That record above was my first impression of Fela, at least with the knowledge of who Fela was. It was the mid-eghties. I'd actually heard him before, on Ginger Baker's LP Stratavarious. That was about ten years earlier. I didn't know who he was on that one, so the name didn't register and all I discerned after listening to that LP was that the music was not at all what I expected from the drummer from Cream regardless of who he was playing with. The EP above, "Army Arrangement" (plus a couple other songs) was written up in New York Rocker, or it might have been the Village Voice. I don't remember what the review say, but I seem to remember he was in prison or jail at the time. I could be wrong. Regardless it must have been an effective write up because I bought it, listened to it, and was introduced to Fela, the man now with a name. And with a name, he was now eligible for inclusion on the list which is why, years later, I have a mess of his shit. Why am I telling you this? I'm bailing. Here's a couple that I haven't posted before.
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Bari and the Breakaways. They're a band from New Zealand, mid-sixties, that I had never heard of a year ago. I don't know how much they recorded and I'm not sure I want to. I'll just nibble on a song or two every so often. One things for sure: They loved their covers, But they did manage to do a decent job of retaining their own sound.
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I'm sorry. It just hit me. That photo above is probably the most used image of Chan Romero that there is, whether cropped or not. It just hit me tonight that he looks like he's squeezing out a fart. Yeah, that's the kind of mood I'm in right now. I was going to go off again about the way he got signed and how it bugs me. (After Ritchie Valens died, Romero's manager pitched him to Bob Keane to fill the vacancy on his Del-Fi label.) I was going to write some serious shit. But then I saw the 2012 video of Romero (linked below) doing his "Hippy Hippy Shake" live. The performance is actually pretty good. Romero pulls it off respectably considering his age. But what I found most entertaining is the bass player, notably a six string bass player. I'm not pointing him out to poke fun, I'm totally curious about his story. How did he come to play with Romero? Given his excess strings, what is his preferred genre? And his restrained rocking out moves? Was he once a total rocker? One thing you gotta give him, he's fully into it. Good for him.
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So, Paul McCartney played a surprise show at some pub in Liverpool and debuted a new song. The internets is blowing up. It's not a huge deal to me, cool enough I guess. But, as long as I went digging for the videos, I'll save you the hassle.
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I don't know how long it would have been before I was cognizant of Booker T and the MGs had it not been for Creedence. Back when I was barely a teenager, there was a Creedence concert special on TV. Being in possession of maybe three or four LPs at best, Creedence was my band. I soaked up all I could. There was nowhere else I'd be other than plopped down in front of the TV. And the opening act for this particular concert was Booker T and the MGs. Had they merely opened for Creedence it wouldn't have gotten my attention. But during their performance, playing "Time Is Tight", John Fogerty, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford were in the wings watching, visibly digging it. That was all the endorsement I needed. Booker T and the MGs were added to the list (back in the good ol' days when it was short and manageable).
When I finally got a Booker T and the MGs greatest hits LP, I realized that I had heard them before. "Green Onions" was played on the oldies station and for whatever reason, I hadn't known the name of the song or the band. But, after picking up the LP, they would pop up sporadically in unexpected places. About two years later "Green Onions" was in the soundtrack of American Graffiti a movie me and my buddies saw a half dozen times. Somewhere around then I became cognizant of Stax Records and studio and learned that they were the house band. A few years after that the Clash covered "Time Is Tight". Then Barfly, the semi-biopic about Charles Bukoski, had "Hip Hug-Her" as the intro rolls, during footage of dive bars with the titles superimposed.
I'm embarrassed to say that it never occurred to me to go past a cursory survey of what's online, otherwise I would have known that they backed Neil Young, at least once, in 1993. How did I not hear about this one? That's the video above. It's a show in Belgium, a full two hour set. I know what you're thinking. It could be really great or really suck. It is really great in some parts, and it really sucks in some, but the juxtaposition of Steve Cropper and Neil Young is interesting, not just for the playing but the ego dynamic, particularly because Cropper is known to think that his shit don't stink. And you know that Neil Young just don't fuckin' care.
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Marlena Shaw's "California Soul" came up today. I'd been avoiding it for the past few years because it was in commercials and I didn't want any associations. I went cold turkey. Whenever one of the commercials came on, I turned the sound off. That was a few years ago, and now the coast is clear. I went back to it today. Hell yeah. It sounded better than I remembered it. A lot better.
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I've posted Ray Charles here before, several times. But I don't think I've ever gone back to listen to "What I'd Say". I did tonight, and it sounded great, and I can see why it was a hit, and so on and so forth, but what struck me tonight is how he milked the song. It's got long introduction, the vocal part, the solos, the call and response vocals in the last part of the song. It does all this without going anywhere, all this switching of gears just to parallel park. But shit what a song.
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I heard an awful reggae cut a few nights ago. I'll have to track it down and post it here. It had all sorts of digital shit going on, dripping in Autotune. It fucking rattled me, it sounded so phony. So, to get it out of my head I made a bee-line to my safe harbor, the roots/DJ/lovers rock era roughly mid-seventies, early eighties. I ran into a few I hadn't heard, including a different version of Burning Spear's "Creation Rebel". Yee haw. I'll post that shitty song later.
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I remember a ways back that I promised to post every song in the Sun Records discography even if it takes me a million years. I'm not backing out of that, I'm just taking my sweet ass time. And today, I make progress. Here's a handful from Jack Earls and Jimmy Wages, two obscure Sun artists, two among many. Running across Wages's "Mad Man" changed my night. First off, I don't care who the artist is. If it's a song called "Mad Man" there is a very good chance I'm going to click. A song called "Mad Man", recorded at Sun, there is no way that I'm not going to check it out. That got me to thinking about all the others that recorded at Sun, the artists that no one hears that might not have as snappy of a song title. They deserve a shot too, if for no other reason than they recorded at Sun. Good enough for me.
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Whoa. I just ran into what was my first exposure to moving images of David Bowie. I was sixteen and all I knew of Bowie musically was Ziggy Stardust. YouTube and DVDs were still decades away. As far as visuals, all I had to go on was album cover photos and magazines. Those were the days when concerts were about the only way that you would experience a live performance, unless the artist was big enough to gain a slot on one of the late night concert shows, the big two being Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and The Midnight Special (the latter hosted by Wolfman Jack). We knew Bowie was going to be on the Midnight Special so the usual late night teen high-jinks were clipped early in order to be home in time to see it.
I remember being in my parents living room with my brother as we watched the freak show unfold. Despite having seen photos of Bowie and hearing some of his music, I wasn't prepared for an eyebrow-less androgynous skinny as a rail dude with more costumes than Cher. It was engaging. Radical. I realized what all the fuss was about. This guy was different. He made Jagger look like a jock. When he did his singer/guitar flirting with Mick Ronson, I'd no clue that it was to sell records. I had no idea that any of the over-the-top-ness of it was designed to sell records. All I could think of is that we had here one bona fide freak show.
Seeing it again after all these years was an eye opener. The tightness of the band is pretty amazing considering that it was shot live. The set includes a few covers from the LP that was released a couple weeks earlier, Pinups. It was an LP consisting of all covers aimed at the U.S. market where the originals weren't well known. That LP turned me on to songs I'd never heard the originals of, and in some cases, never heard of the band. Hard to believe I'd yet to hear Barret-era Pink Floyd, the Pretty Things, Them and the Yardbirds. Thinking back, the Who and the Kinks, might have been the only bands that I was even familiar with. Here's a few from the Pinups LP.
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I'm not a big Arlo Guthrie fan. I don't have any of his records, but he doesn't bug me. He was counter culture enough in his day and, shit, his dad was Woody Guthrie. I haven't heard full albums of his in years. But I was checking up on Tibbles's posts over at Time Goes By, because it's been a while. His name is Peter Tibbles, but he has too perfect of a last name to not use it by itself. Tibbles. Sounds like a character in a movie. (Hope you don't mind Peter!) Tibbles has tastes that intersect mine a lot, but he gets into stuff that's way off my radar. Like Guthrie's "Coming Into Los Angeles", a song about flying into L.A. with a bunch of weed. I knew the song, but it's been years since I've heard it. What the fuck. Click.
Wow. My ear has changed in the last few decades. When I first heard the song, in my teens, smuggling weed into L.A. seemed exotic, dangerous. Nowadays, you can buy it in a store. But that's not the big difference, When I heard it today I was struck by the awesome guitar work. It's just too good, and there's more than one expert picker playing simultaneously. How many, I'm not sure. But a look at Wikipedia tells me that there were no fewer than four that played on the LP that contains this song. Check this: Ry Cooder. James Burton. Clarence White. Gene Parsons. Man, any pair of those names would be enough. Make it three and you have a country rock Blue Öyster Cult going on.
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"Summertime Blues". You've heard it a million times. "Ho-hum" you think. Well fuck you. I've heard it a zillion times and I heard it today and was reminded what an awesome piece of work it is. Eddie Cochran was barely in his twenties when he recorded it. The kid was a genius. Here's a few of his, and other people covering him. Plus a really good appreciation by Binky Phillips. Go on and do your ho-hum thing somewhere else.
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Sun Ra has a thousand records out and I've heard only a handful. This I do know: every Sun Ra tune that I've ever heard is, at the very least, interesting. More often than not, they're other worldly. What better representation of this than his "There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)"? For Sun Ra it's typical, ten minutes of dramatic slow moving space jazz. If you want to read the story of how someone scored an original pressing of this record, head over to the hosting blog, Melting Pot. There's two more long songs too.
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What became of my third night of a three day Memorial Day weekend? I'm not one to bow their head in reverence to fallen soldiers. In some sort of way, all service men and women are answering the call to duty to defend our country. In the end though, they're basically signing up to kill or be killed, and as cynical as that sounds I have the quote from my friend Harold, ten years older than me and a source for many beer drinking insights, who once said that he could not be in the military because he's just as soon turn around and shoot someone he didn't like than someone he didn't even know. It's all bullshit. Yeah baby, peace, love and dope. As misguided and corny as hippies were (and bad dancers to boot), at least they offered a counterpoint.
Whatever. Trying my best to put on a patriotic front, I ended up thinking about what American music was most American, undeniably born here and done better here than elsewhere. Fuck, where to start? Blues, jazz, country and western, surf, rockabilly? I settled on country and western, after revisiting Porter Wagoner's "The Rubber Room", a sure fire Lux and Ivy favorite had they ever ventured near the pedal steel abyss. Really, nothing says good ol' American country and western than a song about being institutionalized, replete with echo that would make King Tubby sit up straight for a minute.
After that it was the George Jones's "The Race Is On" which may be my favorite country and western song ever. (That's him at the top of the post.) It's not high art, but it's perfect. 1964 who the fuck are the Beatles flat top twang. After playing that it became an orgy of my dog died yesterday and my wife left me. I was so damn forlorn, I could only muster the energy to cut and paste four songs.
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Can you imagine? One minute it's lightweight vocal stuff, then the next, Elvis hits and every other song has "rock 'n' roll" in the title. 1956 seems to be the year everybody knew the phrase that pays. That year, Johnny Carroll (above) had at least five songs with "rock 'n' roll" (or some deviant of "rock") in the title. That was just one guy. Everyone was doing it, whether or not they were even playing rock 'n' roll. It was a total free for all.
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I was driving around the hood today and the Coaster's "Poison Ivy" came up on a mix unexpectedly. I did what any reasonable person would do. I rolled the windows down and blasted it as loud as I could. Yeah, look at me neighbors. I'm badass. Hey ladies, whenever you get tired of the cars that go boom, there's a guy with thinning hair and a breast pocket with a hundred pens blastin' OG Leiber and Stoller right over here. Fuck yeah. Coasters rule.
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You know, in keeping with my practice of not uploading any music, instead linking to stuff that's already sitting around online, it narrows the scope of music that I can mention or write about. But it's still a pretty deep well. I just know that if I started uploading, it would be a total rabbit hole. I know that with certainty. So when I run across a well written blog that has personal stuff with musical factoids and a wide range of music, I have to point you to it. It's really my favorite type of music blog. Sure, there are blogs with exhaustive research and biographical details. Those serve their purpose. But the type I'm talking about makes it feel like you're sitting around some unidentified living room, drinking and listening to music with the host. Margauxville totally fits that bill.
Here are just two random tunes, both awesome on their own and for very different reasons. Which speaks volumes about the host.
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Robert Nighthawk's stuff is all over YouTube but I couldn't find any downloads. No matter, you don't have to own it to sink into it. And you should sink into this. His music sounds like he looks. Come to think of it, that photo is the best song I've heard in days.
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I ran into John D. Loudermilk's original version of "Tobacco Road" and I figured I'd go listen to Edgar Winter's version. The wheels came off, I ran into some Edgar Winter's White Trash with Jerry LaCroix and spent a good hour running down LaCroix's stuff. Here's a couple with him with White Trash and a video from when he was with Blood, Sweat and Tears. Man that guy could belt.
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Over at Facebook a friend dragged me into a thing where you post the cover of one of your top ten favorite LPs every day for ten days. The catch is that they have to still be in your regular rotation. Today was day three and it was the LP above, the only good Modern Lovers LP. The best stuff on it was produced by John Cale. Here's two of them.
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