Cash’s studio recording of this on Unchained, his second album produced by Rick Rubin, was a revelation. I loved the original (Beck wrote it, it’s from his great album Stereopathic Soulmanure), but Cash’s deep voice and the simple backing of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers rendered it just as darkly sad, but less petulantly sloppy.
On this live version Cash is a lot more wispy and the band is a lot more country, and it’s nice to listen to a fresh take.
I don’t know how I discovered Percy Mayfield, I must have read about him somewhere. I knew his songs, this one particularly, which was a hit in 1950 and which has been covered by just about everyone in the world. For instance, the Grateful Dead (according to the Wikipedia, though I couldn’t find a clip of that one). He’s written many other wonderful songs, with terrific melodies and simple but ambitious words, and I think he has a terrific, warm and open voice, too. If you didn’t know about Percy Mayfield before, now you do.
Back in 1982, I saw these guys at Gerdes Folk City, a bar next to the McDonalds on West 4th Street that was a Village folk institution. A place of historic interest. Last I checked A Kettle of Fish, a bar that had once been on McDougal, had moved there, but that was long enough ago that maybe J. Crew is in the space now.
The Dream Syndicate, who were written up in the Times or Voice as a formidable non-Cali-style band from LA, were pitched as the new Velvet Underground, but they were quite a bit less. At the same time, live in a tiny room sitting close to a small stage, when you’re young and big drums and careening guitars are like everything, they were fantastic.
And the record works really well, despite their limitations. This song is the title track.
One alarming thing, in addition to the vast expanse of time between the night I saw the Dream Syndicate and, um, today, I can’t recall who I saw them with. I remember the sound, I can feel the noise. I can remember buying the tickets, but I’m getting black drapes on who I was with. They were “confused” times, so maybe it was all painful fun. But there is a hole.
I’ve been thinking about the Smashing Pumpkins lately, a band I liked a lot but haven’t listened to recently, and then on the subway tonight in the novel I’m reading (Tao Lin’s Taipei) he mentioned the Pumpkins. (He mentions lots of bands. I ended up with Against Me! last night because I looked up the Ataris, another band mentioned in the novel, and they play that amped up guitar rock that turns Green Day into prog giants. They were wanting. You can Youtube them if you want.)
Smashing Pumpkins were pretty universally hated back in the day, the grubbingest of grungers is the way the story goes. But I liked their music back then, especially Siamese Dream (which this cut is from) and the epically grandiose and asinine (and unspellable) Melon Collie and the Something or Other in a Village of Dingoes. But despite the title there is some powerful rock on that one, too, which maybe we’ll get to another day.
I would say that their songs are built on powerful mid-rhythm parts, static melodies that noodle all over the same place, and guitars that careen from notely to powerhouse (and that’s where most of the dynamics come from). The other distinguishing feature is a distinctive distortion that almost sounds like the tape is being slowed and released and slowed.
I think it’s to their credit that Steve Albini compared them to REO Speedwagon and Bob Mould called them the grunge Monkees (Husker Du had a similar constant distortion field effect going on come to think of it), but you may disagree (with me and agree with them). But Smashing Pumpkins were way popular when this rock style, the last legitimate rock style that was popular, was popular, were not posers (but may have been ambitious assholes), but I’m not sure I see the crime in any of that. But feel free.
I read a story in the NY Times today about this band, which is playing locally tonight or tomorrow or both. I’d never heard of them, but the story represents them as a modern and relatively popular punk band, so it got my curiosity up. Certainly some of the few modern rock bands I like, Fucked Up foremost, really are punky.
So I was just digging around on YouTube and heard some interesting stuff, but I wouldn’t call it punk and I wasn’t digging the style. And I have to admit, this one didn’t catch me at first, but it’s a duet and I liked the woman singing and kept listening. She is Tegan Quin of the duo Tegan and Sara, who are alt-rock favorites in recent years. And as I listened I got caught up in the drumming and the interchange of the vocals, and the somewhat soft guitars stopped bothering me as much.
I may or may not ever play this again, it’s a little slick for my tastes, but it’s worth a listen if only just for the drums. And I’m going to dig further into the Tegan and Sara catalog. There is pleasure there in her voice.
There is also the reason why the Times was writing up Against Me! at this point. It seems that Tom Gabel, the band’s singer when this record, New Wave, (produced by Butch Vig, by the way) was released in 2007, has long had gender dysphoria, and last year started hormone therapy to transition from male to female. At the band’s shows now he presents as a woman, and goes by the name Laura Jane Grace. What’s curious to me is that the Wikipedia entry for this album identifies the lead singer as Laura Jane Grace rather than Tom Gabel. Can that be right?
I don’t care personally, but watching this video and then reading about the dude as Laura Jane Grace seemed confusing.
I almost feel like a foolish old man putting this clip up.
I kept hearing this song on KTKE and I kept thinking it was really old Jack White and White Stripes.
So, I ask Lindsay a few months back if she knows Hold On by Alabama Shakes when I discover the truth about its source, and she says, rather nonchalantly, “oh, that got some airplay about a year ago.”
But, this song sticks with you. Steve, I know you are not in favor of geeky bespectacled women singers (I personally dig women who wear glasses) but this song builds really well.
There is another clip from Austin City Limits a few months after this appearance where Brittany, the lead singer is playing a Gibson SG.
Either way, I really love this song. I keep humming it to myself (along with Dig for Fire) lately.
Live, apparently a showcase show at the time of their first album (Sorry Ma Forgot to Take Out the Trash) in 1981, which explains the decent video. It doesn’t seem that long ago, but then I didn’t know this album until later. I’d say they’re too busy breaking things to have sex on the floor, but maybe that comes later.
On Playboy After Dark. Choice.
This is a punk band. They pay respect to traditional styles, the way punk bands do when they cover C’mon Everybody, and they play fast and the louder the better. They’re from Monterey, Mexico, and this video is a delightful introduction to a band that might even have a better name than the Circle Jerks (if I’m getting philosophical). I like mixing things up in the music, I like fusion (thank god for Bitches Brew), and I like an accordion. So El Gran Silencio hits about eight of my sweet spots simultaneously. Plus there’s the dancing.
When I got out of college I got a job as a projectionist for a film distribution company. Back in those bad old days there were no DVDs and the only real tape machines were giant Umatic Sony devices that cost a fortune. So most films were sent to the office in the 35mm format. I had a projection booth behind the conference room and showed all sorts of great art films of the late 70s to the four old industry vets who owned the company.
Because it was helpful to have me around, they at first had me do office chores when I wasn’t projecting, increasing my hours and my tedium. Filing sucks. But before long the sales manager, not that much older than me, a baseball and rock ‘n’ roll fan, taught me how to handle the advertising buys as the company’s films played across the country. This mostly involved schmoozing with theater owners and deciding how big a campaign would be run in their town, and how much each of us would pay for it. There was more to it than that, but the point is that my role in the company grew.
So even though there were fewer movies to project on film, because there were more movies coming in on the Umatic Betacam tape, I had plenty of work. I also had keys to the office, and I now look back in horror at the Sundays when I would throw football-watching parties in the company conference room. I can’t recall why that seemed like a good idea.
What was a good idea, however, was checking out what movies had come in on tape. These were films I generally didn’t get a chance to see as part of the work day, because the old guys didn’t need me, but I saw lots of these great (and many not so great) films long before their release after everybody went home or on the weekends. One of these films was The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, Julian Temple’s ode to Malcolm McLaren and his creation of the Sex Pistols. This was a movie that I’d been tracking in Variety and NME for seeming years, a movie that for various reasons involving rights and financial expectations wasn’t expected to see a live movie screen, and I got to watch.
It felt dangerous to slip the cassette into the hydraulic apparatus that smoothly sucked it into the machine, threaded the tape and then let it rock. It was crap, but not without interest, and I think it included video of and early rehearsal by the Sex Pistols playing the song. Or maybe memory is a gas. Maybe Roadrunner isn’t in the movie at all (I can’t find any reference to it or clip from it), but it is on the soundtrack album. In any case, I got to see the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle before almost anyone else did.
And this ragtag cover of Jonathan Richman’s great song is both monumentally sloppy and also demonstrates how good this band of louts was. The rhythm never wavers, the chords chime, and when Johnny can remember the words he’s a rock artist.
