The Steve Reynolds Program - Ain't Got No/I Got Life
Hello, Subscribers and Looky-Loos!
It's tough to write about music. I'm not going to type out the cliched sentence, but just link to it. In the aughts, I wrote album reviews for my local paper and then for a social media site focused on music. I always struggled to expound on stuff beyond "this rocks" or "this song does not rock." I did learn that I much preferred writing reviews of albums I liked than dissing the ones I didn't. And that made me feel different than teenaged me, which I'm sure is a good thing.
If I were to do a series on my 100 worst songs, though, I'd be more than happy to rant about these two terrible tunes.
In other news, my town, state, country, and world is full of regressive maniacs. And with ultra-targeted disinformation and propaganda, they're actively fighting against progress. As two astronauts in a low budget movie said, "Shit! This ain't no good!" How do we counteract this? Does celebrating culture help? Engagement with art? Placing pamphlets under the windshield wipers of cars parked on my street Saturday? I don't know.
Anyways, here's talk about a song older than me.
Song #2
Ain’t Got No/I Got Life
By Nina Simone
Before Suzy moved to LA where I was, she mailed her CDs ahead of her. I listened to them ahead of her arrival, to reacquaint myself with my faraway girlfriend while waiting for the end of the long-distance part of our relationship. That’s when I first took in Nina Simone. This is one of the three gazillion things I thank Suzy for.
I’m not going to report on who Nina Simone was. Either you know, or you should watch the documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” as soon as possible.
Context and juxtaposition can take songs places they were never meant to go. Cover songs always intrigue, but rarely elevate a song. It takes insight and a true artist to do this.
Covering a song from a musical is very difficult to remove the context and juxtaposition. A Broadway song is tied to a character and situation, so these songs either have specific references that sound abstract when sung without setup or visual components that don’t translate outside the show. Also, that character and artifice are hard to vanquish when doing it as a straight performance.
In the musical Hair, the song “Ain’t Got No” is a sped-up litany of complaints sung by the whole cast after a less than a half-minute passage named “I’m Black.”** Among the things they ain’t got include: culture, underwear and tickets. “I Got Life” conversely brags about what they have. In the movie, Treat Williams, who may have vanilla for blood, belts it out at a fancy dinner table and, you’re not gonna believe it, ON a fancy dinner table. It’s such a corny scene you expect Margaret Dumont to gasp in shock.
So technically, this choice is two songs, so put an asterisk on my Top 100*, but in Simone’s reworking, the segue between the thematically/melodically related songs is almost imperceptible. It becomes one piece, with the litany of what one lacks followed by the defiant celebration of oneself.
Simone recorded two studio versions. There’s the one I prefer: piano, a cymbal-riding drumbeat, organ and bass backing up. The single version released as a single foretells the mid-70’s trend of loud horn charts where the coked-out players barrel through the whole way through. It all distracts from Simone’s voice too much.
The song’s intimations of Zen philosophy resonate still. After singing all the possessions she does not have, including shoes, money, class, parents, faith, land and more, she sings about what she does have, which is her body (including boobies, a change from the original line “tits”) and life. Possessions are not important and worrying about them is a heavy drag, man. Be glad for the breath, the moment. And in these moments you’re listening to a groove that could be on The Electric Company.
This version has a great moment after the music ends. Simone belts out “I got life!” and the band hits the final note. She then matter-of-factly says, “that should be good,” The producer’s voice over an intercom responds “that’s groovy.” How 1968 can you get?
*Top 101
**Complete lyrics of “I’m Black”: I'm black (I'm black)/I'm pink (I'm pink)/I'm Rinso white/I'm in-vis-i-ble.”
Addenda
Two down. Ninety-eight to go! Forward to people who like tunes. I’m going for weekly releases so I won’t pester your inbox too much.
This week’s Song I'm Mad I Forgot: MC's Act Like They Don't Know by KRS-One.