I have plans to see the Grateful Dead tribute band Grateful Shred in November. Two of the musicians in that band, Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch, have been performing and recording together as Mapache for several years.
Mapache (Spanish for racoon) has a unique blend of Gram Parsons like country, Americana, and traditional, Spanish language, Mexican influences. Their 2022 album, Roscoe’s Dream, is a tribute to Blasucci’s Boston terrier, that has travelled on the road with them for many years.
Today’s SotW is “Pearl to the Swine.”
It has Americana roots but with a groovy, ‘60s fuzzed out, psych guitar. And in Mapache style, there are some nice harmonies on the outro.
Annette Peacock is one of those artists that almost no one remembers, even though she was quite influential in her day. Her 1972 album I’m the One was a mix of jazz, psych, and avant-garde funk. It was helped along with a prototype synthesizer that we provided to her by none other than Robert Moog himself. She used it to process her vocals very effectively.
As background, Peacock was married to jazz bassist Gery Peacock in the early ‘60s when she hooked up with Timothy Leary at Millbrook — the hippy commune just east of Poughkeepsie, NY devoted to drug experimentation and spirituality — to study Zen and Microbiotics. She later married jazz keyboardist Paul Bley, who was also a pioneer in the use of ARP and Moog synthesizers.
On I’m the One (1972), Peacock was responsible for vocals, electronic vocals, acoustic and electric piano, synthesizers, and electric vibraphone. It also included appearances by Bley, keyboardist Mike Garson, and drummer Rick Marotta.
Legend has it that David Bowie was so impressed with I’m the One that he invited Peacock to guest on his next album — Aladdin Sane. (The title is a pun on the words A Lad Insane.) She declined but suggested Bowie hire her keyboardist, Garson. Garson accepted and is responsible for the innovative piano solo on the title song. It is one of my favorites!
So, if you are the type of person that is always seeking out new musical ideas, check out Peacock’s I’m the One. It is available on Spotify and YouTube.
Today’s post is yet another in my “Evolution” series.
Sixty-five years ago, Eddie Cochran released the evergreen “Summertime Blues.” Originally intended as the B-side to Cochran’s “Love Again” it captured the zeitgeist of the late ‘50s rebellious American teenage life. It rose to #8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in the summer of 1958.
San Francisco’s hard rock group Blue Cheer made the song their own when they released the unlikely single in 1968. Given the ear-splitting volume that Blue Cheer’s music was meant to be played at, their version reached a surprising #14 on Billboard’s Hot 100. I remember watching them perform on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Bandstand was well known for having their guest performers lip-synch. The band clearly isn’t playing live (they have no vocal mics, although drummer Paul Whaley seems to be pounding the skins) but as a 12-year-old kid, I was very impressed with the giant wall of Marshall stacks they had behind them as props.
The Who also included “Summertime Blues” in their setlist. They recorded studio versions of the song, but they didn’t see the light of day until the late ‘90s and early aughts on expanded CD releases of Odds and Sods and The Who Sell Out. But their seminal version from Live at Leeds (1970) managed to reach #27 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The Who also performed “Summertime Blues” at Woodstock which will have its 54th anniversary in mid-August.
That makes 3 top 40 versions of the song!
In 1999, Japanese Punk Rock band Guitar Wolf, released their own version of “Summertime Blues.” The fact that they are singing the lyrics in an undecipherable form of Japanglish only adds to the charm of their recording and is true to the spirit of teen defiance that was captured in the Cochran original.
Fifty years ago, British singer-songwriter Linda Lewis charted with her first hit in the UK, “Rock a Doodle Doo.”
This song is a taste of British soul at its best. It is smooth and sultry, and sung beautifully. The New York Times described her performance as showing “off her range with vocals that swung from husky lows to shimmering highs, to the point that the song could be mistaken for a duet.”
“Rock a Doodle Doo” didn’t dent the charts in the US, even after being given a promotional push through its inclusion on Appetizers (1975), one of the Loss Leaders compilation albums that Warner Brothers released through mail order.
Besides her solo work, Lewis was an “in demand” background singer. She sang on David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, Cat Stevens’ Catch Bull at Four, Rod Stewart’s Blondes Have More Fun, Al Kooper’s Possible Projection of the Future and last week’s SotW, “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. She was also an extra in The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, in the role of a screaming fan!
Lewis passed away just a few months ago in May 2023, at the age of 72.
Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel enjoyed considerable success in the UK throughout the ‘70s, notching four Top 10 singles there. Here in the US, he only charted once. “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” reached #96 here in 1975. And that is the SotW.
After charting a couple of Top 10 singles (#5 “Judy Teen” and #8 “Mr. Soft”), original band members John Crocker (fiddle), Milton Reame-James (keyboards), and Paul Jeffreys (bass) held a mutiny over publishing royalties. They wanted to contribute to the songwriting and Harley told them their songs weren’t good enough. So they quit. The incident motivated Harley to write “Make Me Smile…”
You’ve done it all You’ve broken every code And pulled the rebel to the floor You spoiled the game No matter what you say For only metal, what a bore
Reame-James and Jeffreys joined Bill Nelson in Be-Bop Deluxe which inspired that last line.
There’s nothing left All gone and run away Maybe you’ll tarry for a while It’s just a test A game for us to play Win or lose, it’s hard to smile
In the end, you would have to say Harley won the battle. He recruited a new band and “Make Me Smile…” soared to #1 – the Top of the Pops!
In 2015, the song charted in the UK again at #72. Now how did that happen? As it turns out, Harley was fined £1,000 when he was caught travelling at 70 MPH in a 40 MPH zone. Jeremy Clarkson, then host of the BBC’s motoring programme Top Gear, was outraged by the fine so he encouraged all of his viewers to download “Make Me Smile…” to help Harley pay for it. It worked!
In the first few years after college, my friends and I threw some epic dance parties. We didn’t offer a lot. There was plenty of cheap beer and wine, and some munchies. But what we had in abundance was good vibes and great tunes!
A deep cut that was always a big hit on the dance floor was “Melody” by the Rolling Stones.
“Melody” comes from the Stones’ underrated 1976 album Black and Blue. It is a smooth, sultry number that was credited as “inspired by Billy Preston.” But let’s face it… we all know it was really written by Preston; but Jagger/Richards had the clout to deny publishing to “bandmates.” (Just ask Mick Taylor!) Further proof is the prominence of Preston’s jazzy piano playing and soulful vocal duet with Jagger.
Whenever I hear this song, I’m back on the dance floor with old friends in that magical house in Newton, MA. Good times!
I’m writing to you today from Colorado. I think that my have influenced my decision to post thes essay.
We tend to put celebrities up on a pedestal as if their lives are all glamour and riches. But all humans, including pro athletes, titans of industry, Hollywood actors, and rock stars, have their fair share of suffering.
As a case in point, the outwardly funny (perhaps goofy) Joe Walsh has had a tremendous career. One of the greatest guitar players in the history of Rock music, he had initial success with the James Gang, as a solo artist, and finally as a member of Eagles. He has also toured with his brother-in-law’s group – Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
But he has also suffered great tragedy. Back in 1974, his then-wife Stefany was in a car accident with their daughter Emma in the car. Stefany was taking Emma to her favorite park when the car was hit on the passenger side by a drunk driver that ran a stop sign. Emma, who was just weeks away from her third birthday, suffered massive head trauma and ultimately succumbed to her injuries.
As is often the case, this put a strain on the marriage and Joe and Stefany ultimately divorced. Joe later had a child’s size drinking fountain put into the playground in Boulder, CO, that was dedicated to Emma. He also wrote her a song.
Years later, Joe was in a relationship with Stevie Nicks. She tells the following story in the liner notes to her greatest hits album, TimeSpace:
I guess in a very few rare cases, some people find someone that they fall in love with the very first time they see them… from across the room, from a million miles away. Some people call it love at first sight, and of course, I never believed in that until that night I walked into a party after a gig at the hotel, and from across the room, without my glasses, I saw this man and I walked straight to him. He held out his hands to me, and I walked straight into them. I remember thinking, I can never be far from this person again… he is my soul. He seemed to be in a lot of pain, though hid it well. But finally, a few days later, (we were in Denver), he rented a jeep and drove me up into the snow covered hills of Colorado… for about two hours. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but he did tell me a story of a little daughter that he had lost. To Joe, she was much more than a child. She was three and a half, and she could relate to him.
I guess I had been complaining about a lot of things going on on the road, and he decided to make me aware of how unimportant my problems were if they were compared to worse sorrows. So he told me that he had taken his little girl to this magic park whenever he could, and the only thing she EVER complained about was that she was too little to reach up to the drinking fountain. As we drove up to this beautiful park, (it was snowing a little bit), he came around to open my door and help me down, and when I looked up, I saw the park… his baby’s park, and I burst into tears saying, ‘You built a drinking fountain here for her, didn’t you?’ I was right, under a huge beautiful hanging tree, was a tiny silver drinking fountain. I left Joe to get to it, and on it, it said, dedicated to HER and all the others who were too small to get a drink.
So he wrote a song for her, and I wrote a song for him… ‘This is your song, ‘ I said to the people, but it was Joe’s song. Thank you, Joe, for the most committed song I ever wrote. But more than that, thank you for inspiring me in so many ways. Nothing in my life ever seems as dark anymore, since we took that drive.
Wednesday is a band from Asheville, NC. They combine shoe gaze with alt-country in their own unique way. Their latest album, Rat Saw God was released this past January.
“Chosen to Deserve” was released as a single and is today’s SotW.
The song is about confessing to your partner all of the things you wouldn’t want them to know about your past until your relationship is secure enough to weather those truths.
I used to drink ’til I threw up on weeknights at my parents’ house My friends all took Benadryl ’til they could see shit Crawlin’ up the walls One of those times my friend took a little too much He had to get his stomach pumped They took him over to the hospital and told us he was lucky to survive
The key to the song comes in the final lines:
Thank God that I was chosen to deserve you ‘Cause I’m the girl that you were chosen to deserve
Guitarist/vocalist Karly Hartzman sings the song with a drawl that’s reminiscent of a younger Lucinda Williams backed with some serious guitar riffage.
In an article on the NPR Music website, Marissa Lorusso wrote that Hartzman “says that she wrote “Chosen to Deserve”… as an homage to Drive-by Truckers’ “Let There be Rock” but with Hartzman’s own “experiences from growing up and f***ing around and getting into stupid s***,” as she explains.”
So, let’s have a little fun and listen to “Let There Be Rock” too.
The Drive-By Truckers’ track starts like this:
Dropped acid, Blue Oyster Cult concert, fourteen years old, And I thought them lasers were a spider chasing me. On my way home, got pulled over in Rogersville Alabama, With a half-ounce of weed and a case of Sterling Big Mouth. My buddy Gene was driving, he just barely turned sixteen. And I’d like to say, “I’m sorry”, but we lived to tell about it And we lived to do a whole bunch more crazy, stupid, shit.
Today’s SotW was written by my cousin, Mark Vincent. He has written posts several times before. He is in the Brooklyn, NY based band, The Occasionalists.
Pride Month is coming to a close, and my Live Karaoke Band is playing an LGBT fundraiser tonight in Brooklyn, at 7:30 PM ET, at littlefield (635 Sackett Street).
My dad band, The Occasionalists, consists of five middle-aged, straight, white guys, which presents a challenge in creating an appropriate and relevant set list for such an event. We searched the internet for ideas and stumbled upon my new favorite song (at least for the summer). Two of my bandmates are musicologists near the level of my cousin Tom, so when neither heard of the Scissor Sisters, I thought I may have met the Obscure requirement to be a SotW.
“Take Your Mama” is a little bit of glam and a lot of classic three-chord rock with a fun groove and a rebellious vibe. The song celebrates taking the singer’s mother out for a night on the town to see what gay nightlife is all about. Coming out hasn’t sounded like this much fun since Diana Ross, nearly a quarter century earlier.
The joy of the song and band is best captured in this live performance — the kind of video you can watch over and over. Have a great summer.
I have already posted about songs written by the pre-Steely Dan songwriting team of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen that were recorded by other artists. The first was “American Lovers” by Thomas Jefferson Kaye (April 18, 2020) and another was “I Mean to Shine” by Linda Hoover (March 11, 2023). Another, today’s SotW, is “Sail the Waterway” by Denny Doherty.
After the Mamas and the Papas broke up, Doherty went on to record a couple of solo albums. The first was 1971’s Watcha Gonna Do? The album had a country rock feel and contained several Doherty originals alongside Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’” and a Beatles’ medley of “Here Comes the Sun/Two of Us.”
After that album was completed and released Doherty entered the studio again in 1972. This time he recorded four songs. None had been heard until they were released on an album called Of All the Things: The Complete ABC/Dunhill Masters, in 2017.
Of note is that two of the aforementioned four 1972 songs were written by the pre-Steely Dan Becker/Fagen team — “Sail the Waterway” and “Giles of the River”. Further, Becker and Fagen played on the tracks, and they were produced by Gary Katz, a name very familiar to Steely Dan fans.
Later, in November 1972, Steely Dan released their own debut. But a well-kept secret is that they released a single ahead of the album on June 16, 1972. The A-side was “Dallas”, and the B-side was “Sail the Waterway”!
