I don't normally like to include songs that are basically talk-singing (otherwise, this blog would be nothing but Cake songs), but am making an exception for this one for four reasons:
It is about a cool car: a Model A with a Lincoln-Zephyr V12 engine.
It is a song written in response to another song (Arkie Shibley's 1951 hit "Hot Rod Race," in which a Ford and a Mercury were smoked by a "kid in a hopped-up Model A.")
The song mentions "going up the Grapevine Hill," which is the way we would drive from home to Los Angeles when I lived in Bakersfield (and is still the route when I visit).
The original 1955 version by Charlie Ryan is less famous than a later 1971 version by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.
Ahh...1950s doo wop. Always a solid source of songs with spoken words!
This installment comes courtesy of Joey & The Teenagers, an off-shoot of one of the earliest successes in rock music. Like a lot of teen music from the 50s, it's a whole lot of "I like her and I miss her but I don't know what she's thinking." Have you tried something novel: asking?
My darling What is on your mind? Why do you always keep me in the dark?
Maybe one day, I'll know and understand When I hold your hand in mine What's on you your mind.
This one enters the blog from Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs. It also has a spoken interlude. Bonus!
I'm lazy tonight as I get caught up on these entries. Direct from Wikipedia:
The song is best known as lyrically formatted for a female vocalist and as such is addressed to a desperate wife and mother who would like to trade her prosaic existence for the jet setting lifestyle the song's narrator has led. The narrator alludes to various hedonistic episodes in her life, concluding that while she's "been to paradise," she's ultimately failed to find self-fulfillment expressing this with the line, "I've never been to me." There is also an alternative set of lyrics for the song formatted for a male singer, in which the narrator is an elderly man, destined to die the very next day, begging for a dime for a cup of coffee, addressing a younger man who is "raising hell" the way the old man used to do.
Yikes. Also, I don't know of too many other songs that have the line "subtle whoring."
The spoken portion:
Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie. A fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be. But you know what truth is? It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with this morning, the same one you're going to make love with tonight. That's truth, that's love.
Like many of the old country tunes, I became acquainted with this one listening to K106 (KKWS Wadena-Brainerd-Park Rapids) when I was growing up. Here's another song with spoken interludes, this one a two-for-one deal: 'Whisperin' Bill' Anderson's "Still." A 1963 country tune about unrequited love, so much so that his life is falling apart...sad. So very sad.
Interlude 1:I've lost count of the hours and I've lost track of the days. In fact, I've lost just about everything since you went away. Everything, that is, except the mem'ries you left me. And that's one thing that no one can mar. I don't know who you're with; I don't even know where you've gone. My only hope is that some day you might hear this song and you'll know that I wrote it especially for you. And I love you, wherever you are.
Interlude 2:This flame in my heart is like an eternal fire, for every day it burns hotter and every day it burns higher. And I haven't been able to put out one little flicker, not even with all of these tears. My friends think I'm crazy and maybe I am. But I'll carry this torch just as long as I can, for some day, you might just decide to come home and I want you to know I'm still here.
In 2012, we saw Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes in concert in Milwaukee. It was a great show, a jangly, neo-folk affair. We had a great time.
"Home" from the 2009 album Up From Below got a lot of airplay on 88.9 Radio Milwaukee. Not quite as much as The National, but that's a story for another day.
Here's the spoken section of "Home":
Jade?
Alexander?
Do you remember that day you fell outta my window?
I sure do‒you came jumping out after me.
Well, you fell on the concrete, nearly broke your ass, and you were bleeding all over the place, and I rushed you out to the hospital, you remember that?
Yes, I do.
Well, there's something I never told you about that night.
What didn't you tell me?
Well, while you were sitting in the back seat smoking a cigarette you thought was gonna be your last, I was falling deep, deeply in love with you, and I never told you 'til just now!
Fun fact: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes is the indie-folk/psychedelic folk project of Ima Robot front man Alex Ebert.
While listening to the Tom Wanderer Radio Experience(Thursdays on WMSE, 3-6PM) on my ride home from work this week, I heard the unmistakable sounds of spoken word after singing.
First, the song that inspired this post, Patti Smith's "Easter":
I am the spring, the holy ground,
the endless seed of mystery,
the thorn, the veil, the face of grace,
the brazen image, the thief of sleep,
the ambassador of dreams, the prince of peace.
I am the sword, the wound, the stain.
Scorned transfigured child of Cain.
I rend, I end, I return.
Again I am the salt, the bitter laugh.
I am the gas in a womb of light, the evening star,
the ball of sight that leads that sheds the tears of Christ
dying and drying as I rise tonight.
As I listened to the 1978 album by the same name, I counted even more songs with spoken interludes (in addition to an obsession with Christian imagery surrounding death and resurrection (see the title), and organ music.)
Here are a few examples:
"Space Monkey" (track 2):
A stranger comes up to him; hands him an old, rusty Polaroid.
It starts crumbling in his hands.
He says, "Oh man, I don't get the picture. This is no picture.
This is just...this just-a...this just-a...
This is my jack-knife. This is my jack-knife.
This is my jack-knife. This is my jack." (shriek)
"Privilege" (track 7):
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me through the path of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.
A bonus second spoken interlude from Track 7:
In the presence of my enemies,
Thou anointest my head with oil.
My cup runneth over.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
"25th Floor" (track 8):
Stoned in space. Zeus. Christ. It has always been rock and so it is and so it shall be. Within the context of neo rock we must open up our eyes and seize and rend the veil of smoke which man calls order. Pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man to reform and transform waste. The transformation of waste The transformation of waste The transformation of waste The transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest pre-occupation of man. man being the chosen alloy, He must be reconnected via shit, at all cost. Inherent with(in) us is the dream of the task of the alchemist to create from the clay of man. And to re-create from excretion of man pure and then soft and then solid gold.
Bonus trivia: Patti Smith's "Easter" album also features the song made popular in the 1990s by 10,000 Maniacs: "Because The Night."
Here's another classic song with talking, courtesy again of early 1960s country music!
Tonight's entry is Bobby Bare's Detroit City. This one hit #9 on the country charts back in 1963. Clearly the protagonist in this song would really like to return home somewhere south of Detroit. Further south than Windsor, Ontario, Canada. No, far south, in the continental US of A, based on the description of cotton fields early in the number.
As you know, I rode a freight train north to Detroit city And after all these years I find I've just been wasting my time So I just think I'll take my foolish pride An' put it on a southbound freight and ride Go on back to the loved ones The ones that I left waitin' so far behind
Mr. Bare was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013, with Kenny Rogers, and is also credited with introducing Waylon Jennings to RCA records.
