I was going to do a Wilson Pickett post, because he seems in danger of falling down the Memory Hole, when I came across this fairly amazing bit of of television from 1969. You guys might remember the post of Tom Jones with Jack White doing Howlin Wolf – it was damn good, right? This is TJ dueting with Wilson Pickett and TJ holds his own all down the line. I’m not exactly a big Hey Jude fan but damn if they don’t show it off in its best light.
If TJ holds up with the Wicked Wilson, then Wilson holds up with James Brown. The sound is muffled, you’ll just have to turn it up.
Which brings me to my fave Pickett tune, an early version (rarely if ever topped imo) of smooth Philly Soul, a very cool swinging funk.
Pretty excited about seeing Uncle Acid Sunday night in Philly. Just got the new album yesterday and this is my favorite so far:
The typical Uncle Acid Lennon/Sabbath mix works particularly well on this poppier-than-usual tune. The verse reminds me of Cinnamon Girl a little. Don’t see how you can’t keep from bobbing your head by the time the Iommi outro guitar solo is singing.
The tour has just started, the album just came out. If these guys are playing in your area, you really owe it to yourself to go. Tickets are cheap and, for me, there’s nothing like seeing a so-far somewhat undiscovered band still in a small venue on the way up. Paying $150 a ticket to watch dots on the stage or the TV screen has never been my cup of tea.
Since they “came up” recently, I thought of The Dickies for the first time in a while. Way more famous for covers than originals – from Paranoid to Silent Night – this is my favorite Dickies song nonetheless. Why?:
1) The scientific-sounding guitars over the Barracuda-like rumble (Heart sucks, by the way) are A+.
2) Always wanted to play this song. What could be cooler than chanting “Mole Men, Mo-a-ole Men” live on-stage?
3) The line “Beware of the head Mole Man Jack,” obviously a desperate attempt at something to rhyme with the previous “back” and “attack,” is so awful lyrically it becomes beautiful eventually.
By the way, in college, I owned a long-sleeved t-shirt with that phallic Dickies symbol on it. It got a lot of laughs in the cafeteria.
Knights in White Satin indeed. I don’t despise the Moody Blues as you might figure. I mean, I mostly despise them, but they came up with some good melodies (no doubt stolen from Classic Composers). Hey, if The Toys can do it why not the Moodies? Be that as it may, I always thought Out and In was a tune that would be great all punked up.
I mean, am I wrong? Oh shut up, Steve.
But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here so you can hear the Moody Blues doing James Brown’s “I’ll Go Crazy.” Of course they were a different group then, a Brit Beat Combo. It’s not as bad as it could be, if only because the song is so great that Lawrence Welk could get it over.
But you have suffered enough. Dig on the man himself:
Nicky uncovered this video, one of our last gigs, at the Chase Lounge on 3rd Ave. and 13th St., on a hot and very late night. We went on at 3:30 AM. I hadn’t thought about the song Bag-dad Bang in a while. Nicky and I had a song called Divorce Party (“Come on everybody, split up!), but when the first Gulf War broke out – broke out my ass, when we attacked – we thought we should write a Political Song. So we didn’t, instead we wrote a Topical Song. I wrote the lyrics in record time, about 10 minutes in one sitting, and they still make me laugh, and since you’ll never understand them, I’m writing them down. It’s the opener on the video:
Coming in under the radar
I got shot right out of the sky
I wound up loaded in a Baghdad dive
The waitress looked at me and said you’re lucky you’re alive
Hey G.I. do you wanna surprise
You know your Uncle Sam lied
I got a thang it’s too too much
Bag-dad bang
She was selling so hard I didn’t know what to think
I said get that umbrella thing outta my drink
I’m serious about euphoria
Taking out Sadam but now I’m in Gomorrah
Hey G.I. take a look in my eyes, would I lie to you?
Now you can think, or you can drink
Bag-dad bang
C.I.A. trying to prove I’m a spy
In the house of pain I’m just another guy
Accusation’s untrue but it hurts
They think I wanna be a Colonel Kurtz
Hey G.I. I heard about that guy
He really knows how to fly
You like ’em pink?
Whadda Drink
Bag-dad bang
I was pissed off at this gig because my amp wasn’t loud enough and it hurts my tone, but what the hell. I hope you like it.
I have noted during my infrequent posts this summer that it was a crazy busy one. Like, I have never had as since I retired from ATT, I get to do what I want when I want.
That meant time in Pismo Beach, New York, Chicago, Yosemite (Diane had to go back to New York in this gap, but I got to go home), Chicago, Lake Tahoe, and then the Northern California Russian River area for our annual trek to performing arts camp.
I just never imagined when I had more time available, that I would be busier than when the “structure” having a job presents.
Music was indeed involved in a few of these treks. In the middle of July, my band, TheBileTones got to pretend to be a real rock’n’roll band, playing a pair of gigs in the Chicago area, and the Yosemite trip was with our core music community friends, so a lot of picking was attempted during that week.
But, nothing is like the Cazadero Performing Arts Camp, where I basically play in one band or another all day long, and even get to try some solo acoustic stuff and really experiment with both songwriting and styles.
This year I took my friend Dennis Fortin’s “Gypsy Jazz” class. Dennis is a great guy and teacher, and a killer on Telecaster, able to play a myriad of styles. I have played with him at camp having fun doing Dear Mr. Fantasy, One Way Out, and also Stop Dragging My Heart Around.
In fact, Dennis plays in a local bay area Gypsy Jazz band cleverly called “Eclair de Lune.”
Another class I took was string band, offered by my good friend, teacher, and mentor, Steve Gibson, and within that class Steve presented the song “Minor Swing” by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli.
Though I do indeed have a couple of Django/Stephane CD’s, I have never tried to play anything of the Paris Swing ilk, and it is some tough stuff. Interesting, chord shapes, great rhythms, and fantastic jamming and improvising much of the time.
I realize we all have subjective notions about what is rock’n’roll, but I challenge you to find any song anywhere that is as smoking hot as this tune. These are unbelievable musicians, but what really suggests how masterful and in the zone they are, listen to how often in the background a voice pops through the instrumental with a “yeah” type sound.
Anyway, things slow down. I can catch up. And listen and write more
The Waldos were the unofficial house band at the Continental Divide in NYC in the 80s and into the 90s. Formed by Walter Lure after The Heartbreakers drowned in drugs, also featuring the excellent Joey Pinter on guitar and Tony Coiro on bass. This song goes back at least to 1975, written by Walter and played by the Richard Hell version of the Heartbreakers. I always loved it.
I have a large and opinionated family. A friend once ventured in their presence that “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye was one of the best records ever made. Our friend is not the only person who feels this way, I have heard and seen the opinion expressed several times over the years. My family averred as one, and my daughter Meg spoke up, “It’s not even the best version of ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” My friend said, “You don’t mean Creedence?” Meg said no, although she is a big Creedence fan, and popped up this version for our dining and dancing pleasure. It was the first version too, at least as far as being a hit single.
I haven’t played in that many bands but my favorite by far was Fun No Fun. We’re having a reunion (minus Nicky which is minus a lot) on July 22nd in Northampton, MA. John Rennau is turning 60 on that date, as I turned 60 a few weeks ago. We were in kindergarten together.
But we weren’t in bands together until our mid-20s, mostly because Johnny Er was living in Colorado from ’74-79. After The Sinatras collapsed in 1980, Nicky and I kept playing together and Johnny Er eventually joined us. One night at the rehearsal studio we ran into Andy Towns, who was auditioning girl singers for his songs. The girls were gone but Andy stayed and we played some Slumlords tunes and just rocked them to bits. I said to Andy “We should start a band.” He nodded eagerly. Thus were The Femme Fatales born. Not my name, too generic and blah I said, but Andy insisted, saying it’s not generic to the public. The idea was to do Andy’s songs – he had about 50 – with three girl singers up front and a roaring rocknroll train behind them. I still think it’s a great idea and to this day it has never really been done. As fate would have it, this song came up on my Pandora tonight and it’s pretty close to what we sounded like. I like to think we snarled more but I like it.
The main reason it didn’t work was that the girls couldn’t hear themselves over the band. The girls were trying to, I don’t know, sing, and we were really loud. The volume problem then is not a problem now, by the way, what with better tech. Anyway, they did fine in practice but onstage at CB’s they fell apart. For all the great sound system at that club, the stage monitors sucked. Sally, Helen and Janice couldn’t hear themselves and they lost the harmonies. There is a tape of that show off the board, really good audio, and it just breaks my heart – the band is so on and the singing is so off it was painful at times. We got an encore out of politeness, and closed by doing Chinese Rocks without the girls, who were off screaming at each other. It’s killer. And that was the end of that band – although we had a gig 3 days later at the Left Bank in Mount Vernon. We did that gig as a foursome, alternating the vocals between me and Andy with Johnny Er helping. There was a tape of that show too and it was a great set. I was all for plunging ahead.
But Johnny Er wanted to play guitar, not bass. At that time I was just married, a baby on the way, fed up with the whole band bullshit thing, and in no mood to start all over. I did still love playing, as I do to this day, but as a life there was just no good reason to endure what had to be endured, and inflict it on my wife and child, with a very possible pile of shit at the end of the rainbow. The music I wanted to play turned out to be cult-popular at best. That’s a sad fact but it’s a fact.
John met a songwriting guitar player named Cindy Pack and they formed the Desolation Angels, to which John brought some fine rocking melodies. They made a good 45 which I don’t have digitally, but here is a live at CBGB version of the A-Side “Shangri-La” from John’s next band Reverba, with my boy ripping out some electric 12-string.
