As you’ll see in the morning, if you follow this by the day part, I bumped into the Backyard Babies’ version of a particular tune last night that makes tomorrow’s Breakfast Blend. Which got me thinking about Dregen, the lost wonder of the Hellacopters, and all the ins and outs of Sweden’s hard rock wars.
The Backyard Babies are known, according to Wikipedia, as the band that introduced Sweden to degenerate rock.
This is the Backyard Babies biggest hit. It was featured in one of the Guitar Hero releases, and the video is kind of okay, even though it’s just the band playing the song on a roof in LA. That’s how energetic they are.
I know this song from the Live Stiff’s version, which is similar, but a little less focused. Until this week I only knew Wallis as the least poppy Stiff recording artist, but then I never put him together with Motorhead and didn’t know the Pink Fairies.
For their third album, Larry Wallis joined the Pink Fairies. That may not be so monumental, except that after he left the Fairies Wallis was a founding member of Motorhead, with Lemmy of course, and one of the original Stiff Records artists, as well as in-house producer for Stiff. City Kids is one of his tunes recorded on the prophetic Kings of Oblivion album in 1973.
The song that weaves through Robert Stone’s first novel is the Ventures’ 1960 hit, Walk Don’t Run. Damned if the Pink Fairies don’t do an epic cover of it!
Here’s a tune that tastes equally from the Allman Brothers and the Raspberries canteen. That’s a crazy hybrid, and maybe you have a better way to describe the mix, but nine minutes of jammy power pop is hard to wrap one’s legs around. On the other hand, it is epic. Not artsy, but big. I’m not sure the video helps, but it is obvious and not without interest.
Eno’s new record (with Karl Hyde) uses African rhythms and sounds, mixed with machine sounds, to do the opposite of swing. But I suspect they would say that in the moire patterns of insistent rhythm there is swing, and more.
And I wouldn’t argue. This is a great sound, even if it doesn’t go for the heart. (And maybe that’s a point?)
There’s a good reason Young didn’t include this one from the On the Beach sessions on the On the Beach album. Does not rock enough. And wouldn’t even with the full band.
But it’s kind of a nice cap to our Nixon discussion, whatever Neil’s saying.
A ways back (try 2005) the SXSW music festival released a torrent of songs by bands playing the festival. I downloaded it, something like 2GB of tunes, something like two or three thousand of them, mostly by unknown bands.
Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of crap, and some finds. As the bum ones would come up I would delete them, and when a good one came on I would give it four or five stars, but that was a few iTunes installs ago and I’ve lost my play counts and stars many times since then. But every once in a while I’ll stumble on one of those songs that I liked.
I know nothing about this. Google Addictions and Candy and you get a million hits about too much sugar. But it’s fun and from 2005.
Though Complete Control is my favorite song by The Clash, Give Em Enough Rope is by far my favorite album by the band, as well as my favorite phase of theirs.
Rope was followed by London Calling, but by then the rawness of Complete Control became a little too polished for my taste. London Calling was ok, but for me Rope was the perfect mix of attitude and sonics and rawness.
I saw The Clash a couple of times when they toured behind Rope, and I still remember them opening once with Safe European Home, and the first chords just blasting out, and just grinning from ear-to-ear because it was soooo fucking good.
Well, when I was making Lindsay’s holiday disc, this Clash tune is another I stuck on the playlist. I had not heard it for a while, but Stay Free is just great, just like the album. Rope is now on my car’s computer, and also on my iPhone.
BTW, check out Strummer’s furious rhythm playing on this live track.
Do you remember President Nixon. Or the bills you have to pay?
We finally watched Twenty Feet from Stardom, the documentary about backup singers that was a must-see hit a couple of years ago. It’s pretty delightful, and also sad, as the women who learned to sing in church eventually see their bigger dreams of solo success fizzle.
The movie finally settles on Darlene Love’s compelling story for its big emotional finish, and that’s fine, but it also downplays the success story of Luther Van Dross, who can be seen in this video from New Years—as 1974 turns into 1975—backing up David Bowie on Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve. Vandross is the chubby fellow on the left.
Vandross successfully escaped the gravity of the background singer role and had a successful solo career as a singer and producer, unlike the stories featured in the movie. That’s a sign that the movie is more a charming story than truth telling, but it’s worth seeing just to spend time with Love, the Blossoms, Merry Clayton, Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega and many others. Their stories are really interesting, and inevitably tell a richer story than the one the movie chooses to focus on.
This clip is for Luther Vandross and yesterday, the day after David Bowie’s birthday. It is cool, a synonym for awesome.
