Repetune - The Songs of our Heads

I spent all day today in an air-conditioned classroom with windows that can’t be opened, so I wasn’t aware how bad the fires of Southern California had become. I knew Malibu was in deep, Magic Mountain seemed imperiled, and southern San Diego looked like it was going through its yearly inferno. As I write this, though, the skies of the city are maroon with ash and reflected light, and the heavy stench of smoke permeates everything within my vicinity. Times like this make radio stations get a little goofy. This morning on KROQ, Kevin and Bean played Bad Religion’s “Los Angeles Is Burning”, and either KLOS or Jack FM played Hendrix’s “Fire”. In a time like this, though, how could this classic not come up? It’s all that’s been in my head for the last few hours. Lyrically, this is a completely inappropriate song to have blasting while uncontrolled flames rage across the hills and people settle down to sleep in empty gyms and rec centers. Still, though, like Wang Chung’s invisible vise, it grabs me and doesn’t let go. You have to excuse me for the moment, though. I have to call my family and make sure they’re OK.

 To the firefighters battling this thing - Thank you, and please don’t let the motherfucker burn.

We’re back from our time warp back to the 70s, and in a pique of chronological curiosity, we’re firmly ensconced in the 1940s via a jazz classic couched in the irony of the 2000s, making it a repetune that never fades.

I love the drums in this song. They’re very Muppet Show to me - random tin cans and clanky, unidentifiable sounds, mixed with a trap kit for that jazzy, swinging feel. I cannot help but move to them. Sometimes, in the car, it’s a shoulder shimmy. At home, it’s a bastardized zydeco/lindy-hop full body spasm because, well, I’m rather uncoordinated down there. Whatever the place, whenever the time, I’m going at it.

Then, there are the lyrics. As I think back on the popular swing that everyone associates with the period, none of it concentrates on lurid matter. The most forward any of it got was the Andrews Sisters telling their beaus not to sit under the apple tree with anyone but them. The Ditty Bops, however, take up the cause celebrated by Ma Rainey and many other singers who weren’t afraid to put a little bump and grind into their twist and shout:

Wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate
I’d never stay home, stay out too late
I’d get my stuff about as high as a kite
You know I do it for you every night
Now all the boys in the neighborhood
Knew Katie could shimmy and it’s mighty good

Hot stuff!!! Kate’s the town bicycle, and her little sister wants to follow in her footsteps. Aaah, underage sexuality. I haven’t felt this cool about it since Maurice Chevalier’s turn in Gigi.

This song is so catchy, I can’t help but have it course through my brain every now and again, sometimes for hours-long stretches. It requires my daily necessity for fun, funk, and the ladies. Sure beats my old job - smuggling Russian whores into the country via storage containers in San Pedro. A lot more enjoyable too.

As we come to the end of our 70’s AM Classics theme week, we have engineered the progression of songs throughout to save the best for last. When the time came to post, though, it was difficult to come up with a real caketopper of a song, one that would encapsulate all that is good about a repetune, while also uncovering the worst tendencies of the genre. After some thought, it dawned. Where could one find a song that was applauded and detested in equal parts, that was both completely forgettable and completely memorable? Where, pray tell, could one find a song that was at once, insubstantial as the wind and as solid as a rock?

EUROVISION EUROVISION EUROVISION EUROVISION EUROVISION!!!

There are many, er, special instances of pop gems that have won Eurovision. ABBA (sorry, I don’t have a backwards ‘B’ on this keyboard) actually got their big break by submitting “Waterloo” to the competition and emerging victorious. More than ABBA, though, who seemed to have some sort of magic elf living in one of the Bjorn’s beards that was able to write repetunes up and down the Billboard charts, I would rather focus on an example by a Spanish group / woman / big band (I can’t tell who’s what) and their winning entry from 1973.

Eres Tu is, in short, the definition of repetune. The melodies are sweet and sticky like the inside of a honey jar. There’s an orchestral fanfare, which isn’t necessary but always helps. The best part, though - I don’t understand any of the lyrics. I speak a little Spanish, but only when it’s spoken at a speed suitable for Bob Ross or congressional candidate Tim Calhoun. When sung at seventy beats per minute, it’s unintelligible. Add in the arbitrary Spanish accent of adding a ‘th’ where there should be a ‘z’ (and Cristina, if you’re reading, that means I think it’s just lovely), and well, it’s a song that demands repeated listens, just to know what phonemes are at play.

As far as I can tell, the song has something to do with water in a fountain, or someone being like the wheat in bread. I swear to God. Wheat in bread. You give a Spaniard $50,000 and a recording contract, and what for? A song about loving someone so much, you consider them the recommended daily allowance of fiber in your starch. That’s love folks. That’s amor, plain and simple.

I can’t deny that Eres Tu doesn’t have some outside help. I believe this is one of the songs Farley and Spade sing during the travelling montage of Tommy Boy. Also, there is a completely tasteless cover of this song by an Australian named Jimmy Campbell which wrecks the romance and tenderness of the original. That, of course, means it’s really funny. Find it, compare it to the original, and bask in the glory.

When travelling through the land of the repetune, beware. In most cases, the residents are benign, offering their musical wares with generosity in the hopes that you will approve. Some, however, hold no regard for your sonic appreciation. Donovan, I feel, is king of this outcast clan, and this, my friends, is their battle cry. Annoying as all get out, this song is the reason people should be forced to undergo classes and get registered before they’re allowed to use a slide guitar.

I mean, what good could have come of letting the Hurdy Gurdy Man operate a machine so complex? That being said, it’s the thing that makes the song stick in everyone’s head. Sure as shit, it’s not the lyrics or musicianship, despite the fact that the words

Superman and the Green Lantern ain’t got nothing on me
I can make like a turtle and dive for the pearls in your sea

somehow work their way into the mix. I would have thought a lyric as inane as this one would have made it out of the studio. Shows what I know about making music.

Why Imani Coppola based a whole single around the loping guitar line that pervades Sunshine Superman is mysterious, but ultimately understandable. It’s entirely that slide guitar, combined with an acoustic and a no-tone electric, that creates the memorable hook. This is the musical equivalent of throwing up on a Tilt-A-Whirl - circular, messy, and not worth the money, but in the end, an event that you recall for the rest of your life. For the sake of the site, I’m taking this one for the team.

It’s always somewhat discombobulating to hear a song and like it, then find out later that it’s a cover. When I was eight or nine or ten, Michael Damian (remember him?) put out a single called “Rock On”, and I guess what with Corey Feldman being in the video, and having just seen The Lost Boys, I latched onto it like a baby onto mama’s teat. I kind of figured out that it wasn’t the original version when R.E.M. integrated some of the beat and lyrics into their track “Drive” off of Automatic For The People. I didn’t hear this version, ostensibly the original, until about two years ago.

What makes this song a repetune is the way it stands out musically. Again, being a repetune doesn’t necessarily mean a song is great, but I enjoy this song enough to have actually purchased it off iTunes. Considering I’ve paid maybe twelve dollars in the past year for music (and four of those dollars went towards Radiohead’s latest album), this is a great honor. I definitely got my $0.99 worth anyway.

The flow is actually commendable considering the song splits itself into many little sections due to the dubstep-inspired bassline and the weird cardiac percussion. For the first 30 seconds, this could be Pink Floyd. Getting down to brass tacks, Essex’s vocals fade in, disembodied and laconic, like he’s singing to himself. There are lots of little backing vocal effects that don’t make a lot of sense, like the Barry White-ish iteration “James Dean” at the end of verse one, and how later in the song, Essex chants “Jimmy Dean” and “Rock on” with equal aplomb. Just a few seconds later, the cacophony of a detuned strings section underscores what the song pushes forward - the image of young Dean, his car screeching sidweways along Highway 46 near Cholame, just about to hit a tree, the songs of the angels and monsters trailing the Li’l Bastard down his short steep path to immortality.

If this song can be taken as a testament to the power of youth and the loss of days gone by, when one actor in a short burst of air could sum up in three movies what it’s taken the young actors of the last half-century to iterate about the struggle between being too young to matter and too old to rock, then rock on, David Essex. Rock on, James Dean. Even you, Corey. You rock on too.

Is it strange MC Hammer’s greatest contribution to music, in my mind, is introducing the Chi-Lites to the rest of the world? Then again, in thinking about how the world tends to accept covers, most of the people listening to it probably had no idea it was a cover to begin with. The chorus is the primary repetune in my head.

Much like the earlier post this week about Baby Come Back, this song is about lost love. And in deeper examination, it is a song about obsession.

The song starts with the following spoken line

One month ago
I was happy as a lark

At this point, the singer identifies happiness as being with the girl. And now, after separation, every activity from walking, movies, and watching children play bring back her memory. But, perhaps the singer is simply trying to relive the exact same moments he used to share with her, only this time, without her. And since he continues placing himself in these situations

I know I can’t hide from a memory
‘Though day after day I’ve tried
I keep sayin’ she’ll be back
But today again I lied

He knows he cannot hide from a memory so he keeps running with it. He keeps trying every day to hide from the memory, and I believe it is his attempts to hide from the memory he is lying about. The method by which the verses are performed are of a man hiding something deeper. It as if he wishes to hide the emotional impact of the woman.

But the obsession is best displayed by the chorus. The chorus repeats over and over and finally the speaking stops as the Chi-Lites with their big afros keep in perfect harmony asking

Have you seen her?
Tell me, have you seen her?

The question is asked multiple times, but without an answer.

And in closing, the song displays the true obsession with the following:

As another day comes to an end
I’m lookin’ for a letter or somethin’
Anything that she would send
With all the people I know
I’m still a lonely man
You know, it’s funny
I thought I had her in the palm of my hand

In the palm of his hand. He wanted this girl. He wanted her under control and now she is gone. And he is left waiting for a letter or something. He drove her away, if she can no longer be found. He is left to ask around, “Have you seen her? Tell me, have you seen her?”

(This is the third installment of Repetune’s first ever theme week - 70’s AM Classics)

Seals & Crofts are to the toy piano what the Beatles are to bowed strings - both bands were the first to use their respective instruments in popular song and make it mode. Whereas rock has pretty much been littered with unnecessary cellos and violins, the toy piano has never quite caught on in mainstream music. Sure, Tori Amos, Radiohead, and Evanescence dabble, but really. Rarely is the toy piano used for dramatic effect in song. In general, the more tinkling the sound of an instrument, the less likely is it featured in a composition. This is why there are only three great mandolin excursions in the history of rock, and Losing My Religion has two of them. In case you had developed a fever and the only prescription was more toy piano, well, here’s your remedy.

Oh, don’t mistake me. I don’t slight tiny pianos that barely hold an octave and a half. After all, it’s only a legitimate musical tool that can make the sound of a dropped roll of quarters AND make Pooh and Tigger wave to the user. Thanks to this song, the sound I used to make as a kid by patting an empty pie tin with a spatula is displayed in full force, wrapped in an ambiguous, meandering melody that, inexplicably, bored its way in the base of my skull sometime in the early 80’s and has preyed there on grey matter since. 

And hey, what’s up with this song using the word ‘jasmine’ so often? I’d understand if another word was more plentiful, like ‘the’, or ‘love’, you know, useful utterances. Yesterday, I didn’t think there was a lazier lyric than the one from that song by America. Well, folks, I’m here inside your computer tonight to let you know that yes, America has abdicated the throne to two soft rock stoners from Frisco, Texas. Thanks to them, I don’t even want to rent Aladdin just so I can stay away from that word.

Just about the only good thing I can say at all about the song, other than it’s an amazing repetune, is that both Seals and Crofts are of the Baha’i Faith. I don’t know why this memorable. Maybe it’s because now, the number of Baha’i celebrities in my world has increased twofold. Where once there were only Khalil Greene and Rainn Wilson, there is now a quadrumvirate. A quadrumvirate of wispy haired guys, but a quadrumvirate nonetheless.