Category Archives: I Like This Song

Night Music: S.F. Seals, “Doc Ellis”

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oneperfectgreenblanketMany of our regular commenters are in Phoenix this week, enjoying the pleasures of Spring Training, the LABR auctions, and the visual stimulation of Old Scottsdale.

No better time to run Barbara Manning’s post solo band up the center field flag pole. I know of no other rocker with cooler baseball bona fides. The art with this post is the cover from her album One Perfect Green Blanket, which is quite perfect.

The song commemorates Doc Ellis’s No Hitter, pitched while on LSD. We’ve posted the cartoon video about this event before, on askrotoman.com. But we’re not stalking. Just marveling. And Barbara’s song is great, too. Direct link to Ellis on LSD.

Night Music: Talking Heads, “Uh-oh, Love Comes To Town”

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Screenshot 2015-03-04 00.07.16Some white reggae cum SOCA on the first Talking Heads cut on the first Talking Heads album. Who would have thought!

I was parking the car today, something we do in this city, and heard this on the radio. Wow. I hadn’t forgotten it. I’m sure I’ve heard it sort of recently, but dropped into the auto experience, I was blown away.

It sounded great, immediate, powerful, and reminded me of just how into this band I was when they were in their simple state. They got groovier later and that stuff is fantastic, but man oh man there is good music here in the working it out stage.

Morning Borning: The Real ZZ Top

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Everybody comes back and now the hot topic is The Sound Of Music. Rock ‘n’ roll! Yeah, sure.

Listened to ZZ Top’s best last night, Tres Hombres and Fandango. Them be two mighty fine albums, folks. I don’t think I included either in my Top 50, but they wouldn’t be far below. And if I re-did my list today, they might crack it. The live side of Fandango is mostly a waste, but the studio side makes up for it by being near-perfect. Tres Hombres isn’t perfect, but consistently excellent throughout.

This song was in Dazed And Confused, which we’ve discussed recently and kudos to Linklater for including this and not just the obvious Tush.

The feel of this song has a lot in common with early KISS. I don’t understand how one could like one and not the other. My guess is it’s that damn facepaint and antics. The song has little in common with later boring, commercial, synthesized, beardy ZZ Top. I’ve read they’ve somewhat come to their senses and returned to their roots, but I haven’t gone there (yet).

Hope this driver had a six-pack for the road.

Night Music: The Fleshtones, “American Beat”

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These guys never broke out in any meaningful way, but in those golden days of rock ‘n’ roll they were soldiers on the front line. I loved this song, played this single constantly for a while, because it was so clued in to all the different sounds we rocked to. Anthemic without being bossy, devoted without being chaste.

Night Music: The Strokes, “Someday”

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When we first heard the Strokes they sounded like guys glomming on to all that was already good about rock ‘n’ roll. But now, many years later, they sound a little like the last breath of fresh rock ‘n’ roll. I’m not sure what the real context is, today, but this was a band that always sounded like they were ready for pleasure. That is a very good quality.

Scot/Scott: Midnight Moses

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Don’t know if we’ve mentioned Sensational Alex Harvey Band at all here at RR. Don’t know why I got to thinking about this gem that I covered in a hard rock band years ago.

SAHB did some other good stuff, but there’s also a lot of nonsense on their albums. This is their masterpiece, for me at least, a song that would likely make my all-time Top 25. It’s clearly the blueprint for Bon Scott AC/DC, up there with just about anything else in my book. (My favorite rock singer of all-time, Bon admitted mimicking Alex Harvey’s vocal style. As always, everything’s a copy of something else.)

It’s also a great example of how, for me, vocals are way more about melody and flow and iambic pentameter and sounding good together than about what’s being said. Do you know what the hell Alex is singing about? I have no idea. But it sounds great.

Alex Harvey died suddenly of a heart attack, now long ago in 1982. His birth date is before my dad’s.

This video is about as cool as a lip-synch can get:

Night Music: Elvis Costello and the Attractions, “Two Little Hitlers”

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I got here via an email from my friend Steve, who asked why the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard named his magnum opus (six volumes, uncountable pages–volumes 4-6 aren’t even available in the US yet) Min Kampf. I mean, provocation or what?

Steve was asking because I kept writing about the books, of which I’ve read three so far, and their music content, on Rock Remnants. Plus the very amazing joy they bring because of their artistry, which has to do with writing and aesthetics and structure and mastery of the language, which is always a challenge with translation. But the books are fantastic, on their own terms and, I promise, on yours.

I today found this story at the newyorker.com, which does a fair job of limning the issues. But ultimately, isn’t it all a bit of Blitzkreig Bop?

What make’s Costello’s version of Belsen Was a Gas so much more resonant was the white reggae and a pretty savvy observation that any relationship can turn into a battle of emotional fascisms (the original name of the elpee was Emotional Fascism), fighting it out until one little Hitler does the other one’s will. Musically, nicer than the Sex Pistols, but conceptually, maybe more corrosive.