{"id":5303,"date":"2019-08-02T10:07:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T10:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terenceblacker.com\/New\/?p=5303"},"modified":"2021-02-25T13:08:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T13:08:23","slug":"friday-song-dan-hicks-bottoms-up-1994","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terenceblacker.com\/New\/friday-song-dan-hicks-bottoms-up-1994\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Song: Dan Hicks, BOTTOMS UP (1994)"},"content":{"rendered":"

How did I miss Dan Hicks? His seductive blend of gypsy jazz and bluegrass, his cool and sassy lyrics, his bloody-minded determination not to fit it into any particular genre\u00a0 – all of that is tailor-made for me. Yet, until a couple of years ago, he was no more than a fringe figure to me. i discovered his songs, and how much I liked them, at around about the time he died, aged 74, from liver cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I blame Paris. I lived there briefly in the early 1970s and missed out on a number of interesting but short-lived songwriters (Steve Goodman, Gram Parsons, Judee Sill) who were emerging in that golden age of the singer-songwriter.<\/p>\n

Hicks was briefly quite a big star\u00a0 – he was a\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em>\u00a0 cover story twice – but in around 1974 he drove his career off the road. His group Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks had been cool and sexy enough as a live act (the two girl singers were knows as The Lickettes) and his mock-cowboy persona, a precursor of our own Hank Wangford,\u00a0 had disguised the fact that the music they played – what Hicks called ‘folk swing’\u00a0 –\u00a0 was out of step with pretty much everything that was fashionable at the time.<\/p>\n

The YouTube clips from that time<\/a> show a great band playing good-time music – but the good times have not reached their eyes. One journalist has described Hicks’ on-stage persona as ‘exploring the edgy no-man’s-land between jokes and insult’ and reviews from the time make it clear which of those two territories was the more occupied. A 1974 San Francisco Chronicle\u00a0<\/em> review had the\u00a0 headline ‘INSULTS, SARCASM, RUDENESS’.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To judge by a Rolling Stone<\/em> feature of the time<\/a>, the band’s final implosion was caused by a toxic combination of bad management, ego, booze and, above all, a serious attack of the disease familiar to many rocks stars, painintheassitis.<\/p>\n

Hicks was a boozer and, as he said, ‘couldn’t handle success – the little I had’. After a decade and a half of self-destruction, including a couple of stays in the Old Rehab Hotel, he re-emerged in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

His new band The Acoustic Warriors were terrific musicians and between them they produced a sound that is unlike any other band I know. What I would have give to seem them performing, as in these clips,\u00a0 ‘Shootin’ Straight’ \u00a0<\/a>or the wonderful ‘Savin’ My Lovin”<\/a><\/p>\n

My favourite Dan Hicks CD is, unusually for me, a live performance recorded in at McCabes Guitar Shop in Los Angeles – Shootin’ Straight (1994). <\/em><\/a>\u00a0 Sensibly, the producer included on the CD some of Dan Hicks’ funny, mock-formal introductions to the songs. Edging his way\u00a0 into ‘Bottoms Up’, he says:<\/p>\n

‘Now we have a ballad from the lady’s point of view\u00a0 – a kind of cocktail-hour ballad. We have the young lady sitting at the bar in the middle of the afternoon, sipping at a mint julep or something – a Rob Roy, perhaps. She’s feeling a little tipsy\u00a0 – she’s kind of mildly shit-faced. We have her song now – she’s talking out loud and don’t really care to who…’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a song with a woozy, unfocussed\u00a0 – in fact, mildly shit-faced\u00a0 –\u00a0 vibe.<\/p>\n

‘They raised my rent just yesterday<\/em><\/p>\n

And my house is fallen down.<\/em><\/p>\n

My little pup went out for a walk<\/em><\/p>\n

And I found her in the pound.’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By giving it a female narrator (something I also like), Dan Hicks distances it from his own experience of booze and gives the song\u00a0 another, more interesting story.<\/p>\n

‘My car won’t start but it’s all right<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Cos I’ll be soon in gear.<\/em><\/p>\n

And lighten up on the chatter, dudes,<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll pull you in, I’m in the mood…’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s all here – the cool chords, the great melody line, the sound of a gypsy jazz guitar, and wonderful, conversational lyrics –<\/p>\n

‘I don’t mind drinking\u00a0 on my own,<\/em><\/p>\n

If there’s moves to be made, I’ll make ’em on my own.’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a lesser-known Dan Hicks song and this audio version of a live performance is the only one I can find.<\/p>\n

(I’m aware that this is the second Friday Song with alcohol as it theme\u00a0 –\u00a0 that’s a coincidence, not a cry for help.)<\/p>\n