Author: Renfield

spider gourmand
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Broadcast

Any of you bastards heard of them?  Someone put me onto them last night.  They were active from late 90’s to around 2011, when their singer passed away after catching H1N1 on tour.  This song’s from their first album, The Noise Made By People, which is good.  If you took Forever Changes, removed the Hispanic influence, added some delightfully creepy synths, and brought in a fifteen-year-old Nico to sing, then you might have something like this album.  Or not.

Update from the rabbit hole: this one, from second album, sounds like Silver Apples, but with a far better singer.

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George & Martha

Something reminded me of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, which in turn reminded me of this parody.  Benny Hill’s Richard Burton is spot-on.

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Speaking o’ Memphis

Here’s a radio show of some 60’s-70’s rarities.  I love the ones by the Breakers and Flash and the Memphis Casuals.  I bet they kicked ass live (I’m not old enough to have seen them, although I did see about half of the others on this list).  Unlisted after the Tommy Hoehn song is a pretty terrible cover of “I Walk the Line” by a band called Hot Dogs, who had some good songs;  why on earth was that chosen?  I find Chris Bell’s acoustic version of “I Am The Cosmos” too slow, sludgy, and depressing–which I guess makes sense, as he was chronically depressed.   It’s the sound of Quaalude abuse.  The official single version moves along better, although there’s still about as much sludge as I can endure.

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Magical Mystery Chord

https://youtu.be/gwfH9oAiPH0

Harmonics doesn’t get more fun than this chord.  I think someone’s posted an analysis here before, but I’d forgotten the details.  Randy Bachman got to listen to the individual tracks at Abbey Road;  here he is breaking it down.  Truly a band firing on all cylinders during this time, the height of their early period.

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Suckers Wanted

Julian Lennon will auction NFT’s of some of his prized memorabilia: John’s black cape from Help, a Les Paul ( I guess Yoko owns the Epiphone Casino), Paul’s handwritten notes for “Hey Jude,” and some other treasures.  He’s keeping the originals.  In Julian’s words,

I actually felt very bad about keeping all that stuff locked away, and I just felt that this was a unique way to continue dad’s legacy and show people the collections I have…

Aw, how nice.  John’s legacy needs so much  help these days.  And I’m sorry he feels bad, but the money should help that.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, but with NFT’s you can have it and sell it!

There’s a sucker born every minute.  –PT Barnum

Never give a sucker an even break.  –WC Fields

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Righteous Gemstones

Any of you bastards watching this?  I’m through most of S1, and much of it is hilarious.  Bogs down a little in a couple of middle episodes involving flashbacks and a ho-hum subplot, but it picks up again and looks like it’s  heading for a strong finish.  I’m hearing S2 is good.

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Born Fighter

Not his greatest song, but it has one of the funniest first verses I’ve ever heard and a Dave Edmunds solo (2:00) that curls what’s left of my hair.  When I searched YouTube for this song, I ran across a ’79 documentary of the same name.  Here is a clip where Lowe and Edmunds talk a bit about Phil Spector, then work on takes of that same solo.  I haven’t watched past where the solo recording ends at 15:00, so I don’t know if the rest is worth watching.  Nick Lowe seems rather, um, “relaxed.”

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Oh, Not Whoa

Sometimes aesthetics call for an “oh” instead of a “whoa,” as in the chorus of this forgotten Wings song.  This overlooked album track is pretty good, with a good guitar riff, a decent enough hook, and some Stax horns.  Far better than this album’s single, “Listen to What the Man Said,” which is just dishwater.  The post-Beatles careers of Lennon-McCartney revealed that they needed each other, or at least assertive bandmates.