DRINKIN’ CHAMPAGNE | DEAN MARTIN | THE ESSENTIAL DEAN MARTIN

In A Song A Day, I’ll hit shuffle on my full Spotify collection of songs and write an immediate reaction to the first thing that comes up.

A few years ago, I read DINO, Nick Tosches’ book about Dean Martin, and honestly, it affected me more than just about any other music book I’ve read (and I read a lot of music books). In Tosches’ portrayal, Dean Martin came across as the most terrifyingly empty nihilist I’ve ever come across. No ambition to speak of, no thoughts, really, just appetites to be filled and a happenstance career that allowed it all to happen. Any narrative where you come out thinking that Frank Sinatra looks like a principled stand-up guy by comparison is a dire one.

But in that stretch, I did listen to a bunch of Dean Martin, and I can’t say that I don’t like some of it. I don’t think he was a guy who put any effort into his art, but sometimes Martin’s natural abilities couldn’t help but make great things.

“Drinkin’ Champagne” is not one of those cases. This song is a dog. The production manages to be both antiseptic and saccharine, with perfectly-balanced awful, bloodless instruments making a bead for terrible strings and the lamest possible background singers to lay in. Maybe I’m not being fair, maybe I’m allowing my own musical baggage to carry too much weight, but the sound of the instrumentation here is just a series of signifiers pointing to a file in my head labelled “THE TYPE OF MUSIC I HATE.” And central to it all is Dino’s voice, which just isn’t good here. He slurs and stumbles and sounds like he doesn’t give a shit. Nihilism aside, he made some great songs before he decided to just coast and crank some shit out here and there. This song is pretty clearly afterwards.

POWDERFINGER (Live) | NEIL YOUNG | LIVE RUST

In A Song A Day, I’ll hit shuffle on my full Spotify collection of songs and write an immediate reaction to the first thing that comes up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2-Wp7D7BVk

Oh boy. Lots here.

1. MUSICAL

I love Neil Young, and this is one of my favorite of his songs. The way his voice floats over the dustcloud of distorted guitar. The way that dustcloud periodically resolves from big rusty sheets of noise into clear, discrete lines and then dissolves again. The way the live version swings (in a leaden, Neil Young-y sort of way) much better than the studio version. The way the lyrics tell a story that’s kind of ridiculous (when I played this song a lot on my undergrad radio show, my friend and cohost Megan once just said flatly, “you know, this isn’t really a song that speaks to my experience or lifestyle.”) but still makes it sound urgent and compelling. Those lines “red means run, son / numbers add up to nothing.” If you’re buying what Neil Young’s selling, this is the primo shit.

2. AUTOBIO (a)

I spent my 20s playing bass in a country-punk band, and I insisted that we learn Powderfinger and play it as often as possible. I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance this was our most-played cover. This is one of the handfuls of songs from those days that, if needed, I could grab a bass and go onstage and play now with zero fear about not remembering the chords (the song also was front and center for me as I switched from bass to guitar, and was one of the songs I learned guitar on; so I could probably step up and cover the guitar part, although I might want to run through some of the lead sections backstage). I insisted on singing it, too, which was kind of a bold choice given that my vocal range has no overlap with Young’s and my attempt to get there made me sound like Wayne Coyne huffing helium while being fed through a meat grinder.

3. AUTOBIO (b)

But this was also one of my father’s favorite songs; that’s how I learned about it. We’d gotten a tape deck for one of our cars, and my mother got my father a copy of Live Rust on tape, and we were driving around listening to it, and when “Powderfinger” came up, my mother turned around and said, “this is your dad’s favorite song.” She later told me that he particularly related to the line, “just think of me as one you’d never figure.” My father’s life was a slow-build exercise in deferred choices leading to frustration, leading to rage, leading to the white-hot destruction of most of his personal relationships, including the one with me; our last communication was an email from him offering to pay for me to change my last name to anything but “Pille.” For the sake of my own mental health, I try not to think about him much. But if I do, I generally think of him as one you’d never figure.

When that thinking does happen, it’s usually when I’m playing that song on guitar. And if I’m playing it, it’s usually on the telecaster that my parents got me when I finished undergrad, the guitar I used to write my chunk of the songs for that country-punk band. I recently thought about getting rid of that Telecaster and trading it in for a better guitar that better suited the way I play now. But I couldn’t pull the trigger on doing that, since this guitar’s my last physical link to my parents.. I kept running a cost-benefit analysis on it, but the numbers added up to nothing.

GUESS WHO | THE ALABAMA SHAKES | SOUND & COLOR

The thing that jumps out at me about this song is the weirdness of its production. Not in a bad way! But it’s unusual! This doesn’t start out sounding like a song that’s going to chirp along over a drum machine all the way through, but that’s absolutely what it does, clicking and chirping its merry way along.

It’s full of other weird production decisions- some strings pop in! The vocals pop in and out of distortion! The entire thing seems kind of jammed into a pretty narrow sonic range. I don’t mean this in any way as an attack on the song, but the strong feeling I get is a bunch of people just idly farting around with a groove in a studio and seeing what happens as they fuss with it; and then, liking what they’d come up with, laying down a vocal over it that evokes Marvin Gaye. No clue if that’s actually how this song came to be; maybe it was actually written and carefully fussed over. But it sounds effortless and light, and that’s pleasant.

Probably because of the drum machine and the farting-around feel, this song also weirdly reminds me of the Replacements’ “Within Your Reach,” which was just Paul Westerberg and a drum machine. In that case, that song is the way it is because he was worried the other Replacements would make fun of the “sensitive” song. I don’t know too much about the internal dynamics of the Alabama Shakes, but I really doubt that’s what’s going on here.

THE GENERAL LEE | JOHNNY CASH | THE DUKES OF HAZZARD

In A Song A Day, I’ll hit shuffle on my full Spotify collection of songs and write an immediate reaction to the first thing that comes up.

When I decided to start this project, I don’t think I could have hoped for an easier layup to start things off.

I’ve loved this song since the late 90s, since my peak of Johnny Cash superfandom. This song is the kind of ridiculous shit that only Johnny Cash could make cool- from a cash-in album put together to capitalize on the success of The Dukes of Hazzard, this song is written from the point of view of a muscle car, describing its thirst for fun and adventure in tones that make it sound like a kid’s loyal dog. The arrangement’s nuts in a very early-80s way, with way too many backup singers oohing and ahhing and a piano part that sounds like it came out of an old-west saloon.

But turning kitsch into gold was always a Cash long suit, and he does it here (it helps that the tick-tocky guitar parts on this thing chug along righteously; and note that, despite the video above, I’m pretty sure that’s not Waylon Jennings playing guitar). Goddamned if this thing doesn’t sound like an anthem of some kind. It’s the magic of Johnny Cash’s voice that he can make lines like “I’m the best pal the Duke Boys ever had / I’m thunder on the highway lookin’ bad, bad, bad” sound, well, if not cool at least vaguely serious and fun.

There’s a vague reference to the flag waving proudly, and that’s a little squicky given that the roof of the car has a Confederate battle flag, but I think this is the kind of thing you have to just shrug and consign to being from the past. Having read a bunch about Johnny Cash, I actually think there’s a decent chance he’d be on the right side of the Confederate monuments debate. That’s unknowable, of course, but that’s my read. Anyway, this is a really fun song that revels in its own dumbness, despite that weird little extra contextual thing. The ending is more of the same: cheesy bad car engine sound effects, and a problematic-but-atavistically-fun sounding of the General Lee’s “Dixie” horn.