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.
I came across this Hank Williams cover, which rocks pretty hard and stokes my fear or heights.
Which reminded me of this other Hank Williams cover.
Belated concert review from Monday, 6/27:
Everything started out well enough. I love Underground Arts. But I knew the Turbonegro set list had changed. You see, one of the greatest regrets of my life is having never seen the real Turbonegro with Hank Von Helvete. The last time I saw them (and the first time I saw them) a few years ago in New York, it was their comeback tour, with new singer Tony “The Duke Of Nothing” Sylvester. For that tour, they were more or less a Hank tribute band, playing all the household name Turbonegro hits. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty good.
Since then, Turbonegro has changed. Their new sound is way, way too poppy. The set list two Mondays ago was dominated by new stuff and Party Animals, my personal choice as the worst Hank Turbonegro album. And only one song from Ass Cobra, arguably the best hardcore album ever. That’s a toughie.
But nothing could prepare me for the very long encore. Each member of the band was introduced to an extended mostly-awful cover song. I remember Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting (the best), Van Halen’s Jump, and The Heat Is On (the worst – forget who does that and I’m not gonna go look either).
It was like a nightmare.
Finally, the band took a bow and left the stage to. . .I couldn’t make this up. . .We Built This City.
Typing this out, it seems like they were simply playing some over-the-top “let’s offend the audience as best we can” routine. If it was that, I’m really glad, but I don’t think so.
In any case, I’m completely through with Turbonegro until I have conclusive evidence things have gone back to semi-normal.
Here’s a video, of their latest crappy song that I posted a few weeks ago. You can see my fuzzy head in the bottom right corner, starting at about the 45 second mark.
Very funny five minutes of journalists asking questions. Lou answering.
Followed by some fine stripped bare hits live with excellent dancing by Lou.
Prince is pretty famous for not licensing any of his music to any streaming service but Jay Z’s Tidal.
But he should also be famous for initiating many online services with various plans to serve music and publicity and other ideas over the years. After all, he was a major artist who went indy after his falling out with Warner Brothers.
He left the label, but they owned his music, so he presented himself as a slave and wouldn’t use the name Prince, since that was his slave name.
Prince’s various online ideas have now been collected at the PrinceOnlineMuseum.com. I’ve only browsed so far, so I have no tips, but this is stuff Prince did online.
