Here is Dick Manitoba with some version of the MC5 in 2006 playing Kick Out The Jams. I’m sure I would have had a great time if I was there, and it sounds fun. Actually real fun. I wish I was there
But wouldn’t John Sinclair say that recapitulation is capitulation? Or maybe Malcolm X said it.
More country than rockabilly and irresistible.
When I first learned about Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe and Graham Parker, I first learned that they grew out of a scene that was exemplified by the Brinsley Schwarz band. Pub rock, they called it.
This wasn’t a little thing. But I’m surprised I have to admit that I’ve never actually listened to Brinsley Schwarz until today. So this cut jumps out. A goofy Nick Lowe. What more could you ask for?
It is the League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR) weekend in Phoenix, and that means time with my bestest industry friends.
Later today I will see fellow Remnant Steve Moyer, but for the most part this week I have been traipsing from ballpark-to-ballpark with my running buddy Steve Gardner.
Steve and I always have so much to talk about: baseball, food, and especially music.
As we ate breakfast the other morning, we were talking about country and alt-country, and I remembered this anecdote from my youth.
When I was eight or so–so this is 1960-61–and was a cub scout, our little pack got tickets to the local NBC affiliate’s Saturday afternoon variety show. Remember that at that time there were just three TV networks, and nothing like cable. In fact I am not sure if PBS had a presence as of yet.
I remember the show was hosted by the news anchor, who also hosted the kids Saturday morning/weekday afternoon kids cartoon show, along with that variety thing (which was that period’s time of local cable access filler).
Well, when I was in the audience, the musical guest was Buck Owens, and he sang his new hit, Tiger by the Tail.
It was just Buck, though he surely had a shiny suit and flashy guitar (at least to an eight-year old), so no Buckaroos. And, I am pretty sure Buck had an electric (not as cool as the metalflake vintage Tele being played below) but was not plugged into anything.
Furthermore, this was my first exposure to lip syncing, in its most rudimentary form.
On the floor, in one corner of the little studio, was a little plug-in Admiral, much like the phonograph we had at home, and someone dropped the .45 single on the turntable at the right time, dropped the tone arm, turned up the volume, and the race was on (ok, George Jones reference) so to speak.
Funny how we remember. Before Buck was big stuff, for sure.
Many of our regular commenters are in Phoenix this week, enjoying the pleasures of Spring Training, the LABR auctions, and the visual stimulation of Old Scottsdale.
No better time to run Barbara Manning’s post solo band up the center field flag pole. I know of no other rocker with cooler baseball bona fides. The art with this post is the cover from her album One Perfect Green Blanket, which is quite perfect.
The song commemorates Doc Ellis’s No Hitter, pitched while on LSD. We’ve posted the cartoon video about this event before, on askrotoman.com. But we’re not stalking. Just marveling. And Barbara’s song is great, too. Direct link to Ellis on LSD.
I feel like I’ve read some of this elsewhere, but Frank Owen was there and does a fine job describing the mayhem and machinations out of which came The Buzzcocks, The Fall, Joy Division, Morrisey and The Worst, among others. Some of it is the big picture, but there is also the personal:
“The Perry Boys had snuck up behind me and one of them had hit me over the head with a specially sharpened Levi belt buckle, leaving me lying on the concrete in a halo of my own blood. They probably would have kicked me into a coma if it wasn’t for my PVC-clad friend Denise Shaw, who stood over six feet tall in heels and dressed like a fetish model. She saw the incident and rushed over to fight off my attackers with her handbag.”
The Perry Boys were kids from the Council Houses, who hated the punks. Mark E. Smith wrote a song for the Fall about them:
The date is in 1975. The band formed the previous year. The sound is crap. The video is noisy, which is bad. But it’s great nonetheless. Even though it isn’t entirely pleasurable. But who comes here for pleasure?
Arturo Vega was the band’s supporting artist, who created the iconic and immortal Ramones crest.
Others know more than me about this clip, but to me it seems amazing that they had it all together already. This was the sound they pitched for the rest of their lives, there at the beginning, almost whole.
According to this story, Gary Glitter made $450,000 in 2012 from royalties for his songs, the most famous of which is Rock and Roll Part 2.
The problem is that Glitter was convicted for his massive child-porn collection in the 90s, did his time and then spent a number of years dodging the police in Southeast Asia, while apparently living the life of a sex tourist. All the while funded by the licensing fees paid by sports arenas and television and movies and commercial for the use of his songs.
He was arrested again in 2006 in Vietnam for molesting pre-teen girls, and after conviction and sentencing to three years in prison the NFL banned the playing of his songs at their stadiums. Some other teams did, too, but enough were still playing the tunes in 2012 to pay him that big score.
Glitter was recently convicted of child sexual abuse of three girls as young as 10 years old, crimes that dated back to his days as a rocker in the 70s and 80s, and was sentenced this week to 17 years in prison.
It’s hard to associate the glories of Rock And Roll Part 2 with the evil that Glitter has done in his life, until you follow the money. Then it all becomes very clear.
Here’s a fun one. Enter your birthday into this site and they’ll tell you what song was No. 1 the day you were born.
I doubt your song can be much cooler (or classic) than mine.
They’ll also tell you what song was No. 1 the night you were conceived, a real rock ‘n’ roll moment for sure. (I’ve posted about this song twice before, with various versions but not the giant hit that was Tennessee Ernie Ford’s.)
Here’s a post about Karl Ove Knausgaard and the Beatles. Come Together is an excerpt from Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book Three, Boyhood.
It is the story of a first love, sort of, and gives a good idea of the flavor of these books.
The Beatles song that’s quoted in the story and gives it its name is one of my favorites from the band’s later period.
The recording is the studio version, even though it is cut to live visuals.
The story ends citing a tune called No Way Back (Ingen Vei Tilbake) by the Norwegian band, The Aller Værste. Here’s a live version of the song, from 1980, which is about the time when the story takes place. You can listen (and sing) along when you get to that part.
