Dr John "Mama Roux"

One of the good things about older artists continuing to make music, is that it does encourage you to go revisit the old stuff.

And not just because the new stuff reminds you of the old stuff, but because the new stuff makes the old stuff relevant.

Such is the case with Dr. John.

The song "Mama Roux" had been in our library for years and year.  We don't have saved playllists that go back that far, but I think it's safe to guess that song had been rotation since the early days of MVY over 30 years ago.

Somewhere, 4 or 5 years ago, in a regular round of reconsidering, we had looked at some of the songs from the 60s and 70s to set aside some of the tracks that sounded particularly dated, including "Mama Roux."

"Dated" is a funny, somewhat problematic term.  Everything that was recorded in the 70s sounds dated today, because it's 40 years old.  But what I'm getting at is that not only is the track old, it now no longer fits easily into the station's playlist.  It sticks out like a sore thumb.

This is a subjective judgement, no doubt.  But I think you'd probably agree that a song like "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed" fits into the present playlist comfortably, despite its age.  While "Marakesh Express" by Crosby, Stills & Nash feels a little fried at this point.

So "Mama Roux" came out of regular rotation.

Then a funny thing happened.

In 2012, Dr. John made the record "Locked Down" with producer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, who specifically wanted to make a new record that recalled the sound of early Dr. John records like "Gris Gris."

After months of playing the new song "Revolution" on MVY---and loving it---I happened to be out somewhere, where they were playing "Gris Gris" and I heard "Mama Roux."  And that style that had sounded so far away when I was hearing the tune a few years ago, now felt like it had renewed resonance.  It made sense again.  It had context, because of the new record.  It fit.

So "Mama Roux" is back in rotation again . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Bono "Silver And Gold"

One more Weekend Post from "Sun City."

Bono was involved in the "Sun City" song.  And as Little Steven was about to being mastering the final tracks he had, Bono showed up with a newly recorded tune.  One that features Keith Richards and Ron Wood as his bandmates.  It arrived so late in the game, that it didn't even make the track listing, which had already been printed.

"Silver And Gold" would eventually be re-recorded by U2 and make its way to the "Rattle And Hum" record, but this is the original release.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Gil-Scott Heron "Let Me See Your ID"

A Nelson Mandela-related Weekend Post:

"The word causalities comes up a lot . . . Nothing casual about dying."

I wrote yesterday about the "Sun City" song, and how it was one of the first "political message" records I had ever tuned into.  And that it was my first run-in with many artists that I would come to appreciate more deeply in the years to come (including Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone and Little Steven himself).

Van Zandt's original intention was to just make a single.  But as more and more artists came on board, he found himself with more and more material.  Eventually, they stretched things out to a full length release.  Though . . . there was a lot of filler---like 3 remixes of "Sun City."

There were also some really interesting and important pieces.

"Let Me See Your ID" was my first run-in with Gil-Scott Heron.  And it was my first real experience with a sound collage.  Heron's spoken parts to this piece were so clear and direct, that it helped explain the situation in both a contextual and moral way.  The line I quote at the start of this post really struck me, and forced me to start thinking critically about the words we absorb, well, casually.

I think it's worth pointing out, again, that the work on this album is overlooked and under-appreciated as an early example of Rock musicians working with Rappers, and effectively bringing music that was associated with Black and Urban listeners to the White suburbs.

When you heard it for the first time, "Hey, what Peter Wolf is doing, is the same thing these rappers are doing," rap music made sense.

Definitely check out today's song.  But if you have 45 minutes, stream the whole album below.


Hear the song on Youtube.


Hear the full album on Youtube.

Artists United Against Apartheid "Sun City"

There is wall-to-wall coverage of the passing of Nelson Mandela, and many wise and informed folks are offering their thoughts.  So I'll leave the job of remembering Mandela to them.

Instead, I wanted to write about how I even knew who Nelson Mandela was in the first place.

I could literally count, on my fingers, the number of non-white people I knew that lived in my town, growing up. 

I understood the concepts of racism and prejudice and oppression, but in the very, very white suburbs north of Boston, they were abstract concepts, not daily struggles that took place before my eyes.

By 1985, a number of charity songs had hit the airwaves and MTV, led by "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and "We Are The World."  But I was intrigued by the video and song for "Sun City."

First, it was really the first instance I'd seen of rock artists working with artists from the relatively new, strange and curious world of rap music (the song pre-dates Aerosmith/Run-DMC's "Walk This Way" by a year).  "We're Rockers And Rapper united and strong . . ." was something completely unprecedented.

Second, I was struck by the kind of artist who appeared in the video.  While bonafide superstars like Bruce Springsteen and Bono did appear, there was a lot of focus on some real esoteric and/or underground names like Lou Reed, Ruben Blades and Gil-Scott Heron.

But mostly, I was fascinated by the politics of it all.  I mean, I'd never really heard an artist call out the President in a popular song like Joey Ramone does.

I'd never heard of Sun City, the place.  I'd not seen images of violence, protest and strife as shown in the video.  The song inspired me to learn what exactly Apartheid was, what "constructive engagement" meant, why they were showing images of Martin Luther King Jr. in a video about South Africans, and why all these artists weren't going to play "Sun City."

Baby Boomers can go on and on about how images like these, and songs on these subjects were nothing new---they lived through the Vietnam era.  But the fact is that despite whatever accomplishments they might have made in the late 60s and early 70s, now that they were the adults, they were not doing a damn thing to teach social justice, or even contemporary history, to the next generation.

I learned it from a song.

Nelson Mandela will be remembered in a number of ways.

One person can make a difference.

Education makes a difference.

Speaking truthfully and never turning a blind eye makes a difference.

Encouraging people to reject violence, but demand change, will make a difference.

Nelson Mandela's struggles were half a world away from where I lived.

But thank God there were people like Steven Van Zandt who could take his message, and make it mean something to a little White kid living in a little White world.


Hear the original song on Youtube.


Hear the live version on Youtube.

Postscript:

This post was about Nelson Mandela and the power of song, and I didn't want to fill it with silly and snarky comments and observations.  But HOLY SHIT does the video need to be watched with live commentary.

Just a few observations . . . It is VERY worth your while to read about the background of the song on Wikipedia . . . Miles Davis was only supposed to do a few seconds, he played for 7 minutes so they made a full jazz version of the song . . . (:58) DJ Kool Herc wants you to know his sunglasses flip up . . . (1:08) Steven Van Zandt looks like he should have been a vampire on "True Blood" . . . (1:16) blink and you miss it---Pete Townshend was involved in this project . . . (1:48) it makes some sense to put Springsteen with 2 former Temptations (I'm sure Bruce was psyched), but Pat Benatar as the fourth in the foursome is weird, right? . . . (2:13) scratch that, weirder quintet---George Clinton, Joey Ramone, Jimmy Cliff, Daryl Hall and Darlene Love . . . (2:55) Bonnie Raitt's mainstream success was still a few years away, in the context of this video she was another "esoteric" artist . . . (3:10) I think the world is a sadder place not having heard a full album from "Reed N Oates" . . . (3:28) What's happening on the wall behind Bobby Womack?!?!? . . . (3:39) Does Ruben Blades give a slow motion "fuck off"?  . . . (4:02) DJ Kool Herc really wants you to know his sunglasses flip up . . . (4:14) Daryl Hannah??? . . . (4:28) Peter Wolf hand dance! . . . (4:30) Does Jackson Browne have his shirt buttoned only at the top?  How very LA-in-the-80s . . . (4:42) Bono, auditioning for the role of The Devil . . . (5:00) Ringo! And your first peek at future drummer-in-high-demand Zak Starkey . . . (6:19) Bono kisses a Fat Boy! . . . (6:22) Weird, context-less, and inexplicably-slow-motion shot of Michael Monroe of Hanoi Rocks . . . (7:17) The most powerful singing yet . . .

Lord Huron "She Lit A Fire"

Sometimes, the case for a song it made quickly.  "It's a one-listen song" is a line employed by promo folks when they know a tune is going to be quick to win people over.

Sometimes, the case for a song is made slowly.

The Lord Huron record has been out for a year, and folks have been talking to me about it for a year.

I liked the first single, "Time To Run," but we didn't add it.  I felt like the beat was a little on the modern side.  And that very contemporary thing of making the vocals seem very far away and church chorus-y, while popular, is quite the opposite of the voice-up-front-and-clear folk roots of MVY-core artists like Dylan and John Lennon and Gregg Allman, etc, etc, etc.

Lord Huron was at Newport Folk, and I did catch a good chunk of their set.  In short, they were super-impressive.  And the singles, including the second one "She Lit A Fire" sounded strong.

And Jess Phaneuf has been lobbying for this band.

Now, so have a few listeners.

Getting emails asking "Why don't you play more polka?" isn't going to get MVY to play more polka.

But when we're on the fence about an artist, then hearing that listeners are excited about a band, is helpful.

We're passed the time of year when we're going to get any singles from major artists, so now is the time we can go a little farther afield, and add a track like "She Lit A Fire."


Hear "She Lit A Fire" on Youtube.


Hear "Time To Run" on Youtube.

Burl Ives "Holly Jolly Christmas"

I asked Barbara this week, “When did the Stocking Stuffer start?”

She looked up and ahead, searching through the years . . .

“I don’t know.  The 80s, probably?  It may have started before I got here.”

So for maybe 27+ holiday seasons, we’ve had the mvyradio Holiday Stocking Stuffer.

When I first started at MVY, we had the Singing Elves.

The Singing Elves were a number of MVY DJs (Barbara included), singing a 15 second snippet of a Christmas carol, with their voices altered up to high-pitched, elf-speed.

By the time I arrived on the scene at MVY, the staff haaaaaaaated those f-n elves.

There were 4 songs, and they rotated heavily, annoyingly.

But we couldn’t get rid of them.  People were obsessed with them.

Calls would start coming in, mid-November:  “When are the elves going to start!?!?!”

Every year, we’d entertain the subject of ditching the elves.  But inevitably, the question of “What will we replace them with?” stumped us.

Finally one December, in the middle of playing those annoying little bastards for the one-too-many-th time, we committed to it.  The elves were going to go, and we were going to decide NOW, what we’d do next year.

After much discussion, involving new Elf jingles, or the voice of Santa, or other talking bits, we decided that the only way we were going to survive the repetition that would continue each year, ad infinitum, was do not do a voice.  Just do a jingle.

I set about finding a short, distinct holiday jingle.

After many underwhelming ideas, I found the piece of music that we use today.

Burl Ives famously sang “Holly Jolly Christmas.”  But he reprised his version of the song in the stop-motion animated classic “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.”

And in this version of “Holly Jolly Christmas” there is a prologue/intro to the song that is easily clipped from the more familiar beginning of the tune.

Maybe in the year 2025, some Program Director at MVY will be insanely sick of the Stocking Stuffer jingle.  But for now, it rules the (holi)day.

(The Stocking Stuffer jingle is the first 6 seconds of this clip, right up until the singing starts)


Hear the song on Youtube.

Grace & Tony "November"

As we get to the end of the year, I start looking at songs that we haven't ever added, but seem to hang around my iTunes playlist for one reason or another.

On closer inspection, many of them turn out to be likeable tunes. 

But after further consideration, still don't quite fit the station.  Or they can be memorable songs unto themselves, but in the larger picture, we're not convinced that this is a band we could potentially follow for songs and albums to come.

So I'm on the fence on this track.

Whether or not we add it, you might find it fills a spot in your playlist, when you realize that Tony is the brother of John Paul White of The Civil Wars.  And Grace and Tony are married.  So for all of you who were disappointed that John Paul and Joy of The Civil Wars were not a couple, and that the band itself divorced, here's close relative, figuratively and literally, whose story has a more pleasing ending.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Frozen "In Summer"

We took the kids to see the Disney movie "Frozen" this weekend.

We're only on December 2nd, and I have already seen "Elmo's Christmas Countdown" three times, and "The Grinch" twice.

The switch in my brain the kinda turns off the holiday-kiddie-fare has been activated.

That said, "Frozen" was actually very, very good.  Like, I walked out of the theater humming the songs, feeling good about the message, and not having to console any small children because the villain was too f-n scary.

My wife enjoyed it too.  And before we were even to the car she said what I knew she was going to say:

"Oh, we are buying that soundtrack!"

The songs were particularly good in this Disney effort.  On par with Disney's best modern musicals, like "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty And The Beast."

On the whole, big thumbs up for this film.

If I had any minor critique about the film, it was that the Snowman character seems a little out of place.  The rest of the movie has this mystical-realism style, similar to "Brave."  And the Snowman is straight out of something very cartoon-y, almost like a computer-animated Chuck Jones creation.  It's like he's wandered in from a different film project.

That said, I expect to see more of Olaf the Snowman.  I would not be surprised to find him showing up in his own future shorts and specials.  He is hilarious (voiced by Josh Gad of "Book Of Mormon" fame), and has one of the best songs in the film, where he imagines the wonderful life of a snowman in summer.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Jonathan Richman "Rockin' Shopping Center"

Another song for the big shopping weekend . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Fountains Of Wayne "The Valley Of The Malls"

For those of you who have been on a shopping binge . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.