Month: January 2024

Arthur Lee was as astonishing talent. He wrote most of the material for Love, which Wikipedia categorized as psychedelic rock, folk rock, acid rock, and psychedelic pop. I hear a little surf and garage rock in there as well. Love was the first rock band to sign on Electra. When I heard Love’s version of Little Red Book, I thought it was a rock song about a guy who was taking a breakup too hard. Next came 7 and 7 Is and She Comes in Colors, turning trippy. Lee never wanted to take the easy way out, and band members were leaving before Love had a hit. They did Hey, Joe, as well as anyone, but it fell to The Leaves to make it a hit. I thought Talk, Talk (by the Music Machine) was a song by Love. It was a great time for rock and roll, and Love was leading the way.

Da Capo and Forever Changes were the next albums—great. Here’s my read on their problem—the early days of underground FM were great for Love—the DJs could play what they wanted, and they loved Love. But the band didn’t score a hit, and everyone else started to sound like them. Maybe record buyers and the corporate types picking playlists thought Electra was just for folk artist singer-songwriters.

This was my wife’s record. I liked the group enough that I bought their albums as they came out—I didn’t need their greatest hits. This is quite a collection. It is all so nice. My first reaction is that there is no teenage anxiety, a key ingredient of rock and roll. As I listened more, I realized it is very happy, but there isn’t any real emotion. I can’t tell what makes them so happy. There is content that is dark—sniffin’ glue, drowned my cat, didn’t want to be the one who said ‘the end,’ I’m leaving you today, don’t pass the cards to me to deal the crushing blow—but the music and the singing is so sweet I thought they were kidding. It’s not emotionless, the way ABBA didn’t know the meaning of what they were saying. It’s that I can’t believe the singer really was going to leave.

Maybe it’s me. When Younger Girl was out, I’d never had a girlfriend. Love was a foreign language. Maybe what they said lined up with everything I didn’t know—we were a good match. As I found out about how hard it can be to leave someone, I gave the Lovin’ Spoonful credit for putting it between the lines. I don’t know. There’s no sex in these songs. There is love, there’s breaking up, there’s knowing it’s not time, but there’s no next step.

They rhymed ‘beach boy’ with ‘hoi polloi’—the dictionary says hoi polloi is demeaning. Me, I say it’s funny. There are jackhammers in Summer in the City. Night Owl Blues is an instrumental—even a decent blues song sounds upbeat. The title of the song is You Didn’t Have to Be So Kind, but the song says ‘nice,’ not ‘kind.’

I have so many good things to say about Sonny Boy Williamson II, also known as Rice (or Alex) Miller, it’s good I have so many of his records. There are some singers that whatever they may be saying, you know they are singing about sex. Sonny Boy was one. The way he says ‘Come here, baby’ in I Can’t Do It Without You would be hard to resist.

This record is widely known for its nearly 12-minute compilation of outtakes for a song Williamson called Little Village. When Leonard Chess asked why that was the title, Sonny Boy referred to him as ‘motherfucker,’ adding that Chess could name it for his momma if he wanted. Not only is there lively discussion, it is a great record.

Great lyrics: In She Got Next to Me, he says Believin’ is all right, just so you don’t believe the wrong thing. (I can almost hear Descartes say that). The reason he wants to believe her is ‘She is just as cool in the summer as she is in the spring.’ That is poetry. He also reports that when ‘It was 9 below zero on the outside, I brought my baby’s temperature up to 110.’ In Take Your Hand Outa My Pocket, he says ‘I caught your hand in my pocket above the elbow.’ I don’t think she was reaching for his wallet.

When I played this last week, I was disappointed. The group’s next record, named ‘Traffic,’ was much better. This album only had one song with guitars playing chords, drums, and vocals singing into a mic (without dubbing and distortion). It features harpsicord and sitar, fine instruments both but too precious for rock and roll, in my opinion. I think the seeds of progressive rock were planted here. And the songs weren’t any good.

I didn’t rush to post that opinion, which worked out very well. After bingeing on the best hits of the 1960s over the weekend (remembering the Shangri-Las after the death of Mary Weiss, their lead singer), I awoke with Coloured Rain running through my head. It is staying there despite my best efforts to move on. It’s a great little tune.

Before the Information Age, I knew Dave Mason was in the band early and left abruptly. He is on the cover of ‘Traffic’ and nowhere to be seen on Mr. Fantasy, so I thought ‘Traffic’ came first. The songs on ‘Traffic’ seem less sophisticated; for example, ‘here’s a little song you can all join in with, it’s very simple and I hope it’s new’ seems like juvenilia.  I was wrong to think ‘Traffic’ came first.

Another error to confess to: I thought Dear Mr. Fantasy (the song) was about how hard it was to be a touring rock star, like Bob Seger’s Turn the Page. ‘You are the one who can make us all laugh, but doing that you break out in tears.’ I haven’t found anyone else who thinks so.

I saw this band in 1968 at La Cave nightclub in a basement on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. They did a set, then yielded the stage to Taj Mahal and his band. The club where Taj was supposed to play had been raided by the police and closed because there was pot. Linn County Blues Band (as they were known then) played well, though the vocals were rough. I saw this record years later at a used record store and had warm memories.

It’s mostly covers of blues standards by the likes of Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, and Lowell Fulson; a classic Merle Haggard tune; and four songs by the band. The music is fine, the vocals meh.

They played regularly in Chicago, then the record company thought they should drop the ‘blues band’ from their name and move to San Francisco. They played the Fillmore and opened for some big-name bands, but they never had a hit, never really built a following. (There were a lot of bands in San Francisco.) The drummer quit to play in the Full-Tilt Boogie Band behind Janis Joplin and the guy who provided piano, organ, and vocals joined with Elvin Bishop.

In some typefaces, L7 looks like a rectangle. That’s close enough to ‘square,’ as in fuddy-duddy, dull, conformist, fussy, and excessively conventional to prompt Rick James to leave and not look back. The song Bustin’ Out is a catchy tune, says me, and the phrase is repeated enough to work its way into my head without trying to move in. The rest of the album is okay.

I loved James’s music since the first time I heard Super Freak. It was on the punk rock show on the student radio station at Penn in 1981. The DJ played Super Freak twice because it was the best new music that week. I went out and bought all his albums.

There’s a mistake in the lyrics printed on the liner sleeve. James does a little tribute to Patti Labelle, including the most famous line in her big hit, Lady Marmalade. ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?’ is about all the French I know. Someone typed the line how it sounded: Vous le vous couchez avec moi?

I’ve played this more than any other record, I think. Let It Bleed started with a lead, but I don’t care much for Midnight Rambler anymore. American Beauty was my favorite for a long time, but over the years it got too damn melodic for a rock record. As evidence of the power of Workingman’s Dead, it is what I played last time I chased an earworm away.

I used to think Uncle John’s Band had too many questions in it. When I was in school, I had to answer more questions than I wanted, so when the Dead asked ‘how does the song go?’ I said if you don’t know I won’t help you. Now I just think of it as entry-level existentialism and laugh it off.

The only way I can claim to be like Sam Cooke is that I don’t know much biology either, but I have never believed a dire wolf would weigh 600 pounds. ‘Six hundred pounds of sin’ is a terrific and terrifying image, but that would be bigger than most tigers. Just now I read the entry in Wikipedia for dire wolf (I didn’t know it used to be a thing)—it topped out at 150 pounds. I still don’t want one at my window.

I enjoyed making mix tapes (before I started working too hard) and this compilation had some obscure songs. I liked Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat by Paul Evans—surprisingly chaste. Stranded in the Jungle by the Cadets is very odd. The singer rides atop a whale from Africa to his local lovers lane in 12 hours.  The Bobbettes had a hit with Mr. Lee, so someone thought of trying I Shot Mr. Lee (I shot him in the head, whoa oh).

I had a mix tape of trashy oldies drawing on those and others like them that was a big hit at parties.

The first time I watched Saturday Night Live was in December, 1976, when Frank Zappa was the musical guest. He played I’m the Slime, The Purple Lagoon, and at about 2 a.m. Peaches en Regalia. I must have been in a grumpy mood—I didn’t laugh at the show. I decided it wasn’t a good investment of my time and bought the record. I’d heard Willie the Pimp and Hot Rats and liked them. I didn’t know the rest of the record was jazz instrumentals.

After the instrumentals by Gary Davis earlier this week, I checked my collection for records without anyone singing. There are more than I thought—about 80 of 700. Most of those are jazz, featuring John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Art Tatum. A few are classical; there’s a fair amount of comedy. At least one is Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. It’s 20 below here and I’m ready to hear about the wolves in Wales. (If it doesn’t warm up, I can play Dire Wolf by the Grateful Dead. That mentions a harsh winter. I wonder how many songs mention wolves?)

I have four albums by the Rev. Mr. Davis; I thought I picked the one with his singing Death Don’t Have No Mercy. I didn’t see that this record is all instrumental. I like Candy Man and the Maple Leaf Rag on this record too. Davis played a wide variety of music on the streets of New York City for years.  

The liner notes complain about the college kids recording folk music and keeping the royalties. Davis’s Wikipedia page says that performers including Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Grateful Dead, Eric von Schmidt, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones shared credit (and royalties) with Davis; the income allowed Davis to buy his house and live in comfort.

The comments on YouTube for Candyman rave about Davis’s technique.