Old Wavest

 

There can be none more Old Wave an illustration than this (pencil? charcoal?) portrait of Joe Cocker, surely? 

Alan Aldridge, one of the inventors of the graphic style that loosely informs the poster. 

Ah, Chris Stainton Band backed up Joe Cocker. 

Prior to that Stainton and Cocker had been in the Grease Band - that's pretty darn Old Wavey

Stainton crops up over and over - backing up Clapton, playing with Boxer  (alongside Patto, as mentioned on this concert advert)

A supergroup signed to a five-album deal worth 1.2 million wouldyoubelieve?

This second album is when Stainton come on board as "additional personnel"

New Wavest

 

1985 - late for New Wave, but the DNA lingered longer in the Los Angeles gene pool

Found that on this LA cable music video show from the 1980s - Goodnight LA.

Feel like episodes of Goodnight LA might have been studied closely by Ariel Pink and Geneva Jacuzzi

Here's Goodnight LA's top videos of 1983 end of year - mostly English and well-made, alas. 

Plus an early Midnight Oil

music about music, songs about songs (2 of ?)

 

This is also via the Dego of 4 Hero selection, via the sample of the horn part on A Tribe Called Quest's "Footprints"

Subject of meta-music and pop-on-pop delved into deeper here

music about music, songs about songs (1 of ?)

 

via this (Dego Macfarlane of 4 Hero's selection in Jockey Slut (via Test Pressing)) 

Subject of meta-music and pop-on-pop delved into deeper here

rock songs I loved before my taste formed (1 of ??)

Which doesn't mean things I'm embarrassed about - not at all... just things that caught my ear before I was seriously following pop 'n' rock... not formative loves but pre-formative loves, maybe

This one, for instance, still sounds amazing to me

The dazzle of the sound enacts the title. It's like the "Digital Love' of its time, but without any irony, or nostalgia. Everything phased 'n' philtered, even the vocal (which is apparently why "wrapped up like a deuce" is heard by everyone as "wrapped up like a douche")

That Moog tremolo-ing a rocket streak up into the sky  - might that have been a formative electronic-thrill for young me?  A very different  deployment of Moog to, say, "I Feel Love" from that same year - much more rock, flashy rather than mechanistic-futuristic.

The face and look of the singer makes it all even more perfect.

The lines that leap out to me now - more than the "douche"  or the calliope crashing to the ground -  are:

"She said, 'I'll turn you on sonny to something strong / Play the song with the funky break'"

Written in '73, or even '72, by Springsteen - I'm surprised that the term "funky breaks" was in parlance then. 

(Update: another lyric I only just noticed - "Go-Kart Mozart" - clearly Lawrence of Felt / Denim was a fan of this single, or dug the echt-70sness of it).

Those lyrics felt like a frothing fountain of imagistic frolic to me then - and still override any kind of sequential mental picturing that would form them into a scenario / mise en scene / storyline. The language-romp approaches peak-Costello self-enraptured wordplay levels - the lyrics just become another element of the totality's shimmer-dazzle.

A classic example of radio rock - live-rocking energy, fed through a ton of production, oriented around HOOKS. 

It works through what I call asignifying craft  - tension and release, build up and breakdown - such that the single is ultimately "about" nothing but its own splendor, the structural thrill-ride of its movement through time. 

The full track / album version -  at once more epic in its extended form - yet slightly less majestic,  through being less concentrated. 

You know what, I am not sure I have ever listened to the Brooce original before 

'S okay...  lollops along amiably... somewhere between Dylan and KC & the Sunshine Band!

Utterly eclipsed by the cover version.

I have been meaning to check out the album discography of Manfred Mann's Earth Band

Greil Marcus reps for the debut in the back bit of Stranded, says it's progressive rock redeemed by a sense of humour... (is this really what progressive rock lacks?  After all A/ there's a fair amount of goofy, whimsical, plain daft prog...  but equally B/ the solemnity is the point, surely. Would Magma be improved by gags?)  

Another renowned critic who's a fan of Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Kodwo Eshun!

The band took one of the more interesting career paths

As Manfred Mann - no Earth Band yet -  they were one of the massive UK Beat Group era hit-makers, smash after smash after smash....   

One of those archetypal-Sixties, Carnaby-Street type groops that have been evacuated from memory to very large extent - like the Dave Clark Five, or the Move.

They carried on having large hits right through psychedelia....

I do like these two, indeed have a tendency to annoy family members by breaking out into an Alan Partridge style version of  the "ha, ha, said the clown" chorus

"The Mighty Quinn" (another cover - Dylan this time) surely has some relation to the Anthony Quinn film in which he plays an Inuit. 

Original singer Paul Jones was such a star (and being well-spoken and articulate, a frequent figure on chat shows as Representative of the Young Generation) that he got the lead role in the dystopian pop-culture-gone-totalitarian movie Privilege. 

He also starred in this "experimental satire"

Arthur Brown appearance at 35 minutes in !

Then, sans Jones and sans his replacement, the disconcertingly named Mike D'Abo, they reinvent themselves as a progressive rock group, adding Earth Band to the end of the name - and in accordance with that moniker,  doing eco-themed concept albums like The Good Earth.

Holst and roll!

Finally Manfred Mann's Earth Band have One Last Huge Hit with "Blinded By the Light"  -  a smash on both sides of the Atlantic - and even bigger in the States, where it got to #1.

D'Abo postscript: Phil points out he wrote this song, aka the Office theme tune albeit in Rod Stewart's version. 

The physical resemblance between Paul Jones and Mike D'Abo was commented upon at the time. 

Both went to Oxbridge - but neither completed their studies. D'Abo came away with a "first class jazz collection" but no degree. 

Jones (as Phil points out) did this Sex Pistols cover

the hoodoo voodoo boogie (liner notes - slight return)

"My group consists of Dr. Poo Pah Doo of Destine Tambourine and Dr. Ditmus of Conga, Dr. Boudreaux of Funky Knuckle Skins and Dr. Battiste of Scorpio in Bass Clef, Dr. McLean of Mandolin Comp. School, Dr. Mann of Bottleneck Learning, Dr. Bolden of The Immortal Flute Fleet, The Baron of Ronyards, Dido, China, Goncy O'Leary, Shirley Marie Laveaux, Dr. Durden, Governor Plas Johnson, Senator Bob West Bowing, Croaker Jean Freunx, Sister Stephanie and St. Theresa, John Gumbo, Cecilia La Favorite, Karla Le Jean who were all dreged up from The Rigolets by the Zombie of the Second Line. Under the eight visions of Professor Longhair reincannted the charts of now."

"I will mash my special faix deaux-deaux on all you who buy my charts, the rites of Coco Robicheaux who, invisible to all but me, will act as a second guardian angel until you over-work him. All who attend our rites will receive kites from the second tier of Tit Alberto who brought the Saute Chapeau. To Chieu Va Bruler up to us from the Antilles to the bayou St. John. Aunt Francis who told me the epic of Jump Sturdy and Apricot Glow. Mimi, who in silence, says the lyrics to Mamma Roux in Chipacka the Chopatoulis Chocktaws without teepees on Magnolia Street and wise to the Zulu parade and the golden blade the sun-up to sun-down second liners who dig Fat Tuesday more than anybody and that's plenty. I have also dug up the old Danse Kalinda to remind you we have not chopped out the old chants and the new Croaker Courtbuillion to serve Battiste style of Phyco-Delphia. We did the snake a la gris-gris calimbo to frame our thing into the medium of down under yonder fire. We walked on gilded splinters to shove my point across to you whom I will communicate with shortly through the smoke of deaux-deaux the rattlesnake whose forked tongue hisses pig Latin in silk and satin da-zaw-ig-day may the gilded splinters of Aunte Andre spew forth in your path to light and guide your way through the bayous of life on your pirougue of heartaches and good times... Push and the shove that you need to get your point across no matter what the cost."

Triggered by this Toop-treatise out soon on Strange Attractor 

Two-Headed Doctor

Listening For Ghosts in Dr. John's Gris-Gris

By David Toop

Two-Headed Doctor is a forensic investigation into a single LP: Dr. John, the night tripper's Gris-gris. Though released in 1968 to poor sales and a minimum of critical attention, Gris-gris has accumulated legendary status over subsequent decades for its strangeness, hybridity, and innovative production. It formed the launch pad for Dr. John's image and lengthy career and the ghostly presence of its so-called voodoo atmosphere hovers over numerous cover versions, samples, and re-invocations. Despite the respect given to the record, its making is shrouded in mystery, misunderstandings, and false conclusions. The persona of Dr. John, loosely based on dubious literary accounts of a notorious voodooist and freed slave, a nineteenth-century New Orleans resident known as Doctor John, provided Malcolm "Mac" Rebennack with a lifelong mask through which to transform himself from session musician in order to construct a solo career.puzzle, experimental rhythm, blues disguised as rock, and elaborate hoax, Gris-gris was a collaborative project between Rebennack and producer/arranger Harold Battiste (at the time musical director for Sonny & Cher). A few brief sessions held at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles brought together many of New Orleans' finest musicians, including Shirley Goodman, John Boudreaux, Plas Johnson, Jessie Hill, Ernest McLean, and Tami Lynn. Along with their complex histories, the cast of characters implicated in the story includes Ornette Coleman, Lafcadio Hearn, Zora Neale Hurston, Cher, Sonny Bono, Sam Cooke, Ishmael Reed, Black Herman, Prince La La, and many others. The story details in discursive style the historical context of the music, how it came together, its literary sources, production and arrangements, and the nature of the recording studio as dream state, but also examines as a disturbing undercurrent the volatile issue of race in twentieth-century music, the way in which it doomed relationships and ambitious projects, exploited great talents, and distorted the cultural landscape.

David Toop discussing the book (and much else) on the Rock's Back Pages podcast

An album I've never really got with, despite owning a vinyl copy for decades now...  initially lured by the fab cover version / UK near-hit by Marsha Hunt of the Dr's most famous tune "I Walk on Gilded Splinters", the last track on Gris-Gris

Toop-treatise does sound intriguing....  tad hauntological, even

Still there is something that niggles a bit about these records which seem soaked in a kind of erudition...  and that then demand an equally erudite response ("forensic" as the jacket copy puts it)

(Digressing slightly - I am sure I read some prominent American rockcrit - one of the really big beasts - having serious issues with Dr. John's stage shtick at this time... the witch-doctor robes and the hoodoo hocus hokum... feeling that it was more than a tad suspect.... perhaps this is some of what Toop is picking over in his monograph) 

But maybe it's time to plunge again into the phantasmagoria... attuned to its made-in-LA fabrication aspect (c.f. Little Feat)... a fantasy from afar.

Talking of fantasies from afar and studio-concoctions

Guess which unlikely Brit pop star was influenced by Dr. John? 

This fellow!

Highly unlikely on the pretty-boy-face of it - but the good Doctor was an avowed inspiration to David Essex and producer-partner Jeff Wayne when they made these peculiar pop-not-pop records

While researching Shock and Awe, learning about the Dr. John connection drove me to check out some of the amorphous sequel records he made after Gris-Gris  - like Babylon and Remedies

Now I think about it, if I recall right Mike Leander - just prior to making "Rock and Roll, Pt 1 + 2" -  had also been listening to Dr. John and similar bayou-gumbo swamp-rock things like Exuma - as well as to the Afro-rock drum-looped boogie of  John Kongos, as in "He's Gonna Step On You Again".

Another glam intersection with Dr John: the Marsha Hunt cover version of "Splinters" was produced by Tony Visconti ....  Indeed Hunt was Marc Bolan's girlfriend (this is during Tyrannosaurus Rex days rather than T. Rex)

Cher also covered "Splinters" back in 1969 (Gris-Gris's producer-arranger Harold Battiste was Sonny & Cher's music director)

Out of many other covers, this "Splinters" by Paul Weller from 1995 sticks out. 

I guess here the Modfather is retracing a certain evolutionary path once taken by Steve Winwood (with Traffic) and Mighty Baby (once The Action). Or indeed the Small Faces>>>Humble Pie trajectory. 

Mod into proggish sophisto-rock with roots flavors.  Southern fantasies from afar (very afar in this case). 

(Perhaps Weller influenced a little by the Primal Scream Dixie-Narco move?). 

Speak of the devil, here's Humble Pie covering "Splinters"

"Splinters"-aside...  

Mostly with Dr. John / Mac Rebennack, I remember hearing these much more straightforward New Orleansy records that John Peel would play now and then -  contemporary releases but sounding like mystifying musty quaintness when nestled next to the Fall and the Undertones.

A Dr John interview from 1982

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