This was an anomale, I rarely write from a title, seems a little nashvillian, but I overheard someone use it in a sales pitch once. I loved the absurdity of someone taking someone else out for a “testdrive’. I first played it out at a chuck/ladytown/orphantrain gig, and Sarah and Aram spontaneously joined in on backgrounds.

I wanted the bridge to be a “sad happy ending”, a silver cloud with a dark lining, because I am just that kind of cynical bastard. let’s settle down with a white picket fence in the biggest distopia on the planet.

Put Me to the Test • 2008 Chuck Lee Bramlet

People talk shit
They don’t know where to go
Ain’t gonna quit
Just cause you tell me no

You know it just aint right
It aint right to put me down
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

Life is a bitch
If you lay down boy you’re dead
This aint a pitch
You best not let it go to your head

You know it just aint right
The way you make me beg for you
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

You’re a fine one to talk
with your bitter calloused ways
We’re gonna take that walk
Happy ever after
In the poison LA haze

Nobody knows
The way I feel for you
In or outta your clothes
It’s almost too good to be true

You know it just aint right
The way you put me on my knees
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

Driving south from Monterey back home to LA, right before heading up into the grapevine, Cowschwitz. The stench is ungodly. The pens seem to stretch for miles. the waste from these animals pollutes the air, the water supply, ecoli gets into the food chain, vegetable and animal. the cows are packed in, fed an unnatural diet for their species, a strange mixture of corn, hormones chemical additives and meat from the fallen and sickly of their own kind. They are destined to die a cruel death after a cruel life, and why? To feed fat American’s insatiable desire for crap food, to dull their minds, make them more sullen and aggressive and yet more compliant to a manipulative corporatocracy, and shorten their own lives. Consider resolving to eat a little less meat today, your system will thank you, and you will be contributing a little less to THE ABOVE.

Re: Glenn Beck’s screed at CPAC. I’m a proud progressive. Why? Because I am capable of rational, critical thought. I pay attention to consensus from the scientific community, and respect it. I know that America was founded on the principle of freedom from any state religion. So come and get me. Send your hordes of morons. I’m right here. And unlike the white house, I WILL fight you.

This River -click to play while reading

Aram Arslanian, producer

I was lucky enough to work with Aram Arslanian producing on this track. Aram and his wife Sarah had a house in Sunland at the time. Aram has an awesome solo project ongoing called Orphan Train and Sarah has a band called Ladytown, and I was playing some live gigs with both.

Aram had me lay down the guitar track, and it all went down so relaxed we used take 2 or so. Aram put a conga down as a click, which surprisingly worked.

Later we brought in Joel Martin with his Les Paul and a stereo amp setup, again, Magic Joel, one or two takes tops, and he’s done and packing up while I listen back, stunned.

When Aram sent me the original mixes I was happy with everything but the lead vocal, which I was able to redo with Rich after Aram moved north.

Serendipitously, Sarah and Aram and son Sam moved to Portland, later settling in Vancouver WA, across the river. Aram now plays with one of my old friends James Low.  Small universe.

I wanted a really strong finger-picking song. I really like the way a lot of traditional old english folk tunes are structured lyrically, with all the verses the same, but with a changing lead line, so that “singalongs” become easy.

I wrote this song about Portland, OR, a dark rainy northwest town built on the confluence of two rivers, the Willamette (NS) and the Columbia (EW). I lived there in the 90’s, started lifelong friendships, and if I could make a decent living there, I would be there now. The city has a subterranean moodiness and a beautiful melancholy that sunny LA deprives me of. I also had some romantic experiences that have changed me forever. I seem to have written many songs about this place, and the people I knew there.

THIS RIVER         2006 Chuck Lee Bramlet

River winds all through this town
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

Rushes out into the sea
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

River hides it’s secrets well
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

Nobody knows your heart like me
No One knows you in the dark like me

Oh the wind and oh the rain
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

Next: Recording This River, working with Aram

Act Naturally

Ringo sings Buck O! (see Feb 3 blog entry on Buck) Just like a drummer that can play in the back end of the pocket but never actually slow down, Ringo can sing flat but somehow make it work. His personality comes through. George channels Carl Perkins, and this is his best playing on the album. Note on the digital remaster; I swear I can hear foot stomping in the bridge rhythm guitar track “I can play the part so well”. Beautiful cover.

It’s Only Love

The boys always did this schmaltzy take on “latin” rhythms, Besame Mucho, Mr Moonlight, etc. and here John does his usual wink and nod toward that form, extending the joke with fake tongue rolls, bizarre rhyme scheme, etc. Yet something real comes through in his voice and slays me. George adds a weird tremolo hook, under 2 minutes and out.

You Like Me Too Much

George song. A little bit weak sauce, the lyric hook itself is awkward, but that’s its charm. What the lyric describes is subtly horrific. I will be a bastard, but if you dare leave me, I will catch you and put you back in the nest. I can, cause I’m a damn Beatle. The solo break is a piano-guitar trade off old timey chromatic ascend-descend thing that I hate from the sixties. It spells “good times” in a way I find depressing.

Tell Me What You See

Kind of a throwaway by John and Paul. Lyrically starting down that slightly gurujy path of spiritual-sounding nonsense. Things go blandly along until the bridge, then they open up with beautiful three part harmony, then they kill, gorgeous. Like crawling in the desert for days, stopping for the best cool water ever, then crawling on.

I’ve Just Seen a Face

Paul’s. Catchy, hooky, uptempo. Beautiful little simple acoustic parts dovetail together, and the words describe innocent new love and euphoric rush. What’s not to like? And if it’s too happy for you, it’s only 2 minutes.

Yesterday

Way too much has been written about this song. One of Paul’s great strengths, and paradoxically, great weaknesses is his uncanny ability to write, play and sing things that sound like they should be hooky and eternal, but don’t stand up to much scrutiny. This song has a pleading, yearning quality that hits me over the head and boxes my ears, not pleasant. Yet if I could write a song half this good, I would be ecstatic. And probably rich. Paul’s input to George Martin on recording the string quartet (close-miked, with bowing noises intact, and less vibrato than traditionally used at the EMI sessions) has had a huge impact on recording classical ensembles.

Dizzy Miss Lizzy

John closes with a barnburner cover, like on the first record with Twist and Shout. He rips his voice out, like the last set on a Saturday night. George plays the same clunky bendy riff all the way through, and it gets irritating. I’m not buying this one. I think this was the last of the Beatle cover songs, and it shows. Hamburg days are truly over.

Next: Back to the album.

Listen to I Lost It while reading (opens in a seperate window)

Rich suggested we just start with acoustic and vocal, but laid down a brutal tom drum ride for the verse. It really changed the way I played it, and the basic sounded meaner than catshit. Singing over the top of that required that the vocal be more raw and direct. When things were sturdy, we laid an electric tuned down the same way over parts, giving things a bit of chime. Rich played his Jazz bass Chris Hillman style, with a pick, putting in cool swoops in the right places.

I took the basic home and added a string quartet on the bridge section to the end using Miroslav Philharmonik. I track string quartet one instrument, one pass at a time, Double Bass, Cello, Viola and Violin. It sounds more real that way. I wanted the Stones “Lady Jane” effect, where the primitive vocal is juxtaposed against more refined and delicate instrumentation.

I brought the submix to Rich, and he loved it, suggesting we add bells, which added a real Psychedelic Furs quality. He also put some tympani down. This turned out to be a very unique track, one of my favorites. There are twists and turns, and one doesn’t know what’s coming next.

Next: Back to the Beatles for a moment.

I wrote this as originally as an empty backing track to collaborate with another writer. Time was dragging on, and I was thinking about my first car that I bought before I could legally drive, a purple and yellow ‘57 Caddy with no brakes. This is a long and pointless story, so I’ll skip it.

Anyway, the first line came, and the rest flowed like water.

I Lost It 2007 Chuck Lee Bramlet

Once I had a Cadillac
Gave it to a girl, so I lost it
Once I had a shirt on my back
Gave it to a girl, so I lost it

That’s why I can’t drink
No matter what you might think

Once I had a life
Gave it to a girl, so I lost it
She was my next ex wife
The perfect girl, so I lost it

That’s why it’s a shame
Please don’t tell me your name

Tell me everything, such pretty eyes
Let me hear you sing, your inner voice
Let me see your face, drop the disguise
Don’t know what’s good for me
I don’t have a choice

Once I do, then it’s on
When you do I am gone

Once I had a pair
Gave em to a girl, so I lost it
Had color in my hair
Hung out with a girl, so I lost it
Once had self esteem
Hooked up with a girl, so I lost it
Gave up on that dream
I couldn’t have it
So I lost it,
So I lost it

The tuning is CGDGCD, which is supposed to be Jimmy Page’s Rain Song tuning, but I couldn’t swear to it, because I can’t really play The Rain Song although it would be appropriate this am.

Next: Recording I Lost It (I’ll finish the Beatle thing later)

Help!

The movie’s title song is fragmented, with a key that deliberately shifts around, avoiding commitment, until the first verse hits with a ringing A. But the lyrics are a paean to uncertainty. Lennon continues the self loathing theme he first started exploring on Beatles for Sale: No Reply, I’m a Loser, I’ll be Back. Not exactly typical fodder for a pop song. The song is perversely peppy, a hyped-up admission of Lennon’s own depression in the face of unheard of pop stardom and adulation. Listen to the desperation in his voice, tucked into the folds of a 2:20 single. They even end with a cheesy sixth chord vocal harmony. Brilliant.

The Night Before

I am not a fan of Reverb or Echo on vocals. Except on this song. Paul’s lead vocal is drenched in a very natural, very complex-sounding chamber echo. To me it is the hook of the song, along with George and John’s “Ahhh, the night before” answer backs on the verse. The basic track is a wurlitzer or electric piano with Paul’s ompah bass and Ringo’s charmingly rushed tom fills, nary a guitar in sight, until George’s strangely double tracked octave solo, with clunky bends and no sustain. The lyrics are forgettable, but the track’s sound and mood is the star.

You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away

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

Luckily, the film footage clearly shows Lennon’s unusual rhythm guitar fingerings. I devoured this as a kid, the way his “drone G” has a tough-to-play fretted D note at the top, and he keeps shifting the same ‘G-B’ fingering base up the circle of fourths in the low end. More self-loathing in the lyrics, supposedly Dylan’s pot-fueled influence on John. Ringo smacks a tambourine on the two and four, and plays the ride eighths on a maraca in the chorus. I’m not a fan of the flute solo at the end, but it’s mercifully brief. The hook here for me is Lennon’s Dsus, D, Dsecond, D rhythm figure in the chorus.

I Need You

Not the greatest George composition, but serviceable. The hook sound is a volume pedal, available to country pedal steel players of the day, but played a little timidly on this track. Luckily the background vocals are godhead, and Ringo works the claves in the bridge.

Another Girl

More clunky bends from George, all the way through the damn song, distracting from Paul’s slightly misogynist ode to womanizing. Somewhere Ernie Ball heard this track and invented the slinky uncoated string as a service to humanity. The song ends, but George continues before skidding to an abrupt halt. Weird.

You’re Going to Lose That Girl

Backgrounds kill on this song. John hits a little cool falsetto in the chorus, more clunky-bendy from George, and Ringo gets a little carried away on the bongos. Lyrics are: “You treat your girl like shit, so shape up or I’ll steal her ’cause I can. I’m a damn Beatle.”

Ticket to Ride

So many cool things about this track. Foremost is the start-stop drum figure, supposedly dreamed up by Paul and taught to Ringo, who nevertheless swings it like crazy against the steady and simple tambourine. George hits a beautiful picky 12 string hook, pealing like churchbells, no doubt making Roger (then Jim) McGuinn of the Byrds take notice in Los Angeles. The bridge and ending kick it double-time, bringing relief and contrast against the main rhythm hook.

Next: Back to the album, then more from “Help!”

OK so I’m a sucker.

As a kid, for me, the role of lead guitarist was given to the fastest, most advanced guitar student, or the guy with the most expensive guitar, or the loudest amp.It usually had nothing to do with soul, magic or even personality. It led to masturbatory self-excess, aimless noodling. It culminated in that horrendous crap that emerged from the Sunset strip in the 80s. Walk into any Guitar Center, and as long as you can stand it, listen. That is the legacy of the church of the lead guitar.

I went out and bought the Help stereo remaster like a million other lunkheads. Why? It had a lot of strikes against it.

Help wasn’t the COOL Beatle movie. It was the other one. Life for the fab four had already accelerated to a frenzied pace that left little room for creativity except “on the fly”.

Richard Lester, who had gotten his breakthrough shot as a filmmaker in Hard Days Night had an amazingly happy accident with these four then unknown lads on that first film. Chemistry was with them, and the blissful charm of low expectations brought hosannas upon all.

Now, Beatlemania was in full flight. and the game had changed. Lester didn’t have access to the boys as he had before. He also picked up the mistaken impression that he could show up at the studio and throw his weight around. George Martin and the band presented a united front and shut him out of the process. So they scripted a preposterous adventure movie, and shoehorned the musicians into it. Then, they came up with songs for said movie. Not necessarily an inspired formula for great art. You can hear the strain on the over stretched capacity of the band. All this being said, it is one of my favorite Beatle albums.

One of the reasons is the public deconstruction of George Harrison. George’s strengths as an artist were easily eclipsed by John and Paul.

Paul’s uber talent and presence on record is easy to track. He was like Michael Jordan in Lead boots, or Michael Phelps leading a pack of average swimmers with his arms tied back. His uncanny ear for quality in pitch, rhythm, and arrangement, his ease in mastering instruments, and his amazing voice (able to shred Little Richard and croon like Presley, but without schmaltzy techniques like vibrato) made him a star player. Yet his first instinct was toward band solidarity. And he had to contend with John.

John was the soul of the Beatles. He did not have the glib shape-shifting ability of Paul, but there was a beautiful gravitas and completeness in his presence. His rhythm guitar playing has an earnest physicality, sturdiness and a willfully crude honesty that I (for one) have spent a lifetime trying to emulate. And his voice, very subtly soulful and honest, happened to blend perfectly with Paul’s. When John had to decide on whether or not to include Paul in the Beatles, someone who could steal his spotlight, John fortunately chose improving his band over eliminating possible rivals.

Ringo was the beautiful sound of someone straining to exceed their limitations, always game, always playing with total commitment to the moment. That ride cymbal on those early records sounds vicious and unapologetic. Listen to the attack on “Ticket to ride”, make no mistake, Ringo rocks.

Then there’s the problem of George. Burdened with the role of junior songwriter in the firm, his voice was the perfect “x-factor-missing-ingredient” in their fantastic harmonic blend, and his songs at this point were clunky and unconfident. But the biggest factor for me that dominates “Help” is the desperate sound of his guitar playing. On all their previous recordings George was either:

1. Imitating Carl Perkins (wonderfully)
2. Playing almost a second rhythm, little accents and comments rounding out Lennon’s fat bedrock chunking. Or
3. Swooping in to save the day with a cool hook (“She Loves You”).

George doesn’t seem to fill any of these roles on “Help”. He seems to be floundering, at a musical cul-de-sac. His playing sounds tortured, like he’s struggling with too-heavy strings or too-high action (distance of the strings from the fretboard). Later on in their career, Paul might have grabbed the reins and played lead (as he did later on “Taxman”), but on these songs George is allowed to stand in his own. His playing sounds distracted, tossed off, with a scabby hesitancy. Biggest band in the world, and they let all sorts of clunkers stay in the mix. In the proTools sanitized recording world of today, such honesty would never stand. This is right before his transformative immersion into Indian music, and his later redemptive reinvention as a solo artist.

With the new mastering job, these elements are popping out with 3D clarity.

Next: Still more on “Help”.