melodically, it’s not what your brother does.””
“Then Nick said, “You should sing it.” I said, “Well, I can’t sing.” Then he gave me my motto for the rest of my career, when he said, “I can’t sing either, but I’ve somehow made a living doing it.” And that registered. Because in those days there was still enough of a sort of do-it-yourself punk rock underground that I was attached to. So I go, “Yeah, that’s right. That guy can’t sing and that guy can’t sing, and she can’t sing, and that other guy can’t sing either.””
“Once I played X the demo, I was really high on the idea of me singing. I just thought the song was frigging great. It was one of those things that as soon as I heard it coming back through the speakers of the studio, I was like, “That could be a hit.” I played it for Exene and John Doe and John was instantly: “I want to sing that song.” And I was like, “Oh, fine.” Because I knew that he could. So that’s how it eventually wound up on an X record called See How We Are.”
* The above select quotes by Dave Alvin were taken from a Songfacts column, They’re Paying My Song, written by music writer and published book author Bruce Pollock.
Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube
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