Tuesday Tuneage
Rod Stewart - "My Way Of Giving"
1970

On his early albums, Rod Stewart was a unique, terrific interpreter of others' material. He delivered master versions of songs written or made known by artists such as The Temptations, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bob Dylan. Perhaps the oddest cover he did was "My Way Of Giving", a song originally done by The Small Faces. Because at the time of Gasoline Alley, from which this tune is lifted, Rod was a member of The Faces - the band The Small Faces evolved into after Steve Marriott left and Stewart and Ron Wood joined. The Small Faces version of the song is two minutes long, a wonder of blue-eyed soul and superb backing vocals. Rod's version is four minutes long and his vocal is conversational and intimate where Marriott's had been restrained and cool. By the end of his version, Rod is attacking the vocal with ebullient whooping and brings the band into the whoosh, only to have it end with simple, touching keyboard notes.

Oh, and that band? Not the typical Mickey Waller, Martin Quittenton, Pete Sears band that showed up on those early Stewart albums, but members of The Faces - Kenney Jones, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane instead. (Needless to say, Ronnie Wood was on a track no matter who the rest of the band was.) So we have Rod Stewart covering a Small Faces song and the bass, drums, and keyboards all come from the guys who played on the original. Members of the Faces would show up on other songs on Stewart albums two-through-four also, one wonders how these songs - and especially "My Way Of Giving" - ended up on Stewart solo albums rather than Faces albums. As I have found zero info on this in my research, I like to imagine that Stewart album vs. Faces album involved coin flips or card games.

Tuesday Tuneage
Kiss - "Hard Luck Woman"
1976

In last week's post, I theorized that Bonnie Tyler responded to music industry demand for more Rod Stewart mid-tempo hits. A year before this Kiss, ever the savvy businessmen, had pulled the exact same move. In this case Paul Stanley actually wrote the song with Rod Stewart in mind as the artist who would record it. Then he realized his own band should record and release it, because: 1) How many ballad hits could a band like Kiss come up with? "Beth" had been a monster hit earlier in the year, and wouldn't "two-point-five" be the over/under mark? I'm sure Stanley and Gene Simmons hired some market research whiz to find out how much money the band stood to make in the girls-who-like-the-slow-songs demographic; and 2) It wouldn't be very Kiss-like to hand away a song that had potential to make even more money for the band as their hit to an AM Top 40/FM AOR rival like Rod Stewart. Royalties vehicle? Forget that!

So what we have in "Hard Luck Woman" is (apologies, but I am simply going to cut-and-paste some words from last week) a raspy vocal and simple acoustic-guitar-and-rhythm-section a la early Stewart. Part of me loves to imagine that when Paul Stanley wrote this (and when I imagine classic-era Kiss doing anything away from the stage like recording tunes or writing songs … I still see them in complete makeup), he was daydreaming and thinking: "The Faces are packing it up and Ronnie Wood is joining the Stones. Maybe Rod will be looking for a new songwriting partner? Time to drop this teenybopper costumed nonsense and become a serious artist. Me and Rod … Rod and me! Why not me??"

Tuesday Tuneage
Bonnie Tyler - "It's A Heartache"
1977

Rod Stewart. By the time I was aware of Rod, he had hits like "Tonight's The Night" and "You're In My Heart" that I always found depressing and soon he moved on to songs that were so aggressively bad like "Hot Legs" and "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" that they must be considered hostile. And if anybody remembers the song "Passion" … well you know why it took me until circa 1990 to embrace any of Rod Stewart's music. Then I found out about his early greatness and landed where I still am today: I only listen to his first four albums (plus his brilliant cover of "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)" from that sam era) and can never get myself to move past 1972's Never A Dull Moment.

But apparently in the mid-seventies, when he skyrocketed to superstardom, there was a need for more Rod Stewart product, and Bonnie Tyler responded. "It's A Heartache" has a raspy vocal and simple acoustic-guitar-and-rhythm-section a la early Stewart. I was surprised when researching reading up on Wikipedia about this song that it was also a huge country hit. Because to this day I have it is permanently wired in my brain as an AM Top 40 hit like those mildly depressing Stewart songs. Also, any listen to this song reminds me of a relative who once said Bonnie Tyler's voice "is as good as John Denver's." I kept my mouth closed but thought "wha??"

Tuesday Tuneage
Rainbow - "Since You Been Gone"
1979

Russ Ballard is a man who has written a billion songs, of which a couple of hundred have become hits for others. While reading up on him recently, I found something a little odd. Within one year of Head East covering a Russ Ballard song, Rainbow would cover the exact same song. To wit: Head East recorded "Since You Been Gone" in 1978, Rainbow in 1979. Head East did "I Surrender" in 1980, Rainbow in 1981. Typical Brit rockers, those boys in Rainbow. Wait for Americans to do something, then rip it off. That Ballard is British and hence was in Rainbow's own back yard makes this even more egregious. But it also makes sense. Rainbow leader Ritchie Blackmore, who once declared his love for Foreigner and how Lou (Freakin) Gramm influenced him, probably also loved the merely-competent Midwestern hard rock of Head East. Maybe he tracked their ablums when he was looking for something "with an edge" and picked up on those Ballard songs.

"Since You Been Gone" is one of those songs that's been covered numerous times. Go to YouTube and you can find the Head East and Rainbow versions, plus by a band called Clout, Cherie and Marie Currie, and Russ Ballard himself. The Rainbow version is the most familiar if you grew up listening to AOR radio. I seem to remember reading where somebody from Rainbow or one of their fanboys congratulated the band on having a unique take on the song because they tacked a guitar solo on to the end. (Ritchie Blackmore looking for another solo? Shocker!) It is quite a fun tune, and Rainbow's version earned it airplay.

Then consider the video: The keyboardist dresses like the dork who sat in front of you in math class, the drummer wears a windbreaker, the bass player wears a blazer and tie. The lead singer has short hair and sports sneakers, and with this being the UK in 1978 that may have been a bid to get the band new wave/street credibility. Then there's Ritchie Blackmore, the enigmatic leader of the band, who is seen at the start of the video than not much until the end. You keep waiting for something explosive to happen, that Ritchie will of course crank up some fretboard histrionics and then his appearance in the video will be like when Orson Welles showed up in The Third Man. But Blackmore has all the charisma of a stone wall, the rest of the musicians follow his non-lead, and it leaves the singer look like he's trying too hard. But hey - to Rainbow's credit, their version of "Since You Been Gone" is a hell of a lot more energetic than Head East's. I'd still rather watch Cherie and Marie Currie though. They're like half of an ABBA with twice the fun!

Tuesday Tuneage
REM - "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"
1987

The best way to read the "A" section of the paper these days is with a healthy dose of disconnect. It's a mess out there. A recent trip through the headlines with a red pen generated a sixteen-team apocalypse field, complete with seeds and a bracket. A larger field would of course include nuclear powers like the UK and France, but for now they will have to hope for an apocalypse NIT. Here's the seeds, and here's the bracket:

1) Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine
2) China, India, North Korea, USA
3) Hamas, Iran, Japan, Syria
4) Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic State, Taliban

That creeping feeling of dread is back with us. Last Thursday when everything seemed to be falling apart, an hour or so in a downtown bar with the British Open on the screens was a respite, but that night was a gloomy affair of Surly (appropriate) beer, leftover soggy bar nachos, and an inability to turn off the cable news. Putting things in a bracket is always fun, but problem is: Ultimately in an Apocalypse Bracket, there ain't no winners.

Tuesday Tuneage
Nazareth - "This Flight Tonight"
1973

Talk about two tunes that deserve a mashup - the Joni Mitchell original and Nazareth's cover of "This Flight Tonight" - mostly because both Mitchell and Nazareth's Dan McCafferty have, um, distinct singing voices. Yes, those crazy Scotsmen in Nazareth went and covered Joni Mitchell because Judy Collins was too busy that day to handle it herself. And you just know sweet Judy wouldn't have been able to throw that sly Slade/Mott the Hoople-like short chant into a chorus like Nazareth did. Next time I tune into a big game at Fenway and see chrome-domed James Taylor grinning with an acoustic guitar, I'm muting the TV and blasting this one loud 'n' proud. Because: FOLK ROCK BABY!

Tuesday Tuneage
Poison - "Unskinny Bop"
1990

One wonders if Poison had come along in the early seventies rather than the mid-eighties they would have been solid AM hitmakers, maybe a scrappy/garage/American version of Sweet. Their eighties work had a "sounds great on the radio, won't buy the album of course WHO DO YOU THINK I AM" quality to it. Sing along to them in the car during the lunch break run to Wendy's, then head home after work and listen to Metallica albums and think serious thoughts. After recently hearing them on Jack FM (natch), I realized just how much fun Poison were, how for a few years they put out a handful of radio-friendly tunes that hold up quite well, thank you. Recorded towards the end of their run as hit-makers, "Unskinny Bop" has nonsense lyrics, seamless harmonies, a hook that won't quit … all adding up to make a nineties bubblegum/pop/metal/whatever gem. I had mostly forgotten this one, but it now stands unforgettable. It also stands (serious thought ahead … somebody get this guy some Wendy's … ) as proof of the redeeming power of commercial radio.

Tuesday Tuneage
The J. Geils Band - "Angel In Blue"
1981

The other night while listening to random iTunes tracks under headphones, "Main Street" came on and I tweeted: Only Bob Seger could write a great, poignant song about a stripper. Top that, Jackson Browne. Not so sure why I was being so snarky on Browne, I must have grabbed whatever iconic singer/songwriter popped into my head. Seger is as worthy as any of the highly hailed Songwriters, why not just tweet that?

The next day I slapped the J. Geils Band's Freeze-Frame LP on my turntable for a spin. What's lost with time and their mass success with Freeze-Frame is that in the seventies they were a contender for the never-crowned American Rolling Stones, as Dave Marsh once wrote: "(They) came closest to the Stones' synthesis of rhythm & blues, bravado and strong sense of outrage." Also lost is the mastery of some of their finest songwriting, like the incredible "Cry One More Time" and the stunning "Teresa." On side two of  Freeze-Frame is "Angel In Blue", a song I had loved in high school. It's great, poignant (nice writerly word Tuomala, "poignant") and is about a stripper. So in that one tweet I needlessly cheapshotted the man who wrote "Doctor My Eyes" and my initial assertion was wrong anyway. The lesson here is to not drink and tweet, kids. (Drink, then tweet the next morning with coffee.) And oh yeah - check out the J. Geils Band catalog. Better than Elvis Costello!

Tuesday Tuneage
AC/DC - "Problem Child"
1976

In my ongoing quest to find The Song Of Summer 2014, which for some reason in my head is to find an old song I dig and have a hip-hop crew sample it and make something exquisite and funky for me to blast on my iPhone while I sip on a Sierra Nevada Kellerweis or a Bell's Oberon Ale or a Bud Light Lime-A-Rita (finances might dictate this one) and stare out my kitchen window into the sunshine and imagine what people do outdoors when the temperature gets above eighty degrees. (Me? I end up blasting the AC at some point and watching The Wire on Amazon Prime.)

My latest candidate to be turned into a hip-hop wonder is AC/DC's "Problem Child", the song so fine that they put it on both their Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and Let There Be Rock albums. (Research indicates that this is the result of international releases having different tracks than AC/DC's home Aussie releases, but that's no fun. Part of me thinks the Young brothers said: "F*ck it, we're putting 'Problem Child' on this LP also!")

Bon Scott throws rap-worthy challenges all over this one. He starts out with a "cop this" (BEGGING SOMEBODY in the future to use it!), tells us he's "cold as ice", then offers up this:

man in blue
it's up to you
the seed is sown
what I want is stash
what I don't I smash
and you're on my list
dead or alive I got a .45
and I never miss

Later, Bon assures us that "even my mother hates me"! Go Stagger Lee!

The tune has an awesome beat, a simplistic-yet-killer riff … and after the song seems to be over for some reason they tack on a low-fi recording of the beat and riff as if they are looking into the future and BEGGING SOMEBODY to sample it! Who dares offend the memory of the late Bon Scott? I demand a rap-rock "Problem Child" remake! My birthday is in August!

Tuesday Tuneage
The Jaggerz - "The Rapper"
1969

Thrown onto a bubblegum anthology that I put together ten years ago, I always forget about this one until I listen to said DIY playlist. But how could I forget about this one? It's got everything except the kitchen sink in it! To wit:

Written by band member Donnie Iris (!), it has Creedence chords, a fuzzbox chorus that sounds like an attempt to be additional members of the Family Stone, and said chorus also has the Latin-percussion break that was so popular during the era. (See also: The Rolling Stones' "Can't You Hear Me Knocking", The James Gang's "Funk #49".) Sure it seems to always be in a hurry to get to the chorus, but it clocks in at under three minutes, so what do you expect? The lyrics are about a pick-up artist who "needs somebody to sock it to" (ugh) and yet the group applauds itself at the end. You wonder if AC/DC took note and decided to have itself booed at the end of "The Jack". (Where Bon Scott acts as if it is applause anyway.) You also wonder why there hasn't been a hip-hop adaptation of this one. C'MON: It's got heist-worthy beats, the singer throws down a what-ya-got sneering "heh" towards the end, and IT'S TITLED "THE RAPPER"! Hollywood remakes everything and most of those are horrible decisions, but we can't get one left-field attempt to stretch this tune into The Song Of Summer 2014?

My interpretation of the lyrics of the closing theme from WKRP In Cincinnati

Went to the bartender

Bartender, I said: "Yeah"

Said to the bartender:

"Microphone did uh uh"

I said: "Good bartender

I had better a head"

I said: "I would good

and good that I did ah hah"

Tuesday Tuneage
The Standells - "Try It"
1967

(Early draft of a personal ad - do they still have these? Back section of City Pages? - written to get the attention of a certain young lady.)

To the punk rock girl dressed in black shoes, black shorts, black top, with dreds and sunglasses outside of Extreme Noise Records on Lake Street May 28th around 7:15 pm who aimed a huge smile my way as I was unlocking my bike:

Hey Killer Smile - I merely smiled back at you that evening. Here's what I should have come out and said -

I got eighteen beers - Six Summit EPAs and a twelver of Premium, all in cans - in this rear bike basket. I got some great punk rock albums ready to play on my Technics sound system: The Very Best of The Standells on the Hip-O label and Paul Revere and the Raiders' Greatest Hits on the well-respected Columbia label. (And if you plan on staying longer, I got the Nuggets and Children of Nuggets box sets.) You can simply hop on these handlebars and we'll take the six blocks home. I can wear all black also (black Nikes, black gym shorts, black Cheap Trick teeshirt.) I don't have cool sunglasses like you, but I do have transition lenses so I can block out the sun pretty quick when need be (which is almost always, right?); these kinda-shades look especially great on me in the winter when I'm also sporting my long-sleeve black-and-gray Led Zep teeshirt ("Communication Breakdown" = punk rock riff?) and UND hockey hat pulled low … and for further street cred my favorite sports team, said UND hockey squad, sometimes also dresses in all black.

As you can see from the above, my punk rock credentials are pretty darn good. I should also mention that I once shook Wayne Kramer's hand. And that when I was a toddler, I stabbed myself in the head with a blue pencil and still have a blue dot to prove it. I've even been in Extreme Noise once or twice. I "get" punk rock. So let's splurge, buy the Los Nuggetz box set, and spend the summer together with it and discounted Tecate in cans.

Tuesday Tuneage
Len - "Steal My Sunshine"
1999

Jack FM is now my go-to fun music station. K-Twin was my fun station but they’re classic rock now and I’ve heard all those songs a thousand times. I’ve heard many of the songs on Jack FM a thousand times also but not all of them. Some had been lost to me over the years with my evolving (ha ha) tastes in music and preferences in radio stations. So when it’s time to lock in a radio station and read the paper or shave or stare into a scotch and think about life or writing or both (at times they are one and the same) sometimes I just gotta hear The Bangles’ “Hazy Shade of Winter” or Greg Kihn Band’s “Jeopardy” or some other gem from my past.

Or that night a couple of weeks ago where I was staring at my financial situation spreadsheet trying to figure out how to pay for said (cheap!) scotch … and groceries, health care, cat food … and had Jack FM on and some song I had never heard before came on and I kept turning up the volume until all the solutions to avoid going broke came shining through. Temporary solutions, sure, but patches are all that are needed until that property tax refund comes riding to my rescue in July. The song was “Steal My Sunshine” by Len, and honestly I hadn’t heard it before and if I had it did not stick with me. Good, because it came out in ‘99 and I have the feeling mid-thirties Tuomala would have thought it dumb and beyond redemption.

According to Wikipedia, Len's Marc Costanzo said he wanted to make a song like The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” (Len’s song is better) so he alternated vocals with his sister, Sharon. Throw in that the band is Canadian and all of this is as sweet as the song is with its Andrea True Connection bump and sunny vibe. As one-hit wonders go, this one is GRADE A. Throw in that Jack FM recently ran promos that feature clips from Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Caddyshack, and The Troggs' "Summertime" and it's clear that my Jack FM phase isn't going away any time soon.

Tuesday Tuneage
Bad Company - "Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy"
1979

Go out on the main road, then down the hill, there was the resort. They had cabins for rent, and at times they actually were rented. For food there was chintzy frozen pizzas they’d heat up and crappy frozen burgers they would nuke. If you were old enough, you could order 3.2 beer or bring a bottle for set-ups. But we went there for the candy: All kinds of it on display behind the bar, also pop in the back room fridge.

Once we got old enough to see over the pool table we were also old enough to spare some candy money to play songs on the jukebox. A dime for one song, a quarter for three. Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy, Elvira, Centerfold, Rockin' Into The Night, You May Be Right, Even It Up. Play more pool, put more change in the jukebox. You come up with a quarter? Choose a song and then hand the other two to your buddies to pick. Play pool badly. Make jokes, try to be funny. Recycle a line you heard on a cop show about brawling outside with pool cues. It’s not clear whether the cues should be used like swords or clubs. The dimes and quarters keep us in own little world of songs and wisecracks. Far, far away from the day drinkers at the bar, huddled over their beers, hoping for relief from the sun outside.

Tuesday Tuneage
Blondie - "Hanging On The Telephone"
1978

I used to hate cell phones. As I wrote back in 1998: "The way I see it, in ten years or so, most everyone except me will have a cell phone. (Nice word: "cell"). And then I won't even have to try to avoid talking to people like I do now. Everyone will be walking or driving around with their ears and mouths pressed to their cells, and I can cruise through life uninterrupted, just hearing bits and parts of conversations that aren't mine. I can't wait."

At the time, cell phones were something of a status symbol. And that status was of someone whose every potential conversation was so imporant, it couldn't be missed. What an annoyance those folks were. I remember being at a hockey game in 2000 and some guy a section over was kicked back with sunglasses on and chatting away on his cell phone. It was a little-attended WCHA playoff game at Target Center, so a lot of people heard me and knew who my question was directed at when I loudly asked: "HEY WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?" Right around the same time, in the same building, while at a Metallica concert, my friend Jim and I were walking around a concourse and suddenly spotted a biker-looking dude, about fifty, draped in leather, talking on a cell phone. We shortly after stepped on an elevator and Jim and I looked at each other, chuckling, with the same reaction: "Did we just see that??" 

I caved and got a cell phone in 2002 for business purposes, if I was running late or if a client needed to reach me while I was out and about, I had the cell phone. Sure, it was often forgetten in my car's glove compartment or book bag; or I had the mute button on and missed any calls, but I felt it was important at this point for my business to have a cell phone. Five years later, I dropped my land line and went purely with the cell phone. It was much cheaper, and besides I rarely made or received phone calls at this point, what with almost all business communications being handled with email.

And what I hadn't foreseen back in the nineties was the potential in the cell - nay, the MOBILE phone (Orwell would be proud) in helping me with avoiding senseless interaction with people I don’t know, have no desire to meet, and don’t want to engage in pointless conversation. Look at what the mobile phone - a device chock-full of apps which also happens to have a phone function - allows me to do and NOT do:

It saves me in the bar; I can scroll through Twitter, tweet, check sports scores, text pals, look things up on Wikipedia ... as long as I'm staring at my screen I am less likely to be bothered by some barfly and have to talk about some crappy local sports team, libertarian politics, who in this joint has weed to sell, or get trapped in the “let me buy you a beer” cycle.

It saves me on the bus; I don’t have to talk about the weather or whatever else if I get stuck sitting next to somebody. If somebody else is talking loud on their phone, I just crank up the Black Sabbath on mine and stare out the window until the annoyance passes.

It saves me on the plane; I don’t have to talk to the person next to me about travel plans, where I am going to or coming from, what I do for a living, or my Minnesotan thoughts on Prince or the Maul of Amerika.

It saves me from holy rollers; as I related a year ago: "I break a commandment and lie. I tell him I have a phone call."

My mobile phone. My MOBILE phone. Even when you contain nothing to read, study, or get lost in; you do the essential job of keeping me to myself. You are my hero, my secret friend, my savior.