OK, I am not dead, and I apologize for my Remnants absence.
I actually had this great piece all ready to write, back when B.B. King passed away, but aside from a bunch of crazy baseball and football junk to write, we went up to the Lake for a respite. And, I began working on an outline for a long piece about god and life and golf, though I am not sure where it is going.
So, enough cheap excuses.
As a member of the BileTones, I have been turned onto a lot of stuff I did not previously know that well. New Order, Uncle Tupelo, Hayes Carll, and the Drive-By Truckers for instance, are all performers I now really like a lot.
Well, Jason Isbell was a guitar player for the Truckers for eight years, from 2001-2007 and worked on some of my favorite Truckers material from the album A Blessing and a Curse.
Isbell did some solo work, then formed his band, The 400 Unit, in 2009, worked with Neko Case, and in 2013 released the brilliant Southeastern, which features your accompaniment to Sunday Eggs Benedict and a latte (or whatever other virtual chow you choose), Super8 Motel (which is currently a standard part of the Tones setlist).
I mean, even if you are in a Super8 Motel, if you cannot get Eggs Benedict, maybe this song will be a tonic.
I came to the Go Betweens backwards. I fell for a band called Stars, from Montreal, in the early aughts, and discovered the Go Betweens through various recommendation engines from there.
The Go Betweens are named after a Joseph Losey movie, which immediately tells you they’re not grinding, but they’re terrific songwriters and a strong band in every way. They are not twee even if they are not hard.
This song gets the call tonight because I just found this charming video, which is perfectly undercutting and musical at the same time.
I have to admit that I’ve never been a big fan of heavy metal or its offshoots. My college roommates loved Black Sabbath. I just didn’t get it. Hair metal? Speed metal? Not for me. Over time I did open up to it a little. There was a time that I couldn’t stand AC/DC, but I love them now.
But there are always exceptions and that brings me to today’s SotW, “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely” by Hüsker Dü.
Hüsker Dü was a post punk band from Minneapolis. They played a brand of hardcore speed metal, but with less screaming and more melody. They were a power trio with two terrific songwriters in Bob Mould (guitar/vocals) and Grant Hart (drums/vocals), and Greg Norton on bass.
“Don’t Want to Know…” is a Hart song from the band’s 1986 major label debut, Candy Apple Grey. It’s another in the long tradition of Rock music break-up songs.
I’m curious to know exactly how you are
I keep my distance but that distance is too far
It reassures me just to know that you’re okay
But I don’t want you to go on needing me this way
And I don’t want to know if you are lonely
Don’t want to know if you are less than lonely
Don’t want to know if you are lonely
Don’t want to know, don’t want to know
The day you left me, left me feeling oh so bad
Still I’m not sure about all the doubts we had
From the beginning we both knew it wouldn’t last
Decisions have been made the die has been cast
The phone is ringing and the clock says four A.M.
If it’s your friends, well I don’t want to hear from them
Please leave your number and a message at the tone
Or you can just go on and leave me alone
Hüsker Dü never achieved the commercial success they deserved. When I listen to their records (an amazing six albums – two of them doubles – and two EPs released between 1983 and 1987) I can’t imagine a Nirvana or a Green Day without them. (In fact, Green Day recorded “Don’t Want to Know…” for a scrapped MTV pilot called Influences.
My friend Angela posted a link to a listicle about things New Yorkers who are older than 40 have done.
I’m older than 40, and I’ve done most of them, except for go to Max Fish. It seems.
But No. 11 on the list references the spectacular desolation of lower Manhattan back in the 60s and 70s. I loved walking around that neighborhood in those days, and then I heard this Jonathan Richman song, which gets it completely right.
I’m not clear about the origins of this track. It may be Mick Taylor’s audition. It dates from 1969 and what you hear in the left track is Keith. The piano player, most important, is Nicky Hopkins. The guitar in the right track is Mick Taylor.
It’s a great raw version of a great song years before it ended up in a great version on elpee. Can’t get enough…
The Stones’ version is better, but I was in a bar tonight and heard this cover and was so glad someone thought that this great song was worth covering.
I have to say, the biggest difference is Jagger, who knows way more about the way words work and perform.
But even without Jagger and Bobby Keys (who is missed terribly, too) this version is fine. Though maybe more a reminder about how great the Exiles on Main Street performances and mixes are, and how a great song can make a less than great band seem good enough.
He was a DJ on Sunday nights on WNEW when I was in high school. Back then NEW was a free form radio station. The DJs played what they wanted. This meant that you might get a mash up of different styles, hard rock and jazz in the same sequence of songs, or show tunes complementing something odd. Or they’d play pop songs sometimes.
The thing about free form radio was that you really got to know the DJs. They had taste and they demonstrated it every show. Sometimes the music was your style, sometimes it was something you’d never heard before in a style you didn’t know existed.
This is different than Pandora, which tries to match you with bands that play in a similar style to the bands you like. Free form mostly exists at college stations these days, and most of those shows feature a DJ known for playing a single style, at least most of the time.
But back in the hey day, the big palette was a virtue, at least for those of us who loved it, and WNEW was an incredibly great station while it lasted. In those years I also lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco, both of which had great free form rock stations, and Boston, which had a great oldies station.
Today, Boston has one of the best college stations in the country, at Emerson College. WERS is sort of free form, like Fordham’s WFMU (Scelsa’s last radio home), but is also fully aware of the value of having contributors who enjoy (and pay) for the programming.
Free form radio was (and is) great art, but it is niche. The Iheartmusic industry is built on the scientific finding that most people like to hear what they know, and are repulsed (or bored) by what isn’t what they already like.
Perhaps the best free form radio station today is WPKN in Bridgeport Connecticut. It takes no commercial or syndication money and relies solely on listener contributions. This is great, but most PKN shows are dedicated to a form. Bluegrass, polka, country, blues, free jazz, you name it. There is a show, but it isn’t a Vin Scelsa show.
Vin Scelsa’s thing was wild leaps of musical imagination, a love for Firesign Theater (if I’m remembering correctly), and a digressive patter that could extend to long closely-tended tales that I’ve long forgotten, but the memory of which produces astonishment still.
When I started this website, my heart was in this free form mixing of styles and enthusiasms and the energetic exploration of different stuff. That’s because of Vin Scelsa. And Jonathan Schwartz. WNEW DJs when I was in high school. And my high school (11th grade?) social studies teacher, Charlie Backfish, who is to this day a DJ on the SUNY Stoney Brook radio station.
Nick Paumgarten writes about him in this week’s New Yorker, which does a good job of capturing Scelsa’s quirky personality.
Paumgarten also mentions that for his final show Scelsa opened with Sopwith Camel’s Hello Hello and finished with Lou Reed’s Goodnight Ladies. Both feature a brass bassline that sounds good to me.
