Group Grope: The Tubes!

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Feb 022008
 

So I’ve been thinking about how we truly do need a “Group Grope” with the Super Ginchy Rock Combo, The Tubes!

I’m really not kidding. These guys were way ahead of the curve when they came out. I can remember dropping a quarter into the jukebox at Master Pizza and playing both sides of the “White Punks on Dope” 45, and standing on my chair and letting it wail above the Pong machine. Was I cool? Hells, yeah! I thought so, anyway (it was a pretty quiet pizza shop, we weren’t bothering anyone). The Tubes were a band that thought the kids were important. They understood that kids want sex and violence, and that parents had no idea what popular culture, their kids, rock and roll, and the freedom of a Driver’s License were capable of on an unsupervised Saturday night.

Their music holds up today. The synth flourishes tend to be a bit much, but the drum sound and the guitars are still there. The lyrics are smart and funny, and Re Styles was the greatest “Secret Weapon” any band ever had. Trust me. I saw her. I saw what she did on that motorcycle. I wanted to be on that motorcycle with her so bad. “Don’t Touch Me There” was one of those hit singles your mom cringed at when driving you to swimming practice in 1976. “What Do You Want From Life” and its final line, “A baby’s arm holding an apple,” made a lot of teenagers go “huh?” But the old man just said, “I don’t like these guys.” But I did. I loved The Tubes.
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Roy Wood, Boulders

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Jun 272007
 


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.

Wake Up
Rock Down Low

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.

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Feel Like Kicking a Dead Horse?

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Jun 182007
 

Been away some time? First-time visitor? Some threads continue to have life in our collective mind long after saner heads would turn out the lights and hit the hay. For instance:

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The Greatest Prock Artist You’ve Never Heard: Tamio Okuda

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May 312007
 

Feeling somewhat humbled by the lack of novelty in my last Thrifty Music installment, I was very pleased to have made a major score on my last 80-cent LP purchase: the album Crache Ton Venin, by French punk/hard rockers Telephone. I’d certainly never heard these guys before, and I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer rockin’ excellence of this disc.

But then my guilt got to me. See, I’ve been meaning to introduce you folks to another non-Anglophone rocker for months now, and I keep putting it off. But no longer! In the interest of clearing the decks for a Telephone post yet to come, today is the day I finally share my enthusiasm for Japanese procker Tamio Okuda.

I was introduced to Okuda second-hand, by reputation, back when I was going through a bit of a Jellyfish phase a number of years ago. While searching for the whereabouts of main Jellyfisher Andy Sturmer, I kept reading that he had teamed up with some Japanese pop star, writing music for the guy. I found this curious; most J-pop I knew was awful, treacly stuff — though it had been many, many years since I really followed it much.

This was back in the early days of the InterWeb, and these tantalizing name-drops were all I had — until I took a trip to Japan to visit my brother in 2001. Armed only with a name, I took my pidgin Japanese to the local wrecka stow and asked the clerk if he had any Tamio on the shelves. He looked at me in the same way an American clerk might stare down a Japanese tourist who asked if please there might be any Rolling Stones for purchase in your fine music disc shop please — i.e., like I was mildly retarded. He then guided me back to the T.O. section and let me go hog wild. I bought everything I could get my hands on, knowing there was no way to get this stuff back home.

When I got back to the hotel, I popped open my discman and plopped Tamio’s album 30 in it, cueing up the one song I knew Sturmer had co-written: “Coffee”. It satisfied all my deepest, darkest prock urges, delivering a song that sounded like Badfinger, Wings, XTC, and all the best Jeff Lynne hook-craft one could wish for. There was a part of me that felt somewhat ashamed by the music’s total lack of novelty, but the excellence of songcraft was undeniable, and, well, you get the idea.


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Proctomusicology: Through the Prism of Todd Rundgren

 Posted by
Apr 252007
 


If you’ll recall, we’d been making some progress toward a working definition of Proctomusicology and its practitioners’ common threads as expressed in what is becoming known as Prock music.

If the Proctomusicologist, as another Townsperson remarked, displays, “an overt intention to approach rock from an intellectual mindset,” then Todd Rundgren might be an artist we can study and use toward furthering our definition. If you have not already viewed the opening clip of Todd’s flashy, self-consciously bluesy performance of “Black Mariah”, I encourage you to do so now…

What did you think? There’s the obvious play for the glam market; the second-rate self-conscious “Yer Blues”-like use of blues structure; the green-haired taller brother of Paul Williams twiddling knobs, the last psychedelic painted guitar, chops and perms a’plenty… And how ’bout that intro: “You know what, he looks like he does everything!” All around, it’s a pretty joyless and stifling performance, no?
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Jeff Lynne: Master Craftsman or Just a Tool?

 Posted by
Feb 182007
 

Folks: it’s with a somewhat heavy heart that I have to open up a dialog on a topic of some internal conflict for me, namely: how much do I really like Jeff Lynne?

The truth is, I’ve always been deeply conflicted about this guy. On the one hand, he wrote, arranged, performed and produced some of the most pleasing ear candy to emerge from the 70s — an era when radio competition was particularly fierce. For a while there, the guy was unstoppable, and *prolific* to boot. And those songs! Pure pop perfection!

Even his lesser numbers — like the material he tossed off for the godawful Olivia Neutron Bomb vehicle “Xanadu” — kicked ass. What pop tunesmith wouldn’t give his right arm to be able to write something like “I’m Alive,” or the title track from that movie?

And it’s not like Mr. Lynne doesn’t also have an impeccable pop/rock pedigree, to boot. Lesser rock nerds will of course know that he was a critically important member of the underappreciated late-phase Move, along with Mod fave Roy Wood. Serious Prock aficionados will even have heard a track or two from his admirable early efforts with the Idle Race. And — Lord knows — he keeps all the “right company” *these* days.

So what is it about this guy that keeps him rattling around in the same box where I keep my Jellyfishes, Ringo solo albums, Badfinger singles and such? More than any artist, I want to say — at the same time — “he’s awesome!” and “he’s a hack!” I mean, I don’t feel this way about Hall & Oates, fercrissake!

Is it the signature, unmistakable production? The have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too attitude towards wanting to be “orchestral” and candy-coated at the same time? The awful Look? Just plain jealousy? What is it?

I’m hoping that hearing what the rest of you think about Mr. Lynne will help me come to grips with my feelings on the man.

I look forward to your responses.

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