l'étranger en ville (come alive)

ok, I have a lot of music I would look to put up here, but, real quick, first, because holy shit, did you guys hear about that protester that tried to get Rove in a citizen's arrest for treason? check it out.

& now a post by special request from a dear friend (& blog reader so loyal he actually catches me when I spruce up old posts in the middle of the afternoon -- his diligence is a lesson to us all). Del Shannon has always been one of my very favorite singers.

the song he's best known for is runaway, & there's a lot to be said for it. the song is beautiful, & it's beautifully produced (try to filter out the possibly-too-much horns, & listen instead to the urgent keyboard line & sermonic vocals). it's also a watershed for the tasteful use of electronic sounds in pop music: the instrument taking the solo is a custom-modified clavioline (to hear what it sounds like unmodified, listen to baby you're a rich man by the quarrymen; that instrument that sounds kind of like a bagpipe is in fact in clavioline). the song has a chorus but no verses: there's an introduction, then a chorus, then a solo, then a chorus, & the whole thing's over before you've even found your hanky. & what I always notice most about it, ever since I was a kid, is the peculiar line that hints at brutally dark feelings: I wonder where she will stay. brrrr, that's what I want to hear. sweet horrible lunatic.

click here to hear &/or download runaway.

it was Hank Williams who first made Del Shannon want to sing, & there's a part of how he gets it out -- like he's been cold in a paddock all night -- that acknowledges that faltering alabaman warmth. his 5th lp is called Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams, & is a record of Little Richard covers (no). his version of weary blues isn't as november-evening as the original, but it's still a statement of power. I dig the way he hold the word blues in the third line of the chorus. gets across, no?

click here to hear &/or download weary blues.

another lovely song with beautiful & interesting electronic sounds is daydream. click here to hear &/or download daydreams. this one's not a life-changer, but, I mean, not everything can be.

now. the good stuff. the more Del Shannon you listen to, the greater the role you realize is played by his bugs-under-the-skin neurosis, the same neurosis that seems the source of stark lines like I wonder where she will stay (imagine James Maddalena singing it). his second single, after runaway (& probably his second-best-known, an execrable cover of do you wanna dance notwithstanding), is hats off to Larry, whose lyrics make schadenfreude snappy: "hats off to Larry / he broke yr heart / just like you broke mine when you / said we must part / he told you lies, o it's / yr turn to cry cry cry / now that Larry's said goodbye to you". this song was #5 in a year whose #1s included Brook Benton's the boll weevil song & Pat Boone's moody river. (also another great moment for electronics in pop music, by the way -- check out the quivering glass sound that runs thru the song).

click here to hear &/or download hats off to Larry.

& now we're all strapped into the Del Shannon cyclone, & Del Shannon coney island is beginning to assemble itself far beneath us, & there is nothing, nothing to be done. stranger in town shows Del Shannon openly sounding against his formidable native paranoia. this is pretty weird stuff. check out the lyrics:

me & my baby been on the run so very long
her folks sent a man to get us, they say we done wrong
so we run, yeah we run, yeah we run from the stranger in town

stranger in town, he's out to get to me
stranger in town, wants me & my baby
follows me
to every town
& if he gets me
he'll bring me down
so we run, yeah we run, yeah we run from the stranger in town

the music has great sweetness & it's inventive on a fantastic scale (listen to that rhythmic vamp that plays while he sings follows me / to every town / & if he gets me &c, & then listen to the 4-bar instrumental bridge, the doofily somber prologue, the shimmering switches from major to minor tonality). also, it's about being incredibly troubled. I think there were few ears in america in 1965 that straddled brains capable of being wrapped around this music. least of all whoever was producing it -- no matter what the lyric, he always sings it like it were as natural as deeliver de letter de sooner de better.

click here to hear &/or download stranger in town.

a more bladerunnerly kind of oppression is being fled in keep searchin' (follow the sun). as Auerbach notes (of someone else, of course), Del Shannon's "speech does not serve, as does speech in Homer, to manifest, to externalize thoughts -- on the contrary, it serves to indicate thoughts which remain unexpressed." (my emphasis.) if crazies were breakfast this song would be one rootin-tootin lumberjack special. here are the lyrics:

no one will understand
what I've got to do
I've go to find a place to hide
with my baby by my side

she's been hurt so much
they treat her mean & cruel
they try to keep us far apart
there's only one thing left we can do

we gotta keep searchin' searchin'
find a place to hide
searchin' searchin'
she'll be by my side

if we gotta keep on the run
we can follow the sun

it's a lovely melody, like a lot of the ones he wrote. the song is all shadow: who are they? why are we hiding? just bizarre. & it ends with what can only be called an utter, dying-of-the-light freak-out.

click here to hear &/or download keep searchin' (follow the sun).

something characteristic of a great many of his songs is that there's no real verse to speak of: rather, there's a kind of weird introduction, then an intricate chorus, then an instrumental solo, repeat the chorus, & none of them is much more than 2 minutes long. simplify, simplify! what lovely & bizarre & concise statements were his.

Del Shannon continued being more sensitive & crazy than moldy-oldies reunion tours could accomodate. on february 8th, 1990, he killed his face with a gun, possibly in part due to derangement of his condition by prozac, which had been approved by the fda only 14 months earlier & may not have been understood clearly yet.

it might help us understand or remember just how barbarous were the forces at whose mercy Del Shannon's young career placed him to hear some of the radio commercials he made for pepsi. here are two of them. they're kind of even, well, beautiful, & also they are hideous & lame & are crap-things.

click here to hear &/or download a pepsi commercial starring Del Shannon.
click here to hear &/or download another one.

I'd like for Viktor Pelevin to write something about these.

I wish so badly for Del Shannon to have been born in a different age, down a different stream. anyhow, I hope someone loves these songs as much as I do. I love them a lot. I wonder where she will stay. he sang it that creeping line his whole life. victim of infinity. & we really needed him.

by the way, I hope you didn't miss my post yesterday on the musics of georgia. please write comments on this blog! & force others to read this blog! & for the love of god please put a link to my blog on your blog. (I'll do the same.) because that's fun.