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I saw Follies last Thursday (review to come), and now, what, four days later, I can't help but think that one of our modern follies is Disaster Panic, that damned-if-you do damned-if-you-don't state of mind where you prepare for the absolute worst and then get peeved when it doesn't happen. The movie analogy for this state of mind is perfectly expressed in the following exchange from Philadelphia Story, where Tracy Lord, who thinks she got drunk and did the dirty deed with Mike Connor, hears Mike explain what really happened:
MIKE CONNOR: Kittredge, it may interest you to know that the so-called “affair” consisted of exactly two kisses and a rather late swim. All of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and the memory of which I wouldn't part with for anything. After which I deposited Tracy on her bed in her room, and promptly returned down here to you two--which doubtless you'll remember.
GEORGE KITTREDGE: You mean--you mean to say that’s all there was to it?
MIKE CONNOR: I do.
TRACY LORD: Why? Was I so unattractive?
Or in Irene terms:
NEW YORK: Oh Irene--you passed me over for Philadelphia?!? Why? Was I so unattractive?
Or in Sondheim terms:
NEW YORK: Oh Irene--you said you wanted me! Or were you just being kind?
Heh. Yeah--guess what song I've been listening to all weekend? But not the original. And not even the gloriously insane Liza Minnelli cover of the original. No--I've been listening to the Pet Shop Boys' demo of the gloriously insane cover that they produced for Liza Minnelli. Along with a lot of other PSB songs, because they make me happy and they make me want to dance, two things you should always do when a hurricane is on its way.
So here's that demo, along with an extended version of "Jealousy" (the spoken quote is from Othello, which makes for a great trivia question), along with another demo of a song they wrote for Kylie Minogue (which is my all-time favorite Pet Shop Boys song), along with the hoot-and-a-half AbFab number they did after getting plastered with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley (true story).
Be happy and dance, people.
Losing my mind
Jealousy (extended version)
Falling (Demo for Kylie)
Absolutely Fabulous
As summer winds down--no--wait--who am I kidding?--as summer careens to a hurricanish halt, and the last weekend of August, which seemed so far away in June, is actually starting right now in Australia, here's some fun music to listen to. I could just have easily called this post "Behold the power of cheese," because these three songs totally fit that description. Like good cheddar fits that description--in the best possible way.
Yes, it's The Raspberries. If you were anywhere near a radio in July of 1972, you would have heard the opening riff of "Go All The Way" about once every 20 minutes on AM Radio, which actually played music back then.
These songs sound like they were deliberately designed to make anyone in the world feel 18 again. Or in my case, 20.
Enjoy.
Go All The Way
Let's Pretend
Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)
In a perfect world, these three songs would have started to play every time I entered a bar this weekend.
If you add their ages up, the three of them together are over 100 years old.
Even though every single one of them is, like me, a timeless teenager.
Sing along and think of me.
Devil With A Blue Dress
Nobody But Me
Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)
Memory is like a stenographer with delusions of creativity. It records what happens, but somewhere between the actual recording and the version that gets logged into your mental library, the stenographer starts editing things to make it more bearable, less hurtful, more flattering, less forgettable. Or just more fun. And to hell with what really happened.
Case in point: I have a very clear picture in my head of a bunch of women singing along to Rickie Lee Jones back in the days when my friend Tom lived on Norwood Ave in Newton. I can’t pin the memory down to a particular party, or an actual date. But it’s there nevertheless. I can clearly see Debbie and Sue and Donna and Tom bending over at the waist and swaying their shoulders to Rickie singing “Chicken in the pot, chicken in the pot, chicken in the pot.” And right there with them is Sue’s sister Debbie, and Liz, and Rita, and--here’s where it gets crazy--Cheryl (who never went to one of those parties), and Jewel (who I didn’t meet till I got to New York) and Jan and Tracy and Stacy and Susan, and at various times over the last couple of decades, pretty much every woman I call my friend and every waitress and bartender from every local I’ve ever downed a pint at. Plus Tom's two daughters.
Which is insane. Those daughters weren't born and I didn’t meet half those other women till long after Tom moved out of Newton. None of them were there in real life. But I can see them in the living room. It's about one in the morning. Half the people there are smoking Newport 100's. "Danny's All-Star Joint" comes on the mix tape (mix tapes!) and when the first notes play, everybody starts bopping. The ones who were there and remember. The ones who weren't there that I remember, that I can see as clearly as if they were, because it's that kind of moment, at that kind of party.
And you’re there too.
Danny's All-Star Joint
Under the Boardwalk
Folls? Hell no. Not judging by their music, and not judging by this picture, either. Those are the five things I want to do while I'm taking a bath. And with maybe only two or three different people.
Seriously though: is there anything that says "Summer's here!" better than the three songs below?
Our Lips Are Sealed
Vacation
We Got The Beat
Answer: Nope.
Enjoy.
When I was 16, I was studying Latin and Greek and reading Herzog in English class. (Saul Bellow at 16--only in a Jesuit high school.) When Rachel Sweet was 16, she quit high school and toured the country singing in support of an album released on the Stiff label. She never really caught on--she only made 3 albums, I think--or was it 4?--but my friends and I loved her, and if there had been an American Idol back in those days, she probably would have won everything hands down.
So to get you started right this last Monday in June (aieee!), here's her hit --
B.A.B.Y.
-- her underage drinking lament--
Wildwood Saloon
--her fun double cover--
And Then He Kissed Me/Be My Baby
--and her bid for The Cheese Hall Of Fame:
Everlasting Love (with Rex Smith)
Hope you like them, and I'll see you next week after I run a couple of red lights on Memory Lane.
Twenty-nine years ago today, I moved to New York. If you walked down 44th Street on June 20th, 1982, around 2 in the afternoon, you would have seen me, with really long hair, sitting with a suitcase on the steps of an apartment building, sitting there waiting for the friend of a friend who said I could be his roommate. Since this was before telephones, never mind cellphones, I sat there staring at Dyke's Lumber for a long, long time before he finally showed up.
This is one of the albums that brings back that summer. It was released on April 28, 1982, which makes it a good five years older than most of the people I hang out with these days. So these three songs may be new to them, in which case, I envy them this first acquaintance.
This one's for somebody I'll never understand:
Someday, Someway
This one's for Ava and Eva:
Rockin' Around in NYC
And this one's for me. Duh:
Cynical Girl
Have a great week; me, I'm off to relive my wasted youth by drinking at the Wildwood Saloon.
The Katydids were an early-90's band with a mid-60's sound led by lead singer Susie Hug and spouse Adam Seymour (who later played with The Pretenders). They only had two albums, the first of which is a forgotten little classic. Produced by Nick Lowe, which automatically guarantees a striking pop sound, the self-titled album has 11 songs on it, and each one has that indefinable but instantly recognizable summer sound to it: lightness, clarity, sunshine-call it what you will. It's in all three of the songs below.
The first one is my favorite. Bouncy, danceable, happy, sly--it's like an updated cha cha (check out the one-two cha-cha-cha drumbeats throughout). You wonder if that was the group's idea or whether it was Nick Lowe's. Either way, it's a trans-generational crossbreed that's out to prove that your parents doing the cha-cha is exactly like you doing the pogo.
Lights Out (Read My Lips)
For a little balance, here's the sadness in the middle of the happy sandwich--a lament for all the missing things we stick with because we think we'll actually find the missing piece. Ignoring the very real possibility that the piece was never there to begin with. (And speaking of missing pieces, listen for the brief but telling guitar echo to "It's Only Love (and that is all).")
Girl in a Jigsaw Puzzle
Finally, something that sounds like a time warp out of 1965 and not 1990. You can easily imagine it as a number-one single from a one-hit-wonder band out of Bristol, after which they went to Hollywood and made a bad beach movie based on the song title directed in faux Richard Lester style by somebody with one-tenth Lester's talent in which James Brown and the Famous Flames have a guest number that steals the film. Believe me--it's all there if you listen closely enough.
Miss Misery
