BEACH BOYS BREAK UP AGAIN -- BRIAN WILSON, 2 OTHERS, FORCED OUT
By Tony Hicks, Contra Costa Times
Mike Love, who owns the name of the Beach Boys, has canned three band members, including Brian Wilson.
Love announced that the group will split after finishing concerts this week in the U.K.. Wilson, widely considered the creative genius behind the band, Al Jardine and David Marks have been dumped from the group, according to the Huffington Post. The report said three did not find out they had been dropped until Love and Bruce Johnston released a public statement.
So Mike Love, who was lucky enough to participate in some of the most transcendently magical pop music moments of all time, over a decades long career, and most recently a few months ago....
...has decided to piss it all away.
What a dick.
Seriously, what a dick.
Although apparently the rest of the band -- particularly Dennis Wilson -- knew this from day one.
Well, here's an interesting little recently discovered historical artifact.
To wit -- a mini-documentary shot at my old school in 1970, a few weeks before Kent State and the attendant ugliness. Featuring just about every hippie on campus at the time.
And if you want to know how it felt to be an early 20-something at a liberal arts college at the ass-end of the counter culture era, you really can't do better than this.
Oh, and speaking of ugliness, it also features a brief glimpse of yours truly. In perhaps the single least flattering look I ever essayed.
Although in my defense, I suspect I was extremely stoned at the time.
I should also add that the aforementioned old school, C.W. Post, was the only college in America which had an SDS chapter that actually held a bake sale.
Finally: Kudos to my old chum (and the film's director) Jeff Allan, who recently rescued this priceless time capsule from pre-digital obscurity.
From a VERY interesting profile of Neil Young in last Sunday's NY Times Magazine.
That's Neil and his first girlfriend, Pam Smith, at Falcon Lake, Manitoba in August of 1964. Picture = 1000 words, if not more.
You can read the piece over here. Lots of fascinating stuff, but nothing specifically -- alas -- about why Neil seems to have bailed on the Buffalo Springfield reunion tour, which is apparently now deader than the Papal penis.
Although this bit about a recent show with Crazy Horse...
He played that night as if he were mad at Old Black [his Les Paul guitar], even if he smiled into the squall. The crowd remained enthralled as he tortured a single note with the whammy bar, although this kind of indulgence has worn out some of his other playing partners. “We’ve played that note, can we move on, Neil?” Stephen Stills says with a laugh over the phone as he recalls playing with Young.
Long time readers may recall that in the mid-70s I was a member of an enterprising New York City underground band who released a highly regarded (by us) D.I.Y single.
And that we were called The Hounds. A name, I should add, that we agonized over and ultimately decided on thanks to the suggestion of a friend (hi, Kerri!) who thought the phrase "the hounds of spring," from Atalanta in Calydon (1865) by Victorian era English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, kinda had a ring to it.
So. Please enjoy "Call Me," the A-side of our aforementioned 45 rpm platter. An attempt to do sort of bubblegum pop-Stones with a Who-esque middle section, with what success you can decide.
In any case, we broke up a year or so after this was released, and almost immediately we learned that a Chicago glam-rock bunch had not only stolen our name but actually gotten signed to a deal with Columbia Records. Even more infuriating, we heard third hand from somebody at CBS that the pretender Hounds had gotten their contract on the basis of somebody in A&R thinking that our song was the work of those other guys.
I have no idea if that's true or not, but I can guarantee that we all stewed about it at various low dives while consuming adult beverages at three in the morning on numerous occasions.
That's the cover art for those other Hounds' 1978 debut album Unleashed; all I'm gonna say about it is that a) good taste is timeless and b) I am convinced that Spinal Tap's "Bitch School" was based on it.
And here's those other Hounds cult hit "Drugland Weekend" from the aforementioned Unleashed. Sounds like an over-played and basically meh Mott the Hoople pastiche to me, but obviously I'm prejudiced.
Okay, so those other Hounds never became household words, and I have long since forgiven them (and our lawyer, who declined to sue then. Probably a good idea).
But now, via the miracle of the intertubes, I have just learned that before those other Hounds, and years before my bunch, there were...The Hounds.
From Sweden, and apparently world famous in their homeland between 1966-68.
And now I need to know -- do you slash your wrists in hot or cold water?
Especially after hearing the Swedish Hounds' hit cover version (in Sweden) of "The Times They Are A-Changin'."
Which -- given it's interestingly accented English -- at least does justice to the original by the song's composer, some guy named Sven Dylan
[I first posted this back in 2008; I'm reposting it today because a) I think it's really quite funny, and b) because it's suddenly relevant again, for reasons that will become clear in the postscript to the original piece. Enjoy, please. -- S.S.]
A true story:
Back in the dim dark past (by which I mean the Hyborian Age, when Conan the Barbarian actually walked the earth) I got a gig (life-changing, as it turned out) as the rock critic at my college paper. I got it not out of any special qualifications, of which I had none; in fact, if truth be told, the reason I got it was that nobody else had bothered to ask for the job. I, on the other hand, had correctly reasoned that the major record labels were then in the process of dispensing vast largesse on anybody with a byline, and thus -- dreams of free LPs dancing in my head -- I petitioned the powers that be (who were doing massive quantities of drugs, if memory serves) and was given a weekly column to do with as I pleased.
Anyway, sometime in the spring of 1970 I received a large package from Warner Bros./Reprise Records. I don't recall everything that was in it -- I'm thinking an early T-Rex album, although I can't be sure -- but one album in particular stood out -- No BS, by a then unknown Detroit band called Brownsville Station. And by stood out, I mean the cover really, really sucked. Like, it was, perhaps, The Worst Album Cover of All Time.
I mean, really, embarrassingly, horrendously bad. So bad, in fact, that I didn't bother to sell it, as was my wont with LPs I knew I was never going to listen to, but rather kept it around, still shrink-wrapped, as a cautionary exemplar of hideousness. (I later learned that before WB picked up No BS for distribution, it had been a D.I.Y. effort self-released on the band's own label, mostly to sell at gigs, which in some ways excused the cover's awful amateurism. But still, I thought -- dudes, you're on a major label now; hire somebody who can actually draw.)
Anyway, like I said, the album -- which I showed, with much guffawing, to everybody I knew for a few weeks -- eventually went into my collection in the milk crate with the rest of the B's (I was one of those geeks who alphabetized his albums) and I got on with my life.
Cut to: a party in early 1973. I found myself chatting with an absolutely adorable young woman (bangs, long dark hair, and I was a goner) who as it turned out had grown up in Detroit and knew everybody in the rock music community there. She told me some amazing stories -- she had painted Bob Seger's psychedelic van at age 13 -- and she thought I was fairly cool because I knew who (local Detroit faves) The Rationals were. After many drinks, we adjourned to a local Greenwich Village watering hole (it was run by legendary Max's Kansas City restauranteur Mickey Ruskin, who she knew, impressing me mightily) and I proceeded to fall completely head over heels. And then -- around midnight, I recall -- she mentioned that she really wanted to do album covers when she got out of art school. I asked if she'd ever done one, and, somewhat ruefully, she mentioned Brownsville Station.
Yup -- the object of my affections was the woman behind The Worst Album Cover of All Time. And in in case you're wondering if I told her I knew it, let alone that I though it was TWACOAT, I'm going to assume you know absolutely nothing about guys.
Anyway, the story has a sort of happy ending. The woman in question and I went on to have a long and mostly happy run as the Nick and Nora Charles of 70s Manhattan, and we're still friends to this day. Carol Bokuniewicz (that's her name) went on to do some much better album covers -- you might remember this one --
-- and eventually achieved, deservedly, lasting fame when she co-founded the hugely influential design firm M&Co, whose wristwatch is one of the most iconic images of the last several decades.
Incidentally, a few years after we met, I interviewed the guys in Brownsville Station, who were then riding high on their hit "Smoking in the Boys Room." All went well until I mentioned that I was living with the woman who had done their first album cover, at which point I was nearly ejected from their hotel room. When I asked what was wrong, band leader Cub Koda would only say "Shit, man...that's the worst album cover of all time."
Anyway -- so. Brownsville Station.
As you can tell from the above, I was a fan of the band, both musically and as people (they were seriously nice and seriously funny guys). Drummer Henry Weck has since become a Facebook pal over the course of the last year or so; Cub Koda, who reinvented himself as a really terrific rock historian/critic in the 80s and 90s, went to the Great Jam Session in the Sky in 2000, alas. R.I.P., Cub.
In any case, Henry was kind enough recently to send me a copy of the band's latest CD...
...recorded with longtime guitarist Michael Lutz and two (relatively) newer guys. And to my quite delighted surprise, it turns out to be an absolutely first-rate piece of straight ahead kick-ass hard rock.
Here's my favorite track -- a blistering metallic assault on "My Friend Jack." [Which is not, as I mistakenly claimed, The Smokes' 1967 psych-pop classic of the same name. That's the one with the "my friend Jack eats sugarlumps" line, while this one is a BS original, and how I confused the two songs I'll never know. In any case, as is my wont, I regret the error. --S.S.]
Brownsville previously recorded the song in the late 70s, with Cub; that version was in a sort of Beggars Banquet folk blues style, and quite delightful. But this new one is just great no BS (I can't avoid the phrase) rock (in the manner of Dave Edmunds, particularly on the solos), and thoroughly representative of the rest of the record. I should also add that one of the band's new originals, entitled "Rock and Roll is Better Than Music," thoroughly lives up to its title, as well as being the kind of world class two guitar-bass-and-drums stuff that they really don't make anymore, although they obviously should. Whoever they are, of course.
You can order "Still Smokin'" -- and if you don't, you're a schween -- over at Amazon here.
A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ”
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The finding was made public in Rome on Tuesday at the International Congress of Coptic Studies by Karen L. King, a historian who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.
To quote George Harrison in Help!, I don't want to knock anybody's religion, but. So let me just say this about Jesus -- he was good, but he was no Flying Spaghetti Monster.
If you know what I mean.
That said, here's a little pop quiz that only appeared on the web version of the Times story.
"This scroll, according to Harvard's Karen King, contains the passage: 'Jesus said to them, 'My wife …'".
A) '...I think I'll keep her.'
B) '...take her. Please.'
C) '...shall be John Entwistle's best song for The Who, though "Success Story" is pretty rockin'."
Okay, I'm only posting this because Grand Funk Railroad came up in our recent discussion's about Carly Rae Jepsen and Colbie Caillat, but I've been meaning to get the following sentiments off my chest for what seems like years.
But first -- the aforementioned Grand Funk Railroad. Covering "Gimme Shelter" in 1971.
Seriously -- listen to this under the headphones. And then demand combat pay for the experience.
And before anybody makes the point, I will concede that once Todd Rundgren got his hands on these clowns, they became listenable and/or entertaining.
In small doses.
But if you like the power trio version, there's no hope for you. None.
Just a little addendum to yesterday's discussion of Carly Rae Jepsen's Song of the 2012 summer "Cal Me Maybe."
It was not my intention to unfairly demonize Jepsen's hit, which as I said is a perfectly acceptable piece of disposable pop fluff. In fact, I will admit, without shame, to bopping along with the chorus on a couple of occasions, my dismissal of the thing as utterly generic (which I stand by) notwithstanding.
That said, a couple of points raised by our characteristically perceptive readers on the subject behoove addressing.
From Dave:
I think you elucidated most of the charms of this song yourself, SS. It is hook-laden and incredibly catchy and memorable. But it's also attached to a fundamentally real and interesting idea: it is hard for girls, especially young girls, to let their intentions known to boys. I'm convinced that they "Maybe" in the title is the key to the success of the song. It's the kind of qualifier that people use when asking someone out on a date. Anything not to lose face or appear desperate!
I suspect this is exactly right, which is to say the song is significant (and successful) more for its lyrical sync with the zeitgeist than with anything musical.
From ROTP(lumber):
Just remember this song will be somebody's favorite song of their youth 50 years from now.
I actually think not. Consider: Have you ever met anybody who was seriously nostalgic for Grand Funk's "I'm Your Captain" or -- even more to the point -- Frampton Comes Alive? I certainly haven't. And if I did, I would be reluctant to shake their hand.
From Scott Interrante:
I'm not going to take too much time here, but I do want to just list a few things that, in my eyes, make this song stand out and offer some of that personality you claim it lacks.
There is a deliberate avoidance of the tonic chord. This song is in G major, but the chords throughout are C (G) D (Em) :|| (the G an E minor chord are parenthetical because they occur on weak beats and don't actually function as sustained harmony.) So the song essentially circles from IV to V but never resolving to I. Meanwhile, the vocal melody sings almost exclusively in a G major arpeggio, resolving the chords with the melody as opposed to the harmony, which creates a pleasant tension that propels to the song forward. (Note: this isn't actually completely unique. Similar techniques are used in "Teenage Dream," "Califonia Girls," "One More Time," and, most recently, Carly Rae Jepsen's new song "This Kiss").
Kudos, Scott. I mean no snark when I say that this is the most, er, interesting exegesis of a putatively disposable pop hit since Wilfrid Mellers compared the early ouevre of The Beatles to Schubert lieder.
And, finally, from our good buddy Sal Nunziato:
Must everything be "cool?" Or acceptable to the cognescenti?
What a wonderful world it would be....or 1973...if "Call Me Maybe" sat alongside Dylan's "Duquesne Whistle" and the new Shoes single and the new Public Enemy single and the new Joe Walsh and the new Patti Smith and the new Rihanna in the Top 10.
Exactly so. But your implied question -- how come this isn't in fact the state of the world? -- is something that perhaps might be a fruitful subject for future pondering.
Also, and I meant to add this yesterday, that there are far, far worse recent teen pop hit songs than "Call Me Maybe."
Consider, if you will, the truly satanic evil that was Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly."
Seriously, this comes off, to my ears anyway, like the very first songwriting attempt by a complete idiot. And if we're talking about songs that limn the romantic mores of contemporary high school kids, then "Bubbly" makes "Call Me Maybe" sound like Jane Austen's Emma by comparison.
Also, too -- if we want (and we probably should) ear candy bubblegum teen pop/rock songs in our lives...
...then isn't the above kinda more like the way they oughta be done?
So I am informed that Canadian Idol pop tart Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" was very popular recently.
I wouldn't know myself, because I was too busy catching up on season five of Stargate Atlantis on DVD to pay much attention to the radio or YouTube for the last couple of months.
Okay, let me stipulate up front that the single is a perfectly serviceable disposable pop song. It's undeniably catchy and, praise jeebus, it has no aspirations to being anything other than what it is. What's more, it does what it sets out to do -- i.e, insert an ear worm into your head -- with great skill. This is no small accomplishment, as anybody who's ever loved a Monkees hit can attest.
That said, if this isn't also the most generic goddamn thing I've ever heard, than I'm U Thant.
Seriously -- is there anything about this record that is in any way distinguishable from about a squillion other pop records you've vaguely been aware of over the last couple of years?
Some identifiable personality quirks? An usual vocal quality? Body odor? Anything? (Although I will admit that the steals from the arrangement of Annie Lennox's "Walking on Broken Glass" in the chorus are kinda of fun).
Bottom Line: I'm sorry, but if this was indeed the Song of the Summer for 2012, then things sucked even worse than the crappy weather we endured would indicate.
Well, it's Friday, and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental tater tot Fah Lo Suee and I are off to Hollywood, where we're going to try to interest the folks at HBO about a movie based on the current Mitt Romney presidential campaign.
We're trying to get Lyle Waggoner to play Mitt.
Hey, I thought Lyle was dead too, but according to Wiki, it turns out "he currently resides near Jackson, Wyoming where he is a sculptor. His works can be seen at Galleries West Fine Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and are usually humorous renditions of lovely ladies some of which are cast at Eagle Bronze in Lander, Wyoming."
In any event, given that (unless something untoward happens) things are sure to be a little quiet around here for a few days, here's a fun and hopefully stimulating little project to help us all wile away the idle hours.
Best/Most Important American Rock Band of the 1970s!!!
No arbitrary rules, except that I'm gonna have to be a Nazi about the whole "rock band" thing. Specifically, Bruce Springsteen is not eligible, given that none of his studio albums have ever been credited to the E Street Band. In other words, for the purposes of our discussion, Bruce is technically a solo artist.
Unlike, say, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, who have numerous albums out under that moniker and who are in fact eligible if you're so moved.
Also, feel free to nominate The Eagles. However, be aware that if you do I will come to your house and taunt you mercilessly.
And my totally top of my head Top Five is/are:
5. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Petty has pissed me off a couple of times over the years -- a Confederate flag as a stage prop? A duet with Stevie Nicks? -- but those first couple of albums were inarguable. Plus, the band was drop dread great live as you can hear from the above version of "American Girl," recorded in their prime. I saw them in a club around the same time as this -- dressed all in black, amps up to eleven, and they were simply devastating.
4. Talking Heads
I succumbed to these guys charms later than most people, and I still think that a lot of David Byrne's anxiety attacks set to music are a tad pretentious, but c'mon. What a body of work.
Plus -- Tina Weymouth, or as we used to call her around Casa Simels, "Marianne Faithfull in a trash compactor."
Also -- yes, I know this album came out in 1980, but since my then girlfriend did the album cover I'm letting it slide.
3. The Ramones
Mentioned this a few weeks ago, but very few pop musicians in any genre get to invent an entire sound. Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, and The Byrds come to mind, and yes, this bunch of loveable pinheads accomplished exactly that.
2. Steely Dan
By the time they entered their smooth jazz period I kind of lost interest, but in the beginning at least the Dan a) had the hottest guitars that ever managed to get on Top 40 radio, and b) wrote more interesting songs (based on personal experiences) that nobody (besides the authors themselves) actually quite understood what they were about than anybody in rock history.
And the Numero Uno made-in-the-USA outfit of that miserable and unlamented decade simply has to be...
1. Television
The greatest two-guitar front line band ever. My early 80s skinny tie group used to do a killer version of "Ain't That Nothin'", but no matter how hard we tried, we never could get that guitar riff from "See No Evil." And I've never heard anybody else who could do it, either.
From 1973, please enjoy the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver and their unjustly forgotten hit single "(I Don't Want to Love You But) You Got Me Anyway".
These guys were Brits, of course, but at the time everybody pretty much assumed they were Americans. Because the song, fine as it is, has a distinctly California vibe, although I can't think of a California band of the period that made a record even remotely as good. In any case, let's just say I wasn't surprised when SB&Q bassist Bruce Thomas turned up as one of Elvis Costello's original Attractions.
In the meantime, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the song's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania. And no, it isn't great lost singles of the 70s.
Tried to post this on Labor Day, but I was having DivShare problems at the time.
But given the current events involving the teachers in Chicago this week, it seemed appropriate again.
So...from 1973, please enjoy Brit folk-rockers The Strawbs and their actual militantly pro-labor hit single "Part of the Union."
A song, I should add, that is pretty much unthinkable on the American pop charts, both then and now, but which remains a perennial in the UK along the lines of "Mull of Kintyre," fer crissakes.
And a song which I am sure deeply upset, both at the time and over the years, the odious Margaret Thatcher, then an obscure in America Tory rising star, rather than the single most batshit insane legitimately elected head of state of any advanced industrial democracy in the second half of the 20th century she ultimately became.
And leaving politics aside, I think we can all agree that the joke simply wouldn't work if you substituted Mitt and Ann for the Obamas. There's no way you can imagine those two walking down a slushy Greenwich Village street in winter.
Instead, from 1966, please enjoy the indisputable kings of the Wilmington rock scene The Enfields and their quite jangly and winsomely minor key local hit "In the Eyes of the World."
This is one of those songs that, apparently, is sort of a household word amongst Nuggets-era garage rock aficionados, and at the risk of blowing what little credibility I might retain, I must confess I hadn't heard it until yesterday.
That said, it's a terrific piece of work, and quite worthy of The Zombies and The Searchers, the Brit Invasion bands that obviously influenced it.
Skip to the last paragraph if you're wondering about the title. Otherwise, and as long as I'm posting self-indulgent photos from my college days, here's another one (which I'd never seen till last week, I might add).
That's my old pal and long-time musical collaborator Tony Forte, looking extremely mod (dig the shoes) at C.W. Post in late '68.
Note the photo of George Harrison -- one of the four prints that came with the LP versions of The Beatles' White Album -- underneath his chair.
Heh.
Meanwhile, from a decade later, here's Tony in the studio -- produced by yours truly -- with the quite hilarious and vaguely smutty "Hot Flash." Our attempt to sort of go punk, with what success I'll leave it to you to judge.
Tony's playing three rhythm guitars here (left, center and right channels) plus those blisteringly metallic sort of Keith Richards-ish solos, which I think are genius.
I should add that I produced this only in the sense that I paid for the session (at a really crappy eight-track joint) and sat behind the board nodding occasionally. Tony tacked on the all-girl background vocals (by some friends of ours) after the fact; I thought it kind of violated the spirit of what we were doing at the time, but in retrospect I don't particularly mind them.
I should also add that the drummer on this is none other than the incomparable Corky Laing, of Mountain and West, Bruce and Laing fame. A super nice guy (who worked cheap, in this case) as well as a pretty remarkable musician.
Having problems with Divshare -- going on two days now -- so pardon this self-indulgent post until I figure out what's going on.
That's me, of course, circa 1969-70, posed in front of my dorm at C.W. Post (a college chum kindly passed that along to me a few weeks ago; I hadn't seen it until then).
In any case, it kind of makes me sorry I never recorded a solo album; that would have made a great cover graphic.
From Tempest, his forthcoming 35th(!) studio album, please enjoy voice of a generation Bob Dylan, and the utterly infectious lead-off single "Duquesne Whistle."
I wasn't crazy about Bob's last album, but if the rest of this new one is as good as this, I'll be a happy chappie.
Although it does seem the voice of a generation has an awful lot of phlegm these days...
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