Author: Kim Simpson

“Chilly Winds” (1971) – The Osmonds

“Chilly Winds” (1971) – The Osmonds * Written by Lalo Schifrin and M. Charles (Mike Curb) * Produced by Rick Hall * 45: “Double Lovin'” / “Chilly Winds” * LP: Homemade * Label: MGM
 
In some alternate timeline (Star Trek foreshadowing alert), the Osmonds’ “Chilly Winds,” with its folky arrangement, philosophical lyrics and gorgeous vocals (possibly their finest on record) would have been a stage show staple, right up there with “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” In the less pleasant timeline we inhabit, though, the song is an embarrassing poison pill in the famous Mormon family’s history, something they were likely tricked into doing and have quite plausibly blocked from memory. Written by Lalo Schifrin and the pseudonymous conservative (when expedient) MGM president Mike Curb, it appeared as the theme for Roger Vadim’s 1971 movie Pretty Maids All in a Row, accompanying an opening sequence where a teenager (John David Carson) ogles his schoolmates. Cynically salacious, even by sexual revolution standards, the film barely escaped an X rating, depicting Rock Hudson as a high school counselor who has his way with female students (minors) before murdering them. Along the way, Angie Dickinson seduces Carson (a minor), while Telly Salavas, James Doohan (Star Trek‘s Scotty), and William Campbell (Star Trek character actor alumnus) do hapless police investigations. The whole thing glows with inviting, vibrant Star Trek colors and associations, with production and screenplay credited to none other than Gene Roddenberry. John David Carson would later appear as the lead role in the Mormon church-funded short film John Baker’s Last Race (1976), contributing yet another bizarre ingredient to this nightmarish, mixed-moral matrix.

“Cook of the House” (1976) – Wings

“Cook of the House” – Wings (1976) * Written by Linda McCartney and Paul McCartney * Produced by Paul McCartney *45: “Silly Love Songs” / “Cook of the House” * LP: Wings at the Speed of Sound * Label: Capitol

“Cook of the House,” featuring Linda McCartney’s best known vocal, appeared on the B-side for “Silly Love Songs,” the track that served as a cheerful anthem for the summer of ’76 and whose overuse as an analogy for rock’s death (or just Paul’s) became more tiresome than its saturated airplay. “Cook of the House” crackles with rock ‘n’ roll flipside-ology, only to be thrown out at your own ignorant accord. It brings to mind Rosie and the Originals’ 1960 “Give Me Love” (the B-side of “Angel Baby”), which John Lennon adored and was likely a Beatle inner-circle favorite. The sound of cooking grease comes off as scratchy vinyl; Linda sings instead of Paul, just as one of the Originals, on “Give Me Love,” sang lead instead of Rosie; a tenor sax honks aimlessly; the drums sound like sofa cushions. What does Paul sing at the beginning? Why are there voices of affirmation after he sings what he does? What is Linda saying in the verses? Not clear at all. How many consumers spun the 45 and relished the muffled, thumpy sound they heard? Untold numbers. Read some of the words most any critic has written about “Cook of the House,” though, and you’ll see why she recorded a song (on her posthumous Wide Prairie compilation) about “stupid dicks.” (Extracted/adapted from a longer post on Wide Prairie at Boneyard Media.) 

“Open Your Heart” (1981) – The Human League

“Open Your Heart” (1981) – The Human League * Written by Jo Callis and Phillip Oakey * Produced by Martin Rushent and the Human League * 45: “Open Your Heart” / “Non-Stop” * LP: Dare * Label: Virgin * Charts: UK #6

The Human League’s commercial breakthrough in 1981 showcased a simplicity vs. complexity dialectic in new British synth pop. Producer Martin Rushent, having programmed the intricate chain of sequences on “Open Your Heart,” would surely laugh if anyone were to inquire about the track’s scaled down nature. The final product, though — including the white-background cover art, the one-word album title, the button-tapped electronics — argued for minimalism, dehumanization, emotional restraint. “Open Your Heart,” in fact, pushes so far in that direction that it breaks down one of those white studio walls to reveal a pastoral conception of minimalism. A Casio VL-Tone, that most portable of early synthesizers, plays the melodic hook on the “flute” setting, as though emanating from under a shepherd’s shade tree. For three 1981 singles, the band experimented with a Red and Blue labeling system, which they described self-effacingly in the New Musical Express as a way of differentiating between their “Spandy” [Spandau Ballet] or “Abba” offerings (i.e., dance or pop). “Open Your Heart” clearly qualified as Blue/Abba, whose 1980 song “The Piper”—the B-side for their UK #1 “Super Trouper” — also used a synth flute and evoked pre-industrial age airs.

“Duel at Diablo (Main Title)” (1966) – Neal Hefti

“Duel at Diablo (Main Title)” (1966) – Neal Hefti * Written by Neal Hefti * LP: Duel at Diablo: Original Motion Picture Score * Label: United Artists

By 1966, the trumpeter and arranger Neal Hefti, having made a name for himself with Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, shifted his focus to film and TV scoring. Although his themes for The Odd Couple (1968) and Batman (1966) are his most enduring, other ones paired with lesser-known projects would nonetheless sport a certain trademark heft, shall we say. The Duel at Diablo theme is one of these, catchy and finger-snappy enough to work as a TV jingle. Instead, it accompanied one of the era’s more distinctly violent and emotionally complicated westerns. Based on Marvin H. Albert’s 1957 novel Apache Rising and featuring James Garner in perhaps his most sullen role, it grappled with the grim and messy reality of US/Indian relations and offered the viewer, whom it wore down with its relentless fighting and high body count, no convenient outs. When the snazzy theme kicks in for the closing credits, it feels like a tone-deaf maneuver, if not intended as outright mockery. What’s up with you? the peppy theme asks. It’s only a movie. (Duel at Diablo‘s opening sequence plays on a TV during Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976), giving Hefti’s theme an opportunity to do double-mockery duty.)

“New York, New York” (1981) – The Dictators

“New York, New York” (1981) – The Dictators * Written by Adny Shernoff * Cassette: Fuck ‘Em If They Can’t Take a Joke * Label: ROIR

The Dictators, above every other categorization (proto-punks, hard rockers), were New Yorkers. Part of the fun of their debut album Go Girl Crazy (1975) was hearing vocalist Handsome Dick Manitoba, who wore the same kind of afro as the MC5’s Rob Tyner, doing renditions of California-centric material (“California Sun,” “I Got You Babe,” “Cars and Girls”) in his unmistakably Bronx manner. (Manitoba joined the reformed MC5 as the obvious frontman to replace the deceased Tyner when they reformed in 2005.) But those tracks had the whiff of escape fantasies. Their next two albums, Manifest Destiny (1977) and Bloodbrothers (1978) betrayed a few too many commercial intentions that made them seem vulnerable in a way that betrayed their band name. The chosen title of their 1981 live cassette on the NYC-based ROIR label, Fuck ’em If They Can’t Take a Joke, may as well be understood as their explanation for any previously perceived weaknesses, because it’s their best album. It’s got most of the best tunes from the other releases and includes their crucial “New York, New York,” which is, unlike the Sinatra signature tune, a dispatch from Fear City (a term used in a 1975 union pamphlet to scare off tourists). The song tells of garbage in the streets, dirty air, and fellow citizens worthy of only derogatory names, with an insistent and staccato melody that could, in some other guise, do intro duty for a news hour or movie-of-the-week on WNEW (channel 5). The Fleshtones, also intrinsically New York, do a cover of it as the sole keeper track on the 1996 Dictators Forever Forever Dictators tribute album. On the 1981 source version, though, you get to hear Manitoba close the track by yelling, “you talkin’ to me?!”

 

“Walkman On” (1983) – SSQ

“Walkman On” (1983) – SSQ * Written and produced by Jon St. James * LP: Playback * Label: Enigma
 
Jon St. James’s band SSQ very much resembled Berlin, another Orange County group whose Pleasure Victim EP he had worked on as an assistant engineer. Both combos had four guys handling the programmed instrumentation with a petite female singer out front. Terri Nunn of Berlin and Stacey Swain of SSQ could have been sisters, and the cover art for SSQ’s debut album seemed inspired by the cover art for Berlin’s 1979 debut single. But SSQ were in good hands with St. James, a film and TV placement radar machine whose Casbah Recording Studio accommodated plenty of project traffic. He’d eventually guide Swain to a hitmaking career (as Stacey Q), manage and produce a number of artists such as Anything Box (“Living in Oblivion”) and Candyman (“Knockin’ Boots”), and compose for the big and little screen. If tracks on the SSQ Playback album show their age in celebrating defunct technology, much of the music itself streams comfortably retro in the 2010s (cf. Kraftwerk, Computer World (1981)). Five out of the nine titles refer to machinery that jibes with the record’s overall sound, with the true timepiece being “Walkman On,” referring to the portable audio cassette player that Sony first made available to consumers in 1979. It’s digital music about analog listening, but the Walkman concept lives on and so does this song. (Stacey Q’s electro-dispassion works so well here, but it’s an approach she’d abandon for her chirpy late ’80s Billboard chart assault.) 

“Proud to Be Your Slave” (1975) – Diamond Head

“Proud to Be Your Slave” (1975) – Diamond Head * Written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker * Produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter * Arranged by Jimmie Haskell * 45: “All for the Love of Music” / “Proud to Be Your Slave”
 
The soft-rock Diamond Head from Southern California (not to be confused with the UK metal band) took their name from the famous volcanic ridge mark in the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and although their version of the Dennis Lambert-Brian Potter tune “If That’s the Way You Want It” only reached #106 in Billboard (their only chart appearance), Hawaiian radio spun it like crazy. Info about this band is elusive, but a 1975 B-side of theirs called “Proud to Be Your Slave,” has the distinction of being a curio from the song catalog of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Although Diamond Head are shoo-ins for the recently-conceived “yacht rock” category, as are Steely Dan—thanks to their studio slickness and camaraderie with the genre’s regulars—this record, with its lyrical and musical sardonicisms, calls attention to the otherwise odd fit.

“Run Runaway” (1983) – Slade

“Run Runaway” – Slade (1983) * Written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea * Produced by John Punter * B-side: “Two Track Stereo One Track Mind” (UK); “Don’t Tame a Hurricane” (US) * LP: The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome (UK); Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply (US) * Label: RCA (UK); Epic/CBS (US) * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#20); UK #7.

England’s Slade, the early ’70s glam-stomp hitmakers with merely a cult following in the US, found renewed momentum as elder statesmen thanks to festival gigs in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal early ’80s. They were thus all warmed up to capitalize when the American metal band Quiet Riot turned their “Cum On Feel the Noize” into a top 5 US hit in August 1983. Smartly, Slade got some new material ready, and by April 1984, a track called “Run Runaway” became their biggest stateside hit, peaking at number 20. In context, the key line “see chameleon lying there in the sun / all things to everyone” points to the track’s crossover appeal in a cliquish market—American Top 40, AOR, and alternative rock stations all embraced the tune (whose guitar lines nodded to the bagpipe rock sound of Big Country). “Run Runaway” also tapped into cozy subconscious memories of a protestant hymn called “There Is a Happy Land” (its opening words: “There is a happy land far, far away”), whose third line melody parallels the third line of Slade’s hit. The track appeared on a late 1983 British release called The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome, shaken free of cultural stereotypes in 1984 with a new cover and title for American release (Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply).

“Pheremones and Incense” (1986) – Andy Bole

“Pheremones and Incense” (1986) – Andy Bole * Written by Andy Bole * LP: Ramshackle Pier * Label: Left Leg
 
The British acoustic guitarist Andy Bole released his debut LP Ramshackle Pier in 1986. Listening to it sends you back to what feels like an era of more sprightly fingerstyle sounds, before the Fahey-revival steam engine started making its rounds. Bole is an internationally-minded multi-instrumentalist who would go on to study hansa veena (a type of Indian slide guitar), and he’s also an experimentalist, with certain tracks sounding like his fingers have turned into pencils, or his guitar has been somehow strung up non-linearly. He’s participated in numerous projects past and present, including Bonfire Radicals, Fret and Fiddle, Shankara, and Daevid Allen’s Glissando Guitar Orchestra. This bouzouki track, called “Pheromones and Incense,” appeared as one of three bonus tracks on the 2004 CD reissue of the Ramshackle Pier LP, although the notes don’t indicate whether it’s an outtake or recorded later.

“Go Lil’ Camaro Go” (1987) – Ramones

“Go Lil’ Camaro Go” (1987) – Ramones * Written by Dee Dee Ramone * Produced by Daniel Rey and Dee Dee Ramone * LP: Halfway to Sanity * Label: Beggars Banquet

The Ramones and car songs are among America’s greatest exports. “Go Lil’ Camaro Go,” from 1987 — one of the Ramones’ less celebrated eras — is a merger of those two products. Debbie Harry’s vocal contribution reminds us that upper-register female voices in the car crash records of the early sixties signified angels warning of impending tragedy. Songwriter Dee Dee (not to be confused with the Dee Dee of Dick and Dee Dee) also installs a set of healthy “papa oom mow mows,” knowing that all songs with such machinery turn into classics.