If Mark Knopfler and the rest of Dire Straits had blown up in a nuclear rocket sled accident minutes before donning those terrycloth headbands and pastel sweatsuits and recording “Money for Nothing”, would their first few albums be more highly regarded among the highbrow rock fans who tend to populate these Halls of Rock?
“Well, duh!” said Schneider, when Rock Town Hall caught up with him for verification. “The way he held his own with KISS was eye opening. I suddenly saw his prior singing appearances on variety shows in a new light.”
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Rock Town Hall has long appreciated the Web’s wealth of rock fan artwork: sketches of favorite artists, paintings, even body art, such as the huge tattoo of a Bob Seger album cover across a dedicated fan’s sturdy back. Some of these works already grace our pages and rotating banner. Do kids still scrawl rock band logos on their notebooks? Now that’s an early example of rock fan art that’s in need of a future discussion!
In hopes of Rock Town Hall one day being offered original rock fan art for display, we are launching an occasional appreciation of an especially distinctive, moving piece of found rock fan artwork that only a true fan could create. Today’s introductory display follows. We like to call it Velvet Wonder. Enjoy!
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Any Townsperson worth his or her salt has given it up for the above Jethro Tull performance of “Song for Jeffrey” from The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus film. Unless you’re really old and really cool – or really young and only think you’re cool – chances are you came across this performance long after suffering the inevitable mixed feelings brought on by the likes of the following number:
I’ll leave our Townswomen out of this, although it’s possible a few women in the world have a taste for the chunky guitar riffs and codpiece-clad, medieval hi-jinx promised by Classic Tull. If you listen between the lines, so to speak, you may hear a combination of the fractured blues of Captain Beefheart and the newly forged metal of Black Sabbath.
“He said ‘snot.’ Huh, huh…huh, huh!”
Geo mentioned the other day that he had more records by Sun Ra than any other artist. That got me thinking – who is the artist with the most pieces in your collection? At one time I might have guessed James Brown, or the combined works of all the P-Funk configurations. I just counted – 54 pieces (that’s counting each disc of a multi-disc set separately).
Who is the artist who takes up the biggest chunk of your record collection? Are you sure, or is that just a guess? And do you know how many items make up this chunk? Is this in fact your favorite artist, or does this artist just have a huge body of work?
I think my favorite is Lyle Lovett in Short Cuts, although Huey Lewis taking a piss in that movie was pretty special as well. Actually, Tom Waits in Down By Law is right up there.
OK, so even the Hall’s rabid Beatles fans were underwhelmed by the offshoot Beatles-tribute single I’d stumbled across while unexpectedly researching a relatively decent song I’d foggily remembered from my teenage years of flipping FM channels in hopes of hearing a new song that rocked. Remember, this was the time when the likes of Journey, Kansas, Toto, and the relatively rocking Boston ruled the airwaves. Recent “oldies,” which would form the foundation of the Classic Rock radio format, were always cool for me, but it was tough to find something new and exciting, like newcomers Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and The Police.
J. Geils Band, pre-Freeze Frame, and Thin Lizzy, could deliver an occasional, plodding, half-decent new single, and then there were oddities that would make it to FM radio for a couple of weeks, like the song I’ve posted from our most recent Mystery Date.
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