Nick Lowe

[gordonzola]

I like Nick Lowe. I’ve always liked Nick Lowe. If my dear readers don’t know his music, he started out as a power pop/pub rock pioneer ala early Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and Joe Jackson. As he’s aged he’s gotten more country singer/songwritery. He’s written a ton of songs over the last 30-odd years. Maybe it’s just in San Francisco, but Lowe appears to be playing the biggest venues of his life at nearly 60. Good for him. Seriously.

I really enjoyed seeing him at the Fillmore last night even if I was there under some false assumptions. A co-worker, who usually know about these things, kept saying that this was the 30 year anniversary of Lowe’s best album “Jesus of Cool/Pure Pop for Now People”* and that he was going to play most of those songs. With that in mind I paid the $30.

Mind you, I didn’t expect the Bay City Rollers song. I still think it’s funny but it’s clearly dated. But almost every other song on that album stands the test of time (“Marie Provost”, “So it Goes”, “Heart of the City”, “They Called it Rock” even “Nutted by Reality”). I still listen to that album. “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass”** is still one of my favorites, much quieter than the lyrics and the time period in which it was written would imply.

Instead Lowe played a set like almost any other musician in the world, promoting his latest album. Even though that album sounds good, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. Clearly though, my co-worker is to blame for the expectations, not Nick Lowe. Lowe was just doing his thing.

At some point during the set, as a full day of work then standing at a venue started to annoy my pretty-well-healed-but-still tender-stress-fractured-foot, I realized I would rather be seeing him perform at a bar. His music isn’t danceable, but it’s fun to watch him, to see how much he means it, to catch the clever word play. Sitting down at a sticky table filled with empty beer bottles would be the perfect place to see Lowe play. Lowe writes a lot of songs worth paying attention to.

That said, there’s one Nick Lowe song that always disappoints me even if it is a crowd favorite: “What’s so Funny about Peace, Love, and Understanding?” When Elvis Costello sang it*** the contrast between Costello’s image (especially at that time. In the late ‘70s Buddy Holly glasses were scary) and the hippie lyrics created an interesting tension. Costello even sang it in a different voice than usual. Did he mean it? Was it sarcastic? Was this what he really thought? And I’m no Steve Earle expert, but I think the same thing applied there. Performing a song that seems to be at odds with one’s persona is thought-provoking.

Nick Lowe performing that song sounds like “I wish it was the ‘60s again”. No tension, just nostalgia for the never-was.

I did hear Lowe play one song off the album (“Heart of the City”) as a second encore I had to rush home before slantedtruth drank all my wine. The 22 didn’t let me down. Packed with Friday night revelers of every background, the 22 is a place of (sub)cultural sharing. People talked to whoever they were crammed into of music, venues, jail, tattoos, and parties.

And, in a time-honored tradition or oral history, old-timers shared knowledge with SF-newbies by yelling things like “Move to the back!”, “Back Door!”, and “Step down!”



*”Jesus of Cool” was the UK title. His label made him change it for the US release.

** l love the sound of breaking glass
Especially when I'm lonely
l need the noises of destruction
When there's nothing new
Oh nothing new, sound of breaking glass
Safe at last, sound of breaking glass

***Record geek trivia alert: Elvis’s “Armed Forces” was originally called “Emotional Fascism” and “Peace, Love…” replaced a song about English racism and the aftermath of colonialism from the UK version.

**** Confidential to sdn Robyn Hitchcock opened but I was on the bus from work while he was playing. I did see him do a few encores with Nick Lowe though. I would have said hello from you if I’d gotten close enough but he was on the other end of the stage.

Comments

[tuliphead.livejournal.com]

Oh dammit, I really really wanted to be there. I'm a huge Hitchcock fan and had heard the LA version of this show a few nights before was great - apparantly Costello showed up and played with them both. Sadly, I had to be in exciting Reno, NV last night for a family event. Glad you had a good time, though!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

yeah, I heard about the Costello appearance. No such luck this time.

[nihilistech.livejournal.com]

Jesus of Cool is such a great album. I'm a sucker for the biting lyrics to bouncy music thing though. I saw Nick Lowe play here at Bumbershoot a couple years back. Even though it was a completely acoustic set of mostly his newer stuff, it still felt incongruous to be listening to him sitting out on a lawn.

Also, I've always wondered what the relationship was between his "Little Hitler" and Costello's "Two Little Hitlers" might have been. Do you know?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I have a vague feeling that I once knew that relationship but I sure can't remember now. ;)

[jtemperance.livejournal.com]

I came close to going to this show, but had been at Cal Day all day so stayed in the East Bay for a classical recital instead.

It was just about 20 years ago that I saw a Robyn Hitchcock show at the Fillmore! Some things never change.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I've never seen Robyn Hitchcock apart from the encores.

[hematopoetic.livejournal.com]

And, in a time-honored tradition or oral history, old-timers shared knowledge with SF-newbies by yelling things like “Move to the back!”, “Back Door!”, and “Step down!”

This is kind of the best thing about Muni. STEP DOWN! BACK DOOR!!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

it's our mantra.

[lastwater.livejournal.com]

Oh - see - I know fuck all about Nick Lowe, but love Robyn Hitchook (though only know a handful of songs by heart they are very nice to have in my walking-about-and-singing-repetoire). Someday I'll actually see him perform.

Wait - now I know a good deal more than fuck all about Mr. Lowe! Thank you for writing!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

you're wlecome.

[ilipodscrill.livejournal.com]

i could probably just google him, but who's Steve Earle? and i'm curious if the English racism song is available elsewhere.

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

Steve Earle is a country/rock singer-songwriter who was born in Texas and mostly resides in and around Nashville. He's had an extraordinarily checkered career: he broke out in Nashville in the early 1980s as a songwriter for others and then went on to record some extremely good country albums of his own, including the hallmark "Copperhead Road." To his great credit, he never hopped aboard the Young Country bandwagon that was big at the time; his work has more of a Bakersfield sound.

While he was doing all this, Earle was also developing one hell of a heroin habit. He eventually wound up in jail for a few years on drug charges. Somewhere along the way he kicked the smack. When he re-emerged in the mid-1990s, a few things had changed: the rock-and-roll elements of his sound were more noticeable and his politics (which, he once said in an interview, have always been "a bit to the left of Mao") were more openly stated on the record. He's since put out several phenomenal albums, including Transcendental Blues, Jerusalem and The Revolution Starts...Now. He wrote a song called "John Walker Lindh's Blues," about the "American Taliban" captured in Afghanistan in 2001. He wrote an incredibly skeevy yet hilarious love paean to Condoleeza Rice. And he built a classic truck-drivin' country song around the story of some military contractor moving a gasoline tanker around Baghdad.

I saw Earle perform in concert in DC in 2004 or 2005. My girlfriend insists that he is "old-man hot." Emmylou Harris joined him on stage to sing a song, to his great surprise; he stopped, abashed, pointed at her and introduced her to the crowd as "Emmylou...fucking...Harris." Also he managed to break a string sawing on an electric mandolin during an encore.

In short, he's pretty awesome and worth checking out.

[commandercranky.livejournal.com]

He also appears on The Wire as recovering addict and NA sponsor Waylon. He does a pretty damn good job.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

yeah, he was awesome in that!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

The song, "Sunday's Best" was on the UK version so it must be around somewhere. It's cryptic like Elvis at his best, though it's not his best song. It could probably also be misinterpreted out of context.

Times are tough for English babies
Send the army and the navy
Beat up strangers who talk funny
Take their greasy foreign money
Skin shop, red leather, hot line
Be prepared for the engaged sign
Bridal books, engagement rings
And other wicked little things

[Chorus:]
Standing in your socks and vest
Better get it off your chest
Every day is just like the rest
But Sunday's best

Stylish slacks to suit your pocket
Back supports and picture lockets
Sleepy towns and sleeper trains
To the dogs and down the drains
Major roads and ladies smalls
Hearts of oak and long trunk calls
Continental interference
At death's door with life insurance

[Chorus]

Sunday's best, Sunday's finest
When your money's in the minus
And you suffer from your shyness
You can listen to us whiners

Don't look now under the bed
An arm, a leg and a severed head
Read about the private lives
The songs of praise, the readers' wives
Listen to the decent people
Though you treat them just like sheep
Put them all in boots and khaki
Blame it all upon the darkies

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

I know Sunday's Best (as in, I must have owned an album with it at some time), and although I like Elvis Costello quite a bit, I was never obsessive enough to have gone out of my way to buy an import, so it's got to be available in the US.

[ayun.livejournal.com]

About a month ago I got into the idea of twinned songs that share lyrics or titles or are clearly meant to reference each other. It was for a mix CD that never really came together, but it got me back into Nick Lowe via "...Breaking Glass" which would've been paired with the Bowie song and "I Knew the Bride" which got a ton of airplay on WXRT in Chicago when I was a kid. I'd never realized before then that it, too, is a tribute song of sorts.

Anyway, I'd totally have gone to that show.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I was never a big Bowie fan. what song does it reference?

[ayun.livejournal.com]

A song called "Breaking Glass" on Low. (The title of Lowe's EP Bowi is supposedly a nod to Low as well.) It's used in this youtube video of someone trying to figure out a unicycle: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDAheK8C_0

[mitchco.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you match up Bowie's Low and Lowe's Jesus of Cool track-by-track, there are lots of weird little coincidences... I was on a big kick of playing them that way for a while. I'm off-on-off about Bowie, but Low is my favorite album. A lot of it is done with Brian Eno. The track "Sound and Vision" is especially pleasurable.

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of things from the 70s, even the late 70s, as "old" and things from the late 80s or more recently as "not old," with the dividing line somewhere around 1983. As I wrote that bit about Steve Earle, though, it occurred to me that only ten years separates Jesus of Cool from Copperhead Road, while twenty years separates the latter from today. I think I need to update my mental categories.

Similar moment: mocking the Rolling Stones in 1994; then, last year, listening to friends try to defend U2's new albums. Uh, guys...?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I find myself often having to update those mental categories. It's also hard to realize an album is 30 years old and I remember it coming out.

He also produced the first punk rock record in the U.K. ("New Rose")

[walktheplank.livejournal.com]

I find myself often having to update those mental categories. It's also hard to realize an album is 30 years old and I remember it coming out.

I'm still trying to get my mind around the fact that the punk rock era was closer in time to Buddy Holly.

Re: He also produced the first punk rock record in the U.K. ("New Rose")

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

OW! Now my brain is coming out!

Re: He also produced the first punk rock record in the U.K. ("New Rose")

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!!!

[crabbypattie.livejournal.com]

I freakin love that album!

[yooniehatesyou.livejournal.com]

i was completely kicking myself for letting nick lowe go unseen the last time he was in town this spring. he is going into old-fogey-dom with the utmost elegance (and i truly do not mean that as some kind of back handed compliment but rather the highest accolade). he's a gentleman cat burglar and and ermine in a skinny suit. never fails to to boggle my mind how difficult simple power pop is to pull off.