After disgracing myself, the cleansing storm:
Antidote Music
After disgracing myself, the cleansing storm:
NIGHT MUSIC: Golden Palominos, “Dying From the Inside Out”
Golden Palominos were the drummer Anton Fier’s band, abetted by the bassist Bill Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis. At the start they had Airto Lindsey and Fred Firth on board for a loud dischordant rant. Subsequent records featured lots of guest artists and often featured the charming vocalist Syd Straw. The music ranged from arena rockish to alt-country rockish. On their second record John Lydon, Jack Bruce and Michael Stipe guested. On the record after that it was Peter Holsapple, Richard Thompson, and T-Bone Burnett, among others.
I was a big fan of this band, and saw them a few times over the mid 80s. Last time was at Studio 54, with the Ordinaires opening.
But I don’t remember this song, from their fourth album, which features Bob Mould on vocals and Richard Thompson on the guitar.
A few years ago my friend Walker suggested we go to the Living Room to see a guitarist, Tony Scherr, a guy who had played with Bill Frissell and Sexmobb and Willie Nelson, who was writing his own songs and playing out, trying to start a fire. He is an excellent guitarist and a good enough songwriter, but he didn’t break out. Or hasn’t yet. That night there were maybe 15 people in the audience, the music was terrific, and the drummer was Anton Fier, helping out a friend. Playing the drums because that’s what he does.
Morning Blend: Zager and Evans with Eminem
Another one of Zager and Evans’ losers was this story about a psychopath named Fred who finds success in the military, but then disgraces his family by killing someone civilian.
One of Eminem’s greatest hits was this one about Stan, Em’s biggest fan, who can’t control his love.
Night Music: Zager and Evans, “The Candy Machine”
It never occurred to me (until tonight) to dig deep in the oeuvre of Zager and Evans, who are known almost entirely for their No. 1 hit song in 1969, In the Year 2525. Zager and Evans are famous for being one of the only bands to have a No. 1 and never having another charting single.
But Zager and Evans did not just disappear. And they were not forgotten. This song was apparently used in a movie that had Jack Black in it. And a YouTube commenter said this:
So Zager and Evans are immortal for smart dancing.
Lawr Michaels Hates These Songs (most of which have to do with Martin Luther King)
You may, too. I’m not here to argue that they’re great music. But I think they’re pretty spunky pop songs, and for some reason Lawr picked them out of thin air and created a pantheon of my bad taste.
But maybe you don’t know about them.
Royal Guardsmen, “Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron”
History is a deep well of ideas for stories and songs. This song borrows a rather odd story from the Peanuts comic strip to tell the story of the greatest fighter pilot if World War I, the war to end all wars, and how he was vanquished by a cartoon beagle whose best friend was named Woodstock. With harmonies and sound effects, and Snoopy of course, who at the time was big. Irresistible. As a 10 year old I don’t think I thought much about the copyright implications of using a character created by someone else in a pop song. But the writers were sued by Charles Schulz, the creator of Snoopy, and United Features Syndicate, which sold the strips to newspapers, and lost, and ended up giving up all publishing royalties to Snoopy’s creator. Ouch.
Fun fact: Co writer Dick Holler’s other big hit song was “Abraham, Martin and John,” performed by Dion. Martin Luther King fact No. 1.
Bobby Goldsboro, “Honey”
This is not rock in any shape or form. It’s Lawrence Welk crossed with some kind of kitchen sink melodrama, shaped by Jeff Koons. I like the plain spoken words, which don’t overreach while drawing grandiosely from a vocabulary of knee jerk emotion. Rain falling on kittens? Go away. The song was written by a guy named Bobby Russell, whose other hits were Little Green Apples and The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, two other songs Lawr probably hates.
Fun fact: Honey hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts the week Martin Luther King was murdered. Martin Luther King fact No. 2.
Strawberry Alarm Clock, “incense and Peppermints”
The Strawberry Alarm Clock are still touring and recording. This, thier first single, has some of the sound of a Door’s song, but it also has sweet backing vocals, skrunky guitar breaks, pentatonic piano backups, and a lot of other fake psychedelic effects, ending with a sweet Cowsills-like harmony. It is all going to be alright.
Fun fact: The band’s drummer worked up a jet system attached to his wrists, so it looked like his hands were on fire while he played.
After their No. 1 experience they were scheduled to go on tour with the Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield, but many dates in the south were cancelled after Martin Luther king was killed. MLK fact No. 3.
Norman Greenbaum, “Spirit In the Sky”
I was going to write a lot about the guitars and the backup singers. Norman’s plain and straight-forward vocals, and the song’s clean melody. It’s a rhythmic stomp, a dark harbinger, and an inspiration even if you’re an unbeliever, all at once. But it’s the killer guitar sound and the gospel singers backing it up that make it work. But then I saw the video. Wow. There is that Jesus stuff, but Norman was a good Jewish boy trying to write some Gospel music, and he succeeded. Though for me it isn’t the gospel, it’s the sound, which is pretty unusual for AM radio hits.
Bob Dylan is another Jewish boy to write praise songs for the Lord. FWIW.
I’m told the song is used to introduce the Angels of Anaheim before their home games. Good choice.
And then there is Martin Luther King fact No. 4.
Zager and Evans, “In the Year 2525”
Totally catchy, but totally ridiculous. I’m embarrassed for ever having suggested this had any redeeming value. Fun fact: It was knocked off the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 by the Stones Honkey Tonk Women.
Plus, there is no Zager and Evans and Martin Luther King connection. How can that be?
Song of the Week – Shelter Song, Temples
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
I’m long overdue for a SotW featuring new music, so I’ll fix that today with a song by the band Temples.
Temples is a new psychedelic 4 piece band from the UK that treads much of the same territory as Tame Impala. But where TI takes 60s psych influences and gives them a very modern face lift, Temples seems happy just to inhabit the sounds of the past. They even record with analog equipment, including reel-to-reel tape deck and effects pedals, and classic Rickenbacker 12 string guitars.
Their first single, “Shelter Song”, was released in 2013 but their debut album, Sun Structures, was just released in February.
You can hear the territory that “Shelter Song” stakes out from its first psilocybin chords. The music draws comparisons to so many icons of Nuggets era 60s psych – 13th Floor Elevators, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Byrds, Donovan, Love, Syd period Pink Floyd – that it’s senseless to try to name them all. I even hear a little Marc Bolan/T Rex glam influence too. (But I may be influenced by lead sing/guitarist James Bagshaw’s curly head of hair with that assessment.)
When Bagshaw sings the hippy dippy lyrics, his vocals are somewhat reminiscent of Robert Plant.
One night
You came on over to me
Late night
We shared a drink or three
Night night
I read a proverb to you
That night
She left a room with a view
Take all the time
Time that you want to
Make up your mind
Mind how you go
Take me in time
Time to the music
Take me away to the twilight zone
That the band has an ear for a decent pop melody is what makes their album so pleasurable. If you’re up for a paisley filled, musical nostalgia trip, Temples’ Sun Structures will take you there.
Enjoy… until next week.
My First Date
Jean lived out near the Mall, so we decided to meet out her way. I was 14, maybe. An imbecile.
I remember a few things. Their priority will show why this was a middle school disaster.
On the bus out to the mall I heard Steppenwolf’s The Pusher.
I also heard Norman Greenbaum’s fantastic Spirit in the Sky.
My buddy Bobby’s brother suggested that if the word “tissue” came up one should say –Tissue, I hardly know you.
We were in the camera shop when Jean said tissue.
Breakfast Blend: Argent, “Hold Your Head Up”
Sometime not long after my eventual betrothed and I cohabited, her dad sent us a Sony Dream Machine, which was a pretty great clock radio. I know, now we have the history of the world on our phones which also work as an alarm clock, but it wasn’t always so.
What was so is that we set our wakeup to WNEW, which was New York’s classic rock and somewhat-a-little free form station, even in the mid-80s. At this point I’m guessing that it was WNEW’s 20th anniversary, and they started one of those things. They counted down the 500 or 1000 or 5000 greatest songs of all time, who can remember, and while we didn’t listen all day, it was a topic of some conversation each day, because we woke up to it.
And as they counted down, as we woke up each morning, we heard songs listed as No. 324 that we considered Top 10. (I have no memory of any rankings, sadly, since it would be better if I could explain why Psychokiller should have been top 100 rather than 406th, or whatever the actual facts were, but I can’t.) In this context the last few days of this marathon were truly suspenseful. This was the best radio station I knew limning a pantheon of rock tunes at a time when that wasn’t something available all over the internet. It was something music geeks might do, and they really had no good way to know that there were so many other geeks out there doing the same things. They were a band that had yet to meet.
So, while I have no memories of specific songs, I remember commenting in the final days that they were using up all the good stuff in the countdown. There was nothing good left for number one, it seemed, the morning of the big reveal. But there was.
At the appointed hour, the appointed DJ (it had to be Scott Muni), played the Greatest Rock Song Of All Time! Here it is:
You might ask What’s my point. I might say that’s my point. Hold your head up.
Night Music: Les McCann and Eddie Harris, “Compared to What”
Another song that is a question, this one without the question mark. That Tower of Power track, What is Hip, reminded me of this, but Compared to What predates it by at least a few years.
McCann and Harris are a more trad jazz ensemble, and I first heard their version of the song driving around Long Island with my buddy Peter. I had heard lots of 40s jazz at home growing up, but this was my introduction to something wilder and more interesting. It sounded angry and beautiful, too, and is one of the reasons I listened to a lot more jazz in my life.
It turns out that the song was written by Eugene McDaniels, and first recorded by Roberta Flack. Her version, on her first album, is more traditional, focused more on the words of the message than McCann and Harris’s version, which delights and twists the knife on the refrain, and pumps up the music. Theirs is greatness, but Flack illustrates where the song started.
What Is Hip?
I’m not sure Tower of Power included the question mark, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. (Clip is from 1976 live album, with question mark.)
A website devoted to data with the uneuphonious name of Pricenomics devised a way to discover which bands are the best hipster bands, by plotting their ratings on Pitchfork (high is cool) and their Facebook likes (high is uncool). It will surprise no one that Vampire Weekend straddles the divide between pop and hip.
Follow the link to find out which bands are the hippest and those too pop to matter.
What is definitely not hip at this point, if it ever was, is Tower of Power. But they can play.