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 (1)

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 (4)

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 signifi