Song for Don Draper

I admit it, I've finally caught the Mad Men bug. I've also found myself listening to this strange tune quite a bit. They pair up nicely, what with their surface glosses hiding all kinds of trouble. It's typical early-'60s girl group fare except for, uh, the lyrics.

It's hard to figure out exactly how to read this. Is she a masochist? Not just taking her socially-sanctioned licks for cheating, but eroticizing it as well? Is there a certain romance in the violence, a love meant just for you? A comfort in stability, even if it's cruel? Or is it just a hard chunk of subversiveness, casting the whole soon-to-be-toppled order as brutality wrapped in syrupy strings? I think Don would give it all a nervous smile. Not so for Grizzly Bear.

The Crystals - He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)

Total modal

A bunch of famous people have been dying lately. One not-so famous person who passed recently is George Russell, and I think he deserves a note or ten thousand in tribute. Songblague will do its humble part.

Sadly under-praised, Russell was one of jazz's great innovators, working up an approach to improvisation based on scales, rather than chords, and getting all crazy with the Lydian mode, which I admittedly don't understand as well as I'd like to. Anyway, he made a bunch of awesome records in that great early-to-mid '60s period, when jazz was discovering all kinds of cool things about itself, before getting carried away by its excesses. This cut's got energy with brains to match.

The George Russell Septet - The Stratus Seekers

(Aww man, I just read that Rashied Ali and Les Paul kicked off as well. What is going on here?!)