From 2023, and his forthcoming (as yet untitled) new EP, please enjoy former Spongetones auteur/power pop legend Jamie Hoover and his hilarious alt-country booze ballad "Bourbon Understands."
Attentive readers will doubtless remember my enthusiasm for Hoover, particularly for his absolutely transplendent mid-90s cover (with the Spongetones) of Paul McCartney's "On the Wings of a Nightingale"...
...which I wrote about back in 2019 over HERE. But, as you can tell from the new one, he's sort of branching out these evenings, genre-wise, and good for him. At least as long as his liver holds out.
But now to business. To wit:
...and your favorite or least favorite country song by a solo artist or group that is NOT specifically a full-time country act is...?
Discuss.
BTW, my choice would be Steve Goodman's "You Never Even Call Me By My Name."
Which begins with the line "I was drunk the day that mom got out of prison." Heh.
Anyway...Have a great weekend, everybody!!!
BTW: You can, and should, find out more about Hoover's music and his future (hopefully sober) plans over at his OFFICIAL WEBSITE.
[I originally posted a slightly different version of the below back in 2009, when the world and this blog were young. I'm re-upping it now because I recently stumbled across the song in question and wondered anew if it had finally made it to CD. The answer, alas, is still no.]
Okay, here's a very sad and, frankly, very pathetic story that proves I really need to get more of a life. So please try not to laugh.
But first, from 1975, please enjoy the B-side blues/gospel/pop ballad confection "Believe in What You Do" by the shoulda been bigger Maxine Nightingale.
As I said, the song is from 1975; more specifically, it was the flip side of Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From," a world-wide multi-million selling smash that still gets played on oldies radio.
Said B-side has never appeared on any subsequent vinyl album or CD by the artist who recorded it, as I mentioned up top; the video here is a rip from a vintage 45.
The only reason I ever heard this one in the first place is because, at Stereo Review, I was on the United Artists promo singles list, and for some perverse reason I always played the flips of records that were on the radio, on the off chance that there might be some buried treasure, as it were. To my ears, at the time, it sounded pleasantly like the kind of song Rod Stewart might have done before his artistic decline; it also sounded to me like a decent Eric Clapton tune, albeit sans guitar. In any event, I always liked it, especially the minimalist Floyd Cramer-esque piano solo, and in fact at one point I may have tried to con my 70s band (we had a girl singer) into covering it.
In any case, I lost both my copy of the 45 and a low-fi cassette I duped from it during a house moving episode in the late 70s, and over the last several years I've developed a jones to hear it again. More recently, I've tried without success to find a downloadable version anywhere on the intertubes. So at some point (I can't recall exactly when) I finally broke down and paid ten bucks to get a used vinyl copy from Amazon. Another fifteen bucks at a studio got me a decent cleaned up mp3 transfer, which alas I can't share with you for lack of the software needed to insert it into Blogger-friendly HTML.
Bottom line: To my surprise, the song still sounds as insinuating to me as it did in 1975. On the other hand, I think there's an obvious reason why it's never been on any vinyl or CD compilation by the artist in question, and that's because -- wait for it -- it's not really all that interesting to anybody but me. I mean, given the (putting it charitably) sparseness of the production, I'd be very very surprised if the thing wasn't just some publishing demo that was rushed onto the flip when the producer/writer team behind both tracks sold the record company on the eventual A-side smash. Which doesn't sound remotely like "Believe," by the way.
So -- just to recap. For some reason, I became obsessed with a song that nobody else, including the artist, the producers or the songwriters, felt strongly enough about to ever even acknowledge its existence. And I then forked out 25 bucks that would have more profitably been spent on hookers and blow to hear it again, through a patina of crackle and turntable rumble.
Hey -- I said this was a sad and pathetic story. I didn't say it would be interesting.
BTW, since I originally wrote the above, I have been semi-reliably informed that the keyboard player on the track is the sadly forgotten Dave Rowberry, the guy who came in for Alan Price when he departed The Animals. If anybody out there can confirm this, I'd be your best friend.
From 2015, live on Sirius XM, please behold Chris Cornell and a jaw-dropping unplugged version of his "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart."
I was never particularly a grunge fan back in the day, and to be honest, the whole Chris-Cornell-is-the-Greatest-Rock-Singer-Ever meme occasioned numerous arch-raised eyebrows from me over the years. Sure, objectively, he had a really powerful instrument and his own sound, but the style/tradition he came out of was just not my thing. Still, when a friend turned me on to the studio version of "Nearly" a while ago I became an instant convert. And when I stumbled across that live video last week I was genuinely gobsmacked again at how great both song and singer were.
BTW, I have not been able to determine who that cello guy on the left is, but Yo-Yo fucking Ma's got nothing on him. I mean -- wow!
I discovered the following in the SR archives a few days ago, while doing research for my forthcoming greatest hits book. I'm not sure how I feel on the subject all these years later; frankly, not only had I completely forgotten I'd written the piece, I had completely forgotten that the album that occasioned it even existed. In any case, it's not going into the book, but I'm kinda curious what you guys think. (I should add, for a little historical context, that it was written several months before John's murder, which of course changed everything.)
THE BEATLES: RARITIES (Stereo Review, July 1980)
Let's talk about rock and roll heroes. Still have any? I didn't think so. No wonder, really, when you consider what buffoons, by and large, our Sixties heroes have managed to become. Critic Simon Frith observed that the reason English punks hate hippies so much is that they are secretly afraid they'll turn out the same. They probably will, and though it does conjure up some interesting prospects, it's going to be pretty grim if our Sixties heroes are any example.
Consider, say, Grace Slick, now doing the talk-show circuit as a reformed alcoholic and carrying on like a Young Republican version of Lillian Roth. Or, better still, consider Bob Dylan, who appeared during the most recent Grammy Awards, after being introduced by Kenny Rogers as "the voice of a generation," (which immediately moved those at my house to apply for membership in some other generation) wearing a tux and looking like a rather more jowly Richard Nixon. He proceeded to sing a Sunday School ditty that wouldn't have been out of place at a Billy Graham crusade, and finished by thanking the Lord and his producer in that order. Now I ask you -- in 1967, as you sat long into the night listening to Blonde on Blonde, could you have imagined, even in your wildest hemp-induced reveries, a de-greening of that magnitude?
The punks actually seem to have found ways of accelerating this depressing recidivism. By the time you read this, Debbie Harry of Blondie will be all over the tube hawking jeans bearing the name of Gloria Vanderbilt, which would have been unthinkable as recently as three years ago. And there will certainly be others in her wake; if Slick and Dylan can make shambles of our collective dreams, than I would counsel young idealists not to count too heavily on Bruce Springsteen or the Clash remaining long unsullied either. The point is that hero worship is just as dangerous in rock-and-roll as it is in any other area of life, politics included. Because, finally, all your heroes have feet of clay; every one of them will let you down if you give them the chance.
Which leads us to the Beatles and their "new" album. The Beatles were the biggest heroes rock-and-roll ever produced, and if Rarities is nothing else, it is an artifact that takes their continued hero status as a given. I don't that's terribly healthy, though I will concede it may be justifiable. Though their individual stocks have dropped considerably in the years since their break-up (with rare exceptions -- a few of Paul's singles, most of Band on the Run, and John's angry brilliant first solo album) they have had the wit or integrity to resist being reformed. And that is why they still qualify as heroes.
But, no matter how you try to rationalize it, the Beatles-as-Heroes line is counterproductive, even though there are hordes of people out there who would like nothing better than for the Mop Tops to shake their aging booties on-stage one more time. To tell the truth, I might have enjoyed the spectacle once myself. No more, and what finally wised me up were a couple of unpleasant realizations. One: It dawned on me that everything I detest on the radio today can be traced back to the Fab Four, from Barry Manilow to Foreigner. (I'm sure that when the Beatles were writing "Yesterday" or "Penny Lane" it was not their intention to provide inspiration for those who in better times would have been writing jingles for chewing gum, but the mush-rock sound that defines our own is basically a bastardization of once-exciting Beatles innovations.) Two: I realized that I simply don't listen to them much any more. That can be chalked up simply to overexposure (hell, if I had heard the B Minor Mass as many times as I've heard Sgt. Pepper, I'd probably never listen to it again either), but I think it goes deeper than that. While I still believe that their talent and vision were the most all encompassing of any rock band, past or present, they no longer speak to me. And there are lots of people around who do.
It isn't a question of their music having dated; most of it hasn't and probably won't. The point is that life goes on, but the Beatles-worshipping mass audience seems not to care, preferring instead to crawl back into the womb of nostalgia. If you don't believe me, then please explain why nothing on AM radio these days, with the exception of the occasional disco record, would have sounded at all out of place back when the Beatles were at their peak. I'm not suggesting that everybody go out and buy the new Public Image album; Johnny Rotten hasn't got a fraction of John Lennon's genius. But if people won't even take the time to listen to what he (or any of his contemporaries) have to say, preferring instead to dream of some vanished Golden Age that never existed anyway, then we are all of us -- hippies and punks alike -- in serious trouble.
What disturbs me most about Rarities is that it seems aimed directly at people who still buy the Beatles myth whole, those who think of the group as a permanent standard against which the rest of rock-and- roll (and maybe everything else) must be judged forever. But even at a discount price, it's such a slight package that had a similar reconstruction job been undertaken for a lesser group, Raph Nader would be bringing class-action suits for consumer fraud. These aren't rarities -- they're footnotes, and from the lunatic fringe of Beatlemania at that. What you get are occasional lengthened intros ("I Am the Walrus") and endings ("And I Love Her"), B-sides you already own, and bad mono mixes of a lot of ephemera. Who, other than the kind of people who can't throw out back issues of National Geographic, even cares anymore?
Yes, I'm being unfair. It is sort of nice, finally, to have the un-Spectored version of "Across the Universe," one of Lennon's loveliest studio essays. And there's nothing intrinsically evil about an album for collectors; if this had been released in, say, 1970, it would have been an appropriately thoughtful coda to a distinguished career. But this is 1980, dammit, and we live in a world where things change. Rarities, it seems to me, attempts to deny that, and ostrichism is the very last thing we need right now. That being the case, I can find only one redeeming feature in all of this; in an age when rock stars fall all over themselves to hustle for establishment status symbols, its a consolation to know that the Beatles themselves had absolutely nothing to do with the decision to market this dispiriting package. -- Steve Simels
I dunno. There's part of me that still sort of agrees with all that, but obviously it was a different world when I wrote it and I had a higher youthful self-righteous quotient.
[I originally posted versions of this back in 2008 and 2014, and frankly I can't remember anything else I did either year; I assume I was having fun and being reasonably productive, but I can't prove it. In any case, as is my wont, I've changed a couple of entries and done some cosmetic re-writing, just so you don't confuse me with Marlene Dietrich singing this.
Enjoy, if possible. -- S.S.]
And now to business.
Best Post-Elvis Pop/Rock Band or Solo Act That Should Have Had a Mega-Career But For Whatever Reason Didn't!!!
Okay, we're talking one-hit wonders, groups or acts who had a couple of records that may have been critically acclaimed but sold negligibly, or just people that nobody ever really heard of but were fricking fantastic anyway. This is, admittedly, even more subjective than usual. Do the MC5 count? Everybody knows they were great, but they never sold that many records and broke up after three albums. How about Nick Drake? Until that car commercial made him a sort of household word, he'd been basically an obscure dead guy for decades.
Like I said, it's subjective. For me, then, I think the pornography standard applies -- i.e., I know a beautiful loser when I see one.
And that said, my top of my head Top Ten would be:
10. The Monks
These guys only made one studio album, which wasn't even released in their home country until 25 years after the fact. But as the above clip demonstrates, they invented Blank Generation punk rock when Richard Hell was still in junior high.
9. Brinsley Schwarz
The Band, but with pop songs, and, as you can see, one hell of a live act. IMHO, of course, they should be considered gods for no other reason than giving the world the original version of "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding".
8. The Records
It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that if it wasn't for these guys, and the debut album "Up All Night" is from, the blog you're reading now wouldn't exist.
7. Kevin Salem
My favorite hard-rocking guitar-wielding singer/songwriter of the 90s. Why he remains obscure when, say, a nit like John Mayer walks the streets a free man is, frankly, beyond me.
6. The Wonders
Let's be honest -- if these guys had been an actual band rather than a fictional construct for a movie, they would have made the Hall of Fame years ago.
5. Marc Jonson
He's a genuine pop genius. He absolutely ruled the Greenwich Village rock scene in the late 70s and early 80s, his songs have been recorded by the likes of Dave Edmunds, Robert Gordon and The Roches, and he's one of the most riveting live acts I've ever been personally jealous of. So why ain't he a superstar? You got me.
4. The Rising Sons
Featuring the rather awesome talents of Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal before they got famous. The fact that this track languished unreleased in the vaults of Columbia Records for nearly three decades before it was finally unleashed on the world is pretty convincing proof of the non-existence of God, IMHO.
3. Marah
Their template was The Replacements doing Bruce Springsteen covering the entirety of Exile on Main Street. It is not an exaggeration when I say that I would cheerfully cut off both of my testicles for the chance to have played on a song as great as the above.
2. Moby Grape
They all sang (gloriously), they all wrote (brilliantly), their lead guitarist was one of the most innovative American players of the decade, and their debut album is a timeless masterpiece that deftly mixes rock, country, blues, gospel, and psychedelia. Meanwhile, lots of otherwise intelligent folks still think they were the punchline to a dumb Sixties joke.
And the number uno band or pop auteur that should be currently relaxing on the Riviera inhaling cocaine and Cristal absolutely is....
1. Willie Nile
He made one of the great debuts in rock history, and he's still making albums almost or as good as that one even as we speak.
From 1970, and their eponymous debut album, please enjoy the original four-man lineup of Brinsley Schwarz performing Nick Lowe's uncharacteristically non-ironic "Mayfly."
This, of course, verges on the dreaded prog-rock territory (specifically early Yes) but what saves it is the fact that the song itself is quite pretty (in a folkish sort of way) and, more important, the lyrical organ playing of Bob Andrews; if you ever saw the band I toiled in on keyboards (after the demise of The Floor Models), you would have noticed that I pretty much stole everything I ever played from Andrews' work on this one song. Just gorgeous.
From 2023, please enjoy on-the-side-of-the-angels wiseacres Emma's Revolution and their late Trump Era re-think of "Reunited."
As, y'know, "Re-Indicted."
Long-time readers will recall that I wrote about those guys back in early 2020, when they did a pandemic-themed remake of the Julie Gold classic as "From a (Social) Distance".
This new one, however, is -- as befits the malevolent subject of its satire -- considerably snarkier, and I think anybody who listens to/watches the song/video (which was written and produced, amazingly enough, in a matter of days after the news broke) will react as I did, by laughing yer ass off.
Hey, it's cathartic, and lord knows we need it. Or as I said in 2020 (and have repeated several times recently) one of the few silver linings of our current crisis is that, when it's over, we're going to look back on it as a vintage time for black comedy and gallows humor.
Anyway, you can and should find out more about Emma's Revolution (including a link to their website) over HERE. And god bless 'em for the wonderful work they're doing.
"Real Love" is not only a completely valid Beatles record but as good as many of the ones they made together before John's death.
Discuss.
My answer to the question, BTW, is a resounding "you bet!" That song gives me chills on every level (could Ringo's drums or George's guitar solos or the overdubbed Beatles harmony vocals on the chorus be any more gorgeous? Uh no.)
In any event, I bring this up mostly because when the news broke a few days ago that McCartney (and one presumes Ringo) are finishing the last of the three John songs that Yoko gave to them when they were working on Anthology, this time using Artificial Intelligence (although other than trendiness I can't see how that's relevant to the discussion one way or another), I got into a bit of a brouhaha with an old friend and bandmate who thought my opinion of "Real Love" was close to sacreligious.
Bottom line: What do yu guys think? And should we be dreading the new one?
Meanwhile, in related news...
Dirk McQuickly of The Rutles...
...has announced that the final Rutles record will be completed using A.S., or Artificial Stupidity.
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