Category Archives: best

Night Music: The Allman Brothers, “One Way Out”

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Last night, in New York, the Allman Brothers played their last show. The band has been a different band for much of it’s career than the band that once contained Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, which is playing on this live version of Sonny Boy Williamson’s song, One Way Out. Better? Worse? I loved the old days. The Allman Brothers were the first big rock band I ever saw live, though I didn’t know anything about them that day. They were the opening act for Mountain at Stony Brook University. A fan was made.

Night Music: The Who, “My Generation”

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My dad is old and he has lost almost everything that makes life worth living but his mind, which is still working overtime clocking the stuff that happens. But isn’t that great at enjoying the daily stuff that is happening outside himself.

I’ve spent much of the last week in the Sunshine State trying to figure out a way for him to live the best life he can in his decline. The hell of it is he can still be charming and funny, but the toll taken by his body’s decline means he’s often playing a defensive game. And he’s not that charming or funny, because even at his most expansive he’s thinking more about what he isn’t than what anyone else is.

It’s awful.

Plus, he’s pretty much constantly fending off those who want to strip him of his liberty, which is to his credit. Except that the facts of the last couple of years show he can’t really handle liberty. Given choice, he chooses badly (or at least, the way of the rotting flesh).

I think an 86 year old has the right to choose badly, as long as they’re not bringing those around them down too, and unfortunately he has a wife who is apparently incapable of escaping his vortex. So he’s not helping her, at the least.

Which makes me think I don’t want to ever get old. Oops.

Breakfast Blend: The Mekons Rock and Roll

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At some point indie rock got hot and the Mekons ended up signing with a major label. The resultant album, The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll, was full of great music. Rocking music.

This is the official video for a song called Memphis Egypt, which could be called Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Here’s a video of a live Memphis Egypt performance from 2011 in Zurich, home of Dada, more than 20 years later, of Memphis Egypt and Where Were You, did I mention live? Fun, right?

You can read Robert Christgau’s liner notes for the non major label rerelease of the major label Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll album here.

Night Music: The Mekons, “Where Were You?”

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From 1978. Over too soon.

Notes: I have this song on an album called Where Were You? Hen’s Teeth and other Lost Fragments of Popular Colture, which collects early Mekons’ and oddments. But it turns out Where Were You? was written about at Aquarium Drunkard a few weeks ago, by a guy with a potent thirst for mythologizing. And Googling landed me on a story about this song on Popmatters, about five years ago.

Night Music: Iggy Pop, “Lust for Life”

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I think of this song a lot, and that’s n0t a gimmick.

I’ve been reading the novel My Struggle, and the fictional young Karl Ove Knaussgard (not the writer, who shares his lead character’s name), is left alone for the weekend by his father. The year is 1985. On the first night alone he eats a lot of shrimp, drinks some beers, and then walks the street of his town listening to Iggy’s Lust for Life and one of the later Roxy Music albums on his Walkman. He marvels that with the music filling his head the sights he sees, the people working in stores and driving in cars, seem to be in an entirely different world than the one he’s living in. Later on that night, after perhaps a few too many more beers, he falls in the love in an earthshaking way with Hanne, a Christian girl who says she cannot fall in love with him. It is one of the three or four real loves, he recognizes, that he will have in his life.

The novel I cannot recommend highly enough. The song is a classic, but one that has become a little bit like wallpaper. Is it a car commercial? Or from a hip film? Or from a not so hip film? This is a song that has been iconized and exploited beyond redemption. But if you can cut through all that and turn it up, you will be awed. (This clip has the wackly poetic lyrics, too, which are a nice reminder of how loopy a great song can be. Just like hypnotizing chickens.)

 

Gotta Post Once In A While

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To thwart Peter’s scheme of total domination.

I want to write a big article on some great rock oral histories, but I forget how to post pictures. Ah well. Maybe someday.

Got a new used car a little over a week ago and it has the best car stereo system I’ve ever owned, featuring a Rockford Fosgate sub. (Remember when we were young and up on high-end stereo equipment?)

Cranked the criminally underrated Masters of Reality debut album (in my Top 10 – I forget where) and this one really hit me. Just a crunching killer of a riff. The dated 80’s glam women in the video are amusing too.

Can’t Help It

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More former Dil Tony Kinman from the really good read Left Of The Dial:

“I would not compare the Ramones album to what I consider the single greatest moment of rock ‘n roll history. It’s in Little Richard’s recording of Lucille. Little Richard is screaming so loud that he overdrives his mic. On the hit version, there’s actually distortion recorded on that. I don’t care if you are even recording for a shitty indie punk rock label. Punk rockers would not let that happen, nowadays. That was a major hit song by a major hit performer of the time. I am speechless just thinking about it. To me, that is the single greatest moment because of what it is, which is incredible, how it sounds is great, and because of the context. He’s overdriving the mic, but the way things were back then was, ‘C’mon Richard, that sounds good enough. We’re done here. Let’s go, man, I’m thirsty, or whatever, or we better get to the gig.’ The era, the primitive rock era and the way those guys worked back then. . .And to this day, that song still has more truly astonishing passion and emotion in it, real terrible energy in it, than anything that has come since.”

I can’t hear distortion in this, but I think I know what he means. Maybe it’s shitty youtube or something. I especially like watching the drummer here. He amuses me:

Then, it occurred to me that Little Richard reminded me a lot of a character out of my childhood. Cesar Romero’s Joker (always will be my favorite Joker). The wild eyes, the hair, the maniacal smile. If Romero’s Joker wasn’t at least partially influenced by Little Richard, it’s a helluva coincidence. Even the moustache (which I always loved that Romero kept even under the Joker makeup).

Night Music: Little Richard, “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got (But It’s Got Me)”

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More making-dinner music. Sort of. I was cooking tonight and put on Little Richard’s Essentials album, because Moyer mentioned him the other day.

I love Little Richard. I know I’m piling on, but for me he’s the quintessential Ur-rock guy. Others played rock before. Others were trying to play it at the same time. But at that point Little Richard was better than all of them. Maybe put together.

But while making dinner, totally blown away again by Rip It Up and the Girl Can’t Help It, I kept trying to remember the name of the soul tune of Richard’s that first made me realize that he wasn’t just a rock n roll oldies guy, but was instead a rock giant. (No slight to him, that was my mistake.)

This is is. And sometimes I even moan.

I think we could hear any number of soul masters perform this excellent tune just fine, but I would bet not one could match Little Richard when the day was done.

He’s hardly an overlooked genius, but I think the towering of his talent and style and achievement is often overlooked.

Oh, and it turns out the guitarist in this band is the young Jimi Hendrix.