{"id":5585,"date":"2015-05-15T14:21:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T14:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturedallroundman.com\/?p=5585"},"modified":"2015-12-10T05:17:18","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T08:17:18","slug":"culturedarms-songs-of-the-month-april-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-songs-of-the-month-april-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Culturedarm’s Songs of the Month (April 2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Prince<\/a><\/p>\n

A late edition this month, owing to the UK general election 2015 occupying the last couple of weeks; but here are plenty of words and some excellent songs and videos to \u2013 more than, I think \u2013 make up for it.<\/p>\n

Prince \u2013 \u2018Uptown\u2019 & \u2018I Would Die 4 U\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been listening to these two songs by Prince on repeat for much of the past month-and-a-bit, courtesy of my two preferred Prince albums: \u2018Uptown\u2019, the fifth track overall and the first on the second side of Dirty Mind<\/em>, was released in September 1980 a month ahead of the album as its lead single, and became a hit on the Hot Soul and Hot Dance Club charts; while \u2018I Would Die 4 U\u2019 proved the fourth single from Purple Rain<\/em>, reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 following its release in November 1984.<\/p>\n

\u2018Uptown\u2019 is built upon a simple and relatively sober looping bass line, with propulsive percussion, funk guitar, and keyboard flourishes around the chorus. The sound is upbeat, just tethered by the bass, as Prince recounts, briefly perturbed, being asked \u2018Are you gay?\u2019 by a lady he finds attractive. Deeming her \u2018a crazy, crazy, crazy little mixed-up dame\u2019, Prince declares \u2018She\u2019s just a victim of society and all its games\u2019 and quickly decamps to \u2018Uptown\u2019: apparently drawing upon the commercial district of his Minneapolis home, but here equally a realm of the imagination, where there is freedom of persuasion and expression, sex and dancing, and good times rolling all night long.\u00a0The funk guitar and Prince\u2019s high-pitched, tenacious vocal make this really sensual; and there\u2019s a nice astral interlude before the song slowly fades out.<\/p>\n

There is nothing else like the relentless, skittering percussion of \u2018I Would Die 4 U\u2019; and as keys dissolve and the percussion claps and synthesizers emerge momentarily, Prince offers at once a profession of faith and an entreaty, uttering urgently \u2018I\u2019m not your woman \/ I\u2019m not your man \/ I am something that you\u2019ll\u00a0never understand \/ I\u2019ll never beat you \/ I\u2019ll never lie \/ And if you\u2019re evil I\u2019ll forgive you by and by\u2019. The lyrics are vaguely spiritual, shuffling between a skewed Old Testament religiosity and New Age suggestiveness, and there are some of these overtones to the music too, with the song\u2019s great power coming from the intensity of Prince\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

Prince is notoriously averse to his music appearing on YouTube and via other social and digital media outlets. The video below contains a fantastic excerpt of Prince playing \u2018Uptown\u2019 live at the old Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, in early 1982; but there\u2019s nothing like this available for \u2018I Would Die 4 U\u2019, and some of the prominent covers and remixes of the song which are about are atrocious.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6ISW7zEy4WQ<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Johnny Cash \u2013 \u2018The Mercy Seat\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the theme of religion, and especially the Old Testament, here\u2019s Johnny Cash\u2019s cover of Nick Cave\u2019s \u2018The Mercy Seat\u2019, from American III: Solitary Man<\/em>. A profoundly well-written song, it is full of overt allusions to the Bible, and philosophical investigations too as the protagonist, going about the course of his life on death row, begins \u2018to warm and chill \/ To objects and their fields\u2019. But the language remains colloquial and replete with keen observations. The rhetorical twisting as the condemned man\u00a0weighs his fate and his guilt prefigures the physical twisting he will endure in the electric chair; and Cash\u2019s cover\u00a0crashes to a climax amid the clanging keys of piano and organ. The experimental video below is by Bill Totolo.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZGGSTiDOjKU<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The Kingsmen \u2013 \u2018Louie Louie\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the end of the month, 28 April, Jack Ely, the former lead singer of The Kingsmen, died after a period of illness. He was 71. The Kingsmen\u2019s cover of \u2018Louie Louie\u2019 remains the most well-known version of the song: it persisted at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks from the end of 1963, and became notorious, and endures to this day, owing largely to the difficulty interpreting Ely\u2019s energetic rendering of the lyrics.<\/p>\n

\u2018Louie Louie\u2019 was written by Richard Berry in 1955, with his original take on the song released in April 1957. Drawing most clearly upon Chuck Berry\u2019s \u2018Havana Moon\u2019, but also from the first-person perspective of Frank Sinatra\u2019s \u2018One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)\u2019 and from the sound and speech patterns of local Latin American music, Richard Berry\u2019s composition depicts a young man sailing the sea and hoping ardently for some alone time with his love. The relative incomprehensibility of Ely\u2019s vocal, however \u2013 buffeted by the noisy garage rock of the band \u2013 led listeners in 1963 to begin attributing to the song\u00a0a set of varying dirty lyrics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The FBI got involved, but their lengthy investigation into The Kingsmen\u2019s recording proved inconclusive. Dirty renditions of \u2018Louie Louie\u2019 routinely incorporated sexual intercourse, oral sex, infidelity, masturbation, and menstruation: all aspects of my favourite version of the song, performed\u00a0by Iggy and The Stooges and preserved on the live album Metallic K.O.<\/em>. Ely\u2019s vocal, delivered in the truest spirit of rock and roll, made this and other related highlights possible; punctuated by his climactic cry, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s give it to \u2019em right now!\u2019.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4V1p1dM3snQ<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Prurient \u2013 \u2018Dragonflies To Sew You\u00a0Up\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prurient\u2019s new album, the 90-minute long\u00a0Frozen Niagara Falls<\/em>, was released this week on Profound Lore Records. At the tail end of March he offered his first look at the work through the densely constructed \u2018Dragonflies to Sew You Up\u2019. Fissured tribal drums compete with steady and sleek late-night synths, equally resolute as Prurient anxiously menaces the immediate space with an overwhelming black metal cry. The margins of the song are traced via bar-room chatter and wandering piano.<\/p>\n