Maybe those English weren’t so bad after all. Lots of great stuff in here. Elvis’ “Watching the Detectives” is worth it alone.
Jul 032011
Jul 022011
Sounds of the Hall in roughly 33 1/3 minutes!
In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-In Mr. Moderator celebrates our nation’s birthday—and gets a load off after an intense, emotional week! Why don’t you fire up an M-80, kick back, and appreciate the riches of this nation?
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/RTH-Saturday-Night-Shut-In-35.mp3|titles=RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 35][Note: The Rock Town Hall feed will enable you to easily download Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your digital music player. In fact, you can even set your iTunes to search for an automatic download of each week’s podcast.]
Jul 022011
As seen on TV
I’ve taken the opportunity provided by falling ill on a holiday weekend to plow through a stack of unlistened-to 78 RPM records today. In the pile, I found a disc that actually somewhat startled me. It was a disc featuring one of the most familiar songs in North American recorded music — certainly one that is at the top of the recognizability list for music played on television. I had never really stopped to think about its origins, or the fact that this weird little tune is probably one of the most familiar pieces of music to any kid who grew up after the dawn of the television age — but there it was, spinning ’round my battery-powered wrecka playa. A quick InterWeb search led me to this blurb about the performing artist, which I found humorously obscure:
“Williams was discovered by the (label’s) president in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Tempo Records first approached another bones player, Ted Goon, known as Mr. Goon-Bones, but Ted had a conflict at the time. Before Ted got his conflict resolved, Tempo discovered Williams and his first hit record hit the airwaves.” (Ted Goon died in 2003 at the age of 92. Ted was an Honorary member of the Rhythm Bones Society and lived in California just a few miles from the home of Williams.)”
My challenge to you is to deduce the song in question from the information gleaned in the above text. Do us all a favor and don’t cheat by searching for the entire text string on Google or something lame like that. There are some clues that are in plain sight:
1. “Williams”
2. Rhythm bones
4. Familiarity to TV watchers from the 1950s until today
I’ll give you one more: the fact that this artist was discovered in Los Angeles may throw you off the trail.
Go to it! And, just remember — if you’re completely stumped, you get just as much credit for an imaginative answer as you do for a correct one.
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Jul 012011
Come on, ref! It’s a simple question — is “Magneto and Titanium Man” fair or foul?
Jul 012011
I just realized that the Phillies were playing the Blue Jays today and, while working from home today, I could have watched their wild come-from-behind victory on TV. Shoot! The fresh-0ff-the-keyboard game report also reminded me that today is Canada Day and we’d done nothing to honor our Townspeople up north. Better late than never, better never late: today we honor Canada by saying something nice about early ’90s Montreal band Bootsauce.
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.
Jul 012011
Feel free to use this thread to suggest your own summer rock reads. I’d like to tell you about my first completed rock read of the season. Continue reading »
Jul 012011
In the June 3 edition of The Independent, an article penned by Andy Gill and entitled “Days of Whine and Roses” opens, “Over the next fortnight, fortysomethings of a certain persuasion will be heard sighing into their lattes, lost in fond reminiscence of the sweet pain of adolescence. Because 25 years ago this month saw the release of The Queen is Dead…”
Gill, another sigh-inducing musician of us latte drinkers, goes on to state, “And if you were a teenager in 1986, no other record reflected the febrile mixture of loneliness, contempt, self-pity, petulance, sexual confusion, juvenile intellectual superiority and general emotional turmoil that characterises most adolescents’ experience of life.”
Further discussion of Morrisey‘s “sardonic stage laughter,” the “self-assured” rhythm section, and Marr‘s “array of African-tinged arpeggios, biting riffs and subtly wielded feedback” is included for the reader’s enjoyment. Finally, the article ends with several British music press heavyweights’ choices of their favorite song from the album.
Isn’t it time that we, the cogniscenti of RTH also review this important album? If REM’s I.R.S output and a critical upgrade of Husker Du elicited recent posts, shouldn’t we weigh in? Of particular importance is the concept of “cleverness,” recently eschewed by Mr. Moderator.
