Cosimo Matussa also engineered/produced this one, which is just a perfect pleasure. I can remember the first time I heard it. I’d bought a compilation of early New Orleans music, curious about these oldies that weren’t on the radio. It was full of great tunes, but this is the one that beckoned over and over.
I got to boogie woogie like a knife in the back.
Is this the first rock ‘n’ roll song?
That was 1947. Some say it was this Fats Domino tune from 1950.
I always thought this Joe Turner tune was the one, but obviously this was a process.
The unifying thing here, however, is that all three tunes were recorded in Cosimo Matassa’s studio in New Orleans, with Matassa engineering.
Jerry Lee Lewis cut his first demos in that studio. Frankie Ford’s iconic New Orleans tune Sea Cruise was recorded there. Little Richard’s hits? Matassa recorded them.
You can read all about his rockin’ life in this New York Times obituary.
The movie clearly copped the setting and specifics of the band’s official video for Transmission, but aestheticized it. The better sound is a plus, the more engaged closeups are a plus, but the more controlled edges of the frame and the understanding that these are actors defangs it. The Official Video feels edgier, even though it is official.
I’m on another Raveonettes binge. One mark of a great band is that what they do sounds so obvious once you hear it, but you never heard it before and nobody else is doing it. This song is a place to take punk that no other punks thought of, at least that I know of.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
I was watching an episode of Live from Daryl’s House that had Minus the Bear as his guests. To my surprise, they played a version of “NYCNY” from Hall’s Sacred Songs solo album. That got me thinking about my favorite songs on two pretty obscure albums that remain forever intertwined.
Sacred Songs is an interesting album and considered a hidden classic by its fans. It was recorded with Robert Fripp’s help (guitars and production) in 1977, but RCA withheld its release until 1980. At that time, Hall wanted to branch out from the blue eyed soul he was making with partner John Oates, and Fripp, on hiatus from King Crimson, was about to start work on his Exposure solo album.
“NYCNY” is a very cool song that was written in collaboration by Hall (lyrics) and Fripp (music). An alternate version showed up on Exposure in 1979 under the title “I May Not Have Had Enough of Me but I’ve Had Enough of You” but with different lyrics by that version’s co-writer, Joanna Walton.
When work was completed on Sacred Songs – it only took three weeks – Hall returned the favor and agreed to help out Fripp with Exposure. My favorite song on Exposure is “You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette” which was also co-written by Hall and Fripp and features a Hall vocal.
Recorded in New York in 1978, you can definitely hear the influence of the local punk scene that was on the rise at that time.
Although Hall and Fripp seemed like a very counter intuitive pairing when they began work together, you must admit that the music they made still sounds pretty good some 35 years later.
Enjoy… until next week.
Listening to Transmission makes it impossible to not think of Roadrunner.
I think this Sex Pistols version was part of Johnny’s audition to be in the band. Of historical interest because his vocals rock even though he doesn’t know the words to the song, and the band is pretty tight.
Did this end up in our list of songs about the radio?
It is one of Greil Marcus’s History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs
What Marcus gets into in the book as this film clip, from the movie Control, is performed by the actors, not the band. Still, it has a massive power.
I don’t remember this video, and I have to say that the military theme surprises me. But the video seems to be French in origin, which might explain it all.
In any case, new wave explains most of the rest.
Speaking of new wave.
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