Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #25! Two Year Anniversary!

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opener – Mansfield/Hawkshaw – Action Scene (KPM)
Thee Midniters – Love Special Delivery (Whittier)
Harvey Mandel – Wade In the Water Pts 1&2 (Philips)
The Equals – Police On My Back (RCA)
Chad Mitchell – For What It’s Worth (Amy/Dunwich)
Everything Is Everything – Ooh Baby (Vanguard Apostolic)
Sons Of Champlin – Fat City (Verve/Trident)
Sons of Champlin Radio Spot

Cowsills – River Blue (MGM)
Cowsills- How Can I Make You See (MGM)
Cowsills – the Fun Song (MGM)
Cowsills – On My Side (London)
Cowsills – Once There Was a Time (London)
Cowsills – If You Can’t Have It Knock it (London)
Cowsills – Mystery Of Life (London)

Bill Cowsill – When Everybody’s Here (MGM)
Bill Cowsill – Take The Gun (MGM)
Bill Cowsill – Nobody (MGM)
Bill Cowsill – 2 x 2 (MGM)
Bodine – Short Time Woman / Oakland (MGM)
Bodine –Statues of Clay (MGM)
Bodine – Disaster (MGM)
Lightmyth – Across the Universe (RCA)

Paul and Barry Ryan – I Can’t Make Your Way (Decca)
Paul and Barry Ryan- Pay You Back With Interest (Decca)
Billy J Kramer – His Love Was Just a Lie (Columbia)
Rainy Day Friends – Away To Some Other World (World Pacific)
Rainy Day Friends – Don’t You Feel Rained On (World Pacific)
Wool – The Boy With the Green Eyes (ABC)
Lloyd Green – Steel Blue (Chart)
Stone Poneys Pepsi Commercial

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 25 – 190MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome to this month’s episode of the Iron Leg Radio Show.

As hard as this is to believe, this – the 25th edition of the ILRS – marks the two-year anniversary of the show!

It was back in May of 2011 that I decided to create an Iron Leg-gy alternative to the Funky16Corners Radio Show (albeit on a monthly, not weekly basis) in which I could bring you all manner of pop, sunshine, garage, freakbeat, psych and whatever else sounds groovy.

This time out you get some cool new arrivals, a long, second installment of my exploration of the Cowsills and a couple of old favorites.

As always, I hope you dig it. If you do, there are 24 more episodes in the archive to stuff into your ears.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Iron Leg: 2012 The Year In Vintage Pop

Why, yes dear! I’d love some fuzz!

Playlist

Woolies – Who Do You Love (Dunhill)
Beauregard and the Tuffs – Ramblin’ Rose (Decca)
Brenda Lee – Is It True (Decca)
Evie Sands – I Can’t Let Go (BlueCat)
The Knack – Time Waits For No One (Capitol)
Monkees – Star Collector (Colgems)
Nat Stuckey – Listen To the Band (RCA)
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart – Smilin’ (Aquarian)
Royal Guardsmen – Leaving Me (Laurie)
WC Fields Memorial Electric String Band – Hippy Elevator Operator (HBR)
Morning Glories – Love-In (WB)
Liberace – Suite Judy Blue Eyes (WB)
Mike Stoller and the Stoller System – Silver Sea Horse (Amy)
Nobody’s Children – I Can’t Let Go (Bullet)
Kitchen Cinq – Codine (LHI)
Spotlights – Batman and Robin (Smash)
Wayne Logiudice – Come On (Let’s Get Some Action On) (Philips)
What-Knots – I Ain’t Dead Yet (Dial)
Bougalieu – Let’s Do Wrong (Roulette)
Connie Francis – Fallin’ (MGM)
The Gosdin Brothers – The Sounds of Goodbye (Bakersfield Intl)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg 2012: The Year In Vintage Pop – 99MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

What you see before you is the annual gathering of the ‘Best of’ Iron Leg for the year 2012.

Every year about this time I go back and comb the year’s posts looking for what I consider to be the finest tracks.

As the track listing above indicates, this has been an exceptional year, both for my record collection and for your MP3 delivery/storage device.

There are hot garage punk tracks, psychedelia, power pop, sunshine pop and all kinds of other goodies for you to soak yourselves in as the new year approaches.

As always, I hope you dig it, and that you join me in 2013 for more of the same.

Until then, stay cool, and I’ll see you when I see you.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #20

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opener – Action Scene – Hawkshaw/Mansfield (KPM)
Spirit – I Got a Line On You (Ode)
Spirit – Taurus (Ode)
Spirit – Girl In Your Eye (Ode)
Spirit- Straight Arrow (Ode)
Spirit – Topanga Windows (Ode)
44th St Portable Flower Factory – Let’s Get Together (Scholastic)
44th St Portable Flower Factory – The Letter (Scholastic)
Esko Affair – Morning Dull Fire (Mercury)
Roy Buchanan – Down By the River (Atlantic)
Spirit – Clear LP Promo

Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich – Shame (Fontana)
Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich- You Make It Move (Fontana)
Bang Girl Group Revue – Drink In Hand (Psychedelphonic)
Bang Girl Group Revue – Love’s Gone Bad (Psychedelphonic)
Dino Desi and Billy – I’m a Fool (Reprise)
The Finnz – East Side Story (Finnz)
Heather Black – Bill The Black Militant (Double Bayou)
Kitchen Cinq – Determination (LHI)
Terry Knight and the Pack – Got Love (Lucky Eleven)
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – Heart Full of Soul (Liberty)
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – The Flake (Kelloggs Corn Flakes Ad)

The Critters – Mr Dieingly Sad (Kapp)
East Coast Left – My Child (Kapp)
Epic Splendor – It Could Be Wonderful (Hot Biscuit)
Giant Crab – Help Yourself (Uni)
Giant Crab – It’s Getting Harder (Uni)
Hourglass – Power Of Love (Liberty)
Music Machine – Some Other Drum (Original Sound)
Tom Northcott – Blackberry Way (Uni)
Peter Fonda – November Nights (Chisa)
The 10:15 – Joe’s Acclamation ()
Semicolons? – Beachcomber (Cameo/Parkway)
Poco – Hurry Up (Epic)
The Rockets – Hole In My Pocket (White Whale)
Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere LP Promo

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 20 – 184MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

I hope all is well in your part of the world.

It’s time once again for the Iron Leg Radio Show, episode 20!

This time around we start the show with a tribute to the late, great Ed Cassidy of Spirit, move on into some top shelf freakbeat and garage and finish up with a solid set of pop.

I hope you dig it all, and that you come back next week for the annual Year In Vintage Pop mix.

Until then…

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #9

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Hawkshaw/Mansfield – Action Scene (KPM)
Brenda Lee – Is It True (Decca)
Nat Stuckey – Listen To the Band (RCA) Echoes In the Wind
Nat Stuckey – In the Year 2525 (RCA)
Fabulous Thunder – Jealous of You (Tight)
Dino Desi and Billy – I’m a Fool (Reprise) Lee Hazelwood
Dino Desi and Billy – The Rebel Kind (Reprise)
Pinking Canandy – Hello Hello (Uni)
Pinkiny Canandy – Mr Keiley’s Roof (Uni)
Pinkiny Canandy – Goodbye Goodbye (Uni)
The Knack – Time Waits For No One (Capitol)
The Knack – I’m Aware (Capitol)
Paul Revere & the Raiders – Pontiac Judge Commercial

Hub Kapp and the Wheels – Radio Spot
Hub Kapp and the Wheels – Sigh Cry Almost Die (Capitol)
Hub Kapp and the Wheels – Boney Moronie (Capitol)
Tom Northcott – 1941 (WB)
Tom Northcott – Blackberry Way (Uni)
Tom Northcott – Iron Pines (Uni)
Frankie Valli – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore (Philips)
John Frangipani – Jingle Jangle (Mainstream)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Clouds (Both Sides Now) (Verve)
Carnation Instant Breakfast Commercial

Enoch Light and the Light Brigade – Over Under Sideways Down (Project 3)
Keith Mansfield – Boogaloo (Epic)
Sweet Charity OST – The Pompeii Club (Rich Mans Frug) (Decca)
Walter Wanderley – Kee-Ka-Roo (Verve)
Dave Grusin – Ascent To Virginity (ABC)
Mr Jamo – Shake What You Brought With You (SSS Intl)
Henry Mancini – The Theme From the Party (vocal) (RCA)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 9 – 156MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome back for the ninth go-round in the Iron Leg Radio Show saga.

This time out we have all kinds of goodies for your earholes, including some unusual country-pop, beat, late-60s power pop, prime Canadian folk-rock and a long set of explosive now sound goodness.

If you haven’t yet picked up last month’s (or any of the other previous) episode on MP3, please do yourself a favor and grab it (them).

I hope you dig this episode, and I’ll see you all next week.

See you next Monday.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Radio Stars – Dirty Pictures

The Radio Stars

Listen/Download – Radio Stars – Dirty Pictures

Greetings all.

I hope the end of the week finds you all well.

The tune I bring you today is something a little later on the schedule that we’re used to here, but there is a tie in for you psyche-a-mo-delic types, so hold steady.

Earlier this year I bought a nice stack of groovy records from my man Mr Luther, including some psyche, some soul, and as you’ll see/hear today, some proto-punky, post-glammy, power pop (enough hyphens for you???).

As seen here previously, I’m a big fan of the UK 70s label Chiswick Records, which, along with the Stiff imprint, released a grip of very interesting stuff, which thanks to the vibe they were cultivating and the various and sundry stylistic intersections of the time produced some very interesting sounds.

One of these sounds was that produced by the group the Radio Stars.

Formed out of the ashes of a number of bands, but most prominently featuring Andy Ellison, former lead singer of John’s Children (see, I told you…) the Radio Stars kind of floated in the same stream as bands like the Raspberries and any number of the flashier, more Anglo-sounding pop bands of the day, in that they were steeped in an early 70s brand of metallic pop (thus, the glam) but mixed in a substantial bit of forward thinking energy, thus the punk/power pop.

It’s telling that one of the other members of the band, bassist Martin Gordon (who wrote today’s selection) had done time in Sparks, bringing with him some of the campy, avant-pop gloss of that band.

The tune I bring you today is 1977s ‘Dirty Pictures’, which taken down a glam notch might pass for an early Cars song.

Featuring some razor sharp guitars and Ellison’s flash vocal delivering the suggestive lyrics, predates the Vapors similarly themed ‘Turning Japanese’ by a few years.

The songs actually met with a little bit of success in the UK, and recorded three albums between 1977 and 1982.

The Radio Stars reformed and were performing concerts in the UK as recently as this year.

I hope you dig the sound, and I’ll be back on Monday.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some boogaloo!

Raspberries – Go All the Way

The Raspberries

Listen/Download – Raspberries – Go All Way the Way

Greetings all.

How’s by you?

All is well hereabouts, aside from the usual deficit of time and energy.

If I were asked to reference the first songs I remember hearing as a kid, I’d probably touch on the Mamas and Papas or Beatles, with my first significant attachment to contemporary pop music coming in the summer of 1969, when as a 6 year old I spent a few weeks in the company of my older cousins who had the radio going non-stop, with the Stevie Wonder, Tommy James and the Shondells, Blood Sweat and Tears and Oliver (yes…Oliver).

However, track it a few steps further on down the line, to when I had acquired my very own radio, to which I had become attached, and you’d be settling in around my 10th year on the planet.

1972 (actually, probably Christmas of 1971) brought a snazzy, multi-band portable radio into my life, where it took a leading role until I got my first record player.

Most of my listening at that time was divvied up between WABC (and occasionally WNBC) on the AM dial, and WCBS (an oldies station) on the FM side.

At that time – though I didn’t really have any idea at the time – most of the jocks I was listening to were relics of the heyday of AM Top 40 radio in New York, with guys like Cousin Brucie and Dan Ingram.

While some of their contemporaries – like ex-Good Guy Scot Muni – ended up on FM rock stations, these cats were still doing what they did best, serving up whatever was hot to a willing audience of teenagers with an exciting delivery that almost made you forget how many commercials were breaking up the musical flow.

Back then, I was listening to the radio almost constantly, from when I got home from school, between dinner and bed, and then long after the lights went out.

Though I remember a lot of what hit the Top 40 back then, aside from various and sundry soul and funk sounds, not a lot of the rock stuff has stayed with me, changing/evolving tastes being what they are.

One marked exception is the Raspberries’ ‘Go All the Way’.

I can say with a fair amount of certainty that the first time I heard this record my ears perked up, not to perk back down for a long, long time.

Though at the time I had literally no idea what Eric Carmen was requesting in the song, it wasn’t particularly important because once the opening guitar riff (perhaps riff isn’t strong enough of a word) hit, nothing else mattered.

‘Go All the Way’, despite Carmen’s patented brand of marshmallow fluff in the verse, was heavy as fuck, and super, duper (shmooper?) poppy, encapsulating in its three minutes and 10 or so seconds every bit of satin, guitar strings, sequins, platform boots, long hair, stage pyrotechnics of 1972, without (and this is the important part) sucking like so much of the other music that brought on the same sense memories.

It’s still one of those records that absolutely DEMANDS that the radio be turned up when it comes on.

No matter that within a few years Carmen would have detached himself from the steely grip of the band so that he could suck OUT LOUD with stuff like ‘All By Myself’ (REALLY?!?!) and ‘Never Gonna Fall In Love Again’ (dumb move, pal…), and would even further on down the road take part in the execrable ‘Dirty Dancing’ soundtrack, the records he made as part of the Raspberries are rightfully considered as a classic intersection between hard rock and power pop (you know Cheap Trick were digging this…at least Robin…).

Thank you Ohio.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a funk 45 instrumental.

Free Design x 6 : Chris Dedrick RIP

Free Design

Listen -Free Design – Kites are Fun – MP3

Listen -Free Design – Jack In the Box Radio Spot – MP3

Listen -Free Design – Bubbles – MP3

Listen -Free Design – You Could Be Born Again – MP3

Listen -Free Design – 2002 a Hit Song – MP3

Listen -Free Design – The Proper Ornaments – MP3

Greetings all.

I just heard yesterday that Chris Dedrick, leader of one of my favorite pop groups the Free Design had passed away at the age of 62. He was living in Canada.
I was going to write something new, but realized that I’d already said what I wanted to about the group in this post from last year.
I am however adding a couple of tracks I haven’t had up in this space before, including what may be, if not the rarest track by the band, the weirdest, that being an early 70s commercial jingle for the Jack In the Box burger chain.
The quality isn’t fantastic, but I don’t imagine there are many copies of this one floating around, so take it for what it is.
If you haven’t picked up any of their stuff, iTunes features a couple of nice ‘best of’ comps, as well as all of the full albums.
My sympathies go out to his family.

Originally posted June 2009

The tune I bring you today has been sitting in my “to be blogged” folder for a while, waiting for just the right time to be posted. A few weeks ago a reader wrote asking if I would ever post said song, and since it was burning a hole in my hard drive, I took the request as a sign, said yes, and here we are.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, there was once a time where my taste for the twee side of pop was, for lack of a better term, undeveloped. If you had played a Free Design (or Curt Boettcher) track for my long-haired, Led Zeppelin listening to self, I would have choked on the sugar and perhaps beaten you soundly (though in that same period I was often stoned and sluggish, so you probably would have gotten beyond my grasp without much effort).
When I look back on it, this seems odd because the band that got my head into music in the first place was the hookiest of all, that being the Beatles. My sensibilities have always been hooks and harmony attuned, but like any youngster (which believe it or not I once was) I had a head full of roadblocks that only time and tide would erode. Now that I am at an age my 18 year old self would likely consider my dotage (I’m 46), many of those walls have been torn down, some by myself, some by the urging of others and some all by themselves.
If memory serves I first found my way to the Free Design via the mid-90s Japanese fascination with them and their sweet sounding ilk, via the pricey reissues put out by Cornelius, and the homage by groups like Pizzicato Five. At some point I got my hands on the compilation by Varese Sarabande, and my mind was, in short order, good and truly blown.
It’s only in the last few years that I finally acquired some OG Free Design vinyl (there are still a couple of albums I’m looking for) and I was pleasantly surprised that much of the material that I hadn’t heard yet was up to the standards of the ‘greastest hits’.
Like many of the groups I would group with the Free Design, like Sagittarius, the Millennium, early Paul Williams (all faves, and barely scratching the surface of the genre), I would hesitate to push them on anyone that wasn’t already somewhat attuned to the sound. The digestion of this kind of music requires a certain amount of context and preparation for proper appreciation. Where the Curt Boettcher sound is based in a conventional pop/rock setting, the Free Design drew from Now Sound and sophisticated harmony singing like the Hi-Los and the Swingle Singers before touching on rock tangentially, sounding like a high school swing choir led by a pop visionary. Though their arrangements were often dense with ideas, and the backing tight and energetic, at first listen some of their recordings sound like so much candy floss.
There were times when I was first exposed to the group where the music seemed to radiate earnestness that at times struck me as a put on. However, repeat listening, especially to the right songs, reveals that the group really had a lot going on.
Formed in the mid-60s by the Dedrick siblings (Chris, Bruce, Sandy, Ellen and Stefanie) the members of the Free Design came from a musical family. Their seven albums (most of which were released on Enoch Light’s Project 3 imprint) were a mixture of brilliant original material and interesting covers (Bacharach/David, Turtles), all delivered with the group’s intricate harmonies and backing from the same group of crack session players that recorded for Enoch Light’s other projects.
The tune I bring you today is the title track from their first LP, 1967’s ‘Kites are Fun’. An ode to the pure, childlike pleasure of kite flying – something that would have been assumed to have lysergic roots in other hands – ‘Kites are Fun’ features cascading, madrigal-like harmonies and a relatively spare backing (bass, tambourine, acoustic guitar and recorder), and lyrics that defy any attempt at interpretation on anything but face value. No one was going to hear ‘Kites are Fun’ and jump to conclusions that what the Free Design were blending their heavenly voices about was a euphemism for anything stronger that a little exercise in a windy field.
That vibe is one of the things I dig so much about the Free Design. Like the narrator in ‘Bubbles’ (featured in Iron Leg Digital Trip #18), the person singing about kites is undeniably a kid. This may be hard for someone from 2009 to understand, but Free Design were operating in an irony-free zone. This is not music delivered with a wink and a knowing smile. To paraphrase a then popular phrase, with Free Design, what you hear is what you get.
If you get a chance to scan their entire catalog, it is clear that they were capable of delivering more adult themes – they did a wonderful version of one of my fave Bacharach songs ‘Windows of the World’ – and despite the childlike subject matter, the music of Free Design was nothing if not sophisticated. If I ever get my hands on the rest of their records, I may have to do an all Free Design edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something Free Design-related.

Peace

Larry

*Keeping things kid, on an episode of the very groovy ‘Yo Gabba Gabba’ I was surprised to hear a cover (with a short, animated video) of ‘Kites are Fun’ as performed by the Parallelograms. Back in the 60s the song was covered by another Project 3 artist, guitarist Tony Mottola.

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some classical jazz funk (really).

ILDT#34 – Symphonie du Sneetch…

Iron Leg Digital Trip #34 – Symphonie du Sneetch

Playlist

Unusual Sounds
In a Perfect Place
Run In the Sun
Take My Hand
You’re Gonna Need Her
…And I’m Thinking
Watch Me Burn
Weather Scene
Heloise
Broke Up In My Hands
Behind The Shadow
Things We’ll Never See
The Fool For You
The Dog In Me
They Keep Me Running

Listen/Download 98MB/256K Mixed Mp3

Greetings all.
I hope everyone is digging, and digging into the summer, soaking up as much sunshine as possible (barring the slow incineration of sunburn).
I was driving home the other day, filled with tourist-related road rage, when I came to the Manasquan River bridge on RT70 (which will mean nothing if you’re not from the area, but bear with me), and as the car started up the span a vista opened up before me of absolutely surreal loveliness.
There was a gigantic blue sky, spotted with what seemed like uniformly sized, cottony white clouds. It was almost as if I was headed into a matte painting from an early technicolor movie, and in a split second all the anger evaporated.
Of course it all came back a few minutes later when some knucklehead cut across three lanes of traffic to make a turn they hadn’t planned for, but that’s the way it is here at the shore. You take the good with the bad, hoping that the good actually remembers to repeat it’s part of the cycle before you snap.
I got up early on Saturday, and while I was trying to ease into the morning, sipping a delicious iced coffee I was wandering around YouTube when I happened upon something remarkable, that being a video of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands.
It was ‘Heloise’ by the Sneetches.
I can’t remember how I first heard of the Sneetches (it was well over 20 years ago) but I do remember how I fell in love with their sound the second the needle hit the record.
If you follow things here at Iron Leg or over at Funky16Corners you’ll know that aside from my wife and kids, there is little in this life I love more than discovering new (to me) music.
It’s like a drug.
Really.
I get cranky when I don’t have it and when I find something new, and the notes and tones start to fill my ears the pleasure centers in my brain are activated and something (endorphins?) is released and all is at least temporarily well with the world.
The discography of the Sneetches is packed from end to end with sounds that have that effect on me.
Aside from my early years of Beatles appreciation, I can hardly think of an artist/band that seemed as if every note they played had been engineered for my specific enjoyment.
That idea is of course absurd, with the truth being a lot closer to an accidental simpatico wherein the musical sensibility of the Sneetches (as creators) and myself (as listener) intersected on almost every level.
The grooviest thing of all, is that while the sounds that they made during their time together were evocative of the 60s (and the 70s), they rarely (despite an eagerness to record cover material) sounded like any one band. They were in turns Beatle-y, Zombie-ish, Buffalo Springfield-esque (and on, and on ad infinitum with added touches of Raspberries-osity) but unlike the vast majority of bands that arose in the mid-80s 60s revival scene, they managed to distill their many influences into a modern sound.
Despite this fact, and that the music they made between roughly 1985 and 1995 is consistently brilliant, they never really broke through to a mainstream audience (or even a significant indie contingent). I’d go as far as to say that during the time they were active, the Sneetches were pound for pound the finest pop band in the world.
I never really understood their inability to break through to a major audience, and from almost the very first time I heard the Sneetches I did what I could to turn people on to their music, whether it was passing tapes on to friends, or writing about them in my zine(s), all to no avail (though I did get a nice note from Matt Carges once).
Every once in a while I’ll cross paths with someone similarly enthusiastic about the Sneetches (my brothers both dig them too) but not nearly enough for my tastes.
You see, good music (or art, or movies or whatever else it is you dig) shouldn’t be filed away, especially when it hasn’t been exposed to everyone who might find within it the kind of spiritual ‘fuel’ that I find in a band like the Sneetches.
They took the time to channel their considerable talents into creating something beautiful, and while it might be rediscovered in a hundred years making them the musical Vermeers of their day, it would be nice if people could hear it and dig it while they are still here (not together as a band, but here with us in the corporeal plane) to be appreciated.
I’m putting together this mix so that those of you that stop by here, and haven’t heard/heard of the Sneetches might get a taste s it were and head over to iTunes to consume (thus the absence of a zip file of individual tracks). Though much of their discography is out of print, you can get their masterpiece ‘Sometimes That’s All We Have’ (and the comp 1985-1991) on iTunes, and backstock and used copies of their other albums at Amazon and elsewhere. I think that once you get a taste you’ll be out there, beating the figurative bushes of the interwebs so you can obtain copies of your own.
So take some time and appreciate the Sneetches.

Peace

Larry

PS Make sure to head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Alex Chilton RIP

Damn…

I just got word that the mighty Alex Chilton, of the Box Tops, Big Star and decades of solo work has passed away at the age of 59.

As has been discussed here before, when I was coming up in the 80s, the “big two” acts that seemed to influence everybody, and got played constantly in my car and my home, were the Velvet Underground and Big Star. The first two Big Star albums are among the finest recorded in the 70s, packed to the rafters with amazing songs and performances.

I’ll assume that most of the people that read this blog are already aware of their music. If your not, make it your business to check it out as soon as possible. You will not regret it.

The post below first appeared in October of 2008.

Peace

Larry

PS Check out the Box Tops on Zacherley’s Dance Party. Shades of Count Floyd…

Radio City-era Big Star

Listen – Big Star – O My Soul – MP3

Greetings all.
As is often the case in my little corner of the blog-o-mosphere, the tunes I select for inclusion therein are often picked at random, the result of yet another safari into the crates. I’ve discussed the phenomenon before, but so vast is the selection of vinyl piled in my lair, that I often find things I’d forgotten, or forsaken having assumed that they were forever lost.
The tune I bring you today was just such a record.
But first, a nostalgic interlude…
Back in the day, when my brothers* (blood and otherwise) were being inundated with sounds alternative (back when that really meant something), there were a few bands from the days of yore that were for youngsters like ourselves (and many before us) cornerstones of an even earlier alternative.
This list included such rediscoveries as the Sonics and the 13th Floor Elevators (on the garage/psyche tip) and most prominently (on a much larger scale), and most importantly to the formation of my own musical worldview, the Velvet Underground and Big Star.
Now, the Velvets had – thanks to the long and successful career of Lou Reed – a foot placed firmly in the present. I forget who said that everyone who bought a Velvets LP in the 60s went on to form a band, but that particular equation was multiplied exponentially in the 80s where no band from the 60s loomed larger.
Big Star was another story entirely.
Though Alex Chilton was something of an indie darling, no one sane would describe his post-Box Tops career as having seen any financial success. That said, in the 1980s the ears of anyone with even the tiniest bit of pop sensibility were filled with the music Chilton created with Big Star.
Formed in 1971 by Chris Bell, Andy Hummell, Steve Ray and Jody Stephens. Ray soon left the band and was replaced by Chilton. They were signed to the Stax Records subsidiary Ardent, and released their first album, ‘#1 Record’ in 1972.
If you haven’t heard ‘#1 Record’, back away from the interwebs (or open a new browser) and find yourself a copy, because – and you can trust me on this – it is one of the finest pop records ever recorded, by anyone, anywhere. That record, in which all but one of the songs were collaborations between Chilton and Bell (rife with Lennon/McCartney-esque creative tension) was the only one recorded by that line up.
By the time they released their follow up ‘Radio City’ in 1973, Bell had departed, along with a certain amount of their polish, which as we shall see, was a good thing, because that albums spontaneous feel was something of a shot heard round the world (with about a ten year delay) appearing a decade on in the sounds of REM and the Replacements among others.
Today’s selection is the only OG Big Star record I’ve ever come across in the field, and if memory serves was scooped up for chump change in an old record store.
‘O My Soul’ opens with wild, shambolic rhythm guitar, laced with bits of keyboard stabbing through the somewhat awkward beat. Chilton’s vocal is spot on (though if all you’ve ever heard him sing was ‘The Letter’, you might be surprised). The song sounds every bit as fresh today as it must have in ’73, which is probably a testament to the band’s far reaching influence (though I suspect that so much time has passed that there are tons of bands out there working a Big Star vibe who have never heard of Alex Chilton or Chris Bell).
It’s a great bit of power pop, and as I said before, if you’re not already hep to Big Star, go out and get you some.
See you on Monday.

Peace
Larry

*In 1990, my brother Chris and I took a road trip down south, mainly to visit friends in Georgia, but including stops in Chattanooga, Nashville and Memphis. A big part of our Memphis visit was a pilgrimage to Ardent Studios, where we saw the very Big Star supermarket that inspired the bands name.

Three by Sky b/w RIP Doug Fieger

Sky (Doug Fieger, center)

Listen – Sky – Goodie Two Shoes – MP3

Listen – Sky – How’s That Treating Your Mouth Babe – MP3

Listen – Sky – One Love – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope all is well in your corner of the sphere.
This post comes a little late, but thanks to borderline exhaustion, I couldn’t get it together for last week.
That was when I heard of the untimely passing of Doug Fieger, leader of the Knack.
I have to admit here that I was never a huge fan of the Knack. It would be accurate to say that in 1979, ‘My Sharona’ was nothing less than a blight on my senior year of high school, the kind of song that sent me flying to change the radio dial whenever it came on. It wasn’t until a few years later, when I heard their cover of the Kinks’ ‘The Hard Way’ that I softened in my appraisal of the band (which would have happened eventually since they were right up my power pop alley).
Anyway, it was early last year, on a digging/DJing trip to Washington DC that my man DJ Birdman turned me on to the fact that the Knack wasn’t Doug Fieger’s first band. That honor goes to the group you’re hearing today, Sky.
Fieger came of age in Detroit, where in the late 60s, he apparently sent a letter off to uber-producer Jimmy Miller (Rolling Stones, Traffic among many others) and suggested that if he were ever to come to the Motor City, he should drop in and hear Fieger’s band, that being Sky. Miller took him up on his offer, and at the ripe old age of 17, Fieger and his bandmates were spirited off to the UK where they recorded their debut album, ‘Don’t Hold Back’ in 1970. They would record a second LP with Miller (this time back in the States) before breaking up in 1972.
I grabbed the Sky album out of sheer curiosity, but was blown away when I actually heard it. Doug Feiger and his bandmates were making music with the same kind of proto-power pop sting as contemporaries like Big Star and the Raspberries. This is not to suggest that they sound anything like either of those bands, but rather that the benefit of hindsight suggests that they were all sailing in the same general direction.
The sound of Sky is a mix of 1970-appropriate heavy guitars, mixed with some great hooks. They were clearly ahead of their time, which is probably what doomed them to obscurity.
The three tunes featured today are fairly representative of the sound of that first album. ‘Goody Two Shoes’, ‘How’s that Treating Your Mouth Babe’ and ‘One Love’ all have the same tight, choppy guitar riffs that with a tiny bit less of the ‘stadium filling’ vibe would resurface as the decade progressed with Grin, Dwight Twilley, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers i.e. the earlier, rockier end of what would eventually morph into new wave and power pop.
I don’t know if any of the Sky material has ever been reissued on CD, but it ought to, since it’s quite good.
I hope you dig it, and you raise a glass in memory of Doug Fieger.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a new, all-Northern Soul edition of the Funky16Corners Radio Podcast

PSS The Iron Leg Digital Trip Podcast Archive has been updated, now with 31 mixes!