Closed for Monkey Business

Had a productive but very late night.

Regular all dressed and peppy postings resume on the morrow.

Oh Hell, Let's Just Make It Butch Walker Week

From 2012, please enjoy the great you know who on Daryl Hall's brilliant TV series.

With "Bodegas and Blood."



Sweet jeebus, that is amazingly wonderful. Listen under headphones, BTW.

And may I add that I would give my left nut to be a guest on an episode of that show. Singing or playing anything.

Is This the Most Exciting Rock 'n' Roll Song Ever? Some Signs Point to Yes!!!

From 2000, please enjoy the Marvelous 3, featuring the great Butch Walker...

...and their brilliant ode to negative solipsism "I Could Change."

New Year's Day, lyin' next to my bed
With a hand in my pants and a song in my head
About being depressed til I figured out
It ain't the '90's anymore

I looked through a Raygun and looked through a Spin
Then I ripped out the pages of clothes that were in
Threw on my Pumas and tried to throw it all behind me

And Mona Lisa smiled as I was walkin' through the door
She said, "Yo, you gotta keep it real, just like the year before"
I second that emotion and twenty thousand more

[Chorus]
I could change and you could change
But everybody would stay the same
I could change and you could change
But everybody would stay the same
I know

Still on vacation with nothin' to do
So I got in my car and I got a tattoo
Just to cover up the one that I got of you
When I was drinkin'

I really only now regret the things I haven't done
Stayin' under covers in the dark it ain't no fun
I'd rather take my glasses off and stare right at the sun

Yeah!
I know
Yeah!
I know

I don't precisely recall how I stumbled across this song -- which is by a band I missed back in the day -- but Jeebus H. Christ on a piece of challah toast, this is about as killer as it gets.

I mean seriously -- if this one doesn't get you jumping around you need immediate medical attention. And I should add that the lyric is so vividly written that anybody, of any generation, should know the feeling.

Your Monday Moment of Words Fail Me: Special "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" Edition

So two weeks ago, on our first day in San Francisco, a certain Shady Dame and I were walking down Geary Street; I believe the plan was to go see the old Fillmore West, which is still a concert venue. (It was way disappointing, BTW, but that's a subject for another post).

At any rate, in the course of our moseying, we passed a small art gallery called the San Francisco Art Exchange, and suddenly we were both flummoxed to see a set of six photos from the Abbey Road album cover shoot -- five outtakes and the familiar iconic LP -- hanging on the wall.

Intrigued, we went in, and suddenly realized the gallery was also hosting this amazing exhibition.

And yes, the Abbey Road collection is the last commercially available complete set of the original photos, and can be obtained for your personal collection, if you have a lot of disposable coin, for 800 thousand clams (cheap, as they used to say at MAD).

In any case, we wound up talking to the gallery rep, a wonderfully enthusiastic and kind young man named Matthew Ely, who was gracious enough to take BG and I on a tour of the gallery's full cache of rock and movie memorabilia. Among the unbelievable stuff available for purchase there was one of Jim Marshall's last remaining prints of the cover for the first Moby Grape album (a mere 10,00 bucks, if you want to buy me a birthday present), an actual edition of Gered Mankowitz's famous shot of Jimi Hendrix in his trademark military coat, and signed-by-the-photographers prints of famous Stones and Beatles images up the wazoo.

But this is the one that totally killed me -- the Blonde on Blonde cover photo, signed by shutterbug Jerry Schatzberg. I was dumbstruck.

To browse the gallery's collection -- and BTW, the SFAE is also the largest dealer of original artwork by the great Alberto Vargas (yes, him) -- click on their website HERE.

And if you're ever in San Francisco, stop by 458 Geary Street and tell 'em PowerPop sent you.

For Andy

Self-indulgence alert: I'm gonna get a little sentimental here.

So as long time readers are aware, back in the early 80s I toiled in a 12-string pop band called The Floor Models. And also that Andy Pasternack, one of our principal songwriters (and our Rickenbacker ace), passed away unexpectedly in 2012.

I should add that apart from being immensely talented, Andy was also one of the sweetest guys who ever wore shoe leather; as Gerry Devine (our singer and other principal songwriter) put it to me recently -- Andy never got the memo that if you're a genius you're supposed to be a dick to other people.

In any case, there was a song of Andy's called "You Can't Tell Me Anything" that I particularly loved, and which we used to do live for ages, but for some reason never demoed, which has been a sort of sore point with me for all these years. So recently I decided that we should record it for a possible posthumous EP as a sort of tribute.

Only problem was nobody could remember the lyrics. Ack.

Then a month or so ago I discovered a crude live version, taped by someone with a boom box in front of the band at one of our legendary weekend gigs at The Other End (bless you, Pat Kenny!). We edited it -- removing a duplicate verse and a brief instrumental solo section that didn't really work -- and presto! We had a click track for a concise three minute song that seemed to encapsulate the entire esthetic of the band.

So then ace drummer Glen "Bob" Allen, myself, and brilliant guitarist J.D. Goldberg (who came in for Andy in a later incarnation of the band) headed into the studio to recreate the song from the ground up. (Gerry did his vocal at home and then intertubed it to us.)

And here it is, a few sessions later, in more or less finished form.

Where are you going with that look on your face
Seems so off-center
So out of place
What makes you think that I know
How much of you I'm missing

But you can't tell me anything
If I don't listen
If I don't listen

What are you thinking with that crease in your brow
There's been some confusion
But that's all over now
You know it might make some sense
If only you let it

But you can't tell me anything
And then just say forget it
And then just say forget it

You say that you're thinking
Thinking about me
It sounds like you're planning to make it without me
And I would do anything
I would do anything
If you just wouldn't doubt me

What are you doing with this time on your hands
Too many secrets that I might understand
What makes you think that I see
How much of you doesn't show

Well you can't tell me anything
You don't want me to know
You don't want me to know

We're gonna tweak the mix, and we'll probably put a Rickenbacker 12-string part on it, but even at this stage, I gotta say -- this is a magnificent song and the performance ain't too shabby either.

And I think Andy would have approved.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Your Thursday Moment of Words Fail Me

So to paraphrase Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby -- I just went *FOLKIE* all of a sudden!

Seriously, after listening to my chum Peter Spencer's splendid new album (as discussed yesterday) I remembered an obscure folk thingie by a 60s guy named Jackson C. Frank that I originally wrote about in back in 2009. And I decided to revisit it.

And what I stumbled across in the process is an amazing cover version by a young woman from the UK -- previously unknown to me -- named Janileigh Cohen. Who I think may have a future in the music field.



I'm still not sure whether this is a great song or merely a maudlin one in an interestingly period way, but I think we can all agree that the above is a pretty spine-tingling performance.

Your Wednesday Moment of Words Fail Me

My old chum from my days in Greenwich Village Peter Spencer has a new album about to drop, and this is my current favorite song from it.

I've been listening to it obsessively for two days now, and when I informed Pete of that he told me "There's a running bet over which Dylan song it "borrows" from the most, 'Boots of Spanish Leather' or 'Girl From the North Country.' "

Personally, I vote for "Girl," but I don't really care if it's derivative -- I'd give my left nut to be able to finger-pick and sing like that.

The rest of the album is equally good -- when it's available for purchase, I'll let you know.

Closed for Monkey Business

Had a massive attack of post-vacation exhaustion.

Regular posting -- including a dispatch from the most amazing music-related art gallery ever -- resumes on the morrow.

Jerry Lewis 1926 - 2017

On top of everything else, Monsieur Lewis deserves to go down in history as one of the great avant-garde noise-rock guitar heroes of all time.

You know -- as in Mars, DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks...bands like that.



And speaking of DNA, as you will doubtless notice, Jerry's guitar solos in the clip above sound pretty much exactly like Arto Lindsay. He kind of looks like him, too.

Obviously, if Jerry had been hanging out on the Bowery circa 1984, it wouldn't just have been the French hailing him as a genius.

POSTSCRIPT: So I was at our local watering hole in the Q-Boro yesterday when the news came of Lewis's death.

I mentioned it to the very nice millennial bar lady and she said "I don't know who that is."

ME: The other half of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the most famous comedy team of the 50s.

HER: I've heard of Dean Martin. Jerry Lewis, no.

ME: (thinking) Ah -- ever see that Eddie Murphy movie THE NUTTY PROFESSOR?

HER: Oh, yeah -- love that.

ME: It's a remake of a Jerry Lewis movie.

HER: Oh. Okay.

Kill me now, is the point I'm trying to make.

You Can Take the Jew Out of New York...

...but you can't take the New York out of the Jew.

So, of course, BG and I had to travel 4000 miles to see a Roz Chast exhibition at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum this morning.

More dispatches from our Excellent Cross Country Adventure starting Monday, after our return to the East tomorrow.

In the meantime -- have a great weekend, everybody!!!