In Will’s recent core dump of music recommendations came The Stone Poneys doing “Different Drum.” It’s a curious song. Musically, it is hard to make work, but The Stone Poneys do so. And Linda Ronstadt’s voice is, as always, beautiful. She would later do the song as a solo act.

The song was written by Michael Nesmith of The Monkeys fame. In fact, the song was apparently first performed on their television show. When I was a kid, I didn’t much like the show. But it might have been very good. Does anyone remember it fondly?

Regardless, here it is:

In 1965, Lee Hazlewood was producing the debut album of Nancy Sinatra, the daughter of one of my favorite singers (despite myself). And he thought she would be perfect to record his song “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” He reportedly told her to sing it like she was a teenager who had sex with truck drivers. But not in those words.

I know that the song is supposed to come off as dangerous. And maybe in 1966 it did. But all my life, the song has seemed sweet — like the singer is bluffing. It does sound like a teenager is singing it. I find far more true female strength in “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” or pretty much any Édith Piaf song.

But there is no doubt that “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” has broad appeal. My parents loved the song and owned the album. My older sister loves the song. And so do I. Although it is probably the case that we all get different things from it.

Will sent me a long list of songs that I should do for the Morning Music posts. They are not particular favorites of his, just some random things that came to mind — totally in keeping with the idea of Morning Music. I thought I would present the one song that most spoke to me: “Everywhere that I’m Not” by Translator off their first album, Heartbeats and Triggers.

Will and I have a long history with this amazingly great band. They were a San Francisco band and we used to see them at little venues like the Cotati Cabaret. They were great live; they were great on vinyl; they were just great. It’s just a four piece outfit with Steve Barton and Robert Darlington on guitars, vocals, and songwriting.

Many people think that “Everywhere That I’m Not” is about the death of John Lennon. It is not. It is about a guy who thinks he sees his girlfriend everywhere. But he knows it can’t be her, because in his mind she is off everywhere else having a great time. Without him. It could be a really depressing song, but instead, it is quirky good fun.

“You’re in New York, but I’m not. You’re in Tokyo but I’m not. You’re in Nova Scotia, but I’m not. Yeah, you’re everywhere that I’m not.”

As everyone who reads this site should know, I’m not up on pop culture. So when my sister mentioned the George Ezra song “Budapest,” I had never heard of it, even though it has over 38 million views on YouTube. Ezra is really not bad, which is helpful to me since I mostly assume only total crap can be popular. (This is because I am an old man and thinking that society is in decay is a contractual obligation.)

Ezra wrote the song “Blame It on Me” with Joel Pott. It’s a very compelling tune. The lyrics are evocative, but not detailed enough to extract much in the way of meaning. But it’s a pleasant song.

We haven’t been to France in a while, so how about a little Jacques Brel? (France, Belgium, whatever!) He is really one of the favorite singers — which probably explains why I have written about him so much around here. And today, we listen to “Mathilde.” It is possibly my favorite of his songs. Musically, it has these gorgeous long melodic lines. But more than that, the lyrics have a special meaning to me.

It tells the story of a lover’s return. Mathilde has broken the singer’s heart in the past. And now that she is coming back, he is filled with dread. He talks about how he is going back to hell and entering combat and so on. Yet he cannot stop himself. The whole song is a beautiful marriage of fear and excitement. I don’t think there has ever been a more honest love song.

Mathilde est revenue!

In my never ending efforts to not be boring, I came upon the Russian rock band Chizh & Co. And I know nothing about them other than that they formed in 1993. But their music is really good. It’s got a classic rock sound to it, but there is a lot of jazz in there as well. I guess it is what we would call fusion.

The following song is “Crossroads” (or “Перекресток” if you prefer). Like a lot of the music of theirs, it is Latin inspired. (Alert Vermont!) It’s the kind of music that makes me feel good: sufficiently complex to engage me, professionally rendered, and with more content than style. Check it out; it’s really great:

The Zombies are a good band. And I apparently mean that literally, because the band is still together. And unlike a lot of bands from that time, there is a good reason for it. They can really play. Other than producing catchy pop tunes, I’ve always been really impressed with the keyboard player Rod Argent. And only today I learned that he is also one of their main songwriters — writing all three of their big American hits.

One of those songs is “She’s Not There.” I actually find the lyrics kind of whiny. “How many people cried”? But what do you want? It’s a pop song. But the music is really good. I love the minor key. Here is the band back in 2007. It is mostly Argent and the lead singer Colin Blunstone. That might be Chris White on bass — I’m not sure. Paul Atkinson (guitar) died back in 2004. Hugh Grundy (drums) was around for the 50th anniversary show in 2011, but he’s not here.

Given that it is Cesar Chavez’s birthday, I thought it might be a good time to do a little union music. And I think I’ve found the perfect song: Tom Morello’s “Union Song” off his album, One Man Revolution. It even refers to Chavez (and songwriter Joe Hill, writer of “There Is Power In A Union“).

This performance is in the Los Angeles Chinatown at a protest against Walmart that labor unions put together. Of course, the Walmart opened anyway. It’s important to remember that the United States is not a democracy. Being on the side of workers in the US is being a supporter of the ultimate under dogs. But the struggle continues. ¿Si nos quedemos, juntos vamos a ganar? ¡Si!

One of my favorite albums ever is Gang of Four’s first album, Entertainment! It holds up as well today as it ever did. Musically, it is hard to beat the driving rhythms of that tight-knit trio. You don’t need anything more than guitar, bass, and drums. And as I’ve discussed, the synthesizer destroyed a lot of music from that period, so in a sense, Gang of Four was lucky.

The other side of Gang of Four was the explicitly Marxist lyrics of Jon King. But more than that, there is an explicit rejection of common pop music tropes, such as the long song. But the main thing about the band was that they really didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard. Since then, of course, there is Red Hot Chili Peppers, which has always sounded to me like a pretty direct ripoff of the band. (Not that they aren’t great.)

Gang of Four is still performing. Kind of. There is only one remaining member — the amazing guitarist, Andy Gill. The music is good (I just listened to their/his latest album). But it isn’t like the old stuff. For one thing, it isn’t political like it used to be. I think if Jon King isn’t in the band, you really can’t call it Gang of Four.

Here is the band at the time performing “To Hell With Poverty” off that first album:

I’ve been on an Aardman Animations jag. Mostly, this has meant a lot of Wallace and Gromit and a little Chicken Run. But as nice as the music is in those wonderful films, they don’t compare to the amazingly catchy theme song to Shaun the Sheep. And it is that song that has been stuck in my head for two days, driving me even more crazy than usual.

There have been 130 episodes of the show — most about seven minutes long. But what I just learned is that Aardman created a feature length film, Shaun the Sheep Movie. But other than being shown at Sundance, it doesn’t seem to have been released in the United States. But I’m sure I’ll wait for the DVD anyway.

The theme song is “Life’s a Treat.” It was written by Mark Thomas and performed by comedian Vic Reeves. All you hear on the show is a the chorus, of course. Here’s the whole thing:

In general, new wave songs do not hold up. There is just something about real (non-synthetic) instruments that never gets old. You may not like classical music, but a violin doesn’t sound stupid. And it isn’t really that synthesizers sound stupid. Listen to Dark Side of the Moon. But in the early 1980s, there was a change going on from analog synths to digital synths. And those early digital synths sucked. They sounded fine at the time but now they make me want to rip my hair out.

But there are songs that manage to overcome this. I’ve discussed this before. But today I offer another such song, Nena’s “99 Luftballons.” I don’t know, maybe it is just one of my blind (Deaf?) spots. Or more likely, the over-polished pop sound of the song just works in contrast to what is actually a really depressing song.

It tells the story of 99 toy balloons being mistaken for alien aircraft. So the military send some fighter jets to check them out. When the pilots find that they are just balloons, they attack them, thinking of themselves as “Captain Kirk.” But everything goes astray as this playful activity is mistaken for an act of war. Thus the 99 balloons lead to 99 years of war and the destruction of the earth.

In some ways, the English translation of the song is better in a purely artistic way. Just the same, it pulls a whole lot of punches. The German song shows far more contempt for the ruling elite. This is a funny thing about Americans: we think of ourselves as such individuals but we yield to power more than most people. And that’s especially true when it comes to the military, which we are supposed to never counter. I’m not too keen on Germany, but this is a damned good pop song.

On Tuesday, I published, 35 Years Without Óscar Romero. This led to my discovering THE PROJECT: Martyrs Prayers. It is a collection of explicitly religious songs about Christian martyrs. On the CD they’ve released, there are ten songs, each about a specific martyr. Interestingly, one of them is “Clement,” which I assume is about Pope Clement I. Personally, I find Clement of Alexandria a more interesting guy — admittedly, not a martyr. But he argued against what I think of as the Saint Sebastian form of martyrdom. The question is, if you are clearly just trying to get yourself killed, are you a martyr? I don’t think so.

The martyrs on this album represent what I consider the real deal. Ultimately, most of the martyrs are political in nature. And that goes right along with my feelings about religion as being fundamentally political — at least when it comes to religion and not ontology. And as you should know, when it comes to politics, I have a great deal of faith. Because what’s the option? Applying the same thing to God isn’t much of a stretch, even if it isn’t something that I personally feel.

I’ve only heard two of the songs: the ones that they’ve produced highly evocative videos for. Interestingly, they are both assassinations. The first is the song “Becket.” But I want to highlight “Romero.” In addition to it being a beautiful song, the video includes lots of footage of Romero himself (something we don’t have for most of the others — although they do include two other 20th century martyrs). It’s really great. Give it a listen: