APPLES VS JOLLY RANCHERS

Just a brief one, pun intended. I had a need for something a little raunchy and had been meaning to post the Briefs again. Throwing in the Didjits as well. Both are from the nineties, way after the initial punk era. That might explain the spikey hair and goofy sunglasses. I gotta say, whenever I see bands trying a little too hard to look punk or edgy, I always think about the stealth attack of Middle Class' Sears-worthy plain clothes and their proto-hardcore blast. (That's Middle Class, below)

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Listen:
The Briefs - Poor and Weird mp3 at Killed By Death
The Briefs - Rotten Love mp3 at Killed By Death Go there to get it.
The Didjits - Headless mp3 at Killed By Death
Middle Class - Out of Vogue mp3 at Killed By Death
Middle Class - Three others at Killed By Death Go there to get them.

LAST CALL!

Here's a few last minute New Orleans based tunes to finish off Mardi Gras, aimed specifically at the party hounds that won't stop until Fat Tuesday turns into hangover Wednesday. The big question? How many Nevilles were there anyway?

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Listen:
Profesor Longhair - Mardi Gras in New Orleans mp3 at Groove Addict
Sugarboy Crawford - Jock-A-Mo mp3 at Internet Archive
Ernie K-Doe - Ta-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta mp3 at Internet Archive
Aaron Neville - Over You mp3 at Internet Archive
Jessie Hill - Ooh Poo Pah Doo mp3 at Internet Archive
Lee Dorsey - Ya Ya mp3 at Internet Archive
Art Neville - Arabian Love Song mp3 at Internet Archive
Clifton Chenier and his Red Hot Louisiana Band - Party Down mp3 at Internet Archive
Bobby Charles - See You Later, Alligator mp3 at Internet Archive
Cyril Neville - Tell Me What's on Your Mind mp3 at Internet Archive

PARTY AT LARRY'S

One of these mixes was posted before but I don't think the other one has. Regardless, they're both great. My comments from the original post.:
Oh yeeaaaahh, this mix by Funky 16 Corners' Larry Grogan hits the spot. It's two and a half weeks until Fat Tuesday and if you do Mardi Gras type celebrating, this sucker will fill an hour far better than any cheesy store bought compilation. A killer selector, Larry's mixes invariably contain lesser known songs and artists along side recognized names in an almost formulaic ratio. This particular one is no exception. To wit, here's the roll call: Roger and the Gypsies, Professor Longhair, Bobby Marchan, Diamond Joe, Eddie Bo, Lee Dorsey, Dixie Cups, Earl King, the Meters, David Batiste and the Gladiators, Bobby Williams, Curly Moore, Ernie K Doe, Larry Darnell, the Explosions, Rubaiyats, Warren Lee, Willie Tee, Danny White, Lee Dorsey, Oliver Morgan, Eddie Bo. The bonus? That would be the opportunity to sluff off for a night.

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Listen:
Funky 16 Corners presents Mardi Gras Boogaloo 22 song mix  Go there to get it, download link is posted after the song listing
Funky16Corners Mardi Gras Pt2 – Keep the Fire Burning 26 song mix Ditto.

HOW COME NO ONE THROWS BEADS AT ME?

Holy shit! I've been asleep at the wheel. Fat Tuesday is in two days! I missed putting up tunes for the amateur parties that generally happen on the weekends, so these are for the hard core Mardi Gras celebrators who do it right. Fat Tuesday is the culmination of the festival. So, these go out to everyone that already knows how they'll feel on Wednesday (when the brain bill becomes due). These will get you started. More to follow...

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Listen:

Warren Lee - Star Revue mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Shirley & Lee - Feel So Good mp3 at Rocky 52
Dave Bartholomew - Carnival Time mp3 at Home of the Groove
Roger and the Gypsies - Pass the Hatchet (Pts 1 and 2) mp3 at A Terrible Blogger Is Born
Champion Jack Dupree - Drunk Again mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Huey "Piano" Smith - Popeye mp3 at Probe Is Turning-On the People
Jessie Hill - Whip It On Me mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Al Tousan (Allen Toussaint) - Pelican Parade mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Frankie Ford - Roberta mp3 at Rocky 52
Eddie Lang - Something Within Me mp3 at Soul Garage
Eddie Bo - Roamin-itis mp3 at Groove Addict
Lee Dorsey - Yes We Can, Pt 2 mp3 at Videogotz
Huey "Piano" Smith - Would You Believe It mp3 at Modern Kicks
Jessie Hill - Oogsey Moo mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Lee Dorsey - Holy Cow mp3 at Probe Is Turning-On the People

STRANGER AS SELECTOR

I love it when this sort of thing happens. I'm in the alley, going into my garage, and a bike rolled down the street blasting Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves". I don't think I've ever heard that song in the wild before, let alone on a friends stereo. Now that I think about it, the last time I may have heard it outside my apartment was when I saw the Clash cover it live years ago. So here it is. Play it next time you're on a bike with a boom box and make a stranger happy. If you're unfamiliar with the song, the Clash version is below, that might jog your memory. If you're already familiar with it, there's another Murvin song down there, him doing "Gypsy Woman".  Just him and guitar, no reggae.

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Listen:
Junior Murvin - Police and Thieves mp3 at Snuhthing Anything
The Clash - Police and Thieves (streaming) at YouTube
Junior Murvin - Gipsy Woman [sic] mp3 at Lemon Alchimie

FUCK PUTIN.

An obvious choice I know. Sometimes it's right there in front of your face.

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Listen:
Edwin Starr - War mp3 at Internet Archive

JAMS FROM BEYOND YOUR SCREEN

Here's a handful of funky African cuts. It finally dawned on me, another reason why I love African music. Compared to Western music, it's unpredictable. No familiar chord progressions here, at least not that I can hear. Another thing, you're never quite sure what instrument will be featured. You're just cruising along, listening to very organic sounding grooves and then out of nowhere a synthesizer. Even with that, much of the time it's hard to tell when it was recorded.

These four are great, two of them were unknown to me. Tony Allen happens to be a personal favorite so he's our featured pin-up above. The crazy thing is, these were buried in a funk mix with a bunch of textbook seventies funk, American style. Go figure.

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Listen:
Dele Sosimi - E Go Betta mp3 at Internet Archive
Wallias Band - Muziqawi Silt mp3 at Internet Archive
Tony Allen - Cella's Walk mp3 at Internet Archive
Alemayehu Eshete - Tchero Adari Nègn mp3 at Internet Archive

SWEATIN' TO THE ODDBALLS

Yee haw, obscuro night. I ran into a handful of tunes from one of the Moments compilations of rare sixties and seventies soul and funk 45s. These are right at the cusp of soul getting funkier. Band names you'll have to write down to remember. The lack of context or backstory (yet) makes them perfect for that mix you're going to make. The ol' mid-mix "Hey, this is good. Who the fuck was it again?"

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Listen:
Guy Morris and Band - Cool It mp3 at Internet Archive
Randolph Brothers Plus - What It Is (Parts 1 & 2) mp3 at Internet Archive
Doc Oliver - Soul Popcorn (Parts 1 & 2) mp3 at Internet Archive
Phil Flowers - If It Feels Good Do It mp3 at Internet Archive

"WOAH WOAH WAH"? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

Per usual, looking for something else I ran into an oddball, April Steven's "Teach Me Tiger". This thing is a real piece of work. All of the subservient cooing and trying-too-hard effort to sound sexy. It kind of makes me uncomfortable. Creepy, too, that her brother, Nino Tempo, wrote it. This one no doubt pissed off feminists when it was released, at least what few there were in 1960. Yeesh.

For a very shaky reason "Touch Me Tiger" reminded me of Nora Dean's "Angie La-La". I think it was all the cooing. Dean's song has a lot of moaning, not quite Donna Summer territory, but close. Still a little odd. if you're hoping for a hit, why would you inflate the creepiness? Note: You reggae people who haven't heard "Angie La-La", listen to it. It was produced by Duke Reid, and there isn't a lick of ska, rocksteady or reggae in it. Actually, I don't know what genre you'd dump it in. That's the best kind of oddball.

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Listen:
April Stevens - Teach Me Tiger mp3 at Internet Archive
Nora Dean - Angie La-La mp3 at Art Decade

FUCK YEAH MY MASK IS OFF THEATER

For those of you in the United States (or with access to the ABC television network) here's a heads up. The film, Summer of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), is airing tonight at 8:00 PM. It's a documentary that came out last year, made by Questlove. of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. It features footage of Nina Simone, B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Fifith Dimension, the Chambers Brothers, Edwin Hawkins Singers, Ray Baretto (?!), the Staple Singers, Redd Foxx and a bunch of others. The footage was on a shelf for over fifty years. It's also on Hulu if you're a streaming person. Here's the trailer.

FORGET SHIT FOR THIRTY FOUR MINUTES

I started to write something about King Sunny Adé but realized that it would take more time than I was willing to spend in front of a screen on a Friday night. So you're spared. Here's three random but totally awesome jams. No idea of the exact vintage, haven't looked, too preoccupied with the beat to bother. Three songs, thirty four minutes. What the hell you waiting for? Git.

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Listen:
King Sunny Adé and His African Beats - Ja Funm mp3 at Internet Archive
King Sunny Adé - Ase mp3 at Internet Archive
King Sunny Adé and His African Beats - Ki isu to diyan mp3 at Internet Archive

CUTER THAN BILL HALEY.

Here's three good covers. The first one is by Sophie Barker, of whom I've heard exactly one song, her cover of Peter, Paul and Mary's "Leaving On A Jet Plane". It's a good version, almost Cat Power-ish in it's simplicity and decidedly down tempo bummer air. The song has a special place for me, the original that is, because it was running through my head many years ago when my first long term girlfriend was walking towards the plane, leaving to go to college. The happy ending to that is that we're still friends all these years later.

The second cover is Ann Margaret's version of Bill Haley and the Comets "Thirteen Women", re titled "Thirteen Men". If you're not familiar with the song, Haley's version is about having a dream where the H-bomb goes off, with only one man and thirteen women left alive. Imagine the fun if you were that man, right? So, in Margaret's version, there's only one woman, her, and thirteen men. Though those imagined odds of hooking up with Ann Margaret seem slim, think of it this way: In really life you'd be competing with all men. In Ann Margret's imagined scenario you would only be competing with twelve men for her affections. Yeah, right.

The third is kind of mind blowing, just because of who the singer is and what was done to the chosen song. Betty Lavette's cover of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changing" does not sound like something you'd hear from a soul singer that began her career in the mid-sixties. It almost sounds like Betty Davis backed by the whoever Al Green's band was back in the day, though that might just be because it has the feel of "Take Me To the River". I gotta say, the addition of an in-your-face horn section would really kick ass.

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Listen:
Sophie Barker - Leaving On a Jet Plain mp3 at Internet Archive
Ann Margaret - Thirteen Men mp3 at Internet Archive
Bettye Lavette - The Times They Are A-Changin' mp3 at Internet Archive

A NATION'S ATTENTION FOR FOURTEEN MINUTES

Just a heads up here, you may already be on it. The half time show in the Super Bowl today was Dr Dre, Snoop, Mary J Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and (unannounced) 50 Cent. It was awesome. There are all sorts of stories floating around. Check it out before you read any. It's pretty amazing what they did, and it was all talent without a lot of over the top gimmicks or pyro-technics. Anyway, about the link below, if it's taken down, just go to YouTube to see whatever one is the "official" one. There were about a half dozen when I was there. You really should check it out.

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Watch:
2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show - Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent (live) at YouTube

AW FUCK.

Just a few days ago I had decided to revisit the Detroit Cobras after not listening to them for a couple years. I happened on a live video of "As Long As I Have You". That voice of Rachel Nagy's had far more range that I remembered. In the video she sounds at times like Chrissie Hynde with added gravel, but on the choruses when she really ramps it up she hits Janis Joplin territory. After watching the video I got to thinking about the Detroit Cobras, how they've been dissed over the years because they do all covers. What? Everyone does covers. If it's a good song who cares? Oh, I know, all those singer-songwriter types that can't conceive of someone else getting the publishing royalties. The bands with grand schemes to be huge, rock stars with money flowing in from multiple streams. Beside them, who really could give a shit who wrote a song? If it's good, it's good. Especially in the hands of band like the Detroit Cobras who always sound exactly like the Detroit Cobras, thanks in no small part to Nagy's voice. They have a steady swagger that says "I'm a lifer", the no shits given attitude. Let the others chase fame, tell us how it is.

Okay, so I'm going off. Within a few hours I'm thinking that the Detroit Cobras are the greatest party band ever. I really did re-examine them for an inordinate amount of time, even for me. I got to thinking about them too much so, shit, let's round up some shit for a post. Yeah. If you know, you know. When I did a search for an image I ran right smack dab into it. Rachel Nagy died in January. Fuck. There will be no replacing her. Rest in peace rocker lady.

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Listen:

The Detroit Cobras - Stupidity mp3 at PogoGo
The Detroit Cobras - Putty in Your Hands mp3 at T.S.McClellan
The Detroit Cobras - Can't Do Without You mp3 at Andre Cilliers
The Detroit Cobras - Last Night mp3 at Andre Cilliers
The Detroit Cobras - Insane Asylum (streaming) at YouTube
Video:
The Detroit Cobras - Stay Down at YouTube 2020, their last video
The Detroit Cobras - Right Around the Corner at YouTube In their element on a party boat.
Many more videos at YouTube

DUDE NEVER GETS OLD

There is something untouchable about this song. It's one of very few songs that when I hear it randomly (it's rare), everything stops. It becomes the soundtrack for whatever I'm doing for three minutes. Man, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the record over the years, drunk and sober.

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Listen:
Hank Williams - Hey Good Lookin' mp3 at Tumblr

SWAY, BOUNCE, SHAKE, GYRATE, WHATEVER

Last night after I finished here I went to the living room and blasted the Daktaris. I've got this new thing where I hang from my pull up bar, crank up the tunes, and with the body weight oddly divided between legs and arms and my eyes closed, I gyrate, lift, stretch and basically just try to get to everything. It could be called dancing. It probably looks like a cross between some spaced out deadhead chick with her arms flailing and one of those drunk geriatric geezers at the blues club that think they still have it, shit ass grin on their face. I'm sure that's exactly what I look like. I can only do this because I live by myself so, literally, nobody's watching. The cool thing is that it is disorienting. We are almost always on our feet, so we know what that feels like.. When we hang from our arms, we are holding up all of the weight. Not much guesswork there. But when you mix the two, legs and arms, in varying degrees, it is not familiar, Do that while you're moving around, with your eyes closed, and the right music is blasting and you're halfway to outer space, or at least an endorphin high. The Daktaris were perfect for that last night.

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Listen: 
The Daktaris - Musicai Silt mp3 at Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Daktaris - Super Afro Beat mp3 at Tumblr

IT'S 'N' DAMNIT!

I can't explain it, I have a thing for Ricky Nelson's early stuff. While not really rockabilly, it was simple rock 'n' roll but with James Burton on guitar, you're a step closer. I think part of it is my admiration for a kid rocker making lemons into lemonade. He was stuck playing himself in a TV family sitcom under the guidance of show biz parents. He managed to make a music career from the exposure he got playing on the show. He became a teen idol and then kind of grew out of it, still playing music long after the show went off the air. Unfortunately with his later stuff there were some real dogs. One such dog was his "Rock and Roll Lady" from 1975. Completely textbook sappy. As I mentioned in a post a while back, Nelson and John Fogerty covered each other's songs in the seventies (Creedence did "Hello Mary Lou", Nelson did Fogerty's "Almost Saturday Night") and as a weird addendum of sorts, just as Nelson had his "Rock and Roll Lady", Fogerty had "Rock and Roll Girls", likewise a dog.

One clue that they would be bad? This to me is glaring. There are numerous ways to write out "rock 'n' roll". With apostrophes, without apostrophes, one apostrophe, with a "d", without a "d" and so on. You can't consult a dictionary because they are hardly experts on the subject at hand. Now, I've had this conversation before. My brother and I used to have debates about the correct way. After much discussion we agreed that the correct way to write it is "rock 'n' roll". No "a", no "d", two apostrophes. The further you stray from that, the more out of touch you are. The furthest away from the correct way is just how both Nelson and Fogerty wrote it, "rock and roll". That's straight out of the parents' lexicon. Anyway, there's a few early Ricky Nelson songs down there too. Penance.

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Listen:
Ricky Nelson - It's Late mp3 at Time Goes By
Ricky Nelson - Be Bop Baby mp3 at Rocky 52
Ricky Nelson - Boppin' the Blues mp3 at Rocky 52
You've been warned:
Rick Nelson - Rock and Roll [sic] Lady mp3 at Time Goes By
John Fogerty - Rock and Roll [sic] Girls (streaming) at YouTube

OUTSIDE, GETTING SOME AIR.

I hate it when blogs make some big announcement that they're going to stop posting. You'll receive none of that here. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a little frustration at this end. Here's an overdue update:

1. Google sucks. Search engines tend to penalize blogs with a lot of outgoing links. As you've no doubt noticed, there's a shitload of outgoing links here. To make matters worse, the search engine that most people use, Google, seems to have fine tuned the algorithm to the point where this blog doesn't show up until you reach the sixth or seventh page of results. To put it in contrast, the term "Trastos" alone used to bring this blog up as the first or second search result on the first page. It was the wild west,  man.

2. Where is everybody? Today the blog only got 66 page views. That's down from an average of a few thousand a day. Part of it is due to the bad search results. What is ultra disappointing is that, from the beginning the whole purpose of this blog was to build a community of fiends that like all sorts of music and don't coddle any favorites that have passed their prime. You would think that after fifteen years of doing this there would be more than 66 page views in a day, especially when you consider that there are over 3600 posts.

3. Music blogs are all but kaput. I used to link to all sorts of music blogs that had music, videos or posts of note. I've always credited the sources and in many cases encouraged you to go to the other blogs. It's getting harder to find music in the nooks and crannies of other blogs. What blogs haven't shut down are now linking to YouTube links or Spotify. Shit, you can find stuff yourself doing that.

4. Time. When I think about all the time I've spent doing this over the years, if I would have applied that to learning an instrument, I'd be damn good by now. Time is precious, it really is. I've wasted enough over the years to know that. Unfortunately I don't have much to show for it, that's okay. Like I say to friends who ask why I bother to blog, I usually mention that one of the benefits is that it keeps me out of trouble. This is true in a sense. It does help to keep me from drinking. But who's to say returning to painting, learning an instrument, or writing about things other than music wouldn't do the same thing, possibly with more benefits.

Here's what I think I might do. Start a second Trastos affiliated blog. There I'd post only text, with a single link back here for any outgoing links. I might write about other shit too, besides just music. It would be a win-win for any of you regulars. You could skip the incessant blabbering and get to the meat.

I'm pondering that, yeah but I really just wanted to rag at length. It felt pretty good. Maybe that's why people bitch and moan so much online nowadays. It makes me want to stay offline altogether.

MASK UP AND GET THE SHOTS THEATER

Oh man, I must have been in my twenties but I remember it like it was yesterday. My friend Ed and I were hanging out and between beers and/or bong hits, we were thinking of the future when we'd be old and crotchety and we'd be saying to young snots "Sex Pistols, now there was a band!" Many laughs over that. But guess what. The day has come. So, I'll say it,  "Sex Pistols, now there was a band!" I was reminded of that incident when I ran into the flick There'll Always Be An England, a live concert film of the Sex Pistols playing in London in 2007. Here's what brought on the flash back: The concert was thirty years after their formation (actually I think it's thirty one years). So, what you see in the film is a band playing songs that were the rage thirty (one) years earlier. Say the Sex Pistols were fully on their game in 1977. How many young people in 1977 would go, enthusiastically, to see a band that was in their prime thirty years earlier, in 1947? Shit, I can't even think of a single song that I know of from 1947.

You could say that the Sex Pistols reuniting at all kind of goes against the intent of the 1977 Sex Pistols. It kind of looks that way. I'm way passed giving a shit what they do. It's entertainment. It is rock 'n 'roll and there's nothing wrong with that. This film isn't just some slap dash shakily shot cheap footage. It was directed by Julien Temple and the music producer is Chris Thomas who produced the Pistols' early stuff. Fucking Lydon though. He's so damn full of himself. Makes sense that he's expressed admiration for fucking Trump. (A description and set list can be found on his site.)

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Listen:
Sex Pistols - Anarchy In the UK mp3 at Ebaums World
Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen mp3 at Clones Project

CUCKOO FOR KOKO

Here's three by Koko Taylor that aren't "Insane Asylum" and one that is. The latter song has been posted several times here but I have no qualms about posting it again, it's that good. A duet with Willie Dixon, the way Taylor comes in after Dixon's mournful intro (at 1:14) makes my hair stand on end. The drums and bass, the sparseness of the guitar and horns, the stops and starts,...I tell you, this is the package.

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Listen:
Koko Taylor and Willie Dixon - Insane Asylum mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Koko Taylor - (I've Got) All You Need mp3 at Internet Archive
Koko Taylor - Egg or the Hen mp3 at Internet Archive
Koko Taylor - Just Love Me mp3 at Internet Archive
Video:
Koko Taylor with Little Walter - Wang Dang Doodle (live) atYouTube