Tag Archives: Pretenders

44th Favorite: Learning To Crawl, by Pretenders

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Learning To Crawl. The Pretenders.
1984, Sire Records. Producer: Chris Thomas.
Gift (cassette), 1984. Purchased CD, 1995.

IN A NUTSHELL: A record with driving, punk-spirited songs with strangely grown-up lyrics about aging, parenthood and loss. But Chrissie Hynde’s terrific voice and songwriting, and cool guitar from Robbie McIntosh and Billy Bremner, keep the record from being a downer. It’s a rarity – an album I still love, but now for different reasons.
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Big sisters get a bad rap in modern media. They’re generally portrayed as mean, conniving, dissatisfied, misunderstood, dangerous, violent … Well, I’m here today to say that in real life, big sisters are pretty frickin’ awesome. I have two terrific ones, and none of the words above describe them (typically). They’ve been important in many ways, including how they’ve helped inform my 100 Favorite Albums! They’ve both been responsible for several of the albums directly, and indirectly they’re responsible for all of them: for they’re the first two people whose musical tastes I tried to emulate and, later, influence.

I’m the youngest of three kids, and I have two older sisters. I’m five years younger than Anne and three years younger than Liz.

[captionpix imgsrc=”https://www.100favealbums.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/sisters.jpg” captiontext=”The author (in blue) begins his indoctrination into sibling dynamics.”]

The kids in every family[ref]I’m speaking of families with multiple kids. Only-children have a different experience, obviously.[/ref] have their own special dynamic, a mode of interaction passed on through the brood that sets boundaries on things like appropriate deference, teasing, displays of emotion, connectedness and play. The results of these dynamics are evident to all. Some families have raucous, screaming kids; some families have quiet, reserved kids; some hang out in a big bunch; some appear to be single children unaware of the siblings around them.

I’d venture to say that in all cases the rules of engagement among the kids are set by the eldest child. This is only fair, since the eldest child is the one who was so rudely stripped of her role as the lone sponge in an ever-widening, depthless pool of parental love; forced to not only share that ocean of affection with others but also to pretend that half an ocean – then a third, and a fourth, etc, depending on how many more damn smelly babies that formerly fawning, duplicitous duo called parents decides to keep bringing home – is just as good as a whole ocean, as if she can’t do simple arithmetic.

There was a trio of brothers in my neighborhood, The Poetzel boys, and they were on one extreme of this spectrum of sibling conduct, with an eldest son, Deaner, who clearly had never accepted the division of his ocean. Their parents both worked, which was still rather unusual in my mid-70s, rural Pennsylvania town, and sometimes after school they’d be locked out of their house for an hour or so. They’d spend the afternoon on their back patio screaming, shoving, fist-fighting, throwing rocks and slinging weaponized buckles at each other in bloody belt-fights. These melees frequently ended with Deaner crying frantic tears of regret as he attempted CPR learned from the TV show Emergency! on a younger brother who likely learned how to feign unconsciousness from watching the same show.

In my family the eldest child didn’t view us new ocean dwellers as combatants to be dominated and subdued, but as vulnerable neighbors in need of guidance and instruction. If this sounds like a euphemistic description for “bossiness,” I don’t mean it to be. I never thought she was bossy – I thought she was the coolest eldest sibling a kid could have – creative, fun, exciting and full of love. She still is!

My other sister and I often talk about how lucky we were to have such a big sister. Her creativity made playtime exciting! For example: the three of us often played Barbies, in which my job was to handle many of the leading male roles with my G.I. Joes. (As a hearty, red-blooded, five year-old boy, I insisted on calling the game “G.I. Joes,” not “Barbies.”) At some point my sisters got a Barbie-sized Supermarket, which included Barbie-sized packages of frozen foods and other products. My big sister, using cardboard and markers, designed and produced dozens of products for sale at the store, with individualized product names and brand names and packaging designs and advertising campaigns and jingles.

The fun of playtime was always what was going on inside our heads, and Anne would plunk real stuff into our imaginations every time we were together. Whether it was playing school in our basement “classroom” surrounded by individually hand-drawn class photos hung on the wall of each of the thirty students; or decorating an HO gauge train set at Christmas time, watching her deftly build Olmsted-quality backyards, farm pastures and a baseball field with colored, sprinkled dust; or walking our Barbies (I mean G.I. Joes!!!) into the 6′ x 6′ house she built on a slab of ply-wood my dad cut, onto which she had glued linoleum and carpet remnants, drew and shellacked hardwood floors, erected walls of cardboard that were painted and wallpapered and hung with lights and shelving, with doorways cut appropriately between rooms; a house that in the end seemed almost too beautifully museum-quality to actually tramp combat boots throughout.

When I got a little older, both of my sisters joined the Disco Revolution and went dancing on weekend nights instead of playing G.I. Joes with me. By then she was in high school, and even though we didn’t play anymore, she did have a crate of albums that had a huge impact on me. She continued to be cool and creative, and still did remarkable things as she got older, like move across the country to Yosemite National Park as a barely-in-her-20s young woman – the sort of move I’d never known anyone to ever do, except for people who’d joined the Army.

During her time in California (and before that, while she was away at college), in my teenaged brain, she seemed like an unknowable Goddess – a figure I’d worshiped since childhood and who sent me gifts and spoke to me sometimes, but who I figured I would never – could never – really know. Her gifts and communications were like blessings. For example, when the Preppy Look was in style in the 80s, and I was raging against it in my head – mainly because I knew I was too chubby and too self-conscious to try a new style, and those fashionable clothes were well out of my family’s price range, anyway – she sent me a modest yet stylish striped sweater that fit me and looked good, allowing me to experience a bit of modern fashion and, more importantly, a bit of self-esteem. When she visited during my season of JV basketball, she watched me play, then weeks later sent photos she’d taken of the game – proof that my dreamlike experience as a bonafide high school athlete who earned some playing time wasn’t just a dream.

We didn’t speak much, as long-distance phone calls were pricey back then[ref]Or fraught with static and dropped connections during my family’s attempts to save money by somehow using my aunt, who was a switchboard operator at an Army base, to patch long distance calls through some elaborate, Pentagon-owned system of wires and cables.[/ref], but she sent us cards and letters. And she sent gifts. She sent the gift of music.

And just as she didn’t ask me if I wanted that sweater, she didn’t ask me what kind of music I liked. She’d just send me cassettes that she thought I should hear. The first one I remember getting was Speaking in Tongues, by Talking Heads. Their hit “Burning Down the House” was huge on MTV at the time, and I’d seen them perform on David Letterman, but I wasn’t really a fan. And even though I was probably bummed that she hadn’t sent me an old Rush cassette, I listened and found I really liked it. She later sent me a cassette of The Pretenders’ self-titled debut, which we’d listened to in her sweet ’64 Mustang before she moved away.

Another one I got from her around that time featured a song she’d told me about during a phone call or a visit, a song I’d never heard, but that she thought summed up her life as an aging 21-year-old quite nicely: “Watching the Clothes.” The album was Learning to Crawl, by The Pretenders, and even though I’d already heard a lot of the songs on the radio[ref]Five songs on the album hit the charts, a sixth was an AOR standard and a seventh became a Winter Holiday favorite.[/ref] I couldn’t get enough of it. My Goddess sister had delivered once again.

I’d been a huge Pretenders fan since I started watching MTV. (Ok, more precisely, I was a huge Chrissie Hynde fan.) But by the time 1984 rolled around, those early MTV days of 1981 seemed like ages ago to me. And so much had happened to the band in the interim: in 1982 original bassist Pete Farndon was fired by the band over his drug use; two days later 25 year-old guitarist James Honeyman-Scott[ref]Who a) remains one of my favorite guitarists ever, and b) owns one of the coolest names in rock.[/ref] died of a heart attack from too much cocaine; then a few months later, Farndon himself died of a heroin overdose. Band leader Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers were forced to start over amid all that emotional trauma, and Learning to Crawl was the introduction of the new band.

“Watching the Clothes” seemed strange to me as a teenager: a song about watching laundry? But even though the lyrics seemed odd, I liked the song.

I still do, particularly the solos guitarist Robbie McIntosh rips through. Beginning at 0:58 he plays a simple ascending chromatic scale that amps up the energy and builds the tension until the band re-enters. At about 1:46 he tears off a sort of rockabilly solo that carries the song to its riff-coda ending. Throughout the whole song, Chambers plays a beat that sounds very washing machine-esque. It’s a punk-y song, for sure, aggressive and intense, but it’s about … watching laundry? But maybe there’s a reason for that …

As a huge MTV watcher, the first song I ever heard from this album was the classic “Back On The Chain Gang.” The video was played constantly in the fall of 1982. (The song was released as a single before the entire album was finished recording.) It’s a touching song about the death of Honeyman-Scott, and it’s one of those rare songs that’s gotten better with age.

The song has a bit of a honky-tonk feel, and Tony Butler[ref]He was the bassist for Big Country, and was recruited to play on this song and “My City Was Gone” before Malcolm Foster joined as bassist.[/ref] plays a bass line that conjures hard work the way the song “Working In A Coal Mine” did. Billy Bremner[ref]Another recruit for a couple songs.[/ref] plays a countrified guitar riff that makes the song, and throws in nice harmonics (about 2:00) that I always listen for. Great song that it is musically, it’s the lyrics and subject-matter (a lost friend, and moving forward) that have made the song improve with age: the more people you meet in life, the more you cherish those for whom you can say “…a break in the battle was your part … in the wretched life of a lonely heart.”

It’s a great song, but what happened to the rockin’ band who sang “Stop snivelin’! You’re gonna make some plastic surgeon a rich man!?” Perhaps I can find that punk spirit on the driving, souped-up hit “Middle Of The Road.”

This song has one of the great openings in rock, Martin Chambers’s tumbling drums into those unmistakeable three chords. The guitar riff is busy but cool, and the backing hoots are sing-along fun. Hynde’s vocals are some of her gruff’n’sweet best, snapping out long strings of words about growing older, growing up. Chambers’s excellent, driving drums really command the song, which builds to a creative solo by McIntosh, at 1:42. The band sounds like they’re having fun, as Hynde counts them back into the final verse, through her harmonica-solo closing, which starts with a grunt and a sort of meow. It’s a terrific song, even though she sings “I ain’t the cat I used to be/ I got a kid, I’m thirty-three!” which doesn’t sound too punk. But hold on, I’m starting to recognize a pattern … So these lyrics on these songs … why … I believe they’re all about getting OLD!!! No wonder I’ve liked this record more and more as I’ve gotten older!

No song on the record is more obviously about aging than the fantastic “Time The Avenger,” which, even as a teenager, has always been my favorite song on the album.

Right away, the drums and riff give the feeling of time, constantly ticking. Hynde uses her sultry voice[ref]I’ve always loved how she pronounces “vodka” as “vod-ker.”[/ref] to tell the story of an aging Lothario who’s beginning to realize it’s all slipping away, who’s wondering whether it all had a point. I love the guitar harmony as the second verse starts, and I love the chorus, how Chambers deftly moves the band through the syncopation (at 1:48) of the “Time, time, hear the bells chime” vocals. And the guitar behind the chorus vocals is really cool, particularly the harmonics at about 2:13. Former Pretenders guitarist Honeyman-Scott had a style all his own, using chords, arpeggios and harmonics where others might play runs, and Robbie McIntosh does an amazing impression of him on this song.

On “Middle Of The Road,” Hynde briefly addressed parenthood, and on a couple other songs she dives deeply into the topic. “Show Me” is a song that sounds a bit soft at first, but that’s grown on me since the first listen way back when – and now that I’m a parent, it can at times weirdly cause me to get a bit verklempt.

Despite its rather casual, light pop sound, the bass line is really cool and Chambers’s distinctive drum fills are notable throughout. McIntosh’s guitar has a shimmery delay, and he plays with a very Pete Buck of R.E.M. style. Hynde’s voice is beautiful, but it’s the words that get me – particularly since I’ve been a parent. If you’re a parent, or an auntie, or have had a special baby/toddler in your life, this song presents all the wishes you have for that child – what you want for the child, and what you want FROM the child – in a world that, as we age through it, can very often feel like it’s gone down the shitter. And those wishes boil down to one word: Love.

The song Thumbelina also treads in this territory, describing a road trip with a child set against a sweet country swing. Even though I loved this record as a teenager, the wisdom of lyrics like “What’s important in this life?/ Ask the man who’s lost his wife” were lost on me. I didn’t care about the song meanings, I just liked the rock. And now, as a 50 year old, I can especially appreciate these reports from adulthood – even when they turn a bit curmudgeonly. Such as on the excellent groove, and growth-at-all-cost shaming, of “My City Was Gone.”

The bass line, again by Tony Butler, is a classic as is the bluesy soloing by Billy Bremner. The lyrics are once again about growing older, the frustration over the loss of childhood and its memories. Bremner uses harmonics beautifully and his solo at about 2:38 is classic.

There are a few songs on the album that I can take or leave. “I Hurt You” has some cool vocal tricks and a menacing tone, but doesn’t meet the standard of the rest of the album. “Thin Line Between Love And Hate” is a cover that is done well, much like a satisfactory bar-band can pull off a cover, but that I generally skip. The closing song, however, is one for the ages – if you don’t mind Christmas songs.

“2000 Miles” has a lovely guitar figure throughout, with a chiming effect that makes the quick run played before the verse (0:33) sound terrific. But the star of this song is Hynde’s amazing voice, pulling such feats as singing two words, “He’s gone,” and easily stretching them across 5 beats and about 10 syllables in a way that makes the song a challenge for other singers. From the very beginning, Chrissie Hynde has been an extremely talented vocalist, and this song, about a lover far away for the holidays, demonstrates she’s still got the chops.

Learning To Crawl is remarkable for tackling grown-up subject matter in its lyrics while retaining the band’s youthful, punk-y aesthetic[ref]This aesthetic would COMPLETELY fly out the fucking window with the band’s next record.[/ref]. I liked it as a teenager, and I like it today. I still like the way it rocks, but I also appreciate it for different, old-man-type reasons, too. It’s a rare record that can accomplish that trick!

I’ve gotten to know my sister much better over the years than I did as a child. We’ve grown closer – all three of us siblings have. She’s no longer unknowable – she’s now just totally lovable! When she sent me this cassette over 30 years ago, I don’t think she was sending a message about life. I expect she just knew a good record when she heard it. But who can truly know the ways of the Goddess?

[captionpix imgsrc=”https://www.100favealbums.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Anne-at-Pride_Fest__07.jpg” captiontext=”The author’s eldest sister, still cool after all these years.”]

TRACK LISTING:
“Middle Of The Road”
“Back On The Chain Gang”
“Time The Avenger”
“Watching The Clothes”
“Show Me”
“Thumbelina”
“My City Was Gone”
“Thin Line Between Love And Hate”
“I Hurt You”
“2000 Miles”

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62nd Favorite: Pretenders, by The Pretenders

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Pretenders. The Pretenders.
1980, Sire. Producer: Chris Thomas; Nick Lowe.
Gift 1984.

pretenders album

nutshellIN A NUTSHELL: Aggressive, melodic, unusual punky pop rock that sounds unlike anything else. Chrissie Hynde’s vocals and James Honeyman-Scott’s guitar work shine on an album that combines power and sweetness and grit and beauty. The band moves from jangle pop to tough punk to slow-dance grace, and never sounds like a copy of anything else.
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diaryIf you’ve read this blog before, you’re very aware of what I’m about to type in the sentence after the next one. If you haven’t read it before, the next sentence may be the last of mine you’ll ever read. In this blog about records and music, I write just as much about me and my life as I do about the records and the music.

It’s kind of a weird thing to do – a private citizen who’s celebrityaccomplished nothing noteworthy to anyone outside a few friends and family[ref]The kind of noteworthy things everyone does: work a job, have some kids and pets, go on a vacation once in a while.[/ref] documenting things that have happened in my life. Who really cares? I’m a huge fan of rock music autobiographies[ref]Only AUTObiographies, generally speaking. (The recent book on The Replacements, Trouble Boys, by Bob Mehr, is an exception. However, the band cooperated (for the most part) so it was sort of like an autobiography.) I want the story told in the person’s own words. I accept that I may be getting a whitewashed or distorted version of facts, but it’s the trade-off I accept for reading the artist’s perspective. Besides, I’m more interested in insight into the creative process and what shaped an artist’s life than hard-hitting facts about their personal lives.[/ref], and what makes them interesting is the fact that the people writing them have done something terrific, moving, outstanding … something that has boredtypically touched the lives of millions, and reading their words can offer insight into their work.

I, however, have not done anything even remotely similar. The closest I’ve come to reaching millions is the time one of my funny phone calls made it on the air on WEEI radio’s old afternoon feature the “Weiner Whiner Line” back in the early ’00s[ref]Brief recap: Ivan Rodriguez, big-league catcher long rumored to have been a steroid user, returned to Spring Training significantly slimmer than previous seasons. Around the same time, Terri Schiavo’s family was battling for the right to remove the feeding tube from her brain-dead body. I called the show and said, “What happened to Ivan Rodriguez? He’s so small! Either he went off steroids or somebody removed his feeding tube.” A buddy at work told me he heard it. I was so proud.[/ref]. And (much like this blog) hardly anyone even knew it was me who did it.

importantSo why do I write so much about a bunch of mundane memories, stories so insignificant that very often the other persons featured in them have only a vague remembrance of the events I describe? It’s partially because I have a super-inflated ego, a borderline delusional sense of my own level of importance in the world, which demands I impart upon any unwitting reader an amplified version of all the characteristics that make up my “self.”

monetBut that’s only part of the reason. It’s mainly because this music has always connected with me on a deep level. Music informs my life and helps me make sense of it. There’s a soundtrack playing inside my head while I make my way through my life and, just like a movie soundtrack, it’s full of songs that color the events and enhance my feelings. My experiences are inextricably bound to the music that plays in my head during them, so I can’t really discuss the music I love without also discussing my life events that go with that music. It would be like displaying a black and white rendering of a work by Monet: you’d get the idea, but it wouldn’t really be the same. (Given Monet’s abilities vis-a-vis mine, a closer analogy might be watching an infomercial with the sound off.)

So music is part of all aspects of my life, both the good and the bad. bagheadThis means I’ve written about some pretty unsavory characteristics of myself – or rather, my past selves. I’ve changed a lot over the years. But the music has remained with me. In these posts I’ve talked about my past problems with alcohol and self-control, my past intolerance of others and flat-out bigotry, my nerdiness, and – maybe most embarrassing of all – my love for albums that aren’t very good. However, there are parts of my life that I won’t write about. I don’t write directly about individuals in my family, or other people I know. I try to refrain from writing about how wonderful I am – I figure that will come through on its own. I’m also not going to write about sex[ref]You’re welcome.[/ref].

I’m not a prude, and consider myself pretty “sex positive,” as they say, but my thoughts on the topic are not something I want to broadcast to the world at large, nor do I think I can write well about it. However, this creates a problem for prudeme when writing about music, as music does relate to all aspects of my life, so …

A big issue with writing about sex is the fact that discussing attraction and romance in a thoughtful, respectful manner is a precarious ledge along which to travel, and as a heterosexual male, one stray word from my own personal unskilled hands could easily send the piece off a sheer cliff into a glorified version of a “Letter to Penthouse Forum[ref]Although, to be fair to myself, I probably could complete a paragraph on sex without using terms like “bodacious ta-tas” or “luscious (anything).”[/ref].” Additionally, this blog is about rock/pop music, which has always been aimed directly at the teen market. So, even songs I didn’t hear as a teen can frequently stir teenage-based thoughts and emotions, and it is simply a fact that teenage feelings of attraction are different than what adults feel. In trying to delve back into those teenage feelings and document what I find, I risk coming up with nothing more than “That chick was hot!” and “I figure I’ll never touch a breast.”

But yet, I want to write about all these records honestly.

Anyway, look: some music, and some musicians, I do associate with feelings of physical attraction, and most of those associations are from a time in my life when I was in my teens and early twenties, and – at the risk of sounding like a sexist jerk judging women like livestock at the Farm Show – even barracudathough I am now approaching 50 and no longer base my opinions of these artists (who are now approaching 70) on what they looked like, I still can remember what I once felt, and songs from that era can still generate these feelings. To boil it all down: when I hear an old song by Heart today, there’s still a part of me that thinks “Man, those two are hot!!” (To be fair to myself, there’s an even larger part that thinks, “Man, this song is awesome[ref]Pre-1982 Heart only.[/ref]!!) So I’d like to write a little bit about sex and music – without discussing sex and without sounding sexist. In only about three sentences, too, since I’ve already wasted all these words on a rambling (though not particularly digressive) caveat. I’ll be as careful as possible so I don’t drop off that cliff.

I remember being grossed out by Cher’s sexy costumes on the old Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour TV show. I was not yet 10, and whenever she came out to sing (and make fun of Sonny) with her belly exposed, or in skin-tight dresses, I was horrified. By middle school, disco music was in full swing, and despite the often blatant sexual nature of the songs, I was clueless about their meanings and didn’t think much about the general attractiveness of the singers[ref]Although I did think The Village People were cool-looking guys, and was dumbfounded by the gullibility of a friend who told me he heard they were gay.[/ref]. The middle solidgoldschool years were also the era of Blondie, a band with songs I liked but with a singer whose attractiveness – once again – I didn’t really think that much about[ref]Even though my dad clearly felt strongly about her looks. He’d always recognize their songs and ask my sisters and I, “Hey, is that Blondie?” with a certain level of interest that was never matched in any of his other very few references to the existence of rock music.[/ref]. Sometime around 8th grade, the pop-music TV showcase Solid Gold debuted, airing locally in my town just before Saturday Night Live, and it featured The Solid Gold Dancers, who … well, I’ll not venture further out onto the ledge: suffice it to say things were changing with me, and I tried not to miss an episode.

As I’ve mentioned often in this blog, MTV was a big turning point in my musical appreciation. It launched in August of 1981, coinciding with mtvmy freshman year of high school – which was right about the time I also started noticing things about girls and women (including The Solid Gold Dancers) that I’d never considered before. In those early MTV years, the channel played songs I liked sung by women who were cute, but that I didn’t find particularly attractive. They also played songs I didn’t particularly like sung by women I found rather … captivating, let’s say. There were also a few videos of songs by women that my 14 year old self just couldn’t fit into its tiny little concept of men and women and attraction – even though – confusingly – I found them rather attractive just because they were making music.

And then there was Chrissie Hynde, of The Pretenders.
pretenders_1
The Pretenders had several videos in rotation on MTV in 1981 and 1982, and all of them featured lots of shots of the band playing, including leader Chrissie Hynde strumming that guitar and singing. To that point in my life, I could have easily pointed out girls and women that I considered “pretty,” but Chrissie Hynde didn’t look like those people. She wasn’t ugly, but she seemed tough and dangerous, like she didn’t give a damn whether I thought she was pretty or not. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And she played that guitar, and sang so sweetly, but at times with such force and such emotion, on lyrics that were direct, not demure, that were at times shocking to a naive 14-year old boy from small town Pennsylvania.

The band’s biggest hit video to that point was “Brass In Pocket,” andwaitress it featured Hynde acting as a waitress in a diner, serving the rest of the band members and their girlfriends. I hated that video. I didn’t want to see her act, I wanted to see her SING and PLAY! When she acted, she was just another person on TV. When she sang and played, she was CHRISSIE HYNDE. I found her compelling, but I couldn’t really explain why. I’d figure it out soon enough.

Chrissie Hynde has always been the leader of The Pretenders: chief songwriter, singer, and rhythm guitarist. The band has had some tragic setbacks, including firing original bassist Pete Farndon in 1982 due to heroin abuse, followed two days later by original guitarist James Honeyman-Scott’s death from a cocaine overdose[ref]Hynde wrote the lovely “2000 Miles” about his death.[/ref]. Farndon himself died a year later. The band has had lots of lineup changes, but Chrissie Hynde has always been there. And the album Pretenders had the first, and most memorable, lineup.

64 mustangThis was another album that I originally found in my oldest sister’s collection – however not in the milk crate full of vinyl, where I discovered so many other records. Pretenders was on a cassette she owned. I had seen it but hadn’t played it, until dawned on me one day that this was the band I’d fallen in lust with on MTV. Then I played it a lot. I also have a memory of listening to it with my sister while she drove me around in her sweet ’64 red mustang. She eventually moved to California and took the cassette with her, but she sent me a copy for a birthday present.

The album immediately announces itself, and Chrissie Hynde, with the raucous and raunchy “Precious.”

Four drum stick clicks, a little background chatter and that driving guitar riff begins. chrissie guitar 2The bass kicks in around 10 seconds, and the band is off and flying. Hynde’s voice is tough but sweet on a song that doesn’t really have much of a melody, and at times is almost a rap. If you’ve read Hynde’s recent autobiography, you know that she had a pretty violent life as a young woman in Cleveland, associating with biker gangs and doing way too many drugs. “Precious” is about her escape from Cleveland; while others stayed, as she states in one of the most famous “f-bombs” in rock history, she had to “fuck off.” The Pretenders’ songs often have unconventional structures and time signatures, and “Precious” doesn’t hew to the typical “verse-chorus-bridge” pop song format, but just charges ahead. It’s fast and direct, and James Honeyman-Scott’s guitar is unusual, with effects such as the flanging, featured at 0:44. It’s a perfect first song for a first album.

“The Phone Call” is up next, and it’s got an unusual sound, too.

For one thing, it’s in the time signature of 7/4 (withchambers an extra 6/4 measure before the chorus (if you will)) which is odd enough, but switches to 4/4 (with stray 2/4 bars every fourth bar, for good measure [ref]Get it? Ha! Anyway …[/ref]) in the instrumental section. It all creates a cool, noisey, aggressive sound within which all those extra beats are barely noticeable. This is a testament to excellent drummer Martin Chambers, who handles it all with no problem whatsoever. I never knew what the barely audible, again mostly melody-less vocals were singing about, but I believe they are also about Hynde having to get the hell out of Cleveland to save her life. It’s evidence of the band’s, and Hynde’s confidence, that she’d place two such unusual songs 1-2 on the first record. It makes a listener wonder what’s coming next. And next up are two songs that have always blown me away.

The first is “Up the Neck.” And it features the inimitable guitar sounds of James Honeyman-Scott.

His guitar riff alarm opens “Up The Neck,” and after 10 seconds he begins to play ascending notes that draw me right into the song. Pete Farndon’s simple, catchy bass joins Hynde’s vocals and by 22 seconds in, jamesa perfect guitar pop song is under way. While she’s singing about what sounds to be a one night stand that turns violent, Honeyman-Scott’s guitar continues to produce little chiming flourishes that are unmistakably his, and unmistakably cool. Honeyman-Scott is one of those guitar players with a sound all his own, who you can identify simply by listening. Others in this category are Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, and Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsay Buckingham. At 1:15, when the ascending riff returns, he adds even more curlicues to it. It’s the perfect complement to Hynde’s sweet and aggressive (and suggestive: “the veins bulged on his … brow …”) vocals. He plays a coolly simple solo, as well. It’s a song I always listen to with enthusiasm that is only eclipsed on the album by the next song: “Tattooed Love Boys.”

I probably overuse the term “chiming” to describe a certain sound a guitar can make, but it perfectly describes Honeyman-Scott’s chrissieguitarguitar riff on this song. His chimes begin a charging, aggressive song with snarling vocals and a crazy time signature of either 15/4, or 7/4 + [2 x 4/4] (if there’s a difference). That time signature gives the song a hiccuping, rough-edged sound that makes it far more compelling than it would be in a typical time signature, and Chambers again shines behind the drums. The extended guitar section, from about 1:18 to about 2:11, with its stops and starts and one-measure guitar solos, never fails to astonish me. I feel like I could happily listen to this song on a continuous loop.

One of the great aspects of early MTV was how the channel would reward a viewer for watching in long chunks of time. You knew that if you just watched long enough, and sat through enough bullshit and goofy crap (terms I use endearingly, as I enjoyed the bullshit and goofy crap, too) you’d get to see a a video you loved. For me, “Tattooed Love Boys” was such a video. And it wasn’t played frequently, so I had to watch a lot. (I HAD TO!) pretenders_2This video, with the band covered in sweat and manhandling their instruments, drove me crazy. It wasn’t just the playing: much of my fervor was due to Hynde’s performance – her wielding that guitar, dancing and moving, her voice, openly singing about a crazy, rough sexual experience involving what sounded like several men, in which she seemed to brag about, and take delight in, her role. In her recent autobiography, she has deflated my (and I hope everyone’s) fascination with the what-sounded-sexy-back-then lyrics by revealing that the song actually described a brutal gang rape by a group of bikers she thought were her friends, including a boyfriend. It’s still one of my all-time favorite songs, but I hear it differently now.

“The Wait” is another song that floors me every time, again with the crazy time signature, again one of my all-time favorites.

This is a song sung at a furious pace, with Hynde spitting out peteunintelligible lyrics about, well, something, I guess, scratching guitars in the verse, and a terrific walking bass line in the chorus by the under-appreciated Pete Farndon. At 1:47 a quiet, sultry bridge begins, then at 2:14 empties into another excellent guitar solo from Honeyman-Scott, finished off with Hynde’s grunt of approval at 2:47. It’s a song that makes me bounce around whenever I hear it.

Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders don’t just play the crazy-rhythmed, furious punk songs. They also manage the typical pop song quite nicely, as evidenced by the wonderful “Kid.”

Along with great harmony vocals and a driving beat, what I love about this song is – once again – Honeyman-Scott’s incredible solo at 1:35, culminating in a lovely harmonic, and backed by Chambers’s tribal drums. pretenders 3The band also covers The Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing,” and serve up their big hit, “Brass In Pocket,” both excellent, straightforward pop pearls. There’s also the instrumental, video game-inspired “Space Invader,” featuring sounds from the old arcade game recorded when it was a newfangled thing! The songs “Private Life” and “Lovers of Today” are a pair that I never loved (although, as always, the guitar work in “Private Life” is top-notch) but tolerated so that I could get to the last song.

“Mystery Achievement.”

It’s a perfect song to end an incredible album. The drums and bass get the song pumping, and soon enough Hynde is singing mysterious lyrics and Honeyman-Scott is throwing in his signature sounds. At 3:00 the band plays an extended instrumental section, with echoing drums and guitars and then an incredibly cool solo that pulls out at 4:23 and breaks into a nifty, ringing two-note riff behind the chrissie2vocals. It’s a song that demands repeated listening, and leaves the listener exhausted but satisfied by the very end.

Some lyrics from that last song, “Every day/ every nighttime I find/ Mystery Achievement/ you’re on my mind,” begin to describe what it’s like when you’re 13, 14, somewhere around that age, and you start to recognize something, some thing, you’ve never recognized before, even though you feel it must have been there all along. Maybe it was a face that inspired it, or a body, or a movie. For me, it was a singer in a band. I couldn’t explain it then, I can’t explain it now. The only thing I know for sure about it – even after all these years – is that it led me to a tremendous rock and roll record.

Track Listing
“Precious”
“The Phone Call”
“Up The Neck”
“Tattooed Love Boys”
“Space Invader”
“The Wait”
“Stop Your Sobbing”
“Kid”
“Private Life”
“Brass In Pocket”
“Lovers Of Today”
“Mystery Achievement”

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