Saturday Songs - Sept. 24

1. “I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man” – Prince

Prince, for whatever reason, is one of those prominent artists I’ve never run into. Whether that’s due to my sort-of-estrangement from popular music or simply a freak oversight in my musical taste, I can’t really say. All I can say is that this song appeared on essentially a mystery-mix-CD in our college mail van CD player and it sort of hooked me. Later I discovered that the CD is the property of my friend Jack and, subsequently, that the third track was a Prince song.

While the song has a super-catchy chorus and some great (cheesy) verses, what really attracted me to the song is the breakdown that begins around 3:48. That breakdown, which might be a gimmick in another pop song, becomes a neat little experiment with some jazz-rock fusion-sounding material, culminating in a return to the main guitar riff for a mere ten seconds and then fading out. The great strength of that bridge section is that Prince doesn’t feel the need to go back into another verse or even chorus, just the guitar riff and then fading out.

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2. “The Battle of Hampton Roads” – Titus Andronicus

I couldn’t think of a more appropriate name for this punky, fascinating band—their namesake may be a Shakespeare play, but it’s also one of the Bard’s most notorious, difficult plays, so violent (similar, though, to many revenge-tragedies of the day) that modern audiences are disinclined to study it. As a result, it’s rarely considered an important work…but it’s still there, like a sore thumb you can’t ignore.

The band, I think, reflects that exact position in the current world of indie music. This is not a happy band, nor is it one that sounds particularly great. Even the production values on their tracks come off as a little lackluster—there is grit and a sort of informed carelessness rubbing against every track. That said, they are hard to ignore in today’s indie world. Their phenomenal second album The Monitor was, at turns, about growing up in New Jersey and (hopefully evidenced by the title of this featured song) the Civil War. Their work is full of weird binary oppositions and anger and a profound sense of longing and restlessness.

A Note: While I love these recordings and this album, Titus Andronicus is definitely a band best seen live. They have an absolute blast on the stage…and you have an absolute blast in the crowd.

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3. “Fire In The Canyon” – Fountains Of Wayne

A band that, sadly, continues to be best known for their snarky pop song “Stacy’s Mom,” there is way more to Fountains of Wayne than Top 40 aficionados can tell you. Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, the two songwriters of the band, have a knack for writing hooky little pop songs like “Stacy’s Mom” but far more carefully constructed and clever. (If you think that “Stacy’s Mom” is the pinnacle of clever pop songwriting, then you ought to listen to the rest of Welcome Interstate Managers.) The chorus of this song rings with a buried uncertainty and sadness: “Believe us to be born into a path straight and narrow /
on every crooked road we travel down.”

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4./5. “Tecumseh Valley” / (“Tecumseh”) – Townes Van Zandt

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Sometimes I feel as if I mention the semi-namesake (he wrote the song “Pueblo Waltz”) of this blog not as often as I should. In my mind, Van Zandt is the foremost modern songwriter, second only to Bob Dylan. (I’m disinclined to comment on the prowess of Irving Berlin, the Carter Family, or Stephen Foster.)

The song tells the story of Caroline, a woman forced into prostitution by some hard luck, who eventually kills herself in her misery. Not a pleasant song, but Van Zandt relates the story with startling compassion and insight. Part of the beauty of the song is that we never know what Caroline looks like; we receive one breathtaking comparison and that is it. “It seemed to me that sunshine walked beside her,” claims Van Zandt’s narrator. It is these bright, clarifying details that elevate his songwriting above his peers.

But while Van Zandt’s skills as a songwriter have been long recognized, his performing talents have been more or less entirely underappreciated.

The best way to understand this might be by looking at the separate performances of this song—the first “Tecumseh Valley,” on Van Zandt’s debut album For the Sake of the Song and the second (alternately titled “Tecumseh”) on his second album. The cut on the first album, a faster, snappy version of this song, does not tug at the heartstrings quite at the way the cut on the second album does. The long, lonesome notes in that second version yield something like an infinite sadness, while the first version sounds clipped.