I was parking the car when this came on WFUV, a college station with professional DJs that is currently playing a mix of album-friendly tunes from across eras and genres. Grandaddy, it turns out, got their start 30 years ago in Modesto CA and have dabbled in various indy grunge psychedelic styles ever since.
I’ve played a bunch of their music and it has a mostly muted energy but pops with clever ideas, lyrically and musically. I suspect as I listen more I’ll like some of it more, but Watercooler is immediately classic.
No Hava Nagila. This is an amazing list with lots of Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Lou Reed, but lots of oddball stuff too. And every one of them with a story.
I’m not sure I’ll ever play it again. I’m pretty sure I never heard it before tonight.
It’s from 2008. It hit No. 17 on the US Billboard charts, but even though I had a nine year old in the house it didn’t make an impression on me. But what’s striking is the speed (fast), the strings (aggressive), and the guitars (really aggressive).
Couple it with some plain talking lyrics and an oddly effective chorus and I’m not sure why it didn’t make it to No. 3. Maybe because it’s from Australia.
In any case, this post isn’t a recommendation exactly, but a nod to the idea that the pieces of great songs and great ideas can also end up in pieces of commercial product that might actually have some personality to it.
When I first heard this song over the weekend I thought of Lawr, whose name was Lawrence and who lived in California (when he wasn’t in the UK seeing the Sex Pistols).
This is an excellent Mekons track, hard to imagine they’ve been doing this for more than 40 years. Play it loud.
I didn’t know Erik, I think I emailed him once, but maybe it was someone else in Hans Condor. They were a Nashville band that gloriously went on a Japan tour, and leave behind a great album and at least one terrific video.
So this isn’t a personal reminiscence.
But a lot of Nashville loved Erik. Reading the remarks would be emotional (a young person dies) but his generosity is legend.
From “half way to Memphis” to rocking Cleveland and everything in-between, Ian Hunter has now brought us five generations of songwriting wit and musical prowess. This ode to a dear friend, David Bowie, reminds us of better days. Days when we smiled, we laughed, and we enjoyed the camaraderie and friendship shared between two amazing human beings.
“Dandy – the world was black ‘n’ white You showed us what it’s like To live inside a rainbow Dandy – you thrilled us to the core You left us wanting more And then we took the last bus home”
Read a bit about them in the upcoming shows list, and played their 2019 record. Good stuff. I won’t say this is the best, but it captures what they’re doing, a rock-soul mix that’s pretty irresistible because, songs are good.
I wrote about Ellen Foley’s very excellent Spirit of St. Louis, an album of her boyfriend Mick Jones’s songs, some written with Joe Strummer. And most of it played by the Clash as her backing band. Some will disagree about the excellent part.
Another odd collection is Wendy James’s debut elpee, Now Ain’t the Time for Your Tears, from 1993. James was the singer in a new wavey band called Transvision Vamp that I don’t really know. After that band broke up she somehow ended up recording a solo elpee with all the songs written by Elvis Costello, some with his then wife Cait O’Riordan. Like Spirit of St. Louis, this is odd music that veers from punky riffs, to rock, to artsy new wave, and like Spirit of St. Louis, I find it very captivating.
London’s Brilliant, like many of the songs, appears to be self-referential, a song for James to sing that also describes her place in the rock world at the time the record was made. It is one of those co-written by O’Riordan. And perhaps I should warn you that it totally cops (and admits to copping) the guitar riff of Clash City Rockers.
Frank created a book of photographs called The Americans back in the 50s. It’s a terrific book of strikingly straightforward and revealing images full of, um, Americans.
Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction to The Americans, an obvious choice at the moment On the Road ruled the world. Kerouac also wrote and narrated Frank’s first film, a shambling tale of New York City’s bohemian lives, called Pull My Daisy. You can view it here.
Frank, of course, took the photos that made up the collagey cover of the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street.
Frank also made a tour documentary with the Stones at about the same time. It is called Cocksucker Blues and the Stones, who have said they thought the film was excellent, sued to keep it from being released because its explicit sex and drug scenes were too much even for them.
A deal was reached that allowed Frank to show the movie five times a year provided he was in attendance. I remember one year leaving the Rolling Stone magazine Christmas party early to see the film at the Anthology Film Archives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. You can find the film in pieces on You Tube, from time to time. Frank clearly wasn’t policing the copyright, nor were the Stones, as evidenced by this music video that uses some of the film.
Frank also made some dramatic films that drew notice, though the only one I saw was a shambling road picture featuring a who’s who of cool rock dudes in the late 80s (I’m talking guys named Johansen, Waits and Strummer, plus Leon Redbone).
This is the trailer with French titles.
This seems to be the whole film with German titles.
Final bonus video with Frank’s Super 8 film of the Stones.
