Greetings, fellow Town Hallers! I’m passing these two vuh-deos along to prove a point: there is something distinctly autumnal about the Kinks in their wistful, introspective but optimistic prime, ’round about 1967. The obvious choice to make this point is this song:
… but there’s also something crisp, snappy, and I-can’t-wait-to-get-home-to-warm-up-some-leftovers about this one, too:
And by the way: is it just me, or do these two songs constitute one of the most amazing rock and roll singles of all time? (“Mr. Pleasant” was the B-side to “Autumn Almanac.”)
Anyhow, I realize there’s nothing specifically autumnal in the lyrics to 95% of the Kinks’ output in this or any other era of the band’s history, but, by golly, I hear it in the arrangements, the production, the melodies — Fall is everywhere! Anybody else hear the band this way?
You may cry “No fair!” but I sense that a good deal of Townspeople have found Bono to be as annoying as anyone in rock at some point. Let’s get it off our chests once and for all, then find a way to admire the guy for what he is, within reason.
Those of us who feel this way may easily agree on the whole package of annoying behavior that could lead to screen-length rants, but for today’s Last Man Standing, I ask that you attempt to detail specific things about Bono that annoy the crap out of you, from his Holstering techniques to elements of his Look. Save the rants; state your beefs, one at a time. Let’s see what it adds up to.
Remember, Last Man Standing drills require the submission of no more than one (1) entry per post. When all ways in which Bono annoys the crap out of you have been exhausted we will take a moment of silence to celebrate the awarding of the RTH non-prize!
I was looking for the appropriate clip to express my thanks to the active and lurking members of Rock Town Hall. I found the following. I think you’ll agree that it’s about as beautiful as sentiment as one human can express through a computer screen. Thanks, and enjoy your holiday weekend (these wishes extend to those of you not being thankful for the conquering of the New World).
I can’t remember the last time a song has captured me like this but it reminds me of that ultimate hopeless teenage obsession I had with “My Sharona”. It just broke and neither my local drugstore, The Ames, nor The K-Mart (my three record outlets in the summer of 1979) had it in stock, so I was stuck waiting by WCAU-FM so I could hear it once an hour.
This went on for a few weeks until my parents finally had to drive to the mall to get something and I could finally buy the single, with the foxy Sharona in the wife-beater picture sleeve and the faux Beatles label.
But I digress. The song I can’t stop listening to currently is by obscuro, private press rocker Marc Mundy, “How Can I Marry This Language”. Born in a showbiz family, raised in Cyprus, and brought up on Mediterranean radio that featured sounds from Istanbul, Cairo, and Tel Aviv, Mundy ended up in Greenwich Village in the late ’60s. He married a Turkish looker and in 1970 recorded his only album, with his wife on backing vocals and an unknown cast of her Turkish cronies on
back-up.
Although one has to get accustomed to a accent that sounds dangerously close to Borat, this song has been short-circuiting its way into my idle thoughts almost hourly for weeks. It’s that chorus, where he breaks into a wordless vocal that seems to approximate some ancient folk melody, that just kills me everytime.
Not that everything around it isn’t fantastic, that crazy stuttering Moon-like drumming, the stop-start rhythms with the kissing sound, the lyrics about asking for a woman’s hand in a foreign language, and the fact that it is one of those “3-minute zingers” (2:57 actually) recently talked about on some uptown blog, it all has me smitten like a schoolboy.
I’m like everyone here, I love the rock and roll of this era, but why listen to yet another Beatle-ish/Kinks approximation when I can listen to a song as confounding as this?
