I’ve resisted posting this one, mostly because it is way bigger than a Night Music posting, and yet perfect for a casual, hey, you gotta hear this one note.
My old buddy Peter turned me onto the Groovies (and the Beau Brummels and, for that matter, the Searchers, too, thank you Peter), which is one reason (or three or many more) he’s a big character in my life.
What I can say for sure is that this album, on Sire, in the middle of punk, was a clean and compelling call to hew the clean line between rock and pop. Not that the Groovies had historically respected such formal niceties.
But that doesn’t matter. This recording or this song does. Whoever the players were, whoever wrote it, whoever produced it, whoever mastered it, none of them would ever be a part of a recording so perfect again.
Despite those cartoon characters in the video (whose idea was that?). You gotta hear this one.
The Beau Brummels were one of the most and successful American bands to follow in the wake of the Beatles arrival in the States. Laugh Laugh and Just A Little were big hits, and not just imitations of the Invasion sound. I didn’t really know these guys though until the release of Nuggets and the Flaming Groovies Shake Some Action.
The Stones were at the top of their game in the midst (at the start almost) of an incredible run of great music. I have to admit I haven’t listened much to Let It Bleed in recent years because it seemed so familiar, spoiled by overplaying on classic rock radio and my own turntable decades ago, but having a listen today I was struck by how fresh and awfully good the lesser known songs are.
I’m talking Country Honk, and You’ve Got the Silver, and this one. They defy genre and characterization. They rock, but they’re blues and country, and just plain Stones, all at once. It’s surprising what you end up with when you go back to the familiar.
I was washing dishes today and started singing this song. Maybe because I was looking out the window, or maybe just because it’s one of those songs I know all the words to. Of course, the version I know is the Allman Brothers version, which is pretty great.
But this version, I think it’s the original, is clearly the template. It’s good to keep track of where the music came from.
Today’s SotW is a little out of the ordinary. That’s because it really only focuses on part of a song rather than the whole thing – the intro.
This idea popped into my head recently when I was watching a TV show and a commercial for AT&T Wireless came on. I wasn’t paying much attention but they use the Beach Boys “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and the song’s intro instantly caught my ear. It’s really nice.
When used correctly, a pop song’s intro acts like a mini overture – it sets the mood for what follows. I’ve read a lot of “best of” lists for song intros on the internet and they’re littered with Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Rolling Stones songs. Don’t get me wrong, they list countless great songs with great guitar “intros” but to my ear they mostly just establish the riff that get played throughout the rest of the song. That may be your criteria for a great intro, but not mine. I want something a little different and more sophisticated.
Brian Wilson was the master. My all-time favorite song intro is on “California Girls.” I know, “California Girls” doesn’t seem to qualify as Ignored Obscured Restored, but the intro certainly does. Beside, what’s more American than the Beach Boys on 4th of July weekend?
Where the hell did that intro come from? It’s so simple yet so perfect. It uses the notes of a B chord, repeated four times – first just guitar and piano, then with bass, then a horn in harmony, then the swell of a horn section in a more complex harmony – before moving down a step to A.
This wistful piece of music is a perfect contrast to the easy rolling feel of the song’s main verse/chorus structure. Brilliant!
In the harder rock genre, Joe Walsh had a good instinct for writing intros. Check out “Funk #49” when he was with The James Gang and “Rocky Mountain Way” for a couple of examples.
Well, a happy Independence Day to you all, especially in these times of political strife and angst.
Being the progeny of immigrants who fled Germany with what little they could drag with them, leaving fortunes and family behind to perish at the hands of the Third Reich, I find it frustrating these days to see the perverted way in which the Tea Party and right wing have somehow co-opted the ideas of freedom that the then left wing Sons of Liberty–the bulk of whom were Deists, not Christians or Puritans at all–represented.
For the conservative faction of this country does not understand that during the revolutionary war they would have been Torries, embracing the edicts of King George (as the Bush family, who actually date back that far did, actively supporting the crown during the war of 1812), opposed to the path of independence chosen by Samuel Adams, his cousin John, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington.
Similarly, that same right wing does not seem to get that one of the reasons the American Revolution worked was that it was indeed a guerrilla war, fought on our own soil, against a potentially more dominant foe (England), but an absentee one. Meaning every time we think of invading a foreign land, like Iraq or Iran or Viet Nam, we should remember the three points the home field advantage affords in football.
In other words, it is tough to win an away war.
That said, I am a seriously patriotic and freedom loving first generation American who believes in liberty and justice for all, and that indeed all men are created equal, despite the initial success of our country being rooted in the slavery of African Americans and the genocide of the Native Americans.
For the truth is we all have our dark side: the problem emanates from denying that fact.
Which brings me to the great LA punk band X, founded by John Doe, DJ Bonebroke, and Exene Cervenka, who work a side project with Blasters founder Dave Alvin, and Jonny Ray Bartel of the band The Red Devils.
That band is The Knitters, who released a first album of roots music, Poor Little Critter on the Road in 1985, and then followed up with a second disc in 2005 entitled Modern Sounds of the Knitters.
When asked about the 20-year gap between albums, Doe deadpanned, “The Knitters, like their music, don’t do anything hasty. Since our last record’s been out for a while and it did pretty good, we figured it was just about time to put out another.”
What is better is the song I chose to acknowledge our Independence Day is not on either album the Knitters produced, in fact I could not even find a youtube of the band performing this great song, so I had to stick with this version by Doe and his cohorts, which I like a lot better than the couple of more countrified versions out there by Alvin and his mates.
The recording is a little rough, but I suspect just like our revolution was sort of a rag tag affair at its inception, and one that gathered momentum as it continued, so is the song.
It is also a standard of the Biletones set list, and if we had a video of us cranking it out, then I would have happily posted it.
But, we will have to stick with Doe, for he and mates do it justice despite the funky sound.
A safe and wonderful holiday and holiday weekend to all: just, as you enjoy BBQ and fireworks and savoring our freedom, remember the notion came from progressive (though admittedly imperfect) men who had a vision. Let’s stay true to that, and not the idiot demagogues who preach their vision of freedom, but dismiss any other.
Might as well play them all. It’s almost a long weekend.
Gary US Bonds version, with a swell video…
Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers’ take…
Jimmy Cliff and Elvis Costello’s song has the same title but is not the same song! I hadn’t heard it in long enough that I filled in the blanks, thinking it was the Pomus/Schuman tune. I’m not sure the world needed another song called Seven Day Weekends, but it got two really good ones. THe Cliff and Costello tune appears to be written for a goofy tropical island vacation movie, clips from which keep video clip suitably frantic.
There are terrific versions of this great Doc Pomus/Mort Schuman song by Gary US Bonds, a duet by Elvis Costello and Jimmy Cliff, but I found this on a CD of demos the Dolls had recorded in 1973, which was released in the 90s sometime.
There’s a Heartbreakers version, too, with Johnny Thunders, that’s almost traditional. In every case, a great song for the start of summer.
