Stuck In My Head: Poker Face

I never, ever listen to the radio. The Bay Area has few good stations, and really, why would I bother with the amount of portable CDs and CDRs floating around the house? But last week I found myself running errands with only an AM/FM radio at my disposal, and tuning into the local “Contemporary Urban” station (KMEL for those of you scoring) I was suddenly confronted with Lady Gaga. Most of us have seen the photos, the crazy outfits, the 22nd century fashion sense, but I hadn’t heard the music. The experience went something like this: …okay, this isn’t bad…[bobbing head]…hey, this is pretty good…[bobbing]…wow, I actually like this…[bobbing]…MAH MAH MAH POKER FACE!…[pumping fist out car window]…

Not pretty, I know, but therein lies my essential quandry with Lady Gaga – I’m either an old curmudgeon who doesn’t get it, or a hopeless dork slumming two musical generations below where I ought to be. Lady Gaga is clearly a flashy offshoot of the disco that I know and love, so I’m going with hopeless dork plus a splash of curmudgeon. ‘Poker Face’ has some great hooks and is worth repeat listens, but the fashion stuff makes me very suspicious. It’s not even the superficial nature of the gloss and glitz, but the sense that music is just one small part of Gaga Inc.

By all accounts, the woman born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is sharp and saavy. She took her stage name from the Queen song ‘Radio Gaga’ and has spent the last several years seeking to outdo Freddie Mercury as a shockingly flamboyant rock star diva. Clearly comfortable with her own nudity, Gaga has worn plenty of outfits that make me feel like a mommy-what-are-those 5 year-old kid. And like Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga’s music seems secondary to her function as a publicity machine.

She has claimed that her favorite philospher is Rilke – a weird declaration that is yet another red flag for my inner curmudgeon. Rilke was a German poet who wrote mainly on two topics: the quest for success and the meaning of true love. With her camera-friendly outfits and catchy hooks, Lady Gaga would appear to have mastered the former, while the lyrics of ‘Poker Face’ indicate that she’s taking the scenic route to the latter. “No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger,” wrote Rilke. I don’t know if Lady Gaga is making great art, but those lobster shoes look pretty dangerous…

Listen: Poker Face

Doubleshot Tuesday: Southern Harmony & Musical Companion/The Mollusk

[Today: Reissuing the 90s...]

Compact discs started showing up in record stores in the mid-80s, but co-existed peacefully with tapes and LPs for a few years before sales of the latter formats started to sputter out. By the end of that decade, it was nearly impossible to find a new release on LP – music stores were literally giving away vinyl in an effort to clear rack space for compact discs. Between 1989 and 1994, a miniscule number of new releases were made available on LP, and while that number grew as the 90s wore on, it was still more or less a dead decade for long playing 33 & 1/3s.

But lately, labels have started to go back to that lost decade and re-issue some of its greatest hits on vinyl. Plain Recordings seems to be on a one company mission to re-release the 90s on wax, with a flurry of recent affordable, 180 gram vinyl re-issues of heretofore un-spinnable albums like Primus’ Sailing The Seas Of Cheese, The Black Crowes’ Southern Harmony & Musical Companion, Ween’s The Mollusk (along with the rest of their catalogue) and Wilco’s Summer Teeth (ditto on their catalogue).

Based out of the UK, Simply Vinyl has been up to the same thing for a few years now, putting out high-quality re-issues of classic 90s albums such as Nirvana’s Nevermind, Nas’ Illmatic and Radiohead’s OK Computer. Speaking of Radiohead, they recently re-released every note of their catalogue on LP, along with a variety of singles that encompass B-sides and 12″ mixes. Radiohead has released so much stuff on vinyl in the last year that every record store in the free world now has an overstuffed bin of their albums. But they’re hardly alone – virtually every new release is now given the LP treatment.

Why the sudden explosion in vinyl releases? The obvious answer is also the correct one – money. For a withering music industry, LP sales represent one of the few growth markets going right now. Take a second to think about the staggering irony of that statement. If ever there was a real-life corollary to the tortoise and hare fable, it’s the sales trajectories of the LP and the CD. While compact discs have gone through a boom/bust cycle that now finds them on the path to extinction that LPs faced in the late-80s, vinyl has enjoyed modest, sustained growth since the late 90s, and is now back. It may be the result of cold-blooded capitalism, but lately microeconomics have given music fans something to cheer about…

Listen: Remedy [Black Crowes]

Listen: The Mollusk [Ween]

Listen: Time Will Tell [Black Crowes]

Listen: Waving My Dick In The Wind [Ween]

Video Break: Once In A Lifetime

Talking Heads >> Once In A Lifetime. This one’s for Dooley Fletcher…

Weekend Playlist

“If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are.” ~ Vincent Furnier (aka Alice Cooper)

Fujiya & Miyagi | Lightbulbs

Alejandro Escovedo | A Man Under The Influence

Mazzy Star | So Tonight That I Might See

Jimi Hendrix | Valleys Of Neptune

Bob Marley | Natural Mystic

Fila Brazillia | Brazilification

Big Star | #1 Record

Bob Dylan | Oh Mercy

Alice Cooper | From The Inside

The Blue Nile | A Walk Across The Rooftops

Funkadelic | America Eats Its Young

The Beatles | Let It Be

Linda Ronstadt | Heart Like A Wheel

Gil Scott-Heron | Pieces Of A Man

Tim Buckley | Greetings From L.A.

Dan Auerbach | Keep It Hid

Chet Atkins & Les Paul | Chester & Lester

Various Artists | O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack

Dennis Coffey | Hair & Thangs

Luis Gasca | Luis Gasca

Wynton Marsalis | Marsalis Standard Time

Beastie Boys | Licensed To Ill

The Beach Boys | The Beach Boys Love You

Jim Marshall (1936-2010)

Rock photographer Jim Marshall passed away in his sleep last Wednesday in a New York City hotel room. Marshall, 74, was responsible for some of the most iconic images of the rock era, including famous photos of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar at Monterey and Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin. But it’s two of his lesser-celebrated images that are my favorites – Hendrix lost in his music at Monterey (above) before he sacrificed his guitar to the gods, and a photo of the Hells Angels taken outside Winterland. That Marshall’s subjects trusted him implicitly is no surprise – he had a knack for capturing the essence of the people he turned his camera to. “I have no kids,” he said. “My photographs are my children.” If that’s the case, then Jim Marshall had lots of beloved, beautiful children…

Buried Treasure: A South Bronx Story

[Today: Band of sisters...]

Here’s a South Bronx story: Helen Scroggins looks around her South Bronx neighborhood and watches kids being swallowed up left and right by the mean streets. In her living room, she sees her daughters grooving to TV programs like Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and the PBS program Soul. When the girls ask her to buy them instruments, she obliges one Christmas, on the condition that they actually put in the time to learn how to play. She believes this will give them something constructive to do and keep them out of trouble. Friday night “music reviews” become standard, and before long Renee (guitar), Valerie (drums) and Deborah (bass) have a sound, and a band. Their name comes from the initials of two of the sisters’ birth stones (emerald and sapphire) and the color they hoped their records would attain (gold).

“At first we used to just try to copy records from the radio,” Renee told NME in 1981. “Then we got tired of that ’cause it didn’t come out right. So we decided we wanted our own sound and we never tried to play after anyone else again.” After gigging around New York and opening for a wide variety of acts, from Grandmaster Flash to The Clash, they crossed paths with Factory Records owner Tony Wilson, who paired them with producer Martin Hannett (of Joy Division fame). His sparse production of the group’s 1983 debut Come Away With ESG accentuated their percussion-driven rhythms – the backbone of their punk/funk/disco/soul hybrid sound. Laced with conga drum and reverb, their music sounds like gritty funk recorded in a gleaming, sterile lab environment, and their clean beats have made them a favorite of DJs and sample-grabbers the world over.

ESG wasn’t a punk band musically, but by performing in front of live audiences after limited self-training, they handsomely paid off the theory of punk music. In several ways they were the inverse of the Ramones – they were actually siblings, they really didn’t know how to play (the Ramones, like most punk bands, were better musicians than they let on), and their sound was funky and futuristic. But like the Ramones, ESG never found commercial success. The title of their 1992 EP Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills told the story of a band struggling to stay afloat. The group has broken up and re-formed several times in the interim, and the best moments from their on-and-off career can be heard on the 2000 compilation A South Bronx Story.

Listen: Moody

Listen: My Love For You

Listen: You’re No Good

Masterpiece: Ramones

[Today: ONETWOTHREEFOUR!...]

“HEY!… HO!… LET’S GO!” From the first line of the first song on the first Ramones album, it was clear that this band was on a kamikaze mission to take rock & roll back to its leather jacketed roots. Recorded over 17 days in February of 1976, at a cost of just $4,600, Ramones features 14 songs that clock in at around 28 total minutes, with barely a breath between them (or just enough time for bassist Dee Dee Ramone to shout his famous “ONETWOTHREEFOUR!” count in). With titles like ‘Loudmouth’, ‘Chain Saw’ and ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’, these musical hand grenades combined New York swagger with low-brow pop culture, including references to horror movies, comic books, CIA operatives, Doo-Wop, drugs and male prostitution.

This album was constructed like a comic book – short, simple and graphic, each song framing a vivid panel of down ‘n dirty NYC life that sticks with you. But Ramones isn’t important so much for what it includes, but for what it leaves out. Stripped to its core, this music blasted a minimalist trail through the showy solos and pretentious wankery that pervaded rock in the mid-70s. The Ramones were so off the path of typical 70s rock that one early review graspingly described them as a cross between The Seeds and The Byrds. In truth they were probably closer to a combination of The Stooges and The Archies (with a healthy dollop of Phil Spector’s girl groups), but no musical comparisons can capture the essence of this group – they were true originals in a world of copycats.

Typical early reviews dwelled on how dumb this group was, and interviews were peppered with dat and dis to emphasize the point. The group also endlessly endured the back-handed compliment that they helped create a formula for punk rock. The Ramones were surely influential, but there’s never been another band quite like them. If their music was so simple and stupid, it should be more easily replicable. But making great music out of minimal parts isn’t easy – it’s incredibly hard, and the riffs that Johnny Ramone created out of a few chords have more than stood the test of time. Songs like ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ and ‘Judy Is A Punk’ still have the power to get under your skin and make you want to beat on the brat…

Listen: Blitzkrieg Bop

Listen: Judy Is A Punk

Listen: 53rd & 3rd

Doubleshot Tuesday: #1 Record/Pleased To Meet Me

[Today: RIP Alex Chilton...]

Alex Chilton passed away last week in New Orleans at age 59. His career was the very definition of “cult” – he was incapable of repeating himself musically and had exponentially more artistic influence than commercial success. Chilton was just 16 years old when he hit the top of the charts in 1967 with ‘The Letter’, shortly after joining a blue-eyed soul band from Memphis called the Box Tops. In 1970, Chilton quit the Box Tops, and, after kicking around a few bands in Memphis, formed Big Star in late 1971.

Big Star’s name wasn’t ironic – Chilton had every reason to believe that his new group would sell like hotcakes. At a time when T. Rex was continually topping the charts with catchy pop tunes, Big Star’s brand of power pop should have had a place on the radio, but it wasn’t to be. Far from becoming the #1 Record its title implied, Big Star’s debut didn’t come close to cracking the charts, and when the band members began to struggle with drugs and one another, it was just a matter of time before Big Star cashed it in. The band released one more album and recorded a long unreleased third before splitting up in 1974.

If Chilton was phased, he didn’t show it. Instead, he continued to make his own music and went into production, helping bands like The Cramps put their sound together. But his career drifted ever further from the mainstream. “I plan to continue playing music and making records as long as I can,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1985. “If a major label wants something to do with me, that’s fine but I don’t mind if I’m never on one again. At the moment, I’m making records for myself, which could make me a lot more money in the long run.”

He didn’t get rich off Big Star, but some of the kids who were listening to it did. R.E.M. and The Replacements were just two of the 80′s bands who openly spoke of their debt to Alex Chilton, and made music that was the logical extension of his group’s smart, slanted pop. The ‘Mats even wrote a song about him for their 1987 album Pleased To Meet Me. In the alterna-world of their ode, “Children by the million wait for Alex Chilton when he comes ’round.” Chilton’s crowds were considerably smaller than that, but they worshipped the man. And so the last word goes to the fan who left this comment on a message board last Thursday:

I saw Alex Chilton just once, in 1984, at the Uptown Bar in Minneapolis, with the Replacements. It was a glorious, shitfaced drunk, inspired and beatific show. They played a bunch of covers. I bootlegged it on cassette and I think I still have the tape somewhere. Jesus Christ, I hope so.

Listen: In The Street [Big Star]

Listen: Alex Chilton [The Replacements]

Listen: The Ballad Of El Goodo [Big Star]

Listen: Can’t Hardly Wait [The Replacements]

Sleeve Notes: Enjoy Jimi Hendrix

Rubber Dubber was the working handle of a Los Angeles-area bootlegger who operated for a few years in the early 70′s. Most of Rubber Dubber’s early releases were double-LP recordings from the L.A. Forum that were packaged in a plain white sleeve with the words “Yours truly, Rubber Dubber” stamped on the front. Eventually, Dubber started including more elaborate artwork on his releases, including this clever cover for Jimi Hendrix’ April 25th, 1970 appearance at The Forum. According to Clinton Heylin’s indispensable book Bootleg: The Secret History Of The Other Recording Industry, Dubber used a high tech recording system to capture the shows he bootlegged – instead of lugging a tape deck into the venue, Dubber used microphones with FM transmitters that beamed the music to a truck sitting in the parking lot. Heylin also claims that Dubber’s releases were so polished that Atlantic Records considered approaching him to release one of his boots of a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young show. With its eye-catching cover art, Enjoy Jimi Hendrix now fetches upwards of $175 on the open market. You can download the complete album here, but I’m holding out for the original LP.

Magic Moment: James Brown On The T.A.M.I. Show

The T.A.M.I. Show was a pioneering concert film that was recorded at the Santa Monica Civic Center on October 28th and 29th, 1964 and released to theaters later that year. The movie featured a variety of top performers of the day, including The Supremes, Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys. James Brown’s performance has been oohed and ahhed for decades, but with no video to back up the delirium, his brilliance has been little more than a rumor – until now. On March 23rd, the complete T.A.M.I. Show will finally get its release on DVD.

After previewing the video, I now understand what all the fuss was about – Brown is at a performance peak here that matches the grace and power of Muhammad Ali prowling the ring or Willie Mays patrolling centerfield. His dancing is off the charts, as he presages Michael Jackson’s moonwalk and moves around the stage in a constant blur of motion. This performance shows why he was nicknamed Mr. Dynamite – when he’s forced to stand behind the microphone he looks like he’s about to burst out of his skin.

In a profile of Brown that he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, Rick Rubin describes seeing video of Brown’s T.A.M.I. Show performance:

I remember going to Minneapolis to visit Prince years ago, sitting in an office waiting for him — and there was an endless loop of James Brown’s performance in the 1964 concert film The T.A.M.I. Show running on a screen. That may be the single greatest rock & roll performance ever captured on film. You have the Rolling Stones on the same stage, all of the important rock acts of the day, doing their best — and James Brown comes out and destroys them. It’s unbelievable how much he outclasses everyone else in the film.

This clip features Brown and his Famous Flames ripping through ‘Out Of Sight’ and ‘Night Train’ – two of the four numbers they performed for The T.A.M.I. Show. Pity the Rolling Stones – they had to follow this…