August 27, 2010 05:38 PM
Nights At The Roundtable - Scott Walker - 1968
Scott Walker - 1968 - Crooners voice with an anarchists tongue
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Scott Walker isn't universally known in the U.S. these days. If you were child of the 60s he would be instantly recognizable as "Scott from The Walker Brothers" and were teen idols who emigrated to the UK where Scott has lived ever since. But after the Walker Brothers dissolved, Scott went off on a solo career and his own path as a singer. Rather than go after the blatant commercial material of the time, he became enamored of the music of French composer Jacques Brel, whose brutally descriptive lyrics and fierce originality became Walker's musical trademark.
Tonight's track, a famous one (or completely new if you've never heard of him) comes from Scott 2 which he recorded for the Philips label in the UK in 1968. Jackie is a Brel song, and completely gets under your skin. First because you think it's one of those over-produced, over-blown songs that seem so middle-of-the-road. And then you listen to the lyrics and realize just how knife-edge sharp it is.
Small wonder it hit number 1 in England and Europe and stayed on the charts for 18 weeks.
Well, musical taste is entirely subjective. More power to Walker that it reached #1, but it didn't grab me at all.
Then again, over the years a lot of music has eluded me the first few times out. I had never been impressed with Bruce Springsteen, for example. I didn't dislike the E Street band, but neither was I a fan. That worm turned late one Saturday morning twenty-or-so years ago. Having finally fallen asleep after working hours of overtime on a graveyard shift, I was jolted awake by a greatest hits tape played loudly by a neighbor while he washed his car. I was annoyed (to say the least), but it was getting on towards noon and that's a price you pay when you work nights. As I lay there cursing the world, I began tuning in 'Pink Cadillac', and took solace in the fact that it was a really good song. I got up, made coffee, read the paper, and tapped my toes to the rest of the tape. I've been a fan ever since.
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