Tuesday Tuneage
The Bangles - "Hazy Shade Of Winter"
1987

The Bangles. That stretch senior year of college where "Walk Like An Egyptian" was in MTV's top ten videos so we roommates would call attention to anyone not in the room, gather around TV when they were on, mostly to look at Susanna Hoffs' eyes at that moment toward the end of the video. The album was okay from what I remember. They released a glossy followup a few years later and for me that was it for The Bangles except to Google Susanna Hoffs photos every once in a while.

But then. But then. "Getting Out Of Hand" (recorded when they were known as The Bangs) appeared on the Children of Nuggets collection that I bought back in '08. Catchy, slightly garage, and charming as hell. Hmmm. Scoring their debut album, All Over The Place in pristine condition on vinyl for fifty cents at a Roadrunner Records sale shorty after that was another revelation. Seamless harmonies, driving beat, hooky guitars, brilliant pop songs … it added up to a gem of a debut album and while it shimmered it wasn't eighties glossy. It's always a fun listen with coffee on afternoons off work.

So, I figured, The Bangles had an outstanding debut, got more commercial and less interesting as the eighties went on. Is the "Walk Like An Egyptian" video on YouTube? Then Jack FM ("No Repeat" "Playing What We Want" "Tuomala's Go-To Fun Station Now That K-Twin Changed Formats") the other night played The Bangles' version of "Hazy Shade Of Winter", which was taken from the Less Than Zero soundtrack in 1987. Holy moly. Rick Rubin-produced flawless production. Metallic guitar. Those harmonies. Simon and Who? All for, as Chuck Eddy put it, "a soundtrack to a lousy flick about rich teens on drugs (named after a lousy novel about the same, named after an Elvis Costello ditty about the National Front.)" Well The Bangles showed up, did their job, and took no prisoners. Quite impressive.

And in the song's video, how smokeshow are The Bangles? When I watch it, I don't want to see Jami Gertz, that's how smokeshow. Not to mention VICKI PETERSON'S HEELS, STOCKINGS, SKIRT, AND HER BANGS COVER ONE EYE AND A SHOULDER STRAP HANGS FREE

Tuesday Tuneage
Van Halen - "Bottoms Up!"
1979

Not another poem about wanting
a drink, not another wait in vain
screed. You'll be at that bowling alley
soon enough, IPA/kami lined up in front
of you, checking bus schedules, getting home
for hockey, delivered sandwich, various
cusses lobbed at the screen.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Mike Curb Congregation - "Burning Bridges"
1970

One day last week my accounting brain and writing brain were at war with each other, so I did what any reasonable person would do to avoid a complete intellectual breakdown: Took the afternoon off, made a pot of coffee, and fired up a film I hadn't seen since as a kid, Kelly's Heroes, on TV via Amazon Prime and the Roku box.

Among the many anti-war war movies of its sixties-into-seventies, it throws a little Me Generation philosophy in as well. A group of American soldiers go on a rogue mission well behind enemy lines to rob a bank of its gold. The town is in occupied France, and I never caught if they are intent on plundering French or Nazi gold, but who cares? It's a caper movie, and who doesn't love a good caper? And sure, it's considered an anti-war movie, but when the Nazis get blown away, they get blown away violently and in large numbers.

And if you're worried about any actor going against type, no such worries here. Telly Savalas talks tough. Donald Sutherland excudes a proto-beatnik cool vibe (he even rides around with a guy named Moriarty.) Carroll O'Connor yells a lot and his character is unintentionally funny. Donald Rickles rolls his eyes and makes smart remarks. Clint Eastwood squints.

So you're saying: "Yeah, I just looked this flick up on Wikipedia and it clocks in under two-point-five hours. How did it take up a whole afternoon?" Well, there's things going on with the music that had me hitting the pause button and headed to my iMac, and I'm not just talking about the abundant anachronisms. Like a Morricone-like moment near the end that nods towards Clint's role in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Or Sutherland's character leading a tank raid by blasting Hank Williams Jr.'s "All For The Love Of Sunshine" (forcing Coppola to top it with "Ride of the Valkyries" in Apocalypse Now.) Said Hank Jr. song was written by Mike Curb, whose own group sings the movie's hippy-dippy theme song, "Burning Bridges." Curb went on to become Lieutenant Governor of California. The Man can't bust our music? The Man made the music!

Tuesday Tuneage
Tony Carey - "A Fine Fine Day"
1984

Tony Carey isn't from the Garden State, but "A Fine, Fine Day" has New Jersey all over it. The video is Sopranos-light (and shot a decade-plus before Jersey's own Tony Soprano and family appeared!), telling a darker story than what is alluded to in the song. The tune itself is a first-rate Bruce Springsteen knockoff, Carey haunts the Springsteen ballad side effectively, leaving the rocker side of Bruce to John Cafferty with "On The Dark Side." Both tunes are from '84, I hear Springsteen himself had a good year also.

Tuesday Tuneage
Wet Willie - "Keep On Smilin'"
1974

A glance at Wet Willie's Greatest Hits album cover confirms the stereotypes you imagine for a seventies Southern rock band:

Fat guy with hat and facial hair? Check.
Guy with overalls or suspenders? Check.
Guy with plaid or flannel shirt? Check.
Guy with rapidly-receding hairline? Check.
And one guy who looks glad to be along for the ride and one skinny guy with a beard who pulls of the Legitimate Rocker look.

Not to mention that song titles like "Grits Ain't Groceries", "Red Hot Chicken", and "Dixie Rock" point towards yet another Southern rock band piling up cliches and guitar solos. But to listen to the tunes …  As John Milward wrote in The Rolling Stone Record Guide (orginal red edition):

"Most other Southern bands seasoned their blues rock with country influences, but Wet Willie fueled its with hard-biting R&B."

Lead singer Jimmy Hall was a solid soul-influenced singer, and Wet Willie's only hit, "Keep On Smilin'", is one of the lost classics of seventies blue-eyed soul, gospel-tinged and triumphant. (It charted #10 but doesn't get oldies radio play? What gives?) On a down day you can do no worse than to track this one and heed Johnny's reminder to stay gold.

Tuesday Tuneage
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - "Opera Star"
1981

Released at the start of the "Neil Young experiments with a new genre every year" era¹, Reactor was the first Neil album I bought, and still my favorite - mostly because I got it when I was sixteen and didn't know what canonical Neil Young music quite was. Reactor is grungy, silly, serious, and kicks down doors like no other Neil album I have heard. Then again, I haven't heard all of 'em.

The leadoff track "Opera Star" is an underrated garage rock gem chock-full of goodies. It's a Neil song with an actual interesting rhythm, you can almost dance to it. Reactor also contains "T-Bone", which is Neil's attempt at an extended dance mix. It works, in fact, pairs quite well with any number of the "mashed potatoes" R&B songs from the early sixties.

And not to mention, "Opera Star" also has: class resentment, drugs, getting f*cked up, and ridiculous-but-fun backing vocals. In the chorus, Neil informs the protagonist - and by extension, the listener - that he/you will never be an opera star. I'm sure Neil Young fans continent-wide were crushed.

---

1 Garage-metal, electronic, rockabilly, country, return-with-Crazy Horse, big band, etc. etc.^↩

Tuesday Tuneage
Peter Laughner & Friends - "In The Bar"
circa mid-1970s

I lead a boring life. I watch UND hockey games on a laptop hooked up to my TV, binge on Netflix, and read a lot. My social life, as The Music Machine once infamously sang, is a dud. Avoiding people is sort of a twisted pastime of mine. But with writing I can let my imagination run wild, put it on paper, and then revise it from there. It's truly the most fun I have, even if apathy, lack of discipline, and other assorted mental landmines abound. Sometimes it gets dreary, sometimes it's just a chore. But in the good times? As Herb Brooks said in Miracle: "Ever see him when his game's on?"

At some point, the small fun project I did to keep the writing muscles warmed up became the focus of the writing. And that's just fine. Time to write, a forum to present it, and the promise of this being possible again next week. Notebook in the bookbag, index cards in its pockets, a laptop on a clean desk with a lamp. That is all I ask.

And one more thing, a quote from Peter Laughner: "Here I sit, sober and perhaps even lucid, on the sort of winter's day that makes you realize a New Year is just around the corner and you've got very little to show for it, but if you are going to get anything done on this planet, you better pick it up with both hands and DO IT YOURSELF."

Tuesday Tuneage
Jack Scott - "There's Trouble Brewin'"
1963

Giovanni Domenico Scafone Jr - he later went by the decidedly non-ethnic "Jack Scott" - was born in Windsor, Ontario, and moved to Detroit as a youth. He later served in the army, meaning that he was the rare man who left Canada to come to the United States to serve in the military. At one point, he formed a group called the Southern Drifters. This was clever, a nod to his Windsor roots. Because everybody (except Journey) knows that Windsor is south of Detroit.

When you think of the rockabilly sound, Jack Scott's music is likely what you have in mind. Swaggering beat, incisive guitar leads, and a greasy wannabe tough guy on the vocal. (I hear more Jack Scott than Elvis Presley in Johnny Bravo's voice.) On "There's Trouble Brewin'", he finds out that his gal has been stepping out with Santa Claus. He hints at malice towards old Saint Nick but ends up declaring the old man to be "a goof." Whew. As the man said: "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Tuesday Tuneage
Jeff Beck Group - "Morning Dew"
1968

Earlier this month while doing my research reading the Wikipedia entry on "Hey Joe", I came across notes about Tim Rose and "Morning Dew." I was left shaking my head (more Twitter-like "smh" than a literal shaking of my noggin) on account of 1) said Mr. Rose, and, 2) Claims about the Grateful Dead. First off: Tim Rose had claimed "Hey Joe" is a traditional song - nope - and also changed like two words in "Morning Dew" and somehow absconded off with a songwriting credit. Who was this Tim Rose joker? Well, he was a folkie who early in his career had been in a band with somebody named Jim Hendricks and they called themselves The Big Three. Note this group did not later mutate into the formidable power trio The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Rose ended up being bigger in England than the US (natch.)

Then we have the Grateful Dead. Wikipedia says "Morning Dew" was made famous by the Dead, a tidbit I was unaware of. I didn't even know the Dead were associated with the song. Me, undoubtably like many other hard rock fans, had discovered the tune via the Jeff Beck Group's Truth album, on that one Rod Stewart had been the vocalist. He was a notorious folkie in his early days and I'm guessing he didn't even learn the song from the Dead.

And here's what happens when I drink lots of coffee and do my research read Wikipedia and start getting near that late sixties heavy British rock rabbit hole. I realize that: The Truth album leads off with a cover of the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" - on which Beck had played. And on the Jimmy Page & Black Crowes album Live At The Greek, they play "Shapes of Things" in the style of the Beck Group, but the guitar solos are drawn from both the Yardbirds and Beck Group versions of the song. And Robert Plant's Dreamland album from 2002 contains covers of both "Hey Joe" and "Morning Dew." Page and Plant's band Led Zeppelin? First known as The New Yardbirds.

Oh, and the Beck Group's take on "Morning Dew"? It's folk rock at its finest and/or heavy rock at its most poignant. Chilling stuff.

Tuesday Tuneage
Los Locos del Ritmo - "Hey Joe"
circa mid-sixties

PART ONE: PLEASE MR. POSTMAN

Mexican Rock And Roll Rumble And Psych-Out South Of The Border. Ordered in the nineties via mail order. No, not Amazon Marketplace, where you can buy old CDs for like a penny and get them for four bucks total with shipping and the third-party dealer mails them to your door in those cute little padded envelopes. (And you hope the mailman leaves them on the floor in the lobby beneath your mailbox so you don't have to make a special trip to the post office solely for your meager little score.) No, mail order, where you had a catalog of a company's releases, you filled out the order form - having to use tiny little print on those things, right? - calculate your shipping costs and sales tax (if applicable), stuff it in an envelope with a check or money order, and then wait for your goods to show in the mail. How quaint! Almost as much fun as going to your local record shop, asking the dude behind the counter if he could order you Mott the Hoople's Brain Capers album, and he'd flip through this huge catalog the size of two Minneapolis phone books, and he'd say: "Yeah, we can order that. Should be in next Tuesday. We'll call you."

Thankfully nowadays, songs like those on Mexican Rock And Roll Rumble And Psych-Out South Of The Border - mid-sixties south-of-the-border garage bands doing rock 'n' roll songs, singing them in Spanish - are all over the web. On YouTube, on random sites, and on Amazon, where I'm eyeing up buying Los Nuggetz for myself for Christmas.

PART TWO: BULLET POINTS (HEY JOE, WHERE YOU GOING WITH THAT BERLITZ GUIDE IN YOUR HAND?)

My favorite song on Mexican Rock And Roll Rumble is where Los Locos del Ritmo ferociously attack "Hey Joe."

1. It's always fun to hear "Hey Joe" played at the faster speed. The Jimi Hendrix Experience's version is the one most well-known these days, and part of the genius of his version is that Jimi slowed the song - normally a fast-paced one that was up there with "Louie Louie" in being covered by garage bands coast to coast - down to make it unlike any of the prior versions.

2. "Hey Joe" seems like it's an old folk tune, but it's not. Lester Bangs: "There was this one song called 'Hey Joe' that literally everybody and his fuckin' brother not only recorded but claimed to have written even though it was obviously the psychedelic mutation of some hoary old folk song which was about murderin' somebody for love just like nine-tenths of the rest of them hoary folk ballads." (I also used this quote in a blog post last year about The Litter. I went on to write: "[Versions of 'Hey Joe'] all kinda sound the same once you've heard The Jimi Hendrix Experience's reimagining anyway." I am now declaring May of 2012 Bill Tuomala to be wrong! THIS VERSION of "Hey Joe" by Los Locos del Ritmo is uniquely brilliant and clocks in at #2 after the Hendrix version on my all-time "Hey Joe" list!)

3. This is recycled material from me, I've used it in my zine and on the radio: Since I don't know Spanish and Los Locos del Ritmo were from Mexico … I am dying to know - In this version of the tune, where does Joe plan to escape to?

Tuesday Tuneage
David Essex - "Rock On"
1973

I'm guessing this is the only David Essex song you'll ever need. Certainly, it's the only one most of us have ever heard, though I wonder if its flipside "On and On" is some sort of continuation of the single. Horribly covered by some soap opera actor in the eighties, in the nineties REM was smart enough to reclaim the song by quoting it on their eerie single "Drive."

It sounded out of place on the radio in the early seventies, and likely would in any era. Bass-driven and echo-heavy, it's first verse is an homage to old rock 'n' roll without sounding like any sort of rock 'n' roll at all. (John Fogerty had to be nonplussed upon hearing it.) "And where do we go from here?" anticipates Guns n' Roses "Where do we go now?" in "Sweet Child O' Mine." More significantly, the funhouse look at rock 'n' roll of "Rock On" anticipates the brilliantly haunting book Rock Dreams, which was released just a year later.

This tune leaves more questions than it answers. The question bugging me this week: Is "Jimmy Dean" a confidence that he knows the late James Dean on the familiar basis or does it to harken to singer Jimmy Dean, he of "Big Bad John" note, who is also known for his microwavable breakfast fare?

Tuesday Tuneage
Axe - "Rock 'N' Roll Party In The Streets"
1982

PART ONE: US-81 OFF-RAMP TO MINNEAPOLIS WEST BANK

"Rock 'N' Roll Party In The Streets" is the rare song on Tuesday Tuneage which is not only a Q-98 Classic, but also has status as a favorite of the Cosmic Slop show on Radio K back in the day. I'd try to describe it, but you just have to track it. Soon you'll be pining for a summer night of having a keg cup in your hand, bumming a heater off of a friend, checking out the hot burnout girls in their Levi's, and nodding your head to the killer song blasting on the boombox.

And you gotta love the audacity of the song's premise. Most of us, when we have parties, we have them in our houses or backyards. Maybe in the garage. Not these guys and not this party. It's going to be IN THE STREETS BABY AND IT'S GOING TO BE A ROCK 'N' ROLL PARTY. How many kegs of High Life got drained out on the pavement that night? And did Axe invent National Night Out??

PART TWO: CONSUMER REPORTS SEZ

"Rock 'N' Roll Party In The Streets" is on the album Offering. A sophomore year dorm suitemate had Axe's Offering on cassette and played it frequently, I remember asking him if he could maybe play his copy of Hot Rocks for a change instead. I don't remember what the rest of Offering sounded like, but am pretty sure it didn't equal "Rock 'N' Roll Party in the Streets." Sure, I could go look up the take Rolling Stone had back in '82 or pull up the AllMusic review. But instead, I'm going to offer (sorry) up what genuine Amazon customers think of this album. Because if you are going to spend $15 on an Offering CD (or around $5 for the cassette on ebay, and I get the feeling cassettes outsold vinyl on the original release of this album like 10-1), you should know what the people truly think! (All spelling is left as-is.) Take it away, folks:

"The entire first side is terrific, and the second side is, too, until the last song or two. I own this album on cassette."

"I had 3 cassettes of Offering, one for my car, one for my boyfriend's and one for the portable player I took on my morning run."

"This album had a certain sofistication in it that, I, as a teenager, had to listen to a few times to grasp … Axe's sound, to me, is like Bob Seger electrified!!"

"I bought this on a cassette when it first came out. It's not a great album but definitely worth buying."

"Axe were your typical hard rock bar band type that had just enough licks to find them tapping on the shoulders of 80's A.O.R. radio stations. In order to get there, however, they put on a lot of polish to keep the airwaves sweet, which means that "Rock And Roll Party In The Streets" could have easily used some Everclear in the punch."

"It should also be on your current playlist if you are a true rock and roller."

"Way back in the early 80's my cousin and I walked into this independent record store in Missouri to pick up a Blue Oyster Cult album. At the recommendation of the owner we also picked up this GEM. I wore the vinyl out and switched to cassette."

"FYI - AOR stands for Album Oriented Rock, a very successful FM radio format in the late 70s and early 80s that evolved from the underground/freeform radio formats of the late 60s. ...Post disco, but pre Madonna. Quite a lot of these stations eventually morphed again into Classic Rock stations during the late 80s and early 90s. Axe is one of the many bands that had their moment in the AOR era, but have been excluded from most classic rock programming."

"I dont know if this is a good enough review or not. Need some feedback on it asap. This is my first time doing this."

Tuesday Tuneage
New Radicals - "You Get What You Give"
1998

With "You Get What You Give", New Radicals marked themselves as one of the great one-hit wonders of the past twenty years. I bought their only album, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too, back in the day when I read somewhere it was a refreshing alternative to Beck's minstrel act on Midnite Vultures. It had always been a fun, pick-me-up album to listen to, but after recently loading it on my iPhone and having it grab me in some way it hadn't before on a bus ride home one afternoon, I began to get more intrigued the overall seventies blue-eyed sould vibe, the humor, the Prince homage in "Technicolor Lover", and daring to a leftist (if not ummm, radical) lyrical vibe into a mainstream album. Not to mention the essential appeal of the hooks a'plenty all over the album. My only complaint is that the scorching indictment of Corporate America is largely buried on the title track via mumbling.

And now it's Groundhog Day here for me, as New Radicals only released the one album. Frontman/mastermind Gregg Alexander broke up the band to focus on songwriting and producing. Great for him, you gotta do what makes you happy. Still, I feel depraved and depressed there have been no more New Radicals LPs, EPs, 45s, or iTunes Exclusives that have come down the line since 1998. All we have is this: Hall and Oates, with the help of Todd Rundgren, covered "Someday We'll Know" in 2003. As expected.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Victims - "Television Addict"
1977

The dream where I was a rookie homicide detective and Lieutenant Giardello took a shine to me and my work effort. The only time ever I enjoyed wearing a suit.

Spending an an hour of two of research and seventeen bucks at Amazon figuring out how to hook up my MacBook to my HDTV, just so I could watch my college hockey team on a bigger screen.

Years ago when a couple told me they didn't have a television, stealing Joey Tribiani's material and asking: "What's all your furniture pointed at?"

My Mom saying that TV was the best babysitter. She'd just plop me or my siblings in front of it, we'd stare at it, and she could get the housework done in peace.

The dream where I was part of the Carver basketball team (despite being in waking life short and horrible at hoops), hanging out with Cool, New York, and Thorpe, joining Salami as we walked out to the Motel California.

Those times in the nineties when I would go out of my way during Screen-Free Week - when such a silly concept actually got attention, had to Google it to even see what it's called and if it's still a thing - to watch more TV. Take that, snobby dorks!

The dream where a friend and I were involved with a meth dealer, contemplated turning state's evidence, decided to do one more favor for the dealer, then the cops pulled us over, I lied my socks off, my friend got hauled downtown on a trumped-up bunco charge, and I destroyed damaging evidence and decided to leave town permanently.

Tuesday Tuneage
Run-DMC - "Rock Box"
1984

F*ck it, cards on the table, this off my chest: "Rock Box" is the greatest heavy metal song ever recorded.

First heard these guys on Chicago radio during the two years in the mid-eighties when my folks lived in Illinois and I'd visit them on college breaks. Mom was in the store grabbing a couple of things, I was out in the car and started channel surfing. I came across two guys rapping-near-yelling while metal guitar wailed on. I had read in a recent issue of  Rock & Roll Confidential that there was a rap-metal group called Run-DMC and figured "how many rap-metal outfits can there be?" Back in Grand Forks, I found myself in the Columbia Mall record store buying Run-DMC's King of Rock and Jason and the Scorchers Lost and Found, what with the purchase of Purple Rain the summer before having led to my permanent removal from the "I prefer music by long-established acts, many are likely British, and some may be dead" ranks.

Soon I would backtrack and get Run-DMC's debut, where they first came up with their groundbreaking (and there is no way of overstating this) sound. Drum machine, synthed chimes, heavy metal riffs, and Hendrix-like leads on guitar. It's like they took the controlled chaos of the early Funkadelic albums or those few seconds of "Beat It" where Eddie Van Halen totally shreds and constructed a whole universe around it.

In two years they would follow the natural progression that "Rock Box", then "King of Rock" suggested, brilliantly cover "Walk This Way," and rehabilitate Aerosmith completely. Their formula was so unique it has never been topped. Rap. Metal. Rap-metal. Boom. I'll listen to Run-DMC on a loop to my death before I get into old fogey songwriter music by the likes of John Hiatt or Elvis Costello.