Tuesday Tuneage
The Ventures - "House of the Rising Sun"
1964


So this week's tune came up on my iTunes jukebox recently and I thought it would be fun to write about it. Easier said than done. I typed the header above and then got to the year and realized I didn't know what year it was released. Big deal, I thought, I'll just go to allmusic.com and do a search. Problem is that searching by the song brings up every artist who has recorded "House of the Rising Sun", which is like a hundred thousand and searching through Ventures albums isn't the answer as they have released a couple million of those (and that might be if you include anthologies.)

Such needle-in-the-haystack wishes weren't good enough for me, and being the private detective-in-waiting that I am, I thought of a better way to figure out the release date: I dug through all my old cassettes, where I knew I had a Ventures anthology bought in the discount bins at Target in the late eighties. I found the tape, looked up the label info and what year it was released (Tridex Records, 1980) and cross-referenced this info against allmusic.com's listings. Bingo! Allmusic listed a Greatest Hits, while my cassette was titled The Best of the Ventures. My cassette is simply a stripped-down version of Tridex's Greatest Hits. So by clicking from this Allmusic entry, I was able to find out the release year of this Ventures tune. Which is the same year as the hit Animals version, which I should have been able to make an educated guess on with The Ventures - a band known for doing instrumental covers of current hits.

All I remember from this Ventures Target-bought tape was that 1) It was a hell of a lot of fun to listen to, and 2) "House of the Rising Son was my favorite tune on it by far. As my component tape deck is no longer in use (it's still there physically, sitting on top of the receiver with the turntable on top of it; but audio-wise I used its inputs on the receiver for the Roku box) I may have to play this in the boombox I use in the bathroom for its radio ... what better music to sing along with in the shower than an all-instrumentals collection?

As for why we should care about The Ventures, Jean Charles Costa in The Rolling Stone Record Guide sums up their albums the best: "Rejoice in the fact that they all sound the same ... Stiff snare and cymbal sound, pulsing bass and metallic guitars spitting out popular melodies through a wash of echo and vibrato."

In that book The Ventures are listed immediately after The Velvet Underground. After tonight's mini-adventures, I am more intrigued with The Ventures than I think I've ever been with the Velvets. Go figure. As for my late-night Tuesday Tuneage detective work described in great detail (sorry) above, the case is closed and I should be able to get some shut-eye before Writing Wednesday. But I am desperately resisting the urge to track down what I can find about the Tridex label...

Tuesday Tuneage
J. Geils Band - "Cry One More Time"
1971

Just got back from vacation today and have been busy with work, so this week is a rerun of sorts. I first wrote about Geils' "Cry One More Time" back in '06, though I fell in love with the tune many years before.

Tuesday Tuneage
Marvin Gaye - "Purple Snowflakes"
1964

Before Prince did "Purple Rain" and Jimi Hendrix came up with "Purple Haze," Marvin Gaye was singing "Purple Snowflakes." Absolutely beautiful.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Drifters - "White Christmas"
1954


The animation on this link is cute, but pay attention to the tune: A Christmas standard done in stunning R&B fashion by The Drifters. Merry Christmas everybody!

Tuesday Tuneage
Sugarloaf/Jerry Corbetta - "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You"
1975

I have a playlist set up in my iTunes that is simply titled "Jukebox," and in it are a bunch of random songs I've downloaded over the years. Most of the songs are typically not part of any album I have in iTunes. A favorite thing to do is to pour a drink or grab a beer, fire up the Jukebox on random, and kick back and enjoy the tuneage. This playlist is where I have gotten many a song for this Tuesday Tuneage series and one of my fave songs to hear is "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You."

It hit #9 on the US singles charts in 1975, though you can't call it a one-hit wonder, as Sugarloaf previously hit #3 with "Green-Eyed Lady" in 1970. But "Don't Call Us" is not a Sugarloaf song proper, as my my pal Chuck pointed out that Sugarloaf and their lead singer Jerry Corbetta were co-credited on "Don't Call Us" and a quick look at Internet photos of both the actual disc and the album on which is was placed all have "Sugarloaf" and "Jerry Corbetta" on them. (Gotta love it how the album cover uses separate-but-bad fonts for each entity!)

The tune features an awesome keyboard-driven riff, post-Dylan hipster vocalizing, glorious backing vocals, and samples of both the Beatles and Stevie Wonder. I love the turn-the-tables ending:

"We got percentage points and lousy joints and all the glitter we can use, mama, so huh don't call us now we'll call you."

Allmusic.com calls this tune "bubblegum sarcasm," which is by far one of the greatest turn-a-phrase I've read in my music reading lately.

Oh, and the phone number? It's CBS Records phone number, they had previously turned down Sugarloaf for a record deal. Which ranks "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" up there with great anti-label songs such as Graham Parker's "Mercury Poisoning," Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Workin' For MCA," and the Sex Pistols' "EMI."

Tuesday Tuneage
Jim Ellis - "WKRP In Cincinatti End Credits"
1978

The greatest hard rock song ever? Maybe. That it contains the best nonsense lyrics - I can identify "bartender" twice and not much else - since The Kingsmen stumbled through "Louie Louie" is certain.

Tuesday Tuneage
Killing Joke - "Requiem"
1980

The graffiti in a stall of one of my high school's bathrooms said: "Killing Joke. LA punk/metal." Turns out Killing Joke were not from Los Angeles, nor were they punk (metal, sure you could make the argument.) I thought about them off and on during the ensuing years, but never ventured out and bought their music ... even though Alan Moore and Batman (and Metallica too, covering Killing Joke's "The Wait") suggested that I should. A friend took me to a Killing Joke show at First Avenue in the mid-nineties, it was a solid show from what I recall. But what I seem to equally remember about that night is that Stabbing Westward opened, and I swear in my early zine days I wrote that some radio hit they had "sounded exactly like Def Leppard," but I can't find proof of it now. (Meaning there is the possiblity that I am thinking of *a second* industrial band that sounded like Def Lep!)

So anyway, for some reason a couple of weeks ago I bought Killing Joke's debut album - with the riveting "Requiem" as the leadoff track - thereby proving that factually-inaccurate high school bathroom graffiti can get to you thirty years later. Who knew?

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rolling Stones - "Please Go Home"
1967

When I was twenty-one and living with my parents post-college, I came across a copy of The Rolling Stones' Between The Buttons at some chain - Musicland, maybe - on Wayzata Boulevard near Ridgedale. It was a German pressing, and with it being a Stones album from the sixties, I snapped it up. I gave it a spin or two, but with no blues-rock raveup like "Street Fighting Man," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," or "Brown Sugar" on it, I quickly filed it away, both in my vinyl crates and in my mind: This album was no Beggars Banquet or Let It Bleed, it was more akin to the crappy Their Satanic Majesties Request - just another Stones sixties experiment gone wrong. Or so I thought.

A couple of weeks ago while flipping through my vinyl, I pulled Their Satanic Majesties Request and decided to give it a spin. While I was at it, I pulled Between The Buttons also. But while Majesties still largely stinks, Between The Buttons was a revelation. Sure, it didn't have the blues-raunch associated with classic Stones, but this wasn't the flimsy attempt at folk rock I had thought it was. This was a first-class collection of great songs, one after the other ... "Yesterday's Papers," "Cool, Calm, And Collected," and (especially) "All Sold Out." And I've been playing this LP over and over since. (The AllMusic review sums the album up best.)

My German pressing is the UK version of Between The Buttons. The USA version includes the hits "Ruby Tuesday" and "Let's Spend The Night Together" and kicks "Back Street Girl" and "Please Go Home" off its edition. Good thing I got the UK version, as if I had the USA edition I would have been thinking: "Oh, that's that mediocre album except for the two hits" all these years. But now that I get this album, I'm loving its collection of non-hits. And "Please Go Home" is a must-listen for anybody who loves those old Rolling Stones songs you never hear on oldies or classic rock radio. It's a psychedelic take on their fantastic Bo Diddley stance, better than any of the acid experiments of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and over in three minutes, fourteen seconds. So while the twenty-one-year old me was pretty clueless (and not just in regards to old Stones albums), I'd like to thank him all these years later for grabbing the gem that is Between The Buttons at that almost-forgotten chain store. Rock on, Minnetonka.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rivingtons - "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow"
1962

The hardest of rock, all without guitar histrionics, and one of the most purely fun songs you are going to hear. And one of these days I gotta find a way to poke Songwriter fetishists by sneaking a "The Rivingtons? Oh man ... awesome lyrics!" into a conversation.

Tuesday Tuneage
Joe Walsh - "Rocky Mountain Way"
1973

Last summer while drinking more than one Surly Furious with my college buddy Bob, we started playing a parlor game. It was a "where would you live?" game. I believe (it's a little fuzzy - have you ever had several Surlys?) the questions included:

1) If you had to leave the Twin Cities and Minnesota, which city would you move to?

2) Would you rather live on the East Coast or West Coast?

3) Would you rather live in New York or Los Angeles?

My answers were:

1) Denver. You can see the Rocky Mountains, and they're breathtaking. There's no mosquitos and no humidity in the summer. I could bring beer and chips over to my brother's place on Saturdays and watch college football on his much-larger TV. They have a great college hockey program at Denver University, who is a big rival of my UND team, and living in Denver would mean getting to watch WCHA games. Plus it's the home of Modern Drunkard. And let's not forget the incredible Denver Sandwich, which you can get in any city but surely must be at its best here.

2) West Coast. While it's unlikely I will ever leave Minneapolis, I recently thought that it would be somewhat worthwhile to keep my streak of having never lived east of the Mississipi River. When I look at my place in America, I consider myself a Westerner. I also don't refer to the East as "back East", as I've never been there. I refer to it as "out East." (Furthest East for me? A day-long business trip to Cincinnati in the early nineties.) I've been to Oregon - to visit the aformentioned Bob twenty years ago or so - and it's beautiful. Any locale in northern California, Oregon, or Washington would be preferred to the East Coast. I'll take the threat of an earthquake and falling into the Pacific over the possibility of falling into the East Coast Bias.

3) Los Angeles. Maybe it's that I've been watching a lot of Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm reruns on WGN. Maybe it's the Charles Bukowski thing. Maybe it's Steve Erickson's Amnesiascope. Maybe it's that I recently finished yet another reading of Joan Didion's The White Album. Maybe I'm intrigued by the idea of sports games starting two hours behind when I'm used to them starting. (With all the UND home hockey games now on Fox College Sports, what better way to start a weekend then a Sioux hockey game dropping the puck at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday?) Ah hell - who am I kidding? It's mostly because Midwestern people seem more fascinated with New York than Los Angeles and I'm not fascinated with New York City, never have been. Los Angeles doesn't excite me that much either, but going east seems to be going against some age-old instinct I have as a Westerner. Heeding Horace Greeley's timeless advice, I would head west.

As for "Rocky Mountain Way," its riffing and production evoke for me the wide spaces of the West. Plus I first heard it while living in the Denver suburbs in the shadow of those Rocky Mountains. I never tire of it.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Flamingos - "I Only Have Eyes For You"
1959

In The Heart of Rock & Soul, Dave Marsh calls this tune "one of rock's continuing marvels." All I would add is that it's haunting and eerie and makes me so glad I looked into the iTunes Store and found their iTunes Essentials: Doo Wop.

(Local footnote: The Flamingos are the same group that forced Minneapolis heroes Flamingo to change their name to The Flamin' Oh's!)

Tuesday Tuneage
Mott the Hoople - “Ballad of Mott the Hoople (March 26, 1972 – Zurich)”
1973

I'm on staycation this week, sitting at home with a book, Netflix, music, sitcom reruns, and booze. On Saturday, I got motivated to go to the coffee shop and write, but now that I'm solidly in the slackerdom of midweek my only motivation is to get to the CC Club sometime soon for a burger basket. So this week's song is kind of a repeat: A much-beloved Mott the Hoople song I wrote about years ago.

Tuesday Tuneage
Loverboy - "Turn Me Loose"
1980

So thirty years later, it dawns on me that this tune is about a male prostitute wanting freedom from his pimp. You know: punk rock. Apparently the band name and that photo on the cover of the album weren't enough of clues for me.

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.