Faces - "Stay With Me," A Nod Is As Good As A Wink To A Blind Horse
Spin did a very fun debunking of various rock and roll myths, particularly the one concerning Rod Stewart and a stomach full of...how shall I euphemize...baby batter.
In the article, they talk about how Rod Stewart went from working-class English rock hero to fancy-boy with a supermodel wife, thus becoming fodder for rather vulgar urban myths about sailors and stomach pumps.
Indeed, Stewart's progression to super-stardom is interesting to think about. He started as the vocalist for a group named after a guitarist, The Jeff Beck Group. Moved from there to Faces, and sang some spectacular blues and rock songs with Ron Wood and Ronny Lane. And finally, ends up becoming a mega-star with disco-schlock songs like, "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" and ersatz Billy Joel, "Some Guys Have All The Luck."
Surely one of you, my loyal readers, will throw solo Stewart's "Maggie May" in my face. To which I will say, "Great song. Faces song." He didn't record it with Faces, but it reeks of everything Faces did. Subdued mixtures of Folk and Blues, themes of women as beckoning sirens of beauty and turmoil, all very much what Faces did rather successfully.
Honestly, Rod Stewart's later career doesn't trouble me nearly as much as some other truly offensive stuff: Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne, Anne Murray...wow, apparently I hate Canadian women. But I do think Stewart's subsequent success has left Faces a vastly underrated band. And "Stay With Me" shows off Hot Rod at his best, long before he discovered synthesizers.
Freestyle Fellowship - "Cornbread," Innercity Griots
Really this track is an Aceyalone song, but it is on a Freestyle Fellowship record. West Coast Rap in the '90s is usually described as some monolithic genre with everyone sampling Parliament and Funkadelic and rapping about chronic and drive-by's. While I won't dispute the fact that Cali has been ahead of the curve on sipping extraordinary herb, the homogenized term "West Coast Rap" doesn't hold up.
Listen to "Cornbread" and you'll hear the essence of Black American wordplay, a lighthearted, irreverent approach to the English language, combined with a profound gift for weaving narrative and novelty. Aceyalone, who is one of the more underrated hip-hop artists of the last two decades, juggles schoolyard jump-rope rhymes and comic book tales of fighting King Kong, Godzilla and Rodan, while interspersing statements about ethnic and personal pride, "Used to be a peewee, now I'm full grown/Not a shufflin' jiggaboo, I'm hard like stone."
Most importantly, the song is fun and perfect for playing loudly in your car on a hot summer's day. And it's definitely underrated.
Fiona Apple - "Fast As You Can," When the Pawn Hits...
She kinda set herself for mockery when she gave her second album a ninety word title. I'm not going to take up space printing it here, just google it.
Her first record, Tidal, sold well. It probably didn't hurt record sales that the video for "Criminal," the #1 single from the album, was just this side of teenage porn. This side being Calvin Klein ads, the other side being Ron Jeremy.
But this second album was a different animal. Jon Brion, who has produced numerous other singer-songwriters, influenced Apple's sound dramatically, and helped create an album that was as much vaudeville as it was Tori Aimless.
All of a sudden, Apple sounded as if she welcomed the criticism she had previously been so deeply affected by. She wanted your scorn, so that she could pity you and your need to find fault with her. In the rhythm and sped-up meter of "Fast As You Can," she made it clear that she was flirting with crazy. In fact, she sounded ready to fight, and I loved it.
She warned us.
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