WELCOME TO THE WEIRDOHOOD

So, Eileen, the woman with the Stooges T-shirt that lived across the alley from me, moved out. A couple weeks later I see a car parked in her old parking place with a Gang Green sticker on it.  A couple days later, the guy who inherited her parking spot, owner of the car with te Gang Green sticker was getting in his car. "Gang Green, eh?" I said. We were off and running. It turned out the guy was into 80s punk, hence the sticker. So, to get an idea of how deep his tastes were, I mentioned the Stooges. He passed that test. In ensuing conversations I sorta mentioned how deep the punk well was. (Stooges is level two shit.) I told him I'd burn a thumb drive for him (no turntable, no CD player, just streaming gizmos and a cassette deck in his car). I would have offered a cassette mix but that would entail pulling out a cassette from the back of the hall closet. I knew I'd never make the effort, so why bullshit myself? That said I told him if I ran across any old mixes that I still had, they'd be his. All of this is just to say that the Weirdos songs below are for him. Please note: RIP Dix Denny. Long live all Weirdos.

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

Listen:
The Weirdos - Destroy All Music mp3 at Killed By Death
The Weirdos - Life of Crime mp3 at Killed By Death
The Weirdos - Why Do You Exist mp3 at Killed By Death
The Weirdos - We Got The Neutron Bomb mp3 at Killed By Death
The Weirdos - Solitary Confinement mp3 at Killed By Death
Video:
The Weirdos - I'm Not Like You (live) at YouTube Los Angeles 1978
The Weirdos - Destroy all Music, A Life of Crime, Hitman, Idle Life (live) at YouTube San Francisco  1978

FORMATIVE YEARS ROCK

I wasn't looking for this because I didn't know it existed. A live broadcast of an Avengers show from 1979. If I don't post it now, I'll forget. The Avengers were one of the early San Francisco punk bands from 1977. Blah, blah, blah. There's three songs down there from their first EP from '77. The live thing is from two years later and is kind of sloppy but, having been recorded for a radio broadcast, the sound quality is better than a bootleg. What the hell. Years ago I would have killed for a thirty minute set by the Avengers, but these days, well, shit I've listened to Avengers a lot over the years. Might as well be "Johnny B. Goode" at this point. Still, this goes out to my twenty year old self.

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

Listen:
The Avengers - We Are The One mp3 at Killed By Death
The Avengers - I Believe In Me mp3 at Killed By Death
The Avengers - Car Crash mp3 at Killed By Death
The Avengers – In Concert at Old Waldorf, San Francisco – June 13, 1979 – KALX-FM broadcast mp3 at Past Daily

THE DAY THE WORLD TURNED DAYGLO (SORT OF)

It's been a few. Unusual happenings the past few days. The big bad Hurricane Hilary was on it's way. It was supposed to plow right through the neighborhood. Everybody was scrambling around on Saturday, trying to get a weekends worth of errands done in one day. And they had to find sandbags. I finished my shit in mid-afternoon, went for a swim. It was getting close to sunset so I went out to the alley to have a smoke and read a few pages. Hung a right past the laundry room and looked to the west. Ho-ly fuck. The sky was fluorescent, incredibly colored from bright pink to neon orange. I walked to the end of the street which is a dead end on a bluff above some tide pools. I was about two blocks south of where the photo above was taken (detail of a photo by Randy Dibble), but my view was unobstructed. With my jaw hanging open, I ran into several neighbors who did the same thing, caught a glimpse and dropped everything to check it out. I love living here.

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

Listen:
X Ray Spex - The Day the World Turned Dayglo mp3 at Tumblr Original
The Cripples - The Day the World Turned Dayglo mp3 at Xtrmntr Cover

EVEN THE SOUND OF THE DRUMS

Aw hell yeah. I'm not even going to bother with any excess yapping. Dig the tone on Little Walter's harp. This, in 1954. This is pre-rock metal. Shit, look at the title. Again, 1954.

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

Listen:
Little Walter - Rocker mp3 at Internet Archive

ONE GOOD LONG PROG-JAZZ-ROCK JAM SPECIAL

The other night I was listening to the jazz station, the program "Bohemia After Dark". It's a good thing to have one when you feel like being surprised. Besides the sometimes offbeat jazz, I've heard Tom Waits, Fela, Ken Nordine, Gil Scott Heron and a bunch of other stuff you wouldn't really associate with jazz. That's precisely why I dig it. So the other night they (or rather her, Claudia Russell "your jazz kitten") played a song with some jammin' solos, guitar, electric piano, and organ In the middle of the song there was a drum part that really blew me away. After a few minutes I visited the station's web site to see the playlist so I could find a name to go along with the nasty jam.

Brian Auger and the Trinity, "Listen Here". Yeah. So I scoured, first to YouTube, to hear it again, then I poked around looking for an mp3. (No luck there so you'll have to settle.) Then I went to Discogs to check on the credits. I had to see who the drummer was. Oh jeez. There were six, count 'em six, percussionists on the song. (All listed at Discogs). The song had been on several Auger career spanning compilations but I wanted to find the album it originated from. There I saw it. Total fucking palm-to-forehead "Doh!!". It was on an LP I used to own. That tells you how much my tastes have broadened. Note that I said I "used to own". I know I had it. It was likely a 99 cent low-risk LP that was purged after taking it for a (obviously too short) test run. Who knows, I could still have it, about a half of my collection is unsorted. Anyway, the song is nine minutes long, the drum part is at 5:21, but start from the beginning. The whole thing is great. Cherry picking parts of songs isn't fair to the artist unless you're DJing or sampling, something like that. But listening, respect.

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

Listen:
Brian Auger and the Trinity - Listen Here (streaming) at YouTube

FRESHMEN TAKE NOTE

A member of It's A Beautiful Day died a few days ago, I saw it in a news feed. I don't like It's a Beautiful Day, but it reminded me that they had a song called "Don and Dewey" that I always used to run into when I was looking for music by, yep, Don and Dewey. I'm not sure why they did a song about Don and Dewey (or at least titled as such), I just know it got in my way when searching for something more crucial. So, fuck It's A Beautiful Day, here's some Don and Dewey.

Don and Dewey were a criminally overlooked early rock 'n' roll duo. You locals here know I'm crazy about them. I have to thank for that a slightly older couple, semi-friends who played a Don and Dewey record at a house party when I was roughly twenty three years old. The next day I bought the compilation seen above. Tower Records actually had it. The record has been in constant rotation here for decades. For those of you not familiar with them, consider it a second tier essential, meaning that once you digest the big name early rockers (Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, et al) they should inhabit your playlist. Know them you creeps.

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

Listen:
Don and Dewey - Justine mp3 at Rocky 52
Don and Dewey - Jungle Hop mp3 at Rocky 52
Don and Dewey - Farmer John mp3 at Rock Town Hall
Don and Dewey - Miss Sue mp3 at Rocky 52
Don and Dewey - Just a Little Lovin' mp3 at Rocky 52
Don and Dewey - Jelly Bean mp3 at Internet Archive Burned from a 78

OUR PARENTS HAD ELVIS. WE HAD X.

There's an old post about X that's been getting hits lately (Didn't see this coming) which made me want to hear X last night, so I did. The first song that happened to come up was "White Girl". That's a really familiar song to me and it made me think about why I liked it and most of X's early stuff so much. Part of it, I know, is the way John Doe and Exene Cervenka sing together. Something about their dissimilar voices, how sometimes they trade off lines and sometimes they harmonize. That's the part that gets me, when they're harmonizing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a little abrasive. No doubt an acquired taste, but there was no shortage of of acquired tastes in my crowd back in the day. All of my friends were into X, several still go to every show they play here, when they do. I don't go because I've seen then a lot, most shows in the early days. They're still playing a lot of the same songs. That said, I can see why a lot of people my age still go see them. From reports of friends their gigs are almost like reunions with the old punk crew. I don't do reunions because it always seems to me that it's reliving past glories. Just replace that old star quarterback with the graying spiky haired dude that used to rule the pit. Same thing.

So, with my one night X-fest I really dug into "White Girl" and realized that the vocals have just about all of the trademark John/Exene qualities. They swap lines, they harmonize in that slightly abrasive manner and, here's what got me. About a minute in (on the record, ), when they sing the chorus ("She's a white girl..."), their voices really do come together, so much so that you'd guess that John Doe's vocals were double tracked. Check the clip above, shot in the studio the day they were recording it. Dang me if they aren't both on that chorus at least on film. (2:29 in the video). I could be wrong.There's also a live recording of them doing it in 1988, eight years after it was released, and a live video from 2016, thirty six years after it was released (!).

Once again, I'm posting a link to the documentary about X, The Unheard Music. That was the source of the studio clip, but there's a mess of live stuff and hanging around in it as well. Worth a gander if you've never seen it. Shit, now I kinda know how the teddy boys felt.

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

Listen:
X - White Girl mp3 at Internet Archive 1980
X- White Girl (streaming) at YouTube
X - White Girl (Live) (streaming) at YouTube 1988
Video:
The Unheard Music (documentary) at YouTube 1986
X - White Girl (Live) at YouTube 2016

THE DEMO THAT HIJACKED MY NIGHT

Hey, it's time for Friday Night Rabbit Hole! I ran into a demo of "Respect Yourself", the song that was a hit for the Staple Singers. It was written be Mack Rice. Never heard of him. But I love that song so it was a no-brainer. Ho-ly shit, I was blown away at how different the songwriter's demo was. It's good, totally different feel. Seriously, it actually sounds like a demo Mick Collins would have done. What amazed me was what the Staples did with it. How do you transform something like that into gospel soul anthem?

Here's where the rabbit hole comes in. I remembered reading an article recently in the New Yorker about Stax demos so I went and found it. (I haven't re-read it yet but I'm sure Mack Rice is in there. As a preventive measure I redact my "Never heard of him.") It was a good read the first time I read it, but I don't remember all of the details (there are many). I continued poking around and found, on Stax's YouTube channel no less, the whole box set of recently uncovered Stax demos, 146 in all. This will take a while....

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

Listen:
Mack Rice - Respect Yourself (demo) mp3 at Internet Archive
Staple Singers - Respect Yourself mp3 at Internet Archive
Staple Singers - Respect Yourself (live) mp3 at Internet Archive
Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos (Complete) at YouTube
Visit:
The Secret Sound of Stax at The New Yorker

THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF FUZZ

Here's a few that I haven't seen or heard before along with one I have. It's Japanese psych/hard rock, the Mops. It seemed like I posted them a few months ago but then I checked, it's been twelve fucking years. So, yeah, they're due. Here's a handful, including the song I posted before, "I'm Just a Mops" (Note: Before you go off about the grammar, check in with Archie Bell, as in "Hello everybody, I'm Archie Bell and the Drells".) There's also a couple covers so you can see how they compare with their Yankee counterparts.

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

Listen:
The Mops - I Just a Mops mp3 at Internet Archive
The Mops - White Rabbit mp3 at Internet Archive
The Mops - Asamade Matenai mp3 at Internet Archive
The Mops - Light My Fire mp3 at Internet Archive
The Mops - Kienai Omoi (Anthem) mp3 at Internet Archive
The Mops - Asahi Yo Saraba mp3 at Internet Archive