Music lovers and professional musicians at Power Pop are sure to enjoy a new movie, The Sales Girl, that's a terrific contemporary combination of comedy and drama.
And that's because of the way that rock 'n roll compliments the movie's unusual plot.
The main storyline of the 123-minute flick focuses on the relationship between first year college student Saruul and 40-ish Katya, the owner of a sex shop in an unnamed city in Mongolia (most likely Ulaanbaatar, the capitol).
Saruul was offered the sales job by a classmate whose street injury -- shown in a very funny opening scene -- has incapacitated her for the time being.
Both characters, Saruul and Katya, will stay in your memory, long after the movie ends.
Rock songs accompany -- by my count -- 10 scenes in the movie. Most of the scenes are shot on location, so, in effect, The Sales Girl also promotes the city as a great travel destination.
Short version: Check out The Sales Girl, available from Film Movement, with English sub-titles on DVD or streaming, over at Amazon HERE.
-- Drew Simels
Thanks, Drew -- looks like a hoot!!!
But which, thematically, leads us to this weekend's business. To wit.
...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Elvis pop/rock/folk/soul/blues/country/hip-hop song referencing -- blatantly or obliquely -- what my mom used to refer to as "X-E-S spelled backwards" in its title or lyrics is...?
Discuss.
And in case you're wondering, here's my candidate.
Swear to god, there are some days I think that may be the last great rock-and-roll record ever made.
What can I tell you -- so far, the summer here in Forest Hills, a/k/a the Paris of the East Coast, has totally sucked.
Which may be why I'm so taken with "Outside Place," the brand new promo film masterpiece by veteran West Coast power pop/punk band LA DRUGZ -- by comparison, Los Angeles looks like a little bit of heaven.
I must confess I was unfamiliar with these guys until a day or two ago, but I am informed that the song itself, which as you can hear totally rocks, is ten years old. Hey, I slept through the 'teens.
In any event, as you can also plainly see, the new vid is a sly homage to the greatest film of all time, the Mike Nesmith(!)-produced cult classic Repo Man.
And as I hinted up top, I'm a total sucker for all cinematic evocations of the L.A. River -- giant ants or no.
In the meantime, you can find out more about those guys (who come off above as both natural born comedians and a kick-ass band) and order the cool original (2013) EP from whence the song derives over at the website of Hovercraft Records HERE.
And I should add that a fab gear Weekend Essay Question will be up tomorrow, and it's a little smutty.
[Okay, you younger folks (if you're out there) -- I really need you to give me the proverbial hand. Read on and you'll understand why. -- S.S.]
So. As is not exactly a secret, when I'm not hanging out here, I'm often lurking/posting over at a certain left-wing political blog whose name I won't mention, but whose initials are Eschaton.
I've been a regular there going back to the 'aughts, and in fact, it's where I first encountered the original proprietor of this here blog, NYMary. I've also made several other long-lasting off-line/real world friendships at said location and, if truth be told, it's actually where I met and fell in love with a certain Shady Dame who's been mentioned here from time to time.
In any event, as you can gather, it's been a big part of my life for quite a while, and I owe its head honcho -- nom du blog Atrios -- more than I can put into words.
That said, the aforementioned Atrios is also semi-legendary for his utterly appalling taste in music. It's been a running gag over there for as long as I can remember, starting with the old days when he would put up videos by what I used to refer to as "whey-faced Brit prog-rockers".
Hey -- if you like those kinda bands, god bless, but I had fun taking cheap shots at him and them.
But of late -- starting this year, if memory serves -- he's been foisting clips on us by even whiter bands, and it's beginning to get really creepy.
I mean, all of them sound exactly alike, and when they don't just bore me to scowling fidgets, they actually make me physically ill. To wit.
I'm not kidding -- the above makes me slightly nauseous, which is a reaction I've never had to any music of any kind at any time in my life.
And those guys aren't even the worst. Gimme a minute and I'll find you a more egregious example.
As you can hear, this shit is about as formulaic and twee as can be. Everything has insanely lame drumming (usually beginning with somebody playing with brushes), annoyingly simple arpeggiated guitar licks (sometimes executed on mandolin or uke), cutesy/affectless little girl vocals (sometimes, but not always, nasally harmonized) and pretentious/gobbledeegook lyrics that inevitably recall some sensitive teenager who has underlined verses in a thin volume of poetry and written "how true!" in the margins.
Also, one of the singers usually plays one-finger keyboards with sampled violin sounds or something similar half way through the song. Oh, and there are occasional very serious string, sax and flute players lurking about, and nobody in any of the bands seems to have the slightest interest in acknowledging the audience.
Have I mentioned that on top of everything else, the music is utterly and frighteningly sexless?
In any event, the end product just makes me, in the immortal words of Dorothy Parker about Winnie the Pooh, want to fwow up.
And I mean that literally. Which, as I said, is something that has never previously happened to me when listening to music.
Okay -- to finally get to the point: can somebody out there please -- PUHLEEZE -- tell me what this shit is called?
By which I mean -- what genre? What syle? There's gotta be a name for it, given how many bands are playing it.
In other words: Exactly how the fuck do the youngs -- who I assume are the audience (Atrios notwithstanding) for whatever it is -- describe it to the rest of us suffering mortals?
I await your replies with breathless anticipation.
From 2020, please enjoy the great Carla Olson, assisted by Peter Noone -- yes, the guy from Herman's Hermits -- and a killer and heretofore unknown to me remake of The Searchers' 1965 English hit "Goodbye My Love."
I think we can agree that's quite fabulous, but since I love you all more than food, here's the original in a new stereo mix.
Well. That was pretty fabulous also, you're welcome very much.
BTW, the song was co-written by legendary Searchers drummer Chris Curtis and Petula Clark's auteur Tony Hatch. Both of which/whom are interesting stories I'll get to one of these days.
[h/t Jonathan Lea, who plays the cool 12-string on the Olson track]
And speaking as we were the other day about wonderful but unjustly forgotten Sixties NYC psych-folk rockers Autosalvage...my friend and Boston-based rock crit Brett Milano turned me onto this quite astonishing footage yesterday.
The aforementioned Autosalvage -- including all four original members -- rehearsing for a reunion gig they did at SXSW in 2012.
Way cool on a lot of levels, and what I wouldn't have given to attend the actual show.
Which leads us, as I'm sure you've guessed, to the business at hand (and apologies if I've done something like this before). To wit:
...and your favorite post-Elvis band (or solo artist) in any genre that you never got to see and it has bugged you ever since is...???
Oh, and in case you're wondering -- my choice is a tie. Between these guys...
I actually had tickets for a Springfield show in, if memory serves, 1968, but at the last minute I got sick and couldn't go.
Boy, was I pissed. Although I was more pissed in 2011 when that rat bastard Neil Young pulled the plug on the Springfield reunion tour before it got to NYC. Fuck you, Neil, and your highly overrated work ethic.
...and these younger guys.
I totally flipped over the GBs when their breakthrough album (the classic New Miserable Experience) came out in 1992 -- I might as well have been genetically programmed to dig their combination of wistful romanticism, punk and jangle -- and courtesy of A&M Records I was on the guest list for a weeknight show they were doing at CBGBs in support of it. But I figured -- rightly, as it turned out -- that they wouldn't hit the stage until the witching hour (when it would be fashionable), and at the point I was already too old for such an exertion and stayed home.
From their eponymous 1968 waxing, please enjoy shoulda-been-contenders NYC folk/rock/psychedelic/proto-New Wave band Autosalvage and their astoundingly prescient and fabulously jangly "Land of Their Dreams."
Attentive readers will recall me singing (heh) the praises of these guys several times over the years, but never specifically this song, whose aural mismash of symphonic strings, bluegrass influenced guitars, Dylanesque vocals and kick-ass rhythm section has confounded me (in a good way) ever since I stole a vinyl copy of it from my college radio station shortly after its original release.
Seriously, it's one of my forever faves, a haunting and stunningly abstract piece of jangle-rock that has always seemed (to me) to be utterly outside of time. I mean, for years, before and after it finally got reissued on CD in the late 90s, I used to play it for people and ask them to guess when and where it was recorded.
Invariably, the answer would come "Athens, Georgia, mid-to-late 80s?"
Heh.
Anyway, the short background version: Despite Autosalvage being a big deal on the local NYC scene back in the day, their sole LP never sold much, and the concensus has always been that they missed out by not moving to San Francisco in time for the Summer of Love, when their mix of psychedelic jam stuff and tight concise song structures would probably have gone down a storm.
They were also an interesting couple of guys. Guitarist Rick Turner, who I interviewed once, was a charming dude who went on to a hugely successful career as a luthier on the West Coast; he used to write a column for Guitar Player magazine, and he made and maintained all of Lindsey Buckingham's custom instruments for ages. Bassist Skip Boone was the brother of Lovin' Spoonful bassist Steve Boone, and went on to be a seminal figure, as a producer and recording engineer, in the Baltimore alt-rock music scene. And the band's rhythm guitarist Darius Davenport was the son of one of the founders of The New York Pro Musica, among the first and best original instrument groups performing medieval and early baroque classical stuff. (His dad is on the album somewhere, actually.)
But I mean seriously -- what I wouldn't have given to have heard these guys cover a Wilson Pickett song with backing by a crumhorn section.
Anyway, the even shorter version: If the song above doesn't remind you of Television (the band) you're just not paying attention. Which is the larger point this post is about, duh.
...I discovered this over the weekend and it just blew my tiny mind.
That's the Grape's classic "Sittin' By the Window," written by Peter Lewis, and performed by -- hole. e. shit -- his daughter Arwen.
The short version: that's from an entire album of Grape covers Ms. Lewis did in 2015, which apparently none of you bastards ever bothered to tell me about; I have been listening to it obsessively since Sunday, and I just can't get over how wonderful it is, both in execution and conceptually.
I should add that I love that her name on the guitar case is in the same typeface as the old Grape logo. Oh, and John Sebastian (yes, him) is on another track from the record; remind me and I'll post it later in the week.
[The following is a true story. I first posted it here in 2008(!), but I've just tweaked it for inclusion in my forthcoming Greatest Hits book, and in case you missed it back in the day, I hope you get a kick out of it. --S.S.]
So...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 (C.W.Post) newspaper. 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 anywhere, and thus -- dreams of free LPs dancing in my head -- I petitioned the paper's 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 LP in particular stood out -- No BS, by a then obscure Detroit band called Brownsville Station. And by stood out, I mean it REALLY stood out.
Like, it sported 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 for beer-and-cigs change, as was my wont with most of the free promo LPs I knew I was never going to listen to, but rather kept it around, still shrink-wrapped, as a cautionary exemplar of esthetic hideousness. (I later learned that before Warners 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 (long dark hair and bangs, 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 -- at 13, she had painted Bob Seger's psychedelic van -- 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 said hello to her when we walked in, 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 thought 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 proceeded to have a long and mostly delightful 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. You can find out more about her...
...and her most recent work over at her official website HERE.
Incidentally, a few years after Carol and I became an item, 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."
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