Kempa.com » MP3 of the week

4.14.04

Another half-baked idea that I may or may not follow through on is to put up a new MP3 every week and write a little bit about it. Here’s the first installment.

Harry Nilsson – ‘Vine St.’
From: Nilsson Sings Newman (1970)

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There’s a nice summary of the song, on this Randy Newman site:

”One of Newman’s truly original compositions, “Vine Street” strings together a trick intro, barbershop harmonics, split-second key changes, multiple bridges, and sudden fade-outs, all set to semi-autobiographical lyrics about starting out in the music business.”

Taken from an entire album of Newman covers by Harry Nilsson, a friend and I recently had a drunken conversation about how the arrangement of the Nilsson version the best. The best part of the song as far as I’m concerned is the ‘song within a song’ device that Newman uses – if you listen (or examine the lyrics below), you’ll see that partway through the song there’s a drastic shift where the narrator references the first half of the song as a wholly separate song. Meta-song?

This was the only example of such a thing I could come up with until this morning in the shower, when I realized that the new D12 single, ‘My Band,’ does something similar, including a bit from a purported future single: ‘My Salsa.’ I’m not sure if this ‘counts’ yet, my brain is still conflicted. I’ve included the lyrics to ‘Vine St.’ below, along with the relevant sections of the ‘My Band’ lyrics.

If you can think of any other songs within songs, let me know or post in the comments, because I’m all about that. I should probably make clear that I’m not looking for songs that reference other songs – there are a billion examples of that; and I’m not looking for songs that simply reference themselves – that’s every hip hop single ever. I’m looking for songs that appear and are referenced within a song. Yes.

Update:

I just heard the Van Dyke Parks version of ‘Vine Street,’ and the intro song is different. Crazy.

‘Vine St.’ Lyrics:

My baby left this morning
With everything I had
She didn’t give me no warning
And that’s I feel so bad
I need her, I need her
I need some sympathy
I need her, I love ya
Come and sit by me

That’s a tape that we made
but I’m sad to say
it never made the grade

That was me: third guitar
I wonder where the others are?

Vine Street
We used to live there on Vine Street
She made perfume in the back of her room
while me and my group
would sit out on the stoop
and we’d play for her
the songs she liked best to have us play

On Vine St.

Vine Street
the crack of the backbeat on vine street
swingin’ along on the wings of a song
lying secure, self righteous and sure
wild with things we’d say
if the people would pay to have us play

On Vine St.

Having seen the Family Guy episode featuring Randy Newman (mp3) for the first time last night, it’s hard to take the lyrics too seriously, but I still think it’s a great song. There’s a similar MAD TV parody of Newman (which also involves Star Wars) here.

‘My Band’ Lyrics:

My salsa, look out for my next single, it’s called My Salsa…
My salsa, salsa, salsa, salsa, my salsa
Makes all the pretty girls wanna dance
And take off their underpants
My salsa makes all the pretty girls wanna dance
And take off their underpants, my salsa

Comments

4.14.04

jason says:

Two tenuously associated comments:

1. I remember once long ago sitting in the Allen’s basement, I made the claim that I thought Eric’s Trip did a better job with “Laying Blame” than Sloan did. My comment was met with icy stares and verbal abuse from all parties present.

2. I’ve always been a fan of Cursive’s “Burst and Bloom” which lyrically acknowledges that the EP is merely a marketing scheme to raise awareness for the next LP

One random unassociated comment:

I hate how this comment window won’t open any bigger, so I can’t see everything that I have written at once. What gives?

4.14.04

Scott says:

You didn’t mention anything about Harry, so I thought I would. Nilsson is, in my opinion, the most criminally overlooked singer in the music world. He was great and he was rather eccentric musically. If you don’t know his stuff, you won’t regret picking some up.

4.14.04

Andy Baio says:

Man, this is one of my favorite albums of all time. I’ve never liked Randy Newman’s voice much, but his songwriting and piano playing both shine in Nilsson’s covers. “Love Story” and “The Beehive State” are two other highlights on an amazing album.

As for song-in-songs, the first one that leaps out at me is the breakdown in Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight.” The acoustic song briefly breaks into an electric slide-guitar number, that sounds like it’s being played on a cheap transistor radio.

There’s an article about various song-within-song devices in this article from a folk music magazine. And here’s another thread about it, but most of these are simply allusions rather than embedded songs.

4.14.04

Zach says:

The Van Dyke Parks version is pretty great as a example of Van Dyke’s “Holy Shit! Can I over-arrange a song or what?” skillz. The first Harper’s Bizarre album also has both Newman and Van Dyke Parks all over it, over-arranging and just being showy in general. I love it. In regard to the song-within-song thing, “Ballad of Dorothy Parker” by Prince has a Joni Mitchell reference in which he sings “Help me I think I’m falling in love again” for a second. Does that count? Sure.

4.14.04

Zach says:

I should have also noted that the 3rd Harpers Bizarre album, “The Secret Life of Harpers Bizarre” has a version of “Vine Street” on it. “Vine Street” itself is the second half of a medley with their song “Bye Bye Bye.” So “Bye Bye Bye” serves as the “tape that we made.” Craze.

5.13.04

Brandon says:

I wonder if there are any other Newman versions of the song which include a “tape that we made” at the beginning. I’ve only heard the Newman demo from the boxed set, which doesn’t have it. Did he write something for that part? Was this clever trick his intention the whole time? If not, I guess VDP would have been the first to do it then, with Harpers and Nilsson following, but I’m not sure when Harpers recorded it.

Incidently, I believe that the “tape” on Van Dyke’s version is an actual older recording of folk songs he made with a guy named Steve Young (who is credited on the album as playing the instrument “folk”) They are playing the traditional folk song “Black Jack Davey” covered by Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal and the White Stripes, among others…

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