Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opener – Action Scene – Hawkshaw/Parker (KPM)
Nino Tempo and April Stevens with the Guilloteens – I Love How You Love Me (Atco)
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart – Teardrop City (A&M)
Sir Douglas Quintet – She’s About a Mover (Tribe)
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – The LS Bumblebee (Decca)
Giant Crab – ESP (UNI)
The Bit A Sweet – How Can I Make You See (ABC)
The Garden Club – Little Girl Lost and Found (A&M)
The Garden Club – I Must Love Her (A&M)
John Wonderling – Midway Down (WB)
The Turtles – Buzz Saw (White Whale)
ALSAC Teenagers March Concert Commercial

Buffalo Covers…
Staple Singers – For What It’s Worth (Epic) 1967
Mojo Men – Sit Down I Think I Love You (Reprise) 1966
Kenny Rankin – Four Days Gone (Mercury) 1970
Percy Sledge – Kind Woman (Atlantic) 1968
Poco – Go and Say Goodbye (Epic) 1972
Glenn Yarbrough – Everybody’s Wrong (RCA) 1967
Fanny – Special Care (Reprise) 1971
Fever Tree – Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing (UNI) 1968
Yes – Everydays (Atlantic) 1970
The Road – Mr Soul (Kama Sutra) 1970
Bonnie Raitt – Bluebird (WB) 1971
Chris Smither – I Am a Child (Poppy) 1970
Kate Rogers – Broken Arrow (Grand Central) 2005
The Grip Weeds – Down to the Wire (Buy or Die) 1998
King Curtis – For What It’s Worth (Atco) 1967

The Doors – Peace Frog/Blue Sunday (Elektra)
The Doors – Unknown Soldier (Elektra)
Rick Nelson – Don’t Make Promises (Decca)
Rick Nelson – Barefoot Boy (Decca)
Rick Nelson – Marshmallow Skies (Decca)
The Dillards – Lemon Chimes (Elektra)
The Dllards – Reason to Believe (Elektra)
The Collage – Rainy Blue Memory Day (Smash)
The Collage – My Mind’s At Ease (Smash)
The Collage – Would You Like To Go (Smash)
Van Dyke Parks – Come To the Sunshine (45) (MGM)
Van Dyke Parks – Datsun Commercial (WB)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 26 – 233MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

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

This is a very special edition of the ILRS, with lots of groovy new arrivals and an extra long set in middle of the show devoted to cover versions of Buffalo Springfield songs (thanks to Echoes In the Wind for the inspiration).

You get more than two hours of music this month, so strap on the headphones and dig (in).

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Giant Crab

Listen/Download – The Giant Crab – ESP

Listen/Download – The Giant Crab – Hot Line Conversation

Greetings all.

I hope you all have your go-go shoes laced up and a snootful of Owsley’s finest rocket fuel, though if you don’t, pouring today’s selection into your earholes should suffice.

Though I haven’t written about the Giant Crab before, I have played their tunes on the Iron Leg Radio Show more than a few times.

I first heard of the band many, many years ago, when I saw their album covers in an old coffee table book.

I didn’t actually hear their music until a few years ago when I was lucky enough to come into possession of their ‘Cool It…Helios’ album.

That record was a very pleasant surprise indeed.

Though it opened with a bizarre interlude that suggested full-on psychedelic transit, what the grooves of the album revealed was in fact a very soulful group.

When I did a some research I was blown away to discover that the Giant Crab weren’t a bunch of crusty hippies, but in fact two sets of brothers (Orosco and Friscia) from East LA.

They got their start in a band called Ernie and the Emperors, and after some of the members went off to the Army, reconstituted as the Giant Crab in 1967.

Their two albums move between garage, psyche pop, soul and heavier rock, with the band’s sound evolving along the way.
So much so, that by the time they dropped today’s selection in 1969 they had gone all the way over into Blue Cheer-ville.

What is especially interesting, and you may already have dug this if you clicked on the link, is that ‘ESP’ is in fact a thinly disguised rewrite of the Pretty Things 1966 single ‘LSD’.

‘ESP’ is crazy heavy, flanged, organ and guitar driven madness. It’s hard to listen to it without imagining one of those pulsating psychedelic light shows pushing you to the brink of a seizure.

As much as I dig the Pretties OG, I’d go as far as to say that the Giant Crab win this contest hands down.

The flipside, ‘Hot Line Conversation’ is also quite heavy, and pretty far out as well, with the sound effects. There is definitely some Vanilla Fudge in the mix here.

This is some serious shit right here, and ought to be much better known.

Wow.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Maxwells and the mighty Sir Doug Sahm

Listen/Download – Sir Douglas Quintet – She’s About a Mover (1965)

Listen/Download – Sir Douglas Quintet – She’s About a Mover (1981)

Greetings all.

This week I heard the news that one of the institutions of NY/NJ rock’n’roll, Maxwells in Hoboken would soon be closing its doors.

This was very sobering news indeed.

It was as if I was a character in a Harlan Ellison story watching huge hunks of my past falling away behind me.

Between the mid-80s and the late 90s Maxwells was a home away from home for me.

Sure, sure, everyone has a story of their favorite rock bar, where any number of momentous nights were passed and great music played, but I can assure you that very few of those places held the magic of Maxwells.

I’ll assume that those of you of a certain age or musical inclination have at least heard of the club, as it is – justly – legendary.

However, those of you that were never actually there would be in for quite a surprise if you ever saw the famous back room where so many incredible nights of music occurred.

There was an odd calculus wherein the hugeness of the bands that played at Maxwells is measured against the actual, physical size of the place, which produces numbers that seem impossible.

Where so many famous rock joints were structurally unsound, pestilent holes in the wall, covered in equal measures of graffiti and bodily fluids, Maxwells was located on a busy corner, in a fairly unassuming part of Hoboken, NJ. The front of the house was a nice looking restaurant and bar, where excellent food and beer were served.

If anyone had related stories of the back room, you could not have been blamed for expecting a veritable cavern.

But when you walked past the jukebox and the basement stairs, forked over your ten bucks (or so) to the guy with the strongbox and passed through the doors into that space, your mind probably bent just a little by the force of improbability.

There, the room that hosted the Fleshtones, the Dickies, Love, the Chesterfield Kings, the Lyres, Richard Thompson, the Bongos, Richard Case, Game Theory, the Sir Douglas Quintet, The Spectors, Mod Fun, Eleventh Dream Day and countless others (those are just some of the bands that I actually got to see) seemed impossibly small.

There was a bar on the side, sound booth in the back and a small set of bleachers on one side of the room, with a small stage at the front and a well-worn wooden floor where we would all stand (sometimes dance, a little) and watch the greatest music of the day being made.

I still can’t understand how some of those shows even happened.

I can’t remember a single time when I wasn’t able to get in to see a band, despite the small size of the room and the low admission price.

It’s not as if Maxwells was located out in the boonies somewhere.

Maybe it was because all of the best times I experienced at Maxwells predate the rise of the internet and social media (back when you used to have to pick up a newspaper to see who was playing), but no matter how late, or how amazing the bands, we would usually just walk right in.

It’s completely inconceivable in today’s world, where most of those shows would be sold out in seconds.

In retrospect, the coolest thing of all is what an ‘organic’ thing Maxwells was. No matter how many times I went there, or how comfortable I got, I never felt like I was part of a “scene”. It was just a cool place, full of cool/interesting people, all there to hear great music.

I haven’t been back to Maxwells for many years, my days of late-night rock and rolling now located in the distant past.

But I do remember how magical that place was for my friends and I, and how many remarkable shows we saw there.

The night the Fleshtones finished a long, sweaty show with Peter Zaremba leading a conga line around the room while banging on a drum made out of a trash can.

The night the Lyres played so long that Jeff Conolly had to start repeating songs from the beginning of their set (and we still couldn’t get enough).

The time the Chesterfield Kings got so riled up that Greg Prevost started busting up the pressed-tin ceiling with a microphone stand, and it seemed like we were (happily) picking paint chips out of our hair and clothes for hours afterward.

The night’s I proudly got to stand in the audience and watch both of my younger brothers bands (Gigantic, and the Grievous Angels) play on the Maxwells stage.

And…the night my buddy Bill and I selected Petula Clark’s ‘Downtown’ on the jukebox so many times they eventually pulled the plug.

But the greatest night of all – for me anyway – was the night I got so see the Sir Douglas Quintet.

It was transcendent musically, and personally in that I got to meet, and share a beer with one of my true musical heros.

I wrote about it in the earliest days of Funky16Corners, and I’ll repost it here. I think it’ll give you a taste of what Maxwells was like, or at least what it meant to me.:

______________________________________________________________

Back in early 1990, I had just returned from a grand tour of the South (with my brother Chris), in which we visited friends, family and tourist traps in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville.

A fine time was had by all, and I returned to NJ well rested. The Monday after getting back, having affixed an Elvis sticker to the trunk of my Chevy Spectrum (in the most ironic sense possible), I left for work.

About a half mile from work, I leaned over to tune the radio, and when I looked up I was a very short distance from the back of a car that has stopped to make a left turn. Naturally, I slammed on the brakes, but was way too close to stop, and promptly rammed that car, almost pushing it into oncoming traffic.

That car was totaled.

My car was totaled.

I had a big cut on my forehead and some sore muscles, but was otherwise OK (thankfully, so was the person in the car I hit).

The whole episode was a huge drag, which would haunt me financially for years to come (I’ll save that story for another time). My car was a few months from being paid off, and I hardly had the money to go out and buy a new one.

Well…my Dad came and picked me up at the hospital, and I went to spend the night at my parents house. So, I’m sitting on my Mom’s couch, aching, generally feeling sorry for myself and dreading what kind of trouble (financial and otherwise) I was going to be facing when this all shook out (like, was I gonna get sued etc. and how as I going to get to work without what Long Duck Dong decribed as an “auto-mo-beeeeellll…”).

Utterly depressed.

Then, out-of-the-blue, a friend (who in the ensuing years has just about lost his mind after being ground up by the teeth of an adulthood he was ill equipped to deal with, and thus shall remain nameless) called and asked if I wanted to go see the Sir Douglas Quintet at Maxwell’s in Hoboken.

Well, hell yes.

I think I had known about the gig, but had written it off because I was supposed to be working that night.

Serendipity, knowing what was good for me, stepped in and destroyed my car – and the car of another – so I might be there. Mysterious ways indeed.

My pal came and got me, and we drove to Hoboken where I figured I could find succor and consolation in a mixture of righteous music and beer.

All the way up I bitched and moaned about how terrible the fallout from this accident was going to be (completely ignoring how lucky I was that no one had been seriously hurt), and wondering what I was going to do. The irony in the fact, that I was being chauffered to this show by one of the WORST drivers this state has ever known (the kind of driver that makes you wonder how they could possibly keep getting insured) was lost on me.

We managed to arrive safely in Hoboken, and right after finding a parking space managed to run into a couple of very good friends, who, after hearing my tale of woe, took a page from the friend handbook, and promptly got me high.
Things were looking up.

Not long after that we all walked up the hill to Maxwells.

For those who don’t know, for a while Maxwells was the greatest rock’n’roll bar in America (maybe the world). One of the smallest music rooms around (which despite it’s size managed to host almost every major alternative – in the broadest sense of the word – act of the 80’s/90’s), fantastic selection of beer, quiet neighborhood (almost zero chance of getting mugged/robbed or having your car stolen), and it was in New Jersey.

Anyway…we all walked into the bar, said our hellos to a few familiar faces and proceeded to enter the back (music) room. I found a bar stool and began to drink.

So you’re reading this and thinking “So what? Glad to hear you managed to find some friends with whom to become intoxicated following your careless driving episode, but why should I care?”

Man, that was cold…. But I digress.

I was really, really depressed (did I already say that?). I knew, despite the fact that I was “up and around”, that the fallout from the accident was going to suck, and I didn’t really have any money, and blah blah blah….you know? The fact that in the space of a few hours I had managed to hook up with some good friends, get high, order a beer and sit waiting for a true hero of American rock’n’roll music to take the stage, was – as I saw it – a significant turnaround.

The key part of that run on sentence, was the phrase “true hero of American rock’n’roll music”. The Sir Douglas Quintet or more specifically Doug Sahm was (at least in 1990) a relic of a bygone era. One hit wonders who jumped onto the national stage in 1965, and promptly fell off again. That’s the short version. The longer version – which you will always get here – sees the many incarnations of the band continuing to make great music on through the end of the 60’s and right up to the present. Doug Sahm started making records as a 14 year old in mid-50’s Texas, recording several R&B inflected sides before the birth of the Sir Douglas Quintet. That this birth took place in the diseased – though musically prolific mind – of Huey P. Meaux (otherwise known as the Crazy Cajun), is important. Meaux, deciding that he needed something to compete with Beatle-fueled Anglophilia, decided to give the band a decidedly English sounding name, and put them on the cover of their first album shrouded in shadows (to hide the fact that the Quintet was composed of a couple of Texas hillbillys and three Chicanos, and not another gang of tea and crumpeteers from the old sod).

Even more remarkable is the fact that this ruse held together even though the miraculous product of this collaboration sounded like Ray Charles fronting a Tex-Mex band. ‘She’s About A Mover’ hit the Top 40 in 1965 and got the Quintet on Shindig, Bandstand etc, and launched Doug Sahm and his compadre Augie Meyers (he of the SDQ’s trademark Farfisa organ) on a 40 year odyssey.

That the tune was a bit of genius is undeniable. That the pop charts were not ready for a continued assault from these synthesizers of R&B, rock, norteno, cojunto etc is similarly carved in stone.

The band dropped off the charts (though recording several excellent singles for Meaux’s Tribe label) and following a 1966 pot bust Sir Doug put some flowers in his hair and headed for that Shangri-La that Sid Dithers once referred to as San Francisky.

There, in 1969 a reconstituted SDQ crafted the absolutely brilliant ‘Mendocino’ LP, grazed the Top 40 yet again and went on to make a lot of outstanding, moderately successful records for a variety of labels.

In the early 90’s, Sahm and Meyers hooked up with Freddie Fender and Flaco Jimenez to form the Texas Tornados, and had a few years of bonafide country stardom (and excellent albums) ahead of them. Anyway….When the SDQ took the stage that night, I just sat there and basked in the glow of great music, played and sung by great musicians in a tiny little bar in Hoboken, NJ (probably smaller than the places they played 25 years before back in Texas). I was transported (as all truly great music ought to be able to do) and for about 2 hours – as the SDQ laid down some of the most authentic “soul” music as has ever been played – my smashed up car (and the car that we had joined together to smash) and the cut on my head and the ache in my back and my uncertain future all vanished. It was just me, my friends, 75 to 80 other people and the Sir Douglas Quintet experiencing the kind of communion that happens on Friday nights in clubs all over the world, where people band together with their beer and their music and file their troubles away, at least for a night.

Only here, in Hoboken, the music was so much better.

It certainly helped that they ended the show with a brilliant medley of ‘She’s About A Mover’, the 13th Floor Elevators ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ and ? & the Mysterians ’96 Tears’ (kind of a Rosetta Stone of Texas 60′s punk).

Maybe a year later, when Sahm and Meyers were touring as part of the ‘Last Real Texas Blues Band’ (with pigtailed Texas sax wizard Rocky Morales along for the ride) I had a chance to rap with Sir Doug (and Augie) at the bar, and he was every bit as cool as you’d imagine. Funny, down to earth and get this…he could not stand George Bush (that’s Daddy Bush, but I imagine had he lived to see Dubya in the White House he wouldn’t have dug him much either).

Sir Doug passed away in 1999 (he was only 58). When I heard he was gone, I remembered how he and his music lifted me up that night in 1990, and I smiled.

______________________________________________________________

The tunes I’m posting today are (as seen above) the OG version of the SDQ’s ‘She’s About a Mover’, and a live version of the same song, recorded at the Whiskey in LA in 1981.

I hope you dig the words and the sounds, and I also hope that someday, some time, you get to experience live music in a place as cool as Maxwells.

Until next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Martin Margulies aka Johnny Legend (above), Bill Cowsill (below)

Listen/Download – Lightmyth – Across the Universe

Greetings all.

The logo above indicates what I hope is the beginning of an ongoing look into the interesting, back alleys of the Cowsills discography.

I recently put together a mix CD for a friend that I jokingly called ‘The Cowsills: None of the Hits’.

It was composed of rare 45s, LP tracks and rarities, the title a nod in the direction of the amazing variety in the group’s catalog that most people haven’t heard.

Included in the latter category were a couple of cuts produced by Bill Cowsill after his unceremonious ejection from the group by his father.

The first few years of the 1970s saw Bill recording an excellent solo album, as well as producing a few other bands.

The track you see before you today is a one-off 45 by an LA group called Lightmyth.

Lightmyth has its roots in a Sunset Strip band called the Seeds of Time, and featured in their ranks a young fellow named Martin Margulies.

I mention this because in a few years Margulies would become better known under the name Johnny Legend, an important early rockabilly revivalist, character and all round bon vivant.

As the story goes, Lightmyth got their hands on an early release of the Beatles ‘Across the Universe’ and their 45 hit the racks here in the States before the Fabs did.

I haven’t been able to run down the dates on the two releases, but in the end it is a moot point, since almost no one heard or bought the Lightmyth 45, rendering it the intriguing obscurity that it is.

Their version of the song is pretty cool, opening up with sparse acoustic guitar and piano, and working its way to a thundering climax at the end.

The production is cool, with an obvious ear turned toward George Martin’s work with the Beatles.

It’s perfectly groovy 1970 hippie rock, and while the lead vocal isn’t likely to make you forget the Beatles, I dig it.

My copy of the 45 is a promo with ‘Across the Universe’ on both sides (mono/stereo but I have seen a reference that indicates there are stock copies with a song called ‘Quest of the Golden Horde’ on the b-side.

I hope you dig the tune, and stay tuned for periodic installments of the Cowsills Project.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Ray and the boys…

Listen/Download – The Doors – Not To Touch the Earth

Listen/Download – The Doors – The Unknown Soldier

Listen/Download – The Doors – Peace Frog/Blue Sunday

Greetings all.

I hope all is well in your corner of the universe.

This past week saw yours truly on the receiving end of a spiritual kick in the ass when news of the passing of the mighty Ray Manzarek came over the wire.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever discussed it in this space before, but when I was a kid (17 in 1980) the Doors inhabited a place in my mind, previously held only by the Beatles, and afterward by Otis Redding.

They were IT.

My buddy Mike and I were (to slightly varying degrees, he being of a slightly more conventional bent, then and now) major Doors fanboys, right before that first big posthumous rush when the mythology/hagiography ‘No One Here Gets Out Alive’ was flying off the shelves.

Fortunately for me, my love for the Doors preceded the emergence of Jim Morrison as leather clad memento mori, cemented by the opening organ run of ‘Light My Fire’ which I probably heard for the first time only a year or two after it was first released.

I remember walking a couple of miles to the dusty flea market and returning home with a copy of ‘13’ (the first Doors ‘Best of’) which I quite literally wore down over the next few years.

There was something about the Doors sound which managed to hit all of the pleasure centers in my teenage brain, including evidence of a certain darkness which – even though I didn’t really understand it – appealed to me greatly.

When ‘No One Here…’ came out, preaching the gospel of Jim Morrison, making note of the sacraments of intoxication, rebellion and poetry, it was like finding a religion that had been specifically designed for teenaged outsiders.

The music of the Doors, which I already dug, suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

When you’re an adolescent, you’re much more susceptible to finding profundity wherever you look.

Here we had Jim Morrison, great singer and amazing performer and above all an intellectual who was also – at his best (or worst, depending on your own perspective) a huge, protruding middle finger pointed at the authority figures of his time.

Morrison was punk in a way that I understood, while at the same time I was largely oblivious to the punk that was happening around me. While many of my peers looked to Johnny Rotten or the Ramones, I cast my net back a decade and fixated on Morrison.

Of course, a few years later, when other – less worshipful – voices entered the conversation, combined with my own maturity (as it was) it became clear that Jim Morrison was less a dark, shamanic lord, than he was an out of control alcoholic and ego (albeit with a great deal of talent) who made the lives of those around him extremely difficult.

While this changed the way I thought about Morrison, it never really had an effect on the way I felt about the Doors music.

Of course, by the time I figured all of this out, a whole new generation of kids were finding the same things to dig about Jim Morrison that I had ten years before.

This had everything to do with the fact that the Hopkins/Sugerman bio (seemingly perpetually in print) had been in many ways supplanted by the voice of Ray Manzarek.

Everywhere the Doors or Jim Morrison came up in conversation, it seemed Ray Manzarek, with his hippie drawl, was there too, playing Joseph Campbell to Jim Morrison’s hero with a thousand faces, perpetually whipping a few years of rock’n’roll madness into a kind of psychedelic meringue.

Where I had settled into the idea of Morrison as a great rock singer and frontman, Manzarek was popping up, right and left, using words like “shaman’ and ‘ritual’ to describe the man and his life.

The funny thing is, when you go back and watch film of the Doors, you get the impression, delivered with repeated sly grins, that Morrison himself didn’t believe half of that stuff, and for the same reasons, I never thought Ray bought into it all the way either.

But he became the public face of the Doors, as well as the guy shoveling coal into the furnace of Morrison’s memory.

One of my favorite bits of musical algebra (as it were), is to posit that most aren’t nearly as good as their biggest fans think they are, nor are they as bad as their detractors would have you believe.

The Doors are exemplary in this respect.

While they weren’t the modern equivalent of an ancient shamanic ceremony, they weren’t a psychedelic clown car either.

One of the cooler things about finding out more about the Doors as I got older (separate from all the ‘kill your idols’ ish) is that I began to appreciate the depth of their music.

When I was first listening to the Doors in the 70s, I had yet to hear (let alone really understand) the music of Arthur Lee and Love, the Velvet Underground or the 13th Floor Elevators. I was basically digging the Doors without an adequate supply of context.

As I got older, and listened to more, something very interesting happened.

A lot of the bullshit got shaved away, but what it revealed underneath was a band that was trying (and more often than not, succeeding) to make something new and interesting which in most cases worked outside of the contemporary grab bag of musical clichés.

Though it was probably 15 years between the first time I heard the Doors play ‘Alabama Song’ and when I heard Brecht and Weill’s ‘Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’, it immediately occurred to me that the Doors weren’t fucking around. They understood from whence that music came, and (re)delivered it in a way that was both proper and respectful of the original context.

Critics in the 60s and the 70s were find of stapling all kinds of retrospective tinsel onto their favorite bands/performers, suggesting that their music was ‘evocative’ of one cool old thing or another, but the Doors were one of the first bands where I understood that if they did evoke memories of earlier, ‘important’ things, it was because they meant it that way.

While I wouldn’t (couldn’t) refer to Jim Morrison as a genius, I also wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that he was better read and smarter than a lot of his contemporaries, and less pretentious than a lot of folks would have you believe.

The Doors weren’t dilettantes when it came to jazz and the blues, or working those sounds into their music in an organic way.

They didn’t sound like anyone else, nor – once they were gone – did anyone sound like them.

Sure, there have been countless attempted-Morrisons over the years, but by and large they missed the point, misunderstanding Blake, and taking the road of excess not to the palace of wisdom, but straight to the gutter (or like Jim, right into the cemetery).

Ray Manzarek, manning the combo organ, piano and even that odd, Fender keyboard bass, was the instrumental heart of the Doors. Though he wasn’t the group’s main composer (those duties assumed by Robbie Krieger and Morrison*) the sounds he made, on the Vox Continental or Gibson G-101 organs, pianos (acoustic and electric) were what made the band’s music stand out. I can hardly think of a keyboard player (aside from any singer/songwriters where the primary instrument was piano) in a band that contributed so much to the recognizable sound of their band, where the instrument wasn’t a Hammond organ.

As I said earlier, the Doors music was unique, and in retrospect, surprisingly odd and challenging for a band that was in its day quite popular.

There is a stark dividing line between most of their hits and their album tracks, and you have to wonder what was going through the mind of someone that bought ‘Waiting for the Sun’ for ‘Hello I Love You’ and got the record home only to hear ‘Not To Touch The Earth’ or ‘The Unknown Soldier’.

The tunes I’m including here today are faves of mine from ‘Waiting for the Sun’ and ‘Morrison Hotel’.

The aforementioned cuts from ‘Waiting for the Sun’ are great examples of the “weird” side of the Doors.

‘Not to Touch the Earth’ is as piquant a bit of bad-trip psyche out as has ever come down the pike. Opening with Doug Lubahn’s (of Clear Light) bass, Manzarek’s organ and Kreiger’s woozy slide guitar, Morrison joins in for a verse, and then things get progressively darker, dissonant and weird, broken only by the periodic ‘run with me’ chorus.

‘The Unkown Soldier’ was the first 45 from ‘Waiting for the Sun’, and believe it or not, broke into the Top 40 in 1968. The song is a playlet, with martial sound effects, a mock execution and cheering crowds, and it still seems weird to think of it sandwiched in between ‘To Sir With Love’ and ‘La La Means I Love You’ on the radio.

‘Peace Frog/Blue Sunday’, which run together near the end of side one of ‘Morrison Hotel’ is alternately the funkiest thing the Doors ever laid down, and the most melancholy. ‘Peace Frog’, with lyrical nods to Morrison’s arrest in New Haven and the unrest at the Democratic Convention in Chicago features one of Robbie Kreiger’s hottest guitar solos.

‘Blue Sunday’ is a slow, dreamy, and in the context of the Doors catalog, very conventional love song, which provides a stark contrast to ‘Peace Frog’ (which I’m guessing was the idea).

In the years after Morrison’s untimely demise, Manzarek played with artists as diverse as Philip Glass and Iggy Pop, and most importantly produced the first four albums by X, including their breakthrough ‘Under the Big Black Sun’.

There were also the various and sundry Doors recreations, none of which I paid much attention to, unable to stomach the idea of a faux-Morrison out in front.

That said, Ray Manzarek always seemed like a good guy, with his personal and artistic heart in the right place, which is why I could forgive (and occasionally enjoy) the mythmaking.

He was a great talent, and will be missed.

See you all next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for the 2013 Allnighter/Pledge Drive!

Limey and the Yanks

Listen/Download – Limey and the Yanks – Out of Sight Out of Mind

Greetings all.

Welcome back to the old leg of iron.

The tune I bring you today will certainly be a familiar one, whether you’re a garage head, or just an Iron Leg habitue.

I featured a different version (still my favorite) by the Bit A Sweet back in 2007.

As stated then, the version of the song that I knew first, was the one I bring to you today, by Limey and the Yanks.

Back in the olden days – when things were different – before CDs and iPods and what not, we had to listen to actual records.

On the garage/mod scene, though some of us had our mitts on the OG stuff, most of what we were hearing was via compilations (some legit, most not) of classic 60s garage, mod and psychedelic stuff.

The Limey and the Yanks version of ‘Out of Sight Out of Mind’ was initially revealed to me on one of the ‘Highs in the Mid 60s’ comps, one devoted to the sounds of the greater Los Angeles area.

I immediately fell in love with the song – it being a stellar example of the garage punk – and it was a few years on before I discovered the Bit A Sweet version.

Though I prefer the Bit A Sweet 45, I still love this one and was more than eager to fork over the dough when I found a copy at a record show last year.

Limey and the Yanks were a particularly interesting story for a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, their lead singer Steve ‘Limey’ Cook did in fact hail from the UK, and had relocated to southern California as a teenager.

Second, and also very cool is the fact that despite the fact that they didn’t have a national hit, Limey and the Yanks were huge around LA and Orange County, releasing a couple of boss 45s (for Starburst and Loma, both 1966), headlining in every major local club, opening for a wide variety of national and international acts and appearing on LA-area radio and TV on the reg.

Their version of ‘Out of Sight Out of Mind’ (co-written by Steve Duboff of the Changing Times and Dave Morris) features cool guitars a great lead vocal by Cook and what sounds like an electric harpsichord.

You can read an interview with Steve Cook here where he infers that the band recorded a lot more material than ever saw the light of day on vinyl.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

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

The Kingsmen

Listen/Download – The Kingsmen – Long Green

Greetings all.

I though we’d get going this week with a little Pacific Northwest, headbanging, frathouse grind.

The Kingsmen – with the ‘Louie Louie’ and all associated iterations thereof – need no introduction, especially if you’re tuned into the frequency here at Iron Leg.

Oddly enough, to me anyway, they are as opaque as they are legendary.

You can say ‘The Kingsmen’ to almost any rock fan and thoughts of toga-clad yahoos vomiting on their sneakers pop into their heads, but strangely, no image of the band themselves.

I always go back to the clip that was making the rounds back in the garage/mod 80s, of the Kingsmen on some teen show lip-synching ‘Louie Louie’ but aside from that you could put any gang of longhairs (or semi-longhairs) in front of me, tell me that they were the Kingsmen and I’d pretty much have to take your word for it.

This has to do with the fact that the Kingsmen, were, like a lot of PNW bands, a revolving door of sorts.

Hit the Kingsmen’s Wiki page and take a look at the list of members over the years and you start to see familiar names, i.e. Jack Ely and Lynn Easton (two names I always identified with the core of the band) but also guys like Don Gallucci (of Don and the Goodtimes and producing fame), Turley Richards (who recorded a few albums of his own in a completely different style) and even (during the 80s) Andy Parypa of the original Sonics.

The Kingsmen were on and off the charts, sometimes high (Louie Louie, the Jolly Green Giant) and more often low, between 1958 and 1967.

They released ‘Long Green’ in late 1964, and it went on to chart regionally (Detroit) in early 1965.

If its rudimentary stomp and growl rings any bells for you, it’s probably because (in addition to any familiar ‘Louie Louie’-isms) it’s a loose rewrite of the Premiers ‘Farmer John’, which I suppose isn’t a HUGE deal, since both songs are built on a pretty simple frame, albeit one guaranteed to get your drunk uncle out of his armchair and grooving across the floor.

Once again, the Kingsmen have produced a largely indecipherable lyric, which is also pretty much irellevant, since this is more about communicating the WOMP, WOMP-WOMP on your way to the keg than it is about telling a story, though that in itself may very well be the story.

Either way, it’s good, cathartic stuff.

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

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

George Jones

Listen/Download – George Jones – She Thinks I Still Care

Listen/Download – George Jones – Root Beer

Greetings all.

Wow…

I was sitting at my desk on Friday morning, digimatizing some 45s and picking songs out for Funky16Corners when what should pop up in my Facebook feed but the news that the mighty George Jones had passed away at the age of 81.

There have been a few posts here at Iron Leg over the years that hinted at my love for country music of a certain vintage, but I’ve never really gone into it in any depth.

Like many rock’n’rollers in my age group, I backed my way into country music, mostly via covers of classic songs by groups like the Grateful Dead and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

I found my way into country through ‘country rock’, which is really a way of saying that the real stuff was too potent to hit right away so I had to have it diluted first.

Country music, much like disco, is a sound that in my early years I was always aware of but separated from culturally.

Sure, I’d watch Hee Haw on Saturday mornings as a kid, and knew all the really big names, like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, George Jones and Buck Owens through their crossover into the general pop culture zeitgeist, but had almost no exposure to their music.

It was only in the 80s, when I started to investigate the twangier end of the spectrum, especially Gram Parsons, that I found myself a gateway into the sound.

Parsons, on his own and with the Flying Burrito Brothers introduced me to singers like Jones, Haggard and Owens in a way that I might never have discovered if left to my own devices.

Because they took the time to pass it through a late-60s, ‘California hippie’ strainer, Parsons (who referred to his sound as ‘Cosmic American Music’), and folks like the guys in the Buffalo Springfield/Poco axis, as well as early adapters like Gene Clark, Mike Nesmith and Rick Nelson, made it much easier for someone like me to find my way, first to the Bakersfield sound, then on to guys like George Jones.

Someone – I can’t remember exactly who, but the sentiment is general enough that it could have been any number of people – said that country music exists in some ways as a kind of “white man’s soul music”.

The racial aspect of that is kind of simplistic, and I’d go as far as to suggest that it ought to be amended to say “another kind of soul music”.

If you’ve spent as much time listening to music as I have, especially soul music, and then drill down into the soul of the deep south, you begin to realize that the borders that were drawn in our minds over the years, especially in regard to the constructs of race and music, and the way they effect each other, are often much more porous and flexible than we ever imagined.

One need only listen to singers like James Carr, Arthur Alexander and Joe South* to realize that country, and soul are much broader categories than most people think.

Though he would never fit the accepted mold of “soul singer”, George Jones was a singer with a remarkable amount of soul.

The first time I really “heard” George Jones it took me a while to reconcile the crystal clear, powerful voice with the public image of a tortured soul wrestling with alcohol and all the troubles it brought with it.

Though there are many singers whose voices you could imagine in any number of contexts, George Jones pipes seemed purpose-built for country. High and clear, and fitting perfectly in close harmonies that sounded like they came down from the hills, his singing was country music.

Jones always struck me as something of a raw nerve. One need only look at clips of him performing live and take a close look at his eyes to see what I mean. No matter what kind of song he was singing – and he was famous for tales of heartbreak – Jones always seemed to me to be peering warily from behind a wall of some kind. Having devoted so much of his resources to that incredible voice, which carried with it so much emotion, the look in his eyes betrayed a soul in distress.

When you consider a life so filled with upheaval, much of it brought on by his own behavior, there was a temptation over the years to look at Jones and think ‘Man, he some kind of wild good ole boy!’, chuckling at the image of Possum defiantly riding into town on his lawn mower when his car keys had been confiscated.

But there was nothing funny about it, and you could see that despite an occasional wry tip of the hat in the direction of that particular anecdote, Jones didn’t think it was either.

Fortunately for Jones, his family and those of us that love his music, he managed to pull it all back together and live to a ripe old age no one could have imagined when he was at his worst.

The two tracks I bring you today represent two sides of Jones.

‘She Thinks I Still Care’ was a #1 Country hit for Jones in 1962. It remains today, more than 50 years later one of the truly great records in the genre. It has been covered many times – the first time I heard it was via Leon Russell’s cover on his 1973 ‘Hank Wilson’s Back’ LP – and is one of the truly great statements of heartbreak.

Listen to Jones’s version and marvel at what a remarkable singer he was. He lays down the first line of the song in a rich, almost conventional baritone, but by the time he reaches the end of the second line, his voice takes on another character entirely, stretching out and almost taking on the reedy sound of a fiddle (an effect that he repeats on the second line of every verse).

If you get a chance, check out Little Willie John’s recording of the song, which is epic in its own way.

The second tune is a much more lighthearted number, touching on Jones’s rockabilly tendencies.

One of his biggest hits was 1959’s ‘White Lightning’, written by JP Richardson (the Big Bopper) and as close to rockabilly as any mainstream country record ever came.

‘Root Beer’, which appeared on the same 1962 LP as ‘She Thinks I Still Care’, ‘The New Favorites of George Jones’ is in many ways a rewrite of ‘White Lightning’, this time on the carbonated, non-alcoholic side of the street. Though the production is Countrypolitan-heavy, that rockabilly vibe is still there, and it’s funny too, so there’s that.

Jones went on to be one of the biggest stars of country music (alone and in duets with his third wife – of four –  Tammy Wynette).

If you’re not familiar with Jones, and wish to investigate further, there are tons of compilations out there of his early stuff (Starday, Mercury, United Artists) that can be picked up on CD or in iTunes.

I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

*And you could easily add names like Solomon Burke, Otis Redding, Tony Joe White and OV Wright to that list

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Listen/Download – The Phaetons – Leave It To Me

Greetings all.

The tune I bring you today is another one of those things that I discovered in an auction, dug the sound and grabbed the record despite knowing nothing about it.

Naturally, the sound is the main thing that matters, i.e. I love when a record has an interesting story behind it, but if the song is groovy, none of that matters.

Fortunately, when I started doing a little digging, I turned up a couple of interesting facts.

The Phaetons (or at least these Phaetons) hailed from Long Island, NY.

They recorded three 45s for Warner Brothers records, all in 1967/68, and all, interestingly enough, produced by the great Jerry Ragavoy, better known as one of the finest soul music producers and songwriters of the classic era.

The 45 you see before you today was released in 1968, and by catalog numbers appears to the the Phaetons last for Warner Brothers.

Both sides of the disc are cool, melodic pop rock, with the flipside ‘You Better Come Back’ sounding like something the Left Banke might have put together in one of their more upbeat moods.

The side we feature today is the groovy ‘Leave It To Me’.

Interestingly, the song – written by legends Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman – was first recorded by the UK group A Band of Angels in 1965. That group, which featured future Manfred Mann singer Mike D’Abo took the song at a plodding, almost ballad pace (you can pick it up on iTunes as part of a Picadilly Records comp).

The Phaetons version of ‘Leave It To Me’ cranks up the tempo a notch or two, which really brings the melody to life. The group had excellent harmonies, and the guitar is especially nice.

Lead singer Gerard Kenny went to to some success as a pop singer in the UK (also writing ‘I Made It Through the Rain’ for Barry Manilow) and some of the other members of the band recorded an LP in the 70s as Roland Jade.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.