Category Archives: night music

Night Music: Johnny Winter, “I’m Yours and I’m Hers”

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My memory is there was a lot of hoopla when Johnny Winter’s eponymous elpee was released in 1969. I think he had signed a big contract and of course there was the whole albino thing, but what I remember most was falling in love with the sound of Winter’s guitar playing and voice, and the variety of arrangements on the record, jumping from Chicago to the Delta to Texas and back north again. I didn’t know that much about the blues then, but this was a revival record that satisfied in a wholly American and authentic way.

As I learned more, listening to more of the original players, I came to admire this record even more. There was nothing wrong with the Yardbirds and John Mayall, the Stones and Led Zeppelin, nothing wrong at all, but they sounded mediated in a way that this record doesn’t.

And on an autobiographical note, there was the morning when a gang of housepainters were working out in the hallway when I woke up. College kids from Stony Brook University, which was nearby. painting our house. I woke up and hit the play button on my stereo and the first bits of this tune growled out, and the boys raved. There was nothing cooler for an eighth grader to have a bunch of college kids digging your style.

As Winter moved to more popular stuff, along with his brother, I lost touch with Johnny and Edgar except on pop radio. But this record did the trick, from start to finish, getting me into the Blues for real

 

Night Music: The Shaggs, “Philosophy of the World”

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The whole idea of art and agency in art is challenged by outsider artists. That is creators who don’t seem to have technical chops but somehow make visuals or sounds that engage anyway.

The Shaggs were a bunch of sisters who formed a band at their father’s direction and made an album in 1969 that went no where, at least partly because it was horribly played.

But, some years later that horrible playing became a virtue, and they were adopted by Frank Zappa and Terry Adams as naifs, making brilliant music without consciousness.

I spent some time tonight with Laura (last name unregistered by my brain), who plays drums in the modern version of the Shaggs, backing up Dot Wiggins, apparently the last remaining sister on tour. Until tonight I didn’t really know the Shaggs’ album, but Laura told a story about Dot’s musical tastes.

“What do you listen to,” Laura asked.

Dot said, “Herman Hermits.” Her tastes were fixed in the 60s.

Lester Bangs said the Shaggs were better than the Beatles, which is one side of the discussion about interesting naivete versus commercial calculation. I didn’t grow up with the Shaggs and didn’t invest myself in their story when Terry Adams and Frank Zappa revived them. For me this is outsider art, if art is what you want to call it.

I’m glad to hear it, I find it hard to give it much credit but enthusiasm.

Night Music: Wilson Pickett, “The Midnight Hour”

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Holy cow, it’s the midnight hour, and Wilson Pickett and Steve Cropper wrote a song about it!

Pickett may have my favorite voice in all of soul, a fantastic blend of grit and croon, and The Midnight Hour was his first big hit. This track is an indelible pleasure, even when you consider the delights that came later.

Night Music: St. Paul & the Broken Bones, “I’ve Been Loving You (too Long to Stop Now)”

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One thing about the core of us here at the Remnants is that we all became friends thanks to baseball: in particular fantasy baseball.

And, maybe there is something about how our respective and collective brains process, that makes it so that while we all do love baseball and games, there are a bunch of other things we all love, and are happy to discuss ad naseum.

Like music.

So, when our good buddy from Rotowire, Derek Van Riper, asked me if I was familiar with St. Paul & the Broken Bones, I had to plead ignorance, but that did not last too long.

I did a YouTube search, and found a song entitled Call Me, which was pretty good. It also reminded me so much of the late great wonderful Otis Redding, and his band the Barkays, who sadly died in a plane crash in December of 1967.

And, as I finished watching the Call Me video, what did I spot but a live cover of the band performing Redding’s wonderful I’ve Been Loving You (too Long to Stop Now).

Now, to be fair, my love of Redding and that song tracks back to a pair of vintage all time classic albums: Otis Redding Live in Europe, and Jimi Hendrix & Otis Redding Live at Monterey (which made my essential 50 albums list).

So, the fact that Paul Janeway (St. Paul) and his crew pretty deftly pull off their homage and sound is high praise. I mean, these guys really have the essence of the Stax/Volt sound down.

Here is the band covering Otis:

And, as a means of comparison, here is Otis and the Barkays at the peak of their form at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, just about six months before they perished.

Otis is so good and cool, and his band is so tight that it is hard to imagine anyone even trying what St. Paul and mates did. They certainly get props from me. Thanks DVR!

 

 

 

Night Music: Leonard Cohen, “Save The Last Dance for Me”

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Doc Pomus and Mort Schuman wrote this classic in 1960. It was originally recorded by Ben E. King and the Drifters in 1960.

Pomus had polio as a child and used crutches to get around until later in life, when he used a wheelchair. The irony of a man who can’t dance writing a song about watching his lover dance with another is powerful stuff, and Lou Reed has told the story that the lyric was inspired by Pomus’s wedding day, when he married a Broadway star and dancer, but could not dance his own wedding dance.

All of which would be way too much, except it’s true. And the song is not comfortably romantic. There is angst, lots of angst in there, too.

Which is what helps make Leonard Cohen’s closing time singalong with 14,000 Irish so touching. Oh, that and Leonard’s age. We’re all too freakin’ human.

Night Music: The Bruthers, “Bad Way to Go”

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The Bruthers signed a management deal with Sid Bernstein and managed to get one single released: Bad Way to Go b/w Bad Way to Go.

The only reason I know this is because I was researching another song, not the same song, called Bad Way to Go for a Breakfast Blend tomorrow. But this is fun because it is a fairly deranged song with lots of moving parts.

It also turns out that the Bruthers are real brothers. The band broke up after Bad Way to Go didn’t hit and RCA released them, but they didn’t get out of the business. Keyboardist Joe Delia ended up arranging and playing on David Johansen’s 1978 hits, Hot Hot Hot, while guitarist Frank Delia went on to direct videos for the Ramones, Wall of Voodoo and Jefferson Starship.

The video is suitably crazy, but is clearly from a time much more recent than 1966.