Some days there are just some songs you have to hear...

As I've no doubt said here before, I love lists.

When The Book of Lists, by David Wllechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace, came out in 1977, I was in bliss. I'd been making lists of my own - favorite movies, favorite books, favorite tv shows, favorite songs and albums - for a long time by that time, and I was so happy to see that someone else enjoyed making them.

Granted, some of the lists in the book and those that followed it were, um, unusual, and some of those lists got the book banned from some libraries. They also produced something called The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People, that I imagine also produced some complaints. That was a book that was essentially a list in and of itself, broken into several different categores.

All of which has very little to do with today's post, except that I've been list making-making again and decided that, to make sure that it wasn't a complete waste of time, I would share with all of you. I was going to call the list "My Favorite Songs...Today", but that isn't quite accurate, so instead I'm going to call it "The Songs I Really, Really, Really Need to Hear Today". Which means that some of them might be repeats, because I've got several songs in my life right now that I've been needing to hear on a fairly regular basis.

That is certainly true of "Forever", by The Beach Boys. Yes, I know, I've been obsessed with the band for the past few weeks. But this song has struck me in the most forceful way, and it amazes me that although it was on the band's album "Sunflower", which was recorded in early 1969 and released in 1970, I did not discover it until, what, three weeks ago or so. It was written by Dennis Wilson and Gregg Jakobson. The song has been called "timeless" and compared to some of the best of Elton John and Bernie Taupin's ballads, which isn't exactly faint praise.

This is a mostly a capella version of the song, on which Dennis Wilson sings lead. Right at the end, someone gets really silly (and I've seen people debate online whether that last note is Brian Wilson or Carl Wilson getting creative), but this is really a lovely, lovely performance of the song, which is quickly becoming my favorite song:



Love songs come in all moods and flavors. Another one of my favorite love songs, and favorite songs without qualification, has a completely different mood than "Forever", which is quiet and sweet and meditative. The Turtles' "Happy Together" (which I'm sure I also must have shared at some point, possibly not very long ago), which is just plain, well, happy. This is another song that I really need to hear today, and on as many days as possible, really. This song is deeply embedded in popular culture, having appeared in at least 20 films over the years, as well as in a number of television episodes. It has been covered by many other artists (including by Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, performing later as Flo and Eddie) and is the 44th most performed song in the US in the 20th century

This lip-synched performance, from "The Ed Sullivan Show", is really badly synched, but I like this particular video for its excellent example of the by-play between Volman and lead singer Kaylan, which was sort of a trademark of Turtles' performances:



And there is "Love Hurts", which could have equally well been called "Love Sucks". But, since just about everybody goes through a "love sucks" sort of experience at least once in their lives, this could be considered the universal love song. It has been covered by just about everybody, it seems, since Boudleaux Bryan wrote it. It was first recorded by The Everly Brothers in 1960 (and released in 1961). The list of cover versions on the song's entry on Wikipedia runs to over fifty, starting with Roy Orbison (in March 1961), and including The Who, Nazarath (which was the first version I ever heard), Cher (twice), Journey, Heart, Don McLean, and Rod Stewart, to name just a few.

This is my favorite version of the song, recorded by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris for Parsons' album "Grievous Angel" in 1974. Parsons had just the right voice to convey the pain and ache of love gone wrong:



Another favorite love song of the melancholy variety is "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away". This song, which appeared in the movie "Help!" and on the soundtrack album in 1965, was credited as a Lennon/McCartney composition but was actually written by John Lennon alone. Like "Love Hurts" it deals with love gone wrong, but takes a more bitter tone. And Lennon's rendition of his song is brilliant, but my favorite version comes from The Beach Boys. Their cover appeared on the 1965 album "Beach Boys Party!", which was released late in the year as a collection mostly of covers meant for Christmas. Again, as with "Forever", the band's drummer, Dennis Wilson, sings lead, lending just the right inflections in his voice to make you believe what he is singing. Basically, on this song Wilson out-Lennon's Lennon, which is quite an accomplishment.

This is not the album version of The Beach Boys' cover of the song, but the audio of a live performance at Michigan State on October 22, 1966:



Speaking of John Lennon (and getting away from love songs), I also have a huge need to hear "Working Class Hero" today. This song is on Lennon's first album after The Beatles broke up, "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band", recorded in 1970 and released in the US in 1971 but not in the UK until 1975. It is a very stripped down song, just Lennon's voice and his guitar. It's the first song I ever heard with the word "fuck" (well, "fucking", actually) in it, and for that reason it was banned by some radio stations and the manager of one station that did play it was charged and faced prison time for letting it on the air, but the charges were ultimately dropped. In Australia, the offending word was cut from the version of the album marketed there and from the lyrics sheet that came with the album. But it's a good song, and here it is, obscenities intact:



But, it seems like I can't get away from the love songs today, and especially the melancholy ones. Like this one,, "Spanish Moss", by Gordon Lightfoot. I love Lightfoot's music, and this may well be my favorite of his love ballads, if not his whole catalog of songs. It appears on his album "Summertime Dream", from 1976. It's a very cinematic song, and I've always been able to feel a whole story in there that goes beyond the actual lyrics. And speaking of lyrics, this song has one of my favorite lines in all of popular music. I mean really, "...kisses mixed with moonshine and red clay" is just, well, really sexy (which is a word I don't like because it is overused and misused so much, but it is the only word I can find that is appropriate to how I think of this line):



I can only introduce the next song I needed to hear today by saying that the first time I ever heard it, on the radio, back in 1987, when it first came out, I was speechless for about 10 minutes. It's that good, lyrically and musically. By Gary Moore, it is from the album "Wild Frontier". I didn't catch the name of the song or artist that day, and I spent a good two or three days listening to the radio whenever I could, hoping they would play it again and actually say who it was or what the name of the song was...in those pre-google and pre-YouTube days, that's what you had to do sometimes, to find out enough about a song to get your hands on it. And, in fact, I guess I should say that this is "Over the Hills and Far Away", not to be confused by the song of the same title by Led Zeppelin. Because it is totally not the same song:



There are more on the list of songs that I need to hear today, but this has gone one long enough for one post, so I'll stop at one more. It's a love song, too, of the "I love you but I can never have you because somebody else got there first" variety. This was my favorite song when I was in the 8th grade, and I still love it now, all these years later, as much as I did then. This is The Grass Roots and "Midnight Confessions". I suppose it should be one of my guilty pleasures, but I feel no guilt about it at all:



As I said, I could go on doing this, probably all night. But I have other things I should be doing. The amazing thing is that I haven't fallen down the rabbit hole I could have, going through and listening to everything I found along the way while I was putting this together, other songs, some of which I haven't thought about in a long time, that made me think, "Oh, I need to hear that, too." Sometimes my willpower amazes me. Other times, it just fails me, but it's working at the moment.

Music Sunday: The 1974 Edition

I've been researching in the 1970s the past few days, and so I thought it might be time for some '70s music. '70s music kind of has a bad reputation in some circles because it was the decade of disco. It almost seems like that should be capitalized. Decade of Disco. With some echoes in there, or something, maybe a little reverb. And I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of disco.

On the other hand, a lot of non-disco music also came out in the '70s. The music of that decade was at least a diverse as that of any other decade. And a lot of music came from the decade. So, I decided to focus on 1974, the year I graduated from high school.

Yes. I know. I'm old. Still...

The first song I want to share was out early in the year, but the album (remember those) it was on, "Grievous Angel", by Gram Parsons, came out several months after Parsons's death. Pity. This song, "Las Vegas" (sometimes billed as "Ooooo, Las Vegas"), was co-written by Parsons and British musician Ric Grech, who played bass with Blind Faith, among other acts. It's a really good song, at least in my opinion. I wish Gram Parsons had stayed around long enough to make more music. I didn't know this song when it came out, but I've loved it ever since the first time I heard it:



Also out in January of 1970 was Gordon Lightfoot's album "Sundown". The album and the title song both reached number one on the charts in the United States, as did the second single from the album, "Carefree Highway". Both songs are good, each different from one another in theme.

Here is a live performance of "Sundown" from 1974:



And here is "Carefree Highway". Completely different vibe:



The Eagles had an album out in 1974, "On the Border", which included such hits as "Already Gone" and "Best of My Love". But there's another song on the album that I like at lot. This live performance of "James Dean" comes from the band's performance at California Jam on April 6, 1974:



"Already Gone", the first release from the album, went to number 32 on the US charts and "Best of My Love" was the band's first number one single. "James Dean", on the other hand, which was the second single released from "On the Border", only made it to number 77.

So far, the songs I've shared today come from similar roots. Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" is farther down the road into a different part of the 70s music scene. From the album "Caribou", this is one of my favorite Elton John songs, not least because of the absolutely amazing live performance I saw of it at Dodger Stadium on October 26, 1975. When the song began, it was still light. But the song was long enough that night that by the time it ended the sun had gone down and it was completely dark. Then, just as the last chord faded out, the stadium lights all came on. It was beautiful. This clip is not from that show, but from a show at Wembley stadium in London in 1984. I tried to find a clip from the show I went to, but if it exists, I couldn't find it.



And now for a little novelty...Ringo Starr had an album come out in 1974, "Goodnight, Vienna". One of the songs from that album was "Only You (And You Alone)", a cover of a song from the 1950s. As a promotional clip, Starr sang the song on top of the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, alongside a mock-up of a flying saucer and huge figures looking like Klaatu and the robot Gort from "The Day The Earth Stood Still". This came from the fact that the album cover recreated an iconic scene from that film. Finding this clip, which I didn't realize existed, tickles me because I can remember driving by on the freeway during that period and seeing the saucer and huge figures on the roof of the building, which had been put up as promotion for the album. Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s made for some trippy and unique experiences:



John Lennon also had a new album out in 1974, "Walls and Bridges". The song "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" was included, here in a live performance with Elton John:



For some reason, today's post has taken me most of the afternoon to put together. so I'll leave it at this for now. I might have more to share from the 1970s later on.

Movie Monday: The "Reel Life vs. Real Life" Edition

So, I'm behind.

Yesterday was Music Sunday, and I fully intended to get a post written and up here, but Blogger decided not to cooperate (it was having trouble loading), and so that didn't happen. And now it's Movie Monday. So, I suppose some sort of mash-up is probably the way to go.

I can do that. And I can start of by saying that I watched "Grand Theft Parsons" (2003) over the weekend. Again.

It isn't really a biography of musician Gram Parsons, but a semi-faithful re-creation of the days after Parsons's death, when his road manager, Phil Kaufman, set out to fulfil the promise they had made to each other that, whoever died first, the other would take their body out to Joshua Tree Nation Park in the California desert and cremate it in the place they both loved.

This really happened. I can remember hearing the reports of the incident in 1973. For many years after, the only thing I knew about Gram Parsons was that he died and some wild friend of his had hauled his body out to Joshua Tree and torched it. And so, when I first became aware of the movie and its premise, I was skeptical that it would make any kind of a movie, let alone a watchable one.

And, actually, the critics are split on whether or not it is actually watchable. Some found it "tasteless" and "stale", without "soul or imagination." But others described it as "a delight, a comic tragedy" and said it has "tremendous charm." It is a black comedy. What else could it be, with the subject matter involved?

But, after I learned more about Parsons's music (I've written about Parsons here before), I watched the film. It isn't for everybody. I'll grant you that. But I see in it a sweet core, a story about real friendship and real regret on Kaufman's part (as portrayed by Johnny Knoxville) that he wasn't there when his friend needed him most. Yes, it takes liberties with the facts. Most movies based on real events do.

Here is the trailer. This is one you really need to judge for yourself:



The thing is, though, if you see "Grand Theft Parsons", you should also see "Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel", a 2006 documentary about Parsons that tells the real story of his life. It isn't always a pretty story, but pretty much everyone who knew him gets to contribute their thoughts, good, bad, or indifferent, and I found it to be a pretty complete treatment of his life, his talents and his foibles, and his death.

Here is the trailer for the documentary:

Music Sunday: The Gram Parsons Edition

Had he not died of a drug overdose in a motel room at Joshua Tree National Monument in 1973, Gram Parsons would have turned 66 years old last Monday. This leaves open the question of whether or not he would have found wider success as a musician and songwriter, had he lived longer. Oh, he was in bands that were known, including some time spent as a member of The Byrds. He was a founding member of the Flying Burrito Brothers. But his solo career never really took off. He only recorded two solo albums, "GP" and "Grievous Angel". "GP" did not make the charts at all,and "Grievous Angel", released after Parsons's death, only rose to 195 on the album charts.

So, why am I even bothering to devote a Music Sunday post to Gram Parsons?

Parsons might not have been what anyone would consider a star in his 26 years of life. He is, however, considered by many to be the father of country rock and alt-country, even though he is said to have hated the term "country rock" and preferred to call his vision of music "Cosmic American Music". Well, it was the late 1960s and early 1970s, and lots of things got called "cosmic". But, silly-sounding genre name and all, Parsons is seen today as an incredibly influential figure in music. Several tribute albums have been recorded and tribute festivals have been held in his honor. A number of books have been written about him and his life and death have inspired both a play and a film. There is a feature-length documentary about his life and music. This is a lot of noise after the fact generated on behalf of a drug-addicted singer and songwriter who died at the age of 26.

I'd say that constitutes having had an impact.

It has been said that one either "gets" Gram Parsons and his music, or they don't. I do, apparently. I didn't know his work when he was alive, but I remember the news reports in the wake of his death, when a friend of his stole his body and took it out to Joshua Tree to cremate it, as had apparently been Parsons's wishes. This all caused quite a sensation at the time. To my knowledge, however, I had never heard his music until a few years ago, after I read one of the books about him and sought out his work to see what all the shouting was about. Now, I've never been a huge country music fan, but I like what has become known as country rock. But even though a lot of his solo recordings sound more country to me than rock, I immediately connected with the music.

One of the first bands Parsons was in was The International Submarine Band, which he helped form while he was a student at Harvard University for about ten minutes. The band made one album, "Safe at Home", which didn't sell very well. One of the songs on that album was "I Still Miss Someone", a cover of a Johnny Cash song from 1958:



Parsons moved to California, The International Submarine Band broke up, and he ended up spending a few months as a member of The Byrds during the time they were recording "Sweethearts of the Rodeo", which has been called the first country-rock album by a recognized act. It caused quite a stir at the time and is considered a classic today, although at the time a lot of music fans didn't quite know what to make of it and it only went to number 77 on Billboard's album chart. Due to conflicts and legal issues, some of Parsons's vocals were taken off the record, but his influence remained evident in the song choices on the record. Two of the songs there were either written or co-written by Parsons.

After his short stint with The Byrds, Parsons founded The Flying Burrito Brothers with Chris Hillman, another member of The Byrds. Again, while the band's work during Parsons's time with them gained notice, their albums didn't sell well. Also, Parsons's interest wandered again and, after differences with other band members (including the fact that Parsons was spending a lot of his time hanging out with members of The Rolling Stones), Parsons left, having recorded just two albums with the band. Part of the legacy of that time was a performance at the infamous free concert headlined by The Stones at Altamont Speedway in California in 1969.

The second of those two albums, "Burrito Deluxe", includes a cover of the Rolling Stones song "Wild Horses", although it is difficult to call it a cover in that the version on the album was actually released before the Stones released their version on "Sticky Fingers", a year later. I prefer Parsons's version:



After leaving the Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons pursued his solo career. About that time, he had been introduced to Emmylou Harris, and some of her first recorded work was on Parsons's two solo albums. My favorite of the songs on those two albums is their cover of "Love Hurts", on "Grievous Angel":



Also from "Grievous Angel" is this song, "Las Vegas" co-written by Parsons and Ric Grech, proving that Parsons could do upbeat just as well as he could do melancholy:



One could say that Gram Parsons pissed his life and talent away. But, handicapped as he was with substance abuse issues that were endemic in his family (both his parents were alcoholics; his father committed suicide and his mother died from alcohol-related issues, both by the time Parsons graduated high school), maybe he did the best he could with what he was given. It was a pitifully small about of work that he left behind, but it was enough to help jump-start a whole genre of music.

And that isn't trivial.

Music Sunday: A Few Favorites...

No deep analysis today for Music Sunday. No theme. Just a few things I feel like sharing, songs and performances that I particularly like.

First, here's a live version of Summertime, by Janis Joplin, from 1969:



Also, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris with their cover of Love Hurts. I think this is the definitive version of this song.



And, finally, The Who, live, from 1975, Behind Blue Eyes (plus bonus Keith Moon):