I don’t think i’ve ever expressed my love for the kinks on this thing before, so i think it’s time to make up for that. I really love the Kinks. Like, have days more and more where they’re all i really want to listen to. I’ll usually start at Kontroversy though, because i do get tired of the honky R&B shenanigans, but that goes across the board. Kinks got songs i can’t get tired of and am always finding new favorites or ones that hit me harder than they used to. There’s no other band that does this to me, with maybe the exception of John Fahey. Either way picking a favorite Kinks song or album is impossible and useless. I refuse to field such a question. People always ask each other, “beatles or stones, dude?” and there’s nothing wrong with that question but if i had a third option, i know very well what i would chose. Having spent so much time with the core albums it’s real nice to hear something new from their peak period that escaped making it onto their usual albums. The two i offer up today are The Great Lost Kinks Album and Dave Davies never fully released album that got canned for whatever reason, most likely canned with a little help from older, wiser and much more dickish bro, Ray.
The Great Lost Kinks Album came out in 1973 but has been way out of print since then which has always kept it a low profile trajectory. This is a true shame because some of the songs on here are really fantastic. Culled from leftovers mostly around Village Green era as well as really rare b-sides and movie soundtrack songs, the collage-d nature of the album doesn’t seem as it is. That is to say, it passes very easily as cohesive effort.
On to poor old confused and belittled Dave’s big opus that never was. Word around the block goes, after Dave hit the target with “Death of a Clown” everyone started to either prop him up or knock him down, up from the record company and down from his big brother who was not interested in sharing any of the band’s reigns. The album was none the less planned and slowly worked on for a while but eventually got splintered into solo Dave singles, Kinks album tracks and some of it totally shelved. Poor kid. Anywho, i’m sure all that is behind him these days being that he has more important things to worry about such as recovering from a nasty stroke, but this album pretty much brings together every kinks song Dave wrote and sang prior to 1969, as well as a few more tracks from the would be album. These latter tunes are what you came here for and these are the real gems of the group. “Creepin’ Jean” and “Hold My Hand” just two of these rarities that make you understand why a total ego case like Ray would be very nervous that songwriting genetics weren’t solely his to express.
The trip ruled (It was THE insane) and we have a mostly very pretty country but San Francisco is the prettiest. Glad to be back. I’ll put some real shit up real soon.
Hi, i’m hitting the road playing drums for Ty Segall and will hopefully be far far away from a computer for a month. So, needless to say there ain’t gonna be a whole lot going on around these parts. But since i have nothing better to do i’m going to post a group of good stuff. If any of you bozoz are coming to one of the shows you should say hello.
The Pretty Things recording under a fake name to try and make some money in the movie biz. The concept doesn’t make sense to me either, but the songs still rip.
Combining members from Sparks, Roxy Music, Jook, and John’s Children and pairing them with Gary Glitter’s TAILOR isn’t enough to constitute a super group well then what hope does Chicken Foot have? Funny thing is despite how totally stacked Jet was yet they folded less than two years after forming completely unsuccessful. Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am indeed. They played a really ambitious spaced out glam style that was a pretty great mix between Sparks and Roxy Music. If you can imagine what it would sound like if Sparks had written Virginia Plain it would probably sound something like Jet. Having said that, this album really rules and the fact it was a total flop is a pretty tough one to figure out. These songs are undeniably catchy and pretty epic little pop songs that get stretched out and turned around for few minutes before finally ending and the next one comes barreling at you. Maybe British music fans just couldn’t take yet another band after Sparks, Roxy Music, Bowie etc. that wanted to be ambitious and fabulously Glam. That’s a pretty crappy theory but it is true that their peers were truly receiving big accolades while everyone just made fun of Jet’s album cover. The cover by my own admission sucks pretty bad, but god damn the tunes still rule! Don’t make the same mistake our ancestors made, check out Jet!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one day you walked into a crummy bar at sundown on an ugly, muggy day in less than ideal part of town in a less than ideal mood looking for a beer and something to stare at but instead were confronted with a god damn bar band that ended ruling really hard? You know how it would go too, you go in and for fucks sake who are these retards playing the BLOOZE??? Fuck, i would even prefer one of those horrible internet jukeboxes (we’re all doomed to deal with for the next thirty years) that play 30 secs. of a terrible song really loud before stopping again waiting for someone to poor $5 into it brilliantly picking 90’s Metallica, Bob Seger and maybe some Hootie & The Blowish if their feeling a little guilty, but a fuckin band? Really? It’s 7:24 on wednesday and these guys are up there PUMPIN away. You finally get the mid fifties spaghetti strap tank wearing bar tender with big bushy curly hair who was talking to some guy at the end of the bar for ten minutes before moseying over and asking “wha cha want?”, to fetch you a $3.50 bud lite and now, finally, time to stare off into space and avoid checking your watch that you know will be going suspiciously slow. But oh yeah, the band you have been tuning out is still up there PUMPING away. You finally start watching them and actually looking at them to realize what a bunch of muppets they are. Bass player has a ketchup stain on his Stax shirt, drummer has about four drums on stage but only uses two of them, tuned guitars? no thanks! Visibly drunk with their amps littered with empties and “wounded soldiers” help your prudish suspicions. But then all the sudden they meander into something that sounds familiar and you realize it’s a pretty sly rendition of the classic “Little Red Riding Hood” and the hook is headed for your cheek. You’re not immediately sold, naturally, but you also can’t look away (options are slim, though) and the guys careen through the rest of the song pretty solidly. Well, hey, that was a nice little bonus, right? But now songs over and you figure it’s time to go back to the blooooze. Well fuck, wrong again. This next tune shuffles along even better than the last and either you pulled you head out of your ass or the band hits its stride. The songs keep ruling, and you realize calling them a blooze band is insulting and very dumb because these misfits have a whole lot more going on that. They end up playing for ten more minutes before they pack it up and two of them leave the place while the other two relieve our princess behind the bar and get ready for the evening “rush.” You leave the bar stoked, looped and humbled. Thanks, Limes.
The Limes are from Memphis, a one Shawn Crips is the brains and voice behind it while he’s backed up by a group of Memphis all stars. These songs here came out on cd back in 2006 and the bands only vinyl appearances have either been very very limited or disappointing, but on this cd Mr. Crips nails it. He weaves some wonderfully lethargic songs that have a really great atmosphere around them being both catchy and heartfelt. If you’re looking for some more great jams for summr, i suggest you try out The Limes.
I’ve written here before on my thoughts regarding big time, wildly successful bands inspiring nobodies to do their own backwards take on their idols music and producing a product that in the end i find to be far more compelling then those who our little unheralded heroes were gunning for. It’s almost as though these idol bands (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Sex Pistols etc.) become the text book answer to a certain style of music and it’s up to the rest of the world to take their template and put their own touch on it. This of course begs the question of why settle for one of these bozos trying to preach a gospel you’ve heard before and done “better”? Well, simply because hearing that gospel is boring and tired. It was done right and that’s great. Now can we hear something else? Yes, you surely can.
PS. I still love listening to Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Sex Pistols. I’m just trying to make a point, everyone stay cooool
So today’s ultra cool super fan went by the stage name of Steve Treatment and he was yet another fixture in London’s late seventies punk scene. His idol and textbook was Mr. Marc Bolan and his little T.Rex outfit you might have heard of. The story goes that Stevey was stalking around London one day when he spotted a hip young lady in a T.Rex shirt. He quickly stopped over to find out where she got it and low and behold Bolan headquarters was an office just a few blocks away. Naturally enthused he bounded over to the office where he cooly made friends with crowd including the head honcho himself. Along with now buddying up with his idol, he made fast friends with Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks from the (untouchable, amazing, genius) Swell Maps who ended up both being his backing band and releasing his first single on their own label. Cool. So the story from here is moderate success, three singles and footnote in history as being the one who is credited with convincing Marc Bolan to bring The Damned on tour with him in order to appear hip with the up and coming “punk” community. Funny stuff. Anyway, Steve Treatment is very obviously a T.Rex fan, but he has plenty more to offer than being a copycat. T.Rex rules real hard, and so does Steve. If you imagine Steve a sort of hobo T.Rex, or T.Rex looped out and wild in the studio with the recorder left on you’re getting close. There an unending supply of great ideas coming out of these songs, they just happen to be a little scruffy. Lower your expectations of fidelity, structure and ability and you will find yourself swimming in creativity.
A one suburbanbatherson has been putting together tons of videos for all kindsa great songs using odds and ends from British TV’s past and posting them on Youtube. The results are great and there are tons of stuff i’ve never heard of too, which is always exciting. So check out his full list of videos here and you are welcome for giving you yet another source of life sucking internet entertainment. May we all enjoy our eyes being burned out of our heads in the next few years.
and now you still have almost 150 more videos to watch…
Pugh Rogefeldt is one of Sweden’s most well known psychedelic hit makers which might seem to make him a little fish in a puddle but that isn’t really true. I kinda want to call him the Swedish Caetano Veloso, but even i haven’t sold myself on that call, so i’ll leave it as a hypothesis in progress. It’s folky, goofy, psyched out but not too far out and has the always wily flash of fuzz sneaking through. Of the two albums, i’m a much bigger fan of the second “Pugish” but it’s worth noting that the first album “Ja, Dä Ä Dä!” apparently won a Swedish Grammy for best album the year it came out and the opening drum break from the first song on the album has some renown as it was sampled by the always corny DJ Shadow. What a doof that guy is. Pugh also spent three months in prison for going AWOL from his army duties to record it. Anyway, for my tastes “Pugish” hits in all the right places and the more goofy parts get on my nerves less while the dreamy melodies really sink in and happily hang around for a while. Let’s get a little euro and like it. Thanks Carlos!
Wanna hear the weirdest “garage” band that’s existed in years? Cheveu showed up a couple years ago with a few great singles that turned heads all over the place and last year they came through big time by putting out one of the best albums of the year. They are one of the weirdest bands that cannot be described without using the “garage” tag about their sound, a descriptor not often used when discussing interestingly and highly creative modern bands. Do they even have garages in Paris? I’d like to say it’s because they’re French, but that country has proven itself to produce plenty of real dull “garage” rock over the years, so while these are three dudes are very very French and that’s a big part of their charm, they obviously tapped into some spring of creativity most are clueless to. So what do they sound like? Well they got this singer who saunters around like a belligerent cro-magnnon desperate to get his rocks off usually mumbling incoherently in broken English about everything from Superman’s cum to James Bond as a model while another dude rips away away at a perfectly distorted guitar seeming to have an endless supply of killer riffs and a third dude who looks confused while tinkering with a blown out drum machine and occasion killer organ hook. A little of something for everyone, no?
He is a wild eyed basement dwelling eccentric loony and what’s more angelic than that? He’s something that this world has very very few of; a unique (an true understatement), highly motivated, exceptionally creative, completely autonomous, righteously sincere, unpretentious artist who has dedicated his life to his craft and has produced mounds of exceptional work that the world will get unjustly more enjoyment from than will ever send in praise and respect back to it’s creator. I know heaping this much praise and hype towards one person most often ends in disappointment once someone actually hears/sees/tastes whatever it the hype is hyping but it’s how I feel about the guy, and hope you do too. What i’m offering today, after going back and forth about the morality of posting something the guy would happily sell you cheap, is a quick comp some one did of a real slew of R. Stevie’s hits. Not a greatest hits package because any legit greatest hits from this guy would occupy two to three albums at least! It’s called Hobbies Galore and judging by the prolificness of this guy, there is some serious irony involved in that title. 400 albums since 1968 and still going, amazing dude.
