Handsome Boy Maudlin School

One of my favorite late 50's/early 60's rock 'n' roll trends was the proliferation of teenage car wreck songs.  They were weepy little mini-soap operas, usually told in flashback, and somebody usually died.  They had song titles like "Teen Angel" and "Last Kiss" and "Tell Laura I Love Her," some featured sound effects ("Leader of the Pack," "Dead Man's Curve") and, looking back at the charts, were immensely popular at the time.

Today I came across an Everly Brothers song I had never heard before that takes the genre a step further.  I proudly bring to you... the AIRPLANE CRASH song.

(Cannot stop staring at those pompadours.  Plus, matching shirts!)

"Ebony Eyes," written by John D. Loudermilk and performed by the Everly Brothers, was released as a single in January of 1961 and peaked at #8 on the US charts.  Incredibly, the song went to #1 in the UK despite the BBC initially banning it due to its somewhat disturbing content.

The B-side was "Walk Right Back," which would chart at #7 in the States and gave the Brothers another #1 in the UK.  At some point the record companies switched the songs so that "Walk Right Back" became the A-side single and "Ebony Eyes" the B-side.

Another commonality I just noticed, "Ebony Eyes," "Leader of the Pack," and "Dead Man's Curve" all feature a few seconds of spoken word.  I suppose that, given the narrative nature of these songs, this wasn't an unusual thing to do.  Speaking to the listener is also a good dramatic ploy (as if these songs need to be any more dramatic).

Anyway, I love finding lost treasures like these.  If anybody knows of any other old pop-music melodramas let me know.  We will put on our high school letter jackets and mourn the mangled corpses of our lost fictitious sweethearts.  It'll be fun!

[File under: They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To]

Sorry, Lars

I feel like I need to clarify that Metallica barb I made the other day.  I mean, I guess I don't NEED to clarify it, but I sort of WANT to.  Otherwise Lars, via Google Alerts, will hunt me down and litigate me.

My relationship with Metallica is complicated.  I'm sure it's the same way with a lot of people.  On one hand you have these classic Metallica songs, songs you crank up while driving, these primeval songs that force you, whether you like it or not, to make a metal face and bang your head.  That Metallica is dang near the best band ever.  And then on the other hand you have the past decade, these years of unaware self-parody, years of painful music, years of "IS THIS SERIOUSLY A SONG?".  Among their recent albums you may find a diamond in the rough, but you can't pop in St. Anger and expect the cover-to-cover rock'n'roll bliss of Master of Puppets.

So, yeah, Metallica has let me down recently, and sometimes that causes me to caustically lash out.  But then I'll hear "Wherever I May Roam" on my way to work and forget about the disappointment.

 

Remember the good times, folks.  And remember that while recording an album with Lou Reed may not have been a good idea, the band still has a substantially large library full of thrashy metallic goodness.

New Old Songs: Denison Witmer, Chris Staples

Yesterday I started a post about (of all bands) Metallica.  But, like Metallica, it became self-indulgent and out of control and pleasureless.  Unlike Metallica, though, I was able to delete everything I wrote, leaving no evidence for our distant-future alien overlords to puzzle over when they get around to analyzing our historical records and Google caches.

So instead I'll serve up these nummy nuggets:

Denison Witmer's 2005 album Are You A Dreamer? is now available as a full free download at NoiseTrade.  I've gushed about Witmer before, either here or on other blogs or aloud to myself in an empty room.  He is easy to miss, unassuming in every way.  But his music will cradle you gently while simultaneously conjuring up bittersweet imagery from vague memories.  Denison Witmer is the teenage scrapbook you forgot all about.

As far as this download is concerned, Are You A Dreamer? is vintage Witmer.  Mellow, acoustic, wistful, singersongwriter-rific.  Four bonus tracks are thrown in there as well.  Sufjan Stevens, if you're interested, does some vocal harmonizing and plays some accompanying banjos and recorders and wurlitzers and whatnot.

Recommended for people who like music.  Not recommended for people who don't.

Elsewhere in free downloads of old music, Chris Staples has made available two forgotten tracks he recorded a twelve years ago, product of a brief side-project called Donkey And Deer.  Actually, HE may have forgotten about them, but I've had those two tracks on one hard drive or another for those dozen years.  I downloaded them from MP3.com back when MP3.com was awesome, and those two files have somehow survived cut-and-pastes and computer crashes and all those things that have systematically erased pre-2001 Internet.

Get those tracks at Chris Staples' bandcamp page.

Old friends of mine will recognize at least one of those two tracks because way back when I was a mixtape-burning fiend I would usually find a way to include either song.  If you ask me for a CD full of whateversongs I would still probably stick a Donkey And Deer song on there.

Listen to "God Send A Bomb" if you'd like to be depressed out of your mind.  I like this one best.

Listen to "You Should Be Living" for something a little more motivating.