Peter posted last week on the ever-fun Lee Michaels (sigh, no relation unfortunately) and his biggest hit, Do You Know What I Mean?
I was a big Michaels fan back then, and I think I saw him at Winterland and Sound Factory and various little northern California venues four times with my childhood friend Stephen Clayton.
I never saw him play with anyone but his great and behemoth drummer, Bartholomew Smith-Frost aka “Frosty.”
Further, I always remember he was barefoot, and from what I could see, his feet were really dirty (even back then, he was a stoner after my own heart).
I remember loving Michaels’ first pair of albums–Carnival of Life and Recital–after which he released Barrel, the work the artist insisted was his first real album. That is because Barrel was just Michaels and Frosty whereas the first two efforts featured the likes of studio-men Eddie Hoh and Hamilton Watt and friends.
The problem is as much as I liked Michaels and Frosty live, similarly I thought those first two albums were full of great tunes and some decent crunch and psychedelia.
The song I picked here is Streetcar which was my fave on that first Carnival of Life album.
As I was searching for Michaels information to assemble this little ditty, I did come across his website, which is kind of a hoot in a “peace and love I am a bit of a scattered stoned out hippie but that doesn’t mean I am stupid or anything” way.
All the Japanese pop some forced this song into my head, and, to quote Lucinda Williams, I Can’t Let Go.
Not that I wish I could.
Kyu Sakamoto was sort of the Masanori Marukami of pop: Sakamoto the only Asian to log a #1 hit in Billboard history, and well, this is it. And, though he was a one-hit wonder here, though “Mashi” (the Giants nickname for Marukami, the first Japanese born in the Major Leagues) was kind of like that too, they at least both paved the way.
I guess it is pleasant enough, and when the song came out in 1963 it was indeed a huge hit (sold 13 million units overall). But, this song is certainly not pop as I think of it, and it is as far removed from rock and roll as Percy Faith and Mitch Miller and even Pat Boone’s obnoxious cover of Tutti Fruiti.
Not sure why it was such a big hit, though? Sort of muzak with words none of us knows, and as I thought about it, I thought about compiling a Steveslist of the six songs not sung in English to hit #1 on the Billboard chart.
But, as I looked at them, they were all really so awful–and I get they may evoke fond memories in some–that I just couldn’t do it.
However, they are:
Nel Blu Dipinto di Bleu: Domenico Modguno, 1958 (My mother loved this song: Bobby Rydell did the American thing with Volare.)
Sukiyai: Kyu Sakamoto, 1963
Dominique: The Singing Nun, 1963 (See how badly we needed the Beatles? Two of these dogs in one year.)
Rock me Amadeus: Falco, 1896 (Proud that I have no conscious clue what this song is.)
La Bamba: Los Lobos (I love the Lobos, and this song, in fact this is the best tune on the list, but why not Richie Valens?)
Macarena: Los Dell Rio, 1996 (Never understood and I guess the only reason I know this song is they played it at the ball park.)
I just don’t get any of these songs, save La Bamba, which is really a treatment of a Mexican folk song, being hits at all. Not that I am trying to be xenophobic, but in general the music is cheesy and most really cannot understand the words. Meaning if we were on Bandstand, and doing “Rate a Record,” we couldn’t say, “I give it a 73, Dick. It had a nice beat and I liked the lyrics.”
OTOH, I don’t get I’ve Never Been to Me or Abba songs (maybe tuneful, but so what?) or even Snoopy Versus the Red Baron (which I hated at the time as much as I hated Incense and Peppermints and In the Year 2525.)
BTW, this video of Sukiyaki is the official publicity one Sakamoto released. And, sadly, in another shot at fame, Sakamoto was killed as one of the fatalities resulting from the JAL air crash August 12, 1985 the worst air disaster in history.
So, on that sobering note, enjoy if you can. If you dare.
That is my cheap shit excuse for neglecting to surrender my share of contributions to the Site here over the past weeks.
Truth is, my life is very busy, although I am in the process of transitioning from one of those more than demanding day jobs that really pays the bills and provides my health care, to the ranks of the retired. Although for me retired means writing four or five baseball columns a week, working on some fiction, being at the ball park, playing music, writing songs, and well, writing here too among other things.
Well, rest assured, just because I get distracted and forget to post stuff here, it doesn’t mean I am not thinking about it.
And, while I have a lot of fodder floating around in my grey cells, somehow when watching Family Guy a couple of weeks ago I saw this which demonstrates just how brilliant Seth MacFarlane and his mates can be.
I get if you hate Family Guy. Peter Griffin is as oafish and mostly offensive a character as we can imagine. In fact if The Simpsons has proved to be the best representation of American Family life ever recorded, the Griffin family has pushed that envelope by showing our basically soulless full of reality TV instant experts internet cell phone culture in an even more visceral way.
In other words, yeah: lots of fart and toilet jokes, too much blood and vomit, lots of gags that no one can let go of, and on and on.
However, if you can indulge creator MacFarlane just a little, when he is on, he is so on it is scary.
And, very often, that on is the result of some musical genius.
Not that we are talking Lou Reed or the Hellacopters or original music.
More like knowing that the ever-hot Lois Griffin banged all of Kiss as a young woman, something that makes her Trog husband Peter proud.
But, the show also riffs other songs and genres and stuff so brilliantly. As in the song/sequence below where MacFarlane and mates take on Disney, not only in song, but with just a few deft line changes from the animators, and a little creative use of metaphor, well, you get this:
OK, so it ain’t rock’n’roll, but it is funny and I do like it. It is also smart, which I also like.
When I think about it, in fact, most of my earliest exposure to classical music–aside from what my parents usually had going in the background–was the result of Looney Tunes, as in this great clip of Bugs playing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2 (although when I first saw it, I had no idea what the music was):
To finish off, I am going back to Family Guy, again with a song and dance number that is so clever, and to pair with Bugs and his ilk, links back to the 30’s with the song Bag O’ Weed which totally riffs on the Marx Brothers and Duck Soup (I looked for a video clip of the brothers banging on the helmeted heads of the enemy Sylvanians with dubbed xylophone music that MacFarlane parodies, and could not find one).
However, if you watch carefully during the finale, you will indeed see a Groucho head spill out (at 2:49) among the images, giving credit where credit is due right after the Duck Soup riff (instead of helmets, Brian and Stewie are banging on bongs).
OK, so I got that out of my system, and I can start writing about some serious music. Like Foghat.
What else would I be doing during the day than working and listening to KTKE? Even if baseball is on in the background, the volume is down, essentially sparing me the observations of commentators explaining what I can see for myself.
This time, the nugget from the past they hit me with was Wicked Gravity by the Jim Carroll Band
Carroll was a young poet who emerged from the New York arts scene of the late 70’s, along with Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe, with whom he apparently shared living space as the punk movement was burgeoning.
He published an autobiographical volume, The Basketball Diaries, in 1978 that dealt with his adolescence, sex, shooting hoops in high school, and drugs, specifically the author’s heroin addiction.
Largely a product of a Catholic upbringing, the young poet hit the music scene to, forming a band and releasing a decent enough first album, Catholic Boy.
The big hit from the disc was For All the People Who Died, but I always dug the cut here, Wicked Gravity a little more as a song.
Apparently this clip was posted on YouTube by Carroll Band bass player Steve Lisnley, who noted the video is from the band’s final live performance.
Carroll produced music, prose, and poetry through 2000. He passed away in 2009 at the age of 60 from a heart attack, and one posthumous volume, The Petting Zoo was released in 2010.
I hardly ever get a chance to play guitar these days. Which is a drag because though I am an adequate lead player, I am a pretty strong rhythm guy.
But, sort of by default, I have become a bass player over the past six or seven years, and that has been interesting as part of my growth as a so-called musician.
What this has done is now when I hear a song, I not only listen to the bass on the song more carefully, but similarly do I imagine what I would play, humming the line and notes to myself.
When I do find a run I like, I have been dragging the tune the bass line is attached to over to my teacher Steve Gibson, and try to pick it apart, and learn some new stuff.
So, this list represents the last cluster of songs where I just found the bass deadly and fun to learn.
Long Way to Go (Alice Cooper): I was driving to band practice a couple of weeks ago and looked for something to sing along to while driving to get my voice warm. And, though I have loved the Love it to Death album since it came out in 1971, and even knew bits and pieces of the bass parts throughout, I had never really let the bass of Long Way to Go–which is the song that gives the album its title–hit me. Well, till a couple of weeks ago, and I stopped singing and dug just how great this bass line is.
Some wonderful chromatic walkdowns, and isolated notes are all great, but what really nailed me was the completely different path during the interlude/breakdown before the final verse. Just brilliant playing by the band’s bassist, Dennis Dunaway.
The original Alice Cooper band might well be the best garage band ever (gotta give props to the Ramones here, too), and it is such a shame that they mostly self-destructed after Killer.
I know my mate and fellow bass player Steve will love it to death that I put this song atop the list.
Secret World (Peter Gabriel): Peter Gabriel sometimes seems overlooked to me considering how what a great visionary and explorer of music and art he is.
Arguably, his Sledgehammer video was among the early really c0hesive pieces of celluloid to grace the scene.
Though I was never a big fan of Genesis, his mark on that group goes without saying. And, though I am not that crazy about Phil Collins as a singer/songwriter, he is an excellent drummer, and Gabriel’s influence on Collins as a tunesmith speaks for itself. Or at least it used to.
This song, though is such a tour de force number it is hard to deny, and the great Tony Levin’s bass playing just kills me.
The studio version of Secret World is good, but when Gabriel and his band do it live, things move, shall we say, to another planet and level.
Watch the video here and you will both see what I mean, including Gabriel’s vision as an artist.
Cold Sweat (James Brown): I probably would not have been stung quite so hard by this song, had teacher Steve not brought it to my attention. This line created by the Flames Bernard Odum is a case study in time, discipline, and the selection of notes.
Not much more I can add to that.
Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin): While I have always owned albums by the Zep, and dug their songs, it was not till I started seriously playing music 20 years ago that I began to really appreciate just how good they are/were.
The first eponymously titled album was influential in ways I have described before, but over the last few months, the Biletones were trying out a new drummer, whom I subsequently fired a few weeks ago.
His biggest crimes were not keeping time for the band, as opposed playing the drums and not paying any attention to the rest of us, and in the process, not locking into me. I think the drums are the heartbeat of a song, and the bass the pulse, and they need to be in lockstep, complementing one another.
There were other musical transgressions committed by Scott, but that was the most egregious, as in I simply couldn’t, and then wouldn’t play with him. Cos he would never look at me or synch with me.
Bad.
Anyway, Dazed and Confused is textbook synch between drummer John Bonham and bass player John Paul Jones.
In particular, the call and response between the bass and the drums during the interlude might seem overly simplistic, but that is the feel I always want with whomever I am sharing the rhythm section.
And Your Bird Can Sing (Beatles): Anyone who doubts just how brilliant Paul McCartney’s playing is has obviously not listened too carefully. But this song, among my favorites of the group’s catalogue, just shows every piece of clever and musicianship these guys had in less than two minutes. The bass line is beyond musical. It is magical.
Of course I am working, and streaming KTKE (still the best radio on earth in the best traditional listening to the radio sense) and The Band’s Chest Fever hit the airwaves.
The studio version is among my favorite songs by the iconic group, but I found this live version from Woodstock that is so good (too bad no real video).
Aside from the killer church organ intro, the group pushes this cranker forward in such a relaxed fashion, that it just flies by.
Really love the drums and Robbie Robertson is as good as they come on the guitar. Vastly under-rated.
One thing about the core of us here at the Remnants is that we all became friends thanks to baseball: in particular fantasy baseball.
And, maybe there is something about how our respective and collective brains process, that makes it so that while we all do love baseball and games, there are a bunch of other things we all love, and are happy to discuss ad naseum.
Like music.
So, when our good buddy from Rotowire, Derek Van Riper, asked me if I was familiar with St. Paul & the Broken Bones, I had to plead ignorance, but that did not last too long.
I did a YouTube search, and found a song entitled Call Me, which was pretty good. It also reminded me so much of the late great wonderful Otis Redding, and his band the Barkays, who sadly died in a plane crash in December of 1967.
And, as I finished watching the Call Me video, what did I spot but a live cover of the band performing Redding’s wonderful I’ve Been Loving You (too Long to Stop Now).
Now, to be fair, my love of Redding and that song tracks back to a pair of vintage all time classic albums: Otis Redding Live in Europe, and Jimi Hendrix & Otis Redding Live at Monterey (which made my essential 50 albums list).
So, the fact that Paul Janeway (St. Paul) and his crew pretty deftly pull off their homage and sound is high praise. I mean, these guys really have the essence of the Stax/Volt sound down.
Here is the band covering Otis:
And, as a means of comparison, here is Otis and the Barkays at the peak of their form at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, just about six months before they perished.
Otis is so good and cool, and his band is so tight that it is hard to imagine anyone even trying what St. Paul and mates did. They certainly get props from me. Thanks DVR!
Lindsay dropped this cut on my Xmas disc a couple of years back, and there is something so basic and rhythmic about it, although to be truthful, I cannot put my finger on specifically what kills me about the song.
I do think there is something hypnotic about repetition in music when pulled off right. Prince’s Purple Rain being a great example of a song that seems like the only real words are in the chorus, for example, although there is some actual substance beneath that repetitive portion of the tune that draws us in.
Much the same is this one by the tUnE yArDs (hey, that is their spelling, not mine, though I confess as a fan of e.e. cummings, I love lower case letters dominating) during which we only seem to hear the scary chorus over and over (listen carefully, cos it ain’t pretty) although the sweetness and innocence of the voice of band brain child and leader Merrill Garbus somehow transcends the ugly scene.
When we were discussing Wreckless Eric and the Stiffs Live a few weeks back, I thought of Richard Thompson with a smile.
He is indeed my very favorite guitar player (though watch it Richard, Mick Ronson and Bill Frisell are gaining on you), singer/songwriter, and live performer.
Since Peter brought Richard and Linda and Shoot Out the Lights to the forefront, such is my opening.
Just about everything Peter culled about Richard’s career is correct, although Thompson did take a break from performing in the 80’s at some point.
I am not sure exactly when, though I suspect it was the early 80’s, or perhaps even the late 70’s.
I know this because I caught the Austin City Limits with him many years back, and during an interview the guitarist noted that he had turned to selling antiques for a while, a gig for which he admitted he was not very good at.
But, he returned to music, and the interviewer asked what brought him back, and Thompson noted, “The Sex Pistols.”
When asked to elaborate, Thompson said, “I realized I didn’t have to turn into Elton John.”
Sometime after Amnesia ( which features the terrific Valerie) was released, then the closest thing to a breakout for Thompson with Rumor and Sigh.
It was then that I truly fell in love with Richard, for though I saw Fairport Convention in the early 70’s, the first time I saw him solo was opening for Crowded House around 1988, touring solo acoustic behind that album.
Rumor and Sigh featured the great Vincent Black Lightning 1952, Read About Love, and the song below, Feel So Good. The You Tube version is culled from Letterman, and his band is the Letterman band, meaning Paul Schafer is on keys.
As a result of some odd Tout Wars drafting machinations last weekend, I was prompted to write about that, and in the process, brought up Frank Zappa and his band The Mothers of Invention.
After which it occurred to me that we have never given the brilliant, funny, and iconoclastic–not to mention great guitar player–much due on this site.
So, I will try to rectify that.
My appreciation of the man dates back to 1968, when as a long haired kid I attended a John Birch Society meeting wherein the backwards rednecks presented a program on how rock music corrupts our youth, making them become long haired degenerate dope smokers (just like me?).
I went with a handful of friends, and it was very scary as these guys were–and still are–neo-Nazis, but now I can look back on the whole affair with some kind of romantic eye.
A few years later my oldest and closest friend, Stephen Clayton and I saw the Mothers, on one of the weirdest bills ever. Opening was the band founded by then ex-Quicksilver guitar player, John Cippolina, Copperhead. Next was the jazz fusion band, Weather Report (who I have since seen three more times), and then Zappa and his mates hit the stage, playing Chunga’s Revenge that I can remember.
Zappa has also been sort of an American version of John Mayall, with the likes Lowell George, George Duke, Terry Bozio, Ansley Dunbar, and eventually Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (AKA Flo and Eddie, ex-patriots of the Turtles), among other luminaries, in his band.
The tune I picked for today’s edification is the eternally funny Eddie Are You Kidding from the album Just Another Band From L.A. (note too that Zappa’s influence moved, as year’s later the great Los Lobos paid homage by naming their compilation album, Just Another Band from East L.A.).
Just for fun, I also added this terrific clip of Zappa appearing before Congress in 1985, testifying before Tipper Gore’s stupid committee who were monitoring music and lyrics at the time for appropriateness. Note that Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snyder–three artists who could not be more different–all testified, and all three dissed the whole process as a bunch of shit.
Rightfully so! Anyway, Zappa was smart, funny, and eloquent as you will see if you hit the clip below.
