Gavin B.

Patti Smith took such a long haitus from music that many younger music fans don't realize what a big impact she had on popular music in the Seventies. Like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and the New York Dolls, she was a musical bridge that connected the early Seventies glam rock underground to CBGBs punk rock scene that changed the course of popular music forever. The British punk rock revolution of 1977 had the music of the Stooges, the Ramones, the New York Dolls and especially Patti Smith as a foundation.

I'm supplying a link to an excellent profile of Patti Smith that appeared in the Guardian in 1997 by Michael Bracewell. It's remains the most perceptive piece ever written about Patti because Bracewell connects all the dots and fully understands the significance of Patti Smith's contribution to music. Patti Smith: Woman as a Warrior and Mystic

Gavin B.

Song of the Day


The Feelies: boys with perpetual nerdiness.


The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness- The Feelies In the early Eighties the best band in New York City actually lived across the Hudson River in Hoobken New Jersey. The Feelies were a lovable group of nerdy guys just out of high school who had a chiming guitar sound and crazy off tempo polyrhythmatic tribal drum sounds.

The leader of the band was a musical savant named Glenn Mercer who didn't seem the least bit interested in being the next big thing on the new wave music scene. I saw the Feelies live on three occasions during that era and they lived up to their growing reputation one of the best live bands of that era.

Their first album Crazy Rhythms became a fetish item for the NYC rock underground after it went out of issue in a couple of years. The album was special for a lot of reasons: the bursts of guitar crossfire between Glen Mercer and Bill Million and the frantic drumming of Anton Fier gave a sense of immediacy and volitility to their music, but that enegry was counterpointed by a sense of mystery and introspection in the songs they wrote.

The Feelies waited six years to make another album and gained a notorious reputation as a difficult band to work with. The album the Good Earth wasn't nearly as exciting as their debut. The Feelies regained some of their audience with the release of Only Life in 1988 but broke up soon after that album was made. Over the past 20 years the Feelies have reunited periodically with Mercer and Million at the helm. That band has currently been reunited for about a year and a half and has gigged around New York, Boston and Hoboken but has yet to release another album.

Gavin B.

Song of the Day


The Dodos: The once quirky duo is now a quirky trio.


Red and Purple- The Dodos This wonderous version of Red and Purple was rendered live at the NPR studio complete with toy piano and tom-tom heavy tribal drumming techiques of Logan Kroeber. Their latest album, Time To Die was released last week and it's a less frentic and moodier album than their first two albums Visiter (2008) and Beware of the Maniacs (2006).

Part of the reason for the sound makeover may be Phil Ek's role as producer on Time To Die. Phil Ek is resposible for crafting and producing the crystaline picture perfect sound of Fleet Foxes' debut album last year. The addition of Keaton Snyder on electric vibraphone and toy piano transforms the once quirky duo of Meric Long and Logan Kroeber into a quirky trio with a more defined sound.

Gavin B.

Worlds Worst Beatle Covers Part I

I'm not the sort of person that stops to gawk at traffic accidents because my morbid preoccupations are of a milder nature. I stop and gawk at really awful songs performed by really awful performers. A really bad rendition of a Beatles song really catches my ear because decimating a Lennon/McCartney song is the pop music equivalent of pillaging the holy temple. There are enough bad Beatles covers to warrart a 2 part (possibly 3 part) post to cover to give my reader an idea of the full range of transgressions against Beatles music by nearly every nation and culture on the face of the earth.

Be forwarned these Beatle covers are really bad but don't blame me, I'm just the messenger and the public has the right to know and a right to indulge in their own lurid curiosity. I'll start with one of the milder descerations of the Beatle's catalog the Telly (Kojack) Savalas rendition of Something:




It gets a lot worse from this point on folks, so I'm giving you fair warning as I introduce you to the rendition of Blackbird by the Japanese super group, Hanaregumi:

Gavin B.

Worlds Worst Beatle Covers Part I

I'm not the sort of person that stops to gawk at traffic accidents because my morbid preoccupations are of a milder nature. I stop and gawk at really awful songs performed by really awful performers. A really bad rendition of a Beatles song really catches my ear because decimating a Lennon/McCartney song is the pop music equivalent of pillaging the holy temple. There are enough bad Beatles covers to warrart a 2 part (possibly 3 part) post to cover to give my reader an idea of the full range of transgressions against Beatles music by nearly every nation and culture on the face of the earth.

Be forwarned these Beatle covers are really bad but don't blame me, I'm just the messenger and the public has the right to know and a right to indulge in their own lurid curiosity. I'll start with one of the milder descerations of the Beatle's catalog the Telly (Kojack) Savalas rendition of Something:

Something by Telly Savalas


It gets a lot worse from here on folks, so don't say I didn't warn you. Next is a rendition of Blackbird by the Japanese supergroup Hanararegumi:



This rendition of Let It Be by the Russian Naval band gives new meaning to the word "awful." Another fair warning: the following song is frightfully bad that I thought it was some kind of Monty Pyton joke when I first heard it:



To conclude Part I of our epic tribute to bad Beatles covers, I present you with the singer by which every awful standard of music is frequently measured by: William Shatner. This Captain Kirk rendition of Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds is so single mindedly bizarre I don't quite know what to make of it. The version of "Lucy" transcends every notion of what is bad music and I can only conclude that William Shatner consumed 15 tabs of blotter acid, 1 hour prior to the recording session:



WARNING: Part II of Bad Beatle Covers will include Bill Cosby's version Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band and a mariachi version of Get Back that will make you want to vomit.

Gavin B.

Song of the Day


The 1967 edition Incredible String Band strikes an autumnmal pose


The Half Remarkable Question- The Incredible String Band The success of bands like Fleet Foxes and Midlake have renewed interest in the esoteric folk sound of the Incredible String Band. ISB's primary players were a pair of Glasgow based multi-instrumentalists named Robin Williamson and Mike Heron who started ISB as a trio (with banjoist Clive Palmer) and primarily played traditional Celtic and American folk music. Clive Palmer left the group and moved to Afghanistan shortly after the first album was released.

Robin Williamson moved to Morocco for a year and studied Eastern music modalities. The result was an abrupt makeover in the sound of ISB. Their second album was influenced heavily by Eastern and North African music, as Williamson added exotic touches such as the Middle Eastern oud, Indian sitars, and tambouras began to permeate the group's sound.

ISB's music began to touch on themes of cosmic consciousness, pantheism, and arcane practices of Wicca. Some have compared ISB to Donovan, a comparison that flatters Donovan and undervalues the musical skills and the creative songwriting talents of ISB. Williams and Heron didn't yield to the pressure to make more pop oriented music as Donovan did, and eventually Donovan lost his audience by doing so.

This 1968 performance of The Half Remarkable Question on British television, demonstrates the full force of the remarkable and unorthodox talents of the Incredible String Band.

Gavin B.

Song of the Day


Shriekback's music was hard to market because the band frequently strayed outside of the usual categories and sub-genres of post punk music.

This Big Hush - Shriekback Shriekback was a difficult band to market because it was hard to place the band in a musical category. Dave Allen formed Shriekback in 1982 following his departure from the celebrated post punk, anti capitalist British band the Gang of Four. Joining Allen were Barry Andrews former keyboardist from the pop oriented XTC and Carl Marsh guitarist for the more obscure and unrecorded band, Out on the Blue Six.

The band used lush synthesizers, intricate drum programs, fluid basslines and sinister sounding vocals but were not a dance band, not a goth band nor a post punk clone of the influential electronica band Kraftwerk. There is no single stellar Shriekback album and their best songs are spread out over the nine albums they recorded, four of which were released long after the band broke up in 1989. There is also no single anthology or "best of" Shriekback album that adequately covers all the highlights of their entire musical catalog because Shriekback migrated from label to label over the years and recorded on six different record labels over the seven years of the bands existence.

The Shriekback song The Big Hush gained notoriety from it's inclusion on the soundtrack of Manhunter (1986) an early Michael Mann movie based on Thomas Harris' book The Red Dragon which introduced the world to the noted psychiatrist and uber serial killer Hannibal Lechter. Michael Mann, like his peers Jim Jarmusch, Sophia Coppola and Quentin Tarrentino, is a film director who makes music a central part of his artistic statement as a director. Mann's exquisite use of music in film led the venerable Rhino records to issue a two CD retrospective compilation of music Mann's film soundtracks called Director's Cut.

I saw Shriekback live at a Boston club called Spit in 1983 following the release of their first album Care. I was a fan of both Gang of Four and XTC but Shriekback's music was completely different that of their parent bands and completely different from most of the post punk music of the era. There was a sense of mystery and brooding attitude of pessimism that permeates nearly all of Shriekback's music that is close to the austere existentialism of Joy Division, the star crossed band from Manchester that reflected the harsh and dismal realities of life in the UK under the Thatcher era.

Gavin B.

Song of the Day




Sink or Swin- Bad Lietenant From the ashes of New Order comes Bad Lietenant formed by ever resiliant Bernard Sumner who also built New Order from the remains of Joy Division after the death of Ian Curtis.

Their first album isn't scheduled for release until October 6th but Amazon had a one week $2.99 prerelease sale of Never Cry Another Tear yesterday to drum up some word of mouth on the album. Upon a few listenings I'm happy to report Never Cry Another Tear is stonger than Get Ready or Waiting for The Sirens' Call, New Order's final two albums for Warner.

During this week the album will be available as a digital download exclusively through Amazon.com; subsequently, for one month beginning October 13, the full, physical CD can be purchased only at Amazon.com. On November 10, Never Cry Another Tear will be distributed to all other retail outlets via a partnership with Original Signal Recordings.

You can download the entire album for $2.99 at Amazon.com until Tuesday October 6th when it's officially released.


Sink or Swin was released earlier this year as a single and at least four other songs on Never Cry Another Tear that are strong enough to warrant release as singles.

The core of Bad Lietenant muscular frontline of three guitarists consisting of Sumner, Phil Cunningham, and Jake Evans. You will hear a lot of similarities to New Order, since Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris go way back to the earliest edition of Joy Division and guitarist Phil Cunningham has been associated with New Order since 2001's Get Ready album. Bad Lietenant makes the final break with the Kraftwerk influenced sythensizer music that characterized so much of New Order's music in the Eighties and Nineties.

Never Cry Another Tear doesn't have the hit-or-miss quality of the final two New Order albums and the jangling three guitar crossfire seems to have provided inspiration to Summer who was suffering from a severe case of songwritting block in the final decade of New Order's existence.

jackhammer

I'm underwhelmed by that song. I'm a big fan of both Joy Division and New Order but this lacked serious spark for me and was non descript. I may give the album a listen out of curiosity but if that's an indicator

I think the last few years of New Order was Sumner and Hooky constantly at odds with the sound they wanted with Hooky favouring a more aggressive guitar based sound and Sumner sticking to his Pop sensibilities, that's why I like New Order so much. Albums were always balanced between these sounds.

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Gavin B.

You make a good point but still Bad Lieutenant's bad music is better than 90% of music out there these days. I have no objection to to a pop sensibility, per se. There is a big difference between the pop music of Elvis Costello than say, John Mayer for instance, but both performers write music that firmly rooted in the popular music tradition.