All of This and Nothing: Songs That No One Will Hear

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This is possibly the most Obscure of my obscure songs: a single from one of those bands that is basically one person: the Swedish indypop "band" we are soldiers we have guns. (Stylized in all-lower case, for maximum indy cred, I guess.)

we are soldiers we have guns ran for the back half of the Aughts, roughly, with a few EPs and at least one full-length (get up, get out, - still on Bandcamp for anyone interested to look for more). The one person in this case was Malin Dahlberg; no idea what she's doing these days but I hope it's creative and fulfilling and wonderful.

Songs That No One Will Hear is the first we are soldiers we have guns song I ever heard; I think it was featured on Fingertips (which has been the way I discovered a lot of bands over the years - might be good for you, too. If not, my general advice is to find some outlet that is similar enough to your tastes that you always find what they feature interesting).

The lyrics don't exist anywhere online, and we are soldiers (I'll stay lower-case, but I have to abbreviate it somehow) has a lo-fi sound - so untangling exactly what Dahlberg is singing might not be worth the effort.

But, for a lovely mostly-quiet song from an obscure band from an obscure part of the world, Songs That No One Will Hear is almost a platonically perfect title, and the song itself lives up to it. Just listen.

All of This and Nothing: I Can See Clearly Now

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week swings back to Famous, with Johnny Nash's 1972 song I Can See Clearly Now.

(Speaking of seeing clearly, I wonder if it's at all clear what my organizational structure was for this year? I don't think I ever actually said it. Both Obscure and Famous songs are running in reverse chronological order, though the two streams are entirely uncoupled, to keep them alternating. And they would have to be, since, in a weird bit of symmetry I didn't plan, only five of the Obscure ones are from before this century and only five of the Famous ones are from the current century. There's a reason for this structure, a deeply silly one which I'll explain when we hit the relevant song.)

As with all of the Famous songs, I'm assuming you know it by this point. Even if you weren't around in 1975, it's been in plenty of media; the copy I have is from the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack, where it runs under the opening credits in that traditional movie undercut-the-mood-with-a-poppy-song way.

The song itself is happy - purely so. There's few enough of those.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

There's no subtext, no hidden darkness. I was going to spin a whole theory here about how it reflected the post-Watergate mood when I realized I had the date as 1975 in error - it's actually from 1972. So I don't even have that. Just a happy song about things finally going right, after a long time when they weren't. That's plenty.

All of This and Nothing: Down in the Valley

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I think this is another case where the song I really like is from a side band or otherwise quirky project. Which is why I count it on the Obscure side.

But, this week, the song is Down in the Valley by a band called The Broken West.

(Some light Googling later: looks like this was the frontman's first band - he's a guy named Ross Flournoy - and the one that brought him and the rest of the group some attention, but they broke up fairly quickly. Flournoy formed another band, which also doesn't seem to have gone very far, and no one's bothered to update Wikipedia for more than a decade. As always, I hope he's out there making music and living off it, and no one around him has had the free time to update some random website.)

And I have no idea what this song is really about.

Sun down, blood horizon, now it feels alright
No one feels the darkness down in the valley tonight

It's all evocative, allusive - it sounds like a Western of some kind (or I may be latching on too hard to the band's name), but there's none of the usual Western trappings: guns, cowpokes, cattle, shootouts, Indians.

But, as I've said more than once in doing these song-based posts, you don't need to understand a song to like a song. A song is about listening, and feeling. This one has a great feeling, and sounds big and impressive: take it on that level.

All of This and Nothing: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I was a boy in the 1970s; of course I liked AC/DC.

But I was more of a punk/new wave kid as a teen - more or less, and a few years late, since I lived way the hell out in dull suburbia - so it's specifically the Bon Scott era of AC/DC I connected to. A short window of time in the late '70s, sure, but loud and raucous and quintessentially Australian in a way that was very appealing to an American not sure of any of that stuff.

I only bothered to buy one AC/DC record in the CD era. (The enthusiasms of our youth might not always embarrass us, but it's the way to bet.) This is the one. I still like some of the other songs - Big Balls is a hoot, even in my fifties - but the title song is the one AC/DC song I'd save from the wreckage of civilization if given the choice.

It's always Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.

No fancy interpretations here: this is a song from the point of view of a "fixer" whose main business seems to be killing people. There's also, in best AC/DC fashion, a lot of double entendres that have confused several generations of listeners into thinking the service provided must be fucking, not killing.  [1] If you want to take it all that way, I don't think the band would care. Just bang your head along to the beat, and it'll all be fine.

It is obvious; it is cartoony; it is a lot of fun, especially if you first heard it at an impressionable age. I did.

[1] To be pedantic about it: verse two is clearly fucking; verse three is clearly killing; verse one is vaguer but pretty solidly killing. And the outro is all murder methods. I think the evidence is clear.

All of This and Nothing: What's a Devil to Do?

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I blogged about this band once before - but I should note that I'd gotten a mislabeled copy of this song and thought of it under the wrong title for a few months. And all of this is Obscure enough that my confusion made it even worse.

The band is Harley Poe, which I think was a specific project/style for a while in the Aughts, not a long-running band. And my favorite song of theirs - among a lot of competition - is What's a Devil to Do?

I don't think Harley Poe was a joke band, but they were a focused one: they did songs on horror-movie topics (vampires, zombies, cannibals) in a low-fi acoustic style that sounded to me very much like early-period Violent Femmes. (But I didn't see anything from Harley Poe to explain the sound; they might have had a different touchpoint or explanation.)

This song is from the point of view of an evil man - given the grand guignol of so many of their other songs, I tend to assume he's the Antichrist, but the song itself never quite says that outright.

I was created down below
And if it's evil that you're planting
Then it's evil that will grow

Like most of the Harley Poe songs I've heard, it's over the top - but lovingly so, in a way that completely commits to the bit, in the same way that a blues song can be about the singer taming a tornado. And that low-fi sound rocks hard, especially here.

Now Jesus died for them, it's true
But what's a devil to do?

All of This and Nothing: Barracuda

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

As usual with the Famous songs this year, I'm assuming you recognize this one - probably just from the title. You might not have been around in 1977 to hear it when it was new, but it's been in movies and TV shows and probably video games and web animations and other things I don't even know the right names for. It's got one of the great guitar lines in all of rock.

It's Barracuda by Heart, from their third record Little Queen.

According to legend, it's about A Specific Guy, some music-industry jerk who made ridiculous, horrible comments backstage at some concert to singer Ann Wilson, who almost immediately went back to her room and wrote the song. It has that kind of immediate energy, and it's a great story, so why not?

If the real thing don't do the trick
You better make up something quick

The lyrics are vague and allusive - there's a dolphin, and also the barracuda of the title, which is somehow "lying so low in the weeds" like a snake. There's almost a whole aquatic metaphor going on, and an energetic fan could probably assemble a big, complex explanation on a wallchart, with strings and thumbtacks and circled photos.

But you don't need that. Just the Wilson sisters, voice and guitar, and enough anger to fuel a fine four-minute song.

Oooh, Barracuda!

All of This and Nothing: Alarm Clock

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Back to Obscure this week, which as usual means a song I found semi-randomly by a band that I can't tell you all that much about.

This time out, it's Alarm Clock, by the British band The Rumble Strips, from their 2007 debut record Girls and Weather. It's poppy without quite being power-pop, driven by some nice horn work and an appealingly distinctive vocal performance by the lead singer.

And it's a fun, zippy song that's about exactly what it says: the singer's alarm clock, which was annoying and now no longer works:

Well I don't like doing things
That other folks tell me to do
So I hit it with a hammer
And now he's quite subdued

That's it: a fast-paced, fun, horn-driven pop song about a guy who doesn't want to get up in the morning. If there's a Platonic ideal of the relatable song, this is right up there.

Well my alarm clock he ain't working
But I don't really mind
'Cause he ain't no friend of mine
He kept waking me up all the time

All of This and Nothing: One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I like self-indulgent media more than most people, I think - long rambly shaggy-dog stories in whatever format, from MST3K's sublime "A Joke by Ingmar Bergman" to Tristram Shandy.

This week's song is the musical equivalent of that: a fifty-year old version of a much older blues song, by what was then called George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, from their 1977 debut record. (Some of you might prefer the John Lee Hooker version; that's valid but I don't agree.)

This week, we've got "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer." No "and" in the title - it's late, and you gotta get some drinking done, so there's no time for wasted words.

The "song" is actually a medley; the story-song portion that opens it is a different Hooker song, "House Rent Boogie" - but who cares about that at this point? It all goes together, and it all tells one story. You want to nitpick?

I said I know,
everybody funny, now you funny too

Thorogood was in peak form here, in his early incarnation as a bar-band slide-guitar hero - before the blandness of the '80s took over his schtick. The guitar work is blazing, and his singing is just perfect for the song: dismissive, offhand, barely engaged until the subject of alcohol comes up.

No I ain't seen my baby since
Nigh on a week
Gotta get drunk man
Till I can't even speak

Blues songs are like noir in that they're about the main character doing things the wrong way, or for the wrong reason, or just ruining things - getting blotto drunk in some dive bar because his girl is off somewhere else doing something else. And, if you don't have your girl, what else is there in life? That's the blues.

One drink ain't enough
Jack you better make it three
I wanna get drunk
I'm gonna make it real clear
I want one bourbon,
one scotch and one beer

All of This and Nothing: Quit While You're Ahead

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week it's another Obscure choice: a 2007 single from a band with at least this one good record, about whom I don't know much else.

Quit While You're Ahead is from Southeast Engine, who were big enough to have a Wikipedia page listing their seven records. But, on that page, the most recent record listed is from 2012, and the first outside link is to MySpace, so I suspect they're solidly defunct at this point.

But a song, once recorded, lives on. And this is a good one.

The singer is talking to someone: someone who's trying to convince him of something, and has almost succeeded.

So tell me what I believe
tell what it is I need
tell me you'll provide it for me yes
and I will do anything for you
I'll do anything you tell me to
I'll mistake the lies you sell me for the truth

But that other person hasn't quite closed the deal yet.

Say it, say it like it is
you got thirty seconds kid
you got all the time you need

It's all in a straightforward rock presentation, big and impressive and driving, with strong drumming and guitar work to support that compelling voice. What more do I need to say?

All of This and Nothing: Cathedral

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Some songs are really important to you at specific moments in your life. This one was a big deal in my head when I was about thirteen - and you probably are wincing, because we've all been thirteen.

It's not pretty.

I still think the song is interesting and thoughtful, but there's definitely an aspect of sounds-profound-to-thirteen-year-olds about it.

This week, my song is Cathedral by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

(At the time, I didn't know it was explicitly about an acid trip. What can I say? I was thirteen. Profundity flows freely at that age.)

The song is about a guy - lead singer (on this particular song) Graham Nash, to be precise - visiting Winchester Cathedral early one morning and having unexpectedly strong reactions to all of it:

And now I'm standing on the grave of a soldier that died in 1799.
And the day he died, it was a birthday,
And I noticed it was mine.

Listening forty years later, it's all a bit sophomoric, in that late-night bull-session way, but songs are inherently simplified anyway; I don't know if it's any more sophomoric than any other song trying to tackle big ideas. And Nash absolutely sells it: we feel that this is a real moment he had, that this is what he thought and felt and worried about.

Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here.
Too many people have lied in the name of Christ
For anyone to heed the call.
So many people have died in the name of Christ
That I can't believe it all.

This is a song with a story and a point of view, from that era when CSN made brilliant, beautiful music what seemed like effortlessly, with flowing harmonies making it all sound larger than life and important. This is the kind of song that has an outsized impact - that style, that material, and the person I was then. I don't know if it still hits like that, even for people who are thirteen now. I'd like to hope so; I'd like to think that a song can still do that.

All of This and Nothing: Cage in a Cave

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I have a weakness for concept records. I think I developed that growing up in the 1970s - it was hard to avoid concept albums then, and we all came down with at least a mild case.

This week's song comes from a concept record - Rasputina's 2007 Oh Perilous World! I couldn't give you a decent coherent description of the overall story - the Wikipedia article includes a lot of things I don't really remember or didn't focus on. But the record is at least partially about Fletcher Christian, the famous mutineer from the Bounty.

And the song that's all about him is Cage in a Cave.

Fletcher Christian, he found him a cave
and he'd go there to be alone

Rasputina is a band that uses odd instrumentation - the lead is usually an electric cello - and singer Melora Creager sings in what I think is a slightly affected style, too: it's all distanced, strange, specific, different. She also writes the song, and is not afraid of wordplay and long words that take over their lines.

To fits of melancholy
he was increasingly prone

So this is a song I like largely for vibes reasons. It's about a dude hiding out, because the things he tried to do haven't worked out the way he hoped. So he's off in a cave, where he can be alone.

But, most of all, it sounds cool: it's a magnificent, enjoyable "everybody go away and leave me alone" song.

All of This and Nothing: Rock Lobster

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

For many of these Famous songs, I'm not introducing them so much as saying "hey, remember this one? Yeah, I like it, too!"

And never more than this week, with one of the iconic songs of the late 20th century, the song that I will insist is the best thing the B-52s ever did: Rock Lobster.

It is intensely itself, and is the epitome of a song that has a vibe and a sound but very little in the way of a coherent story. This is not a song that will tell you what it's about.

Well, it's a beach party, obviously. As big and overwhelming a party as you can imagine. But what any of the details mean - well, you can work that out yourself. The B-52s are too busy cooking.

We were at the beach
Everybody had matching towels
Somebody went under a dock
And there they saw a rock
It wasn't a rock
It was a rock lobster

You either get it or you don't. But all you need to do is listen. Well, maybe dance, if you feel so inclined. I think the B-52s would want that.

All of This and Nothing: Get It On

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week's song is not from the 1960s. It might sound that way, but it's actually a 2008 song by an Australian band, The Chevelles.

This is Get It On.

It was the lead single from a record designed to launch them in the US, Barbarella Girl God - they leaned into the '60s thing, I think, at least somewhat - and that record has a bunch of other good songs, too. She's Not Around, C'mon Everybody, and Every Moment I particularly like.

I don't think the launch "took" the way everybody hoped, which is why I'm classifying this as one of my Obscure songs this year. But a good song is a good song, and ones you haven't heard before are wonderful, so, if this one is new to you, you're welcome.

It sounds to me like yet another "rock band on the road" song, with verses loosely about specific US West Coast cities - no details, just the "here's what's next" of a band on the road in a blur of shows and highways:

Well, I'm seein' things in the highway lights
Twenty-four cities
I don't see the sights
Too far from home
Forgot my own life

And those kind of songs are fun. For those of us who don't go on tour with a rock band - which is the vast majority of us - they encapsulate the great parts of that life (excitement, cool music, novelty, moving on quickly) and avoid the less-pleasant bits (living in a van with 2-5 people you used to like, long hours on the road, eating whatever's available on those highways, etc.).

This is a good one; it gives the feel of that road rolling on, with something new around every corner. The feeling that you might as well Get It On.

All of This and Nothing: Logical Song

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Some weeks the title of the post gives away the song. This is probably one of the most obvious: there's only one Logical Song.

It's from Supertramp, who were huge in the 1970s but are one of those bands (pretty common in the '60s and '70s, now that I come to think about it: Three Dog Night, Grand Funk Railroad, Bread, Bad Company) who dropped out of visibility almost immediately when they stopped making music.

So I'm calling this one Famous - it was Top 10 in the US & UK, and the biggest hit from a then-major band - but you might have to have been alive in 1979 to agree with me.

It's one of the great classic rock "what's the point of all of it?" songs, coming at the end of the supposedly-happy '70s and asking the musical question

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

I love the way it's full of half-rhymes and almost-rhymes, piles of words that sound like "logical" in one way or another, just words on words on words about what life as an adult is like - and that wistful question of whether it has to be that way.

But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh, responsible, practical

The instrumentation is also more than a little odd for rock - two keyboards drive most of the song, it starts with that iconic maraca-shake sound, and there's a prominent saxophone solo in the middle. Well, it was the late '70s, at the end of a long run of prog-rock doing quirkier and quirkier things with the form.

And some thing never do change:

watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical
A liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal

All of This and Nothing: You Cross My Path

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

We swing back to Obscure this week with a song from The Charlatans from 2008. (This is the modern UK-based Charlatans, sometimes referred to as Charlatans UK; there was a US band with the same name in the '60s. This UK band of Charlatans, I'm happy to see, is still out there.)

They'd been putting out records for almost twenty years, and had some up-and-down fame - I think more in the UK than the US, but bands are quirky and have odd careers, so maybe they were massive hits in Poland or Thailand somewhere along the way, too.

You Cross My Path was the title song of that record, and it's just a great rocking song, in the old "you don't want to mess with me" genre.

It's not entirely clear who the singer is aiming the song at, or why, but he makes his intentions clear:

You cross my path I'll take you down

Or, to be even more pointed that than refrain, slightly later in the song he tells us

I will rise again and I'll take you down like that
You will die up there alone, I'll take you down like that

Given that this was a band well into their career, there's a non-zero chance that it's "about" a DJ or rival band - I'm deliberately not doing any research because I don't want to find out if that's the case. I like this song in part because I can fill in the blanks - I suggest you listen to it with the same openness.

But do listen: it's a barn-burner, full of energy and emotion and life. And do not piss off that singer, if you know what's good for you.

All of This and Nothing: I Can't Stand Still

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Any indy cred I might have ever had is out the window: I'm writing about a Don Henley song.

I Can't Stand Still was the opener and the title track for his debut solo record, way back in 1982. The Eagles had broken up; he'd had a random song or two in the year or so in between, including a single with then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks; Stand Still was his big launch as himself and not one guy in a band. This song was never a single. But, if you bought the record, as a lot of us did in those days, this is what you heard first: Henley's disciplined drumming and a wailing keyboard line to launch right into yet another story of bad love.

You say you haven't got another lover
You say you only want to make the scene
Then you try to keep it under cover
What does that mean?

It's all in the voice of Henley's character; we don't know what "she" would say about any of this. But the singer is jealous, and suspicious, and worried. When I listened to this song in 1982, I was thirteen - I believed him entirely.

Now...well, I'm not so sure. There's more than a little control in the way he talks about the relationship.

I can take it if you need some freedom
Understand it if you miss your friends
Don't you ever try to think of me some
You never tell me where you've been

The refrain is all about that other guy - the one the singer assumes or knows or suspects is seeing "his" girl when she goes off - maybe assumes he's always there whenever she's anywhere else.

I love that energy in Henley's singing, and especially the keyboard, which is dominant throughout the song, in a clear '80s style that sounds nothing like a real physical piano or organ. And, most of all, that restlessness, fed by that unspecified, sourceless dread of what he's sure is happening when he's not around.

But baby, I can't stand still (while he's holding you)
I can't stand still (while he's touching you)

All of This and Nothing: Jackson Leftfield

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

OK, I've finally hit the point where my "Obscure" songs are so obscure that I can't even find a version of them online to embed here. Which somewhat ruins the point of the post, I guess, but let me do what I can in the circumstances.

Boxer the Horse is [1] a band from the Canadian Maritimes; their debut EP was The Late Show in 2008. The music website Fingertips featured a song from that record; I downloaded it, liked it, and ended up buying the band's full-length French Residency when it came out a couple of years later. (They seem to have had another full-length in the middle, which I missed.)

That first song, the one I heard in 2008, is Jackson Leftfield, which has very little trace on these here Interwebs. YouTube has a live version, but the album version doesn't even seem to be on Spotify anymore. The Fingertips link is long-dead. No lyrics exist anywhere I can find.

It's a loose-limbed, harmonica-fueled, electronic-organ-infused romp - Jackson is a girl the singer is talking to, though I think she's a friend or acquaintance rather than the object of his affections. Whoever is after her, though, she's not having it:

She said get your damn hands off me man
Do you have any idea who I am?

It's an energetic, fun song from a band that seemingly has been forgotten even by the people who knew they existed in the first place. The world is full of songs like that, unfortunately - or fortunately; it means the world is full of great stuff - and this is one I really liked and wanted to remember...if only I could find it to share it.

[1] Probably "was," I don't see any activity post-2014. But let me be optimistic.

All of This and Nothing: Under Pressure

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

It's a two-fer this week - maybe even a three-fer. Two famous artists, with one song that you probably already know.

"How well do you perform under pressure?" they ask.

"Well, I'm OK with the David Bowie part if you can do Freddie Mercury." is what you're required to answer.

Under Pressure was a one-off song, with David Bowie joining Queen - apparently because he lived nearby the studio in Montreux where they were recording - and almost being part of multiple songs on what eventually became the 1982 Queen album Hot Space. 

Almost being the important word there.

This one song came together, credited to the four members of Queen and Bowie equally.

And it's been a cultural touchstone every since, a unique amalgam that fits into the work of both artists while having its own quirky specificity.

(It's also one of the great videos from its early era - odd images, smash-cuts, synchronized to the music, with no sign of any of the people who made the music.)

The lyrics are banal and general - this is a song driven by the voices and the sound rather than what they say. 

Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets

Yeah, pressure is tough, isn't it?

People on streets
Ee da de da de
People on streets
Ee da de da de da de da

This song is a major example of how the best songs can have the silliest-looking lyrics, when you write them out. Songs are gestalts, combinations of sound and emotion, and the words are only one small part of it. This is a wonderful one, and I probably don't have to tell you that.

But I do have to ask: How well do you perform under pressure?

All of This and Nothing: The Hurting Heart

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

We're back to Obscure this week, with The Hurting Heart, my favorite song from singer-songwriter Richard McGraw, off his 2009 record Burying the Dead.

This is another artist I know basically nothing about. Somehow, I got on publicity lists for some small record labels in the early days of this blog - I know; I'm not sure why or how myself - and have gotten a stream of review material that way. Because of that, I think I got Burying the Dead via email: it was coming out, and a publicity person at the label had me on the big list of "media" - or, probably more likely, and sadly for me, "influencers" - so I got it, and listened to it.

I don't know how many other people did. It's a fine record, with a bunch of excellent songs. But there are dozens of fine records every year; I don't myself listen to most of them, and I'm sure you're the same. The world is big and full of wonders, which can be sad if you're someone who just made something wonderful and the world isn't interested.

But maybe I can cast a little bit of light on this raw, bad-love song, a decade and a half later.

This is another "you broke up with me; you're going on with life and I'm not" kind of song, with McGraw's immediate, tormented voice to make it real.

And you're not even a ghost
since you moved back home.

She's doing well; the singer is not - and knows it. He wants to get over this, but he's not there - I hope there's a "yet" implied, but you never know with bad-love songs.

And if I could set aside this hurting heart.
I'd bear your ring at your wedding.
'Cause I don't want to own it
and I don't want to show it.

That refrain is strong and true, and gives the song real power - it's a song that shows rather than tells. McGraw says "hurting heart," but doesn't describe it, or talk about his pain, just what his ex-lover is doing and what he insists he is or will or should be doing.

But he's not doing it yet. That's the point of a song like this, and McGraw has crafted a great one here.

All of This and Nothing: The Dead Heart

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Back to the '80s once more for this week's Famous song.

I don't want to say music is always about passion and energy - there's a place for coolness and craft - but it's a huge part, particularly in all of the sounds that came from rock & roll.

Midnight Oil was a band founded on and driven by a very particular, geographically-specific and politically-grounded kind of energy. All of their strong songs are in the "grab up your banners and march" mode; I think this one is the most successful, but there are several others that are close.

This week, the song is The Dead Heart.

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue

The Oils sang about the plight of the Aboriginals more than once, but this is the most pointed, I think - the purest and clearest version. These days, a song this obviously in the voice of someone else might get called appropriation, but the Oils were one of the few saying anything like this in 1987, and were the loudest and strongest. I hope that stands for something; that there's not a modern equivalent of "premature anti-fascism" for well-meaning lefties.

And the song rocks. The Oils were always driving, powerful, loud and just plain rocking. Sure, it was all in the service of their causes, but they knew the music had to be there first. It always was; never more than with this demanding, in-your-face song.

Forty thousand years can make a difference to the state of things
The dead heart lives here