Happy Thanksgiving!

It was my civic duty to make this post. I was rearranging my CDs over the Thanksgiving days and I ran into Primal Scream’s Riot City Blues, which made me realize how good it is. This is perhaps the best song on the album.

Things:

1) Three chords. All the guitar solos are rock ‘n’ roll cliches. Beautiful.

2) Notice how many posing/cliche rock star moves the players do. When a song causes a musician to launch uncontrollably into a rock star move, that’s a good thing.

3) “Don’t need a knife, don’t need a gun, I got a crown made of human skull.”

4) The chick (I didn’t know who she was either) is the singer from The Dead Weather, among other bands.

5) Jools Holland!

Time To Go Back In The Kadavar Water

I bought an album by German band Kadavar a couple years ago and liked it OK, but I found it a little too straight Sabbath rippy to hold my interest for more than a couple listens.

Classic Rock magazine told me tonight that their new album, Rough Times, is uncharted territory for them. This song has perhaps just enough pop sensibility to make the whole thing work better. I’m gonna give Rough Times a try.

The drummer’s eyes, the singer’s teeth, the hairbrush at the end. Intriguing!!!

Remakes, Remodels

A few weeks ago I heard the current Dead Boys (Cheetah Chrome, Johnny Blitz and some other guys) totally remade the first album Young, Loud and Snotty. The reviews on Amazon are pretty horrible, so I stayed away.

Once down this remakes rabbit hole I found out there’s a band who did a somewhat well-known remake of Rocket To Russia. The Amazon reviews for that aren’t quite as bad but the gist is mostly, “just listen to the real Rocket To Russia instead.”

The best of this ilk from a critical perspective is a band called The Vindictives’ remake of Leave Home. It receives Amazon kudos for not simply trying to re-do The Ramones and rearranging the songs, etc.

So my CD arrived yesterday – more expensive than the usual as it came all the way from Japan. Popped it in today and it’s disappointing. Valiant effort, I guess, but the singer is damn annoying. A combination of the male Rezillos singer, who sounds good in The Rezillos, and Darby Crash, who rarely sounds good ever, but that was kinda his schtick.

Oh well. Another experiment bites the dust. If you need anything it’s this album-opening version of Pinhead. Cute idea to intersperse Freaks audio clips. I made it about halfway through the album as I increasingly thought, “I really should be listening to the real Leave Home.”

Funny, if I’d heard this version out at a bar somewhere, I’d have gone crazy chasing down the source of this “cool” other version. As they say, often the chase is better than the catch.

If nothing else, it beats The National doing The Ramones.

Bill’s Sperm

Obviously, there was a lot of fun to be had years ago (and it still holds up today!) with this early Descendents’ gem. It occurred to me this week that in perhaps the song’s most celebrated lyric, “Do you want Bill’s sperm with that?” that sperm would be produced by none other than Gene’s now friend and musical compadre, drummer Bill Stevenson.

This is something you should investigate further, Gene.

Obit – Grant Hart – Husker Du – 9/14/17

Husker Du drummer Grant Hart died of cancer today at age 56. Zen Arcade was in my top 50 album list and the Huskers were true pioneers of the melodic dissonance sound copied a billion times over since their heydey in the 80’s. I was fortunate enough to see them live at some dump in Philly in their prime.

Of course, Husker Du is not in the Rock Hall. We need the space for rapper Tupac and seventh-rate copy punkers Green Day.

I know this is a song written by Grant and sung by him too. Adios, amigo.