Good Night Music: The Stranglers

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Rattus Norvegicus may have been the first punk album I bought, either that or the Vibrators’ Pure Mania. It’s a long time ago, but recall that:

a) It took a while until a lot of punk bands released full albums; often punk bands just had singles. Even the Sex Pistols album didn’t come out until October of 1977.

b) Most everything was an Import, so only the good record stores carried a lot of this stuff.

I recently bought the Stranglers Old Testament box set instead of simply getting the first two albums, which were the ones I was into. I hadn’t done much with it, but today I listened to those first two. In retrospect, it’s very uneven, some stuff brought a smile to my face, some stuff is pretty crappy and doesn’t hold up.

Here’s a good one:

Time Waster: Which Classic Rock Band Are You?

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Buzzfeed strikes again. Yesterday I was Pennsylvania, the state that leads. The day before I was James Madison, the President who had a personality like mine. Today:

Screenshot 2014-02-16 11.43.47

I’m learning so much about myself.

Night Music: Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, “Cover of the Rolling Stone”

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Tom posted about Dr. Hook earlier today in his weekly story.

I was skeptical about Will Sheff’s claims about this long forgotten Dr. Hook DVD, from a show on German TV in 1975, but I started reading, which got me to listening, and he doesn’t exaggerate as much as he could have.

I don’t see quite the danger he does in Penicillin Penny, but then he’s watched the show enough times to know how the story plays out, and his reading of the song definitely makes the story better. And the story does play out, dramatically and expressively, when the band plays their greatest hit.

The way George Cummings hijacks THe Cover of the Rolling Stone is explosive, in the same way Andy Kaufman could wrangle the spotlight away from whomever and twist it onto some other space where Andy Kaufman shined brightest. Cummings is making a feedback screech, for some unstated reason, and it makes for surprisingly vigorous theater.

But the real brilliance is that this doesn’t seem at all staged. It’s just a guy in a band stealing the spotlight on this particular night in Germany. The stakes were small, the rebellion (in context) large. Caught on tape.

http://www.willsheff.com/we-never-have-to-be-alone-dr-hook-and-the-medicine-show-live-1974/

Great find, Tom! Will doesn’t overstep when he points to part of this show as being punkish. These guys were the guys Patti Smith hated in high school.

UPDATE: I posted the above, thinking I’d read Will Sheff’s story to the end. But I hadn’t. It turns out Sheff opens the story up into a discussion of all sorts of problems with authenticity and stagecraft, the very lack of which—in this program—I thought he was holding up to some esteem. But he has suspicions that the high drama might have been staged.

I find his late reveal on the potential that all this crappy stagecraft could have been orchestrated to be problematic. I feel tricked. At the same time, hate the storyteller, but if he’s right the tale gets better. And if not, the tale is as good as it ever was.

You are forgiven Will.

Another Kiss Tribute

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Nobody generates more facepaint. (click to enlarge)

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Song of the Week – Marie Laveaux, Dr Hook and the Medicine Show

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dr hookIGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

Over the Christmas holiday I visited my cousins in FL and they turned me on to a magazine article and DVD they had recently discovered about Dr Hook and the Medicine Show. Yes, you remember the group that had a few hits in the early 70s with Shel Silverstein penned songs, most notably “Sylvia’s Mother” and “On the Cover of the Rolling Stone.”

Well, it all started with this long form article, “We Never Have to Be Alone”, by Will Sheff that describes (in lengthy detail) a performance by Dr Hook that was taped by a German TV station in 1974. (Besides being a fine writer, Sheff is also a member of the Alt Country band Okkervil River.) Sheff makes a passionate argument that Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, Live 1974 is the best concert film ever recorded. Ever!

My cousins had a copy of the DVD I was able to view it before reading the article. I have to admit, it is something to behold. What you see is a band that clearly has the talent to put on a great performance, but a whole lot happens in the brief 9 song, 45 minute show. Songs start and stop, guitars go out of tune, band members get pissed off at one another, and one guy even pukes on camera. But amidst all this mayhem is a performance by a band that has self-deprecating charm, wit and, at least for certain moments, flashes of brilliance. They play like they’ve got nothing to lose and it is a delight to watch.

The Sheff article has a few YouTube clips from the TV show embedded into it. Here’s one of them:

But you have to read the Sheff article (all of it) and try to get your hands on a copy of the DVD so you can view the whole thing at once. You will not be disappointed.

Enjoy… until next week.

Listen to Evan Davies on WFMU

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I don’t listen to Evan’s show every week, but that’s my problem. I find I don’t have that much time to listen to the radio, though that’s certainly my choice. I could choose differently.

Evan programs lots of obscure power pop and oddball rock releases on his radio program. He travels the world looking for music that might otherwise be overlooked. The great thing is that every song is not a great song, but every song has a reason to be played on the radio. When I do tune in I’m quickly sucked into the vibe. It’s wonderful. Though not necessarily great for getting work done, unless “work” is letting the mind ramble.

You can find Evan’s radio show here. That link probably takes you to this week’s show, but from there you should be able to find more if you want.

Please want. Free form radio like this is a precious resource, like water that isn’t contaminated by heavy metals. Or radio that isn’t contaminated by heavy metal.

Night Music: Mike Watt, “Big Train”

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So, Mike Watt solo on the Jon Stewart show in 1995.

The only thing is that for Mike Watt solo means Eddie Vedder is playing rhythm guitar, Pat Smear is on the electric slide guitar, and Dave Grohl is hammering the drums. What channel was this?

Lunch Break: De La Soul, “Talking ’bout Hey Love”

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De La Soul was the best of a flowering of hip hop groups about 25 years ago who broke the hard street mold of lots of rap back then. Others I liked a lot were the Jungle Brothers and Monie Love. DLS were from the Long Island suburbs and their music, designed by another Long Islander named Prince Paul, is usually affable and often funny, sometime surreal and not all that aggressive. But it crackles and pops atop a big resounding beat, sometimes with some sharp social observation, while you sway and smile. Their tunes have the scratchy feel of an oldie, mashed up and filtered through time and polished with a modern attitude, filtered by a sense of humor even when angry.

This tune is a good one for Valentine’s Day, a love song built on a Stevie Wonder song, with some sharp spoken word to round it out. Hmmm, maybe not so good for Valentine’s Day after all.

I bring De La Soul up today because as a promotion for something new that’ve got coming up they’re giving away mp3s of all their music. That seems like a funny way to do business, but a visit to YouTube shows all their albums online already. You can sign up for the promo (you have to share an email address) at wearedelasoul.com. UPDATE: I always wondered why I couldn’t stream Three Feet High at Google Music or Mog, and it seems the answer is that because of the way the rights were cleared neither label nor band had the rights to release the music digitally. That seems about to change, as well as the band having new music coming shortly. Now you know.

Which is the best De La Soul album? People I’ve been reading today seem to favor Buhloone Mindstate, but by that time my attention had flagged a little. Both 3 Feet High and Rising and De La Soul Is Dead caught me at a really good moment, so I think it’s probably best to start at the beginning, if you’re going to wade in.

Then tread water.

Archive: Spiders, “No Price Tag”

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Gene put a link to a Spider’s song in Steve’s post about Glen Buxton.

Great stuff, but there is more. I can’t tell if this one is more Yardbirds or Stones, but clearly the pre-Alice had chops.

Night Music: Blood Sweat and Tears, “I Can’t Quit Her”

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Talking about great first albums that dwarf everything that came after, the story of Blood Sweat and Tears is a good one.

Al Kooper and Steve Katz played together in the Blues Project. Kooper, known for going electric with Dylan and producing Hendrix and playing on Let it Bleed with the Stones, was something of a quiet star. He wanted to start a jazz-rock fusion band before that was really a thing. Blood Sweat and Tears was to be his band, named after a Johnny Cash album, for some incongruent reason.

But the better point is that these musicians, working only a few years after the Beatles and Motown and others launched the brave new world of modern pop, rock and soul music that was both fantastically popular and often formally ambitious, were trying to take it up another notch. Could they make music that incorporated blues sounds, pop song structures, horn parts and maybe even strings, plus backwards masking when it worked, to make pop music?

The band’s first album, The Child is the Father to the Man, has fantastic cover art. It also meets the challenge in spades. It is an album full of improbable pop hits, though it was slow to catch on despite the band’s pedigree and the attention it garnered even before its music had been heard.

But even after its minor success, the band thought Kooper’s voice, which I think is an major asset, was not that exact. Which is also true. So they canned him, even though he was the band’s leader. They offered him the keyboard job. I’m sure he cursed. And after that Blood Sweat and Tears were dead to me.

But for one album this improbable ensemble really nailed it.