Author Archives: Tom Muscarella

Song of the Week – Trip Hoppin’, Aerosmith

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Great bands are capable of putting out very good music throughout their careers. For some reason most fans latch on to the first few albums by most groups and then move on. There are exceptions of course. I can happily listen to any album by the Beatles all the way through and most any by the Stones or Springsteen. But there are records by some of my favorite bands, like the Kinks for instance, that get a little tired late in the discography. However, even their worst is pretty damned good and probably has at least one or two gems hidden within.

That brings me to today’s SotW – “Trip Hoppin’” by Aerosmith.

Aerosmith had a great run of 4 or 5 classic hard rock albums in the 70s then let substance abuse run them off the rails. By 1980 band stalwarts Joe Perry (lead guitar) and Brad Whitford (guitar) had left the band.

In 1984 the original band members reunited and found their second wind with another group of commercial and critical successes including Permanent Vacation (1987), Pump (1989) and Get a Grip (1993).

The band’s biggest hit (measured by sales) was the single “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” This 1998 power ballad was from the soundtrack to the movie Armageddon. It was written by Diane Warren and was Aerosmith’s first #1! (Frankly I find it an embarrassment to their roots.)

In 2001 Aerosmith released Just Push Play that included today’s SotW – “Trip Hoppin’.” Although the album reached #1 and had a Top 10 hit with “Jaded”, it wasn’t a huge critical success. (The Blue Army loved it but I doubt it brought in any new fans.)

“Trip Hoppin’” kills it! It’s a typical Aerosmith rocker but with a bit of a 60s era psychedelic twist (especially in the chorus). They even pull out the psych phasing trick. The title and lyrics are a throwback to the 60s too.

And if my karma suits you
Cross the line into another place and time
Tell me how pretty she is
When she turns the colors of the rainbow

One more day with you…trip hoppin’… yeah
One more night with you…no stoppin’
Ain’t no smokin’ fantasy
‘Cuz lovin’ you is trippin’ to me
You got me psychadelicized
You got my situation bone-a-fide

So keep on digging. You can find gems hidden everywhere in their catalog that includes 12 multi-platinum, 18 platinum, and 25 gold status albums.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Too Much Monkey Business, Chuck Berry, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan, Pump it Up, Elvis Costello, Wild Wild West, The Escape Club

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Over the years I’ve written several posts in what I refer to as the “Evolution Series.” It consists of two sub categories. The first highlights the development of a single song over time by different artists [say, Train Kept A-Rollin’ by Tiny Bradshaw (1951), Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio (1956), The Yardbirds (1965), Aerosmith (1974)]. The other traces a certain song style – i.e. a rhythm or lick – as artists borrow from the past to make it their own (the Bo Diddley beat to Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” to “Magic Bus” by The Who to Springsteen’s “She’s the One” to U2’s “Desire”).

Today’s SotW is another collection in the second category. It starts with Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business” (1956).

Berry’s 5th single introduced an unusual rhythm for the vocal delivery of the lyrics. He spits out words to simply describe the frustrations of everyday life, like losing your money in a pay phone (that is, if you know what a pay phone is).

Pay phone, somethin’ wrong, dime gone, will mail
I ought to sue the operator for tellin’ me a tale

Bob Dylan picked up on Berry’s lyrical delivery and raised the bar on “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965).

In 2004, Dylan told the L.A. Times’ Robert Hilburn of “SHB,” “It’s from Chuck Berry, a bit of “Too Much Monkey Business” and some of the scat songs of the 40s.”

It became even more iconic with the D. A. Pennebaker directed scene, from the documentary Don’t Look Back. of Dylan flipping through a series of cue cards with key words from the song, including one of Dylan’s most quoted lines:

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”

Next in line is “Pump It Up” (1978) from Elvis Costello’s second album, This Year’s Model.

“Pump It Up” has some of Costello’s best lyrics from his early days as the angry young man.

She’s been a bad girl
She’s like a chemical
Though you try to stop it
She’s like a narcotic
You wanna torture her
You wanna talk to her
All the things you bought for her
Putting up your temperature

Lastly is “Wild, Wild West” (1988) from the one hit wonder, The Escape Club.

In 1988 I was the DJ at a Christmas party at the famous Cask & Flagon near Fenway Park in Boston. The friends that hosted the party were mostly into the “alternative” rock of the day (Style Council, English Beat, etc.) which was right up my alley. I still remember seguing from “Pump It Up” into “Wild, Wild West” and how nicely it worked – the true test being that no one left the packed dancefloor.

I can think of a couple of other songs that might be close relatives to this series – maybe U2’s “Get On Your Boots” or R.E.M.’s “The End of the World as You Know It.” Can you come up with any others?

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Hesitation Blues, Janis Joplin & Jorma Kaukonen

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This week a new Janis Joplin documentary, Little Girl Blue, was broadcast on PBS’ American Masters. I had a chance to watch it and think it was worthwhile. It wasn’t the best documentary I’ve ever seen, but it earned some kudos for access to family letters and discovery of some previously unseen archival footage that the filmmaker provided to us.

There were also a few interesting bits of information that were new to me like her romance with David Niehaus, an American she met while she was on a “detox” holiday in Rio in early 1970.

Another bit of information that grabbed my attention was the existence of the “typewriter tape” – a recording she made with the pre Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen in 1964. The tape got its name because you can hear Kaukonen’s wife typing a letter in the background as Janis and Jorma tape a rehearsal in his Santa Clara home when he was still a senior at Santa Clara University (prior to moving into San Francisco’s Haight district).

Today’s SotW is “Hesitation Blues” from the Typewriter Tape.

The fidelity of this recording isn’t great (it wasn’t a true demo) but the performance and historical value makes it worth a listen. Joplin’s command of the blues and Kaukonen’s finger picking guitar style are both very impressive for their age and experience. “Hesitation Blues” would remain a standard in Kaukonen’s repertoire. It was the first cut on Hot Tuna’s first album in 1970.

If you would like to learn more about the Typewriter Tape, check out KQED’s Gabe Meline’s recent interview with Kaukonen.

https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2016/05/03/jorma-kaukonen-on-janis-joplin-and-recording-the-1964-typewriter-tape/

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Hypnotized, Fleetwood Mac

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Fleetwood Mac has gone through numerous line-ups in its 50 year career though it’s been pretty stable since Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined in 1975. But for the first 8 years the band went through several incarnations. The first was the blues based band led by guitar hero Peter Greene. When Greene left, Danny Kirwan took over as the main songwriter. Version 3.0 came about when Bob Welch stepped forward with his songwriting and vocals.

Today’s SotW is Welch’s “Hypnotized” from the album Mystery to Me (1973).

In a 2012 article for Rolling Stone, David Fricke wrote “The best song Welch ever gave the Mac, “Hypnotized” was urgent noir propelled by a shuffling mix of guitars and (Christine) McVie’s electric-piano understatement, with Welch singing in a sleepwalking cadence like a Raymond Chandler detective musing to himself in a late-night rain.”

“Hypnotized” was released as a single, but it was buried as the B-side to Mac’s cover of The Yardbirds “For Your Love.” (If you’re a vinyl album geek like me, you’ll try to find a copy of the album that erroneously lists an unreleased song called “Good Things (Come to Those Who Wait)” that never made it onto the album because it was dropped at the last minute and replaced by “For Your Love.”) Fortunately for Welch and the Mac, “Hypnotized” became an FM rock radio staple in the 70s.

It starts with a very catchy Mick Fleetwood drum pattern – a snare crack and three beats on the bass drum under an insistent patter on the high hat. Once the beat is firmly established it’s followed by some slick guitar interplay. Christine Mac and Bob Weston provide soothing backing vocals.

The lyrics have an early 70s, Carlos Castaneda (The Teachings of Don Juan) inspired, mystical vibe.

They say there’s a place down in Mexico
Where a man can fly over mountains and hills
And he don’t need an airplane or some kind of engine
And he never will

According to Mojo (Jan 2013), “Welch apparently wrote this eerie electric blues after dreaming that a UFO piloted by a Navajo shaman had landed on the tennis court in Fleetwood Mac’s communal country pile.”

Sadly, Welch died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest in his suburban Nashville home in 2012. But he left us a strong legacy of music in his work with Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist, especially the album French Kiss (1977).

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Time Square, Destroyer

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Canadian Dan Bejar exercises his craft through two bands, The New Pornographers and Destroyer. I’ve long been a fan of The New Pornographers – their “Myriad Harbor” was the SotW on March 1, 2008 – but I’ve have had very little exposure to Destroyer’s 10 albums. So when their latest record, Poison Season, was released last September I decided to give it a thorough test drive. I’ve been on the road with it ever since.

The album has the same type of cinematic quality as Springsteen’s Born to Run album. (I’m thinking of songs like “Meeting Across the River” and “Jungleland.”) A fine example is “Time Square” in the first and last of the three versions of on the disc. But today’s SotW is the middle, more pop version of the song.

The lyrics merge biblical references with modern day New York City references to create some interesting and thought provoking imagery.

Jesus is beside himself
Jacob’s in a state of decimation
The writing on the wall wasn’t writing at all
Just forces of nature in love with a weather station

Artists and repertoire
Hand in hand through the grey doorway at dawn
The writing on the wall said, “Jesus saves”
The writing on the wall mentions Honey playing a game with the waves

You can follow a rose wherever it grows
Yeah, you can fall in love with Times Square
Times Square

The words capture something intrinsic to NYC in much the same way as many of Lou Reed’s lyrics. They’re vague enough to avoid any obvious interpretation, yet strikingly beautiful nonetheless.

This is all sung in Bejar’s fragile voice to a romping groove of acoustic guitars, piano, drums, congas and horns. The instrumental break after the first chorus is simply joyous.

Now I’ve got some work to do digging into Destroyer’s back catalog of those other 10 albums.

Enjoy… until next week.

BTW – Today is Record Store Day. Drop the digitized music for a couple of hours and go put your hands on some physical product today. It’s good for the soul.

Song of the Week – Keep It Warm, Flo & Eddie

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Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan first made their name in the music business as the creative force behind The Turtles. They scored a number of Top 40 hits with the likes of “Happy Together,” “Eleanor,” “She’d Rather Be With Me” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

Their albums, part parody, part serious, generally were well received by critics but didn’t chart so well with the public. (They were largely a singles band.) One, Turtle Soup, was produced by Ray Davies of the Kinks.

By the early 70s Volman and Kaylan had had enough of The Turtles. They assumed the aliases of Flo (the Phosphorescent Leech) and Eddie due to contractual obligations with The Turtles’ recording label (White Whale) and joined forces with Frank Zappa for a series of albums – 200 Motels and Fillmore East – June 1971 (1971), and Just Another Band From L.A. (1972). That ended when Zappa was injured at a London concert in 1971, so the boys made a series of Flo & Eddie albums for themselves.

Today’s song of the week is “Keep It Warm” from their fourth album, Moving Targets (1976).

Musically “Keep It Warm” is a Beach Boys parody (dig the “Good Vibrations” reference about 2:30 in) mixed with grim lyrics that reflect the then current evening news headlines of the mid 70s.

Elect another jerk to the White House
Gracie Slick is losing her door mouse
Take her off the streets and keep her warm

Kill another whale with your power
Or shoot a bunch a kids from a tower
Snipe them in their cars, blood keeps them warm

Starting in the 70s Flo & Eddie began singing harmony/background vocals for other artists. They were regulars on T. Rex albums including Electric Warrior and The Slider. They also sang on songs by Alice Cooper, Blondie, the Ramones, Stephen Stills and Bruce Springsteen (“Hungry Heart”), among many others.

In recent years they’ve been doing summer “shed” package tours. I saw them a couple of times with the “Hippiefest.” This season they’re out with The Cowsills, The Spencer Davis Group (I assume sans Stevie Winwood), Chuck Negron (of Three Dog Night), Mark Lindsay (of Paul Revere & the Raiders) and The Gap Band including a couple of stops in New York in June and California in July. They’re still a very funny duo so you might want to check them out if they’re in a town near you.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Old Times Good Times, Stephen Stills

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Stephen Stills had a pretty good career going by the end of 1968. He’s already scored a hit with “For What It’s Worth” and several critically acclaimed albums with the Buffalo Springfield and recorded the Super Session with Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield.

But it wasn’t until he teamed up with David Crosby and Graham Nash that he really broke through to super stardom with the release of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1969 and Déjà vu with Neil Young joining in 1970.

By November of ’70, Stills was already trading on his brand with his first solo album, Stephen Stills. It’s a good, but not great album and contained another of his hits – the gospel infused “Love the One You’re With.” The album also holds the distinction of being the only album that both Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix play on (though not together).

Hendrix contributed to today’s SotW, “Old Times Good Times.”

The song’s lyrics trace from Stills’ youthful days in New Orleans through to his time in New York City and later California.

When I was young and needed my time alone
Jump in the pirogue, pole down the Bayou
Bogue Falaya river was dark and cold
Seven years old, I couldn’t find my way home

When I was twelve, I learned how to play the guitar
Got myself a job in a jax beer bar
Got myself together, went to New Orleans
Found myself workin’ for rice and beans
And it was good times

New York city was so damned cold
I had to get out of that town before I got old
California and rock and roll dream
Got too high and we blew our whole scene
But we had a good time

Old times, good times
Old times, good times

It’s a rocker that follows the template drawn up with songs such as the Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man.” It’s a vehicle for an R&B jam session, albeit a very short one. It chugs along with Stills on organ and Hendrix on guitar trading riffs most of the way through.

I don’t know the exact date of recording session for this song, but the album was recorded in June/July 1970. Hendrix died a couple of months later on September 18th, 1970, making this one of his last sessions. (Stills dedicated the album to Hendrix on its back cover.) Too bad, I would have liked to hear them work together again, perhaps with both on guitar another time. Sadly that’s wasn’t to be. But at least we have “Old Times Good Times.”

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Dog on a Chain, Emitt Rhodes

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I’ve always been an Emitt Rhodes fan. I liked his early work with the Merry-Go-Round and his classic early 70s power pop solo records. In fact, I featured both in a SotW on July 16th, 2011. So I was very excited a few months ago when I read in Mojo that he would be releasing his first full length album since 1973. But I wondered if it would be even slightly possible that he could make an album up to his prior standards after all these years.

Well it’s out now and the answer is a resounding YES!

He can still sing, he can still craft a catchy melody and his lyrics reflect the maturity you would expect from a guy that’s had 43 years to sort out song ideas he’s kept stuffed in envelopes all this time. But what impresses me most is how much feeling these songs convey.

Rhodes, who was famous for playing all the instruments on his 70s solo albums is no one man band this time around. He’s enlisted the help of some younger power pop artists — Roger Joseph Manning Jr. & Jason Falkner of Jellyfish (refer back to SotW on May 23rd, 2015), Aimee Mann (‘Til Tuesday), Susanna Hoffs (whose Bangles recorded the Merry-Go Round’s “Live”), Taylor Locke (Rooney) and drummer Joe Seiders (New Pornographers). This was clearly a labor of love for all involved.

Today’s SotW is the album opener, “Dog on a Chain.”

It starts out like a folk song – just guitar and vocals. After the first verse and chorus the full band joins in and the song gets a lift. Aimee Mann provides a vocal harmony and Jon Brion, who was in ‘Til Tuesday’s touring band and played on Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk, adds additional harmony and a nice guitar solo. . (This is a very incestuous group of musicians, isn’t it?)

The lyrics tells the familiar story of a man who has sacrificed his own desires to please his woman only to find she no longer loves the man she molded him into and wants a divorce. With his tail between his legs he says:

I was led along like a dog on a chain
Out in the cold, out in the rain
I was led along like a dog on a leash
I did as told while she did as she pleased

and

She berates me
Calls me crazy
Certifiably insane
Once she praised me
Now she hates me
I can’t see how I have changed

The entire album is available on Spotify. Go check it out.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Dangerous Rhythm, Ultravox!

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05d81eeca340635b3a868503a32d9e3f_fullUltravox! released their self-titled debut in 1977. They were extremely popular in the UK, having landed seven Top Ten albums and seventeen Top 40 singles there. But most of those hits were in the version of the band led by Midge Ure (dropping the ! from their name), not the original group led by John Foxx.

The original lineup straddled the turf between Roxy Music glam and late 70s British punk. An example of this is the Steve Lillywhite and Brian Eno produced, reggae influenced, “Dangerous Ryhthm.”

Upon its release as their first single, Sounds magazine opined “They might be rather like a younger early days Roxy Music but, oh my what a good model to copy. And their very youth bestows upon them a direct brashness missing in the recent Roxy. Rich emetic bass, precise Ringo drums, synthesiser cascades and Eno’s hand in the production make this the best and most confident debut single since ‘Anarchy’.”

The pulsating bass and staccato guitar (which is reminiscent of Elvis Costello’s “I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea”, by the way) complements the way the lyrics convey the demimonde of the British club scene.

Surging and merging
Urgent and urging
Soft as a footstep on the stair

The red light is on now
My gravity’s gone and how
I can feel something in the air

It’s not like anything I’ve ever known before
And I don’t care

This number really captures the pulse of its time.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Turn to Me, Plastic Penny; Lady Samantha, Three Dog Night; Bad Side of the Moon, Toe Fat; Rock Me When He’s Gone, Long John Baldry

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elton_john-bernie_taupin

Elton John and Bernie Taupin began writing songs together in the late 60s. Many bands recognized their talent and recorded their songs before Elton John became a worldwide superstar, cementing their songs in rock history. Today’s post recognizes a few of them.

Plastic Penny was a psychedelic pop band from England and included drummer Nigel Olsson who later became a key member of John’s recording and touring band. “Turn to Me” was on their 1969 UK released album, Currency. To the best of my knowledge “Turn to Me” never received a proper recording by John although a demo version does exist and can be found on YouTube.

“Lady Samantha” was recorded during the sessions for John’s first album, Empty Sky but wasn’t included on the original album. Instead it was released as a single in January 1969. Three Dog Night found the song and recorded a version for their second album Suitable for Framing, released in June 1969, more than a year before John would gain stardom in the US with his first hit “Your Song”, released in October 1970 and peaked in the charts at #8 in January 1971.

Toe Fat’s recording of “Bad Side of the Moon” was on an album released in May 1970. The song came from the Elton John sessions but wasn’t on that 2nd album. It was the B-side to the single release of “The Border Song”, another cut from Elton John. It also came out on the live 11/17/70, a radio broadcast from WABC (later WPLJ) in NYC, that was released in the US in April 1971. Toe Fat featured multi-instrumentalist Ken Hensley who left the band to start the hard rock band Uriah Heep.

Long John Baldry recorded two albums with an interesting concept. Each had one side produced by Rod Stewart and the other by Elton John. His 1971 album It Ain’t Easy included a John/Taupin song called “Rock Me When He’s Gone.” This song was written during John’s Madman Across the Water sessions but didn’t make it onto the album. John’s version didn’t see the light of day until the 1992 release of his set of unreleased recordings, Rare Masters.

Enjoy… until next week.