A historical factoid, a rock and roll moment and usually a song all combine (if not collide) with my individual perspective and opinion at least once a day, sometimes more.
Greg Lake turns 63 today. He's probably best known as the "L" from ELP (That's Emerson, Lake and Palmer, as every school boy knows).
I sometimes wonder what ELP songs they'd actually play on so-called classic rock stations if it were not for those Lake wrote ("Lucky Man," "Still... You Turn me On," "In the Beginning" and—as soon as it's five minutes past Halloween—"I Believe in Father Christmas"). I think of his vocals as deep, sonorous and unwavering. His Wikepedia entry calls his vocals "soulful." That's like saying a cup of coffee has a "rich" flavor. Sounds good, but what exactly does it mean? If it means "conveying strong emotion," which seems logical enough, I think Lake's voice, while entirely up to the task of (and fitting for) most of the songs I've heard him sing, is about as "soulful" as a piece of unpainted lumber.
But on one of the best songs from King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, Lake's voice, admittedly with the help of mucho distortion, takes on a surpisingly different shade becoming at once squelched yet powerfully angry. If you're a progressive rock fan and find yourself in an argument with someone who thinks all prog rock sounds pussified, this would be the tune to whip out of your back pocket to end that debate.
In addition to singing and playing bass for King Crimson's first LP, Robert Fripp convinced Lake to sing on the second LP, In the Wake of Poseidon, even though he was well underway with forming ELP by then. Many happy returns to Mr. Lake. All is forgiven for that Asia crap.
Hard to say why some Brit bands that really started to break in the early to mid-sixties—such as the Stones, the Who and to a lesser extent (at least in terms of widespread popularity and overall recognition) the Yardbirds and the Kinks—captured the imagination of so many of us in the States while some of their contemporaries aren't even given also-ran status on today's classic rock stations.*
But such is the fate of the Pretty Things (their earliest incarnation as Little Boy Blue and Blue Boys actually included Mick and Keith until Brian Jones recruited them away for his project). Vocalist Phil May joined forces with Dick Taylor (who earlier had played bass with the nascent Stones) and thus was born the Pretty Things. No cuddly, clean-cut Liverpudlians they, with Taylor now on lead guitar and May singing and blowing harmonica, they were a bluesy, rudely noisy, deliberately provocative looking, acting and sounding quintent of London boys (early press on the band included May's boast of having longer hair of any other Brit rocker of the day). They never had a single that did anything in the USA, although two of their first three were in the UK top twenty. Most people are far more familiar with those ("Rosalyn" and "Don't Bring Me Down") from David Bowie's tribute to music from this era on his '73 LP Pin Ups.
If you're not familiar with the Pretty Things, they're well worth a listen. Their eponymous debut features a dozen competent if simple songs, mostly covers of blues standards with a few of the groups earliest attempts at composition (the most fully formed example probably being Dick Taylor's "Honey I Need"). Their early sound really gels on their second LP, Get the Picture, released in '65. Ten of the 18 tracks on the expanded and remastered CD version are original compositions and all of the tracks easily stand with the early Stones' or Who's material as a no fop zone of straight from the hip rock and roll with treatments of R&B covers like "Come See Me"
or the alternately sly and manic "Can't Stand the Pain" written by May, Taylor and session drummer Bobby Graham.
Following the transitional and ill-fated '67 LP Emotions and roster changes that left only May and Taylor from the original line-up, the Pretty Things released one of the late sixties forgotten—and many have said "first"—concept albums, S.F. Sorrow.
Evolving into a psychedelic style that often sounds like Ray Davies meets early Pink Floyd, the album is based on a short story May had written and follows the narrative arc of one Sebastian F. Sorrow from his arrival in the world with the song "S.F. Sorrow is Born"
all the way to "Old Man Going" (performed here by the 21st century version of the band, featuring May and Taylor and with a David Gilmour cameo), the song showing Sorrow near death's door where he's empty, angry and—
in the album's coda—"Loneliest Person"—bleakly disappointed and alone.
After S.F. Sorrow, the Pretty Things released Parachute in 1970. Although the tracks run an interesting range of songwriting from the wispy "The Letter"
to the muscular "Rain," founding member Dick Taylor had left and the absence of his expressive guitar playing is sorely missed.
The Pretty Things soldiered on through the last three decades of the 20th century in different variations revolving around May and, later, Taylor, too. They gig to this day and still go largely ignored here in the states. Phil May celebrates his birthday today, turning 66 years old.
*Please note that I've omitted the Beatles from this list because even though the Stones are often characterized as the yang to their yin, I think it seems fair, if only for reasons of sheer popularity and commercial success, to put the fab four in a class of their own.
Honestly, I don't know much about David Sylvian or the first group he sang for: Japan (who apparently made the unlikely evolution from slummy punk glam to experimental art rock in a five studio album arc). I know I used to own the CD The First Day, the first of Sylvian's collaborations with Robert Fripp (a guitar genius so seriously devoted to his craft that he often sits on a stool when he plays, yo!). The whole LP is filled with dreamy, sublime, sneakily funky, ambient tinged songs that always succeed in holding up as solid songs despite all the adjectives they attract. Referring to the juxtaposition of Fripp's guitar work and Sylvian's voice, Trouser Press aptly describes this LP as an "engrossing, invigorating and mind-expanding adventure of sharp teeth and smooth skin." Sylvian celebrates his 52nd birthday today. Here's a sweet live version of one of the most memorable songs from The First Day:
Happy Birthday to Jeremiah Griffin Harrison who today turns 61. He was keyboard player for the Modern Lovers on their classic debut recorded in '72 but not released until '76. By that year, Harrison had joined The Talking Heads (the only member of the group not a Rhode Island's School of Design alumn) who released eight studio and two live LPs. You might remember the song Rev It Up, from Harrison's second solo LP, Casual Gods, which received a fair amount of radio and club airplay circa '88. His first solo venture was more under the radar. Along with Bootsy Collins on bass and producer Daniel Lazerus, Harrison released Five Minutes (Bonzo Goes to Washington) in '84, the song featured one of the earliest examples of the now common hip-hop technique of lacing sampled loops of a person's speech (in this case Ronald Reagan's joke accidentally caught on an open mike about his legislation to "outlaw Russia forever" and to "begin bombing in five minutes") throughout a dance mix.
Happy Birthday Brian James! He was born Brian Robertson 55 years ago today. On this day in '77, as he turned 22, Stiff Records released Damned Damned Damned, the debut album by the seminal British punk band James was playing guitar for. The same label, helped by house producer Nick Lowe, had previously released the single New Rose (also on the album). While the groundbreaking Brit-punk bands of the day tended to engage in chaotic political/social commentary (The Sex Pistol's God Save the Queen or Anarchy in the UK) or intense, high energy, rocking political/social commentary (The Clash's White Riot or I'm so Bored with the USA), the Damned eschewed political/social commentary entirely to concentrate solely on intense, high energy, rocking chaos. And we're all the better for it. Let it be known throughout the land that amidst all of the Brit-punk fever and furor circa '77, the Damned were the first of the first wave of Brit-punk bands to release a full length LP. This video is of slightly low quality ... a bit dodgy as it were (which seems highly appropriate) and it cuts off before I'd like it to, but you own this record don't you?
Al Kooper formed the group Blood, Sweat and Tears, but left after their first album was released in '68. None of the tracks from this elegantly arranged and highly worthwhile album charted, but Kooper had already tasted Top 40 success as guitarist for the Royal Teens (and only 14 years old at the time), co-writer of Gary Lewis and the Playboy's This Diamond Ring and the man who laid down the spooky, unforgettable organ licks on Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone (among many other Dylan songs from Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde). That's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his accomplishments (Super Session, for example, you know you love that album) and today he celebrates his 66th birthday. He wrote half the tunes on BS&T's debut, Child Is Father to the Man, including this one. Happy Birthday, Al.
Thus spake the Replacements' Paul Westerberg in their sixth and first Stinsonless LP, Pleased to Meet Me, in the song Alex Chilton which Westerberg wrote in an attempt to, as he has said in an interview last year, "hip the outside world on who this guy might be."
This guy was the man who managed to sound like two completely different singers between his time with The Box Tops (The Letter, Cry like a Baby, Soul Deep) and as part of the far more influential than commercially successful seminal power pop band Big Star. After Big Star imploded he hung out in NYC with a short lived band, produced some tracks for the Cramps in Memphis, worked for a short bit as a tree trimmer and dishwasher in Louisiana and made some of the most deliciously weird solo efforts you'll ever hear (just try to get a hold of the Like Flies on Sherbert LP where he does covers ranging from The Carter Family to K.C. and the Sunshine Band's Boogie Shoes or the LP 1970 in which he does a supremely drunken and destructive cover of the Archies' Sugar, Sugar). To use a word worn out by critics, Chilton's work as a whole is "uneven" (yet always interesting) but when you soar to the heights of the Big Star songs Chilton wrote (i.e. most of them including the one below) many other moments of self indulgence can be taken in stride. Happy Birthday to Mr. Chilton who today turns 59 years old.
Happy Birthday to Scotty Moore who turns 78 years old today. Those of us younger than Mr. Moore may take many key elements of the traditional rock and roll band blueprint for granted. For example, the idea of a lead singer playing rhythm guitar or not playing guitar at all while a "lead guitarist" did all the heavy six string lifting. But Scotty Moore, as the guitarist for Elvis Presley from '54 until the time E. started to make shitty movies (notably, Moore's handling of the guitar was also a key ingredient to Elvis's legendary '68 Comeback Special, too), was the first to define the role of lead guitarist and inspire the likes of others, Keith Richards for example, to adopt that role in their own style. Here Mr. Moore performs lead with some other guitar guy (can't remember his name) who is playing rhythm and singing.
Worth trying to find (in theory) is Moore's LP, All the King's Men. I offer this as a theoretical because I'm still looking for the LP myself, but if the rest of the album is even half as good as the Deuce and a Quarter track from it (which I do have) where Keith Richard and Levon Helm help out, it's gotta be sweet.
Today is the first birthday (his 70th), but certainly not the last, that legendary record producer Phil Spector will spend in prison. He is currently serving a 19 year to life sentence for second degree murder. I won't attempt to condense his career (which left an indelible mark on the sound of popular American music) into a thumbnail sketch in this post. But I will share this moment below that marks the beginning of a brilliant career that had fizzled and has now presumably ended in such a ugly and tragic way. That's the young Mr. Spector playing guitar and singing back up on a song he wrote and produced in 1958. The song was inspired by the epitaph on his father's grave. Benjamin Spector had taken his own life about a decade before this song was released. The song went to #1 on the Billboard Charts and has been covered, in some cases with slightly rearranged lyrics, by many.
Many a rock and roll artist is known by a single name only: Bono, Sting, Ozzie, etc. And then there's the one and only Lemmy. Born on this day 64 years ago as Ian Fraser Kilmister, he would grow up to play guitar in several fairly under the radar bands and roadie for The Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Nice until he joined the vastly under appreciated British band Hawkwind on bass in '71. A drug bust in '75 led to him being fired from that band and he formed his own band originally called Bastard. His manager informed him that this name might be a bit of impediment to commercial success and Lemmy changed the name of the band to the last song he had written for Hawkwind: Motörhead, which is a great song and although not entirely seasonal, does at least mention "Christmas" in the lyrics.
Since we are smack dab in the midst of Yule season, I thought I'd also add something quite seasonal.Merry Christmas Eve to all and Happy Birthday to Lemmy!
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