Music Project: Thursdays

On the local non commercial radio station (CKUA; for some time supposedly the only such in North America), they used to play Thursday or why I did not go to work today every Thursday. Its one of the lesser known songs from Harry Nillson, he of the execrable Everybody’s Talking to Without You to the amusing tropicalist Put the Lime in the Coconut which would fit great on a mix tape with Tim Buckley’s Peanut Man and Belafonte‘s Day-O. He died of a heart attack at 52 . Prior (obviously) to this he used to go on serious toots with the angry peaceful Beatle, John Lennon.

Just last year I discovered the Lennon song Real Love (was he perhaps the tender Beatle?). It was a scratchy muddly thing consisting of a clumsy out of tune piano part and a wavering vulnerable vocal but at the right time this song can tear you apart. Sounds as though he wandered into a room in an abandoned house, found an old piano covered with dust and started playing. And what it illustrates so well is that a good song does not need very much. Great tunes over a bad radio take the piss out of great production values on some ordinary tune on a real system. (And then Regina Spektor went and did a decent live version of the song but I think I’ll stick with the Lennon version below).

Not really a Thursday song. So here’s one.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. David Bowie. As far as videos go, he’s up there with Peter Gabriel for being a bit of a visual maverick for his time (for instance Ashes to Ashes may not seem like much not but at the time it was like nothing else out there). And he will be up on the Sunday installment of this series as well. But to consider this man. Generally one has the sense of a man of style; well dressed, well spoken but how did he manage to evolve not only the wild days but the car crash fashions as in this Raggedy Andy seen here with a beNiled Marianne Faithful doing I Got You Babe?

I lived in Germany for a year and became friends with an Italian and we ended up in a car with a bunch of his pals barreling down the road just outside of Rome and on the player was Ziggy Stardust and they were totally grooving and I was thinking “you are grooving to my culture; you are listening to my music”. But why did I feel that -I’ve still not been to Britain.

Yesterday I put on Scary Monsters for the first time in a long time and found that most of it hadn’t weathered all that well but as well as his usual crew, the lineup was outstanding with keyboardist Roy Bittan (better known for his work with Springsteen), some guitar from Pete Townsend and most importantly the oblique alien noodlings of Robert Fripp (I think of King Crimson as TV on the Radio’s older colder and more cerebral sibling). But for all the talent it hasn’t weathered quite as well as Let’s Dance or Lodger.

Bowie is also interesting is that one doesn’t think of him as an influence really. He’s been cutting edge, worked with many outsider talents, allied himself with new talent, plunged into style after style, and been active for about 40 years so why not? He certainly has a particular and consistent vocal style and through all his phases he remains distinctive and yet there’s no sense of something being passed on as you would with The Stones.

He has also done the best cover version of a Pixies song by anyone.

But one of my most amusing memories is seeing him sing The Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby. Maybe its just me but it seems to me as if Crosby just despises Bowie (I might be projecting since I kind of despise Crosby (I dislike him almost as much as I abhor Bob Hope which might also be why I love Dave Thomas’ parody of him so much). The two just seem to personify the zenith of male paternalist decadent Western culture.

And one last Thursday song, a little newer than the rest, courtesy of Morphine.