One! Two! Three! FUCK!!!

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The first "conspiracy theory" I remember: that Paulie was really hollering That Word on the fourth beat of his count.



I think today we all can accept the fact that the lads were just too polite to even be thinking that in the studio. But it was a debated point back in Mr. Phillips' 5th grade class at Woodland School. I always leaned toward the "FUCK!!!" theory, but mostly out of wishful thinking. Deep inside, I knew he really said "FAH!!!"

Below is an alternate version. In his dramatis personae, so to speak, John is voiced to sound like The Poor Man's Ape Named Ape, meaning a very pale echo of Ronald Colman.



These delightfully wretched cartoons, produced by Al Brodax, came along in 1965 as Saturday morning diversions. If I remember accurately, viewing these cartoons provided my first experience with cognitive dissonance.

I Saw Her Standing There, The Beatles (1963, multifarious video provenances too crazy to attempt documenting), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes. Consider yourselves educated. Please discuss and provide noncommercial commentary.

Friday Night Fish Fry

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The song is "The Fever." If you're expecting a cover version of Peggy Lee, you're too damn old. Myself, I'm on the cusp.



I chose this version because of the bonus lead-in comedy from SCTV, which is my favorite sketch comedy show ever. It's hilarious seeing Dave Thomas and Catherine O'Hara bickering with a definitive air of comedy menace. I don't recall ever seeing a bad episode.

Anyway, stick around for Southside Johnny (music begins about 1:05). I didn't know this was a Springsteen composition until long after I'd heard Southside's rendition---first live at The Quiet Knight in Chicago around 1975. When I listen to Springsteen recordings from this era, so much of it sounds pretentious and melodramatic to my adult ears. Not Southside, though. If I had to choose between seeing one of the two performing today, I'd take Southside in a second.

Too lazy to document the provenance of this clip tonight, but as always it's embedded from YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Birthday Girl Fish Fry!

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Little Oscar, my favorite geezer lady, is having a birthday for a few more hours, so here's a treat for her from the days when "Doug Stephenson" roamed the earth and Columbia Record Club would send you five---FIVE!---free LPs as long as you'd buy one a month for the rest of your life or send it back within 7 days at your own expense.



Whatever Gary Lewis album this was on, we heard the damn thing about five times a day for the entire summer of 1965 in heavy rotation with Jay & The Americans and Jan & Dean. Probably no one is more responsible for me taking up leaded gasoline for recreational use than Little Oscar and Gary Lewis' goddam Playboys!

I embedded this particular version of the selected tune, however, for reasons that have much to do with me and nothing to do with Little Oscar. See if you can guess what they are. Unfortunately, LO did not have any hot friends like the ones tearing it up above, with the possible exception of Terri W. who I was still slightly too young to "appreciate." But she and her bra-stuffing girlfriends were all nice girls, with no vices other than Pepsi. They were never a pain to be around. And that's about the nicest thing any kid can be expected to say about his big sister.

Happy Birthday, Little Oscar!

Little Miss Go-Go, Gary Lewis & the Playboys (1965, Liberty 55778 [45 rpm single; can't track down the album catalog number]), via YouTube, embedded with a claim of fair use because it's Little Oscar's birthday!!!

Editor's note: I read in the liner notes of my CD greatest hits collection that this recording was Take 27! Can you imagine that? I think Brian Wilson must have put together "Good Vibrations" in fewer takes than that.

Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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I discovered that this track was available at Amazon or iTunes as an MP3 and copped it for my "8th" playlist (meaning radio hits from the 8th grade slice of my life, 1966 - 67). It's part of my vinyl 45 collection, scavenged from a thrift store in the mid-70s, when it was still possible to find original-issue singles in reasonably good shape. But my personal vinyl digitization backup project is perpetually just over the time horizon, and I didn't feel like waiting that long to enjoy the song again. This YouTube version is in glorious mono, which I prefer for my pet radio hits.



My grand observation about this song, other than how solid it still sounds, was going to be that it would have been right at home on a Beach Boys album of the same era. It's every bit the production of "Good Vibrations," in my opinion, but surely didn't cost even a tenth of what Brian's masterpiece did (either financially or in terms of mental health). Then, in looking up this song on Wikipedia, I found that the production has more than one connection to Wilson and his dysfunctional band of surf boys.

Sagittarius was a band in a similar way that The Archies was a band. They were a pickup studio group produced by a gentleman named Gary Usher, who wrote lyrics for some early Brian Wilson compositions. The band he pulled together for this record included stand-in Beach Man Glenn Campbell; and Campbell's later replacement, Bruce Johnston. So the fellas knew something about singing close harmony... so there!

I'd love to know where Usher ganked the scratchy, needle-drop toreador clip during the psychedelic musique concrete-type bridge. Even back in 1967 I was certain I'd heard it before, probably from one or more cartoon soundtracks.

Anyway, it's not heard very much on the syndicated corporate oldies radio stations, which is fine by me.

My World Fell Down, Sagittarius (1967, Columbia 4-44163 [45 rpm single]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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I've always considered this a gorgeous pop song, with the mix and more economical edit of the original single being the superior version.



As a lad I responded little and thought even less about pop music lyrics. The main reason is that the words sounded largely unintelligible to my ears, and so I paid attention to vocals almost exclusively in terms of their musical characteristics.

About 10 years later, when my brain was fully developed and I could both understand the words and parse their meaning, I remember being shocked by just how sociopathic the lyrics of this tune really are. By this time in "rock and roll history" (i.e., 1966), there were plenty of really cold lyrics about boy/girl-type stuff, such as Under My Thumb and Norwegian Wood (although I didn't "get" those, either). But, for cryin' out loud, I Saw Her Again is not only pretty, but quite a sweet and jaunty little production. As I say, this tale of a man deliberately and remorselessly exploiting an unsuspecting woman is downright creepy.

Only tonight, when I as looking for a version to post here, I learned that the story behind the composition is even more twisted than I'd suspected. The following is an extract from the notes posted about this cut at YouTube:

Mamas & Papas leader, John Phillips revealed in an interview that the "I Saw Her Again" was composed after he learned that Michelle Phillips (John's wife and fellow group member) and Denny Doherty (also a group member) were having an affair while the group was on tour. He laughingly told Dick Bartley that he wrote the song "so Denny would have to sing it on stage every night and feel guilty".  

You may remember reading in recent years that Mr. Phillips is said to have been quite a piece of work, so his expressed mirth in the above text supports the squick factor of the whole production, as I experienced it when I first paid attention to the lyrics. And because of that (but not the whole drugging-his-daughter-for-incest thing, which allegedly occurred 13 years later), I enjoy this song now more than I ever did before. It's analogous to a principle used in formulating perfumes: every world-class scent includes a minuscule portion of a gut-wrenching odor such as vomit, urine-saturated rags, or rotting flesh. Maybe this is why some of our greatest artists are, in their personal lives, monsters. Or the converse may be true.

Also, for historical interest, go to the notes on YouTube to find out for once and for all whether the famous false start on the outchorus (at 2:15 in the video) was intentional or not. Hint: it was a production error---just what it sounds like---but producer Lou Adler thought it sounded awesome, so they kept it.  

I Saw Her Again, The Mamas & The Papas (1966, Dunhill 4031 [45 rpm single]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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A nice, nostalgic kettle of fish for you to fry:



This is the UK release of a brisk little ditty by a cheeky group of RAF personnel. The lyrics were toned down for the US market, supposedly, but the only difference I can detect here is the inclusion of a line about birth control... which would still be too controversial for the US pop charts here in good old 2013.

I noticed on the label that the tune was composed and produced by Jonathan King, who is best known (to me) for his 1965 wimp-rock ballad "Everyone's Gone To The Moon." Evidently, according to Wikipedia, Mr. King has had his hands in lots of projects over the years, ranging from work with Genesis, 10cc, the Bay City Rollers, a film called Vile Pervert: The Musical, and a 2001 conviction on charges of sexual assault of five teenage boys between 1983 and 1989.

It's Good News Week, Hedgehoppers Anonymous (1965, Decca F.12241), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Friday Night Fish Fry

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Tonight, for some reason, I feel like offering something violent for our entertainment. But not cheaply topical with respect to certain national news events of the week. So put this in your pipe and smoke it:



In case you can't understand the words, this performance is a medley of perspectives on nonapproved drugs---namely, bassist Mark Sandman's musings on his own daily drug experimentation upon himself sandwiching a succinct description of US war-on-drugs policy. I selected this specific video to show this oddly instrumented power trio in action. If you like the feel of it, find a higher-resolution version of this song on YouTube and play it back at earbleed level through your little earbuds. You really need to hear their studio performances on CD-grade recordings to hear what this combo is all about.

There are half a dozen reasons why this is one of my favorite bands of all time, but I won't use the present space to tell you why, and it doesn't matter anyway. I'll just say that I can't think of any other band that sounds so unusual and accessible at the same time.

Test Tube Baby/Shoot 'em Down, Morphine (live at Nightstage, Cambridge, MA, 26 May 1992 [recording provenance unknown] ), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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On account of I miss hearing from Gurlitzer lately, here is some bait to lure herself out of her lair. I'm pretty sure she was in our party at the Roosevelt University Auditorium in Chicago in December 1971 to hear the boys "premier" (or so they said) this very song: Mother.



Listen to the intro by poor Terry Kath: he sounds like his brain has been toasted to the size and mental capability of a raisin. I think it's hilarious that he start's picking out the stock lullaby theme (go-to-sleep, go-to-sleep...) as he's talking, then dribbles off like he's got the somnambulas.

As an adult I became pretty critical of Chicago because I felt they squandered their talent. I stopped following them after their third album, from which this is, er, from. (Not counting Carnegie Hall, which was their fourth.) I feel that none of the members improved an iota, technically, after "Chicago Transit Authority." Knowing little about the band, biographically speaking, I would assume that they were a victims of their meteoric rise to fame and hip-capitalist management. I can almost hear it: You boys could be as big as The Beach Boys if you let us help you write some "relevant" lyrics and pick out some nice "threads". We can also make your hair look sexier while still being hip! Yeah---and you can have all the "pot" you want for free! So I feel the fellas became too famous, wealthy, and high for their own good, and ours too. Maybe that's unfair, but I felt that much of their second album was pretty much only going through motions dictated by some insidious devitalizing force. By the third, it all sounded canned and labeled to me. Their lyrics explored the safe perimeter of pseudo-profundity, and the ensemble horn arrangements mostly sounded like rote variations or fantasias on riffs from Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon.

No one in the band was a virtuoso... and I feel that's actually OK. After all, Chicago was just a rock band... of which some of us had unduly high expectations if we were suckered by the most-of-them-studied-music-at-college marketing. (There's not a thing wrong with a good street-quality jazz-rock band in my book, but I wanted Chicago to exceed the high points of the first album every time out.)
 
The Carnegie Hall album is full of distracted, mediocre moments. But this track is not one of them, despite Kath's soporific introductory ramble. The composition isn't much but isn't bad either---head-shop-type lyrics about man's inhumanity to Mother Nature, changing meters several times before a 5/8 section that is supposed to "resemble industry, and money-making, and pollution". But what a surprise to my cynical 21st century earbones! I'd forgotten. Everybody sounds like they really mean it on this cut, especially during the 5/8 jam! James Pankow starts it with some frantic trombone that may draw from bop chops he learned at college. And Walt Parazaider, bless his heart, really takes his chances on tenor. Maybe he's just running up and down arpeggios from his methods book, but he just gives it up and dives in. Hard to believe this is the same guy who struggled with improvising Dixie and Battle Hymn of The Republic on flute a little earlier in the program. Then Pankow comes back at the end with quite a sensitive elegy-type solo that even made me feel emotional when I reheard it for the first time after buying the Rhino reissue several months ago. The whole collection, even with its flaws, is like an under-appreciated friend.

Mother, Chicago (1971, from "At Carnegie Hall," CD reissue Rhino R2 76174), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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This is very cute. Be sure to watch the post "performance" "interview" with Dick Clark.



It may be my modern sensibilities, but I think that Dick Clark is being a bit of a dick with the boys, at least unintentionally. It appears there's a partial language barrier to which Mr. Clark may not be sensitive. However, he does seem to try to provide some context after the fact by explaining that big-time entertainers (such as himself) don't know their own itineraries most of the time.

I notice that the group spells the word "premiere" the way I remember learning it. For a coupla decades I had assumed that I'd just learned an incorrect spelling of the word in my remedial elementary school education.

I post this song with respect to Senor Rodolpho Murga, who taught me how to make pozole last weekend. Tonight I tried my own batch solo. Tomorrow will tell how it came out.

Farmer John, The Premieres (1 August 1964, live lipsynced* performance on American Bandstand, ABC-TV), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.
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*The fellas should have at least put someone on stage holding a tenor sax to produce a better illusion.

Friday Night Fish Fry (!)

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Been awhile. Happy birthday, Frank! (21 December 1940).



This is the wider world's introduction to FZ and the Mothers of Invention. First tune---grand slam in every way, from attitude to lyrics to arrangement to teen beat. I wonder whether the US counterculture would have been different had Zappa's management and the Verve label had invested several-thousand bucks in strategic payola and disc jockey blowjobs to get this track on the AM radio in fall 1966 (and backed by "Trouble Every Day"). There's a lot on this album that sounds not unlike the Stones. But... fat chance. Have you ever heard lyrics like this on any commercial or NPR radio station?

You know the routine---jam in the earbuds and crank it up to where snot starts running down your upper lip. My first version of this tune and the album it's on was vinyl:

Hungry Freaks, Daddy, The Mothers of Invention (1966, from "Freak Out," Verve V6-5005-2X), embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Not necessarily apropos to the nth degree, but, nevertheless, I am embedding this video in honor of the memory of Vaclav Havel, whose nonfiction writings I have just discovered and about whom I will have more to say later. For now let it suffice to say that the essay I am examining these days like an MRI scanner appears in a cheap edition printed on thirsty pulp paper that begs for marginalia to be inscribed by my genuine Fisher bullet Space Pen.



Now, as to the featured tune, and this particular performance of it, the following:

I've always loved it. My brain originally perceived it as being off-kilter in a way I couldn't explain. First, there's that George rhythm guitar riff that filled the radio like an anthem, but more closely resembled the random tones and percussive, lurching rhythms of a pinball machine to my delicate ears. Then, there's that part---repeatedly---that sounds like a ritardando-slash-meltdown, which is in all cases slapped aside by an abrupt return to the Harrison riff with Ringo bashing his tubs. And finally, there are the words: a song that has nothing to do with girls or whatever that other mysterious stuff was that they were singing about when I was in 7th grade (such as "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yellow Submarine"). This was just a song about a guy who wanted to write paperback books like the ones I used to like to smell at the drugstore news stand next to the comic book racks. (Like Dr No From Russia With Love, of which I could never get past the third page because it was too sexy---just kept reading the first three pages over and over.) So even then, in the back of my unsophisticated brain (infused with anti-knock leaded gas, as it was) I still found myself thinking, "huh?!?" It worked on me sort of like a zen koan.

About 25 years ago the concert from which this clip was extracted was issued by some obscure Italian label which, if memory serves, could get away with selling this bootleg recording at that time due to European copyright laws pertaining to live performances. I enjoyed the rawness of it, and for the first time I heard that the little "meltdown" segments were actually an ear-ptical illusion: when played live, Ringo kept the rhythm audible in the background to keep the lads together. In the studio recording, though, it just seems as if the band holds together via ESP.

Unlike some people, I'm not fazed by all the technical flaws of this recording. It is a document from early days, when the stars set up their own equipment on tour and they probably had no way of hearing themselves in their puny stage monitors over the screeching crowd and arena reverberations. But it does present Paul (fighting with his wobbly mic much of the time) phrasing the melody less "up-and-down" than on the single. It's too bad we don't have some high-quality relaxed, live performances from this era of their careers.

Paperback Writer, The Beatles (live, 2 July 1966, Budokan Hall, Tokyo, provenance of recording unknown), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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I wish that whomever posted this clip on YouTube had obscured the identity of the musicmakers. It's an epic bit of fucking around by Brian Wilson that hints at what he might have accomplished in the studio armed with better mental hygiene.



Starting at about 0:12 and repeating through the track you can hear the Woody Woodpecker motif in the high register of the accordion, which accounts for the subtitle of the composition. There's also a bonus cartoon theme that's even more prominent, arrangementwise, though to my embarrassment I can't identify the source material by its proper title. (Maybe one of you can.) It's featured in at least one Bugs Bunny episode---the one where he has invaded Elmer Fudd's surrealistic dreams (the one with the Salvatore Dali landscapes) for the express purpose of driving Mr. Fudd insane. Bugs gives lyrics to some old saw of a classical theme, thusly: "The rabbits are coming, hurrah, hurrah...!" Wilson uses a slight variation of it. What a nut!

I really enjoy, and am still taken aback by, the psychological tone of this piece. It certainly conveys something foreboding along the lines of a return to winter... at least the winters of yesteryear when all the leaves dropped from the trees, the insects died, the birds flew south, and the landscape was blanketed in frozen gray water crystals for 3 or 4 months.

Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (Woody Woodpecker Symphony), The Beach Boys (reissue 1990, "Smiley Smile & Wild Honey," Capitol C2 93696), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Stars and stripes

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A few years ago while drifting into sleep on a Sunday night, I had an aesthetic experience with a John Philip Sousa march. Our FM public radio station used to run a show called Pipe Dreams, which featured a fairly wide range of music as performed on genuine pipe organs. (In its effort to make WILL-FM "even better," the program was eliminated 2 years ago and replaced with the same syndicated (i.e., simulated) classical music programming that fills about 18 hours of their 24-hour daily schedule.)

Anyway, that evening on Pipe Dreams was presented a rendition of Sousa's iconic "Stars and Stripes Forever," zestily pounded out on a major league, one-off concert pipe organ. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to retain either the organist's name or any information about his mighty instrument into the next day's waking world. But my mind was in a peculiarly receptive state between waking and sleeping, and the performance enthralled me.

I had enjoyed playing alto and tenor saxophone parts, both first and second, on this ditty in high school because most of the other instruments (especially the piccolo) were doing all the hard work. Yet the arranger---Hal Leonard, no doubt---was generous enough to let all the saxes play soli on one of the several famous melodies penned for the march... the one that goes "Dah Dah Dah-duh-duh duh-Duh-Duh" and so on. As with my K-12 concert band experience (starting in 5th grade, actually), my marching and pep band experience helped to plow a larger field for my musical tastes than I'd have tended otherwise.

But hearing "Stars and Stripes Forever" in my mentally, and I'd even say psychically, receptive state, made a memorable impression on me even on the verge of slumber. First, I was able to hear that the organist was hitting every essential note in the score outside of the percussion parts. That was plenty of a mind-blower to me, physical-coordinationwise, who admittedly is not familiar with the level of virtuosity needed for, say, Bach's baroque organ works. But more important was the clarity with which I grasped Sousa's composition. It was the first time I had ever experienced Stars and Stripes as a masterpiece of form, coherence, and even arithmetic.

I tried earlier today to find the specific performance of my memory on YouTube, but I couldn't (not on the first page, at least). The versions posted there are flawed, soundwise and performance-wise. The main problems are excessive echo or audience noise, which obscures an organist's precision; or, more typically, an organist's actual lack of precision and expressiveness. The version I heard that night was a well-engineered studio recording with all requisite reverb, but not too much. And the performer, whomever he was, sounded like he really got the piece. At the time of its composition, Stars and Stripes was not a mere patriotic chestnut written to be pried out of its shell once a year, but was actually a huge pop music genre of the period. I have no serious knowledge about American music before the emergence of jazz, but I suspect that Sousa marches were about the equivalent of rock and roll at the turn of the 20th century.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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This is neat!



For starters, I never get tired of listening to the radio version of this tune. There's so much to like. First, it's a delicately balanced rock ballad; the tempo is danceable and almost brisk while the chord progression includes lots of nifty chromaticism that carries an emotional tinge.

Second, the lyrics deal with the overworked topic of young heartbreak with precocious maturity and a heartening lack of melodrama. As an expression of support for a friend who has lost the "game," I always perceived that Gerry was singing to a female friend, but that's not actually "hard-coded" into the lyrics. Assuming my interpretation represents the band's intent, there is one big way this type of song can go wrong: the consoling party (that is, the singer) is using sympathy as a pretext to worm his way into a distraught lady's undergarments. There's no room for suspicion of that in these lyrics, though.

Third, the arrangement handles the orchestration perfectly. The small string section provides atmospherics, the brass instruments contribute dignity, and the oboe phrases evoke the moments before sunrise better than any other voicing I can think of. This part of the chart reminds us that some adults took part in the production, too---George Martin, maybe? Whomever: they did themselves and the band great credit through economy and understatement, avoiding both cloying sentimentality and over-formality.

But this performance, as I say, is particularly neat to my earbones. It's from a 1964 edition of The Ed Sullivan Show. The boys are playing live, for real, with a small orchestra stashed away somewhere behind the theatrical flats or on the sidelines. As you can hear, there were some problems keeping the orchestra in sync with the band in a few places, particularly a brass flourish at the end of the bridge (around 1:40). I find these production artifacts to be endearing, and don't hear them as errors. These are the fingerprints of a noteworthy pop music performance by talented musicians who at the same time sound like regular, approachable people.

Along those same lines, they Pacemakers sound like they're playing regular, everyday instruments. The rhythm guitar and piano don't sound cheap, but unprocessed and unaffected. Their tones are the same sounds that talented kids in the neighborhood could produce in Dad's garage if they had the same equipment and experimented with the knobs. And I enjoy hearing all the raw detail in those instrumental parts---especially the guitar---that were not conspicuous on the single.

Although I can't be certain, this sounds like the same performance included on a disc I own that collects Ed Sullivan Show recordings of five British Invasion bands from 1964 - 1966. A few months ago I dug it out after it laid dormant in my "stacks" for almost 20 years, and became enamored of it. As I've implied, the sound will not impress audiophiles, but the audio fidelity is perfectly good for a live recording of the period, and most of the tracks offer fine performances replete with previously unheard details and artifacts like those I've mentioned above. The Billy J. Kramer material is good (two Lennon-McCartney songs). The Searchers track, Needles and Pins, is also very nice and makes me wish a few more had been included. Peter and Gordon are alright, and even the four (!) Herman's Hermits tracks are decent---much better than I expected. Besides the Pacemakers' three tracks, the disc ends with a great "set" by The Animals, who exude a genuine and unprocessed character that you could imagine being played in a bar or college gym. The only stinker of the lot is I'm Telling You Now by Freddie and the Dreamers (sorry, lads, but even as a kid I didn't care for your sucky novelty music). A production note about the disc: each "set" is well engineered to sound like a single performance, but many of them are edited together from different locations in the space-time continuum.

Anyway, back to the libretto: below I'm providing the catalog information from the version I own, which will deviate from the YouTube particulars because mine is audio and theirs is video.

Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying, Gerry and the Pacemakers (performance 10 May 1964, from "The Sullivan Years: The British Invasion" [1990], TVT Records TVT 9428-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night After Hours

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Here's an oddly glorious-sounding ditty from the soundtrack of Frank Zappa's out-of-print movie 200 Motels.



I just happened to listen to my CD version of this tonight whilst making a batch of Utility Research Muffins, Bluberry-Orange, and felt like sharing it with the rest of yez.

They lyrics represent a lament of the late-sixties rock star, who it would seem did not always necessarily have access to the highest-class of groupie after any given show (particularly in a place like "Centerville: A Real Nice Place To Raise Your Kids Up." The falsetto vocals are by Turtles singers Howard Kaylan and Mark Vollman, who formed the core of Zappa's "vaudeville band." (The bass player in this aggregation was Jim Pons, yet another Turtles alumnus.) The subject matter of this band was heavily skewed toward obscene, surreal vignettes from "life on the road," which also was the theme (such as it was) for the movie.

It's hard for me to put my finger on what I like about the timbre of the organ in this one. It's churchy and industrial and atmospheric all at once, with lots of colorful fat-fingered dissonances. The trombone is used in an unusual way in this cut, too, being the only wind instrument in evidence. Even more unusual: it's played by George Duke, known pretty much exclusively for keyboards in subsequent versions of the Mothers and, later, in the jazz world at large. The reverb of pretty much everything is both completely over the top and just right to my earbones.

Another oddity: the mix on this version sounds significantly different from my CD on Ryko. don't know if the poster took this from the vinyl or the VHS movie soundtrack, or if the CD was released more than once with different mixes. Zappa was notorious for doing ridiculous things with the mixes and edits on CD reissues... and not necessarily well loved for it by his fans. In this case, though, the mix on this version is fine by me---it just highlights sounds and nuances that aren't apparent on any version I've heard recently. One day I will pull out the vinyl, wipe it down, and give it a hear.

What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning? Frank Zappa and The Mother Of Invention (1971, from the "original MGM motion picture soundtrack" of "Frank Zappa's 200 Motels," Rykodisc RCD 10513/14), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Gorgeous song; music maybe not what one would expect by the title.



As I've mentioned before, song lyrics have almost always been a secondary consideration to me because I could rarely understand them, articulationwise. I tend to listen to the vocals first as another instrument in the arrangement. Then, if I can understand the words as coherent phrases in English, fine. But I'm a pretty literal-minded guy, so I feel real proud of myself if I can extract the composer's intended meaning from roundabout poetics.

E's lyrics are very personal, always. People who know something about the personal tragedies he endured as a younger man may have a clue about the enigmatic lyrics of this song. I happened to think of playing it for you tonight because as we approach the climax of the Christian Holy Week it comes to mind that (1) some traditions hold that Christ spent the Saturday after his crucifixion in Hell and (2) we never learned about this part of the religion in Sunday School or even confirmation as young teenagers in the Methodist denomination. At this point I will invite The Minister's Daughter to shed any light on this, as available. (Allegory and all.) Also, Beer-D and/or Big Rock Head should feel free to disambiguate the content of the lyrics to this haunting Eels composition.

Your Lucky Day In Hell, Eels (1996, from "Beautiful Freak," Dreamworks DRMD-50001), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Here's Diana Krall's peckerwood husband.



Just kidding! (Peckerwood-wise.) Elvis Costello has been a favorite of mine for over 30 years, and this cut stands out to me among his long list of masterpieces.

The zippy pop arrangement, as exuberant as bubble gum, provides the happy "vector" for delivering an apocalyptic prophecy for Empire. I assume that Costello's lyrics were understood much more directly by his British audience, being children of an imperial twilight, than by Americans. But his imagery is so vivid that the thrust of the words were readily discerned even by a complacent twenty-something college slacker in 1979 who had little detailed knowledge of colonialism.

This song has not become any less relevant with the decline of the great Western colonial powers, because those empires have been supplanted by extractive transnational corporate enterprises that rival the power of  any in world history. And ultimately, I think the new ones are every bit as doomed as the ill-fated empires of Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. This is still a prophetic, snappy little pop ditty that should haunt the brain stem of any plutocrat within hearing distance.

Oliver's Army, Elvis Costello and the Attractions (1979, from "Armed Forces," Columbia JC35709), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Bonus fun stuff: while scavenging my vinyl LP collection for the catalog information I rediscovered the bonus 33 rpm demo EP packaged with the original US release of Armed Forces. It contains "Watching The Detectives," "Accidents Will Happen," and "Allison." Also stashed away in the sleeve: my ticket stub for the 10 March 1979 Elvis & Attractions performance at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Bruce Pavitt's girlfriend smuggled my camera into that show under her greatcoat after a security goon tried to confiscate it from me. Don't try that today unless you're prepared to get beaten in the skull with a five-cell Maglite or else give some fat turd a blowjob.

Friday Night Fish Fry

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Not in Lent yet, but we're having fish on Friday anyway, so there!



First things first: this is one that needs to be listened with earbuds jammed brainstem-deep and cranked.

One of the reviews on the YouTube page refers to Chicago Transit Authority as one of the best-engineered albums of its times, and I agree. I first borrowed this album from Larry K. as a high school sophomore and listened to it on one of those tube-driven phonographs like the gradeschool AV department had, where the left stereo speaker is built into the lid over the turntable. This cut, the first on the "CTA" album, floored me with its brassy ensemble riff, percolating bass, and swells of Hammond organ. I'd always enjoyed horn-heavy arrangements, like The Buckinghams often used, but this was the first rock band I'd ever heard built around the core voices of big band instrumentation. I listened the shit out of it until I had to give it back, but soon scrounged $4.95 (it was a double album, you know) to get my own copy at Zayre.

Within a few months I'd bartered something (probably some Playboys I had stolen from Doug Pearson's garage) for a Heathcraft phono amp, and by means now forgotten cobbled together a more powerful record player. This was the first album I played on the Heathcraft, and again I was not disappointed in the results---more presence and excellent-quality bass response; a nice improvement over the bare phonograph. CTA also was the first album I played on the old man's Kenwood rig in the family room, pushing out 100 (peak) watts! And so over the years, Chicago Transit Authority---and "Introduction" in particular---became my reference song for every new stereo component upgrade. The other night I discovered that I've had my nifty B&W speakers bi-amped improperly for 3 years or more, with right bass and left treble coming from the left side, and the converse coming from the right. So I fixed it, and tonight I cranked "Introduction" to 60 (because 11 isn't high enough).

To me there's a certain poignancy to this fantastic chart and performance because I think it's the best thing Chicago ever did. One might say I think everything after this track was downhill for Chicago, even though most of the cuts on this album are at least in the same league as "Introduction." (Actually, I think "Questions 67 and 68 is its equal.) The most impressive thing to me has always been how many changes the band walks the listener though so easily. In fact, it's brilliant, and they show off every single thing they can do, except for Terry Kath's Hendrix-type guitar neck-wringing (which comes later on the same album). The tragic flaw of Chicago, though, is that they kept coming back to the same well for years and years thereafter. Horn ensembles based on minor variations of Jim Pankow's signature trombone arpeggio; no more trumpet solos of note from Lee Loughnane as far as I can recall; and no tenor solos ever, to my knowledge, from Walt Parazaider. Maybe the fellows tried to extend themselves later, but if so I lost interest long before then. After hearing Hot Rats in 1969 and upon being disappointed by Chicago 2 in 1970, Frank Zappa soon became my jazz-rock pied piper.

There was some material I liked on Chicago 2 (the "25 or 6 to 4" album), but it didn't compare to CTA. Plus, even to my immature ears, I thought the sound was abominable. The bass had no presence and the horns sounded like they were recorded off a transistor radio somewhere in the next studio. The lyrics were even more contrived than before (lyrics were always their weak point, in my opinion), and the vocals seemed self-conscious and even awkward. By the release of Chicago 3, it sounded to me like the band was just going through the motions. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to see that original lineup at Soldier Field in Chicago, summer 1970, and they opened their set with this song. The sound was abysmal (due to Soldier Field "acoustics," not record producer malpractice this time), but I appreciated the thought and felt the presence.

Introduction, Chicago (1969, from Chicago Transit Authority, Columbia CS-9809), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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It seems that Johnny Otis departed the scene on Tuesday. Listen to this.



It was only recently that I learned Johnny Otis recorded the hit version of "Willie And The Hand Jive." It's a song I never cared for, so that never registered with me. I know of Johnny Otis mainly through some of his popular recordings on Savoy that were compiled by that label as part of a 1977 double LP called The Roots of Rock 'N Roll. And, unlike many other compilations of that same name, that one is aptly named. Roots includes the cut featured here.

This recording is from an era in American pop music that has interested me for a long time, which began right quick after World War II. For economic reasons, big swing bands were no longer affordable to maintain considering that musicians made their big money from touring; a big band, like an army, travels on its stomach. So different things began happening to jazz, most of which involved pared-down orchestras exploring different sounds. One group brought jazz instrumentation to the blues---the "jump blues," to be more precise---retaining a brass section and featuring the emerging electric guitar more prominently than it had been used in most jazz. Others went in a more vocal-oriented direction, sometimes featuring full-harmony groups that provided roots for doo-wop.

I can't find any quick reference to the personnel comprising the Johnny Otis show, but I recall that it was on the largish side---maybe 7 or 8 guys plus vocalists. This cut features "Little Ester" (barely a teenager at the time) and the Robins. It starts with the characteristic arpeggiated chord played by Otis on vibes, which opened many of his sides during the Savoy era. The structure is a simple 12-bar blues, but listen to how much is going on in the mix. In back of Esther there's classic rock-sounding fills, a hyperactive rolling piano, and a bit later lots more vibes. Then there is Robins close harmony buoying Esther's melodic taunts and accusations all the way, and in the third chorus "Daddy" ripostes with his own denunciations. Finally, they spend the fourth chorus dueling to the bitter end.

So to summarize, in this Johnny Otis production, you can hear jazz vibes, rock guitar, doo-wop backgrounds, plus blues vocalists and piano. More roots than you can stake a shick at.

Incidentally, Otis had an extremely interesting career that you can read a bit about here and here. At the latter link you can hear parts of a 1989 interview Terri Gross did with Otis. Worth a listen if you have 20 minutes.

Double Crossing Blues, The Johnny Otis Show featuring "Little Esther" Phillips (1949, 78 rpm recording Savoy 731-A), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes. 

Friday Night Fish Fry!

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Because we haven't had one in so long! And because I get to choose which night the Fish Fry happens, versus the Prayer Meeting. So here:



I haven't played anything "horny" for Gurlitzer for a spell, so here's one she will remember fondly from the days of "Boom-Chuck-Chuck." (No, assholes, that's not at all what you might think it means. Thank you for your attention in this matter.)

To my teenage earbones, this studio single version of "The Letter" by Joe Cocker was much more exciting than the later recording captured on the Mad Dogs And Englishmen live album. It's fresher, not yet played to death on the road, and the horn solos are more lively. I was  not originally a fan of this song as recorded in 1967 by the Box Tops. Today I would call that one "overproduced," and Alex Chilton delivers the melody line straight up-and-down, rhythmwise, which doesn't interest me.

But the arrangement heard here---by Leon Russell, I presume---struck me as rhythmically off-kilter in a novel way. It begins with some hammering on the piano, sounding like a hungover warmup exercise, then joined by drums reminiscent of (but not exactly like) the stereotypical "Indian" tom-tom figure BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom, which itself is very straight up-and-down. But I was and still am fascinated how Cocker joins this ape ensemble with his lummox vocals, threading his melody through that piledriving rhythm environment like a drunk driver who thinks he's going to escape the police cruisers by madly weaving through the bollards lining Wall Street. And he does! (This time.) You can somehow tell it's the same song the Box Tops recorded, but not very.

The Letter, Joe Cocker and the Shelter People (1970, monaural 45 rpm single A&M 1174), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: I hadn't heard the studio single for years because my highly unique local corporate oldies channel plays only the live version. But I just received it in the mail yesterday as a bonus track on the "deluxe" CD. Haven't even heard it in hi-fi yet, but will before the night is over.