Thinking about weird but wonderful white reggae, here is this one from Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Abdul and Cleopatra, that I really love (with a suitably odd homemade video–for instance, why use a map of the Tidewater rather than, say, Egypt?):
And this other one, the instrumental Egyptian Reggae, which has more than 2 million views, perhaps more for the video than the tune (which is catchy nonetheless).
Just an excuse to listen to Dreadlock Holiday.
10cc – dreadlock holiday by gazaw
Which is pretty amazing. The most literal video is also the most ironic. I’m not sure Wolfman Jack would approve.
Keith, on the other hand. moved to Jamaica at some point, and ended up having a band of local musicians record as Wingless Angels.
The beauty of Keef’s album with Wingless Angels is it really is the music his Jamaican neighbors/friends/accomplices played. As he says in his book, you can hear the crickets. This is way closer to the gospel of Rastafari than that of Island Records and the international hit machine’s embrace of the Island.
There are virtues and tradeoffs either way, compromises explicit and implicit.
In the end, it comes down the music.
Spoon has a new record coming out in August, and today a song escaped or was pushed, called The Rent I Pay. It’s okay, a thumping beat and some layers of guitars and distortion, with lyrics I’m not obsessive enough to understand just yet.
Back in 2007 I bought Spoon’s rapturously reviewed album Ga Ga Ga Ga. Actually I downloaded the tracks from my music vendor of choice then, eMusic. So while I have the files, I don’t know the package, which I’m sure had a torturously tiny lyrics sheet. Which may be why I played the stuff a bunch of times and then it oozed back into the deep well that is my music library. I remember liking it well enough, but obviously not indelibly.
And from a couple of listens today to the Rent I Pay and a revisit to Ga Ga Ga Ga, I think the problem is obvious. These guys are, as everyone says, one of the best rock n roll bands of our times, but they’re not quite right. The tempo isn’t pushed forward enough, the songs don’t swing. The crunch is big, but echoes over a static landscape into which it curls up and dies. The problem of comparisons is that there aren’t that many rock bands these days, apart from the ones playing the oldies. Call that small pond syndrome.
And these guys aren’t young, like Fidlar. Spoon formed in 1993, in the heights of rock’s last gasp, Grunge.
Sorry to make this sound like such a drag, Spoon isn’t really that. But it doesn’t burst with excitement, the way the Black Keys sometimes do (or did, in their early days). This bit of white reggae is just fine, but it really makes me want to hear Dreadlock Holiday.
I closed the Fantasy Football Guide tonight.
I bet the 2cellos are fun to see live, but bowed instruments are so 1980s.
But, it’s all I have:
#exhaustion
All that stuff about the Records last week just reminded me how much I loved the flood of British Power Pop bands that poured in tagging along with the punks in the late 70’s.
Nick Lowe might have led the charge with Paul Weller (The Jam) and Bram Tchaikovsky (The Motors) along with Eddie and the Hot Rods and the Tom Robinson band. It was great here in the Bay Area, as one of those bands tickled in each week.
Such were the Vapors, who became legitimate one-hit wonders with their incredibly clever and tuneful–and I guess by now overplayed–Turning Japanese. And, the album the gave us that song, New Clear Days, was just as solid to me as was the Records vinyl.
In saying that get that I really dug them both, and still do.
So, I went to the tune I remember best from their big album, A Letter From Hiro.
Which oddly seems to also tie back into all the Japanese power pop of a few years back.
Strange.
But it’s Imperial State Electric.
Note how the drummer borrows what’s good about Keith Moon while leaving behind the annoying excess nonsense.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
I believe in trusting my instincts and following the subtle signals we receive from the cosmos. I know, it sounds hokey but when unrelated events line up you have to wonder why and trust there is a reason.
Let me explain how I came to choose today’s SotW.
Blondie has been all over the media lately. They got a recent cover story in MOJO (May 2014) and took a rare musical spot on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (May 14th). This got me thinking about Blondie’s roots as an act at CBGB’s along with the other bands commonly associated with the club. Some had very successful careers (The Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith) others a little less so (Television and Mink Deville) and yet others were merely a footnote – like The Shirts.
So I began to think that maybe a song by The Shirts would be a good SotW candidate, especially since their brand of power pop was closer to Blondie than the edgier rock of most of those other bands.
But here’s the kicker that caused me to pull the trigger. I just received an email from Netflix announcing that the 13 episode season two of Orange is the new Black is now available for viewing. Bingo, the light went on! Annie Golden, the lead singer for The Shirts, played the character of the “mute” Norma in season one. That locked it.
Today’s SotW is “Tell Me Your Plans” from their 1978 debut album.
“Tell Me Your Plans” was a surprise hit in Europe but received little notice here in the States.
For an example of the band’s harder rock sound, check out “Empty Ever After.”
The Shirts were based out of Brooklyn. Several of the Italian American bandmates were cousins – kind of a neighborhood band – and preferred that the band’s name be pronounced with a heavy Brooklyn accent — The “Shoits” (think John Travolta’s Tony Manero character in Saturday Night Fever).
The Shirts was produced by Mike Thorne who may have formed relationships with the CBGB acts when he was hired to work on Wire’s Live at CBGB Theatre, New York – July 18th 1978. It has his trademark sound that graces quite a few other great albums including Wire’s Pink Flag, ‘Til Tuesday’s Voices Carry, and Human Sexual Response’s In A Roman Mood.
After releasing a couple more albums The Shirts dissolved in 1981.
Enjoy… until next week.
I don’t like prejudice, and so I don’t like knee-jerk evaluations of stuff. Oh, it isn’t your style? I would hope you listen instead and think instead of jerk your knees. Or shoot your mouth. Criticize, don’t bleat like some pop/punk princess.
I was working at the Food Coop today, enter Portlandia sound effect, and the squad leader put on a Pandora stream of early 80s pop disco. Reminders of lots of cheesy tunes, lots of dark nights, and also a reminder that at a time when Punk was ascendent, the Disco vision was also ascendant. The outcomes were totally different, but the motivations of the two were locked together, at least until AIDS erupted.
I and almost every other rocker I knew loved Good Times. It’s a great groove.
I’ve posted about Kathleen Hanna before. She was a leader of the Riot Grrl fanzine and band scene in the early 90s. There is a movie out about her, called The Punk Singer, which scored an 88 at Rotten Tomatoes.
In recent years she’s had a band called The Julie Ruin. Their album is a mixed bag, but this is a good one.
And let’s end with something of a Ted talk by Hanna at a show at Joe’s Pub in NY a few years ago. Good fun.
I hoped to end with a song by a band called Muttonchops, but such a thing does not seem to exist on You Tube.
I read a good review of this band’s “punky” new record last week and waded in. These guys are from Scranton PA, and the band’s name is the phonetic spelling of the German word for troubadour, which is kind of what gives here. You would hope that the sons of coal miners and refinery workers would be clawing (or digging) like mad to escape the brutal lives their parents lived as they struggled to get their little honeys into college and away from a life of Walmart and picking scabs off the inside of their various orifices. Kind of like Steve, who hails from around those parts, but no.
This kind of punk is really singer songwriter pop bleating catchy tunes above some well struck drums and jangly-hard guitars. I listened to a bunch of Menzinger’s songs and this one is the best I heard, but if you like it you might find something you like more in their catalog. If that’s the case, I’d suggest you try harder. There’s no reason to settle for competent fake punk.
By the way, I tried to be grumpy about the video but I couldn’t. Perfect.
Hmm, Menzingers, kind of like telling jokes about men. Kind of like that video. Brilliant.
