Tuesday Tuneage
Scandal Featuring Patty Smyth - "The Warrior"
1984

When it was announced last summer that the Twins' radio broadcasts would be moving to 96.3 FM K-Twin for the upcoming season, I checked out the station to see what kind of music it played. Then I found myself loving it. I'm not being ironic here, turns out I'm a big fan of the "Hot AC" radio format! In fact, I fear burning myself out on it and then I'll be back on Local Current and SiriusXM Underground Garage, where I won't hear "Hey Jealousy" by the Gin Blossoms, "What Do All The People Know" by the Monroes, "Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant, or "Locked Out Of Heaven" by Bruno Mars.

Recently while driving a rental car, I heard "The Warrior" by Scandal on K-Twin and found myself cranking up the volume. When I got home, I had to fire up the song again on YouTube. The video is dumb and features weirdo dancing/performance art. But when Patty Smyth does the "shoot the pistols" gesture at the end? Always gets me. More importantly, this tune was a big hit during that magical radio summer of 1984. I was one of those guys up north smug in my knowing the difference between Patty Smyth and Patti Smith. These days, I don't think about it much and have reduced it to this shorthand:

Patti Smith was married to Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5, meaning he was a protopunk. Patty Smyth is married to John McEnroe, who in the seventies was a punk.

I've never heard Patti Smith on K-Twin. Maybe she should hire Nick Gilder and Mike Chapman?

Tuesday Tuneage
Husker Du - "New Day Rising"
1985

In which Saint Paul's own Huskers play fast fast fast and Bob Mould repeats three words over and over:

New day rising
New day rising
New day rising

It's the most audacious album opener since Mott the Hoople's debut, when they started off with a cover of "You Really Got Me" (done as an instrumental.)

"New Day Rising" is a fun one to make up your own words to. For instance, I generally have every other Friday off, so on the Thursday night I find myself singing:

Three-day weekend
Three-day weekend

There's all kinds of variatons of four or five syllable phrases that you can use:

Taco Tuesday
Surly Bender
Heggies Pizza
TV Girlfriend
Obama Mandate
Golden Chokers
Summit Saga
Scotch And Soda
Grain Belt Premium
Huskers Vinyl

Just remember: You're not insanely talking to yourself if you are instead singing!

Tuesday Tuneage
Ray Conniff and The Ray Conniff Singers - "Ring Christmas Bells"
1962

Mom used to play Ray Conniff and The Ray Conniff Singers' We Wish You A Merry Christmas around the house during December. As a little kid, I was a big fan of it. Then I got older and thought it cornball. I dug it out of my stash of inherited parents' vinyl (my folks are still with us, but gave me their LPs years ago) one recent Saturday evening fully prepared to make fun of it as preparation for listening/scribing to Marah's excellent A Christmas Kind Of Town album.

I knew my plan was in trouble as I glanced at the album cover. I had forgotten that the gal on it always gave me a certain glad/uneasy feeling throughout my youth. She sports a miniskirted Santa outfit with strategically-placed belt, Santa hat, black boots, plus no ring! (After sorting through my Mom's LPs, I see that Conniff regularly put yeah-baby gals on his album covers. A sly one, that Mr. Conniff. Sell the albums to America's housewives and once the husbands spot that eye candy they won't complain or insist Johnny Cash be played instead.)

Then all my snideness was blown away a few seconds into side one. Turns out this Conniff album is pretty good. I quickly reached a decision to add this one to my Christmas music rotation, it'll be a mandatory listen along with Bob Dylan's Christmas In The Heart, A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, Marah's aforementioned album (which I will tell you about, someday), and Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You. The Conniff album holds up because: 1) It's traditional songs which they do quite well, and 2) I'm a sucker for this type of Christmas music.

Also We Wish You A Merry Christmas brings up memories of winter and Christmas in West Fargo, North Dakota, where my family lived until 1972. Santa at the Nodak store, lots of snow, huge holiday dinners with my Mom's sister and her family, my brother and I being on a toboggan tied to a snowmobile as our neighbor Punchy pulled us, his looking back at us, grinning.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Refreshments - “Banditos”
1996

To be clear: This music-listening phase I’m now going through is not “nineties nostalgia.” As Michael Ventura wrote: Nostalgia cheapens, corrupts, and, finally, destroys memory, leaving in its place a bright plastic artifact that pretends to be one’s past.

See, lately my mind has been running through a lot of nineties memories. And with me, memories heavily go hand-in-hand with music. But I’m not being nostlagic for the nineties. I mean, why would I be?  For the first half of the nineties I worked for a cheapo outfit of a corporation, where I got to hear nonsense about “team” and “teamwork” on a daily basis, got lied to and stabbed in the back, and (among other cultural insults) had a coworker ask if The Black Crowes were “a new wave band.” It was horrible, kept getting worse, yet somehow I got it through my thick skull that it didn’t have to be permanent. The last half of the nineties were some of the best times of my life as I worked on being a writer (instead of merely thinking I could be one someday) and started a zine. But still, I was doing temp jobs for low wages. The days weren’t all that great, reading the newspaper with my brown-bag lunch was easily the highlight. If it wasn’t for MPR/KFAN/Radio K on that little radio I kept in my cubicle, I would have been one miserable little accountant.

But that mid-point of the nineties, when REV-105 was going strong and breaking ground and The Edge was trying to play catch-up here in Minneapolis was some joyous fun while spinning around the FM dial. I keep meaning to assemble a playlist of faves from those few short years. Most of them would be one-hits, and that's fine with me, I hear that era as single-servings, not Bold Statements By Major Artists. (Not that bold statements weren't being made, just my radio-listening experience was typical one of hearing a bunch of fun songs by various artists.) I should assemble this playlist soon, before I totally forget all the songs I loved. Case in point, a few weeks ago I heard The Refreshments' "Banditos" on SiriusXM Lithium and realized I had completely forgotten it. It's a beauty of a one-hit wonder, hooky garage rock with a certain contagious exuberance over its slacker tale. In the Jukebox of My Mind, this tune is the much-heralded B-side to Beck’s “Mexico.”

This is the only song I know by The Refreshments. Maybe they recorded other such gems, but this one is the only one I care to hear. Because I have a very specific memory of hearing this in on my car radio on Emerson Avenue South in 1996. I was in a very good mood that day, I don’t remember why. Maybe it was just hearing this song. Some days, something like that is enough.

Tuesday Tuneage
Lorence Hud - “Sign of the Gypsy Queen”
1972

A Tuesday Tuneage sorta sequel to last week’s April Wine piece. It turns out that the Wine’s “Sign of the Gypsy Queen” is a cover, orginally done by a Canadian rocker named Lorence Hud. If someone said the name “Lorence Hud” wouldn’t you immediately think “must be a Canadian rocker” without knowing his occupation?

Hud’s lumberjack looks remind me of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Not a good thing, as I’ve never seen any of the X-Men movies, and have only liked Jackman in one thing: The Prestige. I don’t have a Dr. Cox-like disdain for Jackman, I just don’t have much use for the guy. Same goes for Liam Neeson (notable only Christopher Nolan has done anything good with these guys lately.)

And now when I hear “Hud” I’m going to think of a pretty good Canadian rock song and Hugh Jackman and not necessarily Paul Newman and Patricia Neal. Not sure that was fair to my mind, but I brought it upon myself.

Tuesday Tuneage
April Wine - "Caught In The Crossfire"
1981

I decided to take a trip down memory lane last weekend and dug some LPs from thirty years ago or so out of the archives. First up - and I never got further - was April Wine's The Nature Of The Beast, one of the first ten albums I ever bought and one I haven't listened to since high school.

I could be patronizingly smug and say that this album is "competent hard rock", but I see it as more of a grab bag, as heard all over Side One. At times it's Grade-A meat rock, like the so-cool-at-age-fifteen "Sign Of The Gypsy Queen." At times it's unintentionally hilarious, like the vocorder use in "Now It's All Over." At times it hints at a unique hard rock/new wave meld like in "Wanna Rock", which is not to be confused with their "I Like To Rock" from the prior LP. (Where they also covered King Crimson!) (And just to be a show-off, I gotta point out that "Wanna Rock" also shouldn't be confused with "Can't Stop Rockin'", a song recently recorded by members of Styx and REO Journeywagon.) The album's biggest hit was a glossy power ballad, "Just Between You And Me", that featured a line sung in French, which on Saturday made me want to find a place in town that serves poutine.

"Caught In The Crossfire" ends the first side, it's a sci-fi tale complete with bad laser sound effects in the chorus. How bad? My Excel program makes a deadlier-sounding effect when I delete the contents of a cell. The tune deals with some poor guys who are, yes, caught in the crossfire. But not just any crossfire, this was taking place during a "new age war." New agers are bad enough, but BATTLING ones? Astrologers vs. Past Lifers? Who wants to be stuck in the middle of that? But then we hear: "My buddy said he had a space van." Sounds like he just dropped it in real casually too: "I got a sixer of Molson, a bootleg copy of Strange Brew, and uh, a space van." But what a van it turned out to be, it could outrun warships!

This song also mentions "The Empire", which is very Star Wars; but also mentions a "neutral zone" which is very Star Trek. Fortunately, April Wine never had to face up to Jack Donaghy:

For four years I've had to make do with what passes for men around here, with their untucked shirts, boneless faces, their Stars, both Wars and Trek.

Side Two? It features "Big City Girls" AND "Bad Boys", and also a pun worthy of Paul Westerberg in "Future Tense": "I feel a little unbalanced between the pros and con men."

The lyrics sheet on the inner sleeve breaks down 1) exactly when choruses are to be sung, and 2) who does each guitar solo (The Wine had three guitarists.) That's detail! Try and find that in the iTunes Store.

Then there's the album art. The cover photo indicates that one of the three guitarists morphs into a half-man, half-tiger during their live shows, which must have made Ted Nugent's loincloth shtick look tame. On the back cover, frontman/songwriter Myles Goodwyn wears a scarf with his Canadiens jersey, which he tucks into his jeans.

Tuesday Tuneage
Black Halos - "No Tomorrow Girls"
2001

As I've written before, I have an iTunes jukebox playlist that I like to fire up, hit "shuffle", and blast on headphones late at night with a nightcap or two. This tune is a fave when it shows up. Catchy, fast, features yeah-yeahs, and is over before you know it. Plus, half the time I think it's Faster Pussycat anyway. It also mentions rye whiskey:

You see them dancing in a club
They're drinking rye, you're drunk on love
But you know you ain't got a chance

Wow those lines hit home hard, no wonder I downloaded this one back in my days of actually going to clubs. And right when you (not me, I'm not the biggest lyrics guy) are ready to swoon in your rock-lyrics-as-poetry boots, it's soon followed by this gem:

The future's shining brightly in their thighs

Damn! That shows that there needs to be a punk rock version of This Is Spinal Tap. Want further proof? A quick perusal of their Wikipedia page shows this:

They broke up in 2008 after having their equipment stolen while on tour.

Special Halloween Excerpt From "The Overly Friendly Neighbor", An Unfinished (Or Was It Ever Really Started) Essay

Then there was the Halloween party plan. He told me about it as we walked down the stairs, having accosted me while I was heading down to my car. The Halloween plan was for people in the building to dress up as a superhero AND to also decorate their apartment as the superhero's lair. Sounds like a lot of work, I said. It'd be a lot of fun, he assured me. (Parties with themes outside of: keg with Old Dutch Rip-l chips and French onion dip are rarely that much fun, I have found out over the years.) You guys have fun, I said, and by the look on his face I knew I had let him down and likely killed the party planning committee's momentum. The party never went down.

(A dissertation: How many superhero lairs are doable? How do you make your apartment look like the Batcave? Do you have to hire an Albert? Assemble a Batmobile in your living room? What is Superman's lair? A phone booth? As to Marvel, how do you recreate the upper floors of the Baxter Building? Is Spider-Man's lair his bedroom in Aunt May's house? Iron Man's lair would be Tony Stark's office, right? How do you recreate that? You you try to make S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters if you dress as Nick Fury? What do you do if you dress as Thor or the Silver Surfer. Stupidest Halloween party idea ever, further proof that this "holiday" should be left to the kids, they can do so much just using their imaginations …

Tuesday Tuneage
Seaweed - "Go Your Own Way"
1993

I hear that voice on my answering machine still, fifteen years later. The voice of a man trying to maintain a steady confidence, the voice of a man wanting to make a sale, but suddenly not sure what goods he had to offer or at what price he could sell them.

“Bill? Hi, it’s Mitch. I heard that you had been offered to come back and do the payables job, but turned it down. Just want you to know that we think you should come back. It’s a team, here. Gotta think of the team.”

The phone call was an odd one to be placed. Mitch worked at a company where I had just finished up a temporary accounting gig. I had been let go during a staff shuffle, and a short time later my temp agency called and said the company would like me to come back and handle the payables job as that person had left. I turned it down flat as I didn't want to handle payables, which is one of the least enjoyable of accounting duties. You field phone calls from people looking for payment, and generally people who feel they are owed money aren't very pleasant.

Mitch's boss had called my agency with the offer. The agency called me, and then the agency called Mitch's boss back with my decline. That was the chain - company management talked with temp agency management and vice versa. So when Mitch, a staff accountant, called me at home about my work situation, I was chagrined. And it wasn't just the invasion of my privacy and going outside the normal chain of the temporary staffing game that stuck with me; I think it was invoking "team", which by that time in my mind had become a foul word.

I've been self-employed for thirteen years now, so I need to reach back to that mid-nineties era to cough up the proper bile I had for the "team" concept:

This is that “whole is greater than its parts” or “team” crapola that fronts phony community in the workplace in an attempt to suck the individuality out of you. The word “team” was appropriated from the sporting world, where greed and winning at all costs drive things. (They drive things in Corporate America, too, but management will lie and tell you otherwise.) If you are on a sporting team, then by all means synergize. That way you can win your league championship and get tons of bonus money and endorsements and fame. If you’re just a regular ol’ working stiff, this team stuff at work is bogus. Unless you think work is fun, and you enjoy that wacky workplace humor and can’t wait until the next office potluck. Then the team thing is okay, because your much brighter team members will end up doing your work and covering for you. If you’re bright (and I know you folks out there are) you’ll think of yourself. Thinking of yourself is what capitalism was built on. Your boss and coworkers will disdainfully say you’re “not a team player”, but you’re too good for the junior varsity, aren’t you?

Yeah, that's how much I hated the word "team" being applied to the workplace. Things are so much better these days of self-employment. The hours are better, the coffee is better, the people are damn swell. Teams are something I see on TV in brightly-colored uniforms.

(Note: Tip of the pen to my pal Turk for coming up with the "junior varsity" line back in '91.)

Tuesday Tuneage
Crowded House - "Weather With You"
1991

You know you're old when you're in the frozen foods section of Rainbow Foods, hear a song on the PA, and say to yourself: "Hey! That's a catchy song! When I get home I gotta download that one!"

But then you don't actually know what the song is are what artist did it, so you end up googling "wherever you go take the weather" and find out it's Crowded House, and that brings back memories of their first album and a failed romance in which that album didn't really play a part but for some reason is associated with it (don't let girls check out your album collection, dude) and you know what? You took a lot of crap from your hard rock buddies for having a Crowded House album and it was actually solid pop music and you liked tracks off their second album when you heard them on Cities 97 during that time when some thought - including you at times - you were on your way to adult- and career-hood …

Anyway, this song isn't from either of these albums but you absolutely adore it anyway. You should use it to taunt the weather addicts in your life someday.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Kingsmen - "The Jolly Green Giant"
1964

Kingsmen fans of the "their earlier stuff was sooo much better" ilk probably don't favor this one as it was recorded after original vocalist Jack Ely - the same dude who tried to start singing a verse too early in their classic "Louie Louie" - was forced out of the band by the drummer's mom (I'm not making this up) in a contentious power move.

Kingsmen purists also probably say: "This song is sooo commercial." Well yeah duh, it's dang close to being a commericial for Green Giant products, with one of the band members shouting "artichoke hearts!" and "brussel sprouts!" during the song. "Eat your vegetables from a company based in a valley in southwestern Minnesota" may be a weird subtext coming from a Portland band, but the commercialization was just a cover for the real purpose of this tune: A sly comment on race relations in America, 1964. Some gal wouldn't date the Green Giant. Because he was too tall? No, the gal was an Amazon. She thought he was disgusting because he was the wrong color. Booooo.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Yardbirds - "You're A Better Man Than I"
1966

Whoah whoah whoah. You mean to tell me that "You're A Better Man Than I" was the B-side of "Shapes of Things"?? This puts that 45 on the short list of greatest two sides-in-one of protest music ever unleashed. (What'd the Beatles put on the back of "Revolution"? "Hey Jude".) Certaintly its kick out the jams high energy puts it near the top for its sheer audacity factor. The doom/gloom backdrop plus the power/glory of the noise on "You're A Better Man Than I" set a template for heavy metal, not to mention it features the Greatest Rock Guitar Solo Ever.

Lester Bangs: (Jeff Beck's solo) was THE original primal prototype heavy metal guitar move. Ten million fretbusters since have heard and tried to replicate the chilling fire-and-ice power of it and all failed.

My question is: Which rock 'n' roll band is going to be men enough to step up to the mics, cover this one, and dedicate it to that Richie Rich putz Mitt Romney? Because if no one else will do it, I will be forced to reform my garage band, The Recount Five (active November 2000 - January 2001 in Florida; November 2008 - June 2009 in Minnesota) and we'll do it. Which shouldn't be a problem, my band is fictional. Hell, that means we could even have Sam Phillips record it. Just like The Yardbirds did with this tune. Yep. THAT Sam Phillips.

Tuesday Tuneage
Black Flag - “TV Party”
1982

Stooges-like throb with kinda-inspired lead guitar. I’d love it to death as satire except I actually lived this my senior year at college when I rented a house with five other guys. One roommate, after the rest of us went to sleep, would stay up late with more beer and bottom shelf vodka, then pass out on a coach with CNN Headline News playing so loud we could hear it upstairs when we woke up in the morning. The guy I shared a room with and I would joke that we already knew the news of the day because we had heard it over and over for an hour or so before we actually woke up for real. Needless to say, we had been too lazy/hazy to go downstairs and shut the TV off overnight in the first place.

As for the video ... Seeing it after seeing Henry Rollins on Sons of Anarchy: Could it be in these near-thirty years that his acting "chops" have actually diminished??

Tuesday Tuneage
Gary Stewart - “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)”
1975

Another downside to such a dry summer is that there were too few rainy afternoons to say: Fuck it, I’m gonna sit here all afternoon, drink beer, and listen to country music. Then  you dig out your Waylon, Willie, Jerry Lee, Merle, etc.; crack a few cold ones, and sit in dimness of your living room and mind and take it all in. I know others use rainy afternoons to organize scrapbooks, go through family photos, or catch up on correspondence; but some us take such weather as opportunities to Think Big/Think Stupid and go for broke.

Always on the playlist these afternoons is “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)”. Perpetual contender always for Greatest Song Title Ever and perhaps the finest in Stewart’s pantheon of drinking/cheating/honky-tonking classics from the mid-seventies. That list?

“Drinking Thing”
“Honky-Tonkin’”
“Out Of Hand”
“Quits”
“Single Again”
“Whiskey Trip”’
“Your Place Or Mine”

Okay, you’re thinking, what a bummer. Day drinking and a song cycle of divorce/alcoholism/adultery/bars. Here’s the bright spot: Stewart had a road band called “The Honky Tonk Liberation Army.”

Tuesday Tuneage
The Troggs - "Summertime"
1975

Why reinvent yourself when you can keep doing the same great thing over and over? I'm thinking AC/DC, you may be thinking of the Ramones.

I used to hear "Summertime" on Q-98 out of Fargo. It's acoustic guitar, drums, BASS BASS BASS on lead, and typical Troggsian leer. I assumed it was from their glory days of the mid-sixties, but it's from '75 - meaning these orginal metallic murkers unleashed this morsel of sheer brilliant punk shortly before "punk" appeared.

I like the summertime
When the girls wear their dresses so low
You can see the sun on their t-t-t-t-t-t-tan skin

Clever? Not very, but then look at the titles of Troggs' tracks four through eight on The Best of The Troggs (Fontana/Chronicles release, 1994): "I Want You", "I Can't Control Myself", "Gonna Make You", "Anyway That You Want Me", "Give It To Me." These guys weren't exactly the most playful of wordsmiths to start with.

You know when the Stones sang "I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes / I have to turn my head until my darkness goes"? This is the flipside of that sentiment. Makes me think of June, when I was walking the four blocks home from the bus stop on a Friday afternoon. First block I spot a hot strawberry blonde walking up to her duplex. Sun dress plus wedge heels. She was carrying a bottle of Jim Beam so big that it needed a handle. Such sights get a confirmed warm-weather downer like me to start softly singing:

I like the summertime, when the girls wear their dresses so ...