Randy Newman - Little Criminals

"Short People" was the first song I'd heard by Randy Newman when I was a kid. It was also one of those songs far too many people took at face value based on the title, who didn't even bother to listen to the song. I still remember the tempest in a tea cup and even then it was perplexing. Dang, even Billy Barty wasn't very happy about the song.

I know there were a lot of people who seemed to pride themselves on not listening to the lyrics of a song as a way of defending themselves when listening to "questionable" music. At least that was a defence a lot of "Christian" kids used to defend listening to secular music. The ability to be tone-deaf and easily offended isn't something new ... The problem with satire is to some folks it's just truth wrapped in humour as a way of sending in a Trojan horse filled with hate and bigotry.

Randy Newman's affinity for first person narratives that cut deep can be a little on the nose, and with "Short People" being so outrageous it's hard to imagine the song ever being taken at face value ... because it should be obvious to even the casual listener what the song is really about:

Short People are just the same
As you and I
(A Fool Such As I)
All Men Are Brother
Until the day they die
(It's A Wonderful World)

The song stresses outrageous bigotry as the central narrative voice continues to double down. The message being that some people will look for ways to single out others for whatever difference is most visible, be it stature or whatever separates us from them. We're called to feel outrage and emphasize that we are all indeed the same. Instead the song, that was catchy AF, was assigned to the novelty bin, and any outrage was directed at Randy personally.

Ah, satire.

Oh well, if at first you don't succeed ... try again.

This was never intended to be a short meanderamble on the merits of misunderstood satire in popular music. Little Criminals was Randy's fifth record and would be his lone gold album in the States, which to me is hard to fathom. However, it is what it is ...

This was an album I first got in the late '80s and I started working backward from Trouble in Paradise and then would get his records based on his sporadic release schedule. The last actual vinyl record I bought in the early '90s was actually a Randy Newman record Born Again, and am still blown away by "It's Money That I Love."

There's something oddly timeless about Randy Newman, and his songs have always straddled the absurd with the gut wrenching. His orchestration only enhances the experience. The songs and the arrangements are so good - these are songs worth hearing.

Of course as with so many things it's a matter of perspective. Turns out some critics, yeah - Rolling Stone, I'm looking at you ... found this to be a middling affair where Mister Newman was at his most ambivalent. Turns out his past work carried a lot of weight, and the songs on this one didn't have the same gravitas. Still, it warranted three stars, but it highlighted an interesting observation. Is an artist only as good as his previous work, or does his work stand on its own? What if you have no previous baggage? Does your opinion mean less? These are meaty questions, and frankly a little too much for my limited processing.

I'm a simple fellow who is drawn to pretty melodies and if lyrically there's more going on that's a plus. Randy Newman to me was a storyteller who didn't have to fit into any particular narrative box - at least for me. I did judge what I heard based on pretty simple criteria. I like it, or I don't. This gives me a lot of latitude, and of course if it's catchy and has great musicianship I'm generally pretty happy.

So, here we have Little Criminals, and it started off with a catchy song that had great musicianship - and it set the hook pretty deep. From there it was a really pleasant musical roller coaster that went up and down emotionally and thematically (the songs were all good, it wasn't that kind of coaster) and reading the lyrics on the back cover as the songs played only made it more better. Having the songs out of order on the cover was a little irritating at first, but then it just became part of the experience having to find the song that was up next.

Then there were the credits ... oh I love the credits. Being 1977 there were characters you'd expect to see, like Waddy Wachtel on guitar, and Klaus Voorman on bass and Jim Keltner on drums. For me the names that popped were the guys from the Eagles. Glen Frey (it was spelled that way on the back), J.D. Souther, Tim Schmit, Don Henley who sang backing vocals on a few songs. Joe Walsh provided guitar on a track, and so did Mr. Frey (who killed it by the way on "Baltimore"). I loved seeing their names listed.

While this may not have been Mr. Newman's finest hour, it was a hell of a ride for thirty-eight minutes.