03/08/2011

Summer In The City

As with classical music, it has been a recurrent characteristic of songs that they easily lend themselves to the changes of the seasons, both lyrically and musically. Sometimes, the result can be surprisingly effective: Bettye Lavette’s powerful performance of Through the Winter is so desolate it makes the listener feel as bleak as the title. At other times, the association of song and season can be a bit, well, obvious. In the Chi-lites’ Coldest Day Of My Life, the lines “I remember, oh, yeah, the signs of springtime. There were birds, music everywhere “ are accompanied by a flute chirruping like a blue bird in a Disney cartoon.

The same applies to places and seasons. For various reasons - to do with geography, cultural association or just the peak time when tourists go there – some cities are musically linked more with one season than another. Paris and springtime, Rome and summer. Yet what is striking is how the musical images raised by summer, in particular, can change when linked to particular places. Take Greece, for example. The sub-Abba song In the Summer Sun of Greece by A La Carte is typical of musical visions of Greece - all orange groves, sparkling sea and sunshine. If, however, you focused in and imagined that there was such a song called Summer in Athens, the mood would be different. It might have to deal with darting from cafe to cafe to avoid the heat, standing in a bad-tempered queue of backpackers to get a glimpse of a bit of the Acropolis and wondering who on earth might buy the bear that has been hanging outside a butcher’s window for at least a week.

To some extent the same sort of difference can be found in summer songs of England and London. Summery songs about England tend to be about the countryside or seaside, like Seaside Shuffle or In the Summertime. Songs about summer in London, however, are more ambivalent.  Madness described 'Summer in London' in  A Day On The Town with a characteristic cynical perception - seeing the union jack t-shirts and mugs and £6 ice cream cones.: “Chip on your shoulder, chips in your mouth, Can you see the old lady, with tickets to tout. Getting the tourists into their traps, taking their money, the shirts off their backs”. The Pogues had a downright depressing picture in Dark Streets of London: “And every time that I look on the first day of summer takes me back to the place where they gave ECT, and the drugged up psychos with death in their eyes and how all of this really means nothing to me”.

For the outsider, summer in New York, however, carries a more stereotyped set of images gleaned from TV shows and films set in the city: sticky heat and rising tempers as electricity cuts hit, kids splashing in the jets of a sprinkler fire hydrant, a cop wiping sweat off his head as taxi sirens blare. The song here, Summer in The City, neatly captures that picture and mood, with its driving rhythm, pounding drums , sounds of traffic and descriptive lyrics; “All around, people looking half dead, walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head”. The song has been covered a number of times - by Joe Cocker and Quincy Jones amongst others - and has been used as background music in a number of adverts and films, including Die Hard: With a Vengeance: not surprisingly perhaps as there is a cinematic element to the song. The version here is the original one from 1966 by New York group The Lovin’ Spoonful , a contrast to their more familiar good-time and laid-back summery feel. In a relatively brief period of time in the mid-sixties, the group notched up an impressive number of John Sebastian-penned songs that remain timeless, with an instant feel-good effect: their first big hit, Do You Believe in Magic, with the priceless lines “I’d tell you about the magic , it’ll free your soul but it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll”; You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice (I would have liked you anyway); and a dozen more. (Sebastian was also a skilled harmonica player and can be heard to good effect on Judy Collins’ Thirsty Boots).

In the clip below, the group are miming. That is not unusual but it is an example of a performance when it is obvious that the act are miming through deliberate intent: guitarist Zal Yanovsky is having a conversation at one point. Some acts seemed to do this, possibly to show their disapproval of having to mime as it implied a slight on their capabilities. Guitars remained slung at the side, drumsticks hit the air, at times signs saying ‘We are miming’ were held up. This was different from those occasions when a technical hitch left an unfortunate act stranded and mouthing like a fish out of water. One such time was All About Eve performing Martha’s Harbour on Top of the Pops in 1988, when the group were unable to hear the backing track and sat patiently waiting for it to start.


There is another song - Up On the Roof - that does not actually mention New York but was clearly inspired by it and which acts as a neat counterpoint to Summer in the City – it takes the listener to rooftop level above the traffic noise and jackhammers drilling in the road. It was a Goffin/Carole King song - written in the Brill Buildings on Broadway that remain a landmark on the bus tours round New York - and was originally a USA hit for the Drifters in 1962. There have been several versions since, including Carole King herself, James Taylor and Ike and Tina Turner but oddly the hits of the song in the UK have been from unlikely sources. Singer-songwriter/entertainer Kenny Lynch had the first hit in 1962, followed in 1995 with a Number 1 by TV actors Robson and Jerome, the video of the song showing them prancing about against a Manhattan skyline with - being British-an obligatory afternoon cup of tea. Perhaps the most sublime version, however, was by another New York singer-songwriter, Laura Nyro, capturing hustle and bustle and serenity in 3 minutes: ironically for a prolific songwriter in her own right, this was her only hit as a performer.

Hot town, summer in the city. The words somehow imply the need to escape somewhere – to the roof top in New York, to the relative cool of a museum or cafĂ© in Athens, to the shade of a willow tree in London’s Regents Park. Waiting for the autumn leaves to start to fall.

Link to song

38 comments:

  1. Thanks Geoff - what a great song and great video. And I think the keyboardist is trying to look a little like Ray Manzarek of the Doors ......

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  2. I had no idea these dudes were white! Always thought they were black cats.

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  3. I love how the drummer seems to have lost one of his suspenders around 1 min 8 seconds.... Suddenly it's gone.....

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  4. There are some not-terrible remixes of this song too, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH9ouT30dn8

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  5. THANK GOD FOR THE ENGLISH INVASION.

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  6. I always wanted sideburns like that as well. But they never grew. It bothered me.

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  7. John Sebastian wrote some really good songs, he was also a very good harmonica player (he plays harmonica on some Doors records too).

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  8. Back in the 60s, virtually all TV performances by pop bands were lip-synced, and you can notice John Sebastian's amused look at the final break, where he starts playing the keys too soon and looks over his shoulder - probably at the line director (and even though the part he was pretending to play is a electric piano track, he's "playing" it on a Vox organ.) Keith Richards makes some interesting comments on TV lip-syncing back then in his recent autobiography.

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  9. Masterpiece! But I was once walking down the street in NYC with Sebastian, and this was playing from a shop, and he didn't even notice it!

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  10. I read somewhere that he originally submitted this as a poem for high school english class and was rewarded a D for his efforts. i think the teacher had trouble with the part about it being a different world at night, where, we are told, one finds a girl and dances all night.

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  11. I think it was John Sebastian's brother who had written an essay or poem for school and part of it was integrated into the song.
    I dont think the Doors were known at that date, Ingrid!Maybe it was the other way round.

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  12. That video of All About Eve is very funny, although at the time and ever since I believed they were protesting lipsyncing and fake performances - the whole BBC anti live policy thing - bit disappointed to discover it was just technical error!

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  13. Hey - I recognize that street in the photo you used Geoff; it's MacDougal Street in the Village (just north of Bleecker). Great street, full of great music venues too. And about 5 blocks from where I live!:)

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  14. Oh dear, you didn't love Athens much, did you Geoff:) ("darting from cafe to cafe to avoid the heat, standing in a bad-tempered queue of backpackers to get a glimpse of a bit of the Acropolis and wondering who on earth might buy the bear that has been hanging outside a butcher’s window for at least a week" - I think that's the least positive portrayal of a city you've done since you mentioned the Australian Gold Coast earlier this year!)

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  15. That's a great idea, that certain songs evoke particular seasons and seasonal changes.....

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  16. I think the connection between places and seasons that you mention is really interesting - I agree that the associative reasons include "geography, cultural association or just the peak time when tourists go there" but I also think there is a symbotic relationship here between songs and places: songs about particular places focus on particular seasons for the reason you list, but we also associate places with seasons because songs have already made the association (so many songs about Paris and springtime have given rise to and then reinforced the idea that Paris is best in the springtime, etc).

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  17. So Geoff, are you arguing then that summer, more than any other season, is the most flexibly applied - the image that changes the most across different evoked places? (Greece vs England vs New York, etc)? Whereas winter, which you have written about previous, tends to have more blanket associations and imagery in music across multiple places and cultures?

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  18. I'm a bit of a Chi-Lites fan, although I agree about the obviousness of those lyrics.:)

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  19. I totally agree about London summers being much less light-hearted and fun sounding than the rest of the English summer songs. But doesn't this - combined with your point about Greece vs Athens - suggest it's about summer in the city versus summer in the countryside / on the coast? The Greek orange groves are surely the equivalent of the British seaside (you know, in this analogy, not in reality!), and Athens is London. And city summers - with the heat, crowds, traffic fumes and queues - are never as nice as coastal / countryside summers, whether in Greece or England. I'm sure there are nice summers going on right now in New York state as well (in the Adironacks and the Hudson Valley), while New York City itself swelters and hums. Basically, I agree that summers are variant in songs about places, but only as far as cities versus countryside, not necessarily country by country or song by song, if that makes sense.

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  20. Here's In the Summer Sun of Greece by A La Carte in case anyone wants it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Op16XXWYrQ

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  21. Here is the only version of Bettye Lavette’s Through the Winter that I could find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q13kB27FSZI. I love her - she did a great job at Obama's inauguration too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvApnxZ4hRg

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  22. Love The Pogues, Dark Streets of London, such a weird song! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNQpMCxh-ww - an instant classic!:)

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  23. Here is Madness, A Day On The Town - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9bt3Ib5Das - and thanks for this great discussion of summer Geoff, I am downloading all these songs into my Geoff/Summer playlist to listen to as I wander about various cities this summer!

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  24. The Laura Nyro version of Up On the Roof is glorious - thanks so much for posting that Geoff!

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  25. I only really knew the Joe Cocker version before this week's blog - www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9wD4KhQoqA - but I like the original better now!

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  26. The Regina Spektor version of Summer in the City is an interesting take! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRzToFBHu4g

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  27. I think the video for the Quincy Jones version of Summer in the City is all about driving through a town in France in the summer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd9wMHKMj6E

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  28. It's nice you mentioned Judy Collins’ Thirsty Boots - here's my performance of it! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM5A0p2VgZQ

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  29. Ha ha, I love the Robson and Jerome prancing-with-tea-in-Manhattan video!

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  30. MJ - that's an interesting point, and I think that what Geoff gets at in his last sentence about the need to escape from the "hot town" to NY rooftops or museums/cafes or tree shade (the little tiny pieces of non-city in the middle of cities)............

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  31. Thanks for your version of Thirsty Boots, Simone- a lovely performance.
    Yes, I think it is MacDougal Street, Maggie-I was going to see the Cafe Wha! and Bitter End.

    I think you are probably right about the town v country in summer point MJ. I was trying to think of a sunny song about Rome in summer to show the exception but I cant think of one!

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  32. Geoff, you would enjoy this recent article - /www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/arts/music/when-gridlock-is-music-the-streets-provide-a-serenade.html - from today's New York Times actually - about finding music in the city's gridlock sounds.............

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  33. NYC has changed since I was a youngster. We never had A/C until I was well into puberty. I would open my window to get some air, but air didn't move for the whole months of July and August, unless you stood right next to moving traffic or a train as it pulled into the sauna-like station. Now, when you go outside, you are suddenly hit by the constant hum of thousands of A/C's working overtime. it's like a steady all around low toned sound that never goes away until the temps get below 75 degrees.

    Years ago, you could be walking down the block and see a garbage truck cross the intersection a block away. 4 minutes later, when you finally crossed the street, walking through the still dank wake of the long gone truck of rotten garbage, the nose ambush in the air was SO strong that your eyes would tear and your gag reflex would make you lurch forward. It was like an invisible wall, something the army should actually look into for possible non-lethal weaponry, the NYC garbage truck in mid August could take out whole platoons.

    Another thing i remember about those days in the summer, besides RUNNING to playgrounds with working sprinklers or broken fire-hydrants, was that you could always tell non new yorkers at a corner when a bus would pull out from a bus stop. New Yorkers were the people who quickly backed up far away from the bus. the tourists were the ones who got blasted, face first, by the huge, hot, exhaust clouds that used to come out of the back of these gargantuan diesel engines. nowadays they are hybrids with exhaust pipes that stick out the top and aim the hot blasts up into the ether where they belong. but back in the day, one good blast from a bus exhaust could turn your white outfit black and sooty, and fill your lungs with ultra heated smoggy exhaust. enough to kill an old French person in a single blast.

    I swear the race riots, the murders, the crime, the craziness was only instigated by the awful, inescapable heat.

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  34. Top of the Pops' miming policy did create some funny moments, didn't it? Like Jimi Hendrix who, on hearing someone else's track being played by mistake (in the days of live broadcast), mumbled "I don't know the words to that one, man". Or Simon Le Bon posing with his microphone which promptly flew off the stage and he was left to sing into a microphone stand; he just shrugged his shoulders and carried on.

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  35. The fire hydrant image is so iconic because it's true - and still is. This is from June of this year! - http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/jeffisgr8t-3170753.jpg?w=940&h=611

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  36. Great column, thanks for that, and thanks to all your readers for the comments. The Lovin’ Spoonful is still touring, we did 7 shows last month. Sometimes it is hard to imagine that we have been playing music for a living for nearly 50 years now.

    Joe (Butler)

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  37. Thanks for writing in, Joe. I reckon your song Old Folks is up there with the best in the Lovin' Spoonful catalogue
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDqQQyXYEE

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  38. I love this blog!!

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