I'm a little all over the place tonight so amuse yourself with Glen Campbell egging Merle Haggard on to imitate Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Buck Owens and Johnny Cash. He pretty much nails them all. Watch the whole thing for the surprise guests and stare slack jawed at the amount of talent on one stage. They don't make TV like this anymore.
I'd never heard Betty Mabry before tonight and, man, was I blown away. Not by the song, "Get Ready For Betty" released in 1964, but by the juxtaposition of it and "He Was a Big Freak", released ten years later under her married name Betty Davis.
Quote her ex-husband, Miles Davis: "Betty was too young and too wild for the things I expected from a woman." "Betty was a free spirit - talented as a motherfucker...she was raunchy and all that kind of shit, all sex...I just got tired of it."
Quote her: "The music is physical, and it's about sex. In the sixties everyone was into dope and staying high. Now it's sex. Man and woman. My lyrics go right to it. I don't beat around the bush. It's hip to eat pussy these days. Really hip."
Ohh la la, m'lady. Where were we? Oh yeah, "Get Ready For Betty" is Northern Soul dance floor fare. Good, really good, but not mindblowingly so. But listen to it and then check out "He Was a Big Freak", the latter sounding like a salad bowl of Bill Withers's "Use Me", the Slits, the Contortions, Gang of Four, and more. And that was 1974, ahead if it's time and all that jazz. Eat that.
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Today I crossed paths with a woman that looked to be in her mid sixties, smartly dressed, but not in a fancy way. And she didn't appear to be one of those older ladies trying to remain stylishly current either. She was just wearing black jeans, a black jacket and a red screen printed t-shirt. But she had a unforced swagger. I recognized a part of the image on her shirt that showed. Just as she was passing me, I asked "United Farm Workers?" She gave the faintest smile, raised her fist, exclaimed "Viva Huelga!", This lady that still had it in her. She walked past me and out the door of the store with her fist still in the air, demonstratively. I just stood there and watched, uttering "fuck yeah".
The man, Cesar Chavez.
If you are unfamiliar with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, It's study time. This is American history and labor history, about farm workers and sacrifice, the power of a boycott and the power of unionizing, and the thirty five year old man that made it happen.
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After what has seemed like an eternity of hearing nothing but crappy music seeping from neighboring apartment complexes, a couple of days ago I happened to hear someone playing La Lupe's cover of "Fever". Unbelievable. Someone living within earshot knows of La Lupe. You'd have to know my neighborhood to know how out of the blue that is. I'm just gonna ride on that tonight.
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A few days ago, I was in one of those happy go lucky fancy free moods that are all too rare. In my car, in no particular hurry, and not in the doghouse, not anywhere that I knew of anyway. For whatever reason, Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell" started playing in my head. I don't know why, it just did. It set into motion a rewind of sorts, and for the last few days I've been revisiting songs that I've heard a thousand times, but haven't listened to in a while. Not necessarily to maintain that mood, but that's what it ended up doing. Bo Diddley, Liverbirds, Don and Dewey, wait...Bo Diddley?
In the middle of all of the meandering, it occurred to me that I might have lost a link to a set of photos of early rockers and country and western artists taken by a young girl armed with a Brownie camera back in the fifties. (She took the photo above.) When I realized that I hadn't properly tagged that in an earlier post, and not remembering the gal's name, semi-panic set in. Thankfully that little search box on the top left of this and every other page saved the day. So, before I go any further, let me introduce you to the search box. Up there at the very top left hand corner (scroll up dummy). It is your friend. As many tags as there are in the right column (under "Index"), there are many posts here that lack proper tags. And being that there are 1857 posts here, I'm not about to start checking.
Anyway, just listen to these. This is some Grade A shit. And by all means, check the guitar solo on the Valiants' cover of "Good Golly Miss Molly". It's seriously fucked up, somewhere between awful and pure genius. I don't know about you, but the Wild-O-Meter here goes in both directions.
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Are any of you old enough to remember making mix tapes and trying to fill every second of tape with whatever you had lying around so there wouldn't be a be a big gap at the end of one of your C90? A couple minutes of a free for all, filled with spoken word, sound effects or whatever?
Man, those sound effects records came in handy. I remember one time, walking down the boardwalk near a local beach and hearing the loud crash of a plate glass window breaking. As I approached I heard another window breaking, and soon after that, another. All of these startled tourists were looking around. Again, there was another crash, louder as I approached, along with a maniacal laugh. I knew the laugh. It was my friend Kevin Chambers [RIP] and it turns out that he was playing and replaying the end of a tape I'd made him, full blast on a giant boombox, on a busy boardwalk, just laughing his ass off. Good times.
Where was I? Oh yeah, mix tape filler. I just ran into a site with some interesting filler, particularly if you like oddball shit. First up is "The Beating Goes On" with Murry Wilson dishing out unsolicited advice during a Beach Boys recording session, sampled with whatever it is this electronic music would be referred to as. Techno? Drums 'n' Bass? House? EDM? I don't know enough to classify it, I just refer to it as "No Guitar Music".
The other two things are what the maker, David Dixon, refers to as "dictionaraoke", defined on his site as "Audio clips from online dictionaries sing the hits of yesterday and today. The fun of karaoke meets the word power of the dictionary," which is just a long way of saying "funny as shit". Check out Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" with the audio widgets from Merriam-Webster and Microsoft Encarta taking the vocal duties, And check out John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom". Tee hee. Nothing is sacred.
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Digging the sound on this one. Or the mix, whatever. The 1965 B.B. King LP Let Me Love You. Check the song below. If you like that era of B.B. King, when there was still some evident rawness, go to Groove Addict for another song and a link to the whole LP.
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I was indifferent to the Hammond organ for years. I knew it played a big role in a lot of bands I liked. Hell, my first concert ever was Deep Purple. So, yeah, I knew that big keyboard wasn't a piano, and wasn't a farfisa, an electric piano, or anything like that. The thing was massive, a lot of buttons and what not. And even as much as I was into Deep Purple back then, and as integral as organ was to their sound, Jon Lord would have to take a back seat to Ritchie Blackmore. In rock 'n' roll, with few exceptions, guitar always wins. But jazz is entirely different. Anyone can be a showboat. And Jimmy Smith is the showboat that made me love the Hammond organ. Dude was so damn smooth.
I ran into an old German documentary on Smith and am ass deep in it. Even though the non-invasive narration is in German, all of the Smith footage is in English, and it's definitely worth seeing. Skip around, there's live footage, studio footage and candid footage. Two hours worth. Here's a starter pack, to get you in the mood. Just listen to him rip the "Mission: Impossible" theme a new one.
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You know what makes that photo of Barbara Lynn cooler? She played guitar left handed. Her first recordings were done at Cosimo's. She wrote ten of the songs on her first LP. She had a hit.
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Last night, for whatever reason, I decided to revisit some lesser known Billy Lee Riley cuts, and the second or third one I hit on was his cover of Big Joe Williams's "Baby, Please Don't Go". Again, for whatever reason, it made me want to hear the Amboy Dukes' version. It had been a while, primarily because Ted Nugent is such an asshole these days, it's hard for me to hear it objectively. But his guitar on it is pretty damn cool, and who knows? Maybe he wasn't such an asshole back then. After that it was Them's version, followed by Big Joe Williams's original (that's him above), And so on. It's such a basic song, it's cool to hear what different people do with it.
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Ever judged a band by how they looked? You know you have. You know who some of the worst offenders were/are? Punk rockers. Particularly back in the day. Most of them missed out on DMZ's "When I Get Off". I did. What's this? Big fluffy hair? Forget it. Not even getting a spin. Young and stupid. Don't you be.
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NWA, just as lethal without any cussing. You know what that means. You can blow it up in your cubicle without your boss getting pissed. If he does, tame him with the source material by Charles Wright, who happened to be Eazy E's uncle. Or try Leroy Sibbles's groove. It's all good.
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Last night after checking out, I went over to Soul Safari, the host of one of the songs by the Boyoyo Boys. I'd never been there, but let me tell you, when it comes to African music, holy shit, do they have it covered. An instant add to the blogroll (in the column on the left, under "Get Lost"). That never happens. It's that good. It's African music of all types and regions including African garage and psych. Here's three by Fela that I hadn't heard and another totally unrelated song by the Flames, a band that included Ricky Fataar, who was in the Beach Boys for a short time and was also one of the Rutles.
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"Stealing is a glorious occupation" said Malcom McLaren. "If you can't write songs, no problem - simply steal one and change it to your taste." He did just that. He was a bit of a cultural slut. He had already latched onto the situationists, Teddy Boys, the New York Dolls, the Sex Pistols, and Bow Wow Wow. Why not South Africa, South America and rap? He didn't play an instrument, and he didn't really sing or write songs. But he had a knack for slapping shit together and making something else. And he didn't give a shit.
Here are a couple songs from his 1983 LP Duck Rock. It was a salad bowl of scratching, international music and studio flotsam. And, of course, McLaren's sparse nonsensical lyrics. The two McLaren songs below feature uncredited South African musicians, Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, and the Boyoyo Boys. They didn't even get their names on the record.
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It's the fault of "The Whistler", Allessandro Allessandroni. He's the guy you hear in many of the soundtracks to Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, notably on the Ennio Morricone stuff. I had the inkling for that singular sound, just air and lips, and this guy was the king. That sent me on a tear looking for Morricone stuff, and I ran into a bunch of other stuff, so it's kind of a grab bag.
About this grouping. The first one, Ennio Morricone's theme to "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" ("Il Buono Il Brutto Il Cattivo") is like Morricone 101, spaghetti western gold and all that. "For a Few Dollars More" features Allessandroni. Probably some of the others do as well, I'm too lazy to look it up. But on the subject of the Whistler, check "Fashion Party" by Danielle Luppi. In 2008 Luppi enlisted Allessandroni to whistle, backed by the I Marc 4, an Italian studio band active in the sixties and seventies, sometimes referred to as the Wrecking Crew of Italy. If you think that combination can not help but sound vintage, despite the year it was recorded, you're right. But then again, some of you might think of 2008 as vintage.
The other stuff down there varies. Hugo Montenegro was kind of a musical slut, churning out sanitized cover versions of hit songs. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. His cover of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" was the one that became a hit in the U.S., in 1968. But on "Hang 'em High", he adds backing vocals that border on "Up, Up and Away" cheery. Too feh for my blood. For that material anyway. Al Caiola is down there because I wanted to hear a version of "(Theme From) The Magnificent Seven" with more guitar in it, Jackie Mittoo is down there because, hell, it's Jackie Mittoo, he's bad as shit.
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The Placeholder Two. Here's one from Don Gardner, the slick dude upstairs, and one from Rex Garvin and the Mighty Cravers. Dig it or don't, I don't care. I'm a wild man. I have two flyswatters and they are both lethal.
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This juxtaposition was just, I don't know, too striking, comically so, to not post. These were two consecutive postings on a social media feed. Two versions of punk rock, one a band from Canada, the Queers, playing in San Diego sometime in the last week. The other, X Ray Spex, on a TV show in 1978. Admittedly, the difference in eras makes this an apples and oranges comparison, but what kills me is how the Queers clip is exactly what X Ray Spex weren't. The Queers bassist, who appears to be a little tilted, starts purposely knocking down the drummer's cymbals. After the guitarist tries to get him to cool it, a few measures later he's knocking into him. The guitarist shoves him to the ground. All this during the song "Kicked Out of the Webelos". For those of you who don't know, Webelos was an intermediate scouting
group, between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. These
are grown men. Oh brother.
Let's go peagreens, crowd in here. If you want to have a well rounded knowledge about early punk rock, you must include X Ray Spex. They didn't sound like everybody else, they didn't dress like everybody else, and they didn't act like everybody else. Plus they had sax. And a mighty singer and lyricist in Poly Styrene. There wasn't any of this tough guy bullshit. No fake danger. Their lyrics were commentaries on rampant consumerism, conformity and submissiveness. Not getting kicked out of the scouts. Starting to sink in? I really don't feel like going into it much more in depth than that tonight. Read their Wiki page or something. But take it from me, X Ray Spex are far more important that most of that stuff in your punk pile. And they are still relevant, perhaps more today than in 1978.
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It's not as if there's any shortage of cool Howlin' Wolf photos. There isn't. But, man, when Skid Roper posted the photo above today, the Wolfman synapse snapped. Lucky for you, that means low on yapping, high on howling. I believe the words/music ratio works in your favor.
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If I saw a film about R.L. Burnside's life, I'm not sure I'd believe half of it. He was born in Lafayette County, Mississippi. In his teens, he was taught to play guitar by, among others, Mississippi Fred McDowell, who was a neighbor. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago where his estranged father lived, to find work. He hung out with Muddy Waters, who was his cousin in law, and around Maxwell Street, ground zero for Chicago blues. But the job market wasn't as he had hoped it would be, and in the space of a year his father, two brothers and two uncles were murdered. So after three years there he high tailed back south.
Within a few years he would end up incarcerated, after killing a man at a craps game. Here's where it starts to get really thick. His stint was at Parchman Farm. ThatParchman Farm. And all of this was all before he had recorded anything. His first recordings were field recordings done in 1967 by George Mitchell, whose body of work would later be issued by Arhoolie, Rounder and Fat Possum. Mitchell had been tipped off to Burnside by Othar Turner of the New Star Fife and Drum band, those rhythmic voodoo nuts from yesterday. Man, this shit is getting deep.
I'm sorry, that is one baddass mic stand. Burside playing at a picnic, 1978. A Lomax joint.
Burnside recorded for several labels, but his spike in popularity came after being signed to Fat Possum, a label started by the editor and a writer for Living Blues magazine. Soon after that, Jon Spencer convinced him to record with his Blues Explosion, resulting in A Ass Pocket of Whiskey, released on Matador. Proving that there were no sour grapes, Living Blues called it "perhaps the worst blues album ever made", and, of course, the Spencer crowd ate it up. The horror of blues horrors was yet to come. Among other later releases were three remix albums, ordinarily not necessarily a bad thing. But these were the type of remixes that make even an armchair purist cringe. Remixed to attract the techno, downtempo and hip-hop markets. Oh the humanity.
On top of everything else, Burnside is probably the only artist who was a sharecropper, played juke joints and played with the Blues Explosion as backing band and opened for the Beastie Boys. He played at Richard Gere's birthday party for crying out loud. Late in his career, under his doctors orders, he quit drinking, and then claimed it left him unable to play guitar. Who writes this shit? No one would believe that movie.
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If you've been around here for any length of time, you probably know that I have a particular fondness for oddballs. When those oddballs happen to be a band I'm not familiar with, from another country, doing a cover of a familiar song but in unique over the top earnest fashion, shit, just get outta my way. That's the case with the True's cover of "In the Midnight Hour", a version that sounds like Tom Waits in a late sixties Spanish psych-soul band with Davie Allan coming in for the solo. If you get any of that, you get why I'm all over this one, fidelity be damned. Actually, the fidelity isn't that bad, it's similar to other international records of the time. Hell, why am I even mentioning fidelity? This is the type of record that renders technical jive meaningless.
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No distractions this time. One song for you to dissect. If you've never heard it before, listen to it repeatedly. Put it in a mix. Know this song. If you do know the song, listen to it again. Sam Cooke, backed by the Wrecking Crew, 1962, with Diddy Wah favorite Earl Palmer on drums. If you need more, you need to listen to it again.
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It's a trade off. One one hand you have Duane Eddy and his signature twang. Timeless, ever so cool, badass. On the other hand you have the hit and miss quality of his material, the backing vocals in particular. They always sound corny. Though part of it is the lyrics. But even with the corniest lyrics ever, Darlene Love could very well be one exception. She could sing phone book listings and sound good and when her vocals come in at about 1:52 in "Your Baby's Gone Surfin'" you get 37 seconds of awesome vocals on a Duane Eddy record. That's extremely rare.
Here's a handful. If you want more, check the last link to three dozen more at the Internet Archive.
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Quincy Jones has a long list of accomplishments, arranger, producer, conductor, performer and so on. He basically did everything. You might remember him from his involvement in "We Are the World". Forget about that, check this early stuff. It's pretty swinging. If you don't happen to dig on the smooth shit, take a pass. I don't care.
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I like the type of band that has horns and keyboards. A complete band. Not that other set-ups don't work, but when you add keyboards (think the Faces), or horns (say, Rocket From the Crypt) it makes that sound all that bigger. When you have both (Exile on Main St. era Stones) it's like having overdubs at your disposal. To pull that off, and maintain some sort of edge, is not and easy thing to do. Chicago? No. Blood, Sweat and Tears? No. King Khan and the Shrines? Yes. that's over simplifying things, comparing apples and oranges. I don't care. The point is that Khan and his mob do it well.
I'd never seen the live clip posted below, and that's what I'm digging on right now. A 49 minute set. Check the intro, sounding not too far from Jerry Dammers' Spatial AKA Orchestra. And then Khan comes out and it turns into a full on rock 'n' soul throw down. Is Khan the real thing? C'mon, let's not over analyze things, who the fuck cares? It's that kind of music. It that sense, he's very much the real thing.
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