Randy Newman
Good Old Boys

Every now and then, it is good and right to add to the collection of chatter about some of Randy Newman's albums, still scarcely represented on this site.

I will be brief, without repeating myself with compliments and admiration for Californian Randy: so what is good in this 1974 work, the fourth of his discography? It's that this time he takes aim (good-naturedly, ironically, melancholically as per his character) at the prevailing narrow-mindedness in the southern states of the US… Titles like "Rednecks", "Louisiana 1927", "A Wedding in Cherokee County" are explanatory in this regard.

But nice jabs are also directed at the "northerners," guilty of hypocrisy because, for example, they wanted the niggers free, yes, but only to stay caged in their ghettos, like Harlem in NYC, Roxbury in Boston, and so on. It gives me satisfaction to read in the lyrics and hear from Newman's mouth this word, nigger, which for the past few decades has undergone ridiculously radical ostracism, still very much alive. What's wrong with calling a person of color a "negro"? Who decided that this was highly offensive, forcing everyone to switch to that much more generic "black," referring to a color? In 1974, "negro" could still be said freely, and Randy Newman sings this now-neglected word in "Rednecks," one of his favorite compositions, which, however, he avoids performing today, precisely because of the lyrics. "Woman is the nigger of the world…" sang Lennon, "Siamo i Watussi gli altissimi negri" chirped Edoardo Vianello, and Fausto Leali echoed with "Signore, sono un povero negro…", today it's not okay! What a nonsense…

Those to whom Randy Newman's music is boring (I've named the best parts of the album anyway) should at least read the lyrics, truly touching, clever, of absolute level, especially for those who have a decent idea of how people think in the United States, a nation profoundly and viscerally different from us in everything, not just in eating and the obsession with baseball and weapons, and this despite the eighty years of… ahem… colonialism towards us.

With his disenchantment, his intelligence, his quiet pianism, his arrangements in the style of the fifties and sixties, namely those orchestrations we are accustomed to associating with the soundtracks of "telefoni bianchi" films (music often composed by his family members, uncles and great-uncles… Randy descends from a family of Los Angelino Morricones!), Newman is not for everyday listening, doesn't work as background to work, house chores, or whatever: one must immerse themselves, concentrate a little, lyrics in hand and be open to sounds not at all rock and decidedly pre-Sixties.

Once you get in sync, it's enjoyment and admiration. Then, after two records, you get tired and return to Led Zeppelin, fine, but this man and his musical things are unique and very interesting.