Some Thoughts on Great Album Tracks

It's very difficult for even the most talented music artists to consistently put out great material. Music history is filled with one-hit wonders, and even quite successful artists have released singles that flop or had hits that despite their commercial success were at best unmemorable. And for most artists their singles are their best material. In the early days of rock and roll, albums were mostly filler, artistically secondary to the singles which were the artist's most important releases. Even in later days, many artists' only really essential songs are their hits. However, for many other artists this is not at all the case. The best artists were (or are) able to produce albums where most or all the songs are excellent. In some cases, regardless of how consistent the artist's material is overall, album tracks may be superior to singles from the same album. In the 1970s, the era of album oriented rock, many artists didn't even bother with singles, a famous example being Led Zeppelin (they only released a few singles in the US, and their most famous song, "Stairway to Heaven", was never released as a single), and for many that did, singles were secondary in the same way that albums had been in the early rock and roll era had been, Pink Floyd being a good example of this. But even for artists who had mostly excellent singles that were promoted fairly heavily, such as Elton John, the Eagles or the Rolling Stones, there are examples of album tracks that are as good as or even better than many of their hit singles. I would rank Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" and the Eagles' "The Last Resort" among those artists' best five songs, but neither was a single.

I have thought about doing a series of articles on excellent album tracks by different favorite artists. A similar but slightly different approach would be to focus on songs that are genuinely obscure parts of the artist's catalogue, as songs that are technically album tracks, like the abovementioned "Stairway to Heaven", nevertheless have just as high a profile as any single release. Of course I would be more or less forced to mainly focus on artists whose catalogue I am exceptionally familiar with. There are many artists whose work I enjoy a great deal without knowing much beyond their hits, and others for whom my collection is limited to only one or two albums. This is a source of some regret, as I know that in many cases even the most comprehensive compilation can hardly do justice to the artist's career. But since both my time and my money is limited (not to mention the space I have available to keep all these albums in), there are always going to be gaps like this in both my collection and my musical knowledge. Anyway, getting back to the point, there are only a few arists for whom I could do a proper review of their album tracks, B sides, or otherwise less well known material. One obvious example is the Beatles. But in their case the sheer volume of good songs becomes an issue. If we're talking about the early albums, the problem is less pronounced. For instance, on the first album, Please Please Me, "I Saw Her Standing There" is an obvious example of a superior album track, one that in my opinion not only outshines all the other album tracks (even the excellent cover of "Twist and Shout", though not by much) but also the single "Love Me Do", with only "Please Please Me" itself being more or less its equal. A similar example on With the Beatles is "All My Loving" - though one could also argue that while this and "I Saw Her Standing There" are technically album tracks, neither is exactly obscure. In any case, while the quality of the material varied noticeably on some of the early albums, when it comes to albums like Revolver, every track is excellent, even though only two appeared as a single, and none of the songs on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band were singles, making the entire album a collection of good to great album tracks. While I wouldn't rate all the songs on these albums or on the White Album, Abbey Road, etc. equally, it is still pretty much impossible to pick just one or two songs as outstanding album tracks.

Another possibility is the Police, though in their case they generally did a very good job picking their singles, so that there are only a few album tracks that compare with the singles from their respective albums. The same is mostly true of Sting, with a few exceptions, mostly on particularly strong albums like Ten Summoner's Tales. For Genesis, the biggest issue is that in the 1970s, they were very much an AOR band, with singles largely remaining an afterthought. It was only beginning in the 1980s (well, actually from 1978's And Then There Were Three) that there was a notable contrast between the high profile singles and the less well known album tracks. In this era there are certainly a number of prime examples of great album tracks that were the equal of or even superior to the singles, including "Dodo/Lurker", "Home By the Sea", "Silver Rainbow", "Domino", "Driving the Last Spike" and more, not to mention some excellent B-sides that never even made it onto an album. But while I may indeed write something specifically focusing on these and other frequently overlooked Genesis tracks from the latter half of their career, there are other ways of covering such material; in fact some of it is referred to in my articles on the various individual members of the band and in my reviews of the compilation R-Kive (available here and here.

Perhaps the best target for an article about excellent album tracks is Queen. They generally made very good choices for singles, and for a few albums in the mid to late 1970s they present a problem similar to that for the Beatles, i.e., most of the album tracks are also very good. Still, for many of their albums there are certainly songs that I consider to stand out even among otherwise good material on their respective albums and in some cases to even be marginally superior to the singles from the album. One prime example from late in their career is "Was It All Worth It", which is probably my favorite track on The Miracle and indeed one of the band's best songs from that period. But whether I ever get around to exploring standout album tracks by Queen or anyone else in detail, one thing all of the above examples serve to show is that if it all possible we should avoid judging any major artist solely by their singles, as many if not most of them will have at least a few less played album tracks that are equal to and sometimes better than the hits.

Old Article: Taiwanese Popular Music from the End of World War II through the 1960s

As I hinted at in the introduction to a previous post, the link to my article "Taiwanese Popular Music from the End of World War II through the 1960s" on the Taiwan Culture Portal seems to be dead (indeed, the Taiwan Culture Portal doesn't seem to exist anymore, at least not in its original format - the original web address now appears to be that of the main website for the Ministry of Culture, though I didn't explore it in any depth). Since I was far to busy to write anything new for November (in fact this post was backdated a few days to ensure I had something online for that month, as I didn't really post it until a few days into December), this seemed like a good time to post the original article here, though with the caveat that it is now over ten years old, and could use some serious updating in light of things I've learned since. I did make a few minor changes, but not as many as I would have if I had more time.

Sixty years ago, Taiwan's music scene was dramatically different from what it is today. In the years immediately after World War II, the music industry hit a commercial low point beside which today's moribund industry seems prosperous. Of course, the reasons for the industry's problems in the late 1940s and early 1950s were completely different from those of today. The primary problem was simply that Taiwan, its infrastructure damaged and its economy severly disrupted by the war, was very poor. The few records that were produced were of much lower quality than those that had been released in the 1930s, due to material shortages and the need to keep costs down. Since there were few records and relatively few could afford stereo equipment anyway, live performances were a major source of music for many people. The chief venues for music were what were known as geting (歌廳), which translates as music hall. In the first few years after the war, there were open-air geting along the riverside in Taipei, though soon these were replaced by cabaret-style venues, which remained popular into the 1970s. Larger scale performances were occasionally held in the large hall which had recently been renamed Zhongshan Hall (中山堂). Performances here or in the more expensive music halls were by big bands, of which there were several prominent in the 1950s. On the opposite end of the scale, in the streets there were itinerant musicians of all sorts. Another source of music was radio broadcasts. Many of the prominent musicians, composers and performers of the time did shows on the radio or worked full time for radio stations. Another opportunity for performing was at shows put on by the military for entertaining soldiers.

Though relatively few records were produced in the first decade or so after the war, quite a few songs that are now considered classics were released in this period. A few of them were recorded in this era, though others seem not to have been released record until some years later. One of the most prominent composers of the late 1940s and 1950s was Yang Sanlang (楊三郎), who was also founder and leader of the Black Cat Big Band (黑貓歌舞團). Working with lyricists like Nakano (那卡諾), who also played drums in the Black Cat Big Band, and Zhou Tianweng (周添旺), who had written lyrics for many classics of the Japanese era, Yang wrote "Hoping You Come Home Soon" (望你早歸), "Song of Bitter Romance" (苦戀歌), "Love's Lonely Flower" (孤戀花), "A Rainy Night at the Port" (港都夜雨), "Autumn Wind on a Rainy Night" (秋風夜雨) and many more. Another composer and bandleader in this era was Xu Shi (許石), who also established one of the first postwar record companies. His best-known songs included "Anping Nostalgic Melody [Remembering Anping]" (安平追想曲) and "When the Gong Is Sounded" (鑼聲若響). Other classics from the first decade or so after the war included two songs by Zhang Qiu Dongsong (張邱冬松), "Old Glass Bottles" (收酒矸) and "Hot Rice Dumplings" (燒肉粽); "Mending a Broken Net" (補破網), written by lyricist Li Linqiu (李臨秋) and composer Wang Yunfeng (王雲峰), both of whom were prominent songwriters in the Japanese era; and "You Can't Raise Goldfish In a Wineglass (Bottoms Up)" (杯底不可飼金魚) by classical-trained composer Lu Quansheng (呂泉生). These songs vividly reflected the times in which they were written, as did songs like "Miss Lottery Ticket" (獎券小姐), which referred to a very popular government lottery of the 1950s.

All of the abovementioned songs were in Hoklo (also called Minnan or Taiwanese), the language of Taiwan's largest ethnic group. Though Mandarin speakers began coming to Taiwan after 1945 and there was a huge influx of them in 1949 when China fell to the Communists and the KMT moved its government and what remained of its army to Taiwan, performance catering to this group consisted almost entirely of older Mandarin songs from Shanghai like "Night Blossom [Tuberose]" (夜來香) or new Mandarin hits produced in Hong Kong (where most of the Shanghai entertainment industry moved after 1949). Performances and records of such songs were popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s (and even in more recent decades). Many singers who made a name for themselves performing in music halls in Taiwan did so singing oldies from Shanghai and even English songs. Some of these early singers included Gao Manli (高曼麗), the sisters Shuanghua (霜華) and Xuehua (雪華), Ziwei (紫薇), and Painana (派娜娜) [Note: Painana was a Taiwanese aborigine from the Alishan area, the daughter of Gao Yisheng (高一生), an intellectual, composer, local leader and victim of the White Terror, in which many intellectuals and dissidents were arrested and executed by the KMT government]. While cover songs predominated, however, there were two Mandarin songs of note which came out of Taiwan in the first decade after the war. The first of these was the aboriginal-flavored "High Green Mountain" (高山青) from the first movie produced in Taiwan after the war, The Transformation of Alishan (阿里山風雲). The second was "Green Island Serenade" (綠島小夜曲), which will be discussed below.

By the late 1950s, records were becoming more common, as were Taiwanese films, which often included new songs in their soundtracks or were inspired by and named after classic songs or recent hits. On the negative side, however, many record companies prefered to keep costs down by copying foreign songs (international copyrights were not an issue in those days) and having Hoklo lyrics added to them, thus avoiding having to pay local songwriters to write original melodies (in many cases, even the arrangements were copied). The vast majority of the foreign songs copied in Taiwan in this period were from Japan, since, having grown up under the Japanese, many Taiwanese had a taste for Japanese melodies, particularly for the melancholy Japanese song form called enka. These Japanese songs with Hoklo lyrics were known as "mixed-blood" or "translated" songs. One of the most popular singers of the late 1950s and 1960s was Wen Xia (文夏), the vocalist on well-known songs such as "Hometown At Dusk" (黃昏的故鄉), "Mama, Please Take Care of Yourself" (媽媽請你也保重), and "The Stars Understand My Heart" (星星知我心), which were songs which he directly translated from Japanese. Among the many other popular songs of this type were "Dusk on the Mountain Range" (黃昏嶺), sung by Ji Luxia (紀露霞), one of the most popular singers of the era; "The Orphan's Wish" (孤女的願望) and "Happily Going Sailing" (快樂的出帆), sung by Chen Fenlan (陳芬蘭), a child star who continued her singing career into adulthood; "Handsome Guy on the Mountain Top" (山頂的黑狗兄) and "Pitiful Flower, Goodbye" (可憐戀花!再會吧), sung by Hong Yifeng (洪一峰); "Village Boy" (田庄兄哥), sung by Huang Xitain (黃西田); and "Sulan's Getting Married" (素蘭小姐要出嫁), sung by Huang Sanyuan (黃三元). The lyricist on many of these songs was Ye Junlin (葉俊麟), who wrote thousands of lyrics for Japanese melodies in this period.

Songs adapted from Japanese did not completely dominate the Hoklo music scene. The aforementioned Hong Yifeng, one of the most popular singers of the era, composed a number of very popular songs with lyrics by Ye Junlin, including "Memories of an Old Love" (舊情綿綿), "Twilight in Danshui" (淡水暮色), "The One I Miss" (思慕的人) and "Formosa Mambo" (寶島曼波), all of which were released in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Another successful singer-songwriter was Wu Jinhuai (吳晉淮), who had spent many years performing in Japan before returning to Taiwan. His biggest hits were "Gloomy Moon" (暗淡的月) and "Guan-a-nia Romance" (關仔嶺之戀). Guo Dacheng (郭大誠) was a singer-songwriter who emerged a few years after Hong and Wu. Many of his songs, some of which had original melodies and others of which were adaptations of Japanese songs, were humourous, with titles like "The Muddled Tailor" (糊塗裁縫師), "The Wandering Medicine Man" (流浪拳頭師), and "Pitiful Wino" (可憐燒酒仙). He also wrote the lyrics for "Going to the Graveyard" (墓仔埔也敢去), a song originally popularized by Ye Qitian (葉啟田) and more recently by rocker Wu Bai, as well as "The Oyster Picker's Wife" (青蚵仔嫂), which has also been covered by many artists (the melodies for these songs were originally Japanese and a folk song from Hengchun in south Taiwan, respectively).

Despite the efforts of people like Hong Yifeng, Wu Jinhuai, Guo Dacheng and others, Hoklo songs saw a steep decline in the 1960s. One reason for this was the previously mentioned preference among record companies for using Japanese songs, which eventually forced many local songwriters to turn to other jobs to make a living. But another reason was government policy and changes in the society. In the 1960s, the government began heavily promoting the use of Mandarin over local languages like Hoklo. Among the steps they took was severely restricting the number of "dialect" (i.e., non-Mandarin) songs that could be played on the radio. Also, in 1962, Taiwan's first television station, Taiwan Television (TTV), began broadcasting. This soon became one of the main vehicles for promoting new songs, as more and more Taiwanese watched the numerous variety shows which were shown. But, as with radio, the broadcast of Hoklo songs on television was heavily restricted. So by the mid-1960s, the main way in which Hoklo songs could be promoted was through movies. Even these began to decline in number, and by the end of the 1960s, Mandarin songs completely dominated the popular music scene.

As mentioned above, there were very few original Mandarin songs written in Taiwan in the decade after the war. The man most responsible for changing that was composer and arranger Zhou Lanping (周藍萍). Zhou, originally from Hunan in China, came to Taiwan in the late 1940s (he worked on the film The Transformation of Alishan as music director and may have helped write "High Green Mountain", though the film's director is usually credited with the melody for the song). In the early 1950s, he composed the music for "Green Island Serenade", which was recorded by Ziwei, the first truly popular singer of Mandarin songs in Taiwan. Actually, "Green Island Serenade" was not popular when it was first released. However, it slowly spread among the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, gradually growing in popularity, and after several years became a hit back in Taiwan itself, where it is now considered a classic. Zhou composed music for a number of other original Mandarin songs which appeared in movie soundtracks in the late 1950s, often working with the lyricist Zhuang Nu (莊奴), who would go on to write lyrics for many hit songs. However, it was "Recalling the Past" (回想曲), recorded in 1961 by Ziwei (紫薇) with both music and lyrics by Zhou, that many consider the first really big Mandarin hit in Taiwan (even "Green Island Serenade" supposedly only peaked in popularity in its wake). Zhou also wrote a number of other well-known songs such as "Beautiful Formosa" (美麗的寶島) and "Bilan Village Girl" (碧蘭村的姑娘); even more successfully, he composed the music for the huangmei opera film The Love Eterne (梁山伯與祝英台), which shattered box office records in Taiwan in 1963.

Unfortunately, Zhou moved to Hong Kong to work on movies, depriving Taiwan of its premier composer of Mandarin songs. So instead, record companies producing Mandarin records did the same thing that those producing Hoklo records did -- they used songs from Japan and other foreign countries. "Unforgettable Memory" (意難忘), recorded in 1963 by Meidai (美黛), was a massively popular Mandarin hit, perhaps the first to successfully outsell the Hoklo songs of the time. This song was a Japanese melody to which lyricist Shenzhi (慎芝) added Mandarin lyrics, as was "I'm Beside You" (我在你左右), another hit for Meidai, and "Heartless Person" (負心的人), a big hit for Yao Surong (姚蘇蓉) which was later banned because it was onsidered "unhealthy". Shenzhi also wrote lyrics to an old Taiwanese song for "A Glass Full of Bitter Brew" (苦酒滿杯), popularized by Xie Lei (謝雷), and to a Korean song for "Crying Flower" (淚的小花), popularized by Qing Shan (青山). However, new composers of Mandarin songs did finally begin to emerge in the late 1960s. The most successful of these was Zuo Hongyuan (左宏元), who worked frequently with Zhuang Nu. Together they wrote a number of hits for Yao Surong and others. Zuo also wrote the music for Yao's huge hit "I'm Not Going Home Today" (今天不回家), another song that was later banned (in fact many of Yao's hits were banned), and for "Jingjing" (晶晶), a theme song which was an early hit for Deng Lijun (鄧麗君; also known as Teresa Teng).

Though first Hoklo and then Mandarin songs dominated Taiwan's mainstream popular music scene in the 1950s and 1960s, Taiwan's other ethnic groups, the Hakka and the various aboriginal peoples, still had their own music in this period. Hakka music was still mostly traditional music such as "mountain songs", but singers like Lai Bixia (賴碧霞) and Lu Jinshou (呂金守), who recorded under the name Minglang (明朗), did record some popular songs in Hakka. However, these were primarily adaptations of songs that had been hits in other languages. As for aboriginal songs, Puyuma songwriters Baliwakes (陸森寶; Lu Senbao) and PangTer (陳實; Chen Shi) wrote a number of original songs in this period, including Lu's "Beautiful Rice Grains" (美麗的稻穗) and "Praising The Ancestors" (頌祭祖先) and Chen's "Ocean" (海洋). Many records of aboriginal songs were released in the 1960s, mostly by Ring Ring Records (鈴鈴唱片; pinyin: Lingling), which also released numerous Hakka records as well as Mandarin and Hoklo ones. It was also in the 1960s that Amis singer Lu Jingzi (盧靜子), the first aboriginal star, emerged. Though she wasn't well known among Han Chinese listeners, she was popular in all the aboriginal communities and even performed overseas in Japan and Southeast Asia. She performed many songs that were extremely popular among aboriginal audiences; her versions of the songs are still often the ones aboriginal people are most familiar with, even when she wasn't the original vocalist. Most of these songs were however virtually unknown among non-aboriginal audiences, one exception being "Malan Romance" (馬蘭之戀), which was turned into a hit song in Mandarin and Hoklo and was covered by many popular singers, with Lai Bixia even doing a Hakka version.

Still, for most music listeners in Taiwan, by the end of the 1960s, Taiwan's music scene was dominated by Mandarin songs popularized on television (a second station, China Television [CTV] began broadcasting in 1969). Some of these songs were composed by local songwriters, but many were still adaptations of foreign hits. Lyrically, many were overly sentimental and shallow love songs which had limited appeal for the educated youth of the time, who turned instead to Western music (see box). It was this background which set the scene for the transformation of Taiwan's music scene in the 1970s.

Reflections on Fats Domino, Tom Petty and the Traveling Wilburys

While 2017 has not matched 2016 in terms of unexpected deaths of major rock artists, it has already seen a few significant ones, including Chuck Berry. This past month two more big names were added to the list, Tom Petty and Fats Domino. Fats Domino's death, like Chuck Berry's, can't be considered untimely like so many from last year, as he was 89 years old, but it is still a
major loss, and Petty's death has to be considered somewhat premature, as he was only in his sixties. In both cases, I only own a "best of" compliation, so I can't really do a comprehensive overview of their careers. Instead, I'll briefly note some of my favorites among their hits, and a few less well known tracks or side projects from each that I also like.

I started off my 3 CD rock and roll compilation from many years back with a Fats Domino song, "The Fat Man". This is considered one of the foundational tracks for rock and roll, with good reason (though the song it was based on, "Junker's Blues", is great too, and has arguably even more entertaining lyrics). Other tracks I included were "Goin' Home", "Ain't That A Shame", "I'm In Love Again", "Blueberry Hill", "Blue Monday", "I'm Ready", and "Walking to New Orleans". In fact, only Chuck Berry had more songs on that set. I'd probably pick "Ain't That A Shame" as the greatest of his original songs, though "I'm In Love Again", "Blue Monday", "I'm Ready" and "Walking to New Orleans" (largely the work of Robert Charles Guidry aka Bobby Charles) are all strong contenders ("Blueberry Hill", a favorite of many fans, is actually a cover of a song dating to 1940, though Domino's version is now pretty universally considered definitive). Most of his original songs were collaborations, mostly with his producer Dave Bartholomew, but he was given sole credit for a few songs, including the early hits "Every Night About This Time" and "Please Don't Leave Me", as well as the later "I Want to Walk You Home", all excellent pieces of work. Domino also played a vital role in the Lloyd Price classic "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", on which he played piano (the song itself was based on "Junker's Blues" via Domino's "The Fat Man"). As for Domino's later career, I don't know much from it, but I am a big fan of his covers of two songs by favorite artists of mine. One is the Beatles' "Lady Madonna", which Domino covered not long after it first came out (it was his last chart hit). Paul McCartney wrote the song largely as a tribute to Domino, so it's not surprising that his version sounds great. The other is Randy Newman's "Have You Seen My Baby", a song which is also very well suited to Domino and his rollicking piano. His version of the song is great, possibly even better than Ringo Starr's somewhat later but perhaps better known version, though I'd have trouble choosing between them. Of course Domino's influence on the music that came after him is also reflected in all the covers of his classic songs that have been performed since, though few of them can match the originals.

Among the Tom Petty songs (most released with his band the Heartbreakers, though a few were in his name alone) that I'm particularly fond of are "Breakdown", "I Need to Know", "Refugee", "Don't Do Me Like That", "Don't Come Around Here No More", "I Won't Back Down", "Runnin' Down a Dream", "Free Fallin'", "Learning to Fly", "Into the Great Wide Open" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance". His duet with Stevie Nicks, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", is pretty good too. A highlight of Petty's career was his participation in the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup that originally came together to record a George Harrison B-side; the record company, in this case quite wisely, decided that the resulting "Handle with Care" was much to good to waste as a mere B-side, so a whole album was recorded. Petty's most notable contribution was "Last Night", which he sang lead on and probably was the main writer of. Another track he seems to have been the main writer for was "Margarita", which he and Bob Dylan sang lead on. If I were to put together my own Tom Petty compilation, I'd probably put these two songs, or at least "Last Night", on it.

It's amazing to think that of the five Wilburys, only Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne are still alive now; Roy Orbison of course being the first to die, just after the release of the first Wilburys album (his guitar stood in for him in the video for the second single, "End of the Line"). After Petty died, I thought it might be interesting to put together some sort of Wilburys compilation
or list. Unfortunately, since I don't have the second Wilburys album, I would have trouble doing it properly. But it occurred to me that a comprehensive retrospective on the Traveling Wilburys could be expanded beyond the two albums released by the supergroup to include Wilbury related tracks that weren't released under the group name. Of course each individual Wilbury had a huge catalog of classic songs, so it would be hardly be practical to include all of their solo careers. But in the years around the time the group was in existence, there were many songs written or recorded by two or more members of the group that appeared on their solo albums from that period. Petty in particular had quite a few such tracks, because Lynne co-produced two albums of his, playing on all the tracks and co-writing a bunch of the songs, including the aforementioned "I Won't Back Down", "Runnin' Down a Dream", "Free Fallin'", "Learning to Fly" and "Into the Great Wide Open". "I Won't Back Down" in particular was practically a Wilbury song, as George Harrison played guitar and sang backing vocals on it. Other Wilbury crossovers include the George Harrison album Cloud Nine, which Lynne co-produced and played on; two singles from the album, "This Is Love" (the song that "Handle With Care" was originally intended as a B-side to) and the brilliant "When We Was Fab", were co-written by Harrison and Lynne. Another Harrison track which involved multiple Wilburys was "Cheer Down". Lynne co-produced and played on the track, and Petty helped Harrison write the lyrics, though he didn't play on it. Several tracks from Roy Orbison's posthumous album Mystery Girl also involved two or more Wilburys. Lynne produced three songs on the album; one was co-written by Orbison and Lynne, and two ("You Got It" and "California Blue") by Orbison, Lynne and Petty, with all three playing on them. While I haven't heard "California Blue", "You Got It" was a hit and there's a video (apparently from a special on the Wilburys) with narration from Tom Petty showing clips from the recording of the song. Depending on how broadly you define a Traveling Wilbury related track - for instance
whether it's enough for two of the group to have written and recorded the song together, or whether there should be three of them involved - you could have either several great bonus tracks or an entire extra album of Traveling Wilbury music to go alongside the recordings they released as a group.

Old Article: "Hit Music" (熱門音樂) - Taiwanese cover bands in the 1960s

The following is a brief article I wrote for the December 2007 issue of Fountain, a magazine on Taiwan culture published by a government agency. That issue focused on Taiwanese popular music, and I wrote several articles for it, including one on Taiwanese aboriginal pop and one on Taiwanese popular music from WWII to the end of the 1960s (I'm not sure if the latter article is still online, so I may repost it here in the future). I've done a fair amount of research on these Taiwanese cover bands, a very few of which did make records (one even made a record of original songs in Mandarin) and someday I hope to publish a much more lengthy and up-to-date article on the subject. I have added a very brief list of a few key bands from the period in question, though a comprehensive list would be many times longer. Note: In Fountain, the article was titled "Rock and Roll Cover Bands".

Though mainstream Taiwanese popular music in the 1960s was worlds away from the rock and roll sounds of Elvis and the Beatles which dominated the West at the time, the latter did not go unheard among Taiwan's youth. As early as the late 1950s, several groups were formed by young people in Taiwan to perform Western songs. In Chinese, these Western pop songs were called "remen yinyue" (熱門音樂, literally "trendy music" or "hot music"), here translated as "hit music", and the whole scene became known by that name. In terms of hit records or immediate impact on Chinese-language pop in Taiwan, "hit music" had little obvious influence. Though many young Taiwanese formed groups in the sixties and early seventies and performed in hotels, nightclubs and other live venues, few of them made records, and most performed covers of English songs exclusively. But "hit music" was actually quite influential in the long run, for two reasons. The first was that the interest of young people in Western pop during this period was a direct precursor of the "modern folk song movement" of the seventies. The second was that many of the songwriters, musicians, and performers who dominated Taiwan pop in the seventies and eighties got their start in "hit music".

One major factor in the growth of the "hit music" scene was the presence of American soldiers in Taiwan. The clubs and nightspots frequented by American soldiers and the hotels used by American visitors provided venues for "hit music" singers and groups. Of course Americans were by no means the only audience for "hit music"; its fans were predominantly Taiwanese youth, especially in Taipei but also in the central and southern parts of Taiwan, and frequent concerts aimed entirely at Taiwanese young people were held involving multiple artists. But the foreign presence played an important role financially, and the chief goal for most groups was to get a position as the resident band at some international hotel.

The "hit music" scene peaked in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, after which "campus folk songs" surpassed it in popularity among Taiwan's youth. But it left behind a legacy in the folk song movement itself, which started largely as a reaction to "hit music", and in singers and musicians like Huang Yingying (黃鶯鶯), Su Rui (蘇芮), Chen Zhiyuan (陳志遠), Weng Xiaoliang (翁孝良), Wu Shengzhi (吳盛智) and Luo Dayou (羅大佑), all of whom began their music careers performing "hit music".

Some key "hit music" groups from the late 1960s and early 1970s:
雷蒙合唱團 The Ritmos Combo
電星樂隊 The Telstars Combo
陽光合唱團 The Sunshine
石器時代的人類合唱團 Stone Agers
愛克遜合唱團 Action
雷鳥合唱團 Thunderbird

The Robert Johnson Legacy: A Compilation

This month, as with many other months lately, I haven't had time to do any substantial new music writing. One excuse I have this month is my new radio show. Since it's weekly and I have to do at least some of the recording myself (basically for the last few shows I've been recording my spoken parts and the songs, but someone else is taking care of the final editing and mixing), it's been taking up a fair amount of time, and of course I still have my regular parttime job and have had many other things going on, including giving a talk on censorship of Taiwanese popular music in the past century at a coffee shop and going to Taidong (Taitung) on the east coast to do more research on the popular music of the Taiwanese aboriginal people. I thought about posting lists of the songs I played on my radio show over the past month, but I'm more inclined to set up a separate avenue for doing that, as this is mostly an English-language blog and most of the songs I play are in one of the various Chinese languages (mostly Mandarin, sometimes Hoklo/Minnan, and occasionally Hakka) and even the songs in aboriginal languages, which make up a large proportion, often have only Chinese titles, since tradtionally aboriginal songs didn't have set names and the record companies would just give them titles in Chinese. I could theoretically translate the titles, but I don't have time to do that. So instead I'm doing what I've done more than once before and pulling out an old compilation that I did many years ago and just posting its tracklist here. This one is at least fairly appropriate, because as it happens in my radio show for this week and next (the latter has already been recorded), I played covers of classic Taiwanese songs, mostly aboriginal but also some non-aboriginal, by contemporary artists, then played original or early versions of the same songs from decades earlier for comparison. This particular composition of songs by legendary bluesman Robert Johnson is organized similarly, in this case with his version coming first, followed by a much later recording of the same song by a well known artist.

Of course some of Johnson's most famous admirers are present here, such as Eric Clapton (on his own and with Cream and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers) and the Rolling Stones, along with later blues artists like Muddy Waters and B.B. King (the later doing a song that was reworked and popularized by fellow bluesman Elmore James), but also more suprising artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers (doing the atypical Johnson song "They're Red Hot"). While Cream's version of "Crossroads" is the best known cover here, there are a lot of other interesting ones, and each artist has a completely different take on Johnson's songs. The compilation also included a couple of Johnson songs without corresponding cover versions (the final one, "Terraplane Blues", is said to be the one regional hit song Johnson had in his brief lifetime), plus three extra tracks by Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe and Lead Belly, all three also being songs that have well known versions by other artists. The Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe song of course was covered by Led Zeppelin. The Lead Belly songs were not original to him, having been around since at least the beginning of the 20th century. The first, also known as "In the Pines", was most prominently covered by Nirvana, who was apparently largely following Lead Belly's version. The second is best known as "The House of the Rising Sun" and has been covered by numerous artists under that title and others.

I've included the orginial track details (and a brief list of additional Johnson covers) that I wrote back when I put this together, with a few edits. I wrote them under the assumption that the readers actually had the CD to listen to, and recognized the songs. While I can't make that assumption here, I imagine most of these tracks can be heard on YouTube (my apologies for not having time to provide links).

The Robert Johnson Legacy

1 Cross Road Blues Robert Johnson 2:40
2 Crossroads Cream 4:15
3 Kind Hearted Woman Blues Robert Johnson 2:51
4 Kind Hearted Woman Muddy Waters 2:37
5 Ramblin' On My Mind Robert Johnson 2:52
6 Ramblin' On My Mind John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers 3:08
7 I Believe I'll Dust My Broom Robert Johnson 2:59
8 Dust My Broom B.B. King 3:21
9 Traveling Riverside Blues Robert Johnson 2:46
10 Travelling Riverside Blues Led Zeppelin 5:12
11 Walkin' Blues Robert Johnson 2:30
12 Walkin' Blues Eric Clapton 3:37
13 Love In Vain Robert Johnson 2:25
14 Love In Vain The Rolling Stones 4:22
15 Last Fair Deal Gone Down Robert Johnson 2:37
16 Last Fair Deal Gone Down Taj Mahal 2:39
17 Malted Milk Robert Johnson 2:22
18 Malted Milk Eric Clapton 3:36
19 They're Red Hot Robert Johnson 2:58
20 They're Red Hot Red Hot Chili Peppers 1:11
21 Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped The Devil) Robert Johnson 2:51
22 Terraplane Blues Robert Johnson 3:00
Bonus Tracks:
23 When The Levee Breaks Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe 3:11
24 Where Did You Sleep Last Night Lead Belly 3:02
25 New Orleans Lead Belly 3:17

Cross Road Blues
Recorded November 27, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues
Also covered by the Allman Brothers Band

Crossroads
From Wheels of Fire (1968)
Also contains lines from "Traveling Riverside Blues"

Kind Hearted Woman Blues
Recorded November 23, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues
Also covered by Johnny Winter and Eric Clapton

Kind Hearted Woman
Recorded in the late 1940s
From More Real Folk Blues (1967)

Ramblin' On My Mind
Recorded November 23, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues
Note the train sound effect

Ramblin' On My Mind
From Blues Breakers John Mayall with Eric Clapton (1966)
This is Eric Clapton's first lead vocal on record

I Believe I'll Dust My Broom
Recorded November 23, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues
Also covered by Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, ZZ Top and many other bluesmen

Dust My Broom
Arranged by Elmore James
From B.B. King The Collection

Traveling Riverside Blues
Recorded June 20, 1937, Dallas, TX
From King of the Delta Blues

Travelling Riverside Blues
Recorded June 24, 1969
From BBC Sessions
A studio version is available on the Led Zeppelin Boxed Set
This version contains several lines from "Kind Hearted Woman Blues"
This song was clearly the inspiration for Zeppelin's "The Lemon Song"

Walkin' Blues
Recorded November 27, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues
Also covered by Bonnie Raitt on her eponymous 1971 album

Walkin' Blues
From Unplugged (1992)

Love In Vain
Recorded June 20, 1937, Dallas, TX
From King of the Delta Blues

Love In Vain
From Let It Bleed (1969)

Last Fair Deal Gone Down
Recorded November 27, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues

Last Fair Deal Gone Down
Recorded December 3, 1965
From Mojo Workin' - Blues for the Next Genenration

Malted Milk
Recorded June 20, 1937, Dallas, TX
From King of the Delta Blues

Malted Milk
From Unplugged (1992)

They're Red Hot
Recorded November 27, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues

They're Red Hot
From Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)

Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped The Devil)
Recorded November 27, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues
This song has some of Johnson's fanciest guitar playing

Terraplane Blues
Recorded November 27, 1936, San Antonio, TX
From King of the Delta Blues
This was Johnson's most successful record in his lifetime,
selling several thousand copies

All songs written by Robert Johnson

Other covers of Robert Johnson songs:
Sweet Home Chicago (as "Baby Don't You Want to Go?") Tommy McClennan
(this was aupposedly the first Johnson cover, recorded in 1939)
When You've Got A Good Friend Johnny Winter
From Four Until Late Cream (from Fresh Cream)
Stop Breaking Down The Rolling Stones (from Exile on Main Street)
Come On In My Kitchen Allman Brothers Band
I'm A Steady Rolling Man Eric Clapton (from 461 Ocean Boulevard)

Bonus Tracks:

When The Levee Breaks (J. McCoy[Kansas Joe]/M. McCoy [Memphis Minnie])
Recorded June 29, 1929
From Mojo Workin' - Blues for the Next Genenration
Covered by a certain famous hard rock band
(though they did alter it a great deal)

Where Did You Sleep Last Night (Huddie Ledbetter [Actual authorship unknown, though it certainly predates Lead Belly])
Recorded February 17, 1944
From Goodnight, Irene
Covered by Nirvana and Kyle

New Orleans (J. Lomax/A. Lomax/G. Turner [Actual authorship unknown, though it definitely wasn't written by
John Lomax and his son Alan, who somehow got credited on Lead Belly's version])
From Goodnight, Irene
Covered by lots of people (mostly under another name, of course)

原聲探索-My New Radio Show on Alian 96.3

Previously on this blog I mentioned that I was doing a bimonthly radio show on Taiwanese music on the Taipei radio station News 98. Regrettably, that show ended a few months ago, but the good news is starting next month I will have a new show on Alian 96.3原住民族廣播電臺 (the Chinese part of the name translates to Indigenous Radio Station). My wife and I came up with the name 原聲探索 for the show, which roughly translates to “Original Sound Exploration” or “Aboriginal Sound Exploration”, depending on how you interpret the first character. This show will be weekly and will be broadcast every Wednesday from 6 to 8 pm. The station itself is new and was originally scheduled to start broadcasting on August 1, but this has been pushed back, though I’ve been told they should start broadcasting no later than August 9. As the focus is on Taiwanese indigenous people, at least half of each of my shows will focus on aboriginal artists and songs, though I will also play some non-aboriginal Taiwanese popular songs and even occasionally songs from elsewhere, such as Southeast Asia, Japan, Hong Kong, and the West. When the manager originally proposed the show to me, he suggested that I do an hour of non-aboriginal music and an hour of aboriginal music, but while I may do some shows where each half is completely independent of the other, in most cases I’ll try to have an overall theme, and I’ll often alternate between the two types of music. I’ve already recorded my first show, in which I’ll introduce myself and talk about how my interest in Taiwanese popular music and in particular aboriginal music developed, in the process introducing some of the different types of music I expect to play on the program.

Here's a list of the tracks played on the first show:

風雨無阻〈詞曲：李子恆〉 周華健 (1994)
我是誰〈詞曲：黃舒駿〉 黃舒駿 5:00 (1994)
小姐免驚〈詞曲：吳俊霖[伍佰]〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1995)
戀曲1980〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
走在雨中〈詞曲：李泰祥〉 齊豫 (1979)
美麗島〈詞：陳秀喜，梁景峰改寫 曲：李雙澤〉 胡德夫、楊祖珺 (1977)
望你早歸〈詞：那卡諾[黃仲鑫] 曲：楊三郎〉 紀露霞 (1946/約1957)
濃膠膠〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
Anak (Words & Music: Freddie Aguilar) Freddie Aguilar (1978)
最最遙遠的路〈詞：泰戈爾、胡德夫 曲：胡德夫〉 胡德夫 (1997)
可憐的落魄人〈詞曲：高飛龍[高子洋]〉 陳明仁 (1981)
怎麼會這樣〈詞曲：Panai 巴奈〉 Panai〈巴奈〉 (2000)
乾杯〈詞曲：魏榮貴〉 林慶雄（阿碰） (1995)
白米酒!我愛你〈詞曲：原住民歌謠〉 高平山 (1980年代)
念故鄉〈詞曲：陸森寶〉 吳花枝／南王民生康樂隊 (約1961)
馬蘭網魚歌〈詞曲：阿美族歌謠〉 盧靜子 (1967)
紅頭崎之夜〈詞曲：原住民歌謠〉 石寶[李石良] (約1961)
Mahalateng 我心所屬〈詞曲：Suming舒米恩〉 Suming Rupi 舒米恩•魯碧 (2010)

Album Review - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan

Album Title: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Artist: Bob Dylan
Release Date: May 27, 1963

Side One
Blowin' in the Wind
Girl from the North Country
Masters of War
Down the Highway
Bob Dylan's Blues
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Side Two
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Bob Dylan's Dream
Oxford Town
Talkin' World War III Blues
Corrina, Corrina (Traditional, Adapted and Arranged by Bob Dylan)
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas, Bob Dylan)
I Shall Be Free

All songs credited to Bob Dylan except where otherwise noted (but see below)

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is not Bob Dylan’s most representative album and it is arguably not his best, given contenders for that spot such as Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home and Blood on the Tracks. But it is certainly one of his most important and best known, and I’d certainly rank it as one of his top five. It is the album that made him famous, catapulting him to the top rank of contemporary artists and causing him to be dubbed the spokesperson for his generation by the media, much to his dismay.

Some of Dylan’s most famous songs are included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The opening track, “Blowin’ In the Wind”, is still perhaps his best-known song of all, with numerous covers beginning with the hit version by Peter, Paul and Mary; it is certainly the one best known here in Taiwan. “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall”, and “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right” are also among his most popular recordings. Among the less widely played songs, a favorite of mine is “Oxford Town”, a song about the civil rights movement, but really I enjoy all of the album, from the English folk of “Girl from the North Country” to the humor of songs like “I Shall Be Free”. Songs like the latter, or “Talking World War III Blues” provide a contrast with the intensity of songs such as “Masters of War” or “Hard Rain”. It’s this variety in styles and lyrical content that makes the album more exciting to listen to than many other folk albums. The album represented a big leap forward for Dylan as an artist, showing progress far beyond his more run-of-the-mill first album (which only had two originals on it, and nothing with nearly the dramatic impact of the best songs on this album). Indeed, it represented a leap forward for contemporary folk music in general, as no one was doing anything quite like what Dylan was doing.

Dylan justly gained fame for his brilliant lyrics, particularly on songs like “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall”, “Blowin’ In the Wind”, and “Masters of War”, but his skill as a writer (recognized last year with a Nobel Prize in Literature) is also evident on songs like “Oxford Town”. The music that accompanied these lyrics was also excellent, but despite what the album credits say, it wasn’t entirely original. Nearly all his melodies were based on older folk tunes, though in some cases he adapted them to the point that they were quite different from his source materials. Still, at most he properly speaking should only be considered a co-writer of the music on these songs, and in some cases only the lyrics are his. Even with the latter he often retained lines and themes from the original songs, though generally the lyrics were at least 80% original, and essentially constituted a new creative work. From today’s perspective, claiming credit for melodies and words that are not your own is considered dishonest, but for what it’s worth it should be remembered that Dylan came out of a folk tradition where such practices were widespread. His hero Woody Guthrie also took his many of his melodies from older songs but then copyrighted them under his own name, as did Pete Seeger (though the latter took pains in the liner notes to later compilations to talk about his sources). The same practice was widespread in the blues as well, with performers like Robert Johnson taking bits and pieces from older songs to make their own. For that matter, while he hasn’t been as meticulous about explaining the origins of his songs as Seeger, Dylan himself has been open about the origins of at least some of these tunes. In any case, it is beyond debate that while perhaps “Blowin’ In the Wind” couldn’t exist without “No More Auction Block” and “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall” couldn’t exist without “Lord Randall”, these songs are still highly original creations that go far beyond their source material, and no one but Dylan could have created them.

It is actually an interesting exercise to compare the folk songs Dylan used as the basis for his songs on this album to his final product. In many of the song descriptions below I've included references to the older songs to make it easier to do this. While the relationships are pretty obvious in most cases, it's also clear that Dylan's songs still ended up sounding quite different, particularly in terms of lyrics, but often in arrangement and even melody. At all events, while Dylan was clearly building on what went before, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan remains a highly original album, and also Dylan's definitive statement as a folk singer (along with his excellent follow-up single "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), as it was not long afterwards that his style evolved dramatically, with his lyrics become more abstract and less direct and his music incorporating more rock elements, as on albums like Highway 61 Revisited. Along with several of those later albums, it is an essential part of any substantial music collection.

Note 1: Unfortunately, the studio recordings of most of these songs are rather hard to find on YouTube. One person seems to have posted most of the album, though whether those will remain available for long is hard to tell. There is an "official" posting of the audio of the album version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and there's one video accompanied by what sounds like the album version of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". The links in the album track listing above are all to these album versions. Some of the links in the song descriptions below, however, are to various live versions from around the same time as the album; for instance, the versions of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Girl from the North Country" are from a 1964 TV.

Note 2: A few early copies of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan were pressed with a different track listing, including four tracks that were dropped from the later version: "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", "Let Me Die In My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie", and "Rocks and Gravel". These songs were replaced by "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", and "Bob Dylan's Dream". While the later version is generally considered a big improvement, the dropped songs are interesting in their own right. "Let Me Die In My Footsteps" is even mentioned in the liner notes for the original album (written for the final version), where it is compared to "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", and "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" gained notoriety when Dylan was told he couldn't sing it on the Ed Sullivan Show, leading him to refuse to appear.

Blowin' in the Wind: The song that first gained Dylan nationwide recognition, and still one of his best known songs. It is both a civil rights anthem and an anti-war anthem, and this wide applicability no doubt helped make it so widely sung. Though it was Peter, Paul and Mary who had a big hit with it, Dylan's own version has always been widely played as well, and remains definitive. Dylan himself acknowledged that he based the melody on the African American spiritual "No More Auction Block" (which was also a major influence on the anthem "We Shall Overcome"), but "Blowin' in the Wind" still manages to sound quite different from the original spiritual (though the similarities between the two are fairly obvious).

Girl from the North Country: As most fans of 1960s pop will immediately recognize, this song is based on the old English folk ballad "Scarborough Faire", which Simon and Garfunkel famously covered a few years after this album came out. Dylan even retains several lines from the original: "Remember me to one who lives there/She once was a true love of mine". But Dylan altered the melody and wrote new lyrics for most of the song, updating the ballad to tell the tale of a modern romance rather than a medieval one.

Masters of War: The most lyrically vicious song on the album and one of its highlights, this song attacks those who profit off of war. The words are entirely original, but the music is based fairly closely on Jean Ritchie's arrangement of the folk song "Nottamun Town" (he apparently had to pay her a few thousand dollars to settle a suit over the matter). Though the relationship between the two songs is instantly obvious, Dylan's song has an additional edge to it, in part due to the lyrics but also due to the way he performs it.

Down the Highway: A 12-bar blues lamenting the absence of a departed lover, this song doesn't have the impact of the songs that came before it, but it makes a nice change of pace.

Bob Dylan's Blues: Another blues-based tune, this one a more humorous one. Nothing really exceptional, but a decent album track.

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall: If I had to pick a single song as the best on this album, it would probably be this one. It's a lyrical tour de force and Dylan's performance is also excellent. Musically it's based on the Anglo-Scottish folk song "Lord Randall" (or "Lord Randal"), but Dylan altered the original tune and his delivery is quite different from what went before. The result is one of his most powerful songs.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right: This song also became a hit when covered by Peter, Paul and Mary in the same year Dylan's own version was released. A rather vitriolic song sung to a lover the narrator is about to abandon, it represents another facet of Dylan's writing, one further developed on songs like "It Ain't Me Babe", "Like A Rolling Stone", "Positively 4th Street" and "Idiot Wind". The melody ultimately derives from the traditional song "Who's Gonna Buy Your Chickens When I'm Gone", but Dylan's immediate source was fellow folk singer Paul Clayton's "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone?", from which Dylan also borrowed a few lines.

Bob Dylan's Dream: An evocative song based on the traditional song "Lady Franklin's Lament". Dylan reworks the original fairly drastically, turning it into something new while retaining the feeling of the original folk song. Another solid album track.

Oxford Town: As noted above, this is one of my favorite songs on the album. The lyrics are very cleverly written, and the jaunty tune is very enjoyable and yet still doesn't seem like a mismatch for the rather serious subject matter. Where the tune comes from I am uncertain; I seem to recall reading it somewhere, but I can't track it down now. In any case, even if it's not an original, it's a good choice and quite different from the other tunes on the album.

Talkin' World War III Blues: The talking blues is a style Dylan picked up from his idol Woody Guthrie. Here he uses it to good effect in the humorous take on the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Corrina, Corrina: This is the one song that is officially credited as being a traditional song, perhaps because Dylan didn't alter it much, though he threw in a few lines from songs by bluesman Robert Johnson, another performer Dylan admired. Not as interesting as the songs for which Dylan wrote original lyrics, perhaps, but a decent nod to his various roots.

Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance: This and "Corrina, Corrina" were the only tracks not solely credited to Dylan. He based it roughly on "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance?", a song popularized by Texas bluesman Henry Thomas, who recorded it in 1928 (though he didn't actually write it either). In fact Dylan changed the song considerably, such that it only vaguely resembles Thomas's version, though it retains almost the same title phrase. Another humorous song, it's a good album track.

I Shall Be Free: This song was based roughly on Lead Belly's "We Shall Be Free", originally performed by Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Sonny Terry, though Dylan altered it quite a bit. This is perhaps my favorite of the humorous tracks on the album, and makes a good closer. Some listeners would perhaps have preferred Dylan to end with another major statement like "Blowin’ In the Wind", "Masters of War" or "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", but Dylan decided to close on a lighthearted note, and I think it works just fine.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at 50: What Makes a Great Album?

The Beatles’ landmark album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released 50 years ago last week, so not surprisingly there have been a number of articles about the anniversary in the news. I have already posted my own retrospective review of the album, so instead I want to talk about a more general question: what qualities make a great album? Obviously, there is a large degree of subjectivity involved, which is why everyone will have a different list of favorites. Nevertheless, certain albums appear with much greater frequency in such lists than others. Some of that may be just the weight of reputation (a conviction among some that that is the case with Sgt. Pepper, for example, is why, aside from often appearing at or near the top of “greatest albums of all time lists”, it has also appeared in “most overrated” lists). Nevertheless, it is clear that there are certain qualities that albums like Sgt. Pepper have that cause them to be highly rated by most music critics and fans. While everyone may have somewhat different views as to what those qualities are, I will explain what I personally find attractive in the albums that I like best.

The first and most essential quality, of course, is great songs. Of course, even on the greatest albums, not every song will be a work of genius that is likely to appear on a list of the greatest songs of all time. But on the best albums, all of the songs will generally be at least good, and most of them will be great. An example of this is the Beatles’ Revolver. Many of the songs on that album are absolute classics, and even the weakest of them are at least good. But Revolver is hardly the only example; one thing all the best albums have in common is a preponderance of excellent songs. Occasionally a great album may have a song or two that is mediocre or even bad, but on many good albums even a weak track may serve some purpose in context, even if it seems dispensable in and of itself.

This has to do with another important quality in most albums that I personally would rate as being among the best, namely variety. Even if the songs on an album are great individually, if they all sound too similar to each other the album will end up being monotonous. On most of my favorite albums, the songs have a wide range of arrangements and musical styles, and in quite a few cases the instrumentation varies as well. Revolver is again an excellent example of this – “Eleanor Rigby”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “For No One” and “Love You To” are all completely different along with all being brilliant songs. Likewise, Queen’s A Night at the Opera covers an incredible range musically. In fact, both these bands managed to be stylistically diverse through much of their careers, and this, along with the more basic capability of writing good songs, is one of the reasons why I like pretty much every album they released. Musical variety is also a strength of many other favorite artists of mine, including Genesis, Randy Newman, Sting, the Super Furry Animals, Taiwan’s Luo Dayou and Thailand’s Carabao, to name just a few examples, and this ability to write a wide variety of songs can be seen in all these artists’ best albums. In many of these cases, having more than one songwriter or even more than one lead vocalist helps, though a talented individual songwriter like Newman can cover quite a bit of ground on their own. While there are some albums with less stylistic diversity that I still consider excellent, it’s generally the ones with more variety that I prefer.

Adding variety can also help make the occasional weak track much more palatable in context. Take the Beatles’ eponymous double album (best known as the White Album). Some have suggested that they should have narrowed it down to a single album of consisting entirely of great songs. But aside from the fact that in my opinion there are more than a single album’s worth of great or at least very good songs, one of the White Album’s greatest virtues is its sprawling stylistic diversity. Songs like “Wild Honey Pie” and “Revolution No. 9” are not exactly great songs in and of themselves, to the extent that they are even songs at all. But they both (particularly “Revolution No. 9”) add even more variety to an already incredibly diverse group of songs. To take another example, “Who Dunnit?” from Abacab is many Genesis fans’ pick as the worst track the band ever released. While it is certainly not a great song by any means, it has a bizarre tongue in cheek element of humor that in the context of the rest of the album makes it listenable and even gives it a certain attraction (it helps that it, like “Wild Honey Pie”, is short; if it were any longer its rather limited charms would not be enough to save it). Of course, tracks such as these have to be balanced out by a large number of great songs, which is fortunately the case on both the White Album and Abacab. But context can be key even for tracks that most critics and fans enjoy. Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier”, for instance, isn’t exactly a song, so it would sound odd in isolation, but in the middle of OK Computer, it serves as a sort of interlude, if a somewhat usual one.

The flip side of variety is thematic unity, or at least a certain degree of musical consistency. From the examples I’ve cited above, it should be clear that I don’t think it is necessary for an album to be a full-fledged concept album to be great. I do like many albums that could be considered concept albums, and if an artist can pull off the difficult feat of assembling a group of songs that are great individually and musically diverse and yet are tied together by some overarching concept, that can make their album even better than it would be if it only possesses the first two qualities. This is very hard to do, however. On many concept albums, some of the lyrics ended up sounding a bit forced, which can negate any advantage gained by the thematic unity. Also, it can mean that individual songs taken out of context don’t make much sense. Perhaps this is why my very favorite albums are usually not full-fledged concept albums. The Who’s Tommy, Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall are all great albums that I like very much, but none of them are my favorite albums by those artists (though admittedly I don’t own a copy of Tommy, so it’s possible that if I get one and listen to it enough, I may decide it’s better than Who’s Next, my current favorite by the Who).

What often works better is a loose concept, where the overall theme is vague enough that all sorts of songs can fit it comfortably (such as on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon), or simply tying songs together musically, as was done on the Beatles’ Abbey Road, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or several of Queen’s early albums, as well as on Dark Side. Sometimes the concept will be so loose as to be virtually non-existent, as is arguably the case with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band itself. John Lennon was fond of pointing out that his songs on the album had nothing to do with Paul McCartney’s Lonely Hearts Club Band concept, and in truth even many of Paul’s own songs don’t have any obvious connection to it. But just by tying together the first two songs and reprising the title track near the end, just enough of a feeling of unity was created to make the album seem like a single unified work. Indeed, the trick of reprising an early track near or at the end often helps create a feeling of thematic unity, as when Queen ended A Day at the Races with the same Brian May guitar instrumental piece as they used to begin it, or when Genesis reprised elements of the opening tracks of Duke in the mostly instrumental ending to the album. In any case, while I personally tend to value variety more highly than thematic unity, it helps to make the album feel like something more than a random collection of songs.

Another issue is length. Revolver and Sail Away are quite short, but perhaps because they each still have a lot of songs they don’t seem as short as they are. However, anything shorter than Sail Away, which is barely over 30 minutes, would almost certainly feel unsatisfyingly brief – even Sail Away itself might be improved by adding another song or two. At the other end of the spectrum, there are quite a few excellent double albums; aside from the ones mentioned previously (the White Album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, The Wall and Tommy), other examples include Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life and Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. However, even the best of artists have difficulty writing that much good material, so the best single albums are generally more consistently good than the best double albums.

A final consideration, but one that is largely independent of subjective personal taste, is how influential the album was. If I was making a list of my own picks as the greatest albums of all time, I would certainly take the albums’ impact into consideration, so that one that had a major influence on later music would rank higher than one that I personally enjoyed listen to as much but which didn't have as much impact on the course of music history. In other words, my list of the greatest albums would differ somewhat from my list of personal favorites, though of course there would still be a great deal of overlap, and I would not include albums I don’t particularly enjoy listening to on any but a very long list of “the greatest albums of all time”, no matter how influential they were.

I’ve mentioned just a small sampling of the albums I’d rate among the great ones, or as personal favorites. Others include several albums by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Fleetwood Mac’s eponymous album and Rumours, Radiohead’s The Bends, and more. But what about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band itself? Yes, that one is definitely up there, even if it isn’t my absolute favorite. After all, it’s got great songs (if not quite the equal of Revolver), plenty of variety, and a loose concept tying it together. Part of its reputation is due to the last consideration I mentioned, namely that it was incredibly influential, indeed one of the most influential albums ever. But even considered independent of its impact, it certainly qualifies as a great album, if only one of many.

My Thai Popular Music Collection, Featuring Carabao and Asanee Wasan

Though I’ve written a lot about various British and American artists on this blog and have also posted a few pieces on Taiwanese popular music (though not that much relative to the time I’ve spent researching it), I have barely touched on the music of other countries in Asia. In part, that’s just because I know comparatively little about it; I’ve lived in Taiwan for many years, I speak one of the country’s languages, and I’ve met and even done album liner notes for a few of the artists, whereas I’ve only visited the other countries in the region, and (except in the cases of China and Singapore), I don’t speak their languages with any fluency. However, I have managed to collect a fair amount of music from these countries and, relying largely on things I’ve read by others with more knowledge, have learned a bit about several of the key artists in these countries.

Outside of Taiwan, the Asian country whose popular music I’m most familiar with is Thailand. I’ve spent more time in Thailand than in any Asian country other than Taiwan; aside from a dozen or so trips of various lengths, we even lived there for three months fifteen years ago. Another factor is that CDs of local music are unusually cheap in Thailand, generally less than US$5, so I could buy them a lot more freely than I could anywhere else. Of course there are still a lot of things making it harder for me to become as knowledgeable about Thai popular music as Taiwanese or English-language popular music. The biggest barrier is language. I speak a smattering of Thai, enough to bargain for things in a market or hold an extremely simple conversation with only a few exchanges. My Thai is about as good as my Hoklo/Minnan; though I don’t speak either well at all, they are the only Asian languages other than Mandarin where I know more than a few phrases. But my ability is still extremely limited, so to understand the lyrical content of songs I have to rely on translations or references in English by others. I am often able to figure out some basic information about the songs on CDs I own such as who wrote the music and lyrics; I know a few of the letters, but more importantly I’ve learned to recognize a few key words and name, or I’m able to deduce them by comparison (e.g., it’s easy enough to guess the words for “lyrics”, “music” and “arrangement”, as they appear next to or under the song titles and in front of the names of people), but this is still harder for Thai CDs than for CDs from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines simply because the latter countries use the Latin alphabet. The language barrier also means that for historical background on the music I have to rely on the limited resources available in English, or use online translation programs to attempt to get the gist of what I can find in Thai.

In any case, I have several dozen Thai CDs, perhaps as many as a hundred. Most of them are rock, folk and urban pop, though I also have some CDs of luk thung, commonly referred to Thai country. I tried to acquire music by a fairly wide variety of artists, particularly those who seem to be regarded as particularly significant or representative, though I’m sure there are many important ones I’ve missed. So, for example, I have CDs by classic luk thung singers Surapol Sombatjalern (สุรพล สมบัติเจริญ) and Pompuang Duangjan (พุ่มพวง ดวงจันทร์), kantrum singer Darkie, and mor lam singer Jintara Poonlarp. I have CDs with songs by early urban pop groups like the Impossibles and Grand Ex and rock groups and pop singers from the 1980s and 1990s such as Micro, Billy Ogan, Bird, Itti and Mai, as well as later artists like Loso, Palmy, Beau, Paradox, Smile Buffalo and Silly Fools. In particular, I tried to acquire music by key artists from the genre known as pleng phua chewit (“songs for life”), a type of folk rock mixing Western folk and rock with some elements of more traditional Thai music, and emphasizing lyrics with more sociopolitical content. The first and most important (except for the band I’ll discuss momentarily) “songs for life” group was Caravan (คาราวาน), and I’ve bought a number of their CDs. I even met and exchanged greetings with their lead singer and key member Surachai Jantimatorn (aka Nga Caravan) when he visited Taiwan for the Migration Music Festival a few years ago. I also have CDs by Hammer, Pongsit Kamphee and Zuzu. But the two artists whose albums I have the most of are the brotherly pop rock duo Asanee Wasan and Thailand’s most famous band, the “songs for life” rock group Carabao.

Carabao was formed in the early 1980s and has been active in various forms pretty much ever since. The group’s mainstay is its chief vocalist and songwriter Yuenyong Ophakul, better known as Ad (or Aed) Carabao. Other key members include guitarists Lek and Thierry, multi-instrumentalist Keo (or Khiao) and bassist Od (or Ot). Carabao is not only very popular among Thais, it is also the one Thai band non-Thais who have a passing familiarity with Thailand are most likely to have heard of. Even today Carabao’s symbol, a long-horned buffalo skull (a carabao is a type of water buffalo native to the Phillipines, where Ad and cofounder Keo were students in the late 1970s), can be seen all over Thailand. Carabao’s sound combines elements of Western folk, country and rock (such as Lek’s Santana-style guitar playing) with rhythms reminiscent of Thai music forms such as luk thung and mor lam. The band’s lyrics frequently deal with social issues, and Ad in particular is outspoken on social justice and the environment.

The band hit its peak in the mid 1980s with what is generally considered its classic lineup. The series of albums Carabao released in the 1980s are pretty much all classics, particularly those from their third (Waniphok) to their ninth (Thap Lang),but the most famous was their fifth album, Made in Thailand, released in 1984. It sold four to five million copies and remains one of the most successful Thai albums ever. The title track is the band’s best known song, but several of the other tracks are also among their most popular recordings, and really everything on the album is good. This is definitely the one must-have Carabao album, though the other albums from this period are also highly recommended.

Ad Carabao wrote the majority of the band’s songs, at least in its early days, though Lek and Thierry in particular also wrote some songs, typically writing and singing one song each on most albums they participated in, and occasionally co-writing the music for other songs with Ad. Most of the band’s chief members have released solo albums, with Ad in particular having a number of solo successes – in fact, one of his best known songs, the ballad Thaleejai, was released on an album that he recorded with his brother Id, though it has since appeared on Carabao compilations as well. Speaking of which, Carabao has released a rather bewildering number of compilation albums, live albums, “special” albums (such as acoustic and remix albums) and collaborations with other artists, which can be a bit confusing for those who don’t read Thai (and possibly even for Thais as well). Anyone looking for a good compilation is advised to have a list of key songs to look for on the track listing (e.g., “Wanipok”, “Made in Thailand”, “Refugee”, etc.) in order to make sure it has the most important Carabao songs.

Since Carabao has released so many albums, I don’t have anything like a complete collection of their recordings, even though I easily have more than a dozen Carabao CDs. The Thai artist who I am closest to have a complete collection of is the duo Asanee Wasan. Asanee and Wasan Chotikul are two guitar playing brothers who got their start as members of the folk group Isn’t in the late 1970s. Asanee worked with several other artists in the early 1980s before the brothers released their first album as a duo in 1986. They became more popular with each subsequent release, and remain one of the country’s top selling artists and concert draws, though their output slowed considerably after the early 1990s. Perhaps their most notable album was their fourth, 1989’s Fak Thong. This contained “Yindii Mai Mii Panhaa”, a song which has been widely covered around Asia, including versions in Hoklo (by Taiwan’s Blacklist Workshop), Mandarin, English, and Cantonese, as well as one of the group’s most popular ballads, “Dai Yang Sia Yang”. It also contained “Krung Thep Mahanakhon”, which is a melodic chanting of the full name of Bangkok (which has the world’s longest official name) over rhythmic music composed by Asanee.

Musically, Asanee Wasan is more pop than Carabao, and the lyrical content of their songs only rarely strays into more serious subjects, though Yuenyong Ophakul (Ad Carabao) helped write a couple of their songs and together Ad and Asanee wrote “Chiwit Samphan”, an environmentally themed “Do They Know It’s Christmas” style song performed by the top “songs for life” artists of the late 1980s. Also unlike Carabao, Asanee Wasan frequently sings songs written for them by others. Asanee has generally written the music for several songs on each album (for instance, he wrote the music for all three songs mentioned above), and he often arranges songs written by others. Wasan only occasionally takes a hand in the writing. The brothers do produce all their albums, and even songs written by others have their distinctive sound. Asanee, who is the elder of the two brothers, usually seems to be the dominant of the pair. He is extroverted and flashy in his performance style, and he sings lead on the majority of the duo’s songs. As noted, he also frequently takes a hand in the songwriting or arranging. Wasan, who is on the chubby side, wears glass, and seems more introverted than his brother, generally sings around two songs on each album, and these are usually ballads (though several of them have been among the duo’s biggest hits). However, it is worth noting that on the first of the two solo albums that Wasan has released has a song called “Loey Dam Loey” which is reminiscent of the rock style more associated with Asanee but was written by Wasan. The duo does this song on a concert DVD I have, and Wasan plays the really fast guitar solo from the song himself, proving that he is capable of matching his brother for flashy guitar playing.

15 Essential Recordings by Chuck Berry, the Grand Old Man of Rock and Roll

Last year became notorious for the number of prominent people in music and other fields who died in the course of the year. While this year has not yet equaled the pace set early last year, earlier this month saw the death of another music great, Chuck Berry, one of the pioneers of rock & roll, indeed some would argue the greatest one of all. Berry’s longevity was impressive; he was 90 years old when he died, having outlived many of the rock musicians he influenced. This was even more surprising when you consider that he wasn’t even all that young at the birth of rock and roll, having turned 30 in 1956, just when the new genre was taking America by storm. By comparison, Elvis Presley was only 21 in 1956, when he was having his first major label hits, and the Beatles had already broken up by the time any of them reached 30. Indeed, even many years ago it amazed me to think that Chuck Berry was still around when so many of his successors were not.

Of the first generation of rock and rollers, including Presley, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and more, Berry was perhaps the most representative of the sound of the new genre as it was born from a fusion of rhythm and blues with elements of country, and he was one of the few who wrote (or perhaps co-wrote, as I discuss below) all of his songs. His influence on the next generation of rock musicians was profound. The Rolling Stones were practically founded on a love of Chuck Berry, and John Lennon was quoted as saying “If you were going to give rock & roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.” Songs like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Johnny B. Goode” are all time classics that have been covered countless times, and Berry’s performing style was imitated by many later musicians. Berry himself was supposedly pretty difficult to work with and in later years his shows were apparently rather erratic in quality, but that doesn't negate his impressive accomplishments. Those of his admirers who dealt with him certainly felt that way; Keith Richards commented that while he found Berry difficult, he put up with the aggravation because of all he owed to Berry.

In a previous post, I talked about an album of Chuck Berry covers that I put together many years ago, including ELO’s masterful fusion of “Roll Over Beethoven” and Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the Beach Boys rewrite of “Sweet Little Sixteen” as “Surfin’ USA”, alongside covers by the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Emmylou Harris, Paul McCartney and more. This time I’m listing my choices as the fifteen most essential recordings by Chuck Berry himself. Aside from the obvious hits, I’ve included some of my favorites among his relatively obscure tracks. Berry’s one major downside as a songwriter was that a lot of his singles sounded quite similar; indeed he sometimes reused the same music (listen to “School Days” and “No Particular Place to Go” or “Johnny B. Goode” and “Let It Rock” for some examples). But he also did songs that sounded nothing like the hits, such as the ominous sounding “Downbound Train” and the tragicomic calypso song “Havana Moon”, both of which combine great lyrics with interesting music. He also did songs in the classic blues style, with “Wee Wee Hours” being the example I’ve included here. The later “You Never Can Tell”, best known today for its use in the film Pulp Fiction, also has a musical flavor that is distinct from his earlier hits. Perhaps Berry’s greatest strength in comparison with other early songwriters was his lyrics; only Jerry Leiber of the Leiber and Stoller songwriting team could match him in those days. Among my favorite Berry lyrics are “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and “Memphis, Tennessee” with its surprise twist at the end.

But as far as the music is concerned, though Berry is credited as sole composer on all his songs, there are a number of songs where that credit should be taken with a grain of salt. His breakout track, “Maybellene”, was based on the upbeat Bob Wills arrangement of the traditional song “Ida Red”, and his sole number one hit, the risqué novelty song “My Ding-a-Ling”, was originally written and recorded by Dave Bartholomew, who in turn took the melody from the 19th century song “Little Brown Jug” (Berry did substantially alter the lyrics and arrangement, but at most that should have be good for a co-writing credit). Finally, it’s possible that pianist Johnnie Johnson helped write the music for many of Berry’s songs, most of which he played on (in fact Berry’s career got started when Johnson recruited him to join a trio he was leading). As I wrote in my post on the autobiography of one of Berry’s biggest fans, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Richards “asked Johnson about how songs like ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘Little Queenie’ were written. Johnson said Berry would come in with all the words and then Johnson and the band would play a blues format with Johnson laying out the sequence. Richards’ reaction was hey, that means you co-wrote the songs. He goes on to note that he and the drummer went back and looked at Berry’s songs and realized that they were all in piano keys.” Johnson, who died in 2005 a few months short of his 81st birthday, sued Berry over the credits for many of the songs (including “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”) in 2000, but the case was dismissed because too much time had passed. Interestingly, one song Johnson himself said he didn’t even play on was “Johnny B. Goode”, which he said Berry had told him was a tribute to him (Johnnie Johnson), though it also had a lot of autobiographical elements about Berry himself. Regardless, Johnson’s role in the creation of Berry’s music should be remembered along with Berry himself.

Here, in order of release, is my list of essential Chuck Berry songs:

Maybellene (1955)
Wee Wee Hours (1955)
Downbound Train (1955)
Roll Over Beethoven (1956)
Brown Eyed Handsome Man (1956)
You Can’t Catch Me (1956)
Too Much Monkey Business (1956)
Havana Moon (1956)
School Days (1957)
Rock and Roll Music (1957)
Sweet Little Sixteen (1958)
Reelin’ and Rockin’ (1958)
Johnny B. Goode (1958)
Memphis, Tennessee (1959)
You Never Can Tell (1964)

A Selection of Superstar Beatles Covers

Cover songs are looked down upon in some circles. This is to some degree due to the immense success of artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who wrote the vast majority of their own songs, including all their major hit singles, setting a standard followed by rock bands and singer-songwriters since. Though of course there were quite a few performers who wrote some or all their own material before the Beatles era (Chuck Berry, for instance) and many songwriters performed on occasion (including greats like Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael), in the past it was quite normal for most singers to get their material from others. While this sometimes meant songs written particularly for them to sing, it was also common to perform songs that had already been recorded by others. Of course artists have continued to do this since Dylan and the Beatles, but the expectation had been created that the best, most genuinely creative singers and bands would come up with their own material. I'll admit to sharing this prejudice to some extent, in the sense that I am most impressed by artists who can both write good songs and perform them well. In part this is an interest in the creative side of music, so that I'm more inclined to focus on the writers of songs, whether we're talking Porter and the Gershwins from the early to mid 20th century, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in the 1950s and 1960s, or Randy Newman in more recent decades, than their performers. However, not every great performer can be or even needs to be a great songwriter. Whether we're talking Ella Fitzgerald or Elvis Presley, there's no denying that many people who didn't write any songs are still among the most important artists in popular music. For that matter, many capable songwriters enjoy performing others' material from time to time. The Beatles themselves did a lot of covers, especially in their early years (their powerful cover of "Twist and Shout" is just one example), and the individual Beatles continued to perform cover songs throughout their solo careers. Dylan also did covers from time to time, and even artists that never did any on their studio albums, such as Queen and Genesis, played them in concert. Indeed, a good cover can be as much of a work of art as an original song. Some cover versions manage to surpass the originals, even by substantial margins, though this is of course a subjective judgment, partly influenced by how we're exposed to the song in the first place (for example, people often tend to be partial to the version they hear first, though that can change after repeated exposure to another version).

Sometime I may attempt to draw up my own comprehensive list of great covers, but for today I'm just going to introduce a CD of Beatles covers I put together many years ago. It includes both some very well known covers of Beatle songs and some that are fairly obscure, though the artists doing them are generally quite well known. This was actually only one of three I made at the time, and even after three I hadn't come close to including all the interesting Beatles covers out there (some years after I made these CDs, I picked up a book entirely dedicated to Beatles covers, and even that book, which mentions hundreds of covers, doesn't include all of those in existence). I originally sent the CDs without any track listings to several members of my family to challenge them to identify the performers. They did pretty well, considering that even though all (or nearly all) the artists are fairly famous, not all of them were people you'd necessarily expect to have covered the Beatles, and it's not always easy to identify performers by voice alone. In any case, one of my goals was to show the great diversity of artists who have covered the Beatles, and the wide variety in interpretations that exist. I may post the track lists for the other two CDs in the future, but just this one has a lot of great stuff.

Can't Buy Me Love Ella Fitzgerald
A Hard Day's Night Billy Joel
Yesterday Marvin Gaye
Help Tina Turner
In My Life Crosby/Stills/Nash
Taxman Stevie Ray Vaughan
Eleanor Rigby Ray Charles
Tomorrow Never Knows Phil Collins
Penny Lane Sting
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Jimi Hendrix
With a Little Help From My Friends Joe Cocker
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds Elton John
The Fool on The Hill The Four Tops
Hey Jude The Temptations
Revolution Mike+The Mechanics
Obladi, Oblada Sting & Youssou N'Dour
Come Together Aerosmith
Across The Universe David Bowie

Theme Songs for the Incoming Administration of Deplorables

Since Don tRump (aka Pumpkin Hitler) has had such trouble finding acts willing to perform at his inauguration, I thought I’d go through my music collection and come up with some suitable music for him and his proposed cabinet of deplorables. Unfortunately, even the most ironically exaggerated of these songs could turn out to be scarily accurate if the worst tendencies of the incoming administration are left unrestrained. If they are to remain in the realm of satire rather than prophesy, it will take the collective efforts of all people of conscience and good sense.

Theme Songs for the New Administration

Political Science (Randy Newman) – Randy Newman himself commented that this song is “never out of date, unfortunately.” But this sort of ignorant, nationalistic jingoism is especially reminiscent of the attitudes of tRump and a number of those around him.

Deportee (Woody Guthrie/Martin Hoffman) – It was hearing a version of this song that inspired me to put together this list. Though it’s more than half a century old, its lyrics (which Guthrie originally wrote as a poem, inspired by a news report about a plane crash that killed several Americans and more than two dozen Mexicans who were being sent back to Mexico and who were not listed by name but just referred to as “deportees”) attack the same kind of dehumanization of undocumented immigrants that characterizes tRump and his followers. Of course we should also remember that Guthrie also wrote a set of lyrics titled “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home (Old Man Trump)” about his greedy, racist landlord Fred Trump – Donnie’s father.

Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Marvin Gaye) – This Marvin Gaye classic will unfortunately be an even more accurate depiction of the way we’ve polluted our environment if people like Scott Pruitt, tRump’s nominee for EPA director, get their way.

Pollution (Tom Lehrer) – Another good description of what even a few years of Republican dominance of government is likely to do to our environment. The line about what comes out of the taps is eerily close to what the people of Flint have had to put up with already, and that sort of thing will just get more common in the next few years.

Send the Marines (Tom Lehrer) – This would work as a theme song for a Defense Department headed by "Mad Dog" Mattis.

Murder by Numbers (Sting/Andy Summers) – While this song is more broadly targeted at all political leaders and the ease by which many of them give orders that lead to others’ deaths, it also is a scary reminder of what such power can become if wielded by someone unrestrained by conscience or empathy (neither of which tRump or many of his top nominees seem to have much of).

It's Money That Matters (Randy Newman) – A perfect fit for tRump and his cabinet of greedy billionaires, especially people like Mnuchin, DeVos, Tillerson and Ross, not to mention all the "coddle the wealthy" Republicans in Congress.

Trigger Happy (“Weird” Al Yankovic) – While Weird Al Yankovic, unlike Tom Lehrer or Randy Newman, rarely does songs with a political slant, this original song (a “style parody” of the Beach Boys) is the perfect theme song for all the gun nuts who will run rampant if the “guns everywhere” policies supported by tRump and the Republicans actually become law.

Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) (Roger Waters) – This grim portrait of a twisted education system seems rather fitting as a theme for what we might expect of education under Betsy DeVos, with her hostility to public schools and promotion of unregulated charter schools that “advance God’s Kingdom”.

Which Way to America (Vernon Reid) – This Living Colour song contrasts the America of the wealthy (and usually white) population and that of the poor (and often minority) population, the sort of inequality that will only get worse under tRump. Their “Cult of Personality” from the same album in some ways fits tRump, though I think of him as belonging to a slightly different category than leaders like Hitler or Stalin, whose evil was more calculated.

Subcity (Tracy Chapman) – A lot of Chapman's songs are about America's neglected underclass, but this song, with its lines about not being able to get any government relief and of course "Please give the President my honest regards/For disregarding me", is particularly appropriate considering the cuts to food stamps and other programs that can be expected from the Republicans.

Hammer to Fall (Brian May) – This apocalyptic Queen song seems fitting as a description of the sword of Damocles we’ll all be living under with tRump in charge. Queen’s “White Man” (also by May) would also be appropriate in reference to Standing Rock and similar disputes.

American Idiot (Armstrong/Dirnt/Cool) – This one is an obvious one, fitting for both tRump and those who voted him into office.

Putin (Randy Newman) – I only discovered this new Newman song today, but it's the perfect theme song for the guy who helped put tRump into office.

We Will All Go Together When We Go (Tom Lehrer) – Let’s just hope this one doesn’t turn out to be prophetic.

Update:
I'm Dreaming (Randy Newman) - I just ran across this song today, and I just had to add it. As a Randy Newman fan, I'm a bit embarrassed to have missed hearing this, since it apparently dates back to 2012. He seemingly wrote it in character (as he often does), in this case the character being an Obama-hating tea party type. As such, it makes the perfect theme song for the tRump voter.