Those Old Melodies: Songs Rediscovered

“Crime and Punishment,” Fun Lovin’ Criminals
By Lisa Haviland
The Fun Lovin’ Criminals debut album, Come Find Yourself, dropped on February 20, 1996, five years after H.W. Bush’s Gulf War commenced and concluded and seven years before G.W. Bush’s war began and failed to end. The Middle East emerges on the album’s twelfth track, “Crime and Punishment,” a passing reference that seems much more relevant today as it ruptures the bullet-laden landscape spit out by “Uncle Huey” (aka vocalist and guitarist Hugh Morgan). After returning from a Gulf stint with the Marines, Morgan bartended at New York’s once-seminal, since-closed Limelight, where he met “Fast,” i.e., Brian Leiser, soon to handle keyboards, bass, trumpet, and harmonica. Steve Borovini (“O”) would become the trio’s drummer.

Fun Lovin’ Criminals

“Crime and Punishment” lays old, unsanitized New York to rest—the one run by the Gambinos back in the day—and throws off a final challenge, while also narrating the day-to-day of “the b-boy, the doper, and the thrasher.” These are America’s less glamorous, yet enduring (if interchangeable) criminals who comprise the street-level Game similarly laid out by The Wire. Urban monotony and dread open and close this chapter via the track’s pendulum-swinging riff, though the band holds it back for a bit at the bridge, making for a well-paced dénouement. The story ends as it always does: with violence that is ignored or denied by the American public at large—the taxpayers—regardless of whether that bloodshed is perpetuated by the street or the government.

I ain’t pushin’ no party, I ain’t meddlin’ in Saudi,
Yo, I think it’s fucked up, what the federal laid on me
I’m watchin’ the news, you’re forcing people to choose
between the lesser of two evils: my red, white, and blue
The deceiver’s deceiving because the people believe him
Now the troops are bleedin’ and their mamas are grievin’
Keep on payin’ your taxes while you don’t know the facts
Let the contracts get backed while your conscience relaxes—
Me, I pity the punks that partake in the madness.

“Goodbye My Friend,” Guido and Maurizio de Angelis
By Martin Lien, Vanguard Music Library
This is a song I first heard in an Italian cop movie (Il Cittadino Si Ribella) and then rediscovered at MovieGrooves where I bought the soundtrack. It’s an epic haunting dirge, heavy on groove and explosively dynamic. Some of the lyrics sound nonsensical and are nearly indecipherable at times because the lyricists’ and performers’ first language was not English. Yet it still works because of the use of the titular reference in the first line and other bits that are easy to pick out. A heartfelt song with simple yet catchy melodies and a great structure.

“You’re So Vain,” Carly Simon
By Adam McIntyre
It’s a rainy day in 1983, I’m five years old and I’m wondering how come that piano on Dad’s record sounds so dark and strong. The melody’s so perfect in spots that I have no choice but to pay attention to random lyrics like “clouds in my coffee.” As I got older and more jaded, I decided that the song was disposable 70s garbage with wimpy symbolism for nothing, written by a vindictive ex-lover with nothing better to do than fail at avoiding writing about their break up. It’s ridiculous (at best) to validate someone’s vanity by writing a song about it and claiming in the chorus that you haven’t. The mind boggles.

Cat Stevens and Carly Simon:
“Really, I swear it’s NOT about you.”

Still, from time to time adults yearn for the tastes they loved as children. A few years ago, I caught the first solo acoustic show by Gary Louris of The Jayhawks and he covered the song brilliantly. It took me a few more years to remember to get the song again. There’s a wisdom and innocence in the lyrics that went right over my head as a young adult. After a strong first verse (a good introductory verse by anyone’s standards), there’s a lift—an intro into the chorus where the music practically stops and the song shifts gears into one of the decade’s most memorable choruses. It’s that lift, where her voice sounds so wistful and inviting that guys like myself fall in love.

The second verse is where she comes clean; the subject of the song is indeed an ex. I don’t know exactly why, but the line “you gave away the things you loved, and one of them was me…” as the band falls away to just Simon’s voice and the piano. . . that’s another spot where the weight of what’s being said falls into place for me. She might not be hurt anymore, but she sure remembers how it felt.

She thinks he’s scum, basically.

And rumor has it that she invited him to sing backing vocals.

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