Author Archives: Steve Moyer

WTF!?

by

Discovered this video of two Swedish bands covering a Copters tune, which, in and of itself is B+ cool. (Notice how they don’t have two drummers at the same time, but they switch drummers mid-song. Never saw that before. Also notice the extreme greasiness of the redheaded guy’s hair in the interview. Finally, notice a fully-bearded Joe Sheehan playing guitar for The Hives.)

Since I’d never heard of Graveyard, I was lead to this, which pretty much turns my crank and turns on my curiosity (dig the syncopation and crazy-ass vocals):

So. I need to investigate further. Over to Amazon. There I find their Amazon 5-star album from 2011, Hisingin Blues FREE TO DOWNLOAD FOR PRIME MEMBERS!
 (Boy, it is fun to italicize and bold.)

Now I am the most resistant guy in the world to the download. I am the only person on earth who liked the CD format – way more hassle-free than vinyl, but still retaining enough vinyl-ness for my satisfaction. My heart says pay $14 for the CD, but my mind wins out with, “at least download it first and see if it’s worth buying.” My life turned a corner today.

As for Prime, I’m a member anyway, mostly because the food my pet rabbit (abandoned to me by the family that abandoned me last August) eats is hard to find in the pet stores and way cheaper on Amazon. Years ago, I would think, “Every king store gets toppled eventually, but what will ever topple Walmart?” The answer is Amazon.

Mannah from heaven.

Off!

by

Been listening to the new Off! album a lot, Wasted Years.

This is where my musical head was at in the 80’s when new wave and hair metal and all the other crap one hears on 80’s retro radio today was popular. I missed out on as much of that as possible.

Yeah, this is rehashed Circle Jerks, but rehashed Circle Jerks is pretty damn good compared to 95 percent of what else is going on these days.

The other day I was in the supermarket glancing at fantasy football mags and I noticed the new GQ features, “The Best 21 Albums Of The 21st Century.” If you wanna get depressed about music, take a gander at that list.

Does anyone care?

Beatles List You’ve All Not Been Waiting For

by

Obligatory Preface

This was so hard. So hard. So so hard. So so so hard. Harder than life itself. Makes “Sophie’s Choice” seem like paper or plastic.

Blahbitty blah blah blah.

Three Things About The Beatles

I went through my Beatles phase later in life, post-college even. But geez, they are great. And I have a difficult time respecting any musical fan or, particularly, musician, who has never had an extended period of discovering, loving and appreciating The Beatles.

On a related note, there’s no finer place to grasp the concept of background vocals than The Beatles. And you’d be surprised how many musicians don’t get background vocals. There are musicians who can’t sing. There are musicians who can’t sing backgrounds. There are musicians who think they can sing backgrounds, but don’t really understand them past the simplest form. What’s left is fine background singers and those are few and far between, at least on the regular guy/mortal musician level.

On an unrelated note, one of my favorite parts of the must-see rock doc “Lemmy” (the Motorhead singer) is when Lemmy explains that, although the Stones always got the credit as the tough guys, in fact, the Beatles were blue collar rough-and-tumbles from the wrong side of the tracks, while the Stones were a bunch of art school prancers. We stand corrected.

The List

#1 – 5 points – What Goes On – Debate always rages over Ringo’s greatness or lack thereof as a drummer, but I love him as a singer. His clear, sincere voice always cuts through whatever else is going on on the album, whichever that may be. In addition, I love the scratchy guitar. And I’ll never tire of Paul’s decision to walk the bass on just one chorus. So cool. How many bass players would walk it every chorus? Almost all of them. (Lawr would, because he told me.)

#2 – 4 points – She Loves You – The three-part harmony on the final “Yeah” is better than most songs all by itself. A helluva fun song to sing and play yet cover quantity is slim.

#3 tie – 4 points – You Won’t See Me & I’m Looking Through You – Can’t tell you specifically why I like these more than others; it’s just that Beatles thing. And I can’t tell you which one I like more than the other either.

#5 tie – 3 points – All My Loving, She Said She Said, I Call Your Name – Same thing here as the #3 tie, but just slightly less.

#8 – 2 points – Yellow Submarine – Verse gets a 5, chorus gets a zero, averages to 2. (Actually 2.5, but the rules call for truncation, not rounding.)

#9 – 1 point – Blackbird – I’m not one for wimpy songs of beauty, but I like this one. So does Charlie.

#10 – 1 point – Revolution – The poppy one. Q: Chairman Mao? A: Anyhow.

A Study In “Gimme Shelter” Live

by

Let’s start with “the best version ever”:

Cool:

The fish (the instrument).
The best Rolling Stones song ever is in there somewhere I guess. I can’t get past two minutes and the song hasn’t even started yet.

Uncool:

Stupid runway long enough for a plane to use.
Black lady wailing stuff that’s not even in the song.
Nine minutes? Really?
This is why I have no particular interest in seeing the Stones anymore. I missed the boat (but not the runway).
Sometimes more isn’t more.

Now we’ll move onto the real Rolling Stones (the ones I’d pay to see):

Cool:

The fish (instrument).
Jagger’s vocals, dancing and general swagger.
Jagger’s foreign accent on the word “shell-tah” toward the end.
Charlie Watts’ bored expressions – sleeping, smiling.
Charlie Watts’ tit t-shirt.
Mick Taylor smiling and hammering away the rhythm.
Sometimes less is more.

Uncool:

They don’t show who’s playing the fish.
Is most of the music recorded and Jagger’s just singing over it? Geez, I hope not. If so, shame on me.

And finally (there’s been way too little Hellacopters on this damn site lately):

Cool:

The fish (instrument).
The fish player puts down the fish to kick the ball.
Four guitars!!!
Two keyboardists and you can’t hear one note of keyboard!
The Hellacopters’ bass player.
Nicke Andersson plays an MC5 lick during the solo.
Sometimes more is more.

Uncool:

I don’t know who Soundtrack Of Our Lives is (nor do I care).
How the Soundtrack Of Our Lives guys look compared to the Hellacopters guys.
Hellacopters drummer is absent.
Two drummers would’ve been better in this case.

Conclusion:

What the Rolling Stones lost between the good video and the “best version ever” can be found in the Hellacopters video.

Thank you and goodnight.

All My Friends Are Dead

by

Goodbye original Ramones. Copied this from some website; maybe they’ll sue us. Didn’t post a picture either because, if you don’t know what Tommy Ramone looked like, just go away.

Really strange that Johnny, Tommy and Joey too, all got killed by really bad cancers. They may as well would’ve done heroin like Dee Dee.

That makes the oldest original Ramone a max of 62 (or 65). Ridiculous, when they definitely weren’t known for their excesses (again, besides Dee Dee).

Keith Richards will probably live to be 100.

Tommy Ramone, aka Thomas Erdelyi, the last surviving member of the original Ramones died today at his home in Ridgewood, Queens. He was 62 (several sources say 65) and had been in hospice care following treatment for cancer of the bile duct. The time of death was 12:15pm. Claudia Tienan, his partner of 40 years, asked Andy Schwartz, former editor of NY Rocker (among many other things) to make the announcement of his passing.

Tommy and guitarist John Cummings (Johnny Ramone) first got together in a high school garage band called the Tangerine Puppets. When the Ramones formed, he was supposed to be their manager, but ended up becoming the drummer from 1974 to 1978 and producing several of their albums. Tommy was always considered the most “normal” Ramone.

Post Ramones, Erdelyi produced the Replacements Tim album and Redd Kross’s Neurotica. In recent years he’d been playing bluegrass and folk with Claudia Tienan as Uncle Monk.

In Lieu Of Nothing

by

Been too busy to even read Remnants most of the time lately. Have two Steveslists that I thought of weeks ago but haven’t written yet (5 Bands I Used To Like A Lot But Never Listen To Anymore and 5 Favorite Rock Books) and I owe Peter the beginning of a dueling review of the new Fucked Up album (which no one will care about besides Peter and I).

But here’s a band I read about in the Rolling Stone yesterday who seem interesting. I now read Rolling Stone monthly but never buy it. I find a chair at Barnes & Noble (enjoy it while it still exists, Steve) at the Lehigh Valley Mall while my kids waste an hour walking around and pilfer the content for free.

These guys sound like Jonathan Richman mixed with the Violent Femmes (among other things) to me, but the comments mention Richard Hell, so I figured you guys might be interested. I’ll be stuck on Fucked Up and Off! for a while, so go ahead without me.

I had half a memory of Peter writing about these guys before. Perhaps I was just too ignorant to find it.

Ladies and gentleman, The Parquet Courts: