The Torch Has Been Passed to a New Generation of Americans

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I though I'd share this lovely moment from a story in the January issue of MOJO I just chanced upon.

November 2007: The Foo Fighters are in Canada, supporting Bob Dylan on the latter's Modern Times tour. [Head Foo and former Nirvana drummer] Dave Grohl is in his dressing room when he gets a message that Mr. Dylan wants to see him.

"So I walk out," says Grohl, "and he's standing like a silhouette in a dark corner -- black leather boots, black leather pants, black leather jacket. He said 'What's that song you got, the one that says "The only thing I ever ask of you is you gotta promise not to stop when I say when"?' I said, oh yeah, 'Everlong.' He said, 'Man, that's a great song, I should learn that song."

Grohl laughs loudly. "So I don't give a fuck what anybody else thinks. Bob Dylan likes one of my songs. That right there is enough for me."

Well, obviously, Bob's right -- "Everlong" is a great song. But I gotta say, that story is just so cool on so many levels...

Great Lost Singles of the 60s (Special Rich Little Edition)

Okay, this has basically nothing to do with the theme of this here blog, but I've always liked it so I thought I'd share.

So, from the summer of '67, please enjoy Spyder Turner's version of Ben E. King's oft-covered "Stand By Me." Complete with vocal impressions of Sam Cooke, Eddie Kendricks, James Brown and several other greats of soul and r&b.;




This is the uncut album version, BTW; the single is actually two minutes shorter.

Incidentally, despite the fact that it was a Top 10 hit back in the day, the single itself has more or less disappeared down the memory hole. Entertaining as the thing is, I suspect most purists consider it essentially a novelty record, thus explaining the fact that Spyder Turner's name seldom comes up when people discuss classic soul. I think it's great, myself, but then again, in Gong Show creator Chuck Barris' immortal phrase -- what do I know, I like cold toilet seats.

Weekend Listomania (Special Beyond Zager and Evans! Audio/Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental hand/groin coordination consultant Fah Lo Suee and I will be off to lovely Indianapolis, Indiana and the palatial home of Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Theoretically), where we will be beating the little SOB within an inch of his life. No particular reason, actually, just on general principles.

In any event, further posting by moi will have to be sporadic for a day or two.

In the meantime, then, here's a hopefully fun little project for us all:

Post-Beatles Pop/Rock Song -- Hit or Non-Hit -- That Really
Should Be a Hit in a New Cover Version By Somebody Smart!!!

No arbitrary rules here whatsoever, you're welcome very much. And yeah, I'm pretty sure I've done something similar in the dim dark past, but I came up with a couple of interesting new choices so what the hell.

And my totally top of my head Top Six is:

6. Brenda Holloway -- Every Little Bit Hurts




From 1964, a serious contender for the most gorgeous R&B; ballad of all time. It's actually been covered fairly often -- the Small Faces with Steve Marriott did a killer version -- but I guarantee even a decent remake by a current diva would be Top Ten so fast your head would spin. Incidentally, this was written and produced by Ed Cobb, who also wrote and produced -- hold onto your hats -- The Standells' proto-punk classic "Dirty Water." Obviously, this is a gentleman whose career deserves further research and possible reassessment.

5. Knots and Crosses -- Creatures of Habit




A local indie-rock hit in Boston in the early 90s. and one of the most absolutely heartbreaking songs ever written. And a genre straddler too, I think.

4. Gerry Devine and the Hi-Beams -- Excuses, Excuses




THE great tear-jerking neurotic Jewish country song (admittedly, a narrow genre) via my pal Andy "Folk Rock" Pasternak. Okay, I'm playing bass and keys on it, but I swear to god this could be a smash for somebody.

3. Warren Zevon -- Tenderness on the Block




An oddly overlooked track from Zevon's biggest hit album. In fact, it's one of the most overtly Brill Building pop things he recorded, sort of in the same ballpark as its producer Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby," which did pretty well, as I recall.

2. The Tokens -- He's in Town



An absolutely glorious near epic slice of 60s urban romanticism, and hands down my favorite sort of obscure Carole King-penned song. This was a minor hit in '65, but I guarantee if you give it the the full Springsteen/Spector treatment today it would be a license to print money.

And the numero uno pop or rock ditty that should go to the toppermost of the poppermost in a brand new version undoubtedly, please don't argue this because I'm sensitive, is ---

1. The Cars -- My Best Friend's Girl



I've said this a hundred times, and I'll say it again -- a country band with a little imagination could emphasize the obvious Buddy Holly-esque roots of this and have a hit in the proverbial New York minute.

Alrighty, then -- what would YOUR choices be?

[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best or worst films inspired by somebody's real life -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, if you could see your way to leaving a comment over there, it would cement an era of good feeling I'm having with management and maybe get me a much deserved raise. Thanks!]

Oh, Just What the World Needs -- An Early Clue to the New Direction That Looks Like Kiddie Porn!

From 1998 and the Mean Streets of The Mickey Mouse Club -- please enjoy(?) the irrepressible Britney Spears and her frankly in questionable taste on a zillion levels hit "...Baby One More Time."



You probably should take a shower afterwards, but in any case a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded the first reader who gleans the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

Songs the Beatles Covered (An Occasional Series)

From 1962, please enjoy suave r&b;/pop balladeer Lenny Welch and the original hit version of a movie song that loomed large in the Beatles' legend -- "A Taste of Honey."




The Beatles version (which as you can hear cops all sorts of stuff from the Welch arrangement) is on the 1963 Please Please Me album, of course, and if truth be told I hadn't known that it was a rather faithful cover of a specific earlier record. In fact, I'd never even heard of Welch's until a few days ago; as far as I knew, he was a one hit -- "Since I Fell For You" -- wonder. Live and learn.

Great Lost Singles of the 70s: The Road to Ruin

From the very first year of that lamentable decade, and the solo album that sold five or six copies in his hometown alone, please enjoy the amazing Ron Nagle and his kick-ass ironic (or is it?) anti-drug anthem "Marijuana Hell."




Although not, alas, a household word, Nagle's nonetheless a really interesting guy. A member of terrific first generation San Francisco band The Mystery Trend (click here and scroll down to hear one of their songs) he went on to a serious career as a producer and songwriter (for John Hiatt and Barbra Streisand, among a horde of others) while at the same time pursuing a totally separate life as one of the most important abstract expressionist ceramic sculptors in the country.

This little piece of his is actually in the Smithsonian.



In any case, "Marijuana Hell" is just a great rock-and-roll record, and the rest of Bad Rice, which I had on vinyl back in the day (thanks to being on the Warner Bros. mailing list when I was rock crit for my college paper), is almost as good; it's an album that clearly deserves its cult reputation. BTW, the great Jack Nitzche produced, and Ry Cooder is all over it on slide guitar (although I'm not sure if that's him on "Marijuana Hell" itself). Rather amazingly, it's never been rereleased on CD, but you can download a very clean rip from the LP over at redtelephone66, perhaps the most amazing and indispensable site of its kind on the web. If you do, make sure you say hello to proprietor Leonard Los, and tell him PowerPop sent ya!

Who Dunnit? (An Occasional Series): The Jersey Shore

Okay -- IMHO, this is one of the best (and least pretentious) straight ahead unhyphenated rock songs of the last fifteen years. Just two guitars, bass and drums, and the best damn singer you ever heard.




The band was a short lived supergroup of sorts (with the lead singer unbilled), and if you had been really lucky you might have stumbled into a dive bar around Asbury Park in the late 90s and heard them playing.

No Googling -- but a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who correctly identifies the vocalist without having previously heard the story.

As Noel Coward Said, There's Something Extraordinarily Potent About Cheap Music

Here's a hopefully amusing postscript to my Weekend Listomania rant about "that clown from Spandau Ballet."

Edward Norton doing to "True" what should always have been done to "True."



Seriously, Spandau Ballet always used to strike me as being a frat party band from 1963 that was too dumb to know it. Those fricking suits...that utterly unironic lounge lizard crooning.

In any case, I haven't seen Modern Family, but if the rest of it is this funny, I probably need to.

Weekend Listomania (Special Golden Throats Audio/Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental nocturnal emissions specialist Fah Lo Suee and I will be taking an exploratory meeting with George Swine, CEO of EnormoCorp Industries [R-Manchuria]. Something to do with a forthcoming senatorial campaign I may be contemplating now that the Supreme Court has decided that money talks (I would be the bullshit walks part, obviously).

In any event, further posting by moi will have to be sporadic for a day or two.

In the meantime, then, here's a hopefully fun little project for us all:

Post-Elvis Pop/Rock Singer or Group Who Most Influenced (For Good or Ill) the Art of Pop/Rock Singing!!!

No arbitrary rules here whatsoever. (I should also add that my song selections do not necessarily represent the singer or group's most influential work. They're just things I like, or that perhaps immediately sprung to mind.)

And my totally top of my head Top Seven is:

7. Bob Dylan -- Percy's Song




Believe it or not, there are still people who think Dylan couldn't sing. Heh heh. I usually play the studio version of this for those folks, but for some reason I can't find it on my computer at the moment, so this very nice live version will have to suffice. In any case, Dylan's phrasing and charmingly nasal tones have influenced countless singer/songwriters over the years, few of whom would have likely been granted artistic license without his example.

6. The Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger)-- Good Times, Bad Times




Snotty white boy sings the blues and quite convincingly -- this despite the fact that he doesn't really sound all that black, although everybody thinks he does at the time. An amazing accomplishment, when you think of it, and the template for decades of snotty white boy vocalists who probably never even heard of Muddy Waters.

5. Vanilla Fudge -- You Keep Me Hanging On



If truth be told, it wasn't the faux classical instrumental overkill that made The Fudge influential (that stuff is as dead as the papal penis, actually). No, it was their vocal approach. The notion, in rock, that you can simulate soul with pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling begins here, and legions of bad bands and singers -- mostly from Long Island, for some reason -- have made that appalling innovation part of their gestalt.

4. David Bowie -- Young Americans



The aforementioned pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling overlaid with an affectless Anthony Newley impression. Influential? Essentially, every unbearable singer out of England between 1971 and the late 80s -- Bryan Ferry, Martin Fry of ABC, The Thompson Twins, that clown in Spandau Ballet -- copped their vocal shtick from Bowie. Hey, thanks for nothing, Dave.

3. Patti LaBelle -- Over the Rainbow



Over-souling: A vocal style in which the singer throws throws some poor song onto the floor, writhing in pain and gasping for breath, and then wrestles it into submission until it simply expires. The late great Jerry Wexler, of Atlantic Records, named it, but it was Patti LaBelle who brought it to the mainstream, and just about every successful r&b; singer, male or female, emulates it at the moment. I should add, of course, that Patti's 1985 "Over the Rainbow," as heard above, would be considered a laughable model of subtlety and restraint by most contemporary artistes of the American Idol school.

2. The Doobie Brothers (Michael McDonald) -- What a Fool Believes



Okay, there's no real name for what McDonald does, but it's a style in which the singer's beard does all the work, and for a period in the 80s, it was the dominant male vocal sound of pop music worldwide.

And the numero uno most influential post-Elvis vocalist actually turns out to be...

1. Cher -- Believe



Well, Cher via the dreaded AutoTune. I'm guessing the list of irredeemably crappy hit records featuring robo-vocals in the wake of 100-percent-recycled-plastic-life-form Cher's "Believe" now numbers in the thousands. In any case, the single most insufferable pop music trend of the last decade plus.

Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?

[Shameless blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best or worst movie adaptation of a stage play, drama or musical -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, if you could find it in your heart to go over there and post a comment, I might be able to con management into upping my already wildly overgenerous freelance fee. Thanks!!!]

An Another Fekakteh! Early Clue to the New Direction: Special Utter of Lack of Personality Edition

From 1984, please enjoy -- if that is the word, which I don't think it really is -- World's Most Generic Rock Singer Bryan Adams and his hit (in which he waxes nostalgic for a year he was way too young in real life to have experienced in the manner the song suggests) "Summer of '69."



I think I've told this joke before, but a few years later, when I heard that Adams was writing the theme song for Kevin Costner's Robin Hood movie, I suggested that he might want to title it "Summer of 1269."

In any case, as always, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded the first reader sufficiently courageous of ears to glean the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

And given that this is really one of the most unfairly opaque clues I've ever posted, I probably need to add early on that the World's Most Generic Rock Singer tag is the salient thing here.