Hang Up Your Hang Ups

I like to listen to Herbie Hancock when I run. Nice and intricate, and it makes my butt shake. If I shake my butt in a straight line, I can put some miles on, for sure.

Anyway, I was out with an old friend the other night, and she is in a period where she is reexamining her beliefs.

"Hang Up Your Hang Ups", indeed.

This cut is from Man Child (1975), but this video is cleverly done and merits some discussion.

Made by a fan, it starts out like some TV cop drama from the 70's, nicely aping the musical theme. As the song develops, so does the video. It stretches out to incorporate some stock footage of NYC and then splices in some movie clips that feel just as gritty. The three I spot (love it if you can spot any more -- leave a comment) are Midnight Cowboy (1969), the French Connection (1971) and Taxi Driver (1976); these three films allow the setting, NYC, to become another character that imposes its will on the others. All in all, the creator of the video uses them to great effect in conveying the schizophrenic feeling of post-modern urban life.

What's more, the mid-70's were an interesting period for the US and NYC. Notice the big cars, modernist architecture, public works projects and urban squalor.

This video nicely documents the last hurrah of American-dominated business. Japan's "Just In Time" production methods and flexible distribution would shake the pillars of American commerce in just a few short years, and OPEC's production cuts would signal the beginning of the end of Detroit's dominance.

For New York City, the mid-70's were spent dealing with the aftermath of Robert Moses' horrible "urban renewal" system that ruined neighborhoods, displaced people and served to further segregate the population. Bankers wouldn't lend to African American neighborhoods, landlords could make more by burning their properties and collecting insurance, and the disenfranchised were the ones that suffered in that city for about the next 20 years.

Anyway, this song is about as funky as you can get without someone named "Bootsy" involved. Enjoy it.

Grace Jones - Pull Up To The Bumper

I recently went on vacation. And, being a music lover, I filled my mp3 player to the brim with old and new stuff before I left.

While I have my morning coffee each day, I let Rhapsody generate song lists for me based on my listening history. And from those song lists I pull the interesting songs and dump them onto playlists with snappy titles like "Pinch n Poke" or "Map Maker, Make Me a Map" or some other label that doesn't help me remember what in the hell I put on them. It was a combination of these mixes mostly that I dumped onto my mp3 player before I took off.

So, there I am, on a train crawling along the coast, when I decide to listen to one of the aforementioned mixes; this one had a theme of world-y, Afro-poppy funky stuff from different decades. I hit play and zone out while I stare out the window. The music starts -- kinda bouncy and disjointed with sporadic 80's percussion. "Hmmm," I think to myself as the singer begins, "this must be that Grace Jones song I threw on there. Not bad."

I keep listening, tapping my finger on the arm rest, but not really concentrating on what I'm hearing. Then the lyrics start to become clear:

Pull up to my bumper baby,
In your long black limousine,
Pull up to my bumper baby,
And drive it in between.

Pull up, to it, don't drive, through it,
Back it, up twice, now that, fits nice.

Huh?!? Wait a minute -- she's not singing about parking cars! Now I'm paying full attention to the Jamaican chanteuse crooning in my ears:

The lines are short,
I'll fix you up so won't you please come on,
That shiny, sleek machine you wheel,
I've got to blow your horn.

The lyrics create mental images that are in stark contrast to the foreign shoreline and towns I see through the window. I laugh at my private joke and vow to research the Lp when I get home.

Produced by Sly and Robbie, the album "Nightclubbing" has great dub-flavor, but there is a New Wave edge to the grooves. I recommend it (especially for the Iggy Pop cover), but this post is really about the song and not the whole record.

The video (1981) does a great job of conveying the nocturnal city as a living thing. There's a post-modern feel; like the technology that was able to make the pastiche of the chaotic city was also responsible for its unruliness. Watch for the great shot towards the end of a wall of TVs exploding. Good ol' Regan-era, pre-MTV video.