Among our regulars, I’m calling on Happiness Stan to help explain England’s late-1960s skinhead movement. If there are other Townspeople out there who have something to add that I haven’t already learned from that beacon of accurate and original reporting, Wikipedia, please chime in.
How did a rock subculture rooted in an appreciation of Jamaican and African-American music become associated with right-wing politics? Did anyone who lived through this era note a shift in how skinheads were perceived within the rock community? I’ve read that the skinheads were an outgrowth of the mods. How did that shift take place?Continue reading »
It’s no secret that, like a lot of young teenage boys in the early-to-mid-1970s, I found Carly Simon hot. Although I never cared much for any of her songs beside the outstanding “You’re So Vain” and, OK, I’ll admit it, her duet with James Taylor on “Mockingbird,” there was a sense of anticipation over the release of each new album cover. With her XL smile; sleepy eyes; soft, flowing fabrics; a flexible, acrobatic posture; and a soap operatic personal life Simon was rock’s safe-as-matzo Jewish American Princess. She wasn’t tangled up in that smelly CSNY crowd, like Joni Mitchell. She wasn’t a practitioner of witchcraft, like Stevie Nicks. She made no claims to being “one of the boys,” like Linda Rondstadt. Carly was all woman, more like one of my Mom’s younger waitressing friends than a rock star yet not half as square as a Barbra Streisand, who couldn’t manage an acute angle alongside renegade Kris Kristofferson. For a middle-class boy venturing into the world of sexual longing and rock ‘n roll, she was as pervasive and only mildly daring as a woman’s subscription to Cosmopolitan.
As I got into my later teens and became both more judgmental and daring, the mid-’70s appeal of Carly rapidly diminished. By 1981, when the likes of Debbie Harry and Exene were my maturing notions of rock womanhood, I had no idea the following video ever existed, of a song called “Vengeance,” which thankfully I don’t recall ever hearing. Talk about an ultimate rock soft-on. Let’s examine the moments that would have immediately spelled the end of my young lust for Carly, had I not already been heading in that direction.
Breaking news, courtesy of Townsman diskojoe (and his friend), who writes:
A friend of mine sent me the following link to an interview of ZZ Top by Andy Kershaw of the BBC in 1987 & there’s something interesting @ the 4:50-5:00 mark when the drummer, the beardless one named Beard was asked why they didn’t tour outside the US:
Play continues in our tournament to determine—once and for all—rock’s greatest backing band ever.
The first two rounds have been completed. The attached grid shows where we stand as the Regionals round is played out: backingband-tournament-64
Feel free to think ahead to coming Regional battles as you begin work on the present conference match up. Meanwhile, tournament play for the Classic Conference has begun. Four backing bands remain: The E-Street Band vs Crazy Horse and The Spiders From Mars vs The Silver Bullet Band.
Regionals: Classic Conference
Because the selections from this point forward are so crucial to future generations’ understanding of rock history, play will follow a different course of action in this round. Before any voting can take place, Townspeople are encouraged to post comments and YouTube clips of the backing bands you support in this round. You may begin launching your campaigns now. After a day or two of lobbying and counter-lobbying the polls for this conference’s regional round will open. We don’t want any rash votes on Day 1 that you may regret on Day 3 of discussion. Dig?
UPDATED: POLLS NOW OPEN THROUGH MIDNIGHT ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2012!
Regionals, Classic Conference: The Silver Bullet Band vs The Spiders From Mars
The Spiders From Mars (74%, 28 Votes)
The Silver Bullet Band (26%, 10 Votes)
Total Voters: 38
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Regionals, Classic Conference: The E-Street Band vs Crazy Horse
Hey, team — I just wanted to fire off a quick, earnest appeal, urging all of you to reach out to your senators to voice your opposition to the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or “PIPA.” You’ve probably heard a lot about this bill already, thanks to famous Internet players like Wikipedia blacking out their site for a day to protest the draconian means by which the US government proposes to restrict access to “pirated” content.
I won’t bore you with all the specific, tech-y reasons why PIPA is a horrible bill — and I won’t irritate you by bloviating about how it would mean the breaking of the seventh seal of the free speech apocalypse, ushering in a new dark age of e-fascism in the name of corporate greed, etc., etc. What I will tell you is that if this bill passes, Rock Town Hall as we know it will, in all likelihood, eventually cease to exist.
All those so-awful-that-they’re-hilarious videos will be taken down at the source, under threat of legal action. All the unauthorized screen caps from JaBo’s “Dancing in the Streets” video will be replaced with black boxes. No more Mystery Date. No music-rich Insta-Reviews or histories of obscure rock bands. In fact, there’s a good chance that the site as a whole would be taken down, if the wrong people find us and threaten the RTH web host with legal action because they’re “facilitating copyright theft” by keeping us on their servers.
Many of you know me as a fun-loving, studio-owning, underemployed composer of music — but my “day job” is as a marketing executive at one of America’s leading web hosting companies, and we’re neck-deep in a fierce battle to kill PIPA and other bills like it. PIPA is coming up for a key cloture vote on January 24, and we need to make sure it doesn’t pass that vote. (If it does, it will be hurried onto the floor for a yes/no vote, and chances are good it would pass.) What we need is more time, so we can explain to ignorant lawmakers just why this bill makes no practical sense. You can help us get the time we need.
If I could impose on you, by January 23, to take a moment to write a brief note to your senators outlining your concerns about PIPA’s effect on Internet innovation and small businesses — small-business innovations like a certain free-wheeling, fun-loving communi-blog devoted to the world’s aging rock nerd community, for example — I would appreciate it. And I know our Moderator and The Back Office would, too.
Who still pays attention to Saturday Night Live? For me, the mainstream is largely off of my radar, so I’m not so sure how this Lana Del Ray thing came to my attention, or why I find it fascinating—but I do.
To summarize, Lana Del Ray co-wrote and sings this song called “Video Games.” She performed on SNL and suddenly the Internet was flaming about what a train-wreck it was. I’m not defending this performance—it’s not great and it’s not comfortable to watch, but it’s not the biggest mess I’ve ever seen on SNL or other TV shows.
But what sparked this uproar? One of the most notable sources was a tweet from actress/”musician” Juliette Lewis, who wrote, “Wow, watching this ‘singer’ on SNL is like watching a 12-year-old in their bedroom when they’re pretending to sing and perform #signofourtimes.” Lewis has since deleted her tweet and said some nicer things about Del Ray. Maybe she realized she was standing on shaky ground herself?
I dare you to watch both of these videos. Do you choose the pot or the kettle?
In the recent Laura Nyro threadTownsman alexmagic made some hyperbolic statements regarding Mike Nesmith. (Seriously, Mike Nesmith “is the most indefensible omission from the Hall of Fame?” I think I could successfully defend his exclusion from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as easily as I could defend his exclusion from the Baseball Hall of Fame.) However, he touched on one point that I think the uni-mind that is Rock Town Hall should explore, to whit, the thought that Mike Nesmith is “often given credit for launching the ‘country rock’ genre.”
There seem to be a lot of candidates for that. There are The Byrds, whose Notorious Byrd Brothers showed a bit of country and was released in January 1968, or the more often cited Sweetheart of the Rodeo, released in August, 1968. The latter made it all the way to #77 on Billboard and featured a number by another candidate for country rock launcher, Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.”
And there’s Graham Parsons & the International Submarine Band, whose Safe At Home came out in 1968. Wikipedia says their b-side cover of Buck Owens’ “Truck Drivin’ Man,” released in April 1966, is “now largely considered the first country rock recording.” It starts at 2:11 of the following clip:
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