Like late 19th-century English literature, I know far more about Roxy Music from those they’ve become or those they’ve influenced than their actual elpees. That’s because I’ve never owned a Roxy Music album (but I own plenty of Eno), and I’ve never read a Jane Austen novel (though I’ve seen plenty of the stories on a movie or television screen).
The last couple of days I’ve been playing the Essential greatest hits el=pee, which starts with the fantastic Re-Make/Re-Model and ends with a live and somewhat lachrymose version of Jealous Guy. In between is their first single, from 1972, the rollicking Virginia Plain, which seems to mash just about every style of rock under a Velvets’ kind of chug.
The movie Deliverance was a horror movie based on the idea that educated adventurers rafting through West Virginia were somehow better than the impoverished folks who lived there. But one of the movie’s most memorable scenes was a bit of music that was written by a man named Arthur Smith, who died earlier this week, which showed a shared core of delightful string picking.
Smith had a long career as a songwriter, performer and television host. He also owned a recording studio in Charlotte, N.C., where James Brown recorded Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.
The NY Times obit ends with an anecdote. It seems that when the guitarist in a fledgling rock band called the Quarrymen bungled the lead line in Smith’s Guitar Boogie, the band moved Paul McCartney to bass player and brought in George Harrison as a guitarist.
If you think Back In Black is AC/DC’s best album, you can stop reading right here. In truth it is the only good Brian Johnson album.
The top five AC/DC songs conveniently came out to one song per each of the first five albums, so I will list them chronologically.
It amazes me that, although I am generally very lyric agnostic, Bon Scott’s lyrics do a lot for me. Always perfect iambic pentameter (very important to me), always very rock ‘n’ roll. Therefore, I will include videos with words and the outstanding song lyric when possible.
Disclaimer – These aren’t about Beatles vs. Bob Dylan vs. Rolling Stones (especially since this one’s about only AC/DC). These aren’t necessarily the “correct” choices that you can find on every other internet or magazine list. These aren’t about who was the first to do this or that. Steveslist doesn’t care. These are about what I reach for and what turns my crank and what makes me smile.
Rock ‘N’ Roll Singer from High Voltage
I do believe this is the first album I played in the brand spankin’ new 8-track player my friend installed for me in my dad’s 1968 Rambler station wagon for my first solo drive after getting my drivers license. I felt like a damn Hell’s Angel.
Outstanding Lyric – “Yes I are.”
Ain’t No Fun Waitin’ Round To Be A Millionaire from Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Seven minutes of boogie woogie drone. (This may well have made the Best 5 7-Minute Songs list if I had realized it was 7 minutes.) Brian Johnson AC/DC fans don’t understand this stuff whatsoever.
Outstanding Lyric – “I got patches, on the patches, on my old blue jeans. Well they used to be blue, when they used to be new, when they used to be clean.”
Overdose from Let There Be Rock
The second guitar’s entrance at 0:47. When the whole thing begins marching along at 1:25. Crazed barely-controllable (the whole thing is constantly threatening to degenerate into a feedback fest) buzzing bee guitars. Electric as electric gets.
Outstanding Lyric – “All over you.”
Gone Shootin’ from Powerage
Cool, light, feel-good, duel-guitar boogie woogie – about heroin. Could drone on forever as far as I’m concerned.
Outstanding Lyric – None to speak of.
Touch Too Much from Highway To Hell
This one was even a hit. Super lyrics all the way through.
Outstanding Lyric – “She had the face of an angel, smilin’ with sin, the body of Venus with arms. . .”
St. Paul & the Broken Bones and Otis got me wanting this one, no doubt one of the 100 best songs ever. For some reason it’s in danger of going down the memory hole, so just in case you youngsters don’t know it let’s take steps:
One thing about the core of us here at the Remnants is that we all became friends thanks to baseball: in particular fantasy baseball.
And, maybe there is something about how our respective and collective brains process, that makes it so that while we all do love baseball and games, there are a bunch of other things we all love, and are happy to discuss ad naseum.
Like music.
So, when our good buddy from Rotowire, Derek Van Riper, asked me if I was familiar with St. Paul & the Broken Bones, I had to plead ignorance, but that did not last too long.
I did a YouTube search, and found a song entitled Call Me, which was pretty good. It also reminded me so much of the late great wonderful Otis Redding, and his band the Barkays, who sadly died in a plane crash in December of 1967.
And, as I finished watching the Call Me video, what did I spot but a live cover of the band performing Redding’s wonderful I’ve Been Loving You (too Long to Stop Now).
Now, to be fair, my love of Redding and that song tracks back to a pair of vintage all time classic albums: Otis Redding Live in Europe, and Jimi Hendrix & Otis Redding Live at Monterey (which made my essential 50 albums list).
So, the fact that Paul Janeway (St. Paul) and his crew pretty deftly pull off their homage and sound is high praise. I mean, these guys really have the essence of the Stax/Volt sound down.
Here is the band covering Otis:
And, as a means of comparison, here is Otis and the Barkays at the peak of their form at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, just about six months before they perished.
Otis is so good and cool, and his band is so tight that it is hard to imagine anyone even trying what St. Paul and mates did. They certainly get props from me. Thanks DVR!
Doc Pomus and Mort Schuman wrote this classic in 1960. It was originally recorded by Ben E. King and the Drifters in 1960.
Pomus had polio as a child and used crutches to get around until later in life, when he used a wheelchair. The irony of a man who can’t dance writing a song about watching his lover dance with another is powerful stuff, and Lou Reed has told the story that the lyric was inspired by Pomus’s wedding day, when he married a Broadway star and dancer, but could not dance his own wedding dance.
All of which would be way too much, except it’s true. And the song is not comfortably romantic. There is angst, lots of angst in there, too.
Which is what helps make Leonard Cohen’s closing time singalong with 14,000 Irish so touching. Oh, that and Leonard’s age. We’re all too freakin’ human.
A bit of ashcan soul by Springsteen, from which Johnny grabs the gritty realism, adds some soaring horns, cornball harmonica and a chorus of complementary voices and makes a bombastic kind of perfection. Me? I’ve had a fever for the last couple of days, so it got into my head.
