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May 05, 2009

Numerology: Cinco de Redo

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 5 was not given its proper due. So today, we take a tequila shot, fire our pistols into the air, and continue to rewrite history. (JK)

“And if you have five seconds to spare/Then I’ll tell you the story of my life…”

--The Smiths, “Half a Person”

Five is pretty essential to our existence: as the divine XTC pointed out, we have one, two, three, four, five senses working overtime. We have five fingers on each hand (the better to avail ourselves of a fifth of Bourbon via the five-finger discount). There are five books of Moses, and Muslims pray facing Mecca five times a day. And yet songwriters tend to employ five in a fairly mundane way: as a measure of time.

All you little girls/
sittin'out at that line


I can make love to you woman/
in five minutes time


Ain't that a man.

– Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy”

Five minutes is rarely meant literally. It’s often shorthand for no time at all (as in five-minute abs), or it refers to an indefinite time period in excess of five minutes (as in, “let me just sleep for another five minutes”). Five minutes is such a handy and liquid concept that intrepid numerologist types must wade through a thicket of titles saluting five minutes of just about everything: “Five Minutes of Fame,” “Five Minutes of Flow,” Five Minutes of Rage,” “Five Minute of Funk, “Five Minutes of Skunk,” and tons more. Five minutes can be used for good or for ill—a dichotomy illustrated by the Sammy Cahn chestnut “Five Minutes More,” in which the singer begs for five more blessed minutes in the arms of his beloved, and Pantera’s “Five Minutes Alone,” wherein the singer desires that same period of time to pummel the crap out of his oppressors. Not surprisingly, the Stranglers echo the Pantera sentiment in the raw and rumbling “5 Minutes” a non-LP single from 1977, which features the line, “And if you hassle me Mister, I might just lose my head.”

The Stranglers - "5 Minutes"
(live on French TV, 1979)

But of the five-minutes genre, it’s hard to top “Five Minutes” by Bonzo Goes to Washington, a collaboration between Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads and funk master Bootsy Collins, built around Ronald Reagan’s famous adlib into an open microphone, “I’m pleased to tell you today that I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” The Gipper, who made this controversial quip not long after his famous “evil empire” speech, was roundly excoriated for amping up the already high tensions between the world’s two superpowers. Enter Messrs. Collins and Harrison, who sampled and looped the president’s ill-chosen words, put them over a funky groove, and released the thing on Sleeping Bag Records, the small NYC hip-hop label cofounded by the multitalented composer and cellist Arthur Russell. In doing so, Bonzo & Co. succeeded in sending up the president-as-cowboy in a way that a thousand editorial writers could never do.

Bonzo Goes to Washington - "Five Minutes"

In “Five Days, Five Days” Robert Gordon laments the length of time that has passed since his baby walked out the door; in “5 months, 2 Weeks, 2 Days,” Louis Prima does something similar, only Gordon sounds more miserable than the exuberant Prima, which is odd, given that relatively speaking, it should be the other way around. “5 Years” is a typically otherworldly concoction by Bjork, off Homogenic, which she recorded in the wake of her stalker’s suicide and hoped would sound like “rough volcanoes with soft moss growing all over it.” Clearly, she succeeded. “Five Years Time” by Noah and the Whale is too cute by half, a Saturn commercial waiting to happen, etc., but man, you’d have to be a total curmudgeon to hate on this ukulele-driven ditty, even while it uses one of the most familiar chord changes in all of rock. Of course, in five years time, Noah & the Whale will probably be fielding interviews for a VH-1 series on has-beens of the ‘00s. Already, the song seems “so five minutes ago.”

Bjork - "5 Years"

David Bowie - "Five Years"
(live, on The Old Grey Whistle Test, 1972)

David Bowie - "Five Years"

Towering high above all these is David Bowie’s mighty “Five Years,” the opening track on his most vital LP, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. This stately dirge—which is easy to overlook on a record whose most recognizable high points are high-energy rockers fueled by Mick Ronson’s pealing Les Paul riffs—uses details both straightforward and slightly cracked to conjure a dystopian world on the cusp of extinction that feels like something out of JG Ballard. Bowie delivers an exceptional vocal, (which apparently took just two takes), starting off weary and resigned and finishing with anguish and urgency. (On his next album, Aladdin Sane, Bowie would revisit the song’s chord sequence and 3/4 meter on the doo-wop flavored “Drive-In Saturday.”) “Five Years” had its genesis in a dream. Bowie reports that he had a nocturnal vision of his deceased father warning him that he had five years to live, and to avoid airplanes. The 4-Skins’ “Five More Years,” on the other hand, is a tribute to idleness that probably originated when its authors were sitting on a moth-eaten couch smoking fags. And as for Brian Setzer’s “5 years 4 months 3 days,” my guess is he was out shopping for a new pair of brothel creepers when inspiration hit.

From five years we segue to five gears, which is standard on most manual transmissions, and which Elvis Costello, inveterate wordsmith that he is, twisted into “5ive Gears in Reverse,” a song from 1980’s Get Happy. It’s something of an anomaly on the album, more of a straight-ahead rocker than most of the Motown/soul/R&B-flavors on offer, with a stunning fadeout featuring skronky guitar licks that interlock sublimely with Bruce Thomas’s limber bass playing.

Elvis Costello TV Commercial for Get Happy!

Mark Eitzel of American Music Club shares a bit of Elvis’s tendency toward pinched crooning, which is evident on the lugubriously longing “Chanel No. 5.” (Calexico covered this song, and while Calexico has never shied away from odd covers, I doubt they would attempt the bewitching, Sonic Youth-esque “Five” by Electrelane, or the balls-out “Five” by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, or even the sunny, strummy “Five Get Over-Excited” by the Housemartins, but they’d give “Five Guys Named Moe” a good run for its money.)

Palate-cleansing “5” fact: Proponents of the negativity bias theory tell us that in the average marital relationship, it takes five compliments to make up for a single cutting remark. Something to keep in mind the next time she asks you if this dress makes her ass look big.

Five o’clock has become synonymous with the end of the working day, and many songs reference this somewhat dated concept, from the big band hit “Five O’Clock Whistle” to the Jam’s “Just Who is the 5 O’Clock Hero?” and Jimmy Buffet and Alan Jackson’s invitation to start drinking, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” The best of these is doubtless “5 O’Clock World” by the Vogues, a perfect slice of radio pop circa 1965, with a powerful melody, a catchy army-drill cadence derived from the repeated “hip!” and a nifty yodeling bit in the turnaround. I admit it was the slightly heavier cover by Julian Cope that I first heard, so hearing the original, without Cope’s added lines about nuclear apocalypse and his interpolation of Petula Clark’s “I Know a Place,” was almost revelatory, like hearing “Hey Bulldog” in stereo for the first time, or noticing that the lady you brought home has five o’clock shadow.

The Vogues - "5 O'Clock World"

…The Jackson…the Dave Clark…the Ben Folds…the Count…the Maroon…the Gramercy, the Crypt-Kicker…what’s missing here is 5.

Janice Nicholls - "I'll Give it Five"

Five bucks doesn’t mean what it used to. In the jaunty George Jones-Gene Pitney collaboration “I’ve Got Five Dollars and It’s Saturday Night,” our boys have big plans that include wine, women, and song, all for a fiver. That barely buys a draft beer these days. “I’ll give it five” used to mean something, too. Teenager Janice Nicholls sang a song named after the phrase she uttered to wide acclaim on the ‘60s British TV show Thank Your Lucky Stars. In the song, Ms. Nicholls, who became a chiropodist after her brief fame, name-checks all the hottest acts of the day, including Chubby Checker, Alma Cogan, and Bobby Vee in her strong Midlands accent, and charmingly renders the title: “Oi'll give it foive.” Can I get a high-five? Hey, don’t leave me hanging—I may be a bit late to the party, but I am aware that National High-Five Day—which celebrants commemorate by high-fiving everyone they meet—occurs on the third Thursday in April. Since 2002, the inventors of this holiday have also posted a list of suggested songs that lend themselves to the slapping of palms, including “Obviously Five Believers” by Bob Dylan (who seems to have a song for every number we cover here), but somehow they left off a prime candidate in Beck’s “High-Five (Rockin’ the Catskills)" from his greatest single achievement, Odelay. Are they kidding? Let me hear you say Sergio Valente! OK, I should probably take the advice of Dave Brubeck and “Take 5.” This was the first jazz single to sell a million copies, and even non-jazz-lovers recognize it. I wish I could say the same for “Take 5” by Northside, also-rans from the acid house scene of the early ‘90s who produced several cool singles.

“Yeah, she looks like a painting/Jackson Pollock’s Number 5”

–The Stone Roses, “Going Down”

Cinco Library Presents "Encyclopedia of Numbers"

Sometimes a painting is just a painting, and a number is just a number. In songs like “5 from 13” by Soft Machine, “5 Percent For Nothing” by Yes, and “5 – 4 = Unity” by Pavement, 5 is simply a numerical value (though Pavement were subtracting all sincerity from Brubeck's aforementioned hit). The five in "Hawaii Five-O” and the moody “Five O” by James don’t signify much, and who knows what it means in “Transona 5” by Stereolab, a song that continually returns to the observation, “Two inevitables/we can’t avoid dying.” In the Doors’ “Five to One,” sung by an audibly intoxicated Jim Morrison, the meaning of five is a matter of conjecture. Some say it refers to the ratio of young people to adults in 1967, or that of pot smokers to non-pot smokers, or Viet Cong to American troops in the Vietnam at the time. Whatever it means, this call to arms has been extremely influential. Jay-Z and Mos Def have both seen fit to sample it; Mike McCready of Pearl Jam based his guitar solo in “Alive” on Ace Frehley’s solo in “She,” which Ace freely admits nicking from Robbie Krieger’s “Five to One” solo; Oasis nicked the tune wholesale on “Waiting For the Rapture,” and the line “No one here gets out alive” served as the title for Danny Sugerman’s definitive Doors bio. In a less confrontational corner of the counterculture, “5-D,” recorded by the Byrds a few years before the Doors track, is a psychedelic love song set in the fifth dimension. Speaking of dimensions, blues shouter Jimmy Rushing’s nickname came from the novelty song “Mr. Five By Five,” whose protagonist was “five feet tall and five feet wide.”

“Well, he was only 5' 3''

But girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole

Not in New York.”

–-Jonathan Richman, “Pablo Picasso”

You don’t have to be tall to be a legend. Elvis stood about 6 feet tall, but many major figures in rock have been shorter. Nevertheless, being short is rarely an asset, unless you make it one, like Johnny Rotten, who emanated menace in his debauched king’s crouch. In “Five Feet of Lovin,’” Gene Vincent raves that his five-foot-tall mama “is cool cool cool,” but in general, Long Tall Sally trumps Short Fat Fanny. It takes an iconoclastic figure like Iggy Pop to sing “Five Foot One” from the point of view of a lovesick Lilliputian and get away with it. In the hands of any one else, the song would come off as a joke, but Iggy turns this tale of an amusement park worker who longs to “go home with all the big folks” into the defiant cry of a wounded misfit on life’s fringes. “I wish life could be Swedish magazines/I wish life could be…anything!” he screams before the song’s chaotic fadeout. “Five Foot One” appeared on New Values (1979), Iggy’s return to relative sanity after several years of physical and emotional turmoil following the breakup of the Stooges, and the urgency of his short-man protagonist reflects his newfound sense of purpose. Obviously, the 5 slot is a crowded category, but the primitive power, snarling self-affirmation, and utterly unique worldview of “Five Foot One” make it my top choice, narrowly edging out Pop’s friend and cohort, Mr. Bowie.

I mean, what the hell, what the heck??

Iggy Pop - "Five Foot One"

Endnote: With the wealth of five songs, this listing is far from complete. “Five Seconds” by Peeping Tom, “Five Minutes” by Arctic Monkeys, Tom Verlaine’s “Five Hours From Calais,” Tricky’s “Five Days,” The Fall’s “M5,” “Five Faces” by Linear Movement, and “Five Easy Pieces” by Green on Red are just a handful of songs that haven’t gotten their due. But it would be silly to try to list them all. So let’s end it with “Five Ways to End It,” a concise, infinitely sexier take on the main conceit of “Fifty Ways to Lose Your Lover,” by the Long Blondes.

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, 62, 63

Posted by David Klein at May 5, 2009 01:02 PM

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