In late 1964 the Rolling Stones released their second album in the US, 12 x 5. It included a couple of their early hits — “Time Is on My Side” and “It’s All Over Now,” both covers of American R&B songs. But by this time Jagger and Richards were already dipping their toes into the songwriting waters.
One of the originals on 12 x 5 was “Good Times, Bad Times.” It’s a decent slow, country blues. It may remind you of their version of Fred McDowell and Gary Davis’ “You Gotta Move” from Sticky Fingers.
In 1968 a garage band from West Virginia called the Jay-Bees took the song, converted it to a minor key and created a proto punk classic. (They also shortened the title to “Good Times.”)
The creepy laugh that continues throughout the song adds to the haunted house effect of the cut.
Why this track never made it onto one of the Nuggets compilations is a mystery to me. Someone needs to contact archivist Lenny Kaye to try to get the answer.
But no matter… I’d guess the Stones — the original punks — would approve of the Jay-Bees treatment.
Lucinda Williams made an album called Sweet Old World in 1992. It was the follow up to her fantastic debut album on Rough Trade, which was actually her third album. She’d had a previous career, 10 years previous, recording for Smithsonian. Exclamation mark.
Those first two albums, Ramblin’ and Happy Woman’s Blues, are great by the way.
In any case, after her terrific album Lucinda Williams, for Rough Trade, she got picky. It took a few years to finish Sweet Old World, which leads with an upbeat song about a street person who resonates.
It took her six more years to record Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, her masterpiece, but I think a lot of the earlier songwriting is better. But the guitars rock more on Car Wheels.
Subsequent events suggested she was unhappy with the sound of Sweet Old World, which is softer than her later albums. And last year her husband suggested Williams rerecord the whole album with a harder and more rockin’ edge. So she took her touring band into the studio and they redid it.
You know, it’s hard to dislodge what you like with something else, even if it’s better, but here’s the new version of Six Blocks Away, followed by the original. You be the judge.
The Cult is a band out of the UK that was led by lead singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy. Although they formed the group in 1983, I hadn’t caught wind of them until they released “She Sells Sanctuary” in 1985.
I can’t remember where I was the first time I heard this song but I recall that it grabbed me immediately. How could it not? It launches with a captivating intro. It starts with the sound of a buzzing bee, then distant, distorted guitar for 4 bars that gives way to the full band backing a locomotive riff.
Duffy told the story of how he came up with the intro in an interview with Johnny DeMarco:
It sounds like a silly old story, but we were recording “She Sells Sanctuary” in a studio in London called Olympic, where Zeppelin and Free used to record… I was in there during “She Sells Sanctuary,” and I found a violin bow, and I started to play the guitar with the bow like Jimmie Page. I did it to amuse Astbury, who was in the control room, and in order to make it sound weirder, I just hit every pedal I had on the pedal board. Then once I stopped banging the strings and doing all that, I played the middle section of the song, which was kind of a pick thing with all the BOSS pedals on, and that sound just leaped out. The producer went, “Hold it, hold it, that’s great!” And we decided to start the song with that mystical sound.
When Astbury comes in on vocals, you might think Jim Morrison was reincarnated. Clearly I’m not the only one that hears the similarity of their vocal timbers. Astbury covered two songs (“Touch Me” and “Wild Child”) on the Doors tribute album – Stoned Immaculate: The Music of The Doors.
Then he went on to actually become a member of the Doors! Well, at least performing under the name Doors of the 21st Century (or D21c) with original group members Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger.
The title of the song never makes it into the lyrics. But the clue to its meaning come in the line:
And the fire in your eyes keeps me alive
Inside her you’ll find sanctuary
The singer finds sanctuary in his relationship with the woman that has “the fire in your eyes.”
The version of “She Sells Sanctuary” that I first heard (and featured here as the SotW) was the one released on the Cult’s 1985, second album, Love. But “SSS” was released on a 7” single before the album came out (and without the iconic intro).
I loved Bill Withers. Lean on Me is an amazing song. But when John Legend covered this song with the Roots some years back I was surprised because it was powerful and unforgettable and I didn’t know it. Thinking about politics and music making lately, I’m not sure there is much value in trying to change minds, but this tune is a testament to deep feelings that affected us all once upon a time. Beautifully.
This is another one h/t to the Dean of American Rock Critics, though he didn’t plug this song. I found it on the YouTube.
These guys are old and weird. The first two songs of theirs I listened to were called Gloria, and this one, which was once a Who song. Neither was a cover.
They skew to the indie side of rock, but I’ve put this clip on repeat. I liked them at first hear. They sound like they need to do this more than anything. That’s enough for now. Maybe more later.’
Tom wrote about these guys from Texas living in Brooklyn nearly four years ago, and posted a pretty good song that I don’t remember hearing. This is the title track to Parquet Courts new album, which the Dean of Rock Critics gave an A and said: “Their aural gestalt will never be on a Stones-Ramones level, but those are the comparisons—in an appalling year when too many g-g-b-d types have chosen to gaze inward, I doubt we’ll hear a greater album.” I gather I’m immune to the irony. Or ironies.
If you’re a regular reader of my weekly posts, you know that I don’t often use my soapbox to deliver political messages but today is an exception.
The Trump policy to separate children from their parents as they seek refugee status at the southern border of the US is cruel and inhumane. It does not represent who we, as American people, are. There has to be a more kind and generous way to protect our borders.
So what has that got to do with the SotW?
I was reminded of the lyrics to a song called “I Believe in You” by the country music star Don Williams.
I don’t believe in superstars, organic food and foreign cars
I don’t believe the price of gold, the certainty of growing old
That right is right and left is wrong, that north and south can’t get along
That east is east and west is west and being first is always best
But I believe in love, I believe in babies, I believe in mom and dad, and I believe in you
The lyrics to this 1980, #1 hit on the country charts are particularly appropriate because they seem to address the political divide in our country. But the last line ties it into the news of the day – “I believe in love, I believe in babies, I believe in mom and dad.”
For me (and probably you if you’re reading this) another line hits home:
But I believe in love, I believe in music, I believe in magic and I believe in you
Yes, I really do believe in the magic of music to heal and bring people together.
So there you have it. I’ve said my piece. Music without politics next time.
I have had so many thoughts about what to write and who to write about here over the months since our friend Steve passed away, and nothing seems worthy.
My new band, Jackknifed Big Rig played The Clash’s Safe European Home our last set, and I dedicated it to Steve, and Diane even filmed it. But, the sound was funky and it was not worthy of a You Tube, although we have a fancy schmantzy gig coming up July 14, at the storied Hotel Utah in San Francisco, opening for Patrice Pike. And, the plan is to play it again then and try to film again and then post.
But, this Family Guy—The Griffin That Stole Christmas–has become a favorite cos of one-liners and cut-aways like this, and I know Steve would have busted up.
So, I return with this. And, since the ice is broken, well, more to come.
We’ve talked about them before but there is much left to be said.
Roxy Music is right up there among the greatest bands of all time. I’ll put their first five albums up against anybody’s five albums, and you will be forced to admit it’s close. But unlike every other band I’ve ever loved, I didn’t love them at first. Or rather, I loved the music but couldn’t stand Brian Ferry’s voice. Then my friend Dee talked me into seeing them at the Academy of Music. Later known as The Palladium, it was the successor to the Fillmore East in New York and a great place to see a show.
Dee worked with a coke dealer named Jimmy Digs, an extraordinary character. First of all, the guy worked as a meat cutter in the old Brook Ave. meat market deep in the South Bronx, roughly four square blocks with decades of animal fat ground into the sidewalks and streets.One of the harder and nastier jobs on the planet. And yet he was a weight dealer who made a lot of money. I know because I saw his apartment. Sure, it was in the Bruckner projects, but it was huge and lavishly decorated in the Afro style of the 1970’s. Second, he was a great guy, at least as I knew him. He liked us and gave us great deals. Jimmy (he was late-30’s, maybe 40) introduced us to his wife, got us some drinks, and led us to his getting high room, containing two sofas, a coffee table, and state of the art stereo and TV. He smiles and slaps a 3-finger bag of coke on the table. “You sniff?” he asks, and I say yes, I sniff. We sniffed a lot for about an hour, talking mostly about music and grooving to, as I recall, Bohanon. When we left someone was trying to break into D’s car. We yelled and started running to the car and the guy took off. He had done no damage. “When they see a white face the first thing they think is ‘cop’,” said D.
But that was another night. This night, on our way to the show, we were supposed to meet Jimmy at a bar on Lenox Ave and 146th St. Dee parks the car and we walk in and I swear at that second the song on the jukebox stops and every eye in the jam-packed joint is fixed on us. I was shitting bricks trying to act blasé. Dee just asks the guy next to him “Where’s Jimmy Digs?” “In the back,” he replies and we walk through into a back room where Jimmy was. “You should have come in the back door” he says. I was like, how silly of me. How could I fail to grasp the adventure potential in exploring a Harlem back alley on Friday night? So I took my chances with the front door. We did our business and left, got into the car and Dee says: “We were lucky.”
One more thing about Jimmy Digs: he had four thumbs. True. A second thumb grew from each of his regular thumbs.
So we arrive at the Academy in fine shape and we see Roxy. This was the Stranded tour, post-Eno with Eddie Jobson on violin and keyboards and (I think) John Wetton on bass. They were spectacular. I had to see Ferry live to understand his singing, which come to think of it is a strange thing. I can only say that what sounded mannered and overly stylized on vinyl sounded natural and highly emotional live. I understood: while so many singers pretend to care and they don’t, Ferry pretends not to care and he does. Nothing new really, it goes back equally to the blues and the sophisticates of the jazz era, and probably a thousand years before. Ferry gave the stance new context in the 70s. The context of their music. Seeing them opened up the whole to me, and I have loved them ever since.
Roxy Music is far, far more than Brian Ferry and the Roxies. Every musician who was ever in the band added heaps to the whole, including every single one of their endless parade of bass players. Which is amazing but I’m about to prove it to you. It’s one proof of their greatness: the least important member was always fantastic. I only say “least important” in band personnel terms, certainly not musically.
So here we go with five different bass players from each of their first five albums. The original bassist, Graham Simpson, was also with Ferry a co-founder of the band. Ferry (and anyone in his right mind) wanted him to stay, but Simpson didn’t like the Roxy image manipulation. A no-fun guy, but he sure could play. In demonstrating, I think it’s important to stray from the best-known Roxy tunes, because there are so many great songs that are lesser-known. “Ladytron” from the first album:
So Simpson leaves and in comes Rik Kenton or else John Porter, nobody seems to know, and I ask you: can you tell the difference? If I told you this was Simpson you wouldn’t think twice:
Great amateur video too.
I have to laugh when people say that Roxy became less experimental when Eno left. It shows that these people are not listening. Again I’m not sure if the bass player is John Wetton or Jon Gustafson but who cares, this guy plays his ass off too, and this one song has more cool sonic/musical experimentation than all of Pink Floyd combined:
Picking a tune from Country Life is tough because the bass is largely passed over in the high-end mix that Chris Thomas and Ferry imposed on that album. Maybe it was the right decision, for many people like Country Life above all others (Lawr is one as I recall). It is a dense album that must have been a bitch to mix. But the bass punches through on “Out of the Blue”
Ferry and others have pointed to Jon Gustafson’s bass on “Love Is The Drug” as the key to its hit status, so it must be true. But I wouldn’t say it was Gustafson’s best work on the Siren album. “Just Another High” and “Both Ends Burning” equally display his killer timing, and so does “Could It Happen To Me?”
See what I mean? Most of the time the bass is pure groundwork – there is so much else going on in every song – and yet it never fails to propel and fill and create space as needed, as the best bass players always do. And Roxy had like eight of them.
At the height of the prog rock era in the early ‘70s was a British group called Flash that was a poor man’s Yes. Not only did Flash imitate Yes style arrangements and Jon Anderson’s high register vocals, but they also featured former Yes musicians Tony Kaye (keyboards) and Peter Banks (guitar).
Flash released three albums in 1972-73, but bad vibes between Banks and the rest of the band led to a break up by the end of ’73.
Today’s SotW is “Black and White” from their middle album – In the Can.
“Black and White” is a showcase for Banks’ stellar guitar work. At 12 minutes, the cut risks becoming boring – but that never happens. The playing, singing and thematic changes keep it interesting throughout.
Keith Gordon posted this description of the song on his blog — That Devil Music: classic rock & blues remembered… – in 2013:
A wildcat reading of “Black And White,” from Flash’s sophomore effort In The Can, opens with Hough’s spry drumbeats atop which Banks layers on swirling, prog-psych guitar textures. A twelve-minute opus, the song is the perfect showcase for both the band’s individual talents and immense chemistry. The odd man out may be vocalist Colin Carter, who is too frequently (and unfairly) compared to Jon Anderson of Yes when, in fact, he has his own distinctive style. “Black And White” is as much a display of Carter’s impressive vocal gymnastics as it is for the guitar or percussion and, at nearly a quarter-hour of playing time, there’s a lot of virtuoso sounds emanating from the grooves.
Flash also produced a couple of noteworthy LP covers that would not fly today given the current sensitivity to the #MeToo movement. One showed a woman’s panties and another displayed hair falling over a shoulder, barely concealing a naked breast. (Both were far more provocative when the gatefold was opened!)
Flash also produced a couple of noteworthy LP covers that would not fly today given the current sensitivity to the #MeToo movement. One showed a woman’s panties and another displayed hair falling over a shoulder, barely concealing a naked breast. (Both were far more provocative when the gatefold was opened!)