Weekend Listomania: Special You Can Call Me Ray Edition

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental Zous Bisou Bisou, the lovely Fah Lo Suee, and I are off to downtown Dakota Dunes, South Dakota to do a little consulting work for Beef Products, Inc., the good folks who make that pink slime beef additive you've been hearing about lately.

Our mission: To get pink slime into the American heartstream!

Which means that, barring the unforseen, things will probably be a little quiet around here for a couple of days.

That being the case, here's a fun little project that should help us wile away the idle hours until the premiere of that new Three Stooges movie (which actually looks pretty damned funny).

Best/Worst Extant Cover of a Kinks Song and/or One That Hasn't Actually Been Done Yet But That You'd Really Like to Hear!!!

And my totally top of my head Top Five is/are:

5. Mott the Hoople -- You Really Got Me



Re-imagined as an instrumental, for heaven's sake, which still strikes me as a hilarious and brilliant masterstroke. Of course these guys had a genius for oddball covers, as the same album's deadpan reading of Sonny Bono's "Laugh at Me" as an outtake from Blonde on Blonde made abundantly clear.

4. Herman's Hermits -- Dandy



Peter Noone and company may have been lightweights, but on record they did total justice to this gem from Face to Face, aka the Kinks first great album. This non lip-synched TV version doesn't make a case for them as a great live band, however.

3. Van Halen -- You Really Got Me



Bloated, smarmy and (for me) unlistenable, and don't give me that Edward Van Halen shit, because I don't want to know. Really, it makes me physically ill that an entire generation grew up thinking these putzes wrote the song.

2. Mark Lanegan -- Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' About That Girl




The Screaming Trees frontman's sepulchral take on the great nervous bohemian blues tune (originally from the Kinks third album in 1965) as heard on that 2006 MOJO tribute sampler I remarked on yesterday. Incidentally, I'd forgotten how much I loved this song until I saw Ray do it in concert earlier this year, but of course that show is a story unto itself.

And the all time Dedicated-Follower-of-Fashion recording ever simply has to be...

1. The Pretenders -- Stop Your Sobbing



C'mon, it's not even close. Seriously -- there are times I think the way Chrissie sings "Each little tear/that falls from your eye" is the single most spine-tingling moment in the history of rock 'n' roll.

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

An Early Clue to the New Direction: Special Adam Schlesinger is a Fricking Genius! Edition

This may be old news to you guys, but I just chanced across it over at Willard's Wormholes and have been wondering where it's been all my life.

From the 2006 MOJO sampler The Modern Genius of Ray Davies, please enjoy World's Greatest Living Power Pop Band Fountains of Wayne and their absolutely astonishing cover of The Kinks' deliberately retro 1981 single "Better Things."




Apparently, FOW recorded this for a 2002 Ray Davies tribute album, which I also missed somehow. In any case, as much as I love the Kinks original, I have to concede this improves on it, if only in terms of the energy level.

And in any case, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the track's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired

Well, actually, real-life responsibilities have reared their ugly head, and I'm also sort of stumped for anything surprising to natter on about. So I thought I'd just post the B-side of that remarkable Summer of Love single by Brit rockers One in a Million I put up the other day.

So please enjoy "Fredereek Hernando" -- once again featuring the 14 year old(!) Jimmy McCulloch on guitar.




I forget which commenter brought it up, but it's true -- these guys actually sounded more like The Jam than The Who.

Hope I Die Before I Get Old. Not.

From their 1972 album Teenage Heaven, please enjoy awesome antipodean rockers Daddy Cool and a song which is the unsuspected missing link between Eddie Cochran and Alice Cooper -- the epochal "Teenage Blues."





I posted about these guys a couple of years back, but for those of you who missed it, here's the short version:

I used to have this album on vinyl -- a consequence of being on the Warner Bros. Records freebie list as my old college paper's in-house rock crit -- and although I vaguely recalled enjoying it (or at least some of the songs) I lost my copy ages ago and more or less forgot about it. So when it turned up on a now shuttered download site, I auditioned it under the headphones mostly from idle curiosity.

And flipped my geriatric lid.

I have since been informed by estimable PowerPop commenter Peter Scott, who blogs about Down Under bands over at Peter's Power Pop, that these guys are about as iconic as you can get in Australia; their biggest hit -- "Eagle Rock" -- was Number 1 on the Ozzie charts for ten(!) weeks back in 1971. Peter also informed me that said hit is so utterly ubiquitous in his homeland that it took him years before he could get over being sick of it and actually appreciate how great a band they were.

In any case, this stoner sort-of haiku from "Teenage Blues" -- "I've been thinking a lot/About getting a job but/I'm paranoid about my hair" -- has got to be one of the greatest opening lines not just in pop music but in the entire history of literary endeavor going back to the Greeks.

And this later bit -- "Don't wanna get a job/Don't wanna go to school/Just wanna hang around/street corners like a fool" -- is actually even better.

I should further add that I was moved to write about all this after having discovered this 2009 live performance -- with the song's composer, the obviously years past teenage Ross Wilson belting it out with undiminished aplomb -- on YouTube the other day.



The album does not seem to be available legitimately over at Amazon, BTW; if I can find another site where you can download it, I'll let you know.

Life During Wartime

In case you missed it over at love of my life Charles Pierce's place the other day, here's the best Etch-A-Sketch related story that has nothing to do with that Mormon game show host who's running for the Republican presidential nomination.



Via Pierce, and I quote:

"When David Byrne, eventual leader of Talking Heads, was applying to the Rhode Island School of Design, his application project reportedly consisted of a collection of Xerox copies of Etch-A-Sketch maps of each of the 50 states.

How he did Michigan and Hawaii, I will never know."

I have no idea if this is true, but it really sounds like something Byrne would have done.

Weekend Listomania (Special Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. But given that you can now legally commit gun murder in Florida, I'm not about to tell you guys where I'm going or who I'm going to see until I get there, if you know what I mean. And that includes my charming Oriental Annie Oakley impersonator Fah Lo Suee, who happens to have a condo in Boca.

That being the case, and since things will be mostly quiet around here for the time being, here's a fun little project to help us all through the hours when you're out of ammo and there's nobody you hate in the immediate vicinity:

Best or Worst Pop or Rock Song or Album About Starting the Show or Just Shows In General!!!.

And my totally top of my head Top Five is/are:

5. Nick Lowe -- Rollers Show



This seemed pertinent after our discussion of the other day, obviously.

4. Emerson Lake and Palmer -- Welcome Back My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends



I dislike this crap so profoundly I refuse to post any audio or video from it. And may I simply say that the title of this bloated live double album always sounded kind of like a threat to me.

3. Wings -- Rock Show



You know, these Wings guys were pretty good. I wonder if any of them ever did anything else?

2. Grand Funk -- We're an American Band



This may count simultaneously as best AND worst, but that's just me, probably.

And the number one Hello-Cleveland!!!! song of them all simply has to be....

1. Warren Zevon -- When Johnny Strikes Up the Band



Nothing else even comes close, IMHO. Seriously -- if I ever find myself performing live rock-and-roll again, this is the song I want to open with.*

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

*Don't worry -- not gonna happen.

Unsolicited Song of the Week (An Occasional Series): Special Early Clue to the New Direction Edition

And because we like to have something recorded in this century from time to time, please enjoy power pop comers One Like Son --the pride of Montgomery, AL. -- and "Start the Show," the appropriately monikered and utterly infectious, title track to their debut album.



I hear a hint of The Undertones in there, unless I completely miss my guess, and maybe a little Cheap Trick. In any case, I just dug this one, right off the bat, strictly on the aural level; however, when I got around to listening to the lyrics, I related like crazy (for obvious reasons) and dug it even more.

I should add that OLS member Stephen Poff, who kindly let me hear this in the first place, assures me that the album was recorded on an iPhone. Speaking as somebody who's only just gotten used to recording my own garage band on a laptop, I must admit to being somewhat astonished by this.



I should also add that you can -- and obviously should -- order the whole album over here.

And of course, as usual, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the song's connection to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

I must confess I had forgotten about this very sad story until I chanced across this first song the other day.

From 1967, please enjoy 14-year-old(!) guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, doing time as as a member of One in a Million, with perhaps the most amazing obscure pop-psych Brit single of the Summer of Love ever, the sublimely early Who-ish "Double Sight".




Let me repeat: McCulloch -- that's him, center front in the group photo -- was 14 years old when that was recorded.

And then, from 1970 -- when he was a grizzled 17 year old -- here he is with the song that guaranteed him a degree of genuine pop immortality.

The utterly transplendent "Something in the Air."

Produced by Pete Townshend, just to add to the various levels of irony.

	Thunderclap Newman - Something In The Air .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

After Thunderclap Newman? A very impressive list of credits that includes work with John Mayall, Harry Nillson, Stone the Crows and eventually a stint as a member of Paul McCartney's Wings (he occasionally played bass on stage when Macca switched to piano or guitar).

And then this (via Wiki):

"McCulloch died of heart failure caused by a heroin overdose on 27 September 1979 in his flat in Maida Vale, North West London. He was 26."

Jeebus, what a fucking waste.

Tuesday Moment of Words Fail Me: Special Just Kill Me Now Edition

A recent photo of power pop deity Nick Lowe.



You know, he's kinda cute in a Sir Alec Guiness/C. Aubrey Smith kind of way; if he had been born a few decades earlier, he could have had a career in some of those 1930s British-in-India movies.

Nonetheless, there's something about that photo that I find...disturbing.

[h/t Trademark Dave]

Monday Moment of Words Fail Me: Special My Son the Folksinger Edition

From 1972 and the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village (then as now a hole in the wall dive), please enjoy a very young Bruce Springsteen in a wide belt and work shirt telling it like it was.



Have I mentioned that words fail me?

[h/t Laura G.]