Themed on the date in 1776 when Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence creating the United States of America. Enjoy!
First Word
There are so many songs that use the 4th of July as a reference and it had always been in my head to do a blog theme based on this. I’ve gone really niche though, only allowing songs with the date in the title but I have relaxed this strict criterion to allow either 4th or Fourth to be used – what am I like, eh?
You will note that there are no tub-thumping tunes about the good old US of A – there is quite enough of that going on in an election year which has all gone pretty toxic. And talking of elections, because the national holiday in the USA coincides with a general election in the UK, my 4th of July playlist contains one outlier as the final track…
Fourth of July – Dave Alvin (1986)
Dave Alvin was the founding member of the Californian roots rock band The Blasters and his wonderful version of the band’s Border Radio featured on WIS 26Jan24. That track was taken from his first solo album in 1986 Romeo’s Escape, which opened with this single, the first US national holiday song to be playlisted this week.
Deceptively straightforward, Alvin’s Fourth of July is a song about a couple who’ve had a major falling out over some unspecified misdemeanour by the narrator. Their relationship has deteriorated to the degree that they have both given up trying. But one night, when the narrator is out on the back stairs to their apartment having a smoke, he discovers that there are Mexican kids letting off holiday fireworks in the alley. Shocked to find their problems have allowed them to forget the date, in the middle eight he finally apologises for whatever he did and pleads with his girl to dry her tears and walk outside with him because: “Hey, baby, it’s the fourth of July!”.
As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been thinking what is it that makes me like the song so much – is it maybe the thumping snare, those jangly guitar arpeggios and the lovely lead lines counterpointing the gorgeous pedal steel licks? I think all of these are great but it’s probably the clever use of a pre-chorus section to signal the impending chorus that is the really clever bit. As each verse finishes, listen to the pedal steel slide up to the first pre-chorus line about smoking the cigarette. There is then a punctuated three-note step into the next line about the Mexican kids before a lovely four-note step down into the chorus. As a listener, it creates a real feeling of anticipation as the sing-along hook chorus approaches. Simple but highly effective songwriting.
4th July – Aimee Mann (1993)
In common with many artists over the years, I came to Aimee Mann via Elvis Costello. When she was the lead singer of the Boston band ‘Til Tuesday, they co-wrote the song The Other End Of The Telescope, which appeared on the third and final ‘Til Tuesday record in 1988 Everything’s Different Now, with EC on backing vocals. He then recorded it with the Attractions and it was the opening track on his great 1996 LP All This Useless Beauty.
Mann began her solo career with her 1993 debut album Whatever. Costello was very complimentary about it during interviews at the time and this caused me to walk into a shop and buy it, which sadly not many people did. It ended up being one of my records of the year, crammed full of intelligent songwriting and great tunes. It opens on an upbeat note with the great single, I Should’ve Known, but the standout track for me was the more melancholy 4th of July. With just her voice and guitar, the fireworks reference in the first verse sets the tone: “And when they light up our town I just think/What a waste of gunpowder and sky”. It’s a break-up song that slowly builds to a lyrically-rich, melodic chorus where Mann imagines her ex-lover when he is older and realising they should have stayed together. She pictures him saying: “But, now here I am and the world’s gotten colder/And she’s got the river down which I sold her”. Arguably, it’s a contrived rhyme, but that doesn’t stop me really liking it!
As a footnote, in 2000 Costello was asked by Vanity Fair magazine to list 500 albums that he considered “essential to a happy life”. Listed alphabetically by artist, Whatever is placed between The Mamas & The Papa’s A Gathering Of Flowers from 1970 and African Herbsman by Bob Marley and the Wailers from 1972. He provided a recommended track from each album and chose 4th Of July. Trainspotters like me can read the whole article here.
4th July, Asbury Park – Bruce Springsteen (1973)
I reckon most people thinking of a 4th of July reference in the Springsteen canon will think of the ballad Independence Day from 1980’s The River and not this earlier track from his second album The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle. Better known by its alternative title of Sandy, it comes from the early days when the words poured out of Bruce, so much so that it often seemed like there was insufficient room to fit them in around the music.
Opening with a delicate Springsteen guitar solo, this warm and romantic summer ode to the Asbury Park of his upbringing gets the holiday fireworks reference into the opening line: “Sandy, the fireworks are hailin’ over Little Eden tonight”. Its partly whispered verses give the song incredible intimacy and the lyrics are crammed with imagery as Springsteen sees he is leaving for greater things: “And me, I just got tired of hangin’ in them dusty arcades/Bangin’ them pleasure machines”. But its the chorus which wraps you in its tentacles as the late and much-missed Danny Federici’s accordion swells like the waves on the Jersey shore. As Federici weaves his magic, the elegiac lyric tugs at the heartstrings: “Sandy, the aurora is risin’ behind us/This pier lights our carnival life forever/Love me tonight for I may never see you again”.
Springsteen has said that the Sandy in the lyric is a composite of the girls he knew when growing up but the Madame Marie referenced was a real fortune teller who was a fixture on the boardwalk. The story goes that when Springsteen saw her, she told him he would be a success, and that Springsteen joked that she said that to all musicians. Madam Marie lived to see she was right as she died in 2008, at the age of 93.
Fourth of July – Sufjan Stevens (2015)
I first encountered Michigan-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens through one of those cover-mount CDs on the late lamented music magazine The Word. The free CD included the curiously named song Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland Illinois, the opening track from his critically acclaimed fifth album Illinois released in 2005. I was captivated by its breathy ethereal beauty and bought the album to find it was far from the longest song title on the record where many of the tracks were minimalist or complex instrumentals. The album was linked to his 2003 record Michigan, both created as ‘concept’ albums with music referencing places, events, and people related to each state. Although known as Illinois, the sleeve art bore the Slade-influenced title Come On Feel The Illinoise, which for an artist working out of 21st century New York, made me smile.
Fourth of July is taken from Stevens’ seventh album Carrie & Lowell which was inspired by the death of his mother, Carrie. The songs on the record are based on memories of the limited time they spent together (she left home when he was very young) and of his relationship with her second husband Lowell Brams when he and Carrie were briefly reunited before she died. The mix of songs and instrumentals were highly regarded by the critics, one citing its “small, elegant moments that reach for the heart”. It featured on many of the Album of the Year lists in music publications. On Fourth of July, Stevens recounts the intimate and heartbreaking time he spent by his mother’s death bed and his sense of loss, heightened by the years he didn’t spend with her. “What could I have said to raise you from the dead?/Oh, could I be the sky on the Fourth of July”. It’s beautiful but not an easy listen.
Fourth of July – Darlingside (2016)
Darlingside were a new band to me when I saw them on the main stage at the Black Deer Festival back in 2022. I’d love to say that Fourth of July was played that day but I’m a bit hazy at what they performed other than Old Friend and the excellent Hold Your Head Up High as an encore, both from their second LP Extralife from 2018. I’d given it a listen in the run-up to the festival and found their folky, harmony-filled, baroque pop easy on the ear. On the day, I enjoyed their tight-knit approach to performing, all gathered closely together singing into a single mic at the centre of the stage – a real sense of a group at ease with themselves.
Fourth of July is taken from their oddly named 2016 EP Whippoorwill which comprised five tracks originally recorded during the sessions for the 2015 LP Birds Say but didn’t make it onto that record. It’s a perfect example of their oeuvre, with voices and acoustic instruments perfectly arranged, their pristine melodies executed like it’s still 1965 and David Crosby is still in The Byrds. The song has two restrained verse and chorus sections which kick into lively instrumental breaks, full of trembling mandolins and plucking banjoes, and some wonderful oooohing voices. At 2:30 they throw in a tempo change which you think might take you to a strangely downbeat denouement before it kicks back into the uplifting harmonies for a few bars at the end. It’s a wistful lyric apparently looking back at the carefree summers of youth in rural New England and the Independence Day reference is in the chorus: “Past the farms and the big fields/The sun coming up in our eyes/Days were blackbirds charging up on a wire/And nights were the fourth of July”. Lovely stuff.
Elected – Alice Cooper (1972)
This is the outlier that doesn’t meet the theme criteria but what’s the point of writing your own blog if you can’t break your own rules once in while, eh? By the time you are reading this, the UK general election will be over and a new government should just be forming. We will be watching this from afar, having just arrived on the other side of the channel where France will be in the middle of its own two stage election process. I don’t like bringing party politics into the blog but regular readers will not be surprised that my concern lies with the rise of the hard right in both countries in recent times so I’m hoping for outcomes that promote tolerance and respect.
Released in September 1972, I bought this raucous single after saving up my twelve year old pocket money and it is sat, very worn, with its green Warner Brothers label on the shelf behind me as I type this. The iconic School’s Out had been released on my twelfth birthday that year and we had spent the summer riding our bikes ‘no hands’ while belting out the chorus of that song at the top of our (breaking) voices. We had no problem understanding the politics of school being out forever, but the message of Elected! was slightly confusing to pre-teen lads from Paisley, unfamiliar with the two-party system in the US. However, Cooper’s election promise to form “A new party/A third party/The Wild Party!” sounded fantastic. And, were we able to cast a ballot, who could resist campaign rhetoric like “I never lied to you, I’ve always been cool”? Certainly a platform that many of those vying for our votes these days could not claim to stand on.
It’s still a great record, bursting with energy and Cooper’s amazing raw voice soaring over the top of it. While it starts with a fairly straightforward guitar rock format, the drama in the song is achieved by the development of the instrumentation, with the horns arriving in the second verse and expanding into the chorus harmonising with the guitar riff. They then drive the bridge with a descending motif until the final verse bursts out and then another glorious descending guitar part takes us to the horn drenched coda while Cooper yells incomprehensively with his megaphone. The single got to No4 in the UK chart and this is the only link I could find to the great promo film which was shown on TOTP. It features Cooper in a white suit and top hat shaking hands with bemused Americans in the street before retreating with the band to a scruffy office where a chimpanzee arrives with a wheel barrow full of used dollar bills. The chimp proceeds to answer the phone and light everyone’s cigarettes as they madly throw the money around the room. Proto-Trump behaviour!
Last Word
So now the ‘carte postale’ experiment begins with next week’s blog the first to come from our road trip around France. In keeping with the postcard vibe, expect much shorter posts with little rhyme or reason to the choices of tunes. There may also be a paucity of media links to other tunes and videos but I often wonder how many people click these anyway. Maybe this new style will catch on!
And I will do my best to remember to update the Master Playlist, but I’ll always have Fraser Maxwell ready to remind me if/when I screw it up. 🙂
AR
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