Category Archives: attitude

Afternoon Snack: Green Day, “Jesus of Suburbia”

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Sometime back Steve dissed Green Day.

I understand we all have our preferences, but I have been meaning to present them, maybe even with consideration as a great band.

I got to see them twice, way back when Dookie was released. In 1993, they were the opening act at the local BFD, a spring pre-cursor to Lollapalooza. That year was a heavyweight BFD, also featuring, Pavement, Luscious Jackson, Toad the Wet Sprocket, the Rollins Band, the Flaming Lips, and the Knack (who had become a sort of cool post punk retro band).

I saw Green Day again a year later, still paying dues and working at their already well defined craft/attitude presented in Dookie. When that album came out, my legs could still allow me to run 25-35 miles a week, and Dookie was a Walkman favorite for a while.

I confess that I did not buy any Green Day discs till American Idiot was released a decade later, but their doggedness, and tuneful pop hits kept right on coming.

Warning. Redundant. When I Come Around among others, are all well done power pop/punk tunes to be sure.

But, I remember my friend George Anderson, making me sit in his car after we had picked up Chinese food. Jesus of Suburbia was next cut coming on the newly released American Idiot.

“You gotta listen to this before we go in. You will love it,” George implored.

That meant Mongolian beef and BBQ pork were going to cool down some, but I listened and George was right. I loved it.

Say what you will, but American Idiot is solid album, with clever tunes, a clean sound, and a lot of punch. Maybe it was popular, or chic, but I cannot see blaming the band for actually achieving what we all aspire to: commercial success.

Here is Jesus of Suburbia

For fun,  let’s toss in the band’s treatment of the Simpson’s theme from The Simpson’s Movie.

Afternoon Snack: 13th Floor Elevators, “You’re Gonna Miss Me”

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Gene’s post of the Dolls Too Much Too Soon reminded me so much of the 13th Floor Elevators, that I was jonesing to hear that great tune from Roky Erickson and band.

In searching, I found this really great clip from Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is.

Since it is actually semi-live, and since I don’t remember seeing the Elevators in “action,” I had no clue that the odd sort of synth/bass sound was Tommy Hall playing the jug.

Now I know.

Lunch Break: The Who, “Tattoo”

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Well, since we have been talking about both selling out, and tattoos, it just seemed right to post this as some lunch break fun.

The Who Sell Out is my favorite album by the band, and I brought this disc into the tattoo parlor when I was inked with my Tigger/Owl tat (in memory of my late wife Cathy, and son Joey) as I thought it would be perfect background music (it was).

BTW, I love Keith’s playing, but I also think it is a good example of Townshend being frustrated with him when he says “can’t you just be a metronome?”

The Big Compromise: Art versus Success

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Maybe it is inherent in the species. The argument certainly comes up here often enough. And, that issue/question is delineating between driving for success, and selling out.

It does seem there is a consensus, that once a band does indeed make it big, and has some money and serious production behind them, the group loses the vitality and drive sought while spending every day for years practicing and every night over the same span playing dive bars, hoping to develop a sound, move up the venue chain, and ultimately make a comfortable living as a musician.

Obviously some bands make it big–like U2 and KISS–but it seems inevitable that at some point, with commercial success, “the edge” (pun intended) gets lost, and though the band may enjoy an even larger audience, the sound or vision that grabs most serious music junkies becomes lost.

There are exceptions. Elvis Costello. Bob Dylan. Neil Young. Prince. Joni Mitchell. Stevie Wonder. David Bowie. The Beatles. The Stones. The Kinks. Bruce Springsteen. I would even throw U2 and the Dead  in there.

But, for the most part, bands have a sound, are discovered, make it big, and then spend an album or two trying to recapture the raw energy that pushed them in the first place in a more formal recording setting, become commercial, overproduced, and then has-beens.

I guess like every riddle in life, this one really has no answer, but we all have opinions.

But, the whole argument reminded me of something I believe Cyril Neville said when his band released their album, Uptown.

Uptown was a departure for the Neville Brothers, who were certainly renowned within the music world as artists and performers, but despite four singles released between 1978 and 1987, including a great cover of Iko Iko (1981, from Fiyo on the Bayou), they never cracked the Billboard Top 100.

With Uptown, the Nevilles cashed in on their industry cred, showcasing Keith Richards, Ronnie Montrose, Branford Marsalis, and Carlos Santana as guests, with Daniel Lanois producing.

The result was a hit, Whatever it Takes, a song which I still think is great, but which is a far cry from their take on Iko.

But, though the band got a hit, the album was not well received critically, nor was it well thought of by the hard core Neville fans because the sound was so much more commercial.

So, when asked about selling out, Cyril said something to the effect of, “we thought we might like to send our kids to college one day.”

What can you say to that?

Attitude: Joni Says “Bite Me”

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Say what you will about Joni Mitchell.

I say rock’n’roll is about attitude, and that Joni has it in spades.

This piece, written by Eric Rovie at the AV Club, says everything you need to know about it. Name another performer willing to take that path?

The text is:

joni

One of the truly great pastimes of the Taylor Swift Era is trying to figure out which celebrities inspired Taylor’s musical tales of heartbreak and inevitable recovery and triumph. We’ve been pretending not to move our feet to “Shake It Off” all summer, but now we have some insight into the possible meaning of the line “haters gonna hate, hate, hate” with confirmation that folk singer Joni Mitchell put the kibosh on a Swift-fronted biopic.

The movie, which Swift has been eyeballing since 2012, would have been based on Sheila Weller’s book Girls Like Us, a group biography of Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon. Alison Pill of The Newsroom fame was rumored for the part of King, with John Sayles and Kate Jacobs on board as screenwriter and director, respectively. But Mitchell was apparently not enamored with the gossipy content of Weller’s book, nor with the possibility of being represented on film by America’s biggest pop star, telling the film’s producer, “All you’ve got is a girl with high cheekbones. It’s just a lot of gossip, you don’t have the great scenes.” By putting her foot down on the project, Mitchell appears to have killed off our only chance to see Swift performing “A Case of You” while pensively smoking cigarettes, which is tragic in its own right.

Breakfast Blend: The Move, “Do Ya”

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I was a big ELO fan, at least till they became sort of redundant in the Moody Blues sense, and punk exploded and I abandoned all things progressive and over-produced.

facethemusicThat said, El Dorado still is a pretty good listen depending upon my mood, as is Face the Music which does have one of the best album jackets ever.

But, the first time I heard Do Ya, it was a cover by Todd Rundgren. I loved it at first listen, but as I tried to track it down, I discovered the song was originally written by Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood. Wood was the genius behind The Move, and dragged Bev Bevan and Jeff Lynne to that band, which eventually morphed into ELO.

ELO did recreate Do Ya, with strings, and though I had not yet completely “a-band-doned” them (I think it was on A New World Record) that version does not even come close to the kick-ass original by The Move.

I don’t do coffee much anymore in the mornings (green tea, please), but this does get my adrenalin going.

 

 

Breakfast Blend: Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

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Since Diane and I have been up in the mountains the past week, evening time has meant movies for the most part (don’t get me started on trying to stream the World Series or the NFL on a laptop or tablet or IPhone: to frustrating and worse than flying cos’ every keystroke costs something).

Diane had never seen the wonderful Martin Scorsese PBS film, No Direction Home, the American Masters documentary on Dylan covering his childhood up to the infamous Royal Albert Hall performance in 1966 (I still posses a vinyl bootleg that was called The Great White Wonder of the set).

What has always struck me about both the film as well as his autobiography, Chronicles, Volume 1, is what a normal guy Dylan seems to be despite all they hype and adulation and craziness that has surrounded the bulk of his career.

I particularly love the press conference scenes in the movie, like this one:

Anyway, Gene’s post on Louis, noting folk is not dead, sort of stirred it up in me as to just how amazing and prolific and ridiculously good Dylan was at everything folk before he led the charge to changing the rules and plugging in and pissing off the traditional folkies, for example, at said Royal Albert Hall gig.

There is a lot of footage in No Direction Home of Dylan at Newport in the early 60’s and he is just riveting, not just as a songwriter, but the dude is also a fantastic acoustic guitar player, and this showcases just how good he is!

Night Music: Dion & the Del Satins, “Runaround Sue,” J.D. McPherson, “North Side Gal”

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I cannot even remember what I was looking for in YouTube when on the list of suggested items I saw a link to a version Dion’s Runaround Sue, just a fantastic song.

I am sure Peter and Gene, New Yorkers both, appreciate Dion, first with the Belmonts, then as a solo artist, who represented the doo wop bands, and the toughness of the New York streets of the 50’s better than anyone.

Dion’s pained voice and words reflected the unspoken angst of an era when angst was indeed not to be spoken about: but, at least we could live our pain vicariously through Mr. diMucci.

Dion, who had his struggles along with his hits, still lives and I believe still performs, but in the 1961, with Runaround Sue, he was dynamite.

What is funny is this clip, of the singer with the band The Del Satins, is just weird.

First, I don’t remember ever hearing-or at least knowing about–a song by them backing Dion.

Second, I could swear they are all just lip synching here, because Dion recorded the song under his name alone after splitting with the Belmonts. And, the song represented sure as hell sounds like the original recording.

But, even for lip synching, these guys have to be the most laconic band in the history of anything.

Even so, my man Dion is still at least trying to perform, but the rest of the band, especially the back up sax guy who largely snaps his fingers, and sings back-up with the two guitar players, is almost dead. And, when they go into their “awwwwwwwws” none of them moves even remotely close to the single mike. Not too mention their lips are way out of synch.

The piano guy is even worse, for though he is playing, or pretending anyway, he is largely looking at the camera in some kind of earlier wishful version of a photo bomb or selfie or something.

But, enough of the band, the audience is even worse. They seem to be in a nightclub, but no one has have a drink in front of him or her (well, ok, I saw one beverage, but it looks untouched). Otherwise, they are just fucking sitting there, while Dion is at least pretending to wail. And, even if the song is piped in from the original recording, that song rocks.

Yet not one person is so much as tapping their finger on the nice white table cloths, or even swaying just a little.

Which confirms my notion of how sadly repressed we were.

Whew. Glad we can all now have sex and drugs and rock’n’roll.

While we are at it, while thinking about this piece, I happened to hear J.D. McPherson on KTKE, in Truckee, performing a song new to me, but surely evocative of Dion and doo wop and rock’a’billy.

Check it out. Pretty cool tune, and though it seems the sax is overdubbed in this video, the sax player still showed more moxie than that guy in the Del Satins.