Weekend Playlist

“When I got out of high school, I thought, I’ll take a year or two off and play the clubs, get this out of my system, and then go to med school.” ~ Gregg Allman, on the road not taken

Pearl Jam | Vs.

Kings Go Forth | The Outsiders Are Back

Various Artists | Midnight Cowboy Soundtrack

Beastie Boys | The In Sound From Way Out!

Sandy Bull | Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo

Cactus | Cactus

Sweetwater | Melon

Calexico | Carried To Dust

Various Artists | Easy Rider Soundtrack

Various Artists | Apocalypse Now Soundtrack

Gil Scott-Heron | Pieces Of A Man

Arrested Development | 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of…

Allman Brothers Band | Idlewild South

Otis Redding | Dictionary Of Soul

Various Artists | Bay Area Funk 2

Chase | Chase

Neil Young | Freedom

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers | Hard Promises

Kris Kristofferson | Me And Bobby McGee

Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim | Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

Smashing Pumpkins | Siamese Dream

Dexter Gordon | Doin’ Allright

Mott The Hoople | All The Young Dudes

The Steve Miller Band | Brave New World

Primal Scream | Screamadelica

Bad Apple: Welcome Back, My Friends, To The Show That Never Ends ~ Ladies And Gentlemen Emerson Lake & Palmer

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

The birth of Punk was in part a reaction to the extreme bloat of rock music in the early 70s. Virtuoso musicians and their never-ending solos came to dominate popular music – and none more so than prog rockers. Led by the likes of Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull and Emerson Lake & Palmer, prog (for “progressive”) rockers considered themselves more akin to classical composers than mere pop musicians, and that mistaken identity resulted in some excruciating records filled with album-length suites of bombastic, overblown nonsense that was threaded together by the thinnest of conceptual twine and passed off as serious-minded ART.

ELP keyboardist Keith Emerson once said, without a trace of irony, “I consider everything I compose a gift.” Well then… thanks? I don’t remember asking for a triple-live-LP of piano improvisations, swollen concept pieces, and schmaltzy classical interpretations, but this is really… nice… and long. How long is it? Well, that ridiculous, unabbreviated title should provide some clue – it’s so long that the Ramones entire debut is shorter by five minutes than two separate songs included here.

Words aren’t sufficient to describe how tiresome, contrived and dated this music sounds – mainly because words typically make some sense and aren’t 277 syllables long. Every note here is played for maximum showy-showmanship – and the gongs! Gongs and synthesizers like you wouldn’t believe. It’s enough to make you understand why quaaludes were popular in the early 70s. Some of this sounds like a band having a collective seizure while playing the intro to a cop show, while other parts could be monkeys turned loose on the drums and gongs and such. Which actually makes for quite an adventurous listen.

‘Tarkus’ is an interesting collage of the bad side of 70′s music – loopy synthesizers, over-emotive singing and airy, meaningless lyrics colliding in a scrambled mess of notes. Rather than comprehensible words, we get reverbed vocals that will make you feel like you’ve been drinking cheap wine under a blazing sun. Are we having fun yet? I really must remember to write Keith Emerson a thank you for his loverly gift.

I’m not sure if anyone has ever tried to pin the tail on the prog donkey that represented the tipping point in forcing the creation of punk music, but there are much worse nominees than WBMFTTSTNELAGEL&P. Any beginner band that heard this in 1974 would have been tempted to think ‘We can do way !@#$ing better than that’ – and they would have been absolutely correct…

Sleeve Notes: Rocket To Russia

Taken in the garbage-strewn alley behind CBGB by their manager, Danny Fields, the cover photo of the Ramones’ third album is as punk as it gets. Punk magazine co-founder John Holmstrom created the pinhead drawing on the back cover, and was present at the photo shoot: “I remember when Danny Fields took the cover photo for Rocket To Russia. He invited me along in hopes that they could recapture the magic from their first record cover. He shot it in the back alley behind CBGBs, and there was a lot of garbage (as usual) back there. It was all over pretty quick – these guys never enjoyed doing photo sessions very much.”

Johnny Ramone stares at the camera like a little boy pouting over a plate of broccoli. Dee Dee meanwhile seems to be glancing at something other than the camera – his attention perhaps momentarily captured by a spooked pigeon or a Bowery brawl that has erupted in FUCKYOOOs and AZZZHOLEs. But Tommy and Joey both stare down the camera behind black shades – Tommy seems to strike a jaunty pirate pose, while Joey leans back on one hip, subtly bringing his height in line with the rest of the group. This might just be an image of a band that’s annoyed to have their picture taken and can’t wait to get back to the bar, but even here the Ramones exude a dirty cool that’s totally eye-catching…

Magic Moment: Catching The Buzz

Manchester’s Buzzcocks were one of the premier punk groups. Lead singer and songwriter Pete Shelley wrote smart, biting tunes about love’s losers that still hold up. This clip sees the group playing their classic tune ‘Ever Fallen In Love?’ for an enthusiastic, energetic crowd, circa 1978…

Buried Treasure: The Undertones

[Today: John Peel weeps with joy...]

Inspired by the Stooges, Sex Pistols and Ramones, as well as Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation, Northern Ireland’s Undertones spent 1976/77 honing their songs during club shows before making enough headway to get their eponymous debut recorded in time for UK punk’s second wave. In lead singer Feargal Sharkey, The Undertones had one of the most unique voices in all of punk. His lilting, nasal croon sounds almost literally imbued with electricity – at times Sharkey’s voice wavers like a man singing with his finger in a live socket. The band also enjoyed the adoration and critical patronage of legendary Radio One (and Peel Sessions) DJ John Peel.

Upon hearing the song ‘Teenage Kicks’ on the radio for the first time, Peel broke down in tears of joy and had to pull his car to the side of the road. He claimed the need to always play another song after ‘Teenage Kicks’ on his radio show so that he had time to gather himself before going back on air, and even had lyrics from the song (“Teenage Dreams, So Hard To Beat.”) inscribed on his tombstone.

“I play ‘Teenage Kicks’ to remind myself exactly how a great record should sound,” Peel wrote in 2001. “But what’s so great about it?’ people, from my own children to complete strangers in wine bars, have asked. I’ve never yet come up with an answer that pleased me much, falling back each time on: ‘There’s nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it.” The same could be said of The Undertones’ entire debut – it’s a taut, uplifting piece of punk that reveals flashes of pop and glam, all smothered in irresistible guitar hooks.

In spite of Peel’s enthusiasms, ‘Teenage Kicks’ only hit #31 on the charts, and The Undertones lived on the near-fringe of punk rock. The band released four albums, as well as 13 singles (an enormous output for a punk group) before disbanding in July of 1983. “One of the reasons I left when I did was that I wanted to preserve the Undertones for people as something special,” Sharkey told ZigZag in 1984. The joy of a legendary DJ, the pure sound of the evolution of rock, Feargal Sharkey’s quavering call of freedom – it’s all preserved on The Undertones…

Listen: Teenage Kicks

Listen: Girls Don’t Like It

Listen: I Gotta Getta

Listen: Mars Bars [bonus track on CD re-issue]

Masterpiece: Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols

[Today: The towering inferno...]

“Maybe I’m just a really bad comedian, but I thought Never Mind The Bollocks… was hilarious from start to finish. Pointed, but hilarious, and therefore useful,” claims Johnny Rotten in the Classic Albums documentary on this record. The joke, as it were, was on a starched-shirt music industry looking to cash in on the nascent punk scene. The Sex Pistols were a high-profile hot potato that jumped from EMI to A&M before finally landing at Virgin. Band manager Malcolm McLaren lived by the adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” and his lads more than took him up on it, flaming out in a drunken scene at A&M that got them kicked off the label the same week they signed.

Of course, the band’s legend was fueled by some incendiary singles. ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and ‘God Save The Queen’ are two of the essential songs in the punk canon, and both still sound nasty and provocative. Johnny Rotten’s sneer was one of punk’s most lethal weapons – he built his character on Sir Laurence Olivier’s portrayal of King Richard III, and both men played their roles brilliantly. Rotten provoked crowds, crouched behind his mic stand like a demented Quasimodo and ready for battle. Steve Jones built a wall of layered guitars in the studio that sounds like punk Phil Spector and brooks no imitation. The rock mainstream has come around to Jones’ guitar style enough that Never Mind The Bollocks… now sounds like contemporary rock rather than vintage punk.

“Bollocks” is a British slang term for the dog’s balls (or nonsense), and this album came under fire almost immediately upon hitting the shelves on October 27th, 1977. Sued for obscenity, the band and Virgin head Richard Branson were eventually and “reluctantly” found not guilty. Beyond the dirty word on its cover, this album was a thumb in the eye of the British establishment. It bespoke of abortions and mental illness, smeared the royal family and openly called for anarchy, and generally sounded like the worst nightmare of every upstanding British subject.

But Never Mind The Bollocks… has proved to be very useful indeed, becoming one of the most influential albums in the history of rock, and providing a guiding sneer for albums well beyond punk. Its nasty swagger can be found in Guns ‘N Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, its title was clipped for Nirvana’s generationally epic Nevermind, and its bad attitude has been aped by nearly every hard rock album to hit the shelves since the early 80s. The Sex Pistols may have been quickly consumed by the flames of their own nihilism, but while they were still burning brightly, their fire was second to none…

Listen: Anarchy In The U.K.

Listen: God Save The Queen

Listen: Pretty Vacant

Rasputin Music

Rasputin Records was founded in 1971 and over the years has lived in several storefront locations on Telegraph Avenue near the Cal-Berkeley campus. Its original location was in what is now Blondie’s Pizza, a couple of blocks towards campus from its current spot at the corner of Durant & Telegraph. Rasputin Music, as it’s now called, is just a block away from Amoeba Records, and together they form the best one-two punch of record stores that I’ve seen anywhere in the country.

I originally intended to do a joint post of both stores, but people spend so much time fawning over Amoeba (justifiably) that I decided to give Rasputin the spotlight here. Most of Rasputin’s LPs are located in its basement, which is one of my favorite rooms to shop for music in. I’ve picked up some essential albums here, including affordable used copies of Never Mind The Bollocks, One Nation Under A Groove and Sticky Fingers, to name three of several hundred. Here are a few pictures from one of my happy places…

[roll over for captions - click to enlarge photos]

On The Fence: My Aim Is True

I know he’s widely considered to be one of the best songwriters of his generation, but the music of Elvis Costello leaves me unmoved. I neither like nor dislike most of his songs, they’re just something that have been around whether I want them to be or not. “I heard you’re not impressed,” he sings at one point on this album, and that about sums it up…

THUMBS UP: I appreciate Elvis Costello as a fellow music fan more than as a musician (if I may take a slight detour) – his list of 500 essential albums that appeared several years ago in Vanity Fair was the work of a total record geek, and I sought it out and clipped it, and still have it around here somewhere. His music doesn’t excite me, but it’s okay, and I see why people like it. I have a brother-in-law who thinks that caviar is a neat way to spend his money. Who am I to tell him it’s not? Personally I don’t like caviar, but enough people do that I recognize it must have some value. Same goes for Elvis Costello…

THUMBS DOWN: I like Costello’s given name – Declan MacManus – better than his stage name, and have always been rubbed the wrong way by his appropriation of Elvis Presley’s moniker. Bad form. Additionally, he always seemed like a misfit among the punks, slightly wimpy and out of place, and that relationship hasn’t helped my impression of his music. Granted, he has evolved into an elder statesman singer/songwriter, but his early albums are always recommended, and those are on Stiff Records alongside some fiery punk. All of this doesn’t have much to do with his music, but his music bores me, so the less said about that the better…

[How does Elvis Costello rate with you? Essential or zzzzzzzzential?]

Album info:

Release date
July 1977 (UK)
March 1978 (US)

Producer
Nick Lowe

Label
Stiff Records

Side One*
Welcome To The Working Week
Miracle Man
No Dancing
Blame It On Cain
Alison
Sneaky Feelings

Side Two
(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
Less Than Zero
Mystery Dance
Pay It Back
I’m Not Angry
Waiting For The End Of The World

*UK track listing

Doubleshot Tuesday: Turning Japanese/Come On Eileen

[Today: The playground rumor mill...]

Once upon a time in a pre-digital age, school playgrounds and cafeterias were fertile, humid breeding grounds for the craziest rock & roll rumors you could imagine. Before the days of going to the Internet to get more information on a given subject, you were left to your own devices to decide whether that outlandish story of rock abandon was a Paul Bunyan-esque myth or a glimpse into the rarified life of the rock star. After all, you couldn’t really go to your parents and inquire about Rod Stewart having animal semen pumped from his stomach – or at least I wasn’t prepared to have that conversation with my mom.

The schoolyard grapevine was also where I learned that Gene Simmons had a cow’s tongue surgically added to his own (I’d like to shake the hand of the guy who thought that one up), KISS stood for “Kids In Satan’s Service”, Ozzy Osbourne was actually the prince of darkness himself, and Led Zeppelin had done unmentionable things with a groupie and a fish (the last two actually turned out to be true). I distinctly remember the moment during my senior year of high school when Tami Henry leaned across the aisle in Personal Finance and solemnly told me that the Beastie Boys’ Mike D had died of a drug overdose. I also have it on good authority that Paul McCartney died a long time ago.

The point is that the pre-Internet rumor mill was a lot like the Wild West – lots of guns, blood, booze, bad behavior and wild sex. The fact that most of it was patently false hardly matters. This was what you did to entertain yourself in an era when the best video game consisted of two sticks volleying a small pixel “ball” back and forth across the screen. My only regret is that my friends and I didn’t spend some time putting our heads together to come up with our own rumor to pass around (something like, “Glenn Frye had a testicle removed because he thought it would make him sing better.” On second thought, maybe it’s not too late…).

The reason I mention all this is that for my schoolmates’ fixation on wild innuendo, two pretty explicit songs sailed right over our collective heads. I thought ‘Come On Eileen’ was a catchy little tune about a guy urging his girlfriend to go all the way, but it wasn’t until college that someone suggested to me that the title of this song referred to semen, literally on Eileen. Because it was my college roommate Tim doing the suggesting, I scoffed and laughed it off (you had to do that with most of Timmy’s proclamations) but with each subsequent listen it became more apparent that this song is about staining a dress (the lyric sheet might not look it, but it sure sounds like it to me). Whether or not you buy that, it’s a fact that Dexys Midnight Runners took their name from dexedrine, a synthetic version of speed. Now that would have been a good playground nugget…

Additionally, it wasn’t until well after college that a co-worker pointed out that The Vapors’ new wave hit ‘Turning Japanese’ was about masturbation. I’m not sure what I’d previously thought this song was detailing – tourism maybe – but a brief (incredulous on my co-worker’s part) conversation forever lifted the veils of innocence from my ears. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m jumping into my time machine to head back to 1980 so I can spread the word around my school…

Listen: Turning Japanese

Listen: Come On Eileen

Sleeve Notes: We’re An American Band

They were a Flint, MI band to be precise, and before last week, everything I knew about Grand Funk Railroad could be summed up in one word: sucks. Then I read that 100,000 copies of their album We’re An American Band were pressed on gold vinyl, my interest was piqued, and I ended up buying a copy on the cheap (thanks Amoeba). Even if the vinyl is more clear yellow than “gold”, it’s still a cool design (the cover has more of a reflective gold surface than what’s pictured above). In 1973, selling 500,000 albums and “going gold” was the pinnacle of the rock pyramid, but within a few short years KISS would release the humbly titled Double Platinum. But not even KISS had the coconuts to feature a photo of the entire band cavorting naked on hay bales that had been studded with small American Flags. Amazingly, Grand Funk was labeled a ‘Heavy Metal’ band and often compared to Black Sabbath in the early 70s. Which proves that the drugs of the day were plentiful and potent, and critics were partaking…