DOUBLE DYNAMITE. AS ADVERTISED.

One of the first soul LPs I ever bought was The Best of Sam and Dave. It was a great one to start with. It had hits and a lot of songs that I didn't recognize. Even though I bought the LP long after the material was recorded, if the rest of the songs were hits, they weren't big enough to make it to the oldies stations a decade or two after being released. It was a great LP. They recorded most of the songs, if not all, at Stax backed by Booker T and the MGs. Their voices are perfect together and the unscripted "ad-libs" between lines makes it feel like you're there.

I'm sure many of you have heard "Soul Man" their biggest hit, probably a million times. Even if you have, listen to it again without distractions. Really listen. It's an excellent song. There's one part, at 1:14, where one of them says "Play it Steve" right before a guitar lick. I remember how proud I was once I put together pieces of liner notes from different LPs and deducted that "Steve" was Steve Cropper of the MGs. This was years before the internet so without the aid of liner notes it would have taken a trip to the library or contacting a music egghead. Liner notes, folks, liner notes.

I still listen to that Best of LP pretty often...oh, that reminds me. If you really like a song, or multiple songs, by a particular artist, do yourself a favor. Don't just download a song or two. Shell out for a compilation of the artist, Greatest Hits or other. You really can't judge any artist by one song. And, if you're like me, it might open up a rabbit hole leading to other artists on the same wavelength, or recorded at the same recording studio or with the same producer or just give you a tip for a record label with similar fare. Though the Sam and Dave LP was on Atlantic, because they recorded at Stax that opened up a plethora of other artists to check out.

Here's just a few from Sam & Dave. You really need check the video. It's a Stax Volt tour in Norway in 1967 with Otis Redding, Booker T and the MGs and Sam and Dave. (Otis Redding opens it, with Booker T and the MGs at 2:58, Sam and Dave at 7:18 and more Otis Redding at 17:38.) This is the good shit with a lot of sweat.

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Listen:
Sam and Dave - Soul Man mp3 at Internet Archive
Sam and Dave - Hold On, I'm Comin' mp3 at Internet Archive
Sam and Dave - You Don't Know Like I Know mp3 at Internet Archive
Sam and Dave - You Don't Know What You Mean to Me (streaming) at YouTube
Sam and Dave - It's a Wonder mp3 at Mr. Suave

ONE HAS JACKET ENVY

I miss the early Black Keys. For their first few LPs they were raw, living up to their "part broke ass shit, part hot ass shit" sound. I'm not saying their later stuff isn't worth listening to, I just really dig their first few LPs.

Here's three covers that found their way onto their first three albums. You should know the originals. If you don't, they're easily found. I really dig the way they deconstruct them and put them back together with fewer parts. It's kind of like what the Ramones did, but the Black Keys didn't rely on the "1,2,3,4!" nothin' but chords approach.

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Listen:
Black Keys - She Said, She Said mp3 at Internet Archive 2002, Orig: Beatles
Black Keys - Have Love Will Travel mp3 at Internet Archive 2003, Orig.: Richard Berry
Black Keys - Summertime Blues mp3 at Tumblr 2004, Orig.: Eddie Cochran

UNEVENTFUL DAYS HAVE EVENTS

Here's one of the many reasons I love living in Southern California. It's been getting chilly lately and the water temperature slowly dropping. It was supposed to be cloudy and rainy today, and the water temperature had dropped to 62°. It looked like the end of the beach days for the year. Regardless, I ran errands early, just in case. By the time I got home the clouds had parted and the temperature was a few degrees warmer than forecast-ed. I figured that one of the perks of living five minutes away from the beach is that if you go down there and it starts raining, you just shuffle back home without wasting half a day driving, parking, and driving back. So I grabbed my shit and started down there. Got as far as Newport Farms, the convenience store two blocks away, and ran into David, a Spicoli type character who's a master carpenter and covered with tats. (My favorite: bread, cold cuts and garnishes tattooed on his knuckles. A knuckle sandwich.) So I walk with him to the tattoo shop and then ran into Kevin, another local. While talking to him, Gil, still another loc', comes cruising by on his bike. I went for a short walk to the other end of the beach, and when I come beach, who's plopped down right by my unattended shit? Bob, who lives across the street from me. On the way home I had two more friend run-ins. To cut to the chase, I whiled away most of the afternoon shooting the shit with friends and getting wet at the beach. (Bonus: The water temperature actually went up to 64°!). This on a day that wasn't supposed to be accommodating to goofing around outdoors. I was resigned to getting shit done. It turned out to be an awesome day to be "unproductive".

When I got home, the song below came to mind. What's not to like about a well crafted pop song about a nice day with a heavily accented Euro-babe singing with bonus bird tweets?

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Listen:
Persephone's Bees - Nice Day mp3 at Audio Drums

BACKSTAGE AT THE CALVACADE OF KNOCKERS

Thematic mixes are usually a double edged sword. On one hand, they can suck. In the struggle to find songs that fit the theme, some crappy ones creep in. The quality of a thematic mix is really a measure of the selector's collection and know-how. This one is by Phil X. Milstein, aka Probe Is Turning-On the People aka Snidely Whiplash, and it is great. He has really good and well informed taste. Another sign of a like minded fiend? Of all the contending song titles available as a title of his post, he chose the song "Who's Knocking On My Door" by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Sucked me in.

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Listen:
Little Richard - Keep A Knockin' mp3 at The New LoFi
The mix:
Who's Knocking On My Door at Boss Radio 66 47 song mix in a zip. Note: The download link appears to still be good despite being from an old post. I didn't follow it through to the end because I'd already downloaded (shortly after it was posted) .

DIVERSIONS RULE

I ran into a bunch of what's referred to as Mod Jazz. It's not the first time I've heard that term. Being an American too young (never mind on the wrong continent) to experience the whole mod thing in the sixties, I get my mod-ucation as hindsight. So I might have it all wrong. It seems to me that the music the mods favored, outside of mod bands like the Who, the Small Faces and so on, included ska, Northern soul, jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues. Not sure where mod jazz is in the middle of that. Tonight, after hearing a half dozed cuts, it occurred to me that this "mod jazz", along with Northerrn soul and soul jazz, was very similar to what was referred to as Popcorn by scenesters in Belgium. [This way to the black hole.] I tracked down the short documentary about the popcorn scene that I'd posted eight years ago (it's good, watch it) and then the wheels came off. I'm all over the place right now so these will have to do.

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Listen:
Booker T and the MGs - Soul Jam mp3 at Internet Archive
Bobby Bland - Honey Child mp3 at Internet Archive
Jack McDuff - Hot Barbeque mp3 at Internet Archive
Mac Rebennack = The Point mp3 at Internet Archive
Ray Bryant Combo - Sack O' Woe mp3 at Internet Archive

THAT VOICE

A couple days ago a live clip of Toots and the Maytals from 2017 popped up on my feed. I hadn't seen live footage of Toots Hibbert in a long while so, what the hell, right? Sheeit! I was amazed at how well his voice has held up over the years. I mean it's not like he's Sinatra, his voice has always had a gospel-like roughness to it. Even with that, he was at it for roughly fifty years and he still sounded pretty much the same. This is good shit.

Here's a handful of early things (mid-sixties to early seventies) and a studio clip from the 1972 film The Harder They Come. My favorite part of that clip is the moment at 2:13 that Jimmy Cliff (in the yellow hat) has a lightbulb go off, thinking "Hey, I could do that." One last thing: As I often do when I see a video that's good, I check to see what other stuff is posted on the user's channel. The user that posted the live clip turned out to be Quincy Jones ("Qwest"). As I suspected, that dude has taste. There's a ton of good stuff. Dig it.

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Listen:
The Maytals - Do the Reggay mp3 at Internet Archive Very early, if not first, use of the word "reggay" [sic] in song.
The Maytals - Monkey Man mp3 at Internet Archive
The Maytals - Pressure Drop mp3 at Internet Archive
Toots and The Maytals - 54-46 That's My Number mp3 at Internet Archive
Toots and  The Maytals - Funky Kingston mp3 at Internet Archive
Video:
Toots and the Maytals - Sweet and Dandy at YouTube From the film The Harder They Come 1972

THE SANTA ANA SOUNDTRACK

You wouldn't know it from looking at them but after years of listening to the Budos Band, I can't help but associate them with the beach, the walk home after a swim during Santa Ana weather conditions (warm and dry, offshore winds). Something to do with when I first started listening to them, they were on heavy rotation at home that year the water and weather stayed nice well into November. They don't look very beach-y, particularly in the video below. The funny thing is, now twenty years in, they look like half the people in my neighborhood (which is the beach). In other words, they look a little scroungy. Their sound has gotten harder as well. I wasn't crazy about the more in-your-face sound a few years ago but after seeing the video below, I'm re-thinking that. The video is great. Filmed this past August. There's a handful of their early stuff down there too so you can see what a couple decades of evolving does.

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Listen:
The Budos Band - King Kobra mp3 at Internet Archive
The Budos Band - Unbroken, Unshaven mp3 at Internet Archive
The Budos Band - Origin of Man mp3 at Internet Archive
The Budos Band - Monkey See, Monkee Do mp3 at Internet Archive

The Budos Band - Budos Dirge mp3 at Internet Archive

FULLY BAKED GROOVES

Well, here we are, a couple Fela Kuti cuts. Characteristically long: one is fifteen minutes, the other seventeen minutes. That Fela. Dude loves his long jams. At that length you can let 'em rip and go about your business. Make a sandwich whilst shaking your ass and your lunch will taste better. One nice thing for you locals is that these are solid and despite having posted Fela's stuff many times over the years, I've never posted these.

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Listen:
Fela Kuti - Dog Eat Dog mp3 at Internet Archive 1977
Fela Kuti - Go Slow mp3 at Internet Archive 1972

FUCK THE HALL

You know the butterfly effect? It's the theory that a small change somewhere can cause another change with  something else, which leads to another change and after this happens a bunch of times pretty soon something distant and more significant changes. I'm bringing this up because there is no doubt that people like me complaining that Link Wray was not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [sic] lead to his being inducted this year. Let me make it clear that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a piece of crap. It's just a record industry way of pumping itself up. They don't know rock 'n' roll. Case in point, the Bee Gees were inducted in 1997. Would you call any song of theirs rock 'n' roll? And they were inducted twenty five years before Link Wray! Should I twist the knife a little more? Wray was inducted with a Musical Influence Award, not as a performer. What the fucking fuck?!

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Listen:
Link Wray - Rumble mp3 at Internet Archive
Link Wray - The Swag mp3 at Internet Archive
Link Wray - Rawhide mp3 at Internet Archive
Link Wray - Ace of Spades mp3 at Internet Archive
Link Wray - Run Chicken Run mp3 at Internet Archive
Link Wray - The Black Window mp3 at Internet Archive
Link Wray - Jack the Ripper mp3 at Internet Archive

IL MONDO MORRICONE

I ran into a post at Radio Diffusion Internasionaal Annexe that was international covers of Ennio Morricone songs. Yeah, you know where this is going. The songs are from the Sergio Leone's "Man With No Name" trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. That sent me into a Morricone bender. If you are familiar with his work on those three films, you'll know that he uses pretty unique instrumentation, including whistling, jaw-harps, and choruses singing non-words, some bordering on grunts..

This is awesome.

I've heard Morricone covers plenty of times. Almost without exception they were period covers, done at the time of the films to cash in. Most of the covers have been pretty straight forward, so the international covers (also period cash-ins) were interesting to hear, particularly with the traditional country relevant instruments in the mix. They're from all over the place: Hong Kong, Nicaragua, Guyana, Sri Lanka, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, the Phillipines and Singapoe.

Here's the OG himself, Morricone, a few American covers and just one of the songs from Radio Diffusion. There's a link to his post, I'm only posting the one so I have an excuse to use that badass sleeve above. Mint condition, I swear.

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Listen:
Ennio Morricone - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly mp3 at Adhocc
Ennio Morricone - A Fistful of Dollars mp3 at Gyerekek Kedvencei
Ennio Morricone - For A Few Dollars More mp3 at Blondin
Hugo Montenegro - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (streaming) at YouTube
Billy Strange - For A Few Dollars More (streaming) at YouTube
Al Caiola - For A Few Dollars More (streaming) at YouTube
The Golden Palominos - For a Few Dollars More (streaming) at YouTube
Hugo Montenegro - Theme from A Fistful of Dollars (streaming) at YouTube
Los Bad Boys - Por Unos Dolares Más (For a Few Dollars More) mp3 at Radio Diffusion Intl
Seven more international Morricone covers at Radio Diffusion Intl
Watch:
Morricone Segreto - Celebrating Ennio Morricone: The Secrets Behind His Genius at YouTube Documentary, 25:53 minutes

THE LAST POST

That time you run into a band that you haven't thought about in ages. You know you have a copy of their first LP that you've had for years and it's miss-fuckin-filed. You know you'd never have sold it because even back in the day you knew that it was a kind of milestone for the late seventies L.A. punk scene. There weren't many bands in 1979, that had that sixties garage band thing going without copying it. You listen to the recordings and it's evident that their recording budget was next to nothing. Then you remember that they were so strapped that they hand wrote the titles of the songs on their first 45. Core.

The Last was an awesome band, more so because they straddled multiple scenes. They were part garage band, part punk, part jangly mid-sixties band, they had good songs and didn't seem concerned about looking cool. I can't think of another band that was on both Bomp (a retro/pop oriented label at that time) and SST (home to Black Flag). Respect.

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Listen:
The Last - L.A. Explosion mp3 at Internet Archive
The Last - She Don't Know Why I'm Here mp3 at Internet Archive