Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. XCIII--Eric Burdon and War: Spill the Wine

Every now and again a song comes along that I'll listen to numerous times and for some reason it never grabs me and then one day I'll be listening to it and something just clicks and I'll wonder, "How did I never notice before how great this song was?"

Such is the case with this week's tune, "Spill the Wine" by Eric Burdon and War, which I "discovered" about ten years ago after I'd picked up a copy of War's Greatest Hits in a discount bin in some now long forgotten record shop.  I'd heard it many times before, but somehow listening to it in my car driving back and forth to work triggered something in my brain that made the song into an all-time fave (of course, I was working for Kmart at the time, so I may have wanted a swig of wine as I drove to and from their store...).

Eric Burdon is famed for being the lead singer of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted band, The Animals, which, truth be told, outside of "The House of the Rising Sun" is a band that I'm not terribly fond of.  The Animals had a number of hits in the 60's before the usual rigmarole left them in the dustbins of Rock and Roll Bands that Eventually Broke Up.  At that point Burdon teamed up with War (regular readers may remember my write up of War's "Summer" earlier this year) for a couple of albums before embarking on the Famed Band Member Goes Solo Tour which pretty much went absolutely nowhere.  Still, Burdon is recognized as on of the all-time great rock and roll vocalists (#57 on Rolling Stone's list of The 100 Greatest Singers of All-Time).

Released in 1970 on the very coolly named LP, Eric Burdon Declares "War", "Spill the Wine" was War's first chart hit, reaching #3 (most assuredly with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  Though not on par with Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin, "Spill the Wine" was an accidental song of sorts--while recording, one of the band members accidentally spilled some wine on the soundboard, which Burdon and War member Lonnie Jordan deemed hilarious (one supposes a bit of the famous weed may have sparked such hilarity over a not particularly funny incident) and composed the song in response.

One of the more amazing things about the song, to me, is how easily it could have been little more than a novelty song, but somehow isn't.  Part of this is the lyrics themselves--a series of rambling and bizarre monologues that sound like they're out of a Tim Burton movie.  Not your average "Gangnam Style" bullshit for your average American.  The rest of it, of course, is the jazz/funk/pop/R & B stylings of War--I'm not exactly a Funkmaster, but even I can't help but both marvel at and shake my tailfeather to the music.  Combine those two with a simple and catchy as all hell chorus--"Spill the wine, take that pearl" is the sum of it--and you have another classic for Friday Night Jukebox.

Did I mention there's also a flute solo in the background throughout?  Another of those Moments You Don't Find All That Often In Pop Songs....

Rap sheet (note that some consider this song to be among the early influences of rap):  "I thought to myself, what could that mean?/Am I going crazy, or is this just a dream..."

Enjoy:

Peace,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. LXXVII--War: Summer

Sunday marks the official beginning of summer, so naturally my thoughts turn to...great songs about summer...which brings us to a little ditty entitled, appropriately enough, "Summer" by War for this week's Jukebox feature.

If you're of a certain age (a polite way of saying "old"), you can remember when record labels would add a new track to Greatest Hits packages as a way of suckering people into buying the Greatest Hits album--if you were a big enough fan you'd already have all the hits but you absolutely had to have that new single.  "Summer" was just such a single--though unlike many such songs, it was actually worth the price.

War, much like last week's band The Guess Who, had a great run from the early 70's through the mid 70's--it would have been hard to get through any of those years without thee or four War singles making the charts and getting plenty of airplay.  Originally, known as Eric Burdon (of Animals and "The House of the Rising Sun" fame) and War (until Burdon's departure in 1970), the band formed in 1969 and was a multi-ethnic (somewhat novel for the time) band that featured a plethora of musical styles--jazz, funk, rock, reggae, R & B, and Latin.  Their album The World Is a Ghetto was the best selling LP of 1973.  War is still together and touring, though only one of the original members is still playing (sadly, two of the original members have passed).  Also like The Guess Who, their Greatest Hits package is a delight to listen to even these so many years later--chock full of great songs with lots of great grooves.

Released in 1976, "Summer" was the last hit single War would have, reaching #7 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  Amazingly enough, the song is a tribute to that most wonderful time of the year--no, not fucking Christmas:  summer.  Though the lyrics are somewhat dated (they're not somewhat dated, they're tremendously dated) with references to listening to 8-Tracks (again, of a certain age) and CB radios (ditto), the song is still an infectious ode to all the things we love to do when the weather is warm and the sky is blue.  Best of all, it's sung and performed in a hazy lazy groove reminiscent of summer itself, with some wonderful four part harmonies on the chorus.  All in all, if you're a fan of summer (count me in) or summer songs (ditto), War's tribute to long days and short nights is a winner.

Truer words:  "Yes it's summer/My time of year...."

Enjoy:

Peace,
emaycee