For the most part, Cratedigger features vintage albums, but every once in awhile, I’m going to write about some new vinyl. That’s the case this week: The Cocktail Slippers’ CD Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (Wicked Cool Records) was released in April, and the vinyl comes out this month.
I don’t know about you, but when I think about rock and roll, my thoughts don’t usually turn toward Norway. However, as the album’s co-producer (along with former Plasmatic and Disciple of Soul Jean Beauvoir), Steve Van Zandt, points out in his thoughtful liner notes, “Scandanavia consistently displays an unflinching reverence for the history of rock, and American pop culture in general.” How Van Zandt found this band of five working-class women from Oslo I don’t know, but he not only co-produced the album, he wrote two of the songs, including the title track, which has a chorus that recalls some of the great songs he wrote for the early Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes albums.
I had the chance to see these women perform at SXSW this year, and they’re capable musicians and songwriters. More importantly, they understand what rock and roll is all about, and display undeniable commitment to the tenets of the form. Oh, and they know how to make people dance. (more…)
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the rarest of breeds in the music world: the protest remix.
It’s unclear which is more inconceivable today: that a major label would release a stinging protest song aimed at the government of an extremely wealthy country, or that the song would crack the Top 40. But thanks to the overwhelming good will that came from Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in late 1984 and USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” a few months later, benefit fatigue had thankfully not yet kicked in, and “Sun City,” shepherded by Steven Van Zandt, became a surprise hit in late 1985. Now consider some other curiosities about the track:
– Two of the verses feature rappers, a full six months before Run-DMC and Aerosmith would drop their game-changing collaboration. - The production was by New York big beat maestro Arthur Baker, who was adored by musicians but not exactly known as a hitmaker. - The majority of the artists who sang on the record hadn’t scored a Top 40 hit of their own in years, if ever.
Indeed, “Sun City” is about as hipster a benefit/protest record as you’re likely to find. Daryl Hall and John Oates, Pat Benatar and Bruce Springsteen are easily the biggest commercial names at the time to appear on the record, while socially conscious artists like Peter Gabriel, Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett and, of course, Bono would find mainstream success in the coming years. The rest of the contributors are a who’s who of New York cool. Joey Ramone, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, Run-DMC, Duke Bootee, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Stiv Bators and Lou Reed all make appearances, as do Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, George Clinton, a pre-comeback Bonnie Raitt, Temptations David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Wolf, and Herbie Hancock. (Jackson Browne contributes as well, though getting him to work on a protest song back then was like shooting fish in a barrel.) Bob Geldof’s name appears on the 12″ single’s back cover, though one wonders if that was the benefit record equivalent to giving Berry Gordy writing credit on a Motown single; whether he contributed to the track or not, you gotta put Bob’s name on it.
The song itself is easily the best of the big benefit singles, with a crazy catchy “I ain’t gonna play Sun City” chorus and a slammin’ rhythm track assembled by Baker. And again, one must give credit to Van Zandt and Baker for leading off the song with rappers, an unprecedented move at the time. Some stations refused to play the song for that very reason – which just seems hilarious in today’s musical climate, where whitey is the odd man out – and that makes its rise into the Top 40 all the more impressive. What, then, would Baker do with the remix?
Go absolutely apeshit, that’s what. The A-side mix is over nine-and-a-half minutes long, and the “Not So Far Away” dub mix is a gargantuan twelve-and-a-half minutes. He samples Daryl Hall’s voice and turns it into a percussion track – something Girl Talk would turn into a copyright supervisor’s nightmare some 20 years later – and allows what I can only assume to be Hancock to noodle for the final five minutes of the dub mix. And, per usual, there are lots and lots of edits, though the credits for those edits go to Albert Cobrera (note the spelling) and Aldo Miran, which has to be the Latin Rascals (Albert Cabrera and Tony Moran) in disguise. Can anyone confirm or deny?
One of my favorite things about the A-side mix was how Baker turned the last lines in the verses sung by Springsteen, Bono and Bobby Womack into a cappella bits, only to bring the track thundering in on that fourth drum beat in the final measure. And man, listen to that Bono vocal. He hasn’t put anything that passionate to tape in ages.
These days, of course, “Sun City” has as much relevance as songs about occupied Germany, since apartheid came to an end in 1994. I am also reminded of a professor of mine who taught a class on the Sociology of Popular Music (help me out, Ohio University grads: he had a wooden leg, and would sometimes turn it around backwards to mess with people): he thought “Sun City” was fascinating because it’s basically musicians singing to other musicians. After all, no one buying this record was about to play Sun City, were they? (You could make a similar argument that Michael Jackson was singing about how he and his fellow pop stars are the world, and the ones who make a brighter day, blah blah blah.) And, adding an extra dose of irony, half of the artists who sing on this record were nowhere near the Sun City concert director’s radar (though if the video below is to be believed, Daryl Hall turned down $2 million to play there), which means that their declaration that they ain’t gonna play Sun City is like me saying that I’m not going to do business in Dubai. It’s good to have principles, but it’s a lot easier to have them when you know that you will never have to exercise them.
Still, you can’t deny that “Sun City” did an incredible job raising the average person’s awareness to an alarming human rights issue, and that was Van Zandt’s primary goal all along. That the song cracked the Top 40 as well was gravy. I will confess that I did not rip either of the tracks below (still need to save up the coin for a USB turntable, right after I plunk down my soul for the upcoming Beatles version of Rock Band), and the dub mix has a skip in it, but hopefully this will make up for it: the video I’ve included for “Sun City” is done “Pop-Up Video” style, woo hoo! Who would have thought that a third of the video’s budget was spent covering Jimmy Cliff’s hotel room?
Post script: I spent a day at Sun City in 1997, and while this may fly in the face of the thousand words before it, I have to say, the place was pretty sweet.
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…)
Let us now praise famous do-rag-wearing guitarist/songwriter/deejay/record execs. Now, unless Clive Davis has a couple side gigs or fashion proclivities I’m unaware of, I can think of only one person who fits the bill—Steven Van Zandt. Call him Miami Steve, Little Steven, Silvio Dante, or Steven Lento, his main nom de rock should be “Almighty Savior of Garage Rock”—that soul-stirring mongrel amalgam of rock, soul, surf, folk, blues, punk, and the kitchen sink. Progenitors and practitioners of the three-chord stomp owe the recent interest in their work to Van Zandt’s radio program Little Steven’s Underground Garage and its various offshoots, including festival concerts, the show’s Web site, its satellite radio channel, and the wonderful Wicked Cool Records, the label through which Van Zandt has released a stack of loud and proud albums by the likes of the Chesterfield Kings, the Cocktail Slippers, and the Grip Weeds.
Wicked Cool is also responsible for a series of bitchin’ compilations named after Underground Garage’s weekly “Coolest Song in the World” feature. The eighth volume of the series has just seen wide release (after a four-month exclusive period with f.y.e., which sponsors the show), and it is a keeper. With its focus on new and young bands, the album shows garage as a living, thriving endeavor.
Palmyra Delran of the girl group the Friggs kicks off the comp with “Baby Should Have Known Better,” locking into a punky groove and spiking her cautionary tale with the kind of repetitive chorus that lodges itself in the listener’s head for years. It’s a fitting start to the record—the song was selected by Underground Garage listeners as the “Coolest Song of 2008″ and, well, it rocks.
“Terminal Boredom” finds the awesomely named Cute Lepers rocking a tune that could have been a Clash outtake. The Lepers are currently signed to Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records—a fitting connection, as Jett’s influence can be felt on a number of tracks led by female singers, like the Downbeat 5’s “Dum Dum Ditty,” which channels the Crystals through a Bad Reputation filter. That track would have made a an equally great Phil Spector single or deep cut on the Ramones’ first record, as would a number of old and recent Joan Jett tracks. (more…)
For the most part, Cratedigger features vintage albums, but every once in awhile, I’m going to write about some new vinyl. That’s the case this week: The Cocktail Slippers’ CD Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (Wicked Cool Records) was released in April, and the vinyl comes out this month.
– Two of the verses feature rappers, a full six months before Run-DMC and Aerosmith would drop their game-changing collaboration.
Cocktail Slippers, Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (2009, Wicked Cool)
