The Best of Carly Simon, Elektra, 1975

Somehow I never realized that Carly Simon’s greatest hits are 40 minutes of unrelentingly cynical disappointment about love and long-term romance. I love it. One reason I hadn’t listened much was the ketchup commercial, and another was her being married to James Taylor. ‘The Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frostin’ is not an honest description of driving in bad weather. That probably wasn’t fair to hold against her, and they are long divorced, so there’s nothing holding me back. In That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be, she says of older married people: Their children hate them, they hate each other, they hate themselves. ‘Silent rooms, tearful nights, angry dawn’—that’s poetry. In The Right Thing to Do, so long as you stay, loving you is right. In Mockingbird, all the gifts to express love might fail. In Legend in Your Own Time, her lover started early by disappointing his mama. In I Haven’t Got Time for the Pain, she lays in on so thick I think she’s trying to kid herself: ‘Open up and drink in the white light pouring down from heaven.’ In Anticipation, these are the good old days for the simple reason that it’s all downhill from here. In (We Have) No Secrets, Simon agrees with Bob Seger: Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.

In I Am a Rock, Paul Simon urges us to avoid entanglements. Carly Simon sounds more like Muhammad Ali looking back at long career of engagement.

Official Music, King Biscuit Boy with Crowbar, Paramount Records, 1970

I bought this used in 2010 because in 1975 I knew a guy who loved King Biscuit Boy. As he heard about King Biscuit Time and King Biscuit Flower Hour, he trimmed the facts to fit with what he knew about King Biscuit Boy. This record isn’t much good if you’ve heard Sonny Boy Williamson, say. However, as I wrote this review, I found that the record is adjacent to some great stuff. For example, Crowbar was Ronnie Hawkins’s band in the late 1960s. One day he fired them all (saying those boys could eff up a crowbar in 15 seconds, giving the band its name as a parting gift), which is the same career path as The Band. King Biscuit Time is the longest-running daily American radio broadcast show, gracing the airwaves since November 21, 1941. Just about all the great blues performers have been on it. Levon Helm (drummer and singer for The Band) said it inspired his career. King Biscuit Flower Hour (a great name, I think) was a weekly rock and roll radio show for 20 years. As Cheap Trick put it, everything works if you let it. My goal is to get everything to touch.

Brave New World, Steve Miller Band, Capitol Records, 1969

I bought this record used because it had a song I liked—Space Cowboy—and the band had a dozen hits. Space Cowboy is still okay, but the rest of the record isn’t, even the cut with Paul McCartney fooling with Steve Miller. It has some redeeming moments: a call to ‘turn on your love light, let it shine on me’ (the first of the playthrough) and it combines two tropes in an amusing way—I went to see the doctor/to have my fortune read.  It even has a phrase no other record has—prayers and surveyors. But it isn’t very good.

Vol. 2, Big Mama Thornton, Arhoolie, 1967

Such a strange record. My other Big Mama Thornton records emphasize that she made a hit of ‘Houn’ Dog’ before Elvis Presley did, that he wanted to sound like her, that she is the godmother of rock and roll. I see how that helps a blues singer sell records to rock and roll fans. She does a great version of Wade in the Water, for example, that could be a rock song. On this record, though, about half of her songs are hymns—the fountain will never run dry/I never have to cry/I never will die/because I know the sun keeps shining/Jesus take my hand. In another song, she’s headed for the pearly gates, St. Peter gonna lead her. I understand that her faith was an important part of her life and she wanted to sing about it.

But the other half of the songs include Bumble Bee (sort of a companion song to Muddy Waters wishing his honey bee would bring her sweetness back to him) that says ‘you stung me this morning/I’ve been looking for you all day long.’  I never expected to hear Big Mama say ‘your stinger as long as my right arm/you had me to the good place.’

I am puzzled by Black Rat. She says she’ll hide her shoe close to her man’s shirttail.  I’ve heard threats to put one’s boot up another’s rear end—never heard a woman say it though. Then I thought, shirttails are in the front as well as the back. She could be threatening to kick him in the crotch as hard as she can. The next verse is obscure—I took you downtown/pay your doctor bill/Now I’m in a little bit of trouble/tryin to get me killed. I guess St. Peter can handle ambivalence.

This Arhoolie record is the best-made I’ve played. Sixty years old, there’s no surface noise and the instruments are all crisp.

Chicago Fire, Son Seals, Alligator Records, 1980

I hadn’t noticed that the songs on this record are not happy. Buzzard Luck is a phrase I like to use: can’t kill nothing, and won’t nothing die. I’m Not Tired asks for the chance to prove his love (after years of being by her side). Leaving Home has ‘I’m broke, ragged, and disgusted.’ The landlord comes to the door to say, Son, you gotta pay up or move out. In Gentleman from the Windy City he’s putting on his best outfit while thinking he may be coming home in a VW. In Goodbye Little Girl, Seals says he used to be her funny clown, someone she liked having him around. In Crying Time Again, as he smokes two or three packs of cigarettes and drinks a bottle of gin, the sun goes down and his baby is leaving again. In Nobody Wants a Loser, he says ‘I’m an alcoholic, and sometimes I regret it, especially when the liquor store won’t give me no more credit.’ Seals did have a tough life.

The song titles and credits on the back cover are in light blue reversed out of black, as we used to say in the communications biz. They are a headache waiting to happen. When I spent too much time on my computer, I’d switch WordPerfect to colors like that to make sure I would log off soon.

Stavin’ Chain Blues, Big Joe Williams and J.D. Short, Delmark Records, 1965

I’ve had this record for more than 50 years, and I am no closer to understanding the lyrics to Stavin’ Chain Blues now than then. J.D. Short sings it—too bad for me, I can understand everything Big Joe Williams sings. I could tell it was sex or violence (or maybe both). After more than an hour in YouTube, I can say Short’s version is about violence, most of the other versions are about all kinds of sex. One site claimed to know, having Alan Lomax as a source. Lomax knew this Stavin’ Chain character that Jelly Roll Morton sang about was Wilson Jones, a blues musician that Lomax photographed and recorded in 1934. Stavin’ Chain was a pimp. But there isn’t a song I can find that says that. An illustration of Stavin’ Chain has a drawing of a black man in prison stripes, but no details. One version I found quickly said “my heart is full of pain/they got me down with a stavin’ chain.” It was easy to understand but no sex. There must be 25 versions along the line of ‘you can’t ride my train, I’m the chief engineer, and I’m gonna run it just like Stavin’ Chain.’ Train songs in that context are sex. Mance Lipscomb says he’s winin’ boy (frequently teamed with Stavin’ Chain). He had mamma on the porch doing the double twist. Janis Joplin, who showed up on that search, had ‘mamma down on the levee doing the double twist.’ After all that, I’m sure it’s about sex. Sorry I can’t be more specific. Some singers turned it into an almost generic dirty song. [If Stavin’ Chain couldn’t find a woman, he would find his fist.]  I’m pretty sure Short says Stavin’ Chain went to prison for killing a woman; upon his release, he went back for killing a man.

The Temptations Sing Smokey, Gordy Records, released 1965 (reissued 1968)

This was the second Temptations album when first released. It was reissued in 1968; that’s the version I have. It has three hits on it, pretty good for a second album—The Way You Do the Things You Do, It’s Growing, and My Girl, which Wikipedia calls the Temptations’ signature song. I say The Way You Do the Things You Do outshines it on this record. You can see for yourself.

John Sinclair, 82, died

That’s evidence that smoking marijuana every day for over 60 years doesn’t kill you. I’m disappointed that there’s only spotty coverage of his death in the mainstream media I follow (looking at you, New York Times). Any outfit that reported Wayne Kramer’s death two months ago should have as big a splash for Sinclair. He managed the MC5 for a while, after all. He had a vision of a society based on rock and roll, dope, and sex in the streets. He called for a communal, classless, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, anti-racist culture of liberation. (He gave up on politics when he realized that middle-class kids only wanted the marijuana.) He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the late ‘60s for giving two joints to an undercover cop (the way I remember it, she had pestered him for it). Michigan changed the law so that possession of a small amount of dope was a misdemeanor with a one-year max. He was released a few days later. He was later arrested for conspiring to blow up a CIA office. He beat that charge because Nixon’s Department of Justice had ignored the Constitution as it collected the evidence. He is the godfather of decriminalized dope. Barefoot Jerry is on YouTube doing Tokin’ Ticket, but I can’t bring myself to link to such a lame song. Better you should play some MC5 loud.

Natural Boogie, Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers, Alligator Records, 1974

The liner notes on this record tell you what you’re getting—this band plays blues, but it’s happy music too. The notes continue by saying this is one of the tightest, happiest boogie and blues bands in the country. That’s a good description. It’s basic three-note boogie with slide guitar.  Hound Dog Taylor played at the Memorial Day cookout behind my dorm in 1972. I was one of dozens drinking too much and dancing till we dropped. When I played the record this time, I was thrilled to hear Taylor sing ‘Sadie’ with finesse and meaning I had never noticed. When he asks ‘Sadie, will you come back home tonight,” he sounds hurt that she left. “What you want your man to do”—he’s asking because he wants to know how to do it right. “I don’t love no one else but you”—he’s making his case. It’s a wonderful love song.

About the accuracy of lyrics on the web—I only found two of his songs. One was Roll Your Moneymaker. What’s online is ‘Well my mind only chance/I won’t be here at all.’ That’s gibberish. What I heard made sense—’Well, if my mind don’t change/I won’t be here at all.’

953 West [Belmont], Siegel-Schwall Band, Wooden Nickel Records, 1973

That was the address of the Quiet Knight nightclub where Siegel-Schwall played many times. This was the band’s seventh record of ten, so if it seems to be uneven, I suppose they knew it and liked it that way. They seemed to have fun when they recorded this. I love I Think It Was the Wine, as in ‘It may have been the greasy pizza, but I think it was the wine.’ It’s another song that equates all wine with fortified wine and fighting. ‘I never hit anyone with a 2 X 4 before last night,’ Jim Schwall sang. ‘My daddy said a couple of beers are okay/but that wine is just no good.’ Denver must have been a special place—Bob Seger did Get Out of Denver, Canned Heat did a song that criticized the police in Denver, and this record had a song about a young woman’s leaving her parents’ house in Chicago for Denver without saying goodbye. They were the only blues band I know of who recorded some material on Deutsche Grammophon.

The record cover has a drawing of the Belmont L stop and a poem by Eddie Balchowsky, a Chicago poet, artist, composer, and certified character. His Wikipedia entry has a clunker in it, saying he went to Spain in the mid-1930s to fight for Communism. The way most people put it is that leftists of various sorts, including socialists and anarchists, fought to defend the Spanish Republic from the Nationalists.