Five Epic Tracks That Really Do Need to Be the Length That They Are

Christ, could that title be any longer?  Oh well, you get the drift.  Sometimes artists feel the need to construct really long tunes in an effort to branch out a little more.  Sometimes these longer tracks are worth the effort, and other times they're just an incredible bore (Green Day, I'm looking at you).  At any rate, it looks like we have another list on our hands here.  This time it's all about five long tracks that I like to hear all the way through whenever I hear them.  Note the non-inclusion of Chicago.  I'm sure they'll make one of these lists someday.  Let's groove, shall we?

1. Television - "Marquee Moon"

The studio cut of the tune is over ten minutes.  The classic live versions would get even more epic at times.  This band pretty much solidified its legendary status with the title cut on their debut album.  The knotty main riff mixed with the almost mechanical bass and drum parts which then gives way to a lovely flourish influenced all those crappy defunct math rock bands that failed in the earlier half of this decade.  The lyrics are awesomely weird, but it's that guitar solo that just takes the song into the epic realm.  There's not a note wasted, with each lick building on the next until it all gently tumbles down like a sparkling snowfall before getting back into its locked main groove.  It doesn't matter if the other songs on the album aren't nearly as grand.  How could they be?

2. David Bowie - "Station to Station"

Granted, almost the first two minutes of this track are nothing but the sound of a train coming down its tracks, but the remainder is nothing short of stunning.  Bowie as the Thin White Duke in all his coked-up glory scares the hell out of us with his bizarro tale of the Duke "making sure white stains" and forever throwing those ever-lovin' darts in lovers' eyes.  It's a beast of a track, lumbering along like a giant Panzer, taking out everything with an oddly delicate touch.  But then, Bowie decides to boogie for the second half, and the cocaine kicks in full throttle as the band funks the hell out of the decadence and brings the mother down.  The first time I heard this song, I was literally awestruck.  It's still exciting and phenomenal.  Some live versions, as those found on Stage and the Serious Moonlight video are not too hot, but the recent reissue of Station to Station featuring a second disc of the legendary live show at Nassau Coliseum cooks. 

3. George Benson - "On Broadway"

Benson took this old number and made it his own, which is no small feat, considering the dude had cut tons of classic sides in the '60s alone.  By the '70s, George was moving into different terrain and this live workout from Weekend in L.A. featuring Ralph MacDonald on percussion needs to be heard in its 10 minute glory.  The radio stations always play an edited version a little over five minutes, but there's no denying the satisfying groove laid out here in Benson's licks and scatting, and his band just locking in to the funk and taking it skyward.  It's a tune that's as much of its time and place as "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees or "Peg" by Steely Dan.  To my ears, it's also the best damn version of the song ever recorded.  Sorry, Blossom Dearie.

4. Frank Zappa - "Son of Mr. Green Genes"

"Mr. Green Genes" appeared on the Mothers album Uncle Meat.  When playing the track live, Frank and the band would either eschew the lyrics and do an instrumental groove, or play a more fleshed-out version with more instrumental bits.  What that whole thing morphed into was the wonderful "Son of Mr. Green Genes" on the Hot Rats LP.  It's over eight minutes long, and begins with the familiar melody from the original tune sounding all stately and such before giving way to a slew of amazing Zappa guitar solos.  Whenever people don't tend to "get" Zappa for his guitar work, and are those types who only know him for his "dirtier" stuff from the '70s, I offer them up this track.  Frank's licks and melodies were always like no one else's and here he just lets one killer solo cascade into the next.  The cool thing is that it never comes off as mere wanking, but then when Frank was on the guitar, it never really did.  Hell, he managed to even keep Steve Vai contained and listenable, so that's got to count for something.

5. The Stone Roses - "I Am the Resurrection"

I've talked about this song so many times in other places, so I'll just get to the point.  John Squire's guitar solos in this song are the stuff inspiration is made of.  How anyone could listen to this track and not be moved seems near impossible.  The whole album is a masterpiece, but it all leads up to this one tune (though the US versions always added "Fool's Gold" afterward, which is also an awesome song), this singularly brilliant shining zenith of the Madchester scene.  Had the band not been met with so much legal bunk with their labels after the debut was released, it's hard to even say if they could have even done it again while striking while the iron was still hot.  We know that the miserable Second Coming released eons later was anything but.  But when you've reinvented the wheel once, it's fine to let everyone else have a ride.

My two favorite guitar solos of ALL-TIME!!!!1111one!

Hey, time for some more end of the year crapola!  Not that this particular post has anything to do with such an idea, but hey, we can keep the wheels rolling here even if I don't have ten albums you should have heard this year that I'd probably more than likely forget by next year.  I mean, I've looked back at some of those lists I've published over the years, and I think I must have been seriously high or just lazy when seeing some of the stuff I listed as "best of the year."

Aaaaanyway, on to the topic at hand which is, of course, my two very favorite guitar solos of all-time!  I've heard a lot of music over the years, and as we all know, the guitar solo is one of those staples in rawk music that can often provide perhaps the most memorable moment of a song.  Other times, the guitar solo can just make you wish the guitarist would give it up and end the damn song already.  Grateful Dead, anyone?

OK, that was an easy shot, but it's there for whatever that's worth.  So without further babbling, let's get on to this very short list, won't you?

1. The Knack - "My Sharona"

Get The Knack is one of the greatest albums of all time, period.  Now, a lot of people get excited when they hear the opening drum beats and bass riff to this tune, either in a fit of nostalgia, or because they're part of that Gen X crew who saw Reality Bites and thought it was totally rad when it was used in the soundtrack.  But I think these folks get excited about the tune for the wrong reason.  The right reason?  Berton Averre's guitar solo, of course!

You get to the middle of that song and Averre just takes off like there's no tomorrow.  But the solo is one of those that builds and builds, each portion getting better and better than the one previous.  It's a euphoric solo, one with nothing but happiness and release behind it.  Indeed, the late, great Doug Fieger said that he wanted Bert's solo to be the musical emulation of sexual climax.  And so it does climax into a wonderful tumble of notes that is echoed by Bruce Gary's drum beats before ripping into some tasty chords and giving way to the familiar riff once again.  I get excited every time I hear this solo and I never get sick of hearing it.  It's perfect in every way.

2. The Cars - "Shake It Up"

Now this solo isn't as grand in scope as the one in "My Sharona," but it's no less exciting.  Elliot Easton fires off the notes in the opening salvo of the solo like his guitar is a monster machine gun.  There's plenty of good sliding back and forth, as well.  It's a solo in the more traditional sense of the beast in that it echoes some of the song's melody, but it's blistering all the same.  The aural equivalent of a speedball bender almost going off the rails, yet keeping everything in perfect motion.  The Cars were damned fine at making good New Wave tunes, and this entire album found them working that groove as good as ever, coming after the rather confused Panorama.

The Five Greatest Rock Double Albums of All-Time!

Hey it's the end of the year and time to start doing up those lists that everyone loves to read come every December.  I didn't get a lot of listening done to much new music in 2010, but that's OK.  Who cares about that when there's so much stuff to still write about from years gone by?  Indeed!  So now I'd like to dump my five fave double albums on you kids.  You probably have your own top five.  That's groovy and I'm sure you have a place to talk about them as well.  I can guarantee you, though, this list does not contain any albums by Chicago.  So there you have it.  And yes, these are ranked.

1. The Clash:  London Calling

My very fave double album of all-time goes to The Clash and their tail end o' the '70s blast of goodness London Calling (at least in the UK; in the US it was released in January of 1980).  Sometimes I don't want to hear this album.  Sometimes I have gotten sick of it.  But man, every time I sit down and listen to the thing all the way through, I cannot deny its greatness or its scope.  It's funny, it's moving, and it rocks.  I love every note and every tune on it.  My faves would be "The Right Profile," "Lost in the Supermarket," "Revolution Rock," "Lover's Rock," and "Koka Kola."  Hell, it's all good, nay, great!  Punk rock could've begun and ended here.  It didn't, of course, but it's almost all you need, I think.  Yeah, I never was much of a Pistols fan, and the Ramones didn't do much for me past their debut album.  And I say "almost" in this case, because we have to add the second album in this list...

2. Minutemen: Double Nickles on the Dime

Like London Calling, this album encompasses a whole lot of lyrical and musical ideas and is enjoyable through and through.  Almost more funk than punk, the Minutemen didn't really ever court the whole punk attitude that the music must be loud and abrasive and be about being pissed off.  For them, it was about a deep love for music all around and getting it out on SST via the DIY method.  Hell, they cover (depending on which version you have) Van Halen and Steely Dan here, with no tongue in cheek.  But the highlight for me has always been "#1 Hit Song" and D. Boon's hilarious reading of the lyrics "Love is leaf-like / You and me, baby / Twinkle, twinkle, blah, blah, blah / E...T...C...!"  Lots of songs, lots of info, lots of grooves.  And a shitload better than Husker Du's Zen Arcade.

3. Original Movie Soundtrack: Saturday Night Fever

When I was five and six years old in 1977 and 1978 respectively, my older brother brought home basically the albums that would turn me into the music fan I am to this day.  Billy Joel's The Stranger, Steely Dan's Aja, The Blues Brothers' Briefcase Full of Blues, and this beastie right here.  Now this is the beginning and ending of disco.  Of course, it isn't literally, and there were plenty of other fine disco tunes compiled elsewhere, but not in the way Saturday Night Fever delivered.  You had all those Bee Gees hits on there (new mixed with old, like "Jive Talkin'" and "Stayin' Alive"), plus Bee Gees tunes as covered by other artists on the same damn collection (Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You" and Tavares' "More Than a Woman")!  THEN you had all the other great stuff like "Boogie Shoes," "Open Sesame," "A Fifth of Beethoven," "Disco Inferno," and instrumental goofiness written for the movie like "Night on Disco Mountain" and sill other grooves such as "Calypso Breakdown."  Whew!  Yeah, my older bro was into the disco thang heavily, and I even convinced my mom and dad to buy me a white disco outfit from a Sears catalog like the one Travolta wore in the flick.  Hell, I even had a "kid's" version of the album released on the Kid Stuff label entitled Night Fever.  All these years later and this shit still holds up amazingly well.

4. The Beatles: The Beatles

Perhaps this is one of those ringers that is to be expected in a list like this.  But it is my favorite Beatles album.  Now, the last entry was thanks to my older brother, but it was my older sister who first sat me down at around age three and spun this one for my ears.  Actually,  vividly remember her playing "Revolution 9" for me, strapping me in for the full experience by slapping the giant brown headphones on my skull that we had back then and just being amused.  Well hell, she knew I'd enjoy some crazy sound effects, and I did.  But it was also songs like "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da," "Back in the U.S.S.R.," "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," "Rocky Raccoon," and "Piggies" that pleased my ears as a tot as well.  So when I got into middle school and started my Beatles infatuation in earnest, this was the album I was most excited about rediscovering.  I still love it.  And for those who bitch about "Number Nine," all I can tell you is I've heard far crazier and far crappier things in my life than that.

5. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica

I first heard this wonderful, weird album when I was in high school and my buddy Mark Zecchini burst into my room telling me and some other pals that we had to listen to this tape right now.  So we did.  And we laughed.  And we laughed.  And I immediately wanted a copy for myself.  So I wound up borrowing it and made a copy, and then later that year on my birthday got my brother to buy it for me on CD (along with the Modern Lovers' debut, if memory serves correct, aaaaand The Carl Stalling Project's first volume, too).  What can I say?  There is no middle ground with this album, and that's the way it will always be.  It is unto its own musical universe.  I understand when people say they hate it.  But I also understand why it is loved as it is, too.  The Cap hadn't done anything remotely like it leading up to it, and though the followup Lick My Decals Off, Baby is sometimes cited as the better and more focused album, you couldn't have had it without having this first.  And now that the dear Cap has passed away, its influence will only be felt deeper.

The best rock song ever?

So I was sitting around with my kid today (he's six).  We were watching some TV and one of the commercials that came on was for one of the shitty popular light beers and featured Mr. Steroid Livestrong himself.  No biggie, really, except the tune used for the ad was Blur's "Song 2."  I turned to my son and I said, "You know, that might just be the greatest rock song of all time.  I don't ever get sick of hearing that, do you?"

He shook his head "no."

"Song 2" has all the great hallmarks of a real rock and roll classic.  It's under three minutes (it's barely over two, if that), it has a chorus that explodes in your head the very first time you hear it, and it has really dumb lyrics that don't necessarily need to make much sense.  I know I had played my kid the song before on my iPod, but he had recently gotten into it through the LEGO Rock Band game.  He knows good rawk when he hears it.

Plasticity is what counts, kids.

Now, for a long time I've claimed that The Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" is my all-time fave rock tune, but "Song 2" has that same indelible groove behind it that other goofy rock classics like "Louie, Louie" have.  It sounds great anytime, anyplace, anywhere (especially when I've heard it cranked at various amusement parks in the past), it makes you wanna yell "Woo-hoo!" really loudly, and it also makes you want to shake your ass to it.  If it's not the best rock song ever, it's certainly well worth placing in a short list of "perfect" rock songs.

Whatever the case, I find it's one of those songs that's impossible to hate and perhaps Blur's greatest moment that they ever recorded.  The rest of the album the song is taken from is OK, but doesn't really have the nervy energy "Song 2" does.  Now, had they dared to just put out a 10-12 song album of nothing but short, sweet tunes like it, they could possibly have recorded a rock masterpiece.  But they didn't, and now we have Gorillaz.  Oh well.

Libby's own MK Ultra program of the '60s

You may have thought that only the government was into the whole sinister mind control program way back when, but think again.  Did you know that Libby's, makers of fined canned food products in the USA also decided to control the minds of hip teens back in 1966?  It's true.

They did it with canned Sloppy Joe.

That's right.  The Sloppy Joe.  First, they hit the airwaves with a black and white spot introducing a new fad dance called "The Sloppy Joe," wherein unsuspecting teens ate cans of Libby's Sloppy Joe mixture, ingesting weirdo mind control crap that turned them into corporate automatons sporting Sloppy Joe shirts in "Beef," "or Pork."

Bone chilling, is it not?

If that weren't enough, Libby's then did a 180 in full color.  This time their subversive plot came with groovy lyrics, complete with colorful images of the shit-like looking mixture simmering up in a pan.  Did they eat it?  Oh boy, did they ever!  Sock hops at home were never the same after Libby's mind control briefly took over, which happened to be right before those filthy hippies out in San Francisco took over with acid and forgetting to bathe, only to cover up the stench with patchouli.

Yuck!

But don't take my word for it.  Dig the heady vibes from the original commercials right here.  We are lucky Libby's does not make Sloppy Joe in a can anymore.  One can only imagine the horror of such a thing in today's modern society.



Sloppy Joe subversion.  Tasty!




Don't eat the brown Sloppy!

Elton John Only Had Two Hits

I don't care what the "facts" may say about Elton John's recorded output, or what they may say about the supposed number of times he had a hit single.  As far as I know, Elton John only had two hits.  How do I know this?  Because every time I listen to the classic rock station on the radio around here, the DJs always play either "Bennie and the Jets" or "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" when it comes to Elton.

Grandma?

I have no idea why.  I mean, the guy had plenty of far better tunes.  If I was in command, we'd be hearing "Susie (Dramas)" or "Amoreena."  Hell, I'd even spin "Island Girl" a dozen times if you liked.  But this isn't the case, and instead history is staking its claim on Bennie and Saturday Night.  When I was younger, those two songs were pretty damn awesome.  Now whenever I hear them, I just want to bury the radio in the back yard.

How did it come to this?  It's as if Elton only ever released Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and that was it.  Maybe it's a ploy to make us all forget how much godawful crap he has put out over the course of his career.  I mean, he's guilty enough to have his piano taken away forever just for appearing on "That's What Friends Are For."   If not that, then perhaps it's for his hair.  Whatever the reason, all I know is that all copies of that album need to be destroyed, pronto.  Besides, I never liked a girl with a handful of grease in her hair.  Blech.

Stu Cook and the Dreadful "Sail Away"

Lock the door, don't let Stu sing

Many terrible things have been written about the final, terrible Creedence Clearwater Revival album Mardi Gras.  You know, that it was "Fogerty's Revenge" because Stu Cook and Doug Clifford wanted to get their lousy songs on the albums.  So John Fogerty relented on the stipulation that the two clowns sing their own tunes as well.  Apparently, they didn't want to do that, but John gave it to them as an all or nothing proposition.  Thus, the album was created.  Oh, it still managed to chart and have some hit singles thanks to Fogerty, of course, but the other dudes in the band didn't have such an easy go at it.

"You guys can sing your crummy songs and I'll still be laughing."

So kids, I want to focus on Stu Cook's really bad song entitled "Sail Away" from this turd.  When you listen to Mardi Gras, you get the feeling that Stu and Doug were trying to emulate John Fogerty as much as they could in their singing styles.  Both of them try to do the rough-yet-smooth twang that Fogerty capitalized on.  While Clifford's attempts are just sub par, Stu Cook's mangling of the Fogerty style on "Sail Away" is enough to induce immediate laughter as soon as the guy starts singing.

It sounds like he's being strangled from the get-go:  "LAWK the DOOOOR, sun's a FAWLIN' / POKE the FAHR, don't LET the COLD IN / Gonna try to SAIL AWAY from the REST of MYYY LIIIIIFE."

The emphasis is weird, the meter is facked, the whole thing sounds like it's being sung by some drunken, gargling robot crashing into everything in its path.  When you listen to it and how generic Fogerty's guitar work is on the track, you can't help but begin to understand his plan of deep-sixing the group in one fell swoop.  Hell, who can argue with a dude who cranked out tons of great hits over the course of a nice handful of albums in just a two or three years?  Why relinquish creativity to a couple hacks with no real skills at all?

Please keep your mouth shut, Stu.

But of course Cook and Clifford are still cranking out those old chestnuts under the moniker "Creedence Clearwater Revisted."  It's bad.  You know, like any type of that once great band now doing the county fair circuit sort of situation.  At any rate, I urge you to listen to "Sail Away" and have a good, hearty laugh that will hit you right in the gut every time you hear it.  I guarantee Creedence Revisited isn't ever going to revisit this crapper.  Fogerty must have had a hard time not laughing when it was all originally going down.


The terrible culprit.




You'll dance to anything...

Small Faces: "Tin Soldier"

My fave Small Faces tune featuring the groovy P.P. Arnold.

Lou Reed: "Sweet Jane"

I love Lou Reed.  The Velvet Underground is my favorite band of all time.  "Sweet Jane" is my favorite rock song of all time.  Here is Lou, Robert Quine, Fred Maher, and Fernando Saunders rocking it perfectly from the A Night with Lou Reed show filmed in 1983. 

You'll never convince me that Pet Sounds is a "masterpiece."

For whatever reason, I own a lot of the Beach Boys' stuff.  I guess this is the sort of thing that happens when you're a certain sort of a rock and pop music fan, serious about getting into anything and everything and have that completist attitude at times.  Let me say this to you with a clear set of ears, though: The Beach Boys recorded a whole lot of crap.  Yes, even before Brian Wilson had his nervous breakdown, freaked out, and started grooving in a sandbox and living in bed, being coaxed to write "good songs" by his brothers who offered bags of cheeseburgers to the "genius."

Overrated hoo-ha.

Never was I more disappointed in a Beach Boys LP, though, than with the oft-heralded Pet Sounds.  I remember having read so much about it prior to buying it; that The Beatles' Rubber Soul had inspired Brian Wilson to want to make something "greater," etc.  So when it was reissued in the '90s, I grabbed a copy on tape and took it home, ready to be blown away.  But I should have known better, I really should have.  After all this was the Beach Boys we were talking about.  Granted, they had some fine hits, but they also had "Amusement Parks U.S.A.," "Salt Lake City," and "Pom Pom Play Girl," along with other trivial turds.  So basically for every one or two great tracks, you had to put up with 10 or so duds per album.

So given the fact that the Beach Boys' fans were all about their car, surf, summer, and girls tunes, how could it have been any surprise to Brian Wilson that Pet Sounds was met with such indifference?  Especially when The Beatles and Dylan were carving out huge influential swaths of pop music, causing a lot of the Boys' fans to already become bored with that stuff that they had been eating up just a few short years before in 1962?  Beach music was a fad.  Even if "I Get Around" and "In My Room" held darker lyrical edges, it wasn't enough to remain vital in what would become a musical and pop culture revolution in the next few years.

Making pop music for old farts.

I listened to Pet Sounds and don't think I even made it through all the way in one sitting the first time around.  That's how underwhelmed I was.  "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows" were fine pop, but the rest of it, recorded as usual with help from Brian Wilson's finest session cats, sounded like elevator Muzak to me.  It also sounded weird and phony, too.  What the hell was Wilson doing warbling these cornball Tony Asher lyrics?  Why did it all play like a dull audio soap opera?  Isn't this the kind of music Murry Wilson's parents would have listened to?

Blah.

Workin' hard for cheeseburgers and coke.

You can fire off as many arguments and points as you like, but my ears will never perk up to the sound of this album.  Cite all the artists it influenced.  That's fine.  All the believers can continue to believe.  But this was the true end for Brian Wilson.  After this, it was a long, long ride down to the bottom, with those "glimmers of hope" that would rear their ugly heads ever so often.  But the Boys were done.  At least in the U.S.  Other countries would hang on to 'em for a while, but rock and roll grew up and left these cats far behind.  They'd become a fun nostalgia trip years later for those kids who wanted to relive the sun and surf tunes, the same generation who didn't bother to take them seriously when Brian Wilson wanted serious respect so desperately.  But it's hard to take a band seriously when they constantly turn out the chunder that dotted their late '60s and well on into the bulk of the '70s years.  Need I mention "Match Point of Our Love?"  Now that's the definition of craptastic, kids.

Five lyrically lazy pop tunes (with hits!)

Not every pop star can always be magically productive, be it musically or lyrically.  But sometimes our heroes crank out songs that can make us scratch our heads looking back at them.  Here are five tunes hand-picked by yours truly from some of my fave artists that just don't get me in any sort of rah-rah mood when it comes to the lyrical portion of the song.

1. The Beatles - "Love Me Do"

So simple a first grader could have written it (possibly with a little help from a friend).  In fact, it's so simplistic that it's no wonder Capitol and other US labels passed on The Beatles originally if this was one of the tunes offered up by the soon-to-be Rock Legends.  This is moon/June/spoon rhyming at its worst.  Granted, this was circa 1963, so it's to be expected...sort of.  Given the fact that the followup single "Please Please Me" was light years ahead of this tune (most notably at the song's bridge where Lennon rapidly fires off the lyrics), it begs the question how did it make #17 in the UK?  The Fabs even had better numbers they could have dished out like "Some Other Guy" whose sheer energy was plenty more exciting than that of "Love Me Do."  Maybe we should blame it all on George Martin.  Of course, he'd be the one being told what to do not long afterward.

2. Teenage Fanclub - "What You Do To Me"

The Fanclub made no bones about being fans of Big Star.  After breaking onto the charts with "The Concept" from their second LP Bandwagonesque, the band hit us with this tasty slab of #1 Record-inspired goodness.  Too bad, then, that the lyrics are fucking terrible.  "What you do to me / I know, I can't believe, there's somethin' about you, got me down on my knees /What you do to me /What you do to me / What you do to me / What you do to me."  Repeat.  Laziness at its worst, no matter how convincing the music was.

3. Bob Dylan - "All the Tired Horses"

Wow.  Dylan was so lyrically burned out by the time he recorded Self Portrait that even he couldn't be bothered to sing on this, the album's opening track.  "All the tired horses in the sun / How am I supposed to get any ridin' done?"  Who knows?  Just keep repeating it and have some ladies sing it for you, Bob.  Sure, picking anything from this album might seem like an easy target, but come on.  It does pick up a little later on.  Dylan's cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" also on the album makes Paul Simon sound like a hack.  Now that's funny.

 4. Lou Reed - "Follow the Leader"

After releasing the excellent Coney Island Baby in 1976, Lou Baby switched labels from RCA to Arista and crapped out the Rock and Roll Heart album for Clive Davis.  Oh, it's got its selection of really bad tunes ("I Believe in Love" is both unbelievable coming from Lou and also sounds like the rejected theme to some bad TV sitcom), but "Follow the Leader" has to take the cake all around.  Lou's band gets all sweaty, cookin' up a boogie that this time sounds like some rejected incidental '70s cop show music while Mr. Reed on Speed stammers such memorable lines as "Follow, follow the leader n-n-now / New York, New York City n-n-n-n-now-now."  Great, Lou.  How does the rest of it go, dude?  Oh yeah, "Oh, if you wanna dance / Hey, work up a sweat / Better, better, better get yourself a little romance / And you better, oooh / Get up a little sweat and a little romance."  Jesus, Lou, put down the drugs already, man.

5. Billy Joel - "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Who started it, then?  I'm one of Billy Joel's biggest fans, but damned if I can't even bring myself to put this on my iPod, or into a Billy Joel mix or ever feel the need to hear it ever again.  Billy's always had his critics, usually about his lyrics, but listing names and events off one after another does not make for inspiring listening.  Of course, that didn't stop us fans from shooting it right up the charts, either.  Go ahead, lay the blame on me.  I never gave much of a damn for the Storm Front album from which this was taken, anyway.  The only part of the whole thing that sticks in my head is "Communist Bloc."  So I must have blocked out the rest of it successfully.  Get it?  Haha.  Yeah.  OK.

Johnathan and James

So John Lennon's still dead, and Jim Morrison was born on this day millions of years ago and managed to accidentally top himself in the bathtub at age 27.  Two rockers whose fans ascribe the word "genius" to in many circles.  I don't, though I do enjoy what both dudes did during their lifetimes.

I was only eight years old when Lennon died.  Having not yet gotten into his work or The Beatles', I can't say that it had any effect on me that I can recall.  The first time I can actually remember thinking about John's death was when "Nobody Told Me" was released posthumously on Milk and Honey.  I enjoyed the song a lot (still do) and remember hearing it in my mom's car on the radio one day and thinking to myself how Lennon was no longer around and what a shame it was.  No, the Lennon I "grew up with" in the '80s was Julian and his tunes on Valotte.  That brings back another memory of watching a special of his on Showtime or something at the time and him playing his dad's "Day Tripper" during a live segment and my mom commenting on the fact.

After getting into The Beatles in earnest during my middle school years, the first solo Lennon album I bought was Shaved Fish.  I remember buying it in some shitty record store in a mall down in Florida and the cashier looking at another cashier and going "Look at this...Shaved Fish?!" as if I was bringing back the bubonic plague or something.  Maybe it was because she had never heard of the album and thought it was a weird title, but I got the feeling she was chastising me.  It didn't matter.  I recall putting it in my Walkman for the first time and listening and thinking, "Man, John Lennon really liked echo on everything."

As for Jim Morrison and The Doors, I've always had a love/hate thing for him and the group.  I own all the band's albums featuring Morrison and absolutely love the L.A. Woman album.  But I've always cringed at how the fans - both young and old - just ascribe that whole "genius" tag to Jimbo.  I wouldn't deem any of his lyrical skills or drug and/or alcohol-infused bravado "genius," but these are the same people (at least the younger of the ilk) who say the same lame thing about Kurt Cobain. 

To me, Morrison was an entertainer who happened to be fronting this nice little rock combo.  Sure, he sung of darker themes and breaking on through and all that stuff, but it was the mid '60s, baby, and it was the newest thing under the sun.  I will say that I find The Doors' music to be the most enjoyable to come out of the west coast at that time, certainly much better than all the hippie nonsense wafting out of San Francisco at the time.  That whole peace and love trip seemed better served under Jim's death trip vibe than taken seriously as a recourse for society's ills.  Jim often threw the word bullshit around.  Was he aware of his own?  Maybe, but by the time his gut and beard had fully blossomed and his voice was a shadow of its former glory, The Doors became less mythological and more earthbound.  It started on Morrison Hotel and made its logical conclusion on the blues-drenched L.A. Woman.

I recently watched the new documentary on the band called When You're Strange and felt that it lacked the visceral action and groove of Oliver Stone's maligned The Doors.  Though the new film allows the story to be told through archival clips of the band, Stone's flick made the group all seem larger than life.  After seeing it, you couldn't help but want to hear some of the band's tracks and learn more, no matter how much of it was or wasn't sensationalized.  The new film just feels like a plain vanilla examination of the group.  The drama distilled into something less frenzied.

Anyway, another anniversary comes and goes for these two.  Lennon's work has all been remastered and reissued yet again, and The Doors had their groovy 40th Anniversary mixes issued not too long ago.  The music remains vital.  The messages contained therein may or may not be as urgent depending on who you are and where your tastes lie.  To me, "Imagine" was the apex of Lennon's naivete towards the whole "Peace, brother!" message he and Yoko had cultivated since 1968.  To millions of others, though, it remains a song of hope.  Personally, I always found tracks like "Mother" to be a little more convincing.

Paul McCartney's '70s Wilderness

Poor Paulie McCartney. The guy hasn't been able to buy a hit single in what seems like ages. Not that it matters to him or his fans, but I remember the days when you'd hear a new Macca tune on the radio and it'd be a hit. I suppose the last time I really recall that happening for him was when he released Flowers in the Dirt and managed to score pretty well with "My Brave Face," "This One," "Put It There," and "Figure of Eight."  Then he kind of slid into a mediocre phase that his harshest critics had always accused him of peddling.

But enough of that.  Let's go back to the early '70s after The Beatles called it quits and Paul demanded that his first solo album be released before Let It Be.  It retrospect it makes sense in a backhanded way towards McCartney.  Let It Be was hardly a high note of the Fabs, but it was certainly more interesting than most of McCartney.  So John and Paul battled it out through tunes back and forth, culminating in Macca putting a picture of two beetles screwing on the back of his second LP Ram and dropping lyrical references to the misery in "Dear Boy" and "Too Many People."  Lennon attacked back with "How Do You Sleep?" on his own Imagine.

Fuck the Beatles, we got to rock!

Yes so the ex-Beatles were having a field day with their pissing contest.  Meanwhile, Paul decided to form a new band, christened it Wings and took the group a-touring in a little van across the English countryside, making surprise appearances at various colleges and the like.  Exciting stuff, to be sure, but music-wise McCartney crapped out the weird and loose Wild Life as Wings' debut.  Even stranger, the album managed to get all the way to #10 on the charts.  Back then, Paul could release absolute junk and it would sell because the fans were so rabid for the product.

How dare you bust Paulie for pot!  Now let's go make an album.

I really hated Wild Life for a period in my life.  As I've gotten older, though, I enjoy it quite a bit.  "Mumbo" might not be anything than a loosey goosey soundcheck, but it rocks harder than anything Paul does these days.  The pot-infused cover of "Love is Strange" is pleasant, and "Some People Never Know" is a lost classic.  Linda got to debut her vocals on the slight "I Am Your Singer," but even at this point Wings managed to create its own sound.  As the band got better, you always knew when you were listening to a Wings track on the radio.  So that's already in place.  Paul even managed to find the time to sing a kind song to Lennon entitled "Dear Friend."

Adding Paul's name first made the music sell like hotcakes!

After the album was released and met a scathing reception, Paul expressed disappointment that he had recorded it so fast (apparently he did so because he had read where Dylan had done his latest LP in a really short amount of time), but he also thought maybe the public at large didn't realize it was his band.  So for the next release, the wonderful Red Rose Speedway, the band became "Paul McCartney and Wings."  Hopefully after all these years, Paul has realized that it was the overall quality of Wild Life that let the folks down, and not that they didn't know who recorded it.

Red Rose Speedway has always been overlooked in the Macca canon.  It spawned the gooey and forgettable hit "My Love," but it also contains some of Paul's best stuff pre-Band on the Run superstardom.  The opening "Big Barn Bed" perfects the Wings vocal harmony formula and rocks well.  "One More Kiss" is a cross between English country and the old style stuff that Paul was so fond of and recreated himself in tracks like "Honey Pie."  "Little Lamb Dragonfly" is a lovely, slightly surreal piece of work.  And my absolute favorite is the gorgeous "When the Night."  At times Red Rose Speedway may seem slight, but it also features McCartney doing a sort of last grasp on the old experimental Beatles formula that was still fresh at the time.  Hell, Henry McCullough's guitar playing is worth it alone, even on "My Love" where his solo is the best thing about the whole song.

The album was a good primer for what was to follow.  It put Paul back in a larger spotlight, and even led him to do such things as the "James Paul McCartney" TV special which featured some tunes from the LP amongst other numbers.  Probably the most unfortunate thing to come from all this, though, was Paul and Linda's joint decision to start sporting mullets, a choice that they wouldn't change until around the time of London Town.  I suppose one could accuse Bowie of setting the trend, but I would rather think it was the sweet, sweet dank that the McCartneys were ingesting at a sizable rate at the time.

Ah mullet, much later.

The weird mess that was Todd Rundgren and Utopia

Back in my high school years, circa grade 10, I found myself getting knee-deep in the music of Todd Rundgren.  At the time, Todd was one of my faves.  His lyrics seemed to speak to a lot of my silly teenage angst and his quasi-religious (or whatever you wanna call it) treks fit the open-minded/open-ended opinions I had on such stuff.  However, his band Utopia was a harder sell for my ears.

Not that that was strange, really.  Utopia was never a band that quite fit.  And not in the Velvet Underground or Big Star sort of way.  Utopia's biggest problem was that since it was Todd's baby, its formula would constantly change from album to album, much like Rundgren's solo work.  But Todd doing something different each time out in a solo manner was more intriguing than having to slog through Utopia's myriad changes.

In the beginning, Utopia had a shitload of dudes in it.

Look, you can chalk the first bit of confusion up to the fact that it was the '70s when the band debuted (1974) and listening to the prog rock mess of Todd Rundgren's Utopia is still a challenge for most.  Personally, I still enjoy the epic side-long "The Ikon" (clocking in at just a shade over 30 minutes), mainly for Todd's wacko guitar work on it.  The goofy lyrics leave a lot to be desired, but Rundgren manages to weave some pop sensibilities into his trip.  The rest of the album (the first side) is a drag.  "Utopia Theme" is a chore. "Freak Parade" is a mess, and the short "Freedom Fighters" is mired in the kind of craptastic noodle-headed comic book philosophies that bogged down a lot of the slightly more "progressive" artists at the time.  Utopia was no Rush.

The second version of Utopia during the goofy RA phase.

The first version of the group with its too many members squeaked out a crummy live album after that, featuring one decent tune that was marred by leftover hippie nonsense ("The Wheel").  After no one bothered to care about that LP, Rundgren pared the band down to a quartet and shat out the cosmic slop known as RA.  The band dressed in bad Egyptian attire on the album's sleeve and managed to turn out a couple decent tunes ("Communion with the Sun" and "Jealousy") and then managed to mess up most of side two with the boring "Singring and the Glass Guitar (an Electrified Fairy Tale)."  Again, Utopia was no Rush, whose own 2112 pretty much set the benchmark for this kind of thing.  So Todd reconfigured what Utopia was all about again and came up with a new formula.

 

Oops!  Wrong audience.

1978's Oops! Wrong Planet was a step in a more pop-oriented direction.  The only thing leftover from the prog crap was the giant pyramid that Todd would scale during live shows featured on the front cover.  There were no epic tunes this time, just regular-length tracks.  My fave of the bunch has always been "Windows" featuring vocals by keyboardist Roger Powell.  This is where you'll also find the not very tough "Love in Action" and the overrated "Love is the Answer."  "Trapped" and "Crazy Lady Blue" were fine and overall the album was better than its predecessors on the whole, but that really wasn't saying a lot.

New decade, new duds, same sales.

So the '80s dawned and Todd was faring better with his solo stuff as usual.  Utopia trotted out Adventures in Utopia in 1980 and scored a "minor" (something like #65 if memory serves correct) hit with "Set Me Free" sung by bassist Kasim Sulton.  But there were better songs, like Todd's New Wave ballad "Second Nature," the fantastic "You Make Me Crazy" with vocals by drummer John Wilcox, and the silly "Shot in the Dark."  At this point it seemed like the band was humping the comic book ideas completely with songs like "Last of the New Wave Riders."  Fans will note that on the LP and subsequent reissues that the album was a supposed soundtrack for a TV special that never aired, with each of the tracks coming from a different episode.  To my knowledge an actual series was never produced and the "concept" was just that.  Weak sauce.

Well, anything's better than the Egyptian garb.

But making a slight dent in the pop charts wasn't satisfying enough for Todd, so next up we got the Beatles send-up Deface the Music which actually had some killer pop tunes on it, but sold like dead rats on a buffet as it was released around the time John Lennon was killed and no one couldn't have cared less.  But it is worth checking out, especially if you're a Beatles fan, though it doesn't come close to the fun of the first Rutles LP.  Not to be deterred, the band reconvened and spat out Swing to the Right, a collection of tunes inspired by Reaganomics and all that stuff some of you kids may remember.

Actually, the album has some really solid tunes on it and is worth delving into, even if it seems like a difficult listen at first.  Rundgren and pals were finally honing something approximating coherence here over an entire album.  "Shinola" is one of Todd's best and nastiest bits, and the New Wave/disco groove of "Fahrenheit 451" is tasty.  "Lysistrata" is the one Todd would trot out during solo gigs, and the cover of "For the Love of Money" is pretty damn good.

The band's best LP.  No one cared

Following this, the band and Rundgren split from the Bearsville label and started setting up shop on crummy indie imprints that no one ever heard of.  The first release, simply entitled Utopia is the band's best work, bar none.  The original LP featured 15 tracks across three sides of vinyl.  Here you had everything from the favorite "Feet Don't Fail Me Now" to "Princess of the Universe" to the terrific "Bad Little Actress" and "Hammer in My Heart."  The band nailed it dead on.  It should have been a hit, especially in the early '80s when it was issued, but like everything else the band did, it basically sank without a trace, known only by the band's fans.

Christ, let's just call it a day already.

The frustration of missing the public yet again began to take its toll and the last pair of Utopia albums, Oblivion and POV were rather depressing affairs.  I always preferred the former over the latter as it at least had stuff like "Too Much Water," "Love With a Thinker," "If I Didn't Try," and the oddball "Bring Me My Longbow."  It's actually not too bad, but suffers from a sort of over processed sound a lot of albums were punched through at the time.  POV, on the other hand, had the corny "Mated," the decent "Crybaby," and the goofy "Zen Machine."  Meh.

And then it was over.  Todd called it a day on the group.  The last offering was a "best of" compilation of the last three albums called Trivia, which featured two "new" tunes, the decent "Fix Your Gaze" and the ho-hum "Monument."  Years passed and in the early '90s the band got together briefly and released the live Redux '92: Live in Japan.  Again, only the hardcore cared, and again the band was put to rest.

It's hard to assess what Rundgren was going for with Utopia.  Aside from the great self-titled album, you could basically cherry pick ten tracks from most of the other albums and have everything you need to know about the group.  To my ears, there was always just something about the sound of the band that wasn't quite right.  Why Todd felt the need to have a regular band format crank out these albums when he would have been just as adept at doing them himself is worth pondering as well.  There are people who will swear by this group.  I love a lot of Todd's work, but honestly I find a lot of Utopia's tracks to just be pointless.  I suppose Todd did, too, after years of trying to make it work.

Blog pinger

You know I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind.

So here it is.  A new blog.  A new step in the process of yours truly moving forward with the writing thing that he abandoned for a while.  Not that it truly mattered in the grand scheme of things, but I did miss doing it all.

Who am I?  You don't know?  That's OK, some days I don't, either.

Music critic (Fufkin, PopMatters, Bullz-Eye; my own trip known as "Echo From Esoterica" from 2001-2004), musician, writer, pop culture sponge.

So yeah, a reboot of sorts.  A dabbling in this and that, of something and nothing.  Who cares?  The kids get it for free via texting and push notifications.  Back in my day we still used typewriters.  Big deal, I know.  It doesn't exactly inspire OMFG, does it?  It's not supposed to, really.

I just turned 38 recently.  Wasn't I just 28, or 18?  Can't really remember 8, though I'm sure it was undoubtedly grand.  So much to recall but only I care. 

The blog as an egotistical landfill.  Everyone's got one, don'tcha know?  Some of 'em gain Importance!  You might even get featured on NPR where they'll talk about you in that weird, almost-stoned/sort of robotic not quite but pretty much monotone.  Weird.

I'm beginning to wonder if The Beatles are my favorite band of all time and not The Velvet Underground as I always proclaim them to be.  It's all tasty.