Popless Week 19: Glorious Crackpots

After
17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from
all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order,
to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs.

The
music world shelters its share of addicts, schizophrenics, and the suicidally
depressed, who all venture into the darkness and return just far enough to file
reports about life on the edge. And they provide a valuable service, don't get
me wrong. But all things being equal, I prefer the merely strange to the deeply
deranged. I like musicians who maintain a modicum of control over their output,
yet still keep returning to the same sounds or lyrical ideas over and over,
even when no one's paying attention. Their compulsions are mild but defining,
and as these artists continue making idiosyncratic, personal music, after a
while we can come to feel like we know them, to the extent that even their
weaknesses become endearing.

Prior
to 2004, my knowledge of Harry Nilsson was largely limited to his cover of Fred
Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," some anecdotes about the year he spent partying
with John Lennon, and a vague awareness that he'd written the goofy novelty
song "Coconut" and the Three Dog Night hit "One." I also knew that his
best-known, most successful album was Nilsson Schmilsson (followed by a pair of
ill-regarded sequels), so when that record was remastered and reissued in 2004,
I picked it up, and was surprised by how many songs I already knew, including
Nilsson's seven-minute raver "Jump Into The Fire" and his hyper-schmaltzy cover
of Badfinger's "Without You." Nilsson Schmilsson is in many ways the prototype for the '70s "well-made
album," employing state-of-the-art production on a set of originals and covers
that show stylistic versatility and an impressive amount of care lavished even
on the filler.

And
yet, while Nilsson
Schmilsson is
more contemporary and more immediately accessible than anything else in the
Nilsson discography, it still has its kinks. Consider "Driving Along:"

In
just over two minutes, Nilsson delivers some blunt social commentary—too blunt, really—couched
in a song structure that keeps opening up and getting more elaborate until it
practically dissipates. Hit-making producer Richard Perry may have ordered up
the song's factory-issue guitar solo, but Nilsson's heart is more in an
arrangement that keeps changing, unlocking new possibilities. After hearing
that song, I knew I had to track down as much Nilsson as I could, so over the
next month I bought a slew of import CDs, most of which combined two albums on
single discs. One of the first imports I picked up included in its bonus tracks
the sublime non-LP single "Down To The Valley:"

Again,
this song takes a simple idea and loads it up with as much orchestration and
vocal pyrotechnics as Nilsson can muster, making the presentation far more
important than the actual content. Nilsson was clearly someone who loved to
play around, both with his songwriting and in the studio. I worked my way
through his early solo albums: the wild, Beatlesque Pandemonium Shadow Show, the wispier Aerial Ballet, the somewhat grating
soundtrack to Skidoo (featuring the closing
credits in song form), and the doggedly retro Harry. On the latter album, Nilsson covered a Randy
Newman song, "Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear," and then Nilsson
worked with Newman on what, to my mind, is his masterpiece, Nilsson Sings Newman, for which he recorded each
instrumental and vocal part over and over, before weaving the best snippets of
each into cinematic tracks like "Cowboy:"

By
this time, in 1970, Nilsson was still mainly a cult act, responsible for a
couple of fluke hits of his own and a couple of big hits for other people. That
all started to change at the dawn of the decade, first when Nilsson
masterminded the trippy animated TV special The Point!, for which he wrote a set of spare, catchy songs
about friendship and individuality:

And
then came Nilsson
Schmilsson,
the big commercial breakthrough, released that same year. But more interesting—to
me at least—is what Nilsson did with that sudden success. His early
recordings had been eclectic and eccentric, taking his natural talent for
melody and his strong, multi-octave voice and using them as elements in songs
and albums that took a little work for fans to fully follow. Once Nilsson went
mainstream on Nilsson
Schmilsson,
he could've easily continued down the path that so many other offbeat pop and
rock stars did in the '70s, following the money. Instead, he reunited with
Richard Perry and made Son
Of Schmilsson,
a wildly offbeat rock record that kicks off with the wonderfully perverse "Take
54:"

I
can't even imagine what fans of "Without You" and "Coconut" made of this song
about a star who needs his favorite groupie in the studio so that he can sing
his "balls off." From the vampire picture on the LP cover to offbeat tracks
like the country music parody "Joy" and the crude "You're Breakin' My Heart"
(with its chorus "so fuck you"), Son Of Schmilsson is about as flippant a
response to fame as any platinum-level artist has ever attempted. And it became
the model for Nilsson's '70s albums, which frequently featured oddball cover
art, twisted remakes of rock classics, and outright novelty songs like "Kojak
Columbo," "The Flying Saucer Song" and "Jesus Christ You're Tall." But sprinkled amid the more out-there
material was some of Nilsson's most heartfelt ballads, like the mournful
cycle-of-life lament "Salmon Falls" from Duit On Mon Dei, and the quietly desperate "Don't Forget Me,"
from Nilsson's drunken collaboration with John Lennon, Pussy Cats:

And
these albums also included some of Nilsson's most effortless pop songwriting,
like "Pretty Soon There'll Be Nothing Left For Everybody," from Sandman—a jaunty song that
maintains Nilsson's preoccupation with cheerful nihilism.

In
a way, these '70s albums—often knocked out during long benders, with
Nilsson's voice ravaged by misuse—are "well-made albums" too. After all,
they do show off a variety of styles, and an expansive sound. But there's
something a little off about them. Maybe it's that the creative force behind
the music is a guy who gleefully sabotaged himself through self-destructive
behavior and a love of bad jokes.

Nilsson
had his admirers back then, but record sales and chart action tapered off, and
most rock critics , if they covered Nilsson at all, tended to sum up his
post-1971 career as a pathetic waste of a once-promising talent. Writing about Son Of Schmillson in 1972, Rolling Stone critic Stephen Holden
referred to the lovely "Turn On Your Radio" as a "trifling ballad" and about
the raunchy "You're Breakin' My Heart," Holden said, "as obscenity it's insipid
and as satire prepubescent." He downgraded Nilsson's "Spaceman" in comparison
to Elton John's similarly sci-fi-themed "Rocket Man" ("a record with real
passion"), and he dismissed the record as a whole for having "a humor so
deadpan, so essentially sarcastic, that it is difficult to relate to it on more
than a superficial level," adding, "Life is just a silly, meaningless jumble of
dreams and memories, OK—but where is the hurt and disappointment that
infuses such a vision?"

I
would argue that context is everything, and that if Holden or his critical ilk
had considered Nilsson's career as a whole, they would've realized that the
hurt and disappointment was always there, but leavened with a certain amount of
"ah, what the hell." This was a man who began his career singing the
autobiographical song "1941," about how his dad left him as a boy, and how he
planned to leave his own son, and that he expected that son to take off one day
too. That may be a sentiment that's "difficult to relate to," but it's one
that's wholly Nilsson's. And while I wouldn't call Nilsson's outlook on life
"harmless," it does have a rakish, seductive charm, luring listeners along with
a trail of sugary crumbs.

[pagebreak]

Pieces
Of The Puzzle

The
High Llamas

Years
Of Operation
1990-present

Fits
Between The
Beach Boys and Steely Dan

Personal
Correspondence
Speaking of Glorious Crackpots, The High Llamas' frontman Sean O'Hagan may not
be as eccentric as Harry Nilsson, but he's certainly followed his own muse,
even when it's undercut his commercial prospects. I first discovered The High
Llamas thanks to a happy weekend spent flipping through The Trouser Press Guide To
'90s Rock.
The entry on Stereolab featured a handy "see also" tag at the end, and I was
intrigued by the description of The High Llamas' Gideon Gaye, which promised a
Stereolab-affiliated sound cut with The Beach Boys and Steely Dan. Despite its
abundance of failed sonic experiments, I liked Gideon Gaye enough I picked up Hawaii when it was released domestically,
and again found some truly terrific material, undercut by repetition, an
exhausting album length, and O'Hagan's predilection for putting the same damn
banjo and gurgling synthesizer on nearly every song. It was as though O'Hagan
were stubbornly refusing to simply entertain, even though he clearly had the
ability. In the decade since, O'Hagan has stuck to his guns, returning every
couple of years with another set of similar-sounding songs derivative of
Bacharach, Tropicalia, Brian Wilson and Donald Fagen. But over time, The High
Llamas' rip-jobs have become identifiably O'Hagan's own, and fans of the
band—of which I am one—have come to enjoy spending time in his
world whenever he opens the door. All of O'Hagan's experiments have led him to
a placid place, and musically speaking, he seems to have learned what he can do
without, while still delivering heart-stoppingly lovely songs about idyllic
locales and seasonal memories.

Enduring
presence?
Unlike a lot of acts with a spotty output, I'm not sure it's possible to put
together a High Llamas compilation that would represent them any better than
their albums do. Even stripped
down to their peak 40 minutes, The High Llamas would probably exhaust most
people. The band's past two albums—Can Cladders and Beet, Maize & Corn—are arguably their
best, but I don't know that I can unequivocally recommend them over Gideon Gaye or Hawaii. Either you're willing to
meet O'Hagan on his own plane, or you're not. I can't decide that for you.

The
Hives

Years
Of Operation
1993-present

Fits
Between The
Stooges and Trio

Personal
Correspondence
In theory, The Hives might be the best rock 'n' roll band on the planet right
now. (All together now: "In theory, communism works. In theory.") Everything
about The Hives' presentation, from their snazzy suits to Howlin' Pelle
Almqvist's charged-up pitchman persona, is pure rock—the old stuff, calculated to get fans
moving. But the band has yet to
close the deal with me. The Hives' best songs—"Hate To Say I Told You
So," "Tick Tick Boom," "Two-Timing Touch And Broken Bones," "A Little More For
Little You"—are duly ass-kicking, and yet the rest of their albums can't
quite reach the heights of their singles. They often sound like raw frenzy,
unchanneled and therefore—oddly enough—uninteresting. Almost as
much as The White Stripes, The Hives seemed like they were going to be the
flagship band of neo-garage, pushing the genre beyond retro by distilling its
essence and carrying it into the modern day. The White Stripes have done
marvelously with that mission, and The Hives have tried, by nodding to
technopop and R&B.; But so far, they keep coming a cropper.

Enduring
presence?
Last year's The
Black And White Album
was a particular disappointment, coming after the focused and forward-looking Tyrannosaurus Hives. I'm really pulling for The
Hives, because when they're on, they really do leave every other band of this
era eating their dust. On the whole, though, they've been locked from the start
into a speed-to-the-finish bash, with each instrument in each song holding to a
single melodic pattern for the two minute average playing time. Though a guitar
or two may drop out momentarily for the sake of dynamism, the compositions
contain too few surprises.

The
Hold Steady

Years
Of Operation
2004-present

Fits
Between Bruce
Springsteen and Thin Lizzy

Personal
Correspondence
You know how sometimes you read a book and get an idea in your head about a
character's physical appearance, and then the movie version comes out and it
looks all wrong? Yeah, that was my original experience with The Hold Steady. I
was totally unaware of Lifter Puller before I heard The Hold Steady's 2004
debut album Almost
Killed Me, so
listening to Craig Finn growl out rant-y, repetitive lines like, "We got wars
going down in the middle west / We got wars going down in the middle western
states" had me picturing him as a wild-eyed, long-haired dude, slightly
unhinged but wickedly witty. It wasn't until Separation Sunday came out a year later that I
finally saw a picture of the band, and found out that Finn was yet another
doughy, bespectacled, balding indie-rock type, largely indistinguishable from a
Ben Gibbard or a Colin Meloy. (I suddenly understood why Gerard Cosloy had dismissed
The Hold Steady as "late-period Soul Asylum fronted by Charles Nelson Reilly.")
But it didn't rattle me much. About Separation Sunday I wrote, "Finn bellows like
an overcranked art student, reading lyrics from some barroom poet's police
statement. On the first Hold Steady record, Finn worked the room at a rowdy
Saturday night kegger, overhearing improbable stories and telling a few lies of
his own. Separation
Sunday could
be taking the place the next day, as the partygoers with nowhere to go hang out
in a skate park and talk about God." Then about 2006's Boys And Girls In America, I wrote, "Finn may be a
smart-ass and a poseur, but he genuinely understands how it feels to want to get wasted, both as a way
of fitting in with the crowd, and a way of forgetting that he can't. Always
muscular, The Hold Steady is now wiry to boot, capable of cabaret ballads like
'First Night' as well as Thin-Lizzy-meets-Black-Flag anthems like 'Massive
Nights.' Both those songs are about moments that linger, 'when every song was
right,' and the triumph of Boys And Girls is that it's full of the kind of songs that Finn's
protagonists would crank up, relishing every power chord." My one lingering
hang-up with The Hold Steady is that I feel like Finn repeats himself too much
with all his lyrics about party-addled teenagers. I'd like to see him widen his
focus a little. At the same time though, I think he writes some of the most
vivid—and funniest—story-songs in modern
rock, and guitarist Tad Kubler and pianist Franz Nicolay steal from classic
rock as well as anyone. Boys
And Girls In America
capped a three-year run that showed a clear progression in songcraft and
understanding of rock dynamics. Every year, one or two albums come along that
make me look forward to waking up to a new day, because I know I'll get to
listen to them again. Boys
And Girls In America
was one of those albums.

Enduring
presence? When I
interviewed Finn two years ago, I asked him why so many critics and rock
fans hate him so much, and he was refreshingly honest about it, saying, "I
think my vocals are hard for some people to take. I also think that people of a
certain age in the indie-rock scene experience music as a part of their
identity. If you're into, like, I don't know, Saddle Creek or whatever, and
you're younger, you want people to know that's what you're into. I think us
being kind of classic-rock-based might be threatening to those people's sense
of identity. I can understand that. I love The Grateful Dead and I also love
hardcore, but when I was 20, I couldn't see how I could love both. At 35, it
makes tons of sense to me." It makes sense to me too, though I still get a
little hurt by how much some music buffs—including friends of mine—actively hate The Hold Steady. It's like
they resent the whole idea of midwestern schlubs moving to the hipster
neighborhoods of New York to sing faux-badass songs about where they used to
live, set to crushing riffs borrowed mostly unironically from corporate rock. Whereas
me, I sometimes feel like The Hold Steady have taken all my favorite threads of
rock history and woven them together, making the kind of music I might make if
I were in a rock band (only with different lyrics). I understand there's a new
Hold Steady album due in July. You guys wouldn't mind if I ended this project
early, would you?

The
Housemartins

Years
Of Operation
1983-88

Fits
Between
The Jam and Cliff Richard

Personal
Correspondence
There aren't too many bands in pop history that said hello and
goodbye—with only two albums no less—as gracefully and
entertainingly as The Housemartins. Even though bandleader Paul Heaton went on
to offer a similar—albeit more slow and soulful—version of The
Housemartins' sound with The Beautiful South, the snappy, concise approach of London 0 Hull 4 and The People Who Grinned
Themselves To Death
is tough to top. Approximating both "Up With People" and early Motown, The
Housemartins sang happy-sounding songs about how we're all slaves to
consumerism, religion and authoritarian fear-mongering, and how our best option
is to leave our churches and maybe pick up a gun. (And that just covers one
song, "Get Up Off Our Knees.") People feels maybe a hair more strained than Hull, as the band started to take
their status as social commentators a smidgen too seriously, but on the whole
it's every bit as bright, jumpy and hooky a record as the first one. The band's
posthumous singles collection Now That's What I Call Quite Good captures some essential
non-LP tracks and Peel sessions (similar to The Smiths' Hatful Of Hollow), and holds together well as
an album all on its own, but it doesn't have the same upstart sting of the
first two albums, both of which are jaunty pop records that even my punk
friends found acceptable.

Enduring
presence? I
don't know of any modern bands who cite The Housemartins as a direct influence,
but their bustling and overtly poppy sound definitely echoes through Belle
& Sebastian—as well as all the current Swede-pop bands that worship
Belle & Sebastian. I just wish some of the new breed were as engaged
politically as they are musically.

Hüsker
Dü

Years
Of Operation
1979-87

Fits
Between
Volcano Suns and Naked Raygun

Personal
Correspondence
In the spring of '85, a little less than a year after I became a regular reader
of Rolling
Stone, the
magazine published an article that would be one of the two most important Rolling Stone articles I'd ever read*. It
was a Michael Goldberg report on the state of American punk rock—what's
now referred to by some as "post-hardcore"—using The Replacements, Meat
Puppets, Black Flag, Minutemen and Hüsker Dü as the anchor bands. I cut out the
pictures from that article and taped them to my 3-ring binder, and I referred
back to the text of that article often as I went exploring in used record
stores. It took a while before I could track down Zen Arcade, the key Hüsker Dü album in
the piece—which even the author admitted was hard to find—but I
came across Flip
Your Wig for
$4.99 and made it my first Hüsker Dü album. Then, out of the blue, my
brother—never a punk guy in any way—brought home New Day Rising from college, and I fell in
love with "Celebrated Summer," Bob Mould's half-nostalgic, half-desperate
pro-vacation anthem. (I even started working on a novel called Celebrated Summer, heavily influenced by
Stephen King's novella The
Body, but I
never got past the first chapter.) That summer I went to The Governor's School
For The Humanities in Martin, TN, and met a good group of alterna-kids with
eclectic tastes. I remember we all went to the local record store together and
each special-ordered one album that we really wanted. I got Echo & The
Bunnymen's Songs
To Learn And Sing,
another friend got The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead, and an especially hip girl in our clique got Hüsker
Dü's Candy
Apple Grey—which
is why for years I had a cassette tape with The Queen Is Dead on one side and Candy Apple Grey on the other. When I returned
from Governor's School, I started my junior year at a new, bigger high school
that had an actual punk crowd, something my smaller high school—which had
been closed in accordance with Tennessee's desegregation laws—did not
have. But I was disappointed to find out that the punks at the bigger school
weren't as broad-minded as my friends from Governor's School. One day one of my
new punk friends said, "Raise your hand if you think Hüsker Dü has sold out,"
and when everybody but me raised their hands, I realized that the gap between
what I was looking for in music and what the scenesters expected was probably
going to be unbridgeable. I still hung out with them anyway. I just didn't let
them see what I was buying at the record store.

Enduring
presence? Can
I confess something? Although I loved loved loved Hüsker Dü back in the '80s, and I still think that
they were a phenomenal band, they're probably the band that once meant the most
to me that I almost never listen to now. (Close second: Sonic Youth.) Something
about Hüsker Dü now strikes me as ungainly, even a little adolescent—and
not in a "what a golden age that was" way, but in an acne/body-odor way. The
unassailable Zen
Arcade aside,
I find I get a purer rush from Mould's first two solo albums and Sugar. Hüsker
Dü is almost more impressive as an influence on post-hardcore than as a band in
and of themselves.

*The
other RS article that changed my life,
by the way, was Mikal Gilmore's "Daredevil Authors: Today's Real Superheroes,"
which led me back into comic books after about a six-year layoff. But that's a
subject for a different feature: "Capeless," coming 2009.

[pagebreak]

Idaho

Years
Of Operation
1992-present

Fits
Between
American Music Club and Red House Painters

Personal
Correspondence
Glorious Crackpot Week brings us inevitably to Idaho, and its lone persistent
member, Jeff Martin. Stalwarts of the mid-'90s "slowcore"/"sadcore" scene,
Idaho had a big enough following to score a short-lived deal with semi-major
Caroline, but never broke big enough to develop a full-on "cult," per se. Since
returning to independence, Martin and his revolving cast of Idahoans (most
notably guitarists John K. Berry and Dan Seta) have released new records every
couple of years, and toured Europe, where the band has always drawn fairly
well. But those Idaho albums stopped getting much critical attention around
2000. Even I—who have purchased every single one of them—haven't
written about the band since the '90s. Maybe that's because there's not a whole
lot to say. Martin continues to write strikingly moody songs, and he's
progressed in his concept for the band, although that vision has led him away
from the scraping guitar and rattling percussion that made Idaho fairly
formidable as rockers in the '90s. Today, Martin prefers to noodle on his piano
and mutter evocatively. But like the best of the GCs, his music is reliably
good, and it's been a pleasure to check in with him periodically to see what
he's mumbling about now.

Enduring
presence? I
don't think the critical community's Idaho-neglect amounts to a major lapse; in
the end, they are just another indie-rock band
that's carved out a tiny niche. They're not a significant influence on anyone,
and Martin hasn't been painting masterpieces in his dark corner of the room.
But because we live in a satellite TV world, with hundreds of channels to
choose from, I'm personally glad that I still subscribe to The Idaho Channel,
which allows me to get away from the hubbub of who's buzzworthy and who's
overrated, and instead just enjoy some pretty music that only a few people
really care about.

Stray
Tracks

From
the fringes of the collection, a few songs to share….

Haystak,
"Reckon"

When I
interviewed this hulking Nashville rapper back in 2000, I made the
mistake of treating him like any other fledgling local musician, and thus fully
expected him to talk openly, earnestly and humbly about his struggles with
trying to break wider in a tricky business. Instead, I got the full show.
Haystak answered nearly every one of my questions with a lengthy,
self-promoting speech that had almost nothing to do with what I asked, and he
generally acted like he was already a superstar, and that his only real problem
now was how to deal with the haters who were jealous of his success. I would've
taken this pitch more seriously if we hadn't been sitting in a run down Mt.
Juliet office park, right behind a tractor supply store, but hey, as you all
know, I am but a naïf when it comes to hip-hop. I do like this song though,
which bumps along with a lot of nervous energy, and makes nice use of the
orchestral stings and local color.

Head
East, "Never Been Any Reason"

Heart,
"Magic Man"

I
don't want to be one of those guys who romanticizes the music of an earlier era
at the expense of today, but whatever the lapses of mid-'70s album rock radio
and the regressive "classic rock" era it spawned, I've got to give those coked-out
corporate whores credit for nurturing sublime crypto-boogie like these two
anthems—the first a hit in '75, and the second in '76. They're both heavy
and groovy (but not too much so on either score), and both emphasize the power
of the rock wail. Heart of course went on to be the bigger band (though did you
know Head East lead singer John Schlitt later became the frontman for Petra?),
and while there's probably a lot that could be said about Heart's gradual
transformation from kick-ass lady-rockers to proto-Celine Dion balladeers, I'm
not especially interested in what happened to them or why. I'd rather think of
Heart as another band, like Head East, that lived and died in the mid-'70s,
kicking out a few ever-present, weird-sounding radio hits, complete with
incongruous synthesizer solos. Hey man, is that Freedom Rock? Turn it up!

The
Heartbreakers, "Chinese Rocks"

And
now here's the antidote to the Hearts and Head Easts of the swingin' '70s.
While the mainstream radio darlings wrote and recorded songs designed to take
listeners out of their own lives for five minutes or so, Johnny Thunders and
his Heartbreakers tried to open a window on every unpleasant minute of the
street punk's existence. Dee Dee Ramone and Richard Hell co-wrote this exposé
of drug addiction and its repercussions, but Thunders made it his own. (Quite
literally…for years, Thunders' was the only songwriting credit for "Chinese
Rocks," even though he had nothing to do with it, besides helping make it a
punk classic.) Some people hear The Heartbreakers and can't ever take Heart
seriously again. Others still like a little escapism mixed in with their
docu-dramas.

Herr
Louis & Weaselis with The Hungry Five, "Down By The Pickle Works, Part 1"

Somebody
asked last week why I didn't focus more on some of the oddities in my
collection rather than the same old indie-rock and soft-pop acts, so here's an
oddity for you, taken from last year's Folk Songs Of Illinois anthology. It's a little
piece of ethnic humor, from the era when a good exaggerated accent was enough
to get people chuckling. Enjoy.

The
Hidden Cameras, "Death Of A Tune"

And
now back to the indie-rock and soft-pop—or in this case, a cross between
the two. I was a little thrown off some by The Hidden Cameras' early work,
which extended frank sexuality into the realm of explicit smut, even while the
band played twee music from the well-established "raging milquetoast"
tradition. With bandleader Joel Gibbs' nasal, cabaret-ready vocals swimming
smoothly through a warm instrumental bath, most listeners could hum along
happily for three minutes at a time without ever realizing that they're
enjoying a song that celebrates soiled underwear. The Hidden Cameras have
gotten tamer over the years, and I'm especially fond of their 2006 record Awoo, which serves up one sweetly
melodic retro-pop song after another—including "Death Of A Tune," a zippy
little number about how a lover's silence sucks the music out of the room.

The
Hombres, "Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)"

I
first got to know this garage-rock nugget from The Nails' 1984 cover, which I'd
naturally assumed was an original, because the resources for learning otherwise
weren't available back then. When I got a copy of Nuggets a decade or so later, I had
one of those weird double-take moments when The Hombres' version came on.
(Imagine if you were listening to an old Patsy Cline album and suddenly she
started singing "Jesus Take The Wheel"… that would be a comparable experience,
I would think.) I haven't heard The Nails in a while but I'm going to go ahead
and give the edge to The Hombres, if only because the original recording sounds
like a semi-parody of Bob Dylan, and the 1984 is just a party record.

Homer
& Jethro (w/June Carter Cash), "Baby It's Cold Outside"

I'll
give June Carter Cash my full attention in a couple of weeks, but since Eddy
Arnold passed this week, I'll pay him tribute by putting up this song, which
uses Arnold's records as the hick chic version of seductive sophistication.

Hoodoo
Gurus, "Bittersweet"

I
got a copy of Hoodoo Gurus' Mars Needs Guitars in a radio station giveaway back in 1987, and brought
it home thinking I wouldn't know any songs on it. But when I cued up side one,
I heard "Bittersweet," a song I'd been looking for months, without ever knowing
its name or who was responsible for it. I'd heard "Bittersweet" a few times on
Vandy's college radio station, and it'd made enough of an impression that I'd
scrawled some of the lyrics down in this little notebook I kept with me at all
times in high school. (I hope I still have that notebook somewhere in my attic.
I bought it when I realized that I probably shouldn't be doodling and jotting
down song lyrics on my desk, and it became like a semi-journal, full of
cartoons, band logos, and general impressions of my current mood. Sort of like
Twitter, but on paper.) I later discovered that Hoodoo Gurus had a few other
songs that I would come to like a lot, but this is the one that I feel
should've been a bigger hit in the U.S. There's really nothing objectionable or
off-putting about it; it's just a walloping, well-produced rock song. If only
John Hughes had put it on a soundtrack…

Hooverphonic,
"The Magnificent Tree"

Hooverphonic
has always been my go-to '90s trip-hop/dream-pop act, probably because they had
utilize fairly conventional song structures, providing surer footing in an
ethereal genre. Hooverphonic also won my allegiance with the title track from
their third album, which makes brilliant use of Crosby, Stills & Nash's
"Guinnevere," a song that's always meant a lot to me.

Hot
Hot Heat, "Pickin' It Up"

Now
that we're a few years removed from the glut of neo-new-wave acts riffing on
XTC and Gang Of Four, Hot Hot Heat's at-the-time-disappointing 2005 album Elevator sounds a lot better, and I
wonder now, if critics had taken to it more readily—or if the Warner
publicists hadn't been such pricks about sending review copies out early enough
for critics to get acclimated to the record's shiny, hooky sound—would we
all have been spared last year's weak follow-up Happiness Ltd.? Even in my own mixed review
of Elevator, I did recognize the
greatness of this song, writing that it "bucks and sparks and is just about the
most perfect 'good to be alive' post-punk anthem of the past ten years…It's
worth the whole lot of uninspired new wave revivalists just for 'Pickin' It
Up.'"

House
Of Freaks, "Yellow Dog"

I
mentioned above that bands inspired by Hüsker Dü are in some ways preferable to
the original model, and I could say much the same about House Of Freaks, one of
the first of the guitar-and-drums-only roots-rock duos. The bands that followed
House Of Freaks—including Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, Spinanes, The White
Stripes, The Black Keys and Hillstomp, to name just a few—proved more
capable of dredging up the swampy sound that HoF only alluded to. But House Of
Freaks were still a formidable live act, especially when they trotted out
"Yellow Dog," a raver that always left the audience happily exhausted.

Howard
Jones, "Hide And Seek"

I
went through a brief period after the release of Human's Lib where I thought Howard Jones
was some kind of whiz kid, and I was happy when his follow-up album became a
huge hit in the U.S., even though I didn't like it as well as the debut.
Perhaps not coincidentally, around the time Jones became a big star, I learned
that I'd been mishearing one of my favorite Jones lyrics. What I thought was
"Who do you find it in / Everything that you see?" was actually "Hope you find it in," etc. My
disillusionment started the fairly
rapid process of well-poisoning when it came to Jones. But hey, we all do it.
What are some lyrics that you all preferred in the version you heard, as opposed to what the
singer was actually singing?

HP
Riot, "I Have Changed"

I've
been writing about Brazilian bands influenced by American funk and soul, but
here's an R&B; obscurity—taken from the super-cool anthology Super Cool California Soul
2—that
borrows the vibrant bustle of worldbeat, to thrilling effect.

Huey
Lewis & The News, "Do You Believe In Love"

It
was a strange era when rockers as square as Lewis and songs as straightforward
as this one could become massive hits. I can't mount a defense of The News as
heartfelt as I did for, say, Hall & Oates, except maybe to mention that
Lewis has an expressive voice and an affable demeanor, and that as cheesy as
The News' biggest hits often are, they're also admirably fleet and
unpretentious. I'm not a raving fan by any means, but I've always had a soft
spot for Lewis. Chalk it up to being a teenager in the '80s.

The
Human Beinz, "Nobody But Me"

When
you hear this song, do you think of Paul Shaffer & The CBS Orchestra
singing the theme song to the game "Know Your Cuts Of Meat," or do you think of
the big swordfight in Kill
Bill: Volume One?
(Or neither?) By the way, nothing against The Isley Brothers, but this take on
"Nobody But Me" has always struck me as definitive, perhaps because it chugs
along somewhat joylessly, making the singer's superiority almost sound like a
burden.

I
Am Kloot, "Over My Shoulder"

Ian
Dury & The Blockheads, "There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards"

Here
are two more for the Glorious Crackpot file (UK edition). The former is a
current indie-pop act led by Johnny Bramwell, who over the course of a small handful
of albums has shown allegiance to a spare, hooky sound and a slightly skewed
sensibility, building songs on a few lines of imagistic poetry and some
hushed-but-rhythmic instrumentation. As for the late Dury, he belonged to music
hall and cabaret traditions both new and old, and he mastered the art of
talk-singing better than anyone since the heyday of Rex Harrison.

Ice
T, "O.G. Original Gangster"

It
should surprise no one who's been reading this column that I'm not big on
gangsta rap, but there are exceptions. I'm a fan of
N.W.A.'s Straight
Outta Compton
(which I'll get to later), and I love Ice T's O.G. Original Gangster. I love its diversity of
sound and its focused lyrics—the songs on O.G. tend to stay on topic, and thus deliver a cogent take
on thug life that's part voyeurism, part social commentary.

Regrettably
unremarked upon:
Hasil Adkins, Hazel Dickens, Heatmiser, Helmet, Hem, Henry Mancini, Herb Alpert
& The Tijuana Brass, Herbie Hancock, Hillstomp, Ho-Hum, Hoagy Carmichael,
The Hollies, The Holy Modal Rounders, Hope Sandoval, Hot Snakes, Howlin' Wolf,
Hoyt Axton, Hugo Montenegro, The Human League and Ice Cube

Also
listened to:
Harvey Hindemeyer, Hauschka, Havanna Exotica, Hawsley Workman, Hawnay Troof, Head Like A
Kite, Head Of Femur, Headmess, Headmint, Health, Healthy White Baby, Heather Duby,
Heatwave, Heavy Stereo, Heavy Trash, Hefner, Heidi
Saperstein, Helen Foster, Helene Smith, Hell On Wheels, Hell
Promise, Hello Stranger, Helvetia, Hendricks &
Co., Hendrik Meurkens, Henrik Schwarz, Henry Spaulding. Henry Thomas,
Herbert, The Here And Now Boys, Here Today, Herman
Jolly, The Hero Cycle , hi-posi, High Inergy, The High Strung, The Higher, Highway QCs, Hiroshi Takano, His Name Is Alive, The Hiss, History At Our Disposal, The Hit Parade,
The Hitch-Hikers, The Hitmen, Hobex, Hockey Night, The Hokum Boys, Holler Wild Rose, Holly Dolly, Holly Golightly, Holly
Williams, Holy Fuck, Home, Homunculus, Honeybus, The Honeycombs, Hootie & The Blowfish, Hopewell, Hot
Chip, Hot Club De Paris, Hot Club Of Cowtown, The Hot
Dogs, The Hot Puppies, The Hotel
Alexis, Hotel Lights, The Hourly Radio, House Of
Pain. Howie B, Howie Beck, Howie Day, The Howling Hex, Hoyt Ming
& His Pep-Steppers, HP Riot, The Hues Corporation, Hugh Maskela, The Human
Society, Humphrey Ocean, Hurrah!, The Hurricane Lamps, The
Huxtables, Hypatia Lake, The Hyperions, The Hytones, I Am The World
Trade Center, Ian Hunter, Ian Moore and Iceage Cobra

Next
week: From Idlewild to Jan Hammer, plus a few words on jamming