I don't do nostalgia. If you're not creating new music, you're irrelevant, dead to me. Baltimore's own Kix has risen from the dead as of late 2013, when they recorded their fifth album with the same lineup (one key original founding member excepted). Rock Your Face Off was perhaps too positively reviewed here in the excitement after its release. But any subsequent reassessment is obviated and beside the point as the band prepares to release Can't Stop The Show: The Return Of Kix, a deluxe live and behind the scenes and in the studio making of multi media rockumentary. Apparently they’re breaking their collective arm patting themselves on the back after three years. To that I say, good for them. Former bassist/songwriter/control freakin' Svengali Donnie Purnell dominated the band for nearly two decades. How satisfying must it have been for Kix to say kiss my ass, we can do it without you, nineteen years later no less. All we have to do is replace you with a younger songwriting bassist. Well, that’s actually a bit bizarre, but hey, whatever works. And it did/does. Last week was the second appearance in so many years on an OC Bikefest Thursday, and again they Rocked Our collective Face Off. And We Liked It. 

Kix albums have always been models of mediocrity - the last album prebreakup (1994's Show Business) excepted, curiously and ironically enough, and the "reunion" album continues to improve on the original model, if only marginally. A fun listen for casual fans, essential for fans. Eighties alsorans, ultimately? Perhaps. But there's a soft spot in a lot of ageing - and legendary front man Steve Whiteman just turned sixty going on sixteen - headbanger hearts for The Goddamn Kix Band, who were imitating AC/DC a decade before Rhino Bucket (who guitarist Damage Forsythe actually joined in the early oughts). It goes without saying as common knowledge that Steve is the best front man since Robert Plant (who could also be disarmingly funny onstage for an egotistical Rock God, besmirked with elegant verbal asides especially on the triumphal but troubled 1977 tour; Whiteman is much cruder, with a witty but silly sense of adolescent scatological humor) or Bon Scott, the quintessential funny drunken gentleman. And speaking of affectionate soft spots, as a bred and spread Baltimore boy, I still remember Keith Richards/ junkie gypsy stakes entry Ronnie Younkins project with Faces obsessive Jeremy White: the MicknKeef punning The Slimmer Twins album was produced in 2k by GunsnRoses' Gilby Clark. 

But don’t take my word for it regarding the new and improved version of this nearly forty year old Maryland Institution. Check out the new album/documentary in a couple weeks.

 

 

2 paraphrase The Rock, finally! the Blues has come back to Ocean City!

Last month, Lower Case Blues had half of their tools of the trade purloined by some anti music lower life form, at least affording me the impetus and excuse for writing a long delayed (by a year no less...my bad) article about their fine fourth album. Last week they recovered at least one guitar and proceeded to return triumphantly to M.R. Ducks downtown on de bay. So with regard to underrepresented lo ere long these past couple column years, to continue my attempt to reconcile my oversight and show I’m contrite,  here's an apposite straight review of the proceedings. Well, the first half of it anyway ... second sets being a, ahem, challenge for me.

As a prefatory note about the venue, it don't get no better than a waterfront concert: this is why we live here, fellow locals. Blues on the bay, baby. As the sun sets, yet. Said Blues began promptly at five with an old original shuffle, "Next Time I See You", BJ on bass/vocals and Paul on drums pacing themselves in reserve for now, Jake on the white Strat lets it loose and gets Buddy Guy post haste. Why wait, It’s Five O'clock Somewhere. Bo Diddley's well covered  "Before You Accuse Me", originally from 1957 with Willie Dixon on bass, at least was updated by a propulsive funky shuffle groove arrangement. Another Diddley big daddy of a number, 1962's "I Can Tell" followed as Paul gripped the lumber jazz style, eventually segueing into ZZ Top's "Jesus Just Left Chicago", just an excuse for Jake to outplay Billy Gibbons himself. An unnamed (cause I don't know the name of it) Albert King, of the three Kings (BB, Freddy, Al) influencing Lower Case Blues, number featured Paul's poly-rhythm with more cowbell and the first solo from Mister Muntz. "Turn Your Lights Down Low" was not the Bob Marley familiarity but an original twelve bar blues with a surf garagey "hey" refrain (!). The next original was by fellow local Blues man Tom Larsen and shall remain unnamed cause ... And finally, the finale was what we were waiting for: the first two tracks from the latest album, last year's Own Time. The title track was first, exemplar of Lower Case Funk as influenced by The Meters and Parliament/Funkadelic. As Beastie Boys sampled "oh my god that’s some funky shit! "I Aint Goin Nowhere", the album opener, closed the set as it commenced, with a shuffle, this one driven by a staccato groove riff. Which brings me to the opportunity to bitch again about bands with an arsenal of their own good songs retreading and reheating worn, well tread and tepid covers. Will it stop? Hell no. Should it stop? Hell yes. But - Stop it.

That said, go see them anyway, the originals are worth waiting for, and you'll see virtuosity in the interim. At: Hammerheads on Bluesday Boozeday Tuesday afternoons, and Delaware Distilling Company on Thirsty Thursdays. These joints are in Rehoboth, LCB's home surfnturf, but if you wait for them to yield right of way south ... let's just say you'll be waiting. Til they do, I for one have a fine memory of a fine OC gig to last me ...

It's also the best excuse to allow a non local band to usurp this space. Tijuana's own Los Shadows may not have purloined, speaking of usurpation, White Reaper's Band Of The Year regnancy last year, but had I been cognizant of their six song debut, recorded that August, they would have at least been toppermost of the poppermost for my Cinco De Mayo fiesta. Such as it is, the new disqué de Shadows is fresh as of June. It's called Midnight Climax and features the decidedly Reaperesque "Riverside" with its bubbly organ line and garage surf riff. Los Shadows likes to slot their occaisonally bemasked personas into the "surf punk" stakes; as we shall see, they sell themselves short in so doing. Not that that isn't my genre. But the Nirvana influenced quartet drift blissfully into Blue seas - my beloved Ocean Blue (!) - on the new "Cream", Blue Dream" (bluetiful...swooningly so), and the old "Voices". Which is to say, the genre, to be specific, would be 'ringing guitar dreampop', albeit with aggro drums. But no denying the David Schelzel(esque) intonations. 

Blisspop.

Okay - call it a draw at 'surfpop'. "Sleeping Outside" is legit surf fare, all seasoaked reverb. Still, last year's model "Sally" as well as the fresh "The Times" are nothing if not standard Britpop. Go figure.

And go to You Tube for a couple of live numbers from the band's home turf south of the border. For those keeping score, the new titles on Midnight Climax are: "Sleeping Outside", "Blue Dream", "The Times", "Cream", "Riverside", "Taxicasido". They feature the new bassist, BTW. 

Salud, compas!

  Cognitive dissonance. Ambivalence. Polarization. That's how one feels about Rod Stewart: shame, that. As Morrissey sang, we hate it when our friends become successful. But when you go from promising young rocknsoul singer with a proto metal band that Led Zeppelin stole more from than they did Willie Dixon, to the best Rolling Stones band not actually named The Rolling Stones, to...lounge lizard lite? Engelbert Humperdinck? Mel Torme, The Velvet Fog? But then he'll go and let the latent rocker we all know is screaming for vengeance out to play with old mates. Or release a piece of rocknroll found on the street like "Finest Woman That I’ve Ever Known" just a couple years ago. Hell, even after his Atlantic Crossing to Hollywood in 1975 - after Faces fell, well, on their faces - considered his official "sellout" - he made his heaviest hard Stones rock with Carmine Appice's heavy hands on plodding sub Bonham drums and "Hot Legs", influenced by "Tumbling Dice". And Carmine cowrite "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy", ploddingly silly subdisco: is this guy serious? (Ministry side project Revolting Cocks thought so, covering the infamous hit in 1993.) Am I serious? Laugh/scoff/harrumph if you will, hipsters and musical elitists/snobs - a club of which I’m a card carrying member - but these were and are great goddamn songs.

So yes, I still admit my affection for Rod Stewart, a soft spot and guilty pleasure. His pedigree/resume started impeccably. His devastating version of "Old Man River" from March 1967 commenced his commiseration with ex Yardbird Jeff Beck - a guitarist rated by the like of Scotty Moore (yes, Elvis' original sidekick), Joe Perry, Michael Schenker, Mick Ronson, Eddie Van Halen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Joe Satriani - and included Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, and Keith Moon. That first Beck album followed in July 1968, with future Face/ late of The Birds and Creation Ron Wood on bass (not guitar); it covered Willie "I Am The Blues" Dixon's "You Shook Me" - Jonesy, again, on organ (!) months before Zeppelin did. "Rock My Plimsoul" predicted Page/Plant's call/response by the same margin: Jimmy was taking notes! For that alone Rod can be exonerated of the schmaltz. "Blues Deluxe"? This legendary album, again, Led the way, pun intended. And again, "The Blues"' "I Ain't Superstitious" proves heavy metal pedigree in that it was covered by Megadeth eighteen years later. This version most likely! A year later Faces first rehearsal covered Dixon's "Evil" and Big Bill Broonzy's "I Feel So Good". So we’ve established that the cat was rooted in the same blues as the other sixties British heavyweights. Stewart maintained a smashingly successful solo career, initially with Wood as his main man, whilst drinking Blue Nun and champagne at the onstage bar (!) with the lads til their final tour in Summer 75, the final Faces single having been recorded Fautumn 74 ("You Can Make Me Dance"/"As Long As You Tell Him"). But the rock stopped rolling, more or less, and rocking Rod was under heavy manners as the rastas say, after 1984's Camouflage.

Which brings us to OC local Tommy Edward and Sir Rod. A solo performer in his own right - guitar, covers unfortunately - Edward imitates the newly knighted Englishman about as well as anyone could, as I’ve not seen another, nor have any such desire or inclination. The bottom line is it’s a fun show at Springfest and Sunfest annually, and there is no better venue for any performance than Sunset Park downtown on the bay as the sun sets. The Sir Rod experience went down ahead of said sun Thursday at seven and was as predictable as you like, all the usual suspects in the form of the hits present and accounted for.

What's remarkable about seeing said Sir is that said hits are apparently a bottomless well, the familiar radio fodder becoming overwhelming over the course of the two hour revue as one realizes just how much ammunition is in that old cannon. Edward has much from which to choose from an impressive catalog of crowd pleasures even with Stewart originals to work with. So the only question is, why must he choose so many of the old geezer's so many covers? But IMHO that goes for any artist: why cover a cover? It's been done before. There are more than enough good songs to go around. Copy one that hasn't been copied already. We've heard that tune before, ad nauseum. Yes, when a band plays an unnecessarily overplayed cover, that's my cue to flee. But in this case, the drum solo is worth sticking around for: Harry's metallic turn perhaps gives one a glimmer of where his boss' sentiments really lie (just like his idol, a rocker at heart?). As does keyboard/backup singer Melissa's hairswinging, if not headbanging, raucous raw enthusiasm, calculatedly infectious. A contrivance? Of course, but that's beside the point in a performance that's wheel(chaired) out for festival folk twice a year, at Spring/Sunfest, and other county fair type family friendly hoedowns - like the Thursday Nights In The Park series, all of which were (mostly) cover/tribute acts for tourists who won't have their musical tastes, such as they are and subsist of whatever is on classic rock radio, or the pop hits station that plays what plays at Food Lion. 

Cynical? What the hell, I had fun.

 

This week, the Delaware power trio Lower Case Blues were pillaged plundered and purloined of crucial tools of the trade, specifically a bass, pedalboard, snare and cymbals. As a columnist whose ostensible raison d'être is the local scene, I have done LCB a disservice, not damning them with faint praise but with little praise: I've been waiting for a weekday southern show (south of Rehoboth anyway) to cover. Well, their fourth album has been out over a year and I'm still waiting. So it's high time I found my Own Time (that's the name of the album, see what I did there) to review the record and promote Delmarva's most virtuosic band. That's right, I said it.

Prefatory notes: Own Time's production is rather an underproduction, deliberately dry to match singer/bassist BJ's dry, wry, tongue-in-cheek vocal delivery. This band's musicianship is such that overproduction would be eighties excess overkill. As is their wont, LCB lets the music do the talking, as Joe Perry said in 1980. Here's the track by track of said music on this the latest.

• "I Ain't Going Nowhere": shuffle with a groovy staccato riff

• "Do It On Your Own Time": Lowercase Funk. Title track hips one to the Meters/PFunk influence and gives the drummer some with a funky beats break: Paul is a double threat on the bass, by the way. No threat to the like of Mr. Muntz, the frontman, but he can hold it down. Speaking of the singer, here you hear his exaggerated wahwah whigne.

• "No Good Reason": Hendrixian intro into Blues' best so far. Not on the disc - in their forty or so song catalogue. A slow burning masterpiece of underproduced under statement.

• "Let Me Be Your Man": as in "I know you got another man but I can love you better than him".

• "You Cant Take It With You": standard twelve bar blues.

• "Blue Robot": seven minute instro - their best yet - based around Jake's brittle (not brutal) riff and a tricky time signature turn. Solos for bass/guitar/drums respectively.

• "Whiskey In The Dark": duet with Jake (!), torchlit cocktail jazz blues.

• "Find My Way Back Home": just an excuse for what is just another hohum average face melting guitar solo, influenced, it should be interjected at this juncture, by Buddy Guy and the kings: BB, Albert, Freddy.

• "Keep Holding On": midtempo pie filler with blues base.

• "Backporch Blues": anticlimactic snare based closer.

LCB's work ethic compares favorably with any working band's. They play EVERY DAMN DAY - seasonally anyway. They are ubiquitous, at least in Rehoboth, where they've held residencies for years Sundays at five at Big Chill Surf Cantina and at ten at The Pond; Tuesday afternoons at Hammerheads; and Thursdays at 7:30 at Delaware Distilling Company.

 

...with apologies to Sly Stone.

Sure, the 2nd Street Jesus Freak has been building them for over two decades in front of the Plim Plaza. But for sand sculpture freaks looking for more than historically inaccurate (Christ couldn’t possibly have looked like that, as science proved - as did Time magazine, among others, did with its cover portrait - years ago, but myopic religious fanaticism has no regard for science or progress in general) churchical/biblical depictions, the third annual OC Sandfest, beginning Monday and culminating in the awards ceremony at the grandstand downtown Thursday at noon, demands a daily walkabout. 

Here's your soundtrack as you perambulate: eight sand in your suit songs for the eighth month.

Crucially crucial: The Beach Boys have at least a dozen lyrics in their catalogue referencing sand (said Captain Obvious). So they'll be represented by

*"Brian Wilson" - Brian Wilson (2000)

Barenaked Ladies wrote this affectionate semiautobio ode that the genius man child himself rated so as to cover inna a capella style on his 2000 "Live At The Roxy" set. "If you wanna find me I'll be out in my sandbox/wondering where the hell all the love has gone/building castles in the sun/and singing Fun Fun Fun."

*"I Live For The Sun" - The Sunrays (1965)

Having been booted from The Beach Boys - his own sons and nephew-a year earlier for unwelcome production advice and general assholism, "Dad" Murry Wilson adopted The Renegades from Pacific Palisades, changing their name and producing their first single in the style of early Brian hits, including session drummer Hal Blaine. "Take your girl by the hand/walk with her in the sand" was naïve imagery his son had progressed past by Spring 1965. But I’ve covered that beachfront property a couple times this year alone.

*"Beautiful Girls" - Van Halen (1978)

The Michael Anthony-led a capella vocals of Van Halen lightened the heavy metal crunch, speaking of that other famous band of L.A. brothers, and they didn’t get any more sunlit and summery than "I got a drink in my hand I got my toes in the sand/all I need is a beautiful girl". Shine on Dave, you crazy diamond.

*"Remember Walking In The Sand" - Aerosmith (1979)

From original sixties girl group The Shangrilas in 1964, produced by Brill Building songwriter Jeff Barry and written by future New York Dolls producer Shadow Morton, author of the girls'/Dolls' "Give Her A Great Big Kiss". Aerosmith covered it based on the Dolls association on their last album before the Tyler/Perry alliance severed, Night In The Ruts. That's all Brad Whitford on guitar as Joe had split by the time this song was recorded in May 1979.

*"Castles Made Of Sand" - Jimi Hendrix (1967)

In the year of Jimi's psychedelic masterpieces, in the same late October session as "Spanish Castle Magic". Nuff, as they say, said.

*"Fins" - Jimmy Buffet (1979)

"Maybe roll in the sand with a rock and roll man/somewhere down Montserrat way." From Volcano, Bubba's transitional release after the rum and coc party that was his hedonistic seventies, documented the year before on the raucous era ending live document You Had To Be There. Once asked in an interview "which direction is your music headed, Jimmy smirked "south." Not anymore - the new direction for the mellowed and mediocre eighties would be a lateral move at best. As he admitted on a lesser track on the same superior album he was, indeed, "Stranded On A Sandbar." 

*"Enter Sandman"- Metallica (1991)

On the subject of transitional albums and lateral (at best) moves: Metallica hire super producer of the moment Bob Rock and take it to the next level and beyond with the polarizing Black Album. Irrelevance is next. Come to think of it, Aerosmith's unfortunate trajectory preceded Metallica's when they hired Bruce Fairbairn in 1987 for Permanent Vacation.

*"Mister Sandman"- Pat Ballard (1954)

My favorite part is when the girls sing the title and the baritoned title supplicant answers.

Bring me a dream in the form of some dreamy sand art this week. With a drink in my hand and my toes in the sand.

Dave and his two mates played every day for six days - for four hours straight (half hour intermezzo excepted). Not bad for an old guy. Now, drummers, as a rule, are required to possess the stamina of the energizer bunny but comparatively (to his two partners) young man James Alan Irvin just keeps going...and going... Gone, daddy, real gone. He's a show unto himself. "Flair" was not just what Jennifer Aniston's waitress was required to wear in Mike Judge's modern classic comedy "Office Space", it defines this cat's kinetic Style, with a capitol S. And he's as infectiously amimated - aesthetically and chopswise - on the last song as on the first. And they do dozens of songs in the hour and a half sets. As a drummer myself in a past life (before I moved to a condo, where Bonzo/Keith Moon/Cozy Powell/Ian Paice- that is, LOUD - influenced drummers are frowned upon and then evicted) a comparison to Ginger Baker's (he turns 77 next Friday) tribal African beat is not unwarranted, updated, er, backdated to fifties rockabilly revival - Slim Jim Phantom on expanded kit perhaps. My deal was I got bored after a half hour of practicing. This cat's still stoked with the sticks after four hours. Yeah, its sickening. I’m jealous, yes. Especially considering Irvin is almost as good on guitar and fronts his own band on the side. 

But this is the Microwave Dave show and the veteran (literally - he served in Vietnam, thank you for your service to our country, sir!) bluesman calls the tune. Again literally - there is no setlist, every performance is by the seat of his pants - overalls actually - as he calls out options to be agreed by three man committee between selections. So, like The Grateful Dead every gig is singular. So what follows is an approximation of a typical extended appearance, a composite of Monday afternoon's and Wednesday evening's marathons, to invoke an Olympic reference. 

Any explicatory prefatory band notes are reñdered redundant by my heartical from last year, titled similarly to this one and located by clicking ‘view all archives’ at the bottom of the Sonic Notes page. So we join the gig in progress.

"Key To The Highway" was a fine mellowing down easy opening jam to the week's proceedings. Originally Big Bill Broonzy, then Little Walter at Chess, brought to the white folk by Eric Clapton in 1970. James introduces his Whipper Layton from SRV's Double Trouble shuffle right away. "Hey Maryann" by Ray Charles conversely featured a dry acoustic snare and tambourine on the hihat - more Irvin signatures - and lots of twang on MicDave's solo. "Look At That Cadillac" was on The Stray Cats' third album, 1983. (Chicken) "Scratch My Back" could've well been Muddy Waters on the spoken vocals, but no it was Dave with his vibrato- guitar, not voice. Next, piano blues without piano BT Roosevelt Sykes, The Honeydripper, who inspired that less than inspired early eighties supergroup. Leslie guitar stands in for keys. Give the drummer some: that famous Sandy Nelson song from 1961, "Let There Be Drums" - indeed! The last song on the last album, 2011's Last Time That I Saw You (it’s on Spotify, and it’s pretty damn good), was a Hawaiian cum American Indian instro called "Rafferty". This is the point where the bluesman switches to a Flying V and I'm gobsmacked by the dichotomous cognitive dissonance of these plangent dulcet tones from an instrumental model made famous by Jimi Hendrix's screaming solos at the Isle Of Wight a month before he died, Diamond Head's Brian Tatler, and from there Metallica. But I shouldn’t be surprised by anything Dave does by now. Impressed, yes. "I Can’t Dance": slide showcase from the man. Bottleneck that is. (Too) brief shimmering intro - bedazzling even- before sliding into "Shake It", which ultimately left me bereft with blues balls in its abbreviation. Furry Lewis from Memphis: "Casey Jones" circa '30, storytellin’ railroad blues from the depression, dawn of a genre. Led Zeppelin could have done it in 1970 on side two of 3.

"Wouldnt Lay My Guitar Down" begins set two in doubletime with some old Dave originals, like "Wait For You Baby", a standard twelve bar blues. Another (lengthier) glistening glissando staccato intro into "She’s Too Good For Me" with a sticky jam center - tasty. Johnny Shines' "Mister Highway Man" startled me with a bolt from the blues Rush worthy mid song halftime change. "Sugar Bee" was another leslied shuffle. "When The Levee Breaks" was one of the few credits Bonzo earned. It's so iconic, it's a challenge of a tough sell without that canonic crush; as The Nukes interpret it, it's not the drummer's song but bassist Rick Godfrey's as he double duties it to a blues harp workout. A welcome reconstruction. The next instrumental with its staccato and arpeggio - dare I say - compared with Johnny Marr and "The Draize Train". The stalwart rhythm section was not unlike Andy Rouarke and Mike Joyce. This segued into a Dick Dale-esque jam that continued on a Jimi-esque joint before a trip to Hawaii. May I interject at this juncture, this was possibly the most somnificent half hour of live music I have ever been present at the creation of on Delmarva? Equally astonishing was a cover of The Yardbirds' 1966 "Over Under Sideways Down" in this year that I write my continuing series on the fiftieth anniversary of music's greatest year. "Rumble", over familiar though it is was the apposite intro to Last Time That I Saw You's rumbustious "Vagabundo", which James made seem like was written for and around his triplets. Thus beginneth an hour of stellar jamming that concluded with the five year old "All Night Boogie" and could only be rivalled locally by Delaware's own blues power trio Lower Case Blues: better technicians but too many standard covers, although originals are comparably listenable.

Surely these fine musicians were ill served for their efforts by a challenged view away from the bay and toward your scrawny scribe and bibulous blond boy for four hours, as this was my time to shine, in the sun at an afternoon show. So they mercifully only had to deal with me for an hour and a half two days later at a six o'clock start. As I rise before the buttcrack of dawn, I must flee by sundown lest I turn into a pumpkin. So here's set one.

Dave brought his guitar arsenal but imho the Strat sounds best. So rich. Compare to the cigar box and two Flying Vs, one purple, one peanutbutter tan and brown two-tone. Yes, this band is just am all-around fun time. All aboard for Fun Time, as another guy named James sang.

This time we were treated to not one but two opening jams, one a standard twelve bar, the second doubletime. "Meet Me At The Bottom" - Howlin Wolf cum "Down At The Bottom" crunch. Another blues titan, Tampa Red and "Anna Lee": slow twelve bar with reverb. The solo made me grin like a tarded cheshire cat. And I’m not easily impressed. Tanx, Dave. Los Lobos: "If I Say", doubletime shuffle. The 2011 album's "Alabama Saturday Night" demands that cigar box guitar - smaller and dissimilar to Bo's. Shouldn’t this song be exclusive to the title time? I’m just sayin’. "She's Too Good For Me" again - this is hard rock, not blues! I can dig it. "Highway 49" is not Bob Dylan's Highway but screamin’ blues. A, out of control off the chain and down the street shuffle ensued before being dialed down by some set ending Hawaiian guitar chill.

Please indulge my arrogant ("No Substitute For Arrogance" - Joe Perry, 1981) opinion piece in closing. I've a boot of a Misfits gig from 1981 where the incomparable Danzig says thanks to the opening band and follows it up with this gem: "everyone who wasn't here is an asshole". This was the best week for live music in Ocean City history. It was an agonizingly cogitated decision to miss reggae champions Zion at Fager’s Island Tuesday and White Marlin Open Wednesday, and my buds Funk Shue at the scales Thursday. I chose a band that's only here once a year. But if you didn't catch them or the two locals this week...I got nothing for you. As Glenn said...

But again, there's hope for you. Also Friday afternoon: sway with the Shue as they bring da funk at the Plim Plaza Caribbean pool bar at one. That is if you want to stay this side of the bridge. But I'll be back on Sunset. Next week Fager’s hosts Zion again, boozeday 2sday at 5:30. And local bluegrass/Dylan and The Dead fanatic Nate Clendenen's Eastern Electric is downtown at Sunset Park on the bay Thursday at, yes, sunset. Be there or be square! Cheers!

 

 

"When first I heard Rock steady/thrilled me to the bone/when I talk of rock steady/you need a riddim of your own/Rock steady easy/steady rock easy"

-Bob Marley, 1968

 

This week's continuing 1966 series continues with Jamaica's morph from ska into rock steady as Saturday is Jamaican Independence Day from British colonialism. Not that that improved living conditions in the poor impoverished third world country - indeed it would get much worse in the mid seventies, crime wise, before it would get better. 

Still, signature ska collective The Skatalites skanked out "Independent Anniversary Ska" in commemoration of the occasion and their last single. Among the vocal melody makers of nascent reggae that they backed in 62-65 were The Wailers.  A sea change was in the Caribbean air as early as December 1965 and Bob's "I'm Gon Put It On", with its slower, if not slow, still jaunty, riddim. Emphasis on the downbeat bass was a clue of what would soon come. Bob and Bunny's "Lonesome Track"  updated their ska original. Still saxy, and still featuring that silly chuggatrain vocal vamp. 

What a difference a few months made. March 1966 at Coxsone Dodd's Studio One saw Peter Tosh record the first version of his "Sinner Man", later updated as "Downpressor Man". This was the first indication of the militant rasta's risible nature: this is a serious cat we deal with! An almost mournful descendant bass riff was not characteristic of the upful ska sound. Nor were Tosh's words of foreboding:"where you gon  run to?"

Scary stuff. But still, this is sound system era JA. One could still put on ones "Dancing Shoes" as Bunny Advised in March 1966. Nice up de dance Jah Bunny. He continues the pre rasta vibration with "Let Him Go", the last time The Wailers would speak of "rudie", that unfortunate OG thug. I say good riddance.

Another couple of oft recovered Bunny selections: "Who Feels It Knows It", and of course, the lovely, lilting "Dreamland" complete the ‘66 selection.

As for non Wailers music, The Maytals' "Bam" for Leslie Kong, producer, is memorable to say the least.  The rude, not rudie, Prince Buster testified of a "Hard Man Fe Dead" - creepy. And the proto lovers rock Desmond Dekker recorded "Shanty Town" two years ahead of its famous inclusion in The Harder They Come.

As for the mighty Upsetter, Lee Perry? Hell, he was just getting started. But that’s another heartical. In the meantime - happy Independence Day. Cheers and Jah bless.

BEATING A DEAD HORSE

A couple years after another iconic hard rock/heavy metal (depending on who you ask; the late Lemmy, RIP,  would have just called it rocknroll) legend, Black Sabbath, perpetrated a fraud by reuniting with all the attendant fanfare, pomp and circumstance but without Bill Ward, GunsnRoses begins the cliched long awaited "reunion" tour that isn't. Oh - and this comes as AC/DC concludes their tour featuring none other than Axl Rose on Brian's Johnson and in his place in front of a band that doesn't include bandleader of forty-two years Malcolm Young. 

I don't buy any of this.

This will not descend (ascend?) into an Eddie Trunk versus The Rock Hall Of Fame worthy vituperative jeremiad against in name only halfassed, half cocked band reunions that tarnish once mighty acts' legacies. But even though a great band is indeed worth more than the sum of its parts, don't expect new music from a once great newly reunited band to be worth anything if its parts haven't produced anything worth hearing on their own. I'm looking at you, Stone Roses. So even if Axl, who either blackmailed or held hostage his bandmates into signing over to him the GnR name (brand by this time), deigned to bring back Slash/Duff/Izzy/Steven (all still alive and playing, astonishingly) for a new album, consider first Slash and Duff's - and second GnR drummer Matt Sorum's - empty chambered Velvet Revolver. And who can forget the forgettable but decade in the making monstrosity that was Chinese Democracy.

So it may be illuminating as to the original four songwriters' merits to compare and contrast those credits back when, to paraphrase George Harrison, they was fab.

*MK 1: 1984-86

Please allow me to disabuse all of the notion that Appetite For Destruction was the debut album. Full length, yes - but it was preceded by the limited edition EP (I still have the original cassette, worth I don’t know how much) - "Live" Like A Suicide, first word parenthetical because it was recorded in a studio in October 1986, along with "Welcome To The Jungle" as it would appear on the long player. Album sessions proper proceeded. So here's the early arsenal:

IZZY STRADLIN: "Shadow Of Your Love", "Reckless Life", "I Think About You", "Anything Goes"

SLASH: "Back Off Bitch", "Welcome To The Jungle", "Paradise City", "You're Crazy"

AXL: "My Michelle",  "You’re One In A Million"

DUFF: "It's So Easy"

SLASH/IZZY: "Don't Cry", "They're Out To Get Me", "Mr Brownstone", "Sweet Child Of Mine"

DUFF/IZZY: "Patience"

Advantage? Ladies and gentlemen we have a draw.

*MK 2: 1990-91/Use Your Illusion

Ah, the perils of rocknroll decadence. The old trope "it would have made a great single album" arguably doesn’t apply to this two and a half hour double plus as there are arguably two or three sacrificial filler tracks at best. Of course some titles dated back to the pre GnR Hollywood Rose/LA Guns era of 1984.

BAND: "Bad Apples" (filler?), "Dust And Bones" (hell no!)

SLASH/DUFF: "Civil War", "Don’t Damn Me" (filler), "Get In The Ring"

AXL/SLASH: "November Rain", "Estranged"- Axl at his epic best, with devastating guitar melodies by Slash

SLASH/IZZY: "Perfect Crime" (filler?)

IZZY: "Right Next Door To Hell", "You Ain't The First", "Doubletalkin Jive", "You Could Be Mine", "Fourteen Years", "Pretty Tied Up"

AXL: "Dead Horse", "The Garden", "Yesterday", "Shotgun Blues" (filler?), "Breakdown"

SLASH: "Garden Of Eden", "Bad Obsession", "Coma", "Locomotive"

DUFF: "So Fine"

Advantage: Izzy. And not just for prolificness: of his six, only "You Could Be Mine" is not among Illusion's highlights. Duff again has only one contribution, but this time it's a quiet gem, especially as sequenced between the somnificent, unstoppable "Locomotive" and breathtaking, modular "Estranged".

Pay no attention to Rose's latest ego show. You're tired of most of Appetite and have been since it was overplayed in the late eighties. Go back and rediscover the penultimate of the four original GnR records (the final The Spaghetti Incident was a fun collection of covers recorded mostly on the endless tour of mid 1991- late 1992).

 

Flash forward fifteen years to the birth of similarly ahead of his time (percussion wise; I've been attempting - and failing - to not just duplicate, but comprehend his astonishing fills... hell, riddims!) Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart. Brilliant from birth, obviously, a childhood weaned on Rand begat lyrics like "keep on looking forward no use looking round...live for yourself, there's noone else quite worth living for/begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more/we marvel after those who sought the wonders of the world". The politics of individuality, so relevant in this politically charged era. 

Peart goes on to credit Rand live and direct in the (sonic) notes to 2112 thusly:  "the genius of Ayn Rand".  2112, song and concept, was based on Anthem. Which is based on Aristotle: "the paramount goodness is happiness". And George Orwell's 1984, which as an anti big government, pro Libertarian tome, requires no intro. 

So. That brings us to Anthemic. Van Halen - no perveyers per se of anthems, but that is open for debate - classified their music as "Big Rock". 

Anthems are big rock - as in, not rock and roll. It's a stomp your hands, clap your feet sticky sweet piece of pink musical cotton candy. Slade probably invented it, despite what Quiet Riot, or my beloved Twisted Sister, would have you believe. T Rex? "Hot Love" was Marc Bolan's first foray into post trippydippy acoustic Dylan imitating duocentric simplicity. Early 71, pre Electric Warrior. 

Kiss is still encapsulated (inKissurated? Or did Gene copyright that) by "Rock And Roll All Night". Dial A Cliche, of course, but I defy anyone to cite a more apt example of an anthem. BTW/FYI, Paul wrote the chorus, Gene the verses. Brilliant!

AC/DC. Early Cheap Trick. Riot (not Quiet). Hell - year zero - Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Clash, Gen X.

Dorothy? 

As they say, don’t fake the funk. Okay. Don’t fake the rock, I say. 

Impetus! 

This band's impetus is dubious at best and I'm not afraid to say it, they are dangerously close to a Monkees/boy band factory fabrication.  The roots in a Hollywood studio is suspect at best. As is the writing credits to everyone not in the band. 

That said, I haven't headbanged that much since my heavymetal centric longhaired eighties daze. So I don't know if Dorothy is tongue in cheek - but if they are they are the best at what they do: the toppermost of the poppermost as it, er, were -  Monkees/boy bands be damned. 

The bottom line? They kick ass. Which. In these troubled times. 

We can use. 

As Ace says, keep Rocking until further notice.