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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Mini-Reviews

  • The Saddest David Bowie Song Ever

    Today I heard David Bowie’s 1999 single “Thursday’s Child” and it made me sad. Which isn’t an unusual reaction. The song’s been making me sad ever since it was released. It is, without question, the saddest David Bowie song ever. Even though the lyrics seem to take an uplifting turn, Bowie sings them in a flattened, weary moan over a slow, steady wash of keyboards that suffocates the optimism of the chorus – throw me tomorrow now that I’ve really got a chance. The whole song feels like a bed you can’t get out of on a dark, rainy morning – it’s comfortable and warm, but also undeniably symptomatic of depression. It’s an achy song.

    It was the opening and the only real highlight of Bowie’s album …hours, an album that I wanted to love (if for no other reason than the album’s back cover art which resembles nothing so much as a scene from a David Bowie support group meeting), but never quite warmed to. The song’s adult contemporary feel, far more suited to a latter-day Annie Lennox record, not only came in stark contrast to the industrial conceptualism and the frenetic drum ‘n’ bass dalliances of the two records that preceded it, Outside (1995) and Earthling (1997), but also the remainder of the record that followed – a meandering collection of purposelessly artsy guitar-rock (think Tin Machine II 2).

    The song also reminded me of the general lack of new David Bowie music. For nearly 40 years starting in the mid-60s, Bowie had been one of the most prolific, and continuously productive artists of his time, but since releasing a quick pair of decent but forgettable albums in 2003 and 2004, he’s been absent. No new music doesn’t mean no new product though. For the last 20 years, Bowie has turned the packaging and re-packaging and re-packaging of his back catalogue into an art form unto itself. Witness the titanic reissue of his 1976 album Station to Station.

  • Eureka!! Unearthed Jackson 5 Treasures

    Whenever a record company says they’ve found music by an artist that has been “recovered from the vaults”, I scratch my head. Like, do you guys have tapes in a dusty old storage room somewhere? I’m really not sure how that works. Particularly in regards to Motown-because stuff keeps turning up. Was there some shoddy bookkeeping going on or what?

    At any rate, in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, Motown unearthed a slew of previously unreleased Jackson 5 tracks and released them on a CD called “I Want You Back: Unreleased Masters”. While one might rightfully assume that this is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, I’m surprised to say that this material is pretty good. I wonder *why* this stuff ended up unreleased.

    I think you’ll be surprised by the quality of the songs. The first two appear to be from the J5’s original run of hits, while the later two date from after Michael hit puberty. These songs adopt a more democratic approach to vocals, and the last track, “I’ll Try You’ll Try” adopts the socially conscious approach that Marvin Gaye and The Temptations were famous for during that period.

    Definitely worth checking out.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #18: Born Sippy

     

    STEALERS WHEEL “Star” b/w “What More Could You Want” (A&M Records #AM-1483-S, 1973)

    Everybody knows Scottish folk/pop/rock duo Stealers Wheel’s Dylanesque 1973 Top-10 smash, “Stuck In The Middle With You,” a classic oldies-station staple even before that director included it in that movie. (Sense a theme here?  Backtrack to 45 RPM #15.  I assure ya, boys, it’s purely coincidental.)  Fewer people, however, know about “Star,” the Wheel’s follow-up single, much less their brilliant 3-LP output.  I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, a little ancient history.

    Like that famous postage stamp with the upside-down airplane (though worth considerably less money), my copy of  “Star” is misprinted.  The B-side label is pressed onto both sides of the disc, giving the illusion that both sides feature the same track, “What More Could You Want.”  Double-A-side 45s were common in the early ’70’s, usually pressed in limited quantity for in-store or radio play.  If one side became worn out or scratched, you could simply flip the disc and play the clean side without having to pony up the bread for a fresh copy.  Sucker that I was, I bought this fake-double-A-side platter at my neighborhood drug store thinking it was the Stealers’ new single.  For months, I played “What More Could You Want” over and over, thinking, “This song is great!  How come it’s not on the radio?  How come it’s not a smash hit?”  Then one day I accidentally flipped it over, and the opening strums of “Star” emerged from my little stereo.  Oops.

     

    A catchy shuffle of the Lennonesque variety, “Star” is 3 minutes of pure shimmering acoustic-guitar pop loveliness and honey-throated vocal harmonies, punctuated with spikes of harmonica, kazoo, woodblock, and bawdy barrelhouse piano.  It spent 3 weeks on the US singles charts, peaking at #29 in March of ’74.  The duo of Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan went on to produce one more brilliant (but underrated and underperforming) album for A&M before sadly parting ways in ’75.

     

    And as for that B-side I played to death after mistaking it for an A-side?  Well suffice to say it rocks.  “What More Could You Want” is a ballsy, two-chord stomper, with tricky time-signature changes and stop-start verses, that could fit right between The Sweet and Badfinger on your next Roots Of Brit-Pop mixtape.  Hell, remove the squiggly synths and beef up the guitars a tad and it wouldn’t be out of place on an early KISS album.  And listen up all you overpaid computer geeks at Activision — break that slide rule out of your pocket-protector and put on your horn-rimmed glasses with tape in the middle now!  With lyrics like, “You got a brand new Telecaster / What more could you want,” this track is a must-have for the next edition of Guitar Hero. So get on it, you slack-ass fucks.

    Both Rafferty and Egan pursued solo careers.  Stateside, Rafferty ended up back in the Top 20 in 1978 with “Right Down The Line” and the sax-fueled classic, “Baker Street” from his multi-platinum United Artists LP, City To City.  The 3-LP Stealers Wheel catalog [Stealers Wheel, Ferguslie Park and Right Or Wrong] has been reissued in the UK by Cherry Red Records, and is well worth seeking out.

    NEXT WEEK: It Came (Crawling To The U.S.A.) From Liverpool!