Domino isn’t the immediate precursor of Van Morrison’s sound, even if Van’s song is a tribute. But this clip is choice just because of the sax break and it’s pounding piano and the way the white audience is fenced off from the stage, but clearly doesn’t need to be. Clap hands.
And isn’t that Harpo Marx standing with Mannix watching? The clip is from the movie Shake Rattle and Roll, and Harpo isn’t credited.
The Germs are not universally loved, but they are indisputably worth talking about. And they covered Chuck Berry, well.
I love this.
I gather this is an early recording of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker doing some covers in a club. The first is Chuck Berry’s Too Much Monkey Business, which is fantastic. That’s why I’m here, though I loved Cream back in the day. But we didn’t have this then.
Then there is the rest, which is pretty damn sweet.
Many of the great Chuck Berry covers were by the Rolling Stones, and a few were by the Beatles and John Lennon. But there were other covers of note. Here is a website that lists them all.
Here are a few I recommend.
This embellished list by Alan Light is well worth going through. They’re the greatest hits, for the most part, but many of the notes were new to me.
As was this song, which Light notes he wrote while in jail, without a map.
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28740659
Dick Clark introduces an appearance by Berry promoting this album and stumbles over the title, with the audience tittering at the double entendre. Really?
It is 1959, and, as Clark mentions, this is an album that has on it Carol, Maybelline, Johnny B. Goode, Roll Over Beethoven, Little Queenie and many more.
Those were the days of album oriented rock. Not.
It’s an incredible trove, not a greatest hits album, that the Rolling Stones particularly mined for their early (and later) setlists.
Berry, of course, looks right at home playing along to this other cut, Back in the USA, that is also on Chuck Berry is on Top, with the totally white and polite audience clapping along.
This is a recent release of a deep cut that got lost in the machine. It was discovered by an independent label, Melodies Unlimited, that saw the value in an old elpee that didn’t sell much when it was released, but people kept talking about it. According to Pitchfork, for a while copies of the original vinyl were fetching $1500.
The reason is this long and bubbling groove of a track. Tomorrow’s People were four brothers, the Burtons, on this particular day made a jam that has improbably endured. Dig it!
One of the thrills of the punk years was the primacy of singles. US bands would launch with a self- or independently pressed 45, looking for enough buzz to get a major label deal. UK bands and labels eased the way into the US market by dropping 45s into the indie record stores, where some people, I was one, would hang out and hear the choicest cuts on the store’s record player.
These singles came, usually, with picture sleeves. Sometimes they came with other gimmicks. I’m sure every punk band wanted a hit single, but most of these weren’t destined for radio play. They were meant as samizdat from the heart of DIY RNR, a beacon looking for similar youths with guitars and loud drums. If you had a single, you had a calling card at least.
One true thing was that there were some great songs released, and another true thing was that many were followed by fairly crappy albums.
The Dead Boys album leads off with their great single, Sonic Reducer, and is followed by a collection that sounded pretty strong in its day. Looking back at it now, what seemed like great energy and clever arrangements then seems today a little obvious and not quite as hard as they should have been. Such is context.
Gene points out, however, that this album should have been on the Rolling Stone Punk Top 40 Albums, and he may be right. It was historic, one of the first true punk albums on the shelves. I’m not sure of that importance as I listen today, but I am nostalgic. See, I actually performed on the album as a musician, of sorts.
The cut is the second track, All This and More. My girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend, Jim, was an assistant engineer on the album for Genya Ravan at Electric Ladyland. One day we were hanging out there, maybe waiting for him to get off work, when he brought us into the studio. It was the weekend, for sure, it wasn’t someplace we could wander in to usually. But on this day we got headphones and instructions to do the hand claps that lead off All This and More. And we did them and are on the record.
I think. Because I’m assuming our hand claps were good enough. I’m assuming that Genya didn’t get some other young people in to do better hand claps. No way to know that now. In any case they’re good claps. Not as good as the hand claps in the Stooges’ No Fun, but good enough for All This and More, which has one of the great weird first lines in all rock songs.
So, Gene reminded me that I probably performed on a record he thought should be in the Top 40 of Punk albums, even if it’s the elpee that displaces Blink 182.
What a joke.
In other words, we didn’t get any royalties or credit. And I haven’t played the record since before it came out, which I guess is why I forgot about this story. Until now. But there it is. History, perhaps.
When it comes to pissing matches and irreconcilable pluralism, no one does it better than Rolling Stone magazine.
They decided to make a list of the 40 best punk rock albums of all time. But, they limited each band to one elpee. While I can see the reason for the limitation, I think having decided upon it, they should have realized that calling it the Top 40 Punk Albums of All Time was a falsehood.
Also, should compilation records qualify? Singles Going Steady was almost contemporaneous, sort of, but the Bikini Kill singles album came out way later. Terminal Tower was kind of Pere Ubu’s Kinks Kronikles, but does that make it chartworthy?
Might not be a bad idea for us to play around with our own Top 10s, with as many elpees from any band as you feel is warranted in, in the comments. Think I’ll invite Dave Marsh to contribute. I’m sure he’s got a Bob Seger record in mind.
So here it is. Sharpen your knives. Have fun.
While reading, listen to this, ponder (and read fast).
