#rocknuts

This is one of the most moving love songs ever written for people who’ve been around the block a few times. It is by new wave pioneer Graham Parker, who celebrates his 67th birthday today. Parker emerged from the U.K.’s boisterous pub rock scene of the early Seventies, and later that decade became grouped in with Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson as the not-quite-punk-but-angry-and-literate Rockers of the day. After he split with his band The Rumour his material never quite reached the popularity of Costello’s or Jackson’s, which was a shame when it was as good as this. Such a poignant lyric, incredible melody and a fantastic vocal performance. His is a catalogue worth revisiting someday.

  Wrapping Paper

I’ve broken your glass, called someone a dirty name Made a nuisance of myself in front of friends I’ve dug my own grave, please don’t let me lie in it Instead let’s bury everything that caused us pain

Speak to me now, speak to me, darling You’re not a princess, I’m not prince charming Speak with your tongue, use body language And pull your skin like wrapping paper ’round my heart

Sometimes I feel the kick has gone, it gets mundane So I team up with the devil and make hell But I’ll hang on in as long as I know I’ve got you As long as I know love’s a cure that makes me well

Speak to me now, speak to me, darling You’re not a princess, I’m not prince charming Speak with your tongue, use body language And pull your skin like wrapping paper ’round my heart

We move around, drag ourselves from town to town Wrap up lots of gifts and toys and China tea But they don’t feel nothin’, they’re just inanimate They just go in suitcases and fly away

Speak to me now, speak to me, darling You’re not a princess, I’m not prince charming Speak with your tongue, use body language And pull your skin like wrapping paper ’round my heart

Sometimes there’s no reason for a Song of the Day choice other than it just popped in my head. This song is one of those. Off the 1990 Ah Via Musicom album, it’s been a popular track on classic rock radio for many years and was once selected as the No. 17 guitar solo in Guitar World magazine’s list of 100 Greatest Guitar Solos. You might think it would have taken Johnson a while to create this song, but that couldn’t be further from the truth as he once said it took him five minutes to write and that it was his mother who first caught on to it. “She said, ‘That’s a really nice song, that’s going to be something.’ And I thought, I don’t know, it’s just another song,” Johnson said in an interview with Starpolish (via Songfacts.com). “But she was real encouraging about it. It was one of those songs that came to me in five minutes, and it almost sounds like it’s derived from something else, the melody. But it was just one of those things that happened and by default became a hit.”

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the passing of Roy Orbison, who died on this day in 1988 of a heart attack at age 52. This track, recorded in 1962, was written by Joe Tanner, a longtime Orbison collaborator who was a member of the 1950s vocal group The Bluenotes. Tanner also played guitar on “Oh, Pretty Woman”.

I took a visit to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame recently, where one of my favorite features is their collection of handwritten lyrics. This is one of the songs they have on display, and since I hadn’t heard it in a while, I figured it would be a good choice to spotlight today. It’s an interesting and almost comical song lyrically — a tale of pointing and laughing at the ex who got burned after doing the burning herself, and yet the main character still wants to get back together with her. (Hats off to Larry, he broke your heart/Just like you broke mine when you said we must part/He told you lies, now it’s your turn to cry cry cry/Now that Larry said goodbye to you/I know this may sound strange/I want you back, I think you’ll change…) Love can be that stubborn sometimes. The song peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard chart in the US.

Kim Deal and The Breeders have been having a hell of a year. They released one of the years best albums in All Nerve. Their catalogue has gone through a massive reissue which brought Pod and Lash Splash to vinyl in the US for the first time. Now, 4AD has announced to release more of the Kim Deal mythos.

4AD has decided to reissue Deal side project The Amps. The album is 1995’s Pacer which features Jim MacPherson from The Breeders joining on drums and Dayton, Ohio musicians Luis Lerma and Nate Farley on bass and guitar, respectively.

The album will release August 10th of this year. It’s available for pre-order now.

This week in 2007, the Traveling Willburys box set Collection reached number one in the UK, one of six countries in which it topped the charts. This track was one of two on the collection that was previously unreleased, along with “Like A Ship.” George Harrison led the way on this track, with backing vocals from Dhani Harrison and Jeff Lynne added in 2007. Beautiful song.

June 1968 was a hell of a time in America and on the rest of the planet too. The Vietnam War was yielding more casualties than ever, there were two devastating political assassinations and there was unrest in the streets. The Summer of Love already seemed like a distant memory, but on the positive side, the Rock Revolution was in full swing and music was exploding off in new directions. FM Rock radio was still in its infancy, meaning that Top 40 was still the main medium for new music, and so here are some of the big Top 40 hits from June 1968 in no particular order:

  Mrs. Robinson – Simon And Garfunkel

It’s hard to separate this song from The Graduate, the generation-defining movie in which it played a central role, a conflation that surely enhanced the song’s appeal among all the boring, self-centered and disaffected Benjamin Braddocks and Elaine Robinsons of the day.

  MacArthur Park – Richard Harris

In 1992 humorist Dave Barry conducted a readers’ poll that named this the Worst Song of All Time, but we think there are plenty worse. Sure it’s ridiculously overblown and overwrought, but songwriter Jimmy Webb deliberately set out to make it that way in the name of artistic innovation, since overblown and overwrought were still fresh Rock concepts back then.

  Yummy, Yummy, Yummy – Ohio Express

Haven’t heard this one in years and it’s not quite as bad as we remembered it, although the lead singer still sounds like a goat. You’ve got to figure that 50+ years of hearing crappy bubblegum music tends to inure one to its horrors.

  Tighten Up – Archie Bell & The Drells

By the time this reached #1 Archie Bell had been drafted into the Army and was already seriously injured overseas. Neither he nor anyone else could have predicted that this simple song – the whole thing is like a two-minute intro – would top the charts, but like all huge hits it had that inexplicable something that people find irresistible.

  Jumpin’ Jack Flash – Rolling Stones

The Stones were at a creative and a career crossroads, coming off the LSD-addled mediocrity of Their Satanic Majesties Request and needing to re-establish their standing on the Rock scene. This song did a lot more than that. If Mick and Keith were sons of the Blues, then Jumpin’ Jack Flash – the character – became the holy spirit of the Rolling Stones, and God saw that it was a gas, gas, gas.

  Tip Toe Thru’ The Tulips With Me – Tiny Tim

A lot of people badly needed an escape from the troubles of the day, and Tiny Tim provided a departure as far away from the norm as you could possibly get. More proof that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

  Sky Pilot – Eric Burden And The Animals

Anti-war songs were common by this point, but a wicked guitar solo fading into the real sounds of war was a wrinkle that gave and still gives this song a powerful punch. This was the last we would ever hear from the Animals, and it was a pretty strong way to make an exit.

  Mony Mony – Tommy James and the Shondells

I remember one night around this time in 1968, I was just a little kid and my amazing big sister Peggy let me tag along in the back seat on a run with her boyfriend to the local burger shack. He was driving a 1966 white Chevy Impala convertible with red interior, top down on a beautiful warm starry night when this song came on the radio, cranked up loud, and I was never the same after that, in a good way.

  Reach Out Of The Darkness – Friend & Lover

The husband-and-wife team of Jim and Cathy Post threw three song fragments together and somehow managed to catch the zeitgeist of the day – well it was groovy that people were finally getting together – but many people thought they were singing “freak out in the darkness”, which would have been even groovier.

  I’d Like To Get To Know You – Spanky And Our Gang

This one is a real cultural artifact, it’s almost as if 1968 is the only year it could have been made. They called it “sunshine pop”, and it is certainly that (Spanky McFarlane could really sing), but the real highlight is the semi-psychedelic breakdown in the last part of the song, because in 1968 even the poppiest of pop songs wanted to be just a little bit trippy too.

  Other Big Hits In June 1968 Include:

A Beautiful Morning — Rascals Think — Aretha Franklin This Guy’s in Love — Herb Alpert Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing — Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell Angel Of The Morning — Merrilee Rush Love Is All Around — The Troggs Stoned Soul Picnic — The 5th Dimension The Horse — Cliff Nobles & Co.