“Late at night, I think about the love of this whole world…” Last night, I was taking a walk, now that the weather has cooled off some and we can be outside without being immediately attacked by mosquitoes. It was one of those rare walks that I took without headphones. It was more laziness than anything that kept me from going upstairs to get my iPod before I left the house. We’d spent a lot of the holiday weekend working out in the yard with the kids and I was sore all over. But the night was gorgeous, and even though we worked hard, I think we all had a lot of fun – we all felt good about what got done, the garden and the yard looked better than they had all summer. We’d spent some time with two of my sisters and their kids. We’d even carved a little time out for ourselves – playing lazer tag, bowling, go-karting, and eating a lot of pizza on Saturday afternoon.
Last week, my partner and I attended a funeral for a woman we’ve known for a long time. She died of cancer – only a year older than myself. She was not really part of our regular circle of friends, and so it was hard to know what to say, or if there was really anything to say. The tragedy of it was so obvious that it felt vulgar to try to even say so out loud. I was thinking about her on my walk and about her little girl who would do the rest of her growing up without her, and I was thinking about my own family, my own kids, my own brothers and sisters, and how wonderful it is that we have each other – to play “dogs versus humans” in the park, to burn hot dogs on the grill, to roast marshmallows and watch our son discover how cool a styrofoam plate looks when its melting over the hot coals of a campfire.
I’m not a religious person, but in the years since I first heard the Beach Boys’ 1970 Sunflower album, I’ve come to regard this little song – not quite two minutes long even – as a sort of profession of my own personal faith. “And when I go anywhere, I see love.” Enjoy.
Tommy James was a huge star when my mom was in high school. But his songs were everywhere when I was growing up in the 80s. Joan Jett was singing “Crimson and Clover”. The Rubinoos and Lene Lovich both did covers of “I Think We’re Alone Now”, but in 1987, everyone’s favorite mallrat Tiffany made the song a number one hit. And no school dance was complete without Billy Idol shouting “Mony Mony”. That song was ever-present – Billy actually charted the song twice. Apparently, my high school has banned the song from school dances these days due to a certain bit of traditional audience participation involving chanted profanities. I wouldn’t know anything about that.
While I knew all those songs were covers, I’m not sure I ever quite made the connection that they all came from the same source until I was in high school, and it wasn’t until I picked up a Rhino Records anthology of his music that I had the first inkling of just how fascinating and joyously inventive a talent the guy was, nor just how popular he had at one time been.
Born in 1947, Thomas Gregory Jackson was a prodigious little music geek from the Midwest, one who spent all his spare time (not to mention spare change) listening to music, hanging out at the record store, reading record industry trade magazines and fooling around with a ukulele. While his peers were collecting baseball cards and rattling off players’ statistics, Tommy was learning who was signed to what label, what songs were charting, and who wrote and produced them – and dreaming of seeing his own name on those little 7″ inch records with the big holes in the middle. In his new autobiography, Me, The Mob, and the Music, Tommy James likens the pleasure of 45 rpm records to candy. As a 45 lover myself, that comparison rung immediately true. And Tommy James put out some of the sweetest, most colorful chunks of audio candy in all of pop music. Some call his songs bubblegum; I like to think of them as Jolly Ranchers – intensely sweet, crystalline, and enduring.
Tommy James and the Shondells “Mony Mony” (1968)
Tommy was a working musician by his early teens, and he and his bandmates would cut the single that would launch Tommy to stardom when he was barely 16 years old. But “Hanky Panky” wasn’t an overnight hit. By the time some dj in Pittsburgh started spinning it in 1966, the band had long since broken up, Tommy and his high school girlfriend were married an expecting their first child, and staring down the reality of responsible adulthood. As it turned out, responsible adulthood would have to wait. For, like, a really long time. Me, The Mob, and the Music is billed as “one helluva ride”. That was what his boss at Roulette Records – the legendary (and infamous) Morris Levy – told Tommy he was in for the day he signed his first record deal.
Within five years of meeting Mr. Levy, the lanky teenager from Niles, Indiana would rack up an astounding 20 hit singles including classics like “Mirage”, “Do Something To Me”, “Crystal Blue Persuasion”, “Sweet Cherry Wine”, and “Draggin’ the Line”. He got to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show, and rub elbows with his musical heroes (who became his musical peers). And with later albums like Cellophane Symphony (whose title track is a 9-minute instrumental recorded entirely with a Moog synthesizer) he also became one of the very few artists to transcend an early (and well-earned) reputation as a teeny-bopper to make it with the hipper FM radio crowd in the late 60s. With his knack for inventive pop production, he ably straddled a line between artsy and commercial – his pop songs were rarely disposable, and his experiments were rarely indulgent. He approached songwriting and recording with a sense of purpose and drive. But most of all joy. His records are loaded with joy.
Tommy James “Sweet Cherry Wine”
But as with any good rock ‘n’ roll story, the Tommy James story isn’t all fame and glory. Me, the Mob, and the Music details the challenges unique to working for a guy like Morris Levy, whose almost certifiably sociopathic business sense was paired with a strong paternal protectiveness, and whose ties to the Genovese crime family in New York would eventually put Tommy James’s career (and his life) in danger. It’s also a story about addiction, recovery, failed relationships and family. Both mostly it’s about his music and his conflicted and financially abusive “father-son” relationship with the volatile and manipulative Morris Levy, which continued long after James severed professional ties with the man.
In fact, there’s very little in the book dealing with James’s “real” family. He checks in periodically on who he was dating or married to at various points in his career, but after the formative years, we don’t get much about what his parents thought of their only son’s stardom, or how it affected his relationships. Though James was a father at 17, he’s never a father in this book – he’s always “the kid” around the Roulette offices – and his son is only mentioned in passing. Maybe that’s another book. As it is, Me, the Mob, and the Music is as quick and engaging as any of Tommy James’s pop songs. It’s written in a very anecdotal style that makes it pretty breezy reading, and it offers a glimpse into the rise of a 60s superstar, the inner workings of Roulette, one of the iconic pop empires of its time, and the tragic downfall of its beloved tyrant emperor.
Last year, around this time, Kanye West was getting himself into trouble by hijacking an adorable white girl’s acceptance speech at the VMAs. This year, he’s taken to hijacking an established international dance-pop phenomenon with a remix of Belgian dance-pop-rapper Stromae‘s debut single “Alors on Danse”.
Though the song’s been sitting at our near the top of the charts throughout Europe for most of the last year, it has yet to make much of an impact here. But that may be changing. The apparent embargo on viewing the song’s official video in the U.S. has been recently lifted, and an actual downloadable single has also been released; in the last couple weeks, it’s shown up on the Canadian pop charts (although French language songs have an advantage in Canada they don’t have here). This may be the latest hint that the hit may soon be gracing U.S. airwaves. (Also, my teenager, who loves Linkin Park and Maroon 5 and speaks not one whit of French, completely digs this song and will probably be horrified to hear the Kanye-fied version).
Kanye’s substituted Stromae’s verses which (en Francais) detail a cycle of existential ennui with his own dorky verses (en Anglais) about being a discerning partier and a prolific consumer. The fact that he’s annointed Stromae‘s song with his holy Kanye-ness can be read as a sort of meta-proof of his rarified tastes. (Read: Dude loves himself some genuine French stuff! Err, French-ish.) That said, much – most – is lost in translation, and I hope that if Kanye does manage to get American listeners’ attention with this remix, they’ll soon enough abandon it in droves to embrace the superior original, which is that rare thing: a supersmart, superpopular pop sensation (which also has a very cool horizontal split screen video – see below).
Meanwhile, Stromae’s debut album Cheese was just released earlier this summer, and is currently promoting the follow-up single “Te Quiero”.
