Sounds of the Hall in roughly 33 1/3 minutes!
In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-In your host, Mr. Moderator, celebrates the downloading of a track by The Groundhogs that lives up to blooz-rock majesty of a long-lost cassette collection of Groundhogs songs gifted to a young, impressionable Mr. Moderator by a long-lost friend. Yet another search through a big box of ancient cassette tapes that bugs Mrs. Moderator to no end is about to ensue. This discovery, by the way, fits in nicely with the Mod’s recently rekindled ape sympathies, but a chatty ape tonight’s host is.
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/RTH-Saturday-Night-Shut-In-40.mp3|titles=RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 40][Note: The Rock Town Hall feed will enable you to easily download Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your digital music player. In fact, you can even set your iTunes to search for an automatic download of each week’s podcast.]
Count me in as a Be Bop Deluxe fan. They deserved greater success than they had and I think part of the problem was that people who liked music in nice, neat categories didn’t know quite what to make of them. Were they prog? Glam? Pop? Metal?
As for Bowie, I think the reason that Mr. Mod finds so many of his songs to be terrible is the fact that he has tried just about everything along the way. I’m a fan of his with a pretty complete collection but I also acknowledge that he’s put out some really bad albums and even his best albums have some clunkers. Oh well, that’s the hazard of risk-taking. “Boys Keep Swinging” is terrific, however. I assume that most RTHers have seen the video for the song but if you haven’t, it’s worth watching. David looks pretty normal at first…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMhFyWEMlD4&ob=av3e
Love it! I’d never seen that video.
I don’t recall ever seeing that video. I always think of his SNL appearance, where I think he played this song and did something “freaky” – having Klaus Nomi and/or appearing as a marionette version of himself.
I played this song for my 14-year-old son yesterday, and as it got underway he asked if it was the Undertones. Pretty cool leap from the backing vocals, I suppose, if you ask me.
Bowie’s video and your comments brought to mind an artist, Pat Keck, who we first saw near Boston. She makes moveable wooden sculptures, many referencing musicians who were her friends. She has one of Klaus Nomi rising from a coffin. She did one of David Bowie wearing a suit made of Funny Bone wrappers. Here is a video of 4 of these figures. To us, they look like Byrne, Sylvian, Bowie and Smith.
http://www.patkeck.com/Video/Messengers2-1.wmv