Fun novelty tune from Ellis, who also did the bewitching and irksome Name Game, but a mesmerizing dance video as well, like a kaleidoscope with swing. Thank you, Walker, for the hat tip.
Author Archives: peter
Christian James Hand Breaks Down AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock
I learned about this from a Facebook post by my friends Annastasia and Herrick. Hand went to school with Herrick.
Hand takes songs and breaks them down into their component parts. Haven’t heard anything like this before, and don’t know how the he gets to the individual tracks, but it’s pretty neat. Here’s the show:
https://audioboom.com/posts/6503846-studio-session-on-fhf-let-there-be-rock-by-ac-dc-11-20-2017
Here’s the whole song.
Those Darlins, Be My Bro
Nashville indie gals have a pretty sweet catalog. Lots of country, lots of sass and cleverness. Like this. If I walked into a bar and found them I would be overly enthusiastic and glad.
Eno and Rick Holland, Bless This Space
Came upon this lead track from a 2011 album (Drums Between the Bells) these two guys (Holland is a poet) made. Arty as all get out, but man it sounds good. That is a fantastic guitar solo.
Good Old Boys
Randy Newman’s first three albums are full of good songs. Songs that were hits for others, like Mama Told Me Not to Come, and songs that made his reputation as a song craftsman and satirist. But it was his fourth album, Good Old Boys, that I think is his masterpiece. Here the satire is scathing, and then the sentiment is true, and in a song like Birmingham, the two come together seamlessly.
Thinking about Alabama tonight, and thinking how in the 43 years since this great album came out, the same problems persist. Maybe things are worse.
If Roy Moore wins in the Alabama race for the Senate seat tonight (Ed. Note: He didn’t.), we should probably all sing Kurt Weill’s and Bertolt Brecht’s Alabama Song, something of a hit for the Doors back in the day, (Show me the way to the next whisky bar, oh don’t ask why, oh don’t ask way. Show me the way to the next little girl, oh don’t ask why, oh don’t ask why.), but in the meantime, these three songs from Good Old Boys will get you started:
Going Out In Style: Johnny Hallyday
Johnny Hallyday was a giant rock star in France, and would show up in all sorts of French films I’ve seen over the years. Whether the movie be commercial cheese or popular entertainment, Hallyday’s presence was always electric. This guy was a real rock star.
Not that I ever listened to his albums. Like Elvis Presley, I got the sense he had some great songs, but he also recorded a lot of shlock, all the more so for the movies. So, incredible aura, but very little consideration as an artist. And this seems to be the case all over the English speaking world.
But in France? He died this week and they threw him a rock star’s funeral. Dig all the pictures here.
A few songs:
The Rousers, Rock ‘n’ Roll or Run
Nice NY Times story about denizenz of the Max’s and CB’s scenes now playing out around town like time never stopped. Their apparent motto: “If I’d have broken big maybe I’d be dead now.”
Biggest play goes to the Rousers, who have a pretty great sound.
Last Kiss Plus Wayne Cochrane and Pearl Jam
Wayne Cochrane wrote and performed the song Last Kiss in 1961. It wasn’t a great hit. But it had legs. Here’s the original recording.
Cochrane is a character in John Capouya’s new book about Florida Soul, which is how I came upon the song.
The funny thing for me is that the original version of the song is catchy, but doesn’t get at the real moral position the young man is in as the Pearl Jam version, even though Cochrane was a preacher (a Florida preacher, but still). What Pearl Jam version?
Tommy Keene RIP Places That Are Gone
I liked this song back in the day, partly because of the Bobby Thompson quotes, but it’s also smart and sounds great and has a bit more oomph than many of the 80s power pop tunes did. He went to the same high school as Nils Lofgren, made many records, had no hits and a part of the world mourns his death yesterday.
The End of the Internet
You know how you’re going from place to place on the internet, and then you end up someplace and you have no idea how you got there? Tonight that happened to me, when I landed at clubdevo.com.
Devo would seem to be an internet savvy band, all techno and futuristic, even if that represents the devolution of humankind. But clubdevo.com is a wasteland. Only the Twitter feed is alive with content. You can check in here: http://www.clubdevo.com/
But better to check this: