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:: Our Beautiful Flag is Crying ::

:: Angels of Mercy ::

The 4th of July is a great opportunity to take stock of the bounty of things that help make this country great. But, it never hurts to take a look at the many problems that face our nation as well. For example, the fact that we no longer love our beautiful flag causes her to cry. That sucks.

Many thanks to Roy at Record Recycler in Torrance for this one. Happy belated 4th everyone!


Mike

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:: Suge Knight Sweetheart ::

:: New Shoes ::

Hello, do you miss us? I'm not sure we're actually back yet, but I hate to think we're nothing but a mausoleum of dead links these days. For those many who keep posting that some of our older links are dead: yes they are. We keep things up a generous amount of time, in many cases 6-8 months, and we don't have the server space to keep up the audio to everything we've ever written about. I also don't have the time to go and remove every dead link, so I apologize if you've clicked through thinking you were getting this song you've been looking for since 1987 only to get an ugly 404 page. We're pretty nice guys, so if you can just post a comment or better yet, email the person who wrote the piece, we can usually oblige you.

So recently a few new vinyl only record stores have opened in the Los Angeles area, Vacation Vinyl and Origami. This is great to see, and so far I've already spent a fair amount of money at these places.

Origami is particularly dangerous for me, as it's right next door to The Echo and stays open until 2am, meaning that if I stumble drunk out of a show at The Echo with a loose wallet, I come home with an armful of impulse buys, especially 7" records. I know this happens, because it happened Friday. But I had one of those accidentally really good purchases. I picked up a 7" by this band called The Lights, a band I thought Mike and I played a gig with 3 or 4 years ago. Having now listened to this 7", I am certain this is not the same band, although they both do wear their post-punk influences on their dark sleeves. I think maybe that band we played with were The Red Lights or something. Did I mention that sometimes Origami sometimes has free beer? Check them out.

This definitely has some early 80's Factory sounds (yes, some Joy Division,) a fair bit of Mark E. Smith on "New Shoes," and just overall tastily syncopated, bass-driven sparseness. I guess it's not terribly different from the A-Frames, either. Anyway, you can listen to it and make your own clever influence assumptions.



Tony

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:: Henson - Do Me Wrong, But Do Me ::

Update, 2/20/2009
Well as The Dude himself has said, "New shit has come to light."

I've recently been in correspondence with a relative of Tim Henson's who informed me that while the police ultimately ruled the death a suicide, an independent private investigation came up with his death being a murder. I would like to write a more complete tribute to Tim Henson at a later date once I've filled in some more blanks, but for now I'd like to get this one thing out there for the respect of his family. So read some of what's below with a grain of salt for now, and hopefully I'll rewrite this piece in the near future.

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A long time ago, at a record store kinda far away, I picked up about 200 pieces of 7" vinyl. I think they were 20 for a dollar, and I took full advantage. Some of the things I found were actually really cool, like an early Wrens (the incredible NJ rock band, not the vocal group) 7" and a handful of autographed Mark Sandman side project singles (he had just recently died). But for the most part, I selected things that sounded bizarre or funny. After listening to several of my acquisitions, I decided to make a compilation of the best/worst ones, hurriedly throwing it together and dubbing it Scars On 45. I took it to band practice, and it soon became a post-practice listening staple, a legend in our own minds. I made two more Scars comps, and I can trace back this whole addiction to finding and sharing the strange and wonderful plastic platters that are out there to those times. I've never looked back.

This song is probably my favorite thing I've ever found. It's not the weirdest, nor is it the funniest, but to me it is the the best combination of the sublime and the ridiculous. It's almost become mythical to me, because of my struggle to learn anything at all about the artist, researching many different times and ways. I think I've finally got enough of a handle on it to be able to write something.

Henson was Tim Henson, a Fame Studios session keyboardist. Many, many classic recordings were made at Rick Hall's Fame Studios, home of the "Muscle Shoals Sound." I am told he played keyboards on the monster soft-rocker "Torn Between Two Lovers". I guess Tim was being given a shot at being more than just a session player, and this single, and the self titled album it comes from, came out in 1974. "Do Me Wrong But Do Me" was written by Alan O'Day, who had a pretty big hit with the perfectly goofy "Undercover Angel" in 1977. O'Day's own version of "Do Me" appears on the same album. The flip side of his single is a cover of my favorite Beach Boys song, "God Only Knows," which is a bit of a trip because of the abundance of analog keyboard sounds. "Do Me" was produced by Rick Hall himself, with string arrangements by Grammy, Emmy and Clio Award winner Jimmie Haskell. It's filled with squawking wah guitar and ridiculous lyrics, but balanced with some really nice changes, and to top it off, what I think is a perfect bridge. Even though the lyrics are hard to take seriously, and in fact were probably supposed to be humorous, the music underneath gives off a darkness in juxtaposition that makes this, for me at least, a fascinating listen. I'm sure I've listened to this song over a hundred times.

In my final round of internet searches on Tim Henson, I came across someone who knew him, and through him I got some actual information. It seems that shortly after Tim had been made an official member of the prestigious Muscle Shoals Sound rhythm section, he took his own life. There was evidently a lot of pressure being a studio musician, in both quality of performance and the amount of work one would have to take on just to make ends meet. I guess if he was also trying to make it as a solo artist, the pressure would be that much greater. So yeah, this tale does not have have a happy ending, and we see yet another talented musician who becomes little more than a footnote in rock history. For me, this song always had a melancholy vibe to it, and knowing what I now know, it always will.

I'd like to thank JD Wyker and the members of the Mighty Field Of Vision mailing list for all the help and information they've given me. I was wondering if I'd ever be able to do this piece, or at least do it any justice, and they gave me what I needed.


Tony

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:: Songs of Safety Part One ::

:: Songs of Safety Part Two ::

:: Manners Can Be Fun Part One ::

:: Manners Can Be Fun Part Two ::

:: Health Can Be Fun Part One ::

:: Health Can Be Fun Part Two ::


Fun. We all like to have it, especially kids. When I first popped this on, I couldn't believe how unfun it sounded, especially when I tried to imagine being a kid and being bombarded with these condescending messages set to music that I doubt any kid was ever into. Things like making sure you don't cook your fingers by confusing the hot and cold faucet handles, and to hang on to your mother's hand when you are watching a parade, which incidently would be where you might hear music such as this. But the more I listened, the more the quaintness of it drew me in and by the time it got to manners being fun, they actually kind of were.

Some context helps here. I was under the assumption that this record was from the sixties, and from the inner sleeve this pressing was from at least 1967, a year I don't associate with hokey whitebread music using words like "motorcar." So I looked this stuff up, and this is just three 78's from the 40's put onto one LP, one of countless repressings that had been done over the years. That explains why this sounds so square for the late 60's, when surely talking magic mushrooms were already teaching kids to read.

Frank Luther is an interesting character. He started out doing very country Country Music, and later settled in as a top childrens records artist. The label this was on, Vocalion, which as this point had been revived by Decca as a budget label for reissues such as this, has a tremendously rich history, including the only Robert Johnson records ever produced.

So sit back and have a listen, and try to imagine an age when kids needed a whole lot of instruction just to stay alive and not be run over or burned alive, and then laugh thinking about how these days junior has to show grandpa how to download a photo attachment from an email.


Tony

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:: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer ::

Have you heard enough of the Christmas classic, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to last you a lifetime? Of course not, especially when you can hear this one - brought to you by a sixties Taiwanese all-girl band called, The Five Petals. After you’re all through, though, I dare you to head over to www.radiorudolph.com and attempt to listen to the other 26,532 versions of the song without going completely batshit.

Phil

:: Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay ::

:: Lies ::

:: Call of The Wild ::

:: Megalomania ::

:: Cactus Fruit ::

:: You're A Dancer ::

:: And You Know ::

:: Bandit ::

:: Get Down Woman ::

:: Visions Through an Empty Glass ::

While searching through the new arrivals bin at Amoeba one fine day, I did a double take when I laid eyes on this one. I could tell immediately it was a "vanity" record. In other words, some guys figured that since no real record label would sign them, they'd put up the cash themselves and obtain fame and fortune via the back door route. These records are always fun in some way or another, but Amoeba wanted $20.00 for this one. Why? I didn't know, but since then I've seen it around a couple of times at different stores, and it was even more expensive. Something about the name of the band gave me pause though. Jupiter. "Why do I know this?", I asked myself. I squinted my eyes and looked closer. There, grinning back at me from the back cover was my childhood friend Tim. The rather dapper looking guitar player is Lorenzo, a guy I went to high school with. Tim and I played in Lorenzo's band for a month or so during my freshman year. $20.00? No problem.

Tim and I were best buds during our middle school years. We got into the rock & roll when we were about 13 and went to our first "concert" together (Creedence with Booker T & the MGs and Wilbert Harrison at The Forum). Tim took up guitar, and showed me a few chords. We convinced our parents to lay out the big bucks and buy us brand new Teisco Del Rey guitars from the local Thrifty Drug Store ($50.00 price range). Mine broke within the first week when I leaned it against the wall and it slid down and hit the tile floor, the neck snapping clean off at the body. I got my money back and traded down for a more "practical" item; a bean bag chair. Shortly thereafter, Tim bought a Harmony Strat-O-Tone from the local pawn shop for $12.00. By this time he had acquired quite a few cheap, semi-functional guitars, so he gave me the Harmony. I still own this guitar and will be forever in his debt.

Tim and I drifted apart during high school, the band with Lorenzo being one of our final attachments. A couple of years after high school, Tim turned up again after he got wind I was in a punk band and started hanging out with us, but we were in two different worlds. Another couple of years later he showed up on my doorstep with a record in his hand. Turns out he and Lorenzo had gotten back together again and started a band called Jupiter. And look! Their version of "Mongoloid" made it onto a Devo tribute album put out by Rhino Records called "Devotees". Well I'll be damned.

Maybe I was jealous, or just didn't care, but I didn't even bother to go out and buy myself a copy of Devotees at the time (a move I later regretted, although I now own a copy and they're not all that hard to find). I didn't see or hear from Tim for another 25 years after that, and I had no idea that Jupiter put out their own LP. I kind of wished I'd stayed in touch now, but at the time I was about to get married and settle down, and I'd had enough of the whole band scene (little did I or my future wife know that after a couple of years of marriage, I'd join a band and would always be in one band or another from then on).

Some time during high school, Tim asked if I would record his band on my new JVC reel to reel, which had a "sound on sound" function allowing you to multi-track. I went to Tim's house and recorded him and his friends Tom and Wes in Tim's bedroom. Tim and Tom played acoustics and all three sang harmonies. One of the songs was "Lies", a bright, poppy early Beatlesque little number which Jupiter gave the power-pop treatment here. Way to go Tim.



Well worth the $20.00 I paid for it, Multiple Choice is truly a pop gem that grows on me with each listen. Lorenzo (as I recall) was a total Byrds freak when he was 15, and as you can see the Rickenbacker and Vox thing was still his sound of choice at this point. The 60s are an obvious influence, but they were ready to take this thing into the 80s. Megalomania is a revelation and hints at a darker side I would love to hear more of. Even seemingly daft throwaways like Cactus Fruit and Bandit eventually reveal hidden layers. The ambitious closer, Visions Through an Empty Glass starts off wearing it's Pink Floyd influence on it's sleeve, but then goes punk/pop bat shit crazy, then back again.


The final bit of 6 degrees for me is the fact that the album was recorded at Media Arts Recording in Hermosa Beach, where my punk band had recorded some demos a couple of years previous. The studio would become synonymous with Black Flag, and the house engineer, Spot, would become SSTs go to guy for Hüsker Dü and The Meat Puppets.


Now I wish I'd stayed in closer contact with Tim and Lorenzo in those days and had seen Jupiter play some shows. Oh well, never too late for a comeback...


Mike

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:: Moonlight Masquerade ::

Taken from Mickey Rooney Jr’s 1978 solo album, aptly titled Crazy Ideas, “Moonlight Masquerade” is a shameless rip off of Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood’s 1972 hit, “It Never Rains In Southern California.” While the production, harmonica lick, and chord progression sound just like it, the lyrics are much lighter, such as with the opening lines:

When I first saw you at the all night supermarket
And I held a watermelon in your hand
Do you remember all the promises you told me
As we ate it in the back seat of your van

In verse two he continues the food metaphor when she promises to give him all her cupcakes all she can. But to his credit, Mickey Rooney Jr. got the jump on Dan Fogelberg, who didn’t get hip to the ‘saw you at the grocery store’ angle until 1981 with the regrettable release of “Same Old Lang Syne.” Unlike the dismal winter imagery of that song, the chorus of “Moonlight Masquerade” takes on a balmy, Hawaiian tinge. The lap steel guitar part and lilting female backing vocals are suggestive of a climate suitable for having unprotected sex in a van, and more feel-good overall than dead Fogelberg’s frostbitten dick vibe.



According to his myspace page, Mickey Rooney Jr. lives in Hemet, California and still performs occasionally, while his former bass player John Blanchard is in a California State prison serving time for murder, so it’s all relative.


Alec