Ryan Adams: "Kim" (2014)

Ryan Adam's album called Ryan Adams is excellent and there are many nice cuts on the album. "Gimme Something Good", "Am I Safe", and "My Wrecking Ball" are all worth owning. According to Adams, he couldn't come up with a name for the album so just left it at his name. Years from now many people are going to mistake this work as his first album. This is the first all Ryan Adams produced album recorded in his home studio in L.A.

But back to the music...after listening to the album quite a few times, the staff at Monahan's Song keep coming back to his cut "Kim." The guitar work is crisp and clean and feels very original. The song really grabs you when the drums kick in. Don't look too much for clever lyrics on this one. The words convey an immediate and not thought out expression of pain and abandonment. This person who has lost Kim has not sat down and thought this all through yet:

I can't sleep, can't let go
Underneath my feet it's miles
Nothing, there's nowhere to go
With this key, scratched into my arm
I spell out your name, it's ringing in my head
Like a false alarm
As the leaves begin to fall and grey
Walking down the street I watched you walk away
To be with him
Kim, Kim, Kim
Oh Kim!

Parts of this song remind us of a more lilting version of "Allison Road" by the Gin Blossoms (written by Robin Wilson), which was featured in Monahan's Song on 9/11/13.

Our research finds that none other than Johnny Depp does some lead on this track. Listen for it at about 2:20 into the video below. He has played on stage live playing "Kim" several times with Adams.

We are not going to do better than Wiki's bio for Adams :
David Ryan Adams (born November 5, 1974) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and producer. He is best known for his prolific solo career, and as a former member of alternative country band Whiskeytown, with whom he recorded three studio albums.

In 2000, Adams left Whiskeytown and released his first solo album, Heartbreaker, to critical acclaim. The album was nominated for the Shortlist Music Prize. In 2001, Adams released the UK certified-gold Gold, which included the hit single, "New York, New York".

He released five albums with the rock band The Cardinals and in 2009 Adams married singer-songwriter and actress Mandy Moore. Adams left The Cardinals and announced that he was taking a break from music. He resumed performing in October 2010 and released his thirteenth studio album, Ashes & Fire, on October 11, 2011.^[4] The album peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200. In September 2014, Adams released his fourteenth album Ryan Adams on his PAX AM label.

So while "Gimme Something Good" is already the song leading in play from this album, we highly recommend "Kim".  Give it a listen. 

Mongo Santamaria: " Watermelon Man" (1963), Herbie Hancock: "Watermelon Man" (1962) (1973)

                                                       Herbie Hancock

Here is the story of a great instrumental that changed three times and has been covered by over 200 artists!

According to an article by Mike Hobart:

When the American pianist Herbie Hancock was composing the soul jazz classic “Watermelon Man” for his 1962 Blue Note debut album Takin’ Off, he realised that he had presented himself with a problem.

On the one hand, the then 22-year-old wanted to mesh experiences from his own life into his work, and the rolling, rackety sound of a watermelon seller’s horse-drawn wagon doing the rounds of Hancock’s Chicago South Side 1940s childhood was a powerful memory refracted into the tune’s core.

On the other, the image of a grinning piccaninny happy with his watermelon slice was then a horribly dominant racist caricature, and in the rising civil rights temperature of the times Hancock knew the song could misfire.

“So . . . I asked myself two questions,” Hancock later recalled in his autobiography, Possibilities. “Is there anything wrong with watermelons? No. Is there anything inherently wrong with the watermelon man? No . . . By naming my song ‘Watermelon Man’, I wanted to reclaim the image.”

Herbie was asked to fill in for Chick Corea who was leaving Mongo Santamaria's band. and according to Hancock: "Donald Byrd came to one of the gigs and Donald had a conversation with Mongo about the link between African American music and Afro-Cuban music since the roots from Africa were pretty much the same. And Donald asked me to play the song Watermelon Man. So I started playing it and Mongo said, keep playing it. So then he got up on the conga drums. Soon as he started playing, that Afro-Cuban sound fit like a hand in a glove. And one by one, the people in the supper club who had been sitting at the tables talking, one by one, they got up. Pretty soon they were all dancing and screaming."

                                                      Mongo Santamaria

Watermelon Man was released as a single from Herbie's first album Takin' Off. The album did not chart, but the single reached #121. His 1973 remake contained on the now famous Chameleon album never charted.

Mongo's Album charted at #63 in 1963. This version of Watermelon went to #10 in the Hot 100, #8 in R & B Singles, and peaked at #3 on the Adult Contemporary charts.

In the opinion of Monahan's Song's staff, we love Herbies original but, nobody remembers hearing it growing up. "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck, yes. "The In Crowd" by Ramsey Lewis? Sure! But mostly we all remember the Mongo Santamaria version which got constant play on mega radio stations like WABC in New York.

As for the 1973 remake of the song on Herbie's celebrated album Chameleon, the synth does not hold up and as stated before, we prefer the original. Another problem is that it takes 1:40 into the song before the slightest hint of a melody shows up.

But decide for yourself. Here are all three versions for your consideration and enjoyment: