I don’t know why ribald doo-wop is surprising, but the form just always seemed sort of clean and romantic. Always old fashioned and nice. Of course not.
Category Archives: attitude
Night Music: Steve Earle, “Copperhead Road”
Quite simply, I love Steve Earle.
A great songwriter and performer, with a social conscience and the conviction to speak out, Earle has had his demons, a la Johnny Cash.
Like Cash, Earle had his issues with drugs and the law, including spending time behind bars.
However, like Cash, that seems to have bound the singer to the working class in a way most performers of substance (not talking Toby Keith, here) might simply wish for.
This song, from the album of the same name–which happens to be my favorite of Earle’s catalog–just rocks it with words and attitude and even a sort of contextual prohibition sense of history. Did I say it rocks, too?
Earle has indeed produced a fabulous, and somewhat varied body of work, be it this early sort of alt/country rock, his work with Del McCoury, or his fantastic anti-Middle East war tome, Jerusalem.
It is high time we gave some space to Mr. Earle (and I don’t care what his friends call him!)
Lunch Break: Yo La Tengo, “I Heard You Looking”
It is Tout Wars Week, as Peter so aptly documented, meaning the core Remnants will be in Manhattan through the weekend, playing, drafting, drinking, eating, smoking and goofing off together (though technically, Spring will attack us all sometime on Saturday, leaving the Winter of 2015 behind).
It is great, so in honor of this, here is my favorite New York band (ok, so they are from Jersey), with a tune I hope Steve, who is riff oriented, likes.
This song is an instrumental, just based upon one very simple arpeggio. And, it builds and takes off like fire to become this oddly dissonant and yet beautiful tour de force number.
BTW, all the Tout activities are open to the public. Go to ToutWars.com for the itinerary and details.
Night Music: Lesley Gore, “You Don’t Own Me”
Lesley owns it. An inspiring cut.
Snow Shovel: More Off!
No one will watch this whole thing, but just watch until they start playing if nothing else. I’m struck by two things:
1) Keith Morris’ combover radical dreads hairstyle. (Perhaps it’s time to go skinhead, Keith.)
2) Something about Keith’s voice, mannerisms, etc. during the preamble remind me of. . .LAWR!
Bonus) Nice Mott shirt, bass player.
Afternoon Snack: Ani DiFranco and Ry Cooder, “Deportee”
Congressman Steve King blasted the President yesterday because the first family invited Ana Zamora–a Dream Act candidate–to sit with Michele Obama during the State of the Union speech.
Zamora did not merit being referred to by name: rather King tweeted “#Obama perverts ‘prosecutorial discretion’ by inviting a deportable to sit in place of honor at #SOTU w/1st Lady,” King wrote. “I should sit with Alito.”
Basically that means King is in congress to represent the xenophobes and bigots within our population (you know who you are).
I tweeted back that King should check out the Lucinda Williams/David Rodriguez song, Deportee. In the tweet I noted that he would like the song since all the undocumented die in a plane crash at the end of the song.
I have a live version my friend Les burned for me (by Williams and Rodriguez), but I could not find it on YouTube. But, in searching, I discovered the song was written by Woody Guthrie, and is based upon a real incident (the actual title is Deportee (Plane Crash at Los Gatos).
Anyway, I found this cool version by Ani DiFranco and Ry Cooder. Good stuff.
And, fucking bite me Steve King. Good thing you descended from Native Americans, and not from immigrants (that was sarcasm Steve: I forgot, you are not smart enough to understand sarcasm without an explanation).
Lunch Break: Devo, “Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy”
Another nugget that popped up for me while assembling Lindsay’s holiday disc was this absolute gem from Devo.
In fact, it is such a great cut, that I was sure someone (maybe even me?) had written about the band or song before, so I was surprised to see only indirect references to Devo within the Remnants archives.
I think history will prove Devo–particularly Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry (Gerald) Casale, the band’s driving forces–vastly underated, as a band, as songwriters, and as artists. For, what Devo did was much closer to rock and roll (I guess actually New Wave) theater than most bands. But, they were also very tight musically, as you shall see.
I found these two live versions of the ever intense Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy while looking for a good representation of the song, and they are both great, and interesting.
The first is from 1977, when the band was still pretty new on the forefront of Devolution. The film is rugged and jumpy, but the sound is ok, and the opening bass solo from Casale–who adds the great stage look of having a lefty player–is really great. You can see Mothersbaugh, as a singer/performer/front definitely has some chops.
But, check out how much tighter and polished the whole thing was three years later, after a serious cult following and a couple of discs and big time touring. By then Mothersbaugh was pretty well realized with this really mesmerizing performance.
Killer.
Night Music: The Clash, “Stay Free”
Though Complete Control is my favorite song by The Clash, Give Em Enough Rope is by far my favorite album by the band, as well as my favorite phase of theirs.
Rope was followed by London Calling, but by then the rawness of Complete Control became a little too polished for my taste. London Calling was ok, but for me Rope was the perfect mix of attitude and sonics and rawness.
I saw The Clash a couple of times when they toured behind Rope, and I still remember them opening once with Safe European Home, and the first chords just blasting out, and just grinning from ear-to-ear because it was soooo fucking good.
Well, when I was making Lindsay’s holiday disc, this Clash tune is another I stuck on the playlist. I had not heard it for a while, but Stay Free is just great, just like the album. Rope is now on my car’s computer, and also on my iPhone.
BTW, check out Strummer’s furious rhythm playing on this live track.
Breakfast Blend: Happy Birthday, January 8 (Elvis and Ziggy)
“Lindsay With an A” on KTKE noted this morning that today was her birthday.
More important, she shared the date with some pretty good names, like Stephen Hawking, who is an amazing 73 years old today.
Today Elvis would have been 80, so I thought I would drop in a favorite of mine by the King. Though I must say among the work of Presley, the stuff I like the best are the Sun Sessions. Still this one shows I was a rocker at 10 years old.
The fun does not stop there as January 8 is also the nativity commemoration for David Bowie, who is 68 today.
I love Ziggy, and all the stuff Bowie did with Mick Ronson for sure, but I also loved his Man Who Fell to Earth Heroes/Low phase. But, this song, from Diamond Dogs, remains my favorite Bowie cut.
Afternoon Snack: Toad the Wet Sprocket, “Hold Her Down”
Lindsay and I burn CD’s for one another on birthdays and XMAS.
I think these are what we would call “mix-tapes” in the “cassette High Fidelity” vernacular.
The whole process is fun: she digs for stuff she thinks I would like and not know (like Neutral Milk Hotel and Atmosphere, whom I shall comment on soon) and I try to do the same, digging for Billie Holiday and Dylan bootlegs along with odds and sods from hither and yon.
So, part of the process for me is simply staring at the wall of CDs in the music room, and trying to pluck out some nuggets accordingly. This time through, the great Toad the Wet Sprocket song Hold Her Down jumped out at me, and made it.
Aside from I love where the band got their name (Monty Python), Toad is a pretty good and versatile band (I saw them at a BFD many years back) and Hold Her Down is a great driving and lyrically powerful cut (listen carefully: it is a vehemently anti-rape song).
So, for my first entry of the new year, rock out.