Monthly Archives: February 2018

Song of the Week Revisited – Rocket Man, Pearls Before Swine & The Man in the Moon, Grinderman

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

I recently learned that Tom Rapp, a psych-folk innovator and the creative force behind Pearls Before Swine, has died after a long bout with cancer. This news has prompted me to pay him tribute by revisiting a SotW posting I originally distributed on April 4, 2009. You can read his full obituary here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/obituaries/tom-rapp-the-voice-of-pearls-before-swine-is-dead-at-70.html

Back in the late 60s/early 70s, Tom Rapp recorded several fine “psychedelic folk” albums with his band Pearls Before Swine. His finest was The Use of Ashes (1970). This album was recorded in Nashville with some of the same session men (Charlie McCoy & Kenny Buttrey) used by Bob Dylan on Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding.

That album’s “Rocket Man” (not to be confused with the Elton John/Bernie Taupin song used in a recent episode of My Name Is Earl) is my favorite and this week’s song. The lyrics were inspired by Ray Bradbury’s “The Illustrated Man” and tell the story of a son’s astronaut father that dies in space:

My father was a rocket man
He often went to Jupiter or Mercury, to Venus or to Mars
My mother and I would watch the sky
And wonder if a falling star
Was a ship becoming ashes with a rocket man inside

I was first turned onto Rapp and Pearls by my brother and his college buddies (they were big in Boston). A couple of years ago my buddy Joe M. (the drummer in San Diego’s Pink Floyd tribute band) revived my interest in these records when he let me borrow a boxed set he picked up. It wasn’t until this more current listening that I picked up on Rapp’s Carol Channingesque lisp. How did I miss it all the times I listened to this song/album in the 70s?

If you get a chance, listen to “The Jeweler” from the same album. It’s truly a gem. (Sorry!)

I was recently reading a MOJO article on Nick Cave and learned that his Grinderman song “The Man in the Moon” has a very similar feel and lyrical content, so I have to include that as a second song of the week.

My daddy was an astronaut
That’s what I was often taught
My daddy went away too soon
Now he’s living on the moon

Hang on to me people, we’re going down
Down among the fishes in an absence of sound
It’s the presence of distance and it’s floating in time
It’s lack and it’s longing and it’s not very kind

Sitting here scratching in this rented room
Scratching and a tapping to the man in the moon
About all the things that I’ve been taught
My daddy was an astronaut

They’re perfect bookends.

Enjoy… until next week.

Clapton/Gibson/Fender

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I’m not much of a Clapton fan. As a matter of fact, anything he did in the past 25 years I likely don’t know.

But there’s a new Showtime doc on Clapton that you guys are bound to run into pretty soon. I stumbled into it and was interested enough to stick with it from about Cream through the middle of Clapton horndogging after George Harrison’s wife. Switched to the local news then, but I recorded it to watch the rest of what I want to later.

Anyway, Clapton went to see the Allmans. which led to the recording of Layla, of course. What struck me was a quote from Duane Allman saying something like, “I played the Gibson all the way through and he played the Fender all the way through.”

The movie then plays the Allman Layla guitar track naked and I never realized how much that gritty Gibson undertune contributes to the greatness of the song.

Forgive me if this is common knowledge to the Dave Marshers. I point it out because the Dave Marshers usually point out stuff like lyrics and jazz.

I’ve always been a Gibson man.

Wish I had the naked Allman track, but the best I can do is the whole song. Hopefully you can pick out the Gibson base guitar part (not bass guitar part). Watch the movie.

Jean Fleety

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Is there a hotter true rock band these days than Greta and her young (Van) Fleet? These guys are gonna be BIG if they’re not already. Almost saw them months ago in some little club in Lancaster for like $15 but by the time I found someone to go, tix were like $150.

Heard this recently and like it pretty good. A little like if prime Zep covered the Genie.

Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson

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While we go afield, here’s a tune from Saturday Night Live a bit ago.

Chris Stapleton is the biggest rock guy in country music. Think music.

Sturgill Simpson is the songwriter of country life. Think words.

Here the two of them offer awesome guitar solos, and a classic country theme. On Saturday night TV.

I’m glad to have heard it. And won’t ever likely hear it again.

Sturgill Simpson, You Can Have the Crown/Some Days

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A few years ago I heard about this country songwriter named Sturgill Simpson. In recent years what I’ve heard from him has been clever and smarty, and not that interesting.

But this clip, from 2014, is surely the reason folks have been talking about all his talent. This is good stuff, if you like this stuff.

 

The Dead South, In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company

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Clever video. But simple.

Simple song. But maybe clever. The lyrics seem to show a dark murder ballad, though I didn’t get that on first listen.

Whatever. Somehow this cute video and folkish trad song has scored 44 million plays on YouTube. That’s huge, it is real money, and it comes from Canadians into bluegrass, even if the music isn’t bound by genre exactly.

More power to them. This isn’t rock, but if these folks can earn green on this fine but totally uncommercial song, I’d say they’re successful remnants.

Also, good title and band name. Especially for northerners. Maybe not as good as The Band.

Isley Brothers, Summer Breeze

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I was in a bar tonight with my friend Herrick. The bar is new, it’s called Bierwax. Bad name, right? Here’s a link to their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BierWax-269076593218456/.

What they do is sell 12 draft beers from local breweries you can’t get anywhere else. That’s the bier part. Plus a couple of handfuls of bottles, cans, and big bottles of craft beers.

They also have thousands of vinyl elpees on the wall behind the bar, and two DJ turntables on the back shelf. That’s the wax part.

No requests, it says plainly on the shelves of vinyl, and you can’t see what they have. So, you could say, Counting Crows please? And they would mock you.

Or rather, they would be as nice as they are, and they wouldn’t play any Counting Crows.

In any case, this tune came on at some point, and we were talking and didn’t hear the intro and the rather signature guitar line. Catching up in the middle, four plus minutes in, it gets wild enough you hope Seals and Crofts never heard it.