I was driving around the other day, attempting to complete last minute holiday errands when the “hot lunch” came on the local representation of the hard rock station.
“The Bone” is the local pathway to bands like Black Sabbath and Rush and Def Leppard, who I admit are not my faves on one hand, but on the other do offer the crunch of guitars.
The “hot lunch” is just an hour of said groups with a theme suggested by the DJ, and with listeners then calling in their requests.
This particular edition of the “hot lunch” featured songs that had whistling, and the set kicked off with the great and goofy Hocus Pocus by the Dutch band Focus.
Spearheaded by killer guitar player Jan Akkerman, this was the band’s only real foray onto the American pop/rock scene, but so off beat and silly a song it is, punctuated by blasts of Akkerman’s wizardry, that the whole song is just one great goulash of fun.
Part of the shtick was also provided by keyboard player/flautist/yodeler Thjis van Leer.
Yeah, yodeling, flute, bridges with drums, and even whistling along with, as noted, those searing and interesting Akkerman solos.
We went out to dinner with my friend Stephen Clayton, and his wife Karen last night (it was Stephen’s 63rd birthday).
While we were waiting to be seated, and after smooching howdy to one another, of course we all checked our phones for messages and other errata.
I happened to have my iPhone open to the Remnants site, and up popped the clip of KISS below, posted by Steve, I guess in defense of a bad band he loved when he had braces on his teeth.
Steve noted that we should, “be prepared to be blown away” (or some like quasi pithy comment), that Flip Wilson’s (the host) outfit was awesome (yawn) and that Joni Mitchell could stick this “up her cootch.”
Aside from that fact that anything in life would only be made better after swimming around in Joni’s vagina, irrespective of her age, I did watch this, with Stephen (with whom I saw KISS in 1979, as I think I have mentioned before).
I can understand 14-year olds being enamored. In fact, aside from the fact that I did take some great photos of the band, there was nothing else I left with other than they were at best a ho-hum group, who did indeed pander to 14-year olds (girls, Steve, even) who would be lost without their make-up (ok, maybe not lost: maybe never even found).
This clip re-affirms it. Aside from some very nice rhythm chords leading into the solo in Deuce, this performance is as meandering and uninspired and tired as it gets. Like the band, who are indeed tight, but neither particularly clean, nor smart let alone original (ooh, make-up, how clever, tell Alice Cooper to try it, and ooh, windmill guitar, maybe Keef could try that and show it to Pete Townshend, and ooh, choreographed guitar dance steps, maybe Paul Revere and the Raiders could pick up on that one).
I have to say I feel the same about Slade, who wore the same stupid shoes, but who were also a completely one-dimensional band in my view.
I get we all have our adolescent loves (I dug the Moody Blues, and still love the Who and the Kinks as much now as I did in 1968), but to suggest this stuff is better than Green Day (I will accept both being equally vapid, but the truth is, I like Green Day and their poppy-punky stuff, which at least sounds crisp, and does whine about teen angst, an essential to rock’n’roll) is just stupid. Like KISS
Anyway, as I concocted a response to the post to put here this morning, the clip (which was called “Breakfast Abortion”) mysteriously disappeared. Knowing Peter, I doubt he cut it because of any form of censorship.
So, I can only imagine Steve thought twice, and yanked it himself (el cajones minora, Steve?).
Truth is, it is more than fine with me to like this shit. As is liking Slade and Hellacopters and Turbonegro and a bunch of loud run of the mill working bands who basically play straight ahead three chord rock. I mean, I like Green Day and the Who and U2, and Joni Mitchell and have never claimed my taste was anything other than things I personally liked anyway.
But, please don’t suggest this stuff is better than much aside from Spirit in the Sky, In the Year 2525, or Incense and Peppermints.
When I think of food tunes I think of this one, too. I got to know it from Commander Cody’s version, but George Thorogood covered it (and left out a lot of the food words).
And via the miracle of the Internet it is a piece of cake to find and hear the charming original, from 1945, with Ella Mae Morse singing with Freddy Slack.
The intersection is a songwriter and guitarist who used to sing in the 90s with the Ass Ponys, whose third Nirvana-tinged album from 1994 I own, and who now plays and writes and sings with Wussy. Chuck Cleaver is his name, and he’s a guy from Cincinnati who has never stopped indie rocking.
This Seattle band played in New York the other day, and I didn’t go to see them. I’d never heard of them, but the review in the Times was enthusiastic, so I’ve been playing them. The band is great, the songs are inviting, the arrangements are clever with dynamics (if not exactly air), but the singing is a mystery. Why?
I’m not sure what should take its place, of course, but it wrecks these tunes for me.
Of course, we get back to the issue of live music, which brings different expectations. Just watching their heads on this one is fun. Almost. Stop singing!
The second Golden Palominos album is an all star affair. Not everyone plays on all tracks, but you get the idea.
Anton Fier – drums, DMX, percussion
Bill Laswell – bass guitar
Jody Harris – guitars, slide guitar
Richard Thompson – guitars
Mike Hampton – guitar
Henry Kaiser – guitars
Nicky Skopelitis – guitars
Arto Lindsay – guitar, vocals
Chris Stamey – guitar, piano, vocals
Bernie Worrell – Hammond organ
Carla Bley – Hammond organ
Syd Straw – vocals
Michael Stipe – vocals
Jack Bruce – vocals, harp
John Lydon – vocals
Lydon sang vocals on this song. The record was produced by Anton Fier, for Laswell’s label, Celluloid.
An alternate version with Jack Bruce singing was released on a 12″ single b-side.
I came across this article about the Internet Underground Music Archive this morning. IUMA started in 1993, was a website that allowed bands to post their songs and make pages for themselves. Started when the Web had tens of thousands of users, it persisted until 2006. The article tells how some music loving engineers got their, where Napster and mySpace and Soundcloud eventually landed, years earlier.
One problem, when they started, was that the file for one song could be the size of a user’s hard drive!
One of the stories in the piece is that of a band called the Himalayans, the band that Adam Duritz was in before Counting Crows, and the band that wrote and recorded the original version of Round Here, which was posted on the IUMA website long before it became a hit. The Himalayans’ version sounds a lot more like U2, I’d say.
