Day After Day #274: Girls Talk

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Girls Talk (1979)

Many artists have had vanity labels over the years, usually to release their own material. When Led Zeppelin was at the height of its powers in 1974, its contract with Atlantic Records expired and the band decided to start its own label, Swan Song Records. The Rolling Stones and Beatles had done similar moves a few years earlier; the idea was to release future Zeppelin albums as well as music by other artists the band liked. 

The first Swan Song releases weren't Zep-related, but the debut album by Bad Company and a new record from the Pretty Things. The label was active for a decade, ending in 1983 after Zep broke up and manager Peter Grant fell into ill health (although Swan Song is still used for re-releases of its albums). One of the artists who signed to the label in the early days was Welsh guitarist Dave Edmunds, who had been playing in bands since he was a teenager in the late '50s.

Although Edmunds was primarily known as a rockabilly artist, he also was a producer and had a big hit in 1970 with a cover of "I Hear You Knocking." He produced early '70s British pub rock acts like Brinsley Schwarz (featuring a young Nick Lowe) and Flamin' Groovies as well as blues-rockers Foghat. Edmunds released a 1972 album called Rockpile and for the tour, called his band Dave Edmunds and Rockpile; after the tour, the band split up.

In 1976, Edmunds and Lowe formed a new version of Rockpile along with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams (who had played drums in the original Rockpile); by this point, Rockpile's sound had evolved into power pop, although it also got lumped in as new wave by the late '70s. But because Edmunds had his deal with Swan Song and Lowe had his with Stiff Records (where he was in-house producer), things got a little complicated. Essentially, the band would record albums and then release them as either Lowe or Edmunds solo albums. 

One of those albums was 1979's Repeat When Necessary, which was billed to Edmunds. The album featured mostly covers, although Bremner contributed three originals, including Graham Parker's "Crawling from the Wreckage" and Hank DeVito's "Queen of Hearts" (which later became a hit for Juice Newton). The most prominent song on the album was "Girls Talk," which Elvis Costello wrote and gave to Edmunds to cover. 

It's a typically lacerating but extremely tuneful Costello composition about the emotionally damaging world of gossip. 

"There are some things/You can't cover up with lipstick and powder/Thought I heard you mention my name/Can't you talk any louder?/Don't come any closer, don't come any nearer/My vision of you can't come any clearer/Oh, I just wanna hear girls talk."

Costello and the Attractions did their own version and released it in 1980 as the B-side to their cover of "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down."

"Got a loaded imagination being fired by girls talk/It's a more or less situation inspired by girls talk/But I can't say the words you wanna hear/I suppose you're gonna have to play it by ear, right here/And now girls talk/And they wanna know how, girls talk/And they say it's not allowed, girls talk/If they say that it's so/Don't they think that I know by now?"

The Edmunds version is more upbeat than Costello's, driven by Edmunds' acoustic guitar work and vocal delivery, while Costello's take is a little more sinister. Both versions are excellent, but they just hit differently.

"But the word up on everyone's lipstick that you're dedicated/You may not be an old-fashioned girl but you're gonna get dated/Was it really murder? Were you just pretending?/Lately, I have heard you're the living end."

Edmunds' version was released in June 1979 and hit #4 on the U.K. Singles Chart; it also got to #18 in Canada, which is where I was hearing it regularly on the radio. In the U.S., the song reached #65 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Linda Ronstadt also covered the song on her 1980 new wavy album Mad Love; she also covered two other Costello songs ("Party Girl" and "Talking in the Dark"). Aimee Mann has praised the song, saying she used to cover it live, and Tegan and Sara did a version for the soundtrack of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

After the success of "Girls Talk," Edmunds and Rockpile released the first and only album under the name Rockpile with 1980's Seconds of Pleasure; Edmunds' contract with Swan Song was up so he was freed to do so. The album had a minor hit with "Teacher, Teacher" and the band ended up playing the Heatwave festival in Toronto in August 1980 in front of over 100,000 fans. But tensions between Edmunds and Lowe, mainly over Edmunds' dislike of band manager Jake Riviera, led to Rockpile splitting up in 1981.

Edmunds released four more albums in the '80s with limited success and by the '90s was essentially retired, although he joined a couple of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band tours in 1992 and 2000. He did a tour in 2007 and performed live a few times over the next couple of years. His last release was an instrumental album in 2015. 

Day After Day #94: So It Goes

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

So It Goes (1976)

When it comes to pure pop craftsmanship, you can't do much better than Nick Lowe. He's been a working musician since the late '60s, he worked as a producer on some classic early punk records (like the Damned's "New Rose"), he's had a few big hits and he's had songs that became big hits for other artists. 

Lowe got his start in 1967 with the band Kippington Lodge, which was renamed to Brinsley Schwarz a few years later. He stayed with the band until 1975, when he joined the band Rockpile as a bassist. 

In 1976, Lowe was working at Stiff Records and released the label's first single, "So It Goes." The label gave Lowe 45 pounds to make two songs working with drummer Steve Goulding of The Rumour. Lowe sang and played guitar and bass and came up with one of his best songs.

Opening with a guitar and drums flourish, Lowe launches into the first verse with his typical verbal aplomb.

"I remember one night the kid cut off his right arm/In a bid to save a bit of power/He got 50,000 watts/In a big acoustic tower/Security's so tight tonight/Oh, they're ready for a tussle/Gotta keep your backstage passes/Cause your promoter had the muscle."

Lowe's limber bass line propels the song forward to the chorus: "And so it goes/And so it goes/And so it goes/And so it goes/But where it's going no one knows."

He mixed in some swipes at geopolitical negotiations as well.

"In the tall building/Sit the head of all nations/Worthy men from Spain and Siam/All day discussions with the Russians/But they still went ahead/Now jumped up the U.S. representative/He's the one with the tired eyes/747 put him in that condition/Flyin' back from a peace-keeping mission."

Lowe packed all this into a compact 2:34, just the perfect distillation of power pop and smartass commentary. The song wasn't a huge hit, but it was voted the fifth best single of the year by the NME critics poll. Eventually, it ended up on Lowe's 1978 debut album Jesus of Cool, which was repackaged as Pure Pop for Now People in the U.S. (can't be mentioning Jesus now). The album also included "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass," which went to #7 in the U.K.

Lowe was a busy man. He produced albums for Elvis Costello, the Damned, the Rumour and Dr. Feelgood and was recording with Rockpile, who re-recorded a version of "So It Goes" (see below). Lowe and fellow Rockpile guitarist Dave Edmunds had separate recording deals, so Rockpile would essentially record albums and they would be released either under that name or as Lowe or Edmunds solo albums.

I first became aware of Lowe in 1979 when he had a top 40 hit with "Cruel to Be Kind," which was originally released when he was in Brinsley Schwarz and re-recorded with Rockpile and put on Lowe's Labour of Lust album. The same year, Elvis Costello had a big hit with "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," a song Lowe wrote in 1974 with Brinsley Schwarz. 

The '80s were also a busy time for Lowe, who continued producing for the likes of Costello, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Paul Carrick and releasing his own material. I saw him open for Costello at UNH in 1989. In the early '90s, he teamed up with Ry Cooder, John Hiatt and Jim Keltner to form the supergroup Little Village. He's continued to release new music periodically, mostly focusing on rootsier sounds, and toured with Los Straightjackets in recent years.