From 1970, please enjoy incomparable Canucklehead rockers The Guess Who, who ask the musical question "Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?"
No wait, that was Chicago. This is "No Time."
I regret the error.
This is a nearly perfect record in my book -- that great psychedelic guitar riff as a hook, gorgeous harmonies, and the lovely folk rock guitars on the verse (somebody, presumably Randy Bachmann, is doing a pretty cool Zal Yanovsky impression).
In any event, the Floor Models talked about covering this at some point, but for whatever reason we never got around to it. Pity; I bet it would have been a gas on-stage.
My Australian record mogul informs me that the ZERO HOUR RECORDS brilliantly re-mastered reissue of Floor Your Love, by the fabulous Floor Models (featuring a bass player whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels), will be available by no later than late October.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that he still hasn't shown me the rejiggered and (assuredly) way cool new album graphics. AAARRRGGGHHH!
In either case, I am beyond stoked at the prospect of the album finally coming out.
So, while we wait, here's some live stuff that won't be on the album (for obvious low-fi reasons) but which is still pretty damned exciting anyway (IMHO).
From the Other End in Greenwich Village, on October 9, 1982, here we are with rather blistering renditions of our own "Excuses Excuses," Tom Petty's titular classic, Lulu's "To Sir With Love" (guest vocal by the lovely and talented Jan Melchior) and The Monkees "Last Train to Clarksville."
Like I said, it's low-fi, but boy, does the atmosphere and the vibe and the energy come through undimmed nonetheless.
Also: The brilliant Rickenbacker 12-string stuff -- on the left channel -- is, of course, the work of our deeply missed pal Andy "Folk-Rock" Pasternack. Damn, Andy, you were the best.
It's a wide-ranging interview, where we talk about the book, but also the benefits and risks of basing your understanding of the world on pop music, the Steve Miller Band, how to talk to musicians, the effect of the internet and a ton more things.
So the other day I was comfortably ensconced, popcorn in hand, in the dark vastness of my local Hell Octaplex. When the pre-trailer music-radio played a new recording by Placebo called "Loud Like Love."
Now, Placebo is a band the very existence of whom I had managed to fail to notice until last week. But the radio announcer/dee-jay was kind enough to inform me that they've been around since the early 90s, are big in the UK, and in fact have sold 12 million albums worldwide (none of them to me, obviously).
In any case here's the track in question.
Three thoughts immediately occur upon contemplating it.
1. The song seems to be a pleasant enough, if ultimately mediocre, piece of 21st century folk-rock.
2. Is it just me, or does the singer sound unpleasantly like Neil Diamond in his "Coming to America" phase?
3. What kind of dumb fucking name is Placebo? I mean, what the hell -- some other band had already used Ersatz or Phony?
Long-time or attentive readers may recall that, a few years ago, I exhumed one of my dead-trees efforts from The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review, in this case -- to be specific -- my review of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy album, written shortly after John's murder in 1980.
In the new intro to said piece, however, I noted that...
"A few weeks after the piece appeared I got a very nice note from a woman who had worked as a personal assistant to Brian Epstein at the height of Beatlemania. She told me that of all the reviews of the album she had seen, it was the one that most resonated for her. That meant a lot to me."
...and over the intervening years it has increasingly irked me that I had never saved the letter and thus had forgotten the name of the woman who wrote it.
So you could have knocked me over with a feather when I read the following in a piece by Dennis Hartley over at DIGBY'S HULLABALOO on Saturday:
I have to say I've never seen a Beatles doc as touching, unpretentious and utterly charming as Ryan White's interestingly titled Good Ol' Freda.
The unlikely star of this breezy study is an unassuming, affable sixty-something Liverpudlian woman named Freda Kelly. At the tender age of 17, she was hired by manager Brian Epstein to do odd jobs around the office while he focused on the then-fledgling career of his young proteges. A year or so later, she became the chief overseer for the band's fast-growing fan club, embarking on what was to turn into an amazing 11 year career as (for wont of a better job description) the Beatles' “personal secretary”, from Cavern Club days to the dissolution of the band.
What makes Freda unique amongst the members of the Beatles' exclusive inner circle (aside from the fact that she remains a virtual unknown to the public at large) is her stalwart loyalty to this day, vis a vis protecting the privacy of her employers; she's never written a “tell-all” book, nor cashed in on her association with the most famous musical act of all time in any shape or form.
Granted, after appearing in this film, she won't be so unknown, but she makes it abundantly clear this represents her finally caving in and appearing on camera to say her piece (since we're all so damn nosy and insistent), then she'll be done. And she does tell some tales; although none of them are “out of school”, as they say. But that's okay, because she is so effervescent and down-to-earth that its like having her over for tea to peruse her scrapbooks and enjoy a pleasant chat...
...and realized that Freda was, without question, the long-ago note writer. Nice to learn she's still alive and well and, apparently, delightful.
Note: Good Ol' Freda is in limited theatrical release and on PPV (check local listings!).
UPDATE: Here's the official trailer.
I'm informed that you can stream it from Amazon if it isn't playing at a Hell Octaplex near you.
I am very much enjoying the new Netflix series Orange is the New Black--though less impressed with the binge-watching these all-in-one-place Netflix series inspire. (Hell, even with DVDs you had to get up and change the disc after a few episodes. Not anymore!) And my daughter, 9, frequently falls down rabbit holes made of improbably attractive and auto-tuned teen stars whose future twerking and inevitable rehabs are destined to fill my declining years. I do not really ever want to see Good Luck Charlie's mug shot.
Anyway.
Despite the dangers off binge-watching, OITNB is a terrific show (and relatively bite-sized, at only one season), made even better by the surprise inclusion of pop-punkster Annie Golden as Norma. She doesn't have a lot of lines--Norma's distinguishing characteristic is her strict rule of omerta--but she's a constant presence at the side of the steely kitchen manager Red (played by an almost unrecognizable Kate Mulgrew).
Golden (here shown on Mulgrew's left), in case you've forgotten, was the adorable lead singer of the Shirts.
It was she, Jane Weidlin, Clare Grogan, Josie Cotton, and the late Patty Donahue (of the Waitresses) who got me through adolescence with the brief shreds of self-confidence I managed to salvage. Little weird girls were okay, or at least had a niche to fill, and that gave me something to hang onto.
Courtesy of our friend Allan Rosenberg, some absolutely fabulous Flo Mos photos we'd all forgotten about.
And courtesy of Gerry Devine, here's the last song Andy and Gerry wrote together. (They started it back in the day, but it wound up on the shelf until Gerry finished it in 2012. Andy approved of the result, BTW.)
"Letter From Liverpool." And how perfect is that?
Seriously -- I cried like a baby when I heard this for the first time on Monday. It's so obviously about us...
My late Stereo Review colleague Noel Coppage famously said -- and I paraphrase -- "The music of Yes is Exhibit A for the pernicious influence that becoming one with the cosmos has on syntax."
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