Tag Archives: song of the week

Song of the Week – Snakeskin, Deerhunter

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In the mid 2000s I discovered three indie rock bands with “Deer” in their names; Deer Tick, Deerhoof and Deerhunter. I’ve always had a difficult time keeping them straight. Here’s a quickie primer.

Deer Tick – The Providence, RI based band is an indie Americana band. Influences touch on rock, folk and country music.

Deerhoof – A quirky indie rock band led by drummer Greg Saunier (who plays out in front during concerts) and Asian singer Satomi Matsuzaki. They are based in the SF Bay area. Their “Fresh Born” was a SotW in 2008.

Deerhunter – This band is a little harder to pigeon hole stylistically. They were founded by vocalist Bradford Cox (vocals, keyboards, guitars) and Moses Archuleta (drums) in Atlanta and are known for recording songs in a wide range of genres – ambient, noise rock, art rock, punk.

Today’s SotW is from their 2015 album, Fading Frontier. It’s called “Snakeskin” and covers new territory, even for the eclectic Deerhunter – funk.

This song has a heavy groove that’s like a dinosaur stomp through the woods. But the band reverts, somewhat, to their old tricks as the track turns into an ambient wash over the funky bed for the last 2 minutes. It works!

The lyrics reflect the Southern Gothic style of, say, fellow Georgian Flannery O’Connor.

I was born already nailed to the cross
I was born with a feeling, I was lost
I was born with the ability to talk
I was born with a snake-like walk

I was trippin’ now on a city cloak
They were separated then with sunlight shrouds
I was born with a crippled man on my back
I was national, I was geographic black

This was one of my favorite cuts from 2015.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Cover Girl & You Might Say, Browning Bryant

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This weekend marks the 8th Anniversary of the SotW. Thank you for you continued support and feedback. It inspires me to keep on keepin’ on.

Back in November, shortly after Allen Toussaint died, music industry critic Bob Lefsetz dedicated one of his blog posts to his favorite Toussaint covers. It was a comprehensive list of great recordings.

A few weeks ago he posted this response by the great Al Kooper from his “mailbag.”

From: AL KOOPER
Subject: Re: Re-Allen Toussaint

Missa Lefsetz

I was kinda surprised that no one mentioned a rare WB album that Allen produced in the early 70’s self-titled it was called “Browning Bryant”. A young white kid who totally understood New Orleans musica. The opening track has always been one of my fave AT compositions. I told him so when we met at a concert in NYC where each act played just one Dylan song. It was about 8 years ago. I told him I loved that Browning Bryant track he wrote called “Cover Girl.” I wondered if he still recalled it. He started singing it to me and I joined in and we laughed. That was one of my favorite bump-into-somebody-you-cherish moments. Have a listen – Ya might like it.

Since I’d never heard of Browning Bryant I immediately did some research, besides listening to “Cover Girl.”

I learned that “Cover Girl” wasn’t the only Toussaint song Bryant recorded. I fact, his 1974 album had 11 cuts – 3 originals and 8 written by Toussaint! Further, the album was produced by Toussaint and used the New Orleans based R&B group The Meters as Bryant’s backing band.

Also of note, the 6’5” Bryant was only 15 years old when the recording began. I was shocked that I missed an album of this quality for all these years, so I’m presenting a second song this week – “You Might Say.”

If you liked Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees, this will be right up your alley.

Thanks to Al Kooper for exposing me (us) to this great, obscure artist and album. But this should come as no surprise since Koop has been doing this for a long time. In fact I’d recommend you check out his podcasts called New Music for Old People.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Sock it to Me Baby, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels

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I’ve been a fan of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels since they released their first hits back in the mid-60s. My idol Bruce Springsteen was also a big fan, adapting Ryder’s hits into his famous final encore number, “The Detroit Medley” (which you can hear on the No Nukes: The Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future album).

Oddly, Springsteen’s medley leaves out my favorite Ryder hit – today’s SotW “Sock it to Me Baby” (#6, 1967). Put this one into the Restored category.

“Sock it to Me” is a wild, sweaty dose of Rock ‘n Soul. It has all of the best Detroit has to offer musically. It rocks with MC5 like intensity (check out the guitar break after each “Sock – it, to me baby” section), it has a Motown beat that makes dancing irresistible, and it has that subtle sexual tension that is present in so many of Rock and Roll’s best songs. Ryder’s performance is a damned good imitation of James Brown. And somehow when that slide whistle comes in it sounds just right despite my instinct telling me it should be corny (as it is on Procol Harum’s campy “Mabel”).

This is a party record if there ever was one.

When I began to write this post I wondered when the phrase “sock it to me” first came into the 1960’s lexicon. It was a popular catchphrase often used by Judy Carne on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In that first aired in 1968. Then there’s the “sock it to me” background vocal on Aretha’s “Respect.” That was recorded on February 14th, 1967; a little more than a week after Ryder’s song was released on February 4th. So who used it first, Aretha or Mitch? It would appear Mitch, but it’s hard to tell for sure – the matter made a little more complicated since both artists were based out of Detroit. Who knows what each was hearing around town prior to their recording dates?

One last Fun Fact: Winona Ryder chose her stage name when she saw a Mitch Ryder album in her father’s record collection. Interesting, since Mitch’s real name is Bill Levise.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Run, Boy, Run, Longbranch Pennywhistle

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lb photoFirst it was Bowie, then Glenn Frey of Eagles. I have to admit, Eagles weren’t my favorite band. There were times that they rocked out and I could relate, but their soft rock ditties like “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Best of My Love” just don’t do it for me.

But Frey’s passing allows me the opportunity to pay him tribute by posting about another group he was in – the duo Longbranch Pennywhistle. The self-titled album has been long out of print so it is the second installment of my “Rare Record Series.”

Longbranch Pennywhistle was released in 1969 on the independent Amos label and was the work of Frey and his longtime friend and collaborator, John David (JD) Souther. In fact, they teamed up to write several of Eagles big hits including the aforementioned “Best of My Love”, “New Kid in Town”, “Victim of Love” and “Heartache Tonight.”

SotW is “Run, Boy, Run.” It was chosen because it was written by Frey and reminds me of my favorite Eagles song, “Already Gone”, which was sung by Frey (although written by Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund) and contains some of his best ripping guitar solos.

On “Run, Boy, Run” (and “Already Gone”) you can hear some of that working class rock and roll style that Frey must have learned growing up in Detroit and playing with Bob Seger (guitar and vocals on “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man”). The song/album also doesn’t suffer from the musical backing they get from session players including James Burton, Larry Knechtel, Jim Gordon, Ry Cooder, and Doug Kershaw. Not a shabby group.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – A New Wave, Sleater-Kinney

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Today’s SotW guest contributor is Haley Flannery. I was first introduced to Haley when her father, a lifelong friend of mine, asked me to add her to the SotW distribution list. I have since come to know her as the outstanding author of the Emphatic Hands blog where she professes a fondness for girl bands amongst other things.

Carrie Brownstein published a memoir last year. Though she is now arguably better known as an actress (see Portlandia, Transparent), as well as a writer and cultural critic (for NPR and others), Brownstein devoted the majority of the memoir’s pages to Sleater-Kinney, the punk band that she founded with Corin Tucker in 1994, dissolved in 2006, and reformed in 2014 to release one of 2015’s best albums, No Cities to Love.

It is not surprising that Sleater-Kinney is so vital to Brownstein’s life story. They’re a vital band that has made some of the most singular, electrifying music released in the last two decades. No Cities to Love picks up right where their last album, 2005’s The Woods, left off, exploring the anxieties of living in the modern world, making music, and relationships.

The songs on No Cities to Love are powerful and catchy, none more so than mid-album track “A New Wave,” which is Sleater-Kinney at its most upbeat. Even the music video, a collaboration with the animators of Bob’s Burgers, is pure fun.

No one here is taking notice
No outline will ever hold us
It’s not a new wave
It’s just you and me

When Brownstein sings these lines, and when she sings later of “inventing our own kind of obscurity”, it brings to mind the band’s career-long refusal to be defined. Sleater-Kinney are shapeshifters. They are punks, feminists, mothers (literally and figuratively). They are world-class musicians and intellectuals. They are entertainers. They are uniquely themselves. They were, and still are – as Greil Marcus once called them – America’s best rock band.

Enjoy… until next week. TM

Song of the Week Revisited – Break It Up, Patti Smith

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I originally wrote this post in May 2008. I decided to repost it because it refers to a concert I saw 40 years ago today. It brings back great memories.

PattiSmithHorsesI was a DJ at Boston College’s radio station, WZBC, when Patti Smith’s album Horses was released on November 8th, 1975. I remember seeing the record in the “new releases” bin and being immediately drawn to it. Who was the androgynous woman in the black & white photo on the cover, wearing suspenders, with her coat hanging defiantly over her shoulder? (Of course at the time I wouldn’t have recognized the name of her photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, even if it had been pointed out to me.)

I listened to that album, and listened again. I’m still listening to it and get a rush every time I hear it, though I acknowledge it is one of those love it or hate it records.

302590_2382373359995_6379699_nA few weeks later I was back home for Christmas break in Newburgh, NY and learned that Patti would be playing the Red Rail, a small club in Nanuet, NY. A few buddies and I made a white knuckled drive the 40 miles to Nanuet in a massive blizzard. My parents were pissed that I insisted on risking the drive through that terrible storm.

The concert was unbelievable. Patti was in rare form, improvising her beat poetry to the three chord garage punk of her backing band. She was high as a kite and kept complaining that “some dude poured orange juice in my hair backstage.” This YouTube video from 1976 will give you an idea of what it was like to see her that night:

This week’s song is “Break It Up” from that debut record.

It was co written by Tom Verlaine of Television and was supposedly inspired by a dream about visiting Jim Morrison’s grave. It starts with a gentle piano intro. When Verlaine’s guitar comes in at the chorus, it sounds like a ghost haunting a cemetery. I’ve always loved the effect on Patti’s voice when she literally beats her chest during the lyric:

Ice, it was shining.
I could feel my heart, it was melting.

This is emotional stuff. Patti sings as if possessed, her words finding their own rhythm within the steady beat of the music. By the end her wailing sounds like she’s speaking in tongues at a Pentecostal revival. The piano pounds away with the guitars and keeps building all the way through the fade.

I hope you enjoy getting reacquainted with this song as much as I have.

Until next week…

Song of the Week – Travelin’ Shoes, Elvin Bishop

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Back in the early 70s the Macon, Georgia based Capricorn Records was the home to the country’s best Southern rock bands. The kings of Phil Walden’s label were the Allman Brothers, but it was also the label for The Marshall Tucker Band, The Outlaws, Wet Willie, Grinderswitch and Cowboy. Country bluesman Elvin Bishop joined their roster for his fourth album, Let It Flow (1974).

The best song on Let It Flow was the 7+ minute “Travelin’ Shoes”, today’s SotW.

On “Travelin’ Shoes” Bishop makes use of the twin lead guitar style that was the Allman’s trademark.

The album’s liner notes credit a who’s who of rock stars — Dickey Betts (Allman Brothers), Toy Caldwell (Marshall Tucker), Charlie Daniels, and Sly Stone! – but doesn’t specify who played on which cuts. It has to be Betts playing that second lead guitar on “Travelin’ Shoes” but I can’t discern if any of those others also play on it.

Some of you may recognize Bishop from his 60s work with The Butterfield Blues Band and his collaboration with Michael Bloomfield/Al Kooper, when he was steeped in traditional blues. Others may be more familiar with his #3 commercial hit “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” (1976). “Travelin’ Shoes” finds him covering the territory somewhere smack in between.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year), Regina Spektor

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Today’s SotW post is short and sweet. It’s a sentimental toast to the New Year by Regina Spektor, “My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year).”

Raise your glass and we’ll have a cheer
For us all who are gathered here
And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, kind, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we’ll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year

And what’s wrong with a little positivity in these troubled times? Nothing. So as twenty-fifteen comes to an end and you reflect on the events of the past year – personally, politically, globally – have faith that the next one may be more “gentle, kind, and forgiving.”

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Heavy Weather Traffic, Katydids & Idea, Bee Gees

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My car still has a cassette deck in it. Really. Yeah, I’m not a car guy. I buy something reasonable and drive it into the ground. My 2006 Toyota has 120,000 miles and is still chugging along.

About a month ago I was rooting around in my music cave and found a big, old box of cassettes. I decided to plop it into my backseat and reach back to randomly grab something to listen to on my work commute. (An old school version of shuffle play.)

One day I played an album by the early ‘90s British band Katydids. They were formed by the duo of Susie Hug (vocals) and Adam Seymour (guitars). The first song on their eponymous, first album is today’s SotW – “Heavy Weather Traffic.”

Katydids, was produced by the great Nick Lowe. We all know that he only associates himself with quality projects. In this case it’s just solid guitar rock with top notch vocals and clever lyrics.

As I listened to “Heavy Weather Traffic” for the first time in about 20+ years there was something about its main riff that seemed very familiar to me. It was bugging me for hours. I finally decided that it reminded me of the Bee Gees “Idea” from their 1968 album of the same name.

I’m still not 100% sure this is the song I was trying to place, but now that I reacquainted myself to “Idea” I really liked what I heard. I didn’t intend for this post to feature more than one song but “Idea” is too cool not to share. If you only know the Bee Gees from their Saturday Night Fever incarnation, you’re in for a big surprise.

Put this one into the book as RESTORED.

Enjoy… until next week.