I know very little about Mike Bloomfield. I know he could play. I know he appeared on some bad jam session albums with his old bud Al Kooper. I know he burned out way too soon. I’d never heard him speak until stumbling across this clip. He comes off as a good egg. I’m not happy that I’m headed back to work after a long holiday weekend and that my colleagues and I have a ton of stuff to do before the year is up, so I’ll take all the good eggs I can get to start this week. Thankfully my colleagues are good eggs too. Start your work week with a good egg.
We here in the Halls of Rock Town are sometimes taken to task for being overly negative, snarky, hyper-critical, and all too often, just downright rude. As part of our collective efforts to bring a bit of sunshine and light to the world wide web, we occasionally make an extra effort effort to find something good to say about, you know, stuff that is clearly godawful.
It is in that spirit that we embark on yet another effort to bring some positivity to our proceedings. Please spend some quality time with the video above, then—if you can—please find something nice to say about it. You’ll feel a whole lot better, I promise you.
I look forward to your comments. Just remember, if you can’t say anything nice about this video… please don’t say anything at all.
For the Thanksgiving holiday Mr. Moderator shares a very special Saturday Night Shut-In. Your host gives thanks and praise in between complaints over the audacity of asking for salt and pepper when served with an original vinyl Beatles album. A special shout-out is sent to former members of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Join us, won’t you?
A band that’s been wildly popular through 3 lead singers, a record-setting run of bad taste, and dozens of hissy fits is usually not thought of as being in need of a world famous Rock Town Hall Critical Upgrade, but while watching the movie Argo this weekend and hearing “Dance the Night Away” crank up during a scene it occurred to me that I might have been more receptive to Van Halen in their time, if not even liked them a little better, if they had been marketed as a power pop band rather than some kind of badass hard rock act featuring a lead guitarist who was taking the next giant steps after Hendrix.
They were marketed as some kind of badass hard rock act featuring a lead guitarist who was taking the next giant steps after Hendrix, right?
Maybe I missed the point. Maybe they were supposed to be taken as some sexually charged version of The Raspberries. Pull down Eric Carmen’s bellbottoms and you’d be looking at the smooth, plastic crotch of a Ken doll. You know David Lee Roth, on the other hand, was packing heat inside his Spandex tights. I don’t think he needed plugs down there.
Is that what the little girls have understood all along? Should I have been grading Van Halen as a power pop band more than a hard rock act? Thought of in those terms were they actually kind of great?
As I get stuck on the intro to “Dance the Night Away” I am, probably fortunately, not having much luck recalling how their other songs go except for a few key bits, like the talking blues intro to on song and the chorus of “Panama,” at least the opening line of the chorus, when they sing the song’s title. Come to think of it I just heard “Jump” about a week ago and realized how decent a power pop song that was.
A few weeks ago I stumbled on a wealth of videos of artists performing some song called “Mamy Blue.” I don’t recall ever hearing this song before. The first performance I decided to watch featured a catalog of Rock’s Unfulfilled Fashion Ideas.
I did not like the song one bit, but with all the covers I thought I’d try another.
I didn’t realize the last time this discussion came up in the Halls of Rock was prior to the launch of the public blog. Few of you remain active from those days, so I’ll raise a question I’ve still not received a satisfactory answer to here: Who in The Velvet Underground actually sings “Sunday Morning?”
Wikipedia, which is usually 100% accurate says it’s Nico. I’ve seen elsewhere on the Web, those parts aside from Wikipedia, which are usually 97% accurate, that although the song was written for Nico, Lou sang it. There are even other folks beside me who are not sure about this question.
Personally, I think it’s neither Nico nor Lou. I think Doug Yule actually made his first appearance with the Velvet Underground a few years earlier than his official entry on the third album. We’ve tried to get Doug to do an interview with us to no avail. Maybe he fears being confronted with this question. There’s not a trace of Nico or Lou’s distinctive accents and difficulties with “sealing the deal” on notes. How many recordings of Lou Reed exist, and on how many of them does he sound anything like the person singing this version of “Sunday Morning?” I believe the answer is “0.” It’s got to be Doug! Or Bernard Purdie.
Is anyone willing to step forward to clear this up?
