We’ve discussed Kevin Rowland and Dexys here before, maybe too much. This is fucking bizarre. The high-stepping bass player, the worried accordion player, the fiddler who just won’t sing with enthusiasm, Bob Geldorf on acoustic guitar. . .
In typical backwards fashion, I’ll confess that Too-Rye-Ay led me to Moondance.
It’s an annual happy day today as my Fantasy Baseball Guide magazine arrived in the mail. Though I’m neither kissing a man nor smoking a fag in this year’s edition, it made me think of this Wire Pink Flag classic.
Every forming hardcore band that could hardly play covered this in the early 80s.
Thank you Peter Kreutzer and his superhero alter ego Rotoman.
Guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke died of pneumonia today and Motorhead joins another fave The Ramones as a band with no living members from the real lineup.
For a long time, when I include a youtube link in my comments, it doesn’t flesh out, leaving a plain, unappealing link to click. Earlier today, the whole thing went kaput as when I typed all this in as a comment, it gave me some security error and nothing stuck at all.
So I’m doing this as a new post, lest I waste my time trying to comment again. Here we go:
I’ve always thought of Smithereens as a second-generation Hoodoo Gurus, a band I liked a lot way back when, but whose music doesn’t hold up for me anymore.
Early on in the Smither’s career, I read something that their goal was to combine The Beatles and AC/DC. A noble pursuit for sure, not that they ever achieved it. (If you want John Lennon and Black Sabbath – for real – it’s Uncle Acid.)
Got excited when I saw Tom’s title, anticipating a Smithereens cover of the original Behind The Wall Of Sleep. Oh well.
Good Old Boys made me think of Waylon Jennings and Waylon Jennings made me think of my favorite Waylon song, Honky Tonk Heroes written by Billy Joe Shaver.
If there’s a morality tale in this song I don’t know what it is and I don’t much care. I particularly like when it kicks in at about 1:30 and I like even better when it kicks out with the riff at 3:20.
It’s a testament to the musical world we live in that everybody has a Johnny Cash shirt, no one has a Waylon Jennings shirt and no one even knows who Billy Joe Shaver is. (No offense to Johnny Cash – it’s not his fault.)
Uncle Acid’s first album has been floating around for a few years but wasn’t very accessible. They finally remixed it, remastered it and released it properly. (I even saw it at FYE over the weekend, the last-gasp mall record store.)