R.I.P. HE WHO FUCKED WITH HEADS

The co-founder of the Residents as we know them, Hardy Fox, has passed away. The Residents actually started in 1965, which I didn't realize until I actually read up about them today. Their first LP, Meet the Residents, was released in 1974. My first exposure was in the late seventies at the dawn of punk rock. They weren't a punk band, they were a fuck-with-your-head band, kind of experimental but with an eye on pop culture. But if you were into punk rock back then, chances are you were checking out anything that was a little different, especially if it fucked with your head.

Check "Edweena", it's creepy enough to make it on a Halloween playlist. It's somewhere between Bernard Herrmann and a moment from a David Lynch film. Kind of indefinably creepy. To see how they handled popular music there's a couple covers, one of Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walking" and a chop 'em up medley of Beatle's songs, twenty four in all. That one was released in 1977, a good two or three decades ahead of the Avalanches' splice fest and all the mash-ups that followed.

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Listen:
The Residents - Edweena mp3 at Beware of the Blog
The Residents - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry mp3 at Beware of the Blog
The Residents - These Boots Are Made For Walkin mp3 at Beware of the Blog
The Residents - Beyond the Valley of a Day In the Life mp3 at Aquabotic

THE SWAMP FOX HAS PASSED

Man, I just heard that Tony Joe White died last week, on October 24. If you aren't of a certain age that heard his "Polk Salad Annie" when it was a hit (or later on an oldies station), you might not know him at all. I've heard the song a thousand times and it's got this vibe. The only way to describe "Polk Salad Annie" is stoner swamp. He probably wasn't stoned, but that doesn't mean he doesn't sound like it. It might be time for me to get past that song and dig into his sizable back catalog. But that song is sooo good. I don't want his average to go down.

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Listen:
Tony Joe White - Polk Salad Annie mp3 at Rocky 52
Tony Joe White - High Sheriff Of Calhoun Parish mp3 at Tantramar (?)
Tony Joe White - Black Panther Swamps mp3 at For the Sake of the Song Go there to get it.

WANT MORE?

Okay, after these you're on your own. I'm about out of Halloween shit. There's a couple down there, stragglers from Halloweens past, and a few from a couple collections of Halloween ditties that I ran across a few years ago that still happen to be online. Some are kooky, some almost too silly to excuse, but what the hell, if I'm gonna dump more Halloween shit on you, might as well go with volume. In other words, you sort 'em out. There's a mix down there too. 25 songs in a single mix. Can't sort that shit.

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Listen:
Don Hinson and the Riga-Morticians - Ribloflavin Flavored Non-Carbonated Blood mp3 at Franxman
Bobby Boris Jones - Surfer Smash mp3 at Franxman
The Abominable Surfmen - Monster Surfer mp3 at Franxman
Kenny and the Fiends - House on Haunted Hill mp3 at Franxman
Tarantula Ghoul and the Gravediggers - Graveyard Rock mp3 at Franxman
Glen Ryle - Wolf Gal mp3 at Franxman
The Zanies - Mad Scientist mp3 at Franxman
Frankie Stein and His Ghouls - Monster Motion mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
The collections:
Ghouls With Attitude (Disc 1) - 28 songs at Franxman Individual mp3s 
Ghouls With Attitude (Disc 2) - 23 songs at Franxman Ditto above
Bonus mix:
Trick or Treat, Volume 7 at Grey Haus 25 song mix (via MediaFire)

SHE'S GONNA NEED A BIGGER BROOM

And they just keep coming. Wait, okay, so the first two have been posted before. The other links are for three four song Halloween mini-mixes that haven't been posted before. So technically I'm, at worst, 2/5 lazy. If you count each four song mix as four songs rather than  one link, then I'm only 2/14 (or 1/7) lazy. All this math is making me dizzy.

I shouldn't be writing excuses. I should write about the music. Unfortunately, I cannot. Because the Sonics' (seen above) "Witch" and Screamin' Jay Hawkin's "I Put A Spell On You" are so epic, I must stand back to avoid drooling on my keyboard.

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Listen:
The Sonics - The Witch mp3 at Ryan Bosetti
Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Put a Spell On You mp3 at Clayton Counts
Cool Ghoul - Four song mix mp3 at J.R.'s Fun House Go there to get it and the playlist.
Creepy Chix - Four song mix mp3 at J.R.'s Fun House Ditto above.
Graveyard Creeps - Four song mix mp3 at J.R.'s Fun House Ditto above.

MUNSTERS THEME DEPOT

It's that time. I picked up a book on the Wrecking Crew today and about twenty five pages in, enter Billy Strange. Strange is one of my favorite studio guitarists, due in no small part to a thrift store purchase of his Goldfinger LP, an instrumental album, somewhat surf-ish. It was a oddball favorite of mine years before I knew anything about the Wrecking Crew. "Goldfinger" was the draw, but it also included "Peter Gunn", "Man With the Golden Arm", and the titillatingly titled "Theme For Pussy Galore", just the thing a James Bond ignorant twenty-something could use to amuse his beer drinking buddies. Sandwiched in there too was "Theme From the Munsters". I've DJed more than my share of Halloween gigs in the past and Strange's version of the Munsters theme was always a go-to. It's a gas.

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Listen:
Billy Strange - The Munsters Theme mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Jack Marshall -The Munsters Theme (streaming) at YouTube
Jimmy Smith - The Munsters Theme (streaming) at YouTube
Los Straightjackets - The Munsters Theme mp3 at Jason Sheeley
Comateens - The Munsters Theme mp3 at ATumblr (?)
The Slackers -The Munsters Theme mp3 at Radical Records

MEANWHILE AT THE ITCH

Steve Cropper doing his best Link Wray? Yeah, you'd bite. The effort was there though it ended up sounding like Wray doing light weight surf. But a solid "A" for effort. That it was released on Stax makes it an oddity enough. Here's what Cropper said of it:

"That I was sort of a pickup of where the high school band had left off,"..."'Restless' was actually written when we were in high school. We had actually demoed it in Jim's garage or at least out in Brunswick, Tennessee. It was sort of a takeoff on a Link Wray kind of idea. I think we were just kind of satisfying our egos. We'd just say, 'We want to do this.' 'Okay, fine, you want to do this, go play with it: We'd go in and cut these things and then what do you do, put them on the shelf and forget about them? No, we'd put them out. It was a pressing bill and we had enough hits to back it up so it was not a bad shot."

What the fuck. It's a great badass-enough instrumental. And you may never hear it again. Again, what the fuck.

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Listen:
The Cobras - Restless mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban Go there to get it.
The Cobras - Shake Up (streaming) at YouTube

DON'T OVERTHINK LOUD

You know, there's a lot of reasons to not like Crime (the band). They were corny, not in a clowning way. It was their not-at-all believable tough guy posturing. Like Fonzie with cuss words and loud guitars. If they came out today, you bet I'd latch onto reasons not to like them. The reason I can't dismiss them in hindsight is because when I first heard them I wasn't looking for a reason to dislike any punk band, I was looking for a reason to like them. Not because I was some kind of undiscriminating ignoramus, there was just that little punk rock that had made it to vinyl. Shit, we didn't let any of the corniness or posturing of the Ramones, let alone stupid lyrics, stop us from liking them. And at that time that's about all there was.

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Listen:
Crime - Hot Wire My Heart mp3 at For the Sake of the Song
Crime - Piss On Your Dog mp3 at For the Sake of the Song
Crime - San Francisco's Doomed mp3 at Nevver Go there to get it.
A compilation LP:
San Francisco's Still Doomed (streaming) at YouTube

DRINKIN' BLOOD SPO-DEE-OH-DEE

Yep, mining the old posts for anything remotely related to Halloween, again. Because it's far easier to repost Halloween stuff than it is to do a proper new post. Seriously, fuck it. I don't dress up for Halloween, I get hardly any trick or treaters, I don't go to Halloween parties. I repost. Oh wait, I guess I do dress up. Right now, I'm dressed as lame.

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Listen:
Rocket From the Crypt - I Drink Blood mp3 at Xtrmntr
Rocket From the Crypt - Rise From the Dead mp3 at Xtrmntr
Rocket From the Crypt - 27 more songs at Xtrmntr
Video:
Rocket From the Crypt - Village People Medley/I Drink Blood at YouTube Halloween 2003, dressed as the Village People
Rocket From the Crypt - I Drink Blood, Sturdy Wrists at YouTube Halloween 2013, dressed as astronauts

MISSING THESE TWO

Man, I'm scrapin' it here. Lumping these Cramps songs into the Halloween category is stretch. but a stretch is all that's required to get me outta here ASAP. It's not all that lame though. Halloween is coming and they wouldn't be out of place in a mix. Shit, just burn them and hand them out to the kids instead of candy. No cavities.

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Listen:

The Cramps - I Was a Teenage Werewolf mp3 at Hey Cool Kid
The Cramps - Rockin' Bones mp3 at Johan Urban (?)
The Cramps - Confessions of a Psycho Cat mp3 at Review Stalker

NOT FIGHTING IT

I wasn't in the mood for Lou Donaldson. Wasn't thinking jazz. Then I heard "The Squirrel". Fine. Okay, perfect. It's raining out, nowhere to go. Lou fucking Donaldson it is. "The Squirrel" swings. Dig the percussion. Shit, here come the beatniks.

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Listen:
Lou Donaldson - The Squirrel mp3 at Beware of the Blog 1960
Lou Donaldson - Blues Walk mp3 at ATumblr (?) 1958
Lou Donaldson - Reverend Moses mp3 at Pixie Radio 1967

A SOLID GAS

I've got no clue and, quite honestly, I don't want one. All I know is when I hear something like these two cuts, I don't care about genres, eras, personnel, writers or any of that. I don't even want to go as far as seeing if these were the same Premiers that did an excellent cover of Don and Dewey's "Farmer John" (though I doubt it, different sound and this Premiers record was on a NY label).  I just want to imagine it as a soundtrack for doing nothing, because that's just what I'm about to do.

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Listen: 
The Premiers - Orbit Bound mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
The Premiers - Shawnee mp3 at Rock 'n'Soul ichiban

BLACK METAL

No apologies here. You know how, when you first hear a song you that you've never heard and you actually like, maybe even a lot, you hesitate to consider it a favorite? You might just be in a mood that is more conducive to some shit jam. And then you hear it again a while later and it sounds just as good, even better? You listen to it again periodically and then after a while it kind of dissipates into the ether of your not-discerning-enough gluttonous music library. Happens to me a lot. But this also happens to me. I pull a random mix CD to listen to while driving and hear this, now officially a favorite, song. It sounded so good, really loud and booming. Here's the surprising part. It's what's known as cod reggae, or close to it. Cod reggae is watered down not-quite reggae, by and large by white people, and I hate that shit. But when it comes in the form of Clout's "Sunshine Baby" I'll lap it up. Theirs isn't really reggae, except that it is. It relies on the bass, and ultra simple rhythm (can you even call it "riddim" when it's from South Africa and it's white?), and the pace is the same. It does have a lot of brass and a lot of strings but they're wrapped around a cool organ riff and that mother lovin' bass, more punctuating than anything else. This one is good, one of those freak one cult record wonders. "Sunshine Baby" has a posse.

The song has been posted before but it's been years and this time I bring extended versions, one an officially released EP and the other a mysto-remix that appeared on a boot of remixes.

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Listen:
Clout - Sunshine Baby (streaming) at YouTube
Clout - Sunshine Baby mp3 (via Mediafire) at Sound Boutique
Clout - Sunshine Baby (Maxi) mp3 (via ti1ca) at Docover Official EP b/w Save Me in a zip
Clout - Sunshine Baby (streaming) at YouTube Mysto-remix

LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED

You just gotta know that at some point in the eighties or nineties, there was some college radio DJ somewhere that just thought his shit did not stink because he pieced a five song set of the songs below. Oh yeah, he's a hero all right, no Boingo for him. He stepped out of that booth at the end of his shift practically beating his chest. There's a chance he got laid that night. A couple decades later, he's got the corner office and he's wondering what went haywire.

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Listen:
Misfits - Halloween mp3 at Emotion Lotion
Dead Kennedys - Halloween mp3 at Hey Cool Kid
The Dream Syndicate - Halloween mp3 at Quit Mumbling
Mudhoney - Halloween (streaming) at YouTube Sonic Youth cover
Sonic Youth - Halloween (streaming) at YouTube

CAN YOU SPOT THE SQUARE?

It's a debate that's been going on for years. Was Alan Freed a rocker friendly DJ or a straight laced carpetbagger? That debate is so old it's ridiculous. Are radio DJs really supposed to have principles? Yeah, he did promote rock 'n' roll shows, but was he only in it for the money? He wasn't a musician, what was his interest? He did seem enthused. But then there's that pesky little payola thing. Pay to play. Record companies paid him to play their product, and he was getting co-writing credits in exchange for airplay, benefiting from the publishing royalties. Fuck, whether or not he coined the term "rock 'n' roll", he all but invented a crime.

I ran into a collections of his live broadcasts from 1956. Right on the cusp here, there's big band, rhythm and blues, doo wop, and the earliest strains of rock 'n' roll. Somewhere among these broadcasts are Count Basie, Joe Williams, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, LaVerne Baker, The Robins, The Jacks, The Treniers, The Penguins, Etta James, The Clovers, The Cadillacs, Clyde McPhatter, Della Reese, The Platters, The Drifters, The Moonglows, Chuck Willis, Ivory Joe Hunter, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, Johnny Burnette Trio, Chuck Berry, Flamingos, Big Maybelle, Jimmy Cavallo and The House Rockers, and Bill Haley and His Comets. A crap shoot yes, but shit, just stream them while you're doing the dishes or something. There's 24 broadcasts, all about 25-28 minutes long. You may get sick of all of the spots for Camel cigarettes, the sponsor of the show. I sure did. Otherwise, good eatin'.

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Listen:
Alan Freed - Camel Rock 'n' Roll Dance Party at Internet Archive 24 episodes.
NOTE: Once there, to download, scroll down In the right column, under "Download options" click on "VBR MP3 Files"

YEAH? SAYS WHO?

The Sonics have been here plenty of times. I know that some of you know them like the back of your hand, as I do. Take one for the team. This is a public service. While I have posted these in the past, the downloads they linked to have all expired. I can't go walking around, going about my business, knowing full well that there isn't a working link of the Sonics' "Psycho" here. It's just not right.

This is for those of you who don't know the Sonics. Put simply, the Sonics were an hard driving American rock 'n' roll band with a minimal amount of flash and a singer with one of the most durable throats in the biz. Listen to the vocals on "Psycho", particularly the screams. I bet you couldn't match that once, let alone every night. To refer to them as proto-punk, which they often are, doesn't do them justice. They worked out of the Pacific Northwest hundreds of miles from the closest music epicenter. They weren't signed to a major label, they didn't record in some big fancy studio, and they definitely didn't lean on the manicured licks of the Wrecking Crew to dandy up their recordings (which is what Paul Revere and the Raiders, also from the Northwest, did), and they didn't buy into the peacock shit. While the Beatles were singing la la la about Michelle my belle, the Sonics were screaming about psychos and drinking strychnine. They were the shit.

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Listen:
The Sonics - Psycho mp3 at Internet Archive
The Sonics - Strychnine mp3 at Internet Archive
The Sonics - Boss Hoss mp3 at Internet Archive
For your wall:
High resolution copy of above photo

FUCK YEAH NON-HITS

Okay, I think there's enough of an age gap between me and some of you that I can rationalize pushing shit on you. Five words: Buy albums, read liner notes. Exhibit A: For those of you who have no more than a greatest hits package of Creedence, if even that, listen up. Buy a fucking long player. Because the only way to hear Creedence is in the context of a never intended as a hit type song in the middle, or end, of a side. You won't get a "Graveyard Train" or "Penthouse Pauper" on a greatest hits package, but they're on the same album, along with a cover of "Good Golly Miss Molly". Kind of unbelievable that these are on the same LP as fucking "Proud Mary", one of the only two songs from their Bayou Country LP that will show on your compact little compilation (the other, "Born On the Bayou"). Now. Buy albums, read liner notes.

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Listen:
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Penthouse Pauper mp3 at The Adios Lounge
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Graveyard Train mp3 at Internet Archive
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Good Golly Miss Molly (streaming) at YouTube

NEVER TOO LATE TO SAY THANKS

Otis Rush died a few days ago. Confession: It never occurred to me that he was still alive. Does that make me a bad person? Well, shit, I can barely keep track of birthdays, so how would I be expected to remember who's alive and who isn't. Particularly because I don't really follow current blues. I mean, yeah, old rockers I keep track of to a certain extent (Little Richard? Still kickin'. Jerry Lee Lewis? Check. Dick Dale? Hell, he's coming to town soon so I know he's still up and around). But for some reason I still feel bad that I hadn't been appreciative enough while Rush was still alive.

Like a lot of blues lifers, most of his best stuff was recorded decades ago. Shit, "I Can't Quit You Baby" was his first single and probably his best known song (it reached #6 on the r&b charts in 1956). "All Your Love"? Late fifties. "Homework"? 1962. And with those three, I'm tapped out of song titles I actually remember.

One part of one song you should check: Little Walter's "Goin' Down Slow", with Rush on guitar. At :27, listen to the way he hammers the strings. Remind you of any other left handed guitarists?

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Listen:
Otis Rush - Homework mp3 at Snuhthing Anything
Otis Rush - All My Love (I Miss Loving) (streaming) at YouTube
Little Walter with Otis Rush - Goin' Down Slow mp3 at Internet Archive