Song of the Week: "The Man You'll Be Looking For", The Tages

Gosh darn it. I'm sorry for missing our regular Monday installment of Song of the Week. And I'm almost as sorry to tell you that I don't have much time to get to it today. I am posting a lovely song, but no pithy comments. Boo Hoo.

So, our SOTW this week comes from Stockholm, Sweden. Sometime around 1966, these cats who called themselves The Tages recorded a groovy bass heavy song called The Man You'll Be Looking For. Anyone who knows me knows that I love me the sound of an aggressive bass. Mmmmm! And this one has a bottom so big that it would make Sir Mix-A-Lot fall in love.

Also linked is a wonderful little radio interview with some unga Svenska flicka who gushes over her love of the song, saying, and I quote: "de gummistövlar göra mina bröstvårtor rött". I couldn't agree with her more.

So, please have an enjoyable listen to The Tages' Man You'll Be Looking For and then click on the Swedish radio interview on the left. Or do it in the opposite fashion. I don't care.

Yorgada torgada bungada!

Video Diary: The Ventures, "Diamond Head & Caravan"

Happy Friday to all. Two, that's right, two Ventures videos in one. Plus a creepy ad.

Hey kids, want to be cool this weekend? I thought so. If for some freak of nature reason you actually get invited to a party, get-together or, even better, one of them soirée parties that I've read so much about in them vintage swinger magazines, just throw out the following sentence: "I've always believed that Nokie Edwards is criminally underrated as a guitarist. How about you?" I promise you, Ventures loving members of the opposite sex are going to be knocking down your door with pipeline love.

Song of the Week: "Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)", Earl King

This song has had me flippin' like a flag on a pole ever since I caught Ron Silva and the Monarchs performing it in San Francisco last month. It's Earl King's original composition (but second recording of the song), Come On (parts 1 and 2) as recorded for Imperial Records in 1960. Many of you may know it from Jimi Hendrix's cover of the song as recorded for Electric Ladyland, or from Stevie Ray Vaughan's cover of Hendrix's cover. Or some hipsters may know the cool and mellow Alvin Robinson version. It doesn't much matter, they're all damn good.

I don't know all that much about Earl King other than he had a residency at the infamous Dew Drop Inn in his hometown of New Orleans and played with Guitar Slim and even played as Guitar Slim after Slim was temporarily knocked out of action by a nasty little auto accident. (Earl King also played with Irma Thomas who got some love from On The Flip-Side a few months back.) Earl King became a mainstay on the New Orleans stage for years until his passing in 2003.

Come On not only has an undeniable groove that will get your tail feather shaking and some wicked little guitar riffs (this writer is particularly smitten with the guitar riffs at 3:40), but this song also has some great lyrics. Lyrics like, "I love you baby like a miner loves gold", "you've got me flippin' like a flag on a pole", and "so many people live in make-believe/they keep a lot of dirt up their sleeve." I'm not even sure I know exactly what is meant by that last one, but I like it.

Click here to listen to Earl King perform Come On (parts 1 and 2).

PS, turn your lamp down low, you know I love you so.

Song of the Week: "Summertime", Billy Stewart

Today's look at George Gershwin's Summertime has us digging up one of the most unique takes on the classic song. It hails from 1966 and appeared on the blues label, Chess Records. It's by scat-soul singer and all around unique showman, Billy Stewart. Two versions of this song were released. A single, which became a minor hit, and this version, the longer album version. This longer version includes more scat, more sax and more crispy good Summertime love. Click here to listen to Billy Stewart's remarkable take on Summertime. We'll see you tomorrow with another very different version of the song. Until then, cheers.

Song of the Week: "Summertime", Santo and Johnny

Listen - Santo and Johnny perform Summertime.

Today's look at Summertime has us focusing on an instrumental version of the classic as performed by Manhattan-based brothers, Santo and Johnny. The two Farina brothers are unquestionably best known for their indispensable composition, Sleep Walk, a song that can make a strong argument for being the progenitor for surf music. Following the unlikely success of Sleep Walk, Santo and Johnny released Summertime as the flip-side of their next single, the foot stomping Caravan. The Farina brothers' arrangement of Summertime is centered around the slow, jazzy chord structure of the arch-top guitar and a piercing lead performed on the lap steel guitar. A simple string arrangement briefly ads to the patina of the all-too-short song. But it is the molasses-in-winter slow leads on the lap steel that make the instrumental take on Summertime so compelling. Chiming with the reverb drenched sound first laid down in Sleep Walk, the brothers make another dreamy AM radio classic. A song that would have been the perfect sound track for a hot summer night's make out session performed in the back of dad's Oldsmobile while parked at Inspiration Point overlooking Wenatchie Lake. Click here to hear Santo and Johnny's version of Summertime. We'll check back in tomorrow for another version of Summertime. Until then, enjoy.

Song of the Week: "Summertime", The Zombies

Today we start a week long salute to one of the greatest songs ever written. The song is Summertime and was penned by George Gershwin in 1935 for the musical, Porgy and Bess. Some songs are brilliant because of the performance, but not necessarily the intrinsic nature of the composition. See MC5's Kick Out the Jams video diary entry directly preceding this post as an example. Other songs are so perfectly composed that it is nearly impossible for anyone to do a bad version of it. Summertime, I would argue, falls into this latter category. In celebration of Summertime (and Summer), we will post a new version of the song each day this week. Upbeat, sorrowful, latin, soul, jazz, rock and country. We may just explore them all.

Today we start things off with the criminally underrated British Invasion band, The Zombies. Their version is pretty straightforward. Slow and brooding, the moody nature of the song is first tipped by the bass work of Chris White who gives us the first melodic hint as to what song we are enjoying. Then the beautiful, breathy voice of Colin Blunstone comes in. Blunstone, perhaps best known for voicing the band's hit, Time of the Season, sings Summertime with a sultry heat that would fit well into any Tennessee Williams play. Rod Argent's electric piano punctuates our song and the three front men harmonize with a gentle ghostly feel to it. Click here to hear the Zombies version of Summertime.

We'll see you tomorrow with another version of the song.

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.

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 Genesis 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.

Video Diary: The Chocolate Watchband, "Sitting There, Standing"

The Chocolate Watchband perform Sitting There, Standing as seen in the 1967 movie, Riot on Sunset Strip. The video/audio sync blows, but you get the picture.

Original Song Project: "Boulder Bound", Morgan Young

Here is a little ditty I recorded this weekend while hanging with my kids in Goblin Valley, Utah. My daughter originally came up with the basic melody while singing about butterflies and bacon. Two things she really loves! I added a few flourishes to fill it out and changed the name from Pretty, Pretty Butterflies and Bacon to Boulder Bound, which we were at the time.

It's a one-track recording with no edits and employs a Gibson J-200 in open G tuning and a straight tuned Lee Oskar Harmonica in the key of G and that's all. It's a finger stretcher.

I hope you likey.

Song of the Week: "Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)", Robert Johnson

Just behind baseball historians, musicologists hold the title of most likely to turn their subjects into superheroes. The ideal candidate for the musicologist is a ghost. A musician who quietly walks into a juke joint, sits down and starts plying his trade in front of a loud and hostile crowd. In a striking moment he quiets the sundry ne'er-do-wells (usually bringing tears to the eyes of the most hardened men and stealing the heart of the most faithful girl). Then the ghost mutates into the warm mist of the night with just his instrument and the satisfaction that he is the best ghost musician in these here parts. "Who was that masked musician?" one breathless woman asks with idolatry coloring her voice. A skittish little bug-eyed man in overalls responds, "That was no ord'nary muse-ishin'. Not like any other we know, at least. That there was the devil himself."

Welcome to the over-legend of one Mr. Robert Johnson. So little is known about the exceptionally talented itinerant musician that he becomes the perfect blank canvass for musicologist and folklorist who have been unable to control their urge to paint the canvass with their own skewed palette. The prevailing myth of Johnson is that he puppy-dogged Charlie Patton and Son House around the Mississippi delta trying to learn all he could from the two masters. But he was shun for his lack of talent and over eager ways and sent packing. Soon after, on a warm summer night in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the young man crossed paths with the devil (disguised as a man) who took the Gibson guitar, re-tuned it, played a beautiful song on the flat-top box, and asked if Johnson wanted it back. In his affirmative response, Johnson had sold his soul to the devil down at the Crossroads in exchange for becoming the greatest musician ever.

This, of course, is pure rubbish. The few known facts of Robert Johnson's life are quite ordinary. The musicianship, quite extraordinary. Robert Johnson was probably born in or near Tunica, Mississippi some time around May, 1912. He died on August 16, 1938 in Greenwood, Mississippi. His death certificate, signed by a white plantation owner, lists syphilis as his cause of death. This is a little suspect as the person who signed this never met him and certainly didn't perform an autopsy on his body. In addition, assigning "syphillis" as a cause of death to young black men in that day was extremely common and not always accurate. Eye-witnesses (credible and incredible) and rumors suggest he was poisoned by a jealous boyfriend and died an agonizing death over a two-day period. We'll never know for sure. Twenty-six short years, 29 recordings, two recording sessions in Texas, two photographs. That's all we really know for sure. 

Our SOTW, this week, is Johnson's stellar Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil). One listen should be all you need to understand why so much legend has built up around the man. The open E (actually Eb) tune is a wonderful showcase for Johnson's precision slide work, his impressive right-hand percussive strumming technique and his ability to change tempos to add tension to certain moments in the song. The song should be entered into the records as Exhibit A when trying the case of Robert Johnson, guitarist v. the rest of the blues guitarist to ever perform. Johnson makes constant subtle changes to his main riff without ever changing the substance of it. For example, compare his playing of the main riff at :07 with the riff at 1:22 and his still different riff starting at 1:29. Or note how he breaks from the 12-bar normative structure of the song by adding or subtracting bars for affect. Such as when he adds ten seconds of turnarounds at 1:07 to cover his spoken word part. And again, he adds bars at 1:59 as he implores himself to "do it now" and sits back and lets us hear his wonderful percussive right hand slap a syncopated rhythm. Bottom line, the itinerant young man was a master of his instrument. A person who had an intuitive understanding of what was possible. A man who was not contained by the norms of his day. A man who pioneered new ground. A man who progressed so quickly and so much further than those around him that it led people to start rumors -- in his day -- that he had sold his soul to the devil to become the best guitarist in the land. A rumor he appeared to embrace as the subtitle of this song would suggest. 

Now stop and listen to the same song. But don't listen to the Robert Johnson, the master guitarist. Listen to Robert Johnson the singer. He was a singer with tremendous range and tremendous power in his voice. He sings a smooth melody, often breaking into spoken word in mid-sentence, over the staccato guitar riff. (No matter how hard I worked, I would never be able to sing that melody over that guitar riff. In my head, with my abilities, the two just can't be done together. But they obviously can.) The 25 year-old Johnson sings with a passion usually not associated with a man of youth. At the tail end of the 2nd verse, at around 1:16, Johnson lets out a one-syllable howl that lets you understand in no uncertain terms the honesty of his blues. No matter what language, no matter what year you heard this, you can comprehend his deep anguish. The anguish of a man who moans like he knows his death is just days away. Then a two-part spoken interlude that sounds like it comes from two different voices. "Yes. Preach 'em now".

"Yes the blues is a low down achin' disease. Like consumption, killing me by degrees. I can study rain, oh, ohhh drive, oh, oh drive my blues. I been studyin' the rain and I'm gonna drive my blues away. Going to the distillery, stay out there all day."

Take away the ghost, the spirit and the lore which ultimately diminishes Johnson's real skills by focusing attention elsewhere, and we are left with the single most important figure in the entire genre of blues. A man whose massive skills continues to cast a shadow over blues, jazz and rock to this day. Robert Johnson, the man. Not Robert Johnson the ghost. That's all you need.

Song of the Week: "Tennessee Flat-Top Box", Johnny Cash

Listen - Johnny Cash performs Tennessee Flat-Top Box

Everyone loves Johnny Cash. Punks adore him. Country and Honky Tonkers revere him as a Mt. Rushmore figure of the genre. People who hate country, love Johnny Cash. Folkies love him. Rock-n-rollers love him. Hippy-jam band cats love him. Honestly, how could you not like the man in black? He was exceedingly original, stiff armed the stiff Nashville machine, embraced musicians like Bob Dylan when others around him were hostile to rock and folk, and produced consistently great quality work. JC even embraced people who were relegated to the trash bin by society as witnessed by his prison concerts.

And no wonder everyone loves him -- his music, his voice, his story-telling skills are just top-notch. As evidence, I offer the man's 1961 sleeper, Tennessee Flat-Top Box. The somewhat autobiographical tale of an unassuming boy who was quietly turning heads by doing things his own way is classic Cash. So is the Tennessee Two's chug-a-chug-a-chug chug rhythm. But what's different about this song is that striking and constant acoustic guitar lead. I'm unsure if the wonderful wooden indian-like lead guitarist Luther Perkins is playing this lead or if a studio musician was called in. In some aspects it is very Luther (the walking leads with heavy emphasis on the polka beat), but in other ways it is not Luther at all (the multi-string slides and the use of acoustic). I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be Carl Perkins on lead. I just don't know. If you do know, please let me know.

I hope you enjoy this song. Cheers.

(Not, Alas) a Monkee’s Nephew

Sometime last year I think it was, I had a dream that Michael Nesmith was my uncle. I don’t remember much about the specifics, or even if I managed to ask him the burning question, “How could you work with Davy Jones for three years without beating the crap out of him?” But I do remember that I was pretty sad to wake up and find that Uncle Nes wouldn’t be at Thanksgiving after all.

I’ve always liked the Monkees, and I firmly believe Micky Dolenz has one of the great rock and roll voices. But Nesmith was the one who made them feel substantial and not just a made for t.v. cartoon.  He was already an experienced songwriter before he was cast as a Monkee.  His song Mary, Mary appeared (somewhat uncomfortably) on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s second album East-West even before the “Monkees” series debuted in September 1966, and in 1967 the Stone Poneys hit big with Different Drum another pre-Monkee Nesmith composition.  By picking an actual quirky tunesmith who was not a central casting teen idol type, the Monkees producers sowed the seeds for the group’s eventual rebellion against the use of outside songwriting and studio musicians. 

While existing in the heart of the Monkees teen-pop bubble, Nesmith was increasingly drawn to country styles.  In May 1968, as the Monkees show was winding down, he recorded a session in Nashville.  Most of these songs were not used on Monkees records, and some would be redone on his own albums in the early 70s.  I like these early versions, which exhibit some of the same generational tension between song and backing that Bob Dylan’s Nashville-era recordings do.  In contrast to his wry and laconic Monkee persona, a lot of Nesmith’s songs are wordy and conversational.  Check out Some of Shelly’s Blues and The Crippled Lion.  While the backings are pure 60s Nashville country (with the addition of harmonica on Shelly’s Blues) the songs themselves are, in typical Nesmith fashion, crammed full of words and chord changes.  In Shelly’s Blues Nesmith dishes out his brand of clear-eyed but syntactically jumbled advice, while The Crippled Lion is a humble and self-aware inwardly directed pep-talk.  The guy would really make a fine uncle.

Video Diary: Sonny Rollins, "The Bridge"

Sonny Rollins with Jim Hall who looks like the guy who played Mindy's dad in Mork and Mindy. 

Song of the Week: "Sing, Sing, Sing", Los Straitjackets

With the amount of surf music the On the Flip-Side staff listens to, it's a real wonder it's taken this long to get a good surf instrumental elevated to Song of the Week. Praise reverb, the wait is over. This week we sample the fine instrumental skills of Nashville-based surf merchants, Los Straitjackets as they put their thumping interpretation to Sing, Sing, Sing, a number written by Benny Goodman back in, I think, 1937. 

For those of you not hip to a live Los Straitjackets show, here is a little primer to help you get caught up. The band performs a relentless attack of instrumentals while decked out in Mexican wrestling masks, they introduce their songs only in a rapid-fire Spanish that will make you think you are part of the Inquisition, and perform deadly serious unison "dance" moves that, admittedly, may make Gene Kelly raise an eyebrow askance. And if you are really lucky, you get to see the masked musicians perform with The Pontani Sisters, three Brooklyn based sisters who interpret the band's instrumentals with a PG rated Go-Go/Vaudevillian/Burlesque-like show that will have the audience laughing all night. And on a really good night, Kaiser George, the Scottish Buddy Holly look-alike will MC the show and throw in a twist number to boot. Or maybe Big Sandy will jump in to add some vocals to a number of Rockabilly tracks. And to wrap it all up, the whole gang will stand at the exit and thank you for coming and wish you a safe drive home. 

All this adds up to an evening of great entertainment that is good for the whole family as well as the very serious connoisseurs of surf music. In short, the Flip-Side brain-trust suggests you check out Los Straitjackets' tour schedule (in support of their new Yep-Roc album, The Further Adventures of Los Straitjackets) and have a night of total entertainment, the likes of which, one doesn't get to see much anymore. The Christmas shows are particularly entertaining as this low-res video of Sleigh Ride will hint at.

In the meantime, enjoy this thumper SOTW from Los Straitjackets and get ready for the bestest week you ever had.