From peak indie era rock of the 90s. Sounds like the Replacements. Or the Only Ones. Okay, not that good, especially when the energy goes away for no reason. But there’s some of this that sounds awfully good.
Category Archives: I Like This Song
Isley Brothers, Summer Breeze
I was in a bar tonight with my friend Herrick. The bar is new, it’s called Bierwax. Bad name, right? Here’s a link to their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BierWax-269076593218456/.
What they do is sell 12 draft beers from local breweries you can’t get anywhere else. That’s the bier part. Plus a couple of handfuls of bottles, cans, and big bottles of craft beers.
They also have thousands of vinyl elpees on the wall behind the bar, and two DJ turntables on the back shelf. That’s the wax part.
No requests, it says plainly on the shelves of vinyl, and you can’t see what they have. So, you could say, Counting Crows please? And they would mock you.
Or rather, they would be as nice as they are, and they wouldn’t play any Counting Crows.
In any case, this tune came on at some point, and we were talking and didn’t hear the intro and the rather signature guitar line. Catching up in the middle, four plus minutes in, it gets wild enough you hope Seals and Crofts never heard it.
Baddest Bassline of All Time
Again I sing the praises of 70’s funk. This one is the perfection of Sly’s Family Affair style. Family Affair was the bigger hit but what do they know? Among its many virtues, this is the baddest baseline in history. I open the floor to other contenders.
Should Have Been a Hit
Actually it was a #1 hit in Britain. Somehow I missed it back in the day. Garage soul with Satisfaction-plus fuzztone. That singer’s got some pipes. They didn’t write it but they might as well have. The original by Jackie Edwards is an early reggae song and a fine tune, but Spencer and the fellas make it something else again.
Ron Gallo, Young Lady, You’re Scaring Me
You have to hear this. Rock from Philly. I came upon this from my 19 year old daughter’s playlist. Life is good.
Song of the Day: Where the Hell is Bill?
Mod ska dancing?
Mark E. Smith Has Fallen.
Over the years I’ve listened to a lot of The Fall records, and liked all of them. But I never was a fan. There is probably a conversation to be had about that.
Mark E. Smith, the singular head of The Fall, the constant amidst constant change over 40 years, died this week. The first video of them I found was this, which doesn’t seem typical, but does kind of get a vibe going.
The younger Fall is what I remember better. And it isn’t that different.
Watching that Totally Wired clip I could imagine why I would fall in love with this band, this guy, this poet. But that wasn’t a connection I made. At the same time, I was totally down with the Fall as a great band. Why? Because of a Barbara Manning song. Her endorsement meant everything.
It Was Reet Petite
We’ve discussed Kevin Rowland and Dexys here before, maybe too much. This is fucking bizarre. The high-stepping bass player, the worried accordion player, the fiddler who just won’t sing with enthusiasm, Bob Geldorf on acoustic guitar. . .
In typical backwards fashion, I’ll confess that Too-Rye-Ay led me to Moondance.
Classic Nuggets: Paul Revere & the Raiders, “Sometimes”
I am not sure why Sometimes of all songs from my past popped into my head the other day. I think someone asked me a question, and I answered “sometimes,” and poof, there you go.
But, I am glad because I remember loving the shit out of this song when I bought Paul Revere’s third album Here They Come, though it was never a hit or even released as a single. It was covered later by The Cramps and The Flamin’ Groovies, however.
The Raiders were certainly a hot band in 1963. I saw them twice in the early 60’s opening for the Beach Boys (whom I actually saw six times and was in attendance August 1, 1964 when Beach Boys Concert album was recorded) and with music and television growing, The Raiders became a house band on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is, his follow-up to Bandstand aimed at the next generation of pop music kids.
But, talk about an advanced sounding song, recorded in 1965, Sometimes was produced by Terry Melcher. Melcher was a principal producer for Columbia Records at the time, and was the son of Doris Day. Melcher had a band–The Rip Chords–who had an early 60’s hit (Hey Little Cobra) and as part of Bruce and Terry (Here Comes Summer).
Bruce, was Bruce Johnson who eventually became a member of the Beach Boys, but Melcher also was tied to Charles Manson. Melcher rejected Manson’s audition tapes, clearly pissing Manson off. Melcher had owned the home where the Tate-LaBiancha murders took place, but (obviously) did not live there any longer when Manson’s minions did their dirty work.
Rumor has it that some of the recording of Here They Come was performed by The Wrecking Crew, but Drake Levin probably did play the guitar and his solo is pretty hot. Levin was a pioneer with guitar pyrotechnics, having been among the first to double-track a solo on Just Like Me.
To me, however, Sometimes sticks out as an actual substantive song as opposed to a lot of what turned into the car song pop dreck that highlighted pop music, along with surfing, before the Beatles and Brit Pop rescued us. Nothing represents this pre-genre better than Hey Little Cobra.
Compare that to Sometimes.
And, will try to write here more often. The re-launch of Creativesports, and work on my latest book have distracted me!
Christian James Hand Breaks Down AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock
I learned about this from a Facebook post by my friends Annastasia and Herrick. Hand went to school with Herrick.
Hand takes songs and breaks them down into their component parts. Haven’t heard anything like this before, and don’t know how the he gets to the individual tracks, but it’s pretty neat. Here’s the show:
https://audioboom.com/posts/6503846-studio-session-on-fhf-let-there-be-rock-by-ac-dc-11-20-2017
Here’s the whole song.