Here’s another power-pop band that isn’t totally in the thrall of their influences, so they’ve gotten a fair amount of press (which goes to show that something isn’t dead). I do hear different influences in each song, but the quotes are slippery, shadows of sounds that are in my head but hard to put a anvil or stirrup on. Which means some of the songs I kind of like because they remind me of Graham Parker or Rage to Live, while others, like this one, sound like they might work (with a little work) in an arena.
This one sounds like the hardest song Joe Jackson ever recorded.
These guys are from Australia and seem to have found a way to make the virtues of straightforward rock feel uniquely their own. It helps to have a great singer, this one is named Shogun, and catchy clever songs.
We know that. He died upteen years ago tonight. I was at a theatrical production called In Praise of Wine, with my friend Helen, and I praised wine too heartily. As we were leaving the theater we learned that Lennon had been killed. It was terrible, and then I went to sleep.
In the ensuing days it was hard not to troll the Lennon mourners. We thought they were sentimental, and they didn’t care about us at all. Drinks were thrown.
And I’m pretty sure that nothing constructive happened. Except maybe we all, even the most hippieish, thought that Imagine was treacle.
Which is why, on this anniversary, I land on Instant Karma. It’s an insistent song, but the words are as limp as those of Imagine or Revolution. It seems to be the tune that the rockarazzi have settled on as John’s legacy. Whatever.
But it really isn’t that good a song. It’s a slow slog through angry retribution, and while I would hope it introduced the concept of Instant Karma to the world, Google instant karma and you see no John Lennon song for pages, the world has passed it by.
Which leads me to the 45 I bought when the Beatles broke up. It’s meta to a fault, but it’s way more fun than Instant Karma or Imagine or How Do You Sleep, the songs that make me regret poor John.
Holly Woodlawn was a movie star back when I was in high school. She was on the cover of the Rolling Stone, an amazing picture I can’t find, but one that certainly mixed up a young person’s head about the possibilities in this world.
When I was in high school we ate up Paul Morrisey’s trashy movies, Flesh and Heat, Dracula and Frankenstein 3D, some of which starred Holly Woodlawn.
When I heard that she’d passed yesterday I recalled the long and ridiculous dialogues she and Joe Dellasandro had in Trash, Holly’s nasal insistence the opposite of glamorous, but at the same time so full of its own sense of value, so real, that it also felt brave and heartening and hugely personal.
Vincent Canby got it right in his review of Trash in the New York Times:
“Holly Woodlawn, especially, is something to behold,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The New York Times, “a comic book Mother Courage who fancies herself as Marlene Dietrich but sounds more often like Phil Silvers.”
Which is why her place in rock ‘n’ roll history is cemented by these lines:
Holly came from Miami F-L-A,
Hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A.,
Plucked her eyebrows on the way,
Shaved her legs and then he was a she.
She says Hey babe,
Take a walk on the wild side
Said hey honey
Take a walk on the wild side.
You can read her New York Times obit here. The Rolling Stone obit is here.
Damn if this isn’t the second slow song I’m posting out of my last few posts, stretching many inactive months.
Graveyard is touring now and you folks need to check them out. I’m planning to see them in Philly on February 13th.
So refreshing to see a band (remember those?) with long stringy hair playing guitars (remember those?). Oh yeah, I forgot about all the pop punk garbage shit.
My two girls were home for Thanksgiving and, in the car – I swear – all they would play is that fucking Adele song OVER AND OVER AGAIN, interspersed with that fucking Justin Bieber song OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
God help us all.
P.S. – I particularly love the chord changes during the part where the ladies are singing background.
I found this Bob Christgau story about seeing Elvis Costello and the Roots a couple of years ago, when their album Wake Up Ghost came out. It’s a fine record, but what made my eyes open was his description of their cover of the Specials Ghost Town.
Here it is.
Sound is crap, but it is sweet. Here’s the original version, which EC produced, and has a lot more air.
Entranced by Cowgirl in the Sand and those various guitar sounds, I have to ask what happened when I heard this music back in 1977?
An urban art history version, huh!, of Cowgirl in the Sand, or maybe some other dueling guitar sound songs out of Neil and CSNY, Duane and Dickie, or something way more off kilter.
I love when Tom says, Richie says, let’s dress up like cops and see what we can do. That’s still scary today.
Hmm, now that I started this I’m thinking that Cowgirl is much more like Marquee Moon or The Dream Dreams the Dreamer, from Television’s second album. Whatever. Listen to it all. It’s not my fault.
Playing a Neil Young song on this site is like putting lipstick on a pig. Young is the ultra dude of American rock, the shot of tequila in your eye, the collateral skag, unless he was getting quiet.
Plus, he’s a star. Like Dylan, Joni, and the rest.
But driving to Boston for the feast today I got put in mind of this song, which I typed almost all my college papers to (because the vinyl was longer than the usual pop record).
Sorry, this is mainstream, but these are killer guitars, some of which sound like the guitar I made out of a shoebox when I was in fifth grade. It made sounds, it didn’t endure. But this does.
I was thinking today about how sucky French rock and roll was.
We all love Johnny Hallyday, but he is no Edith Piaf. He is no Charles Aznavour. Edith and Charles have nothing to do with rock, because French is the language of longeurs and triste, and not the language of the hammer, the beat, the job, the drummer.
So, I Googled best French rock songs. The first one listed was not a rock song at all. Typical.
The second one is this one, which is okay. It’s not just a Jack White ripoff, it’s not just a simulation, it sounds of a place and time. Not a great tune, French is not a great language for rock (except for C’est Plan Pour Moi), but it’s growing on me each time I play it.
