Leftovers (Little Black Book): Sharon and Karen Edition

Leftovers, especially this year, have been a lot of songs from “themes I missed in the time I was here.” That’s as true of my posts as anyone else’s. But I missed our Little Black Book theme because it happened before I became involved in Star Maker Machine. So I never saw the formal definition of the theme. It seems to me that a little black book implies that something illicit is going on. These ladies are not entirely respectable, and you keep them secret. Here are two who fit that description perfectly.

David Bromberg: Sharon

[purchase]

Sharon is not the kind that you can make an honest woman of. To cheat on a girlfriend or a wife, you don’t have to talk to Sharon, or even set eyes upon her. The transgression has occurred as soon as you enter her tent.

Jill Sobule: Karen by Night

[purchase]

Karen is trickier. By day, she seems respectable enough, boring even. But Karen has a secret. To learn it, add moonlight. And no, she’s not a werewolf. Nothing supernatural is needed here.

Little Black Book: Marianne

Stephen Stills: Marianne

[purchase]

Back in 1971, despite their success, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were so ambitious that the band alone wasn't enough of an outlet for their creative endeavors, each member released strong solo albums. David Crosby had If I Could Only Remember My Name, Graham Nash with the wonderful Songs For Beginners and Neil Young was between über-classics After The Gold Rush and Harvest. Today's selection, Marianne, is from the aptly named Stephen Stills 2.

Stephen Stills 2 was recorded with Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Mac (Dr. John) Rebennack, Nils Lofgren, The Memphis Horns, among other luminaries of the seventies Rock scene. On Marianne, Stills channels The Beach Boys with Brian Wilson-like falsetto vocals, it was released as a follow-up single to hit Change Partners. You're a sweet little heart breaker, Marianne...

Little Black Book: Sheila

Morphine: Sheila

[purchase]

Figured I'd squeeze one more in, before our week is done.

My brain has gone a bit wonky, so I'm sort of at a loss of what to say. I think that's why I like music. It will speak for you, if you need it to.

"Sheila" is taken from Morphine's 1993 release Cure For Pain, which is the all-time greatest make-out album. Ever.

Little Black Book: Sara

Bob & Sara Dylan

Bob Dylan: Sara

[purchase]

I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells
I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through
Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel
Writin' Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you

Sara, Sara
Wherever we travel we're never apart
Sara, oh Sara
Beautiful lady, so dear to my heart

Happy B-Day, Mr. Zimmerman!

Little Black Book: Gloria

Them: Gloria

[purchase]

Gloria isn't a song, but a shamanistic incantation from Rock's High Priest, Van Morrison. During the earliest live performances, eighteen year old Morrison would often improvise lyrics, sometimes stretching it out to fifteen or twenty minutes long.

I watch her come up to my house
She knocks upon my door
And then she comes up to my room
I want to say she makes me feel all right
G L O R I A

Gloria is one of those epochal numbers whose DNA runs deep in Rock and Roll's genome. Dave Barry joked "If you drop a guitar down a flight of stairs, it'll play 'Gloria' on its way to the bottom." Paul Williams wrote, "Into the heart of the beast... here is something so good, so pure, that if no other hint of it but this record existed, there would still be such a thing as rock and roll.... Van Morrison's voice a fierce beacon in the darkness, the lighthouse at the end of the world. Resulting in one of the most perfect rock anthems known to humankind." I couldn't have said it any better myself - bask in the glory that is Gloria.

Little Black Book: Darcy Farrow

John Denver: Darcy Farrow

[purchase]

Darcy Farrow is a straight-up folk song first recorded in 1965 by Ian & Sylvia, and since recorded by dozens of country and folk musicians, including John Denver, Nanci Griffith, and Jimmy Dale Gilmore. The song was written by Steve Gillette and Tom Campbell. The John Denver version is the only one I own, so that's what you get. If anyone has the original, please pass it my way and I'll include it in the post.

This is a traditional, travis picked, folk tune that tells the tragic story of Darcy Farrow, who was the most beautiful flower that bloomed o'er the range. Local boy, Vandamere, pledged his love to her, but before they could wed, Darcy died in an accident. Soon after, Vandamere put a bullet through his brain.

According to Gillette, the song was inspired by a non-fatal accident that his sister, Darcy, had when she was 12. Tom Campbell wrote the words, with the real Darcy's experience acting as little more than a launching point.

Music is always a personal experience, in the end, and for me I have at least two reasons to love this song, besides the fact that it sounds great:

1 - It's relatively easy to play on the guitar, but sounds hard to play. This kind of thing is gold when it comes to impressing the uninitiated.
2 - I have spent a lot of time in and around the Carson Valley, Virginia City, and Truckee so the scenery is easy for me to imagine.

... Enjoy

Little Black Book: Victoria

Kinks: Victoria [purchase Castle edition of Arthur, which has 10 bonus tracks]

I'm actually kinda shocked no one's posted this yet. This is the song that sent me over the edge for The Kinks. The leadoff track on their 1969 masterpiece, Arthur, "Victoria" is a tongue-in-cheek rebuke of quaint, old British values, while simultaneously longing for those same values. Classic Ray Davies, for sure. Most importantly, the track rocks. New bassist, John Dalton, and perennially underrated badass, Mick Avory, keep the song in the pocket, while Ray and brother Dave's guitars expertly weave in and out of each other's way like they're in a car chase ... much like their vocal harmonies, actually. Best part of the song is where Dave goes mental at "Hong Kong." Priceless.

Little Black Book: Guinnevere

David Crosby: Guinnevere

[purchase]

Once upon a time, the recording was the recording; the very concept of demo versions would have made little sense in a world in which the point of record-making was that it captured the live performance event. These days, of course, performance is repetitive and constant, and some days it seems like every scrap of material is recorded. The end result is a blessing and a curse, part and parcel of the very newness which confounds labels and pits artists and fans against the very recording industry that is supposed to align and represent those parties and more, and going into why and wherefore would take a good couple of hours we just don't have.

But just because something has been recorded doesn't mean it has value. As I discussed in a post about B-sides and rarities over at Cover Lay Down yesterday, many non-album tracks truly belong in the vaults and dusty hallways where they are ultimately unearthed. Demos, especially, often suffer from poor recording quality, not to mention as-yet-unperfected songwriting; though there are plenty of collectors who drool to hear even the muddiest scrap of Nick Drake or Beach Boys outtake, there's a reason why this, after all, was not the version the artists and engineers chose to press into wax for all eternity.

Which makes David Crosby's predominantly solo version of Guinnevere, originally recorded in-studio a year before the release of the full-bore Crosby, Stills, and Nash version, a tripartite anomaly: a demo recording, released by the artists themselves, which is both crystal clear (thanks to some decades-later remixing and a surprisingly crisp source tape) and hauntingly beautiful. It may not have the full-bore CSN harmonies we know from the "original" version, and it seems to have traded the slow build-to-rock we're used to hearing for an acoustic envelope of singer-songwriter sound. And maybe it's my bias as a folkfan. But in my mind, this is the keeper.

Little Black Book: Doralice

Stan Getz & João Gilberto: Doralice

[purchase]

The only line in this song I can make out is "Doralice, you're making me dizzy." Nevertheless, classic song.

Little Black Book: Griselda

Yo La Tengo: Griselda

[purchase]

"Come won't you walk with me Griselda, wearing that dress that moonlight shines through, I am a sad and lonely boy, since your mother said I couldn't see you." That´s Yo La Tengo, with a deceptively simple song from their delightful cover album Fakebook (´90). I´ve never heard the original by Peters Stampfell´s Holy Modal Rounders by the way. Anyone?

Little Black Book: Annabelle

Gillian Welch: Annebelle

[purchase]

I don't know much about Gillian Welch, except that she rose to fame as a result of the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. I only own one album.  Each of the songs on it have a sweet country feel and old fashioned pastoral lyrics. Several of the tracks are really quite beautiful.

The featured track is excruciatingly sad.  A mother with an apparently failing farm mourns the death of her daughter, Annabelle, who was the apple of her eye.

And we can not have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

Little Black Book: Rosie

Jackson Browne: Rosie

[purchase]

I was about 8 years old when the album Running On Empty came out.
Little wonder I missed the wink and nod "love interest" from this song, until around five years later.
The song is a tender, beautiful, heartbreaking salute to that "anything is better than nothing" emotion, which will worry souls deep into the night.

And, too, this song represents my second entry for our week's theme that is not really about a woman... Hrm...

"Paging Dr. Benway... Dr. Benway, please pick up the white courtesy phone..."

Little Black Book: Peggy

Toots and the Maytals: Peggy

[purchase]

It seemed like time to start stretching the genre boundaries a bit more here at Der StarMacher, so for those who, like myself, were ever-so-briefly caught up in the late-wave ska revival of the early nineties and ever wondered where that sound really came from, here's some old school that sounds very much like the new(ish) school.

All Toots and Co. need is a slightly tighter sound and a less muddy production, and they could pass for any number of dapper young bands of slightly geeky wannabes from an era that would, eventually, bring us Gwen Stefani as a chameleonic last woman standing. Not that we'd want to strip this song of all its ragged charm, of course: it's the lazy beat that makes this work.

Oh, and if you keep squeezing your woman, but she don't want to squeeze you right, it's a pretty safe bet that she doesn't like you all that much. The pain in Toots' voice as he realizes this is matched perfectly by the wail of the saxophone.

Note: original release was a 1965 single; purchase link goes to Toots and the Maytals website. Also, if anyone knows how to stave off an attacking swarm of hummingbirds, someone named Peggy could really use your assistance.

Little Black Book: Anna

Arthur Alexander: Anna

[purchase]

Arthur Alexander was a big influence on the Rolling Stones and The Beatles—especially John Lennon. AMG calls his body of work “the stuff of genius.” Despite his talent and influence, Alexander is not well known. This particular song was covered by the Beatles, but I favor the original.

Little Black Book: Donna

     

Richie Valens: Donna

[purchase]

When Richie Valens was a student at San Fernando High, he wrote this about his girlfriend, Donna Ludwig. The Pacoima, California, native was first known as the "Little Richard of the Valley", most Rock fans recall he was one of the musicians that perished in the fateful plane crash that is known as The Day the Music Died. Donna Ludwig is now Donna Fox, Branch Manager of Sacramento's Eagle Home Mortgage. She's married with grandkids and has a personalized license plate that reads "ODONNA". I had a girl, Donna was her name...

Little Black Book: Suzanne

Leonard Cohen: Suzanne

[purchase]

We speak so easily of lyrics, but music and interpretation are a big part of meaning.

For example, take Suzanne, a sad tale of a second-person hero who falls in with a half-crazy temptress with a perfect body, and - as far as I can tell; Leonard Cohen's lyrical style is often oblique - catches her madness like a virus in the process. In the original version of this 1967 song, Cohen's molasses-slow delivery and lugubrious vowels flavor the lyrics with an aching tone of regret for such recklessness, and its inevitable conclusion. As the first track on Leonard Cohen's first major release, the song would come to set the tone for the incredible career that followed.

But as the history of Hallelujah amply demonstrates, the possibilities for tonal interpretation that Cohen's openly vague poetics provide are vast. Some subsequent covers of Suzanne -- and there are many -- seem to have interpreted the dream-like second verse, with its directly biblical narrative of a pitiable and lonely Jesus, as a prompt towards a more mystical approach, as if we should celebrate the way our almost-narrator openly embraces madness as a kind of visionary model for behavior. Others seem to emphasize the woman, as if the cost did not truly matter, as if to say that love is a madness well worth embracing. Here's a couple of samples, just to prove how much tonal shift can matter to meaning:

Nina Simone: Suzanne [purchase]

Peter Gabriel: Suzanne [purchase]

Neil Diamond: Suzanne [purchase]

Little Black Book: Rosie

[ purchase ]

Bobby Charles: Rosie

This is a bonus cut from Bobby Charles' self-titled debut, one of my new favorites. I can't stress enough the great sound this record provides. Vetiver just released a cover of Bobby's I Must Be In A Good Place Now, showing some much due reverence to this fine LP.

As songs' go, I guess, Rosie's never coming down, and things can never be rosy.

Little Black Book: Amoreena

Elton John: Amoreena

[purchase]

Lost, somewhere in the seventies - mom has two records in constant rotation at the Humphries household; Carol King's Tapestry and Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection. I have to admit not being a fan of Mr. John's music, except for this album. I know the guy is talented, he's just not my cup of tea. Amoreena's full of palpable lust and yearning, anyone that's been separated a great distance from a loved one can relate. Lately, I've been thinking how much I miss my lady...

Little Black Book: Debora

T. Rex: Debora

[purchase]

Bwr already posted up Beck's "Debra," which was on my short list, so I'll go with T Rex adding an 'o' to the name...

"Dug a re dug n dug a re dug etc.
Oh Debora, always look like a zebra
Your sunken face is like a galleon
Clawed with mysteries of the Spanish Main, oh Debora..."

Dug a re dug n dug a re dug, indeed.

Little Black Book: Veronica

Elvis Costello: Veronica

[purchase]

OK - I know there are at least three of us who are thinking about posting this song, so I hope you'll forgive me for taking it.

For me, Allison and Veronica are the bookends that mark one of the strongest, if not the strongest, streaks of musical output in rock history. Ten brilliant albums in as many years is a standard that very few artists can compete with (I say 10 instead of 11 because Goodbye Cruel World was a bit of a misstep, in my opinion). Following Veronica, Costello has done some very nice work, but nothing since has ever compared with his initial decade-long burst of activity.

Trust, Armed Forces, This Year's Model, Get Happy, Imperial Bedroom, King of America. Man, that's some great stuff!  This incredible streak started with a girl's name, and it ended in the same way.

I know I'm preaching to the converted, as it seems that most of the authors here are Costello fans. But that's as it should be.

So, sit back and Dig It!