High Expectations: Wings: "Hi Hi Hi/C Moon"

When I think of Paul McCartney, I tend to remember two things first:  both of them immediate and heartfelt reactions.  One was during the Oscars back in '02 when he was performing the title song of Vanilla Sky and a friend yelled at the tv set, in exasperation, "You used to be a BEATLE!"

The other reaction was from my best friend, Gemma, who was taken by her then boyfriend around 1990 to see McCartney in concert.  Her review was mixed, at best; she didn't (and still doesn't) hate the man per se, but the show went on for so very long, and it was fine when he was doing Beatles songs...but his own...

In the 70s people had the right to expect the same levels of genius from the now ex-Beatles as they did when they were still a group; that they all devolved into their constituent parts is one of those letdowns the 70s were so very, very good at.  Lennon cut his losses, as such, by just stopping altogether in 1975; no one expected much from Ringo and thus he didn't make out all that badly; and George kept going, though more and more of his attention was towards making movies, namely in helping to produce them, than trying to have hit singles.

McCartney though, on evidence, really needed to keep himself busy churning out single after single; he was, according to Dellio and Woods, "a Top Forty automaton, a three-minute warlord in an LP combat zone, a human jukebox run amok."  From what I gather in Fab by Howard Sounes, McCartney is the kind of musician who most definitely needs someone who could talk back to him, or else what he would record would be, to put it kindly, not very good.  A George Martin or Lennon to say "No."  McCartney sadly didn't have this in Wings (Denny Laine?  Linda*?  Anyone else?) and thus he would do songs like this one, a song Sounes calls, frankly, "stupid**."  I can only agree, and note that it only did well in the UK as it was banned for clearly being about drugs.  (It is here as it got to #2 on the Radio Luxembourg chart.)  McCartney had recently had a problem with the law about pot plants found on his Scottish farm; and this rockin' tune man is a "So what, I'm still Paul MF McCartney, suck it" sort of reaction that probably sounded like a good idea at the time***, but has no more impact than pushing over an outhouse while someone's in it and running away.  Our Macca, I can hear his fans say, no one tells him what to do!

That it was a hit shows how many adolescents sympathized with him, wanted to own a sh-sh banned single, and maybe how this mild nyah-nyahing was easier to absorb into pop culture than tougher songs which were sold in the wrong shops.  In McCartney's view, it was another hit, proof (sad proof, I'd say) that the public were perfectly happy with the post-Beatle letdown, or that maybe they didn't think they had that right to genius after all.  If "Hi Hi Hi" is bad, then "C Moon" is the kind of genial inanity that he does very well; a kind of reggae-ish love song that lilts and glides along, the sort of thing I imagine McCartney can do in his sleep, practically.  It was played on the BBC instead of the a-side (which was played on Luxembourg); both of these songs have, as far as I can tell, fallen into The Void, which is rare for McCartney but understandable; his big ballad "My Love" came next, followed by the crazed (and Martin-produced) "Live And Let Die."  Those were both songs I'm sure Gemma heard back in the day, and songs he likely still performs; "Hi Hi Hi" is the kind of song that quietly was shelved once the counterculture 70s were gone, and McCartney had grown up.  A little...

I will return to Wings in the fullness of time, with a song that by them that I actually like, believe it or not.   

Next up:  gossip girl.


*Is it just me or was it somehow mean for Paul to make Linda join the band?  Did he really feel so embattled by the end of The Beatles that he needed his wife to be there in the studio with him? 

**Get you ready for my polygon" is enough to make me say "Block that metaphor!"

***I know I don't need to say it, but once you're on drugs so many, many things do seem like good ideas; seem is the key word here.

A Tasty Geezer: The Piglets: "Johnny Reggae"

When I was sixteen or so, I read my first Bronte novel; it was, inevitably, Wuthering Heights.  The edition I (and all my fellow students at White Oaks) had wasn’t the Penguin edition but the US one, bought at the start of the year in the office where they sold books in high school.  It looked like this.  The reason I mention it isn’t because I liked the novel (I struggled with Joseph’s dialect and had to work at the novel’s structure, even though a convenient family tree was part of the introduction) but because of what was said about the author.  Especially what her sister, Charlotte, said about her* : “Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone.”  Well, I thought, that’s an odd thing to say about someone who has written something so complex; but Emily’s general stoical nature (I seem to remember, but can’t find, something about her removing a nail or tooth or some such thing from her skin with utter calm) appealed to me.  And so did the instruction of Patrick Bronte, to Mrs. Gaskell, on her writing about Charlotte – “No quailing, no drawing back!”

And so it is with this blog – some might want me to draw back from writing about certain people, certain songs, and while a few – a very few – I am avoiding for my own sanity, the rest I can and will write about.  Indeed, I would be cheating myself if I skipped anything, especially since the very things that some might object to I didn’t hear in the US; and they are part of UK pop culture, whether UK pop culture is willing to admit this, or not.  Some might object to my writing about Jonathan King – in this case, about his smash hit “Johnny Reggae” (an NME #2) – and some others just might feel a little…uneasy.  All things considered, I can understand that; to this day, I have noticed, for instance, that chart shows (radio shows that go through charts of the past – Pick of the Pops, Double Top Twenty, etc.) always conveniently swerve around or contrive to avoid King’s works; I am not sure if this is a legal matter, a matter of taste, or something of the two combined.  As a man with a criminal past – of a sexual nature – I am not sure if the radio silence is some odd kind of shunning, a continuing punishment. 

We are in the depths of something here, dear readers, that goes beyond the Void and into some kind of re-writing of history, as if songs like “Johnny Reggae” never happened in the first place, where the industry that King thrived in for a long time suddenly turned on him, in a way that looks a bit scapegoatish to me.  That he did time for terrible things is well-known; but then Phil Spector and Joe Meek’s productions still get played, and they both murdered someone, something far worse than what King did.  To an outsider like me, this is unfair; something like an aesthetic as well as a legal judgement has been wrought. 

This UK quailing and drawing back from what actually happened, what lots of people actually bought and danced to – because hey, I’m sure this was played at a lot of parties at the time – is a shame; this is a fine song, King’s foray into reggae, with one girl telling another about her fine fine boy, and how she’s so into him, and vice versa.  It’s just suggestive enough to be real, detailed enough so that you too can imagine how handsome and cool the guy is.  Not for one minute is it trying to be real reggae (the girls have Cockney accents) and if it was deemed a novelty at the time, well, it was a popular one, one written and produced by King, who had already had hit (“Everyone’s Gone To The Moon” from ‘65), named the band Genesis and helped them with their first album, and otherwise was one of the stars of King’s College in Cambridge in the mid-60s (along with fellow students at the time Nick Drake and Ian MacDonald; I’m not sure if they knew each other though)**.  King thus covers a lot of ground here, from prog rock to bubblegum, a man who could sense a trend or geist and get a hit – such as this one – with a kind of irreverence balanced with an actual understanding and love for pop. 

But the UK media has swept all this away under its figurative carpet; and so in the mosaic that is 70s pop, there are bits and pieces missing, because it cannot, for whatever reason, separate the person from their works, observe Larkin’s Law, and understand its past.  That sweeping has removed this song from pop currency, for all intents and purposes; and as a lot of you well know, this is not the first time I will have to deal with music that is unplayed, unknown by anyone under 40 or so, in this blog.  As uneasy as I know it will be for some, I will be trying to understand the 70s and how they were, and in this case how the UK deals, or doesn't, with those who have done their time and are all but outcasts, who were famous in the 70s and beyond and how they are seen (or rather not seen, not to mention not heard) now. 

Next up:  and so the legacy begins.  

            

*I realize that what Charlotte wrote might be an exaggerated or romanticized view of Emily’s character, but at sixteen I had no idea about this.

*This recent interview with King provides a lot of information on his conviction, the murkiness of the law, and how he sees himself - as a man who did bad things, but not nearly as much as what he has been accused to doing. 

You Can't Play That On The BBC part 3: The Troggs: "I Can't Control Myself"

"AAAwwwwOOOOOOOHHHHHHH NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screams Reg Presley, as if he is doing something he likes maybe a little bit too much and also maybe has done something wrong.

But it's not his fault!

This man is on fire, after all, and possesses (or is possessed by, more accurately) something way beyond anything he's experienced before. Unlike "Wild Thing" where he bosses the girl around, here she is an idol, a figure with naked hips and long hair and a way of breaking him down until he's helpless, swamped by a fervor so big it could "move a nation" (whatever thatmeans). In such a state he of course is going to scream and the bubblegum "ba bas" are like so much background noise to his passion. He is swamped by something he can't control (and this loss of control is fun, of course, as long as she's faithful) and if only she knew how it felt, her hair would curl. Well! He may be ridiculous to others but what the hell does he (or should he) care?

I can't say this is the beginnings of ye olde punk rock*, but I can't say this band (beloved of Lester Bangs, mais oui) isn't getting back to the basics even as the baroque and (shh-it's just starting now) psychedelic modes are beginning to take hold of the more famous bands. The Troggs knew where their bread could be buttered, so to speak, and it wasn't in anything that would take long to write or record. Mutant energies were working elsewhere; here the thudding bass and hapless howls are enough to make sure that rock 'n' roll stayed just as degenerate and disrespectable as it should be. His scream of pure pleasure at the end is miles away from anything normal radio would play. I wonder if it will return?

Next: more uncontrollable behavior, believe it or not.



*Chrissie Hynde dedicated this to Sid Vicious at the Pretenders' first gig; before the concert she found out he had died.

You Can't Play That On The BBC part 2: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich: "Bend It!"

In the midst of all this it's important to remember that we are still in the Age of Meek, though the man himself was entangled in a lawsuit and increasingly (understandably) anguished over many things, he was still writing and producing songs. Not hits; Edinburgh's own The Buzz's epic "You're Holding Me Down" should have been a monster freakbeat hit of the first order, but it was just too much for The Man (talk about a song only playable on pirate radio). Meek was a producer who had his own technique and sound, stubborn, unable to just simply record a band and have a "live, off the floor" vibe that was the hallmark of others (The Who songs at this time all sound like they were recorded as is in a broom closet, for instance.)

How I wish I could say that this song was a Meek production, but songwriting team Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley (who had had success with Meek with this song, one so compressed it sounds like a singing baseball bat) had no luck with the band (then called Dave Dee and the Bostons) as Meek wanted them to play slowly, then speed them up on tape; the band just knew how to play the songs they had one way, and that was that - Meek stormed upstairs, and the band schlepped their equipment back down the stairs. Howard and Blaikley then not only were their songwriters and managers, but producers too. Part of Meek's anguish must have been knowing how successful they were, while his own songs were busy getting nowhere.

If The Who introduced gender confusion to pop, well, here comes DDDBM&T with something so utterly blatant that I am surprised anyone played it...but a cheery bit of "Zorba's Dance" makes this playful and you just know girls loved Dave Dee*, the sort of guy who could sing this with a smile and enjoy its campness without being camp himself in the least. It got played because it was naughty (so naughty that they had to re-record it with different lyrics for the US) and the fact that it was written by a gay songwriting team...did not seem to matter. (DDDBM&T's first chart hit was called "You Make It Move" - no kidding.) The slow-building excitement, the clapping, the insinuating melody - it's like a Greek dance meeting a late-night Blow Up-style freakout wherein everyone is having a good time and anything could happen afterwards, to the point beyond just flirting and dancing. This impending shagfest rave-up was too much for the BBC (who only played The Honeycombs after they had reached the Top 20), who still are reluctant to play it. It may seem embarrassing now, I suppose, but such insistent and scrunching rhythms were exactly what the grannies in Arboath/Iowa didn't approve of, bless them. Pop always needs a WTF song of one kind or another, and while this is the strangest of the bunch of '66, it is by far the last...

Alas, this is the only time I get to write about these colorful, winking and theatrical men (Howard & Blaikley and DDDBM&T) - Meek was growing ever more morbid, trying to record ghosts in graveyards...just as the 60s were at their most vivid and alive, just as the strangeness began to creep in, around the edges...things were only barely in check.


*Dave Dee was a policeman before he formed a band; he was called out to help at the crash that killed Eddie Cochran and injured Gene Vincent, a moment that may well have transferred some of Cochran's rebellious spirit into Dee. Who knows? I am sure Meek would have understood, and maybe even envied him for it.

How Great I Art: Tony Martin: "Walk Hand In Hand"

It is rare, dear readers, that my opinion of a song is a negative one. I will always try to find some redeeming factor in the mess, some future salvation, even. But this song makes that task a hard one.

Why? Is it because of the horns, the large choir of "awe," the general sense that Martin took this song as no one else wanted it? Hmm, in part, but only in part. There is a reason the BBC banned this, and it has nada to do with standard 50s boilerplate singing or production. It is the lyrics.

"Walk hand in hand with me/Through all eternity/Have faith, believe in me, give me your hand."

"Love is a symphony/Of perfect harmony/When lovers such as we/Walk hand in hand."

"Be not afraid for I am with you all the while/So lift your head up high and look towards the sky."

"Walk hand in hand with me/God is our destiny/No greater love could be/Walk hand in hand, walk with me."

Unless you are a nun (in which case, hey! Welcome to MSBWT, and no offense to you, ma'am) this is an icky song, to say the least. There are certain topics - religion being one of them - that are best avoided in what could be called 'mixed' company; at large family gatherings, work, the bus stop, etc. Music most likely (as I understand it) came out of religious rites and languages, and the lyrics from before the Greeks up to the 50s usually were that of men and women singing in praise/fear/hope of their creator. (If I am wrong about this, I'd be very happy to hear about it.) No one but no one presumed to know what the creator would sing to them, let alone how to suggest his/her/its majesty and power.

But the 50s was a time when all kinds of lyrical boundaries were being stretched if not broken altogether, and the lyricist here thought he had a fine idea in somehow comparing a couple in love walking hand in hand to the creator's general attitude towards us mortal creatures. WRONG. Like I said, only a nun (who "marries" Jesus, in effect) could hear this and get all gooey-eyed. Does God really want to take us on a date? (Does God have a crush on me? as the teen girl magazine might ask, with a handy quiz to figure out the answer.) "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands" says one song, and yet here this unfathomably large hand is holding yours - a rather awkward situation, at best. I'm sorry, but to paraphrase a play: Your Voice Too Short To Sing Like You're God.

(Alert readers may notice this was a number two single just before "Hound Dog"; I will soon be catching up with the story of the number twos in proper order, while at the same time introducing a profound and unpredictable man. Sorry for the delay in posting this but I am nearly settled in London!)