Tag: Peter Case

I just started to listen to Peter Case recently, although I like the Plimsouls, I never knew much about Case. This song and its history intrigued me. First of all, it’s a great song, but Case started this song by reminiscing about when he was a kid and shook hands with John Kennedy at a county fair that Kennedy had appeared at. So by total coincidence, this again fits into the book I’m reading. I had a playlist of his songs, and I heard this one, and I thought…what hand did he shake? I then read his quote about shaking hands with JFK. 

He first broke out with The Nerves, a tight power pop band that was popular on the early LA power-pop scene. Though they never found major commercial success, they did have the song Hanging on the Telephone, later covered by Blondie. The Nerves showed Case’s gift for melodic songwriting and short three-minute power pop songs.

After that came The Plimsouls, who blended power pop with roots rock and harder edges. Tracks like A Million Miles Away made them cult favorites and briefly pushed them into the mainstream. The band toured constantly, but music industry pressure and burnout pulled them apart just as they were gaining traction.

This song is off of Peter’s self-titled debut album, released in 1986. The musicians he gathered, I’m a huge fan of. Roger McGuinn on his 12-string Rickenbacker, Jim Keltner on drums, Van Dyke Parks on keyboards, T-Bone Burnett producing, and acoustic guitar and more. He was on Geffen Records at the time and also released a UK EP called Steel Strings that contained many of these songs. He also released another EP called Selections from Peter Case. That one had two different versions of the song Steel Strings on it. 

The album was largely recorded live in the room, with players reacting to each other instead of building tracks layer by layer. I say this a lot in my reviews, but it’s true in this case as well. The band played to each other, and there were minimal overdubs. He kept small imperfections that made the performances feel real. The goal wasn’t to overproduce the album; it was to capture the way these songs worked when he played them alone or in small rooms.

He has been productive as a solo artist. 14 studio albums, 4 EPs, 3 compilations, and 11 singles. A tribute album was also released in 2006, A Case for Case, with various artists. 

Peter Case: I wrote this one in 1984, on the Amtrak train down to San Antonio, where I was meeting the rest of the Plimsouls to start a tour. It’s about meeting JFK on his trip to the Erie County Fair, when I was five, though I was also thinking about MLK and RFK. 

I Shook His Hand

I was a kid out behind the fair
His words were like lightning in the summer air
His eyes were wild with the truth he told
Holding back the rain while the thunder rolled

I was too young to understand
I was proud to say I shook his hand

He took command on a winter’s day
All across the land, spring was on its way
He struck fear into the hearts of fools
Breaking up the gangs, breaking all their rules

Too young not to understand
I was proud to say I shook his hand

Each tongue is a world, each eye is an ocean
Of every child, woman, man here in living motion
Now who’ll protect us, who’ll pеrfect us
Who’ll live to see the day whеn love connects us
Who’ll take a step out in this land
I’ll be proud to say I shook his hand
I shook his hand, well I shook his hand

For years they tried to kill him, he finally died
I still remember how I felt when my mama cried
I grew up with a bullet in my breast
If you knew it or not, so did all the rest