This is one you may not have heard of. Or may have forgotten.
The Golden Palominos were a working outfit from 1981 to 2012, when their last record came out. Their first album was a work of No Wave, a punk jazz fusion thing that highlighted bandleader Anton Fier’s massive drumming, and lots of skronking and wailing by downtown notables like John Zorn, Aarto Lindsey, Fred Frith, and bassist Bill Laswell, who played with the band consistently.
I’m not impugning the first album, but like much of No Wave, the joys are hard earned. Worthwhile? Probably, but it is on their second album that Golden Palominos became music for minds like mine.
This is a great rock record. For one thing it features guest vocals by Michael Stipe, John Lydon, and Jack Bruce. It has a cover of Skip Spence’s Omaha. Richard Thompson plays guitar. Carla Bley plays organ on Buenos Aires. And it introduces us to Syd Straw, who in subsequent permutations became one of the Palominos’s front people.
I only saw them once, on stage at Studio 54, with the great Ordinaires opening for them. But this is a record that is heavy, jazzy, poppy, full of songwriters and singers, with great playing and a killer rhythm section.
Try it out.
I think these guys are from New Zealand. What I know for sure is that on this elpee they’ve made great songs and arrangements that fuse the Beatles to the 13 Floor Elevators, and take most direction from the Dolls.
But to me, this doesn’t sound like homage, it sounds like joyful expression.
Could I be wrong? Their earlier albums are rawer and less imaginative.
But that isn’t the bar. This album isn’t about what it means, it’s about how great it sounds. And then, it means something. That’s punk we haven’t heard recently.
I think.
But maybe it’s not a problem. There is a lot to like about this song. Dreamy and meandering with a wash of rhythm underneath, it’s kind of lovely, which makes it like loud folk rock.
In any case, here’s a heads up.
I keep listening to this, seduced by the wiry guitars and solid drums, and realize I’ve wandered into a pretty powerful description of sexual power and the dynamics that ensue.
I saw this new film last week with friends. None of us knew much about the film, it had just opened, but it was Nico, about whom good books have been written, and who sang three songs on the first Velvet Underground album (the banana one). We knew that Lou Reed hated her, that Andy Warhol added her to his house band perversely, and our favorite song of hers was a cover of Jackson Browne’s melancholy These Days. Rael thought the trailer was a stinker.
But the movie was very good. Most notably, Trine Dyrholm acts and sings as if she’s living the part of the mordant junkie who can’t help but talk about how she feels and why she lives. But the movie makes excellent narrative choices that pile up, like leading with Nico’s These Days, and then moving on to her much broader music made in an atmosphere of chaos and imprecision.
This review on Slate by Carl Wilson does a good job of explaining the film, and puts it into the context of many other movie bio pix that don’t follow the form of Ray and Walk the Line. Read that, see the movie, and I’ll leave you with this. Not a spoiler, but a game changer in the film’s narrative, surprisingly enough.
This is another one h/t to the Dean of American Rock Critics, though he didn’t plug this song. I found it on the YouTube.
These guys are old and weird. The first two songs of theirs I listened to were called Gloria, and this one, which was once a Who song. Neither was a cover.
They skew to the indie side of rock, but I’ve put this clip on repeat. I liked them at first hear. They sound like they need to do this more than anything. That’s enough for now. Maybe more later.’
Simple song. But maybe clever. The lyrics seem to show a dark murder ballad, though I didn’t get that on first listen.
Whatever. Somehow this cute video and folkish trad song has scored 44 million plays on YouTube. That’s huge, it is real money, and it comes from Canadians into bluegrass, even if the music isn’t bound by genre exactly.
More power to them. This isn’t rock, but if these folks can earn green on this fine but totally uncommercial song, I’d say they’re successful remnants.
Also, good title and band name. Especially for northerners. Maybe not as good as The Band.
The Residents were/are a band I always wished I liked more. This is one of their defining moments. If nothing else, one could never call The Residents unoriginal or boring.
I’m halfway through this elpee on YouTube, listening at top volume while editing the biographical info of quarterbacks for the Fantasy Football Guide. Blame Hank and Co. for any errors.
There aren’t many modern punk bands that grab me, but this is clangorous driving rock n roll, a little garage-y, with some fun song ideas a la the first and second wave of bands with ugly album covers. These guys have that, too. But they don’t sound derivative so much as inspired to make their own noise. So they do!
I think this is their first album. The second one is called Stay Home, or it could be the other way around.
The version of this song you may know, by the Four Seasons, is a gorgeous slow burn, though a version by the Walker Brothers that has a touch of Merseybeat baked in was a bigger hit.
This version was recorded first, and it punks it up, as Gene might say, in a Spectorish way. The common denominator is Bob Crewe, who wrote the song with Bob Guadio, and whose record labels released both versions.
