Chris Stroffolino: May 28, 2006

Talk Talk Talk

There’s a song called “Elephant Talk” by King Crimson, which lampoons the talk industry. Then there was a band called Talk Talk.
Back in 1966, there was a great garage-rock hit single called “Talk Talk,” by The Music Machine, and I could talk and talk about talk and gossip about gossip and babble and bicker in my role as rock critic, but I think I love it more when musicians talk back, or fight amongst themselves, especially if it inspires them (us) to give more impassioned performances. If there’s a theme to this week’s top ten list, I guess this is as good as any.

1. Nick Cave, “There She Goes My Beautiful World.”
   A recent epitome of punk-folk piano. On the 2004 album,Abattoir Blues_,.
2. Neil Innes
   I wonder if anybody’s referred to him as the BritishChristopher Guest, for in many ways their ‘careers’ are strangely parallel. I discovered Innes first, through Monty Python, The Rutles and The Bonzo Dog Band. While Guest moved from the American version of Python, National Lampoon, especially his great parodies of James Taylor and Bob Dylan, before moving onto his own Rutles-like project, Spinal Tap, my anglophilia has always prefered Innes. Check out, for instance, one of his lesser known tracks, “A Background To History,” on Python’s Matching Tie And Handkerchief_. He played San Francisco this week, but I was playing crosstown at the same time.
3. Honor Roll, “Emotional Purgatory”
   This Virginia band from the late ‘80’s should be more known. Such songs as “Emotional Purgatory” and “So I Ran” are among the best articulate melodic punk rock that decade produced.
4. Paul McCartney, “Junior’s Farm/Sally G.”

   It amazes me how few people know of this double-sided single, which is among the best solo work McCartney ever produced. Released in 1974, not long after the critical success of Band On The Run, the A-side may very well be McCartney’s most rockin’ song. Here, his voice quavers with a passion that he only rarely achieves. The B-side, by contrast, is a fine example of country rock, which is also very believable (it doesn’t seem like he’s doing it just to master another genre). The songs perfectly compliment each other. If you’re skeptical about McCartney and WINGS, give these songs a shot.

5. Frank Zappa, “Camarillo Brillo”

   Zappa used sex the way many other rock stars used drugs. While many of his sex lyrics seem very adolescent, like a stand-up comedy album by Steve Martin, for instance, that wears thin after five or six listens, despite the brilliance of the musicianship (in contrast to the more authentically soulful weirdness of Captain BeefheartInnes), in “Camarillo Brillo” he transcends such limitations with a self-deprecating humor, as he presents himself as someone initially reluctant to walk into this woman’s room. Ultimately, he succumbs, which leads him to rhyme “she threw off her ragged poncho” with “we did it ‘til we were unconcho.” This song occured to me last week as I resisted
   a woman’s advances, because “actually I was very busy then.”

6. The Beth Lisick Ordeal,pass

   Though many more people may know of Beth Lisick through her writing, especially her recent New York Times Bestseller, Everybody Into The Pool, this currently out of print album, released by Dunord Recoding Company in 1998, is an excellent example of spoken word poetry
   over well crafted avant-jazz arrangements with Andrew Borger, David Cooper, and George Cremaschi (and a host of guest musicians). One could compare it to some of Zappa at his best, like if that monologue spoken by Suzie CreamcheeseInnes on Joe’s Garage (the one where she takes syllogistic reasoning about the relationship of love to beauty to truth to music to a absurdly transcendent level),
   was extended over 40 minutes (and during that time Ms. Creamcheese grew up to become a real woman rather than a mere male fantasy).

7. Matson Jones

   This Colorado band, led by twin female goth-dressed cellists, may at first seem like another gimmick band (as they’re setting up). But the second they start playing, all bets are off. Definitely one of the best new bands I’ve seen in the last two years.

8. Kenny Rogers And The First Edition, “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town”

   Though written in the 1950s about the Korean war, this version (released in 1969, during the height of the Vietnam War) is still the best of this song I’ve heard. Hard to believe that the man later known for such schlock as “You Decorated My Life,” pulled this off. It manages to straddle the cultural divide (anti-war, but pro-troop) even as it comes close to demonizing the woman for not waiting three months until he dies before she takes her love to town. Much more touching than another misogyonist, anti-war song from the same time (“American Woman,” by The Guess Who), the song brilliantly manipulates the heart strings as it builds to its lyrical climax, “If I could move, I’d get my gun and put her in the ground.” It’s a tragedy with similarities to Shakespeare’s “Othello” or “Hamlet” (as well as John Prine’s later “Sam Stone”)—but the sympathy is much more with the guy because, well, if he could move, he wouldn’t have to get his gun (because she wouldn’t want to leave him).

9. Runt, “We Gotta Get You A Woman.”

   Okay, I’m in an old school retro groove now! Like the Kenny Rogers song, this song also seems to have its share of misogyny. “They may be stupid but they sure are fun,” but Todd Rundgren’s brilliant lyrics to this song also turn on the speaker of this song. The guy’s acting like the know-it-all in love, offering his friend advice on women, but then sneaks in lines like “you say how, and I’ll say when” which foreshadows the song’s great punch line, “and when we’re through with you we’ll get me one too” copping to the fact that he
   doesn’t know much about women either! A post-Beatles pop masterpiece.

10. Emmett Rhodes, “Love Will Stone You.”

    After mentioning McCartney and Todd Rundgren, I have to mention Mr. Rhodes (of The Merry Go Round fame); he’s been getting a little more recognition lately, but often he’s still tagged with something like ‘a poor man’s McCartney,’ but since “Love Will Stone You” was he first song of his I heard (back around 1988 on Rick Allen’s
    late night freeformat show on WYSP in Philadelphia), I always heard something in Rhodes that I don’t generally hear in McCartney, a John Lennon-like passion and darkness. Rundgren and Alex Chilton, Eric Carmen and Badfinger have elements of this too, but Rhodes has suffered more from this unfair comparison.