October Project - Bury My Lovely / Ariel / Where You Are / Take Me As I Am

The name may sound like a clandestine government operation, but October Project is actually an underground band that has quietly gone from a garage in New Jersey to music halls across the country.
Their self-titled debut album sold more than 200,000 copies, bolstered by the band's touring with Sarah McLachlan and the Crash Test Dummies. Now, they have just released their second album, "Falling Farther In," and they are starting to tour as a headlining act. In an increasingly competitive music business, October Project finds itself in an unusual, almost old-fashioned position: Word-of-mouth and local press are fueling their popularity.
"We feel blessed because we're able to make albums. We feel further blessed that we're doing well and people are responding," says songwriter and keyboardist Emil Adler in a phone interview.
While band members estimate they sell close to 5,000 records a week - 10 times more than their debut averaged - their records have never been reviewed in Rolling Stone or Spin magazine. Nor have they been heavily marketed by their record company, Epic. This only adds to the band's grass-roots appeal, Adler figures, saying, "Our cult audience couldn't be happier."
"Many of our fans discovered us in special, roundabout ways. They feel like we're their band," explains Julie Flanders, who writes lyrics but does not perform on stage. "As a result, we have a very intimate relationship with our audience, and we feel like a local band wherever we go. It's something you can't create artificially."
Almost as unlikely in today's volatile music climate is the breadth of October Project's audience. Judging from the e-mail we get, Flanders says, "the audience ranges from the teenager who can't get into the club to see us, to the parent of the teenager who has taken the CD, put it in the Range Rover, and won't give it up." The ringer was when they heard from a marching band that covered an October Project song in a competition - and won.
While October Project's sound is difficult to describe, it occupies a lofty, mellow spot on the pop barometer, incorporating folk, keyboard-driven melodies, and rich, haunting harmonies. But it's hardly fluffy stuff. The group's poetry-set-to-music often evokes mystery and melancholy - qualities that have invited comparisons to Enya. The band eschews any "new age" label, however.
"Ethereal" is not really a word we like attached to us, says lead vocalist Mary Fahl. "Inspirational" would be better, but "emotional" is probably the best, she explains in the joint interview.
If October Project's debut album entertained any criticism at all, it was that the album as a whole seemed too sonically dense, too celestial. In response, the band built "Falling Farther In" with a "stronger rhythmic spine," as Adler puts it. "We wanted our second album to capture the urgency of our live performance," Flanders adds. "We're very much a live band."
Fahl's rich, full voice embodies much of the band's identity. (She counts Sandy Denny, Marianne Faithfull, and even Petula Clark as influences.) October Project's music has an enigmatic quality, Fahl says, where the emotions expressed are not direct. It's like an "emotional hologram," where the listener enters into the musical landscape, she says. "In a sense, Suzanne Vega does something similar in that it's not direct and yet one of the reasons it is so haunting and it lingers for so long is that the songs are very poetic and get to what they're saying in a very metaphorical way."
Adler adds that there's also a "healing quality about the band": "We attempt to do for an audience what we're doing for ourselves by being in a band and by making music - making the day better or making the moment better."
October Project band members also take pride in their contributions to LIFEbeat, the music industry's organization to help those diagnosed with AIDS, and their public-service announcements for Violence-Free Families and Communities. The song "Eyes of Mercy" on their first album was written for the children of Bosnia.
The band plans more tours and will work on another album. Their dream project? To open for someone they all admire. Speaking for the band, Flanders says, "Sting and Peter Gabriel would be top choices."  From: https://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1127/27151.html

 

Dr. John - Right Place Wrong Time / Peace Brother Peace / Shoo Fly Marches On

Easily the most recognized song from Dr. John's long and varied recorded output, "Right Place, Wrong Time" is a pivotal track that marries the legacy of the good doctor's New Orleans rhythm-and-blues ancestors to the bold funk that dominated black American music at the time of the record's release. This musical apotheosis marked a new height for Mac Rebennack, a New Orleans session musician since the 1950s, who'd reinvented himself as Dr. John, The Night Tripper in the late 1960s, in theatrical homage to the Big Easy's voodoo traditions. A Top 10 chart success in 1973, the tune momentarily elevated Dr. John in the public consciousness from "musician's musician" to pop star.
In a Songfacts interview with Dr. John, here's what he told us about the track: "That was my life for a long time. At the same time I was in the wrong place at the right time, and the right place in the wrong time, too. That was the problem. We're always shifting those gears."
"Right Place, Wrong Time" opens the similarly titled LP In the Right Place, Rebennack's sixth album under the Dr. John persona. Whereas Dr. John's previous album, 1972's Dr. John's Gumbo had paired him with producer Jerry Wexler in an affectionate tribute to classic New Orleans rhythm and blues compositions of the 1950s and '60s, "Right Place" enlisted the production talents of NOLA's own Allen Toussaint, in a far more contemporary setting. Adding to the disc's funk credentials, was the inclusion of the New Orleans Soul talents, The Meters, who were merely a few years removed from instrumental hits like "Cissy Strut," and only a few years away from mainstream success like a Saturday Night Live appearance and opening on tour for The Rolling Stones. The combination of Dr. John's growling vocals and blues piano with Toussaint's tight arrangements and The Meters in-the-pocket groove proved to be a funky alchemy of the first order. "We were making fun music, and doing it at our pace," Toussaint said.
Of musical interest, too, is Rebennack's continued tribute here to his musical ancestors in the stride piano part that comprises the song's bridge.
Lyrically, "Right Place, Wrong Time" is standard blues fare, documenting in ironic one-liners the singer's propensity for misfortune. In the tune's weirder moments, Rebennack fuses this blues-based sense of the absurd with a psychedelic sensibility in line with the late '60s mood that saw Dr. John's emergence. He calls, for instance, for a little "brain salad surgery" to fix his ailing mind, articulated here as "refried confusion."
The line "just need a little brain salad surgery" in this song provided the title for the Emerson, Lake & Palmer album Brain Salad Surgery, which was released later in 1973.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/dr-john/right-place-wrong-time

Renaissance - Can You Understand / Carpet Of The Sun / Ashes Are Burning

The history of Renaissance is so complicated that Ashes Are Burning no longer has any of the original band members remaining. The band’s most beloved core line-up was first assembled on the previous album, Prologue, and the same four-piece of Annie Haslam (vocals), Jon Camp (bass, acoustic guitar), John Tout (keyboards) and Terrence Sullivan (drums) also play on Ashes Are Burning.
Somewhat unusually, the longest history with the band is with two outside members, composer Michael Dunford and poet Betty Thatcher, who together are responsible for the music and lyrics on all but one track of the album. Both were involved in the making of the 1970 Illusion album, but are not actual members of the band. Dunford officially joined the band with the next album. The only song Dunford was not on Ashes Are Burning to compose is ”On The Frontier”, written by Renaissance founding member Jim McCarty. Who was no longer a member of the band at this point. Confusing? A bit! Thus, Ashes Are Burning is a very rare prog album where all the material is written by someone other than the band members.
The album smoothly blends influences from both folk and classical music (no direct quotes are spared). The semi-acoustic sound was an important part of how Renaissance distinguished themselves from other progressive bands. And the acoustic aspect was especially emphasized on this Ashes Are Burning album. Instead of electric guitars and synthesizers, it is John Tout’s classical-style piano that takes centre stage, and the impressive, gentle yet powerful, five-octave vocals of Annie Haslam, who had studied opera singing. Tout also makes restrained use of synthesizers but, pleasingly, sticks mostly to piano, which was rare for early 70s rock bands. And well, for rock bands of any era really.
Although Renaissance draws much of its influence from folk, the grand symphonic nature of the band’s music also clearly distinguishes it from the core of the folk scene. A rock-like kick to the sound is added by Jon Camp’s very Chris Squire-like bass playing and of course Sullivan’s relatively straightforward drumming. Camp and his bass are given plenty of space, as the only electric guitar on the album is on the closing title track, where guesting Wishbone Ash guitarist Andy Powell gets to squeeze in a long guitar solo.
The album’s opening track, the powerful ”Can You Understand?” and the album’s highlight, the delightful prog-folk anthem celebrating nature, ”Carpet Of The Sun”, also features a 22-piece string and woodwind orchestra. This was the first time Renaissance had used an orchestra. On the next two albums, the combination of rock band and symphony orchestra became a trademark of the band.
In addition to the above mentioned songs, the 12 minute title track with Powell’s guitars is also quite impressive, but on the other hand it is also the most typical prog rock song on the album and therefore doesn’t feel as original as the rest of the material on the album. However, the song became an important part of Renaissance concerts and often stretched to more than 20 minutes live, with various band members having long solo parts.
Ashes Are Burning was the band’s most successful album to date, but the band still remained mainly a cult name, even though at their best they could perform to concert audiences of thousands of people.  From: https://pienemmatpurot.com/2023/10/10/review-renaissance-ashes-are-burning-1973/

 

XTC - No Language in Our Lungs

Todd Bernhardt: Let's talk about what, in my opinion, is one of the Great Pop Songs out there...

Andy Partridge: "No Lampreys in my Lunch"!

TB: [laughing] I was looking at the entry in Song Stories about this song, and you said the irony it is, even though it's about not finding the words to say what you want, you think that you pretty much did say what you wanted to in these lyrics.

AP: Well, knowing that you wanted to talk about this song, I thought, "Do you know, somewhere, I've got a notebook with the first scribblings of this song in." And I dug it out! It's this little tiny pocket-sized notebook I used to carry round with me on tour. I found the first jottings in here.

TB: So this actually when you were touring for Drums and Wires, then?

AP: Well, I shall tell you where it got in the book [leafs through pages]. A couple of pages before are the lyrics to "New Broom." So that was written before. And then it's "Outside World." That was written next. Then "Millions" got written -- all I've written is "Chin" above it, because that was short for "Chinese," and then I knew what guitar figure that was.

TB: Yeah, you'd written that originally for Barry's "Things Fall to Bits," right?

AP: Yeah. And then there was a song called "Under a Microscope," which didn't get done.

TB: Meaning you didn't even write music for it?

AP: No, not that I can remember. Then there's another song that didn't get done called "Pretty Precious." Then, here's a song that was going to be titled, "I Have the World in my Mouth." And the lyrics I wrote down are, "I have the world in my mouth / I can say what I want to say / I have a sword in my hand / I can slay what I want to slay / For a minute I became a crusader / Lionheart, a Holy Land invader / I have the world in my mouth."

TB: That's funny! So it became the bridge.

AP: And it also became the contrary to that! Because when I came to looking through the book for what ideas I'd written down, I started kicking this around, and the more I thought about it, I thought, "Christ, I don't have the world in my mouth! I can't say what I want to say!"
When I worked on it, I realized that what I really wanted to say was the exact opposite of the first sentiment. [West Country yokel voice] Ooh, int that strange! Ooh, Oi wonder if George Formby ever 'ad that problem! [laughs]
So yeah, it was originally called "I Have the World in my Mouth," and it was about how you can say what you want to say. Of course you can say what you want to say, but there's still a lack of communication. Because communication isn't really words -- it's about all sorts of things, isn't it. It's about every sensory input you can imagine. It's not just sounds of things.

TB: Right. There's intent, for example.

AP: Yeah. There's tone, your body language, your inflections, the actual language that you're using -- you can raise an eyebrow and it means something totally different. There are so many subtle but powerful variations of communications. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that most people are totally impotent. I think everybody is, when it comes to putting their ideas across. You know, the constriction of society, and the constriction of not wanting to upset people. That's very English, after all.

TB: Was there something definite going on in your life that was frustrating you, that prompted you to flesh this out, going in this direction?

AP: No, I think that, the more I worked on this song, where the idea was you can say exactly anything you want to say, the more I thought deeper about it, I thought, you can use words, and you can say what you fancy saying, but we're not communicating. And, like I say, that's an English thing, an English hang-up. The English will say anything they can, other than what they're really feeling. Or, that might be a human thing, generally.

Probably the nearest piece of music we ever got to one of my favorite bands -- and Colin's and Dave's -- which is Free.

TB: Oh, really?

AP: Because it had a Free tempo.

TB: Interesting. I've heard you talk about the similarity to the Beatle's "Rain," but I didn't consider Free.

AP: The musical template that I had in my mind, I think, was something that Free would have done. I liked their languid, sexy, slow grooves, which seemed to lend a gravitas to some of the crassest things they would sing. Because a lot of their lyrics -- let's be honest about it -- they're not good. With them, it's more the overall thing -- the great sound of his voice, the beautiful holes in their playing, and the funk that they had.

TB: Speaking of lyrics, let's talk about them a little bit more. Did they just flow out intuitively, or did you really work hard on constructing them?

AP: I really constructed them. But I was very lucky to find "lungs" to rhyme with "tongues." Because it's great, it's all connected. It's all part of the same process of speech. How jammy is that! [chuckles] It's like the filmmaker, or ex-filmmaker, who reviews food for one of the magazines here, Michael Winner. Of course, his column's called "Winner's Dinners." That's a great bit of happenstance, you know. If his name had been Michael Eckfast, he wouldn't be reviewing dinners, would he?

But it was just a great piece of happenstance that "no language in our lungs" and "no muscles in our tongues" work great together.
[aggressive Cockney voice] So what is it, guvna? What you want to know about the lyrics specifically?

TB: [laughs] Well, a lot of people on Chalkhills have said...

AP: Oh, so it's all wrong! Okay. So, tell me what they've said.

TB: [laughs] They've picked this apart and really tried to analyze it, so I wanted to find out from you if you really sat down and wrote these out, and re-wrote them, slaving over each line.

AP: Yeah, I always do that with a song. I always take the screwdriver to it over and over again, and tweak and twurk -- is "twurk" a word? -- until it's as tight as I can make it by the deadline of when it's got to be recorded. I was getting more -- much more, on this album -- into looking at what lyrics were really about. I was starting to get quite serious about lyrics.

TB: Looking at these lyrics, too, and thinking about the other songs on Black Sea, there's a sense of frustration here. That's why I was asking if there was a specific event in your life that maybe had prompted this. "Living Through Another Cuba" has an element of political frustration, and "Sergeant Rock" is about romantic frustration....

AP: I guess I'm just a frustrated individual. I'm a rather tame person who doesn't say what they really mean, and probably because I'm faint-hearted, winning Fair Lady was difficult for me.
I think it was probably the thought -- I know this sounds weird, but I've got to sort of tune in to the state of mind I had back then -- maybe I was frustrated that I had an hour and a half to talk to thousands of people on-stage, and sing to them, and I found myself not expressing what I wanted to express. That may have been some of the motor behind writing this song -- where you find yourself in the position of having that soapbox...

TB: Yeah -- you have the opportunity, but are you taking advantage of it.

AP: Yeah. And do people want you to take advantage of it, or do they just want that little performing monkey on the barrel? "Oh yeah, get him to do that funny little dance where he jumps backwards over his own head while you're playing that tune on the barrel!" That's what they want. They don't want the monkey to throw his fez down and say, "And I'll tell you what really pisses me off!" You know?

TB: Exactly. Or, are they listening to you, but still not getting it?

AP: Well, I couldn't communicate on stage. I was too intimidated. You know, I wouldn't wear my glasses, so I couldn't see the audience. But I still felt very intimidated -- "God, how many thousands of people are hanging on every word?"
I did have the wrong frame of mind to be on stage. Some people say, "Oh, it's great when you go on stage, because you know they all love you, and they're willing such great stuff out of you," but I never found that. I always found it was like a battle. I felt it was me against the world, and that's probably not the right state of mind for a communicating entertainer, if you see what I mean.
I felt like it was a war when I went out there, and it shouldn't have been. It should have been much more "receiving the love" vibes. Because a lot of it was love vibes. A lot of the people who came to the gigs already had the albums or singles -- that's the majority of live shows. You're not winning converts, you're rewarding people who bought the record. That's by far the greatest majority of people in the audience.
So, for some reason, I would see it as a kind of a war, but I would feel frustrated that I wasn't really saying what I was thinking. And also, did they really want to hear what I was thinking? So, it was a kind of double-barreled frustration, really.

TB: And did you feel that people were not understanding what you were trying to say? Did you have problems with the critics, or would you talk to fans who would say, "Oh, this song is about this," but you knew in your heart and your mind that it wasn't?

AP: No, most people kind of got the gist of what was going on. Although, to make more magic in the songs, I kept hiding behind -- and I've said this quite a few times -- but instead of me, I'd sing "they" or "she" or "he." But really, mostly, I meant "me." And that's one of those conventions where you get to sort of say the truth, but you're hidden behind a mask. It's easier to be naked if you've got a mask over your face.

TB: [laughs] Exactly. So, let's talk about the music a little bit. You said the words came first on this, but I don't know if you'd fleshed out all the words on this before you started on the music or not.

AP: Do you know, I can't even remember! I know it was that idea about -- let me look in the book again -- "I Have the World in My Mouth." Yeah. And then I finished off "Millions." What did I write next? Oh, wait a minute! After I wrote "I Have the World in My Mouth," do you know what I wrote?

TB: What?

AP: "Roads girdle the globe / black belt around the morning robe." That's all I wrote! So, there you go, that's the first glimmer of "Roads Girdle the Globe."

TB: That's funny. So, this was written as a Drums and Wires song, in a way. Because it's in the midst of all those songs that ended up on that album.

AP: Yeah! The first intention of it, yeah. The first inklings of it came out in the Drums and Wires material.
Musically, Free was a kind of a template. I wanted it to make it feel stately and proceed through the song in a measured pace, because it's about communicating and I didn't want to rush it.
There are quite a few things that I'd never done before in songs. A few chords that I'd never used. [picks up guitar] I don't know how you're going to do this, because I don't know what the intervals are. I was playing this earlier on. I hadn't played it for years, but you sort of don't forget it, because it's bashed into your brain through hundreds and hundreds of live shows.

TB: Sure. "Muscle memory." Burned into the synapses.

AP: Yeah. [plays intro]

TB: That intro, did that come later?

AP: Yeah, I think that was pinned on, to make an "event" to start the song.

We're in the key of B, which was good for me to sing relaxed or loud in. Which oddly, is a key that Free used to play a lot of their stuff in. [sings vocal line] "To tell the world just how we" -- it goes into half-time there. Then I used to like it when it went to the Gb7, because I could twinkle around on that chord.
And then there are these chords [plays "no bridge of thought" part] -- I mean, they're very strange, almost like jazz chords or old kind of songwriter chords. And I don't know where they came from, and I don't even know what the shapes are, to tell you.

TB: Is this because you had the melody in your mind already, and you were just building chords to go with it?

AP: Yeah, I was just trying to find what would work. I was looking for that [sings melody line], and these just seemed to fall easily into place.
And then there's the [sings and plays the "no letting out just what you think"] -- which is another old sort of Tin Pan Alley-type chord. You know, it's that [sings augmented feel] "something's about to happen." And then what happens is, it resolves into the title line.
And then we have that thing that somebody's mentioned, "Ooh, that's just like 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)'!" You know, that [plays descending arpeggio] -- actually, that little chord change, it's almost like the entire Abbey Road album in one little four-bar sequence, you know? [chuckles] Because you've got bits of "Because"...

TB: There's even some White Album on there, too!

AP: Yeah, probably!

TB: You and Dave worked very closely on this one.

AP: Yeah, I think he enjoyed this. He got to dig in, and he did a great little succinct, concise solo in this, which is very well thought-out. I think he really enjoyed it because it tapped into a lot of musical things that were influential for him. It touched on the Fleetwood Mac thing of the twin guitars, or triplet guitars -- I'm talking about the original Blues band, not the modern Fleetwood Mac -- or people like Wishbone Ash, with the two dueling guitars. Whenever there was some sort of sniff of dueling guitars in the air, Dave came to life, you know? So, he took to that like [pauses] a member of Fleetwood Mac to an obscure religious cult! [laughs] They seemed to going mad one a week, at one time in Fleetwood Mac.

From: http://chalkhills.org/articles/XTCFans20070624.html 

Indigo Girls - Jonas & Ezekial / Galileo / Joking / Airplane

Though not what you'd call polished or slick, Rites of Passage introduces a sound and structure that are a touch more refined than previous albums by Indigo Girls. Thanks to producer Peter Collins and a slew of amazing guests, including Jackson Browne, David Crosby, the Roches, and Lisa Germano, the added harmonies and diverse instrumentation put on a whole other spin. Heck, they even tossed in strings arranged and conducted by Michael Kamen. But lest you think otherwise, the songs themselves are pure Indigo Girls. One of the threads that runs through tunes by both Amy Ray and Emily Saliers seems to center around what it takes to be a good, kind person in this world, to do the right thing even in the face of danger or at all costs. Both women also express humility and reverence for a power greater than themselves, be it a cause, a god, a love, a fear, or a poet. Vocally, their harmonies have never been cleaner and clearer than on songs like Saliers' "Love Will Come to You" and "Virginia Woolf." And, naturally, Ray's fiery passion rears its head on "Jonas and Ezekial," "Joking," and "Chickenman." The Girls continue to be two of the most literate, engaging, and important songwriters in the folk-rock scene as they tackle issues ranging from Native American awareness to governmental misdoing.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/rites-of-passage-mw0000620263#review 

 

David Bowie - Changes / Life On Mars / Andy Warhol

In the spring of 1971, when David Bowie wrote the now classic line ‘Turn and face the strange’, he created a mission statement for the next decade of his career. At the age of 24, seven years into that career, three albums and ‘a million dead end streets’ behind him, Bowie had been brooding on the sidelines as friendly rivals Marc Bolan and Elton John started to find stardom. Determined not to be left behind, he pooled his creative strengths and began writing songs that were “more immediate”.
“In the early seventies it really started to all come together for me as to what it was that I liked doing,” Bowie told me in 2003. “After I came back from my first trip to America, I had a new perception of songwriting, and it was about a collision of musical styles. I found that I couldn’t easily adopt brand loyalty, or genre loyalty; I wasn’t an R&B artist, I wasn’t a folk artist, and I didn’t see the point any more in trying to be that purist about it. "What my true style was is that I loved the idea of putting Little Richard with Jacques Brel and the Velvet Underground backing them. What would that sound like? Nobody was doing that. At least not in the same way."
Changes began, he once said, as “a parody of a nightclub song”. But it quickly became one of his new hybrids, fusing cocktail jazz, boogie woogie and beat poetry to a Beatlesque chorus. Significantly, as Bowie worked on the song – and all the material for the Hunky Dory album – he would often swap his usual instrument, a Harptone 12-string acoustic guitar, for the ancient grand piano at Haddon Hall where he lived.
“He loved that piano,” Angie Bowie told me. “David was a fantastic musician, because his approach was not studied, it was by ear. He had an ability to pluck a song from those first moments when he played with an instrument. Writing on the piano opened up his possibilities, because of its association with so many kinds of music – classical, cabaret, every style.”
Listening to Bowie’s home demo of Changes, the song is all there, although his playing is a bit plodding. That’s why he brought in session ace Rick Wakeman to play piano and embellish and add more of a nuanced touch to the recording. “David knew what he wanted to do,” Wakeman tells Classic Rock. “He knew how the music needed to be and he would pick musicians that he felt could achieve what it was he was after. I went to his house, and he had his guitar and he played all of the songs, and every single one was a winner.
"I took some manuscript paper and I was writing stuff down, and I stopped and said: ‘Do you know what you’ve got here? This is the finest collection of songs, and I tell you what, I don’t have any money but if I did I would put it all on saying that this particular record – which he already told me was going to be called Hunky Dory – will still be around and important long after you and I are gone.’
"And he laughed. I said: ‘I’m serious.’ He gave me total freedom to play what I liked, really. The vamping bit in Changes was his idea because that’s how he wrote the song, so that’s how it stayed. Sometimes when there’s something simplistic, if it works then keep it.”
Sessions for Hunky Dory at London’s Trident Studios ran through June and July 1971. Bowie, his musicians and producer Ken Scott worked from two p.m. to midnight, Monday to Saturday, with quick breaks for tea, sandwiches and the occasional bottle of wine. There was a sense of excitement on the sessions, fuelled by Bowie’s new material. “Honestly, I didn’t think he had these songs in him,” recalled drummer Woody Woodmansey. “They were more structured. He’d obviously focused more as a writer, yet he’d managed to keep his unique approach, especially lyrically, while streamlining everything.” “
"Hunky Dory was the first recording session I ever did in my life, and just to be in a studio was amazing,” the late bassist Trevor Bolder said. “Our approach was very off-the-top-of-our-heads. We’d go in, David would play us a song – often one we hadn’t heard – we’d run through it once and then take it. No time to think about what you’re going to play, you’d have to do it there and then. In some respects it’s nerve-racking, but it gives a certain feel. If you play a song too many times in the studio it can become stale, and I think David wanted to capture the energy of it being on the edge.”
“There was incredible pressure in getting a track recorded right,” Woodmansey agreed. “David didn’t like doing more than three takes to get it. Nearly every track I recorded with David was first, second or third take, usually second. He knew when a take was right.”
Changes was released as a single in January 1972, but failed to chart in the UK, and in the US it made it only to No.66. But it became a staple of FM radio, and in Bowie’s live sets, evolving through different arrangements as his stylistic calling card. As the lyric says, he was always ‘much too fast to take the test’ of being pigeonholed. The song, which has become an anthem of youthful freedom, has been covered by several artists, perhaps most creatively by Seu Jorge in Wes Anderson’s film The Life Aquatic. It was also a preamble to John Hughes’s teen movie The Breakfast Club.
Putting it in the context of the album that it kicked off, he told me: “Hunky Dory gave me a fabulous groundswell. First, with the sense of: ‘Wow, you can do anything.’ You can borrow the luggage of the past, you can amalgamate it with things that you’ve conceived could be in the future, and you can set it in the now. "Then the record provided me, for the first time in my life, with an actual audience – I mean people actually coming up to me and saying: ‘Good album, good songs.’ That hadn’t happened to me before. "It was like: ‘Ah, I’m getting it. I’m finding my feet. I’m starting to communicate what I want to do. Now… what is it I want to do?’”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/music/tracks-singles/david-bowie-changes

 

Steeleye Span - Female Drummer

Margaret Jeffrey sang When I Was a Young Maid to Peter Kennedy and Hamish Henderson in the berryfields at Blairgowrie, Perthshire, in July 1955. Steve Roud noted:

The Female Drummer was collected regularly in England and Scotland, but more rarely in Ireland or North America, and appeared on numerous broadsides and garlands, dating back to about 1800. The broadsides claim that she fought with the Duke of York at the Siege of Valenciennes, which took place in 1793 during the French Revolution, but the traditional texts have all discarded this historical detail. The motif of women dressing as men is fairly common in British folk song, but the reason is usually to accompany or find a sweetheart who has gone to war. Our drummer girl, however, seems to have enlisted for the sheer hell of it.

Harry Cox sang The Female Drummer at home in Catfield, Norfolk, in 1955 to Ewan MacColl. This recording was included in 2000 on his Topic anthology, The Bonny Labouring Boy. Steve Roud noted:

A firm favourite with 20th century traditional singers, being found all over England, quite commonly in Scotland, but more rarely in Ireland and North America. Nearly all the major 19th century broadside printers included it on their sheets, which probably accounts for the song’s remarkable textual stability across time and space. The earliest known printing is on an Evans (London) broadside of about 1810 in the Madden Collection at Cambridge University Library.

Lal & Norma Waterson sang The Pretty Drummer Boy in 1965 on the Watersons’ album A Yorkshire Garland. A.L. Lloyd noted on the original album:

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was not unheard of for girls to dress as boys and enlist in the army or navy. Christiana Welsh fought for Marlborough with distinction and ended up as a Chelsea pensioner. Another bold Amazon, Hannah Snell, being wounded during the West Indies campaign against the French and Dutch, extracted the bullet from herself to avoid being unmasked as a woman. The dashing Mary Read served as both soldier and sailor before she became notorious as the Female Pirate. None of them, however, had the charm and sauciness of the female drummer boy, whose ballad, travelled as far north as Aberdeen where Gavin Greig reported it as “well known”. Percy Grainger got this present version from a Yorkshire-born singer on the “wrong” side of the Humber, at Barton [in Lincolnshire].

The Digital Tradition comments: Collected by Percy Grainger and sung by A.L. Lloyd and the Watersons. This is one of the many songs in which a young girl dresses up as a man and joins the Army. This one is special because there’s no lover involved nor does she become pregnant. The second verse refers to the habit of punishing the young servicemen (drummer boys, midshipmen etc.) for petty offenses with lashes on the bare bottom while being bent over breech of a cannon. I would really like to know how she pulled off the trick of not being found out.

Steeleye Span learned this song from the Watersons and recorded it in 1971 as Female Drummer for their second album, Please to See the King; it was also put on the B-side of their single Rave On. The song starts with something close to a rock riff and has the melody played in Ashley Hutchings’ bass with Maddy’s joyful voice intermingled with Peter Knight’s soaring violin. Steeleye Span performed this live for the BBC radio programme “Peel’s Sunday Concert” on 15 September 1971. 

From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/watersons/songs/thefemaledrummer.html 

Stone Temple Pilots - Vasoline / Pretty Penny / Still Remains / Big Empty

Kurt Cobain died on my 12th birthday. Well, actually, his body was discovered on my birthday. Forensics would show that Kurt shot himself three days earlier, on April 5, 1994.  Some would argue that the grunge movement died then, too. But you can’t shut off an entire music genre in one day. I’d argue that Kurt’s passing signaled grunge’s imminent demise – but it was Stone Temple Pilots’ Purple that delivered the death knell. 
When STP released their dark, edgy debut, Core, in 1992, the lyrical themes of abuse, injustice, and sexual objectification went entirely over my sweet, little 10-year-old head. But with two more years of experience under my belt, I could finally appreciate the band’s dark side.
A hit single from The Crow soundtrack, Big Empty first showed up on mainstream American radio on May 22, 1994 – two weeks in advance of the release of STP’s sophomore album, Purple. By the time the album’s second single – the swirling, grinding Vasoline – rolled out the following week, I was sold. 
While that first chunky, dirty riff of opener Meat Plow hooked me instantly, heavy hitters like Lounge Fly, Unglued and Army Ants kept me engaged. I found that the acoustic Pretty Penny served as a beautiful, aching palate cleanser between the hard-rocking yet romantic, Still Remains, and heroin love letter Silvergun Superman. And I will never forget how gutted I felt when I first heard closer Kitchenware & Candybars (which, years later, I’d discover was about a heartbreaking experience with abortion).
But as great as Purple is on its own, its accessibility (for better or for worse) would push grunge – or what the mainstream thought was grunge – even deeper into pop culture than ever before. By September 17, 1994, Interstate Love Song and Vasoline would reach the Number One and Number Two positions on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart, and hold these positions for two weeks straight. Surely, at the time, American rock fans were yearning to fill the void left by Kurt Cobain, and radio stations were all too happy to provide.
Labels had long been capitalising on once-counterculture-misfits like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains – bands whose members had toiled away in underground Seattle clubs for years in the late ’80s before finding mainstream success. But with Stone Temple Pilots, and especially after Purple, labels would chase the mere sound of grunge, turning the genre into a parody of itself. December of 1994 would bring us Bush (a 'grunge' band from… England?); 1995 would usher in Silverchair (Australian 'grunge', too?); and by ’98, mainstream American radio was flooded with post-grunge acts like Creed and Godsmack. Purple killed the possibility of 'true grunge' ever making it into the mainstream again.
And yet, though its music is veiled by a pop veneer, Purple’s lyrics are still dripping with legitimate pain in a way that post-grunge bands could only dream of emulating. In fact, rather than trying to sound tormented, Scott Weiland would head in the opposite direction with a softer, sweeter tone. His lyrics for Interstate Love Song even explicitly describe his ongoing attempts to hide a growing heroin addiction throughout the recording of the album.  From: https://www.kerrang.com/how-stone-temple-pilots-purple-put-grunge-out-of-its-misery

The Bangles - Going Down to Liverpool / Live

 The Bangles - Going Down to Liverpool

 The Bangles - Live

While it may be the first Bangles song that many people remember, “Manic Monday” was not the first Bangles song to reach the airwaves on radio and MTV. That distinction goes to “Hero Takes a Fall,” which was the lead single from their 1984 debut album All Over the Place. In between those two singles, The Bangles released “Going Down to Liverpool.” Unlike “Hero Takes a Fall,” it didn’t make it onto any Billboard chart. Yet it has become one of the band’s most enduring hits. According to setlist.fm, the only song The Bangles have played more often in concert is “Manic Monday.”
The Bangles have popularized tunes written by other songwriters, and they did so famously with Prince’s “Manic Monday.” Not only was “Going Down to Liverpool” also written by someone outside of The Bangles, but it was composed by a member of another band that rose to prominence around the same time The Bangles did. Kimberley Rew of Katrina and the Waves wrote the song for the band’s 1982 debut EP, Shock Horror!, and he sang lead vocals on the track. (At this time, the band was simply called The Waves.) They rerecorded the song, again with Rew singing lead, for their 1983 album Walking on Sunshine. The album’s title track is an early version of what became Katrina and the Waves’ signature song.
In the late stages of recording All Over the Place, Bangles guitarist Vicki Peterson and bassist Michael Steele overheard their roommate listening to a demo version of Katrina and the Waves’ “Going Down to Liverpool.” Peterson told Melody Maker, “It was great, the beat, the feeling of it, something about the guitars sounded like us.” She convinced her bandmates to record their own version and add it to All Over the Place. Less than a year later, Katrina and the Waves recorded their third version of “Going Down to Liverpool,” this time with Katrina Leskanich on lead vocals. Both this version and a rerecording of “Walking on Sunshine” appeared on Katrina and the Waves’ 1985 self-titled album.
For those who are only familiar with The Bangles’ version of “Going Down to Liverpool,” it may be confusing that a band from Los Angeles would be performing a song about a city in North West England. Maybe if the song were an homage to the most famous Liverpudlians, The Beatles, there would be a clearer connection to The Bangles, but the song’s setting and lyrics make more sense with the understanding that it was written by an English guitarist.
“Going Down to Liverpool” consists of just one verse and one chorus, slightly modified and repeated three times. The verse essentially consists of a question: Where are you going with that UB40 in your hand? The alternate version of the verse replaces “UB40”—which is a unemployment benefits form in the UK—with “load of nothing,” so the song’s protagonist has neither a job nor possessions to hold them down. The chorus provides the answer to the question, which is I’m going down to Liverpool to do nothing / All the days of my life.
In the Katrina and the Waves’ versions, the song’s carefree message is delivered by the acoustic strumming and bouncy bass line as much as by its lyrics. The Bangles’ cover of the song is largely faithful to these versions, from Debbi Peterson’s lead vocals to the acoustic and electric guitar tones. What sets their version apart is the dreamy, echoey backing vocals, and particularly the way Susanna Hoffs takes her harmonies higher in the chorus once Debbi Peterson’s vocals trail off. Peterson’s more subtle approach on drums also gives The Bangles’ rendition an aptly mellower feel.  From: https://americansongwriter.com/the-story-behind-the-bangles-sleeper-hit-going-down-to-liverpool-and-the-other-80s-band-that-recorded-it-first/ 

Steely Dan - Rikki Don't Lose That Number

It’s jazz. It’s always jazz. No matter how close they came to brushing up against the pop mainstream, no matter how much they leaned into the balladry of soft rock or adult contemporary, no matter how much their initial twin guitar attack was reminiscent of hard rock, and no matter how similar their lengthy instrumental excursions might have been to progressive rock, everything that misanthropic musical geniuses Steely Dan did always came back to jazz.
It was in their DNA. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were reserved and taciturn individuals, but they shared a similar intellectual bent and manic love for modal jazz, old-school R&B, and the earliest days of funk. They were unlike any two other people in the entire world, so it must have been fate that they found each other at Bard College during the late 1960s.
It was at Bard that Donald Fagen befriended the wife of one of his teachers, Professor Guy Ducornet. Rikki Ducornet was a writer who had grown up on the college’s campus and graduated from the university with a B.A. in Fine Arts a year before Fagen had enrolled there. The two found themselves at the same party, and despite Fagen’s knowledge of her marriage and her pregnancy at the time, he gave Rikki his number.
Ducornet, as can be culled from the lyrics, never called Fagen. When talking with writer Steven Moore in 1998, Ducornet offered up her own interpretation of the tune: “Philosophically it’s an interesting song; I mean I think his ‘number’ is a cipher for the self.” She wouldn’t be the only person looking for deeper meaning within the song’s lyrics, but Fagen has played these interpretations off, saying that it was simply an unrequited love song.
It’s not known precisely when Fagen turned his spurned advances into the inspiration for a song, but even if he had written the basis for ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ soon after the event, he didn’t bring it to the band until 1973. Becker and Fagen had attempted to make it as Brill Building-esque songwriters after graduating from Bard and attracted the attention of producer Kenny Vance, who gave them jobs as touring musicians with his ’60s doo-wop group Jay and the Americans. One of Vance’s associates, Gary Katz, appreciated the material being written by Becker and Fagen, and when Katz got a staff producer job at ABC Records, he hired the duo as songwriters for the label.
Katz quickly realised that their material was too technically complex and lyrically obscure for some of the lighter artists on the ABC roster, so he suggested instead that Becker and Fagen create their own group. Before moving out to California with Katz, Becker and Fagen had played with a New York guitarist named Denny Dias, who flew out to join the project. The trio recruited drummer Jim Hodder and guitarist Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter to round out the initial incarnation of Steely Dan. However, ABC didn’t think Fagen had the voice or presence to be the group’s frontman, so the quintet became a sextet with the addition of vocalist David Palmer.
By the time the band reached 1974’s Pretzel Logic, Fagen and Becker made it clear in no uncertain terms that they were Steely Dan and that the rest of the members would be joined, or in most cases replaced, by studio musicians. Dias would be retained for the future, but the other members were largely phased out by the time recording sessions for Pretzel Logic began. Baxter would later join the Doobie Brothers, with his solo on ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ being one of his final contributions to the band.  From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-story-behind-the-song-steely-dans-sly-rikki-dont-lose-that-number/

 

Spirit - Dark Eyed Woman / So Little Time To Fly / 1984

Spirit had only formed in 1967 in the ashes of a previous band called Red Roosters and already by 1968 the band had released its first two albums, scored a top 40 hit with 'I Got A Line On You' AND was asked by French film director Jacques Demy to record the soundtrack to his film 'Model Shop' which ultimately would be shelved until it finally saw a release in 2005. The band had also undergone a massive touring schedule yet the pressures of the record labels were to consistently pump out product no matter at what cost to the quality. Having capitulated, the result was the rather disjointed third release Clear which pretty much gets panned as Spirit's weakest moment during its initial four album run with the classic lineup.
Although Clear featured the by then standard mix of songs written by both guitarist / vocalist Randy California and drummer Jay Ferguson, the album felt more like an odds and sods kind of affair with tracks scraped together for the sake of releasing an album's worth of material. The band itself has always expressed a distaste for having to release an album before it was actually ready to do so but nevertheless the album emerged in August 1969 and despite it all doesn't really sound that bad once you know the story behind why it sounds so unusually eclectic. The band delivered its usual 60s psychedelic rock soaked bluesy pop tracks and opens with the instantly catchy 'Dark Eyed Woman' followed by 'Apple Orchard' which showcases California's tasty guitar soloing and the band's excellent vocal harmonies.
While the band starts out in classic Spirit form, the album becomes a bit more unpredictable starting with 'Ground Hog Day' which suddenly abandons the 60s pop psych for a blues rock sound as if the band was channeling its inner John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers. Interestingly Spirit also seems to have written catchy melodies that others would later borrow and make their own. The rather unremarkable track 'Cold Wind' has an intro that sounds just like the main melody for Bill Wither's 1972 smash hit 'Lean On Me.' Add that to the 'Stairway To Heaven' debacle from the band's debut album track 'Taurus' and perhaps Spirit was one of the most plagiarized bands of the entire 60s!
Given the soundtrack score fell through, the band suddenly had a bunch of extra tracks it could pad the album with however given the three tracks 'Ice,' 'Clear' and 'Caught' sound more like something off a Weather Report album in an all instrumental jazz fusion light mode, these tracks totally clash with the brash ballsy blue rock songs such as 'Policeman's Ball' and 'I'm Truckin.' Despite sounding like totally different bands, the jazz rock tracks are actually quite brilliantly performed sounding a bit like 70s Soft Machine at times with beautiful keyboard tones and California's excellent fusion guitar soloing. The rather anachronistic 'Give A Life, Take A Life' sounds as if it was one of the band member's first songs written in the early 60s with a dreamy traditional pop song with pop harmonies right out of the early 60s.
Despite its oddball mix of tracks, Spirit didn't really have it in them to craft inferior material. While the album doesn't hold together as a whole, the tracks taken on their own terms hold up pretty well although not all are created equal. For a throw-it-together job, Spirit rose to the occasion and piece-mealed a decent selection of tracks that just happen to sound a bit quirky sitting next to each other. Newer remastered versions of the album also feature a number of bonus tracks including non-album singles such as the excellent '1984.' The band would have the proper amount of time to work on its next album 'Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus' which would got down in history as their strongest work.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=13051  

 

Rod Stewart - (I Know) I'm Losing You / Mandolin Wind / Lost Paraguayos / Twistin' The Night Away

The focus of today’s ‘Take One’ feature is a idiosyncratic little ditty composed by Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood and released by Stewart (in some countries) as the flip side to his 1972 number one hit ‘You Wear It Well’. ‘Lost Paraguayos’is a humorous narrative set to the quintessential and solid instrumental backing group Stewart used exclusively at the time. The song is available as an album track on side A of Stewart’s classic 1972 solo LP Never a Dull Moment.
The song spotlights the deft arranging talents of Stewart and showcases the usual Stewart suspects, Micky Waller on drums, Stewart collaborator Martin Quittenton on acoustic and of course Ronnie Wood on guitars and bass. Stewart’s compositions often had a unique folk thread running through their foundations and this track concentrates on Stewart’s blending of both pastoral folk elements and pub rock. His vocals can never be doubted in this era and this track allows for argument that he was the best rock vocalist of the time.
A ticklish acoustic filigree begins the song with the campfire accompaniment of a solitary tambourine. The song bobs around expectantly with Rod sweetly laying out his reasoning for abandoning his overnight love. Stewart first lists what he likes about his lady before initiating the litany of reasons she can’t join him on his journey. Stewart sings to his female companion with buzzed buoyancy, explaining to her that the inclement weather is bringing him down and he must be on his way to some ‘South American sun’. He admonishes his lady friend that she’s too young to come with him, she may cause him trouble and that ‘she sure don’t look like his daughter’. The story follows a pebbled road to camp but will soon find its way to the expressway as Stewart plans his musical getaway.
Stewart’s marvelous vocals are made more enjoyable by his suspiciously hearty laughing the follows the lines ending with, ‘Ya know I wouldn’t tell you no lie’. The brisk rustic strumming works in conjunction with the eavesdropping nature of the narrative, coloring a wonderful scene developed as well through Stewart’s lyrical humor and the sympathetic instrumental arrangement. 
The songs humble beginning in a contemporary folk setting patiently shifts to exuberant rocking and rolling by the halfway point. The contrast between the ‘shade’ of Stewart’s current situation as opposed to his eventual destination of fun and sun is the crux of his debate with the unseen lady of the song as well as the basis of  his many excuses to her. The changes of  Stewart’s emotional state are reflected by the developing instrumental dynamics that take place throughout the duration of the track.
A sunny water front mid song guitar breakdown following the fist verses elicits the big ‘bang-bang’ drums and bass that enter for the third verse.  Woody, in the sneaky way that made him famous begins to play a beautiful muted counter melody on bass under Stewart’s ascending and now urgent vocalizations. The layered acoustic guitars exude vibrant tones that bring to mind other legendary and helplessly catchy Stewart tracks from the era, ‘Maggie May’ and the ‘A’ side to this song ‘You Wear It Well’.  The song’s anxiousness continues to increase as I can envision Stewart already has one foot out the door and one eye on the Southern reaches.
A  Mexican Banda joins in on swelling horns as Stewart bids ‘farewell’ in a series of excited vocal exclamations. Woody catches up from behind on electric guitar and offers the street musicians a descending melody line played in perfect, yet gently contradictory time to the horn licks. The clear blue guitar line reminds me of the introductory Chuck Berry ’Sweet Little Sixteen’ lick, but placed in a brand new context. 
The song soon reveals a huge fadeout reaching the crest of a musical arc as bottles pour, the breeze blows and the celebratory destination of the sun is reached. Stewart reports lyrically, ‘Good Bye honey, it aint’ funny’ on the fade, while a dusty street dance has been initiated and glorious musical independence has been achieved. The bass is particularly active here and a gold star must be offered to Woody for his assistance in composing the multitude of melodic interplay the dresses the songs framework.  From: https://talkfromtherockroom.com/2015/07/take-one-rod-stewart-lost-paraguayos.html

K's Choice - White Kite Fauna / To This Day / Paradise In Me

She strides into the room, her wild, bleached mane damp from a
long day of interviews and rehearsal. He follows close behind with
a casual gait and cool, unaffected manner. Lounging in the bar of
the Troubadour on a sultry Los Angeles afternoon, modern rock band
K’s Choice oozes quintessential rock star quality.
But over apple juice and insightful reflections, siblings Sarah
and Gert Bettens seem grounded by the Belgian comfort that they are
quick to remember and eager to discuss.
"A lot of the things that I wrote about in this record are
inspired by, or just triggered by, melancholy and missing home,"
lead singer Sarah reveals. "It’s a very strange way of living,
always being away from home – the same nine people on a tour bus
coming home for, like, one week and then going on the road for two
months."
This nostalgic feeling drives their emotional songwriting,
culminating in their third and latest album, "Cocoon Crash." The
Bettens lead the band, which includes guitarist Jan Van Sichem Jr.,
drummer Bart Van Der Zeeuw and bass guitarist Eric Grossman.
Last week, K’s Choice kicked off their American club tour after
a 10-day stint with the Lilith Fair tour. Beginning in San
Francisco, they stopped next at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on
Tuesday, dispensing their version of what Americans have coined
"alternative rock."
"(‘Alternative music’) means something else in Belgium than it
means here, and I haven’t figured out yet exactly what it means,"
Sarah admits.
The two explain that "alternative" music in their country
remains faithful to its name; a "really original" and "really
experimental" form that doesn’t necessarily apply to their
style.
"I don’t think we’re an experimental band," Sarah says. "It’s
pretty straightforward songwriting – emotional, acoustic guitar,
about things about ourselves. But here, I’m not really sure what it
means. A lot of things that are ‘alternative’ seem really
mainstream to me."
But she adds, "We’re not just the pop band who has one song, and
that’s it. I think we take our lyrics very seriously, and we really
try to make something that, although it doesn’t sound experimental,
we really try to make something very genuine."
Their musical philosophy imbues every aspect of their
songwriting in "Cocoon Crash," from the friendship-inspired ballad,
"Winners," to the self-affirming "Believe." Their key distinction
from the oxymoronic "mainstream alternative" scene is their
unabashed willingness to be positive.
"We wrote a song about that," Gert says. "It’s called, ‘Too Many
Happy Faces.’ It’s the quote of a singer in a Belgian band that
told friends of ours after a show that he liked (it), but he
thought there were too many happy faces … It is kind of cool to
be negative. We want to emphasize that it doesn’t need to be that
way."
Their thought-provoking lyrics fused with an edgy, electric
sound was what attracted Alanis Morisette when she stumbled upon
the relative unknowns at a music festival in Germany in 1996.
Morisette invited the band to join her American tour. Their break
coincided with the growing popularity of their single, "Not An
Addict," which ultimately became their biggest hit.
While the song’s success propelled them to American notoriety,
pressure to deliver another hit plagued K’s Choice when recording
"Cocoon Crash."
"The record company kept telling me, ‘We don’t have the new "Not
An Addict" yet,’" Sarah said. "There’s nothing that stimulates you
less than people who tell you stuff like that … but while we were
working, we were just trying to make the best record we could make.
You can’t do anything more than that."
The result is an album with a greater intensity than their 1995
sophomore release "Paradise in Me," said Sarah. She attributes this
new level of quality to the band’s growing closeness through the
years.
"Cocoon Crash" is also characterized by a wide range of musical
genres, from folk to rock.
"To both of us, an interesting thing on our albums is a lot of
dynamics in the lyrics (but) especially in the music," Gert says.
"We try to do that live too. That surprise element is always
interesting."
The dynamics of their live act was evident in Tuesday’s show at
the Troubadour with a variety of songs that pleasantly jerked the
mood of the evening from smooth ballads to jolting rhythms.
Sarah shifted from song to song with a rasped intensity that the
unaccustomed ear could have mistaken for hoarseness. But fans knew
it was distinctively Sarah.
While K’s Choice entertained with a high energy that infected
the eager crowd, their performance left die-hard devotees
uninspired. The band’s slow start dragged for the first handful of
numbers but managed to gain momentum once they unleashed "Not An
Addict."
With their growing popularity in the United States, K’s Choice
seems far removed from their much-missed home. But their pensive
lyrics act as an ongoing reminder of their true priorities, much
like the Celtic cross tattooed on Sarah’s forearm.
"I wanted something that, for me, meant that I’ll always believe
in something," Sarah explains. "But I didn’t want specifically a
Christian cross because I really don’t know what I’m going to
believe in 50 years. But I know, for me, it means that life will
always have a deeper meaning, and there’s a universal truth,
whatever it is."
From: https://dailybruin.com/1998/08/02/making-the-right-choice

Jackson Browne - Doctor My Eyes

Jackson Browne's songs often ask if it's better to see the world through the harsh lens of reality, or to just leave on the rose-colored glasses. He does just that in "Doctor My Eyes," asking if was unwise to leave his eyes open for so long, as now he must contend with a "slow parade of fears."
The song had a very literal inspiration. "I did, in fact, have something happen to my eyes," Browne told Rolling Stone. "They became red, I could barely see - I didn't know what it was. They gave me some drops: 'Keep your eyes shut for a few days.' By the time I wrote this, I could see again. But it was a metaphor for having seen too much, a loss of innocence."
Originally, the lyrics were about a guy who tries to get help, but is doomed because it's too late. Browne's record company thought it was too much of a downer, so he made it into a story about a guy who has gone through a lot in life and comes to accept his fate.
Browne's Southern California musical cohorts David Crosby and Graham Nash sang harmony vocals. Brown was signed to Asylum Records, which was owned by David Geffen. According to Jackson, Geffen asked Nash if he thought there was a single on the album (Browne's first), and Nash picked this one, with the proviso that Browne add a high vocal part, which he did.
Browne was just 23 when this song was released, but he was well known in the Southern California music community, where he had high standing with the likes of Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. A few years earlier, he was part of an early permutation of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which ended up recording two of his songs: "Melissa" and "Holding." He also worked with Nico and Tim Buckley as a backing musician; Nico covered Browne's song "These Days" in 1967.
Browne, though, had never had his own band, so putting one together for the album was a challenge. He ended up anchoring it around bass player Lee Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel, who where James Taylor's rhythm section and much-admired session pros. Instead of working with a high-powered producer, Browne put engineer Richard Orshoff in that role and gave his players lots of input. They were able to transform the songs he had been playing solo on acoustic guitar into full arrangements.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/jackson-browne/doctor-my-eyes