Category Archives: I Like This Song

Night Music: Van Halen, “Oh Pretty Woman”

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I remember the first time I heard Roy Orbison’s great Oh Pretty Woman. It was one of those songs I did not need to hear twice before knowing it was killer, and the song has pretty much been a seminal tune over the 50-plus years since its release.

I never really thought about who would cover the song and why because the song was so much Orbison’s that “why bother?”

So, the last band I expected to infect me with a revisionist cover was Van Halen, who were still shy of their great 1984  disc.  But, starting with the fantastic clunky chunky metal effects pyrotechnics Eddie V coaxes in the Intruder prologue, to the great chorusy arpeggios that kick off the song, it nailed me at first listen and truth is, I now prefer the Van Halen’s version to Orbison’s.

This isn’t like Jimi Hendrix owning All Along the Watchtower, where Bob Dylan’s version is fine, but the song is clearly Hendrix’s now and forever. The Orbison version is still great, but Van Halen added a layer of rock and roll guts to the song that sort of works in concert with the emotions of love maybe lost and maybe found that should be part of the pain of life and relationship that rock and roll speaks to at its core.

I dunno. Maybe I am just getting sentimental as I move towards #iambecomingabesimpson, but fuck it. It is what it is.

Dan Hicks Died.

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Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks made four records back in the late 60s and early 70s that I wore out. Dan was a jazz guy, he liked novelty songs and the sounds of the 30s, though he started out as the drummer in the somewhat psychedelic Charlatans, a forerunner of the SF bands of the second half of the 60s. One Charlatan ended up in the Flamin’ Groovies, even.

Hicks didn’t play drums in his band, he played guitar, and he played with terrific fiddle players and acoustic bass and, of course, the Lickettes. They always sound a little crazed, mad with joy or fear or whatever bit of gut and smile they’ve got going in one of Dan’s terrific songs. All of them sound like they’re going to spin out of control, but they never do, at least not unless it’s on purpose, and the reward is a collection of great songs that are made even greater because of Hicks’ thoroughly delightful commitment to them.

This first clip is a promotional film featuring the first Hot Licks band in 1969, lip synching to their recording of the the Jukies Ball.

Here’s a silly party song with the Lickette’s out front from the Flip Wilson show.

His greatest song has all the same elements, yet isn’t silly at all.

Back in those crazy early 70s I listened a lot to Dan Hicks and Commander Cody, another funny band playing old music not for nostalgia’s sake, but because the songs are catchy and great, especially when played straight, as if the sound of before was a perfect fit for today. There were plenty of other bands mining this same vein of ore, not rock, but for me the others felt false and lacked the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. They were playing old peoples music, while Dan and the Commander were delighting in their eternal youth.

Until this week.

 

 

Allman Brothers, Leave My Blues At Home

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I read a cute story today about Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi in the New Yorker, which for some reason got me thinking about Idlewild South, the second Allman Brothers Band album. The one before Live at Fillmore East. The record was kind of a bomb, but you have to wonder why.

I like this cut, which should be an amiable shuffle, but somehow turns all the good feelings inside out. Leave ’em at home? Sure, but they’re coming with you. That’s how it sounds to me.

 

 

OBIT: Maurice White (1941-2016)

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Once again a significant figure in the pop music world has passed to another plane, this time in the form of Maurice White, leader, songwriter, and force behind the dynamic Earth, Wind, and Fire.

My first real job out of college was spent as a social worker for the Housing Authority of the City of Oakland. That meant managing public housing units, and that meant my day was indeed spent on some of the city’s tougher ghettos.

I did always get on just fine in such circumstances, and though I was indeed into 801, Springsteen, and then punk when it arrived, I never backed away from soul, starting from the earliest days of Motown.

EWF, or “the elements” as my cool work mates referred to the group, were certainly a band at the time I really did like, but I probably would not have been exposed to White and crew in the same way had I not held my job.

But, my workmates turned me onto their Way of the World album, that featured the great Shining Star. And, though Shining Star is a killer cut, I chose the title track as my tribute to White, who passed this morning after suffering from Parkinson’s Disease at 74.

Way of the World is a love song that indeed features White’s strong melody and lyrical skills, his band at full skill, and this particular cut has a killer guitar solo, something we all love.

EWF are still the elements, and White is eternal. Sigh.

 

Afternoon Snack: Avi Buffalo, “What’s In It For Me?”

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Back in the days before the market crash and stuff like that, I subscribed to Mojo Magazine. But, it got expensive and well, print is dead, so after six or seven years I let it drop.

I do sort of miss the rag even though I was forever behind in reading and remotely staying current with the what was new, for Mojo was great for that in my view.

I found Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, and Avi Buffalo, among others via Mojo, which made it a lot easier to identify newer bands I might find challenging.

I had pretty much forgotten about Avi Buffalo till last week, when I accidentally wiped out the albums I had stored on my car playlist. So, in the process of rebuilding, I found a mix disc I burned with What’s In It For Me.

Granted, this tune is nothing earth shattering, but it is tuneful pop with really fine guitar interplay and pretty good drums. The bass player plays a Hofner, but he is the weak link.

Anyway, for what it is worth.

 

The Tar Babies: A Sampler

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The guitarist from the Tar Babies, Bucky Pope,  has a new album out with a band called Negative Example. Ben Ratliff tells me so in the NY Times. He calls Pope “one of the great non virtuosic guitarists of the era.”

Here’s a Tar Babies song,  Rockhead.

Here’s another tune.

Well, actually, it’s hard to tell who are Tar Babies and who are other bands called Tar Babies. But this is their first release, a 12″ put together from sessions produced by Butch Vig and Bob Mould. It’s a much heavier headbanging sound than the funk-inflected tunes above.

Tar Babies were from Madison Wisconsin in the 1980s. They reformed in the 90s for an elpee, and then played some more in the Aughts as the Bar Tabbies.

The only Negative Example album I could find on YouTube was this cover of the Beach Boys Disney Girls.

 

Paul Kantner Has Died.

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Jefferson Airplane were a giant San Francisco band, and Paul Kantner had a lot to do with that, but when I just read that he’d died today, I thought of this song.

It’s from an album by Paul Kantner, branded as Jefferson Starship called Blows Against the Empire. As an idealist 17 year old with a bent to sci fi it hit pretty much every beat in my book. Well, except for the rock one.

But the album has it’s rock-ish moments, too.

But the song I like best is the folkiest, written by Rosalie Sorrells.

In any case, Paul Kantner was a nexus for all the psychedelic San Francisco musicians, who collaborated on this album, and many other projects, that were made as art and agitprop rather than commerce. Blows Against the Empire is the one project of his that captured me. You can hear the whole thing here.

He did not have anything to do with We Built This City. RIP.

 

Lauryn Hill, Lost Ones

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Everytime I hear news about Guantanamo I think about the song Guantanamera, which Lauryn Hill’s sings on a Fugee’s elpee.

But when I think about Lauryn Hill I think of this song, the first track (apart from the silly skit tracks–whose idea was that?) on her great album (if you get rid of the skit tracks, which you can do) The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

I also think about taking my daughter to the Brooklyn Museum when she was three or so, to a show about rock ‘n’ roll, and she toddled through the exhibit and hugged Fugee Wyclef Jean’s Fender, which caused some serious grief among the guards. Hey, it’s their jobs and rightfully so. To this day she has not hugged another guitar in a museum, but she’s started to work out the chords on our electric.

Rediscovering Supershit

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Was putting together my playing wish list for the new forming band I’m in last night. Honestly, I’m pretty excited. Two guitars – Gibson/Marshall, good singer too (not me).

Realized how long it had been since I spun the Supershit 666 EP, so I stopped in my tracks and did it. Retains the title of best piece of recorded music ever. And, consequently, it must be the most underrated piece of recorded music ever, because I never see it mentioned – anywhere. I’ll bet 99.99999999 percent of the music world doesn’t even know it exists. This has to play at my funeral after-party as my last statement to the world. (Am I full of shit or what? Glenn Frey and Don Henley have nothing on me.)

Take a listen to this original song by The Rods. The first Rods album is supposedly an underrated classic in and of itself. Never got it, because what I sample sounds a little too 80s for my liking.

Now take a listen to the Supershit cover. They run it over like a snowplow burying Peter Kreutzer’s car after a Brooklyn blizzard (quite the colorful writer, I am).

The “slight” change to the opening lyric line says it all: