Song of the Week – Go Now, Bessie Banks

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Most of you associate The Moody Blues with their late 60s/early 70s progressive rock classics like “Nights In White Satin”, “Ride My See-Saw”, “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Balance.” But before that, they were a British Invasion pop band, playing a mix of originals and covers of American R&B (like most of their peers).

This early version of the band included guitarist/vocalist Denny Laine (who went on to greater renown as a member of Paul McCartney’s Wings) and had a #10 hit in the US with the Laine sung “Go Now” in early 1965.

If you’re a Baby Boomer you probably remember this song. If you’re a Gen Xer or Millennial, maybe not so much (unless your dad weened you on oldies radio when you were a toddler).

Still, I’ll bet most of you don’t know that the Moody Blues version of “Go Now” was a cover of an original recording by Bessie Banks (1964). Banks’ “Go Now” is today’s SotW.

It was produced by none other than the great R&B team of Leiber and Stoller. Purists think Banks’ version is the superior one. I love it too and that’s why I’m sharing it with you today. But I also like the Moody’s version. I’m going to cop out and call this one a toss-up.

Enjoy… until next week.

Afternoon Snack: Cher/Nancy Sinatra, “Bang Bang”

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OK, so I am kind of into letting the Spotify do its thing. Mostly, on the 35-minute ride to the links, I have picked an artist and let the streaming rip, but this morning I was feeling nostalgic, so I dug around and found a 60’s hits stream.

There was a bunch of Dylan and Doors, and the Turtles along with the Isley Brothers and ultimately Stevie Wonder when Bang Bang, by Nancy Sinatra came on.

Let’s be clear. I hated These Boots Were Made for Walking (save the cool bass walkdown at the end) from the first time I heard it, as a 13-year old in 1966. I did not think Nancy Sinatra talented. Her singing wasn’t chanteuse-like a la Marlene Dietrich, nor was it pretty, a la Connie Francis (sorry, I had a mad crush on Connie as an eight-year old).

There was nothing that seemed remotely real about Sinatra the daughter (or son, who did redeem himself with a guest shot on Family Guy). And, for extra fun, remember that Frank Jr. was kidnapped out of Harrah’s in 1963, and that Dean Torrance–the Dean of Jan and Dean–was involved in that caper.

Nancy just seemed the epitome of plastic to me: worse, she was a moderate talent at best who was able to cash in on her father’s name and fame, for had she been Jane Doe from Everytown, Iowa, Nancy would never have had a hit record.

There is this quasi Django Rheinhardt gypsy-ish guitar in the background of Nancy’s version, but basically it just blows. I was happy for I Was Made to Love Her to kick on after Bang Bang was shot.

As a means of comparison, I did go out an find the Cher version, which is far more orchestrated than I remember. I do like Cher’s voice: at least I did back then and to a degree for Cher was like Neil Diamond in that I liked her early stuff, but as she got bigger and mainstream, her songs seemed cornier, and I was disinterested.

The thing I like about the Cher version is the clear Phil Spector/Sonny Bono influence. Also, at the time, I knew she was a shitload hotter than Nancy could ever hope to be. I mean, Nancy could only hope to attract the likes of Gene Simmons, Gregg Allman, or Richie Sambora.

 

Afternoon Snack: Eagles of Death Metal, “San Berdoo Sunburn”

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I cannot remember how long ago my mate Steve Gibson burned a disc of the Eagles of Death Metal for me. I know I played it, but the disc got lost in a pile, and the band never really made my playlist, though they were always hanging around the periphery of my listening and consciousness.

There was “Them Crooked Vultures,” which featured Josh Homme whom Steve  Moyer discovered several years back, and from then, it seemed everywhere I looked, Homme, the guitar player, was featured.

Still, though I thought of them kind of like James Joyce’s Ulysses, a book I know I should read someday, but a book I am keeping on my to do list so I always will have something to fall back on should I run out of things to do, you know?

Of course, over the past months, the band has had sad interactions with first the shootout in the Bacalat in Paris, and then oddly, the San Bernardino connection because of the song below, San Berdoo Bunburn.

Which is kind of extra sad as the more I get to know the band, the less they would want to be associated with much of anything aside from their irreverant–and funny–rock’n’roll chops and words.

This song came to me by way of my Biletones mate Bill Alberti, as we are now looking to put the tune on our setlist. (One thing is for sure: I now follow the Eagles on Spotify.)

I did look through several versions of the song, and though I prefer live, it is really hard to hear the words on the recordings on YouTube. So, I went with this video which peppers the screen with the occasional lyric.

Enjoy.

Song of the Week – I’m 16, Ros Sereysothea & Tiger Phone Card, Dengue Fever

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Several years ago I downloaded a compilation of Cambodian rock music called Cambodian Rocks. I can’t remember what blog I found it on, but I remember that the article noted that the original disc provided very little in the way of song titles, artists or other credits. By the time I found the album most of the missing credits had been identified, but the whole backstory intrigued me.

So I was very excited when a documentary film called Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll and directed by John Pirozzi was being shown in San Francisco and Berkeley last May. Unfortunately it was such a limited engagement that I missed it. But now it’s available on iTunes so I was able to watch it in the comfort of my home recently. It’s not for everyone, but as a student of rock music I found it to be fascinating.

Here’s what I learned:

In 1953, Cambodia received its independence from France. Their new ruler, King Norodom Sihanouk, was a flawed dictator with a few redeeming characteristics. He wanted to modernize Cambodia and had a strong interest in the arts, specifically film and music. Artists in those industries were given tremendous creative freedom even though they reaped very little in terms of financial reward.

By the mid 60s, the Viet Nam war brought Armed Forces radio into the country and exposed them to the eclectic sounds of American rock music. Unencumbered with genre boundaries, the Cambodian rockers mixed French pop, Latin, psych, surf, R&B and Asian melodies into a big, boiling pot of rock and roll stew.

The country’s biggest star was Sinn S, known as the Cambodian Elvis. (With his pop crooning style, he sounds more like the Cambodian Nat King Cole to me.) Yol Aularong had a more authentic Western rock and roll style and merged it with overt political protest lyrics. (Let’s say the Cambodian MC5.)

Ros Sereysothea was the queen of Cambodian rock. Her “I’m 16” is today’s first SotW.

In a 2007 article about Cambodian rock in The Guardian, music journalist Nic Cohn writes of Ros:

Her voice was the perfect teen-dream confection, equal parts heartbreak, flirtation, and true romance. Even though I couldn’t understand a word, she affected me more strongly than any female pop singer since Ronny Spector of the Ronettes…

She was also a canny songwriter, her melodies twisty and surprising, yet instantly hummable…

On “I’m Sixteen”, her greatest hit and the signature anthem of Khmer rock, she sings: ‘Life’s like a flower/Spreading fragrances everywhere.’ So long as she keeps singing, she can almost make you believe it’s true.

This golden age of Cambodian rock lasted until 1975 when the communist Khmer Rouge, led by Pot Pol, captured the capital of Phnom Pehn. They evacuated the city and sent everyone to live the life of agrarian peasants… if you were lucky. Almost 2 million people (about 1/4 of the country’s population) were murdered during their near 4 year reign through 1979. Anyone that was suspected of being middle class, intellectual or artistic was executed in “the killing fields.” People disappeared under suspicious circumstances. That included most of the Cambodian rockers and explains why so little information about them survived.

Fast forward to 1999. Again from Cohn’s Guardian article:

… Ethan Holtzman, a Californian keyboard player, went backpacking in the Cambodian countryside and hitched a ride on the back of a pick-up truck. As Holtzman’s travelling companion, semi-delirious, suffered with dengue fever, the truck driver played a tape of Ros Sereysothea’s ‘New Year’s Eve’. Holtzman was knocked sideways. When he got back to America, he formed a Khmer rock band – himself on Farfisa organ, his brother Zac on guitar, plus drums, bass, and sax – and named it Dengue Fever.

For authenticity, a Khmer singer was needed. Long Beach, California – Little Phnom Penh – is the world’s largest Cambodian enclave outside the homeland, founded by refugees. There, Dengue Fever found Ch’hom Nimol. A popular performer at weddings, she came from a famous family of singers. Though she lacked a little of the range and raw power of Ros, Ch’hom was dazzling in her own right, with the seamless high vibrato characteristic of all the best Khmer female vocalists.

Today’s second SotW is Dengue Fever’s “Tiger Phone Card.”

Musically the song preserves the spirit of the Cambodian Rocks selections. It cleverly takes the form of a conversation between lovers. And I love the economical guitar solo that comes in at about 1:37.

Enjoy… until next week.

Shuffle Is The Devil, And So Is Witchcraft

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Lawr, you inspired me. I swear I’ll get that Graveyard concert review written one of these days, but for now, this.

Been way into a “new” band called Witchcraft (Swedish, of course – where the hell else would any good new music come from?). Was introduced to them by a guy who auditioned for guitar in our new band, Hard Rocks!, but we ended up taking someone else. This guy told me I needed the consensus Witchcraft masterpiece Legend and, boy, he was correct.

Just so happens they put out a new album Nucleus, in January and I snapped it up. Nucleus is LONG. I’m guessing it plays for almost an hour. And it takes some time to sink in. You aren’t gonna shuffle this and stumble upon Shake It Off. I’d say three or four BEGINNING TO END plays to be fair.

But geez, it’s a monster. My favorite (kind of obsessed with it lately) is a 14-minute little ditty that matches even Zep’s Levee for heavy (bonus rhyme), I think it’s about some guy losing his mind and is called Breakdown. I can’t even find it on youtube. Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t sit here listening to the whole thing if I put it up anyway.

I’ll give you this one instead, the first single (really, single that’s being played where?). More poppy, with some Jethro Tull flute and a lyric line about the economy. Not even sure what to think of that.

I’m kind of afraid to go to that new The Witch movie.

Here Comes the Weekend: Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”

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As I have been driving around in my car the last week I have been streaming Spotify, so far in a primitive fashion, by just selecting the artist I want to hear, and hitting shuffle.

Though you can scrounge through the Spotify archives and pick up just about anything imaginable (still looking for a copy of Voodoo, by Quicksilver Messenger Service, though) I do find that the shuffle is largely from a handful of albums. Some might be greatest hits, and some re-issues with added stuff, but the spectrum is not always as random as I would imagine.

Still, while streaming Richard Thompson, I got I Wanna See the Bright Lights in 1974 and then the lovely Beeswing from Mock Tudor two decades later.

Thompson is a tremendous wordsmith and song writer, but similarly, he is such a ridiculously imaginative and tasty guitar player that it is often hard to take it all in. Not that he is inaccessible, for Thompson is as fun a stage presence as there is.

So, Beeswing did coarse through my IPhone and into my car stereo and all the words really got me for the first time, and well, whew. So, saying the guitar playing is almost secondary, well, you judge and figure it out.

 

But, just in case you don’t know Thompson that well, here he is like, cranking it out on his Revering, on Elvis Costello’s late TV show with Elvis struggling to play rhythm guitar (maybe they even turned the volume off cos he looked so lost?).

I did search for Thompson doing this with bay area axe-man Henry Kaiser, whom I have twice seem play the song with the songwriter, but nada. So, let’s go with this.  Tell me you have seen a more relaxed or competent guy (let alone confident) jacking with his tuner as part of the solo in the middle of the song?

 

LINK: Barrage Rock!

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There’s a story in today’s NY Times about some guys who get together in a garage in Queens (NY) and podcast their takes on recent rock news. They also have guests. This week: CJ Ramone. Other weeks? Steve Albini and the guy who directed the movie Riot on the Dance Floor, about that New Jersey club, City Gardens, that everybody says was legendary.

These guys are in their 40s, by the way. And one of them has an actual bar in his garage, where his wife lets him hang out so he doesn’t hang out with his friends in their house. And probably ruin their kids. I don’t know. It’s a fun story well worth reading.

Which reminds me that the Remnants  have talked about doing their own podcast. I think we think it would mostly be music. But I suspect there will be talking. I have some ideas for features:

Remnants Telephone. One Remnant plays a song, then the other Remnants in turn each play a song with some connection to the preceding song. After the four songs are played, each Remnant in turn says why he chose his song and its relation to the preceding song. Conversation ensues.

This Day In Rock. Each Remnant, or one Remnant, tells a story about something that happened in history on that date, and conversation ensues.

Song of the Week. Tom plays and explains his song. Conversation ensues.

Prick up your ears. One Remnant plays a contemporary song, a find, a discovery, others listen, conversation ensues.

Outro. Four (or five, if Tom is in) songs, without comment or conversation, one each by a Remnant.

Fade to black.

In subsequent episodes we start with clips from the Outro and comments by Remnants and we hope eventually listeners and commenters about the songs. And so the snake eats its tail. And we eat our tale.

But maybe you have other ideas? Like what does Moyer think about Graveyard now? Some of us have bated breath. Some of us have abated caring.

See you on the radio!