A Cushion Or Pillow For Those Emotions: “Green River” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

I am not suggesting that CCR were the masters of replicant rock since John Fogerty’s memories are mentally transposed rather than imposed on him by an outsider. But the ringing childhood reverie of “Green River” actually relates to Putah Creek in the western Sacramento Valley – and as for Green River itself, Fogerty got the name from a bottle of lime-flavoured soda-pop.

Nonetheless, Fogerty so clearly believes that he is reliving swampy times in Louisiana that it’s hard not to get carried away with him; “Green River” is a tough, intelligent and succinct pop single from a time when pop singles existed, let alone were worth investigation and extended study. But its wistful recollections are not free of the ominous; near song’s end Fogerty sings of how “old Cody” has told him: “You’re gonna find the world is smoulderin’/And if you get lost, come on home to Green River.” The implication is that the apocalypse has already happened.

Date Record Made Number Two: 27 September 1969

Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 1

Record At Number One: “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies

UK Chart Position: 20

Comments

Threads Of Alligator Lizards In The Air: “Purple Rain” by Prince and The Revolution

The original idea was for a country-style collaboration with Stevie Nicks, to whom Prince sent a ten-minute instrumental backing track, asking her to come up with some lyrics. However, Nicks was overwhelmed by what she heard and feared that the task was too much for her to take on, so the song was reworked in rehearsal with The Revolution, utilising Wendy Melvoin’s guitar phrasing as a new guideline. The song appears to have existed before the film; Purple Rain the movie is best described as lucid hokum, but its soundtrack changed the atoms which constituted “pop,” far more so than much ostensibly radical music of the period. For many of that decade’s generation, Purple Rain the soundtrack was “our” Ziggy Stardust – better conceived, performed and produced in every way – and the title song, which closes the album, was “our” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide.” It is such a patient epic, the song, and about a lot of things, and people – each of the verses addresses a different su...

A Disaffection, Or Fight Against Same: “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty

Even as a young teenager growing up in Lanarkshire, I was always listening out for music that sounded out of kilter, whether it was George Crumb’s Makrokosmos III (the closing section of which I heard on a Saturday afternoon on Radio 3) or anything which “irrupted” the top forty. From the first time that I heard “Baker Street” on the radio – I think it was Dougie Donnelly on Radio Clyde – I was immediately hooked, mentally noting that this song seemed to go as much against the grain of a standard pop record as anything coming out of punk or New Wave, and was probably just as angry, if not angrier. For forty years I harboured the notion – and this was from a time when visiting London, never mind living and working in it, was still a distant pipedream – that the song encapsulated the situation of the displaced Scotsman, marooned in a world he doesn’t really like or perhaps even understand. Make no mistake, this is undeniably a Scottish record, and seemingly all about someone...

“I Would Have Thought In The Middle Of The Atlantic In The Middle Of The Night That Rockets Must Mean Trouble”: “I’m Not In Love” by 10cc

"watching for night, with absinthe eye cocked on the lone, late, passer-by." (Sylvia Plath, "Prospect," 1956) This story begins in 1954, before most people had really recognised anything called rock, and a pop record which is half-perfect. That record, which stayed at number one in our charts for ten weeks, was “Cara Mia” by David Whitfield with Mantovani and his Orchestra and Chorus. Now, Whitfield was never the most subtle of singers and his in-your-face bellowing is somewhat distracting – it is significant that he was the first British reality media star (not from television, because at that time Opportunity Knocks was only broadcast on Radio Luxembourg) since his climactic high C at the end of “Cara Mia” is like a display of gymnastics, or an athletic field event; can he do that triple loop or throw that javelin beyond the stadium? It proves that technical prowess can often render itself unlistenable. But the magic here lies in the extraordinary ...

Raise All Kinds Of Candy To The Stars

Search This Blog