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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
All rights reserved

Ram On

RAM has always been my fave McCartney album, but I hadn't heard it for
years until I got the CD today.

I'd forgotten how happy McCartney was on the album, from the first to
the last track. His gay abandon infects most of the lyrics, and
provides the album with an identifiable voice that runs through all
the songs.
 
RAM has great PaulAndLinda vocals. The focus is American College music
(earlier Ivy League), which is exactly suited to Linda McCartney's
Cheer Leader voice. That's no coincidence: RAM is full of vocal parts
written to exploit both their voices. Linda McCartney shines on RAM.

Too Many People
Opening on his favorite blurred chunky guitars and gorgeous gurgled
strangled vocal, McCartney briefly indicates the underground passion
that's going to push and pull us around before falling into a solid
track.

Forget the crap about Lennon-references and listen to the singing, the
great rhythm guitar part, Linda's great harmony and all the little
nuances that pepper this song.

The outro is something else again with those high twanging notes. 

Solid.

3 Legs
Great sound, great vocals. But the lyric lets it down. I know his
middle finger is vertically inclined, but in-you-face tends to get
up-my-nose. The track works best when he launchs off above the clouds.
There's a tempo change for the outro.
 

Hmm.

Ram On
A ukelele freak like me was always bound to fall in love with Paul's
loving Uke. Moon, soon, right away, we're not far from Moonlight Bay,
the college music of an earlier generation. This really is Ivy League
territory.

He gets a great sound out of his uke. 

Linda's flat vocal harmonies are perfect. The two of them get so much
variety in their vocal color on RAM.

The song is based on some the most scantily clad ideas you could
imagine. A snippet here and tidbit there. This is brave song-writing:
believing that it will all work out in the studio.

To paraphase a friend: gold.

Dear Boy
Genius from start to end. Every stroke sits in just right place. The
whole flows out of a single inspiration: that's what characterises
this album: lots of inspiration, lots of broad strokes, lots of
arriving right on time.

Many have tried the A-minor song with descending bass. In fact, it
would be hard to find a decent composer who hasn't. But McCartney owns
the territory here as if it were virgin forest. That's a habit of
his.

My oldest son, who is a McCartney man, heard this track for the first
time tonight (he's been a bit recalcitrant) and commented only
there's a lot going on, and then arranged to get the CD off me. The
song is quite short, but there's an amazing amount of activity. 

Quite intricate vocal counterpoint from Paul and Linda. No George
Martin to blame here, but this is richer than anything the Beatles
produced.

If you want proof that notation is not required to write good vocal
parts, then just listen here. This is a rich fabric, full of color, a
full breast of air and great passion. 

And a snappy little ending (note the Beach Boy's effects).

Deft.

Uncle Albert
Behind this complicated ditty is an excruciating passion, beginning
with I believe I'm going to rain (followed by a movie-theatre 3D
summer rainstorm).

Strings and horns join a duet finishing we'll be sure to give a ring
and the sound of a telephone ringing (you do know, I hope, that it's
Paul doing a vocal impression of a phone).

We slowly realize that the reason Albert and the telephone aren't
getting through is because he and his lovely lady are solidly in their
nest. And we haven't done a bloody thing all day. "But the kettles
on the boil and we're so easily called away".

It's the slow burn that sets this song apart.

Yeah yeah from Linda gives a little Beatle-moment dear Fab friends
and McCartney does one of his little wooh-things.

You know, out of context, what he's doing is incredibly vapid. In
context, it's brilliant orchestration. The whole section is freely
composed, ending on those light Beatle stacato string chords (before a
crude join to Halsey).

Isn't this the point about RAM: McCartney is able to assemble all the
little devices he usually applies to songs like Maxwell etc to an
extended fantasy across the whole album. I can't think of another pop
album where we really see McCartney the composer at work as we do
here. This shits all over the medleys on Abbey Road, for my money. 

Pure Macca.

Admiral Halsey
After a little jig we get an update on Boy you're going to carry that
weight with Linda's broad american Hands across the water,
contrasted with Paul's refined English upper-crustacean cup of tea
stuff. And it's the better half of England that hosts our cups of tea
and telephones here. Ya gotta like this stuff, even if you don't wanna
shout about it.

A complete time change to a cartoon excerpt, brings us back to the
opening bits and a another time change for the outro (and those Beatle
piano triads). 

John must have liked it too. 

Smile Away
Skip time? The best bit is PaulAndLinda's Revolution style doo wop
harmony. His attempts at blues and soul aren't working here (although
I'll make a guess that at least one my friends loves this track!).
Perhaps the delights of student lodgings and socks that adhere to wall
are behind me. Perhaps its just the six-pack I'm missing.

Well, I'm still listening. I've turned up the volume to full and I'm
using the deep bass to dislodge any fluff in my auditory tracts. Oh
shit, they're going quietly now. The loud bit has to come back
sooner or later...

At 2:46 Linda does a long ah and some descending I I I I's which
are pure Carole King. The ensuing outro is really stupid and I guess
I'm smiling too.

Damn your eyes McCartney.

Heart Of The Country
Back to college with some Country and swing. I always wait for the
scat bits in this song and I do like his cork-up-my-ass voice. Great
little band you got their Paul. Ba-da-wah-doody-doo-wah... I guess
that's Paul on acoustic. Sheesh, the boy musta been born in You-Tah,
or Ari-Zona. He's really got that down-home thing down.

Light relief. We'll need it.

MonkberryMoon Delight
McCartney's Meglamania as the Wind Played A Dreadful Cantata. This
Song Of A Fantast always makes me feel like my dimensions have
increased to the horizon and the moon. McCartney's triumph on this
album is to marry those corny lyric idioms that he loved so much with
The Vision Thing. There's something bombastic and noble running
through the entire album. Monkberry Moon Delight is just one of five
or six highpoints.

Delicious lyrics. A mixture of fabulous poetic images and utter corn.

Above Linda's beguiling flat mm'bah ostinato Mr Manic goes out of his
tiny little mind. For about three minutes. It's a grand(iose) effort
from both. Even the Yoko-impression can't be taken in ill-humour. It's
followed by something that resembles the dialogue at the end of Hey
Bulldog, to which the song as whole owes a debt.

It's difficult to describe how successful I find this song. Perhaps I
shouldn't try. The marriage between a repetitive beat and free fantasy
is not easy to sustain. Here McCartney transforms his outro skills
into some akin to an abstract narrative form. Hmm. I knew I shouldn't
have tried.

Opera Buffo at its best.

Eat At Home
This is not a bad song. It's just not up to the high standard of the
other material. Even the Buddy Holly verse with melisma ending doesn't
help out. There is a magic moment just before the solo. But there's
enough of those on this album.

Tight.

Long Haired Lady
Again we start with a stark contrast between McCartney's passionate
well well well (John's post-Beatle word) and Linda blandly replies
is this the only thing you want me for in one of those
I-desparately-need-to-wee girly voices.

Three quite distinct sections parade by in less than a minute or so.
The strange thing about this tableaux is that not one of them is
actually all that great on its own. Taken together, the triptych slots
into place with a comfortable click.

Dear phenomenal lady.

Like Hey Jude the song falls into a repeated chorus, in this case
"Love is long" (from the long haired lady Linda herself). 

The outro stops just as effortlessly as it started and we're back at
the beginning. McCartney applies the same techniques of shortening the
material that Mozart would have employed and we're soon back in the "love
is long" (this time with quite exquisite harmonies. I'm starting to
run out of superlatives here).

Fine evocative painting and complete. 

Ram On
The reprise is not much than a gesture. Another broad stroke falling
into a couple of phrases that remind me of Can You Take Me Back. 

It's a short separator between the two part ending of Long Haired
Lady and The Back Seat Of My Car.

Art.

The Back Seat Of My Car
If the College Theme wasn't pregnant enough for you, the closing track
drives it home with the classic image of necking in the back seat of a
car.

The Beach Boys and Buddy Holly made the plight of middle-class
teenagers in their relentless quest to follow the wisdom of their
hormones in the face of middle-aged oppression into a search for the
holy grail (sorry about that sentence folks). 

That's what this song is all about. You can find wisdom wherever you
seek it, if you seek with an open heart, and what is more tragically
beautiful than pubescent love. Love without a use-by date. McCartney
uses this theme to climb up a mountain and jump off its top.

But listen to her fathers song, don't stay out too long.

Oh, we believe that we can't be wrong is a revelation.

Again it's a song of disparate parts that make no sense in isolation.

The coda begins at 2:00, evolving quickly into we believe that we
can't be long, a pause, a repetitive section, an ooh section, etc
etc. It takes fully two minutes before he reachs that incredible
climax, which cannot be compared to anyone except himself. It makes
every hair on my body stand up and salute.

McCartney never delivers better than here. Taken together with Hey
Jude and Maybe I'm Amazed, we have three deep-sea bores plunging
straight down to his deep fire. Unstrained, unrestrained gold. 

Very deep.

My Piano Was Bold And Outspoken...
James Paul McCartney married his favorite form of music. Or put it
this way, musically, he and Linda were more than just good friends. To
my mind this album celebrates that union.

Along with the Stone's Satanic Majesties Pleasure, RAM is one of
those brilliant tangents that was never taken any further. Pity. But
RAM's in the record stores and I got my copy for peanuts. Manic, very
loving. Very relaxed.