U.T.F.O. -- "Roxanne, Roxanne" (1984)

[Kangol:]

There goes that girl they call Roxanne

She's all stuck up

[EMD:]

Why you say that?

[Kangol:]

She wouldn't give a guy like me no rap

She was walking down the street 

So I said, "Hello, 

I'm Kangol from UTFO."

And she said "So?"

There's a long tradition of "answer" or "response" songs in popular music.  For example, Big Mama Thornton's original "Hound Dog" song (which was covered by Elvis Presley) generated six answer songs by other artists.  

Van Zant, Young

Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" was a response to Neil Young's "Southern Man" -- and one of the few answer songs that was more popular than the song to which it responsed.

The rap genre has inspired a lot of answer songs.  Most of these battles have been fairly benign recording-studio affairs that may have injured a combatant's pride but did no tangible harm.  (A few have resulted in assaults and even a drive-by shooting or two.)  The "Roxanne Wars" exceeded by far all other hip-hop music rivalries in terms of the number of answer songs that were produced.

In 1984, the New York City hip-hop trio U.T.F.O (which stood for "Untouchable Force Organization"), released a single that bombed.  But the record's B-side -- a song titled "Roxanne, Roxanne" -- became quite popular.

In "Roxanne, Roxanne," each of U.T.F.O.'s three MCs -- the Kangol Kid, Doctor Ice, and the Educated Rapper (a/k/a "EMD") -- take turns complaining about how a stuck-up girl named Roxanne failed to respond to their def rhymes and their other charms.  Frankly, the song is no great shakes, and seemed destined to be quickly forgotten.

But one day, a New York City radio DJ and a local record producer were complaining about how U.T.F.O. had cancelled a live appearance at a show the two were promoting.  A 14-year-old girl named Lolita Shanté Gooden heard the conversation and suggested they produce an answer record to get revenge on the group.

In "Roxanne's Revenge," the precocious singer -- now known as Roxanne Shanté -- puts all three of her would-be seducers in their place.  She has better rhymes than any of them, she brags, and how can a girl be impressed by an MC who doesn't have fresh rhymes?

Here's how she dismisses Kangol:

I met this dude with the name of a hat

I didn't even walk away, I didn't give him no rap . . .

Every time that he sees me, he says a rhyme

But, see, compared to me it's weak compared to mine

In any category I'm considered the best . . .

And everybody knows I will win the contest

Adelaida Martinez

U.T.F.O.'s response was interesting.  They released an answer to the answer, featuring a female rapper named Adelaida Martinez, who claimed to be "the Real Roxanne."  Her response responds to the original "Roxanne, Roxanne" almost line by line, but she belittles the U.T.F.O. threesome just as badly as Roxanne Shanté did.

Here's the Real Roxanne taking on the Educated Rapper:

Your nose is always runny

You look like Bugs Bunny

All your raps are old, ancient as a mummy

Your house is so scummy

Your clothes are so bummy

But now with your hit record all I want is your money

Educated Rapper, You ain't nothing but a dummy

You try to be chummy or you plays gin rummy

I bet makin' love to you must really be crummy

That's some bad rapping.  But both Roxanne answer records were big hits as well.  And that inspired a fourth Roxanne record -- then a fifth -- then a sixth -- and so on and so forth.

Roxanne's entire (fictional) family got into the act.  There was "The Parents of Roxanne" and "Yo, My Little Sister (Roxanne's Brothers)" and "Rappin' Roxy: Roxanne's Sister."  

There was "Do the Roxanne" (which created a dance but didn't diss anyone).

And finally there was "Roxanne's a Man," which claimed that Roxanne was really a transvestite whose manhood had been taken from him in prison, and insulted U.T.F.O. for getting all hot and bothered over a crossdressing sissyboy:

After things had died down, U.T.F.O. issued an answer of its own, insulting Roxanne and claiming never to have liked her in the first place, which generated a second answer from Roxanne Shante.  (Stop the world -- I want to get off!) 

Estimates of the total number of "Roxanne Wars" records range from 30 to over 100.  (That means I could have chosen different Roxanne-themed songs for the February 2012 version of "28 Posts in 28 Days" -- if I had wanted to drive away all my remaining readers, that is.)  Yet not a single Roxanne record is explicated on www.rapgenius.com -- a very surprising oversight on my brother Mahbod Moghadam's part.

Here's a video piece on the Roxanne Wars that aired on "Beef," a BET series that focused on feuds in the world of hip-hop.

It's hard to understand how the "Roxanne Wars" could have happened.  The original song was nothing special, and the first answer was notable mostly for its aggressive tone and amount of profanity.  Rarely does a song generate more than one answer, but somehow the third song in the Roxanne series seems to have opened the floodgates.

Let's all hope nothing like this ever happens again.

Here's the original "Roxanne, Roxanne":

Here's "Roxanne's Revenge" -- recorded in one take, boys and girls:

Here's "The Real Roxanne":




Finally, here's "Roxanne's A Man":

Here's a link you can use to buy "Roxanne, Roxanne" from iTunes:

Here's a link to use if you prefer to use Amazon:

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- "Country Girl" (1970)

Country girl I think you're pretty,

Got to make you understand,

Have no lovers in the city,

Let me be your country man.

In the course of writing this blog, I've discovered a lot of great songs.  I've also rediscovered a lot of great songs that I used to know but had forgotten about.  For some reason, the rediscovery of a forgotten song is even more satisfying than the discovery of a new one.

Bitoni's "Return of
the Prodigal Son"

Until yesterday, "Country Girl" was dead to me, but it is alive again.  It was lost, but now it is found.  (Apologies to Luke 15:32.  By the way, do you remember what the prodigal son spent all his money on?  "Harlots," according to the King James Version.)

Last year, I began a series of posts on songs from albums that everyone listened to in when I was in college.  Those years -- the early 1970's -- was a sort of "Golden Age" of popular music, and I had no problem finding great songs that were also well-known and very popular.

2 or 3 lines has a short attention span, however, and that series has sort of petered out after roughly two dozen posts featuring songs by King Crimson, It's A Beautiful Day, Led Zeppelin, James Gang, Traffic, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Steely Dan, Derek and the Dominoes, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Jethro Tull, Moody Blues, David Bowie, and many others.

I've been ready to move on and post about the music I listened to in law school and afterwards, but felt that I needed to bring the college-era series to a formal close.

I have a long list of remaining "possibles" for that series -- Pink Floyd, Yes, Blind Faith, the Allman Brothers, the Who, Steve Miller, George Harrison, T. Rex, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, among others.  But there was one group from that era that was so popular and so iconic that I simply could not overlook them: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

I was never a huge CSNY fan.  In fact, I never owned any of their records -- as a group, or as solo performers -- while I was in college.  They were a little on the soft side for my taste.  Or to be more accurate, they were a little on the soft side for me to admit that I had a taste for them. 

There is a lot of music from those days that I've always liked, but that didn't fit the image I was trying to project -- not only to the world at large, but also to myself.  I think I've gotten over that now.  But back in the day there were a number of songs (usually sentimental, girly songs) that had an effect on me that I refused to acknowledge -- even to myself.  Some of CSNY's songs fit in that category.

But I didn't think I could claim to have really covered the music of my college years without posting about a CSNY song.  Plus I know that a lot of you love CSNY, and -- let's be honest here -- if I want 2 or 3 lines to remain a wildly popular blog, I've got to keep the customers satisfied.   

Crosby, Stills and Nash

So I took a quick look at the group's first two albums -- the first one without Neil Young and the second (Deja Vu) with him.

I quickly rejected about half the songs on those records.  "Marrakesh Express" is OK, but too lightweight.  "Wooden Ships" is too serious, and the Jefferson Airplane's version is more interesting.  "Guinnevere" sounds more like Simon and Garfunkel than CSNY, plus they misspelled it.  "Teach Your Children" always made me roll my eyes, and "Almost Cut My Hair" is not a song that can be taken seriously.

So what did that leave me with?  "Judy Blue Eyes" is a very interesting song, but also very familiar.  "You Don't Have to Cry," "Pre-Road Downs," and "Carry On" are all very representative of the group's style, but no one of them really stood out for me.  I've listened to "49 Bye-Byes" a few times recently -- the words don't make much sense, but I like the song a lot, and it hasn't been played to death -- so it was probably the leader in the clubhouse.

Neil Young

Then I got to "Country Girl," which I don't think I had heard in at least 30 years.  I think of the group more as CSN than as CSNY, so I resisted using a Neil Young song at first.  But after I listened to "Country Girl" all the way through, I could not say no to it.  

I can't make an intellectual argument for the song, but I can't deny its emotional effect on me.  I have no clue what the song is about -- it's all pretty vague.  The line "Country girl, I think you're pretty" is as sappy as it gets -- I don't think I've ever told a girl or a woman that I think she is "pretty" because I think the word is vapid and unconvincing -- but somehow it works.  

Stehpen Stills has claimed that Deja Vu is the result of 800 hours in the studio.  I don't think of CSNY recordings as being particularly polished in terms of production -- too many of the songs sound pretty casual, and the harmonies wander at times.  But "Country Girl" shows considerable attention to detail.   

"Country Girl" is subtitled "A. Whiskey Boot Hill -- B. Down, Down, Down -- C. Country Girl (I Think You're Pretty)."  But "Country Girl" doesn't sound like three different songs to me -- in contrast to "Judy Blue Eyes," which sounds like three distinct songs that have been stapled together.

Let's listen first to a Neil Young-only version of this song:

I think that version is very good.  But the four-voice harmony and the other instrumental touches that were added to the Deja Vu version add a lot to the song.  Also, Young loses control a little in the last chorus -- he is pounding away on his acoustic guitar and singing at the top of his lungs.  You can't help but be moved by his letting all his emotion come out, but I think most people would say he crossed the line just a little.  (It's always been a challenge for Neil to stay on pitch, and he wanders quite a bit here -- and he overwhelms his microphone as well.)

But I like the fact that he didn't hold back here.  I used to do the same thing on the piano -- at times, I couldn't play loud enough to suit myself.  My audience may have preferred to turn the volume down on me just a bit, but I was having none of it.

The Deja Vu version strikes the perfect balance between transcendence and self-control.  The song builds and builds, but saves something for the end.  The final chorus is like the sun bursting through the clouds.  

Here's CSNY's "Country Girl."  With this song, I am declaring "The College Years" series of 2 or 3 lines posts to be officially over.  That doesn't mean I won't blog about other songs from that era in the future, of course.  But it does mean that I can move on to our next series: "2 or 3 lines: The Law School Years (1974-77)," which will feature songs by Roxy Music, Brian Eno, the Tubes, 10cc, City Boy, the Sparks, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, and others. 

Here's a link to use if you want to buy the song from iTunes:

Here's a link to use if you want to buy it from Amazon:

Talking Heads -- "The Big Country" (1978)

A baseball diamond, nice weather down there.

I see the school and the houses where the kids are. . .

I guess it's healthy, I guess the air is clean.

I guess those people have fun with their neighbors and friends.

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.

I couldn't live like that, no siree!

I couldn't do the things the way those people do.

I wouldn't live there if you paid me to.


The Talking Heads are one of my favorite groups of all time, but this song really rubs me the wrong way.  It is just a bit condescending, n'est-ce pas?  "I guess it's healthy," and "the air is clean" -- but "I wouldn't live there if you paid me."

I'm probably overreacting, but when I hear this song, I can't help but think that singer/songwriter David Byrne is talking about my hometown, which is Joplin, Missouri.

Having grown up in Joplin, it's not surprising that -- like the character in Montgomery Gentry's song, "Hell Yeah" -- I've "got a redneck side when you get [me] agitated."  So I say f*** David Byrne and the horse he rode on.

Armie Hammer

Sure, I moved away from Joplin several decades ago, and have never seriously considered moving back there.  And yes, like the singer of this song, I'm constantly flying high above Joplin and the rest of "flyover country," looking down my nose at middle America as I fly from one coast to the other and back again, taking meetings with all the Silicon Valley types who want to buy my wildly popular blog and all the Hollywood types who want to make a movie about it.  (I think Armie Hammer -- the tall guy who played the rich, preppy Harvard twins who rowed in the Olympics in The Social Network -- should play me.)

But that doesn't mean it's OK for Byrne to make fun of Joplin.  He has a lot of nerve.  After all, Byrne spent his teenage years in Arbutus, Maryland (an unincorporated area just outside the Baltimore city limits).  As anyone who lives around here knows, Arbutus is a REALLY hurting place.  Talk about a place where "I wouldn't live there if they paid me."

"I was a peculiar young man -- borderline Asperger's, I would guess," Byrne once wrote about himself.  I don't know Asperger's from shinola, but Byrne's peculiarity is anything but "borderline."  If you've seen him in the "big suit" in the Talking Heads' concert movie, Stop Making Sense, you know what I mean.

After high school, Byrne left Arbutus for the Rhode Island School of Design, which is in Providence (God give us strength), Rhode Island.  I've been to Providence many, many times, and it is only marginally less hurting than Arbutus.  

Yes, Providence may have Brown University, which is purportedly an Ivy League school.  Brown is an Ivy League school in the same sense that the Yugo was a car.  Here are a few of Brown's more famous alums:

1.  Amy Carter -- the least attractive Presidential daughter ever.  (There have been Presidential sons I'd rather kiss than her.)  We saw her in a local ice-cream place once many years ago, and she was showing off for her friends and making a lot of trouble for the waitress -- what a jerk.  Her greatest achievement as an adult seems to have been illustrating her annoying father's 1995 children's book, The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.  To give Brown credit, they kicked her out for academic reasons after her sophomore year.

Amy Carter's wedding picture

Ted Turner

2.  Ted Turner -- a spoiled little rich kid who grew up to be a spoiled rich guy who still acts like a spoiled little rich kid.  He initially majored in classics at Brown, but his daddy said that he "almost puked" when he heard the news and made him switch to economics.  Ted never graduated either -- he had a woman in his dorm room, which was apparently frowned upon back in the day.  Brown later gave him an honorary degree in recognition of his many accomplishments, which have included calling observers of Ash Wednesday "Jesus freaks," telling Charlie Rose in 2008 that within ten years "most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals" due to global warming, and colorizing many classic black-and-white movies.  He also has opined that Americans should have no more than two children.  (Turner has five children, by the way.)

3.  Chris Berman -- veteran ESPN announcer.  I am shocked that Chris Berman graduated from any college.  He was a pretty funny guy about 100 years ago, but so were Moe, Larry, and Curly, and none of them were ever mistaken for Ivy Leaguers.

4.  The current governors of Rhode Island, Delaware, and Louisiana.  You'd be hard-pressed to find three more hurting states.

Anyway, my point is that Byrne has a lot of nerve making fun of Joplin.  

Tina Weymouth

Byrne is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  When he and fellow Rhode Island School of Design student Chris Frantz were forming the Talking Heads, they persuaded Frantz's girlfriend (Tina Weymouth) to learn to play bass guitar because they couldn't find a bass player.

They were living in New York City at the time.  I'm guessing there were thousands of unemployed bass guitarists in New York City in 1975.  But Byrne and Frantz decided the best thing to do was have Frantz's girlfriend learn how to play the bass from scratch.  (Frantz must have wanted to cry after the Talking Heads became major stars.  Can you imagine, all of a sudden you are a major rock star and your girlfriend is in the band, so she's around when you are on tour?)  

One final note.  Byrne is a cycling activist, and has a regular cycling column in the New York Times.  He rides a Montague folding bike.  I like nothing more than riding my bikes, but you would not catch me dead on a bike named "Montague."

Gould as Marlowe

One of my favorite movies of all times is Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye -- Altman's take on Raymond Chandler, starring a very confused Elliott Gould as the iconic private eye, Philip Marlowe.

There's a scene in the movie where a gangster named Marty Augustine and several of his thugs visit Marlowe, whom Augustine believes has knowledge of the whereabouts of a large sum of money that has been stolen from Augustine.  Augustine's girlfriend -- a sweet, innocent young woman -- is in the group.  After demonstrating to Marlowe how much he cares for this woman -- "I sleep with a lot of girls," he says to her," but I make love to you" -- he picks up an 1970's-style glass Coke bottle and brutally smashes her in the face with it.  It is perhaps the most shocking and appalling thing I've ever seen in a movie.

As the girlfriend writhes on the floor, screaming in pain, Augustine speaks to Marlowe. "That's someone I love, and you I don't even like," he says.  "Find my money!"




So what is my point?  My point is that I love the Talking Heads.  Imagine what I would write about a band that I didn't even like.

Here's "The Big Country":

Here's a link you can use to order the song on iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to order it from Amazon:

Run-DMC -- "King of Rock" (1985)

Now we're the baddest of the bad

The coolest of the cool

I'm DMC, I rock and roll 

I'm DJ Run, I rock and rule

It's not a trick or treat 

And it's not an April fool

It's all brand new 

Never ever old school

Say good-bye to "old school" rap, students.  Today's "Hip-Hop 101" lecture will introduce you to one of the most important of the second-generation rap groups.

Run-DMC's sound and look was "all brand new" indeed -- radically different from that of old school hip-hoppers like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.  They were the first rap artists to break through into the pop culture mainstream.  

Among other things, Run-DMC was the first hip-hop group to have a gold album, the first hip-hop act to make the cover of Rolling Stone, the first hip-hop act to appear on "American Bandstand" and on "Saturday Night Live," the first hip-hop act to be nominated for a Grammy, and the first hip-hop act to have a music video played on MTV. 

Run-DMC consisted of MCs Joseph "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, and DJ Jason "Jam-Master Jay" Mizell, all of whom were from the Hollis neighborhood in Queens.  Run's older brother, Russell Simmons, an early-day rap promoter, helped them get a record deal, and the trio released its first single in 1983, when all three were still teenagers.  

Run-DMC

Run-DMC's sound was closer to hard rock than disco or funk -- it was hard-hitting, stripped-down music that gave a prominent place to electric guitars.  First-generation rappers tended to dress more like disco and funk stars, while Run-DMC went for a more "street" style.  The group's trademark look featured black fedoras, jeans or tracksuits, and unlaced Adidas sneakers.  (That company eventually signed them to an endorsement contract.)

DMC later explained the reason for the group's low-key style:

[T]he performance became the attention-getter and not how good you looked, how many curls you had in your hair.  It was just about the beats and the rhyme. . . . [T]hat was the reason why people related to us -- even the rock 'n' roll kids, the white kids.  They could relate to us because we was just like the guys on the corner they saw, or the guys they went to school with, or the people they worked with. . . . We're normal guys, but we're good, and this is who we be.

Larry "Bud" Melman

The music video for the "King of Rock" single -- the first hip-hop video to air on MTV -- opens with Run and DMC pushing past a security guard (played by David Letterman sidekick, Larry "Bud" Melman) and entering a faux rock 'n' roll museum.  (The Rock and Roll Hame of Fame and Museum wasn't opened until almost a decade later.)  

Once inside, our boys go a little nuts.  They knock a Michael Jacksonesque white glove off its pedestal and walk on it, disdainfully unplug a TV showing a live performance by Jerry Lee Lewis, grab one of the Fender Stratocaster guitars on display and wave it around menacingly (perhaps in imitation of Pete Townshend of the Who preparing to smash his Stratocaster on stage), and break a pair of replica Elvis Presley sunglasses.  The video was viewed by some as Run-DMC's striking a symbolic blow against the music establishment, which had generally dissed rap. 

The oddest part of the video is a shot of DMC dropping a fedora on to one of four small busts that are obviously meant to depict the Beatles.  That shot is accompanied by this line from the song: 

There's three of us, but we're not the Beatles

John Lennon had been murdered several years earlier, leaving only three Beatles living at the time the video was filmed.

Joseph "Run" Simmons -- now known as "Rev Run" -- and his family are the stars of the long-running MTV reality show, "Run's House." 

Rev Run and family

Older brother Russell Simmons hasn't done too badly either.  He and music legend Rick Rubin founded Def Jam Records in 1984, and Simmons has also produced television shows and movies and created clothing lines (the best known of which is Phat Farm).  He is said to be the third richest man in hip-hop, with an estimated net worth of $340 million.

Here's the music video for "King of Rock":

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to buy it from Amazon:

Drake (ft. T.I. and Swizz Beats) -- "Fancy" (2010)

You fancy, huh?

You fancy, huh?

Nails done, hair done, everything did

Nails done, hair done, everything did

You fancy, huh?

"Fancy" fascinated me the very first time I heard it, and it still does.  I will never leave my car when this song is on the car radio -- I simply must sit there and listen until it's over.

Drake

"Fancy" is about what I find to be some very mysterious mating rituals.  It wasn't that hard to decipher the song's lyrics -- with a little help from my friends at Rap Genius (shout out to my brother Mahbod!) -- but that doesn't mean that I really understand what's going on here.  

It's like trying to figure out what's really going on in the minds of the men and women in a Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope novel.  You understand English so you know the meanings of the words the authors use.  But can an American living in the 21st century really appreciate why the characters in a 19th-century English novel do the things they do?  Only to a very limited extent, I think.

It's like that with "Fancy."  I'm an old white guy, and the guys who sing "Fancy" are not.  There are plenty of other things that distinguish us, too.  So I'm sure there's a lot of subtle stuff in these lyrics that goes right over my head.

In the first verse, Drake raps about a woman who takes a long time to get ready to go out at night:

You getting ready so I know we goin' be here awhile

In the bathroom, flat irons and nail files

Spending hours in salons on your hairstyles

In the mall steady racking up the air miles

I figured out all by myself that the last line referred to the woman earning frequent-flyer miles by using a credit card to buy things at the mall, but Rap Genius explained one detail that I wouldn't have figured out for myself. 

Drake is Canadian -- which makes him an African-Canadian, I guess? -- and "air miles" specifically refers to the "Air Miles Reward Program," a popular Canadian customer loyalty program that rewards members with points based on how much money they spend at participating retailers.

While waiting around for this woman to get ready is annoying, Drake admits that she is worth the wait:

Time heals all, and heels hurt to walk in

But they go with the clutch that you carry your lip gloss in

And look I really think that nobody does it better

I love the way you put it together

Not only that, Drake's woman is well-educated, and he's always liked his women "book and street smart."



The T.I. sneer

 T.I. picks up the song at this point.  (T.I. is one of my favorites, partly because he can curl his upper lip in this really cool sneer when he sings.  I so wish I could sneer like T.I.)  He's surprised when a woman he meets seems to be motivated by considerations other than money:

Well aren’t you a breath of fresh air

From all these superficial gold-digging bitches in here

T.I. is used to being hustled, and the woman who catches his eye -- she's drinking at the bar with some girlfriends -- surprises him when she declines his offer of a free drink.  She's financially independent, not looking to hook up with an NBA player or other professional athlete or celebrity.  

He's interested, so he checks her out a little more closely:

Naked ring finger (check)

M3 beemer (check)

Champagne Range

Triple white Jag

Closet full of brand new clothes and hand bags

Alexander McQueen, Prada, Gucci, Chanel

D&G, BCBG, Versace, Louis and Bebe


In other words, she's not married and she has plenty of money of her own -- how else would she be able to afford a BMW M3, a Range Rover and a Jaguar, not to mention a closet full of designer outfits and handbags?  

NARS blushes

A little later in the song, Drake alludes to another brand name: "Orgasm" blush, a cosmetic product sold by the NARS company.  NARS also makes "Super Orgasm" blush, which it describes as "the universally flattering shimmering peachy pink blush [that] gives the effect of an ultimate super uh huh afterglow."  (Thing kind of thing is why 2 or 3 lines desperately needs a female intern.  Or at least it's one of the reasons.)

T.I. sums up his initial impression in these words (rather crude, but he makes his point clearly): 

You ain't needy, greedy or easy 

As these other breezies

Who f*** for bottles of Riesling 

Or bowls of baked ziti.

In other words, don't expect this woman to go to bed with you just because you bought her some wine and pasta at a cheap Italian restaurant -- especially when the wine is completely inappropriate for the cuisine.  

Drake takes over again for the last part of the song.  Like T.I., he is surprised -- but pleasantly surprised -- by a woman's refusal of his offer to pick up the tab.  He admits that he used to go for cougars, especially if they were educated and had enough money of their own to pony up some cash if he was a little short, and then mentions his friend Jason, whose girlfriend Tammy had a purple Bentley.  (The MSRPs for Bentleys range from $177,600 to $267,000.)

We go to dinner 

You don’t even look at me to pay

Mature women with more than me 

Were the first to tempt me

And Jason had this girl Tammy 

With a purple Bentley

How she got it I ain't never get to ask

Yeah, but shout out to the homeowners

The girls that got diplomas

And enough money 

To loan us a little something extra

Should we ever need it

Damn!

It sounds like Drake is quite taken with this young lady. He's been looking for the woman of his dreams for a long, long time, and is surprised and pleased to have found her at last.  At the same time, he is a pragmatist:

Better late than never

But never late is better

Well put, my African-Canadian friend!

The "You fancy, huh?" line from the chorus of this song has become an oft-used catch phrase of mine -- so oft-used, in fact, that my 16-year-old gives me that look whenever I use it in his presence.  (You parents of teenagers know what I mean by that look.)  I find it suitable for use in many different situations, and I feel so very, very cool when I use it.

Here's "Fancy."  (The complete lyrics are in the first comment to the video if you'd like to sing along.)

Here's a link you can use to buy it from iTunes:

Here's a link to use to buy it from Amazon instead:

Montgomery Gentry -- "Hell Yeah" (2002/2003)

He works way too much for way too little

He drinks way too early 'til way too late

He hasn't had a raise since New Year's Day in '88

Gets trampled on by everyone 

'Cept when he comes in here

He's a product of the Haggard generation

He's got a redneck side when you get him agitated

He got the gold tooth look from a stiff right hook he's proud he took

For his right-wing stand on Vietnam

Says he lost his brother there

He yells out "Johnny Cash!"

And the band starts to play 

"Ring of Fire" as he walks up 

And stands there by the stage

And he says

"Hell yeah, turn it up, right on!"

That's right -- 2 or 3 lines is featuring a country-western song.  You got a problem with that?

(You're thinking to yourself that 2 or 3 lines has finally jumped the shark, aren't you?  I mean, we're jumping from pop bimbos like Ke$ha and Nicki Minaj to what's shaping up to be an ENDLESS history of rap music to a country-western song?  Folks, 2 or 3 lines jumped the shark a long, long time ago.  And I'm afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better.)

I shouldn't have waited this long to do a country song -- a lot of you probably thought that I didn't like country music, or that I see myself as too good for country music or something -- that my you-know-what don't stink.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Just like the guy described in the lines from "Hell Yeah" that are quoted above, I am 100% redneck by birth.  I have a perverse pride in being a redneck, and you'll never catch me denying that I am  one.

My wife does NONE of these things!

My ancestors are nearly all English, and when they fell on hard times in England, they came to Virginia sometime in the 1700s.  I don't know precisely why they came to Virginia, but I assume they were having trouble making a go of it in the old country -- would you really pack up and take a dangerous and uncomfortable sea voyage to settle your family in a wilderness if you were making beaucoup bucks in Ye Merry Olde?

After a couple of generations in Virginia, my ancestors moved to Kentucky and Tennessee -- presumably because things didn't work out according to plan in Virginia.  Later they moved to Missouri and Arkansas -- obviously life sucked pretty bad in Kentucky and Tennessee if they were that desperate.  



One of my great-great-grandfathers founded Ava, the county seat of Douglas County, Missouri -- where parts of the movie Winter's Bone were filmed.  If you've seen the movie, you'll know that Douglas County ain't exactly California.  I took my kids to see Winter's Bone so they could see how things might have turned out for us if those ancestors had ended up on the wrong side of the law.

Speaking of California, my forebears were apparently too clueless to keep going west to California 80 years ago when even John Steinbeck's Okies were able to figure out that was the smart move. 


Even they were smarter than my ancestors

 Nope, my folks stayed right where they were -- in places like Neosho, Missouri, and Goshen, Arkansas (near Fayetteville).  

Given all that, why don't I listen to country music?  I have listened to a fair amount of country-western at times.  I listened to it all the time when I was in law school in Boston -- all part of that perverseness I mentioned earlier.  (The Harvard University radio station had a weekly show that featured equal parts outlaw country and traditional/bluegrass music -- it was called "Hillbilly at Harvard," and it's slogan was "Country music for eastern New England.") 

My daughters -- who grew up in suburban Washington, DC, and went to a Catholic girls' high school, for cryin' out loud -- have been country music fans for years.  My sister and nearly all of my Arkansas cousins (of which there are several thousand, many of whom are married to each other, or at least very close friends) listen to it.  

But I haven't listened to country music regularly for a long time.  But occasionally I will stumble across a good country song that will stick in my brain. 

By "good country song," I mean one with a heapin' helpin' of ATTITUDE.  "Hell Yeah" certainly qualifies.  

(By the way, I assumed until I was writing this post that Montgomery Gentry was one guy.  But it turns out that the name refers to a country music duo with two singers -- Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry.  Live and learn . . .)

I've been writing a lot about hip-hop music recently.  One reason it appeals to me is that my wife thinks I am far too old and upper-middle-class to listen to it, and I'm contrary enough to listen to it for that reason alone.  Also, rap songs are so chock-full of words, and can be so clever or funny or outrageous that they appeal to me intellectually as well.  But rap songs usually don't tell a story and rarely have good characters.

"Hell Yeah" is a brilliant character sketch.  We meet two characters who are very different people, but who end up in the same place (a redneck bar), doing the same thing (yelling out song requests to the band).

I'm going to call the first character "Joe."  We learn in the first verse that he has a deadend job and a drinking problem.  Although the song doesn't tell us this explicitly, I don't think Joe went to college.  And I'm betting his wife kicked him out about 20 years ago, and he's been living in a one-bedroom apartment or a trailer park ever since.

Joe grew up on Merle Haggard, and supported the war in Vietnam not for political reasons, but because his brother fought and died there.  So be careful what you say about Vietnam around him.  You may be 20 years younger and 50 pounds heavier, but Joe's is going to come after you if you say the wrong thing, sucker.

Once Joe's had a couple of beers more than are good for him, the bar band starts playing "Ring of Fire," and that's all he needs to go a little crazy.  (Say what you will about Joe, but he has good taste in music.)

Why "Ring of Fire"?  Because that's what Joe was listening to with his brother back before Vietnam.  It's a great song -- but more importantly, it's a song that evokes a particular time and place for Joe.

Now let's meet the other character in "Hell Yeah" -- I'm going to call her Amy.

She's got MBA and a plush corner office

She's got a don't-mess-with-me attitude

She'll close the deal, she don't reveal that she can feel

The loneliness, the emptiness 

'Cept when she comes in here

She's a product of the Me Generation

She's got a rock 'n' roll side when you get her agitated

She's got the tattoo there on her derriere from a spring-break dare

In Panama where love was all 

She thought she'd ever need

She yells out to the band, 

"Know any Bruce Springsteen?"

Then she jumps up on the bar

And she starts to scream

She says,

"Hell yeah, turn it up, right on!"

(Note: as any redneck would know, "Panama" does not refer to the country where the Panama Canal is, but to Panama City, Florida, a popular spring-break destination for drunken college kids that sits smack-dab in the middle of the stretch of Gulf Coast beaches known as the "Redneck Riviera.")

Spring break at Panama City Beach, Florida

Amy is a somewhat more problematic character than Joe.  You might say Joe is a bit of a cliche, but Joe's a somewhat more convincing character than Amy is.  

If Montgomery Gentry had asked me, I would have told them to make Amy a little less successful in business.  I'd give her a business degree from some no-name state college, not an MBA.  And I wouldn't give her a "plush corner office" -- I'd make her a salesperson, working mostly on commission, cold-calling strangers in the hope of landing some new business.

But the rest of the portrait of Amy is dead on.  She's a generation younger than Joe is -- maybe 35 years old, while he is 55 or so -- but they aren't so different.  She's working too hard to have much of a personal life -- or maybe the only guys she meets are jerks and losers -- so she ends up having one too many drinks at some random dive on her way home from work.  (The bar where she and Joe are drinking is Joe's regular place, I think, but not hers.)  

And why does she want to hear "The Boss"?  Same reason Joe gets excited when "Ring of Fire" is performed.  Springsteen evokes a special time and place for her -- namely, a bar in Panama City when she had just turned 21 and was about to get a tattoo on her derriere.  (In a way, she's sorry to have the tattoo today -- but she's not sorry she got it.  I bet that she and her friends had a helluva lot of fun that night.)

There's no indication in the song that Joe and Amy have any kind of contact.  They don't have a drink together, or go back to Joe's trailer park, or fall in love and get married -- not a chance.  They are just two solitary people, drinking to forget their troubles, until the music suddenly strikes a spark and they are up on their feet, singing along, and shouting out a request when that song is over.

This song gets you going and puts you in a great mood, even though it is about two fundamentally unhappy characters.  It captures that moment when you have had a little too much to drink, but not a lot too much. 

A couple of more drinks and your mood will turn from euphoric to desperate or angry, and you'll start to feel sorry for yourself as you realize it's well after midnight and your alarm is going to wake you up at 6 am in the morning.

But right now -- at this exact moment -- you're energetic and excited . . . the band has just begun to play a song you love, and you're going to sing along to it at the top of your lungs.  For the next three minutes, everything will be just fine.

Tomorrow's another story, of course -- but for now, to quote Matthew 6:34, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Here's the official music video for "Hell Yeah," which has a much more light-hearted spirit than the gloomy spin I put on it:

Here's a link you can use to buy the song on iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to buy it from Amazon:

Clara Engel -- "Madagascar" (2009) (part 2 of 2)

You could take me down 

With one touch of your scorn 

Your kiss like a whip 

Your caress full of thorns 

Desire desirous 

Pleasure that tears itself apart

(Click here if you haven't read part 1 of this post.)

In the first part of this post, I talked about the lyrics of "Madagascar."  Now let's talk a little about the music.

"Madagascar" -- which is track 6 on Clara's 2009 album, Secret Beasts -- is musically very different from "Accompanied by Dreams."  (Click here for a different video of Clara performing that song.)

"Madagascar" is mostly just Clara Engel's voice and percussion -- although there's some guitar and even a little trumpet.  The drums sound somewhat tribal -- as in African -- which is appropriate given where the angels hail from.  But Clara does other songs where she is accompanied by similar drums.

Clara Engel

Clara sings the first verses quietly, although she sings with considerable intensity.  She doesn't really start to cut loose until about two minutes into the song, when the first chorus begins.

There are two brief post-chorus bridges where Clara wails wordlessly to a noisy and dissonant instrumental accompaniment.  The second one of these passages -- which begins at about 3:35 -- is real possessed-by-spirits stuff that is almost certainly going to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  

The volume then gets turned down and the song closes as quietly as it began with a repeat of the first six lines -- it's just Clara's singing and some drums.  

I might have ended the song after that second chorus/bridge, when both the volume and the emotional intensity were at peak levels.  (To borrow a joke from This Is Spinal Tap, on a scale of one to 10, "Madagascar" hits 11 here.)  I understand why Clara wanted to repeat the first verse -- it's a really good verse, and there's got to be a temptation to sing it again to make sure your listeners get it.  

In addition, it enables her to come down slowly from that second chorus/bridge and allow the audience's heart rates to return to normal levels.  Perhaps ending the song as abruptly as I've suggested -- with the drums pounding and the horns blasting and Clara wailing -- would have been too shocking.

"Secret Beasts" cover

We just had a close call, boys and girls.  If Clara hadn't e-mailed me, I probably would have never heard this song.  It's a little discouraging to realize how much good music I'm missing out on today, not to mention all the music from 10 years, or 20 years, or 30 years ago that I overlooked at the time and will likely never stumble across in the future.  

The same is true for books, of course -- and movies.  And women, too, of course.  Life is just too short.  You barely have time to scratch the surface. 

But let's look on the bright side.  Kismet brought Clara Engel's music to me, and now I'm bringing it to you.  Let's look at the glass as half full, not half empty.  In the words of the old hymn, let's "count our blessings, name them one by one."

And now that the hymn is over, it's time to pass the collection plate.  Remember that stuff at the beginning of this post about your having a chance to become a patron of the arts?

Here's how Clara described life as an independent musician to another blogger:

I’m independent, yes. I am working with two small labels right now . . . . In terms of business, at the moment, I’m horribly broke and can’t afford to record. 

Music scenes, and maybe all art ‘scenes’ are usually run by nepotism. [Note: I'm think she's talking about "cronyism" more than "nepotism."]  If you don’t know the right people, and you aren’t good at mingling and social climbing, you become isolated. No one will hear you, no one will book you. It doesn’t matter how strong your material is. . . .

The people who buy my music online mostly live in Europe and in the USA. I’ve experienced such kindness, support, and generosity from my online listeners -- it’s amazing. But it’s a hard balance, and a huge job: marketing oneself and creating. I want to devote my time and energy to my work, not to promoting myself on Twitter. That just seems like a waste of my mental resources.

I do value my independence, artistically speaking -- I would never ever want to be bound to a label that put limits on my creativity or withheld any of my output. I am my own boss. I will always be independent in that sense. I don’t have a desire to be rich, but I would love to be a self-sustaining indie artist, and I’m still in the process of figuring out how to do that.

I want to single out two of the things she said:

1.  "I’m horribly broke and can’t afford to record."

2.   "I want to devote my time and energy to my work, not to promoting myself on Twitter. That just seems like a waste of my mental resources."

And here's something else she said without coming right out and saying it:

3.  Clara LOVES music and nothing is going to stop her from creating it.  (I love music, but I don't think I LOVE it -- given the way I've lived my life, I must love other stuff more.)

One way to support Clara's music is to go online and buy one of her albums -- or at least buy a couple of her songs.  Here's a link to her web store.  (Some of her stuff is available on iTunes and Amazon, so you can buy from them if you prefer.  But quite a few of her songs are only available through her web store, and don't iTunes and Amazon have enough money already?)

You can use this link to listen to and then buy "Madagascar."  (It only costs a dollar, for cryin' out loud.  Archduke Rudolf had to give Beethoven thousands of crowns, or florins, or thalers, or whatever they called Benjamins back in the day.  Of course, he did get his name on the Fourth Piano Concerto.)  

But there's an even better way to become Clara's patron.  Click here and you'll be taken to Clara's Kapipal page.  

I had never heard of Kapipal until now.  It's what is called a "crowd funding" site that enables you to create a web page where friends and strangers can contribute money to you or to your cause.  Maybe you want to raise money for earthquake relief in Japan, or you need help to pay for your wedding -- or for a new music album you hope to record -- so you post a link to your Kapipal page on Facebook or whatever and hope that your friends and family come through.

Click here to learn more about Kapipal.

Any money that you send to Clara via Kapipal is going to help pay for the recording and editing of her new album.  I'm giving you a chance to assist in the creation of a work of art -- and if Clara's work to date is any indication, it will be a very original and very provocative work of art as well.

There are several ways to go here.  You can donate as little as $10 and Clara will list your name in the album credits.  But for $15, you'll get a download of the album.  And for $30, you'll get not only a free download but also a CD of the album, which Clara will autograph for you.

Clara figures that if she can raise only $3000, she can produce her new album.  That's not a lot of money -- it doesn't sound to me like you have to worry about your contributions being wasted on chaffeur-driven limos or cocaine.  

If you like "Madagascar," this is a no-brainer.  But even if you don't know what in the hell to make of "Madagascar," that doesn't mean you can't help a sister out.  

So you can do the right thing, or you can just turn the page -- or, in this case, close your browser.  I hoping that a few of you will decide to help Clara get to her goal.

Click here to listen to "Madagascar."

Once again, here's a video of Clara performing "Madagascar" live:

Here's a link to Clara's Facebook page.

And here's a link to her Myspace page.

(By the way, Madagascar -- an island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa -- is the 4th largest island in the world.  Not counting Antarctica and Australia -- which are usually considered continents, the four biggest islands in the world are Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, and Madagascar.  Madagascar is slightly larger than France and quite a bit larger than California, and has a population of 20 million people, which is more than New York and almost as many Texas. ) 

Madagascar