This week: An old favorite revisited and some new dandies considered
Roger Miller
Oh Boy Classics presents Roger Miller (Oh Boy!)
Figuring that it takes a songwriter to know a songwriter (and a Miller to know a Miller), we asked Knoxville's own Scott Miller why exactly Roger Miller is the "greatest songwriter in the world." Here's what he said:
1) Because he said so.
2) Nobody (but Hank Williams) could blend humor and heartache together so well you couldn't tell when one began and the other ended.
3) First Album=five Grammy awards.
4) His writing was deft and impeccable. The list of great songs is almost endless: "King of the Road" ( "a man of means by no means, King of the Road"); "Dang Me" ("lack fourteen dollars havin' twenty-seven cents"); "Husbands and Wives" ("It's my belief pride is the chief cause in decline in the number of husbands and wives").
5) The list goes on and on. Analyzing it is somehow futile, it's too big and too great. Just enjoy it for chrissakes.
Good advice. And the 16 songs on this new, nearly perfect compilation are the best place to start. Besides the classics the younger Mr. Miller cites above, it includes the irresistible "Walkin' in the Sunshine," the deadpan heartbreak of "The Last Word in Lonesome is Me," the lightly crazed "England Swings" ("like a pendulum do"), and my personal childhood favorite "Do-Wacka-Do." Not to mention "My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died."
The songs are so disarming that it takes a while for the subtlety of their tone and love of language to sink in. "King of the Road" is not nearly as carefree as it sounds—just listen to the way he says, "I ain't got no cigarettes"—and the portrait of a kids' TV host in "Kansas City Star" is tender and nuanced where a lesser writer would have just gone for gooniness.
Throughout, there's the bewildering pleasure of Miller's singing, with its exuberant scats and be-bops and froggy blats ("Yo-de-lee-de-lay-dee, y'oughta see my car"). Jazzy without being jazz, country but never corny, he was an all-American original. Dig it.
—Jesse Fox Mayshark
Dandy Warhols
Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (Capitol)
The most exciting record I've heard in, what, weeks, at least, and the foxiest little thing I've heard in a long time, the unfortunately titled new Dandy Warhols' disc (their third), Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, is in fact not a note-for-note tribute to Rent. Good lord, of course not; though there is plenty of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll to go around.
Dandy darlings don't despair: While the first three songs find these Portland hustlers blowing one last valentine to their American-pie-served-on-a-Britpop-platter past, it is not so much a kiss-off as a fond farewell. And, hello, Velvets; yeah, Iggy, they're nodding at you. Still, "Country Leaver" is a giddy not-joke, a loping cowboy wink that recalls John Phillips' Cali country-hippie chic as much as anything else; "Cool Scene" likewise slithers with a low, '60s fashionista, drug-bliss groove. Wanna shake your ass off? The fang-bearing social seether "Horse Pills" (trading lines that rival Sisqo— "In your itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny-riding-up-your-butt bikini"—with catty commentary on the sugar mama lifestyle) and strutting "Shakin'" (here's that Iggy tribute) will do the trick. Same goes for "Bohemian Like You"—an exuberant, insistent single waiting to happen, Zia McCabe's keyboard swivel setting a scene as giddy as "The Dandy Warhols' TV Theme Song" (from the band's 1995 debut, Dandys Rule OK). But, as frontman Courtney Taylor turns on his trademark mocking charm, this little bruiser keeps tongue loosely in cheek for a sweet sting: "Who's that guy just hanging at your pad/He's looking pretty bummed, yeah you broke up—that's your bad/I guess it's fair if he always pays the rent and he doesn't get bent about sleeping on the couch when I'm there." Oh well-whatever-nevermind, indeed (but injected with a sense of stylish humor, friend).
By the end, "The Gospel," a shimmering fifties-style, love-song swoon 'n' sway, finds Taylor in a Chris Isaak mood; but it's the Dandys—are they being ironic, or just lovely? Either way, I'm hooked.
—Shelly Ridenour
August 31, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 35
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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