The video that went along with Lawr’s post of Deportee spoke directly to the issue of the state of California keeping dust bowlers from Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas out of their state. Bastards!
Woody Guthrie wrote a rollicking good song about that situation. I saw this band back in 1977 at the Bottom Line. They seem a little stiff, but professional, on the Old Grey Whistle Test, but they were rollicking in NYC when I saw them. It was a great show.
Do you remember President Nixon. Or the bills you have to pay?
We finally watched Twenty Feet from Stardom, the documentary about backup singers that was a must-see hit a couple of years ago. It’s pretty delightful, and also sad, as the women who learned to sing in church eventually see their bigger dreams of solo success fizzle.
The movie finally settles on Darlene Love’s compelling story for its big emotional finish, and that’s fine, but it also downplays the success story of Luther Van Dross, who can be seen in this video from New Years—as 1974 turns into 1975—backing up David Bowie on Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve. Vandross is the chubby fellow on the left.
Vandross successfully escaped the gravity of the background singer role and had a successful solo career as a singer and producer, unlike the stories featured in the movie. That’s a sign that the movie is more a charming story than truth telling, but it’s worth seeing just to spend time with Love, the Blossoms, Merry Clayton, Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega and many others. Their stories are really interesting, and inevitably tell a richer story than the one the movie chooses to focus on.
This clip is for Luther Vandross and yesterday, the day after David Bowie’s birthday. It is cool, a synonym for awesome.
I always have regretted not having seen Cheap Trick during their hey days in the late 70’s.
There were a couple of opportunities, particularly in 1978 at a Day on the Green, when AC/DC came around for the first time.
Also on the bill were Ted Nugent, whom I hated almost as much then as I do now, Journey, whom I hated almost as much as Ted Nugent, and Blue Oyster Cult who I couldn’t take seriously. For which I am now sorry.
But, AC/DC and Cheap Trick–the opening acts–were of major interest. And, I had a hard time justifying buying a ticket to just leave after two bands.
During their three-disc run of In Color and Black and White, Heaven Tonight, and Dream Police, the band totally kicked it for me, with driving pop-rock tunes peppered with clever lyrics, and a collection of players who seemed to have a shitload of fun doing what they were doing and being who they were being.
A side note about those three albums is, if you look closely at the album jackets, you will see a shot of the cover art of the previous album hidden. I always loved that.
By the time Budokan hit, and the band broke through, I was mostly done with them. Not that Budokan was not a hot set, or that Cheap Trick had done anything wrong. They just got too popular for me, I guess. They also lost air play time.
I was reunited with them when I started playing guitar for real, a little because they use simple major chords, and a little because my teacher and friend, Steve Gibson, was also a fan. And, then I met another friend and musician, Steve Chattler, who is a big “Trick,” as he calls them, fan as well.
Not to mention Diane grew up not so far from Rockford, home of the quartet, so somehow Cheap Trick wanted to be part of my existence, thus little point in resisting.
The song I picked for your bedtime listening is a fave. I Know What I Want has all kinds of Beatlesque stuff to it, especially the wonderful Eight Days a Week sus chords during the bridge.
I think the album version would be a lot cleaner than this live track from that very Budokan set, but since Steve (as in Moyer) is such a gearhead, I thought he would like what appears to be 30 strings among three guitar players.
I happened on this article in the Guardian today about a new generation of blues rock players who say they learned the blues at least in part from listening to Jack White. Like a game of telephone, mistakes are made.
That’s not really what I mean. Each of the three bands talked about in the story combine modern and old sounds in interesting ways. Benjamin Booker stands out to me, because I could see his mix turning into excellent songs. Right now, this one is probably the best, and it has some excellent drumming and interesting bass playing and Booker is pretty laid back about making some fast and pounding noises with his guitar.
He’s got that diffident voice thing going on, which is too bad, but there’s way more good here than bad. It just isn’t fully baked yet. For instance, Paul Schaffer’s organ part is a nice addition.
You should watch the D.D Dumbo clip, in which an Australian named Oliver Perry one-man bands things using loops, playing African guitar styles (which were at least in part derived from African guitarists listening to Lightning Hopkins), making art rock blues that support his arty vocals and more droney/chanty than catchy melodies. But it’s a cool sound that reminds me to listen to that Dirty Projector’s album I like so much (which nails all the vocal-mix-melody-abstraction issues this music is just starting to explore).
We went out to dinner with my friend Stephen Clayton, and his wife Karen last night (it was Stephen’s 63rd birthday).
While we were waiting to be seated, and after smooching howdy to one another, of course we all checked our phones for messages and other errata.
I happened to have my iPhone open to the Remnants site, and up popped the clip of KISS below, posted by Steve, I guess in defense of a bad band he loved when he had braces on his teeth.
Steve noted that we should, “be prepared to be blown away” (or some like quasi pithy comment), that Flip Wilson’s (the host) outfit was awesome (yawn) and that Joni Mitchell could stick this “up her cootch.”
Aside from that fact that anything in life would only be made better after swimming around in Joni’s vagina, irrespective of her age, I did watch this, with Stephen (with whom I saw KISS in 1979, as I think I have mentioned before).
I can understand 14-year olds being enamored. In fact, aside from the fact that I did take some great photos of the band, there was nothing else I left with other than they were at best a ho-hum group, who did indeed pander to 14-year olds (girls, Steve, even) who would be lost without their make-up (ok, maybe not lost: maybe never even found).
This clip re-affirms it. Aside from some very nice rhythm chords leading into the solo in Deuce, this performance is as meandering and uninspired and tired as it gets. Like the band, who are indeed tight, but neither particularly clean, nor smart let alone original (ooh, make-up, how clever, tell Alice Cooper to try it, and ooh, windmill guitar, maybe Keef could try that and show it to Pete Townshend, and ooh, choreographed guitar dance steps, maybe Paul Revere and the Raiders could pick up on that one).
I have to say I feel the same about Slade, who wore the same stupid shoes, but who were also a completely one-dimensional band in my view.
I get we all have our adolescent loves (I dug the Moody Blues, and still love the Who and the Kinks as much now as I did in 1968), but to suggest this stuff is better than Green Day (I will accept both being equally vapid, but the truth is, I like Green Day and their poppy-punky stuff, which at least sounds crisp, and does whine about teen angst, an essential to rock’n’roll) is just stupid. Like KISS
Anyway, as I concocted a response to the post to put here this morning, the clip (which was called “Breakfast Abortion”) mysteriously disappeared. Knowing Peter, I doubt he cut it because of any form of censorship.
So, I can only imagine Steve thought twice, and yanked it himself (el cajones minora, Steve?).
Truth is, it is more than fine with me to like this shit. As is liking Slade and Hellacopters and Turbonegro and a bunch of loud run of the mill working bands who basically play straight ahead three chord rock. I mean, I like Green Day and the Who and U2, and Joni Mitchell and have never claimed my taste was anything other than things I personally liked anyway.
But, please don’t suggest this stuff is better than much aside from Spirit in the Sky, In the Year 2525, or Incense and Peppermints.
Joe Cocker, late of the Grease Band and a great Woodstock performance, died of lung cancer today (making him also now late of life).
I cannot really say I liked Cocker live better than I liked John Belushi riffing on the whole schtick, but there is no question the Cocker’s seminal interpretation of the Beatles With A Little Help From My Friends is a fantastic and riveting performance.
Not much more to add or subtract beyond showing that shining moment in time and space.
This song was a hit in 1969, which means I was stumbling into adolescence and learning to delight in stupid rude puns (or what appeared to be so, at the time). This version, a song about food by the way, is contemporary (from October 2014), and Tony Joe’s voice isn’t quite so flexible, but it percolates anyway. And he has a nice buzzing solo, too. And Dave Grohl and Pat Smear, too. Plus Dave.
In my high school years, and into college, my band was Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. They were a country band that played the old style, no wimpy folk music here, and featured the Commander as big personality and boogie king, Bill Kirchen as most excellent rockabilly guitar, Andy Stein on the fiddle (one I touched after a show at Long Island University), the incomparable Bobby Black on pedal steel, and Billy C. Farlow as rockabilly vocal king.
The band’s roots were in Ann Arbor, though they ended up in San Francisco. But this clip is from a concert to support White Panthers leader John Sinclair, who was doing hard time for holding two joints when he wasn’t managing the MC5. The point was that drug laws were being used to muzzle political dissent.
The MC5, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Bob Seger, and Alan Ginsberg, and many others, performed at this show.
I didn’t know this clip until today. For me this band is the exemplar, the ultimate. And this is the perfect weepy country song.
This is the elpee version. Better mixed and performed. Perfect.
Biologists who discover new species are given the privilege of naming them. Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium discovered these deep sea snails.
“Because they look like punk rockers in the 70s and 80s and they have purple blood and live in such an extreme environment, we decided to name one new species after a punk rock icon,” said Shannon Johnson, a researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
And here’s a band called the Snails covering (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais in 2010, in memory of Joe Strummer’s death, which came 12 years ago this week. Perfect.
