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)
Monday, July 31, 2017
Friday, June 30, 2017
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
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.
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.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
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.
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.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
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)
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)
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
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
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
Thursday, January 19, 2017
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
