Straight swingin'

Funny how different ears hear music differently. Top shelf hard bop trumpeter Freddie Hubbard jumps out of the jazz crates into mid-'60s grooviness with this jam. To the non-jazz kids, this is infectiously swingin'. And yet you can hear the band practically straining to iron the swing out of the beat, like the curls out of their hair. No judgments, and certainly it's a hot one. Just funny, is all. And best enjoyed inside a tight turtleneck.

Freddie Hubbard — The Return Of The Prodigal Son

Are you sure we're getting away with this?

It's a bit sad that history has made the Hollies one of those bands that collector nerds have to keep championing. It just goes to remind that being hugely popular in your day is no guarantee that people will keep celebrating you tomorrow. Here's a song that could pass for an early Beatles classic. Also a lyrical reminder that vintage sugary pop also had more than a bit of sweaty teenage sleaze in its heart.

The Hollies — Games We Play

Year opens

Well, hello 2013. I must say, we're really in sci-fi territory here with a number like that. 2013 reads like a generic 'future' signifier from many a dystopian movie embedded in my subconscious. In light of that, I think we need to start things off with a wide-eyed (and heavy-lidded) paleo-futuristic jam from the late '60s. Fingers crossed that this may be the year of the trumpet space echo.

The Don Ellis Orchestra - Open Beauty

Visions

Ah, sweet unheralded psych pop magic. Bless the people at Rhino for their continued curatorial prowess. Pulled out this adjunct to the Nuggets series and was charmed anew by nearly every track. I couldn't share just one. 

I don't know what I like more about this first song — the easy grooviness or the fact that it came from a has-been rockabilly guy reconstructed for the psychedelic era. At this distance, quality wins over authenticity, and who really cares if this Baker Knight was cynically cashing in or having his mind blown? As for Kim Fowley's mini space adventure, I cannot bring myself to believe he wasn't laughing all through the session. In both tracks, I sense a wide-eyed wonder that may take several generations to recapture.

Baker Knight and The Knightmares - Hallucinations
Kim Fowley - Strangers From The Sky

You'll lose your mind and play

It's a rare song that hits on most of the hallmarks of psychedelic music without coming off like a parody. Pre-arena Pink Floyd were aces at that. And not just in long form. Syd Barrett could conjure musical visions from the outer (inner?) regions in the space of a tight pop song. Case in point...

Pink Floyd - See Emily Play

Like to sing about sunshine

Funny how even the more sensible of us fall victim to the fabled company party and all its ragged booziness. After near-disastrous phone disappearance and subsequent sleep-deprived, hungover recovery mission, I'm thinking it'll be easier to stay above the influence in the future. (My creaky bones nod in agreement.) Meanwhile, I'm thinking some ridiculously sunshiny tunes are a nice way to downshift from a manic couple of weeks. The Free Design sometimes strike me as a put-on, but there are some subtle dark vibes underneath the harmonies. Here are a couple tunes from both ends of their full-throated career.

The Free Design - Umbrellas

The Free Design - Like To Love

Smooth criminal

Been catching up on movies I should've watched in film class. Melville's Le Samourai is justly legendary for smooth n' icy French gangster chicness as personified by Alain Delon. There's nothing more I can really add to that piece of iconography, except to note how much I really do appreciate the minimal amount of speaking not just in the movie, but also in many parts of life. Which may mean that I'm putting myself in the wrong situations. Or that I'm getting crankier with time. But with 4 of 5 songs this week being instrumentals, I think it's that I'd just rather hear music most of the time. Including awesome soundtracks like this one.

François De Roubaix - Le Samourai

Are you coming home this year?

I admit I was a bit wary last night when I went to see Ray Davies perform some Kinks klassics with a full-on choir behind him. Turned out I had no reason to be. He was in remarkably un-haggard shape and full of good humor as he trotted out the hits and cult hits, many of which were lifted into happily rarefied airs with all those voices. I'm squarely with all the Village Green preservationists who appreciate Davies's late-'60s pastoral zigging when so many others were electrically zagging. Which fires up a desire to drop some dynamite forgotten tracks that give a little look into a version of the 1960s that never had the chance to get Behind The Music'ed. I'll probably be sticking with this theme through this short Thanksgiving week. Here's some very un-Kinks-ish music to start it off.

Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Intro
Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Mother Writes

You get used to an empty room

Forget about songwriting prowess, ragged charm, and the grace to almost never make a public fool of oneself over a 40 year career. It's rare for any man to achieve "women want to be with him and men want to be him" status. All the more impressive when his name seems to destine him for a career in Accounting.

Sometimes you have a day when you realize your life has drifted way too far from the exquisite poetry of a Leonard Cohen song. These are the times when such a song is necessary.

Leonard Cohen - Master Song

Baroque n' roll

Well, damn, Blogger seems to have re-asserted its usually invisible dominion over the SB space. Which is to say, "site maintenance" has not only delayed today's post, but seems to have deleted yesterday's altogether. Thanks much, Google. No one should have an excellent Yellow Magic Orchestra tune taken away from them, so I'll fix that when I get time.

Meanwhile, happy Friday the 13th. No ghoulishness from me though. Instead, how about a delectable slice of '60s pop. With jealousy-ridden lyrics to offset the succulent melodiousness.

Also, FYI, given transit and assorted commitments, probably no tune this coming Monday. Unless I rescue that YMO post.

The Left Banke - She May Call You Up Tonight

Atony toni toné

Thought I'd do a quick Itunes library search for a Yom Kippur-appropriate song. The "sorry" these Australian mods are talking about is the furthest thing from Judaic soul reflection, but it's a pretty hot listen, and that's what counts here. It's also miles away from late '80s R&B, but you know I can never resist a terrible pun. Sorry.

The Easybeats - Sorry

Be a jerk and go to work

Frank Zappa is so deeply woven into Songblague's DNA that it's easy to lose sight of the man himself. And then there's sheer scope of the his work, which you'd be well-advised to go research if you're not already familiar. Having spent some time plumbing the depths of the Zappa cult and the span of his cosmology, I'd be foolish to try to summarize the layers of appeal.

Of course, some tracks are more essential than others, and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" is an early masterpiece, far beyond just about anyone in the rock idiom circa 1967. Not that this is even rock music at all, what with reference points ranging from R&B to Varese-ian dissonance. The track lays bare the suppressed depravity of straight-laced, post-war America, ripped loose from the dark desk drawers of its elites, without enacting the caricature of middle-class, hippie pseudo-rebellion (Frank's stance on that was pretty brutal too, as we know). From a musical and technical standpoint, it's a stunner. Totally controlled and surreal. And yet, there's something of the bootstrap, lo-budget charm that he'd lose in later years.

Zappa would go to many fascinating places after this, but I don't think he was ever a more astute cultural observer or keen satirist. Oh, did I mention the music is effing sick too.

Frank Zappa - Brown Shoes Don't Make It

Supernatural intervention in the workplace

You spend all day twisting little muscles in a conference room. Your senses retreat, and the walls start to look like geological facts. And then a cavernous song comes to blast open the mental landscape and swell you with something that cannot be captured in headline or footnote.

Scott Walker - The Plague

Let's talk in bubbles

Looks like this week has become a little musical travelogue. Or at least a 5-day shutout of The Homeland. I know, very unpatriotic. So it goes. Let's finish it off with a stop in France. This one's a departure from Serge's usual brand of debonair sleze. It's actually a sweet picture of romance in comic book land. Of course, the music itself suggests a very non-PG-rated strip show. But hey, look who we're dealing with.

Serge Gainsbourg - Comic Strip

(And for a Friday bonus, enjoy this important 20th century moment.)

Byrds in hand

I first heard the Byrds in an episode of The Wonder Years. It was one of those scenes where Kevin experiences a life lesson to the tune of an overplayed '60s chestnut, "Turn, Turn, Turn" in that instance. While I knew there was something cheesy about it all, I was totally smitten with Roger McGuinn's 12-string sugar clusters. The harmonies were pretty sweet too.

Despite the earnest efforts of several friends, I just can't get into the countrified latter part of the band's life. But those first few albums deliver hooks aplenty, even if the lyrics are a little cringe-worthy. I think this one represents the culmination of that version of the band. Full frontal jangle, nice chords, and vox that work as music alone. Sounds like Peter Buck picked up everything he knows from this fab track.

The Byrds - Have You Seen Her Face?