Tuesday, August 17, 2010

SONG #141: Stand Up

Al Green, Call Me, 1973





Hello again!  Thanks for indulging my vacation-- I almost wrote a blog or two on the road, but I had really let my brain settle in at about 80% functionality, and I figured I better wait until I got home to try to communicate anything.  Not that I'm at full strength today-- I just took a two hour nap this afternoon after sleeping in.  Hopefully, you had a chance to read some old blogs in my absence.  More likely, you just now thought, "Oh, right!  That blog!"  Either way, back to business.

Most of the time, vacation for me means not much music.  I'm surrounded by people I rarely get to see, and by the time I put Will to sleep, I can barely keep my eyes open.  The one musical moment that does stick out from the last two weeks happened at the beach with the blog gal's family.  My sister-in-law Annie (who is a real writer-- her book's being excerpted in Time Magazine in a month or so) was cooking, and had Pandora playing on her laptop, and one fantastic soul song after another came on.  I went in to compliment her on her taste, and when I discovered it was a free internet radio station, I thought of how much easier it is now to hear music than when I was a kid.  

Take today's artist, Al Green-- when I was in high school, no Al Green records were in print.  Crazy, but true-- he hadn't been put on CD yet, and the Hi Records catalog was in shambles.  So if you're me, and you want to check out this "Al Green" you've been hearing about, you either have to listen to soul radio and hope you get lucky (and there's no soul radio in the 'burbs), go to a used record store and pay way too much for a used copy of one of his records, or just put him on the "to hear someday" list.  It was a great day in the reissue-crazy 90s when I finished my "to hear someday" list (not sure who the last artist was-- maybe German art-weirdos Can).  My sister-in-law is not a record collector, but thanks to Pandora, she's extremely well-versed in classic soul.  That's a beautiful thing about the internet age, and it reminds me why not everyone has a 20K iPod.  If you don't mind someone else playing DJ, you don't need one.  

The other thing that struck me as I casually listened to Pandora's choices for an hour was that, one after another, they were soul artists who had incredible hot streaks, and then completely crashed and burned.  My one decent epiphany of the vacation (other than I need to be more careful when I bodysurf at 40 than at 30, and that ice cream always tastes better dipped in chocolate) was that soul singers share a remarkably similar career arc to comedians.  Both seem to discover their voice, absolutely own their art for about five years, and then lose their touch utterly and completely.  That doesn't happen in other fields-- painters don't have five year hot streaks, nor do writers, or even other genres of musicians.  It seems particularly to plague comedians and soul singers.  As Howard Cosell used to say, let's go to the videotape:

Visionary, great comedians who suddenly lost it and became shockingly unfunny:

Bill Cosby-- Owns the 1960s.  By 1979, his standup is wretched.  His TV career follows the same pattern-- The Cosby Show was solid (if unwatchable in reruns), but all other attempts were cringeworthy.  Plus, there's Leonard Part 6.





Richard Pryor-- Owns the 1970s.  As funny as a person has ever been.  Then, suddenly and tragically not funny around 1982.  Legend forever tarnished by The Toy, perhaps the most misguided film by any major comedian.




"na·dir 

[ney-der, ney-deer]–noun: the lowest point; point of greatest adversity or despair."



Robin Williams-- Amazingly funny from late 70s to early 80s.  If you haven't heard his first comedy album, Reality... What a Concept, try to find it.  I think it's genius.  And then... have you seen a Robin Williams movie lately?  Hoo boy.  Low point by far: Patch Adams.  Absolutely unforgivable.  That movie was so manipulative and cloying and awful that I felt like I'd been emotionally harassed by it.  It's the film equivalent of the date-rapist preppy guy in 80s teen flicks.



"Your terminal illness is funny if I put this red nose on!  Watch!  I'll show you!  Knock knock.  (Who's there?) The angel of death.   HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!  Want me to do a funny genie voice?   Hello?"



Eddie Murphy-- Owns the early 1980s.  Replaces Pryor as funniest man on earth.  And then... wow.  He now seems to be in a race with Burt Reynolds to see who can make more terrible movies.  By my count, it's still a landslide at 40-23 Burt*, but Eddie has decades of crud ahead of him.   Eddie does have nine good movies, but only two since 1988.  And Norbit and Pluto Nash should each count as -10.



What can you say here?  Truly-- what possible caption could communicate what's going on in this photograph?


Jerry Seinfeld-- Owns the early 1990s.  Has had the good sense to go into semi-retirement just as he started to grate.  If he comes back, I believe we're in for some serious schtick.  How quickly have Seinfeld reruns aged, by the way?  It's crazy-- they look and sound and feel really old already.  It's like watching Love, American Style.

There are plenty of other examples (George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Steve Martin, Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks, David Cross, etc.)  Needless to say, I'm pretty scared to see what Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle do next.  They both feel like they're staring at the abyss to me.

So there you go-- comedians seem to be able to put their finger on the pulse for about five years, and ride the zeitgeist, and then they're not only done, but totally superfluous.  Once they lose their connection, their ability to hear the hidden rhythms in our society, they can't communicate at all.

It's the same with almost every soul singer that I love.  Here's an incomplete list off the top of my head, but enough of one to make my point:

Aretha Franklin-- After scuttling for years, she strikes gold at Muscle Shoals in 1967 with Atlantic, and is the greatest singer on the planet for about five years.  Then she rides the "Freeway Of Love" to the all-you-can-eat diner for the next 40 years and counting.



Eddie Murphy in Norbit.  No, wait  That's the other... oh.  Oh, dear...  um...


Bill Withers-- Makes a series of terrific sides in the early 70s; by the end of the 70s, he's the worst kind of sappy, syrupy hack.

Bonnie Raitt-- Don't think she's a soul singer?  Listen to her first five albums or so.  Then do yourself a favor and STOP LISTENING!  It gets really sad really quickly.  I'm thrilled for her that she had a resurgence and made some dough-- she seems like a terrific person-- but I'm not a huge fan of those records.

Lauryn Hill-- I think the Fugees record and Miseducation are great.  Ms. Hill then seems to have gone quite mad.  The MTV Unplugged 2.0 record is among the worst I've ever heard.  It's like watching someone pretend to be a star in her bedroom through a two-way mirror.  So disconcerting.

Otis Redding-- Now, Otis dies at the height of his fame, so he's a different story, but my guess is that the 70s would have been very unkind to him.  Perhaps my favorite singer of all time, by the way.  If I had to pick one voice, it might very well be Otis Redding.

Stevie Wonder-- If you count Little Stevie Wonder and Grown-Up, Artistic Control Stevie Wonder as two artists, then he belongs here too.  Stevie will get his own blog someday.

Prince-- Again, Prince needs his own entry, but if you take away his work from 1980-1987, would you even consider him a good artist?

Curtis Mayfield-- Starting to see a pattern here?

Donny Hathaway-- Or here?

Mable John-- See Blog #8.

Sly Stone-- See Blog #79.

See what I mean?  There's something going on.  What is it about comedy and soul singing that links them in this way?  Why are these careers impossible to maintain?  

Here's my theory: to be a great comedian, you have to be willing to reveal everything about yourself.  You have to be unafraid to admit to your greatest weaknesses and faults.  While you're usually likable because you're so funny, you also usually reveal yourself to be miserable at the same time.  Comedians are rarely having a good time-- it's what allows them to tune in to society's foibles in ways that the rest of us can't.  The greatest comedians always make me feel smart because they make me say "Yeah!  I noticed that too!" to myself, and then incredibly dumb because I needed them to point out the importance of that insight I knew but had done nothing with.

Great soul music does the same thing to me.  The best songs make me feel smart because I can get lost in the music and agree with all the musical choices being made, and emotionally smart because they make me feel consciously in ways I had felt only subconsciously .  And then, at the same time, I feel dumb because I needed a song to show me how I was feeling.  That's my admiration for both forms.  They give me that sense of catharsis that we've been searching for since Aristotle coined the term; both forms make me feel better because they explain to me why I wasn't feeling better to begin with.  

And that's why I think you burn out after half a decade-- who can keep up that kind of honesty and pace and openness and rawness?  Things get in the way-- for example, you make money, or you get married, or you have some kids, or you finally go to therapy, or you're consumed by your demons, or whatever.  Any one of those changes can disconnect you from the secret voices you were hearing.  You need someone else to carry that load.  And so the torch keeps being passed to the next brilliant misanthrope who tears him or herself open so we can see ourselves.

Now... I told you all that to tell you this.**  The thing that struck me about that Pandora playlist was that you could let all that music blend together so easily and use it as a nostalgia soundtrack.  In the early 80s, the movie The Big Chill suggested that 60s soul music was invented for 30-something white people to listen to at reunions while they cooked dinner together and realized the existential nightmares their lives had become without peace rallies and flower power.




Boy did I hate The Big Chill.



To Pandora and my sister-in-law's credit, in the hour I listened, I mostly heard songs on the 20K list.  Nevertheless, great soul music and good soul music sometimes is difficult to separate.  It has a sound and a feel, and if all you're listening for is that, then it's easy for lesser artists to slide right on by.  Same with comedy-- any good comedian can hang in there for five minutes.  "Hey-- I was just on a Jet Blue flight, and I was wondering what would happen if that crazy flight attendant was the pilot???  I think it would go something like this..."

Which brings us to this Al Green song.  I've chosen this song so you can ask yourself this same question-- is this song good or great soul music?  This song is from Green's best album, but is not a song that's ever received significant airplay.  

The truth about Al Green's work from this period is that it all sounds the same-- there's a very specific aesthetic to the Hi Records catalog, and every song follows it.  On the Al Green records of the early 70s, I think they hit on a pitch-perfect approach.  The first thing you'll notice is the drums.  These are the most straightforward, untreated drum tracks you'll ever hear.  It's hard to play that slow and simple and specifically, but these tracks pull it off over and over, with the bass offering small rhythmic alterations with extremely tasteful fills.  Then there's that fantastic guitar-- just a hint of distortion, bubbling around the beat and vocal, emphasizing the most melodic qualities of the electric guitar.  The final touch are the horns, always understated but essential-- you might not even notice them in the verses until your second time through the track.  Listening to early-70s Al Green makes me feel like I'm moving in slow motion.  It's as slow as a song can be and still be dance music, but it's serious dance music-- if the term wasn't woefully underused, I'd say "Stand Up" is, more than anything, sexy.

The final piece of the puzzle, of course, is Al Green's voice.  He's got such complete control over the songs from 1971-1975 that what he does sounds effortless.  I can tell you that these songs are hard as hell to reproduce, though.  Trying to cover Al Green songs will make you feel pretty unfunky pretty quickly, especially if you have to try to sing them.  Green holds notes forever with painful dexerity-- I don't know how he keeps notes going using so little breath.

Robert Christgau says "Stand Up" is the "subtlest black identity song ever."  Interesting reading-- it does sound like a call to arms to take advantage of the moment-- "tomorrow's about to come."  I like the reading of the song as a more laid-back "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved" or "We Got To Have Peace," but Green's work is rarely that overtly political, so I read it more as a song about being and living in the present, which would thematically connect it to his best love songs.

You can argue that this tune is a not-as-good rewrite of one of Green's hits, and maybe you're right, but to me, I think that misses the point.  Al is so tuned in to his art in 1973 that songs like "Let's Stay Together" or "Here I Am" are pouring out of him.  It's good to pause and appreciate all the songs from that moment, because it's never coming back.

Irregardless***, it's nice to be home.  Time to do eleven loads of laundry.  I think I'll put on my Motown's Hits To Do Laundry To playlist...


* Thank you, IMDB.
** Thank you, Bill Cosby.
*** Thank you, Massholes.



5 comments:

  1. Huh! I love Al Green, but you're right, I can't say I know his complete album material. Bill Withers is another example of a catalog that avoided reissue for way too long. You're even more right about the fact that music is so much easier to hear these days; it's hard to imagine anything that can't be procured within a matter of 30 seconds or less. Furthermore, I did notice the same jumping the shark trend among comedians and great voices in music. I think money is likely the biggest culprit, perhaps one reason Dave Chappelle cashed out at the height of his popularity, wanting to be comedy's Otis Redding (again, death aside) and not Sly Stone.

    As for Robin Williams's "low point by far" I think you should take a look at "Toys" (1992):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z-YelXqFXI

    Maybe it was meant to be a sequel to Richard Pryor's "The Toy" or just one up it in idiocy. I haven't seen "The Toy" yet, but might have to try a marathon of turkeys for Thanksgiving...

    Also, I'm disappointed you left out the organ when providing the recipe for Al Green's songs! I agree, the drums are the first thing I notice (especially in "I'm So Glad You're Mine" as they're literally right there alone in beginning in all their hardcore syncopated funkiness), but the organ comes second to me. It's just about as steady as the drums, holding down the chords and playing really unique stabs with a hollow registration I haven't heard anywhere else. Go put on "Love and Happieness" and "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" right now. In fact, here they are:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfWPDGWP568

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO6Rknx5xyI

    As a self-proclaimed B3 player, I gotta say, these two tracks alone are incredibly influential. Everything fits so well, it hurts.

    Lastly, you might consider having your sister-in-law share her Pandora station and find a way to link to it here. I'd certainly like to check it out!

    -Andrew

    Oh, and it seems like Al Green somehow survived the shame spiral you illustrate. Maybe it helps to have your catalog disappear for a couple irrelevant decades and resurface in a hit movie (preferably directed by Quentin Tarantino) and become relevant to a whole new generation. Enjoy the vintage comeback, then come up with new material and take it on the road. I haven't heard said new material from Al Green, but he seems to be doing far better than Sly Stone...

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  2. this is not about music, but i'm curious what you think eddie murphy's two good movies since 1988 are...

    jessica

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  3. Andrew-- mea culpa for the organ omission. In my defense, it's not very crucial on this track, but you're right that it defines a lot of his hits. As far as Al Green's more modern work, I think it lacks that special ingredient, though he himself is obviously a much more happy, content person.

    Jessica-- I was thinking The Nutty Professor and Shrek. I admit that about five minutes of Boomerang and Bowfinger are also funny.

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  4. Dude this post is such a masterwork I don't really even know what to say. Your take on comedians is 100% spot on. It's just not possible to stay funny for that long a period of time.

    One other parallel between great soul acts and great comedians is that while they're hot it looks SO EASY. In the middle of Eddie Murphy's Comedian, Pryor Live at the Sunset Strip or the peak Aretha or Stevie Wonder years it is all clicking so beautifully you just sort of assume that these folks will be able to spin straw into gold forever. That's the mark of the true greats in either genre: when they're on it looks as easy as pie.

    So easy in fact, that you forget how exceptional what you're watching is. All it takes is five minutes of a run of the mill comedian or singer to remind you of the shocking truth: it's REALLY REALLY hard to create that magic. When it comes it's a gift and it inevitably goes. It's funny, but we always ask the wrong question about these artists: what went wrong? Why did it end? As if greatness were the status quo and the fall from greatness is what needs to be explained. Probably better to either ask what made them great (for however brief a time) or to just enjoy it while it lasts.

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  5. Two things: I would argue that carlin had a very long and productive career. Sure, there was the Rufus thing from Bill and Keanu, but he was still on the road as a working comedian. Most of those others (Pryor, murphy, that douche Williams) all switched to mainly movie roles. Carlin did standup all his life and while he lost the fame of his peak he was still doing his thing. His standup bits at the end of his life still had moments of brilliance. Perhaps the closest aretha has come to a moment of brilliance in the last 20+ years is that snickers commercial (make joke about method of payment here)
    Second, I would not classify prince as a soul singer. Funk, r and b, sure. Strictly soul, no. Also he has been productive, weird but productive, and some flashes of brilliance. I thought the musicology record was pretty good. Then there was the super bowl and it just made me happy to think of how nervous he made the execs at the network. I think he has just, like carlin, been out of the public's eye.
    That said these exceptions don't make the rule. The rev is the man. He recalls what was said about frank sinatra: you can listen and memorize a song but will never be able to replicate the phrasing. His timing and phrasing are his genius.

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