“Oh, how happy we will be/ if we keep the ten commandments of love.”

—the Moonglows

“One of a thousand pities that you can’t categorize

There are ten commandments of love…”

—Elvis Costello, “Pidjin English

“She’s got the ten commandments tattooed on her arm.”

—MC5, “Sister Anne”

Not nine. Not eleven. Ten commandments. No wonder ten-named songs are a solid lot: they are linked inextricably to the very basis of Judeo-Christian morality. Use 10 right, and you have a powerful weapon. Granted, it’s a heavy a subject to tackle head-on in a pop song, but in “The Ten Commandments of Love,” a valentine to fidelity and deep, abiding romance, the legendary doo-wop practitioners the Moonglows stirringly suggest a concept the average 1950s teenager could get cozy with. (True, the ‘Glows only enumerate nine commandments of love, but the background vocals cunningly fool the ear into thinking it’s heard the full decalogue.)

Harry Nilsson, no stranger to numerically titled songs (see “One” and “1941”), used the Ten Commandments as the basis for his “Ten Little Indians,” which he derived from the short poem-turned-schoolyard jingle that Agatha Christie borrowed for the title of one of her most popular mysteries. (The original title, published in the UK in 1939, used an appalling racial epithet instead of Indians, but the U.S. edition carried the title “And Then There Were None.”) Unlike the original poem, in which each little Indian dies from one form of random misadventure or another, in Nilsson’s version, which the Yardbirds covered, each one dies by breaking a commandment. The Beach Boys’ “Ten Little Indians,” one of their least successful singles, and deservedly so, uses the traditional sing-song melody of the playground to tell the story of a fickle “squaw” who resists nine eager suitors—and their offers of moccasins, feathers and the like—before settling on “the tenth little Indian boy.” Certainly a low point for a great group. Much more uplifting is “Ten Little Kids” by the Jayhawks, a joyful stomp that really is about kids, from their sublime Tomorrow the Green Grass. The densely churning “Ten Little Girls” by Curve (heck, all their songs are densely churning) diverts from the poem, dispatching the girls in question in one fell swoop.

“Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow/the drummer relaxes and waits between shows for his cinnamon girl”—Neil Young, “Cinnamon Girl”

The nation’s oldest college athletics conference is the Big Ten, but R&B sax master Bull Moose Jackson had a far different, far from officially sanctioned kind of sport in mind on his signature “Big Ten Inch Record.” The caesura that follows “ten-inch” is all that’s needed to make Jackson’s song a classic of the double entendre, and it’s obvious why Aerosmith covered it in 1976, much to the delight of their male teenage fan base. Motley Crue’s premature ejaculation ode, “Ten Seconds to Love,” speaks to that same hormonally addled populace, only1983-style: with phallus-as-loaded gun imagery and the assurance that it’s ok to be bad in bed and brag about it afterward. (Alice Cooper’s “10 Minutes to the Worm” has nothing to do with sex whatsoever, while Jefferson Airplane’s “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds” is a hard-charging complaint song that takes issue with “people laughing at my hair” and overpriced dope, among other things.)

Bull Moose Jackson - "Big Ten Inch"
XTC - "Ten Feet Tall"
the Stone Roses - "10 Storey Love Song”

We live in a base 10 world, so we lop things off in sets of ten. Ten’s a significant demarcation: it’s a ten-foot pole we wouldn’t touch something with; a deep breath we take before counting to 10. We make top 10 lists, rate people’s looks on a scale of 1 to 10 (the corn-rowed Bo Derek was the feminine ideal in 1977, so she was a “10,” a concept explored in Rich Creamy Paint’s “You’re a 10”). When we feel fantastic, larger than life, how do we feel? We feel 10 feet tall. Which brings me to XTC’s “Ten Feet Tall,” a scintillating and understated gem from the band’s watershed Drums & Wires that features as concise a four-bar guitar solo as has ever been attempted. It perfectly embodies the otherworldly sensation of dumbstruck rapture, while marking new creative territory for this endlessly inventive combo. The acoustic, jazz-chord-laden single was Colin Moulding’s attempt to subvert the band’s MO up to that point, what he called “Quirk, Jerk, Spiky, Crikey, Start, Stop,” and offer up something altogether smoother and sexier. The result speaks for itself: “Ten Feet Tall” remains one of XTC’s most delightful and understated creations. The Stone Roses’ “10 Storey Love Song” amps the love- as-height imagery to gargantuan proportions, from mere feet to stories. The hyperbole inherent in the song’s title is right in line with the over-the-top ambitions of Second Coming, the Stone Roses’ swan song, which was little more than a bevy of bloated blooze riffs utterly lacking the magic that characterized the band’s self-titled debut. That record, many contend, belongs among the greatest ever, while the pompously titled Second Coming is all but universally reviled, or at least characterized as a monumental disappointment. That said, “Ten Storey Love Song” is one of the record’s few standouts, imbued with a strong melody and a sense of proportion, even with its outsize emotions.

Footnote: the Velvet Underground voiced a similar sentiment with the also-ran “Love Makes You Feel Ten Foot Tall,” which ended up on Loaded: The Fully Loaded Edition.

Before attaining a brief ubiquity with their big-beat cover of the Stones’ “I’m Free,” the Soup Dragons were an enjoyably twee English indie band whose “Hang-Ten!” was a fizzy little thing that went pop, like Buzzcocks Lite. The song takes its title from the ‘60s surf term for riding a wave with all ten toes hanging off the board. Bowling never became the craze that surfing did, nor did it inspire tons of songs, but Raleigh, N.C., troubadours the Connells did refer to the strangely addictive pastime in “Ten Pins Down.” The title of “Box 10,” Jim Croce’s concise, affecting ditty of hard times in New York, refers to the address of the Sunday mission where he ends up after losing his earthly possessions to naiveté and a cold-hearted woman. That Sunday mission might plausibly be in the vicinity of 10th Avenue, the site of Bruce Springsteen’s “10th Avenue Freeze-Out,” a staple of the band’s oeuvre that traces the origins of the E. Street Band in colorful if decidedly abstruse fashion—Clarence Clemons recently admitted he had no idea what it meant. Speaking of freezing, “10 Degrees and Getting Colder” by Gordon Lightfoot tells the tale of a down-on-his-luck musician trying to hitch a ride near Boulder Dam.

Fun 10 Fact: “Ten Bob Twist: (obs.) A portion of drugs, usually cannabis, bought for ten shillings sterling; half a quid deal.” (The aural equivalent of a contact high, “Ten Tons of Dope” by Luminal dwarfs a half-quid deal in a cannabis haze of epic proportions.)

“And if a 10-ton truck crashes into us, to die by your side what a heavenly way to die...” The Smiths, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "10 X 10"
(live @ Glasslands Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

Kleenex- "DC -10"
Blonde Redhead - "10"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "10 x 10"
Beach House - "10 Mile Stereo"

Heavier and far more potentially lethal than a 10-ton truck, the DC-10 aircraft was taken out of production in 1989, roughly a decade after it was saluted with “DC-10” by Kleenex. This unheralded all-female Swiss band (actually, they’re all unheralded) were forced to change their name (to Liliput) when leaned upon by tissue-industry thugs. The tough gals behind “DC-10” would have likely appreciated Blonde Redhead’s caustic “10,” featuring yelped, half-spoken Sonically Youthful vocals. If you’re making a mixtape at home, I would suggest following “10” with the sexy, strutting “10 x 10” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs from the Is Is EP, and then, to take things down a notch, “10 Mile Stereo” by Beach House, a slice of elusive dream pop that shimmers like rainbows in a puddle.

M.I.A. - "$10"

Ten has turned up in a many an album title, and while these are not eligible for the top spot, they do merit mention. First and foremost, Ten is the title of the debut outing by Pearl Jam, which, more than any other record, including Nevermind, brought grunge into America’s living rooms. 10 the number is even more popular as an album title: L.L. Cool J, the Smithereens, the Guess Who, the Stranglers, Enuff Z’Nuff, Wet Wet Wet, and Asleep at the Wheel are just some of the acts that have all used it, and the second discrete semiprime also fits into Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, the Elvis Costello best-of Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How’s Your Fathers, and countless others.

A $10 bill used to be called a sawbuck because of the roman numeral X’s resemblance to a certain wood-holding device, but no one calls it that anymore; maybe that’s because it buys so little these days it doesn’t seem to deserve a jazzy nickname. Of course, M.I.A. wouldn’t agree with me: in “$10,” she sings “What can I get for $10—anything you want,” a sentiment that would go down well with the protagonist of ZZ Top’s “Ten Dollar Man” from the less-than-essential Tejas LP (1977). Essential advice comes in the form of the Monochrome Set’s “Ten Don’ts For Honeymooners,” which begins with the sage declaration, “Don’t ski naked down Mount Everest/With lilies up your nose” before proceeding with a litany of other priceless matrimonial no-nos, including:

Don’t dance the polka in a dhoti
And whistle The Rite of Spring
Don’t recite Hamlet’s soliloquy
While munching onion rings

The Monochrome Set - "Ten Don't For Honeymooners"

“It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?” Once a staple of the average Joe’s viewing habits, the 10:00 news inspired songs like “News at Ten” by the Vapors (of “Turning Japanese” fame.) Still, there’s probably no better song celebrating 10:00 than “Clock Strikes Ten” by Cheap Trick, the final track from the monumental At Budokan. “10 A.M. Automatic” by the Black Keys certainly owns the morning slot, while the Verlaines “All Joed Out” looks like the only song in existence to mention the rarified time of “10:00 in the afternoon.”

Something about 10 just seems to go with “years.” Warren Zevon (“After 10 long years they let him out of the home/ Excitable boy they all said…”), The Who (“Ten years old with thoughts as bold as thoughts can be”) and the good old Grateful Dead (“I’ve been gambling hereabouts/ for 10 good solid years”) provide a few examples of this sturdy construction, while 10-years-titled songs abound, including the stately “Ten Years Ahead” by Swedish psych-pop prodigies The Soundtrack of Our Lives and Game Theory’s “Andy in 10 Years.” But the very best of this subset have a common denominator in the form of guitar legend Jimmy Page. One of them is “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” a song recorded by The Yardbirds for 1967’s Roger the Engineer, when Page shared lead guitar duties with Jeff Beck. Although the song was one of the band’s less successful singles, it stands as one of those rare songs from the psychedelic era that carries the hallmark sounds—the vaguely Middle Eastern modalities, mystical lyrics, like those referring to “sinking deep into the well of time,” disembodied voices and creepy laughter—but doesn’t sound at all dated. With its nifty structure and bevy of guitar sounds—stabbing, discordant, feedback-laden, explosive bursts—amid the songs’s juddering rhythms, “Happenings” just grabs you by the lapels, pins you against the wall, and slaps you into submission.

Yardbirds – “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”
Dusty Springfield - "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten"

Before discussing top dog, it seems wise to heed Dusty Springfield’s advice when she sang, “I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten.” Because it’s a heady topic. When I first began brainstorming song ideas for this list, my “10” song came to me right away. While there are several excellent contenders (the Yardbirds song in particular is certainly epic enough to take the crown), I am still inclined to stick with my original choice: “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin, off their monolithic Physical Graffiti. It encapsulates all that is great about Led Zeppelin: the sense of space, the majesty, the indelible melodies, guitar lines that fly too close to the sun, drums that shake you to your very foundation, and the whole thing filled with urgency, yearning, and, in this case, something like 14 separate guitar tracks during one especially rich sequence.

For the converted among you there will be no argument. For those who never got into the band—or simply never got their appeal, for those who hated “Stairway” or who were born too late for the band to truly enter your soul, etc., I say unto you only this: This one might make a believer out of you, at least a believer in the sublimity of the song itself. All you have to do is pretend you’ve never heard of Led Zeppelin or Robert Plant or that fish in the hotel room with the groupie in LA. Just pretend your friend brought this over and slapped it on your iPod, told you it was an outtake from Tool’s latest, and I defy you not to be moved.

Led Zeppelin - "Ten Years Gone"

Like any great Zep song, “Ten Years Gone” is an amazing feat, a miniature movie consisting only of sound. Every melodic excursion and turn within its six-minute confines sounds like it was written into the song, and yet there is a certain organic looseness that keeps it from sounding like the labored-over creation it clearly was. “Ten Years Gone” starts hushed and builds elegantly upon an insistent, Moebius strip kind of a lick, one that sounds better as all the melodic permutations of it are writ large, strategically, in the most perfect places. And Robert Plant delivers one of his most modulated performances in this paean to a lover from the past who demanded he choose her or his music—and lost the bet. When Plant finally gives it up and wails a couple of “woo-woo, yeah-yeahs” like the banshee incarnate, it’s the perfect, the only sound that will do.

Led Zeppelin - "Ten Years Gone"
(live, 1976)

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, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 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, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68

Continue reading "Numerology: Ten, Again" »

Posted by David Klein at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan, precipitating America's entry into World War II and marking one of the pivotal dates of the 20th century. In an odd numerological coincidence, exactly 68 years after what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously called "a date which will live in infamy," we probe the depths of #68 songs--more proof that despite all the heavy lifting entailed by this quest, we are fully in sync with the universe and doing exactly what needs to be done...

“She's sixty-eight, but she says she's twenty-four.


I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more.”—Bob Dylan, “Maggie’s Farm”

Slangily, 68 is an unreciprocated sexual act—a 69, only, “I’ll owe you one.” But the far more pervasive meaning of 68-titled songs follows an emerging trend in recent numerological surveys: namely, that as the numbers get higher, they start to coincide with critical years of the 20th century. Thus, 68 is firmly associated with 1968, a year marked by assassinations and war, civil unrest and violent upheaval the world over. 1967 had its Summer of Love, but by the time the summer of ’68 was over, the worm had turned: Kennedy and King were dead, Paris was burning, Soviet tanks had crushed resistance in Czechoslovakia. Not that these tragic events killed off the sense of giddiness stirred up by the countercultural revolution, but flower power had gone mainstream. Exhibit A: Happening ’68, a rock ‘n’ roll variety show overseen by Dick Clark, which ran for two seasons starting in 1968 and featured a mix of musical talent (James Brown, the Beach Boys, the Nazz) and Hollywood biggies like Don Rickles, Leonard Nimoy, and Sal Mineo. The show’s theme song, sung by Paul Revere & the Raiders, is not without its charms, with vocalist (and the show’s co-host) Mark Lindsay gruffly declaring that “something’s happening,” even if at that point most of it had already happened, and now it was being packaged for mass consumption.

Andy Timmons - "Happening '68"

Desmond Dekker & the Aces - "Intensified Festival 68 (Music Like Dirt)"

The percolating “Intensified Festival 68 (Music Like Dirt)” by Desmond Dekker & the Aces beat out Toots & the Maytals to win the song competition of the third annual Jamaica Independence Festival in 1968. The following year, Dekker gave many people in the U.S. and the UK their first taste of reggae with his immortal single “The Israelites,” but he never repeated his success. Although the world would soon see the rise of reggae stars with names like Marley, Cliff, and Tosh, Dekker never took his proper place among them, giving credence to a quote I’ve heard attributed to David Bowie: “It doesn’t matter who does it first; it matters who does it second.” On “’68 Aka Only Time” Lemon Jelly samples a schmaltzy UK hit by New Zealand crooner John Rowles from, when else, 1968, taking the song’s title phrase and slowing it down till it spreads like syrup over the song’s brisk beats.

Lemon Jelly - "68 AKA Only Time"

Jawbox - "68"

Other key ingredients in the 68 stew include “68,” a taut churner from Jawbox, who came out of the Washington D.C., hardcore scene that spawned Fugazi and Minor Threat and earned the antipathy of purists by signing with a major label. Decades later, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about. Like the Jawbox song, the following are united by their seemingly arbitrary use of 68: “68 State,” the ominous opener of Gorillaz D Sides, a collection of unreleased songs and remixes; “68” by synth-poppers Iris; “Peaceblaster ‘68” by the proggy jam band STS9; “68” by the stripped-down roots-rockers ’68 Comeback from the delightfully named A Bridge Too Fuckin’ Far, and “Sixty-Eight” by—are you ready for this?—Clay Polysorbate Masquerade Band Green. Finally, “Fall of ‘68” is an enervating trifle by Austin’s Windsor for the Derby.

The top contenders for the 68 spot come from opposite ends of the spectrum: one of these acts melded earnest rebellion, martial beats, and chant-like hooks, the other wafted sci-fi epics in special-effects-laden enormo-dome spectacles. Pink Floyd’s ascendancy to the status of Monolithic Rock Act was nothing like a done deal in the years after founder Syd Barrett wandered off into the acid mist. With David Gilmour picking up guitar duties, the band continued with the long-form compositions that would mark their later work. But before the breakthrough of Dark Side of the Moon, Floyd had yet to hit upon a sound that could claim the masses. Atom Heart Mother (1970) is very much in keeping with Floyd stylings to come, a mix of sighing pastoral and sprawling psychedelic commingling in suite-like formations, only at this stage the results weren’t buffed to the polished sheen. To hear “Summer ‘68” is to find the band in transition. Keyboardist Richard Wright, who would end up being virtually invisible, was at this point still allowed to sing lead vocals. (On Saucerful of Secrets, the band’s second LP, Wright sang more leads than Waters or Gilmour.) Nevertheless, Wright’s keyboard colorations are essential elements of many of the band’s best-known songs, and several of his compositions belong right there at the top, including “Us and Them.”

A confused or unoriginal You Tuber's mash-up of "Summer '68" and Wizard of Oz footage

Pink Floyd - "Summer '68"

“Summer ‘68” starts in sighing pastoral mode, with just Wright’s keyboards and his hushed vocals. The singer speaks directly to the girl he’s just spent the night with, in decidedly unsentimental fashion: “Would you like to say something before you leave?” Soon things shift, rather jarringly, into a swirling section with Beach Boys-like interlocking vocals intoning, “How do you feel?” In comes a bombastic brass theme that feels nautical, only instead of suggesting a graceful sloop à la “John B” this feels like a foundering ship taking on water under a roiling sky. The song alternates between these sections, culminating with the declaration, “I’ve had enough for one day.” If the “Summer ‘68” can be read as a kiss-off to the excesses of the late ‘60s, a rejection of the rock-star scene as a whole (“the music was too loud”) and the false intimacy of free love (“I hardly even like you”), history shows us the band had not yet been fully welcomed to the machine. What’s most notable about this fanciful collision of musical parts is that, lyrically, it’s uncharacteristically direct, eschewing the psychodrama and heady themes of later work and sticking close to a straightforward narrative.

A similarly titled song by the Charlie Daniels Band, “Summer of ’68,” takes a dim view of all that counterculture stuff. What starts out as a slightly bitter look back at “flower children” who tried to change the world (“Some folks blew their minds so bad/they couldn’t even concentrate”) ends up on a starkly jingoistic note (he sums up liberal politics with the line “save the whales and kill the babies”) before bringing it all home with a 9/11 reference that somehow connects to the summer of ’68. And to think that Daniels’ first national hit, “Uneasy Rider,” was a sympathetic story song about a long-haired, pot-smoking hippie who gets hassled by some good ol’ boys in a Mississippi watering hole.

The Welsh foursome known as the Alarm never broke through in the U.S., but in the UK the band had an impressive number of hits and an army of loyal fans. Critics called them a second-tier U2, incorporating the most bombastic, chest-beating elements of the Irish quartet while lacking any of its musical invention, sonic detail or lyrical prowess. Joe Strummer was characteristically blunt in his assessment: “The Alarm? The wrapping on a chocolate bar. They’re the imitation of a shadow of the Clash.” Joe probably had similar sentiments about Big Country, the Waterboys, and the scads of other earnestly keening bands that his band spawned. Even those who like the band acknowledge that every Alarm song is an anthem, a call to arms, a battle cry. Such a strategy is ultimately extremely limiting, but “Sixty-Eight Guns” is one of the band’s best anthems, with a compelling melody, pleasantly twangy guitar, flavorsome spaghetti-western-style brass accompaniment, and an inspired vocal by Mike Peters, all adding up to a rousing track, as long as you don’t examine it too closely.

The Alarm - "Sixty-Eight Guns"

After going back and forth considering the relative merits of “Sixty-Eight Guns” and “Summer ’68,” in the final analysis I feel more taken with the Alarm track, for a few reasons. For one, it’s a full-fledged band effort, and, in the spirit of the no. 51 contest, which pitted the best work of a pretty good band (New Model Army) against a lesser track by one of the greats (Jimi Hendrix), I’m inclined to go with the former. And on numerical merits, the Alarm wins hands-down: 68 is front and center; it refers to 68 actual things, rather than serving merely as an appendage in the title, and the number is essential to the chorus. With these high numbers, we often have to take what we can get, but this plenitude of sixty-eight-ness is most welcome. More generally, the Alarm earns points for true numerical inspiration: not only do they also perform a song called “Spirit of ’76,” the band itself arose from an earlier group called Seventeen, named after the Sex Pistols song of the same name. And I don’t have to tell you what 17 x 4 is, do I?

That’s right: 68 … our battle cry.

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, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 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, 64, 65, 66, 67

Posted by David Klein at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 8 was not given its proper due. So today, as we all hold our breaths waiting to know if we'll ever know how bad the U2-scored Spiderman musical can possibly suck, Dave gives the mark of the arachnids its due, and continues to rewrite history. (JK)

A few years ago, on 8-8-08, to be exact, the Times published an excellent tribute to the number 8, titled “Crazy Eights.” Readers learned about the “deranged Roman Emperor Elagabalus,” who held octal-themed dinners to which he’d invite eight very tall men, eight men with gout, eight men with hooked noses, and so on. Mary Queen of Scots decreed that no one with a rank lower than an earl or archbishop could eat more than eight dishes at one meal. Rather than try to compete with such erudition, I just tip my eight-cornered hat, offer up a toast (V-8, naturally) and proffer my own list of associations, which, as is my wont, is a lot less high-minded and a lot more contemporary: “Eight Arms to Hold You” was the original title of the Beatles’ Help. The 8-track, an endless loop of 1/4" magnetic recording tape, is a low-fidelity icon invented by Bill Lear of Learjet fame. The boogie-woogie bugle boy of Company B played his horn “eight to the bar,” and Tobor the Eighth Man was an American adaptation of 8-Man, a Japanese cartoon from the mid-‘60s starring what’s considered the first robotic manga character. Tobor (“robot” spelled backwards) derived extra strength by smoking “energy cigarettes.” Of course, these days, any purveyor of children’s entertainment who suggested such a plot point would be declared a Section 8, the Army term for a soldier who is too mentally addled to participate in war, as in this line from Full Metal Jacket: “I don’t think Leonard can hack it anymore. I think Leonard’s a Section 8.”

Tobor the Eighth Man
(opening theme song)

While 8 may not receive the attention as 1, 3, 7 or 9, as the Times article alleges, it still makes its way into a bevy of song titles—only there’s not much of a pattern. And while there are some fine offerings, the 8 slot comes down to a cage match between two classics of the mid-‘60s, both stellar offerings from seminal bands. But before attempting to make the deeply personal choice between these two superlative contenders, let’s take a look at the mixed bag of offerings clamoring somewhere beneath these titanic tunes. “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am” our lone Roman numeral entry, is a remake of a hoary English music-hall ditty and a no. 1 hit in the U.S. for Herman’s Hermits in 1964. “Henry” was one of the fastest selling singles ever, at that point, although the Hermits didn’t think much of it. And while it helped break the band in America, it fostered their lightweight reputation, a source of tension throughout the band’s brief but successful run.

Most songs about times of day stick with nice round numbers (e.g., “Six O’Clock” by Lovin’ Spoonful, “12:30” by the Mamas and the Papas, “5:15” by the Who). Breaking the mold is the languid, lugubrious “8:05” by Moby Grape, which imbues a pretty mundane time of day with heretofore unimagined drama, courtesy of the hushed harmony singing of the Grape. David Bowie’s “Eight Line Poem” makes a neat segue from “8:05,” with its slow, bluesy guitar and general air of torpor. The third song from Hunky Dory finds Bowie in a reflective mood, which he would soon jettison when he adopted the Ziggy Stardust persona.

“Behind the eightball,” a billards term for “in a disadvantageous position,” has entered the vernacular with a vengeance. The term has provided song titles for the likes of Bill Haley, Madness, and Lee Dorsey. Eightball is the name of a seminal ‘90s comic drawn by Daniel Clowes, father of “Ghost World,” and Eightball songs referring to a large amount of cocaine are plentiful, such as NWA’s “8 Ball” and Super Furry Animals’ “Baby Ate My Eightball.” Less Than Jake’s “Ask the Magic 8 Ball” is an homage to the Mattell toy that’s been answering yes-or-no questions with oracular authority since the 1940s, and which is now available in both online and sarcastic versions. Plain-old “Eightball” or “Eight Ball” has been tapped by a slew of rockers, from Boston’s Gang Green to ex-Saint Ed Kuepper to the numerically named Salem 66. But it is “8-Ball” by Underworld, from the soundtrack to Leo DeCaprio's big emission of cinematic greenhouse gas, 2000’s The Island, that really takes the cake. From all the pressure that went into making that piece of hokum, a diamond was squeezed out, in the form of this gorgeous track, with its chugging mellow groove, scrappy guitar break that slowly builds to a rousing finale, and lyrics that are faintly ridiculous yet perfectly aligned with the song’s seductive rhythm.

Underworld - "8 - Ball"

The top ten 8-bit video game themes...

The protagonist in Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man plots a murder in a crimeless future where telepaths monitor the minds of the populace to prevent crimes before they can occur. To keep the telepaths at bay, he hums this disturbingly catchy jingle:

Eight, sir; seven sir;

Six, sir; five, sir;

Four, sir; three, sir;

Two, sir; one!

Tenser, said the Tensor.

Tenser, said the Tensor.

Tension, apprehension

And dissension have begun.

The Liars incorporate the sequence in “The Pillars Were Hollow & Full of Candy So We Tore Them Down.” Not an eight song in the strict sense, but it seemed too cool not to mention. The following, however, is a bona fide 8-themed assortment:

* “After Eight,” the closing track of Neu ’75, feels like a New York Dolls-style stomp that’s been picked up and tossed headlong down the autobahn.
* Cloud Cult earns a double dose of octal props for the shape-shifting “Your 8th Birthday” off The Meaning of 8.
* “Eight Piece Box” by Southern Culture on the Skids is the last word in woman-as-roadside-meal imagery.
* “Mix Number 8,” left off the initial release of Eno & Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (it was included on the 25th anniversary re-release) has its charms, among them a stuttering rhythm track that recalls Eno’s work with Cluster, a Harold Budd-sounding spray-can trumpet, and spoken vocals in an unnamed language ingeniously manipulated into a sort of melody.
* Beginning with the line, “When you sleep, no one is homeless,” “Eight Full Hours of Sleep” is a paean to the redemptive power of unconsciousness by Against Me. It should not be confused with “Track 8” by the largely unheralded late-‘80s Lincoln, Neb., outfit For Against, which, despite an uninspired title, boasts dark, echo-y guitar lines, a crisp rhythm section and candied, yearning vocals that predate the shoegazer sound of the early ‘90s by several years.

For Against - "Track 8"

* “Eight Days on the Road” is a versatile nugget by Howard Tate that has been covered by the Queen of Soul and Foghat. (Incidentally, Foghat, whose name comes from an imaginary character from the childhood of the band’s singer, Dave Peverett, gave the world the so-called Foghat Rule, namely, that every fourth album has to be a live double.)
* Styx’s anti-greed “Pieces of Eight” does nothing to burnish the reputation of this oft-maligned art rock outfit of the ‘70s.

But we’re reaching now. The fact is that 8 comes down to a contest between two out-and-out ‘60s rock classics: “Eight Days a Week” and “Eight Miles High.” It really comes down to this: Are you a Beatles man or a Byrds man? In this corner, you've got Lennon and McCartney at the peak of their collaborative powers, their voices melding in a delirious, rough-hewn harmony of rare beauty. The song was one of the Beatles’ many firsts: the first time they took a rough sketch of a song and experimented with various ways of recording it in the studio. Those swelling, heavenly chords that seem to arrive out of nowhere to mark the song's beginning—the first fade-in on a pop song—came about well after the best take (no. 13), during remixing sessions. Those ringing guitars, those bracing handclaps, and lyrics that perfectly embody romantic infatuation add up to 2:44 of pure, magisterial hook. The song has been covered by everyone from Alma Cogan (a Monty Python punch line) to the Runaways and the Dandy Warhols, none of whom could possibly hold a candle to the original.

the Beatles - "Eight Days a Week"

But maybe the whole “ooh I need your love babe” thing is no longer relevant to your nuanced existence. Perhaps you prefer the challengers, in the corduroy trunks and rectangular purple shades: The Byrds. From the ominous distorted bass line that opens the track, like a Morse code signal, joined by those unmistakable Byrds harmony vocals, and that guitar—Coltrane lines squeezed through a lysergic play-doh factory via McGuinn’s 12-string Rickenbacker—this is perhaps the quintessential aural equivalent of the drug experience. While it spawned scores of formulaic psychedelia à la the Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine,” “Eight Miles High” manages to convey both the euphoria (through, what else, euphoric vocals) and the paranoia that a lysergically altered consciousness can bring. Building to a satisfyingly chaotic ending—always a plus—“Eight Miles High” is, no pun intended, hard to top.

the Byrds - "Eight Miles High"

R.E.M. - "Driver 8"

In a certain sense it’s pointless to say one is better than the other, unless it makes sense to argue that a lemon is better than a lime, a crocus better than a snapdragon. It’s tempting to consider these two old warhorses akin to Dame Judi Dench and Helen Mirren canceling each other out at the Oscars, and award the statuette to Anna Paquin in an upset (in the form of R.E.M.’s “Driver 8.”) Great song, to be sure, but how could R.E.M. win out over the Byrds, when R.E.M’s trademark sound is, like, two-thirds Byrds? With my back to the wall, I have to give the nod to the Beatles, using the following criterion: If stuck on a desert island with a close-and-play record player and a vinyl 45 of one of these songs, I would opt for “Eight Days a Week.” Its jangly, smile-inducing beauty just might give me the strength to carry on, while the spooky, drug-induced beauty of “Eight Miles High” would surely make me a Section 8.

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, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 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, 64, 65, 66, 67

Posted by David Klein at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Have you seen her hair/it’s a style from heaven

She's so square, she’s nowhere…” -XTC, “She’s So Square”

Nearly every instance of 67 in a song title is a reference to the year of Sgt. Pepper, Are You Experienced?, “Light My Fire,” the Human Be-In, and more generally, the Summer of Love. (It’s also the year Walter Matthau won the Oscar for best supporting actor for The Fortune Cookie.) “Supersexy ‘67” by Coltrane Motion (who won Numerology’s top spot for “Twenty-Seven,” a lacerating anti-tribute to Kurt Cobain’s “stupid club”) demonstrates singer Michael Bond’s predilection for alliterative syllables. Bond, who spoke with me via e-mail, was unaware that he had a thing for sevens, but acknowledged that the sound of the syllables is part of 7’s charm. With its half-sung vocals, canned beats, and ramshackle production, “Supersexy” is clearly indebted to early Beck, a charge that Bond readily cops to. In fact, he says, it was Beck’s Odelay that spurred him to start recording his own music in the first place. The music for “Supersexy,” which had been kicking around for a years, was Bond channeling Beck channeling Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” The slyly suggestive lyrics came later: “I was on vacation, and in the middle of reading Thomas Pynchon’s V, and his weird, paranoid description of ‘60s counterculture really resonated with me, especially when placed against the backdrop of the modern American beach town, which has a similarly jarring, almost trashy vibe. The lyrics are a kind of stream-of-consciousness flow about watching your culture get sold back to you, filtered through decades of commercials. Nothing particularly deep, but for those of us whose first glimpses at the ‘60s were through Monkees reruns or the Beach Boys guest-starring on Full House, it should make a little sense.”

Coltrane Motion - "Supersexy '67"

Two outsized forces on the 1970s pop charts showed up for the 67 party. “Questions 67 and 68” was the first single released by the group formerly known as Chicago Transit Authority. (The band shortened its moniker to avoid the same kinds of legal hassles more recently experienced by the Postal Service.) Say what you will about Chicago, the group has sold more records than any American band but the Beach Boys. And while many of the hits were right in line with formulaic ‘70s radio pabulum, Chicago forged a signature sound from the disparate influences of jazz, classical, and rock. I will also give Chicago credit for two juicy numerical singles (the other one being “25 or 6 to 4”). The numbers in the title refer to the years ‘67 and ‘68, when Chicago keyboardist Robert Lamm was besieged with commitment questions by his girlfriend. Elton John vied with Chicago for chart dominance during the “Me Decade” but his “Old ‘67” comes from The Captain and the Kid, a 2006 follow-up to the classic Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. The song has some of the Americana-steeped flavor of early Elton LPs like Tumbleweed Connection, but as often happens, the follow-up record failed to measure up to the original.

Let's Active - "Route 67"

It’s not clear if ace producer Mitch Easter, who once facetiously referred to himself as “the Dr. Dre of jangle,” was riffing on the ever-popular “Route 66” when he named the instrumental closer on his excellent Big Plans for Everybody “Route 67” or if he was merely referencing a highway in his native North Carolina. But this frantic, slide-guitar-driven nugget feels miles away from the twee-ness of the records he made when the group was actually together, and even departs from the luminous, layered pop constructions that preceded it on the essentially solo Big Plans. The record remains an underappreciated gem, although at the time of its release it received accolades from a variety of sources, including Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, who said he would be happy to mow Easter’s lawn.

Since 1967 is the outsized influence here, a brief accounting of 1967 songs seems in order, despite the fact that these songs are not eligible for highest honors. The suite-like “1967,” from Adrian Belew’s most commercially successful solo outing, Mr. Music Head (1992), has a cerebral charm and surrealistic lyrics, but I have to dock it points for having nothing to do with 1967, at least as far as I can tell. More to the point is “1967” by the Auteurs, which revolves around an undeniably Beatle-esque descending chord pattern and the arch, insinuating voice of main Auteur, Luke Haines, and, yet, upon closer inspection, lines like “The Beatles and the Stones mean nothing to us” reveal it to be a sort of anti-1967 song. (The snarling “67” by Love Battery, veterans of the ‘90s Seattle scene, takes a similar tack: “Well me and my friends were sittin’ round/talkin’ bout a thing called love/Since 1967 well it’s never been enough.”) “1967” by Tom Robinson of “Glad to Be Gay” fame is a touching backward look, with images of “eating apples off the allotments” and “swapping cigarette cards,” while Don McLean (who as a youth was apparently a lonely teenage broncin’ buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck) avoided the metaphorical trappings of his landmark “American Pie” on his “1967,” a song narrated by a disillusioned Vietnam War vet. Some folks avoided that war by heading to Canada, home of Dayglo Abortions, whose 1981 debut LP, Out of the Womb, featured the taunting “1967” (as well as “I Killed Mommy,” and “Too Stoned to Care”).

Love Battery - "67"

“I shouted out, “Free the Expo ‘67”


Till they stepped on my hair, and they told me I was fat
”

–They Might Be Giants, “Purple Toupee”

Expo ’67, the April-to-October international extravaganza held in Montreal, featured a geodesic dome by Buckminster Fuller, a live broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show, and performances by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Tiny Tim. A weeklong pass set you back 12 bucks. Montreal ska band the Kingpins saluted that event in their highly infectious “Last Train to Expo ’67.” (Meanwhile, in Trinidad and Tobago, where the yearly carnival celebration is commemorated in a song competition, the winning ditty that year was a joyous romp called “Sixty-Seven” by the Trinidadian calypso singer Lord Kitchener.) A number of songs have employed the Expo ’67 nomenclature strategy of tacking ’67 onto a solid noun or place name. “Detroit ‘67” by the Quebec-born Sam Roberts and his band is built around a honky-tonk piano figure that sounds both well-worn and timeless. In this rousing recollection of a time and place, Roberts yearns for a world he’s too young to remember; he laments the loss of Detroit’s past, from the sordid (Jimmy Hoffa) to the sublime (Motown), from the recent past (the assembly line) to the long-gone (the Chippewa). The chorus is earnest and infectious as the third-person narrative shifts to a direct plea: “Does anyone here remember those times? Can anyone here just tell me what they felt like?” “Jagger ‘67” by the Infadels, a twitchy storm of in-your-face beats and declamatory vocals, celebrates London’s lustful dance music scene, a girl with “twisted hair” and a “lip-ring stare.” (Note to rock trivia buffs: the song’s insistent dance groove is powered by drummer Alex Bruford, son of original Yes drummer Bill Bruford.)

The Infadels - "Jagger '67"

On the fringes of 67-dom are “67 Degrees” by echolyn (that’s right, the “e” is lowercase), a Pennsylvania prog rock institution that formed in 1989 from the ashes of Narcissus; “Sixty-Seven” a synth-driven instrumental by Korean duo As One; “67” by King’s X, a complaint about the surfeit of offerings on cable TV; and “Les Bonbons 67” by Jacques Brel, which features lines like “I say meow meow” and “I hear my hair push,” (at least according to my rudimentary French) and is strictly to be avoided. Meanwhile, on the same continent, Dutch saxophonist Candy Dulfer, who has collaborated with Pink Floyd and Van Morrison and received a shout-out from Prince on his 1989 single “Partyman,” offers up a frothy cup of jazz-funk on the instrumental “Finsbury Park, Café ’67.” Rounding out the European category is “Dirty 67” by Belgian hardcore punks Sunpower, from Pain For Profit (2007), which also features “I Hate Authority” and “Gonna Cut Myself.”

But getting down to the matter at hand, choosing a winning song for 67 proved an unusually nettlesome task. The Coltrane Motion and Sam Roberts songs are damned good, but I was determined to rustle up a bit of 67 magic. A few months ago, after bending the ear of my friend Zeebling Monroe, a New Zealand-born musician who tends bar at the Lower East Side watering hole Barramundi, I managed to get him jazzed about writing a 67 song. As a bonus, he also directed a video for it, and I think the results speaks for themselves. I realize I am setting myself up for allegations of voter fraud or influence pedaling or whatever, but if Zee’s song did not deliver the goods, I wouldn’t be crowning it king. But it does, and I am. It’s haunting and heartfelt, and Zee’s video incorporates some of the magical elements I was looking for. Here’s what Zee has to say about it:

“The song was inspired by master Hong Kong movie director Wong Kar Wai, who is one of my all-time favorite directors and inspires me no end. In particular, the song refers to and contains sound bites from In the Mood for Love and its sequel, 2046, both breathtakingly beautiful movies with minimal dialogue, dripping in emotion. Its kind of a different sound for me, but the stuff I got together for this album is all pretty varied, with a lot of Japanese influence, both in Japanese artists I’m working with on it and samples I’m playing with.”

Zeebling - "Hong Kong 67

The cinematic inspiration finds expression in the atmosphere and structure of the song, which bleeds into existence with a tremulous synth tone, a disembodied voice from a Wong Kar Wai film and the eerie childlike vocals of Yumi Kaizuka, which bring to mind those little she-devil twins in The Shining singing to themselves while playing mumblety peg in the Overlook Hotel’s hedge maze. Zee weaves a slow, insistent melody, his words indistinct, like whispers, over a mournful piano, a fat, blasted-out guitar and some softly pummeling beats. Sonic touches waft in and out of the mix, a fuzzy shard from a film score here, a slice of slowed-down Fellini dialog there; at points the sound melts away for a few moments, like a slow fade to black, followed by a smash cut back to the song. What stands out most in the end is the eerie “na-na-na-na” vocals, which feel like an eerie re-imagining of the joyous final section of “Hey Jude.”

In contrast to the picture the music paints in the mind's eye, the video, far from being ominous, is hopeful. In numerology, 67 becomes the sum of 6+7, 13, which is bad luck in our culture but a magical numeral in others. In the clip, a lone character (played by Yumi Kaizuka) uses magic to transform her situation. She does a tarot reading in her Manhattan apartment and draws a card that indicates emotional disappointment. She then pretties herself up, draws a magical sigil, and uses it to dress a candle to cast a spell. After reading the cards again, she finds her offering has been acknowledged and heads out into rough-and-tumble New York, where she pays her respects to the powers responsible for the change, making a humble public offering before walking off into an ostensibly brighter future.

Zeebling - "Hong Kong 67"

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, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 7 (counterpoint), 7 (redux), 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, 64, 65, 66

Posted by David Klein at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nine-tentacled octapus, chillin'.

A quickly dropped note to direct MS readers towards this piece of familiar numeromusical musings from our homeboy (homeman?), Dave Klein. Dave, a New Yorker relocated to the greener pastures of North Carolina, is now dropping a few pearls of his unquestioned number song wisdom on the readers of Chapel Hill's fine alternative rag, The Independent Weekly. You can read Dave's picks for the nine greatest "9" songs in the rock canon here.

Please also peruse the Numerology archives, for exhaustive takes on numbers far beyond the one that makes up the current date.

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 7 was not given its proper due. So today, before the 7th month bids farewell for another 12, we continue to rewrite history. (JK)

“A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.”
--Pink Floyd, “Chapter 24” (based on the I Ching)

A few years ago on 7-7-07, the world experienced a huge matrimonial upsurge, a phenomenon that highlighted just how strong is the belief that 7 is a blessed number that brings about good fortune. The reasons for this run across religions, nationalities, and centuries. In all the major religions, 7 is associated with perfection and completeness (see the Old Testament, the Kabbalah, the Pixies’ “Monkey Gone To Heaven,” and other holy texts). This even holds true for not-so-major religions (Zorastrianism anyone?) Then again, according to the New Testament, there are seven signs of the apocalypse, while according to Seven Mary Three, I have become cumbersome to my girl.

The seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride—have been around in various forms since the 4th century, and have made their way into canonical works by Dante and Chaucer, paintings by the likes of Hieronymous Bosch, a “sung ballet” by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, and a concept album by Joe Jackson. (Oddly enough, the seven Cardinal virtues—faith, hope, charity, etc.—have inspired nothing approaching the creative outpouring unleashed by the sins, although “Charity, Chastity, Prudence and Hope” by Hüsker Dü is pretty cool.) And while the Traveling Wilburys, Simple Minds, Flogging Molly, Gene Loves Jezebel, and many others have written songs called “Seven Deadly Sins,” the debut single by Brian Eno, fresh from jettisoning himself from Roxy Music in 1974, beats them all. OK, “7 Deadly Finns” is just a punning reference to the Sins, but it’s miles ahead of the competition. In the words of noted rock aesthete Jeff Klingman, in this “blissful song about Finnish sailors thrilling bored French women, Eno gives each sailor a specific attribute: there’s the masochistic freak, the treed kitten, the outgoing cross-dresser, the Eno impersonator, the distrustful hat enthusiast, the indoors sunglasses type, and the skinny outcast.” The giddy enthusiasm of a song is so joyous, he writes, “the only logical conclusion is to erupt into yodels.” I heartily concur; there is no finer instance of yodeling in a rock song (with the possible exception of “Hocus Pocus” by Focus.)

Brian Eno - "Seven Deadly Finns"

Seven-related phenomena come so thick and fast that one reference often builds upon another. “The Magnificent Seven,” the Clash’s first foray into rap, took its name from the classic 1960 Western, which was modeled on Kurosawa’s seminal Seven Samurai. “The Seventh Seal” by Scott Walker takes its title from a Bergman film, which takes its title from a passage in the Book of Revelation: “And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” (Clocking in at well under a half hour is the cult classic “7 Screaming Dizbusters”—if by cult you mean Blue Oyster with an umlaut—from the seminal Tyranny & Mutation LP.)

Muddy Waters - "Hoochie Coochie Man"

On the seventh hour/On the seventh day/On the seventh month/The seven doctors say
He was born for good luck/And that you'll see
I got seven hundred dollars/Don't you mess with me.

According to legend, the seventh son of a seventh son is destined for greatness. Somewhat ironically, real-life seventh sons of seventh sons include human sleeping pill Perry Como. But the blues is filled with references to 7, in lines like the above-quoted passage from Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man.” Willie Dixon’s “The Seventh Son” is the quintessential song of the genre. (Fellow Chicago blues man Willie Mabon did a lovely version of this oft-covered track.) Like “Sixty Minute Man,” it’s one of music’s great boasts—not only is the title son a lover beyond compare, he can also heal the sick and raise the dead. The protagonist in Iron Maiden’s “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” is also a healer type, but his sexual prowess goes unmentioned. A line in Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” “But the second mother was with the seventh son” is believed by some Dylanologists to be an incest reference, but to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all depends on what the meaning of “with” is.

Willie Dixon - "The Seventh Son"

Willie Dixon - "The Seventh Son"

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, All good children go to heaven
—The Beatles, “You Never Give Me Your Money”

An aspect of 7 that has been manna to songwriters over the years is that it rhymes with heaven. In Islam, the heavens number seven. While it’s unclear if the term “seventh heaven” has an Islamic origin, that the association is well ingrained cannot be denied; even as kids, many of us learned to associate seven and heaven from that old chestnut “This Old Man,” a catchy little ditty in which the title bloke plays knick-knack up there. The term has provided song titles for heavy acts like Deep Purple and Prodigy, and Gwen Guthrie of “Aint Nothin’ Goin on But the Rent” fame. More generally, it’s tough to find instances of 7 that aren’t rhymed with “heaven.” I’m partial to the twee but somehow haunting “Tram Number #7 to Heaven” by the preternaturally wistful Jens Lekman, which channels a bit of “This Old Man” (“Tram number five/I’m still alive/Tram number six/I think I’m fixed”) in its gradual ascension to the title phrase, while also incorporating a left-field reference to a “banana from 7-Eleven.” Seven-eleven, a winning combination in dice games, appears frequently in blues and cowboy songs, while the Ramones made good use of the term’s convenience-store connotation in a song whose refrain goes, “I met her at the 7-Eleven/Now I’m in seventh heaven.” Undoubtedly the worst of the many seven-heaven songs is the uber-melted-cheesy “Heaven on the Seventh Floor,” a 1977 hit for actor/singer Paul Nicholas, whose varied career includes stints as Jesus (as in, Christ Superstar) on the London stage, Cousin Kevin in Ken Russell’s Tommy, and TV pitchman for the dubious Rougemont Castle wine, which is, to borrow a phrase from a beloved Monty Python routine, “an appellation contrôlée specially grown for those keen on regurgitation.”

You say you’ve seen seven wonders/and your bird is green… .
—The Beatles, “And Your Bird Can Sing”

Oddly enough, the seven wonders of the world have not inspired any truly wondrous songs. “Seven Wonders” is the title of an inessential late-period Fleetwood Mac single, a pretty but precious ditty by Nickel Creek, and an overwrought offering by Peter Hammill. “Seven Wonders of the World” by doo-wop practitioners the Keystones is like a poor man’s “Ten Commandments of Love,” with the expected numerical listing and rhyming of “seven” with “heaven.” Meanwhile, Prince Buster’s instrumental “Seven Wonders of the World”—easily the best of the lot—is pretty obviously the basis of the Specials’ “Ghost Town.” (Watch here.)

“Number seven 
on the chump list
/Playing stooge
/Eatin’ shit"
—The Minutemen, “Toadies”

A number this ubiquitous yields a bevy of tracks named simply “Seven” (or “7”), and an accomplished roster it is. There’s “Seven” by David Bowie (uncharacteristically subdued) “Seven” by Dave Matthews Band (uncharacteristically heavy) “Seven” by James (characteristically earnest), “Seven” by Scott Walker (uncharacteristically generic), “Seven” by Arctic Monkeys (characteristically dissatisfied), and “Seven” by They Might Be Giants (characteristically adenoidal). Two lesser-known acts on the Merge label, Wwax (“Seven”) and Ashley Stove (“To #7”) round out the pack, although there are many more, like “Funky #7 by Hot Tuna (uncharacteristically funky). OK. I’ll stop. Two songs strike me as the finest of this subcategory: “7” by Prince, a groovy, gospel-tinged sing-along featuring lapidary production touches, which seems to be about the eventual demise of the seven deadly sins, and a more recent offering: the utterly gorgeous “Seven” by Fever Ray, the solo project of the Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson, whose otherworldly voice seems to emanate from an uncharted celestial realm and yet never loses its humanity.

Prince - "7"
Fever Ray - "Seven"

“Seven years went under the bridge/like time was standing still…”
–OMD, “If You Leave”

“And on the seventh day He rested,” a paraphrased Bible quote, is responsible for the seven-day week, which, in turn, has given us a slew of songs combining 7 with various periods of time. To wit, I give you, in ascending order of length: “7 Seconds,” a collaboration between Senegalese singing sensation Youssou N’Dour and NYC-born Neneh Cherry (who lost the 1990 Best New Artist Grammy to Milli Vanilli—oh, the irony), which was a top 10 hit all over Europe in 1994; and the spooky, minimal “7 Minutes” by Vancouver electronic dance trio Circlesquare. Obviously, seven days (or nights) is the big enchilada in this category. Bob Dylan’s “Seven Days,” a non-LP track that ended up on his first Bootleg collection and which was adeptly covered by Ron Wood on his solo effort Gimme Some Neck, is a lean rocker in which the desperate singer awaits the arrival of a woman whose face could outshine the sun in the sky—all he has to do is survive. (Dylan’s “Seven Curses” also appeared on that same three-disc Bootleg collection.) A similar sentiment of longing pervades Chuck Wood’s “Seven Days Too Long,” a Northern Soul barn-burner covered by Dexy’s Midnight Runners in the heady pre-“Come On, Eileen” days. Can’s abstract instrumental “Seven Days Awake” should not be confused with “Seven Days a Week” by TMBG, while “Seven Nights to Rock,” which has been covered by the Boss, Nick Lowe and Stray Cats, is a thumping proto-rocker by Moon Mullican, who claimed he took up the piano “because the beer kept sliding off my fiddle.” The Dubliners’ “Seven Drunken Nights” celebrates whisky-soaked abandon, while “Seven Months” is a lonely lament by Portishead told in typically cinematic terms. “Seven Years” by Watermelon Men is a fine example of ‘60s-era Swedish garage rock, while “Seven Years in Tibet,” one of the better tracks from David Bowie’s electronica exercise, Earthling (which coincidentally opened with the seven dwarfs-referencing “Little Wonder”) takes its name from an account of an Eastern journey by an Austrian mountaineer who didn’t find Shangri-La. Speaking of which:

“Time goes by and he pays off his debts/Got a TV set and a radio/For seven shillings a week…”
–The Kinks, “Shangri-La”

If it hasn’t become abundantly clear, there are more 7 songs out there than you can shake a stick at, from the corny ‘50s novelty number “(Seven Little Girls) Sitting in the Backseat” to corny ‘00s teen queen Miley Cyrus (“7 Things”). There are ponderous, artsy offerings from Teardrop Expodes (“Seven Views of Jerusalem”), Jane Siberry (“Seven Steps to the Wall”), and Aphrodite’s Child (“Seven Trumpets”), proggy things from Genesis (“Seven Stones”) and Adrian Belew (“Seven E-Flat Elephants”). The Temptations’ “Seven Rooms of Gloom” features a tour de force vocal by the peerless Levi Stubbs, while Liz Phair’s “Dance of the Seven Veils” contains one of indie rock’s finest instances of the C-word. Sting’s “Love is the Seventh Wave” was an overly optimistic forecast from Dream of the Blue Turtles, while Smashing Pumpkins’ “7 Shades of Black” finds Billy Corgan entreating someone to “fall in hate with me.” Billy, you had me at “shades.” And to round out the pack, I’ll menton “7Rain,” by Front 242, “Song Seven” by Swell, "7 Souls" by Ponytail, “Return of the Los Palmas 7” by Madness, “7:30” by Pernice Brothers, and “Seven-Mile Island” by Jason Isbell.

The White Stripes - "Seven Nation Army"
R.E.M. - "7 Chinese Brothers"

But getting down to brass tacks, I can only point out the finest of the fine, briefly sing their praises, offer a totally subjective opinion of the best one, and get out before I overstay my welcome. Truly a “Smoke on the Water” for the new century, “Seven Nation Army” by White Stripes (the title based on a mishearing of “Salvation Army” by youthful John Anthony Gillis, before he adopted a tri-colored wardrobe and changed his name to Jack White) builds up such a mighty head of steam it threatens to overshadow much of this beloved duo’s recorded work. And it has spawned tributes: a dub version by Hard-Fi, an electro remix by JAS-3, and a monolithic workout by Metallica, all serving to highlight the versatility and perfection of a short succession of well-chosen notes. It hasn’t existed that long, but you can still imagine in a hundred years it’ll still sound like all hell breaking loose. I can imagine the young John Gillis reading The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop, a top-selling children’s book for many years but no longer a staple in grammar school bookshelves due to its brazen stereotypes and, frankly, grisly subject matter. This tale of a Chinese man wrongly accused of murder who escapes various methods of execution by having of his identical brothers—each with a different super power—take his place in turn, is the kind of book you can never quite forget once you’ve read it. I’m sure it haunted young Michael Stipe and REM, whose “7 Chinese Brothers” (they added two siblings, presumably for reasons of cadence) is a reminder of just how distinct indistinctness can be. Like most of early REM, the song is melodically memorable and lyrically impenetrable, yet Michael Stipe’s vocals, the solid ensemble playing, and the slowly unfolding sonic layers of Mitch Easter’s detailed production cast a powerful spell, making one yearn for the autumnal glory of early REM.

You can take all the tea in china
Put it in a big brown bag for me
Sail right around the seven oceans
Drop it straight into the deep blue sea
--Van Morrison, “Tupelo Honey”

Thousands of years old, the phrase “the seven seas” can refer to any number of bodies of water. It has inspired a range of artistic expression, from the sublime (a collection of poetry by Rudyard Kipling) to the, if not ridiculous, certainly unnecessary (the last song on the last album by Flock of Seagulls). With apologies to OMD’s quite good “Sailing on the Seven Seas” and Queen’s “Seven Seas of Rhye,” which makes abundantly clear just how integral Freddie & Co. were to the birth of Metallica, the only song that really matters here is “Seven Seas” by Echo & the Bunnymen. A standout from the group’s most fully realized record, Ocean Rain, “Seven Seas” is pure seduction, a monument of lushly produced orchestral pop topped with a rich, confident vocal by Ian McCulloch, who manages to turn kissing a tortoise into an act of transcendence. It’s both grand and grandiose, perfectly embodying how to get away with making an outsized gesture in the context of a rock record.

Echo & the Bunnymen - "Seven Seas"

My allegiances have shifted since I first wrestled with conferring top-song status in this category. I’m currently inclined to bestow the prize on “7 and 7 is,” a 1966 single by Love and the band’s only hit, which reached #33 on the Billboard chart during the summer of that year. Led by Arthur Lee, Love briefly ruled the LA rock scene, only to be supplanted by the Doors, with whom Love shared a producer, an engineer, and a record label. A two-minute sprint culminating in the sound of a nuclear explosion (replete with a countdown), “7 and 7 is” has been rightly called proto-punk. Subsequent covers by the Ramones, Alice Cooper and others speak to the song’s primitive perfection). The amphetamine pace, hit-the-ground running intensity and raw, barely contained singing could not have been more out of step with the burgeoning psychedelic ethos of the day, but Lee’s contrarian streak is well documented; this was, after all, the band that turned Bacharach-David’s “My Little Red Book” into a punk song, turned down an invitation to play at the Monterey Pop Festival, and always wore its Flower Power-ready moniker with a thick layer of irony. If Lee had played his cards right, Love would be remembered as one of the great bands of the ‘60s, instead of one cherished exclusively by rock’s most discerning contingent of listeners. But Lee never wanted your pity:

“If I don’t start cryin’ it’s because that I have got no eyes
My bible’s in the fireplace and my dog lies hypnotized
Through a crack of light I was unable to find my way
Trapped inside a night but I’m a day and I go
Boo-bip-bip Boo-bip-bip YEEAAH!”

Love - "7 and 7 is"

Endnote: “7 and 7 is” is used to great effect in Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket. The song’s B-side,” “Number 14,” a response to the sum inherent in the A-side’s title, was described by rock scribe Chuck Eddy as “perhaps the only Band-style Civil War rebel-nostalgia ever sung by a descendant of slaves.”

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, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 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, 64, 65, 66

Posted by David Klein at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A handsomely curved configuration resembling two amply nostriled noses in profile or two spoons poised to dig into some steaming porridge, the no. 66 casts a long shadow on the numerical landscape. On the dark side, it’s two-thirds of the number of the Beast, according to the Book of Revelations, and it’s the number of miles that made up the hell-on-earth route that was the Bataan Death March. It also has a special importance in the history of Great Britain, what with the Norman Conquest (1066), the Great Fire of London (1666), and the last year the Brits took the World Cup (1966). But to those of us with a sense of musical perspective, 66 is the name of a historic U.S. highway and a classic song. Like the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four,” which seems to have scared off sensible songwriters from writing another 64 song, “Route 66” is a colossus that dominates its slot all but completely. The always-reliable All Music Guide lists over 900 releases on which the song appears, by everyone from Ray Charles to Anita Bryant.

Photographs of fancy tricks

And all the girls that he's going to fix

–Elvis Costello, “I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea”

Its writer, Bobby Troup, was akin to a journeyman pitcher in baseball, a guy with the goods to make it to the majors but lacking the X factor to ascend to the level of the greats or near-greats. Nevertheless, Troup was a man of many talents. An able pianist and a recording artist in his own right, he was also a record producer, TV show host, and an actor. (He portrayed bandleader Tommy Dorsey in The Gene Krupa Story, among other movie roles.) But Troup seems to have had a good sense of his own limitations; though he wasn’t quite leading-man material, it didn’t stop him from acting. He found steady employment on shows like Mannix and Dragnet, and most notably, had a featured role as Dr. Joe Early on Emergency, where he worked alongside his wife, the blonde-tressed torch singer Julie London, who played hot nurse Dixie McCall. But let’s face it: by the time he was well ensconced on the tube in the early ‘70s, Troup probably could have retired on the royalties from the song he wrote in 1946, during a pit stop on a cross-country car trip. In the invaluable 1001 Songs, author Toby Cresswell supplies Troup’s account of the song’s genesis:

“My wife and I were eating in a Howard Johnson’s and looking at a road map…She said, ‘Why don’t you write about Route 40.’ I said, ‘That’s silly, because we’re going to pick up Route 66 outside of Chicago and take it all the way to Los Angeles.’ She said, ‘Get your kicks on Route 66.’ I said, ‘God, that’s a marvelous idea for a song.’” Troup finished the song in the car. (His marriage to Cynthia didn’t last, but he was gracious enough to give credit where it was due.) When he arrived in L.A., Troup played the song for Nat “King” Cole, who seized on it immediately, and his version went to the upper reaches of both the R&B and pop charts. It was by far Troup’s greatest contribution to American culture—but he was no one-hit wonder. He also penned “The Girl Can’t Help It,” a Little Richard screamer that served as the title to a seminal ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll movie, as well as “Their Hearts Were Full of Spring,” which the Beach Boys recorded, and “The Meaning of the Blues,” recorded by Miles Davis during his golden age.

Nat "King" Cole - "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66"

Some history: The route in question was first laid out as a wagon trail, with delegation of camels in tow, in 1857. Designated no. 66 in 1926, it became a key route for the westward migration of Dust Bowl refugees, a process chronicled in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, who dubbed it “the Mother Road.” Over the next few decades, Route 66 became a critical cross-country thoroughfare, much loved by an America still in the throes of its love affair with the automobile, as well as a breeding ground for the development of the modern filling station. Perhaps inevitably, though, Route 66 was not cut out for America’s post-war prosperity; the four-lane interstates were better equipped to handle heavy-duty trucking, and the road swiftly deteriorated physically as it shrank in importance. By the ‘70s it was a shadow of its former self, with major stretches shut down, and in 1986 it was officially decommissioned as a U.S. highway. Today there is a movement afoot to preserve parts of the road for its cultural importance. But, in its heyday, Bobby Troup’s song helped to cement Route 66’s status as an American icon in the public consciousness.

The Cramps - "Route 66 (Get Your Kicks On)"
Depeche Mode - "Route 66 (Beatmasters Mix)"

“Route 66” is an amazingly versatile song; it works in just about any genre, from bossa nova to a primitive electric stomp. Troup’s jazzy original showed off his keyboard chops and sly scat singing. Nat Cole ran with it, adding his mellifluous phrasing and rich rasp to Troup’s gorgeous syllables and kicking the thing into the stratosphere. Numerous versions followed: big band style (Harry James, Bing Crosby, etc.) and lighter takes in the spirit of Cole’s approach (Mel Tormé, Louis Prima, Louis Jordan). Chuck Berry’s 1961 version is perhaps the earliest straight-up rock version of the song. Given his deep influence on the Rolling Stones, it would make sense to surmise that it was Chuck who inspired them to make their audacious cover. But, according to several accounts, it was actually the rendition done by soporific crooner Perry Como that the lads studied. Nevertheless, the Stones transformed this slinky concoction into a fierce, groovy rocker on the strength of Keith Richards’ Berryesque rhythm and lead lines, the tight, brisk rhythm section, urged on by handclaps, and Mick Jagger’s brash vocal. (He stumbles a bit on “don’t forget Winona” but obviously couldn’t care less.) The start-stops in the bridge amp up the tension and release, while the chunky guitar lick that anchors the song has been incorporated into practically every subsequent cover, from garage/pub rock offerings by the Count Bishops and the Eyes to faithfully Stones-y versions by the Pretty Things and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, the Replacements and R.E.M. The Cramps’ hushed, deconstruction is an exception, but even covers by goth proponents like Depeche Mode and Lords of the New Church owe a great deal to the Stones take. A country version by Asleep at the Wheel, Buckwheat Zydeco’s N’awlins-flavored version, and the UK Subs hardcore bash-o-rama demonstrate the infinite variations the song can withstand. Amazingly, given the visceral, trip-off-the-tongue nature of the lyrics, which border on poetry, no one has seen fit to do a rap version (although Public Enemy did touch on 66-ness in “Incident at 66.6 FM,” a brief collage made up of racist comments to a radio call-in show). So, while Nat “King” Cole’s is the definitive version of Troup’s original, the Stones turned “Route 66” into a lean, mean slice of visceral rock ‘n’ roll. Thus, with all due respect to the sophistication and subtlety of Mr. Cole, my deep-seated propensity to rock compels me to confer top ranking on track 2 of the 1964 debut LP by the future world’s greatest rock band: “Route 66.”

The Rolling Stones - "Route 66"
(live @ Knebworth, 1976)

Well if you ever plan to motor west

Get your kicks on Route 66

The Rolling Stones - "Route 66"

Endnote: Along with the hundreds of versions of the song, the highway itself has not lost its hold on American pop culture. It was the name of a TV series in the early ‘60s, as well as the working title of the Pixar hit Cars, which is set there. It also serves as the name of a film festival, a vintage diner, a clothing line, a theater company, a literacy program, a motor speedway, and a novel series.

Final Endnote:“66” by Afghan Whigs contains these unsettling lines: “Come on little rabbit/
Show me where you got it
/'Cuz I know you got a habit.” Whether this has anything to do with the Jack Rabbit Trading Post on Route 66 [http://www.jackrabbit-tradingpost.com/] cannot be confirmed at press time.

Endnote III: A New Beginning: I have just discovered “66” by Danish electro-rockers Spleen United (I wonder if they were influenced by the Stomach Mouths of Stockholm), a standout track from the band’s second LP, Neanderthal (2008).

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, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 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, 64, 65

Posted by David Klein at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Our man Prof. Klein is currently jet-setting glamorously from No. Carolina to deepest upstate New York, but a pocket of airport wifi was all he needed to pass on a few 6.4.09 words on a related decimal numeral of unique interest. The song is a scizophrenic favorite of mine from way back, so I of course I obliged. The song's from my man Gary Wilson, who, as you may remember, rocks the most...(JK)

I didn’t intentionally exclude Gary Wilson’s “6.4 Equals Make Out” from my recent survey of six songs for any arcane numerological reasons—it simply got lost in an avalanche of worthy options. And I’m not alleging that it would have beaten Hendrix’s “If Six Was Nine” for top honors, but make no mistake; this track, by the outlandish cult musician and favorite of Beck (he gets a shout-out on “Where it’s At”) is the greatest, weirdest 6.4 song in existence. (And, as far as I can tell, the only 6.4 song in existence.) At first it could pass for a laid-back Beck B-side, but it takes a hard turn into Bizarro Land after a couple of repetitions of the title phrase, when Wilson abandons melody altogether and starts delivering desperate entreaties. “How old did you say you were?” he asks, only to be met with “16!” Wilson reaches a greater height of self-delusion with the phrase, “She’s a real groovy girl, and she’s got red lips,” which he repeats with a growing edge of desperation, finally adding, “Can’t cha hear me, God??” At this point, “6.4 Make Out” resembles nothing so much as a love song to a blowup doll. “She’s real!” he wails, “She’s real!!” When the thing finally fades out, you kind of want to take a shower. (And deflate that blowup doll once and for all.)

Gary Wilson - "6.4 = Make Out"

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, 5 (redux),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, 64, 65

Posted by David Klein at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sixty-five is a number that might well suffer from self-esteem issues. As the U.S. speed limit and the age at which you join the ranks of the elderly, 65 comes off as a scold, a cut-off point—in short, nothing much to celebrate. Country great Merle Haggard addressed this on the recent “Come On, Sixty-Five,” a musical wish to hasten the arrival of his 65th birthday so he can get his gold watch, kick back, and perhaps enjoy some warm evenings sipping Bourbon and branch on his porch (after pawning that watch). The song is summed up in the line, “I’ve heard it said that hard work never did a body’s body any harm. Well they were wrong.” Neil Young echoes this point in “Southern Pacific,” wherein an aging train engineer reports: “I rode the Highball/I fired the Daylight/When I turned sixty-five/I couldn’t see right.” A further echo of this lonesome-train feeling can be heard on “Sixty-Five Days,” a reverb-y instrumental by the rootsy Knoxville Girls, named after a chilling murder ballad popularized by the Louvin Brothers.

The doo-wop era began in the early ‘50s and was buried under an avalanche of Beatlemania some ten years later, which is why Paul Davis’s egregiously sunny hit “’65 Love Affair” is such a historical travesty. For those of you who somehow missed out on this staple of rock radio circa 1981 (it was a favorite of Dick Clark), the song is heaven for those who consider “doo-wop-diddy” the most joyous sound in creation. But by 1965, when the Who sang “My Generation” and the Byrds recorded “Eight Miles High,” this kind of ditty was already gathering dust. (True, Manfred Mann hit number #1 with “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” a year earlier, but its spirit was far more early-‘60s pop than ‘50s doo-wop.) Originally titled “’55 Love Affair,” Davis’s song got a name change when some clever A&R people decided that ‘55 sounded dated, not that the radio-listening youth of America were sticklers for historical accuracy. The spin doctors got it right, though—it ascended to the Top 10, and the Jesus of Nazareth look-alike Paul Davis had a giant hit on his hands.

If there were any justice in the world, Josh Rouse would have had at least one hit on his hands by now. In the course of 10 years or so, Rouse, a Nebraska native who later settled in Nashville, has put out a record a year, all of which are marked by gorgeous highpoints but also a tendency to get a little same-y. “65” from the EP Chester, a collaboration with Kurt Wagner of Lambchop, is one of the lesser tracks on this collection. Despite some interesting non-sequitur lyrics (“The good things they proceed to rot
/The uselessness of smoking pot”)
 and an easy mid-tempo cadence, it lacks the strong chorus or wry punch of Rouse’s best. (The meaning of 65 is ambiguous here; there’s a mention of the Berlin Wall, but 65 is also the name of the highway that runs through Nashville, the city where Chester was recorded.) The meaning of 65 is similarly vague in “Rainy Night 65” by New Model Army, the venerable British trio that garnered top honors for no. 51 slot. This stark dirge would break Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night” over its knee, if such a thing were possible, while the ponderous “Paris 65,” by French art rockers Etron Fou Leloublan, is a knotty mélange of keyboard lines in search of a melody, sprinkled with some barked vocals—a head-scratcher in any language. “65 Doesn’t Understand You” by 65 Days of Static is not much easier to “get.” A series of intricate, caustic sections that mix Sonic Youth-style spiky guitar work with prog intricacy and industrial keyboard textures, the song somehow coheres, producing a sonic picture that is at once disorienting and strangely alluring.

Etron Fou Leloublan - "Paris 65"

While we’re on the subject of heavy, White Zombie’s commercial breakthrough, “Thunder Kiss ’65,” would make a perfect anthem for an army of marauding huns, with Rob Zombie’s brawny vocals leading the way over turgid bass-heavy riffing. In the midst of the maelstrom, which incorporates film samples (“I never TRY anything; I just do it. Wanna try me?”), police sirens, and shredding axe work, it’s easy to miss the similarity to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” It’s also easy to miss what it has to do with 1965, but a lyric sheet proves that "What’s New Pussycat" and “Satisfaction”—both produced in 1965, are both name-checked. But this is not a song for study; it’s meant for head-banging or pole-dancing, and on that front, it is highly recommended.

Gene Chandler never topped “Duke of Earl,” his 1962 hit that has earned a rightful place among the great singles of the early rock era, but the Chicago native, born Eugene Dixon, had a subsequent string of Top 40 hits produced by the great Curtis Mayfield, including “Rainbow,” aka “Rainbow ’65.” Consisting of Chandler’s adlibbed vocals over a trilling piano and simple drumbeat, the song served as a trusty encore in live shows. In the version recorded at the long-gone Regal Theater in Chicago, titled “Rainbow ’65 (Parts 1 and 2),” the crowd exhorts Mr. Chandler throughout with impromptu screams, including the immortal cry, “You GO, dad!” And after he confesses that “I gonna reach out and-uh BITE-cha,” he is met with palpable delirium. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Striking a more upbeat note is “65 Bars and a Taste of Soul” by Charles Wright & the 103rd Street Rhythm Band,” a sizzling funk outfit that got some early support from Bill Cosby and whose members went on to work with Earth Wind & Fire and Bill Withers. Their biggest hit, the oft-sampled “Express Yourself,” (1970) is a perfect a slab of ‘70s R&B that seems to combine the best elements of “Cool Jerk,” “It’s Your Thing,” and “Mr. Bigstuff” into one irresistible, hip-shaking package.

Charles Wright & the 103rd Street Rhythm Band - "65 Bars and a Taste of Soul"

Other 65s worth noting:

* The Beatles fifth U.S. release for Capitol, Beatles ’65, cobbled together songs from two previous British releases, much to the consternation of purists, although subsequent recordings by Frank Sinatra (Sinatra ’65) and Duke Ellington (Ellington ’65) indicated that some folks didn’t mind.
* The pensive “65 and Sunny” by Travels, a Massachusetts duo who were aptly described in Performer magazine as “full-hearted yet half-hearted”
* “’65 Mustang” a tuneful tribute to an automobile with a complicated past by Five For Fighting
* “65 Directory” by Tomlin, an unsung‘70s Australian outfit
* The title weather system in Neko Case’s “This Tornado Loves You” is “65 miles wide.”
* Wall of Voodoo’s front-man Stan Ridgeway had a European hit in 1986 with “Camouflage, which was set “…in the jungle wars of ’65.”
* “55 in the waist /65 in the hips,/55 in the waist/a long lean gal ain’t worth doodly squat.” –Sugarboy Crawford, in his paean to feminine amplitude “She Got to Wobble When She Walk”
* “65 Roses,” titled after a boy’s mispronunciation of his sister’s cystic fibrosis, belongs in the pantheon of “tragedy” songs, right up there with Henry Gross’s dead-dog lament, “Shannon,” “Last Kiss” by J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers, and “Christmas Shoes” by Newsong. The mispronunciation was tapped for Songs for 65 Roses, a well-intentioned comp featuring North Carolina’s finest, including the dB’s, Let’s Active, Superchunk, and Fetchin’ Bones.
* “65%” by Tuomas Tolvonen, a proponent of Finnish electronica music (known as “suomiaundi”), provides the intriguing if physiologically incorrect notion that “65% of us is water and the rest of dust”
* “65 Pushups” by guitar wiz Prashant Aswani, is a funky fusion of hot riffing that recalls Jeff Beck’s collaborations with Jan Hammer.

Travels - "Sixty Five and Sunny"

“I'm looking for the treason that I knew in '65

"

–David Bowie, “1984”

"In the winter of ‘65/we were hungry, just barely alive—"

The Band, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

To Bowie and the Band, ’65 was a mythical year. True, the Band’s Civil War-themed lamentation takes place a century before the ’65 that Bowie refers to, but both years were marked by conflict. So, perhaps it’s fitting that our winning song refers to a year, as opposed to the speed limit or the retirement age, even though the reference is more of a glancing blow than a straight shot. “Circa ‘65” is a spare and haunting number by Darling Downs, an Australian duo comprised of two mainstays of Sydney’s indie rock scene: vocalist Ron Peno, former lead singer of Died Pretty, and Kim Salmon, who is credited with forming one of the first punk bands in Australia as well as predating the sound of Seattle in the early ‘90s with his band the Scientists. (This is not hyperbole: the sound of the band has a marked similarity to the ‘90s Seattle aesthetic, and in a documentary on the Australian rock scene that aired when Kurt Cobain was still in school, Salmon used the term “grunge” to describe the sound of his band.)

The Darling Downs - "Circa '65"

While Peno and Salmon have spent most of their lives playing music influenced by the Stooges, Velvet Underground, and others of that ilk, the sound they make together is rooted in Americana, an acoustic mixture featuring Salmon’s banjo and guitar, Peno’s rich and resonant vocals, along with harmonica and the occasional shake of a tambourine.

“Circa ‘65” resulted from the duo’s idiosyncratic method of songwriting. As Salmon explained to me, he begins by laying down an instrumental groove, and Peno free-associates over the top in order to come up with a melody. “The stuff he sings is random and tends to borrow from rock’s rich tapestry. One of the lines for this song ended with the phrase “back in 1965” because, as your essays testify, there is a history of numbers, particularly dates, in rock lyrics. For example Jonathan Richman's “She Cracked” has the lines “Well she was sensitive
/She understood me/
She understood the European things of 1943.” This is definitely the type of feel that Ron was looking for. As he never writes any lyrics down, he tends to improv lyrics rather than learn them. He’s lazy, and he thinks this is easier. When recording, he put down a guide vocal, and I went back and wrote it all down, basically trying to decipher. Neither Ron or I knew exactly what had been sung, so translating it in itself made the end results even more surreal, e.g., “I had to have the halo, when I hit the floor, I’ve been on a timeless journey since 1964.” (Yes, a different date than the title.) It was like Ron was on the couch and I was his analyst, and then William Burroughs got the results and cut it up!”

And in the spirit of William Burroughs and his cut-up technique, the randomness of the process produces something with a resonance all its own. “I have found working with Ron that even though what he does is somewhat random, it does tend to take on a huge amount of meaning simply because he doesn't allow himself the chance to contrive. Everything he sings comes straight out of his psyche. By its sheer meaninglessness, 1965 has become full of mystery and spiritual significance.”

The Darling Downs - "Circa '65"

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, 5 (redux),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, 64

Posted by David Klein at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We’ve had 800-pound gorillas in the room before, but with 64, one song so dominates that it seems to have cowed most sensible songwriters into submission. Let’s be clear: 64 has never been a popular number in song titles (“64 Bars on Wilshire” by ace jazz guitarist Barney Kessel notwithstanding). But since the Beatles made “When I’m Sixty-Four” in 1967, they have simply owned the number. The song is a modern standard. It’s instantly recognizable by young and old, yet it’s one of the most atypical songs in the Beatles canon. Not because it doesn’t rock—from the very start, the Beatles showed a willingness to make forays into a number of non-rock styles: from the gentle balladry of “And I Love Her” and the squeaky-clean “Till There Was You” from Broadway’s The Music Man, onward to “Yesterday,” which convinced many skeptics (or squares) that the Fab 4 were more than a passing craze. “When I’m Sixty-Four,” with its crooning vocal and cheekily comedic tone, falls squarely in the British musical-hall tradition of the early 20th century. What makes it singular is that it sounds old. Yes, they would repeat this trick with “Your Mother Should Know” and “Honey Pie,” but on the screamingly psychedelic Sgt. Pepper, the song stood out, in the words of author/Beatles savant Ian MacDonald, “like a comic brass fob-watch suspended from a floral waistcoat.” Indeed, sandwiched between Harrison’s “Within You and Without You” and the shimmering colors of “Lovely Rita,” it constitutes a hard 180-degree turn into the musty but innocent past.

The Beatles - "When I'm Sixty-Four"

“When I’m Sixty-Four” was almost wholly a McCartney creation. John contributes some acoustic guitar in the last verse, Ringo provides minimal drums and some chimes, and Lennon and Harrison sing background vocals (their ‘ah-ah-ahs” after “you’ll be older too,” as Tim Riley points out in Tell Me Why, are the aural equivalent of a grown-up’s finger wag), but Paul composed and sang it, played the piano on it, and wrote it for his dad, Jim. The song had kicked around since the band’s earliest days in Hamburg, when they would play an instrumental version when experiencing technical difficulties. McCartney says he wrote the song when he was 16, and was inspired to record the thing when his dad turned 64, in 1966. The pronounced oompah-band vibe must have added interesting visuals for young people using Pepper as the background for an LSD trip, but it’s hard to imagine that it was any kid’s favorite track on the album, and just as hard to imagine it not being the favorite song of those in Jim McCartney’s generation.

“The most devilish thing is 8 times 8…” –Marjory Fleming (1803-1811)

Marjory Fleming, a child poet, writer, and diarist from Kirkaldy, Fife, Scotland, and a favorite of Sir Walter Scott, showed prodigious literary abilities in her brief life, writing in a bold, clear-eyed manner (“Sentiment is what I am not acquainted with”) far beyond her years. As the above quote indicates, she found the product of 8 x 8 extremely vexing (and had even more trouble with 7 times 7, about which she wrote, “…it is what nature itselfe can’t endure.”) Whether Black Francis of the Pixies was influenced by Marjory for the “If the devil is 6/than God is 7” section of “Monkey Gone to Heaven” is unknown, but she might have been on to something about 64. It may just be coincidence, but from the looks of it, covering “When I’m Sixty-Four” is not a wise move. You might say that “When I’m Sixty-Four” is to the Beatles what Macbeth is to Shakespeare. (It is considered bad luck to even utter the name of Shakespeare’s 29th play inside a theater—performers wishing to avoid the mishaps associated with it refer to it as “the Scottish play.”) I make this allegation because several of the best-known performers who have covered “Sixty-Four” never reached the age of 64, including Keith Moon, who sang it on the misguided all-Beatles collection All This and World War II; John Denver, who died in plane crash in 1997, and former child star Jack Wild, who starred in H. R. Pufnstuf and died a protracted death of cancer in 2006 (the year McCartney turned 64). Others who covered it experienced high-level personal tragedy: the chanteuse Claudine Longet was convicted in 1976 of manslaughter in the death of her boyfriend, skier “Spider” Sabich, and never performed again, and 25 years after the British singer and performer Georgie Fame sang the song, his wife, the former Nicolette Harrison, Marchioness of Londonderry, leaped to her death from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. Parodying the song, however, does not seem to have any associated risks. The Rutles did a spot-on pastiche called “Back in 64,” and to my knowledge, the lesser talents who came up with “When I’m 84” and “When I’m 43” have not incurred the heavy hand of fate.

Claudine Longet - "When I'm Sixty-Four"
Keith Moon - "When I'm Sixty-Four"

Most people have stayed away from attempting a 64 song of their own. The most interesting item I’ve come up with is an obscurity lover’s dream: a song by the former band of a one-hit wonder. It’s not quite as juicy as, say, something by the teenage garage band of the guy who did “They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha Haa,” but it’s close. Roger Jouret, better known as Plastic Bertrand, had a European smash hit with “Ca Plane Pour Moi,” a delirious bit of new-wave doggerel built around Jouret’s nonsensical French and English rant and its wordless pseudo-Beach Boys hook. Punk and new wave were not known for a sense of humor, and Belgium is hardly a cradle of rock ‘n’ roll, (though it has produced a smattering of fine acts, including Front 242, dEUS, Evil Superstars, and some commercial hit makers like Technotronic), so the charmingly goofy “Ca Plane” ranks high among the country’s contributions to pop music. I’m telling you this because previous to his brief moment in the sun, Jouret played drums for Hubble Bubble, which produced two undistinguished records in the late ‘70s. “Number 64” from Faking (1979), is an innocuous folk rock/new wave hybrid, with ringing acoustic guitar chords and a typical chugging eighth-note groove.

Nifty Sixty-Four Fact: The Kama Sutra contains a total of 64 sexual positions, or “64 arts,” but it’s really an 8 x 8 affair, with eight main positions that can be combined with eight sexual techniques. Incorporating an octopus adds exponentially to the fun.

“All alone at the ’64 World’s Fair/Eighty dolls yelling “small girl after all.”

–They Might Be Giants, “Anna Ng”

1964 was a cultural treasure trove: the World’s Fair in New York City introduced the world to Belgian waffles; the Beatles kicked off the British Invasion with “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and it was a good year for cars. “My 64” by rapper Mike Jones pays tribute to his “chopped and screwed” 1964 Chevy Impala, a classic muscle car that aficionados often convert into a low rider. The year provided a starting point for ’64 - ’95, the numerically rich third release by the English duo Lemon Jelly. After two albums that were mostly danceable ear-candy affairs graced with sun-dappled production and left-field samples, ’64 - ’95 was an ostensible concept album, with each track named after a year and built around a song from the same time period. By and large, the textures were far more caustic than before, and in most cases the songs defied the expectation that they would sound like the year on which they were based. Witness “’64 AKA Go,” a song featuring William Shatner that’s loosely based on (but doesn’t actually sample) “Ringo,” recorded in 1964 by Lorne Greene, better known as Pa Cartwright on Bonanza. The two songs have little in common save for some spoken-word narrative provided by an actor trying his hand at being a recording artist. Shatner, who began his recording career in 1968 with The Transformed Man, has surprised many by transcending joke status as a singer (unlike, say, Leonard Nimoy, whose “Proud Mary” has to be heard to be believed) and ascending to an impressive level of cool. In 2004, he put out the Ben Folds-produced Has Been, which found him collaborating with a slew of top-notch musicians, including Lemon Jelly on one track, and doing a shockingly good cover of Pulp’s “Common People.” On “’64,” Shatner intones in ominous Beat-poet style: “And so I went, alone/East, west/East, west…” over a hypnotic pulse that slowly builds in complexity. After tolling bells herald a quiet section, the song erupts into a thunderous power-chord climax that destroys all traces of the gentle, groove-alicious Lemon Jelly sound and culminates in a final utterance from Shatner, channeling his role as a pitchman for the travel Web site Priceline:

“And so at last I understood. Go.”

Lemon Jelly - "'64 AKA Go"

William Shatner is Terrorized by Some Sort of an Airplane Yeti
(Twilight Zone episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" aired October 11th, 1963)

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, 5 (redux),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 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Ain’t you the guy who used to set the paces

But I used to follow you back in ’63”

--“Bell Boy,” The Who

Any school kid will tell you that when a donkey and a horse mate, the result is a creature with 63 chromosomes, but thus far songwriters have steered clear of this phenomenon. As the above passage from Quadrophenia indicates, our climb up the numerical ladder has reached the point where the numbers have begun to coincide with the years of the rock era. By a wide margin, 63 songs deal with 1963, sandwiched halfway between rock’s breakout year of 1957 and the universally acknowledged death of the ‘60s at Altamont in December of ‘69. The most inescapable of these ’63-centric songs is the horrifically catchy “December 1963 (Oh What a Night),” by Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, a late-career hit for a man whose string of falsetto-laden hits in the early ‘60s earned the Four Seasons a place in rock’s hall of fame. While the song can still cause palpitations among the mom-jeans set, it is suffused with a cloying nostalgia and devoid of any suggestion of the lust that one assumes made the night in question so special. And the piano riff is so jaunty-cheesy it makes Billy Joel sound like Arnold Schoenberg. Clearly more palatable is New Order’s “1963,” which takes the year’s central tragedy—the Kennedy assassination—as its subject matter. In spite of those cheerful, high-fretted Peter Hook bass lines and Bernard Sumner’s sugary vocals, this is a dark tale of a woman killed by her husband, based on Sumner’s half-baked theory that the bullets that day in Dallas were meant for Jackie Kennedy in order that JFK could marry Marilyn Monroe. Of course, many of New Order’s lyrics amount to sheer poppycock in service of transcendent song-craft, and indeed, Marilyn had died a year earlier, but all this conjecture is moot—the song is not eligible for top honors because 63 does not appear as a stand-alone number in its title. Thus far, I have disallowed “19_ _” type titles, and I’m going to stick to that ruling (until such time that I find I simply have no choice).

New Order - "1963"

So, what about the pre-’63 world? Well, there’s “Pre 63,” an instrumental by Groove Armada, leading lights of chill-out music after the genre became a brief global smash in the wake of the late-90s ascendancy of Massive Attack, KLF, and Morcheeba. To my ears, much of this music now sounds interchangeable, and “Pre 63” is no exception. Just a funky bass groove built around an insistent flute hook and fleshed out with an extended muted trumpet solo, it feels formulaic and leaves little lasting impression. I wonder what we were all on back then that made the urge to chill out so universal. (Ten years from now, people might be saying the same about the work of DJs like Roman Frolikoff, whose “63 Model Subjects” sticks close to the familiar house/techno blueprint.) Several decades pre-“Pre 63,” Teresa Brewer ruled the charts. A singer for whom the word spunky was tailor-made, Brewer was blessed with the ability to be heard in the back row of the theater, which was in those days considered a vital asset. Hence, on “Sixty Three Sailors in Grand Central Station,” Ms. Brewer’s searing pipes could penetrate one of the fallout shelters that would proliferate in the early part of the next decade. In this O Henry-like tale of missed connections, Ms. Brewer goes to surprise her naval beau, but finds him missing—because he somehow slipped out and headed to her place—to surprise her! Oh, the irony. And speaking of the good old days, let’s not forget 1863. J. Rawls, a rapper and producer for the likes of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, titled “Sixty-Three is the Jubilee” after a negro spiritual of Civil War era that features the kind of lyrics you just don’t see anymore: “Oh, de Jubilee is coming/Don’t ye sniff it in the air/And sixty-three is the jubilee/for de darkeys eb’ry where!” Rawls was probably wise to make his song an instrumental.

If all this smacks of the musty past, hang on—we’re not through yet. Being 63 years old is a condition most people would rather not sing about, but Victoria Williams assures us that it’s never too late. Her stirring “Century Plant” tells of a sexagenarian who “went back to college, at the age of sixty-three/Graduated with honors, with an agricultural degree.” Koko Taylor would certainly applaud this achievement. Ms. Taylor, born Cora Walton and better known as the Queen of the Chicago Blues, has already topped this count-up, nabbing the coveted 29 spot for “Twenty-Nine Ways to My Baby’s Door,” a song she recorded when she was in her 30s. In her “63-Year-Old Mama”—a defiant boast with an automotive bent—Ms. Taylor proclaims she’s still got it and never lost it: “The young mens call me a Mercedes but the old mens say I’m a Jaguar, and their engine don’t run cold.” Similarly automotive-minded is “My ’63,” an obscure B-side by Neko Case & the Sadies. This love song to an old car has proved difficult to track down, but being that Ms. Case herself has dismissed it due to her own overwrought vocals, we can safely assume that “My ‘63” is no “Ol’ 55.”

Theatre of Hate - "63"

Mick Jones of the Clash produced Westworld, the first full-length release by Theatre of Hate, on which the gloomy, plodding “63” appears. Though they were a short-lived presence in the British goth-rock scene of the early ‘80s, Theatre of Hate made an impression on the UK charts in ’82 with “Do You Believe in the Westworld,” as well as endeared itself to radio titan John Peel. The band broke up soon thereafter, when guitarist Billy Duffy bailed to start the Cult with Ian Astbury, whose keening vocals are not too far from those of T.O.H lead singer, Kirk Brandon. Danny Elfman, composer of The Simpsons theme and countless of top-notch movie soundtracks, first honed his estimable gift for film scoring with Forbidden Zone, a slab of oddball cinema circa 1982 starring Herve Villechaize of Fantasy Island fame. “Cell 63,” is a perplexing mash-up of styles that mirrors this wacky film (Elfman also appeared in it, in the role of Satan), which veered from sci-fi to sex farce and featured lines like this: “Flash, be sure and tie your grandfather up and check the knots real good.” Although it sounds like a tribute to an atomic alien from a B-movie, “Ballad of 63 Eyes” by a West Virginia band called Moon (who describe themselves as Hüsker Dü meets the Monkees) is actually a crunchy, tuneful shout-out to their fellow West Virginian rockers—you guessed it: 63 Eyes (not to be confused with 63 Crayons, of plain old Virginia).

Moon - "Ballad of 63 Eyes"

Once again, this quest has produced an eclectic cavalcade of also-rans and thankfully, a single choice of unimpeachable aptness. “Rawhide ’63” is a retooled version of a 1959 single by the great Link Wray, a half-Shawnee Indian who grew up poor in Dunn, NC, (not “white-man poor” like Elvis, but “Shawnee-poor” as Wray put it) and who is widely credited with inventing the power chord, which as its name implies, is a blunt, forceful blast of sound created by playing only the low strings of a guitar, usually combined with overdrive and distortion. As a child, Wray lived in fear of raids by the KKK, went to work at the age of 10, and learned guitar from a black man named Hambone. Although he came to admire the virtuosity of elegant, clean-toned players like Chet Atkins and Tal Farlow, he lacked the chops to emulate them. So he came up with something raw, visceral, and damaged. His sound is best captured on his signature song, “Rumble,” (1958), one of rock’s greatest and most influential singles. With its fuzzed-out minor chords slow-strummed over a creeping drumbeat, bringing to mind the gait of a leather-clad hood heading to a gang fight, “Rumble” is the very embodiment of early rock ‘n’ roll’s menace. And Wray—hunched from childhood illnesses, minus one lung from a bout of TB acquired in the Army—performed in a black leather jacket, dark shades, and a beaded headband, looking every bit as badass as the sound he made. “Rumble” was an instant smash, even though radio stations refused to play it simply because of its title and the belief that it might incite impressionable youths to commit real violence. This is doubtless the only instance of a song being banned simply for its sonic implications, as opposed to lyrical transgressions, either real or imagined.

Link Wray - "Rumble"
(live, 1978)

Over the next few years, Wray devised numerous singles that traded in the same overdrive and distortion (initially achieved by poking a pencil through the cone of his amplifier). “Rawhide ’63” exemplifies the sound of the late-‘50s-early-‘60s heyday of the rock instrumental, when a flip of the radio dial might turn up wordless gems in any number of genres, from sweaty Latin-tinged garage rock like the Champs’ “Tequila” to surf music classics like the Chantays’ “Pipleline” to the soulful swing of “Green Onions” by Booker T & the MGs. Built around simple blues chord changes, “Rawhide ‘63” is a brisk, tight number featuring the surf-style drumming of Wray’s brother Vernon, a pumping keyboard, and Wray’s inimitable licks, combining a touch of Chuck Berry and Duane Eddy but adding up to a sound all his own.

Wray never reached the upper reaches of the charts again. After “Rumble,” he bounced around from label to label, eventually retiring to his family’s farm in the early ‘70s and recording his own records in a homemade studio there. He achieved a bit of a comeback in ‘77 backing up neo-rockabillyist Robert Gordon, and spent his final years in Copenhagen living with his wife, raising a son, and playing the occasional gig. But his legacy is secure. His embrace of feedback, noise, and distortion can be felt to this day. Every notable guitarist in rock, from Clapton, Page, Hendrix and Townshend on through Jack White of the White Stripes, has incorporated these elements. Moreover, every major stylistic permutation of rock, from the heavy metal and punk of the ‘70s through college rock and hair metal of the ‘80s through the grunge of the ‘90s, and onward owes a debt to the sound of a blasted-out guitar chord, made famous by the man born Fred Lincoln Wray Jr. His music has been prominently featured in film, including Pulp Fiction and Pink Flamingos, and the tributes to his singular influence are legion. I’ll leave you with these:

“If I could return in time and see one band live, it would be Link Wray and the Ray Men.” – Neil Young

“He is the king; if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and ‘Rumble,’ I would have never picked up a guitar.” – Pete Townshend

Link Wray - "Rawhide '63"

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

Posted by David Klein at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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 3 was not given its proper due. So today, on a date tripping over treys, we continue to rewrite history. (JK)

It’s tempting to agree with the geniuses at Schoolhouse Rock that three really is the magic number. I know that Moe, Larry, and Curly, the Father the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and every other immortal power trio would agree. It would be superfluous to list the plenitude of threes in our lives, so I’ll just offer up the fact that there would be no funny without it. The tripartite structure of jokes depends on a combination of the Jew, the Irishman, and the Italian all walking into a bar—no more, no less—for humor to (at least potentially) ensue. But really, what is three-ness? It is not to be alone, not to be two peas in a pod; it’s where the space between us becomes the space among us: a huge leap. “We Three” by the Ink Spots limned this territory: a pining man, driven by existential loneliness, softens his solitude by imagining himself in an arrangement of three, namely “My echo, my shadow, and me.”

the Ink Spots - "We Three"

What to make of the handful of three songs by bands or artists whose careers were tragically cut short I know not, but I give you: Jimi Hendrix’s cosmically groovy “Third Stone From the Sun”—endowed with the line “And you’ll never hear surf music again” and nakedly nicked by Right Said Fred for “I’m Too Sexy”; Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps” a good-natured stomp in which singer Ronnie Van Zandt pleads for a running start from a barroom badass; Nick Drake’s “Three Hours,” a quietly harrowing piece about the futility of escape, and Eddie Cochran’s “Three Steps to Heaven,” a spooky, posthumous hit after his fatal taxi-cab crash in 1960. Less well-known is School of Fish, a Boston-area band whose “3 Strange Days”—a college radio hit in 1991—retains its crunchy power-chord charm. Bandleader Josh Clayton-Felt died nine years later of cancer at the sadly youthful age of 32. (3-30, I might add, is the birthday of Vincent Van Gogh.)

Three is well represented among heavy hitters, sometimes in exalted fashion, sometimes not. Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” is one of the man’s most popular songs—it’s certainly the happiest three song in existence, a perfect example of the way Marley’s music embodied struggle while retaining hope and joy. The Beatles’ cover of the middling Leiber-Stoller track “Three Cool Cats” is a trifle from the pre-“Love Me Do” era. “Three Angels” is something of a curiosity in the Dylan canon: a halting spoken-word piece with a slowly swelling gospel choir, which lacks a verse-chorus structure. Judging from its placement as the penultimate song on New Morning, one suspects that even Dylan knew it wasn’t one of his peak moments.

Three o’clock in the afternoon is a dull time of day, but 3 a.m. is fraught with drama. In Hillary Clinton’s infamous 2008 campaign ad, she asked whom Americans would want to take an important late-night phone call at the White House. (The populace responded with an emphatic “not you.”) In 1961, Gary U.S. Bonds hit no. 1 with “Quarter to Three,” a finger-poppin’ R&B rave-up with honkin’ sax, which was a favorite encore of a young Bruce Springsteen. Sleater-Kinney’s “A Quarter to Three” is a surprisingly meditative piece from a trio known for catharsis. In Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Three Hours Past Midnight,” the distraught axe-man bewails the lateness of the hour and the absence of his baby, and contemplates catching that midnight train. Guadalcanal Diary’s “3 a.m.” is a haunting meditation on the dark night of the alcoholic’s soul, while Matchbox 20’s “3 a.m.” chronicles the romantic yearnings of an insomniac who doesn’t want her man to catch a cold. Young Jeezy’s “3 A.M.” is also about romantic yearnings, the kind that hit you when you’re up on “that Grey Goose, higher than a pelican.”

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers - "Not Yet Three"

In “Not Yet Three,” Jonathan Richman’s youthful protagonist share’s Young Jeezy’s disdain for sleeping, rejecting his dusk bedtime with a fierce but clear-eyed logic: “I’m stronger than you, you’re simply bigger than me.” Many a rock ‘n’ roll purist disdains Richman’s post-Modern Lovers output, but no one will ever write a more compelling song about the injustice of having to go to bed when you can still hear kids playing outside. Richman reminds us that the urge to rebel does not necessarily begin in the teen years. Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters—who apparently became a drug addict by the ripe old age of 10—is living proof of that sentiment. The cute but wounded protagonist of his “Three-Legged Cat” (OK, it’s only a metaphor, but still…) would make an ideal companion for Richman’s not-yet-three-year-old.

Red House Painters - "Three-Legged Cat"

Stereolab gives us no less than a perfect triad of three songs, two of them from the lovely, mid-period Mars Audiac Quintet. “Three Dee Melodie” opens the proceedings with the familiar elements of sing-song repetition in alternating French and English, and hypnotic, burbling analog synths. And it still feels like a feat for a song this languid to incorporate a refrain of “The meaning of existence can't be supplied by religion or ideology.” “Three Longers Later” begins like a deconstruction of a typical Stereolab song, with just a single keyboard note and those intertwining vocals set in a Möbius-strip-like loop, before morphing into more knotty percussive territory. After eschewing three-titled songs for over a decade, Stereolab returned with “Three Women,” a dreamy pop song with a springy Motown bounce and horns straight out of Burt Bacharach. Massive Attack’s “Three” is pretty dreamy, too; it’s the kind of song that would make a perfect soundtrack for being scrubbed with a loofah, while “Three Words” by Junior Boys would be better suited to being pummeled by pom-poms.

Stereolab - "Three Women"
Junior Boys - "Three Words"

The post-punk movement of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s offers perhaps the strongest array of three-related songs, united both numerically and in terms of a certain astringent bleakness. Wire’s “Three Girl Rhumba” is one of the easiest songs to sidle up to from the highly influential and much-loved Pink Flag (1977). A model of caustic, catchy precision, the song is manna from heaven to a hungry numerologist, with lines like, “Open your eyes/Think of a number/Don’t get sucked under/A number’s a number.” (It also put Justine Frischmann’s nieces through preschool.) The ironically named Pop Group had a B-side called “3:38” in 1979, a claustrophobic dub instrumental that recalls same-era PIL. That same year, the Cure released its debut album in the UK, Three Imaginary Boys, which came out in the U.S. under the name Boys Don’t Cry, much to the consternation of singer Robert Smith. The title track is typically stark and ominous, with watery guitar strumming and a precise, plodding bass line over which Smith, his youthful croak full of foreboding, pleads, “Can you help me?” Television Personalities’ “Three Wishes,” the lead track from the They Could Have Bigger Than the Beatles compilation (1982), has a sing-song minor-key melody that mirrors the bleak sentiment of the chorus: “If I had three wishes, I’d wish for three more.” The shambling “Three Cheers for Our Side” from the debut LP by semi-legendary Scottish post-punkers Orange Juice exemplifies the band’s early amalgamation of off-the-cuff looseness and Edwyn Collins’s cheeky, off-key singing, all kept somewhat grounded by well-placed ooh-la-la vocal support and jaunty rhythms.

Wire - "Three Girl Rhumba"
Pop Group - "3:38"
the Cure - "Three Imaginary Boys"
Television Personalities - "Three Wishes"
Orange Juice - "Three Cheers For Our Side"

Scooting into the ‘90s, “Skip Steps 1 and 3” from Superchunk makes a virtue of impatience and burns with the naked fury of Steve Albini’s stripped-down production. A year earlier, Jane’s Addiction delivered “Three Days,” a 10-minute opus off Ritual de lo Habitual that starts with a hushed, insistent bass figure and slowly uncoils into a full-on eruption. Perry Farrell said the song was about “taking [your] party to the limit,” which puts a line like “three lovers/in three ways” in much-needed perspective. Speaking of three lovers, the arrangement known as the threesome has proved ripe subject matter for songwriters over the years. David Crosby might have been the first to broach the topic frankly with “Triad,” in which he, with a lack of compunction reflective of the ‘If it feels good, do it” hippie ethos of the late sixties, asked of his long-haired lovers: “Why can’t we go on as three?” (No one would ever mistake the Commodores’ “Three Times a Lady”—covered by Eddie Murphy’s Buckwheat as “Unce, Tice, Fee Tines a Mady”—for a song about a threesome, with the possible exception of David Crosby.) More recently, the Magnetic Fields’ Disortion opens with “Three-Way,” a clangorous blast that brings to mind both Jesus & Mary Chain and Phil Spector. (The only words are the joyously gang-vocaled title phase.) Multitalented producer/musician/filmmaker Jim O’Rourke, in the deceptively pretty “Halfway to a Threeway,” offers this hushed-voiced come-on to an apparently wheelchair-bound seducee:

I just can’t get you to sit

cause I’m halfway to a threeway

Jim O'Rourke - "Halfway to a Threeway"
the Magnetic Fields - "Three-way"

On the subject of threesomes:

In a recent survey, the number of American respondents who admitted to having participated in threesomes was bested only by the extremely tri-curious Icelanders; Norway captured the bronze.

As with all the low numbers, there really are too many to discuss individually. My cup runneth over. But here’s a no. three montage sequence, somewhat thematically arranged for your viewing pleasure, before we get down to brass tacks: “Three in One” - The Upsetters, “One of the Three” – James, “Three or Four” - New Pornographers, “Three’s a Crowd,” – George Jones, “Three Feet High and Rising”: Johnny Cash, “Three Men Drown in the River” - Blackout Beach, “Three Colours” – Sunset Rubdown, “The Color of Three” – Fennesz, “Three Window Room” – Blank Dogs, Modest Mouse – “3rd Planet.”

Blank Dogs - "Three Window Room"
Modest Mouse - "3rd Planet"
Sunset Rubdown - "Three Colours, pt.1"

Because nos. 1, 2, and 3 are so overstuffed with possibilities they have their own caveats and bylaws. The main caveat is that I make no attempt toward objectivity; it’s one thing to say that Stereolab’s “OLV 26” is the greatest 26 song, quite another to declare a song as “best” when there are many good ones in many genres, as there are with these low numbers. I have, however, declared that for these low ones, the song should somehow embody the essence of that number. A final criterion, which I feel compelled to temporarily and self-servingly jettison, is the requirement that the number appear in the song’s title. I do this because my choice for best 3-song fulfills the “essence of the number” criterion so well that I am compelled to look the other way on the issue of its title.

Schoolhouse Rock - "Three is a Magic Number"

“Three is the Magic Number” is perhaps the best-known song from Schoolhouse Rock, the educational animated series from the ‘70s that has since wormed its way into the pop cultural firmament with a vengeance. De La Soul’s “The Magic Number” is firmly based on the original, only for what one assumes were legal reasons, the words “Three is” do not appear in its title. Just this once, I’m going to ignore that obstinate fact. But Mase, Dove, and Plug One nabbed the best part of the song, dispensed with the times-tables practice, and turned it into a lyrical and rhythmic tour de force, crammed with an eclectic barrage of samples (Eddie Murphy: “Anyone here ever get hit by a car?” Syl Johnson exhorting us to “Do the Shing-a-ling!”) and the kind of beats you have to be dead to ignore. 3 Feet High and Rising (1989) was a world away from the in-your-face, revolutionary screeds of Public Enemy, N.WA., Ice-T, and Boogie Down Productions. It wasn’t that De La lacked for braggadocio, but these “phrasing Fred Astaires” brought sly finesse, a looseness, a tinge of jazz, and an idiosyncratic suburban worldview that had been missing.

Three forms the soul to a positive sum


Shake, rattle, roll to my magic number

De La Soul - "The Magic Number"

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 (redux), 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 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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 2 was not given its proper due. So today, on a date slick with deux, we continue to rewrite history. (JK)

“It takes two to tumble/it takes two to tango

Speak up; don’t mumble if you’re in the combo”

—Elvis Costello

Let me begin with the same caveat I’ve given for all of the numbers that you can count on one hand: There is no definitive song when the offerings are this vast. It pushes the idea of objectivity right out the window when you have so many songs from so many giants of the music world. Some of these are great, and many are very good. Even some of the bad ones (“Two Tickets to Paradise” by the rocker born Edward Mahoney, for example) have some squirmy charm. So the best approach seems to be to break down the glut into some basic categories and zero in on one or two of the most striking examples. So, dear reader, consider this an idiosyncratic survey accompanied by a diffidently offered choice of best no. 2 song ever.

We live in a binary world: Adam and Eve, ones and zeroes, hot and cold, black and white, and lest we forget, good old life and death. Try to imagine a world without opposites and you just might give yourself a brain-ache. Most of life’s critical experiences come in pairs. Take eating dinner, for example: first you’re hungry, then you’re full. Even the basic mechanism of our existence on a cellular level—sodium in, potassium out—is a two-part sequence.

In the world of song, two often means one thing: two people in love. I’d say the majority of two-titled songs refer to love or relationships. Bill Withers had a Grammy-Award-winning hit with “Just the Two of Us” in 1975, which is the kind of easy-listening R&B that only a curmudgeon could resist. Others of this genre include “2 Hearts” by Kylie Minogue, “Two Hearts” by Bruce Springsteen, “Two Hearts” by Chris Isaak, “Two Hearts Beat As One” by U2, “Two Fine People” by Cat Stevens, and the list goes on. My favorite of this ilk is “Two of Us” by the Beatles, a song whose fractious genesis was captured in the film Let it Be. Beginning life as a straight-ahead mid-tempo rocker, the song didn’t really cohere until it was stripped down to its essence: a rustic blend of voices, acoustic guitar, and a simple metronomic beat. It could almost be a campfire song but for McCartney’s active bass lines. While Phil Spector’s production job and general liberties taken on the album Let it Be have been castigated by everyone from the Beatles on down, “Two of Us” has none of the Spectorian bombast that inspired the powers that be to release the pre-Spector version of the record as Let it Be…Naked in 2003. It’s merely a fine and not over-familiar example of the Beatles’ greatness.

the Beatles - "Two of Us"

A number of songs have been titled plain old “Two,” from Ryan Adams to Eyeless in Gaza, Pete Rock to Porter Wagoner, John Cage to Billy Squier, but none are distinctive as songs titled “One,” which is probably why none of them come quickly to mind. Here’s a much richer vein; what I call the Two Nouns category. To wit: “Two Rooms” by the Feelies, “Two Receivers” by the Klaxons, “Two States” by Pavement, “Two Halves” by My Morning Jacket, “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Two Gunslingers” by Tom Petty, “Two Trains” by Little Feat, and “Two Hands” by King Crimson. I’m partial to “Two Sisters,” a Kinks song from the splendid Something Else (1967) that finds Ray Davies casting a gimlet eye on the title characters, the mutually jealous Sylvilla and Percilla. With a jeweler’s precision, Davies captures the change of heart of one of them, the married one, who, realizing she’s better off, “ran around the house with her curlers on.” And the song clocks in at 2:02. How 2 can you get? Another one close to my heart is “Two Librans” by the Fall, a delectably dark and truculent seether that could almost pass for a Pixies song were it not for the inimitably slurred doggerel of Mark E. Smith. As is typical for Mr. Smith, only discrete snatches of lyrics are comprehensible, but he growls out the ostensible chorus, “Two librans…reflect” with the urgency of a defrocked preacher after a night of heavy drinking.

Pavement - "Two States"
the Kinks - "Two Sisters"
the Fall - "Two Librans"

Speaking of heavy drinking, Jim Morrison of the Doors was known to enjoy a wee bit of the old grape from time to time. He was also fond of the ladies. “Love Me Two Times,” a sassy single penned by Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger, was alleged to be a veiled reference to oral sex, but since when did the Doors veil anything? After the Oedipal freak-out of “The End,” you’d think they would just come out and say it. Seems more likely that the song depicted a soldier’s plea to his beloved before heading off to war, which was the explanation offered by Doors manager Danny Sugerman in his tell-all No One Here Gets Out Alive. Also of note on the “two times” tip: Johnny Cash’s “Two-Timin’ Woman” and a slew of other two-timers: mamas, papas, daddys, losers, babys, two-steppers, and turkeys.

the Clean - "Two Fat Sisters"
the Fiery Furnaces - "Two Fat Feet"

A close cousin of the Two Nouns category is the Two+Adjective+Noun category, with songs like “Two Fat Sisters” by the Clean, (a riff on the Kinks song perhaps?), “Two Left Feet” by the Holloways, “Own Two Feet” by the Jean Paul Sartre Experience, “Two Left Feet” by Richard Thompson, “Two Fat Feet,” a sexy two-chord vamp by Fiery Furnaces, and the oft-covered “Two Sleepy People” by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser. Although it really consists of a compound modifier and a noun, I’m going to insert the slinky “Two Dollar Wine” here, by one of the more unheralded Athens, GA, bands, the Glands. You wouldn’t necessarily think that a separate category for Two-Headed songs would be warranted, but you would be wrong: “Two Headed Man” is by bluesman Lonnie Brooks, “Two Headed Woman” is by bluesman Willie Dixon. “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child” is the work of Mojo Nixon, and there are at least 20 more, with titles like “Two Headed Freap” and “Two Headed Calf” and “Two Headed Alarm Clock.” But it’s really down to two (which is fitting): the moving “Two Headed Boy” by Neutral Milk Hotel comes close, but it’s hard to deny the power and glory of Roky Ericson’s classic “Two Headed Dog,” which wins for Roky’s yowling pronunciation of the title phrase and the sheer oddity of the line, “I’ve been working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog.”

Roky Erickson - "Two Headed Dog"

The Numeral 2 category runs the gamut: there’s 2 as in “to” (e.g., “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O’Connor, “2 Kool 2B Forgotten” by Lucinda Williams) 2 as in part 2 (e.g., “Eye of Fatima Pt. 2” by Camper Van Beethoven, “King of Carrot Flowers, Pts 2 and 3” by Neutral Milk Hotel), 2 as the second song on the record (“Song 2” by Blur). And then there’s 2 as a numeral or as part of a sequence of numbers, a rich subcategory packed with such gems as “5-4-3-2-1” by Manfred Mann, “5-4-3-2 Wave” by Patti Smith Group, “2:1” by Elastica, “2/1” by Brian Eno, “2,4,6,8 Motorway” by Tom Robinson Band, “V-2 Schneider” by David Bowie, “2 H.B.” by Roxy Music, “2cv” by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, and the knotty, mathematically questionable “2+2=5” by Radiohead. And there are probably some bad ones too.

Elastica - "2:1"
Roxy Music - "2 H.B."
Radiohead - "2+2=5"

The Two [insert time period here] category has some fine, eclectic offerings: “Two Seconds” by Laura Cantrell, “Two Minute Warning by Depeche Mode, “Two Weeks in Spain” by Gentle Giant, “Two Months Off” by Underworld, and “Two Years of Torture” by Percy Mayfield. Defying easy categorization is a quad-fecta of lovely twofers: Mission of Burma’s shimmery incantation “Trem Two,” Magnetic Fields’ “Two Characters in Search of a Country Song,” which shimmers in a totally different way, Spoon’s inscrutable “Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine,” and shoegazer classic “You Tear the World in Two” by Pale Saints.

Magnetic Fields - "Two Characters in Search of Country Song"

Palate-Cleansing Two-Song Fact: The most covered two song in existence is undoubtedly “Tea For Two,” a standard by Irving Caesar and Vincent Youmans that the invaluable All Music Guide confirms has appeared on well over 1,500 records.

Too 2 much? OK. Enough. Let’s just do it already. As with no. 1, the essential character of the number must be part and parcel of any song claiming this crown. In the first half of the 20th century, the winning track would have to be “It Takes Two to Tango,” which was popularized by Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Dean Martin and others. The lyrics of this lilting number are all about the magic of two, as defined by the existential singularity of one:

You can croon to the moon by yourself

Well you can laugh like a loon by yourself

Spend a lot go to pot on your own

There are a lot of things that you can do alone

But it takes two to tango…

Rob Base & DJ Easy Rock - "It Takes Two"

The operative phrase here, “it takes two,” inspired Harlem rapper Rob Base’s single “It Takes Two,” which Spin magazine proclaimed to be no less than the greatest single of all time. While any such declaration strikes most rational people as profoundly hyperbolic, there’s no denying the power of this 1988 single’s groove. This sample-heavy joint has itself been liberally sampled, and Rob Base has been given numerous shout-outs for it. But if I were forced to declare any single the greatest ever, choosing “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye might not cause me to lose any sleep. I mention this only because Marvin Gaye’s “It Takes Two” strikes me as the best, most two-alicious two song out there. Echoing the lyrical sentiment of “It Takes Two to Tango,” this duet, which was an international hit in 1967, perfectly embodies the alchemy that occurs between two people in love in the alternating verses between Gaye and Kim Weston. Less well-known than Tammi Terrell, Gaye’s collaborator on hits like “Aint No Mountain High Enough,” Weston more than holds her own in this infectious concoction.

HER: One can go out to a movie, lookin' for a special treat

It takes two, baby. It takes two, baby. Me and you. Just takes two.

Marvin Gaye - "It Takes Two"

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, 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 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Have you heard the 61 salutes?
Can you hear the simple truth?
What swell party this is…

Have you heard?”

-- Thea Gilmore, “Have You Heard?”

When Roger Maris hit his 61st homerun of the 1961 baseball season, breaking the long-standing record held by Babe Ruth, he brought a new measure of notoriety to the 18th prime number. Now that the excesses of baseball’s steroid era have effectively obliterated 61’s special status to sports fans, the number’s association with a certain highway immortalized by Bob Dylan is pretty much set in asphalt. Before we head down that well-trod road, an excursion through some less traveled paths seems in order.

The Kissaway Trail - "61"

Odense, Denmark, is the birthplace of Hans Christian Anderson, King Canute IV, and the Kissaway Trail, aka the Danish Arcade Fire, an act whose existence lends credence to the music industry truism that if you get big enough, you will be imitated. Just as Nirvana gave us Seven Mary Three and Cher stirred up a shitstorm of auto-tuned vocals and R.E.M unleashed a thousand jangles, Arcade Fire begat the Kissaway Trail. From the opening banjo lick and on to the cattle-driver ‘s “yeah” that sets off the proceedings, “61” delivers that ineffable marching-through-the-streets-in-a-ruffled-shirt-playing-kettledrums vibe that Arcade Fire ostensibly invented. But if you can forget all that and just go with it, the charms are there. Now let’s head to Germany.

Unknown Artist - "Berlin 61"

While Google has rendered moot the kind of debates that used to rage in smoky bars, about who was the bass player for a certain unheralded ‘60s band or who directed a particular B movie—technology also poses questions it can’t easily answer. For example: the identity of the band behind “Berlin 61,” a song I found floating around cyberspace and cannot seem to find anything else about. With a title that refers to the year the Berlin Wall was erected, this Teutonic Motorhead/Ramones hybrid shares the name of a TV movie—and apparently, if you liked it, the sages at IMDB say you would also dig on Der Tunnel. Thanks. I’ll get right on it. But right now, I have to catch a plane back to the states.

West Virginia is the winter home of Dean Wells, a Vermonter who churns out records under the name the Capstan Shafts. He’s often compared to Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices, and for good reason: the man embraces a DIY, lo-fi aesthetic, is shockingly prolific, and deals in short songs with inscrutable titles (e.g., “Vegans and Meteors,” “Bluegene V. Debs” “The Trilateralist Told You Not To”). In the past five years or so, he has released something like 10 albums and 12 EPs, all packed with songs that rarely exceed two minutes.

Capstan Shafts - '61 Sideburns'

Like many of his songs, “61 Sideburns” has touches of absurdity and sincerity. 61 Sideburns sounds like the title of a Dali painting, but there’s nothing surreal about the song’s central line: “We lived in the last genuine time.” From the raspy passion with which he delivers it, I took it fairly literally, but Wells himself set me straight. He told me he was actually writing about “the same complaint everyone has as they mature: ‘In my day, we had… ‘Music was ...’ Crap like that. We borrow from the past, use modern conveniences, and still think, WE were the real people. I do that anyway.”

I do too, and so do you. As for the sideburns in question, I was off the mark in imagining a motley collection of 31 muttonchopped dudes, with one of them sporting a single sideburn. The title actually refers to an old photo of Mr. Wells that inspired a friend to comment on his 1961-era beatnik facial hair. I find it refreshing that when you tease apart the layers of this fascinating miniature, there’s a lot less ambiguity and deliberate surrealism than one might have suspected. In any case, with just Wells’s occasionally double-tracked voice, some handclaps, and a fuzzed-out acoustic guitar, “61 Sideburns” leaves more of an impression in one minute than most properly produced, traditionally executed corporate pop ever will.

“A road is a road, but sometimes it’s more. Sometimes a road sings.” That’s what it says on thesixtyone.com—an extremely civilized Web site where artists and listeners can upload and share music. If any road can be accused of singing, Highway 61—which cuts a line through the American heartland from the Mississippi Delta up through Minnesota—has some serious pipes. Known as the “blues highway,” U.S. State Highway 61 has become virtually synonymous with the blues, with its name serving as the basis for a couple of classic blues songs, a long-running blues festival in Leland, Mississippi, and an Internet radio station dedicated to the blues. “Highway 61 Blues” was a hit for Jack Kelly & His South Memphis Jug Band, an outfit that lasted from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, while the venerable bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Highway 61” has been covered by both kindred spirits like Sunnyland Slim and mainstream titans like Billy Joel.

In his primal, lonesome, slide-guitar-driven lament, McDowell entreats the Lord, “If I happen-a die/’Fore you think my time has come/I want you to bury my body/Out on Highway 61.” McDowell labored in relative obscurity until the late ‘50s, then recorded several influential records in the ‘60s before his death in ’72. The Rolling Stones covered McDowell’s “You Got to Move” on Sticky Fingers, and his slide guitar technique has been much admired by Bonnie Raitt and others.

Mississippi Fred McDowell - “Highway 61”

But let’s get down to brass tacks. The 61 song that’s most identifiable to folks today is Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” the title track from his 1965 album that ranks up there with his very best—and that’s saying something. It’s hard to imagine that Dylan wasn’t familiar with one or both of the aforementioned Highway 61 songs, but in a 1967 interview with Rolling Stone, he rejected the idea that there was any major significance to his choice of the road in this striking track. All he would say is, “Highway 61 exists—that’s out in the middle of the country. It runs down to the south, goes up north.” Dylan was never a very cooperative interviewee, but he knew full well that Highway 61 is a route shrouded in mystery and myth. The intersection of 61 and Highway 49 in Clarksdale, MS, is the crossroads where Robert Johnson was said to have made his deal with the Devil. Elvis Presley grew up near it, and the great blues singer Bessie Smith’s fatal car crash occurred on 61. (A few years after the Dylan song, Martin Luther King Jr. was felled by an assassin’s bullet as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, right off 61.)

Bob Dylan - "Highway '61 Revisited"


At any rate, “Highway 61 Revisited” is the sound of the newly electrified Dylan at the height of his powers. The song is grounded in the blues, but true to its title, Dylan revisits the blues, and the result is a barn-burner and a lyrical tour de force. In the very first line, Dylan paraphrases the Book of Genesis: “God said to Abraham kill me a son/Abe said, man, you must be putting me on.” From there, the scenes shift to a sprawling hallucinatory tapestry, peopled with a seedy cast of characters like Louie the King, Mack the Finger, Georgia Sam, a promoter, a roving gambler and 49 red white and blue shoestrings. And with its tricky references within references about the twelfth night and the seventh son, the song is also numerical bounty. And it all cruises along on a rollicking current of sound augmented with a screaming slide whistle and Mike Bloomfields siren-like guitar fills, evoking cars and trucks whizzing past on the open road.

It might be said that Bob Dylan made the world safe for singers to take the stage armed only with a guitar, idiosyncratic lyrics and the voices of character actors rather than leading men. In short: people like Dean Wells of Capstan Shafts. Now if Dylan would only set me straight on “Highway 61 Revisited” the way Wells did for “61 Sideburns,” this article would be truly groundbreaking. Sadly, Dylan’s music has engendered so much deep thought and attempts at interpretation that the man would be downright foolish to nail it down for his listeners. For every Dylanologist out there who claims that, “The second mother was with the seventh son” is some kind of incest reference, there’s me on the sidelines reminding them of what he said regarding a verse in “The Man in the Long Black Coat” from 1989s’ Oh Mercy. When asked about the line, “People don’t live or die/people just float, he said something like, “I just needed something to rhyme with ‘boat.’”

“Highway 61” can claim a rightful place among the great songs of the rock era. Dylan has called it one of his favorites among his own songs, and has reinterpreted it many times over the years, including a powerhouse version from the legendary “Tour ‘74” with the Band. Cover versions abound—by the likes of Johnny Winter, the Blasters, Georgia Satellites and Karen O—all of which have their strong points. Son Volt’s “Afterglow 61” is a loving tribute to both the tune and the road, but best of all has to be P.J. Harvey’s bristling assault on the song, an absolute marvel of reinterpretation and homage that clocks in a full 30 seconds shorter but packs even more explosive tension than the original.

PJ Harvey - "Highway '61 Revisited"

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, 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

Posted by David Klein at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

While we all anxiously await the first 2009 installment of Dave Klein's Numerology column, we now take a moment to recap the last twenty entries in the man's continuing search. For those of you who are just now visiting our fair shores to plunder this impressive list of mp3s, here's how it works: There are lots of songs vaguely about numbers, and a smaller subset of those songs which feature numbers in their titles. Not just the obvious, meaningful, and easy to rhyme numbers like 2 or 50 either. Prof. Klein takes each digit from 1 to 100 in turn, sussing out the musical monuments to each, and eventual declaring a definitive winner. He's done 60 so far. That's, like, a lot. Below, you'll find winners 41 to 60. Click on the digit for the essay, on the song for the song*. Then, when "61" drops sometime soon (and I think we probably have a good idea what the eventual winner for that numeral might be), you'll be totally up to speed. Maybe you should clear out your schedule a bit...

41: Wire - “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W”
42: East River Pipe - "Down 42nd Street to the Light"
43: Guillemots - "Made Up Love Song #43"
44: The Zombies - "Care of Cell 44"
45: Elvis Costello & the Imposters - "45"
46: The Showmen - "39-21-46"
47: Dwight Twilley - "47 Moons"
48: The Clash - "48 Hours"
49: The James Gang - "Funk # 49"
50: PJ Harvey - "50 Ft. Queenie"
51: New Model Army - "51st State"
52: The B-52's - "52 Girls"
53: The Ramones - "53rd and 3rd"
54: Toots & the Maytalls - "54-46 Was My Number"
55: Tom Waits - "Ol' 55"
56: Gene Vincent - "Five Feet of Lovin' '56"
57: Man Sized Action - "57"
58: Mott the Hoople - "Born Late '58"
59: Simon & Garfunkel - "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)"
60: Billy Ward and the Dominoes - "Sixty Minute Man"

* except for ol' Elvis Costello's "45", which oddly continues to elude me. The link there is to a You Tube'd live performance.

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The number 60 gives us no less than a sense of mastery over time. What would we do without the 60 seconds that make up the 60 minutes that make up our hours? Civilization would collapse. And we wouldn’t have songs like “Sixty Second Interval” by the Vapors. (Anyone hoping for a hidden gem by the men who brought you “Turning Japanese” would be wiser to consult the first half of New Clear Days (1980). “60 Seconds” by China Drum, the hard-rocking outfit whose audacious version of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” is one of the great radical cover songs in recent memory, comes up short with the generic-sounding “60 Seconds.” Far better is Ennio Morricone’s “Sixty Seconds to What?” from the For a Few Dollars More soundtrack. With its yearning trumpet and bombastic church organ, it immediately calls to mind the iconic visage of a stogie-chomping, poncho-draped Clint Eastwood. As Clint will tell you, living to be 60 years of age is no big deal these days. According to a recent study, 70-year-olds feel 15 years younger than their age. That might have surprised the young Elton John, who wrote “Sixty Years On” early in his career and liked it enough to include it on both his self-titled debut record and the numerically toothsome live album 7-12-71. Addressing old age, Elton demonstrates a heady prescience of infirmities yet to be experienced as well as his precocious melodic gifts.

The great American composer Aaron Copland said, “If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of the Beatles.” Indeed, the 60s were a decade whose overriding cultural force was a single pop group, yet encapsulating the decade in a song has proven to be a tricky business. T. Bone Burnett gave it his best shot, but despite vocal help from Pete Townshend, “The Sixties” comes off as heavy-handed social commentary (Sample lyric: “Auto dealers don’t just sell drive-trains/Sometimes they also deal cocaine”) Most people know Burnett as the Grammy-winning producer of O Brother Where Art Thou? as well as the Robert Plant/Allison Krause smash collaboration, Raising Sand. But Burnett played guitar with Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review in the mid-‘70s and had a critically acclaimed, commercially marginal solo career in which he gained support from an impressive array of rock royalty, including Mick Ronson, Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, and Bono. Despite these impressive credits, his albums sold poorly, and it’s not hard to see why: despite his abilities as a writer and arranger, Mr. Burnett’s nasal singing voice is an acquired taste to say the least. He had a penchant for substituting narration for singing, an approach with limited appeal. “The Sixties,” is just such a narrative. It begins, “I have a painter friend who says he’s actually slept with Jacqueline Kennedy… or was it John Kennedy? Maybe it was Jacqueline Bisset. At any rate I can tell I’m starting wrong. Let me begin again.” Sadly, he does begin again, and the result lends an eerie prescience to a lyric his man Dylan would write more than a decade later: “The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity.” Sub-T. Bone efforts of this ilk include the irony-deficient “Green-Tinted Sixties Mind” by Mr. Big, “Sixties Man,” a trifle by the Sweet, well past their prime, which scatters allusions to Woodstock and San Francisco over a faux new wave beat, and Barclay James Harvest’s “A Tale of Two Sixties,” which references Bowie’s Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane (both from the ‘70s), serving only to make the Sweet look historically astute in comparison. Perhaps wisely, “Six Six Sixties” by Throbbing Gristle and “Sixties Remake” by Tokyo Police Club employ “60s” as part of an evocative title phrase and leave it at that.

Nico - "Sixty Forty"

The ‘60s were good to Nico (formerly Christa Päffgen), whose achievements in that decade included acclaim as an international fashion model, appearing in La Dolce Vita, fronting the Velvet Underground on their groundbreaking first record, inspiring Bob Dylan to write “I’ll Keep it With Mine,” and attending the Monterey Pop Festival on the arm of Brian Jones. She left it all behind in the ‘70s to forge her own stubborn musical path in collaborations with Brian Eno and others, but her career and personal life took a cruelly downward spiral. Despite producing some critically praised records, she fell into near obscurity and heroin addiction, and spent years living in out-and-out squalor. In 1988, she moved to Ibiza and tried to turn it all around, only to have a bicycle accident end things once and for all. The music from her final years was increasingly bleak, still sung in the haunted, slightly flat voice that was her signature, adorned in the end by only a mournful harmonium. “Sixty Forty” is so bleak you want to run and hide, with lyrics that chill you to the bone like a New York winter:

“At least I've given it away
/To keep it only would have made me stay

Will there be another time? Will there be another time?”

New Order - "60 Miles an Hour"

Sixty miles an hour is a critical benchmark in the automotive world. Seventies soft-rockers Pablo Cruise actually worked themselves into a lather with “Zero to Sixty in Five,” which was deemed rockin’ enough to earn a spot in Guitar Hero II, but New Order’s “60 Miles an Hour” certainly wins the 60 mph crown. Showing off everything this legendary outfit does well, it more than lives up to its celebration of the cruising ethos, while suffering slightly from having to follow the godlike “Crystal” both as a single and in the record’s song sequence. Regardless, the powerful melody and soaring production add up to track with plenty of staying power, and in absence of strong competition it would be good enough for the top spot.

Boards of Canada - "Sixtyten"

Here’s a set of oddball 60-related songs I offer up in the name of completeness: “Sixtyten” by Boards of Canada, a spooky yet vaguely funky number from the excellent Music Has a Right to Children, “Sixty Sixty,” an off-the-cuff instrumental from the late-era Faust, “60%,”a spirited blast of pop-punk by NOFX, and “60 Revolutions” from Gogol Bordello, whose lead singer starred in Madonna’s directorial debut and was cheekily described in the New Yorker as “explosively hairy.” Bob Seger, who is no slouch in the hairy department, gave The Numeral Formerly Known As Three Score a measure of pop immortality in “Night Moves” when he solemnly rasped, “Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy/Out in the back seat of my ’60 Chevy.”

Gogol Bordello - "60 Revolutions"
(live on Later with Jools Holland)

But songs about 60 as a rate of speed, a signifier of a decade or a measure of time cannot but pale next to one celebrating the glories of what can be accomplished in a single 60-minute period. Thus, “Sixty Minute Man” by Billy Ward & the Dominoes leaves them all in the dust. It’s one of the great sexual boasts in musical history, and it’s all the more striking for becoming a national hit in 1951. It hardly needs to be said that musical expressions of raw carnality were not a staple of the pop charts during the Truman administration. (Chart-toppers that year included Patti Page’s “The Tennessee Waltz,” “Aba Daba Honeymoon” by Debbie Reynolds, and “On Top of Old Smokey” by the Weavers.) The raw blues has a long history of such references, of course, but when blues songs became crossover hits, the sex tended to be cloaked in metaphor e.g., “I’m like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store” or imagery that sounded like voodoo incantations, e.g., “I got a black cat bone/I got a mojo, too.” But Billy Ward and his salacious protagonist, Lovin’ Dan—whose sexual prowess and stamina was voiced by the rich bass of Bill Brown, and not Clyde McPhatter, the Dominoes’ celebrated vocalist—were having none of it. “Sixty Minute Man” leaves little to the imagination:

Billy Ward & the Dominoes - "Sixty Minute Man"

There'll be 15 minutes of kissing

I'm a sixty-minute man

Many radio stations banned it, but the song went to no. 1 on the R&B charts and became a crossover hit under the guise of a “novelty song.” As outrageous as the lyrics were, it wouldn’t have become a classic if it weren’t so downright irresistible, with its sly guitar licks, spirited backing vocals, and delightfully swinging arrangement courtesy of the Julliard-trained musical prodigy Billy Ward. These days, sexual boasting is commonplace, but this recording has a light touch and a sense of joy that’s never been matched, even by John Lee Hooker, who upped the ante in 2006 with “Four Hours Straight.”

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, 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

Posted by David Klein at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The process of diligently, sometimes desperately, searching for number songs never fails to turn up interesting tidbits. In the early ‘70s, when women were paid 59 ¢ for every dollar earned by men (many of them male chauvinist pigs), proponents of women’s liberation wore buttons that read simply “59 ¢.” (If 21st-century feminists felt inclined to protest the wage gap, their buttons would read “77 ¢.”) Another thing this quest has taught me is that for every number between 1-100, some kind of connection can usually be made to Bob Dylan, and 59 is no exception. “The Ballad of Donald White,” which Dylan adapted from a traditional Canadian ballad called “Peter Emberley” and performed early on before concentrating on his own material, contains the lines, “And so it was on Christmas eve
/In the year of ‘59/It was on that night I killed a man,
 I did not try to hide.” Hardly an uplifting sentiment, but when you’re Dylan you don’t need to write an anthem every time out.

The Gaslight Anthem - "The '59 Sound"

I firmly believe that a band whose name incorporates the word “anthem” has a responsibility to render listeners physically unable to keep their fists from clenching and their heads from bobbing to its music. The Gaslight Anthem, punk rockers from New Brunswick, N.J, deliver the goods with “The ’59 Sound.” It’s the kind of song that would sound glorious blaring through a car stereo on the Jersey Turnpike beneath a splendidly polluted sunset, or even just ringing through headphones while waiting for your toast to pop. While it may not break any new ground (in fact, there’s an unsettling vocal similarity to the Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy”) “The ’59 Sound” succeeds; rock ‘n’ roll allows for almost infinite variations on a theme, and the force of good crunchy guitars and a sturdy melody will often carry you through with flying colors. “’59” by the Brian Setzer Orchestra is more specific to the year 1959 than “The ’59 Sound,” but this earnest but edgeless tribute to a great year in rock does little to evoke the spirit of the times.

For all you sidewalk social-scientist Blondie fans out there, please know that “11:59” has already nabbed top honors for the 11 slot, so chill. The Postmarks of Miami, Florida, perform a faithful cover version of the song on their By the Numbers CD, a collection guaranteed to warm the heart of numerologists worldwide: each song, from “One Note Samba” to “Five Years” to “11:59,” has a number in its title, proof positive that this author is not alone in obsessing about number songs. Speaking of covers, on the mini-album entitled 59, the adorable Japanese duo Puffy Ami Yumi performs a crisp rendition of “Joining a Fan Club” by Jellyfish, overlooked power pop proponents from San Francisco of the early ‘90s. Moving from the briefly appreciated to the largely unknown, “59.58” is a song by Headcase, a solo project from session man and former Curve bass player, Dean Garcia.

Imagine, if you will, that a songwriter ended up turning into a chicken. Wouldn’t you be tempted to look at his early work for references to laying eggs and clucking? It’s like when a singer commits suicide; one can’t help poring over song lyrics for intimations of his self-destructive plans. In that same vein, when a writer comes out of the closet, there is an urge to look back at his body of work for signs of self-loathing, or an over-reliance on neutral pronouns. Hüsker Dü provides a case in point; two of the three members of this seminal Minneapolis power trio eventually came out as gay. (Oddly enough, it was bassist Greg Norton, the one with the swishy handlebar moustache, who was the band’s lone heterosexual.) It’s hard to say how much of the angst that marked the band’s early records was fueled by Bob Mould and Grant Hart feeling forced to live a lie, but “59 Times the Pain” certainly exemplifies the inner turmoil of a deeply conflicted man. The song is brutal and grinding, with lyrics that speak of unbridled torment:

Husker Du - "59 Times the Pain"

The most intense of burning hells
Blasting expectations into smithereens
Never feeling normal, can’t accept the truth
Resign myself to hating it, I hate it all…
59 Times the Pain/I could never be like you

A Swedish hardcore band was so taken with the song that it took the title as a band name, and had a pretty successful 10-year run starting with a single called “Blind Anger & Hate.” Well, what did you expect from a band called 59 Times the Pain, “Feelin’ Groovy”? Ah, there’s my cue. As with no. 50, a composition by Paul Simon is the proverbial elephant in the room. But unlike the 50 slot, which offered a multitude of choices, this elephant can neither be ignored nor passed over for a more esoteric choice. “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”—let’s be glad he named the song after a structure properly known as the Queensborough Bridge—is the quintessential feel-good song of the ‘60s or just about any other era. Oh, there are countless songs about feeling good, but most focus on something specific—like “a new dawn, a new day, a new life,” as Nina Simone sang in “Feeling Good” or “the only one who can bring me joy” in Otis Redding’s “Happy Song,” to name just two. In “Feelin’ Groovy,” Simon turns this idea on its head by appreciating what we tend to overlook. It’s easy to feel good because you just got paid, just got laid, just met the girl of your dreams, but the source of Simon’s groovy feeling is freedom (no deeds to do, no promises to keep) and the simple sweetness of ordinary things: the morning, cobblestones, flowers, and that lamppost he is moved to address by name. Taking stock, Simon concludes, “Life I love you. All is groovy,” and somehow it doesn’t seem trite or mindless, like the ‘80s equivalent, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

Simon & Garfunkel - "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"

Simon & Garfunkel - "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"
(live in Central Park, NYC, 1981)

Cochise - "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"

Few of the cover versions of the song were half as groovy as the original. In 1967, Harpers Bizarre, then known as the Tikis, were a Santa Cruz surf band led by future Van Halen producer Ted Templeman. The music industry legend Lenny Waronker, who knew catchy when he heard it, approached the Tikis to record the song. Changing their name so as not to lose the hard-earned street cred of their Tikis fan base, the renamed Harpers Bizarre scored a monster hit with a lush, syrupy version replete with key change. Early in the ‘70s, a progressive-minded quartet called Cochise decided that “Feelin’ Groovy” needed an infusion of Heavy in the tradition of the Vanilla Fudge, who took the wired, sprightly intensity of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hanging On” and bludgeoned the song into submission. Cochise’s “Feelin’ Groovy” wasn’t quite as misguided, but it shared a common impulse to break a butterfly on a wheel. The debut LP by Cochise, whose members went on to play with Procol Harum, Foreigner, and Pink Floyd, was notable for its cover art, designed by future Pink Floyd cover-meister Storm Thorgerson. It depicted the sun rising over the Grand Teton-esque expanse of a woman’s naked breasts (quite daring for the time) and probably led to more than a few impulse buys by mammary-minded adolescents. Former street musician Ted Hawkins, who enjoyed a few years of notoriety before his death in 1995, did a soulful, stripped down version, and Jimmy Page liked to incorporate the melody into live versions of “Heartbreaker” and “Whole Lotta Love.” But the S&G original reigns supreme. During the duo’s 1966 concert tour, Simon explained the origins of the song to their audiences via the following charming spiel, which he tweaked from night to night:

"I came back from England to the United States in December of 1965, and “The Sounds of Silence” had become a big hit…. I had to make this transition from being relatively unknown in England to being semi-famous here. I didn’t adjust well. It was always slightly embarrassing to me, teeny bops, etcetera. So I used to think, all my sweets are gone, good times gone, left over in England. All the songs I was writing were very down type of songs, nothing happy, until about last June. For some reason last June I start to come out of it. I start to get into a good mood, I don’t know why….

So here I am getting into this pleasant frame of mind, and I was coming home one morning about 6:00, comin’ over the 59th Street Bridge in New York, and what a groovy day it was, a real good one, and one of those times when you know you’re not gonna be tired for about an hour. You know it’s gonna be nice. So I started writing a song that later became “The 59th Street Bridge Song” or “Feelin’ Groovy.”

Groovy little footnote: Simon & Garfunkel’s song was the first song to fully exploit the term “groovy,” which, along with “far-out,” “too much,” and “out of site,” vied for the title of essential superlative of the ‘60s. The cheesy “Groovy Kind of Love” swiftly followed, and years later came the Clash’s sublime “Groovy Times” and the acid house gem “Groovy Train” by the Farm.

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, 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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

--

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 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Even before I discovered that in Central American lore 58 signifies bad juju (something to do with 58 original sins) the number was already emitting perplexing vibes and wafting them my way. Fifty-eight (which is the sum of the first seven primes) presents a challenge even to the most seasoned seeker of numerically titled ditties. The fact that 58 is the name of the side project of Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx (their cover of “Alone Again (Naturally)” borders on a criminal act) supports my contention that 58 is inherently flawed. Whether you agree or not, it’s hard to argue that the offerings assembled herein comprise a pretty motley crew (I’m sure Nikki would agree.) Motliest by far is “Ronsard 58,” an early work by Gaullic sleaze hero Serge Gainsbourg that recently made it onto a Top 10 list of Serge’s most misogynistic songs (amid plenty of competition). Although unversed en Français, I was able to secure a rough translation of this vaguely jazzy Beat-poet blues number. The essence is that Serge is sweet-talking his latest female conquest with details of the riches lay that in store for her. Someday, he speak-sings between drags on his Gauloise, this unnamed young woman will have a life of leisure, with cars, boats, and houses. No longer, he assures her, will she be a “dirty little whore.” How romantic.

Serge Gainsbourg - "Ronsard 58"

To less salacious songwriters, 58 tends to mean 1958, and not necessarily in a good way. Frickley in South Yorkshire is a small mining town where, according to “Frickley 58” by Chumbawumba, “once the riot coppers beat the pickets to the ground.” But a football stadium has since been erected where the protesters were felled, and no one remembers the struggle. Songs like this never become hits. As proved by “Tubthumping,” the band’s lone smash, when people in a song get knocked down, it’s best for them to get back up again (and declare, “You’re never gonna keep me down!”) “Alabama ’58” by the Dubliners, another song about injustice, connects the intolerance of the American South to similar ugly chapters from the pages of history. Al Stewart, of “Year of the Cat” fame, is known for incorporating history and historical figures, including Warren G. Harding, Nostradamus, and Jean-Paul Marat, into his songs. His “Class of ‘58” is a cheeky look back at rock’s golden age, with the sharp-eyed observation that “One day they’ll make TV shows on ancient rock-and-rollers.” Although not quite ancient, the debut album by Chicago (released under the group’s original name, Chicago Transit Authority) featured the eight-minute, not at all poetic “Poem 58,” which was mainly a showcase for the hot licks of lead guitarist Terry Kath. Although best known for their radio-friendly hits of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Chicago was far more aggressive sounding on their early albums with Kath. But after he fatally shot himself with a gun he thought was unloaded, in 1978, Chicago’s lost its hard-rock edge and headed toward the extremely lucrative middle of the road.

In the fuzzed-out shoegazer scene of the early ‘90s, Kitchens of Distinction never got the recognition garnered by many of their compatriots, partly due to a preponderance of unapologetically gay-themed lyrics, but that didn’t stop Thom Yorke from citing the South London band as an influence on Radiohead. (Notable among other KOD-influenced bands are Interpol and the Editors.) Post-Kitchens, bandleader (and licensed physician) Patrick Fitzgerald has forged ahead as Stephen Hero, continuing his interest in widescreen atmospherics and showing a notable predilection for numerical titles with 2007’s 57 Stars of the Air Almanac and the song “58th Star.” This big minor-key ballad has a sweeping romanticism and shows Mr. Fitzgerald’s voice to be undiminished by time or the lack of breakout success, although comparing the object of his love to the heavens above, the planets, and the firmament does border on the bombastic.

Stephen Hero - "58th Star"

Dave Matthews has a thing for numbers, but his “58” differs very little from his “34” and “41”—all tasteful lite-jazz instrumentals that would make a lovely soundtrack to a meeting with a sales rep over biscotti and java at a local Starbucks. “Let’s Start at 58th and Roosevelt” by P-Love wouldn’t raise any hackles among the coffee-and-laptop crowd either, but “58 Kilpatrick St.” by Boston punks the Blue Bloods would definitely not make it onto the play list—which is to its credit. This revved-up ode to the refusal to grow up and take responsibility features the piquant lines, “Well we smoked all your mother’s cigarettes/and we drank all your father’s beer/you’re 28 years old/and you still live downstairs/and the night will become day down there.” While we’re on the subject of post-punk, “Chevrolet ‘58” by Venezuelan surf rockers Los Mentas sounds a lot like the Clash’s version of “Brand New Cadillac,” right down to the stutter-stepping opening bars.

But you know what they say: you don’t have to be a weatherman to know that if the wind hasn’t hit 58 mph, you can’t issue a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. And while I can’t find a single song in Bob Dylan’s canon associated with 58, drawing a straight line from Dylan to Mott the Hoople, the star-crossed champs of 58, is pretty simple. Ian Hunter, Mott’s perennially shade-wearing front man, aped Dylan’s vocal style for the band’s first few records, which made a certain sense given his limited range and the jaded imagery of this former professional songwriter’s lyrics. Mott’s first few records sold poorly, despite the band’s well-earned reputation as a titanic live act. Even so, they possessed some of the coolest nomenclature in rock history. The audacious name Mott the Hoople (taken from a 1966 novel by Willard Manus) was bestowed by their first manager, Guy Stevens, the legendarily mad figure who also named Procol Harum and eventually produced the Clash’s London Calling. (Hoople means “hobo” or “buffoon.”) The band also boasted bassist Pete “Overend” Watts (his real name) and later added guitarist Ariel Bender (a replacement for Mick Ralphs, who went on to mega-stardom with Bad Company). Folks, you just don’t get names like that anymore. Yet the band struggled to translate their live energy into recordings. By early ’72, with the group at the point of collapse, Overend Watts contacted David Bowie looking for a bass-playing gig. Instead, Bowie offered up “All the Young Dudes” and produced the breakthrough LP of the same name. (Bowie first offered “Suffragette City,” but Hunter, who also wanted “Drive-In Saturday,” said it wasn’t good enough.) Under Bowie’s tutelage, Hunter dropped some of Dylan’s mannerisms, picked up a few of Bowie’s, and the band gained some much-needed studio skills. The Bowie infusion resulted in the resurgence of the band’s career, as well as one of the great singles of the rock era. But while Mott finally achieved a measure of rock ‘n’ roll glory, fame is fleeting, a theme explored in songs like “Ballad of Mott the Hoople.” Two years later, internecine squabbling led to Hunter’s departure, which leads us to “Born Late ’58,” a song that embodies this internal tension by the fact that it was recorded after Ian Hunter had already left the recording sessions for The Hoople, disgusted with the limited abilities of Ariel Bender.

“Born Late ‘58”—not to be confused with “Born in ‘58” by Iron Maiden lead shrieker Bruce Dickinson—is not an earthshaking song, but it has the signature glam boogie sound of classic Mott and proves that Watts was capable of singing a lot like Ian Hunter (something he would do a lot more of in the uninspired, mercifully brief post-Hunter incarnation of the band.) Eventually, Hunter returned to the studio to finish the album, and apparently approved of the song, in which Watts taunts a would-be suitor who is just a bit too long in tooth to bed the object of his affections:

Admit it, she’s greater, shame you weren’t born later.

Mott the Hoople - "Born Late '58"

A few final notes:

NOTED PERVERSE TWAT is an anagram for Pete Overend Watts.

“Plan 58” by Main Concept is German rap at its finest.

John Cage composed “Fifty-Eight” to be performed at the Landhausof, an Austrian structure with 58 archways.

At the 2:58 point in “Hey Jude,” John Lennon can be heard to mutter “fuckin’ hell” at his muffed vocal. I kid you not.

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

Posted by David Klein at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The ’57 Chevy, with its distinctive grille and tailfins, is as essential to late ‘50s teen culture iconography as blue jeans and Brylcream. While only a few songs directly mention this classic auto in their titles (most notably “’59 Cadillac, ’57 Chevy” by outlaw country singer David Allen Coe) the car’s place in rock history is secure. Bruce Springsteen just donated one to the Manhattan annex of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame, and it was the vehicle that carried a young Robert Zimmerman on his journey east from Chicago to frigid Greenwich Village in January 1961. (Speaking of vehicles, in Passenger 57—a vehicle for the tax-evading Wesley Snipes—his character’s tagline is, “Always bet on black.”)

H. J. Heinz had a much better slogan. When he adopted “57 Varieties” for his rapidly expanding foodstuffs company in 1892, Heinz gave 57 the kind of notoriety you just can’t buy. His choice of number had nothing to do with accuracy (the company’s offerings already exceeded that number) and everything to do with catchiness. There’s no denying it has a nice ring to it. Besides which, there’s an uncanny aptness to 57, with its suggestion of overabundance that skirts outright hyperbole. Richard Thompson seems to invoke the number in its Heinz-ian sense in “Valerie,” a song about a frivolous temptress who spends her would-be suitor’s money on “fifty-seven things she’s never going to use.” And it doesn’t seem far-fetched to suggest that Bruce Springsteen, at least unconsciously, had ketchup on his mind when he wrote “57 Channels and Nothing On,” an anti-TV diatribe that the Springsteen faithful didn’t exactly snuggle up to. Chalk it up to an extremely infertile moment in his career—the early 90s, when Springsteen left Jersey for L.A, ditched the E. Street Band, and found a new measure of personal happiness. But wait, you say, what about Bruce’s other 57 song: “Incident on 57th Street” from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle? A fine song, to be sure, but one that feels like a rewrite of the superior “Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park),” from the very same album, right down to the spoken-word interlude that sets up the final chorus. And since “Sandy/4th” has already taken the no. 4 crown, a line must be drawn somewhere in the pale Jersey sand.

Heinz 57 Steak Sauce Ad, 1986

“Class of ‘57” by the Statler Brothers (none whom were named Statler) is a dreary country version of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died,” where instead of Carroll’s New York-centric laundry list of fatality--
Judy jumped in front of a subway train/
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein—the Statlers give us: Betty runs a trailer park, Jan sells Tupperware/Randy's on an insane ward, Mary's on welfare. Though not without its charms, the song lacks the wry humor of “Flowers on the Wall,” the 1965 ditty used to such fine effect in Pulp Fiction. (It’s playing in the car when Butch unexpectedly encounters Marcellus Wallace, right before the hellish fight that lands them both in the clutches of Zed.) The Statlers, a Virginia quartet that began as the Kingsmen, were forced to rechristen themselves when the Kingsmen (of Portland, Oregon) became instant rock legends with their 1962 recording of “Louie Louie.” Fortunately, the Statler Tissue Company was around to provide inspiration.

Biffy Clyro is a Scottish band whose name brings to mind Spanky and Alfalfa, but whose “57,” combining soft-loud grunge dynamics with big emo hooks and proggy twists and turns, suggests something far less innocent. Velocity Girl, who took their name from a song by Primal Scream, give us “57 Waltz,” a clamorous sea shanty from the 1993 debut Copacetic that bears all the hallmarks of the Indie School Class of ’92: the R.E.M. jangle, the buried vocals, and the wall of guitar noise, all of which do a good job of obscuring the song’s lyrical shortcomings. It certainly can’t compete with Ralph Stanley’s “The Flood of ’57,” the tale of a deluge that befell the Illinois town of Belleville after excessive rainfall turned Richland Creek into a deadly torrent. It’s almost cruel to juxtapose a bluegrass legend like Ralph Stanley with toxic-sounding songs like “57” by Killdozer from the pivotal Intellectuals Are the Shoeshine Boys of the Ruling Elite and “SM57” by Pussy Galore, a caustic ode to a beloved Shure microphone off 1989’s Dial M for Motherfucker. But 57 makes for a strange cast of characters, so why not let them mingle?

Killdozer - "57"
Pussy Galore - "SM57"

Besides, these are the also-rans. The ultimate 57 song in existence is an incendiary blast from a seriously unheralded band out of the Minneapolis hardcore/punk scene of the early ‘80s: Man Sized Action. While Hüsker Dü and the Replacements still garner deep and abiding love from the music-conscious among us, whenever I mention Man Sized Action, all I seem to get are remarks like, “Gee, I didn’t know you swung that way.” Folks, all kidding aside, for a brief shining moment, Man Sized Action was a real force in that seminal Minneapolis scene. In ’84, no less than the über-producer Steve Albini wrote a glowing tribute/history of the band, describing how MSA formed in the vacuum that resulted in the absence of the perpetually touring Hüsker Dü, the fizzling of various ‘70s holdover bands, and the Replacements becoming “parodies of themselves.” Albini went on to say that MSA were not only better and more original than their local competition, he even gave them the edge over the Clash and the noted 57 aficionado Bruce Springsteen.

Man Sized Action—Pat Woods, Tony Pucci, Kelly Linehan, Brian Paulson, and Tippy—recorded two records for Bob Mould’s Reflex Records. The first, Claustrophobia (1983), was hampered by Mould’s tinny production, but the second one—an eight-song EP, Five Story Garage (1984) still sounds as fierce and unforgiving as the Minnesota winter, undiminished by time, new production techniques, or radical improvements in the science of rock & roll. “Fifty-Seven,” one of the highlights of the collection, combines the loud-and-fast hardcore aesthetic with the corrosive guitar frequencies of Hüsker Dü, led by the urgent keening of vocalist Pat Woods. According to Albini, the song’s name derives from “its position on the MSA Master Song List of History and Achievement.” Now that’s a list I would love to see.

Man Sized Action -"57"

Postscript: Brian Paulson, guitarist for Man Sized Action and co-producer of Five Story Garage, has ultimately reached a wide audience through his work as a recording engineer on records by Wilco, Superchunk, and Beck (O-De-Lay), among others.

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

Posted by David Klein at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Let no man claim that Dave Klein is less than thorough with his regular Numerology posts. I will not stand for it!

Buuuut on the occasional occasion that the Venn Diagram of Klein's record collection and mine have diverged, I have taken it upon myself to drop him a line--a duty which I have sporadically neglected. Note, I'm not claiming that Dave's picks for these numbers were wrong per se, or that these three tracks from the 00s are the rightful heirs to their respective numerical thrones, just that they exist and demand a reckoning.

Said reckoning follows below...

Life Without Buildings - "14 Days"

Dave claimed that there is only one truly great 14 song, and I'm not entirely sure Life Without Buildings proves him wrong, but it certainly belongs on the short list of good ones. The band's fruit fly life span at the turn of this century didn't last long enough to enjoy the neo-post-punk boomlet that would erupt a few years later, but it certainly used their influences to more original, gentle effect than most of their fashionable successors would. Sue Tompkins is less excited on "14 Days" than she is during the rest of the group's only studio album, 2000's swell Any Other City. She rationally informs her paramour that she's hitting the road in two weeks time. The tension comes from Robert Johnston's loosely coiled, and occasionally laser-emulating guitar. It's too modest to be a standout on a stellar LP and thus perhaps a bit meek to live on as a numeral torchbearer, but it's still a breezy delight.

Why it falls short: Because I love the Television Personalities, so, so much.

Memory Cassette - "50mph"

This track is from the second Memory Cassette EP I've been smitten by in as many weeks, the freely offered digital collection The Hiss We Missed. There was no way to include this in the original 50 essay, as it had not yet existed. Even if it had been, it's tough to just up and grant a newcomer a win over PJ Harvey's plain nasty "50 ft. Queenie." "50mph" is utterly gorgeous though, with those ambiguous vocals slightly disconcerting, even as the backing track is lulling us to a highway-inappropriate dream state.

Why it might actually be a contender: As legendary as PJ's fury may be, it seems just way too triumphant to be merely marking halfway. As used in her song, 50 is a towering height emblematic of a fearsome self esteem. It's a culmination, not a checkpoint. And in a set of 100, a ferocious climax seems premature. There's work to be done yet. In comparison, Memory Cassette's soft focus ode to cruising velocity might be more apt, solely for its steadiness. There are miles yet to cover, it says, but we'll get there soon enough.

McLusky - "1956 and All That"

Never were there surly Welshman as beloved as the late, lamented McLusky. (For the record, Tom Jones has to be considered more swarthy than surly.) "1956 and All That" a b-side that came to me via a 2003 Australian EP called Undress for Success has their trademark snarl. Any track that ends with its singer yelping that "your son looks like Michael Jackson" is definitively meaner than the recent 56 winner "Mean" Gene Vincent. I halfway considered bringing the track up pre-column, but I halfway thought Dave might pull another rabbit out of his hat, and the official number one thousand, nine hundred and fifty six would be rendered technically ineligible.

Why it falls short: You don't get to like McLusky without a high tolerance for extreme misanthropy and gallows humor, but this one may be a bridge too far. "Come out quick and count the corpse, I'm sure we killed a family..." isn't the first line in too many comedic successes. The thrash of their best tracks is there, especially in the buzz saw portion preceding minute two, but the wit isn't quite sharp enough.

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fifty-six is responsible for some primo sepia-toned moments of the past century—Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games, Shirley Temple had exactly 56 curls on her head, to name two—but these admittedly alluring phenomena did not inspire songwriters to render specific numerical homage. Thus, 56 is perhaps best known to rock enthusiasts not through a song title but for a brief but memorable walk-on part in a Bob Dylan song that goes:

Meet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha

Meet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha


Honey, we could be in Kansas


By time the snow begins to thaw.

No more eloquent mention of 56 exists in the annals of popular music. 56th and Wabasha, where Dylan dreams about meeting the lover whose absence torments him throughout Blood on the Tracks, is the pinnacle of explicit musical 56-ness. (“Love Potion #9” with its line, “I told her that I was a flop with chicks/I’ve been this way since 1956” is a close second.) But if you’re thinking about making a pilgrimage to 56th and Wabasha as part of a mad quest to visit every place ever mentioned in a Dylan song, think again. While Dylan’s songs are full of real place names (on the previous track he mentions Honolulu, San Francisco, and Ashtabula) if you visit the Wabasha Street near the University of St. Paul, where Dylan spent formative time, and expect to find your way to 56th Street, you’ll be disappointed. They do not intersect. Another, much huger, thing that it pains me to note is that this admittedly rich discussion has focused on a song called “Meet Me in the Morning” and not “56th and Wabasha,” which forces me to acknowledge that after a quadruple run of classic songs by classic artists (B-52s, Ramones, Toots & the Maytals, Tom Waits) numerical reality has slapped us upside the head, pointed an impudent finger at our chests, and said, “Are you SURE about this? Is there really a cool song with 56 in its title?” The answer is yes, barely. On a technicality—but yes. (Be patient: we’ll get to it.)

Several in the rarified world of 56-titled songs refer to 1956, a glorious year in rock ‘n’ roll’s brief infancy when the charts were clogged with Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and other charter members of rock’s pantheon. “Nineteen Fifty-Six” by the Rascals—one of the premier singles bands of the ‘60s—is good fun, a rocked-up blues number that borrows perhaps a bit too much from “Kansas City,” but it doesn’t rank as essential listening. “Nineteen Fifty Six, Fifty Seven, Fifty Eight,” a jaunty Bollywood rave-up celebrating the rush of progress, comes from a 1959 film called Anari (The Naïve One). It features the distinctive vocal talents of one of the most celebrated Bollywood playback singers, Lata Mangeshkar, who was once alleged to be the world’s most prolific recording artist and is now acknowledged to be a merely fantastically prolific one, with many thousands of recordings to her name. While classic Bollywood music is based on ragas and other traditional Indian structures, the genre also included a kitchen sink of influences, every single one of which seems to make an appearance in “Nineteen Fifty-Six.” And somehow in all of it I detect a curious Fiddler on the Roof meets the “Russian Sailors Dance” flavor. Oddly enough, it has a far stronger Eastern European flavor than “Budapest ‘56” by Paris Violence, a song about the infamous Soviet crackdown on Hungary, told via shouted French vocals and Ramones chords.

Lata Mangeshkar - "Nineteen Fifty Six, Fifty Seven, Fifty Eight"
Paris Violence - "Budapest '56"

Unsolved 56 Mystery: Michael Stipe sings the word “yeah” 56 times on R.E.M.’s Andy Kaufman tribute “Man on the Moon.” On Nirvana’s yeah-fest “Lithium,” Kurt Cobain sings it 56 times. Why??

Another mystery is why 56 is so well-liked on the West Coast, but there’s no refuting the facts: “56 Hope Road” by Orange County action-figure band Sugar Ray, “Haunting 56th Street” by Oakland’s Push to Talk, as well as Goldenboy, a skate punk band (OK, from the west coast of Norway) that cites Paul Anka, Chuck Norris, and White Lion as influences, and sounds a note of Weezerian power punk on “Fifty Six.” Bringing a jaunty ska beat to the proceedings is “Dub 56” by the Toasters, a long-running American ska revivalist institution whose members appreciate the sound of a good saxophone, and would no doubt dig “Fifty-Six,” a marvel of invention and technique by the legendary tenor sax player Johnny Griffin. “4:56 A.M.” from Roger Waters’s midlife-crisis-themed album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, is graced by plenty of Floydian sax, courtesy of David Sanborn. And “A Dip in the Lake: Ten Quicksteps, Sixty-two Waltzes, and Fifty-six Marches for Chicago and Vicinity” doesn’t call for a saxophone, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. This theoretical work, conceived by John Cage in 1978, called for groups of people to visit hundreds of predetermined addresses in Chicago and “either listen to, perform at and/or make a recording of the sounds at those locations.” So if a man happened to be playing saxophone at one of Cage’s addresses, and one of the delegations opted to make a recording of him, you could say the work had a saxophone in it. But that’s far too esoteric for me.

Certainty though, has been in short supply during my search for the ultimate 56 song. While I prefer to confer top honors on a title that uses the numeral in a deliberate or evocative way, sometimes that’s just not possible. The song I’ve chosen, “Five Feet of Lovin’ ‘56” by Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, is identical to the original 1956 version of “Five Feet of Lovin.’” (It was not unusual for Vincent to revisit songs from his back catalog, a practice that yielded a slew of alternate takes and alternate titles.) What really matters is that “Five Feet of Lovin,’ ‘56” by any name, shows off the talents of a singular, tragic figure, in all his snarling rockabilly glory.

Born Vincent Eugene Craddock in rural Virginia, Gene Vincent came storming out of the gates in 1956 with “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” an original composition allegedly inspired by the Little Lulu comic book character that ranks as one of the indisputably great songs of the early rock era. But Vincent never came close to the upper reaches of the charts again. Abandoned by American radio, he found favor and adulation in the UK. But while on a1960 tour of the UK, he was in the horrific London taxi crash that killed Eddie Cochran and left Vincent permanently damaged. For the next 11 years, on various labels and amid numerous personal crises, he struggled to revive his career. In 1971, while visiting his father in California, Gene Vincent died of complications related to a bleeding ulcer at the age of 36.

The Gene Vincent story is as sad they come, and it is one that has inspired rock writers to do their best work. As a preteen I learned about Gene Vincent from the hallucinatory Rock Dreams, which distilled two decades of rock iconography and poured it into the folds of my fevered teenage brain. One haunting illustration showed a hunched, switchblade-clutching Gene Vincent, surly and defiant, cornered in an English pub, facing down a constable holding a badge. The accompanying passage is something I’ve never been able to forget:

“After he hurt his leg, Gene Vincent always performed in pain and the possibility of collapse, and he stood on stage without moving, leaning forward, with his bad leg half-bent in front of him. Sometimes he seemed quite desperate, and he would shudder and strain and shake himself like a maimed, black-leather animal, castrated by captivity.” --Nik Cohn, 1973.

In the fantastic 1001 Songs, Toby Cresswell reckons that Mick Farren, “a writer and sometime rocker, put it best when he said, “Gene Vincent was a drunk, a pillhead and at times, a dangerous and creatively erratic asshole, but that may have been the true power of the man….His leather clothes have been copied so many times down the generations that they have become one of rock’s visual clichés. His attitude has been copied in some part by most of rock’s wannabe philosopher desperadoes and pretend warrior poets.”

Gene Vincent - “Five Feet of Lovin’ ‘56”

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

Posted by David Klein at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven starred in 55 Days at Peking, a 1963 film about China’s Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Sammy Hagar, an avid boxer in his youth, became known for rebellion with “I Can’t Drive 55,” his flip of the bird to the double-nickels that became an MTV staple in 1984. I won’t venture a guess as to how Charlton, Ava, and David would have fared, but it’s a good thing Sammy wasn’t born in Victorian England, where the Locomotive Act—the world’s first speed limit—made it illegal to drive a car (known then as a “light locomotive”) faster than about 10 mph. My guess is that Hagar, a longtime Patti Smith fan (they jammed together when both were inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in ’07) would have had to invent punk 100 years ahead of schedule just to express his outrage.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - "5:55"

the Perfect Disaster - "55"

Pink Industry - "Fifty Five"

Sammy’s song looked like it would be one of a small handful of 55 songs, but once again, this mad quest of mine has turned up far more crooked-numbered titles than I would have ever imagined. “5:55” is the bewitching title track to Charlotte Gainsbourg’s first grown-up solo work. Cowritten by the French duo Air and Jarvis Cocker, the song is a lush and transporting blend of rolling piano chords, whispered vocals, and soaring strings. There are a more than a few songs titled simply “55”—by Echoboy, San Antonio troubadour Jack Levitt, and even the Master Musicians of Jajouka, who were to Brian Jones what Ladysmith Black Mambazo was to Paul Simon. The Perfect Disaster was an English alternative band of the late ‘80s whose song “55” has the mathematically confusing refrain of “57 miles from home,” but features a four-on-the-floor chug that harkens back to Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” and by extension, the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For the Man.” (The Perfect Disaster struggled to find an audience, but bandleader Phil Parfitt went on to play with Spiritualized, while bassist Josephine Wiggs played with the Breeders, Dusty Trails, the Josephine Wiggs Experience, and has recently collaborated with Massive Attack.) Screaming Blue Messiahs also sang about the accursed speed limit in the late ‘80s. An Americana-loving trio led by the chrome-domed Bill Carter, the Messiahs offered the charged-up rockabilly stomp of “55-the Law,” which comes off as a celebration of the open road until Carter slips something in about “the wife and kids are dead”—an odd touch indeed. Before launching into “55,” Kasabian front man Tom Meighan asks the Brixton faithful if there are any punks in the house. Not surprisingly, the crowd answers in the affirmative. Possibly the best of the straight-up 55 lot is “Fifty Five” by Pink Industry (1985)—an eerie slice of synth-pop from a duo comprised of former Frankie Goes to Hollywood bassist Ambrose Reynolds and former Big in Japan vocalist Jayne Casey—which has far more icy appeal than one had any right to expect. And let’s just say that the Dave Matthews Band’s lite-pop workout “Stolen Away on 55th and Third” is two blocks and an eternity away from “53rd and Third” by the Ramones, and that “$55” by John Wesley Harding sounds more like Elvis Costello than Elvis Costello himself, which is a tad unsettling.

Fifty-Five Fact: Class of ’55, a mid-‘80s tribute to Elvis Presley by Sun Records legends Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash also featured Rick Nelson, in his last recording session.

the Astronauts - " '55 Bird"

To the youth of Boulder, Colorado circa 1963, the Astronauts—Rich, Stormy, Bob, Dennis, and Jim—were the biggest band around. “’55 Bird,” the band’s pleasantly goofy tribute to a well-loved vintage of Ford Thunderbird, employs a vocal arrangement reminiscent of their contemporaries the Beach Boys, who had already transcended the surf music genre in a way that bands like Astronauts and the Trashmen (proud sons of Minneapolis and the creators of the classic “Surfin’ Bird”) never would. “’55 Bird” is a fun trifle, but the band’s fever-charged instrumentals—powered by a twin rhythm guitar attack—were its strong suit. The Astronauts’ lone chart success came in 1964, with a sizzler called “Baja,” written by ace producer/songwriter-for-hire Lee Hazlewood. Hazlewood, who went on to record 20 idiosyncratic albums of his own (most of which went unappreciated until the end of his lifetime), had an enlightened rogue persona that had much in common with Tom Waits. Hazlewood even recorded a Waits song on Poet, Fool or Bum (1974), which received the one-word review: “Bum” upon its release. While Hazlewood’s grizzled, booze-soaked melancholia was getting no respect at all, his musical doppelganger over at Asylum Records had just turned out a grizzled, booze-soaked, melancholic masterpiece and kick-started a career that’s still going strong after three decades. No one said rock ‘n’ roll was fair.

Waits’s proper debut, Closing Time (1973), opened with “Ol ’55,” a love song to a car that’s hard not to feel instant kinship with. So lonely it aches, then soaring and full of hope, “Ol’ ‘55” introduced the world to a voice that one waggish writer said sounded like it was bathed in whiskey, hung in a smokehouse, and then run over. What better way to deliver poignant, wryly observed lines like these:

Well my time went so quickly, I went lickety-splickly out to my old '55

As I drove away slowly, feeling so holy, God knows, I was feeling alive.

When the world-weary Waits (who was only 24 at the time) describes turning to his beat-up old car, it’s more than just a ticket out of a bad situation: it’s his hope, his refuge and salvation. A year later, his label-mates the Eagles recorded their own version, and liberally sweetened it with West Coast harmonies, which Waits, not surprisingly, found “a little antiseptic.” Still, that’s the version most people know. Sarah McLachlan covered the song as well, but the original is imbued with a rough grace that the voices of Henley, Frey or McLachlan are just too damned pretty to capture. But no matter who’s doing it, the glorious chorus feels like the musical embodiment of the sun’s rays spreading over the horizon, and the “freeway cars and trucks” perfectly capture 55’s automotive essence. Ever the innovator, Tom Waits didn’t just write the greatest 55 song ever—he also gave the world “lickety-splicky,” an adverb that should only be uttered by people whose voices have been freshly run over.

Tom Waits - "Ol' 55"

Postscript: Whether “Schfifty Five” by Group X is technically eligible to win the top spot is a question I will leave to the numerological sages on high. Thankfully, Tom Waits has made the question moot, but this strangely inflected rap goof by a Georgia band posing as an Arabian outfit has some kind of primitive magic to it.

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

Posted by David Klein at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 a number as primary as, say, 1, was not given it's proper due. So here, as with 4 on the 4th, is a retooled essay, appropriate to the holiday at hand. (JK)

Lists of the 100 greatest movies, albums, and novels tend to begin at 100 and work their way down. It’s different with number songs. Here, we begin at 1 and work our way up. At the outset, the field is so crowded that choosing the definitive #1, 2 or 3 song is a purely subjective act. With 40 or 50 good choices, it’s pretty hard to say: This is it, the Ultimate No. 1 Song in the Universe. It’s later on, when you encounter a number that offers only one or two viable choices, that the process seems imbued with some measure of objectivity. But so many songs have 1, 2, or 3 in their titles that I make no claim to objectivity for the winner’s of these slots. After that, something strange happens: 4 comes up, and suddenly you can count the contenders on one hand. And a little later 12 comes up, and it dawns on you that you have some serious digging to do. Thus, the real work of this list really begins after the initial flood of 1, 2, and 3. But what a flood it is.

One is undoubtedly the most common number found in the world’s song titles. A cursory examination of hit songs in the U.S. and UK over the past 40 years shows no less than 50 hit songs that begin with “one”—and that doesn’t even include songs that have the word somewhere else (e.g., “Just One Look”). One is such an essential concept in human existence, and it crops up in so many critical figures of speech that it looms over its numerical brethren like the monolith in 2001. No other number can come close to boasting this many sublime (and occasionally ridiculous) songs. Here’s a sampling:

“One Way or Another,” “One Fine Day,” “One Love,” “One Way Out,” “One Way Street,” “One More Time,” “One of a Kind Love Affair,” “One Bad Apple,” “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show,” “One on One,” “Little Bitty Pretty One,” “Long Cool One,” “Could You Be the One,” “This is the One,” “I’m One,” “I Am One,” “I’ve Been the One,” “Still the One,” “She’s the One,” “You’re the One” “Going for the One,” “Special One,” “You’re the One That I Want,” “The One I Love,” “The Only One I Know,” “One More Cup of Coffee” “One Too Many Mornings,” “One More Night,” “One of These Days,” One of These Nights, “One Summer Night,” “One Night in Bangkok,” “One O’Clock Jump,” “One Mint Julep,” “One Headlight,” “One Piece at a Time,” “One on One,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” “One After 909,” “One For My Baby,” “One Draw (I Want to Get High), “One Step Up,” “One More Colour,” “One of Our Submarines is Missing,” “One of These Things First,” “One of a Very Few of a Kind,” “One World,” “One Word,” “One Way Ticket,” “One Will Be the Highway,” “One Long Pair of Eyes,” “Just One Look,” “One of Those Sometimes is Now,” “Just One of Those Things,” “My One and Only Love,” “You’re the One,” “Inspection Check One,” “One Tin Soldier” (The Legend of Billy Jack).

the Chiffons - "One Fine Day"

Bob Dylan - "One More Cup of Coffee"

As great as these songs are, they all lack something crucial: They aren’t about one or oneness; they’re about a headlight, a tin soldier, a night in Bangkok. Thus, in order to whittle down this enormous field, I’m only going to consider songs with a pronounced sense of one-ishness. And still, there are tons of choices. “One Two Three Four,” the infectious single from Feist’s much-lauded The Promise, fulfills the criterion by using 1 as a number. The problem is—and I know this may sound churlish—1 in this case is no more important than 2, 3, or 4. Manfred Mann’s “5-4-3-2-1,” “1-2-3 Red Light” by 1910 Fruitgum Co., and others of that ilk share this same basic shortcoming. (Actually it’s their only shortcoming, and I apologize for exposing it.) “One,” the mighty antiwar epic from Metallica, never mentions one at all, so that won’t fly.

Songs called “Number One” are legion, making strange bedfellows of Joni Mitchell, John Legend, Styx, Pharrell, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Deep Blue Something (remember them?), Etta James, Helloween, Martha Reeves, and my favorite “Number One,” the one by Alison Goldfrapp. “Looking Out for Number 1” is a title employed by BTO, UFO, the 5th Dimension, and Travis Tritt. Also worth noting is “No. 1 Blind” (Levolour/Lev-o-lour”) by Veruca Salt, “1” by Throbbing Gristle, and a bevy of songs called simply “One” –by the likes of the Bee Gees, Busta Rhymes, Creed, Dokken, Vince Gill, Ghostface Killa, Alanis Morissette, and Sunny Day Real Estate. (For those of you planning on making a #1 Songs Mixtape, I recommend segueing from “No. 1 Dominator” by Top into “Number 1 Lowest Common Denominator” by Todd Rundgren—and honestly, not because it rhymes, just because it just happens to flow perfectly.)

U2 - "One"

For me, it comes down to a trio of great songs that wear “one” proudly on their sleeves. (And “Number 1” by the Rutles isn’t one of them.) “One” is among the greatest songs in the U2 catalog. The slow building arrangement showcases the band’s individual parts beautifully, leading to a truly joyful release, and the lyric is sharp and powerful, however you read it. It’s the kind of song that even the band’s detractors might grudgingly admit digging. “One” is U2’s most covered song, with versions by Johnny Cash, Mary J. Blige, Warren Haynes, Joe Cocker, and most alarmingly, Jim Dubois and Ethan Chandler of the Bank of America, (which itself earned a cover by David Cross.)

“One” (as in “is the loneliest number”)—a magical pop single with a concept everybody gets—is also one of a handful of songs about a number that didn’t debut on Schoolhouse Rock. In 1968, “One” was the first in a run of 21 consecutive chart hits for Three Dog Night. In Aimee Mann’s version of the song, which is prominently featured in Magnolia (1999), the song’s essential charms are maintained without the falsetto bathos of the original.

Aimee Mann - "One"

The only critique I can offer of “One” by U2, Aimee Mann or Three Dog Night is that they are all seriously earthbound. A mad quest needs to begin in a high and exalted place, and you can’t get any higher than “The No. 1 Song in Heaven” by Sparks. I have another reason for choosing Sparks. It’s this: After first witnessing Sparks—pre-puberty, at soccer camp, on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert—I went out and bought my first album. I had other records, of course, but Propaganda was the first one I went out and bought with my own money. I’m proud of it now, but for a long time chose to withhold from my teenage friends how impressed I was by the sight of the prancing, falsetto-voiced, staccato-singing Russell Mael and his winsome, Hitler-mustachioed, keyboard-playing brother Ron, and their performance of “Reinforcements.” The song was just so stuffed: stuffed with layers of fat glam guitars; stuffed with tasty words like “subterfusion,” “coup d’etat,” and “Denise” (the name of the girl I was obsessed with at the time); and all of it tricked out in a baroque Queen-like arrangement featuring multiple buildups and breakdowns. The rest of the record did not disappoint: there were more interesting words (potentate, impetus, ornithologist ) and an abundance of astounding Les Paul hooks, not to mention the drum stylings of Norman “Dinky” Diamond, whose VH-1 profile beckons to be made. The highly enlightened music writer Jim O’Rourke will forever be my hero for calling Propaganda “the standard to which I hold myself and everything else” and “one of the few perfect pop albums.”

Sparks had a go at nearly every musical idiom that cropped up in the past three decades. The L.A. natives never tried grunge, but they aced the exam for lethal glam rock, orchestral bubblegum, and calibrated slabs of oomph like “No. 1 Song in Heaven” (1979). When they decided to go disco, the Maels went straight to the top, enlisting the Eno of Disco himself, Giorgio Moroder. Not surprisingly, the entire platter pulsates like a finely crafted soul mechanism delivered from on high.

The song filters down, down through the clouds

It reaches the earth and winds all around

And then it breaks up in millions of ways

It goes la, la, la, la-- la, la la la la…

Sparks - "No. 1 Song in Heaven"

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

Posted by David Klein at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A fame mosaic from Studio 54's heyday

If you look closely at Studio 54’s iconic white-on-black “54” logo, the 5—clearly the masculine of the two numerals—seems to be subtly humping the 4. And the salacious, Disco Era connotations of 54 don’t end there: Xenon, a popular but less legendary nightclub from the same period, took its name from the element whose atomic number just happens to be 54. Coincidence? Possibly, or perhaps it was a deliberate but subliminal nod toward the biggest thing out there, in the best tradition of the Sex Pistols inspiring the tweaked version of their name: Celibate Rifles. In any case, no song from that sozzled epoch actually uses a Studio 54-iented title, although several dance tracks from later decades do. “Fifty-Four,” by Sea Level, a ‘70s outfit formed by a trio of musical refugees from the Allman Brothers, came out in the heyday of disco, but it’s not clear if the title of this funky lite-jazz instrumental has anything to do with the club.

In 1972, five years before the Studio 54 opened its hallowed doors, Harry Nilsson was at his commercial zenith. Nilsson Schmilsson had yielded three wonderfully diverse singles: “Without You,”—a cover of a Badfinger song—was four minutes of Orbison-worthy melancholia; the lilting, utterly ridiculous “Coconut” had millions of people around the world humming “You put de lime in de coconut” in spite of themselves, and “Jump Into the Fire” was a thunderous slab of nerve-jangling rock ‘n’ roll that featured Nilsson’s desperate, ragged vocal and an aggressive bass line played by Klaus Voorman. “Without You,” which topped the U.S and UK charts and languished in the Top 40 for months, has since been covered by a vast swath of the musical world, including Heart, Donny Osmond, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Shirley Bassey, Air Supply, and most lucratively, Mariah Carey. (Even Nilsson couldn’t help himself from re-releasing the song, not once but twice, after he first struck gold with it in ‘72.)

And with his breakout success, Nilsson, who once caused Little Richard to exclaim, “My, you sing good for a white boy!” suddenly went from musician’s musician (Paul McCartney called a then-unknown Nilsson his favorite American singer at a late-‘60s press conference) to successful recording artist, and the Brooklyn native wasted no time in following up his commercial breakthrough with a bit of rock-star indulgence that the 70s music biz both tolerated and nurtured. “You want to record the follow-up in Africa? Sure thing, Harry. What, you say you want to include a chorus of octogenarians on “I’d Rather Be Dead” (key lyric: “I’d rather be dead/than wet my bed”)? You got it, son. As long as there’s a single.” Son of Schmilsson did contain one glorious single in “Spaceman,” which cracked the Top 40, but the rest of it was just too eccentric for the masses.

Harry Nilsson - "Take 54"

Why am I telling you this? Son of Schmillson opens with the stomping “Take 54,” in which the singer laments his lost groupie-muse with the refrain: “I sang my balls off for you baby!” Today, it still comes off as a pretty rude lyric; in the Nixon reelection year it was doubtless even more jarring. And throughout Son of Schmillson, Nilsson gives full vent to his penchant for the weird, the blunt, and the gleefully off-kilter. On subsequent records, indulging his interest in such noncommercial genres as English music hall and old-school pop standards, Nilsson thinned out his audience even more. That his best-known achievement of the late ‘70s was getting thrown out of the Troubadour in L.A. with John Lennon for heckling the Smothers Brothers says a lot about Harry’s career arc.

History buffs and fans of Canadian rock will recognize the phrase “Fifty-four forty or fight!” The slogan originated in a border dispute in the 1880s between the U.S. and Britain over what was then called the Oregon Country, and turned into a rallying cry for Americans who believed that any British claim to land south of the 54th parallel meant war. In the end, President James K. Polk accepted a dividing line at the 49th parallel, which remains in place today. The Canadian alt-rock band calling itself 54-40 or Fight never laid a claim to the U.S. market, but has the ignominious distinction of one of its songs being covered by Hootie & the Blowfish.

Aphex Twin - "54 Cimru Beats"

Like several songs on the ambiguously pronounced Drukqs collection by Richard “Aphex Twin” James, “54 Cimru Beats” has a Welsh name (Cimru is Welsh for Wales), but anyone hoping for something with a touch of the Welsh folk tradition—a fiddle perhaps—will be disappointed. Instead, “54 Cimru Beats” is a tangle of simultaneously caressing, scraping, whooshing, and pummeling sounds sewn together by an obsessive and inscrutable master’s hand—all quite typical of James’s upbeat stuff. But it’s so un-Welsh sounding it may as well be Swedish, like the Dandelions, whose single “On the 54” was featured in a Volvo ad and certainly enhanced the clothes-shopping budgets of this snappy-dressing Stockholm five-some.

Continue reading "Numerology: Song 54, Where Are You?" »

Posted by David Klein at 07:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

from the print series "The fifty-three stations of the Tokaido" by Hiroshage

I admit I haven’t read Car, Boy, Girl, the 1961 book on which The Love Bug was based, so I cannot say for certain whether the protagonist of Gordon Buford’s novel wore no. 53, or even if he was named Herbie. Not so surprisingly, Car, Boy, Girl is out of print, so please forgive me for not tracking down a copy. What’s important is that whoever came up with the numeral for the cuddly Volkswagen Beetle did a fine job. Fifty-three is a number totally devoid of flash. (In fact, the late Buddy Hackett, who voiced Herbie in the original Love Bug, would have been perfect to portray 53 in my as-yet-unnamed Numerology Movie Project.) Why is 53 a sad-sack number? You encounter it in mundane places: the ass-end of your phone bill, a road sign, the entrance to your friend’s apartment. It’s no wonder then that the top three #53 songs in the known universe all incorporate 53 in the same quotidian way: as part of a street address. Now, street-address songs take up a good-sized chunk in my vault of numerically titled ditties—“The 12th Street Rag,” “The 18th Street Strut,” “51st Street Blues,” and the like. And it’s true that on occasion, numbered street names can transcend their inherent blandness and attain their own mythic quality (e.g., Highway 61, Route 66), but I would contend that songwriters do their best when they make up streets of their own. “Thunder Road,” “Lonely Avenue,” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” simply exist on a grander scale than Gene Pitney’s “24 Sycamore Street” or “442 Glenwood Avenue” by the Pixies Three.

Minus the Bear - "Memphis & 53rd"

Seattle’s Minus the Bear named itself after B.J. and the Bear (minus the bear, get it?), a cheesy ‘80s TV show in which freelance trucker B.J. McKay, his pet chimp Bear, and a gaggle of lady truckers do battle with the nefarious Sheriff Lobo. (B.J.’s truck may not have had a name or a mind of its own, but Herbie’s influence was unmistakable in the way the orange-and-white Kenworth K-100 semi took right turns.) Deliberately or not, “Memphis & 53rd” from Menos Del Oso (2006) shares the same central credo as the theme music from B.J. and the Bear: “keep moving.” The song has a thrilling opening—23 seconds of spaghetti Western-meets-late-‘90s Jungle beats that I kept wishing would just continue. From this Portishead-esque place, the tempo shifts to a restless kind of a prog-ska beat as the lyrics sketch the tale of a couple on the run from a nameless black-hatted figure. The playing is first-rate, but what I really wanted was another helping of that spaghetti.

Turquoise - "53 Summer Street"

“53 Summer Street” is a single by the ultra-obscure Turquoise, whose members grew up in the same Muswell Hill neighborhood in North London as the Kinks’ Ray and Dave Davies. As the Brood, the band recorded demos with Dave Davies in ‘66, and more demos a year later with Keith Moon and John Entwistle. It was not until the tumultuous summer of ’68 that the band, now called Turquoise, released any music, and their output was limited to a pair of double-sided singles that met with little success. After making a few more recordings, Turquoise called it quits in 1969. It took until 2006 for a full accounting of the band’s work to see the light of day, in the form of The Further Adventures of Flossie Fillett: The Complete Recordings on ace retro label Rev-Ola. The set includes alternative versions of the key singles, a cover of Dave Davies’s sublime “Mindless Child of Motherhood,” and a smattering of extra tracks, none of them especially memorable. Of the two A-sides, “Woodstock” shows a clear Kinks influence, with Ewan Stevens’s vocal sounding uncannily like Ray circa Village Green Preservation Society, right down to the timbre. (Turquoise even had its own song titled “Village Green.”) It’s the Who’s influence that’s most evident on “53 Summer Street,” with verses that recall “Pictures of Lily” and a touch of “I Can See For Miles” at the end of the chorus. But somehow this tale of a club owner who ends up in jail due to unnamed shady doings at 53 Summer Street never achieves liftoff. With the rerelease of Flossie Fillett came the expected accolades calling it a lost psych-pop masterpiece, but I’m not convinced; it’s one thing to be influenced by, pal around with, and even sound like the Kinks and the Who, quite another to deliver the same thrills.

Before bestowing the 53 crown upon the bowl-cut heads of the winners, it seems proper to acknowledge the other 53 songs out there, a dearth though it may be. The B-52s’ “53 Miles West of Venus” has something of a “Planet Claire” feel, but has nothing to say. It’s filler. Don’t get me wrong; just because the only line in the song is the title itself, repeated endlessly, doesn’t necessarily kill the party for me—I mean, “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road” is pure genius—but this is nowhere in that league. (Amazing how, with the shifting of a single digit, this numerical thing turns champs into chumps.) Honorable mention goes to “Midwatch 1953” by the Fall from The Unutterable (2000), which is like a Fall take on the death of Hal the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only instead of a slurred recital of “Daisy, daisy, give me your answer true,” Mark E. Smith wheezes, “Who could foresee what happened in 1953?” accompanied by what sounds like instrumental backing from two seemingly unrelated songs and a damaged pinball machine. (I also can’t help but mention Crowded House’s gloriously harmonized, Walking round the room singing ‘Stormy Weather’/at 57 Mount Pleasant Place in “Weather With You.”)

the B-52s - "53 Miles West of Venus"
the Fall - "Midwatch 1953"

Just as the B-52s own 52, their contemporaries the Ramones own 53. Both bands always flirted with a cartoon image, but were at heart totally genuine about the music they made. Ramones songs dealt with harsher subject matter, of course, but most were leavened with a humorous edge or a schoolyard shout-along chorus reminiscent of a radio single from the ‘60s. To say “53rd and Third” lacks the buoyancy of typical Ramones fare is a major understatement. Even the title—evoking the soulless grid pattern of New York City streets and avenues—lacks the glee of a typical Ramones title. Instead, it soullessly imparts the location where the song’s protagonist toils in the sex trade. And while the prototypical Ramones song is a pile-driven version of bubblegum or girl-group pop, “53rd and Third” is just a brutal onslaught. The sunny melody of a song like “Beat on the Brat” keeps it from feeling like a song celebrating actual assault (on an actual brat), but in this squalid little tune, there is no subtext, no sweet spot, no place to hide.

the Ramones - "53rd & 3rd"
(rehearsal footage, 1975)

The song “53rd & 3rd” speaks for itself. Everything I write is autobiographical and very real. I can’t write any other way. – Dee Dee Ramone

53rd and 3rd/Standing on the street

53rd and 3rd/I'm tryin' to turn a trick
53rd and 3rd/You're the one they never pick

53rd and 3rd /Don't it make you feel sick?
Then I took out my razor blade/Then I did what God forbade

Now the cops are after me/But I proved that I'm no sissy

the Ramones - "53rd & 3rd"

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

Posted by David Klein at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Mathematically, 52 is an “untouchable” number—meaning it’s never the sum of the proper divisors of any other number—and maybe this fact has some bearing on the demonstrable scarcity of 52 in the world of song. A deck of cards, the number of weeks in a year, these are the greatest hits of 52. so wouldn’t it make sense that there’d be a gambler’s lament called “52 Pickup” or some old chestnut with a refrain that talked about “…loving you 52 weeks of the year”? There is indeed a handful of “52 Pickup” songs, but I’ll be damned if any of them are notable. Certainly none can lay claim to being the musical equivalent of 52 Pickup by Elmore Leonard, the taut crime thriller that was turned into a pretty damned good movie starring Roy Scheider, Ann Margaret, and former Prince protégé, Vanity. (Not to mention a party sequence featuring Ron Jeremy and Amber Lynn. Good times!)

The closest I found to a 52-weeks song was “50 Weeks of the Year” (on a box set of country line dance music, for all those line-dancing completists out there). 52 is the name of a DC comic starring Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Ralph Dibney the Elongated Man, and a new superhero, Supernova, which was released in 52 weekly installments. In the world of jazz, Manhattan’s West 52nd Street was once synonymous with its world-class jazz clubs, and it earned many a musical tribute, including “52nd Street Theme” by Thelonious Monk and “Forty Six, West Fifty-Two” by Chu Berry, as well as Billy Joel’s 52nd Street (1988).

But just as sure as the 52 on Dontrelle Willis’s jersey, as sure as the 52 white keys on a piano, 52 means only one thing in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. And that’s the B-52’s. As the story goes, one night in 1976 after collectively sharing a mystical libation at a Chinese restaurant, the Athens, GA quintet had themselves a joyous first jam session and dubbed themselves the B-52s—not in the sense of the strategic bomber that figured prominently in the Cold War and Dr. Strangelove, but after a Southern slang term for the towering beehive hairdos favored by vocalists Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson. (The bouffants were so nicknamed because they resembled the nose cone of the legendary aircraft properly called the B-52 Stratofortress.) In a recent interview, Cindy Wilson recalled how the glorious harmony vocals that are the siren call of the B-52s first developed.

“It was that first night - we worked well together right away. When we started rehearsing, we came up with “52 Girls” and we sang in unison a lot, and naturally went into harmonies and played around with it and it became natural.”

“52 Girls” is immediately arresting, a perfect calibration of Keith Strickland’s unignorable drum beats, Ricky Wilson’s sinewy guitar riffs, and Cindy and Kate’s laser beam vocals. (And the temporary absence of Fred Schneider’s Sprechgesang does not feel like any kind of loss.) The song seems to be a celebration of girls, which is not unusual--only it’s sung by girls, and that is unusual, especially in 1977. And it’s not about the typical girls of song--heartbreakers, teases, impossible dreams, etc. This is about the girls who weren’t clichés: Tina, Louise and Hazel and Mavis. Wanda and Janet and Ronnie and Reba. These [emphasis mine] are the girls of the U.S.A. The true cool ones. Thirty years ago, when “52 Girls” came out as the B-side of “Rock Lobster,” that was a bold statement, perhaps even quietly revolutionary. Yet the message, if I read it correctly, was not easy to decipher. You can listen 100 times and still not hear “Effie, Madge and Mabel and Biddie” as the song’s opening line. No doubt the sheer elusiveness of Kate and Cindy’s vocals, veering from pep-rally clarity to something bordering on pure sound, is part of the song’s enduring appeal. (link to no embed You Tube clip from 1978 here)

B-52's - "52 Girls"

It’s safe to say that no one has ever managed to look or sound like B-52’s. After hearing their music, John Lennon was inspired to return to the recording studio after a lengthy hiatus. So arresting was the blend of quirky influences (a wag at People magazine likened their sound to “the illegitimate offspring of George Jetson and the Shirelles”) that in the hands of lesser mortals it would have come off as mere camp. Instead, the B-52s never projected anything less than total commitment. Surely the most unheralded element of the band’s first two records is Ricky Wilson’s distinctive guitar playing. The B-52’s could have not have existed without Wilson’s work on a four-stringed, custom-tuned Mosrite guitar. Simply by removing the two middle strings and tuning the remaining pairs way down (down! down! down! as the song goes), Wilson achieved a limber yet punk-toughened take on surf guitar that even without a proper bass was able to make the music really swing.

The B-52s cast an outsized shadow on the world of 52 songs. The Boredoms, Japanese avant-noise purveyors with a proven interest in numbers, did a 36-second deconstruction of “52 Girls” called “52 Boredom (Club Mix). Surprisingly, it’s only the second-shortest track on the Boredoms’ critically hailed Soul Discharge ’99 collection. (The prize goes to “Hamaiian Disco Without Bollocks,” the collection’s four-second closer, which has the distinction of being the shortest song in rock.) Elsewhere, there’s “52 Seconds” by Bad Religion, a 58-second grenade of a lead track from New Maps of Hell (2007), which finds the SoCal hardcore stalwarts sounding invigorated well into their third decade. “52 Pilot” by the often-sublime Saint Etienne is as pleasant as it is forgettable. Honorable mention goes to Richard Thompson for “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” a love song of the highest order that would have nabbed a place of high honor here had Richard only opted to use the apostrophic form of “1952.”

Boredoms - "52 (Club Mix)"

Bad Religion - "52 Seconds"

There’s only one other song up for serious consideration, and that’s “52 Stations” by Robyn Hitchcock, a singular figure in music whose principal musical touchstones are Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, John Lennon, the Byrds, and Lewis Carroll. “52 Stations” begins with two lines that positively thrum with information. If there’s not a whole movie here, I see a great opening sequence shot in the London Tube:

There’s fifty-two stations on the northern line
None of them is yours, one of them is mine

In two short lines we know the singer is a spurned man, an obsessive type who knows perhaps too much about train schedules, and rides the Tube lamenting lost love. He seems resigned and wistful at first (“In sorrow not in anger/you forget the best/You remember how she was looking and then you forget the rest.”) but eventually sadness turns to anger: “One night/I hit her in a car park/left her in a car park/and I just went away.” Now he’s haunted by her memory, wanted for assault (if the police are doing their jobs) riding the Northern Line (the black line on the color-coded London Tube map, by the way) a shadow of his former self (and a menace to his fellow riders.) For a man whose catalog includes songs like “Veins of the Queen,” “The Man with the Lightbulb Head,” “Uncorrected Personality Traits,” and “Sandra’s Having Her Brain Out,” a song like “Fifty-Two Stations” is lightweight stuff. No insects, no Egyptian cream, no one having her brain out—just a desperate man who’s romantic enough to see the face of the woman who done him wrong every time the train stops.

Robyn Hitchcock - "Fifty-Two Stations"

Endnote: There are actually 50 stations on the Northern Line. According to wikipedia, the last station to close, South Kentish Town, did so in 1924. So either Hitch was channeling a ghost (entirely possible in his case) or he needed an extra syllable, and “two” provided both a triple dose of alliteration while minimizing his exaggeration, something one imagines would matter to a man who named his first solo album I Often Dream of Trains.

“I was never intentionally obscure,” Hitchcock once said. “It’s just that everything seemed to me so confusing that my songs always seemed very fragmented ‘cause that’s how I perceive things.”

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

Posted by David Klein at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When Dave first started Numerology, it was all a bit of a laugh. He'd toss off three of four numbers in a drunken burst, confident and carefree that'd it'd always be so easy. Now, chest deep in the marginalia the forties and fifties have brought, he's kept awake at night thinking of all the major players he'd left uncovered in the single digits. So in addition to moving the Numerology train forward, he'll occasional fill-in the aloof early entries. He'll start revising his own history today with an appropriate digit. Trust us, it was easier to just let him... (JK)

What’s your favorite 4 song? Chances are, unless you are more of a numero-musical obsessive than I am, which I doubt, nothing leaps to mind. That’s because four songs lack the semantic immediacy of “One is the loneliest number” or “Three is the magic number” or even “When two tribes go to war.” Four is rife with associations, but songwriters don’t tend to write songs about the essential four-ness of a situation. Four has at least one unique property—it’s the only numeral that has the same number of letters in its name as its value, a phenomenon that holds true across several languages—but compared to 1, 2, and 3, four is much more a character actor than a leading man. The pop charts are littered with one-, two- and three-titled hits, while only a smattering of four-titled songs have made it into the top 40, the most recent being the egregiously catchy debut between Madonna and Justin Timberlake, “Four Seconds.” Nevertheless, we still have to narrow down the field a bit, so songs that use 4 to mean “for,” (e.g., Prince “I Would Die 4 U,” Durutti Column “4 Sophia”) are not eligible, and neither are purely arbitrary usages like "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)" by Arcade Fire.

For most of the past century, “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover” (1927) was the ultimate four song in existence. Al Jolson (now there’s a name you don’t see much in the blogosphere) sang it back in the ‘20s, and in 1948 it became a national hit for bandleader Russ Morgan. (I dig the warbled rendition by jazz guitar master Nick Lucas.) But that’s your grandfather’s four-leaf clover. “I’ll give you a four-leaf clover/take all the worry out of your mind” sang Pete Townshend on “Let My Love Open the Door,” the mellow version of which was prominently featured in Grosse Pointe Blank and Dan in Real Life. And to judge by recent four-leaf-clover songs from Old ‘97s, Badly Drawn Boy, Erykah Badu, Abra Moore, and Winger, clover hasn’t lost its appeal. Metallica, however, offered a terse smackdown of the whole genre, with “No Leaf Clover,” opting instead to draw not upon whimsy but on the Book of Revelations for their contribution to the world of #4 songs. “The Four Horsemen,” which uncannily suggests “Children of the Grave” played at 45 rpm, is far nastier than Judas Priest’s oddly sedate “Four Horsemen,” but it’s the Clash’s “Four Horsemen” that’s most up my street (even though in retrospect, it seems like one of the lesser songs on London Calling, the group’s creative peak.) Feeling a bit doom-laden? Consider making a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse mixtape, starting with the above and adding the Stranglers, Ralph Stanley, Glen Campbell, Aphrodite’s Child, and the Klaxons, all of whom have songs named after those galloping harbingers of doom and destruction.

Too bad 4 Non Blondes didn’t have a Four Horsemen song. That would have been cool.

Fun “4” Fact: Blues Traveler, Foreigner, and Tupelo Chain Sex had little in common musically, but they all made a record named after the numeral 4.

Aphex Twin - "4"
Public Image Limited - "Radio 4"

My first cursory mind-search for #4 songs yielded an appealingly random selection: Aphex Twin’s gorgeously skittering “4,” “Four Sticks” by Led Zeppelin, probably the weakest link on Zep’s monolithic untitled fourth record, but still quite audacious, and “Radio 4” by PIL, the stately, ominous, uncharacteristically restrained piece that closes Metal Box, which wouldn’t sound out of place nestled toward the end of Side 2 of Bowie’s Low. But all of these seemed to lack anything essentially fourish, and I was determined not to rest until I found a song befitting the number’s considerable stature. Four is the number of the seasons—but obviously Vivaldi and Frankie Valli are much more synonymous with the four seasons than any “Four Seasons”-named song, whether by Crowded House, Violent Femmes, Toots & the Maytals, Ambrosia, or for that matter, Killer Dwarfs or the Sadistic Mika Band. Four is the number of the bodily humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm), the cardinal points (north, south, east, west,) and the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism (life means suffering/the origin of suffering is attachment/the cessation of suffering is attainable/the path to cessation of suffering), but where are the songs to show for it? (Given my druthers I’d enlist the Pixies to cover bodily humors, Wire would handle the cardinal points, and I’d leave the Four Noble Truths to the Sadistic Mika Band.)

Continue reading "Numerology: Seconds on the Fourth" »

Posted by David Klein at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The top-secret military testing ground in the Nevada desert known as Area 51 holds a place in the collective imagination as a hotbed of extraterrestrial life. Will Smith ends up at the site—which the government only admitted existed in 2003—after crash-landing in Independence Day, and the scores of songs with “Area 51” in their titles attest to the site’s enduring inspirational qualities. The post-Gram Parsons Flying Burrito Brothers, the Charlatans UK, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Graham Parker have all mined Area 51 for subject matter, and so have lesser-known acts like Paddle Cell (purveyors of Teutonic psychobilly) and stalwart Portland thrash-mongers (no, not trailblazers) Dead Moon.

“Dick Butkus #51” is Dillinger Four’s ode to the legendary Chicago Bears defensive end who once said, “When I played pro football, I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately—unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.” “51%” is a dreamy morsel of muted optimism from Mark Sandman, the leader, singer, and sax player of Morphine, who died after collapsing onstage during a performance in Rome in 1999. Sandman’s husky whisper—somewhere between Mark Lanegan and Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam—rides on a cool stream of sax, two-string bass, and plucked slide guitar, and the sound is plain gorgeous. The title track of 51 Phantom by the North Mississippi All-Stars has a swampy flavor that sounds right at home next to the Sandman’s heavenly drone.

Mark Sandman - "51%"

Twenty of the 50 states have a Highway 51, so a mess of Highway 51 songs is to be expected. On his 1962 debut record, called simply Bob Dylan, the toast of Hibbing, Minnesota covered “Highway 51 Blues” by Curtis Jones, in the urgent Woody Guthrie style that marked his early work. The Jones version makes clear that the highway in question is U.S. 51, which runs from Wisconsin to New Orleans, but John Lee Hooker doesn’t pay much mind to the road on “Goin’ On Highway 51”—he’s too busy lamenting the recently departed Miss Fannie Mae, who wouldn’t even shake his hand when she left. All she said was, “Someday I will meet you when you’re troubles are like mine.” Now that’s a good highway song.

“Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up,” is Pink Floyd’s rewrite of “Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” a slow-building freak-out that went through several incarnations before a monster live version ended up on the band’s half-live, half studio Ummagumma (1971). Lacking the original song’s whispered warning to Eugene, and in a different key, “Come in Number 51” served as the background music for the incendiary denouement of Zabriskie Point (1970). This attempt by Michelangelo Antonioni (fresh from his acclaimed Blow-Up) to create the definitive ‘60s counterculture movie kept audiences away in droves, but in its favor, the movie boasted trippy incidental music by Jerry Garcia, an uncredited Harrison Ford as a student agitator, and a tagline that sounds like it was coined by Matthew McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused: “Zabriskie Point. How you get there depends on where you’re at.” (Not to mention a notorious orgy scene, set in Death Valley.)

Zabriskie Point (trailer)

I bet even Aimee Mann, whom reviewers never fail to describe as “acerbic,” would appreciate the irony of seguing from “Fifty Years After the Fair”—one of the bounciest things in her oeuvre—to the lethal comedown of “High on Sunday 51.” In the former song, she proclaims, “We’ll get it right, I swear” while “Sunday” takes the grim view of mankind that is Ms. Mann’s most common mode of expression. Just as Elvis Costello is apt to depict relationships in military terms, Ms. Mann has a preferred metaphor: namely, addiction. In a few strokes, the refrain of “High on Sunday 51” conjures the fool’s bargain made by the enabler: “Hate the sinner but love the sin/Let me be your heroine.”

Aimee Mann - "High on Sunday 51"

The following modern locution, which I spotted in a recent New York Times Sunday supplement, has yet to find its way into a song, but I bet the Flight of the Conchords would do justice to it:

Fifteen/fifty-one – adj. ‘a numerical neologism used to describe the optical illusion created by “cool mom” 50-something women who resemble their teenage daughters from behind, but from the front look like members of the First Wives Club, e.g., ‘from a distance she looks like jailbait but up close she’s a cougar—it’s beyond fifteen/fifty-one.’

Like earbuds and celebrity chefs, the 15-51 phenomenon is a thoroughly modern development. Just ask Merle Haggard, whose “The Way it Was in ‘51” sings the praises of an era when Truman was still president, the jukeboxes were crowded with Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, and rock ‘n’ roll had yet to be invented. (And obviously, long before women were routinely confused with their daughters from behind.) A few final 51-related things kicking around: the brief, feedback-only “Orgo 51” by the Descendants and “51-7” by Camper Van Beethoven, who have sounded better,

Since the Strokes already picked up the 12 trophy for “12:51,” the 51 contest comes down to a matchup similar to one we’ve recently encountered: a decent song by an iconic act vs. one of the best by a lesser act. In the 48 contest, it was the Clash over the Crash (Suzi Quatro’s “48 Crash,” to be exact). This time, Goliath falls.

Jimi Hendrix - "51st Anniversary"

The big gun here is a once-obscure Jimi Hendrix song called “51st Anniversary.” Reissued on the 1994 CD rerelease of his monumental Are You Experienced (1967), the song was the B-side of the “Hey Joe” single and did not make it onto the UK or American album versions of the record. And I have to say, it’s not hard to see why this was slapped on the back of a single and forgotten about; it just isn’t that good. In fact, it has about as little going for it as any Hendrix song I can think of. The chord progression feels pedestrian, the lyrics have first-draft written all over them, even the spoken-word section sounds like something Jimi did a lot better on “If Six Was Nine.” I’ve played the song a few times and it just hasn’t taken hold. No, it’s not terrible, but compared to the rest of Hendrix’s audacious debut, it’s really weak. Most people hold Hendrix up as key figure in rock, and I’m squarely in that camp, but the idea of this list is not to confer lifetime achievement awards; each song has to stand up tall and be the best, and “51st Anniversary” just doesn’t cut it.

I was lucky enough to have an older brother who didn’t believe in buying an album or two at a time; he saved up and bought them in stacks. The Ghost of Cain (1986) by New Model Army came from one of Jonny’s stacks. After playing me “51st State,” (already a hit in the band’s native Britain), he must have caught something in my crazed eyes that told him he would never love this record as much his brother already did, and so he gave it to me. I still cherish the LP, even though now it brings a snicker and not even a shred of awe to see those three men on the back cover, pictured under ominous skies, glowering in black-and-white. The middle one—the one with the most scornful expression —went by the nom du rock Slade the Leveller. That made a big impression on me. What a guy in his 20s could dig about New Model Army (named after Cromwell’s antiroyalist militia) isn’t hard to determine: the music was dark, precise, unforgiving—and catchy. They traded in politically charged anthems with lyrics as much spat-out as sung, and their lack of a sense of humor was not something I viewed as detrimental.

New Model Army - "51st State"

“51st State” (actually a cover of a song by a really, really obscure group called the Shakes) was NMA’s biggest British hit. Aided and abetted by a rousing football-chant chorus, the song takes aim at Yankee imperialism and pulls no punches: “We’re W.A.S.P.s/proud American sons/we know how to clean our teeth/and how to strip down a gun.” Not surprisingly, members of the group have had enormous difficulties obtaining visas to play in the U.S. ever since. Personally, I never had a problem singing along, sometimes even beating my chest in sympathy, with the triumphant chorus: “Cause we’re the 51st State of America!” I was no W.A.S.P., but I was an American, and I dug the fury that New Model Army hurled our way, in much the same way as a baby monkey prefers being beaten by his mechanical mother to being ignored by her.

New Model Army never made much of a dent in the U.S. market, although, closer to home, they maintained an extraordinarily devoted fan base. Main dude Justin Sullivan retired Slade the Leveller long ago, while continuing to lead various incarnations of NMA into the ‘00s and remaining fiercely committed to the pursuit of global justice. All politics aside, “51st State” still sounds great. It’s proof positive that the worst song in a great man’s catalog is no match for a good band’s best. And there’s some justice in that.

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, 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

Posted by David Klein at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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

--JFK Runway

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

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

Paul Simon - "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"

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

Just get yourself free (advice)

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

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

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

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

the Police - "Born in the 50s"

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

Aimee Mann - "50 Years After the Fair"

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

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

Metal Urbain - "50/50"

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

the Fall - "Fifty Year Old Man"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Butt-head: I’d like a 50-foot wienie.

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

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

You bend over

Casanova

No sweat

I’m clean

Nothing can touch me

PJ Harvey - "50 ft. Queenie"

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

Posted by David Klein at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

In a cavern, in a canyon,

Excavating for a mine,

Dwelt a miner, forty-niner,

And his daughter Clementine.

About a century before the Joe Montana era, “My Darling Clementine” made “forty-niner” a household word. Alas, “Clementine” lacks a 49 in its title, but “The Days of ’49,” also rooted in the California Gold Rush, is a traditional folk song that has been covered by a long line of guitar-wielding troubadours, from singer-songwriter/real-life cowboy Jules Verne Allen to a guy who changed his name to Dylan. The song recounts “a few hard cases,” men who met their fate “in the days of old/when we dug out the gold/in the days of ‘49.” Dylan’s version comes from his much-maligned Self Portrait (1970)—a double LP that included inferior versions of his own songs and seemingly tongue-in-cheek Paul Simon and Gordon Lightfoot covers—and which was widely interpreted as a flip of the bird to his audience. (An audience, we would later learn in Chronicles Vol. 1,, that to Dylan circa 1970 was represented by the most rabid, garbage-sifting, house-invading element.) In spite of Greil Marcus’s notorious pan of the record—which began, “What is this shit?”—Self Portrait is neither an outrage nor a misunderstood classic. Call it a grab bag with an unusually low ratio of hits to misses for a guy like Dylan. “Days of 49” is clearly one of the hits. Originally a lilting folk number, the song in Dylan’s hands becomes a rocking cowboy song, presaging the rustic direction Dylan would take, both musically and sartorially, in the decade to come. (“Days of 49” is also the name of a song by the Blue Aeroplanes, which lacks the spoken vocals of Gerard Langley, much to its detriment.) It should also be noted that State Route 49, which passes through many a historic California mining town, inspired songs by Big Joe Williams and Howlin’ Wolf, both called “Highway 49.” Wolf’s is undoubtedly the greatest song ever written about a woman named Melvina. (It’s pronounced mel-VEYE-na, by the way.)

Bob Dylan - "Days of '49"

“49 Bye-Byes,’ the Stephen Stills-penned closer on Crosby, Stills & Nash’s self-titled debut record, sports plenty of the trio’s trademark harmony vocals, but it would take a hardcore CSN freak with a pronounced contrary streak to champion it. Certainly the weakest of the four songs Stills contributed to the first record, “49 Bye-Byes” comes up wanting next to the record’s many indelible melodies. But you can forgive S for a bit of self-indulgence: While C and N were solely lending their golden throats to the enterprise, Stills was doing the lion’s share, playing every instrument but drums, contributing four tunes, and singing his ass off. As on virtually every song he’s ever recorded, “49 Bye-Byes” finds Stills—who would soon embrace a look based entirely on jeans and sports jerseys—singing about his “lay-day.” But Stills’ line of seduction falls short of his best. Let’s face it: “Steady girl, be my world” is no “Love the one you’re with.”

Nick Nicely - "49 Cigars"

Nick Nicely remains obscure, even in a world where technology has ensured that the obscure are faring much better than they used to. In 1982, Nicely released a pair of singles and disappeared, leaving people like XTC’s Andy Partridge in awe. The guy sure knew how to pick his psychedelic onions: “49 Cigars” is a close cousin of “Tomorrow Never Knows” until it breaks into a middle eight that bears a striking verisimilitude to Barrett-era Pink Floyd. “49 Cigars” is a swirling, lysergic delight that, unlike most if not all others of its ilk, was recorded in one take.

“49 Second Romance,” (1980) a minimalist, “dark-wave” dance track by German synth duo P1E, sounds like a Teutonic Joy Division without a bassist or anything vital to say. Compare the relative poetry of JD’s “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio” to P1E’s “You, you, you like to dance” to see what I mean. I still find the song faintly, weirdly irresistible—especially the intro, which combines the best elements of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” and the Sweet’s “Fox on the Run,” and vocalist Ute Droste’s gift for making boredom palpable.

P1E - "49 Second Romance"

In a usage that one has to applaud for its stubborn mathematical sense, even as one decries the singer’s excessive reasonableness, “Forty-Nine, Fifty-One” by Hank Locklin employs 49 specifically because it alone signifies the amount of effort one man is willing to accept from his woman and still have things be hunky-dory.

“If you’ll admit that you’ve been wrong/I’ll take half the blame

If you say half the fault was yours/Than I will do the same

We really need each other after all is said and done

If you’ll try forty-nine percent than I’ll try fifty-one”

Hank Locklin - "Forty-Nine, Fifty-One"

Of course, by the time the kicker comes around—“If you try forty-eight percent/than I’ll try fifty-two”—you begin to suspect that old Hank is headed down a slippery slope. Locklin is still active; at 91, he’s the oldest member of the Grand Ole Opry, and he also maintains an active fan club in Norway, home of the electronica practitioners Royksopp. If that segue struck you as both abrupt and arbitrary, let me assure you that it’s not arbitrary: Royksopp’s “49 Percent,”—the second single from the follow-up to rightly celebrated Melody A.M. (2001)—features a refrain that makes a mockery of the hopefulness in Hank Locklin’s equation:

“49 percent/one percent less than half/and less than half ain’t really much of nothing.”

I could forgive the song’s defeatism if I could get past its generic dance feel, which pales next to the warmth and quirky textures of the first record; once it gets going, it just doesn’t have anyplace special to go. Sadly, what Hank Locklin accomplished in less than two minutes was, in this case, a lesson lost on the Tromsø-based duo, whose name means, among other things, “mushroom cloud.”

Pere Ubu - "49 Guitars and One Girl"

A mushroom cloud of toxicity hangs over much of the early work of Cleveland’s Pere Ubu. “49 Guitars and One Girl,” from New Picnic Time (1979), is abrasive in the extreme, a caustic collision of demented chicken vocals and several (though definitely not 49) jabbing guitars. David Thomas’s sputtered “Don’t panic, don’t panic” does little to reduce the tension, nor does the debauched laughter at the end, which is way creepier than the fadeouts of “I Am the Walrus” and Sabbath’s “Am I Going Insane.” Cubed.

“49th Parallel” by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel makes no reference to the 49th parallel, which separates the U.S. from Canada. Instead, the song reflects Harley’s desire “to drift away to a land of my own.” That sentiment, coupled with a Little Feat-style funk groove, place the song squarely in 1975, the year in which Harley recorded his signature hit, “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me”). “49th Parallel” is nowhere near as memorable as that.

the Jazz Butcher - "Lot 49"

In The Crying of Lot 49—a paradigm of postmodernism (i.e., a book I don’t really understand) by Thomas Pynchon—cultural references and historical digressions abound. The heroine of this short novel, Oedipa Maas (one of many characters whose contrivance of a name has to be ignored in order to get caught up in the story) must discover how she fits into the mysterious death and life of her ex, one Pierce Inverarity. It’s not giving away a major plot point to mention that Lot 49 refers to a set of rare postage stamps up for auction. At times like this, I breathe a sigh of relief that I am a musico-numero-obsessionist, and not a literary critic. My sole obligation is to report that at least three bands have called themselves Lot 49; the addressee on a letter to Radiohead’s merchandising arm is W.A.S.T.E., an acronymic reference to the slogan of the book’s Tristero organization; and that Yo La Tengo got cute with “Crying of Lot G.” Most appropriate for our purposes, a jangly blast by the oddball English musician known as the Jazz Butcher is called simply “Lot 49.” In its unforced shagginess and deadpan glee, this is a song that speaks to a less fettered time in the world of indie music. These days the climate is more nurturing toward a certain studied D.I.Y. aesthetic, in the spirit of Final Fantasy. In a dictionary of the near future, the definition of “precious” will include a picture of a small dog clad in renaissance garb and a recording of “49 MP” by Final Fantasy (from the 2007 release, He Poos Clouds, a title that supports my snideness).

The stellar 1988 Creation sampler called Doing it For the Kids, from whence “Lot 49” came, is a fine compendium of songs from that era, including two that define “haunting”: My Bloody Valentine’s “Cigarette in Your Bed,” and “House of Love’s “Christine.” (In a dictionary of the near future, the definition of “precious” will include a picture of a small dog clad in Renaissance garb and a recording of “Many Lives 49 MP” by Owen Pallett aka Final Fantasy. Sufjan Stevens is James Hetfield next to this guy.

Last week, as I was considering the merits of “Funk #48" by the James Gang, I had no choice but to discuss the band’s radio rock staple “Funk #49” (1970), which, indisputably, is the definitive 49 song. If the number of precocious kids and adults attempting to master this song on YouTube is any proof, “Funk #49” has had a lasting impact far in excess of position no. 73 on the Billboard chart, its zenith as a single.

It’s hard to remember that there’s a middle section, with jungle noises and mucho cowbell, that sounds like it was flown in from a Kool & the Gang song. What you remember is the force of that guitar lick and how it meshes perfectly with the limber bass line and the, yes, seriously funky drumming. You remember lines like, “Sleep all day/out all night/I know where you’re going.” On paper, it sounds like a warning against self-abuse, but when Joe Walsh delivers those lines in his crooked croon, above that hot-asphalt riff, it feels more like a tribute to the very things the song ostensibly advocates against. Yet, deep in my heart, I’m sure the people cranking “Funk #49” at all-night parties in the’70s were too busy shaking their hip-hugger encased booties to feel scolded.

the James Gang - "Funk #49"

*In a Pynchonian turn of events, Graham Nash recently collaborated with a ha, Norway’s biggest musical export of the rock era until Royksopp.

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 , 47, 48

Posted by David Klein at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

4:48 a.m. – the time most suicides are purported to take place. Said to be the time of night when people suffering from mental disorders report feeling very clear and cold, while those outside perceive them to be in their deepest delirium.

Tindersticks - "4.48 Psychosis"

Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, what one theater critic called a 75-minute suicide note, was not performed in the playwright’s lifetime. Kane’s suicide in Feb. ’99 ensured that. The lyrics of the Tindersticks song “4:48 Psychosis” come straight from the play—which has no characters and no stage directions—and the song fulfills its promise of a truly bad trip. It begins with the question—What do you offer?—and the recitation of a somehow ominous-sounding sequence of random numbers, before a swirling, “Venus in Furs”-grade drone—replete with viola shrieks—kicks in, and Stuart Staples duskily intones Kane’s bleak words:

At 4:48/When sanity visits

For one hour and twelve minutes I am in my right mind

When it has passed I shall be gone again

But take heart: Hours, not death, are the primary concern of the vast majority of 48 songs—the winning track included—and for that we can all be grateful. Three 6 Mafia (“48 Hours to Respond”), Ladyhawk (“48 Hours”)—a Vancouver band that likens its sound to “cashmere underwear,” and the prolific guitar shredder known to the world as Buckethead (“48 Hours to Go”) have all mined the 48-hour angle. Toss in Magda—the Polish-born, American-raised, Berlin-based DJ, whose “48 Hour Crack in Your Bass” features a bass line so thick and pulchritudinous you can practically smell pancakes—along with the demented blues stomp of “Letnik 48” by Slovenian rock-scene stalwart, Tomaz Domicelj, and you have the potential for a mix-tape that will perplex all of your friends.

Tomaz Domicelj - "Letnik 48"

I realize that’s a lot to take in, so let’s take a deep breath and imagine a time before 48 came to be viewed principally as the sum of the hours contained in two days. Yes, Virginia, there was a time when 48 had a far different connotation. (Indeed, you are correct in pointing out that 48 the atomic number of cadmium—but that’s not it.) For most of the first half of the 20th century, 48 signified the number of states in the U.S.A. When you referred to “the 48,” people assumed you meant it in the same sense as this line from “Let’s Get Away From it All,” the pop standard Sinatra made famous:

We’ll travel ‘round from town to town/We'll visit ev’ry state,

And I’ll repeat, “I love you, sweet”/In all the forty-eight.

The great musical iconoclast Spike Jones, who added gargling, whistles, and a large dose of nuttiness to his versions of pop standards and classical works, recorded a surprisingly unfunny number called “Forty-Eight Reasons Why.” (Not to be confused with “48 Reasons” by first-wave oi band Red London). The Jones song lays out 48 reasons to heed the call of Uncle Sam (one state = one reason) and ends with a caffeinated recitation of state names, amid bugle riffs and the sound of marching feet. It sounds heavy-handed and forced, no doubt, but so ingrained at the time was the concept of “the 48” that America’s favorite red-haired puppet, Howdy Doody, sported 48 patriotic freckles on his lacquered wooden cheeks. The Gourds, roots rockers from Austin, TX, recently revisited this connotation in “Lower 48” and managed to avoid sounding jingoistic; amazing what a minor key and lyrics like “Married my cousin up in Arkansas/Married two more when I got to Utah” will do for you.

A more poetic treatment comes from celebrated guitarist John Renbourn, whose “Forty-Eight” features bells, primitive percussion, and a bluesy workout, bracketed by a sublime conversation between guitar and glockenspiel. “48 Hour Drive (Boston)” by Baltic Fleet, is a slowly unfolding flower, very much like Sigur Ros but without anything identifiably Icelandic (e.g., words sung in Icelandic). But if that sounds too meditative, try “Bomba ‘48” by the ska-punk Texas outfit known as Los Skarnales. Or if for some reason you want to see what happens when a brainy, willfully obtuse brother-sister team writes a song that inadvertently makes the simplicity and lack of pretension of Los Skarnales seem like the very essence of all that is good in the world, check out “Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street” by Fiery Furnaces. And if you are in the mood to ponder whether Sunny Day Real Estate was a great, seminal band or merely a decent one that traded in the soft-loud/soft-loud structure and temper-tantrum vocals associated with the grunge aesthetic—check out “48” from “the pink album.”

The James Gang’s “Funk #48” features the same kind of crunchy Joe Walsh guitar licks that make “Funk #49,” which followed a year later, so recognizable. “Funk #49” is clearly the superior song—stronger melody, more interesting vocal flavor—but “48” is no slouch. The band has an intuitive grasp of the looseness : tightness ratio that makes a rock trio such an ideal vehicle to deliver the goods. In the wake of the Who, Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, the power trio was a popular formation. The James Gang—whom Pete Townshend himself recruited to open up for the Who on a 1970 British tour, were one of the best. What they lacked in pinup quality they made up for in talent (but you know how far that will get you in rock.) The worst thing about the boom in power trios was that it helped usher in an era of exceedingly bland rock-band names: West, Bruce & Laing; Beck, Bogert Appice—suddenly it was cool to sound like a law firm. You even had power duos (see: Whitford-St. Holmes). Finally, the point became to choose the most boring name you could possibly think of. What else could explain the success of Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds? Even the post-Graham Nash Hollies couldn’t resist calling a late-period LP Clarke, Hicks, Sylvester, Calvert and Elliot (1977). At that point, with the British Invasion a hazy memory and five years since “He Aint Heavy (He’s My Brother”), I guess the Hollies were just looking to see if anything would stick—be it a couple of disco tracks or what looks on paper to be a nakedly bad move: an attempt at hard rock, called “48 Hour Parole.” (See? There was a point to that digression.) If that sounds like a good idea to you, it’s available on Amazon, for a handsome sum. Convince me it’s an overlooked gem and you’ll be handsomely rewarded.

Suzi Quatro - "48 Crash"

Suzi Quatro - "48 Crash"

By 1973, as the power trio rebellion was being quelled by an army of singer-songwriters in patched denims, the English glam scene took flight, and so did the career of Suzi Quatro. With “Can the Can,” her second single, she hit no. 1 on the British charts, and came through with a few more strong singles penned by the ace songwriting team of Chinn/Chapman. One of them was “48 Crash,” a song about reaching the age of 48 and feeling shitty about it, which went to no. 3. While the youth of today might know her solely for her six-episode stint as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days, Quatro enjoyed years of success in the UK and Australia before finally breaking through in the U.S with “Stumblin’ In,” a peak moment in sunshine pop from 1978. A few more UK chartings followed, but that was the extent of her success in her native land. Before you weep for Suzi, consider that she has sold more than 45 million records in her lifetime, and more records in Australia than the Beatles. What that says about the land Down Under I’ll leave to Men at Work to write a song about. Whether the Detroit native was a proto-riot grrl I will leave to the historians. But all things being equal, if “48 Crash” achieved the high camp of the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb,” it just might be sitting on top of this list.

Instead, we have “48 Hours” by the Clash, a song that was excised, along with two others, from the U.S. release of the band’s self-titled debut. The move pissed off the Clash, but I have to think we Americans won out—I mean, “Complete Control” alone is worth the three that got cut, to say nothing of “Hammersmith Palais” and “I Fought the Law,” which we also got. So I admit it: “48 Hours” is not an essential Clash song. Does that mean that even a non-essential Clash song beats the songs gathered here, including Suzi Quatro, in a walk? My answer is a Joe Strummer-snarled “fuck yeh!” The record that introduced the Clash was rife with elbow-throwing lyrics—fun didn’t seem to rate high on their list. But “48 Hours” comes off as a rare celebration of pleasure by a band for whom anger and boredom were the critical emotions of their explosive infancy. It’s gruff and tight: two verses, two choruses, and a skronky guitar break—that’s it. Leave it to the Clash to do “48 Hours” in a minute and a half.

the Clash - "48 Hours"

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 , 47

Posted by David Klein at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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.

[Photo cred: © Sandy Guy Schoenfeld - Howling Wolf Photos]

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 (1)

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.

the Cure - "39"

Getting old makes strange bedfellows. Both the Cure and Jerry Lee Lewis sang songs about characters at the age of 39 who are desperately trying to keep the candle burning. Leave it to the Cure to come through with a dark, pained opus, cranking up the guitars and vocal angst against a massive sonic backdrop, to fine effect. If not for our winner, the Cure might have given us a Bummer Trifecta—a run of three dark and depressing winners in a row. As for the Killer, I may risk sounding a note of stodgy traditionalism, but I dig Jerry Lee when he is pounding away on the piano much more than when he’s tickling the ivories and crooning in laid-back country style, as he is on this one. Similarly laid-back is the brief “Raid on Bush Creek in ’39,” from the debut record by unsung trad rockers known as Goose Creek Symphony, which doesn’t hint at why this prolific Kentucky outfit earned comparisons to the Band.

If twee pop is your thing, check out “X39” by the Bristol-based outfit known as the Casswells: it’s the sound of people in elbow-patched cardigans, threadbare T’s and diaphanous pajama bottoms, strumming guitars. If you’re making a party tape on the theme of 39, think twice about following the Casswells with Sacramento’s Killing the Dream, whose “39th and Glisan” will dampen the mood just as sure as shootin’. But if you’re more the type whose parties generally end up with hordes of shirtless nomads beating their chests around a stack of burning tires, Karma to Burn’s “Thirty-Nine” might be just the thing.

Not long ago I went on at length about 36 being the number at which songwriters officially address women’s measurements. Indeed, titles like “36-24-36” abound; but I have now learned that some folks envision a slightly different golden mean, like Jimmy Jones, a smooth soul R&B singer whose biggest hit, “Handyman,” was turned into porridge by the honey-voiced James Taylor in 1977. “39-21-40 Shape” wasn’t a hit for Jones, but it serves as conclusive sonic evidence of a man who knows what he likes.

The always confounding Aesop Rock comes back to haunt me with another massive armload of beats, samples, and syllables. The atmosphere of “39 Thieves” is menacing and the beat is dark and slippery, and I have no idea what it’s about. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t have to know what a song is about to enjoy it, but somehow when the thing I don’t get is a rap, I feel like I’m missing the whole point.

I have lived my entire life without any knowledge of the existence of Spock’s Beard, whose sixth album, Snow, is a neo-Christian parable about an albino psychic with a messianic following. [Cue Chris Farley’s interview w/ the Beard: “’Member that time you did that, um, album, about that albino psychic…with the…uh, messianic following, and um, but the guy dies but he achieves peace through his connection with God? Y’member that? That was awesome.”] “The 39th Street Blues (I’m Sick)” is more pop-metal than prog, like King’s X grafted onto Lamb Lies Down on Broadway-era Genesis, yet its coda sounds eerily “V-2 Schneider”-ly.

Spock's Beard - "The 39th Street Blues (I'm Sick)"

Ever since believing an interview in Circus magazine in which Freddie Mercury of Queen proclaimed that the band had chosen the name Queen “for its regal connotations,” I have always been taken in by them. They had oh so many tricks up their sleeve. Perhaps only Led Zeppelin rivals Queen in the sheer scope of aural territory covered. Although by the end of their career, Queen seemed to be letting the inherent bombast and theatricality of the enterprise take over, the first half dozen records are crammed with a great deal of inventive and utterly distinctive music. Although the debut album will always remain closest to my heart, thanks to a well-worn vinyl copy bequeathed to me my older brother, I do recognize that A Night at the Opera is Queen’s landmark album, boasting “Bohemian Rhapsody” “You’re My Best Friend,” “Death on Two Legs” and the ultimate 39 song in the universe by a long shot, “’39.”

Hearing “‘39” still feels like the breath of fresh air that it was in the era of Boston, Kiss, and Zep, cutting through the muddle with the sweet sound of acoustic guitar, vocal harmonies straight out of Oz, and eloquent, timeless sounding lyrics. Certainly the world “grandchildren” has never been more eloquently uttered in the context of a rock song before or since.

Questions abound: Why is it called “’39”? When you tick off the sequence of songs on Queen’s first five albums in order, you’ll find that “’39” shakes out to be the 39th song of the band’s recording career. That’s a first, I think. And it’s notable for being sung not by Freddie Mercury but by its composer, Brian May, now a certified rocket scientist and—this can’t be completely random—ranked No. 39 on the Rolling Stone list of 100 Greatest Guitarists. But what’s it all about? May says he was tapping into a sci-fi motif—the man who comes back from space travel having aged a year, to find a hundred years have passed—and relating it to his own sense of estrangement from his own home after returning as rock royalty. Somehow the result sounds has such a pure rustic sound it feels as if it could have been written in the sixteenth century. May delivers a memorable vocal in a plangent, earnest voice—backed by a chorus of flanged-out Mercury (as well as drummer Roger Taylor, who occasionally chimes in with an uncanny impersonation of a theremin.) Although Mercury gets proper credit for his singular vocals, May has a much better voice than a guitarist of his caliber needs to have, and its quiet strength helps seal the deal on this classic song. The Pacific Ocean performed a sweet cover of “’39” on So Beautiful and Cheap and Warm (2002), but it’s hard to top the ethereal beauty of the original.

Queen - " '39"

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Lou Reed maligned the number 37 in “Femme Fatale,” but some interesting 37 songs popped up once I started looking. While the field for 38 is similarly scant, once again, some odd nuggets have appeared in my pan. (Somebody helpfully suggested .38 Special to me, and in all honesty, I can still get into “Hold on Loosely” much more than is wise to admit here, but this is about songs, people, otherwise Matchbox 20 and Level 42, etc., would be eligible to win something based on their numerical names alone, and that I could not abide.)

Divididos - "El 38"

I can definitely abide Divididos, an Argentine rock institution that kicked off its 1991 major-label debut, Acariciando Lo Aspero (“caressing the rough”), with “El 38,” a spirited mix of garage band chords and tuneful shouted vocals. But would they abide me? The ironically named Bristol, England outfit known as the Pop Group (formed in 1978) revered chaos, cacophony, and confrontation; the instrumental single “3:38” sounds like someone playing a dub record and a funk record simultaneously through an underwater tape deck while someone farts in the water. Which is not to say it’s bad. I regret that “4,738 Regrets” by Trans Am is numerically ineligible for the 38 spot, because it is surpassingly gorgeous. Needless to say, if this list does reach 4,738, my money’s on Trans Am to win in a walk.

Hot Springs - "38th Adventure"

High praise goes to Canada’s own Hot Springs, whose “38th Adventure,” the final track off last year’s debut CD Volcano, finds the band adding a playful touch of glam flavor to its edgy indie rock, with Giselle Webber’s vocals bringing to mind the raspy warble of Feargal Sharkey’s work in the Undertones and a frayed quality reminiscent of Karen O.

Continuing with the Canadian subplot, “38 Years Old” by Canadian Rock Hall of Fame members the Tragically Hip merits consideration. (The Hip, as they are known, were not named after the Elvis Costello line in “Town Crier” (‘teddy bear tragic and tragically hip’) as I had thought, but rather from a line in a Michael Nesmith film). Is it mere coincidence that two of my five 38 songs are from Canadian outfits? I mean, what are the odds? (The Odds, actually, was a ‘90s band, from Vancouver. This is getting weird.) Anyway, “38 Years Old” is an earnest minor-key twanger about a dude who’s reached that lofty age and never kissed a girl. It’s sad all right, but our glowering 38 winner says, “You want sad? Here’s sad.”

That’s right: 38’s a bummer. Following the dark night of the soul of our previous winning number, the no. 38 song takes a similarly unsparing look at human beings behaving badly. The title of the winning song, “38,” by Revolting Cocks, refers to the number of people killed in the Heysel Stadium disaster, a 1985 football hooliganism-related catastrophe that somehow isn’t the worst one ever. (That would take place three years later, at the Hillsborough Football Ground, where more than twice as many fans would be crushed or suffocate to death.)

The final game of the European Cup at Heysel Stadium in Brussels hadn’t started, but with the title at stake and a history of bad blood between the two clubs, the war had already begun. When hordes of Liverpool fans jumped the chicken-wire barrier that had separated the factions, Italian fans of the Juventus club retreated until they could go no further. Then a retaining wall at the edge of the crumbling stadium buckled under the added weight, and there was a hellish crush. In the end, 39 people died; clearly RevCo went to work on this song before the final toll could be assessed.

Revolting Cocks - "38"

As “38” reminds us, a song that commemorates a horrific event doesn’t have to sound like “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning.” This is no lament; in fact, the message is that this sort of thing happens all the time. Get used to it. Dance to it. Now, I’m not saying I would wish all songs about disasters, floods, and levee breaks to have an industrial rock sound, but in this case, the harsh, unforgiving beats are the perfect expression of being pulverized, as are the repeated words “38/38/There were 38,” which pummel the listener like a taunting jackhammer. Later on, in a popular early sampling move, (think: “Nineteen” by Paul Hardcastle) a news-clip voice is incorporated, in this case, one that sounds a bit like the actor Brian Cox, telling us in a plummy voice, “I can tell you the official number of the dead is now at 38.”

As much as I’d like to be offhand about it, I must confess that it feels funny writing about the Revolting Cocks. Revolting Cocks has to be the most profane band name in history. (Yes, certain death-metal/speed metal outfits have had more disgusting names, but I don’t count them because of my inability to stand the entire genre.) The real credit goes to Butthole Surfers for opening up the floodgates for bands to employ anatomically intimate names. As the story goes, before settling on that infamous moniker, the Surfers would amuse themselves by choosing a new, outrageous name for every gig they played. So one night it would be Nine Foot Worm Makes Own Food, next week it was Abe Lincoln’s Bush or the Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole. But one fateful night, in Austin in1982, at the last minute they introduced themselves as the Butthole Surfers, after a song Gibby Haynes had just written, and the namescape of rock was forever changed. So far as I can tell, no band of any stature had ever had a name like that before. Sure, Steely Dan was Burroughsian for artificial johnson (wasn’t he a basketball player from Canada?), and Buzzcocks was pretty in-your-face, but with a name like Butthole Surfers, there is no ambiguity. Subconsciously or not, this name must have emboldened other bands. Pretty soon, in the next state over from Texas, in fact, you had Wayne Coyne & Co. using the tamer yet somehow related name of Flaming Lips, and in 1985, Al Jourgensen, the Neil Young of industrial rock—named one of his side projects Revolting Cocks. That same year, Stockholm garage rockers the Stomachmouths named themselves after the Swedish approximation of “intestinal valve” a term they’d found in a translation of Confederacy of Dunces. Looking back on it, this clearly was the heyday of the grotty-name trend.

Surfers kingpin Gibby Haynes has had no regrets about sticking with the Butthole name all these years. “My mother even says the name now,” he once said. “It took her ten years, but I’ve heard her say it now three times about.” I wonder if Al Jourgensen can say the same thing.

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

No less of a heavy than Lewis A. Reed tells us that 37 is a piss-poor excuse of a number. That’s how I interpret his line in “Femme Fatale”: “You’re written in her book/You’re number 37 have a look.” Guy could have picked any other number to signify utter ignominy, but he chose 37. And indeed, it does have the uncanny ring of the end of the line.

With Lou’s damning assessment in mind, I guess I should feel relief for the existence of a viable 37 song, by a major figure, from a major record. It’s a bit of a downer—and with a few exceptions (Charley Patton’s “34 Blues,” PIL’s dour “Radio 4,” and the council-flat ennui of Television Personalities’ “14th Floor”) this list has eschewed songs that inspire suicidal thoughts. But our winner this week has me contemplating man’s inhumanity to man, at a time of year when I much prefer to be admiring the lighted snowflakes bedecking the lampposts along Delancey Street.

In 1961, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram attempted to fathom the repeated assertion of the Nazis on trial in Nuremburg that they were just following orders. Milgram devised an experiment to determine just what the average person was capable of doing when reassured by a man in a white lab coat that the act was perfectly acceptable and appropriate. Volunteers who were assigned the role of “teacher” were told to administer electrical shocks of increasing voltage to the “learners” in the experiment when they made an error on a test involving word pairs. Despite the sound of screams, and even though they knew it was wrong, 65 percent of the volunteers complied with the official-looking people conducting the tests, and continued to deliver punishment.

Peter Gabriel has always been drawn to dark subjects. His solo records have included songs from the point of view of an assassin, a housebreaker, an amnesiac, and a mental patient, along with elegies about Stephen Biko and the poet Anne Sexton. “Sledgehammer”—the song that put him over in the U.S. chiefly through a swaggering horn line and an innovative use of Claymation—was out of character for him. “We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)” with its ominous drumbeat and slowly uncoiling atmosphere, is prime Gabriel territory. Lyrically, through, it’s atypically concise, which is surprising coming from a man who once filled up album-length suites with tales of giant hogweeds and astral travelers. I’ll never understand how a song about a subject he was so passionate about became a haiku. “We do what we’re told” is repeated six times, followed by “One doubt/one voice/one war/one truth/one dream.” Certainly minimal is one way to go, but I can’t help thinking that if “WDWWT(M37)” had some of the lyrical detail of “Biko,” the result would have been a stunning. Oh, and if you’re wondering what the 37 refers to, it’s the number of volunteers who were willing to give the maximum voltage. These 37 (from a group of 40) were willing to authorize the maximum punishment because in this arrangement, the actual punishment was meted out by a third party, enabling the punisher to keep a safe distance.

Peter Gabriel - “We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)”

Despite some reservations, I’m going with Gabriel over the competition because of his ingenious use of 37, the song’s spooky majesty, and its overall place in the rock firmament. Also, it figures prominently in a “Miami Vice” episode. (Ricardo Tubbs portrayer Phillip Michael Thomas was apparently such a Gabriel fan that he reportedly played “In Your Eyes” at his 1989 wedding to Kassandra Green, including a reenactment of the famous Cusack-ian boombox scene, complete with real rain.)

On a far less disturbing note, let me introduce you to the rest of the “37” Club. I was hoping for better things from Game Theory, winners of the 24 crown. At one point in my life, GT’s skewed, psychedelically tinged power pop fulfilled many of most deep-seated needs, but “37th Day” is one of the bass player’s songs, and one of the few not written and sung by bandleader Scott Miller. Miller freely admitted the limitations of his own vocal instrument, so logic would dictate that the bass player in such a band would simply have to have a worse voice than the lead singer, right? Right. Striking a more traditional power pop note, in a more forthright voice, is “Love Song #37” by Ann Arbor’s own Maypops.

Smog - "37 Pushups"

The ramshackle “37 Pushups” by Smog grows on you, like bracken, with its scrape-y violins and the beleaguered-sounding Bill Callahan singing bleakly humorous lines: “I feel like Travis Bickle/listening to Highway to Hell/It’s a shitty little tape I taped off the radio…37 pushups/in a winter-rates seaside motel.” Similarly bleak yet lacking humor, are “37 Hours” by former Throwing Muse Kristin Hersh (sample lyric: “I dropped a cigarette in my shoe and dove in the water”), and “Number Thirty-Seven” by Odes, from their lone release on Merge Records.

Kool Keith - "Black 37"

The strange cocktail that is “Black 37” by Mr. Nogatco (aka Kool Keith) is distinctive indeed, with cheesy sci fi-movie dialogue segueing abruptly into heavy-metal crunch chords and a lusty, impressionistic rap (“Her bra’s made o’ mink/her panties fur is a bear/My eye contact is everything I touch/I wanna lick her hair.”) Kool Keith would probably dig La Polla, a punk band from the Basque Country whose fractious career spanned three decades. This is not meant as a dis, but “Tumba 37” from Toda La Puta Vida Igual (1999) is exactly how Green Day would sound dubbed into Spanish. Cleveland-area electronic music maven Jon Sonnenberg gives us the moody, blipped-out “Channel 37,” and finally, “Size 37” is by a band called Granger that I can find next to nothing about (surprising in this day and age). The band’s sole release, Underwater Hum, was released by Shanachie, one of the world’s largest independent labels, which is known for just about every other genre but indie rock. But that’s what this is, and it’s surprisingly tuneful, with touches of New Pornographer-type harmonies and a comforting jangle, yet not quite audacious enough to knock down a heavyweight.

So world, here’s your number 37. Have a look.

Please continue.

The experiment requires that you continue.

It is absolutely essential that you continue.

You have no other choice. You must go on.

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

One doesn’t have to search far and wide to find a prominent instance of the number 36 in popular music. Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is one of the most celebrated recordings of the past 20 years, its name derived from the seminal kung fu flick 36 Chambers of Shaolin. But in absence of a numerical song title, I can only tip my hat meekly and say rules are rules. When Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry tipped his cap, he had to avoid smearing the Vaseline he kept on the inside, to keep batters swinging and missing. He was no big fan of the rules, but the Giants still retired no. 36 in honor of the crafty hurler, the first man to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues. I realize the connection to 36 is tenuous at best, but you don’t have to be a baseball fan to appreciate that 36 is the golden mean of women’s breast size.

the Violent Femmes - "36-24-36"

According to a week’s worth of research, 36 is the dimension at which songwriters begin writing songs explicitly about measurements. Put it this way: there are zero songs that celebrate the measurements “35-24-36,” but I’ve found half a dozen or so that begin with 36. “36-24-36” by the Violent Femmes, an early track included in the band’s exhaustive career retrospective Add it Up, is a cheerfully libidinous ode to the meaning of life as manifest in breast, hips, and waist size. The Shadows have a typically twang-tastic instrumental with the same title, while Bobby “Blue” Bland (or, as he’s introduced in “36-22-36,” “the man, I mean the MAN, the sensational, the incomparable, the dynamic” Bobby…Bobby Bland!”) clearly liked his ladies a little leaner than the Femmes. His sly ode is imbued with the palpable joy and vocal tremble that only true lasciviousness can bring. ZZ Top prefer the same dimensions advocated by Professor Bland, although on the refrain, the hirsute trio amend the title phrase winkingly to “Thirty-six eighteeen thirty-six!” Now, that would be something to see. Listening to Billy Gibbons’s guitar, though, so thick and nasty you can practically taste bilgewater, it struck me that the line between these guys and cooler-than-cool outfits like Queens of the Stone Age is not as clear as one would think.

Searching for songs with 36 in their titles has yielded more than its share of aural oddities, like “Prep Gwarlek 36” from Aphex Twin’s prolix collection Drukqs, which is as weird an unapproachable as it sounds, and Killing Joke’s “S.0.36,” from the band’s self-named 1980 debut. A spiky colossus of a song, “S.O.36” is a good representation of the sound of Killing Joke, described by its original drummer as “the sound of the earth vomiting.” Still, when it comes to eruptions from the bowels of the earth, Carly Simon said it best: nobody does it better [than Killing Joke.] I know that was weird, but I just had a strong urge to juxtapose Carly Simon and ‘bowels of the earth.’

Killing Joke - "S.O.36"

I know there are some Placebo fans out there chomping at the bit for “36 Degrees” to snatch up the 36 crown, but I can’t let that happen. I’ll never get used to the voice of Molko, and the over-serious way he delivers lines like ‘Shoulders toes and knees/I’m 36 degrees,” which simply takes all the fun out of exercising to this song in the first place.

Os Mutantes have been called the Beatles of Brazil, and seen in that light, “Dia 36” clearly demonstrates how even the (actual) Beatles’ most negligible efforts, dreary pap like “Blue Jay Way,” had a global influence. Closer to home, the emphatic “Thirty-Six” by Brooklyn’s Man in Gray makes me want to smash stuff up. Something about vocalist Christina Da Costa’s seen-it-all snarl recalls the great unheralded Columbus, Ohio, trio Scrawl. If only I could figure out what it has to do with 36...

It doesn’t really matter. I’ve had a 36 song picked out for a long time. It comes to us from one of the best albums of the new wave era, Nick Lowe’s Jesus of Cool, or as it was known in the U.S., Pure Pop for Now People. When he released his first LP, Nick Lowe was already a bona fide force, a guy who could pull off calling a solo record Jesus of Cool and not get laughed at. A key figure in the English pub rock movement, which predated punk and in some ways served as a model of punk’s DIY spirit, then the in-house producer for Stiff Records, where he produced critical early releases by bands like the Damned, Elvis Costello and the Pretenders, Lowe was primed to flex his muscles as a truly ace songwriter in 1978, with a take on pure pop that was well attuned to the charms of ‘60s radio and yet also highly insolent.

Nick Lowe - "36 Inches High"

The one song not written or co-written by Lowe on that collection is a truly odd thing called “36 Inches High,” by the singer-songwriter Jim Ford, whom Lowe cites as his biggest influence. I checked out some of a recent reissue of Ford’s work, and can see what Lowe sees in this under-the-radar original, namely, a rootsy, authentic quality and a strange sense of humor. Originally an academic, Ford had the good sense to pitch that career choice and hit San Francisco in the golden year of 1966. Soon his songwriting abilities came to the notice of an enterprising record company owner. His recorded work made nary a ripple, but Ford’s songs were recorded by some of the greats and several very-very goods, including Bobby Womack, Aretha Franklin, The Ventures, Ron Wood, and Dave Edmunds. Ford moved in some interesting circles; he dated Bobbie Gentry of “Ode to Billie Joe” fame (Ford claimed he wrote the song), hung out with Sly Stone during the most mad years of the Family Stone, and produced exactly one record—1969’s Harlan County, a long-time cult item, re-released this year with a slew of extra tracks, under the title The Sounds of Our Time.

Jim Ford - "36 Inches High"

Fact is, though, if it weren’t for this column I probably wouldn’t have tracked down the original “36 Inches High.” I’m glad I did. Ford does “36 High” almost a capella; there’s just some steel guitar, a touch of strumming and picking, and his plangent tenor, while Lowe’s cover adds a turgid rhythm pattern and some interesting sonic touches. For the first two verses, “36 Inches High” seems to be saying something pretty deep, offering tersely detailed sketches of an epic life. Then, in the end, we see it’s all an elaborate ruse designed to give flight to the joke-y third verse. It’s one of those crazy jumps in logic that songs sometimes take that leave you going ‘What the hell just happened?’ even after you’ve heard them a million times. Like in “Band of Gold” when Freda Payne goes from new bride to sleeping on the couch in the time it takes to take a breath. I give the nod to Nick’s version because it succeeds as an inventive cover, adding flesh to the bare-bones song, as well as being part of a critical run of songs on a classic LP, but I tip my cap to Jim Ford for writing this deeply singular musical conundrum.

Once I was a soldier

l rode on a big white horse

Silver pistols at my side

Carryin' the flags of war

And I Iost track of the men who fell

In the cannon's roar

I never got over bein' a soldier

Once I was a tax man

Collectin' dollars and dimes

I heard the rich man grumble

I heard the poor man cry

Some few couldn't afford to pay

Were put to a shackle and key

I never got over bein' a tax man

Once I was a ruler

About twelve inches long

Three times me made a yardstick

36 inches high

36 inches high was I

36 inches high

I never got over 36 inches high

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Reaching 35 in this column feels like an accomplishment, and maybe that’s because society itself sees reaching 35 that way. After all, once you reach the age of 35 (if you were born in the U.S.A. and a non-felon) you can hold the highest office in this great nation of ours. If you’ve been married for 35 years, tradition holds that well-wishers festoon you with coral as an anniversary gift, and you don’t have to be a clownfish or a sea anemone to know that coral is pretty special. Speaking of reefs, the winning 35 song has been closely linked to marijuana use, but upon closer inspection, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what the meaning of “stoned” is.

Thirty-five is well represented in the jazz milieu as a location, with the great Jelly Roll Morton (“35th Street Blues”), boogie-woogie pianist Jimmy Yancey (“35th & Dearborn”) and multi-instrumentalist Benny Carter (“35th and Calumet”) all taking the street address angle. For those who desire a more modern, and shitty, take on this theme, check out “The F-35” from Marco Beltrami’s dynamic score to Live Free or Die Hard. If you listen really closely you can hear Bruce Willis (channeling his Bruno persona) laying down backward-masked harmonica licks. Or maybe that’s just a smokin’ synth.

Aesop Rock - "11:35"

“At exactly 11:35 PM on January 21st some shit went down…” raps Aesop Rock on “11:35,” and after about 11 listens I still don’t know what that shit is. In terms of subject matter, “11:35” has a good deal in common with Jim Carroll’s immortal list song “People Who Died,” but it’s such a sprawl that the notion of the simultaneity of these events, proclaimed so deliberately at the outset, is abandoned. Still, as far as songs that deal with prison rape go, it’s ahead of the curve.

I hope you won’t hold it against me when I say I know next to nothing about Against Me!, the Gainsville, Florida, punk outfit that, apparently, many people dig. Sometimes things just fall through the cracks. The band just released its fourth LP, on Sire Records, produced by ‘90s studio god Butch Vig. “Tonight I’m Gonna Give it 35%” is a pleasingly gruff anthem that I can totally get behind, not least for lines like “It’s got me on my knees in a bathroom/praying to a god I don’t even believe in.”

AC Newman - "35 in the Shade"

The Slow Wonder, the solo outing by New Pornographers kingpin AC Newman, is a consistently strong collection that, at its best, rivals and even surpasses the power pop glories of his main outfit. “35 in the Shade” makes for a rousing closer, but to these ears, this head-banger lacks the subtlety, the velvet-glove-cast-in-iron appeal of Mr. Newman’s finest work.

The minimalist “Bit 35” from Broadcast’s fine Tender Buttons is a muted instrumental that evokes nothing so much as the slow lane of the Autobahn. It’s a slight but sublime trifle that passes from view too quickly. For the sake of thirty-fivular competists out there, I’ll mention the lachrymose “$35” by the sometimes-transporting Aluminum Group, “I Die at 35” by Boston death metalists Beyond the Sixth Seal, and “35 Years From Alpha,” the title track from a 1999 release by Jamaican sax man “Deadly” Headley Bennett. And then there’s the pensive atmospheric “Poem 35 & 36” by Penny Rimbaud, a member of the UK anarcho-punk outfit Crass. Led by the vocal trio of Steve Ignorant, Eve Libertine and Joy de Vivre, Crass churned out several LPs beginning in the first wave of punk, including Stations of the Crass and Christ the Album. If the band had had a hit in the ‘90s, they would have been Chumbawumba, but Crass broke up, according to plan, in 1984.

It may sound crass, but none of these songs holds a candle to our winning song. Bob Dylan has already come close to claiming a spot on this list, first with “Positively 4th Street,” which would have made a dandy no. 4 winner, but in the early rounds, to winnow the field down a bit, I restricted winners to songs in which the number is actually sung, and true to form, the often inscrutable Dylan never mentions “4th” (or “Positively” or “Street,” for that matter). His “Seven Days” just wasn’t quite up to snuff to win that fiercely contested slot, and “Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35” was, at that point, out of contention. But a wise numerologist hedges his bets, rewrites the rules when necessary, and repeats what Pee-Wee Herman said after tumbling off his bike ass over teakettle: “I meant to do that.”

I’ll admit that “Rainy Day Woman” is not one of my favorite Dylan songs, not by a long shot, but all the signs point to it being the definitive 35 song. The recent release of the heavily anticipated Todd Haynes anti-biopic I’m Not There certainly tells me we are experiencing yet another collective Dylan moment, and besides, it’s a major song by any definition. In 1966, a single by the biggest singer in the world, with the refrain “Everybody must get stoned!” was just the kind of thing to give broadcasters fits, and while the song wasn’t nearly as explicit as “Eight Miles High,” it created a stir and no doubt fueled many a pot party in its heyday. It’s also for notable for being the lead track on the landmark Blonde on Blonde LP, and for being the only Dylan song to employ a brass band. Beyond that, RDW12&35 is a glorious goof and certainly one of the best of Dylan’s overtly comedic songs. In a few years the Funny Dylan (Todd Haynes flirted with a Funny Dylan sequence, but apparently Bobcat Goldthwait was unavailable) was all but gone, replaced by Grouchy Dylan (Brian Dennehey).

But what about those numbers? In fittingly Dylanesque fashion, the numbers in the title are open to interpretation. When he sings the refrain, his pronouncement is greeted by what I imagine to be a Tom Waits-ian crew of colorfully frocked revelers, reacting with the kind of enthusiasm that greets Neil Young when he warbles “And I felt like getting high” in “After the Gold Rush,” Roger Daltrey when he wails, “We’re all wasted” in “Baba O’Reilly,” and Tom Petty in that “let’s smoke another joint” song. But the sound of song—the stumbling tempo, ramshackle instrumentation, and impromptu shouts, hoots, laughs, and catcalls—is more suggestive of a barroom sing-along than a bacchanalian smoke-out. The verses certainly don’t paint a stoned scenario; they allude to a certain inevitability, but of what? Being found out? Misunderstood? Screwed over? Who is the “they” he keeps referring to? Is it The Man? Rapacious women? The increasingly intrusive public? Adherents to the marijuana theory point to the numbers in the title—12 and 35—which multiplied together equal 420. You may not know this, I certainly didn’t, but 420 is a certifiable slangy reference to pot use. According to Michael Horowitz of Flashback Books, a repository of rare books, periodicals, and artifacts related to the drug experience, “the phrase was first used by a group of pot-smoking teens at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California c. 1975 to denote the time they would meet to share a joint after classes.” Dylan’s song predates this usage by almost a decade. Who’s right? If anyone out there has anything to add about this cannabis-related conundrum, please don’t bogart it. Pass it on to me.

Bob Dylan - "Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35"

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

And now, the first inductees into the 34 Hall of Fame: Miracle on 34th Street, the heartwarming 1947 Christmas bauble starring Natalie Wood, Complex 34, the site where the early Apollo space missions were launched, and David Ortiz’s jersey.

Where does that leave us? With the “34 Blues.” While I can truly dig the blues, I am no aficionado of it. Truth be told, it’s not the kind of thing I tend to play a lot of at home. It’s a genre that many folks, including one of my esteemed MS colleagues, cannot embrace because “all the songs sound the same.” There is some validity to this point of view, but to put it in terms that these people might understand, that’s like criticizing New Order for being repetitive. It’s what you do with the repetition, and what you do within the strictures of a musical style, that counts.

Charley Patton - "34 Blues"

“34 Blues” comes from a seminal figure in 20th century music: Charley Patton the Father of the Delta Blues, a hard-living, corn liquor-swilling, woman-chasing brawler whose from-the-gut bellow could be heard for hundreds of yards, without amplification, and whose influence extends from Robert Johnson to Howlin’ Wolf to Jimi Hendrix to any number of modern-day bands trading in primordial stomps and icky thumps. More than a musical innovator, he was an incredible showman. He played the guitar on his knees, behind his head, and would throw it in the air and catch it between his legs (and not bean himself like the dude in Nirvana) long before anyone dreamed of mistreating a guitar that way. Patton often used it as a drum, simply pounding on it for long stretches to keep the beat going during the wild Saturday night dance parties where he played. All the stories about Patton indicate he was as cantankerous as the U.S. general with whom he shared a surname. When one of the loose women he ran with gave him lip, he was apt to clock her on the head with his guitar. He was only about 5’ 5’’ but he was always ready to throw down.

Listening to Charley Patton and reading about his life is to learn how the blues evolved, and like Patton’s story, it is a compelling tale. In the 1920s the music industry saw the commercial potential in blues music and brought proponents of a more homogenized, sophisticated style of the blues to the cities, while players in the Deep South, like Patton, played a more raw, open-ended, rhythmically complex style. The homogenized urban style—with its 12-bar structure and predictable turnarounds—is what makes all blues sound more or less the same, but to my ears, the more raw Delta style feels less pat.

When the Depression came, the industry turned its back on the blues, and people like Patton remained unheard outside of the juke joints and parties. It was only as the economy began to turn around that the industry came calling. In the last year of his life, Patton was brought to New York to record his songs. No tapes of the sessions remain; his entire recorded output has been transferred from 78s so scratched and abused they make the lowest-fi stylings of GBV and Pavement sound like Trevor Horn productions. But that’s part of the charm; the songs are like living fossils, ancient and yet alive with passion and sorrow.

Patton’s songs were about drinking and fighting, womanizing and being thrown in jail. In moments of weakness he would repent and swear to follow the Bible, but would soon return to his lowdown ways. Only toward the end of his life did he begin to yearn for a bit of stability. “34 Blues” is a lament for a particularly cruel year. He goes broke, his car gets taken away, and he has to go back to pushing a plow on a farm. Of course he doesn’t say that 1934 is the year he died, but he does not sound like a man with a lot of time left.

“I ain’t gonna tell nobody, ’34 have done for me/I ain’t gonna tell nobody what/ ’34 have done for me/Took my roller, I was broke as I could be.”

Patton’s lyrics are very difficult to decipher. A few words come through, but the overall meaning is easily understood. His voice was a musical instrument, whose scarred timbre and haunting resonance was his and his alone. Hearing the sound of this man singing provides a visceral charge, a sense of the rough beauty of what it felt like to be in the room when he was making music.

It’s not as if “34 Blues” is the only 34 song out there; it’s just by far the best one. After repeated digging, I can only offer the following odd assemblage of mostly instrumental thirty-fouria: “M 34” by the estimable Ennio Morricone, which sounds right at home on Spaghetti Westerns Vol. 1; the Dave Matthews Band’s gently picked “#34,” perfect background music for a scene in which the title character of “House” sits in his apartment popping Vicodin and working out a chess problem, and a couple of songs from genres that I will only invoke in case of emergency: jazz (Bill Evans Trio: “34 Skidoo”) and hardcore (A Global Threat: “Channel 34” and Gorilla Biscuits: “34 34 34 34 34 34 34 34,” although the latter piece—a brief mash-up of a skipping CD and muddy hardcore riffs—has some obtuse charm.) I should also mention “Voyage 34” by Porcupine Tree, a 64-minute “extended single” that simulates the ill-fated 34th acid trip taken by a young man named Brian. The suite is divided into four phases and floats through sonic territory that will be familiar to fans of the Orb. The brainchild of English multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree’s prog-metal-indie hybrid Fear of a Blank Planet has garnered favorable attention and new fans for this prolific band (myself included) of late.

Porcupine Tree - "Voyage 34" (Phase One)

In the first phase, after Brian and his fellow travelers ingest their sugar cubes, the music that kicks in sounds like an acid house version of “Another Brick in the Wall,” and the Floyd connection remains palpable throughout the journey, with voices fading in and out, lots of wailing guitar, and an encompassing outer space vibe. Whether it would make a good soundtrack to a real LSD trip is something I’d rather not know. If I’m on high acid and I press “Play,” hearing something that begins, “This remarkable, sometimes incoherent, transcript illustrates a phantasmagoria of fear, terror, grief, exultation, and finally, breakdown…” would send me scrambling across the room in search of my Lemon Jelly CD.

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, rock & roll’s heart used to beat at a rate of 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. Yet I am hard-pressed to proffer more than a smattering of candidates for the #33 crown. And the immediate numerical weather forecast calls for continued lack of a bountiful harvest. But take heart: I see it this way: we are skipping across a very wide pond. There are fewer rocks out here than closer to shore, but we have no choice but to keep leaping from rock to rock, confident that we will get to the other side without having to land on any shitty rocks or falling in. I have an abiding belief that a quality rock exists for every number in this pond and that we are going to land on them. (And to think that a mere few columns ago I swore to give up metaphors altogether.)

George Harrison called his 1976 solo record 33 & 1/3 to coincide with his current age, as well as for its vinyl implications. Sadly for this column, there was no title track, but I will confess to a lifelong appreciation of a tuneful bit of fluff called “Crackerbox Palace” from that record, probably because it reminds me of being young and stupid. It seems necessary to acknowledge the power triumvirate of Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Patrick Ewing, great players who, at a collective height of 21’ 2”—all wore No. 33.

One of the highlights of the ‘90s for me was having Spin magazine print my letter in praise of James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins. But my passion for the band dimmed significantly after I saw them live and had to endure one of Billy Corgan’s anti-crowd rants. My enthusiasm waned further with the overblown Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness. As anyone familiar with reading music criticism in the bathroom will tell you, most double albums are better off as killer one-disc releases, but try telling that to a simpering genius like Billy Corgan and he might spit at you. Regardless, nobody preferred the second disc of Melon Collie (Twilight to Starlight) to the first disc (Dawn to Dusk). As often happens with double sets, Corgan & Co. led with their best (and there is still plenty of detritus on disc one.) Why, if not for “1979,” you could probably just use disc two as a coaster and not miss anything essential. “Thirty Three, ” (track three, disc two) is a limpid, weepy thing, which finds Billy magnanimously singing, “I forgive everyone” before returning swiftly to martyr mode, proclaiming that the earth laughs at “the blasphemy in my jangly walk.” I suppose he’s saying it’s blasphemy to have a spring in your step at the decrepit age of 33, but hey, the earth doesn’t know you’ve got Fables of the Reconstruction playing in your headphones; it just knows you have a jangly walk and, to the earth, that’s very funny.

the Verlaines - "Heavy 33"

Like most of the New Zealand indie scene of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the Verlaines never got their due in the U.S. And unlike the Chills and the Clean, the Verlaines weren’t a good live act—the arrangements were just too baroque to pull off. Two Verlaines songs appeared on a 1993 compilation called No Alternative, a set of B-sides and rarities from Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Matthew Sweet and others (along with a truly awful Stones cover from the Goo Goo Dolls): “Heavy 33” and a fine cover of “Joed Out” by indie chanteuse Barbara Manning (lead singer of 28th Day, winner of this column’s #25 spot). From the unresolved opening chords, “Heavy 33” finds the Verlaines in pensive territory, with Graeme Downes sounding like he’s singing from the ledge of a tall building. By the end, what began as a dirge has gained force and strength, the despair turning into a sense of sullen resolve. Too bad the group never released anything this good again.

Stereolab - "Peng! 33"

Not many people have covered Stereolab songs. Perhaps it’s that too much is distinct about the group’s sound and the interplay of the two vocalists, and the overall tonalities just don’t seem to lend themselves to easy reinterpretation or reenactment. Enter Iron & Wine, aka Samuel Beam, whose fuzzy acoustic style seems to render everything he touches into an Iron & Wine song. His cover of Stereolab’s “Peng! 33” succeeds in doing just that. I didn’t think it was possible to hear a Stereolab song and not think of the voices of Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen, but somehow, in a feat of musical alchemy Mr. Beam has excised the Can and inserted the campfire. Perhaps he was drawn to the simplicity of the words, which manage to sound less like Marxist platitudes and more like straightforward expressions of optimism:

Curiosity was far greater than our fear. It felt so simple and so prodigious at the same time.

Incredible things are happening in the world. Magical things are happening in this world.

Across the river there are all kinds of magical instruments. While really we keep living like monkeys.

Incredible things are happening in this world. Magical things are happening in this world.

We can be grateful to Stereolab for introducing a slew of previously uncool styles into the indie pop mix, and for singing words like this and getting away with it. Their enchanting singsong was a siren’s call. Imagine how cloying and precious these words would sound coming from the mouth of someone like Bjork. Fortunately, Sam Beam’s beatific whisper proves itself an alluring mode of transport for them.

Iron & Wine - "Peng! 33"

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

After the scanty offerings that 31 offered, it came as a happy surprise to find 32 a veritable wellspring by comparison. Maybe that was to be expected: as any mathematician will tell you, there’s a world of difference between an obstinate prime like 31, and 32, the fifth power of two; something like a longshoreman standing next to Veronica Lake. Thirty-two is a high-profile numeral; it has a publicist. Water freezes at 32 degrees F; there are 32 teeth in the mouth of adult homo sapiens, and lest we forget, there’s the 32 caliber revolver. Ice, chewing and shooting: what more do you want?

Genesis - "The Chamber of 32 Doors"

The wizards behind Genesis had their reasons for choosing 32 as the number of doors in exceedingly Merlin-esque “The Chamber of 32 Doors,” from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The deeper meanings of this lushly designed two-disc concept album set have always eluded me, even as Genesis-loving friends of mine insisted it was the band’s magnum opus. The Lamb was supposed to be about the spiritual journey of a graffiti-scribbling Puerto Rican youth named Rael, but that made no sense, because all of Genesis music emanates from a fog-enshrouded glade in Avalon, right? How could the reedy voice of Peter Gabriel, intoning lines like, “I’d rather trust a country man than a town man” amid a sea of treated keyboards, ever evoke Times Square? To this day, it remains a mystery known only to the robed art rock gods on high.

They Might Be Giants - "32 Footsteps"

They Might Be Giants on the other hand, couldn’t evoke a glade if they (might be) tried. You can’t be wearing pleated pants in a glade and live, and certainly not with those nasal voices and hyper-literate songs about Belgian painters and birdhouses. Although the duo was capable of straightforwardness, “32 Footsteps,” from their eponymous 1986 debut, is the kind of song they’re known for: tricky rhythms, a skewed sensibility and a lot of detail squeezed into a musical miniature. But if you listen closely, you realize it’s just a nerd’s version of a love song.

And then there’s Van Morrison’s “Thirty Two.” You’re probably not familiar with it, which is better for you. When Van was under contract to Bang Records in 1967, he somehow “made good” on his contract by cranking out a bunch of spoken-word crapola that is as devoid of merit as anything ever produced by someone of Van the Man’s stature. Worse by a mile than anything on Dylan’s Self Portrait or the Stones’ Emotional Rescue. Not fascinating, though. Just bad. Similarly spoken-word but far less heinous is Beat poet Kenneth Rexroth’s “State & 32nd,” which still proves more than definitively just why poets should avoid fronting bands, unless they’re Patti Smith or the guy from Prinzhorn Dance School. It’s actually not bad. Rexroth’s voice, aptly described as “crabby” in a review I read, has a sly way with lines like: “Dice girls going home. Whores eating chop suey/Pimps eat chile mac/Drowsy flatfeet/ham and eggs.” And the band is first-rate; it’s just a bit short on hooks.

So is Ani DiFranco’s entire ouevre, voluminous though it may be. In fact, it would almost be surprising if she hadn’t recorded a song with 32 in it. In any case, while I respect the work and the DIY attitude, I’ve never really enjoyed Ani’s music much. Besides, the winner of the 31 spot, “31 Flavors” is all the flavors we need right for awhile.

I enjoy reading about the failures of others as much as the next guy, but the reports of Pete Doherty’s travails are just depressing. Like most people stateside, I am more familiar with this perennial screw-up’s exploits than his music. “32nd December,” by Doherty’s band Babyshambles, sounds as off-the-cuff, apathetic, and definitively English as one would expect, but at least it’s good-natured.

So much has been said about Robert Johnson that it forces one to choose his words carefully. In that respect, he has a lot more in common with Pete Doherty than I initially suspected. In typically dire fashion, Johnson’s “32-20 Blues” is a tale of vengeance, a cocky boast of the damage a big bullet will do to an unfaithful woman. No wonder the Stones covered it.

If I send for my baby, 
man, and she don't come
/All the doctors in Hot Springs 
sure can't help her none

If she gets unruly
 thinks she don't wan do

Take my 32-20 now and 
cut her half in two

Robert Johnson - "32-20 Blues"

The proud sons of Hicksville, WV, known as Karma to Burn, had a song called “32” on Wild Wonderful Purgatory (1999), which consisted solely of numerically named instrumentals, each as fierce as Stephen King’s possessed lawnmower.

But I never even considered any of these songs. The 32 slot has always belonged to The House of Love. When I first encountered the band’s second eponymous CD (the one with the butterfly on it, with “Shine On” and “The Beatles and the Stones”) it struck me as one of the most gorgeous guitar records ever to grace my bright yellow Sony Walkman. Those guitars: a perfect combination of fuzzy and sweet, wailing but warm; and the dark, anguished vocals of Guy Chadwick. Even the name Guy Chadwick was something I considered surpassingly cool.

“32nd Floor” begins with silence and then, like a dropped match that ignites the drapes, roars to glowing life. Ringing guitar lines circle each other in a sensuous two-step, a chin-bobbing beat takes hold, and Guy Chadwick burnished baritone comes in. The words might seem heavy-handed on their own, but in the song they make such perfect sense (in a Ben Hur) kind of way, that you don’t even notice that “mind” rhymes with “mind.”

Money is the heartache, moral is the shame

Duty comes to those who love the numbers and the name

So find the State of Israel, find the State of Rome

Crush the fools, in huts of clay, there's danger in the garden

Take me to your Station, take me through your mind

Drop that code you give me, just let me feel your mind

Take me through the evening, on my 32nd floor

And I'll never ask for more

The years have not diminished the music for me. Nor have the critical summaries I have come across recently, saying the band amounted to a brief fad, a quick flash of chiming guitars before the acid house/rave scene and grunge changed the musical landscape. Maybe so, but guitars that flash this brilliantly will always paint purple-hued visions in my mind’s eye, set my chin bobbing and spread a sly grin on my face. And I’ll never ask for more.

House of Love - "32nd Floor"

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by David Klein at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Now that we’ve reached 31, I am not surprised to hear a chorus of crickets. Thirty-one does not come across as a hot and happening number. If it were a color it would be ecru, but let’s give ecru its due. There’s that sweet baseball legacy: Hall of Famers Ferguson Jenkins and Dave Winfield both wore no. 31, and it’s the number of wins that Denny McLain—a Tigers pitching phenom with the heart of a smalltime crook—won in 1968. Think of it: 31 games. No one has come close since, and with the current “get to the sixth inning” mentality, 31 wins is unlikely to be topped. I wonder what Denny McLain’s entrance music was at Tiger Stadium in 1968.

In my mind, the third of the 44 known Mersenne prime numbers (Mersennes are numbers that are one less than a power of two) suffers from its featured role in that dreary yet useful little rhyme we learned in school: “Thirty days hath September/April, June and November/All the rest have thirty-one/Excepting February alone” (Some rhyme, eh? A white person definitely wrote that.) I guess my associations with the poem are uniformly negative because I tend to recite it when I have to write a check or commit to something.

But let’s not forget, 31 was pretty damned kind to the Baskin-Robbins people (we’ll get to that), and Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs (it was called Songbook in the States) is one great piece of music writing. Even the Beatles got around to making a specific reference to 31, Paul McCartney did anyway, in a song John Lennon famously detested, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Maybe the sticking point was hearing Paul sing the line “PC Thirty-One, says we’ve caught a dirty one/Maxwell stands alone” 31 times before he was satisfied. (PC in this case means police constable, but PC 31 sounds more like an earlier version of Bowie’s TVC15. It was said at the time that TVC15 had something to do with masturbation, and oddly enough, thirty-one is Turkish slang for masturbation, apparently. If anyone knows of a song that incorporates 31 in this particular sense I hope you will alert me, and pronto.)

Let’s summon our inner Buddhist and not dwell on what we lack. Let’s be thankful for our small repast. I feel like a nomadic herdsman rooting through his rucksack and spilling out an austere collection of edible pinecones for all of us to enjoy. First pinecone: “Thirty One Flavors” by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Dig in! It’s a decent enough extended vamp that you can shake your hips to. But that’s about it. The band enjoyed a lot of critical praise in the ‘90s but I never quite got what all the fuss was about. Of course, when I surveyed the arid pickings for 31, I was happy to find a song from a band that many people whom I respect dig, and who knew, maybe this would be the moment where I’d discover JSBE and realize what I’d been missing all these years. Sadly, I remain unconverted.

the Moving Sidewalks - "Pluto, September 31st"

The next morsel—the shimmering, day-glo pinecone—is better known as “Pluto, September 31st” by the Moving Sidewalks, a ‘60s psychedelic outfit that spawned Billy Gibbons of Z.Z. Top. The group had a numerically titled hit in 1967 with “99th Floor,” which first came to my ears via the essential Nuggets collection. “PS31,” from the Sidewalks’ sole album, Flash (1968) is the album’s epic, replete with an echo-drenched, melody-free interlude in the middle and lyrics that rival pre-Shark Sandwich-era Spinal Tap: “A mystic fog is in my eyes/the carpet’s been pulled from under my butt/and as the dark begins to clear/my brain’s reduced to one watt/But slowly it’s all happenin’/my mind might melt today/But don’t relate too late/Just remind your little body you might be late…” Can’t you just hear David St. Hubbins belting this shit out? But say what you will, there’s no denying the song’s kicking groove.

Karma to Burn - "Thirty-One"

That scary-looking pinecone giving off don’t fuck with me vibes? Say hello to “Thirty-One” by Karma to Burn, from a coiled, menacing collection of numerically named instrumentals from 1999, called Wild Wonderful Purgatory. This West Virginia band didn’t muck about with names of songs, or even with words. They just played hard and fierce. Like the other offerings on the record (e.g., “Twenty,” “Twenty Two,” “Three”) “Thirty One” is a multipart head banger that would please both Dave Mustaine and Butthead. All hail not giving a shit about song names. That’s just ballsy. You want a title? Fuck that. Next song! What are we up to? 32? Thirty-two!!!! Keeerraaang!

We’re down to our last pinecone (I promise never to use this or any metaphor again.) The Shirelles were a proto girl group; they were brassy and sassy and tuneful, capable of musical coquettishness as well as what music critic Charlie Gillett termed, “vulnerable and suppliant availability.” They were also favorites of the Beatles. Formed in 1958 as the Poquelles, the Shirelles have already locked up the column’s coveted 21 spot with their frustrated ode to turning 21 and being liberated from all strictures. “31 Flavors” is not quite up to the level of “Twenty-One.” It’s definitely no “Baby it’s You,” and it doesn’t approach the depth of signature singles “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” and “Soldier Boy,” but as infectious trifles go, it’s hard to beat. Even the geniuses behind It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World knew enough to put it on the soundtrack to their tightly plotted epic. I was putty in this song’s hands from its opening purred syllables, “Ya ya ya ya”

Like so many songs of this ilk, the sexual subtext is buried in a lot of ice cream imagery, but I think William Burroughs had something to say about kissing in 31 flavors in Cities of the Red Night, and as I recall, and there was no doubt about what he meant. Then again, Burroughs was never this good a singer, I mean, during his girl-group phase. And gooey as it may be, the song is undeniably sensual. Ice Cream Joe has a few tricks up his sleeve, you can be sure. Obviously the term “31 flavors” is not original; Baskin-Robbins came up with that in 1953 to distinguish it from Ho-Jo’s, which was proud of having 28 flavors. But somehow it’s not irksome in the way it would be if the song had been based on a slogan for say, the Jolly Green Giant or Campbell’s Soup. In this world of 19-game-winning Cy Young Award winners, it’s hard to deny the innocent charms of a song that goes:

I call him Ice Cream Joe

He is the most delicious boy I know

Every time his tasty lips are kissing mine

He gives me 31 flavors

(And we like tutti-frutti best)

And finally, I do realize there’s a Snoop Dogg song by the same name, but this one is better.

the Shirelles - "31 Flavors"

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 get a bit tricky.

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)

Posted by David Klein at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There's been quite a stretch of slain digits on Numerology's altar since I last piped up with a conflicting view. I guess that was to be expected. As the numerals continue to climb, the songs about them decrease. With fewer songs, the chances that two might hold similar sway begin to dwindle. We'll soon be lucky to find a standard bearer for off-brand numbers like 43, and will long for the days that we could lob rhetorical bombs. So, because I might not get another chance for quite some time, at thirty, I'll take a stand. Needless to say, I'm also right.

A few words about the number itself. Thirty is a conflicted number, relatively low in the scheme of things, but with a weight to it that demands a bit of respect. Twenty bucks for a steak or a concert ticket seems about right, but for thirty, whatever it is had better be amazing. Waiting for twenty minutes is a bit annoying, but get held up a full half hour, and it's a gripe worth angrily repeating. Then there's the notion of age, perhaps the ol' Roman triple x's most dominant cultural connotation. As I quickly speed towards it myself, and continue to amass pals who easily disprove the touched upon aspersions on over-thirty trustworthiness, it increasingly seems like no big deal. But, then again, "Get it together, you're a twenty-seven year old man!" just doesn't have that same shameful sting that an inserted thirty would bring. It seems to me that all things being equal, a victorious representative should carry a bit of gravitas.

I've got nothing against Chuck Berry, or his winning entry, "30 Days." It's undeniably fun, for sure, but I'd never place it amongst Berry's legendary best. It's got the boogie piano, it's got the velvet howls, it screams out our number again and again. But it's missing the indelible narrative of a track like "Johhny B. Goode" or "You Never Can Tell." If another choice were present that had equal or greater artistic merit, and also the weight I was looking for, I wouldn't hesitate to leave it behind.

Klein's runner up was Pere Ubu's apocalyptic "30 Seconds Over Tokyo." It stand as a monument to urban dread; post punk music from before punk had fully cemented itself into the public consciousness. But really, there are some problems with PU's track that knock it a notch or two lower than Berry's second tier. First and foremost, the creeping tension of its central guitar line is never really given the chance for release. Around the two minute mark, when you're expecting the song to provide the sonic destruction that its title implies, the momentum completely derails into a free form wank fest that was probably inspired by Zappa, Beefheart, or some other jerk who hates workable song structure. The menacing lead re-enters, but :40 seconds later we're back in some kind of goofy hoedown that evokes clowns under the big top more than bombers over Japan. When the cool part of the song finally snaps back, our interest has already flatlined. It's like they had the structural kernel of an all-time classic and got way too far up their own asses to pull it off. It was nailed once though, just not by Pere Ubu.

While the CBGB's brand was taking its first steps in New York, Cleveland was ruled by Rocket From the Tombs. (They are not to be confused with with the shitty Rocket From the Crypt, though their name choice is indeed puzzlingly lame.) The band only existed for roughly eight months and never got around to making an actual record, but the shadow they cast on Midwestern punk rock is long and deep. RFTT's definitive line up was stocky Ubu frontman David Thomas--then going by the ridiculously awesome stage name Crocus Behemoth, Cleveland scenester supreme Peter Laughner, Craig Bell--bassist for local punks Mirrors, and two soon-to-be founding members of scuzz rock stalwarts, Dead Boys; drummer Johnny "Madman" Madansky and Gene O'Connor, ultimately known as Cheetah Chrome. There were alot of internal tensions in that group, that in retrospect make their early demise seem obvious. How could the regressive Stooges pounding of the Dead Boys sit side by side with Crocus' art rock freak show? How would Laughner's earnest Lou Reed-as-a-singer-songwriter schtick go down when singing beside a three hundred pound monster in a judge's robe and a pair of skinny glitter-sick gutter punks? Though the fantasy tracklist for an imaginary Rocket LP (imagine a side one containing both "Final Solution" and "Sonic Reducer") would have placed the band in the highest echelon of 70's rock, the center ultimately couldn't hold.

The only real document of the band's prowess is a 2002 compilation entitled, The Day the Earth Met the... Rocket From the Tombs. Cobbled together from fuzzy live performances and a surprisingly good 1975 practice session, it gives only a glimpse into what could have been. For the uninitiated, here are two tracks to demonstrate the group's breadth. "Sonic Reducer" is basically unchanged from the caveman thud of its eventual DB's version. Laughner, who would be an actual dead boy due to drug abuse shortly hereafter, has a grungy sincerity that would later be covered by Axl Rose and blatantly appropriated by Jeff Tweedy on Wilco's "Misunderstood."

Rocket From the Tombs - "Sonic Reducer"

Rocket From the Tombs - "Amphetamine"

Then there's RFTT's version of "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," which, like the rest of their songs, was never released under the name of its original makers. This recording, again taken from the '75 tape, is worse in terms of audio fidelity, but better in every other sense than its Ubu counterpart. You have to remember that this band still had the untidy rock heart of the Dead Boys stuck in its chest. Cheetah and the Madman wouldn't stand for the Trout Mask circle jerk that completely derails Prof. Klein's runner-up. Here, when the song is shaken from Laughner's creeping lead, it's inherited by Chrome's wild flailing. The crawling lead in is actually given the violent pay off that we expect, thanks to the in the red explosiveness of the 'Boys. The star is still Peter's snaking guitar and Crocus' increasingly unhinged delivery, but when it returns here, it really feels like our men have taken some enemy fire. It's raw and it's primal, and it was recorded during rehearsal. This is how this band sounded in practice. The difference between the two versions is the thin line between unrealized potential and a compromised reality.

For thirty, that just seems right.

Rocket From the Tombs - "30 Seconds Over Tokyo"

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 get a bit tricky.

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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For a brief period at the height of hippiedom, “never trust anyone over 30” was one of the favorite aphorisms of young Americans. To be sure, it constituted one of the more detailed pronouncements of a generation that pioneered theretofore uncharted usages of “like,” “I mean,” and “you know,” and tended to gravitate to catch-phrases like “out of sight” and “too much” and “far out” rather than outright sentences. An obvious exception is Timothy Leary’s “tune in, turn on and drop out,” but no one ever took credit for “never trust anyone over 30.” Probably because he or she turned 30 and it suddenly seemed pretty stupid. No one has named a song after this nugget of pop cultural ephemera either, and that seems a shame.

Most 30 songs relate to measurement of some kind: days, seconds, and if you’re Simple Minds, “30 Frames a Second,” which is a lot more paranoid and robotic than you might imagine if all you’ve ever heard was their tuneful Breakfast Club anthem “(Don’t You) Forget About Me.” Even more upsetting than the sight of Judd Nelson’s nostrils flaring in that 1985 John Hughes vehicle is “Thirty Whacks” by the Dresden Dolls, a haunting cabaret-style take on the Lizzie Borden story, which contains this splendid line, “How did I manage to station myself in harm’s way/and only get hit with a ticket for loitering that I have no way to pay?” Tom Waits roars through “16 Shells From Thirty-Ought Six” in his most Howlin’ Wolf mode, hurling Beat gems as he goes but it’s at least as 16-ish as it is 30ish. “30 Days in the Hole” by Humble Pie, whom Peter Frampton left for solo glory, is a big lazy jam set to a decent-enough groove, if you like Bad Company, and sounds like a bunch of heavily bearded musicians on a stage shouting themselves hoarse for a contract-satisfying double-live release. Bow Wow Wow’s ode to cassette tapes, “C30, C60, C90” is the musical equivalent of a mouthful of pop rocks, a fizzy burst of disposable fun, but it lacks essential 30-ness. And our shortest entry, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 14-second spoken-word piss-take called “Thirty Dirty Birds,” from 1985’s Freaky Styley, reveals just how elusive a New York accent can be for Michigan natives like Anthony Kiedis.

The two major contenders for the 30 crown couldn’t be further apart. In one corner is a harrowing, hallucinogenic sprawl written about the first U.S. bombing raid on Japan in World War II, and in the other, a Chuck Berry song. It’s hard to believe both were spawned in the same universe.

Continue reading "Numerology: The Big Three - Oh" »

Posted by David Klein at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

by David Klein

It feels appropriate that as I struggle to put together a proper survey of songs featuring the number 29, we are smack dab in the dog days of summer, a time when I traditionally feel that I’ve had too much of a good thing and start longing for the crispness and less jaded priorities of fall, as well as the feeling of wearing a jean jacket again. My late-summer listlessness has found expression in a less-than-critical but still heartfelt list, which appears oddly enough on the 29th of August. That being said, I am relieved to be able to report that I did find a song I can respect in the morning.

Sorry, all you wheezy, goateed nighthawks in your porkpie hats, our winner is not “Twenty Nine Dollars” by Tom Waits. I dig Tom Waits, his albums, I mean, and he was really excellent in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. But this sleepy blues number, sporting a refrain (“All you’ve got is twenty-nine dollars/and an alligator purse”) that’s growled out with boozy gusto, could hardly be called essential Waits. Less essential still is “29,” the name of a song AND an album by prolific, recently sober rocker Ryan Adams. Transparently based on the Grateful Dead’s “Truckin,’” both musically and lyrically (even down to mentions of cocaine and getting busted) the entirety of this heavy-handed tale of drug abuse and getting straight can’t hold a candle to Dead’s nimble opening image of “Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street.”

29 Palms is the name of a small city in the Mojave Desert that is home to the Joshua Tree National Park, where Bono & Co. glowered and squinted their way to black and white glory in 1987, and where the Stones took mushrooms and wore ponchos and watched for UFOs with Gram Parsons in an earlier decade. Other things happened there too, but those seem the most relevant. What all this has to do with “29 Palms” by Robert Plant is hard to say. It’s a dreamy, innocuous ballad that enjoyed chart success in 1993, but as much of a Zeppelin fan as I am, my interest in post-Zep Robert Plant is roughly commensurate with my utter indifference toward Mick Jagger’s solo record. It’s not clear if Plant’s song title had something to do with “The Lady From 29 Palms,” a chestnut about an untouchable tease dating from the ‘40s that was sung by people like Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra. It’s corny and it’s dated, but TLF29P boasts a praiseworthy numerical lyrical structure:

She got twenty-nine Cadillacs, baby

Twenty-nine sables from Saks and them Cadillacs

Twenty-nine fellas who never had their arms

Around the lady from 29 Palms

Goes Cube - "Goes Cube Song 29"

Oh, I should say that the numerically minded, totally happening Brooklyn outfit known as Goes Cube have a 29 song on its fairly recent EP with the chuckle-inducing name of Beckon the Dagger God. It’s called “Goes Cube Song 29,” but then, all the band’s songs are named for numbers, i.e., “Goes Cube Song 30,” “Goes Cube Song 46,” and that one you can’t get out of your head, “Goes Cube Song 34.” The only problem with this numerically nomenclative predilection is that the numbers are not reflected in the songs at all. There’s no “29-ness” to “Goes Cube Song 29.” Ditto the utterly catchy “Goes Cube Song 34.” Unless the evil-sounding shrieks unleashed by singer Dave Obuchowski represent the sheer panic that sets in as one contemplates the decade after one turns 29. But I doubt it.

Deniz Tek, the leader of legendary Australian punkers Radio Birdman, could not possibly have added to his cult status with songs like “Hit 29” from 1998’s Equinox. A queasy hybrid of metal riffs and lounge lizard licks, this ponderous non-hit would almost surely alienate both constituencies. But compared to the Rembrandts’ “April 29” (rhymes with “everything is fine”) “Hit 29” is “A Day in the Life.”

Willie Dixon - "Twenty-Nine Ways"

In “Twenty-Nine Ways,” blues titan Willie Dixon boasts that nothing can keep him from his baby’s door, and he ticks off the various ways he has of getting there: “One through the basement/two down the hall/ When the going get tough/I got a hole in the wall.” While we are not given exact numerical evidence (he only mentions about a dozen ways), we have to take the singer’s word for it when he says there’s a reason he’s not laying all of his cards on the table: “A lot of good ways I don’t want you to know/I’ve even got a hole in the bathroom floor.” It’s hard to imagine that Paul Simon didn’t take the central idea of Dixon’s song and flip it around when he wrote “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” In his ubiquitous mid-‘70s radio staple from Still Crazy After All These Years, Simon enumerates the many ways of getting out that very same door. Coincidence? I wonder. But there’s no debate about the sturdy appeal of the Willie Dixon song, which sings the praises of the 10th prime number like no other.

Koko Taylor, whose signature hit, “Wang Dang Doodle,” has been covered by everyone from the Dead to the Nuge to the estimable Polly Jean Harvey, sang perhaps the definitive version of Dixon’s song, with the longer title “Twenty-Nine Ways (To My Baby’s Door)” on her self-titled1969 LP, which Dixon produced. In the ensuing decades, “29 Ways” has been covered by blues outfits ad infinitum, as well as a host of singers with bluesy leanings. But the fact that it’s been covered by both ‘70s actress Susan Anton (that’s right. Susan Anton, of Goldengirl) as well as Jim Belushi, who couldn’t possibly be a good singer, speaks to the appeal of this song, which even people whose best talent isn’t singing are just dying to wrap their vocal chords around.

In any case, the point of this excursion has always been to find not just the best song for every number up to 100, but a good song, too. “Twenty-Nine Ways (To My Baby’s Door”) is both definitive and good and unarguably the best 29 song ever written. Ever ever ever! Take that, Ryan Adams. My work is done here.

Koko Taylor -"Twenty Nine Ways (To My Baby's Door)"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

by David Klein

Being asked to veer away from my inexorable numerical path for a moment and take a giant leap on behalf of Merry Swankster’s 1,000th post is both an honor and a welcome respite. To those of you who are paying attention, this week I am poised to take a good hard look at the handful of musical offerings with the number 29 in their titles, so if this isn’t a good time for a digression, I don’t know what is. In any case, may MS continue to thrive and mutate for another thousand posts at least.

What does a thousand mean? It means a grand, a thou, a Grover Cleveland. It’s an iconic number. A thousand years is ten centuries. It would take a thousand-yard-stare to take it all in. But with a number this beautifully simple—just zeroes, a one and a comma—there has to be a song to do it justice, right?

Right. But first, just place these imaginary headphones on and feast your virtual ears on a deuce of angry ‘thou songs from the grunge years: “Room a Thousand Years Wide” from Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, and the Offspring’s “A Thousand Days” from the 1989 self-titled debut. A little too manic this early in the morning? Try this one, from the 1997 debut by the Stereophonics, a Welsh trio led by the wonderfully raspy-voiced singer Kelly Jones, which opens up with “A Thousand Trees,” a passionate and tuneful blast that still packs a punch, while making the irrefutable argument that, “It only takes one tree/to make a thousand matches/Only takes one match/to burn a thousand trees.” The wistful “A Thousand Miles Away” by the Heartbeats has been used in a thousand ‘50s movies. You know it, “You’re a thousand miles a-way-hey…” I think of a post-Opie, pre-Richie Cunningham Ron Howard in American Grafitti when I hear this one. Far less tolerable is “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton, which seems tailor-made for on-air promos for the Lifetime Channel. Country crooner Lefty Frizzell swore to his beloved that “I Love You a Thousand Ways,” while the gravelly voiced, NYC-based singer-songwriter Jim Allen, who regularly earns vocal comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, assures us that there are “A Thousand Ways” to kill a man.

Before we get to the best thousand song of all time, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the honorary best thousand album of all time award goes to Guided By Voices for Bee Thousand. (Apparently there is indeed a song called “Bee Thousand”—Robert Pollard wrote it while unconscious in a puddle behind a Dayton 7-11—but even my esteemed colleague Mr. Klingman is having trouble tracking it down.) Here to accept the award for B1000 the album is Charles “Echos” Myron, the real-life subject of GBV’s cryptic “Echos Myron.” Take a bow, Myron. Do you have anything to say? “Shit yeah, it’s cool.” Thank you, Echos.

I bet Echos Myron would have dug “Thousands of Days” by R. Stevie Moore, who has self-released a stream of homemade cassettes for decades, and seems to straddle the line between an oddball lo-fi experimentalism and a genuine Howard Finster- or Jandek-level artistic eccentricity. One of my favorite bands of all time, XTC, have a song called “1000 Umbrellas,” which I worked very hard to like but never quite embraced. It’s the penultimate song on side one of what some call the band’s best single recording and what I call their last great record, the Todd Rundgren-produced Skylarking. The song is a bit fussy and arch, a portent of the “orcoustic” direction the band would take when they finally got out of their protracted record-contract nightmare in the late ‘80s.

The wonderful If I Should Fall From Grace With God by the Pogues was graced by “Thousands Are Sailing,” a sober, elegiac number about coming to America, the kind that Shane McGowan cunningly slips in next to his scrappy pennywhistled raveups and drinking songs. Speaking of raveups, the Real McKenzies from Vancouver fuse punk rock fervor with trad Scottish melodies and instrumentation on the rousing “Swords of a Thousand Men,” which would have sounded good in a punk rock version of Braveheart.

Pale Saints - "A Thousand Stars Burst Open"

The Cure’s “A Thousand Hours” is a lugubriously seductive downer from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, with Robert Smith intoning morosely over the lush atmospherics. Cut from a similar melancholy cloth but a bit less tragic is “A Thousand Stars Burst Open” by Pale Saints, a hidden gem, but a gem, to be sure. It turned up on the soundtrack of a forgettable little movie called Joy Ride, which had one thing going for it: a soundtrack by a slew of dreamy 4AD bands including Lush, This Mortal Coil and the not-often-remembered Spirea X. I’m glad I’ve never seen the movie because apparently the sequence featuring this song could put you off it forever, and that would be a pity. I’m wagering you’ve never seen it either, so you can now listen unfettered to this little slice of heaven. When people throw around “shoegazing” these days, they usually mean something hazy in the extreme, with buried vocals and curtains of distorted guitars. This is a more austere and melodic version of the scene that celebrated itself, saving the wailing wall of chordage that we crave until the very end. All hail Pale Saints!

Wilson Pickett - "Land of 1000 Dances"

Patti Smith - "Land: Horses, Land of a Thousand Dances, La Mer"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Like perfect games in baseball, perfect numbers are extremely rare. A perfect number is an integer that is the sum of its positive divisors. Twenty-eight is the second perfect number; six is the first. The early Hellenistic mathematicians were aware of just four perfect numbers, and I feel a bit like one of the early Hellenistic mathematicians. I only know of a handful of 28 songs, (and most of them are far from perfect.) But perhaps, like the hoary number crunchers of yore, I am ignorant of a trove of pickings that will be discovered by future generations.

Let’s leave idle speculation behind for the time being. The eccentric, extraordinarily prolific singer songwriter Hasil Adkins, who died a few years ago after being run over by a teenage punk on an ATV, had a mournful, half-spoken song called “28 Years” on his album Achy Breaky Ha Ha Ha. Vans Tour perennials Buck O Nine have “28 Teeth,” while Lollapalooza second-stagers Sponge have “28 Days.” I wish “28” by the ‘80s outfit Stars of Heaven had more going for it. The Irish quartet was a favorite of legendary London DJ John Peel, releasing a few albums and singles on Rough Trade in the ‘80s, one of which I even own. Unlike the chiming, country-inflected songs the band typically played,“28” (so named because its tempo is twice as fast as “7 and 7 Is” by Love) is rather slight, with a melody that barely registers, much to my disappointment.

Steppenwolf’s place in rock history is secure by virtue of “Born to Be Wild” and its iconic reference to “heavy metal thunder,” along with the band’s other FM radio staple “Magic Carpet Ride.” No one would argue that “28” is as memorable as those tunes, but it’s still a pretty good slice of pumped-up late ‘60s rock with a pounding go-go beat and a laid-back message to offer: “She’s 28 years old tonight/I told her not to fear/it’s all very right.” There’s a bit of de rigueur, mystical hippie gibberish (“Silk on silk/feather in light/make the black/part of the night”) but in the end, “28” is just a tale of lust that ends successfully: “She woke up/grinning with laughter.” Imagine that, and at the age of 28.

Steppenwolf - "28"

Steppenwolf actually shares something in common with our winner. The band released a lot of music in its career, but will always be known for “Born to Be Wild.” Today’s winner—born Antonia Christina Basilota in Philadelphia, and who showed an early talent for go-go dancing—is also known principally for one song. In her case, it was a little ditty called “Mickey,” a massive international hit and, in the minds of many, one of the most annoying songs to ever clog the airwaves.

Toni Basil will never be able to outrun the image of her 40-year-old self as the frighteningly perky, slightly long-in-tooth cheerleader in the “Mickey” video, belting out the song while busting out all those stiff-armed rah-rah moves. It’s fortunate for us in the numerology world that “Mickey” was just the tip of the iceberg—OK, it was the tip and a huge hunk of the iceberg. But Toni Basil lived quite an interesting life before she went platinum in 1982. And let’s just get it straight: she charted three times, so she was no one-hit wonder, either.

Talking Heads - "Once in a Lifetime"
choreography by Toni Basil

Before she became famous singing “Anyway you want to do it/I’ll take it like a man,” Toni Basil had done things many of us only dream about—choreographing the video for Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime,” acting with Jack Nicholson in his classic anti-hero role in Five Easy Pieces, dancing with Davy Jones in the Monkees’ cult favorite Head. And yet, because of that song, that herky-jerky, schoolyard taunt-sounding, aural virus of a song, mentioning the name Toni Basil still generates chuckles and cheerleader poses. To be sure, there’s something ridiculous about a grown-ass woman in a cheerleader costume pretending she’s still in high school, but let’s go back to 1966, when Toni was only 23.

Though “I’m 28” was her first single, Ms. Basil had already been in show business for five years as a dancer and choreographer, so she’d earned the right to sing a worldly lament. (Remember, Alice Cooper was already in his mid-20s when he sang “I’m 18”) Considering that it was written by Graham Gouldman, the multitalented producer and songwriter behind hits for the Hollies, the Yardbirds, and many others, “I’m 28” achieves an admirable level of female angst. In Leslie Gore’s 1964 anthem “You Don’t Own Me,” also in 3/4 time, the teenage singer sets the record straight for her meat-headed boyfriend. I can easily see the spitfire teenager who sings “You Don’t Own Me” 10 years later, as the singer in “I’m 28”: wiser, more cynical, and starting to worry that this whole taking-no-crap-from-men thing might have backfired on her.

Lesley Gore - "You Don't Own Me"

Against a background of keening organs and cymbal crashes, Ms. Basil gets right down to it: “I’m 28, it’s getting late/what have I got to do?” There is desperation in her voice, but there is also defiance. She doesn’t want to end up an old spinster, but like any sensible woman in 1966, she is tired of the games and the bullshit and the roles people want her to play. It’s almost as if she’s just been hit on by the dude from the Steppenwolf song “28,” who told her not to fear, “it’s all very right,” at which point she threw a drink in his face, stormed out and sang this song on the way home.

"Lipstick, pancake, shadow for the eyes/it’s all been advertised/but it’s getting me nowhere."

With a voice this sassy it’s hard to take the singer’s fears of finishing up “alone and in a rocking chair” seriously, but there is no simple resolution to “I’m 28.” The singer’s plea, “what have I got to do?” goes unanswered. Listening to “I’m 28,” you can tell from the throaty wail that it’s the same singer as “Mickey,” but in my mind I see a different vision, one that is infinitely more pleasing. I see Toni Basil clad not in cheerleader garb but in something totally hip (circa. 1966) and belting out this melodramatic little gem for all she’s worth.

Toni Basil - "I'm 28"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

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

* Painting: "Indescretion #28" by Jean Paul Gotting

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

by David Klein

You probably suspected that somewhere along the line the pickings were going to get a little thin. Ladies and gentlemen, that time is now, for we have officially entered the valley of the crooked numbers. Twenty-six has no discernible meaning or significance for the average person, thus, very few people have seen fit to include it in a song, as a title or even as a lyric. Up to now, certain unexciting numbers have squeaked by on the strength of one strong cut (I’m thinking of “14th Floor” by Television Personalities) but 26 poses even greater problems. Who writes a song with 26 in the title? As I was conceiving this endeavor I saw the great chasm that opens up at 26, and realized that something had to change at this juncture. And so it does: from here on in, any good song that has a number in its title is eligible to win, regardless of whether the number is part of the lyrics. At the outset, with the choices so abundant, it made sense to apply some rules, just to weed the pack out a bit, but at this point there just aren’t enough songs to go around to justify enforcing that rule. It’s not just because Stereolab’s “Olv 26” is such a delight, but if you’re going to break the rules, let it be for something like this.

It’s not meant as a slight, but “Olv 26” sounds like every other great Stereolab track, with those burbling beats, earnest yet blasé bocals, and Marxist slogans, all in perfect, slightly off-kilter harmony. As far as I can tell, Olv might stand for ‘our lady victory,’ but I am far too dense to comprehend lyrics like, “Depuis le temps que c'est promis
nous irons tous au paradis,” which appear to be in some kind of foreign language.

Stereolab - "Olv 26"

A few other brave souls decided that no. 26 was a good, evocative numeral to use in song. The Pretty Things do some sloganeering of their own on “October 26,” (seemingly inspired by Russia’s October Revolution) a languorous, shape-shifting thing from the Parachute LP (1970) that would have sounded at home squeezed into the medley from side 2 of the Beatles’ Abbey Road. The song’s refrain, “Revolution/is all that it can be/If you find your own solution/than that’s all right with me” demonstrates the bad effect that good politics can have on music, here, serving to move the scruffy-sounding Pretty Things to trade in their earthy lyrics for groovy ‘70s platitudes. Nevertheless, the song is first-rate, with lovely harmonies and a true, mature-Beatles sound via producer Norman Smith (who also produced Pink Floyd and scored a no. 3 hit in America as Hurricane Smith a few years later, with “Oh Babe, What Would You Say?”).

One of the last official gasps of Pavement was captured on the 1999 At Home With the Groovebox compilation, on which a roster of mostly Grand Royal artists each wrote a song utilizing vintage ‘80s synths. “Robyn Turns 26” is pretty much a Malkmusian effort, with his ladyfriend in the Yoko Ono role, providing some guest rapping. It’s got piss-take written all over it, but the man is incapable of writing a song without a few caustically hilarious lines, e.g., “Kick it with the Trustafarians/ Colorado College! /Are they Sega or Atarians?” and the highly numerical, "got 20 camel lights, a six pack of brew/ that's 26 friends...” Plus, sampling an Indian rain dance chant for comic effect, as opposed to doing it as an act of reverence, is refreshing. I think 1999 was the year I O.D’d on Native American motifs in electronica.

And then there’s “Pattern 26,” from the Fire Records compilation I Wouldn’t Piss On It if It Was On Fire. Manifesto was a short-lived outfit fronted by D.C. hardcore vet Michael Hampton, a guitarist and singer who played in bands with both Henry Rollins (when he was still known as Henry Garfield) and Ian McKaye, among others, making Hampton the undisputed Zelig/Forrest Gump of the D.C. hardcore scene. This agreeably crunchy number has more in common with British indie guitar rock circa 1992 than with the in-your-face thrash of Hampton’s earlier bands.

And that’s really it for 26. Honest. You can check for yourself if you want to.

While 26 lacks any meaningful association, 27 has a resounding significance in these parts. Twenty-seven is the age at which certain rock stars have died and gained “immortality.” Or, to paraphrase Kurt Cobain’s mother, 27 is the age that you join “that stupid club.” I point this out in hindsight, for it took an unexpected musical discovery for me to make this association. But finding a song that captures 27’s dark ethos has renewed my faith in the seat-of-the-pants approach to life that I favor.

In this arid region, almost anything with a 27 has to be considered, even musical versions of Psalm 27, albeit briefly. At first all I had was an avant-jazzy whatsit with no words, no discernable melody, and a 27 tacked on to it (“Discipline 27” by Sun Ra) and a high school reminiscence from Doughty of Soul Coughing (“27 Jennifers”), a man whose singing voice never failed to impede my enjoyment of his records. Finally I turned up a song I could live with.

The 3Ds were a solid New Zealand band on the Flying Nun label, whose limited output (just an EP and two LPs) was due to various band members’ juggling other higher-profile gigs. Although “Vector 27” comes from their last and not best record, it still has the fierce attack and no-frills angst that is perhaps the only element common to the sprawling genre dubbed NZ indie rock. Now, given the paucity of songs in this slot, I had my money on the 3Ds, thinking, here’s a good band, a pretty good song, and for 27 that will just have to do. But folks, the beauty of this endeavor is that it leads to unexpected outcomes. I not only discovered a 27 song that I can really get behind, I’ve also got a new band to dig.

Coltrane Motion - "Twenty-Seven"

“Twenty-Seven,” by the Chicago-area duo known as Coltrane Motion, comes on with a bees’ nest hum before establishing a slinky beat and static-laden drone, shot through with shards of feedback, harmonics, and velvety mellotron toots, all in service of an insinuating melody. It adds up to a deeply catchy and alluring cocktail, equal parts euphoria and danger, just like the rock-star phenomenon the song depicts. According to Michael Bond, the group’s leader who also heads up the bands’ record label, Datawaslost, “Twenty-Seven” is “a song about writing songs about how you're going to die, and sort of flipping the musician-as-martyr thing a bit.” In the first verse, [it] “takes the ‘fame = early death’ equation to ludicrous lengths.”

“Don't clap your hands or I'll die in a plane crash

Don't sing along or I'll overdose

I know you want me / wrapped in plastic

What a shame, I've got their first album, I loved that song where he went

I'm going to fall apart

in a sea of broken synthesizers

I'm going to walk out while it's still playing

kick drum, snare drum, kick drum, snare drum”

Listening to Coltrane Motion, it’s immediately apparent that these are clever guys with really good record collections. But behind the knowing song titles (“Ex-Girlfriend in a Coma,” “I Guess the Kids Are OK”) and references to 4-track tape hiss is an abiding belief in the inspirational power of rock & roll. The title of the recently released Songs About Music is neither obtuse nor ironic; it’s actually a straightforward declaration of the muse that inspires Bond and his band mate, Matt Denewitz (synths). And what inspires them is the last 40 years of pop music. “Twenty Seven” sounds a familiar feedback-drenched note that recalls such initialized UK acts as JMC, MBV and BRMC (I was trying to see if I could avoid writing the word “shoegazing” this week), while “Come to Me” is sunshine pop that evokes the simple joys of ‘60s radio, and “Summertime” is pure American garage rock that sounds like something off Children of Nuggets. Several songs have a certain ramshackle quality in the spirit of lo-fi masters like Beck and Guided By Voices, but Coltrane Motion do more than ape their unimpeachable influences; you can hear the influences, but the band manages to leave its own musical thumbprint on these 12 songs. Maybe it’s because they write their own sound software. In any case, I doff my cap to Coltrane Motion for writing a song that this column desperately needed, and I highly recommend Songs About Music to anyone who relishes dense layers of feedback and plenty of kick drum, snare drum, kick drum snare drum…

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

by David Klein

Twenty-five is a nice chunky number that gets its mojo from how neatly it fits into 100. It’s most often associated with anniversaries, whether matrimonial or historical, but no one ever wrote a great song about a 25th anniversary. What matters to songwriters is that 25 is a melodious sounding numeral that plays well with others, as these lines from “All the Young Dudes” attest: “Speed jive/don’t want to say alive/when you’re twenty five…”

Disqualifiable on technical as well as aesthetic grounds, “In the Year 2525,” by the redoubtable Zager & Evans, is annoying on many levels. I’ll just give you one: they switch to singing about the year “6510” when they run out of words that rhyme with five. (R.E.M. used to cover it, and it was still pretty bad.) Another song you can still hear on oldies radio is “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago. Based on a pretty cool descending chord pattern, the song has an admirably numerical title, albeit one that has puzzled people for decades. It was thought that the title was some kind of mystical drug reference but in fact, it refers to the time in the middle of the night when you can only approximate how late it’s getting. But in the final analysis, 25O6T4 is weighed down by its bombastic horn section and the forced drama that has marked cheesy pop tunes since time immemorial. (You didn’t really think Chicago would win, did you? But I will confess to a highly uncool appreciation of “If You Leave Me Now.”)

Because of its vital place in the base 10 world, 25 inspires songwriters to go all mathematical on us. Many knocked Veruca Salt as a poor man’s Breeders, but the group never got props for its mathematical bent: on the debut American Thighs are no less than three numerically titled songs, including “25,” on which Veruca demonstrated a solid understanding of multiplying by 5s. (When I was 5 I took a dive/when I was 10/ I walked again…”). Not surprisingly, Johnny Cash shows us definitively how a counting song is done, in “25 Minutes to Go,” which he performed, appropriately enough, for the inmates at Folsom Prison on his immortal 1968 LP. To a hoedown beat that gradually picks up, a man counts down his last moments:

Well they’re building a gallows outside my cell

I’ve got 25 minutes to go

And the whole town’s waiting just to hear me yell

I’ve got 24 minutes to go

Well they gave me some beans for my last meal

I’ve got 23 minutes to go

But nobody asked me how I feel

I’ve got 21 minutes to go…”

In the cabaret-style version by the Tiger Lillies, the song ends with a truly disturbing choking sound that hasn’t been equaled since Monty Python’s “And Now, the Sound of John Denver Being Strangled.”

An obvious contender for the 25 crown is “Twenty Five Miles” by Edwin Starr. Combining the countdown approach with an irresistible groove, the result was a major crossover hit in 1969. While not quite as big as Starr’s signature song, “War” (as in “War/huuuuh/what is it good for/absolutely nuthin’) this journey song is spurred on by a driving beat and Starr’s stirring vocals. I’ve always been ambivalent about the fact that he never gets home. With five miles to go, there is a final self-exhortation of “I got to keep on/WALKIN’” and some seriously funky drumming, and the song fades. I guess it would have been lame to end with, “I got 60 more feet to go now” but to me the song feels somehow unresolved. I would venture to say that most listeners will assume that Edwin makes it home, and I can live with that, but one question has always stayed with me, namely, just why he’s walking in the first place. Has he just been released from prison? Did his car break down? In a rare mystery from Motown, we never do find out.

Edwin Starr - "Twenty-Five Miles"

Australian garage purists the Lime Spiders put out a screaming howler called “Twenty Fifth Hour,” which, one imagines, might have found a place in Spike Lee’s movie of the same name if Lee had elected to shoot a scene in the Anna Paquin character’s apartment, as she slips into a slutty dress before her night on the town. (Note to trivia enthusiasts: this is the second time Anna Paquin has been conspicuously mentioned in the course of this column.)

Similarly high-energy is Sleater-Kinney’s “By the Time You’re 25,” which takes scathing aim at music industry success, led by Corin Tucker’s distinctively ululating vocals. (Note to indie-rock enthusiasts: in the course of researching this article I consulted Wikipedia and discovered that the Sleater-Kinney page cannot be edited right now due to “vandalism.”) Rounding out the pack is Olivia Tremor Control’s gentle “NYC 25,” in which the number does not appear, and “25 Years” by proto-proggers Hawkwind. Yes, there are more, but we have to get serious now.

Continue reading "Numerology: Quarter Life Crises" »

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

by David Klein

Know this to be true: making sense of the breadth of songs titled “Twenty Four Hours” and “24 Hours a Day” is not something to be taken lightly. Athlete, 10cc, Betty Boo, Kiki Dee, Canned Heat, Sundays, Swans, Ace, and Champion Jack Dupree are but a few of the musical masters I had to unceremoniously weed out just so I could narrow it down to a half dozen or so worthy contenders and a few oddballs to kick sand at.

Muddy Waters - "Twenty Four Hours"

I wonder if anyone has ever enunciated the numeral 24 with more conviction than Muddy Waters. His glorious growl on “Twenty Four Hours” is a perfect expression of the blues—three chords, dire lyrics, and a man in pain. And one has to admire the song’s underlying, undeniably mathematical logic:

She been gone twenty four hours

And that’s twenty-three hours too long

Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin attempts to channel the spirit of Muddy on “Tea for One,” the nine-minute concluding track from Presence and one of Zep’s most lugubrious jams, when he intones, “Oh twenty-four hours/Baby sometimes seem to slip into days” while Seattle’s own Mudhoney, in their sludgy rave-up entitled “Twenty Four,” have very definite plans for the next 24 hours, and they don’t include pining:

I've been drunk for twenty four hours (drunk)

Someone's always trying to change me (stupid heads)

I've been drunk for twenty four hours (really drunk)

I'll stay drunk for twenty four more (yeah)

On “24 Hour Party People,” Happy Mondays advocate a similar level of recklessness, albeit with the unspoken addition of powders and pills. I have to point out that although “24HPP” gave an excellent film its name, Sean Ryder’s ragged vocals keep me from getting swept up in this would-be anthem.

Joy Division - "Twenty Four Hours"

Joy Division’s “Twenty Four Hours” is as dire as a tourniquet. For Ian Curtis, a day was something to endure, and the song captures the tight grip of raw dread. There is no bridge; the music ebbs and flows like an angry ocean with Curtis’s unearthly baritone floating above it, issuing some of the most nakedly honest lines of a brief career marked by naked honesty.

Now that I’ve realized how it’s all gone wrong

Gotta find some therapy, this treatment takes too long

Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway

Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late

Like most of Joy Division’s recorded output, it’s an incredibly powerful, despairing piece of music. And in the tradition of several of the band’s songs (e.g., “Digital,” “The Eternal”) the titular phrase, and in this case, numeral, is never mentioned. So, as much as it pains me to show these guys the door, I am duty-bound to keep looking; there are just too many enunciated 24s in the world of song for me to go this dark route. Where will it end?

If Ian Curtis was an influence on disco chanteuse Barbara Pennington, it isn’t evident on her rump-shaking 1976 ode to daylong lovemaking called “24 Hours a Day.” Tangentially, there isn’t much of a Barbara Pennington sensibility to the Bottle Rockets song of the same name, although, in terms of the kind of activity the St. Louis roots rockers would like to be engaged in for 24 hours in a row, they are firmly in the Pennington camp.

Gene Pitney - "Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa"

While we’re on the subject of Bottle Rockets, much of the action in the movie Bottle Rocket takes place at a pleasant but shabby motel out in Nowheresville, USA. In “Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa” by Gene Pitney, the singer finds his destiny, in the form of a lady, at “a small hotel” that’s just a day’s drive from his baby in Tulsa. Blessed with a mighty voice and major songwriting chops, Gene Pitney is less well known than Roy Orbison and Del Shannon, but he belongs squarely in that tradition, of the emotional balladeer with an almost operatic style, whose best songs tend to involve heartache. The song is vintage Burt Bacharach/Hal David, with mariachi trumpets, hooks galore, and a tasty story to tell. The irony! It was just a matter of mileage that changed his life forever.

Pitney must have had a thing about 24, because he recorded another 24 song—“24 Sycamore”—and what are the odds of that? I discovered it on the truly wonderful and bizarre collection of obscure covers and alluringly naïve music from the past four decades “curated” by Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey, called The Trip. Teeming with songs, this collection has everyone from OMD (“Waiting for the Man”) to Sonny Bono (his creepily lysergic “Pammies on a Bummer” has to be heard to be believed). Pitney’s “24 Sycamore,” a heart-on-his-sleeve wailer, is the other side of “Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa.” Now the singer is in a hell of his own making. Having ditched the wrong girl, he now knows he’s doomed to forever pine for the hand he used to hold, at 24 Sycamore Street.

Gene Pitney - "24 Sycamore"

Peering, as is my wont, into the shadowy crevices at the outskirts of rock, I feel the need to recognize, and then quickly run away from, the reclusive sonic pioneer known as Jandek, whose composition called “Twenty Four” can be found on his understandably hard-to-find 13th album, Telegraph Melts. I have it on good authority, though, that it lacks the hook-filled, Brill Building pizzazz of his earlier works, and that’s good enough for me. This isn’t an exact science, after all.

In fact, my choice for greatest 24 song just proves how inexact and subjective this whole thing is, despite all my strenuous attempts at imposing order and a certain judicial rigor to the proceedings. I try not to let personal sentiment rule, but in this case I think the song and band and the sentiment of the song win out. Yes, it’s my favorite, but it could be yours too (if you weren’t such a Gene Pitney fan.)

In 1985 my world was happily teeming with wispy adenoidal vocals and cool-ass power pop riffs. The critics called it jangle-pop, or Paisley Pop or the first generation of R.E.M.-influenced bands. My faves were the dBs—a minor sensation in England but the victim of a very bad distribution deal in the U.S.—who featured Chris Stamey’s twee but cool Southern vocals, and even R.E.M’s producer, Mitch Easter—a limited singer—got into the act, fronting his own outfit and making records with Let’s Active. Today’s winning band, Game Theory added a level of post-graduate sophistication to the power pop enterprise. When I first heard the voice of Scott Miller, I was sure it was the second coming of Big Star’s Alex Chilton— nasal, fey, and pretty, yet bolstered by stingingly Beatles-y guitars. And the man was crazy smart, with song titles composed of Kubrick movie quotes, album covers with crazy typography in enormous fonts, lyrical references to highbrow books and lowbrow culture. There was a lot to digest, but Miller’s brilliance was never in question.

Unlike any other 24 song I’ve found, Game Theory’s “24” is about being 24, and it nails—in oblique terms, naturally—that very particular precipice. Twenty-four is the last time you’ll be closer to 20 than 30. It’s the last good look you’ll have of your teenage years, because pretty soon a whole new numerical truth will come into view, as your childhood continues to recede into the distance. There is much to admire about the song: the sweet sound of acoustic guitars, the incisive lyrics, the rainbow-bright sheen of Mitch Easter’s production, the fact that it is 2:49 in length, and that it proudly declares its titular number. And yes, those wispy vocals.

I'm in the sweetest way misled, growing my hair in bed

Coffee or beer--These are a year's component thread

And everything is in terms of next time

Twenty-five thousand more miles to the dateline

Is it because I'm 24, not 25?

Game Theory - "24"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

by David Klein

Our winner today actually took me by surprise, but as you will see, it is all too fitting that strange things are afoot now that we’ve reached 23. As I did my usual extensive research for my weekly installment of numero-musical obsession, I was pretty much figuring out the best way to declare that nothing could possibly beat the Brothers Johnson’s version of “Strawberry Letter #23,” in thousand words or less. But in my attempt to be thorough I have stumbled into dark territory. I know that you out there, dear reader, knew all about the 23 Enigma (the belief that all events are connected by the number, 23, a phenomenon that William Burroughs famously espoused, and which is also the basis for that creepy-looking Jim Carrey vehicle) and were well aware that 23 is also the number of the Illuminati, the secret cabal that conspiracy theorists believe controls world events. Because you, dear reader, secretly control world events, don’t you? I knew it. I can hear you through my fillings. In any case, what really struck me as bizarre is that I turned up a major treatise on the number, freshly written, no less, the kind of numerological piece yours truly would hope to write if my sole interest was in numbers.

It’s chockfull of info like, “The 23rd letter of the alphabet is W, a letter whose shape suggests two horns pointing down and three points up, like the devil-horns hand-sign thrown up at rock concerts. On the typewriter keyboard, W lies directly below the two and three.” And it struck me as undeniable that the summer, nay, the very age of 23 is upon us.

Lest we forget, there’s also a very fine psalm numbered 23, but maybe it too is part of a dire conspiracy. Representing the excelsior at the bottom of the 23 sonic gift basket are Numerology’s pet whipping boys, Jimmy Eat World, along with newcomers with the soccer-derived yet still-suspect moniker of Yellowcard, both of whom have songs called “Twenty Three” that channel youthful angst via fiercely strummed guitars and imperfect couplets. Four Tet, a side project of Kieran Hebden of Fridge (a band whose catalog is well worth investigating) employs his preferred aural grab-bag approach on “Twenty Three” from 2001’s Rounds, but the number seems arbitrary.

Luna - "23 Hours in Brussels"

On the other hand, Luna’s languid “23 Hours in Brussels” stretches out in the manner of the passage of time, as extended vamps tend to do. It opens with a seeming allusion to “Proud Mary” (“Left my hotel in the city”) and traipses ahead at a walking pace. With Tom Verlaine adding his signature squalls and squiggles, the song has a surfeit of laid-back, urban cool, and belongs on any serious compendium of great songs about cities of the world.

The title track to Blonde Redhead’s 23, one of my favorite releases of the year, has a strong, insistent melody and a na-na-na chorus set against slaloming Loveless guitars. Like the other songs sung by Kazu Makino, “23” echoes the ethereal vocals of Miki Berenyi of ‘90s 4AD band Lush. And lyrics like these, which would bring a smile to William Burroughs, show that this song is very much about the phenomenon of 23:

23 seconds, all things we love will die

23 magic, if you can change your life

Sounding a similar sonic note of ethereality mixed with a touch of creepy is “23 Lies” by Death in Vegas. These two would go well on a mixtape created by the dead twins in The Shining.

But sometimes a song so owns a number that even a majestic, exhilarating, numerically named newcomer like Blonde Redhead’s “23” seems destined to come in a close second. “Strawberry Letter #23” by the Brothers Johnson has always struck me as the ultimate 23 experience.

the Brothers Johnson - "Strawberry Letter 23"

Let’s be clear: the Bros. did not do all that much to the original. It’s not on the level of what Hendrix did with “All Along the Watchtower.” They stick pretty close to the original: the melody, that nifty little insinuating hook that starts the song, the spacey, Steve Miller-ish interlude—all there in Shuggie Otis’s original version (only Shuggie uses a glockenspiel). But the Quincy Jones-produced SL23 is the one that everybody knows, it’s the one I always grooved to and which never failed to get a response from people on my living room dance floor back in the day, and, moreover, it benefits from Jones’s production and vision. The vocal melody has been sculpted into shape, and the background vocals add exquisite color in the remake. It also has a deep and timeless groove that somehow penetrated my skull at a time when I still listened to a great deal of Jethro Tull.

But wait. Just…wait. The lyrics to “Strawberry Letter #23” never say 23. What they say, twice, is “twenty two.” Is that supposed to be mystical? Additionally, whether it’s 22 or 23, the number is essentially arbitrary. This calls everything into question. The rules state that if a truly good song sings the number in question, it is more worthy than a truly good song that doesn’t. I know it’s unprecedented, but I’m going to have to surprise myself and give it to Blonde Redhead, for succeeding on every level, with a cool, memorable song that is very much about a numerical phenomenon, with a simple numerical title and with the number sung aloud. With apologies to George “Lightnin’ Licks” Johnson and Louis “Thunder Thumbs” Johnson, I give you:

Blonde Redhead - "23"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

by David Klein

"That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

I’m surprised some psychedelic outfit never tried to capture the absurd circular logic of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 via a seven-minute space epic. After all, the Grateful Dead were such Vonnegut fans that they named their music publishing company Ice Nine, after the pernicious chemical compound from Cat’s Cradle, so the idea doesn’t seem that far-fetched. But if there are any serious Heller fans out there in the music world, no one has stepped forward, although the likes of Pink, Billy Squier, Yngwie Malmstein and second-wave English punkers Infa Riot (how’s that for a quadruple bill?) all have songs called “Catch 22.” I’ll let you guess which one of the four lends itself best to pogo-ing.

This surprises me. How hard could it be to write a pop song based on a groundbreaking 1961 novel about the absurdity of war? If that doesn’t say hit, what does? In any case, we’re not left with much to choose from. A moody meditation on turning 22 by twee Aussie popsters the Lucksmiths (“Funny old birthday/I’ve talked to no one”) is as enervating as it sounds, and even the Roy Orbison song I uncovered, called “Twenty Two Days,” doesn’t quite deliver the goods. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved Roy Orbison ever since being haunted by a painting of him on a motorcycle, looking sad and albino, in a compendium of writings and hyper-real paintings that blew my teenage mind called Rock Dreams . But this one is way cornier than the average Roy song, or maybe it’s that the corniness doesn’t work in his favor this time. Yes, Roy’s magic voice is here in all its glory, but the song itself lacks essentialness.

I can’t leave behind 22 without mentioning “Room 222,” a 1969 TV drama that ran for several seasons, focusing on the students and teachers of Walt Whitman High, in a typical American town that was never named. The show’s earnest, wistful theme song, which I realize now owes more than a little to the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill,” still brings to mind the coolest teachers I never had: Mr. Dixon and Miss McIntyre, gorgeous and benevolent to a fault, and students like Bernie with the gigantic ginger ‘fro and Jason, the sullen, artistic black student who claimed, in one memorable episode, that Abraham Lincoln didn’t give a damn about the black man, and especially that young hottie Miss Johnson, played by the alluringly winsome Karen Valentine (who went on to portray Gidget, post-Sally Field, and found herself professionally doomed thereafter). But of course, of course, the song is wrong in every way: it has an extra 2, for one thing, and it’s an instrumental, and it’s about as rocking as powdered milk. And yet I want you to hear it because a) it will take you on a trip to musty times when an earnest song played on a recorder was still deemed a good way to move the masses and b) it could almost pass for one of those instrumentals on Nick Drake’s Bryter Later, and that’s just plain weird, and C) It won’t take that long.

Jerry Goldsmith - "Theme from Room 222"

But getting back to the matter at hand, as far as I’m concerned there are only two 22 songs worthy of consideration. I am well aware that some of the more rabid Flaming Lips fans out there will be tempted to attack me with a giant chartreuse balloon when I say that I respect the Flaming Lips more than I dig them. Their charms are many and yet I file them along with a few other bands that everyone loves but I don’t, like, I dunno, Wilco or somebody. See, once upon a time, I thrilled to an emphatic garage rock anthem by a band I’d never heard of, with the outlandish name of the Flaming Lips, and the song was called “My Own Planet.” It bears little if any resemblance to the shambolic searching quality of their later, critically acclaimed work. The Lips’ contender for this slot, “When Yer Twenty Two” is actually much more numerically minded than my winning song, and much more enjoyable to these ears than many other Lips songs, with a churning rhythmic attack, impassioned vocal performance, and lyrics that are weirdly, wonderfully poetic:

"Stuck in the perpetual motion

Dying against the machine

The whole thing leaves

You a nothing instead of a these

The sun is black and the black halos fly

And your number is backwards again when you try

The sound is so cute when you’re 22

When you’re 22"

But, to paraphrase Pee-Wee Herman, “I like you, Wayne Coyne & Company. LIKE.” And were it not for a certain other 22 song, which I love, liking WY22 would be enough. Plus, I say this not in an obscurer than thou way, but in a trust me, this is awesome kind of a way: I practically guarantee (a contradiction, I realize) you haven’t heard it.

Ike Reilly is a hard-touring Chicago rocker, a former bellhop who has suffered for his art. He had one record released on a major but has been hitting the road and playing sweaty anthemic bar-band rock for the past several years, converting 70 or 100 people at a time in old-school fashion. As far as I know he hasn’t yet resorted to giant balloons. Reilly is the kind of guy who responds to his girlfriend getting the bum’s rush from Joe Strummer by writing a great song about it (a number song as well, called “Hip Hop Thighs #17”), and he’s one of the few stealth masters of the form on my radar. World, this is your 22 song.

“Do you think that maybe this is just your life?”

Ike Reilly - "22 Hours of Darkness"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

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

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

by David Klein

Twenty-one is the name of a popular card game and the number of shots in a famous “gun salute,” but no good song has ever been written about either of those things. To most westerners the number 21 signifies the age of 21, and a number of songs have been written on that subject. After all, reaching the age of 21 is a very specific plateau for human beings in these parts—full-fledged adulthood. It’s no surprise that there is no shortage of songs with 21 in their titles, but what song truly captures the essence?

Clearly one of the most luminous mentions of 21 in pop music occurs in the Who’s “1921,” a song that pretty much sends the whole Tommy story into orbit with one little line: “What about the boy?/He saw it all.” The song begins with a stirring, hopeful melody, and then Pete Townshend comes in, proclaiming, “Got a feeling twenty-one is gonna be a good year.” Nevertheless, it is my sad task, dear Who fanatics, to point out that, as angelically as Pete pronounces the numeral in question, “1921” is ineligible to vie for the 21 spot because of the 19 Rule, i.e., that year songs (e.g., “1999”) cannot shrug off their nineteen-ical moorings and declare themselves a shorter, more-convenient-for-this-list number. One thousand nineteen hundred twenty one? The Who owns it like a pair of tight pants that fit only the collective Who (just imagine such a splendid pair of pants for one second, will you?) but this number needs to be won, and won decisively.

I love “Tram 21” by Electrelane. Sounding a sonically Stereolab-like note, it rolls along a solid rhythm track, emitting long blasts of farfisa organ, and slowly building up a head of steam so that by the time the soaring vocals come in, we imagine some kind of party-train caravan traveling through purple mountains. We also envision the number 21 emblazoned on a tattered flag that flickers in the breeze, but envisioning the number is not the same as having it mentioned in the song. And it’s an instrumental to boot, so farewell, sweet tram of coolness.

“Death Trip 21” by Irish rockers Ash is the huge, crazed monster that swipes Electrelane’s tram off its tracks with one bat of its huge paw. Making great use of an evil-sounding shrieking siren sample that the Chemical Bros. also used at least once, this one is not an instrumental, but none of the lyrics make that crucial distinction between Death Trip 21 and how it differs from Death Trip 14 or 37. It’s arbitrary and this list eschews arbitrary. 50 Cent’s “Twenty One Questions” is numerically accurate and reaches pure poetry with the line, “I love you like a fat kid love cake,” but it’s just a little too pimp-centric to speak to the universality of the 21 experience.

Continue reading "Numerology: When You're Twenty-One, You're No Fun? A Rebuttal..." »

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Well all, we're one fifth of the way through Numerology. It would almost be sad if there weren't like 80 digits left to go. If you've joined us at some point since the feature's inception, here's your chance to catch up (besides, you know, clicking through to the archives). Here, as determined by David Klein's irrefutable scientific process, are the end all be all numero-musical selections for each and every digit 1 through 20.

Those of you who just jumped on to raid our mp3 cupboard, take note and read up. Click on the numeral itself for the specific written deliberations, and on the song title to listen to the winners.

There will be a test.

01: Sparks - "the No. 1 Song in Heaven"
02:the Fall - "Two Librans"
03:Wire - "Three Girl Rhumba"
04:Public Image Limited - "Radio 4"
05:Iggy Pop - "5'1'' "
06:Liz Phair - "6'1" "
07:Echo & the Bunnymen - "Seven Seas"
08:the Beatles - "Eight Days a Week"
09:the Temptations - "Cloud Nine"
10:Led Zeppelin - "Ten Years Gone"
11:Blondie - "11:59"
12:the Strokes - "12:51"
13:Pixies - "No. 13 Baby"
14:the Television Personalities - "14th Floor"
15:Wire - "the 15th"
16:KISS - "Christine Sixteen"
17:Stevie Nicks - "Edge of Seventeen"
18:Alice Cooper - "I'm Eighteen"
19:the Rolling Stones - "19th Nervous Breakdown"
20:T - Rex - "20th Century Boy"

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

by David Klein

When Neil Young declared, “You can’t be 20/on Sugar Mountain” he seemed to mean that 20 is something to leave behind. And in the context of this list, I’d have to agree with him. On its own, the number 20 feels incomplete. Think about that horrible song, “In the Year 2525.” It could have been titled 2929, or 2424, but even Zager & freakin’ Evans realized that an extra beat was required to make 20 work in a song. As we sashay through this Land of Twenty together, you’ll see that the best songs in the region feature tri-syllabic forms of the numerals in their titles. Honest, you will.

Let’s dispense with the also-rans: Placebo’s “Twenty Years” could inspire suicidal thoughts in a misguided teenager or anyone with an active aversion to Brian Molko’s nasal delivery. Crosby Stills & Nash’s “4 & 20” is about suicidal thoughts, and it is a spare masterpiece, sung and played entirely by Stephen Stills. I remember hearing the song as a child when a particularly cerebral babysitter with the memorable moniker of Andy Pfeffer played it for my siblings and me. Andy insisted that we quiet down before he played it, because, he explained, it’s the kind of song you need to be quiet for. And it is, but since the song’s title refers to the singer’s age, 24, it really can’t be the 20 song, now can it? Additionally, I’m trying to avoid suicide songs on this list, (which doesn’t bode well for Joy Division’s “24 Hours.”) For obscurity’s sake, let’s mention the New York outfit The Van Pelt’s “Turning Twenty into Two.” There, now that felt good.

So where does that leave us?

Continue reading "Numerology: 20 Questions" »

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

by David Klein

Let’s get this clear: songs named after years (e.g., “1999,” “Paris 1919”) do not qualify as candidates for the “19” trophy. If I’m mad enough to keep pursuing this exercise in musical OCD onward for the remainder of my human existence, then I assure you that His Royal Purple Badness will have sole possession of the vaunted “1,999” spot, and that John Cale will perch regally atop “1,919,” perhaps wearing a jester’s hat. But I’m trying to impose a bit of order here, and I feel it’s imperative to strictly interpret the meaning of a number unless circumstances force me to do otherwise. Since I have unearthed a small basket of “19” songs, I feel no need to open up the floodgates for the likes of Messrs Cale and Rogers Nelson, not to mention Iggy (“1970”), Smashing Pumpkins (“1979”), Robyn Hitchcock (“1974”), Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons (“December 1963 (Oh, What a Night”) and many, many more. Where would it end?

The Rolling Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown” is the obvious frontrunner here: classic song, classic band, classic period of the Stones’ career. But let’s consider the field. Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen” is also a classic. Certainly one of the smoothest and slyest songs in the Dan’s oeuvre, this is the tale of an aging Lothario who laments that the teenage girl he’s trying to woo doesn’t even know who Aretha Franklin is. Resolution comes in the form of the old reliable—marijuana and tequila—but it’s the song’s leisurely, slinky groove that really intoxicates. In 1976, a mega-selling band like Steely Dan could get away with a hit song extolling the virtues of Cuervo Gold and “fine Colombian.’ It would take almost 10 years before Tipper Gore and her cronies started putting warning labels on records. And you have to admire Fagen and Becker’s prescient use of product placement—a full decade before Sigue Sigue Sputnik sold advertising space between songs on Flaunt It.. I’m sure the Cuervo people would have licensed the song had it not been for the reefer reference.

The Eagles of Death Metal’s “I Got a Feeling (Just Nineteen)” is a pumped-up, pre-coital victory dance built around a couple of sludgy chords, Jesse “The Devil” Hughes’s campy falsetto vocals, and the band’s signature “stripper drum beats.” While this competitive field forces me to award it best original screenplay and not best picture, special kudos goes to EODM for one of the best numerically titled rockers of recent years. Additionally, just to be exhaustive, the numerically monikered Old ‘97s of Dallas share something in common with Warped Tour veterans Buck-O-Nine, Thin Lizzy vocalist Phil Lynott, and lo-fi kingpin Smog: namely, songs called “Nineteen.” How about that?

Meanwhile, in the bizarro universe, Paul Hardcastle’s “19” grabbed the top spot, despite having one of the most unlikely opening lines of any major musical hit: “In 1965, Vietnam seemed like just another foreign war, but it wasn’t.” Not quite “Well, since my baby left me/I found a new place to dwell,” now, is it? Nevertheless, bizarro music columnist D Kleinfelder argued that the sample-happy “19,” based on words from a TV documentary about war veterans, incorporated an audacious use of then-novel sampling technology, constituted a serious attempt—and a danceable one, no less—to raise consciousness about post-traumatic stress disorder, and hewed closer to numerical definitiveness than the Stones song, with its “19th.” Kleinfelder also stated that “19” sounded better coming out of Bryan Adams’ “18 ‘Til I Die” than the Stones, as well as better leading in to Lee Ann Womack’s “Twenty Years and Two Husbands Ago.”

As you can plainly see, Mick & Keith and the boys have to win this one. During a brief but fertile few years in the mid-‘60s, Stones songs were imbued with an unmistakable Englishness. This record comes from that brief but bracing era. By the end of the decade, the distinctly English locale of Out of Our Heads (‘65) through Flowers (’67) had been replaced by the “ballrooms and smelly bordellos/and dressing rooms filled with parasites” of Exile on Main Street (1970). But for a few years it was all Lady Jane and St. John’s Wood, windscreens and Union Jacks. Not that the music was genteel or anything; the narrative viewpoint was occasionally tender, but more often downright nasty.

the Rolling Stones - "19th Nervous Breakdown"

The venomous “19th Nervous Breakdown” is as mean-hearted as any of the best misogynistic Stones songs. It was apparently inspired by the same woman (Chrissie Shrimpton, the sister of the model Jean) who inspired musical hate notes like “Stupid Girl” and “Under My Thumb.” Mick eviscerates her on all fronts, from her childhood to her current status in London society. It’s a harsh takedown of a woman who could only be English, by a man who could only be English.

And what a slice of sheer perfection it is, from that very first alchemical explosion at the beginning, when one guitar line slices in for two bars before being joined by a second phrase (which I imagine would have made a great riff for the doorbell at Keith Richards’ castle), to create an intricately knotted loop of sound. Bass and drums kick in, and the song hurtles forward. Aided and abetted by Charlie Watts’ jittery cymbals, that jarring corkscrew lick right before “Here it comes,” the marvelous middle eight (“Oh, who’s to blame/That girl’s just insane…”) and Bill Wyman’s dive-bombing bass runs in the fadeout, it’s safe to say that character assassination has rarely sounded this good.

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He'll probably coast on teen angst for awhile, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

by David Klein

Even a casual fan could come up with the definitive 18 song without too much contemplation. The song that comes to mind immediately is “I’m Eighteen” by Alice Cooper, which has all the essential characteristics of a great rock single: lean, strong hooks, wailing Les Pauls, a clenched fistful of attitude. Nevertheless, it must be said that despite its rarified pedigree, (18 is a flat-out beautiful number. Look at it. It’s one of the most voluptuous numbers in the universe. And were you aware that 18 is the only number that equals twice the sum of its digits?) top-notch 18 songs are relatively few in number.

Coming in a distant second, but distinctly charming nonetheless, is “18 With a Bullet” by English session man Pete Wingfield, a doo-wop style number that actually made it to #15 on the U.S. pop chart in 1975, (although not necessarily with a bullet.) Sung mainly in falsetto, this sly come-on is rooted in that most romantic of argots: record industry-speak. And it works. It’s hard to resist lyrics like, “I’m a super soul sure-shot/I’m a national breakout/so let me check your play-list, mama/Come on, let’s make out” and my favorite, “Be my A-side baby/Be beside me/ Right now I’m a single/but pretty soon you’ll see…We’ll be raising a whole LP.”

Prince (Boy George once likened him to a dwarf that fell into a vat of pubic hair) could write a good song in his sleep, so I’m guessing that even an outtake like “18 and Over,” originally slotted for Sign O’ the Times, has its funky strong points. To be honest, I haven’t had much luck tracking it down, but I seriously doubt that hearing it would sway me that it’s definitive. After all, Prince has drawers full of outtakes in his plush purple pad; Cooper’s song is a primal gem, a certifiable rock anthem, and one of the best songs in his catalog.

The vastly underappreciated Bush Tetras, still best known for the 1980 no-wave classic, “Too Many Creeps,” issued a comeback record of sorts in 1996, produced by Nona Hendrix, the second track of which was called “Page 18.” The egregiously appreciated Red Hot Chili Peppers have the randy “She’s Only 18,” and canine-monikered rapper Bow Wow has plain old “Eighteen.” For the sake of thoroughness, I can also tell you that the schlock rock genre is well represented here, with Bryan Adams’ “18 ‘Til I Die,” Skid Row’s “18 and Life” and Black & Blue’s “Hold On to 18.” And obviously, I couldn’t consider Moby’s moody instrumental (does he do any other kind?) “18.”

So what is it about “I’m Eighteen”? It grabs you. With its indelible riff, serpentine lead line, keening harmonica, and Alice’s take-no-prisoners vocal. “I’m in the middle without any plans/I’m a boy and I’m a man/I’m eighteen/and I don’t know what I want/I’m eighteen/I just don’t know what I want/I’m eighteen/I gotta get away.” Like adolescence, the song starts out like a dirge but eventually, hopefully, god willing, it ends up a celebration: “I’m eighteen and I like it!” Never mind that Cooper (originally Vincent Furnier) was a full 23 years old when he staked his claim to immortal teenager-hood; this remains an ideal song for disaffected youth to snarl along to, even today. And that’s no small thing.

Alice Cooper - “I’m Eighteen”

* Random fact about “I’m Eighteen” – When future Cooper producer Bob Ezrin (Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, other gi-normous rock epics) first went to catch an Alice Cooper gig, he was knocked out by this song, and later told Cooper he really liked the one that went, “I’m EDGY!”

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He'll probably coast on teen angst for awhile, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

by David Klein

While 16 will forever be saddled with a sweet image, even if the song is about sullying that very innocence, 17 is pure angst on wheels. To hear the songwriters of the last 40 years tell it, to be 17 is to be miserable, angry, depressed and quite possibly suicidal. Songs celebrating the free and easy side of 17 are very much in the minority. Boyd Bennett, an unheralded rockabilly player who reckoned Bill Haley had ripped him off, had one lone hit in 1955, with a rocking number called “Seventeen.” It went, “Seventeen, hot rod queen/Cutest girl you’ve ever seen/Tell the world I’m really keen/On my hepcat doll of seventeen.” A charmingly dated scenario, to be sure, but not the true 17. In “Sexy + 17,” the Stray Cats looked backward to the ‘50s—as they did in all their musical endeavors—to find something unthreatening to admire about the number. The dearth of positive 17 songs certainly stems from the fact that the number has become inextricably associated with its age equivalent in human years.

The most joyous moment in pop 17-ness has to be the opening couplet of “I Saw Her Standing There.” “Well she was just seventeen/and you know what I mean” is as much a part of the rock vernacular as “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Maybe if that crooked number had been part of that ecstatic song’s title, things might have turned around for 17. But the Beatles went for “I Saw Her Standing There” and henceforth, 16 out of every 17 “17” songs have been sung from the point of view of someone extremely miserable.

Janis Ian, who had an unlikely hit in 1966 with “Society’s Child,” at the precocious age of 15 (and that’s pre- Tiffany and TRL) scored an even bigger hit nearly a decade later, with “At Seventeen,” a first-person chronicle of that age’s particular pain, with details that we may never see the likes of again. Lines like, “To those of us who knew the pain/Of valentines that never came/And those whose names were never called/When choosing sides for basketball” will always send douche chills shooting up the spines of people who lived through the era when this song was all over the radio. Winning a sort of Oscar in its field, “At Seventeen” has earned a hallowed place in I Hate Myself and I Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard by Tom Reynolds, which I highly recommend, and a cursory Google search reveals that many people feel share the belief that the song reaches dangerous levels of moroseness. Because of its ubiquity on the airwaves during the singer-songwriter-friendly ‘70s, “At Seventeen” had a virtual lock on the number for several years, successfully withstanding a gob of spit and an elbow jab by the Sex Pistols, whose “Seventeen” declared “I’m a lazy sod!” but alas, the only number Mr. Lydon utters in the song is actually12 more than 17 (“You’re only 29/Got a lot to learn”). Pistols contemporaries The Cure went for “17” glory with “Seventeen Seconds,” the catchiest song ever written about the last 17 seconds in the life of a person who has just committed suicide. Tracey Ullman obviously saw the appropriateness of 17 for her song “You Broke My Heart in 17 Places” (a pretty nifty song, the chorus of which adds to the titular phrase, “Shepherd’s Bush was only one.”) Unsung Chicago rocker Ike Reilly has a sleazy masterpiece called “Hip Hop Thighs #17,” but it gets disqualified for numerical arbitrariness. Jimmy Eat World’s “Seventeen” gets disqualified for never mentioning the number. Tim McGraw’s “Seventeen” gets disqualified for being by Tim McGraw. Ditto “Seventeen” by Winger.

Rising from some strange, pillowy planet, “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” by Broken Social Scene is a favorite song of robot geishas worldwide, as well as one of mine. Sadly, and I do mean that, there is no mention of the titular number, although the line “Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me” gets said 13 times in a row. There is no justice. Ladytron’s “Seventeen,” which is as icily cool as one would expect from this gelid Liverpool outfit, decadently declares, “They only want you when you're seventeen/When you're twenty-one you're no fun.” With its throbbing dance-floor beat, this one really gives my winning choice a run for its money.

Keren Ann, the exotically heritaged singer songwriter who cannot seem to garner any negative press, comes close to seventeen-ly sublimity with the stately “Seventeen,” sounding something like what a young, alto-voiced Leonard Cohen might have written. A beautiful song, but the sophistication of the arrangement and the singer’s knowing perspective serve to belie the song’s central plaint, “Look at me/I’m only seventeen,” rendering it an odd choice for the quintessential “17” song. For that distinction, a song really must embody the whole seventeen-ian ethos. And that’s why there’s only one real choice.

Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” from 1982’s Bella Donna has the quaking, feverish intensity of a very confused, very sexy teenager, on the cusp of adulthood. It announces itself boldly in a spray of 16th notes (16th notes—that has to be significant) and Ms. Nicks delivers a whomping vocal that I defy you not to respect in the morning. Even Joan Cusack’s campy performance of the song in School of Rock only serves to reinforce Eo17’s iconic status. Here’s a song that’s embraced by the once and future nerds and the whirling ingénues among us, as well as those of us who fall somewhere in between.

Stevie Nicks - "Edge of Seventeen"

* Random fact about “Edge of Seventeen” – The title comes from a mishearing of the phrase, “the age of seventeen,” reportedly drawled by Mrs. Tom Petty, in response to Ms. Nicks’ query as to when she had first met her husband.

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He'll probably coast on teen angst for awhile, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

by David Klein

I never realized just how many 16 songs there are in this world. As anyone with a cursory knowledge of number songs knows, “16” songs grew in abundance in the 1950s, when girls had sweet sixteen parties, with 16 candles on their cakes. “16 Candles,” a 1957 hit by the Crests, inspired the 1984 movie of the same name, which itself became a cultural touchstone, albeit briefly, back when the whole world belonged to Molly Ringwald and we only lived in it. “You’re Sixteen” by Johnny Burnette, was remade into a hit by Ringo Starr, at the start of his hot streak in the early ‘70s. Songs like Neil Sedaka’s “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” and “Only 16,” a hit for Sam Cooke, tend to emphasize the youth angle (“She was too young to fall in love/and I was too young to know”) If you read between the lines in the ever-salacious Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” you can surmise that all the cats don’t just want to “dance” with the budding nubile in question. No discussion of “16” songs would be complete without “Sixteen Tons,” a country classic that everybody from Johnny Cash to Bo Diddley to Stevie Wonder have covered (“You load 16 tons and what do you get/Another day older, deeper in debt.”) And let’s not forget that quaint ditty from The Sound of Music, “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” On second thought, let’s.

Sixteen was no longer sweet by the time the ‘70s rolled around. Iggy’s stomping “Sixteen” from Lust for Life is twisted and carnal in the extreme, while Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks was so enamored of 16 that he wrote the caustic, knotty “Sixteen” as well as the more straight-ahead “Sixteen Again.” And in the ‘80s there is the poignant “Sixteen Blue” by the Replacements. I know it’s blasphemy, but I always liked the rockers more than the heart-on-your sleevers by Mr. Westerberg. Sue me. The Chills, one of my favorite bands of all time, had a song called “16 Heartthrobs” which was one of the lesser songs off the sublime Brave Words LP.

There is a slew of songs entitled “16 Days”: from erstwhile Golden Palominos vocalist Lori Carson, Modern English of “I Melt With You” fame, and Ryan Adams’s former outfit, Whiskeytown. And the number is still hot, as recent songs by No Doubt and Le Tigre (both called “Sixteen”), the Decemberists (“16 Military Wives”) and Fall Out Boy (“A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me”) attest.

As always, though, I go with my gut, if indeed I have a gut feeling, and thus the winning16 song is one that is deep in my blood, with decades of enjoyable listens behind it. It’s a song that always got me going and made me want to dance around (as good a barometer as any). While contemplating Kiss for the overrated band/underrated song query recently tossed to me by my esteemed colleague with the paisley iPod case (Mr. Klingman) I came to the conclusion that while there are many negatives you could hurl at Kiss, overrated is not one of them. Yes, they have legions of fans (an army, I heard) willing to lay down their lives for the Knights in Service of Satan, (apparently, that’s what Kiss stands for) but you don’t find too many people praising the band’s musicianship, the deeper meaning of “Cold Gin” or the complexity of their arrangements. Some people just like going to the circus.

I have enjoyed a few Kiss songs in my time, but found most of their output a bit too lunk-headed and party-hearty for my liking, even in the pre- Lick it Up years. Nevetheless, there was a time when I could draw each of their faces in ballpoint, and if I had to name a favorite Kiss member, it would have been Ace. I even saw the band play, on a triple bill with the J Geils Band and Mahogany Rush, at an outside gig at the long-gone Roosevelt Stadium in New Jersey. I remember dutifully standing up and singing along during “Rock and Roll All Nite” but I wasn’t all that captivated. I think I was too far from the stage to fully appreciate what they were all about.

“Christine Sixteen” was always one of the good, good Kiss songs, maybe their best. It’s just flat-out fun, a bouncy pop number with a sweetly stinging Stones-y guitar lick and a satisfying arrangement that makes it the ideal song to listen to on your way down to the Dairy Queen after a little league game. All the dopey Kiss hallmarks are here: the lumbering vocals, the adolescent lyrics (“She’s been around/but she’s young and clean”) even a bonus dopey spoken narrative (“When I saw you coming out of school that day…”) and yet it’s hard to resist. Maybe it’s the complex call-and-response (Christine! Sixteen! Christine! Sixteen!) Maybe it’s that saloon piano going ‘clang-clang-clang-clang.’ Or maybe it’s just those three drum hits the set off the chorus. I know some of those “sweet sixteen” songs have more cultural significance, and I know the ‘Mats song is deeper, but I can’t help myself, and besides, this isn’t about cultural significance. It’s about finding the song for the number that just feels right.

Kiss - "Christine Sixteen"

* Random fact about “Christine Sixteen”: The 1977 single’s B-side, “Shock Me,” was covered in multiple deconstructive versions by Red House Painters.

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He'll probably coast on teen angst for awhile, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

by David Klein

Would that there was a title track to Paul Westerberg’s 14 Songs, because I am facing a dearth, a lack, a paucity and so on, of proper 14 songs. Were it not for the fact that I have a totally ace 14 song up my sleeve, I might have already experienced my first spate of night terrors related to this numerological quest. In my zeal to provide some kind of a range, however, I have turned up the following: “Fourteen” by the sometimes delightful, occasionally un-listenable Beat Happening, in this case, in blatant un-listenable mode; “14 Years” by Guns ‘N Roses, whom I could never fully embrace, the somber “14 Days” by Nick Lowe, and “Feb 14.,” a cry in your beer number by the Drive-by Truckers.

Good thing “14 Cheerleader Coldfront” by Guided By Voices arrived unexpectedly on my desktop the other day, like one of the cans of Schlitz that Robert Pollard lobbed high and far into the crowd when I saw GBV play an outdoor show many moons ago, in Central Park. It’s an unadorned little number off the originally self-released Propeller, sung by sometime vocalist Tobin Sprout (whose name could almost pass for a GBV song.) Like most GBV songs, the lyrics are either inscrutable or simply nonsensical, like text derived from William Burroughs’ cut-up technique, and that’s part of the charm. But the slightness of the 90-second song, the lack of any real cheerleaders, and the arbitrariness of the use of 14 here render it an also-ran. The fact is, there’s only one really great 14 song, and it’s Television Personalities’ “14th Floor,” the first single from a seminal band that was shambolic before your favorite band was shambolic. This is what Chuck Berry would have written if he had been a young Brit, living in council housing in 1977. (I realize that, in a certain sense, this is an ill-advised simile, but come on, take that leap of logic with me.)

I'm looking down on London/But there's little I can see/Cos I'm living so high up/And it looks so small to me/And I'm feeling so frustrated/Cos the lifts are out once more/And when I get home from work tonight/I gotta climb 14 floors, I tell you mate... 



14th floor 
Oh no, my face don't fit 
14th floor Just a number on the council list 


14th floor Oh no, there's nothing to do/14th floor 
It's got a roof, it hasn't got a view 



Television Personalities - "14th Floor"

Crooning to the MS public, I humbly intone, “Fifteen minutes with you/Well, I wouldn’t say no.” Don’t get me wrong—I understand why Morrissey went with the far more evocative “Reel Around the Fountain” as the song’s title, but “fifteen minutes with you” is the song’s main hook, and it would have made my job a whole lot easier. What I’m trying to say is, I see no other choice but to break my own rule, big-time. I have said many times that ‘tis better to refer to the number in question then to never refer at all. After breaking this rule at 3 and 4, I have adhered well to it since then, but blast it, what better 15 song is there than Wire’s “The 15th”? And no, the Fischerspooner cover version could not be construed as better (although it is damned good, and more fun than Mike Watt’s cover version on 1996’s Whore: Tribute to Wire, containing My Bloody Valentine’s sizzling cover of another numerically named Wire song that seems all but a shoo-in later on in this list.)

Andy Warhol’s concept of 15 minutes of fame serves as the basis of a number of 15 songs. The late and sorely missed Kirsty MacColl gave us “Fifteen Minutes,” a charming, Kinks-ish hate-note to sell-outs, bozos and others “whose mediocrity excels,” from her finest record, Kite. Johnny Boy, of “The Generation That Bought More Shoes…” fame has a “Fifteen Minutes” too. The Blue Aeroplanes, one of the only bands that ever got anywhere with a vocalist who spoke rather than sang (imagine a more versatile Art Brut led by a declaiming debauched poet type) have a track called “Warhol’s Fifteen” which has a lot in common with a Neil Young song except lines like “Whatever eye is trained upon it/your face is the future/a smoother transaction is hoped for/than the hollows beneath their skin.” Early glam queen Suzi Quatro and ‘90s house proponents Sheep on Drugs are among several outfits with songs called “15 Minutes of Fame.” And an early Snow Patrol song that could be the template for a lot of recent Snow Patrol is called “Fifteen Minutes Old.” Still…I’m not convinced that any of these approaches the icy majesty of Wire’s “The 15th.” In fact, when it comes to icy majesty, accept no substitutes.

“The 15th” breaks every rule. It doesn’t say the number; it doesn’t even say much of anything discernible. The subject of the song, the vague “you”—could be an idea that was never expressed. Maybe the 15 somehow relates to the album’s title, 154. Maybe it’s a bunch of clever nonsense. Enigmatic is hard to pull off. Michael Stipe, for example, managed when he mumbled, but once he enunciated, and started singing about the flowers of Guatemala, a lot of the mystery was gone. “The 15th” shows how to maintain the mystery, with words that convey an almost alien-sounding logic, even though we cannot grasp them.

Reviewed, it seemed/As if someone were watching over it

Squared to it, faced to it, it was not there

“The 15th” is like the monolith in 2001. It just is.

Wire - "The 15th"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He'll probably coast on teen angst for awhile, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint)

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So, admittedly, you're going to have to be willing to follow me through some flaming hoops of logic here. Pixies or Big Star would be tough customers for any number, obviously, and to displace them for a track that so blatantly flaunts the bi-laws of this enterprise would seem a quixotic undertaking at best. There are no lyrics, no enunciation of the key integer, and what would seem to be a tenuously arbitrary connection to the numeric value. In his official wisdom Prof. Klein dismissed my chosen usurper as unfortunately beneath consideration. But this is no ordinary number we're dealing with here. If ever a number had an ingrained cultural meaning understandable to all, it's thirteen. If the point of this series is to find the ultimate musical expression of every number there is, shouldn't the intrinsic meaning of said numbers be a consideration in determining between strong contenders? Well?

So, let's forget the rules for a second and consider, shall we?

The common folklore is that number thirteen gained it's cursed status when Judas pulled up the thirteenth chair at the last supper. Of course, the bad 13 mojo isn't confined solely to the Christian world, as even those wacky Norsemen proclaimed their murderous trickster god Loki (known by Marvel Comics readers for his golden helmet and tight green tights) as the thirteenth deity. But it's more prevalent than that. Some trace the fear of thirteen to general calendar mistrust. The Gregorian and Islamic traditions for example, with their twelve month standard, turned up suspicious noses at the crunchier, slightly pagan, 13 month lunisolar version. It's not a done deal that we can pin any of this on orthodox religion at all, though. Apparently there are references to general 13 related heeby jeebies in Hammurabi's Mesopotamian Code circa 1760 BC. Those are only the historical explanations. We're ignoring the creepier tidbits, such as the uniformly thirteen lettered names of Theodore Bundy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Jack the Ripper. We also haven't even dipped a toe in the somewhat mysterious origins of the ill-ease over Friday the 13th, birthdate of evil folk such as Fidel Castro, Margaret Thatcher, the Olson Twins, and Fantastic Four director Tim Story. 13 has an unsettling power that crosses cultural and historical lines, making otherwise practical folk like high rise architects ban all mention just to be safe. There's just this unreasonable, inarticulate dread there.

So how do our top contenders look in this light? Big Star's "Thirteen" is more appropriately described as a perfect distillation of thirteen the age rather than thirteen the number. This isn't such a problem for numbers like sixteen, seventeen, or twenty-one, whose cultural identity is more firmly based on their correlation to an age, but here the stand alone meaning's gotta be factored. While there's clearly a boatload of dread surrounding the junior high years, this admittedly gorgeous song about chatting up girls and listening to the Rolling Stones is a bit too romantic in its details to express any sort of centuries old, unspoken evil. Pixies' "No. 13 Baby" (the eventual victor) has a bit of mean streak, sure. But like many of Black Francis' lyrical turns, the death and darkness is all mixed up in sex. His tattooed lust object may very well be inspiring some strong feeling, but unreasonable dread isn't it.

Which brings us finally to the point. There may not be a simpler, better example of pure, non-logical dread in music than in John Carpenter's 1976 soundtrack for his film, Assault on Precinct 13. First, to dismiss Klein's point that this song's 13 relationship is sullied because the film's besieged police station actual bears the number 9. Well, Carpenter's no dummy. As odd as it is that the movie's specifics change the title's location, at least he understands the inherent power. He gets that 13, when included in a title, is going to predispose audiences to a bit of nervous tension. For a film that uses techniques and imagery from zombie films morphed into an urban police thriller (and hopefully that brief description lengthened a few NetFlix queues out there) a name prominently featuring the less spooky numeral was not going to cut it.

Enhancing Carpenter's cagey film making smarts, it's the film's score that really ratchets up the suspense. The main title music (which repeats in different variations throughout the movie as the faceless street gang keeps bearing down) is basically just one repeated synth line rumbling through on a repeated loop. Carpenter's time and money restraints on recording led to the simplicity and permeating blood red fuzz. The director has said that he simplified Lalo Schifrin's Dirty Harry theme, which was in turn a simplified version of Led Zeppelin's "the Immigrant Song". Well, the distillation from complexity to bare essentials plays in its favor. Without any words to guide us, the listener is immediately affronted by a progression of notes that can't be stopped or reasoned with. A refrain that's coming to get you, no matter what. It's the things that go bump in the night, pumped directly from your speakers. As such, it's the perfect thirteen song. It may not make sense when held to the strictest letter of the law, but that's sort of the point. It's got nothing to do with straightforward logic.

This digit goes deeper than that.

John Carpenter - "Assault on Precinct 13 (Main Title)"

// John Carpenter - Assault on Precinct 13 Original Soundtrack - buy

Note: Although it was re-released in 2004, a quick look at the untamed wilderness of Amazon's used market tells us that scarcity has already driven prices for the reissue up to the 80 dollar range. Easy come, easy go.

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He'll probably coast on teen angst for awhile, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 01:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

by David Klein

Let’s get this straight right from the start: Twelve is not one of those cool numbers. Say the word “twelve” out loud a few times and you might stop believing there really is such a word. Its lack of euphoniousness is no doubt responsible for the dearth of 12-titled songs. Nevertheless, one has to work with what one has. I had to cast aside “12 X U” by Wire because it’s sung “one-two-ex-you,” but that’s probably a good thing because Wire looms Giacometti-like on the numerical horizon. Other songs to be considered hastily and then gotten rid of include Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” (Zimmy never says “12”—or “35” or “rainy day woman” for that matter), the sachrymose ballad (that’s a cross between saccharine and lachrymose—I recently submitted it to OED online; haven’t heard back yet) “The Twelfth of Never,” which was a hit for the likes of Donny Osmond, Johnny Mathis, and Slim Whitman. (For that alone you would think the song would be utterly disqualified from consideration here.) But in the course of researching this deeply complicated piece, I unearthed the fact that Jeff Buckley covered this song, and so has Nina Simone, Elvis, and a slew of notables. In the end it matters not; so firmly ensconced in the "You Can’t Polish a Turd" school of musical criticism am I that no further discussion of bad songs happening to good people is necessary.

Not that there are that many places to go. The languid and lovely “Twelve Hours of Sunset” by Roy Harper is as shimmery as its title would suggest. Harper has always existed well below the radar here in the states, even when he was saluted by name in a Led Zeppelin song (“Hats Off To (Roy) Harper”), and delivered a memorable lead vocal on Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar.” A fantastic acoustic guitar player, Harper issued his first LP in 1966, and has continued writing songs and performing in a deeply personal vein ever since. Harper coaxed haunting acoustic solos out of Jimmy Page on 1971’s outstanding Stormcock, a fine place to start.

As this numerological exercise evolves beyond a mere list, it starts to resemble a jukebox of sorts, and hence, I’m starting to value punchy, jukebox-sized songs because of the way they fit together into a lean, punchy set with some attitude. With that in mind, it’s not hard to choose “12:51” by the Strokes, a lean, sassy song by a band that’s been adored and maligned in equal measure. The sweet jab of rhythm guitar, the helium-tinged Cars synth and the beautiful dumbness of the main hook prove irresistible to these ears. Also to its credit: the number “12” gets some good enunciation in the bridge, and, in an echo of the “Five Foot One”/“6’ 1” segue, here we go from “11:59” to “12:51.” And, [speaking in my worst Tony Montana voice], and that I like.

the Strokes - "12:51"

I’m in a state. I’ve got a pair of stellar opposites vying for “13” gold: The Pixies’ scabrous “No. 13 Baby” and the musical comfort food that is “Thirteen” by Big Star. But first, the also-rans: the flipside to “Rock Around the Clock” was called “Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town)” It starts out like a real downer, with the lines, “Last night I was dreamin’/dreamed about the H Bomb” but it’s actually a fantasy about the bright side of nuclear war: namely, you could, conceivably, get a lot of nookie. For a kitschier version of the track, look no further than the back catalog of the multitalented Ann-Margaret. Brian Jonestown Massacre’s “13” is a low-slung bluesy shuffle that is certainly no slouch. Nor is Elvis Costello’s “13 Steps Lead Down,” off of Brutal Youth (1994), one a very small number of Costello records that I’ve gotten some mileage out of, post-Juliet Letters. “13 Steps, which has the added advantage of being 13 years old, has some of that whip-crack intensity of the younger, far less content Mr. McManus of yesteryear. It saddens me not to be able to consider John Carpenter’s surprisingly good soundtrack for Assault on Precinct 13, but as an instrumental work, it doesn’t stand a tattooed tit’s chance in hell among the crop of songs under consideration. Besides which, if you want to get technical, the assault in question takes place at Precinct 9, Division 13, so the song is disqualified under the Moonglows “Bait and Switch” precedent (i.e., in “The Ten Commandments of Love,” only nine are mentioned, rendering the song null and void for this list.)

So what’s it going to be then, eh?

The sweetest song ever written, which doesn’t even say thirteen but only does so invisibly, out of implication, or a badass swaggerer who rides into town and declares itself No. 13, baby…?

Big Star - "Thirteen"

Big Star’s song is a thing of rare beauty, to be sure, with resonant, poignant lyrics that even the less lyrically minded among us can appreciate. But there’s that nagging feeling that the titular digits are never mentioned, and the added fact that the Pixies follow the Strokes quite nicely, and so I have to tip my hat to Black Francis & Co. Other reasons to vote Pixies in the great 13 choice poll: An overall greater adherence to numerical values. The cover of Doolittle (for my money, the best, most cohesive LP in the Pixies canon) is littered with low numbers, and it also contains the immortal “If the Devil is 6/Then God is seven” rant from “Monkey Gone to Heaven.” Finally, “No. 13 Baby” pulls you in at the very beginning, with a hanging minor chord that seems to quote almost directly from the chord that begins the nastiest song in the Kinks canon: “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.”

Pixies - "No. 13 Baby"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He'll probably coast on teen angst for awhile, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 06:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

by David Klein

When I first began brainstorming song ideas for this list, my “10” song came to me right away. I’ve turned up a number of excellent contenders, but there was never a lot of serious competition. “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin, off their monolithic Physical Graffiti, encapsulates what’s great about Led Zeppelin: the sense of space, the majesty, the indelible melodies, guitar lines that fly too close to the sun, drums that shake you to your very foundation, and the whole thing filled with urgency, yearning, and (in the case of 10YG), something like 14 separate guitar tracks.

For the converted among you, there will be no argument. For those who never got into the band—or simply never got their appeal, for those who hated “Stairway,” or who were born too late for the band to truly enter your soul, etc., I say unto you only this: This one might make a believer out of you, at least a believer in the sublimity of the song itself. All you have to do is pretend you never heard of Led Zeppelin or Robert Plant or that fish in the hotel room with the groupie in LA. Just pretend your friend brought this over and slapped it on your iPod, told you it was an outtake from Tool’s latest, and I defy you not to be moved.

Led Zeppelin - "Ten Years Gone"

Like any great Zep song, “Ten Years Gone” is like an amazing feat, like a miniature movie consisting only of sound. Every melodic excursion and turn within the song’s six-minute confines sounds like it was written into the song, and yet there is a certain organic looseness that keeps it from sounding like the labored-over creation it clearly was. All praise to the master producer Jimmy Page. It starts so hushed, and builds so elegantly upon an insistent, Moebius strip kind of a lick, one that sounds better as all the melodic permutations of it are writ large, strategically, in the most perfect places. And Robert Plant delivers one of his most modulated performances in this paean to lost love. When he finally gives it up and wails a couple of “woo-woo, yeah-yeahs” like the banshee incarnate, it’s the perfect, the only, sound that will do.

If anything could have swayed me, it’s this cool-as-shit track by Liliput (known as Kleenex before they got leaned on by tissue industry thugs - ed), an influential though unheralded Swiss band (actually they’re all unheralded) from the early ‘80s, which MS resident Swiss-o-phile Jeff Klingman sent my way, despite his own strong feelings for this Zeppelin track. I have to dock it points because the “10” part is almost arbitrary, and remind Mr. K of the fact that the 10 bracket is a tough one. As in baseball, most of the low numbers are retired. If the song were called, for example, “DC-43,” it would be a total shoo-in. And while I’m employing an equestrian figure of speech, in the interest of a horse race, YOU take a listen:

Liliput - "DC-10"

I know I might be hearing from the Springsteen-ites out there (“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”), the six people who really dug the Stone Roses’ Second Coming (“10 Storey Love Song”), and possibly even fans of The Soundtrack of Our Lives, alerting me to the stately “Ten Years Ahead.” I fantasize about hearing from fans of the Monochrome Set. This oddball ‘80s combo, whose cheeky “Ten Don’ts For Honeymoons” begins with the advice, “Don’t ski naked down Mt. Everest/With lilies up your nose,” had the temerity to list glowing reviews from the rock press on the back of their 1982 LP, Eligible Bachelors, including this one, from Ongaku Senka (Japan): “Though I rarely give five stars, I can do nothing but praise such exciting music.” The first single by Curve was the densely churning “Ten Little Girls.” (I haven’t heard it in awhile, but all Curve’s songs are densely churning.) And I cannot in good faith omit mention of “Big Ten Inch Record,” from Aerosmith’s best record ever, Toys in the Attic (1975). Popularized by Bull Moose Jackson, “Big Ten Inch” sports the kind of outsized double entendre that even an 11-year-old boy can understand. (Back in the day, long before they covered “Walk This Way,” the members of Run-DMC used to think the name of the band was Toys in the Attic. I learned this from watching one of those “history of rock” documentaries that proliferated in the late ‘90s.) Finally, on the ‘50s tip, I’ll mention “The Ten Commandments of Love” by the Moonglows, which was name-checked by Elvis Costello in his scintillating “Pidgin English.”

The pack thins out a lot at 11. U2 turns up yet again, with their Martin Hannett-produced second single, “11 O’Clock Tick Tock,” which the good folks at Wikipedia tell me is among the 20 most performed songs in the band’s oeuvre. Respect to the tie-dyed minions who have written in to remind me of the Grateful Dead song called “The Eleven,” named after its tricky time signature (11/8). Primus did something similar with “Eleven.” I wanted to consider “E Eleventh Nuts” from last year’s fine White Bread Brown Beer by Scritti Politti but it was one of the few tracks that didn’t quite grab me. There was a cool number from the ‘80s by singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman called “The 11th Confession,” which I remember from a mixed tape, side by side with Hunters & Collectors. And it just wouldn’t be Christmas without a pompous art rock song to consider, in this case, “The Eleventh Earl of Mar” by post-Peter Gabriel Genesis (full disclosure, I once paid to see post-Peter Gabriel Genesis in concert, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.) In the end it was not hard to give the nod to Blondie for “11:59,” a great three-minute pop song, steeped in ‘60s girl group drama, with a great, grab-you intro and nifty, noir-ish lyrics to boot.

Blondie - "11:59"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It looks easy now, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

by David Klein

It is a wise populace that speaks with a nearly unanimous voice, especially when proclaiming the preeminence of the Beatles. In these shaky times, it seems essential to have a few truths we call hold self-evident. Besides, now that the 8-spot is firmly in the hands of Liverpool’s finest, I am officially absolved of having to consider “Revolution #9.” With its mind-numbing repetition of the titular numeral, it’s certainly a kind of iconic 9 song; of the other major 9 songs I assayed, R#9 is the lone eight-minute Dadaist freak-out. More traditional fare abounds: the Lieber/Stoller classic “Love Potion #9” (pornographically covered by Blowfly) the lunk-headed Bob Seger song called “Nine Tonight” (and I like Bob Seger), and several from the early ‘80s when the phrase “9 to 5” was that era’s “you go, girl.” As with most earthly phenomena, Dolly Parton was there first, with her bouncy rendition of the title track to the movie 9 to 5. A year later, Sheena Easton was unleashed upon a fascinated public, scoring a monster hit with “Morning Train (9 to 5).” Even the Ramones seemed to pick up on the trend with “It’s Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World),” a decent track from one of their lightest albums, 1981’s Pleasant Dreams. Easily the best song to utilize both 9 and 5 comes from one of my favorite unheralded bands of all time, Game Theory, with a quirky little pop gem (like so many of their songs) called “Nine Lives to Rigel 5.” With a title that refers to one of the stars in the constellation Orion, the song is typical of songwriter, Scott Miller, who seems to have written the book on obscure references, even going so far as to name one CD The Tape of Only Linda, in reference to the famously embarrassing isolated-mic version of “Hey Jude” that a waggish roadie made of the late Linda McCartney. But somehow the dedicated Game Theory fan in me still hesitates to pronounce the track the definitive 9.

Nine is about good things: the players on a baseball team, Salinger's Nine Stories, a cat’s lives, the chorus of “London’s Burning”—good things. It's the last of the single digits, solidly comprised of three threes. There’s a classic country song called "Nine Pound Hammer" that I've loved since childhood. John Lennon's "#9 Dream” was a big hit on A.M. radio in the mid-‘70s, with its strangely addictive chorus of “Ah! Bowakawa pousse, pousse,” and then there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room,"Karn Evil 9" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. ELP is, hands-down, the group most railed against in documentaries about the birth of punk. Every punk doc worth its salt features an interview with a punk legend, wearing shades and smoking a fag, who says something like, “It was bloooody awful back then. All ELP an’ that. But when we saw the Pistols, we said, we can do that…”) It is so much part of the received wisdom of punk history that ELP represented all that was wrong with the music scene at the time, that no one ever questions whether the group deserved to be despised so much. You mightjust be inspired to take a second (or a first) listen after reading the following quote from the trio’s vocalist/bassist/guitar player, Greg Lake. “ELP was so bloody dark and aggressive. When the whole punk rock thing came out we used to laugh at them. Because if you’re talking about aggression—real aggression—that’s ELP. This was a truly aggressive band, aggressive to each other, aggressive in the music, aggressive in performance, aggressive in stage production. It makes Johnny Rotten look like a fucking walk in the park.”

So, intrepid MS reader, go listen to “Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression” if you want a taste of something seriously aggressive. As for me, I couldn’t really consider this track even if I wanted to be perverse, because it doesn’t mention its title, and as we have established, a song that mentions its title will always score higher than a song that doesn’t, (all together now) except if its by Stereolab.

Wilson Pickett - "Engine Number 9"

In the end I'm down to two slabs of sizzling soul. "Engine #9" by Wilson Pickett has to score way up there. With a truly backbone-slipping groove established almost chiefly by means of the holy trinity of cowbell, maraca and vibraslap, and a typically charged-up vocal, this is classic Pickett. My only reservation is that, as an extended vamp, the song seems to suffer slightly by comparison to both the temporal concision and breadth of sonic touches that mark my winning selection, "Cloud Nine" by the Temptations.

The first single to feature pioneer producer Norman Whitfield’s “psychedelic soul” style, “Cloud Nine” is a stone-cold classic, with urgency, a brilliant arrangement, fuzzed out guitars and gospel-inflected vocals that helped extend the group’s reach beyond the traditional Motown audience and into the mainstream. More important, this dark ode to self-medication as a means of escaping the world’s ills still has plenty of resonance today, and still packs a mean punch.

the Temptations - "Cloud Nine"

Finally, you just got to love that wah-wah pedal…

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It looks easy now, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

by David Klein

As much of a conundrum as the number 7 presented, 8 ups the ante significantly with two out-and-out ‘60s rock classics heading the pack: “Eight Days a Week” and “Eight Miles High.” It really comes down to this: Are you a Beatles man or a Byrds man?

In this corner, you've got Lennon and McCartney at the peak of the collaborative powers, their voices melding in a delirious, rough-hewn harmony of rare beauty. Hand claps that practically make the song. Those swelling, heavenly chords that seem to arrive out of nowhere, to mark the song's beginning and end, and a clever, purposeful use of the number “8.” All wrapped around a single that is 2:44 of pure hook, 8DAW looks invincible.

the Beatles - "Eight Days a Week"

But maybe you are made of stronger stuff. Maybe the whole “ooh I need your love babe” thing is no longer relevant to your nuanced existence. Perhaps you prefer the challengers, in the corduroy trunks and rectangular purple shades: The Byrds. The ominous distorted bass line that opens the track like a Morse code signal, soon joined by those unmistakable Byrds harmony vocals, and that guitar: Coltrane lines after a trip through a psychedelic play-doh factory and filtered through McGuinn’s 12-string Rickenbacker. This startlingly vivid reenactment of the drug experience is unlike much of the blantantly drug-inspired music from this era, which today sounds more campy than trippy. “Eight Miles High,” on the other hand, manages to convey both the euphoria (through, what else, euphoric vocals) and the paranoia that a lysergically altered consciousness can bring. Building to a satisfyingly chaotic ending—always a plus—8MH looks like a winner.

the Byrds - "Eight Miles High"

It’s probably pointless to say one is better than the other, unless it makes sense to argue that a lemon is better than a lime, or a crocus is better than a snapdrago