Weekend Listomania (Special Golden Throats Audio/Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental nocturnal emissions specialist Fah Lo Suee and I will be taking an exploratory meeting with George Swine, CEO of EnormoCorp Industries [R-Manchuria]. Something to do with a forthcoming senatorial campaign I may be contemplating now that the Supreme Court has decided that money talks (I would be the bullshit walks part, obviously).

In any event, further posting by moi will have to be sporadic for a day or two.

In the meantime, then, here's a hopefully fun little project for us all:

Post-Elvis Pop/Rock Singer or Group Who Most Influenced (For Good or Ill) the Art of Pop/Rock Singing!!!

No arbitrary rules here whatsoever. (I should also add that my song selections do not necessarily represent the singer or group's most influential work. They're just things I like, or that perhaps immediately sprung to mind.)

And my totally top of my head Top Seven is:

7. Bob Dylan -- Percy's Song




Believe it or not, there are still people who think Dylan couldn't sing. Heh heh. I usually play the studio version of this for those folks, but for some reason I can't find it on my computer at the moment, so this very nice live version will have to suffice. In any case, Dylan's phrasing and charmingly nasal tones have influenced countless singer/songwriters over the years, few of whom would have likely been granted artistic license without his example.

6. The Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger)-- Good Times, Bad Times




Snotty white boy sings the blues and quite convincingly -- this despite the fact that he doesn't really sound all that black, although everybody thinks he does at the time. An amazing accomplishment, when you think of it, and the template for decades of snotty white boy vocalists who probably never even heard of Muddy Waters.

5. Vanilla Fudge -- You Keep Me Hanging On



If truth be told, it wasn't the faux classical instrumental overkill that made The Fudge influential (that stuff is as dead as the papal penis, actually). No, it was their vocal approach. The notion, in rock, that you can simulate soul with pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling begins here, and legions of bad bands and singers -- mostly from Long Island, for some reason -- have made that appalling innovation part of their gestalt.

4. David Bowie -- Young Americans



The aforementioned pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling overlaid with an affectless Anthony Newley impression. Influential? Essentially, every unbearable singer out of England between 1971 and the late 80s -- Bryan Ferry, Martin Fry of ABC, The Thompson Twins, that clown in Spandau Ballet -- copped their vocal shtick from Bowie. Hey, thanks for nothing, Dave.

3. Patti LaBelle -- Over the Rainbow



Over-souling: A vocal style in which the singer throws throws some poor song onto the floor, writhing in pain and gasping for breath, and then wrestles it into submission until it simply expires. The late great Jerry Wexler, of Atlantic Records, named it, but it was Patti LaBelle who brought it to the mainstream, and just about every successful r&b singer, male or female, emulates it at the moment. I should add, of course, that Patti's 1985 "Over the Rainbow," as heard above, would be considered a laughable model of subtlety and restraint by most contemporary artistes of the American Idol school.

2. The Doobie Brothers (Michael McDonald) -- What a Fool Believes



Okay, there's no real name for what McDonald does, but it's a style in which the singer's beard does all the work, and for a period in the 80s, it was the dominant male vocal sound of pop music worldwide.

And the numero uno most influential post-Elvis vocalist actually turns out to be...

1. Cher -- Believe



Well, Cher via the dreaded AutoTune. I'm guessing the list of irredeemably crappy hit records featuring robo-vocals in the wake of 100-percent-recycled-plastic-life-form Cher's "Believe" now numbers in the thousands. In any case, the single most insufferable pop music trend of the last decade plus.

Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?

[Shameless blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best or worst movie adaptation of a stage play, drama or musical -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, if you could find it in your heart to go over there and post a comment, I might be able to con management into upping my already wildly overgenerous freelance fee. Thanks!!!]

An Another Fekakteh! Early Clue to the New Direction: Special Utter of Lack of Personality Edition

From 1984, please enjoy -- if that is the word, which I don't think it really is -- World's Most Generic Rock Singer Bryan Adams and his hit (in which he waxes nostalgic for a year he was way too young in real life to have experienced in the manner the song suggests) "Summer of '69."



I think I've told this joke before, but a few years later, when I heard that Adams was writing the theme song for Kevin Costner's Robin Hood movie, I suggested that he might want to title it "Summer of 1269."

In any case, as always, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded the first reader sufficiently courageous of ears to glean the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

And given that this is really one of the most unfairly opaque clues I've ever posted, I probably need to add early on that the World's Most Generic Rock Singer tag is the salient thing here.

Block That Metaphor!

Been meaning to post this for a while -- it's another track from that Live at CBGBs double LP from 1976 we mentioned last week.

So -- please enjoy Bowery faves The Miamis and their simultaneously funny, sweet and rousing ode to service(!) with a smile, the anthemic "We Deliver."




I know very little about these guys beyond the fact that they were from NYC and played at CBGBs a lot. It's a fabulous song, though, and as with the Laughing Dogs (see link above) it's all but impossible to imagine how it or the band ever got tagged as punk or underground.

Idylls of the King

There's rock criticism, and then there's rock criticism.

From 1982, and the simultaneously funniest and most appalling bootleg of all time, please enjoy the late Elvis Presley and the dance sensation that fortunately did not sweep the nation -- "Do the Clam."




In case you were wondering, EGS was a collection of 22 of the most egregiously awful tracks on some of the crappiest of Elvis' almost literally countless albums -- most, but not all, from the movie soundtracks he ground out by the yard (some come from the blatant throwaway live records issued in his name as well). The idea, of course, was to make fun of even the possibility that Presley was some kind of an artist, let alone a major one, and in 1982, in the wake of the rampant over-commercialization of Presley's death, that wasn't as offensive a thing to do as it might sound, at least depending on your perspective. In fact, if the people who put the bootleg together weren't themselves Presley fans, I'd be very surprised.

I actually had this on vinyl back in the day, mostly for the cover art, although the reproduction of an actual prescription written by Dr. Nick was a really nice touch as well.

I should add that "Do the Clam" (which was written, I kid you not, by Ed Wood Jr.'s girlfriend and Glen or Glenda? co-star Dolores Fuller) is not, strictly speaking, the worst song of the compilation. That honor may belong to "Queenie Wahine's Papaya" or "There's No Room to Rumble Rhumba in a Rumble Seat," but obviously we're splitting very obnoxious hairs here.

Also, I am reliably informed that there's a CD resissue of this with bonus tracks. If you own it, I would like to meet you, if not (as I am wont to say) perhaps to shake your hand.

Songs I've Just Realized I Can't Live Without: The Note He Wrote

Jim Ellison, frontman of power pop faves Material Issue, killed himself (carbon monoxide poisoning) in his Chicago garage on June 20, 1996. I didn't hear about it till a couple of weeks later -- a passing mention in (I seem to recall) an otherwise unrelated item in Billboard -- but I remember being genuinely (and somewhat unexpectedly) saddened, certainly more than I'd been over Kurt Cobain's suicide. No surprise there, really; it's not exactly a news flash that an old fart like me wasn't, shall we say, Cobain's demographic, and in any case, just about every sentient being on the planet had probably seen his exit coming. Ellison's death, however, took me aback -- there had always been an undercurrent of regret in MI's music, but the guy who wrote and sang "What Girls Want" had nonetheless struck me as somebody with a generally positive outlook on life. Besides, he was only 32, and it just seemed so sad and pointless.


Nobody ever really knows what drives another person to such extremes, of course, and family and friends have been mostly tight-lipped about the circumstances, but apparently a busted romance had something to do with it. So when Telecommando Americano, the posthumous Material Issue CD the band had been working on before Ellison's suicide, came out in 1997 I had a bit of trouble reviewing it. For obvious reasons, I could barely get past the opening track.

"What If I Killed Your Boyfriend."



A great snotty and blackly comic take on the classic rock kiss-off song, I think, which would have been enjoyed as amusingly ironic if Ellison had lived to see it released, but which resonates on all sorts of other levels in the here and now. I mean, there's really no other way to hear it except as a window into his doubtless desperate emotional state at the time.

I should add that a version of this was going to be the lead-off track on an actual solo album of cover songs I was working on in 1998. The concept had to do with awful girlfriends and tragic relationships. The working title: More Songs About Anger and Embittered Self Pity.

Fortunately, for a number of reasons, cooler heads prevailed.

Those Fabulous 80s!

A brief and belated postscript to the "favorite drum stuff" Listomania from the other week:

In good conscience, I must add a song that occurred to me about five seconds after I posted. So, from 1986, please enjoy entertainingly lachrymose synth-popster Howard Jones and the vastly superior remake of "No One is to Blame" featuring some balding guy on those pagan skins.




Like most sensible folks, I ODd on Phil Collins back in the day (jeebus -- how many annoying power ballads did he have on the soundtracks of 80s films?) and to be honest I never much cared for Genesis in either their prog or pop incarnations. Nonetheless -- the man is an absolutely brilliant drummer, with a groove and a sound that behooves respect from mere mortals, and he owns this song. Which I think is lovely, actually, but what Collins does with it simply kicks it into another dimension of gorgeous.

Indeed, I maintain that his live drum entrance in the tune's second verse is as perfect a moment as any in all of Western art.

Okay, I'm obviously kidding about that. But not as much as you might think.

Weekend Listomania (Special HCR Audio/Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental flourish of strumpets avatar Fah Lo Suee and I will be taking an emergency meeting with former nude model turned Massachusetts senator Scott Brown [R-pimped his daughters].

Actually, that's not strictly accurate. In real life, I'll be in New Jersey helping my mom celebrate her 90th birthday (Hi, mom!) but I figured it was worth saying simply to get up the nose of a sensitive reader who took offense to my making fun of a certain well-known theocratic nutcase in last week's Listomania. And if that sounds meanspirited -- hey, it's been a very irksome week.

In any event, further posting by moi will have to be sporadic for a day or two.

In the meantime, then, here's a hopefully fun little project for us all:

Best or Worst Post-Elvis Pop or Rock Song Referencing Doctors, Medicine or Just Your Health in General!!!

Yeah, yeah, I think I might have done this one before, but I'm senile, and as it turns out, there was news last week -- seriously -- that gingko biloba actually doesn't help memory at all. So this subject has obvious personal resonance.

I'm sorry...have we been introduced?

Anyway, no arbitrary rules of any kind. Go nuts.

Hey -- there are pears in my Jell-O!!!!

And my totally top of my head Top Seven are:

7. The Velvet Underground -- Lady Godiva's Operation



Lou Reed and John Cale's pathetic commercial sell-out attempt at a Top 40 hit single.

6. Madness -- Cardiac Arrest



I'd actually forgotten how much fun these guys were. Love that xylophone solo!

5. Frank Black -- Headache



Great song, but when I watch the video I think -- for a fat guy, he doesn't sweat much.

4. Joe Jackson -- Cancer



As in "everything gives you..." And this was from Joe's big mainstream commercial breakthrough album, ironically.

3. The Beatles -- Dr. Robert



If memory serves, the real life meth-dispensing Park Avenue doc the Beatles are referencing here is the same one who used to peddle speed to the Warhol crowd, thus lending credence to the rumor that Brian Epstein was a big fan of the Velvets first album. Come to think of it, I seem to recall reading somewhere that Lou Reed actually took a meeting with Epstein in '67 to discuss management, but for whatever reasons -- including Epstein's sudden death, obviously -- it never came to anything. History sure would have been changed in unfathomable ways if it had, of course.

2. James Brown --I Feel Good



And who can argue with that?

And the numero uno song brought to you by the Aetna Insurance Group quite self-evidently is ---

1. Humble Pie -- I Don't Need No Doctor




I would just like to go on record as saying that I have never been able to listen to this track without laughing. Seriously. I inevitably visualize it being sung by four screaming gay midgets. I have no idea why that is, but it's true.

Alrighty, then -- and what would YOUR choices be?

[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best or worst big screen debut by an actor or actress -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, I would be your BFF if you could see your way to going over and leaving a comment, even though there's not a single gratuitous Avatar joke. Thanks!]

Oh Great, Yet Another Deliberately Obscurantist Early Clue to the New Direction

From 1976, please enjoy Bowery faves The Laughing Dogs and their winningly winsome powerpop confection "It Feels Alright Tonight."




This is from the "Live at CBGBS" double album, and it has been a source of wonderment to me for all the years since it came out that the Laughing Dogs ever got tagged as punk or underground. Jeebus, this could pass for Todd Rundgren or maybe Supertramp for heaven's sake, and that organ solo in the middle wouldn't be mistaken for amateurish or avant-garde by anybody with functioning ears.

The group went on to make two studio albums for Columbia; they're apparently very nice, although I've never heard them (neither has ever been on CD, but I seem to recall they're available on a free download site somewhere). Incidentally, the second one -- The Laughing Dogs Meet Their Makers-- has one of the great album covers of all time. A photo of the band being pummelled by their actual moms. Heh heh.

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

Hey -- I Got a Check For Fifteen Dollars For This Joke!

My comment at the Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop Critics Poll, on newstands now.

Not a particularly good year for music or much else, I think, but it did at least provide a vindication for Devo's theory of things evolving backwards. I for one clearly remember contemplating diva du jour Amy Winehouse back in 2007 and hoping she wouldn't kill herself. And yet here I am now, a mere two years later, contemplating diva du jour Lady Gaga and hoping I won't kill myself.

Steve Simels
Hackensack, NJ

My best albums of the year list is over there somewhere as well.

In Everyone's Life, There's a Bummer of '67

You know, as a rule, I try to post mp3s here of stuff with some -- uh what's the phrase I'm groping for? -- genuine musical interest.

Okay, okay, except for that Beatle Barkers stuff.

Not today, however.

Seriously, this is just heinous, although I think it's worth posting for extra-musical reasons. So, from the depths of the Summer of Love, please enjoy(?) Marcia Strassman and her deeply inauthentic ode to the inner DFH in all of us -- "The Flower Children."




Yes, as we mentioned last week, that is indeed the same Marcia Strassman who later found fame and fortune as Gabe Kaplan's wife Julie on Welcome Back, Kotter. And who better to deliever the immortal lyrics "The flower children/really know what's right/And they're just trying to tell this world/that there's no need to fight"?

Really -- who?

And here's the dirty little secret: To me, and (this has been scientifically proven) to every other straight Jewish guy of my generation, Julie Kotter was, how you say, fantasy fodder.



C'mon -- you don't think we were watching that stupid show for Ron Palillo, do you?

In any case, I'm sure you'll forgive me for including this example of Strassman's early, funny work.