LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 28

I can't believe that until the last few days I hadn't ever watched more than a snippet or two of the Kinks live. I did see them live a couple times years ago and, through a couple friends who were the president and vice president of the American Kinks Fan Club, got to meet Ray Davies, but it never occurred to me to go back and watch their early live stuff on YouTube. While I did busy myself for the last couple days digging into some of their stuff, that's not why I've been scarce. I just felt like a break of a couple days. I'm kind of sick of looking at screens. Wah, wah, wah.

So, anywho, after watching the live stuff the big takeaway was this: Shel Talmy was one shit hot producer. If you compare the Kinks recorded versions of "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and all of the Night" to the live versions, the records have considerably more punch. Talmy produced a lot of their early hits, as well as "I Can't Explain", "My Generation" and other early hits by the Who, "Friday On My Mind" by the Easybeats. And that's just some of his early work. Get it? I took off a Talmy detour. But I don't have time for both. I'm sick of looking at screens. So. here's the Kinks stuff.

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Listen:
The Kinks - You Really Got Me mp3 at Tumblr
The Kinks - All Day and All of the Night mp3 at Tumblr
The Kinks - You Gotta Move mp3 at Tumblr
The Kinks - I'm Not Like Everybody Else (streaming) at YouTube
Video:
The Kinks- You Really Got Me at YouTube 1965
The Kinks- All Day and All of the Night at YouTube 1965
The Kinks- Live, short set (but good!) at YouTube 1966
The Kinks- Last of the Steam Powered Trains, Picture Book at YouTube TV appearance, 1969
The Kinks - Live at the Beat Club at YouTube Seven songs, 1972

DODDBALL

I heard Cal Tjader on the radio the other day, and today the Modern Jazz Quartet, both times digging on the vibraphone. I needed me a fix and I knew who I was going to look for. Lenny Hibbert, I knew I'd posted him before and I was surprised to find that the link was still good. Yee haw. 

Lennie Hibbert was one of Coxsone Dodd's session hires at Studio One, one of the most consistently great reggae labels in its day (the peak being the early sixties to late seventies). Hibbert was a vibes player, not an instrument that's barely audible on reggae recordings. But Dodd was into jazz and put out a few records by Hibbert. The two LPs I've heard are awesome. Some reggae, some a little more jazzy, and some a little funky. But it's all good and the unlikely juxtapositions of instruments works, It fills a void you didn't know existed.

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Listen: 
Lennie Hibbert - Creation, Full LP (streaming) at YouTube
Lennie Hibbert - Creation (via ADrive) at Ghost Capital Full LP zip with 12 individual mp3s. Go to Ghost Capital for the song list.

DANNY'S SONG

I'm reading Ian Hunter's tour diary from 1972 with the unfortunate title Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star. It's from a U.S. tour, right about the time that "All the Young Dudes" was released. It's entertaining in a behind-the-scenes way. One of the big takeaways is something that happens every once in a while that makes me stop and smile, realizing that whatever you know about music, and no matter how long you've been listening to it, you sometimes find surprises. For instance, in this book he mentions that Crazy Horse's Danny Whitten had OD'd, adding that Mott the Hoople recorded one of his songs, "Downtown" on an early 45. I knew Whitten had played with Neil Young and wondered if it was the same song as Young's "(C'mon Baby Let's Go) Downtown", which it indeed was. What the hell? That's one of my favorite Neil Young songs and I love Mott the Hoople as well. How the hell did I not know this? And Mott's version came out earlier. Where did they get it from? Duh. Of course. Crazy Horse.

"Revolution Blues" is down there as parting gift. Or chips and salsa. Whatever, it's a good song, I dig it. But, if you check only one thing, do check the crunch of Young's "Downtown". Yee haw, it's a racket.

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Listen:
Crazy Horse - Downtown (streaming) at YouTube
Mott The Hoople - Downtown (streaming) at YouTube
Neil Young - (C'mon on Baby Let's Go) Downtown (streaming) at YouTube
Neil Young - Revolution Blues mp3 at Essentially Eclectic

EMBRYONIC CHILL

A good friend posted this song on Facebook. We've known each other for years, so our tastes intersect quite a bit. As a result, it's been ages since he's posted a song by an artist that I've never heard of. That is, with the exception of Hawaiian artists, which is expected because that's where he lives now. [I take that back. I just realized that I posted this song two years ago, so I obviously had heard of him. Must have forgotten about him as soon as the pixels were dry.] But it is a sneaky groove this one. The way it just plods along, nothing jumps out at you. Then the song ends. De-acceleration is complete. This is a perfect come-down if you ever need one.

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Listen:
Timmy Thomas - Why Can’t We Live Together mp3 at The Fader

NEVER ARGUE MUSIC WITH A 15 YEAR OLD

I'm not a flute guy. I'm not sure where it came to me that flutes lacked balls. They were dainty, unlike sax or brass, who more often than not were in your face. I do know that my distaste for flute began with Jethro Tull. I'll be honest, the fifteen year old me is in charge here, I don't care what Jethro Tull sounds like, those bloomers or elf pants, whatever, Ian Anderson insulted my blue jean guitar rock mindset. Fuck 'em. Banned for life. If you think that's harsh, take it up with the fifteen year old me.

Years later Herbie Mann's shirtless hairy torso seemed so out of touch I began to wonder what the flute does to them to make them present themselves like that. So, I  pretty much ignored flute players all together. Flute stuff was still there, but that doesn't mean it merited exploring. Again, fifteen year old me. Don't bother arguing.

When I was in the thick of that, Johnny Winter's Still, Alive and Well LP came out. One song, "Too Much Seconal" had flute on it, played by Jeremy Steig. He is the reason why the door was never completely closed on the flute. For that one damn song. After I listened to that tonight, I went looking for anything by Steig himself. "Howlin' For Julie" is the first thing I happened to find, and it pretty much rips. His playing at the three minute mark is as Stooges-like as I imagine flute can be. Still, flute.

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Listen:
Johnny Winter - Too Much Seconal mp3 at Tumblr
Jeremy Steig - Howlin' For Judy (streaming) at YouTube

THIRTY SECONDS OF THIS SONG

This is a repost, but the song was running in my head. Hey I fucked with the photo of Zappa, that was enough work. All goofing aside, here's the old post:

There's always that guy who knows the Velvet Underground, the first Modern Lovers LP, and Television and has always steered clear of Frank Zappa. I was that dude. Still not a real fan, I have a few records that I never listen to. But one song I really dig is "Trouble Every Day", from 1966. The lyrics are frighteningly relevant today. But right now I am marveling at the similarity, the big fat splotch in the middle of the Venn diagram, of jagged guitar interplay. If you know the three bands mentioned above, dig on the solo starting at 3:50.

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Listen:
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - Trouble Every Day mp3 at Gorveg (?)

LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 27

I was trolling for a full length film to share and it occurred to me that some of you may not have seen Head, the feature length Monkees film that was a last ditch effort to outgrow their manufactured past. It failed. Too weird for the teeny boppers and too late to convince the counterculture types. But it is something to see. A stoner classic. If you do partake, do so. If you don't, you'll feel like you have.

The last time I posted it, this is part of what I had to say: A weird movie. A movie that sprang from a stoned weekend with the producer of their TV series, Bob Rafelson, and a young screenwriter, Jack Nicholson. That Jack Nicholson. The movie, Head, bombed, as many interesting but out of the ordinary movies do. That doesn't mean that it isn't worth watching. No, it's good, really good if you're of the sort that digs pop culture gone haywire. It's fucking nuts. It's like one of those hair brained ideas that you have when you're stoned, but think better of when you're not. Thankfully they didn't second guess their stoned selves. As if to make a point, the cast includes the A and Z of opposites, Annette Funicello and Frank Zappa. In the same flick. Man, they had to have been stoned to dream up that juxtaposition.

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Listen:
The Monkees - Porpoise Song mp3 at Tumblr From Head

THE BEAT MAN

I was hunting for something completely different and ran into these Tony Allen cuts. There's been quite a few posts here about Allen, and I've had a long day, a good day but long. So, the blab will be brief. The last place I want to be is in front of a computer screen. Here's the two. You should really dig into the hosting blog, For the Sake of the Song. The host has tastes right up my alley. Before I ran into these, I ran into the Flat Duo Jets, King Tubby, and the Raincoats. Shit, the latest post is Thelonius Monk.

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Listen:
Tony Allen and His Afro Messengers - No Discrimination mp3 at For the Sake of the Song
Tony Allen with Afrika 70 - Progress mp3 at For the Sake of the Song
More Tony Allen here

THE INEXPLICABLE SUMMER JAM

Today it was in the mid-80s on the coast, the water temperature was 75, and there was a slight bump of a swell. I saw friends at the beach, friends on the way home, and my niece and her "not-boyfriend" just stopped by. It's summer. And it's been two years since I posted Althea and Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking". It's one of my favorite summer jams and it hasn't a damn thing to do with summer.

Here's that song and the song that the original riddim was made for, Alton Ellis's "I'm Still In Love With You". The latter was one of my first reggae purchases. I didn't know who the fuck Alton Ellis was and wouldn't have known to care where it was recorded or who played on it. But it's an old friend at this point, as is Althea and Donna's song.

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Listen:
Althea and Donna - Uptown Top Ranking mp3 at Tumblr
Alton Ellis - I'm Still In Love With You mp3 at Stop Okay Go

NOT UNLIKE MY DINNER

There's a lot of songs  about hot dogs. Once you've thought of a couple, the more you find, the more you find it harder to stop looking. I stopped at three because I ain't got all night. Easy as it is to find hot dog songs, it's hard to find any photos of someone looking cool with a hot dog, particularly celebrities. Seriously, try to find one. They all look like doofuses. I looked for a half hour and the only one I could come up with was of Dave Brubeck with a hot dog in his hand at the Newport Jazz Festival, back in the day whenever that was. Problem is, that same photo's been posted here a bunch of times. Plus tonight is about hot dog songs, and Brubeck may have eaten them but as far as I know he didn't play songs about them. So, you get a photo of gut bomb mecca Pinks and hot dog tunage from Corky Jones (a young Buck Owens), Hasil Adkins, and the Detroit Cobras.

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Listen:
Corky Jones - Hot Dog mp3 at Rocky-52
Hasil Adkins - No More Hot Dogs mp3 at David Garlitz
The Detroit Cobras - Hot Dog mp3 at Internet Archive
Because he looked cool with a hot dog:
Dave Brubeck: Deep Cool

THE LAST THROES OF COMBS

Last night I was watching the first night of the Democratic National Convention. At the end of it they played a video of Billy Porter doing a well intended but, well, underwhelming version of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" with Stephen Stills on guitar. Now I don't wanna be a downer, but after the show closed I saw a snippet of an interview with him where he said that he recorded the song earlier in the year with an eye on the temperament of America and, to paraphrase (albeit in more frank terms), timed it for an opportune release date to capitalize on the unrest. I forget how he put it but the overall feeling I got was that it was a little disingenuous.

So, I went to listen to the original. It's a great song, there's no doubt about it. I remember trying to learn the song with some roommates when we were going to start a band, basically learning as we went. That lasted a couple weeks. The song though is a favorite still. I was checking a video of them live, on a TV show, doing "For What It's Worth" and "Mr. Soul". It's awesome, particularly when, in "Mr. Soul", Neil Young's solo at 2:20, starting out all robotic then getting pretty wild for a TV show. Then at 2:40 a shot of Richie Furay and Stephen Stills rocking out, with Stills looking kind of goofy with his cowboy hat and suit, but the good kind of goofy. The "Yeah, yeah Laurel Canyon, you still got a little freak in you." kind of goofy. The icing on the cake is at about 3:09, just a few seconds of Stills on the right banging the hell out of his guitar like that banjo player in the Monks. That's an asshole-ish level of obscure reference but fuck it, I call 'em as I see them. I mentioned it to illustrate how easily distracted I am when pursuing something. Anyway, dig the sound of the studio version of "Mr. Soul". There's a lot of shit going on that song, not the least of it is some well placed fuzz.

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Listen:
Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth mp3 at Sounding the Alarm
Buffalo Springfield - Mr. Soul mp3 at Tumblr
Video:
Billy Porter and Stephen Stills - For What It's Worth at YouTube

BRIAN, NO

The other night I was out in the alley having a smoke and reading a few pages of a book and noticed a young woman having a smoke across from me,. We got to chatting and after a few minutes I introduced myself. (Relax, I do that with anybody that I have a decent conversation with, particularly if the possibility exists that I'll see them again at some point. I'm the friendly asshole of the neighborhood. The chit chat dude.) Her name was Caroline.

As I do when I meet someone, to remember their name I try to associate it with a song. The obvious one for Caroline was "Caroline, No" by the Beach Boys. The closing track on Pet Sounds. So, after formal introductions I asked Caroline if she'd ever heard "Caoline, No" and she hadn't. She only vaguely recognized the name the Beach Boys (I did say young woman). I told her that it was a song I'd use to remember her name and that it was a beautiful song, "forget all about that 'Surfing USA' stuff," yadda yada, yadda, look it up on YouTube. When I got back inside I went to look for it online, because I couldn't find my CD. In doing so, I ran across "Smart Girls". Have you heard this stinker? A rap record by Brian Wilson. It's awful. Rejected by his record company for good reason. It's the worst thing he's ever done. The worst rap-related piece of corn I've ever heard. It was done at the insistence of his then over-controlling shrink, Eugene Landy. True. It also involved Matt Dyke, DJ and a principal of Delicious Vinyl. He had some sort of affiliation with the Beastie Boys around the time of Paul's Boutque, but whatever cred he had from that, as far as I'm concerned, is negated by this piece of shit. He really ought to be ashamed. He should have known better than to enable this nonsense.

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Listen:
The Beach Boys - Caroline, No (alt. take) mp3 at Big O Zine
Brian Wilson - Smart Girls mp3 at Beware of the Blog

NOT QUITE ON THE AIR BUT CLOSE

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban is no longer. The good news is that they're now Boss Radio 66, a channel at MixCloud with online radio shows featuring the same mob plus, it appears, guest DJs. The whole lot of 'em are or were affiliated with WFMU and if you know that station, you know what they're about, namely (in their words) "garage, funk, go-go, psych, rhythm & blues, rockabilly, soul, sound bites, movie trailers and tons more nonsense 24 hours every day". Yee haw!

Because everyone and their mother have smart phones at this point, it's getting harder to find downloads particularly single songs. If you can stream from someone else's cloud, why bother downloading? I get that. Guess what? I'm the last hold out. I don't have a cell phone at all because I don't want to pay for the privilege of having a distraction in my pocket. It's awesome, you should try leaving your phone at home sometime. Pretend you're camping or something.

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Listen:
Boss Radio 66 - Online radio mixes from the mob formerly known as Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban

WHEN GIMMICKS KINDA WORK

I don't want to be too critical. Not in the mood tonight. I can hear my Mom saying, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." So I won't. Wait, I thought of something nice: "Well, it looked good on paper."

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Listen:
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs with Debby Harry - Strawberry Fields Forever mp3 at Tumblr

THE OLD TIMEY SHREDDER

Okay, this means I'm out of some loop. I like bluegrass as much as the next guy, but I don't actively keep on it. Why? It's old timey shit, it will always be around. Isn't new old timey an oxymoron anyway? Still, even if bluegrass wasn't my bag at all, I would certainly think I'd hear about a talent like this guy. I was listening to a hip hop track at YouTube and it popped up in the sidebar. "Dust In A Baggie"? What the hell. When the guy finally starts playng (at the point the video below starts) it becomes instantly obvious, this isn't your average picker in the back room at some house party with Stoney McBaggyshorts over in the background. I feel a little lame for not knowing about him. The video linked at the bottom is from around 2012, putting him at about age nineteen. He looks to be about the same age in the one directly below. There's a bunch of other videos from over the years over at YouTube, He's changed his looks quite a bit, but I don't care about that. Dude fucking smokes.

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Video:
Meet Billy Strings at YouTube

MAS MINGUS

Aw fuck, downloads be damned. There's this guy I met a few years ago, Daniel. We met while ogling the same cherry early fifties Chevy rolling by. (I think it was a Chevy, I may remember it wrong.) After talking cars a little bit we parted ways, and over the course of a couple years we got to know each other a little better. He had a really cool style, old school, but not in a traditional way. Part of it was the way he talked, almost always with a grin and a conspiratory manner, like he was letting you in on something. It was just in this manner he told me stories about hanging out with Charles Mingus's son, what the inside of Fantasy Records was like, stuff like that. All of these stories, and he's just a few years older than me.

Daniel moved away a year or so ago but we've kept in touch. He posted some Mingus tonight at Facebook. "Haitian Fight Song". Yee haw, that's the first Mingus song I ever heard, and the song that made me seek out more of his shit. That's it, I caught the Mingus tonight. Unfortunately I couldn't find an mp3 of that song, but it set the mood. Downloads be damned tonight. Most of you probably listen to this stuff through your phone anyway. YouTube's good for that. Hell, just go out and buy it.

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Listen:
Charles Mingus - Haitian Fight Song (streaming) at YouTube
Charles Mingus - Lock 'em Up mp3 at London Jazz Collector This thing goes off. Check the yell at 4:16
Charles Mingus - Cecilia mp3 at Pixie Radio
Charles Mingus - All the Things You Could Be Right Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother mp3 at African American Literary Theory

LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 26

I'm just finishing reading Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded (by David Hepworth) and there was a lot of shit that prompted memories. It's an account of the year 1971, chronologically January through December, in rock music. He makes a good case for it being an epic year of firsts and big changes. I won't ruin it for you, just take my word for it. One thing he devotes a few pages to was The Concert For Bangladesh, the film, the LP and the concert itself. For those of you who've never heard of it, it was a benefit concert (actually two shows) organized by George Harrison for the war torn Bangladesh, where people were starving to death. He was asked for help by his friend Ravi Shankar and he just dug in, inviting friends Leon Russell, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and so on. A very crowded stage. Just one of the clips has Harrison, Dylan and Russell singing "Just Like A Woman".

I couldn't find the whole thing but I did find a playlist someone put together at YouTube. There's enough to give you an idea if you want to pursue it, I'm sure it's all over the place online. I've no idea how young you would have to be to not be cognizant of the event. Well, not young. How non-old you would have to be.

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Visit:
George Harrison and Friends The Concert For Bangladesh (playlist) at YouTube

NOW WITH ADDED DISTRACTIONS!

Yeah, this record has been here before, a bunch. It's one of my favorite reggae LPs, early Horace Andy on Studio One. Seriously, this is the shit. As close to the true sound of classic Studio One from the golden age, the early seventies, as you're gonna get. The reason I'm posting it is because I had a jolt earlier today. I was going down my alley on the way to the beach and a car driving down the street at the end of the alley drove by playing, no, blasting Horace Andy's original version of "Skylarking", the Studio One version. I doubt seriously that anyone but me would get worked up about something like that, at least not in this neighborhood. Here's why: It's kind of obscure, you have to be into reggae to know the song, and you have to be really into reggae to know the Studio One version. Most Horace Andy compilations feature the song, but a later version recorded who knows where. And then there is the stuff he did with Massive Attack. Not my thing. Another thing is that my neighborhood ain't exactly dread central. There's a fair amount of rastas, but they don't typically broadcast their tunes from a car. Most of the reggae you hear around here is either Bob Marley, some digital type dancehall shit (not a big fan of dancehall nor digital reggae) or some horrid white reggae crap (Slightly Stoopid lives in town). In fact, I think that today might be the first time I heard any Studio One Horace Andy outside of my own apartment or house (years ago I lived in a house where we played it quite a bit).

Amazingly the link I've posted before for the whole LP was still good (it's been online for twelve years). So, yeah, if you like the samples below, go get it. For those of you who have been there, done that, there's a couple related things down there too. Someone posted a  dub version of the Studio One "Skylarking"version on YouTube. I let it run while I was working on this post so I wasn't paying attention when the song ended. Then it started again and it wasn't the same version. So I opened the screen it was playing in and it was a cover, by a kid! What's more, this kid does all sorts of classic reggae, he sings and plays organ. This kid does a cover of Jackie Mittoo's "Ghetto Organ"!! Even if no one else thinks that's fucking awesome, I know my friend Scott will. He gets it.

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Listen:
Horace Andy - Skylarking mp3 at Tumblr
Horace Andy - Skylarking (+ dub) (streaming) at YouTube
Horace Andy - Where Do the Children Play (streaming) at YouTube
Horace Andy - Mamie Blue (streaming) at YouTube
The full LP:
Horace Andy - Skylarking (download) at Global Grooves Click on the green download button, fill in the captcha, and you're gold baby.
The wiz kid:
Kailash - Ghetto Organ at YouTube Jackie Mittoo cover
Kailash - Skylarking at YouTube Horace Andy cover
Kailash - His channel at YouTube

NEVER THE COOLEST, BUT NEVER UNCOOL

It felt good. It being yesterday, Friday. The weekend was coming. I hadn't heard Dave Edmund's Everlys-sounding "Here Comes the Weekend" in a long while, so I went on a hunt and fell smack dab into a black hole. A Dave Edmunds black hole. He's done so much over the years without any sort of radical changes to his style that it doesn't seem like that long ago that he had a hit on AM radio in the U.S., but it was way back in 1970. It's hard to imagine that a cover of Smiley Lewis's "I Hear You Knockin'" would be a hit in the U.S., even more remarkable when you consider the fact that he was all but unknown stateside before that.

Dave Edmunds has never really been flashy, never a huge mega-rock star. But he was consistent, had a long career and he never hid his fascination with American roots music. Back in the day my brother had an LP by Love Sculpture, the first band that Edmunds had recorded with. My brother was going through a Bluesbreakers fueled diversion into British blues and Love Sculpture, he reckoned, was kicking it up a notch. He played the shit out of that album.

Fast forward a few years later, I read a review of Edmunds's Git It, his second solo LP, and it mentioned that there was some rockabilly on it. This was the first time I'd ever heard rockabilly mentioned in a review of a current LP. Unlike Britain, when rockabilly died in the U.S., there were no teddy boys fanning the flame. With the exception of Rollin' Rock Records, which I didn't know about at the time, rockabilly in the U.S. was pretty much kaput. So, I bit. That LP, or cassette in my case, was in my Walkman knock-off for a solid week while walking the mile and a half each way to work. It had a bit of everything. Covers of songs by Arthur Crudup ("My Baby Left Me"), Hank Williams ("Hey Good Lookin'") Otis Blackwell ("Let's Talk About Us") and an early Bob Seeger ("Get Out of Denver"), not to mention a version of Rogers/Hart's show tune "Where or When" that sounds like he's attempting a Beach Boys approach. And that's not counting the new songs, some written by Edmunds, some co-written with Nick Lowe, two by Lowe alone and one by Graham Parker. The affiliation was one just beyond the outskirts of pub rock. One of the songs, "I Knew the Bride", is the definitive version, better than Lowe's own version recorded a year or so later. That's just one LP. There's fourteen more. That's why you got the bell bottom boys yesterday. I'm still not through.

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Listen:
Dave Edmunds - I Hear You Knockin' mp3 at Tumblr
Love Sculpture - Wang Dang Doodle (streaming) at YouTube
Dave Edmunds - Here Comes the Weekend (streaming) at YouTube
Dave Edmunds - Get Out of Denver mp3 at AM Then FM
Dave Edmunds - Back to School Days mp3 at Rock Town Hall
Dave Edmunds - Worn Out Suits, Brand New Pockets mp3 at Rock Town Hall
Dave Edmunds - I Knew the Bride (streaming) at YouTube

WE WILL OUT FUCKING BELL BOTTOM YOU

I know nothing about this band other than what I just read in the description at YouTube. But sometimes it's just that way. Funky ass cover, weird band name, curious LP title and an oddball mix of instruments: I'm on it. So far I've skipped around and some has been annoyingly overplayed, some is the good side of grating, and some is just plain out there. You may not ever hear anything like this. Yeah, you should definitely blow this shit up in your ear things.

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Listen:
Exmagma - Goldball 1974 (full album) (streaming) at YouTube

STILL APPROPRIATE

Man, I dig this one. David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) and whoever the hell the Comrades are, doing a cover of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth". It sounds like a cheapo version of Berlin-era Bowie. It kinda works. I don't think it has quite enough of a thud though. I'd up the bass. It made me think of Generation X's cover which needs some punch too. No one, that I've heard anyway, has made a version that's as heavy as Lennon's original. And his wasn't loud, just well produced. Maybe it was because you can only hear a good song for the first time once. Whatever, I just wish there was a cover of it that would just completely bLow me away. Eh, this will do for now.

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Listen:
Love and Rockets - Ball of Confusion mp3 at  Zed Equals Zee Earlier David J

EARLY KAREN HATING

I'm browsing over at The Probe, All the way back to the earliest posts, fifteen years ago, and amazingly the links are good. Bookmark it because you'll never get through it in one sitting, and the full name, Probe Is Turning-On the People is impossible to remember until it becomes ingrained. And it will.

Here's one from Half-Japanese. Karen's getting kicked out of the house. And, yeah, speaking of Karen, there's a link to the Wiki page for the pejorative use of Karen and the story behind all of that nonsense.

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Listen:
Half-Japanese - Karen mp3 at Probe Is Turning-On the People
Visit:

Karen (pejorative) at Wikipedia

LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 25

Pam Grier pointing a gun at some fool.

I read in a book today that the Melvin Van Peebles film Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song predated Shaft. I had always assumed that Shaft was one of the earliest Blaxploitation films. [Insert apology for possibly offending some people by using the term "Blaxploitation". That's the common term. School me on something better.] Did some digging when I got in and found out that Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song was actually the first of the genre. Man, the shit you learn, So, I went back to check the theme song, because it has a cool groove. Then others. And so on. Fast forward and I'm now knee deep in Blaxploitation flicks over at the YouTube. What the fuck, it's been a while.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Luchi De Jesus - Friday Foster Main Title mp3 at Soul Donuts
Dennis Coffey - Love Theme from Black Belt Jones mp3 at Blaxplotation
The Dells - No Way Back mp3 at Soul Donuts
Melvin Van Peebles - Sweetback's Theme mp3 at Oz Good It's actually a pre-fame Earth, Wind and Fire, and composed by Van Peebles
Willie Hutch - Tell Me Why Has Our Love Turned Cold mp3 at Crate Kings
Video:
Blaxploitation flicks at YouTube Tons of them. Tip: Jim Kelly.

TEENAGE ME IS ABOUT TO SHIT HIS PANTS.

This is a gift to my younger self. When I was in my early teens, there was one band that mattered to me more than any others, Creedence. For whatever reason, after buying their fifth LP Cosmos Factory as my first album ever, I hitched my wagon to them and no other band came close. I did a term paper on them, collected their back catalog and checked out the sources of their covers, and of those there were some good ones. On their first LP, Screamin' Jay Hawkin's "I Put A Spell On You", Dale Hawkins' "Suzie Q" and Wilson Picketts's "Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)". On their second Bayou Country, Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly". On their third LP, Green River, they covered Nappy Brown's "The Night Time Is the Right Time" (likely picked up from Ray Charles's version). On their forth LP, Leadbelly's "Cotton Fields", and "Midnight Special" a traditional folk song that no one seems to know who wrote. Cosmo's Factory yielded Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me", Roy Orbison's "Ooby Dooby", Arthur Crudup's "My Baby Left Me" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", a hit for Marvin Gaye just a couple years earlier. When you're as young as I was, you didn't know shit about any of these songs or the artists that recorded them. But it was a map for future digging.

I never got to see Creedence other than a TV special that was on around that time. If I had known that they played at Woodstock, I would have been hysterical after going to see the movie and not seeing them in it. So, these clips are for my younger self. Although I still think that Creedence was a damn good band, John Fogerty's  solo career has kind of diluted things. Nevertheless, I would have gone ape shit back then to see Creedence on the big screen.



There's some other videos below, a few more Woodstock clips and the odd TV appearances. The kicker for me, oddball lover that I am, is not even a real Creedence video, It;s a thing I ran across on Vimeo, a guy with the handle "Soul Train Bro", Dude lets you watch him listen to side one of Bayou Country. This is not one of those videos where you get someone totally unfamiliar with a band to react either in a quizzical or excited way, and you, familiar with the band, laugh your ass off. No, Soul Train Bro does little more than listen, making about four comments during the whole thing. That's an exaggeration, but there are minutes that tick away while he moves and reacts so little, you'd swear the video is frozen. It's just so out there in its nothingness that it's right up my alley. Like a classic rock version of Eno's Music For Airports.

The oddball icing on the cake is Soul Train Bro's Vimeo channel, which is totally unrelated to Creedence. It's just him sharing his listens on a variety of LP sides. Led Zepp, Betty Davis, Jethro Tull, 13th Floor Elevators, Deep Purple, Rory Gallagher, Sabbath and others. My younger self would want no part of Soul Train Bro's listening parties. My current self values the raising of any freak flag, even if the person holding the flag doesn't even know it. Fuckin' Soul Train Bro is okay in my book.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Video:

Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Put a Spell on You (live) at YouTube Woodstock

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Keep On Chooglin' (live) at YouTube Woodstock

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River (live) at YouTube Woodstock
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Proud Mary at YouTube From the Dionne Warwick Special Souled Out
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Proud Mary at Vimeo From the Ed Sullivan Show
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River at YouTube The Andy Williams Show
Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Put A Spell On You at YouTube Promo film
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Sweet Hitch-Hiker at YouTube Promo film
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bayou Country, Side One - Soul Train Bro at Vimeo Soul Train Bro listens and comments. Exhilarating.
Soul Train Bro - His channel at Vimeo

VINTAGE SICK

A friend of mine hepped me to an early Cramps promo film of Human Fly, from 1978. This is before music videos. My Friend had originally seen it back in the day, sandwiched between two midnight movie type feature films, in an actual theater. So in that context, it does seem like a B-movie short. It's the early Cramps too, when they still had Bryan Gregory.

I wanted to post that before I forgot and as long at I was doing that I figured I'd pad it with a few other things that you might not have seen. One is a video of them playing at a mental hospital for an audiece of mental patients. It could be seen as an opportunistic publicity stunt or a heartfelt pulic service. I don't care so I never really looked into it. I do know that I feel slightly voyeuristic when I watch footage of the patients. I don't like that feeling. Nor do I like the feeling of seeing the Cramps playing a Halloween party on an episode of Beverley Hills 90210, but there it is, in all it's glory.

There's also some music links, one is an entire live set at CBGBs from 1978. Not the greatest fidelity, but actually pretty good for that era and particularly that venue, not exactly a concert hall.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Cramps - Human Fly mp3 at Review Stalker
The Cramps - Primitive mp3 at The Flaneur's Arcade
The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck mp3 at Review Stalker
The Cramps - Live at CBGBs mp3 at Internet Archive 13 Songs, go there for song list.
Video:
The Cramps - The Way I Walk (live) at YouTube At Napa Mental Facility 1978
The Cramps - On Beverly Hills 90210 at YouTube