40 Years: The Complete Singles Collection (1966-2006)
(Collectors' Choice Music)
US release date: 25 November 2008
By Charles A. Hohman
15 May 2009
Tommy James would like you to know he's still alive, and he kept
making music long after you stopped caring. Instead of loading his
latest, supposedly definitive anthology with out-of-print album cuts
and forgotten B-sides from his Shondells heyday (bait for those who
still like to crank up "I Think We're Alone Now" or "Mony Mony"), he
has sanctioned a career-spanning "singles collection" that tracks his
excruciatingly slow, apparently reluctant and quite well-deserved
retreat into has-been land.
Thus, 40 Years: The Complete Singles Collection does a disservice to
a first-rate American bubblegum-pop singer, rivaled in his era only
by Mark Lindsay and arguably the teenage Alex Chilton. Though billed
to Tommy James and the Shondells, only 19 of the compilation's 48
cuts predate James' solo career, and for an act inextricably linked
to the '60s, the vast majority of the music was released after 1970.
Furthermore, every song on the first disc made Billboard's Hot 100;
only four cuts from the second disc did likewise.
On paper, such a disjointed compilation seems laughably excessive and
quite inessential, but ultimately harmless. For anybody slogging his
way through disc two, hearing James' sleepwalk his way through
faceless MOR drivel too airily tame for even your dentist's office,
it's an utter travesty, full of songs not just forgettable but often
unlistenable. Its best track, a cover of Gary Glitter's "I Love You
Love Me Love", drains the song of its irony, even striking those
all-important commas and sanitizing glam-rock years before the Bay
City Rollers did (with far less-resistible results). Taken in
totality, 40 Years illustrates a pop star's fall from grace, too
focused on that elongated (not to mention boring) fall rather than
the brief-but-exhilarating grace.
So what the hell happened? How was the snotty, lecherous teen
smirking and strutting his way through "Hanky Panky", the dramatic
lothario of "Mirage" and the guy who revisits his first orgasm ("You
make me feel…soooo….good") in the chorus of "Mony Mony" reduced to
just another yacht-rocking MOR drone? Simply put, Tommy James was a
great singer, but he was never much of a songwriter, and therein lies
the problem. Like most great bubblegum acts, the Shondells were
puppets, and producer-songwriter team Ritchie Cordell and Bo Gentry
were the Henson-and-Oz of the teen-pop sugar rush, churning out
lively bursts of super-melodic teenage kicks. They fitted these
assembly-line confections for James' almost-gritty voice, a
pleasantly impassioned instrument with the just the right hints of
rebellion for kids not ready for soul or blues.
These numbers succeed not just as vocals or compositions, but as
records full of intense atmospherics and what-the-hell kitchen-sink
flourishes: the palpitating bassline of "I Think We're Alone Now"
echoing the collectively beating hearts of teenage America, the
spatial chaos of "Mony Mony" and the tremolo vocal effects on
"Crimson and Clover". At his best, James was a garage rocker (the
verses of "Hanky Panky" were improvised, and the record took two
years and a lot of fortuitous coincidences to become a hit) turned
pop star. He brought his Nuggets soul to Peter Noone's fanbase, and
while it lasted, it was great for all parties involved.
Like so many big-headed performers, drunk on pride and plaudits,
James' ego began to exceed his talent, and he eventually parted ways
with Cordell and Gentry. No longer did he add his exhilarated rasp to
stellar-bubblegum tunes. He was now an artist, one both enamored and
firmly out of step with the late '60s zeitgeist. "Crystal Blue
Persausion" is a second-hand approximation of psychedelia from a guy
too scared to down the heavy drugs. "Sweet Cherry Wine" is a
gospel-tinged peace-and-love song, vaguely political, vaguely
religious, too commercial to be anything but vague. And while the
world was becoming a ball of confusion, James was extolling some
benevolent ball of fire in the sky watching over you and I.
His records were still reliably melodic (though never as indelible as
"I Think We're Alone Now") and surprisingly rhythmic: The
galloping-cowpoke groove of "Gotta Get Back to You", the plummeting
drums of "Do Something to Me" and the testifying horns of "Chuch
Street Soul Revival" all beg to be sampled. However, his lyrics were
consistently terrible: too often preachy and overly serious, unaware
of their own sheepish nonsensicality. He sells his shallow words as
if they offer deep psychic insight, and it's enough to make you miss
the red-faced kid running as he fast as he could from those busybody
adults who just didn't get young love, man.
As the '70s wore on, and James dropped the by-now ceremonial
Shondells from his billing, the music only got worse: the records
less sonically compelling, the vocals more tired and rudimentary and
the songs duller and more cliché-ridden. James cut a couple
low-charting CCM numbers that offer some muted excitement ("Nothin'
to Hide", "I'm Comin' Home"), glimpses of a
more-fruitful-but-unheeded career path that would more effectively
use his talents and interests. Lite-radio staples "Sweet Cherry Wine"
and "Crystal Blue Persuasion" hint at that spirituality; one that
draws influence from gospel and CCM, but James is as much businessman
as Christian, so his religious songs remain vague, addressing a "you"
that could just as likely be a woman as a deity.
Instead, James remained a pop slave. He co-wrote "Tighter, Tighter",
the one hit for studio conceit Alive & Kicking. James' version is so
labored that it actually leaves you fondly recalling Alive & Kicking.
So inept was his '80s material that he couldn't even capitalize on
the comeback potential of '60s nostalgia (The Wonder Years,
mass-produced tie-dye) and a string of hit covers, from Joan Jett to
Billy Idol to Tiffany. This should have been resounding proof that
the Shondells' hits were more about the songs than the singer.
But of course, Tommy James is no quitter; he's not even one to take a
hint. He persevered for the next couple decades with increasingly
insignificant blandness, even revisiting "Sweet Cherry Wine" with a
generic gospel choir and hollow over-production. Instead of taking a
God-bless-him-for-trying approach, the 40 Years liner notes (by Ed
Osborne and Martin Fitzpatrick) stress that James' 2004 singles were
top-ten Adult Contemporary hits (not on Billboard charts, mind you,
but the relatively obscure FMQB airplay charts, though even that
claim is suspect).
The compilation closes with the collector-baiting "Long Ponytail", a
disheveled 1962 recording by a 15-year-old James and his then band,
Tom and the Tornadoes. It's immediate, joyous, urgent and happily
imperfecteverything James' post-Shondells material was not. Such is
the life of a bubblegum pop singer, even a great one: Maturity proves
to be his artistic downfall.
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment