Jason whipped I Can't Go On, I'll Go Onby The Broken West my way last spring. I love it. This is wonderful, pure, Power Pop sent from the clouds. The Broken West, out of sunny LA, open the album with one of the best tunes of the last five years, "On the Bubble." This track makes any brilliant pop cassette even better. It gives a striking opening punch to any comp you put together. The rest of the album is just amazing and as much as I repeat "On The Bubble," "You Can Build An Island" is my favorite track. There's great guitar work here, brilliant harmonies, and this is such a strong, kick ass debut, that I'm going to stand in the street and scream about it.
Their sophomore effort, Now Or Heaven, has just been released. I haven't heard it yet but that's going to be part of my life's work for the next few days.
Here's an abstract from Angelo, the man responsible for taking us to Power Pop Heaven. Thanks, Angelo.
If you're blogging around, now you know there's a list of the 200 most essential power pop recordings of the last +35 years. John M.Borack has put together the list for the excellent "Shake Some Action" book published by Bruce Brodeen and Not Lame. John Borack is one of the preeminent writers/reviewers covering the power pop/pure pop musical style we all know and love. You may or may not agree with the list (IMHO i do agree mostly with that list, even though mine would have been different) but i guess it would be interesting to post a complete "Best" of the ultimate power pop guide. So, i picked one song from each album selected by John Borack. My picks were totally subjective, so you won't get any "September Gurls", Rock'n'Roll Girl"', "Tomorrow Night" or other all-time classics. I tried (but not always) to not chose the songs you could already find on some famous power pop compilations ("Yellow Pills", "Poptopia" or the Rhino "DIY Series" and many others...).
Ah, the opening track on "Fresh." You can't beat an album that opens with a simple drum roll that segues into chiming, open chords, and lyrics about teenage romance. "I Wanna Be With You" makes Vietnam seem like a distant memory, even if it's 1972. Just think about it, there you are in your Duster driving to the "Stop n Shop" thinking about Vietnam, if only for a minute, and the DJ spins out this nugget of pure powerpop shang-a-lang. You can't help but go faster, turn up that factory-in dash stereo, and drive straight to your girlfriend's house or trailer. Chances are she's got a cooler car. Dad bought her that Nova.
And you knew that tonight would feel so right didn't you? I mean you've been seeing her for what four months and she hasn't given it up? Well Eric Carmen's made everything alright for you... He's given you an in. There's nothing that would make a 1972 Ohio evening perfect and all that silly war crap go away than you and your girl, in the back of her car, with "I Wanna Be With You" blaring the hi-fi. It's like Eric Carmen is Cyrano. He's taking the panties off for you. He's so convincing. Your love could really live forever, tonight.
But be careful. For while "I Wanna Be With You" is one of the greatest powerpop songs of all time, I mean all the ingredients are there, it's all harmonies, a walking bass line, chimey guitars, the verses are only two frickin' lines, the song does have one of rock's signature lyrics encouraging date rape...
"Hold me tight
Our love could live forever after tonight
If you believe that what we're doing is right
Close your eyes and be still."
Or it's the best line to get into a girl's pants EVER!
I work at a library. Next door, at the coffee shop, great people do great things. Large doors separate us but they're always open and the ace kicking stink of coffee and the musical what-nots of any employee fill this space that's traditionally hush, hush. Mallory, could be blasting some Guided By Voices or Sonic Youth. Jami, likes things soft and twangy. Ian, he's a songwriter guy and frankly too sensitive for a Dutchman. Tom, he's all over the map.
There's a turntable at the coffee shop and Tom, has a crate full of records. Leon Russell, Big Bambu, The Commodores, Sly Stone, Cat Stevens. These records hide how much of a Rush fan he really is. Huge. He could be Geddy Lee if he wasn't Tom. He's that much Rush. Maple or Oak, he can't decide which tree he likes better. I bet when he's driving, Tom's marching with the Oaks but when he's with his daughters it's the Maples. This morning was a different story.
The beauty of Pandora is how easily we can lose ourselves in our own usness. That shit we picked out is US. Okay, I wouldn't have picked Six Pence but I did pick out The Sundays and Pandora got that one right. Harriet Wheeler can do no wrong. Tom loves the Pandora.
This morning it's 80s hits: Our House, Howard Jones, Heart and Soul, Outfield, Quaterflash, Romantics, Donald Fagen from that fucking awesome and don't you fucking forget it smash album that I can never forget and absolutely tell everybody I know to get it, The Nightfly. Dexy's, Duran Duran, Bangles, Sewing Machines of Love, Culture Club, King of goddamn Pain. Berlin, No More Words, a personal favorite of mine for private reasons that will remain private. Okay, sexy dancing. I really need to hear Lene Lovich's Lucky Number to complete an incomplete vision of dark haired, sexy dancing, Serbian, 1980s eroticism.
Watching the sunrise over such a beautiful park as the one we have here is made all the more special by Come On Eileen. If I only had a pair of coveralls that would really cover all. And a floppy hat. That would really make the people outside follow me around and "Toora Loo-Rye-Aye!" And who doesn't want to do that in the first days of Fall?
I was working at Hastings (an old entertainment store in Springfield, MO) and there was this really cool guy name Chris who worked there. He was a few years older than I was, (I was 21) and way more knowledgable about music than I was, but I was trying to play cool with him. We were talking about stuff and the topic wandered over to Henry Rollins and I was like, "Oh, I love 'Kick Out the Jams' that song rocks" and he looked at me kinda funny. He says, "You've heard the MC5 version right?" like he's afraid of my answer. I said, "Huh?" He jumped up and down, and was yelling, "Oh my God! Wait till close! You're about to get an education!" I had absolutely no idea what I was in for.
The store closed...half the lights were out, and from the huge soundsystem in the store I hear, "KICK OUT THE JAMS, MUTHAFUCKA!" and it was bliss from there on out. Suddenly I was launched into this whole new world of ROCK that was different from what the mainstream rock was that I was listening to. I didn't know anything but while I was standing there in the book section, mouth agape, soaking it all in, I thought, "I must have more of this." (I'd been listening to Radiohead a lot) To hear the MC5 for the first time like that was like the Heavens parting and the voice of the Almighty saying, "Let there be Rock!" (like in the AC/DC song) just for me. I had heard rock before, but it was cold and empty. This had swing and was loose but tight all at the same time. The bass was what sucked me and swirled me around and pulled at my gut. The howls were unparalleled and the mix allowed me to imagine they were just on the roof rockin' the house down. I wish everyone coulda had that experience. It's a great one.
So, thank you, Chris for tearing me away from the shoe-gazers and the imitators. Thank you for an experience I will never forget. Thanks to you, I'll be in the nursing home, with Alzheimer's, happily screaming "Kick out the Jams Muthafucka!"
My folks have never been music lovers. This has always struck me as odd because my dad's uncle, Don Day, has practically dedicated his life to bluegrass music. He converted his dairy farm in Conway, Missouri into a sort of amphitheatre / campground hybrid, and puts on a fairly large bluegrass festival (Starvey Creek Festival) twice a year. Uncle Don's vision and hard work seems to have paid off, too. He doesn't milk cows anymore. Anyway, one might think that this passion for music would have made its way down the gene pool to my father. But it didn't. When I was small, you could count the records in our house on one hand: a couple of Ventures albums that I suspect he bought for the bikini clad girls on the cover, a carpenters album, and a couple of (fat era) Elvis 45's. These were all filed away neatly in the console of the record player that was seldom touched. Around the time that I was about ten or eleven years old, my folks decided that the old record player was of no use to the family. The record player, it's console, and the contents inside were hauled away (big loss, I mean the fucking Carpenters?!). It's likely that this may have been inspired by one of those "purge your lives of rock music" sermons that we heard at church regularly, but I can't be sure of that
A couple of years later, we moved to a new house with a basement. One day I was rummaging around in the basement looking for a tennis ball that I'd been aimlessly bouncing against the wall for what seemed like hours when I came across an LP that had fallen between the cracks and ended up in the same cardboard box that my tennis ball had landed in. The record's jacket was mustard yellow. In the middle was a circular "fish eye" photo of three really freaky looking guys with huge Afros. Printed across the bottom, in bold purple letters and a font that reminded me of wax dripping down the shaft of a candle were the words, Are You Experienced? "Clearly not," I thought to myself; and I desperately wanted to be.
The image that those three guys (especially the one in the middle) projected from that album cover was irresistible to me. The only problem was that I had no turntable to play this LP on. I tucked the record under my arm, bolted upstairs, and stashed it away alongside my sports illustrated swimsuit issues. It just felt like contraban somehow. I'd get it out every now and then and just stare at it and wonder what kind of sounds would jump out of those grooves if I ever had the chance to drop a needle in them.
By the time I got to the ninth grade, my folks had noticed how much in enjoyed listening to the radio in the car and bought me a "boom box" type cassette player/radio (though I still had no tapes). Also around this time, I had earned their trust enough to be dropped off at the mall on Friday nights with my friends. One of the first things I did when I got there was head straight for Camelot to get a copy of Are You Experienced? on cassette so I could finally hear it (I had actually skipped lunch all week and pocketed my lunch money so I could afford it). My friends laughed. They were all listening to Tone Loc and Vanilla Ice. I didn't care. Hell, if I'd had my own ride, I would have left right then. The suspense had been building for about a year and I couldn't wait to satisfy my curiosity.
Anyone familiar with this classic album can probably guess the rest of the story. My life was changed when I heard the grinding, opening riff of Purple Haze. And the backward guitar riff on the title track even frightened me (still does a little bit). Though it seems obvious now, at the time I could hardly believe how great this music was and the jacket (as much as I love it) paled in comparison. I was hooked
Got the second Portishead cd at the library. Pretty stunning. They're one of those countless bands that I've always read glowing things about, but have never gotten around to hearing. My only objection is that the gal singing (Beth Gibbons) emphasizes the nasally, cutting edge of her voice more often than she needs to. She clearly has some good vocal abilities, and uses them accordingly. I could stand to hear more of her subtle, breathy, back-of-the-throat singing more often. That fingernails on blackboard singing fits some of the tunes, but a little goes a long way with me. Having said that, what an amazing, dark, creepy, hazy musical world those folks have created. David Lynch nightmare druggy evil clown music. The perfect soundtrack to Cindy McCain following you through the woods in a blood-stained wedding dress while clutching a meat-cleaver and smiling the whole time as she softly intones, "turn around and look into my eyes, my eyes, my sweet white eyes..."
The Queen City Roller would like to welcome the decorative Rock and Roll stylings of Stu Sturgis. There's nothing too tall he can't tackle and nothing too short he can't kick over.
The QCR hopes that you enjoy art as much as the next Joe or Jane.
And this illustration gives us a chance to quote DBT; "Lord knows, I can’t change” sounds better in the song than it does with hell to pay."
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Even The Losers" Released November, 1979
"It's just the normal noises in here."
Yeah, just what you would've expected from Petty in 1979, but "Damn the Torpedoes" is anything but normal. It's like the band operated from within some genius brain. I don't think it's all Jimmy Iovine's doing but someone, something, made one of the greatest albums ever and in the fall and spring 79-80 I suddenly realized what it was to be an individual. I mean look at the cover! Signature black suit coat, probably velvet, a simple red shirt, and a Rickenbaker so cool I bought one. Hell, I bought the whole goddamn look. "Damn the Torpedoes," song for song, taught me what it meant to be cool and at 15 I really needed to be cool. I'd had enough of Darren Kinney spitting on me in the halls of Parkview High.
I didn't really have a connection with "I'm One" by The Who in 1979 but "Even the Losers" proved to me that the best music isn't written by bullies. The best pop songs are about everyday guys and gals getting off or getting one over on the Nugents of the world.
Ever have a summer when it was just you and the girl or guy at the lake? Or your neighbor that you've always hung out with but when the hair started to grow all you could really think about was them? That's where the guy in "Even the Losers" lives. It's the moment. That time when nothing else matters but hanging out on the roof, smoking mom's stolen Pall Malls, and pointing out things that are further away then the nearest star. Three months of lovin', touchin', and squeezin' and then at the end of it all they're gone. They're all you can think about and school really sucks.
Who knew that guys like you could get that lucky? Skipping rocks, skinny dipping, heavy petting, and maybe making it to a Babys song. It may never happen again and part of you hopes that it never does. "God it's such a drag when you're livin in the past."
Big Rickenbaker chords and a simple D-A-G melody aren't all it really takes for "Even the Losers" to work. Stan Lynch's shaker and fuck-all fills combined with Benmont Tench's great, thick, Hammond chords texture and frame the song through the first two verses and chorus. They give a little extra in the bridge but after the last chorus, as Mike Campbell plays a second solo that shoots the song home, the whole band just makes you move. The Heartbreakers spin you with the promise that everything after this moment is going to be awesome and that "even the losers get lucky sometime."
I'm still bummed about Black Moses. This guy, who the thumbs are pointing to, is a big fucking Stax fan. Huge. I have Stax people I love and people I really love. Black Moses is one of them. Issac was Soul Brother number 1.5.
Can I just say that his version of "Walk On By," is way soul heaven to me. While I really love Bacharach era Dionne Warwick, Hayes' spooky ass arrangement and killer chick backing vocals took this song places that old Burt wouldn't have ever imagined; bedrooms around the world. I went to see Eartha Kitt once in the East Bay. Eartha was in the middle of a song in French, or Turkish, or Kitty Kat, and she was wailing away like she does when all of a sudden, in my right ear, comes this silky soapy baritone saying "Man, Eartha really sounds good tonight." I turned around and in the booth behind me was one bad mother. Eartha's alright but this was Isaac! I kept looking around because he wouldn't stop talking and then when he wouldn't stop talking I wanted him to shut his mouth, so I could dig Eartha. I think it was a show that actually cost me money and I didn't want it ruined by anyone, especially Isaac Hayes.
I could give a shit about Scientology or Chef and as far as Shaft is concerned, I'm more thankful for the sequel because it's responsible for one of the baddest motherfucking soul performances of all time and it gives me an excuse to post the video. Just watch the sister dance in this performance from Wattstax. No one dances like that anymore and no band looked or sounded like they were coming straight outta the funk box to devastate more than The Bar-Kays (who were the band that backed Hayes on Shaft ) in this live version of "Son of Shaft."
My old friend Scott died this week. Drugs took him in the Pacific Northwest. He was easy for drugs to find, difficult for friends. I'd only seen Scott once in 20 years. He roamed into the Outland in the middle of a set I was doing in 1999. He gave me a wave and was gone. I had so much catching up to do.
Scott was punk rock. He was the "get your ass kicked for just being a punk" punk. Only, Scott fought back. We skated ditches, parking garages, ramps. We wrestled over issues of Maximum Rock and Roll. We wore old man bermudas. Swapped decks and folded pizza the proper way, down the middle. We stayed up late with Tony, Andy, and Kellett watching URGH! A Music War. We took punk rock to the roller skating rink and busted our asses doing DEVO flips in the back. We worshipped the The Jam. We lived together. We stole food. Shared girlfriends. Scott and I took a trip to see Die Kreuzen, skated all over Kansas City, did an interview with The Star. We dropped acid for the first time together. Thanks be to DEVO for getting that party started.
Murphy and I were mates. Thick as fucking thieves. Scott took all the English Punk Rock shit he could take, blended it with really early and cutting edge American Hardcore, and turned himself into a one man wrecking crew. Crass, Husker Du, Throbbing Gristle, Black Flag, The Jam, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, J.F.A., Bauhaus, Youth Brigade, were just a few of the bands that passed from his wide eyes and fast talking mouth into my record collection. Scott moved at a speed that none can imagine. He was firmly electric.
After Scott moved back to the Queen City from Tulsa, where we had moved to further ourselves, I moved towards Modism and we lost touch. Scott became a father of two and ventured towards Seattle. And there he stayed.
His Glendale yearbook featured a blurb about Scott and his punky new wave ways. This nifty skate ditch photo purports to show Murphy in action. The QCR staff is not sure about the short shorts and safety gear. They may have been needed to teach good, responsible boarding. I can't make out the deck but I think it's mine. The yearbook staff asked Scott what he thought about society…
"I think people are too caught up with other people's standards. Society suppresses people and strips them of their individuality. Individualism is my main idea on what I really stand for."
That sounds a lot like Paul Weller and like Weller, Scott made the standards and he made the rules.I'll miss him.
Recent readers, contributors, artists, hooligans and roustabouts, The Queen City Roller is going on a short holiday. A week. Grin and bear it. They'll be stories and action to report. Bears. Things of that sort. Tiny museums will be explored and rocks overturned. Cars may be set on fire.Kitties washed.
In the meantime, listen to The Psychedelic Solution on Compound Radio. Compound Radio is actually in a damn compound. It's true. Neck tattoos, broken bottles, a kitchen. Things that one normally finds in a compound. Sometimes, there is a radio. Jim Jones had one at his compound. And shows? Hell, there are so many shows on there that it will blow your damn mind. Or your friend's mind!
The Psychedelic Solution airs Monday nights at 8pm Pacific. That's 10pm for all you Okies and Bleeding Kansans. When the QCR gets back from holiday, well, you just watch out mister!
A Missouri based blogozine covering music, politics, Clown Mouse, and other things. Featuring essays, reviews, recommendations, rants, things you would've learned had you not been listening to ________, and you may now lick the spoon.
Jason whipped I Can't Go On, I'll Go On by The Broken West my way last spring. I love it. This is wonderful, pure, Power Pop sent from the clouds. The Broken West, out of sunny LA, open the album with one of the best tunes of the last five years, "On the Bubble." This track makes any brilliant pop cassette even better. It gives a striking opening punch to any comp you put together. The rest of the album is just amazing and as much as I repeat "On The Bubble," "You Can Build An Island" is my favorite track. There's great guitar work here, brilliant harmonies, and this is such a strong, kick ass debut, that I'm going to stand in the street and scream about it.
