Category Archives: I Like This Song

I’m A Musical Sucker For. . .

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1. Bluesy-riffy guitar.
2. Another bluesy-riffy guitar playing at the same time.
3. Repetitive, droning chord pattern.
4. Screamy/melodic high-pitched vocal.
5. Bashing, driving drums, such that make one want to march.
6. Wah-wah. (Does any popular music these days use wah-wah?)

All of which are featured on the debut track of Graveyard’s debut album, which I got with my Amazon birthday gift card. I got six CDs and this is the one I want to play most.

Things to look forward to:

Still one Graveyard album I don’t yet have. God I hope – even though they seem kind of tame live – they don’t break up before they tour the US again. (Discovered them shortly after they went home after playing Coachella.)

Screw Carlos Santana.

Night Music: Chuck Berry, “Roll Over Beethoven”

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A few years ago Chuck Berry was inducted into some songwriter’s hall of fame. A friend said, “Chuck Berry?” Hell yes.

Berry’s rep has diminished thanks to Keith Richards (his bastard son, who disavowed him) and Chuck’s impecunious behavior, but the fact is that Johnny B. Goode, Maybelline, Back In the USA, Roll Over Beethoven, and almost every hit he ever wrote except My Dingaling, ranks among the best rock and roll tunes of all time.

I should bless you with Carol, here, but this will have to do:

Lunch Break: The Black Keys, “Little Black Submarines”

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The Black Keys are another band that has generated very little attention here, so I want to fix that.

I really love the band, who in so many ways seem so unlikely (they certainly don’t look like rock stars, yet they totally rock).

One trouble I have with them is though I own three of the bands albums, I have no clue what any of the songs are called. Of course, I never knew the name of Steely Dan’s tunes either, and I still like them a lot, so apparently that does not account for much.

I know Lindsay saw the Keys with Jake Bugg last week, and she said it was a great show. So, I am hoping she posts about it.

In the interim, here is a fix.

Party’s Over

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I often forget how much I love The Raspberries. I kind of think on the whole they kick the snot out of the other Beatle-y first wave of power poppers – Badfinger, Big Star, etc.

Eric Carmen (try to forget solo Eric Carmen) is a fantastic singer, Wally Bryson is a fantastic harmonizer and occasional lead vocalist (like on this one). Wally’s guitar is clever and often rips. The drummers – both of them – are primo Keith Moon minus the annoying over-the-top.

The Rasps made four albums and an argument can be made that each album got a little better than the last. Don’t know any other band I can even begin to say that about.

Had to go to NYC today on business and picked Raspberries (actually the fairly recent reunion “Live On Sunset Strip” which is quite good for oldsters recreating old memories) on the bus ride home.

This is my personal favorite in the category of band-breaking-up song. From their final album:

Night Music: Sonic Youth, “Teenage Riot”

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This may be my favorite Sonic Youth tune. It seems to be all about getting psyched to make music, to think big thoughts, but then also recognizing that what the kids want matters, too.

Or maybe it’s about something else. I have to say I never really thought about meaning until just now.

What I like is the way the guitars resonate and chime, interweave and resonate, and chase the rhythm section, and the way Thurston Moore’s words evoke something, specifically, yet don’t seem to be pinnable to anything but his particular story.

Seven minutes never went by so fast. That means something.

Breakfast Blend: Breakfast in Bed

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Woke up with this bit of Dusty in Memphis, written by Eddie Hinton and Donnie Fritts for Dusty Springfield’s weird and wonderful classic, in my head.

But before I knew Dusty’s original I’d heard Lorna Bennett’s 1972 reggae version, from the This is Reggae Music Vol. 1 compilation. Those drums kill and Lorna charms.

On a later volume of This is Reggae Music there was this remix, with the toaster Scotty adding his signature to the tune, released as Skank in Bed.

Good morning.

Night Music: The Allman Brothers, “One Way Out”

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Last night, in New York, the Allman Brothers played their last show. The band has been a different band for much of it’s career than the band that once contained Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, which is playing on this live version of Sonny Boy Williamson’s song, One Way Out. Better? Worse? I loved the old days. The Allman Brothers were the first big rock band I ever saw live, though I didn’t know anything about them that day. They were the opening act for Mountain at Stony Brook University. A fan was made.

Shandlerfest!

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Why don’t they just officially change the name at this point?

Music hasn’t been a big part of Shandlerfest for me, but this song stands out.

My usual crew were cruising Scottsdale looking for something new a few years ago when we stumbled into a new bar that had just opened. Shotgun Betty’s was a rock ‘n’ roll misogynist dream – top-notch beautiful girls in the skimpiest of daisy dukes alternating between pole dancing and bartending, with loud, mostly classic rock blaring. It’s wasn’t a strip bar, “classier” I guess and the girls were all enthusiastic and friendly. We went there every night of that particular trip.

Unfortunately, the next time we got there (spring or fall, I forget), the top-notch beautiful girls weren’t there anymore, replaced with unenthusiastics and unfriendlies. We stop maybe once every couple of trips anymore, but the place never comes close to that original visit.

This song caught my ear that first night and perhaps gets at a little of what Peter always talks about with the in-the-moment bar setting, although I’d happily listen to this at home too. Nothing original here, owing completely to “LaGrange” and “Boom Boom” and surely a million other Delta bluesmen on stools. But it sure is nice to see a bunch of average-looking guys in drab clothes kicking the shit out of what the usual Hot Topic Adam Levine lookalikes with generic tribal tattoos (oooh) and earrings in their lips (aaah) are doing.

Unfortunately, I’ve explored more Clutch and I don’t think anything else compares to this either:

Breakfast Blend: Joni Mitchell

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Joni Mitchell is not perfect, but she is perhaps our best example of a singer-songwriter with a rock ‘n’ roll heart.

She created music, from the start, that challenged expectations, became hits, fearlessly exposed her self (Rolling Stone mocked her sex life, famously and appallingly), and explored relentlessly the world outside herself, which she hoped to inhabit gracefully.

To put it bluntly, if she had had balls she would have put them forward in jeopardy to show that she was serious about her place in the world. The music may have been pretty at times, but the emotions were often as raw as anything else. And usually more so.

As seems to happen often with songwriters I admire, it is a cover that helps me explain Joni Mitchell. That would be Annie Ross’s Twisted.

And a cover of one of her songs, Clouds, that takes it just a bit farther.

Night Music: Mountain, “Theme For An Imaginary Western”

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This song was written by Jack Bruce, with words by Pete Brown, for Bruce’s solo Songs for a Tailor album. My grandfather was a tailor and I found this picture of him and my grandmother in his shop on Fifth Avenue, probably in the 60s.

grandparents-inthetailorshopMaybe it was in this room that my grandfather made me a Nehru jacket, which was tres sharp.

In any case, Felix Pappalardi, who produced Songs for a Tailor, brought the song to Leslie West, and Mountain recorded it for their classic and great album, Climbing. They also played the song at Woodstock and it is on the Woodstock 2 album, but this is the studio version.

Bruce subsequently joined Mountain’s Leslie West and Corky Laing in West Bruce and Laing, something of a supergroup that didn’t make that much of a splash, though my friends and I were enthusiastic fans.

Jack Bruce died this week, and he was a huge star because of his work with Cream, but he also created a substantial body of work that didn’t have that much to do with Cream. We still have that, too, and shouldn’t forget it.