The Animal Speaks was written by Akron bandleader of The Numbers Band, Robert Kidney, and recorded for the band’s first album in 1975. Earlier versions of the Numbers Band had Chrissie Hynde’s brother and future members of Devo on board, but by the time they recorded their first album, a live one, they had a different lineup.
They went on to make three albums over the next ten years, popular success didn’t find them the way it did Pere Ubu, let’s say, and for a while Robert Kidney toured with the Golden Palominos.
I came across this article about the Internet Underground Music Archive this morning. IUMA started in 1993, was a website that allowed bands to post their songs and make pages for themselves. Started when the Web had tens of thousands of users, it persisted until 2006. The article tells how some music loving engineers got their, where Napster and mySpace and Soundcloud eventually landed, years earlier.
One problem, when they started, was that the file for one song could be the size of a user’s hard drive!
One of the stories in the piece is that of a band called the Himalayans, the band that Adam Duritz was in before Counting Crows, and the band that wrote and recorded the original version of Round Here, which was posted on the IUMA website long before it became a hit. The Himalayans’ version sounds a lot more like U2, I’d say.
I guess this piece goes back to the determining the difference between what is good, art/music wise, as opposed to what we like.
To a degree, I will buy into Steve’s notion that once the “Average Joe’s” are hep to a band or performer, I am usually done with them.
That said, his comment on the Rubettes piece, that Dave Evans could not pick up a Jimmy Page lick is kind of specious to me.
I did think of the great Jimi Hendrix in this sense, for though he was indeed a tremendous and innovative player, as much of his performance was rooted in the volume and feedback he employed. And, I don’t mean that as a slam. I LOVE Hendrix, and was lucky enough to see him four times.
But, if you doubt this, check out Randy Hansen, who does his Hendrix tribute.
I actually saw Hansen in action, maybe 35 years ago, and no question he had the Hendrix chops and sound down as you can see. Does that mean it is good? Does that mean Bono sucks because he cannot sing Come on Feel the Noise a la Noddy?
Does it mean Hendrix sucks because Dylan wrote All Along the Watchtower? Or that Joan Jett sucks because she made a hit out of Bad Reputation, even though Freedy Johnson wrote it? Despite the fact that both deconstructed the songs and essentially made them their own?
Does it mean the the movie Clueless sucks because it is based upon Jane Austen’s Emma, which was given a truer representation to the original with Gwyneth Paltrow?
Is there a difference between “this sucks,” and, “I don’t like it?”
There is another song called Love Is All Around, probably more famous than the Mary Tyler Moore show theme. Written by the Troggs’ Reg Presley, it has a somewhat different sound than their other big hit, Wild Thing.
This clip is an early example of an MTV clip, some 13 years before MTV started.
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.
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.
Someone posted this picture on Facebook today, saying you know you’re from Smithtown if you recognized this spectacle.
I didn’t recognize the picture or the band (or the spectacle of the testicle), but someone immediately commented, as you can see in the picture. The Good Rats!
The Good Rats played at a bar over by the ocean called Oak Beach Inn, a notorious place I only knew from their radio ads full of reverb. The Rats often opened for more national bands at clubs and arenas. But as you can see from the comments, it isn’t easy to win respect.
Lyrics quiz: I know they don’t mean much, but I can’t figure out the second line of the couplet that begins: Let me tell you I’m going to make myself famous…
Please comment if you can figure it out.
Another song from their first album, out in 1969, is pretty cool.
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.
