Nothing but a Heartache
I woke up this morning with the song “Nothing but a Heartache” stuck in my head. It was puzzling because I couldn’t remember when or where I last heard it. But the song stayed there, refusing to leave.
I had to research a little to find who performed it; turns out it was a 60’s girl group called the Flirtations. While I was looking this up, I saw a YouTube comment that had me laughing and nodding my head at the same time: “Once upon a time, they wouldn't let you on stage unless you had talent. Those days are gone.”
Anyway, the Flirtations started life in 1962 as quartet called the Gypsies. Within a few years they had become a trio, won a Supremes sound-alike contest, and changed their name to the Flirtations. In 1968 they released “Nothing but a Heartache,” which would be the girls’ biggest hit.
All of which reminds me I need to clear some of the crap off my iPod to make room for music like this.
Nothing but a Heartache.mp3 Labels: oldies, soul
Outta Their Minds
While I was enjoying my Thanksgiving feast yesterday, I happened to hear a song so gritty and dirty it almost made me choke on my mashed potatoes. I immediately ran over to see what was playing and I’ll damned if it wasn’t the King Khan and BBQ Show.
I have one King Khan album and I had to let my dinner sit there cooling while I dug it up to see if that otherworldly slice of rock ‘n’ roll could by chance be on it. And yes it was. The song was “Outta My Mind” from the King Khan and BBQ Show’s 2004 eponymous debut release.
I immediately put the disk on and enjoyed myself some 45 minutes of psycho / blues / garage / punk / whatever you wanna call it, it’s great music and made the rest of dinner oh, so much more enjoyable.
In case you’re not familiar with the King Khan and BBQ Show, The band is composed of former Spaceshits band mates Mark Sultan and Blacksnake, aka King Khan. They both left the Spaceshits in 1999. Sultan went on to form Les Sexareenos, before reconnecting with Blacksnake in 2002 and putting together the band that would eventually become the King Khan and BBQ Show. The band released their third LP,
Invisible Girl last month.
Outta My Mind.mp3 Labels: blues, garage rock, punk
Happy Thanksgiving
TV Dinners.mp3 ~ ZZ Top, from
EliminatorLabels: classic rock, holiday
This is Hell
Lemme get a couple orders of business out of the way before we get to the music.
First, I’m already –
already – seeing hits here for Christmas music. If you’re one of those people, you know now those links are dead. They have been for almost a year and I have no plans on resuscitating them. I probably will post Christmas music at some point, but I promise you it will
not be before Thanksgiving.
Next are these annual end-of-year best of / worst-of / who-gives-a-shit-about-it lists. I plan to continue my tradition of non-participation in this list making. If you’re into that sort of thing, the
LargeHearted Boy blog has already began aggregating lists.
I thought I had one other item on my curmudgeonly agenda, but it slips my mind at the moment so we’ll move on to the real reason we’re all here.
Apropos of nothing, I’ve got some Elvis Costello tonight, from his 1994 album
Brutal Youth. Or, more accurately, from the 2002
Brutal Youth reissue bonus disk.
I originally bought
Brutal Youth excited that Elvis was reuniting with the Attractions. Fifteen years later, the album has become one of my favorites. While it doesn’t have the angry energy of the first three albums, it shows a more mature Elvis who wields his words like scalpel instead of a blunt edged instrument
One of my favorite tracks on the album is “This is Hell.” I’ve always liked the wordplay in the song and the way it seems to describe one of my worst nightmares: douchey nightlife (“The bruiser spun a hula hoop while all the barmen preen and pout ... This is hell, this is hell ... It never gets better or worse”).
The version here was recorded in December 1992 at Church Studios in London. It might almost be considered a demo take; the final version wouldn’t be done until early the following year. While Elvis plays bass on this version, Bruce Thomas returned to the band to play on the final album version.
The second song, “A Drunken Man’s Praise of Sobriety,” is a Yeats poem that Elvis set to music.
This is Hell (Church Studios version).mp3 A Drunken Man’s Praise of Sobriety.mp3 Labels: outtakes
Tony Rome
The other night I happened to watch the 1967 Frank Sinatra classic,
Tony Rome. The film was interesting in a couple of ways: First, it features Sinatra the way that I’d grown up imagining him: Tough, quick with a one-liner, and having to always dodge women who are non-stop throwing themselves at him.
The other interesting aspect is that Tony Rome shows a Miami completely different, yet remarkably the same, as the Miami I know. I laughed when I saw some of the Miami Beach structures in the movie that probably weren’t new then and are still standing today, only now they actually are home to the sort of low-lives the fictional PI was chasing 40 years ago.
The Tony Rome title track is ridiculously catchy and poppy, while being cool in a retro, Tarantino kind of way. Steven Van Zandt has it in rotation on his
Underground Garage channel on SiriusXM radio and I figured if it’s cool enough for Little Steven it’ll probably do for this site. Besides, it’s been stuck in my head since I watched the movie.
Frank’s daughter Nancy sang the title track for the movie; her second go with a movie theme song, following on her earlier success with the title track for You Only Live Twice. Lee Hazelwood, who wrote most of Nancy’s earlier hits, also penned this sultry classic.
Also, just for fun, I’m including a not-too-bad cover of the Beatles’ “Run for Your Life,” which Nancy recorded for her 1966 album
Boots.
Tony Rome.mp3 Run for Your Life (Beatles cover).mp3 Labels: Beatles, covers, movies, pop muzik
Can You Go a Little Deeper: Warren Zevon
Like many people “of a certain age,” my earliest exposure to Warren Zevon was 1978’s “Werewolves of London.” It would be years before I learned that the witty lyricism of that pseudo novelty hit carried itself into much of Zevon’s songwriting.
A more recent (within the last few years, anyway) discovery for me was “Carmelita,” a bittersweet song from Zevon’s 1976 debut. The song is ostensibly about a heroin-addicted writer in love with a Mexican girl. There is, however, another school of thought that, in keeping with the album’s leitmotif, “Carmelita” is actually about Los Angeles rather than a literal person. “I'm there with her in Ensenada / And I'm here in Echo Park ... Carmelita hold me tighter / I think I'm sinking down.” You could take it either way, I imagine.
Musicians as diverse as Linda Ronstadt and GG Allin have since covered the song, which initially attracted little attention. Interestingly, Ronstadt changed the lyrics from Zevon’s original “pawned my Smith Corona” to “pawned my Smith and Wesson,” essentially changing the song’s protagonist from a writer to a gunslinger. When GG covered the song, he left Ronstadt’s change while adding one of his own, altering the lyrics from “playing solitaire with my pearl handled deck” to “playing Russian roulette with my pearl-handled gun.”
Zevon’s original features – as does the rest of the album – a veritable who’s who of L.A. rockers of the era: Waddy Wachtel and David Lindley both make appearances on this song and if you listen carefully, that’s Glenn Frey singing harmony.
Carmelita.mp3 ~~~~~
(
Can You Go a Little Deeper is an irregularly recurring feature here wherein I resurrect old favorites, lost songs, and other things you maybe haven’t heard in a while)
Labels: classic rock, deep tracks
Beachfront In Reno
In case you haven’t been keeping up with Sublime, the band’s name has been coming up a lot lately. Unfortunately, it’s been in the context of a courtroom as drummer Bud Gaugh and bassist Eric Wilson have battled with Brad Nowell’s estate over use of the Sublime name.
To quickly bring you up to speed, Wilson, Gaugh, and singer/guitarist Rome Ramirez performed last month as Sublime at the Smokeout Festival in California. They were immediately hit with a threatened
lawsuit from Nowell’s estate. “Out of respect for Brad's wishes," Nowell's representatives said in a statement, "we have always refused to endorse any group performing as ‘Sublime,’ and now with great reluctance feel compelled to take the appropriate legal action to protect Brad's legacy."
Despite efforts from Wilson and Gaugh, earlier this month a Los Angeles judge shut down an effort by the new lineup of Sublime to perform under the name.
Regardless of pending suits around Sublime, the two founding members have been staying busy with other projects. They worked together in the Long Beach Dub Allstars, and Bud Gaugh has just released an album,
After the Quake, with his latest band, Del Mar.
Del Mar formed in 2007 when Mike Martinez and Matt Bode, who had been involved in the Reno music scene, decided to start a new band. Nicole Hutcheson, Gaugh’s wife, found out about the project and also wanted to participate. When the band needed a drummer, it was only natural to include Gaugh.
The music combines the sound of the harder Sublime songs with traditional surf music and just a touch of ska-punk. “I want to have an arsenal of punk music for the young fans and surf music for the older fans,” Bode says.
The band has foregone the usual record industry hassles, choosing to distribute the album independently, and taking a direct-to-fan and DIY approach in marketing and touring. For information on getting the disk, click over to Del Mar’s
website. And on an unrelated, but cool, note, the album’s cover art is by Dennis “Lil Daddy” Roth, son of legendary hot rod cartoonist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Check these guys out.
Reno.mp3 Labels: new stuff, ska-punk
Slash Turns Japanese
Seriously. Slash is probably the hardest working rock guitarist around. If he’s not lending his talents to any number of artists, he’s either playing live or working on his own studio projects. So, while Velvet Revolver is on permanent hiatus, Slash has wasted no time in recording a solo album with guests ranging from Iggy to Fergie.
The album itself isn’t due out until early next year, but a Japanese-only single has already been released, featuring Koshi Inaba, of Japanese hard rock band B'z, on vocals.
The song, “Sahara,” sounds more like Slash’s Snakepit than it does Velvet Revolver; it’s harder, faster, and not as glossy. Bonus strangeness points – Koshi sings the song entirely in Japanese. It actually took me a couple of listens before I realized there was a reason I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Sahara.mp3 Labels: guitar heroes, hard rock, new stuff, singles
From Below Sea Level, California
From the Licorice Pizza files of “maybe you haven’t heard of these guys but you should have” comes a band from the deserts of Southern California.
Throw Rag comes from California’s Salton Sea, a barren, sub-sea level wasteland located more or less south of Los Angeles. Sean Wheeler – aka Capt. Sean Doe – has fronted the band since its formation in 1993. Capt. Sean, Dean McQueen, Franco Fontana, and Chango Von Streicher make up the current incarnation of Throw Rag.
The early versions of the band were compared to the Pogues, playing a kind of Irish folk-punk. This style was evident on their debut disk, 2001’s
Tee Tot. It was just after the release of
Tee Tot that Throw Rag starting getting national attention, grabbing opening slots for bands such as Green Day. They also got on board the 2002 Warped Tour.
By 2003, Throw Rag had signed with punk label Better Youth Organization and released the far noisier psychobilly-meets-Motörhead album
Desert Shores. This is widely considered their break-out album, and got decent MSM reviews: Throw Rag takes the anything-goes attitude of early Damned,” wrote
Billboard, “and grafts it to the purposefully sloppy riffs of boozy bar punk to get a record that celebrates punk’s cut-loose mentality that’s frequently lost in the dead-serious world of rock’n’roll rebellion.”
The follow-up to
Desert Shores – 2005’s
13 Feet and Rising – continued in the punk-a-billy direction and featured a who’s who of punk legends: The Circle Jerks’ Keith Morris; Jello Biafra; and godfather to them all, Lemmy.
This afternoon’s music is from the
13 Feet and Rising album and happens to be the tune featuring Lemmy: a cover of Merle Haggard’s “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down.”
Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down (Merle Haggard cover).mp3Labels: covers, psychobilly, punk
Nick the Stripper
Those of you with iTunes are probably already aware of the huge variety of radio stations available there for live streaming. I recently found one,
Devil’s Night Radio, that I have become a fast fan of because of the insane variety in their programming. At any given time you’re as likely to hear Hank Sr. as you are the Stooges.
As often happens with music I hear, it was something I heard on Devil’s Night Radio that has inspired this post. While listening the other day, I heard a song called “Nick the Stripper” by a band called The Birthday Party. The song, driven by bass and horns, could have been a routine strip club grind number. Instead, the music is slowed to a dirty funk, and we learn that “Nick” is a male stripper who is “hideous to the eye.” Nick Cave’s truly scary sounding voice completes the picture of something you hope you never have to see.
Nick Cave, along with Mick Harvey, and Tracy Pew, played together in bands previous to forming The Birthday Party; the name change came as the band evolved from playing punk covers to playing darker, feedback-laden, raw blues-type music. The Birthday Party would split in 1983, with most of the members going on to successful solo careers.
The Birthday Party, despite lack of any real commercial success, has proven to be continually influential to modern bands, particularly “goth-rock” bands. “The Party have been indirectly held responsible for the rise of a visceral new hardcore, ranging from The Sex Gang Children, through Danse Macabre to March Violets,” the New Musical Express wrote in an early-80’s article.
“Nick the Stripper” comes from 1981’s
Prayers on Fire, which was The Birthday Party’s first album with that band name (the two earlier disks were released under their previous name, The Boys Next Door).
Nick the Stripper.mp3 Labels: "alternative", Australian, punk
Steven Tyler Done With Aerosmith?
The gossip around the Internet is that Steven Tyler is leaving Aerosmith. That move, which would for all intents and purposes break up the legendary band, seemed to be confirmed in an interview Joe Perry gave the
Las Vegas Sun newspaper.
“Steven quit as far as I can tell,” Perry told the paper in an interview published Friday. “I don’t know anymore than you do about it. I got off the plane two nights ago. I saw online that Steven said that he was going to leave the band. I don’t know for how long, indefinitely or whatever. Other than that, I don’t know.”
Most of Aerosmith’s recent world tour was canceled in August after Tyler fell from the stage at a Sturgis, S.D., concert and broke his shoulder. The band members were unhappy with Tyler over the incident. However, Aerosmith salvaged the final leg of the tour, including two shows in Hawaii and one at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix before more than 50,000 fans.
Perry told the
Sun he hopes to keep Aerosmith together, with or without Tyler, but he was so stunned by recent developments he doesn’t know what’s going to happen.
Meanwhile, talk on the
AeroForceOne message boards was mostly about Tyler’s selfishness and the idea that “he's not Rod Stewart that split from the Faces while still in his 30's and had a whole career ahead of him.”
There’s no confirmation or denial from Steven Tyler at this point, other than a statement he made in an interview with
Classic Rock magazine regarding his future plans: “It's definitely going to be something Steven Tyler, working on the brand of myself — Brand Tyler.”
In my opinion, Aerosmith is past their prime and would do well to call it a day. They haven’t been able to keep it together like the Stones have and they haven’t been able to consistently turn out rock music on a par with their earlier successes. The slick pop of albums like
Just Push Play is an embarrassment to the band and to those of us who used to be fans.
Here are a couple of things from the 1991
Pandora’s Box compilation.
Lord of the Thighs (live-1978).mp3 I Wanna Know Why (live-1978).mp3 Chip Away the Stone (alt version).mp3 Helter Skelter.mp3 Labels: Aerosmith, classic rock, covers, current events, live albums, outtakes
Tom Waits and Down by Law
This past weekend I watched
Down by Law, a 1986 Jim Jarmusch film. Not long ago I had watched an older flick of his and thought I’d check out some other things.
The movie, in case you haven’t seen it, is more or less about a pimp and an out of work DJ who land in, then escape from, a New Orleans prison. Along with them is an Italian guy whose knowledge of English is mostly limited to phrases such as “If looks could kill, I am a-dead now,” or “I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream.” (For a more complete synopsis, check the above link.)
Tom Waits is in the movie, as Zack, the DJ. I knew he’d had a couple of small roles in other films, but I’d somehow missed the fact that he’s in Down by Law. His relationship with his cellmate, Jack (played by John Lurie), is the movie’s main focus. Waits also has a couple of songs in the film, both from his 1985 album
Rain Dogs.
Although the rough concept of the album revolves around New York City, the two songs used in this movie, “Jockey Full of Bourbon” and “Tango ‘til They’re Sore,” are both just as appropriate to New Orleans. Not just the music, which, especially in “Tango,” is overlaid with horns, but the noir-ishness of the music fits beautifully with Jarmusch’s grim, black and white New Orleans.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I need to recommend it to you. Here are the songs, which are great in their own right, but in the context of Down by Law, gain a whole new level.
Jockey Full of Bourbon.mp3 Tango ‘till They’re Sore.mp3 Labels: alt.jazz, blues, movies
I had to research a little to find who performed it; turns out it was a 60’s girl group called the Flirtations. While I was looking this up, I saw a YouTube comment that had me laughing and nodding my head at the same time: “Once upon a time, they wouldn't let you on stage unless you had talent. Those days are gone.”
