Tuesday Tuneage
Freddie and the Dreamers - "Do The Freddie"
1965

Heard this catchy ditty Friday on satellite radio, then checked out the band doing the song on YouTube. Oh. My. Lord...

1) An attempt at an early-sixties dance craze?

2) At least two guys in the band appears to be in their forties, which must have been a rare occurence for pop bands of the sixties.

3) Check out The Temptations and think about how white Freddie and the Dreamers were.

4) Then again, Lester Bangs in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll: "Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and such should be not only respected, but given their place in history."

Tuesday Tuneage
The Baseball Project - "Don't Call Them Twinkies"
2010

It's a weird Tuesday night here in Minneapolis. The Vikings had a bye last weekend so talk about them has dropped amid the Twins opening their American League Divisional Series against the big bad Yankees tomorrow night. But a few hours earlier tonight, everything went haywire. Rumors hit the Internet that the Vikings are talking with the Patriots about trading for Randy Moss.

Despite the lovefest over Target Field and the Twins having actually scored the feat of having won world championships, this is a Vikings town. So I wouldn't be surprised to wake up Wednesday to hear that the Vikings have made their acquistion of a malcontent and that these twin towns are abuzz over a 1-2 team that is early in its season with a long way to go for any Super Bowl appearance that would inevitably result in getting utterly destroyed by a vastly superior AFC team.

But hey, I stay at home to write on Wednesdays, so I can drink my coffee and hopefully find something to read about the Twins somewhere. Maybe the New York papers?

As for this week's song, you can listen to it and read its backstory here. The Hold Steady's Craig Finn wrote the lyrics and sings it. It has a reference to Mudcat Grant, states that "we don't buy our titles", (in your face wherever you are George Steinbrenner!) and contains an oh-so-Midwestern "please" in the chorus.

Nobody has written such a song about the Vikings yet. Then again, "thirty-four total points in four Super Bowl appearances" isn't much of a hook.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Mummies - "(You Must Fight To Live) On The Planet Of The Apes"
1993

One reason why the Children of Nuggets box, while fine, didn't live up to my mind's hype was that it largely lacked the swaggering/stumbling we-wanna-be-Stones/Yardbirds menace of so many of the bands on the original Nuggets box set. Children of Nuggets substituted "psychedelic and pop sixties" for "garage" and while these sounds are pretty, there wasn't enough of basement brewings like "Pabst Blue Ribbon" by Untamed Youth.

Another true garage band to show up on Children of Nuggets were the self-proclaimed "Kings of Budget Rock," the Mummies. They dressed in mummy costumes made of Ace bandages, refused to release their music on compact disc, played through the crappiest used lo-fi equipment they could find, and proudly bashed out garage rock that on recorded tracks sounded like it had been dubbed from tape to tape to tape, the kind of trashy great stuff that was called "punk rock" back in the sixties. As Mark Deming says at Allmusic.com:

Four guys in mummy outfits bash out crude '60s-style rock about beer, babes, and open hostility on battered gear which was doubtless discarded by tone-deaf teenagers who got over their 15-minute delusion of possible future rock stardom in 1966 ... At a time when a lot of garage rock bands sounded like they were drowning in a sea of paisley and nehru affectation, the Mummies flipped the whole scene the bird.

If these jokers had come up in the last ten years I would have scoffed, but they thrashed around in the eighties-into-nineties years making them likely my age, so of course I dig 'em. Then again, I only got into them ten days ago.

Oh ... the song? Gloriously loud and dumb and the first few times I heard it on Little Steven's Sirius station I hated it, but then suddenly I loved it big-time. Things like that happen sometimes.

Tuesday Tuneage
Sniff 'n' the Tears - "Driver's Seat"
1978

It hit number 15 on the US charts but I don't remember hearing it on Top 40 radio. This song will always be:

1) An eerie song I heard on Q-98 on rainy afternoons in Ottertail County thirty years ago or so. Kinda new wave, kinda hard rock.

2) The song playing in Boogie Nights on the New Year's Eve where the seventies turned into the eighties and Floyd Gondolli (Philip Baker Hall) entered the room.

As for the Sniff 'n' the Tears video, well I truly couldn't ask for much more.

Tuesday Tuneage
Focus - "Hocus Pocus"
1971

You think I'm going to try describing this tune with words??

But how great is this song? Its title rhymes, meaning it goes up there with standards like "Tutti Frutti," "Wooly Bully," "True Blue," "Double Trouble" "Bang-Shang-A-Lang," "Wango Tango," "A.C.D.C.," "Someday, Someway," "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," etc. etc.

Tuesday Tuneage
Steel Wool - "No Sugar Tonight"
1969

I told the story of this song (or my theory on it) last year on an Exiled Radio podcast. Since I haven't done a podcast in over a year - got sick of hearing myself talk - and I think only four people listened to those podcasts anyway, I feel safe writing the same old thing about the song here.

A couple of years ago, I read the book Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth by Kim Cooper and David Smay. There was a short chapter on White Whale Records, a Los Angeles label in the sixties that was most famous for having The Turtles on its roster. The book mentioned that one of the singles released by White Whale was a song titled "No Sugar Tonight" by the band Steel Wool and that the song was written by one Randy Bachman. There was no mention of Bachman's Guess Who pedigree or that his band actually recorded this song also. So I downloaded the song - a terrific, fast-paced, garage-y take on a song you've heard a million times on classic rock radio and are likely sick of.

But Steel Wool's take lacks the "New Mother Nature" second half that the Guess Who had. A look at Wikipedia's entry on the song shows that Bachman wrote "No Sugar" while in Los Angeles and that while the Guess Who recorded it in 1969, they didn't release it until 1970 so there is a solid chance that Steel Wool released it first. My theory on this is further backed up by Wikipedia's claim that Bachman played "No Sugar Tonight" for his band and the record label, they said it was too short, and Burton Cummings then wrote "New Mother Nature" to fill out a longer piece. (Which makes "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" Canada's "A Day In The Life.") See, I think Randy Bachman wrote "No Sugar Tonight" in Los Angeles and shopped it around in order to get some songwriter money. But the best he could do was pawn it off on Steel Wool - which in order further the mystery was maybe fronted by Bobby Randell, who used to be a key member of The Knickerbockers of the garage-rock Beatles-sounding "Lies" fame.

A song that's two minutes and five seconds long and yes, it stuck with me so that I thought through all of the above. Damn that was a fun few days.

Tuesday Tuneage
Alice Cooper - "Generation Landslide"
1973

A brief rock 'n' roll history lesson, because few I have talked to over the years seem to know this: The name "Alice Cooper" originally applied to the whole band - Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce on guitars, Neil Smith on drums, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Vincent Furnier on lead vocals. After seven albums -five on Warner Bros. and four of those produced by the masterful Bob Ezrin - the band split up (likely due to artistic differences, right?) and Furnier went on to a solo career as "Alice Cooper." It is important to understand this, it's why the original band's (best captured on 1974's Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits) music is better than Alice's later solo stuff. Plus it makes the "she asked me why the singer's name was Alice" line in "Be My Lover" all the better in the By The Way Which One's Pink Sweepstakes.

I first heard "Generation Landslide" in the movie Dogtown and Z-Boys (the movie so nice Stacy Peralta wrote it twice) and not owning any Alice Cooper aside from Greatest Hits was intrigued. I acquired the song and it's brilliant. Acoustic guitar opening, hooks galore, Dylan-like lyrics, a damn fine harmonica solo, and a hard rock ending that's worthy of The Who. The song is about the generation gap - I think, though the first time I heard "landslide" used colloquially was after the 1972 presidential election - but nobody has anaylzed these lyrics like those of "American Pie" though the song is just as good and over and done with much quicker.

Thinking Too Much About The Ghost Writer

I watched The Ghost Writer the other night. It looked great - it was always cloudy and/or rainy, adding to the foreboding - and the actors were all in fine form, plus you got your blonde or brunette mature hottie choice between Kim Cattrall and Olivia Williams (much younger than her character in real life, somehow they made her look older and hotter.) It deals with a ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) assigned to help former British prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) with his memoirs. The previous ghost writer died under mysterious circumstances, and this new ghost writer begins to find out things are not what they seem with Lang and his past. I ended up giving it three stars (out of five) on my Netflix, but there were certain elements of the plot I couldn't get my head around in any type of logical way.

**NOTE**: Plot spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen The Ghost Writer and don't want it ruined, please stop reading.

1) Lang makes a speech on the road outside of his compound and security seemed pretty lax. I was waiting for somebody to pelt him with an egg or two. Geez, with security like this he could end up getting shot ...

2) Towards the end of the movie, at a book publication party a note is passed from person to person to person to person (etc.) to Lang's wife. These are a bunch of hoity-toity folks drinking champagne, not a seventh-grade study hall. No way the note gets passed like this.

3) One of the mysteries that unfolds is the assertion that Lang has been a CIA operative since the mid-seventies and in his ten years as prime minister, did the USA's bidding. Since when has the United States government ever needed the CIA to get the UK to do what it wants? No malfeasance needed: All the Americans gotta do is ask.

Tuesday Tuneage
D.A.D - "Sleeping My Day Away"
1989

This one was a staple on Z-Rock back when I was enthralled with that blissfully awesome station. It opens with a Folsom Prison guitar, throws in a hook-tastic riff, melody, and chorus and containst this immortal line:

"'Cause I hit the sack when the sun's coming back!"

Which lyrically resembles Merle Haggard's "Honky Tonk Night Time Man." Combined with the Johnny Cash reference above, I'd love to argue that this makes D.A.D. some hidden gem of an alt-country band but I haven't had enough coffee yet today to pull that off.

(Option #2 after more coffee: Anti-corporate down-with-The-Man rant on how D.A.D. used to stand for "Disneyland After Dark" but the band dropped that name under legal pressure from Disney, the same corporation that owned ABC Radio Networks ... who pulled the plug on Z-Rock!)

All these years later I still love this tune, and it describes one of my great achievements as a younger man. Because during this era, I once came home from work on a Friday, fell asleep around 6:30 pm and woke up Saturday afternoon about 4:30 pm. Twenty-two hours straight!

Tuesday Tuneage
Paul Westerberg - "Man Without Ties"
1993 (I think)


I'm not here to convince you of the greatness of Paul Westerberg's songwriting. Those of you who are familiar with the 'Mats and Westerberg's solo work know this already. If you've stumbled upon this and are not familiar with Westerberg's work, well you'll just have to trust me: The man has a golden pen.

Years ago I turned my good friend onto Turk onto the Replacements. It was part of a musical reciprocity agreement - I loaned him some of my new music LPs from the likes of the 'Mats and Husker Du, he loaned me classics from the likes of Black Sabbath and Van Morrison. After listening to a few Replacements albums, Turk declared that Westerberg a modern-day Woody Guthrie who "could write a song about anything, including that hot girl who works at the convenience store in Midwest Plaza." It was my duty to inform him that Westerberg had already done that, "Customer" from the Replacements' first album.

So last week I stumbled upon a Westerberg tune titled "Man Without Ties." I thought it might be about guys like me, as I don't have to wear a tie to work. Before buying it from iTunes, I scanned the lyrics. I instead found out that it's about an unattached man who eats frozen pizza every Friday night. Holy crap, the song isn't just about a guy like me, Westerberg has nailed my life to a "T"! The feeling I got was eerie, but it subsided as I sang along with the song six or seven times in a row. The tune is a fun one, it starts out almost as a whisper and is a full-blown singalong by the end.

Rituals For Agnostics

After thirty years, I recently switched from using an electric razor to shaving with a manual razor and shaving cream. What happened was that one morning I put my bifocals on after shaving and with my readers part of the lenses saw I wasn't getting the clean, close shave I thought I had been getting. I hated shaving anyway - a few years back I moved to shaving only every other day as appearances aren't important with my employment situation. To see that I wasn't getting the job done properly drove me nuts. I've never had the desire to grow a beard (though a Nick Blackburn/Matt Guerrier-like moustache is under consideration), so shaving suddently became a major concern.

After doing some research online, I went with a Gillette razor. My other option was something from the Schick line. In fact, I like saying "Schick" more than I like saying "Gillette", so at times I pretend I bought the other brand. And after shaving once the old-fashioned way, I was hooked. Now instead of hating shaving, I love it. I love filling the sink up halfway with hot water, I love covering my face with shaving cream, I love rinsing the razor after a few strokes. And once I don those bifocals ... ahhhhh, sure "Schick" is fun to say - but so is "Gillette Mach 3 Turbo." So now I have a new favorite ritual.

And "ritual" is the key word here. As I get older and find ways to manage the various anxieties, worries, and day-to-day hassles that ultimately don't add up to anything major but a confused mind ... I find that it's the little rituals that calm me down, make me feel in control, and ready to face the day or long night.

Grinding whole bean coffee, pouring water into the coffee maker and hitting the "on" button. Reading the newspaper during commercial breaks during the Twins game. Mixing a martini, Rob Roy, or simple scotch and soda - my move last year to add cocktails to my liquid diet was no doubt influenced by the non-ritual of opening a beer. Cleaning the vinyl LP, cleaning the needle (all vinyl junkies know the importance of using clean needles), dropping the stylus on the outer rim of the album or single.

Rituals. The simple little things that keep me from saying "the way of the future" over and over again.

Tuesday Tuneage
Black Sabbath - "Snowblind"
1972

I pretty much hate summer. I was trying to decide if I "hate" summer or if I merely "dislike" it. But words like "detest" and "loathe" kept popping up in my mental thesaurus, so "hate" it is. I hear my fellow Twin Cities residents tell us that summer is our reward for our brutal winters, but I look at it the other way: Our winters are relatively mild (spend a winter a couple of hundred miles or more further north and you'll know what I mean) and I look at our falls and winters as being a reward for days where draining heat and humidity drown out any attempt I have at enjoying a day. Plus summer features lots of sunshine, which I find boring. Nighttime? Darkness? Much more fun, much more to dream about and write about in the dark hours.

Today the heat index in Minneapolis hit over 100 degrees. I spent most of the day in my apartment with my window air conditioning unit going, along with ceiling fans and a fan blowing here in my writing office. It wasn't cool enough to chill beer, but it was comfortable. I have recently been reading some nonsense about how we need to put our home air conditioning units aside. Something about how if we don't chill ourselves at home, we'll go outside and socialize with our neighbors. Then because folks are outside a lot after work, our streets will be safer. I assume that the anti-air conditioner lobby thinks that once this "Open Windows, Use Fans" strategy eliminates crime, it will soon bring us world peace.

Which brings me to Black Sabbath's "Snowblind." As I prefer winter to summer, when the heat index is around or over 100 degrees, I love to blast this tune on headphones and pretend it's January (even though the song isn't really about snow.) I crank up the air conditioning and celebrate that via its blasting loud technology it trumps all of that hippie commune "let's live together as one" bullshit. Just like Black Sabbath did.

Tuesday Tuneage
Point Blank - "Nicole"
1981

My one memory of this song when it was popular (it hit #39 on the Billboard Hot 100 when I was in high school) is hearing it while driving down Washington Avenue/Highway 81 South in Grand Forks on my way home from school. In fact, that is my only Point Blank memory. Curious, I checked my Rolling Stone Record Guide (original red one) to see what they had to say about the band. John Swenson: Pointless late-Seventies formula hard rock. Nice pun, Swenson. Allmusic.com doesn't give the band any kind of overview or bio, but their always-friendly album reviews tend to back up Swenson's "formula" claim, tending to refer only diehard fans of the group or Southern rock afficiandos to certain albums.

"Nicole" is from an LP titled American Exce$$. If you're someone who admires their use of dollar signs there, well they previously had an album pointedly - pun intended, Swenson got me going - aimed at getting some attention titled Airplay. Allmusic.com describes American Exce$$ as: "more Toto than ZZ Top." That hurts. More interesting in this review is the fact that prior to this album, Point Blank fired their original lead vocalist and brought in a guy named Bubba (yes!) Keith.

Rather than calling "Nicole" something as harsh as "formula", I'll call it "competent hard rock" and a helluva lot better than most stuff playing on Grand Forks' Top 40 station back in '81. It's about a guy who returns to his hometown to find the sweet little thing he had a fling or romance with has turned into a bad girl.

She's "hanging around with strangers" and "looking like a burnout."

But in the end, he admits he kinda likes his girl gone wrong, and not just because burnout girls wear the tightest jeans:

You started looking kind of spaced-out
You drive a man stark raving wild

Of course she drives you wild, she's a hot girl and your name is Bubba. Nicole will never settle down with you but she'll let you buy a box of Miller High Life for her and her friends Friday night.

Tuesday Tuneage
Blue Oyster Cult - "Black Blade"
1980

The lyrics for this song were written in collaboration with science fiction writer Michael Moorcock, and it's all about his hero Elric - the protagonist of a bunch of sword and sorcery books. I admit I had the misfortune of reading some of them as a teen. Not only were they not "hard sci-fi" but they were fantasy, which is bullshit. (Tip of the pen to Roman from Party Down Catering.) (Moorcock did write Behold The Man, which as far as I can remember is some great sci-fi. To keep all of this in perspective though, none of this stuff is exactly Play It As It Lays.)

But Blue Oyster Cult's sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal/S&M/kitchen-sink shtick holds up so well over time because their tongues were always planted firmly in cheek. And BOC's music also holds up because it is up there with the very finest of seventies metal: Riffing guitars, rock-solid rhythm section, and hooks hooks hooks. At the end of this tune you get some some sort of robotic voice talking sinister-like at the end. He's the voice of the Black Blade sword and he's asserting his control over his would-be owner. It's as scary as the kids who show up on your doorstep on Halloween in monster costumes. And "Black Blade" is as much fun as handing out treats to those kids and chuckling while you sip on a beer. Help yourself to some candy.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Del Fuegos - "Don't Run Wild"
1985
A big deal to some in the mid-eighties was the so-called "roots rock" movement. The logic, I think, went like this: Rock in the first half of the eighties got too overproduced and glossy. Roots rock was part of the counterattack, with band emphasizing "roots" such a country and old-time (think fifties) rock 'n' roll. Hence the likes of The Blasters, The True Believers, Rank and File, Jason and the Scorchers, The BoDeans, The Beat Farmers, Lone Justice, The Long Ryders, and The Del Fuegos. And just like pretty much every rock 'n' roll genre ... Some of it was great while much of it forgettable. (This description sums up The Long Ryders' State Of Our Union LP: Opening song "Looking For Lewis and Clark" is a classic while the rest of the album is unbelievably mediocre.)

Anyway, The Del Fuegos put out "Don't Run Wild" in '85. I had never seen the linked video until tonight, but now I know what Patrick Dempsey was up to before Can't Buy Me Love. I first heard the tune on Q98 out of Fargo and loved it. Still do, with its mysterious sound and catchy chorus it's a late-night-under-headphones fave. Problem is, the album they put it on is called Boston, Mass. When rock 'n' roll fans think of Boston, they think of the awesome J. Geils Band, who did their own version of roots rock (soul, R&B, Stonesy swagger) in the seventies and easily beat all the above-listed bands. "We are gonna ... blow ... your ... face ... out!"