Who Moved My Cheese Metal?

Our long WMMCM flight begins its descent on this unusual vehicle:

This Steppenwolf TV appearance doesn’t include the long keyboard solo, but on the other hand, Rushton Moreve, who co-wrote the song, is wearing a caftan. Also he appears to be, well, not entirely up on events. Moreve’s spaced-out look may be, and probably is, simply showmanship … but there is that caftan.

Anyway, the vocal isn’t quite the album version, so this was likely recorded live before the show for later lip-synching, a fairly common practice then and now. And yes, John Kay is lip-synching, as is made clear in the last few seconds of the clip. (And isn’t that a great face for rock ‘n’ roll? He’d be about 23 or 24 here.)

This bluesy bit of psychedelia is widely believed to be about drugs, and indeed it may be. Steppenwolf did a first-rate version of Hoyt Axton’s “The Pusher,” which celebrates the joys of pills and marijuana even as it rages against those who sell heroin, and John Kay’s own “Don’t Step on the Grass, Sam” is a vigorous defense of “Mary Jane” against an anti-drug politician who, in an immortal rock phrase, declares marijuana to be “evil, wicked, mean, and nasty.” So yes, there is some reason to believe that the magic carpet in question may be a prohibited substance.

Or possibly not. There’s nothing directly in the lyrics to suggest anything other than a purely thought-based “trip,” and, as noted, the ‘Wolf dudes were not shy about explicit drug references when that is what they intended.

I like to dream
Right between my sound machine
On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
Any place it goes is right

Just floating away on the music, and inviting his girl to come along: “Why don’t you share your dreams with me/Fantasy will set you free.” And he encourages her to “let the sound take you away.” The “Aladdin’s lamp” business could be a drug-induced vision or a dream or fantasy; in context, I vote for dream.

This song so much loved by classic rock radio that it has been played right into the ground, but it’s worth a fresh listen if you’re fried on it (I was). It has a percussive drive that complements the bluesy vocal, a grand, bubbling bassline, and that rockin’ Farfisa. Here’s the complete version.

And with that, the Flying Cheese, in the air for more than two weeks, comes in for a landing at last.

As we here at WMMCM are circling the field lining up on the approach path getting ready to land, there is room for one or two more before arrive back at the airport. After spending so much time in flight with Snoopy, Joni, Tom Petty, Elton and more dogs and Valvoline than we know what to do with it’s seemed time to perhaps head back to earth.

After having one’s head in the clouds for so long things can become kind of fuzzy due to lack of oxygen so, what better than some Pink Floyd to help ease the pressure in our ears as we come back in…

I remember the first time I saw this video. MTV, of course. They did a big promotional run-up to the “World Debut” showing. I don’t know about my friends but I was not disappointed. (They were all drunk. Come to think of it, I was too). Either way, I liked the song and video.  It has that strange edgy sound Pink Floyd had mastered with The Wall a few years earlier. Even when the words are calm and soothing, David Gilmore’s comforting voice, (even and measured as a proper Englishman should be), there is a level of discomfort to the whole thing. That’s always a big attraction for me with Pink Floyd. Gilmore can be singing the most simple things and it’s just somehow wrong. I don’t mean to say he’s a bad singer, far from it. Just that his style or more accurately, lack of one, gives the songs he sings a very appealing detachment in the vocal delivery.

1987′s “A Momentary Lapse Of Reason” was the first Floyd album without founding member Roger Waters. Waters and Gilmore had been splitting the lead vocal duties since the early days of Floyd after the band decided that original singer and guitarist Syd Barrett was too strange even for them.

Now with Waters out of the picture Gilmore became the only lead singer and primary force in the band, so where to take it?

Flying!

Gilmore and Nick Mason are both multiple rated pilots. That means they are qualified to fly different types of aircraft. Single engine, twin engine and so on. So why not write about that?

When you add in the conclusion of a nearly twenty year “difference of opinion” between Waters and Gilmore, learning to fly seems to be a good metaphor for heading off in a new direction as well.

Now for the song.

Some really great Gilmore guitar leads here. That’s to be expected. Gilmore’s tone and feel are always quite enjoyable. In the breaks I really feel like his guitar is flying along with the story. I know a soaring guitar is a bit of a cliché but here it’s quite accurate. The backing vocals includes the “girls.” It wouldn’t be Floyd without them. Another interesting addition is the spoken words through the solo break. That’s actually Nick Mason’s voice having been recorded conversing with the tower during one of his flights.

You can’t get more flying than that.

The long flight continues on WMMCM, with this one from Scottish pop artist Al Stewart.

This is from Year of the Cat, in 1976. The title track of Year of the Cat is thoughtful, moving, and evokes a particular place as powerfullly as any pop song I can think of.  “Flying Sorcery” is not so successful — and it is, sadly, rather more typical of Stewart’s output.

(I left this at the large DailyMotion embed size because creator  Higbie made a great video to this song. Be patient through the band pics — this is very nicely done.)

“Flying Sorcery” may or may not be about English aviator Amy Johnson, who died flying for the Air Transport Authority in 1941. She was a striking figure, and I would say that she deserves a better song. If it is intended to be about Johnson, it’s not thought through very well — the accident pointed to here (“I suppose you never saw the landing lights”) can’t really be connected with Johnson’s crash into the Thames Estuary under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

This is not a terrible record — it sounds just fine, and, like the rest of the album, it is produced with sensitivity and imagination by Alan Parsons. But it just doesn’t go anywhere. It isn’t clear who the speaker is, and why he seems to have been along on the fatal flight, or how he can be both “drifting with the tail-wind” in the cockpit and on the ground looking up at the empty sky. It keeps bumping up against meaning something specific, and then just ambling off into nonsense again.

Such as:

The sun comes up on Icarus,
As the night-birds sail away,
And lights the maps and diagrams,
That Leonardo makes,
You can see faith, hope, and charity
As they bank above the fields,
You can join the Flying Circus,
You can touch the morning air against your wheels

Just ridiculous. A set of arbitrary allusions to mostly flying-related things that have nothing to do with the rest of the song and nothing to do with each other (or with Amy Johnson, for that matter) and provide only a spurious depth to the song. And if he’s thinking about Amy Johnson, then with “join the Flying Circus,” he has both the wrong air force and the wrong war.

But it is very pretty, isn’t it? As I’ve noted here before, I’m not sure there was ever a producer who did better service for a mediocre artist than Alan Parsons did for Al Stewart.

In the early 90′s rock radio was a bit confusing at times. You might hear Journey’s “Wheel In The Sky” right next to Neil Young’s “Southern Man” at any given time. Following that might be Skid Row’s “Eighteen And Life” leading into Yes’ “Roundabout” and right before the inevitable commercial break they may have closed with the Scorpion’s “Winds Of Change.”

All in all a really strange time for rock radio.

So what do you do about it if you are a young and talented musician/songwriter?

Well, you pretty much ignore anything else on the radio and do your own thing and hope for the best…

1990′s Toy Matinee was a truly weird band. Musically and otherwise. (If you know the story of Kevin Gilbert’s untimely death from, well, if your interested read the link, you’ll get the picture). Gilbert and Patrick Leonard had formed the band from a group of musicians that would eventually become known, thanks to Sheryl Crow, as the Tuesday Night Music Club.

Gilbert and Leonard had a unique view of the world with the album including songs dedicated to the President of the then newly liberated Czech Republic, Václav Havel, and two songs about Madonna as Leonard had been songwriting partners with the pop queen for some time previously.

“Last Plane Out” is a celebration of excess. A four and a half minute might as well try to fly as you fall off the cliff kind of song. The intro is a bit misleading as to where this is all going and somehow that only adds to the fun. The absurd lyrics can be taken seriously if you really want to do that…

“Greetings from Sodom, How we wish you were here,
The weather’s getting warmer, now that the trees are all cleared.”

Nothing gets a party going better than some good old fashion death and destruction.

Now, all in all, “Last Plane Out” is pretty funny. “Dog’s and Valvoline?” Did they really say that? Yep. They did…

Toy Matinee didn’t really have much in the way of a career as Leonard lost interest in the project and offered no more support, but Gilbert and then girlfriend Crow did the rounds of radio promotion and special events most notably with KLOS 95.5fm’s Mark & Brian show. “Last Plane Out” was the bands biggest single reaching 23rd on the charts with a minor follow up hit, “The Ballad Of Jenny Ledge,” hitting the same mark but without the same impression on radio or sales. And with Gilbert’s death in 1996 Toy Matinee was finished.

Toy Matinee is truly one of the more interesting albums you will ever hear with great harmonies and a wide range of musical styles reflecting  perfectly the state of rock music at the time it was released. It’s a bit of everything at once, and for once, that idea actually worked.

As a bonus, here’s my favorite Toy Matinee song.

It’s about Madonna… Can you tell?

“Things She Said”

We are still up in the air at WMMCM, and here’s a nice one from Tom Petty.

(The official video is available for embed, but it is both NSFW and stupid, so we have a fan-created video instead.)

This is from 1991, and I’m fonder of Petty’s earlier work, but this is just a good, solid radio record — it’s the nice, straightforward and unmistakably American rock he does so well, with the usual nice details from the Heartbreakers, like that gently echoing guitar and the rifle-shot drums that come in at the three-minute mark. Not a thriller, but a nice mid-career tune about getting by, get along, and finding your place in a tough world.

I’m learning to fly
But I ain’t got wings
Coming down
Is the hardest thing.

Doesn’t get much more typically Petty than that, does it?

As we continue in flight at WMMCM (we’ll be landing around the end of the week), we have this choppily pretty track from Joni Mitchell’s 1971 Blue.

“This Flight Tonight” is a love song on first listen, with a view from the airplane window and apparent regret at having gone away.

Up in the air, she’s saying
You’ve got the lovin’ that I like all right
Turn this crazy bird around
I shouldn’t have gotten on this flight tonight

But that is not quite what this song is about. The singer is infatuated with a difficult man, and when she’s not around him, their problems become that much clearer:

You got the touch so gentle and sweet
But you’ve got that look so critical
Now I can’t talk to you, baby
I get so weak
Sometimes I think love is just mythical

But she can’t stop wishing things would get better: “Oh, blackness, blackness dragging me down/Come on, light the candle in this poor heart of mine.”

In the last verse, it becomes clear that she isn’t on her way out of town — she’s coming home, and the plane is about to land:

Up go the flaps, down go the wheels
I hope you got your heat turned on, baby
I hope they finally fixed your automobile
I hope it’s better when we meet again, baby.

Makes the last time she sings “I shouldn’t have gotten on this flight tonight” mean something quite different. There is more to the song than that, but a simple love song this is not.

And, by way of a curiosity, this adaptation with an entirely different melody by Scottish band Nazareth.

They don’t seem to have a clue, do they?

As we fly along on WMMCM, here’s another sort of vehicle:

A pop act with occasional R&B tendencies, the 5th Dimension had hit after hit in the late ’60s and early ’70s. This one was pretty early, making the top 10 in 1967. And yes, I know it was the ’60s, but I am still somewhat concerned by that clear plastic poncho Florence LaRue is wearing in the video. This is a TV appearance — do you suppose someone at the network panicked over her semi-revealing outfit? If so, did this really address the issue?

But anyway, this is a pleasant record from a usually quietly consistent vocal group.  The song is by Jimmy Webb, who also of course wrote some of Glen Campbell’s most memorable songs in Campbell’s pop star days. The vocals are not as polished as they would become later with the 5th D — with this arrangement, it’s a bit too high for the women and a bit too low for the men — but that actually works a little better than studio perfection would have with the slick tune and lyrics that are maybe a bit hyper-elegant.

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon
We could float among the stars together, you and I
For we can fly (We can fly)

It is a nicely extended metaphor for all the grand things that could happen if this pair are really in love:

Suspended under a twilight canopy,
We’ll search the clouds for a star to guide us,
If by some chance you find yourself loving me,
We’ll find a cloud to hide us,
We’ll keep the moon beside us

The 5th Dimension were hugely popular for a time, and though their sound was usually pretty mellow, they took on some interesting songs — two of their bigger hits, “Stoned Soul Picnic” and the singer-killing “Wedding Bell Blues” were by the always challenging songwriter Laura Nyro (who also wrote “Stoney End,” a strange song recorded by many and conquered by none). But the 5th Dimension are perhaps best remembered for this one:

It’s a silly song from a silly show, but they do it perhaps about as well as it can be done. The audio is not the best on this clip, and the “Sunshine” section is shortened, but I couldn’t resist the platform in space. And whoever is playing bass on this just rocked.

In the dark, early days of the First World War a hard fought battle was developing between the well trained and highly motivated ”Flying Circus” pilots of Germany led by Baron Manfred Von Richthofen and the British pilots of the newly formed Royal Air Force. Richthofen became known to the world as the Red Baron because of his bright red Fokker DR-1 tri-plane

which he flew to victory in aerial combat some eighty times making him the leading ace pilot of World War One.

In 1966 the Red Baron finally met his match.

I almost hate saying it but the victory in 1966 was made much easier by the fact that he had been dead for fourty eight years…

Florida’s The Royal Guardsmen, (yes, I did say Florida), were complete strangers to the radio waves of the mid ’60s. Even though Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron made it to number 2 on the charts, The Royal Guardsmen faded into a long pattern of recording Snoopy related songs actually even managing to get themselves sued by United Features Syndicate, the publishers of Charles Shultz’s Peanuts cartoon series.

The mixing of pop rock with Snoopy gave them one hit that lives on today, that’s one more than most bands ever get and what’s wrong with that?

Being that I am heading out of town in the morning I thought I would leave you all with a bit of travel fun and enjoyment.

Ah yes, the joys of shoe inspection and body searches while waiting in ridiculously long lines with hundreds of your closest, (and newest), acquaintances. Nothing beats the sunshine and light given off by your friendly airport security drones…

So what could be worse than that?

Oh dear…

The Who’s “Glow Girl” was written by Pete Townshend as he was getting together ideas for what would become the rock opera Tommy. A rather dark song but very interesting. Daltrey had not quite found his classic rock voice yet but it’s beginning to sneak out here and there.

While Roger Daltrey was still finding the lion that would rage in a few years from 1968 when “Glow Girl” was recorded, The Who and Townshend were on to something. The ending lines of Glow Girl became on the the first lines in Tommy released a year later, the girl having been changed into a boy for the storyline to work better.

The one thing sonically that is quite fixed in “Glow Girl” is Keith Moon’s drumming. He fills all the open spots beautifully even doing some delightfully placed runs through his tom toms that match John Entwistle’s bass in a style they would soon improve upon with Tommy and then perfect on  the Who’s Next and Quadrophenia albums. Listen to the run following “sentimental photographs” in the third line. Rarely has a rhythm section worked more closely together.

Townshend’s lyric and melody are maturing quite quickly at this time in The Who’s career. “Glow Girl” has a very seductive melody that draws you in with its power pop chords and very full vocal harmonies backing Daltrey. The subject matter kind of sneaks up on you, at first a bit of reminiscing.

“Your out-of-tune piano, sentimental photographs,
A million little memories, a million little laughs.”

Then it’s all gone wrong.

“The wing of the airplane has just caught on fire,
I say without reservation we ain’t getting no higher.”

Then a bit of British reserve…

“The plane is diving faster, we’re getting near the ground,
Nobody is screaming, no one makes a sound.”

And rebirth…

“It’s a girl, Mrs. Walker, it’s a girl.”

It’s not a long song lyrically or by the clock, and it may never have been properly finished, which might explain its release only on the 1974 Odds & Sods compilation album. But the effect and emotion, notably added to by Townshend’s plane crash guitar riffs prior to the ”Mrs. Walker” closing lines, make “Glow Girl” truly innovative and a track that, had it been released when it was recorded, might have actually given too much away about where The Who and Townshend were headed musically.
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Where you have songs about airplanes — and we do, in our ongoing informal tribute to flight — you have to have a song about an airplane crash. And so the Everly Brothers, and “Ebony Eyes.”

(Odd and distracting visuals ahead — best I could find.)

Written by JD Loudermilk, this song from 1961 fits right into the fad for tragedy tunes that had been running since the mid-’50s.

It’s pretty simple: A young serviceman with not enough time on a weekend pass to go home and get married gets the chaplain’s OK to send for his fiancee: “My Ebony Eyes/Was coming to me/From out of the skies/On Flight 1203.”  He’s at the airport, waiting for her to come in, but the plane doesn’t arrive.

That is followed by a spoken interlude. But as spoken interludes go, it’s not that bad. Don is no actor, but he gives it a little something and doesn’t embarrass himself at all. The plane is late, and the soldier asks about it at the airline desk. The clerk reassures him, but the weather is bad, and, “Then came the announcement over the loudspeaker: Would those having friends and relatives on flight number 1203…..”

It’s not what you’d call a good record, exactly. The lyrics are clunky (“authorized” is not an easy word to sing, actually) and there’s no real emotional arc, since the mopey tone makes it clear from the start that Ebony’s not going to make it to the wedding. Some guilt or regret for having asked her to come might have added a bit of depth, but there’s no indication of it in the lyrics.

But it has a simple, pretty tune, and, typically for the Everlys, they do a thoroughly professional job. If there’s not much to the material, they make the most of what there is.