Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. DXXIII--Neil Young: Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

Yikes--almost two weeks late.  To steal a phrase, it's alright, Ma, it's life and life only....

My introduction to this week's tune was my turntable in my bedroom at my parents home in Kokomo, Indiana.  I had a big assist from noted rock critic Robert Christgau and a stellar review he wrote in The Village Voice for this week's album--which prompted me to rush right out and buy a copy.  Christgau nailed it--it was a great record and with the passage of time became quite the influential album....

I wrote about Neil Young in Jukebox Vol. LXXX, and if I do say so myself, it was a nice bio paragraph, and other than his marriage to actress Daryl Hannah, releasing nine (!) more albums (Young was nothing if not prolific) and adding one more Grammy nomination it was a pretty bland nine years for Young (note:  tongue planted firmly in cheek).  I also wrote about Young for his brilliant protest song, "Ohio" in Vol. CCLII, which was ever so nobly performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. That's six links in three sentences--you'd think this was Wikipedia....

"Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" was the closing song on Young's seminal 1979 album, the rather oxidizingly entitled Rust Never Sleeps.  The single would peak at #79 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Pop Singles chart, while the album hit #8 on (just to show you how old the album is) on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.

Fun Fact:  Rust Never Sleeps opens with an acoustic version of this week's song, entitled "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)."  Pretty damn sure that's a Friday Night Jukebox first (and one hell of a song in its own right).

Give "Hey Hey, My My" one listen and you can instantly tell why Young is considered the Godfather of Grunge.  From the thrashing slashing guitars to the ripped raw lyrics, Young takes on his relevance, his music's relevance, and what exactly should become of rock and roll (one of pop music's great ironies is that punk music did burn out rather than fadeaway).  It was a singular achievement for Young and sparked a musical movement for the rest of us.  Did I happen to mention that it's also simply a great song?  The vocals, the guitars, the band, the lyrics--just an ultimate piece of work that ranks with any of rock's greatest songs.

Lyric Sheet:  "Hey hey my my/Rock and roll can never die/There's more to the picture than meets the eye/Hey hey my my..."

Enjoy:

Bonus acoustic version:

Fuck Donald Trump

Peace,

emaycee

It took a Village (Voice)

It's alright, Ma, I'm only crying

I noted a couple of posts back in Friday Night Jukebox that I spent my formative years (ages 14-21) in the small (but completely uninteresting) town of Kokomo, IN.  Our newspaper there, The Kokomo Tribune, reflected the town itself and what many of its residents would consider an ideal America--Mom, baseball, apple pie, and hot dogs (not a caricature).  Somehow when I started college at the regional Indiana University campus there in Kokomo, I came across the New York City weekly The Village Voice.  

The big city newspaper in Kokomo was The Indianapolis Star, a conservative beacon in Indiana.  Television consisted of five channels--the big three (only ABC, NBC, and CBS existed back then), one local channel that showed nothing but reruns, and if the weather was just right (no clouds) you could sort of get the PBS station on the TV.  Radio was top forty out of the big city there in Chicago, and again, if the weather was just right, you could get one of them rock and roll FM stations out of Indianapolis.  There was no internet.

You can imagine what it was like, then, when I started subscribing to The Village Voice, an alternative weekly before there were alternative weeklies.  It introduced me to the punk movement and Neil Young (after a hella review of his Rust Never Sleeps LP) and the work of music critic Robert Christgau (whom I continue to have a love/hate relationship with to this day).  It taught me that not all people who were gay were in the closet.  That there were Americans who were a lot more liberal than that commie Jimmy Carter.  That there were a lot of people angry just like me at the state of America.  And that there was a lot more to America (both good and bad) than I had been taught in my high school history classes.

So it was with some sadness that I read this past week that The Village Voice is ceasing publication, though I'd quit subscribing sometime after my daughter was born (not a justifiable expense for a young family) roughly thirty-five years ago.  Not surprised--printed newspapers have pretty much become a quaint nod to our past, which I suppose is what this whole post is.

Give 'em credit, though--in a world that is still screaming for the coolness quotient, they scored a perfect ten on their final cover (Dylan saluting, as seen at the top of this post).

If you gotta go, as the saying goes, at least leave a beautiful corpse.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol CLXXI--The Roches: We

Any group that has a song with a lyric about the shit hitting the fan and performs it in three part harmony is aces in my book....

Maggie and Terre Roche came from deepest New Jersey and dropped out of high school in the late 60's so they could begin performing music full time.  Sister Suzzy joined them in the 70's, they cleverly named the newly formed band The Roches, and the trio would go on to become another in a long line of musical performers who were critically acclaimed and sold very few records (though I myself have three of their albums and one of Suzzy's solo efforts).  Still, over the course of thirty-eight years the sisters released thirteen LPs as a trio (the last in 2007) and ten albums in various solo and duo incarnations.  Their debut album was given a classic rating by The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Maggie and Terre provided backing vocals for Paul Simon on his There Goes Rhymin' Simon LP (featuring FNJ fave "An American Tune,"), and the Roches perfomed on Saturday Night Live, The Animaniacs (as the Roaches--get it?), and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Sadly, eldest sister Maggie passed away in 2017.

Fun Fact:  The Roches are the only band to write a song about appearing on SNL--before their appearance in 1979, they were assured by many in the music biz that said appearance would make them into huge stars...and it didn't.  The Roches wrote "Big Nuthin'" (my second favorite Roches song) to commemorate their performance.

Released in 1979 on their aptly named debut album, The Roches, "We" was never released as a single and therefore we will have no bullets this week on the Billboard charts....

Backed only by a lightly strummed acoustic guitar, "We" is a tour de force introducing (for the most part humorously) the Roches to their listeners.  We're told they're from New Jersey but now live in NYC, they don't give out their ages or their phone numbers, that two of them have made a record before, they've performed all over the U.S. and in England, and that their last name is spelled R-O-C-H-E.  Throughout, the sisters harmonies are nothing short of exquisite, and when combined with the song's humorous bent and funky phrasing, it creates a quirky masterpiece of folk pop for the ages.

Lyric Sheet:  "We are Maggie and Terre and Suzzy/Maggie and Terre and Suzzy Roche/We don't give out our ages/And we don't give our our phone numbers..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CLII--The Magnetic Fields--Nothing Matters When We're Dancing

Truth be told, my love affair with this week's tune began the first time I heard the chorus, when the word "dancing" was rhymed with the city of "Lansing."  Whether this was because I live in Michigan, or because it's incredibly clever, only the Gods of Pop Music know for sure....

The Magnetic Fields are the brainchild of one Stephin Merritt, and were formed in 1989.  Merritt is an offbeat songwriter, and the band helps to showcase his lyrical talents.  Near as I can tell, the band has had zero in the way of what would be considered mainstream musical success--no hit singles, no million selling albums, no Grammy nominations let alone awards, and no record breaking world tours.  Nevertheless, they've released eleven albums over the course of their twenty-eight year career, the latest being released just this year.  Their album 69 Songs (which oddly enough, features 69 songs spread over three CDs, including this week's tune) is considered their best album and was released to extreme critical acclaim in 1999, including finishing second in the hipster's newspaper of choice, The Village Voice, year end Pazz and Jop poll.  The three CD box set sold a whopping 83,000 copies (still 83,000 more CDs than I've ever sold).  Sadly, they are another in a long line of bands that had their been world enough and time, I may have become a huge fan of, but I'll settle for having heard their delightful 69 Songs album, and the joy it brought me for months on end.

"Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" was never released as a single, though if it could have been transported back to the 40's or 50's and been given to Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett or Nat King Cole it probably would have rocketed up the charts.  Featuring a deliciously strummed ukulele (another of those not oft used instruments that in the right place can take a song to another plane), Merritt's distinctive baritone, and some oh so perfect harmonies in the chorus, the song tells the tale of two old lovers lost amongst each other as they dance to the last song of the night in some old dilapidated dance hall.  I'd be the first to admit it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea--a balls out rocker it ain't--but every time I hear it it adds a little sunshine to my day and I'll be singing it over and over for days on end.  Sometimes a pretty song is just a pretty song....

Lyric Sheet:  "And nothing matters when we're dancing/In tat or tatters you're entrancing/Be we in Paris or in Lansing/Nothing matters when we're dancing..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee