I like the "The Rent Is Too Damn High" guy. Old school zeal, platform at his disposal, with a message for the people. What's not to like? You go, you weird bearded, glove wearing, "had it up to here" shit stirrer.
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Is there a greater voice in soul music? Is there a greater voice, period? And it's embarassing really, so many of us take her music for granted, because there are so many songs, and hardly a stinker among them. I had reason to pause today when I heard that the Queen is ill. She was released from a hospital a few days ago, from an undisclosed illness, and told not to perform for six months. Now, I'm not one to get all new-agey on you, but if you believe in positive vibes (or prayer for that matter), now would be a good time to put them in the out box.
When I think of Aretha Franklin's music, I always go to "Rock Steady." That hasn't always been the case. But, one night when I was DJing, roughly twenty years ago (yikes!), a friend of a friend requested it. She was a poet, who loved baseball and playing pool, and was sort of tomboy-ish. Not really in the crowd that I hung with, but the sort of person who is so innately cool, they don't even play the game. Needless to say, I trusted her song selection, and when I played it at a volume much louder than I was used to at home, it was about eighty times more powerful. The place went nuts. But that's how Aretha Franklin's music is. Even the most jaded hipsters will cop to the Queen.
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There's a bunch of reasons to post "Check Out" by Us Kids, not the least of which is to hep you to Garage Hangover. It's a really great, very focused blog about obscure garage bands from the first garage era. It's been linked over in my sadly neglected blog list ("Get Lost") pretty much since day one, and it's provided me with hours of digging and reading about bands that don't mean a trifle in the overall rock n' roll scheme of things. Yet each band has their own special, if sometimes mundane, story.
Us Kids was a band of 11-14 year olds, from the early sixties, "Check Out," the one mp3 posted, is pretty good, and not just kid good. It's hard to believe the writer was something like 13 years old at the time. I listened and tried hard to imagine the song done in a somewhat creepier style. The very title of the song, and the riff, were already headed there. Some sort of teenage Link Wray, this kid was. That's when I started hearing the Cramps. I was thinking how cool it would be if the Cramps covered it. Then I realized that they practically did, with their version of Ronnie Cook and the Gaylad's "Goo Goo Muck."
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I'm a cynic, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Any band that puts a Circle Jerk (Keith Morris) and a Redd Kross member (Steven McDonald) together would sound enticing to anybody my age. First thought: What kind of way out wacky shit could they be putting out? Then you throw in a former member of Burning Brides and a Hot Snake, and it starts to sound like something that could be the hottest shit in town. Right? Well, what it actually resembles is a retread, bordering on cash in. That's a little harsh, but...[turn to camera 3] Come on guys. Even though you say "we're not a punk supergroup," you know that's what some nuts will say. At least you're going to get a little inventive, right?...wait, what? You mean to tell me that it's going to sound an awful lot like late 70's L.A. hardcore? Have you learned nothing? I'm not saying that I don't like that type of stuff. Hell, just like you, I was practically weened on it. But, c'mon, you're probably only going to be working with this combination of people for a while. How 'bout you blow some old fart minds?! Sure, old farts don't sink their teeth into stuff like kids do, they don't buy as much music. Well, bully for you. I'll take it, and I'll find in interesting, but I, rather we, really could use some help over here. This shit's getting...old.
Here's a whole bunch of good blues. A lot of it may be familiar. There's some lesser known stuff here too. Check out the recommended sites at the bottom. You'll want to bookmark them, there's way more than one visits worth.
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If you know the history of the Beach Boys, you may know that the Murry Wilson, (father of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl) was an abusive, over controlling father. Frustrated over his own lack of success in music, he took it out on his sons. He may have had veiled good intentions, but when he got pissed, he really let go, doing all sorts of incredibly cruel shit. Things like taking out his false eye and making Brian look at the empty eye socket. Once he got so pissed off at Brian, that he hit him upside the head (with a piece of lumber, if memory serves), so hard that he became deaf in one ear. So it was a strained relationship, to say the least. As with many abusive parents, the dynamic changes as the child ages. Some children handle it well, and take it stride. When the Beach Boys were riding high, they became less submissive, and actually started to stand up for themselves. And, thanks to the trend of releasing every outtake and fart ever recorded in a studio, you can hear the Wilson family dynamic as the boys started to realize that they may in fact have the upper hand. So, with no further ado, here are two mp3s of the night a drunk Murry Wilson tried to commandeer the recording session for "Help Me Rhonda." The first version is 40 minutes long, admittedly a little much, even for a Beach Boys freak. The other is a twelve minute edit with the highlights.
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Many moons ago (okay, several), Sub Pop had a singles club. You send them a lump sum, they sent you music by mail. The pressings were small (a few thousand, I think), so, as you can guess, some of them, particularly the early ones, are hot items among people who clamor for that sort of thing. So, when I run across them, I'll let you know.
This one is from 2000; the White Stripes doing three Captain Beefheart covers. In case you clamored too late.
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It is just one of the many remarkable things that have changed in music in the past ten years. International music has gone, uh, international. Before the availability of just about any music, at any time, was commonplace, even the largest record stores devoted only a sliver of shelf space to music from other countries. Now that there are consumers actively looking for obscure titles, collectors are out hunting, and labels with long stagnant titles are issuing compilations at a dizzying pace. All this is great, especially if you're the sort of person that has found themselves bored with familiar music, and the regurgitation of long established styles.
Frank Gossner, of Voodoo Funk, takes the record hunt to new levels in Africa.
Early on, before the internet made international music readily available, many of the recordings issued in the U.S. were rather academic in their approach. Labels like Folkways, and early on Elektra, took anthropological tacks, and though the music may have been inviting, the lack of flair limited their appeal to, for lack of a better description, music eggheads. One pre-mp3 label that tried to change that was David Byrne's Luaka Bop. Byrne's obsession with Brazillian music lead to licensing deals, and after being coupled with some snappy packaging, before you knew it, hipsters of yore were listening. After the label gained popularity, Byrne found himself annoyed enough with the marginalizing of international music by the labeling of it as "World Music" that he wrote an excellent essay entitled "I Hate World Music." It pretty much makes the case that we (Westerners) are jerks to put so much emphasis on Western music, that we lump everything else into one umbrella category.
Today you can find international music smattered all over music blogs, with artists initially known very little outside of their geographical homes now given second lives, with some becoming full-on internet driven icons. The music below is just some of the music on one post alone at Mixtape Riot. Nigeria, Peru, and Columbia are represented. And on his next post (which is what reminded me how awesome it is to have international music at our fingertips) he covers some Middle Eastern music.
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If you were going to throw a decent Halloween bash, how hard would it be to round up a bunch of Halloween music without having to resort to "The Monster Mash" or, worse yet, "Thriller"? How about over 300 songs, in 16 mixes? Rev Frost has posted a bunch at his super fine blog Spread the Good Word. And he has great taste. Where else are you going to find Akira Ifukube's "Frankenstein At Lake Biwa"? And what Halloween would be complete without surfing monsters, eh? I just ran across the Deadly One's "It's Monster Surfing Time" with "Igor Goes Surfing" and, yes, "It's Monster Surfing Time" (and ten others). I've no idea what the vintage is of this double edged cash-in, but it's got the Vee Jay label, so I'm guessing 60's (though the artwork is so perfectly corny that it may be faked). Dig in at Rock n' Roll Ichiban.
Now it's getting personal. Gregory Isaacs, the Cool Ruler has passed away. He died yesterday of lung cancer. I had been listening to him for a few years by the time I first saw him live, but I was unprepared for how he would absolutely own the audience that night. The whole room swayed, ladies swooned, and the entire club had a unified vibe, including the bartenders and staff. He reminded me of Al Green, with his laid back style and impeccable appearance. Like Green, he sang love songs, but he also sang of social injustices and songs for the downtrodden. I remember thinking that night that there was no more fitting moniker than the one I had heard so many times before it had real meaning. I got chills. I was witnessing "the Cool Ruler."
Gregory Isaacs - Tune In (1978). It doesn't get any smoother than this.
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This is some good stuff. Exceedingly tight West coast funky soul, with everything thrown in. A little Tower of Power, Fela, Santana, Isaac Hayes, B.T.Express, Philly soul..., there's a lot to dissect here, if you're the dissecting sort. The guitar, the horns and the percussion all command repeated listens.
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Every once in a while I get backed up with different oddities that don't necessarily merit their own post (but of course, the Impossibles' "Mr. Slow" sure did). They might be of interest to some of you, and they may never pop up again, so there you go, reason enough to put them up anyway. The first is "Strip-Tease" by Nico, with former man about town, Serge Gainsbourg. That one may be known by some of you more well heeled Nico or Gainsbourg fiends, but it was new to me. The other is by Turbogeist, your standard newish owe-a-debt-to-punk type band. It's of interest for two reasons. One is that the singer/guitarist is Mick Jagger's son, and the second reason is, while it isn't earth shattering by any means, it's better than anything the Stones have done in recent years.
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Leonard Cohen aged gracefully, from early Dylan comparisons to elder statesman of songwriting, without giving much thought about record sales, airplay or any brand of hipness. I mean, he practically makes Dylan look like a sellout. He's an artist's artist, and he'd probably still be doing what he does, even if it meant playing coffeehouses for decades on end. And with those calm emoting hand gestures he does up near the microphone, it's really no wonder all literate women love him. He can do more standing in one place then Jagger or Iggy Pop can do hurling their osteoporosis bound bodies all over the place.
Here's a few live cuts from a 1993 Zurich show. The quality is really clear, and the arrangements about as good as it gets. This stuff is timeless. Check out the entire show, and four other live cuts at Captain's Dead (the same site that posted a slew of live Tom Waits stuff a while back).
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It's anybody's guess how sane Lee Perry really is. Some say he's a sonic genius, some characterize him as a semi-crackpot, and the universally praised recordings he's produced as a long string of fortunate accidents. But his track record, primarily the records he produced in the seventies, speaks for itself. Bob Marley, the Heptones, Junior Murvin, Max Romeo, Augustus Pablo, Gregory Issacs, the Melodians, and I Roy are just some of the artists he worked with in that decade alone. And that was in addition to recording his own solo records.
The Black Ark, his studio, was primitive, with only basic recording equipment. It was his manic style of throwing everything at the wall that made him unique. When it came to mixing seventies era reggae, his template was his own, and as off the wall as some of his techniques were (inserting sound effects, mixing live on the fly), it made his sound hard to duplicate. When other reggae producers were playing it safe, and making cookie cutter records using tried and true methods, he seemed to do whatever he could to break that mold.
A look inside a recording session with the Upsetters and the Heptones, at Perry's former studio, the Black Ark.
By the time the eighties rolled around, the Black Ark was no more. It burned to the ground, with the erratic Perry claiming responsibility. He went to England worked with On-U Sound's Adrian Sherwood, and later the Mad Professor. The quality of his work waned, but he remained in demand. In 1998, he popped up doing vocals on a Beastie Boys album (two cuts on "Hello Nasty") and, after meeting Andrew W.K. in 2006 (oh, to be a fly on that wall!), asked him to co-produce an album that also featured Moby, Ari Up and, as strange as it seems, Don Fleming (from Gumball). Since then, he's been all over the place, and after his music drifted further away from reggae, he was reined in, collaborating again with Adrian Sherwood in 2008 for a return to more straight up reggae, the album "The Mighty Upsetter."
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Just minutes ago, I opened an email from my friend Mikel, who I've known since our fanzine days back in the early punk scene. Reading the email, my heart sunk. It was just a forwarded press release, saying that Ari Up, lead singer of the Slits, had passed away at the age of 48:
"Ari Up (born Ariane Forester), the German-born lead vocalist for seminal British punk band The Slits has died at the age of 48 after a long battle with illness. Her immediate family has asked for privacy at this time and no public service is planned. She is survived by three sons, her mother Nora, and stepfather Johnny Lydon (also known as Johnny Rotten)."
Video of "Lazy Slam", just released today
Regulars here (all four of you) will know that know that she held a special place in the Trastos heart (uh, punk crush #17). I wrote about her a little over a year ago, when the revamped Slits had just released a new album, their first in years (that post can be found here). A certain amount of innocent exuberance has been lost, but photos of that smile will be be around to remind us of the joy inherent in following one's own path. And something tells me that she's not one to rest in peace, more like run amok in peace.
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No band has ever had a better timed first album than the Ramones did. Right when rock n' roll needed it the most, the Ramones came along and stripped that flashy rock star shit right away. Put them up against what any band was doing in 1976, and contrast and compare.
Here's four from the first three LP's, when they still had the original line-up (and the chemistry). If you never had the opportunity to see them live, check out the video. Imagine if you had a choice back then of seeing some precious egotistical self-absorbed filthy rich rock star virtuoso from a football field away, or what you see in the video; what would you gravitate towards?
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Johnny Winter already had a few records out when he signed with Columbia in 1969. None of the early releases got much attention. But Rolling Stone had been more than kind, and that got Columbia's attention. They quickly signed him, and their push behind his first album on their label was immense. Soon, heads were listening, and there was a real buzz about the "new" American blues man.
With Columbia's push came big budgets, and excellently art directed LP covers. The first was a solemn portrait with a black background, self-titled with white stenciled letters. The follow-up, "Second Winter," was photographed by Richard Avedon, in his psychedelic style (as he had for the Beatles). The third, was with his newly constructed four piece, featuring former members of the McCoys ("Hang On Sloopy"), Rick Derringer among them. That cover was shot by Norman Seeff, the soft-focus hot shot photographer at the time. The cover of the fourth, "Johnny Winter And Live," consisted of live shots by Seeff, with a band portrait on the inside, also shot by Seeff.
I remember all of seemingly inconsequential trivia because my brothers and I bought his first four albums, and once the music was consumed, the liner notes were devoured; all due to the long wait for the fifth LP. (Unbeknown to us, the wait was due in part to Winter's attempt to kick heroin.) Each of the first four LPs was distinctly different, ranging from acoustic blues to straight-up seventies guitar rock. Because I know them inside and out, those first four Columbia records remain my favorite.
1970
Listen to the "When You Got a Good Friend," from the first Columbia LP. It's just Winter playing acoustic bottleneck slide, with one guitar overdub. Recording wise, it doesn't take rocket science to get that down. Yet the song is full, and the playing so traditional, the only clue to its vintage is the clarity of the production. On "Highway 61 Revisited," from "Second Winter" he's transformed, becoming the rock n' roll slide guitarist. He's really all over the place, almost to the point of showing off. The last one, a cover of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," is from the live album, and it is seventies teenage guitar freak Godhead.
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U Roy's been at it for a long time. Since 1969, he has been a constant in reggae. With most of his contemporaries long retired, he continues to record and perform on a regular basis. He, of course, is the epitome of a reggae DJ/toaster. So much so that, despite not being the first, he's often referred to as "The Originator" (a title that he shrugs off).
He was born Ewart Beckford in 1942 (U Roy came from a young relative's mispronunciation of his name). He started out just introducing the records at Jamaican sound systems (King Tubby's among them). After a couple years of performing, John Holt brought him to the attention of Duke Reid, former cop turned producer and label owner (Treasure Isle). U Roy quickly hit his stride, and in 69-70, he was the man. At one point, he had four of the top five records on the charts in Jamaica. After that, he just kept going, and going.
Here is a very awesome, very early clip. Surprisingly good guality too:
Below are a few songs, representing different periods in his career. The first "Dynamic Fashion Way," besides having an awesome title, is among his very first. The second is from the big breakthrough "Version Galore" LP, right about when he had all the hits. The next two are both from the landmark "Dread In a Babylon" LP, from '75. The final two are newish, and have a lot electronic gizmos going on. He's strayed a little, and on "Lovers Rock" I can deal. But, with "Luv n' Live," despite enjoying the comfort of hearing his voice, I gotta pass. There's just too much tweaking and not enough of U Roy.
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Awesome Color sound like someone handed them the first two Stooges albums and locked them in the basement. Really. But that's fine, because the Stooges reunion a few years back didn't really capture the old magic (feel good story though, it was). Awesome Color get closer to it, and it might be their youth. Without a doubt, they have their roots, and what Chuck Berry was to the Stones, the Stooges and the MC5 are to Awesome Color. (They're from Michigan, so it does make does sense.)
A cursory look at their video for "Eyes of Light" shows a little ingenuity. 28 seconds into it, when your pretty much mesmerized by the sheer racket, the guitarist is shown playing with a small amp in his picking hand. I like that. Why walk all the way over to your amp to get some feedback, when you can do it right where you are? Nice surprise these guys are. Though they've been around a few years, it's not often you find a newish band that does this sort of thing, this good. And doubly nice after clicking on the name, expecting some twee sounding pop band that you will immediately dismiss, only to realize that it is one of the greatest stoner band names ever. Turn it up.
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Dusty Springfield was all over the place. She must have been, she had "Dusty in London," "Dusty in New York," and "Dusty in Memphis" records. No matter where she recorded, she was always had top notch producers and arrangers. Take "Anyone Who Had a Heart." It's got that guitar, that only plays about four notes, and it's fucking awesome. It sets the tone of the whole song. Then there's swamp-ish guitar and horns on "Son of a Preacher Man," part of the reason the "Dusty in Memphis" LP is so highly regarded. And on "I Only Want to Be With You," the production is big. Like Spector, without all the bells and whistles. (Would I love to hear a great reggae version of that one.)
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