DB's Song of the Day (day 273): "MONOLITH" (1971) T. Rex

Another month bites the dust. And it’s the birthday of the late Marc Bolan, of T. Rex, formerly Tyrannosaurus Rex. I don’t know much of the early hippy Tolkien-influenced stuff Bolan got up to with his musical partner Steve Peregrin Took, but when they split and Bolan substituted T. for Tyrannosaurus and joined up with producer Tony Visconti, the new band produced one of the stellar albums of that little blip of time known as the early Seventies.

Electric Warrior was not an album I admired at the time. It was the height of glam, which Bolan was a poster boy for over there in the UK. He had some top ten hits there but the only one he had here was “Bang a Gong (Get It On).” And yet he became a critics’ darling and I was a bit annoyed by the hype. Bowie I liked better because he had a lot of darkly apocalyptic ideas and some great power riffs. Bolan was more of a popster for our love.

Eventually—long after his day and his death in 1977—he won my allegiance to EW and its follow-up The Slider (1972). That change of heart came during the early part of this century when I went back to much of the music of my youth and discovered neglected psychedelia and neglected Brits like Bolan. EW boasts great production, lots of nice guitar fills, little touches that recall psychedelia mixed with R&B licks and overlapped voices that might not be out of place in a girl group.

It was hard to choose the song for the day. I played both albums and almost settled on the irresistible hit “Bang a Gong” for its chugging rhythm guitar and Flo and Eddie backup vocals. Or, from The Slider, “Spaceball Ricochet” with its druggy delivery and its “changeless angel.” But I settled on “Monolith,” an early favorite from the album, because its lyrics are interesting and Bolan’s delivery, with his coiled snake voice, seems to be sneaking up on some kind of vision of the dregs left this vault to brag on.

The song feels like a good one to end the month on—the month that ends summer and with it all sorts of faint visions of hope and succor. Don’t get me wrong: October is one of my favorite months, much as April is over there in the first half of the year, but I have the sense that things will be growing more darkling. So let Marc Bolan pronounce his oracular sense of where we are now:

The throne of time / Is a kingly thing / From whence you know / We all do begin / And dressed as you are girl / In your fashions of fate / Baby it’s too late

Yes, “too late” and “of fate” rhyme easily enough (my early complaint with Bolan was that his rhymes were too easy—the lyrics are printed on the back of that great cover image and just seemed so unspectacular to my teen critic’s mind, filling up with Dylan), but his way of alternating the final phrase with the final phrase of the second verse, “Girl, it’s no joke” puts a spin on that “throne of time” bit I find compelling. And a shrug off like “Shallow are the actions / Of the children of men” rebounds on the whole idea. Time is kingly, and it’s where we all commence—like we’re all kings’ kids. Whereas the “children of men” are shallow, their vision “fogged.” And that’s no joke because it’s too late for us to live up to our fate. We’ll end up dull and human if we’re not careful.

There’s an autumnal feel there, no? And my favorite lines let me reference my zodiacal symbol—whose period just passed away before August (“die she must”) did: “And lost like a lion / In the canyons of smoke.” The lion is lost to us now, kids. And, girl, that’s no joke.

See what I mean about “oracular?” Who knows what the hell Bolan is really on about. But that’s the way the poetry of the song works: it sounds so portentous while his Les Paul licks are so teasing.

And why “monolith”? We all remember it from 2001 (and the memory was even easier c. 1970), where it was a symbol of extraterrestrial intelligence. Bolan liked to flirt with our star-born essences, with the wizardry of occult practices. For me, the monolith is that big amp on the cover.

All hail the electric warrior.

DB's Song of the Day (day 272): "IT'LL BE ME" (1958) Jerry Lee Lewis

Today’s birthday boy is Jerry Lee Lewis, 79 years old, and touted as “the last man standing” since all the other members of his Sun studios cohort—Elvis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins—are no longer extant.

Lewis is one of the original bad boys of rock’n’roll, rockabilly, and, eventually Country. He’s a much-imitated original as a performer, with his stand-up piano playing, using his feet at times, playing behind his back and other tricks. The piano becomes an extension of his own body and he seems to have double-handedly created some of the more prominent piano “riffs” in rock—particularly the glissando slide for emphasis and banging the bass keys, barrelhouse style, as an underpinning for his right hand theatrics.

As a singer, Lewis is generally engaging, having fun with a lyric even when he’s doing a straight-faced talking passage as in “The Green Green Grass of Home”—a song I almost chose to post about since I remember it from way back when it was a hit for Tom Jones and was covered by others. Lewis’s version antedates Jones’ and is closer to Country than the schmaltzier version Jones scored with. But, to my mind, if we’re going to do a song for “the Killer” it’s got to be one with some high-stepping piano.

The version of “It’ll Be Me” I favor, I think, is the one I have on a Jerry Lee Lewis compilation—picked up because my friend Rob is an enthusiast and convinced me—and it’s the version that closes Lewis’ debut album Jerry Lee Lewis (1958). However, the original recording of the song backs Lewis’ trademark big hit “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” but that version, which features a quicker tempo and a goosier vocal, doesn’t work for me quite so well.

The first version of the song I heard is on a Richard Thompson compilation, Guitar/Vocal, where it’s given a rousing live extended version. It’s a great mindless rocker, with lyrics simply cataloging all the places “you” might find “me.” Some of the places are pretty imaginative. On that score my favorite is—in save the best for last fashion—the concluding “If you see a new face on your totem pole / If you find a lump in your sugar bowl / It’ll be me, uh huh, I’ll be looking for you.”

Beating the haystacks, searching every tree—and the “deep blue sea”—and on a rocket to Mars and “hanging from a lamppost bright” and “a-peeping from a crawdad hole.” The images are a bit kaleidoscopic, coming at the listener like a hallucinated round of endless stalking. Or maybe just looking for a "you" that does not exist. It also reminds me, litany fashion, of all the ways they'll "stone ya" in Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35."

Jerry Lee has fun with the song and on the album version I generally like the recording better, particularly the drums. There’s some guitar-picking to match Jerry Lee’s tinkling as well, and the whole thing clocks in a little longer, with the vocal more chortling and yodeling. A convincing little rocker back there when it was all just beginning, dating from before I had joined this merry-go-round.

If you hear a voice a-calling out in the night.

DB's Song of the Day (day 271): "JUST LIKE HONEY" (1985) The Jesus and Mary Chain

I must admit I always chuckle at the part in High Fidelity (2000) when Barry (Jack Black) tells a hapless customer in his clutches, who has just said The Jesus and Mary Chain "always seemed . . ." “They always seemed really great is what they always seemed. They picked up where your precious Echo left off and all you can do is complain about no more Echo & the Bunnymen albums!”

Well, there are more Echo & the Bunnymen albums, if anyone cares. I still haven’t heard Meteorite (2014), but might. Meanwhile, there aren’t any more Jesus and Mary Chain albums, after 1998. And, Barry’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, I too felt JMC “always seemed . . .” Like they were trying too hard to be the 80s’ hipsters’ answer to the Velvet Underground. Not that I mind that. In fact I grew to like it, but at arms’ length. Indeed, as I’ve just been reminded by my friend Emmy, the Eighties were the time of that brief “Paisley Underground” phase of things that leaned heavily on the recording and presentation styles of psychedelia c. 1965-67. JMC were the punker version of that because they emulated punk-precursors the Velvet Underground, c. 1967-68, and the Stooges c. 1969, rather than, say, Between the Buttons.

But Barry has a point. Echo was already staking out that territory c. 1980-84. And that’s why JMC, who debuted with their ground-breaking (in hindsight anyway) album Psychocandy in 1985, “picked up where they left off.” And 1987’s Darklands is almost definitely a more necessary album than Echo’s of that year.  JMC cleaned up the harsher edges of their sonic attack and became melodic in a way that Echo and crew already were. But they still had an edge that came from their ability to create Phil Spectoresque soundscapes. It is a heady mix the brothers Reid create.

Today’s song is the opening track on the first album, which I’ve selected because of associations it has, though I’m much more partial to Darklands—especially the first two tracks. The thing about “Just Like Honey” besides the sheer dense aura it presents, like a sheet comprised of mother of pearl being rained upon by various shades of piss, is its hypnotically hollow drumbeat, its twanging buzz-saw guitars, oceans of reverb, and the way backup singer Karen Parker’s rendering of “just like honey” as a breath more than a whisper locks so effectively with Jim Reid’s monotone slur, creating a little filip, “just like hon—just like honey—EY.” Kills me. “I'll be a plastic toy” . . . or silicon, or rubber, or what-have-you.

The song’s associations come from its very effective use—indeed the most effective moment in the entire film—in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003). The impetus that sends Bob Harris (Bill Murray) to the arms of Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), younger (married) romantic muse to his elder (married) platonic mentor, for an inaudible murmur in her ear and a kiss is made an emotional crux largely because of the way JMC’s signature song comes in to comment, making the moment seem a do-or-die melding. “Listen to the girl / As she takes on half the world / Moving up and so alive / In her honey-dripping beehive” with the “It’s good, so good, it’s good, so good” making our hearts expand with those of the two characters, having just shared one of those “I don’t really know you but I’ll remember you forever” embraces.

In fact, the moment would count more if Coppola had managed to make Charlotte one of “those girls”—the kind who do seem to be taking on half the world. JMC gives her a lot more stature than Coppola’s script does, but let’s not cavil about the film. Let’s stick with the JMC moment, as if the whole film exists just to give us a satisfying music video idea. And why not?

“Walking back to you / Is the hardest thing / That I can do.” Maybe, but walking away can be awfully hard too, sometimes. So I’m dedicating this post today to someone I sorta had a “lost in translation” moment with (minus the screen kiss) . . . which occurred after the film was already common currency, so, maybe it really wasn’t “all that,” and I’m simply letting a memory of the film create that sense. There was no soundtrack. Still. The song is a melding of cinema and reality, for me. There’s a jewel ya know glows . . .

Just like honey