Magic Moments in Recorded Sound, Part Two

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Lt’s go ahead and call this PART TWO of Magic Moments in Recorded Sound. To thine own self be true—and Blimpie sandwiches to the rest. 

PART THREE will follow. And PART FOUR. Beyond that? Well, we don’t know what is beyond that, my dudes. That depends a lot on my enthusiasm. And in some way your subscriptions. Folks, I always bring a change of clothes in case it gets messy. You may want to do the same. 

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“Savin’ My Semen for You”
Willie Nile

Stop me if you’ve heard this. Willie Nile is this wiry little dude who can work a crowd like all get-out. We did a few songwriter-in-the-round shows together out East and he kept me very much on my toes. One night as we were climbing on stage Willie turned to me and whispered in my ear, “I can bench press 400 pounds. You know that, right?” Then he picked up a 400-pound bench! (Don’t get Willie riled.) It was a blast. Willie played a song called “Savin’ All My Semen for You,” which Garth Brooks or one of those Hat Acts really should record. That would put Garth back on the map for sure. It’s a stone-cold smash. Oh well (sigh), what can I do? I should have been a country music producer.

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“Shake Your Money Maker”
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac (1968)

So yeah, I was at the library the other evening killing time. I was early to meet some friends for a meal in North Beach. Now when I say “library,” I mean City Lights. I picked a copy of I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone, the Jim Dickinson autobiography, off the shelf and read a few passages. Then I neatly put it back. I was like, I’ll get this later. As you do. 

“Shake Your Money Maker,” the Elmore James classic. We played this with Dickinson when we backed him for a few shows all those years ago. I wanted to be prepared when Jim came to town, so I really leaned in hard to get as close to learning the Elmore version, note for bent note, as I could. Hint: It’s in open G tuning. But Dickinson’s version was something else. Way more tricked out. He told me it was based on the Fleetwood Mac version. 

I said, “Oh really?”  

And he said, “Oh yeah, the Fleetwood Mac version smokes over Elmore’s.”

I’ve been meaning to seek it out.

(Note: There’s a live LP on New Rose out there if you can find it. Jim Dickinson with Chuck Prophet & The Creatures of Habit—A Thousand Footprints in the Sand—Live at Slims—June ’92.)

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“Do the Robot”
Tav Falco’s Panther Burns
The World We Knew (1987)

“A swamp fox up to his neck in funk.”

Musing along . . . a big influence on these essays, rhapsodic observations—or whatever you want to call them—is Tav Falco. Tav Falco’s Panther Burns put out an LP called The World We Knew back in 1987. Recorded by Roland Janes. Produced by Alex Chilton, featuring Rene Coman, Lorette Velvet and her Hellcats, George Reinecke, and a cast of what Dickinson used to refer to as “midtown mutants.” The inner gatefold sleeve featured liner notes from Tav. Late-night ruminations, descriptions, tone poems for each song. Plus his photography: black and white images of fortune tellers on motorbikes, dancers in the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta backroads, vintage revenge porn (a photo of what looks to be someone wrapped in cellophane getting spanked with a hairbrush). The weird, the poignant, the profound. 

And a mess of great songs too. “Ditch Diggin” (put your Sunday suit on and do some “Ditch Diggin”). Cordell Jackson’s “Stranded on a Dateless Night,” unrecorded Mac Rice songs like “Do the Robot.” “Pass the Hatchet” (let me chop it . . . C’mon now, pass the hatchet. Timber!) Tav is a genius song collector from way back: The World We Knew is chock full of ’em—a soundtrack for “gear heads and exhaust queens.” On Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues,” Tav writes: “The sound of a wagon and a mule dragging through the dirt.” Plus songs that found their way to the Panther Burns through “fragmented radio broadcasts beaming through the early morning fog of Avenue D in the East Village,” replete with “esoteric noir beats and unapproachable grooves” and “cryptic lyrics piercing the darkness.” 

A lot has happened since 1987. Last I heard Tav was a ballroom dance instructor in Vienna, Austria, these days. I hope so.

EDITORIAL UPDATE: Looky here: The University of Chicago Press recently put out a book of Tav’s photographs: An Iconography of Chance. Says here in the description: “All about crossroad meetings, glory and defeat . . . An exotic guide to the Deep South. Tav Falco is an explosive cocktail for those heading to the asylum.”

One of those beautiful clothbound books. Ooh, I want(!) Scrumptious.

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“Smokey Joe’s Café” (Live)
Loudon Wainwright III
Years in the Making (2018)

Loudon didn’t often play with a band. Rarely. Like never. But when he did, this completely unhinged rock and roller came out. His live take on this Lieber and Stoller classic sounds like it’s from one of those gigs where there’s no proper stage. I’m picturing the old Crepe Place in Santa Cruz where the bands just set up in the corner on the floor. No mics on the amps. Maybe a mic on the bass drum. That’s about it. Those gigs in actuality can be pretty hellish. Then again, I kind of miss that place. We had some massive nights there. Which only proves that, given enough time, I can romanticize anything. 

Come to think of it, we played one of those low-to-no-stage gigs like that in Yakima, WA, once. A girl fell face first onto the stage while we were playing. She got up, tripped over James’s pedal board, got up again, turned to James, and shouted over the music, “I can’t feel my teeth!” And then she ran out the front door into traffic.

That was a dog’s age ago, but occasionally when I ask James how he feels about a headphone mix, or his favorite Golden Girl, or his Panera sandwich, or whatever, he’ll say, “I can’t feel my teeth.” And it will make total sense to me. 

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“All That I Got Is You”
Ghostface Killer
Iron Man (1996)

“I saw life for what it’s really worth and took a step back.”

There’s people who can explain this better, but there’s some kind of formula or structure to most hip-hop tracks. There’s the 16 bar verses where the toaster gets a chance to “spit,” followed by a pre-chorus or “channel” into the chorus (repeat). Some of it’s bad. Some of it’s good. Some of it is breathtaking. Like this jam here. Ghost tells the truth. He’s playing it straight. Pretension is too easy. Straight is hard. Simple is hard. 

“15 of us in a three room apartment.
Sadly, Daddy left me at the age of six.
I didn’t know nuttin’ but Mommy neatly packed his shit.
She cried and Grandma held the family down.
I guess Mommy wasn’t strong enough, she just went down.”

I don’t suppose Ghostface is listed in the Rolling Stone poll of the 100 greatest songwriters. (I just checked. He’s not.) Lists make people stupid. (Except this list you’re now reading. This list will make you a better person, no two ways.) Ghostface doesn’t need a Songwriter Hall of Fame nod. He’s his own Hall of Fame. Ghostface for Senator. Supreme Court Justice Ghostface Killer has a nice ring to it. Get this country straightened out once and for all.

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“Red Moon”
Big Thief
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (2022)

THAT’S MY GRANDMA!

Adrianne Lenker, y’all! This was recorded in Tucson. And it’s magic. Nothing short of magic.

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“Storm Windows”
John Prine
Storm Windows (1980)

“I sit alone just looking at the world through a storm window.”

People get older and they talk about the weather. It happens. John Prine is still a young man here. But he’d always had an outlook on life that was wise beyond his years. How else could he come out of the gate with those songs? You know the ones: “Hello in There,” “Donald and Lydia,” “Angel from Montgomery.” Anything but overblown, he said more with fewer words and chords than anybody. 

Maybe he’s feeling his age here. He sounds lonesome, a little blue even, when he sings “storm window keep away the cold.” But what makes this song anything but a downer is the change-up pitch wherein “a country band that plays for keeps, play it so slow.” And you’re transported into that bar where the loud guitars electrify the air, women dance alone. Last call is a lifetime away. And everyone’s got a chance with anyone. And you split without signing your credit card slip and you don’t even care.  

“Don’t let your baby down.” Words to live by. Or you might wind up out in the cold. 

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My in-laws kept an eye on the weather with their TV meteorologist of choice, Dallas Rains. Dallas is the big chief meteorologist for ABC7 Eyewitness News. Everyone is a rock star these days. Executives. Parole officers. Even telemarketers who would never dream of throwing a TV out a hotel window are rock stars now. Rockstar is a sticky soft drink of a buzzword now, along with jargon like “above my paygrade” or “single bullet theory.” Thrown out there so much it’s lost all meaning. It’s as meaningless as those American flags in front yards throughout the South that I see from the window of my Econoline. But when a meteorologist stands in those high winds with a microphone, it’s like they’re on stage. They are rock stars. And rock stars don’t care about money or Ph.D.’s, affordable lightbulbs, or the price of tea in Koreatown. These rock stars are deep into seismic patterns and barometric pressures. 

And sure, when I’m in a hotel room I’ll leave The Weather Channel on. Weather updates keep me in the loop. Because when you’re on the road, you’re out of whatever loop there is. The Weather Channel keeps me informed. And when there’s nothing to talk about on The Weather Channel, they’ve got their rotation of oldies they can trot out. A greatest hits of natural disasters, floods, and hurricanes. Always reminding you that things could be a lot worse.

We don’t have storm windows in California. But I did live in Cleveland for a few years as a child. That first winter it snowed like mad in that rented house off Euclid. We were California people. So long ago, even my parents were kids. The snow! We’d never seen anything like it. I think my father actually said, “God put it there, God will take it away.” My mom was embarrassed when a neighbor couldn’t take it anymore and broke down and shoveled our sidewalk. 

This might be my favorite John Prine song. But really, my favorite Prine song is generally the one I’m in the middle of listening to.

I’ll bet John Prine was no stranger to a snow shovel. He seemed like a good guy.

It’s the same thing everywhere.

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“It’s Expensive Being Poor”
T.V. Smith
Generation Y (1998)

Poverty isn’t healthy. There are no stores in the TL selling actual food. Oh, 27 flavors of pork rinds? Well, sure. Poverty isn’t healthy. Food deserts are a harsh enough reality. Throw in stressful, dangerous, shitty jobs, SROs, and Emergency Room health care and it all takes its toll. For folks in the suburbs with their Costco memberships, a can of soda is like 25 cents. For the folks in the hood? A vending machine charges $1.75. It’s expensive being poor. That’s what the man said.

I heart T.V. Smith. He makes no excuses. He’s a true punk rock troubadour. From what I’ve heard, he’s got a scruffy backing band at the ready stashed in every corner of the globe. I’ve met some of the guys that are his Spanish backing band. Guys like T.V. Smith are our teachers. T.V. stays fit. And along with Wreckless Eric, he’s one of those guys that came out of the Punk Rock Class of ’77 who still has something to say and is making great relevant art. 

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Entire playlist here.

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Onward,

    -CP