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June 09, 2008

Numerology: Hits From Halfway

Half comes up a lot. We comprehend concepts like 50 percent or 50-50 odds deep down in our bones. Essential numbers like 50 find their way into scores of songs, and there is no shortage of #50 songs out there—“50 Miles of Elbow Room” and “50 Miles to Go,” “50 in the Clip,” “50 Miles From Nowhere,” “50-50 Split” and many more that haven’t a chance of nabbing the top spot. You see, the 500-pound gorilla in the world of 50 songs is Paul Simon, whose “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” a smash hit from the golden era of solo Simon, is undoubtedly the song to beat. And with Simon’s recent month-long BAM residency and the likes of Vampire Weekend representing a wave of young bands looking his way for inspiration, it would seem all the more appropriate that “50 Ways” nab the 50 spot: Classic song; classic artist; still hot with the kids. And the song transcends mere popularity or sales; it is—to use a word I’m surprised Simon never used in a song—ubiquitous, as indicated by a recent entry in overheardinnewyork.com:

Pilot: Remember, there are 50 ways to leave your lover, but only 8 ways out of this aircraft.

--JFK Runway

the Electric Mayhem - "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"

Problem is, I have never been a fan of the song. I was overexposed to it at a tender age via a northern Jersey A.M. radio station called WWDJ (“Ninety-se-ven, DEE-JAY!”) and can distinctly remember lurching across my bedroom to swipe at the radio dial in the same second that my synapses recognized the song’s distinctive military-snare opening. I admit it would be a bit churlish to sidestep a classic merely because it brings me back to the rainy days and Mondays of my youth, but something far beyond personal antipathy is at work here. Folks, this is a matter of ethics. “50 Ways” is a deeply dishonest song. Now wait—lest you think I’m about to hurl accusations of cultural piracy—the Graceland kind—at the man, let me assure you: it’s nothing like that. It comes down to pure mathematics.

Paul Simon - "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"

Slip out the back, Jack (way)
Make a new plan, Stan (way)
You don’ need to be coy, Roy (advice)

Just get yourself free (advice)

Hop on the bus, Gus (way)
You don’t need to discuss much (advice)

Just drop off the key, Lee (way)
And get yourself free (advice)

The man talks about 50, and doesn’t even get into double digits. That is just feeble. I’m not saying he needed to go the Sufjan Stevens route (in “The 50 States Song,” Sufjan mentions all 50). I would simply hold him up to the Shirley Ellis standard. You know what I mean: in “The Name Game”—where she goes, “Shirley Shirley bo Birly” and “Arnold Arnold bo Barnold,” and then she demonstrates a little trick with Nick, and pretty soon there isn’t any name that you can’t rhyme. Suppose I wanted to leave my lover. What would I do? Nothing. Because nothing rhymes with David. If I weren’t in love with my wife, according to Simon, there’d be no way out. That said, the craft behind “50 Ways” is impeccable, but of course you can say that about any Paul Simon song. It’s a given. You also have to admire the sheer diversity of chords packed within something so goddamned commercial. That it’s been parodied (“50 Ways to Love Your Liver,” “50 Ways to Fool Your Mother”) further testifies to its outsized imprint. But I’ll repeat myself (at the risk of being crude): A fatal lack of plausibility is this song’s Achilles heel.

The Burnt Vegetables gave me my first taste of Frank Zappa. I was in junior high; the BV’s were few grades ahead of me. Deeply reverent Zappa freaks, they adopted the sardonic outsider stance of their hero. With a name copped from the song “Call Any Vegetable,” the band played at backyard parties, with a set-list consisting of Devo and Beatles covers, along with several of Zappa’s goofiest, like “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance” and “What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?” Stuff even non-Zappa freaks could dig on. The Vegetables would never have played a song like “Fifty Fifty.” It requires some seriously sick chops, a migraine-inducing vocal, and a two-minute Jean-Luc Ponty violin solo, all far beyond the capabilities of even the greatest garage band. “50 Megatons” by Sonny Russell is a bizarre rockabilly number from the soundtrack to Atomic Café, the terrific, chilling documentary that reminded 1980s America of its “duck-and-cover” past. The soundtrack is an amazing document of musical offerings from the A-Bomb era, including the highly addictive “Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb” by Lowell Blanchard & the Valley Trio.

the Police - "Born in the 50s"

Rock ‘n’ roll was born in the ‘50s, and so was Sting, but I am hard-pressed to find a good 50 song from the decade. “Fifty Years From Now” by Harry McClintock, best known for “The Big Rock Candy Mountain,” is a 1920s-era broadside against economic inequality. “Born in the 50’s,” from Outlandos d’Amour (1979) typifies the kind of straight-up rock song that the Police stopped writing after their first few records. Beginning with a pair of attention-grabbing couplets (“My mother cried/when President Kennedy died/She said it was a communist/But I knew better”), it features a nifty bridge and demonstrates Sting’s strengths as a back-of-the-throat wailer. While Sting seems to have ceased reminding people of his age, folkie Bill Morrissey wears his like a badge on “50,” a sassy ode to turning half a century old: “Hey you kids, this ain’t no jive,” he sings, “But I’ve seen the Beatles perform live.” Aimee Mann, who was born in the autumn of 1960, put out her first solo record on the embattled Imago label. Lacking promotion, the record went nowhere, as did Ms. Mann’s career, until she contributed songs to Magnolia a few years later. People who were moved to check out Whatever (1993) (and 1995’s I’m With Stupid) after rediscovering the former Til Tuesday vocalist at the 2000 Oscars found a trove of glistening ‘60s-tinged folk-pop like “50 Years After the Fair,” a vivid evocation of “a perfect world across the river in Queens” featuring background vocals by Byrds man Roger (né Jim) McGuinn.

Aimee Mann - "50 Years After the Fair"

Creation Records artists liked to explore new sonic frontiers, but Biff Bang Pow, formed by Creation cofounder Alan McGee, was all about the glory of guitar pop and other styles from rock’s past. “Fifty Years of Fun,”(1984) BBP’s first single, is a fair enough summation of where they were coming from, in less than two minutes.

I’ve never really wondered what Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins was singing about. She sings in tongues most of the time, and her instrument requires no translation. But for this endeavor, in order to identify what quality of fifty-ness the Twins were getting at in “Fifty-Fifty Clown,” I peered under the Cocteau Twins rock (drenched in pearly dewdrops drops, natch) and discovered that Ms. Fraser’s first murmured trill on “Fifty-Fifty Clown” translates to “I feel rewarded on being so ugly, eh.” The rest of it scans even less well (and not a fifty-fifty clown in sight.) I felt compelled to listen to the pensive “Fifty Fifty Chance” by Suzanne Vega after this one, and the sharp, well-observed lyrics let me know exactly where I stood: “There’s a pan on the floor/Filled with something black.” But knowing where you stand is way overrated: the 50-50 award goes to French punques, Metal Urbain, for “50/50,” an exultant track that’s rousing in any language.

Metal Urbain - "50/50"

Here are two songs by bands that rose and fell in the 80s, eschewed major chords, and produced a “50” song in 1987: “50 Miles” by Dumptruck is an urgent plea from a man stuck in a Donner party of a relationship; Dream Syndicate’s “50 in a 20 Zone” sounds a bit like solo Tom Verlaine: a couple of chords, a mid-tempo chug, and some hella soloing. What the Spin Doctors and their 5x-platinum Pocket Full of Kryptonite (1991) containing the execrable “Forty or Fifty” are doing in this paragraph, I have no idea.

the Fall - "Fifty Year Old Man"

Imperial Wax Solvent (2008), the 27th record by the Fall, finds the indefatigable Mark E. Smith in typically high dudgeon as he pushes his band through an 11-minute shape-shifting rave-up called “Fifty Year Old Man.” Other recent offerings include Lali Puna’s quietly pulsing instrumental “50 Faces Of,” which would make a fine soundtrack to a tense nighttime driving scene in an edgy Showtime drama; “Off By 50,” which closes Pinback’s intriguing Autumn of the Seraphs (2007), and Grandaddy’s uncharacteristically awake-sounding “50 Percent,” the refrain of which—“50 percent less words”—gives the editor in me fits.

I can’t very well write about 50 without mentioning the rapper 50 Cent, born Curtis James Jackson III. Now check this out: The same year that Fifty was busted for selling crack, 1994, the Jesus Lizard released a knotty, almost funky workout called “50 Cents.” The song was track 8 from Down, the fourth and last Jesus Lizard record with maverick producer Steve Albini. I mention this fact only because one year earlier, the very same Steve Albini produced the winning song for this highly contested spot: PJ Harvey’s “50ft Queenie.”

PJ Harvey - "50 ft. Queenie"
(Live @ the Metro, Chicago 1993)

Besides the fact that they were both written by pint-sized performers, “50ft Queenie” and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” have little in common. PJ spits out the words at the top of her vocal range; Paul never breaks a sweat. “Queenie” has the stark, abrasive production of Steve Albini; Paul’s has the lush, detailed sound of mid-‘70s album-oriented radio. Despite the tricky time signature and abrupt shifts in volume that make it radio-unfriendly in the extreme, “50ft Queenie” was Harvey’s best-selling single in the UK. It was just too in-your-face and unrelenting for mainstream U.S. radio, but the song made its presence known on MTV.

Butt-head: Beavis, the name of this song is “50 Foot Queenie.”

Beavis: Yeah, I’d like a 50-foot queenie.

Butt-head: I’d like a 50-foot wienie.

Wienie or queenie, I know the two cartoon cretins would agree with me that “50ft Queenie” is a blistering geyser of a song—pure channeled fury. When the opening guitar figure—a swamp blues lick with its tail tied in a knot—gives way to mountains of guitar and Ms. Harvey starts to unleash, you almost want to run for cover.

This enraged goddess has some choice words for the overburdened lothario of Simon’s song:

You bend over

Casanova

No sweat

I’m clean

Nothing can touch me

PJ Harvey - "50 ft. Queenie"

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 , 47, 48, 49

Posted by David Klein at June 9, 2008 03:10 PM

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