A Tribute to Oliver Williamson (1932-2020)

 

A SHORT TRIBUTE TO OLIVER WILLIAMSON (1932-2020)

Ajit Chaudhuri – August 2020

‘Economics went astray because economists mistook beauty, clad in mathematics, for truth’[1]

It is a birthday month (I turn 57) and therefore time for some reflection. When, in the course of a career, do you do your most important work? Is it in the early years, when brain power is at its peak and a spouse, if one exists, is less demanding? Or later, when you have figured out the ways of the world and made the mistakes that enable learning? Or even later, when you’re the boss and can get things done? Or maybe towards the end, when you have reached where you are going to reach, have nothing to prove, don’t need to kiss ass, and can focus upon what you want to do?

This note is not an attempt at an answer! However, I do remember a discussion with a professor in the mid-2000s in which he mentioned an encounter with Ronald Coase, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1991. Coase was waiting at the lift of a hotel at a conference he was attending, as was another economist and his son. The latter economist recognized Coase and introduced himself, they made some polite chit-chat, and Coase then asked his son what he was doing. The young man was studying economics, so they talked about what he (the son) was working on. As Coase got off the lift, he told the young man ‘you know, when I was your age I had already written the paper that won me the Nobel.’

The paper in question, ‘The Nature of the Firm’[2] was written in 1932 and then languished for five years until it was finally published. It then languished further, until the 1960s – the period in economics when the ‘efficient markets’ school of thought was at its peak; when neo-classical economists saw their chief function as one of understanding how pricing coordinates an economy, when organizations were a mere black box or a production function that converted inputs into outputs through a price structure, when humans were the rational and selfish homo economicus, and when complexities were simplified with the extensive use of abstract mathematics.

Coase’s thinking was brought in from the cold by a group of scholars who challenged the domination of ‘efficient markets’ and asked the questions – if markets are so good at directing resources, why do companies exist? Why are some activities directed by market forces and others by firms? Why is there such a plurality of organization forms; family firms, franchises, alliances, big corporations, natural monopolies, inter alia; and how do these structures impact the economy? They were led by Oliver Williamson, who developed Coase’s ideas and used them to understand realities through a field of study entitled ‘New Institutional Economics’, thereby making economics more tangible and accessible[3] to generalists like me.

According to Coase, the firm is a response to the high cost of using markets – it is cheaper to direct tasks by fiat (i.e. via orders to employees within a hierarchical organization) than to negotiate and enforce separate contracts for every economic transaction because of what he called ‘transaction costs’. Coase was the first to spot an enduring truth, that successful economies combine the benign dictatorship of the firm with the invisible hand of the market. His ideas raised the counter question – if firms exist to reduce transaction costs, then why have market transactions at all?

It was Williamson who delved into the ‘make or buy?’ question. When should a firm buy something, rather than make it in-house? He identified three inter-related factors that governed such a decision; specificity of asset, openness of contract, and scope for opportunism. He defined an asset as specific to a transaction if its value is lower outside of a transaction than within it, and said that vertical integration (i.e. bringing it in-house) is better than going to the market when the asset is specific to the transaction. Similarly, he distinguished between spot transactions (purchasing a product once, upon immediate payment) and long-term contracts (committing to purchase a product at different times in the future at an agreed quantity and price) and said that the latter are necessarily incomplete, slightly open-ended, and sustained largely by trust – a contract stays in force primarily because its breakdown would hurt both parties. If market forces change the relative bargaining power of the parties in the future, there is scope for one party to exercise rational opportunism and break the contract. Such transactions would be better managed within an alternative form of governance, the firm. Complicated? I will try to simplify below!

Take for example the case of car manufacturer Company X and car body maker Company Y, wherein X has the option of buying car bodies from Y or the option of purchasing Y outright and bringing it within X’s operations. In the former option, i.e. X buys car bodies from Y, if Y has to purchase an expensive manufacturing die that is specific to X’s car design, it needs assurance of future purchases – if X declines to purchase car bodies in future, the expensive asset (the die) has little value and Y is screwed. Alternatively, if demand for the produced car skyrockets, Y can hold X to ransom by pushing up its price. Due to the likelihood of such opportunism in the future, it is better for X to exercise the latter option and purchase Y.

It always felt that, deserving as he was, Williamson would never be a Nobel Laureate because of Coase being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1991. The 2009 Nobel Committee’s announcement of the Nobel for Economics was therefore a wonderful surprise – Williamson had won it jointly with another giant, Elinor Ostrom, whose work on the role of institutions in natural resources management helped puncture the ‘tragedy of the commons’ doctrine that assumed humans as selfish and calculating[4].

Oliver Williamson’s passing on 21^st May 2020 did not hit the headlines in these pandemic-affected times. But his work affected many fields, and helped make policies and form regulations on the relative roles of the state, the market and institutions. This note is a short tribute to a man who ‘switched on the light where the keys were, rather than searching for keys where the light was’.

 

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[1] Krugman, Paul; The New York Times; 2009

[2] Coase, Ronald; “The Nature of the Firm”; Economica 4(16) pp 386-405; 1937

[3] Ghosh, Ranjan and Goyal, Yugank; “Oliver Williamson: The Man Who Reduced the Transaction Cost of Economics”; The Economic and Political Weekly 55(28-29), 11^th July 2020.

[4] Two more Coase acolytes have since won the Economics Nobel – Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom in 2016 for their work on the theory of incomplete contracts that helped understand which government services can benefit from being privatized, and which are better off under government control.

The Chinese are Coming!

THE CHINESE ARE COMING! THE CHINESE ARE COMING!!

Ajit Chaudhuri – July 2020

I write this note about a game that I have loved without ever having played – badminton! It is a love affair that began in the mid-1970s, when the game was ruled by Indonesians (Rudy Hartono and an up and coming Liem Swie King) and Danes (Fleming Delfs and Svend Pri), when China was not represented (Chinese Taipei was China in all sports bodies), and when the annual All-England tournament was the de facto world championship (a formal world championship began in 1980, and the game was introduced in the Olympics in 1988). And I write this as a tribute to my all-time favourite badminton player, who announced his retirement earlier this month.

But more about that later! At this time, I would like to take the reader back to 1978, when there was palpable excitement among badminton lovers – we were going to get our first sight of the Chinese– its top players were coming to the Asian Games. How would they fare against the Indonesians? Would it change the world order?

The generation that brought China in from the cold were its top 3; Han Jian, Chen Changjie and Luan Jin. Han Jian went on to lose the gold medal match to Liem Swie King (the order was reversed in New Delhi in 1982) and then won the world championship in 1985 as the Chinese began to make their space in the game. The early 80s were incredible times, with an established order jostling with upcoming players (Prakash Padukone, Icuk Sugiarto and Morten Frost Hansen) for supremacy. And slowly ceding it, with Hansen ruling until another generation of Chinese players (the left-handers Zhao Jian Hua and Yang Yang, and Xiang Guobao) took control. And China has been a part of badminton’s elite ever since.

In the women’s game, the Chinese came in with two players – Han Aiping and Li Lingwei  – who went on to win everything between them, starting a Chinese domination that began to be challenged only in the mid-2010s. They played against each other ferociously in most finals, and then teamed up to play doubles together as the best of friends. I must confess to spending a fair bit of time watching them because of their looks (Aah! Aiping’s legs marking time as she waited for the high shuttle to drop – the memory stays on 40 years later). For some inexplicable reason, badminton is the best sports eye-exercise after women’s volleyball and the Chinese fared superbly on this front – subsequent world no. 1’s who would have set a catwalk alight include Xie Xingfang and Gong Ruina. Other honourable mentions would include Lene Koppen of Denmark and Susi Susanti of Indonesia. Unfortunately, most beautiful women players end up marrying male counterparts in this deeply incestuous sport.

My favourite player of that time was Sugiarto! You may wonder why, considering the only big tournament he won was the 1983 world championship (defeated Liem Swie King in a slugfest of a final – the best match I have ever seen). It was because; he was the only defensive player of those times, he had the best back-hand in the game (the only player who did not go around high tosses to play them on the forehand), and his main attacking weapon was a jumping back-hand smash that he could execute with power and precision from the baseline (again unique in those times).

And my other favourite, Prakash, with the sex god looks and the probing half-smash that invariably won him the point two rallies later. He came into the limelight with a win at the Commonwealth Games in 1978, from where we went on to win the 1980 All-England defeating Liem Swie King in the final (King returned the favour in 1981).

And then, there was the men’s doubles – possibly the fastest and most ferocious non-contact sport – where power and placement had to be combined with teamwork and stamina. The 70s had two great Indonesian teams ruling the roost; Tjun Tjun/Wahjudi and Christian/Ade Chandra. Later years saw the South Korean pair Joo Bong Pak/Moon Soo Kim and another set of Indonesians Rexy/Ricky. And the Sidek brothers of Malaysia, Razif/Jalani, who figured out how to serve so that the shuttle reached the opponents feathers-first (the service was subsequently banned).

Now – to my tribute! Badminton lovers would have got the news, earlier this month, that Lin Dan is finally retiring[1]. I feel a sense of loss – I have followed him from when he burst into the international limelight as a cocky kid, tearing through a star-studded line-up to win the 2004 All-England. He has since won everything there is in the game; 5 world championships (between 2006 and 2013, and was a losing finalist in 2005 and 2017), 2 Olympic golds (2008 and 2012), 6 All-England’s (between 2004 and 2016, and was a runner-up there as recently as 2018) and 2 Asian Games golds (2010 and 2014). I was in the stadium when he came to Delhi for the 2010 Asian Championships, when he was at the peak of his powers. And while reams have been written about him, nothing can quite describe the aura he brought on to a court. He had shortish hair that stuck out, and when he faced you and the shuttlecock was in the opponent’s court he looked like a tiger on the prowl; the hair straight up, the eyes fixed on the opponent’s movement, and the racket like a short-sword in his left hand.

It is difficult to write about Lin Dan without a mention of his wife, the glamorous Xie Xingfang – she was two years older than him and was his girlfriend from when he was 14. And his rivalry with Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia, a perennial world No. 1 without winning a major tournament (they were good friends off the court).

I will miss you, Super-Dan!

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[1] For those of my readers who do not know Lin Dan, a short detour is recommended into https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/badminton/legendary-shuttler-lin-dan-retire-6490468/

Volunteering, Lockdown and ZZZ

VOLUNTEERING, LOCKDOWN AND ZZZ

Ajit Chaudhuri – June 2020

According to The Economist[1], the COVID-induced lockdown has divided the world into three Zs. There are those working from home on full pay using internet-based communication, the Zoomers, who have to deal with the trials and tribulations of boredom. Those with zero-hour contracts as small businessmen, labourers, and informally employed service providers are the Zeros and in deep shit. And then there is Gen Z, with tanked higher education and employment prospects, also in deep shit. My own situation (thus far) as per this categorization is thankfully the first, and I decided to alleviate the boredom by stepping out and doing some voluntary work.

I got an opportunity with a citizen-organized food delivery initiative called ‘Khaana Chahiye’, which prepared hot meals and provided them a) at stations to migrants leaving the city by train, b) at slums to those living without work and c) on the road to pavement dwellers and itinerants. I came to know of the initiative through a colleague and spent an evening at a railway station as an observer before applying to be a volunteer on its website. By the time I came on board (mid-May) it was very well organized (having begun in March), so I just needed to slot in and get to work.

So, what did I do? I spent two weeks going to a restaurant in Bandra, loading 3,200 hot meals on to a BEST bus designated for this purpose, picking up my supervisor at Vile Parle, and then heading onwards to Dahisar via points in Jogeshwari, Borivli, Malwani, Malad, etc. handing over a specified number of meals to contact persons at pre-arranged locations. We took the occasional detour; once we had some crates of gulab jamuns that we delivered to orphanages in and around Andheri after our regular route, another when we stopped to take a COVID test (more about this later).

Should I have done so? Well, maybe not, for various reasons! One, I am on a ‘work-from-home’ because it is unsafe to be out. Two, I was out for most of the working day (when I was supposed to be at home working). And three, I am at a vulnerable age, and I had my Mother-in-law at home those days (I lied about both in my selection interview). But, it took me out after two months stuck in a closed space with wife and Ma-in-law. And, my own city was (is) facing its biggest crisis in living memory, and I was not going to respond to the question ‘what did you do during the lockdown?’ with an ‘I was a good boy! I stayed at home and did my work.’ No way!!

How was it? On the good side, pretty good fun! My key learnings were –

One – I finally got to see Mumbai’s suburbs! There was an old joke at the time of India’s moon mission, in which the Mumbaikar issues ISRO a challenge – let’s see who reaches first, you to the moon or me to Andheri East. With no traffic, I discovered that Bandra was 15 minutes away and getting to Andheri East was merely another 30. To my shock, the burbs were both civilized and worth seeing. I am no longer intimidated by the prospect of stepping beyond my corner of the city.

Two – I managed to suppress some ideological issues! First, I am not a believer in providing food to people-in-need. My own experience suggests a) that food is akin to opium in creating dependency, b) that it delays recovery and c) that it diverts policy makers from the need to sort out the public distribution system (wherein basic services such as food are provided as a right rather than a handout). And here I was, in a system with clear demarcation between ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’. I consoled myself by staying at the back of the bus and managing inventory, and by knowing that the receivers themselves had the impression that this was partially a municipal programme rather than a pure charity because of the BEST bus that we travelled in.

And second, while the initiative itself was non-political, my supervisor was a BJP member and I think also RSS (i.e. the opposite end of the political and ideological spectrum from me). He was in his late thirties, had been on my route from when it began in March, and he was brilliant. He knew every location and every contact personally on this complicated and diverse route that touched many difficult areas, he was kind and patient in his dealings with everybody, and he was trusted implicitly all along the route. He would speak Marathi with the Marathis, Gujarati with the Gujaratis, Hindi with migrants from the north, and Urdu in the minority dominated areas. At no time were his ideological or political leanings on display – on the contrary, he was free in his abuse of the government and the effects of its COVID policies on his ice-cream business. His only discernable bias was his refusal to give food to drunkards – one drop-off point was near a liquor shop and we were often approached by people in the booze-line. Needless to add, we became good friends!

Three – I saw the limits to technology! The organizers had initially planned to send the food out with a driver armed with the location of the drop-off points on Google Maps and the phone numbers of the respective point-of-contacts. The ensuing chaos resulted in a steep learning curve, with things changing to ensure that there was a volunteer on every bus who was responsible for delivery, was a face of the initiative to the beneficiary, and was available for feedback and requisitions on future needs and requirements. We got to know the importance of the bananas and biscuits we provided in addition to the meals (they were kept by children for next morning’s breakfast), or that the Don Bosco orphanage could absorb any amount of meals (it had young boys for whom no quantity of food was sufficient – so we made it our last stop in which its own quota and any additional stuff could be offloaded) by virtue of our presence at transactions and our conversations with the beneficiaries.

Four – life was good at the bottom of the chain! I had the luxury of being a grunt – I merely had to land up, hang around, load, unload, and shift meals from one sack to another, etc., some of it on a moving bus, and then go home. No stress about whether the food or the bus would arrive, or any other coordination/management related matter – others did all that. In the process, I got time to look around and absorb things. Like the efficiency of operations (hot food moving from being a set of ingredients to filling a hungry person’s stomach, every day, in numbers, changing for the requirement of the day, all the work done by volunteers!). Or the happiness with which my bus driver drove on the city’s empty roads – he had spent 45 days in lockdown before being called up and was thrilled to be out. Or the integrity with which the recipients reduced their requirements as time passed.

And five, I met new and inspiring people! Mumbai to migrants like me is a strange place – Mumbaikars are pleasant and orderly but also highly transactional in their interactions (and I sorely miss Delhi’s large-heartedness). It was good to know that there are people in this city who put self-interest on low priority during a crisis and refuse to let lockdown restrictions and health risks get in the way of doing things that need to be done. The initiative was organized by a group of restauranteurs without restaurants (due to the lockdown) – they saw that people needed food and opened their kitchens to make it available. My co-volunteers were mostly people who had been upended by the pandemic; my supervisor ran four ice-cream parlours, another guy owned an event management agency, a lady had just finished her teaching contract with an NGO and her plans for higher education were on hold, etc. People who were screwed, and who stepped out to do something for others rather than hide in their homes and wallow in misery. It was an honour to meet every one of them!

Not everything was great, though! The law of averages duly applied and a co-volunteer, who had spent a day on the bus with me, tested positive for COVID. I did ten days in self-quarantine, worried sick that if I had something my Ma-in-law would get it as well. I didn’t, she didn’t and my marriage, I think (and hope), survives!!

I came back to my food-route after quarantine and found that things had changed for the better. Traffic was out on the roads again, that ghost-town feeling was gone, and the need for cooked food had reduced considerably with people getting back on their feet. Within a few days, ‘Khaana Chahiye’ correctly decided to close the route, and I got back to doing what I was supposed to – working from home.

I would like to conclude with the saying ‘if you can’t be a good example, you should at least be a horrible warning!’ I’m not sure where I stand in this spectrum!

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[1] ‘Zoomers, Zeros and Gen Z’; The Economist issue of 23 May 2020

The Future of Leching

THE FUTURE OF LECHING

Ajit Chaudhuri – May 2020

These are hard times, the world is going to change blah, blah, blah, and we are all concerned about the COVID-battered economy, the creaking public health system, the government’s encroachment into our lives, our uncertain livelihoods and likely-to-rapidly-dwindle savings, whether Liverpool will be appointed EPL champs, and the future of things such as education, travel, fine dining, work spaces, et al (I could go on and on). This note is about something much more serious – the survival of the lecher in a future of universal full-face respirators and contour-disguising PPE kits.

Leching – defined for the purpose of this note as ‘the act of hanging around in public places looking at girls’ – is the world’s second oldest time-pass for single men. It cuts across culture, class, religion, and region, and was indulged in by Mesopotamians, ancient Greeks and your Dad. It has many names – ‘checking out the babes’, ‘sampling the eye candy’, et al (my generation would remember the scene in the film ‘On Golden Pond’ that introduced us to the term ‘cruising chicks’[1]). And while mostly undertaken in market places (GK-1’s M block market was the gold standard for Delhi-wallahs in the early 1980s), at beaches, swimming pools and marriages, the serious lecher could convert any occasion into an opportunity; funerals, teerth yatras (pilgrimages), parents-teachers day at one’s children’s school, village self-help group meetings, academic conferences, and congregations to celebrate women’s day.

The term has a negative connotation, and the act itself faces opposition from parents (who hate time wastage), feminists (who hate men) and religious fundamentalists (who hate fun). It faces competition from the Internet (with the widespread availability of free porn and ‘hook-up’ sites) and women’s sports on TV – 40 years back the participants mostly looked like prison guards in drag, now they look like (and many are) models, including chess players and shot putters. And yet, it thrives – reminding one of Md. Iqbal’s lines ‘kuch baath hai; ki hasthi mit-thi nahin hamari; sadiyon rahan hai dushman, daurein zamaa hamara’ (there’s something about us; our footprints don’t die out; our enemies have been around forever; and yet we flourish).

But the COVID outbreak is an enemy like no other! How does one lech when the objects of one’s attentions are in facemasks? And if one does so, how can one avoid the cardinal sin of wasting time and effort on homely girls?

The latter statement requires explanation! Why should lechers be choosy – I mean, here are a bunch of idle good-for-nothing losers, what do they have to be picky about? This requires some understanding of leching’s logic of operation. Any act that crosses the threshold of merely hanging around and looking, such as approaching the girl, making conversation, taking her out, getting to first base, etc., is a function of something called ‘aukaad’ – a combination of factors that include the subject’s looks, courage, ambition, wealth, and prospects in life. Setting ambitions within the boundaries of one’s aukaad is rational strategy. The critical constraints in leching, conversely, are time and presence – for the lecher, the beauties are just as available and accessible as the others and, if one has 30 minutes, for example, to hang around, it would be a cardinal sin to expend them exercising one’s eyes on the latter.

And therefore, for leching to survive COVID, lechers will need to imbibe new skills to separate the lech-able from the others. Mere visual signals will be insufficient, and one will have to learn to recognize alternative cues. Luckily, a body of knowledge on this matter already exists, and I am qualified to expound on it based on observations from evenings mis-spent in the bazaars of small towns while criss-crossing Afghanistan and the years lived in the ghunghat-ridden areas of western Rajasthan.

This body of knowledge has two underpinning ontological assumptions about basic human behaviour. The first is that a beautiful woman will find ways of informing you (yes, even you) that she is beautiful, no matter what the circumstances. In the small towns of northern Afghanistan, it was in the way she swished her burkha as she passed you, the fleeting glimpse she afforded of her high heeled shoes, or the whiff of perfume that hung tantalizingly in the air after she went by. And the transmission of a message – ‘I am stunningly beautiful, and you are damn lucky to be in my vicinity’ via demeanour, aura, and other non-verbal and non-visual means.

The second is that beautiful women expect to be recognized when they meet someone they know, no matter what the circumstances. I was forming women’s groups in refugee villages in western Rajasthan in the early 1990s – this was a particularly conservative community that did not let non-resident men into the village (even visiting sons-in-laws had to stay outside in a designated hut that was called an ‘uttaara’), and the women had to have veils on in the presence of any man. In time, me and my team were allowed into these villages and to hold women’s meetings without the women needing to be veiled up (the first line at such meetings, after hi-hello, was to tell the men hanging around to get lost so that we could talk in peace).

‘How the hell did you expect me to recognize you?’ I asked one of them when I was at the receiving end of a firing for having behaved formally when I had met her earlier at a local market, ‘you had your ghunghat on full.’ I was duly informed that she didn’t give a shit, that friends should know each other when they meet, and that I would have to figure it out. And, as time passed, I did! And I discovered that beauty is visible in obvious parameters such as height, figure and carriage, and also in non-obvious ones such as hands (and the way she wears her bangles), ears (and the way her veil sits on them), and feet (the shape and cut, and also the second toe sticking out more than the big toe is an indicator that she is ‘bossy’).

And therein lies the future of leching – in recognizing cues that are not centred around fairness of face. For it to continue to be a worthy pastime, some re-calibration of skills and abilities on the part of the lecher may be required (and the element of speculation may even enhance its appeal). This brings me to the question that you would no doubt have on your minds – can the homelies use these cues to divert or misguide the lecher? Certainly! But, so what? For if she has you thinking ‘Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars’ (to quote Christopher Marlowe), then no matter, to you she is Helen of Troy.

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[1] If you haven’t seen this Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn and a smoking hot Jane Fonda classic, you have missed something in life. The scene being referred to is seeable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eQBa4JQzDI&list=PLRscOIr5vFO1phloMb-JU9Vyp2uiX7CC7&index=172

Ladies Who Don't Need to Sing in Undergarments

LADIES WHO DON’T NEED TO SING IN UNDERGARMENTS

Ajit Chaudhuri – April 2020

I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but many women singers sing in clothes resembling undergarments. And I see why – because the likes of me would not otherwise notice them. And so, I have made a list of songs (all in English, and all sung by women) that have zapped me, songs that I would not give a crap what the singer is wearing and how she is gyrating. Along with the list is a short note on why I liked each one.

Afficionados, please note – the criteria for selection is a) has to have zapped me, b) woman singing it, and c) in English. I have whittled the list down to 20, which means that some beautiful voices have not made it (Joan Baez, Sinead O’Connor, Shirley Bassey and Stevie Nicks come to mind). And the English criteria has meant that some that have zapped me are negated (such as Agnetha Faltskog’s ‘Vart Ska Min Karlek Fora’, Nazia Hassan’s ‘Aap Jaisa Koi’ and Miriam Makeba’s ‘Malaika’).

So, here’s the list! The one’s in italics are where the singer has also written the song!

Singer	Song	Group	Year
Adele	Make You Feel My Love		2008
Asha Bhonsle	Bow Down Mister	With Boy George and the Culture Club	Late 1980s
Deborah Harry	Sunday Girl		1978
Diana Ross	When We Grow Up	The Supremes	1973
Janice Joplin	Mercedes Benz		1970
Jessi Colter	I’m Not Lisa		1975
Joan Armatrading	The Weakness in Me		1981
Joan Jett	Bad Reputation		1980
Joni Mitchell	Circle Game		1966
Kim Carnes	Bette Davis Eyes		1981
Linda Perry	What’s Up	4 Non-Blondes	1992
Lulu	To Sir With Love	In ‘To Sir With Love’	1967
Miley Cyrus	Every Rose Has Its Thorn		2010
Natalie Maines	Travelling Soldier	Dixie Chicks	2002
Norah Jones	Here We Go Again	With Ray Charles	2004
Petula Clark	Downtown		1964
Sandy Denny	Who Knows Where the Time Goes	Fairport Convention	1969
Shania Twain	Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain	With Willie Nelson	2003
Tracy Chapman	Fast Car		1988
Yvonne Elliman	I Don’t Know How to Love Him	In ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’	1970

The Cross Generation Numbers

I.             

Miley Cyrus – ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’: I couldn’t stand this woman – she was among a select group of people who had me reaching for the remote to change the channel whenever she appeared on TV (along with Will Smith, Jim Carrey and a certain Indian Prime Minister who I don’t have the courage to name). The thought of her singing this hardcore and very male 1988 metal number written and made famous by the group ‘Poison’ had me in a quandary between laughing and vomiting.

I was wrong on this! She does it brilliantly (and looks damn good while doing it)!

Norah Jones – ‘Here We Go Again’: I love Ms. Jones – that smoky voice, the lack of any frills, and the fact that she doesn’t use her father’s fame (unlike her half-sister). But still – going one-on-one with the great Ray Charles on this one?

She not only holds her own; she gives this old number a completely new flavour!

Shania Twain – ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain’: The song is like a low-end prostitute; it’s been done by almost everybody. What made this version special was the singer – she did it live, with Willie Nelson accompanying her on the guitar and back-up vocals. We all know that she can sing, but this was something else!

The cute numbers

Deborah Harry – ‘Sunday Girl’: I remember this number from the days when I infested dance floors as a young man and, when I heard it again more recently, I remembered why. There was something about Blondie, a certain girlie meanness behind the cute look, the bad hair, the sweet voice and the unremarkable lyrics that was accentuated by the punk rock guitaring of Chris Stein who accompanied her.

Diana Ross – ‘When We Grow Up’: The execrable film ‘Young Adult’ had exactly one redeeming feature – a background song that caught my ear for its lilting beauty and simplicity. The lyrics went, ‘I don’t care if I’m pretty at all; and I don’t care if you’ll ever be tall; I like what I look like, and you’re nice small; we don’t have to change at all’. It turned out to be a 1970s number by the one-and-only Ms. Diana Ross.

Lulu – ‘To Sir with Love’: I heard this first as a teenager while seeing the eponymous film. The film (about a dedicated teacher and a school in a tough London neighbourhood) was brilliant, as was its theme song – sung at the school’s graduation party, with lyrics about the transformation of their lives (‘those school girl days; of telling tales and biting nails are gone’) and gratitude to the teacher (‘how do you thank someone; who has taken you; from crayons to perfume’).

The songs that strike

Janice Joplin – ‘Mercedes Benz’: The version I first heard had no accompanying musical instruments and no background vocalists, and I don’t know what zapped me more – the lyrics, or Joplin’s voice. It says a lot about what has changed in 50 years, that a song of protest about consumerism has been converted into an ad for a high-end brand. It also says something about what has not, that hers was a unique voice (like she had broken glass down her throat) and she continues to be inimitable.

Joan Armatrading – ‘The Weakness in Me’: I knew of the singer, but the first time I actually heard her was while watching the chick-flick ’10 Things I Hate About You’ – one of the background numbers (i.e. this one) had the lyrics ‘why do you come here, and pretend to be just passing by’ sung in a voice that had all the pain of forbidden love. I was floored to the extent that I immediately looked up the lyrics and chords and tried to belt it out with my guitar. And better singers than me have tried to do so (such as Melissa Etheridge), but this one is among those best heard in the original.

Joan Jett – ‘Bad Reputation’: Named in 2009 as the 29^th best hard rock song ever (and highest-ranked by a woman) – I love everything about it; the tune, the lyrics, the music video of it (this is seriously funny – it parodies many of the music labels that kicked her out for not being able to sing), and the fact that it is used by a top woman wrestler (Ronda Rousey aka Rowdy) as accompaniment to enter the ring. A credible imitation is by the singer Avril Lavigne, who shed her ‘sweet goody two shoes’ image to redo this number more than 30 years later – she sounds almost the same as Jett.

Joni Mitchell – ‘Circle Game’: This brilliant singer and song-writer was on my long list for three songs – I am going with this particular number because it zapped me the most when I first heard it (in the last scene of some film in the mid-1990s; I stayed to watch the post-movie credits so that I could hear it to the end).

Linda Perry – ‘What’s Up’: This is a song about the frustration involved in adjusting to one’s place in the universe, and people either love it (‘a massive neo-hippie anthem’, according to one review) or hate it (The Huffington Post described it as, without question, the worst song of the 1990s). I love it! The lyrics are simple and catchy, the tune takes you from high-range to gravelly in a single passage, and the chords are playable by amateurs such as yours truly.

Yvonne Elliman – ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’: My sisters loved this song, so I was forced to listen to it a lot while growing up, and it is among those that we belt out together every time we meet up and are a few drinks down. The tune is memorable, and the lyrics encapsulate how a man would describe the confusion of love from a woman’s point of view. I like it to the extent that I still try to do it every now and then with my guitar, and have everyone wonder about my sexuality.

The pure voices

Adele – ‘Make You Feel My Love’: I knew the name, but nothing that she sang, until I stumbled upon this one. The lyrics are disconcerting in their old-fashioned anti-feminist description of unrequited love, but they fit brilliantly with the singer’s unique voice. I was unsurprised to subsequently learn that it was written and originally performed by Bob Dylan. Adele’s version is a huge upgrade (and I love Dylan)!

Asha Bhonsle – ‘Bow Down Mister’: This Boy George number meanders along until, somewhere towards the end, a not-unknown back-up vocalist magically transforms it into something special with the beauty and purity of her voice. 

Sandy Denny – ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’: I had never heard of either the singer or the song until it popped up on some playlist recently but, once I did, life has not been the same. The voice haunts me, and the lyrics buzz in my ears. It was difficult for me to believe that Ms. Denny wrote this song while still a teenager.

Tracy Chapman – ‘Fast Car’: I heard this one when it first came out, in the days when stuff like ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ and ‘Like a Virgin’ were dominating the airwaves, and I remember that it was like breathing fresh air. A beautiful voice, a melodious tune, instruments that weren’t overpowering, and lyrics that meant something! Wow!

The others

Jessi Colter – ‘I’m Not Lisa’: I heard it recently on some playlist, and went back and played it three more times. The tune is unexceptional, but the lyrics are about something rarely described – a man’s love for his ex-spouse from the perspective of his current spouse – ‘I’m not Lisa; my name is Julie; Lisa left you; years ago;’, etc. You would not have heard of singer or song, and I recommend a try.

Kim Carnes – ‘Bette Davis Eyes’: I thought it was Rod Stewart when I first heard this number, and was surprised to subsequently learn that the singer is a woman and a cute blonde at that. The song did so well that Bette Davis herself came out and endorsed it, saying that it made her look cool to her grandchildren.

Natalie Maines – ‘Travelling Soldier’: There is nothing exceptional about either singer or song, and I don’t know why it zapped me – but it did, and so it is here!

Petula Clark – ‘Downtown’: The song writer for this one, Tony Hatch, claims that ‘it never occurred to me that a white woman could even sing it’ until Petula Clark expressed interest and made it into a smash it. I loved it from when I first heard it, in my early 20s, and it has accompanied me on many drinking sessions since then.