Joe Walsh’s first band in college was called the Measles, and included Cleveland legend (according to Cleveland legend John Coleman) Glenn Schwartz, who later played guitar in Pacific Gas and Electric (and just about every band around at the time, maybe because he was insane.
If I’m understanding correctly, the Measles recorded on song, I Think of You, which was released as a single under their name and on the first Ohio Express album, under the name Ohio Express, called Beg Borrow and Steal. On the same album is a version of the hit song Beg Borrow and Steal that you’ll find in the Nuggets boxed set, which was released in 1966 credited to the Rare Breed.
In any case, for Joe Walsh and Glenn Schwartz completists, here are The Measles. And get vaccinated!
Back in the late 60’s, when suddenly garage bands were booming and scoring hits, there was a bevy of groups who hit the Top 40.
The Leaves (Hey Joe), The Sonics (The Witch, among others, documented here even), The Count Five (Psychotic Reaction, made even more famous by the late Lester Bangs), and The Standells (Dirty Water, made even more famous by the Red Sox) are some of those collectives who scored radio play.
And in there was the double Rickenbacker sound (gets me like I think dual SG’s get Steve) and quasi Brit look the Syndicate of Sound carried on their flirt with fame.
It is hard to appreciate just how on top of the Remnants Peter is till he leaves for a few days.
Meaning guilt is enough of an impetus for Steve and me to acknowledge the void, and to try and fill it up a tad.
So, I thought I would turn to a band I really have loved over their career, who have a great body of work, and yet who have barely merited a whisper in Remnantland.
I was a fan with my first listen to Radio Free Europe, and with their third album and the song Fall on Me the issue of buying their next disc sight unseen was beyond settled.
I do have all their albums, and I think I put their brilliant Automatic for the People on my essential 30 or 50 or however many albums we listed a few years back.
For a sample, I picked a rocker from the great Monster album, a song fostered by a news miscue elicited by Dan Rather, but not meant to be heard by the viewing public when he asked “What’s the frequency Kenneth”, ostensibly of the sound guy on the news show. This is kind of a fun live version, with a couple of different performances spliced together.
For a second piece, a live treatment of the beautiful Man on the Moon that concludes said Automatic for the People as perfectly as does The End wind up Abbey Road.
In the darkness of the late 80s there were the Silos.
Like the Mekons they had a fiddle. They also had a big drum sound, and spoke the vernacular English.
Like the Mekons they never had a hit, and maybe came even more unclose. They don’t rock nearly as hard as the Mekons, and didn’t endure nearly as long, since they were mostly a one-man band. Eventually he went solo, which made not much difference except his nut was smaller.
Is that a good thing?
But if you’re mixing up rock and folk, smarts and rock, this is a pretty fine band to have.
Supposedly this is the first Neil Young song he played no instrument on, he only sang.
I think the spectacle of the orchestra is the reason to watch. The sentiment is, of course, hugely noble, and the presentation is really weird.
I like Young for being heartfelt, and he can be very smart about his music and the role it plays in peoples’ lives by virtue of his playing and talking. That matters.
Stick around Leeds’ post-punk scene a little longer, we visit Delta 5 on the Top of the Pops. The caption says it was 1981. Delta 5 notably had two singers and two bass players.
We all have our likes and loves here in Remnantland.
Peter certainly has the widest palate of taste and experimentation, with Steve sticking to a core sort of set of criteria that constitute rock’n’roll, while Gene, steeped in his working class New York roots, is drawn to the arty side of music Peter, but his soul pushes more from the influence of doo wop through the Ramones, via Johnny Thunders.
I think essentially it is all good stuff.
As for me, I am drawn to the pop sensibilities, and for me, the wit of the British tongue, merged with American rhythm and blues, is what I love or gravitate to most, but I dig Beethoven and Roland Kirk, as well.
But, one of things I had been trying to do here is remember to highlight bands and artists who we tend to forget about, hence, the Moody Blues, who were, along with the Who and the Kinks, my favorite band back in 1967-69.
Before Pink Floyd, before Rush, before Yes, and before Spiritualized, there was the Moody Blues, the first real prog rock band.
The Moodys first hit in 1966 with a hit, Go Now, that featured Denny Laine (later of Wings) on vocals, in 1965, but after that tune, Laine left the band and re-emerged with John Lodge and Justin Hayward as their principles.
In 1967–the year of Sgt. Pepper–and the group produced the Days of Future Passed, a concept album that featured the beautiful cuts Tuesday Afternoon and Nights in White Satin at a time when Pink Floyd was still seeing Emily play (a song I love).
The jump in concept and realization between Go Now and Tuesday Afternoon is kind of like the leap between Radiohead’s Creep as compared to Airbag.
Featuring the flute of Ray Thomas, and the unusual and haunting mellotron keyboard of Mike Pinder, Days of Future Passed was an attempt by the band to deconstruct Dvorak’s Symphony for the New World and on the liner notes of the groups follow-up, In Search of the Lost Chord, producer Tony Clarke regarded the band as the “worlds smallest symphony orchestra.”
This all might sound hoity toity snotty, and as having nothing to do with rock’n’roll in the Moyer sense, but this was the throes of the psychadelic era and I was a 15-year old new stoner and both Days and In Search were always on the changer (as were Tommy and Blonde on Blonde) and I still am knocked out by the band’s Legend of a Mind song.
Sadly, I saw a reunion performance of the band at Red Rocks 20-years or so ago, and it was embarrassing to watch, but, I still have to acknowledge that Moody’s played a pivotal part of my life for a few years back there.
In fact, I was into the Moodys before they made it, and started losing interest in the band with their next album, On the Threshold of a Dream, and by the time To Our Children’s Children’s Children came out the band had become a favorite of those ubiquitous average Joes, and that was the last album I bought by the band, turning instead to Atom Heart Mother.
Irrespective, the song Gypsy from Children’s remains one of my favorite songs of the group.
