It is November here in Korea. (Come to think of it, it's November in the rest of the world as well) While the weather can be absolutely miserable this time of year in, say, Canada or Britain, the days are still relatively mild over here. The nights are another matter entirely. This juxtaposition makes it feel like while everyone clings desperately to summer, winter is flexing its muscles.
With the daytime being warm and my thoughts still on how I spent this past July and August — it was grand, thank you for asking! — it still feels appropriate listening to summer music. At the same time, I'm not one of those people who gets uptight over having to hear Christmas songs this early. Thus, this is the one time of the year that this crossover can occur: "Club Tropicana" and "Last Christmas" together! (Indeed, The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds is, among its many other achievements, equally brilliant for both kicking back in the sun and ringing in the festive cheer)
There isn't a lot linking songs about the summer and the Christmas season but there is at least one thing they have in common: the best of them dial back on the idealism at least a little bit and allow some realism to peak through. The fantasy world of holiday favourites stretching from the Great American Songbook all the way through to Mariah Carey have seldom done much for me. I prefer to hear about Chris Rea stuck traffic as he heads up to Middlesborough to see his family or Patty Donohue "rapping" about how she forgot to get a can of cranberries for what is meant to be a solo Christmas. (What is it with Americans and their tinned cranberries? Aren't they aware of how easy they are to make?)
There's less idealism found in summer hits, even with the odd "Hot Fun in the Summertime". Bananarama's eighties' classic "Cruel Summer" may be an anthem of holiday heartbreak but I think it also captures the lethargy of the heat and even soundtracks that point when kids who ought to be basking in the wild abandon of a summer vacation begin to find it a drag as they sit through hours of tedious reruns on TV. Looking at it from a slightly different angle, Belle and Sebastian's "Summer Wasting" revels in the laziness of a long break from school and responsibility. Of course, the standard was set by George Gershwin's "Summertime". Not only have there been a seemingly endless list of astonishing versions over the years (renditions by George Shearing, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Booker T. and the M.G.'s are among my favourites) but it also has a dense, languid atmosphere which undermines the hopefulness of DuBose Heyward's lyrics.
Part of what makes "Summer in the City" such a triumph is that it weaves this hellish tale of New York beaten down by a heatwave while not for a second diminishing the city's standing. (This is by no means a one off: there can't be another city in the world that songwriters have glorified and trashed at once. One of my personal favourites is "Hey Manhattan" by English sophsti-poppers Prefab Sprout) It no doubt helps that the cool air settles in every evening where you can go out and find a girl. While it summed up the Big Apple's nasty summer, it's important to consider that John Sebastian and bassist Steve Boone wrote it much earlier. (John's younger brother Mark came up with the original idea and also received a songwriting credit for his contribution) Like Christmas songs having to be in the can well before the big day, it goes to show the group's professionalism that they could nail down a summer hit just as winter was coming to an end.
More importantly, The Lovin' Spoonful's signature song is a banger. A few years earlier it would have borrowed liberally from Phil Spector's Wall of Sound but by 1966 it was the chugging rhythms of Motown that provide its backbone. (I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere but I wonder if Martha and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" provided some inspiration) Other summer numbers are all about the dog days but much of this moves at a brisk pace. Cities like New York don't just slow down based on the season and/or mood of the populace, everything goes by rapidly whether you're game for it or not.
Needless to say, "Summer in the City" is a New York song through and through. At the same time, I think it gets to the core of the madness of any major metropolitan area around the world. Even places like Bangkok and Jakarta, where the evenings are nearly as unbearably hot as they are during the daytime, there is so much stress, grime, shitty air and noise to deal with. Yet, massive cities are far more brilliant than self-righteous backpackers who prefer exploring the countryside will have you believe. You think small town folk are "more real"? City dwellers are as real as they come.
Score: 9
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Can Con
Oh, I shouldn't be so cruel towards poor old garage rock. After-all, just as there are no boring school subjects only boring teachers so, too, does it go with genres of music. When played with intensity, nothing can beat a little garage rock. Introducing The Ugly Ducklings, a Scarborough, Ontario five piece whose debut single "Nothin'" was doing reasonably good business on the national charts. (It was a full on hit on the old CHUM listing which suggests their following was mainly around the Toronto area). Bloody hell, they play hard and something tells me that this could apply to their rowdy personal lives as well. I've been paying backhanded compliments to many Canadian acts in this space that "they would've been great to see live" but it's easy to imagine this lot creating havoc on stage to go with their recordings. I'd commit myself to listening to more of their stuff but I'm still not quite ready to move on from this one.
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