This Seattle band played in New York the other day, and I didn’t go to see them. I’d never heard of them, but the review in the Times was enthusiastic, so I’ve been playing them. The band is great, the songs are inviting, the arrangements are clever with dynamics (if not exactly air), but the singing is a mystery. Why?
I’m not sure what should take its place, of course, but it wrecks these tunes for me.
Of course, we get back to the issue of live music, which brings different expectations. Just watching their heads on this one is fun. Almost. Stop singing!
Reading Bobby Keys’ astounding obituary I learned that not only were Keys and his buddy Keith Richards born on the same exact day, but that Keys was taught to play the baritone sax by his high school buddy, Sonny Curtis, who took over as the singer/guitarist in the Crickets after Buddy Holly died. Curtis is now in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Crickets, and in the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame, best known for writing two indelible songs.
Peppi Marchello was the Good Rats’ singer, and the single constant throughout the band’s career, which ended when he died in 2013.
This is a band, the obit quoted Rolling Stone calling “the world’s most famous unknown band.” We don’t need Rolling Stone to tell us that that’s a rock remnant.
The Daily News says their 1974 album, Tasty, was their most successful, and that their biggest hit was the plaintive and slow-stomping Injun Joe.
And here’s a bootleg of a jam from 1974, with Tommy Bolin (who was in the James Gang for a while), Carmine Appice (the drummer in the Vanilla Fudge, and Beck, Bogert and Appice, of course) and the Good Rats. They’re playing at Ebbet’s Field, a famous small club in Denver Colorado in the early 70s.
The Attractions were touring supporting Imperial Bedroom, the album that Columbia promoted with the headline, Masterpiece?
I saw the band on the pier by the Intrepid, and then got a call from my friend Robin. Her neighbor was a writer on the Letterman show, and she had tickets to see them in the studio on Letterman’s show. We went. You can see them here. Thanks Robin.
The reason I landed on this is I’ve been playing that album a lot lately. I hadn’t revisited it for years, partly because of that Masterpiece? dodge. The weird overselling and the record’s effete literary musicality caused a problem. You can’t say you love this record without saying you’re some king of fancy boy. Unless you’re brave.
I love this record. The Attractions were a fantastic band, and the songs and arrangements on this elpee push them to create lively melodic music that can only, sometimes, be called Beatles-esque.
But the record really doesn’t rely on pretension. This isn’t XTC. There’s lots of air and delicious melody in the arrangements. Beatles engineer Geoff Emmerich produces this one, and the sound is precise and rich, full of detail, but each layer adds nuance, not complexity. This is art rock that is art, but doesn’t sacrifice the straight forward perspective of rock, even if the tunes mostly rock only in spurts.
And then there are Costello’s words. He’s a writer of too many words, sometimes, but when they’re pared back, as they actually often are, especially on Imperial Bedroom, he’s also a writer of uncompromising personal directness and vividness. The two songs on this Letterman clip are lyrically bold and personally revealing.
And this live version of Beyond Belief shows the rock heart at the core of Imperial Bedroom.
This seems to be from a Grammy Awards show, not that long ago. Notable because the front line of dudes is Stevie Van Zant, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, and Dave Grohl. That Grohl dude is everywhere.
Presumably this was a tribute after Joe Strummer died, in 2002, though I’m not sure how to look that up quickly, nor if it is important. Could have been 2003 (Strummer died in 2002). I like the way the guys do the share-the-microphone singing thing, and how big and veiny the Boss’s throat gets when he’s singing. It’s also cool how they trade lines, and how cacophonous the stomp gets as they go on. Loud counts.
Okay, I didn’t know about this 1979 U2 song, and its humiliating video. But it’s U2 and they weren’t yet famous, so they were working it. Hard to blame them. Still…
A year before that The Only Ones released this tune, which is one of the great romantic tunes of all time. Disambiguated, of course. But please dare to compare not only the hook, but the ambition and imagination.
I liked the first U2 album, in large part because of this song, which feels like it is going to spin out of control, but it never does, all the while rueing the day that control was lost.
This live version doubles down on that conflict, and maybe signifies why this rock band has always come across as more in control than ecstatic. I love the way Mr. Vox yanks his sweater out of the public’s hands, and uses that as a way to wade gently back into the fray topless.
The problem with memoir is that the facts or the memoirist aren’t always sure how to close the deal (or tell the story).
I’m not sure what Neil Ratner could have done with this, but it isn’t fully baked. What we know is that he wasn’t inclined to be a doctor, but he became one. And he wanted to be a drummer, but he became a doctor. At the same time, it’s a slice of the rock ‘n’ roll life, starring two of our faves, Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer.
And Doctor Ratner is an affable host. (Click the link at the end to visit his website, which covers other aspects of his career.)
