Last March, in my tribute to Eddie Jordan, the former Formula One team owner, I told the story of my meeting with him and his band, The Robbers, at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix during their gig at the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuala Lumpur. I mentioned at the end of the piece the sad news of the death of one of the band members, Jonathan Perkins, who was a brilliant musician who had played with Roger Taylor of Queen, but who had his own legendary band called “Miss World,” for which the other Robbers had also played. Perkins had also worked variously with Little Richard, Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Timothy Leary, Roger McGuinn, Glen Matlock, Bob Geldoff, Dave Stewart and Daryl Hall and John Oates. In recent months I have been in touch with Matt Exelby, the singer, guitarist and keyboard player, who was another musician in Eddie Jordan’s band, and a good friend and colleague of Perkins. Last night I discovered that Matt has put up on YouTube a song that Perkins wrote and had created an initial, and simple, demo recording of, that Matt has now completed after several months of work on it. It is brilliant.
The original demo was recorded at Sunrise Sound studios in Hampshire by Marc Burford, another talented singer songwriter and producer, in 2022. Matt has now added all sorts of instruments, sounds, and backing vocals to the demo that features Perkins singing. Matt then made a video for the song, and has now put it up on YouTube. It is a work of great beauty, and brings us Perkins’s deep, melodious voice and extraordinary lyrics, along with the full-bodied sound that Matt has now given it, to show us a stunning example of Jonathan Perkins’s work. I only met Perkins that one time in Malaysia, but we almost instantly found a deep connection, having both suffered familial tragedies within a year or two of each other at the time – he the death of a daughter, I of a wife – and with his depth of character as well as talent it is no surprise to me that he both played with the best of them, and also influenced generations of musicians as a music teacher.
This labour of love that Matt has done to complete the song they would have finished together, is a great example also, of the love and respect that Perkins drew from his friends and acquaintances. I have been listening to “Where the Wild Flowers Grow” over and over again, and I hope you will be touched as much by it as I am, too.
PARIS – Readers of this blog might remember that just over a year ago I published a big feature article in The Village Voice about Elliott Murphy, a major singer-songwriter of the last half century, who gave up his life as a rocker in New York City for …life as a rocker in Paris. Murphy is a one of a kind who has had an atypical career that began with his first album, Aquashow, released in 1973, when he was hailed as the next Bob Dylan. Since 1989 he has lived in Paris and tours Europe year round serving his fans here, who have now supported him through not only the first four albums from major labels, but right up to his most recent, possibly his fiftieth or more, album, called Infinity. Now to get to the point of this impossibly long lede: (jump to the nut graf below):
Some months after my article about Elliott was published I decided – but not for the first time – to see if there were any of Elliott’s songs that I might myself be able to play on the guitar and sing. It was not an easy task – so deceptively simple can they be, as I discovered. Then, somehow, I managed to give a spin through one of the great songs of that first album, “How’s the Family.” I succeeded in finding adequate chords, and a key that suited my voice – that required a lot of trial and error. And the only thing that really stumped me was the vocals in the chorus.
That said, I was also conscious that my effort bore very little resemblance to the sublime original version Elliott did on Aquashow – and still does. But I had a feeling, a way to approach it, that made it feel to me a little more like some kind of crooner song and approach – with a bit of jazz and folk mixed in.
I recorded the song on my iPhone 13 Max in my living room – guitar and vocals. Then I had the crazy and somewhat presumptuous idea that I should send the recording to Elliott to see what he thought – and as a way to show my thanks for his creations. I excused myself over the vocals on the chorus, however.
To my enormous surprise, he wrote back and said that if I ever considered releasing the song, he would be happy to add some backing vocals on the chorus and a bit of harmonica! That was it. All the motivation I needed to do a proper recording in the studio and get this DONE! My first studio recording in a decade.
In short, I wasn’t going to let pass an offer like that. So I set about the recording: I went to Basement Studio in Paris, owned and operated by my old friend Nick Buxton, and he recorded me on my guitar and vocals. He did a rough mix of that, which I then decided to send to my childhood friend, Danny Colomby, in Canada. I have known Danny since I was at minimum eight years old. I have ALWAYS dreamed of doing a recording with Danny, but never felt up to it.
Danny is a musical wizard, and always was (in my eyes.) He is a magical bass player, who has played with legends. His first cousin was Rick Danko, bass player for The Band, while his father’s first cousin was Bobby Colomby, drummer for “Blood, Sweat, and Tears.” But beyond that, Bobby Colomby discovered Jaco Pastorius, the greatest ever electric bass player, and he produced Jaco’s first album. I especially love Jaco’s work with Joni Mitchell. So when Danny – who plays like Jaco – accepted to play along on this track, I was over the moon.
What I never expected was that Danny would put two different basses, including the fretless, in a beautiful backing melody, and some keyboards and percussion. And a great mix! Out of this world.
The ultimate moment was when I sent Danny’s mix finally to Elliott Murphy, and he not only returned it with his backing vocals and his harmonica, but also some Rhodes piano, percussion and guitar! What is so fabulous aside from Elliott’s musicianship here – that ethereal harmonica – is that he had the humility to contribute to a cover of his own song that is so different to the original, except for the obvious main melody and all the lyrics. (To start with, the tempo of my version is much faster than the original.). To accept that and to play his harmonica along with this different version is a testament to the depth of the man. Out of respect for him, in addition to my version, I am posting here below his own original from Aquashow.
Finally and ultimately, after all this bla bla, give a listen to those extraordinary lyrics, written by a 24-year-old, more than 50 years ago, and that still ring true today.
My cover of “How’s the Family” is now posted and available for streaming or download at all the major music streaming services – Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, etc., and in Spotify, in the link above. My plan now is to create a music video for it. So keep posted!
PARIS – Hard to believe that a year has passed since my 7,500-word portrait of Elliott Murphy appeared in the Village Voice celebrating the 50th anniversary of the musician’s debut album, “Aquashow.” Not so difficult to believe that Murphy today released another album in his epic never-ending (to borrow an idea from Bob Dylan’s concert tour) run of personal opuses. If you did read that big article, you might remember Murphy saying of a singer-songwriter: “If you can’t come up with 10 good songs a year, then what are you doing here?” And guess what? “Infinity” – is it his 51st or 52d album? I’ve lost count – is better than that: 9 wonderful songs.
With the first LP he had critics proclaiming him the next Dylan and his face was plastered all over NYC subways with the statement: “Elliott Murphy is going to be a monster.” While he did end up being a monster, it was not one of the kind that people could have imagined at the time. At 76 this month – and another couple of concerts next week at Paris’s New Morning to celebrate his birthday as usual – he’s still telling his life’s story in rhythm, melody and lyrics as he always has.
You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds
As regular readers of this blog might remember, I stand by Ernest Hemingway’s dictum warning fiction writers not to do book reviews, because “You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.” While I write, sing, and play songs myself, I would never even feel qualified to critique others in any but an impressionistic manner. So I devised two ways to do album talk on this blog: First, my long-since disused “Morning Exercise Music” column; and, second, my Not Reviews (of music, books, plays, films, everything). So this is a Not Review: It’s about the music I’m listening to these days, and what it made me think and feel.
Aquashow
In fact, while I wanted to talk about it on the blog, my first listen to “Infinity” was supposed to be as casual background music while I worked on something else. That plan went out the window within the first few bars of the first track. I found myself completely drawn in, unable to do anything but listen, and I also called up the lyrics on my screen and began jotting down thoughts and impressions with each song.
The album kicks in with “Granny Takes a Trip,” in which I was blown away by the chess analogies since I play the game daily! The song’s playful, almost Sgt. Pepper’s-like rhythm set the stage for an album that is both energetic and reflective. It’s the kind of track that takes a few listens to fully unravel, but even on first pass, it’s clear that Elliott’s songwriting remains razor-sharp.
“Red Moon Over Paris” had me remembering that blood moon we all saw not long ago, and I couldn’t help but wonder if some of this album was born from the isolation of the pandemic (until I later saw otherwise in Elliott’s newsletter!). “Hoping for a change to come… hoping it’s a lucky one,” he sings, making me think that in any case, this album was fed by a lot of the general political situation that we are now facing. That is confirmed by the line he uses paraphrasing John Lennon: “Maniacs are running this world, you know?”
Elliott Murphy as Late W.B. Yeats
A lot of the lyrics also drew to my mind the late poetry of W.B. Yeats, when he had that burst of creativity in his 60s and 70s… and I’m remembering the Yeats lines from “The Second Coming”: “Things fall apart…Darkness drops again….” (Although the poet was in his fifties when he wrote that one.)
As with the chess, I had to smile as I listened to “The Lion in Winter / The End of the Game,” a tribute to the late Peter Beard, the legendary photographer and adventurer. It brought back a memory of both my own 14-month sojourn in Kenya many red moons ago, and a phone call I’ll never forget that I had with Lee Radziwill, Beard’s friend and sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. She called the Trib to see if we could send her an article we ran about Beard being crushed by an elephant. Elliott has always had a knack for weaving historical and personal threads together, and this track does it.
“Fetch Me Water” is the wonderful moment when we get some of Elliott’s higher singing notes I was waiting for, and with slide guitar, and Melissa’s beautiful violin bringing in a touch of Scarlett Rivera-esque magic. There’s another sound to this – a traditional sound. And the backing vocals, nice, probably some Melissa there too…. It’s haunting and melodic, featuring one of his signature non-word vocalizations – his “ba ba ba ba ba ba” floating through the mix like a callback to some of his early work. “Makin’ It Real” injects a necessary jolt of rock ‘n’ roll energy, sounding a bit to me like a cross between Iggy Pop and Frank Zappa. (By the way, Elliott likes to refer to his music not as Folk Rock but as Rock Folk.) And then there’s “Night Surfing,” which has a hypnotic quality, its unique vocal delivery and ukulele rhythm giving it a dreamlike atmosphere. It also has some kind of Springsteen-esque thing about it, but is distinctly Elliott.
The album closes with “Count My Blessings:” a song that felt to me like it was recorded in Elliott’s living room, which I made a note of before I read in the credits that it was recorded on a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder, giving it that intimacy that’s rare in today’s polished world of overproduced music. Co-written with longtime guitarist collaborator Olivier Durand, we also find Elliott’s beautiful, understated harmonica, giving another layer of the personal to this the song. Its delivery reminded me a little of early Tom Waits.
“Infinity:” Another Elliott Murphy album all of a piece
One thing that really stood out for me with “Infinity” is its coherence. Every track feels like an essential piece of a larger story, a deliberate construction rather than simply a collection of a bunch of songs at hand. Elliott once raised that point with me about having to eliminate potential songs for an album if they didn’t fit the overall vision of the album, and that approach is evident here. So maybe that’s what happened to that 10th good song….
Again, in the interview that I did with him for that Village Voice article published a year ago, Elliott said that what’s missing from much of today’s pop and was at the center of his and his contemporaries’ songwriting, is personal storytelling. “Infinity” is a lesson in how it’s done. And I cannot end this without mentioning that a big part of the magic of this album, like so many of Elliott’s others in recent years, is that it was produced by, and with some backing instruments played by, Elliott’s son, Gaspard, who is clearly the next step towards the infinite of the Murphy musical story….
PARIS – I recently saw that the Paris Songwriters Club open mic at the Cave Café on Tuesday nights would open its rules a little to allow cover songs. This is the wonderful evening hosted by Paddy Sherlock for close to a decade now, and that after finding and then losing two or three venues, finally landed in its dream spot of the Cave Café basement room just behind Montmartre. What made for this open mic’s originality – personal compositions only, please – also made for a certain limitation for someone like me, who has only so many songs I’ve written that I will ever dream of singing in public. So I kept going, but I would always sing the same songs…until I kind of stopped. When I heard I could sing cover songs now, I went IMMEDIATELY!
But attention, or watch out, or wait right one second: Paddy wants to make it clear that this remains the Paris Songwriters Club, and that he still prefers songs performed being those written by the performers themselves. But he felt that it was time to open up to continue to do exactly the same thing that is the point of the original idea: To encourage singer songwriters and just plain performers to get up on stage, experiment, and hopefully feel the urge, and the comfort to eventually write their own stuff.
It came out of his mouth before I even said it, that there were cases of people who write their own songs, but don’t have enough of them.
“But if someone comes and they’ve written, like, 2,000 songs, I’d really rather they do their own!” said Paddy, when we spoke about it at the end of another great night at the open mic.
In fact, and indeed, as I sat there last night and listened to one original musician after another – none of whom I had ever heard before – I realized that almost all of them were doing their own songs anyway. And I felt that, this is great, the tradition continues, but the doors are open for anything. (I must not forget to add that Paddy has also always allowed for people to do stand up comedy, acting, reading, whatever they want.)
And boy, did “anything” follow. From Brooklyn came a somewhat secretive guy who called himself “Dr. Faustus.” I say secretive simply because, a), he left before I even had a chance to talk to him and b), I had the sense that he had done a pact with the devil, and so hightailed it outta there as soon as he could.
And I say that about the pact because his cover of Bob Dylan’s Talking World War III Blues was just brilliant. So brilliant that I thought, “Who is this guy?” But never got an answer, except he is from Brooklyn….
So I was happy the doors had opened for that one.
There was another guy who did a song that might as well have been a personal composition for most of us, as I think a lot of us might not have heard it before, even if I think it might be well known in Corsica. And if not, it should be. It was something like “Ma Patrie, Corse…” but I did not note the title, and anyway, the guy said it was written by his music teacher in high school – so it might be considered something of a personal composition after all.
When it came my turn, as I have not been performing in public much lately, and there I was doing cover songs for the first time on Paddy Sherlock’s open mic, I was overly nervous, and felt worse than half ok during my first two songs. I was also using a guitar that was up to my chin with the strap setting, and that didn’t help. I did “Runaway Train” by Soul Asylum and “Come Pick Me Up,” by Ryan Adams.
But it was on my second time on stage after we had run through two songs from all musicians present and had time for another go that the evening transformed for me into a truly memorable one, and gave the real sense to the meaning of the new approach allowing cover songs at Paddy’s place.
I am working on a recording of a cover song that I hope to release soon. The guy who wrote the original even offered to sing or play a bit on the song himself, and given that he is a very successful musician, I got out and recorded my guitar and vocals as quickly as I could. I got a friend from Canada to add bass. But then I realized that having upped the tempo so much in my version recorded in the studio that I don’t have enough “space” to sing the chorus as it should be done, in a long, drawn out manner. In short, the chorus sung by me stinks.
I’ve been wrestling for weeks, even months, on how to fix that problem. So with only a few people left in the room last night, I decided to explain my predicament and ask for ideas on how to fix it. I sang the song, it went down pretty well, and I felt much better about my performance. (To the point that some listeners did not quite understand the problem with the chorus – but I told them I cheated on stage, making room in that part that I don’t have in the recording!)
But what happened was I got some fresh ideas – particularly from Paddy a bit later – and now I have some new ideas on how I might fix that problem with the chorus.
Who could possibly have imagined that Mr T would return for another round of elections four years later, let alone the close race that he is producing looking like he is the favorite to win. What’s all this talk indeed!??!
CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily: One of the things that fascinates me in playing music, is the question of the roles played and interchange of timing and emotion and melody. Sometimes I think there is a tradeoff between timing, the count, the rhythm, and emotion. Other times I think I just don’t know what I’m doing. The other day I stumbled upon a recording I did at home in 2015 of Bruce Springsteen’s song, “Born to Run.” As I now work on a new cover song recording that I hope to release in the coming months, this Springsteen one I did years ago made me think about that whole question again. The timing, the count, in this attempt at “Born to Run” is ALL OVER THE PLACE! It sounds like I didn’t know what a metronome is; although I know it was really because I didn’t care. It was an after dinner and wine effort to do a crude recording of “Born to Run” in a slowed down, folky version, rather than the original hard romping rock. While there is no constant rhythm or count, there is definitely meandering emotion.
[B. Spurgeon’s B. Springsteen lies here (I wonder if those initials ever hindered his career?!):]
Aquashow
With the song I am working on at the moment, by Springsteen’s friend Elliott Murphy – about whom I did a huge feature article in The Village Voice last February – I did use a metronome. This is his song “How’s the Family,” off Murphy’s first album, Aquashow, which was released in 1973. Although I had done an initial version of the song in the same way I did the Springsteen, and the emotional rambling worked for me, it was essential to use a metronome for the recording, as I am asking musician friends around the world to contribute their parts remotely – bass, drums, etc. But how strong will it be? Only the final recording will tell me.
Again, though, it reminded me today of my 2016 CD, “Out of a Jam,” where, although recorded in studios with the bands present, some of the songs were done with a “tick” – the metronome – and others we decided to do without the count. For instance, on the song Borderline, I used the metronome; but due to various reasons, on the song, “When You’re Gone Away,” we did not use a metronome. And the rhythm does actually change slightly over the song from the opening to the end, in a very slight crescendo. It felt appropriate for the song. And which is more effective? Not sure it’s possible to say – except I have noticed over the years that Borderline performed live tends to get a more enthusiastic response than did the Borderline of the CD.
This morning, I saw an astounding video of Prince doing a monumental live version of “Play That Funky Music.” One of the keys to the whole performance was the astounding tight rhythm section and Prince’s more than impeccable melodic expressions on the guitar within that tight confine. Hits you over the head with that rhythm and tightness of timing! Filled me with an admiration I hadn’t felt since certain Jimi Hendrix moments.
But it did raise in my mind that question again of how much leeway a musician has within the confines of rhythm, count and beat, etc. Oh, yes, and regarding that Springsteen effort I did – another thing it brought to my mind, again in relation to the recording I’m doing at the moment, is when is reverb too much reverb? At the time I recorded it, I felt that I had put about 300 percent too much reverb on it. Now, I find it charming – this feeling of a big room, an otherworldly thing that goes along with the slowness of the version of the song.
Well, isn’t that what playing music is really all about? That there are no formulas? Just like writing, and most of the other arts. I hope to post that new Elliott Murphy cover sometime soon, once it is done!
PARIS – One year into the pandemic that has killed live music and the life I spent most of this blog writing about – open mics, bar gigs, jam sessions etc. – and you might think that the musicians of the world would have collapsed and taken their music to heaven by now. That would be to underestimate the spirit that drives musicians onwards: To make music no matter what! In the last few weeks I have seen a sudden harvest of initiatives, sounds, CDs, gigs and things that to me show how so many of the musicians I have met over the life of this blog – 11 years old last month – have taken advantage of the lockdowns in their respective countries to forge onwards in making music and promoting their careers in ways that the gigs can no longer do.
And what a great feeling of pleasure it is to see how they have progressed through the mess that was thrust upon us all, setting the stage for even greater things when the curtain rises again post-Covid trauma. I want to just mention a few of these bits of news from musicians I have met, played with or just heard at open mics over the last decade. I’ve got five examples with five representative videos that I invite you to check out…and why not support them with a buy!
1) I met Greg Sherrod at the Some Girls open mic on rue de Lappe near the Bastille in Paris around a half a decade ago. I came in like any other night, signed up to play, and there was this guy from Connecticut who had just arrived for a short stay in Paris, and as a singer songwriter, and longtime performer with bar bands, had come to Paris with the goal among other things of playing in some jam sessions. It turned out he had been reading this blog for a long time in advance to prepare the trip, and so how fabulous that the first open mic he attended I was there, and he recognised me! So began a mostly long-distance friendship that is still going strong. (Can you believe it that it was Greg in Connecticut who introduced me to the fabulous Netflix series “The Eddy,” that takes place in France?)
The news from Greg is that he is launching a national campaign on June 1 to sell his latest CD, “Do You Feel It?” I loved his CD that he released a few years ago and that I spoke about on this blog, but this new one has even MORE of his energy and bubbling, bursting, addictive feeling! Greg’s really got a unique voice and style, and I implore you to go and check this out on Greg Sherrod’s bandcamp page. It’s really different, and I wish him the best of luck on the national launch.
2) Regular readers of this blog will know the name of Paddy Sherlock. But maybe not the way I am about to talk about him. As his name suggests, Paddy is Irish. But he is also a decades-long Paris expat, and host of the also decades-long music night at the Coolin’ Pub in the Latin Quarter, which sadly, closed a few years ago to make way for an Apple Store (more or less). After that, Paddy hosted an open mic that was exclusively devoted to original songwriters, and started at the Tennessee Bar before moving to O’Sullivan’s Rebel bar. It only ended when Covid started, and I imagine Paddy will be back to hosting it after the pandemic ends.
If, that is, he is not too famous and in demand thanks to his latest CD, “Dusk,” which not only has been playing regularly on one of France’s top radio stations – FIP – but has also been getting fabulous media coverage, including as I write, being called the album of the week by the French edition of Rolling Stone magazine! A video of one of the songs, “Like a Diamond,” which I link to above, has more than 20,000 views in a short period of time. In short, it has taken the lockdown for Paddy to apparently break out in a big way. Paddy, a multi-instrumentalist, but trombone specialist, is also a very cool songwriter and singer, and actor, and that all comes together on the video, as you will see.
Misja Fitzgerald Michel
3) The only musician on this short list who I did not meet at an open mic is Misja Fitzgerald Michel, one of France’s top jazz guitarists, whom I met through a mutual friend, a photographer. And what a discovery! I say he is a jazz guitarist, but he is pretty much an all-rounder, and never more so than now that I can tell you about his recent exploit. (Misja did a fabulous CD a few years ago playing guitar along to the singing of Hugh Coltman of cover songs all by Nick Drake. A kind of Nick Drake tribute album that got some great critical reviews.) In fact, he has had two very interesting projects in the past year or so since Covid, one being his CD with a vibrophone player named Franck Tortiller, but the one I wanted to draw your attention to now is astounding!
Just as the virus began threatening everything, Misja managed to get in a concert in Paris playing along with a symphony orchestra a piece written by the Polish composer, Elzbieta Sikora, based on a piece by Wanda Landowska, and instead of using the piano, chose to use the electric guitar as the lead instrument. It was directed by Marzena Diakun. Playing just before the coronavirus broke out, the intervening time allowed the project to develop both a CD and a video of the performance. I sat mesmerised listening to and watching his performance, in this extraordinary moment that out-Fripps Fripp and that requires all of Misja’s technical knowledge and feeling, in a virtuoso performance of a kind on an electric guitar that I’ve never heard, and an extremely cool idea. Check out the video of the making of the performance to see if you agree!! And you can find out more about the performance on the site of those who put it together. Here is a great description of the CD.
Gaelle Buswel
4) Researching this next performer on this blog itself, I discover that the first time I ever heard Gaelle Buswel sing was as far back as 2009! It was at the Cavern bar in Paris, at the weekly vocal jam, and I was immediately subjugated by her performance. In fact, I can’t think of a better way to describe her than the way I did on this blog the following year: “Gaelle Buswel has an amazing voice, extraordinary charm and stage presence, and she…gee, she has a little of that Bruce Springsteen quality of looking like she’s loving every minute of the performance and the communication with the audience.”
I saw her perform a few times after that, but it was mostly in watching from afar that I have seen Gaelle’s career take off and actually explode. And with good reason. You can add to the above description her untiring work, application and will power! She works ceaselessly from what I have been able to see in receiving her newsletters for years now and following her career. She has opened for Ringo Starr, ZZ Top and Deep Purple; she has played many of the greatest blues festivals in France and elsewhere in the world, including winning prizes at the Cognac Blues festival, and elsewhere, and she has now just put out a new CD in the middle of Covid, and got herself splashed all over the covers of the French music magazines as a result. It just keeps going upward, this career, and damn the virus! Check out the video of the title song from the latest CD above – oh yes, and I forgot to mention that Gaelle, although French, specializes in not only singing all the rock and blues classics of the English-speaking world, but she also writes her own songs in English….
5) I finally got up the courage to apply myself to today’s post when I saw a familiar face looking out at me through a video on my Facebook, and I decided to give a listen. Joe Danger is a fixture of the Nice bar music scene, and I heard and met him too for the first time almost a decade ago. I last saw him a couple of years ago when I was visiting Nice and eating in a pizzeria with Ornella and found myself sitting at a table beside Joe! We never got to know each other very well, because I was never very long in town, and Joe was never very long off stage. Despite his name, and his perfect English accent, Joe hails from Germany! But he has lived in Nice since the 1980s, and he has been eternally attracting masses of young listeners to his various nights playing music in places like Jonathan’s music bar. I’ll never forget the first time I saw him play there, in the cave in the basement: The place was empty. Completely. And then Joe took to the stage, and suddenly, within minutes, the room was bursting at the seams with twenty-somethings, all coming to listen and go crazy to Joe! He was in his mid-to-late 50s! But he had something they loved! And as soon as his set ended, they all deserted the bar….
I am putting up the video I saw of Joe’s today because I think this song he wrote, “Let’s Get Rich,” speaks totally, completely and perfectly of the feeling of the moment for musicians who make their livings out of playing live music, especially in bars. While it is telling the story of low-down times and lack of money, it is the act of writing and playing – and Joe says he is currently about to record it with a band – that shows the kind of backbone, faith and spirit of fighting on that is really behind all of these musicians at this difficult moment. Way to go Joe Danger! Way to go all of them!
PS, don’t forget to check out my own lockdown effort that I posted about recently, which is my song about our crazy, sick world of the moment on another level: “What’s All This Talk!?!”:
PARIS – With the world no doubt feeling tense over the possibility of an Act II to the riots of D.C. at tomorrow’s inauguration for Joe Biden as president of the United States, and the end of the reign of terror by Donald Trump, I wanted to do a post of a kind I have never done before. It has to do with the writing of my new song, “What’s All This Talk?!” Normally I prefer to leave as many interpretations open as possible for a song I write, since I do believe that sometimes songs can be interpreted even in ways the author did not intend; so why limit it with an explication de texte?
But as you can see from the video that I made for this song – which I will put here below again – I have already decided, by using news footage from several different sources of the riots at the Capitol Building on 6 January to give one interpretation to the song. In fact, I was pretty surprised myself how well those riots seemed to illustrate the meaning. Especially since I wrote the song in late October, early November, just before the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.
And it is true that Trump was first and foremost in my mind when I wrote it. But he wasn’t the only one. I also had Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro, Salvini, Orban and many other world leaders involved in the current trend for populist destruction and manipulation in mind. And I even had past such leaders, like Hitler and Mussolini in mind. But when I saw the riots at the Capitol, I said, crap, this thing is really coming to a head here, and these images are the perfect illustration for this sad protest song “What’s All This Talk?!”
So I decided to try to string them together as a background for the song. For me, personally, it was an interesting project, because pretty much without fail all the songs I have ever composed have had to do with a broken heart, a love story, an emotional relationship with a lover, etc. The old stories. I never thought I could write a protest song about politics.
Then something happened and I only saw it once I made the video. In fact, there were one or two listeners who when I sang them the song wondered if it was about a personal relationship rather than the politics I had intended. But now I know and understand: For the past four years I have been emotionally devastated by witnessing these political populist movements we are surrounded with and by the seeming loss of a world where the highest values are truth and beauty for one where lies and ugliness seem to reign. In other words, I did indeed have an emotional crisis; but not with any particular person, rather with our vanishing world of decency.
So it turns out that this is only just another love song of a broken heart after all. Let’s hope for a clean and peaceful transition of power tomorrow, followed by the whole world coming back to its senses bit by bit.
P.S. I also decided to put up the video on my YouTube channel, so anyone who doesn’t use Facebook, or who wants to link the video somewhere themselves, can have access to it. So here is that link here for “What’s All This Talk?!“
