"Multiply" Jamie Lidell-Multiply

I checked out Jamie Lidell's albums a while ago and rendered it as pseudo-hippster-wigger crap. Maybe it isn't but it certainly is not my speed. This track from the 2005 album of same title is something different. Always makes one wonder how an artist can roll out a song that is so good and the remainder of his/her work just leaves you feeling bland and indifferent.

A fusion of soul, funk and hints of reggae (at least in the intro) this tune brings to mind the sweet soul of Junior Walker, Joe Cocker's "Feeling Alright", Arthur Conley, Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheel as well as Gary U.S. Bonds. Almost on the verge of Shag music or what we call up here in the northeast, beach music.

You can picture this song in a vacation commercial, two couples running in the sand, splashing in the waters. It could be used in a scene depicting a woman struggling home from work during rush hour in the big city then fading to her getting ready followed by a shot of her dancing into the wee hours with a few girlfriends.

What comes to my mind is a small place where I used to live in north Florida, about two hundred yards away from my house it was one of the only places that was open late night that served hard booze because of the draconian Southern Baptist laws. It was a strange place, I've walked into the bathroom countless times and seen someone shooting smack, there were a lot of tattoos, weirdos, whores sitting at the bar alone; basically the dregs of society. On many occasions I wound up getting either kicked out or on the cusp of putting a bottle across a forehead.

They had good tunes though and if not live the jukebox had a badass selection. Maybe because of the people, mostly because of the music, I always felt terribly comfortable in this place and it can be proud to know that it was one of the few places I would actually dance. I would dance not because I had to by coercion from a woman or because everyone else would but rather because the groove would hit me right in the face, at that point there is only one other option.

An old buddy's girlfriend taught me how to Shag properly and it was put to good use in this dimly lit place at one in the morning. Usually I was there alone sans friends on a random weeknight which is probably why when they are reading this they are crying "bullshit" but I used to get down at times. And in something I've never really heard a woman say before, they'd utter "You are a really good dancer." followed by "Though you don't look like you would be one at all." Which at 6'3" and 245 pounds was certainly true. They weren't bullshitting, I could tell. I could tell because I was entranced and lost myself, lost everything around me except her and the tunes.

I always said to those who would beg me to dance, "Give me something to dance to and I'll be there on the floor before you know it." To me this is the only thing to dance to. Techno/House/Electronic can be good but it doesn't hit me. I can Tango, Waltz and even two step (though it has been a while) and while cool they are too constricting. This groove however just as: Sam Cooke, Otis, Parliament and those mentioned before in this post hold they key to true movement in my mind. It touches you so down deep inside, the combination of Phil Spector-esque wall of sound, a great rhythm and that raspy growl...it is hard not to get caught up and find yourself out there without even realizing what you are doing.

"When Rita Leaves" Delbert McClinton-Nothing Personal

A while back I wrote a post about one of the slickest Marty Robbins tunes in the vaults. Days ago I was driving up the FDR eventually up to the country to do 18 and "When Rita Leaves" came on the radio. Strange because I rarely listen to music on the radio and stranger still was what popped into my mind.

I thought about the woman in "Devil Woman" and how Rita where probably the same person. It is nothing earth shattering but it gave me a smile to think of this one woman who wanders around the boarders of the southwest enchanting men and destroying their lives in the process. Then I thought about the song "Dry Lightning" that comes from Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad album and again how it was written about Rita and then finally about Warren Zevon's "Carmelita" and once again how it was Rita he was singing about. My thoughts were awash with the similarities and story that could be written tying all these snippets of life together, all by different artists who probably had different women in mind. Hell most everything written, sung and painted has been stolen from someone else.

I had a friend whose mother loved Delbert McClinton and probably because of that never paid him much attention, however every once in a while he'd knock on the door of my ear and pry his way in. This song always finds its way in. The silky gut string's lead that trickles throughout the song placating the dearth of love the voice is singing of with a hint of strings barely audible in the corner combined with matter of fact lyrics in Delbert's honest voice is a wonderful combination.

Years ago in South America I ran into my own Rita in a small bar late in the evening. There had been ones before and after but this Rita burned a scar in my memory that will never heal. She spoke little English but we found ways to communicate, jet black hair with a small mole on her left cheek and complex deep brown eyes that matched the hue of her skin. I woke up the next morning in a small room with commotion outside the windows below the first story of which I was laying, A Saturday market in a part of town I could never place. Seven in the a.m. and it was already over thirty three degrees and close to that in the room, the ceiling fan doing little other than ensuring the heat was properly scattered throughout the room; Rita looking adorable and better than the night before sleeping in bed like an angel in the clouds wrapped in white sheets.

Until it was time to leave and I walked home up the hills of the campamentos with a throbbing headache from five bottles of bad champagne and a pack of Belmonts, though cigs and champagne never throbbed such as this. Maybe it was because of the difference in brands, maybe it was because this was the fourth day in a row of doing the same but more so it was withdraw of Rita and the views I had had of her silhouette against the fire lights of the streets and the strange words that rolled off of her tongue like the gut string in this song.

I keep saying I'm going to go back down there and find her but it is probably better to not take up such a logistically impossible request and just return there in my mind while Delbert's musical silhouette projects itself onto the walls of my living room, with instead of dark hips in my hands merely an old Yamaha that has a dead low E and cracks across the back.

"Carmelita" Warren Zevon-Warren Zevon

I write this in a strange mood for I usually listen to the song while writing, however now George Jones and Tammy Wynette are on, their best album "Golden Ring". I feel as though I beat that horse to death, like Springsteen I can listen and write about George Jones for years upon years.

But there's other music out there.

Carmelita has one of the smoothest gut string guitar solos in history breaking up the somewhat drole and depressing lyrics. Having a few buddies who battled with addiction I find it always striking to listen to a man write a song about heroin. In some ways this song (though I've never reached out to the junk) reflects the jones and the creepingly horrible sensation of wandering around looking for your next fix.

I think the best testament to this song was a drive I had a month ago with a very good friend who listens to bullshit music. Dance, techno, maybe some Pink Floyd and Tom Petty...strange combination for sure. We were driving back from a weekend in the Hamptons, his girlfriend passed out in the back seat and my iPod on random, Carmelita came on and he was instantly transfixed with the tune. Though he has lived in the states for quite some time his speech is somewhat broken English with the other seven languages he speaks thrown into the mix. After it was over he stuccato-ly said "I like that song, you put it one again."

I did, five more times over and we cruised back into town on 495 in and out of traffic after a sun drenched-Petrus infused weekend in various wheel's estates. It was the perfect decompression after the social scene. And that is one thing I've always dug about the man who sat shotgun. He is part of that scene but, like myself, always had the feeling he would feel much more comfortable away from all the climbing and out west in the country or even in a Bukowski suite wasting away on the outskirts of Hollywood.

So dig this song when you have a bit of a buzz or the next day after a very big one when the anxiety is building and you check your Amex account with one eye open, the sweats and shakes making it all the much more enjoyable. Hopefully there isn't someone else whose name you can't recall laying next to you but if he/she is then let them in on the secret as well for we all need that shot of methadone whether it is proverbial or literal the morning after.

"Slightly Used Woman" Georgette Jones-Slightly Used Woman

I think it has been a while since I've checked in. Hard to tell since the past weeks I have been lulled into afternoons reading "Do" and "Don't" on Vice Magazine, weekends drinking bottles of wine by myself sliced with nauseating trips to the Hamptons and golf every other day followed by six hour lunches and a handle of Sapphire all while not having been inside a woman since that tour of the Statue of Liberty. But in between there has been a lot of driving alone which is always the best way to drive with few exceptions of a good buddy or a woman who sits shotgun mostly sleeping, looking like an angel.

I've been really fucking bored, fucking being a rude term but the adjective that encapsulates the feeling in the best way. Hell everything is cyclical, seven months from now I'll be on a jet to Afghanistan after a month of sucking it in the Carolina woods humping a pack. When you are bored and somewhat melancholy there's songs such as this.

Georgette Jones, born Tamala from the best stock of country music imaginable: George Jones and Tammy Wynette. She adds to the myth herself by not engaging in the music industry in full for some time and having an equally unsettled life just as her two parents before her.

It comes out in her voice, her phrasing and songwriting. I can listen to this song forever. I can listen to it alone in the car, or sitting on the couch; on the beach or laying in bed alone or accompanied. I can listen to her say "She's just waitinnnng for someone to love herrrr" over and over again until it burrows a whole into my skull. The stark almost banal and bland lyrics with a whining pedal steel sliding through the background and how the last line of every verse leave the opening for Georgette to sew it all up and paint the picture as few can.

Maybe it takes a slightly used man to recognize one of his own kind and possibly one will never see those flaws mentioned in that vividly tight refrain:

But inside there’s a slightly used woman,
On her body there’s scars and there’s dents.
She’s just waitin’ for someone to love her,
And ignore all his deep fingerprints.

Wow, it reminds me of one of my favorite lines in songwriting using similar imagery:

Well you've been broke and yea you've been hurt,
Show me somebody who ain't.
Yea I know I ain't nobodies bargain but
Hell a little touch up and a little paint.

Kinda funny how the first selection was written by a woman and the second by a man, I guess the world takes its toll on everyone. I'd love for both of them to get together and do a few songs together.