Greetings, seekers of the unusual, the out-of-the-way, the off-the-beaten-track… the downright cheap!
In these troubled economic times, it’s comforting to know that there’s still a world of wonderfully weird music to explore, at practically no cost, right around the corner at your local flea markets, thrift stores and garbage dumps. Please, Townepeople — won’t you give these tunes a home?
Today, I return from “Red Tag Day” in Purcellville, Virginia — a day when the whole freaking town sets its crap out on the curb with price stickers affixed. In addition to driving home with the weirdest chair I’ve ever seen in my life — a plain old folding metal chair that somebody decided to “pimp out” with racing intakes, cooling exhaust pipe and a spoiler (see below) — I also spent a few dollars on a few discs I thought I’d share.
Or, rather, discs I thought I’d share as part of a general shout-out to two of our most faithful Townsmen, Oats and 2000Man.
The first of the three tracks is from an album called “You Turn Me On!” by Ian Whitcomb. Ian Whitcomb had one minor hit with the title track from this LP, then vanished into obscurity. Before he vanished, he penned an editorial screed for the Los Angeles Times that I would love to read, as it reputedly assured his banishment from the halls of late-60s pop hipsterism. Why, you ask? Because in it, he took all the pompous, overblown pop “artistes” of the day to task for their self-important sillinesses, specifically singling out some of the most popular bands of the day and asking why they insisted on replacing good old-fashioned pop music with, you know, the likes of Procol Harum. Anyhow, as a result of this, Ian Whitcomb became dart board target #1 for the emerging “counterculture” inteligentsia. Or, at least the ones who were also music nerds.
I wish I could say that his music shows how foolish the world was for passing him over, that the “You Turn Me On!” album was his great, lasting revenge over those who shunned him. I wish I could say the album I found for 50 cents was a shimmering emerald city of pop magnificence — but I can’t. In truth, it’s pretty much awful, from one end to the other. A real turd. BUT! Hold on a second — buried in the middle of this colossal dump is a really pretty little song, that sounds to me like a long-lost out-take from the Kinks’ “Village Green” or something. Entitled River Of No Return, I present it to you all — but especially to Townsman Oats, who we all know has a huge boner for the Kinks in this era. Tell us what you think, Oats — but please leave your boner out of it.
Next up are two tracks I thought I’d post for our resident Stones obsessive, 2000Man. The first is Del Shannon’s take on Under My Thumb. To my ears, I hear nothing special — but I know (I think I know) that Del has some big fans in this Hall, and this, the InterWeb tells me, is a particularly rare track of his. So here it is.
The last of the tracks, once again posted in 2000Man’s general direction, is a foot-stompin’ cover of the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction. Or, rather, it’s a foot-stompin’ cover of a cover of “Satisfaction,” because the performers — South Carolina frat-rockers The Swingin’ Medallions — clearly took their main inspiration from Otis Redding’s smokin’ cover of this fine tune. I gotta say, though, there are a bunch of things that work in the Swingin’ Medallions’ favor as this track compares to Otis’. Number one, it’s LOUD. Everything is LOUD on this track. The horns are loud. The screamin’ vocal is loud. The drums are loud. And — most especially — that crazy, totally out-of-tune guitar that makes an appearance after the first chorus, then again as the song fades… is really LOUD. Awesome!
Anyhow, I hope you all enjoy these three tracks. As always, your feedback — especially from you, Oats, and you, 2000Man — is gratefully appreciated.
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
To be clear: the real *winner* in these tracks is the Whitcomb number. But the Stones covers should at least be of interest to our resident Stones completist/Obsessive.
HVB
Er…Ian Whitcomb hardly disappeared into obscurity. He’s probably the leading living expert on the early days of popular music, from Stephen Foster to the 1920s. He’s written books on the subject (I have an autographed copy of his AFTER THE BALL, which my friend Janet Klein gave me in exchange for writing her official bio a few years ago; he’s something of a mentor to her), and compiled and annotated several excellent collections of said music. Plus he did a terrific album a few years ago as Ian Whitcomb and the White Star Orchestra, which was a recreation of the sort of music that would have been played on the ocean liners of the Titanic era.
Not rawk, tis true, but Ian Whitcomb is a bit of a legend in musicological circles.
“A bit” being the key words.
I’m just saying that kinda like the time you thought Jewel Akens’ “The Birds and the Bees” was this incredibly obscure find, this guy is well known in his chosen field.
Who the heck is Jewel Akens? No such Thrifty Music entry exists, sir!
Jewel Akens, The Birds & the Bees:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMlAl0eZk-A&feature=related
Plus a cool live take from Shindig:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umyl-wWRkJ4
Nice Ian Whitcomb track. Just goes to show you, even the most minor of our American boys could have been The Kinks, if such a trite endeavor could have kept their interest for longer than an album track.
Sorry for the pince nez move, dbuskirk, but Whitcomb is British.
The Whitcomb song is nice. Oddly it’s not on the Rhino best-of.
The Shannon version of Under My Thumb suffers from carboncopy-itis. Del does a very good version of the Stones’ deep track Out of Time on his Drop Down and Get Me album from the early 80s.
With a name like Ian Whitcomb you think I would know he is from across the pond. For some reason I had him pegged as some fey L.A.er. He gives twee a bad name.
HVB,
Thanks for the shout-out, and for thinking of me. Also, I really enjoyed your pithy, rather accurate assessment of the mix CD I sent you.
That said, I think this Whitcomb tune is just okay. There’s a stiffness to the rhythm, and a sort of unnatural halting quality to the melody, that makes it fall short of the standards of Village Green-era Kinks, to my ears. But his sad-British-boy voice is a pretty good approximation of Ray at his most forlorn. Thanks again!
Thanks, HVB! I think Double Shot of My Baby’s Love is one of my favorite songs, and they did a nice job on Satisfaction, but I like it better a little more stripped down. Some book I have has an Otis Redding quote (supposedly) saying that he wrote the song. That’s pure bs, but there are days when I like the horns to blast that riff. I gotta think that a Swingin’ Medallions show must have been more fun than a Tilt A Whirl.
Del Shannon doesn’t do much for me. I think Andrew Oldham met Del and recorded some stuff, and I wouldn’t doubt that’s where that came from. The success of The Stones let Andrew do some things that really didn’t matter at all, and that paint by numbers version is pretty dull. I think Andrew missed the point a lot, because he just wanted to get rich.
Pretty awesome thriftiness, though!
That Whitcomb song is pretty cool. Wish I could replace “Down by the Riverside” with it.
The arrangement of “Under My Thumb” is pretty true to the original, so it’s pretty great by that fact alone. Shannon’s voice, though, can’t match the cool of Jagger’s. The original is one of the coolest songs in the world, in my opinion.
That version of “Satisfaction”, on the other hand, BLOWS! At first it sounds like it’s going to be purposely funny/bad, like a Residents track. Then it’s just bad, not even good-bad, but you’re right about the out-of-tune guitar, HVB. It almost redeems the song to the level of great-bad.
Too bad not even one person in the band sounds like he was in on the joke. Had one been, this might have been a stone-cold funny turd.
Thanks for sharing these tracks, Hrrundi. I’m pretty sure I’m a better person for having heard them.
I also liked the Ian Whitcomb song. It does sound a little like a VGPS song, which is amazing since it came out three years before. It’s too bad it’s not on the Best of Ian Whitcomb Rhino LP that I picked up at a Leachmere bargain bin many moons ago.
As for a Kink-alike song done by a Yank band, I direct you to “Saturday Afternoon” by the Chicago band Green from their 1987 album Elaine Mackenzie. It sounds just like something from the 1966-69 period. The rest of the album sounds like Prince and the Zombies.
Thanks for the feedback, all. In general, I’m in agreement, though I’m not sure that version of “Satisfaction” is as bad as Mod says it is. It’s merely slightly-worse-than-mediocre in my book. Del is interesting but ultimately kind of pointless. But I really do like that Whitcomb number. I suppose the Kinksy-ness of it stems from the fact that both he and Ray share an affection for the English music hall tradition (Whitcomb has made a career of it in his post-rock days). Anyhow.
There’s another track on this LP called “Nervous” that features Jimmy Page on guitar and Mitch Mitchell on drums. It’s a measure of how lousy it is that it still didn’t warrant sharing.
HVB
I like that version of Satisfaction. It’s fun. I think sufficiently lubricated at about 11:30 on a Friday night, that would be irresistible.
By the way, Shannon’s Look in that photo you pulled, HVB, is fantastic!
I gotta say that while Shannon’s look is pretty good, I really want to sit in that chair!