60 Songs That Saved My Life, Part 1

Bono curated an identically-titled playlist, and was good enough to say that my work on this blog had inspired it. Shortly thereafter, Larry Mullen, Jnr. asked me, under Bono's auspices, to curate a playlist with an identical theme. It's an honor and a pleasure to do just that herewith.

From A Jack To A King; Ned Miller: I was an intense, little kid (shrugs). This and Hank Williams's "Kaw Liga" would form the template for how country music should sound.

Help!; The Beatles: No kid should identify with this. John Lennon's first primal scream.

Down In The Boondocks; Billy Joe Royal: Yup. But, he could admit it.

I Never Loved A Man (The Way That I Love You); Aretha Franklin: Someone had gone through the same thing. SOMEONE HAD GONE THROUGH THE SAME THING!!! Wuthering Heights, way down home.

Easy For You To Say; Linda Ronstadt: The queen of "He done me wrong" claps back, and it is magnificent.

The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn; Emmylou Harris, feat. Ricky Skaggs: Her careworn emotionalism. His intricate harmonizing. If I couldn't sing like this, I knew I would die.

One Way Donkey Ride; Sandy Denny: Arrived in my life just as I was ready to admit these things were true.

Bury My Lovely; October Project; The critics who dismissed this were lucky they hadn't lived it. Finally, someone told the emotional truth.

Drowning Man; U2; A song and a savior that held me aloft in a dark time.

In God's Country; U2: I felt like they and I were the only ones who saw. No one else said a thing.

Oh, Yoko!; Without Nicky Hopkins' transcendent country boogie, this would have been just another silly love song. This painting with music was one of the most musical things Lennon ever did. Marks the first time I ever looked at album credits to find out who on God's green earth ...?

Awaiting On You All; George Harrison: George had found religion, and he pulled the rest of us into the circle to rejoice right along with him. What a rush!

Gold Dust Woman; Fleetwood Mac: Not rock, not pop. Bill Monroe would have called these the "ancient tones".

Come To Jesus; Mindy Smith: Where death of all kinds is simply something to get through, Mindy Smith suggests a companion. The song I needed after I lost the best friend I ever had.

Biko; Peter Gabriel: Be a witness, is all. Be a witness.

Charming; Jonatha Brooke: "No knowledge is too much to bear in the end"? Brooke lies with every word, and knowing that she's lying is the most comforting thing ever.

Cup Of Loneliness; George Jones: There's talking about it, and there's living it. Guess which one this is.

Ain't That Peculiar; Marvin Gaye: Just talking about it was enough to liberate you with gospel fervor.

Sin City; The Flying Burrito Brothers: A requiem for 1968.

Christine's Tune; The Flying Burrito Brothers: It's not misogyny if they're evil. Also, what Sneaky Pete Kleinow does with pedal steel should have been enshrined in some hall of fame or other, ages ago.

Worried About You; The Rolling Stones: The Black Hats transcended their publicity machine and, Lord, did we need it.

You Don't Have To Cry; Crosby, Stills, and Nash: The Woodstock Generation pauses for some grown-ass shit. Ouch!

Expecting To Fly; Buffalo Springfield: That feeling when they were planning their escape the minute they got there, but they were the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

Pretty Boy Floyd; Bob Dylan: The bite with which Dylan sings this would wake anybody up. At least, it should.

Pretty and High; The Roches: Forget "I Am Woman". This is feminism, unbound.

Down The Dream; Maggie and Terre Roche: Primed the pump for my Celtic music obsession. See also: Telephone Bill from the same record.

Today; Jefferson Airplane: #RelationshipReality. It's harder than you think.

Mandolin Wind; Rod Stewart: #RelationshipGoals. It's easier than you think.

Handbags and Gladrags; Rod Stewart: I don't know. That little girl may have needed a warning, but she deserved every bit of this chamber-folk sunshine. Some of the best work Stewart and composer/arranger Mike d'Abo ever did.

Debris; Faces: Ronnie Lane seemed always to be crying and laughing in equal measure, so it was left to Ian McLagan to do the crying on guitar and keyboards both. Some of the most unsung blue-eyed soul backup ever.

New Blog Name

I'm now Febrile Ohms.

Also, I'm using this site as an archive only now. I've been moving my posts over to Tumblr as the mood strikes me.

Find me there at Febrile Ohms and on Twitter @febrileihms for my latest musical mutterings.

Fleeting

Fairport Convention performs two songs in this clip. Somehow, I never get past the first to view the second. After reading this post, you may understand why.

Who on God's green earth decided that dying in battle is glorious? My guess would be that, while the Greeks invented this notion, the Romans perfected it.

When you force slaves to fight your battles, you can afford to lose a few ... thousand. When your country is small, you feel every loss more keenly. This, then, is a song about war. It has nothing to do with glory.

Somehow, it is appropriate that a song which reverberates with quotidian details should be memorialized in a clip that's chock full of them, a performance by men at the exact age for going off to war.

The joshing. Isn't that how it always starts when, deep down, the sheer terror of knowing you may not come back alive beats like a bass drum? Dave Swarbrick gets in a good one at Simon Nicol's expense and Nicol, in his three-piece suit, jacket discarded, gets a wee bit defensive as Dave Pegg looks on like a tolerant, older brother.

Nicol, whose self-deprecation charms without even trying, introduces the song, kicking it off with an electric dulcimer that makes a fine, droning substitute for Scottish bagpipes. Swarbrick sneaks a look at a folded page of lyrics in his hand. As Nicol sings the first verse, there's the dawning realization that something has already died:

I've heard them lilting
At our ewe-milking 
And I've heard them lilting
Before light o' day

Swarbrick cranes his neck to see that those high notes reach the mic. Pegg's droning, rock-solid bass mimics the electric hum of the dulcimer. The two of them join the chorus, in memoriam:

Now they are mourning
For all time lamenting
The flowers of the forest
Are all wede away

No, there's no glory here; not even in the battle. Nicol's recollection is dry to the point of being deadpan, with the barest hint of snark:

Where the English, by guile
For once won the day

Again, the chorus, followed by an instrumental break releasing all the emotion that the singers don't quite dare.

All three repeat the first verse in unison, soldiers marching into -- or out of -- a local tavern; or, maybe just marching home. 

Then, the chorus, rendered once more in heart-stopping, three-part harmony, accompanied by nothing more than cymbal hits, struck surely but sparsely, as though the drummer doesn't have the heart to keep the beat.

With the last, fading notes, Swarbrick shakes his head at the futility of it all. 

When it's over at last, Nicol slumps in his chair and sighs. Pegg, the stoic of the bunch, simply turns away.

Written in honor of the Scots killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, today, this song is most often played on Remembrance Day to commemorate those lost in World War I.

This is Fairport Convention with"Flowers of the Forest".

Country Manners

This was a huge crossover hit. Back then, that meant parents were listening to the same songs their kids were.

I've remarked elsewhere that vernacular music has a distinctly regional accent when it's performed by people of another country, and this is no exception. It seems that, in Canada, even their country music is polite.

Here's Anne Murray with her first U.S hit, "Snowbird".

So Many Questions

Friends have been trying to get me to listen to this song for days. I refused because I only knew one version, and I was never going to listen to that again.

Well, I finally went to YouTube, searched the site, and found I did not know the only extant version.

Fine, but I have questions.

Why do oldies stations refuse to play quality tracks from less popular artists, i.e. the deep cuts of the 50s through the 70s?

Why did music media bow slavishly before snotty, racist nouveau artistes when they should have been touting the shockingly superior originals?

I don't mean I'm shocked this is better; I mean I'm shocked that it's never been treated like an enduring classic, given how much better it is than the familiar, New Wave version.

I don't suppose I'll ever get answers, but I do have this: Sam and Dave with "I Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down".

Attenuated

The very first time I heard Eric Clapton, he was screaming. His band screamed right along with him.

That was "Layla". It was a sound I wanted more of. It is one of the songs that affects me today the same way it did when I first heard it, all those years ago.

Funny, that's the precise feeling Clapton talks about in this song, even though it could not be more opposite "Layla" in spirit.

This is Eric Clapton with "Rock and Roll Heart".

Merry Pranks For A Monday

Nothing going on here, just Georg Solti conducting the Wiener Philharmonic in a sparkling version of Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel".

About Yesterday

Riddle me this:

Who was ejected
For restaurant rage,
When he learned I'd escaped
My Twitter cage?

#MondayMonday

The Great Interpreter

There aren’t many live recordings of legendary singer/guitarist, Red Allen, available so I’m glad to see his recorded work on YouTube. Red was one of the greatest interpreters of songs in bluegrass, and this performance is no exception.

The album this comes from, Keep On Going: The Rebel and Melodeon Recordings is an essential compendium of his work. Bonus: It features the work of some stellar sidemen including fiddler, Scotty Stoneman and banjoist, Porter Church.

The song is “Hello City Limits”.

Harmonious

Of the brother duos so popular in the 1930s, The Monroe Brothers had speed. Bill and Earl Bollick, collectively known as The Blue Sky Boys, had beautiful, intricate harmonies like these.

This is “Happy Sunny Side Of Life”.

An Old Song, A Definitive Performance

Junior Sisk, solo, displaying the effortless vocal technique and pure mountain soul that inspired IBMA voters to name him Male Vocalist of the Year. This is an old song and often-covered, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone ever do it better. This is “He Died a Rounder At Twenty-One”.

Newgrass Does Trad Grass

NewGrass Revival, having a blast at Bean Blossom, 1972. Relative to much of what NGR did, this is a fairly traditional sound. Even so, they manage to sneak in some mighty rock riffs.

This is “Wild Hog”.

Hank Williams, High Lonesome Style

Maybe it's that high lonesome sound, but, for some reason, the songs of Hank Williams sound especially good when done in the bluegrass style. This one is no exception.

 Here are The Shenandoah Cut-ups in their gospel incarnation, The Shenandoah Valley Quartet, with “How Can You Refuse Him Now”.

Decorated Veterans

What did it take to sing tenor to Jimmy Martin?

When he left Bill Monroe for a solo career, Jimmy Martin had to answer that question with a tenor whose power equalled Monroe’s. Martin found the perfect foil in Paul Williams.

A few years ago, Williams got together with two other Martin alumni – Doyle Lawson (who plays guitar here), and banjo man, J.D Crowe. They’ve made a couple of well-received albums, but when they hit the stage, they blow the roof off the dump.

In this clip, they’re joined by Jason Barie on fiddle and Dale Perry on bass – both of whom were members of Lawson’s band, Quicksilver, at the time. And though everyone is in top form, it’s hard not to single out Crowe’s return to a more traditional, blues-based style (He has said he learned a lot from Fats Domino’s piano playing) for his work with this group. This is his best picking in years!

Here they are with Williams out in front, singing one of his signature numbers, “The Hills Of Roane County”.

A Medieval 70s Hit

Ah, 1972 – those were the days. An English folk band could record a medieval Christmas hymn and it would actually be a hit!

This is the mighty Steeleye Span, fronted by Maddy Prior (whose soprano is even better these days), with “Gaudete”.

Oh! Almost forgot: A loose translation of the lyrics.

Dear Uncouth: Help! I'm On Steroids

Dear Uncouth:

I'm addicted to steroids. Am I going to Hell?

Rock 'n' Rage

Dear Rock:

No, but you're sure enough putting the rest of us through it. So, you'll likely be brought up on charges when you get there. Get some help, son.

Rooting For You,

Un

A Simple Song Gets Complex With A Second Look

I love this song, but I was hard-pressed to say what's extraordinary about it until I listened -- really listened -- to the lyrics.

"I fell in love in Cincinnati," Steve Gulley sings, following with the standard tale of a naive young man falling prey to a citified gold-digger, and a chorus that you wouldn't write home about. The final verse goes like this:

I wish that I was in Kentucky
With mama, and papa dear
But mama's gone now, and so is papa
And Kentucky's a long way from here

And, all of a sudden, the chorus makes horrible sense:

It's a lonesome feeling when you're traveling
Down a lonesome road, down a lonesome road
Nobody cares a thing about you
It's a heavy load, it's a heavy load.

The lonesome road is the Hillbilly Highway, both literal and metaphorical, that Appalachian migrants took to escape the poverty at home for the jobs to be found in the wealthy, industrial north.

More than one bluegrass pioneer made this journey -- Bill Monroe, Red Allen, and The Osborne Brothers, among others. Like this song's protagonist, The Osborne Brothers journeyed from Kentucky to Ohio. Eventually, they found musical success. Without the family, culture, and institutions that had sustained them back home, they found their share of loneliness and isolation, too.

This is Steve Gulley, Dale Ann Bradley, and Debbie Gulley with "Lonesome Feeling".

It's Just Gossip

Ray Charles based "Leave My Woman Alone" on this melody. A few great artists covered it as is -- The Carter Family, The Golden Gate Quartet, Sister Rosetta Tharp, among others.

I chose this setting by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard because they include more of the verses, and the lyrics are crystal-clear. This is one case in which you want to know exactly what's being sung.

You don't hear this one much anymore. Too bad, because it's a one-way ticket to self-preservation, if nothing else. As for those Christians who would say that gossip is no more harmful than eating shrimp, well, they're the ones this song is talking about.

This is Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard with "Let That Liar Alone".

Bakersfield Roots

Country music doesn't get any better than this.

The hard luck, futility, even the sketchiness of the perennial down-and-outer come through loud and clear in the emotive harmonizing of Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam, two country giants -- one of whom helped shape the Bakersfield (California) sound in classic country music, the other of whom brought that sound back in the 1980s to listeners who had been starving for it.

Homer Joy's song is, of course, a classic. But this version is special because it captures the cross-cultural, working-class roots of the city itself, thanks to the addition of norteño legend Flaco Jimenez on accordion. A perfect country recording.

One Cool Guy

Nick Lowe is a whip-smart songwriter with the British penchant for bone-dry humor. He has great hair. And he used to be Johnny Cash’s son-in-law. I mean, how cool can one guy be?

Even worse for us geek types, he hasn’t slowed down a bit. With this song, he designs his own “12-Step Program (To Quit You, Baby)”.