Buried Treasure: Run For Your Life

[Today: Three minutes of rock & roll perfection...]

The Raw Meat is less than a footnote in the history of rock – this group enjoyed a brief residency at the Cheetah in NYC, and released one lone single before breaking up just weeks before a scheduled appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Their single – ‘Funky Humpback’ b/w ‘Run For Your Life’ – features a pretty forgettable A-side, but ‘Run For Your Life’ is a savage, funked up piece of raw soul that had me thinking I recognized the lyrics, checking Google, and then exclaiming “THIS IS A BEATLES SONG?!?”

This sounds like what might have resulted if Captain Beefheart gobbled speed, decided to emulate Otis Redding, and packed off to Memphis to record with the Stax/Volt horns. It takes the psychotic heart of this Beatles tune – which is masked by their Fab Four charm – and turns it loose, with great blasts of horns, a fierce backbeat, and a frontman who sings like 50 miles of dirty gravel road. The Raw Meat approached this tune as if they had nothing to lose – and indeed they didn’t – making it one of the great Beatles covers of all-time. TRM didn’t just anticipate punk with this track, they created a punk/funk/rock/soul hybrid that still sounds miles ahead of any record that will be released next week.

The 45 is the great rock equalizer, and even though they never released a full-length album, for 3 solid minutes, The Raw Meat stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, James Brown, The Stones, The Stooges or any other ground-breaking, exciting performer of the last 50 years. Really great singles ride an ascending arc of excitement that takes you up & up & up and leaves you exhausted, spent, broke, in the gutter with your ears blown out of your head, and ready to put the needle back and do it all over again. ‘Run For Your Life’ is such a kick in the groin that one can’t help but wonder what might have happened if this group had stuck together long enough to play Ed Sullivan. For one song at least, The Raw Meat was the greatest band in the world, so maybe it’s best to just leave it at that…

Listen: Run For Your Life

Masterpiece: Done By The Forces Of Nature

[Today: The Jungle Brothers go their own way...]

“But is hip-hop really music?” my mother-in-law Judy asked me over cocktails last August. Coming from anyone else, this would be a thinly veiled jab, a comment that hip-hop was most definitely not music. But my mother-in-law is a good egg, and not the judgmental sort, so from her it came as a genuine inquiry. Perhaps she’d been misjudging hip-hop because she was viewing it within the context of music, while this was some other kind of art altogether. I laughed and assured her that hip-hop was indeed music, but what I really wanted to do was drop the needle on the Jungle Brothers’ Done By The Forces Of Nature.

This 1989 album is a showcase for everything that’s right about hip-hop: thoughtful lyrics, clever rhymes, positive vibrations, smart samples, and good humor. Absent from its grooves are knuckle-headed misogyny, violent imagery, gratuitous cursing, and lame skits. The Jungle Brothers’ tunes live in a different universe from the typical rap topics – ghettos, guns and hos – and instead deal with subjects such as black pride, hard work, vegetarianism, house music and belly dancers. This is an upbeat joyride through real black consciousness, minus the stereotypes, and these tunes are driven by an outstanding collection of funky samples. Done By The Forces Of Nature is less frenetic than the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, but both albums clearly came from an era when sampling old records was a low-cost, at-will proposition, and both artists exquisitely pillaged the past to create something undeniably new.

‘What U Waitin’ 4?’ was selected by VH1 as the 88th greatest hip-hop song of all-time, but it’s hard to think of many tunes in any genre that are better than this. There are at least twelve different infectious grooves embedded within the song, which is an open invitation to get down and boogie. ‘Feelin’ Alright’ pays tribute to the joys of a two-month paid vacation in Africa, and ‘Acknowledge Your Own History’ is a non-preachy primer on the typecasting of American history. Appropriately enough for a rap album named after a line in the Bhagavad Gita, Done By The Forces Of Nature sold just 27,000 copies on release. But 20 years later it remains one of the freshest, funkiest, smartest albums on the market – proof positive that hip-hop has an intellectual pulse and actually qualifies as music.

Listen: What U Waitin’ 4?

Listen: Feelin’ Alright

Doubleshot Tuesday: Masters Of War/War Pigs

[Today: Death of a war pig...]

“But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.”

- Bob Dylan, ‘Masters Of War’

*****

Robert S. McNamara, the longest-serving Secretary of Defense in the history of the United States, died yesterday at age 93. My feelings on this topic were drolly summed up by a friend’s FaceBook update, which read: “ROBERT McNAMARA DEAD AT 93. ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG.” McNamara was one of the chief architects of the Vietnam war, but in recent years he’d struck a tone of remorse and apology about the way that war was handled – most notably in Errol Morris’ Oscar-winning 2003 documentary Fog Of War. McNamara admitted that he had underestimated the fortitude of the North Vietnamese army and overestimated the general threat of Communism. He was a man haunted by the failure of the war and the death of 58,000 American soldiers under his watch.

One of those dead was my uncle Donnie – by all accounts a popular, outgoing guy who was quietly mourned throughout my extended family. I never knew Don, but a 5×7 black & white photo of him in military dress sat in a frame in the living room of our little house on Piedmont St. I looked at his forever-young face almost every day through my middle school and high school years, and wondered what he was about. But photos are a poor substitute for flesh and blood, and trying to get a sense of him – through a few glowing adjectives from my mom and aunts – was like chasing water down the drain. He was gone, and all the talking in the world wasn’t going to bring him back.

So you’ll excuse me if I don’t shed any tears at the passing of McNamara, a man David Halberstam piercingly described as one of The Best And The Brightest. His bumbling in Vietnam led to the pointless deaths of fine young men all across this country, and the draft system devised by his defense department spread that pain evenly throughout every city and town in America. Bob McNamara was worse than diabolically evil, he was powerfully incompetent, and my only regret is that he had but one life to give for his sins against this country. Unfairly, he died peacefully in his sleep at age 93, after sending tens of thousands of kids to a violent, premature end. I for one refuse to let this butcher pass quietly…

Listen: Masters Of War [Bob Dylan]

Listen: War Pigs-Luke’s Wall [Black Sabbath]

A Day At The Flea VIII

The P and I spent part of our holiday weekend at the local flea market. Here’s some of what we came away with…

Freddie King | Let’s Hide Away and Dance Away

Ray Charles | The Blues Featuring Ray Charles

Freddy Fender | Before The Next Teardrop Falls (Spanish Series)

Lenny Bruce | The Law, Language, And Lenny Bruce

Lenny Bruce | Fantasy Promo Album

Ella Fitzgerald & Billie Holiday | At Newport

Cootie Williams & Rex Stewart | Cootie & Rex In The Big Challenge

Kool & The Gang | Greatest Hits!

Bud Shank Quartet With Bob Cooper | Jazz At Cal-Tech

Roberto Clemente | Memorial Album

Woody Guthrie | Archive Of Folk Music

Stan Kenton | Cuban Fire!

Various Artists | Phil Spector’s 20 Greatest Hits

Robert Francis Kennedy | A Memorial

El Cerrito 78rpm Record Swap Meets | 1981 poster

4 Quintessentially American Albums

With apologies to Betsy Ross, here are four quintessentially American albums…

The Black Crowes | Amorica

4 adjectives: organic, grooving, stoned, horny

Listen: High Head Blues

Johnny Cash | America: A 200-Year Salute In Story And Song

4 adjectives: proud, tough, resilient, god-fearing

Listen: Ragged Old Flag [from the compilation Life]

Sly & The Family Stone | There’s A Riot Goin’ On

4 adjectives: angry, armed, revolutionary, buzzed

Listen: Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa

Outkast | Stankonia

4 adjectives: articulate, funny, funky, stylish

Listen: B.O.B.

*****

HAPPY 4th OF JULY!!!

Buried Treasure: The Black Light

[Today: Castles made of sand...]

From sea to shining sea, America is a vast tapestry of cultures and values. The four corners of this country often seem to have little in common besides the flag that flies overhead, but for my money it’s the breadth and difference of opinion that makes the United States so formidable. And America is only becoming more colorful – the US Census Bureau projects that by 2042, whites will no longer constitute a majority of the US population. This shifting demographic landscape invites speculation about what “American music” really sounds like, and a quick glance at the stats shows that by the middle of this century, it will probably sound a lot less like The Beach Boys and a lot more like Calexico.

This Tucson, AZ-based group is comprised of ex-Giant Sand members Jon Convertino and Joey Burns – along with an ever-rotating cast of musicians – and named for a border town that sits on the California side of Mexico. Through a hybrid of Mariachi trumpets and guitars, twangy rock, and found sounds, their music captures the great open spaces of the American southwest. Burns has playfully described Calexico’s sound as “Ambient Mariachi Death Rock”, and that joke probably gets closer to the crux of their sound than reams of critical analysis could. The history and mystery of Mexico runs deep within the grooves of The Black Light, and it’s an album of non-stop, shimmering motion.

From a lonely train whistle, ‘Minas de Cobre (For Better Metal)’ builds into a Mariachi foot-stomper that’s punctuated by a squadron of spicy trumpets. The instrumental ‘Gypsy’s Curse’ is as foreboding as its title implies, and ‘The Ride (Pt II)’ puts the top down for a spin through the “the neon hub of downtown.” These songs connect together into a loose concept album about being on the run in the Southwest, but what really ties this music together is an atmosphere of lovely, sprawling decay. The Black Light is a luxurious, multi-hued castle built from grains of desert sand – a structure that represents the future sound of America.

Listen: Minas de Cobre (For Better Metal)

Listen: Gypsy’s Curse

Listen: The Ride (Pt II)

Masterpiece: Endless Summer

[Today: The beach goes on forever...]

Beaches, babes, boards, waves, hotrods, and long summer days. The world of the early Beach Boys’ singles was a simple, sun-drenched place that harkened back to the wholesome fun of the 1950’s, when teenagers “went steady” and getting high merely involved climbing up on a wave. This was archetypal, mythological America, where manifest destiny led to golden shores full of tanned, smiling people who peed sunshine and farted rainbows.

Quite frankly, the culture depicted within this music bores me. I thank my lucky stars that California isn’t the vanilla place that’s described here, and it likely never was. But in spite of the sell-by date on some of its subject matter, The Beach Boys’ music contains a secret ingredient that helps it resonate through the ages – namely, the genius of Brian Wilson. One of the most gifted songwriters of his generation, Wilson constructed three-minute symphonies about teenage summer dreams, and even if the details of those dreams have morphed through the ages, the spirit behind them – freedom, happiness, and love – hasn’t changed much at all.

Implicit within every upbeat Beach Boys tune is the death of happiness, the setting of the sun, the end of summer. From ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ to ‘I Get Around’ to ‘California Girls’, the songs compiled here are invitations to grab hold of every minute and wring the fun from it – ride that wave, kiss that girl, rev that engine, squeeze that lemon – because these times will never pass this way again, and when they’re gone, they’re gone for good. In various interviews, Brian Wilson has talked about the “eternal now” and his songs ride the breaking wave of an ever-active present. People actually do stuff in Beach Boys songs, and even if it ain’t my kind of fun, it sure does sound like summer…

Listen: I Get Around

Listen: Good Vibrations

Listen: California Girls

Bad Apple: Girl You Know It’s True

[Today: The unique artistry of Milli Vanilli...]

Milli Vanilli has entered the American vernacular as shorthand for a faker, a dupe, a con artist – which is perhaps a greater achievement than many of their late-80’s musical brethren can claim. Hey, Milli Vanilli means something – it might not be positive, but the idea of this band persists, particularly in major league baseball, where every team seems to field a few steroid cheats who are the athletic equivalent of Milli Vanilli (Sammy Sosa anyone?). By not even providing the vocals for their own album, they were natural godfathers to the current mob of untalented hacks using ProTools and AutoTune to sound like they can sing. In many ways, Milli Vanilli were ahead of the curve – if they were to appear on the scene today, it would be mere weeks before they enjoyed their own reality TV series (in fact, they were featured on the very first episode of VH1’s Behind The Music).

The group’s debut, Girl You Know It’s True contained enough shitty synth-pop that, naturally, it produced three #1 hits, sold 10 million copies, and won them the best new artist Grammy for 1990. But Fab and Rob (the lads on the cover) didn’t panic, they simply held press conferences even though they couldn’t speak a word of english without thick German accents. Even as a dopey 20 year old, I remember hearing these guys talk and having a WTF!? moment, wondering how they were singing the smooth R&B that was all over the radio and MTV. It was like hearing Arnold Schwarzenegger accept an award on behalf of Teddy Pendergrass. From there a few well-placed questions cut through the tissue of lies behind this album, they were exposed as frauds, the Grammy was returned, and they were effectively ruined.

Their story took a dark turn in 1998, when Rob was found dead in a Frankfurt hotel room from an overdose combo of alcohol and pills. His death was ruled an accident, but he’d attempted suicide before, and it’s hard to see that attempt not being related to his former group’s spectacular and very public flameout. His ex-bandmate, Fab Morvan, explained on his MySpace page that “…we were just a couple of kids who were unsure about how we could achieve our dreams, but once we found the way to do it… the rest, as they say, is history. Our album, Girl You Know It’s True, sold more than 14 million copies around the world and we were all over MTV.”

Universal Pictures currently has a Milli Vanilli biopic in development. Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson told Variety that “I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of fakes and frauds, and in this case, you had guys who pulled off the ultimate con, selling 30 million singles and 11 million albums and then becoming the biggest laughing-stocks of pop entertainment.” I for one look forward to this upcoming cinematic triumph, for it will expose Milli Vanilli for a second time – not as cheats and hacks, but as savvy hustlers who figured out that the star maker machinery runs on lies, guts, and style, long before that became obvious to the rest of us.

Doubleshot Tuesday: News Of The World/The Guitars That Destroyed The World

[Today: Apocalyptic guitars...]

Kim Jong Il scares me. His nuclear ambitions can’t be a good thing, and his failing health, combined with the destitute state of North Korea, make him a guy who’s got little to lose by pushing the big red button. And North Korea’s just the tip of the armageddon iceberg – all over the world there are hot spots that we’re supposed to be concerned about: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Honduras, Darfur, Georgia, the list goes on and on.

But none of these countries and their tinpot dictators put the fear into me nearly as much as the Russians did when I was a kid. Many a night during the early-80’s I went to bed expecting to be awoken by a mushroom cloud that was airmailed in from Moscow. Before the Internet, and with cable TV in its infancy, Ronald Reagan was able to use cold war rhetoric to make the Russians seems like blood-thirsty communist automatons from another world. Russians were also routinely cast as the bad guys in American popular culture – from James Bond to Rocky to Hawaii Five-O to the Olympics, and well beyond.

But strangely enough, the most apocalyptic record cover in my parents’ collection didn’t involve the Red Army marching down Hollywood Blvd or a mushroom cloud hanging over America, it featured a painting of a giant robot scooping up people and crushing them like ants. Queen’s News Of The World is funny to me now, but it gave me the willies when I was younger. That single drop of blood about to drip from the robot’s finger, and the terrified looks on the faces of the fleeing mob on the inside gatefold cover? These are some of the things that a 9-year old’s nightmares are made of.

A few weeks back I was browsing through the racks at Laurie’s Planet Of Sound in Chicago, and I came across a used LP that features my kind of apocalypse. The 1972 Columbia compilation The Guitars That Destroyed The World does show an army marching down Main St, USA, but it’s an army of giant guitars that look like they walked right off the Loony Tunes assembly line. The tiny little people on the cover scream and flee, but I wouldn’t be moved by those guitars one bit – I’ve lived through Ronnie Reagan, the Russians, killer robots, and Kim Jong Il. Bring on the giant guitars…

*****

Here’s what the apocalypse really sounds like…

Listen: Stain Of Mind [Slayer]

Listen: Jesus Built My Hotrod [Ministry]

Listen: Thirteen [Johnny Cash]

Listen: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath [Black Sabbath]

Listen: Danger Zone [Kenny Loggins]

Inside The House Of Records

Eugene, OR is known as Tracktown USA, and it’s definitely one of the leading track & field cities in the world. It’s also noted as: 1) the home of the University Of Oregon (Go Ducks!), 2) the birthplace of Nike, and 3) a cradle of hippies and anarchists. But just off the eastern edge of the UofO campus sits one of the best record stores in the whole wide world. The House Of Records is, as its name indicates, an old house that’s been converted into a record store, and it’s the place where I first started buying vinyl as a broke college kid so many years back. Many of the same folks who worked there 20 years ago are still behind the register – albeit with a bit more gray in their hair and crow’s feet around the eyes.

Last July The P and I were visiting Eugene and we made a stop at the House Of Records. We arrived just after they’d opened, so there was nobody in the store. The clerk gave me the OK to shoot some photos of the store, and so I did. Here’s a quick peek inside one of my favorite record stores anywhere:

[click to enlarge]

[House Of Records business card, from the early-90's...]