Two songs that I am certain define the mating rituals of the over-educated and under-utilized twentysomethings and early thirtysomethings of my generation are the Talking HeadsThis Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) and Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere. So infatuated I am by these songs, I never pass up a chance to write about them. (This post features MGMT and Vampire Weekend.)
So on that note, here's an extended mix from the 1986 12" that includes a (get this!) Jellybean Dub. Jellybean appears to have been one of those go-to remixers in the 80's, like Shep Pettibone. As the early days of digital studio excess are in full effect here, it takes a couple of minutes to figure out that this is not an instrumental version of the theme from a teen comedy set in southern California. No cinematic introduction and a lot of digital cowbell.
Ever since I saw the scene in Penelope Spheeris' classic LA punk cult film Suburbia where the management clears the room by playing some old time jazz, I've been convinced of the absolute necessity of playing a spectacular and fitting song at the end of a DJ gig. Something that speaks as much to the one night standers as it does to the sad and lonely single people nursing warm bottles of soapy ale. So, here goes, a couple of sure-fire that will elevate your from simple bar-room clearing to emotional catharsis.
I have a very distinct memory of playing Blue Rodeo's Lost Together as a closing song one night and watching a couple enact a theatrical slow-dance to it that would be best titled, "." A real snapshot of how the common people live and love." Our was a moody big lug of a guy, with a big mess of hair, a quiet demeanor, and a matching jean jacket and jeans. He looked like he could be in Blue Rodeo. His partner was a younger woman, dressed a little too trashy for her own good, and looking too aged for her age. Together, they moved, hands held, pushing apart and pulling back together, in a pantomime tinged with prairie pathos. It was a real moment of human feeling, made possible by Cancon regulations and the diminished expectations of the hardscrabble Canadian working class. (Authenticity's hard to come by in this post-modern era, so it's important to notice it and laugh silently at it when you can.)
Doesn't Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo sound like Neil Diamond? Blue Rodeo even has an album called Diamond Mine, which any close-reader worth his or her salt knows cleverly refers to Neil Diamond. And Neil Diamond has a song called Forever in Blue Jeans, which is about as close to a Blue Rodeo mission statement as I've ever read.
Mr. Bojangles. I bet when Sammy Davis Jr. performed Mr. Bojangles on German television, the audience wept and wept and wept. They wept because here it was, wasn't it? Proof of the victory of the American ideal over the hard-headed Teutonism that had driven them to wage war like the world had never seen before. And a sparky, petite, soft-shoed black Jew with one eye (just like Claus Shenk Graf von Stauffenberg!) was singing to them about a tap-dancing guy and his dead pet that he met in a jail in a formerly French city in the south of the United States! Man, that must have really let loose the floodgates. War guilt and silent shame and pet death.
As a parting shot, Fleetwood Mac's Hold Me is three minutes and forty-nine seconds of . If the other too suggestions are a touch too morose, Hold Me will let your revelers depart on a high note.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Berlin's Take My Breath Away, The Cars' Drive, and Leonard Cohen's Closing Time.
Tokyo Thursdays are such an unholy union of music, people, and drinks that the club got busted last time, and is out for the count this week. That's why the whole evening is moving into exile. Under the watchful eye of our Chiang Kia Shek Lookout, we'll be moving a little further south for a temporary stay in the old digs of Panthere Noire - last summer's flash-in-the-pan club that unceremoniously disappeared after a couple of months.
This Thursday, and this Thursday only, I'll be playing along with CFCF (Mike Silver), which is always a bunch of fun and sometimes involves a bit too much talk about Fleetwood Mac.
If you're like me, you probably love Cut Copy and don't like Elton John. Well, Cut Copy have been notoriously slack in the music-making department since their last album, but thank God friends and fellow countrymen Knightlife have stepped in to fill some of the void for polished floor-filling electro-house. As for Mr. John, I've never been much of a fan, despite my mother's undying love for the little guy. Nonetheless, this edit courtesy of recovering English acid-house head Ashley Beedle passes the dancefloor test.
When it comes to Fleetwood Mac, there are a couple of idées fixes that I tend to harp on about when the topic inevitably arrives. First, there's my suspicion that when Lindsey Buckingham wrote 1986's Everywhere, he was either directly or indirectly paying homage to the Talking Heads'This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), which was released in 1983 (and with the intro, possibly the sound logo of Disney's Buena Vista). Both of these songs are passable as hipster mating calls, which would explain the following videos.
MGMT cover The Talking Heads
Vampire Weekend cover Fleetwood Mac
Secondly, that a couple of years ago, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album was the album that allowed people of my age and generation the chance to re-evaluate Fleetwood Mac, primarily because the strange excess and weirdness of the album itself and the recording process gave us permission to. That was followed by an embracing of Tango In The Night (I'm thinking now of CFCF's great re-working as evidence), and that we'll shortly be in the age of Mirage, after which there will be a Photian Schism for a couple of years while various sects develop around The Cult of Peter Green, The Gospel of Christine McVie (née Perfect), The Doctrine of Stevie Nicks, & maybe even The Decrees of Mick Fleetwood's Zoo (that's least likely, I think.)
So, what's going to give us all permission to delve into Mirage? Truthfully, the nasally voice of Stevie Nicks has always rubbed me slightly the wrong way, to say little of her neo-gypsy art school teacher outfits (I hate free spirits), so it's going to be a Christine McVie song first, Love In Store, which is awesome in much the same way that the Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey is awesome, and has given me great results as a late-night dancefloor closer.
After Love In Store, my next pick on the album is the 9th track. The opening piano roll of Hold Me is a compelling dance-floor shuffler that eventually picks up steam & becomes a near-perfect expression of desire and the anticipated satisfaction of that desire.
Christine McVie back when her last name was Perfect
Finally, there's the album closer, Christine McVie's ballad Wish You Were Here, reportedly about her deceased lover Dennis Wilson (of The Beach Boys). Incidentally and (by now) obviously, I love Christine McVie's voice, and how much does Victoria Legrand of Beach House's voice sound similar? Just prior to Christine McVie joining Fleetwood Mac, she recorded and released a solo album calledChristine Perfect that I would highly recommend to anyone else enamored with her voice. Here she sings noticeably deeper, and the music is bluesier than her later solo work, especially on a cover of Etta James' I'd Rather Go Blind and my personal favourite, No Road is The Right Road, which is the stylistic forerunner of Holly Golightly's There Is An End.
This could all be moot, though. It's been a long time since I've mp3 blogged, and maybe now we've all got rid of our musical hang-ups, which would go a long way to explain the widespread enthusiasm for the Italo Disco Bike-In this weekend.
Lindsey Buckingham pays tribute to Adam Ant & the Nouveau Pirate Movement
