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April 08, 2009

Numerology: Dialing Direct to Indonesia?: The (In)Significance of Sixty-Two

print by Sixty-Two Design

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder/how far off I sat and wondered

Started humming a song from 1962/ain’t it funny how the night moves…

--Bob Seger, “Night Moves”

I may be past the days when I was a little too tall, could’ve used a few pounds, but I have often sat and wondered what song from 1962 the “Night Moves” dude was humming. Maybe it was “Telstar” by the Tornados, the first British release to hit no. 1 in the U.S., or Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl” or “He’s a Rebel” by the Crystals. James Bond made his cinematic debut that year, in Dr. No, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, and Eichmann was hanged in Israel. So, evocative year that it was, it’s not surprising that ’62 has made more than a few appearances in song titles. Country legend Marty Robbins proclaimed himself “1962’s Most Promising Fool.” Ian Matthews, a British folk-rocker and veteran of Fairport Convention and a slew of other outfits, wrote “The Rains of ’62,” a mournful rumination on the theme of “you can’t go home again.” “Girl from ‘62” by Thee Headcoats is a feverish 90-second psychobilly eruption, scream-sung by “a boy from ’59.” Similarly loud and raw albeit with a punkish flavor is “My ‘62” by Left Alone, who look and sound like a Rancid tribute band. Their poppier label mates on Epitaph Records, Guttermouth, give us “Camp Fire Girl #62,” which begins, “She’s got the healing powers of medical marijuana/and she feeds herself the same ole crap she feeds to her iguana.” Moving backward in time, a New Orleans singer named Ronnie Barron (a cohort of Dr. John) recorded “Eighteen Sixty Two,” a nostalgic depiction of a year Barron apparently believed was really groovy: “Liberty, justice, freedom for us all/Abraham Lincoln said ‘Soul brothers, stand up tall,’” while Pavement’s “Circa 1762,” a Peel Session track that never made it onto an official release (until the reissue of the debut Slanted and Enchanted), is evidence of a band with the requisite cockiness not to feel obligated to plop every one of its good songs on a record.

Pavement - "Circa 1762" (Peel Session)

“…6406286208 821 4808651 32…”

--Kate Bush, “π”

As you can plainly see, it requires a real effort to come up with a lyrical instance of 62 in the world of popular song. The fair Ms. Bush doesn’t even say “sixty-two,” only “six two,” but any song wherein an angelic soprano manages to sing the pi sequence up to the 70th digit is OK in my book. Besides, we’re hurting here; there’s not even some old nugget, like, say, “Old Blind Joe’s East 62nd Street Boogie Woogie” to get us through. After following Highway 61 and discovering a deep vein of Americana, taking Highway 62 merely leads us from the U.S.-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canada border, with nary a highway song in between. Not so for the M62 motorway in northern England, a thoroughfare with a storied past, which has been mentioned in songs by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and the Human League, among others, and found its way into the title of “M62 Song” by Doves. Now, apparently this track was recorded under an overpass on the M62 (it certainly sounds like a field recording) but some trainspotter types have pointed out that the overpass in is actually located on a different, albeit nearby, road. Obviously, this doesn’t mean much to the average listener. The song itself is based on the haunting “Moonchild” by King Crimson, sung by a pre-ELP Greg Lake and used to fine effect in a bewitching scene featuring a tap-dancing Christina Ricci in Buffalo 66. Speaking of ELP, the German trio Triumvirat was known as the German ELP, which strikes me as the ‘70s equivalent of the Kissaway Trail (aka the Danish Arcade Fire). What next, the Croatian Beck? The Mongolian Yeah Yeah Yeahs? How about the Finnish Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? In any case, “The Earthquake 62 A.D.,” from Triumvirat’s concept album Pompeii, is as pompous as it sounds, with squirrelly keyboard excursions mimicking the exact tone and timbre of the vaunted Keith Emerson. It may well be that it was this record, and not the ELP of legend, that gave Johnny Rotten the incentive to upend the bloated ‘70s rock status quo

Doves - "M62 Song"

To be fair, 62 doesn’t completely lack cultural significance. Joba Chamberlin, star pitcher for the New York Yankees, wears no. 62, but so far there’s no Joba song. There is, however, Chamberlain, an Indiana-based progressive emo hybrid with roots in the ‘90s, whose “Magnetic 62nd” labors to keep its competing influences in check. “62 Pickup,” by the Queens rapper known as Cormega, is built upon the stately piano chords of “The Theme from Hill Street Blues,” and features a courtroom scene with the white-guy judge on loan from Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City.” “Sixty-Two Fifty” is a late-period offering by the great Latin soul percussionist Wilie Bobo. Best known for his classic “Spanish Grease,” Bobo had already done his finest work by the time this song appeared at the tail end of Hell of an Act to Follow (1978).

But out of this mixed bag, I can see only one 62 song to pluck with any definitiveness: “Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)” by the MC5. Time and again, it has been said that punk rock descended from the Stooges, the New York Dolls, and the MC5. Of the three, the MC5 (the Motor City 5, named for their native Detroit) are the least familiar to today’s listeners, and for the record, that includes this writer. Their LPs were the hardest to find (because they went swiftly out of print), and their legacy is the hardest to make sense of. Even in the mid-70s, young Zep-heads were made aware of the existence of Iggy and the Dolls because their antics were noted in the rock mags of the day. The MC5 were already history.

Part of the band’s complex legacy derives from its political stance. Their manager was John Sinclair, founder of the White Panther party, which aligned itself with the Black Panther party’s goals of empowerment and social equality for black people while also espousing cultural revolution under the slogan, “Dope, guns, and fucking in the streets.” At least that’s what the group claimed to stand for during its initial and most controversial incarnation. After playing a riotous free show at the polarized1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the group (along with the Stooges) was signed by Elektra. The following year, they released a frenetic concert LP recorded at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, which began with crazy-fro’d singer Rob Tyner exhorting the crowd to “kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” At the record company’s insistence, the line was changed to “kick out the jams, brothers and sisters” on the record, but the liner notes included the word. As a result, one big store refused to sell it, and radio stations wanted nothing to do with it.

MC5 - "Kick Out the Jams"
(live @ Wayne State University, Detroit)

Record sales were only part of the problem; the group courted controversy and alienated everyone. The Black Panthers pegged them as “psychedelic clowns.” The white radicals considered them insufficiently committed to revolution. Promoter Bill Graham blackballed them after an aborted gig at New York’s Fillmore East ended in violence and chaos. Of course, when the record didn’t sell, Elektra dropped them. Meanwhile, the band members didn’t necessarily walk it like they talked it. Guitarist Wayne Kramer admitted, “We were sexist bastards….We had all the rhetoric of being revolutionary and new and different, but really what it was, was the boys get to go fuck and the girls can’t complain about it. And if the girls did complain, they were being bourgeois bitches—counterrevolutionary.” They were clearly destined to fail. Despite an appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone, the group had a flavor that was just too thorny for mass appeal. Even critics weren’t bowled over. The legendary Lester Bangs was unimpressed, writing at the time that the MC5 “came on like a bunch of sixteen-year-old punks on a meth power trip” and called Kick Out the Jams (1969) a “ridiculous, overbearing, pretentious album.”

The following year, the group tried to tone down some of the musical extremes, recording a studio album helmed by critic-turned- producer Jon Landau (the man who later declared he had seen rock ‘n’ roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen). Eventually, they ditched him and issued High Time (1971). It was their most accessible album, but by then it was too late. Their status as the “cultural arm” of the White Panther Party and their very public allegiance to dope, sex, and revolution had gotten them into trouble with the authorities. (“The phones were always tapped…” said guitarist Wayne Kramer.) Gigs were often broken up by police; manager Sinclair was busted for marijuana possession, and drugs and alcohol were taking their toll. They couldn’t even get respect in England. One of the final nails in the coffin was an infamous 1972 Wembley Stadium gig headlined by Chuck Berry, at the inception of the paradigm-shifting glam era. The group, decked out in silver spacesuits and sporting long hippie hair, was met with hurled Coke cans and stony silence between songs, despite reports that they played their asses off.

Which leads us back to “Rocket Reducer No. 62.” Every adjective that’s ever been thrown at the MC5 applies here: high-energy, revved-up, sweaty, nerve-jangling, incendiary. There is sheer power and precision in the locked-in guitars of Fred “Sonic” Smith and Wayne Kramer, and the rhythm section holds down the volcanic fury of the music with a solid, amphetamine groove. Not to mention Rob Tyner’s vocal, which screams “lock up your daughters.” It’s the in-your-face, uncompromising nature of the music that’s pure punk: the fury, the excitement, the volume, the ugliness. But the sprawling jamminess of the song and its lascivious message is a far cry from punk’s nihilism. It’s more like the mating call of drug-fueled, macho hippies copping the pose of inner-city thugs. Johnny Rotten or Joey Ramone would never be caught dead singing words like these:

After some good tokes and a six-pack

I’m a born hell-raiser and I don’t give a damn.

MC5 - "Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. We hear 60 is the new 40, and now we're not even that impressed by his progress.

Previously: No. 1, 2 (redux), 3, 4 (redux), 5-7, 6 (redux), 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, 59 , 60, 61

Posted by David Klein at April 8, 2009 08:39 PM

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Posted by: Randall Monty at April 9, 2009 09:21 PM

Posted by: david k at April 10, 2009 10:02 AM

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