October 10, 2016 - Deep Purple - Smoke On the Water (1972)

When I was in fourth grade in 1976, there was a talent show at my elementary school. A classmate named Greg brought in a bass guitar and an amp, and he played the intro from Smoke On the Water. G-Bb-C, G-Bb-Db-C. One of the greatest rock riffs of all time. I didn't know what the song was, but when I eventually became familiar with it, I remembered the talent show.

I grew up in northern Illinois. The only Lake Geneva I knew was in Wisconsin; it was where I went to church camp for a few days in the summer. I had no idea what Montreux was, or how to spell it. I didn't know who Frank Zappa was, or why he was with a bunch of mothers. I just knew there was some stupid with a flare gun who started the fire.

Of course, I now know that the song is Deep Purple's musical news report about what happened - the band were planning to record some songs at the Montreux Casino, using the Rolling Stones mobile recording studio. Frank Zappa was playing a show there when someone fired a flare gun and started a fire. Claude Nobs, Funky Claude, founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, helped people escape from the burning building. The band ended up recording at the Grand Hotel in Montreux, which was mostly empty, since it was the end of the tourist season.

Ian Gillan sounds fairly pissed off and disgusted, I love the way his voice rises up after We ended up at the Grand Hotel...Ritchie Blackmore plays a nice guitar solo in the middle. The live version from the Made In Japan album is pretty close to the studio version, although it allows a bit more space for Jon Lord to show off his chops on the organ.



 

October 9, 2016 - The Kings - This Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide (1980)

Hey Judy, Get Trudy...I was around 13 when this song appeared on the scene. What a way to kick off the 80s. I loved it the first time I heard it. Strangely, I never owned a copy of it. The 45, at least the American release, split the song a/b sides. Who would want to flip the record? These songs are meant to be next to each other, not on opposite sides. I believe I recorded it off the radio using our handheld tape recorder. It was on WLS all the time. It ends on the dot so the DJ never ruined it by breaking in too soon. Check out the video, you can tell these guys loved what they created, a total crowd pleaser. One of the greatest one-hit wonders of all time, I never tire of it.

This Beat Goes On is the first half of the tune. Meat and potatoes two-string mini barre chords, then the new wave keyboard comes in. Great rhymes abound, Donna - wanna - Toronto. The vocals are progressively modified, adding more reverb and delay as the song progresses. The part that begins I have lots of friends that I can ding at anytime is exciting and really raises the ceiling. There is such joy in this song, fun times, going out and acting crazy. Another great line - Hey ladies, you crazies, well me and Zero request you in the Mercedes. I always wondered who this Zero was. The singer then announces this time I'm switchin' to glide, foreshadowing the next half of the two-fer. Lunatics Anonymous, that's where I belong...I used to think he was saying Lunatics are not honest. A few repeated lines of this beat goes on and then we head into...

Switchin' To Glide...after all the craziness, it's time to recover...save up your energy because nothing matters but the weekend, from a Tuesday point of view. Glide through the week until the craziness is unleashed again. Listen to the line balancin in my head...love it! Drums pounding, crazy keyboard swoops, vocals all reverbed out. I finally found some way outta this hole ya know, outta this hole! Magical stuff.

I don't know what else to say, other than I am so happy this song exists. The Kings are from Oakville, Ontario, CANADA. I wish I could have seen them in 1980 somewhere in Canada. They are still an entity, so there's still a chance.

October 8, 2016 - Yoko Ono - Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City (1970)

This is Yoko's song of grief after having a miscarriage. It begins with a snippet of George Harrison on sitar that gets looped as Yoko Ono starts singing, tons of echo added to her vocals. After the first pass through the lyrics, a looped drum pattern comes in with some funky bass from Klaus Voormann and hurdy-gurdy sounding guitar from John. Yoko's voice becomes more anguished as the song progresses. At 3:50, Yoko and the carriage drift away from us, and we are left with bird songs of a typical morning.

Experimental and droning, it makes me think of something that Can or Faust might do. The lyrics are the title words sung verrrry slowly. This is from Yoko's Plastic Ono Band album, but I heard it on the Onobox set, which my local library owns or owned. I'm not quite sure. If you like this song, and you want to dip your ears further, by all means do so. I can probably name a handful of other songs I like and/or tolerate. I wish she had more songs like this one. Sometimes a couple of her Double Fantasy songs enter my consciousness and I'm not too bothered, but in general my ears can only go so far into the Yoko catalogue before they get scratched and irritated by her screechy claws and I run for the hydrochloric ac--, I mean hydrogen peroxide. Ow! It burns! Yeah, OK, I appreciate the artistic efforts, I'm just not that into the output. As Paul said in a recent RS interview, 'She's so Yoko!'

October 7, 2016 - Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love (1969)

Wanna whole lotta love neeeow whole lotta love neeeow whole lotta love neeeeeeeeeow...that's the essence of the song.

Is Robert Plant laughing or coughing at the very beginning of Whole Lotta Love? You make the call. This is Led Zeppelin's version of the Small Faces You Need Loving version of Willie Dixon's You Need Love. This was the early Zep blueprint; i.e., stealing ideas from the older American blues guys, then turning their amps up to eleven and radio sexting it all to the bulging collective consciousness of 1969's young white male population. Ah keep it cooling baby.

The main riff is kind of like the heavy equivalent of The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction, which is their equivalent of Beethoven's 5th. You need coolin...wanna whole lotta love, neeeeeeow....

The middle part starts at 1:19. It is a trippy experimental sound collage of primal passion, with theremin and twiddled knobs, John Bonham keeping the groove, Robert Plant's voice ducking in and out of the shadows. Warning!...scary Robert voice at 2:44! Without this middle section, we get a whole lotta talk and nothing to back it up.

Then at 3:02 the massive drums shatter our illusions and Jimmy Page's dry distorted electric guitar machete splits our reality in half. Back on the outside trying to look in. 'Aw, sod off, ya perv.' Sorry, Robert.

October 6, 2016 - Sugar Minott - Vanity (1978)

Anyone up for some nursery rhymes? How about a biblical passage? Well, Vanity has both!

Sugar Minott starts off by singing There is a message in what I've got to say to you. I always like to continue this lyric in my head by adding a brief  'listen to me now' prior to the first verse. It's on my 'things that songs could have had included that I would have appreciated' wish list. Well, now it's time for nursery rhyme story hour with Sugar:

Verse #1: Old King Cole, that merry old soul. He lost all his gold, and now he's crying a sea.
Verse #2: Humpty Dumpty, the big fat egg who fell off the wall. All of his friends couldn't put him back together, even with all their money.
Verse #3: Little Miss Mary, quite contrary...and filled with vanity, no doubt.
Verse #4 and #5: Jack and Jill. This one is a little confusing to me. I think Sugar sings about George and Jill going up Jack's hill to rob the dreadlocks of his fill. But he caught them, and now they are under the ground. See, he put a twist on it.

The message is - don't put your trust in vanity for it will let you down. And Sugar also warns about hoarding lots of wealth as he paraphrases Mark 10:25 from the Bible when he sings It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than the rich man to enter in the kingdom of Zion. Basically, just be real because this stuff matters on a cosmic level.

This is taken from the excellent compilation Respect to Studio One. The music bounces along merrily as any nursery rhyme should, complete with a significant dub break. Excellent bass lines, horns, whistling synth sounds, percussion.

October 5, 2016 - The Beatles - A Day in the Life (1967)

A Day in the Life flows right out of Sgt Pepper's (Reprise) so you get a few seconds of the audience fade out as the gently strummed guitar enters. Majestic piano chords appear moments later. Then John Lennon's dreamy vocals come in on the first verse: I read the news today, oh boy, accompanied by light piano, maracas, and bass.

He blew his mind out in a car is a continuation of the first news story, and right after this line at 0:48 Ringo comes in with a dramatic drum fill, and he continues to fill in the spaces through the end of the verse.

After I'd love to turn you on at the end of the verse about seeing a film, the orchestra appears for the mind-blowing ascent into the clouds. Then we get Paul's nifty little woke up fell out of bed section. Jazzy piano lines.

One final verse about 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and then another epic orchestral maneuver, and we get to the final giant piano chord fadeout. The weird inner groove part is attached to the end of the song, which I wish wasn't there because it sometimes freaks me out to no end. There I am, all relaxed as the giant chord dissipates, then I get the shock of whatever it is..."I never could be any other way" or something. Ughh, be quiet! Leave me alone!

I am often amazed by this song, like I almost can't believe anyone could create such a transcendent piece of music. It sits there at the end of the Sgt Pepper album in its own space, separate from the previous songs.. It is the room at the top, that you need a special code to enter. Truly a work of master craftsmen.

October 4, 2016 - Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band - Against the Wind (1980)

I know what you're thinking. More Bob Seger? Really? See, my friend Dave and I love this guy. We love poking fun at Bob's reflective earnestness and the way he stretches out a song through his extemporaneous fade out vocalizing, it's part of the charm in his songs about blue collar American life. The struggle, beauty, determination, getting back on your feet when you fall down. Keep on keepin on. And enjoy a cold beer while you're at it. That's Bob's way. To quote Office Space, "I celebrate the guy's entire catalog."

Against the Wind has some typical Bob-isms: the double negative wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then, the turnaround phrase I was living to run and running to live, the discombobulated dimensions of moving eight miles a minute for months at a time, the passion of caught like a wildfire out of control and how she swore that it never would end. The urge to slow down and rest while life keeps throwing challenges at you. The feeling of trying to get back home when you know you can never go home again.

The last minute and a half is the fade out vocalizing, as against the wind is repeated over and over and Bob keeps adding to the mix: I'm still running, see the young man run, watch the young man run, and the joyful 'where did that come from' burst of let the cowboys ride! That's Bob's push-you-over-the-cliff moment. One more butt-clenching agehnnnst the wind! and the song is done.

October 3, 2016 - Talking Heads - The Big Country (1978)

Bill Janovitz wrote a great review of The Big Country on allmusic.com. The slide guitar from Jerry Harrison is my favorite part of the song, from some reason it makes me think of a laid back air raid siren. The narrator is on an airplane, commenting on the things he sees on the ground and imagining what the people are doing down there. It all sounds quaint and peaceful: baseball diamonds, houses, farmland, simple lives. But he's certainly not coming to raid them. He doesn't want anything to do with them:

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
I couldn't live like that, no siree!
I couldn't do the things the way those people do.
I couldn't live there if you paid me to.

In spite of this sentiment, you can't help feeling sorry for this guy; he seems so lonely up there in the clouds, so removed from this sort of life, he would envy them if he were able to comprehend it.

October 2, 2016 - The Clash - Straight to Hell (1982)

OK, another song about hell. Straight to Hell is the elegy recited at yesterday's funeral in Stull. It could be Stull (part 2). Perhaps this guy was guilted to death by the Clash, forced to listen to the lyrics by Joe Strummer on the way to Stull until he saw himself in them.

Go straight to hell boys...the verses describe three different situations in the world that were basically a piss-off to the working poor by those in power. Steels mills being shut down in England. Poor American boys sent to Vietnam who ended up fathering Vietnamese children who never knew them. Arson started in apartment buildings occupied by Puerto Rican immigrants in an effort to frighten them out of a neighborhood in New York.

The opening music has a hazy film of regret, and to me it also has a sci-fi aspect to it, like these are images being broadcast out into space - look alien beings, this is what our people do to each other. At 0:21 it sneaks in the oriental riff with some quasi-bamboo clack percussion.

October 1, 2016 - Urge Overkill - Stull (Part 1) (1992)

October. Rocktober. Rock Lobster. Red Lobster. Blue Oyster. Crab People. Pulling mussels from a shell. Ergo, October is also National Seafood Month. Hey, it really is! Holy coincidence, Batman!

Stull (part 1), by Urge Overkill, is from the Stull EP. The cover of the Stull EP has a tombstone with STULL carved on it. The tombstone rests in the Stull Cemetery in Stull, Kansas. Makes your head hurt a bit. It's a heavy word, like a chunk of rock or the end piece of a meat loaf. Uh-uh, looks like you got the stull end of that loaf, brother!

I am including an article called Stull, Kansas: Gateway to Hell. It's a nice creepy read to get us all in the Halloween spirit, all about hidden stairs that descend into the netherworld. Yoinks! Yikes! Ka-pow!

The song is pretty creepy, too. It starts off with this slow groove Polk Salad Annie sound in the guitars. The drums mess with the rhythm now and then with abrupt offbeat patterns that add a hesitant quality to the lyrics. Are we sure about this? Let's go back. The narrator is driving to Stull like he has no choice. Destiny. The vocals are double-tracked, he needs an extra him for reinforcements against the evil lurking there in rural Kansas. He is doing a good job navigating, mentioning how much closer he's getting. 30-20-10 miles, 6 and a half, almost there...almost there...2 and three quarters, point seven six miles. He's planning to be buried there. He is going to look for a nice plot. Best wishes, fella.

Where is Stull? I looked on google and it really is around forty miles west of Kansas City! Son of a gun. Stull is not a place I'd be looking forward to visiting. I mean, look at the record cover. Well, I guess if was just passing through, and it was daytime, then maybe. I would be respectful to the ancients, no worries there. Hopefully vice versa. Don't be afraid, it's great.