Why Do We Talk About T. Rex and Alex Chilton More Than Steppenwolf?

 Posted by
Jun 302021
 

When I was younger and more idealistic, I might have crafted a 10,000-word essay this question. I don’t think I have that much idealism left, but I’ve got to ask anyway.

I got turned onto Steppenwolf as a little kid, thanks to the faux-live album with the snarling wolf on the cover. Their half dozen or so nasty rock classics were staples of AM radio, also bridging over to FM, when I finally got around to listening to FM radio. Their music was featured in Easy Rider, another key learning opportunity that my parents somehow turned me onto when I was about 7 years old. Steppenwolf was biker cool, man.

I still love listening to a Steppenwolf hit when it comes on the radio. Years ago, I tried listening to something other than the live album or their greatest hits. If you’ve been wondering if the deep cuts are worth the effort, trust me: they are not. That said, the band’s 5 or 6 killer singles retain their staying power.

OK, “Magic Carpet Ride” isn’t as mind-blowing as it was when I was 7, and “Born to Be Wild” has lost something thanks to overexposure, but “Hey, Lawdy Mama” came up on a playlist the other day, and I was as ready to pick a fight with a stranger as ever. That is possibly the most badass song ever. Some of those little guitar hooks could take down the best guitar hooks by the mighty Lynyrd Skynyrd.

And don’t get me started on “The Pusher.” It’s as ominous and unintentionally funny as ever.

We could be talking more often about the 5 or 6 great singles by Steppenwolf, but instead, we go on for days over T. Rex or lazy-ass Alex Chilton. Why?

I look forward to your thoughts.

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Turns Out Everybody, Especially Me, Was Wrong About Alex Chilton

 Posted by
Jun 282021
 

It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong — but it takes a much, much smaller man to take nearly 40 years to ‘fess up to his mistakes. And that’s just the kind of man I am. So here I am, stripped naked of shame and regret, chained to the Orockle doors, megaphone in hand, ready to scream into the howling wind: I WAS WRONG ABOUT ALEX CHILTON’S 1980s OUTPUT!

Like everybody else who came into rock maturity in the 1980s (other than E. Pluribus Gergeley), I fell deeply in love with Big Star upon hearing them as a pimply-faced college puke. Big Star had everything I needed as a budding music nerd, in overwhelming abundance: Impeccable song craft! Soaring harmonies! Clanging guitars! Doomed-to-fail braininess! I-know-more-than-you-do exclusivity!

I rhapsodized over the pop perfection of their first two albums, and made excuses for the shambolic weirdness of the third. I agonized over the band’s collapse, and cursed the world for not appreciating their greatness, even as I enjoyed being one of the select few who actually owned a copy of “Radio City” on the original Ardent label. I decided Alex Chilton was a genius.

Of course, I wasn’t the only music nerd in the 1980s to discover Chilton and Big Star, so a few indie labels decided it would make good business sense to green-light various Chilton “comeback” projects, which were targeted fairly specifically at people like me. And here is where I started to go very, very wrong — because, like almost everybody else at the time, I thought these albums and EPs sucked.

The critical take on Chilton’s first “comeback” album, “High Priest,” was basically:  “huh?” Everybody, including (probably especially) me, just could not understand why the man we perceived as the creative genius behind the dense, powerful, proto-power pop of Big Star would debase himself with such a lazy throwaway album of obscure ’60s AM/soul radio material. The arrangements were sloppy — not insane, or non-existent, as on “Like Flies On Sherbert,” but stripped down, basic, elemental… yeah, “lazy.” Basically, if Alex had wanted to piss off all the people looking for a return to Big Star’s style and substance, he couldn’t have done a better job.

But — even as some critics twisted themselves into pretzels trying to convince us this was all part of a Chilton master plan to fool the world by deliberately making music that was beneath him — the truth is that this album, and most of the other stuff he released as an indie elder statesman, was great. Not Great with a capital “G,” but impeccably curated, played with honesty, clarity, and nuance, and generally pleasing to the earbulbs. I’ve grown into a place where I absolutely adore these records, and I listen to them far more often than the Big Star material (which I still marvel at, but find to be very much “of an era.”)

I should point out that I also love the original artists’ versions of the covers within this catalog. But Chilton’s soulful interpretations are unique, and meaningful. Like a bop jazz trio doing a set of Broadway show tunes, they’re measurably different from the originals, but respectful of the source material.

All this to say: go check out “High Priest,” or “Set,” and listen with an open mind. I think you’ll like what you hear.

HVB

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Summer Music Reads?

 Posted by
Jun 212021
 
Am I the only person who finds the author’s name inappropriately large and confusing, in the context of the artist and his real name?

Townspeople, it’s that time for cracking open summer music reading. My birthday just passed, which means I’ve got some new books piling up. I’ve been digging right into this oral history on David Bowie, listening to all the Bowie albums being covered as I read. So far, for all my complaints, I’m clearly enjoying it, but maybe in a bit of a “hate-read” way.

You may recall my longtime difficulties with Bowie. Despite the fact that I love 30 songs by him, he’s just…not my kind of guy. The focus of this oral history is on his devouring – aesthetically, sexually – side of him. It confirms so much of the foreign – to my sensibilities – vibe I’ve always gotten from him. He seemed like he was so ambitious, so eager to create a persona – two qualities I actually don’t have an issue with – but he wasn’t doing it for himself, the way my natural music hero John Lennon seemed to be doing. Instead, he seemed to do all this to insulate his inner void, or whatever. I’m thoroughly enjoying this book, I am ashamed to say, but the story so far, through Aladdin Sane and his dumping The Spiders, is making me a bit queasy.

I’m curious to see if this rock bio can end without chapters on our hero hanging out with Phil Collins and Sting at exclusive Caribbean resorts. I hate when that happens.

What music reading do you have underway or lined up for the summer?

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I Need Some Help With These Stones Lyrics

 Posted by
Jun 132021
 

Hey, gang — I need some help with some Stones lyrics. I cued up a bunch of trackssss from across their career — nothing too obscure — and wrote down what I heard, starting right at the top of each tune. But Mick was pretty much incomprehensible, so I stopped transcribing before I hit the choruses. Which was pretty stupid, because now I don’t remember which songs these are. Can you help ID the tunes? Once I get the song names, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to figure out what the heck Mick is yelling about. Thanks.

1.

Yeah, once papa cold when I was crazy spade

Gear New York’s lanky legs

I saved my money, I took a plane

Ever I go seems the same

2.

I’m a little bit clean of mulcher

All my friends are cultures, snot feelers too

3.

When your walrus is rough

Satan’s glove

I been browned in your love

You got a front door blue, yeah

I’m from the same one that you, yeah

Oh, I mock the helm mop blues

4.

Break me five, big me down, me runny, know my way around (assy Choo cha!)

Pig me pile, ping me dan, beat me run-in, beat me on the ground

5.

No git, can’t sleep, wing up, no sleep, sky diver insider, slip brooch, sky dang

Moon bed lover, got no time on feen

One less sucker bare freak on the soul scene

Oh, for bid nay oh, git stand

6.

Made me think of Percy

All the kind of worsen

Make me fer the cattle on thang

Baby, Baby

Doe these the jews in a frown

7.

Reb troll up the cold town bully

Come on bend my hand

Riff so yo you braille buddy

Briss so muss so pram

Bray buss every lane granny you and stay

But I lost a lot of girl over you

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