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.
I couldn’t watch the political news today. Too depressing.
So I streamed KTKE and on came the Straits, a band I had not heard for a while.
During the new wave rush, Dire Straits were a serious fave of mine, and Mark Knopfler was similarly both a fave guitar play, and songwriter too.
With riffs (dude fingerpicks, which makes me totally wonder how he gets such a throaty sound out of his leads sometimes) influenced by Richard Thompson (Knopfler once said he learned the most from listening to Thompson) and Dylan-esque words and vocals, Dire Straits were just different enough, just edgy enough, and way good enough to survive.
Somehow they seemed way smart enough too, which may sound snotty, but I mean it in the sense that the band played challenging music. But, I think if we all look at the bands we really loved the most–The Velvets, Replacements, The Stones, Dylan, Iggy, etc.–all dared us to ride along on their artistic and musical journey.
Dire Straits third album, Making Movies made my essentials list. Making Movies jumped the band ahead from their early sound to what sounded like new territory at the time. The entire album is fabulous, and since I was jonesing for a little crunch from Mark and his axe, here you go.
Peter’s post of Legs by ZZ Top prompted me to comment that if we, as humans, keep at a talent long enough, eventually the work and experience will coalesce into a representative work.
I suppose this harkens to the old give a typewriter to a monkey and eventually the ape will give you back a novel.
I don’t mean it that way, especially in the context of Sonic Youth, who have always worked to produce challenging music that pushes the bounds of art as rock.
Still, when they released their album Rather Ripped in 2006 (the band’s 14th) as the closest thing to a collection of pop tunes, the Youth finally scored a hit a la the Top with Eliminator.
I have seen the band a couple of times and while they were interesting, they were never as accessible as this. With a pair of guitar players, and a pair of bass players, no less.
Since the Remnants brought up Joe Walsh free of any self aggrandizing by moi, here are the Biletones in action at a dive bar.
We had a great set, and my wife Diane filmed this with iPhone, yet it is still pretty good (though if you can listen on headphones, the sound is soooo much better and you can really hear the bass).
In the same vein as Hey Little Girl and the Music Machine posts of late, 96 Tears came bopping out of the KTKE stream the other day, and as much as I love that the station drops gems from the past into their mix without warning, I never understood why this song was such a big hit.
Like Incense and Peppermints or Spirit in the Sky, or (double gag) MacArthur Park, this song did and still does little for me. But, all those songs were big hits somehow.
OK, if you turn the volume up while streaming the vid below, it is not horrible, but certainly not any kind of a break through classic song. And, as a garage song, it does not compare with Talk Talk, or even Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye) in my meager view.
I am sure this will rankle many, and I am sorry if you love it. Give me Jackie Wilson’s Higher and Higher over it any minute of any day of the week.
I was lucky enough to see Cream in 1968, during their first big American tour. I was just 15, but they knocked me out. Oddly, the opening act was the Grateful Dead, who played Alligator for an hour, and that was it, making it really hard for me to warm up to the band for a number of years (Workingman’s Dead started the change).
They were great, and I do indeed love Fresh Cream, though curiously, nothing by the band made my essentials list.
Still, NSU, I Feel Free, and I’m So Glad are serious faves.
However, in deference to Lindsay’s “what I like to listen to when I am sad,” I grabbed my favorite Cream cut, Deserted Cities of the Heart, penned by Monsieur Bruce, and in honor of his passing.
From Wheels of Fire, which was produced by said Felix Papplardi (whom I believe played cello on the cut), this song rocks, is dreamy, and takes some unexpected form twists (I LOVE the doorbell/glockenspiel/whatever is channeled into the background as Clapton starts his solo).
Miss you Jack! You were great (and somehow, I cannot believe Ginger Baker outlived you).
I included both the haunting studio version with said strings and treatments, and a fairly blistering live take as well.
It is like looking through the old Macmillan Baseball Stat book: You look up one number, and that leads to another and another and what started out as a search for Napoleon Lajoie’s (got it that time, Steve) best year for doubles (51 in 1910) winds up comparing George Brunet’s career WHIP (1.316) with that of Jamey Wright’s (1.545, pretty crappy for a former first rounder) three hours later.
My piece on the Syndicate of Sound led to Gene posting the Music Machine, and when I finished watching that, there was a link to the Seeds on a show called Shebang, which I think I remember, but am not sure.
I can say that I kind of liked the Seeds, but I can also say this is maybe the worst lip sync ever:
But, in typical stat searching style, that led to this video of 50’s pin-up model Bettie Page dancing, I guess suggestively, to another Seeds hit, I Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.
The song is ok, and for sure Bettie was hot (dark hair, bangs, and blue eyes are deadly. If I knew she was left-handed, and wore glasses sometimes a la Dorothy Malone in The Big Sleep, I would have probably spent my life savings trying to track her down) but for the most part the whole thing is stupid, and not really provocative (was it in 1966? I doubt it.).
Since Diane and I have been up in the mountains the past week, evening time has meant movies for the most part (don’t get me started on trying to stream the World Series or the NFL on a laptop or tablet or IPhone: to frustrating and worse than flying cos’ every keystroke costs something).
Diane had never seen the wonderful Martin Scorsese PBS film, No Direction Home, the American Masters documentary on Dylan covering his childhood up to the infamous Royal Albert Hall performance in 1966 (I still posses a vinyl bootleg that was called The Great White Wonder of the set).
What has always struck me about both the film as well as his autobiography, Chronicles, Volume 1, is what a normal guy Dylan seems to be despite all they hype and adulation and craziness that has surrounded the bulk of his career.
I particularly love the press conference scenes in the movie, like this one:
Anyway, Gene’s post on Louis, noting folk is not dead, sort of stirred it up in me as to just how amazing and prolific and ridiculously good Dylan was at everything folk before he led the charge to changing the rules and plugging in and pissing off the traditional folkies, for example, at said Royal Albert Hall gig.
There is a lot of footage in No Direction Home of Dylan at Newport in the early 60’s and he is just riveting, not just as a songwriter, but the dude is also a fantastic acoustic guitar player, and this showcases just how good he is!
