I’ve never been a big metal fan, but in the dark ages of alt rock I grew to love Helmet. They, along with Come, pounded the head darkly, and I was happy to bang my head along.
I learned today that not only did Helmet play a show in NYC last night, but they have a new album out. I’ve only played a few of the songs, so this isn’t a review, but I get this one. Half the sound is Husker Du, the other half is something bigger and darker, but the combo sounds great, even if the song didn’t grab me the first time round.
Page Hamilton is an excellent and powerful guitarist, and I hope he saves us all from the crap we’re sinking in. Or, to quote Aerosmith, dream on.
I don’t remember whether I first heard Leon Russell on Mad Dogs and Englishmen, or the Concert for Bangladesh or his excellent solo albums. What I remember is that he was off the radar until he was on it, and when we found out about him we loved his songs and his piano, we loved his Stones covers and we loved Youngblood. But what I remember most distinctly was learning that he’d been a session player on Frank Sinatra sides!
But when someone dies you learn other things. Such that Russell co-wrote (with Bonnie Bramlett) Superstar, the great weird Carpenters song.
And then there is the session work, like this early Stones demo featuring Russell, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, of a song that grew up to become Shine A Light.
I listened to a lot of Stars in the middle aughts. And I started listening to this paranoid and challenging pop song again over and over in the last week. I’m not sure why. Not related to the election, I don’t think. It feels like the mound of potatoes in Close Encounters, maybe, but what I know for sure is that this is an amazing band that isn’t rock ‘n’ roll, but also isn’t yer usual pop maunderings.
Found myself singing 2000 Man today. It’s a great song to sing when you’re doing something mindless. And so, while I cooked dinner, I put on the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesty’s Request.
It is a psychedelic record by the least psychedelic rock band of all time, but mostly that doesn’t matter. For instance, in In Another Land, there is a psychedelic verse with harpsichord and audio effects, but when the chorus kicks in, the song rocks. Then I awoke, was this some kind of joke? Yes!
You should listen to the whole album. Even Gomper, the Stones prequel to Patti Smith’s Radio Ethiopia, has merit, but the fact is that all the songs rock in a way no other psychedelic band rocked. Thank Charlie, perhaps. The songs can’t help it. Here’s 2000 Man, a song about temporal displacement the Kinks would be have been happy to record.
Okay, my favorite song on the album, may be The Citadel:
If these guys weren’t from Maryland, and this video wasn’t from a show in Philadelphia, I’m not sure I’d be posting it, but some small part of the fun was trying to find our buddy Steve in the crowd at this show.
It’s quite a show. I love the hurtling, twisting, spastic bodies of the stage divers, the oculus of mosh out in the middle of the floor, the way the bass player puts down his guitar and dives into the crowd, then returns to stage and joins back in with the band.
I love the vocalist saying he’s not much with words, and the way he shares the mic at every opportunity.
I love that there are straight edge kids.
I compare this stuff to the Bad Brains clip Steve posted last week and I have to say that it surprises me that this is a style that endures. But the vocalist loves hardcore, it gives him a voice, and you can see it in every angular strut by the stage divers that it means a whole lot to all of them. That’s a great feeling, one I’m happy to share.
Pretty good, no? Kind of a darker take on the Talking Heads 77/Modern Lovers.
I learned about these guys, and a record company called Moonlee, that is dedicated to releasing new rock music from the former Yugoslav republics, from a Cuepoint survey of the scene.
The story ends with the story of Bernays Propaganda, a Croation band that is working these days sometimes with Mike Watt. Their tune Provekje is more indie than punk, but the story says their early stuff is angular, like Fugazi.
Another contemporary band, Serbian I think, is Replikator. This tune struggles to escape the murky bottom like that 90s mainstay Come.
As I’ve noted here a few times, I’m on Bob Lefsetz’s mailing list. Lefsetz is an older (as old as me) recorded music professional. I don’t know his bio, but I like his posts because they’re passionate and informed about a wide range of issues, and he loves the classic rock music (far more than me, but he really loves it).
I didn’t read his original post, but tonight he posted a letter from a musician named Jesse Dayton, who responded to a Lefsetz post by describing who he is:
Hey Bob. Dig your blog. Here’s the skinny. Old Texas family. Recorded w/ Waylon, Cash, Willie & slew others playing guitar after 10,000 hrs of moving the needle on Jerry Reed vinyl. Did hillbilly music for 3 Rob Zombie films which did good enough for me to buy a house in Austin which is now worth quite a few shekels. Just filled in for Billy Zoom while he was getting cancer treatment on 40 show tour w/ Doe, Exene & DJ in X which reintroduced me to a national audience. Wrote/directed a Cormanesque B-movie creature feature w/ Malcolm McDowell that sold & I made $ on & is now a cult thing. Just released new record The Revealer w/ a batch of songs that I didn’t just write, but opened a vein & let them bleed out of my insane childhood & all the desperate characters I was subjected too along the way. It’s all there…civil rights issues, conned hillbillies not voting their interest, being unworthy of real love…you name it. Right now I’m in the middle of nowhere living by my wits w/ 3 piece band on a never ending tour in a motor home. Thx for the shout out amigo. Onward JD
Now, I’m not a big Rob Zombie fan, but Corman, Malcolm McDowell, and Jerry Reed stroke my strings. I’m into open veins pouring, too, if it isn’t suicide.
The great thing about the modern world, a really great thing and I don’t think we’ve absorbed how this has changed us, is that after I read this email note I could immediately listen to Dayton’s record (on YouTubeRed, in this case). And I could judge.
And I judge, meh. Here’s a song I like more than others.
Very Jerry Lee Lewis, and that’s not bad. But as it goes on this guy seems to more marketing to me about his deep roots than actually rocking. The rock feels too organized for someone truly crazed by that wacked out background he describes. In fact the whole idea of the Holy Ghost Rock ‘n’ Roller seems, by the end of the song a pretty fail marketing ploy.
Dayton touches all the bases of apostasy, but starting with the album image and ticking through the tunes, the hi jinx of rural religion is used to denote authenticity. And the music of rock ‘n’ roll is used to denote authenticity.
And the music? Fun, if you’re will to suspend your belief in legitimacy.
I recommend listening to all of Dayton’s tunes. This isn’t bad music and is mostly not bad thinking, but from the album image to the calculated lyrics, this seems more intellectualized than rocked.
Bottom line, I can’t keep listening to it. If I want to hear this music I listen to Joe Ely, to Hank Williams III, to Steve Earle. If I don’t want so much testosterone I listen to Lucinda Williams and, on the sweet side, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins.
But I am going search out that Malcolm McDowell movie.
