Bed Of Lies

Rock Con Los Cruzados.

The Bell That Couldn't Jingle

The first song on my Xmas comp is something I've been wanting to include for awhile.



Last year I was listening to "Holiday Jangle" by the Found Sound Orchestra, and thought the sample sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. It was from this song, which I have on that LP displayed above (A&M's Something Festive -- possibly the only song on this year's mix that I own on physical media) but hadn't heard in ages. I added the FSO intro to my version, which is why the levels are so weird.

"Bell That Couldn't Jingle" was a mini-standard during that period in the mid-60s when every album was mandated by law to have at least one Bacharach/David (this is actually a Bacharach/Kusik song). The version on my Spotify playlist is by Herb Alpert, because they don't have Burt's version, probably because it isn't even on CD.

One For The Road

Today's live album is One For The Road, which was my gateway to the Kinks.



OFTR was my first Kinks album, so I learned most of these classics from the live versions. I knew them from the songs played on the radio like "Lola" and "Superman", but discovered many new favorites that turned out to be old favorites because they were all from the mid-60s. A few months later, I picked up Spotlight On The Kinks with the original studio versions of these songs and never looked back. Rock bands will come, rock bands will go, but rock and roll will go on forever!

Go the F**k to Sleep

MBV

Beautiful Love

Today is Julian Cope's 54th birthday, so here's the best song from Peggy Suicide.

Geometry

Chris Stamey & Peter Holsapple made a great album in 1991.

Alligator lizards in the air

On and on the songs roll on

And soon you are caught up



Stephen Bishop is also responsible for the theme from "Animal House",
and one of the funniest scenes in the movie (IMO).

Electric word life

It means forever and that's a mighty long time.

Like a worn-out recording of a favorite song

Come with me and escape.

Just to find out where they hide her

Nine years ago today(*), I sang this song onstage with Amy Rigby,
and three four years ago I blogged about it.



(*) Guessing on the date, but I think it was the Monday before Labor Day, which would have been August 26th. I remember messing up the "eyes filling up with lonely tears" line, but it was one of the highlights of my recent life.

Everyone's in love with you

What can I say about a Beach Boys album where Mike Love wrote the best song?



Not much. Still singing that same song.

I adore my '64

Before the next one comes out, I should mention that Scott Miller seemed to hit all the right tunes in his latest "Music: Wha'Happen?" (from 1964).



Unlike his list from the following year, he only included one Beatles track ("If I Fell", one of the fillers from A Hard Day's Night) but includes many of the other first wave British Invasion bands (Stones, Animals, Kinks, Zombies), early Beach Boys and Dylan tracks, Phil Spector songs, Motown songs by the Temptations, Four Tops, and the Supremes, even a jazz track from John Coltrane.

The entire list looks like something that would make a great CD, so I created this dozen song playlist on 8tracks.com.


1. Iko Iko - Dixie Cups
2. Secret Agent Man - Johnny Rivers
3. House Of The Rising Sun - The Animals
4. Where Did Our Love Go? - The Supremes
5. Time Is On My Side - The Rolling Stones
6. Gloria - Van Morrison & Them
7. Pink Panther Theme - Henry Mancini
8. Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss) - Betty Everett
9. Don't Worry Baby - The Beach Boys
10. She's Not There - Zombies
11. You Really Got Me - The Kinks
12. If I Fell - The Beatles



Random notes about MWH:1964

1) I knew "Iko Iko" from the Dr. John and Dead versions. Hearing the Dixie Cups version was the best thing about the movie The Big Easy.

2) For another 1964 song from an 80s movie, I would have included Manfred Mann's version of "Do Wah Diddy" (made famous in Stripes).

4) Thanks to Marc Almond, I can't listen to "Where Did Our Love Go?" without hearing it tagged onto the end of "Tainted Love", so I would've prefaced it with Gloria Jones' original version of "Tainted Love" (also from 1964).

6) Scott included "Gloria" in both his 1964 and 1965 lists. He must like the song.

7) Since I was raised on Saturday morning cartoons, I can't hear the "Pink Panther Theme" without singing the jingle from Pink Panther Flakes ("Pink Panther Flakes, are pink!"), a breakfast cereal that would turn your milk pink.

10) I tried to sing "She's Not There" at a karaoke place once. I thought it would be easy, but the chorus ("well, let me tell you 'bout the WAY SHE LOOKS!") is hard to sing. Colin Blunstone is a better singer than me.

11) Two songs on Scott's 1964 list ("You Really Got Me" and "Oh, Pretty Woman") were later covered by Van Halen. I was glad when the originals started getting more airplay than the VH covers of these songs.

We like him better when he walks away

Here's recent birthday dude Alejandro Escovedo with "Castanets", a song he vowed to stop performing after GWB included it on "iPod One" a few years back.



Now that Bush is on his way out ("four more days! four more days!"), Al's started playing it again, and turned it into a celebration of his leaving. So long Shrub!

Working On A Dream

Bruce Springsteen breaks out a new song at an Obama rally in Cleveland last weekend.



Bruce's speech at the rally was also inspiring.



I've got your blue collar (and Blue Ohio) right here, Joe the Plumber!

Live Disappointment

The Onion A.V. Club asks "What was your most disappointing concert experience?".

I've had a few of them. They asked for "most disappointing" concert experiences instead of "worst" concert experiences, so I'm trying to limit it to artists I made a special effort to see, instead of sucky local bands I've seen in opening slots.

Here are five of disappointing concert experiences. Many of these are critical sacred cows, and the last one is by one of my favorite bands ever, but disappointment mostly comes from lofty expectations.



The Pixies at the SJSU Student Union in 1989 (Dolittle tour). I was looking forward to seeing them, but they were horrible..Imagine four people playing at the same time without a sense of rhythm, harmony, or unity. Apparently they were a phenomenal live band, so maybe I just caught them on a bad night. Bob Mould opened, with Chris Stamey on guitar and Anton Fier on drums, and blew the Pixies off the stage.

Sonic Youth. Pretty much every time I ever saw them, but two shows that stand out were opening for Neil Young at the Cow Palace in 1991, and opening for R.E.M. at Shoreline in 1995. At that show, they played a batch of songs from an upcoming, as yet unreleased album (Washing Machine) including that 20-minute "Diamond Sea" song, during which people threw stuff at the stage to urge them to stop playing. At the Cow Palace show, the Neil Young's fans started heckling them and giving them the finger, which made Thurston louder and angrier until everyone mellowed out from all the second-hand pot smoke in the air.

My Bloody Valentine at the Kennel Club in1991. This was right before Loveless came out. I was there to see the openers Yo La Tengo, in one of their first shows with James McNew. I made it through three songs of MBV before running to the exit screeching. I'm going to have to trade in the coolness points I earned for seeing My Bloody Valentine live, but they were a giant wall of loud cacophony, and it hurt my eardrums to listen to them.

Liz Phair at the Great American Music Hall in 1993 (Guyville tour). Another case where I liked the album a lot, and checked out the show even though the skinny was that she wasn't very good live. Liz was worse than "not very good"-- she couldn't sing and play guitar at the same time, had absolutely no stage presence, and only played for 40 minutes. I taped the show, and it didn't even fill one side of a 90 minute tape.

The final Loud Family show at Spaceland in LA (May 2000). This was the last LF show ever, playing middle-slot at Spaceland, and they didn't even get to do a full set. They were fine, but all the bad things that have happened in the last eight years (9/11, George Bush's "election", the Iraq War, George Bush's "re-election", Hurricane Katrina, the global financial crisis) can be traced back to this show. We're living in a backward century now because the Loud Family split up after this show at Spaceland, and it didn't have to be that way.

Friday Faces

I borrowed Ogdens Nut Gone Flake from the library this week, because last.fm keeps recommending the Small Faces to me, and I only knew a couple of songs by them ("Itchykoo Park" and "Song of a Baker"). The latter song is the centerpiece of Ogdens, which has to be one of the strangest hit albums ever! I thought the Small Faces were more of an R&B/soul band, but most of the album is made up of a psychedelic fairytale about someone called Happiness Stan, that I looked up on wikipedia to see what it was about. After reading this, I'm even more confused!

When Happiness Stan looks up in the sky and sees only half the moon, he sets out on a quest to search for the missing half. Along the way he saves a fly from starvation, and in gratitude the insect tells him of someone who can answer his question and also tell him the philosophy of life itself. With his magic power Stan intones, "If all the flies were one fly, what a great enormous fly-follolloper that would bold," and the fly grows to gigantic proportions. Seated on the giant fly's back Stan takes a psychedelic journey to the cave of Mad John the hermit, who explains that the moon's disappearance is only temporary, and demonstrates by pointing out that Stan has spent so long on his quest that the moon is now full again. He then sings Stan a cheerful song about the meaning of life

Parts of Ogdens remind me a lot of the Dukes of Stratosphear, and was probably the main inspiration for Sir John Johns and the guys. Like the Dukes, the Small Faces never performed most of these songs live, but The Playbox Theatre in Warwick, England will be performing a theatrical version of "Ogdens Nut Gone Flake" in November, with music by the Small Fakers (a Small Faces tribute band). Here's the first part of "Happiness Stan" as performed (and mimed) in colour on Colour Me Pop in the summer of 1968.

The rest of the program is here, here, and here.

Back To Guyville

I was going to post last week about Scott Miller's 1993 installment on "Music—What Happened?", particularly his assessment that Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville "was certainly the album of the decade" in the 90s. Scott didn't do an entry this week, so 1993 is still his latest one, and still timely.

In my opinion EIG (not to be confused with AIG, which I bought last week along with every other US taxpayer) is almost certainly not the album of the decade. I bought it shortly after it came out (based on the overwhelming acclaim) and liked it well enough, but it didn't change my life (ala the Shins).

I've been revisiting the album this year, and it would probably be somewhere in my 1993 top five, if I limited my top five to albums by female artists. Not as good PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me or Aimee Mann's Whatever, and about equal to Bjork's Debut or Sheryl Crow's first album. Probably the best of the three good Liz Phair albums before the turn of the century, but not noticeably better than it's successor Whipsmart. But (back to Scott Miller) only half as good as Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things.. how can Scott call something the "album of the decade" when he made at least three better albums in the same decade?

Anyway, here's a nine track mix of some of Scott's faves from 1993. It was a really strong year for music, the year when "Alternative" became "Mainstream".

Music: What Happened? - 1993

1. "All Apologies" - Nirvana
2. "Cherub Rock" - Smashing Pumpkins
3. "Cannonball" - Breeders
4. "I Heard Ramona Sing" - Frank Black
5. "Metal Mickey" - Suede
6. "Radio" - Teenage Fanclub
7. "Sister Havana" - Urge Overkill
8. "Definite Door" - The Posies
9. "Stratford-On-Guy" - Liz Phair

Quivers down me backbone

I'm going to interrupt Pink Floyd week for International Talk Like A Pirate Day and celebrate one of the best rock 'n roll songs ever, "Shakin' All Over", originally recorded in 1960 by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, and covered later by every garage band on every continent.

I can't find any youtube of Kidd & the Pirates performing it (just a clip of the record playing), but here's a 1961 copycat performance by Vince Taylor and the Playboys.



"Shakin All Over" didn't find it's way across the Atlantic until Chad Allen & The Expressions, a bunch of hosers from Winnepeg, covered it in 1965. They wanted to cash in on the British Invasion, so they printed the words "Guess Who?" on the cover of the record, and when the song became a hit, everyone thought the Guess Who was the name of the band. And now you know the rest of the story.

The song also made it's way down under in 1965 via this cover by Normie Rowe which was the top selling Australian single of the 1960s.

"Shakin' All Over" was also famously covered by The Who (on Live At Leeds) as well as everyone from Suzi Quatro to Cliff Richard to Rick Springfield (but not Shakin' Stevens, amazing as that may seem!)

Here are Ireland's Horslips, performing "Shakin' All Over" with strings! And here's a live version (audio only) by Alex Harvey and Cheap Trick. So many versions, so little time!

Friday Forster

I went out to see Robert Forster (erstwhile lesser half of the Go-Betweens) the other night at the GAMH. It was one of only four U.S. dates he's playing in support of his latest album The Evangelist, including shows tonight in Pittsburgh and tomorrow in Columbus billed as "Songs of the Velvet Underground", so it was one of only two regular dates on Forster's U.S. tour.

He played a few solo songs, and then a bunch of songs with a backing quartet that included former Go-Betweens Adele Pickvance (bass) and Glenn Thompson (guitar) and a drummer (Matthew Harrison) who looked to be about 16 years old.

They played most of the songs from The Evangelist (but they didn't play my favorite one, "Let Your Light In, Babe") and a few RF solo songs that I didn't recognize, and a whole bunch of Go-Betweens songs. I counted six songs from 16 Lovers Lane (the six that Robert wrote and sang), a few earlier ones ("Draining The Pool", "Spring Rain"), and a handful the last three albums ("Surfing Magazines", "Caroline and I", "Darlinghurst Nights", "Born to a Family"), a good sampling of the Robert Forster half of the Go-Betweens.

They didn't play any VU songs, but ended the night with a cover of "Don't Talk To Strangers" by San Francisco's own Beau Brummelstones. Readers in the vicinity or Pittsburgh PA and Columbus OH should try to catch Robert Forster's "Songs Of The Velvet Underground" tribute tonight at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and tomorrow at the Wexler Center on the campus of the Ohio State University (the same time as the OSU-USC game, but that's going to be a one-sided blowout anyway!).

And readers near NYC should catch Robert at Joe's Pub on Monday (9/15), where he'll hopefully be able to kick Robert Christgau in the butt for calling him the "lesser half" of the Go-Betweens.