Witty songwriter’s second volume of self covers
Vaughn is most widely known for his compositional contributions to television’s “3rd Rock From the Sun” and “That ’70s Show,” and from well-known covers of his songs by Marshall Crenshaw (“I’m Sorry (But So is Brenda Lee)”) and The Morells (“The Man Who Has Everything”). Liner note readers will also recognize his name from production work he’s performed for an array of artist that spans Charlie Feathers, Arthur Alexander, Ween, and Los Straitjackets. Ironically, his own carefully rendered recordings, starting with 1985’s The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn and running through 2006’s Designs in Music mostly remain the province of dedicated fans. His ’80s and ’90s releases with the Ben Vaughn Combo are a treasure trove of ’60s style, clever lyrics, droll vocals, AM radio hooks and, ultimately, a surprising amount of emotion for a songwriter whose tongue is usually found in his cheek.
This 2008 volume is the third in a series documenting Vaughn’s quixotic journey to cover all his own songs. Included are songs he’s recorded himself, songs he’s given to others, and a sprinkle of songs that never made it to commercial release. In addition to the time-shift of a mature songwriter reconsidering his earlier works, the use of a single band (Vaughn’s current working group, the Ben Vaughn Desert Classic) lends coherence to these songs that an anthology of their original versions couldn’t deliver. Vaughn’s revisited material in the past, reworking a few songs for 1992’s Mood Swings that he felt hadn’t previously reached their full potential, but never has he taken such a methodical tour of his own catalog. This time out he appears to resurrect a number of previously unreleased tunes from his songwriter’s notebook, alongside a few from late ’80s and early ’90s albums.
Most familiar to Vaughn fans will be a pair of songs from 1988’s Blows Your Mind (“Charlene” and “Darlene,” the latter also covered by the A-Bones), and tracks from 1990’s Dressed in Black (“New Wave Dancing”) and 1992’s Mood Swings (“I Dig Your Wig”). Compared back-to-back, there are some notable changes in arrangement (such as the muted trumpet solo on “I Dig Your Wig”), but the general thrust of the songs remains the same. One can imagine most of these incremental changes accumulated over years of performing the songs live. The newly rediscovered tunes include playful tap-dancing blues, Sir Douglas-styled organ rave-ups, twangy Americana, some jaunty wallowing in “Help Me” and “Self Pity,” and Leonard Cohen-styled deadpan monotone in “Bring Back the Night.”
Given the wealth of previously unknown titles, this is closer to a new album than the first two volumes in the series, which makes it a real draw for fans. As an introduction to Vaughn, it doesn’t measure up to the previous editions or earlier classics Three volumes into the project the remakes are starting to feel more like a vision quest for Vaughn than new revelations for listeners. It’s disappointing that the liner notes don’t explain Vaughn’s march through his catalog. Why these songs in this order? Where did the new titles come from? How has his approach to the older songs changed over time? There’s more here than the auteur is explaining. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com] 