If for any reason you cannot find the paperback version of Playing the Indian Card at your favourite bookstore or online retailer, please ask them to carry it. Protest and picket the store entrance if necessary.
The kids ask, why don’t wars other than Vietnam have a soundtrack?
They are influenced largely here by the soundtrack to Full Metal Jacket. This is their prime source of information about Vietnam.
But they do have a point. There was a burst of musical creativity at the time of Vietnam, far better than anything we’re hearing now. And a lot of it was seemingly inspired by the turmoil and the opposition to the war. Times of general crisis are good times for the arts; take Renaissance Italy. This is because art is here to heal confusion; the imagination spontaneously kicks in when times are bad, seeking some order or pattern over the rainbow.
But I immediately dispute their unlearned premise that other wars did not have a decent soundtrack. They just haven’t seen “O What a Lovely War.”
The Second World War too generated some great music. It just hasn’t, to my knowledge, been set to film in the same systematic way.
What about:
Run Rabbit Run
Blood on the Risers
Lili Marlene
The D-Day Dodgers
They Say That in the Army
The White Cliffs of Dover
We’ll Meet Again
I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank
We’re Gonna Hang Out Our Washing on the Siegfried Line
Colonel Bogie’s March
Der Fuhrer’s Face
The North Atlantic Squadron
Bless ‘Em All
There’ll Always Be an England
This Is the Army, Mr. Jones
Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer
O How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning
And, although I find it too smarmy, “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
Somebody really should do a stage show like “O What a Lovely War” around these songs.
Although it is not my number one music pick, sometimes only rock and roll will do.
I don’t mean “rock.” That is a more general term. I certainly don’t mean heavy metal or acid rock. They lack the roll.
To me, real rock and roll is urban and working class. It speaks of the experiences of urban, working class young people. It is musically simple, generally based on a repeated signature or riff. More than three chords is suspect. And it does not end with a finale or have significant variations. It just drives that riff like a motor turning. Life is a highway.
What are some classic examples?
The music of the Beatles is much more diverse than only rock and roll, but when they do rock and roll they can be as good as anyone. They have two great rock voices in McCartney, who can do a Little Richard swoop, and John Lennon, who has a soulful crack in his voice. Both have written great rock and roll songs.
Rolling Stones have long billed themselves as the “world’s greatest rock and roll band,” and I am not inclined to contest the claim. Musically, they are well behind the Beatles; they have only one decent vocalist, and Jagger is no better than decent. Neither Richards nor Wood, nor Jones before him, are really top rank guitarists. Watts and Wyman were great, but neither a bassist nor a drummer can carry a band. Still, this is rock and roll, a kind of folk music. Exemplary musicianship is beside the point. The point is if you can strike the right tone consistently. The Stones have kept it up longer than anyone.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are more versatile, but when they do rock, they really do rock. Springsteen is magnificent as a lyricist, and writes very much from the working class urban viewpoint. I love their use of saxophone and keyboards. Rock and roll should not be limited to guitars.
ZZ Top has just the right groove too. Billy Gibbons is genuinely a top-rank guitarist. But his guitar work has the right mechanical grind. His voice too is mechanical and grinding. Made for rock and roll.
My brother, who prefers jazz, always objected that Creedence Clearwater Revival was too simple. That’s what rock and roll is supposed to be. The hallmark of true rock and roll, for me, is that I can listen to a song again and again and never get tired of it. This seems paradoxically more often true of simple songs. There is no better rock song than “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”
Travelling Wilburys: the greatest of supergroups. As with the Beatles, you have the great swoop of Roy Orbison’s voice on the high notes. You have great rock songwriting, largely from George Harrison. These guys were having fun together, and that energy is what you want for rock and roll. You want the feel of busting loose.
Buddy Holly and the Crickets sound a little too bouncy and upbeat for contemporary tastes, but they deserve special recognition as pioneers. The songs still hold up, although Linda Ronstadt does a better “When Will I Be Loved” than Holly did. They were experimenting, and so can be forgiven. They must have been mindblowing in their day.
The Animals: I always thought Eric Burdon had a great rock voice, pitched towards the blues. As a bassist, I admired Chas Chandler’s runs, and Alan Price was great on the keyboard. He did marvellous solo work later. I wish the original group had stayed together longer. Burdon went weird when he went solo, and did things that did not suit his voice. They were best when they stuck to classics; but that perhaps limited their repertoire and so their potential to last.
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Some claim Detroit is the true and original home of rock and roll. Sounds right—the home of the automobile. Nobody did the good old straight-up full-tilt rock and roll any better than the Detroit Wheels.
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. As good as anyone, and keeping the torch high despite some metal influence. There is something special about seeing a woman who can rock.
Notably absent from my list:
The Who. “My Generation” has some claim to being one of the best rock and roll songs, but often I find them embarrassing. Trashing your instruments on stage is a cheap gimmick. Swinging the microphone or windmilling your arm to simply play a chord are cheap gimmicks. Keith Moon was too busy showboating on the drums to keep a steady beat, and John Entwhistle did solos instead of keeping the rhythm. That’s not rock and roll; because it’s lost the roll. I call kitsch.
The Beach Boys; are magnificent, but they’re art rock. Too complex musically for r&r.
The Yardbirds too were too musically sophisticated and too artistically ambitious to be truly rock and roll. Led Zeppelin were too metallic. Cream lacked the roll.
Some individual songs from other groups deserve mention. You can’t do better than “Dirty Water,” by the Standells. But they were a one-hit wonder. Same for “96 Tears.” “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits is fine r&r; but Dire Straits generally is too musically complex for rock and roll. “You Really Got Me,” by the Kinks; but the Kinks are more art rock. Manfed Mann could rock, on “The Mighty Quinn.” But more generally, more towards jazz rock.
I’m arbitrarily limiting this to groups. Hence no Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger. I have not forgotten.
No headbangers here. No hard drugs, Just good times, beer, girls, and fast cars.
Feeling feverish and incoherent today. I suspect COVID, which complicates my reservation for a booster shot. I guess that’s not happening. Real life sucks.
Unable to sleep last night, I began playing my favourites list of YouTube music videos. Not necessarily my favourite songs: this is a category reserved for music I love that does not fit under some broader classification.
First up. Elvis Presley, “His Latest Flame,” with a selection of shuffle-dancing babes. I love rhythm. Early rock and roll is great for rhythm; later rock lost it, and lost my interest. I also cannot get enough of watching beautiful girls shuffle dance. “His Latest Flame” is based around a simple endless two-note riff. I could listen to it forever. My brother Gerry used to scorn rock and roll as too simple. That’s just what I like about it.
Next up, Madonna singing “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” Rather the opposite. The Webber melody is no doubt complex enough to satisfy my brother. The lyrics, too, are dense, and there’s not much rhythm. Tim Rice is clearly influenced by W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan. But he uses erudition not for comic effect but, here, to express a philosophical world-view in verse. This strikes me as a fantastically hard thing to do, and deserves some kind of award. He also deserves an award for making Madonna relatable. I’m impressed at a rhyme of “existence” with “distance,” “illusions” with “solutions,” or the line. “All dressed to the nines/ At sixes and sevens with you.’
“The Sidewalks of New York” – three versions; none of them quite hits the mark. My grandmother used to sing this to me, and it can sometimes evoke tears. The lost world of childhood—hers more than mine.
W.C. Handy, “St. Louis Blues.” This is a purely instrumental version performed by the composer himself. I love the tone of world-weariness. Sad music is cathartic. The blues is eternal.
Playing for Change, “Guantanamera.” I’m crazy for rhythm. I love Latin rhythms. I love the format of Playing for Change, picking up participants across the world. The words do not make much sense, and are in Spanish, but there is great strength in that simple refrain,
“Guantanamera, guajira guantanamera
Guantanamera, guajira guantanamera.”
Guantanamo girl. Guantanamo country girl.
I know what he means.
A simple cry of aching appreciation for random beauty. This is not a love song; he does not know her name. The verses make sense as a spontaneous meditation on what he could possibly say to this girl, knowing nothing of her.
“I am an honest man from the land of palms…”
“My thoughts are light green, yet burning incarnadine.”
She is his muse. Perhaps she is everyone’s muse; beauty itself.
Norah Jones, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” I do not like modern jazz. I find it pretentious, emotionally superficial, and self-indulgent. Yet I love the vocal stylings of Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, or Diana Krall. When their jazz cool is used on a song with deep emotional tones, the counterpoint is painfully beautiful.
Yo-Yo Ma, Kathryn Stott, “Over the Rainbow.” I’m not big on show tunes as a rule, because they usually seem canned and artificial. But this one speaks of a deep universal yearning. It is in the end the yearning for heaven that each of us is born with. This version is instrumental, and seems even better for it, given that the words are in my head. The imagined song is more perfect tha the song heard with the ear.
Emmylou Harris, “Spanish is a Loving Tongue.” The lyrics are the main attraction here. They started out as a stand-alone cowboy poem, and it is a fine example of the genre. Harris, being a woman, must sing it in the third person. But that seems worth it for the sake of her beautiful country voice.
The Highwaymen, “City of New Orleans.” Willie Nelson is singing on this one, and the others strumming. The lyrics are finely crafted. But this is another rhythm song. It is the rhythm of the rails; you can almost feel them rumbling ‘neath the floor.
I have no connection with this part of the world—the American Midwest, and down the Mississippi. I don’t have wide experience with trains, other than watching them pass by for hours without me on them. But I can almost feel I am there. A perfect slice of Americana.
Willie Nelson with Paula Nelson, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” A beautiful black-and-white atmospheric video. I love the song in its apocalyptic simplicity. I think it was the plainness of Creedence Clearwater in particular over which my jazz-loving sibling and I differed. Willie’s cool voice feels like the cool rain falling.
Jordan Bickhart, “Brownsville Girl.” Dylan’s songs are usually better performed by someone else. It is not that he has a bad voice, so much as that he abuses it and goofs around. I think it is because he finds the songs too emotionally meaningful, too revealing.
“Brownsville Girl” has almost no melody; it is a tone poem. Not a rhyming poem either; blank verse. There is a narrative, but disjointed. A lot of it is just Western atmospherics. There ought to be little to hang your hat on here, but not so—Dylan deserved his Nobel Prize for Literature. He knows the trick of associating images, the same trick that made Yeats’s later poems so great.
The Brownsville girl makes the narrator think of Western movies, which fade in and out of his own remembered life. This is what she was to him: some promise of heroic perfection, somewhere over the rainbow, or across the Mexican line.
Like “Guantanamera,” it is mostly a coyote howl at the moon of beauty, always visible but just out of reach:
“Brownsville girl
with your Brownsville curls,
teeth like pearls
shining like the moon above
Brownsville girl
Show me all around the world,
Brownsville girl,
you're my honey love.”
Deliberately not polished poetry. Just one man trying to express the universal feeling in his heart. The incoherence is part of the point. We are here, and do not understand. Man is in love, and loves what vanishes.
A few years ago on Facebook, someone asked for a list of albums that meant a lot to you.
Here are mine, thrown at me today by Facebook’s “memories” feature.
Lightfoot! His first, and still his best, album. With great bass by Bill Lee. I was a bassist.
Songs of Leonard Cohen Hit me where I lived. I lived a couple of blocks away from Cohen’s boyhood home, and took the same route home from school. He was a local boy. Introduced to Cohen by Nick Economides, who was older and whom I looked up to for his sophistication.
Songs from a Room. Neither this nor his first are his best albums. But these are the ones from my teenage years. "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," "Tonight Will Be Fine." I remember listening to "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" on the porch with Violet Birch.
Byrds, Fifth Dimension. One of the first three albums I bought, in a batch. It wore better than the others. Bought all the Byrds albums following it too. Tempted to put some others on the list. They were probably better albums, but as my first exposure, 5D is the one that influenced me the most.
Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. First got to know it because a neighbourhood kid, Bob White, held dances during which he used to play it. The strategy, all the guys knew, was to ask your favourite girl for “Desolation Row” for a long slow dance where you got to hold her close. Trying to dance to Dylan was ridiculous. Then I started listening to the lyrics. "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," was my favourite for a long time.
Bringing it All Back Home. I bought it after Highway 61. Almost as good.
Blonde on Blonde. Disappointed at first. But it grew and grew on me. "Visions of Johanna.""Just Like a Woman," "I Want You." Al Kooper's organ.
Peter Paul and Mary, See What Tomorrow Brings. A lot of great songs. Among other things, the album I listened to after my first girlfriend broke up with me. My sister and I used to sing harmony on "Betty and Dupree."
Joni Mitchell, Blue. Not my album. My brother was the bigger Joni Mitchell fan. But this one was supernaturally great. Humming “Carey” was the only thing that got me through one summer working in a plastics factory. “River” and “All I Want” were even better.
Planxty. Bought when I was living in Ottawa. Perhaps the greatest album ever recorded by anyone. I had "Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór" played at my wedding. The one that didn’t work out.
Steeleye Span Please to See the King. Picked up second hand in a bargain bin. Yow! I love those rough edges. A revelation after the sanitized folk of the early Sixties.
The Band Music from Big Pink. Another album that seemed to change everything.
Moby Grape. Tipped off on this one by Hit Parader magazine—a great publication. Crazy good. Sadly, two of the band members later just went crazy. Few songs match the energy of Skip Spence’s “Omaha.”
Rolling Stones, High Tide and Green Grass. Not my album. Was playing in a kid rock and roll band, and a couple of my bandmates were wild about the Stones. I think Louis Lapierre owned the album. Did not especially like the music then—it was just the most fun to play on stage. But it has grown on me ever since. The Stones get better with time.
Ian & Sylvia Four Strong Winds. I love all their stuff, and Ian Tyson solo, but this I think was where I came in. I cannot ever get “V’la le Bon Vent” out of my mind. Nor would I ever want to. Let alone the title track. Or “Royal Canal,” which oddly always reminds me of Kingston, with the canal and the penitentiary.
Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet. The soundtrack at Inscape, the teen drop in coffee house in Gananoque, brain child of Father Ed Shea. "Gimme Shelter." Yeah, I love rock and roll.
I never liked The Who. They may be the band that ruined rock and roll.
Ironic to say so, because “My Generation” is almost the ultimate rock song. But after that, they totally lost the plot.
They had no rhythm section—they lost the roll in rock and roll. No steady beat, no repeating bass line. It was all showboating, with three lead instruments.
And they smothered the music in more cheap showing off: Pete Townsend’s windmilling arm, only to play a simple chord. Roger Daltrey throwing the microphone around. Smashing their instruments at the end of the set. Talent no longer mattered; the music no longer mattered. Any no-talent can do any of that. You felt cheap and intellectually patronized just watching it.
Somewhere recently I read a piece by a Catholic English professor lamenting the weakness of the lyrics to the modern Catholic hymn “Gather Us In.” It is a common complaint among Catholics today. Why is our liturgical music so lame?
Lyrics to popular songs are often awful when you set them down in print. These modern Catholic hymns are not egregious by comparison. Still, as the present author argues, why do we cling so hard to them when we have a 2,000-year tradition of the finest composers and poets in Europe to draw on instead, most of whom wrote religious poetry and music?
Some of his objections to the lyrics of “Gather Us In” seem nitpicky when I read them. Yet I myself am deeply aware that the song is unsatisfying, banal. So I take a closer look.
First line:
“Here in this place new light is streaming.”
Coleridge defined poetry as “The best words in the best order.” Keats advised to “fill every vein with ore.” Every word must work in several ways, as though it and no other simply had to be there. Like the gears of a fine watch.
“Here” and “in this place” are redundant. No reason to use both. Just filling in syllables for the scan. “Place” is vague, and so evokes little. A more precise word is more vivid, obviously fits more precisely. And this song was composed to be sung in a church.
Then there is a theological problem, surely, with the word “new.” In what sense is the light of Christianity, of Jesus, or of the sacrament “new”? Truth is eternal, Jesus is eternal, and the church has been doing this for two millennia. It is hardly le mot just. It looks as though “new” has just been tapped here as an attractive, “happy” word, for the same reason it is so often found on packaging and in consumer ads.
“Now is the darkness vanished away”
The entire line is redundant, since it is hard for new light to steam in without removing darkness at the same time. The grammar is also awkward: the correct English word order would be “Now the darkness is vanished away.” Sometimes mangling of grammar is done in poetry to fit the metre, and is accepted, but here it is not even necessary on those grounds. The correct grammar works fine. Even better, as it still scans while more concise: “”Darkness now is vanished away.” The bad grammar seems introduced only to make the lyric sound more “poetic.” Like throwing in a “prithee” or a “fain.”
And, of course, "away" in “vanished away” is yet again, redundantly, redundant. It is hard to vanish, if you are darkness, while still being there.
“See in this space our fears and our dreamings”
Bad parallel. Surely that should be either “fears and dreams” or “fearings and dreamings.” And the latter, with so little mental effort on the part of the lyricist, actually makes the line scan better:
“See in this space, our fearings and dreamings.”
“See in this space” is also perfectly redundant. We have already plainly established, if it were necessary, that the action is taking place here. Which is after all simply to say that it takes place where it takes place.
And on it goes. Little care seems taken, beyond grabbing the first words and phrasings that make superficial sense, are not heretical, and fit the needs of rhythm and rhyme. The thing feels posted in by regular mail. Bulk mail.
Some will no doubt argue that using classical poetry as lyric instead can give us hymns that are hard for many parishioners to understand. Depends on the poem; depends on the poet. But there is also a vast folk tradition we might draw on, with lyrics that are simplicity itself.
Were you there when they crucified my lord?
Were you there when they crucified my lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my lord?
Not hard to understand, and not a lot of spam.
Here’s a Spanish folk hymn, "Pescador de Hombres," that even when imperfectly translated into English, shows what a hymn can be. Our priest back in Athabasca had it taped into the hymnal at the back. A bit of liturgical rebellion, perhaps, on his part, or that of the music director. I love singing it:
Lord, you have come to the seashore,
neither searching for the rich nor the wise,
desiring only that I should follow.
Refrain
O, Lord, with your eyes set upon me,
gently smiling, you have spoken my name;
all I longed for I have found by the water,
at your side, I will seek other shores.
Lord, see my goods, my possessions;
in my boat you find no power, no wealth.
Will you accept, then, my nets and labour?
Lord, take my hands and direct them.
Help me spend myself in seeking the lost,
returning love for the love you gave me.
Lord, as I drift on the waters,
be the resting place of my restless heart,
my life’s companion, my friend and refuge.
They don't much make it any more. Psychedelic rock lost the plot in the mid-sixties, and then hard rock was the reaction. “Hard rock” killed it by taking out the roll.
But someone recently tried to do a list of five best American rock bands, and that got me thinking of my own list.
First, from the UK, the Rolling Stones have a legitimate claim to be, as they claim, the world's greatest rock and roll band. But to me they pretty much stand alone. There's no one else close in the UK, so far as I am aware.
Most American bands lean more towards country rock or folk rock. Great stuff, but not rock and roll, which is a more urban working class sound. Some American bands do got it, though.
ZZTop. Real Texas Chainsaw guitar work.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Springsteen is not just rock and roll. He and the E Street Band can do everything magnificently. But when they rock and roll, they rock and roll. When they do anything else, they always roll.
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Some say she's punk, and punk is cool. It is the closest thing to rock and roll. But I say she has that rock and roll ticking-over rhythm, not the choppy start and stop of punk.
Creedence Clearwater Revival. My brother, who likes jazz, scorns Creedence, saying they are too simple. To which I say, “yeah, that's the point.” The soul of rock is relentless repetition of some simple riff. That is the magic. It's like a mantra, dude. It's dead simple, and that's why you never get tired of it.
That's why The Who suck. They don't get that. My Generation was their one real rock song. You got to get the rhythm down, or you have nothing. The Who never did.
The Travelling Wilburys. Bit of a surprise, perhaps. Bob Dylan can do a fantastic rock and roll song when he chooses, as good as or better than anybody-- I Want You, Gotta Serve Somebody--but he doesn't write them often. The driving force behind the Wilburys seems to have been George Harrison. His stuff with the Beatles was quite different, although a song like My Sweet Lord hints at rock power. But he and the Wilburys really knew how to crank it.
It has been said, and it is true, that the best Canadian lyricists are the best lyricists in the language. It seems to be a peculiarly Canadian art form. The one great name that we anomalously miss up north is Nobel laureate Bob Dylan. But perhaps his talent springs from a similar source. He grew up on Minnesota’s Iron Range. The wind, it sure blows cold way up there. Those long cold winters may foster the meditative state needed for poetry.
Leonard Cohen
The best new poet to emerge in English since Dylan Thomas and his body of work is more important. He is and will be remembered as Canada’s national poet. He sometimes gets a word wrong, but everything is polished like diamonds. In this, he differs from Dylan. A large proportion of what Dylan does is drek, although when he is good he seems to open doors on entire spiritual worlds. Cohen is consistent quality. That being so, it is hard to choose a sample. Everything is magnificent. One of his greatest talents is simplicity. He can say more in fewer words than anyone this side of Li Bai.
The sea so deep and blind
The sun, the wild regret
The club, the wheel, the mind,
O love, aren't you tired yet?
Joni Mitchell
She is, along with Cohen, one of the very few lyricists anywhere ever whose lyrics can stand alone as great poetry without the music. Leonard Cohen demonstrates by reciting “Jungle Line” as a poem in the clip shown. It is actually better without the music, which is a bit grating and conceals some of the words. Not that she isn’t great at the music as well—and at visual art. Graham Nash remarked that living with her was like living with Beethoven. She is a force of nature. I imagine she finds it difficult living in the world, because it really is all so beneath her.
Stan Rogers
His contribution was cut sadly short by a plane crash. But he was great at simple folk lyrics.
But I told that kid a hundred times "Don't take the Lakes for granted.
They go from calm to a hundred knots so fast they seem enchanted. "
And tonight some red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall
And her lover’s gone into a white squall.
Ian Tyson
Everybody knows “Four Strong Winds.” But he has written gems almost past counting, almost always worth many listenings: “Four Rode By.” Magnificent understatement in “Irving Berlin is a Hundred Years Old Today.” “Summer Wages.” Like Rogers, he seems to capture real life.
In all the beer parlors
All down along Main Street
The dreams of the season
Are spilled down on the floor
All the big stands of timber
Wait there just for falling
The hookers standing watchfully
Waiting by the door…
Gordon Lightfoot
Lightfoot sometimes came up with lyrics that were painfully bad. It is hard to forgive
“John loves Mary; does anyone love me?”
But when he was paying attention, he was the best.
If I could read your mind love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind the drugstore sells
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just to hard to take.
Neil Young
Young gives the impression of stream of consciousness writing, with a lot of heart laid bare. No craftsmanship, but it works. Like a wolf in the night howling at the moon.
There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there.
Robbie Robertson
Lyricist for The Band. Pretty good at narrative and atmosphere. He would be appreciated more in Canada if the atmosphere he evokes were not so classically American rather than Canadian.
I picked up my bags, I went looking for a place to hide
When I saw old Carmen and the Devil, walking side by side
I said, "Hey, Carmen, c'mon, let's go downtown"
She said, "I gotta go, but my friend can stick around"
“Somewhere Down This Crazy River” is pure beat poetry:
I followed the sound of a jukebox coming from up the levee
All of a sudden, I could hear somebody whistling from right behind me
I turned around, and she said
"Why do you always end up down at Nick's Cafe?"
I said, "Uh, I don't know, the wind just kinda pushed me this way"
She said, "Hang the rich"
Buffy Ste. Marie
She can do anything. What comes across to me most strongly is her amazing sense of taste, of “just right.” Rarely any kind of misstep. Her voice is like that too.
Guess who I saw in Paris
Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Standing with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Looking all of seventeen
Guess who invited him up to her room
Guess who made him some tea
Guess who got spaced with him, played his guitar
Guess who fell asleep on his arm.
Stompin’ Tom Connors
His muse is the comic muse, which generally does not get the respect that more solemn muses get. But comedy too knows truth. And it is an essentially Canadian genre, stretching from Thomas Chandler Haliburton through Leacock and Robert W. Service to Michael Myers, Lorne Michaels, and the lot. Lots of funny, clever rhymes.
Not PC, but one of his earliest songs is still one of his most memorable:
She came a long, long way from Frobisher Bay
People, don’cha know now what I mean
She had the boys all cryin' on the Distant Early Warning Line
Old Muk-Tuk Annie could really make the scene.
And one of the most famous rhymes in Canadian history:
The girls are out to Bingo and the boys are gettin' stinko,
And we think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night.
Gord Downie
Meh. So I’m told. I’ve mostly missed the Tragically Hip phenomenon, being out of the country for most of it. Tragically Hip is unknown outside of Canada. I have not seen lyrics of his that I like that much, but I am a tyro here.
There are other great Canadian lyricists: too many, actually, to mention. You have to love “Superman’s Song,” for example, or some of the lyrics to Rita McNeil’s “Working Man.
And there are other great Canadian songwriters. Randy Bachmann, for example, with and without Burton Cummings, or Bryan Adams. But these guys are more in the Tin Pan Alley mold: they can crank out great pop songs with great hooks, well-composed confections. But not poetry, as lyrics, and more craft than art. You do not feel them in your gut. And some of Cummings’ lyrics are unforgivably awful: “Talisman, grace my hand.” “American Woman.”
It is also worth noting that Canadian lyrical excellence extends also to the French. Robert Charlebois and Gilles Villeneuve belong in the same rank as our English examples.
Someone on Facebook has a chain letter-chain posting going in which folks are supposed to list the albums that were important to them as a teenager.
Okay, for what it’s worth, here are mine.
Lightfoot! His first, and still his best, album. With great bass by Bill Lee. I was a bassist.
Songs of Leonard Cohen Hit me where I lived. I lived a couple of blocks away from Cohen’s boyhood home, and took the same route home from school. He was a local boy. Introduced to Cohen by Nick Economides, who was older and whom I looked up to for his sophistication.
Songs from a Room. Neither this nor his first are his best albums. But these are the ones from my teenage years. "Nancy," "Tonight Will Be Fine." I remember listening to "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" on the porch with Violet Birch.
Birds, Fifth Dimension. One of the first three albums I bought, in a batch. It wore better than the others. Bought all the Byrds albums following it too. Tempted to put some others on the list. They were probably better albums, but as my first exposure, 5D is the one that influenced me the most.
Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. First got to know it because a neighbourhood kid, Bob White, held dances where he used to play it. The strategy, all the guys knew, was to ask your favourite girl for “Desolation Row” for a long slow dance where you got to hold her close. Then I started listening to the lyrics. Trying to dance to Dylan was ridiculous. "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," was my favourite for a long time.
Bringing it All Back Home. I bought it after Highway 61. Almost as good. Blonde on Blonde. It was a disappointment at first. But it grew and grew on me.
Peter Paul and Mary, See What Tomorrow Brings. A lot of great songs. Among other things, the album I listened to after my first real girlfriend broke up with me. My sister and I learned to sing harmony on Betty and Dupree.
Joni Mitchell, Blue, Not my album. My brother was the bigger Joni Mitchell fan. But this one was relly great. Humming “Carey” was the only thing that got me through one summer working in a plastics factory. But “River” and “All I Want” were even better.
Planxty. Bought when I was living in Ottawa. Perhaps the greatest album ever recorded by anyone.
Steeleye Span Please to See the King, Picked up second hand in a bargain bin. Yow!
The Band Music from Big Pink. Another album that seemed to change everything.
Moby Grape. Tipped off on this one by Hit Parader magazine—a great publication. Crazy good.
Rolling Stones, High Tide and Green Grass. Not my album. Was playing in a kid rock and roll band, and a couple of my bandmates were crazy about the Stones. I think Louis Lapierre owned the album. Did not especially like the music then—it was just the most fun to play on stage. But it has grown on me ever since. The Stones get better and better with time.
Ian and Sylvia Four Strong Winds. I love all their stuff, but this I think was where I came in. I cannot ever get “V’la le Bon Vent” out of my mind. Nor would I ever want to. Let alone the title track. Or “Royal Canal,” which oddly always reminds me of Kingston, with the canal and the penitentiary.
Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet. These were like the soundtrack to Inscape, the Catholic teenagers' drop-in in Gananoque, the brainchild of Father Ed Shea. "Gimme Shelter."
Here’s the exercise: I’m putting together the ideal band in heaven. That means members can be past their prime or dead. It naturally tends to reflect my own personal tastes; your results may differ.
At lead guitar, I want Mark Knopfler. I grant that Eric Clapton is a better guitarist, and so is Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix though is essentially a solo performer; he is too big for a band. And Clapton belongs in the blues, and the rest of this band does not end up pulling in that direction. Knopfler is ideal because he does not take over; he is laid back in his style. He also has a truly wonderful voice, and great songwriting talent.
At rhythm guitar, I want Willie Nelson. With due respect, anyone competent can play rhythm guitar, but Willie Nelson’s voice is unique. He’s good at harmony and backup, so he works well in a band. He’s good enough on guitar to do a second lead if the song calls for it.
At bass, I put Stephen Stills. Paul McCartney is a better bassist and a better vocalist, but he does not really fit here because his songwriting style does not mesh with the rest of the group. It is too pop flavoured, and this group ends up looking kind of country. I really like Stills’ sense of funkiness, which is the essential trait for a bassist. He brings the added advantage of a good voice for harmonies and the talents of a multi-instrumentalist. Having a multi-instrumentalist keeps things from getting stale.
At drums, I want Levon Helm. The main thing in a drummer, I think, is someone who is not going to showboat. That’s not what drumming is for. So anyone competent will do. But Helm also brings a great country voice, and the talents of another multi-instrumentalist.
At keyboards, I want Norah Jones. I want her mostly for her unique voice, but it is also great to have keyboards, the most versatile of all instruments, and it gives her something to do when she is not lead vocalist. Norah’s voice goes particularly well with Willie Nelson’s; the inflection is quite similar. They are the two best country voices around, in my opinion.
I want Alison Krauss on violin. I strongly believe in having the sound of a violin, the most expressive of all instruments, and Alison Krauss’s voice is perfect for the high, pure feminine sounds, I hope contrasting well with Jones’s lower register.
What this band still lacks is a vocal belter in the lower register; everybody here has a laid back quality. In country, there is definitely something missing if you cannot cover the lower register strongly. We need someone who can also play an instrument, because with so many great voices, any pure vocalist is liable to find himself underemployed. Johnny Cash comes to mind; but I have a better idea. I think Johnny is a solo act. Too much personality. I propose, as lead singer and third guitar, the great Stan Rogers. We know he is great as a choral singer. He also brings, of course, magnificent songwriting talent.
There was a movement a few years ago to nominate Bob Dylan for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
It would probably be a good choice, better than most in recent years. If the thought of Jim Morrison being “the best poet of his generation” is appalling, Dylan by contrast probably deserves that title.
His stuff is spotty, some of it wincy. He also lifts things wholesale; he is profoundly traditionalist, profoundly conservative, rather than an innovator. But the best is the best.
My personal, unordered selection of twelve favourite Dylan songs—an imaginary “greatest hits” album:
Gotta Serve Somebody - 1979
Relentless, hard driving, the soul of simplicity. It is the one Dylan song I most love to listen to, even though the lyrics are almost nothing at all. Though Dylan is most famous for his lyrics, here he shows that he doesn’t really even need them—he can do it all with one line and the music, if he chooses.
I Want You – 1966
Primal in the same way. Absolutely pitiless. What could be simpler?
“I want you, I want you, I want you So bad”
Mr. Tambourine Man – 1965
Lovely terms like “the jingle-jangle morning.” It means nothing, and yet one immediately knows what it means. “Evening’s empire.” “The ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming.” It’s primal in another sense: it captures something essential about the nature of art. The Tambourine Man is the archetype of the artist, and this is what he does: he takes us
“Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
... to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
The saving power of art.
Visions of Johanna – 1966
Perhaps Dylan’s most poetic song. It captures the sense of lost love perfectly. Just get the opening line:
“Ain’t it just like the night, to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet?”
You can’t dislike it after that.
“Lights flicker from the opposite loft; In this room the heat pipes just cough; The country music station plays soft But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off…”
“Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while… But Mona Lisa musta’ had the highway blues-- You can tell by the way she smiles.”
Tomorrow is a Long Time – 1971
Again, just get the opening lines:
“If today was not an endless highway, If tonight was not a crooked trail, If tomorrow wasn't such a long time, Then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all.”
The purest, the most perfect, of love songs.
You Ain’t Going Nowhere – 1971
Just wonderful nonsense verse:
“Genghis Khan and his brother Don, They could not keep on keeping on; We’ll cross that bridge after it’s gone…”
Absolutely none of it makes any sense—and the sense of that seems to be of being giddy with joy. Another feeling perfectly captured.
Blind Willie McTell – 1991
“Seen the arrow on the doorpost Saying, ‘This land is condemned All the way from New Orleans To Jerusalem.’"
Like “Mr. Tambourine Man,” this one says something very deep about the nature of art; and also, in this case, about the nature of the world. I think, just because it was so powerful, Dylan was afraid to record it for many years. It came and comes too close to revelatory truth.
“Well, I heard the hoot owl singing As they were taking down the tents The stars above the barren trees Were his only audience Them charcoal gypsy maidens Can strut their feathers well But nobody can sing the blues Like Blind Willie McTell.”
To Ramona – 1964
This is a remarkable love song that also manages to work as a piece of philosophy. That’s a very dangerous thing to try to do. Dylan pulls it off.
“The flowers of the city Though breathlike, get deathlike at times. And there's no use in trying To deal with the dying, Though I cannot explain that in lines.”
“I've heard you say many times That you're better than no one And no one is better than you. If you really believe that, You know you’ve got Nothing to win and nothing to lose.”
These are a Dylan specialty—the anti-love song. Tinged with humour, extremely emotionally poised. Again, a very hard thing to do well, in poetry or song just as in life. Can anyone else but Dylan do this?
“I'm walking down that long, lonesome road, babe. Where I'm bound, I can't tell; But goodbye is too good a word, gal; So I'll just say 'fare thee well.' I ain't saying you treated me unkind; You could have done better, but I don't mind. You just kinda wasted my precious time; But don't think twice, it's all right.”
Ballad of a Thin Man – 1965
This is theatre of the absurd as a song. And everything Jim Morrison and the Doors ever did can be taken from this one Dylan song.
“You raise up your head And you ask, ‘Is this where it is?’ And somebody points to you and says ’It's his’ And you say, ‘What's mine?’ And somebody else says, ‘Well, what is?’ And you say, ‘Oh my God Am I here all alone?’
Because something is happening here But you don't know what it is Do you, Mister Jones?”
And the tune is, in the way of “I Want You,” relentless.
Just Like a Woman – 1966
You just can’t beat the refrain:
“
She takes just like a woman, And she makes love just like a woman, Then she aches just like a woman; But she breaks just like a little girl.”
Yes, he is a poet—and a good enough one to deserve the Nobel Prize. It is only a bias against pop culture that prevents it. But, in America, pop culture is the culture; and that is a good thing. It comes with real democracy.
On a recent vacation in Goa, I picked up the well-known biography of Jim Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive, at a second-hand bookstore on the beach. It was a good, nostalgic read.
Michael McClure, a prominent poet of what some call the San Francisco Renaissance, and others call the West Coast Beats, says of Jim Morrison in an afterword, “I know of no better poet of Jim’s generation.”
I find this a profoundly depressing thought. Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Sixties group The Doors, was a great showman—he had a talent for exhibitionism, up to and including trying to drop his pants on stage—but was he really any good as a poet?
“There’s a killer on the road His brain is squirmin’ like a toad…”
The piece is at the level of a B horror flick—cheap thrills. “A killer”; is there any insight into human nature in that? Or isn’t this a cardboard stereotype?
Can brains squirm? Of course not. It’s a mixed metaphor, and seems to me unintentionally humorous. And so easy to fix—just use the word “soul” instead. The sound values even work better.
“Like” is also weak. It feels as if it’s there only to fill out a line.
Texas Radio and the Big Beat – complete lyrics are here.
"The Negroes in the forest brightly feathered They are saying, ‘Forget the night. Live with us in forests of azure. Out here on the perimeter there are no stars Out here we is stoned - immaculate.’"
This is the naïvest sort of romanticism—“noble savage” stuff. If I were a “negro,” I’d want to shove one of those feathers up his pampered white upper class butt. Note the Stepin Fetchit grammar of the last line—“we is.” Though “stoned immaculate” would be a nice phrase without the dash.
One of his better lines is:
“I’ll tell you this, no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.”
Still unnecessarily inarticulate, though, incoherent. What he means to say is
“No later eternal reward will absolve us for wasting this dawn.”
“Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light Or just another lost angel...city of night”
As a rhyme, City of Light/City of Night is too easy—City of Trite. It is as if the first line, with its alliteration, came easily, and he put in the minimum of effort needed to find a rhyme.
“I see your hair is burnin Hills are filled with fire If they say I never loved you You know they are a liar.”
Bad grammar, and completely unnecessary if he were prepared to put in just a little effort:
“If someone said I never loved you You know he was a liar.”
“Motel money murder madness Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness.”
Another pennycandy rhyme; and another bit of ugly grammar. “Gladness” is the parallel to “sadness.”
“Let’s change the glad gay mood to sadness.”
But that first line is also cheap, B-movie stuff. And even so, it is incoherent. As written, it sounds as though he merely wants to be sad, instead of being saddened by what he sees. And saying “I am sad” is weak writing. Better to show than to tell.
“Indians scattered on a dawn's highway bleeding, ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.”
No scan there.
The reference is apparently to something that happened to Morrison himself as a child. The problem is, it is not meaningful to others. This is shameless self-indulgence, and Morrison is guilty of it often. In “LA Woman,” he breaks into the refrain “Mr. Mojo Risin’/Gotta keep on risin,’” which has no relevance whatsoever except that it is an anagram of his own name.
“Fragile eggshell” is clumsy and redundant. Are there eggshells that are not fragile? Poetry, as famously defined by Coleridge, is “the best words in the best order.” This is not poetry. This is gas.
“Young child is also redundant. Are there children who are not young?
“Mind” is weak, because vague, and too easy. What is the first sign that you are reading a bad poem? It has the word “mind” in it.
“Scattered,” used to refer to human beings, is disturbingly cold. Hardly the mot just.
Why not:
“Arapaho thrown on a dawn pavement dying Their shocked shades obsess the boy’s innocent I.”
Truth told, I liked the Doors in their day. They were no special favourite, but they were more interesting than most pop music.
I was always aware, though, that this was not because of Jim Morrison. I always found him an embarassment. It was the carnival sound of Ray Manzarek’s organ. The drumming was also interesting. And a couple of their songs were just good rock: “Light My Fire,” “Moonlight Drive,” and “Love Her Madly.” But Morrison was involved in the writing of only one of those. “Light My Fire” and “Love Her Madly” were completely by Rob Kreiger.
Morrison got all of the attention, first, because he was good-looking, and second, because he was an exhibitionist. He was the Britney Spears of his day.
The sad thing is that, when he killed himself, the Doors disappeared. Without Morrison, no one wanted to listen to them any more. Yet what made them good was all still there.
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