Why Cry When You Can Dance? : “I Wanna Dance Wit Choo”: Disco Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes/ “Try To Remember/The Way We Were”: Gladys Knight and the Pips

“Nostalgia has always been a bit of a bunko scam.”  David Rakoff 

 The current situation has made people nostalgic, but what is it they are nostalgic for? This is the big question, perhaps too big for this modest blog. Is it the 1970s, a time of one actual/manufactured outrage and disaster after another? As a girl growing up in this time I have (for personal reasons that don’t really fit in here) very little nostalgia for this period, as so much of it was so monochrome and repetitive when it wasn’t disturbing and frightening. Yet even there, you can see how for so many anything distracting or weird or indeed nostalgic was attractive, even necessary.* 

“I Wanna Dance Wit Choo” was the second hit single for Bronx-born Sir Monti Rock III and his backing singers – including Four Season Bob Crewe and his writing pal Kenny Nolan, who both dug the disco scene and very much wanted to get involved. I could go into why disco was popular and the people who went to discos, but let’s just say at this point people were already starting to see disco was a ‘thing’ and they weren’t just male-only spaces as they had been before. At the same time, this is a camp single if there ever was one, (with Sir Monti sounding like David Johansen, ranting in English and Spanish**) and it can be heard as either very enthusiastic or kind of annoying, depending on how much you knew about the already outrageous public appearances of Monti Rock (who had been on tv regularly since the 60s, charming Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.) That said, Disco Tex and His Sex-o-lettes definitely made personal appearances in actual discos, telling people to open up, loosen up and have fun and dance - it's disco time, baby!*** 

While this single got to #2 on the Luxembourg chart, Disco Tex and his entourage were never going to stay around for long – one more album (Manhattan Millionaire – but of course) and he was off making movies and Crewe and Nolan had already written “Lady Marmalade” and “My Eyes Adored You” which have both fared much better over time than the kitschy, outspoken man from the Bronx. People remember (or they lazily let the radio/media remember for them) certain things, but not others. The 70s was a weird decade, and this being as decisively not played as other obscure #2s from this time shows how people want to look back, for sure, but not that much. 

Also getting to #2 on the Luxembourg chart, Gladys Knight and the Pips (though the Pips are taking a break here; it’s just Gladys) certainly know what nostalgia and looking back are really about. Knight mentions ‘the good ol’ days’ in a way that show that while she knows the pleasures and satisfactions of looking back, they are themselves a bit fatuous and she wonders if the children of the mid-70s will look back at this time – a time of real hardship in Harlem and all of NYC as it was declared bankrupt – if even this time will be recalled with aw-c’mon-it-was-great-really fondness. 

This is a live recording from the Apollo; Knight’s audience is not exactly looking back at the same world as those who heard this song in the context of its movie. The classic line about “what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget” (thank you, Alan and Marilyn Bergman) is true, but I know from my own experience that it’s a privilege to ‘choose’ to forget something. It’s far more common (for me) to have to be vigilant about not recalling things and being active in forgiving people in my past in order to move forwards. Let the past be the past. Knight knows people will talk about how much better things were, but she also knows it’s a folly, a way of avoiding dealing with the here and now. 

But people who are living in tough times want fun – and if nostalgia is a way out, they will take it. The 70s was in a way a long process of trying to escape from itself, done in part by trying to remember. Though again, what is being remembered? 

Up next: It’s not how you do it, it’s just that you do it. 

*Nostalgia for the 50s was at a high-tide point round about now, what with American Graffiti more or less begetting Happy Days. The 70s would go back even further in the next year or so. 

** His real name is Joseph Montanez Jr. 

***The Pet Shop Boys song “Electricity” directly mentions Disco Tex – sung from the point of view of perhaps Neil Tennant himself?

Remembering the Forgotten: Ralph McTell: "Streets of London"

We have now arrived at the end of 1974; we are about to enter the then to-some scary area known as 1975.  A time of big decisions and already there's a sense that whatever will become of this decade will be worked out now.  The Nixon era has already ended and the Vietnam War is drawing to a close.  In the UK there’s the growing sense of unease coupled with two events that are responses to that unease.  This unease continues to this day and in fact its crushing and terrible logic is attempting to be worked out even as I write this.  There is hope however; there is always hope....

 

"Streets of London" is the sort of song that sticks; McTell is not singing of any general sense of loneliness but about specific people and to a specific person - a friend of his who was a heroin addict.  It is the realistic loneliness that stands quite opposite to the song which kept it at #2, Mud's "Lonely This Christmas."  It is a gentle, near classical song with a touch of folk; country blues, even.  The power of it is the musical simplicity which acts as a welcoming warm hug of a frame around the four people depicted, all of them alone, all desolate.

McTell's voice is warm too, familiar, as opposed to the (at this point) recently departed Nick Drake, who was more unworldly and yes, seductive.  McTell is taking the listener by the hand into the streets of London, starting at the Surrey Street Market in Croydon (where he was raised), ending on the Thames by the Seaman's Mission with a veteran (WWI? WWII?) who has been cast aside, just as the bag lady and the T.S. Eliot/Beckettian figure who does nothing but drink tea all night to pass the time.  These are all people who are alive but whom society does not want to recognize, who are yesterday's news. The addict is gently shown those who are lost, in darkness, wandering and sadly friendless.  I would like to think that some heard this song and it opened their hearts, or as McTell wanted to do, changed their minds.  Not through preaching but through the powerful examples that especially at Christmastime are a reminder to look out for others and to be more considerate.  That is the real meaning of the season as it happens.

That it took three times, three different recordings, to make this song a hit shows how sometimes a song just has to appear at the right time (and in the right way) to make its impact.  It has become a standard folk song (recorded first in '69, produced by Gus Dudgeon) so much so that punk (ah yes punk - we'll get to that in enough time) band the Anti-Nowhere League did their own cover, with altered lyrics (mais oui) "Let me grab you by the hair and drag you through the streets of London, I'll show you something that'll really make you sick" was heartily approved of by McTell himself. The song is McTell's main legacy, one he has accepted as his gift to the world, even as he continues to write and record albums to this day.  Can the world change because of a song?  Can it have an impact beyond itself? The answer is, as always, with the listener.

 

Next up:  Lord have mercy!

I Met A Man Who Wasn't There: Lulu: "The Man Who Sold The World"

Or, the power of Bowie in the age of crisis.  Lulu attended one of Bowie's concerts, he invited her backstage and said he wanted to do a single with her; and so this happened (b-side is "Watch That Man").  Lulu had been through a lot by this time, including her Eurovision hit (a number two, as you'll recall) and an early and rather poignant marriage to Maurice Gibb, which was over by the time this was released.  So she is at something of a loose end - she has by this time also gone and done an album at the new studio Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, New Routes (following dutifully in the footsteps of La Springfield) and another called Melody Fair -  in Europe she was more or less a hit more in Germany than in the UK, where she was the pantomime star in Peter Pan.  Neither of her albums charted, but I can imagine Bowie wishing she would do something a bit more modern, and since at this time Bowie was the thing (Lulu thought he was "ubercool" herself), a cover version was obvious.

But this song?  Nothing about it is obvious.  Lulu herself didn't understand it but sang it anyway with a kind of toughness and raw quality that acts as a natural bridge between Bowie's version and the justifiably definitive one by Nirvana.  In this version, she is staring, masculine, unamused; this creep on the stair is making her nervous, sure, but her "gazely stare" is expectant, defiant, even.  The man (and she is dressed as a man) has sold the world, she laughs and shakes his hand, but then roams...someone died, didn't they?  Did millions die?  Death is part of life, and yet here death seems to become this man, somehow.  Or is this a kind of death-in-life?  "We never lost control" the song says, not ever saying who "we" are.  Lulu's controlled voice brings the song to life in a way that makes it sound as if the man really did sell the world, and now she is looking in the mirror somehow and seeing herself in that figure on the stair; as if a hidden part of herself has confronted her, and her assertions of control are all she has against this uncanny double.

 We die, we live, and yet do we know who we are?  Lulu's flat "Who knows?  Not me" are a solid wall here, and Bowie's saxophone lends it a kind of creepiness that makes this slightly reggaefied cover unnerving, which is presumably what Bowie wanted.  The pauses and echoes of the original are gone, all is centered on Lulu's voice - and does it alter the song, hearing a woman sing it?  Is this a woman meeting her male self, her repressed side?  Or is The Man here really The Man, content to let you think he's your friend, even though you've never really met him before?  There are puzzles within puzzles here, but Lulu was smart enough to let the song stand for itself, and it was a #2 hit on the Radio Luxembourg chart, where the loucheness of the song altogether was indeed welcome and modern.

Lulu is still an underrated singer and it would be most welcome if she could record a new album a la Petula Clark's Lost In You*; from what I could tell from the Commonwealth Games, she is still full of the genial toughness and eagerness to break new ground, even if all they wanted was her to sing "Shout" one more time.

Next up:  the (partial) invention of Radiohead. 

*It would be almost asking her too much to do this, wouldn't it?  And yet, I think it could work....
   

Onwards, Through The Fog

I thought I should pause for a moment to reflect on what has been happening recently with regards to the intersection of music, power and abuse of power. 

It has become increasingly difficult for me to write wholeheartedly about music in general because of Operation Yewtree – which, if you don’t know about it, is looking at the extensive abuses of the late DJ Jimmy Savile; the revelations of these abuses have caused others to come forward and for other prominent musicians/broadcasters to be called in for questioning.  It is a terrible thing to think of the ugliness and sleaze of the music industry extending to the BBC, but it has.  Paul Gambaccini*, for instance, has been off the air since October, awaiting legal proceedings; retired DJ Dave Lee Travis has been under a cloud of allegations.  Sports broadcaster Stuart Hall has been convicted and put in jail and will likely be there for life.  Musicians are part of this as well:   Rolf Harris has been brought in for questioning; Roy Harper has been too.   Ian Watkins of Lostprophets has pleaded guilty to things more hideous than what most of these men have been alleged to have done, but at the very, very least he has admitted guilt and is now in jail.  The Fog that I have been writing about has its heart here; and that is why writing has now become difficult.  I wish I could just write about the music, but in understanding the charts I have to understand the BBC.  I have reached the point where Gambaccini is working at the BBC, Travis & Savile are fixtures there and only his co-workers really know what Stuart Hall is up to, there in his room…

And it is really like a David Peace novel, save I am not a crime reporter but a mere music blogger, taking my magnifying glass to songs and sensing something toxic about them.  I think of how while it may be noble to write about these times, I am reopening things that should stay shut, not just for the good of you readers but for my own good.   When I think of the mid-70s I remember abuse, plainly, and when I look at the corresponding #2 song I wince – if I have the year right, and the time, and I think I do.  For me there is no going back to accuse my abuser or even naming him – I don’t remember his face, or much of his voice.  Just the notion that I was a thing to be “educated” and the non-cheering thought that if another girl had been outside that cloudy summer afternoon it would have been her, not me.  And as you’d expect, the gulf of experience between now and then means I only am in “now” or “then.”  As the 70s pull ever-closer into focus for me the further many of the #2s of the mid-70s become distant objects, ultimately irrelevant to my experiences as they were lived.  The mere action of looking back at this time does not do what it once did; far more vivid things come to the fore, demanding attention, and crucially almost none of this is helping me adjust to life in the UK.  

Nor does it help that the BBC’s most popular station, Radio 2, is meanly fixated (in part) on this very time.  I have difficulty listening to it now as what I want to hear – the new – is all but drowned out by the old, the creepy and outright awful.  This is, as far as I can tell, is to provide some odd layer of comfort to the listeners, a kind of cozy nostalgia.  Certainly none of it is played in an ironic or facetious manner.  It is – this terrible music – played straight, accepted straight, with no comment or fuss.   I sometimes think I am the only one who notices this, just as I notice that so many of the “love songs” played on R2 aren’t, in fact, love songs at all. 

 

Now, I could (and have) changed the station, but how absolutely wonderful would it be to actually change the station.  But I know that this would be difficult, as the ratings for these shows are so high, proving that the public is willing to listen to crap music and why would the embattled BBC want to lose even one listener?  I think (as Marcello so often says) they are actually terrified of that, but then what to make of the listeners themselves, the UK public at large?  Is this a station that actually exists (a leap here, but not a huge one I don’t think) for the broadcasters rather than the music?  Is what gets played ultimately meaningless?  And are the charts (therefore) also meaningless? In a place as small and dense as the UK, what a DJ plays matters, the charts matter, but what if those associated with charts and shows are…suspect?**

 

As you can see, dear reader, the whole music system closes in on itself here, the actual fans of music themselves – the girls – unable to see what is happening, due to fandom and naivete, until for far too many it was too late.  They may find some therapeutic purpose in writing about the mid-70s; for me it is a step into the past that makes things more complicated than even I had expected.  I like to think as a trained journalist that I can use some of my own personal experience to illuminate the wider scene, but the scene here is ugly, relentless, smug, self-denying…and that scene seeps into the charts, until they become one.  Any steely determination I might have is nearly crushed by that accumulative repulsion.  The rebroadcasting of TOTP on BBC4 shows just how elemental the BBC were to keeping fun and joy off the charts as best they could, the shows being labelled with the tags  “#nostalgiafail” and “#wrongness overload” and variants on twitter for two years now. Even the punk scene ends up as just part of the general scheme of things, alas; the BBC did not alter itself but stays staunchly middle-of-the-road, right in the thick of things where the status quo (no pun intended) remains what I would call “passive aggressive/neutral” – which is also where most abusers would classify themselves, I think.      

So how can I continue to write here?  The only way I can get through The Fog safely is to avoid writing about large chunks of it.  Not all of these songs are here because of The Fog – some I or Marcello have written about already – but I think by listing the ’74 ones you can see where I’m coming from.

“Angel Face” The Glitter Band (I have never heard this on UK radio, and while they are innocent it’s a case of guilt by association, alas.)

“Remember You’re A Womble” The Wombles (I had Woodsy The Owl and I don’t pollute – did The Wombles have the same effect at the time? Again, a question better answered by someone else.)

“Homely Girl” The Chi-Lites (Ugh, and this got in while Curtis Mayfield was sold in the wrong shops.)

“Don’t Stay Away Too Long” – Peters & Lee (who have been pretty much already written about on Then Play Long)

“Shang-a-lang” – Bay City Rollers (I strongly recommend Bye Bye Baby by Caroline Sullivan in all matters to do with the band and their Tartan Army; I was far too young to be part of it.)

“Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll” Showaddywaddy (I will be avoiding this band altogether.)

“Kissin’ In The Back Row Of The Movies” – The Drifters (Perhaps the center of The Fog musically at least, and I must emphasize how their 70s hits weren’t hits in the US.)

“Band On The Run” – Wings (already discussed on Then Play Long)

“Born With A Smile On My Face” – Stephanie De Sykes (I don’t think writing about this or any other soap-based hit will help me understand the UK any better.)

“Far Far Away” – Slade (They remain more than a little alien to me for some reason, so, no.)

“All Of Me Loves All Of You” – Bay City Rollers (see above)

“Killer Queen” – Queen (already discussed on Then Play Long)

“Wombling Merry Christmas” – The Wombles (Isn’t it odd how the ’73 Christmas hits have become standards while the ’74 ones have no lasting impact whatsoever; or maybe not.)

Take away those songs and there are still a few to write about from ’74, ones I can write about with enthusiasm and a strong belief that despite everything, good music does will (like truth) out.  The Fog is something to contend with, but in the next few years I will try to find all the signs of life and light. 

*I cannot comment on Gambaccini's situation directly as it has yet to be resolved one way or another; for someone who was such a fixture at the BBC (R2 had a whole week dedicated to his 40 years there) it may be that no matter what happens he may choose not to return to the station.

**Top of the Pops reruns now have to skip all episodes hosted by Savile and Travis; a whole tranche of shared culture has been denied the UK public, all because the BBC will not just edit their links out – a case of the BBC going too far to correct themselves when in the past they should have done so, but didn’t. 

Beware The Clown: Leo Sayer: "The Show Must Go On"

And so, dear reader, we come to the end of 1973; and here is the first hit of Leo Sayer's career, a song that is about...wanting to escape.  That he is a pierrot figure, a scary clown, adds to the unease of the song (as does the banjo somehow).  He has more than had it with the fat cats and their cigars and fancy cars (which reminds me of "Folsom Prison Blues") who are making him perform in front of an audience that wants his blood, that seemingly will not let him out of the theater alive.  He chose this life, he admits, but he has been used and abused, has broken all the rules; he is the misfit, the outsider, on the high wire precariously balanced between freedom and near death, it appears.  Must the show go on?  No, he says.  He won't let the show go on*.  Just how he is going to do this he doesn't say; that he has got down to this point, where he has been pushed and taken advantage of so many times that he has to say it, is the point.  (How many narratives are there from the early 70s of this kind - the lone person standing up and saying no?) 

Sayer's naturally anguished voice suits this song (a #2 on the Radio Luxembourg chart) - he wrote it with David Courtney, and it was produced by Courtney and Adam Faith, who may or may not have suggested the pierrot costume to Sayer as a way for him to stand out from the Glam Slam crowd.  (Just as Gilbert O'Sullivan had dressed as a school boy when he was first seen, for much the same reasons.)  In any case, the "masquerade" is seen as a sham - could that masquerade be the rock scene itself?  I think so.  And while that show went on, it largely continued in the world of albums, as opposed to the increasingly confusing and baffling world of the singles charts - singles which, as I will explain in the next entry, are getting more and more difficult for me to write about.

This song also stands as a kind of one-man strike anthem, a testament to anyone who feels they too have been used and have been wasting time, to make some kind of stand.  And so the three-day-week comes in, the lights dim and The Fog settles in for the foreseeable future.  Sayer won't have any of it, and being dressed as a scary clown emphasizes how he is the fool that speaks the truth, who feels compelled to do something, and it may well be something violent for all we know.  The Fog cometh; the creeping, surrounding, uneasy-making mid-70s are here, and Sayer's is the last voice of defiance before they begin.

Next up:  power, corruption and lies.

*When Three Dog Night covered this they changed the lyric to "the show must go on" which shows the fundamental difference between the UK and US mindsets.  Sayer wasn't too pleased, apparently, but that's American optimism for you, in the face of Watergate.

Irresistible: David Bowie: "Sorrow"

As 1973 draws to a close - there are only a few songs left (for this blog, in any case) to consider - the understandable and complex idea of going backwards to go forwards is coming into play.  David Bowie's understanding of this was to do an album of covers, as if to say, hmm, yeah, the 60s was my decade too, but it's the 70s now, and what is left of the 60s?  Surely the 70s are not going to be some endless rehash of the previous decade, are they?

"Sorrow" started its way towards Bowie rather modestly as the b-side of The McCoys' version of "Fever" - which brings the nigh-legendary figure of Rick Derringer into the MSBWT story, amongst other things.  It was The McCoys who did it first, and The Merseys (Tony Crane and Billy Kinsley, formerly of The Merseybeats) then covered it and had a hit with it in May 1966.  A line from the song appears in The Beatles' "It's All Too Much" ("with your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue").  The song (written by Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and future Blondie/The Go-Go's producer Richard Gottehrer) is a typical lament about a girl who is "acting funny" and who "never does" what she should (she plays "high class games" - are these the same ones that the woman in "It's All Over Now" plays, I wonder).  The song (an NME #2) is in two parts - the first, wherein he presumably leaves her because she brings nothing but, well, sorrow, and after the saxophone solo, where he is alone and missing her and her "OWNLEY" things - blond hair in particular.  He's unable to sleep, his mind wanders in the song as he tries to find her, unable to resist the pull of her, even if she's bad news for him. 

It is a low-key song, slightly nervous, as if the narrator acknowledges that the object of his desire is possibly "the devil's daughter" but that she has a pull on him that is hypnotic, languorous and will not let him be.  It's not like "Eloise" in its absolute high-pitch of romantic obsession - Bowie is trying to keep a lid on that, but it is as if, with the strings and his own delicate singing, that he is hooked on her sorrow, that he would rather be with her than with someone who was more conventional.  It could be that "Sorrow" is a song looking back at the 60s themselves - dangerous, fluctuating, self-important and utterly compelling - as something that can only be lamented, remembered and sought for, but never recovered.  Not entirely; not completely. 

The 60s are going to keep resonating as the 70s go on - in some parts of the UK the 60s only really begin to happen in the 70s; there is a time-lapse going on, a reluctance to move ahead.  But considering late '73, who wouldn't want the 60s all over again?  Bowie seems to be warning against such thinking, though, and his emotional distance here breaks down pretty quickly - he may be cold or cruel in other ones on the album, but this is a moment of reflection and loss; of wanting and ache.

Next up:  if it can't be shiny, it's dirty.        

Ooh My Soul: David Essex: "Rock On"

The drums beat like someone who is announcing their presence by rattling some candy in a box.  The space of the sound is huge; it seems as if the song is intimate and large at the same time, like the song is admitting that there is a lot of space, emptiness.  The bass beckons; it lets you know that something's up, that if you're willing to listen, then here it is...

...and here is David Essex's voice, a knowing call, a stamp of approval; it almost sounds as if he is talking to the past, that near past of rock 'n' roll that by 1973 was being revived everywhere, from King's Road to Hollywood, trying to get back to the primal moment when someone in a pub or bar or basement or living room said, enough, things have got to change*.  And along came rock 'n' roll to save the kids from being younger versions of their parents, of being pod people.  All the signifiers, as the French thinkers would call them, are here - James Dean, blue suede shoes, the girl in blue jeans who is the real queen - but though he is recalling all this, he knows that there is something wrong.  It is as if he is confronting The Fog as it happens, asking "And where do we go from here?  Which is the way that's clear?" Because the simple dream of liberation that rock 'n' roll presented is now muddy, tie-dyed, and way overdue for something, but what?  Essex (who wrote this song, a Luxembourg #2) may not know in the song besides the heroic call to "rock on" but the music tells a different story.  It slinks around, horns and strings appear and disappear, the Real Thing come in to reaffirm that the girl is indeed the prettiest girl, and all at a pace that is entirely more to do with dub or even avant garde music than what bands like Slade or Wizzard were doing at the time.  Producer Jeff Wayne and Essex wanted to make something new here, a song that pauses to ask just what on earth is rock 'n' roll for and what can it do?  And as Essex exhorts us all to rock on, there he is talking to the kid - the one with the radio under the pillow, perhaps - as the song's space increases and echoes, as if to say that there is space here for you, whoever you are.  Essex sounds as though he knows that yeah, being cool is good and everything, but there is something at stake here just besides watching old James Dean movies and looking for the girl.   I see him calling out to the faithful, the ones who still don't fit in, the ones who maybe were too young to know about Beatlemania firsthand, let alone psychedelic freak-outs, and maybe those who love Glam but can sense that spangly stomping isn't going to last.  The punches of quiet rock as hard as any guitar solos ("Jimmy Dean!" he calls out, as if to invoke him, bring him back to life) - is this the beginning of trip-hop?  Of "quiet is the new loud"?  This song takes rock 'n' roll and strips it back, not back to some kind of "authentic realness" but to the sense that it belongs to those who need it, the kids.  If The Carpenters wanted to go back in time, only to find that maybe it wasn't all that great, then Essex is saying that maybe it can be great in the future, sure, but in the meantime there's a lot of work to be done - "Rock on!" being as much a call to action as anything.  Persist and something will happen, spaces will appear, as dark and scary as things are getting (and with this you can hear the dreaded quiet of The Fog approaching, almost as a physical thing). 

The emphasis on rhythm here is important too - the song comes up from the floor, there is no guitar, just a rumble, as if to say, this is the future - bass and drums, the beat, too slow to be a heartbeat but something tangible, sensual even.  (Essex was a pin-up at the time and I can't ignore this, nor that this was included in the That'll Be The Day soundtrack.)  As things get tougher, the essence of rock 'n' roll will remain, will be remade, will once again surprise and delight, nod it's head and say "Rock on" like a morse code, go UP and Down at just the right moments.  It still stands as a call, a prophecy from here; and hip-hop begins, disco begins, the rhythms and beats and breathless pauses are all in here, in a song that can still be scary, a dare, a challenge - "Rock ON!"
 
Next up:  what happens after you do get satisfaction.


*The recent success Richard & Adam's The Impossible Dream shows that there is still a segment of the music-buying public that maybe thinks that rock 'n' roll is okay but has had its day ("rebel rock has had its day...it has") and now is the time to turn back to what came before.  I am not against this sort of thing if it is done well (pre-rock songs are pretty awesome, for the most part) but if it simply a recital or could be described in any way as "bonny wee" or "aw wee" and there isn't something a little...off about it (i.e. Neil Reid) , then that's not making it new.  That's vintagizing repetition and a living death.  "Rock On" is about keeping a hold on what has been and radically jumping into something new at the same time,

When I Was Young: The Carpenters: "Yesterday Once More"

It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes it does:  a single edit of a song definitively is the wrong way to hear the song:  "Yesterday Once More" is perfectly okay in its gosh-how-nice-to-hear-the-old-songs-on-the-radio way, but the full effect and meaning of the song come through in the album version, from The Carpenters' Now & Then from 1973.  Sure enough, the Carpenters did this song as they themselves liked hearing old songs, but the oldies medley - "Fun, Fun, Fun," "The End Of The World," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Deadman's Curve," "Johnny Angel," "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes," "Our Day Will Come" and "One Fine Day."  With scarily accurate Tony Peluso-imitates-a-DJ segues, it is more than a little eerie, especially if you grew up in Los Angeles, as Richard and Karen Carpenter did, as I did, on and off.  When Richard writes of their delight in hearing the old songs, I can't help but feel that as Baby Boomers they were part of a massive wave that was able to sit back and look at their youth fondly; but I can't also help but notice that there were plenty of reasons to look back.  The songs here are all from the early 60s, a time of optimism and youth and opportunity - a time before responsibility, before the draft, before the living room war, before anyone was assassinated, and certainly before Nixon and Watergate and this new thing, the oil crisis.  This is music from an idealized/idealizing time (American Graffiti was one of the biggest movies in the US in '73) and that nostalgia was shared in the UK, though for different reasons.  

From what I can tell, the liberation of the 60s didn't hit the UK until the 70s, but then so did the various burdens as well.  A lot of you, dear readers, experienced these things firsthand, and as the UK drifted into The Fog, various forces of that situation have to be picked apart, which is hard - as it is such an ugly time that walking into it is kind of scary, even now.  Now- there's an interesting word - starts to suffer as The Fog approaches, and nostalgia - a preference for the past, takes a certain hold.  This song is about preferring the past to the present ("And the good times that I had/Makes today seem rather sad, so much has changed") and about how the narrator would rather sing along/cry along to old songs, relive them as closely as possible, almost turn the radio into a time machine - than deal with the present.  

Perhaps it's just my own youth, but when I remember listening to the radio - something I did an awful lot of in the late 70s/80s, I cannot say that I want to relive those times, as such.  (A lot of the songs I remember fondly either don't get played, or the full version doesn't get played, or invariably I remember the 12" single that also doesn't get played, etc.)  The idea of being nostalgic for the 70s or 80s is a lamentable one to me, seeing as how miserable most of it was - not for me personally, but on a worldwide-global-nuclear-war-any-day-now way, which filtered down into a lot of anxiety and almost not taking music on too personally.  The songs The Carpenters have are all either good-natured or kind of creepy by turn, inherently early 60s in their sense of public fun and danger, the whole Cold War thing being turned into paranoia of a thousand eyes in the night, the broken heart being the real end of the world.  In a way it suggests that in previous apocalyptic times, the radio was the refuge; the safe place, before everything went wrong - or should I say, got much much worse - sadder, really. 

Here Karen* sings of songs that were hits when she was just eleven or twelve, and her alto voice of longing wishes to bring back those times, as bad as she knows they were, as they were at least preferable to now; and as far as I can tell so did many other Baby Boomers just hitting their 20s, faced with the unpleasant fact that the go-go 60s were definitely over and this new...thing called the 70s was unfortunately here to stay, and seemed to be getting worse every time you looked around.  So why not look back?  It's easy, it's comforting, and - I can't emphasize this enough - an awful lot of other people the same age were doing the exact same thing, making it a kind of rite of passage, if you will.  This song marks that time, a time when nostalgia was not quite yet being commodified (Happy Days was just around the corner though) and the thought of anyone ever being fashionably retro in an early 70s way would have seemed absurd** to say the least.  The Fog that overtakes the UK charts starts to form here, in a time when people spent way too much time looking back - not the Glam kids, no, but those a bit older, who remembered what once was and were feeling sadder, powerless even, the snap and joy of the 60s gone, replaced by a world that seemed colder, meaner, and so on.  Nostalgia always does well in times like those; it is thanks to the squeaky-clean oddness of The Carpenters that they forgive this sentiment and also, with the long medley, show how incrementally strange and gone the past really is, never to return.

Next up:  why look back when you can dance?

 

*How odd is it to note that Karen Carpenter and Suzi Quatro were about the same age?

**I can appreciate the term "retromania" but that implies a kind of joyous intensity that nostalgia, which verges on a listless, vague moroseness, suits this song much better.