Davy Jones 1945 -- 2012

The cutest Monkee seems to have died of a heart attack today.

Here's his big number (with Toni Basil) from Head, the most underrated rock movie of all time.



Damn, I feel really old, suddenly.

The Greatest Thing Ever Recorded

Seriously. I'm not kidding about this.

This is better than Bruno Walter's Mahler 4th, Trout Mask Replica, The Sun Sessions, Birth of the Cool and Bidu Sayao's Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 combined.

Also all the Hot Five stuff. And whatever else undeniably classic shit that's just slipped my mind or that you like.



Seriously -- here's the shortest track from the album, posted in the hopes that the copyright police won't shut us down.

A live version of "Don't Make My Baby Blue," written by the great Mann-Weill team and more familiar from the studio take on Shazam. And let's be frank -- if these guys had ever played New York City, they would have been (justifiably) bigger than a certain band featuring that Jimmy Page or whatever his name was.





Seriously -- stop reading now and just go over to Amazon and order a copy here.

Have I mentioned that this album is the greatest thing ever recorded? Seriously?

Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited

Taking Tuesday off for what we used to call a Mental Health day, but we will return tomorrow.

The wait will be worth it, incidentally, and the above title is a clue as to why.

These Foolish Things Remind Me Of...

From a reunion show in 2007, please enjoy pop punksters Cheap Perfume, at some wonderful low dive in New York City, doing to "Boys" what neither The Shirelles or even The Beatles ever quite got around to doing.



The short version: These dames originally got together in 1979 and quickly became a fixture on the NYC rock scene centered around C.B.G.B.'s and Max's Kansas City, although somehow I completely managed to miss them back in the day. Which of course is actually a good thing, because I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever...



...that I would have made a massive ass of myself over every one of them had I chanced across them in a club. If you know what I mean.

In any case, they broke up a few years later, but finally got back together for the reunion show seen above. They've been at it off and on since, and now they've just released their first recordings ever -- an E.P. on Turn-Up Records (home to power pop god Richard X. Heyman) featuring a blistering studio version of "Boys" and three new originals mixed by the incomparable Ed Stasium, who's made superior guitar-rock records with the likes of The Stones, the Ramones and Living Color.

You can -- and very definitely should -- order the disc over at CD Baby here.

Weekend Listomania: Special I'd Prefer a New Edition of the Spanish Inquistion Edition

Well, it's Friday and you know what means.

Actually, I am not even going to attempt a topical joke this week, having read the following in yesterday's New York Times. It seems that Ron Paul is running a new TV ad...

...directed at the youth of America, which begins with a picture of Rick Santorum. “Is this dude serious?” the announcer demands. “Fiscal conservative? Really?”

The ad then goes on to say that Santorum’s votes to raise the debt ceiling were “not groovy.”

"Not groovy."

Words, as they often do, fail me.

So without further ado, and because things will be characteristically quiet around here for a couple of days, here's a little project sure to give us all endless hours of harmless diversion:

Least Groovy Most Annoying Single, Video or Album Track of the New Wave Era

No arbitrary rules, you're welcome very much, and yes, we've probably done something like this before. I guarantee at least the number one pick is new, however.

And my totally top of my head Top Five is/are:

5. Missing Persons -- Destination Unknown



Yes, I am aware that Terry Bozzio was a technically accomplished drummer. I will also stipulate that Dale Bozzio was, as they used to say of certain WWII pinups, really built. They still sucked.

4. Toronto -- Your Daddy Don't Know



This is actually a cool song -- and I'm a huge fan of the New Pornographer's note for note cover -- but this particular video is so generically Eighties (and the band so utterly sexless) that it gives me the creeps.

3. The Thompson Twins -- Hold Me Now



It's like David Bowie trying to cover the Four Seasons, and it sucks even worse than that makes it sound. It's official, folks -- the Thompson Twins were the Most Useless Band of the 80s.

2. Spandau Ballet -- True



These guys were too dumb to know that they looked and sounded just like the band that played The Enchantment Under the Sea prom in Back to the Future, except without the soul. Or maybe they weren't. Either way, you would need a heart of stone not to laugh at them.

And the Numero Uno blah blah blah simply has to be...

1. Total Coelo -- I Eat Cannibals



Okay, I can't get this damn record out of my head. Will somebody please just shoot me?

Alrighty then -- what would your choices be?

Yet Another Early Clue to the New Direction: Special "But at least I have a husband" Edition)

Meant to post about this the other day during our discussion of my old colleague and chum David Klein's splendid new book If 6 Was 9, but here's a number song Dave unearthed that a) I'm embarrassed I hadn't been aware of before (given that it's on Rhino's invaluable girl group box set) and b) is just fricking incredible.

From 1966, please enjoy Toni Basil (yes her, the MTV-era irritant) and the astounding B-side that is "I'm 28."

	Toni Basil - I'm 28 .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

I'm 28, it's getting late
What have I got to do?
My time is going, my fears are growing,
My chances now are few
Lacquers, lotions, sprays and potions
Scented, unguent, mild and pungent
Lipstick, pancake, shadow for the eyes...
It's all been advertised
But... it's getting me nowhere

I'm 28, it's getting late
What have I got to do?
My time is going, my fears are growing
My chances now are few
Dress revealing, sex appealing
Fur and feather, suede and leather,
Naughty, haughty, sure to glamorize...
It's all been advertised
But... it's getting me nowhere

It's nice to be respectable,
Saintly, sweet and fair
But I don't want to finish off alone...
In a rocking chair

I'm 28, it's getting late
What have I got to do?

I should add, and for the record, that the man(!) who wrote this remarkable post-Lesley Gore proto-feminist classic was the absolutely incredible Graham Gouldman, author of more great songs than I can enumerate, beginning with "Look Through Any Window" and "Bus Stop."

And as Dave puts it in the book, "In a kinder and wiser alternate universe, Toni Basil would be more famous for 'I'm 28' than the rah-rah, mutton-dressed-as-lamb paean to anal that is 'Mickey.' What a pity."

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

Unsolicited Track of the Day: (An Occasional Series)

Got this via e-mail and laughed out loud.

Dear Steve,

Firstly, we write to you from chilly London, mind and limbs gripped by the late evening freeze. We apologise if our coherence staggers somewhat.

And now; belated greetings from The Shamefaced Sparrows. The story so far;

Having recently fled our bone-‘n’-carcass-made nest in Shithole, East Midlands, we have fluttered and soared through increasingly glum and greying skylines. With ascending eagerness and hope, we scoured the grim landscape, determined to espy a never-fading, ever-blooming Eden.

We found Hackney.

Still, what can you do?

So, wing-clipped and bound in the bowels of Dalston we find ourselves. And it is here two gutter-sparrows combine the savage sonics of Link Wray with the melodic guile of the French Ye-Ye girls. If that sounds like a fanciful notion; consider the dynamics of both: Youthful, Exuberant, Joyous, Dangerous, Daring and Sexy.

You know, the good stuff.
.
We only ask of you a few minutes of ear-cocked concentration. Thank you, and enjoy.

Fortunately, I actually dug the music they enclosed with it.



Link Wray meets Ye-Ye indeed. And it made me laugh even harder than the e-mail.

There's more over here if the above tickled you as much as it did me.

My Absolutely Last Swear-to-God-I-Really-Mean-It Post About "Waterloo Sunset"

Fast forward through the brief interview footage and go directly to the performance.

Words fail me.



Seriously -- why haven't the Brits knighted Ray Davies already? Screw that, why haven't they nationalized him?

[h/t Laura G.]

I am Not a Number, I'm a Free...Oh, Wait a Minute, I am a Number. Sorry.

IT was conceived, like so many other things, over a beer. I had recently moved my family from the East Village to the Lower East Side (a tiny distance geographically, but a world away in New York City). Whenever time allowed, I'd swing around the block to Lotus, a no-frills corner bar on Clinton Street with big windows and an eclectic mix of locals. Some were on the way up, like Stef, an unremarkable girl from the neighborhood who would stop by to drop off her gig fliers and smoke a cigarette with Ivan the bartender (apparently, she was signed to Interscope and performed around town under the name Lady Gaga). Some were on the way down, like a cohort of regulars known as Rafael the Failed Poet, Full-of-Shit Ken, and Bad Ronald.

That splendid paragraph opens the introduction to If 6 Was 9 And Other Assorted Number Songs -- Vol 1: The No. 1 Song in Heaven to Peng! 33, by my old colleague and chum David Klein. And the "it" being described (in, as it were, utero) is both the book itself and its rationale -- the discovery of a whole new phylum of trivia, i.e. songs with numbers in their titles.



The book had its origins in a column -- aptly titled Numerology -- that Dave wrote for the estimable Merry Swankster music site. The original entries have been cleaned up and expanded for the dead-trees version, but now as then, there are rules for this sort of thing.

Herewith a couple (although not all) of them, as established by Dave, for those playing at home.

The definitive song must have a number in its title somewhere.

The number has to stand alone (so "1999" would not be eligible for 19 or 99; "In the Year 2525" is only eligible for top honors in the #2,525 category. Sorry Zager and Evans fans).

Ordinals are OK ("19th Nervous Breakdown;" "32nd Floor").

Classical music compositions (Mozart's Sympony No. 27 i G Major, K. 199) are not eligible. It would be idiotic to try to compare the relative merits of Haydn's Symphony No. 96 with "'96 Tears."

As you can tell from the title, volume I expounds upon the relative merit of songs featuring the numbers 1 to 33; a second volume, due later in the year, will take the list into the mid-70s. The third (for which the entries have not yet been written) will appear some time in 2013, barring an invasion from space, a la Independence Day.

I should admit, by the by, to a certain relief when I talked to Dave in an expensive long-distance telephone call last week. Which is to say that I didn't recognize scads of the bands and songs he discusses in the book, but fortunately for my critical self-esteem, it turned out that many of them had been unfamiliar to him as well before he embarked on the project. To paraphrase Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich -- "It's called research, Ed."

Interestingly, while two songs that tied for the number 21 honors were by artists who might be described as overly familiar -- Chuck Berry and The Shirelles -- the songs themselves were obscure in the extreme. To wit...

Chuck Berry's "21" comes from his period of greatest innovation but oly came to light fairly recently, on a release of Berry's complete 1950s Chess recordings...While the music is giddy enough, with a rhythmic scheme similar to "Maybelline," the sentiment is rather tame for a Chuck Berry song. The singer is a practical guy who can tamp down his lust and wait patiently for his sweetheart to turn 21 so he can marry her.

...and...

	The Shirelles - Twenty-One .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

The young woman belting out the Shirelles' "Twenty-One" has no time for delayed gratification. The song's caffeinated clip and string heavy arrangement give it a touch of camp and, true to it's era, the final verse tries to rein in the singer's ardor...[The song], a B-side written by Luther Dixon, who also penned "16 Candles," "Mama Said" and "Soldier Boy," is a credible slice of teenage life circa 1961.

I should also add that when I asked Dave what was his favorite of all the songs he'd discovered while doing the research, it was this charmingly salacious early 60s doozy by The Showmen (of "It Will Stand" fame....



...which will appear, for obvious reasons as the number 39 entry in Vol. 2.

I should further add that, for my money, this song from the current volume, which shows up in the discussion for the number 28 top slot, is just too cool for words.



In any case, the bottom line is that If 6 Was 9 is simultaneously a really staggering piece of pop/rock historical scholarship as well as perhaps the most entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny bathroom read, in any genre, so far in the 21st (heh) Century.

Dave has advised me that there'll be an official website for the book on-line in a couple of weeks, where you'll be able to listen to audio clips of many of the songs he unearthed along with other neat stuff; I'll remind you all about this when the site goes up.

In the meantime, you can -- and clearly should -- order If 6 Was 9 either as a Kindle-ready e-book over here or in old-fashioned paperback form over here.

Instrumental Backing Tracks of the Gods: Saturday Moment of "Mea Culpa" For the Last Couple of Crappy Posts

From 1969, please enjoy the once and future Fab Four and a reconstruction of the unedited backing track of George's "I Me Mine."




Let's be honest -- fond as I am the tune, it's not remotely one of the Beatles best. And at the time they were working on this, they were barely speaking to each other and in fact in the process of breaking up.

And yet...the level of whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts creativity and inter-group chemistry here is pretty much beyond anything that you or I or other mere mortals will ever accomplish even in our best moments. And Paul's bass playing is downright supernatural, IMHO.

Wow. Just wow.

[h/t Gummo]