I think I posted this before, but hadn’t heard it in a while and it is some smoking spew. This is where I really line up with Steve, at least I would expect him to love this as I do. Even the words aren’t bad considering but the guitars are right in my garage.

“I bet two dollars on her nose, one dollar on her tail, if she don’t win by a nose she’s bound to win by her tail.” All the DFS gambling talk makes me wanna go to the track with Champion Jack Dupree. Jack played the percentages cannily by moving to Europe in 1960. He died in 1992 at the age of 78 or 82 maybe.

I was going to do a Wilson Pickett post, because he seems in danger of falling down the Memory Hole, when I came across this fairly amazing bit of of television from 1969. You guys might remember the post of Tom Jones with Jack White doing Howlin Wolf – it was damn good, right? This is TJ dueting with Wilson Pickett and TJ holds his own all down the line. I’m not exactly a big Hey Jude fan but damn if they don’t show it off in its best light.

If TJ holds up with the Wicked Wilson, then Wilson holds up with James Brown. The sound is muffled, you’ll just have to turn it up.

Which brings me to my fave Pickett tune, an early version (rarely if ever topped imo) of smooth Philly Soul, a very cool swinging funk.

Knights in White Satin indeed. I don’t despise the Moody Blues as you might figure. I mean, I mostly despise them, but they came up with some good melodies (no doubt stolen from Classic Composers). Hey, if The Toys can do it why not the Moodies? Be that as it may, I always thought Out and In was a tune that would be great all punked up.

I mean, am I wrong? Oh shut up, Steve.

But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here so you can hear the Moody Blues doing James Brown’s “I’ll Go Crazy.” Of course they were a different group then, a Brit Beat Combo. It’s not as bad as it could be, if only because the song is so great that Lawrence Welk could get it over.

But you have suffered enough. Dig on the man himself:

Nicky uncovered this video, one of our last gigs, at the Chase Lounge on 3rd Ave. and 13th St., on a hot and very late night. We went on at 3:30 AM. I hadn’t thought about the song Bag-dad Bang in a while. Nicky and I had a song called Divorce Party (“Come on everybody, split up!), but when the first Gulf War broke out – broke out my ass, when we attacked – we thought we should write a Political Song. So we didn’t, instead we wrote a Topical Song. I wrote the lyrics in record time, about 10 minutes in one sitting, and they still make me laugh, and since you’ll never understand them, I’m writing them down. It’s the opener on the video:

Coming in under the radar

I got shot right out of the sky

I wound up loaded in a Baghdad dive

The waitress looked at me and said you’re lucky you’re alive

Hey G.I. do you wanna surprise

You know your Uncle Sam lied

I got a thang it’s too too much

Bag-dad bang

She was selling so hard I didn’t know what to think

I said get that umbrella thing outta my drink

I’m serious about euphoria

Taking out Sadam but now I’m in Gomorrah

Hey G.I. take a look in my eyes, would I lie to you?

Now you can think, or you can drink

Bag-dad bang

C.I.A. trying to prove I’m a spy

In the house of pain I’m just another guy

Accusation’s untrue but it hurts

They think I wanna be a Colonel Kurtz

Hey G.I. I heard about that guy

He really knows how to fly

You like ’em pink?

Whadda Drink

Bag-dad bang

I was pissed off at this gig because my amp wasn’t loud enough and it hurts my tone, but what the hell. I hope you like it.

The Waldos were the unofficial house band at the Continental Divide in NYC in the 80s and into the 90s. Formed by Walter Lure after The Heartbreakers drowned in drugs, also featuring the excellent Joey Pinter on guitar and Tony  Coiro on bass. This song goes back at least to 1975, written by Walter and played by the Richard Hell version of the Heartbreakers. I always loved it.

I have a large and opinionated family. A friend once ventured in their presence that “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye was one of the best records ever made. Our friend is not the only person who feels this way, I have heard and seen the opinion expressed several times over the years. My family averred as one, and my daughter Meg spoke up, “It’s not even the best version of ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” My friend said, “You don’t mean Creedence?” Meg said no, although she is a big Creedence fan, and popped up this version for our dining and dancing pleasure. It was the first version too, at least as far as being a hit single.

I haven’t played in that many bands but my favorite by far was Fun No Fun. We’re having a reunion (minus Nicky which is minus a lot) on July 22nd in Northampton, MA. John Rennau is turning 60 on that date, as I turned 60 a few weeks ago. We were in kindergarten together.
But we weren’t in bands together until our mid-20s, mostly because Johnny Er was living in Colorado from ’74-79. After The Sinatras collapsed in 1980, Nicky and I kept playing together and Johnny Er eventually joined us. One night at the rehearsal studio we ran into Andy Towns, who was auditioning girl singers for his songs. The girls were gone but Andy stayed and we played some Slumlords tunes and just rocked them to bits. I said to Andy “We should start a band.” He nodded eagerly. Thus were The Femme Fatales born. Not my name, too generic and blah I said, but Andy insisted, saying it’s not generic to the public. The idea was to do Andy’s songs – he had about 50 – with three girl singers up front and a roaring rocknroll train behind them. I still think it’s a great idea and to this day it has never really been done. As fate would have it, this song came up on my Pandora tonight and it’s pretty close to what we sounded like. I like to think we snarled more but I like it.

The main reason it didn’t work was that the girls couldn’t hear themselves over the band. The girls were trying to, I don’t know, sing, and we were really loud. The volume problem then is not a problem now, by the way, what with better tech. Anyway, they did fine in practice but onstage at CB’s they fell apart. For all the great sound system at that club, the stage monitors sucked. Sally, Helen and Janice couldn’t hear themselves and they lost the harmonies. There is a tape of that show off the board, really good audio, and it just breaks my heart – the band is so on and the singing is so off it was painful at times. We got an encore out of politeness, and closed by doing Chinese Rocks without the girls, who were off screaming at each other. It’s killer. And that was the end of that band – although we had a gig 3 days later at the Left Bank in Mount Vernon. We did that gig as a foursome, alternating the vocals between me and Andy with Johnny Er helping. There was a tape of that show too and it was a great set. I was all for plunging ahead.
But Johnny Er wanted to play guitar, not bass. At that time I was just married, a baby on the way, fed up with the whole band bullshit thing, and in no mood to start all over. I did still love playing, as I do to this day, but as a life there was just no good reason to endure what had to be endured, and inflict it on my wife and child, with a very possible pile of shit at the end of the rainbow. The music I wanted to play turned out to be cult-popular at best. That’s a sad fact but it’s a fact.
John met a songwriting guitar player named Cindy Pack and they formed the Desolation Angels, to which John brought some fine rocking melodies. They made a good 45 which I don’t have digitally, but here is a live at CBGB version of the A-Side “Shangri-La” from John’s next band Reverba, with my boy ripping out some electric 12-string.

(to be continued)

Anyway, you got a contender, let’s hear it.