Category: I Said Goddamn

If you ever buy used records, you’ve learned that however clean they looked in the store, they sometimes skip or have a little scratch as loud as a gunshot, usually on your favorite song.  I’ve used this fix at least five times, and it worked every time, both on skips and loud scratches that run across grooves.  (If the scratch runs with the groove, you’re pretty much fucked, as the gentleman in the video points out. ) Using a toothpick is a brililant solution. It can get into a groove just enough to smooth out the edges, but it’s not sharp enough to go deep into the groove and ruin the record.  I guess you could ruin it if you pushed hard enough, but gentle pressure fixes the problem.

Goat’s Head Soup, recently given the full-reissue shebang, has its moments, but in ’73 it was a disappointment coming on the heels of the super-human Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street run.  A recent review on Pitchfork sums up how I feel about it:

This would suggest Goats Head Soup’s true significance is that it marked the moment where a new Rolling Stones record ceased to be a game-changing cultural event, and more like a fresh pile of coal shoveled into the engine room to keep the show on the road.

Simeon Coxe, age 82.

Found this video sometime after I posted about these guys last spring or whenever it was:

I’d never heard of The United States of America before seeing this.

This hilarious encounter between a young London ragamuffin and a moralizing shopowner sort of comes off like 1970’s Charles Dickens .  Still cracks me up after 40+ years.

You all know this song, so I’m not sure why I’m posting this, other than it’s always seemed to me to be somewhat underrated.  Yeah, it appears on “best of” compilations, and MTV did air this video some, but I don’t remember ever hearing it on the radio.  It’s a great song, with brilliant guitar parts throughout, and a badass lead break at the end.  Do I wish I’d seen them live?  Hell yeah.  Sadly, half of this line-up would  be dead within a couple of years.

While we’re revisiting great covers…this one achieves the impossible by being better than the Kinks’ original, in my opinion.  I doubt anyone else has ever bested the Kinks.  Another Nick Lowe production.