There have always been voices in my head. It’s not enough that I tend to blabber in my everyday life; there’s likely to be a stream of internal chatter going on in my head even while I’m talking to another human being. Jeez, it’s like Rupert Pupkin‘s basement up in here.
Among the topics that occupy my mind are the one question I would ask my favorite artists, should I ever have the opportunity to meet them. For instance, there’s a montage of gangland killings in Martin Scorcese‘s Goodfellas that I’d ask him about: Was the scene consciously styled after a key montage of vengeance and bloodletting in Kurusawa‘s Ran? Even if I was grabbing at straws, I bet Marty wouldn’t miss the opportunity to unleash some pent-up, internal dialog of his own concerning Ran. Then we’d spin cool records and trade tales of guilt-ridden, self-glorified debauchery and crippling asthmatic attacks.
Do you have a nagging question you’d like to ask a favorite musician?
Long ago, when I bought Captain Beefheart‘s awesome Music in Sea Minor ep (maybe my favorite ep ever?) and first heard “Kandy Korn” I was struck by how closely the Buzzcocks followed the key components of that song’s template for their own “Why Can’t I Touch It”. There aren’t many opportunities in everyday life to discuss these songs’ similarities, but the question has often come up during my imaginary discussions with Pete Shelley: “Pete, I gotta ask you, how conscious were you and the band of having completely structured your song after Beefheart’s song? I mean, even your and Steve’s rhythm guitar jam on the extended fadeout follows the arc of the extended fade in ‘Kandy Korn’.”
Likely, no great discussion would follow this question, but every once in a while I poke around the Web, thinking I’ll find an old interview in which Shelley was asked just this question. I’ve never found acknowledgment of a direct connection, although the Buzzcocks covered Beefheart’s “I Love You Big Dummy”, and Shelley has cited Beefheart as an early influence. There is one other person out there who’s raised this obvious connection. Only one! Aren’t there much less important questions out there that result in more than 1 Google hit? If you don’t believe me, type in +"why can't I touch it" +"kandy korn". Of 4 hits, there’s only the one relevant hit that I’ve pointed out. If nothing else, we’ve now doubled that amount.
So this is not the most enlightening question I’ve ever imagined asking an artistic hero, but it does give me an excuse to post both tracks back to back for our listening pleasure. If you don’t already own Singles Going Steady, what’s your problem? If you don’t already own Music in Sea Minor, I urge you to seek out the 1983 reissue 10-inch ep version of it, or just make sure you own both Safe as Milk and Mirror Man, the two full-length albums from which the perfectly packaged …Sea Minor cherrypicks.
Captain Beefheart, “Kandy Korn”
Buzzcocks, “Why Can’t I Touch It?”
I’ll have to re-listen to “Kandy Korn” (which I know from The Best Beefheart compilation that has most of Safe as Milk and a few other songs) since, to be honest, it’s not a song in the Beefheart canon that I’ve returned to a lot as I don’t listen to the pre-Trout Mask stuff anywhere near as much as that record and later stuff like Clear Spot and especially both versions of Bat Chain Puller and Doc at the Radar Station.
I’ve listened to Singles Going Steady more than just about anything in my collection, though.
I do have one small correction, though. You wrote:
Actually it was Magazine, but you were close.
Pince Nez time, Berlyant: Buzzcocks covered it first!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/bnbd/
I know that this is almost 2 years later, so hopefully someone will still care enough about this to read it, but “Kandy Korn” just came on my iTunes and I thought the exact same thing, though particularly during its first minute or so. I immediately starting singing “Why Can’t I Touch It”. I don’t know why I never noticed the connection before.
My man! We’ve missed you. The intro’s almost exactly the same, but I think even the structure of the ending guitar jam is related.
I’ve missed you all here, too, and sorry that I’ve been MIA. I’m gonna make a more concerted effort to check in. Anyway, I have to confess that I didn’t remember the thread at all, but a Google search for “Buzzcocks Kandy Korn” turned it up. It was the second hit or something like that. I can definitely sense similarities in the ending guitar jams of both songs, but yeah, it’s the intro similarity that really struck me, hence my desire to look it up and see if anyone else had made the connection.