68 – Story of a Rock and Roll Band – Randy Newman – 1979 and 76 - Diary of Horace Wimp – ELO - 1979

                The Story of a Rock and Roll Band 

                Diary of Horace Wimp        

                        “The Story of a Rock and Roll Band” is Randy Newman’s homage to ELO, a parody/history of how they came to be. It was on 1979’s “Born Again”, from which #65, “It’s Money That I Love” also came.

They were six fine English boys
Who knew each other in Birmingham
They bought a drum and guitar
Started a rock-roll band

And Johnny played little violin
And Bobby Joe played the big violin
The one that stands on the floor
They were all in the rock-roll band

Their first song sounded like this
Please get me a witness
Please get me a witness

Right off, they needed a name
Someone said, "How 'bout the Renegades ?"
Johnny said, "Well I don't know.
I prefer E.L.O."

I love their "Mr. Blue Skies"
Almost my favorite is "Turn to Stone"
And how 'bout "Telephone Line"?
I love that E.L.O.

Yes, they were from Birmingham, but the rest of the story is made up. There was no “Johnny” who played the little violin, nor a “Bobby Joe” who played the big violin, “…the one that stands on the floor.” I also don’t think they were ever called the Renegades; ELO was created from the Move, by Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne.

            The first ELO song (10538 Overture) also didn’t have any lyric like…”please get me a witness,” 

            Newman’s production mimics that of Jeff Lynne, who took over ELO from Roy Wood, which is on display in the other song, ELO’s “Diary of Horace Wimp”, which is from 1979’s “Discovery”, when ELO was starting to get away from actual strings and beginning to use synthesizers (though in the accompanying video, the violin and cellos can be seen and heard).

            1979 was a pretty good year for music and you can read  #6-1979 to see what was going on in my life then.

67- Lilywhite – Cat Stevens - 1970

            Lilywhite - Cat Stevens

           This is the last song on Cat’s “Mona Bone Jakon”, his first album after his recuperation from tuberculosis. 

            It’s short and sweet, summing up all that’s gone before (I think)…

Back upon the mended road I pause.
Taking time to check the dial
And the Lilywhite, I never knew her name
But she'll be passing my way sometime again

I raise my hand and touch the wheel of change
Taking time to check the dial
And the Lilywhite, I never knew her name
But she'll be passing my way sometime again
She'll be passing my way sometime again.

            Those of you who remember vinyl know that songs were placed in a particular order, on Sides 1 and 2, for maximum impact, and it’s something we’ve lost with CDs and digital downloads. Back then, maybe every song on the album wasn’t a great song, but taken together the album held together as a whole because of the way the songs were placed.

            This reminds me of my second favorite podcast on the Steve Dahl Network, Bob andRon’s Record Club.  It’s basically a rollicking, stream of consciousness dialogue between two likeable potheads (and I use that term with all affection) who talk about the different albums they’ve acquired and their attempts to navigate the digital age, where turntables are rare. And their taste in music is way more eclectic than mine, from Frank Zappa and Hawkwind to the Beach Boys and Cat Stevens (now you know why I love them so).

            Where else do you hear about “The 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus”? Their say so alone will get me to buy this album someday when I have disposable income again.

Bob and Ron consistently make me laugh out loud and they’ve re-kindled my interest in vinyl, especially the work of the Turtles, the underappreciated pop group of the 60s (and led me to read Howard Kaylan’s biography, “Shell Shocked: My Life with The Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc.”)

            Sadly, my turntable is only hooked up to my computer right now, to digitize my several hundred albums (someday, not right now with a 4 year old and a nine year old), but when I hook it back up to my stereo…

           

66- Book of Days – 1991 and 100 – Orinoco Flow – 1988 – Enya

Book of Days 

Orinoco Flow 

I know…I know…Enya…New Age…lame…but I find her music very calming and it reminds me of one of my favorite movies of the 1990s, LA Story, written by and starring Steve Martin.

In it Martin is a wacky TV weatherman in LA (who pre-records his forecasts because they’re always the same in LA), who falls in love (after finding out his girlfriend is sleeping with his agent) with Victoria Tennant (Martin’s wife at the time) and gets messages from the freeway traffic condition signs concerning this new relationship.

Lynn and I saw this with Kevin, my college roommate and his wife Janet (who sadly succumbed to ovarian cancer at 40, leaving Kevin to raise his 7 year old son alone) at a theater in Chicago and I recall they were not as enamored with it as I was.

Neither of these two songs appears in the film, but after you hear one Enya, you’ve heard them all.

65 – Be Prepared - Tom Lehrer – 1953

Be Prepared - Tom Lehrer

            This is one of my favorite songs from Tom Lehrer, one of the great satirists of the 1950’s and 1960’s. His best known song (I think), which I remember hearing on “Dr. Demento” in 1974, was “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”.

            In Chicago, Dr. Demento was on WSDM (98FM, now the Loop) which used a couple different slogans in the early-to-mid 1970’s. They were either “Smack Dab in the Middle” (WSDM) or “the station with the girls”, because all the DJ’s were ladies. WSDM played an interesting mix of rock, interspersed with comedy cuts. I first heard Monty Python there as well.

            Lehrer was a very interesting character in the 1950’s and early 60’s, a Harvard educated professor of mathematics at MIT, Harvard, and Wellesley, he wrote and performed his quirky songs in Boston nightclubs in the early 50’s and recorded an album’s worth of songs at his own expense, selling them at concerts and by mail.

            He was lumped in with the “Sick” comics of the late 50’s due to his racy double entendres. Time magazine wrote about “the Sickniks”, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Shelly Berman, Jonathan Winters, Nichols and May, and Tom Lehrer. They were only sick in that they tackled subject matter left untouched by the lame, mainstream comedians of the era, i.e. Bob Hope, Joey Bishop, Joey Adams… 

“Mort Sahl, 32, the original sicknik, now makes $300,000 a year, but still manages to see the worm in the golden apple. Right alongside Sahl in the hierarchy of disease is Jonathan Winters, 33, a roly-poly brainy-zany who has spent most of the past two months as a patient in his favorite subject for humor: the funny farm. While these two once seemed more or less alone in their strange specialty, it is now clear that the virus has spread…

“The sicknik mood and method range all the way from the wistful social desperation of Elaine May and Mike Nichols, who are barely sick at all—just an occasional mild symptom—to the usually vicious barrage of Lenny Bruce. Where Elaine and Mike meditate on the problem of a stranded motorist who has lost his last dime, or a boss quietly trying to drink a secretary into submission. Newcomer Bruce, 33, likes to defend Leopold and Loeb: ''Bobby Franks was snotty…

"Lehrer is that rare amateur who turned professional and who did so successfully; in his last engagement he threatened the sanity of S.R.O. crowds at London's Royal Festival Hall. Sample Lehrer lyric:

I ache for the touch of your lips, dear,

But much more for the touch of your whips, dear.

You can raise welts, Like nobody else, As we dance the masochism tango.

            In 1964-1965, Lehrer wrote topical songs for the American version of “That Was the Week That Was”. These songs had a little more political bent.

            “So Long, Mom (a song for World War III),” “National Brotherhood Week,” and “The Folk Song Army.”

             He also contributed “New Math”:New Math

                        “Hooray for New Math

                        New-w-w-w-w Math

                        It won’t do you a bit of good to review math

                        It’s so simple, so very simple

                        That only a child can do it.”

            And “Vatican Rag,” Link a somewhat sacrilegious take on the Second Vatican Council reforms, which my Blackburn (and later Western and later still in Cary) roommate, Kevin K. did a great rendition of…

                        “First you get down on your knees,

                        Fiddle with your rosaries,

                        Bow your head with great respect, and

                        Genuflect! Genuflect! Genuflect!”

            “Be Prepared” is prefaced by Lehrer…

            “…this one is a little song dedicated to the Boy Scouts of America…those noble little… bastions of democracy, and the American legion of tomorrow…”                                 

                        “Be prepared! That’s the Boy Scout’s solemn creed,

                        Be prepared! And be clean in word and deed,

                        Don’t solicit for your sister, that’s not nice,

                        Unless you get a good percentage of her price.”      

            OK… I guess that could be considered a little sick…           

64 - Lawyers, Guns, and Money and 111 - Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon - 1978

Lawyers, Guns, and Money - Warren Zevon

Werewolves of London - Waren Zevon 

            Two of my favorite songs by Warren Zevon from his great album of 1978, “Excitable Boy.” I bought these from the Zune marketplace since I have not digitized my album, yet.

            Both are fun songs to sing along with and both feature the guttural exclamations Zevon liked to use.

            “Send lawyers, guns and money, dad get me out of here…HAH!”

            and

            “Saw a werewolf drinkin’ a pina colada at Trader Vic’s, his hair was perfect…DUUP!”

            Not much more to say about these songs, they don’t bring any particular memory, I just enjoy them.