Oklahoma Underground Music

The first track on the White Stripes’ White Blood Cells (2001) is a powerhouse rocker, which means, the Stripes being the Stripes, it’s Led Zeppelin-like.  But “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” is a partially religious, smackdown love song that is much better than Zeppelin’s nonsense.  I don’t much care for the second track, “Hotel Yorba,” though, because Jack White’s singing strikes me as strained, and ‘I’m Finding It Harder to be a Gentleman” seems musically off to me, and not just because of Meg White’s mediocre drumming.

“Little Room” is–well, I don’t really know what it is, but “Fell in Love with a Girl” is a fierce-sounding corker wherein falling in love with a girl is not simply . . . falling in love with a girl.  Relationships on White Blood Cells are endlessly disappointing, although it must be said that subject matter here matters less than the music.  Guitar-powered pleasure is to be had from the mid-tempo “Offend in Every Way,” with its seemingly neurotic lyrics, and the slow, soothing “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known.” Jack and Meg don’t have much to say in “Now Mary,” but musically it’s terrific, revved up by a delicious rockabilly guitar.  “We’re Going to be Friends” is a song about children, folkie and fun.

By the 11th cut of this 16-cut album, however, the songs become regrettably trivial.  “I Can’t Wait,” for example, is nothing but a nonentity with a very predictable melody.  All in all, then, WBC is not a great but a good CD, finally tiresome but usually sturdy.  Jack White is indisputably talented; one can’t help wondering what kind of solo career he’ll have.

Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, first performed in 1916, is (classical) music of mystery.

Its first of three nocturnes is almost bone-chilling–and assuredly beautiful–with delicate strings and brooding piano.  It’s exciting when that piano begins to ripple along, and there’s an orchestral climax which seems like a solution to a metaphysical problem.  Again, music of mystery.

In the other two nocturnes, the impressionism continues.  There is airiness and subtlety and, for the whole composition, a perfect coda.  Nights in the Gardens of Spain is a masterpiece.  Falla was Spain’s greatest composer.

Boy, is the Osmonds’ “One Bad Apple” a dud!  Not so their 1972 hit, “Down by the Lazy River,” a happy number penned by two of the Osmonds and sung with youthful conviction by Merrill.  Nor is that the only good apple in the brothers’ barrel.  “Let Me In” (1973), with shining vocal harmony, is a pop masterpiece full of romantic longing; and, really, it too can be placed in the Happy Stuff category.  The music sort of conveys that even if the words don’t.

Bobby Sherman was a contemporary of the Osmonds, and his song “Julie Do Ya Love Me?” is another one whose music belies the sometimes negative lyrics (“Tossin’ and turning’/Freezin’ and burnin’”).  Note the bright horns.  Upbeat fun.  It emanates from a band called Edison Lighthouse as well:  their one hit in 1970 was “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes,” where timbre means business and the melody is joyful.

I suppose the Tee Set was another one-hit wonder with the exquisite “Ma Belle Amie” (1969).  The song features a lovable organ and soulful white-man vocals.  The lyrics are rather odd and rather delightful–and, yes, I have no doubt the fellow is in love with his “amie.”

All these songs can be heard on YouTube.

Frankly, the lion’s share of Christian pop music has not attracted me.  It’s just as uninteresting as today’s secular stuff.  Away from the lion’s share, however, we have the following:

In MercyMe’s “God With Us”, a fine tune exists, not at all messy.  The guitar is conventional, the lead singer somehow sounds like a slacker with passion.  (How’s that for a paradox?)  From the ’80s, Philip Bailey’s “The Love of God” demands to be beautifully sung, and thanks to Bailey and studio trickery, it is.  Probably there was studio trickery.  At any rate, it’s a gorgeous ballad, perfectly recorded; quite a tribute to the Deity.

Also gorgeous is “In Christ Alone” by Brian Littrell.  It won a silly Dove award in 1997 despite some awkward lyrics, but–well–every Christian likes an edifying ballad.

Then there’s Jaci Velasquez.  We can’t imagine Jaci without God, hence “Imagine Me Without You”, a pop gem with impressive feeling and vocal force.  And in the no-nonsense “Lay It Down”. . . well, congratulations to Jaci, the three guys (!) who wrote it, and producer Martin Terefe, because the song has pop-music greatness.  It deserves to be about God.

I discovered both tracks on Velasquez’s Best Of CD (2006).

Most of what’s on the Steely Dan albums, Aja (1977) and Gaucho (1980), is enjoyable, and three tracks in particular I consider great.  Great because, for one thing, they’re meaningful, not mere larks.

The song on Aja is the sinuous-sounding “Deacon Blues”, about an oft-losing sensualist.  He identifies with college football teams that keep getting whipped, turning the first line of the song–”This is the day of the expanding man”–into a nifty piece of irony.  The saxophone here is nothing more than nice, but it bolsters a pleasurable melody.  And the words are trenchant.

Two great ones emerge on Gaucho, beginning with “Hey Nineteen.” As usual, the music is easygoing and Donald Fagen’s voice saucy and non-insistent.  It’s one of the most economical smart-songs you’ll hear; the objects of its satire are a middle-aged man and his 19-year-old girlfriend (“She thinks I’m crazy/But I’m just growing old”).  A sardonic hit.  “My Rival” give us some ominous guitar and percussion before the singer identifies himself as a “fool in love” with a peculiar rival for the woman’s hand.  The chap is determined to defeat his rival until, strangely, the song’s instrumental part conveys a mood of despair, as though there’s really no way the fool-in-love can win.

Again, meaningful.  And not exactly sanguine.

Cheers for Steely Dan.