Finding a 47 song—one that I could believe in—was turning out to be a tough task. “PO Box 9847,” the Monkees’ version of “Want Ads,” was not eligible, although it was surpassingly stupid and catchy. Mark Kozalek of Red House Painters was certainly eligible for “Metropol 47,” a sincere and heartfelt, if lugubrious, love song, in which he sings about his desire to kiss his beloved’s “sweet koala face,” but I am much more fond of his AC/DC covers (even though they sound pretty much like this) on that same Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer EP (2000). The rollicking “47th Street Boogie” by legendary blues pianist Memphis Slim and his hero, Roosevelt Sykes, displays charms a-plenty, as it extols the virtues of New York’s 47th Street—a place where, it assures us, you’ll meet the hepcats and the fly chicks, as well as get your solid kicks. And while the song’s main lyric, in which Slim pleads, “Don’t talk me to death/Babe, I ain’t ready to die,” feels at odds with the song’s celebration of hedonism, I’ll take the 47th Street of Memphis Slim and Roosevelt Sykes any day over the place that Duane Peters sings about in “47th Street,” with his skate-punk band, Die Hunns. Peters, the inventor of such skateboard moves as “the fakie hang-up” and “the loop of death,” brays a chorus of “I’ll bury you at 47th Street” like a feral wolf, but apparently that’s par for the course for the prolific Peters, who also records with U.S Bombs and the Exploding Fuckdolls.

Feeling a bit desperate, I dug around in my vinyl collection, and turned up something promising, off an out-of-print record from 1977, and that discovery led me to an even better one. Funny thing was, both songs were by Dwight Twilley.

Now, I’ve been mining number songs for over a year now, actively searching for connections, sometimes stretching and pulling muscles in the process. Usually it entails sifting through a slew of vintage anecdotes about songs and artists, but this one—no. 47—was different. The question I wanted to answer wasn’t answerable through the usual channels. It was really up to me to find out why Dwight Twilley wrote two songs featuring the no. 47 in their titles.

So I called him, at his home in Tulsa, a week ago, and he was kind enough to explain it all to me.

“I think it's a sexy number. You know, when you just say it, the way it rolls off the tongue. It has great syllables.”

It sure does. In fact, “Rock and Roll ’47” (the second track off Twilley’s excellent yet ill-fated 1977 sophomore effort) captures what a man sounds like when he is truly enamored of a number. Dwight sings it like this: “Forty-seh HEH-HEH Heh-eh-vunn,” echoing Buddy Holly’s “A weh-aheh-aheh-ell” intro to “Rave On,” But from a lyrical standpoint, the inclusion of the number seems arbitrary. I mean, it’s hard to know what to make of a line like, "Heard a song, baby, yesterday/Saw a man understand/That he plays what he says—47."

Dwight Twilley - "Rock & Roll '47"

So is that it? Now that we know how much the man digs the 15th prime number for its mouthfeel, should we simply conclude that the number was included solely for its syllabic usefulness? We should not, because that’s not the whole story.

“That came from the musician's union in Los Angeles, which used to be called, and maybe it still is, local union number 47.” [It still is.]

But wait. How, or why, does this tough, twitchy little song end up with a title containing an oblique reference to the L.A. musicians’ union in its title?

“Because, well, that was kind of the point of it. Like, this was just another rock ‘n’ roll song. It could have been 46, it could have been 45, could have had a name or not had a name. Coulda been a bit more up-tempo or slower, but it’s just another rock ‘n’ roll song.”

Dwight Twilley - "Girls"

When Dwight Twilley first began making records, the “just another rock ‘n’ roll song” aesthetic still had legs. Rock was, after all, a familiar idiom, and, even though it had been turned into something complicated by a lot of progressive outfits, people like Dwight Twilley were more interested in mining rock ‘n’ roll for its primal pleasures. When he got his first record deal in 1976 (with the notoriously badly managed Shelter Records, whom his label mate and early collaborator, Tom Petty, successfully sued), it was during the brief mid-‘70s heyday of power-pop, when bands like the pre-Budokan Cheap Trick, the Raspberries, Badfinger and Big Star wrote catchy, Beatles-influenced songs featuring tight harmonies and sharp guitars. Most of them were about girls. With its choppy chords, heavenly harmonies and badass swagger, “I’m on Fire,” Dwight’s first single, (no. 16 on the Billboard chart in April 1975) typifies the genre as well as anything. One thing that distinguishes Twilley’s early records is the glorious vocal interplay between him and drummer Phil Seymour, with whom Twilley cofounded his first outfit, the Dwight Twilley Band. Another trademark was Twilley’s fondness for the rockabilly “slapback echo” effect, which gave his vocals more than a touch of Sun Studios-era Elvis, amid the ringing, stinging chords. You can hear these vocal characteristics on “Rock and Roll ’47,” a strutting number with a section in the song’s brief break that sounds a bit like John Lennon’s upper-register keening at the end of “Hey Jude.”

But the stunning title track from 47 Moons, Dwight’s 2005 album on the digital-only label DMGI, is another thing entirely. It’s a song most definitely made by a grownup, with sumptuous Spectorian production (the song was lovingly engineered by Dwight’s wife, Jan), an indelible minor-key melody, a gorgeous guitar excursion courtesy of longtime Twilley guitarist, Bill Pitcock IV, and a palpable sense longing and melancholy that puts one in mind of the Righteous Brothers.

Dwight Twilley - "47 Moons"

“I think I had to drive somewhere, [I was] driving at night, and I tuned into one of those late-night radio shows, you know, where they talk about UFOs and zombies and stuff. This particular show they had a scientist on—a real specialist—and so it wasn’t so much fiction, but scientific oriented. And he just happened to matter-of-factly point out that Jupiter had 47 moons, which immediately caught my attention. And it kind of begged the question, it’s kinda like: Doesn’t seem fair; we only have one. And obviously, with the word forty-seven, it was just a natural for me. And because of having the other song—it was just another rock song called 47—I felt compelled to write this song. So I spent a considerable amount of time working on it, because I got real serious about it, and then, coincidentally, about a week later I had finished the song, or I thought I had finished the song, and I open up the newspaper here in Tulsa, through the science section, and there’s a big headline that says: More Moons Discovered Around Jupiter. So I had to go back and add another verse: I sing, I believe, “They thought that there were forty-one/They’ll find a thousand before they’re done.” Like, there just keeps being more and more moons around Jupiter.”

--But that totally finishes the song.

“Yeah,” he says, “in a way it does.”

He doesn’t sound completely convinced. In Dwight’s mind, having to add the final verse to accommodate new scientific findings was something he had to deal with. But to me, the curveball that forced him to add that verse is icing on the cake. It takes a fan to see it as a masterstroke, the part where the camera pulls back and hints at a future, rendering the song into a powerful, poignant meditation on time and space, and the endless cycle of change. And when it’s done, what began as a lullaby and swelled to an anthem finally, blissfully, floats off into the ether, where both heavenly bodies and heavenly songs reside.

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just when I am about to conclude that 46 has no special significance to the average person I must reverse myself completely. Forty-six matters to everybody, and not in some obscure way: Humans have 46 chromosomes. And while this fact might not come across as the type to pay the same kind of musical dividends as other numerical certainties, e.g., “24 hours a day,” that sure didn’t stop Tool from confronting the chromosome angle, tossing in Jungian imagery, and whipping these elements into a robust prog-metal froth called “Forty Six & Two,” which describes mankind’s ascendancy to a higher level of existence via an additional two chromosomes (hence the title). I don’t know about you, but too much Jungian imagery in a pop song, whether it’s by the Police or Peter Gabriel or Tori Amos, is not something I welcome. Pop music is something I turn to for less heady joys; if I’m in the mood for Jung, I’ll just curl up under a Navajo blanket with a flashlight and my dog-eared copy of Man and His Symbols. Still, Tool’s song is undeniably well played and ambitiously conceived; the band understands the power of a strong hook but they’re unwilling to let one or two carry a song. I guess they’re just too busy contemplating the next level of existence to write a song that doesn’t sprawl all over the space/time continuum.

Tool - "Forty Six & Two"

So that leaves a jam band, ‘60s R&B outfit, a popular indie group, an obscure ‘80s Barcelona pop combo, and a religious collective…

The term “jam band” didn’t really exist when the Grateful Dead were around. The Dead were the entire scene; there was no one else. When Garcia finally gave out, jam bands began to proliferate like softly glowing roses, blooming in time-lapse, all over America, and Phish soon became the Dead of the jam band scene. Phish did a lot of the same things the Dead did, but the paradigm had clearly shifted. For one thing, Phish were too young, spry, and together to ever be the sprawling mess that the Dead could be concert. It takes years of monumental excess to manage the trick of achieving genius-level improvisation along with shocking displays of sloppy playing and off-key singing, all within the same song, as the Dead did regularly. The Phish guys were not talented singers either, but they could remember the words and hit the high notes most of the time. While “46 Days” is squarely in the Dead tradition of rootsy syncopation and traditional American imagery (“Leigh Fordam sold me out/46 days and the coal ran out”) mixed with touches of mysticism and stoner ambiguity, it doesn’t approach the Dead’s mythic Americana because Phish sorely lacked what the Dead had in Robert Hunter (and the Band had in Robbie Robertson): a poet.

The Trees Community, an early ‘70s band/religious community, put several psalms to music, including the mostly instrumental “Psalm 46.” It’s compelling, but not as audacious as “Psalm 42,” the mind-blowing12-minute opener from The Christ Tree, the recently re-released collection now being hailed as a major work and a progenitor of the so-called freak folk scene.

Goes Cube - "Goes Cube Song 46"

“Goes Cube Song 46” is another seething slab of post-metal by a Brooklyn band so uncompromising that their songs have no titles, just numbers. All of them are head bangers that avoid self-parody. Punishing indeed.

The All Music Guide says Rilo Kelly’s “Love and War 11/11/46” could pass for “Stereophonics covering Lone Justice,” but deep in my heart I believe that no band should ever cover Lone Justice, nor even be able to pass for doing so. Lone Justice had a few good songs and the world should just leave “Sweet Sweet Baby Mine” and “Ways to Be Wicked” alone. Besides, no offense to the perfectly fine Rilo Kelly, or, for that matter, the Barcelona pop band Brighton 64, creators of “La Calle 46,” but it’s getting hard to ignore two 46 songs that just tower above the rest.

“54-46 Was My Number” by Toots & the Maytals surely belongs in the pantheon of great reggae songs; it could win 54 or 46 with its hands tied behind its back. I hate to tip my hand, but I’m holding off conferring hero’s status upon Mr. Hibbert & Co. until we reach the 54 peg, for purely tactical reasons. I wouldn’t want those of you keeping score at home to think I had somehow missed this numerically rich classic.

the Showmen - "39-21-46"

While “39-21-46” by the Showmen lacks the ideal configuration for the no. 46 slot, (the list would certainly scan better if “46” came first) we need to be thankful for either a printing mix-up or some record company chicanery that enables the original 45-rpm of this single to be here in the first place. The record—our winner for no. 46—is really called “39-21-40 Shape”—and it’s clear to the naked ear that the singer never sings “46” at all. General Norman Johnson, who wrote and sung it, believes the title was deliberately changed by execs at Minit Records, as a ploy to “arouse curiosity.” Makes sense to me. It would be hard to imagine someone really mishearing “40 shape” for “forty-six,” and it was a common practice among labels to change the names of songs, and even performers, at their own discretion. Johnson’s own group had been called the Humdingers until Minit changed the name to the more upscale Showmen. And on a more practical level, even to those who like ‘em big, most would agree that 46-inch hips stray from the feminine ideal. The hips that the song celebrates are still plenty ample, just not 46-inch ample:

“You with your 39-21-40 shape/you got me going ape-ity-ape over you.”

And, o how the kids went ape-ity ape for that “mislabeled” single. It became a huge hit on the jukeboxes of Myrtle Beach, SC, which in the early ‘60s was the hotbed of the Carolina Beach Music scene, where the hip white kids went to do The Shag and listen to forbidden “race” music. The Showmen, led by General Norman Johnson, were the kings of the scene. Eventually the Showmen became the Chairmen of the Board, and had hits with “Give Me Just a Little More Time” and other classic singles. Johnson also had major success writing songs for other bands in the ‘60s and ‘70s, working with the legendary Detroit team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and earning himself a Grammy for writing “Patches” by Clarence Carter. Much later, he sang a beach-music style duet with Joey Ramone on “Rockaway Beach,” and it’s about as un-Ramones-y as you can get.

General Johnson & Joey Ramone - "Rockaway Beach"

“39-21-46” falls squarely into a tradition of songs, like Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Eyesight to the Blind,” that depict women’s sexuality as having healing powers. The Who covered “Eyesight” on Tommy, and in the Ken Russell film version, Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton perform it as a pair of Les Paul-playing clergymen in a church that worships Marilyn Monroe.

In “39-21-46” the voluptuous heroine has the power to make a crippled man walk, a blind man see, and the quietest man in the world talk. Johnson imparts this in his distinctive moan, with every fiber of his being. The interplay between the lead vocal and the doo-wop style accompaniment makes for an irresistible tribute to the divinity of women, one that calls to mind a quotation from the Book of Talking Heads. (Trees Community might not approve, but I’m sure General Johnson would):

The world moves on a woman’s hips/the world moves and it swivels and bops

The world moves on a woman’s hips/the world moves and it bounces and hops/

A world of light/She’s gonna open our eyes up

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Numerically speaking, 45 is royalty. The seven-inch 45 rpm vinyl disc is the medium that delivered rock & roll (arguably in its golden age) to millions of teenagers in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The sight of a spinning 45 was an iconic image even before it appeared in the opening moments of Happy Days, which, along with American Graffiti, persists in coloring my mental picture of 1950s. So popular and ingrained is the retro cool of the 45 that a slew of strange bedfellows, like Morrissey and Ricky Skaggs, have recently issued new collections of old hits, on CDs that model the look of classic vinyl singles.

When you name a song after your band, it had better be good. 45 Grave has an interesting bio, so I was hoping “45 Grave” would be a fist-clenching anthem, but these West Coast goth punks—led by mainstay Dinah Cancer (say it out-loud)—come up a bit short. I’ll take “45 Grave” over “Living in a Box,” but it doesn’t compare to “Talk Talk.” Actually, when it comes to songs sung by women who could eat me for breakfast, I much prefer L7’s “Ms. 45.” But before we abandon the subject of song titles doubling as band names, let me ask you this: wasn’t “Stars on 45” by Stars On 45 the worst of them all?

OK, Stars On 45 wasn’t a band in the true sense; it was a bunch of studio musicians taking cues from a guy named Jaap Eggermont, a man who had devoted much time and energy to a project that was a nightmare to assemble. But Eggermont—former drummer for what is now the longest-running rock act in existence, those proud sons of the Netherlands, Golden Earring—had spent 10 undistinguished years as a producer, and wasn’t about to let go of an idea that he could feel in his bones would be a huge hit.

And so it came to pass, like a Dutch kidney stone, in 1981. Primarily voiced by fake Paul McCartney (Okkie Huysdens), fake George Harrison (Hans Vermeuien), and fake John Lennon (Bas Muys), “Stars on 45” ascended to the top of the U.S. charts a mere six months after Lennon’s murder. (It would take 25 years and the strenuous intervention of Cirque du Soleil to render the Beatles this unpalatable again.) Many found the singing soulless, the beat mind-numbing, and the medley form wanting, yet “Stars On 45” spawned a short-lived revolution. It wasn’t just novelty purveyors like Weird Al Yankovic (“Polkas on 45”) and the British Weird Al, Ivor Biggun (“Bras on 45”) who lined up for a ride on the medley train; legitimately cool bands like Squeeze (“Squabs on Forty Fab”) and Orange Juice (“Blokes on 45”) got into the act, too.

Orange Juice - "Blokes on 45" (John Peel Session)

Eggermont’s first attempt to milk the formula using Abba tunes did pretty well, but the subsequent Stevie Wonder version pretty much tanked, and the Stones medley had to be scrapped completely. It hardly mattered though; the man was already set for life. I’m sure he must have chuckled upon receiving a royalty check recently, from the house-style reworking of his song by the French duo Global Deejays. I get a headache just imagining the complex web of royalty payments that a cover of a Beatles medley would spawn. A final numerical point: Stars on 45 was not the only 45-related venture in Jaap Eggermont’s career: he played drums on Golden Earring’s war-themed “Another 45 Miles,” but probably hasn’t seen any cash from that one in a long time.

Shinedown had a big hit a few years back with “45,” a slice of packaged angst with a testosterone-fueled chorus that goes, “And I’m staring down the barrel of a 45/Swimming through the ashes of another life…” But hang on; it’s not what you think: According to singer Brent Smith, “[B]asically, the 45 isn’t an actual literal term for a gun, I used it as a metaphor for the world, the 45 is actually the world and what it hands you every day of your life.” Maybe so, but don’t tell Bronson Arroyo. The Cincinnati Reds pitcher (and decent guitarist) almost certainly chose “45” as his entrance music because it inspires him to go out there and be aggressive early in the game, not for its metaphorical implications.

Metaphors are grownup thoughts, and 45 is a grownup age. Somewhere around 45, it becomes incumbent upon you to give at least a passing thought to your own mortality. In 1955 the Irish soprano Mary O’Hara sang the longevity-minded “45 Years.” Ms. O’Hara’s name may not be familiar in these parts, but her life has been made into a play, and for good reason: Twice she achieved fame as a recording artist, separated by 12 years of living in a convent. If that doesn’t scream biopic I don’t know what does. Is Holly Hunter available?

I wish Mary O’Hara were here right now to sing a brief medley of songs that were ineligible to win but worthy of mention. It would go like this:

Brimful of asha on the 45/Brimful of asha on the 45.…The only girl I've ever loved/was born with roses in her eyes/But then they buried her alive/One evening 1945…Bleep bleep bleep, bloop bloop.

Cornershop - "Brimful of Asha"

The bleep bleep part was an attempt to conjure up the instrumental “45:33” by LCD Soundsystem. While the innovative Murphy takes the medley to a rarely reached height, “45:33” is an album masquerading as a song. And the fact that it’s priced on iTunes as an album proves my point.

45 is the name of Bill Drummond’s collection of cranky tales about life and the music business. Drummond, whose musical sojourn began in the early ‘80s behind the scenes of Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes, went on to score worldwide hits with the KLF and notoriously burned a million English pounds in 1994. (He now says he regrets it.) The book is an intermittently fascinating account that veers between fanciful discourse on interstellar lea lines and brilliant punchy writing, like this thumbnail description of Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant (circa ’78): Short-order chef with black moods and beautiful eyes. Favourite Stone: Brian Jones. If the book has a musical equivalent, it would have to be a song that is both sharp-eyed and fanciful, one that considers multiple implications with skill and a sneer: in short, a song by Elvis Costello.

Before conferring honors upon Mr. McManus, let me present the bronze, silver, and brass medal winners. The quietly harrowing “2:45 a.m.” finds Elliott Smith on a dark night of the soul, his fragile voice sounding as nakedly vulnerable as ever, even when double-tracked. I just question whether the drums that enter during the last verse need to be there. The simple beauty of the melody, the intimacy of Smith’s voice and guitar are compelling on their own and the drums feel almost like an intrusion, like someone came into the room and turned the lights on too quickly. “Colt 45” by Metal Urbain is an appealingly reverb-laden rave-up that gives French punk a good name. Contemporaries and acolytes of the early Clash, the band employed a declamatory singing style and distorted keyboards, bringing to mind a Gallic take on Suicide. Gang of Four’s “5:45” is a stubborn screed decrying death as entertainment, as only Gang of Four could do it: “How can I sit and eat my tea/with all that blood flowing from the television?”

Elliott Smith - "2:45 a.m."
Metal Urbain - "Colt 45"
Gang of Four - "5:45"

Fine songs all, but not especially concerned with 45. Leave it to Elvis Costello, wordsmith nonpareil, to deliver one song containing all the major connotations of the number: 45 the year, 45 the 7-inch single, and 45 the gun—as well as writing it at the age of 45. Impossibly clever lyrics are what you expect from Elvis, but the sound of “45,” which leads off When I Was Cruel (2002), marked a return to the kind of music he hadn’t made since he was 25. Gone, at least for the moment, was Elvis the UCLA artist in residence and Anne Sophie von Otter collaborator. Back after a long absence was the seductive, bitter, guitar-strumming Elvis who charmed a million hearts with an audacious vinyl troika in 1977-79. That voice is still that voice, the lyrics still sting, and the guitar crunch hasn’t aged badly at all.

Elvis Costello & the Imposters - "45"
(A&E Live By Request, 2003)

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I know what you’re thinking. If you’re anything like me, 44 makes you think of Dirty Harry and his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, which would blow your head clean off.” I’m also reminded of that memorable turn in front of the camera by Martin Scorsese, playing a cuckolded psychopath in Taxi Driver who manages to creep out Travis Bickle himself, by posing disturbing questions about the destructive power of the .44 he’s planning on using on his wife. Accordingly, “.44 Magnum is a Monster” is the name of an instrumental piece on the movie’s soundtrack, scored by the great Bernard Herrmann, who put shrill violins permanently on the map in his score for Psycho. The mighty Howlin’ Wolf apparently never left home without packing his piece. In his oft-covered “Forty-Four,” a jaunty two-steppin’ blues, Wolf delivers a raw, impassioned vocal that shows off his unmistakable jagged-edged timbre. “I wore my .44 so long,” he wails, “I’ve made my shoulder sore.” In just a few words he conveys both a world of pain and the sense that healing can come through the sheer power of expression.

Howlin' Wolf - "Forty-Four"

Even without the gun association, no. 44 signifies power. Ask Henry Aaron, Reggie Jackson, and Willie McCovey, Hall of Fame sluggers all, who slammed the white pill skyward hundreds and hundreds of time with 44 stitched across their broad backs. I would be surprised if they would have hit a collective 1,839 homers had they all worn no. 43. “Surprise Me 44,” by the UK folk-tronica purveyors known as Tunng, has nothing to do with baseball, but with its comforting acoustic guitar lines and hazy campfire vocals, if the song were a baseball player, it would be a light-hitting but dependable second baseman. Even the hippie-dippy sentiments of lines like “Let all the moments go down on you/we’ll sleep tomorrow/it’s nice to do” don’t really rankle. I wish I could say the same for Insane Clown Posse’s “The Night of the 44, ” a rhythmically and lyrically uninspired mass-murder fantasy. A much better song about murder is “44,” from Happy Suicide Jim! (2006) by the Love Kills Theory, which mocks vigilantism instead of celebrating it, and makes its case with a combination of sturdy chords and an upbeat chorus bolstered with gunshots (a full two years before M.I.A. pulled the same trick on “Paper Planes,” to an admittedly grander height).

Nevertheless, no. 44 is the opposite of a big brawny chest beater of a song. In fact, it’s incredibly light on its feet, but before we go there, let’s set this up properly. It’s worth it.

I’m sure it never occurred to Al Kooper in 1968 that one of his most lasting contributions to music would involve the stack of 40 or so British LPs he brought back with him from London that summer. Al Kooper was on the hot streak of his life at the time, and would have been well within his rights to be thinking primarily of his own career trajectory. After all, three years earlier the man makes history, twice: going electric with Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, and playing organ on “Like a Rolling Stone,” a great song that becomes revolutionary when Dylan tells Al to turn up his organ. From 1965-68, Kooper proceeds to play guitar and keyboards on hundreds of sessions, with the Stones and Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Who, and other lesser mortals; he starts and leaves not one, but two, successful bands—the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears—and now he is poised to add solo artist to his resume. In the midst of all this, one of those British LPs, starts to haunt him. One of them, Kooper later writes, “stuck out like a rose in a garden of weeds.”

Odessey & Oracle by the Zombies is now recognized as one of the finest pop records of its decade, or any decade, but in 1968, no one else but Kooper seems to recognize the record’s greatness. Kooper’s so passionate that he personally leans on the new head of CBS Records, which owns it, Clive Davis, to release it in the States. CBS doesn’t think much of the record’s commercial prospects, and they’re about to just shelve it. Remember, Columbia has all the big acts at this time, from Dylan on down, and they’re just not excited enough to get behind a bunch of specky Englishmen singing intricate, minor-key, utterly English-sounding psychedelic pop. But Kooper, a producer at Columbia with nothing to gain from his efforts save for avoiding a crime against nature, persuades Davis to change his mind and Odessey gets released, with little fanfare, and no one pays much attention. The first few singles are released that fall, including this week’s winning song, and they go nowhere. But November spawns a monster, in the form of “Time of the Season,” which grows into an international hit. Of course, by this time, the Zombies have long since broken up.

It’s hard to imagine how Kooper, with his golden touch, somehow believed that “Care of Cell 44” was a stronger single than “Time of the Season” and advised CBS to put it out first. While undoubtedly the definitive no. 42 song of all time, “Cell 44” had already tanked as a single in the UK. It’s suitability as a single notwithstanding, “Care of Cell 44” is the glorious opening of a record that is as good as Pet Sounds or Forever Changes, and flat-out better than Sgt. Pepper, with which it is often compared. The song is a perfect pop tapestry woven of Colin Blunstone’s delicate, dreamy vocals, washes of gauzy mellotron, harpsichord plinks, and a richly melodic bass line. The exquisite, guitar-less arrangement just soars. In addition to its remarkable beauty, the song offers a scenario that appears to be unique in the annals of rock: a love letter to an incarcerated girlfriend. In the hands of Johnny Cash or Nick Cave, a song with this lyrical conceit would be a dirge, but the Zombies fill it with such barely suppressed joy and musical inventiveness (the falsetto-dominated middle eight is remarkably sublime) as to render the prison part irrelevant. We know she’s a good girl; it’s probably just a lot of parking tickets or something. The point is she’s coming home, and soon, and we can hardly wait.

I can never imagine getting tired of this song. That’s even higher praise than “I’ll always love this song” or “This song has a lot of meaning for me” or even “I’ll always think of my first love/car/dog when I hear it.” Nope, a lifetime skip count of zero trumps them all.

the Zombies - "Care of Cell 44"

A final note: Al Kooper’s first solo record, I Stand Alone (1968), received critical praise but was not a commercial success. While he would continue to matter greatly in the music world in the ‘70s (and beyond), mostly as a producer and as the man who discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kooper never made it as a solo artist, a fact that he apparently took pretty hard. But in the year in which he was arguably at his absolute peak, Kooper helped the Zombies leave an indelible mark with their posthumous masterstroke. We can be thankful to Al for that, just as I am grateful to the Zombies, from a numerological standpoint, for ditching both of the song’s original titles: “Prison Song” and “Cell 69.” How they settled on 44 is unclear, but oddly enough, ’44 was the year Al Kooper was born. Guess it was just meant to be.

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Game Show Host (John Cleese): Mr. Voles, I understand that you claim that you wrote all those plays normally attributed to Shakespeare.

Voles: Ah well. This is where my claim falls to the ground.

My claim—that there is a worthy song for every number up to 100—also seems vulnerable to a sudden collapse. I never realized it before, but people like to poke fun at 43. In the above excerpt from Monty Python’s game show “Stake Your Claim,” Voles could have been any age, but it’s funny that he’s 43. Likewise, a fictional sport that Mad magazine dreamed up, called 43-Man Squamish, commences when the words “My uncle is sick but the highway is green” are uttered in Spanish. Forty-three, where is thy dignity?

It should be noted that not everyone thinks 43 is ridiculous. The brain trust behind 43things.com stands firmly behind the belief that 43 is “the right number of things for a busy person to try and do.” Why 43, you ask? Why not, for example, 44? “It’s too much,” they say. And as for doing less than 43 things, the answer is just as airtight in its logic: “You can do less, but it’s still called 43 things.”

One of the 43 most difficult things to explain to people who weren’t around in the ‘70s is how a band led by a shaggy-headed, codpiece-wearing man in tights, prone to playing the flute while balanced on one leg, could regularly play to a sold-out Madison Square Garden, before an adoring teenage audience. How, indeed, could a band named after the 18th-century agriculturist who invented the seed drill grow hugely popular, in the States, no less, playing complicated songs that drew heavily on Irish jigs and ‘round-the-maypole reels? It sounds ludicrous now, doesn’t it, like Spinal Tap’s dancing elves? The biggest mystery is what it all meant. Most bands gave the youth something to go on—Love is all you need; You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows; Well, whatever, nevermind—but what was the proper response to Jethro Tull? Take up archery? Reconsider leotards and lutes?

It’s tempting to say a certain type of nonsense went further when our world had yet to be digitized, but what really made the band relevant to the kids is quite simple: the music had a heavy rock foundation. The rock could coexist with the Olde English folke traditions and the jigs and not harsh anyone’s mellow. Even as Ian Anderson’s look went from the mad beggar of Aqualung to the Robin Hood duds of Songs From the Wood, there were still plenty of loud guitars. And in the early ‘70s, young people in many quarters liked their music to have the appearance of depth. They had no problem with artifice and couldn’t have cared less about danceability or authenticity. And Tull always seemed to be saying something deep. The band’s signature song, “Aqualung,” about a pervy old coot, is a prototypical ‘70s epic: a mini-symphony anchored by a fat guitar riff that was made to be aped by teenage boys “nare-nare-nare”-style. Add to that a reference to snot and you’ve got a song with eternal appeal to the young at heart. “Hymn 43,” from the Aqualung (1971) record, shows off guitarist Martin Barre’s knack for a memorable hook as well as Ian Anderson’s distinctive delivery. The song was part of a growing trend wherein Jesus Christ was a character in a rock song.

Jethro Tull - "Hymn 43"

Country Joe and the Fish were a West Coast band who played Woodstock in ’69, and whose jokey name does not suggest they had the depth to record the seven-minute instrumental “Section 43.” This dark, organ-drenched psychedelic suite, written a few years before bands like the Grateful Dead made lysergic jams commonplace on vinyl, has been called one of the best and truest examples of acid rock, but even while I acknowledge it to be an important song, I would only want to hear it once every ten years or so. Timeless it’s not, and timelessness is of the essence.

Dillinger Escape Plan - "43 Percent Burnt"

I’m blown away, still quivering really, from the sheer physicality of one single Dillinger Escape Plan song. “43 Percent Burnt” is such a brutal, impossibly complicated cluster bomb that, next to it, Vanilla Trainwreck’s fairly evil sounding “43” sounds like the Buzzcocks, “43” by neo-heavy metalists Mushroomhead is a Stone Temple Pilots ditty, and the anti-pedophile “Rule 43” by Glaswegian Oi purveyors Bakers Dozen is a lost Proclaimers song, written after a lager fight.

After Crosby Stills Nash & Young broke up acrimoniously in 1970, Crosby stayed with Nash, but if the drippy soft-rock of “Page 43” is any indication, the well was pretty much tapped: “I think I’ll have a swallow of wine/Life is fine. Even with the ups and downs. And you should have a sip of it. Else you’ll find/It’s passed you by.” It’s not clear whether Crosby was cautioning us that life might pass us by, or just the bottle of wine, but since the song was written in 1972, the odds are he meant both, man.

My winning song is a single by the bird-obsessed UK outfit known as the Guillemots, whose lush, unabashedly romantic songs might come off as a bit too sweet if they weren’t shot through with intriguing instrumentation and arrangements, and hints of conflict underneath the often-soaring surfaces. “Made Up Love Song #43” showcases these qualities. I had trouble with the opening reference to “shining dragons,” but I hung on, and after the second run through of the verse and chorus, the whole thing bursts to life delightfully, with especially lovely interplay in the rhythm section and over-the-top falsetto background singing. “M-ULS43” teems with the irrepressible optimism of the truly smitten; only a person nestled deep in the arms of amour could find “poetry in an empty Coke can.”

Guillemots - "Made Up Love Song #43"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 signifies nothing less than the meaning of life itself. The members of Level 42, London-based purveyors of vaguely danceable smooth pop in the ‘80s, named their quite successful band after this mind-bending sci-fi classic by Douglas Adams, but in the world of music, 42 stands for something only slightly less fraught with possibilities than life itself: 42nd Street. Ten of the 11 songs surveyed herein refer to this once-notorious stretch of Manhattan real estate that was sanitized during the Giuliani years. What’s more, there is no mystery about the definitive 42 song: it’s “42nd Street.” You know the one: “Come and meet those dancing feet/On the avenue I’m taking you to/Forty-second Street” But show tunes are out of bounds here. Bob Dylan (who wrote in Chronicles Vol. 1 that something vital clicked for him as he sat watching a performance of Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera) would disagree, but for me, the vast majority of show tunes don’t feel like they belong with the songs on this list. Blues and country songs, on the other hand, make perfect sense because blues and country are essential elements of rock & roll. I do realize that there are elements of show tunes in music I like and admire, from the Kinks and Bowie and Kate Bush to people like Rufus Wainwright and Nellie McKay. But a song like “42nd Street,” whether the Depression-era ditty version by the Boswell Sisters or the belted-out Broadway showstopper in the Tony Award-winning 1980 revival, just doesn’t make sense at this particular party. What a show tune—this show tune, at any rate—lacks is edge, the edge that characterizes rock & roll and its close relatives. The fact that I cannot turn up a single rock version of the song seems to bear this out. To have “42nd Street” sitting cheek by jowl with “Map Ref 41 N 93 W” would stop this juggernaut in its tracks.

Through the years of unchecked raunch—the ‘60s through the late ‘80s—42nd Street inspired songs that mirrored its nasty side. Folks as varied as first-wave English punkers the Angelic Upstarts, Billy Squier’s first band, Piper, and Golden Earring, the longest-running rock band in history (you read that right; the Dutch outfit best known for “Radar Love” formed in 1961, two years before the Stones) all had songs called “42nd Street.” None were great shakes. The Upstarts, making good use of a police siren, lose points for the social critique of the verses, which rings a bit hollow next to the chorus about “the girl I’d like to meet.” In the song by Piper—from the 1976 eponymous LP that Circus. magazine declared the greatest debut by an American band—the heart of the red light district and recycled Thin Lizzy riffs are but a backdrop for Billy Squier, who howls that he is a man of “repu-tay-shunnn,” “obli-gay-shunnn” and “conster-nay-shunnn.” The Golden Earring song starts with traffic noises and kicks up a frantic ‘70s hard-rockin’ groove before making the expected references to misfits, perverts and losers, and fading out with, you guessed it, a police siren.

IIn the one-off whatsit department: R.E.M.'s Out of Time-era outtake called "42nd Street Song" should have remained on the kudzu-covered cutting-room floor; Flaming Lips' "Miracle on 42nd Street" is a sound collage that leaves little lasting impression, and Malcolm McLaren's "42nd Street," from his 1998 tribute to himself, Buffalo Gals Back to Skool, speaks for itself. Ineligible but worth mentioning for the clear enunciation of "42" are two tracks that employ the tried-and-true street address and phone number strategy: the B-52s' "6060-842" from the classic 1979 debut, and the obscure girl group known as the Pixies Three, whose "442 Glenwood Avenue" is a sassy invitation to a swinging party.

The Trees Community - "Psalm 42"

Certainly the hardest no. 42 song to describe in mere words is “Psalm 42,” a 12-minute symphony of sorts by the Trees Community, a monastically minded troupe whose first release, Christ Tree (1975), was too baffling for any widespread recognition. In recent years, the absolute singularity and authenticity of the project has led to an unlikely wave of positive reappraisal. The sonic landscape that opens “Psalm 42” could almost pass for something from Eno’s Another Green World, but it doesn’t last long; soon there is vocal interplay suggesting plainsong, and there are Eastern bells, and oboes, and voices chanting songs of praise. And that’s only in the first half. It’s fascinating, to be sure, but it isn’t definitive. It’s kind of the opposite of definitive.

Django Reinhardt - "Swing 42"

So, back to the problem at hand. The need for a suitable 42 song has been a conundrum for longer than I care to admit. I briefly considered the spry Django Reinhardt instrumental “Swing 42.” After all, the three-fingered Django was a virtuoso, trailblazing guitarist who influenced generations of players, including people like Jerry Garcia and Mark Knopfler. Then I was excited when I stumbled upon “Fire on 42nd Street” by Austin’s The Lord Henry, but in the end I couldn’t pull the trigger on either the classic jazz instrumental or a decent-enough song that sounds a bit too much like Franz Ferdinand. But this quest has reinforced my abiding faith that there is a good and suitable song for every number, and finally that song appeared.

The Lord Henry - "Fire on 42nd Street"

East River Pipe is the musical alias of Fred Cornog, a reclusive yet prolific songwriter whose weary voice hints at the hard life he’s lived. After a brief flirtation with major labels in the early ‘90s, followed by years of homelessness and drug addiction, Cornog has persevered, finding stability and sanity while continuing to write songs marked by understated beauty and a wry and incisive lyrical touch. It took me a listen or two to fall for the simple charms of “Down 42nd Street to the Light” but I now see its strengths clearly: the weary sense of resolve and hope in his voice, the ramshackle but just-right musical accompaniment, and the hypnotic singsong of the backing vocals, like a child’s voice issuing from the backseat of a car. But if I needed something extra to prove to me that I had found a 42 song I could really live with, it was that Cornog mentions my hometown: "We could fly from here to there and back/Tenafly or maybe Hackensack." I assure you: references to good old Tenafly—also the hometown of Ed Harris, Leslie Gore and Bob Guccione Jr.—are few and far between in the world of popular song. It was all the sign I needed. The superfluous sign, which was just plain odd, is the name of a 1995 East River Pipe release: Poor Fricky.

Fricky was the name of my cat growing up in Tenafly. You can ask my dad.

East River Pipe - "Down 42nd Street to the Light"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Has anyone else noticed that as the numbers go up, the subject matter gets darker? Recently we’ve had the Milgram experiments, soccer carnage, a lethal toss of Big Ed’s knife, and now we reach 41: ‘Zounds! I had no idea that to some numerically minded Bible enthusiasts, 41 signifies the 39 lashes, the spear in the side, and the crown of thorns suffered by Christ. I can, on the other hand, confirm that turning 41 might be your first grandly depressing birthday. (Turning 40, as traumatic as it is, at least involves a big blowout; 41 is nothing but a lethal comedown.)

Bruce Springsteen - "American Skin (41 Shots)" (live)

Unlike many of the crooked numbers we’ve encountered thus far, 41 has strong footing in the rock firmament, and that’s due to tragedy. In “American Skin (41 Shots)” Bruce Springsteen lamented the death of Amadou Diallo, the 23-year-old native of Guinea who was met with a barrage of 41 NYPD bullets in 1999 when he made the mistake of being black and reaching for his wallet in a dark storage facility. Springsteen risked the wrath of the law-and-order types in his fan base by writing this stark and affecting elegy, which certainly ranks as one of the biggest songs by a major artist to go viral on the Internet without any official release. To my mind, “41 Shots” is something to be played sparingly, in the same way that even the most diehard Spielberg fans reach for Raiders of the Lost Ark more often than Schindler’s List (the soundtrack of which contains another dark 41 song: “Jewish Town (Kracow Ghetto – Winter ’41)”

So what’s in 41’s favor, you ask? Iggy Pop said he chose Sum 41 to back him on the single from 2003’s Skull Ring, “Little Know it All,” and subsequent TV performances “because they have balls.” So that’s a positive thing. The 41st Side by the rapper Lake takes its name from an unforgiving housing project in Long Island City where he, as well as Nas and Mobb Deep, grew up. My favorite specific enunciation of “forty-one” comes from Tom Petty’s “American Girl”: Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by/Out on 441/Like waves crashing on the beach.” Of course the song is ineligible to win anything here except my undying affection; I only mention it because it still catapults me into the stratosphere whenever I hear it, conjuring teenage dreams, as well as the scene in Silence of the Lambs when the senator’s daughter sings along to it in the car, in her last free moments before her memorable captivity. Although it was rumored that the song memorialized a woman who committed suicide at the University of Florida, Petty has emphatically refuted the notion that he was referring to anything more than U.S. Route 441, which begins in Miami, passes through his hometown of Gainesville, FL, and winds north to Tennessee. I’ve never been much of a map reader, but I’ve always dug the way Tom spits out those numbers. (And by the way, that map reference, far from being arbitrary, is what we numerologists refer to as foreshadowing.)

Iron & Wine/Calexico - "Prison on Route 41"

Iron & Wine merchant Sam Beam fairly caresses the same syllables that Petty spits, in “Prison on Route 41,” an evocative waltz-time tale of man who avoids the fate of incarceration suffered by his family members because of the love of “the righteous grand Virginia.” While Beam’s burnished whisper sounds heavenly wrapped in the pedal steel, harmonica, and banjo accompaniment provided by Calexico, the song is just as strong, and perhaps a bit more haunting, delivered in Beam’s usual way, with just voice and guitar. It certainly doesn’t need that overloud drum.

Why is it that one man singing and playing an acoustic guitar can convey depths of meaning, while another man, with what some might call a better voice, a more accomplished technique, and quite possibly a better guitar, says almost nothing at all? That’s how I feel when I listen to Dave Matthews’s “41” after “Prison on Route 41.” If Sam Beam is iron and wine, Dave Matthews is the masterfully constructed, utterly lightweight Triscuit cracker.

Alabama, of “40 Hour Work Week” fame, continues to stalk me, this time with its greatest hits collection, 41 Number One Hits. That’s right. Forty-one chart toppers. Would someone please explain to me how this is possible? “Reason 41” by the Alarm offers nothing in the way of an explanation for the success of Alabama, but I couldn’t even begin to consider it because a) it’s extremely trite and b) the Alarm’s big moment comes later on, when it really counts, in the late 60s. And let’s not forget “4:41 A.M. Sexual Revolution” from The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, a concept album from Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters on which he enlisted the help of non-Floydies including Eric Clapton and the late actor and one-armed-pushup master, Jack Palance.

Wire - "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W"

Some songs you love; they touch something in you and you respond by loving them. You get cozy with them and carry them around in your head. But some songs have a different kind of power; they hold you in their thrall. You can carry them around in your head, but still, you’re almost a little afraid of how good they are; you feel the way “Sopranos” heavy Bobby Bacala did when he told Uncle Junior: “I’m in awe-r of you.” “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W” by Wire is just such a song. Despite its strong hooks and soaring chorus, despite the seeming connectedness of various lyrical bits, it’s still a bit of a glorious blur, both sonically and in terms of meaning, like a rainbow in a puddle that disappears when you try to grab it. The specificity of the title and the clearly enunciated attack of the main guitar lines are at odds with the song’s overarching elusiveness. The coordinates in the title, after all, make specific reference to the terrestrial equivalent of nothing at all: a field in Iowa. That same elusiveness and the overall smeared quality of this 1979 song became hallmarks of My Bloody Valentine a good 10 years later. And as far as I know, no one else but MBV has had the guts to cover it , although I can see Yo La Tengo or Sonic Youth doing the song justice.

My Bloody Valentine - "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W"

On a final note, if this quest has taught me anything, it’s that Kenny Rogers was right about the importance of knowing when to hold ‘em and knowing when to fold ‘em. I was wise to hold on to “Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35,” knowing that 35 would be a tough hole to fill, but I’m reversing myself here, using “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W” for 41 and not 93 for no good reason other than the awe factor. But it feels right. By the time 93 rolls around, I’ll probably come up with an argument for “Map Ref” winning that spot as well. Certain songs you’re just willing to go to the mat for. When I reviewed Wire’s 154 for an online data disseminator some years ago, I got fanciful, likening “Map Ref” to “the backing music for a love song between two artificial intelligences.” While that line is clearly indicative of a short-lived Neuromancer phase, I stand by the review’s final declaration: “What can you say? A stunner.”

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With yesterday's Numerology installment on the books, it's time once again to mark a significant milestone on the road to oblivion. Yes, another twenty numerals have been fully sussed out and concretely formulated by Prof. Klein, their optimal musical expression decided. So, like we did for the first twenty, we're providing the next block in one excited burst.

Listen, we've given you people every chance to get on board with this thing. There's a little "Numerology" tag on the side, and links to all previous editions in each post. But if it takes overkill for you to see the light, then browse the tracks below, and click on the bold numeral to its left to read why it, above all possible other options is the song for that specific number. Look, we've got sixty more of these to go, and they're only going to get odder from here. Learn the rules, and play along!

Kisses, JK for MS.

21: the Shirelles - "Twenty-One"
22: Ike Reilly - "22 Hours of Darkness"
23: Blonde Redhead - "23"
24: Game Theory - "24"
25: 28th Day - "25 Pills"
26: Stereolab - "Olv 26"
27: Coltrane Motion - "27"
28: Toni Basil - "I'm 28"
29: Koko Taylor - "29 Ways (To My Baby's Door)"
30: Chuck Berry - "30 Days"
31: the Shirelles - "31 Flavors"
32: House of Love - "32nd Floor"
33: Stereolab - "Peng! 33"
34: Charley Patton - "34 Blues"
35: Bob Dylan - "Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35"
36: Nick Lowe - "36 Inches High"
37: Peter Gabriel - "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)"
38: Revolting Cocks - "38"
39: Queen - " '39"
40: Johhny Cash and June Carter - "When it's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)"

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have struck gold. We haven’t witnessed this type of numerical downpour since the opening credits of The Matrix. Big round numbers are bound to have inspired a bunch of songs, it’s true, but you don’t have to be on a mad numerological quest to know that 40 is a hotter decade number than 70, or even 30. There are just so many meanings and primal events associated with 40. Think of it: you can drink a 40, catch 40 winks, spend 40 days and 40 nights pining for your baby, and top it all off with 40 lashes. Let’s not forget Top 40 radio, the band UB-40 (who took their name from an unemployment form) and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves (a phrase lustily intoned by the Beastie Boys on “Rhymin’ & Stealin’”). In fact, some people contend that life itself begins at 40. Be that as it may, in songdom, 40 tends to be a matter of miles, days, years, or ounces.

Let’s start with ounces. I cannot address the cultural significance of the 40 oz. from personal experience; I prefer a nice orgranic microbrew myself, but ignoring it would be a grave oversight. Malt liquor went global in the mid-80s when Billy Dee Williams did his seminal St. Ides ads; in a few years, people like Snoop Dog and Ice Cube were singing the praises of 40s and introducing the term to frat boys nationwide. Of course, malt liquor is not really a joke, as its nickname “liquid crack” suggests. Chuck D. who sued St. Ides for sampling his voice in a radio ad, wrote “One Million Bottle Bags” to express his hatred for the entire industry, devoted as it is to selling cheap, high-alcohol brew targeted for consumption by inner city youth. Nevertheless, for years, 40s have been held up as one of the iconic objects of rap and rebellion—from the early ‘90s, with Black Sheep (“Pass the 40”) and Sublime (“40 Oz. to Freedom”) to more recent fare from political punkers Leftover Crack (“Rock the 40 Oz.”) and D12, a Detroit crew devoted to bringing “the sick, the obscene, the disgusting,” and who, in “40 oz.,” prove more than willing to fight to the death rather than pour their 40’s out in the gutter.

Forty days and 40 nights, the length of the Biblical flood, inspired Muddy Waters’ sublimely soulful “Forty Days and Forty Nights,” which in turn inspired a lead-footed cover by Steppenwolf and a slew of riffs on the title, including the waggish Badly Drawn Boy’s “Forty Days, Forty Fights,” and the Donnas’ “40 Boys and 40 Nights.”

The sexy synths on Lali Puna’s “40 Days” would segue smoothly into “40 Years Back/Come,” the gelid closer from Royksopp’s Melody A.M. The twangalicious Duane Eddy instrumental “Forty Miles of Bad Road” was covered in true surf style by the Lively Ones, who then re-covered it as “Forty Miles of Bad Surf.” Crazy, man. There’s a bit of an evil surf drum vibe in “Forty Odd Years Ago” by the Exploited, and no discernable surf influence to be found in either the tender Dave Matthews song “40” or “40 Kinds of Sadness” by Ryan Cabrera, a Matthews acolyte who sings with young-man angst you can almost smell.

I’ve tried hard not to mention Anal Cunt by name, but I have to at least give a shout-out for the cannily titled 40 More Reasons to Hate Us (Track 1: “You’re a Trendy Pussy”). I wonder how they’d feel about sharing a bill with Jimmy Buffet. Maybe AC could join Jimmy onstage for “A Pirate at 40.” Just a thought. While we’re talking also-rans, I’ll just throw in “40 Hour Week” by Alabama and leave it at that.

High on the list of runners-up is the Undertones-worshipping Seattle punk band known as the Briefs, whose entirely enjoyable ode to cougar hunting, “Forty and Above,” might bring comfort to the long in tooth while confusing the band’s young male fans.

Wire - "40 Versions"

But here’s where it gets tough. Any one of the following is worthy of winning the top spot here: Wire’s subtly thrilling “40 Versions,” the closing track from the band’s crucial third LP, 154, is seductive, discordant, inscrutable and just plain cool. Godflesh did a darker, heavier cover on the Wire tribute WHORE, but the original is light on its feet, with a hypnotic guitar figure that loops through the song like a replicating virus. But with Wire taking two spots on this list already, I have to draw a line somewhere. Nothing to stop me from choosing Mercury Rev’s dreamy “Opus 40,” itself a bit inscrutable, with its refrain of “Tears in waves/minds on fire.” But it’s one of those songs that resembles a vivid dream, and you wouldn’t want the words to be any more literal. With a timeless groove set by Levon Helm, and an arrangement worthy of Mr. Helm’s former outfit, “Opus 40” stands out on the all-around terrific Deserter’s Songs, (which is now ten years old. Sheesh.) Also in favor of “Opus 40” is that it would sound really good coming after “‘39” by Queen. Both have more than a touch of Oz to them.

Mercury Rev - "Opus 40"

U2 - "40"

U2’s “40,” based on Psalm 40 of the Bible, has been a regularly scheduled sing-along in the band’s live set for about 25 years now. It’s hard to deny the simple beauty of how those liquid strums (played by bassist Adam Clayton, sounding entirely Edge-like) combine with the military kick of the drums and the keening energy of Bono’s vocal to create something pretty heavenly. And in another one of these funny numerological coincidences, the album from which “40” comes, War (1983), is ranked no. 40 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Albums of the ‘80s. And here comes another one: what’s with all these 40 songs being album closers? Along with Wire and U2, I give you Franz Ferdinand’s wickedly good “40' ” the final track from the 2001 self-titled debut. I don’t really understand the anti-FF vibe these days. Maybe nobody likes a Mercury Prize winner. In any case, this dark tale of mountaineering gone wrong features the band’s trademark spring-loaded rhythm section and a rustic melody that would sound at home in the Balkans or a Fiddler on the Roof revival. It really is kind of funny that these guys are Scottish. Full of bespoke textures—plinks, smudgy chords, ghostly melodica, aggressive theremin—and nimble playing throughout, “40' ” mimics the long journey of its protagonist, rising and falling, reaching a full-on assault then backing down to a whisper, and then continuing up the mountain.

Franz Ferdinand - "40' "

Cue Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash singing “When it’s Springtime in Alaska (It’s Forty Below).” I know it doesn’t rock, but I have to go with my gut here. This tale of an Alaskan prospector who gets more than he bargains for when he dances with a redheaded gal on a Kodiak rug, is my favorite 40 song. For one thing, it’s sung by a man who is already dead. And who better to do that than Johnny Cash? His voice is just so room-filling and godlike; the way it sounds next to June’s voice, with her exquisite pronunciation of “see-loon,” is nothing short of divine.

Johnny Cash and June Carter - "When it's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.

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

Posted by David Klein at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an organization of spies, collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of...

[Before the author of this column was able to complete the sentence above, the nefarious organization that controls human events thwarted his efforts. I have uncovered his notes, and done my best to transcribe them accurately. It doesn’t really matter who I am. Just consider me an emissary of some kind.]

I was searching for inspiration in Herman Melton’s Thirty-Nine Lashes—Well Laid On: Crime and Punishment in Southside Virginia 1750-1950, but found it completely devoid of references to songs with 39 in their titles. Next, no doubt more sensibly, I consulted my well-thumbed Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers, which stated in no uncertain terms that 39 is a mathematically uninteresting number. But these portents came to naught, I’m happy to report, for musically speaking, 39 is surprisingly fertile, with an undisputable winning song that has all sorts of numerical juju floating overhead, and a handful of interesting contenders and also-rans to boot. The climb through the 30s has not been without its perils, but at 39 I feel I have reached base camp.