Sung to I Got A Right.
One of my favorite things rock ‘n’ roll:
I Need A Post
Sung to I Got A Right.
One of my favorite things rock ‘n’ roll:
Lunch Break: Alex Chilton
So, on the Tonight Show, the Replacements say their song, Alex Chilton.
When it comes to Alex Chilton, for me, it all goes back to this:
That clip was recorded in the plaza at the World Trade Center on July 14, 2001.
Breakfast Blend: Hawkwind
This morning I stumbled upon a blog by a guy who owns more than 3,000 CDs. His plan was to write about one of them each day for 3,000 days, a goal with the virtue of insanity. He started back in June of 2012, writing about (for some reason) an album called New Gold Dreams by Simple Minds.
After a few months of feverish production the blog posts slowed, and ground to a halt early this year. Then, in March, he announced that he would be taking on a more manageable load, writing about one song per day. For some reason he was soon into Hawkwind, and after writing eight increasingly dispiriting posts about Hawkwind songs, production again stopped.
Having invested 6+ minutes listening to Hawkwind’s The Psychedelic Warlords, and getting to know just a bit about a band I’d heard of but don’t think I’d ever actually heard, it seemed like something to share. I don’t actually have anything to say about it, except I’m glad I’m not tripping.
But that’s from 1974. What did Hawkwind sound like at the beginning, in 1969? Their first album was produced by Dick Taylor, of the Pretty Things, and was recorded live in the studio.
The first song is a folk-rocker, Hurry On Sundown. Pretty nice.
But the song that drew attention for its visionary electronics is the long jam, Seeing As You Really Are.
Night Music: Liz Phair, “Turning Japanese”
When I wrote earlier today the Sonics in 1961 were juvenile I was immediately reminded of the Liz Phair recording Juvenilia. The ep includes some of the songs that she recorded with the band Material Issue on a series of tapes released as Girly Sounds, before she signed with Matador. Before Exile in Guyville.
It also includes a muscular cover of the Vapors’ hit song, Turning Japanese, also backed by Material Issue, and which judging from the YouTube comments might be about masterbation. You moron!
I was going to pair it with the Vapors’ version, but this is much better. There are a lot more comments on the Vapors version’s page, however, including a discussion of why masturbating would be called Turning Japanese rather than Turning Chinese or Turning Asian. Maybe having to do with the number of syllables. Not to be missed, but first, this:
Replacements on the Tonight Show, Tonight.
In 1986 the Replacements were banned from Saturday Night Live after a fairly rousing (at times) if typically rough hewn appearance that involved some forgotten lyrics and an eff-bomb. Plus staggering. Here is a clip of those performances:
That's where we're riding by mmr421
The banning pretty much killed their careers, though Paul Westerberg got around it by going solo.
Tonight the band is on the Tonight Show.
Lunch Break: Freddy King, “In The Open”
I found an album of The Sonics early recordings yesterday, a disk full of live performers that the father of the band’s Parypa brothers recorded at their shows in the early 60s. Larry Parypa went through the recordings and selected 20 tracks for This Is…The Savage Young Sonics. These are lo-fi recordings of a juvenile rock band well before its prime, but it is surprising how much fun this collection of mostly instrumentals is. Not that it beats the band’s classic period elpees.
If there are YouTube clips from this record, I couldn’t find them. What I could find is one of the tunes the Sonics cover, Freddy King’s In The Open. I like vocals, the voice as instrument and all that, but I could listen to this all day.
Night Music: Shades of Blue, “Oh How Happy”
I think I’m generally as grumpy as Moyer, but I have a soft spot for songs that profess the sweet side, and no song does so better than this.
I think it’s audacious in its positivity. But whatever. Enjoy. It is beautiful.
LINK: Lester Bangs Was Not An MC5 Fan
I first learned/heard about the MC5 in Rolling Stone magazine, which as I recall ran a long story about John Sinclair, the martyred leader of the White Panthers who was imprisoned for possession of two sticks of Motor City tea and having grand ideas about freedom and equality that apparently scared the crap out of the cops and their bosses.
I just went looking for that story, to see how much my memory was playing tricks, and found instead this review by Lester Bangs of the first MC5 album for Rolling Stone, which captures his sense of the hype and situation. His lede:
Whoever thought when that dirty little quickie Wild in the Streets came out that it would leave such an imprint on the culture? First the Doors (who were always headed in that direction anyway) grinding out that famous “They-got-the-guns-but-we-got-the-numbers” march for the troops out there in Teenland, and now this sweaty aggregation. Clearly this notion of violent, total youth revolution and takeover is an idea whose time has come — which speaks not well for the idea but ill for the time.
Later in the review Bangs says that the song Kick Out The Jams is like Barrett Strong’s Money as if recorded by the Kingsman, as if that was a bad thing.
Night Music: The Forging of Fred Smith and the MC5
This doesn’t fit the Night Music format, but you should not miss this clip. I think the story teller is Wayne Kramer.
Watch this video.
Night Music: Quicksilver Messenger Service, “Fresh Air”
If you were alive in the late 60s and all of the 70s, you were fed industry folderol about new bands constantly. That was the old way.
There were no zines, no alternative press (unless its origins were political), and no internet. Obs.
But there was radio promotion, touring, and the rock press, which was just beginning to take the music and the artists seriously, if you can believe that. And making lots of money selling ads against its content. No grousing about that, just the observation that one of the reasons things blew up after the Beatles showed everyone how is that small industry became a big one for a while, and while doing so it got the feel of being something new.
I’m sure I learned of Quicksilver listening to this great song on the radio. They have some other good ones, and seem from this vantage to be one of the better more forgotten bands in our history.