Tuesday Tuneage
Vanilla Fudge - "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"
2002

I only got clued into the fact that the great Vanilla Fudge has been again lurking around for the past decade-and-a-half because Little Steven's (always excellent) Underground Garage station on SiriusXM recently started playing their brilliant cover of "I'm A Believer" from 2012. So I started snooping around on this Fudge stuff and yes, they've been putting out albums (one is all Led Zep covers!) and have even maintained a pretty good ratio of band members being founders vs. ringers. The "I'm A Believer" cover is from Spirit of '67, which harkens back to the sound of the original Fudge album from (yes) 1967 - weird, heavy covers of pop songs.

This reformed Fudge's first release was The Return from 2002, which weirdly had them covering songs from their past (which makes them covers of their covers.) But it also had their takes on songs by 'N Sync and The Backstreet Boys, and if I knew any music by 'N Sync and The Backstreet Boys, I'd be a hell of a lot more excited about this. The album's ending track is a heady Fudge move: They run through "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", which drummer Carmine Appice co-wrote with Rod Stewart back in 1978. Considering the horridness of the original*, the Fudge must be applauded by turning it into a seven-plus minute disco-metal gem. It's just as dumb as the original, but for all the right reasons.

*"And after thinking about what's in there that does appeal to so many people and why, is when you wanna make plans to leave the human race." - Lester Bangs

Tuesday Tuneage
Kansas - "Carry On My Wayward Son"
1976

At a client on Friday they were playing a Spotify classic rock station. We heard most of the usual suspects and had a moment of serendipity: Creedence Clearwater Revival followed by The Hollies' Creedence ripoff/homage "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress". But I was disappointed to not hear a couple of Midwestern AOR oldies-but-goodies:

1) Head East - "Never Been Any Reason"
2) Kansas - "Carry On My Wayward Son"

I mean if "Carry On My Wayward Son" came on, I was prepared to initiate a big rap session on whether it was about Jesus or Icarus. (Don't snicker, it woulda added some life to my time spent reconciling that PayPal account!) (Oh and hey PayPal: put on your big boy pants and add genuine MONTHLY STATEMENTS to your options. C'mon, be a true pal.) Also: Would an Icacus song infringe on Led Zeppelin's trademark?

I tracked The Best of Kansas last week, and can hear the peanut gallery already: "Hey Tuomala - That anthology shoulda been an EP! Just like Badfinger's shoulda been! 'Carry On My Wayward Son', 'Point Of Know Return', 'Dust In The Wind', and 'Hold On'. That's it!" I would have agreed just ten days ago, but for some reason suddenly I have a soft spot in my heart for Kansas, who I honestly had not given much thought to over the years. While I have not delved outside of The Best of Kansas, there is just enough there to keep me intrigued. For instance, "Song For America" proves that Kansas could be just as pretentious as the UK progressive bands they emulated*. You might want that one around just to show anybody who thinks eighties product "Fight Fire With Fire" is typical Kansas and you want to show what these guys were up to before airplay became the valued prize. (Surprised the drive for airplay took so long, considering these guys were on the Kirshner label. You'd think the man behind The Archies** would have urged them to shorten the songs, punch up the sound, and go for gold and platinum records.)

And if you're looking for an excuse - and I am, as I am currently tracking The Best of Kansas again with Tullamore Dew and it's getting to be a slog - to not look into any of the Kansas catalog proper, consider the groaner plays on the English language made with a couple of album titles: Point of Know Return and Leftoverture. Makes you wish the discography instead read Kansas, Kansas II, Kansas III, Kansas IV, etc. Wikipedia "research" shows that Kansas original member/guitarist/songwriter Kerry Livgren became a Godboy born again, started the Christian rock*** band AD, and they had an album titled Art of the State. You can guess who had been in charge of the Kansas album titles during their heyday. Some things a baptism just does not fix.

So I'm still playing The Best of Kansas on shuffle and I just forced iTunes to play "Carry On My Wayward Son", which I almost typed as "Carry On My Wayward Song". (Dammit Livgren!) All I can write before I sign off and blast this tune again on headphones is: If you're gonna listen to one vaguely Christian, leans-towards-progressive Midwestern band with chops, clean production, and a staid Geographic Rock name, it's gotta be Kansas right?

* Early in the next decade, Styx would release an allegory about America, Paradise Theater, upping the pretentious ante. And you thought the Midwest was just boogie bands and power pop.

** Just came up with a mid-seventies Archie comics storyline where Reggie steals Kansas's idea for a concept album and presents it to looking-for-a-change members of The Archies band. Andy Kim, meet Rick Wakeman …

*** "She comes home from church / She takes off her pants / That's what I like about Amy Grant" - The Young Fresh Fellows

Tuesday Tuneage
The Dirtbombs - "I'm Through With White Girls"
2001

Tuomala Triumphant: 2015 In Review

Credit Card Laundry Machines: For a moment, I thought my one and only highlight of the year was going to be my building getting laundry machines that take credit cards. No more counting quarters for laundry, no more going to the bank to get two or three rolls of quarters, NO MORE PLANNING MY LIFE AROUND QUARTERS (which should be for pinball anyway.) The Tuesday Tuneage would be the above sentences paired with The Pretenders' "Watching The Clothes". Quick, easy, done. But I did end up having a semblance of a life ...

Muse Prep: Wednesday is Writing Day and to start off the day with doing Magnetic Poetry on the fridge or studying a great coffee table book while pounding mug after mug of joe are great ways for me to loosen up the writing brain. Beats the low panic/one more game of backgammon on the phone/bleep-it-go-for-Netflix stumble that had taken down many a Wednesday in the past.

New Orthotics: And I got 'em a couple of weeks before I turned fifty. Classic Old Guy!

Whiskey River aka Whisky River: This was the year I made the move to higher-quality "brown stuff" (vodka-swiller Roger Sterling's term) like Tullamore Dew (my current Saturday late afternoon/early evening writing companion) and Laphroaig 10 Year (buy-it-when-you-can-afford-it damn good scotch.) But what if my scrappy slacker self-employed financial situation FALLS APART AGAIN?? There's always Old Overcoat when strapped for cash.

Podcast Reduction Act: Apologies to everybody (and their brother, sister, neighbor, and bookie) who now has a podcast. I vastly cut down my podcast listening time this year due to the reassertion of a lifelong motto/retort: "I'd rather read a book."

Teeshirt Breakthrough: 1) Turning fifty meant I could cash in on my right to buy a Ron Jon Custom Surfboards teeshirt. Check out the shade of blue! 2) ShirtManDude.com - This online shop has many gems, the shirts fit perfectly, and they have great pricing. Yes, I'm the guy in south Minneapolis sporting the Citizen Dick teeshirt. 3) New wardrobe - Losing weight means old teeshirts you bought when you were thinner fit once again. I turned that clothing savings into buying my own blood pressure monitor. (And then charged said monitor to my HSA.) (Tax break, y'know.)

Apple Music: This one deserves a separate essay down the road, because streaming music will likely change the way I deal with music. Before, buying an album generally demanded multiple listens of it because dammit I spent eight to sixteen bucks on that album and if it didn't do much for me on the first listen, there was still a wish to recover some of that investment. Paying a nominal monthly fee to stream music? If the album isn't doing it for me it's easy to pause, click, find another album/track/playlist to check out. Yeah, you all went through this with Spotify. But I'm not going to sign up for any service for which I need a Facebook account as I continue to avoid that social media hassle. Baby pictures just don't do it for me.

Naming Rights: Two weeks after I turned fifty (and hence four weeks after receiving my beloved orthotics), I was carded at a neighborhood bar. The pretty young thing studied my ID and said: "Nice to meet you, William." And she called me William for the rest of my stay there. I never bothered to correct her that she could use the familiar "Bill", because the way she said my Christian name sounded so much better than it does at the doctors' offices. The cute young black girl who works at my YMCA's front desk calls me "Will". Of course I have never corrected her either, as SHE bothered to learn how to pronounce my surname.

Tuesday Tuneage
Pat Travers Band - "Snortin' Whiskey"
1980

Who let Pat Travers down?

1) Apple Music. Hey, it's "Pat Travers Band" NOT "Pat Traver's Band". Many of us who don't want to log into - or in my case, create - a Facebook account go to Apple for our streaming music needs. We value correct spelling and proper possessive vs. plural usage. Let the slobs over at Spotify mess that stuff up.

2) The designer of Pat Travers Band's Crash And Burn album cover. The orange mist that takes up most of the cover denotes some kind of explosion, but what the hell is going on here? It's almost like they took the cover of The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland and removed Jimi's face.

3) The copywriter for PolyGram Records, who wrote the back cover notes to Boom Boom … The Best Of Pat Travers. (The only Travers album I own and hence the only one whose notes I have read.) It's like reading a book report from a mailing-it-in kid in junior high:

"Two of his songs have become legend, like rock and roll anthems…" LIKE rock and roll anthems? Show some conviction, scribe!

"(although he detests the term 'guitar hero')" Find me a guitarist who digs this term, it would be refreshing. If you got it, flaunt it.

"Pat Travers can be described as the thinking man's hard rocker, a master of no-frills rock and roll. Pat Travers and his breed of hard rock, are timeless." Rewrite please! YAWN. And what's with the needless comma in that last sentence? IT SEEMS LIKE A FRILL.

Below all of this is a declaration that this album is DIGITALLY RE-MASTERED, but if it's a vinyl LP, isn't that analog? I'm confused.

4) Canadian whisky. Our neighbors to the north spell this distilled beverage "whisky", as do the Scots. But Americans and the Irish spell it "whiskey". Pat Travers is a Toronto native, but "Snortin' Whiskey" is spelled the latter way, meaning that the song likely pays tribute to the superior American brands or maybe Old Crow at the worst. Heck, maybe it was the vastly underrated Old Overcoat that triggered the inspiration for this tune. What we do know is that this group of Canadians wanted nothing to do with their inferior sweet/ugh labels such as Windsor, Crown Royal, Canadian Club (sorry, Draper), Canadian Mist, Black Velvet, McAdams, McWhatever*.

Who did not let Pat Travers down?

1) Pat Thrall, Travers Band guitarist. According to Wikipedia: The inspiration for ("Snortin' Whiskey") came when Thrall showed up to a studio session late. When asked why Thrall was late, he fumbled his words saying that he was “snortin’ whiskey” and “drinkin’ cocaine” the night before. A Jeff Spicoli-like moment inspired a monster monster rock song and Travers took it to the hilt. Bravo.

*Or maybe the song title merely used clever placement of an "e" to gain acceptance in the massive American market?

Tuesday Tuneage
The Uniques - "Mother And Child Reunion"
1972

How I made it through the past fifteen years without hearing about or reading Colin B. Morton and Chuck Death's collection of rock 'n' roll comic strips Great Pop Things, I'll never know. But Greil Marcus is a big fan, and he referenced it in his latest book The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs, and I ran out logged onto Amazon and bought a copy. Cue the hyperbole:

Riffs upon riffs, cheap shots, inside jokes, mangled names (on purpose) … a comic strip so searing that it got Morrissey to go on record and complain. (I can think of no higher recommendation.) This is the best rock book since Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung, if not Rock Dreams. Mostly because it's the funniest rock book since Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung, if not Rock Dreams. - Bill Tuomala, (foot)noted also-ran

Wait? Did I say "hyperbole"? Because I mean every word of the above. If I try to repeat the authors' jokes here I'm gonna fail, so instead look at the illustration that accompanies the title of this piece above. But I will relate how one of the Great Pop Things strips hit home and had me pumping my fist, grinning in solidarity:

In the late eighties, I stated to baby boomer coworkers that the way to make a Paul Simon album was to "strum an acoustic guitar over a bunch of third world music." This was met with eyerolls and I resumed stewing over the fact that I couldn't get Z-Rock on the radio in my office. In Great Pop Things, page 129, Morton and Death describe a "Do It Yourself Paul Simon Kit" that includes "one map of the third world and a selection of romantic, ethnic LP sleeves." Sample album titles are Eskimo Hunting Songs and Pygmie-Beat Revival! You are assured:

"Now you too can be Paul Simon in the piracy … OOPS we mean privacy of your own home."

Bullseye.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rockets - "Oh Well"
1979

Last Friday, a thirty-year-long misconception of mine was cleared up, a boneheaded belief that led me last month to tweet something wrong about the season two premiere of Fargo. I had tweeted a chide at Rolling Stone about them stating that a song by Fleetwood Mac appeared in the episode. That was The Rockets version of "Oh Well", I confidently stated. "Oh Well" appeared shortly after the opening, and was soon followed by Billy Thorpe's "Children of the Sun", meaning that this episode set in 1979 was dead-on in its grasp of the power and the glory of late-seventies AOR radio. But after being steered in the right direction on this song (more on this later) and watching the beginning of the episode again on demand, it turns out it was Fleetwood Mac, with a live version from a 1980 album.*

A summary of the three versions of "Oh Well" that should be familiar to classic rock fans:

 - Fleetwood Mac original studio version from 1969. Written and sung by original Mac leader Peter Green. A long cut on the album, radio usually plays a shorter version.

- The Rockets studio version from 1979. A more hard rock take on the song.

- Fleetwood Mac live version from 1980. Here, Lindsey Buckingham takes over the lead guitar and singing duties from long-departed from the band Peter Green. This version also rocks harder than the original.

On Friday, my friend Jeff and I were raving about Fargo and I was still under the belief that The Rockets version was used in the premiere. Jeff said no, it was the Fleetwood Mac live version. Then after we tracked all three versions (and likely annoying Jeff's studio mates in the process, nothing like trying to wrap up a workweek late on a Friday and two middle-aged dudes are having an AOR bull session complete with playing a single song over and over again), Jeff posited the gotta-be-true theory that after The Rockets rocked up "Oh Well", Lindsey Buckingham responded by making sure it was on their live album and released as an AOR cut to stations nationwide.

Which brings me to the source of my confusion over whose version of "Oh Well" is whose. Because The Rockets released a live album in 1984, which OF COURSE featured "Oh Well". I was at beer-fueled game of Risk in the Twin Cities circa 1986 and a debate broke out over whose version of "Oh Well" was being played on KQRS. I was still relatively unfamiliar with the song, and one of the dudes insisted that the "hard rock" version of the tune - whether it was studio or live - was by The Rockets. This was eventually accepted as fact, further discussion was shelved, and I proceeded to get my armies blown off the world map. Being someone who never cared for superstar-lineup Fleetwood Mac, I was totally unaware that they even had a live album in 1980. Or if I was, I wrote it off as the "cash in on the fans with a quickie tour souvenir" it surely was. (And I ain't gonna give it a listen now, not even for research purposes. Not with The Rockets available on Apple Music.)

And now, looking back, I realized I got my bogus "Oh Well" information from the same crowd who a year earlier had insisted that a new Boston song was out from their long-rumored, always-pending third album. Things were tricky back then in the days before we had the Internet. Oh well...

*And with this season of Fargo being set in 1979, this means the use of this song is an anachronism. This is a slight bummer, as so far this season is one of the best things I've ever seen on TV. If they had used The Rockets 1979 version, they'd still be pitching a perfect game.

Tuesday Tuneage
Rush - "Limelight"
1981

(I make a lot of Q98 references here during Tuesday Tuneage…

(CLICK TO EXPAND)

Tuesday Tuneage
The New York Dolls - "Don't Start Me Talkin'"
1974

As I have written before:

The YMCA is not my social club. The goal of going there is simple: Get an elliptical workout for thirty minutes with my iPhone blasting some metal; walk on the treadmill for forty minutes while listening to more music; stretch; and then get the hell out of there.

But my fellow middle-aged folks who work out at my Y? Way too social for my tastes. Worse, the men are always looking for new members to recruit into their coffee klatch. Last year, I was carrying my bike helmet and one of them nodded at me and asked about my bike ride. I made some dry comment about it not being bad because "it was all downhill", and now we give each other the nod of recognition. Perfectly fine, because he is content to chat away with his other workout friends and leaves me alone to go sweat it out. But early this year, I made the mistake of talking to another klatch member. He was leaning on an elliptical machine that I wanted to use, talking with his buddy on the next machine. I should have just went and grabbed a treadmill and watched Sports Shouting on ESPN. Instead, I asked him if he would be using the machine, he said no, gave me room to get on it, and then started joking around on how I would have to keep his buddy company. Except I think he was only half-joking. I smiled, put on my earbuds, cranked Motorhead, and put any potential conversations out of my mind.

Look, if you want to be pals with your fellow sweat-soaked companions at the gym, feel free. Just leave me out of it. I don't care about your mortgages, kids, lawn care duties, retirement dreams, grandkids, careers, travel plans, or what you're grilling on your decks. Like I stated above, my focus is to get my exercise and get the hell out of there after stretching. But now that I had spoken to the coffee klatch, in future visits they made eye contact with me, nodded at me, tried to draw me into their conversations. I could see as the year went on that some sort of stratagem was needed to back the coffee klatch away from me. Get a shirt that says LEAVE ME ALONE on it in big block letters? No, not passive-aggressive enough. Quit the Y? No, it's only four blocks away. Work out at a different time? No, the late afternoon time is perfect, allows me to blow my accounting number-crunching brain away and then glide into the evening with a fresh mind. Besides, I'm sure other times of the day have their own coffee klatches.

A few weeks ago on a Tuesday, a few of the klatch were standing around chatting over the NFL Network's replay of the Vikings game from the prior Sunday, which was airing on one of the big screen TVs in the cardio room. The Vikings, sheesh. The joke franchise which has choked/quit/clowned its way through over a half-century of existence, yet is still vastly beloved by the vast majority of sports fans in my part of the world. I actively cheer for the Purple to lose, sad but true which is great fun. So I'm not fascinated with the destined-to-fail folks like Zim, Teddy, and Norv that Vikings fans fawn over. I hopped on my usual elliptical machine that was located in front of the group, began my workout, then after a while glanced at the TV to my left. It was late in the fourth quarter … manna from heaven … and my scheming, conniving, avoiding brain, ramped up on endorphins came up with a plan …

Vikings are driving late for a tying or go-ahead score. Teddy Bridgewater drops back to pass … and Broncos blitzers come through unchecked, strip-sack Bridgewater, and pounce on the fumble. Broncos win, remain undefeated, Vikings lose, remain team that can't beat a good team on the road.

And just like I did on Sunday when this game aired live, I pumped my fist and grinned broadly. I didn't overdo it and shout like I had two days prior, but I didn't have any scotch or beef jerky on me this time either. The coffee klatch hasn't tried to lure me into a conversation since.

Tuesday Tuneage
U2 - "Gloria"
1981

Summer is overrated. All those folks with their exhortations to get outside and enjoy the weather are bores: As if the act of being outside is some sort of magical event or that it will solve anything except to keep Coppertone in business. What about those books to read*, TV shows to stream, and LPs to spin? Now that summer is gladly in the rearview mirror, it has dawned on me that October is my favorite month, hands-down. Let me list the reasons:

- Any lingering oppressive heat and humidity goes away. You can shut the windows and not be woken up by your busybody home-owning neighbors who are mowing, blowing leaves, and making general homeowner noise. I like hunkering down inside while it's chilly outside. The landlord (or more likely, my building's thermostat) turns the heat on at some point in October and then my apartment will be 79 degrees until April. I sit inside wearing shorts, a teeshirt, and keep a living room window partially open so that it doesn't creep above 80. Bud Light Lime-A-Rita anyone?

- While the weather is nice enough to still go for long walks, the street fairs and festivals that tend to populate summer have mostly gone away. What this means is that street vendors who invent their own little currency of paper tickets (X amount of tickets for Y dollars, a beer costs Z amount of tickets) aren’t lurking, screwing up the value of straight cash. October: When the good ol’ U.S. dollar stands less of a chance of being dissed and diminished.

 - Hockey starts up. UND and the other NCHC teams generally play Friday and Saturday night series so I can have plans for the weekend. Plus I can double my pleasure: I automatically have an excuse to not meet people for social activities on Friday and Saturday. "Sorry, gotta support my team." Not that I get invited out much these days, but it's nice to have a ready-made alibi. But it's not only the weekends where I can indulge in hockey. The NHL starts and it's a fast-paced, highly-skilled wonder. And it's not just hockey. October is a rich smorgasbord of sports on TV. There's college football, NFL, and THAT PLAYOFF BASEBALL GAME YOU FORGOT ABOUT ON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON!

- Nostalgia. It was in an October that I started my self-employment. At the end of September of 1999, I finished a temp job assignment. During my time off in October I worked a few hours a week doing books for the sole client I had who I worked directly for and waited for the agency to line up my next steady assignment with an outside client. One night during this time, I met my friend Jeff for beers at the CC Club. Jeff was someone I had known for ten years, the brother of one of my college friends. We had never hung out, but having the same interests we would run into each other once or twice a year at shows or movies. During a pitcher of Summit, he mentioned that he was dreading going to his design studio the next day as he had to do client invoicing. I said hey that is what I do for work! Barely-blinking, hops-infused lightbulbs went off over our heads and this led to my securing Jeff's company as that valued second client that I needed to kick temp work to the curb and head into self-employment. Another pitcher of Summit was summoned and we spent the rest of our evening talking about movies, music, TV, etc. Guns n’ Roses was mentioned during the conversation. I got home fired up, abuzz in excitement and pop culture and possibilities. I made a pot of coffee and stayed up until four a.m. writing into my notebook everything I could think of that I wanted to say about Guns n’ Roses. Over the next couple of weeks, this became Exiled on Main Street #21, which was listed in Best of November 1999 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and also led some fans of alternative rock my age to (gasp) say that they sometimes too liked metal. Me, I was on a path where I no longer had to wear khakis and a collared shirt to some downtown office and could stay out late at shows any night of the week. A captain of industry? No, more like a lieutenant of leisure.

*Don't yap at me about summer reading. I do my book reading on my phone and the sun's glare makes this difficult.

Tuesday Tuneage
David Lee Roth - "Yankee Rose"
1986

PART ONE: DESPERATION ON A RED LINE

I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking when David Lee Roth split from Van Halen in the mid-eighties that things were never going to be the same with that band. The goofy theatrics of Roth vs. the rock 'n' roll chops of the other guys was too valuable a dynamic too be recreated or equalled. Even as a teen I knew this.

Buzz started among many hard rock fans when Sammy Hagar was rumored to be the new VH lead singer. I was skeptical, but nobody seemed to agree with me. Sammy Hagar? He was a journeyman, a servicable dude who churned out some decent hard rock earlier in the decade with the likes of "There's Only One Way To Rock" and "Three Lock Box" before veering into meathead territory with "I Can't Drive 55". Seriously, c'mon: The Red Rocker? (I had a college friend who would never call him "Sammy Hagar", it was always "The Red Rocker." Like he knew Hagar well and felt comfortable with the familiar.) Being the only remotely interesting guy in something called HSAS does not lead's one resume in an interview to front the greatest band in mid-eighties America. But the rumor became reality and Hagar was in.

The first Van Hagar album, 5150, had Atlas on the cover, signifying its hope to be a slick mythic product. Rolling Stone (by now the house organ of The Rock Establishment, its publisher Jann Wenner would soon lend a huge hand in codifying all that rock 'n' roll rebellion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) praised it to the heavens because of its tunefulness and slick sound and that Eddie Van Halen's musical abilities obviously outweighed that showy punk Roth's lack of solemnness and how instead Hagar was a nice fit as collaborator. (Rolling Stone's Tim Holmes: On 5150, you taste the clean air of the ozone, see the radiant sunbeams shooting through storm clouds, while the fire burns down below.) (Not mentioned: This album's leadoff single had these lyrics: Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.) Those of us destined to become back-in-my-day VH curmudgeons were already grumbling: "it's just not the same …" while a whole generation of Van Hagar fans was born.

I remember running into a friend on the UND campus in the first half of 1986 and he was telling me how fresh 5150 sounded and how much Hagar added to the band and I was smiling and he thought I was looking forward to hearing the album, but over his shoulder I saw this girl Trish who was petite, hot, and flirty and once made it a point to say stop and say hi to me when she was wearing only a towel wrapped around her as she left her shower … she picked that exact moment to say hi, such are the dangers of stopping by a girls dorm to get some class notes, and somehow my brain stayed engaged on this nonsensical Van Hagar stuff JUST enough to pass on getting a taped copy of 5150. Sure, I could have been a nice guy and taken it, but what if it fell into the wrong hands? What if I then loaned it to somebody in the dorm and it became a soundtrack to our intense post-dinner backgammon games? The horrors.

PART TWO: DAVE TV AVAILABLE IN SPANISH VIA SAP

David Lee Roth's "Yankee Rose" single emerged a few months later in the summer of '86. Roth declared "a REAL STATE of INDEPENDENCE" in case you were wondering what was up behind all the harmless double entendres. The rolling bass into riffing guitars and the ending cries of "bright lights, city lights" toward the end signified that somebody left from the still-remembered, already-long-lamented good ol' Van Halen of two summers prior still gave a damn about rock 'n' roll and making interesting noises and style being character. Rumors that it was a tribute to the Statue of Liberty made the whole thing noble somehow. Roth put together an ace band and recorded a solid album where he appeared on the cover in not-blackface, a native, not a mythic character. Weirder, he also went and cut the full Eat 'Em and Smile album in Spanish. But in the end it all made sense, of course: Because both gringo and amigo editions were PRODUCED BY TED TEMPLEMAN.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Eagles - "Those Shoes"
1979

"I hate the fuckin' Eagles man."

 - The Dude, The Big Lebowski

"Go Eagles! E-A-G-L-E-S! (chuckles loudly)"

 - Mike Tice, December 2005

On a Friday last July, KEXP out of Seattle set about to play every song that was sampled on The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. It was a ridiculously fun project, lasting 12 hours. I heard a few hours while it was on at an accounting client and certain songs would bring interjections from us of "no way!" and "they sampled THIS?" One of the songs played was "Those Shoes" by The Eagles and ever since that afternoon I have tended to go through a phase once a week where I play "Those Shoes" three times in a row and then force myself to do something else in fear that I will keep listening  to it on a loop until bedtime. Strangely, I listen to no other Eagles songs. And this has led me to grab off my bookshelf Headliners: Eagles, a paperback by John Swenson I bought and read back in high school in the early eighties. I'm in a sudden and thankful backlogs of books to read, so I only occasionally peek and page through the book, but I recall it being pretty good as fan bios go. Swenson is a fine writer, and much of the book sneakily doubles as a biography of Joe Walsh and his James Gang*. Walsh is the man who turned The Eagles from a pleasant country-rock outfit into a kinda-hard rock band, and his weirdo persona gave the band a glint of a personality.

So while Walsh didn't have a hand in writing "Those Shoes", his fingerprints/fretboard is all over it. It's got that Midwestern funk thing down like he did in The James Gang  ("Funk #50"?) and more importantly he does croaky guitar like on "Rocky Mountain Way". And let's be honest, Joe should put out an EP of his just playing guitar with that sound. I'd buy three. (One on vinyl, on in mp3, and one for the car I don't have.) But it was a longer-term Eagle who came up with the lyrics, and some of them are doozies.

"You're so smooth and the world's so rough" is lyrical gold, it's like a PG-rated Gene Simmons line. "They give you tablets of love" - is this a pill? And I think "handy with a shovel" means cocaine? I'm drug naive unless it involves antihistamines, caffeine, or pour-your-own depressants. "Jerkoffs in their fancy cars" is a universal lyric … HELL YEAH! "You can't believe your reviews" is probably an aside about the Eagles and rock critics. ("With nary a hint of responsibility in their voices, they sing of Los Angeles' decadent culture, and in the end personify the smugly detached professionalism of much of that city's music." - John Milward, The Rolling Stone Record Guide, first red edition.) Put Cameron Crowe on retainer!

That "Those Shoes" was used heavily in The Beastie Boys' "High Plains Drifter" on Paul's Boutique is huge, but that Beasties ditty pales in comparison to Van Halen's earlier Eastwood-lifting "Hang 'Em High" so I say HAIL CALIFORNIA HARD ROCK/KINDA-HARD-ROCK-WHEN-IT-INCLUDES-JOE-WALSH. DO NOT LOOK BACK. THE EIGHTIES AND BEYOND ARE YOURS. SEE YOU AT US FESTIVAL 3.

*I gotta read this book again cover-to-cover and maybe I'll report back on it here. (Or in typical fashion, I'll instead go crack open Swenson's Headliners: The Who and forget to write about the Eagles book.) A couple of things I do need to bring up though: 1) Swenson signs off with a fan-friendly: "Altogether it seems like the 80s will hear quite a lot from the Eagles", but the book instead appropriately reads as a nice short biography of The Eagles if you don't care about any of their comebacks. 2) In classic fan bio form, the book contains uncaptioned photos. Here's one of Glenn Frey and John Belushi, who is wearing a Minnesota Vikings windbreaker. Why is Chicago guy Belushi wearing a Vikings jacket? Was it the drugs? Did he steal it from Al Franken?

Tuesday Tuneage
Fastway - "Say What You Will"
1983

Zeppish riff predicts The White Stripes, kinda
vocalist lays up short of Stephen Pearcy, surely
not as mysterious as Zebra
not as stone-cold cool as PJ Harvey
not hooks like Billy Squier
not unintentionally funny like Kingdom Come
(or Coverdale/Page for that matter)
maybe shoulda been produced by
recorded by Steve Albini
like Page and Plant?

Tuesday Tuneage
Burton Cummings - "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet"
1976

A couple of years ago I received this email:

Hello, a few of my friends and I are huge Blackhawks fans and we stumbled upon this article you wrote back in 2006 on Jonathan Toews: There's been some debate as to whether it's a parody or not. Any clarification you can give would be great! Thanks!

I would have loved to have responded in deadpan with: "Oh yes, it's true." But I was on vacation and only had my phone to type on and didn't have the energy to mess around with these folks. (Yes, Virginia, there is a Wheatfield Soul Line …") So I revealed the truth: I am a huge University of North Dakota hockey fan who at the time was frequently spinning The Best Of The Guess Who on my turntable and wrote the mashup that took place in my writing mind. While I've written lesser essays with better source material, I would never be quick to dismiss The Guess Who. In 2008, I was deejaying at an art gallery and while spinning "Share The Land", a rather attractive fifty-something wanted to hire me to deejay a party of hers. "Um," I said, "I just do this is a hobby." She looked puzzled. Me, I was probably in a hurry to play Brownsville Station's "Smokin' In The Boys Room". It was a political event, after all.

Tuesday Tuneage
UFO - "Lights Out"
1977

THERE ARE FIVE STAGES TO A PROJECT:
A) Excitement and Euphoria
B) Disenchantment
C) The Search for the Guilty
D) Punishment of the Innocent
E) Distinction for the Uninvolved
 - Aubrey Powell

As a young lover of vinyl albums and their packaging, I was incredibly naive about how album artwork was conceived. If I had a working theory, it was probably thought that each record company had an arts department, and a person or people in that department would deliver artwork after conferring with the recording band or artist. But as a big teenage Pink Floyd fan and a compulsive reader of liner notes, I would always see "Sleeve Design By Hipgnosis" noted on the Floyd LPs. I conjectured that there must be some cool company in the UK somewhere that specialized in trippy Floyd LP art. Later, I would see the Hipgnosis acknowledgement on other bands albums and figured Hipgnosis was some big design company that specialized in album art. I was only half right in my guess.

Last winter, I bought For The Love Of Vinyl: The Album Art Of Hipgnosis by Hipgnosis founders/main collaborators Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. Every Wednesday morning for a stretch of weeks this past spring, I would drink coffee and flip through the book for thirty minutes or so and enjoy the ride. This coffee table book is crammed with album art - front covers, back covers, liner sleeves, posters, outtakes, rough takes - and Storm and Aubrey each provide a few paragraphs telling the story of how they came up with the design. You are in the hands of a couple of highly entertaining guys, they yukk it up through the narratives and sometimes draw a blank with a "that's all I remember, hopefully (the other guy) can provide more detail" confession, and then The Other Guy always does deliver the goods.

I can't do their storytelling justice, but a certain singer is referred to as "Olivia Neutron Bomb" and the tale where Storm jokingly pre-caller-ID answers the phone as Groucho Marx to a quick-to-anger Peter Grant - Led Zeppelin’s notoriously feared and violent manager - has to be in any Hipgnosis biopic. (I may write its script on spec!)

Paging through this book, I fell in love with their approach to their craft. While the Hipgnois album covers are hip, winking, cool; the way they put together album art was the DIY ethic at its best:  Two (later three) guys working in a small London studio. Stock photography stills for background. Get a car, round up some friends to be the models, head to the countryside or an old house for a shoot. And this was all done pre-Photoshop; one of the guys refers to Hipgnosis as "masters of scissors and glue", using montages to great effect.

While Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon is their best-known work, it isn’t “typical” Hipgnosis. Floyd's Wish You Were Here is more representative of their aesthetic. A few more examples:

- The effect for Peter Gabriel’s “melt” album cover was obtained by taking a Polaroid and then applying a blunt pencil to it while it developed. The book is full with anecdotes like this: A make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach unleashed for maximum effect.

- The Strawbs' Deadlines album. Yes they actually filled a phone booth with water and put a (non-stunt man, yikes) guy in a suit in it upside down. (Then there's the inside sleeve, ha!)

- Compare AC/DC’s original Australian cover for Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap to what Hipgnosis came up with for the international version. Storm came up with the design in London, Aubrey was reached by phone in Los Angeles on a different assignment and shot a still of a no-tell motel in LA for a background, then shot models back in London to be the characters in the photo. And I just noticed - there's a dog on the cover! (Aubrey deadpans: "We didn't meet the band and never heard from them again.")

- The UFO Lights Out album. Some guy wearing a jumpsuit, he’s down by where the power works are. But wait: The jumpsuit is zippered down uncomfortably low. And in the background is another person - whether it’s guy or gal isn’t easily identifiable - slipping on his/her jumpsuit. Did they trip out London’s power supply just to have a rendezvous? Or did the hanky panky occur after they fixed a power outage? During? These are the types of stories that form in your mind while gazing upon Hipgnois album covers.

I felt genuinely a bit down when I got to the end of this book, that there were no more pages to flip through and study. Like Rock Dreams and Stairway To Hell, it will likely become one that I occasionally grab to page through, to reference, to allow me to daydream/write/give a damn. As Adrian Shaughnessy writes in the opening commentary, Hipgnosis's work "speaks to people who normally don't care too much about visual expression, in other words ordinary people."

Tuesday Tuneage
Funkadelic - "Friday Night, August 14th"
1970

I turned fifty last week and it was the best sort of birthday. Not only did I not work AT ALL (though working wouldn't have been completely horrible - I'm self-employed and mostly work from home - but I am still in the mindset from having an office job many many years ago where working on your birthday meant spending it with the annoyances/semblances of human beings that are coworkers …), my day consisted of: 1) Biking over to Our Kitchen for a Denver sandwich (their Denver = solid) and hash browns, 2) Biking to Lake Street Spirits for some Summit Saga, 3) Coffee at home with the Common Man Progrum and backgammon on my iPhone, 4) BIGGEST DEAL: Took the bus to Target Field to watch the Twins. Awesome seat (ticket provided by my Dad, still taking care of me when I'm a senior!), Premium stand close by, and fireworks after the game. Twins lost, but I was emotionally prepared for that with Corey Kluber on the opposing nine's mound.

With fifty being a Landmark Birthday, I keep thinking I'm supposed to write something profound, something poignant, something BIG about being around a half-century. I don't have much to say, but I can proudly offer this on Me Being Fifty:

No wife, no kids, no house, no car, no boss, no Facebook account. To quote some of the best lines in Watchmen: "What's happened to The American Dream?" "It came true, you're lookin' at it."