Hot House

The Music Box: Bruce Hornsby’s latest release Hot House, while extremely enjoyable, is a virtual remake of Harbor Lights. Throughout the endeavor, he delivers a similar brew of jazz-pop grooves, and as a result, it sounds just a tad formulaic. On his last outing, he tucked bits of the Grateful Dead’s Dark Star into the intro to Talk of the Town; this time, he borrows heavily from Estimated Prophet, calling his version The Tango King. Nevertheless, Hornsby’s amazing dexterity is on display as he leads Béla Fleck, Pat Metheny, and Jerry Garcia through some funky grooves. White-Wheeled Limousine is given more of a Flecktones-style treatment, and it stands in stark contrast to the stripped down version recorded with Rob Wasserman for Trios. 3.5/5

Bob Gajarsky: Bruce Hornsby has come a long way since being a backing pianist for Sheena Easton’s touring band in 1983. One Hornsby fan, upon hearing this record, said that it was like his last release, Harbor Lights, but taken to the next level – where the musicians sound like they’re having fun, jamming and improvising as they go. I couldn’t agree more. Expect the critics to rave about Hot House – and deservedly so.

Spider Fingers

The opening part of the song sets the scene: “So nice to be here, with all you good people” – it suggests a gig to me, and indeed Bruce has used these opening lines on a few of live taped gigs I’ve heard.

The rest of the song is about a piano lick which seems to involve hitting the same note as many times as you can as quickly as possible. The next verse involves a lot of innuendo, which is surprising given that Hornsby is obviously still a Virgin…ian.

“I can show you on a table I can show you on a chair It’s best shown on the black and whites I know I can take you there”

Hornsby gives us a demonstration of this technique, and then the song seems to break into “Get up, get on up” before winding down, although the instrumental end seems highly compatible with “Jacob’s Ladder”, as has been proven with the two songs being occasionally linked in live gigs.

Carwyn Fowler

Elyce Turner adds: Apparently, the song is named after a nickname that was bestowed upon Bruce by the Deadheads. The story goes something like; Molo was having dinner in a restaurant in a city where the Dead were playing. At the table behind him were a bunch of Heads who were talking about a show they had seen recently and they were hoping that Bruce would ‘do that Spiderfingers like he did at the (fill in date and city here) show’. I know I’m not 100% on my retelling of this story, but it’s something like that. Anyway – Molo didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, so he got a copy of the show they had mentioned and played it for Bruce. Together they figured out what technique they were talking about.

The song is, in part, about that inspiration and also in part about how in the old days of the “Steak and Ale” there were many times when he and his band would be up on stage, ‘givin’ it up for the folks’ with his Jazz licks and such, but the ‘pop-oriented’ people would be sitting there with their drinks ignoring them. He refers to this kind of thing in several songs, Spider Fingers and The Changes come to mind immediately.

White-Wheeled Limousine/Country Doctor

Hornsby is a master of the dark tale, as has been shown in “Valley Road” and other songs. Often, he has disguised the meaning of the song. “The Show goes on” is one great example. However, there’s no mistaking the theme of “White-wheeled limousine”; a wedding-day infidelity which happens in the church grounds as the groom is arriving at the church!!! I need not say much more, suffice to say that after the event,”The father of the bride is drinking so slow”. The musical interest of the song stems from some fine bluegrass banjo solo playing.

“Country Doctor” is another classic Hornsby dark tale, with a similar rural feel to, for example, “Preacher in the Ring”. In this instance, I think the doctor has poisoned his wife (with the stuff in the “bottles unmarked”) in order to start a relationship with another woman. If the story is too depressing, then just fast forward to the middle instrumental section, which some hallmarks of a Hornsby and the Range instrumentation: Organ background, electric guitar playing in quite a tight harmony. However, it’s my opinion that on “Hot House” there is a certain depth to the instrumentation and harmony which I don’t think was heard with the Range. There’s just one puzzling line at the end, written I think from the author’s perspective, which I haven’t grasped the significance of:

“My wife told me one day, I remember kind of strangely, at a friend’s wedding one day, it was a look that he gave me”.

Carwyn Fowler

Walk in the Sun/Tango King

Haven’t got a clue on the interpretations of these, I wonder if anyone out there could help me out? However, they’re great to listen to purely for the musicianship. “Walk in the sun” takes us back a bit to the mellow “old” Hornsby sound, while “Tango King” involves some real tight musicianship between piano and organ. Molo also has a big role on drums here, with an extravagant brass part, conveying a sort of Latin feel to the song, coming in around half way.

Carwyn Fowler

Amanda adds: I’ve got some pet theories of my own about it, and thought I’d take the opportunity to share them. I think it’s along the same lines as “Down the Road Tonight” – a man in love with a woman whose profession is, well, not exactly socially acceptable. In this case she’s probably a stripper. “Watching the men always looking down,” “No one looks me in the eye/They save it for the girls inside.” However, this time the girl actually loves him back, I think. “I don’t much care what they see/I know she saves it all for me.” Maybe he even runs the strip show, since he’s the one taking tickets. What really gets me with this one is the contrast between the lyrics and the music itself – it seems like such a light, happy, fluffy Hornsby tune, but the message (at least the way I interpret it) is really pretty heavy. Anyhow, that’s my theory.

Elyce Turner adds: Vernon James is the man who works in the ticket booth at a strip club. I think his girlfriend is one of the strippers. He is not bothered that all these men are paying to oggle his lady, because at the end of the night she comes to get him and they go home together ( I don’t much care what they see/ I know she saves it all for me”).

The reference to “someday I’ll walk in the sun” may have to do with the fact that in this job, no one sees him. (“No one looks me in the eye/ they save it for the girls inside”) and/ or perhaps they think he is just some loser because of his job. He knows that he (and his lady) won’t be doing this forever, and one day they will be free to walk together in public, with heads held high.

Longest Night/Swing Street

These are generally, mellow songs that seem to be set in fairly chilled gatherings, so I’ll not spoil them with my interpretive ramblings. “Longest Night” has an additional theme, about finding a companion after a barren spell on the love front. Not much in the way of interpretation here (but who exactly are the initialled people, for example Mr. B.M.O.C.)?

May I leave you with a “serving suggestion” for “Longest Night”? I’ll always remember this song for when I happened to have it playing on my walkman on a coach at about 6a.m., having travelled overnight through Scotland, England and France to see my girlfriend. Next time you’re on an uncomfortable overnight Greyhound / Amtrack journey, play this song just as the dawn starts breaking – it really chills you out and makes you feel better!!!

Follow-up, June 25 2001: Longest Night takes us back to a theme that was first introduced in the song “Stander on the Mountain”. Namely, a high-school or college reunion. (As many of you have since told me, B.M.O.C. is an acronym for “Big Man on Campus”). Funnily enough, the song ends with a fairly routine romantic side to it, i.e. the boy in the song meets a nice girl, for friendship possibly leading to something else.

This is nothing compared with “Stander on the Mountain”, where apparently boy MAKES OUT with girl in a car on a roadside (The instrumental break on the ‘Noisemakers’ version lasts just about long enough, I think, for this to happen), and the song also includes some fairly contemplative thoughts on the various emotional aspects of reunions in general.

Carwyn Fowler

Hot House Ball

OK, OK – after about 18 months of people mailing me with this one, I finally get round to writing this song up properly. Hot House Ball is, it seems, an ironic song about a Nuclear Power station, apparently not so far from Bruce’s home in Virginia. There is humour and sarcasm here, as we’ve previously heard in such songs as “Defenders of the Flag”. For example, children will be able to “glow in the dark” at Halloween without having to put on any special make-up.

In other words, this song places Bruce within the Matt Groening (“The Simpsons”) school of putting one in the eye of the more dishonest or sinister aspects of American government. It does not take such a huge leap of the imagination to visualise Homer Simpson himself at the control panel of this particular installment in Virginia.

Carwyn Fowler