Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. DXXXVI--Faces: Open to Ideas

And it's too late, baby, now it's too late (to blatantly steal a phrase)....

This week's tune was originally slated to be the first post I wrote about a song by this week's artist, but then I worried that this song was a little too obscure and changed it to "Ooh La La."  Almost immediately after I posted that one it dawned on me that one of the reasons I started Friday Night Jukebox was to feature obscure album cuts and added it back to my list.  Only took me roughly six years to get back to it....

This will mark the third song by the Faces that I have written about (Vol. CCXXVI and Vol. CDVII) and as the remaining three members are still alive and I've posted about the deaths of the other two there's precious little to add.  So we'll call it a day on the bio paragraph....

"Open to Ideas" was released as a previously unreleased song on their 1999 retrospective, the rather drowsily entitled Good Boys...When They're Asleep.  As the song was previously unreleased you'll be shocked to learn that it wasn't released as a single, while the album peaked at #87 in Scotland and #79 in the U.K. on their respective charts.

Fun Fact:  "Open to Ideas" was a leftover from the band's final session together circa 1973.  And as the old saying goes, better late than never....

There is no one on this planet who was a better practitioner of blue-eyed soul than Rod Stewart back in the day, and "Open to Ideas" is a stellar piece of blue-eyed soul.  Stewart weaves the tale of a man trying to get in touch via the phone with his girlfriend who is taking a break from their relationship.  And in a plaintive yet soul searching vocal he's letting her know that he's, well, open to ideas about how to continue with their relationship.  The band--Ronnie Wood, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, and Kenney Jones--do a marvelous job of subtly keeping the groove going.  Wood gives a nice short guitar solo in the closing instrumental, while the rest of the band closes it out with all the grace it can muster.  Just a beautiful, beautiful ballad of a man coming to terms with the depth of his love, and the limits to holding on to it.

Lyric Sheet:  "Strange that I don't need no break to find out/What it's all about/You and me baby make it really work/But I don't give a damn to shout..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CDVII--Faces: Stay with Me

 I spent a little bit of time during my college years trying to find this week's featured tune on a Rod Stewart album (sounds quaint, but this would have been many years before the internet), only to find out after I began working at Camelot Music that Stewart had been in another band and that they had actually recorded it.  I'm sure it's shown up on one of his many hits packages through the years, but it forced me to give a Faces greatest hits collection a listen, and that was quite fortuitous as they turned out to be a hell of a band in their own right.

I wrote about the Faces in Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCXXVI, and precious little has changed about the band's history or its remaining members who are still alive (though it was reported last year that those three members were recording new music, but nothing has as of yet been released).  Otherwise, Rod Stewart is still touring and making music, Ronnie Wood is still with the Rolling Stones, and Kenney Jones is doing whatever it is that old fart wealthy drummers who whine about their taxes do.

"Stay with Me" was the first single from their 1971 album, the wondrously titled A Wink Is as Good as a Nod...to a Blind Horse (would easily rank in the top ten of all time cleverest album titles).  The single reached #17 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, and #6 in their native U.K. but it's best showing was at #4 in Canada (so many cool kids in the Great White North!).  The album went to #2 in Great Britain and #6 here in the States.

"Stay with Me" is a rollicking number that tells the somewhat tawdry tale of a man asking a woman to stay the night...but to make sure she's gone in the morning.  Somewhat oddly for a hit single, the band--most notably Ronnie Wood on guitar--plays some balls out rock and roll for almost a minute before Stewart's vocals kick in.  Throughout the song, the band absolutely shines--Ian McLagan on keyboards, Wood on guitar, and Jones on the drums literally push the accelerator to the floor from beginning to end.  All in all, though, the song is a perfect illustration of why Rod Stewart is considered one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time.  With swagger ("Guitar!") and humor ("What was your name again?"), Stewart sings from the gut, and from the heart, and electrifies the band note by note and word by word.  A truly great performance from a truly great band.

Lyric Sheet:  "Red lips, hair, and fingernails/I hear you're a mean old Jezebel/Let's go upstairs and read my Tarot cards..."

Enjoy:

Republican = Traitor

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCLIV--Rod Stewart: Oh No Not My Baby

 I knew a little about Rod Stewart's catalog when I started managing a Camelot Music store in 1981, but a few months after I started I became considerably more familiar with the depth of his hitmaking, thanks to a customer who brought back a defective (that wasn't so defective) copy of a best of compilation LP from his days on the Mercury label.  In fact, it was so good I not only bought it, but the second compilation from those years as well, and spend a good chunk of the early eighties listening to the both of them.

I wrote about Rod Stewart around a million years ago in the third ever post for Friday Night Jukebox.  While the earlier posts didn't have quite the biography of the newer ones, I'll still keep this mercifully short as plenty of writers better than I have covered his illustrious career.  I will make note, though, that since his humble beginning busking on the street with a harmonica in 1962, Stewart has won multiple Grammy Awards, been elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (solo and as a member of Faces), been elected into the U.K. Music Hall of Fame, and been knighted.  He's also sold over 250 million records, and has had ten #1 LP's and six #1 singles in his native U.K., as well as four #1's of each here in the U.S.  And to top it off, he'll be releasing his thirty-first album sometime later this year.

Fun Fact:  The first solo album Stewart released did not chart in his native U.K.  The second one hit #62.  Of the next twenty-eight he released, twenty-seven of them reached the top ten in the U.K., and the one that missed peaked at #11.  That is one hell of a streak....

"Oh No Not My Baby" (which for whatever reason does not make the usual use of punctuation marks) was written by the great Carole King and her one-time husband Gerry Goffin in 1964.  It was originally a hit that same year for Maxine Brown, peaking at #24.  Rod Stewart recorded his version in 1973 while still a member of the Faces, but it was released as a solo effort even though he was backed by them in the studio.  It was never released on a studio album.  The single hit #6 in the U.K. (so many cool kids in Great Britain), and #59 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.

With "Oh No Not My Baby" Rod Stewart (who produced the single himself) took the best of sixties pop, added the best of seventies pop, and created a blue-eyed soul gem.  There haven't been too many rock and roll vocalists who can do vocally what Stewart can, and he makes his voice into an instrument of its own as he sings the tale of a man whose friends and family tell him not to trust his lady love, but who's certain that they're oh so wrong about her.  The Faces--with the help of a string section and possibly some horns--make a musical panoply in the background of Stewart's plaintive wailing (especially impressed with the drumming which give the song a nice funk groove) that glues the other pieces together.  If you're an aficionado of pure sweet pop--I know I am--this one is right up there with the best of what pop has to offer.

Lyric Sheet:   "When my friends told me you had someone new/I didn't believe a single word was true/I told them all I had faith in you/I kept a-right on sayin'/Oh, no, not my baby..."

Enjoy:

The Republican Party Is Now a Fascist Cult Just Like Nazi Germany

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol CCXXVI--The Faces: Ooh La La

As I've noted here a time or two, thrift shop CDs for a dollar have added immensely to my enjoyment of music by allowing me to take a chance on bands that I have missed through the years but don't have the financial means to take said chance.  One such band was Faces, who I knew slightly because of a) my fandom of early Rod Stewart, b) their one big hit, "Stay With Me," and c) this week's tune.  I picked up a two disc hits compilation of theirs for that one dollar figuring I'd listen to it a few times through on my jaunts to work before moving onto the next great musical adventure.  I preceded to spend the next three months alternating between the two discs as it turned out Faces were actually one hell of a band whose output went far beyond a couple of  hit singles.

Faces formed in 1969 in England from the remains of Small Faces after lead singer Steve Marriott left to form the band Humble Pie.  Joining Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenney Jones were a lead vocalist and a guitarist of some note--Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood  respectively.  Between their beginning and their end in 1975, the band released four albums (three of which reached the top thirty on the Billboard 200), 11 singles (the aforementioned "Stay With Me" was their only hit, reaching #17--with a bullet!--on the Billboard Hot 100), and were noted for being a hell of a live act (if a bit on the tipsy side as they did so).  Unsurprisingly, Rod Stewart's solo success lead to fissures in the band and they went their separate ways in 1975 (though they have reunited several times through the years).  In 2012 they were elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  In addition to Stewart, their members have gone on to quite some success--Ronnie Wood eventually joined the Rolling Stones and has now spent the better part of forty years with one of the world's most successful bands, and Kenney Jones would go on to replace Keith Moon in the Who for a number of years.  Sadly, Ronnie Lane died of multitple sclerosis in 1997 and Ian McLagan passed in 2014.  Though the band didn't last long, they are considered one of the more influential bands from their era, especially in their native U.K.

Fun Fact:  Small Faces became just Faces because when Stewart and Wood joined the band they were considerably taller than the other members (though only 5'10" and 5'9" respectively) and the remaining members of Small Faces thought they should make a break with the past and focus on the new band.

"Ooh La La" was released in 1973 on Faces' final album, entitled, surprisingly enough, Ooh La La.  It was released as a single but it failed to chart (how in the hell that happened is beyond me).  Rod Stewart--who does not appear on the version being featured this week--did release his own version of it in 1998 and it did hit the top 40 (even though it wasn't a particularly memorable version).  The song has also been featured in a number of movies and television commercials.

"Ooh La La" tells the story of a young man being warned by his granddad about the ways of wily women and the young man rolling his eyes...until he's a little older and wishes that when it comes to women, he knew what he does now when he was younger.  The song is notable because it is the only Faces song that Ronnie Wood sang lead vocals on (though Wood has had a couple of solo projects, being in bands with lead vocalists extraordinaire Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger probably doesn't offer much in the way of chances to sing lead).  Wood also delivers some fine acoustic and electric guitar work, McLagan has some enjoyable piano work in the instrumental break, and Jones, in what may be an FNJ first, plays the maracas (coooolllll) for a bit.  The song has a lot of folksy charm and is one of those that can lighten even the worst of my days, leaving me singing the words "Ooh La La" (and what a great title that is) for days on end.  Just like now...ooh la la, ooh la la la....

Lyric Sheet:  "Poor young grandson, there's nothing I can say/You'll have to learn, just like me/And that's the hardest way/Ooh la la..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee