The question came up the other day at some disreputable forum I frequent: What movie, book, and album would you take with you to a deserted island? The very first disk that came to my mind was Who Are You.
Who Are You is one of the few albums I can – and have – listened to over and over and just never get tired of hearing. It’s hard for me to say exactly what it is that has had such lasting appeal to me. I just find the band sounding extremely powerful and the lyrics among the best Pete Townshend has written.
I first got Who Are You for my sixteenth birthday, about a year after it had been released. I think my journey towards hard-of-hearingness started when I would put headphones on and blast this music night after night. I reset the needle time and again to hear all of the weird sounds of “Music Must Change,” from the creaking to the fluttering. I puzzled over the weird irony of “Not to be Taken Away,” the stencil on the chair in which Keith Moon sits on the album cover. And of course I just stood in awe of the entire album.
There are very few other albums that, 30 years later, I can still listen to start to finish, knowing that I know every note and every beat, and still look forward to hearing them.
When I found this collection of Who Are You demos, I immediately grabbed it, knowing it would be fascinating listening. I wasn’t disappointed. Townshend performs all of the songs solo, mostly on guitar and keyboard, along with what I assume to be prerecorded backing tracks.
According to the information I could gather, these were recorded during 1977-78 (Who Are You was released in August ’78). Most of these songs would end up on Who Are You, while others would appear on Townshend’s 1980 solo album, Empty Glass. The last two tracks, “Affirmation” and “Baba O’Riley” are older, of course, from 1971. This version of “Baba O’Riley” is a synthesizer demo. Some of these tracks, I think, have seen commercial release as bonus tracks on various Who reissues.
You’re probably going to need to clear the kids out of the room for today’s post. The music is once again courtesy of an “add” request to my MySpace space.
I’ll add pretty much anyone, but I will check out your page to make sure you’re not a spammer. When I saw a request from Chalant and went to their MySpace, the first thing I noticed was that they have classified themselves as “hip-hop/rap/pop.” Well, OK. But almost simultaneously, I saw they are “Representin’ the Bible belt, bitch,” and the top song on their player is “Suck My Pussy.”
Maybe this is worth looking into, I’m thinking.
Turns out “Suck My Pussy” is about sex while working at Wendy’s, something that may have resulted in vocalist Jenital Candies losing a job at some point. In another song, I heard some lyrics about anal fisting that had me LMAO, so to speak.
A quick bio, from Chalant’s MySpace: “Chalant met in high school when they were age 14. They started making beats on desks and rhyming in class. This was recorded on a Home Alone Talk-Boy while the teacher was explaining shit. These tapes became our first demos and were later recorded officially in Papa-Nut's parents' house, while under the influence of a wide array of substances. This led to the widely acclaimed Juicy EP featuring ‘Don't You Moderate His Caucus (But I Love Him),’ which was sold to schoolchildren to accumulate more drug money. With those purchases, Chalant was able to record their follow-up album Fuck Break, which explores the fine line between classical chamber music repertoire and southern crunk music.”
Check these guys out. Even if you’re not a hip-hop fan, the lyrics will have you laughing as you’re up and shaking that ass. You can download the new disk, The Trill Life for free from Chalant’s MySpace.
I think I may have mentioned once or twice that Detroit is home to an incredible rock scene. Today’s post just confirms that idea.
Choking Susan describe themselves (jokingly, I assume) as a “cross between the Bee Gees and Minor Threat.” Seriously, they are an old-school-sounding punk band, and they do their city's rock history proud.
The band has been together – in various versions – since about 1999. Colleen Caffeine and guitarist Killer Keith are the mainstays. If you can believe the bios on their Web Site (and if you can believe Choking Susan is influenced by the Bee Gees, there’s no reason you shouldn’t believe these bios), Colleen is a former Hooters waitress and is currently waiting to “find some dumb rich man”; and Keith was born in jail and makes frequent reappearances there. Bass player Lower GI Joe, and drummer Bob the Builder round out the line-up.
“The name Choking Susan comes from the name of a porno movie,” Colleen told Loud Horizon Music. “After a while we decided to change the name to Crap. That was really short-lived though, and we then decided to call ourselves Doug’s Dead Eye, which was a kind of perverse homage to an ex-boyfriend of mine. Although we recorded under the latter name, it again was a short-lived incarnation, and we soon reverted to the original and best, Choking Susan. Why? Because it RAWKS, baby!”
Choking Susan recently released The FBI Did It, which you can order from the band’s MySpace space. They’re also on-again, off-again touring, with gigs in and around Michigan. In August, they’ll be at Rebellionfest in Blackpool, UK. More info on tour dates is also on their MySpace.
I found this Kiss rehearsal recording a couple of weeks ago and thought it would be cool to share. I know there’s some closet Kiss fans still out there!
This rehearsal doesn’t come from when the band was at its peak – the Alive era – but from what I consider as the beginning of the end: The Dynasty era. The fondness I have for this era, though, is that when I saw Kiss on this tour, it was my very first concert. That said, I’m willing to overlook “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” and remember the good songs.
This tour rehearsal recording was made in Lakeland, Fla., sometime between June 11-14, 1979. The tour started there on June 15, at the Lakeland Civic Center. Five long months later, Nov. 7, my cousin and I got my parents to drive us to the Forum in Los Angeles to see our very first concert. I wish I could remember back 30 years and tell you every sight and every sound. I know we had close to the worst seats in the arena – somewhere near the back and the top. It’s odd (well, considering it’s Kiss, maybe not), but the little I remember is more of the spectacle than the music. I sort of remember the fire breathing and Ace’s guitar shooting out sparks. I was too far away to see the blood spitting. There were, of course, tons of pyrotechnics. You could see that even from the cheap seats.
One of the Kiss bootleg sites I checked wrote that you could hear Peter Criss fussing about a lot of things in this recording. I didn’t notice a lot of that, but maybe I wasn’t listening close enough. It was about a month later that Peter would leave the band, after years of growing tension.
Part I King Of The Nighttime World Radioactive Move On Christine Sixteen Firehouse New York Groove Calling Dr. Love Tossin' & Turnin' Love Gun 2000 Man Ace Frehley guitar solo I Was Made For Lovin' You Gene Simmons bass solo God Of Thunder pt. 1 Peter Criss drum solo God Of Thunder pt. 2
My friends at Sneak Attack media sent this to me yesterday and I thought it was worth passing on. I get the occasional email from independent or unsigned bands or artists and this could be their chance to go big time. All I ask is that you hit me up with some music from whatever you submit and mention me in the liner notes of your first album. (I’m kidding about the last one, but I am always looking for cool new music.)
UBER.com, in conjunction with A&R Worldwide’s MUSEXPO, Atlantic Records, Peer Music Publishing, Rebel Group/ADA Distribution and The Agency Group, announced the launch of the online music talent search, YOU BRING THE TALENT.
The winning musician/band will receive: -An EP deal with Atlantic Records -A music publishing deal with Peer Music -A Booking Deal with The Agency Group -Distribution through ADA from The Rebel Group -A Showcase at The House of Blues in Hollywood, CA
HOW TO ENTER: 1) Sign up on uber.com and make sure to check the Musician box on the form (this will allow you to add your music to your page.)
2) Gussy up your page with photos, music, your bio and make it all fancy-like, which is super easy on Uber.
3) Head over to the You Bring the Talent page on Uber and grab the embed code for your Voting Module, so you can pop it on your Uber page, or anywhere else you want people to vote for you.
WHAT TO KNOW: 1) The contest is open until March 31st, so there's plenty of time to sign up and get people to vote for you.
2) Your fans can vote ONCE EVERY 24 HOURS. That's right--all of your friends and fans can vote for you once every day, so let people know at your shows and on your website (where you can definitely put up your Voting Module.)
3) Think about this -- If you've got 1000 MySpace friends and half of them vote for you three times a week, that's 15,000 votes. Not too shabby.
I didn’t realize this until today, but Janis Joplin’s birthday was Saturday. Had she lived, she would have been 65. I found a story in the online Houston Chronicle about a celebration in Port Arthur, the city not too far southeast of Houston where Joplin was born and raised. (I’d link the story for you, but I can’t find it now. Here’s an AP story instead.)
I made a trek down to Port Arthur once, not too long after I moved to Houston in 1998. Not knowing how long we would be living there, the ex-wife and I had promised ourselves that we would see as much of Texas as we could. One weekend, we decided the time was right to drive down to Port Arthur and visit the Museum of the Gulf Coast, see the Janis Joplin exhibition there, and see what else was happening.
The trip itself took us a little more than two hours. As we were to learn time after time, nothing in Texas was nearby. It would take at least an hour to drive from the north suburbs to the west suburbs to see friends. But we eventually got to Port Arthur, Tex., population roughly 58,000. I don’t know if I would treat Port Arthur as a travel destination. Granted, it’s been about 10 years since I was there, but I don’t remember seeing much of anything happening or anyone out doing it. The picture in my mind is of a hot, deserted town.
The museum, for being so out-of-the-way, is very, well, museum-y. There was, of course, the exhibit commemorating the town’s most famous daughter, as well as an entire Music Hall of Fame. Displays celebrate such Texas legends as Edgar Winter, The Big Bopper, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, to name just a couple. This isn’t just a small town Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though; the Museum of the Gulf Coast has plenty of regular exhibits as well. Like I say, I wouldn’t make Port Arthur a vacation destination, but if you find yourself in Houston with an afternoon to kill, take a drive out I-10 and check out what they’ve got. It’s worth the trip.
Today’s music is from Janis’ Aug. 30, 1969, appearance at the Texas International Pop Festival, in Lewisville, Tex. She was touring at the time with the Kozmic Blues band. The band featured a large horn section, lending a more jazz-oriented blues sound to her music.
Many times, if I like an artist’s music but don’t know much about them, I can sort of bluff my way through a post, using a combination of biographical information and miscellaneous quotes (see yesterday’s post).
Then there’s today’s post, which gives me nothing but the music, although I think that’s the way the artist wants it. A few days ago I got an “add” request on my MySpace from someone calling herself “A Girl and A Guitar.” I was intrigued enough to check out her profile, which has as its default song “Ask Me if I Give a Shit.” I listened to the entire song, which is something I rarely do on someone’s MySpace, then dropped her a note telling her I really liked her music. Interestingly, she responded with a nice note, and she sent me some music, but she did not offer up any other identifying information. Neither is there any bio information or pictures on her MySpace. It simply says, “It is not what you have that matters. It is what you do with what you have that matters.”
A Girl and A Guitar defines her musical genre as “acoustic / country / Americana.” She fits all of those neatly, but there’s also an old-school rockabilly feel to her songs. She wrote and recorded all of the music herself and has released an independent album called One Track Recordings, a nod toward her motto of “One girl. One guitar. One microphone. One computer. One software program.”
While the music has a minimalist feel, the songs keep with the country tradition of “Somebody done me wrong.” If there’s any autobiography behind any of these songs, A Girl and A Guitar has been done way wrong. Look at song titles such as “Ask Me if I Give a Shit” and “I’m Not Your Booty Call,” not to mention lyrics like “It just blows my mind time after time / when I can't believe what you've done to me / And you don't even know that you've dealt this blow / You're too self-consumed, boy, to know what you do,” from “Self-Consumed.”
Of course, like all good country lyrics, some are apropos to a number of situations. I think a few of the women in Miami-Dade County could learn from these lines from “When I’m Holding Your Hand”: “Maybe someday you'll realize that it ain't all about the size of your wallet or your automobile. It's just the way you make me feel.”
For more information, and to order a copy of One Track Recordings, go to A Girl and A Guitar’s MySpace space (or click on the above banner - same thing). You can also go to her Web site and send her a request to play your town.
I was kind of torn about whether to post something new or something old tonight. After weighing all consideration, I decided to go with the new stuff. Part of my decision was I noticed all the cool blogs have music up by new(er) bands and I didn’t want to feel like the dorky kid no one wants to play with.
The meXicolas are a trio from Birmingham, in the U.K. NME says they have “super sized QOTSA slashing riffs and gargantuan choruses,” although singer Jamie Evans says, “We listen to bands like QOTSA, Smashing Pumpkins and Chili Peppers. If those are our influences, we’re definitely going to sound heavier. But immediately people typecast you in Britain. We’re not trying to be a US band but we like US music.”
Here’s a quick meXicolas bio: Evans had fronted several bands throughout the U.K. before deciding to settle down in his hometown of Huddersfield and put his own band together. He had heard about a drummer named Tim Trotter, who was living and playing in South Africa, but planned to relocate back to England. Once Trotter moved back, he and Evans met up and began playing together. Evans then began casting about for a bass player and found Del Carter, who had been playing with various bands in the Midlands. Evans was sufficiently impressed with Carter to invite Carter to jam with him and Trotter. The three clicked and the meXicolas were born.
The meXicolas’ debut disk, X, is due out Feb. 11 on In Exile Records. Their U.K. tour kicks off on Feb. 15, including a Feb. 23 show with The Cult.
For more info about tour dates or about the meXicolas, check out their MySpace space. In the meantime, enjoy a couple of songs from their upcoming disk.
I thought I was all special and everything, getting a copy of “1492,” the new Counting Crows single. Then I found out the Crows issued the single yesterday, as a free download on their Web site.
I decided to go ahead and post “1492” anyway, because I think it’s a pretty good song and I like the concept behind the new album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. “Saturday night is when you sin and Sunday is when you regret,” singer Adam Duritz explained. “Sinning is often done very loudly, angrily, bitterly, violently.”
“1492” is the from the "Saturday Night" part of the album – a rocker unlike what I had come to expect from the Crows. Like everyone else back in the early ‘90s, I had a copy of August and Everything After, Counting Crows’ debut. The songs were a little poppy for my usual taste, but they were all right for when the girls came over. The huge hit “Mr. Jones” kind of set the bar for me as far as what I expected from the band: Catchy tunes, but mainly adult contemporary-type pop music. Once August ran its course, the Crows kind of went off my radar.
Saturday Nights, due out March 25, is Counting Crows first new release in five years. Gil Norton, who has worked with the Foo Fighters and the Pixies, produced the album’s rock half, which I think you will enjoy. You can save the mellow stuff for when the girls are coming over.
I was looking things over and realized it’s been a couple of weeks since I posted up any live music. So I dug around the back shelves of my hard drive and came up with this 1999 performance from Hole.
Say what you will about the widow Cobain – at one point she was even more of a train wreck than Britney Spears – Hole could rock. Pretty on the Inside is as grunge/punk as anything from that era and came before the “Kurt wrote their songs” conspiracies. I think there might even be some irony in that Courtney Love would occasionally goof around live and sing a couple of the lines from Britney’s “...Baby One More Time.”
Courtney and her band released Celebrity Skin in late 1998, and promptly went out on tour in support of the album. The tour kicked off in Australia, then Hole and Marilyn Manson were supposed to continue together in the U.S. for several dates. I had tickets to see them on their Houston, Tex., stop in early 1999. After Hole left the tour, Ticketmaster surprisingly offered a refund, so I gave my tickets back. I wasn’t much of a Marilyn Manson fan in those days and didn’t care to see him. In retrospect, though, it probably would have been a good show.
In May 1999, Hole played a much smaller venue in Houston, with Imperial Teen as the opening act. I did get to see them there and really enjoyed the show. It was much cooler to see Hole in a relatively intimate theater as opposed to the basketball arena where they were supposed to have appeared with Manson.
Today’s post is from one of the first shows on that tour: The Big Day Out Festival in Sydney, Australia. According to the info I have, this show was recorded Jan. 24, 1999.
It’s been a little more than a month since I’ve dug into the Licorice Pizza mailbag, so I figure it’s about time, before the gentle people who send me music start to think I hate them. I’ll just blame the holidays for the delay....
So, without further delay, and in alphabetical order, here is some of the latest music to find its way to me.
Suffused with a love of black music history (think Roy Ayers, Rotary Connection, Sun Ra, Minnie Riperton, Afrika Bambaataa), and technical innovation, 4hero's unique brand of alchemy has given us genre-defining albums and breakthrough anthems that stand out as milestones in the history of dance music. After releasing early rave classic "Mr. Kirk's Nightmare," they established Reinforced Records and unleashed "Goldie" onto the world, as well as material by Doc Scott, Photek, Peshay and Grooverider. Band Web site
What happens when you take everything you know about music theory and throw it out the window? For Benzos, Stinky Records’ New York-based, genre-bending quartet, it is not mere experimentation – it is their raison d'etre. Hence, it is no surprise that their sophomore album, Branches, seamlessly blends the ambience and rhythm of early underground dance and experimental electronic music with lush, rock-based guitars and soaring vocals. Band Web site
Goodtimes Goodtimes is the solo project of Franc Cinelli, an Italian raised in London. Drawing on traditional blues, folk and country music, the songs of Goodtimes Goodtimes are infused with the musings of a young man who is as much at home in London's Soho as in Rome's Trastevere or New York's Lower East Side.
There’s no large amount of information about lowstar, who describe themselves on both their Web site and their MySpace as “a 4-piece band based in London who make an atmospheric, energetic, big noise.” Check ‘em out. Band Web site
Last night’s David Letterman was a home run; the best I’ve seen from him in a long while. Not so much Dave, who is always Dave, but his guests, all of who were solidly entertaining: Tracy Morgan, Kat Von D, and the Dropkick Murphys.
Tracy Morgan was bizarrely and hilariously distracted. Every time “D.L.” would ask him a question, Tracy would respond with something completely irreverent and only slightly related to what they were talking about. At one point, they’re talking about the writer’s strike and Dave asks Tracy what he’s doing with his free time. “I’m just doing karate and trying to get females pregnant,” Tracy says. “At the same time. Karate and gettin’ females pregnant – that’s what I do.”
Check this link here to watch one of the funniest Letterman moments in years.
The very pretty and very tattooed Kat Von D was the second guest. She wasn’t up to much, just plugging her TLC show, LA Ink. Dave flirted with her some and she showed him a little David Letterman caricature tat she had just gotten earlier that day. “Believe me, this is the only way a goofy looking guy like myself would get on your thigh,” Dave said.
Finally, the musical guests were the Dropkick Murphys. DKM are one of those bands I’ve always liked, but at the same time, I’ve never seemed to get around to getting any of their music. They played “The State of Massachusetts,” the single from The Meanest of Times, their latest album. What made a lasting impression on me was – I guess it’s James Wallace who plays the tin whistle? – how he looks like someone who could and would beat the crap out of you if you asked him why he plays a flute.
Anyway, after seeing them on Letterman last night, I got The Meanest of Times today, which is where today’s music comes from. “Jailbreak” is a bonus track, which I don’t think is on the US release.
A little more than a year ago, I posted some music by an LA-area metal band called Bitch. In my usual rambling style, I wrote a little about the band, then said they had disbanded in 1993.
Yesterday, I’m checking my email and see that Betsy Bitch herself has taken a look at my little blog and dropped a comment on my year-old post. “Bitch has never ‘disbanded’,” she wrote.
I was pretty stoked to get noticed by a real rock star (“Take my music down” isn’t really the kind of attention I count), so I wanted to get in touch with her and find out what’s going on with Bitch.
People give me crap about having a MySpace space, but we’re about to see that it comes in handy. I Googled Betsy and learned that she has a MySpace, also. So I dropped her a note, apologizing for my error and asking her what was up with her band.
“My original drummer Robby Settles and I recently re-formed the band with two new guitar players, Steve Kara and Jay Dean, and a new bassist, Steve Gaines,” Betsy wrote me back. “We are about to embark on recording a new E.P. shortly. All of the material is written and we're going into the studio soon. Prior to that, we played some warm-up gigs locally just to get the feel of playing live together.
“A couple of years ago, the original line up (with the exception of a new bassist) played The Bang Your Head Festival in Germany to about 15,000 people with bands such as Dio, Twisted Sister, Dokken, Thin Lizzy, Y&T, etc. It was an awesome experience.”
Betsy also provided me with Bitch’s MySpace, where you can stream some metal. Unfortunately, I do not have any digital versions of any Bitch songs; the original post came from vinyl. As a result, we’re going to have to go tuneless tonight. But check out Bitch’s MySpace, look for the new disk, and check out this video of their 1983 classic, “Be My Slave.”
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably heard me bitch once or twice about the lack of rock music coming from South Florida. Well, it ain’t gonna end here. But rock gets a little bit closer with Against Me!, who come from Gainesville. In case you don’t know, Gainesville is way up the road from Miami, which is probably why there’s rock music there.
I first heard of Against Me! probably a year ago, but they’ve actually been around in different variations for about 10 years. From the Against Me! Web site: “A decade ago, Tom Gabel began his music career as a 17-year-old solo acoustic act known as Against Me!, belting out songs of rebellion in Laundromats and any other venue that would have him.”
By the early 2000’s, Kevin Mahon had joined Gabel as Against Me!’s drummer and the duo released the Crime as Forgiven By EP. Later that same year, Gabel and Dustin Fridkin (on bass guitar) recorded and released The Acoustic EP.
The following year, 2002, Against Me! released Reinventing Axl Rose, their first full-length album as a four-piece band. The band has remained a four-piece since, releasing Thrash Unreal, their Sire Records debut, last year. They also scored a slot at the Coachella Festival last year, as well as appearances on Letterman and Conan.
For tonight’s post, I’m pulling a couple of songs from the earlier EPs. “Impact” comes from Crime as Forgiven By; “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong” from The Acoustic EP (as a side note, The Acoustic EP doesn’t really have a name; it’s just commonly known as The Acoustic EP); and “Sink, Florida, Sink” from the As the Eternal Cowboy album. An electric version was also later released as a single.
Settle down, everyone – it’s the name of a song. I haven’t gone over the edge and started a pr0n blog. Yet.
This is actually kind of a repost. One of the very first posts I made on this little blog was about a couple of relatively obscure bands: Baby Buddha and the Rotters. The Rotters song I posted was “Sit on My Face, Stevie Nicks.” (Hence the name of the post.) I never got the situation squared away with my turntable, so I am no longer able to post from vinyl, but I did save the song as an MP3 and filed it away for future reference.
I’ve been thinking for a while that I ought to repost this late 70's classic, just for fun. When I found a digital version a couple of weeks ago, I knew it was inevitable. My original version of the song came from a 45 and you can hear the pops and clicks of the well-worn vinyl.
The Rotters used to have a Web Site with their band history. Evidently someone hacked it, because it’s been “temporarily closed” for a little more than a year. If you need to, you can catch up on some Rotters history at their MySpace. Watch out, though, because some unrelated British band is calling themselves The Rotters now.
As far as “Sit on My Face, Stevie Nicks,” singer Phester Swollen had this to say about his most infamous song: “It had been written in about ten minutes as one of the worst songs possible while at the same time taking a stab at the big bucks rock world we hated so much.”
The Rotters got the song to Los Angeles DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, who put it on the air. “For some strange reason Fleetwood Mac took offense,” Swollen said. “Well, there's no accounting for taste.
“We soon found we were banned in Los Angeles. Someone claiming to be Mick Fleetwood himself called KROQ and threatened them with a lawsuit if they played the song.”
Alongwith “Sit on My Face, Stevie Nicks,” I’ve got another politically correct gem from the Rotters’ compilation Pull It and Yell.
I got a sort of interesting gift for Christmas this year: a wall calendar featuring James Fraher’s black and white photographs of blues musicians. Fraher, in case you didn’t know (as if I did!) is a fairly renowned photographer whose work has appeared on more than 150 album and CD covers. His photographs are in permanent collections at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Mississippi Blues Archive. (For more information about James Fraher's photography, check out BogFire.com.)
The calendar works in your basic calendar style – each month a different musician is featured along with brief biographical notes and suggested listening lists. I figured I could use this as an excuse to broaden my horizons a little and post some music from each month’s featured artist. Since I didn’t feel like doing this on the first day of the month, I settled on doing it on the first Sunday of the month.
January’s featured artist is Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. From the calendar’s notes:
Fond of coming onstage in a coffin, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (1929-2000) claimed that his most famous recording, “I Put a Spell on You” (1956), was fueled by vast quantities of fried chicken and booze. This Dionysian figure, believed to have fathered nearly fourscore children, once hoped to follow Paul Robeson to the opera stage. But his career veered from Golden Gloves boxing to playing piano for such figures as Tiny Grimes and Fats Domino until that fateful night when an A&R man put an eighty-proof spell on the recording studio where Hawkins and his band were set to play a heartfelt ballad inspired by a recent breakup. The results electrified listeners, and the outlandish, theatrical stage show that Hawkins perfected inspired generations of rock musicians. Asked about his interpretations of songs, Screamin’ Jay replied, “I don’t sing them: I destroy them.”
The recommended albums are Cow Fingers and Mosquito Pie, basically a reissue of Screamin’ Jay’s debut album, minus a couple of songs; and Black Music for White People, an album critics said was “too sanitized” and didn’t really capture Screamin’ Jay’s innate weirdness.
I managed to dig up a copy of Cow Fingers, which contains not only “I Put a Spell on You,” but also his versions of Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris” and Bing Crosby’s “Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddle.”
Give these songs a listen and you’ll see – as I did – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was more than just a one-trick pony. Between yelps and screams, he could lay down jazz and blues tracks with the best of them. But even in a standard cheatin’ blues number like “Darling, Please Forgive Me,” Jay stamps it as his by spreading wails and moans of sorrow all over the background.
Last night, I watched this documentary called “Edgeplay: A Film About The Runaways.” It was interesting for a number of reasons, but also disappointing due to a couple of omissions. The largest omission was Joan Jett, perhaps the most successful of the band’s alumnae. I don’t know if she refused to participate or if there is still animosity between her and Victory Tischler-Blue, nee Vicki Blue, the film’s producer and Runaways bassist during 1977-78. Leaving out Joan’s perspective, to me, left a large gap in the story.
The other thing missing was the inclusion of any of the Runaway’s original music. There were live clips of “Wild Thing” and “Rock and Roll,” but the soundtrack was mostly music by Suzi Quatro or solo Lita Ford. Although the band wrote or co-wrote their songs, I don’t know – and the movie doesn’t mention – who owns the rights, so maybe that was the issue with using the music.
One surprising inclusion was the participation of Kim Fowley, the band’s former manager. I say surprising because there is a lot of straight-up hate between the band members and the man they claim manipulated and exploited them. At one point during the film singer Cherie Currie discusses telling her parents about Fowley: “I didn’t tell them everything he had done; my father would have absolutely taken out a gun and blown his brains out. I still hope one day someone does.”
Fowley, meanwhile, looked at the band as a business or a sports team, where several totally different individuals get together for the benefit of a bigger cause. He was the catalyst that put the band together (they were not pre-fabricated, but rather, as Fowley got word of the individual girls, he worked to put them in touch with each other). He ran herd over them like a drill instructor, using fear and belittlement to keep them in line. To him, the band seems to have been nothing more than project from which he could make money. (There is a stark contrast between this and Lita Ford looking back at how much she had believed in what Fowley told her about being a rock star and how much she really wanted that to happen.) The exploitation and alleged psychological and physical abuse of the girls was something Fowley seems not to have been concerned about. He talks about it as if it were just part of the process, like the military boot camps (yes, camps – plural) he claims to have gone through because he “enjoyed” them.
The Runaways’ story is a fascinating look at a band that came up at the time punk rock was being born in the U.S. Because of their youth, their legitimacy is often overlooked, but the fact is they toured with the Ramones and Blondie, and ultimately were to become as much associated as the New York punks as they were with the California scene.
The Runaways’ full history, as well a link to help get them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is at the band’s Web site here.
For some music, I’ve pulled a couple of tracks from the Runaways’ 1977 album Live in Japan and a couple from a 1993 demos compilation titled Born to Be Bad. The demos, I believe, are from the time when the Runaways were just starting out and were a trio with Jett, drummer Sandy West, and bass player Micki Steele.
If you live in the Midwest – well, actually, if you live anywhere north of Central Florida – you’re going to laugh at me, but damn if it ain’t a little chilly here tonight. As a matter of fact, wind chill may push the temperatures down toward freezing. There’s even a possibility we could break the record for coldest Jan. 2, set back in 1898 when temps dropped to 38 degrees. For the record, we’re at 48 as I write this.
Generally speaking, there’s nothing warms the cockles like some punk rock. And lately, punk’s been a little bit sparse around these parts. A while back I chanced across (at emusic) a compilation titled Where the Bad Boys Rock, Vol. 2. I only had enough downloads at the time to get half of the two disk set, but that was enough to sate my taste for some raunchy punk/glam/psychobilly/what-have-you.
Bad Boys was released in 2003 on the People Like You label, home to, among others, Texas Terri Bomb, the Meteors, and the Whisky Rebels.
For my first post of 2008, I picked a couple of the bands I liked best from the disk I have – disk 2 of the set. Included here are Washington, D.C.-based Adam West; the Frankenstein Drag Queens from Planet 13 (pictured to the left ), whose singer, Wednesday 13, was a member of the Murderdolls for a couple of years; Norwegian glam-punks the Trashcan Darlings; and, from Brooklyn, not Seattle, Joe Coffee.
If you like what you hear here, check out the bands’ individual Web sites; many of them have more music you can have for free. Or you could just not be cheap and go buy their records!!
The question came up the other day at some disreputable forum I frequent: What movie, book, and album would you take with you to a deserted island? The very first disk that came to my mind was Who Are You. 
There are very few other albums that, 30 years later, I can still listen to start to finish, knowing that I know every note and every beat, and still look forward to hearing them. 
Love is Coming Down.mp3
