J. Eric Smith Archives - Page 3 of 4

Favorites: Prince (2018-2020)

I blame SE and RJ

Prince Certainly, I started listening to Prince anew after he died in April 2016. But he launched into my favorite songs from my favorite band territory because of Sheila E. and the niece Rebecca Jade. Surely, I don’t have to worry about J. Eric Smith’s band requirement. Prince led, for a time, the Revolution, and other times he’s playing 27 instruments.

Sheila sang at a club in New York City in August 2017. Rebecca was one of the background singers. They performed a half dozen Prince songs, including an RJ solo on Raspberry Beret. Then I saw them at the New York State Fair in Syracuse in early September 2019. More Prince tunes.

Let’s Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince was filmed at the Los Angeles Convention Center on January 28, 2020, two days after The 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards. The all-star lineup of artists performed songs from the catalog of “the 38-time GRAMMY® nominee and seven-time GRAMMY winner.” Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Sheila E. were pegged to be the musical directors. Rebecca Jade was a last-minute replacement for another back-up singer.

The tribute concert, originally aired Tuesday, April 21, the four-year anniversary of the superstar’s passing, and was rebroadcast on Saturday, April 25 on CBS. Rebecca Jade was singing with about half of the artists, including Earth, Wind, and Fire; Foo Fighters; Gary Clark Jr.; St. Vincent; Miguel; Juanes; and of course, Sheila E.

Songs

I own all of the Prince albums from the 1980s on vinyl or CD. 1999, Purple Rain and Sign O’ the Times are my favorites. Making YouTube links prior to 2016 was… a challenge. Song list is vaguely leading to my favorite.

Starfish and Coffee – it’s a song I saw on The Muppets
It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night – live, and it does that Wizard of Oz thing
Kiss
Uptown

The Cross
Raspberry Beret
Controversy
Purple Rain

Delirious
Little Red Corvette
When Doves Cry
I Would Die 4 U/Baby I’m a Star -I always hear these together

Nothing Compares 2 U, featuring Rosie Gaines
1999
Sign o’ the Times
Let’s Go Crazy. I have the 12″ of this, too.

Nearly favorites: Jethro Tull

Songs from the Wood

One more interruption of my favorite songs by favorite artists assignment. This to laud J. Eric Smith’s choice of Jethro Tull for 1978-1982. Probably another Top 10 group of mine in the 1970s.

As best I recall, I have four Tull LPs, plus the greatest hits CD. Benefit, Aqualung, and Thick as a Brick came out each year from 1970 to 1972. Then Songs from the Wood, from 1977 that I certainly bought in the cutout bin. So the earlier music was from my college years. Songs from the Wood, which was a surprising success, reflected what felt like a very different time in my life.

I’m going to paraphrase one of Eric’s paragraphs. “There’s also a complicating factor with Thick As A Brick… originally being released as a single 45-minute long song split over two sides of a vinyl platter. While subsequent compilations and reissues have broken those big song cycles down into smaller bits, the chunking and labeling have been inconsistent over the years, so it’s hard to meaningfully cull cuts from the great disc, and [he and I] have chosen not to do so in creating my Top Ten.”

But if I were, it’d probably be this.

Songs, roughly 10-1

Aqualung. Eric left this off his Jethro Tull list. I could not if only for my recollection of a late sometimes-friend and I air-guitaring this all over his living room.
Locomotive Breath, #62 when rereleased in 1976.- I love the chugging sound that replicates a train.
The Whistler, #59 in 1977
Hymn 43, #91 in 1971. “Songwriter Ian Anderson described the song as ‘a blues for Jesus, about the gory, glory seekers who use his name as an excuse for a lot of unsavoury things.'”
Mother Goose

Velvet Green. Do I like this because it has “Green” in the title? Of COURSE not.
Bourée. Hey, I’m a sucker for Bach.
Songs from the Wood
Living in the Past, #11 in 1973. I’m also a sucker for 5/4 meter.
Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day – I used to say, WAY too often, the title of this song. Because it feels true, still.

References to Billboard pop charts.

King Crimson, for Dustbury (Cat Food)

chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat

In doing those Favorite Songs by Favorite Bands posts, J. Eric Smith picked King Crimson as his current favorite. The band didn’t make my list, because I don’t have enough of their albums. I do enjoy their music, in their various incarnations.

Meanwhile, this week is the first anniversary of the death of the legendary blogger Dustbury, a/k/a Charles G. Hill. I wrote about him here. “Charles was the person most likely to comment on a piece I wrote about music. He would add an anecdote or an obscure detail. Or write about it himself.”

I made some passing reference to the song Cat Food by King Crimson as one of my favorites. It’s on Eric’s list too, BTW. Chaz electronically chuckled at that obscure reference.

Unfortunately, the links I made to his blog don’t work anymore as his blog has closed. FORTUNATELY, it still lives on via the Wayback Machine.

Some King Crimson

Epitath. “Confusion will be my epitath.”
Red
In The Wake Of Poseidon
Frame By Frame

Pictures Of A City
The Court of the Crimson King
Cat Food

Indiscipline. I had a boss who would look at the business he built. He’d say some of these lyrics:
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat-

(Actually, we ALL said THAT…)

The more I look at it
The more I like it
Heh, I do think it’s good
The fact is…
No matter how closely I study it
No matter how I take it apart
No matter how I’ll break it down
It remains consistent
I wish you were here to see it!

21st Century Schizoid Man

I’ve probably quoted part of this song on this blog more than any other

For instance, back in 2006. Elephant Talk – I own, and prefer the dance remix.

Talk, it’s only talk
Arguments, agreements
Advice, answers
Articulate announcements

Babble, burble, banter
Bicker, bicker, bicker
Brouhaha, balderdash, ballyhoo
Back talk

Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy
Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat
Conversation, contradiction, criticism
Cheap talk

Debates, discussions
Dialog, duologue, diatribe
Dissention, declamation
Double talk, double talk

Expressions, editorials
Explanations, exclamations, exaggerations
It’s all talk
Elephant talk

Favorites: Johnny Cash (1996-2004)

Unearthed

Johnny Cash.AmericanRecords Here is another edition of J. Eric Smith’s game show, Favorite Songs by Favorite Bands. Once again, I pulled a solo artist. If I HAD picked a band for this time period, it’d likely be The Beatles again, who had started putting out the Anthology albums.

Over a half-century, I kept discovering and rediscovering Johnny Cash. From his early hits, I knew who he was. He sang the theme for The Rebel (1959-1962) TV show. The prison albums catapulted him to new fame. I watched his great TV show (1969-1972) which had a lot of rock, pop and soul singers as well as country stars; I just discovered it’s being rerun in my area.

But by the early 1980s, I’d largely lost track of him, except for his appearances with the Highwaymen. Well, he had a good quarter-century run. But then he guests on a U2 album, singing The Wanderer!

Shortly thereafter, he did that first American Recording, produced by Rick Rubin, that came out in 1994. And I’m a John R. Cash fan once again. The second disc, with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his backup band, was also quite appealing. So I had to buy some old Johnny Cash, a greatest hits CD plus Folsom Prison and San Quentin.

The third album was released in 2000, and the fourth in 2002. Right after he died in 2003, Unearthed was released. It contained outtakes and alternate versions of songs recorded for those four American Recordings. It also contained My Mother’s Hymn Book, gospel songs Cash first learned as a child. The final disc is the best of collection from those four albums.

Songs

My favorite Johnny Cash songs lean heavily on his latter period. And I’m limiting it to 10 because otherwise, it’d be 50. Only the top 2 are for sure in those positions.

kappa. Redemption Song, with the late Joe Strummer, written by the late Bob Marley, from Unearthed. There are lots of gems there.
iota. God’s Gonna Cut You Down from the posthumous fifth American Recording, the history of the song appears HERE.
theta. Ring Of Fire. Hey, I’m a sucker for the horns, for the Carters’ harmonies…
eta. We’ll Meet Again – the last song on the last album he released before he died. Incidentally, Vera Lynn, most associated with the song, died this year.
zeta. Personal Jesus. Originally performed by Depeche Mode. 4th American album.

epsilon. I Walk the Line – this song defined JRC for me when I was growing up
delta. I Hung My Head from the 4th American album. I owned the Sting original version first and still recognized that Johnny had usurped it from the composer.
gamma. Rusty Cage from the 2nd American album. Written by the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden
beta. Hurt from the 4th American album. Written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. The song was nominated for best male video at the MTV VMAs but lost to Justin Timberlake. Timberlake said in his acceptance speech “This is a travesty! I demand a recount. My grandfather raised me on Johnny Cash.”
alpha. The Mercy Seat from the 3rd American Recording. A cover of a Nick Cave song.

Next time period

Beach Boys (2005-2008). My friend Donna George died back in 2002. I had given her a box set of the Beach Boys, and I took it back, with her blessing the month before she died. After the baby was born, I needed musical comfort food and they were the choice.

Favorites: Talking Heads (1984-1987)

1983, SPAC

More of my J. Eric Smith-inspired Favorite Songs by Favorite Bands, an impossible task I’m doing anyway.

I saw Talking Heads on their stop at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, north of Albany, NY in 1983. It was of the two or three best concerts I’ve seen in my lifetime. Oddly, I have never seen, in its entirety, the well-regarded Stop Making Sense movie made from that tour.

The then-current album in 1983 was Speaking in Tongues. It’s the only album of theirs I have on both vinyl and compact disc. Interestingly, the tracks have different running times, with the cuts on the CD going longer. It was one of those gimmicks that record companies were using at the time to get people to buy into the new CD technology. It remains my favorite album by the group.

Eventually, I acquired all of the studio albums on vinyl. My only CD, besides SiT, is the 1992 compilation Sand in the Vaseline. Here’s a quiz I did some years ago, based on their songs.

Tunes

Mu: Wild Wild Life.
Lambda: Slippery People. “How do you do?”
Kappa: City of Dreams.
Iota: Blind.
Theta: This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody). “I guess I must be having fun.” This is a song that takes me back to a specific time and place in upstate New York.
Eta: Psycho Killer Qu’est-ce que c’est

Zeta: Take Me to the River . If I were ever to sing Karaoke, it might be this version of the Al Green classic.
Epsilon: Crosseyed and Painless. The album Remain in Light is an aural canvas, and picking a “favorite song” is difficult.
Delta: Making Flippy Floppy. “Nothing is complete.” I love saying the repeated FL sound.
Gamma: Burning Down the House . “I’m…an…or..din.ar..y..guy.” Yeah, right. The first single from SiT.
Beta: Road to Nowhere. ‘Give us time to work it out.” “I wanted to write a song that presented a resigned, even joyful look at doom,” recalls David Byrne.
Alpha: Once in a Lifetime. “My God, what have I done?!” The lead single from Talking Heads’ fourth studio album, Remain in Light. The inspiration from Afrobeat is apparent.