Buried Treasure: Free Beer And Chicken

[Today: Move over Babe...]

“I want to play music when I want, write a song if I want or watch a baseball game if I want.” – John Lee Hooker

*****

Growing up, I was a pretty nice kid. But when it came to trading baseball cards, I was a hard-nosed little bastard – a Donald Trump in short pants looking to swindle you out of your valuable old cards. Most kids were taken with the stars of the day, but I lived for vintage cards of minted Hall Of Fame legends. I turned stacks of George Brett, Robin Yount and Mike Schmidt cards into treasures like Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. I still have Roger Maris’ 1961 card with 61 homers on the back. But one of my favorite cards in the stacks of booty I traded for as a kid is my 1974 Topps Hank Aaron. This card prominently features the words NEW ALL-TIME HOME RUN KING on the front of the card, even though Hammerin’ Hank’s 1973 stats on the back showed him to still be one homer short of Babe Ruth’s hallowed record of 714 career home runs.

One panel of the back of the card features a small cartoon of a baseball player wearing a crown, with the reassuring caption that “Hank becomes baseball’s all-time homer king in 1974.” But what if he hadn’t? What if Aaron had been pulverized in a sausage factory accident, or leveled by a runaway mobile home during the off-season? Even though I acquired the card ten years after Aaron had surpassed Ruth’s homer total, my mind still raced with scenarios that would have made this the most valuable and tragic baseball card on earth.

Little did I know that Aaron’s pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record was anything but a ticker-tape coronation. He received a staggering amount of hate mail as he closed in on the record, including many death threats. As the 1974 season opened, he was trailed by armed bodyguards who were positioned in the stands during play, on the lookout for snipers and other would-be assassins. None of this came out at the time of course, and Aaron’s home run chase was a welcome tonic to a country watching Watergate unfold and Vietnam wind down.

One man who was celebrating in his funkiest suit was John Lee Hooker. His 1974 album Free Beer And Chicken is anchored by the two-song suite ’713 Blues’ and ’714 Blues’, a pair of slithering funk celebrations that sound like the furthest thing from the blues. “Move over, make way, ’cause Henry Henry is moving in… talking ’bout Henry Ahhhhhn” sings Hooker like a man approaching ecstasy. On April 8th, 1974, Aaron hit his 715th career homer to set a new record.

This LP was envisioned as a project pairing Hooker with standout rock musicians of the day. Why that effort was abandoned we’ll never know, but the verbiage for it (“…accompanied by a goodly number of… rock and roll heavies…”) remains on the back of the album cover. That project at least explains the presence of Joe Cocker on two tracks. It must be said that having Joe Cocker sing instead of John Lee Hooker is akin to having Jerry Royster pinch-hit for Hank Aaron. But Cocker’s tracks aren’t bad, and Free Beer And Chicken comes off as a nasty funk album that balances Hooker classics (‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’) with newfound pleasures (‘Make It Funky’).

According to venerable record store Dusty Groove, “The groove is very hard and funky, with tight drumbreaks and excellent basslines that you’d hardly expect to find on an album by a blues artist… the record’s got some very nice breaks!” It’s worth noting that you don’t have to be a turntabulist or baseball geek to enjoy this album, but those qualifications don’t hurt…

Listen: 713 Blues

Listen: 714 Blues

Listen: Make It Funky

Doubleshot Tuesday: Croweology/Black Light

[Today: New albums from old favorites...]

Throughout the last half of the 90s and first half of the 00s, the Black Crowes gave every indication of being a band in serious decline. Brothers Rich (guitar) & Chris (vocals) Robinson fought with each other and made pointless solo albums, while Chris married the obligatory Hollywood starlet (Kate Hudson). True fans of the band would point to albums like Three Snakes And One Charm and Lions and see vessels that were half full, but for the rest of us, the spark seemed to be missing, and the Crowes sounded very much like a band going through the motions.

If that comes off as complaint, forgive me, because it’s not meant as such. Most rock bands are lucky (and extremely talented) to be able to drop three meaningful albums within their lifespan (four gets you into Stones/Beatles pantheon territory). With their 1990 debut, Shake Your Money Maker, 1992 album Southern Harmony & Musical Companion and 1994′s Amorica, the Crowes pretty much single-handedly resuscitated Southern Rock and gave every classic rock fan enough great songs to last a lifetime.

You’d have to be pretty hard-hearted to begrudge a band like that the spoils of rock star success. But you’ve have to be downright foolish to expect that a band with so many ups and downs and personal problems would bounce back to make some of their most inspired music 20 years after their debut. The upward trend for the Crowes started with their 2008 album Warpaint. At that point a good-not-great album with flashes of their past brilliance was enough to awaken excitement in their longtime fans. But with 2009′s Before The Frost/Until The Freeze they made an album that was on par with their best work.

With its easy Americana sound, Before The Frost… reflected a mature, seasoned touring band that was stronger than ever for the presence of guitarist Luther Dickinson. Because of their Southern roots, this band had historically drawn comparison to the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but the laid back country flavor they were delving into evoked other vintage groups – The Grateful Dead, circa Workingman’s Dead and The Band.

So good music and some pretty heady comparisons – but even an eternal optimist couldn’t have foreseen their next move. With Croweology, they’ve re-recorded a career-spanning selection of songs, in most cases creating defining versions. But this doesn’t feel like a Greatest Hits-type album as much as re-assessment of their own work. Like much of this album, ‘Remedy’ and ‘Jealous Again’ have less bite and more soul than their original versions. Elsewhere, songs like ‘Under A Mountain’ and ‘Soul Singing’ sound refreshed and very much like hits, even if they went un-noticed on original release. Croweology is reportedly the last album by the band before they go into extended hiatus. A well-deserved rest is in order, but let’s hope this isn’t the last we hear from a band that is finally hitting on all cylinders again.

Groove Armada has also given the world three very worthwhile albums: 1999′s Vertigo, 2001′s Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub), and 2003′s eternally pleasing Love Box. These albums saw them progress from a big-beat, techno sound, into more nuanced, layered songs that increasingly featured guest vocalists. These albums were some of the best in electronica, and were clear inheritors of the disco sound. And like Disco in the 70s, Groove Armada have set about polishing their music to a pin-drop sheen, while being overpowered by vocalists who are trying too hard to sound important. With Black Light, they’ve effectively become a backing band on their own album.

Croweology reminds me of the regenerative power of rock and roll, and why it has survived so many insurrections through the decades, while Black Light reminds me of why Disco died such a preening, spectacular, flaming death in the late 70s…

Listen: Soul Singing [Black Crowes]

Masterpiece: Mermaid Avenue

[Today: Woody lives...]

Woody Guthrie may have been the father of modern folk music, but by age 35 he was more or less done as a recording artist. A number of factors – including his declining health and a harsh political climate – conspired to keep him out of a recording studio for the last 20 years of his life. But Guthrie continued to write songs – songs that referenced Ingrid Bergman and Walt Whitman, union battles and dark highwaymen who rob from the rich to give to the poor, and anything else that crossed his fertile imagination. In the mid-60s, Guthrie was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, and during his final years he was sought out as a folk oracle by young singer/songwriters like Bob Dylan. Guthrie promised Dylan a crack at his stash of unpublished songs, but after he passed away in 1967, legal entanglements prevented Dylan from doing anything with those songs.

Fast forward nearly 30 years, to the spring of 1995, when Guthrie’s daughter Nora reached out to Billy Bragg and asked if he’d like to put music to Woody’s lyrics. “In her original letter to me, Nora talked of breaking the mould,” Bragg wrote in the album liner notes, “of working with her father to give his words a new sound and a new context. The result is not a tribute album but a collaboration between Woody Guthrie and a new generation of songwriters who until now had only glimpsed him fleetingly, over the shoulder of Bob Dylan or somewhere in the distance of a Bruce Springsteen song.” The result of that collaboration, Mermaid Avenue, did more than just breath life into Guthrie’s songs – it built a living bridge to an older, wiser, and infinitely more interesting America.

In the course of these songs (one small sliver of his unrecorded works), Guthrie parties with a niece of Walt Whitman (he’ll not say which one), captures the breathtaking beauty of the Golden State, makes Ingrid Bergman a proposition she can’t refuse, nominates Christ for the highest office in the land, brags on his musical skills to bed a girl, presents a compelling case for women’s lib, and says goodbye to loved ones through death, deportation and heartbreak. Mermaid Avenue sounds thoroughly modern and thoroughly ancient, the whistle of train and clatter of icebox fully embedded in the DNA of its songs. These are songs about ourselves, the way we were, and the way we always will be: heartbroken, self-righteous, joyous, mysterious, ridiculous, simple, poetic, timeless.

Guthrie famously covered his guitar with the phrase “This Machine Kills Facists”, but as Mermaid Avenue so plainly proves, it was his songs that were killer…

Listen: California Stars

Listen: Ingrid Bergman

Listen: Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key

Listen: The Unwelcome Guest

Buried Treasure: Bongo Rock

[Today: The original break beat...]

Michael Viner was an MGM music executive who needed two tracks for a chase scene for a bottom rung B-movie called The Thing With Two Heads. So Viner joined together with drummer Jim Gordon, bongo and conga player King Errisson, and producer and songwriter Perry Botkin, and gave the group the grandiloquently ridiculous name of the Incredible Bongo Band. They recorded a cover of a 1959 hit called ‘Bongo Rock’ and backed it with a song called ‘Bongolia’. When ‘Bongo Rock ’73′ became a surprise hit and sold more than a million singles, MGM decided to finance a full length album.

That LP was called Bongo Rock, and it sank without a trace upon release. It was filled with driving instrumental covers that included extended drum and percussion passages. One song in particular – ‘Apache’ – caught the ear of a South Bronx DJ named Kool Herc, who began spinning it into his late-night block party sets. When Herc looped together two turntables and stretched the percussive break in ‘Apache’, he made it the first breakbeat in Hip-Hop. From humble (and absurd) beginnings, ‘Apache’ became one of the most sampled records in history, and a cornerstone in the birth and growth of hip-hop.

Kool Herc calls it the “national anthem of hip-hop” and Pete Rock says that “If you don’t know ‘Apache’ you don’t know hip-hop.” Indeed, listening to Bongo Rock is like peeking beneath the scaffolding of hip-hop’s messy, ever-changing, graffiti-strewn exterior. Within this tossed-off commercial non-entity, it’s possible to hear the backbone of everything from Grandmaster Flash to Beastie Boys to Nas to Missy Elliott, without really straining your ears. It should have been a short hop from The Thing With Two Heads to obscurity for the Incredible Bongo Band, but Bongo Rock took a detour through the South Bronx and ended up becoming one of the most influential recordings of the 20th century…

Listen: Apache

Listen: Bongolia

Listen: Last Bongo in Belgium

Leonard Skinner (1933-2010)

How does a former Jacksonville, FL gym teacher and basketball coach end up with his own Wikipedia page, and an obit that runs in the New York Times and becomes one of the top five stories on CNN.com? When the teacher in question was the inspiration for the name of one extremely famous Southern Rock Band, of course. The story has been told many times of how Leonard Skinner, a notorious old-school hardass, busted a bunch of students for wearing long hair in violation of school code. One of those busted, Gary Rossington, went on to form a certain rock band and name it in the coach’s honor. Coach Skinner, who wasn’t initially flattered by that honor, died on Monday at age 77.

Skinner claimed that his tough-guy reputation was overblown: “A lot of teachers and a lot of coaches sent a lot of students – boys and girls – down for violation of the dress code. But lucky me, one of the ones I sent down was in this band…” After 13 years of teaching at Robert E. Lee high school, he left education to go into real estate in 1970. After he let Lynyrd Skynyrd use a photo of one of his real estate signs (complete with phone number) on the inner sleeve of their third album, Nuthin’ Fancy, the phone calls started coming.

“I’m laying in bed,” he remembered, “and it’s four o’clock in the morning, and the business phone rings and I reach over and pick it up and I say ‘Leonard Skinner Realty’. I hear music in the background, and this voice says ‘Uh… who’s speaking?’ And I say ‘Leonard Skinner’ and he said ‘Far out!’ He was calling from California, he was partying – it was one o’clock in California – and that was the first call I got. And there were thousands and thousands of calls after that, from all over the world.”

Skinner grew to accept his connection to the famous Southern Rock band, and even somewhat embraced the role, once introducing them at a Jacksonville concert. Asked about how it felt to be so closely identified with such a notoriously hard-partying band, he replied with a smile that, “It’s made me infamous by proxy.” Skinner claimed to not be much of a music fan, but he had a quick response when asked about his favorite Skynyrd song – ‘Sweet Home Alabama’. Why that tune? “I just like everything about it – I like the rhythm, I like the music, I like the words. It’s just a real neat song.”

According to Rossington, “Coach Skinner had such a profound impact on our youth that ultimately led us to naming the band… after him. Looking back, I cannot imagine it any other way. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time.” For his part, Skinner finally saw past the long hair and grasped the essential value of Skynyrd: “They were good, talented, hard-working boys. They worked hard, lived hard and boozed hard.”

Doubleshot Tuesday: Rollin’/Boston

[Today: Unlikely influences...]

Joey Ramone on ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’: “I hate to blow the mystique, but at the time we really liked bubblegum music, and we really liked The Bay City Rollers. Their song ‘Saturday Night’ had a great chant in it, so we wanted a song with a chant in it: ‘Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!’. ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ was our ‘Saturday Night’.”

Kurt Cobain on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’: “[It] was such a clichéd riff. It was so close to a Boston riff or ‘Louie Louie’.” If Cobain left any doubt about which Boston riff he was talking about, the answer was provided at the 1992 Reading Festival:

Listen: Saturday Night [Bay City Rollers]

Listen: Blitzkrieg Bop [Ramones]

Listen: More Than A Feeling [Boston]

Listen: Smells Like Teen Spirit [Nirvana]

*****

Question: What other songs owe their existence to unlikely influences?

*****

Exercise Your Right…

Last winter I put it up to my readers to vote on content for the following week. Lots of people voted, and they picked two good subjects – David Bowie and William Shatner. So as a warm-up for the upcoming election season let’s do it again. As much as I’d like to put Run-DMC and The Groundhogs back on the ballot, I’m instead offering up a fresh platter of selections. Votes will be limited to one per poll for each IP address, and polling will be open until end of day (midnight PST) this Saturday.

Weekend Playlist

“My earliest memory is shouting: at what and for what reason, I don’t know. Probably a tantrum; or I may have been rehearsing. I was always an early starter.” ~ Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

Michael Nesmith & The First National Band | Magnetic South

LCD Soundsystem | LCD Soundsystem

Whiskeytown | Pneumonia

M. Ward | Hold Time

Various Artists | I’m Not There Soundtrack

James Brown | Star Time

The Rolling Stones | A Bigger Bang

The Kleptones | A Night At The Hip-Hopera

Mark Lanegan | Whiskey For The Holy Ghost

Buzzcocks | Singles Going Steady

Kasabian | Kasabian

Daft Punk | Discovery

William Shatner | Has Been

The Pharaohs | In The Basement

Radiohead | In Rainbows

INXS | Listen Like Thieves

Motorhead | No Remorse

Andres Segovia | The Segovia Collection

The Isley Brothers | 3 + 3

Kruder & Dorfmeister | The K&D Sessions

10 Albums To Take Along To College

Our next door neighbor’s son, Sergio, is headed off to college today – he’s going down to Santa Cruz to become a Banana Slug! Sergio and I have become friends over the last few years, playing basketball together and talking music during neighborly visits over the back hedge. We’ve had a couple of discussions about his preparations and expectations for college, and talking with him about it has made me feel both old and young. Old because it’s been more than 20 years since I headed off to college myself, but young because I can vividly remember how exciting it was to launch into that adventure.

I suppose this is a variation of the old ‘desert island disc‘ game – except in this case the island is populated with kegs and co-eds and um… higher learning. Sigh. I miss college…

Jimi Hendrix | Electric Ladyland – College is about opening your mind, and Professor Hendrix can help make that happen…

Related subjects: Astronomy and Quantum Physics

Johann Sebastian Bach | The Brandenburg Concertos – Good study music. And besides, every crusty college bachelor pad can use a hint of class…

Related subject: History

Pink Floyd | Dark Side Of The Moon – There will undoubtedly be late night discussions on the state of the world and the value of man’s soul. This is your soundtrack…

Related subjects: Philosophy and Child Psychology

Miles Davis | Kind Of Blue – At some point you’ll want to impress a girl. This is your soundtrack…

Related subject: Sex Ed.

Bob Dylan | Blood On The Tracks – At some point that girl is going to break your heart. This is your soundtrack…

Related subject: Drama

Rolling Stones | Exile On Main St. – In addition to the rigorous pursuit of knowledge, some university goers enjoy getting pasted on cheap alcohol. Mick & Keith are ready to help…

Related subject: Geology

Led Zeppelin | Led Zeppelin II – Along with books and a toothbrush, this should be standard issue for all incoming freshman (see also – Stones, Rolling – ibid).

Related subject: Classics

Stevie Wonder | Songs In The Key Of Life – Of the many subjects you’ll explore during college, funk won’t be one of them. This will help fill that gap in your education…

Related subject: Metaphysics

Marvin Gaye | What’s Going On – College will help open your eyes to the larger world – meaning you’ll soon realize that it’s full of injustice and endangered tree frogs that need you to protest on their behalf. On this front, Marvin Gaye is your spiritual guide…

Related subject: Sociology

Beastie Boys | Paul’s Boutique – It’s all about hip-hop with the kids these days…

Related subject: Criminal Psychology

Masterpieces: Highway 61 Revisted/Royal Albert Hall

[Today: Dylan electrifies...]

By late 1964, Bob Dylan had hit the ceiling of folk. At 23, he’d already mastered both the topical song (‘Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll’, ‘Who Killed Davey Moore?’ etc) and the protest song (‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, ‘Masters Of War’ and many more). And so half of his March, 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home is electric, with full backing band. That album clearly staked out a new direction, and songs like ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ immediately upped the artistic ante on Rock & Roll.

But Dylan was just getting started – on July 20th, 1965, he released the single ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, which was instantly received as a ground-breaking piece of music, and jumped right into the Top 10. But many of Dylan’s former fellow folkies were less than thrilled with his new direction, and when he took the stage at the Newport Jazz Festival, just five days after the release of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, he and his band (featuring Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper) were roundly booed. With just 16 minutes of amplified music in Newport, Dylan turned popular music on its head.

Far from being discouraged by the violently hostile response he was getting, Dylan fed off that negative energy and used it as a spur to his songwriting. Just more than a month after Newport, he released Highway 61 Revisited, an album directed at his newfound critics and folkie purists alike. Leaving no doubt about his intentions, this time the entire thing was electric, and it dripped with poetic scorn for “useless and pointless knowledge” and the pointy-headed, self-important guardians of culture. “Something is happening here/But you don’t know what it is/Do you, Mr. Jones?” he wonders without wondering on ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’, a pure kiss-off to his former audience. The title track got biblical on their asses, while ‘Desolation Row’ and ‘Tombstone Blues’ plumbed the absurdity and darkness of the human soul. Even the stream of conscious liner notes on the back of the sleeve seem designed to mock the conventional scholarly musings on the importance of the recording. In other words, let the music speak for itself.

As 1965 wore on, Dylan toured with a group that transitioned from the Bloomfield/Kooper band into The Band. Noted Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin has him coming offstage after a particularly brutal booing in New York saying “If they don’t like it, too bad. They’ll have to learn to like it.” He and The Band dug their heels in and focused on their music, and it shows in perhaps the most famous concert bootleg of all-time – the “Royal Albert Hall” (really Manchester) show of May 17th, 1966.

The Trade Mark Of Quality bootleg of this show (pictured above) neatly splits its 8-song electric set into two halves. Side one is surprisingly polite, with very little in the way of shouting or booing. What’s instantly noticeable is how locked in the musicians are. They’ve obviously been wizened by nearly a year of hostile crowds, and have fine-tuned their ability to block out all distractions. But for the most part, side one features rapturous clapping and appreciation – most of this audience was on Dylan’s side, even if a few malcontents would make themselves heard.

Side two of this bootleg is one of the most remarkable live recordings of all-time, and nothing less than a pitched battle between Dylan and an angry handful of rabble-rousers. It’s worth noting that at this point Dylan had been identified with electric music for more than a year, had enjoyed several hit songs, had a bigger audience than ever, and seemed poised to take rock in a new and better direction. The Royal Albert Hall show didn’t happen three weeks after Newport, it happened 10 months after Newport. And still there were people who hadn’t – wouldn’t – accept his new direction. After ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’, one of them yelled out:

JUDAS!!!

He is immediately shouted down by several audience members, one of whom bursts into an inaudible soliloquy. The crowd claps, as if having vanquished the naysayer, but Dylan is fired up. “I don’t believe you,” he sneers “You’re a liar. You’re a fucking liar!” Much has been made of this exchange, but this much is clear from the TMOQ bootleg – that heckler had about as much chance against Dylan as an audience member climbing into the ring at a Wrestlemania event. Hardened from months in the eye of a hurricane, the band immediately launches into ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and Dylan puts over one of the most withering performances of one of the best put-down songs of all-time.

Royal Albert Hall is proof of the high, hard heat that Dylan was taking night after night from his audience, just so he could pursue his artistic vision. What’s remarkable isn’t that he was able to hold his ground within such a hurricane of hostility, but that he broke new ground because of it…

Listen: Like A Rolling Stone

Listen: Highway 61 Revisited

Listen: Ballad Of A Thin Man (Live Version)

Listen: Like A Rolling Stone (Live Version)