What Is It?

 Posted by
Feb 222021
 

Greetings! I’ve always carried around a certain amount of guilt for having introduced the brainless fun and games that, in my view, contributed to the sickening of RTH (Mercury Version). So it’s with no small amount of trepidation that I unleash my latest bit of tomfoolery on our nicely recuperating RTH. Despite my fear of derailing the healthy, thoughtful discourse that we seem to be enjoying, it seems to me that — in between dutifully foraging for fruits and berries, painstakingly poking termite mounds with broken twigs, and performing complex mating and dominance displays — us monkeys also need a few moments of scratching fleas, yawning, and nibbling on the crusty bits we pull off of each others’ anuses. And it is in that spirit that I introduce my latest creation, entitled simply: What Is It?

In the game of “What Is It,” your job is simple: I, the Quizmaster, will provide you with a list of names of things — bands, albums, tours, infamous behaviors, hair styles, quotable quotes, guitar nicknames, what have you. Some may be real; most will be fake. Your job is to tell us what you think the things are. Your answers don’t have to agree with mine, and they don’t have to correctly identify the “real” things in the list, if in fact there are any. Just answer, to the best of your ability, the question: What Is It?

Example — I say: Bow-legged Ida. You say: The name Jim Dandy gave the washboard he played in Black Oak Arkansas. Got it?

Here we go:

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Interesting Musical Stories You Probably Don’t Know

 Posted by
Feb 202021
 

I’m sure many of you know this great old one-hit wonder. Walter Scott was the lead singer for this song by Bob Kuban & The In-Men.

But did you know this story? It’s taken from a longer article you can find here. A real case of life imitating art.

In early 1983, Walter Scott and Bob Kuban performed together for a television appearance and planned to reunite the band for their twentieth anniversary in June 23, 1984, at the Fox Theatre. After one rehearsal in October 1983, Walter Scott disappeared. In late December his wife, Jo Ann, reported to police that her husband was missing. According to Jo Ann Scott, Walter went out to buy a part for his car and never came home. On December 28th, Walter Scott’s car was found by the St. Louis police, abandoned at the airport.

The St Louis police looked for Walter Scott for over a year, but all the leads led to dead ends. Jo Ann Scott filed for divorce, alleging she’d been abandoned. She was granted a divorce and was remarried in 1986. It happened that the groom at the wedding, Jim Williams, had tragically lost his wife, Sharon, when she reportedly died in a car crash in October 1983.

Meanwhile, Scott’s parents never accepted the official story. They urged the police to keep searching for their son. In 1987, the police uncovered a new lead after Jim Williams’ son informed them that his mom, Sharon, had been having an affair with Walter Scott, and his father found out. Subsequently, the police found Walter Scott floating face down in a cistern ten feet from Jim Williams’ house. Walter Scott’s body been there for about three years. Sharon Williams body was exhumed for a new autopsy. The coroner found that Sharon Williams had died from a “blunt force trauma,” not injuries suffered from a car crash – as the first death certificate stated. Jim Williams was arrested and charged with killing both Scott and his former spouse. Walter Scott had been hog-tied by Jim Williams and then shot.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported later that “Sharon Williams died Oct. 20, 1983, and [Walter] Notheis jr. disappeared on Dec. 27, 1983. His body was found in 1987 in a cistern on property James Williams owned in St. Charles County.” It took about two days for the police to catch up with Jo Ann Scott to charge her with the same two counts of murder. But since Jo Ann was offered a plea bargain, she got a $5,000 fine and spent only 18 months in prison. But Jim Williams spent the rest of his life in prison. As the song lyrics recount: “Tough luck for The Cheater.” Indeed. And Jim Williams got his “baby” (Sharon Williams) back from Walter Scott (The Cheater), only to murder her.

Do you know any interesting rock & roll stories like this that you think the rest of RTH won’t know?

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How We Wrote This: Nick Lowe, The dB’s…

 Posted by
Feb 152021
 

I’ve seen a couple of stories the past week from artists talking about their songwriting process. I love reading and hearing about how artists wrote a particular song.

First, there’s this Guardian piece with Nick Lowe talking about the writing of “Cruel to Be Kind.” Great little piece, but Nick may regret sharing this memory:

Ian Gomm, from the Brinsley days, had taught me the triumphal chord at the top of the song, where I sing “B-a-a-ab-y, you gotta be cruel to be kind”, so he has a co-writing credit.

Friend of the Hall Gomm posted this article on his Facebook page and recalled adding more to the song than that single chord.

A richer article written by the song’s author itself, Peter Holsapple of The dB’s, appeared on our Rock Town Hall Facebook page, courtesy of the excellent Steve Hoffman Music Forums. It’s actually a 2008 New York Times article about the song “Love Is for Lovers,” the single from the band’s third album, Like This. Maybe we even covered this back in 2008, but hey, “It’s COVID-19, Jake.” It’s interesting to read Holsapple’s aspirations for the song and the confluence of circumstances that he felt went into its failure to even sniff the charts.

These are both good tales, but what’s your favorite songwriter tale about the writing of a song?

On a related note, I wish there was a Boomer edition of the podcast (and now Netflix series) Song Exploder. which is all about the writing of a song. My problem is that so many of the artists are youngsters way outside my tastes that I really have to focus to appreciate what these people put together. Although I’m exhausted by paying attention to some milquetoast artist like Bon Iver telling me about the creation of his boring song, I usually do appreciate the process. To give you an idea of how much I hunger for a version of this podcast with artists whose music I dig, the Netflix series episode with REM and “Losing My Religion” was a relative godsend for me. Some of you may know how I feel about REM and that song.

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The Sidekick in Rock & Roll

 Posted by
Feb 102021
 

The Sidekick has a long history in other pop culture forms. Robin. Tonto. Dr. Watson. Mindy. Ginger Rogers.

But not so much in rock & roll.

When I first thought of this I figured there had to be plenty and yet I could only come up with a handful. I’m counting on Rock Town Hall to expand my list.

Here’s what defines a rock & roll sidekick to me:

  • Never the leader
  • Almost solely known for his sidekick role
  • Long-standing stint in this role

I don’t think Keith Richards qualifies. Mick is definitely top dog, but Keith is too much a part of the mythos and music to be a mere sidekick. Feel free to argue this point.

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Dugout Chatter

 Posted by
Jan 262021
 

I finally got around to watching the Go Go’s documentary on Showtime. I liked it a lot, even though I don’t think I gained many new insights. At one point, however, Jane Weidlin was talking about seeing the Sex Pistols at their lackluster final show in San Francisco and she said something like, “It was so disappointing because the British invented punk…” She was always in the final three for my pick for favorite Go Go, but this is a frigging dealbreaker! The last person who I heard make that absurd claim was an Irish guy and I shut that conversation down very quickly. As with Rock, the British might have excelled at Punk. They might have even done a better job of it than the American bands. But like Rock (and hip hop, jazz, blues, country, and almost any form of popular music aside from reggae), Punk is an American invention. End of story. In fact, you could make a case that the British did Punk a disservice by distilling it down to a uniform and a set of rules.

Without giving any consideration to how much you like the music:

  • What do you consider to be the first punk band?
  • What do you consider to be the first punk album?
  • Is it possible for Punk to exist today? Or is the nature of Punk such that it had a natural shelf life after which it just became a parody of itself? If the latter, what do you consider to be the last punk band?
  • Is Punk a style of music or an attitude?
  • What do you think separates Punk from New Wave?
  • I’m sure Seymour Stein can point with precision t o the first New Wave band but what do you consider to be the first New Wave song/band?
  • Who is your favorite Go Go?

By the way, Philly-based Townsmen, I noticed in the credits that a bunch of the live clips were recorded at Emerald City in Cherry Hill.

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