Beats me where it came from, but I was making dinner (a nice shepherd’s pie on a rainy evening) the other night and out of nowhere, The Mountains High got tripped off in my head somehow and I found myself singing it while I cooked.
Was it a Proustian moment, where the scent of thyme and garlic with ground beef and carrots triggered memories of being eight and getting totally knocked out by the song? I actually doubt that. My mother was at best a pedestrian cook, and she would never have understood the Proust reference anyway.
But, the song did completely nail me when it came out in 1961 (I was eight, so cut me some slack). I think it was mostly the machine gun drums that got me, but something about the almost dissonant, but somehow very right mix of the vocals of Dick and DeeDee also got under my skin in a good way as well.
That and as a precocious eight-year old, I saw a pic (see above) of DeeDee and had a horrible crush on her. In fact I think that my tastes in women were largely as set there as anytime, as black hair and bangs and the skinny Parker Posey/Chrissy Hynde/Joan Jett look has always been my preference, although add glasses and being a Southpaw for some reason kicks that attraction into outer space. We humans are so odd, no?
I didn’t know about this record until today, or maybe I forgot because I never heard the music until now.
In 1970 Duane Allman started recording a solo album, using what would become the Allman Brother’s original rhythm section (Butch Trucks, Jaimo, Berry Oakley). You can hear them all on this tune. Plus Duane, who was producing with Johnny Sandlin.
I don’t know what happened, but the tracks ended up being finished by Johnny Jenkins, a singer and guitarist who also had a band called the Pinetoppers, which was the first band Otis Redding sang in. Sweet on that. According to Wikipedia, Duane bailed on the sessions to record the first Allman Brothers album, which included brother Gregg as vocalist.
There’s a great version of Dr. John’s “Walk on Gilded Splinters” and a fine take on a song called “Voodoo in You” written by a guy named Jackie Avery, that was covered a few years later more heavily by the Atomic Rooster. But that’s a Blend for another day.
This is a J.C. Loudermilk blues, that has all the signature elements of an Allman Brothers song, plus a little farm….
I don’t follow the traffic here closely. Who cares?
But I do check in to make sure everything is working, and I noticed today that there was a spike in interest in a Swedish punk post I put up last spring.
That post led to a fantastic cascade of Swedish punk rock references, one of which was Turbonegro’s Staten Och Kapitalet. Read the thread for the whole story.
A few years ago Chuck Berry was inducted into some songwriter’s hall of fame. A friend said, “Chuck Berry?” Hell yes.
Berry’s rep has diminished thanks to Keith Richards (his bastard son, who disavowed him) and Chuck’s impecunious behavior, but the fact is that Johnny B. Goode, Maybelline, Back In the USA, Roll Over Beethoven, and almost every hit he ever wrote except My Dingaling, ranks among the best rock and roll tunes of all time.
I should bless you with Carol, here, but this will have to do:
Cleveland lifer John Coleman suggested that I find some of Clevelander Glenn Schwartz. Schwartz was in the Measles with Joe Walsh, and preceded him as guitarist in the James Gang, but the one tune of the Measles I could find was pretty mild.
It turns out that Schwartz was the lead guitarist in the LA band Pacific Gas + Electric during their salad days (“Are You Ready?”), but had a conversion experience and left the rock and roll life to play and record with the All Saved Freak Band.
Coleman says Schwartz still rants like a batshit crazy person, but when he plays he shreds.
This tune is pretty hot, praise the lord.
Schwartz left the Freak Band in 1980 and plays out in Cleveland.
We all have our likes and loves here in Remnantland.
Peter certainly has the widest palate of taste and experimentation, with Steve sticking to a core sort of set of criteria that constitute rock’n’roll, while Gene, steeped in his working class New York roots, is drawn to the arty side of music Peter, but his soul pushes more from the influence of doo wop through the Ramones, via Johnny Thunders.
I think essentially it is all good stuff.
As for me, I am drawn to the pop sensibilities, and for me, the wit of the British tongue, merged with American rhythm and blues, is what I love or gravitate to most, but I dig Beethoven and Roland Kirk, as well.
But, one of things I had been trying to do here is remember to highlight bands and artists who we tend to forget about, hence, the Moody Blues, who were, along with the Who and the Kinks, my favorite band back in 1967-69.
Before Pink Floyd, before Rush, before Yes, and before Spiritualized, there was the Moody Blues, the first real prog rock band.
The Moodys first hit in 1966 with a hit, Go Now, that featured Denny Laine (later of Wings) on vocals, in 1965, but after that tune, Laine left the band and re-emerged with John Lodge and Justin Hayward as their principles.
In 1967–the year of Sgt. Pepper–and the group produced the Days of Future Passed, a concept album that featured the beautiful cuts Tuesday Afternoon and Nights in White Satin at a time when Pink Floyd was still seeing Emily play (a song I love).
The jump in concept and realization between Go Now and Tuesday Afternoon is kind of like the leap between Radiohead’s Creep as compared to Airbag.
Featuring the flute of Ray Thomas, and the unusual and haunting mellotron keyboard of Mike Pinder, Days of Future Passed was an attempt by the band to deconstruct Dvorak’s Symphony for the New World and on the liner notes of the groups follow-up, In Search of the Lost Chord, producer Tony Clarke regarded the band as the “worlds smallest symphony orchestra.”
This all might sound hoity toity snotty, and as having nothing to do with rock’n’roll in the Moyer sense, but this was the throes of the psychadelic era and I was a 15-year old new stoner and both Days and In Search were always on the changer (as were Tommy and Blonde on Blonde) and I still am knocked out by the band’s Legend of a Mind song.
Sadly, I saw a reunion performance of the band at Red Rocks 20-years or so ago, and it was embarrassing to watch, but, I still have to acknowledge that Moody’s played a pivotal part of my life for a few years back there.
In fact, I was into the Moodys before they made it, and started losing interest in the band with their next album, On the Threshold of a Dream, and by the time To Our Children’s Children’s Children came out the band had become a favorite of those ubiquitous average Joes, and that was the last album I bought by the band, turning instead to Atom Heart Mother.
Irrespective, the song Gypsy from Children’s remains one of my favorite songs of the group.
I was watching clips from the punk/new wave movie Urgh! A Music War, a British movie that came out in 1982 that featured filmed live performances of a lot of bands you’ve heard of, and Invisible Sex.
According to the Urgh! Wikipedia page, this performance of Invisible Sex appears to be the only time they ever played live and they left behind no other released recordings. In 2008, however, a guy named Tom surfaced on the Urgh Yahoo page claim to be Gene Axe, the band’s guitarist. There is a page here, which features less than clear writing and a collection of known facts about the band. The most interesting is a list of the supposed band members names:
Gene Wow: Lead vocals
Gene Yus: Keyboards
Gene Axe: Guitar (Probably Tom Toomey)
Gene Machine: Female dancer
Gene I: Drums
Gene Junction: Female dancer
Gene Tee: Saxophone
Ranking Gene: Male dancer, fire blowing, percussion, “keeper of the stash”
Banana Gene, AKA Gene Banana: Bass
A Scottish band started in 1980 by a rock journalist (Sounds) and his mates. The bio at Wikipedia is skimpy, but they had some indie UK hits and made three albums in five years before breaking up. The note on the Give Me Passion clip at YouTube says, delightfully, that they are more Magazine than Orange Juice, and I might actually know what that implies. The WFMU DJ Evan “Funk” Davies posted this video of their second single on Facebook this morning, and it has the video aesthetic of its day down pat.
Give Me Passion was their first single, which certainly didn’t have this video attached to it.
Way back in February, Peter wrote a Night Music piece on Paul Revere and the Raiders and I started to write this very article I am now updating.
I saw the band a couple of times in the early 60’s, opening for the Beach Boys, who played Sacramento a lot. In fact I was at the show that became The Beach Boys in Concert, and the Raiders played that gig.
The Raiders, headed by Paul Revere, were a more than entertaining collection of players who knocked out some very good pop hits. Just Like Me, Kicks, Louie Louie, and Him or Me, What’s it Gonna Be?, to name some.
But, Revere and band hold kind of a funny and dubious place in history.
At the time the first wave of British bands were washing onto the American shore and airwaves, the head of A&R at Columbia Records was none other than Mitch Miller. You know, the Sing Along With Mitch guy, who had a Van Dyke to give the illusion of beatnik coolness, but who in reality was as square as they come.
Convinced that long hair and Brit Pop were just a passing fancy, Miller dissuaded the Columbia powers that the company should not sign any of the zillion bands just waiting to be discovered, and by the time it was realized this was a business/tactical error, The Raiders were the first band signed, for a million clams.
Not that the band was bad: they were just a lot different than the British invasion bands.
Miller skedaddled from Columbia, and Clive Davis took over to a pretty successful run, but the plan definitely waylaid the company for a few years.
Anyway, Revere, the leader, passed away Saturday, perfectly enough at the age of ’76, and irrespective of Miller’s acumen, the Raiders were excellent showmen and musicians and songwriters.
Mountains High got tripped off in my head somehow and I found myself singing it while I cooked.
