Busker Days: 'Eyes of the Tiger, Tears of the Harlequin" Khevan Lennon-Onaje

Here's someone I've heard many times over the last few years at street level in the early morning hours.  His name is Khevan Lennon-Onaje and he's on the tenor sax. Usually I hear his soulful playing as I approach 2nd and Market, which is where I recently made these recordings on my way to work.   The first is an original composition entitled Eyes of the Tiger, Tears of the Harlequin - just an introductory passage it would seem - and the second a Parker tune, Bloomdido.

Song of the Week: "Aneurysm", Nirvana

Back from vacation and still listening to Nirvana. Maybe that is because my vacation took me to Aberdeen, Washington, the birthplace of Nirvana. Since Nirvana got play last week, I won't spend too much time on the write up. Today's SoTW was recorded for a BBC radio program back in 1992. It's called Aneurysm and was composed by all three members of the band: Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic. Another version of the song had appeared in England as the flip-side of Smells Like Teen Spirit, but I prefer this second version. In the US it appeared on the odds and ends/filler album, Incesticide. Aneurysm closes out that album and, in my humble opinion, is the standout on the album. In fact, I would suggest, with its powerful and evolving strong structure, and Cobain's gutteral vocals, it is one of Nirvana's two best songs.

Enjoy.

Song of the Week: "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", Leadbelly/Nirvana

On November 18, 1993, Nirvana took the stage in New York for an intimate acoustic evening to be filmed for MTV. The band was in its last throws of life as Kurt Cobain would commit suicide just 5 short months later. The band was at the end of their US tour in support of the criminally underrated album, In Utero. I had seen them on one of the first dates of that tour. Front row, center in Denver, Colorado. They were amazing. Cobain stared down at the first few rows for the first half of the show. Then, about half way in to the show, as he stepped back from the microphone to take one of his famously spartan guitar leads he looked up at the entire audience. About 1500 people in all. I remember getting an odd feeling at that moment. He looked as if he was going to be sick as he nervously closed his eyes and exhaled a huge sigh. He stepped back to the mic and took another quick pensive glance at the whole room. The rest of the show he performed like a 13 year-old boy trying to work up courage to ask the girl in the blue dress at the other end of the gymnasium if she would like to dance with him. This was a man who was uncomfortable in his own skin. About the worst thing possible, I imagine. And on this night in New York, a few months later, he didn't look too much more comfortable. That night, Nirvana, as was their want, added a ton of songs they rarely if ever performed. Mostly covers of songs by the Meat Puppets, Bowie and The Vaselines. And the closer that night was a cover as well. A traditional American folk song called Where Did You Sleep Last Night (in the Pines). It was a highly impassioned performance that varied surprisingly little from the version by folk-blues artist, Leadbelly. It is the closing verse where Cobain shines with his raspy voice wailing away with sadness as he sings "I will shiver the whole night through". For most it would be the last time they would see Cobain perform and his final plea rings all the much more ghostly for it.

Leadbelly did not write the song (as Nirvana generously credited in their publication of the song), as the song probably dates back as far as the Civil War. But he did record the song as early as 1944 just a few short years before his own death. Unaccompanied (and by himself), Leadbelly plays Where Did You Sleep Last Night? with the scary precision of a man who, himself, knew of murder and life in prison. "My girl, my girl, don't you lie to me. Tell me where did you sleep last night?" Leadbelly's asides fit his cool demeanor perfectly. This is not, like Cobain's version, a man who is driven by emotion. This is the story of a cool level headed killer being interrogated: "My husband was a hard working man, 'till a mile and a half from here. {What happened to him?} His head was found in a driver wheel, but his body ever never be found."

Video Diary: The Seeds "Mr. Farmer"

Lost in the shuffle of the deaths last week of Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson was the news of the passing of Sky Saxon. Sky Saxon, (born Richard Marsh) was the leader of an LA band called The Seeds that made a name for themselves between 1965 and 1970, most notably with their hard-pounding regional hit, Pushin' Too Hard. The band broke new ground with their music and -- unlike many of their compatriots of the day -- did some wonderful album length work (most notably on their first two albums for GNP-Crescendo) despite musical talent limitations. Saxon was a relentless promoter and an early advocate of "flower power" (in fact, he is likely the person who coined the term). I had the opportunity to meet Saxon (and his Scotty dog, Beamus) in the mid 80s and will just say that it was an interesting experience. Here is to hoping that Saxon's beanstalk grows high to the sky.

Song of the Week: "Peacemaker", Green Day

Success for a band can be a damn pain in the ass. The reality is that for every fan the band brings in, they bring in probably twice as many doubters. And when the band has a huge breakout album that wins widespread acclaim and massive sales, the question immediately turns to "what's next?". The Who had to face that question after the success of Tommy. They responded with their magnum opus, Who's Next. The Clash had to answer that question after the success of London Calling. They responded with the spotty and wide-ranging Sandanista. The Beatles had to do it after every album. And it's the position that Berkeley, California's Green Day find themselves in after the breakout success of American Idiot. One could excuse them if they came out with a straight-ahead, play the expectations down album. Or even if they fell flat on their face. But they didn't do either. Instead, this week, they came out with an album, 21st Century Breakdown, that feels very much like a natural extension of American Idiot. But it is perhaps even more ambitious than Idiot.

From Latin inflected grooves to more nuanced George Harrison styled songs to straight ahead hardcore to T-Rex inspired glam rock, the album is a grand musical exposition that changes style and tempo as fast as Liz Taylor changes husbands. Lyrically Billy Joe Armstrong focuses on two characters, Christian and Gloria who struggle with intimacy and personalization issues in a high-tech 21st Century world. The musicianship is top notch, as is the large, lush production from Butch Vig.

Pete Townshend and The Who clearly have had a large influence on Billy Joe. One could argue that Ray Davies of The Kinks has had an influence as well. Both those artists were masters at creating characters in their songs. Characters we could empathize with, hate, envy and fear. Characters who had delusions of grandeur at the same time that they had feelings of unworthiness. And both artists were willing to use whimsy in their lyrics and in their music. A trait from their Song-Hall influences of Post War Britain. But it is Townshend's penchant for creating thematic albums (Quadrophenia, Who's Next, Tommy, Sell Out) that is clearly on display in Billy Joe Armstrong's album. But that is not to say that this is a rip-off. Far from it. It is simply an artist picking up on a creative conceit created by others and used as a tool to tell his own tale. The album's namesake, a massive, constantly evolving song employs nods to Townshend's early pick-up switching guitar work (hear Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere) and Mick Ronson's grand guitar work for David Bowie.

But that's not our song. Our Song of the Week is one of those more whimsical (at least musically) songs. It's Peacemaker and it sits right smack dab in the middle of the album sandwiched between that Mark Bolan type of song and a plodding, melodic, Weezer-like song.

I hate to pull out just one song, but take a listen to Peacemaker. If you like it, there is no guarantee you will like the rest of the album as every song is very different. Same for if you hate it. This is a complete album that, like Forever Changes by Love and American Idiot, needs to be heard in order and in context of the other songs.

Del Shannon: Paranoia in A-minor

When Del Shannon’s first and only number one hit, Runaway, appeared in 1961, there were good reasons to think he would have many more. Here was a distinctive singer with an obvious knack for writing songs that people wanted to hear. Runaway managed to combine haunted desperation with catchiness, a formula that is magical if all too rare. But while he did have a few more songs in the charts through the mid-60s, none hit with the power of Runaway. Still, he should be remembered for more than just that song. Six months before the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Del’s cover of From Me To You, which he learned while appearing with the Fab Four in England in 1963, became the first Lennon-McCartney song in the U.S. charts, providing the only American test of the duo as songwriters completely removed from the hurricane of Beatlemania. Del’s version sticks pretty closely to the original, except when he shows off his vocal chops on the coda.

Other than Runaway, my two favorite Del Shannon songs are Keep Searchin (We’ll Follow the Sun) from 1964 and Stranger in Town, from 1965. They are a matched set of sturdily strummed minor-key dramas, with paranoia as the overriding sentiment. Keep Searchin' exploits the Runaway formula (similar chord progression beginning with an A-minor to G major change, a simple, melodic organ solo, and perfectly controlled but thrilling leaps into falsetto). Stranger in Town continues the sketchily outlined story of the lovers on the run while substituting a sax break for the organ. These two minute chapters detailed the futility of escape, and were perfectly tailored to the era when The Fugitive was one of the most popular shows on the small screen.

After years out of the spotlight, working as a producer and on the oldies circuit, Del attempted a comeback in the 80s with the backing of Tom Petty. He was even asked to join the Travelling Wilburys after Roy Orbison’s death, and his falsetto would have filled that void as well as anyone’s could have. But by then his demons had finally caught up with him, and Del Shannon took his own life in February 1990.

Video Diary: Wilco, "Via Chicago"

Song of the Week: "Satisfaction Guaranteed", The Mourning Reign

1966 is the single greatest year for rock-n-roll ever. 1956 was good too, but no 1966. 1977 was also a critical year, but falls far short of what went down across the globe in 1966.

Let's back up a bit. A few short years prior to '66, rock-n-roll in America was desperately treading water. The record stores had been flooded with a tsunami of over-polished crooners with faux pompadours and plaid dinner jackets who were being sold to America's precious daughters as a safe alternative to true originals like Chuck Berry. Elvis was no longer a ground breaking, dangerous rocker, he was a well quaffed sell-out actor. Gene Vincent himself had sunk to crooning and Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran were the earliest victims of rock-n-roll's toll. True, faint flickers of life could occasionally be glimpsed on the horizon. In Los Angeles Dick Dale was not very quietly creating an entirely new genre of rock-n-roll starting in '61. But it hadn't reverberated yet. In Texas, for a few brief years, starting in '62, Bobby Fuller tried to keep the Holly spirit alive. And in 1963 in Portland, Oregon, the Kingsmen recorded the single most important rock-n-roll record ever, Louie, Louie. But the record was immediately banned across the country and the Hoover-led FBI launched an investigation of obscenity and effectively put out the flame before it could spread too far...in this country. Then The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the tsunami of schlock was itself washed out by the British Invasion, which, thankfully, restored rock-n-roll to its birthplace. Those who couldn't make the football team (and some who could) went to Sears Roebuck and bought themselves a new Silvertone Guitar and declared war on the neighborhood barber. The frustrated radio station engineer implemented dreams of becoming the next George Martin and started moonlighting as a record producer. Club owners and a host of other entrepreneurs eager to make a dollar on the biggest craze since the hula-hoop formed what would pass as local "record labels". Of course, none of these people knew what they were doing so the revolution was delayed a few months. In the meantime, flying in the slipstream of the Beatles, more aggressive Brit bands -- bands hugely influenced by Louie, Louie -- like the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, The Who and the Kinks found an audience in the US. And then, very early in '66, the perfect storm hit. That band in San Jose had put in enough practices in dad's garage that they were now winning the battle of the bands contest. Grandma quietly slipped Dave $150 to cut a record and follow his passion. The owner of Rock-n-Rollerskate, the bestest teen night spot in all of San Jose, was ready to put some bucks down to record that band and maybe make some more money at the concession stand by selling a local record. And Ed, the frustrated audio engineer, had his recording studio all set up in the back of the local appliance store, It's A Wash. The time was now. No editors. No suits. No record company A&R men to say who could and could not record. This was the moment. And all across the world -- in America, Australia, Holland, Sweden and countless other places -- like a brood of cicadas, the now long haired rockers crawled out of the garages adorned in chelsea boots, three button jackets, paisley vests and dark wrap around sun glasses to make their first record. Within a year the record company executives would reassert their control and descend on towns like San Jose, California, Amsterdam, Sidney, and Stockholm and swoop up the bands deemed valuable and crush the bands that showed no utility. But in that one brief moment of 1966 -- wedged between the chaos of innocence and the unassailable rule of record companies -- millions of bands recorded their song. Some awful. Some brilliant.

Today's SoTW, like last week's installment, is one of those brilliant songs from '66. It's by the stunningly obscure San Jose, California quintet, The Mourning Reign. The song, with a clear play to the Rolling Stones, is called Satisfaction Guaranteed. A snarly guitar riff is spurted out with an unrelenting attack. The singer, some bloke named Beau (Bo) Maggie, does his best Mick Jagger swagger: "As you wander around, you find your imagination standing upside down in the mouth of hallucination. You are dissatisfied with the other guys you tried. Now don't you think it's time for a change, because, you know, Satisfaction Guaranteed!" Cue the double guitar lead that no respectable music exec. would have allowed. "Listen boys, you can't be playing over each other like that. It's just noise. Nobody will buy this record if you do that." Thank goodness their was no record exec. at the mighty Link Records in San Jose.

Unlike their San Jose brethren, The Chocolate Watchband, The Count Five and the Syndicate of Sound, the Mourning Reign wouldn't get the chance to make an album. They only recorded one other single and then disappeared into nowhere. Perhaps it was into that "invisible door" or that "hole in the floor" the singer is so desperate for us to know about.

Song of the Week: "Going Away Baby", Grains of Sand

Dusty bins of record stores and countless thousands of entries on eBay are littered with brilliant music that has long been forgotten. Today's Song of the Week is one such song. It's by the LA based band, Grains of Sand and the song is the frenetic Going Away Baby.

I first heard this song from Greg Shaw's brilliant late 70's compilation of 60's garage rock, Pebbles. Pebbles Vol. 1 to be exact. It was certainly one of the standouts on an album filled with forgotten gems of testosterone fueled rock-n-roll by kids who were just one good date away from being satisfied. But lucky for us, most of those kids never got satisfaction and thus made music of frustration for you and I to enjoy some 43 years later.

Grains of Sand were a 4-piece combo that signed with the boutique Valiant Records and immediately went to cutting one of the all-time great 60's pop numbers, That's When Happiness Began. It's one of those songs that beautifully matches pop melodies with a certain smugness to appeal to a wide variety of audiences. The Flip-Side is She Needs Me, a reverb drenched pounder of the highest quality. The groups next single is our SoTW: Going Away Baby. Going Away Baby features the frenetic guitar work of the songs composer, Doug Mark. The barre-chord riff is used as a refrain in the song, continuously bringing it back to it's most appealing quality. What sounds like a Farfisa organ to this writer, takes a front and center approach with it's three chord riff and even takes the center stage on the lead as Mark pushes the song along like a Pitt-Bull on caffeine. And like all sexually frustrated teenage singer's of 1966, the singer is sick. Sick of it baby. He can't take you no more. Yeah.

I know it is trite to say, but please, please, please play this song loud. It's the only way to totally appreciate it.

Cheers, I'm Going Away Baby!

Video Diary: The Who, "A Quick One"

The best music performance ever filmed. Period.