Enjoy the talk about the Beach Boys, who are one of the weirdest pop bands of all time.
Gene made the great point that a lot of the music on Beach Boys elpees was made by the Wrecking Crew. Lawr likes a great song that was apparently a b-side, though the cover art says it was the a-side. Whatever. An excellent song.
Gene replies with a song I didn’t know, but which points out how personal rather than general they were as lyricists, and how determined they were to frame very prosodic and psychologically exposed verses with catchy choruses and brilliantine arrangements.
So, my newsletter guy Lefsetz posts his list of most played songs on the year and this one from the Beach Boys Sunflower album comes up as No. 2. We can psychoanalyze that another time. It’s Carl singing, the rhythm is more Chambers Brothers than anything else, but the lyric strategy has not changed. A great song? Maybe a good one, but a fine tune to listen to.
The former music biz guy turned newsletter ranter, Bob Lefsetz, has a piece today about something called Skyville Live. Skyville Live is a video show that appears to be a small club in which mostly old musicians play with a crackin’ house band, reeling off classic tunes quite wonderfully. Lefsetz hinges his piece on this cover of the Allman Brothers Whipping Post by country star Chris Stapleton.
https://vimeo.com/188680983
Stapleton is a rising star, maybe a rised star. He’s written more than a handful of No. 1 hits, and since becoming a recording performer (in 2015) has been nominated for just about every major award and won some of them, too. So, he’s living the dream.
Skyville Live, it turns out, is a video show out of Nashville that is shown on some weird Verizon channel, and has clips on Vimeo.
Here’s my gripe. Whipping Post is a great song. It’s also a great song because the Allman Brothers recorded it twice brilliantly. And those performances are a part of what makes Whipping Post one of the great classic rock songs of all time.
In contrast, this cover, which seems to be conferring cannon status on the song, is kind of small. I was going to get into a whole argument about organic versus copies, about virtuosity versus chops, about the magic of the moment versus the nod toward nostalgia, about the weak slide guitar, but then I found this clip of the Allman Brothers playing the song in 1970.
I can’t help but think that Stapleton and band, no matter how well intentioned, aren’t paying tribute to the song. It feels like they’re speaking to their own glory by covering a transcendent performance—in a professional manner.
Whipping Post is a great song, but part of the thing that made it as great as it is is the arrangement and musicianship of the Allman Brothers. Stapleton and his session guys are excellent, but they chose the wrong song. They act like they’re playing a song from the cannon, a tune that a proficient rendering will justify. But it doesn’t. The great classic rock songs are usually tied not only to the excellence of the song, but also the moment (and excellence) of the performance. If you don’t live up to that, why bother?
This isn’t to say that great songs and performances can’t be covered, they can, but the artist has to bring something else to the table besides the cover. Think about the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, one of the great tunes of all time:
Devo, of course, raised their profile by their brilliant cover, which totally resets the song. Way to go, Devo.
Gene posted the Searchers version in the comments yesterday, which led me to this TV lipsynch version of the original, which is also great. Too many strings, not necessary, as the Searchers knew, but DeShannon’s version is both closely observed and kind of epic.
The Searchers were a beat group out of the Merseybeat sound, contemporaneous with the Beatles and the Hollies. They recorded a lot of pop covers early on, and good ones, like Sweets for My Sweet, Love Potion #9, and most notably Needles and Pins, which they helped make a classic.
I’ve long thought them to be an important band, because they played so well, and were such an important part of this most important pop scene, but I’ve been listening again lately and as much as I like all these songs, and admire the polish and playing on them all, the variety of styles and approaches leads me to conclude that the Searchers may have been, in their day, the world’s best wedding band.
I don’t mean that as a put down. Wedding bands are different from first rate rock bands, so I’ve dug a hole the Searchers have to climb out of, but I think they can do it. My point is that bands usually coalesce around some principles that guide their sound, their choice of material, their approach, or in other words, their vibe.
The Searchers didn’t really. They had the beat group sound, but they sampled pop and soul sounds without any orthodoxy. They just played, and like the best wedding bands, they brought great chops and energy to everything they did.
Which brings us to Alright, which seems to owe a lot to Ray Charles, but which also has a kick ass guitar solo. I love the way these guys play, but I also see that they’re not very visionary. Nothing wrong with that, but it does tamp down expectations. In any case, enjoy this!
Found this elpee yesterday called the Richard Hell Story. It’s an hour long, the greatest hits if you will. I’m sure I’ve heard this oldie before, but I don’t recall it. Neon Boys were the precursor to the version of Television that Hell was in. I was impressed by Tom Verlaine’s creaky solo, which sounds like he’s playing a cigar box guitar. But he does something with it anyway, and it really elevates the song.
Heard this on Little Steven’s Underground garage over the weekend and like it quite a bit. Don’t know this band; must investigate. Certainly nothing new here, but sounds refreshingly good.
I’ve never been a big metal fan, but in the dark ages of alt rock I grew to love Helmet. They, along with Come, pounded the head darkly, and I was happy to bang my head along.
I learned today that not only did Helmet play a show in NYC last night, but they have a new album out. I’ve only played a few of the songs, so this isn’t a review, but I get this one. Half the sound is Husker Du, the other half is something bigger and darker, but the combo sounds great, even if the song didn’t grab me the first time round.
Page Hamilton is an excellent and powerful guitarist, and I hope he saves us all from the crap we’re sinking in. Or, to quote Aerosmith, dream on.
I listened to a lot of Stars in the middle aughts. And I started listening to this paranoid and challenging pop song again over and over in the last week. I’m not sure why. Not related to the election, I don’t think. It feels like the mound of potatoes in Close Encounters, maybe, but what I know for sure is that this is an amazing band that isn’t rock ‘n’ roll, but also isn’t yer usual pop maunderings.
Found myself singing 2000 Man today. It’s a great song to sing when you’re doing something mindless. And so, while I cooked dinner, I put on the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesty’s Request.
It is a psychedelic record by the least psychedelic rock band of all time, but mostly that doesn’t matter. For instance, in In Another Land, there is a psychedelic verse with harpsichord and audio effects, but when the chorus kicks in, the song rocks. Then I awoke, was this some kind of joke? Yes!
You should listen to the whole album. Even Gomper, the Stones prequel to Patti Smith’s Radio Ethiopia, has merit, but the fact is that all the songs rock in a way no other psychedelic band rocked. Thank Charlie, perhaps. The songs can’t help it. Here’s 2000 Man, a song about temporal displacement the Kinks would be have been happy to record.
Okay, my favorite song on the album, may be The Citadel:
