If you have come to Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits looking for one of my older blogs (Washerman’s Dog, Harmonium Music, C90 Lounge etc.) welcome!
Those blogs are now ‘dead’ in the sense that I will no longer post there. I will be posting what I used to post on those blogs, here from now on. That means you will find music (all regions, all styles, including South Asia)and more here.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like what you find here. I’m still populating this site so keep checking in. There should be stuff posted almost every day.
In the 1960s and ’70s, India wasn’t a place to buy the latest Western pop music. In the few shops that sold LPs, you might find some Mantovani, the odd Herb Alpert and the TJB, quite a bit of Ventures and always, India’s very own Englebert Humperdink.
The Beatles was rare, as was Deep Purple and The Doors. But amazingly, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters was readily available and quite popular. Indeed, so precious was Western vinyl in those ancient days that I once made a handy sum selling some old Elvis and Beatles LPs to the management of Allahabad’s coolest dining venue, El Chico. I knew nothing about the music and cared even less. I was a 13 year old cashing in. But the two middle-aged men didn’t even bargain when I offered them the records. They handed over the 25 or 30 rupees I thought they might be worth. An early example of what is now called a “win-win” situation.
But somehow, some way, we young people, did develop an ear for rock ‘n roll, or what we thought qualified as such. I, much later, learned that there were indeed ultra-hip clubs in Delhi, Calcutta and Bombay where not just rock ‘n roll was bashed out by Indian bands, but also some very cool jazz, I was too young at the time to get to such clubs.
Instead, my early learning began during the intervals at Rialto or Picture Palace cinemas in Mussoorie. As the lights came up and the hawkers entered the hall like storm troopers, a scratchy recording of Cliff Richards or the Beatles would fill the room. It would blast over and over, for the next 20 minutes, while ticket holders relieved themselves, sipped a Fanta or puckered their faces to the taste of mango papad dipped in chili salt.
In eateries like The Tavern (on the Mall) and Kwalitys you could also hear the odd rock song. How our teenage hearts thrilled! It made us American kids feel like we were somehow connecting with the “homeland” even though we had only the vaguest idea of what the States, Australia or England were really like.
Here are five of the most famous Western rock ‘n roll songs that nurtured and inspired an entire generation of Indian (and American expat) boys and girls.
For what seemed years, this was the song that blasted out of the Rialto cinema in Mussoorie during intermission. We went every Saturday to see a show and soon knew this song by heart. Sir Cliff, of course, like Mr Humperdink, was another native son and thus had pride of place in any rock and roll rotation.
An absolute icon of a song. This suave Santana anthem penetrated the consciousness of India’s urban, West-looking youth, like nothing else. It was almost guaranteed to be heard in every darkened restaurant, bar and coffee shop from Srinagar to Srirangapatnam.
Someone eventually had a quiet word with the projectionist at the Rialto. Congratulations was ditched for The Ballad of John and Yoko. This was then played for the next three years straight. We loved it! “Christ! You know it ain’t easy.” Boy! Lennon was singing for us!
Like Black Magic Woman, CCR’s first big hit Born on the Bayou touched something in the Indian spirit. It’s heavy, bluesy riff seemed to connect with nothing that Bollywood was producing. Perhaps that is why it caught on. So influential was this song that an Indian garage band called the X’lents made a cover of it.
The Ventures were pretty well known in India in the ’60s and ’70s. If you couldn’t identify their name you knew the sound. Their album covers were bright and as the ’70s broke, covered with very beautiful babes in interesting poses. This crisp little number was as big a hit in Hyderabad as it was in Honolulu.
of a quote I had posted to my wall when I was a working man.
The code of tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. But NGOs often try strategies with dead horses including the following:
o Buying a stronger whip
o Changing riders
o Charging a lower price for the ride
o Saying things like, “This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse.”
o Appointing a committee to study the horse
o Declaring the horse is faster, better, cheaper dead
o Harnessing several dead horses together for better speed.
Country music is all about beer (crying in it; drinking too much of it), Mama cryin’ and Daddy prayin’, adultery, trains and murdering your girlfriend. And lately, pick-up trucks.
Rodney Crowell’s album Close Ties (2017) is a country record that is about none of that. Or if it is, it is taking those things and skinning them alive. It is the testament of a fully matured man. A man who has pulled off the road to a lookout to behold a not always scenic landscape.
Crowell grew up poor in East Houston, moved to Nashville in the early 70s where he wrote a slew of hits for others, released a few albums, produced several more for his then wife Rosanne Cash and by the end of the ‘80s was one of the faces of the so-called ‘neo-traditionalist’ country set. Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Townes van Zandt and Steve Earle were peers and friends.
In 2017, Crowell was sixty-seven years old. In those years he’d
been lied on, spied on, cried on, tried on, taken for a ride you bet Fracked, cracked, smacked jack, what you see is what you get I’ve been spit at, hit at, quit at, shit at, shouldn’t hurt a bit at, what I’m trying to get at
and had somehow transformed all that into a record that reveals adults inhabiting adult relationships more confusing, messy and meaningful than anything their younger selves thought possible.
He sings about taking too much and giving not much. Taking love for granted. And about the sort of love that disappears but never really dies.
With faith beyond religion, we search the great unknown Free fall into darkness, someplace we’ve never gone I’m tied to ya I’m tied to ya
I know a guy, someone I’m just getting to know a bit better, who finds himself kneeling on the bloodied battlefield of Love. To one side stands the woman he married but pushed away. To the other is the woman he loved beyond imagination who has pushed him away. He tells me he can’t imagine being squeezed for another drop but can’t stop wishing for their hands to massage, pummel and prod him. Especially those corners of him that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Maybe ever.
The first time I saw her she threw me that smile
Pure angel of mercy east Texas style
A poet in gingham, an assassin in jeans
The most near perfect woman I’d ever seen
She was hardly routine
He’s trying to find signs of who he is in the things he’s done.
Life without [her] Troubles me in ways hard to express As she withdrew I grew distant and judgmental A self-sure bastard and a stubborn bitch Locked in a deadly game of chess The upside of my status a cut above the rest
His marriage was a constant battle. His love affair an unexpected oasis.
The last time I saw her was close to the end I cried like a baby for the shape I was in No lipstick or powder to soften the tone The most worthy opponent I’ve ever known Was already gone
That second to last line describes both women, he says.
And then Crowell cruelly, or perhaps mercifully, reminds us
It ain’t over yet You can mark my word I don’t care what you think you heard We’re still learning how to fly It ain’t over yet
And what isn’t over yet? Our love? Our prideful ways? Our cluelessness? Our life? All of the above. And more.
These are songs that only a man who has marched his demons up the hill and back down again could write. And sing. Crowell, the singer is every equal to the songwriter. He has an uncanny talent of delivering cutting self-criticism as well as the bitter tears of the jilted without self-pity or indulgence or pleading. This comes, you’d think, from that place every pilgrim hopes to reach, where the storms of life neither seduce nor reduce you. That place where parental approval, manly accomplishment and perfect love are finally stripped naked.
But I don’t care anymore about the fortune and the fame I was better off before I tried to make myself a name
Close Ties is really a break-up album. A man breaking-up with the masks he has worn, the roles he’s played, the sins he’s denied committing. A man whose world is so shaken and crumbly he sees ghosts everywhere.
I don’t care anymore who does what and why
I was better off before when I was just another guy
I see why my friend keeps listening to it. Because Crowell is expert at bringing to life the oldest of all break-ups—love.
When you walked out on me, it tore my heart in half
And I hid behind a laugh
As I became a slave to shame I cursed your name
God Damn you, rot in Hell
Can you forgive me Annabelle
He is full of regret and clarity. But there is precious little calm here and not much confidence he won’t keep offending. This record is a tale of how many ways a brokenheart feels horrible.
Right about now it gets quiet around here, what with nightfall in the wings The floorboards creak and faucets leak, but it’s the emptiness that sings
The wind grows chill and then lies still Forty miles from nowhere At the bottom of the world
Yet, in the end, full of hope.
I won’t deny that I believe these things you say are true I’ve seen the way you gauge each distant star As long as I can be myself and still be there with you I’ll go anywhere you ask me, near or far I’m tied to ya I’m tied to ya
Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits 