Tuesday, June 29, 2021

DA BULL WAS HUMAN.


After having just mentioned Greg Noll a few days ago, I found out last night that he had just died, yesterday. It hadn't even been picked up by Wikipedia yet. It hit me in a weird way. He was a surfing legend, one of the first big wave riders, all-time and all that jazz. It is like rock 'n' roll losing Chuck Berry. But that's not what made it feel weird. What made it unusual was that it felt like a friend had passed away. As I mentioned in the post a few days ago, I met him a few years ago in a parking lot outside a supermarket. I'd actually seen him about a half hour earlier just inside the entrance of the Target store next door to the grocery store. There he was, just standing there in shorts, flip-flops and sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, holding one of those big ass plastic mugs with a lid and a straw (the type favored by soda pop fiends and highschoolers at their first keg party). He was looking around as if he was looking for someone. I thought to myself "That looks like Greg Noll, but that couldn't be him, he lives in Crescent City." (Crescent City is in Northern California just south of Oregon.) I went about my business figuring it was just a doppelganger.

Leaving Target I was headed to my car. I ran into my cousin and walked with her in the same general direction. We were approaching a truck with a Noll Surfboards sticker on the tailgate. Ordinarily I would just figured it a coincidence. I see those stickers occasionally, as the surf shop (now owned by his son) is just about seventy miles north. But this sticker was centered in the middle of the tailgate, with pin-striping around it. So, this sticker held more significance to whoever...wait! Could it be?, I thought. I stopped, and muttered to my cousin something like "Want to meet a big wave legend?" She begged off and said goodbye. I walked to the side of the truck and saw the silhouette of a big guy in the passenger seat. Noll is big. A bruiser. I figured that if it was him, I'd never forgive myself if I didn't do something. I approached the car door. It was Noll. I just walked up and before I could get past "Mr. Noll,..." his hand was already out the window, to shake.

Here's the weird part. I wasn't nervous at all. Later I chalked that up to having read his memoir, Da Bull, and watched enough semi-recent interviews to know his matter of speaking. He cusses in all the right places, using it as color, not to cuss for cussing sake, That is an art. It almost seemed as if I knew him, there was that sort of one-on-one comfort in conversation, like have having a beer with a buddy.



He was waiting for his wife who was in the grocery store. As our conversation was going on (15 or 20 minutes at that point) I apologized for taking his time and he said something to the effect of "Hey, it's alright. I'm just sitting in a truck waiting for my wife," and the conversation lasted for several more minutes. He talked about his brother (who lives in east county San Diego), the boat he just bought (and was to be docked here), his love for San Diego (Sunset Cliffs in particular), his son, the crowds in line ups these days and then the conversation went to his relationship with Miki Dora. I asked him what he thought about the Miki Dora biography that was published a few years earlier. The two had been friends since they were about ten or twelve, and Noll is quoted heavily in the Dora book. Contemporaries, Noll later favoring the North Shore of Oahu (Waimea, Sunset, Pipeline and Makaha) and Dora at Malibu. They both had rough edges but Dora was a scammer and a thief. A rat fuck. Anyway, once Noll got started on Dora, it was off to the races. This story and that, how they met, the wave they shared at Waimea that was shot during the filming of Ride the Wild Surf. (Noll was the stuntman for the surfing scenes and had gotten Dora, a four foot and under guy, a job doing it. The trouble was, Dora was not at all comfortable in huge surf. Noll knew that. Tee hee, friend.)

Every story would lead to another, and every other segue he would say, "oh wait, that's in the book" and start on another one. Here I was, getting first hand stories, stories that weren't in the books, about a legend, from a legend. Let's take that Chuck Berry comparison again. It would be like asking Chuck Berry about Bo Diddley and have him generously offer up story after story. It was the surfing equivalent of that. He was genial, down to earth and warm in a no bullshit way. No wonder it seemed like a friend died.

I have no clue what music Noll liked, but I have to wash out that surf music with something. In the late fifties surfers dug jazz. And in 1959, what would have been Noll's third year on the North Shore, Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" was a jazz smash hit.

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Listen:
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five mp3
at Time Goes By
Visit:
Greg Noll
at Encyclopedia of Surfing A great page with videos, a profile and articles from years past.

Sunday, June 27, 2021

L.. L. LITTLE WILLIE J.


Here's a fun one. Three cover versions of "Fever", the song first recorded by Little Willie John in 1956 and a hit by for Peggy Lee two years later. The three covers below are all are close enough in length that you can open them open separately and try your hand at syncing your own chorus. Haven't tried it yet myself, but my evening ahead is empty enough that I'm sure I will. It just seems like, if it is possible, it will either sound really good, bizarre or laughable. Any of those could describe my mood, so there's nothing to lose at this end. That's not to say that these versions aren't good on their own. They're all great, and all different.

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Listen:
Little Willie John - Fever
(streaming) at YouTube
La Lupe - Fever mp3
at Aurgasm
Sharon Cash - Fever mp3
at De Discos y Monstruos
Patti Drew - Fever mp3
at Music Dawn

Friday, June 25, 2021

BUFFALO DAUGHTER'S FAULT


Last night I pulled out a random CD and put it on. Buffalo Daughter, a Japanese band. After listening through "Earth Punk Rockers" (an all-encompassing title if there ever was one), I went on a Japanese band binge. Here's just a few. After these I feel into videos. I tend to forget to look for stuff by bands I like if I've already done exhaustive searches before. It hit me tonight that the last time I looked for stuff by any of these bands was years ago, up to fourteen in one instance. There's all sorts of stuff online now.  Do a search for any any of the bands below and kiss your night goodbye.

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Listen:
Buffalo Daughter - Earth Punk Rockers
(streaming) at YouTube
Cornelius - Ape Shall Never Kill Ape mp3
at Zeleny Digital Freaks
Shonen Knife - Super Group mp3
at Magnet Magazine
Cibo Matto - Birthday Cake mp3
at The Sound of Indie
Melt Banana - We Will Rock You mp3
at Beware of the Blog

Thursday, June 24, 2021

AND HE PROBABLY HATED SURF MUSIC.


Did I ever tell you about the time I met Greg Noll? Probably not since most of you don't know he is. He was a big wave surfer, a gutsy pioneer who excelled in giant surf, late fifties, early sixties. When he wasn't surfing, he made films, shaped surfboards and raised hell. And, as I found out roughly five years ago, sometimes he waited for his wife, in a truck in a parking lot at Ralphs, a supermarket.. Remind me to tell you about that encounter some time. Like you could give a shit. Really, I figured I better say something other than "Here's some surf music. Later." That's Noll in both photos. Check that one above, a half century before tow-ins. Imagine paddling into that on a log with block fin. You'd need a slug of juice too. There's a good reel with vintage clips at the Encyclopedia of Surfing. Now, here's some surf music. Later.



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Monday, June 21, 2021

RETURN OF THE ALL TIME JAM


Hot damn! It's the first day of summer. The ocean water temperature is 66 degrees (warm enough to not notice it), the forecast for the next week is the mid-70s. You know, all the cliché Southern California shit. Sue me. Anyway, I know I'm going to post Althea and Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking" sometime during the summer.so why not now? I went for a swim a couple hours ago, read, had a tamale and the Padres are currently leading the Dodgers in the sixth. It a rivalry that goes way back, and both teams are good this year. So I'm in a good mood, and "Uptown Top Ranking" fortifies that.

The riddim comes from Alton Ellis's "I;m Still In Love With You". Althea and Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking" was by no means the only record to use it. Here's a couple others. And if you're already familiar with all of these, dig this exercise. Try syncing Ellis's with Althea and Donna's, opening them in separate windows and pausing one if needed. Then fuck with the volume in each window. When they do sync well you can strut around like some two bit King Tubby,

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Althea and Donna - Uptown Top Ranking mp3
at Tumblr
Alton Ellis - I'm Still In Love With You mp3
at Stop Okay Go
Mighty Two - Calico Suit
(streaming) at YouTube
Trinity - Three Piece Suit
(streaming) at YouTube

Sunday, June 20, 2021

PRINCE BUSTER TO THE RESCUE


Prince Buster started out working security for Coxsone Dodd's sound system, and then left and began his own system. He started dabbling in producing, finally making records of his own. Lots of them. You know what else he did? He afforded me a way out of trying to think of something to post. I clicked on an old post. "Enjoy Yourself". I'm gonna flake off and do just that.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen: 
Prince Buster - Soul of Africa mp3
at Groove Addict
Prince Buster - Respect mp3
at Groove Addict 
Prince Buster - Enjoy Yourself mp3
at Audio Drums
Prince Buster - Danny Dane and Lorraine mp3
at Jaliskoska
Prince Buster - Fowl Theif mp3
at Jaliskoska
Prince Buster - The Fugitive mp3
at Jaliskoska
Prince Buster All Stars - Desafinado mp3
at Jaliskoska
Prince Buster All Stars - Prince of Peace mp3
at Jaliskoska
Prince Buster - Blackhead Chinaman mp3
at Jaliskoska

Saturday, June 19, 2021

BASS PLAYER, STAR FEMININE BAND


Years ago I was at some show in San Francisco and somebody handed me a one page double-sided flyer about what seemed like an art collective, Bazooka Productions, with art by LouLou Picasso and Kiki Picasso. It looked cool and in the ensuing years I picked up artwork by them when I came across it, including an LP, La Perversita, bought just for the cover. That was (gulp) about forty years ago. So, two days ago, I  was looking around Super Super Sounds, a neat blog that focuses on looking through Bandcamp for good shit (there's a lot of not good shit on Bandcamp to sift through). There was a blurb about a French punk compilation on Bandcamp, and the cover looked like something by Kiki and LouLou Picasso, and as it turns out it was. So I go to the Bandcamp page and start to sift through the offerings of the label, Born Bad Records (which has a decidedly Cramps ring to it via the Born Bad compilations of songs the Cramps taught us). This was not the first place you'd expect to find a band like Star Feminine Band.


Star Feminine Band is an all girl band from Benin (Africa). Literally girls, ranging in ages from 10-17 (or thereabouts). They met at a music workshop for girls. Per The Guardian, André Balaguemon, the instructor and host of the workshop, said "Some of his proteges hadn’t ever seen keyboards or a drum kit when they signed up. Undeterred, he spent the first two weeks teaching them to clap to the beat." When you hear them you'll agree that they have come a long way. Read the thing at The Guardian, it tells the whole story. This is a movie waiting to happen.



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

Listen:
Star Feminine Band
at Bandcamp
Visit:
'When we play, everyone dances!' Benin girl group Star Feminine Band
at The Guardian
Born Bad Records
at Bandcamp

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

POST-PUNKY REGGAE


New Order covering Keith Hudson? Who knew? Leave it to Plain or Pan to land this oddball. It sounds exactly like you would expect New Order playing reggae would sound like. Obviously not the real thing, but as an oddball New Order song it certainly passes.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Keith Hudson - Turn the Heater On mp3
at Plain or Pan
New Order - Turn the Heater on mp3
at Plain or Pan

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

IT LOOKS PHONY IF YOU ALL WEAR SHADES. OH.


At this point I'm just tossing you treats so you remember to piss outside. It is what it is. Fifty two minutes of Mudhoney live at Primavera Sound in 2012. The photo is from about twelve years earlier but it's a cool photo. And I'm lazy.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Mudhoney - Full Set, Live at Primavera Sound
at Free Music Archive 2012, on WFMU
NOTE: Once there, to download click on the arrow on the end of the orange streaming bar.

Sunday, June 13, 2021

DARE YOU TO USE A SHAGGS SONG


Oh, now everybody's got a Delta 5 song stuck in their head. Never thought I'd see the day. Apple has some post-punk person selecting the music for their commercials. Every once in a while something like this will happen, someone with unusual taste with get their favorite band in an ad, commercial, soundtrack or something else. I remember years ago when the Sears catalog still existed, it had the second New York Dolls LP as a prop on one of the stereos for sale. WTF? And about ten years ago there was a commercial with a Monks song as the soundtrack, a totally obscure choice for a national ad campaign (I seem to remember it was for a car).

So, how did Delta 5, a little known post-punk band from forty years ago, end up on an Apple commercial? I'm glad you asked that question. After some arduous research (seriously, typing three words into Google really takes it out of you), I found that Variety had already done the legwork.

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

Listen:
Delta5 - Mind Your Own Business mp3
at Tumblr
Visit:
How Did ‘Mind Your Own Business,’ Delta 5’s 40-Year-Old Cult Hit, End Up in an Apple Ad?
at Variety

Saturday, June 12, 2021

GREAT MOMENTS IN STONER CINEMA

Another repost, for a good reason. I hung out with some friends today and for the first time in over a year actually shook hands and hugged. It's amazing what a difference that makes. Anyway, two of them couldn't remember if they'd ever seen Head, the film starring the Monkees. (A description is below.) So I thought I'd post it again so it would be easy to find. I checked the mp3 links and in doing so was reminded what great shit they had, never mind the fact that it's the Wrecking Crew actually playing. Theses songs (below) are just damn good songs. I gotta revisit their records one of these days. Here's the old post:

One thing you have to realize about anybody that was young when the Monkees were on the top of the charts is that most wouldn't have known the difference between them and the Beatles. It didn't matter, they had long hair, they appeared to be a band, and they were on a wacky TV show every week. They were in magazines and had trading cards that came with banana flavored yellow gum. If you were in my neighborhood there was a kid that would pay five cents for a piece of the unusual gum, and the pack of trading cards only cost five cents, so yeah, if you snagged him when he still had his allowance, you had your first introduction to the world of flim flam.



Where was I? Oh yeah, the Monkees appeal wasn't just the music. They were a brand, way more accessible than real bands that actually played instruments. They were marketed like crazy, every possible way you could imagine. And the hits? Well, when the pool of songwriters include Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Boyce and Hart, Neil Sedaka, and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich among others, and the music is played by the Wrecking Crew and other studio musicians, that path to hits is simple: don't fuck up.

Alas, the wool can only cover the eyes for so long. The Monkees knew they were frauds, but wanted the gravy train to stay on track. There were attempts to actually play instruments, but as the fans grew older and less naive, they had to step it up. So they made a movie. 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.


I've posted it before, but a friend just posted a recent thing from NPR about the movie and it occurred to me that what respect I may have lost for their musical output over the years was replaced by a healthy respect for their efforts to cross over to a more counterculture audience. As "music" movies go, only the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels come close to the crackpottedness of Head. That's high praise over here.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
The Monkees - Porpoise Song mp3 at Tumblr From Head
The Monkees - She mp3 at Tumblr
The Monkees - Goin' Down mp3 at Tumblr Dolenz raps
The Monkees - Sweet Young Thing mp3 at Tumblr
Visit:
The Monkees Tried To Cut Their Strings With 'Head' at NPR

Friday, June 11, 2021

FROM THE "GET OFF MY LAWN" FILE


I mentioned a couple days ago that I'm reading Art and Laurie Pepper's The Straight Life. Without going too much into it, a word to Art Pepper fans thinking of reading it: Pepper at times could be a really fucked up human being, and an idiot. We are all human, but just so you know he doesn't gloss over the parts that don't make him look good. The idiot part is that he seemed to make the same mistakes over and over again, with dire results.

I just reached the part of the book where he's out of prison and auditioning for Buddy Rich's band and he's nervous. He'd heard that Rich is a hard guy to work for. I don't know how it turned out (that's still to be read), but I smell a conflict. Anyway, it reminded me of the Buddy Rich tirades I posted several years ago. This is what I said back then:

Here's some good ol' fashioned "fuck" laced tirades, old school style, wherein a member of the old guard, in this case Buddy Rich, berates his younger band. There's a lot of cussin' going on, heavy on the f-bombs. A random line: "You’re all up there, fuckin’ high school, bullshit jive artists." In the one tirade that I tried counting, I lost track at about twenty seven "fucks". Seriously, dude's on the front lines of the Fuck Liberation Army. When it all comes down to it, it's just a word. It should carry no more weight or stigma than the word "fornicate". But it does. And Buddy Rich knows this, as do other foot soldiers. Which is why the artful cusser uses it liberally for flavor. It's cheap ammo. Avoiding the cutesy "fuckin' fuck" and the conceding "fuck you" (which pretty much translates as "I got nothin'"), demonstrating a chef's deftness, seasoning to taste.

There's one of Rich's tirades below, just as a preview. You really should go to the hosting page, they have four in all, audio and transcribed text, so you can follow along in the muddy parts. Plus a comment from a former band member attesting to his nice guy side. "Big Swing Face" is down there because that title rules. It has a nice ring to it.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 
Listen: 
Buddy Rich - Big Swing Face mp3 at NT Jazz
Visit:
Buddy Rich Audio Page
at Track Drummer
Four tapes, audio (streaming and downloads) and transcribed text.,

Thursday, June 10, 2021

NOW, ABOUT THAT BAND NAME


This'll clear out the ol' ear canals. The Cripples, Never heard of 'sm. Synth punk from the late nineties, says here. That's all I know so far. Some of it is hard, some gimmicky, but all are "ah, what the hell" enough. At least those I've listened to. There's twenty seven in all.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
The Cripples - Crutch mp3
at Xtrmntr
The Cripples - Hell mp3
at Xtrmntr
The Cripples - The Day the World Turned Dayglo mp3
at Xtrmntr Cover
X Ray Spex - The Day the World Turned Dayglo mp3
at Tumblr Original
The Cripples - 24 more songs
at Xtrmntr
Video:
The Cripples on Rock! Rock! Rock!
at YouTube

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

THE MANY MOODS OF ART PEPPER


I'm halfway through reading Art Pepper's autobiography The Straight Life (co-written with his wife Laurie). If you know anything about Pepper, you know he's a West Coast jazz guy, saxophone. If you know anything else about Pepper you know that he was a junkie, for years. He did time in a number of facilities, the most notorious San Quentin. I'm only halfway through the book (up to the mid-sixties) and I can tell you just from that that he makes Keith Richards look like a dabbler. Nothing is glossed over in the book. Not the crimes he committed, not the extent he went through to get a fix, not the lovers he treated like shit, or the dark thoughts running around in his head. It is heavy.

So I started browsing, A couple links in, I'm already distracted. There's a shitload about Pepper online. These are tonights detours.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Art Pepper - Caravan mp3 at Rubber City Review
Art Pepper - 'Round Midnight mp3
at Space Age Pop
Art Pepper - Straight Life mp3
at Rubber City Review From Meets the Rhythm Section
Art Pepper - Birks Works mp3
at Rubber City Review Ditto
Art Pepper - More songs and excellent profile
at Rubber City Review
Video:
Art Pepper Quartet - Jazz Casual
at YouTube Three songs, 29 minutes.1964
Art Pepper - Jazz Survivor
at YouTube Documentary, 46 minutes, 1982
Visit:
Their Unique Love Affair
at Perfect Sound Forever Profile of Art and Laurie Pepper, 2014
Laurie Pepper, Wife of Late Saxophonist Art Pepper
at Fresh Air, PBS Interview podcast, 27 minutes, 2001

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

YOUR KID ON BLACK DOG


I ran into a documentary on Led Zeppelin, and I thought I'd throw a couple tunes on too. As I've mentioned before, finding things to download is getting harder and harder. Somewhat safe mp3 search engines are a thing of the past. Blogs are going belly up right and left. It's getting to the point that I've checked my old posts for songs. So to go with the documentary you get couple random songs, an oddball cover and a funny video. Total bric-a-brac.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Led Zeppelin - Gallows Pole mp3 at Tumblr
Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song mp3 at Mercury Paradise
Dondero High School - Immigrant Song mp3
at Internet Archive From Pop Concert 2004
Led Zep Rarities Part 1, Tracks 1-14
at Internet Archive As a single 56 minute mp3, includes a couple Eddie Cochran covers.
Video:
Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused
at YouTube 56 minute documentary
Kids React to Led Zeppelin
at YouTube This is hilarious.

Monday, June 7, 2021

YOU CANNOT UN-HEAR THEM.


If you were a teenager, or any-ager, in the seventies, live footage of bands was hard to come by. There was no YouTube, no commercially available videos, no MTV. Obiously you could go see a band live, but that only applied to bigger cities that were on the stops of major tours. If you lived in Bumfuck, Oklahoma, you were out of luck. There were always the odd appearances on variety shows, but they generally tended to be the least threatening. Variety shows were for adults. You might get the Fifth Dimension or the Supremes. Whoop-de-doo.

In the mid-seventies, programmers noticed the void. Burt Sugarman came up with the idea for The Midnight Special, a show that aired on Friday, from midnight to 1:30 AM. It was a mixed bag, usually with two stages. After one act played a couple songs they'd introduce the act on the other stage. For instance, softies Seals and Crofts ("Summer Breeze") introducing T Rex. Back then, as teenagers not old enough to go to bars, the air time was just about perfect. Whereas bars stayed open until 2 AM, keg parties generally petered out earlier. It wasn't unusual to come home from a party with a couple buddies in tow and flip on The Midnight Special.

Here's a short documentary (nine minutes) on the series and a link to the Wikipedia page that lists the performers. Some were piss breaks (Bread, John Denver, etc) but some were great bands that you might not ever get to see. To wit, the New York Dolls appeared on the show in what may have been their only televised appearance in the U.S. (I certainly can't think of another).

One thing that I'd forgotten is that the bands appeared live, so the versions of the songs you heard could be slightly different than the record. That's where Mark Bolan comes in. I watched a clip of the best of The Midnight Special's 1973 season. Skipping around, a slalom course through soft rock (jim Croce, Loggins and Messina, Helen Reddy), there's Billy Preston, Steely Dan, War, the Edgar Winter Group (wherein he beats the crap out of his new toy, a synthesizer). So, Mark Bolan, after being introduced by Seals and Crofts, does an eight minute version of "Bang A Gong". It's so pathetic (and I like T. Rex), that it's comical. First thing you'll notice is the relentless tambourine bashing by the female back up singers, mostly out of time. It's like they're in their own little world and have nothing to do with the song that's being played. Get used to it because you won't be able to ignore the tambourines for several minutes. You'll also notice Bolan's get-up. Not entirely different from what he would normally wear, which is to say, something ridiculous. The song goes on for a while and then it's cliché time. Oh. man, this is something you have to see. I forget the exact order but there's the smoke machine, the lame solo, the humping the guitar routine and then it morphs in to a funky, white boy version of James Brown Lite. This is Bolan at his most full of himself. It's hilarious and it's awful.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
T. Rex - Bang A Gong mp3
at Tumblr Control group.
Video:
Mark Bolan/TRex - Bang A Gong (live)
at YouTube Eight minutes, The Midnight Special, 1973
The Midnight Special 1973
at YouTube One hour of performances from 1973, includes songlist.
The Making of The Midnight Special
at YouTube Nine minute documentary
Visit:
The Midnight Special at Wikipedia (scroll down for list of performers)

Saturday, June 5, 2021

"CHIPS MOMAN"? WHO'S THAT?


This one reminded me of lurking in thrift stores back in the day, well before people started scooping up any and all 45s to sell on eBay. Back then you could score Volt 45s or Stax 45s (both the light blue label and yellow finger snapping label) at probably one in three thrift stores. Downtown San Diego had the biggest concentration of thrift stores, about five or six, so if you can imagine that nearly every time you made the rounds, you'd have the opportunity to score something from Stax/Volt. I cherry picked. There were so many big names on the label(s) that if was an artist I didn't recognize, it would go through the deliberation process. (All this for a record that might cost twenty five cents.) First you look at the band name, in this case the Triumphs. Okay, from there you figure it's ether a vocal group or an instrumental band. Then you look at the title "Burnt Biscuits". That sounds more like an instrumental title than a vocal thing. Turn it over and see the flip, "Raw Dough". At this point you're convinced that it is an instrumental record. What you won't know for years is that it is a pre-MGs Booker T. Jones record and the only one by the Triumphs. Regardless of the picked over offerings these days, I need to get my ass downtown.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
The Triumphs - Burnt Biscuits mp3
at The A Side
The Triumphs - Raw Dough mp3
at The B Side

Thursday, June 3, 2021

"AND COMBO"? GEE, THANKS FOR THE INFO.


I'm not going to bullshit you. Sometimes I don't really feel like going through the hassle of posting anything. I guess that's obvious when I take a couple days off, On most days like that I'll give it the ol' college try. I find something I like and then, if it's someone I'm not familiar with, I dig for info. In today's case I found little. The song is great but, I found nothing autobiographical about Roy Tann, other than his real name, Willis Threats Jr.. That too turned up with squat. So, it takes me a paragraph to say, fuck it, here's a Roy Tann song that started my fruitless search. I did run into a couple other things to pad the post. One is an unrelated song by Ray Agee, only because it's of similar vintage and it's got a similar feel, and it also is hot shit.

The other thing I ran across, the one takeaway from my Tann search was a radio show by the Hound, a WFMU affiliated true fiend. The artist bios on his site are usually about fifty times more thorough than anything you're going to find on Wikipedia or anywhere else. The guy knows his shit. So his radio show is well selected (I hate it "curated"). He starts with surf, rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, and some hillbilly before he even gets to Roy Tann. But it's like when you first get a car you really dig and you just drive around waiting for the next awesome tune to pop up. Enjoy the cruise.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Roy Tan [sic] - Isabella mp3
at Soul Garage
Ray Agee - Your Precious Love mp3
at Soul Garage
The Hound - As heard on WFMU
at The Hound Go there for the playlist. 3 hours, aired 1991
Visit:
The Hound Blog

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

SCREW THE DATE. I CAN'T WAIT.


It's a one and done night, Nathaniel Mayer's version of "Summertime". This one really swings. I don't want to distract from it because it really merits consecutive plays. Listen to one instrument intently and move on to another. Familiar songs like this, well produced but not lavishly, beg to be picked apart. And, like I said, it really swings.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Nathaniel Mayer - Summertime mp3
at Albums Only

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

DUDE WAS COOL JUST SITTING THERE.


As is probably apparent, I'm a jazz dabbler. That is to say, I'm liking it but there's a good reason for that. My purchases have been limited to the big names that, you know, you hear about for ages. You can't miss with any genre if you take mental notes over the years. One of the big names I haven't gotten around to actually buying is Dexter Gordon. So, pardon me while I add him to the list.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Dexter Gordon - Love For Sale mp3 at Pixie Radio
Dexter Gordon - As Time Goes By mp3 at Tafunus