One of the most sacred elpees in rock history is Neil Young’s Harvest. And I love a lot of it, can sing along to a lot it, though I’ve never owned it.
But even when I was a teen in my friend Judy’s bedroom with a whole gang of kids, listening to this elpee for the first time, it was hard to stomach A Man Needs a Maid.
The sentiment fails, and the grandiose arrangement overcompensates for what? This is Neil Young at his absolute worst.
I’m not sure why Neil decided to tart up the song on the elpee, with all those strings. For me it takes a simple confessional statement, a good melody, and makes it a bit ugly and grandiose.
Here’s a live clip where the basic sexist shit comes across as a man looking closely at his life. He could be wrong, but who can fault him for that. I like that a lot better.
My Frankie Avalon post sparked some responses and ideas, and I thought, “shit, maybe a list of the worst songs ever is kind of fun.” I realize Dave Berry set the precedent, but times change and we all have our likes and dislikes, so I am suggesting we assemble a “Bottom 10.”
That is, if the best ten songs ever are the Top 10, then logically the worst are going to be the Bottom 10 by default, right?
In his response, Steve asked if we did this, if there should be criteria, and while at first I dismissed that to myself, I did reconsider. As in does Macarena belong on the same list as The Last Kiss (J. Frank Wilson, not Pearl Jam) and does that belong on the same list as You Light Up My Life (brilliantly suggested by my wife Diane as I was listing mine) which is just flat out bad?
As in, do cheesey maudlin, wildly stupid and popular in the “pet rock” sense, and fucking awful deserve to be lumped together, or does each own its own genre? And, are there more, I wonder?
My idea is to get some simple parms, and publish lists and maybe even keep a spreadsheet to determine an actual readers worst.
It not only would be fun, but we might see some funny stuff tumble our of our collective.
Thoughts readers? Comment below, or hit me up at lawr@creativesports.com with thoughts under the subject “Remnants Bottom 10.” (Note that this is not new territory for the Renmants, who forged to the awful three years ago.)
And, to show my heart is in the wrong place, I leave you with this:
My Spotify does a cool thing: gives little subset genre playlists of my main giant playlist so if I just want to sample some new wave and no Motown, both of which are on the bigger collection, I can hear just that.
The other day I felt nostalgic, so I put on list that includes Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent and Del Shannon. I am not sure how Spotify associated this horrible Frankie Avalon song with those great artists, but it did, and the song I had forgotten came back to haunt.
This “music” represents the absolute worst of what people imagine of those wonderful nostalgic 50’s, when mainstream radio sucked, racism was rote, and despite the separation of church and state, we were forced to eat fucking fishsticks at the school cafeteria every Friday.
Aside from being a joke, though, the intro to this song from American Bandstand is cool because you can see the Top 10 at the time behind Frankie and Dick Clark. Other than that, the only thing worse than those Friday fishsticks is this song.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
This week marks the 9th anniversary of the SotW; more than 450 posts and over 600 songs! Thank you for your continued support.
Elbow is a British group that is sometimes saddled with the description as a “modern prog” band. What does that even mean?
Yes, the band’s songs are moody and atmospheric but they don’t have many of the usual hallmarks of prog rock like uncommon time signatures and long solos. They are only prog in the same way that Radiohead, Talk Talk, or Coldplay might carry that mantle.
All that aside, Elbow is one of the best bands you probably never heard or heard of. They have been working together since 1990, but it took them a very long time to get off the ground.
In the late 90s they won a contract with Island Records and recorded an album but Island was sold to Universal and the band was dropped by the new company before the album was released.
It took until 2001 for the band to get a new contract with V2 Records and release their critically acclaimed debut Asleep in the Back. (Take that, Universal!) Band leader Guy Garvey said of the title:
“It’s a memory we all share, from when you were a kid and you were coming back from a holiday in the car with your folks. There was that moment where you heard the engine switching off and you knew you were home. That warm feeling. Your dad would scoop you up and carry you up to bed.”
That’s an apt summary of the vibe of Asleep in the Back. Take, for instance, today’s SotW, “Little Beast.”
It starts with a dreamy vamp with some Eraserhead like industrial sounding percussion. About halfway through the song gets a little lift with added instrumentation.
In an interview Garvey said “Little Beast” is about:
“… growing up in Bury, not being a fighter, and occasionally being in dangerous environments. When there’s nothing to do in a small town apart from what’s expected of you, you can get caught up in it all. My favourite lyric is “the whole town’s dripping down a hill like the spine of something dead”. There’s actually a mill town north of Bury where the street layout looks like the spine of a dinosaur coming over the hill.”
I was sitting in the Jacuzzi (a middle of the night ritual, since I have retired), smoking a joint, with a Daily Mix from Spotify playing and the psychedelic lights in our bathroom moving through the spectrum, sipping fizzy water when this song from Johnny Rotten’s second band came on.
I really dug this tune at the time, though I felt the rest of the disc spotty at best, but I sort of forgot about Cruel till the other day, and my, it holds up pretty well.
The thing that also got me about this song was for some reason, the cover of the disc was just freaky in some sort of erotic/exotic/perverted/”I don’t want to go there” way, but I have no clue why.
As for the song, I not only found this video (it actually starts at 7:36) but this TV show has some very weird shit going on, like a magician escaping from a washing machine into which he has been placed, and bound, with water and soap and such going full tilt boogie.
Weird, but fun, I think? And, the song still rules.
Gimme Danger is finally out in a medium we can easily watch.
I streamed it for $4.99 last night on Amazon. In the beginning of the movie, it says “Amazon Studios” so this might be the only place it’s currently available.
Was it as good as advertised? Abso. Fucking. Lutely.
If anyone wants to watch it and talk about some rock ‘n’ roll, I’m here.
In the process of discussing our teen favorites, Tom pointed to the incredible run of brilliant albums Steveland Wonder released and I commented, noting that I felt Talking Book, Fulfillingness First Finale, and Innervisions were on my list of artists who produced three just brilliant albums in a row.
Also added in were:
Blue/Ladies of the Canyon/Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell)
Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed/Sticky Fingers (Stones)
Revolver/Rubber Soul/Sgt. Pepper (Beatles)
Bringing it all Back Home/Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde
Elvis Costello (first three) and Neil Young (Goldrush through Harvest) also made it once the list was initiated, and Prince just missed. But Steve made suggestions of Alice Cooper, the Ramones, and AC/DC which I quickly dismissed
This does not mean I don’t love Road to Ruin and Love it to Death but if we look at Cooper and Steve’s example, maybe I can explain the difference, at least as I mean it.
Love it to Death triggered three wonderful albums from the Alice Cooper band, but the third, School’s Out was a little thin in my view, and Love it to Death included the throwaway Black Juju, an immediate disqualifier.
Why, you ask?
Because in looking at the records produced by the Beatles for example, in Rubber Soul the band clearly kicked their songwriting to a deeper level with the focus of their lyrics moving to a new level, not just for the band, but for pop music. The Fab Four continued this growth, both lyrically and sonic-ally with Revolver, and then even further with Sgt. Pepper. The same can be said about Wonder, Dylan, Mitchell, the Stones, Costello, and Young, all of whom have challenged themselves and their sound, pushing into new directions, and delivering breathing works that pushed the groups collaborative art to a new level.
Not that Love it to Death isn’t art, or a fantastic album, but as good as the record is, by Killer, the band was still spot on musically and lyrically, but while 18 might really fit what I defined above, nothing else on any of the three suggested Cooper albums suggests or provides any kind of growth of the group’s art and sound any further than where it was.
Not that this means Cooper or AC/DC or any performer(s) should be dismissed, but, there is a major difference between releasing three very strong discs that contain great songs, but all basically of the same ilk, as opposed to the other artists who truly moved their skills and experience to a different level.
Snotty? Maybe.
Elistist? Maybe.
But, well, hard to argue? I don’t know.
Have at it, and just to show I understand my roots, let’s leave with Alice, and as good a garage tune as you will ever hear. It is just the individual tune does not the album or artistic value of the relative catalog make.
Just added Love It To Death, Killer and School’s Out to the album troika list, then decided I had to hear me some Alice. Went to youtube and stumbled upon this.
Appears to be a genuine attempt at a music video, way before music videos were a thing.
Not an A+ Alice song, nothing extraordinary about the video either, and guessing you guys have seen this before, but it’s very cool to see footage of Alice and the band in their prime.
I recently discovered the self-titled album of a New York based band called The Mystery Lights. The retro psych group records for the Wick label, the rock subsidiary of soul imprint Daptone; home to Charles Bradley and the recently deceased Sharon Jones.
The description of the band on the Daptone website is enlightening:
“… the Lights’ sound has evolved into a fuzz-fueled hopped-up 21st Century take on 60s garage pebbles, and artful 70s punk, that is all their own.”
That description certainly applies to today’s SotW – “Follow Me Home.”
The band has been together since they met as teenagers in school in Salinas, California, famously the birthplace of John Steinbeck.
I remember seeing Pink Flag in a record shop window on Eighth Street in the Village in 1977. It was an import, expensive, and I hadn’t even heard of the band, but the look was clean and lovely, different than the artwork that smudged across a lof of the new punk music elpees, and it made me curious. Not long after, reviews started appearing and Wire were quickly critics’ darlings. That’s what short and incisive pop noise and catchy melody does.
I waited for the US release, I think, a few months later to finally hear what I’d been reading about. I was rewarded, with a punchy tunes that got in and out quicker than you’d want, but more powerfully than you could hope for. Pink Flag is one of the great rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time. Rolling Stone says No. 412, NME says 378, Steve Moyer says 32. I say closer to Moyer than NME, but whatever.
So, this comes up because Wire has a new song out. They’ve been releasing records off and on for the past four or five years, and even more off and on through the aughts and 90s. I have to admit that I haven’t been paying attention, so I can’t speak to what they’ve been doing, but this is a good one. Short Elevated Period.
