Lindsay and I burn CD’s for one another on birthdays and XMAS.
I think these are what we would call “mix-tapes” in the “cassette High Fidelity” vernacular.
The whole process is fun: she digs for stuff she thinks I would like and not know (like Neutral Milk Hotel and Atmosphere, whom I shall comment on soon) and I try to do the same, digging for Billie Holiday and Dylan bootlegs along with odds and sods from hither and yon.
So, part of the process for me is simply staring at the wall of CDs in the music room, and trying to pluck out some nuggets accordingly. This time through, the great Toad the Wet Sprocket song Hold Her Down jumped out at me, and made it.
Aside from I love where the band got their name (Monty Python), Toad is a pretty good and versatile band (I saw them at a BFD many years back) and Hold Her Down is a great driving and lyrically powerful cut (listen carefully: it is a vehemently anti-rape song).
I was shopping in Trader Joes the other day, where they stream oldies (at least the one in El Cerrito) and this gem came on.
Just a great cut (love the bass intro) that had me humming as I was tossing exotica into my cart.
There are a lot of covers, but the original is still the best, and this one, with a scratchy 45, cuts to the thing that I think gives music lovers a happy heart. (Note that following Everlasting Love was Jimmy Clanton’s Venus in Blue Jeans. I cracked up several folks as I was singing along. Should I be embarrassed that I know all the words still?). That song may be fun, but it is hardly a classic anything, however.
I was driving around the other day, attempting to complete last minute holiday errands when the “hot lunch” came on the local representation of the hard rock station.
“The Bone” is the local pathway to bands like Black Sabbath and Rush and Def Leppard, who I admit are not my faves on one hand, but on the other do offer the crunch of guitars.
The “hot lunch” is just an hour of said groups with a theme suggested by the DJ, and with listeners then calling in their requests.
This particular edition of the “hot lunch” featured songs that had whistling, and the set kicked off with the great and goofy Hocus Pocus by the Dutch band Focus.
Spearheaded by killer guitar player Jan Akkerman, this was the band’s only real foray onto the American pop/rock scene, but so off beat and silly a song it is, punctuated by blasts of Akkerman’s wizardry, that the whole song is just one great goulash of fun.
Part of the shtick was also provided by keyboard player/flautist/yodeler Thjis van Leer.
Yeah, yodeling, flute, bridges with drums, and even whistling along with, as noted, those searing and interesting Akkerman solos.
Christmas–in fact the holidays at large–is an excuse for excess.
I was trying to think of a fitting tune as such, that would reflect the panoply of things that represent the season–food, drink, gifts, money–while also remembering that for Diane and me, Boxing Day will be the actual gift exchange with the family for the first time. That is because Kelly, Lindsay’s sister, has to work the holiday and cannot get away. (It was the same Thanksgiving, the first holiday where she was so grown up she couldn’t get home because of work, so it is fine to stall a day.)
For some reason, the thought of Boxing Day must have triggered my thoughts of the band Boxer, and the song All the Time in the World. While checking out versions, I was reminded of Mike Patto, who headed the group Boxer, and played with Spooky Tooth, a band full of great musicians, but one that never really caught on in the states.
An art rock group of sorts, SpookyTooth included such personage as Chris Stainton, Henry McCullough, Greg Ridley, Mike Harrison, and Gary Wright.
In reviewing this information, I was reminded of the song The Mirror, from the album of the same name, released in 1974. I was in love with ELO at the time, and when I heard the song The Mirror, I thought it was close to perfect.
Fortunately, within three years, punk would arrive and save me from the horrors of second generation prog rock. In fact, when I played The Mirror, while concoting this piece, I was sort of surprised that I ever liked it at all.
Certainly the song is heavily influenced by Gary Wright and the Dreamweaver phase, and I do like the arpeggio guitars and the drums, and even synths, but the words? God help me, and the chorale influenced singing during the over-indulgent bridge makes awful even worse.
Still, an interesting look at Brit psychedelia during the era of Elton John
Mike Patto left Spooky Tooth to form Boxer, and I remember buying their album Below the Belt when it came out, not so much because I loved the band but rather because I thought the album jacket would make the record collectable someday (I was right as it goes for between $75-$100 on Ebay). I do think though, that this had to be what Christopher Guest and Michael McKean and Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner were thinking when they were imagining the jacket of Smell the Glove.
Either way, curiosity got the better of me, so I pulled up All the Time in the World and it was actually sort of raw, but a lot better than The Mirror.
Which I guess isn’t saying much.
Hope your seasonal excesses don’t get the better of you, and if you are doing the gift thing tomorrow, happy Boxing Day!
All these thoughts about food and adolescent bands reminded me of this tune from around 1964 by the Beach Boys.
I was a huge Beach Boys fan, at least till the British wave first hit. And, I was always enamored of Pet Sounds from first listen, which was a few years into the arrival of the Beatles and Stones.
I saw the Beach Boys live four or five times, though, during their hey day (I was at the show that was recorded and released as The Beach Boys in Concert) and their Surfin USA album was the first album I ever owned (a departure from the purchases of singles, that had dominated my life and appetite previously).
That meant that I started to buy albums as well as 45’s for a while, and for sure I got new Beach Boys albums, including Shut Down Vol. II from which I got to know this song.
By 1966, the side of Shut Down II (I think it was the second side) was on the record player spindle, along with side four of Blonde on Blonde and some other stuff I put on to hear every night as I went to sleep.
I remember liking this song a lot back then but have not thought about it for years (the food references, brought it up, I guess) but I was amazed when I listened that it is really a pretty tight little pop tune.
Pretty good words. Good Chuck Berry chords. Fabulous harmonies. Though the dullest break/solo in the history of time. I mean, Carl Wilson lays a couple of licks down during the finale: I wonder why they didn’t have him throw those in earlier?
Anyway, food, and being 14 aside, this is a really nice number from an era now long gone. I have to say too, how sad hearing this makes me in way. I posted Brian Wilson on Saturday Night Live a while back. I noted how pathetic the performance was. In deference, surely, to how vibrant this stuff is.
We went out to dinner with my friend Stephen Clayton, and his wife Karen last night (it was Stephen’s 63rd birthday).
While we were waiting to be seated, and after smooching howdy to one another, of course we all checked our phones for messages and other errata.
I happened to have my iPhone open to the Remnants site, and up popped the clip of KISS below, posted by Steve, I guess in defense of a bad band he loved when he had braces on his teeth.
Steve noted that we should, “be prepared to be blown away” (or some like quasi pithy comment), that Flip Wilson’s (the host) outfit was awesome (yawn) and that Joni Mitchell could stick this “up her cootch.”
Aside from that fact that anything in life would only be made better after swimming around in Joni’s vagina, irrespective of her age, I did watch this, with Stephen (with whom I saw KISS in 1979, as I think I have mentioned before).
I can understand 14-year olds being enamored. In fact, aside from the fact that I did take some great photos of the band, there was nothing else I left with other than they were at best a ho-hum group, who did indeed pander to 14-year olds (girls, Steve, even) who would be lost without their make-up (ok, maybe not lost: maybe never even found).
This clip re-affirms it. Aside from some very nice rhythm chords leading into the solo in Deuce, this performance is as meandering and uninspired and tired as it gets. Like the band, who are indeed tight, but neither particularly clean, nor smart let alone original (ooh, make-up, how clever, tell Alice Cooper to try it, and ooh, windmill guitar, maybe Keef could try that and show it to Pete Townshend, and ooh, choreographed guitar dance steps, maybe Paul Revere and the Raiders could pick up on that one).
I have to say I feel the same about Slade, who wore the same stupid shoes, but who were also a completely one-dimensional band in my view.
I get we all have our adolescent loves (I dug the Moody Blues, and still love the Who and the Kinks as much now as I did in 1968), but to suggest this stuff is better than Green Day (I will accept both being equally vapid, but the truth is, I like Green Day and their poppy-punky stuff, which at least sounds crisp, and does whine about teen angst, an essential to rock’n’roll) is just stupid. Like KISS
Anyway, as I concocted a response to the post to put here this morning, the clip (which was called “Breakfast Abortion”) mysteriously disappeared. Knowing Peter, I doubt he cut it because of any form of censorship.
So, I can only imagine Steve thought twice, and yanked it himself (el cajones minora, Steve?).
Truth is, it is more than fine with me to like this shit. As is liking Slade and Hellacopters and Turbonegro and a bunch of loud run of the mill working bands who basically play straight ahead three chord rock. I mean, I like Green Day and the Who and U2, and Joni Mitchell and have never claimed my taste was anything other than things I personally liked anyway.
But, please don’t suggest this stuff is better than much aside from Spirit in the Sky, In the Year 2525, or Incense and Peppermints.
Joe Cocker, late of the Grease Band and a great Woodstock performance, died of lung cancer today (making him also now late of life).
I cannot really say I liked Cocker live better than I liked John Belushi riffing on the whole schtick, but there is no question the Cocker’s seminal interpretation of the Beatles With A Little Help From My Friends is a fantastic and riveting performance.
Not much more to add or subtract beyond showing that shining moment in time and space.
I understand we all have our preferences, but I have been meaning to present them, maybe even with consideration as a great band.
I got to see them twice, way back when Dookie was released. In 1993, they were the opening act at the local BFD, a spring pre-cursor to Lollapalooza. That year was a heavyweight BFD, also featuring, Pavement, Luscious Jackson, Toad the Wet Sprocket, the Rollins Band, the Flaming Lips, and the Knack (who had become a sort of cool post punk retro band).
I saw Green Day again a year later, still paying dues and working at their already well defined craft/attitude presented in Dookie. When that album came out, my legs could still allow me to run 25-35 miles a week, and Dookie was a Walkman favorite for a while.
I confess that I did not buy any Green Day discs till American Idiot was released a decade later, but their doggedness, and tuneful pop hits kept right on coming.
Warning. Redundant. When I Come Around among others, are all well done power pop/punk tunes to be sure.
But, I remember my friend George Anderson, making me sit in his car after we had picked up Chinese food. Jesus of Suburbia was next cut coming on the newly released American Idiot.
“You gotta listen to this before we go in. You will love it,” George implored.
That meant Mongolian beef and BBQ pork were going to cool down some, but I listened and George was right. I loved it.
Say what you will, but American Idiot is solid album, with clever tunes, a clean sound, and a lot of punch. Maybe it was popular, or chic, but I cannot see blaming the band for actually achieving what we all aspire to: commercial success.
Here is Jesus of Suburbia
For fun, let’s toss in the band’s treatment of the Simpson’s theme from The Simpson’s Movie.
Wow. You get sick and wind down your main work career, missing. or better being distracted for a week or so and look how much you miss.
I got a lot of catching up to do on “posts ex facto,” but just before I disappeared, Steve wrote about listening to something and watching football, when the viewer suddenly switched on the Food Network.
Seems like Steve couldn’t get his fork around that.
Well, as an admitted foodie, and pretty serious cook, I can totally understand. I watch the Food Network as a staple–along with the NFL network, MLB network, TCM, and Adult Swim–checking out at least one complete show of something every day (I not only learn places to eat on the Network, but some pretty interesting and valuable cooking techniques).
But, the whole food/music thing made me think of food songs. Ode to Bobbie Joe sneaked in there, along with Mashed Potato, Hot Pastrami, and of course Gravy, but I went with the Kinks during their fabulous Muswell Hillbillies period.
Gene’s post of the Dolls Too Much Too Soon reminded me so much of the 13th Floor Elevators, that I was jonesing to hear that great tune from Roky Erickson and band.
In searching, I found this really great clip from Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is.
Since it is actually semi-live, and since I don’t remember seeing the Elevators in “action,” I had no clue that the odd sort of synth/bass sound was Tommy Hall playing the jug.
