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November 13, 2008

Numerology: Now We Are Six

As I mentioned previously, Prof. Klein is a bit of a stickler about getting these Numerology pieces right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Instead of chalking early attempts up to the blogging learning curve like the rest of us, he stays awake at night, shaking with regret that low hanging fruit like the number 6 was not given it's proper due. So today, in remembrance of Mitch Mitchell, the man behind the kit for Dave's greatest 6 song of all time, we continue to rewrite history. (JK)

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Robbing people with a six-gun/I fought the law and the law won – The Bobby Fuller Four: “I Fought the Law”

Like insects (which all have six legs) the number six has infiltrated our world at every level. What with six-figure incomes, six degrees of separation, and six of one, half dozen of another, six-related phenomena could provide songwriters with a lifetime of material. Any way you slice it—with Dire Straits’ “Six Blade Knife” or the “Six Inch Golden Blade” of Nick Cave—six has powerful associations. First there are the weapons (e.g., Queens of the Stone Age’s “Six Shooter,” Tom Waits’s “16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six”); then there’s death (e.g., Big Black’s “Deep Six,” No Doubt’s “Six Feet Under”); and lest we forget, the Antichrist (“Six Sixty Six” by Frank Black, “Your Sweet Six Six Six” by HIM, Dave Grohl’s “1, 2, 3, 4, 5 6-6-6!” count-off for Tenacious D’s “Rock Your Socks Off”). The six-o’clock news, which holds very little sway in these days of the 24-hour news cycle, but which once supplied Americans with the 22 minutes of condensed information they desired, spawned a profusion of songs called “Six O’Clock News” and “Six O’Clock Blues.”

All movement is accomplished in six stages/and the seventh brings return
Pink Floyd: “Chapter 24” (based on the I Ching)

The sheer abundance of six-titled songs forces us to excise a large swath just to get to the heart of the order. Quality offerings from a cornucopia of modern music styles need be ditched: rap: (Mos Def - “Six Days”) heavy metal (Alice Cooper - “Six Hours”), proto-grunge (Mudhoney - “Six Two One,”), post-punk (Pigbag – “Six of One,” Screeching Weasel – “Six A.M.,” “Six Percent,” Dead Milkmen – “Six Days”), synth pop (Human League – “Rock Me Again and Again and Again and Again and Again and Again” (Six Times), country (Hank Williams - “Six More Miles,” Charlie Pride - “Six Days on the Road”), alt-country (Lucinda Williams – “Six Blocks Away”), Irish-folk-punk (The Pogues – “Six to Go”), electronica (Aphex Twin – “Six,” Faithless – “Six,” DJ Shadow - “Six Days,” Sneaker Pimps – “Six Underground,” Future Sound of London – “A Study of Six Guitars”), prog rock (Peter Hammill – “Act Six”), stoner rock (Karma to Burn – “Six-Gun Sucker Punch,” “Six”), and assorted rock from the ‘60s (The Seeds – “Six Dreams,” Scott Walker – “Six”), ‘70s (The Sweet - “The Six Teens”) ‘80s (The Cure – “Six Different Ways”), ‘90s (Unrest - "Six Layer Cake," The Verve - “Six O’Clock,” Mansun – “Six”), and ‘00s (The Clientele – “Six of Spades,” Dashboard Confessional – “Age Six Racer,” Fujiya & Miyagi - "Rook to Queen's Pawn Six"). Whew.

DJ Shadow - "Six Days"
Fujiya & Miyagi - "Rook to Queen's Pawn Six"

Woke up one morning saw a rooster strutting by my house/six pack rings ‘round his neck/cock of the block… - Guided By Voices: “Don’t Stop Now”

The sixth sense refers to E.S.P. but it’s really a misnomer; if you consider the vestibular (balance) and kinesthetic (bodily position) senses, we humans have seven, not five. But try telling that to M. Night Shyamalan. In volleyball, a six pack is spiked ball that slams an opponent in the face. Joe Six Pack, formerly known as John Q. Public, is an average Joe who doesn’t have six pack abs. Neither do those who feast on “Six Layer Cake” by Unrest, a melodic, numerically minded strum-fest that features lines like “Sixteen fingers 8 feet high/10 7854321/654422 layer cake.” A six pack is just a delivery system for beer, but like the 40, it has transcended that status and become iconic. (Sort of like DJs, who were once seen as mere deliverers of recorded music and are now an attraction unto themselves.) Six packs have been saluted by country music star Hank Thompson in “Six Pack to Go” and Black Flag, whose scarifying “Six Pack” opens with the threat: “I’ve got a six pack/and nothing to do.” For the sake of thematic consistency, it seems apt to distill these offerings down to a six pack of pure excellence before bestowing top honors.

Unrest - "Six Layer Cake"
Black Flag - "Six Pack"

First up: Bob Dylan’s “From a Buick 6,” a screaming blues rave-up from Highway 61 Revisited that’s cut from the same cloth as “Maggie’s Farm.” This tribute to a “soulful mama” extols a woman’s charms as only Dylan can: “Well, she don’t make me nervous, she don’t talk too much
/She walks like Bo Diddley and she don’t need no crutch.” Yo La Tengo tweaked Dylan’s title on “From a Motel 6,” one of the most heavy and heavenly numbers in the YLT songbook. It’s just huge sounding, with the intertwined vocals of Ira and Georgia set against a thrumming wall of guitar noise that flies so close to the My Bloody Valentine sun you can almost hear the sound of wings melting. It may be churlish, but I have to mark it down a few points for having little or nothing discernable to do with a Motel 6. True, with a sound this glorious it hardly matters, yet with a numeral as tightly contested as 6, even a hint of numerical arbitrariness has to be considered a detriment.

Bob Dylan - "From a Buick 6"
Yo La Tengo - "From a Motel 6"

The Pretty Things - "Midnight to Six Man"

The Pretty Things - "Midnight to Six Man"

“Midnight to Six Man” (1965) is a rollicking celebration of late-night hedonistic pleasure by the Pretty Things, contemporaries of the early Stones (guitarist Dick Taylor played with Mick and Keith when they were called the Rollin’ Stones), only much rougher. Like many a British Invasion band, the Pretties started out as an R&B outfit before veering into a psychedelic phase. Despite their 1970 album Parachute winning Best Album of 1970 honors in Rolling Stone magazine, the band never had a single American hit. Most stateside listeners first heard their songs when Bowie covered “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Rosalyn” on his Pinups collection of covers. The Pretty Things were always a band’s band. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith has cited them as a key early influence; their ‘70s albums were issued on Swan Song, Led Zeppelin’s private label (their manager during that era was the notorious Peter Grant); and one of the peak Clash songs, “White Man in Hammersmith Palais,” begins with the words “Midnight to six man.”

The Lovin' Spoonful - "Six O'Clock"

Scritti Politti - "After Six"

The Lovin’ Spoonful are justly known for a run of great singles in the mid-60s, including “Do You Believe in Magic,” “Summer in the City,” and “Daydream.” The less familiar “Six O’Clock” is a gem from that golden era of pop craft, when cultural changes, abetted by advances in recording techniques, enabled writers to create miniature worlds in three minutes or less. “Six O’Clock” casts a spell from its evocative opening line, “There’s something special ‘bout six o’clock/in the morning when it’s still too early to knock.” The Spoonful were among the finest American bands to form in the wake of the Beatles, and the staccato keyboard line that begins the song strongly echoes the opening of “Getting Better,” enough to have made me wonder whether Paul McCartney was inspired by it. Both came out in ’67, but the Beatles song was recorded in March, three months before “Six O’Clock” hit the charts, so the theory doesn’t hold water. (And I thought I was really on to something there.) Oddly enough, the opening keyboard figure of “After Six” by Scritti Politti has a caustic texture not unlike the keyboard sound in “Six O’Clock,” but the similarities end once the galloping shuffle beat kicks in. I seriously doubt anyone will ever write a catchier ditty about rejecting Christianity. Special props to Scritti mastermind Green Gartside for standing six feet six inches tall. (I’m not making this up.)

Liz Phair - "6' 1"

Measuring five inches shorter than Mr. Gartside is “6’ 1”,” the lead track from Liz Phair’s crucial debut, Exile in Guyville, which transformed the potty-mouthed Oberlin grad into an object of adoration, fascination, and lust for critics and fans alike. Fifteen years later (Christ!) it’s hard to deny that Guyville is unquestionably her defining moment. Subsequent recordings were better produced and performed, but the first record has them all beat. Phair’s sly, sexually frank lyrics initially stopped listeners in their tracks, but the trick got less interesting with time. Singing “I want to be your blowjob queen” was rather audacious in 1993; ten years later, naming a song “H.W.C.” (meaning ‘hot white cum’) was just bad taste. It’s no wonder she elected to re-release her masterwork this year. Any great record needs a great beginning, and “6’1”,” a gimlet-eyed evisceration of a man who beds girls who are “shyly brave” by selling himself “as a man to save,” sets up Guyville beautifully. I could never actually hear how the record correlated musically with Exile on Main Street, but one thing’s for sure; the rock ‘n’ roll boys club was never the same afterward.

Fine offerings all, but “If 6 Was 9” by Jimi Hendrix is the ultimate 6 song. It’s a sonic tour de force, a marvel of controlled chaos and innovation by one of the giant figures in rock. In a 2008 NPR broadcast, Adrian Utley of Portishead talked about having his mind blown when he first heard the song in 1970 at the age of 13. “The sound was so vicious and brilliant,” said Utley, at the time a budding hippie who was especially taken with the line, “If all the hippies cut off all their hair/I don’t care.” At the height of flower power, these words were truly iconoclastic. From a numerological standpoint, “If six turns out to be nine, I don’t mind” is a powerful, even deep, statement based on a strictly mathematical conceit. (Compared to Z.Z. Top’s “I got the six/you got the nine” it’s Shakespeare.) Prominently featured in Easy Rider, the song summed up the countercultural spirit of rebellion far more succinctly than the film itself. It also introduced the concept of the freak flag (“I’m gonna wave my freak high”), for which we can all be truly grateful. Wave on, wave on…

Jimi Hendrix - "If 6 Was 9"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The higher the digit, the lonelier the climb.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, , 4 (redux), 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, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Footnotes, 57, 58

Posted by David Klein at November 13, 2008 02:20 PM

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