Wax on Wax #7: The Music Behind The Mustache
Today we look at four albums, and more importantly, four mustaches. We analyze how said mustaches are either a compliment, or an analog for the music within these four wildly different albums by incredibly varied artists at different points in their careers. We explore musicians who had really come into their own, and a few who may have stumbled out of the gate while still impressing with musical statements that were important to their development. Get your mustache wax ready, and head to the comments. Who has your favorite musical mustache?
Mustache Grade: A mustache that is rough around the edges, unkempt, and with too many stories to tell. Kind of dirty, but charming. A-
Juarez by Terry Allen is a set of Tex-Mex fried tales of drunken nights and wild drives across the American southwest. It's at once full of wanderlust and constantly paying homage to places the characters in these songs once lived or came from. It's a sparse album in instrumentation, seldom featuring more than Allen's barroom piano, his voice, and sweet Spanish guitar. The songs seem loosely composed around a theme of Texas and Juarez, Texas specifically which is now known as El Paso. It's the perfect setting for the outlaw characters who inhabit Allen's songs on Juarez, who are constantly in flux between women, sobriety, the law, and their country. Allen writes a set of songs here in the greater tradition of literature more than any specific music being referenced. Juarez is like reading a good book, or listening to the musings of an old man with too many great stories to tell. The songs flow together in a theatrical way, which is no surprise given the other creative avenues that Allen is known for. Juarez is sentimental like a night spent drunk being sorry for yourself, and cinematic like stock footage of The Great Plains. It's another journey through Americana as only someone born in the heart of it could tell.
Listening to Juarez reminded me immediately of a close friend of mine, songwriter, and poet Sam Small. Sam has a similar was of imbuing his music with a sense of wonder and wander, along with the grounded earth from which he sprung. To a lesser extent, these songs and tales of adventure remind me of Sam's late father Don Small, who could enrapture anyone with his stories of seemingly hundreds of lives he'd lived. No surprise that being raised by a modern American folk hero could turn you into the literary type. Juarez feels like you're sitting in Terry Allen's parlor while he performs his southern musical in its entirety on his piano. Terry Allen comes across less as a welcoming old man reliving his glory days and more like a grimey hobo who's been thrown out of one too many bars doing the same. Terry's characters are unsavory, to say the least, and as often as they're found wallowing in the majesty of the American southwest they're found having drunken escapades with loose women in roadside motels. It's the kind of thing that's maybe more fun to hear about than to indulge in yourself.
To me Juarez is further proof that there must be something in the water down there in Texas; something that either draws in outlaws or maybe just changes those that have their fill. It's a uniquely American romanticism, and these drunks and outlaws are just our society's pirates, samurai, or Knights of the Round Table. They're archetypes that exist in every society, but for some reason, in ours, they have persisted longer than others. You can still find these archetypes in the wild here in America, and you don't have to look very hard as soon as you leave almost any major city. The rest of the world seems to have grown up while we're still looking towards our past for answers that are either not there or completely wrong. In a way, it makes America very unique that even as recent as the 1970s we can still sprout someone like Terry Allen, who would almost surely feel completely alien anywhere else. Juarez has so many stories to tell, and some aren't for everyone. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone with any semblance of American heritage who couldn't relate even just a little to what Allen has to say on Juarez.
Mustache Grade: A stache that is ready for primetime, but with a lot of room to grow. Far from hitting its ceiling, but no slouch either. B-
I still remember where I was the day Lou Reed died. I was in a production analysis class at Berklee with 20 other kids from all over the world. I remember my teacher, Susan Rogers, asking us all to raise our hands if we knew who Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground were. I was the only one who raised my hand. I was gobsmacked and felt the urge in my bones to wax poetic about what an incredible musician we had lost that day. Susan decided that there was no point in continuing her planned lecture that day, and instead, she and I held a conversation for the class all about Lou Reed, his incredible influence on our culture and Susan told us some amazing stories about her encounters with him. You see, Susan Rogers was the real deal. She was no run of the mill faculty member. She'd been Prince's primary engineer, and I'd argue collaborator, during his incredible run in the mid-80s. She helped produce and was in the studio with Prince for the entirety of his magnum opus Sign O' The Times. When she spoke about Lou Reed being a legend, I listened, because she of all people could recognize a one of a kind artist when she saw one. She'd been by the side of one of the most enigmatic and fantastic performers of all time during the height of his powers. Needless to say, I sat at the feet of a master and tried to take in as much as I could during that time. Having any kind of intellectual conversation with her about anything was a treat and a privilege for me as a music fan.
Susan also was instrumental in scoring me one of my first clients when I came to her in distress one day. I didn't exactly make a lot of friends in my major during my time at Berklee. I was extremely insecure, I knew I wanted to work in audio, but even at Berklee in the Music Production major, I felt totally lost. I felt like I was a fraud, and suffered as many college students do with imposter syndrome. I thought one day I'm going to slip, and the jig will be up. Commence pointing and laughing while I sulk my way back to California forever. I never took advantage of office hours with many teachers, I was so scared and nervous for them to see that I didn't understand certain things that I avoided them altogether to keep my mask up. But Susan Rogers was different. She had walked away from music 12 years or so before I had met her, and that choice imbued her with a powerful spirit in my eyes. She'd reached the top of the mountain in my field, as a woman no less, and realized that life held more for her than even all of that. She wanted to become an educator and I'm so grateful every day that she did because she made a profound influence on me. I came to her office hours one day and just let everything out, I told her how little confidence I had and that I wanted to quit pursuing music. I thought maybe she'd understand where I was coming from since she'd walked away herself. Instead, she convinced me to double down and booked me a client, a student band from one of her other classes. She convinced me that I was born to make records and that being afraid was no reason to stop. Again, when she spoke I truly listened and her words hit me like a ton of bricks. A few weeks later I was in a local studio, off-campus, producing an awesome band to 2'' tape. I was forever changed and haven't looked back since.
It made me think, if Susan had this effect on little old me, imagine the effect she could have on someone with immeasurable talent. And then Prince just made a whole ton of sense. Susan was a catalyst for putting emotion and ferocity into a musical production. She brought the best out in her students and I have no doubt did the same for Prince during her time with him. I say all this to point out that everyone has to start somewhere, and we aren't all born in our final forms. We all could use mentors during our formative years when fear and uncertainty take hold to guide us and keep us on the bath we were born to tread. It's helpful with that in mind to take a look at this album, 1979's Prince by the man himself. There is so much insanely raw talent on this album, and it really was just a preview of what was to come in the years ahead. I listen to this album and can't fathom how in a vacuum critics kind of considered it a middle of the road album at the time. Maybe it is compared to Prince's later output, but this is an A+ album by literally anyone else. Prince plays every instrument himself and at just age 19 he was already an incredible force to be reckoned with. The album is very disco-y and fun, with plenty of sexual soul numbers as only Prince could deliver. Everyone knew from one listen of this album that once Prince focused his superpowers on a sound of his own that he would have almost no equals. In my eyes, Susan Rogers was that focus on him just as she became for me all those years later.
This is not the best Prince album, but even the best Prince albums aren't as good as the even better best Prince albums. As with anything concerning Prince, it is just going to be unfair to compare him to anything or anyone. This album shows promise and kept Prince on the path towards dominating the world as he was so destined to do. If it wasn't for breaks like Prince in this world, I don't know where I'd be right now. When life puts up walls, sometimes all you need is a tiny crack to see the sunshine on the other side to keep you going. A tiny crack in the wall of life for Prince was a 3x platinum-selling album at age 19, but again stop comparing things to Prince. It's really not fair. Susan Rogers is an unsung hero of the music industry, and anyone in her orbit becomes more understanding, knowledgeable, and connected to music in a deeper way than they were before meeting her. Don't take my word for it, just listen to Prince. Nothing Compares 2 U Susan, cheers.
Mustache Grade: A stache that never reached its full potential much like Baby himself. A sad reminder of an immense talent cut too short. C
This album screams from the very start. It's clear that this is a band that made it to wax with a ton to prove, and they held nothing back. What you first notice is the gigantic horns, incredibly tight rhythm section, blistering guitars, and last but certainly not least BABY HUEY. Certainly no baby, Huey weighed nearly 400 pounds during the recording of his one and only album due to a glandular disorder combined with heroin and alcohol addiction. Not exactly a paragon of health, this guy, but wow could he sing. Baby Huey & The Babysitters were the funk band of the 70s that never was. Their one album The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend contains more raw funk energy than most bands could muster in a lifetime. There is so much energy behind these songs because this was a band right on the brink of hitting it big. You can hear in the recordings every gig that led to this album, every session, every trial, and hardship. It's a mammoth album comprised of the best sounds of its era, and no doubt would have led to even bigger sounds than we could even imagine.
For all the emotional funk outbursts, the highlight of the album has to be Baby’s immaculate and chilling cover of "A Change Is Gonna Come." It's the kind of cover that should have supplanted the original as the version; like Jimi Hendrix doing "All Along The Watchtower" or "Hurt" by Johnny Cash. It's got so many peaks and valleys, Baby Huey is all at once reminiscent of Sam Cook, Otis Redding, James Brown, and Sly Stone all at once. It's a remarkable recording, performance, and arrangement. There are aspects of the song that are 100% soul, that lead to huge funky sections much closer to the rest of the album, as well as a lot of psychedelic influences from Sly and The Family Stone. Baby and his band have so much personality and it completely shines on this track. Even the instrumental passages are a welcome respite from some of the madness on this album. They show off his extremely talented band made up of The Babysitters, as well as members of producer Curtis Mayfield's band after the fact. It becomes hard to tell where certain contributions end and others begin because the band is so tight. There is nothing obvious on the album that sounds like it was added after the fact, and despite how it was put together posthumously it's remarkable how well everything manages to coalesce.
Curtis Mayfield's presence is felt less as a deft hand and more as a guiding one. This album is full of wild performances, extended instrumental passages, and incredible musicianship much like what you find on Mayfield's own records. The big difference is that Mayfield's albums are much more polished and restrained than anything found on The Baby Huey Story. Curtis and Baby's manager had to assemble what had been recorded up to Baby's death, and took what was there and added some members of Mayfield's band for overdubs. There are also wild live recordings like "Mighty Mighty" written by Mayfield that no doubt was planned for a proper studio rendition. At times during the song Baby even manages to sound a touch like Captain Beefheart, proving there was nearly no vocal style that wasn't completely enveloped by his talent. Other songs sound much more like a Curtis Mayfield song like the single "Hard Times" which is a highlight of the album. It's very dramatic and cinematic, like something from one of Curtis' soundtrack albums.
The Baby Huey Story went on to be a collector's item in soul circles and later became highly influential to hip hop. As far as posthumous albums go, it is easily one of the best ever put together despite how much work had to be done to get it to the state it is in. I have no doubt that had Baby Huey had a chance to finish this album it would hold an even larger place in the soul, funk, and hip hop lexicons than it already does. Curtis Mayfield's additions help this album reach its classic status, but are not completely responsible for it. Baby Huey & The Babysitters prove they were a force that was sadly not meant to be. Baby passed away at the incredibly young age of 26, but contained in those 26 years was a magnanimous spirit that endures to this day. If you're going to record just one album before you go, you could do much worse than the psychedelic soul of The Baby Huey Story.
Mustache Grade: A mustache that has reached its full peak and maturity. It's strong and confident while at the same time being inviting and warm. It's a stache by which all others should be measured, fit for a true dad. A+
The Beach Boys have always been considered the American answer to The Beatles, but I would argue that another response to the complex songwriting put on display by The Fab Four is none other than Simon & Garfunkel. The Beach Boys could match The Beatles in high concept and complexity, but Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle had the old world influences that rooted their music further back much the same as McCartney and Lennon. Simon and McCartney in particular seem like they could have been a match made in heaven had they ever collaborated in their prime. Two gargantuan songwriters like that surely couldn't have lasted more than an hour in a recording studio once egos reared their heads. Still Crazy After All These Years has always been one of my favorite offerings from Paul Simon, in which Simon brings back all of the wonderful tranquility from his Simon & Garfunkel days while also bringing in a cavalcade of upbeat and incredible New York and Muscle Shoals session players. It's an album whose songwriting is matched only by its sonic perfection and immaculate performances. It's the kind of album I would have loved to hear from any of The Beatles post-breakup, but it's almost as if they'd all run out of steam by the late 70s and who could blame them. Still Crazy After All These Years is still a magnificent statement from one of Rock's greatest songwriting voices.
The album cover is reminiscent of Harvest or Rumors with muted tones and a light tan hue that evokes a pastoral tone in the music. It's the perfect depiction of Simon attempting a rural album in an urban setting along with all the musical complexities that would bring about. It's the kind of calm and relaxing album you wouldn't associate with New York City, while at the same time containing music that is inherently New York. There are horns, strings, and big jazzy arrangements that accompany Simon's wonderfully tamed voice. The album is a showcase of the absolute power of the art of making records in the late 1970s. By this point technology, performers, and technique had all reached their zenith, and records recording during this period are some of the most sonically balanced examples we have before or after. Recording engineers at this time were striving for clean recordings which were often a losing battle due to the limitations of reel to reel tape machines. Special mention should be given to Phil Ramone who helmed this album and many more for Simon afterwards. Simon can experiment and achieve things in the studio he otherwise couldn't if it wasn’t for such an adept hand behind the console. Still Crazy After All These Years is nothing but the best in every aspect be it recording, performing, songwriting or otherwise.
It's no surprise that Art Garfunkle rejoined Simon on this album for the first time in five years on "My Little Town." Still Crazy After All These Years is the most Simon & Garfunkel sounding album in Simon's catalog, and I for one (controversial opinion incoming) could have used more Garfunkel on this album. Even if Simon was clearly the stronger songwriter of the two, having that kind of secondhand with another vocalist is incredibly rare and should be exploited at every opportunity. No doubt Simon was still showing the world that he could stand on his own two feet as a solo performer, but nonetheless, I still long for their harmonies when I listen to this album. This album shares the big sweeping reverb that fans of Simon & Garfunkel would recognize, as well as the clever sometimes unorthodox percussion and arrangements that Simon has always been known for. Simon makes plenty of use harmonizing with others on this album to great effect, but I can't help that a small taste of 70s Simon & Garfunkel is just too intriguing for my blood.
In my mind, Paul Simon picked up the songwriting baton from Paul McCartney after Paul's initial solo output. He never again was as ambitious as Simon proved to be for decades still to come. That ambitiousness didn't always translate to a win for Simon, but McCartney also never reached the same highs as Still Crazy and certainly not Graceland in the 80s. Somehow all roads lead back to The Beatles, even when talking about bonafide superstars like Paul Simon. The Beatles, even with all their accomplishments, are still one of the great 'what ifs' due to their somewhat premature breakup. I believe they had at least two or three great records still in them, and they could have defined the 70s in much the same way they defined the 60s. That being said, we're lucky they got out of the way so to speak, which allowed for powerful voices to emerge on to the top spot of musical royalty. Paul Simon has nearly no equals, and when you have to bring up the most musically gifted Beatle to even make a comparison you know there's little left to prove. Still Crazy After All These Years is a wonderful melding of styles as only Paul Simon could deliver, and is a slice of New York like no other. The title song still has a way of stopping me in my tracks, no matter what I'm doing.
Check in next week, we’ll be covering Lineup Changes.
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