© 2007–2012 on original material. For permissions info, contact BK.
As the most glorious and holy day of the year approaches, I just wanted to take the opportunity to wish you and yours a peaceful and joyous time this Sunday. Enjoy, folks. Be safe. Share the game with those you most cherish. Praise Touchdown Jesus.
And remember the words of David Allan Coe: You can count on beer!
Each year around the holidays, I do a mixtape for family and friends, as a way of saying, "You must hear this. Now." Well, dear reader, consider yourself a friend.
Download at will. And lemme know what you think in the comments. Or over on the Twitters.
Playlist:
1. He's Making a Tape — Wild Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire
2. Hawaii — Young Canadians
3. Hey Lupe — Los Straitjackets
4. California Man — Cheap Trick
5. Cynical Girl — Marshall Crenshaw
6. Fields of Athenry — Dropkick Murphys
7. R.A.M.O.N.E.S. — The Ramones
8. Fractures in Plaster — Superchunk
9. The Long Black Veil — Lefty Frizzell
10. Stormy Weather — Phil Phillips
11. Cold Cold Ground — Tom Waits
12. Thrasher — Neil Young
13. Creep — Amanda Palmer
14. Cupid — Sam Cooke
15. Shake a Tail Feather — The Five Du-Tones
16. Lose Yourself — Eminem
17. The Brews — NOFX
18. On This Day in History — Last Stand
19. White Riot — The Clash
20. Nobody's Hero — Stiff Little Fingers
Download zip file
(contains individual MP3s)
Liner Notes:
1. He's Making a Tape: If you don't know the Billy Childish, you should make a point to.
3. Hey Lupe: ¡Damas y caballeros, Los Lobos con Big Sandy, straight off of Rock en Español, Vol. 1! Sloopy who?
7. R.A.M.O.N.E.S.: I have successfully taught my kids to spell Ramones. Score one for punk rock.
9. The Long Black Veil: The original.
10. Stormy Weather: Haunting.
14. Cupid: Sam Cooke's voice on this is pure beauty.
17. The Brews: "Friday night we'll be drinking Manischewitz / going out to terrorize goyim / stomping shagitz, screwing shiksas / as long as we're home by Saturday morning / cause hey, we're the Brews / sporting anti-swastika tattoos / oy oy, we're the boys / Orthodox, Hasidic, O.G. oys!"
20. Nobody's Hero: My favorite underrated punk band.
Yes, PUNK is too fast, it's too loud, you can't quite make out all the lyrics, and it's got a shitty attitude. That is precisely why I like it.
But maybe you're different.
Say you never liked it. Never understood the appeal. Whatever. You tried it once in high school, because the disaffected art crowd was doing it. But you never quite got into it. You rebelled in a different way, or maybe not at all.
This post is for you, dear reader. Let me show you the ways.
It will only hurt a little bit.
We start off nice and easy, learning the fundamentals with these six gentle tunes — grounded in pop, and hand-picked for novice ears, and even safe for most work environments.
Dead Milkmen — Punk Rock Girl
The punk-rock ear-worm. Currently my 4-year-old E-O's favorite song.
Suzi Quatro — Wild One
Suzi Quatro's mainstream turn on Happy Days as Leather Tuscadero gave me my first of many crushes on a punk-rock girl. Like a gritty, female version of, say, Duane Eddy.
Modern Lovers — Roadrunner
God bless you, Jonathan Richman. Best. Driving song. Ever.
Mission of Burma — Academy Fight Song
Accessible music, and lyrics for thinking people.
Runaways — Cherry Bomb
Hello world...
Ramones — R.A.M.O.N.E.S.
Simple, self-referential, pogo-inducing goodness.
Prerequisite, Punk 101
In this session, we move on to bigger, faster, louder, more. See how loud your car stereo can get. Open the windows. Disturb the peace a bit. See how the world reacts.
We'll listen to six classic tunes that each deserve their own stations on Pandora.
The Clash — White Riot
The Clash were a particular mix of rock and punk and ska and world music. This tune was as straight-ahead punk as they ever got.
Sleater-Kinney — Words + Guitar
I want it — way, way too loud....
Stiff Little Fingers — Wasted Life
Maybe my favorite song from maybe my favorite punk band of all time.
Wire — 12XU
Crisp guitar, bass, drums, simple vocal, air-punching chorus.
The Misfits — Last Caress
Oh, Glenn Danzig, you little scamp!
Circle Jerks — I Wanna Destroy You
Good rockin' tonight.
Prerequisite, Punk 301
In this advanced session, we begin to lose rounded edges, acoustical subtlety. But Punk is not concerned with such matters, and neither should you be. Stand up now — crowd yourself bodily into the live show of sweat, blood, beer, and snot — break a guitar string, shred your finger, and turn it way up for these final six:
McRad — Weakness
Philly skate-punk legend Chuck Treece!
The Vandals — Anarchy Burger (Hold the Government)
The Vandals out-Dead Kennedys-ing the Dead Kennedys.
Gorilla Biscuits — No Reason Why
Great example of a mixed- to up-tempo punk.
Minor Threat — I Don't Wanna Hear It
A minute-and-a-half of pure musical thrashing.
Bikini Kill — Suck My Left One
Smirk.
X-Ray Specs — Oh Bondage! Up Yours!
Punk saxophone, people!
"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine..." —Patti Smith
Patti Smith's album Horses is about art and poetry and music and myth in all the ways Patti Smith and early-lover Robert Mapplethorpe had hoped to mix those genres. It is a proper album—a bit of a commitment—in the way that Coltrane's Love Supreme is. It pulls you in, asks that you stick with it, and pays you off in the end.
Still, I came late to the party and finally got around to buying it in the early '90s. I had just been through a particularly grueling breakup, and the album moved me in ways no music had before or since. Emotionally. Spiritually. Sonically. Physically. It is powerful and honest yet strikingly cool in a way that I want to be all those things. And just so damn good. If it had never been released, it would still sound as new today as it did in 1975.
I've been thinking about and listening to a lot of Patti Smith again lately, as I recently finished reading her Just Kids, which won the 2010 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and which is a really fascinating read.
Smith somehow became the misfit queen of the Chelsea Hotel and the Zelig of Greenwich Village at a time when the Village was the Brooklyn of everything.
Even just the short-list of the artists and musicians she dated is a who's who of cool. Mapplethorpe, Jim Carroll, and Sam Shepard, before marrying former MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith.
Along with Joe Strummer, Patti Smith is one of the top musicians on my all-time list. Like Strummer, she influenced countless scores of musicians, whether they realized it or not, some of my favorites among them. From the Runaways and the Slits, to PJ Harvey (particularly on Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, which sounds for all the world like she is channeling Patti Smith), to Sleater-Kinney. For good or ill, it's hard to be punk and female without owing some debt to Patti Smith.
And, in smaller part, I too owe some debt to Patti Smith, as I blast her records in my own painting studio, creating my own art, conjuring up my own personal spirituality, sorting my own words, my own language, expression, emotions, alleviating loss, eluding, alluding, dreaming.
Just some kid, me too.
Songs by Patti Smith:
Patti Smith — Piss Factory (1974)
Patti Smith — Gloria (1975)
Patti Smith — Till Victory (1978)
Patti Smith — People Have the Power (1988)
Patti Smith — Jubilee (2004)
Songs about Patti Smith:
Eric Andersen — Wild Crow Blues (1975)
Jim Carroll — Crow (1980)
Thurston Moore — Patti Smith Math Scratch (1989)
A little weekly meat for your musical stocking. Happy happy, peoples (and come on back next week for cocksure predictions on what's out with 2010 and in with 2011).
Hank Snow — Reindeer Boogie
Tralala — Everybody Christmas Time *
Stephen Foster (Will Barrow) — Holiday Schottisch
* Special shout out to long-time TWM listeners Kerrie and Bill for the Tralala.
During my sophomore year of college, I got my taste of the college radio station by sitting in a few afternoons with my friend Kim, who had a show. This was in the days when the station's entire collection was on vinyl. It was vast, completely varied, and occasionally hilarious.
For an hour or two one weekday afternoon, we filled a slot with what we called Whiplash Radio. The point was to play things in succession that had absolutely no business being played together — or on the radio at all, for that matter: Carl Orff, say, followed by Sigue Sigue Sputnik, followed by The Outlaws (whose "Green Grass and High Tides," incidently, was always a fantastic song for solo DJ outings, as — at nearly 10 minutes — it allows plenty of time for a restroom break). Our setlists caused heads to spin.
Back then before the internets and the twitterati and all, it was difficult to tell just how many folks were listening or not, but that wasn't the point. We didn't really care. We were artists, and in our small way, this was late-'80s performance art.
Arguably (I'd like to think), it was also a bit more interesting than 1980s performance art. We chose musicians and songs we would not otherwise have chosen — if, say, we'd have been trying to build a weekly audience — and perhaps asked that they be listened to in a new light (or maybe at all).
Part of me has always liked juxtaposition — whether brilliantly random or thematic — and I love continuing to make pleasant discoveries in even my own wide-ranging music collection.
Unlike the record store savants in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, I organize my music alphabetically by artist. Jazz is separate, classical is separate, but I don't get all Shrevie about it, so everything else is lumped together — and I love the sometimes chaotic sonic clashes that arise from imposing strict alphabetical order on the music. Not that I listen in alphabetical order, but it certainly influences my choices.
Around the mid-Bs, for example: Dan Bern, The Beta Band (speaking of High Fidelity), Bettie Serveert, Biz Markie, Bjork, Black Flag, Blackalicious, Blake Babies, Blondie.....
Or the mid-M's: Minor Threat, Mississippi John Hurt, Mission of Burma, Joni Mitchell, Moby, The Modern Lovers, Bill Monroe, a '90s bubblegum band called Moonpools and Caterpillars, Morcheeba, Morphine, Bill Morrissey, Mott the Hoople, Bob Mould, The Muffs, N.W.A., Ricky Nelson, The Neville Brothers, ad infinitum.
Nice stuff that I particularly like seeing together. Hell, I might be compelled to hide my wife's Bjork altogether, but instead I get to see her and all her plumed Icelandic glory wedged gingerly betwixt Black Flag and The Biz.
And to keep life even more interesting, now we have the beauty of multi-CD changers and random play — let alone the inherent randomness of the massive music libraries on our computers and MP3 players, where the possibilities for artists, genres, and songs crashing together is not only infinite, but encouraged.
So keep it locked, people. And rock on.
Buffett, Jimmy — Incommunicado
Burke, Solomon — Cry to Me
Butthole Surfers — Ah Ha
The last time I got my middle-aged ass out to see a live show was for the Silver Jews a few years ago. (Great show, by the way.) And the last time I saw the Dead Milkmen was 15 years ago. But the old-school punk rock boys of Philly are together again*, touring regionally when the mood strikes them, writing songs, and shortly, even recording them. So when they played my 'hood last weekend, I had to be there.
The verdict? Not only did they not disappoint, they exceeded my expectations — with a fantastic and somewhat rangy show, which featured all of the usual suspects (as evidenced by the set list, below), some new tunes, a couple covers, and (Rodney being Rodney), a rant or two.
The show began with the so-called "Pleaseeasaur" himself, mister JP Incorporated, the estimable instrumentator, jack of all disguise, and master of elementary Adobe Flash, who put on an excellent and hilarious multimedia show, and was perfectly suited to esthetically prep and properly amp the crowd for the Milkmen.
Here — to properly describe what happened next — I need to mention two things: 1) I'm friends with Milkmen drummer Dean Clean, hung out with the guys backstage, and watched the show from stage right; and 2) The Milkmen are the single most sober-yet-laid back band in the history of anything sonically and even tangentially-related to punk.
From the green room backstage, we could all hear the din of DJ'd tunes mixed with a sold out crowd. There was no pre-show drinking, headbanging, gearing up, histrionics, or even emotion. Joe Jack Talcum, as ever, looking borderline narcoleptic. Even Rodney surprising me with how chilled out he was. But then.
The green room door opens at the precise moment that Frank Black comes in with his vocals on the Pixies' Debaser, booming out of the club's PA. The crowd knows ever word and sings every word, and by the time the stage door swings shut, it seems, Rodney has been magically transformed, going on, over the increased decibel level, about "I saw that movie and it's not "Chien Andalusia, it's Andalou. Chien Andalou. Andalusia! ANDALOU!"
The Pixies' punk-pop anthem was like a shot of pure adrenaline, and like that, Rodney was the pacing, excitable bundle of verbal mayhem I have known him to be. "ANDALOU!" And suddenly, the boys were ready to hit the stage.
And hit the stage they did. I'm not one for bands hanging on past their prime, and if I'm being honest, I had a small feeling that's what was happening here. But I know Dean better than that, and if I had given it more thought, I'd have realized it. Maybe it was the enthusiastic, sold-out crowd, maybe the musicianship and strength of the band themselves, maybe it was Debaser, or maybe it was the beers I had in the green room, but this was a hell of a show. Scratch that, I know what it was, in fact, because, as I noted up front, I'm a middle-aged guy too; it's this: these are four guys with other things going on in their lives who no longer live and die by the music, are not on a grueling tour schedule, and who can now simply play when and if they care to simply because they have a blast doing it. And that shows.
And god bless them for it, because I've aged at the same rate, and this was the just the sort of show my soul needed that night (hell, most nights). I hope to be lucky enough to catch them again another 15 years from now after a similar hiatus. They're a damn fun band, and because of who they are, I don't imagine that will change much.
--------------------------
The following tunes are not exactly in order, but they amount to a fairly complete set list for the show:
Tacoland
I Walk the Thinnest Line
Beach Party Vietnam
Dean's Dream
Stuart
Punk Rock Girl
Big Lizard
Tiny Town
The Dresden Dolls' "Boston"
Leggo My Ego -> Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets
Bitchin' Camaro
Wonderfully Colored Plastic War Toys
If You Love Someone, Set Them on Fire
Nutrition
Methodist Coloring Book
Fifty Things
I Hear Your Name
If I had a Gun
Life is Shit
Meaningless Upbeat Happy Song (new)
The King in Yellow (new; the middle contains the Milkmen's take on an Irish murder ballad called "William Bloat")
* Original Bassist Dave Schulthise, a/k/a "Dave Blood" died in 2004. Dan Stevens now plays bass.
Photos credit: David Palmer (thanks for filling in for my crappy phone camera)
Each year around the holidays, I do a mixtape for family and friends, as a way of saying, "You must hear this. Now." This year, the CD burner on the iMac shit the bed, so we're entering the eco-friendly fully digital realm. Download at will. And let me know what you think in the comments.
Playlist:
1. Haunted — Shane McGowan & The Popes
2. Real Good Looking Boy — The Who
3. Leader of the Pack — The Shangri Las
4. If I Were a Carpenter — Johnny Cash w/June Carter Cash
5. Foundations — Kate Nash
6. Another Nail in My Heart — Squeeze
7. Will It Go Round in Circles — Billy Preston
8. Say Hey — Michael Franti & Spearhead
9. It Mek — Desmond Dekker & The Aces
10. Steve's Hammer — Steve Earle
11. I Am the Light of This World — Blind Gary Davis
12. Special Friend — Larry Davis
13. Hemingway — Blue Clocks Green
14. The Crawl — Spirit of the West
15. When Will I Be Loved — John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen
16. The Road to Rock 'N' Roll — Joe Strummer
17. Cover of the Rolling Stone — Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show
18. Saucy Johnny — Maggi, Pierce, & EJ
19. Hurt — Johnny Cash
20. Santa Ana — Bruce Springsteen
21. Up to Me — Bob Dylan
22. Haunted — The Pogues
Download zip file
+ track 22 (added late)
1/22. Haunted: An A-one Pogues song. A duet, written for the Sid & Nancy soundtrack. I won that LP by answering a trivia question correctly during a college radio station giveaway. It's a middling punk/pop soundtrack, and a so-so movie, but it gave me this song, which provided pitch perfect melancholy to my early 20s. Shane MacGowan would later re-record it with Sinead O'Connor. His version is raw, and not without its toothless charm, but the Elvis Costello-produced Pogues version with Cait O'Riordan is indeed haunting and beautiful, and ever my favorite. Here's both; you be the judge
3. Leader of the Pack: This tune was on a K-Tel–style compilation we had around the house when I was young. I ate it up. I was probably only 12 or 13, and this was right in the wheelhouse of my burgeoning fantasy world of heroism and melancholy.
11. I Am the Light of This World: In March, this song was played to great effect at the funeral for the son of a friend and former boss. Andy was 24 and had been teaching in Laos when he died. To put it much too simply, he was a good kid and the world will be a lesser place without him. After the funeral, I sought out my Blind Gary Davis CD and heard this old song in a new way that will forever be the way I hear it. For you, in heaven, Andy. Godspeed.
12. Special Friend: The Replacements led me to Alex Chilton, which led me to his work as a producer, which led me to this little gem.
13. Hemingway: Again, college. My senior year this time. One Saturday afternoon, painting in the art studio and listening to the station broadcasting from the other side of campus. It was what was called a progressive station, in those salad days before progressive stopped meaning anything to anyone. In any case, it was right there and then that I heard what might well be the catchiest tune ever written. It's not by anyone you've ever heard of, nor has it ever been featured in a John Hughes film, nor a hipster car commercial. But here it is — a perfect pop song.
16. The Road to Rock 'N' Roll: See TWM post on Joe Strummer.
18. Saucy Johnny: Very funny tune by friends Maggi, Pierce, & EJ.
19. Hurt: See TWM post on hurt.
21. Up to Me: See TWM post on song memories. One of my top five favorite songs of all time.
If you set out to write lyrics to start off a punk record, you could scarcely do better than Patti Smith on Horses:
"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine..."
Her snarl is nuanced and a bit understated, but there is no mistaking that she is not a chick to be trifled with. Along with Bruce Springsteen's classic first line of Thunder Road, "The screen door slams, Mary's dress sways..." it is my favorite album opening of all time. And one of my top five punk records. Hands down.
The criteria here is not how influential the record is or was (yes, I have old Stooges albums, but I don't actually listen to them) nor how great a particular song off it might be, it's how the thing holds together as a record, and how it holds up ~30 years later.
Patti Smith's Horses does both. It's a piece of something big, and a bit of a commitment, in the way that Coltrane's Love Supreme is. It pulls you in, asks that you stick with it, and pays you off in the end. And if it had never been released, it would still sound as new today as it did in 1975.
I've written before about the excellence of Minor Threat's classic first EP. No need to rehash that. It certainly rates among the top five punk records on most anyone's list. Mine included.
And I've shouted my love for Joe Strummer on these pages as well. Particularly, for The Clash's London Calling — a seminal record of my frustrated high school years. And an easy top five pick.
We've gotta have a Ramones record in there, and their eponymously-titled debut is it. Musically, it's a near tie with End of the Century, but the debut has more gravitas and attitude. Released in 1976, it rocks like few do, opening up with the blistering "Blitzkreig Bop." And it introduces all the now-familiar Ramones themes: three-chord songs, brilliantly sophomoric lyrics, retooled rock and roll oldies. Trashy, loud, garage-y, punk-y, yet still poppy enough that your kids or your parents can dig it.
And so we come to both the final album and the starting point of this exercise. Jim Carroll died last week ("I salute you, brother!"). When I found out, I posted to Facebook that The Jim Carroll Band's Catholic Boy was one of my top five punk albums of all time. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and I later started wondering if I really believed it to be true. I do. Any day.
It's an outstanding album. I ripped it to my computer the other day. In this age of digitizing music, one has the option to upload only the songs one deems worthy of disc space. With Catholic Boy, there is no filler. Of the 10 songs, I would rate 8 as being excellent, and two or three as being outstanding. It's still a fantastic album. Attitude, lyrical and sonic goodness, grit, Carroll's cool phrasing.
There they are — my top five.
P.S. If you want to argue that any of these are not punk enough for you, fine, no worries — trade out one of them for the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks... A bloody mess, but no one had more attitude than the Pistols. And despite themselves, they managed to record some excellent tunes.
Patti Smith — Gloria
Ramones — Listen to My Heart
The Jim Carroll Band — Three Sisters
One-hit wonders and folks who put out only one great album are a dime a dozen. Tougher to list are outstanding bands who made only outstanding music, but for whom things too quickly fell apart.
Sure, these discussions tend to bring up Clapton's short-lived band Cream, and more recently, Jeff Buckley. I can buy both, but I was never a huge fan of either, so there we are.
It would be difficult to consider the Sex Pistols as being a great band. A musical mess, but they had the right look, attitude, and sound at the right time. They wound up being influential, and, with help, they managed to record a half-dozen absolutely classic songs. For that, hail the Pistols. But thank Christ they didn't last.
A much, much better punk band whose reign was about as short as the Pistols — but whose music was tenfold better — was Minor Threat. Their first EP clocks in at all of 15 minutes, but remains one of my all-time favorites. And that seminal, stark album cover ranks up with the Paul Simonon bass-wrecking shot on The Clash's London Calling.
More importantly, Minor Threat's influence was widespread and significant, musically (where many aped their speed, sound, and delivery), culturally (where, for equal numbers of bands, they crystallized the indie-punk politics and aesthetic, and unwittingly began a Straight Edge movement), and industry-wise (where their indie label became the business model for many to follow, signing solid bands and never forgetting their mission).
They were preceded by a few years by Joy Division, who had only enough time to crank out a single excellent album and record another before lead Ian Curtis killed himself. The remaining members continued to play together as New Order, but it was not the same writing, the same sound, the same band. Which is a shame, to say the least. Some of their stuff sounds dated to me now, but it would have been fun to see where the sonic road led them, and they arguably would have grown with, if not ahead of, the times.
On the other hand, Operation Ivy played excellent ska-punk for only a couple of years in the late '80s, putting out ~30 tunes that I still find infectious before calling it quits, but their sound captured a niche of the zeitgeist before it all changed. And I think the two who splintered off from Op Ivy made the right decision to follow the harder sound with Rancid.
No list of this sort would be complete without the requisite cases of tragic death.
Clifford Brown was a Jazz trumpeter extraordinaire, who died in '56 at age 25 (And not even from junk! He was a sober guy in the wrong car on the wrong night.) In particular, the work he did with Max Roach is nothing short of excellent. Clean, technically brilliant tone, but not overly so, still soulful. He recorded for only a few years, but his legacy has legs to this day, and his horn still sounds great.
I'm more a fan of Buddy Holly than Richie Valens, both of whom had short and epic careers before dying in the same plane crash (which also killed one-hit wonder The Big Bopper). Both showed huge promise and were hugely influential, synthesizing styles that came before them and luring in crossover audiences as they created new sounds.
Who knows what Richie Valens would have done with another year or two, but Buddy Holly certainly recorded enough high quality and successful tunes to justify greatest hits compilations.
Janis Joplin and Otis Redding both had soul to spare and one-of-a-kind voices.
Janis is a tough case, as she arguably could not have kept up her pace nor her voice for much longer. So, while she was taken from us much too young, as they tend to say, and though she had put together short bits of sobriety during her career, she was clearly on her way to becoming a sad lady who would shortly sound like a sequel of herself. But she dies before she got old, and so we're left with a catalog of pretty powerhouse stuff. Her "Down on Me" brings chills to my spine.
I can take or leave Otis's posthumous and bittersweet "Dock of the Bay," but his more rollicking tunes like "Shake" or Stax recordings like "Mr. Pitiful" are just total powerhouses. Back in the '80s, I had a cassette (literally, the first tape I ever wore out from overuse) with Jimi Hendrix's set from the Monterey Pop Festival on the A-side and Otis's set on the B-side. I was weened on Hendrix, he was on top of his game (this was the show where he sacrificed his guitar via fire during "Wild Thing"), and played a hell of a set. But Otis simply killed. He was breathless, energetic, and brilliant, and side B ("Shake," "Respect," "I’ve Been Loving You Too Long," "Satisfaction," "Try a Little Tenderness") of that cassette became scratchy and unlistenable before side A. I have missed it ever since.
Otis, Janis, Buddy, Clifford, Minor Threat — you are my top five. Thanks for the excellence. Godspeed.
I Don't Wanna Hear It — Minor Threat
Cherokee — Clifford Brown
Try a Little Tenderness — Otis Redding
