The Outsiders , Hell , yeah. They had a Garage band in the TV show (Fox , early 90's , me and 3 or 4 people in Utah and Rhode Island watched it.) based on the movie and book. They kicked the Soc's ass , again . This time , by playing "Devil With a Blue Dress On". Stay Gold. We're doin' this one for Johny.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Feb. 17, 2012
Two years after their last live album, the mighty Plimsouls are back with an even more powerful concert CD. Not bad for a group that broke up almost 30 years ago.
Even if you didn’t know anything about The Plimsouls, you would have a hard time believing that Beach Town Confidential was recorded just a couple of months ago, not in 1983.
Now what should you know about The Plimsouls?
They rose from the fires of the frenzied L.A. punk/New Wave scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Led by Peter Case, who had been in a punk group called The Nerves, and fortified by Eddie Muñoz on guitar, Dave Pahoa on bass, and drummer Louie Ramirez, they forged a sound that featured the guitar frenzy of their punk peers but sweetened it with irresistible melodic hooks. You could hear echoes of rock’s founding fathers, mid-’60s folk-rock, and sweaty soul.
The Plimsouls only released a couple of studio albums in their heyday, including their major-label debut, the over-produced but — hey, it was the ’80s — still worthy Everywhere at Once, which yielded the closest thing the band had to a hit, “A Million Miles Away.” They broke up in the mid-’80s when Case decided to pursue a solo career as an acoustic troubadour, which was a return to his roots as a street busker in San Francisco’s North Beach area.
But about every 10 years or so he reunites with the other Plimsouls for a few shows, most recently in 2006. (In 1996, they actually did a fresh studio album, the undeservedly out-of-print Kool Trash, which every true Plimsouls fan should demand to have re-released.)
There are a lot of similarities between Beach Town Confidential and Live! Beg, Borrow, Steal, the Plimsouls’ live record recorded in 1981 and released in 2010. Many of the songs are the same — “Zero Hour,” “Shaky City,” and, of course, “A Million Miles Away.”
Both have covers of Thee Midnighters’ “Jump, Jive, and Harmonize,” and both have desperately horny versions of their own classic “Now” (“Right now! I need your love tonight! I can’t wait any longer!”). Both contain a Bo Diddley song (a splendid “You Can’t Judge a Book” on Beach Town). And both have guest appearances by The Fleshtones’ Keith Streng. (On Beg, Borrow, Steal, all the Fleshtones joined The Plimsouls for a couple of songs. On Beach Town, Streng plays guitar on “Jumpin’ in the Night,” a Flamin’ Groovies tune.)
But the more recent album includes a lot of songs we haven’t heard before on live Plimsoul albums.
“Jumpin’” is just one of the rarities here. Another is “Who’s Gonna Break the Ice,” which — like the best Plimsouls songs — is as catchy as it is urgent. There is even a little-known Everly Brothers song called “The Price of Love.” Like the Everly Brothers, the Plimsouls play this as a bluesy stomp with prominent harmonica. Case pals Andrew and David Williams sing lead on this one, their brotherly harmonies evoking the Everlys.
Beach Town Confidential has the only live recordings of Plimsouls tunes “Magic Touch” and “Oldest Story in The World” — hearty rockers both — and “Hobo,” an instrumental Case dedicates to “all the surfers in the house.” (The show was at Huntington Beach. There probably were quite a few there.)
I think my favorite Plimsouls surprise here, though, is a punchy version of a Moby Grape song, “Fall on You.” All I can say is “Grape job!”
Case is about to embark on a tour with former Nerves bandmate Paul Collins. (They’re playing in Arizona and Texas, but seem to have forgotten about that state in the middle.) I’m hoping the response to Beach Town Confidential will be so great that he will do another Plimsouls reunion — and record a new Plimsouls album — in the near future.
Also recommended:
* Everybody’s Rocking by The 99ers. This record has been out since early last year, but I just recently sunk my teeth into it. It’s the third record by a group that bills itself as a Minnesota punk/rockabilly/surf band.
Minnesota? Why not? One of their songs here, “Minnesota Sun,” is a rewrite of The Rivieras’ “California Sun.” (Come to think of it, last year, the title song of the collaboration between Mama Rosin and Hipbone Slim was “Louisiana Sun,” a Cajunized “California Sun.”
Since this album was released, the term “99ers” has taken on new political connotations. But don’t worry. You won’t hear any weird “human mike” chants or political polemics here. The band named itself after its favorite ice-cream dessert.
This album, on the Spinout label owned by Los Straitjackets’ Eddie Angel, is nothing but good, basic, happy rock ’n’ roll, grounded in Chuck Berry, colored by The Beach Boys, and pumped up by The Ramones. (One song here is called “Ramones Forever.” It’s a cover of a Shonen Knife tune immortalizing our beloved cretins from Queens.)
My two favorites are sung by Molly Holley — the frantic “Six Steps to Your Heart” (I can almost imagine The Plimsouls playing this one) and a sultry cover of a Brenda Lee rockabilly-tinged “Sweet Nothin’s.”
There’s a song here called “Albuquerque Annie,” about a woman who sings in a rockabilly band. It mentions Central Boulevard as well as the Tramway. But it’s not the first time The 99ers set a song in the Land of Enchantment. Their 2008 album, Stand Up and Surf, has a song called (I’m not kidding) “The Surf at Santa Fe.” (“So to my compadres in Minneapolis/Get yourself to N.M. if you’re in need of bliss,” British Steve Shannon sings.) According to one source close to the band, Shannon is a frequent visitor to this state.
That assessment came from the fact that his latest album at the time, That’s All I Need, didn’t seem to have the fire of his previous efforts. But I think I probably spoke too soon.
Williams is releasing an impressive new album this week, Hoods and Shades. And that’s only a few weeks after a jumping little five-song EP, Nightclub, with a Chicago band called The Goldstars, came out.
Although he’s been in the music biz since the 1950s and wrote an actual hit — “Shake a Tail Feather,” covered by Ike & Tina Turner and James & Bobby Purify — Williams has never been a household name.
His is one of those terrible R & B years-in-the-darkness stories — obscurity, drugs, homelessness — that’s way too common. (Rest in peace, Howard Tate.) In the late ’90s Williams began his current incarnation as an underground indie rock elder statesman. He recorded for some of my favorite labels including Bloodshot, Norton, In the Red, and Pravda.
Williams’ albums are always fun, and Hoods and Shades is no exception. What’s exceptional about it is that it’s interesting on so many levels. The first thing you notice about Hoods is its cover, which resembles some blaxploitation movie poster. Williams is there, with his arms around a couple of gun-wielding babes against a backdrop of fiery explosions, skyscrapers, a police helicopter, hooded thugs, and some mean-looking guy in a fedora playing what appears to be a combination guitar/machine gun.
I’m not certain, but I’m thinking the latter is supposed to be guitarslinger Dennis Coffey. Coffey is best known as one of the Funk Brothers, that Detroit collective of studio cats who gave us the Motown sound.
He played on such Motown hits as “Runaway Child,” “Just My Imagination,” and “Cloud Nine” for The Temptations; “War” by Edwin Starr; and “What Does It Take to Win Your Love” by Junior Walker & The All Stars. He also played on non-Motown records including Funkadelic’s first album, Freda Payne’s song “Band of Gold,” and — best of all, in my book — “Who’s Making Love” by Johnny Taylor. In other words, he is one serious picker.
Indeed, it’s Coffey who most contributes to the unique sound of Hoods and Shades. But the rest of the musicians here aren’t exactly lightweights. Among them are Detroit producer and former Dirtbombs member Jim Diamond playing electric bass and Don Was on upright bass.
According to the publicity material for this project, Williams has referred to Hoods and Shades as his “folk album.” That’s probably because Coffey’s acoustic guitar-playing is prominent on many cuts. But the term folk is pretty misleading. This isn’t “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”
Coffey and crew create a swampy sound to complement Williams’ vocals. This musical backdrop is a perfect fit for this collection of songs.
The opening song, an upbeat blues number called “Dirt,” is a new take on the basic dust-to-dust theme of Memphis Slim’s “Mother Earth.” Williams, taking the voice of a streetwise sage, chuckles before he starts singing, “It don’t matter how high we go/It don’t matter if it’s high or low/It don’t matter if we help or hurt/When it all boils down, we just dirt.”
There are a couple of lengthy story songs here that I suspect will be the main things most fans will remember about this album. There’s the atmospheric title song, in which Williams relates a number of terrifying descriptions of violence and poverty in a landscape haunted by young thugs hiding hardened faces behind hoods and sunglasses. The background music is a low-key acoustic blues shuffle with Coffey’s electric guitar providing a distant, desperate sounding response.
Then there’s a funny shaggy “Dogg” story called “Swamp Dogg’s Hot Spot.” Yes, the hero of this tale is none other than soul singer Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg. Somehow I don’t think this story is really true. I’m not sure whether Swamp and Williams really met in “the county jail” like the song says, but I’m pretty sure that Andre Williams never got popped for “selling bootleg CDs.” (In real life, Swamp produced a 1990 Williams album, Directly From the Streets.)
My personal favorite on Hoods is a dandy new version of an old song Williams co-wrote, “Mojo Hannah.” This has been recorded by Esther Phillips, Aaron Neville, Marvin Gaye, and an underrated New Orleans singer named Tami Lynn. Williams doesn’t have the voice of any of those, but his knowing rasp does the song justice.
Nightclub is more typical of what Williams fans have come to expect in recent years. The Goldstars is a fine band playing at the intersection of garage rock and soul music. The group even did a high-energy cover of Williams’ song “Agile, Mobile, and Hostile” a few years ago. And recently The Goldstars has been Williams’ touring band.
Williams has been paired with many bands on recordings in recent years. But with The Goldstars, there’s a real chemistry that’s not always apparent with other backup bands.
My favorites here are “Hot Coffee,” a tight rocker in which Williams sounds like an unholy combination of sex maniac and caffeine fiend, and “Babblin’ Brook,” about a female companion who won’t shut up.
My only complaint about the E.P. is that it’s an E.P. and not a full-length album. I hope that’s something on Williams’ to-do list.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican March 9 2012
Two of the most overused misused words in music journalism are “legend” and its adjectival brother “legendary.”
Read almost any rock rag, and you can find those words used in reference to any singer, picker, or band that existed more than 10 or 15 years ago. Eddie Money is a legend! The legendary Stone Temple Pilots! The living legend, Little Peggy March!
I’ve railed about this in the past and cautioned several younger writers to avoid it. If you want to write about legends, do a book about Paul Bunyan, Robin Hood, or Johnny Appleseed. So here I am now about to explain to you that a certain Cleveland band from the ’70s is kind of a (gulp) legend — or at least was for several decades.
Rocket from the Tombs Early days
I’m talking about Rocket From the Tombs, a highly influential proto-punk band that included singer David “Crocus Behemoth” Thomas, later of Pere Ubu; guitarist Gene O’Connor, better known as Cheetah Chrome, who would join The Dead Boys; and the late punk-rock forefather Peter Laughner, also an early member of Pere Ubu.
Not only did Rocket hive off into two great bands, the group inspired an unrelated but very cool band across the country, San Diego’s Rocket From the Crypt, to take its name — kind of.
The reason I’ll break my own rule and use the “L” word here is because for 30 years or so after the band broke up — after being together about eight months — all anyone ever knew about Rocket From the Tombs was through word of mouth. There were scattered bootlegs, but the band never recorded a proper album during its brief existence in the mid-’70s. Those who never saw the group live and couldn’t find the boots just had to imagine how the band sounded. You had to create the Ubu/Dead Boys convergence music in your mind. And tell your friends about it. Thus, a legend was born.
A couple of Rocket From the Tombs’ songs, “Amphetamine” and a seven-minute recording of “30 Seconds Over Tokyo,” surfaced in a 1990s Pere Ubu box set, Datapanik in the Year Zero. But it wasn’t until 2002 that an actual legal album emerged. That was The Day the Earth Met the ... Rocket From the Tombs, a compilation of lo-fi live recordings and demos released by Smog Veil, Ubu’s record label. It included some tunes later to become known as Pere Ubu and Dead Boys standards as well as a couple of Stooges covers — “Search and Destroy” and “Raw Power” — and a crazed version of a Velvet Underground song, “Foggy Notion.”
It might sound harsh, but I’d argue it was at this point that Rocket ceased to be a legend. Though the group had been defunct for decades and though the release was barely publicized and basically ignored by the mainstream media, Rocket’s music was now accessible to anyone who knew how to search for it. Rocket no longer existed only in the mists of legend.
Apparently that album sparked something. Original members Thomas, O’Connor, and bassist Craig Bell got together with Richard Lloyd (from the band Television, which was lege ... oh, never mind) filling in for Laughner and drummer Steve Mehlman for a Rocket reunion tour in 2004. That tour resulted in an album called Rocket Redux, consisting of ancient RFTT classics recorded in the studio.
Finally, late last year, the 21st-century version of Rocket From the Tombs brought the world Barfly, a studio album with a bunch of new songs. And it’s a decent effort.
The album starts out strong with a song called “I Sell Soul.” Mehlman is storming on the drums while Thomas croons in his trademark warble, and O’Connor and Lloyd play showdown riffs. The band slows down a bit with “Birth Day,” which, without Thomas’ vocals, would actually sound more like a Television song. “Six and Two” is another one in which Lloyd’s Television influence really comes out.
My favorite tracks on Barfly are the crazy rockers. “Anna” falls into this category. So does the minor-key “Maelstrom,” which starts out with a guitar hook that has echoes of original Rocket killer “30 Seconds Over Tokyo.” You can hear a nod to The Velvet Underground in “Good Times Never Roll.” Like the song that precedes it, “Butcherhouse 4,” there’s a pervading blues-rock vibe.
One of my favorite songs is one that’s so good that Rocket included two versions. “Sister Love Train” (and the nearly identical “Love Train Express”) is a soul-infused tune. The main version is fortified by a horn section, while “Express” is a rawer, fast and furious guitar-dominated take.
Even the original Rocket didn’t play at breakneck speed all the time. The current band slows it down with “Romeo & Juliet” and “Pretty,” which starts off with a guitar lick that reminds me of (I’m not kidding) The Band. “Romeo & Juliet” seems plodding at first, but eventually some intense guitar solos emerge.
Rocket from the Tombs These days
As you might have gathered, I like this album. It’s good rock ’n’ roll with some catchy tunes. If you like the music of Pere Ubu, The Dead Boys and/or the original Rocket From the Tombs, definitely buy it.
But it would be a stretch to call Barfly innovative and an even bigger stretch to call it anything close to dangerous — or even adventurous. The original Rocket was all those things. I guess it’s nearly impossible to live up to a legend.
On a similar note, whatever happened to Nasty Grind and Noise Annoys? I don't get on here as often as I should, so I may have missed something here, but they were two of my favourites.
Some of my favorite recent scores were the self titled Cheap Time, Baseball Furies "Greater Than Ever", The Rippers "Tales Full Of Black Soot", Spider Babies "Undressed To Kill", The Spits "V", The Vagrants "I Can't Make A Friend 1965-1968", & Blowin Through Yokohama (16 hot skillet muck muck r&b blasts)
I will on the air and the web on Saturday March 24th from 1:00-3:00PM EST. Thanks to all the bands that have been sending me their stuff to play. You can listen on 89.7 WITR-FM in Rochester, NY or streaming live at http://witr.rit.edu .
that is one hell of a collection!! jealous as hell!! great stuff
Mike said:
The Damned followed by the Ramones. Mostly because they both have released so many damned (get it?) records and 7" sleeve variations etc etc that sucker a collector nerd like me to buy. No picture of me, but a set a photos I'd snapped for another forum. I have to give credit though to an old friend who sold me his entire Damned 7" collection back in the 80's. I knew it hurt him, but he knew it was going to a good home. That's where a good chunk of my Damned and Capt. Sensible singles came from.
Show #366: "Bands & Artists Starting With M, Part 6" playlist:
Mefisto - "Return Of Gemini" The Megatrons - "Velvet Waters" Mehrpouya - "Soul Raga" Mel & Tim - "Starting All Over Again" Melanie - "Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)" Gil Melle - "Desert Trip" The Mello-Kings - "Tonite, Tonite" The Mello-Moods - "Where Are You (Now That I Need You)" The Mellow Brick Rode - "Other Side Of This Life" The Mellows - "Smoke From Your Cigarette" Melih Faruk Serdar Saygun - "Gurbet Acisi" Melissa - "Medicine Mixin'" Melody Fair - "Sittin' Watchin' Waitin'" Tina & David Meltzer - "I'll Forget You" Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - "Satisfaction Guaranteed (Or Take Your Love Back)" The Melvins - "The Man Down There" The Members - "Wish I'd Never Met You" Members Of Time - "Dreamin'" I Memphis - "Gli Amici Miei" Memphis Black - "That's Me Boy" The Memphis Horns - "Soul Bowl" Ley Memphis - "Neighbour" The Menaces - "If You Want Me" The Menagerie - "About Him" Mendelbaum - "Days Gone By" Carlos Mendes - "Penina" Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 - "Mas Que Nada" Mendoza - "The Grateful Salesman & Co." Marianne Mendt - "Wie A Glock'n" The Menerals - "My Flash On You" The Menn - "Things To Come" Mephistopheles - "Take A Jet" The Mercenaries - "Things Found Here" Mercury - "Let Me Down Easy" Mercy - "Love (Can Make You Happy)" The Mercy Boys - "Mercy, Mercy" The Mere Existence - "Now" The Mergers - "Love, You Funny Thing" Merkin - "Watching You" Merlin - "Dirty Woman" The Merlynn Tree - "Look In Your Mirror" Jason Merrick & The Finders - "I'm Not What You Are" Merriday Park - "Went Home Today"
This Tuesday my show featured new music from Pow Wow's, and Teenanger (two great new garage/punk bands from Toronto), as well as new music from Public Image Limited, and The Hives newest single. You can check out my blog post this week on Teenangers Frights album and their newest video here: http://revrock.blogspot.ca/2012/03/teenanger-frights-show-396.html
It'd be interesting , though , to hear what Glam - influenced bands did come out of Australia. There must have been some that played the part , but , maybe did'nt look it .....
I was just thinking about how , in my opinion , "The Raver"by The Troggs sounds like an early blueprint for UK Glam , though they seem to be trying to incorporate an "Aussie" hookline.
John Kongos , from South Africa , was very influential on the early Glam Rock stuff , too . "Neanderthal Man" by Hotlegs is also regarded as one of the early proto - Glam toons. There ought to be an international Glam compat some point , as countries you'd never associate with that sound , had at least a couple of songs that fit the bill.
just picked up the t.rex unchained box set - 8 cds of demos and rarities... i admit it, im a t.rex tragic... grew up on him and sweet and slade ... Marc Bolan was one of my first heroes... in australia where glam was a big hit but we didnt have many of our own bands picking up on it... maybe because of the pub scene here being more raucous and rock and roll... not a lot of dressing up! wasnt the done thing! politics etc prob made a difference too...
I didn't make it to Austin, but I spent some time listening to Burger's stream from their show last Friday night. The Resonars played at 2AM my time and killed it -- I found a little bit from their Trouble In Mind set the next day on YouTube.
