HIDDEN GEM
Stealers Wheel
Stealers Wheel
1972 | A&M

Once considered the British equivalent to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Stealers Wheel are, perhaps unfortunately, now known almost solely for their 1972 classic, “Stuck In The Middle.” The reboot of “cool” that song gained after its inclusion in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs didn’t extend to the band itself, the Scottish duo of Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan. But “Stuck in the Middle” belies the easy cool that overflows from their eponymous debut.

Stealers Wheel were formed in Paisley, Renfrewshire in 1972 by a street performer (Rafferty) and a session musician (Egan). Maybe it’s these former professions (both jobs require a broad spectrum of musical abilities) that’s at work in making Stealers Wheel such a charmingly eclectic album. Opener “Late Again” sounds like Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” after a bag of mushrooms, full of blissed-out major chords. “I wonder why I stay when everybody’s gone away/ There’s always something there that keeps me hanging on,” is a hell of a lot more positive an outlook than the bleak England portrayed in Floyd’s mid-70s output, though.
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HOLY MUSICIAN, BATMAN…

The first time I heard Joan Armatrading, it was last year while watching an old episode of Saturday Night Live on DVD. She performed a song called “Love and Affection” that I quite liked, so I decided to find out more. I got a two-CD anthology from the library called, appropriately, Love and Affection, that covers 1975-1983, which seems to be widely considered Armatrading’s prime period.  From there, I’ve gone on to listen to about half of her recorded output.

Armatrading is hard to pin down exactly. The constant that ties her work together is the subject of love – about ninety percent of her songs are about the good and bad of male-female relationships – and the emotions she is able to wring from that topic.  But rather than seeming like a one-note performer, Armatrading creates music that is undeniably eclectic. On her earliest recordings and also in her recent work, the music sounds very folky and jazzy, sometimes bluesy. Other times it’s unashamedly pop-rock. Usually it bears a Caribbean influence, and sometimes it’s straight-up reggae.
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HOLY MUSICIAN, BATMAN…

If you know anything about Elvis Costello and his relationship with his former backing band from the 70s and 80s, The Attractions, then you know that he hate hate hates Bruce Thomas, The Attractions’s bass player. In fact, the only difference between The Attractions and Costello’s “new” backing band (current tour excepted), The Imposters, is that Davey Faragher from Cracker now plays bass.

Some music writers have gone so far as to call Bruce Thomas Costello’s “nemesis.” It surely doesn’t help that Thomas wrote a wafer-thinly-veiled roman à clef about life on the road, in which he reportedly painted Costello with quite unflattering colors (though I haven’t read the book yet, so I can’t say for sure). This bad blood has led Costello to boldly state that The Imposters have a superior rhythm section to The Attractions, and he’s even gone so far as to say that the old records had interesting bass playing but never had a groove.

This rivalry begs the question: what’s so bad about Bruce Thomas? Well, in truth, absolutely nothing. In fact, I’ve often used him in arguments as an example of a bass player who does a hell of a lot more than fart out the root notes of every chord. His playing is excited and funky, like he forgot he’s supposed to be playing new-wave rock and instead thought maybe he was subbing in for James Jamerson on a Motown revival tour. He crafts catchy melodies, accentuated by rubbery slides down the neck of the bass, creating undeniably infectious grooves.
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NOT ROCK
Herbie Hancock
Head Hunters
1973 | Columbia Records

Many great players have successfully crossed genres, widening the appeal of jazz to a larger and less assuming audience. And funk and R&B were fused with bebop and hard bop long before many assume. This week, I want to pay homage to the album, and the artist, I believe to be the most influential in terms of the electro-funk-jazz movement – Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters.

Head Hunters was released in 1973 on Columbia Records. Though this was not the first time Hancock experimented outside of the bop box, it was the first time the music world, and more specifically pop, recognized jazz in any major way. Hancock incorporated synthesizers neatly into jazz, never sacrificing melody or harmony.
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NOT ROCK
Carly Simon
“You’re So Vain”
No Secrets
1972 | Electra

In honor of Mother’s Day, and as a gift for my mom (since I’m poor), I wanted to feature the work of someone she loves. I wanted to find a record that, when I heard it, instantly brought Mom to mind. But, of course, it also had to be something decidedly “un-rock” – that is, something without a driving back beat, a distorted electric guitar, or anything resembling grit. So I decided to cover a song that is as limp-dick as you can get, and, yet, is a song that I totally love despite itself (and despite it reminding me of my mom’s less than progressive tastes in music).

Say hello to me covering Carly Simon. I never thought this day would come.

“You’re So Vain” is clearly the most well-known song by the former Mrs. James Taylor (more mom-related trivia: my mom was at their show at Carnegie Hall the night they got married), as well as one of the 70s-pop radio staples that you can still hear 10 times a day if you select your radio stations carefully enough. Its ubiquity, and its mind-numbingly catchy chorus, make it a song that has not found its indie-rock “so lame its cool” half-ironic street cred. Maybe that’s because its lyrics and melody really are top notch, with some interesting and vivid imagery. Plus, the question has been raging, with some honest interest in finding the answer, for years: who is the song about?
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ART OF SONG
Marianne Faithfull
“Why’d Ya Do It”
Broken English
1979 | Island Records

A recent op-ed piece in The New York Times asked whether it is possible to part from a myth once it has taken hold. Discussing the potential discovery of the final resting place of Cleopatra VII, one of the original authorities, though not by her own authority, on the art of female seduction – and perhaps of Marc Antony, Cleopatra’s second political lover – Stacy Schiff writes: “What good can be said of a woman who sleeps with two of the most powerful men of her age, however?…Cleopatra has gone down in history as a wanton seductress. She is the original bad girl…And all because she turns up at one of the most dangerous intersections in history, that of women and power. She presides eternally over the chasm between promiscuity and virility…”

Whether or not Cleopatra actually lived up to her reputation “as a wanton seductress” in reality (she didn’t), is of little consequence as long as her myth of licentiousness persists. The uncovering of her tomb and its findings may alter the facts – but our image of her as a petite glamour queen unwrapped from a Persian rug may prove too iconic to roll up again.

Another powerful, potent woman with a legendary rug and a few leading men in her past, whose life would have been told by others, but for her excellent co-written autobiography Faithfull and a second volume, Memories, Dreams and Reflections: Marianne Faithfull. She began as a supporting chanteuse in a male-dominated music scene of the ’60s, but has long since come into her own as a first-rate performer, collaborator, interpreter, and actor. With her well-documented, drawn-out heroin addiction, she also almost fit, like Cleopatra, into one of the few gendered “formulas” Schiff sees for female legend-making: “delusion…disability…” or  “death…”
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HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“Hooked on a Feeling”
Blue Swede
1973 | EMI

“OOKA-SHAKA-OOKA-OOKA-OOKA-SHAKA!” My God. Webster’s defines “pop music” as any music that “features a noticeable rhythmic element, melodies and hooks, a mainstream style and a conventional structure.” And apparently “pop music” also occasionally contains elements that are “out of left field.”

Such is the case with Blue Swede’s biggest hit, “Hooked on a Feeling.” Having been peripherally aware of the “dancing baby” phenomenon of 1996-97, I imagine that (and Reservoir Dogs) was my first exposure to the 1974 #1 hit single. Strange that the song itself has a much more interesting history than the group that originally recorded it.

“Hooked on a Feeling” was originally written by Mark James and released to immediate chart success (Billboard #5) by BJ Thomas, in 1968. It was covered in 1971 by Jonathan King, who added the “ooka-shaka” chants, and Blue Swede picked up the ball and ran with it in 1973. Blue Swede, a band transparently manufactured to back up Swedish singer Bjorn Skifs, kept Jonathan King’s “ooka-shaka” contribution and (I’m speculating) gave it a little European flair. In truth, Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” was produced by Jonathan King himself. So maybe King is the one to blame for what sounds like a gang of angry, lovelorn cavemen and, later, the first of a million “internet phenomena.”
More on Blue Swede | “Hooked on a Feeling”

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“Hooked on a Feeling”
Blue Swede
1973 | EMI

“OOKA-SHAKA-OOKA-OOKA-OOKA-SHAKA!” My God. Webster’s defines “pop music” as any music that “features a noticeable rhythmic element, melodies and hooks, a mainstream style and a conventional structure.” And apparently “pop music” also occasionally contains elements that are “out of left field.”

Such is the case with Blue Swede’s biggest hit, “Hooked on a Feeling.” Having been peripherally aware of the “dancing baby” phenomenon of 1996-97, I imagine that (and Reservoir Dogs) was my first exposure to the 1974 #1 hit single. Strange that the song itself has a much more interesting history than the group that originally recorded it.

“Hooked on a Feeling” was originally written by Mark James and released to immediate chart success (Billboard #5) by BJ Thomas, in 1968. It was covered in 1971 by Jonathan King, who added the “ooka-shaka” chants, and Blue Swede picked up the ball and ran with it in 1973. Blue Swede, a band transparently manufactured to back up Swedish singer Bjorn Skifs, kept Jonathan King’s “ooka-shaka” contribution and (I’m speculating) gave it a little European flair. In truth, Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” was produced by Jonathan King himself. So maybe King is the one to blame for what sounds like a gang of angry, lovelorn cavemen and, later, the first of a million “internet phenomena.”
More on Blue Swede | “Hooked on a Feeling”