I must confess to having never heard of these guys until last week; apparently, one of them went off to somewhat greater success in Sparklehorse (who at least I've heard of, if not actually heard).
In any event, this song is, as they say, the shit.
I.e., rock 'n' roll as nature intended.
And man oh man, did this lyric --
“I danced on ledges a hundred flights up / I drank dirty water from a jagged cup / And I smashed my own bones just to hear them crack / You think this is pain, honey, this is the pleasure.“
-- deserve classic status.
Also -- may I just say, and for the record, that lead vocalist Bob Bortnick's wonderfully snot-nosed delivery of the line "ride 'em, cowboy" right before the guitar solo made me grin from ear to ear.
[h/t Willard's Wormholes]
UPDATE: I have just learned, via the Intertubes, that the aforementioned Bob Bortnick is currently toiling as Senior Vice President and A&R for Warner/Chappell Music. Words fail me.
10 comments:
Check out "Baby's Got Rockets" from their album "Hallelujah Anyway." One of my favorite songs from the '80s. Hell, probably one of my all-time faves, in fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56NjW21IIO8
Just watched that clip. Those guys certainly had the look down, didn't they.
:-)
Well, it was the '80s, after all. At least they didn't have Alarm hair.
But what did you think of the song? I have to admit that it's one of those tunes that I can't play once and then move on to the next. Two consecutive plays is my bare minimum. But don't ask me what the hell he's singing about.
Great tune, "Baby's Got Rockets". Been playing our version of that whenever we get together for a jam since at least the early 90's and we still break it out to this day when the mood strikes.
I thought the song was cool, albeit not as good as "Pleasure."
I'm gonna have to download the rest of their oeuvre, I suspect.
I LOVED that song from the first time I heard it... must have been about '85 or so. Don't even remember where I heard it the first time. Must have been on college radio station KSPC. (They also use "I shot a man in Reno / just to watch him die" in there.)
I first heard DH live on Dierdre O'Donaghue's SNAP program on KCRW, sometime in the mid-eighties. I was driving with the radio on and they did Baby's Got Rockets all raw and ungussied up and I almost had to stop the car.
Wish I could find that live recording...
That's where it was -- it was on SNAP that I first heard them. Thanks Anon!
These guys did a great version of John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery," a tune that was begging for an electric folk rock arrangement.
Bob Bortnik - great guy, great lover. With him throughout the mid-80's - never forgotten...the wild moon nights.
gina
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