Gavin B.

Warehouse of Songs is a journal devoted to the songs that have stayed in my life over the years, even after I've played them relentlessly on my radio shows, at club gigs, on my home stereo and on my Zune MP3 player. Between my collection of vinyl albums, compact discs and MP3 files, I estimate that my collection music exceeds over 300,000 songs.

Of all those songs, only about 2000 to 3000 songs have been durable enough to become "perennials" in my music collection. Perennials are those songs that endure as favorites of mine year after year. If any song can withstand six months of the gratuitous non-stop play I give to my current favorite songs, then it is likely to be on my list of perennials.

Each journal post will be devoted to a single song and will include a short bio of the artist and the history of the song including whatever information I can find about the songwriter, session musicians and the producer. Since my musical taste runs the gamut of nearly every musical genre, I'm hoping there will be something for everyone in this journal.

Comments are encouraged even from those readers who think my taste in music is atrocious. I will probably do several daily posts during the first week of the blog to get the ball rolling and fall into a pattern of 3 to 5 posts a week once the journal begins to develop a reader response.

Janszoon

Looking forward to it Gavin!

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Trollheart

Yay! Another new journal! 2013 is off to a great start!
Welcome, Gavin! You shall be immortalised in this weekend's journal update post.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Gavin B.

Song Title:Waterloo Sunset
Recorded by The Kinks
Composed by Ray Davies
Released in 1967
Song first appeared on the album Something Else



I can't think of a better way to begin a journal of my favorite songs than selecting a Ray Davies song as my first journal entry. Ray Davies is the poet laureate of British pop. The Kinks, weren't as boldly innovative as the Beatles but Ray Davies was arguably a better songwriter than the Lennon/McCartney team. The Kinks carved out their own unique identity early in the British Invasion era by Ray Davies' wry humor and his talent for writing biting satirical songs about life in English society in the waning years of the British Empire.

Nothing was was sacred for Ray Davies... A Well Respected Man took a poke at the hypocrisy of the British middle class, Sunny Afternoon was a jab at the decadence of Britain's aristocratic class, Dedicated Follower of Fashion targeted the fashion icons of Carnaby Street and Victoria was a profane and rollicking condemnation of Queen Victoria and her imperialistic values.

Needless to say, most Americans didn't get it. Ray Davies songs were about the social injustices of the rigid English class system and the decline of the British empire, topics which most Americans were completely ignorant of.

To make matter worse, Kinks were banned from touring the United States for four years at the conclusion of their tour in the summer of 1965. No official reason for the ban was ever given but their drunken and rowdy onstage behavior offended many well connected people in the music business back then. The Kinks weren't lovable and cuddly teddy bears like the Beatles in their live performances. The Kinks were best selling rock stars in the UK but the Kinks never got a foothold in the lucrative American music market.

Waterloo Sunset is look at the more tender side of Ray Davies. It's so well written that upon first listening to it, the song already has a familiar ring to it. The lyrics of Waterloo Sunset such a graceful fit with the music it's about as close to perfect as a pop song can get. The somber mood of the music and Davies vocal is at odds with his claim that he "is in paradise" whenever he gazes at the sunset over Waterloo Station.

AMG called Waterloo Sunset the most beautiful song of the rock era. I agree with that assessment and still get teary eyed listening to it some 45 years after it's initial release.

The story behind Waterloo Sunset has been obsessed upon by Kinks fans for years. Davies' boyhood home on Muswell Hill had a view overlooking the Waterloo Station and the song may be a tribute to his fond childhood memory of watching the sun set over the Waterloo Station. But there's usually more going on in the subtext of Ray Davies' song lyrics than a simple act of story telling. There are layers of meanings in most of Davies' songs and Waterloo Sunset is probably no exception.

One interpretation: Ray Davies was a sickly child who spent several months in a London children's hospital facing the Waterloo Station & at one point Davies said the "Julie and Terry" in the song were his sister and her boyfriend. The idea for the song came from Davies observing the two young lovers from his hospital room window as they walked toward the Waterloo Station hand and hand after a visit with him. That may account for the melancholy mood of the song.

However Julie and Terry are not the names of Ray Davies' sister and her fiance, who she eventually married, but Davies did know a couple with the names of Julie and Terry... read on.

There's also an insider account that supposedly unmasks the hidden identity of the Julie and Terry characters in the song. Ray Davies was friends with actress Julie Christie and actor Terrance Stamp. At the time Waterloo Sunset was written, Christie and Stamp were having an extra marital relationship unknown to nearly everyone except a handful of close friends including Ray Davies. Waterloo Sunset may be Davies' own reflections on the Julie and Terry's doomed love affair which fell apart shortly before the release of Waterloo Sunset. Davies may have been cleverly naming the romantic couple but hiding their romantic tryst in plain sight within a song praising the beauty of the sunsets over Waterloo Station. It was years after the song was released that people began to the connect Julie Christie and Terrance Stamp to the romantic couple meeting on Friday nights at Waterloo Station as the sun set over London town.

Over the years Davies has changed his story on his source of inspiration for Waterloo Sunset and has insinuated that any of the stories may or may not be true.

Waterloo Sunset lyrics

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright
But I don't need no friends
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunsets fine

Terry meets Julie, waterloo station
Every friday night
But I am so lazy, don't want to wander
I stay at home at night
But I don't feel afraid
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunsets fine

Millions of people swarming like flies round Waterloo Underground
But Terry and Julie cross over the river
Where they feel safe and sound
And they don't need no friends
As long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset
They are in paradise

Waterloo sunsets fine

Gavin B.

Song Title: At Home He's A Tourist
Recorded by Gang of Four
Composed by Gang of Four
Released in 1979
Song first appeared as a 7" single release in the United States



The 1979 release of Gang of Four's first album was hugely anticipated event by punk music fans both in the UK and the USA. Even without an album release, the music press in the United States was abuzz with stories of Go4's explosive live shows in venues around the UK. The release of their first American single, At Home He's A Tourist, was a tantalizing preview of their groundbreaking album, Entertainment which was released later in 1979.

In 1979 there was no generic category called post-punk. It wasn't until the mid-1980s that music critics began using post-punk as a descriptor for the numerous punk influenced bands that emerged in the wake of the punk revolution of 1977, led by the Sex Pistols.

In hindsight, three albums released in 1979: Metal Box by Public Image Ltd.; Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division and Entertainment by Gang of Four were the trio of albums that were the foundation of post-punk music genre. Public Image, Gang of Four and Joy Division maintained the punk attitude of rebellion but their music went beyond the basic high decibel rock of punk and explored more exotic musical realms like dub music, reggae, funk, electronic music, and avant garde.

Gang of Four hailed from the northern town of Leeds and were students at Leeds University. Vocalist Jonathan King and guitarist Andy Gill were profoundly influenced by Situationist International a group of European Marxist internationalists who were one of the moving forces behind the Paris revolts of 1968, an event that created a full scale leadership crisis in the French government.

Gang of Four songs had anti-consumerist, anti-imperialist and feminist themes. Their music was loud,confrontational and powered by chugging funk rhythms and crashing dub effects. Andy Gill called his style of playing "anti-guitar." Gill developed a highly innovative technique of guitar playing using choppy, dissonant, atonal chord patterns which often erupted into squalls of feedback and crashing waves of echoing reverb.

The 1980 performance of At Home He's A Tourist at the Ritz in New York City, I've embedded below is a good example of their electrifying on-stage chemistry. I saw Gang of Four a half a dozen times between 1980 and 1992 and they remain the best live rock band I've ever heard. Gang of Four has periodically reunited to tour since their heyday and I'm told they're still capable of blowing the roof off the joint. 57 year old Andy Gill is talking about taking Gang of Four out for one last tour before retiring from touring.

At Home He's A Tourist lyrics

At home he feels like a tourist
At home he feels like a tourist
He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer
He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer

Down on the disco floor
They make their profits
From the things they sell
To help you cover
And the rubbers you hide
In your top left pocket

At home she's looking for interest
At home she's looking for interest
She said she was ambitious
So she accepts the process
She said she was ambitious
So she accepts the process

Down on the disco floor
They make their profits
From the things they sell
To help you cob off
And the rubbers you hide
In your top left pocket

Two steps forward
(Six steps back)
(Six steps back)
(Six steps back)
(Six steps back)

Small steps for him
(Big jump for me)
(Big jump for me)
(Big jump for me)
(Big jump for me)

Two steps forward
(Six steps back)
(Six steps back)
(Six steps back)
(Six steps back)

Small steps for him
(Big jump for me)
(Big jump for me)
(Big jump for me)
(Big jump for me)

At home she feels like a tourist
At home she feels like a tourist
She fills her head with culture
She gives herself an ulcer
Why make yourself so anxious?
You give yourself an ulcer

Gavin B.

Song Title: Cry Me A River
Recorded by Julie London
Composed by Arthur Hamilton
Released in 1955
First appeared on the album Julie Is My Name on the Liberty label



Julie London was sultry lounge singer with a deep smoky voice who was at the peak of her popularity for a 10 year period between 1955 & 1965. It's hard not to notice that Ms. London was a stunningly gorgeous, statuesque redhead and she became the epitome of female sexuality during the "Mad Men" era of Dwight Eisenhower, communist witch hunts and three Martini lunches.

Ms. London didn't have the vocal range of Ella Fitzgerald but she developed her own trademark singing style which was restrained and elegant. Her lingering vocal phrases created a mood of erotic tension that raised more than a few eyebrows... It was an era when squeaky clean, wholesome singers like Doris Day and Patti Page were the best selling female recording artists.

Julie London was a minimalist who preferred singing with a trio or a quartet. She generally avoided overblown string and brass arrangements and ensembles of chorus singers who frequently intruded on the simple beauty of song. Some the best performances of jazz vocalists in the Fifties and Sixties were marred by overdubbed string arrangements and insipid chorus singers.

Cry Me A River became Julie London's signature song and I've always been mesmerized by her effortless, almost lazy vocal in the song. It's the perfect kiss-off song. Julie's vocal style tells us she's cried a river over this guy in the past and she won't be bothered with making the effort to send him off with an emotional farewell.



Julie London's persona was the inspiration for the animated character, Jessica Rabbit, the curvaceous nightclub singer in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Jessica Rabbit was voiced by actress Kathleen Turner.




The composer of Cry Me a River was Arthur Hamilton who was primarily a soundtrack composer. Hamilton included Julie London's version of Cry Me a River in his soundtrack for the 1956 rock and roll film The Girl Can't Help It with Jayne Mansfield. Julie appears in the film singing the song, along with some historic film performances by first generation rockers like Little Richard, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran and Fats Domino. I first became intrigued with Julie London when I saw her hypnotic performance of Cry Me A River in The Girl Can't Help It.

Julie's vintage 1955 version of Cry Me a River has more recently appeared on the soundtrack of the 2005 cult movie V for Vendetta, starring Natalie Portman.


Cry Me A River lyrics

Now you say you're lonely,
You cry the whole night through.
Well you can cry me a river,
Cry me a river,
I cried a river over you.

Now you say you're sorry,
For being so untrue.
Well you can cry me a river,
Cry me a river,
I cried a river over you.

You drove me, nearly drove me,
Out of my head;
While you never she'd a tear.

Remember, I remember,
All that you said;
Told me love was too plebian,
Told me you were through with me

And Now you say you love me,
Well, just to prove you do,
Come on and cry me a river,
Cry me a river,

I cried a river over you x4

Gavin B.

Title: Wicked Game
Recorded by Heather Nova
Composer: Chris Isaak
Date of Release: August 30, 2005



For a fleeting moment in the 90's, Heather Nova was the darling of the indie pop world... but by the year 2000, Heather's choice of album material was uneven and she began missing the mark more often than hitting it, resulting in a loss of a good part of her audience.

Heather Nova's music was hard to fit into any neat musical category. As the 90s progressed she seemed torn between the choices of: 1) remaining a successful but marginalized indie rock star, 2) transforming herself into a mainstream pop diva or; 3) developing a new following within the growing audience for roots music. It's the same sort of self identity dilemma that has derailed Liz Phair's formerly promising musical career every since she released her uncompromising classic indie rock album, Exit in Guyville in 1993.

For the past decade, both Heather Nova's and Liz Phair's musical careers have been withering away in the limbo land of almost-famous, once-ago-promising alternative musicians. Since their own respective heydays in 90's, both Nova & Phair have been constantly falling one step sort of successfully reinventing themselves in a manner that will jump start their stalled musical careers.

By 2005, Nova's record label Sony International made the business decision to release her new album Red Bird in the UK only, which resulted further depletion of her diminishing fan base. It's unfortunate Red Bird was never released in the United States. It's probably the most consistent album of her career and has become a musical treasure to the small cult of fans who still love her music.

The track on Red Bird that is the most riveting is her gorgeous rendition of the Chris Isaak song Wicked Game. Wicked Game has been covered by a legion of artists since Isaak released it in 1989, but no version has come close to his original recording, except for Heather Nova's. With her operatic vocal range and smoldering passion, Heather Nova actually trumps Chris Isaak on his own signature song.

It's not only Nova's singing... I've listened to the Isaak & Nova versions back to back on several occasions and the session players on the Nova version play the backing track with far more finesse and elegance that Chris Isaak's band. I'm not dissing Chris Isaak but Heather Nova deserves to enjoy her moment in the sun for recording this sublime rendition of Wicked Game.

Gavin B.

A recent photo of notorious rock n' roll recluse Kevin Shields.
Is it just me or does Shields have a more than a passing resemblance to another guitar god, Jimmy Page?

Hey Kevin! What Took You So Long?

The 22 year wait for My Bloody Valentine's new album is over and most folks agree it was worth the wait. I hope the wait for the next album isn't two decades because I'll be too old, too deaf and probably dead and buried by then.

Three of the nine songs have more of a dream pop orientation than shoe gaze noise rock sound of Loveless. The embedded song below almost sounds like an outake from a mid 80s Cocteau Twins album.



Here's some of my observations on Kevin Shields unorthodox guitar playing and how he gets that thick, off kilter, liquid guitar sound that has become his trademark style over the years.

I've always thought that Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie and Kevin Shields have been mutually influenced by the other's style of guitar playing. In the early Eighties Robin Guthrie was the pioneering guitarist who introduced a radical new approach to guitar playing that used lush thick chords played through a digital sound processor to create an impressionistic palette of strange and beautiful guitar sounds.

In 1988 Kevin Shields raised the sonic sound bar up a few notches with the release of My Bloody Valentine's second album Isn't Anything . Isn't Anything overlooked album and it was a harbinger of their 1991 magnum opus, Loveless. Around the time when Isn't Anything was released, I heard the term shoegazing creep into the urban hipster vocabulary to describe MBV and a handful of like minded purveyors of dream pop. Three years later, in 1994, the shoegaze descriptor had became a standard genre category to describe a wide range of bands who usually played in downtempo or midtempo time signatures including: The Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Mazzy Star, Galaxie 500, Slowdive, Ride, & Low.

There's more than a touch of the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie in Kevin's studio obsessiveness. "In attitude toward sound, yes," Kevin once said. "But not in approach. The approach for me is very simple, minimal effects, whereas the Cocteau Twins is based on the idea of using effects as instruments. I think Robin Guthrie is quite good, by the way." Guthrie relied on studio overdubbing and pre-recorded loops in live shows to get that thickly layered guitar sound with the Cocteau Twins. He refined it later on in his solo albums.

Shield's guitar playing sounds like it's overlaid with dozens of overdubs but in reality Shields use very few overdubs.

The bigness of his guitar sound comes from the fact that Shields often plays in open tunings which leaves a lot of room to play odd variations of a chord. What people mistake as lots of guitar overdubs are just varied inversions of the chords. Those inverted chords along with Shield's use the tremolo arm (aka "whammy bar") on his guitar are a big part of his trademark wall of guitars sound.

The one effect Shields uses quite often is reverse reverb which he processes through on a Yamaha SPX90 digital processor. SPX90 inverts a normal reverb envelope without making the notes backwards.

Shields spends hours adjusting his guitar & amplifier settings prior to a gig or recording session. If you've ever seen him play live, you may have noticed he uses about 15 or 20 floor pedals to alter the tone of his guitar with his processor. Shields: "There are certain settings I use that, along with the way I have the tone of the guitar set up, create a totally melted sort of liquid sound."

The reason why so many people try bit ultimately fail to imitate Shield's guitar sound, is his esoteric ritual of setting up his guitar and amp sound is a trade secret known only to him. On top of that, most rock guitarists have been trained to play in standard tuning and playing in open chord tunings has only been mastered by a handful of rock guitarists like Shields, Guthrie and Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis.

It's a big challenge for a rock guitarist who's been trained to play guitar in standard tuning to drop everything to learn the art of playing in open tunings, which requires the mastery of a completely different skills set. It's like re-learning to play guitar all over again. When Jeff Beck decided to master jazz guitar in the early 70s, the skills set was so different, he said couldn't play any of his previous rock & roll material from the Yardbirds because of the demands of learning the jazz guitar discipline. Beck didn't play a single blues song or Yardbirds song during the four year incubation period when he reinvented his entire approach to guitar playing. My point is once you've become a fully developed guitarist in the standard E-G-A-D-B-E six string tuning, it's a daunting task to drop everything and relearn guitar playing in open chord tunings.

A few blues players like the late great Duane Allman, Johnny Winter and Butch Trucks play with equal proficiency in standard and open tuning, mostly because playing slide guitar in the old fashioned delta bottleneck style requires a mastery of open tunings. The most notable open tuning guitarists Ry Cooder, John Fahey and Joni Mitchell all have folk music backgrounds. Prior to emergence of Robin Guthrie & Kevin Shields, very few rock guitarists played in open tunings.

Keith Richard sometimes uses an eccentric five string open tuning (G-D-G-B-D) in which he removes the sixth string from a vintage 1953 Blonde Fender Telecaster he uses only for playing in his self taught variation of Open G tuning.

Shields' main instrument is a Fender Jazzmaster guitar known for the note bending capabilities of it's whammy bar. He sometimes uses a Fender Jaguar which is slightly different in tone and playing feel from the Jazzmaster.

Shields has an elaborate system of miking his amplifiers. When I saw him live, he had 2 Marshall JMC800 amps, one of which had a standard single amplifier microphone but the other half-stack of amps had about 9 microphones aimed at the amp from numerous angles. His final piece of equipment is the Yamaha SPX processor which he uses to create all of those strange processed guitar sounds like vibrato, reverb, reverse reverb, sound delays, pitch modulation, sound compression and echoing.

I once watched a MBV sound check & it's hard to tell exactly what Shields is up to when he sets up his equipment but he's completely hands-on and doesn't allow the sound person to set up anything. I don't think Shields is using this painstaking ritual of setting up to conceal his trade secrets... He's simply an uncompromising perfectionist who has to personally adjust each and every setting according to the size of the venue, wall/ceiling & floor acoustics, the varying angles of the stage perimeters and probably even for the precise room temperature of the venue.

Gavin B.

The Future of Rock & Roll?


Can the high voltage retro-rock band the Strypes live up to the hype?

The most talked about band without an album release is the Strypes, a quartet from Cavan Ireland who play rhythm and blues with the same passion and ferocity as the best of the British Invasion groups of the early Sixties. The band formed in 2011 and the oldest member of Strypes is a mere child of 16 years.

Sir Elton John was responsible for hooking the Strypes up with legendary music producer Chris Thomas who has also produced the Beatles' iconic White Album and the Sex Pistols' explosive debut album Never Mind the Bullocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.

The public anticipation of the Strypes' debut album hasn't been this fierce since pre-release hoopla surrounding the 2001 release of the Stroke's first album Is This It... which is a good or bad thing, depending on how much you like the Strokes.

Every year, there are one or two bands are hyped by music industry opinion makers as "the next big thing" in rock music but the "next big thing" only happens once in a generation. The Beatles, the Sex Pistols, and Nirvana were perhaps the only bands in rock & roll history who delivered on the hype of being dubbed as the next big transformational rock band. It's not very often that a zeitgeist rock band opens the hidden door and creates a brand new musical paradigm changes everything.

The Strypes sound like the Rolling Stones circa 1965-66, when the Stones were still playing undiluted R&B on albums like the Rolling Stones Now!, Out of Our Heads & December's Children. The Styrpes embrace a retrograde Carnaby Street mod fashion look, complete with suave art school student haircuts popularized by the Beatles and the Stones.

The true believers are proclaiming the Strypes as the future of rock and roll. . I'm a bit skeptical because I've only heard their cover versions of classic R&B songs, which are powerful but their entire British Invasion shtick is a bit derivative. I still have egg on my face for proclaiming the Hives as the future of rock & roll back in 1997 and since then I've stopped making pronouncements about "next big thing" bands.

I'll wait until their much anticipated album is released later in the spring to render a verdict. I actually got an email from the Stypes' singer Ross Farrelly following up on a YouTube comment I made. Farrelly promised that the spring debut will be almost all original material and completely different from numerous R&B cover songs they've posted on YouTube over the past year. He seemed like a nice young Irish lad.

The fact that Farrelly took the time to send me an email is astounding. Farrelly is the only musician who ever sent me an unsolicited email in response to one of my internet forum postings.

Embedded is the Strypes' high voltage rendition of the Bo Diddley classic, You Can't Judge a Book by It's Cover. Whadda ya think?

Gavin B.

Shingai Shoniwa of the Noisettes

The UK indie rock band the Noisettes have barely registered a blip on the radar screen in the United States but they're known to Brits from their extensive touring and television appearances. On August 5 2012, the Noisettes played to a huge audience in Hyde Park in Central London in celebration of their latest album Contact.

The front person for the Noisettes is Shingai Shoniwa, a British national of Zimbabwean descent. She's a talented vocalist and songwriter who has been compared to Chaka Kahn, Deborah Harry, Neneh Cherry, Polly Styrene, Santigold and loose-leaf binders full of other female vocalists. Rolling Stone bizarrely proclaimed, "Shoniwa is a living, breathing manifestation of the rock & roll spirit, with a voice that is equal parts Iggy Pop and Billie Holiday." Really?

In reality Shingai Shoniwa is like none of the above performers and her musical influences are so diverse, it's a challenge to place her or her music within any neatly defined category. The Noisettes are a record company's marketing nightmare because their music is a hybrid of styles.

On the song Scratch Your Name from their 2007 debut album, What's the Time Mr. Wolf?, the Noisettes play with the passion and fervor of a first generation female punk band like X-Ray Spex or Essential Logic.



Never Forget from the their 2009 album, Wild Young Hearts has more of a conventional R&B feel to it. It's a song that shares the musical territory as Sixties era blue eyed soul singers like Sandie Shaw, Dusty Springfield or Lulu.



That Girl from the Noisettes latest album, Contact (2012) is sounds like it's straight from the Brill Building songbook as performed by early Sixties girl groups like the Ronettes, the Chiffons and the Dixie Cups.