Tune Tag #8 with Mark Nash of "Joy in the Journey": Roxy Music, Esther Phillips, Neil Diamond, The Kooks, Terry Reid & More!

With a variety of links and threads, Mark and I drop the needle on a sparkling array of artists, songs, genres, and eras! "Joy in the Journey," indeed! Hop aboard the Tune Tag train!

Tag! You’re IT, Mark!

Tune Tag welcomes a shiny, new Substack entry, Joy in the Journey, and its accomplished navigator, Mark Nash! His spanking new ‘Stack can be enjoyed and subscribed to by clicking here!

According to Mark, A Joy in the Journey is “A newsletter about the joys I find or create along the way, through music, through hiking, through learning to live life on life’s terms. One song at a time, one hike at a time, one day at a time!”

Mark was born and raised in Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, and attended university in Canada starting in 1989.

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Mark: Full disclosure here: I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated to jump into the Tune Tag pool! With Brad’s encyclopedic knowledge of the music industry, and the breadth and depth of the previous entries in the Tune Tag series, I wondered how I could possibly compare.

But, it’s been so fun to watch the twists and turns in these Tune Tag journeys that I simply couldn’t resist joining in!

Mark’s Song #1 Sent to Brad: Esther Phillips, “Home is Where the Hatred Is,” 1972

My first song is a track which appears on my Spotify playlist, “My All-Time Favorite Songs,” which currently numbers a meagre 34 tracks (the bar is pretty high). “Home Is where The Hatred Is,” by Esther Phillips (who died in 1984 at age 48), is a cover version of a track originally written and released by Gil Scott-Heron as his first single in 1971 (on Flying Dutchman Records, an Atlantic/Atco affiliate).

The B-side of his single was the influential “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” inducted to the National Recording Registry in 2005. In 2021, “The Revolution…” was ranked at #258 on Rolling Stone’s “Top 500 Best Songs of All Time.” Scott-Heron died in 2011 at 62.

I’m intrigued to see where Brad might take us with his first pick, as there are quite a few ways to go. Cover songs? Songs about addiction? A nod to one of Ms. Phillips’ contemporaries? Some weird and wonderful writer, producer or contributing artist connection?

Or, perhaps even more obscurely, the link to Aretha Franklin who gave her 1972 Grammy to Phillips, who was also nominated in the “Best R&B Performance” category that year. From the Blues Foundation, Blues.org: “Aretha Franklin felt that Phillips deserved it and delivered the Grammy to her. Franklin said, ‘I gave her my Grammy because Esther was fighting personal demons, and I felt she could use encouragement. As a blues singer, she had her own thing; I wanted Esther to know that I – and the industry – supported her.’”

Brad’s Song #1 Sent to Mark: Roxy Music, “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” 1973

Mark’s Reaction: Ah, here it is! Brad’s gone with (what I assume to be) the home/heartache theme, although I wouldn’t put it past him to have another six degrees of separation link to my first pick!

I never listened to much Roxy Music growing up as they were a little before my time - Bryan Ferry’s “Slave to Love,” from his Boys and Girls solo album (his sixth) in 1985, was more in my wheelhouse and timeline.

I’d certainly never heard this song before, and as I listened to the half-spoken, half-sung monologue unfold, with an an organ droning in the background and occasional horns noodling away, I wasn’t that inspired.

In fact, at about the 2:30 mark, I was thinking, “Geez, is this song gonna do something!?!” And then at 3:06 it happens: “I blew up your body, but you blew my mind,” the guitar solo kicks in, the drums begin pounding and the sudden urgency of the song draws me in. And now there’s something new to add to my list of “new (to me) music to explore!”

Brad: You might drop a needle on Ferry’s first solo album, 1973’s These Foolish Things, Mark! I got it at the time, but I bought the import (which is what we Texans call an album released in the UK)! It had a Stateside Atlantic Records release, but this was a great example of the British vinyl being a cleaner-sounding disc than the domestic!

Brad’s rationale: Simply matching Mark’s opening lyric theme in songs separated by two years. Admittedly, though, Bryan Ferry’s arch and kitschy lyrics are no match for Scott-Heron’s harrowing treatise.

To quote the mighty Wiki: “Lyrically, the song is a sinister monologue, part critique of the emptiness of opulence, partly a love song to an inflatable doll.” Lest there be any confusion, that’s referencing the Roxy tune.

The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music in 2002 (inaccessible link) asserts that “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” is a melodic, somber composition of the narrator’s dangerous and hopeless environment, presumably of the ghetto, and how its effects take a toll on him. Scott-Heron’s lyrics demonstrate these themes of social disillusionment and hopelessness in the first verse and the chorus.

Mark’s #2 Song: “Superlungs My Supergirl," Terry Reid, 1969

So where do I go from here? As I perused the Wikipedia page for Brad’s previous song, the fact that Roxy Music performed “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” on The Old Grey Whistle Test jumped out at me. Although I was only 4 months old when that series debuted, I’ve been a huge fan since my early 20s when I came across the double-CD, The Best Of The Test, The Old Grey Whistle Test in the music collection of the father of one of my best mates.

It was a revelation! Some fantastic live performances and an introduction to a bunch of new (to me) music. So I thought, “I wonder who performed on Whistle Test when Roxy Music performed that track?” [Brad: A next-level, brilliant Tune Tag move, Mark…very well played!]

A quick ‘Net search revealed that Terry Reid was one of the performers on that April 3, 1973 episode. And that was it! When I hear the name Terry Reid, I immediately think of one song: “Superlungs My Supergirl,” written by Donovan [and recorded by him on his Barabajagal album, released August 11, 1969 on Epic Records, worldwide, except for the UK, due to a contractual dispute; Reid’s cover followed just a few weeks later…also on CBS’s Epic affiliate, but with a completely worldwide release].

Reid’s amazing voice, the driving bass line on his cover: a kickass song and an absolute masterpiece! Perhaps this is just too tenuous of a link; it will be interesting to see where Brad takes us next!