This is just a heads up to surf geeks: On Tuesday July 23 TCM (Turner Classic Movies) is airing all five pre-Endless Summer surf movies by Bruce Brown. Filmed from '58'-''62 these were made before the wide scale commodification of surf culture. Starting at 8:00 on Tuesday, going into the early morning, all followed by John Milius's Big Wednesday (1978).
Slippery When Wet (1958), Surf Crazy (1959), Barefoot Adventure (1960), Surfin Shorts (1960), Surfing Hollow Days (1962). The quality is crude and the narration corny as hell, but they capture the era well.
Bud Shank did the soundtracks to Slippery When Wet and Barefoot Adventure. It's total West Coat jazz. Used vinyl copies of both are pretty cheap and they're both really good.
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Years ago I used to go to a bar near the beach for happy hour. Pitchers were half off, at the time a pitcher of Bud was something like $2.50. I only went to that bar for happy hour. I was a bargain hunter. After going there for a while they got a CD jukebox. The first one I'd ever seen. It was a crazy advancement. The thing would have the full album CDs so for the first time you could hear a deep track on a jukebox. In a bar. Loud. Granted most of it was classic rock. The price you pay for cheap beer.
One time I was in there and the bar was more crowded than usual. Everybody was shout-talking in a battle with the jukebox. That being the case, you could here snippets of conversations a few people away. The loudest, most dominant conversations were of the bickering, agitated chest beating, tough guy routine type. Everybody yapping their early buzz ass off. It was a total cacophony,I decided to add to it.
I had earlier taken a look-see at the jukebox. There it was. The white album. You know it. The double LP by that hairy bunch above. I filed that away, that it was there in case I wanted to hear something from it later. It wasn't much later when, annoyed at the congress of loud talkers, I put on the song that was the way-the-fuck-out-there deep cut of the album. Eight minutes of weird shit. Talk about adding to the cacophony. A couple minutes into it two fights broke out. I left and went home for dinner before going back out to my non-happy hour bar which was way happier.
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I was listening to early punk rock earlier, primarily stuff that I never got around to buying. Back then it was usually a lack of funds and having to prioritize. Some bands though put me off from the start. The Damned are a very good example of the latter. I never took the leap and bought anything of theirs. The first few LPs were everywhere and not disliked by me. I just couldn't, and still can't, take a singer dressed like Dracula seriously, particularly in a punk band. Never mind fucking Captain Sensible's goofy ass shades They were "Nope!" then and they're "Nope!" now. But, holy shit, they sure sound good.
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I wouldn't ordinarily feature someone who does all parodies Weird Al Yankovic ruined it for everybody. His were just stupid, mildly amusing yes, but not gutbusters. Obscurest Vinyl's though are a riot. Part of it is the music, spot on productions of all types of music from the past. The fake sleeves are good too. And the lyrics are like regular people speak,witrh some good ol' fashioned cussin'. This is one that made me give in,. A girl group type ditty with lots of f-bombs. There are tons of others at YouTube.
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If you've an eagle eyed local here you may have noticed mentions of (and links to) The Hound, aka Jim Marshall, a record collector and a radio DJ with killer taste, and also has a blog. Though no longer being updated it is a mandatory bookmark. Mandatory. There's so much information there, bios, little known facts, recording info, and it's all about the good shit (I'll get to that). His profiles of artists make bios elsewhere seem scant. Though he used to have song titles in the text linked to mp3s, the links are no longer functioning. That's a bummer but regardless, the blog is still very valuable.
So what's the Hound into? Here's what esteemed musician/composer/bandleader John Zorn had to say "It's sick, twisted, horrible noise. Those are four of my highest compliments." The late guitarist Robert Quine (Richard Hell and the Void-Oids, Lou Reed) said "The key factors are brutal and stupid. It must have redeeming value." The Hound himself said "It's music of wild abandon and snarling attitude. These are just the records I like, and we present the stuff in the spirit in which it was made."
There's three radio shows he did in 1986 linked below. To give you an idea of his taste, in the first twenty minutes of the first show he plays Dale Hawkins, Esquerita, Roy Hall, Memphis Slim, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. That's just the first twenty minutes. Later in the show, Hasil Adkins, Joe Maphis, Kip Tyler and others. In other words, right up my alley.
The Hound was off the air for years but came back for a while in 2017 doing his shows online at Little Walter Radio. The easiest way to find his shows are at Mix Cloud, per the Hound, "Their search engine is pretty funky, search for 'The Hound Show' [as opposed to 'Little Walter Radio']." Here's a bunch of links. Pardon the fidelity, it's the music that counts.
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On the ride home tonight, it was Gal Costa. She hit the spot. Driving into the beach area where I live, it was sunny and warm, breezy. With Gal Costa on the deck I felt like I was traveling in a different country. I've no explanation. Despite her singing in Portuguese (she was Brazilian) it wasn't that. It may have been the hard to peg nature of her music. It's definitely Brazilian (what with Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso collaborating and a cover of Os Mutantes' "Baby") but not traditional, it's Tropicalia, kind of a mixed bag at that. If you are not familiar with Tropicalia, here's a good primer, Brazil - The Tropicalist Revolution, a documentary on the movement that changed Brazilian music. Part one is below and links to the other parts are at the bottom of the post. If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, do a random web search for "Tropicalia" and cancel all your plans for the night.
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It's been decades since the original Nuggets garage punk compilation came out and I still haven't really gone out of my way to look into the backgrounds of many of the bands on it. That's because that first two LP compilation was joined by others. There were multiple Nuggets compilations, another series, the imaginatively titled Pebbles, the Back From the Grave series, more from Sundazed,...there were just too many to check out the bios of every band. So, once I return to a song I like, that's when I do a cursory background check. Today, a band lost me.The Leaves coulda passed the test based on the two songs I know. "Too Many People" was the one I had to hear. "Hey Joe" was the other. (Their version of the latter was the first released, before versions by Hendrix and others.)
Before the bio check, the photo. Yikes! I ran across the photo above. Things ain't looking too good. Those perfectly coiffed bowl cuts seem a little disingenuous, even keeping in mind that almost all bands back then had their eyes on the charts. So, the Leaves are on probation. Now on to background shit, I dunno, let's try Wikipedia. Once there, there, I was almost blinded. In a sea of words, it might as well have been a neon sign, "They were discovered by popular singer and actor Pat Boone". Game over. Anyone who had anything to do with Pat Boone has a space reserved on the shit list. As you know, Boone is the archenemy of any true Little Richard fan. The conversation ends here.
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I was just going to a random mix at Internet Archive, a radio show. Four one hour shows. Right out of the gate, Frankie Ford's "Sea Cruise". It had been so long since I've heard that song it was like going home. So, before listening to the mix, I was off on a Frankie Ford tack. Then, after hearing Ford's cover of Joe Jones's "You Talk Too Much", I went to the Jones original (Jones wins). Then I remembered. The ballgame is on.
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Here's another guy that doesn't really get the recognition that he deserves, Big Al Downing. He's the piano player in the photo above, in his early band the Poe Cats. This guy did it all, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, country, gospel, and disco. Not to slight his other musical identities, it's his stuff from the rock 'n' roll era that I dig, his early stuff sounding something along the lines of Fats Domino meets Little Richard.
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If I don't post it now, I'll forget. For all of you into beat poetry, here's Allen Ginsberg reading Howl and Jack Kerouac reading his October in the Railroad Earth (with Steve Allen on the 88s). It's mind blowing to think that Howl was such a controversial piece when Ginsberg first read it in public in 1955. (The reading below is from 1959). It had a way of getting under the skin of straights, that I understand, but banning it? Come on, that's like banning people for thinking.
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The other night I had the ball game on with the sound off. The Padres got hammered by the Yankees. The post game coverage came on and there were two Padres commentators talking to each other. The sound was still off. In my head I was imagining that one said to the other "Ahh, we sucked pretty bad on that one." What the hell? Where did that I get that from? Then I remembered. It was uttered by a young teenager in 1967 during the Croton-on-Hudson Band Festival. I last heard it in 2012 when I posted a video of the festival. Yeah, selective memory. Here's the original post:
No mp3 today. Instead, I'd like to direct your attention to the video
below. It is most awesome. It's a few different groups playing in some
sort of battle of the bands in Croton-On-Hudson, NY in 1967. This
sucker's a hoot, so many things to dig. The teen dancers, the
distinctly different bands, the venue. You've got your choice here. It
opens with a standard (for the time) group, the Active Ingredients,
followed by three other groups that didn't have the wherewithal to put
their band name on the drum head, so I can't ID them. The Active
Ingredients do "Midnight Hour," passably for school age kids I suppose.
I love the ad-lib grunts and such towards the end. When the second
band comes on (at 2:06)...well, the first thing that hit me was that
they had a Monks-like beat. All repetitive, all banging thuds. I
really like them. The drummer plays funny to boot. They're followed by
a guy who probably thought of himself as some sort of sensitive John
Mayer-type lady killer, at least of Croton-On-Hudson in 1967. I was
kind of annoyed with this guy. I wouldn't go so far as to say his band
have this thing completely nailed down, but they're far better than
the rest of the bands, and that of course makes them completely
uninteresting to me. The fourth band, whoa, they're my favorite. It's
kids, really, trying their hardest, bless their jumping-the-gun hearts.
Their tune (at 3:25) is quite a racket. In a way that I love, meaning
that the only redeeming thing about it is that they are trying so hard
to hold it together. And, they're at least doing it. (Proto-William Hung.)
The kid singer assesses the performance at the end. Clearly audible
as the song ends (at 3:51), he says "ahhh, we sucked pretty bad on that
one..." It is a defining moment in rock 'n' roll, because every rock
'n' roll band has had one of those moments.
What I like about this video, and what made it worth watching several
times, and posting it without accompanying tunes of any sort, is that
it really has the timeless elements of shitty bands everywhere, from
every era. To a certain degree, even the winner of this band contest,
even the second runner up, let's just cut to the chase here, even the
Beatles, at one time or another, sucked pretty bad on that one.
In a book I'm currently reading, it mentioned Head, the 1968 film that starred the Monkees. The book described the film as "A whoopee cushion that belched pot smoke." It's that and more. Besides the Monkees, the film also had Annette Funicello, Frank Zappa, Carol Doda, Sonny Liston, Victor Mature and uncredited cameos by Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson. If that sounds like a surreal cast, you're starting to get the idea. It's worth a viewing if for no other reason than to see a disjointed stoner flick written in a weekend long pot party by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson. Case in point: While writing the script, one of them brings up the ridiculous idea of having the Monkees come flying out of Victor Mature's hair. Later, when they came back to earth, they realized that the idea would require Victor Mature's participation. (He signed on.) That's just one short weird scene. Expand that to a feature length full of short weird scenes and you have an idea of what it's like to spend a weekend getting stoned with Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson. (Note: If you're a regular here you know, it's been posted before. But, shit, it's been three years. What did you post today?)
While I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to post tonight, I figured I'd listen to some African music that I hadn't heard. Destination: Internet Archive. I'm blown away at the amount of music, books and other stuff over there. It's a rabbit hole of many flavors. Todays gamble certainly paid off. It's eight episodes of a radio show, "The Africa Express", from KOOP in Austin. They're good and varied. A LOT of more obscure stuff, even for those into African music. Book mark it, it's eight hour-long shows. Note: You can also download them from the the link in one the right of the page about halfway down, click on "Download Options". Click on "VBR MP3" for the mp3s. I guess I am posting.
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If you're at all into reggae, you know who Lee Perry is. What you may not know is that as far back as his Black Ark studio days he was working with non-reggae musicians, the best known collaboration being with the Clash. Amongst others he worked with were the McCartneys, those McCartneys. I had heard about the collaboration and shuddered at the thought. I recently gave in and gave two cuts a listen. While not as offensive as I expected, it's still just bland cod reggae. But, man, would I have loved being a fly on the wall at Black Ark. Imagine the conversations that may have occurred. As it is, two years later Perry would end up intentionally burning down Black Ark. Were the events connected? While you ponder that, here's the two cuts and a link to posts about Lee Perry from the past.
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I ran into a collection of songs, nearly all hits, all backed by the Wrecking Crew. If you're not familiar with the Wrecking Crew, go look it up and come back. We've been over it here. [Documentary below. Recommended.] In short, they were shifting number of studio musicians (the core were roughly a couple dozen) who played on a shitload of hits in the sixties and early seventies. The thing that kills me is that, of the many hits that they played on, no matter who produced the sessions, the arrangements and playing carry the songs. The players, usually not credited, were the real stars.
I've posted stuff about the Wrecking Crew several times. I've known their story for years but I'm still finding out about songs that they played on that I didn't know of. Case in point, the Ventures version of the "Hawaii Five-O" theme, just mentioned in a post a week or so ago. The Ventures were an proto-surf instrumental band. What? An instrumental band that had to have help? They weren't alone either. Other instrumental bands leaned on the Wrecking Crew as well; the Marketts, a surf band, jazz dude Lalo Schifrin and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass to name three. Then there were the fictitious bands of scores of surf cash-in records. (Sundazed Records has a number of the latter in their Surf Legends series of compilations. Highly recommended.) I love studio geeks in general. When they're musician studio geeks, forget it, it's off the charts. Total unequivocal respect.
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There I was, perusing a song list of sixties British female pop, stuff like Dusty Springfield, Lulu and Sandie Shaw. Bam! There were a couple cuts by the Liverbirds! I've a soft spot for the Liverbirds. Unlike a lot of British female singers at the time, the Liverbirds played their own instruments. Better, they looked as if they were not to be messed with. They were the cool chicks. That's all fine and dandy if their music backed it up. It did.
Having posted about them several times in the past, I didn't expect find much of anything new online. I was surprised to see that they now have their own YouTube channel and that the two surviving members wrote a book about their band. I'm still in rabbit hole mode. Join me, it beats doing the dishes.
First off, check the live clip, "Peanut Butter". So completely badass. A shitload more of that at their YouTube page. When you check the mp3s below, just imagine them with a meatier production. Even a crunchy Kinks-like sound. Even better? A time machine wherein Jon Spencer produces them à la Blues Explosion. Shit. now I'm just fantasizing.
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Duane Eddy wasn't a surf guitarist but his sound, the echo and tone of his guitar, were hugely influential. There had been guitar instrumentals as long as there have been guitars but Eddy played his leads largely on the bass strings and that, combined with the echo, provided the "twang" that producer Lee Hazelwood dubbed his sound. (Hazelwood devised the echo chamber from an empty 2,000 gallon water tank.) This was a couple years before Leo Fender made the first reverb unit for Dick Dale. So, in regards to his influence on surf music, as one of his album titles says, "The 'Twangs' The 'Thang'"
Duane Eddy died last week. For me it's almost like losing a relative. [Personal story alert.] Hear me out. When I was about ten, my Uncle Mike had just returned home after an Air Force stint in Okinawa. When we went to visit him at my Grandma's he had this enormous sound system set up. He'd had bought it in Japan and had it shipped home. He asked my brothers and I if we wanted to hear it. At that young age our collective record collection consisted of three 45s. We'd only heard music from transistor and clock radios and a crappy portable record player. We did not know what we were in for. Uncle Mike proceeded to blast the Ventures' version of the "Hawaii Five-O" theme at a thousand decibels. There it began.
A while later we got a few hand me down LPs from Uncle Mike. The Ventures, Santo and Johnny and Duane Eddy. Having no LPs of our own, these ushered in the guitar mania that would dominate the next several decades of our listening habits. I know, I can hear it. You're saying "It's not all about you. How about some Duane Eddy background info?" Fine.
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Who has had his music banned by NASA, went to school with Joe Ely, had a song covered by Bowie (who also nicked the "Stardust" for his Ziggy Stardust alter ego), and left two messages on my answering machine? The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, that's who. He's been posted here a few times but I just ran a documentary that will be my viewing tonight. If you don't know the Ledge, I recommend listiening to "Paralyzed" his 1968 debut 45 (below). If that doesn't pique your interest, I give up. I know the first time I heard it, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Down below are links to earlier posts describing why he was calling me, the Bowie connection and why "Paralyzed" was banned by NASA.
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Here's a juxtaposition; Amy Winehouse doing a reggae cover of Sam Cooke's "Cupid" and the Jolly Boys, a soca and reggae group, covering her "Rehab". I ran into these minutes apart, so what the hell. Something tells me I've posted them before. Not my problem.
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Okay, I've heard the song a zillion times over the years and never absorbed who it was by. I'm speaking of "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)". Without looking it up, I could have sworn that it was by someone like Lou Rawls, you know, someone known primarily as a singer. When I gave up, I looked it up. Junior Walker. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know that. But I'm not going to dwell on it. The whole reason the topic came up is because I was digging on Alton Ellis's cover of it and couldn't believe that I didn't know who did the original despite hearing it no less than a zillion times. Regardless, dig it.
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