Yikes! It's the middle of summer and I still haven't posted "Uptown Top Ranking"! If you've been around here long enough you know. As happens every year, I have a contented moment made possible by nice weather, a warm ocean and chance meetings with locals on my way to and from the beach. Per usual, I gush about it. This jam nails the mood, not lyrically, just in the vibe, It's by Althea and Donna and if you've been listening to reggae a long time you might remember when it appeared in 1978. It went to #1 in the UK, didn't do shit in the states. Me and my friends ate it up.
The riddim comes from Alton Ellis's "I;m Still In Love With You". Althea and Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking" was by no means the only record to use it. Here's a couple others. And if you're already familiar with all of these, dig this exercise. Try syncing Ellis's with Althea and Donna's, opening them in separate windows and pausing one if needed. Then fuck with the volume in each window. When they do sync well you can strut around like some two bit King Tubby,
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Well, that was a long piss break. Guess what happened. Nothing. I just wanted to see what it was like to take my unproductive tendencies to the next level. It got pretty boring. I guess one thing did happen. The traffic here jumped, not a little, but a lot. The past few months have had the most hits in the time I've been doing this, something like seventeen years. If this blog was monetized, it would be the ultimate "passive income", money for sitting on your ass. I ain't got time for that.
So, anyway, the Viagra Boys. I happened on a link to one of their videos. Sometimes a band name will be the only reason I click. Viagra Boys: the stupidest fucking band name I've ever heard of. That's precisely what sucked me in. I was hoping for another Oklahoma Blood. Oklahoma Blood you ask? Another band that also sucked me in via a bad band name, with very different results. Oklahoma Blood is a metal band from, you guessed it, Oklahoma. I'm not sure what their reach is but the gigs in the videos have the look of a band still in their take-any-gig stage. To wit, the first video I saw was an instrumental banger called "Stompin' Nachos" and they're playing in what appears to be someone's back yard, complete with a junior headbanger back by the drummer. I'm no judge of this type of metal, but I can say they seem earnest.. I have to admit, the scene is humorous but you know what? Good for them. They're doing it.
Back to the Viagra Boys. I was pleasantly surprised. After .watching a
few videos and without knowing anything about the band I came away
thinking they sounded like the My War-era Black Flag with a
little early Stooges, with Weirdos singer John Denny and a dash of
Flipper sludge. If you're an old fart like me and liked those bands back
in the day your assessment might be different. Good. Another thing was
that they had a synth player and sax, both played abrasively enough that
it made me think of the No Wave stuff from the No New York
compilation. Add all that up and it's a salad bowl of good shit. [I
should add here that in subsequent listening I'd add a dozen other
bands. Heroes-era Bowie is in there, all sorts of stuff.]
I gave it a couple weeks to see if it was just the mood I was in when I first ran across them. Sampled some recordings, watched a few more videos. Okay, I realized that I dig them, a lot more than any "new" band that's come down the pike the past few years. I'm surprised as hell that I hadn't heard of them. Really. They been around for six years or something. I'm so out of the loop that I don't care about being out of the loop.
It's better this way. Even though I thought they had a stupid name, with no pre-conceived notions about their music I was allowing myself almost total objectivity, I'm' pleased as punch, I dig them, from out of nowhere. Late to the party? Says who? The party starts when I show up.
Then, the lyrics. They kill me. "Ain't No Thief", sung in the first person, is about a guy who gets accused of stealing things, repeatedly. His defense is always..., well the chorus says it all with a snarl. "I ain't no thief!, I ain't no thief!, I ain't no thief!, I just got the same stuff!!" Lyrics Larry, Moe and Curly would envy. In "Sports", singer Sebastian Murphy rattles off things that could only be loosely defined by some as sports or sports related, including "Getting high in the morning, Buying things on the internet, ..." ending multiple verses with "wiener dog" which is really a stretch. It's like one of those drunken jams you have with your buds where you just improvise random lyrics. After that as my initial assessment, I ran across an interview with Murphy alluding to almost that exact scenario. When writing he just fits random words and phrases to the music and fine tunes them later once he thinks of something better. Sometimes he doesn't. Hence, wiener dog.
Here's just a sampling. There's a shitload of videos at YouTube on their "channel"; some live, some live in studio and some official music videos. Whoever does their videos does a bang up job. The live stuff is well mixed and has great camera work with multiple cameras. Not the shaky fan videos done with someone's phone. The "official" music videos are entertaining in a David Lynch "what the fuck is this?" sort of way.
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If you're like me, you've probably wondered why more musicians aren't speaking up about what is going on in the U.S., especially the highly visible ones. Springsteen stepped up. These spoken word moments from a concert a few days ago should be heard. He does a good job of describing what's happening in plain terms, And if you're one of those people that feel celebrities and musicians should keep their traps shut and ignore the shit that's going down, pretend he's a nobody and just listen. Now, er, Boss, about that outfit....
Have you seen the commercials for SUVs that have a "crab walk" feature? That's a kind of steering with all four wheels turning simultaneously, instead of just the two front wheels. Rather then turning in an arc, the car goes diagonally. What could go wrong? It's not just a disaster waiting to happen. Many disasters are waiting to happen. Idiots will be driving them. Watch.
After shaking my head, I thought of Prince Jazzbo's "Crab Walking", the long disco mix.version with Jazzbo toasting over the "Skylarking" riddim, I dig it, classic Studio One. So here's that and three other cool golden age cuts.
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Last night I was sick. Bad congestion, body ache, all that. I slept a good long time and got up this morning still feeling like shit, unsure if I was better or worse. Time to move.
I got and made some coffee and grabbed a book. I'm re-reading the Art Pepper memoir. I learned something. Do not read a book about a junky, particularly the part where he's describing his first fix when you're sick. It made be feel sicker. I shut the book. I gotta say, that dude had a mess of a life for someone with a talent so immense. You'd think more people would know of him just because the juxtaposition is so great. I thought I'd fix that by posting about him. In checking, I saw that I'd posted about him the first time I read the book. So below are the text and links from that (all links are still good.) From 6/9/2021:
I'm halfway through reading Art Pepper's autobiography The Straight Life (co-written with his wife Laurie). If you know anything about Pepper, you know he's a West Coast jazz guy, saxophone. If you know anything else about Pepper you know that he was a junkie, for years. He did time in a number of facilities, the most notorious San Quentin. I'm only halfway through the book (up to the mid-sixties) and I can tell you just from that that he makes Keith Richards look like a dabbler. Nothing is glossed over in the book. Not the crimes he committed, not the extent he went through to get a fix, not the lovers he treated like shit, or the dark thoughts running around in his head. It is heavy.
So I started browsing, A couple links in, I'm already distracted. There's a shitload about Pepper online. These are tonights detours.
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I have a friend that I grew up with that now lives in New York. I touch base with her on Facebook every now and then but haven't seen her face to face in at least twenty years. It's a bummer because we went through a lot together back in the day, were roommates (with about eight others) around 1980. Back then she had a thing for David Bowie and I just ran into some Bowie oddballs and it made me think of her. She, Margaret, inventor of the Bowie Fast.
What is the Bowie Fast, you ask? Something that, at one time seemed silly, worthy of a teasing. Later it made total sense. I think it was somewhere around 1978-79, someone was putting on a record and they were asked not to play Bowie. It seemed Margaret liked Bowie so much that she didn't want to risk getting sick of him. She was on a Bowie Fast. Now I know what you're thinking, that Bowie's catalog is so vast that it would be nearly impossible, particularly for a Bowie fan, to even hear all that he's recorded enough times to go to that length. Not the ease in 1978. Bowie only had about a dozen albums out. There was no internet, no downloads or search engines, no deluxe editions. Outtakes, then only on bootleg LPs or via tape swapping, were hard to come by if they existed at all, There was roughly twelve hours (or less) of Bowie recordings readily available. The Bowie Fast makes total sense.
Here's three covers and a link to a collection of more outtakes, demos and the like. Margaret, hope you like :)
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Yep, another Holiday Slackfest All-Star, the GFOS, once a year whether you need it or not. These reposts are getting to be a season all their own. Really though, were you gonna listen to these in July?
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Joseph Spence, I gotta. Even if I'm not in the mood for writing much, I can't risk forgetting him. He's like Darlene Love was a few years back, a different style but also a go-to holiday favorite. If you haven't heard him, when you do you'll know immediately what makes him so special. If I have to spell it out for you, to put it bluntly, he sounds like he's drunk off his ass.
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Back in the day, a lot of my friends from the music scene were into the Pogues and, looking back, I realized that there was a certain type of person that liked the band. I can't really put my finger on it but it was beyond the binary cool/not cool classification. It was like a secret that this small slice of the scene "got" while others were trying too hard to be the coolest in the room. I started thinking about those friends, some now deceased, and got all warm and fuzzy, remembering the Christmas Eve DJ gigs my friend Julie and I had (at the Pink Panther and later the Casbah) and the reaction that "Fairytale of New York" would get whether we played it or one of our DJ friends did.. All of the faces of drunk friends, cigarette smoke softening the view, a few on the plywood covered pool table that did double duty as a dance floor when things got crowded. Shane MacGowan was one of us on those nights.
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As you've no doubt noticed, posts here have been really sporadic. I wasn't really planning on posting anything holiday related, but last night my mood changed. I was out in the alley having a smoke and heard a band a few blocks away. They were playing a hopped up version of "Little Drummer Boy" in a sort of fifties style, replete with horns. Then they played "Run Rudolf Run" followed by "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)". Even a couple blocks away it was apparent it was a large band and they were tight. So I locked up and went to find out where the band was playing. Turns out it was a Christmas party thrown by Pacific Shores, a bar that has been around since the forties and, back when I was a lush, my home away from home. I had approached the shindig from the alley so I was at the side of the stage with a good look at the crowd. It had been some time since I was at the bar and it occurred to me that I was now part of the old guard. It was a younger crowd. What pleased me was that it wasn't a bunch of hipster douche bags. In my absence from the bar it had been my worry that it would be slowly taken over by kids that just try too hard to be cool. It was reassuring that the next wave of drinking kids in my neighborhood seemed down to earth, comfortable in their own skin. I actually got kind of choked up with a feeling that could only be described as All is good. So, in the spirit of slack and holiday tradition, at the peak of laziness and in need of breathing room, the annual reposting of Reverend Tom Frost's Bloody Xmas Mixes.
For all of you party planners running around like headless chickens, a reminder is in order. Spread the Good Word's Bloody Christmas mixes are still online. They used to be downloads, but they're now streaming (click on the "download" links below the song lists). Though they are streaming, I'm sure someone you know is savvy enough to run them through your sound system.
Last Wednesday morning when I saw the election results, in my head I heard the opening eight seconds of the Stooges "TV Eye". If you know the song, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know the song, get with the program (song link below, play loud). After the initial shock I remembered what helped in 2016 when the fuckhead was elected the first time. The clip from the film Animal House with John Belushi as Bluto (below). The image above was done in 2016 by Jamie Reid, the guy who did all of the Sex Pistol's graphics including the iconic "God Save the Queen" sleeve.
There's a few additional unrelated cuts from the Stooge's Fun House down there too, perfect for pulling your hair out. Play loud. Then turn it up.
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How do you rid your life of a major asshole that's been whining for years? It's simple. Vote. No candidate is perfect. Vote for the one that will do the most good for the most people. It's not all about you.
The last time I posted "Fuck Donald Trump" was right before the asshole was inaugurated. Though some of the rhymes could use a tune-up, hearing this again is somewhat cathartic. Before tonight I didn't know that there was a part two. That'll do for now. I might be back, but I'm kinda stuck watching the minute to minute post election developments. It's like the longest ninth inning ever. Two outs, two strikes and foul ball after foul ball. For four fucking years. Fuck Donald Trump.
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It's that time. Here's all of Rev Tom Frost's Bloody Halloween mixes. Every year, a grand Halloween lazy night repost cop out. I'd imagine there are a few of you who haven't heard any of them. If you're unfamiliar with Reverend, there's bits and pieces in these past posts.
The mixes (25 of them!) are only available streaming, but by now most of you have the gizmo arsenal required to blast them at a party.
And don't forget, the Frosty one is a kick ass musician himself. Ask your local Mr. Record Store Man to put the Reverend's goods in their racks. While you wait, buy his shit at Bandcamp.
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Holy shit! It's the last day of summer. That went by fast. Granted I've been summer lazy and posts here have been sporadic, there's just less urgency. That said, it being the last day of summer, I figured it high time to post some surf music. I picked an unlikely band because, well, they're a borderline surf-ploitation outfit, the Lively Ones. Some of you may know the name from their cover of the Ventures' "Surf Rider" on the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction. Why Quentin Tarantino chose their version over the Ventures' is anyone's guess. Maybe it was too expensive to license the original. Who knows.
The reason why I consider the Lively Ones a surf-ploitation band is because they did so many covers of other surf tunes and, as far as I can recollect, didn't have any bona fide hits that were self-penned. I was listening to a few cuts of there fourth LP titled The Lively Ones And Surf Mariachis – Surfin' South Of The Border and it occurred to me that they were like a surf version of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, by no means authentic but entirely listenable.
The few below are from Surfing Drums, their second LP and one of three LPs released in 1963. The thing is dripping in covers, Duane Eddy, the Rockin' Rebels, the Tornadoes, the Bel-Airs and Link Wray and others. (Their first LP begins with three Dick Dale covers.) You gotta check out their cover of Link Wray's "Rumble". Dig the guitar/floor tom freakout at 1:18 and 3:26. (I know what you Wray eggheads are thinking: 3:26? That's right. At 4:10 this cover is almost twice as long as Wray's OG). Returning to the floor tom thing, just listen to the spare primal pounding. Something about it slays me.
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I work and I believe in unions and I believe in workers' rights. I also believe that I will keep it short because today is Labor Day, a holiday for American workers. Though Billy Bragg is British, his "There Is Power In a Union" is right on the money.
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You know rabbit holes. I'm sure you do. Once you hear one thing, it reminds you of something else so you go hunting for that. That leads to another song or artist, and so on. When I fall into a rabbit hole, it can last for days. This time it was Ten Years After that started the wandering. It was their version of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", a live thing from 1975. Originally released in 1969 (I think) I'd heard them do it, but it's been years. But first, take a moment to behold the epic guitar face of Alvin Lee.
After listening/watching it, I was reminded that their arrangement
was pretty thin and that guitar heroics don't age well.. I tracked down Johnny Winter's version from his 1969
Columbia debut for a comparison. I really wanted to hear his live
version, but not until after I heard the earlier version because it was
on a blues album and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" is essentially a blues song.
Cue it up and sit between your speakers, The guitar is in one channel
and the horns are in the other. The riffs are like a call and response.
It's a great version and I really dig both the guitar tone and the
Stax-like horns. But, ho-ly shit, the live version, from 1971 is a
masterpiece in the live blues-rock canon. After his first LP on
Columbia, Winter started delving more into rock 'n' roll. Three LPs into
the change he recorded a live album, billed as Johnny Winter And, with
backing from former McCoys ("Hang On Sloopy") which included Rick
Derringer. On the live version, the guitars, his and Rick Derringer's,
are the dueling channels.(Winter is in the right channel, unless my
speakers are hooked up wrong.) This is some awesome raunchy guitar interplay. Serious, sit your ass down between the speakers. The way the guitars weave in and out with each other, so fucking good. This is the essence of that short lived line up. The live LP is a near perfect live template: insanely loud, blues and rock, heavy on distorted licks. Consider it mandatory..I
added Muddy Waters to contrast with Winter's versions. Waters was a
huge influence on Winter (they would later record the song together) and it's
interesting to hear the two versions back to back. Only eight years
separated them. Last down there is the OG, Sonny Boy Williamson from
1937. Respect.
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I don't know how it happened but..just wow! The Cuban born Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, is slated to be on a U.S. minted quarter. (That's a 25¢ piece). Soul sister Lady Spinsta hepped me to it. She knows. I totally dig Celia Cruz. Seriously, with that giant smile she had, and that voice, how could you not? And, jeez, talk about the jams?! With stellar backing and collaborators (Tito Puente, Johnny Pacheco and that whole Fania mob) her stature in Latin music was like Aretha's in soul. Massive.
I checked the old posts and none of them had any working links so, yeah, I dutifully trackew down a few. Like it or not, my super long break seems to have ended.
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