Tag Archives: song of the week

Song of the Week – Shake Some Action, Flamin’ Groovies

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Today’s SotW is the 500th song featured since this thing started in February 2008. Thanks for your continued feedback and support. T

I recently finished another great rock music history by Greil Marcus – The History of Rock ’N’ Roll in Ten Songs (Yale University Press, 2014). It’s a terrific book and I highly recommend it if you like intelligent, intellectual rock history.

The first song he chooses is “Shake Some Action” by the Flamin’ Groovies.

The Flamin’ Groovies were a San Francisco based band that formed in the mid 60s and lasted through the 70s as the core band. Different configurations gigged until 1992 and there have been a few reunions in the 2000s. This band never achieved the fame they deserved as pioneers of the power pop genre.

“Shake Some Action” was the title song from their fourth album, released in 1976. The song was produced by Dave Edmunds, a British pub rocker that is no stranger to cutting a pop hit.

Marcus makes his case for “Shake Some Action’s” importance in the history of Rock ‘N’ Roll thusly:

‘The story told in “Shake Some Action” is complete in its title – though in the song it’s a wish, not a fact, a desperate wish the singer doesn’t expect to come true. The words hardly matter: “Need” “Speed” “Say” “Away” are enough. It starts fast, as if in the middle of some greater song. A bright, trebly guitar counts off a theme, a beat is set, a bass note seems to explode, sending a shower of light over all the notes around it. The rhythm is pushing, but somehow it’s falling behind the singer. He slows down to let it catch up, and the sound the guitar is making, a bell chiming through the day, has shot past both sides. Every beat is pulling back against every other; the whole song is a backbeat, every swing a backhand, every player his own free country, discovering the real free country in the song as it rises up in front of him, glimpsing that golden land, losing it as the mirage fades, blinking his eyes, getting it back, losing it again – that is its reckless abandon, the willingness of the music, in pursuit of where it needs to go, where it must go, to abandon itself. “You have to go into a crowd and do something they can’t,” [Neil] Young said that day in 1993. “Some of them are hearing it and some of them aren’t, but it doesn’t matter. The idea is the tension.”

In “Shake Some Action,” the tension is there from the first moments – that count is a count to the end, the dead end, the door you’ve locked from the inside and can’t open, and the whole song can feel like an attempt to escape the tension, to let it dissipate, until the musicians no longer remember that the theme that kicked them off was fate. Here, every element in the music is a leap. As different parts of the song slow, as others pick up speed, depending on where you are, which wave in the song you’re riding, the sense of imminent loss can disappear – and then the singer drops back and there is a guitar, more than a guitarist, replacing the story you’ve heard with one you haven’t.

It’s what the singer is afraid of losing defined now purely in the positive, as flight, as freedom, in Norman Mailer’s words loose in the water for the first time in your life, because no matter how many times in how many pieces of music you are swept away at the instrumental passages in “Shake Some Action” can sweep you away, it’s always the first time. When the guitarist steps onto the magic carpet of his first solo, it is a picture of everything the singer is certain is slipping away from him, but it is not slipping away, it is present, you can hold it in your hand, see it glow. At the end, the guitarist again steps forward – and while the notes played might on paper be the same as they were before, in the air they are speaking in a different tongue. The drum roll that has tripped the song into the instrumental passage that will end it has tripped it over a cliff, and you feel not the worth of what the singer wants, but what it was worth, before it vanished, before it went back beyond memory, into fantasy, as if desire never had a face. Is that why you have to play the song again, to make it come out differently? Or because you can’t live without that beat?’

Alright!

I can’t end this post without answering the question I know you all have – What are the other 9 songs? Marcus often makes his case by discussing multiple versions of a song but I’ll just list the originals:

Transmission – Joy Division
In the Still of the Nite – The Five Satins
All I Could Do Was Cry – Etta James
Crying, Waiting, Hoping – Buddy Holly
Money (That’s What I Want) – Barrett Strong
This Magic Moment – The Drifters
Guitar Drag – Christian Marclay
To Know Him Is to Love Him – The Teddy Bears

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – When Things Go Wrong, Robin Lane & the Chartbusters

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Today’s SotW is “When Things Go Wrong” from the eponymous debut album by Robin Lane & the Chartbusters.

Although this album didn’t come out until 1980, Lane already had an established pedigree in the music business. The daughter of Ken Lane (Dean Martin’s pianist on The Dean Martin Show) and wife (for a couple of years) to The Police’s lead guitarist Andy Summers, Lane performed folk rock around LA in the late 60s and early 70s. She caught the attention of Neil Young who brought her in to contribute that haunting harmony vocal on “Round & Round (It Won’t Be Long)” from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

Somewhere around the mid/late 70s Lane moved to the east coast and ended up in Cambridge, MA where she hooked up with the Chartbusters — Asa Brebner and Leroy Radcliffe (who had been with Jonathan Richman and the post “Roadrunner” Modern Lovers), Scott Baerenwald and Tim Jackson.

With the Chartbusters she played a brand of harder rock that often led to comparisons with Pat Benatar and Heart. But she always seemed to me to be closer to Chrissie Hynde.

I saw them perform live in Boston a few times and remember that their three guitar attack was exhilarating.

When their album came out, I remember being very confused by the cover art. It didn’t seem to fit the band I had seen live. Warner Brothers seemed to try to soften their street cred by putting her in spandex (Pat Benatar again) and a stupid stripped sweater. I read an interview with Brebner and he seemed to agree.

“I still cringe at that album cover, which I think largely sunk us as a candy-ass major label contrivance to those uninitiated to our music. The music itself was watered down enough so it could not overcome that basically cosmetic impression that the casual record store [browser] would garner on seeing it in the bins. It didn’t represent us, and I felt cheated.”

Lane & the Chartbusters went on to put out a fine 5 song, live EP and a second album, Imitation Life (1981), but they never garnered the acclaim that they deserved. Damn that album cover!

In 2014 her drummer bandmate Tim Jackson, produced, directed and premiered a film called When Things Go Wrong – Robin Lane’s Story that documented her work. Hopefully it will receive a general release sometime soon.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me), Reunion

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Today’s SotW is a guilty pleasure dating back to 1974, the year I graduated from high school. Maybe it’s that connection that keeps the song so fondly in my memory. It is “Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” by the fake band Reunion.

A few months ago I wrote a post about the Pooh Sticks. On their web page (thepoohsticks.blogspot.com) they did a countdown of their top 50 songs. “Life Is a Rock” came in at #17.

Joey Levine, the song’s lead singer, was also involved in other fake bands including bubblegum music giant The Ohio Express (“Yummy Yummy Yummy” and “Chewy Chewy).

This single established the template for songs with scores of cultural references spit out in a machine gun like, rapid fire delivery. R.E.M’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” (1987) and Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (1989) followed in a similar vein.

Listen closely… some of the references are pretty hip for 1974, bubblegum music fodder.

Enjoy… until next week.

Extra Song of the Week – The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, The Firesign Theatre

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I just learned that Phil Austin of the Firesign Theatre has passed away. He was 74. Although the Firesign were not musicians, they’re brand of comedy epitomized the spirit and culture of Rock ‘n Roll.

When I was in college, my roommates and I listened “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger” (and all of their other routines) endlessly. We knew and could recite the dialog by heart.

I brought one of their films (Everything You Know is Wrong) to campus and once did a 4 hour Firesign marathon on WZBC (Boston College radio).

I also finally got to see the group perform at Boston’s Orpheum Theater, I think it was the late 80s (could have been early 90s). They were great sports, letting the audience recite all of their most popular lines.

Since Peter Bergman died in 2012, the Firesign Theatre is down to two. That is sad news.

RIP Phil (Nick Danger) Austin. You will be missed.

Song of the Week – More Songs About Chocolate and Girls, The Undertones

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The Undertones were a late 70s/early 80s rock band from Derry, Northern Ireland. Their brand of three chord pop punk led to comparisons to Sire label mates, The Ramones. Their songs dealt primarily with teen subject matter, mostly girls and such. (They steered away from political subject matter such as the violence and conflict they were surrounded by at home during “the troubles.”)

They gained their first notoriety when the influential British DJ John Peel championed the band by playing their first single, “Teenage Kicks”, twice during one radio program. He famously named it his all-time favorite song – in fact, a line from the song (“Teenage dreams so hard to beat”) is inscribed on his gravestone.

Today’s SotW is the lead off cut from the band’s second album Hypnotized (1980). It is the tongue-in-cheek titled “More Songs About Chocolate and Girls.” It also pays tribute their other Sire label mates, Talking Heads, whose second album was called More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978).

It comes on with a catchy guitar lick and friendly reggae lilt. It could be a peppier cousin to The Clash’s version of “Police and Thieves.” Later, lead singer Feargal Sharkey implores with his unmistakable warbly vocal:

Sit down, relax and cancel all other engagements
It’s never too late to enjoy dumb entertainment

Ain’t it the truth!

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely, Hüsker Dü

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I have to admit that I’ve never been a big fan of heavy metal or its offshoots. My college roommates loved Black Sabbath. I just didn’t get it. Hair metal? Speed metal? Not for me. Over time I did open up to it a little. There was a time that I couldn’t stand AC/DC, but I love them now.

But there are always exceptions and that brings me to today’s SotW, “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely” by Hüsker Dü.

Hüsker Dü was a post punk band from Minneapolis. They played a brand of hardcore speed metal, but with less screaming and more melody. They were a power trio with two terrific songwriters in Bob Mould (guitar/vocals) and Grant Hart (drums/vocals), and Greg Norton on bass.

“Don’t Want to Know…” is a Hart song from the band’s 1986 major label debut, Candy Apple Grey. It’s another in the long tradition of Rock music break-up songs.

I’m curious to know exactly how you are
I keep my distance but that distance is too far
It reassures me just to know that you’re okay
But I don’t want you to go on needing me this way

And I don’t want to know if you are lonely
Don’t want to know if you are less than lonely
Don’t want to know if you are lonely
Don’t want to know, don’t want to know

The day you left me, left me feeling oh so bad
Still I’m not sure about all the doubts we had
From the beginning we both knew it wouldn’t last
Decisions have been made the die has been cast

The phone is ringing and the clock says four A.M.
If it’s your friends, well I don’t want to hear from them
Please leave your number and a message at the tone
Or you can just go on and leave me alone

Hüsker Dü never achieved the commercial success they deserved. When I listen to their records (an amazing six albums – two of them doubles – and two EPs released between 1983 and 1987) I can’t imagine a Nirvana or a Green Day without them. (In fact, Green Day recorded “Don’t Want to Know…” for a scrapped MTV pilot called Influences.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – I Wanna Stay Home, Jellyfish

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The Paisley Underground was a mid-80s genre of rock music that paid homage to the psychedelic California garage/folk rock bands of the 60s (especially The Byrds) through their usage of pop melodies, vocal harmonies and jangly guitars. The term was coined by Michael Quercio of The Three O’Clock, one the movement’s purveyors. Other bands in the The Paisley Underground were The Dream Syndicate, The Bangles and The Long Ryders.

Another group loosely associated with the genre was Jellyfish, a group formed in Pleasanton, California – an east bay suburb of San Francisco.

Jellyfish was a short lived band that put out two critically acclaimed, but sadly forgotten, albums in the early 90s – Bellybutton (1990) and Spilt Milk (1993). If you are a fan of Squeeze, Crowded House or XTC, you are (or will be) a fan of Jellyfish too.

Today’s SotW is “I Wanna Stay Home” from Bellybutton.

The song is a melancholy ballad that starts with an acoustic guitar intro before the full band joins. The plaintive verses are sung solo but with “ba, ba-ba-ba” background vocals. The lyrics long for the simple joy of living the life of a homebody.

When you need someone
And there’s no one there
There is always the nine o’clock train
To take you out somewhere

I take the train in town
Like I did for years
There is only seven more blocks
I could walk from here

Some tasteful trumpet playing is added to the chorus by Chuck Findley. Beatle-esque harmonies come in on the bridge.

When I realize the weight
That’s firmly on my shoulders
On my shoulders
I just try and find the place
I can take a walk on my blind side
On my blind side

Then a short, thick stringed guitar solo is played before the song returns to the final verse and chorus.

When these memories fade
In my ripe old age
Please remember my dear

I wanna stay home
I wanna stay home right here
I wanna stay home today
I wanna stay

This is a perfectly written and performed pop song. They don’t come any better.

If you listen to more of Jellyfish’s music (available on Spotify and YouTube) you’ll hear lots of other influences – Queen, The Beach Boys, and power pop titans such as Badfinger, Big Star and the Raspberries. They also imitate The Beatles, especially Paul McCartney. I have a live bootleg where they play his solo hit “Jet.”

Most people have never heard of Jellyfish, but once you discover them you’ll never forget them.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – April Fool, Ronnie Lane & Pete Townshend (feat. Eric Clapton)

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We were all very saddened to hear that B.B. King passed away yesterday. Of course I was tempted to pay tribute to him with today’s SotW, but there were so many words written about him yesterday that I have nothing new or special to add. Rest in peace B.B. (and Lucille too).

I recently finished Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces . . ., written by the legendary engineer/producer Glyn Johns. It’s an insider perspective of classic rock and roll that few people can offer. He was in the room when some of the most important albums in the history of rock and roll were recorded.

When Led Zeppelin recorded “Dazed and Confused” he was in the room.

When Mick Taylor and Bobby Keys ripped off those amazing solos on Sticky Fingers’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” he was in the room.

When Roger Daltrey let out that blood curdling scream toward the end of “We Won’t Get Fooled Again” he was in the room again.

As I read the book I was excited about the prospect that Johns would help me to (re)discover some gem of a record that I had overlooked or forgotten. That came in the chapter about the Pete Townshend/Ronnie Lane album Rough Mix.

I’ve always enjoyed that album but often focused on its most popular songs – the ones that got FM radio air play – “My Baby Gives It Away” and “Street in the City.” But it is a lesser known cut on the album, “April Fool”, that Johns says is “among the few moments in my recording career that I treasure.”

The track was almost finished when Eric Clapton offered to add a Dobro part to complement the song.

“I played him the track and I noticed that his foot was tapping as he ran through the song. I quickly put a mic on his foot and we recorded the next run-through. It was note-perfect and quite beautiful. Eric reacting in the most natural and emotive way to the song and Ronnie’s performance of it. Up until that moment I had paid very little attention to Eric as a musician and therefore never really understood what all the fuss was about. I thought he was just another bloody white kid playing the blues. That was very clearly my loss. In a matter of a few minutes I had been completely won over. This was a perfect example of what I have always thought about Eric’s playing. He never allows his brain to get in the way between his heart and his fingers.”

The instrumental title cut (also with Clapton on lead guitar) is pretty cool too.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Waiting for the Sun, The Doors

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I’ve always found it interesting when a band names an album after a song that’s not on that album, but on an earlier or later disc. The most famous example of this is Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. That was the name of their fifth album, but the song by that name was on their next – Physical Graffiti.

The first example of this disconnect that I noticed was with The Bee Gees. Their first album, Bee Gees’ 1st (1967), contained a song called “Cucumber Castle.” They later used that name for their 1970 album.

There are further examples of this throughout rock history.

Artist / Title / Album Song Appears On
Elvis Costello / Almost Blue (1981) / Imperial Bedroom (1982)
Tom Waits / Frank’s Wild Years (1987) / Swordfishtrombones (1983)
Smithereens / Especially For You (1986) / Green Thoughts (1988)

Today’s SotW is The Doors “Waiting for the Sun” from their fifth album, Morrison Hotel (1970).

The name of that song was also used as the title for their 1968 album release. The story goes that the band worked on the song for their third album but didn’t like the way it came out. Funny then that they still wanted to name the album after a song that didn’t make the cut.

Thankfully they continued to work on it and came up with a gem for Morrison Hotel a couple of years later.

Can you come up with any other examples? (Greatest hits compilations and live albums don’t count.)

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Do I Love You (Indeed I Do), Frank Wilson

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Today’s SotW is a Northern Soul classic. When most people hear the term “Northern Soul” they assume it means American soul music that came from acts based in the northern United States instead of from Memphis or Muscle Shoals. In actuality the term refers to a style of American soul music popularized in dance clubs in Northern England. Part of the Northern Soul music culture is to avoid the popular hits in favor of obscure singles often recorded for small, local, independent labels.

Frank Wilson’s single for Motown’s Soul subsidiary in 1965 fits the bill. “Do I Love You (Yes Indeed)” was recorded just before he became one of Motown’s important producers. The story goes that only about 250 copies of a demo 45 were pressed and then later destroyed when Berry Gordy decided it wasn’t worth the effort to promote an act that was planning to focus on a production career, not to become a performing talent.

But a few copies survived, making it a very valuable disc. (One of the few copies known to exist sold in England for over £25,000 in May 2009.) Now, thanks to the magic of digital recordings and the affordable cost of free, you can hear it too!

But its rarity alone doesn’t make it valuable. It’s its quality that creates the demand. “Do I Love You” has all the trappings of a Northern Soul classic – a crisp rhythm, solid beat with evocative lyrics sung from the heart. It’s a song that’s sure to fill the dance floor.

Surprisingly, the backing music wasn’t played by the Funk Brothers – Motown’s house band. No, this song was recorded in LA using Wrecking Crew musicians – Billy Strange, Glen Campbell, Hal Blaine, Al De Lory, Carol Kaye and Tommy Tedesco.

If you’re intrigued by this backstory and would like to learn more about it, check out this long form article that was originally written to support the auction that resulted in the 2009 sale mentioned above:

Andy Nix – Soul News – The Story of Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)

Although this song languished in obscurity until the late 70s/early 80s, Wilson did enjoy a successful career as a producer and songwriter. In fact, he received a co-writing credit for his production of Brenda Holloway’s recording of “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” which was covered by Blood, Sweat & Tears and hit #2 in 1969.

Enjoy… until next week.