I was looking for a David Johansen solo clip and found this bit of nonsense. I’m charmed because Johnny sounds just like he does on the records. All of them.
Category Archives: history
Movie Time: Not Fade Away
After David Chase stopped making The Sopranos he made the movie we would all, in some way, like to make. How did we get sucked into the rock ‘n’ roll wheel? How much sex did we have or not have because of that?
And what can we change now?
I’m watching Chase’s movie “Not Fade Away” and he includes this clip of the Rolling Stones, which in the movie is intercut with James Gandolfini and high school girls to good effect.
Okay, back to the movie.
Journey Into The Internet K-Hole
The two pictures I’ve posted here are of famous rock bands back in the 80s that I found in a post at the Internet K-Hole. It seems that every few months babs posts a collections of snapshots from the 80s, mostly, of kids on skate boards, bands, kids at dances, kids surfing, an occasional nude, kids hanging, kids wearing band t-shirts, kids at the beach, kids with guitars, etc. The pictures are captionless, without context, sometimes adjacent ones relate to each other, but often they come from across the country at seeming random, certainly taken by different photographers, but they seem to tell one artful story, a memoir of a generation, about what it was like to be 16 and 20 and 24 back in the 80s.
If babs posted weekly, we’d get a lot less done.
Ht to dangerousminds.com.
In Defense of Joe Jackson
Steve’s New Year’s article included a bunch of discs Mr. Moyer was considering blowing a bunch of holiday Amazon cash on.
Among the coveted was Joe Jackson’s terrific 1979 Look Sharp, a solid and even pretty diverse debut released during the hey day of Punk and the New Wave.
At first I dismissed Jackson as an Elvis Costello wanna be, but several songs from Look Sharp really nailed me. Is She Really Going Out With Him, Sunday Papers, and One More Time not to mention the great title cut made me buy the vinyl (I got the same issue as Peter, two 10″ discs) and the album was strong enough for me to easily take the plunge with Jackson’s second album, I’m The Man.
I felt Jackson’s second work was even stronger than his first, with the title track resting among my favorite Jackson tunes (it is also a song I played lead guitar on and sang with my first band, Mid Life Crisis). The album also had On Your Radio and the lovely and ironic It’s Different for Girls.
I bought Jackson’s next foray, Beat Crazy, and it did not do that much for me, but the eclectic musician and songwriter–who studied at Britain’s Royal Music Academy–followed that up with his Jumpin’ Jive Review, a wonderful homage to Cab Calloway and especially Louis Jordan.
Next for Jackson was Night and Day, a nod to pop and to Cole Porter, and an album that featured perhaps Jackson’s best known tune, Stepping Out and while there were still guitars and bass and 4/4 time in Jackson’s compositions, it was clear Jackson’s love for big bands and orchestrations was guiding his evolution as an artist.
By the way, Night and Day was again a very strong product, with diverse, tuneful, and thoughtfully constructed pop tunes. And, Stepping Out represented the first produced video by Jackson, who had eschewed the format that had become a staple in 1982, because he felt that video detracted from the music.
Jackson’s next work, Body and Soul again displayed the move towards a more refined 
sound well as jazz in a work that lovingly replicates the cover art of the 1957 release by Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2. Body and Soul has also proved to be my favorite Jackson disc, and the one that made my Top 50 (which now seems like a Top 75) for the site here.
Jackson’s next work, Big World, sampled even further beats and rhythms of the world at large, while also displaying another aspect of the principled auteur, for though the album is a double disc, Jackson only felt he had enough quality material for three sides. So, side four is left intentionally blank.
From there Jackson generally moved more towards works that pushed towards fuller orchestrations, eventually delivering his Symphony #1 (1999) and though I stopped buying each of Jackson’s works, I did see Joe and the band on the heels of their Blaze of Glory tour in 1989, and they were beyond great. Tight, tuneful, and funny, with the goofy Jackson playing all kinds of instruments while he stalked around the stage, like a mad musical scientist dressed in a trench-coat, as his band simply smoked.
As noted, since then, Jackson has moved from the punky guitar driven sound that garnered notice, towards classical music (he has also done a bunch of soundtracks, including Mike’s Murder and Tucker), but comparing the literate and erudite Jackson with the likes of Billy Joel is not just wrong, it is criminal (sorry Gene).
One of the things I have noticed as the cluster of us contributing to the site have made our musical loves known, is some of us have a genre we love the most, or that we feel best represents what the site, as in Remnants of Rock, as opposed to country, or pop, or classical or salsa means, is that we have clear lines drawn about what qualifies.
And, while I understand this–and hell, guitar driven tunes are the ones that get me most as you can see by simply watching the I’m the Man vid–I think artists growing and pushing their vision is what keeps art, both theirs and ours, vital.
Joe Jackson is such an artist. Like Prince, or Joni Mitchell, or the Stones or Beatles, Neil Young, or even Dylan, Jackson has never been satisfied simply doing the same mishmash of tunes over and over again.
Rather he pushes and reinvents himself, and his work to keep both the music and himself growing, learning, and producing.
The results speak for themselves, whether he is your cup of Joe or not.
Obit: Ronnie Biggs
A footnote in England’s Great Train Robbery, he was engaged to hire a train engineer to move the train forward to the unloading point and he hired an old guy named Pops who didn’t know how to operate the train, Biggs was captured because his fingerprint was found in the hideout on a catsup bottle. Biggs was also responsible for coshing the train’s original engineer on the head, and then forcing him to move the train forward himself while bleeding. The engineer died six years later, having never completely recovered.
A couple years later Biggs broke out of jail, and later ended up in Brazil, making money by hosting British tourists in his home for dinner. Which somehow led to a connection with Julian Temple, who was making his documentary the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, the story of the Sex Pistols from Malcolm McLaren’s perspective. Great Train Roberry = Great R’n’R Swindle, leads to this (with Biggs on Vocals, Cook and Jones doing what they do, and apparently a random exiled Nazi playing bass):
Biggs died in England a couple of weeks ago.
The 11 Best of Kanye West
I somewhat facetiously said elsewhere that Kanye West is to the recent years in music as the Beatles were to the 60s. That my friends elsewhere hadn’t heard West’s music, at least not knowingly, demonstrates the fallacy. This modern world is more segmented than the more expansive world of the Beatles. But that’s okay. The following is a very quick pass at 11 songs that make a nice demo of Kanye’s talents, plus two bonus tracks, avoiding as much as possible his self-centered petulance (which is a part of his thing, too).
Chronologically.
We Don’t Care, The College Dropout: I heard this, the sour distortion, the thumping bass, and wildly ironic rapping, and my eyes opened wide.
Spaceship, The College Dropout: Work, resentment, anger, ambition, wrapped up in a universal metaphor and slow oozing soul setting.
Jesus Walks, The College Dropout: This was the third single from his first album (the first two singles were Through the Wire and Slow Jamz). It is huge, giant, plaintive, beseeching.
Golddigger, Late Registration: The giant hit has a massive beat and a relentless Ray Charles hook (sung by Jamie Foxx). Continue reading
Happy Holidays: The Day The Sex Pistols Saved Christmas
A heartwarming story I read about at Dangerous Minds. Read and see it here. 
Plus video of the festivities and a catchy little ditty called a Punk Rock Christmas.
Night Music: The Faces, “Three Button Hand Me Down”
A few weeks back Peter wrote about Humble Pie and their terrific tune, I Don’t Need no Doctor.
Humble Pie was led by Steve Marriott, who not only had among the best and most recognizable rock voices, but was also a founding member of the great Brit pop band, The Small Faces.
Mostly known in the states for their catchy psychedelic hit Itchycoo Park, The Small Faces were far more than the bulk of the states ever appreciated. Their 1968 album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake broke as many rules as an album could in those days. First, the cover of the album was totally different than anything before. It was released in a plastic sleeve, with a fold-out that surrounded the record.
Add to that the entire second side was a fairy story song about Happiness Stan’s search for what he thinks is the missing half of the moon. (BTW, Ogdens Nut Gone was one of my Top 50 essential albums.)
The remaining Faces–Ronnie Lane, Ron Wood, Ian McLagan, and Kenny Jones–all hung with the departure of Marriott, adding Rod Stewart as their new lead singer (Wood invited Stewart to join after the pair worked together on Jeff Beck’s first album, Truth).
The first album the new quintet produced was a fun, bluesy, and listenable work called The First Step, and the other day, as I was streaming KTKE, my Truckee radio station, damned if they did not play a cut from that album, Three Button Hand Me Down.
The Faces were such a great band, both with Marriott and Stewart, and in a way, they were sort of Triple-A Rock and Roll, to the Majors where the players wound up.
Stewart went on to his sort of over-the-top glam career, while Wood joined the Stones, with McLagan supporting the band at times. Kenny Jones drummed with The Who for a while after Keith Moon’s demise, and Ronnie Lane played bass on all of Pete Townshend’s early solo material.
That is a pretty good resume.
So, here is Three Button Hand Me Down
Night Music: Tiki Brothers, “Ocean—Thank You Lou Reed”
My buddies the Tiki Brothers play a lot of water and beach themed tunes. They started out playing covers, lots of novelty tunes (Pipeline anyone?) a few years ago and at one of their early shows at the Steinhof Cafe, a bar up the road from my house, they played a gorgeous non-novelty song about the sea that stately-sloshed it’s way up the bank and back down the beach again, with a long inevitable build of tension and melody and determination. These are the not coincidentally the characteristics that, for me, dominate Lou Reed’s song writing. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he wrote this late Velvet Underground song that I didn’t know, called “Ocean,” which I’d surely heard because it was on the Velvet’s big commercial move, Loaded. (The link here is to the demo version, which features John Cale on organ and wasn’t on the released elpee.)
Walker, the Tiki’s bassist, sent me a recording today. It’s Ocean, the Lou Reed song, only with a kind of righteous poem dedicated to Lou Reed laid on top by the Tiki’s vocalis/mandolin player, Buck, extemporaneously I’m told. And like the original it starts quiet and builds into something of a roiling swamp of tone poem and tribute and something a little lovely and oddly familiar with Lou. It’s recorded live in the rehearsal studio so the balance and mix isn’t always perfect, but that’s okay. It builds to something I thought worth sharing.
Ocean–Thank You Lou Reed, by the Tiki Brothers.
Ps. I went looking for a picture of Lou Reed at the beach, maybe doing tai chi or working on his tan, but this was the closest I could find.
Groupies on Reddit
There is a long Reddit thread about groupies here. You could probably spend days reading it, but it’s fun to wade in.
Here’s a non-rock (hockey) sample:
[–]YoureKindOfADick 953 points 1 day ago
My ex girlfriend fucked half of the Buffalo Sabres circa 2006.
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[–]Camellia_sinensis 2614 points 1 day ago*x2
Is your ex-girlfriend the Ottawa Senators?
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