Hi, this is Popdose senior editor Robert Cass, and you’re listening to Bottom Feeders, a countdown of every song that charted below #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s! And now, back to text jockey Dave Steed and the countdown … which isn’t really a countdown … but I’m not sure what else to call it except “a really long list” … and that’s not sexy at all, now is it? So let’s just stick with “countdown” and get right into the featured songs by artists whose names begin with the letter R.
Li’l bit o’ trivia for you: “My Computer’s Getting Personal,” the minor regional hit I recorded with my old funk group, Robertic Rhythm, juuuust missed the Hot 100 in ‘87, and therefore missed out on being mentioned in last week’s installment of Bottom Feeders. (Remind me not to ask Robert to write an intro in my absence ever again. —DS)
I’ve seen this labeled both disco and new wave. I’m not sure I hear the disco, but the new wave is in full force. “Don’t Stop Trying” is from Steve Rodway’s only record, Horizontal Hold. After this, he did very little for the next decade, at which point he really got into producing music under the moniker Motiv8. Apparently his claim to fame is cowriting and producing Gina G.’s “Ooh Ahh … Just a Little Bit” in 1996. Whatever works, I guess.
Roger
“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” — 1981, #79 (download)
Ranking at a whopping #2 on my Bottom 80 Songs of the ’80s list, this fucker is mind-numbing. I know Roger Troutman made his living using the talk box, both on his solo work and with Zapp, but there’s only so much of this the human ear can take. I can’t listen to “Grapevine” at any volume, as my ears literally hurt from the piercing effects of the box. This version is only, like, seven minutes long — the album version tacks on five more repetitive minutes.
Last week, I took the redeye back from Vegas while still slightly hung over from a blowout the night before. I hadn’t fully recovered a few days later, but that didn’t prevent me from stopping by my regular hangout. I decided to join Giles and Asregadoo on Bourbon Street, and was two sips into my first Knob Creek when I realized I was in the mood for Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones. I guess recapping the events of a weekend in Sin City for the staff was the closest I get to that album’s stoned-out decadence.
Unfortunately, the otherwise excellent jukebox lacks this particular masterpiece, and had to wait until I was done for the night when I could crank it up on the journey home. But I didn’t realize that my iPod was set on Shuffle, so after “Rocks Off,” I didn’t get the breathless rush of “Rip This Joint,” but rather “Let It Loose.”
Some albums hit you on first listen. Others remain outside your grasp for years no matter how many times you keep coming back to them. Then, one day, it all starts to make sense, opening up worlds you never thought existed. Exile is one of those albums. I knew “Tumblin’ Dice” and “Happy” from classic rock radio, but, like most double albums, it was too sprawling. The other albums the Stones put out in that period, Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers, were more accessible, more compact. Even worse was a muddy mix that made most of Mick Jagger’s vocals unintelligible. I could only pay it lip service, repeating what others had said about it, for fear of losing my credibility. (more…)
A little over a year ago, the possibility of a Phish reunion was the stuff of parking lot rumor and message board postings. When they took the stage at Hampton back in March and played those opening notes to “Fluffhead,” 2009 officially became the year of Phish.
Somehow, between jamming with Bruce Springsteen at Bonnaroo and playing consistently sold-out nights, they managed to record a new album with old friend Steve Lilywhite. Joy is their first studio outing since the weary Undermind back in 2004. (more…)
Since talking about 12″ mixes is like dancing about architecture, I’m just posting tunes going forward. So for all you fly mothers, get on out there and dance. Dance, I said!
“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”—Sergei Rachmaninov
“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.”—Plato
“A wop-bop-a-loo-bomp. Alop-bam-boo.” —Little Richard
Isn’t it funny how quite often the finest practitioners of rock and roll—that most American of art forms—are those whose passports originate from outside the U.S.? I’m not just speaking of the Beatles, Stones, or Sex Pistols—we regularly extol the virtues of artists from lands unreachable by car from the bottom of my driveway. The best straight-up rock and roll band in the world right now may very well be the Hives, or maybe The Soundtrack of Our Lives, both of whom hail from Sweden, of all places.
But Norway? We’re expected to believe that the land of Vikings, the ‘94 Winter Olympics, and Henrik-freakin’-Ibsen has provided us with anything any more rockin’ than the wood John Lennon spoke of in that Beatles song? Well, in a word, ja. Leave it to Little Steven Van Zandt, the garage rock godfather, to find, promote, and produce not just a slammin’ rock and roll band from Norway, but a slammin’ all-female rock and roll band from Norway—Oslo’s own Cocktail Slippers.
Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre gives us a kick-ass rock band donning the costumes and playing the part of an early-60s girl group, like the Crystals or the Shirelles or the Ronnettes, with really loud guitars and the echoed thwap of a heavy-armed drummer. “Sentenced to Love” roars out of the gate with snarl and a backbeat the Strokes should kill for. The band’s “I-yi-yi-yi-yi’s” come from the best syllable-stretching rock and roll tradition (think Axl Rose with lipstick; or better yet, don’t), and the ‘Slippers bring forth the mighty thunder of a band onstage, trying to break the mirror behind the bar from across the room. (more…)
It’s been forever and a day since I felt like this
I want a fifth of Wild Turkey and one little kiss
And I don’t miss that girl; if I did, I wouldn’t let it show
I might go to the moon, might wind up dead
Wake up in morning in a stranger’s bed
Well, I’m not concerned with any of that no more — “Six Years Gone” (download)
The Georgia Satellites shot to the top of the charts in the fall of 1986 with “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” a jokey little play on Southern morality that sounded nothing like anything else on the radio at the time. Real drums, no keyboard player, and a sound that wasn’t so much produced as it was simply recorded. With their bad hair, crooked teeth, and dirty clothes, they looked more like beer-swilling rednecks than rock stars; in the age when physical imperfections were beginning to be sanded out of the music business by MTV, the Sats were exceptions to just about every commonly accepted rule of fame. Their debut album, the simply titled Georgia Satellites, was a reminder of what rock & roll was supposed to be: loud, rude, and sloppy. They covered Terry Anderson’s “Battleship Chains,” one of those musician’s favorites that was later recorded by Warren Zevon and The Replacements, among others. They tore the shit out of Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells a Story.” Overall, they channeled their rock heroes (a group that includes the Stones, the Faces, the Beatles, and Jerry Lee Lewis) without simply aping them. What they didn’t do was record another hit single. “Hands to Yourself,” great as it was, pigeonholed the band as something of a novelty act, and they receded from the public eye almost as quickly as they’d entered it. (Thus proving the rock & roll maxim that you can’t yodel in a song and have a long career:unless you have a fabulous rack.) (more…)
What would rock and roll be without drugs? Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the death of Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD-25. Hoffman’s tale is one of the most celebrated stories of chemical discovery; he discovered the compound in 1938 but shelved it after preliminary tests on animals showed no particular pharmacological benefits (aside from “restlessness”). A “peculiar presentiment” prompted Hoffman to revisit the substance five years later, and during the synthesis process he found himself sufficiently disoriented to discontinue work. Three days later, on April 29, 1943, he intentionally subjected himself to what he thought would be a threshold dose of 250 µg (which is actually from two to five times the typical recreational dose), and the well-chronicled adventures that followed have been subsequently celebrated as “Bicycle Day” amongst the psychonaut community.
This album from 1978 features the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra playing that most maligned of instruments, the kazoo. The kazoo was invented by an African-American named Alabama Vest in Macon, Georgia sometime in the 19th century and it was first publicized at the Georgia State Fair in 1852. (I got all this information from Wikipedia, so you know it’s true.)
This first song is called “2001 Sprach Kazoostra” and it’s based on…well, you know what it’s based on. You can almost imagine the little Star Children playing this as the monolith approaches Earth.
This next song shows how kazoos can even be used in disco music. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present “Stayin’ Alive.” (Beware of some pretty scary ad-libbing here.)
While this last song is not included on this record, it’s still by them and it really needs to be included. There was an annoying group in the ’80s called Stars on 45 that did medleys of songs to a steady clap track. Here, the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra does its own take on this phenomenon.
BONUS: Here’s a clip of the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra performing live on The Mike Douglas Show!
If you’re also interested in hearing their take on “Miss You” by the Rolling Stones and “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin, you can get the whole thing right here!
I’m not much of a believer in band reunions — they seldom result in any output that actually improves the band’s legacy, and often have just the opposite effect. Still, I was thrilled recently when rumors of a Faces reunion were all over the Internet. First of all, the Faces were always one of my favorite bands; second, despite the presence of future superstars Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, they never really got the shot that they deserved. Of course, a lot of that was of their own mischievous making. In many ways the world has come to see the Faces as the perennial scrappy underdogs.
Most of the Faces have gone on to solo careers, to one degree of success or another. Beloved bassist and songwriter Ronnie Lane died in 1997. None of them have been able to recreate the special vibe that a Faces album had, though; it was some sort of magic blend of carefree rock and roll, and cry in your beer pathos.
Faces (and Small Faces) keyboard player Ian McLagan became something of a journeyman, making brilliant contributions to records and tours by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, and many, many others. He is one of the most respected and revered musicians in the world by his colleagues and his fans. He moved to Austin in 1994, where he formed the Bump Band, which includes bassist Mark Andes (Spirit, Jo Jo Gunne, Canned Heat, Heart), drummer Don Harvey (Martha Davis, Joe Ely, Charlie Sexton), and Joe Newcomb (Ray Wylie Hubbard, the Resentments, Beaver Nelson). The band released “Extra Live” in 2006.
On August 2, 2006, McLagan suffered a loss that would change his life substantially. His wife Kim was killed in a car accident near Austin. She was 57 years-old, and they had been married for 28 years. Kim had previously been married to Who drummer Keith Moon. McLagan hasn’t stopped playing though, far from it, and now he’s back with Never Say Never (00:02:59), a solo album by a former Faces member that finally captures the magic of the legendary band. (more…)
Roger![2158f0cdd7a03742aec58110.L._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/2158f0cdd7a03742aec58110.L._SCLZZZZZZZ_1.jpg "2158f0cdd7a03742aec58110.L._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]")
Last week, I took the redeye back from Vegas while still slightly hung over from a blowout the night before. I hadn’t fully recovered a few days later, but that didn’t prevent me from stopping by my regular hangout. I decided to join Giles and Asregadoo on 
Cocktail Slippers, Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (2009, Wicked Cool)
The Georgia Satellites shot to the top of the charts in the fall of 1986 with “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” a jokey little play on Southern morality that sounded nothing like anything else on the radio at the time. Real drums, no keyboard player, and a sound that wasn’t so much produced as it was simply recorded. With their bad hair, crooked teeth, and dirty clothes, they looked more like beer-swilling rednecks than rock stars; in the age when physical imperfections were beginning to be sanded out of the music business by MTV, the Sats were exceptions to just about every commonly accepted rule of fame. Their debut album, the simply titled Georgia Satellites, was a reminder of what rock & roll was supposed to be: loud, rude, and sloppy. They covered Terry Anderson’s “Battleship Chains,” one of those musician’s favorites that was later recorded by Warren Zevon and The Replacements, among others. They tore the shit out of Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells a Story.” Overall, they channeled their rock heroes (a group that includes the Stones, the Faces, the Beatles, and Jerry Lee Lewis) without simply aping them. What they didn’t do was record another hit single. “Hands to Yourself,” great as it was, pigeonholed the band as something of a novelty act, and they receded from the public eye almost as quickly as they’d entered it. (Thus proving the rock & roll maxim that you can’t yodel in a song and have a long career:unless you have a 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c51863c6-4b15-44c5-a103-0b0929d2eab7)
