Author: Renfield

spider gourmand
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And now for some REAL dancin’

I’m not much of a Joy Division fan, as I can only take so much post-industrial Midlands desolation.  But this one’s pretty good, and Ian Curtis’s stage gestures are interesting to say the least, especially when he really cuts loose at around 3:00.

You bastards might know way more about these guys, so my apologies if what follows is common knowledge.  It’s pretty widely known that Ian Curtis hanged himself of the eve of what would have been their first tour of the U.S.  Beyond that, I’ve picked up a few interesting facts over the years:

-They formed after seeing the Sex Pistols perform in Manchester.  That same gig also inspired the formation of The Buzzcocks and The Smiths.

-Their bass player developed his style of playing in the upper register because when they started out, his amp was so shitty that it wouldn’t reproduce lower notes without sputtering.

-Ian Curtis had epilepsy and based his stage moves on his seizures, to the point that his bandmates could not tell when he was having a real one.  This predictably led to some disatrous gigs.

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Shit

Ennio Morricone, age 91.  One new fact I learned in an obit is that Stanley Kubrick had approached him to compose music for A Clockwork Orange.  EM wanted to work with him but had a prior commitment to Sergio Leone.

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Whole Lotta Borrowing

Speaking of The Small Faces, here’s their take on Muddy Waters’ “You Need Love.”  You’ll note that Robert Plant, who used to run errands for The Small Faces, later put this to use in “Whole Lotta Love.”  Some music nerds give themselves wedgies over all this, but you’ve gotta concede that Jimmy Page improved it by adding one of the all-time greatest rock riffs.  Fun Fact: when JP was forming what would become Led Zeppelin, Steve Marriott was high on his list of singers until The Small Faces’ manager threatened to break his hands.

By the way, below is the single version of “Whole Lotta Love” which cut out the free-form middle section of bongos, theremin, and Robert Plant gearing up for a sneeze that never comes.  Atlantic did originally put out the whole song as a single, but radio stations would create their own versions without the middle part.  Atlantic responded by re-releasing its own edited single over the objections of the band.  So if you didn’t own the lp and listened to AM radio, this is what you usually heard:

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Gismo!

Because everyone should hear this song at least once.

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And Now For Something Completely Obscure

Electronic pop duo Silver Apples released their first album in ’68.  I believe that makes them the first ever electronic pop band, predating Can, Kraftwerk, et al.  If any of you bastards know of someone prior to these guys, please clue me in.  They sold very few albums, but one somehow ended up in my house in the mid 70’s.  Ignorant that they predated Kraftwerk, I pretty much dismissed them because I didn’t like the songs very much.  They typically set up good initial ideas but, in my opnion, are let down by the singing and trippy lyrics, which creep me out for some reason.   But the electronic sounds are innovative and excellent.  Those sounds come from “The Simeon,” a primitive, homemade synth built by singer Simeon Coxe, an Alabaman.  He was just stringing together old WWII oscillators and claims that at the time  he’d never heard of Moogs or other synthesizers in develpoment.

Silver Apples’ legacy is hard to pin down.  Some 90’s experimental bands have cited them as an influence, but what about the electronic innovators of the 70’s?  You never heard a word about these guys back then, so did they influence Krautrock, Eno, Devo, prog rockers, or just work in a vacuum?  Who knows, but I can’t help but love their oddball creativity.  Very much in the tradition of American cranks innovating alone in the basement or garage.  But overall they show that first usually isn’t best.

Here is their full story, which is very interesting.  If you want to hear more, below is the entire first album and one song, “You and I”, from their second and final album, which was withdrawn soon after release.  The opening of “You and I” is suspiciously like “Station To Station,” but  I have no idea if Bowie was familiar with it.  The whole second album, which I haven’t heard,  is also on YouTube.

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Whiskey Porn

A German or perhaps Scandinavian reviews my favorite Tennessee Whiskey.  I’m posting this because things get funny at around 4:25, when he starts sounding like a 70’s  porn actor getting “serviced.”

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RIP, Dave Greenfield

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but just now getting around to it.  If you hadn’t heard, COVID-19 recently claimed Dave Greenfield, the keyboardist of The Stranglers, a decent first-wave band overshadowed by the great ones.  To me their work is more interesting than good,  but I give them credit for riding the wave at all.  They were at least different, and very competent musically.  Most importantly, when The Ramones and The Sex Pistols drew the line, these guys stepped on the correct side, unlike most.  I haven’t heard all of them, but my favorite is their overly-long cover of Burt Bacharach’s Walk On By .  Which I guess is another way of saying they needed more hooks.

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A Real Tasty Geezer

This funny but rather annoying song popped into my head the other day, probably because I heard the word “geezer.”  I heard it numerous times on the radio in England in the 80’s and was surprised to learn it had made it into the top 10 over there in the early 70’s.  By The Piglets, likely a group of whatever studio musicians were on hand, as is often the case with novelty songs.