I was looking through a boxes of burned CDs looking for something (can’t even remember WHAT I was looking for) and found the CD of Martin Newell‘s Greatest Living Englishman. It’s been easily 10+ years since I listened to this disc (maybe because it was in with my “junk” cds and not in it’s proper case…and also then did not make the great migration to the iPod in 2005).
I played it this moring and thought “How Did This LP Get Away?”
Do any Townspeople have a CD/LP/cassette that you totally forgot about, found, and wondered how you let it get away?
You may recall the interview I conducted with former Television guitarist Richard Lloyd in 2007. Among other topics, I tried to engage Lloyd in a discussion of his time accompanying Matthew Sweet. We quickly veered off into other more pressing matters, but we were able to scratch the surface of guitar porn, or Gentleman’s Rock.
RTH: When I saw you with Matthew Sweet, every guitar player in Philadelphia at that time was gathered at your side of the stage –
RL:Yes, staring at my fucking crotch! OK.
RTH: I was surprised people weren’t shoving dollar bills down your jeans.
RL: I was saying to myself, Will you please move over and let me see some tits? At least if you’re gonna stand there staring at my crotch lend me your girlfriend after the show.
I’m not a guy who goes out of his way to get off on ax-wielding guitar heroes, but Lloyd’s playing was worth the occasionally embarrassing moments of bumping into another guy with a hard-on for the man’s fretwork.
Check out this live clip of Sweet from the tour I saw. I’ll still stand behind much of Sweet’s work from that period, but the guy wasn’t a dynamic performer. No wonder all the dudes stood in front of Lloyd’s side of the stage.
Whether you frequently attend stip – er – rock clubs to metaphorically shove dollar bills into the waistband of a lead guitarist or not, who’s your favorite “adult guitar player” – or “adult” player of any instrument?
I was listening to Big Star‘s “Watch the Sunrise” the other day, a song that I know is not considered “cool” in the Big Star catalog, but I like it anyhow. I like the hyperkinetic acoustic guitar strumming and the song’s fresh-faced, Hostess brand hippie idealism. It seemed to me that this particular type of song was common in the mid-’70s. I think these acoustic-based songs are a little different than the related country-rock songs by the likes of America and others working in that post-Neil Young/Eagles vein.
What led to these sunny, strumming number? I hear early Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, like “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” and “Marrakesh Express” mixed with George Harrison‘s “Here Comes the Sun.” Is there some earlier template that I’m missing? Is it an English folk thing?
This style of music never eclipsed that of its country-rock cousin, but I think it led to two musical dead ends: Boston (the band) and the 128-String Guitar songs we’re frequently tempted to skip on Matthew Sweet‘s Girlfriend. Boston may not be so obvious, but there’s something about them, in songs like “Long Time,” that seem indebted to that style of early ’70s song, despite the big electric guitars and other pompous trimmings.
Does this make any sense, and has this style of music ever progressed beyond these perceived dead ends?
Greetings, fellow seekers of the weird, the wonderful, and the incredibly cheap! I’ve returned to you after an autumn filled with notable thrifty musical finds, scoured from the junk store bins, the yard sales, and the flea markets of our nation’s capitol. And I’m here to share!
Truth be told, this autumn was an embarrassment of riches — I’ve got about a dozen thrifty music finds I really want to play for you — and I’ve still got about 70-80 singles I’ve yet to go through. In fact, I’ve got so many choice tunes worth posting that I struggled to find a unifying theme among them — i.e., some silly Thrifty Music concept that would amuse, delight, and give me an excuse to pad my post out with mind-numbing prose.
So, instead, I decided to just go for the jugular with the three tunes that (so far) have jumped out as the strongest of the bunch. These tunes require no explanation, no contextual analysis, and certainly no excuses. They all completely kick mo-fo ASS, as far as I’m concerned. I trust you’ll agree.
First up: “Leave Me Alone” by Detroit’s own Nathaniel Mayer. The InterWeb tells me that Nathaniel Mayer was a peculiar soul artist whose voice and choice of backing instrumentation was so raw as to presage the whole garage/punk ethos of the mid-to-late-’60s. And, for once, I agree with the InterWeb! From the moment I threw this disc down on the turntable, I was hooked. It’s a winner.
Next, a song that has joined a select few at the top of my list of flawlessly sweet, tender, uncompromising love songs: Lee Williams and the Cymbals‘ “I Love You More”. Good God, but — what could possibly be added to this tune to make it any better? The arrangement and instrumentation is sweet, in every sense of the word, the melody is total brain glue, and that chorus! “I love you more than anybody’s ever loved anyone…” Man, to be able to a) write that lyric; and b) sing it successfully, without the faintest whiff of cheese — well, it’s just brilliant.
Last up, The Vacels — an early ’60s white doo-wop group that somehow made the transition into the mop-toppin’ mid-’60s with toe-tappin’ aplomb. Their most famous (and that’s a very relative thing with these guys) track was a cover of a Dylan number (see illustration), but for my money, this B-side, entitled “You’re My Baby,” is the band’s big winner. I am extremely curious to hear Townsman Mockcarr‘s take on this song. He’s always sported a boner for riff-y ’60s rock that wasn’t afraid to make liberal, front-and-center use of the Rickenbacker 12-string, as this one does. So howzabout it, Mockcarr and all you other slavishly devoted mop-top wannabes? What’s your verdict on The Vacels?
So there you go — three songs that I didn’t look for, that just showed up in my musical life because I was patient and willing to spend 50 cents on musical commodities I knew nothing about. It’s true, I had to sniff a lot of dogshit to find these sweet-smelling gems, but I think it was worth the effort. I hope you agree.
There’s a lot more thrifty music to come, by the way. I just wanted to get these winners into your ear-bones as soon as possible. Let me know what you think!
Sometimes I come up with the germ of an idea for discussion here in the Halls of Rock without knowing exactly where I expect things to go. This is one of those times. I think a lot about the notion of hippies and wish there was some kind of true neo-hippie vibe that I could be swept up in. I’m going to share a few thoughts on the matter and see if any of you have your own thoughts on the subject.
A few of you may have heard me say this story before, but when I was about 6 or 7 years old my parents, who were not hippies in any way but were pretty liberal in terms of the pop culture they’d expose me to, took me to a drive-in double-feature of Easy Rider and Hell’s Angels on Wheels. We went with another family and their young boy. I still remember the other boy and I sitting atop the roof of our old station wagon, and I still remember the thrill I got from all the hippie stuff on screen that night: Dennis Hopper’s mustache, the football helmet, the choppers, Steppenwolf, the bad biker in Hell’s Angels on Wheels getting shot right between the nose bridge of his rectangular Roger McGuinn glasses… From that night forward I wanted to be a hippie.
Maybe a year or two later, I recall an older girl in my grandparents’ neighborhood taking a bunch of us little kids to see to see the movie Willard. (Good god! As a parent of two preteen boys myself, what was going on in the late-60s/early-70s, with my not-normal-but-not-progressive, middle class family, taking me to a double-feature of hippie biker flicks and trusting a 12-year-old girl to take a group of 8 year olds to see another flick about a young man who loves rats?) The girl asked us what we wanted to be, and the other kids wanted to be butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers – the usual stuff. The girl got a real kick out of my wanting to be a hippie, but I recall walking her through my thought process – you know, getting to have long sideburns, a ‘stache, a chopper, a cool helmet, shooting bad bikers right between the eyes… Honestly, to this day I still want to be a hippie, in the rebellious, searching, cowboy sense Easy Rider, and that’s why I’m asking for your help in rebuilding Team Hippie for the Modern Age. Continue reading »
