#let 'em in

[beatleshistoryblog]

Lecture 21: CARRYING ON: Promotional film for the delightful Wings song, “Silly Love Songs” from 1976. The song is contained on Wings’ fifth studio album, WINGS AT THE SPEED OF SOUND. Almost as successful as its predecessor, Band on the Run, Wings at the Speed of Sound included a number of memorable songs, including this one and “Let ‘Em In,” and marked a time when Paul McCartney’s solo career flowered, both artistically and commercially. The promo film is loads of fun, with scenes of the band’s touring, and the footage of Paul and Linda McCartney together is particularly touching. 

[rastronomicals]

9:09 PM EST December 11, 2022:

Paul McCartney & Wings - “Let ‘Em In” From the album Wings Greatest (November 10, 1978)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - Billy Paul, Let 'Em In (Philadelphia International Records, 1976)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

Over the course of a winter afternoon, slightly stoned from my father's weed vape and some Brazilian beer I had with lunch, I went hunting for vinyl records in Little Rock, Arkansas. I'd driven from my parents' house in a township called Central, which was really just a stretch of country highway outside of a bigger town named Malvern. Walmart, Popeyes, car dealerships and a main drag with mostly empty storefronts and secondhand stores.

There was a dearth of commercial/cultural spaces in Malvern: no bookstores nor record shops, no movie theaters. Even Hot Springs, a heavily trafficked tourist spot to the north, had only a modest selection of joints in which to dig for tunes. In the basement of the historic Arlington Hotel, I'd found a used, overpriced copy of Lalo Schifrin's Rock Requiem. Desire far from fulfilled, I sped to the state capitol after googling a short list of places that might be able to satisfy my jones: Control Records, Been Around Records and CD's, and Ugly Mike's. Since Control Records didn't seem like it would be open between Christmas and New Year's, I wended my way to Ugly Mike's for some digging.

The only other customers in Ugly Mike's were a younger couple, college students, maybe, and I was immediately impressed by their commitment to wade through what was essentially a late-90's music store in the middle of conversion to a hoarder's purgatory. It brought to mind John Ashberry's poem "The Bungalows": "You who were directionless, and thought it would solve everything if you found one, / What do you make of this? Just because a thing is immortal / Is that any reason to worship it? Death, after all, is immortal. "

I simply couldn't reconcile Ugly Mike's as a shop, a place of business. At some point, it had been a bonafide music store, maybe a popular one, but the product that that it sold, neglected with a carelessness that bordered on hostility to the most basic elements of trade, mouldered away in direct sunlight. In the central area, compact discs were arranged (I hesitate to use the term "organized") in those specially made press wood shelving units that were ubiquitous in both specialty shops and department stores in the late 90's, early 2000's, lined with squared-packaged discs under placards that read Rock, Pop, Jazz, and Soul. A layer of dust blanketed each row of CD's, still stickered with late 90's prices; $18.99, the going rate for an album back then, which seems inconceivable in today's streaming reality. The whole works was a monument to a time long past, far from missed.

To the side of the CD shelves were rows and rows of tattered cardboard boxes, LP's in worse shape than the boxes themselves, dirty and scratched with torn covers, obviously intended for the garbage. Ugly Mike seemed to have little interest in making them presentable. Though most of the records seemed to consist of the same stuff found on the floor of a Salvation Army (Andy Williams Christmas songs, pop tunes covered by easy-listening instrumental bands), I was able to pull from the rubbish a Quincy Jones, an MFSB, and Billy Paul's Let 'Em In to my breast. Flashes of genuine taste.

Unfortunately, I couldn't dig as deep as I'd wanted. For in addition to the D.L. Hughley radio show (soul/disco hits from the 70's) Ugly Mike played on the store's overhead speakers, Ugly Mike simultaneously ran a podcast about some islands off the coast of Africa loudly at another set of bluetooth speakers at a table, which served as his counter. The dual signals were getting to me. When I approached him, fight-or-flight response coursing through my body, Ugly Mike glanced at the records under my arm without taking his attention away from the podcast, charged me twenty dollars, and sent me on my way.

Paul's Let 'Em In starts off with great joy and not a little defiance. A clip from a Malcolm X speech, criticizing the American Dream as a boondoggle for the marginalized people of this country, rides along a jaunty groove courtesy of Philadelphia International Records. Malcolm questions the aspiration that prescribes complicity at the cost of one's soul. Whereas Paul McCartney's original seemed an open-ended invitation to any odd assortment of characters, Billy Paul's references to Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm, and even Louis Armstrong presents itself more as an argument, without rancor, for the inclusion of these great men into the historical record, as well as the popular consciousness. The implicit critique is that the United States has been resistant to having its story be told from the perspective of Black folks; Paul posits that a widening of the lens and acknowledge a lesser told (and lesser heard) story would result in a more happening party all around.

A slight criticism is that producers Gamble and Huff miss an opportunity in disposing of McCartney's most memorable motif from the song, a little marching melody he weaves between the verse and bridge. Not that it's essential to the story Billy Paul is telling; I would have just liked to hear that groove manifested through some of those hot Philly players.

Overall, though, the PIR factory has the tendency to smooth out the rough edges of their musicians, to a fault. PIR did not buy into the Stax or Fame Studios aesthetic, where the grit and grime is almost the point. Here the drums are perfectly balanced, guitars subtle and rhythmic, and strings tie everything together, almost muzakally. The result is sonic sophistication, expertly calibrated, to an extent that the soul and message of the artist are buried deep in the mix.

The next two tracks from Let 'Em In, both Gamble and Huff compositions, situate Paul as a counter-voice to 1970's looseness and depravity, moralistic stances that erode Paul's hipness. "We All Got a Mission," almost danceable, loses power in the obviousness of its lyrics about social responsibility. "How Good Is Your Game," a little smokier with its Latin-tinged guitars, is not exactly the song one wants to hear on the dance floor either, especially when one is trying to desperately to get said game on. Rather, the song is a chilling reminder that we're all powered by tightly controlled illusions about ourselves; the self-awareness Paul offers is unwelcome when we're out in the world trying to make some love.

The sanctimoniousness eases up on "Love Don't Come Easy," though the singer can't resist the the persistent helpfulness that borders on the self-righteous. For a moment, though, Steve Urkel becomes Stefan Urquelle, dropping G-rated love-making pointers to Carl.

A cover of Badfinger-by-way-of-Harry-Nilsson's "Without You" kicks off the ballad side of the record: music for candlelit anniversaries and bubble baths. This latter half cool-down is listenable, although it has the tendency, in its Philadelphia International Records way, to become so smooth as to be colorless, chrome. Like the musical arrangements, Paul's voice slides rather than hits; he seeks to caress, not to provoke. In that sense, he surely accomplishes what he's set out to do, and in the process forsakes memorableness for polish. Side Two doesn't grip the listener. It floats away like the scent of rose hips.

There is undoubtedly a space for this style of music. It's that space inhabited by Al Jarreau, Christopher Cross; that space where you can hear yourself breathe, when stillness of being takes precedence over the primitive violence of acting out or upon. The songs expend time, yet they give off a sense of stasis. But one must love to live with this feeling, when one invests a few hours getting to know a used record bought in a busted down Arkansas shop. As the great John Ashberry wrote, "Who cares what was there before? There is no going back; / For standing still means death, and life is moving on, / Moving on toward death. But sometimes standing still is also life."

[maeamian]

Hey y'all, now is a particularly good time to show solidarity with the Haitian refugee community of Ohio by donating to groups working on their behalf like The Haitian Bridge Alliance or Advocates for Basic Legal Equity.

The Republican goons are trying to stir up a racist hate mob against them based on extremely sinister lies. To hell with the sorts of people who want racist violence and for those of us nowhere near Ohio, this sort of donation is a decent way of telling both the Haitian community and their tormentors that we have the backs of refugees.

[atanerrum]

wip/ a little treat FOR ME!!!! trigun but on a tundra planet

[egophiliac]

just kinda wanted to try something like this! not sure if I'm gonna do the rest of the guys too, but I figured I'd at least start with Riddle. 🌹

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton knows the FNAF Mimic’s secret..

[glassrooibos]

FABIAN DON’T DO THAT. THAT’S SCARY.

[rannnem]

TWINRUNES FANART I SPENT ALL AFTERNOON ON!

It's how I think Kris would look like as a 16-17 year old (iirc they're roughly 14 in TR). I'm dying to do more fanart of this slightly older TR!Kris design so I'll totally make more

Twin Runes by @akanemnon their artstyle is so gorgeous i hope I did it justice

[beatleshistoryblog]

LECTURE 5: INFLUENCES (PART 2): Since I began this lecture’s blog entries with the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown” and the studio version of “Please Please Me,” it seems fitting to wrap it up with a Beatles song that was heavily influenced by Phil and Don: “Please Please Me,” recorded in 1962. It’s one of the catchiest and most effervescent songs by the band. The Beatles were diehard Everly Brothers fans, and admitted the beloved duo had a huge influence on “Please Please Me.” Fourteen years later, Paul McCartney lovingly referenced “Phil and Don” in “Let ‘Em In,” a Top 10 smash hit that he recorded in 1976 with his band, Wings..

[freshydip]

hey can i hear some noise for Jester Bill. can i hear you all make some fucking noise for Bill In Jester Garb Doing A Gay Little Dance

[rastronomicals]

12:56 AM EDT July 14, 2023:

Paul McCartney & Wings - "Let 'Em In" From the album Wings Greatest (November 10, 1978)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

[mickules]

Parallel Lines

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I do wonder sometimes, if neither of them had become 'Brothers', how they might have fared better. . .

Taka, obviously, would not have been as vulnerable to Celeste's machinations had he not been mourning his Kyoudai. . .

But Mondo? Perhaps without the boon of his new hard won friendship with Taka, he might not have had the confidence to agree so soon to help with Chihiro's training. Deeply unsettled and antsy, newly preoccupied that his worst secret will be revealed, he may have stalled just long enough to have avoided that tragedy.

Did their bond become their millstone?

[elijahmiles]

Anthony Bourdain right now

[kelocitta]

Ended up using that cyan lizard as a jumping off point for learning anthro anatomy a bit more. So heres more of 'em

[ninyard]

Exy fans on Twitter (championship final edition pt2)