Very Strokes-ish, which means it sounds pretty good. It’s two years old, and would be a welcome sound on the radio. On the other hand, could there be a worse band name than Mainland?
Listening to other tunes, they are pretty good at mining the same commercial rock vein as the Strokes, but the rhythm section doesn’t hit quite as hard, and the songs aren’t quite as good. And the arrangements can veer toward, ugh, the commercial crap we try to avoid (and ambitious rockers sell their souls to achieve).
But this one just dropped, and apart from the fake English accent it’s pretty jangly and rocking.
They’re publishing 17 pieces about Stevie Wonder over at Slate this week. The idea seems to be an effort to appreciate our greats before they pass on, which is a nice idea but also a bit embalming of someone who is alive.
Is this really the greatest Beatles cover? Off the top of my head I think I’d go with Wilson Pickett’s Hey Jude, but I’m sure I’m forgetting something even better.
A Google thing reminded me that Steven Biko would have been 70 years old today. Which reminded me of this Peter Gabriel song about him called Biko.
I like some political songs, and don’t like others. The dividing line for me seems to be similar to the one I apply between songs I like and songs I don’t. Catchy, compelling, somehow feels like it means it.
In this case, Peter Gabriel’s Biko is an incantation, a testimony to someone who gave his life for the cause. It is understated and honoring, and it wins for me because I don’t hate it. I worry about a super rich rock star lending his power to the cause of a martyr, but what better use is there for rock presence? And what better use for an artist’s sense of style and grace.
Arlo Guthrie’s Victor Jara is an earnest tribute to Jara, a folk song, and when I hear it today I’m still outraged by what happened in Chile in 1973. The song is more a marker for that outrage, but serves as a reminder.
Enjoy the talk about the Beach Boys, who are one of the weirdest pop bands of all time.
Gene made the great point that a lot of the music on Beach Boys elpees was made by the Wrecking Crew. Lawr likes a great song that was apparently a b-side, though the cover art says it was the a-side. Whatever. An excellent song.
Gene replies with a song I didn’t know, but which points out how personal rather than general they were as lyricists, and how determined they were to frame very prosodic and psychologically exposed verses with catchy choruses and brilliantine arrangements.
So, my newsletter guy Lefsetz posts his list of most played songs on the year and this one from the Beach Boys Sunflower album comes up as No. 2. We can psychoanalyze that another time. It’s Carl singing, the rhythm is more Chambers Brothers than anything else, but the lyric strategy has not changed. A great song? Maybe a good one, but a fine tune to listen to.
I’m reading Springsteen’s book. It’s a good read, he’s as bold an overwriter as an autobiographer as he is (or was) a lyricist, and that’s a good thing. It’s very lively and evocative of the time and his passions as a boy, and as a teen learning to play guitar and gig around. That’s how far I am.
When he gets his first electric guitar, which costs $69 with a small amp the size of a breadbox, a Kent from Japan, he sets to learning to play Honky Tonk. Which got me to thinking about what Honky Tonk sounded like, and I couldn’t conjure it. Though, of course, it’s a song we’ve all heard a million times. Here’s Bill Doggett’s original, parts 1 and 2 combined.
It’s a blues, so of course Johnny Winter covered it. Sans shirt, for some reason, which isn’t really an impressive look.
The Winter recording is from an Italian show in 1988. A look at the Honky Tonk Wikipedia page shows tons of covers, very few of them after the 1960s. What’s funny is that the Beach Boys, that premiere harmony group covered the vocal-free song.
The Boss talks about how in the early 60s, before the Beatles, the idea of a rock combo singing was pretty much unheard of. Bands with electric guitars played instrumentals, like Honky Tonk and Pipeline and Wipe Out! Thank you Beatles.
So, came across this band tonight. A few years old, so not new, and referencing old music mostly, but trying more.
This song, Please, is like a soul cover, but it might be an original.
This is catchy. A real cover.
I like this one because it starts out like a Crystals song, though it goes in a different direction. But there is a lot of music, harmonies and arrangement going on here. And maybe I’m thinking of the Shangri-las.
The Searchers were a beat group out of the Merseybeat sound, contemporaneous with the Beatles and the Hollies. They recorded a lot of pop covers early on, and good ones, like Sweets for My Sweet, Love Potion #9, and most notably Needles and Pins, which they helped make a classic.
I’ve long thought them to be an important band, because they played so well, and were such an important part of this most important pop scene, but I’ve been listening again lately and as much as I like all these songs, and admire the polish and playing on them all, the variety of styles and approaches leads me to conclude that the Searchers may have been, in their day, the world’s best wedding band.
I don’t mean that as a put down. Wedding bands are different from first rate rock bands, so I’ve dug a hole the Searchers have to climb out of, but I think they can do it. My point is that bands usually coalesce around some principles that guide their sound, their choice of material, their approach, or in other words, their vibe.
The Searchers didn’t really. They had the beat group sound, but they sampled pop and soul sounds without any orthodoxy. They just played, and like the best wedding bands, they brought great chops and energy to everything they did.
Which brings us to Alright, which seems to owe a lot to Ray Charles, but which also has a kick ass guitar solo. I love the way these guys play, but I also see that they’re not very visionary. Nothing wrong with that, but it does tamp down expectations. In any case, enjoy this!
In a week of sad deaths, I have no personal stake in the death of Sharon Jones.
I’m not heartless, I just mean that despite her gifts as a singer, and the obvious talents of the Dap Kings, I found much of their music more a simulation of other music than something organic. Music of nostalghia rather than experience.
I always put Sharon Jones in the same basket of imponderables that I put Gillian Welch, an Appalachian archivist who mimicked old styles more than create her own.
That said, Sharon Jones had a great soulful voice, as Gillian Welch did fine Appalachian holler, and with the Dap Kings made sounds that were totally derived from the old music, but live in real time. I think that means they made me think I was living in those days, though I won’t testify to that.
In any case, she has died, and left a funky body of work behind.
