Side topic to an ongoing discussion about the days when a new release could generate a half dozen or more songs for airply: If coke off a hooker’s nipples is no longer an option, how does one bribe a music blogger or internet radio host?
The best answer will receive a Rock Town Hall Prize Package! Entries must be submitted no later than Thursday, July 22. Feel free to test me with actual bribes.
Taxpayer, Super-Patriot, and Townsman hrrundivbakshi‘s recent tale of walking out on a poorly executed and inappropriate performance by a US Army rock and soul band raised the obvious question: What would be the appropriate setlist for proper, rocking execution by a US Military rock and soul band?
Here’s an excerpt of HVB’s super-patriotic rant:
ESPECIALLY since the band showed no taste or common sense at all in their repertoire. I mean, come on — having (for example) a curvy female sergeant in camo pants, jungle boots and tight T-shirt singing “Walk This Way” — I mean the whole lyric, with all the references to schoolyard pussy and what-not — to a room full of teenage boys? With Sam Ash guitars screaming in the background? I’m no prude, but… wha? What does that have to do with love of country, or the caissons rolling along?
Read the whole thing to see what this taxpaying cat’s getting at, then contribute to a setlist worthy of our armed forces! Don’t be some namby-pamby kiss-up and suggest non-rocking songs like “This Land Is Your Land.” Don’t show your hatred for the Middle America that our troops protect by cynically suggesting Toby Keith numbers. This is YOUR US MILITARY ROCK AND SOUL BAND (at least for our US readers, but we invite readers from all nations to help construct this setlist). You’ve got 15 songs plus an encore. Make your setlist suggestions count! This set needs to represent all that is rocking about our armed forces and the United States of America!
Taxpayer and Super-Patriot hrrundivbakshi will decide all final set selections. Thank you.
What’s going on in the great bowling alley of your mind?
There is one thing that bums me out the most about the legacy of The Clash: that the song “London Calling” is generally considered their anthem and stock song for modern-day artists to cover.
It’s not that I don’t like the song “London Calling”; it’s a keeper, but I consider it most valuable as a set up for what follows on the band’s breakthrough album by the same name. I also consider it a song that only The Clash have the right to play. Of course, maybe that’s why the song has taken such a high place in the band’s legacy, but musically the song leaves me wanting a lot more that I typically expect from a Clash song. If I could erase one thing from The Clash’s legacy it would be this song as the go-to song for artists like The Boss to cover. If a blowhard like The Boss (with or without Elvis Costello, a blowhard I love) must cover a Clash song, I wish it could have been a song with a little more to it, like “Death or Glory.”
How about you, what would you most like to see wiped clean from the legacy of a favorite artist?
In this morning’s wee hours, while driving back from a show in Hoboken, NJ, my close personal friend, Townsman andyr, posed an interesting question from the passenger’s seat: Did any musician beside Bill Wyman manage to have a bad Look during the 1960s? I think a number of you would agree with us that the decade offered a variety of sound rock fashions, covering all body types, hair textures, and ethnic and racial groups. Even hulking, pasty, butterscotch-toned Animals’ bassist Chas Chandler managed to develop a good Look in the ’60s. Wyman, however, never came close to finding a style that worked for him, or should I say us (he and his 10,000 jailbait road conquests managed to cope with that bad Look). (andyr went on to lament that Wyman carried his bad Look into the ’70s, like a sexually transmitted disease, eventually infecting his once super-cool bandmates, but that may be for another discussion.)
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Some of you may be following my ongoing efforts to rebuild Team Hippie for the modern age. The time is right for long hair, free (or at least inexpensive) love, and dancing in the streets, but I’m looking for a few good Peace Warriors to lead us out of our current cultural doldrums. As I interview prospective Peace Warriors, one question must be answered: Do you care enough about peace and love to fight for it?
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Today Townsman k. steps to The Main Stage with the following Last Man Standing competition. Take it away, k.!
Those of us following the RTH World Cup of Rock ‘n Roll saw cdm‘s Australian squad play The Hoodoo Guru’s “Like Wow, Wipeout!” – complete with an all-feedback solo. Although it may be a bit of a cliche move these days, I generally like this musical device when it comes in at just the right time. To clarify, I am not interested in those nothing-but-feedback exercises by the likes of Sonic Youth or Neil Young’s Arc but something like the clip cdm used in the RTH World Cup, where the feedback takes the place of a standard guitar solo.
How many of these can Townspeople come up with and how many will it take until we are all good and sick of it?
In the spirit of fairness, I will kick this off with “Little Honda,” by Yo La Tengo, solo at 1:25:
