The French Connection: La reine est morte, vive la reine...

I had planned to compile an album of my favorite tunes from Françoise Hardy for this blog for a while, but never got around to it, and now Hardy forced my hand by, well, dying. So here it is, 22 tracks from throughout her career. Et il y'a tant de belles choses dedans...

What can I say about Hardy that I haven't already mentioned yesterday? Not much, really. I haven't talked much about the fact that for a couple of years, she was one of the most stunning women of her era. She was - and stayed - a beautiful woman, and like Emmylou Harris gained another level of attractiveness  when her blonde hair turned silver. Back in the days she would turn the heads of folks like Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger, but a less famous colleague from showbiz captured her heart. She was married to fellow French star Jaques Dutronc and the mother of second-generation music star Thomas Dutronc.

So, what about the songs you say? You can see even in the earliest selections here, how melancholy is the name of Hardy's game. Her first big success "Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles" from 1962 she portrays a young girl who is deeply unhappy, alone and without someone who loves her while everyone around her (the titular all the boys and girls...) knows some happiness. It immediately separated Hardy from the "Yé-Yé"-pack, even if her record company didn't believe in the song, placing it last on a four track EP after three lighter hearted and more upbeat songs. (In France in the 1960s, most songs would come out as part of four track EPs instead of singles with an a- and b-side). 

"Le Temps De l'Amour" from later the same year is ostensiby a happy song about how during the time for love for young people they forgot how romantic entanglements can hurt, but Hardy doesn't sing it as a happy song. There is a weariness and sadness beyond her young years in these vocals, that despite what the lyrics say, she knows that the 'time of love' will end badly. Hardy always knew that everyone's time of love would end badly some time...

Her life-long topic of song might have been best summarized by the song title "Il N'Ya Pas D'Amour Heureuse" ("There is no happy kind of love"), but she was wrong of course. The love for her son no doubt kept her going in the tough years towards the end.  As she sings in "Tant De Belles Choses": L'amour est plus fort que le chagrin...Love is stronger than grief...let it be so...

The queen of French singer-songwriters is gone, but not forgotten...

Her long fight is over, finally over. Literally just after posting the last All Pearls, No Swine volume the news dropped that Françoise Hardy had died. Having already fought a cancer in the 2000s, she was fighting cancer anew since 2019, having been deprived of having any saliva after 45 rounds of radio therapy. She could not only not sing any more, but hardly breathe, and battled incessant nosebleeds. Things got so bad that she openly campaigned for medically assisted dying options in France and the possibility to end her own life due to her suffering. 

But that's not what we should remember about Françoise Hardy, that monstre sacré du chanson français. Even the first eulogies that came in of course had to mention her as an icon of "yé-yé", the French girl pop influenced by the British invasion bands and notably the Beatles. But Hardy was only "Yé-Yé" by association, mainly because she came up at the very same time as France Gall and Sheila and the other "Yé-Yé" girls, not to mention that the term itself was derogative and supposed to make fun of the English-language aping young girls and the pop confections their producers put on them. But that was never Françoise Hardy. Hardy was, first and foremost, a true singer-songwriter. Unlike the girls she was lumped in with, she always wrote her own lyrics and most often her music.

The other thing that comes to mind when thinking about Françoise Hardy is the enormous amount of melancholy that permeats her music. She once described the theme of her music as "the impossibility of love", and that idea - that love is ephemeral, not eternal - runs through her music like a through line. It also defines the songs on our One Buck Record of the day. I'm currently compiling a Françoise Hardy album that will go up in a day or two, so for today If You Listen will have to do to remember la grande Hardy.  

If You Listen was Hardy's fourth English-language album, though it wasn't called that anywhere at the time. In France it was self-titled, down under it was known as Let My Name Be Sorrow and in South Africa it was very unimaginatively, if correctly, titled 4th English Album. As was the custom of the time, in the late 1960s Hardy put out a number of songs and albums for international markets. Hardy also sang in German and had a number of hits in the land of Lederhosen and brought out an album in Italian. But she most often returned to English .While albums like En Anglais was a rather ramshackle mix of pop covers of recent hits, with none of the arrangements particularly great and reaching for the biggest mainstream audience possible, One-Nine-Seven Zero and If You Listen thankfully were not that. 

If You Listen is a different beast from her earlier international forays, much closer to Hardy's sensibilities and her signature melancholic sound. The song selection includes two songs by Buffy St. Marie and Beverly Martin each, as well as covers of Randy Newman ("I Think It's Gonna Rain Today") and Neil Young ("Till The Morning Comes"), but also more obscure folk music sources like Trees ("The Garden Of Jane Delawney") and Allen Taylor's at the time super-recent "Sometimes". There are also two songs - including the 'new' title song - by The State of Micky & Tommy, Tommy Brown and Micky Jones, who by this time had settled on arranging, producing and writing in France. Micky Jones would of course move on to bigger and better (?) things as the founder of Foreigner. Hardy herself even manages to sneak a single original, sung in French, into the line up.

Get ready for more Françoise Hardy soon, but in the meantime spend some fabulous moments of melancholy with her..let her name be sorrow indeed...

Same As It Ever Was...(Or Almost): All Pearls, No Swine 15

Time for another round on the ol' All Pearls, No Swine carousel, featuring...well, by now you know the drill. 

I wanted a kick-ass opener so the James Gang sans Joe Walsh would do with "Ride The Wind", a collaboration between singer Roy Kenner and guitarero Tommy Bolin. Other rock'n'roll sides come from Randy California with, uhm, "California Man" and the recently One Buck Records-featured Jackie Leven with punk-adjacent new wave band Doll By Doll and "Teenage Lightning". 

Softer sounds come from The Seabird Band, a pop/soft rock troupe with country influences hailing from North Carolina, where they had some local success and U.K. songwriter Paul Edwards with "Butterfly Days", from the album of the same name. Mike Heron splits the difference with his band Heron and the original version of "Don't Kill It Carol", later covered successfully by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. 

Could this possibly look any more 1970s?

No All Pearls, No Swine volume would be complete without my beloved country rock, so you get Santa Fe (pictured above) who - unsurprisingly - aren't from Santa Fe, but from Thouand Oaks, California. They managed two albums on small labels before breaking up, the excellent "I'm Leaving" is from their debut on Ampex Records. Other genre artists present here are their label mate Alzo Fonte with the appropriately titled "Country", Victor Paul & William Ricketts with the lovely "Virginia Feelin'", and speaking of Virginia, West Virginia foursome Kiddog with "Been To California", from a self-titled private pressing release. 

But that isn't all, dear reader. 

There's even some gospel-inspired soul from Arizona family band The Comstocks and for psych fans (or Psychfan) some psych-folk courtesy of Naomi Lewis from Provo, Utah with the title song from her self-published Seagulls and Sunflowers album. Prog fans will hopefully like album closer "Sounds Of The Sea" by Renaissance, cut live in the studio.  

So, as usual, a smorgasboard of unknown or little-known treasures from the 70s, just the way you and I like it...

Uh Oh...it's the finals YOU waited for! Uh, no not you! No, not you either! Well, there must be someone...

So, folks, I guess it had to come down to this. (Sigh) Much as I would've wanted to avoid a Beatles vs. Beatles final, you - the public - demanded such a final. Well, all five of you. So, after months of gleefully ignoring waiting with baited breath, here's the dream finale of our Best Album Eliminator:

Revolver vs. Abbey Road

It's prime Beatles vs. uh, prime Beatles, but close to the end anyway...

It's something new in every song vs. something good in almost every song (don't mention "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"...)

Well, anyway, there's way more folks with way more opinions on the Beatles than me, so, uh, have at it in the comments. Vote for the Beatles album of your choice. Or tell us about the Beatles album of your choice. Or a Beatles song of your choice. Or, you know, whatever...

So, folks, in this battle of giant bugs against other giant bugs who will prevail..?

Spoiler: It'll be giant bugs...

The Life and Times Of Wayne Berry...In Song!

One of the pleasures of creating alternate albums or albums that didn't exist before is - I freely admit it - a God complex. Being the creator that brings order to chaos has an unmistakable allure. It's also fun to play with history, as a reader recently suggested. But yeah, the God complex thing. It gets especially strong if you not only do an album that under other circumstances could have existed, but a concept album that you built from scratch. The whole point of concept albums is of course that they are - if everything goes according to plan and its practitioners aren't total amateurs - meticulously planned. So, to propose a concept album out of a bunch of random outtakes is no doubt a total act of hubris. Constructing a musical autobiography without the artist's knowledge is madness. But hey, a guy's -  especially of the one buck variety - gotta do what a guy's gotta do. 

This will be the end of the three-part "albums that didn't exist"-project of residential favorite Wayne Berry. It is also in some ways my favorite because finding (or maybe: establishing) connections that you didn't see (or maybe: that didn't exist) before is half of the fun of constructing this kind of album. And the more I put songs on the side that might fit the project, the clearer the narrative became. It all started with the newly-minted title song of this album that didn't but should exist: "Country Boy, City Dreams" is clearly autobiographical and sounds like a man taking stock of his career and life situation. Alone, his would not prop up a concept. But then I threw "Looking For Love In America" on the pile, a song that recounts the meeting and love affair of Berry's parents, as well as his own subsequent birth and childhood, ending up with the narrator, Berry himself, looking for love in America. Now, things got interesting: Two autobiographical songs talking about different aspects and times in his life. Now I felt I had something there. 

From these two tentpoles, the rest of the story came easy. ""Looking For Love In America" opens proceedings during World War II and throughout Berry's childhood. From there he alternates between commenting on his love life and his career, first asking you to "Remember The First Time" you fell in (and out) of love before reflecting on his first steps in the rock'n'roll world in "Home Coming Dance". Back to romantic disillusion in "How Many Dreams (You've Got To Lose)" and "In Another World". Then, Berry decides to pick himself up again and go "High Steppin'", pleading to a woman to "Give Me The Chance". Then be contemplates where he is, how he got there and what that got him in "Country Boy, City Dreams" and concludes that he's part of a "Lost Generation". But he doesn't give up hope that "The Next Time" he falls in love with a woman, it will be the good (and final) one. See, it absolutely holds together, almost like the man wrote and planned it that way! He didn't, of course, but hey, order from chaos and all that. If Country Boy, City Dreams was never planned as an album, it sure as hell could've been...

And that concludes my sojourns into expanding Wayne Berry's discography and hopefully helping in spreading knowledge and appreciation of the man as well. He now goes from two barely available (three if you count the unreleased album for Capitol) solo records to five albums with the three albums that never existed that One Buck Records proposed to you. Now, that's a real discography. As with the first two albums (and the 'best of' I compiled) this is eminently listenable pop with folk and country influences. I repeat myself, admittedly, but Berry could've and should've been bigger than he was. Well, now there is more of his music out there to enjoy, so I hope you do just that with Country Boy, City Dreams... 

Boston's Bad Boys' last stand...

Considering the damage the various drugs, alcohol, falls from stages and other shenanigans have caused the toxic twins and their bandmates, it's frankly amazing that everyone is still alive and doing reasonably well, though drummer Joy Kramer has seemingly been permanently ousted by the band since 2021. The sheer longevity of the band is amazing, second only maybe to the Rolling Stones. Any band with such a long career will inevitably have different entry points into their music for different people. My entry point was the tail end of their tenure at Geffen Records, more specifically "Living On The Edge", the lead-off single of their last Geffen album, Get A Grip. 

Common wisdom would dictate that the band was past their prime musically, while being a commercial juggernaut, but for those who (like me) are o.k. with the band's embracing an 80s AOR sound, the second wind - both artistically and commercially - that they had during their tenure at Geffen makes this my favorite era of the band. Get A Grip is spotty as hell, but Pump is excellent throughout and both Permanent Vacation and Done With Mirrors have their moments. 

A couple of months ago I worked on the compilation Country Dreamers, gathering country music tracks from artists not usually working in the genre, investigating the band's "Once Is Enough" (which was featured on that comp), but also a slightly countrified remix of Pump's "The Other Side". Rummaging around for these b-sides and remixes, I thought it would be fun to tell the tale of their Geffen years, but not through the usual suspects - at least not in their usual form. 

G.T.F.O. (Geffen Tracks For Obsessives) isn't only for obsessives, but it does dig pretty deep into less obvious material. The idea was to anthologize their Geffen years by way of b-sides, outtakes, remixes, one-off singles, live tracks and deep cuts. So yeah, some of the big songs from the era are here - the aforementioned "Living On The Edge", "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)", "Rag Doll", "Crazy", "Angel" and "The Other Side" - but all in different versions than the ones that hit the charts. Pump outtake "Burnin' Up" is pretty hot, as is Get A Grip b-side "Head First". Two of their best songs from the era didn't feature on their studio albums - "Blind Man" was collector bait and lead-off single for their greatest hits album Big Ones and "Deuces Are Wild" featured on the soundtrack to, ahem, how era-appropriate - The Beavis & Butthead Experience. 

You were big if you made it all the way to Moe's Tavern...

Considering how relatively samey the music of the 'Smith is, my first version of G.T.F.O. ran way too long, running out of steam towards the end. So I cut some tracks towards the end (moody Get A Grip instrumental "Boogie Man" was always tabbed as the album closer), they will show up on the sequel, if there is interest from the One Buck Records readership (the Ones? the Bucks? - gotta workshop that a little bit more...).

The Geffen era, as it turned out, really was the last stand for Aerosmith as a rock band of any worth. Their troubled and long-gestating return album for Columbia, Nine Lives, was even patchier than Get A Grip and the point, where the band's quality control really started to slip. Then came their biggest hit "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", bringing in millions while being atrocious and the awful Just Push Play album. Since then they have only added the ok-ish blues cover record Honkin' On Bobo and the terrible Music From Another Dimension to their discography, which is probably just as well. But hey, for a couple of years in the 80s and early 90s, the band did get their groove back. So check out G.T.F.O. to groove along with them... 

 

 

Alt Byrds, get on your bikes and sing the Ballad Of Easy Rider

Easy Rider, the movie, was a blessing for the Byrds. After the ups and downs of the preceding year and the low-key Byrds relaunch with Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde, the reconfigured group could use a boost of publicity, which Dennis Hopper's film gave them. While most viewers probably didn't figure out to what degree the original band influenced the conception of the characters and their dynamic - Billy, the mustachoid, paranoid longhair was a stand-in for David Crosby, while the more stoic, grounded Wyatt was based on McGuinn - their music was put into focus again. There was the title song, sung by McGuinn (and helped on harmonica by fellow Byrd Gene Parsons) as well as McGuinn's cover of "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", and a key montage of both bikers riding was set to "Wasn't Born To Follow" off The Notorious Byrd Brothers, its title becoming a sort of unofficial slogan of the movie's characters and attitude. All of a sudden the Byrds were back in public view, and thanks to the Easy Rider link, back to being hip with the kids. There was just one problem.     

If limited creativity and songwriting had already been a problem on the preceding album, this issue rears its head again on Ballad of Easy Rider. Badly. Band leader Roger McGuinn was busy writing songs - just not for The Byrds. He was still working with Jacques Levy on their hippie re-imagining of the story of Peer Gynt, the dashingly hip retitled Gene Tryp. Thus, McGuinn arrived to the recording sessions for what would become Ballad Of Easy Rider with absolutely nothing in his pockets. The one song he brought was the film's title song, half-written by Dylan, six months old at that point and already issued as a solo track for the immensely influential Easy Rider soundtrack. 

So McGuinn had to rely on the rest of the group, and they came through. Gene Parsons contributed the road travelogue "Gunga Din", a minor Byrds classic that is woefully underrated and has, I think, never shown up on any of their multiple retrospectives. John York wrote the fun "Fido", a song that would indirectly and unwillingly bring him into trouble (more on that later). And Clarence White dusted off an old Baptist hymn for his first lead vocal as a Byrd. After Dr. Byrds And Mr. Hyde had established the new-look Byrds as McGuinn's by having him sing all lead vocals, one of the pleasant surprises of Ballad of Easy Rider was the discovery of the band's other voices. However, the Ballad of Easy Rider with its mix of covers and minor-key originals could never catch the attention of the counterculture youth in the way the movie had, even with the movie-tie in and liner notes by Peter Fonda. Other than a general sense of wanderlust, there isn't much that connects the Ballad to the movie and its themes and the Byrds arguably squandered their best shot at becoming and staying relevant again.  

I, like many Byrds fans, have an almost unreasonable love for the album. It's obvious how empty the cupboard was - no Byrds album has more outside songs, and it does have a cobbled-together feel, because, well, it was cobbled together. But it's fine playing and mellow vibe has always appealed to me. In many ways, it is the warmest and friendliest of Byrds albums, a relaxing experience after the odd mix of harder rock and country on Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde. If you like Clarence White's guitar playing and string bending, you'll be served here. The Byrds' odd, half-speed take on "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" for example is elevated almost entirely by White's beautiful guitar work. 

For this version of Ballad of Easy Rider, I got rid of the two weakest tracks of the album. "Jack Tarr The Sailor" is, in my opinion, in contention for worst Byrds track of all time. Not because it's unlistenable or anything but it doesn't sound much like a Byrds song, also due to McGuinn's odd attempt at a British accent. And "Armstrong, Aldrin And Collins" was literally just half a song, and not a very good one at that. In its place are some of the songs that could've been contenders. At least one should've made the cut: I don't understand why we needed "Jack Tarr" when a version of the lightweight but pleasant "Mae Jean Goes To Hollywood" by then unknown songwriter Jackson Browne was in the can.

 And while McGuinn was dreaming of combining the past and the future since before Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, the band finally got a track down that did that, setting a banjo-picked version of the old folk traditional "Fiddler A Dram" to a backing track played on McGuinn's beloved Moog. It's an odd little song, but has a certain charm to it that made me place it on the album. These guys were space cowboys before, let them be space folkies!

Other tracks came down to choices. For some reason, the Byrds selected a particularly nasal vocal delivery by White and kind of sludgy take on "Oil In My Lamp", when a quicker, much sprightlier and to my mind much better take of the song existed. It even has a hint of the old jingle-jangle sound in its opening moments! The other swap came down to personal preference: McGuinn's take on "Tulsa County" is fine, and Byron Berline's fiddle a real treat - but I prefer the original version sung by John York, who brought the track to the recording sessions.

 Alas, it fell victim to politicking: Terry Melcher wanted York to sign over the publishing rights to "Fido" to him, and when York politely declined, all of a sudden he was to be replaced on lead vocals by McGuinn because quote-unquote McGuinn "sounded more like a cowboy". Yeah, sure, Terry. Either way, I love York's drawn out "oh's ("I don't know-ho-ho-ho / just where I'll go-oh-oh-oh") on the original version so that one gets the nod. He sounds plenty like a cowboy to me, but then again I don't have a publishing rights tiff with him! Speaking of "Fido": I was never particularly fond of the drum solo in that, so it got led behind the shed and shot. Sorry 'bout that, folks. 

So, this is the Ballad Of Easy Rider according to the One Buck Guy. Go on a test ride down some sweet country roads along gently flowing rivers with these guys...wherever that river goes, that's where I want to be...(don't we all...?)...flow, river, flow...