Since Jailbreak is in my all-time top 50, I bought the expensive super-duper deluxe version that came out a few years ago, with all kinds of demos, alternates, etc.
This is my favorite. Call me crazy, but it made the price of the whole package worth it all by itself. The differences are subtle until the different third verse (please stick around). And call me melodramatic, but when I first heard this, it gave me a sense of melancholy, as if Phil Lynott was still alive and making great new/old stuff again. I guess the entire song is kind of melancholy.
I’ve always thought this would be a cool cover for Springsteen.
There are other good Sex Pistols songs, but this one seems to me like the heart of the project. Not exploitive or sensational, not based on obvious rock hooks, but awfully catchy and enduring.
Just ordered John Lydon’s new biography Anger Is An Energy for Amazon Prime delivery on Thursday. I looked at it at Barnes & Noble and it must be 500 pages. (I’m definitely a guy who shops at B&N and buys on Amazon and will be the first to bitch and whine when B&N goes under. What a hypocrite.)
Why does Lydon need another biography? I guess I’ll find out, but I read the first one years ago and liked it a lot. Ty Cobb must be up to like five bios at this point, with a brand new one also on the shelves. I’ve only read the I-think-most-well-known-supposedly-much-tall-tales-and-nonsense one by Al Stump.
And forgive me for treating you like a musical three-year-old, but the new Lydon bio inspired me to listen to the Pistols’ Spunk, the prior-to-Sid Bollocks version with Matlock on bass. Again, I’m guessing you all have this as well as Bollocks and you know that Steve Jones (the guitarist on both albums) played bass on Bollocks, because, true to his rep, Sid couldn’t play.
I give you a typical choice here in Anarchy. Notice the more raw sound, the bouncy bass and Lydon’s a-little-flatter-than-Bollocks vocals as well as slightly different lyrics and delivery.
It isn’t difficult to tell Steve Jones played bass on Bollocks because, on that version, the bass simply doubles the guitar, creating quite a powerful sound wall, but very different from the Matlock Spunk recordings.
Hey, if I taught one person one thing today, maybe it was worth it. I’ll let you know on the book.
We were all very saddened to hear that B.B. King passed away yesterday. Of course I was tempted to pay tribute to him with today’s SotW, but there were so many words written about him yesterday that I have nothing new or special to add. Rest in peace B.B. (and Lucille too).
I recently finished Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces . . ., written by the legendary engineer/producer Glyn Johns. It’s an insider perspective of classic rock and roll that few people can offer. He was in the room when some of the most important albums in the history of rock and roll were recorded.
When Led Zeppelin recorded “Dazed and Confused” he was in the room.
When Mick Taylor and Bobby Keys ripped off those amazing solos on Sticky Fingers’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” he was in the room.
When Roger Daltrey let out that blood curdling scream toward the end of “We Won’t Get Fooled Again” he was in the room again.
As I read the book I was excited about the prospect that Johns would help me to (re)discover some gem of a record that I had overlooked or forgotten. That came in the chapter about the Pete Townshend/Ronnie Lane album Rough Mix.
I’ve always enjoyed that album but often focused on its most popular songs – the ones that got FM radio air play – “My Baby Gives It Away” and “Street in the City.” But it is a lesser known cut on the album, “April Fool”, that Johns says is “among the few moments in my recording career that I treasure.”
The track was almost finished when Eric Clapton offered to add a Dobro part to complement the song.
“I played him the track and I noticed that his foot was tapping as he ran through the song. I quickly put a mic on his foot and we recorded the next run-through. It was note-perfect and quite beautiful. Eric reacting in the most natural and emotive way to the song and Ronnie’s performance of it. Up until that moment I had paid very little attention to Eric as a musician and therefore never really understood what all the fuss was about. I thought he was just another bloody white kid playing the blues. That was very clearly my loss. In a matter of a few minutes I had been completely won over. This was a perfect example of what I have always thought about Eric’s playing. He never allows his brain to get in the way between his heart and his fingers.”
The instrumental title cut (also with Clapton on lead guitar) is pretty cool too.
I don’t know why ribald doo-wop is surprising, but the form just always seemed sort of clean and romantic. Always old fashioned and nice. Of course not.
BB King was my gateway to the blues, via his great album Live at the Regal. I saw him live once, at the Academy of Music in New York on a bill with the J. Geils Band in 1973 or so. An amazing show.
I just read on Wikipedia that King’s favorite singer was Frank Sinatra, who similarly died on May 14th.
Sweet Little Angel is a delightful song, full of life and generous good spirits. On a sad day, I get joy, and everything.
Different than the metalchoreography. This was from Shoot Out The Lights, my first brush with Richard and Linda Thompson, in 1982. A breakup album, they toured together to support it and I saw them at Lone Star Cafe, when it was on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street (with the big lizard on the roof). There was palpable negative energy between them on stage, but when I hit the bathroom later they were hanging out by the Asteroids machine and there was the eau d’ herb about. I spent the next few years working slowly through the back catalog, which is uniformly fantastic, while Richard went on the rampage as a solo artist, releasing a lot of music in the 80s. But all starts here.
