Saturday, January 18, 2014

This Is Your Song For....January 18th, 2014: I Feel Better All Over by Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash is gleefully holding a kitten.  Your
argument is no longer valid.
Welcome back.  Today we’ve got one of the Universal Signifiers Of Musical Excellence.

And I’m not really joking.  No matter how you feel about country music--I feel it’s okay, but has lost its way in the last few decades, becoming little more than the equivilent of modern R&B for people who like to wear trucker caps and flannels--almost everyone likes Johnny Cash...and Johnny, who wore black to show his solidarity for migrant farm workers, who played concerts in prison, and who in the twilight of his life devoted several albums to proving that every genre has a country side, would have had it no other way.  He was a man who used his music to espouse his Christian beliefs (primary amongst them the inherent dignity of all men) quietly and without fanfare.  He’s somebody I greatly admire because he used his fame as a tool for social change, caring for it for what he could do with it rather than what it could bring him.

This is, admittedly, a piece of fluff from a compilation album of his love songs, but you can’t deny the way the arrangement just lifts you up.  It’s very honkey-tonk, very upbeat (notice how the melody just keeps building and building throughout, only hitting a downbeat at the very end), and with Johnny’s unique vocalization giving it a warmth and intimacy it probably doesn’t earn.  Yeah, the song’s message boils down to ‘hey, I like having you around,’ but the way Johnny gives the title line a big ol’ shout at the 1:20 mark gives the song a little extra shot of life.  There’s no doubt who you’re listening to, and no doubt who he’s writing about, and you can’t not feel good listening to it. Plus--only two minutes and three seconds, which means it gets on stage, tells you its message, then gets off...and in the world of four minute pop songs that degrade into the title being repeated ninety times on the back end, there’s something to be said for that.

Here's the song!

Saturday, January 11, 2014

This Is Your Song For....January 11th, 2014: No One Wants To Be Alone On Valentine’s Day by The Humms

Preachers To The Converted, Straight Outta Georgia...
Welcome to the first This Is Your Song for 2014!  Let’s go visit one of the Meccas of Modern Rock for a song that...quite frankly...I find hilarious came up right now (getting into a big ol’ fight with one’s romantic interest will do that to a person).

A bit of Googlemining reveal that The Humms are a band affiliated with the Athens. Georgia scene, although they’re originally from nearby Hartwell.  Oddly enough, their homepage is inactive, but they’re still together judging by how up to date their Facebook page is (their twitter, which is @TheHumms, hasn’t been updated since July).  They’ve also got an album out from bandcamp that you can download for free.   It does seem like they describe themselves as a garage rock band, although the song we’re discussing today has a very poppy feel to it.

And speaking of the song....

This is a fun little number, a very upbeat song about how ambivalent those of us who are...without can be on that most cursed day amongst the perpetually single.  The melody is very bright, with a structure which begins with a single guitar, with the other instruments being added gradually until we get a real hootenany feel.  The vocals, which I presume are by frontman/mastermind Zeke Sawyer (there are two other members of the band, but Zeke seems to do everything save mop up the studio), have a slight Rod Anonymous feel to it, ungainly and, well, human.  And the constant strain of the song is very clear--no one wants to be alone no matter what they say.  And yeah, while Sawyer assures us that they might say otherwise, these people are lying (some just find it hard/to tell you how they feel/they say ‘another day, another day, another day’).  And I love how the lyrics purport to be universal, but Sawyer very slyly makes it personal.  Over the course of the three minutes and change of the song, we learn very clearly that it’s not ‘no one’ who doesn’t want to be alone, but him.  The story starts coming out about him and his relationship with a significant other who won’t 'let me in and see what I’m missing out.’  As the song progresses, the charges get more and more specific until we get a very clear picture of what this person is putting Mr. Sawyer through, and how frustrated he is with longing, until he begins addressing the person directly.

Lord knows I sympathize right now...lol.

Anyway, a fun song--fun enough I downloaded the album.  No video for this song, but here's one from the album, Lemonland...