Category Archives: Breakfast Blend

Breakfast Blend: Wild Tchoupitoulas

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Lawr’s post about the Neville Brothers reminded me of a great show I saw at the Bottom Line in NYC some 30+ years ago. The draw was the Wild Tchoupitoulas, a band of Mardi Gras paraders who made a stomping rocking record of parade chants that seemed, despite their lavish costumes, more organic and rocking than anthropological.

It was a show that had the whole club up on its feet, dancing in the aisles, strictly against NYC cabaret laws. Dancing against the law! Powerful stuff, like Footloose!

What I didn’t understand at the time was that not only was the Wild Tchoupitoulas’s band the venerable New Orleans group, the Meters, but the band’s album was the launching point for the Neville Brothers band, who were the opening act that night. Dressed up in parade costumes, who knew?

I only put this together because a few years ago I went to see the Nevilles, who still perform a fine set of NO funk, too polished because that’s what the popular ear wants. And they talked about getting together 30 years earlier, which is when I’d first seen them at the Bottom Line, at which point they seemed like grizzled vets.

In part, because some of them were.

But the seeds of the Nevilles were born in the Meters, who included Art and Cyrille. Good god.

Breakfast Blend: Viv Albertine

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She was the guitarist in the Slits, and now has a very nicely reviewed book out about her days in punk, hanging with the Clash, sexing it up with Johnny Rotten, joining the Slits. I haven’t read the book yet, but it sounds like she tells a compelling story without using a ghost writer.

She also has a new album out.

But, of course, it all goes back to this:

Breakfast Blend: Sonny Curtis

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Reading Bobby Keys’ astounding obituary I learned that not only were Keys and his buddy Keith Richards born on the same exact day, but that Keys was taught to play the baritone sax by his high school buddy, Sonny Curtis, who took over as the singer/guitarist in the Crickets after Buddy Holly died. Curtis is now in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Crickets, and in the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame, best known for writing two indelible songs.

Thanksgiving Breakfast Blend: Danny Kaye, “The Dodger Song”

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As I have probably written before, when I was little, I did not realize I was contrary.

But, I was a Dodger fan in Northern California during the 60’s, so that should have told me all I needed to know.

In 1962, this song by Danny Kaye, made the local charts for obvious reasons.

And, Peter’s Wilco/DiMaggio posts made me think of this song (of which I can still remember all the words).

This is a pretty cool video, by the way. Leggo city (all we had were Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets).

 

Breakfast Blend: Norman Whitfield by Proxy

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In 1970 Motown masterminds Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong (Money, among many others) wrote a song called War for the Temptations that was not released because it was deemed to be too radical.)

Whitfield and Strong then wrote Ball of Confusion, which is psychedelic and strong (like Sly Stone’s stuff), but politically ambiguous. Certainly radical, but hard to pin down. The Temps had a No. 3 hit with that.

At the same time, Motown released a version of War sung by Edwin Starr (who coincidentally wrote Shades of Blue’s great song, Oh How Happy!), that went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

Whitfield then recorded a version of Ball of Confusion with his younger and more political group, the Undisputed Truth. Not that Ball of Confusion is a radical song, but Whitfield and Strong, two of the greatest songwriters of the pop era, were always trying to do something bigger. Good for them. What’s interesting is that all three groups, the Temptations, Edwin Starr, and the Undisputed Truth, were signed with Motown. It’s like Berry Gordy knew he could channel Whitfield and Strong’s creative energy into more sales and profits! Different strokes, and all that.

Breakfast Blend: Good Rats Plus

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Peppi Marchello was the Good Rats’ singer, and the single constant throughout the band’s career, which ended when he died in 2013.

This is a band, the obit quoted Rolling Stone calling “the world’s most famous unknown band.” We don’t need Rolling Stone to tell us that that’s a rock remnant.

The Daily News says their 1974 album, Tasty, was their most successful, and that their biggest hit was the plaintive and slow-stomping Injun Joe.

And here’s a bootleg of a jam from 1974, with Tommy Bolin (who was in the James Gang for a while), Carmine Appice (the drummer in the Vanilla Fudge, and Beck, Bogert and Appice, of course) and the Good Rats. They’re playing at Ebbet’s Field, a famous small club in Denver Colorado in the early 70s.

Breakfast Blend: Elvis Costello on Letterman 1982

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The Attractions were touring supporting Imperial Bedroom, the album that Columbia promoted with the headline, Masterpiece?

I saw the band on the pier by the Intrepid, and then got a call from my friend Robin. Her neighbor was a writer on the Letterman show, and she had tickets to see them in the studio on Letterman’s show. We went. You can see them here. Thanks Robin.

The reason I landed on this is I’ve been playing that album a lot lately. I hadn’t revisited it for years, partly because of that Masterpiece? dodge. The weird overselling and the record’s effete literary musicality caused a problem. You can’t say you love this record without saying you’re some king of fancy boy. Unless you’re brave.

I love this record. The Attractions were a fantastic band, and the songs and arrangements on this elpee push them to create lively melodic music that can only, sometimes, be called Beatles-esque.

But the record really doesn’t rely on pretension. This isn’t XTC. There’s lots of air and delicious melody in the arrangements. Beatles engineer Geoff Emmerich produces this one, and the sound is precise and rich, full of detail, but each layer adds nuance, not complexity. This is art rock that is art, but doesn’t sacrifice the straight forward perspective of rock, even if the tunes mostly rock only in spurts.

And then there are Costello’s words. He’s a writer of too many words, sometimes, but when they’re pared back, as they actually often are, especially on Imperial Bedroom, he’s also a writer of uncompromising personal directness and vividness. The two songs on this Letterman clip are lyrically bold and personally revealing.

And this live version of Beyond Belief shows the rock heart at the core of Imperial Bedroom.

Breakfast Blend: How the Eagles of Death Metal Got Their Name

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A friend of Josh Homme’s was playing him tunes from a Polish metal band called Vader, and was making the argument that Vader fell within the classification of death metal. Homme said if that was true, that Vader was the Eagles of death metal.

He later thought, with his friend Jesse Hughes, that it might be fun to start a project that combined the Eagles and metal. This one was the first EoDM single.

Breakfast Blend: Another Distant Planet World

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Okay, I didn’t know about this 1979 U2 song, and its humiliating video. But it’s U2 and they weren’t yet famous, so they were working it. Hard to blame them. Still…

A year before that The Only Ones released this tune, which is one of the great romantic tunes of all time. Disambiguated, of course. But please dare to compare not only the hook, but the ambition and imagination.