Never thought of this as a rocknroll song but they rock the shit out of it. I heard that Keith wasn’t happy with this song in particular and that’s why the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was never aired. Typical musician. Embrace the garage, Keith.
Also notable in that Brian Jones is still around. Maybe Keith was pissed because the camera is on Jones when Keith is playing.
Three years ago my friend Richard died. He and I had been occasional tennis partners, often shared dinners with mutual friends, and enjoyed talking about music.
He was English by birth, but had lived in the US for many years. I bring that up because he had a love for Englishy art rock and subgenres of dance music that I found somewhat bewildering. But each New Years Eve, at the party we would inevitably be attending together, he would pass out CDs with his favorite songs from the previous year and it was a treat to hear the world through his ears. Richard loved sharing the tunes he liked, and was always looking for new sounds.
At his memorial I learned that back in the early 80s Richard had played the synthesizer in a band.
After his death his wife, Monica, shared a big folder of songs of his, which is another window into his world. We’ve long talked about posting some of these songs somewhere as a tribute, and may still do that on Facebook.
But while thinking about Richard this memorial week, I thought a post of a handful of the tunes I’ve discovered from his collection would serve as a memorial, a tribute to someone who is missed by many.
Have we done anything on murder songs? We should. This one isn’t exactly murder but the threat is refreshingly explicit.
I wonder how many real murders have been directly – inspired isn’t quite the word here – influenced shall we say – by songs? It must have happened a few times. Music has been a major player in various murder cults of course, and war of course, but individuals who committed murder under the influence of a song – how rare is that? Inquiring minds want to know.
Anyway, Sonny Boy II has his very own blues style, and I happen to think that he’s one of the greatest singers ever, not to mention maybe the best harp player, both instantly recognizable at any rate, and his band swings the blues good.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Today’s SotW is a power pop classic. It is “Johnny Have You Seen Her” by the Rembrandts.
I probably wouldn’t be so embarrassed to admit that I love this song if the duo of Danny Wilde and Phil Solem weren’t best known for performing the theme song to the 90s sitcom Friends, “I’ll Be There For You.”
But please try to put that aside and listen to this as if you could separate them from Friends. (I admit I’m being a music snob.)
“Johnny…” has Beatlesque harmonies (and that ain’t bad) with ringing guitars that conjure up similarities to Squeeze and Crowded House – who at their best also emulate the Beatles.
Don’t take this all too seriously. It’s just “pure pop for now people.”
Enjoy… until next week.
At the time, I’m not sure I played any record more than Richard Hell and the Voidoid’s Blank Generation elpee. There are a bunch of great tunes on it, including a Creedence Clearwater Revival cover(!!!!) that’s both surprising and grooves. But this one is a bit like a folk song, except for the brittle strutting guitar solo in the middle, by the always excellent Robert Quine. I’m not sure what it means, except maybe it’s the other side of the Dark End of the Street.
I’m in love with HWIII when he and his band are rocking the country sound. Was listening to an album the other day that descended into some kind of death metal squawking, which wears thing quickly for me. But this is all day.
Almost finished with the John Doe L.A. Punk history book. It’s very good, although probably not intelligent and versatile enough for this audience. Ran into this interesting mistake in Charlotte Caffey’s (Go-Go’s guitarist) chapter about Jane Wiedlin (other Go-Go’s guitarist):
Jane had had a mad love affair with Terry Hall, the lead singer of Madness.
Terry Hall sang for The Specials, not Madness. Not quite on the order of saying Mick Jagger sang for The Beatles, but in the neighborhood. To top it off, Caffey mentions soon after that The Go-Go’s toured with Madness. I would imagine spending weeks touring with Suggs (crew cut footballer guy) to be much different from spending weeks touring with Terry Hall (floofy new waver guy).
Was this a senior moment brain fart, a lifetime of too much drugs, carelessness, ignorance, too much mad in the same sentence? Where was the editor?
Well, Madness was way better than The Go-Go’s and The Specials were way, way better than The Go-Go’s so who cares, I guess.
Those solo records he made in the mid 70s are notebooks of sounds that he gave to Talking Heads, Devo and U2, but they also stand up on their own. This one from Before and After Science comes with a neat video, and like Eno’s other elpees of the period has Phil Collins playing drums, which was probably cool at the time but in retrospect is just a little paradigm shifting.
The last couple of years Diane and I have vacationed in New York, we have hit a couple of plays. Last year, The Book of Mormon and Larry David’s Fish in the Dark were it, and this year, I grabbed tickets to The Humans which had just moved to Broadway a month before our trip, and perfectly, the play won four Tonys including best play, actor, and actress, two nights before the tix I copped.
But, for the second show, I opted for Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. There is no question how much I loved King’s songwriting, then with her (now late) husband Gerry Goffin. The Locomotion, Up on the Roof, Chains, and especially Will You Still Love Me, Tomorrow?–which is among my favorite songs ever–are all such great and timeless cuts. In fact, I wrote this obit when Goffin passed away a couple of years back.
But, last year, when Di and I were in NYC for the FSTA, as we walked up Broadway to Central Park, I noticed the Brill Building for the first time, so I stopped, and looked and took a photo of the front.
Somewhere, that shot was lost, but this year when we walked by I got another snap, and though I knew the bulk of the Brill Building story, the show brought out so much and so many great songs and just what amazing and productive songwriters like Lieber and Stoller, and Neil Sedaka, and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil in addition to Goffin and King, and all of this orchestrated by Don Krischner.
One of the things that plagued Goffin and Mann, in particular, with the British invasion and new propensity for bands to write their own materiel was writing songs that were relevant, rather than just pop tunes that appealed to the generally superficial life of teenagers.
Goffin. who wrote the words, and King banged out this really great tune immortalized:
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Retro soul man Charles Bradley released his third album, Changes, earlier this year and again, the 67 year old former James Brown impersonator does not disappoint. (Bradley saw Brown perform at the Apollo when he was just an early teen and his life was changed forever.)
Today’s SotW, “Ain’t it a Sin” is butt shakin’ funk that doesn’t belie Bradley’s revivalist approach.
On this one, the man christened “the screaming eagle of soul” lets us have it with the full throated refrain:
If you ain’t gonna do me right
I just might do you in
Ain’t it a sin
Asked about that lyric, Bradley responded “… I was saying, ‘Don’t do me wrong, I won’t do you wrong.’” Downright Trumpian!
Way to go Charles. You got me believing that “my mind is goin’ through them Changes.”
Enjoy… until next week.
