That's NOT the Incomparable Eddie ("Big Foot") Griffin-Cohen, BTW.

However, I'm in roughly the same mood as whoever that cat in the photo is.



Highly entertaining posting will resume on the morrow. Swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Over On the Plus Side of the Ledger, At Least Those Striped Shirts Have Finally Come Back Into Style

So over at Facebook the other day somebody trotted out the old "what's the band/performer you most regret not having seen live when you had the chance?" poser.

Which is, of course, a question I'm pretty sure we've batted around here at some point as well. And as usual, my immediate reaction was Buffalo Springfield and the MC5.

But that also got to me thinking about a slight variant to the question -- as in "what's the band/performer whose records you particularly enjoy but whom you not only have never seen live but in fact have barely any idea what they looked like or what they were about in concert?"

And immediately I thought -- the late Phil Seymour.



I'd seen him on TV as a member of the Dwight Twilley Band, of course, but Seymour was a drummer back then, not a frontman. Meanwhile, I really like the guy's solo stuff -- particularly his cover of Bobby Fuller's great "Let Her Dance," which I rhapsodized about in these precincts back in 2009 -- and I realized I have no idea what he was like at center stage.

So -- YouTube being the veritable Library at Alexandria that it is -- a little research turned up two clips. First: from 1981, Phil and band being interviewed by Dick Clark on Bandstand before a performance of "Let Her Dance"...



...and then the official video for the song itself.



About that video, of course, I can only say that Phil's "Let Her Dance" remains a great record. If you know what I mean.

[h/t Dan Mcenroe]

Los Jose Grecos del Muerte

Okay, I will admit to having become moderately obsessed with 60s hitmakers The Rascals of late, on account of having witnessed Once Upon a Dream, their transplendent Broadway concert/retrospective/mixed media show last week, but I promise that this is the last time I'll bother you about them for the forseeable future.

In the meantime, from 1967, please enjoy "Sueno," the utterly insinuating B-side of "Groovin'"



This was one of the more obscure songs in the show -- I don't think I'd ever actually heard it before, oddly enough -- and I found it vastly entertaining in a Spaghetti Western sort of way. Love the ersatz flamenco stylings of underrated (by me, up till last week) guitarist Gene Cornish.

P.S.: A coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who identifies the source of today's title.

P.P.S.: A certain Man with No Name just hepped me to the existence of this even more obscure Brit pop-psych cover of the song by Truth.



Jeebus, that's fantastic.

Hey, I'm Old -- Cut Me Some Slack.

Taking the day off.



Regular posting resumes tomorrow.

Logrolling in Our Time (An Occasional Series)

From sometime in the early '90s, please enjoy my old chums The Rock Club with the effervescently McCartney-esque power pop gem "She's Alright."

Sung by the song's composer, the equally effervescent Ronnie D'Addario.

From the band's delightful CD Wet Money.





And may I say, and for the record, that...

"All of her girlfriends hate me
They all call me a creep and a jerk..."

...is one of the greatest opening lines in the history of the popular music field.

I should also add that these guys are still performing live in the New York area, although -- alas -- they haven't made an album since.

They did, however, contribute a terrific cut to the still available Raspberries tribute album Raspberries Preserved, which definitely behooves behearing.

Guys Without Gals. Or Something.

And speaking, as we were last week, of the fabulous Rascals Once Upon a Dream retrospective/concert show on Broadway -- for which Little Steven Van Zandt deserves numerous props in Heaven -- I found myself thinking of Men Without Women.

The astounding album Van Zandt made, in 1982, featuring the godlike ex-Rascals drummer Dino Danelli on those pagan skins.

And from it, please enjoy "Under the Gun."





Or as I like to call it around Casa Simels -- the greatest Keith Richards record Keith Richards never made.

You're welcome.

Dino Danelli is God. Seriously.

And speaking of The Rascals' Once Upon a Dream (their reunion/retrospective show on Broadway) as we were last week, I found this wonderful 1969 live clip of one of the obscure -- but still delightful -- songs featured amongst the more obvious hits.

The terrific Southern soul pastiche that is "Carry Me Back."



I don't know what TV show that's from, but may I just say and for the record that whoever directed it actually knew what they were doing -- i.e., they always cut to genius drummer Dino Danelli at precisely the right moment.

Also: The drumming here is a veritable master class in how to create a monster groove. Simple (deceptively so), yet propulsive and exciting (visually as well as musically) all at the same time.

God and Man at the Richard Rodgers Theatre

Saw The Rascals Once Upon a Dream retrospective concert show on Broadway Thursday night; I'll let ace rock critic David Browne, writing in Rolling Stone earlier in the week, speak for me on this occasion.

Are the Rascals the most underappreciated and influential band in rock? Arguably New York's first great band, they had an astonishingly varied repertoire – these were the same guys who gave us the beach-stroll beauty of "Groovin,'" the most raucous cover of "Good Lovin'," the white-guy soul of "Lonely Too Long" and the blissed-out pop of "A Beautiful Morning." They've also been covered by Pat Benatar (who did a pretty faithful remake of "You Better Run"), and long before the White Stripes, the Rascals had no use for a bass player. And they were wearing little-kid knickers years before Angus Young.

For years, another longtime devotee, Steven Van Zandt, tried unsuccessfully to broker a reunion of founding members Felix Cavaliere, Eddie Brigati, Dino Danelli and Gene Cornish despite years of bad blood between them. "These guys are such gods to me," he told Rolling Stone in 2009. "There should be statues of them." With The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream, Van Zandt has finally come as close as possible to constructing those monuments.

Opening this week and continuing through May 5th, the two-hour Broadway production brings together the original quartet for their first extended performances together since Brigati left the band in 1970. Van Zandt wrote the script and co-directed it (with Marc Brickman, who has designed and lit shows by bands including Pink Floyd).

It's first and foremost a reunion concert, with the quartet augmented by three backup singers, a bassist and an additional keyboardist. It's also partly an offspring of Behind the Music, since the Rascals tell their story through filmed interviews interspersed throughout the show (albeit with a largely upbeat tone, like the first half hour of your typical BTM). The show is also a little bit Jersey Boys, thanks to additional footage in which actors recreate key scenes in the band's story, from the time Brigati was accidentally shot by his brother to the time they were asked to remake the Olympics' hit "Good Lovin'" (which earned a standing ovation when it was performed midway through Once Upon a Dream).

Fortunately, what could have been a mess mutates into an entertaining and fairly seamless show. From the repertoire to the photo collages behind them, Once Upon a Dream takes the Rascals from their bar-band, R&B-covers days (when they were the Young Rascals) to hitmakers to New York hippies. They're no longer young, in name or age; Cavaliere is now 70, and the others aren't far behind. But over the course of two hours, they gamely recreated their old stage personae: keyboardist-singer Cavaliere's fist-in-the-air exhortations, singer Brigati's dancing-with-tambourines moves, guitarist Cornish's goofy showboating and drummer Danelli's drumstick spins. Also returning were some of the paisley shirts from their Summer of Love period: As hard as they tried, the Rascals were never truly hip, then and now.

But as Once Upon a Dream rams home, cool points weren't quite the point. Before they broke apart, Cavaliere and Brigati were a tremendous songwriting team, and they weren't afraid to be jubilant, excitable boys, on record and onstage. The show opens with the charging "It's Wonderful" and closes two hours later with their civil rights plea, "People Got to Be Free." In between aren't just the biggest hits but plenty of others – the jubilant "A Girl Like You" and "If You Knew" – that attest to the durability of their catalog. Dipping elsewhere, they resurrect obscure album tracks like the trippy garage-band swirl of "Find Somebody" and the spaghetti-Western swagger of "Sueno," both from 1967's Groovin' album, as well as lesser-knowns like the Southern-soul-influenced "Carry Me Back."

Brigati can no longer hit all the supple high notes in the unabashedly sentimental "How Can I Be Sure," and there were opening-night problems, like under-miked voices and a mix that sometimes buried Cavaliere's organ. (And what's with the clip from Pam Grier's Seventies blaxploitation classic Foxy Brown for a show rooted in the decade before?) The ending, which blames their breakup on bad management, feels a bit too simplistic. But Once Upon a Dream compensates with a set list that never lets up, and with the tale of a bunch of regular Jersey and New York guys who naively pursued a dream of blending rock, R&B, soul and psychedelia before anyone else thought it was possible.

I had 11th row seats for last night's performance, and I have only one word to add to the above.

Ditto.

Also: Dino Danelli is in fact God. And Gene Cornish turns out to be a much more interesting guitar player than I'd remembered.

Oh, and they did my favorite Rascals song of all time, too.





Heh.

RIP Scott Miller: Part II

The Loud Family.

"Take Me Down (Too Halloo)."





Just wanted to second NYMary's farewell, and I have to add that the album above is one of the most magnificent pieces of music accomplished by anybody in the 20th Century.

He was only 53 years old when he passed? Goddamnit, this whole death shit is really starting to piss me off.

RIP Scott Miller

I was stunned this morning to learn of the passing of Scott Miller, mastermind behind two of the finest pop-rock bands in my lifetime: Game Theory and the Loud Family. His 2010 book, Music:What Happened? was a terrific year-by-year rundown of the last fifty or so years of the genre.

Miller was a young man, and according to the Loud Family website, had been planning to go back into the studio this year. At this time, they're not saying what happened, but in any case, we here at PowerPop send our warmest condolences to the family and friends of this gifted artist.