Tina Turner was from St. Louis and the river runs through it, plus Ike quotes that other St. Louis rocker, Chuck Berry. They’re rollin’ on the river tonight.
Category Archives: night music
Night Music: Frankie Ford, “Sea Cruise”
Huey Piano Smith wrote the tune. It has since been covered by a Hall of Fame of rock and rollers. But Frankie Ford had the first hit. Here it is from the American Graffiti soundtrack, to make plain that there is nothing obscure here.
But I bring it up tonight because some Red Sox fan adapted it to praise Koji Uehara, a slight but especially effective Japanese hurler who saved the Red Sox tonight against Detroit, getting five important outs to close out a game that gave the Sox a 3-2 series lead. “Sea Cruise” is great rock, but it also qualifies as a bit of a novelty, which is why it seems perfectly apt to feature this BoSox adaptation:
Night Music: Amboy Dukes, “Journey to the Center of the Mind”
I still have the 45 I bought when this was a hit back in 1968. Many deep thoughts ensued.
Night Music: Rare Earth, “Hey Big Brother”
I remember this tune but this clip is something else. Rare Earth was political and wanted to be liked. Not a great combo, but that is what happened back then. The Don Imus interview at the end is really funny because of what he became. Maybe we can call that an opportunist.
Apart from all that crap, I would have been happy at the California Jam.
Night Music: J. Geils Band, “Wait”
Dedicate this one to David Ortiz, who said “Wait, stop a minute” to Joaquin Benoit last night at Fenway. I remember the day John Miller bounced into our lunch room and told us about hearing the first J. Geils Band album. “Wait” is the first cut on the first side, and it was like (to our young tender ears) like hearing the first Stones’ albums in real time (not after they happened). For a time, an incredible band, and it was hard to blame them later for looking for the purse.
Night Music: Plastic Bertrand, “C’est plane pour moi”
As a comrade heads to Europe for the first time, maybe he’ll make his way to Belgium, where the punk rock is like popcorn. Or was. Bon voyage!
Night Music: The Modern Lovers, “Roadrunner”
All that traffic yesterday landed us outside Boston, where the Red Sox started the ALCS against the Tigers tonight. Nice to see friends checking in from the ballpark, which got me thinking about tunes about the city. Too much congruence to ignore. My first impulse was a piece of premier cheese, Dave Loggins’ maudlin “Please Come to Boston,” but as I type this the hometown boys are down 1-0 in the top of the ninth, with the Tigers threatening. Consider this classic a rally cap, in the neon when it’s cold outside:
PS> I hadn’t been paying attention, I was out at the movies seeing Captain Phillips, so I didn’t realize that the Red Sox had been no hit through eight. In the ninth Daniel Nava singled, breaking up the no hitter and introducing some offense into the Red Sox dismal night. But it was not enough.
PPS> Captain Phillips is very well done, but any reviews that suggest that there is extra thinking going on here are wrong. Very exciting action sequences are connected by succinct storytelling bits, but apart from the thrill ride there isn’t much here to make you say wow.
PPPS> All the acting, by Tom Hanks and the non-professional Somali crew, as well as everyone else, is great. As far as they’re asked to go. The Somalis go far because they’re not at all trained. Hanks goes far because he is really good when he’s inside his zone. He is here.
Night Music: The Dixie Cups, “Iko Iko”
Spent hours and hours and hours in traffic yesterday. We played rotating DJs to pass the time, and I picked this classic, which sounded awfully good.
Night Music: Belle and Sebastian, “Judy and the Dream of Horses”
I’ve never seen them play, though I did see former backup Isobel Campbell do a show with Eugene Kelly, former Vaseline, at a small club six or seven years ago. Not like Belle and Sebastian, however, which really doesn’t sound like any other band before or since. I think it’s the way the music can be tiny or big or anywhere inbetween, depending on the mood and focus of the song. In this one more and more sounds and instruments are added as it goes along, until it’s quite rousing finale. Always good words, usually declarative, even if the context isn’t immediately clear, and always sounding evocative and rich. I’d like to see them someday.
Night Music: The Pogues, “Bottle of Smoke”
The departed Philip Chevron and the Pogues were/are terrific players, but it was most often the vocal and lyrical genius of Shane MacGowan that lifted them above the Irish trad bog that enmires many an Irish radio show (I’m looking at you WFUV, all day Saturday and Sunday). Any individual song is great to hear, any live performance is great fun, but soon the very Irishness of it all becomes wearying. But MacGowan never let that happen live, though sometimes the suspense was more about whether he’d fall over before he sang another note or not, and his often excellent songs, while drawing on the sentiment and lyricism of the trad. stuff the band often played, always seemed to amp up the stakes just a bit, so the band’s records remain vital and alive. It was sad when MacGowan left the Pogues, apparently an intervention and a push for self preservation at the same time.
So much talent squandered (or maximized, it’s hard to tell the difference). The Pogues continue to play quite excellently, to this day, but the band that has seemed more essential in its fits and starts has been MacGowan’s outfit, the Popes.