Here’s some live footage with some pretty muddy audio of Bob Mould playing in Atlanta in 1990. Peter Buck plays on Cinnamon Girl, though diffidently. But despite the limitations, Mould is boss and clearly this was a show to see.
Category Archives: live
Breakfast Blend: Friday On My Mind
I first heard Jonathan Richman on the Beserkely Chartbusters album, which included some new Modern Lovers (not the original band) recordings with some of the other bands the Beserkely label were offering. This was the first recorded version of Roadrunner, in 1975, to be released.
In 1976 Beserkely licensed the John Cale produced Modern Lovers sessions and released them. I have no idea which version John Lydon heard before his audition, but the Cale version, titled “Roadrunner (Once)” was a hit in England in 1976. But some NYC record mavens were listening the year before, especially to the tunes Government Center and New Bank Teller, which were different.
But Beserkely was created mostly out of frustration that a Bay area rock band called Earth Quake wasn’t breaking large. The first single the label released was Earth Quake’s version of the Australian band the Easybeat’s 1967 hit Friday On My Mind.
This live version is less, um, concise than the single, but I have to say, for me this is rock ‘n’ roll and remnants, too. I love this band and the video. Less so the pants.
But if it’s Friday, we shouldn’t ignore the far more economical and Mod Australian Easybeats version.
It is a great song. Portugal. The Man should cover it. Or Lorde.
Lunch Break: Alex Chilton
So, on the Tonight Show, the Replacements say their song, Alex Chilton.
When it comes to Alex Chilton, for me, it all goes back to this:
That clip was recorded in the plaza at the World Trade Center on July 14, 2001.
Replacements on the Tonight Show, Tonight.
In 1986 the Replacements were banned from Saturday Night Live after a fairly rousing (at times) if typically rough hewn appearance that involved some forgotten lyrics and an eff-bomb. Plus staggering. Here is a clip of those performances:
That's where we're riding by mmr421
The banning pretty much killed their careers, though Paul Westerberg got around it by going solo.
Tonight the band is on the Tonight Show.
LINK: Lester Bangs Was Not An MC5 Fan
I first learned/heard about the MC5 in Rolling Stone magazine, which as I recall ran a long story about John Sinclair, the martyred leader of the White Panthers who was imprisoned for possession of two sticks of Motor City tea and having grand ideas about freedom and equality that apparently scared the crap out of the cops and their bosses.
I just went looking for that story, to see how much my memory was playing tricks, and found instead this review by Lester Bangs of the first MC5 album for Rolling Stone, which captures his sense of the hype and situation. His lede:
Whoever thought when that dirty little quickie Wild in the Streets came out that it would leave such an imprint on the culture? First the Doors (who were always headed in that direction anyway) grinding out that famous “They-got-the-guns-but-we-got-the-numbers” march for the troops out there in Teenland, and now this sweaty aggregation. Clearly this notion of violent, total youth revolution and takeover is an idea whose time has come — which speaks not well for the idea but ill for the time.
Later in the review Bangs says that the song Kick Out The Jams is like Barrett Strong’s Money as if recorded by the Kingsman, as if that was a bad thing.
Night Music: Quicksilver Messenger Service, “Fresh Air”
If you were alive in the late 60s and all of the 70s, you were fed industry folderol about new bands constantly. That was the old way.
There were no zines, no alternative press (unless its origins were political), and no internet. Obs.
But there was radio promotion, touring, and the rock press, which was just beginning to take the music and the artists seriously, if you can believe that. And making lots of money selling ads against its content. No grousing about that, just the observation that one of the reasons things blew up after the Beatles showed everyone how is that small industry became a big one for a while, and while doing so it got the feel of being something new.
I’m sure I learned of Quicksilver listening to this great song on the radio. They have some other good ones, and seem from this vantage to be one of the better more forgotten bands in our history.
Breakfast Blend: Dancing Barefoot
When Patti Smith was awarded the Swedish Polar Music prize in 2011, her song Dancing Barefoot was sung by two up and coming sisters from the suburbs of Stockholm who go by the name First Aid Kit.
The incantatory power of that song gets me every time, but I wonder what Patti is thinking. Her visage is stern, but it’s hard to believe she is being hypercritical at that point. And by the end she too seems caught up in the power of her song and the loveliness of the harmonies and then the audaciousness of the poetic recitation (and maybe the length of her history, at this point).
The incantatory power of Dancing Barefoot bubbles up in this clip from Rockpalast TV in 1979, too. I’ve watched many Rockpalast TV clips and don’t recall being aware of the audience, particularly, but in this churning version of the song, which wouldn’t be out of place at a Quicksilver Messenger Service show, the audience suddenly breaks through and Patti has to handle the mess, and she does. It is very strange theater that comes with a terrific vocal performance and her very solid band. Plus, she blesses the pope!
LINK: The Most Boring TV Show In the World
A story in the Independent has a story with an embed of a webcam pointed at the zebra crossing the Beatles and Red Hot Chili Peppers used as album covers. Seems that the spot is a tourist attraction and people stop traffic just to cross the street, and you can watch them!
There’s also a documentary about the crossing, which is fairly short and atmospheric and notes that the photo for the album cover was taken two weeks after Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon!
My Favorite Song
I can’t argue this is the greatest song of all time, but if you asked me what my favorite song was, it would either be Da Doo Ron Ron or Let the Mystery Be.
For different reasons, obviously.
Night Music: X, “Breathless”
The one cover song on X’s fourth album, New Fun In The New World, is their version of Otis Blackwell’s tune Breathless.
Breathless was a giant hit for Jerry Lee Lewis. One of my favorite songs of his.
But Breathless was also the name of Jean Luc Godard’s first feature.
And was also the name of a sort of remake by the once underground filmmaker Jim McBride, who turned a film about an American girl in Paris loving a French gangster into a film about a French girl in LA loving an American gangster.
X did the cover for the money and promotion, but as you can see in the clip, they perform it brilliantly. And differently. And this one of the great rock songs, no matter whose version you hear.
But we’ve opened up a can of it here. Godard meets McBride. Blackwell meets Jerry Lee Lewis meets X.
There is more to be said.