Not Quite Paradise City

Glen Campbell - By The Time I Get to Phoenix



Glen Campbell is an unsung hero of rock and roll. Well, at least the less rock-y side of rock and roll. This is the man who played guitar on most of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound work, as well as on songs by Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, The Kingston Trio, Merle Haggard, The Monkees, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Troggs, Frankie Laine, The Association, Jan & Dean, and The Mamas & the Papas. He was also a touring member of The Beach Boys, filling in for Brian Wilson in 1964 and 1965 and played guitar on Pet Sounds.



This was the dude that played guitar on Ol' Blue Eyes' Strangers in the Night, You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' by The Righteous Brothers, and I'm a Believer by The Monkees.

So, while he may not be Tony Iommi or Jimmy Page, the man clearly has some chops and a pretty sound resume. What he does not have, however, is even an ounce of rocking out in this song about a dude running out on his lady. Clearly things didn't work out particularly well because mr Campbell ends up running all the way to Oklahoma. I'm thinking he knocked her up.

Basically, this is Glen Campbell telling some anonymous woman that she is the worst song, played on the ugliest guitar. By The Time I Get To Phoenix is not, however, the worst song. It's just pretty insiduous - the swells of strings, Campbell's mournful vocals, the quietly strummed minor chords in a periphery - it all manages to make you feel pretty sad on both parties' behalf, like you're watching a relationship implode, knowing full well that neither party wants it to happen but that there is also no choice in the matter. There is nothing exculpatory or self-pitying about the song, it's merely Campbell's farewell note. When I first heard this song, I was fully prepared to pan it. Now I quite like it. And repeated listens have caused it to grow on me. It's not necessarily something I would listen to repeatedly, but I can think of worse songs to listen to when you've run out on your lady and are feeling bad about it.

For the record, it's also been covered by Dean Martin, Georgie Fame, Isaac Hayes, Marty Wilde, Solomon Burke, Burl Ives, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Hayes' version runs an incredible 19 minutes, including a full backstory of why the breakup too place.

In a happy twist, Campbell scores pretty well on the Rock Nutter Scale (tm):
- Name: Glen Travis Campbell is about as strange as white bread. An estimated 15% of the male population of the US's Red States have Glen, Travis or Campbell in their name (and 20% of the female population). No points.
- Drugs: Tales of cocaine and alcohol abound. Tick.
- Erratic Behaviour: Married four times and the father of eight children. Numerous near death experiences, heavy spending and public brawls with wife number three as a result of drug and alcohol abuse. Tick.
- Time in Jail: Ten days for drunk driving. Arrested, but not prosecuted, for battery on a police officer. Tick.
- Strange Upbringing: One of twelve children, born in a town with a population of less than 100 in deepest Arkansas. You better believe that was a weird upbringing. Half points.

Not bad, Glen, not bad. You almost snuck past Willie Nelson to be the most crazed country singer so far. But Willie's just cooler, gnaw'mean?

Verdict: Do you think Oklahoma has an extradition policy?

Tomorrow: The Beatles - Penny Lane

Twisted

Chubby Checker - The Twist



With a voice sharing the approximate tone and volume of a horn section and a name parodying Fats Domino, Ernest Evans, aka Chubby Checker, went from being a musical impersonator to the face of a global phenomenon (easily comparable with pet rocks and the hula-hoop) with the release of his cover of Hank Ballard's The Twist. The song actually has a number of relatively dubious accolades - it's the only song to have two identical versions hit US #1 and it's spawned a number of increasingly dire sequels - Let's Twist Again, Slow Twist and, worst of all, The Twist (Yo Twist!) with half-witted comic rap group The Fat Boys.

In addition, it's probably the only US #1 to be a direct copy of another song - as American Bandstand producer and presenter Dick Clark couldn't get Ballard to perform the song on his show, he merely hired Checker and a band and recreated the song in the same key and tempo, getting Checker to impersonate Ballard. The result was such that Ballard initially heard the song, he thought it was him and later complained that he had been "cloned".

Ethical issues aside, the song is a little twee. Fatty keeps singing about how his sister dances - while this would normally be pretty far over the weird/creepy line, the song's too geeky and innocent to be particularly twisted.

And I keep thinking he's singing "come on little bitch / and do the twist".

Verdict: Twisted sister

Tomorrow: Glen Campbell - By The Time I Get to Pheonix

Bows and Arrows

Sam Cooke - Cupid



Before getting himself Sam-Cooke'd (i.e. shot by a woman in a hotel room, not to be confused with being Robert Johnson'd, or killed by a cuckolded husband), Sam Cooke was one of the brightest stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s American R&B movement, as well as a successful gospel singer, civil rights activist and record label owner. And there's a pretty good reason for this - the man had a VOICE.



The music is all huge swells of strings, muted horn and subtle, almost rhumba-like percussion. It's pretty generic and, to be honest, ridiculously schmoove. Far too schmoove for me. Luckily, it's not the main attraction - that honour goes to Cooke's voice, which is smooth as an oil-slicked penguin and seems to treats the verses as an opportunity to soar above the mundanity of the song. And the song really is mundane - the lyrics are as cheddar-tastic as the music.

The result is an annoying muddle - the song is too corny to really do anything other than use as a cod-romantic soundtrack to some kind of nauseating pseudo-romantic moment, but Cooke's voice is so phenomenal that it almost rescues the song. Almost. I want to like the song, hell, I want to love it, but it's cheesier than a bath full of cottage cheese. Having Cupid on permanent rotation for about 45 minutes helped me realise that it's just an innocuous song - it's lack of an edge means that it's going to be condemmned to be background music, a role in which, sadly, it functions just fine.

Verdict: Not gouda-nough

Tomorrow: Chubby Checker - The Twist

The (Adolescent) Ego Has Landed, Settled and Colonised

Guns n' Roses - Paradise City



As I wrote previously, Guns n' Roses are not exactly a favourite on this blog. So it was with a certain enthusiasm that I sharpened the knives against the grindstone of sarcasm in preparation for today's post. Needless to say, the temptation to use the phrase Paradise Shitty was massive. I'll get it out of the way then: The only way to describe this song is Paradise Shitty.

Boom! Genius! Review done. Time for booze and groupies.

More?

Well, alright. You see, this song isn't actually as reprehensible and juvenile as Welcome to the Jungle, despite being written by the same bunch of drunken miscreants (normally a compliment when coming from me, in this case, not) at the same time. The truth of the matter is that this song doesn't come across as forced, which is not the case with Welcome to the Jungle. Welcome to the Jungle sounds like Rose was trying his absolute hardest to be a misanthrope whereas Paradise Shitty (damn!), erm, City is a little more relaxed and shows the more melodic, mellow road that GnR were going to walk down with the best of the Use Your Illusion albums (Civil War, November Rain etc).

Big ups to them but I still wouldn't listen to this song if I had any kind of a choice in the matter. The song itself is almost painfully over-produced and Rose's voice doesn't ever stray from his timeworn canine-deterrent formula. Add to this completely juvenile lyrics and the result is something that, while not being entirely painful to listen to, still manages to be mildly offensive. And by this time you haven't even factored in the personalities of the various band members..

There's a degree of redemption in Slash's guitar playing - he appears to be going completely wolvo-beserker for most of the song and he's actually quite a good guitar player, in the air-guitar-hero-wanker-y mode. But in the end, it is Slash's guitar playing that truly symbolises GnR, and especially everything off Appetite for Destruction, quite nicely - showoff, adolescent and masturbatory.

This is the sound of someone taking themselves very seriously, for no good reason.

Verdict: Not recommended for tourists, or anyone

Tomorrow: Sam Cooke - Cupid

Ex-Beatle in Record Contract Shocker!

George Harrison - My Sweet Lord




George Harrison, eh? Apparently he had some talented friends. Clearly that bunch managed to lean on a record executive heavily enough to get Harrison a record contract because there is no way that he would have gotten one on the basis of his talent. Well, certainly not if My Sweet Lord is anything to go on.

And what a pile of execrable, pseudo-pious bullshit this is. This is the kind of music that middle aged housewives on their Hare Krishna experimentation phase decide they want played at their funerals. To add to it all, this song is nothing but a rip off of The Chiffon's He's So Fine. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Probably the worst bit of an awful song are the chanty backing vocals. Music has to work pretty hard to be worse than My Sweet Lord's sickly sweet backing vocals proclaiming "Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, etc etc". Harrison did, apparently, manage to push the boat of shit out a bit more by exhorting crowds at his concerts to “chant the holy name of the Lord.” before singing “Om Christ, Om Christ, Om Christ” ad nauseum, adding, “I know a lot of you out there think that’s swearing, but it’s not! If we all chant together purely for one minute, we’ll blow the roof off this place" (Giuliano, The Private Life of George Harrison). I don't know how the crowd managed to contain themselves but, seeing as the stadium probably didn't have a roof anyway, disaster was narrowly averted.

By this juncture we've worked out that Harrison is the untalented, psycho-religious Beatle. One would imagine that it would be hard to be less talented than the drummer (there's an old joke about rock drummers: How do you suffocate a rock drummer? Lock them in the car on a hot day. Guffaw), but Harrison has managed to sink to that low. Basically, this is one of the worst songs I have had the displeasure of finding on this list and it will forever colour my view of Harrison.

Verdict: My sweet load of crap.

Tomorrow: Guns n' Roses - Paradise City

No need to apologise

Nirvana - All Apologies



I last remember listening to this song as a fourteen or fifteen year old, when everyone else in the world was also listening to Nirvana - Kurt Cobain had just offed himself and, in typical fashion, was being hailed as nothing less than a combination of John Lennon, Nelson Mandela and Bob Cratchit. After a few months of listening to nothing but Nirvana and their heroin-and-corduroy slacker ilk (Alice In Chains, Soundgarden etc), I shrugged it off and went in search of something a little less moribund.

Strangely, a few weeks ago I listened to Alice in Chains' Sap and Unplugged albums and they were actually quite good. My suprise was reinforced through relistening to this song. I was pretty suprised to see it on this list, as it's not only, as I expected, a rallying cry for disaffected teenagers. It's a really good song. This is the coruscating, visceral howl of a pretty pissed off and tortured artist.

We all know the Kurt Cobain story - successful band, heroin, crazy wife, depression, shotgun. But some of the music is also suprising. All Apologies is a far more mature expression of pain and anger than Nevermind was. Where Nevermind comes across as the output of a songwriter who wrote good, catchy songs with shit lyrics, All Apologies doesn't necessarily abandon the lyrical formula, but it tempers it into something that is a little more than rhyming non-sequiturs. While some of the lyrics are nothing more than lyrical tchotchkes, picked out of a hat at random and howled into a microphone, some of the lyrics actually make a little bit of sense.

Musically, the formula is instantly recognisable - melodic intro, verse, chorus, verse. Repeat ad nauseum. Cheap Trick with louder guitars, as Cobain once described his band. The guitar work is pretty basic, to be honest - buy a cheap guitar, run it through a tube amp cranked to 10 and you won't sound markedly different. Actually learning to play it is pretty optional. It's not for nothing that the first song a generation of guitarists learned was a Nirvana song. In terms of the rhythm section, Kris(t) Novoselic's personality is a perfect metaphor for Novoselic's bass playing - largely anonymous. But Dave "AIDS denialist" Grohl's drumming is pretty good, despite coming from a despicable, ignorant human being.

Let's just say that the world would be a better place if Cobain had shot Grohl instead.

Finally, let's see how Cobain looks on the Rock Nutter Scale (tm):

Weird History?
Not really. He was a disaffected teen. Who wasn't?

Prison?
He was arrested for beating up Courtney Love, which is almost understandable, given how unpleasant she is (the beating up, that is) and for some minor infringements over the years. Half a point, because he was never actually sentenced to a prison term.

Wild Behaviour?
He married Courtney Love. That should be enough.

Pseudonym?
Kurt Cobain's almost strange enough, but it's not a pseudonym. No points.

Drugs?
You name it, Cobain smoked it, snorted it or shot it up over the course of his life.

A strong showing from the man from Aberdeen, Washington, but not good enough to best the charming misanthropists at the top of the scale.

Verdict: All good, bar Dave Grohl

Tomorrow: George Harrison - My Sweet Lord

Murder Most Cool

Lloyd Price - Stagger Lee



Arriving in a flourish of female backing vocals and saxophone is Lloyd Price's tale of a gambler-turned-murderer, Stagger Lee. It's clear that Stagger Lee was a totemic figure in blues and soul music - the first song directly referencing him was recorded by Mississippi John Hurt in 1928 and direct references to him have turned up in songs by Taj Mahal, Wilson Picket ('Stag-O-Lee'), The Clash ('Wrong 'em Boyo'), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ('Stagger Lee') and The Black Keys ('Stack Shot Billy'). And, of course, Mr Price's opus which was, commercially at least, the most successful, charting at #1 in 1959.

That it charted at all in the conservative 1950s was a miracle - it's a song about a man welching on his gambling debts and killing his fellow gambler, despite being begged for mercy. It's violent and vicious and celebrates criminality and murder.

I love it.

Price sings with fire and passion over a bed of exhortative backing vocals and bouncy horns, continually celebrating Stagger's murderous acts. It's really upbeat - no wonder the idiot box has such an easy time desensitising its viewers to murder - when the medium is this good, it's impossible not to like the message. That said, I'm not likely to murder someone purely because I like this song. I'm far more likely to induce murder amongst people by continually playing this song until they decide to batter me to death with a blunt object. I seem to evoke that feeling in people quite a bit. In that case, I will fully condemn this song for encouraging violent behaviour.

In the meanwhile, get your Stagger on.

Pointless and obvious speculative notes: Needless to say, this song was a direct progenitor to the gangsta rap of the various flavours of Ices, Vanilla excluded, and the Death Row posse. It was also considered a celebration of the strong, violent, anti-establishment black man and celebrated by the Black Panthers - Panther leader Bobby Seale reportedly named his son Stagger Lee in tribute.

Verdict: Staggeringly cool

Tomorrow: Nirvana - All Apologies