Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine

Words launch other words, and names have a way of establishing themselves as footholds - nothing could be truer than with the name Jesus, which -  thanks to the centuries of teaching, tradition, imposition and imperialism which have used him as currency - has come to mean whatever you earnestly wish. The devil may have the best tunes, but in at least several top-class songs Jesus gets a mention.

Jesus the Mexican Boy - Iron and Wine

O.k, so it’s not the ‘real’ Jesus, but that’s exactly the point in this word-made-flesh ballad, where the singer and subject drink beer on the fourth of July.  Underneath the soft beautiful melody there’s a tight-packed tale of debauchery and human failing.

File this along side the excellent Frightened Rabbit tune  Heads Roll Off : ‘Jesus, is just, a spanish boy’s name’. 

They ain’t makin Jews (like Jesus any more) - Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys

This is judo music, a strange oriental power-play where you use your opponents strength/momentum to flatten them. Kinky  strolls into a redneck country music bar, both in the narrative and musically speaking, and proceeds to trash its foundations using a pedalsteel guitar and some home-truths.  Alice Walker, in The Colour Puple had her characters debate whether Jesus was black: “”Somewhere in the bible it say Jesus hair was like lamb’s wool, I say. Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he’d have to have it conked before anybody paid him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about they God is that his hair kinky…”. Kinky Friedman and Alice Walker together, though, agree in art on one thing - whatever race or colour Jesus may have been, he sure as hell wasn’t a w.a.s.p’y-texan, beer-drinking, god-loving, race-hating bigot.

 

Plastic Jesus - Ed Rush and George Cromarty

Written by two beatnick hippies in their student days as a social satire and folk parody, the song gained extra weight by being included in the Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke. It’s been covered and added to by everyone from the Flaming Lips through to little-known social satirist Billy Idol (?!?)
“I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, riding on the dashboard of my car”

on a follow up theme you could also check out Soundgarden’s Plastic Jesus: “Plastic Jesus, where are you from? Korea or Canada, or maybe Taiwan”

Jesusland - Ben Folds

The crash course collision between christianity and capitalism that is the American dream is captured brilliantly by the man that wrote Satan is my master (not to be confused with the equally splendid Satan is my motor by Cake).

If you’re going to listen to this, I suggest the spine-tingling accappella version recording that Folds produced of the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Loreleis choir for his University A Cappella project. 

This is a song that makes you yearn for and hate that ‘beautiful mcmansions on the hill’ society.

Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode

The practice of building churches on ground sacred to other cults became a guiding principle of the expanding Church in its early centuries and through to the Spanish conquests of the Americas. Take a winning formula and change it slightly, give it a ‘value add’ and see where it takes you. So too, then with Depeche Mode, the band that started out as Basildon whitewashed jeans and synths likely lads on Top of the Pops, and merged into S&M rock n’ roll beasts with an eye on the darker side of faith, love, and devotion (all the while reigning supreme in the US church of Stadium rock).
The majesty of this song is testified to by the fact that artists poles apart like Johnny Cash and Italian metal band Lacuna Coil have chosen to cover it.

The Mercy Seat - Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds 

Speaking of Johnny Cash - a man with a bit of a thing for Jesus, it’s safe to say - it’s no surprise that he was drawn to this, perhaps the most emblematic of Cave’s songs. Jesus has turned into Christ here, ‘born into a manger, like some ragged stranger he died upon the cross, and might I say, it was quite fitting in its way, he was a carpenter by trade, or at least that’s what I’m told’.

There are no atheists in the trenches, they say, and this is a song battling between old testament defiance and new testament redemption, all told on death row as the singer awaits that most American of judgements, the electric chair.

Jesus Gonna Be here - Tom Waits

This is what you get when you get America’s greatest song-writer rhapsodising about the rapture. With his gravel-rolling vocal chords taking the lead, accompanied only by some twanging and clapping, it sounds as if Tom’s been called from the grave, ready to greet a cargo-cult ass-kicking Jesus, back to judge the living and the dead. Forget the beautiful ballads, the doomed romanticism, in this tune Waits puts himself into the worn-out shoes of a believer walking the last mile. The results are spectacular.

April is the cruellest month - always has been, and always will be, just like tuesdays never come out right; but there is hope at the end of the tunnel, glimpsed briefly through the showers. In those long northern winters, when you’re cooped up, it seems natural to think ahead, to dream - more often than not about getting things that will make you happy, a new laptop, i-phone, gadget bullshit. But you know, really, that the heat of the sun on your face is what you need/want.

Get yourself ready, then, for that first moment when you can sit in the gaze of the returned sun. And there’s no better companion (or presager of the moment) than this song by one-time Man-at-Work Colin Hay. A simple guitar, strumming purposefully and naturally as a wave, and a voice that’s like warmth itself.

“My, my, my it’s a beautiful world, I like swimming in the sea” - banal, beautiful, and perfectly structured. It doesn’t mess about, and with authority lets you know that cynicism, irony, and smart-arsed back-watching have no-place in this particular three-minutes. This is a song where you can check thousands of years of evolutionary defence mechanisms at the door, and relax in the moment.

There’s no need for me to single out the lines that made me smile, that made me sing-along - they’re all clear to the ear, out in the open. All you have to do is listen, and be grateful that Hay is brave / wise enough to have brought these sentiments out into the open. Sit back and relax. “Perhaps this is as good as it gets”.

Though it’s officially springtime, celebrating the sunshine I find myself paradoxically listeing to Paddy Casey’s Ancient Sorrow (rather than the more appropriate Sunnyside of the Street by the Pogues) - a song that, with a brave production that highlights the voices of Casey and the real foundation given by the soulful singing of Terry Sutton. It’s a song that manages to be profound because of the production and performance, rather than because of its banal lyrics.

What’s this got to do with Paul Brady? Well, that ancient sorrow tapped into by Casey and Sutton lives and breathes in Brady’s unmistakable voice. Listen to him sing his pre-Celtic Tiger immigrant songs - in particular Nothing but the same old story, or the majestic (and, once again, banal) Homes of Donegal - and you have a voice that conveys history and all the reasons we choose to sing the blues.

And, though it’s long since been snatched by the supermarket/dinner party moozak brigade thanks to its simple melody, his 1985 hit The Island is one of his finest moments (before you get all hot and bothered, that’s not to dismiss Hard Station, or his work with Andy Irvine).

A songwriter dismissed by many of his contemporaries for the twin sins of a) remaining silent during the Hunger Strikes protests, and b) selling songs for big bucks to stars like Tina Turner and Bonnie Raitt - sins from a small Island where Independence is sanctified but independent spirits are, more often than not,  scorned.

The Island was a two-fingered risposte delivered in a honed, radio-friendly ballad that packs as political a punch as anything ever done by any of his more vocally flag-bearing peers (not looking at anyone in particular, Mr Moore). And it all rests on his voice, and that ancient sorrow we’re talking about. But, in this case it’s not just production and performance, with a set of lyrics that - taut as a tripwire - are anything but banal

Well I guess us plain folks dont see all the story
and I suppose this peace and love is just copping out
and I know that young boys dying in the ditches
is just what being free is all about

And all sung in a time when rebel songs were sung like hymns, but the notion of singing ‘we’ll make love to the sound of the Ocean’ outraged the theo-fascists.

This waltzing photograph of a song is hard to resist. Listening to it you’re brought in front of a scene pregnant with possibilities, and left to your own devices to make sense of it.

The setting is ‘a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning’. Everything is seen through this frame or filter. Brooklyn is one of those magical locations that has a weight to it that, for example, Swindon will never have. It’s not Manhattan and it is New York.

It’s one in the morning - perfectly legitimate, given that it’s the city that never sleeps, but it also gives the suggestion of the illicit, that this meeting may not be one to have in the light of day.

And what’s taking place at one in the morning? It’s up to you to paint the picture, as we’re never told. The subject to whom PJ is singing ’said something, really important’ - but we never find out who it is, or what was said. Ambiguity reigns.

Slouched hidden beside a fire-exit, Antony Hegarty looked neither courageous or a star, clutching his notebook and looking nervous as he waited for his driver to arrive. This was back in 2005, backstage at a festival in Italywhere Antony and the Johnsons were due to headline that night. He averted his gaze from all passers by - particularly those, like me, with press passes dangling. On this chance observation one word springs to mind to sum up this extraordinary singer - shy.

Shy, though, is the last word you’d use to describe this song - given that it confidently stakes out its territory using just Hegarty’s voice to start with. It’s a good minute before any other presence is allowed into this spacious sound, and even then it’s just a hint of feedback and menace from a suspense-laden guitar.

This is a real headturner. It’s got Hegarty’s lilting and lovely voice, but rather than those elegant and beautiful tunes that made up his Mercury Prize winning I am a bird now this is blues all the way.  

There are plenty of taboos that have been broken and flaunted in rock - no-one would blink an eye if you sing fuck, shit, or bastard, but when someone sings

‘that pig took everything I had
that pig made me feel so bad
shake that pig out of the bush
now let’s give that pig a push’  

You know you’re about to enter some dark, and shameful arena where the flesh battles with the spirit and the outcome is far from certain.

Accompanied by a vigilant bass, drums and a saxaphone, the song builds up around Hegarty’s voice. It’s a song you could imagine Tom Waits rasping through with abandon, but he’d never be able to match the effect that Hegarty’s quavering voice conjures up. It’s a voice that suggests fragility and innocence, and yet at the same time is rock solid.

Amongst the many half-baked explanations for Dublin band Something Happens’ inexplicable lack of global success, back in 1990, with the superb Stuck Together With God’s Glue is one that focusses entirely on lead singer Tom Dunne’s paisley shirt collection.

There may be some truth to it (take a look at the video below), but it’s an unfortunate theory, because the paisley shirts actually revealed a deeper truth. Something Happens were one of the bands that, in the ’90s, ushered in the ’60s’ most important conquests to Ireland - Sex and Pop.

The sexual revolution had passed the Republic by back in the ’60s, thanks to a Catholic-minded legislature that made sure that foreign filth like the pill remained foreign. It was only in 1979 that a bill was introduced allowing chemists to sell contraceptives, and even then only on the presentation of a doctor’s prescription certifying that the said items were for bona fide family planning purposes (not, God and Government forbid. for the purpose of pleasure!). A new bill, hotly contested by the hot and bothered, was introduced in 1985 allowing for the sale of condoms, by chemists, to adults. 

In 1990’s economically depressed Dublin condoms were, as they say, a bit thin on the ground. And it’s against that background that the Happens’ second album came out - a potent mix of pop tunes marked by Ray Harman’s ‘electric’ guitar playing and Tom Dunne’s way with words. And while the album will be chiefly remembered for the hits ‘Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello,Hello (petrol)‘ - listed by the NME that year in their top fifty singles - and ‘Parachute‘ - a light hearted love song floating on a wing and a creaky metaphor, the song that keeps me coming back is The Devil in Miss Jones - the song that most aptly sums up this album driven by lust and catholic guilt.

The Happens were the first band to make me realise that having guitars on a track didn’t have to make it ‘heavy’, in fact - as with most of their songs - the opening chords here are giddily light. When the keyboards and lead guitar kick in seconds later it’s like an explosion of colour (back to the paisley shirts then) and the mood is good. You’d be hard put to realise that the song’s title is taken from / shared with a ’70s porn film, as opposed to the 1941 Oscar nominated The Devil and Miss Jones (directed by Sam Wood). But it is, and there’s the rub.

“From the guy at the back with love
to the girl up there
to the devil in miss Jones
even if I only stare”

The greatest things about this song (in no order of preference):

1) It has a melody so brilliant that they didn’t bother to have a sung chorus

2) The lyrics -always under-rated, perhaps because the band were always so tongue in cheek - are stunning. They managed to mix melancholy and frustration with a mischievous glint in the eye. Genius.

3) The song builds up to a rocking frenzy that  Onan would be proud of - the song takes on the subject matter, and runs with it

4) Related to the above - this is the sound of tight band pushing and over-reaching. The rhythm section of Alan Byrne and Eamonn Ryan  up the ante of the song perfectly to its logical conclusion.

Perhaps the best song on what is certainly one of the most under-rated albums ever.

(couldn’t find a video for it, unfortunately - so here’s the video for Hellox5 Petrol instead)

When I think of John Martyn - who sadly passed away on the 29th of January -  I think of friends, spread out across time and space, with whom I’ve listened to his music. It’s natural, because for decades Martyn was an artist to be discovered. He only periodically existed on radio/tv or in the music magazines, but few who heard him could resist introducing him - via a mix tape - to a music-loving friend.

I think of my mate Cathy, who, older than me, took matters into her own hands when seeing my U2 and Black Sabbath dominated tape collection. She introduced me to Martyn’s groundbreaking Solid Air (and, at the same time Van Morrison) with a smile, knowing that it would change things for me for ever.

I think of my friend Ronan, with whom I could never agree over the genius of Doc Watson, but who introduced me to Martyn’s debut London Conversations . A more different record to Solid Air it’s hard to imagine, to the extent that you could never imagine that light folk singer of one was also the gruff, mumbling vocalist with the timbre of a tenor saxophone of the other. Genius either way.

 I think of my friends Brendan and Melissa, who one pleasant afternoon in their small flat near the Guinness brewery ransacked their record collection to find me that spectacular husband/wife album that is Stormbringer. Martyn recorded this gem with his wife Beverley, a formidable talent in her own right. With songs like John the Baptist and the sublime (used advisedly)  Sweet Honesty  the couple managed to capture on vinyl  the joy, excitement, and terrible fear of love.

I think of my mate Mick, with whom I gambled on buying a ticket to see Martyn in Dublin during the mid ’90s. The common wisdom then was that going to see Martyn was a lottery - it could be the greatest or worst gig you’d ever see, depending upon the amount of booze Martyn had consumed.  As it turned out it was a brilliant, funny, warm and inspired performance - the gamble paid off. It was the last gig I ever saw with cheerful and upbeat Mick, who dissapeared shortly after.

There are too many John Martyn songs that have moved me  to list here (though it’s worth giving a special mention to The Man in the Station), but right now I want to go back to the first song of his that I heard - May you Never.

In the context of his career, with it’s constant shifting and searching for new styles - ranging from simple folk through to jazz and blues (with many considering him the pioneering father of trip-hop) - it’s easy to see why Martyn wouldn’t have given this song more consideration. On the complex Solid Air it’s simplicity could fool one into thinking it throw-away, but thankfully it has urgency, momentum, and a hook that is hard to resist.

There are those opening bare-naked lines

May you never lay your head down
without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed
out in the cold

With Martyn’s sweet soulful voice, above a guitar-part that makes you want to learn the instrument properly, these lines manage to be sincere and moving, while in the wrong hands (like, perhaps, those of his sometime colleagues Clapton and Collins) they would risk becoming unbearably sentimental.

And there’s the darkness that was unmistakable in his music, when he moves into his catalogue of wishes

May you never lose your temper
if you get in a bar-room fight
May you never lose your woman
over night

It’s that tension, between light and dark, that makes this so powerful. It looks to the worst, and hopes for the best, all the while taking consolation in rhythm and melody. It’s a beautiful, romantic, pop song that balances on a knife edge.

He’ll be missed.

Imagine yourself in the anonymous looking high-street of any home-counties English town, on a tuesday morning. As you stroll, minding your own business, a man in a bowler hat brushes accidentally into you. The likelihood - in our admittedly contrived scene - is that he’ll akwardly issue an embarassed apology, perhaps going so far as to lift his hat in a well-practiced gesture to indicate he is no buffoon or braggart but rather an upstanding citizen who has unintentionally invaded your ’space’.

Take a hop, skip, and a jump out of your Anglo-Saxon surroundings, walk down the streets of Rome/Athens/Barcelona or Buenos Aires and you can spot the Englishman at a hundred yards - he’s the one wasting his time every two paces with unsearched for ‘excuse me’s .  ’Personal space’ is a very vague concept here, as people hustle and bustle, open to the sights, smells, and sounds around them.

In the 1980s synthesiser is the musical equivalent of the British Empire - dominant, disliked, and dull. Drop the Pilot, by the immensely talented Joan Armatrading, gives a perfect example of why. The song, a distinct departure from her acoustic guitar dominated sound (think of Love and Affection, or Down to Zero), boasts a memorable riff played on the then obligatory synthesiser. Each note is played clearly, all present in their own clearly defined and self-enclosed space. Play it on a guitar and there’s the danger of the notes bumping fluidly into each other - god forbid! 

Let’s be clear - manners and respect for the rules might be an admirable thing for the footpath, but they make your average song sterile.

That misplaced keyboard riff, coupled with the energetically unimaginative chord progression that the <em>actual</em> guitar plays on this song, should be enough to ban it from any of my playlists - and yet, it seems to often make its way back in. Close a door on it, and this brash, self-confident bruiser of a song will climb in the window without apologies (well, the keyboard riff would probably like to say sorry, but is running with the wrong crowd).

And marshalling all this together is Armatrading’s profound and steady voice, ready to sing any amount of foolishness - ‘Animal, Mineral, Spiritual, Physical, I’m the one you need’ - to get your attention focussed on her rich tones (foolish it may be, but ‘Drop the mahout, I’m the easy rider’ is one of the fineset ‘what is she on about?’ moments in pop history).

It may seem like heresy (and a rip-off of a Chuck D. line), but the Clash didn’t mean shit to me when I was growing up. I was six years old in the summer of ‘77, and by the mid eighties their punk revolution had already long-been mainstreamed , commercialised (some would argue also by the band themselves) and robbed of its political value.

The first Clash tune that I heard that really grabbed me was the Mick Jones’ sung should I stay or should I go, and I heard it not on the grapevine, but through a Levis commercial - oh the shame of it all.

Since then I’ve had a mild curiosity about the band, but never a fully fledged enthusiasm. To me,  there always seemed a little bit too much bluster and posturing about the Joe Strummer led band. A revolutionary zeal that, like Strummer’s voice, didn’t always sit well with the actual music. When it worked, like London Calling it was brilliant, but more often than not it didn’t. 

Not a popular opinion perhaps. Watching Julien Temple’s recent documentary on Joe Strummer, you’ll hear how important both the band and Strummer were to various artists including Bono, Anthony Kiedis, Jim Jarmusch, and Johnny Depp. It’s an opinion, though, that if anything was strengthened by watching Temple’s film - Strummer was an important artist on lots of levels, but chief amongst his attributes was a charisma and enthusiasm, and it was one that I’ve never really clicked into.

Jump forward to last year, though, and a friday night in a small bustling bar I sometimes frequent. It’s the sort of place where the guys behind the bar use judgement rather than measures, and are liable to drink into the profits of a night, whilst turning the music up. The bar men are clash fans, and most people are chatting away, almost absent-mindedly interacting with the music. Heads are nodding gently, fingers are tapping along to tunes like Police and Thieves,  Rock the Casbah, Train in Vain, and Bankrobber.

Nothing extraordinary.

Then, the opening riff of Police on my back comes out, and we instantly move from finger tapping to jumping in the air. The bar men trampoline in time to the song, which goes at breakneck speed. Every song has a standard speed, and an ideal speed which is often just a fraction faster - not too much, which would sound careless and clumsy; if done properly, that increase in speed is like a graceful accelaration, like someone tripping out of a tackle.  This song’s original authors, The Equals (a fine London band, including Eddy Grant) played the song at its standard speed. Not too fast, and not too slow. When the Clash took it on for the Sandinista! extravaganza they brought it up a level, to that ideal speed. No-one will ever be able now to play Police on my back faster or slower than the Clash’s version, or at least play it at a different speed and sound credible or good.

And that, my friends, is a long-winded way of saying why this is very much a monkeys’ tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq_HtgGOIfE

There’s an oldish interview with Glen Hansard (the frames / swell season) in TMO, where he talks about poetry, saying “Poetry stirs the blood. Poetry makes men go to war. If you listen to any of the speeches from Bush or the statements from Al-Qaeda, it’s all poetry, and that’s what makes men kill. ”

I heard the news today, oh  boy, and amidst security council vetoes, schools being bombed, and the inability to do anything, I’ve momentarily lost my appetite for singers singing songs. 

Offering a moment of peace and reflectionis the Italian pianist Giovanni Allevi, with his melancholy and beautiful track Back to Life. Allevi, a shy and akward composer who has touched a chord with a wide and diverse audience in his native Italy, plays music that would be classified by the short-sighted as ‘classical’ but it transcends boundaries and snobbish pigeonholes.

Just what’s needed in these dark days. (if you feel like doing something, how about signing the avaaz petition ‘stop the bloodshed in Gaza‘)