As you know, I took a little trip last week and while I drove, I listened to Ben Folds and Nick Hornby's new album, Lonely Avenue. It's quite lovely. Not lovely in the sweet and adorable sense, lovely in the sense that these are real song gems and there are little surprises in each one. Each one tells a story, each one could be a novel on its own and the music is simply wonderful. I really wish someone would turn Lonely Avenue into a movie with vignettes with each song. Hollywood — get on that.
One of these songs, "Doc Pomus" got stuck in my head and there was something recognizable about it and the more I listened to it, I realized I knew the name Pomus as a songwriter.
Listen to this as you read.
I went to the Wikipedia and searched "Doc Pomus" to find out why I knew that name, only to find out he wrote some of the biggest hits of the last half century.
From his wiki:
Using the stage name "Doc Pomus", Felder began performing as a teenager, becoming a white blues singer. In the 1950s, Pomus started songwriting to make more money to support a family, as he had married. By 1957, Pomus had given up performing in order to devote himself full-time to songwriting. He collaborated with pianist Mort Shuman to write for Hill & Range Music Co./Rumbalero Music at its offices in New York City's Brill Building. Their songwriting efforts had Pomus write the lyrics and Shuman the melody, although quite often they worked on both. They wrote the hit songs: "A Teenager in Love"; "Save The Last Dance For Me"; "Hushabye"; "This Magic Moment"; "Turn Me Loose"; "Sweets For My Sweet" (a hit for the Drifters and then the Searchers); "Go Jimmy Go", "Can't Get Used to Losing You"; "Little Sister"; "Suspicion"; "Surrender"; "Viva Las Vegas"; "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame".
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pomus also wrote several songs with Phil Spector: "Young Boy Blues"; "Ecstasy"; "Here Comes The Night"; "What Am I To Do?"; Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber: "Young Blood" and "She's Not You", and other Brill Building-era writers. Pomus also wrote "Lonely Avenue", which became a 1956 hit for Ray Charles.[6]
It also says Pomus had polio as a boy and was confined to a wheelchair in later life and reference Folds and Hornby's song and the lyric they paraphrased from Doc Pomus’ uncompleted memoir, February 21, 1984: I was never one of those happy cripples who stumbled around smiling and shiny-eyed, trying to get the world to cluck its tongue and shake its head sadly in my direction. They’d never look at me and say, “What a wonderful, courageous fellow.”
Now, that's a song.
From Pomus to another writer/songwriter, Nick Hornby, "Working Day" must some up what every writer working today thinks: some guy on the net thinks I suck and he should know, he's got his own blog.
Take a listen if there are no kids in the room. It's a short one.
I kinda love that.
I also really love "Password." It's a thoroughly modern slow-jam about how well you know someone by how you know their passwords and the quirky things you know about people. And not everyone can work "you have a thing for David Blaine" into a song. That's brilliant.
One more. One that a lot of you will be able to identify with. "Claire's Ninth" is the story of Claire's 9th birthday and her parent's divorce, from her perspective and the parents'. The melody is fantastic and the lyrics are sincere and telling.
I bet half of you reading have been in Claire's shoes, having two birthdays. I happened to me as a thirty year-old, but I can identify.
So, combined with last week's Tunes Tuesday that's almost all the songs on Lonely Avenue. And I promise I won't write about Ben Folds for at least a week. Maybe.
P.S. I wasn't going to put up "Picture Window" because it's a sad song, but everyone goes through pain and you never know who may be reading and may be dealing with pain and needs to know they're not alone. Pain is hard, pain is miserable and these lyrics are from a place of hurt, hurt that comes through in the song. As I've said before, it takes talent to write music that makes you feel. A lot of people can write a hit song, but not all of them can make you think or make you feel. That's truly something.
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