converselyspeaking

It’s not a loud noise to tell you to move out of the ambulance’s way, it’s a pretty woman on a rock to lure sailors to destruction. It’s arty, not punk.  Wikipedia says the woman on the cover of the album is 19-year-old Jerry Hall, Brian Ferry’s girlfriend at the time. I never knew.

I bought this record used in the early ‘80s because it had two songs I liked. The bass and drums in Love Is the Drug are hypnotizing. When I played it just now, I realized that the vocals and horns are very strong too. Ferry can sing. Rolling Stone put Siren in the top 500; I wouldn’t go that far. I am generally more comfortable with two or three chords with a beat and lyrics that are as subtle as a mallet. Some of this is syncopated; my sprung rhythm detector went off as I listened. Man, I even liked Sentimental Fool, which opened with a long slow instrumental intro that is sorta spacey. I admit that I have no idea what ‘jungle red’ is.

James White is a name used by James Chance, musician and singer in New York, says Wikipedia. He played with the Contortions, whose shows often ended with a fistfight. Contort Yourself is the first song on the record. Lydia Lunch appears on the album as Stella Rico. The Blacks turned into Defunkt, which has 20 albums in its discography. See how playful this bunch is—a band that has been together a long time is named’ defunct.’ Lunch and White use pseudonyms. As I recall, Rolling Stone said sometimes the band played as James Black and the Whites.

[Tropical] Heat Wave is easy to like; it starts at 11:42 on the album. Side B is mostly jazz. For those of you who missed New Wave, White’s pose on the cover is classic. He wears a white dinner jacket, continuing the playing on words.

This was the third Jefferson Airplane record, the second one after Grace Slick joined. Surrealistic Pillow had White Rabbit and Somebody to Love on it, both boffo hits. Baxter’s (I’ll call it) was an album that sounded like Dada to most Top 40 fans. (Some people said it is what tripping on LSD sounded like. Other people repeated that to sound cool.) Mainstream rock critics didn’t like it.  As I recall, Life magazine said it wasn’t as good as Strange Days by the Doors. In a previous post in defense of Paul Kantner I said it is an all-time great. I am unwavering. I do remember that college friend, after hearing me rave about the record, said he’d played it and it was awful. Was I talking about the same record, he asked.

The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil has the spoken word ‘armadillo’ in it. I will remember that after I forget who I am.

I heard the Byrds play at the University of Chicago in October 1969. They spent more time tuning than all the bands I’ve heard live put together. I thought they were high or showing off. As they tuned again after the third song, a voice from the balcony ordered them to cut the country shit. That seemed harsh at the time. I hadn’t heard this record.

Me, I like country music, but the Byrds were terrible at it. Why would they record I am a Pilgrim and The Christian Life? A friend told me that the Byrds were a gateway to country music for kids who had grown up on Top 40 songs such as Mr. Tambourine Man. I said folks who heard the Byrds do Life in Prison would never listen to Merle Haggard. I bought this record used for a buck in 1981 because so many people said it was great. I still don’t get it.

Does Rotary Connection mean something? The innertubes won’t tell me. Is it about phones—rotary dials were still big in 1969. In 1966 the Rolling Stones did a song titled Connection on the record Between the Buttons—I think I should be able to connect the dots, but I got nothing.

Minnie Riperton was great, the band on the record was very good. What were the folks at Chess/Cadet thinking when they were producing this? I don’t think Respect needed another cover version in 1969. It was the band’s fourth album, so they must have sold some. There’s a lot of the ‘60s that is hard to explain.

This record is a mix of old folk tunes such as Jack o’ Diamonds and De Kalb Blues, for example, and some topical songs von Schmidt wrote, one of them using the U.S. space program as a metaphor for sex. I read the liner notes, finding that von Schmidt was an accomplished painter and won a Fulbright. Two songs that were on earlier posts—Roy Acuff did Titanic and Tal Mahal did Ain’t Nobody’s Business, essentially the same as Champagne Don’t Hurt Me, Baby.

I did some quick poking around in Discogs. I have four versions of Reason to Believe and of Hey Joe. I bet the most frequently recorded song will be a blues classic.

Hutto was one of the most renowned slide guitar players of his generation, hence the ‘slide’ in the title. He was a devotee of Elmore James, and Hutto passed it down to his nephew Lil’ Ed Williams, front man for The Blues Imperials. Wikipedia says Jack White plays the same model guitar that Hutto did. Something about blues music inspires stories about passing down. After Hound Dog Taylor died, Hutto fronted for Taylor’s band, the House Rockers.

I picked this clip of Hutto’s performance for the hat as much as the music. That hat is in a black and white photo on the back cover of Slidewinder. I think it is even more majestic in color.