#ayearofsongs

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #31: “Cowboy Movie” by David Crosby

The rocker as outlaw idea goes back to the genre’s roots in societal rebels in leather jackets mixing it up with folks from the wrong side of the tracks. That spirit melds well with America’s love of the Wild West, where a guitar slinger isn’t far off mythologically from a gunslinger and The Law can be anything from a cop to Big Brother to The Establishment. 

Few numbers take this dynamic as literally as Crosby’s “Cowboy Movie” off his 1971 solo debut, If I Could Only Remember My Name, one of many small marvels captured at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco during the bountiful period CSNY, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and others mingled their talents on one another’s studio work. 

At a healthy 8-minutes, “Cowboy Movie” is fully cinematic with a rollicking, cantankerous score. While the electric guitar pyrotechnics are often credited to Jerry Garcia and Neil Young, it’s actually Crosby and Garcia trading licks - a pleasant reminder that Croz could shred with the best of ‘em. The Garcia/Young pairing can be heard on an alternate version that appeared on Crosby’s Voyage box set and more recently on the 50th Anniversary Edition of If I Could Only Remember My Name. 

The rest of the band is none too shabby either - Phil Lesh on bass, Mickey Hart on drums, and Bill Kreutzmann on tambourine. Crosby vibrates on a deep frequency with the Dead guys here, drawing out some of their heaviest, liveliest playing ever. For my money, Garcia and Crosby are the sharper guitar conversation and the best choice for the official version. They lay back and advance in an organic way not present elsewhere in their work. 

“Cowboy Movie” is legendarily semi-autobiographical, supposedly sparked by hurt feelings after Graham Nash poached Rita Coolidge from a smitten Stephen Stills after meeting her during the recording of “Love The One You’re With” for Stills’ solo debut. In the song Nash is “The Duke,” Neil Young is “Young Billy,” Crosby is “Fat Albert,” Stills is “Eli,” and Coolidge is “Raven,” a “sweet, young Indian girl” later revealed to be “The Law.” 

Crosby’s recasting of a lovers triangle as frontier theatre works marvelously especially in a contender for Crosby’s gnarliest lead vocal, his delivery bucking with wild beauty and power, the perfect rider for all the guitar horsepower. The snippet of happy studio chatter at the very end suggests men that knew they’d captured something special as the dust settled. 

[billyvan]

Pro Tip: Redbull in the studio makes for energetic, albeit eccentric vocal performances. 👍 #studio #recording #vocals #ayearofsongs #billyvan #sunglasses

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #8 - “I’m A Man” by Chicago

The band that barfed out “You’re The Inspiration” in the 80s wasn’t always winery ready adult contemporary. When the Chicago Transit Authority - later shortened after the actual CTA threatened legal action - emerged in 1969, they were a ferociously tight jazz-rock 7-piece that gave equal weight to both halves of their chosen genre. 

To wit, their downright nasty, Afro-Cuban inflected, electric guitar lacerated take on the Spencer Davis Group’s 1967 hit single, which transports Little Stevie Winwood’s ode to modern masculinity to strange new places, transforming the original under 3-minute bopper into a nearly 8-minute assault. 

Their version appears on Chicago’s ballsy 1969 double record debut, and while a truncated single version was released, it’s the full figured take where all the good things of early Chicago rise and rip with terrific power and presence. 

From Peter Cetera’s thick, bounding bass riff to the clave-cowbell-tambourine chug of the horn section when they’re not punctuating lines with brass punch to the Buddy Rich-like charge of drummer Danny Seraphine to the three lead vocalists trading verses to the undeniable star, Terry Kath’s incendiary guitar, Chicago’s interpretation seizes hold and pulls one along at a breath snatching clip. 

As he is throughout their debut, Kath is a marvel - soloing, comping, and chomping at the edges, a player possessed by a ceaseless imagination anchored to a wide stance, bell bottom, badass guitar hero magic. Trombonist James Pankow describes meeting Jimi Hendrix  in 1968 after Chicago opened for Albert King. Hendrix said, “You guys have a horn section that sounds like one set of lungs and a guitar player who’s better than me. You wanna go on the road?” Hendrix later called Kath “the best guitarist in the universe.” 

A focused examination of Kath’s work across the eleven Chicago albums he worked on between 1969-1977 suggests Jimi wasn’t overblown in his praise. Kath’s genius is never more evident than the dozen tracks on the 1969 debut album, and “I’m A Man” is the perfect entry point for the unfamiliar. 

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #1 - “I Will Not Be Sad In This World” by Djivan Gasparyan 

A wordless prayer, human breath given wings, a benediction redolent of the pain and yearning of the living. The title track from the Djivan Gasparyan’s 1983 album is all of these things, the sound of his duduk - a double reed woodwind carved from Armenian apricot wood - a haunting, beckoning call, all at once sharp and low and suffused with unrushed emotion. Over six minutes, Gasparyan carves the air with a simple eloquence, a quietly perfect response to Rumi’s sunrise imploring:

“Today, like every other day,

we wake up empty and frightened. 

Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. 

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #45: “Teen Tonic” by Pierre Henry & Michel Colombier

Sampling in music has been going on since the 1930s but before it got a one-word description it was known as musique concrete, which takes ordinary sounds, vocal snippets, and other noises and mixes them with traditional instruments. As the 20th century progressed, manipulation of these sounds through effects, tape loops, and eventually synthesizers, further expanded the boundaries and ingredients used. 

Musique concrete has rarely been more charming or accessible than 1967’s Messe pour le temps présent, a hip as hell score for a French ballet. “Teen Tonic” bubbles with unbridled modernity from the first flurry of sounds before a simple, infectious organ riff, what sounds like lightbulbs being smashed, and a warm phalanx of singers intoning “aaah-aaah-aaah” arrives. Music occasionally drops out altogether but only for a half second before that goddamn groovy organ returns to carry us to what might be sonar blips at the end. 

“Teen Tonic” has been sampled extensively including Fatboy Slim’s “Song For Lindy,” Luke Vibert’s “Rank Ring Ring,” and Diplo’s “Clear Day.”  Métamorphose: Messe pour le temps présent, a cool remix album of Henry & Colombier’s work came out in 1997 featuring Coldcut, Saint Germain and Dimitri From Paris, further adding layers to these sampling pioneers. 

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #44: “Smoke Rings” by Les Paul & Mary Ford

A small choir of multitracked Mary Fords dreamily intones about disappearing smoke in the night as Les Paul’s guitar sketches lines dripping with echo delay and the romantic fancy of a tipsy Django Reinhardt. This is the sound of the future viewed through the lens of early 1950s.

The song “Smoke Rings” dates back to the late 1930s, and numerous versions precede this rendition. But, part of the couple’s staggering hit making knack stemmed from their ability to mingle nostalgia and familiarity with innovative recording techniques. It doesn’t hurt that Ford possessed a downright sexy voice, and Les Paul was an inventor that understood well how to put his advances into winning practice. 

But, on 1952’s Bye Bye Blues, “Smoke Rings” is simply a perfect goodnight kiss at the conclusion of their third million seller in a row. Nothing then and now quite mirrors the intimately beguiling chemistry Ford and Paul conjured during their decade together. As singularities go, this is a lovely one. 

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #43: “Street Scenes” by Eberhard Weber

Solo bass albums are often a passion project curiosity that goes on a touch too long for most besides fellow bassists. This makes 1993’s Pendulum by ECM Records pillar Eberhard Weber such a wonderful surprise, a shifting landscape of interesting textures, moods, and alluring sounds paired with strong, engaging, diverse compositions. 

“Street Scenes” lives up to its name, Weber’s electric upright bass and inventive use of effects and volume pedal whooshing us along a busy road, breathing as the traffic thins, glimpses of buildings and people flashing by in the steady drive to a happy rest. Like much of Weber’s work, one is rewarded for closed eye focus, a single bass in genius hands capable of sketching a whole world. 

Even if you don’t know his name, it’s likely you’ve encountered his work all over the ECM catalog where he’s played with Jan Garbarek, Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, Oregon’s Ralph Towner and many more. Or perhaps you know him from his inspired turns on four Kate Bush albums - that’s his twisting yet elegant bass on The Dreaming’s “Houdini” and Hounds of Love’s “Hello Earth” and “Mother Stands For Comfort.”

Pendulum is the most distilled example of Weber’s brilliance as a player, composer, and sonic explorer. It is his only solo bass record, and will likely remain so since Weber hasn’t been able to perform since a stroke in 2007. The German bass pioneer deserves deeper regard amongst jazz heads and beyond. Pendulum is an ideal starting place in his discography. 

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #41: “Hard Day On The Planet” by Loudon Wainwright III

The past often rhymes with the future. Themes tend to repeat, and humans being human are prone to the same weaknesses, failings, and drives. Loudon Wainwright III knows this well, and has dispensed his jaundiced, clear-eyed wisdom in verse and melody since the late 60s. However, this swinging catalog of a world in turmoil from the Reagan-Thatcher Years vibrates in distressing harmony with today. 

“The dollar went down and the President said

‘Who's in charge, now?’ I don't know, take your pick

A new disease every day and the old ones are coming back

Things are looking kind of gray, like they're going to black”

“Hard Day On The Planet” appears on 1986’s More Love Songs, the third humdinger-good album in a row cut during Wanwright’s self-imposed exile in England after a messy divorce. A friendship with fellow recent messy divorcee Richard Thompson led to Thompson producing some of Wainwright’s strongest work in his lengthy, constantly interesting catalogue. 

“Hard Day” sways with jazz blues swagger, Pentangle’s Danny Thompson’s robust, strolling double bass propelling things from a slow shuffle to the bring-the-curtain-down finale filled with saxophone, big drums, and a powerful, womanly backing choir including Christine Collister and Maria Muldaur.

“Everyone has a system, but they can't seem to win

Even Bob Geldof looks alarmingly thin

I got to get on that shuttle get me out of this place

But there's gonna be warfare up there in outer space”

The lesson here may be that human beings have always been in constant peril, which encourages one to adopt an apocalyptic outlook. However, new generations continue to pen fresh songs about our end. May they continue to do so for longer than now seems possible. 

“We don't seem to learn; we can't seem to stop

Maybe some explosions would close up the shop

You know, maybe that would be fine: we would be off the hook

We resolved all our problems, never mind what it took

And it all would be over, finito, the end

Until the survivors started up all over again”

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #40: “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” by Randy Newman

Writing in God’s voice seems presumptuous as hell but pause for a moment to consider the number of folks claiming to speak for God every day. Preachers and faith leaders claiming with confidence to know the mind of the Almighty AND that said God has deputized them to speak on their behalf. 

That said, if God was gonna tap a truthsayer to pen a prickly letter to humanity, Randy Newman makes perfect sense. Sounding grizzled and weary as Methuselah as a 20-something, Newman has ever been a vessel for communicating warts and all truths, frequently most effective and chilling with just Randy’s dented Tin Pan Alley voice and clear, spacious piano playing. 

 “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” closes 1972’s Sail Away, a song cycle stripping away layers of American and churchy mythology with finesse, blood drawing humor, and unsparing self-examination. 

“Man means nothing, he means less to me

Than the lowliest cactus flower

Or the humblest Yucca tree

He chases round this desert

'Cause he thinks that's where I'll be

That's why I love mankind”

This is a dirge with a laugh track, the folly of man on parade before an indifferent creator, a point Newman nails hard in the final verse.

“I burn down your cities-how blind you must be

I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we

You all must be crazy to put your faith in me

That's why I love mankind

You really need me

That's why I love mankind”

Amen indeed.

Vintage live take well worth checking out.

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #37: “Soft Picasso” by Vic Chesnutt

“It was a modern love affair

Completely cool and casual”

Thus begins a tale of modern male fragility coming up against empowered contemporary female agency. Though recorded in 1990, it has new resonance in the 21st century mass of wounded alphas and betas confused by a world moving on from phallocentrism. That the song is laugh out loud funny, too, only adds salt, delicious salt. 

“And when he finally confronted her with the question 

‘Had she been bedding down with others in the periphery without him?’

And she replied ‘Hell yes! Ain’t it funny!’”

Vic Chesnutt’s debut album, Little, is a captured-in-a-day marvel filled with material that instantly identified Chesnutt as a distinctive singer-songwriter with a gift for stripping away self-delusion, societal nonsense, and overly polite honesty. 

Produced by Michael Stipe at John Keane Studios after he saw Chesnutt play at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA, outside of a few keyboard squiggles from Stipe, the album is just Chesnutt’s hard plucked acoustic guitar and wonderfully warbled voice, a sound that careens at one shaking tremulously and just as suddenly goes still with the emotional punch of a lover gone quiet.

“Soft Picasso” crystallizes his core qualities as an astute observer of the human condition that acknowledged the cosmic laugh track bubbling behind all our actions. Catchy in a sneaky way, it’s a ditty that’ll resurface on one’s mental tape loop each time one encounters a modern girl “elated what the revolution gave her,” or a modern man “battered and bewildered…being shook from his usual role as the heartbreaker.”

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #36: “I Call That True Love” by Dr. Hook

This bluesy bopper from Dr. Hook’s self-titled 1972 debut is intended to offend. It’s also written by children’s literature legend Shel Silverstein along with all but one track on their debut.

“I Call That True Love” is a misogynistic incel male fantasy that’s so over the top that if it doesn’t make you snicker you’re probably part of the problem. 

“I wanna come home every evenin' to a great big meal of wine and roasted pheasant

I want you to say to me Ray, hey this is Susy, this is Kay, I brought 'em both home to you for a present

When The Man downs his soul and find my stash, won't you tell 'em it belongs to you

And when you're sittin' in the slam tell all the other chickies when they get out they should look me up too”

Silverstein piles it on from tip to tail, and Dr. Hook makes the fucker swing with tipsy back porch charm, especially singer Ray Sawyer’s fully committed, frog croak delivery. The man sells verses lesser frontmen would have flubbed. 

Like much of the group’s first three albums, “I Call That True Love” is only-in-the-seventies counter culture courting gold best enjoyed with an ice cold Banquet Beer and a freshly rolled number. 

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #35: “Let Us Go Laughing” by Bruce Cockburn 

A song of living in joy before we die, “Let Us Go Laughing” is a delicately, deliberately built jewel from Bruce Cockburn’s second album, 1971’s High Winds, White Sky. Like fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen, Cockburn is a poet-musician, a spelunker of language and how it can best be stitched together to express the nigh-inexpressible things inside us and the world around us.

“Ragged branches vibrate

Strummed by winds from o'er the hill

Singing tales of ancient days 

Far and silent lightning

Stirs the cauldron of the sky

I turn my bow towards the shore”

Etched with languid grace, “Let Us Go Laughing” is comprised mainly of Cockburn’s exposed, tender voice and gorgeously plucked acoustic guitar, slowly bolstered and expanded by Eugene "Gene" Martynec’s deeply subtle acoustic guitar. As befits a tune about dying - one of many in Cockburn’s rich catalog - the arrangement is spare before bursting into a pleasurable skip as the end approaches. 

“As we grow out of stones

On and on and on

So we'll all go to bones

On and on for many a year 

But let us go laughing -- O

Let us go”

Like much of Cockburn’s early work, spirit and the unseen world hover in a present way, a melodic reminder that there is more than what we see in this often weary world. 

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #34: “The Daily Mail” by Radiohead 

As is often the case, Radiohead proves eerily prescient on their 2011 shot at tabloid The Daily Mail, the most subscribed to newspaper in the U.K. In 2025, the barbed lyrics hit differently. 

“The moonies are up on a mountain

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

Waiting on the rapture

Singing, ‘We're here 

To keep your prices down

Feed you to the hounds’.”

While quiet at first, Yorke wounded bird whisper singing at the piano, by the time the brass section roars in it’s a collective snarl at pop press lies and drivel and the masses that slurp it up thoughtlessly. 

Recorded for the The King of Limbs: Live From The Basement special after sitting in the demo pile for years, “The Daily Mail” is a pungent reminder how much Radiohead can pack into 3 1/2 minutes - blistering analysis, substantive jabs, and a rich musical setting to match each step. 

The last verse could have been written about the past month in America. Few bands are more adept at holding up unflattering mirrors to society. Bless them for it. Never change, lads. 

“Where's the truth? What's the use?

In hanging around, lost and found

With your head in the sand

Fat chance, no plan

No regard for human life

Keep trying, you've no right

Fast or lose, win or lose

Jumped the queue, you're back again

President for life”

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #33: “Sun Will Never Go Down” by Bernice Johnson Reagon

Unaccompanied singing has tremendous power, an inescapable primal quality that calls back to our earliest ancestors to raise their voices in song. 

This power resonates strongly on Folk Songs: The South, Bernice Johnson Reagon’s 1965 debut on Folkways Records. A enlightening collection of solo performances of field songs, blues and spirituals, the album reaches through time, the presence of Reagon’s “fore-parents” (as she described them) inescapable, fortifying, and humanizing. 

Reagon sings with a range and power that rivals Mahalia Jackson and Paul Robeson where even a simple, bittersweet lament like “Sun Will Never Go Down” glows with a soft light breathed into existence with passion and purpose.

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #32: “There’s So Many Colors” by Akron/Family

To conjure an original musical identity in this day and age is a challenge. Much of what gets created is variations on known costumes, familiar elements reshuffled but readily identifiable. When one encounters truly newfangled music it’s a happy shock to a system accustomed to comforting familiarity. 

Brief but brightly burning Akron/Family blasted off old skin, leaving one pink and disoriented, a loud bang of genuine creation between 2002-2013 that was exhilarating, scary, joyous, fun, and dizzying, proffering an inordinately engaging sonic stew that drew flavor from classic rock, experimental jazz, spiritual music of every continent, '70s Nigerian and Ethiopian music, Nyabingi reggae, old folk forms and more. 

In print it seems too eclectic to coalesce, but Akron/Family loved music in the archetypal sense – song and melody, dissonance and harmony. They drew no borders or accepted any common limitations.

While no single track could contain all their charms, “There’s So Many Colors” off 2007’s Love Is Simple epitomizes their winning singularity. 

“There's so many colors without the dirty windows.”

A street choir repeats this opening incantation a dozen times with the power of vintage Van Morrison, one of several “the love that loves that loves” style runs including, “Sun rise, sun set / Sun ever set and rise to reach”

Wild guitar feedback slowly overtakes the fading choir, a 60s Fillmore jam hinted at that’s fully actualized later. But first, a groovy bit of banjo tickled Cosmic American poetry.

“Shades of purple mainly

But clarity and sharpness, too

While the mountains just push right through

Herds of elk to return to the plains

Plainly sky shades blue

Endlessly mountains they plane towards the sky”

The guitar solo that follows comes from “Down By The River,” and eventually flows into the delicately picked, hushed ending. 

“Sun, a chemical reacting

Ahead above then gone behind

Thus are days and times

And our movement/spaces are defined

We finish in the dark

We finish in the dark

Mountains plane towards sky behind

Plains plainly sky out ahead

And trees disappear to us with sun

That chemical mountain chaser”

Akron/Family composed a 21st century non-denominational hymnal, free of any New Age stink or hippie laziness - music to shake us from our comfort zone, wake the dancer within, and leave our hands sore from clapping ecclesiastically.

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #28: “Coming Up Roses” by Elliott Smith

“I’m a junkyard full of false starts.”

As opening lines go, that’s a keeper. “Coming Up Roses” off Smith’s 1995 eponymous sophomore album is the blueprint for his Beatles/Beach Boys rivaling work on Either/Or (1997) and XO (1998), except its Smith alone on vocals, acoustic & electric guitar, air organ and drums - a bolder artistic vision captured in friends’ living rooms, offered in bare bones form, its spare musical reaching beautifully matched by the thorny, achingly poetic lyrics.

“The things that you tell yourself

They'll kill you in time

Your cold white brother alive in your blood

Spinning in the night sky”

The guitar solo at 1:23 has the perfect brevity of a Rubber Soul solo, instantly engaging and gone so fast that one yearns for more. The tone and style also hint at why Smith later worked with producer Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, The Grays, Jellyfish). 

Smith’s first two albums on Kill Rock Stars often sit in the shadow of his major label efforts. They offer a bedsit view of an artist dreaming aloud of crafting music on a Lennon-McCartney level on a food stamp and minimum wage budget.

“Coming Up Roses” is a testament to looking up at the stars while lying in the gutter, and finding melody, beauty, and words to convey a greater world than the sore reality of a hand to mouth existence, yearning given form and grip, a surprising flowering from pain and struggle. 

“While the moon does its division

You're buried below

And you're coming up roses everywhere you go

Red roses follow”