It's a cover. It's prom the post-Dion Belmonts era, after their legendary leader left for a solo career. Bass vocalist Carlo Mastrangelo had taken the helm He penned this song, a nifty number in the Italian-American 'Greaser Soul' doo-wop style that the Belmonts epitomized. Mastrangelo's deep voice was often the Belmonts' secret weapon (check out his work on 'I Wonder Why') but without Dion's swaggering presence, the record feels more like a nice rough sketch than anything else.
Joan jett fills in that rough sketch perfectly. Her version of 'I Need Someone,' is near perfect example of a rock and roll single. It definetely contains the Belmonts' influence in the Blackhearts 'duh duh-duh duh-duh' background chant on the chorus, but there's also the Stonesy grit of the rhythm section, the Ramones-style guitars, the high, breathy Beach Boys harmony on the verses, the punk-rock growl of Joan's lead vocal, some organ that comes right out of Del Shannon's playbook and spoken word bridge where Joanie seems to be channeling James Brown. If you know what to listen for, this tune is a little history lesson/pastiche of what's good in rock and roll, and even if you don't it's a great record on it's own terms for the sweet sound and the full-bore passion with which all those ingredients are mixed. Joan Jett will probably never again scale the commercial heights she did with 'I Love Rock & Roll,' but I'm sure as hell glad she's still out their doing her thing. Here's to the ultimate rocker chick.
Audio: Show us the most embarrassing album in your collection.
Inspired by Jay.
I got Ham a year and a half go as a small little Bearded Dragon he was so cool. I had wanted one for years I used to lizard-sit for a 3rd grade class their Bearded Dragon during vacations so one of my own would be great. Ham is pretty cool he likes to be misted with water, he likes worms and crickets dropped into his cage and he likes to be very non-social.
This was a first for me as the lizard I cared for before was very social you could walk around with her on your shoulder and she was cool. Ham since day 1 does not like to be held, I've tried again and again and he just won't go for it. But that's cool I don't like anyone to make me do something I don't want to do. The good news is I finally found out he's a boy, when I bought him they couldn't sex him and said I would tell when he became an adult see those enlarged pre-anal and femoral pores on his legs, that means he's a boy.
One argument I get into rather consistently with young music fans is over Bob Seger. While they'll grant that the man has a fine set of pipes, they're only familiar with his middle-of-the-road balladry like 'Against The Wind.' When I tell them that Seger is actually a proto-punk and was a respected colleague of the likes of the Stooges and MC5 they look at me as if I've entered premature senility. Well, class is in session kids. And it's actually quite a story, of how the '60's changed a man, musically and politically.
Seger, the son of a bandleader turned autoworker who left the family
when Bob was 10, found his earliest recording work with an Ann Arbor
outift called Doug Brown & the Omens, who in 1965 wrote a parody of
Barry Sadler's "Ballad Of The Green Beret,' that knocked draft dodgers.
The humor is funny in a puerile way (I also think this may be the first
mainstream pop/rock single to use the word 'gay' to mean 'homosexual' but
I'm not sure), but the 20-year old Seger's voice is already
distinctive. The song attracted some local radio interest, but Barry
sadler threatened a lawsuit and the record was pulled from the market.
When Bruce Springsteen first burst on to the national music scene in the mid-1970's, to many it seemed as if he had come out of nowhere. He actually came out of central New Jersey, which to many people is close enough (I kid). The truth was that there was close to a decade of developement behind the man and the sound that the world got to hear. All goofing aside, the fact that except for a few pivotal moments, all of this happened in Jersey, away from the major scenes of the time, kept Bruce and his friends relatively uncorrupted by the trends of the time and follwing their own muse. Today, I'll try to trace some of that evolution.
Like most American musicians of his generation, Springsteen's first step into the world of rock and roll was in one of the countless garage bands formed in the wake of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Formed in 1966, they played teen dances and parties around Bruce's hometown of Freehold. They managed to scrape together enough money to get some recording time at Mr. Music in Bricktown, New Jersey, where they recorded an acetate single. The 16-year-old Bruce plays rhythm guitar and sings background (his friend George Theiss sings lead), but more importantly, Bruce and George wrote both songs (reportedly on the drive over to the studio). The recording quality is crude, but both Bruces guitar chops and precocious songwriting skills show through, as does the influence of the Stones and the Yardbirds. Only four copies of the actual vinyl are known to exist but dupes have been circulating among collectors for years. [Note: on the far left of the photo is drummer Bart Haynes who was drafted soon after and killed in action in Vietnam, providing inspiration for some of Bruce's later work.]
By 1968-69, Bruce, like many fans of guitar rock, had fallen under the spell of the power trio sound proffered by the likes of Cream and Blue Cheer which allowed him to hone his guitar chops and stretch out his songwriting a bit. They were also prone to loooong jams, rendering the only other recording I have of theirs, (a live 19 minute workout called 'Garden State Parkway Blues') too large a file to be uploaded here. "Sister Teresa" is an uncharacteristically quiet ballad from the band, but this track (recorded live in Richmond in late 1969) is probably Bruce's earliest lead vocal that's made it to wax. It also presages his later lyrical fascination with Catholicism, sin and temptation. This is also the point where future E Street Band Members start to come on the scene. The drums here are played by Vini 'Mad Dog' Lopez, who would later pound the skins on Springsteen's first two studio albums, before being replaced by Max Weinberg. Danny Federici, longtime E Street stalwart on the organ, also made his debut with Child. Vini Roslin rounded out the ensemble on bass.
After discovering that there was a band on Long Island already using the name Child, the band changed it's moniker to Steel Mill (this could be the beginnings of Bruce's fascination with industrial imagery). Their live performances gained them enough of a reputation to get an invitation from Bill Graham to play his club the Matrix in early 1970, which is where the live "Jeannie I Want To Thank You" is pulled from, showing bruce in an uncharacteristically (by later standards, anyway) jammy mood. His guitar and vocal style is starting to gel (and 'Jeannie' may be Bruce's first mystical female, followed later by 'Sandy' ('4th Of July Asbury Park'), 'Mary' ('Thunder Road') and 'Candy' ('Candy's Room')). The guys had definitely been listening to Santana judging by Bruce's guitar playing and Edgar Winter (judging by Danny Federici's astonishing organ).
Graham also gave the band some time at his Fillmore Recording Studio in February of 1970, whence comes 'The Train Song.' It was around this point that bassist Vini Roslin left, to be replaced by longtime Springsteen sidekick (and radio show host and TV consigliere) Miami Steve Van Zandt, but despite my research I've been unable to determine whether Steve plays on the track. The song itself is an interesting stab at the roots oriented sound being pioneered by The Band at the time, which points toward the future, as does the lyrical development.
Here is where things begin to truly take the shape we know. During his spell in California playing gigs with Steel Mill, Bruce saw Van Morrison playing live with a ten piece band which inspired Bruce to expand his pallette and also re-emphasize his R&B influences. This is also where some of the major players of the E Street Band start showing up. Miami Steve Van Zandt and Vini 'Mad Dog' Lopez are present already and bassist Garry Tallent arrives on the scene, as does organist David Sancious (who would remain with Bruce until he recorded the title track of Born To Run, then he left to pursue a jazz career and was replaced by Roy Bittan) and none other than Southside Johnny (of 'and the Asbury Jukes' fame) on harmonica duties. Also around were two sax players and a plalanx of female backup singers known as the Zoomettes. On stage, the band kept a table with a Monopoly board, and musicians not playing in a particular number would join the game, presaging some of the band's latter-day onstage goofery. These tracks show them in 1972 before a hometown crowd in Asbury Park. The music is loose and funky and the distinctive Springsteen is only a few steps away, and the songwriting has become more solid than ever.
Hope you enjoyed this look into an artists history as much as I enjoyed digging it all up.
[Note: Now that the Favorites Coountdown is done, it has been decreed by straw poll of my internet friends that the next theme here is 'Early Recordings,' or records made by prominent artists before they became famous. I've had incredible fun researching and hunting down these songs over the years, and I hope you'll have fun listening to and reading about them]
Before Warren Zevon became the most twisted singer/songwriter in L.A. , he had to travel a long and tortured journey. Hell, maybe that's a big part of what made him so twisted. A classically trained pianist bitten by the rock and roll bug, he initially joined forces with a high school freind and vocalist named Violet Santangelo (she later spent years in musical theatre and is currently a realtor in New York). They formed a Sonny & Cher-style duo and renamed themselves Lyme & Cybelle, scoring a minor hit with the sprightly flower-pop gem 'Follow Me,' Zevon's role was more in the instrumental realm and Santangelo's vocals dominate, both on 'Follow Me' and the poppy, horn-laden cover of Bob Dylan's 'If You Gotta Go, Go Now' also included here.
After the duo split, Zevon recorded a solo album entitled Wanted Dead Or Alive in 1969, produced by Kim Fowley, the self-styled svengali behind The Runaways, of all people. The sound is somewhat murky, which dosen't do the album any favors. Zevon's playing (on guitar and bass as well as his usual piano) is solid throughout, and the outlaw ballad title track points the way towards his future fascination with violence and desperate outlaws. He also does a cover of the New Orleans classic 'Iko Iko' which mixes weirdly with Warren's quirky enunciated vocal style, but that's a really difficult song to ruin, so it's still good.The album went exactly nowhere commercially and he was dropped from his label. It'd be seven more years and a lot more knocking around before we'd hear from him again, but these tracks provide a great glimpse of a warped genius' development.
It's spring time, so that means it's the beginning of indie-rock concert season. Here's what I've got so far. Who's with me for what?
April 1 - Les Savy Fav at Bowery BallroomApril 11 - Cloud Cult at Black Cat
April 12 - Cloud Cult at Ottobar
April 14 - Of Montreal / Indie Rock Karaoke at Studio B
April 15 - Roky Erickson at Bowery Ballroom
April 19 - Humanwine at Crash Mansion (NYC)
April 28 - Dismemberment Plan at Black Cat
May 4 - Sunset Rubdown at Bowery Ballroom
May 5 - Bjork at Radio City Music Hall
May 7-9 - Arcade Fire in NYC (Location TBA)
May 10 - Sloan at Maxwell's
May 11 - Sloan at Southpaw
May 15 - Spank Rock at Highland Ballroom (NYC)
May 17 - Andrew Bird at Webster Hall
June 1 - CSS and Yo Majesty at Irving Plaza
June 23 - Panda Bear at Bowery Ballroom
June 30 - Morrissey at Madison Square Garden
July 16 - Decemberists and Grizzly Bear at Central Park Summerstage
July 18 - Ani diFranco at Prospect Park Bandshell
July 20 - Neko Case at Central Park Summerstage
Volumes of ink and pixels have been expended extolling how this song broke open the field of self-espression in popular music, so I won't add anything except to say that yes, I agree, rock and roll was irreparably different after this record was released. And it still remains relevant today. because of Bob Dylan's surly way of singing his toweringly barbed lyrics, because of Mike Bloomfield's stinging guitar and Al Kooper's organ (a beat behind the rest of the band because he had never played organ before that day, but sensing that something monumnetal was about to occur, he wanted in and faked it).
Suffice it to say this, I've played this song on jukeboxes in swanky lounges, hispter habitues, and utter dives and this is the only song that will stop conversations dead to allow people to sing along, because anybody who's ever led any kind of life has asked themselves the question Bob Dylan is asking himslef in the lyric. And that's what makes this the most utterly human song ever written, and that's why it's my favorite.
Somebody whose name escapes me once said something to the effect that the music of the sixties was an attempt to change the world, and the music of the seventies was about how to to live in that (in whatever way) changed world. That, among other things, is what makes 'Surrender' the greatest song of the 1970's.
It's also a tribute to the strengths of weird narratives. The song begins with a confused kid being scolded by his seemingly clueless parents then coming home to find them smoking pot and rocking out to his Kiss albums. As one critic said 'if that isn't your idea of surrender...'
No, this would merely be an amusing trifle wre it not backed up by Rick Neilsen's incredibly propulsive riffing and Robin Zander's great vocal. And the chorus and final refrain of "Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright...we're all alright," drives home an incredible revelation: nobody's perfect but most of us are doing the best we can, in a word they're all alright. And those words (and more importantly, the way they're sung) make this the best song of the arena rock genre and the best use of rock and roll as a life affirming force ever. I first heard this song as 9-year old and it blew my mind then and it still does now.
David Crosby claims that the idea for the intro to this song was concieved while listening to Indian raga and John Coltrane at the same time on a moving train. If so, this song is a tribute to the power of weird inspiration since that intro broke the whole idea of rock and roll wide open and nearly fitfy years later, this song (and especially it's intro) remain the most potent example of rock's power to musically blow minds ever created.
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