Tuesday Tuneage
The Kings - "This Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide"
1980

How to do justice to one of the all-time greats? There's no way to overhype or overheat this one. Bigger concern: How to sit down and type up these notes up without cuing up the song and starting an instant party in the living room?

Canada's own The Kings' "This Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide" is a garage rock twofer with vocals and keyboards that hold hands with new wave, riffing guitar for the hard rockers, and a great beat so the girls can dance. Throw in an ECHO-y mix by clutch producer Bob Ezrin (a fellow Canadian, whose production credits include party classics "School's Out" and "Shout It Out Loud") and you've got a classic one-hit wonder that will bring a smile to Gen Xers all over North America.

This is one of the few songs that I bother obsessing with the lyrics:

- Lunatics and crazies are mentioned frequently, matching the no-holds-barred zaniness of the music.

- The lines: "Hey ladies / You crazies / Well me and Zero / Request you in the Mercedes" anticipate the appearance of the Beastie Boys a half-decade later.

- I don't trust the infinite lyrics websites. Is it: "I'm laughing as I'm analyzed" or "I'm laughing as I'm outta lies."?

- "Nothing matters but the weekend / From a Tuesday point of view" is another in a long line of lyrics and songs that point to Tuesday (this blog being biased) being the great non-weekend rock 'n' roll day. To wit, a sampling:

"Ruby Tuesday" by The Rolling Stones
"Tuesday's Gone" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
"Voices Carry" by 'Til Tuesday
"Friday on My Mind" by The Easybeats ("Coming Tuesday I feel better")
"Girlfriend" by Matthew Sweet (title track of an album that has Tuesday Weld - yessir - on its cover)

- The "nothing matters but the weekend" line comes into the song just as the drums go to a military march-sounding beat. It's a call to arms! Arm yourself with some Molsons and bring on Friday!

This song never quits. It's the "A Day In The Life", "Stairway To Heaven", AND "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" of garage rock. Play it now and I guarantee: Instant party in your living room.

Tuesday Tuneage
Petra Haden - "I Can't Reach You"
2005

When Petra Haden released her a cappella version of The Who Sell Out back in 2005, it went through a few stages of perception in my mind:

- WTF?
- Okay, I gotta buy this one just out of the curiousity factor. Maybe it'll give me some good material to mock.
- WTF?
- Hey this is dangerously catchy!
- Genius!
- Brilliant!
- This will cure any foul mood I ever have in my life FOREVER.

So last week involved barely making rent and other assorted minor/major hassles involved with being my own boss (and not always being very good at it.) Needless to say: Come Saturday night I fired up Petra Haden's gloriously charming album, poured a cold one, and gave in once again.

Tuesday Tuneage
Green River - "Swallow My Pride"
1988

I recently finished reading Steve Waksman's This Ain't The Summer of Love: Conflict And Crossover In Heavy Metal and Punk. A few thoughts:

1) This was an absorbing and informative read, recommended for fans of either genre.

2) He states the case that punk was basically as a concept invented by writers. True, but how not "punk rock" is that?

3) Chuck Eddy wrote the synopsis for this book back in 1991 in the intro to his book Stairway To Hell: "Punk and metal had been swapping genes approximately forever. Graph their time lines, you'll end up with a double helix."

4) The Stooges' Fun House album is a great metal album. I mention this only because certain punk rock fans I know have hissy fits when I bring this matter up.

The title of This Ain't The Summer of Love was inspired by a bit of a song by Green River. They are one of those bands that looks better on paper than they actually sound. With two guys who went on to form Mudhoney and two guys who went on to form Pearl Jam, they were kind of a reverse-chronological supergroup. The excitement I felt in finding their Dry As A Bone/Rehab Doll collection in the used CD stacks at Roadrunner Records was tops I ever felt about them; actually listening to them is another matter. Mark Arms's sub-Iggy voice generally wears me down before I make it through a complete tracking.

"Swallow My Pride" is where in 1988 they cover their own song from 1985, and end up also covering the chorus of Blue Oyster Cult's "This Ain't The Summer of Love", tying in sonically to the metallic garage sound of the early BOC albums. As eighties punk/alt bands covering classic hard rock bands goes, it's about up there with The Minutemen's take on Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" but not up there with The Replacements covering Kiss and nicking a Ted Nugent riff on Let It Be. Green River scored extra points in advance for not covering the "cowbell" song though. Thank the Lord for that.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Novas - "The Crusher"
1964

So it's a Monday evening in July and I'm bored senseless. The volume of accounting work is slow slow slow, the mental numbness has creeped all over my brain. I don't feel like writing, reading, or watching Netflix. The newspaper has been read and the sun will be out for a while. I surf the channels on Comcast and come across WWE Raw. I stop to watch. The wrestling moves are the same as always, but I'm disturbed by the matchups. The people of color are either heels or getting beat up by multiple white guys. But then "The Real Americans" make their entrance and their manager runs down host city Brooklyn for being a melting pot. He also doesn't like foreigners who are sneaking their way into the country. His team faces the Usos, these high-flying Samoan dudes who wear war paint. The Usos win the match and immediately become my favorite babyfaces with their warpaint, chants, and high-flying moves. I'm hooked.

Next up is the smug Damien Sandow, who instantly becomes a favorite heel. He bills himself as "The Intellectual Savior of the Masses" (his entrance music is Handel's "Messiah") and repeatedly commands the crowd to "Silence!" His opponent is some nondescript guy named Christian, who I eventually deduce is a wily long-time veteran. This proves to be true as he outsmarts Sandow, gains a pin, and then runs out of the ring pointing to his forehead to indicate he also has the smarts that Sandow claims are his exclusively!

Also appearing that night were colorful characters like Alberto Del Rio, a heel who looks like a Hispanic Mitt Romney; weird backwoods cult the Wyatt Family (one guy wore a sheep's head mask); the fascist-looking Shield (three guys dressed in all black, boots and protective vests); and of course ANOTHER heel manager, Paul Heyman, insufferably smug in the best Bobby "The Weasel" Heenan manner. The WWE wasn't the AWA of my youth, but it flipped the AWA formula around. Classic AWA had boring matches - always a star beating up a jobber like Kenny "Sodbuster" Jay (he owned a landscaping business) and interspersed with brilliant over-the-top interviews where a star would interact with classic straight man Gene Okerlund. In WWE, the interviews are rare but the matches always feature name stars. The plan is to keep you interested in the ongoing storylines, hoping you will buy into their pay-per-view events.

And this all takes be back to being a child, when The Crusher was my wrestling hero along with many youth and adults across the Upper Midwest. Leave it to a Minneapolis garage band to pay homage to him on a 45. Listen up you turkeynecks!

Tuesday Tuneage
Golden Smog - "V"
1996

Bulldog Jan 14th

Oh yeah that's her
the one's who's gonna break
your heart tonight
She brings you beers
you give her money
She leaves
Gary once said
that's the perfect woman.

Tuesday Tuneage

R.E.M. - "Orange Crush"

1988

My first sustained exposure to R.E.M. came from two sources: 1) Summer singles on Q-98 out of Fargo when I was spending college years June through August in Otter Tail County. "So. Central Rain" and "Can't Get There From Here" were so weirdly great to hear amidst the hard and classic rock on gravel roads while driving on the way to greasy summer jobs. 2) College pal Gary, who had the albums on cassette. The specific memory here is that we were at a party hosted by close friends but nothing much was going on, so Gary grabbed me and our friend Chris and we drove around Grand Forks with beers and listened to R.E.M. and The Replacements. In fact, that was Gary's reasoning to get out of the party: "Hey I got some R.E.M. and Replacements tapes in the car, let's go for a drive."

But I found Murmur through Document to be non-great outside of the singles. I was at a post-college bash at a friend's apartment in Grand Forks (UND was hosting hated NDSU in football, but it was chilly out so we watched the beer in his flat with multiple flats of beer) when a debate about R.E.M. broke out. The divisions broke down predictably in 1988 ways: The hep declared them arguably the greatest band in the world and the classic rockers deemed them wussy and non-rock. I uttered something I deemed significant from my Schmidt-fueled haze: "They should release a collection of singles, I'd buy that." That fell on flat ears. (Deservedly, I added nothing to the debate, I was just being an entitled consumer.) Amazingly, I was in Northern Lights down on Hennepin and 7th just a few days later and stumbled across Eponymous, the very singles collection I had recently called for.

I fell in love with Eponymous and grew to think of R.E.M. was an outstanding band. Should have went with my first "they're a singles band" instinct though, as Green and Out of Time were both duds outside of their singles (and not always then, "Radio Song" is pretty bad.) I learned my lesson by the time Automatic for the People came out, ducked buying it despite the brilliance of its lead singles "Drive." and "Man on the Moon." Friends would get miffed with my singles band theory and my disdain for Automatic for the People's "Everybody Hurts" but we've reached a detente in middle age as R.E.M. has disbanded and I spend more time delving into my music collection and less time concocting contrarian theories.

I had been silently campaigning for an Eponymous II - a collection of R.E.M. singles from 1988 forward - for years and then finally realized in this day of the mp3, I could make my own R.E.M. playlist. The first song on this R.E.M. Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (That Excludes "Everbody Hurts" And Other Songs) playlist is "Orange Crush". It's from an album titled Green (Chicago rockers Green soon released an EP titled R.E.M.) and is one of those songs that (temporarily) roped me into the sizable R.E.M. cult. It's not about soda pop or the 1977 Denver Broncos 3-4 defense but is intriguingly catchy.

Tuesday Tuneage
Soul Asylum - "Barstool Blues"
1989

to head through that door, take a right and find a barstool. To order and to drink and to glance at the baseball game on the TV. To watch the lovelies as they walk in, to check out the punks as they maintain the code. To order a shot, and then do it well. To contemplate a bus ride home but have one more. To stay later than you meant and to see the record store is closed. To decide to walk home. To stop at another bar. To daydream at night.

Tuesday Tuneage
Smashing Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock"
1993

In those heady days of my Z-Rock obsession they played grunge, which was sweet because grunge was a great subgenre of metal: bottom-heavy, Sabbath-influenced, and played by guys who guzzled beer and wore flannel shirts. Hell, the Pearl Jam guys even loved sports - thereby reinforcing grunge's populist appeal.

On 1992's Singles soundtrack, the one that you swore up and down was "going to be a mainstay of everybody’s album collection in twenty years”, Smashing Pumpkins' “Drown” dropped into all the grunge so beautifully. The following year, I debated buying the Pumpkins' second album, Siamese Dream. The first single, "Cherub Rock" was exhuberant, anthemic. The second single, "Today", had an annoying chorus that was childlike and not in a good way. The sinker was that the third single, "Disarm", it had the “I used to be a little boy” line sung so whinily by frontman Billy Corgan. Along with this was the increasing realization that this Corgan character was something of a dork.

This realization was vindicated after reading an article in the April 1994 issue of Spin on Soundgarden that had major moments of levity, all inadvertently provided by Corgan. To wit:

- Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil drink beers, while Corgan orders a strawberry margarita.

- Corgan riffs on Jungian therapy, then actually asks Thayil what astrological sign he is.

- "Ooh," Thayil says a little too loudly as Corgan walks away, "I'll bet he's going to call his therapist in Chicago, wake her up at four in the morning, and tell her about that big, mean bear who made fun of him."

- Corgan walks past wearing a long-sleeved Superman T-shirt like the one your four-year-old nephew probably owns."You hurt me deeply," Corgan says, touching the giant S on his chest and pouting. "You hurt me deeply in my heart."

(At this point I must say I imagine that Jim Parsons - Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory - of course plays Corgan in the Smashing Pumpins biopic.)

As a music fan, it seemed you had to take the Corgan drama queen nonsense with the anthemic, surging guitars. I couldn’t get my head around that, especially at that age when I had an idealized view of rockers. I spent the rest of the nineties chuckling at Billy Corgan. The next Smashing Pumpkins album was titled - get this: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and had lyrics like "The world is a vampire" and "God is empty … just like me." Whoah, deep stuff there William! After that, there was the inevitable dabbling with electronica and when they put out an album titled MACHINA/The Machines of God I figured laughing at Corgan wasn't even worth the effort any more. Ryan Adams - an equally annoying whiner had appeared and The White Stripes were on the horizon to provide hope and optimism in rock 'n' roll as I entered my late thirties.

These days, I play some Smashing Pumpkins and have fun with nineties nostalgia. I remember the odd moment of seeing Billy Corgan as a panel member on Midwest Sports Channel on the Chicago-based cult favorite The Sports Writers on TV, which meant he wasn't one hundred percent dork. I can hit "skip" any time "Disarm" is played on a device and it's not like I have to hang out with Corgan. And every once in a while, I dwell on that time when “Cherub Rock” was an indicator that Smashing Pumpkins could be the next fave band - I remember what street I was driving on and what the weather was like when I first heard its opening chords - and the oncoming unraveling of the knowledge that their brand of alt rock wasn't exactly the Little Richard funhouse rock 'n' roll that I revel in.

Tuesday Tuneage

The Hellacopters - "Carry Me Home"

2002

I saw The Hellacopters at the 400 Bar just over ten years ago, they were hyper and skinny Scandavian dudes. You know how most American bands will introduce a song, play it, then say "thank you"? The Copters would do this: "This one's called 'Like No Other Man.' Thank you!" Then they would play the song. It was quite endearing and while I have never found their studio releases all that consistent, they recorded enough hard rock anthems to find a steady place in my music rotation. Especially when I need that one song to blast away bad thoughts or distractions in my brain.

I first got into The Copters early in the first term of George W. Bush. I bring this up because of a theory being held by certain music fans I talked to at the time. The theory was this: With a conservative Republican back in the White House after eight years of a Democratic president, there was a good chance that this would bring back the glory of Reagan-era punk rock. (Think Minutemen, Black Flag, Husker Du, etc.) It seemed like an odd theory to me - these same people were badmouthing Bush for his politics, but then out the other side of their mouth were saying: "But think how great punk rock is gonna be in a few years!" As the early years of the Dubya administration played out, there was a punk revival - but it was led by the likes of The Strokes and The White Stripes and was a garage rock revival that had nothing to do with being a reaction to the Bush administration.  

So what does all this have to do with The Hellacopters? They are sympton of yet another hole in this theory I'm addressing: The Copters weren't oppressed by some right-wing administration allegedly turning their country into a police state, they were garage rockers from Sweden, which everybody knows is a generous welfare state. Then note that the original punk rock - the American garage rock of the mid-sixties - was born in the midst of LBJ's Great Society. Yet nobody runs around claiming any type of link between big government and garage rock. Seems to me the only conclusion to draw is rather plain: These punky garage rock spikes happen when kids have garages.

Tuesday Tuneage

Jethro Tull - "Bungle In The Jungle"

1974

Decades before indie rockers across the land totally dweebed out by recording albums of children's songs (makes sense though as whiteboy crappy vocals and lazy rhythm sections - the hallmarks of indie rock - have "childish" written all over them), Jethro Tull placed one of the all-time great child rock songs at number 12 on the U.S. charts. Being eight years old at the time, I'm confident I knew what a great child's song was. The title rhymed, it mentioned animals, and it was catchy. What more could a kid ask for?

Also, "Jethro Tull", like "Led Zeppelin" sounded cool. (I assumed both were men, not bands.) In the last half of elementary school, "Bungle In The Jungle" was a fave. I didn't buy the 45, I didn't buy many 45s. But along with Star Trek reruns, Strangely Enough!, and game after game of Risk and gin rummy; it provided entertainment and entertainment only. Being a kid was no fun, except when it actually was.

Tuesday Tuneage
UFO - "Rock Bottom"
1974

I. UNLESS IT'S LINK WRAY, WHY BOTHER?

Guitarists! I have had guitarist-loving friends who have bought certain albums just because Steve Vai or Dave Navarro played on them. Oh boy! It's a strange little subculture, the fetish over the likes of Vai, Navarro, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani, and Yngwie Malmsteen (who, if he didn't exist, would have to be invented.) This is a world where a bore like Journey's Neal Schon is considered worthy of attention and acclaim.

II. THE NUMBERS ALL GO TO ELEVEN

Gear! Like car buffs and computer enthusiasts, guitarists do that male thing of breaking down and detailing all of the equipment and technology involved in the endeavor. Just check out any guitarist's Wikipedia page to confirm. To wit, here's the wiki on Dave Navarro: Since late 2008, Dave's been seen using live and in studio a custom white Ibanez RG, with a humbucker/single/single pickup layout, gold hardware, and a vintage style tremolo... essentially an Ibanez version of his PRS Guitars Signature Model. Dave previously used a vintage Marshall JCM800, but now plays through 2 Marshall JCM900 amplifiers which are dubbed Tanjerine and Peach. For large gigs he will also use a Marshall Mode 4 for clean tones. In the studio he is also commonly known to use a Vox AC30 for cleans and a Bogner Uberschall for dirty tones.

Me, I like my writing gear: Mead Five Star notebook, Pilot pen, MacBook. One of the best moments in the fabulously great Almost Famous is that snippet on Writer's Gear between Lester Bangs and William Miller:

LB: What do you type on?
WM: Smith-Corona Galaxis Deluxe.

III. MICHAEL SCHENKER HAS STARRED IN TWO SEPARATE GROUPS NAMED "MSG", BUT WHY DOES MY FAVORITE CHINESE TAKE-OUT PLACE BAN THEM?

Recently I was thinking about the guitar/guitarist fetish that some guys have while listening to The Essential UFO. They were the complete package for fans of seventies hard rock: Great riffs, catchy tunes, compelling singer, with Michael Schenker pulling brilliant and inventive leads that avoided jamming and wanking. Like Eddie Van Halen, Schenker played with a certain metallic exuberance that lifted tunes like "Doctor Doctor", "Shoot Shoot", and "Cherry" into the stratosphere. Prime example is "Rock Bottom." It's six-plus minutes of hard rock fury filled with Schenker pyrotechnics. I would never buy an album simply because Schenker played on it, but he's one of those rare axemen who lives up to his hype.

AND IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING … Schenker's Wikipedia page states that: Schenker's main guitar for much of his career was a Gibson Flying V, which he typically played through a wah-wah pedal (used as a parametric equalizer to strengthen the "sweet spot") and Marshall amplifiers.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Long Ryders - "Looking For Lewis And Clark"
1985

The Long Ryders named themselves after the Walter Hill movie, but used the sixties/Byrds spelling of "Riders." So while "Looking For Lewis And Clark" is undoubtably one of the more compelling songs of the mid-eighties roots rock movement, you get the feeling something other than the typical back-to-basics may be looming. For instance, The Ryders are looking for Lewis and Clark, who were explorers themselves: Get it? (Not proud that it took me damn near thirty years to get it.)

The song kicks in with a whistle and a howl, so you get the feeling you're in for a good ride no matter what happens with the lyrics. There are mentions of Tim Hardin and Gram Parsons in the same verse in a bid for Songwriter Credibility, but then they mention their own band name and that seems a tad forced. There's also a bizzarre mention of the Yellow Pages, which you kids out there will have to Google. And speaking of which: HEY DEX AND VERIZON, WHY DO YOU STILL DROP OFF DOZENS OF PHONEBOOKS IN MY APARTMENT BUILDING'S LOBBY?? The song ends with a nod to "Louie Louie", which establishes garage rock credentials. And geography credentials also, as Lewis and Clark finally reached the Pacific near Portland … where both Paul Revere and the Raiders and The Kingsmen both recorded "Louie Louie" in the same week and in the same studio in 1963. Incredible!

Flipping the album cover over (advised, since the cover eerily mimicks what Lester Bangs once wrote about White Witch: Observe the dude standing on the left … a true dork) to scan the credits and you see that it was recorded at a studio in Oxfordshire, England. Hey that's not roots rock at all! What gives? Also, this: "The Long Ryders wish success and happiness to all bands." I smell a simmering feud and hope it involved The Paisley Underground and/or Dwight Yoakam. One can only daydream.

Tuesday Tuneage
Jimmy Cliff - "Sitting In Limbo"
1972

I'm still congratulating myself on being such a great citizen of the good old US of A after fulfilling my recent stint of jury duty. Sure, I didn't have to actually report, I was on call-in status. This meant call twice a day - shortly after noon, to see if I had to report that afternoon; and again in the early evening to see if I had to report the next morning.

Being on call-in status led me to altering my schedule and for a few I days I was leading a version of what could be my dream life: By doing my accounting work mostly on the weekends, I wrote during the days, worked out regularly and earlier in the afternoon than usual, had evenings open for NHL and NBA finals or Netflix movies and TV shows. I was in bed around midnight, got nine hours of sleep, had plenty of morning coffee with my remaining accounting tasks before lunch and the early-afternoon check-in.

But no amount of a Hennepin County-enforced staycation could totally erase whatever weird anxities I had pending in my mind. As the clock ticked towards those twice-a-day phone calls, I would be overcome with a looming dread that I might have to be somewhere that I hadn't totally planned on, wearing khakis and a polo shirt and waiting to possibly talk to lawyers and a judge. As someone who needs to know where and when he's exactly going to be in the next 48 hours (this is related to those "weird anxities" mentioned above), the possibility of being uprooted and obsessing over the Metro Transit website to find the right bus route to get me to the courthouse was troubling.

On the first Thursday evening, when the jury duty voice message said I didn't have to call again until Monday afternoon, I biked like hell to the liquor store and loaded up on Surly and Old Overcoat, enjoying both with the hoops action on ABC that night. On the following Tuesday, when it said my pool number had been released from jury duty and my committment was fulfilled for the next four years, I did a repeat performance of biking, booze, and hoops television. It seemed my appropriate due reward for making thirteen simple phone calls. And the anxiety-fueled dread immediately lifted. As The Tick once said: "Evil has been rousted and the babysitter's been paid." 

Tuesday Tuneage

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - "Century City"

1979

Getting Pink Floyd's The Wall LP instead of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Damn The Torpedoes in the summer of 1980 may have set my appreciation of vital rock 'n' roll back by months, but all these decades later I have recovered. Now Floyd's double album (a late-teen favorite) screams "overblown, dated", but Petty's effort is an all-time fave and a go-to when I want to get back to the basics.

Petty's first three albums are essential, but Damn The Torpedoes was the breakthrough. It's one of those moments in rock 'n' roll when great art equals great sales and folks nod their head in the acknowledgement that the artist has gained much-deserved recognition, rather than muttering "sellout." This was an album so rich in songs that "Refugee" was bumped to second in the order and the hook-filled "Don't Do Me Like That" was moved to leadoff single. I'd never want to buy any the deluxe edition of Damn The Torpedoes, it's thirty-seven minutes of rock 'n' roll perfection.

The Torpedoes song I've been blasting lately to get me through the last four minutes of cardio is "Century City", a song of triumph up there with The Who's "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", The Animals' "It's My Life", and the Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Stone Free." If I ever do end up in Los Angeles, I'm going to hit up this tune on my iPhone, scope out Century City, and rewind the Chuck Berry guitar solo as many times as per my doctor's advised dosage.

Tuesday Tuneage
Beck Bogert Appice - "Superstition"
1973

PART I: ST. PAUL CHEAPO CONTINUES TO HAUNT MY VINYL COLLECTION

There is a Rod Stewart biography from 1981, a glossy fan photo book with text by Paul Nelson and Lester Bangs. Nelson had writer's block, so Bangs hammered out eighty-eight pages in a weekend. The result was stuff like Bangs having Scott Asheton (Stooges) almost joining the first sixties incarnation of The Jeff Beck Group - which featured Stewart on vocals - and John Coltrane miffed because the Beck Group cut him on their take of "Greensleeves." (In the book's intro, Bangs admits he made things up.) A sample chapter is titled "Two Jewish Mothers Pose As Rock Critics" and if you don't want to check out the book after seeing that, well you must have Googled your way into the wrong blog by mistake.

My favorite Bangs-penned chapter is "Bowling For Supergroups: The Beck Years." Apparently, Jeff Beck conceived coming up with a group with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge as early as 1969. But Beck got into a nasty car accident and his dream of playing with Bogert and Appice was delayed until 1973. Beck Bogert Appice released one album, did one tour, and were promptly forgetten by just about everybody. Or so I thought.

(On the back cover photo of the Beck Bogert Appice album, Tim Bogert wears a "Beck Bogert Appice" teeshirt. Apparently HE thought they wouldn't be short-lived!)

BBA covered "Superstition" and the thing is: Stevie Wonder outrocked them on the original. He played all the instruments except sax and trumpet and cut one of the best hard rock songs of the seventies. The BBA cover is the type of thudding boredom that gives supergroups and power trios a bad name. You think the song is over, then what sounds like a gong (?) goes off, then Beck shows off his fretwork some more. And the tune weirdly ends on a drum solo by Appice. The plus side to digging this LP out of my archives and then reading up on BBA is that I think now I can finally distinguish Carmine Appice from Aynsley Dunbar. And I was shocked to see that neither ever played in Uriah Heep.

PART II: BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED

My, uh, research indicated that in between Vanilla Fudge reunions, Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert also played in the following:

Derringer Bogert Appice - Yes, this is the same Derringer (Rick) whose big hit was "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo." He remade this with Mean Gene Okerlund in the eighties and more recently found The Lord and remade it as "Read The Word, Live It Too." Some most fondly look upon Rick as the producer of "Weird Al" Yankovic's eighties albums. I love that on one of their album covers, DBA uses the exact same font as BBA.

Vargas Bogert Appice - My understanding is that Vargas is a sort of Spanish Jeff Beck.

Char Bogert Appice - My understanding is that Char is a sort of Japanese Jeff Beck. Though when I first read this one, I thought it was Cher Bogert Appice. (That'd be a kick, they could star in the Cher Bogert Appice Comedy Hour on CBS.)

Bogert and Appice are everywhere! Wonder how big of a check you have to write to form a trio with them? Or maybe there are Bogert and Appice franchises?? I think the next step for Bogert and Appice is Beck Bogert Appice. You know: Beck! Not Jeff, but that slacker Scientologist guy. I haven't head anything about his "genius" for years. BECK BOGERT APPICE PERFORM MELLOW GOLD AS A BLUESY POWER TRIO. SPECIAL GUEST CHER. I'm not entirely familiar with Kickstarter, so can your people call my people?