Friday night, April 16, in Philadelphia marks a long-awaited reunion show for Baby Flamehead, a late-’80s local (at least) sensation featuring two of our regular contributors. The show will be at the M Room. There’s not a whole lot more I can say about the band and how much I intend on enjoying this show. For this reason and others that I’m too classy to explain, I’m getting a headstart on our occasional Friday Flashback feature. Enjoy!
This post initially appeared 12/6/08.
General Slocum, Mrclean, and bandmates shopping for used records, sometime in the late-80s
I saw this photo of Baby Flamehead, a cool Philly band from my youth, featuring two old friends and Townspeople, General Slocum (Andy Bresnan) and Mrclean (Dean Sabatino), and took a walk down memory lane. Your memories might differ, but won’t you join me?
Long before he achieved rank as General, I met the young Mr. Slocum, if memory serves, through an English class at Temple University that we blew off almost as often as we attended. The lure of checking out the latest arrivals in the record bins at the Temple bookstore sometimes took precedence over the instruction of our Paul Simon lookalike professor. For some reason the bookstore had a line on cutout Klassic ’60s Kinks albums (cheap Spanish pressings), the EMG catalog (ie, Eno, Fripp & Eno, Jon Hassel, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, etc), and some high-brow jazz (eg, Anthony Braxton) I would not otherwise have risked more than a precious $1.99-$2.99 on checking out. Continue reading »
I enjoy hearing rock ‘n roll songs mentioning specific blends of tea. Such references always bring a smile to my face, in part for reminding me of The Rutles and in part for reminding me of a Rutles-inspired band in which I once played. We got a lot of mileage out of tea references, probably too much – and for that reason I’ll refrain from suggesting any songs I was involved in writing and performing with this long-forgotten side project.
Driving to work this morning I turned up the volume on a favorite late-’60s anthem, of sorts, only to hear a specific blend of tea reference that I’d never noticed before. I wqn’t tell you what song it was now, and I’ll only play that card if no one else lists it and I see a chance to win this whole ball of wax. Who among us will be the last man (or woman, it goes without saying) standing to list a rock ‘n roll song mentioning a specific blend of tea? Remember, it’s got to be a rock ‘n roll (or closely related) song (ie, no pre-rock ‘n roll Noel Coward number) and it’s got to cite a specific blend of tea. For instance, this legendary tea anthem, The Kinks‘ “Have a Cuppa Tea,” does NOT qualify because it does not cite a specific blend of tea. I checked to see whether “Rosie Lea” was a blend, but it turns out it’s Cockney rhyming slang for “tea.”
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Because there may be so few options in this Last Man Standing competition, I’ll leave it to you to kick off the opening salvo!
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The other night a couple of Townsmen and I were talking about how hard it is as experienced musicians (to some degree, not accounting for talent or acclaim) to enjoy any dramatic rock movie, whether based on fact or not. We were not talking about rock documentaries or rock operas, such as Tommy, Quadrophenia, or The Wall, but dramatic rock movies centering on the lives of a musician or multiple musician characters. Some we had never seen all the way through, such as The Buddy Holly Story. One of us mentioned The Idolmaker as a relatively accurate portrayal of the lives of rock ‘n roll musicians, but he was the only one of us who’d seen that movie all the way through. The films that immediately came to mind all had major flaws right off the bat that took us out of fully enjoying whatever else the movie had to offer.
We finally agreed that That Thing You Do was a less-objectionable-than-usual portrayal of the lives of musicians. I mentioned that The Germs movie I saw a couple of months ago was impressive for the fact that the actors were probably no less talented than the real members of The Germs. We’d heard that the dramatic movie on Joy Division was supposed to be good in terms of getting the musical stuff right, but we hadn’t seen it. Likewise, none of us had seen that fictional take on The Temptations, The Five Heartbeats, all the way through.
Years ago I remember getting into a big fight with two friends over Grace of My Heart, the dramatic re-telling of a Carole King-like character. I kind of liked the movie thanks to it being stocked with a bunch of actors who get the six-pack from me, but my friends were totally bent out of shape over anachronisms in the model microphones and cut of striped jeans that characters wore. I’ve been there too many times myself when watching rock movies not loaded with six-pack-worthy actors.
I’m sure there some tremendous examples of dramatic rock ‘n roll movies that don’t immediately bum out musicians for their inaccuracies, that do get it more or less right. Truth be told, one of my least-favorite rock movies isn’t so far off the mark in terms of rock ‘n roll when it sticks to the band members’-only dynamic (and when it doesn’t have them sing a completely inappropriate song on a bus trip). We just couldn’t think of them that night, right?
In the history of rock ‘n roll has any band had a less-appealing name than Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich? Until Townsman Hrrundivbakshi presented us with his latest Thrifty Music selection, I’d always purposely avoided hearing a lick of this band’s music for no other reason than the turn-off of the band name. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich struck me as the dream playdate for The Monkees’ Davy Jones and his bestest grade school buddies.
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A Townsman told me recently that he couldn’t make it through the film Into the Wild due to the incidental music by Eddie Vedder. He swore it was the Vedder music alone running through the narrative that made him pop out the DVD. At first I was shocked, but then I thought, Well, I can see that. Those of us in the Halls of Rock could be expected to react more strongly to incidental music than “regular” people. How many times have you been in a public space and found the canned music that’s barely audible to most people overwhelming? I know I have. Have you ever had a moment like the one my friend told me about, when music that’s secondary or even tertiary to the event at hand overwhelmed your senses and spoiled whatever good may have been offered by the primary activity?
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As early as the 42-second mark, Lou can’t stand it anymore. How long until you bag it?
What do you consider a successful All-Star Jam – and by All-Star Jam I think the performance has to involve at least five or more disparate artists and at least seem like a somewhat impromptu performance. I doubt that The Last Waltz‘s star-studded finale of “I Shall Be Released” was that impromptu, but there are a few dozen notable musicians on stage. Chances are a dozen of them had to be following along, not quite sure if they knew the next chord or all the lyrics on the chorus. On the other hand, I don’t think songs composed specifically for an All-Star Jam count in this examination, such as “We Are the World” or the following:Continue reading »
