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Tag: Zac Brown Band

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 2: #90-81 “Ich will noch ‘n bischen tanzen…”

    And the countdown continues…

    #90
    #90: “THE GHOST INSIDE” by BROKEN BELLS.
    Broken Bells are the non-singing guy (Danger Mouse) from Gnarls Barkley, and the singing guy (James Mercer) from The Shins. Here’s the second single from their self-titled debut album. The video, starring Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks is a sci-fi movie on the dangers of deficit spending. In order to get herself to a fabulous resort planet, space traveling hottie Hendricks pawns all her limbs (and probably compromises her position on the repeal of DADT) and still ends up on a deserted island planet in an intergalactic middle-of-nowhere.

    #89
    #89: “HARD TIMES” by JOHN LEGEND & THE ROOTS.
    There are only two covers included on my list this year, and this is the second of them, from one of my favorite records of the year. For Wake Up!, John Legend and the Roots, inspired by the political engagement they saw during the 2008 elections, recorded a passionate set of socially conscious soul songs from the late 60s and 70s, many of them long forgotten like this one originally performed by Baby Huey and the Babysitters.

    #88
    #88: “HIGHWAY 20 RIDE” by ZAC BROWN BAND.
    Tearjerker alert! Tearjerker alert! Are they a jam band? Are they outlaw country? Are they southern rock? Are they sentimental cornballs? They’re a little bit of all of the above. With a great big beard!

    Although they’d already scored a few big country hits (which also had some mild crossover pop success) from their 2008 major label debut The Foundation, it was with their performance at this year’s Grammy Awards that made the band not just the latest country thang, but actually a previously implausible contender for greatest band in the world. This, the fourth single from The Foundation showed up shortly thereafter and became the band’s third Country #1, and fourth Top 40 hit a year and a half after the album’s release.

    #87
    #87: “MORNING SUN” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS.
    “After a long and sleepless night, how many stars would you give to the moon…” The third single from Robbie’s latest solo album Reality Killed the Video Star (he’s since re-joined his former bandmates in the British boy-band Take That), this weepy ballad follows Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road all the way to Strawberry Fields and back again.

    #86
    #86: “NEIN, MANN!” by LASERKRAFT 3D.
    a.k.a. The German theme song for Paul Lorentz at any given wedding reception. Don’t be daunted by the language barrier – the video provides black-lit hand-drawings as “subtitles” over the actors’ faces. It goes roughly along these lines:

    Verse 1: A friend says “Hey, let’s get out of here. The DJ sucks and he’s just playing electro music and not even David Guetta”

    German Paul Lorentz reply: “No man. I don’t want to go yet. I want to stay and dance.”

    Verse 2: A hottie approaches: “Grab your coat and say goodbye to your friends. I want to take you where the night never ends. You and me, we should be dancing in the sheets.”

    German Paul Lorentz reply: “No man. I don’t want to go yet. I want to stay and dance.”

    Verse 3: Bouncer: “Really, dude, you should go. The bartender wants to go home. The dj’s falling asleep at the decks. Seriously, go.”

    German Paul Lorentz reply: See above.

    I like that German Paul Lorentz in the video has a belly like real-life Paul Lorentz. I also like that tick-tock-with-the-tie dance move that he does. I need to use that at my next wedding reception.

    #85
    #85: “MADDER RED” by YEASAYER.
    “Never gave a thought to an honorable living, always had sense enough to lie. It’s getting hard to keep pretending I’m worth your time…” Yeasayer’s neo-psychedelic ode to justifiable feelings of family man inadequacy is appropriately doleful, but not especially apologetic. It’s a domestic drama done up in exotic, futuristic colors. It’s hipster ear candy that sounds a lot like something the Thompson Twins would have done in 1982. It’s also got a real music video, but the video’s really gross and it’s, frankly, distracting from the song – which really is lovely. Thus this live version.

    #84
    #84: “SOMEONE ELSE CALLING YOU BABY” by LUKE BRYAN.
    If we were living in the 1970s, we’d call this pop/rock and it’d be a song by Eddie Rabbitt or Firefall or England Dan and John Ford Coley… But it’s 2010, so we call it country and it’s by a guy who was likened to a cross between Elvis Presley and Gomer Pyle when he appeared at the center of a challenge of the Donald Trump reality show Celebrity Apprentice. That appearance would help push his single “Rain Is a Good Thing” to #1 on the country charts. This song – an inducement to just break-up with the poor guy already – was the follow-up to “Rain”.

    #83
    #83: “WHAT PART OF FOREVER” by CEE-LO GREEN.
    Apparently this ran over the closing credits of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen any of the Twilight Movies. But I LOVE their soundtracks (so far). This song was co-written with a group called Oh, Hush, who appropriately enough, have never posted a band photo or identified their band members who, according to their facebook page, are various male and female superheroes. Here’s a live performance of the song from George Lopez, featuring Cee-Lo’s super-awesome all-girl back-up band.

    #82
    #82: “EGO” by THE SATURDAYS.
    Five hotties with superpowers, British accents, and a flair for public revenge. “Don’t tell me that you’re done as far as we go – You need to have a sit-down with your ego.” Did I mention hotties? With superpowers? And British accents?

    The Saturdays “Ego” from Robin van Calcar on Vimeo.

    #81
    #81: “HOLLYWOOD” by MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS.
    Welsh singer-songwriter Marina Diamandis parties it up in a fake White House with cake and cheerleaders, fake Mariylns, fake Elvises, and… wait… is that a fake Barack in there too? At a time when it seems you can’t watch or read the news without hearing some politician talking about things being rammed down throats, it’s sort of refreshing to hear someone sing about “puking” up “American dreams.” And when she confesses she’s “obsessed with the mess that’s America”, it sounds genuine and even sort of affectionate. Sorta like my obsession with the mess that’s European pop music.

    Coming up in the next block: one sad song about the summer and one happy song about the summer, one song about a shotgun wedding, and one about wedded bliss.

  • Paisley, Brown, and Church: Country Songs That Rawk!

    Every couple of weeks, I make a couple of new mix CDs to listen to on my 40-or-so-minute each way commute to work, basically culling my current favorite tracks to create my very own Lorentz-centric Top 40 radio station. Just like any other Top 40 radio station, it’s all about the hits (hits with me, anyway): the playlist is necessarily limited (I can rarely fit more than 20 songs on a CD) and repetitive (the CD ends, it starts over). I love it. It drives my kids nuts. Just the other day, when the latest a-ha single “Butterfly, Butterfly” came on, my oldest (who invariably gravitates to “Take On Me” whenever there’s a karaoke machine nearby) begged me to skip it. I didn’t then, but eventually, I will. And that will be when I know it’s time for a new mix CD.

    Lately, my morning commute mix CDs have been filling up with a surprising number of country songs. Now, while I’m certainly not one to dismiss country as a genre – I grew up with Kenny Rogers and the Oak Ridge Boys, and thanks to my Dad, I have a very deep love and respect for Willie Nelson – I’m no aficionado either. And as much as I’d like to say I keep an open mind, I have to admit that I’m more open-minded when we’re talking about Scandinavian dance pop than when we’re talking about guys named Garth and Randy who like to wear cowboy hats. I don’t know if it’s the music that’s changing or if it’s just me, but there’s just a lot of country music out there right now that’s, y’know, really good. And I’m not just talking about hipster-approved alternative country. That’s all fine too, but I’m talking about actual country hits. You know, country songs that are genuinely popular with country audiences, and increasingly with pop-crossover audiences as well.

    For instance, Brad Paisley‘s “Water”, the fourth single from his 2009 album American Saturday Night which recently enjoyed a stay at the top of the country charts

    Brad Paisley “Water”

    What I love about this song – and all of Brad Paisley‘s songs really – is how he never wastes a verse. There’s nothing throwaway about how he builds a story, or in this case, builds a monument to something as almost cheesily simple, common, and universal as water. I mean, how dorky does this idea seem on paper? Hey guys, let’s do a song about how great water is. (While we’re at it, why not a song about how cool it is to see stuff?) But verse by verse, he details his ongoing “love affair with water” with images from snapshots that could be sitting in just about anybody’s photo album – the “inflatable pool full of Dad’s hot air” – until you realize that while he might be stating the obvious, sometimes the obvious thing is the easiest to take for granted, and it needs to be stated. Moreover, the song’s joyous invitation to hop into the car and “drive until the map turns blue” has taken on an unintentional and tragic urgency with news of the BP oil spill and its disgusting political and environmental implications casting a depressing pall over this summer season.

    Like Brad Paisley, Georgia’s Zac Brown Band is currently riding on an album that’s destined to be regarded not just as one of the great country albums, but just one of the great albums of its time, period. Although they’ve been sending hits up the country charts and the Billboard Hot 100 since their major label debut The Foundation was released two years ago, it was their amazing 2010 Grammy Awards ceremony performance of their signature hit “Chicken Fried” done as a medley with “America the Beautiful” all dressed up in defiantly ragged harmonies, that established once and for all the force of nature this band is. Although their previous hits have had something of a novelty factor to them, this year they’ve sent two gorgeous ballads up the charts: “Highway 20 Ride”, a heartbreaking post-divorce father-to-son confessional, and “Free”, a song about being young, broke, and in love, and living out on the road – a song feels as big and endless as the road itself, and even gives a musical nod to Van Morrison’s classic “Into the Mystic.” Even as “Free” is still making its way up the Hot 100 (where it entered the Top 40 a couple weeks ago), the album’s sixth single “Different Kind of Fine” – a light-hearted romp celebrating a fine specimen of true country womanhood – has just landed on the country charts. I double-dog dare you not to dig it.

    Zac Brown Band “Different Kind of Fine”

    With his full beard and trademark knit caps, Zac Brown is one of those guys that’s made country radio playlists safe for guys who don’t wear cowboy hats. North Carolina native singer-songwriter Eric Church is a baseball hat kinda guy with a great voice – a boyish, impish, and immediately lovable tenor that he uses to fine effect on songs about love and how nice it is to be naughty. But for its decidedly un-PC celebration of liquor and death sticks, Church’s latest single “Smoke a Little Smoke” barely even qualifies as country, sounding like cross between a Ry Cooder electric blues and a Collective Soul arena rock anthem circa 1993, with all the requisite post-grunge quiet-loud-quiet dynamics. Country as a genre has proven itself relatively slow to evolve. But with the ongoing popular success of Eric Church (and Zac Brown and Brad Paisley), the fish may, in fact, be growing a small set of legs.

    Eric Church “Smoke a Little Smoke”

  • Paul’s Top 15 Songs of Fathers and Sons

    In lieu of a Sunday Brunch Buffet playlist this week, and in honor of Father’s Day, I’ve decided to get in touch with my Inner Casey Kasem and count down my Top 15 songs about Fathers and Sons. There are a lot of great songs out there about all sorts of different father/son relationships. Not all of these are loving songs. Some are angry. Some are ambivalent. Some are very well-known, some not so much. Some are old, some are new. There are almost certainly a few really good ones I missed (or don’t even know – please post your own favorites in the comment section).

    #15: “KINKY AFRO” by HAPPY MONDAYS (1990). An alarming number of these songs are about Dads warning their sons not to turn out like them. “Kinky Afro” is not like that. Sure, the Dad basically says he’s a scum in the first verse (“I only went with your mother ‘cos she’s dirty, and I don’t have a decent bone in me”), but it’s not like he cares if his son turns out that way. And in the second verse, his son basically says that he’s a big scum too. And he’s kinda okay with that I guess.

    #14: “RUNNING IN THE FAMILY” by LEVEL 42 (1987). The title track of their 1987 album… “Our dad would send us to our room and be the voice of doom. He said that we would thank him later.”

    #13: “A BOY NAMED SUE” by JOHNNY CASH (1969). A tribute to a forward-thinking (however sadistic) absentee father. “So I give you that name and I said good-bye, and I knew you’d have to get tough or die…” I like listening to this song just fine, but watching Johnny Cash sing it to an audience of San Quentin inmates heightens elevates it beyond simple folksy novelty.

    #12: “MY FATHER’S CHAIR” by RICK SPRINGFIELD (1985). The 1981 death of his father loomed large over Rick Springfield’s early 80s career. His 1982 album Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet ended on a brief memorial coda and his 1983 album Living In Oz closed with “Like Father, Like Son”. Sure, he was at his most famous, singing silly power-pop ditties about girls, but each of his albums had the incongruous undertow of grief. His 1985 album Tao closes with a song that feels more like an intimate conversation or a diary entry – no verse/chorus, no rhyme scheme – written the year his first son was born.

    #11: “REVEREND MR. BLACK” by THE KINGSTON TRIO (1963). This is a Lorentz family favorite. For me, pretty much every Kingston Trio song is a father/son song because some of my favorite memories of growing up involve sitting around the stereo with my parents and brothers and sisters listening to Dad’s Kingston Trio records. We kids made fun of them when we were little, but as soon as I moved away to school, one of the first CDs I picked up was a Kingston Trio hits collection. Even now, a bunch of us will swoop into an unsuspecting karaoke bar and take the place over. We can always count on my brother to sing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”; they can always count on me to rock out “Baby One More Time”; but we won’t be leaving the joint until all of us have gotten up together to sing “Tom Dooley”.

    #10: “THE MAN I USED TO BE” by JELLYFISH (1990)

    A message from a dead soldier to his fatherless son. The highly underappreciated band Jellyfish could be awfully silly sometimes. At a time when rock music was rejecting hair spray in favor of the unwashed “authenticity” of Seattle’s grunge scene, Jellyfish attempted a serious revival of 70s bubblegum and glam, god love ’em. That said, the first track of their first album, 1990’s Bellybutton, is a somber tune about not being there. “Into battle, and in your shadow, your daddy loves you still. Yes he does.”

    #9: “HIGHWAY 20 RIDE” by ZAC BROWN BAND (2010). Another serious tearjerker, this time from a divorced dad to his son. “When you drive, and you think about your life, I hope you smile if I ever cross your mind…” I choke up at that part every time I sing along – it’s just so heartbreaking. I love this video too – it’s got a great ending.

    #8: “AMBLING ALP” by YEASAYER (2010). In which the Brooklyn hipsters dispense little nuggets of fatherly wisdom with references to early 20th Century European champion boxers and one heckuva surreal video. “Now, the world can be an unfair place at times, but your lows will have their complement of highs…” Note to the initiated: this is the censored version of the video. Note to the uninitiated: Nekkid People Alert! (Blurred Nekkid People, that is.)

    #7: “COWARD OF THE COUNTY” by KENNY ROGERS (1980). A story about a father who died in prison, a gang rape, and an act of vigilante justice. Gangsta rap has nothing on Kenny Rogers. This one’s for Becky, Gatlin bitches!

    #6: “COLOR HIM FATHER” by THE WINSTONS (1969). The Winstons were a great Chicago soul group in the late 60s (they were based in DC, but signed to Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom label) who just had an unfortunate run of luck. Their biggest hit song is this son’s tribute to his truly awesome stepfather that pointedly never mentions the word “stepfather”). Though it hit the top 10 on the pop charts, narrowly missed hit #1 on the R&B charts, and won a Grammy, the song and the group seem all but forgotten now.

    #5: “A LITTLE SOUL” by PULP (1998). One of my favorite “I failed in life” songs. “You look like me, but please don’t turn out like me… I had one, two, three, four shots at happiness. I look like a big man but I’ve only got a little soul.” The video is excellent too – a sad little movie with kids playing out the parts and/or doing the work of their pathetic, apathetic, and/or somnambulant grown-ups.

    #4: “CAT’S IN THE CRADLE” by HARRY CHAPIN (1974). You all knew this was coming, didn’t you? Based on a poem his wife Sandy had written, this is a song that, like Charles Dickens and his “Christmas Carol”, seems to have been written in fear – specifically, the fear of turning into exactly what we don’t want to turn into. Harry admits as much in his introduction to this song here: “… and frankly, this song scares me to death.” We had this on a K-Tel record when I was little and I played the hell out of it. I think my sister and I probably even made up a dance routine to this one once. I wonder what it must have been like for my parents to hear their 7 and 8 year old kids singing along to this song.

    #3: “PAPA WAS A ROLLIN’ STONE” by THE TEMPTATIONS (1972) / “BARBARA’S BOY” by THE FOUR TOPS (1969). I went back and forth on including the Temptations song because it’s at least as much (probably more of) a Mother and Son(s) song. So I’m posting an alternate #3. They’re both great Motown songs, both by foremost Motown acts, and from the same era. But they’re lyrically opposite. Here the Papa’s a lazy no-good-nik who ditches his family.

    Though “Barbara’s Boy” was released as a single, it was a not a hit, and it’s one of the Four Tops’ least anthologized performances. In this song, Papa’s not a rolling stone at all. In fact, it’s the boy’s mother whose fidelity is called into question, not so much by the father, but by other people spreading rumors. One thing not called into question is how much Levi Stubbs’ character in the song loves his son, whether they share DNA or not. And there is truly no voice better for this song than Levi Stubbs, whose voice, to me, embodies all the angst, insecurity, and heartbreak of a certain generation and demographic of men – steady, stand-up, post-war, middle-aged, working class guys – who, in real life, were/are especially reticent about talking about their feelings.

    #2: “THE LIVING YEARS” by MIKE + THE MECHANICS (1988). Like the Rick Springfield song, “The Living Years” mourns a loss as it celebrates new life. I love how the lyrics never really come out and say, Dad was awesome, he did everything right, blah blah blah. The lyrics, instead, deal more with all the conflicts, and how incredibly difficult it is to even talk about them, much less resolve them, but how we wish we could. This is not a song where Mike Rutherford (who wrote it with B.A. Robertson, both of whom had just lost their fathers) just wishes he could have told his father how much loved him. It’s a song that where he wishes they could have understood each other better: “It’s too late when we die to admit we don’t see eye to eye.”

    #1: (of course) “FATHER AND SON” by THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS CAT STEVENS. In a couple of simple verses, Cat Stevens elegantly and movingly explains the essential dynamic of every father/son relationship. Father: “Take your time. Think a lot. Why think of everything you’ve got, for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.” Son: “From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen, now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away.” Here’s a terrific performance of the song Yusuf Islam gave on the BBC in 2007.

    HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, DADS! Paul’s Inner Casey Kasem signing off. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for your beers.