Why I Love My Phony Baloney Job Some Days (An Occasional Series)

So one of the perks of doing what I do -- a big one, actually, especially given that no money is ever involved -- is that every couple of days I get unsolicited music and stuff over the proverbial transom. From people and artists I've never heard of, and hailing from (quite often) exotic geographical locations that I've never been to (and, alas, probably never will).

And, more relevantly, it's amazing how good the stuff often is.

Case in point: the following aural delight that arrived unbidden in my mailbox over last weekend.

Ladies and germs, from far away in one of the lands down under, please enjoy the quite amazing Silk Cut!!!

Or as they described themselves and their music:

Silk Cut is a four-piece rock band based in Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand.

The lead-off power-pop single "Turning The Whole World On" is from their new self-titled album [releasing today -- i.e., July 3, 2024].

Two guitars, bass and drums - the classic rock configuration. “The plan was to try and get some weaving of parts done - think Television, Swervedriver, Big Star and Ride. And, of course, when you get two guitarists with something to prove in the room, there’s going to be some sparks”

Okay, sparks for sure -- i.e., that track is pretty darned great. An instant classic, actually. Play it again slightly louder, won't you? Otherwise you'll miss that fabulous chiming riffage and the world-class harmonies.

I should add that the song is from Silk Cut's second full-length effort, and that they have been known to share stages with antipodean bands including Hoodoo Gurus, which makes them automatically cool in my book.

In any event, you can (and should) find out more about those guys, and download/order the entire album (which is equally as swell as the song above) over at their official website HERE.

Closed for Monkey Business

Between a minor injury (don't ask, although it's actually kind of amusing in the abstract), profound depression over the SCOTUS just giving Trump the legal cover to kill those people on 5th Avenue he used to fantasize about, and trying to get my next post -- which involves new music by a great band that happens to be a Friend of PowerPop© -- just right, I needed a day off.

Good stuff resumes on the morrow. Honest Native American.

Nobody Likes a Wiseass, Simels!

Okay, there are days I think this is the funniest thing I ever wrote. From The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review in June 1990.

SONGSTYLES OF THE RICH & FAMOUS

Consider the compact disc. A marvel of modern technology, it's the result of hundreds of thousands of scientific manpower hours and countless dollars for research and development. Truly a monument to man's ingenuinity and genius, it represents on every level -- intellectual, aesthetic, whatever -- the finest, most noble impulses and accomplishments of the human species.

Like...William Shatner singing "Mr. Tambourine Man"?

Well, yeah. Which is why it's such a thrill to hail the CD release of Rhino's Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Sing-Off. Because in this one gleaming five-inch package science, art and commerce have come together in a transcendent collision of the ridiculous and the sublime. It proves, whether by accident or design, that even in the latter half of the Twentieth Century (once described by Isaac Bashevis Singer as "on balance, a complete flop"), the ideal of the Renaissance Man is alive and well.

Yes, Renaissance men (and women, to be sure) are the very raison d'etre of Golden Throats. For you can find -- whence, as Alan Funt would say, you least expect it -- greart thespian talents, artists who've enriched our lives with their portrayals of Gomer Pyle, Sgt. Joe Friday, and Family Affair's Mr. French, artitists who refuse to rest on their hard-earned laurels. Here, making much -- not for crass commercial gain, but because they must -- they bring their skill and inspiration to bear on the Muse of Song.

For these selfless offerings, of course, mere mortals can only give thanks before listening, awestruck, to the recorded results. Breathes there a music lover who will not thrill to the very idea, let alone the reality, of Joel Grey (father of Dirty Dancing's Jennifer Grey) negotiating the haunting chord changes of Cream's "White Room," and in a big-band arrangement to boot? Is there out there a sentient mammalian so soulless as to be unresponsive to the Byronic nonchalance of Sebastian Cabot's virtuoso recitative of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe?" Could even the stoniest-hearted among us audition Jack Webb's "This is the city"-styled performance of "Try a Little Tenderness" without shedding a silent, solitary teardrop? Like, get real, dude.

There will be, sad to say, those whoe decry Golden Throats in the sure and certain knowledge that Allan (The Closing of the American Mind) Bloom was right, and Western civilization is doomed to the dustbin of history. Lonely, loveless, and probably physically unattractive, these bitter dweebs will note Mae West's "Twist and Shout" (superior, even, to the Rodney Dangerfield version), Eddie Albert's "Blowin' in the Wind" (featuring the very same band that backed Dylan on Blonde on Blonde) or Leonard Nimoy's virile baritone rendering of John Fogerty's "Proud Mary" and, if pressed, respond only with a scornful "Huh?!" Such people, it goes without saying, are to be avoided, for they will someday borrow money from you that they have no intention of repaying.

But that's another story. So, returning to the CD at hand, let us close by praising Rhino's usual superb rematering, by offering our condolences to my friend Greg, who nearly had a religious experience and drove his car off the side of I-95 on hearing Golden Throat Shatner assailing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and by thanking whatever gods we recognize that such a digital experience is available at better record stores at popular prices. And let us contemplate the myriad wonders awaiting us when the visionaries at Rhino offer us an ever greater celebrity anthology, one sure to include excerpts from the Robert Mitchum Calypso Album, the Brady Bunch Kids' "American Pie," and (oh joy!) Ted Knights' "Hi Guys!".

And people say that life is not worth living.

I also can't believe my notoriously strait-laced and humorless editors let me get away with it. But we'll tell you that tale on another occasion.

PS: Here's what the above looked like in the mag.

If you're having trouble reading it, just click to enlarge.