Oh whoa oh oh On the Radio...

It's back, baby -- ORF Rock is retuned and returned to the airwaves on a regular basis!

Les Coole and Penny Baker are . . . ORF Rock.  Get some.

Listen tonight!

Rocking the ORF from the Hague to the Wharf!

As a Single LP 1: George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

Artist: George Harrison

Album: All Things Must Pass

Released: November 27, 1970

Length: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Vinyl Discs: 3

Might as well start with a doozy, right? 2 hours. 3 LP's. Whew.

Backstory: George, known as the quiet Beatle, or if you watched the Get Back documentary, the super whiny one that Paul pushed around, had a treasure trove full of tunes by the time the Beatles busted up in the year of our tiny dictator’s birth (Anno Dictato 1970). 

And… he put them all . . . all . . . all on this record! All of them! Include some Sides E and F sludge. Man. 

George was in a truly spiritual frame of mind in the late 60’s. He was hanging with Norah Jones’ dad and meditating and taking some acid and most relevantly, incorporating a sitar and other Indian classical instruments into rock and roll. It wasn't just the sound of it, though. He was imbued with religion and Hare Krishna and peace on earth. 

The lyrics of All Things Must Pass are mostly about: God, loving God, praying, and really loving God. You hear a song and start to think it’s an ode to a gal, and ah yeah, it’s instead a paean to a god. Which is obviously perfectly fine. There just isn’t a ton of complex lyrical content. All Things Must Pass is really about one thing. Dear lord. 

When you’re a Beatle (you’re a Beatle all the way?), you have lots of things:

Talent. 

Money. 

Fame. 

Wives.

Gold records.

Access to famous recording studios and producers.

But also really gifted friends. Ones who will oblige you and play on your records. This album is star-studded, to include:

• his future wife-swipin' buddy Eric Clapton
• 5th Beatle Billy Preston
• 4th Beatle Ringo Starr
• Gary Wright ("Dream Weaver," "Love Is Alive")
• Klaus Voormann, German bassman extraordinaire
• Jim Gordon, stud drummer til he lost his fucking shit
• Peter Frampton, age 20
• Pete Drake, pedal steel (played on "Lay Lady Lay," "Stand By Your Man" so many more)
• Badfinger dudes
• Bobby Keys, super sax man on Exile and 100 others

Hell, it goes on, see here -- to the point where Dave Mason said he doesn't know what tracks he's on because "there were so many people in the studio." So they all got together in London town and pumped out a plethora of rock music. 

My story: I never really listened to this album before this year. Everyone knows “My Sweet Lord,” and a few of you know about the landmark lawsuit that the Chiffons’ levied at George for ripping off their hit “He’s So Fine.” Score 1 for ABKCO, later seen destroying The Verve.

Other tracks you know from this solo debut include the title track and especially the stellar “What Is Life" -- my favorite all-time George-solo tune and one immortalized in Goodfellas.

   

I am mostly a post-Beatles fan of Paul and Wings, even with some of his slight fare and silly love songs (actually love that one).  Over the last couple of years, I have honed in on Lennon's work before and after his "Long Weekend" and Hollywood Vampires stint and A Toot and a Snore in '74 sagas -- a chapter of Whitneypedia worth mining another time. 

And Ringo is just Ringo, god bless 'im. You can hear everything worthy he's done since 1970 in 14 good minutes. ("Photograph" is outstanding, albeit footnoted with Harrison's co-write.)

George? I never gave him the time. Even though his name is G(h)eorg(h)e.  I know.

Until this project. And I'm glad I dug in. Here we go, with a newly re-arranged and massively truncated album that rivals any Après-Beatle offering. 

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass as a Single LP

Side A (22:12)

1. What Is Life 

This song just seems like a killer album opener to me. And so it is now. 

2. I Live for You

I follow it up with… an outtake? Yep, good shit. Pete Drake pedal steel. Get some. 

3. My Sweet Lord

At #3, we go with the big hit. Hare Hare Krishna Krishna, the thing about the Lord, he’s so fine. 

4. Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)

My favorite discovery on this little journey! Frank Crisp, a “microscopist,” and the original owner of Harrison’s London home. Now that is lyrical fun! Love this tune. Let it roll, indeed. 

5. Run of the Mill

Now this one really deviates from the peace and love! A nifty little tune with some brass, it sounds pretty Beatles-y. Maybe because it was written when the Fab Four were breaking up; it’s a major slap squarely at Paul. Love it. You go, George. 

6. Awaiting on You All

Okay, let’s hustle back to the pew. A rocking little number. Lyrics remind me of our pal Hightower’s ex-gal Allison, who’d joined a cult and shaved her head in the late 1990’s. He went to see her and was catching up, and he told her he was a schoolteacher. She replied curtly, “Okay, but wouldn’t it be better if you were teaching people to chant to God?” 

Side B (20:19)

1. Isn't It a Pity (Version 1)

A lovely song. A long song. A Phil Spector-long song. It’s 7:11. You know, like they were recording so long, so late at night, they had to go get Twinkies and burritos and Cokes and then made the song that runtime. Ringo, Billy Preston, Gary Wright. Version 2 is shorter and has Clapton. Eh, I like this one.

2. If Not for You 

A cover of a Dylan tune. Is it a cover if it’s by your friend and he only released it one month prior? I don’t know. I like George’s version way better. A toe tapper, and his slide sounds great. Listen for a young Peter Frampton on acoustic guitar. (If you can.) 

3. Hear Me Lord

Really enjoy this one. This is a beautiful spiritual with killer keys (piano, keyboard, and amazing organ) and some electric licks from E.C. A great cut. 

4. All Things Must Pass

Closing it out with the title track. I wish I loved this song more than I do, but it’s integral to the album and a good message for today.

Wow. What a tight little banger. Wait, what? Seriously, though, it's too bad Sir Martin, a gheorghe in his own right, didn't stop by Abbey Road Studios in the summer of '70 and hack away at the scraps to make this sharp piece of British steel. 42 minutes and 31 seconds lean. 

Listen away until the next time. Let it roll.

New Recurring Feature: Les Coole's As a Single LP Series

Bloated. Self-indulgent. Lacking self-control and self-awareness. A massive ego trip. 

These are labels often used to describe (a) me, (b) my blog posts, and, most pertinently, (c) double and triple albums throughout rock'n'roll history. Yes, for decades, 99.9% of original release pop and rock LP records were single vinyl discs to be played at 33⅓ rpm, and they usually held 20 to 22, no more than 23 minutes a side. Along the way, though, there were occasional, more robust submissions of multiple discs – those in the .1% – with varying success. 

[Of Note: compilation and live albums are exempted for obvious reasons. They can and should go long. Doy.] 

The Double Album. What a statement. Our work cannot be contained within a single disc! We have more! You need more! The push-back from fans and critics often would become a personal statement about the artist(s), like “The audacity that you wouldn’t pare this down to the standard listening length! Where is your sense of rock album decorum?” 

And let’s face it, sometimes that backlash is warranted. Sometimes recording artists need someone tastefully judicious like George Martin or Rick Rubin sitting there going, “ Nope… nope… nope…” and x-ing out the tracks that clutter up what could be a svelte, sleek piece of musical brilliance. 

The artists need that, but they don’t always get that. You have people like Billy Corgan musing, “We had one solid record and one hit record… let’s go massive double album, baby!” And while I’m sure someone at Pumpkinland (actual studio name) at that time must have told him he shouldn’t, nobody told him he couldn’t. 2 hours and 1 minute of Pumpkins. Phew. 

Then, sometimes you’re The Clash, who boldly released the punk rock Hall of Fame double album London Calling (1 hr 5 mins) in 1979 to incredible fanfare! Success against the odds! And then, validated, just threw the kitchen sink onto tape onto their triple album Sandinista! a year later and didn’t hold back (2 hrs 24 mins). Wowsers. 

For all of that, there are instances when the scope creep does work. In addition to the aforementioned magnum opus from The Only Band That Matters, London Calling, the Stones’ high-water mark to a vast number of fans and critics is Exile on Main Street (1 hr 7 mins). Others are out there. Tommy. The Wall. Songs in the Key of Life. 

Goodbye Vinyl Brick Road 

When vinyl fully gave way to cassette along the way in the 1980’s, the double album became less of a big deal. For one thing, it happened less frequently – there was no decade in music as senselessly sprawling, as dilated and diluted with decadence as the 1970’s. Punk rock at its inceptive core was at least in part an angry reaction to 10-minute epic raga saga songs on double albums belted out in flairs and heels with feathered butt cuts. Punk begat new wave, and the 1980’s were a go. (“It's called the 80's, and it's gonna be around forever!”) 

Brevity was suddenly the wit of soul, rock, pop, and other genres in the 80’s. [Except for reggae. And “Purple Rain.” And “Rock Me Amadeus (Salieri Version).”]

Also, cassettes could handle the load on one unit! For the most part, cassette tapes could run up to 45 minutes a side, so even The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime and its whopping 43 songs was a single tape! (They’re short songs… 1 hr 14 mins.) But wow! 

[Oh, but not Sandinista. That’s two tapes, buddy. Talk about extravagant, boyo.] 

In this cool new medium, runtimes on tapes could elevate beyond the previously established ceilings and nobody really knew or cared. In fact, with the advent of dual cassette stereos and boomboxes, you could have a Maxell (way better than Memorex) 90-minuter with Murmur on one side and Reckoning on the other! And I did! 

Those were great days. Oh, minus the underreported impact from the loss of amazing album art, as liner notes and gatefold album covers were basically eradicated. Also crappy was the inevitable snapping of the tape and the resplicing with scotch tape and a pencil. And the eventual faded warble that cassettes’ sonic brilliance became with overuse. But hey, no scratches like on records! Glad that scratches are gone for good! Oh. Wait for it… 

All Music Media Things Must Pass 

Ah, yes. Then came CD’s. Mind-blowing for the audiophiles. 

Compact discs in the late 80’s and early 90’s were another sea change for squeezing albums onto media. Roughly 74 to 80 minutes on music, so a number of the “double albums” in the original issuance became 2-CD sets. (A little better for album art; still not the same.) 

ooh, the original master recording

Multi-disc releases were boxed and organized a number of different ways, from the big fat double jewel case (could handle 3 or 4 discs but usually just a deuce) to cardboard experimentation to just 4 CD cases that get strewn about in your collection and lost. 

Lose Your Illusion 

So I give short shrift to double albums on CD. Even moreso for streaming. By a looong shot. Doesn’t matter any more. Feels like progress, eh? It’s not. Hell, albums of any kind are secondary items. All the world’s a jukebox and we are merely players of that jukebox now. Only Mr. KQ and a few others spend quiet time with an album and its art. Kudos to that. 

And the seemingly arbitrary time limits of yesteryear? Well, they protected us from overlong kitchen-sink stuff. Hey folk, here’s the demo of the 1st-take acoustic (with oboe) instrumental version of “Layla.” And then Takes 2 and 3 of that. Sweet. 

You know what’s better? Concise? Taut? Crisp? Powerful? Sharp? 

23 minutes on Side A. 

23 minutes on Side B. 

Flip it. Flip it again, if it’s really good shit. 

So… the current malaise has to be remedied. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Marls? I have a greater responsibility to our collective gheorghian music entertainment than you can possibly fathom. 

As such, without anyone asking for it, this is an exercise I have performed for you, albeit one that’s been done – not to death, but ad nauseum in certain music forum spaces on the world wide web. And everyone out there has different opinions, as it damn well should be. So therefore I cannot offer a definitive take on it . . . except that I’ve been hanging with Dave for 37 years so far and so, therefore, this is indeed truly definitive! 

I offer you a premier look at: 

Les Coole’s The “As a Single LP” Project 

:wherein I take double and triple albums of the rock and roll canon and give you a pared-down, svelte, bad-assed rendering of what these records would be like on a single vinyl platter. As in, a Side A and a Side B.  Wander down the road with me if you will. 

Stay tuned. Like right away, the first edition is set to pop, accompanying this post 1-2 like . . . like it's a . . . yep.  A double album. 

Tom Carvel's Bad Fun

Songs emanate from everywhere in the universe. Tunes good and bad (as determined by people like Dave) have origin stories in the craziest of places.  Bands have changed their sounds because of bizarre confluences and random experiences. A group I played with in high school changed our sound for a recording because by buddy Ned had been given a hand-me-down steel drum. As that episode turned out, that was terrible development. 

Stories like this have popped up since the beginnings of rock and roll. Peter Gabriel was inspired to leave Genesis based on seeing a Springsteen show, something he related in the lyrics of the first single off his debut solo album, "Solsbury Hill." And that was the theme song in this beautiful film:

Peter Gabriel now says that that Springsteen '75 Hammersmith Odeon tour -- which he did actually attend, and which was bad-assed through and through -- had nothing to do with the decision and called the backstory "hogwash," but our pal Jason has reminded us for decades...

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Paul Simon wrote "Mother and Child Reunion" based on a diner meal offering a chicken and egg platter of the same name. So they say.

The late, lamented Ian Curtis of Joy Division wrote the fantastic "Love Will Tear Us Apart" generally as a inverse-Victory gesture to the music business but specifically as a reply to Captain and Tennille's "Love Will Keep us Together." Amusing. Except for the part where he hanged himself within the year as a result of a love triangle tearing his life apart. Yiddit.

Don McLean was obviously inspired by Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens' tragic plane crash and legacy enough to write, record, and rest on the laurels of "American Pie." That's well-known and obvious. Less so is that a woman named Lori Lieberman took in an L.A. Don McLean show and wrote a song about it. Like to hear it here it go, as Calhoun Tubbs used to say. So check it out.

It was rather famously borrowed and recut a couple of years later. This is, as they say, the real deal. 

Okay, so what's your point there, Whitdog?

I learned those factoids decades ago. Cool shit. Meanwhile, I learned this next bit last week. Not as cool, just ridiculous.

So take this band The Cult. Yorkshire band of contraction, as in from Southern Death Cult to Death Cult to The Cult. Eventually they became Cu. No, not really.

The Cult, featuring vocalist Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy have been around for 40 years. They have reputedly inspired acts like Insane Clown Posse, the Butthole Surfers, Andrew WK, and Random Idiots. Goth rock. Post-punk. Eventually a hard rock band.

You mightn't have heard of early tracks of theirs like "Dreamtime," "Go West," or "Horse Nation." Not

bad. I especially like "Spiritwalker." Worth a listen.

You certainly are familiar with the album Love, The Cult's 1985 breakthrough. A staple on SiriusXM's 1stWave channel. It's outstanding all the way through. It starts with the colossal "Nirvana," itself inspired by a Seattle-area band from 1991... wait, no. And it builds from there.

Howard Stern loves the Love track "Rain," and on this matter, Howard and I agree. But "The Phoenix" is tip-top. It's all good shit.

And the ubiquitous '80s-alt-rock anthem from this album is, of course, this:

Overplayed to the hilt, but a great one.

So then, according to a 2018 article on the website A Pop Life:

In the summer of 1986 the band went into the studio (the Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, England, property of Richard Branson) with producer Steve Brown. Brown had been responsible for the production of Love. Following the motto “never change a winning team”, the band set out to work. A total of 11 songs were recorded. The new album, provisionally titled Peace, was ready to go. Or wasn’t it?

So here's a smidge of what Peace would have sounded like. 

Like Love, a bit heavier, pretty dense. A few songs sound close to where they eventually landed, like "Love Removal Machine." Others, like "Outlaw," are a million miles away. 

Anyway, then something happened, and months later, out popped Electric. A taut, sinewy war horse of a record that made the Peace sessions seem rather mule-like. Ten great songs and one lousy cover tune. Ian and Billy at the top of their game. Out of the gates with "Wildflower," you knew it was large, but for the uninitiated, listen to this song (also featured at the beginning of last year's Flash movie), one of my all-time favorites:

Damn. What happened?  What could it have been that took Ian Astbury, Billy Duffy, and The Cult's sound from a swirling slog of guitar... grunge, for lack of a better word, into this crisp ass-kicker?

What was so good that it made Dave take the cover of Electric into a tattoo parlor in 1989, point at that bandname in that font, and say to the artist, "I want this on my leg"?

It was Cooky Puss. 

Wait, what? Cooky Puss changed a rock and roll album???!! Come on!

>

No, no. That's Cookie Puss, as chronicled here. This is "Cooky Puss."  The song. The one we referenced last week in Notify 8. The one where Ad-Rock calls Carvel and asks to speak to Cookie Puss. Repeatedly. Over a simple b-boy rhythm. [And this all happened to them next.]

Confused? Let me go tenfold on ya.

That same A Pop Life article says:

When singer Ian Astbury heard the song Cooky Puss by the Beastie Boys (which was produced by Rick Rubin), he knew the band’s route had to change. It had to be more raw, direct, just as the band sounded live.

Come, now. Really. Truly?

I have doubled and tripled my fact-checking on this, and short of talking to Ian, this is what he believes. Peace, now known as The Manor Sessions, became Electric because of fucking "Cooky Puss." (And Rick Rubin, obvi. We know he's the real record-flip ingredient here.)

Astbury confirms this in other interviews.  Brooklyn Vegan:

I’d never try, never think that we could appropriate hip-hop culture or appropriate hip-hop music into what we do. That would be gauche. It wouldn’t be authentic. Certainly it’s part of what we’ve done in the past. I mean the reason we made the Electric album was because of hip-hop. It was because we heard the Beastie Boys. I heard “Cookie Puss” in a club in Toronto very early on. Like ’85. I heard that song, and I was just like it’s so dope hearing that. Obviously hip-hop was this new music. It wasn’t things like Sugar Hill Gang or whatever. We were hearing some of this stuff. Until we came to New York in the early 80’s I didn’t know what culture really was. Being more directly kind of in front of clubs and hearing that kind of music, and then hearing “Cookie Puss”. There was something about that. We came to New York, we came to Electric Lady, we’re part of the Def Jam family. 

[Ianspeak is always and forever terrible rockliché nonsense. Nothing new here.] Vanyaland:

It was a completely different approach. Working with Steve Brown on the initial sessions, I was actually talking about Rick Rubin. I had heard “Cooky Puss” by the Beastie Boys and I wanted to get that sound, and Steve Brown was still into that textured, layered sound and had a different vision of what it should be. I felt that the music we were making, the lifestyle we were living and what was motivating me as a writer was much rawer.

GTB fave KEXP:

I remember hearing “Cookie Puss” in a club in Toronto in, like, ’85. And I went to the DJ and I said, “What is this?” And he went, “It’s by The Beastie Boys.” I had to know everything about them. When I found out they were being produced by Rick Rubin, I thought, he’s got to produce us because that is the sound. Stripped back, rhythmically driven, direct. We had to get that sound. So, we went and pursued Rick Rubin. We met him in ’86 and I want to say he was in an NYU dorm room but that may be a projection of time. But I’m pretty sure we were. I remember we sat in a very small room and he put on a TV. He had a VHS and he put on Blue Cheer and said, “What do you think of this?” We were like, “Wow, it’s really raw, it’s really primal.” And Rick said, “I think you need a bit more of this in your music.” We were young guys, like, 25 at the time. And we were both, like, “This is so exciting!” It wasn’t as nuanced as the English producers who were making these elaborate pop records, layered and textured and what have you. This was way primal and direct and completely reflected our lifestyle at that time. So, that was the link between the Beastie Boys and The Cult. Then, if you look at the MTV New Year’s party in 1986 going into ’87, you’ll see me on stage with them performing “No Sleep to Brooklyn.” I was part of the posse on stage. We really immersed ourselves in that world, the Def Jam world. There were such incredible things in New York at that time and the conduit was the Beastie Boys. Then, later, things like the Tibetan Freedom Concert, which we played with Adam [Yauch]. I wouldn’t say it was an intimate relationship but it was certainly a parallel trajectory in some ways. 

So ludicrous. So good. 

It's not even just that it would be blatant name-checking cred-seeking to mention that he saw the Beasties in 1986, it's just... "Cooky Puss"? It's not "She's On It" or "Fight for Your Right" or "Slow and Low" with Run-D.M.C. or "She's Crafty" with faux Jimmy Page axegrinding or their early punk thrash shit or my fave "Rhymin & Stealin" or anything, anything at all that's not a backbeat with a dipshit crank call. Has he even heard "Cooky Puss"???

The reality is that there are a dozen or more instances of this bizarre recollection that Astbury had, as told to different journalists. Curiously, each instance happened between about 2010 and 2018. No mention of the Cookie Puss persuasion way back when it happened, or in the 90's, or the early aughts. Chances are that, as usual, Ian made up some weird bullshit and stuck with it because it sounded cool and made The Cult seem more relevant. 

• Like his fascination with Native America that informed his cultural appropriation and got him sued by the Sioux. 
• Like when he quipped, "Peace on earth and good will toward men - that is something we need to work on. Like Nelson Mandela, we should learn from him."
• Like when he said, "I've liked the Yankees since I was a kid. I grew up in Canada so I kind of identified with New York sports teams."
• Like when he channeled Marty Balin and Salvador Dali to write, "Sittin' on a mountain, looking at the sun / Plastic fantastic lobster telephone."
• Like when he says anything. It's fun to play along.

But I'll repeat: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. And since we're quoting, I'll offer one of my favorite lines ever, a good one from Four Weddings and a Funeral: "Quite right... why be dull?"

Keep on truckin', Ian.

Anyway, there's your Whitneypedia stupid music worthless bullshit hour for today. 

257 for the Road

I failed to properly thank Zman for touting Les Coole and the Cukes recently. Cheers, mate.

Zed really teed up the Tiny Dictator and all you other road-trippers, commuters, and other bored listeners with some good extended-play sonic soul-quenching. Honestly, marathon trip that it is, you've got more music than time ready and waiting for you, rob. 

Just remember what that strange bird Luis once quipped to me... you know, that special variety of advice that somehow lasts for 30 years in my noggin: "I just say FIDO... Fuck it, drive on."

Drive on, indeed.

...if you're so motivated, drop a public playlist on the Spotify to keep us engaged.

Well, you posted that ask last week, and that there is a #10 tin can o' worms and such that you opened for me. I went to work straightaway. And threw a whole mess of tunes into it. 

What it became is the equivalent of "Clean Out the Walk-In Soup" at the diner. What it's intended to be is an eclectic set of sounds for you to play straight through, shuffle, skip about within, and (I hope) enjoy. 

I tried to include songs you've never heard, or at least haven't heard in a long while. May or may not have succeeded at that.

At the very least, it's a time-eater. 

I hereby present to you for your aural consideration 

257 (and growing) songs 

that occupy 

17 hours and 20 minutes (and growing)

I worked very hard to come up with a clever name for this Public Playlist on Spotify. Well, I just named it "Car" at the outset and left it like many a roadside clunker for sale... As Is. 

Safe travels, and I'll be curious to see if any of these tunes stick with you. 

Requiem for a Roadtrip

rob recently asked for musical recommendations for his lengthy roadtrip to Colorado.  Offering musical opinions is one of my core competencies here.  And postcount is huge.  So here are some suggestions.

Starting in-house, you should check out We Defy Augury, especially the one about Charismatic Megafauna because you probably never think about these beasts.  Also, Les Coole and the Cukes, available here on Spotify.  I celebrate their entire catalog.  And our resident professional musician, Rootstone.

We also have recurring bits of derivative in-house content including Whitney's 6-pack, zshazams, layzman's filler, and top 10.

Sometimes I let someone else do the driving musically when I'm driving automotively--I let the folks on the radio pick the music for me.  I've touted WFMU here many times, and you can stream it from your phone to your car.  In fact they have four different streams at all times: their radio live stream, Rock 'n Soul Radio, Give the Drummer Radio, and Sheena's Jungle Room.  And they have an insanely deep archive.  Rex Doane's Fool's Paradise is my personal favorite and he has over twenty years of shows available to stream.  The Halloween and Christmas specials are always outstanding.  You can also stream WBGO--Felix Hernandez's Rhythm Review on Saturday and Sunday mornings is my favorite.  They have archives too but the interface is clumsy.  I've found myself listening to WFUV during the day lately and you can stream them too.

Those three stations will take care of you.  To w(h)it, whilst running a few errands yesterday and flipping between FMU and BGO (FUV is useless on Sundays, they play Irish folk music), I heard "Revolution Rock" by the Clash, "Me and My Baby Brother" (on BGO) and "Summer" (on FMU) by War, "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" by Marvin Gaye, "Never Can Say Goodbye" as done by Gloria Gaynor, "Brick House" by the Commodores, "If I Were Your Woman" by Gladys Knight and The Pips, "Master Blaster" by Stevie Wonder, and "You Outta Be Here With Me" by Annette Snell.  I even heard "Don't Cha Wanna Ride" by Joss Stone and the song that it samples, "Soulful Strut" by Young-Holt Unlimited.

I don't listen to a ton of podcasts but I greatly enjoy The Bulwark's offerings.  Charlie Sykes is always good.  Here's one with Chris Krebs and Adam Kinzinger.  Anything involving Tim Miller is fun, like this one with the Tribe's own Jen Psaki.  Mona Charen will irritate you but I do think it's good to hear opinions that conflict with my own.  Will Saletan's "The Corruption of Lindsey Graham" is a three-part tour de force.

Anyone with other/better ideas should list them in the comments.  I eagerly await photographic reports from rob along the way.

The Fall of a Sparrow

Some quick filler for you... here's something to listen to on these sunny spring days. Or when you're commuting to work, for those of you that still do. 

My old friend Ned is a musician whose work I've shared with you before. He's a nicest guy ever and knows his way around a whole lot of instruments. Here's the Spotify link to his work. 

A number of years ago, he composed and recorded a song that he brought to our 20-year high school reunion. Much loved by the gathered crowds, it remained in that time's medium (compact disc) until he recently re-recorded and released it on all the streaming sites. It's just called 20, and here it goes...

(listen closely to Verse 2 for a gheorghie namechecking)

Since you asked, yes, Les Coole and the Cukes indeed have a recent release. This came out in March, a vague recounting of a concert my high school chums and I took in at William and Mary Hall in '87. Athens band. Enjoy, if you can. 

At least enjoy Symphony member and friend Jake Fowler on cello. And chuckling at the end. 

And finally, it's been shoved down your throat before, but Garden State Dave's podcast is soaring. Get on board now.

If you wonder what Dave's podcast name refers to, go no further than what is arguably Shakespeare's most famous play. 

Horatio
If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.
Hamlet
Not a whit, we defy augury. There's special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

Not a whit indeed! I certainly couldn't do a podcast like this.

Cheers...

Sometimes I Don't Speak Right But Yet I Know What I'm Talking About

"This shoulda been a post." That's what I had written when this was a comment. Alrighty then!

Marls wins. Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" was named for Deacon Jones.

On the origin of the song's name, Donald Fagen says, it was inspired by football player Deacon Jones, as they like the sound of his name: "It also had two syllables, which was convenient, like 'Crimson.'" The song, however, is really about "the ultimate outsider, the flip side of the dream, boy-o . . . call me Deacon Blues."

They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

Apparently Hall of Fame defensive end Deacon Jones was also a crooner, and in the late 60's he was fronting War (and its earlier iterations) on the LA soul scene. That's when ex-Animals lead singer Eric Burdon found them and joined up. Enter... Eric Burdon and War. Check out "Spill the Wine" below.

And when you do, please keep an eye out for Danish import Lee Oskar on harp. His words:

I was this white, curly-headed guy and I came to America to make it in the music business. That was my whole ambition to come to the United States. So I met first Hugh Masekela and Stew Levine, and they put me up for bit and then it was back to living on on the streets, and then I met Eric Burdon. And with Eric Burdon, he wanted to form a new band, and so he and I went to a club in North Hollywood that was called the Rag Doll, but we went to check out this band and the band was backing up a famous football player named Deacon Jones. When I walked in with Eric, Deacon was doing these one-arm pushups, singing a love song and I’d be pretty intimidated… a [guy doing a] one-arm pushup, singing, “I love you, baby.” And so, I jumped up onstage. And it was just packed with people in there; everybody wanted to make a record deal back then. And the next day I was sitting around the swimming pool in Hollywood with the nucleus of that band that was called Nightshift, and Eric and myself. And that became the backup band that I was part of [War], and that’s how it pretty much happened.

His harmonicas are famous now.

After "Spill the Wine" charted, Burdon's asthma kicked in onstage and made him say "I gotta get out of here if it's the last thing I ever do," the rest of the gang removed his name from the marquee and pressed on.

Cisco Kid. Low Rider. And yes, "Why Can't We Be Friends?" -- a terrific tune about getting along in this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. Featuring, according to los interwebs, Deacon Jones on some of the many vocals. 

There's a lot fascinating about this, and Deacon Jones, the man who purportedly coined the term "quarterback sack" (and who would be 3rd all-time in that NFL category if they kept that stat during his era), was perhaps the most interesting man in the world in the mid-1970's. Or maybe it was Clifford Ray.

Now ya know.

zman Bouillabaise Redux

A few post ideas bubbled up in my meager brain but I never got around to writing them and/or I didn't know what to write so I'm doing another round of zman bouillabaise, which is like b-boy bouillabaisse but not as good.

1. Jacques Tits died.

Here's the introductory paragraph for Jacques Tits's Wikipedia entry: "Jacques Tits (French: [tits]) (12 August 1930 – 5 December 2021) was a Belgian-born French mathematician who worked on group theory and incidence geometry.  He introduced Tits buildings, the Tits alternative, the Tits group, and the Tits metric."

What more needs to be said?

2. The Large Hadron Collider lives.

CERN shut down the LHC in 2018 but it's up and running again.  I don't understand a goddam thing in that link and this is rob's corner anyway.  Just keep an eye out for Armageddon.  

3. The Supreme Court missed the forest for the trees in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol.

In his opinion holding that "New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense," Justice Alito said:

Does the dissent think that laws like New York’s prevent or deter such atrocities? Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home?  And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.

He's correct.  There is probably no way to prevent criminally insane or evil people from committing mass shootings other than confiscating all guns.  But there is some value in trying to limit the amount of shootings that occur, mass or individual.  By that I mean, I don't want to live in a society where everyone around me could be armed at all times.  I don't want to worry that if I bump into someone at a bar they will shoot me because they are drunk and angry that I spilled their beer; or that if I get into a car accident the other person will put a gun in my face in a fit of road rage; or that I will be shot accidentally because some random doesn't know how to carry a gun properly.

Making it harder for people to carry guns outside the house limits the likelihood that this will happen.  The punishment for carrying without a permit is harsh in NY--just ask Plaxico Burress.  He went to jail for 22 months after accidentally shooting himself in the leg in a nightclub while carrying a pistol without a permit.  By contrast, Michael Vick went to jail for about 18 months for his dogfighting ring, while Donte Stallworth went to jail for 30 days killing a man while driving drunk.

We can argue about the proportionality of these punishments compared to the respective crimes, but we can all agree that we are glad we weren't standing next to Plaxico when he accidentally fired his gun that night, and his punishment hopefully deterred a lot of other people from carrying a gun.  Yes, he was carrying illegally, while this decision is about the limitations a state may place on how to obtain a permit to carry legally.  But I think his story counsels against carrying in general and in favor of serious limitations on who, what, where, why, when and how carrying should be allowed.

That's why New York's "proper cause" requirement for a concealed carry permit made sense and should have been upheld.

4. Any debate whether Trump acted up in the limo or threw a Big Mac misses the forest for the trees.

I don't care if Trump grabbed for the steering wheel or his security guard's neck.  I don't care if he threw a plateful of McDonald's finest meats and cheeses and ketchup at the wall.  He riled up an armed mob and told them to go to the Capitol to "fight like hell."  They took him literally and he wanted them to.  Five people died as a direct result, and at least two killed themselves afterwards.  What more needs to be said?

5. WFMU continues to deliver.

I should do another zShazams post but if I do I won't be able to include "Modern Diseases" by Fifth Column because I can't find it on Spotify.  It isn't on YouTube either so I can't even make a Notify contribution!  You can listen to it on the WMFU playlist site.  Here's a Fifth Column song that you can find on YouTube:

Apparently they were "a Canadian all-female post-punk band from Toronto, formed in the early 1980s."  You too can find nifty stuff on WFMU.org and it's free to stream.

Add 2 More to the List

You all recall the music documentary quest I embarked upon last year in the nadir of lockdown. I need to go back and examine where I finished. Well, not finished, as it's a living endeavor. Where I stand, rather.

The list of rockumentaries was long but distinguished. So last night I was in a solitary state of Empty-Nester Lester and decided to check back into the world of music+film. And despite there being many entries on the original list that I have yet to take in, check this out: there are a pair of new additions to the mix. To quote Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three, here's something fresh! 

First, I watched a film currently on Netflix called Count Me In. It's a piece on drummers and drumming through the years. Exclusively as told by rock drummers themselves. There's no trailer I can find, oddly (unless you click the link above and log into Netflix), so this synopsis will have to do:

Count Me In is an exhilarating celebration of the art of rock drumming, featuring some of the best drummers ever to have graced the drumkit. From Roger Taylor (Queen), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Stewart Copeland (The Police), Cindy Blackman (Santana, Lenny Kravitz), Keith Moon (The Who), Nick Mason (Pink Floyd) and John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), we are taken on a uplifting journey through some of the most iconic music ever created, focusing on the women and men with the sticks, their passions, culture and awe-inspiring energy.

There are way more interviewed drummers than what's listed above, and tons of clips through the years. Why they wouldn't make more noise about the fact that the Human Drum Machine Topper Headon of The Clash offers his thoughts therein is just crazy...

Second, I watched a film currently on Amazon Prime called Under the Volcano. It's about the music studio George Martin (the George Martin) created on the island of Montserrat in the late 1970's. The lineup of artists who recorded there in the waning time before natural disasters struck was . . . well . . . long but distinguished. Excellent old footage and new interviews. It's the second music documentary I've watched about a particular recording studio, and the second one done well.

I'll continue to plow through the extensive catalog of the music docs that caught my eye. Stay tuned.

If any of you have watched these or any other amidst the genre, chime in with recommendations or reviews. I am loath even to think about the notion of another lockdown at this point, but after the wedding we were slated to attend in New Orleans right after JazzFest weekend -- an event that had stayed the course even after the Fest was cancelled a couple of weeks ago -- just got nixed, there's a tad more angst and dread in the air.

I guess that calls for a punk rock documentary next.

Speaking of Hulu

I grew up with the Beatles playing in the background.  I'm a fan.  You probably are too so you should watch "McCartney 3, 2, 1" on Hulu.

Paul McCartney and Rick Rubin hang out in front of a mixing board and talk about how various McCartney songs were inspired, written, and recorded.  Sometimes they isolate individual tracks and McCartney explains how that particular aspect of the song came to be.  It's great.

There's no introduction to the series, no throat-clearing explanation of who these guys are, no hackneyed diatribe about the music or the musician's importance.  It isn't necessary--everyone knows the deal.

Each of the six episodes is only 30 minutes long so it doesn't require a big time commitment, and I guarantee you'll enjoy watching two old dudes geek out on music.  The reaction when Rubin drops "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in episode 1 sets the tone.  Check it out.

Aloha! More Music! Les Coole!

You know what you were jonesing for? I do!

More Les Coole and the Cukes tunes!  Welp, the latest single is out.  And while I'd love to have a cue-in like the DJ at the 4-minute mark here:

I'll settle for my own "here ya go"... "Quitters"

What else is new out there among the gheorgherati?

FOGTB Lecky has an excellent new EP out called Pleasant Kingdom. It's an ear-opener. The guy who brought you this gem two years ago:

...now brings you this!

...and this:

School's nearly out, so expect some tunes from Dave/Almighty Yojo. His new EP The Shed should come out this summer. And then Live in the Shed, followed by Living in the Shed.

I've seen Rootsy's studio. It needs some action, dude.

Also, Marls Sings Bing should hit record shelves by 2022.

Listen Up to What's Down with GTB

Gheorghe: The Musical Forum is a great place to experience the latest and greatest in new music, deep cut diamonds in the rough from yesteryear, and music to which we have personal ties. 

To wit...

The new:

Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band... with washboard for Rootsy and a Tally Ho tour date coming up for Rob and Marls...

You heard about Wild Belle here 5 years ago. Check out Natalie Bergman solo...

Dusting off older tunes:

Love this REK tune... seems very pertinent these days...

Rewatched a bit of the Richard Pryor doc Omit the Logic recently, heard this song close it out... lovely...

Personal ties:

More from Les...

Finally, want to read something good? Read the Arcade Fire's Will Butler's honest reflection in The Atlantic on his hesitance to play live despite yearning to do so.

Christmas Came Early for Mark

Sotheby's is hosting a hiphop auction.  This is possibly the least hiphop thing ever but there's so much cool stuff I won't hate.  For example, they have Slick Rick's eye patch:

They have Prince Paul's drum machine:

They have Fab 5 Freddy's MTV ring:

They even have Biggie's crown:

I can afford none of that.  There are a handful of things I could theoretically afford and that are dope to quite dope, like this Beastie Boys concert poster:

Or these flyers:

Or this De La Soul album cover study which is already out of reach:

Or this Tommy Boy neon sign which is also now out of reach:

Perhaps the coolest item for sale is this 125th street subway sign:

I encourage you to take a spin through the lots, there's plenty of fun stuff to see.

Music Documentary Project: Early June Update

I've taken my foot off the gas a bit lately, similar to how G:TB was a well-oiled, postcounting machine in the early days of pandemic quarantining and has recently let up. If you can go outside and live, do so.

I also watched some non-music-documentary television.  It can get a tad monotonous to go from music doc to music doc, even if you alternate genres, styles, and approaches as I have tried to do. And so, I pivoted to:

The Last Dance - (Yes, another documentary. So what, I like 'em!) I watched every moment of the MJ saga.  Compelling as all get-out. He is who we thought he was, but moreso. More amazing, more complete as a player. more of a jackass as a teammate or competitor. To me, the most gripping moments were (a) those that demonstrated that he, as any sane person would, hates the 100%-all-the-time fan-clamor and hides out in a hotel room or his house; and (b) the moment he was presented with the suggestion that in order to be the best player/champion he had had to sacrifice being a "good guy," and that thought brought tears, a hasty explanation, and his demanding a break in the recording. It's better when Superman's a human after all.

Letterkenny - I binge-watched several seasons of this preposterous Canadian show (available on on Hulu,annoyingly). Hilarious and addictive, if ultimately a bit redundant. The scene where the guys are playing catch and Squirrelly Dan uncomfortably introduces the subject of his lady friend and her interest in the "butts-stuff" had me laughing heartily. A hard yes.

Seaver - I stumbled upon a one-hour Tom Seaver documentary on the MLB network. I'm an obvious sucker for the content, but there was plenty new to me, especially the unfortunate epilogue of Alzheimer's and his retreat from public life last year. Tom Terrific was the best Met there was, despite the franchise booting it majorly several times over.

Anyway, I have also made time for more music absorption.  Back to the quest...

ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads (2019) -- This was a tidy, little Netflix piece on the pioneer bluesman Robert Johnson and the generations of intrigue that have surrounded his eerily quick rise from kid with a guitar he couldn't much play to blues god. The story is well-presented and frankly sells itself -- selling one's soul to the Devil for talent.  And then there's his death at age 27. And the fact that (until last month) there were only two photographs ever taken of the man. When I lived across the way from Dave in the fraternity house, he bought a box set of Robert Johnson. I didn't know who the dude was. Turns out many a blues riff and/or style of playing -- which begat many a rock and roll riff and style of playing -- is attributed to one man. At 48 minutes, check it out.

Hip-Hop Evolution (Season 1) -- This is my shit. Z and I have served and rallied here before with old school and older school, but Season 1 of HHE is the jack from way back. Loved it. Planning to continue to dig in on the series and learn lots more along the way.

History of the Eagles (2013) -- Far, far away on the music spectrum from Kurtis Blow and DJ Run, you have Don Henley and Glenn Frey. I like the Eagles nearly as much as the next guy, and there's much to learn and enjoy here. It ultimately devolves into a soap opera, mostly between Frey and Don Felder. And here I thought Don Henley was the douche. But there are cool tidbits like footage of Henley and Frey as up-and-comers in the backing band for Linda Ronstadt, and anything Joe Walsh does is fairly fascinating. Enjoyed it.

The Beastie Boys Story (2020) -- I knew this would be great. I read several unflattering reviews (Pitchfork, AV Club) that called it "no fun." I still knew it would be great. I hadn't heard any of my friends raving about it. I still knew it'd be great.  And... it's great. I feel like I'm the perfect age to be a Beastie Boys fan. When LTI hit, I was a high-school juvenile delinquent Class Clown. As we've written here ad nauseum, when Paul's Boutique launched to crickets, were were jumping around the room heralding what must be a worldwide hit -- college is the perfect time to be exposed to experimentally dope new shit. CYH was a tiny bit more grown up, and we were nearly graduating (well, rob and Dave were). The "Sabotage" video broke and we were early 20's goofballs with jobs. By the time the three bad brothers were starting getting real respect (especially for albums gone by), we were older and commanding more respect than we had a right to. Still clowns, like the B-Boys, of course.  This doc has it all, despite shlocky reviewer's cranky demands for surprises and mayhem. MCA is missed majorly and given a highly fitting tribute.  It's great. Check it out.

The Van Halen Story: The Early Years (2003) -- This low-budget, straight to video obscurity piece was just entertaining enough. Spoiler alert: they paid for the rights to zero VH songs, so you won't hear any. Made me go straight to Spotify after and call up my faves. Also, they only rehash interviews with the band, nothing new -- but lots I hadn't seen. They do get lots of stories from roadies, security, and friends from coming up.  Which is at times better than the sanitized version of wild tales you get from aged rockers. (Eagles, for example.)  "Ed" and "Al" haaaaate "Roth." That's for damn sure. Almost as much as they hate "Dancing in the Street." This one entertained mildly for what it was.

We Jam Econo: The Story Of The Minutemen (2005) -- I loved this one. A long while back, a friend introduced me to The Minutemen. My first reaction was a recoil. Over decades, as I have dug in squarely on punk rock, I have come to love this kind of avant-garde punk. The Minutemen were not hardcore, they were honestly a step-and-a-half from Random Idiots, they were punk with a conscience, and they were beautiful. The documentary, exactly like the band, is pretty lo-fi. And it's solid. The lament of losing D. Boon so many years ago hits home, almost against all likelihood. This ain't no picnic, indeed.

loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies (2006) -- I was late to the game on the Pixies. My first wife was a fan during their 1987-1991 existence, and I learned to love their stuff through her influence soon thereafter. Too late, of course.  But they then regrouped in 2004, and we saw them at Constitution Hall in DC. Hell yes. This is a weird doc -- it isn't a retrospective, it's a behind-the-scenes look at the 2004/5 tour I mentioned. They'd reunited after 13 years, and interactions are awkward and yet uncontroversial, and there are excellent clips of songs from these shows but otherwise just some backstage banter that does not enthrall. Plus Black Francis with his shirt off.

It was very interesting to watch the Pixies one after The Minutemen. D. Boon and Mike Watt met with they were 13, and they were best friends until the end. They'd fight some, but like brothers. Loved one another. The four people in the Pixies met via a classified ad. They weren't friends and still aren't. They don't hate each other, but they were a great band the same way a successful small business often operates -- it was a job. They regrouped for money, clearly. It's almost deflating to fans, but hell, it's always about the music more than anything, and the music was and is exceptional to many of us.


I'll keep watching and conveying the highlights.  18 down thus far.  Suggestions and feedback welcomed.

Music Documentary Project: Late April Update

. . . because you all cared.

Here's the latest in my COVID-caused quest to watch 100 music documentaries. Or at least "a bunch," to clarify the metric.

Five more down. Not that many, but none of them were abbreviated, and in fact, one was a big 'un.  I'm still loving the genre, although anything more than two music docs in a row starts to get a wee bit monotonous, so either turning off the tube or switching to something sports or idiocy-related is a help.  But there's so much good stuff out there, and that keeps me tuning in.

Sound City (2013)

Dave Grohl's ode to the beloved, trashed music studio in Van Nuys, CA. Perfect to watch right after the Rumours doc, since Mick Fleetwood met Lindsey Buckingham right there in the studio, and the rest was history -- including the recording of the ensuing Fleetwood Mac album, which put Sound City on the map. Stories and interviewees aligned nicely. Beyond that small component, a great visual history of a recording studio through the years. Nevermind, Pinkerton, Neil Young, tons of Petty, and many more. Fun fact: Rick Springfield's guitar work wasn't up to snuff, so Pat Benatar's axe man Neil Giraldo sat in and helped make "Jessie's Girl" famous.

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns (2003)

Rob and I traveled to Silver Spring, Maryland exactly one time together. In 2003, we went to the AFI Silver Theater to take in this documentary. He and I have each seen They Might Be Giants live a number of times -- well into the double-digits, and many of times we saw them together. Terrific, fun, band. The stories in this one are amusing but not shocking, which, if you know the band, is... not shocking. The production herein is slightly lower-grade than some of the other documentaries I've seen, which is just perfect for two guys who used to perform with a guitar, accordion, keys, stick, vocals, a drum track, and no other performers onstage. But the Johns are great humans and great performers, there are goofy segments interspersed, and this was well worth another viewing after 17 years. Best scene was when the Johns talk about each other -- a rare getting of the chills in an otherwise quirky little piece. And Dial-a-Song was the coolest thing ever.

If I Leave Here Tomorrow (2018)

Gone with the Wind: The Remarkable Rise and Tragic Fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd (2015)

Yeah, that's right. I watched four and a half hours of content surrounding a band that -- for all appropriate purposes -- ceased to be four years and one month after the release of their first album. I first watched the shorter, more recent, and better-publicized doc; I'd seen parts of its 3-hour mammoth predecessor, so I got a hankering and took it down next. That's a whole mess o' Skynyrd.  Which was better? They're both solid, for sure. Last man standing Gary Rossington was only interviewed in If I Leave Here Tomorrow, which is both good and bad. I'll leave it at this -- for coming in at "just" 95 minutes, the shorter doc has some strange filler like interviewing people in bars who cover Skynyrd.

Unlike TR, I do love this band, and have since high school. Jam band folks prefer the Allmans, rock-song aficionados go the route of Lynyrd Skynyrd. The story intrigues, and while nobody is going to follow suit and watch these back-to-back like I did, it was worth doing. Different takes on the same events were interesting, and more is better when you dig a band. And Ronnie was a fucking tour de force. 

It Might Get Loud (2008)

For the unfamiliar, this was Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White getting together to talk about guitars and guitaring, play some stuff, and have some fun.  Backstory content was included, and that might have been the best part. Three generations (or eras) of rock and roll are represented, three upbringings, three styles, and it's all good fun -- for the music geek. Folks external to that category might be slightly less enthralled. Random amusement: The Edge playing and singing the Ramones tune "Glad to See You Go" from his revisited high school locker room. Fun fact: Jimmy Page played on Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger theme song.

More soon to come! 

* * * * * * * * * * *

We reached 20 posts again this month. Fine work, team.

Putting Our Stamp, Totally Convincingly, On Unlimited New Things

(and creating new acronyms)