Tuesday Tuneage
Dirty Looks - "Oh Ruby"
1988

Just as in 1988 Kingdom Come released the Led Zeppelin knockoff, "Get It On", that same year Dirty Looks came out with "Oh Ruby" which sounds like about 90% Bon Scott-era AC/DC with maybe a 10% GNR influence thrown in to boot. It prompted me to buy the Cool From The Wire album, which had no other good songs and worse, had no other early AC/DC ripoffs on it. (Fanboy Alert: Dirty Looks' Wikipedia page states that the LP "is still regarded by many as one of the best hard rock albums of all time." Doh-kay.)

In the video, the lead singer sports a sleeveless torn teeshirt and tucks his jeans into cowboy boots. The lead guitarist wears a trench coat and gets ample camera time during his competent (but not much more) guitar solo. The drummer has bars around his kit. (?) And we don't see much of the bass player, but enough to know he has hair like the rest of the band sports. Oh, and aside from the band the only other thing we see is an obligatory eighties-metal hot chick wearing pumps, nylons, bustier, and leather jacket. But hey: the word "ass" is bleeped out, because this Ruby chick is classy! (We know this because they rhymed "ass" with "class.") Not to mention she inspired this beaut of a triple rhyme:

She's good
understood
Everybody in the neighborhood?

I'm not much of a lyrics guy, but in all seriousness I have to say that those lines are brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Tuesday Tuneage
Brenton Wood - "Gimme Little Sign"
1967

Bretton Woods is a resort in New Hampshire where The Bretton Woods Conference took place in 1944. At this conference, an international monetary system was set up, the IMF was established, as was the forerunner of the World Bank. The UK's representative at this conference was the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, whose best-know quote is probably "in the long run, we're all dead", came up with another gem regarding Bretton Woods. When asked if England had been sold out to become another American state, he quipped: "No such luck." The Bretton Woods system stayed in place until President Nixon took steps in 1971 that heped usher its end, among them removing the US from the gold standard.

Brenton Wood is a soul singer who hit #9 on the charts in 1967 with "Gimme Little Sign." Future New Radicals band member Danielle Brisebois covered it in 1995 and also had a hit. Brisebois is known for having portrayed Archie Bunker's step-cousin-in-law (or something) Stephanie Mills in All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place. Archie once infamously joked to his son-in-law that he wrote in Nixon on his 1976 presidential ballot (he actually wrote in Ronald Reagan.)

"Gimme Little Sign" is a favorite of SiriusXM's Soul Town station. Having majored in economics as a youth (with an uncredited minor in Nixon studies), whenever I see "Brenton Wood" pop up on my SiriusXM iPhone's app I invariably end up at the Nixon Shock page on Wikipedia. Nixon Shock ... my new fake band name.

Tuesday Tuneage
Boston - "Amanda"
1986

1976: Boston releases its debut album. Side one - which leads off with the masterful "More Than A Feeling" - is AOR bliss, side two ain't so hot. A song like "Rock & Roll Band" shows that they should stick to their heavy guitars-n-harmonies formula and not try to boogie. Also, the song's narrative turns out to be hilarious as it is later revealed that the album was almost entirely recorded by Tom Scholz in his basement, with the "band" being a front to the record label to fool them into thinking that Scholz wasn't merely tinkering with demos that they had already heard.

1978: Boston releases Don't Look Back after two long years (a lengthy stretch between LPs back then). Documentation on this one is hard to find, as the backstory isn't charming as the debut album, but I'm guessing this one also was recorded by Scholz in his basement. This album also works best when they stick to their formula. The title track is brilliant, but you know a song with a title like "Party" is bound to fall flat.

So Boston was set to dominate the eighties, right? They were all over AOR radio and we all couldn't wait to get our hands on that third album. "Wait" is the key word here. Because we waited. And waited.

We were all assured that the third Boston album was just around the corner. There was always a note somebody had read in Rolling Stone or somewhere, that the new Boston album was to be released "later this year" or "early next year." Things got desperate by the mid-eighties. Somebody would invariably claim that they had heard a song off the imminent Boston album, meaning the album had to be out soon, right? This was when I was in college at the University of North Dakota, and it was always some guy who was from the Cities and spent his summer there who had heard that new Boston song last summer ("on KQ", natch). I remember a suitemate during a dorm bull session getting rather testy, insisting: "No, I heard it. I heard it!" A similar conversation occurred when I was on break hanging out in Dinkytown with my cousin Dale, who was attending the University of Minnesota at the time. His roommate flatly claimed he had heard the new Boston song ("on KQ"). Dale shot him down, explaining that he had heard a solo effort from one of the guys from Boston. He had heard a deejay on KQ make note of this.*

By this time, the seemingly-mythical Third Boston Album had become an enjoyable running joke with my brother and me. We'd hear "More Than A Feeling" or "Don't Look Back" on the radio and one of us would invariably say: "That new Boston album will be out any day now!" Not to mention that in some ways things were so much more fun before the Internet. You could just make stuff up, like you could say to a buddy: "Word is that Boston album will be out in time for Christmas." And of course it was taken as gospel. No Internet, not instant fact checking.

But all good things must end. At some point the mystery has to be resolved. I heard "Amanda" while in the shower one morning senior year of college. This is Boston's long-awaited return? I sensed immediately while riding my bike to campus that morning that the myth and the anticipation of the Third Boston Album would turn out to be a hell of a lot more fun and intriguing than its actual release. Nobody I knew bought Third Stage, and to this day it remains an afterthought, as are any Boston albums that have been since been released. Few of us middle-aged white guys have disowned the band though, a tracking of "More Than A Feeling" with a scotch on a Friday afternoon after a long week goes a long way toward tamping down the darkness.

*Research indicates that these are the likely candidates for "Boston" songs heard in the early eighties. ("On KQ."):
- "Dreams", by Barry Goudreau. Goudreau was a guitarist in Boston, and Boston singer Barry Delp handles the vocals on this one. It also has the signature "Boston" guitar sound.
- "So You Ran", by Orion The Hunter. Very mid-eighties in sound (i.e. chintzy and cheesy), but it did feature Goudreau (again), future Boston lead vocalist Fran Cosmo singing, and Delp on background vocals.
- Boston's "Amanda" was leaked to some AOR stations in 1984.

Tuesday Tuneage
Deep Purple - "Pictures Of Home"
1972

The south Minneapolis baby boomer. You know the type: Gray hair, getting smaller by the minute, never smiles. Why do they look daggers at me? Am I such a bother? I sit on the bus with my earbuds in, my UND hockey hat pulled so low it almost touches my glasses, and I'm merely listening to music and reading a book on my phone. When I sit at the coffee shop and write in my notebook, I'm trying to fade into the background. Why are you south Minneapolis boomers such downers with your sense of entitlement and constant frowns?

The boomer who yelled at one of my delivery guys because his van was blocking the alley and she was forced (heavy sigh) to turn her car around and use the south alley exit instead. The boomer who when asked if I truly was about to use the elliptical cross-trainer at the YMCA and I said "uh, yeah" (my right foot was just about to swing onto the machine's footpad), turned her smile upside down, glared at me, and walked away without uttering another word. The boomers at Kowalski's who dominate the narrow aisles and won't give me an inch when I try to walk by. The boomer down the alley who works on his roof in the spring well after dark and well after the city noise ordinance says he can. The boomer across the alley who is sure to rototill his garden on Saturdays at 7 a.m. (When said boomer 
meticulously cleared his garage driveway, was chatting with a neighbor proud of his work and the city plow came through the alley and pushed a bunch of snow on his driveway? Awesome, totally awesome. Watching that was the most fun I have ever had looking out the kitchen window while firing up the morning coffee. Tops observing the murder of crows that hang out in that area, even.)

Look south Minneapolis boomers, it's a long winter and like last year I have the feeling the snow will keep coming for another couple of months. You don't like me, and I'm starting to move past apathy and into active dislike for you as well. The streets are gonna be as narrow as those aisles at Kowalski's. Our glasses are gonna fog up a lot. I will continue in my belief that I don't owe you a goddamn thing. So here's my suggestion: Grab yourself a beer or three, pour a shot of whiskey or vodka, and fire up some metal on headphones, as metal is ideal coping-with-winter music. This week my suggestion is Deep Purple's Machine Head, an album the proles rallied around during your youth. Play it loud, play it proud. Because nothing is better in these times than catharsis, and it's obvious your yoga and meditation ain't working.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Bangles - "Hazy Shade Of Winter"
1987

The Bangles. That stretch senior year of college where "Walk Like An Egyptian" was in MTV's top ten videos so we roommates would call attention to anyone not in the room, gather around TV when they were on, mostly to look at Susanna Hoffs' eyes at that moment toward the end of the video. The album was okay from what I remember. They released a glossy followup a few years later and for me that was it for The Bangles except to Google Susanna Hoffs photos every once in a while.

But then. But then. "Getting Out Of Hand" (recorded when they were known as The Bangs) appeared on the Children of Nuggets collection that I bought back in '08. Catchy, slightly garage, and charming as hell. Hmmm. Scoring their debut album, All Over The Place in pristine condition on vinyl for fifty cents at a Roadrunner Records sale shorty after that was another revelation. Seamless harmonies, driving beat, hooky guitars, brilliant pop songs … it added up to a gem of a debut album and while it shimmered it wasn't eighties glossy. It's always a fun listen with coffee on afternoons off work.

So, I figured, The Bangles had an outstanding debut, got more commercial and less interesting as the eighties went on. Is the "Walk Like An Egyptian" video on YouTube? Then Jack FM ("No Repeat" "Playing What We Want" "Tuomala's Go-To Fun Station Now That K-Twin Changed Formats") the other night played The Bangles' version of "Hazy Shade Of Winter", which was taken from the Less Than Zero soundtrack in 1987. Holy moly. Rick Rubin-produced flawless production. Metallic guitar. Those harmonies. Simon and Who? All for, as Chuck Eddy put it, "a soundtrack to a lousy flick about rich teens on drugs (named after a lousy novel about the same, named after an Elvis Costello ditty about the National Front.)" Well The Bangles showed up, did their job, and took no prisoners. Quite impressive.

And in the song's video, how smokeshow are The Bangles? When I watch it, I don't want to see Jami Gertz, that's how smokeshow. Not to mention VICKI PETERSON'S HEELS, STOCKINGS, SKIRT, AND HER BANGS COVER ONE EYE AND A SHOULDER STRAP HANGS FREE

Tuesday Tuneage
Van Halen - "Bottoms Up!"
1979

Not another poem about wanting
a drink, not another wait in vain
screed. You'll be at that bowling alley
soon enough, IPA/kami lined up in front
of you, checking bus schedules, getting home
for hockey, delivered sandwich, various
cusses lobbed at the screen.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Mike Curb Congregation - "Burning Bridges"
1970

One day last week my accounting brain and writing brain were at war with each other, so I did what any reasonable person would do to avoid a complete intellectual breakdown: Took the afternoon off, made a pot of coffee, and fired up a film I hadn't seen since as a kid, Kelly's Heroes, on TV via Amazon Prime and the Roku box.

Among the many anti-war war movies of its sixties-into-seventies, it throws a little Me Generation philosophy in as well. A group of American soldiers go on a rogue mission well behind enemy lines to rob a bank of its gold. The town is in occupied France, and I never caught if they are intent on plundering French or Nazi gold, but who cares? It's a caper movie, and who doesn't love a good caper? And sure, it's considered an anti-war movie, but when the Nazis get blown away, they get blown away violently and in large numbers.

And if you're worried about any actor going against type, no such worries here. Telly Savalas talks tough. Donald Sutherland excudes a proto-beatnik cool vibe (he even rides around with a guy named Moriarty.) Carroll O'Connor yells a lot and his character is unintentionally funny. Donald Rickles rolls his eyes and makes smart remarks. Clint Eastwood squints.

So you're saying: "Yeah, I just looked this flick up on Wikipedia and it clocks in under two-point-five hours. How did it take up a whole afternoon?" Well, there's things going on with the music that had me hitting the pause button and headed to my iMac, and I'm not just talking about the abundant anachronisms. Like a Morricone-like moment near the end that nods towards Clint's role in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Or Sutherland's character leading a tank raid by blasting Hank Williams Jr.'s "All For The Love Of Sunshine" (forcing Coppola to top it with "Ride of the Valkyries" in Apocalypse Now.) Said Hank Jr. song was written by Mike Curb, whose own group sings the movie's hippy-dippy theme song, "Burning Bridges." Curb went on to become Lieutenant Governor of California. The Man can't bust our music? The Man made the music!

Tuesday Tuneage
Tony Carey - "A Fine Fine Day"
1984

Tony Carey isn't from the Garden State, but "A Fine, Fine Day" has New Jersey all over it. The video is Sopranos-light (and shot a decade-plus before Jersey's own Tony Soprano and family appeared!), telling a darker story than what is alluded to in the song. The tune itself is a first-rate Bruce Springsteen knockoff, Carey haunts the Springsteen ballad side effectively, leaving the rocker side of Bruce to John Cafferty with "On The Dark Side." Both tunes are from '84, I hear Springsteen himself had a good year also.

Tuesday Tuneage
Wet Willie - "Keep On Smilin'"
1974

A glance at Wet Willie's Greatest Hits album cover confirms the stereotypes you imagine for a seventies Southern rock band:

Fat guy with hat and facial hair? Check.
Guy with overalls or suspenders? Check.
Guy with plaid or flannel shirt? Check.
Guy with rapidly-receding hairline? Check.
And one guy who looks glad to be along for the ride and one skinny guy with a beard who pulls of the Legitimate Rocker look.

Not to mention that song titles like "Grits Ain't Groceries", "Red Hot Chicken", and "Dixie Rock" point towards yet another Southern rock band piling up cliches and guitar solos. But to listen to the tunes …  As John Milward wrote in The Rolling Stone Record Guide (orginal red edition):

"Most other Southern bands seasoned their blues rock with country influences, but Wet Willie fueled its with hard-biting R&B."

Lead singer Jimmy Hall was a solid soul-influenced singer, and Wet Willie's only hit, "Keep On Smilin'", is one of the lost classics of seventies blue-eyed soul, gospel-tinged and triumphant. (It charted #10 but doesn't get oldies radio play? What gives?) On a down day you can do no worse than to track this one and heed Johnny's reminder to stay gold.

Tuesday Tuneage
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - "Opera Star"
1981

Released at the start of the "Neil Young experiments with a new genre every year" era¹, Reactor was the first Neil album I bought, and still my favorite - mostly because I got it when I was sixteen and didn't know what canonical Neil Young music quite was. Reactor is grungy, silly, serious, and kicks down doors like no other Neil album I have heard. Then again, I haven't heard all of 'em.

The leadoff track "Opera Star" is an underrated garage rock gem chock-full of goodies. It's a Neil song with an actual interesting rhythm, you can almost dance to it. Reactor also contains "T-Bone", which is Neil's attempt at an extended dance mix. It works, in fact, pairs quite well with any number of the "mashed potatoes" R&B songs from the early sixties.

And not to mention, "Opera Star" also has: class resentment, drugs, getting f*cked up, and ridiculous-but-fun backing vocals. In the chorus, Neil informs the protagonist - and by extension, the listener - that he/you will never be an opera star. I'm sure Neil Young fans continent-wide were crushed.

---

1 Garage-metal, electronic, rockabilly, country, return-with-Crazy Horse, big band, etc. etc.^↩

Tuesday Tuneage
Peter Laughner & Friends - "In The Bar"
circa mid-1970s

I lead a boring life. I watch UND hockey games on a laptop hooked up to my TV, binge on Netflix, and read a lot. My social life, as The Music Machine once infamously sang, is a dud. Avoiding people is sort of a twisted pastime of mine. But with writing I can let my imagination run wild, put it on paper, and then revise it from there. It's truly the most fun I have, even if apathy, lack of discipline, and other assorted mental landmines abound. Sometimes it gets dreary, sometimes it's just a chore. But in the good times? As Herb Brooks said in Miracle: "Ever see him when his game's on?"

At some point, the small fun project I did to keep the writing muscles warmed up became the focus of the writing. And that's just fine. Time to write, a forum to present it, and the promise of this being possible again next week. Notebook in the bookbag, index cards in its pockets, a laptop on a clean desk with a lamp. That is all I ask.

And one more thing, a quote from Peter Laughner: "Here I sit, sober and perhaps even lucid, on the sort of winter's day that makes you realize a New Year is just around the corner and you've got very little to show for it, but if you are going to get anything done on this planet, you better pick it up with both hands and DO IT YOURSELF."

Tuesday Tuneage
Jack Scott - "There's Trouble Brewin'"
1963

Giovanni Domenico Scafone Jr - he later went by the decidedly non-ethnic "Jack Scott" - was born in Windsor, Ontario, and moved to Detroit as a youth. He later served in the army, meaning that he was the rare man who left Canada to come to the United States to serve in the military. At one point, he formed a group called the Southern Drifters. This was clever, a nod to his Windsor roots. Because everybody (except Journey) knows that Windsor is south of Detroit.

When you think of the rockabilly sound, Jack Scott's music is likely what you have in mind. Swaggering beat, incisive guitar leads, and a greasy wannabe tough guy on the vocal. (I hear more Jack Scott than Elvis Presley in Johnny Bravo's voice.) On "There's Trouble Brewin'", he finds out that his gal has been stepping out with Santa Claus. He hints at malice towards old Saint Nick but ends up declaring the old man to be "a goof." Whew. As the man said: "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Tuesday Tuneage
Jeff Beck Group - "Morning Dew"
1968

Earlier this month while doing my research reading the Wikipedia entry on "Hey Joe", I came across notes about Tim Rose and "Morning Dew." I was left shaking my head (more Twitter-like "smh" than a literal shaking of my noggin) on account of 1) said Mr. Rose, and, 2) Claims about the Grateful Dead. First off: Tim Rose had claimed "Hey Joe" is a traditional song - nope - and also changed like two words in "Morning Dew" and somehow absconded off with a songwriting credit. Who was this Tim Rose joker? Well, he was a folkie who early in his career had been in a band with somebody named Jim Hendricks and they called themselves The Big Three. Note this group did not later mutate into the formidable power trio The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Rose ended up being bigger in England than the US (natch.)

Then we have the Grateful Dead. Wikipedia says "Morning Dew" was made famous by the Dead, a tidbit I was unaware of. I didn't even know the Dead were associated with the song. Me, undoubtably like many other hard rock fans, had discovered the tune via the Jeff Beck Group's Truth album, on that one Rod Stewart had been the vocalist. He was a notorious folkie in his early days and I'm guessing he didn't even learn the song from the Dead.

And here's what happens when I drink lots of coffee and do my research read Wikipedia and start getting near that late sixties heavy British rock rabbit hole. I realize that: The Truth album leads off with a cover of the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" - on which Beck had played. And on the Jimmy Page & Black Crowes album Live At The Greek, they play "Shapes of Things" in the style of the Beck Group, but the guitar solos are drawn from both the Yardbirds and Beck Group versions of the song. And Robert Plant's Dreamland album from 2002 contains covers of both "Hey Joe" and "Morning Dew." Page and Plant's band Led Zeppelin? First known as The New Yardbirds.

Oh, and the Beck Group's take on "Morning Dew"? It's folk rock at its finest and/or heavy rock at its most poignant. Chilling stuff.

Tuesday Tuneage
Los Locos del Ritmo - "Hey Joe"
circa mid-sixties

PART ONE: PLEASE MR. POSTMAN

Mexican Rock And Roll Rumble And Psych-Out South Of The Border. Ordered in the nineties via mail order. No, not Amazon Marketplace, where you can buy old CDs for like a penny and get them for four bucks total with shipping and the third-party dealer mails them to your door in those cute little padded envelopes. (And you hope the mailman leaves them on the floor in the lobby beneath your mailbox so you don't have to make a special trip to the post office solely for your meager little score.) No, mail order, where you had a catalog of a company's releases, you filled out the order form - having to use tiny little print on those things, right? - calculate your shipping costs and sales tax (if applicable), stuff it in an envelope with a check or money order, and then wait for your goods to show in the mail. How quaint! Almost as much fun as going to your local record shop, asking the dude behind the counter if he could order you Mott the Hoople's Brain Capers album, and he'd flip through this huge catalog the size of two Minneapolis phone books, and he'd say: "Yeah, we can order that. Should be in next Tuesday. We'll call you."

Thankfully nowadays, songs like those on Mexican Rock And Roll Rumble And Psych-Out South Of The Border - mid-sixties south-of-the-border garage bands doing rock 'n' roll songs, singing them in Spanish - are all over the web. On YouTube, on random sites, and on Amazon, where I'm eyeing up buying Los Nuggetz for myself for Christmas.

PART TWO: BULLET POINTS (HEY JOE, WHERE YOU GOING WITH THAT BERLITZ GUIDE IN YOUR HAND?)

My favorite song on Mexican Rock And Roll Rumble is where Los Locos del Ritmo ferociously attack "Hey Joe."

1. It's always fun to hear "Hey Joe" played at the faster speed. The Jimi Hendrix Experience's version is the one most well-known these days, and part of the genius of his version is that Jimi slowed the song - normally a fast-paced one that was up there with "Louie Louie" in being covered by garage bands coast to coast - down to make it unlike any of the prior versions.

2. "Hey Joe" seems like it's an old folk tune, but it's not. Lester Bangs: "There was this one song called 'Hey Joe' that literally everybody and his fuckin' brother not only recorded but claimed to have written even though it was obviously the psychedelic mutation of some hoary old folk song which was about murderin' somebody for love just like nine-tenths of the rest of them hoary folk ballads." (I also used this quote in a blog post last year about The Litter. I went on to write: "[Versions of 'Hey Joe'] all kinda sound the same once you've heard The Jimi Hendrix Experience's reimagining anyway." I am now declaring May of 2012 Bill Tuomala to be wrong! THIS VERSION of "Hey Joe" by Los Locos del Ritmo is uniquely brilliant and clocks in at #2 after the Hendrix version on my all-time "Hey Joe" list!)

3. This is recycled material from me, I've used it in my zine and on the radio: Since I don't know Spanish and Los Locos del Ritmo were from Mexico … I am dying to know - In this version of the tune, where does Joe plan to escape to?

Tuesday Tuneage
David Essex - "Rock On"
1973

I'm guessing this is the only David Essex song you'll ever need. Certainly, it's the only one most of us have ever heard, though I wonder if its flipside "On and On" is some sort of continuation of the single. Horribly covered by some soap opera actor in the eighties, in the nineties REM was smart enough to reclaim the song by quoting it on their eerie single "Drive."

It sounded out of place on the radio in the early seventies, and likely would in any era. Bass-driven and echo-heavy, it's first verse is an homage to old rock 'n' roll without sounding like any sort of rock 'n' roll at all. (John Fogerty had to be nonplussed upon hearing it.) "And where do we go from here?" anticipates Guns n' Roses "Where do we go now?" in "Sweet Child O' Mine." More significantly, the funhouse look at rock 'n' roll of "Rock On" anticipates the brilliantly haunting book Rock Dreams, which was released just a year later.

This tune leaves more questions than it answers. The question bugging me this week: Is "Jimmy Dean" a confidence that he knows the late James Dean on the familiar basis or does it to harken to singer Jimmy Dean, he of "Big Bad John" note, who is also known for his microwavable breakfast fare?