A nice set of pictures of Debbie Harry taken by Chris Stein can be found here at Slate. Here’s a detail from the photo that makes me want to check out the whole book:
Song of the Week – Sock it to Me Baby, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
I’ve been a fan of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels since they released their first hits back in the mid-60s. My idol Bruce Springsteen was also a big fan, adapting Ryder’s hits into his famous final encore number, “The Detroit Medley” (which you can hear on the No Nukes: The Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future album).
Oddly, Springsteen’s medley leaves out my favorite Ryder hit – today’s SotW “Sock it to Me Baby” (#6, 1967). Put this one into the Restored category.
“Sock it to Me” is a wild, sweaty dose of Rock ‘n Soul. It has all of the best Detroit has to offer musically. It rocks with MC5 like intensity (check out the guitar break after each “Sock – it, to me baby” section), it has a Motown beat that makes dancing irresistible, and it has that subtle sexual tension that is present in so many of Rock and Roll’s best songs. Ryder’s performance is a damned good imitation of James Brown. And somehow when that slide whistle comes in it sounds just right despite my instinct telling me it should be corny (as it is on Procol Harum’s campy “Mabel”).
This is a party record if there ever was one.
When I began to write this post I wondered when the phrase “sock it to me” first came into the 1960’s lexicon. It was a popular catchphrase often used by Judy Carne on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In that first aired in 1968. Then there’s the “sock it to me” background vocal on Aretha’s “Respect.” That was recorded on February 14th, 1967; a little more than a week after Ryder’s song was released on February 4th. So who used it first, Aretha or Mitch? It would appear Mitch, but it’s hard to tell for sure – the matter made a little more complicated since both artists were based out of Detroit. Who knows what each was hearing around town prior to their recording dates?
One last Fun Fact: Winona Ryder chose her stage name when she saw a Mitch Ryder album in her father’s record collection. Interesting, since Mitch’s real name is Bill Levise.
Enjoy… until next week.
OBIT: Paul Kantner (1941-2016)
Paul Kantner, who evolved as the driving force behind first Jefferson Airplane, and subsequently Jefferson Starship (not The Starship, mind you) has passed away at the age of 74.
It is hard for me to believe that almost six years ago I posted this piece right here on the Remnants as I declared the Airplane the best rock band of the San Francisco psychedelic era. That article was on the passing of drummer Joey Covington, and sadly, now it is Kantner.
It is cool that Peter already published Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?, for that was the first song I thought of posting for Kantner, but there are certainly a zillion more I love.
I was lucky enough to live in the Bay Area during the heyday of the SF bands, so I got to see the Airplane more than a few times, even at Winterland, with the Dead, Big Brother, and Quicksilver. Good as those other bands were, the Airplane were easily my fave.
For starters, this clip of Crown of Creation, from The Smothers Brothers Show in 1968, is emblematic of the band–which did feature three singers unlike most bands at the time–in their flower power heyday. (Note that Paul plays a Rickenbacker!)
It was largely Kantner’s vision that pushed the band through five great studio albums along with a killer live one before the metamorphosis into Jefferson Starship,
Kantner was soft-spoken, but equally outspoken with respect to the causes of the left, but he was ultimately a musician and artist whose band left a significant body of great work.
Like this fantastic treatment of the traditional song, Good Shepherd from Volunteers, performed at the Fillmore East in 1969.
But, my favorite moment of Kantner occurred in 1981, when U2 first was gaining a buzz. I went to see the up-and-coming Irish band, and who should be sitting behind me at a little table, all by his lonesome, but Paul Kantner?
I will leave with two treatments of Fred Neil’s The Other Side of this Life. This first is the band, interrupted during play at the infamous Altamont gig in which Kantner, clearly the leader of the band confronts Hell’s Angel Ralph “Sonny” Barger.
But, this second treatment, from the wonderful live Bless Its Pointed Little Head just fucking smokes.
I will see the stars tonight Paul, and will see you among them.
Paul Kantner Has Died.
Jefferson Airplane were a giant San Francisco band, and Paul Kantner had a lot to do with that, but when I just read that he’d died today, I thought of this song.
It’s from an album by Paul Kantner, branded as Jefferson Starship called Blows Against the Empire. As an idealist 17 year old with a bent to sci fi it hit pretty much every beat in my book. Well, except for the rock one.
But the album has it’s rock-ish moments, too.
But the song I like best is the folkiest, written by Rosalie Sorrells.
In any case, Paul Kantner was a nexus for all the psychedelic San Francisco musicians, who collaborated on this album, and many other projects, that were made as art and agitprop rather than commerce. Blows Against the Empire is the one project of his that captured me. You can hear the whole thing here.
He did not have anything to do with We Built This City. RIP.
Iowa Caucus, Politicians, The Boss and Seeing Clearly
I was streaming KTKE on my way to the links the other morning and Bruce Springsteen’s fantastic Brilliant Disguise came streaming through the car radio, allowing me to sing my ass off along with the Boss, finishing just as I pulled into the Buchanan Fields parking lot.
No question, Bruce sticks largely to his working class roots and experience when composing lyrics, and he is indeed a strong songwriter with respect to words, meter, and rhyme.
Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town LP made our initial Top 60, and still is my favorite album by Bruce, but Brilliant Disguise, and Out in the Streets (from The River) are my two favorite songs by the artist.
Brilliant Disguise, which riffs of the early days of Rock’n’Roll in two nice little homages, is really a great tune about relationships, honesty, how we present ourselves to others, and most important, how we see others and how they see us.
The Boss implores a lover’s confusion about barriers for two choruses asking “tell me what I see, when I look in your eyes?” but concludes his last chorus turning the tables asking “tell me who you see when you look in my eyes?”
Brilliant Disguise riffs in its nod to the beat of The Drifters’ Save the Last Dance for Me, and then as the words complete, makes reference to Lou Christie’s The Gypsy Cried, both tunes from 1962.
Anyway, just before latest Republican debate and the Donald Trump travelling sideshow, days before the Iowa Caucus, well, let the words of the Boss ring in the back of our minds.
Lauryn Hill, Lost Ones
Everytime I hear news about Guantanamo I think about the song Guantanamera, which Lauryn Hill’s sings on a Fugee’s elpee.
But when I think about Lauryn Hill I think of this song, the first track (apart from the silly skit tracks–whose idea was that?) on her great album (if you get rid of the skit tracks, which you can do) The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
I also think about taking my daughter to the Brooklyn Museum when she was three or so, to a show about rock ‘n’ roll, and she toddled through the exhibit and hugged Fugee Wyclef Jean’s Fender, which caused some serious grief among the guards. Hey, it’s their jobs and rightfully so. To this day she has not hugged another guitar in a museum, but she’s started to work out the chords on our electric.
Rediscovering Supershit
Was putting together my playing wish list for the new forming band I’m in last night. Honestly, I’m pretty excited. Two guitars – Gibson/Marshall, good singer too (not me).
Realized how long it had been since I spun the Supershit 666 EP, so I stopped in my tracks and did it. Retains the title of best piece of recorded music ever. And, consequently, it must be the most underrated piece of recorded music ever, because I never see it mentioned – anywhere. I’ll bet 99.99999999 percent of the music world doesn’t even know it exists. This has to play at my funeral after-party as my last statement to the world. (Am I full of shit or what? Glenn Frey and Don Henley have nothing on me.)
Take a listen to this original song by The Rods. The first Rods album is supposedly an underrated classic in and of itself. Never got it, because what I sample sounds a little too 80s for my liking.
Now take a listen to the Supershit cover. They run it over like a snowplow burying Peter Kreutzer’s car after a Brooklyn blizzard (quite the colorful writer, I am).
The “slight” change to the opening lyric line says it all:
Stranger In My Own Home Town
Some years ago I stumbled across a great album called Poet of the Blues
Mayfield should be most famous as the writer of the massive Ray Charles hit song, “Hit the Road Jack,” but that song isn’t on Poet of the Blues. Charles signed him to Tangerine Records, where he wrote other hits for Ray, and this song, which was made a hit by Elvis Presley in 1970, on his Back in Memphis elpee.
I didn’t know about this song until today, since it also is not on Poet of the Blues, and I have to say that if I’d only heard the Presley version I would probably wouldn’t have wondered about who wrote the song. It sounds like one of those big star blues jams, fun and all, but without a signature.
But signature is what Percy Mayfield had, always, and especially when he sang. Here’s his version of Stranger in My Own Home Town, which is deeply satisfying, but makes me want to hear Jerry Lee Lewis’s version, too.
Song of the Week – Run, Boy, Run, Longbranch Pennywhistle
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
First it was Bowie, then Glenn Frey of Eagles. I have to admit, Eagles weren’t my favorite band. There were times that they rocked out and I could relate, but their soft rock ditties like “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Best of My Love” just don’t do it for me.
But Frey’s passing allows me the opportunity to pay him tribute by posting about another group he was in – the duo Longbranch Pennywhistle. The self-titled album has been long out of print so it is the second installment of my “Rare Record Series.”
Longbranch Pennywhistle was released in 1969 on the independent Amos label and was the work of Frey and his longtime friend and collaborator, John David (JD) Souther. In fact, they teamed up to write several of Eagles big hits including the aforementioned “Best of My Love”, “New Kid in Town”, “Victim of Love” and “Heartache Tonight.”
SotW is “Run, Boy, Run.” It was chosen because it was written by Frey and reminds me of my favorite Eagles song, “Already Gone”, which was sung by Frey (although written by Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund) and contains some of his best ripping guitar solos.
On “Run, Boy, Run” (and “Already Gone”) you can hear some of that working class rock and roll style that Frey must have learned growing up in Detroit and playing with Bob Seger (guitar and vocals on “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man”). The song/album also doesn’t suffer from the musical backing they get from session players including James Burton, Larry Knechtel, Jim Gordon, Ry Cooder, and Doug Kershaw. Not a shabby group.
Enjoy… until next week.
Josh and Iggy Riff on Colbert
Gardenia.