If people are familiar with The Police at all, it’s probably from a mega-hit like “Every Breath You Take,” or some other song off their classic concept album Synchronicity. That work marked both the apex of the band’s popularity as well as their demise. But most people don’t realize that, way back in the early 80s, The Police were primarly a reggae band. (Or were they a punk band? Or maybe jazz…?)
As far as I can tell, almost every great work of art is actually a synthesis of two or more styles that were previously opposed to each other. In “Driven to Tears,” we have those three disparate influences: reggae, punk, and jazz. More importantly, it is perhaps the band’s ultimate song in that is shows-off the talents of all three muscians so well. Andy Summers’s guitar is elegant yet soaring; Stewart Copeland’s drumming is at its frenetic, polyrythmic peak; and Sting’s singing and bass-playing are the core of the song.
And there’s the libretto, of course. “Too many cameras, not enough food.” It’s a line as heartbreakingly true today as it was in 1980. Maybe more so.
Tomorrow is Halloween, so I thought I would feature one of the greatest goth rock songs of all time. It’s by the band Concrete Blonde, whom I’ve loved since the first time I heard their song “Joey” way back in the early 1990s. (I was driving at the time, and I liked the song so much I pulled over to listen to it.) Lead singer Johnette Napolitano might not be as famous as Grace Slick, Ann Wilson, Alanis Morissette, or Patty Smythe, but she can hang with all of them (or any guy hard-rock singer, for that matter).
The first time I saw MTV, it was in black-and-white. My dad had gotten a new job in Tallahassee and had rented a small one-bedroom apartment there to live in until the rest of the family could move up. I went to visit him one weekend and slept on the couch in the tiny living room. Staying up late one night, I turned on the little black-and-white TV that he had taken with him and was amazed to see this new channel, not available back in Gainesville yet, called MTV. Even in black-and-white, with the music playing through those tinny little speakers, the experience blew my mind.
I probably stayed up three hours that night just watching it. I quickly learned that every song MTV played had a synthesizer or three prominently featured. One of the best songs I heard that night was no exception—“Always Something There to Remind Me,” by the Naked Eyes. What a great song! It’s got one of the best synthesizer hooks of any new wave single. I still love it.
(Fun fact: Most people don’t know that the song is actually a cover of a Burt Bacharach number. Burt Bacharach! Most people today only know Bacharach from his cameo in Austin Powers, but oh well. It’s still pretty amazing.)
Sadly, the singer for the Naked Eyes, Pete Byrne, passed away last month. I thought I would feature his greatest hit as a meager kind of tribute.
No, you are not hallucinating. I am, indeed, lapping myself in terms of Friday Night Rock-Outs. No “real” posts last week. The reason is simple: I’ve been on vacation, visiting family in Pass Christian with my son, Connor. We had a great time, and I did some work on my new novel. But no blogging. Oh, well.
So, I am going to just post another FNRO. This time, I’ve decided to feature one of the best live performances by one of the greatest bands ever. Namely, their performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. This was in 1983, when the band was on tour for their landmark album War, which is when the band began to achieve true superstardom.
In later years (up to and including today), U2 got a lot of hate for becoming a bit pompous and self-important on certain records. But they were—and still are—a great rock band, with a new album climbing the charts.
Their performance at Red Rocks was probably their best. Already a band known for grand gestures and almost militant power, they found themselves playing their hearts out to a full stadium.
“Only the Young” is one of those great songs whose history is so complicated that even fans can’t quite keep it straight. Originally written by Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry and Neal Schon of Journey, it was first released by the great pop-rock band Scandal in 1984, when the band was fronted by Patty Smyth. Journey then released their own recording of the song in 1985, which was featured on the soundtrack of the Matthew Modine movie Vision Quest. Taylor Swift has since done her own cover of the song, which is, naturally, the one most young people know today (if they know the song at all).
I have featured Journey on my Friday Night Rock-Out Series before with “Any Way You Want It.” In that post, I expressed the somewhat novel opinion that “Any Way You Want It” is Journey’s only “good” song. In retrospect, I see that that statement was unfair. “Only the Young” is, also, a very good song indeed. It somehow gets at the heart of the yearning and frustration that young people feel whenever the previous generation is doing its best to keep them down.
Such was the case in 1984, when young Gen-Xers like myself were in high school or college and doing their best to make it in the wake of the Baby Boomers. And it’s even more the case now, when Gen-Z is coming of age in a United States that has, almost literally, been looted by the old people who control it. They face young adulthood in a denuded world, bankrupt and barren of opportunity. I bet the song resonates for them, too.
My favorite version of the song is still the first one, by Scandal. Patty Smyth was one of the most underrated rock singers of her generation, and this song found her at the height of her powers. (Fun fact: Van Halen offered her the lead singer job after David Lee Roth left; she declined due to her pregnancy.) Her voice positively soars on this song, and whenever I hear it, I am transported back to that long-ago time—which, alas, is looking better by the day.
I know, I know. The world probably does not need another tribute to the late Dolly Parton, who passed away on Tuesday. There have been so many fine tributes already, penned by so many good people.
But damn it, I have a few things to say myself.
I enjoy telling people that my father was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, the same town in the Delta where Oprah Winfrey was born. In the days since Parton’s death, it occurred to me that she and Oprah Winfrey had a lot in common. Both were born into poverty in rural America (Pittman Center, Tennessee, in Parton’s case). Both were strong, smart, creative women growing up in a working-class Southern culture that emphasized traditional roles and female submissiveness. Yet both, by virtue of their talent and sheer grit, became cultural icons—household mono-names, like Cher and Liberace—beloved by millions. And they got fabulously rich in the process.
Both women also overcame various physical disadvantages. For Winfrey, it was the mere fact of her ethnicity—her blackness—which made success in the deep South that much more difficult. For Parton, it was (paradoxically) her almost absurd beauty. Specifically, her famous voluptuousness, which seemed so exaggerated that it might easily have made her a kind of joke-act—the bombshell blonde who could also sing. But instead of downplaying her sexiness, Parton emphasized it. She leaned into it, as people say nowadays, wearing curvy, rhinestone-encrusted outfits, big wigs, and long fingernails. Essentially, she created the glittering persona of a smart, shrewd, sexy brothel madame—a role she eventually played, to great effect, in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
This persona allowed her to be honest and down-to-earth in a way that very few other musicians could ever manage. She was like the scarlet woman in town whom everyone secretly admired and enjoyed talking to. She was smart and funny, full of life. Better still, you could tell her anything, and she wouldn’t be shocked.
It didn’t hurt that she had a thousand-watt smile.
Of course, this persona would never have worked had Parton not been a fabulous singer, song-writer, and musician. “Jolene” is still one of the finest country songs ever recorded. And Parton was also a great guitarist—a finger-picker in the tradition of Lindsey Buckingham.
I have a weird, mystical, admittedly woo-woo theory about human consciousness. I believe that, like icebergs, 90% of our being exists beyond this physical plane, invisible to normal perception. Yet, we can all sense a person’s larger essence—whether a person is secretly very good or a real bastard or whatever. It’s like an aura that everyone can feel but no one can adequately describe.
With Dolly Parton, we all sensed her great and unerring goodness, as a person, a spouse, a celebrity, an influencer, and an entrepreneur. She exuded a fineness of character that, for obvious reasons, we desperately need in these dark days. She will be missed very, very much.
Godspeed, Ms. Parton….!!!
(P.S. Here is a great Miley Cyrus cover of “Jolene” that I stumbled upon a few months ago and really enjoyed.)
You can always tell if a classic rock-song was released in the early 1970s because it goes on and on and on. I mean, Freebird? Jessica? Stairway to Heaven? Are you kidding me? The legendary D.J. Wolfman Jack one joked that if he queued up three or four of these songs, he could go out for dinner and be back before they were done.
Every Picture Tells a Story is yet another long rock song that goes on for almost six minutes. Yet, it doesn’t last long enough! The song positively flies by, in part because it…well, tells a story—the rollicking tale of the high-flying, hard-partying, womanizing narrator (who seems a lot like Rod Stewart) and his search for love around the world. With its crazy, open-form lyrics and acoustic, jam-style musicianship, the song really shouldn’t work, but it does, thanks to the combined genius of Stewart himself and his great friend Ron Wood (who was, at the time, not yet a member of The Rolling Stones).
I decided to feature Stewart on this edition of Friday Night Rock-Out because a review I wrote a few years ago of his fine autobiography is getting a lot of hits lately, perhaps because Stewart recently underwent major surgery and people are Googling him. I’m glad my review is popping up in the feed. It was heartfelt.
Cathy and I have been watching season 4 of Dark Winds on Netflix, and I was thrilled to see the fine German actress Franke Potenta playing the villain. She was Lola in Run Lola Run, one of the coolest films of the 90s. (She was also the love interest in the first Bourne movie.) Nice to see she’s still doing great work.
Run Lola Run was also notable for its amazing, propulsive soundtrack, which perfectly fits the action of the film. (You’ll have to watch it to see what I mean.) I liked the soundtrack so much I bought it–on CD, no less. (Yeah, it’s old. So am I.) And I wrote many line of software code while listening to it. Of course, it’s not really “rock.” It’s techno, or EDM, or whatever they’re calling such music these days.
Whatever it is, it rocks.
Here is the premier track, “Believe,” on which Ms. Potente’s voice can be heard speaking. Enjoy!
“Will the Wolf Survive” by Los Lobos came out just a few years before I moved to Arizona for a few years. And so, finding myself living forty-five miles from the Mexican border, the song really resonated with me. I saw a lot of very poor immigrant people doing very hard menial jobs. I drove through countless immigration checkpoints in Texas. I saw the two Americas.
The real reason I love the song, though, is that…well…it rocks. East L.A. style. I love David Hidalgo’s soulful voice, and Cesar Rosas’s lead guitar work fires on all cylinders.
Also, the song seems particularly poignant at the moment, here in America, with all the persecution going on. Same old, same old. Just more of it.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, America’s birthday. So, for tonight’s Friday Night Rock-Out, I was going to share Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” which is my favorite “patriotic” song ever. I love it because the narrator seems genuinely proud to be an American while at the same time lamenting our country’s many, many flaws.
But, at the last minute, I decided to go with another great “heartland rock” singer—and one of my favorite artists of all time, generally—John Mellencamp, and his dark ode “Paper in Fire.” The song is about Mellencamp’s heritage, tracing back to a long line of tough, angry, and sometimes violent men. Which, in a way, describes America itself. Violence and anger are woven through our nation’s history, all 250 years of it. Maybe even further back than that.
Despite the song’s heavy themes, though, there is something thrilling and fun about it. Inspiring, even. I really like the way it evokes Kentucky as much as Kansas, with its blend of rock, bluegrass, and gospel.
