Kat Bjelland turned 50 today. She was the motivator in Babes in Toyland. Happy birthday!
I was a Babes in Toyland fan back then. Happy Birthday Kat!
Night Music: Little Willie John, “Leave My Kitten Alone”
I’m sure I heard the Beatles’ version first, and I discovered Little Willie John because of a story in Rolling Stone—so we’re not talking obscure—but still, this is a song that still sounds fresh to me today. A masterpiece.
And here’s an informative conversation about Little Willie John from a Detroit TV show.
I Like This Song: Chuck Berry and Keith Richards, “Carol”
I should research where this clip is from, though I suspect it’s from that TV special Keith did with Chuck that made Keith realize he wasn’t the bastard son of Chuck. Rather, Chuck was a bastard.
What’s great about this clip is how generous the music is. Once they get past the stuff that isn’t working, they really enjoy playing. Maybe all the more so for all the awkwardness that it takes to get them there.
Night Music: Steve Vai and Ry Cooder (channeled by Ralph Macchio), “Crossroads Guitar Duel”
I was at the library and happened upon a collection of short stories called Los Angeles Stories written by Ry Cooder and published by City Lights Press. I just read the first one and it’s plain clear writing and storytelling, with a bit of surreal effect, and a voice that I’m looking forward to visiting with some more.
That’s not surprising to me. Cooder is one of my favorite artists, and he knows Los Angeles. One of his greatest records is Chavez Ravine, an epic in song telling of the story of the development of the Chavez Ravine barrio in Los Angeles, turning people’s homes into a baseball stadium. I was going to post one of that album’s many great songs, and then I found this bit of extreme cheese.
Dueling guitars is all you need to know. I don’t remember how the young karate kid gets into this fight with rock god Steve Vai, but I did see the movie, Crossroads, once upon a time. I believe souls might have been involved. Vai plays his own part, while Cooder plays the part Macchio pantomimes. The drama is crazily false, while the guitar playing is appropriately incendiary given the Hollywood stakes. This is fun.
Ps. On Steve Vai’s Wikipedia page it says he started in Zappa’s band, went solo but also played with Public Image Ltd., Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake. Talking about a crossroads.
Rock Stars Wearing T-Shirts of the Bands They Influenced
Linking here mostly because I thought Steve might have a heart attack seeing Kiss wearing a Miley Cyrus t-shirt. This is weird.
Night Music: The Rolling Stones, “Star Star”
Lee Siegel is an essayist, and he’s written an essay decrying the coarseness of our culture these days.
It’s hard to argue with that, but Siegel seems to be blaming the internet and social media (maybe, he’s not entirely coherent), for making it easier to be blatant than it used to be. He cites his bona fides by mentioning that his favorite movie is Last Tango in Paris, and that he considered once writing a book about the eff word. He’s no prude, he says.
I think he gets it so wrong because he fails to recognize the big difference in the culture when he and I were young, and the culture today. Back then, until the 80s really, the popular culture was (mostly) monolithic. For example, when punk broke all the news and magazine shows did stories on punk music and culture because it looked like it was the next big thing. It was assumed back then that when something grabbed the populace, like the Beatles, that everyone would soon be into it. Everybody paid attention because such seismic shifts affected everyone. Time and Newsweek put them on the cover.
But really, ever since punk, or at least since around then, our culture has splintered. At about the same time came the introduction of the personal computer and the rise of cable television, and in the intervening years, of course, came the overlay of the internet over almost everything. It isn’t that the internet didn’t matter, but that the internet helped us create millions of separate individual cultures. They overlap, of course, but they are tangential to the mass collective culture that they ultimately make up.
Siegel says the culture has coarsened because we now have the brazenness of Beyonce instead of the subtlety of Elvis. Really?
In fact, we still have the subtlety of Elvis. We are not wedded to today culturally. We can pick and choose historically and geographically. Same with movies, and books, and just about everything. The world is our oyster as far as cultural consumption goes. The price we pay for that is that we share less culturally than we used to. It is relatively easy to ignore the popular culture these days, if you want to.
In reality, my family actually is in the middle of the popular culture, because my daughter listens to pop music. A lot. If not for her I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about Lorde and Miley Cyrus and Ellie Goulding and Birdy, among others. And even when I hear these pop songs she listens to, many of which I actually like, I’m under no illusion they represent the culture. Most of my peers I talk to about them don’t know this music, have no interest in it, are totally separate from it. To be sure, they are a sliver of the total output. And when I tire of hearing them in my house, echoing down my hall, I have my ear buds. Bye bye Lorde.
What has become the popular culture of today isn’t the one thing that everyone gets behind, at least out of obligation, but rather it’s now the one thing that everyone allows to be foisted upon them. As in the movie Idiocracy so goes the MTV Music Awards. The popular thing has to break through the weave of our personal cocoons the way nut-busting does, and so Miley creates her provocative theater. And for our soundtrack, we hear the pop tunes in the grocery, sometimes, but then didn’t we always?
Siegel, early on, uses the Rolling Stones Brown Sugar as evidence that subtlety is better. This, he says, was a dirty transgressive rock song that grabbed hold and is still with us 40 years later. It intrigued and captivated us with its subtle evocation of the slaver-slave dynamic(!), and the caucasian black-music lover and the feelings of the black musician being loved (or ignored). This is complicated stuff. Two years later, Siegel points out, the Stones made another, coarser song, called Star Star (Starfucker). Few remember it, he says. Which may be true. Star Star is a straight ahead rock riff, a Chuck Berry vamp amped up and impeccably layered by the Stones with about 300 overdubs, but decidedly lacking in ambition or achievement. It’s a better rock song than almost anyone else could do, but it is pretty rote for the Stones.
Brown Sugar is a classic. Not for its restraint or subtle coarseness but because of its riffs! It doesn’t sound like a Chuck Berry tune. The lyrics are ambitious, ambiguous, allusive, redolent of power and privilege and I hear the recognition that that power and privilege are crimes, though perhaps unavoidable ones. That’s human nature. The song endures because of it’s excellence, not its restraint.
You can read the Lee Siegel piece and maybe you’ll agree with him. I agree that you hear the eff word more these days, so there is that. But I think if we were to live a long time we would hear this exact same argument, again and again and again, from other old guys who have children and who think the world should make them feel more comfortable. So they gripe. But it isn’t going to soothe them, and more importantly, it never did.
The Greatest Punk Single Is…
I just sent the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2014 off to the printer an hour ago. It’s looking sharp. Thanks to those who contributed. You know who you are. Now it’s time for something fun.
Nathanial nominated “Suspect Device” by Stiff Little Fingers.
Gene counters with the Clash’s “Complete Control.”
Steve says The Stooges “Search and Destroy.”
Rotoman says Richard Hell and the Voidoids “Love Comes in Spurts.’
Have a different fave, or a thought? Put them in the Comments.
Night Music: Howling Wolf, “Spoonful”
I was at a fundraiser for my daughter’s school tonight. Drinks and food at another family’s house in the neighborhood, around the corner.
It was nice, actually, a chance to see and meet neighbors who intersect in a variety of important and less important but relentless ways. But after a while I wandered into the kitchen and there was a band, a trio, setting up. Our host, it turns out, plays bass. They had a list of tunes and played for about an hour. Some Chicago blues, some rock ‘n’ roll, all very nicely played. Our host said they were a blues trio, but the standout song was a kind of bossa nova version of I’m Waiting For My Man.
The cool thing was these three oldish guys, probably younger than me, sounded really good. They were loud, but you could stand 15 feet away and talk. Our host, the bass player, later told me that they didn’t always play blues. He said they’d worked out some Morphine songs replacing the sax with guitars.
I want to hear that. But until then, go with the best…
“You don’t own Blonde on Blonde?”
Obviously, that’s not my real name, but Peter set me up with an account here at the First Pitch Forums. For well, reasons, I prefer to post anonymously now and then. I used to be on the email thread we had before the website came into being. Most of you can figure it out. If not, ask Peter. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed following the work posted here so far, and feel I have a couple of things I could add here and there. My time period runs a tad later than the rest of you, but hopefully I have something to add, and perhaps make you acquainted with something you’ll like that you hadn’t heard before.
I grew up with a father who loved the Beach Boys and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Thankfully for my music tastes, my stepfather came into my life at age 9 with a copious Blues collection, while also introducing me to the Stones, the Kinks, and the Allman Brothers, as well as AC/DC when I got older. Musical taste crisis averted.
My musical tastes run the gamut. I listen to everything. Except country. Insert the worst insult Lester Bangs ever wrote about any piece of music here to tell you how I feel about country music. These days my XM Radio will mostly be found on the blues and vintage soul stations. I find myself listening to more stuff from the Stax, Volt, Chess, and Motown labels than anything else these days. One of the good things about my affection for mid-80s to mis-90s hip-hop are the great vintage songs I would not otherwise have been exposed to as a result of sampling.
In the movie High Fidelity, Jack Black’s character is surprised and semi-berates a record store customer for not owning Blonde on Blonde, saying something to the effect of “Shh, don’t tell anybody you don’t own it!” He then presents him with a copy and an affectionate hug, saying, “don’t worry, it’s going to be OK.”
I’m not going to do a list of my ten best or ten favorite albums, but in the vein of that column, I am going to do a list of what I see are ten “must-listens” at least once. They are an essential part of my library, the albums in my possession that give my music collection a certain panache. And as Steve says, listen to them as full albums in the way they were intended. Not cherry-picking a single on YouTube. Don’t be that guy.
One other note: I’m not going to be obvious here. “Hey, you should listen to London Calling by the Clash!” I have way too much respect for you guys to do that. A little bit of an eclectic mix, but then again, that’s kind of the point isn’t it? Admittedly, a little more modern feel than a site with the word “remnants” in the title should probably have, but I think overall it works.
In no particular order:
1) Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes: Gordon Gano is the Joe Charboneau of songwriting. One great album of songs, and then poof. Sure, there was further output after that, but let’s be honest. Come for “Blister in the Sun” and “Gone Baby Gone” and stay for “Add It Up,” one of the greatest songs ever about teenage sexual longing.
2) Johnny Cash – The Essential Johnny Cash: Three points to make here. 1) Am I cheating by putting a hits album on here? Yes. Don’t Care. 2) “But wait a minute, you said you hated country music?” Don’t kid yourself. Johnny Cash is as rock-n-roll as they come. It’s not country when Johnny plays it. 3) In my day job, I put a “plus” makeup grade on a prospect once for the singular reason that he used Johnny Cash as his at-bat walkup music. That’s a guy I want on my team.
3) Soul Coughing – Irresistible Bliss: Key songs are “Super Bon Bon” and “Soundtrack to Mary.” This is a band that never reached its heights due to drugs and personal differences. They never really put it all together for one album. This is as close as they came, and it’s still pretty good.
4) Van Halen – Fair Warning: This is not going to turn into a rant about Sammy Hagar. If you own one Van Halen album this should be it. It illustrates the brilliance of Eddie’s guitar playing in a short, tight album, and a band operating at its peak musically if not commercially.
5) J Geils Band – Blow Your Face Out (Live) – A fantastic live album from a sorely underrated band. If you cheat and go with a best of album of studio tracks, their “Flashback” album from 1985 is better than any other compilations that came after it. A better live band than studio band. But both were pretty darn good.
6) The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses – Make sure you get the US release with “Fools Gold” on it, not the original UK release.
7) Stiff Little Fingers – Inflammable Material: I will put “Suspect Device” up against almost any 7” punk record ever made. (Note: That statement was purely baiting Steve and Gene to post in the comments.) “Alternative Ulster” is a classic in its own right. That said, this is a band that should have stopped making records a long time ago. Still, we’ll always have this.
8) Muddy Waters – Hard Again: Real Chicago blues with more modern rock production/sensibility/feel. Johnny Winter produced this and it’s on fire from start to finish. One of the best blues albums of all time.
9) Weezer – Weezer: This debut album was released in 1994. I had heard a little bit of this band’s output over the years, but really only gave them a big listen-to about 5-6 years ago. The best part of coming to band a really late is that you have a whole back catalog to go through and appreciate. It’s a really strong catalog, especially the first 5-6 albums. Might be a touch too-poppy for some tastes and I get there, but their catalog continues to grow on me and be very re-listenable. And I say this as someone who doesn’t buy much current rock music anymore (Black Keys was the most recent I think.)
10) Insert best-of soul album here. I can cheat on my own list if I so choose. There are four acceptable choices. Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding or at worst, Stevie Wonder (provided there are no songs on the album after 1980, which is about when his legacy started getting tarnished with each piece of claptrap he released). If you don’t own something by one of those four artists, I feel very sorry for you. (Of note: recordings of Redding’s sets on the Sunset Strip at the Whisky over three nights in April 1966 were released on CD in 2010. They are entire sets as opposed to individual songs that had previously been released in bits and pieces. They give you a flavor of what we missed when he was killed a year later. Fun trivia: Bob Dylan was in the audience for the first set on this recording. Now that I’ve looped the post back around to Dylan again, I’ll end it.)
Song of the Week – Am I Wrong, Mikal Cronin
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Occasionally we’re pleasantly surprised when an artist steps out of their more recognized bandmate’s shadow to offer us a gem of an effort that exceeds expectations.
Based on George Harrison’s earlier Beatles contributions (excepting, of course, his two awesome contributions to Abbey Road), who would have thought he could deliver the triple album of influential, majestic songs that was All Things Must Pass. Mick Jones amazed many when his Big Audio Dynamite albums were more contemporary sounding than much of Joe Strummer’s work after The Clash. And although no one would dispute Paul Westerberg was the leading creative force behind The Replacements, you have to give credit to bandmate Chris Mars for his solo work on Horseshoes and Hand Grenades.
Sticking with this theme, today’s SotW is by Mikal Cronin, best known for his work as the bass player for the prolific Bay area garage rocker Ty Segall. But Cronin released his second solo album this year, MCII, and it is a jewel. The album is chock full of power pop songs, with strong, memorable melodies and nice harmonies.
The song most recognized (and with the most plays on Spotify) is “Weight.” But I like “Am I Wrong” a little better, so that’s today’s SotW.
The song follows the template for muscular pop records used by Big Star, Cheap Trick and Matthew Sweet. It has a driving beat, a tough, distorted guitar sound and a slightly out of tune piano solo. Cronin played all of the instruments himself.
The lyric is simple – just a guy wondering if he’s reading the signs correctly. “Am I wrong? I don’t think so.”
As we approach year end, I’m starting to make a mental list of some of my favorite albums for 2013. MKII is on it.
Enjoy… until next week.