Okay -- not the greatest one ever. 😎
My apologies -- I am feeling extremely lousy, physically, today. I won't bore you with the details, but just consider yourself lucky you're not having the same problem.
An actual fab Weekend Listomania goes up tomorrow -- no fooling!!! 😎😎😎
Jeez, I don't even want to think what they would have done to Sinatra when he styled himself Chairman of the Board. Or Elvis as The King.
In all seriousness, when somebody sent me the above, I actually wasted time searching the internet to see if it was real. I mean -- Fox News? Seemed credible to me.
The bottom line, of course, is that when we can't tell actual news from parody, we're in serious trouble.
More conventionally music-themed posting resumes on the morrow.
I had absolutely no idea that these had guys covered the song, let alone that it went to Number 8 in the UK, deservedly. I should also add that fabulous DC5 lead singer Mike Smith is without a doubt the most underrated vocalist of the Brit Invasion. Seriously, he's just great on this -- soulful, inspirational, and damn.
Oh, and also -- speaking of things I didn't know, please ponder this, which I found at Wikipedia yesterday.
[Dave] Clark was a close friend of Freddie Mercury, whom he had known since 1976. He was by Mercury's bedside when the Queen singer died on 24 November 1991.
Have I mentioned that words fail me?
Also hah. 😎😎
Regular -- and very cool -- music posting resumes tomorrow.
I know, I know, it seems unlikely, even given my widely celebrated lack of imagination, but it's true. Seriously -- I did the research.
So, of course, this leads us, inexorably, to today's business. To wit:
...and your favorite (or least favorite) album cover on a post-Elvis LP in any genre -- pop, rock, soul, country, jazz, comedy, original cast/soundtrack or classical(!) -- is...???Discuss.
No arbitrary rules whatsoever, but for obvious reasons -- particularly that, post-Sgt. Pepper, the album cover had pretensions of being an art form -- I think we should restrict it to the pre-CD era. I mean, top of my head, I can't think of many small-scale covers that have made much of an impression on me in the last couple of decades. But your mileage may vary, of course, so I'm not gonna be a Hitler Jr. on the subject.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, my favorites are a four-way tie.
Beginning with this splendidly tacky example of 50s/60's classical cheesecake.
Yes, I said classical cheesecake. Trust me, it was a real genre, usually represented on stuff from the smaller, indie, classical labels. I should add that there were countless LP versions of this Rimsky-Korsakov warhorse that were similarly (and some a little more daringly) art-directed than the above. (Think: boobs.)
And then there's this one, which speaks for itself.
And this, which I think remains the most evocative and best art-directed album cover of all freaking time. I mean, really -- forgetting the layout and typography of the thing, I can hear the music and feel the Manhattan summer heat just looking at it.
And then, of course, there's this masterpiece.
What -- you seriously thought I wasn't gonna include something by a band I was in? It is to laugh. 😎
I should add that the above is currently hanging, framed, on the wall of my local Forest Hills watering hole the Keuka Kafe.
If you're in the neighborhood, drop by to ogle it and have the pierogies. Tell 'em PowerPop sent you.
Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?
And have a great weekend, everybody!!!
From the May 6 2025 issue of American Songwriter:
In July 1964, the Beatles made a triumphant return to Stockholm, Sweden, after their February debut in America. They had been there nine months earlier on tour, where they had been greeted at the airport by only a few dozen fans.The Fab Four took this in stride, seeing an opportunity to connect with their Swedish fans. However, when they returned, the airport was flooded with thousands of people. Par for the course after the Beatles’ big Ed Sullivan debut.
Among their fans that day was Roger Wallis, a British-born musician and researcher. In 1964, he was a member of the student brass band at the Stockholm School of Economics. The group called themselves Mercblecket, and Wallis often sang and arranged the music for the group.
Wallis managed to speak with Paul McCartney, and after chatting, he shared a copy of Mercblecket’s EP. Titled Mercblecket Beats the Beatles, the EP featured four covers of Beatles songs. It included “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “This Boy,” “All My Loving,” and “I Saw Her Standing There.”
The cover of Mercblecket’s EP is eerily similar to the cover of the Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The group dressed in marching band uniforms and posed around a bass drum. The Beatles, in turn, seemingly recreated this on the Sgt. Pepper cover.
However, many Beatles fans have pointed out that there are more specific references and allusions in the Sgt. Pepper cover. This is most likely more than just a reference to a Swedish brass band. Still, the coincidence is hard to ignore.
In footage taken at the time of the Beatles’ arrival in Stockholm, it’s clear that Mercblecket were in attendance at the airport. Dressed in their uniforms, the brass band regaled the Fab Four with tunes as they exited the plane.
While the similar cover art is probably just a coincidence, many have speculated that Paul McCartney could have had the image in mind when he conceived the original sketch. McCartney was the first to receive the EP, after all.
Oh sure -- it's probably just a coincidence.
Right. And I'm Marie of Romania. 😎
[h/t Jai Guru Dave]
Seriously, I've loved that song since it first appeared (ironically enough on the 1982 soundtrack to Fast Times at Ridgemont High) but I always thought Jackson's version could have rocked a little harder. In any case, somehow I managed to completely miss the above (which is transplendent) until I stumbled on it last weekend, and I would just like to thank all you bastids for not hipping me to it earlier.
Ingrates!!! 😎
From the promo material:
In 1979, The Knack kicked open the doors for a global power pop explosion, and a year or so later, almost as quickly, the doors closed again, but not before a mass of their contemporaries followed them through. Soon, a bunch of others got caught up in the excitement and the record business relearned the power of guitar-driven pop - the first few years of the '80s were as exciting for power pop as the last couple of the 70s had been, and even when it returned to the underground, the music continued to flow throughout the decade.We're on the second disc, in between Marshall Crenshaw and Cheap Trick -- and how fabulous is that?‘I Wanna Be A Teen Again’ follows the 80s power pop explosion from its hypocentre early in the decade to its enduring late period gems, exploring both leading and lesser lights, the old hands and new talents who made it such an exciting musical happening. By the middle of the decade, the term power pop had been all but retired, but a handful of new bands found success by avoiding it, whilst new movements, including the Paisley Underground and indie pop, helped keep others alive under new brandings. All the while a small number of holdouts, the pop equivalent of the soldiers lost in the jungle after the war had ended, strove to keep the music and the name alive.
Packed with classic cuts and long-overlooked rough diamonds, and appearing at a time when new outfits like The Lemon Twigs pick through the body of 80s power pop for material and inspiration and some key artists like Redd Kross and The Bangles are celebrated in books and film, ‘I Wanna Be A Teen Again’ is a timely examination and celebration of this action-packed era and its thrilling sounds.
The set features over 75 songs, neatly alternating between hits and deep cuts from a myriad of name artists/genre faves (I can't believe we're on an album with The Bangles, Rick Springfield(!), The Go-Gos, Shoes and Eric Carmen) and obscure characters like us; you can peruse the complete track listing -- and pre-order the thing, which will be available starting July 18 -- over at the Cherry Red website HERE. I'm told there will be a booklet with extensive liner notes and lotsa cool photos, including one of the Flo Mos; I'm also informed that you'll be able to stream the set over at Spotify, and I'll keep you posted on further details as I get them.
And may I just say, and for the record (as it were) that I'm over the moon thrilled and honored that we're a part of this thing, and my only regret is that my departed bandmates -- 12 string ace Andy Pasternack, who wrote the song, and drummer Glen Robert Allen -- didn't live to see it.
PS: Oh, and here's the compilation's title song, which I must confess I was previously unfamiliar with.
Of course, I am now, unsurprisingly, totally nuts about it.
[cross-posted at Floor Your Love]
I mean, what the hell...it's not like the Power Pop Police are gonna come after me.
So -- this leads us inexorably to today's business. To wit:
The greatest male vocalist, in any popular music genre, who made hit records in the second half of the 20th Century, was Nat "King" Cole.
Discuss.
And by discuss, we mean starting with yes or no, obviously.
In case you're wondering, I vote yes.
Why? Well, as you can plainly tell from that clip, Nat's magisterial phrasing and sheer vocal gorgeousness simply oozed soul, elegance and sex appeal. And he made it look and sound so easy it felt almost supernatural.
Plus, when he wanted to -- he rocked.
Fun fact: His 1957 recording of "When I Fall in Love" (i.e., the one above) reached number 4 in the UK charts in 1987, when it was re-released in reaction to a version by Rick Astley. Heh.
Okay, look, I'm being a little silly here deliberately; I'm aware that this is all subjective and that of course there's no one greatest singer (or guitarist or songwriter or group).
And "greatest"? What the hell does that even mean?
I mean, c'mon, I'm a professional.
But, and I say this as a life-long rock-and-roll chauvinist: Nat rules, okay?
So have a good time with this, won't you?
And have a terrific weekend, everybody!!!
That's dead-on, and very funny. I particularly like the bit about Sonic Youth.
Why? Because (1) the original LP version was never released in the States, and (2) for some reason it was never on CD anywhere till 2022 (on some difficult to find non-US label).
Oh, and which, BTW, you can now get from Amazon for...dig this... two hundred bucks.
I mean -- what?
Weird!!!
Anyway: While browsing some Shocking Blue videos the other day, I discovered to my delighted surprise that said album -- complete -- is now up on YouTube for free.
Je repete -- complete. For free. Can you freaking believe it?
Anywhere, here's the link and enjoy! It's actually a really good album!!!
Have I mentioned that YouTube is the contemporary version of the Library at Alexandria? 😎
I've been on a Shocking Blue kick of late, in case you hadn't noticed.
Anyway, I had never previously seen the above video until I chanced across it the other day, and musical merits aside, but may I just say, and for the record, that lead singer Mariska Veres could have had me if she'd played her cards right. I mean -- hubba hubba, as today's kids put it.
But seriously, though -- for the life of me, I can't comprehend what this inspirational verse...
Put some love in your heart
Like you put the ink in the inkpot.
Learn it and you will enjoy it baby
To put the ink in the inkpot.
...could possibly mean.
Oh well, it was recorded, after all, in a uniquely censorious era, when songwriters around the world were forced to take great pains to disquise what they were really talking about. 😎
Inspirational verse:
I'm not one to start complaining
Why am I so sour?
I'm not losing ground, I'm gaining
Why am I so sour?
Everything is going my way
Traffic's moving on the highway
Don't mind eating fish on Fridays
Still I'm feeling sour
I actually owned that album solely for "You Tell Me Why," a gorgeous folk-rock ballad that's one of the great lost singles of the Sixties, but that lyric from "In Good Time" always used to make me laugh when I cranked it up in my college dorm room. I hadn't thought about it in ages, but the other day, with the recent passing of Pope Francis, it (perhaps unsurprisingly) popped into my head unbidden.
I should add that if it came on the radio now, I kinda wonder how many contemporary listeners would even get the historical reference. 😎
And I finally figured -- oh fuck, let's just go for it.
Which leads us inexorably to today's business. To wit:
...and the worst fucking song/record ever in any pop genre, from the second half of the 20th century to the present day, is...???
No arbitrary rules whatsoever, for obvious reasons, but I will say that if you advocate anything by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler I will come to your house and kill you.
And in case you're wondering -- this is MY nominee.
And if you're wondering why, here's a 1991 column I wrote for The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review that pretty much lays it out.
MY MADONNA PROBLEM (AND YOURS)By now, apparently everybody in the world has seen Madonna's "Justify My Love" video and formed some passionate opinion about it.
That this has happened is, to be sure, no small testament to the business smarts of the former Madonna Louise Ciccone. In fact, given that the clip is verboten on MTV, its ubiquity bespeaks a media and marketing savvy demanding serious respect from mere mortals like you and me. And frankly, all the attendant brouhaha (Censorship! The Decline of the West! Bad Haircuts!) really is sort of neat: It means that what passes for art these days can still stir up controversy.
Of course, the irony here is that the artifact in question is hardly worth all the fuss, especially by the standards of Madonna's earlier work. Face it, kids: The song itself is just a functional piece of disco erotica, and the now-notorious video simply sells it efficiently, nothing more, nothing less. Granted, "Justify"'s evocation of polymorphous perversity might be hot stuff if you've never seen a Visconti movie or Duran Duran's "Girls on Film." But otherwise it's notable solely as an indication of Ms. Ciccone's alternately pretentious and pedestrian sexual preferences (translation: she has a thing, as they used to say, for Eurosleaze). In short, no big deal.
And yet, and yet...I've been thinking a lot about Madonna of late, a chore occasioned by the release of The Immaculate Collection, her nearly complete (that is, without "Justify") video retrospective on Warner/Reprise. And the conclusion I keep reaching has kind of brought me up short, especially since it seems to be a minority view, barring Tipper Gore and a religious nut or two. The conclusion, of course, is that Madonna's most hysterical detractors actually have it right, that this woman and the messages she sends are mostly indefensible on a (gasp!) moral level.
I am, I realize, verging on Cranky Old Man territory here. Obviously, there's no law saying pop music should be spiritually uplifting. Equally obviously, much of it -- including stuff I like a lot -- isn't. That's part of pop's appeal. If singles and videos were nothing but humanist pieties with a good beat, nobody in his or her right mind would ever bother with them.
All that allowed, however, The Immaculate Collection still makes me want to take a shower when it's over, and I think I know why -- it's so nakedly, so honestly scummy. Yes, clip after clip vibrates with subtexts ranging from the distasteful to the nearly evil: porn-palace peepshows as harmless rites of passage ("Open Your Heart"), the Sixties civil-rights struggle as just another pop image to be plundered ("Like a Prayer"), heartfelt odes to unwanted pregnancy ("Papa Don't Preach"), narcissism posing as liberation ("Vogue"), untrammeled greed ("Material Girl") and on an on. And yes, individually they can be (and have been) justified with the sort of arguments (Postmodern Irony! Subversive Ambiguity! She's Only Kidding!) you'd expect to hear in This is Spinal Tap. Unfortunately, when you watch the clips back to back their cumulative impact is anything but ambiguous or ironic. You realize that this stuff is an accurate representation of one woman's sensibility (her soul, if you will), like some ghastly disco version of Advertisements for Myself.
None of this is to knock the music. It's true that if Madonna had been run over by a truck in 1985 the subsequent direction of pop would not have been altered one whit, and it's hard to imagine a young musician somewhere listening to her albums and thinking "Wow, what a cool riff. I oughtta steal it." Still, the best of her singles are, unquestionably, well crafted and damnably catchy, which is why a lot of folks -- particularly feminists and gays desperate for something politically correct to dance to -- seem so ready to overlook or reinterpret what's actually being peddled.
Well, I can sympathize with that. Lord knows there are enough records in my collection that are (at best) guilty pleasures, and I'm hardly advocating some sort of ethical litmus test for pop music. But we shouldn't pretend that this stuff is value-neutral, either. What I guess I'm really saying is, okay, sure, go home and dance all you want to The Immaculate Collection: some nights I might even do the same thing. But when we do, let's at least have the grace to hate ourselves for it in the morning.
Okay, that's my two cents. And yes, as you can tell from the above, I could nominate any number of other Madonna songs for the honor, but I'm limiting myself to just the one in the spirit of fidelity to this week's theme question.
Alrighty then -- What would YOUR choices be?
Discuss.
And have a great weekend, everybody!!!
Heh.
A particularly argumentative music weekend posting will be here on the morrow. 😎
That chore completed, let us stipulate that said list was compiled in 2006, and thus there's nothing on it by, say, fashionable contemporary mediocrities like Chappell Roan or Morgan Wallen.
And yes, I think we can all agree that most of the songs listed therein do, in fact, suck.
That said, I think it's kinda jive that there's nothing on it pre-Beatles; apparently the people at Blender either believed contemporary music as we know it began in 1965 or else they thought there was no crap whatsoever in the 50s.
Yeah, right.
But speaking of the Fabs, I was also a little irked to note the presence of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" at number 48. Which, whatever your opinion of the song musically -- I think it's charming -- displays a certain, er, ignorance as to its historical context and significance.
As you can see from this piece from MOJO, which I originally posted after it ran in their September 2008 issue (not coincidentally the 40th annniversary of The White Album).
That summer, race was a much bigger story than the Beatles.Between starting "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" in March in Rishikesh and the first attempt to record it in Abbey Road on July 3, Conservative Shadow Defence Secretary Enoch Powell gave the notorious "Rivers of Blood" speech on April 20, 1968 (which would have been Hitler's 79th birthday). In it, he prophesied a racial apocalypse in Britain if immigration from the former Empire continued. It was headline news, provoking protests both pro and anti.
So when Paul McCartney wrote what he intended to be a Number 1 hit whose male lead was clearly to be identified as West Indian ("Desmond is a very Caribbean name"), set to music that hybridised British music hall and a ska beat, how could he not be making a point? McCartney was in the business of making points in a publically palatable style: he'd written the Beatles previous single A-side, "Lady Madonna," in solidarity with women's daily struggle. The inspiration for "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" came from a citizen of a former British colony typical of those in the Powellite firing line. Born Jimmy Anonmuogharan Scott Emutakpor in Nigeria, jazzman Jimmy Scott came to England in the '50s, for a while playing congas in Georgia Fame and the Blue Flames; he met McCartney in Soho's Bag O'Nails club. His Yoruba catch-phrase, 'ob-la-di, ob-la-da,' meaning 'life goes on', sparked a hit chorus just as Ringo's stray catch-phrase 'a hard day's night' had with Lennon four years before. And like that 1964 smash, McCartney's new song celebrated workaday romance -- but whose folksiness pictured a friendly face of Britan's controversial new arrivals in a familiar British street setting, the West Indian lilt giddying up a public bar knees-up.
The old joanna [cockney slang for piano -S.S.] intro came courtesy of John Lennon whose "fresh attitude," according to Macca, "turned the whole song around" after it had become bogged down in repeated takes with Ringo and George that totalled 42 hours over seven days.
Vetoed as a single by the other three -- all that effort and ill-temper for "granny music" was their verdict -- the song went to Number 1 anyway as covered by Marmalade, a better version by Leeds-based West Indian musicians The Bedrocks having just scraped into the Top 20.
And Jimmy Scott? He played congas on an early take (Anthology 3), and McCartney later settled a legal bill for him in return for dropping a claim for royalties on the song. Later he joined UK ska revivalists Bad Manners, in 1986 contracting pneumonia on tour in the US and dying after being held for hours naked when strip-searched by immigration officials at Heathrow Airport. McCartney really had a point, it seemed. But not even his fellow Fabs got it. -- Matt Snow
I must admit, that whole story was news to me when I read it in MOJO.
And hey -- its sudden relevance to current events here in the USA will escape no one's notice. 😎
In any event, I've always liked the record, as unfashionable as it may have been to say in rock crit circles, and it's certainly more important than the snobs at Blender gave it credit for.
...and apart from it being fabulous and funny just in terms of the montage, I was suddenly struck by how much better the song itself was than I remembered.
Seriously -- dead catchy, and it rocks. I mean, what's not to like?
So I got a huge chuckle when I looked it up over at Wikipedia and discovered the following:
In the early 21st century, Blender magazine published a list of the "50 worst songs of all time", with "Dancing on the Ceiling" listed at No. 20.
I mean, wow. There's just no pleasing some people, apparently. 😎
Okay, that really made me laugh. 😎
Less self-indulgent actual music posting resumes on the morrow, weather permitting.
Reason I bring it up is because, for most his career, I could take or leave Billy Joel, but mostly leave. Only album of his I ever listened to for pleasure was Glass Houses, i.e., his New Wave move, and thus atypical; other than that, starting with "Piano Man," I kinda found him embarrassing.
The odd thing is, all these years later I suddenly think he's terrific. I even went to one of his now legendary run of shows at the Garden, and thought it was among the best concerts I'd ever attended.
"We Didn't Start the Fire" still sucks, though. 😎
Which leads us, inexorably, to today's business. To wit:
...and the artist you basically disliked in their prime but have -- seemingly inexplicably -- come to appreciate lo these many years later is...?
No arbitrary rules, and no, it doesn't have to be a superstar of any ilk. Just somebody who you didn't care for in their commercial heyday but now think are kinda cool.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, my choice -- aside from Billy Joel, obviously -- is Queen.
Who -- with the exception of one or two tracks -- I mostly couldn't stand back in the day. And then I saw the movie, and now I'm their biggest fan. Go figure.
I mean -- how did I not get how stone gorgeous this is? I mean, sweet Jeebus -- I can listen to that for the bass and drums alone!!! 😎😎
So -- who would YOUR choice(s) be????
Discuss.
And have a great weekend, everybody!!!
And now here, from their just released album Wavelength, please enjoy the lead off track, "Getaway."
I think you'll agree when I say -- that is power pop heaven fer sure.
Seriously, the entire album (which, have no fear, includes the aforementioned Hollies cover) is that good, and what are you waiting for? You can order it, either to stream or in physical form, over at their website HERE (not to mention at Amazon, Spotify, Bandcamp and the rest of the usual suspects). You'll also find gig info over there, and man, I wish I could afford a trip to Illinois to catch the upcoming show they're doing May 3rd at International Pop Overthrow Chicago.
Oh -- and about that CD. As you can see...
...it's packaged with an actual spindle attached -- i.e., an adapter for a 45 rpm record -- as a bonus.
Hey vinyl fans -- how freaking cool is that? 😎
Hey -- they can't ALL be great. 😎
Actual music posting resumes on the morrow, weather permitting.
Ladies and germs, may I please present for your attention -- director Brigitte Berman's Artie Shaw: Time is All You've Got.
I'm not even remotely a scholar of the Big Band era, but before seeing the film, I at least knew the bare-bones of Shaw's history -- i.e., that afficianados of his genre are more or less agreed that, musically speaking, his stuff was more interesting than that of his better known contemporaries Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, and that, on the recorded evidence, his ouevre swung harder than anybody elses. (He was also probably closer than any of them to a contemporary rock star, given his love/hate relationship with his audience, his ahead-of-its time interest in the esthetic of the recording studio, and his understanding of celebrity itself as a kind of Post-Modern phenom). I should add that the film originally came out in 1985; I was thus amused the other day to learn that after it won an Academy Award (for Best Documentary) in 1987, the ever-fractious Shaw sued its makers on the grounds that since it had become more critically and commercially successful than expected, he was thus entitled to a greater share of the film's profits (Shaw lost the suit, BTW).
Anyway, when you see the flick, I guarantee you won't be bored for even a millisecond. Shaw is a resolutely magnetic presence -- funny, articulate, combative -- and he's onscreen (in shot-for-the-film interview footage) for most of the movie. The myriad guest interviewees, many of whom are almost as compelling as the titular star, include Shaw's 8th(!) and last ex-wife, actress Evelyn Keyes (Scarlett's younger sister in Gone With the Wind) and the Velvet Frog himself, the great Mel Torme, neither of whom fail to address Shaw's (er) difficult qualities.
I should also add that there's a particulary wonderful sequence about the making of his 1945 hit recording of Gershwin's "Summertime," featuring trumpeter Roy Eldridge...
...and if you can listen to the finished product without getting goosebumps you need to have your meds checked immediately.
In any event, adding to the fun, the new 4K restoration (supervised by Berman) looks and sounds fantastic. The film has never previously been available for home viewing, so I'm happy to report that you'll be able to stream it at Film Movement Plus starting this Friday; a Blu-ray version goes on sale over at Amazon at the end of next month.
Bottom line: To paraphrase the immortal words of Siskel and Ebert -- four very enthusiastic thumbs ups!!! 😎
I've been a fan of Carrack since forever (i.e., when he was singing "How Long," with Ace back in 1974), but I must confess I had never encountered the above until last week, when Friend of PowerPop© Sal Nunziato posted a link to it over at his invaluable Burning Wood blog.
So I'm sharing it.
And not out of laziness, damnit, and fuck you for suggesting that! 😎
Seriously, the song itself is one of my all-time faves, and while Carrack's neo-Spectorian approach may not necessarily be the way you guys hear it, for me at least, it -- in Sal's phrase -- pushes all kinds of my buttons.
Hmm...perhaps I should check out the album it's from as well.
Oh, and you should be thankful I didn't make an "ex-squeeze me?" joke in today's title. So there. 😎😎
Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.
Basically, it started when I was reading about the recent mini-brouhaha over country music mega-star Morgan Wallen walking off-stage during the final credit bow of the episode of Saturday Night Live he had just appeared on. (In case, mercifully, you're unfamiliar with the guy, here he is with one of his performances from the show.)
Anyway, I was trying to characterize the music the guy does, in a way that would sort of sum up my disdain for pretty much all current commercially successful country music, which frankly kinda sucks IMHO.
And then it hit me.
Auto-Twang.
Thank you, I'm here all week. And like I said, insufferably pleased with myself.
Which leads us, inexorably, to today's business. To wit:
...and your favorite or least favorite genre appellation for an offshoot of pop/rock/country/folk/soul music is...????
No arbitrary rules, but the more obscure the better, as far as I'm concerned. And whether you enjoy the genre itself is irrelevant -- we're talking strictly the name (which was, if truth be told, probably originated by some putz rock critic).
Discuss. (Also: A coveted PowerPop No-Prize© will be awarded to any reader who coins a genre name as memorable as my new one).
Oh -- and I'l tell you my two least favorites for free.
Death Metal (ugh) and Kraut-Rock (yuck).
And yeah, my favorite is Power Pop, but you obviously already guessed that. 😎😎
Anyway, have a great weekend, everybody!!!
So anyway, the other day I was talking with a certain Shady Dame of my acquaintance about a gorgeous remake of The Hollies' "Look Through Any Window" (by Michael Carpenter) that I had posted here earlier in the week. And I mentioned that it had just occurred to me that in some ways the remake was an attempt to give the song a more modern sound along the lines, specifically, of Del Amitri's 1997 "Not Where It's At." A record which as I have noted here on previous occasions is perhaps my favorite piece of power pop jangle of the last several decades.
Here's the artifact in question, as the band performed it on Conan O'Brien's show; I have appended the lyrics for reasons that will be soon be obvious. Give it a listen, won't you?
But the one girl that I want, ain't easy to please with what I've got
With some girls it don't matter where you're aiming/With some girls it don't matter how you act/And some girls they don't care what car you came in
But the one girl that I want, she wants that one bit of geography I lack
Yeah she don't want me 'cos I'm not where it's at
Yeah I'm not where it's at
And some girls they will worry about reactions/And some girls they don't give a damn for that
But somehow I ain't ever in on the action/'Cos the one girl that I want, she wants that one little quality I lack
Yeah she don't want me 'cos I'm not where it's at
Yeah I'm not where it's at
I don't have my finger on the pulse of my generation
I just got my hand on my heart/I know no better location
Yeah she don't want me 'cos I'm not where it's at
Yeah I'm not where it's at
With some girls it don't matter who you hang with/With some girls it don't matter how you talk/And some girls they are easy to be yourself with
You're welcome.
In any event, I proceded to make my case to said Shady Dame by putting up a YouTube of the song which had the lyrics scrolling down as the tune progressed, and the following conversation ensued. [Note: All dialogue rendered verbatim.]
ME: See what I mean? Sounds a lot like Carpenter's "Look Through Any Window."SHADY DAME: Yeah, absolutely.
ME: Of course, the Del Amitri song could have been a hit in 1965 also.
SHADY DAME: Well, except for one thing, obviously.
ME: What do you mean?
SHADY DAME: The girl in the song is gay. That might have been a problem back then.
ME: Gay? What are you talking about? She doesn't want him because he's not where it's at, i.e. he's not trendy enough. As he says "I don't have my finger on the pulse of my generation."
SHADY DAME: Uh Steve -- "The one girl I want, ain't easy to please with what I've got."
ME: Come on, that doesn't...
SHADY DAME: "The one girl I want, she wants that one bit of geography I lack..."
ME: Oy gevalt.
And there you have it, folks. It's official -- I'm the densest humanoid on the planet.
Seriously -- I can't believe I'd been singing along to that record for almost twenty years and never noticed the, uh, subtext.
PS: Here's a clip of that "Look Through Any Window" remake I mentioned up top.
I think you'll agree that's pretty freaking gorgeous, but if you try to tell me it's actually about voyeurism I'm gonna be very upset...😎
From Keith Richards' vastly entertaining 2011 autobiography:
Mick and I spent months and months trying to write before we had anything we could record for the Stones. We wrote some terrible songs whose titles included "We Were Falling in Love" and "So Much in Love," not to mention "(Walking' Thru the) Sleepy City," a rip-off of "He's a Rebel." Some of them were actually medium-sized hits...
Well, actually yeah, some of them were. For example, from 1964, please enjoy The Mighty Avengers -- of whom I can find no biographical info other than they seemed to have hailed from Coventry -- and their version of the aforementioned early Jagger/Richards songwriting foray "So Much in Love."
Note the production credit, i.e. who's probably playing keyboards on it. 😎
And, bringing things full circle, from their 1980 debut album, here are punkish pub-rockers The Inmates (of "Dirty Water" cover fame) and a version that sounds -- I suspect -- a lot more like the original Jagger/Richards demo.
If truth be told, I've loved that Inmates cover, passionately, since a vinyl promo copy arrived at my old offices at the The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review. And I'll bet a Stones live version back in the day would have sounded absolutely fabulous on stage, regardless of what Keith now thinks of the song.
Incidentally, when I originally posted a version of the above back in the day, I mentioned that I had stumbled across a bootleg of the actual Stones demo for the song; if that was in fact true, I have completely forgotten about it in the interim, and a search of my archives for it has turned up zilch. Bummer.
I should also add that I have since learned that Peter Frampton's old band The Herd did a cover of it in 1966, but don't worry -- I wouldn't think of inflicting THAT on you at this late date. 😎😎
My god, that's fantastic.
Seriously, I was not a big fan of the whole 80s video music explosion thing, but after I encountered the above clip for the first time on the network, I started watching MTV obsessively in hopes of seeing it again; it's just absolutely thrilling on a zillion levels.
I hadn't thought about it in ages, but I stumbled on it on YouTube by accident the other day and was pleased to find I still freaking loved it. So I thought I'd share.
Incidentally, the song itself has a rather complicated provenance; as you may know, that's NOT Hartman singing in the clip, although it is his voice on the version on the soundtrack album. It's actually a pretty sordid music biz story, and you can read about it over HERE.
I should add that if you look closely, you'll notice that one of the backup guys in the Sorels is the wonderful actor and standup comic Robert Townsend, of Hollywood Shuffle fame.
I should also add that, considered objectively, Streets of Fire itself is pretty cheesy -- rock-and-roll fable my aunt Fanny. But I don't care; it was worth making for that clip alone.
So, without any further ado, please enjoy The Maccabeats and their, shall we say, less than traditional/stylistically varied take on the Passover classic "Dayenu."
That is so great I can't stand it. Seriously -- how do you say "words fail me" in Yiddish?
And I wish I knew if Dolly Parton has ever heard the tribute to her at the end. I mean, my guess is she would love it.
Anyway, that leads us inexorably to our weekly business. To wit:
...and your favorite (or least favorite) parody/satirical remake/reworking of a pop/rock/soul/folk song is...???
No arbitrary rules of any kind, you're welcome very much.
Discuss.
Meanwhile, have a great holiday weekend, everybody. Good Yontiff! And to paraphrase nice Jewish boy Warren Zevon -- enjoy every matzoh!!!
Incidentally, you can hear lots more stuff by the aforementioned (not aforeskinned, obviously) Maccabeats over at their Bandcamp page HERE.
Inspirational Verse:
I was impressed with every outfit she was wearing
Her favorite show was The Saint with Roger MooreShe seemed to be a true authentic music lover
She was a fan of Roger, but not Donald Glover
She laughed at every joke I told her
Not too young, she was nicely older
And she would swear that you would never hear her swearing
She liked the climates that were colder
And offered me the warmest shoulder
She liked a Guinness and knew what's a good pour
But then I found out who she voted for
I don't know which tickles me more -- the lyrics (hey, I know the feeling!) or the vaguely Revolver-ish sound of the arrangement (love those fake strings!)
More to the point, I cannot tell a lie -- Mr. Eno is actually the nom du disque of Friend of PowerPop© John Dunbar, who attentive readers will recall as the head honcho of The John Sally Ride, a marvelous pop/rock band whose praises I have justifiably sung here on several previous occasions.
I should add that you can (and should) download/buy the song at the Bandcamp link above.
I should also add that when the new album is available in its entirety, I'll let you guys know. You're welcome very much. 😎
Burke was pretty obviously the best drummer to have emerged from the whole late 70s/early 80s punk/new wave hoohah -- a guy who channelled, convincingly, the likes of Ringo, Keith Moon and Dino Danelli -- and as you can see from the clip above, he was pretty much Blondie's secret weapon, as crucial to their sound as Debbie Harry's New Yawk Girl Group vocalese.
I saw him live a bunch of times -- mostly with Blondie and at least once with Dramarama -- and he never failed to impress. Met him once, briefly, at somebody's gig, and he couldn't have been more charming.
And now a desperate plea for help: If memory serves, I saw Burke once, in the early 90s, drumming in the band of some solo late-punk guy who had a very good sort of guitar oriented album out on (possibly) SubPop at the time. I remember enjoying the show thoroughly (I think it was at Trax), but for the life of me, I can't remember who the guy was, and a search of the Burke discography over at Wiki has been unavailing.
Anybody have an idea who I'm talking about? I'll be your best friend...
Also, have I mentioned that this death shit is really pissing me off? Thank you.
...in the misty morn and the dusky dusk?
Hey, i dunno. But seriously -- this is obviously the greatest album cover of all time. (Click on the image to enlarge it if you're having trouble reading.)
Actual power-pop related stuff resumes on the morrow. Honest.
But a postscript on Amsterdam, which is a helluva town. In fact, while walking around there over the weekend -- and I should add that the Shady Dame and I were by far the oldest people we saw the whole time, which was pretty hilarious -- we stumbled across Record Mania, which bills itself (apparently deservedly) as the best record store in the city. And had an absolutely smashing time browsing and shmoozing.
For starters, turns out Mike the Proprietor is a Floor Models fan!
Just kidding -- actually Mike was just a good sport. But he assured me he would listen to the album ASAP.
But even cooler -- look what I found in the store's homegrown Dutch music section...
Wow. I scored a Shocking Blue LP...in Holland! Now I can die happy!
Beginning the second and final leg of our overseas vacation; France (specifically Paris) was a gas, and presumably the Netherlands will be as well (no pot jokes, thank you.)
Anyway, this brings us to today's business. To wit:
..and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Elvis continental European (NOT British) pop/rock/folk solo artiste or band is/are...???
Okay, here are my two faves.
That Shocking Blue live clip is new to me; it's nice to know lead singer Mariska Veres (aka the Roma Grace Slick) was as sexy onstage as she was on record.
As for The Sevens, they were known as, justifiably, the Rolling Stones of Switzerland, and that record was produced, brilliantly (love those gunshots, which were recorded live in the studio), by the pre-disco Giorgio Moroder.
Alrighty then - what would YOUR choices be? Discuss.
And have a great weekend, everybody. See you on Monday, when we will have, hopefully, made a safe return to the Land of the Tariffs!
i should add that Top Secret is both my all-time favorite comedy AND my favorite rock musical, and that Kilmer is brilliant in the Elvis role.
Have i mentioned that this death shit is really starting to piss me off?
Okay, actually no it isn't, but that IS the name of the (mostly) heavy metal (mostly) vinyl record store a cerain Shady Dame and I visited in Paris yesterday.
It's a terrific little hole in the wall obsessives catacomb, and we had a lot of fun browsing. Alas, I can't seem to get the close-up photo I took of the Queen action figures set they had in the window to download, but trust me, it was a riot. (We would have bought the thing, but 75 euros seemed, shall we say, a tad extravagant.)
Anyway, if you're in Paris it's worth a trip to RRV; you can find out more about the joint (including its address, natch) over at its Livre du Visage page HERE.
Anyway, having a great time here in the City of Light, as expected, but in the meantime -- from the 2016 expanded reissue of our 1995 classic Fire Lane -- here's Gerry Devine and the Hi-Beams (a/k/a The Floor Models Mark II) and their obviously relevant ode to the charms of "The Foreign Girl."
Featuring some weirdo whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels on bass. Written and sung by the titular (heh) Monsieur Devine.
It kinda blows my mind, but I don't think I've ever actually posted that before. Pretty cool song though, n'est-ce pas?
Coming tomorrow: an actual dispatch from our current journey on the Continent. Hopefully involving a Gallic record store. 😎
As attentive readers will recall, long-time Friend of PowerPop© Allan Rosenberg, aka Capt. Al, has been toiling on a series about his fave recent artists for us for a while now. (The first installment of these musical musings, about Feist, appeared here back in July.)
And now, without further ado, here's the next to last installment. Take it away, you old sea doggie!!!]
Welcome to the “Best Rock&Roll Music of the 21st Century, Part VII”, by Captain Al!!!
We now come to the section where I honor the best utility players on the field. All all-stars in their own right, these great women musicians don’t get the recognition their solo careers deserve but are nonetheless masters at their position.And because I'm a big time fan of Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women I’m going to start by mentioning some of the greats who were, in fact, the Guilty Women.
Cindy Cashdollar:
Cindy is not just one of the great women slide/pedal steel players, she is simply one of the greats! She’s also very modest, as my one 30 second conversation with her proved to me, but you'll have to take that on faith.
Lisa Pankratz:
The short version: Pankratz is one of the most jaw droppingly good drummers of either gender I’ve ever seen! One time at an end of a performance I witnessed, the rest of the band left the stage while she remained behind the drum kit totally exhausted. She just sat there unable/unwilling to move while she got herself back together (and felt proud of herself at how good she had just been) before exiting the stage. Yes, I’m just imagining that, but in my mind it’s true! And I bet you I’m correct!!! 😎
Christy McWilson:
Mcwilson? She sings like a feisty (heh) angel! Christy has released solo albums, been the singer of the 1990’s band The Picketts (they’re wonderful) and sang with Dave Alvin for decades! Here she is with Dave & The Guilty Women singing one of her original songs “The Weight of The World”.
Kristin Mooney:
And now we take a break from les femmes coupables, although the spirit remains the same. Anyway, besides sporadically releasing her own solo work, Mooney has sung with Peter Himmelman, on the road with The Pretenders and is a top studio session vocalist. Here she is performing on Peter’s “Furious World” webcast show and nailing the song “Let Me In." Originally, this was a song Peter featured on, but as you can hear, she sang it so brilliantly it became totally hers.
Okay, everybody -- thank you guys for sticking around for this series, and I hope you've enjoyed it. Next time, i.e. in the final entry, I'll feature my very favorite performer of our current century.
And I bet you’ll never guess who she is!
--- Captain Al
Hmm. I'll take that last as a challenge, mon ami -- and I can't wait to find out. In the meantime, thanks again for hipping us all to some very cool artistes.
And oh yeah -- actual new posting (from the Paris of actual France -- NOT from Forest Hills, the Paris of the Northeast) resumes demain!!!
A certain Shady Dame and I are getting ready to head off to the Continent for a week or so. Starting tomorrow.
Excuse: Desperately neeeded relaxation. And yeah, this may not be the smartest thing we've ever done. I mean, given what we are all currently enduring from the Real Life Bond Villain/Manchurian Candidate administration, who knows what might happen when we go to the airport?
Barring being shipped to a private prison in El Salvador, however, we will be checking in on a more or less daily basis while we're out of the country -- starting on Monday, when Part VII of PowerPop friend Capt. Al's's 20th Century Best-Of series will be here.
In any case, let's go right to today's obviously relevant business. To wit:
...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Elvis pop/rock/folk/soul/hip hop song featuring a title or lyric snippet/verse in a foreign (i.e. other than English) language is...?
No arbitrary rules whatsoever, although you get extra points if any of them are in Yiddish.
Here's mine, BTW.
Which also has the virtue of being nicely futuristic. 😎
Okay, I was just being silly with that one, obviously. My real favorite -- and this is a bit of a cheat, but it's so fabulous you'll forgive me -- is this one, which I had completely forgotten until I was mucking about in my archives yesterday.
I should add that the above is also a clue to where La Dame Ombragée et moi will be seeing the sights by Sunday.😎😎
Alrighty, then -- what would YOUR choices be? Discuss.
And have a great weekend, everybody!!!
Also -- pray for our safe return! Or stage a GoFundMe in case we need a good lawyer! 😎😎😎
You know, I just gotta say -- somedays it simply astounds me just how talented a lot of my friends are.
In any event -- you can listen to the rest of the album (which includes mucho other cool stuff stuff by worthies including The Grip Weeds, Thrift Store Halo and a great live track by PowerPop faves The Weeklings) and download it at Kool Kat's Bandcamp page OVER HERE.
I should probably also add that Brian D'Addario (i.e., one half of the Twigs) has a fab gear solo album out just now as well, but our friend Sal over at Burning Wood kinda beat me to it.
In this case, I'm referring to a wonderful 2008 rock documentary you almost certainly have never seen.
Here's what I had to say about it at the website of Box Office Magazine at the time.
A love letter from two fans -- writer/director/producers Michael Stich and Fred Cantor -- to a semi-obscure rock group, America's Lost Band is a fascinating retelling of one of the great what-might-have-been stories of American music of the '60s. Those who saw them back in the day have long insisted that The Remains could have been as big as the Rolling Stones. This new documentary on their brief career is unlikely to do as well in theaters as the recent Scorsese-directed Stones vehicle Shine a Light, but it's all but guaranteed to have a long and well deserved success on DVD.The Remains were more or less a footnote to rock history until relatively recently. Formed by four Boston University students in 1964 -- guitarist/singer Barry Tashian, bassist Vern Miller, pianist Bill Briggs III (the group's preppy heartthrob) and drummer Chip Damiani -- they quickly became the most popular live act in New England thanks to a prescient combo of volume, high energy, British Invasion smarts and American R&B moxie. Over the course of the next year and a half they had a couple of regional hit singles, got to strut their stuff on TV (notably an appearance on The Ed Sulllivan Show) and eventually wound up as the well-received opening act on The Beatles 1966 tour, just in time for the release of their one and only album. They broke up soon after, for reasons that have never been clear (and ALB does little to clarify). Over the years since, however, their name started to loom large in garage rock circles, and several critics -- including future Bruce Springsteen producer Jon Landau, who was an early and frequent booster -- helped keep the flame alive. Their album was finally reissued on CD to some interest in 1991, but it was the 1997 release of an often bootleged studio audition tape -- demonstrating that they really were the fire-breathing live act the legend suggested -- that convinced people there was more here than nostalgia. The band subsequently reformed for the occasional live gig, and they've been recording and touring off and on -- these are middle-aged guy with families and jobs, obviously -- ever since.
ALB, narrated by the J. Geils Band's Peter Wolf (another early fan), tells the story with what little archival footage survives -- grainy 8mm stuff from the Beatles tour and that Ed Sullivan appearance -- and with new behind the scenes footage shot over a period of two days in 2006, culminating in a rousing live performance at an L.A. record store. The Remains themselves come across as regular guys, simultaneously bemused by and proud of the fact that their music has survived, and their enthusiam for it and each other is infectious. If the film has a problem, however, it's a certain lack of drama. All four Remains today are happy, healthy, apparently prosperous and, in general, unscathed by rock-and-roll, which is nice for them but something of a let-down for anybody expecting Behind the Music-style dirt. (Tashian, in fact, has had a long and productive musical career, including a ten year stint as guitarist in Emmylou Harris's backup band.) If you can get beyond that, however, you'll probably be charmed by the story's happy ending -- rock pioneers getting the respect they deserve after all these years -- and the warmly affectionate way that Stich and Cantor let it unfold.
I stand by the above, but as alert readers have probably guessed, my prediction about the film's DVD(!) success was, shall we say, overstated; in point of fact, the film has never (up till now, and read on) made the transition to home video/streaming/et al.
I am happy to say that's about to change, however; more than 15 years after America’s Lost Band screened at the Nashville Film Festival and elsewhere, the rock doc will finally be made available to the general public, although as a re-edited 27 minute short and not as the feature-length film that I was lucky enough to see back in the day. (The backstory: There were some licensing costs/rights issues connected with the first part of the film—primarily related to Beatles footage/visuals—that held up distribution for all this time.)
In any case, ALB will start streaming nationwide April 8 on various PBS platforms the day after Connecticut’s PBS station, CPTV, broadcasts the television premiere.
Check, as they say, your local listings; I've seen the new version and it's WELL worth your time.
Oh, and in the unlikely case you're unfamiliar with The Remains, here's a track from the abovementioned studio audition tape.
Pretty cool, no?
Like I said -- check your listings and watch the film.
Tomorrow: Interesting news about a cool rock documentary you may have missed.
From the NY Times:
Touring Kennedy Center, Trump Mused on His Childhood ‘Aptitude for Music’
“I have a high aptitude for music,” he said at one point, according to people at the meeting. “Can you believe that?”Asked about the anecdote, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, did not directly address it but said that the president “is a virtuoso and his musical choices represent a brilliant palette of vibrant colors when others often paint in pale pastels.” Mr. Cheung said that, given Mr. Trump’s roles as president and Kennedy Center chair, “there is nobody more uniquely qualified to bring this country, and its rich history of the arts, back to prominence.”
Words fail me.
Okay, that off my chest, let me assuage your anxieties by noting that there will be nothing but actual music posting (mostly about new stuff) next week, honest. Cross my geriatric heart.
And that brings us right along to today's business. To wit:
...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Elvis pop/rock/country/folk/soul/doo-wop/novelty song featuring nonsense (i.e. meaningless) syllables in its title or lyrics is...?
No arbitrary rules -- obviously, what would be the point? 😎
In any case, here's my three faves.
Okay, the Beatles song is sort of a cheat, in that it actually has an important subtext -- in ways that back in the day nobody in the States quite understood (you can read about it HERE). But I still think it fits today's criteria. And hey, it's my blog, so I get the goddamned decisions -- wanna make something of it? 😎😎
I should also add, and for the record, that the Capris thing makes me absolutely swoon. Also: David Seville was a fucking genius.
Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?
And have a great weekend, everybody!!!
(The music starts at the 3:58 mark if you want to skip the usual show-biz banter leading up to it.)
But seriously -- that's quite impressive. That kid can really sing.
I mean, yeah, it's not as good as Robert Downey Jr. covering "River" (on Ally McVeal, in 2000)...
...but what is? 😎
