Modern music production isn’t much behind in term of the people involved: vocalists, musicians, arrangers, producers, sound engineers – not to mention art direction, photography, promotion, etc. But again, the songwriter is most important: If the song is no good, it doesn’t matter how well it is performed. And even the most free-form jam has to have a starting point.
* * *
Music is among the oldest human endeavors and probably began with primitive humans making unusual sounds with their mouths. Musical accompaniment followed soon after; in 2008, a bone flute was discovered in a cave in Germany that is believed to date back 35,000 years. As language developed, songs began to have real words.
According to Wikipedia, the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition is the Seikilos Epitaph (shown above). Lyrics and melody are both given on this stele; even a form of musical notation is provided. It is believed to date from around 200 A.D.
Most early songwriting though was not written down, but was passed along orally. Much was likely sacred in nature: The Psalms in the Bible for instance were actually meant to be sung, not spoken; and over a third of the 150 psalms have some musical direction in the text.
More recently, “Negro spirituals” are a type of work song that was sung among African American slaves; today, they are recognized as a separate genre of music. The first major compendium of Negro spirituals, Slave Songs of the United States was published in 1867. Some have become quite famous, and even the likely authorship is known in some cases. Wikipedia reports that “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” was written by Wallis Willis sometime before 1862.
* * *
Quoting from a Negro spiritual called “Free at Last”, the rousing 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ends: “When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”
* * *
Since Richie Havens was about the only musician who had arrived at the 1969 Woodstock festival before the highways became hopelessly jammed, he played for hours. As he recalls (quoting from Wikipedia): “I’d already played every song I knew and I was stalling, asking for more guitar and mic, trying to think of something else to play – and then it just came to me . . . The establishment was foolish enough to give us all this freedom and we used it in every way we could.”
After a remarkably quick guitar tuning, Richie Havens then improvised a song called “Freedom” that was based on the Negro spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”. It was this performance that made it into the Woodstock movie. Bob Dylan has incorporated “Motherless Child” into his songs; Wikipedia lists dozens of others who have also recorded the song in one form or another.
Other famous Negro spirituals include “Go Down Moses”, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”, and “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)”. Some modern songs have the distinct feel of Negro spirituals, such as Andraé Crouch’s “Soon and Very Soon” and James Cleveland’s “I Don’t Feel No-Ways Tired”.
Christian hymns, particularly Christmas carols that are hundreds of years old still remain popular today, even though modern popular music has been incrementally taking over most church services for decades. Some songwriters in the Christian church are incredibly prolific; Charles Wesley (1707-1788), one of the co-founders of the Methodist Church is credited with writing more than 6,000 hymns.
* * *
In our own time, Bob Dylan is renowned as one of the most prolific songwriters. In an interview with Pete Seeger that is included on Great White Wonder, Dylan says casually: “I might go for two weeks without writing these songs. I write a lot of stuff. In fact, I wrote five songs last night.” I don’t know whether the first sentence or the last sentence in that quote is the most unbelievable!
I never could come up with a proper count of the total number of songs that Bob Dylan has written; and I certainly wasn’t going to try to count up the huge lists that I encountered, from Wikipedia on down. The Wikipedia category “Bob Dylan songs” has 312 at present, though it is incomplete: For instance, “I Shall be Free No. 10” from Another Side of Bob Dylan is not on the list, since an article on this song has not yet been written.
* * *
But solo songwriting is a lonely profession, and success is far from guaranteed. Bob Dylan’s first album, Bob Dylan did not particularly showcase Dylan’s songwriting talent; there were only two original songs on the album. and the tunes to both had similarities with his mentor Woody Guthrie’s songs. In fact, says Wikipedia: “Mitch Miller, Columbia [Records]’s chief of A&R at the time, said U.S. sales totaled about 2,500 copies. Bob Dylan remains Dylan’s only release not to chart at all in the US, though it eventually reached #13 in the UK charts in 1965. Despite the album’s poor performance, financially it was not disastrous because the album was very cheap to record.” Bob Dylan was one of the first Dylan albums that I purchased, and I am astounded that this album never made the charts.
* * *
On the other hand, Bob Dylan’s next album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was a big hit, and largely because Peter, Paul and Mary had a #2 hit with “Blowin’ in the Wind” that was released just three weeks after Freewheelin’ – Albert Grossman, who was managing both Dylan and PP&M in that time period, brought them the song, and they immediately recorded and released it.
* * *
This started a whole parade of 1960’s artists who recorded Bob Dylan songs. The Byrds alone released five different Bob Dylan songs as singles, starting with “Mr. Tambourine Man” (their first hit song and only their second single). The 2002 reissue of The Byrds Play Dylan (originally released in 1979) has 20 Dylan songs on it, all recorded during the 1960’s.
Several other major artists have launched their careers with Bob Dylan songs, Olivia Newton-John (“If Not for You”), the Turtles (“It Ain’t Me Babe”), and Cher (“All I Really Want to Do”) among them. Cher’s hit version of “All I Really Want to Do” had to compete on the charts with the Byrds’ version of the same song, “All I Really Want to Do”. Additionally, Manfred Mann and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band have salted their albums with mostly obscure Bob Dylan songs since their third release, As Is (1966).
Masquerading as the Wonder Who? – at the same time that the Who and the Guess Who were current – the Four Seasons released a version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” with Frankie Valli singing an exaggerated falsetto. And there is the excellent cover by the Jimi Hendrix Experience of “All Along the Watchtower”, which seems to be on everyone’s short list of the greatest Bob Dylan covers of all time.
* * *
A bit of serendipity occurred when Bob Dylan and Joan Baez appeared together at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival singing a duet of a newly written song, “With God on Our Side” (which would appear on Dylan’s next album, The Times They Are A-Changin’). The Festival was in the same month as the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Wikipedia states: “Baez was at the pinnacle of her fame, having appeared on the cover of Time magazine the previous November. The performance not only gave Dylan and his songs a new prominence, it also marked the beginning of a romantic relationship between Baez and Dylan, the start of what Dylan biographer [Howard] Sounes termed ‘one of the most celebrated love affairs of the decade’.”
* * *
But suppose Peter, Paul and Mary hadn’t had the same manager as Bob Dylan, or that they hadn’t liked “Blowin’ in the Wind”? Or suppose it hadn’t been a hit? Bob Dylan is an unquestioned songwriting genius, but his singing style is an acquired taste – if Dylan had to depend on his own recordings, the world might have already moved on by the time “Like a Rolling Stone” came out more than two years later.
You think I’m kidding? You think Bob Dylan is such a huge talent that he would have been a success no matter what? Consider the case of Mimi and Richard Fariña.
Mimi Fariña is Joan Baez’s younger sister, and Richard Fariña was originally known as a writer and eventually published an acclaimed novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1966). As quoted in Wikipedia, novelist Thomas Pynchon, who served as best man at the wedding of the Fariñas, described the novel as “coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch . . . hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful, and outrageous all at the same time”.
* * *
Richard Fariña was among the early folk singers in the Greenwich Village scene at the beginning of the 1960’s. He met and married folksinger Carolyn Hester after they had known each other just 18 days. Her third album and first for Columbia Records, Carolyn Hester (1961) featured then little-known Bob Dylan on harmonica on several tracks (credited as Blind Boy Grunt).
* * *
Richard Fariña and Bob Dylan became good friends after they met at those recording sessions, as documented in an excellent overview of the New York folk scene of the early 1960’s by David Hajdu called Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. This book created quite a stir when it was released in 2001 as it made the case for Richard Fariña being an equal talent with Bob Dylan.
* * *
After their marriage, Mimi and Richard Fariña began performing as a folk-rock duo that were much closer to the folk end of things than, say, the Byrds. Their first album was Celebrations for a Grey Day (1965). Their best known
songs are “Pack up Your Sorrows”, “Reno, Nevada”, and “Birmingham Sunday”. “Reno, Nevada” was one of the early songs performed by Fairport Convention (dating back to the time when Judy Dyble was the band’s lead singer). As recorded by Joan Baez, “Birmingham Sunday” became the theme song for the Spike Lee documentary film 4 Little Girls (1997) about the infamous 1963 church bombing that killed four young children.
Richard Fariña had an awful motorcycle accident on his 29th birthday, March 8, 1966. A few months later, Bob Dylan had a bad motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966. Dylan survived his injuries; Fariña did not. Today, Dylan is known throughout the world, while Fariña is virtually forgotten. Writer Ed Ward has said: “If Richard had survived that motorcycle accident, he would have easily given Dylan a run for his money.”
* * *
Bob Dylan was one of many folksingers in the early 1960’s who were following in Woody Guthrie’s shoes. From Wikipedia: “Dylan wrote of Guthrie’s repertoire: ‘The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.’ After learning of Guthrie‘s whereabouts, Dylan regularly visited him.” Later on, a number of other performers were heralded as the “new Dylan” – so many that the phrase started to sound like an epithet.
I fear that Woody Guthrie is beginning to fade from public renown; just about everyone knows “This Land is Your Land” – his best known song among many hundreds of them – but they probably have no idea who wrote it. Like most of Woody’s songs, “This Land is Your Land” has homespun lyrics that go straight to the heart.
As quoted in Wikipedia: “[Woody] Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’. He thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent. Partly inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste for ‘God Bless America’, he wrote his most famous song, ‘This Land is Your Land’, in February 1940; it was subtitled: ‘God Blessed America for Me’.” And the original song isn’t nearly so tame as the best known portion; the fourth and sixth verses (which Woody Guthrie himself sometimes omitted in his performances) are much more strident:
As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, It said “no trespassing”.
[In another version, the sign reads “Private Property”]
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
Wikipedia states: “Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Jay Farrar, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Childers, and Tom Paxton have acknowledged [Woody] Guthrie as a major influence.”
* * *
Woody Guthrie’s first recordings were made by Alan Lomax, the famous folklorist that I wrote about in my last post; they had several hours of recordings and conversations between them. His first album, Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) followed. It is regarded as one of the very first concept albums and was Woody’s most successful record.
* * *
I just saw the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar; despite some shortcomings, I liked it quite a bit more than Inception (2010). Many people might not realize that those horrendous dust storms heralding the eclipse of Earth as a habitable planet occurred in real life in the U. S. Midwest during the 1930’s. As if the Great Depression weren’t enough misery, a combination of severe drought and ignorant agricultural methods ruined the rich farmland in the Heartland for years at a time. As a native of Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie naturally identified with the thousands of “Okies” set adrift during the “Dust Bowl” period. Also, as reported in Wikipedia: “Guthrie himself had lived in the town of Pampa, Texas, and had witnessed the devastating Black Sunday dust storm of April 14, 1935.” This “black blizzard” was one of the worst dust storms of them all; an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil were displaced during this storm.
* * *
The best known song on the Woody Guthrie album Dust Bowl Ballads is “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh” (called “Dusty Old Dust” on the album). The Weavers had a hit with “So Long (It’s Been Good to Know Yuh)” in 1951, taking it to #4 on the pop music charts and becoming one of their “staple” songs. From Wikipedia: “The repetitive chorus has been described as ‘a witty, black retort, utterly negative and apocalyptic’”:
We talked of the end of the world, and then
We’d sing a song an’ then sing it again
We’d sit for an hour an’ not say a word
And then these words would be heard:
So long, it’s been good to know yuh
* * *
Another song on Dust Bowl Ballads, “Pretty Boy Floyd” has one of Woody Guthrie’s most famous lines. Like the outlaw couple depicted in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd was a bank robber during the Depression era. While he was elevated to “Public Enemy No. 1” by the FBI following the shooting of John Dillinger, many see Floyd as a tragic figure who was a victim of his times.
“Pretty Boy Floyd” also highlighted the outlaw’s generosity, which was attributed to Bonnie and Clyde as well in the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway movie. In part, the lyrics of this song are:
Yes, he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.
But a many a starvin’ farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.
Others tell you ’bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand-dollar bill.
Sure, anyone could say that Woody Guthrie was romanticizing a criminal. But there is no denying the power of the closing verses as Woody Guthrie points his finger at a greater enemy:
Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
* * *
I have written previously of another song on Dust Bowl Ballads, “I Ain’t Got No Home”. Although Bob Dylan idolized him, it is one of the very few Woody Guthrie songs that Dylan recorded. Also, “I Ain’t Got No Home” virtually shares a title and many of the lyrics with one of the songs by past UARA Ron Franklin, “We Ain’t Got No Home”. It is hard not to simply list the total lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s songs, they are so organically written; here are two choice verses from “I Ain’t Got No Home”:
My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
Now as I look around, it’s mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich an’ the workin’ man is poor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
* * *
Bob Dylan once wrote a poem as a tribute to this folk music giant. Titled “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie”, Dylan recited it once at a concert – specifically, at the Town Hall in New York City on April 12, 1963 according to Wikipedia. I have it on one of my Dylan bootleg albums, and it is also included in what is probably the biggest bootleg product of all time, the 10-LP box set Ten of Swords (1986). The first legitimate release is on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991).
Introducing the poem at the end of his concert, Bob Dylan said that he had been asked to provide something for a book about Woody Guthrie: “. . . what does Woody Guthrie mean to you in 25 words? I couldn’t do it. I wrote five pages. And, I have it here, have it here by accident, actually.”
Many people only think of Bob Dylan as a lyricist for his songs or maybe as a free-verse poet; but if there were ever any doubts about the man’s power as a true poet of the first order, “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” dispels them forever. The lines have a free-verse feel to them, though mostly they rhyme, and there is the same conversational tone that Woody Guthrie used in his own work. There is a breathless, exhilarating rush to the poem – it is nothing less than the search for the meaning of life amid the dross of the modern world. While nothing can top hearing Dylan speak the words himself, the entire poem can be found here on bobdylan.com, Dylan’s official website – www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/last-thoughts-woody-guthrie. It pains me to have to cut it short, but there are more than 200 lines in all, so here are some excerpts:
When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you’re too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin’ behind an’ losin’ yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life’s busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin’ up
If the wine don’t come to the top of yer cup
If the wind’s got you sideways with one hand holdin’ on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood’s easy findin’ but yer lazy to fetch it . . .
And to yourself you sometimes say
“I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn’t they tell me the day I was born”
And you start gettin’ chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you’re lookin’ for somethin’ you ain’t quite found yet . . .
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it’s you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you’re sitting
That the world ain’t got you beat
That it ain’t got you licked
It can’t get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked
You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope’s just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner ’round a wide-angled curve . . .
No you’ll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper maché
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain’t in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who’d turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend . . .
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin’, “Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain’t there no one here that knows where I’m at
Ain’t there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN’T REAL”
No but that ain’t yer game, it ain’t even yer race
You can’t hear yer name, you can’t see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin’
Where do you look for this lamp that’s a-burnin’
Where do you look for this oil well gushin’
Where do you look for this candle that’s glowin’
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You’ll find God in the church of your choice
You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it’s only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You’ll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown
* * *
In the same time period that he released Dust Bowl Ballads, Woody Guthrie was one of the co-founders of the Almanac Singers, which were active between 1940 and 1943. The other founders were Millard Lampell, later a television and film screenwriter, plus Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, who were in the folk group the Weavers that formed later in the decade. As described in Wikipedia: “[The Almanac Singers] specialized in topical songs, mostly songs advocating an anti-war, anti-racism and pro-union philosophy. They were part of the Popular Front, an alliance of liberals and leftists, including the Communist Party USA . . . who had vowed to put aside their differences in order to fight fascism and promote racial and religious inclusiveness and workers’ rights.” Woody Guthrie hung around a lot of Communists during his career, but as far as anyone can tell, he never joined up.
In 1944, Woody Guthrie met with Moe Asch of Folkways Records, where he first recorded “This Land is Your Land”, plus “Worried Man Blues” and hundreds of other songs.
* * *
In 1943, Woody Guthrie moved to a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, New York. Despite the fact that his recording career basically ended in 1947, this was his most productive period according to Wikipedia. He wrote hundreds of songs over this period and worked as long as he was able to hold a pencil.
Woody Guthrie became an active mentor for folksinger Ramblin’ Jack Elliott; because of his deteriorating health from the ravages of Huntington’s Disease, Bob Dylan and his own son Arlo Guthrie said that they actually learned about Guthrie’s music mostly through Elliott. Wikipedia says of this: “When asked about Arlo’s claim, Elliott said, ‘I was flattered. Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn’t teach me. He just said, “If you want to learn something, just steal it — that’s the way I learned from Lead Belly.”’”
* * *
I have already written about the wonderful Mermaid Avenue Series albums. Leftist English folksinger Billy Bragg and the American rock band Wilco put together music to accompany some of the complete lyric sheets that Woody Guthrie left behind that had no accompanying music – more than a thousand songs in all. In part, Billy Bragg’s liner notes on Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II state: “Woody Guthrie was the first alternative musician. While Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley were busy peddling escapism for the masses, Woody was out there writing songs from a different point of view with a lyrical poetry that captured the awesome majesty of America’s scenery and the dry-as-dust humor of its working folks.”
As terrific as they are, the dozens of songs on these albums only scratch the surface; Billy Bragg said in the liner notes that until these other songs can also be unearthed, “Woody Guthrie has so much more to say to us”.
* * *
Of course, these are all people who are more or less well known. Other singer-songwriters live in obscurity but still produce their music year after year. One example is Hasil Adkins, the rockabilly one-man band from rural West Virginia that I have discussed previously. Once Miriam Linna and Billy Miller of Kicks magazine brought him to a wider audience, launching one of the best reissue record labels in the process (Norton Records), Adkins had some celebrity in the final years of his life. Wikipedia and Allmusic list 10 studio albums and 6 compilation albums by Hasil Adkins; I’m up to I think 5 albums myself thus far. If not for Norton, Hasil Adkins would have been almost completely unknown, and that would be a tragedy in my mind.
* * *
While I am listening to an album, I will often look up the rock band or artist that I am listening to on Allmusic in order to check out something about them. I will also hit Wikipedia to see whether there is an article there, meaning that they might be a future UARB or UARA.
One day, I put in PHIL GAMMAGE in Allmusic . . . and nothing came up. Still doesn’t. In some ways, it was less than nothing – there were 7 (yes, seven) albums listed by Phil Gammage, released between 1990 and 2014. But there was not a word of review about any of them, not a biography, not an Allmusic rating (number of stars). In fact, until I just put in a 4½-star rating of his album Cry of the City, there wasn’t even a “user rating” – many albums on Allmusic have hundreds or thousands of them, and I have posted several dozen myself.
* * *
Naturally Wikipedia has nothing on Phil Gammage either, or I wouldn’t be writing this. But there is a long article on the post-punk band Certain General that Gammage co-founded in 1980.
But in Allmusic? Nothing on Certain General either – well, almost nothing. Eleven albums by Certain General are listed on Allmusic, coming out between 1984 and 2010. A short review by Richie Unterberger of their first full album, November’s Heat is provided; but this is the only album with an Allmusic rating, and there are just 8 user ratings among the 11 albums. This is from the website which has as its aim to compile “discographic information on every artist who’s made a record since Enrico Caruso gave the industry its first big boost”.
* * *
I knew of Phil Gammage from a sort of CD EP that I got many years ago called The Electric Radio Sampler Music Test, I believe in a grab-bag package from Bomp! Records. Two of the songs from Cry of the City, “The Stranger” and “High Roller” were on that record that I immediately took to – slice-of-life stories that were well written and backed by a strong rock band. His vocals are a little idiosyncratic – he doesn’t have a trained voice and has some trouble with high notes, but he packs a lot of emotion into his music. It never occurred to me that Phil Gammage might be someone who had fallen so completely through the cracks.
At the beginning of the “Bio” section of his website is a quote from Trouser Press that says of Phil Gammage’s music: “. . . underwrought darkside Americana echoing Nick Cave’s fascinations minus the melodrama. Which might well make Gammage this generation’s Hank Williams.”
* * *
Before long, I picked up a copy of the full Phil Gammage CD Cry of the City, and the whole album is equally good. The opening track, “Tough Town” sets the mood: the narrator has lost his job, found his woman in bed with another man, drinks all night, but: “Yeah, it’s a tough town, but I’m still around”. In “Castle Made of Sand”, he relates: “Yeah, ain’t it funny how things sometimes work out / One day you’re on easy street, the next you’re down and out”. Other songs follow the same theme: “I Took a Walk”, “Wait for the Dawn”, “Motel Called Loneliness”.
The closing song, “The Stranger” is maybe the best song of all on Cry of the City; this is the first time Phil Gammage openly sings from the standpoint of a traveling musician, and he seems out of step with everyone and everything around him (which is not exactly the stance of the earlier songs on the album). The subtext of the song might be his own experience of being an American who finds himself more popular in Europe:
Is there anybody here who speaks the language?
Is there anybody here who knows what I mean?
I am but a stranger here
And I have traveled long and far
with just the shirt on my back and my guitar
I’ve come to sing you songs of love
I’ve come to sing you songs of hate
But someone pass me the wine before it gets too late
Alright!
O.K.!
You don’t speak my tongue but I’ll sing anyway
“The Stranger” is preceded by a fine cover of a Robert Johnson song (always a good sign) called “Me and the Devil Blues”. It is played and sung pretty much like the rest of the songs – no need for Phil Gammage’s band to disturb their groove even for a classic blues cover. But each song has its own personality.
The best word to describe the album for me is genuine – so much so that it is not hard at all to imagine Phil Gammage himself being genuine as well. It might be because Phil appears to be singing about home, that is, his hometown of Houston, though it could just as easily be an amalgam of all of the cities where Phil has lived over the years. For instance, the crashing waves imagery in “Waves” doesn’t really fit Houston (although Galveston isn’t that far away), and the grit in so many of these songs seems all New York to me – but of course, I have personal experience in that city.
Phil Gammage clearly has made a lot of friends in what had already been a dozen years in music. Martin Blazy, who was a fellow bandmember in the Corvairs, serves as the drummer on Cry of the City; and the female vocalist, Wendy Wild had been an artist in the East Village scene when Certain General was starting up. Bassist D. Lee is from Band of Outsiders, and David Kaufman had been in the Nails / the Ravers.
Also, Peter Holsapple, who produced the first Certain General effort Holiday of Love, is a kindred soul – he is another Southern musician whose band, the dB’s had greater success in Europe than in the States.
* * *
As to the stance that Phil Gammage takes on Cry of the City, other rockers have taken this tack, but it usually doesn’t sound that bad. Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” – a longtime favorite of mine, and if anything, Metallica’s 1998 cover of “Turn the Page” is even better than the 1973 original – explores themes of boredom and isolation, but not poverty and danger. This is not true of the music video that accompanied the Metallica song, however, which follows a single mother who works as an exotic dancer and a prostitute.
In Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”, ballplayers and good lookers from schoolboy days are mentioned; in Phil Gammage’s “The Glory Years”, he is talking about happier times in an oil town that has gone bust. (To be sure, Springsteen has talked about hard times in many of his other songs).
In Phil Gammage’s songs, the imagery and the settings are strong enough that you are there with the singer, even when he is in the gutter. On the other hand, his songs are not gloomy at all; the music is upbeat for the most part, and there is a sense of triumphing over hardship, of being blessed with what you have.
The band backing Phil Gammage (on lead vocals, guitar and harmonica) on Cry of the City – Martin Blazy (drums, percussion, vocals), Dennis DeMeo (pedal steel guitar), Vincent DeNunzio (percussion, harmonica, vocals), David Kaufman (piano, organ), D. Lee (bass), Wendy Wild (vocals), and Victor Winograd (guitars) – has an easy, loping sound. The basic template I suppose is blues rock, but the steel guitar gives much of the album a country sheen; and it is nice to hear some great harmonica for a change (two harmonica players are listed in the credits, and how rare is that?), along with occasional bongo drums. The piano is particularly welcome in the mix, and all of the wonderful guitar of course.
At the beginning of the liner notes for the Phil Gammage CD Cry of the City is a free-verse poem that reads like verses and a chorus for a song; it must lay out the philosophy behind this album. (As it turns out, this poem forms the lyrics for a song called “Route 65” that is included on both Lowlife Street and Motel Songs). It ends:
My car’s standing still
And the world is whizzing by my window
That’s how I like it
Me and my dog
And this cracklin’ voice
Coming at me from my radio
He’s telling me who I am,
He’s telling me what I think,
Well let me tell you something pal
I ain’t no dead cat on Route 65
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The two songs that introduced me to Phil Gammage were on a sampler album entitled The Electric Radio Sampler Music Test (1993). The album is probably intended to be played inside record stores as an inducement to purchase albums on sale by the label who released it, Marilyn Records. It doesn’t look like much, but there is some great music on this little CD. Besides the two Phil Gammage songs, there are two by Flamin’ Groovies guitarist Chris Wilson. The opening track, “If Wishes Were Horses” is based on the old saying “if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride” – one of those sayings where everyone only seems to say the first half and often forgets how the rest of it goes (I had for this saying). On this song, he is backed by a San Francisco indie rock band, the Sneetches.
The other Chris Wilson song, “The Derelict” is even better – it is the “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” pirate song. The original song was made up by Robert Louis Stevenson for his 1883 adventure tale, Treasure Island. Young Ewing Allison, a newspaperman of that era, wrote a full poem based on the short verse included in the novel. Accompanied by a gritty rock band called (appropriately enough) the Barbary Coasters (also from San Francisco), the lyrics are taken from that poem and I believe include all six stanzas. I also have the full CD by Chris Wilson that includes both songs, Back on the Barbary Coast.
There is also a Kim Fowley song, “Rockin’ in the Balkans”, and the EP rounds out with “I Pledge Allegiance To Disobedience” by the outrageous GG Allin & the Murder Junkies.
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Marilyn Records was a European label that was founded by French musician Patrick Boissel in the mid-1980’s. After a number of French and Spanish releases, Marilyn began handling the sort of musicians and bands that gravitate to Bomp! Records. Suzy Shaw of Bomp! Records met Boissel at a record convention, and Marilyn Records became their distributor in Europe. One result was a great compilation album that I have of previous Bomp! Records releases called From L.A. with Love (1992) that features the Plimsouls, the Flamin’ Groovies, Stiv Bators, Jeff Dahl, the Stooges, and the Zeros.
In the mid-1990’s, Patrick Boissel moved to Los Angeles in order to work for Bomp! Records. Right away he formed his own label called Alive Naturalsound Records (usually shortened to Alive Records). He and Suzy Shaw married, and they now run the Bomp! empire together.
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Phil Gammage’s early years in music are told in a website on the Colorado New Wave/Punk scene called scarletdukes.com. The author on many of these posts on various bands is named Icepick Phil, and there is a good chance that this writer is also Phil Gammage, since Gammage has been in a band called the Scarlet Dukes. The reportage is certainly from someone who was there to see this music happen, that’s for sure.
Phil Gammage is from Houston and went to college at the University of Colorado. He was walking through one of the classroom buildings early in the school year in 1977 and heard some raucous music being played. It seems that a fine arts professor at the college, Jerry Kunkel had been to the CBGB club, the punk-rock mecca in New York City; there he had heard Ramones, Television and some other early punk bands. He came back to the university inspired to start a rock band himself.
The practice session that Phil Gammage heard was Jerry Kunkel on lead vocals, his new wife Marsha Vann Kunkel on bass guitar, and Jerry Budwig on guitar. Phil picked up a guitar and plugged in; by the end of the night, he was asked to join the band. Drummer Peter Roos was originally from New England and had also seen Television; he joined the band shortly afterward.
Originally called Sidewalk Strut, the new band took the name Joey Vain and Scissors. In the spirit of the times, several of the bandmembers took new names: Phil Gammage was Phil Damage, the drummer Peter Roos became Peter Vacant, and their original guitarist Jerry Budwig took the name Sevin Sister (a play on the bug killer Sevin Dust I guess). The Kunkels kept their real names.
Joey Vain and Scissors played early punk rock classics like the Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat” and Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” but soon began writing their own songs with titles like “New Tattoo”, “Why Do I Have to Wear This Collar”, and “That’s What I Like”. They put together a six-song demo and started playing local clubs. An overview of the band by Icepick Phil says this about their live performances:
“Singer Jerry Kunkel cut a dark and menacing stance on stage. Wearing his silk Tokyo jacket and sporting an earring (one of the few men to do so at that time in Boulder), he soon grew adept at working the crowd. With the band playing their churning and sometime droning rock behind him he sang or spoke his lyrics with a satirical tone that was sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing. Needless to say, this was not your typical music coming out of Boulder, Colorado in 1977.”
In early 1978, Joey Vain and Scissors had the good/bad fortune to play as the opening act for Elvis Costello on campus at the Glenn Miller Ballroom. This was the biggest crowd they had ever played for, but the audience evidently was expecting Ramones clones and were hostile during their set. The discouragement from that experience soon led to the band breaking up. Jerry Kunkel would shortly be appointed head of the Fine Arts Department at the University of Colorado, Jerry Budwig moved to San Francisco, and Peter Roos became the drummer for the Nightflames, whose first concert was opening for Joey Vain and Scissors at their final performance in March 1978.
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After Joey Vain and Scissors broke up, Phil Gammage got another band together called the Corvairs. He and another student Miles Syken agreed to form a rock band; Syken had been the guitarist in a high-energy cover band called the Mutilators, with the remaining members of that band becoming a punk band called Defex. Jon Cormany had just returned from playing in New York City with Boulder’s first punk rock band the Ravers (who by then had become the Nails – they are now one of my favorite New Wave bands since I picked up their album, Dangerous Dreams), and he was in the audience for their first show at the Moose Club as the opening act for the Nightflames. He became the band’s bassist by their next concert. By the spring of 1979, Jimmy Frost joined up as their permanent drummer. Icepick Phil describes their sound in the early years as “a hybrid of a 60’s pop sound, surf, and artsiness”.
In June 1979, the Corvairs recorded a demo consisting of five original songs, including a Phil Gammage song, “Hands of Time”. A CD released in 2000 includes this music; called Denver Sessions ’79, it is still available from PreFab International Recordings. Also that summer, the Corvairs played two shows at the Blue Note club, one of them opening for the Cleveland band Pere Ubu.
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After several dates on the West Coast, with two New Yorkers in the line-up the Corvairs moved East, where they stayed together for nearly a decade. Over that period of time, Miles Syken left the band before their main recording period, and Martin Blazy joined as the drummer in 1986. The Corvairs released two EP’s – Temple Fire (1983), which included “Hands of Time”; and Sad Hotel (1985) – and two LP’s – Rio Blanco (1987) and Hitchhiker (1989 – France only). A planned 22-song retrospective called Unsafe at Any Speed – also the title of Ralph Nader’s famed book Unsafe at Any Speed on the ill-fated Chevrolet car – was to have come out in 2006 on PreFab International Recordings but has not yet been released.
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Certain General came together in late 1980 in the East Village art scene. Before they ever played a club date, the duo of painter and poet Parker Dulany (vocals) and Phil Gammage (guitar) gained some renown by performing at private parties, art openings and after-hours parties. The rhythm section for the band was bass guitarist Russell Berke (who had played with free-jazz pioneer Carla Bley) and drummer Marcy Saddy (who was in the Toronto band the B-Girls). At different times, Certain General was the house band at two legendary New York nightclubs, CBGB and Danceteria.
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In 1982, Certain General signed with the New York independent record label Labor Records and issued their first release, an EP called Holiday of Love. The mini-album was produced by Peter Holsapple of the dB’s and mixed by Michael Gira of the experimental rock band Swans – “an interesting pairing if there ever was one”, said Nick West in a review for Bucketfull of Brains. (I don’t know much about Swans, except for their startling 1988 cover of the Joy Division masterpiece, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). According to Wikipedia: “Holiday [of Love] garnered rave reviews, among them a Trouser Press piece that cited the disc as being created ‘for all the teenage devils of the world’.”
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November’s Heat, Certain General’s first full-length album came out in 1984; like much of the Corvairs’ music, it was first released only in France, in 1984 on the L’Invitation au Suicide record label (yes, that means “the invitation to suicide”). In 1995, the French music magazine Rock & Folk named November’s Heat as one of the best albums released between 1985 and 1995. The album was finally released in the U.S. in 1999 and has recently been reissued on CD.
Since Allmusic has nothing else about Certain General, it is not surprising that Richie Unterberger’s review of November's Heat is lukewarm. After granting them three stars (basically equivalent to a “gentleman’s C” in the Allmusic rating system, which goes up to five stars), Unterberger has some backhanded compliments for the album: “It’s very much a record that’s emblematic of the post-punk dark ages descending on the underground in the mid-1980’s. Funky basslines and mannered vocals (by guitarist Parker Dulany) convey a muted anguish, somber and obtuse lyrics, and not a whole lot of melody. There’s a somewhat goth mood to the sound, though it’s not as over-the-top as that of the true goth bands of the time; there’s also something of a British feel to the approach (especially in the vocals), although again it’s not quite as dyed-in-the-wool UK as actual bands from that country. It’s not as creepy or disturbing as it tries to be.”
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More generous praise can be found in the Wikipedia article. Reviewing a 1984 Certain General show at New York’s Pyramid club, the UK-based New Musical Express called the band “New York’s answer to [Echo and] the Bunnymen with a few [Jim] Morrison tendencies thrown in” [but with] “plenty of individuality and a lead singer full of passionate presence — agonized lyrics torn from twitching limbs”. The review concluded by observing that Certain General was “almost psychedelic in their unfettered spirit”. Bomp! Records – whose affiliated label Alive Records reissued November’s Heat in America in 1999 – has called them “NYC’s 80's cult favorite”, while Rock & Folk identified Certain General as “the bridge between Television and Radiohead”.
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Phil Gammage left Certain General in 1985 and evidently returned to the Corvairs for a time; he then began pursuing a solo career. Prior to Cry of the City, he released two albums on a French label, New Rose Records, Night Train and Kneel to the Rising Sun. Last Call Records, yet another French label that issued his fourth solo album Lowlife Street (1999), says of this early trio of albums: “These records showcased Phil’s songwriting, guitar playing and vocals talents and found him exploring in depth blues and acoustic musical styles.” Of the new album, the promo material states: “This record takes up musically where his previous three solo records left off . . . original songs written by Gammage and performed in his unique and dynamic style.” A retrospective album, Motel Songs came out in 2003 featuring songs from Phil Gammage’s first four CD’s.
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The Last Call Records website also mentions two other bands that Phil Gammage has been in recently: “As the nineties have progressed, Phil Gammage has continued to grow as both an artist and musician. On the 1998 Voodoo Martini release Exotic and Mysterious, the Sounds of Voodoo Martini, Phil explored Latin and lounge rhythms as both a composer and vocalist/guitarist. He has also worked with New York City jazz musicians in a new project called the Scarlet Dukes.”
The 2008 album Rogue Escapades by the Scarlet Dukes is another Phil Gammage recording that Allmusic has listed but not otherwise discussed.
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In 1999, the original line-up of Certain General, including Phil Gammage reunited for an album called These Are the Days that was recorded in the CBGB club’s basement studio for Hilly Kristal’s CBGB Records. The French label Fantastica Records officially released the album, and the band mounted a tour of France accompanied by the Fleshtones, a band that came along with the early punk and new wave bands but was basically a garage rock band.
These Are the Days by Certain General was produced by Genya Ravan, the former lead singer of perhaps the very first all-female rock band Goldie and the Gingerbreads. She was also in the band Ten Wheel Drive and has released several solo albums; I have Urban Desire (1978) myself. Among her other production credits are the Dead Boys’ first studio album, Young, Loud and Snotty (1977). That’s two important punk rock albums that I know of which were produced by women, the other being the 1979 album by the Germs, (GI), which was produced by Joan Jett (a veteran of another all-female band the Runaways).
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Since I only have Cry of the City thus far, I have Phil Gammage’s playlist on from his website, www.philgammage.com. Just one great song after another; they are mostly original songs, but one is a cover of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down”, a traditional folk song that Bob Dylan included on his first album that I discussed earlier, Bob Dylan; another standpoint is an instrumental guitar-driven track called “Royal Flush”. (Two of Phil Gammage’s solo albums have been all instrumentals).
The playlist is mostly coming I imagine from Phil Gammage’s 2014 album Adventures in Bluesland that has made several “Best of 2014” lists by Rock NYC (New York), NBTMusic (Germany), Musik fra Kyst til Kyst (Denmark), and Insurgent Country Radio Girl (Holland). Iman Lababedi of Rock NYC Live and Recorded has written of this album: “It is really about Phil’s wonderful singing. . . . Phil doesn’t have a bad song in the bunch on this perfectly executed faux-blues album.”
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Stephen Graziano, the manager and booking agent for Certain General, put together a label called SourMash Records in order to issue music by Phil Gammage and his associated bands in the US. As described by Graziano: “Stressing cooperation, sharing, and interdependence, both Certain General and Band of Outsiders, in partnership, financed, and organized, totally in-house, the first SourMash Records release, Far Away In America.” Band of Outsiders was a band that was reorganized from a late 1970’s power pop band called The Limit. Another band released on SourMash Records was Phil Gammage’s earlier band the Corvairs, which was in New York by this point.
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In 1995, Phil Gammage founded PreFab International Recordings as a way to present his music on the Internet; their site can be found at: www.scarletdukes.com/prefab/index.shtml . Many records by Phil Gammage, the Corvairs, Certain General, the Scarlet Dukes, Voodoo Martini, and others can be found there.
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Phil Gammage never made a lot of noise over here, but he has had a productive career through France and elsewhere in Europe. As compiled by Stephen Graziano, this discography that is provided in the SourMash Records tribute on the same website is given below, as an indication of the torrent of music from Phil Gammage over the years. The list is not exhaustive; I mentioned several albums earlier that are not on this list.
Here follows a reprint of the Trouser Press Record Guide (4th Edition) listing for the SourMash family of bands. Though slightly garbled, it presents a fairly accurate overview of our thing in the 1980’s.
Holiday of Love EP (Labor) 1982
November’s Heat (Fr. L’Invitation au Suicide) 1984
Reissued w/ bonus tracks (Fr. New Rose) 1990; (Alive) 1999; (Fr. Fantastica) 2002
These Are the Days (Fr. New Rose) 1986
Reissued w/ bonus tracks (Fr. Fantastica 1999)
Cabin Fever (Fr. Barclay) 1988
Jacklighter (Fr. Barclay) 1990
Signals from the Source (CBGB) 1999
Closer to the Sun (Fr. Fantastica) 2000
Live at the Public Theater (Fantastica US) 2001
An Introduction to War (SourMash USA) 2002
Invisible New York (Easy Action UK) 2008
CERTAIN GENERAL / BAND OF OUTSIDERS
Far Away in America (SourMash) 1984
Far Away in America / The Live Side EP (Fr. L’Invitation au Suicide) 1985
Up the River EP (nr/Flicknife) 1985
Everything Takes Forever (Fr. L’Invitation au Suicide) 1985
I Wish I Was Your Kid EP (nr/Flicknife) 1985
Longer Than Always EP (Fr. L’Invitation au Suicide) 1985
Act of Faith (Fr. Barclay) 1986
Acts of Faith (SourMash) 1987
Armistice Day (Nocturnal) 1989
Temple Fire EP (SourMash) 1984
Rio Blanco (Cryptovision) 1988
Hitchhiker (Fr. New Rose) 1989
Denver Sessions ’79 (MP3.com) 2001
Unsafe at Any Speed (SourMash USA) 2006 (not yet released)
Night Train (Fr. New Rose) 1990
Kneel to the Rising Sun (Fr. New Rose) 1991
20th Anniv. Reissue (2011)
Cry of the City (Marilyn) 1993
Lowlife Street (Fr. Last Call 1999
Motel Songs (SourMash USA) 2002
Playtime (nr/Conviction) 1990 (Behemoth) 1991
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FLASHBACK: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band for March 2013 – THE GILES BROTHERS
When writing about the Giles Brothers – which was never actually a band, though Peter Giles and Michael Giles were in numerous rock bands, often at the same time – I was mostly exploring the origins of King Crimson. I worked extra hard to get an associated album, contacting Bomp! Records specifically about making sure that the Giles, Giles and Fripp album, The Brondesbury Tapes (1968) was included in the order. (The other man in the group is Robert Fripp, the only continuous member of King Crimson over the decades).
The only song on YouTube from the Giles Brothers CD that I own is “Nobody Knows the Game”; it is a 1967 song recorded by the Brain: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy508iQuqLI . However, there are several songs by Giles, Giles and Fripp and others taken from the McDonald and Giles album – that’s Ian McDonald and Michael Giles, who are both ex-members of King Crimson.
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PICTURE GALLERY: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band for March 2012 – STRATAVARIOUS
I sold this disco band short somewhat in my post. I was depending on the basic Internet info on the band that was repeated in a myriad places. But it wasn’t until a year or two later that I was able to locate a copy of the back cover of the Stratavarious album, where most of the best information and credits can usually be found. There I determined that the person so beautifully playing the harp on many of the songs is Erica Goodman, a renowned concert harpist. There is also nothing on the back cover about the lead vocalist going by the name of “Lady”, although she is listed this way on at least one of the 12” singles.
Additional credits given on the album include Guido Basso who is featured on the song “Nightfall” that opens Side 2; Tabby Johnson is the female vocalist on “Touching”, along with album mastermind John L. Usry, Jr. Both Basso and Johnson are Canadian jazz musicians that have Wikipedia articles. There are other songs with female vocals where the singer is not given, however.
This is the front cover of the Stratavarious album:
And the long-awaited back cover:
This is the only photo that I was able to find of John L. Usry, Jr., and I am not even positive about this one; it comes from a tribute video that I found online:
Here is a photo of harpist Erica Goodman:
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STORY OF THE MONTH: Dion DiMucci (from September 2012)
Dion DiMucci was one of the leading rock and rollers of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and his work still sounds great to me to this day. He was the front man for Dion and the Belmonts and had several hits beginning with “I Wonder Why” in 1958. On the strength of their early success, they were brought along on the Winter Dance Tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. At one stop, Holly chartered a plane to get to the next date on the tour; but Dion turned down the offered ride, saying that he couldn’t afford the $36 cost. On February 3, 1959, the plane crashed in a cornfield in Iowa, killing Holly, Valens, the Big Bopper, and the pilot. (Waylon Jennings, who was in Buddy Holly’s new band after he left the Crickets, also decided against getting on the plane).
Further hits followed for Dion and the Belmonts, including “A Teenager in Love” – considered by many to be one of the greatest rock and roll songs ever – and the Rodgers and Hart show tune “Where or When”. Dion became a solo artist by 1960 and had another string of wonderful hit songs, “The Wanderer”, “Runaround Sue”, “Donna the Prima Donna”, and “Ruby Baby” among them. In the wake of the horrific political assassinations of the 1960’s, Dion later had another hit song in the summer of 1968 with the simple but highly effective song, “Abraham, Martin and John”.
After a period of Christian contemporary recordings, Dion was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and released a great comeback album called Yo Frankie in 1989. The sticker on the cover proclaims: “The man who invented the rock & roll attitude . . . has now perfected it”. Produced by Dave Edmunds, the album features numerous guest appearances: Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth, and Bryan Adams. Reed’s speech at the induction ceremony is also included on the sleeve.
Mar 2015 – PHIL GAMMAGE; Songwriting II (Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan)
