Detroit and Cleveland, after they stopped being famous for producing cars and steel, wanted to be known for rock and roll. Ian Hunter sang ‘Cleveland Rocks’ and Bob Seger mocked Rolling Stone magazine for being so slow to call Detroit’s audiences the best in the world. Poor Cleveland got the Hall of Fame (Electric Light Orchestra? Donovan? really?) and Detroit got this compilation. The MC5, the Stooges, Bob Seger System, one of Mitch Ryder’s bands, and one of Seger’s guitar player’s bands are great or great-adjacent; there are some lesser bands that are still good. SRC covered Cream covering Skip James pretty well. The Rationals decided to record ‘Respect’ after Aretha Franklin—not a good choice. I bought this for just $3 in 1980 in Philadelphia because they didn’t know how good it was. Something on the innertubes said that Mitch Ryder founded the Seeds and Stems label and that it put out a song by Ryder and Ernie Harwell. Learning things like that keeps me going.
Month: April 2024
Mike Pinder, last of the original Moody Blues, dies at 82
He was their keyboard/Mellotron player. It was an innovative instrument, kind of sampler and kind of synth that gave the Blues their lush orchestral sound in Days of Future Past. Pinder also recited the poem in Nights in White Satin. (Me, I thought that was an outtake from Spinal Tap.) Some stories from the innertubes: Their management company took their early earnings and ran to the hills. The band had a hit in France in 1965 with a version of Bye, Bye Bird, a Sonny Boy Williamson tune. There’s a clip from French TV that’s pretty good.
The Specials, Chrysalis Records, 1980
WXRT played a lot of the Specials when this came out, especially A Message to You, Rudy, which I really liked. I got the record and found that the rest of the record was okay. That’s how it goes sometimes. I like ska, I like sticking it to the man, I like unifying the punks, natty dreads, mods, rockers, hippies, and the skinheads. But this didn’t get me going into clubs, much less going into the streets. It was me, not them. The songs do warn of the folks who want to paint the town gray, which is a good line.
Jonas Friddle, The Last Place to Go, self-released, 2019
Hey—a record released this century. When I saw Friddle in 2019, I thought of John Prine. His songs had depth and maturity. ‘There’s at least two ways a body can drown/getting tossed in the ocean and drinking in a dry town.’ My grandmother lived in a dry town, and my cousins talked about sneaking away on backroads to get a drink. It sounded like prohibition—you’d never learn to moderate your drinking. About going smoothly through life—’a man ain’t a swiss watch, all well-oiled and clean/he’s a lopsided pinball on a tilted machine.’ Reacting to the end of touring circuses: ‘How am I supposed to run away/now that they’ve taken the last place to go.’ He’s skeptical of love: ‘Am I a used car for parts/for sale by the owner.’ There’s a song about Samson and one about the South. In the liner notes Friddle apologizes for the lack of banjo on the record. Isn’t it said that a gentleman is someone who can play the banjo yet doesn’t?
I bet COVID set back Friddle’s career. Here’s hoping it gets back on track.
Early Years 1927-1933, Blind Willie McTell, Yazoo Records, 1968
Dickey Betts died. I don’t have any Allman Brothers records to play or insights about Betts to offer. I did remember that the Allman Brothers made a hit of Statesboro Blues, a Blind Willie McTell song I happen to own a copy of. I noticed the lyrics are a little different. McTell sang that his mother died and left him reckless; his father died and left him wild, wild, wild. That got trimmed a bit by the Allman Brothers Band for a reference to a rock and roll favorite—sister Lucille. McTell complains about a mighty mean woman; he mentions but doesn’t name a sister, brother, auntie, uncle, cousin, and friend. He mentions a classic steam engine that had a ‘colored fireman’ who worked hard, and he asked someone to hand him his traveling shoes.
Elsewhere on the record he sang about a topic dear to my heart—writing paper. By today’s standards I write a lot of letters. For now I’m using up accountants’ forms dating from before Excel that my father brought home from the office and graph paper left from various sources. Maybe I’ll need to buy stationery someday.
The Best of Carly Simon, Elektra, 1975
Somehow I never realized that Carly Simon’s greatest hits are 40 minutes of unrelentingly cynical disappointment about love and long-term romance. I love it. One reason I hadn’t listened much was the ketchup commercial, and another was her being married to James Taylor. ‘The Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frostin’ is not an honest description of driving in bad weather. That probably wasn’t fair to hold against her, and they are long divorced, so there’s nothing holding me back. In That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be, she says of older married people: Their children hate them, they hate each other, they hate themselves. ‘Silent rooms, tearful nights, angry dawn’—that’s poetry. In The Right Thing to Do, so long as you stay, loving you is right. In Mockingbird, all the gifts to express love might fail. In Legend in Your Own Time, her lover started early by disappointing his mama. In I Haven’t Got Time for the Pain, she lays in on so thick I think she’s trying to kid herself: ‘Open up and drink in the white light pouring down from heaven.’ In Anticipation, these are the good old days for the simple reason that it’s all downhill from here. In (We Have) No Secrets, Simon agrees with Bob Seger: Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.
In I Am a Rock, Paul Simon urges us to avoid entanglements. Carly Simon sounds more like Muhammad Ali looking back at long career of engagement.
Official Music, King Biscuit Boy with Crowbar, Paramount Records, 1970
I bought this used in 2010 because in 1975 I knew a guy who loved King Biscuit Boy. As he heard about King Biscuit Time and King Biscuit Flower Hour, he trimmed the facts to fit with what he knew about King Biscuit Boy. This record isn’t much good if you’ve heard Sonny Boy Williamson, say. However, as I wrote this review, I found that the record is adjacent to some great stuff. For example, Crowbar was Ronnie Hawkins’s band in the late 1960s. One day he fired them all (saying those boys could eff up a crowbar in 15 seconds, giving the band its name as a parting gift), which is the same career path as The Band. King Biscuit Time is the longest-running daily American radio broadcast show, gracing the airwaves since November 21, 1941. Just about all the great blues performers have been on it. Levon Helm (drummer and singer for The Band) said it inspired his career. King Biscuit Flower Hour (a great name, I think) was a weekly rock and roll radio show for 20 years. As Cheap Trick put it, everything works if you let it. My goal is to get everything to touch.
Brave New World, Steve Miller Band, Capitol Records, 1969
I bought this record used because it had a song I liked—Space Cowboy—and the band had a dozen hits. Space Cowboy is still okay, but the rest of the record isn’t, even the cut with Paul McCartney fooling with Steve Miller. It has some redeeming moments: a call to ‘turn on your love light, let it shine on me’ (the first of the playthrough) and it combines two tropes in an amusing way—I went to see the doctor/to have my fortune read. It even has a phrase no other record has—prayers and surveyors. But it isn’t very good.
Vol. 2, Big Mama Thornton, Arhoolie, 1967
Such a strange record. My other Big Mama Thornton records emphasize that she made a hit of ‘Houn’ Dog’ before Elvis Presley did, that he wanted to sound like her, that she is the godmother of rock and roll. I see how that helps a blues singer sell records to rock and roll fans. She does a great version of Wade in the Water, for example, that could be a rock song. On this record, though, about half of her songs are hymns—the fountain will never run dry/I never have to cry/I never will die/because I know the sun keeps shining/Jesus take my hand. In another song, she’s headed for the pearly gates, St. Peter gonna lead her. I understand that her faith was an important part of her life and she wanted to sing about it.
But the other half of the songs include Bumble Bee (sort of a companion song to Muddy Waters wishing his honey bee would bring her sweetness back to him) that says ‘you stung me this morning/I’ve been looking for you all day long.’ I never expected to hear Big Mama say ‘your stinger as long as my right arm/you had me to the good place.’
I am puzzled by Black Rat. She says she’ll hide her shoe close to her man’s shirttail. I’ve heard threats to put one’s boot up another’s rear end—never heard a woman say it though. Then I thought, shirttails are in the front as well as the back. She could be threatening to kick him in the crotch as hard as she can. The next verse is obscure—I took you downtown/pay your doctor bill/Now I’m in a little bit of trouble/tryin to get me killed. I guess St. Peter can handle ambivalence.
This Arhoolie record is the best-made I’ve played. Sixty years old, there’s no surface noise and the instruments are all crisp.
Chicago Fire, Son Seals, Alligator Records, 1980
I hadn’t noticed that the songs on this record are not happy. Buzzard Luck is a phrase I like to use: can’t kill nothing, and won’t nothing die. I’m Not Tired asks for the chance to prove his love (after years of being by her side). Leaving Home has ‘I’m broke, ragged, and disgusted.’ The landlord comes to the door to say, Son, you gotta pay up or move out. In Gentleman from the Windy City he’s putting on his best outfit while thinking he may be coming home in a VW. In Goodbye Little Girl, Seals says he used to be her funny clown, someone she liked having him around. In Crying Time Again, as he smokes two or three packs of cigarettes and drinks a bottle of gin, the sun goes down and his baby is leaving again. In Nobody Wants a Loser, he says ‘I’m an alcoholic, and sometimes I regret it, especially when the liquor store won’t give me no more credit.’ Seals did have a tough life.
The song titles and credits on the back cover are in light blue reversed out of black, as we used to say in the communications biz. They are a headache waiting to happen. When I spent too much time on my computer, I’d switch WordPerfect to colors like that to make sure I would log off soon.
converselyspeaking 