The band Hot Chocolate had a handful of hits in the US over a short period in the 70s. But they had more than a score of hits in the UK over 30 years, which has to be of interest to those who track popularity. Or unpopularity.
Hot Chocolate’s singer, Errol Brown, died yesterday.
But I didn’t really know the story. The Guardian has a bit of a story today about Brown and the band, and why they meant so much to England.
I want to leave this post with the song that got Hot Chocolate signed by the Beatles to Apple Records, which I learned about today. It’s a wacky Carribean version of Give Peace a Chance that John found out about, and which led him to sign the band. Crazy.
This post scrapes the surface of Hot Chocolate and Errol Brown. If you hear anything you like, dig deeper.
He’s the guy who signed Guns N’ Roses way back when. Our friend Joe Pisapia posted this video on Facebook along with a nostalgic story about the first time he heard the band, which is a nice story. For my part, I learned about the band through MTV too, and while I liked the hits and was happy to hear them, I was older than Joe and to me they represented an image-conscious commercialism that was a turn off. In this segment of what is a larger video, Zutaut tells the story about signing the band and the problems with breaking them as stars, a segment notable for not having any GNR music, and for Zutaut’s voice, which expresses something about the rock life in its tone that goes far beyond the actual words.
As for his final question, I have two words: Hans Condor.
I wanted to link to the Milli Vanilli version recorded live at Albert Hall, with Jeff Lynne and PJ Harvey, but it isn’t on YouTube.
This video is terrific, which I hadn’t seen before, and which warrants a listen again to a song we’ve all heard too many times. But the psychedelia and pop song craft I hear here is worlds apart from what came after. Get out of here XTC! The noises in this song are economical, the language plain and straight forward (which still leaves plenty of room for weird). I was glad to watch it, even if I would have preferred Milli Vanilli at this point.
There are some reasons to grok ZZ Top. Or dig, if you prefer.
Hard guitar sounds and rockin’ blues are virtues. But this cover of the Beatles hit, by the Moving Sidewalks, which included Billy Gibbons, is an excellent reason to question his taste and ideas.
The Beatles wrote a great pop hit song. The Moving Sidewalks take that song and add a lot of Hendrix moves that add, um, zilch. Right?
Comment if you disagree, but this is so profoundly awful it can’t go uncommented on.
Another Fun No Fun song has surfaced. This comes to mind because while walking around Manhattan Sunday I happened upon this sign outside of a bar on the Upper West Side.
Tim Marchman has written something very long about The Mekons over at Deadspin (on the Concourse, whatever that is). It is a history of the band and an attempt to explain why they’re so great (and were so especially in the 80s), by discussing their elpees of that period in Tim’s order of preference.
I thoroughly enjoyed it because I learned some things about the band I didn’t know, there are good funny quotes from the band, and his song choices and clips are excellent and I enjoyed listening to them all.
On the other hand, the idea of convincing someone that a rock band is great because of the way they embody the moral ethos of failure, and embrace it like a lover or a murderer or something like that, seems kind of pretentious and beside the point. The reason a person might get into the Mekons and think about their history and the way they changed over the years and struggled with lack of sales but also wore that proudly as a badge of honor, is because you fell in love with the music. In other words, you heard a song, you went to a show, and it turned out to be one of the best shows you’ve ever seen. That’s when these other ideas start to have some importance.
I mention this because I think if you didn’t like/weren’t interested in the Mekons you might throw your computer at the wall as Marchman goes on and on, like this about the band’s album, Rock ‘n’ Roll:
“This is basically how the whole record plays out, as a very good and very bitter joke; there are reasons why many aficionados claim this is the Mekons’ best record, and why they may be right. They were certainly never tighter, more confident, more focused, or better engineered than they are here; the whole thing is just a straightforwardly great rock and roll record, which they seem to be uncomfortably aware of. It’s hard to think they meant lines like Throw another rock n’ roll song on the fire, or This song … is in a pretended family relationship with the others on this record and on the charts all that sincerely, and while they may have been mocking a gringo military fighting a rock and roll war, you know they had a little sympathy for them, too. The Mekons may not have wanted to be a great rock and roll band, but they were, and perhaps consequently, they were too honest to either moderate their view of rock and roll as an expression of imperial capitalism’s worst impulses or to take it at all seriously.”
Lou Reed’s sister tells the story of their childhood together, when some mistakes were made. It’s a gripping story told directly, sweet but awful, too.
And it’s hard not to come away with a different conclusion than she does. Or at least a bit of reservation about her sureness.
So, Mamas and Pappas talk. Things were great for a while, but did not end well.
In the interim, there is this album, called Pay Pack and Follow, which is basically the Stones lending their talents as a backup band to yet another dubious (but talented) character.
A little bit earlier the Stones recorded their own song about Virginia, though they may not be singing about the state. You be the judge.
The Stones are releasing a deluxe version of Sticky Fingers in May, which includes this acoustic version of Wild Horses. Nice enough, but I couldn’t get over the thought that Jagger sounds like he’s got a head cold.
I went back to the original, because my thought was that it was pretty acoustic itself, and it is, except for some electric guitar flourishes from Keith. Plus the album version has healthy harmonies on the chorus. Both of which enrich the song a lot.
One funny bit of trivia from Wikipedia. The song was recorded at Muscle Shoals and even though Ian Stewart was present, the piano part was played by Jim Dickinson. It seems that Stew didn’t like to play minor chords!
One other item of note. Many are reporting that this reissue of Sticky Fingers commemorates the 50th anniversary of the album’s release. Nope. The album came out April 23, 1971, forty four years ago this month. Math.
