Our good friend and proprietor of the invaluable Burning Wood blog Sal Nunziato linked to this the other day and I just couldn't resist putting it up over here.
I mean, my god -- this is freaking great.
I actually had a copy of the album that's from back in the day; I don't remember anything else from it (although a look at the track listing, which includes a lot of other potentially interesting covers, has intrigued me). But I vividly recall playing the shit out of the above at top volume (under heaphones, obviously) at my office at Stereo Review. And thinking then -- as I still do now -- that it may actually improve on The Who's original.
BTW, I should add that the credits on that are Shaun singing lead and Todd Rundgren and the members of Utopia doing everything else.
Okay, as I mentioned earlier, I've had to go out of town unexpectedly for a couple of days, and consequently I've had to keep my scribbling to a bare minimum until my return.
So without further ado, this leads us inexorably to the subject of today's business. To wit:
...and the best/most immediately memorable lead-off track to a great album is...???
Discuss.
No arbitrary rules whatsoever, although I was tempted to add "excluding the Beatles or Stones". But heck -- if that's the stuff you wanna pick, go for it.
In any case, if you were wondering what I'm going for, it's this (which may surprise you).
To which I can only add -- wow. And the song that opens their previous (debut) album is pretty fucking amazing too. 😎
Had to go out of town unexpectedly for the next couple of days (family mishegass -- nothing too serious) so I didn't have time to write something for today. Mea culpa.
Regular posting -- by which I mean a particularly interesting Weekend Essay Questiion -- resumes on the morrow.
From Second to None, the just-released new album by Toronto's ace jangle-rockers The Get Alongs, please enjoy the band (plus a small but enthusiastic invited audience) live in the studio with the album's killer lead-off track "Come On."
I gotta say, as much as I appreciate that song in the abstract, the video has an old-fashioned (duh) garage band vibe to it that I just find irresistible. I was not previously familiar with those guys, who I'm informed have been around since 2017, but after seeing that I am an instant fan.
I should add that, as charming as the live rendition is, the studio version from the actual album is on a whole other level of great. You can hear it (plus the rest of the album and lots of their earlier stuff) over at their Bandcamp site HERE.
From January 1967, please enjoy the original (i.e. with Jerry Corbitt as the Lennon to Jesse Colin Young's McCartney) Youngbloods, and their utterly exquisite "All Over the World" (La La)".
An absolutely perfect mashup of Brill Building romanticism and folk-rock; proto-power pop too, come to think of it.
Pardon me for one more day's obnoxious geezer self-indulgence, but I happen to believe that the eponymous debut Youngbloods album, from whence that derives, is an absolute freaking masterpiece on every level. And let's not even bring "Get Together" into the discussion.
In any event, the song seemed like a fitting late coda to last week, in which we argued for the virtues of the Youngbloods contemporaries The Sopwith Camel and Chrysalis. Especially considering that I saw those Youngbloods guys at the tiny Greenwich Village dive the Cafe Au-Go-Go (seating: about 200-300) immediately after the album's release. And that the band sounded exactly -- and I mean EXACTLY -- like the above.
Sometime in the '90s, I suddenly and unexpectedly came into a hefty chunk of cash, and having recently gone through another of the Great Girlfriend Crises that have punctuated my life on numerous occasions since college, I decided to indulge myself. And no, that did NOT mean (as I have no doubt longtime readers are assuming) splurging it all on hookers and blow. 😎
Instead, I planned to go into the recording studio to make a solo album or EP; it was going to be a concept record entitled More Songs About Anger and Embittered Self-Pity (for obvious reasons) and I had a whole list of songs I wanted to cover that fit the bill and some musician friends who were ready to accompany me on the journey.
The short version: Cooler heads ultimately prevailed. After a couple of rehearsals, I decided that the project was kind of silly, and I proceeded to piss away said hefty chunk of cash on...I frankly don't even remember what. Probably just the blow (but not the hookers). 😎😎
Hey, what can I say -- it was the '90s, and we were all a little over the top.
Anyway, that leads us now, inexorably, to the subject of today's business. To wit:
...and if YOU were going to make your own version of More Songs About Anger and Embittered Self-Pity, what songs by which artists would you include?
Discuss.
In case you're wondering -- and this will come as no surprise to the abovementioned longtime readers -- my Numero Uno pick, both then and now, would be this. In fact, I think I actually rehearsed a punkish take on it with a guitarist friend of mine from The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review who could do a very good Johnny Ramone impression. (Hi, Mike!!!)
So this past Monday, in our discussion about sadly underated first-generation SF band The Sopwith Camel, our good friend and faithful reader Capt. Al mentioned another (far more) obscure fave of mine, the upstate (Ithaca) NY band Chrysalis, who made one very interesting album in 1967 and then were similarly lost in the mists of history.
I absolutely adored said album (Definition, released by MGM) and after getting myself over to YouTube and listening to it for the first time in about 40 years, I thought I'd get all self-indulgent and share.
I find both of those genuinely haunting, and IMHO there are several songs on the album at least as good (yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking). That said, if you conclude that their whole gestalt is just insufferably twee, I will not dispute you. I mean, at the very least, it's hard to argue that they were not, shall we say. very much of their time.
I should add that I saw them live (twice, I think) and their songs sounded vastly better in that context; as much as I dig the record, the production is pretty undistinguished/undernourished. I should also add that I think singer Nancy Nairn has one of the coolest voices ever and (you'll have to take this on faith) that they had a lot of charisma onstage.
Self-indulgence now over. More recent music, more suited to the actual theme of this here blog, resumes on the morrow. 😎
An idiosyncratic blog dedicated to the precursors, the practioners, and the descendants of power pop.
All suggestions for postings and sidebar links welcome, contact any of us.
