It is like looking through the old Macmillan Baseball Stat book: You look up one number, and that leads to another and another and what started out as a search for Napoleon Lajoie’s (got it that time, Steve) best year for doubles (51 in 1910) winds up comparing George Brunet’s career WHIP (1.316) with that of Jamey Wright’s (1.545, pretty crappy for a former first rounder) three hours later.
My piece on the Syndicate of Sound led to Gene posting the Music Machine, and when I finished watching that, there was a link to the Seeds on a show called Shebang, which I think I remember, but am not sure.
I can say that I kind of liked the Seeds, but I can also say this is maybe the worst lip sync ever:
But, in typical stat searching style, that led to this video of 50’s pin-up model Bettie Page dancing, I guess suggestively, to another Seeds hit, I Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.
The song is ok, and for sure Bettie was hot (dark hair, bangs, and blue eyes are deadly. If I knew she was left-handed, and wore glasses sometimes a la Dorothy Malone in The Big Sleep, I would have probably spent my life savings trying to track her down) but for the most part the whole thing is stupid, and not really provocative (was it in 1966? I doubt it.).
Since Diane and I have been up in the mountains the past week, evening time has meant movies for the most part (don’t get me started on trying to stream the World Series or the NFL on a laptop or tablet or IPhone: to frustrating and worse than flying cos’ every keystroke costs something).
Diane had never seen the wonderful Martin Scorsese PBS film, No Direction Home, the American Masters documentary on Dylan covering his childhood up to the infamous Royal Albert Hall performance in 1966 (I still posses a vinyl bootleg that was called The Great White Wonder of the set).
What has always struck me about both the film as well as his autobiography, Chronicles, Volume 1, is what a normal guy Dylan seems to be despite all they hype and adulation and craziness that has surrounded the bulk of his career.
I particularly love the press conference scenes in the movie, like this one:
Anyway, Gene’s post on Louis, noting folk is not dead, sort of stirred it up in me as to just how amazing and prolific and ridiculously good Dylan was at everything folk before he led the charge to changing the rules and plugging in and pissing off the traditional folkies, for example, at said Royal Albert Hall gig.
There is a lot of footage in No Direction Home of Dylan at Newport in the early 60’s and he is just riveting, not just as a songwriter, but the dude is also a fantastic acoustic guitar player, and this showcases just how good he is!
Back in the late 60’s, when suddenly garage bands were booming and scoring hits, there was a bevy of groups who hit the Top 40.
The Leaves (Hey Joe), The Sonics (The Witch, among others, documented here even), The Count Five (Psychotic Reaction, made even more famous by the late Lester Bangs), and The Standells (Dirty Water, made even more famous by the Red Sox) are some of those collectives who scored radio play.
And in there was the double Rickenbacker sound (gets me like I think dual SG’s get Steve) and quasi Brit look the Syndicate of Sound carried on their flirt with fame.
I have to admit I never really know just how to compartmentalize Cake.
Surely, by Steve’s definition they are not rockers, and despite the trumpet, the band is neither soul, nor jumpin’ jive a la the Squirrel Nut Zippers, as an example.
The band’s vocals are not really sung, and well, if there is the beautiful ability of a band to coordinate back-up vocals and harmonies as Steve has pointed out, Cake breaks a those rules by shouting out the back-ups, in unison, and in tune, but hardly sung.
If I had to use a word for them, it would be quirky.
I believe the band hails from Stockton, California, a somewhat sleepy largely farm community about 40 miles southeast of Sacramento which also produced the equally offbeat Pavement.
My late wife, Cathy Hedgecock, was a reporter for the Stockton Record for a few years back in the late 80’s, in fact she was the first woman assigned to the farm beat in the history of the Record, something that may seem ho-hum these days, but at the time was a big deal.
Cathy actually wrote a collection of short stories called The Draping Effect that focused on the bizarre things that came through the newsroom of a community that was too big to be a town, and not quite big enough to really be a city. In fact, Cathy often said if there is a strange crime that occurs on the planet, chances are it was six degrees of separation from Stockton.
Anyway, here is my favorite Cake to go with your coffee this morning.
It is hard to appreciate just how on top of the Remnants Peter is till he leaves for a few days.
Meaning guilt is enough of an impetus for Steve and me to acknowledge the void, and to try and fill it up a tad.
So, I thought I would turn to a band I really have loved over their career, who have a great body of work, and yet who have barely merited a whisper in Remnantland.
I was a fan with my first listen to Radio Free Europe, and with their third album and the song Fall on Me the issue of buying their next disc sight unseen was beyond settled.
I do have all their albums, and I think I put their brilliant Automatic for the People on my essential 30 or 50 or however many albums we listed a few years back.
For a sample, I picked a rocker from the great Monster album, a song fostered by a news miscue elicited by Dan Rather, but not meant to be heard by the viewing public when he asked “What’s the frequency Kenneth”, ostensibly of the sound guy on the news show. This is kind of a fun live version, with a couple of different performances spliced together.
For a second piece, a live treatment of the beautiful Man on the Moon that concludes said Automatic for the People as perfectly as does The End wind up Abbey Road.
We are up at the Tahoe house for a week which means no TV (save DVDs) and no radio (save streaming). Right now it means pouring down rain banging off our metal roof, and maybe in a few hours it will mean the first snow drop of the year. Irrespective, we need the water, so bring it on.
But, it also means I am near KTKE HQ in Truckee, and while streaming this morningDJ Lindsday with an A spun this great Marshall Crenshaw tune from his equally fine self titled debut disc from 1982.
I had high hopes for Crenshaw and his Hollyesque delivery (these days I reserve that for Jake Bugg) and saw Crenshaw in the early 90’s at the Fillmore. He was good enough (and paired with the great Jimmy Dale Gilmore) but he hadn’t really advanced much beyond that first album.
Which is ok, I suppose. I just hope for growth out of an artist I like. Still, a tight little cut.
We all have our likes and loves here in Remnantland.
Peter certainly has the widest palate of taste and experimentation, with Steve sticking to a core sort of set of criteria that constitute rock’n’roll, while Gene, steeped in his working class New York roots, is drawn to the arty side of music Peter, but his soul pushes more from the influence of doo wop through the Ramones, via Johnny Thunders.
I think essentially it is all good stuff.
As for me, I am drawn to the pop sensibilities, and for me, the wit of the British tongue, merged with American rhythm and blues, is what I love or gravitate to most, but I dig Beethoven and Roland Kirk, as well.
But, one of things I had been trying to do here is remember to highlight bands and artists who we tend to forget about, hence, the Moody Blues, who were, along with the Who and the Kinks, my favorite band back in 1967-69.
Before Pink Floyd, before Rush, before Yes, and before Spiritualized, there was the Moody Blues, the first real prog rock band.
The Moodys first hit in 1966 with a hit, Go Now, that featured Denny Laine (later of Wings) on vocals, in 1965, but after that tune, Laine left the band and re-emerged with John Lodge and Justin Hayward as their principles.
In 1967–the year of Sgt. Pepper–and the group produced the Days of Future Passed, a concept album that featured the beautiful cuts Tuesday Afternoon and Nights in White Satin at a time when Pink Floyd was still seeing Emily play (a song I love).
The jump in concept and realization between Go Now and Tuesday Afternoon is kind of like the leap between Radiohead’s Creep as compared to Airbag.
Featuring the flute of Ray Thomas, and the unusual and haunting mellotron keyboard of Mike Pinder, Days of Future Passed was an attempt by the band to deconstruct Dvorak’s Symphony for the New World and on the liner notes of the groups follow-up, In Search of the Lost Chord, producer Tony Clarke regarded the band as the “worlds smallest symphony orchestra.”
This all might sound hoity toity snotty, and as having nothing to do with rock’n’roll in the Moyer sense, but this was the throes of the psychadelic era and I was a 15-year old new stoner and both Days and In Search were always on the changer (as were Tommy and Blonde on Blonde) and I still am knocked out by the band’s Legend of a Mind song.
Sadly, I saw a reunion performance of the band at Red Rocks 20-years or so ago, and it was embarrassing to watch, but, I still have to acknowledge that Moody’s played a pivotal part of my life for a few years back there.
In fact, I was into the Moodys before they made it, and started losing interest in the band with their next album, On the Threshold of a Dream, and by the time To Our Children’s Children’s Children came out the band had become a favorite of those ubiquitous average Joes, and that was the last album I bought by the band, turning instead to Atom Heart Mother.
Irrespective, the song Gypsy from Children’s remains one of my favorite songs of the group.
Way back in February, Peter wrote a Night Music piece on Paul Revere and the Raiders and I started to write this very article I am now updating.
I saw the band a couple of times in the early 60’s, opening for the Beach Boys, who played Sacramento a lot. In fact I was at the show that became The Beach Boys in Concert, and the Raiders played that gig.
The Raiders, headed by Paul Revere, were a more than entertaining collection of players who knocked out some very good pop hits. Just Like Me, Kicks, Louie Louie, and Him or Me, What’s it Gonna Be?, to name some.
But, Revere and band hold kind of a funny and dubious place in history.
At the time the first wave of British bands were washing onto the American shore and airwaves, the head of A&R at Columbia Records was none other than Mitch Miller. You know, the Sing Along With Mitch guy, who had a Van Dyke to give the illusion of beatnik coolness, but who in reality was as square as they come.
Convinced that long hair and Brit Pop were just a passing fancy, Miller dissuaded the Columbia powers that the company should not sign any of the zillion bands just waiting to be discovered, and by the time it was realized this was a business/tactical error, The Raiders were the first band signed, for a million clams.
Not that the band was bad: they were just a lot different than the British invasion bands.
Miller skedaddled from Columbia, and Clive Davis took over to a pretty successful run, but the plan definitely waylaid the company for a few years.
Anyway, Revere, the leader, passed away Saturday, perfectly enough at the age of ’76, and irrespective of Miller’s acumen, the Raiders were excellent showmen and musicians and songwriters.
