Tales of True Adventure for Rugged Men Not Unlike Yourself
Agree 100%.
Just in time for Halloween, here’s a rig rundown featuring Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein (The Misfits, Kryst the Conqueror, Danzig, Gorgeous Frankenstein, Blitzkid, Doyle). Enjoy or don’t, you bastards.
EDIT: My inner 16-year-old loves this shit.
The Cars were a great live band!
University of Sussex, January 13, 1979
This one’s a little soft for this blog, but what can I say? Great melodies and harmonies. I seem to be obsessed with early 70’s pop-rock and glam for the past year or two. Maybe as people get older, they revisit their early teenage years?
Anyhoo, Stories was a NYC band trying to continue the Beatles’ legacy. Only a few other bands were trying that at the time–The Move, Bandfinger, Big Star, sometimes Todd Rundgren–and they all were squeezed between the dominant trends of heavy blues-rock and glam. TR and the Move always kept one foot in prog and glam, which broadened their appeal. Badfinger kept things current with a heavy guitar sound. And you all know the fate of Big Star. The story of Stories is weirder: they had a #1 crossover r&b hit, a cover of Hot Chocolate’s “Brother Louie.” The huge success of a song outside of their usual genre eventually led to their demise. A tour at the height of the single’s popularity had them performing for a strange mixture of black and white fans of soul and rock, a truly odd situation for a Brit-pop band. Like their fellow pop bands of the time, they influenced the late 70’s explosion of power pop. Tommy Hoehn’s first album sounds like a lost Stories album, or Stories outtakes recorded by a less talented band. Stories’ albums, like most others, are hit and miss, containing both good songs and duds.
By they way, Stories main songwriter, founder and keyboardist, Michael Brown, had been the leader of the 60’s baroque-pop band, The Left Banke, best known for their monster hit, “Walk Away Renee” and “She May Call You Up Tonight,” later covered by the Bangles. Here’s the original, if you haven’t heard it:
Hmmm?
A new stage show produced by Beatle expert Mark Lewisohn sheds some light on a story we thought we knew. From The Guardian …
They’ve wrapped up the recording of Abbey Road, which would turn out to be their last studio album, and are awaiting its release in two weeks’ time. Ringo Starr is in hospital, undergoing tests for an intestinal complaint. In his absence, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison convene at Apple’s HQ in Savile Row. John has brought a portable tape recorder. He puts it on the table, switches it on and says: “Ringo – you can’t be here, but this is so you can hear what we’re discussing.”
What they talk about is the plan to make another album – and perhaps a single for release in time for Christmas, a commercial strategy going back to the earliest days of Beatlemania. “It’s a revelation,” Lewisohn says. “The books have always told us that they knew Abbey Road was their last album and they wanted to go out on an artistic high. But no – they’re discussing the next album. And you think that John is the one who wanted to break them up but, when you hear this, he isn’t. Doesn’t that rewrite pretty much everything we thought we knew?”
Full article here, including a link to tour dates for a show I would kill to see.
If Target can put up Halloween costumes and decorations the first week of September, I can talk about Dracula. I never noticed this before …
Extreme Nerdy Horror Trivia! In the classic 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, why is there a piece of cardboard on a lamp? An error, or was it actually something intentional?
And best YouTube quote …
Why is there so much Dracula in my cardboard movie?
For The Replacements, I mean. This is the demo version of “Raised in the City,” which I hadn’t heard until Other Other Elvis hipped me to that song-ranking site. Far superior to the album version.
The band soon recorded a four-song demo tape in Mars’s basement and handed it to Peter Jesperson in May 1980. Westerberg originally handed in the tape to see if the band could perform at Jay’s Longhorn Bar, a local venue where Jesperson worked as a disc jockey. He eavesdropped as Jesperson put in the tape, only to run away as soon as the first song, “Raised in the City,” played. Jesperson played the song again and again. “If I’ve ever had a magic moment in my life, it was popping that tape in,” said Jesperson. “I didn’t even get through the first song before I thought my head was going to explode.”
I miss Chappelle’s Show.
Think Mrs. Makerbot would go for this?