The actor Vincent D’Onofrio and the experimental composer Dana Lyn have been recording songs they call punk spoken word. The first one is called I’m A Hamster, which is also the name of the illustration here, which has nothing to do with the music, but is called I’m A Hamster as well, and was made by someone named Techno Unicorn. Coincidence?
The album is called Slim Head Bone Volt and is due to drop next March.
Well, since we have been talking about both selling out, and tattoos, it just seemed right to post this as some lunch break fun.
The Who Sell Out is my favorite album by the band, and I brought this disc into the tattoo parlor when I was inked with my Tigger/Owl tat (in memory of my late wife Cathy, and son Joey) as I thought it would be perfect background music (it was).
BTW, I love Keith’s playing, but I also think it is a good example of Townshend being frustrated with him when he says “can’t you just be a metronome?”
There is another song called Love Is All Around, probably more famous than the Mary Tyler Moore show theme. Written by the Troggs’ Reg Presley, it has a somewhat different sound than their other big hit, Wild Thing.
This clip is an early example of an MTV clip, some 13 years before MTV started.
Everything we love about rock ‘n’ roll: White sailor hats, blue sailor suits and syncronized hopping. These guys were English hitmakers in the mid-70s!
I’m a fan of overreaching, but this tune goes large and ends up super creepy. As if George Harrison, without a sense of propulsion, actually had to make grand promises to attract birds.
I am not sure why pop/soul songs of the early 60’s have been jumping into my brain of late.
Earlier this week it was Dick and DeeDee’s The Mountains High. This morning it was Ruby and the Romantics Our Day Will Come, which I promptly went to on YouTube.
I found the original, plus a pretty good cover by Amy Winehouse, but in the process, there popped up a bunch of other great like songs from the era. Tell Him, by the Exciters, One Fine Day, but the Chiffons, Easier Said Than Done, by the Essex, and this tune.
The songs, and those of the Brill Building and Motown were not only so finely written and crafted, but they were a lot like the movies of the Hollywood system in the late 30’s and 40’s, when it just seemed the competition was tight and everything produced–or at least released–was a the top of its respective game.
It did make me realize that times have changed, and there is no real vehicle for simple pop tunes like these any more. It is rock, or alt, or headbanger, or rap, or house music, but the old homogenization of the pop charts where The Impressions and Conway Twitty and the Beachboys and the Four Seasons and Marvin Gaye could all share Billboard space seems to be long gone.
For, though there were specific genres back in the 60’s, the big deal was to have a cross-over hit, like A Little Bit of Soap, which made it on the soul charts, but also made it on the Billboard Top 100 as well.
Maybe with the death of radio it was inevitable for genre selection to be driven by Pandora and her ilk, but irrespective, it doesn’t seem like bands and songwriters and producers labor to produce little two-minute-plus gems as they did when radio was in its heyday. Not that I am longing to return to those old times, but I did start a new category call “Classic Nuggets” just to cover these lovely little works of musical art.
Let’s start here, anyway, with the Jarmels.
I was playing the album this tune is on recently, and my teen daughter got a little weirded out (Dad! Why are you playing that?) by this one.
It is weird. And obviously and cravenly catchy, but I came upon this video today and it strikes me that while it is as sordid as the song, it is also at the same time as sincere as when Rick says, That girl’s alright with me. That’s a strong message of acceptance, for folks to do/be what they want/are, which seems like a good message (even if you’d prefer your daughter grow up to be someone their fella would take home to mother).
Have another cranberry.
Pico and Sepulveda 2008
One staple of the show was a tune called Pico and Sepulveda, which starts out like Cab Calloway and ends up like Devo. As fine as the tune is, the video is just as fine.
My post of yesterday, Me Talk Pretty One Day reminded me of the great Percy Henzell film from 1972, The Harder They Come.
In the movie, Jimmy Cliff plays frustrated singer Ivanhoe Martin, a young man with talent, but one unable to generate any buzz or interest in his skill either within the music industry, or with the Jamaican population.
So, he becomes and outlaw, first as part of a record deal, and then because it becomes too late to turn the clock back.
Not only is the film really great, but the soundtrack is maybe the best compilation of reggae ever assembled.
But, it was also the first film I ever saw where the words were spoken in English, but the accents were so thick, that American audiences were blessed with subtitles (I think the words of the Pikers in the movie Snatched also might have had subtitles).
Irrespective, here is the clip from the movie with Jimmy recording the title track:
This is an Attractions B-side, originally released with New Amsterdam from Get Happy! in 1980. I own the 45 pictured in the video. The song was later collected in many different places, including the first odds and sods elpee, Taking Liberties (in the US), and like all the repeatedly rereleased novel versions of the classic albums albums with bonus tracks from the Attractions’ early years.
It’s a weird perverse kind of song, swampy with decadence and transgression, not at all in keeping with Get Happy!’s soul inspiration. I find it creepy and catchy and very bent, and tried to post it at some point last year but couldn’t find a copy on the internet.
But now there is one, and it’s gotten 51 plays. Whoops, 52, I played it again.
