Song Of The Day: April 6, 2018
Randy Newman has a thing for people who are not, um, well-adjusted sexually. Some of the songs can even be funny, like ‘Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong’ or ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’ (not that there’s anything wrong with what goes on in ‘Hat’). But he often draws portraits of people whose issues manifest themselves in sinister ways. This one reminds me of something out of a movie by Fritz Lang and featuring Peter Lorre. It is apparently based on a true story. Again, see how little detail Newman provides as he leaves it up to the listeners to fill in the blanks:
I know I said I generally don’t dig the full string arrangements, but I always liked this one. I have an original pressing of Little Criminals.
“I’m looking at the river, but I’m think of the sea.” That’s good shit.
I was really hoping you’d post Rednecks for the Friday tune. Then Liberal Elite could log on and have a dizzy spell while telling us all Randy Newman is a racist.
What I love about ‘Rednecks’ is that the joke is on us:
Now your northern nigga’s a Negro
You see he’s got his dignity
Down here we’re too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigga free
[Verse 4]
Yes he’s free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
[Bridge]
They’re gatherin’ ’em up from miles around
Keepin’ the niggers down
Exactly right. We’re laughing at the dumb narrator all along
No-neck oil men from Texas.
Good ole boys from Tennessee.
“We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.”
But that twist at the end is really sharp.
Also, for the slow and silly, Randy Newman…. white Jewish man… sings the n-word yet is not racist. Try to get your head around it.
Brace Yourself: Found it bore ass to the point of “That’s 3 minutes and 42 seconds I’ll never get back”. I’m a vocalist, but my primary approach to music is as a player, this song does nothing for me. Silky strings or not.
The song is about German serial killer Peter Kurten, who killed nine people, most of them prepubescent girls.
This song, like several others on the album, divides Newman fans, and because the songs vary from very quiet, atmospheric vignettes like this one to “Short People,” it’s not the easiest of his albums to listen to straight through, because the moods shift too abruptly IMO.
The two songs that get panned the most are actually two of my favorites. “Rider in the Rain” is a preposterous cowboy song in which Newman claims he has “raped and pillaged ‘cross the plains,” to gorgeous background vocals by J.D. Souther and Glenn Frey. And then there’s this lovely tune that Newman himself said “isn’t an absolutely anti-police song. Maybe it’s even a fascist song. I didn’t notice at the time.” He was being coy. The LAPD has been crooked and vicious for generations, and Newman certainly knew it — but the little boy narrating this song doesn’t, which is what makes it so heartbreaking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3AC8NNFR-k
De gustibus non est disputandum.
I’m just glad were off that show-tune cover shit.
I dunno, RE. I think “Jolly Coppers” has a melancholy feeling that Newman seldom aims for — he (or his characters) are usually straight-up sad, sometimes self-pitying, but the ironic distance between the little boy and us evokes the lost innocence of childhood, when one could watch a police parade with joy instead of dread.
https://youtu.be/jTEFvdgGvuA
Yeah, that’s not melancholy. That’s vicious.
Made the mistake of listening to “Rednecks” on youtube and reading the comments.