Tommy Womack
No, Not That Womack & Womack
Tommy Womack: There, I Said It! (Cedar Creek '07)
Rising from the icky depths of the lyrically, vocally, and harmonically abject "A Songwriter's Prayer," a 40-year-old Nashville lifer finds solace in a forgotten WTF he wrote at 28 and by age 44 comes up with a bunch of new ones about bad jobs, fluorescent lighting, and low-grade cigarette, beer, and Xanax dependency. The climax would be the proud admission "I'm Never Gonna Be a Rock Star" except that the climax is the seven-minute must-hear "Alpha Male & the Canine Mystery Blood," a world-historically unromantic rocker about rock after 40. Also crucial is "Nice Day," about his boy and his wife and a friend's swimming pool. It won a prize. A MINUS
Tommy Womack: Now What! (Cedar Creek)
Reflective without wallowing in might-have-beens, his nasal drawl weary and at ease with itself, he's an established failure who's calmed down considerably for a pimple on Dylan's ass who believes the best thing about ADD is that it never bothers you too long. "90 Miles an Hour on a Dead End Street" is no advertisement for chianti just as "Pot Head Blues" is no advertisement for cannabis. In one strong song, he feels the heat of an old flame on a checkout line and is so glad the burns have healed. In several other strong songs, he pitches woo wifeward. A MINUS
I'm gonna guess that the Taj song Xgau loves is "Sweet Home Chicago" which is the track right after "Cakewalk Into Town" on Side Two of Taj's Recycling the Blues LP. That one features great bkg vocals by the Pointer Sisters. Perhaps the later CG review of The Best of Taj Mahal simply carried that misconception further.
And that reminds me....I've got to play me some Taj Mahal tomorrow! Maybe The Best of, or the relatively recent Maestro. Oh, who am I kidding....I'm gonna play the debut Taj Mahal (1968) again! !
I've always been confused by this review. The Pointer Sisters aren't on that track. At least not on the two versions I'm familiar with, so someone correct me if I'm wrong. I assumed he was mixing up that other strutting tune "Little Red Hen."
Except that "Little Red Hen" does not appear on The Best of Taj Mahal, which is the review the quote is from. It's a mystery, for the time being.
I have been trying for hours to draft a two paragraph comment about the George Clinton show I saw last week that will get through MSN's spam blocker. I'm guessing that too much of what there is to say includes words like hrrd, climb-ax, con stant, non stop, and f*** with an n rather than a c. So now I'm trying this message as a stand in, to see if it gets through.
and the Pointer Sisters' sashaying backup on "Cakewalk Into Town." Don't die without hearing that one. It's reason to live all by itself. A
A nice companion piece is "Replacements" on TW's Circus Town, as in The Replacements, and in which the protagonist does go to the show, so that at the very least he can say that he was there. They were nice guys and they were dicks he says. And then the Replacements get old (except for Bob of course): Paul's in the basement, writing ballads and drinking O'Douls. In this key verse Womack manages to sound like Dan Bern at one point and like Eminem at another.
Does anyone have any insight into the post-Anthem career of Michael Rose?
My experience would seem to be quite similar to Bob's -- checked out two or three of those solo releases on Heartbeat back in the '90s and concluded "this guy doesn't have a clear personality on his own." (Sadly ironic album title: Be Yourself.)
'To receive your download codes for this E.P. you must SEND A PICTURE/PHOTO/DRAWING OF A HEART TO [xxxxxxxxxxx]@fencerecords.com -- no hearts bigger than 2mb please xx.'
Know why I think nobody's listened to Alpha Male and the Canine Mystery Blood yet? Because nobody's written about it. I don't use the term must-hear lightly.
INDEPENDENT WEEKLY: The lyrics of "Alpha Male & the Canine Mystery Blood" are the very definition of stream of consciousness. I picture the words coming to you in a mad rush, like the exhaling of a particularly big, deep breath. What are the circumstances behind the writing of the song?
Tommy Womack: I was at a party where dogs and mating habits were being talked about. Very often my songs start being written with the first line that I get, and somehow i heard a snippet of conversation about an "alpha male and the canine menstual blood," and I said, "That would be a good band name." An hour later, I went to see a friend's band. I had a lot on my mind, my whole life basically, and my brain wasn't leaving me alone. I don't drink and didn't feel sociable, so I sat at the bar and asked the bartender for two two foot-long strips of blank cash register ribbon. I pulled a pen out of my pocket, and within twenty or thirty minutes I had filled all four sides of the ribbon in tiny script. Like you said, it was all a mad rush. It came like a roaring river to me. I was just taking dictation from somewhere inside myself where I was real scared of everybody and everything.
If the song did indeed come to you in a mad rush, after you got the words down, did you go back and change much? Or did it go down pretty much fully formed?
The lyrics on the record are roughly 95 percent exactly what I scribbled down on the cash register ribbon. Not much was changed at all.
At what point when reading the words did the music start to take shape? Or was this a case of finding a good home for some riffs that had already been in your head for a while?
Listen to Freedy Johnston's "Responsible" and then listen to "Alpha Male." My brilliant melodic contribution to that song is the same fcuking four chords over and over and over to the point that it makes Lou Reed sound busy. All the riffs and different soundscapes that come in and out and keep the song interesting come from the amazing production work of John Deaderick. The mix itself was like playing an instrument. I was really into Beck and how he'll do one verse with one set of instruments and the next verse will be a whole different set of instruments. I communicated that to John and he was into the idea and realized it for me. Our mission was to (a) focus on the lyrics obviously and (b) take a chord structure that's the very definition of repetitive and do what all we had to do to make it never sound boring.
http://tinyurl.com/cjm4q7g
Know why I think nobody's listened to Alpha Male and the Canine Mystery Blood yet? Because nobody's written about it. I don't use the term must-hear lightly.
about the blogger
Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.
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