For the health of underground rock, it’s vital that we find untapped resources to plunder. For those musicians reading with an interest in psych-pop, may I suggest the following Moody Blues deep cuts for your consideration and commentary. I ask you to focus on not only the music but the musicians’ presentation of their music, through Look and the video crew’s lighting and camera angles.
Let’s start with this track, “Om”. I’m a sucker for any ’60s band’s Eastern-style number, but the singers’ mix of moustaches and office-acceptable hair is was sets this clip apart from your standard post-“Within Without You” fare. The television crew’s production values also hold promise for today’s video-making bands. Check it out!
Next, another well-produced video clip, which kicks off with a nicely fetishized organ shot.Continue reading »
It’s going to be extremely difficult for anyone under the age of 43* to properly feel the stinging blows that Team Destroyer will deliver in support of George Thorogood’s Steel Cage Match against ZZ Top and Team Top, but we’ll do our best. Truth be told, it’s going to be only slightly less difficult for the older heads of Rock Town Hall to see the dim stars that will result from our sure-footed jabs, but victory will be all the sweeter.
Before we get into the music, let’s start with the original Look of a young George Thorogood. Take a good look at that cover shot that kicks off this thread. Can you handle what you see?!?!
Now, those of you nerds who remember, circa 1977, high-fiving over the back cover shot of Talking Heads in their little plaid shirts; those of you who discovered Jonathan Richman in his simple, little shirts; those of who were sickened by what rock had become following the age of KISS and other overblown, tarted up arena rockers, look inside your hearts and give Thorogood some respect for his initial choice of simple stage threads. Compare it with that of UK roots rockers like Dave “Saint of Roots Covers” Edmunds, and tell me Thorogood’s not working the same angle, that is Rock of The People.
Now listen to this song while I continue. Listen to it!
Sorry to hijack this thread, Mod, but come on: this “best of the Zeez versus best of Thorogood” concept was dead on arrival. Why? Because the Reverend Billy G and company are so far superior to General George and his band of frat-boy blooz abyoozers that it just ain’t fair to throw them both in the steel cage at the same time. Now, a Handicap Match — *that* might be a little more balanced. So here’s what I propose: I’ve gathered a choice selection of tracks — six, as you requested originally — from across ZZ Top’s career, and they’re making their way to the ring. But note: these are tracks few may have heard; they’re some of the deepest of ZZ’s Deep Traxx. No hits, but, as always, huge chunks of funk and tons of Texas ‘tude. I feel certain they’ll still mop up the ring with the *best* your lame-ass, stogie-chompin’, Mid-Atlantic has-been can offer. Bring it on!
In chronological order, then, here are the members of ZZ Top’s six-man tag team of undeniably rockin’ obscurities:
Salt Lick — from ZZ Top’s first single. Just wanted to prove that this band *always* had what it takes to stomp a mud-hole in Thorogood’s ass.
Have You Heard — also from “Tres Hombres,” but this time a deep, blue testament to the band’s abiding love for red-state, colorblind, gospel preacherman music.
Moving forward a year or two, from “Fandango!”, a live track that documents just what a monster rock machine these guys were live: Thunderbird. The actual performance, while fun, is sloppy as all hell, but that entrance — POW, right between the eyes!
From the underappreciated “Tejas” album, Arrested for Driving While Blind. I’m assuming you’re bringing one of those jive-ass Thorogood drinkin’ songs to the ring. Be my guest, SUCKER — here’s mine.
Lastly, to prove I’m not stacking the deck, here’s a track from the first of the processed 80s albums, “Eliminator.” If I could Only Flag Her Down proves that you can’t hide good music behind crappy production, no matter how hard you try.
So there you go, Mod. I urge you to simply hand over the belt, right now.
Accompanied to the ring by the greatest boogie rock band of all time,
This is not a throwdown I can promote and take part in with even the slightest bit of pride, but upon hearing about 8 seconds of George Thorogood’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” while flipping channels on the drive in this morning, I feel compelled to book the following Steel Cage Match, pitting ZZ Top against the Delaware Destroyer. Hear me out.
Let’s throw out all notions of Critical Acclaim, Authenticity, Cool, and Self-Respect. Let’s line up Team Top vs Team Destroyer, and throw in a half dozen examples of “best” songs by each artist, as chosen by each team of relative, possibly reluctant supporters, against the other in terms of Listenability.
We will ask ourselves – and debate – which artist’s best songs are easiest to listen to, if forced to do so.
Also, each team will have the option of choosing three “skeletons” from the other artist’s catalog. There may be a need, if your team finds itself “winning” this debate by positive means, of embarrassing the other team’s artist.
Let me know what you think about this. Today we can start lining up in support of one artist or the other. Maybe we start developing the list of 6 “best” songs and 3 skeletons. Then we’ll gather those audio examples and see how this plays out in the Steel Cage. Are you game?
The Great 48 has submitted the following Critical Upgrade. I’ve never heard this album, only knowing their popular debut, which a friend burned me years ago and which I enjoy but wish was less silly. The Great One’s description of the band’s overlooked follow up makes me want to check it out. Let us know what you think and whether the Critical Upgrade filing is in order.
First, some set-up is in order: De La Soul was formed in 1987 by Kelvin Mercer (Posdnuos), David Jolicoeur (Dove), and Vincent Mason (Mase), three teenagers from Amityville, Long Island. That last part is important: De La Soul were the first important New York rap group not from the five boroughs, but from a middle-class suburb. Under the guidance of Paul Hudson (Prince Paul), a slightly older hip-hop producer who was also a member of the mid-80s group Stetsasonic, De La Soul got a deal with Tommy Boy Records and released their first single, “Potholes In My Lawn”, in 1988. This song, the chorus of which featured a jews harp and a yodeler, sounded basically like nothing that had ever come before in hip-hop, and when their debut album, Three Feet High and Rising, came out in the spring of 1989, De La Soul were immediately the hottest thing on the scene.
Some historical placement: although Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and some other acts were already expanding the sonic parameters of hip-hop, most hip-hop singles in ’88 and ’89 were still fairly simple, bare-bones affairs along the lines of Run-DMC’s hits. Three Feet High and Rising was worlds apart from that: the songs were still largely sample-based, but although Mase was nominally the trio’s DJ, their sound was created in-studio by Prince Paul and the group out of loops, samples, sequencers, live instruments and found-sound tapes, which made their music far more complex than anything else that was going on at the time. Listen to Three Feet High and Rising today, and unlike just about any other hip-hop record from 1989, it doesn’t sound dated. And it attracted a different sort of white audience than any previous hip-hop album: I can state for myself that although I was mildly interested in hip-hop and buying singles and occasional albums starting with the early run of classic Grandmaster Flash sides on Sugar Hill (other than Blondie’s “Rapture,” my first hip-hop purchase was Flash’s “It’s Nasty,” a great 1982 single based on the riff from Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love”), there was always a vaguely sociological angle, if you get what I’m saying. I barely had any personal connection to Run-DMC’s lyrics, much less Public Enemy.
But once you get past the proliferation of in-jokes, goofiness, and random nonsense on Three Feet High and Rising, the songs are about television, junk food, being slightly scared of girls even when you’re getting off with them (“Jenifa Taught Me”), moral equivocation on the topic of drugs (“Say No Go”), and personal identity versus conformity (“Me Myself and I”), topics that any suburban teenager of any race could get behind. Plus there were the samples. Along with the usual James Brown and George Clinton samples (that last song is built on Funkadelic’s “Not Just Knee Deep”), there were samples from Hall and Oates (“Say No Go”), the Turtles (“Transmitting Live From Mars”), Steely Dan (“Eye Know”), and of course the Johnny Cash sample at the end of “The Magic Number” that gave the album its name. This was music that a teenaged white boy from the ‘burbs recognized. Continue reading »
More than a few of you may be aware of my love for Roy Wood’s solo masterpiece, Boulders. This one-man band outing represents, for me, a landmark in Prock, that is the as-yet-not-fully defined subgenre of progressively self-referential rock and pop music.
You may have heard my spiel before, even if you’ve never heard the album. You may have heard the album before, but even if you couldn’t stand it, I encourage you to grab a copy out of a dollar bin – hell, sadly almost no one wants their old copy – and listen to it in order, preferably a few times. I believe it’s an album of obsessive, whimsical craft and strange beauty. You’ve heard me rattle on about a song’s ability to meet the True Objectives of Rock. An album like this one surely was not part of the original plan. However, in the post-Sgt. Pepper’s era, when the artifact of a rock ‘n roll recording and album could hold as much value as the record’s emotional and rhythmic content, a special place was carved out for rock ‘n roll shut-ins to enjoy in the privacy of their own room. Boulders is just such an album. Do not expect to throw this on at a party and proceed to high-five your friends. See if you can stick in there for the first three tracks, and then see if you can hang on through track 7. If you can get that far, I beg of you to hold tight for track 9, the aptly named “Rock Medley”.
Effin’ Jeff Lynne! The guy used every move in Wood’s book, dating back to his pre-Lynne work with The Move through this stuff and the worst boogie-glam of Wizzard. Wood was the real deal, so real that he often sucked in his overreaching, high-concept flights of fancy. I don’t mean to get down on Jeff Lynne too much, because a Townsman played me the new album by that 40-piece band in the brightly colored robes. My god, Jeff Lynne’s worst work with ELO outshines that crap, but Lynne never put his Prock talents to work on such an inner plane as Wood did on Boulders. This album is sorely in need of some explanation. I’ve got some questions for Wood, and don’t think I haven’t been trying to track him down.
Judging by both today’s poll and the All-Star Jam area, The People are in the process of speaking. We hear a call for a Critical Upgrade on The Clash’s Give ’em Enough Rope, and we’re bringing this issue front and center.
Here’s the deal, though, don’t expect your generous Moderator to do your bidding on this album. Discounting any album that includes “Ghetto Defendant” and “Red Angel Dragnet”, Give ’em Enough Rope is my least favorite Clash album. For almost every pile-driving song I love (eg, “Safe European Home”, “Tommy Gun”, “Stay Free”, “All the Young Punks”) not to mention the silly songs I can’t help but like (eg, “Guns on the Roof” and “Julie’s Been Working for the Drug Squad”) there is an absolute stinker so bad that it would have been rejected for inclusion on a Stiff Little Fingers album!
