And now, JJAMZ‘s homage to both The Police and ’80s horror movies, or, the creepiest video I have watched this summer.
Seriously, I love this song but this video totally gives me the howling fantods.
Naturally I must therefore share it with y’all so we can all watch it from behind our fingers together, preferably in the middle of the day with all of the lights on.
Even more seriously, I’m intrigued by how this song, and in particular this video for this song, combine to interact, if you will, with Don’t Stand So Close To Me, which is ALSO a pretty creepy song.
The video, is, like JJAMZ’s version, also set in a school, but has a distinctly playful feel.
All three of The Police are clowning around as the song plays. Sting, as himself, inexplicably wears puffy golden wings for the first minute or so, spends the last 30 seconds dancing with a lacrosse stick (was it Let Us Use All The Props Day?), and at one point, as the harried teacher, takes off his shirt Superman-style.
In stark contrast, what JJAMZ and director Eddie O’Keefe ask the viewer of their video to contemplate is: What if that teacher struggling with inappropriate desires was a killer?
All I can say is, I hope there’s a follow-up soon.
I snagged this one at the same time I picked up the Tammy Wynette biography from last week, mainly because, while I’m not the biggest fan of The Police, I could not resist that title. Pygmies? Polo? A rockstar with a (kind of) secret double life? Sign me up!
I am pleased to tell you that I had once again invested wisely, because Stewart Copeland definitely comes through in the hilarious / compelling anecdote department.
In addition to his time with The Police, his adventures as a documentary film maker and his trials and travails amid the ponies, the book also covers his childhood in the Beirut and England (his dad was founding member of the CIA!), his college years in California, his forays into the world of opera and ballet, the period he was in a band with Les Claypool and Trey Anastasio, a little bit about the making of Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, his work writing movie scores, his stint as a judge on Just The Two Of Us, the many years he’s participated in La Notte Della Taranta, and ever so much more.
The stories are presented chronologically, but as independent anecdotes, so its possible to skip around and jump over times and topics that may not be of interest. That said, I read it straight through, and don’t feel my enjoyment of the work suffered at all.
Some observations: if you are looking for the nitty-gritty day by day (fight by fight?) story of The Police, this is not the book for you. Copeland hopscotches through their history fairly efficiently, assuming a certain amount of reader familiarity with their story and also with his and Sting’s complex and stormy relationship.
Best bit: the part where Copeland describes Sting trying to conduct Copeland’s drumming with subtle but increasingly furious movements of his guitar. And also the part where Copeland observed that, to the venerable members of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Copeland might as well be as Jonas brother, which nearly caused me to snort my tea out of my nose.
Though the part where I had to put the book down because I was laughing too hard to hold it upright was when Copeland was discussing the perils of being a Los Angeles PTA parent, i.e. that it’s possible Gene Simmons will leave you phone messages like – I’m paraphrasing here – Hi, this is Gene Simmons, you know, the one with the tongue?
The non-The Police related stories were excellent too; I definitely want to attend La Notta Della Taranta now, and his descriptions of his forays into the world of fine arts and movie making and scoring – especially pre-digital recording movie scoring – were fascinating.
In summary: A++, grab it if you find it and be prepared to stifle laughter if reading it in a public place.
I leave you with some videos; first, here he is at La Notta Della Taranta in 2003:
This is the first part of his Horse Opera. The rest is on YouTube and it is all totally ridiculous:
This is half an hour of actual opera, specifically, The Tell-Tale Heart which is not ridiculous at all. Or at least not any more ridiculous than opera is supposed to be.
Oysterhead performing on Conan:
And finally, Copeland jamming out with Matt Stone, Taylor Hawkins, and Chris Chaney at the Sacred Grove, his home studio:
In which Travie McCoy and Matt McGinley of Gym Class Heroes go ice fishing to the strains of Holy Horseshit, Batman! from GCH’s fourth record The Papercut Chronicles II, and, in the process, step all over the hook in order to explain how ice fishing works.
(Yes, yes, I know, it’s a tour video, so it’s more about tour shenanigans than the song. I totally love it, though, trodden upon hooks or not, because, not going to lie, if these two had their own fishing reality show, I would watch the hell out of it, even if they stepped all over their hooks every week while explaining how to tie on flies or whatever.
Another show I’d watch if it existed: Travie McCoy and Pete Wentz going for casual strolls around New York / LA / where-ever and discoursing on street art the same way Ice Cube gets down with his love for architecture in Los Angeles. And for anyone who may be wondering, yes, Travie McCoy does have Hall & Oates tattooed on his hands. Unironically, because he loves them.)
But back to the hook. In-video tomfoolery aside, it does play over the credits, unmolested, which is good, because it is a really great hook, and The Papercut Chronicles II is, overall, a really great record.
I am going to see Dead Can Dance live at the end of this month and I am SO EXCITED. They’re going to be at the Beacon, too, which means KILLER ACOUSTICS, which means Lisa Gerrard is going to make us all feel like our souls have come loose from our bodies. I CAN’T WAIT.
This is Opium, from Anastasis, their first new record in 16 years. If you like it, I very strongly encourage you to dig into their back catalog because there are a ton more gems where this came from. And they are giving away some free EPs on the their website so be sure to grab those, too.
And now jumping forward in time and across several genres, here’s the latest from [STRANGERS], called Safe/Pain. It is, as usual, dreamy and delicious.
Produced by Bas Productions at ZENEssex Studio
Camera: Tom Brown, Jasper Sharp
Sound/Lights: Gary Clark
Set design: Richard A. Sharpe
Editor: Kevin Burtt
Direction: Claire Coulton/ [STRANGERS] / Richard A. Sharpe
The first tapes I bought were Nervous Night and Born in the USA, in 1985, but it was a year later that the George Satellites taught me what put the roll in rock n’ roll, via the guitars in this song. It’s from Georgia Satellites, their first record for Elektra in 1986. They put out two more records before Dan Baird departed for a solo career in 1990, then took a brief break and re-emerged in 1993, and are still out there making music today.
Meanwhile, Dan Baird is busy with Dan Baird and Homemade Sin, which also includes original members of the George Satellites, and George Satellites songs are in their repertoire. The version of Keep Your Hands To Yourself that I have and listen to probably once a week is a Dan Baird and Homemade Sin production.
And that is what this song sounds like to me: homemade sin. Dirty giggles, skinny dipping, having to be be sneaky about finding places to make out, riding in cars with bad bad boys, its all there, singing a siren song through their guitars.
Picking just one Mary Chapin Carpenter video turned out to be impossible. She just has so many good songs.
But since this week has been about country love songs – for certain definitions of “country love songs” – I picked two of those, one for the broken-hearted and one for those in the first flush of passion.
The sad song is first, and it is Never Had It So Good from State of the Heart (1989). The blue filter is perhaps a tiny bit dated (it was the ’80s, is all I can say) but the song itself is timeless.
Listening to it now has just reminded me how satisfying singing along to all that bitterness could be. And the thing is, even when she’s bitter, Mary Chapin Carpenter is a breath of fresh air.
And then to go into the weekend on an up-note, the one for people with stars in their eyes and sexy activities on their minds: Shut Up and Kiss Me from Stones in the Road (1994).
Also, she’s on tour for a big chunk of the fall. Check her listings and get out and see her if you can!
From Mark Chesnutt‘s second record, Longnecks & Short Stories (1992); I think my favorite line is Bubba hollered and raised hell / “I knew just where I was aimin’!
This is an acoustic version, so it’s a little bit slower than usual, but you can get the spirit of the song.
Speaking of me and country radio, I can remember exactly where I was when I heard Delta Dawn the first time: just past the lake and headed down the narrow road through the trees that would eventually take me up to the main road and the 7-11. It was a journey I took frequently, so I was practically on auto-pilot.
And then Tanya Tucker‘s voice and the eerie slow drone under it hit me like a cold bucket of water to the face. I think I turned it up mainly to make sure I was hearing correctly, because it didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before. I don’t remember when this happened, but I’m guessing it was somewhere around 1992, when Two Sparrows in a Hurricane came out. The DJ probably even played them back to back.
I’m not sure I ever heard Delta Dawn on the radio again after that, or at least not for a while, but it stuck with me just the same.
Here she is singing it on Hee-Haw; she was 14 when this performance was recorded.
When I found this book in the music section of a used book store in Boston, I added it to my pile immediately.
Not because I’m a dedicated fan of Tammy Wynette – my favorite version of Stand By Your Man is the Lyle Lovett cover that was included in the Crying Game – but because she is such an iconic figure in country music, and I felt I should get to know her better.
Plus I’ve been reading a lot of auto/biographies of male rock stars lately, and I felt like I should branch out a little bit.
I may have picked it up out of a sense of duty, but what I got was the best kind of surprise. I loved this book. I honestly did not want to put it down, even though it was largely responsible for having Stand By Your Man stuck in my head on infinite repeat for the better part of a week.
Wynette’s story is a real rollercoaster ride of triumphant commercial success highs (all those #1 songs!) and tragic personal lows (her fifth marriage; being addicted to painkillers for most of her adult life due to extensive physical problems), but what really makes this book great is how much Jimmy McDonough loves her. His enduring affection for his subject melded with stubborn journalistic devotion to the truth – even if it is an ugly truth – is on every page.
I also learned a lot about Nashville, and the way country music used to be made, which, then as now, is very, very different from how rock music is made. McDonough also provides what has to be one of the finer, snarkier descriptions of Nashville ever committed to paper, which is Imagine that you’re at the dry cleaners, they’ve lost your pants, and you’re expecting them to be found. Then imagine you’ve been standing there waiting for forty-seven years.
And yet, as McDonough amply demonstrates, the place is home to so many vibrant characters. For example, George “The Possum” Jones, the country superstar who was the third of Wynette’s five husbands and by all accounts of the love of her life. Theirs was a stormy, dramatic union; they were married in 1969, divorced by 1975, and yet still continued to make beautiful music together for many years afterwards.
On a related note, this book is also a pretty good introduction to George Jones. I learned a lot about The Possum, not least being that his hell-raising days were the factual base One More Last Chance which was a hit for Vince Gill long after Jones had (more or less) settled down.
The one minor warning I would leave for the adventurous and ignorant coming after me is that McDonough presupposes a certain familiarity with the major events of Wynette’s personal and professional life. While it’s possible to enjoy this book without doing any previous reading – I know I did – I have a feeling the overall experience would be enriched by having at least a skeletal understanding of her story.
In summary: A++, add this to your end of summer reading list right away.
And now, some videos, so you can see The First Lady of Country Music in action.
Up first is D-I-V-O-R-C-E, her fourth #1 hit:
You know what’s next, right? Warning: may get stuck in your head for days at a time. It was so firmly lodged in mine that I fell into a Stand By Your Man-shaped YouTube hole while trying to exorcise it. My conclusion: I have mixed feelings about the various non-Lyle Lovett modern renditions, but I did enjoy Sara Evans’ version. I also came to the conclusion that this is not a song for the faint of heart or those possessed of a nervous disposition. You have to stare it down and then get up there and belt it out.
And here she is with Mr. Jones, and one of their most famous duets, Golden Ring:
And finally, singing Silver Threads and Golden Needles with her contemporaries, friends and competitors Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn:
