I wanted to link to the Milli Vanilli version recorded live at Albert Hall, with Jeff Lynne and PJ Harvey, but it isn’t on YouTube.
This video is terrific, which I hadn’t seen before, and which warrants a listen again to a song we’ve all heard too many times. But the psychedelia and pop song craft I hear here is worlds apart from what came after. Get out of here XTC! The noises in this song are economical, the language plain and straight forward (which still leaves plenty of room for weird). I was glad to watch it, even if I would have preferred Milli Vanilli at this point.
From one of the best rock oral histories ever, Detroit Rock City – The Uncensored History of Rock ‘n’ Roll In America’s Loudest City, by Steve Miller (not that Steve Miller).
I went hunting (pun intended) for my favorite Ted Nugent “asshole in a cool kind of way” story, but ran into the John Sinclair quote right after it. It’s all there, right on page 19:
Bobby Rigg (The Frost, drummer): The first time we met Ted Nugent all he could talk about was himself and how he was the greatest guitar player in the world. We were in a hotel in New York City. We were staying there, Led Zeppelin was there, Nugent and the Amboy Dukes were there. And Nugent was on the same floor as Jimmy Page, and this hotel was built in a U-shape. Nugent’s window was across from Jimmy Page’s room; he put a Fender Twin Reverb in the window and started screaming at the top of his lungs, “I’m the greatest guitar player in the world! Jimmy Page sucks!” and started playing his guitar as loud as he could facing Jimmy Page’s room. That’s the way Nugent was. What you see is what you get.
John Sinclair: Ted Nugent is an asshole. He always was.
Well, he probably always was, we just didn’t know it yet.
Anyway, I’ve had notions of adding some vintage Ted Nugent to my CD collection for some time now. My friends and I were big into Ted back in the vinyl days, from about the time he abandoned the psychedelic for straight-up hard rock (Call Of The Wild) to the time he started doing all the vocals himself and shaved off his beard (post-Cat Scratch Fever). We used to joke that his beard held all his musical powers and, once it was gone, so was Ted.
Finally ordered up what was my favorite, Ted Nugent – his first album without the Amboy Dukes. Having not heard this album for probably 30 years, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it holds up. I will be playing it again and maybe adding to my early Nugent collection.
Observations, now that I’m much older and wiser:
1) There are no slow songs or noodlers, surely much of what appealed to a pre-punk Steve Moyer back in the day. One can argue Stranglehold is a noodler, but, if so, it’s a damn good one.
2) The militia man beginnings are here, though I didn’t realize it way back when. Get a load of these lyrics (and subject matter) of the otherwise excellent Stormtroopin’:
“Comin’ up that street, jackboots steppin’ high, got to make a stand,
Lookin’ in your windows, listenin’ to your phone, keep a gun in your hand”
3) The best Ted Nugent band was this incarnation, with Derek St. Holmes handling most of the vocals. In retrospect, St. Holmes is quite Steve Marriott (not a bad thing at all – I didn’t know Humble Pie yet as a kid) and some of this album has a very Humble Pie feel to it.
4) Wiki doesn’t say why St. Holmes wasn’t in the band, at least for a while, after Cat Scratch Fever. Wiki also tells me St. Holmes did a bunch of other stuff, including joining Nugent again later. All I remember was the Whitford/St. Holmes album he did with the Aerosmith guy, which I thought about buying many times but never did. You Spinal Tap fans (I am not one) will be interested in knowing that David St. Hubbins’ moniker was inspired by St. Holmes.
5) Finally, the song I’m posting has a very early Alice Cooper beginning yet lyrically seems to be taking a poke at Alice and his lot. I’ve read a good bit of Detroit rock history and don’t remember any feud between the two, so maybe the lyrics are aimed elsewhere.
So this Brazilian song sounds like a Stones song that has a completely different arrangement (and obviously Garcia singing in Brazilian is different than Jagger in English). What is that song? I’m blanking right now. But I’m sure in the morning we’ll all get it, unless it was on Metamorphosis.
When we figure it out I’ll post the Stones song, to complete the blend!
Had some friends over for dinner tonight, and when the talk turned to music this band came up. This is the first song I found from them. The appeal is obvious, but how much of the appeal comes from copping a great sound?
Back in the 1980s there was a record label out of LA that signed a lot of very cool bands. Slash Records focused on the local LA scene with bands like X, Los Lobos, The Germs, the Blasters and more. They also ventured far afield to sign other “roots rock” acts like the BoDeans, whose T-Bone Burnett produced debut – Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams – is a classic. A song from that album deserves to be a SotW, and probably will be some time.
But this week I’m choosing a song from another Slash act, “Backseat Nothing, by Boston’s Del Fuegos.
The Del Fuegos were brothers Dan (guitars/vocals) and Warren (guitars) Zanes, and Tom Lloyd (bass) and Woody Giessmann (drums). The album was produced by the then young Mitchell Froom, who also added some keys to the set. (It was one of his earliest gigs as a producer.)
“Backseat Nothing” is from the band’s first album, The Longest Day (1984). It is very typical of their R&B/rockabilly garage band style – closer to The Rolling Stones than The Clash – which was pretty unusual in the mid 80s when MTV was minting stars and Madonna and synth pop ruled the airwaves.
This approach endeared them to a relatively small but loyal audience. But when the band accepted a sponsorship from Miller Beer to star in a cinema-verité commercial, some of their more sensitive fans smelled a sell out and abandoned them. That’s a little hard to fathom today when even top tier rock stars license their music to peddle goods or accept corporate tour sponsors. But back in the 80s (and before) it was taboo.
One last bit of trivia… “Backseat Nothing” was used in an episode of the FX Network firefighter program (starring Denis Leary) Rescue Me from Season 4 called “Babyface.”
I did not get to see The Upper Crust last night, but my life-long mate Stephen Clayton and I did venture across the bay to San Rafael, to Terrapin Crossroads (Phil Lesh’s place) to see Frisell and his band touring behind the guitar player’s latest disc, Guitar in the Space Age. (Note that I have wanted to see the guitarist for years.)
True, it ain’t rock, but, that does not mean the music doesn’t rock. These guys–for this video is the same band Stephen and I saw–were arguably the most talented collection of musicians I have ever seen playing live with one another. The interplay and musicianship and notes chosen by the collective was breathtaking (watch this and you will see what I mean).
But, in deference to my previous Edge v. Tekulve post, I have started thinking of guitarists in terms of ballplayers, and this time, I could only think of the great Cub and Brave, Greg Maddux as a parallel.
Both can clearly paint the corners, and are artists with a true craft within their respective profession. And, they don’t really look alike, but do sort of have the same look in their eye in the above pics, huh?
Stylish, smart, never overtly overpowering, yet always dominant, Maddux could make the perfect pitch just as Frisell squeezes out the perfect note. Both Hall of Famers!
My old buddies John Seabrook and John Homans have been fronting the Sequoias, a hard driving cover band, for quite a few years now. Here’s a story I posted, with video, from a show of theirs a couple of years ago.
Tonight they step up, however, with a gig at the Mother Nature Network’s White House Correspondents’ Jam at the Fairmont Hotel. The key ingredient this evening, however, aren’t the five bands that are playing that feature journalists, but the piano player for at least one number with each of them: Chuck Leavell.
Rare still photo (actually video frame capture) of some of the Sequoias.
Leavell is promoted as the piano player for the Rolling Stones, which is true, but I’ll always think of him as a member of the Allman Brothers Band.
