Auto Tune: “Crawling from the Wreckage” by Dave Edmunds
April 29th, 2015 at 3:00pm
Driving, riding, roads and of course cars themselves have all been immortalized by writers, composers and musicians around the world. Auto Tune is our way to spotlight a unique transportation song to celebrate these “ridden” gems along with the artists or composers who crafted them. Some you may know, many we’re sure you don’t.
Disco might’ve been ruling the roost in 1979 but that didn’t stop new wave artists from making their impact felt. Super producer Nick Lowe teamed up with pub rocker Dave Edmunds to form the group Rockpile which not only issued its own album but the same team of musicians played on Lowe’s “Labor of Lust” record as well as Edmunds’ “Repeat When Necessary,” the home of this week’s Auto Tune.
Dave Edmunds was an incredible guitarist however not much of a songwriter. He relied on his contemporaries like Elvis Costello and Graham Parker for that sort of heavy lifting. In fact, Parker wrote “Crawling From The Wreckage
All this background info is fine but the reason “Crawling from the Wreckage” is this week’s Auto Tune is because it’s a full-throttle no holds barred sing-a-long about driving. Kind of a theme song for the Fast and Furious crowd.
- Chip Drake, Executive Producer, Autoline
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Sometimes great “Auto Tunes” have strange origins. Take the Albert Hammond story for instance. Who, you ask? Well if you don’t know the name you certainly know his work. He had a top five hit in the early ‘70s that’s still in heavy rotation on the oldies stations with “
” co-written with fellow Brit Mike Hazelwood. They also teamed up with “
” which was a hit for The Hollies. But perhaps this pop singer’s strangest collaboration came when he co-wrote a couple of songs with unquestionably the greatest lyricist of all time Hal David. One song, “
,” made Julio Iglesias a household name – and plenty of money — while the other is this week’s Auto Tune.
” appeared on Hammond’s 1975 album of the same name but never generated the attention he hoped. That same year, however, Art Garfunkel released “Breakaway,” a star-studded disc that contained not only with his duet with former partner Paul Simon (“My Little Town”), but also his cover of “I Only Have Eyes for You.” But in addition to those hits, tucked away toward the end of Side 2 was the Hammond/David tune, which on its face sounded like a simple drive to Los Angeles, but in fact was, and remains, a hauntingly beautiful understated song about the evanescence of love. The Albert Hammond score married with Hal David’s heartbreaking lyrics sung by Garfunkel — one of the greatest voices to ever record music — is a treasure to enjoy over and over again. Especially if someday you find yourself on the 5, 10 or 405 as you’re driving around Southern California.
You may remember the band from its angst-ridden ‘80s hit “
.” You might recognize the band from its brief appearance in the John Hughes blockbuster “Pretty in Pink.” Then again, perhaps you’ve heard the founder and lead singer, Jimmer Podrasky, is the cousin to our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts.
.” Yes, it was sort of an ‘80s anti-version of one of those epic 1960s Cali cars songs complete with the rather rough harmonies (on purpose) and even a nod to the Beach Boys’ 409, though that song never asked “Do you have a buck for gas?”
