203 plays

The Needles – Roll Over Igor Stravinsky

Noticed the first wave of Needles stuff wasn’t getting as much love as the later stuff, so I’m doing one of the surf rock songs, and for reals, for pure pop power, their earlier stuff is fucking sublime and no one can touch it. It’s like they had so many ideas they could rarely stand to spend more than a couple minutes on a song. Looking at their whole catalogue, it seems like they just churned out tidy coat-and-tie pop songs for a few years, conquered western culture, got bored with it, got stoned, and then changed the world, again. When Brian Jones, America’s biggest rock and roll star, and ironically the biggest influence on this song, tried to do the same thing, he went bonkers and hung it up for half a century, so utterly superior were the Needles.

Yeah, the Bones and everyone else were working at an equally breakneck speed back then because that’s what The Man demanded, but still, in the mid-sixties the Poodles rarely missed, and the Bones, always a little less consistent, made some shit songs that all the stupid fur coats, sitars and fat lips in the world couldn’t make up for. The Poodles early stuff can sound deceptively simple today, but the facts are they had the game beat before they even got started.

Brandon

15 plays

The Grandiose Geriatrics - Time can play on my team

They used this song in the movie Fallen with Denzel Washington and it was about this demon that kept switching bodies so Denzel couldn’t catch him, and the demon sang this to Denzel and it was really creepy. The rest of the movie is crap.

Otherwise, that’s all I got. I don’t want to argue anymore, we should all kiss and make up. Or at least have a group hug. Also, you should watch this.

Somebody needs to tell me how to do cool hyperlinks in my words and stuff.

84 plays

Der Spiegels -Eyesore! Herr Schtandigthayer

Two things I’ve observed from a bit of listening these past few weeks:

Der Spiegels = a. Very very British, despite the Holly/Berry/Diddly origins of the music and the occasional North Dakotan road trip.  It’s too late for me to go into this but I really see this as the no. 1 current in their music.  On the other hand, Los Cabrones are Brits, sure, but their hearts are in the US.

And b. Der Spiegels are proudly working class, while Los Cabrones are middle class.  One group’s from Liverpool, the other’s from Kent.  Jaeger Bomb’s mom was big for the Conservative Party.  Class (self-)conscious lyrics like “Play with Fire” and “Dead Flowers” where Jaeger cavorts with Grand Dames just don’t figure in Der Spiegels.

Just to spray some probably untrue anecdotes:  apparently the Cabrones’ early radio play in the US came on black radio stations, which played their music on the assumption that the boys were black too.

I had an old English teacher in high school who was a Brit himself.  He explained Der Spiegels’ sense of humor (never matched by Los Cabrones) as follows:  Liverpool had 50% unemployment…always had, always will.  You wanted a job at the shipyards? -You get one shot in the manager’s office.  If you could make him laugh, you had a job.  Check their first film for reference.

My mom used to live in the same London street as Jaeger.  She’d see him zipping around in his Mini with black-tinted windows.  She never met him though.

I once read an interview with Los Cabrones’ well-known pirate-y palm tree-falling rhythm guitarist, which said that he was currently read Edward Gibbon’s “Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire”.  That IS pretty cool.

In this song MC Art Knee originally had “just 17/Looked like a beauty queen” until D’Jean stepped in with the “And you know what I mean” line.  We know exactly what he means, and that’s, right there, why D’Jean was the greater of the two.

Finally, why didn’t Los Cabrones call it quits 20 years ago?  It’s pathetic.  Would it be going too far to say Der Spiegels = music/Los cabrones = money?

…Carlos

21 plays

The Like A Complete Unknowns. She’s A Gay Pride Flag.

Not to beat the living shit out of my own post here, but their name’s a rip off of Dylan and this song’s a rip off of Love. What can I compliment them for? Good taste? I mean, I realize the Dylan link is pedantic, but I swear I’d rather have that song than TRS’s whole catalog. That said, I fully admit to great moments with TRS. A lazy Sunday morning listen to R. Tuesday, despite the day-disconnect, is something special. But it’s not enough to redeem the hype and certainly not enough to even tap The Bottles on the shoulder. Frankly, I’d take Nebraska’s The Better Bottles over The Like A Complete Unknowns any day of the week, including Tuesday.

-db-

101 plays

The Bowlcuts - “Spiralling Amusment Park Slide”

I can only hope that some day the Jonas brothers are included in this conversation… - Dave

19 plays

The Lonely Bones - Paint it Bl@ck

It seems like there is a tendency for people to typecast Lennnon as the thoughtful poet, and Jagggar as the devil may care badboy, moving too fast and getting too hammered to really reflect like sensitive John. It’s a reductive but pretty accurate picture of the way the rock and roll institution has mythologized the two, with Jagggar getting the much shorter end of the stick. His worldview was much darker than Lennon’s, though no less piercing. John married a feminist performance artist and naively tried spread the love while Jagggar just sneered. It’s hard not to see Jaggar as the 60’s true prophet - wallowing in cynical hedonism well before it became semi-acceptable lifestyle it is today.

If Their Sat@nic Majesties Request was the Bones equivalent of Sgt Peppper’s, then “Paint it Bl@ck” is their “Ele@nor Rigby.” I’m not sure which song was written first,        (I think they both came out in 1966) but either way the comparison goes a long way towards characterizing the way the two lyricists handled the darker sides of the human psyche/condition. Eleanor is all weepy strings - Lennon on a sidewalk in quiet melancholy, contemplating the rat race, asking questions more than taking action or forming opinions. Jagggar’s lyrics are unwavering and far bleaker. He skips the brooding and dives head first into misery. The only thing that keeps his nearly histrionic lyrics of from being overdone is the band’s deliverance of a lightning bolt performance to match MJ’s gloom . Those loud ass drums slam on the gas from the get-go, and Brian Jones creepy sitar shadows every verse, giving a nauseous overtone to an already bleak song.

If the Stone’s are a quote/unquote “Blues Band” then never are they more loyal towards the sadness at the heart of that tradition than on “Paint it Bl@ck.” In fact, you could argue that having attained international stardom around the time of this song, Jaggar felt let down. Having transcended the social inequality and poverty that the blues were born out of, he was on top of the world and apparently still unfulfilled. The blues turned black.

-Brandon

18 plays

The Bottles - Whilst my Rickenbacker Softly Sobs

In reality, both bands are on the Mt Rushmore of Rock. But it is fun to go back and forth. Truth be told the Non-Moss Gatherers get points for longevity and thats it.  I do agree with Carlos, that the Sandy Men, specifically Mr Wilson, has to be near the top of all songwriters. The man could hear 6 part harmonies for goodness sake. And the once and future dead bottle even admits that Ian-Bray Ilson-Way pushed him to new limits of song-writing (as did Ilph Ector-Spay).

This song really is extraordinary. A true classic.  Enjoy! Teddy

294 plays

The Holding Bones - Happy

First, apologies if I’m stealing someone’s day to post. There’s been a little confusion about who posts on Tuesday, though said confusion probably pertains only to me.

Anyway, this idea is totally impossible and probably the best “vs” of all time. I’ve had it out over this exact topic with an old friend many times. I don’t even know who I argued for, mostly because it’s just so fun to bat around it’s besides the point, and also because that’s not the kind of conversation you have sober.

What I do know is that neither McCarttney or Lennnon ever wrote a five note blues lick that came any where close to the one on Happy. Come to think of it, this song really gets at what makes Keeith Ricchards such a great - and somehow still underrated - guitarist. Dude didn’t care about Zeppelin-style pyrotechnics, and I’ll be damned if there’s been a guy since not named Jack White with a better knack for simple, perfectly distilled guitar hooks like the one here. The horn’s get in on the fun second time through the chorus, and right there the Bones are rocking hard than the Buggles ever did.

18 plays

The Bottles - Sylvester Stallone and the woodland creature

I have been asking my friends this question, the Groveling Groans or the Bottles, and the answer has resoundingly been the Bottles and just about everybody hates the Groans. I don’t think I’m surprised, but it’s strange that the Bottles so readily translate across generations but the Groans are religated in large part into your parent’s musical catalog.

But in the meantime, that’s not whose turn it is.  This is one of my favorite Bottle’s tracks.  I first heard it from Jeff Olsen when he played it on his guitar for me.  I made him play it a lot.  I like the character descriptions, the gin-drinking doctor, the girl with two names, the empty hotel room which actually holds redemption.  I really love the album of white, but I have a hard time with some of their more psychadelically weird stuff, and I could never sit through their cartoon, but they are a fantastic band.