This Is Your Song For...November 20th, 2013: Labeled With Love by Squeeze

"Yep...put one over on all of them...except that
Deja fella..."

I know what you’re thinking--Tom’s about to go raving about another of his songwriting heroes.

You would be wrong.

This is, of course, the single every one forgets from Squeeze’s East Side Story, and one of a number of songs done by British artists about WWII war brides (Sure, it’s great, but I still prefer Elvis Costello’s ‘American Without Tears’).  The thing that makes this song remarkable is that it, like the rest of that album, reflects Difford and Tilbrook’s experimentation with American pop music styles; this is at its core a country song with a slow twangy shuffle.

I would go on, but this is not the version from East Side Story, but the version from Spot The Difference, from the latest version of Squeeze that is basically Difford, Tilbrook and whoever happens to be on tour with them at the time....and that’s why I’m pissed off by it.

Maybe it’s me, but the nostalgia-grabs that seem to pass for new albums from vintage artists--you know, where they re-record their old material either by themselves or with flavor of the month artists to give them a patina of hipness--bug the crap out of me.  They’re the inverse of creativity.  They represent the artist being too lazy, or too disinterested in his craft, to create new material.  Every time an artist ‘revisits’ his old material, he or she is counting on our nostalgia to line their pockets because, let’s face it, we’re going to eat it up so we can relive our own glory days--and it’s a surer sales juggernaut than putting a collection of new pieces out into the aether.

And while there are a number of people who bother me with their taking this route, Squeeze is amongst the worst offenders.  Since Difford and Tilbrook brought this version of the band back into existence in 2007, the only new material they’ve produced has been available only at their concerts or as bonus discs to concert DVDs available only at concerts.  And what they’ve released commercially is...Spot The Difference.  This is a whole record of re-recordings that are such slavish recreations of the orginal tracks it’s impossible to tell the difference.  This isn’t like Kate Bush’s Director’s Cut, where she transformed the originals into new configurations; this is a K-Tel-like soundalike act that made me wonder why I needed these versions when I still have the originals.

I love Difford and Tilbrook, who are amongst the greatest songwriting duos in the history of pop music.  I love their solo efforts--I frequently wonder if they’ve revived Squeeze solely as a nostalgia act to generate funds so they can pursue their solo work without interference.  But this version of Squeeze, and all the tracks from Spot The Difference, can go dangle from a rope for all I care.  If you want a great version of this song, find the original.

Here's a video of them performing the song.

This Is Your Song For...November 5th, 2013: Sunday Papers (Live) by Joe Jackson

Portrait of a misanthropic crumudgeon as a misanthropic
firebrand.

Sorry I’ve been quiet for so long...but I’ve brought one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists with me!

This is a live recording from 1979 Los Angeles show I got from a sadly long-gone blog devoted to archiving all those bootlegs us music fans used to get from Music Stores of Questionable Means.  Here in New York, there were a number of record stores in and around Bleeker Street that would have this one cabinet in a corner somewhere with stacks upon stacks of cassette tapes with monochrome construction paper covers of badly photocopied pictures of the star contained within.  While I never got this particular concert, I did get a number of Robyn Hitchcock and New Order ‘rarities’ from these stores that I listened to until the emulsion wore off.  There was something about having this forbidden fruit, even if the sound levels were, well, lousy, that made them all the more special.

I love this song--I used to sing it a lot at karaoke until my good friend Vinnie Bracco started using it as an ‘icebreaker’ song (i.e. the song that a karaoke DJ uses at the top of each rotation to loosen up the crowd and convince them to participate)--and it fascinates me how the practices of the English Press that Jackson is criticizing in this song have become prescient for the American press.  This performance begins with Jackson gleefully reading out random headlines from a British newspaper, and they’re no different from some of the stuff I can see being printed in The Daily News and The New York Post.  This was meant as satire when Jackson wrote it, and now it’s reality for me in one of the most literate cities in this country.

This particular performance is also interesting because it gives us a glimpse of Jackson’s misanthropic nature back when, in that moment in time when punk and new wave were the king of the musical heap, it was not only acceptable but welcome.  Listening to the bootleg straight through, you can’t escape that Jackson has a bit of a contempt for his audience.  Oh, he appreciates them on some level and is grateful they’ve come out for his show, sure....but there’s a surliness to some of his banter that serves as a hint of some of the greater ugliness to come.  Sure, this misanthropy will wax and wane with his musical periods--when I saw him live during the Big World Tour, he was positively charming--but I can’t help thinking this was one of the times he didn’t feel the need to hide the monster inside, and probably took pride in mocking his audience while basking in its praise.

It’s not my favorite song of this period; I still hold the title track for I’m The Man (another song that seems erieely prophetic here in the Age Of The Tentpole), and contend there are moments of ‘Is She Really Going Out With Him?’ that threaten to make it the most perfect pop song ever.  But it’s a great number, and a great little captured moment in the career of this man.  Now he seems to have once again retreated into his jazz-o-philic tendencies, but hearing this track reminds you of how he once was one of the nastiest, surliest, pop star ever....

Here is a live performance from 1980 of the song--probably from the same tour as the one this recording is taken from.