Remembering Dan Boardman and the Spectors

Dan Boardman (left), yours truly (middle)
and my brother CJ (right) at a Spectors gig at the
Funhouse, Bethelehem, PA 1994 (Photo by Bill Luther)

The Spectors (circa 1992) Chris Knott, Sluggo,
Devin Waterman, Keith Patterson, Dan Boardman

Listen/Download – The Spectors – I Fell In Love (For the Very First Time)

Listen/Download – The Spectors – Sow My Wild Oats

Listen/Download – The Spectors (with the Monks) – Oh How To Do Now

Greetings all.

Last week we got the sad news that following a long fight with cancer, Dan Boardman had passed away.

Dan was (when I met him) the lead guitarist (and past drummer) for the mighty Spectors.

Back in he early 90s I was pretty much done with live garage/beat sounds. The New York scene had all but gone in the toilet (with some of the surviving bands morphing into unspeakable awfulness) and there wasn’t much new that I was interested in.

I had taken a step back and started a fairly intense study of jazz which occupied me for about half a decade.

I think I first saw the Spectors around 1992/1993. I knew their bassist Keith Patterson from his time in the Funseekers, and word was that they were tearing shit up, so I ventured out into the night, knowing that if the music didn’t grab me, the beer surely would.

Well, my friends, I’m here to tell you that if “everything” didn’t change that night, a lot certainly did.

The Spectors, having motored all the way east from Minnesota, were a wild breath of fresh air.

Their sound, a mixture of classic UK/Euro beat, garage punk and R&B was potent indeed, their sets a mixture of deadly originals and brilliant covers.

They tore into songs like the Roulettes ‘Bad Time’, the Monks ‘Oh How To Do Now’ and the Undertakers ‘I Fell In Love (For the Very First Time)’ with raw power and a sense of fun and wild abandon that I had missed terribly.

The Spectors took my jaded ass and kicked it, and for a few years made rock’n’roll fun again.

Our crowd always looked forward to their trips east, and their singer Chris became one of my best friends.

It was via Chris last year that I heard that Dan had been stricken with cancer. Having weathered that particular storm with my wife twice in as many years, I contacted Dan, just to let him know that even though treatment could be brutal and unforgiving, that there was always hope, and that we were thinking of him.

Over the course of the year there were updates, and then not too long ago the sad news that Dan had entered hospice care, eventually passing on June 18th.

Though our lives only intersected for a short time those many years ago, it was great to see that in the years since the Spectors, Dan had continued to play in a variety of bands, gone on to have a family and retained a ferocious love of music and life right up until the end.

The songs I’m posting in his memory are some of my favorites by the Spectors, including the aforementioned Undertakers and Monks covers (featuring backing vocal by no less than three of the original Monks!), and one of their best originals, ‘Sow My Wild Oats’.

They are all heavy, filled with energy and excitement, all hallmarks of one of the best bands I ever saw.

So listen to the tunes, and raise a glass in memory of the mighty Dan Boardman.

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

Peace

Larry

 

 

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Paul Revere 1938-2014

Paul Revere (center) and the Raiders

Listen/Download – Paul Revere and the Raiders – The Great Airplane Strike

Listen/Download – Paul Revere and the Raiders – Louise

Listen/Download – Paul Revere and the Raiders – Louie Go Home

Listen/Download – Paul Revere and the Raiders – SS396

Greetings all.

I woke this morning to the sad news that Paul Revere, leader of the Raiders, had passed away at the age of 76.

Oddly, I had just finished prepping two different posts about Pacific Northwest bands (the Kingsmen and Don and the Goodtimes), but I’ll have to push those back a few weeks.

I’ve decided to devote next week’s edition of the Iron Leg Radio Show entirely to Pacific Northwest bands, so stay tuned for that.

The music of Paul Revere and the Raiders has been featured here at Iron Leg a bunch times in the past, in posts and as part of the podcast.

I’m one of those old timers that’ll take time out of my busy day to bend your ear about how the Raiders were one of the great underrated/underappreciated bands of the 60s.

The irony built into that particular conversation is the fact that they were, for a few choice years, very, very successful and big stars.

They were a regular presence on the charts, and on TV, appearing on just about every show that presented rock bands, and as regulars on a couple of Dick Clark vehicles, like Where the Action Is and Happening ’68.

The band, but especially lead singer Mark Lindsay, was fodder for the Tiger Beat crowd as well, appearing in teen magazines and no doubt tacked to the bedroom walls of a healthy percentage of America’s teenage girls.

Oddly enough, it was this popularity, and the band’s highly polished showbiz schtick, with the Revolutionary War uniforms, synchronized steps and clowning, that sank them like a brick in the estimation of the ‘serious’ rock crowd, when that part of the scene rose to prominence in the late 60s.

When the festival and mud thing took over, and rock singers became something a lot less finely tuned and more ‘underground’ (though their records were still being manufactured, marketed and sold by the same gigantic corporations) Paul Revere and the Raiders fell out of fashion.

They still had records on the charts, but my the mid-70s they were by and large relegated to the oldies circuit, with Mark Lindsay gone, and Paul Revere leading a revolving cast of Raiders through the state fairs and night clubs of America.

I first became aware of the Raiders through oldies radio in the early 70s (when their oldies were less than half a decade gone), largely oblivious to their image and the era when I was too young to notice them.

What I heard,  was a band that mixed pop hooks with fuzzed out power better than just about anyone else.

At their best, Paul Revere and the Raiders made records that – had they been recorded by some obscure pack of long-haired basement dwellers and released in a run of five hundred singles, sold out of car trunks and at pizza parlor gigs – would be changing hands for hundreds of bucks today.

They were a big part of the Pacific Northwest sound (and its most successful proponents) , having cranked out their first hit in 1960.

When I came of age, in the late 70s and early 80s, while alt rock was emerging, the classic Raiders vibe couldn’t have seemed less cool.

These were the days when bands cultivated an ‘organic’ look, in which everyone tried their hardest to seem like they couldn’t care less. Paul, Mark, Fang, Harpo and Smitty yukking it up on Hullabaloo was the very antithesis of Michael Stipe peeking through his mop while emoting to a bar full of hipsters.

Yet, by 1984, something weird started to happen.

While most of the alt rock world was wearing their hearts on their sleeves, a bunch of us made a U-turn, going back to 1966 for attitude, fashion, and most importantly music.

This was less of a reach than you might imagine, since 60s sounds, jangle, pop, and even fuzz had been a big part of New Wave and power pop, but what my friends and I were onto was something much more explicitly retro.

We were tunneling backward and appreciating the (mostly) lost sounds of the mid-60s, garage punk, mod, R&Beat, folk rock and psychedelia, trading bootleg tapes of shows like Hullabaloo, Shindig, Action, Beat Club, Ready Steady Go and Upbeat, and (to varying degrees) resurrecting the fashions of the times in clubs in New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, London and anywhere else there were enough devotees to muster up a scene.

While all of this was going on, a generation of kids, most of whom weren’t nearly old enough to realize what a big deal Paul Revere and the Raiders had been the first time around, started to dig their music.

Nearly twenty years removed, with most of their fame buried in cobwebs and the fan magazines mildewed, their music struck a nerve for all the right reasons. The big booming sound, power chords, fuzz and most importantly the hooks drilled their way into fresh, unspoiled minds.

Sure there were still the hardcore obscurantists, hipper than thou, who insisted that the Raiders were uncool, and way too mainstream to stand alongside barely-heard local 45s from 1966, but those types pop up in every scene and are (and were) best ignored.

The tracks I bring you today are some of my favorites by the band, as well as an obscurity that I only recently put my hands on.

Here you get all of the aforementioned elements, the hard charging side of Paul Revere and the Raiders, with the fuzz, tremolo, pounding drums and memorable melodies.

‘The Great Airplane Strike’ – maybe my fave Raiders record, was co-written by Revere, Lindsay and Terry Melcher, and is still a mind-blower. Not their best-known song, but not exactly obscure (it grazed the Top 20 in the Fall of 1966) is a throbbing tornado of guitars. The production by Melcher is amazing, with the fuzzed-out lead cutting through waves of rhythm guitar, bass and drums.

‘Louise’, written by Jesse Lee Kincaid of the Rising Sons was recorded by both Keith Allison, and the Raiders (who he would soon join). Released by the Raiders first, ‘Louise’ was a minor 1967 hit for Allison who recorded his vocals over the existing backing track. It’s a classic slice of pop-garage, with a pounding rhythm guitar line.

‘Louie Go Home’ (co-written by Revere and Lindsay) is one of the more interesting cuts in the Raiders discography.

The original version, a minor hit early in 1964 is a bit of classic PNW R&B stomp, covered by both the Who and Davie Jones and the King Bees. A few years later, the band rebuilt the song on a more 1966-friendly frame for the ‘Midnight Ride’ album, turning it into a completely different, much groovier beast.

Raiders SS396 Picture Sleeve (water damage included!)

The last track was a promo for the Chevy SS396 released on a 45 with a tribute to the Camaro by the Cyrkle on the other side. Released in 1965, and sounding like the band had been hanging around with Jan and Dean, it wouldn’t be the last time they pushed muscle cars, doing a commercial for the Pontiac GTO ‘Judge’ a few years later.

The cool thing is, you can easily find some excellent collections of their stuff (The Legend of Paul Revere, and the Complete Columbia Singles) over at iTunes, or head to your nearest flea market or garage sale where you’re likely to find some of their 45s (or LPs if you’re lucky).

If you’ve never seen the Raiders in action, get on over to Youtube where you’ll find a grip of TV performances from their peak years.

So take a moment to hoist a tankard of ale to the memory of the mighty Paul Revere.

I’ll be back next week with that all-PNW edition of the Iron Leg Radio Show.

Peace

Larry

 

 

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions – You Belong To Me

Elvis says “Whut???”

Listen/Download – Elvis Costello and the Attractions – You Belong To Me

Greetings all.

Every once in a while even the most jaded of collectors needs to be reminded that he/she is not omnipotent of infallible (you shouldn’t need to be reminded, but we are after all taking about record collectors, so…).

Back in the olden days, when I was in high school and new wave was (new) I used to sit at the same lunch table as a couple of marginal characters (at least I thought they were marginal at the time) named Bob and Alan.

Like most non-athletic adolescent boys of the time we spent an inordinate amount of time discussing/arguing about music.

I had recently discovered Bad Company.

Yeah…

Though Bob and Alan were both hard rock aficionados as well, their tastes ran to KISS (I’m still ambivalent), but they had already started to progress by digging into bands like the Clash and Elvis Costello and the Attractions.

I had spent most of my early teen-hood obsessing about the Beatles, and was as a result a case of musical arrested development. I was suspicious of anything even vaguely punk-adjacent, so when the boys started rapping about Elvis, I kind of rolled my eyes and ran the opening chords of ‘Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love’ through my head for the thousandth time.

Flash forward a year or two, and the unfinished synapse that started with the Beatles closed its circuit when I discovered how much of debt new wave and power pop owed to the Fabs and every other pop and jangle band of the 60s.

Before long I was scouring the local flea market for commercial stuff like the Cars and the Romantics listening to college radio.

Then, in college, a friend whipped Elvis’s ‘Armed Forces’ album on me. I immediately threw down my arms, hoisted the flag of surrender and joined Oliver’s Army.

I had seen the Attractions on Saturday Night Live, and Elvis and his spasmodic affect struck me the wrong way (though I remember digging DEVO, so maybe it was a case of ‘weird but not quite weird enough’ or something like that, but when the dulcet tones of ‘Armed Forces’ wormed their way into my head, I discovered that the four-eyed goon staggering around the stage was a songwriter of no small talent and deserved my attention after all.

I eventually found my way back through EC’s early albums – losing track some time in the early 80s when his prolific nature outpaced my interest and bank account – and discovered that there was much gold to be dug.

The record that really knocked me for a loop was the second by EC and the Attractions, 1978’s ‘This Year’s Model’, and the track that I wore the grooves out on was the one you see before you, ‘You Belong To Me’.

I suspect that my 1980s garage-mania has a lot to do with why I love this song so much, since there’s more than a touch of the Pebbles at work here.

You get the ringing guitar riff, the elbows-on-the-keyboard combo organ and the kick of the bass and drums, all of it with roots that reach back to 1966 (thanks to Nick Lowe for the production). I always find myself wishing that someone back in the garage revival days had glommed onto this one but I suspect that such a move would have been perceived as apostate (no matter how hip in real life).

The groovy 45 you see before you was picked up (along with half a dozen others by EC) whilst out digging in the hinterlands of New York last summer.

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

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

The Neats – Six

The Neats

Listen/Download – The Neats – Six

Greetings all.

Back in the olden days, when things were different, and I was (a lot) younger, college radio really meant something.

When I say that I mean that before there was such a thing as “alternative” – we old folks used to call it punk and new wave, aside from a couple of anomalous commercial FM stations that dabbled in the underground (and there were a few) folks like us had to huddle around the wireless, tuned in to stations like WPRB in Princeton and WRSU at Rutgers to hear what was bubbling up from underneath the mainstream.

All kinds of labels and bands, some punk, some pop, were stepping outside of the established framework and recording and pressing their own records, and college radio stations were – outside of buying the records from the band or ordering via fanzines and the like – the only way to hear them.

One of the really big numbers for me, which was in relatively heavy rotation on WPRB was the song ‘Six’ by the Neats.

While I hadn’t really gotten a handle on the new psychedelic and garage bands as a scene per se, those were the sounds I gravitated to on the radio.

Much of the new wave and power pop looked back to the 60s, but the darker side of that decade, i.e. bands that tuned in to the Velvet Underground is something I was only just picking up on.

The Neats, hailing from Boston, MA mixed those sounds with a helping of garage grit and lots of folk rock jangle.

‘Six’ was their first recording, issued on a split EP on the Propeller label with the groups Wild Stares, People In Stores and CCCPTV.

The song opens with throbbing bass and swirling psychedelic organ, before being (mostly) swallowed by waves of rhythm guitar.

The cryptic lyrics are delivered in a deadpan style and despite the lack of retro genre signifiers, the sound is definitely old school au go go.

Truth be told, the Neats never descended into the retro-scene, letting their sound speak for itself.

The two records they recorded for Boston’s Ace of Hearts label, the EP ‘Monkey’s Head In the Corner of the Room’ (1982) and the LP ‘The Neats’ (1983) are both remarkable lost classics. As far as I can tell neither has been reissued.

Oddly, after the Neats left Ace of Hearts for Coyote, they changed their sound significantly (and abrubtly). I had seen them open for REM in 1984 and they sounded like their earlier stuff. I saw them again a year later (opening for the Chesterfield Kings, I think) and the jangle was gone, replaced largely by a bluesy wail.

That all said, I still take these records out and listen to them today, 30 years hence, and dig them as much as I did the first time around.

I hope you dig them too.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #32

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Alan Hawkshaw and Keith Mansfield – Action Scene(KPM)
Chesterfield Kings – She Told Me Lies (LP version) (Mirror)
Chesterfield Kings – Cry Your Eyes Out (Mirror)
Pandoras – Hot Generation (Voxx)
Smithereens – Got Me a Girl (Dirt)
Stomachmouths – R&B 65 (Got To Hurry)
The Scene – Stop-Go (Diamond)
Untold Fables – When the Night Falls (Dionysus)
Vipers – Nothing’s From Today (Jem/PVC)
Vipers – Never Alone (Midnight)
Vipers – You Don’t Believe Me (Midnight)

The Fuzztones – Bad News Travels Fast (Midnight)
The Fuzztones – We’re Pretty Quick (Midnight)
The Fuzztones – Gotta Get Some (ABC)
Green Telescope – Two By Two (Imaginary)
Hysteric Narcotics – Electric Children (RPM Mag Flexi)
Cynics – Painted My Heart (Dionysus)
Funseekers – It Should Be You (Susstones)
Original Sins – Come On Up (Chaos)
Royal Nonesuch – You Need Love (UP)
Telltale Hearts – It Came To Me (Voxx)

Boys From Nowhere – Beg (Young Lion)
Creeps – Rattlesnake Shake (Tracks On Wax)
Fleshtones – The World Has Changed (IRS)
Insomniacs – My Favorite Story (Umbrella)
Lyres – How Do You Know (New Rose)
Plasticland – Go a Go Go Time (Enigma)
Plasticland – The Windowsills (Enigma)
Plasticland – Rattail Comb (Scadillac)
Secret Syde – Hole In My Pocket (Mutha)
Spectors – I Fell In Love (Get Hip)
Stems – Make You Mine (Citadel)
Stems – Under Your Mushroom (Citadel)

The Bangs – No Mag Commercial (Ear Movie)
The Bangles – The Real World (IRS)
The Bangles – The Hero Takes a Fall (Columbia)
The Rain Parade – This Can’t Be Today (Restless)
The Rain Parade – Prisoners (Enigma)
The Eyes of Mind – Yesterday Is Gone (Voxx)
Mad Violets – Psilocybe (Voxx)
Lord John – Westminiature Abbey (Bomp)
Mod Fun – I Am With You (New)
Mod Fun – Grounded (Cryptovision)
Phantom Five – She’s Not (Making Tyme)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 32 – 256MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

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

I have a very special edition of the show lined up for you this month.

Though I have included some garage/psych revival tracks over the course of the previous 31 episode of the podcast, I have always wanted to dig out a big stack of 80s (and some early 90s) vinyl, digimatize it and devote an episode to the sounds of my misspent youth.

So I did (finally).

Though it is by no means comprehensive, it is a good look at the kind of stuff my friends and I were digging during the first wave of the garage/psych/mod revival in the the early to mid 80s.

There’s a bunch of American stuff (both coasts and the middle) as well as the UK, Europe and Scandinavia represented.

There are even a couple of really rare things in the mix for the trainspotters in the crowd.

You get almost two and a half hours of sounds!

As always, I hope you dig it.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #31

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opener – Action Scene – Keith Mansfield/Alan Hawkshaw (KPM)
Colour Field – Can’t Get Enough of You Baby (Chrysalis)
Game Theory – 24 (Enigma)
Smithereens – I Don’t Want To Lose You (Enigma)
Neats – Six (Propellor)
Neats – Red and Gray (Ace of Hearts)
Biff Bang Pow – There Must Be a Better Place (Creation)
Dentists – I’m Not the Devil (Homestead)

The Animals – I’m Gonna Change the World (MGM)
Motifs – If I Gave You Love (Selsom)
Ascots – Sookie Sookie (Super)
The Dillons – Simple Way of Living (Impression)
Nashville Teens – Find My Way Back Home (London)
Spats – She Done Moved (ABC)
Ian and the Zodiacs – Why Can’t It Be Me (Philips)
Freddy Cannon – Cincinnatti Woman (WB)
Freddy Cannon Radio Spot

Lovin’ Spoonful – Six O’Clock (Kama Sutra)
Carson and Gaile – Something Stupid (Kapp)
Biff Rose – What’s Gnawing at Me (Tetragrammaton)
The Daily Flash – The French Girl (UNI)
BJ and the Profits – It’s Gonna Rain (Uptown)
Friday Brown – The Outdoor Seminar (RCA)
The Lamp of Childhood – Two O’Clock Morning (Dunhill)
The Lamp of Childhood – You Can’t Blame Me (Dunhill)
The London Knights – Go To Him (Mike)
Thorinshield – One Girl (Philips)
Real Don Steele Pepsi Ad

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 31 – 134MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

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

I have a groovy one lined up for you this month.

We get things started with a set of 80s bands on a 60s tip, move on to a set of harder edged US garage and British beat,and finish things up with some pop, folk rock and psych.

So pull down the ones and zeros, slide them onto your MP3 delivery device, and slide them into your head.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

DMZ – Out of Our Tree

DMZ

Listen/Download – DMZ – Out of Our Tree

Greetings all.

The past month or so has been an especially tasty one in regard to the acquisition of new (old) records, including some long (long, LONG) time want list items (for here and over at Funky16Corners).

It was during the digimatization process, and plowing through the crates to prep for the next episode of the Iron Leg Radio Show, that I happened upon an especially old record that I had unjustly neglected for years.

Flash back to the very early 80s, and my brothers and I are hanging out in our parents backyard, doing nothing remotely productive, and we happen to hear on the radio that REM were going to be playing that evening at the Capitol Theater in Passaic.

We rapidly dragged ourselves out of our lawn chairs (without spilling our beer) and hightailed it up to Crazy Eddies.

You see, back in the olden days, before the computers and the beep-beep, bloop bloop and what not, you used to have to go somewhere special to buy concert tickets, usually Ticketron (anyone remember those rainbow colored tickets?).

There were a couple of Ticketron outlets nearby, one inside of a Macys department store (?!?) and the other inside Crazy Eddies.

Crazy Eddies was (for those of you too young or too far from the NY area to remember) an appliance/record/tape chain, with lunatic TV commercials, that eventually collapsed under the weight of its founder’s criminal activity.

Though I wouldn’t generally go to Crazy Eddies specifically to buy records (for guys like us it was a place to get stereo equipment and blank tapes), if I’m in a store, and there are records to be had, who am I to look the other way??

So, we buy our tickets for the show, and I headed over to the “imports” section, where in addition to overpriced French prog rock albums, you could find all kinds of domestic independent label stuff.

Though I can’t be 100% sure, I think this was also the day I grabbed the Vipers Jem/PVC LP, but the real score (though I didn’t know it at the time) was a remaindered copy of a four or five year old release by a band called DMZ.

DMZ, formed in 1976 and dead in the water two years later, is now best known as the band that introduced the world to the charms of Jeff Conolly, aka Mono Mann.

It was still a few years before I would hear about the Lyres, so that meant nothing at the time, but I did recognize that the album included a cover of the Sonics ‘Cinderella’, so I forked over my 99 cents, and headed home.

While my ears were still stuffed full of sweet, power pop/new wave candy, I had started to develop a taste for punk (zee raw, seexteez zound) and DMZ brought it.

I found myself dropping the needle on the opning track, ‘Mighty Idy’ a lot, but the cut that really rattled my cage is the one you see before you today, a cover of the Wailers 1966 slammer ‘Out of Our Tree’.

The importance of the damp, depressing Pacific Northwest to the development of punk, 60s and beyond cannot be underestimated.

Bands like the Kingsmen, the Sonics, Don and the Goodtimes, and Paul Revere and the Raiders all made awesome sounds (some, like the Sonics far beyond awesome), but the mighty Wailers were there first.

The group had their first hit with ‘Tall Cool One’ in 1959 (again in 1964), and over the next few years their R&B/frat sound morphed in sometimes savage garage punk.

‘Out of Our Tree’ was released in 1966 and it is one of those records that wears the era like a badge of honor.

You get pounding drums, combo organ, fuzzed out guitars and wailing (of course) vocals, and the overall effect is powerful enough to shoot grandma out of her chair like a roman candle.

Conolly, one of the great rock and roll maniacs and a devoted record collector brought his love of 60s punk to DMZ, and the result was very cool indeed.

Now, if you were to set to Googling, you would discover that there is something of a critical consensus out there which suggests that the DMZ album suffers from sub-par production by Flo and Eddie.

I am here to tell you that this is bunk.

Whether this is a case of “I don’t think it sounds punk (read, INEPT) enough!” or “I love the Lyres and this doesn’t sound enough like the Lyres!” I can’t say for sure, though both schools of thought seem to be in play.

Having been around then, I fully understand the tendency to associate clean, professional production with ‘the man’ and loosey goosey indie 45s recorded in a basement somewhere to be the ne plus ultra, but as is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

I would suggest getting yourself a copy of the album (or just download the MP3 here), and turn it the fuck up.

The production is right on the money for 1978. DMZ sound like an era-appropriate punk band and Flo and Eddie gave the bass and drums (especially the drums) quite a bit of sonic punch.

Jeff is solidly savage, and while the organ could be a tiny bit louder, it is there, and you’d have to be a fool to deny that DMZ does the Wailers proud.

Not long after DMZ imploded, Conolly, Rick Corraccio and Paul Murphy went on to form the Lyres, one of the greatest live bands of the 1980s and beyond.

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

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Iron Leg Radio Episode #3

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opening Theme – Alan Hawkshaw/Keith Mansfield – Action Scene (KPM)

Brenda Patterson – This Wheel’s On Fire (Epic)
Gas Co – Your Times Up (Mirwood)
Plasticland – Rattail Comb (Scadillac)
The Knack – Time Waits For No One (Capitol)
The Bougalieu – Let’s Do Wrong (Roulette)
Crip Guerney – Understanding Each Other (Hi)
The Spats – Bonie Moronie (ABC)
Del Shannon – Sweet Mary Lou (Dunhill)
Modern Folk Quartet – If All You Think (WB)
Small Faces Radio Spot

Electronic Concept Orchestra – Rock me (Limelight)
Quinteto Violado – Acaua (Philips Brazil)
Free Design – 2002 a Hit Song (Project 3)
Beverley – Where the Good Times Are (Deram)
Moody Blues – This is My House (London)
Underdogs – Love’s Gone Bad (VIP)
Orpheus – Lesley’s World (MGM)
PJ Proby – Don’t Forget About Me (Imperial)
PJ Proby Radio Spot

Apple – Buffalo Billycan (Page One)
1910 Fruitgum Co – Blue Eyes and Orange Skies (Buddah)
The Association – Come On In (WB)
The Millennium – I Just Want To be Your Friend (Columbia)
Mighty Baby – Egyptian Tomb (Head)
The Neats – Six (Ace of Hearts)
New Vaudeville Band – There’s a Kind of Hush (Fontana)
Richie Havens – Strawberry Fields Forever (Stormy Forest)
Easybeats Coke Commercial

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 3 – 153MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

As hard as it may be to believe, it’s already time for the third installment of the Iron Leg Radio Show.

This time out there’s all kinds of groovy ish, from the psyche, to the garage, to vaguely almost kinda prog, to cool stuff from Brazil, freakbeat, Moog and the cusp of heavyosity, all delivered with the kind of sub-Wolfman Jack-ery that you’ve come to expect during the three months that this has been going on.

If you dig what I’m doing here (or not, heaven forfend…) , take a moment to drop me a line.

Requests are welcomed (as long as I have it I’ll play it) and while we’re on the subject, should you also dig the sounds of soul, you might want to skip over to the mothership, aka the Funky16Corners blog and click on the F16C Radio Show tab to pull down the ones and zeros on episodes of the long-running show of the same name that airs every Friday night at 9PM on Viva Radio.

That said, I hope you dig the show, and I’ll be back next week with something cool.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Iron Leg Radio Is On The Air!

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opening Theme – Alan Hawkshaw/Keith Mansfield – Action Scene (KPM)

Baker Knight & the Knightmares – Hallucinations (Reprise)
Apparitions – She’s So Satisfying (Caped Crusader)
Andre Brasseur – Pow Pow (Palette)
101 Strings – Spinning Wheel (Alshire)
World of Oz – Peters Birthday (Deram)
Turtles – She’s My Girl (White Whale)
Radio London – Pussycat

Standells – Little Sally Tease (Tower)
Tino & the Revelons – I’m Coming Home (Dearborn)
Thee Muffins – Surprise Surprise
The Lime – Love a Go Go (Westwood)
Strangeloves – In the Night Time (Bang)
Sonics – Lost Love (Picadilly)
Sonny and Cher – It’s Gonna Rain (Atlantic)
Boyce and Hart – Coke Spot

Softmachine – Love Makes Sweet Music
Soft Machine – A Certain Kind (probe)
13th Floor Elevators – Livin On (45 Edit) (IA)
Blue Things – Orange Rooftop of Your Mind (RCA)
Buffalo Springfield – Expecting To Fly (Atco)
Yes – Everydays (Atlantic)
Upbeat radio Spot

Millennium – Prelude / To Claudia On Thursday (Columbia)
Neon Philharmonic – Brilliant Colors (WB)
Mark Eric – California Home (Revue)
Love Generation – The Love In Me (Imperial)
Lee Mallory – Take My Hand (Valiant)
Hondells – Just One More Chance (Columbia)
Neon Philharmonic Radio Spot

Insomniacs – My Favorite Story (Umbrella)
Mod Fun – I Am With You (New)
Lord John – Westminiature Abbey (Bomp)
Smithereens – Just Got Me A Girl (Dirt)
Biff Bang Pow – There Must Be a Better Place (Creation)
Game Theory – 24 (Alias)
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Rattlesnakes (Capitol)
Ravi Shankar Anti-Drug PSA

Montanas – That’s When Happiness Began (Pye)
Lovin’ Spoonful – Six O’Clock (Kama Sutra)
Animals – I’m Gonna Change the World (MGM)
Motifs – If I Gave You Love (Selsom)
Biff Rose – What’s Gnawing At Me (Tetragrammaton)
Billy J Kramer – 1941 (Epic)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 1 – 266MB/256kbps

Greetings all, and welcome to something very special.

As mentioned in today’s post over at Funky16Corners, my experience creating the Funky16Corners Radio Show – which airs on Viva Radio and is then archived for download over at the blog – had me thinking about expanding the whole radio show bag.

Initially I considered doing a second Funky16Corners show, but eventually my thinking came around to the idea of doing something similar with the vibe here at Iron Leg, i.e. 60s pop (and sometimes beyond) of all varieties, with the garage punk, and the sunshine pop, and the psychedelic and whatever else happens to fall into that particular bag.

I’ve been doing Iron Leg, with both individual tracks and mixes for four years now, and I figured it was time for something new and (hopefully) interesting.

The Iron Leg Radio Show (you can tell I sweated over that name, huh?) will be posted on a monthly (for now) basis, and is likely to run in the vicinity of 90 minutes, though this first show breaks the two-hour mark.

You’ll be getting all of the groovy stuff you’ve come to expect here at Iron Leg, but the bouillabaisse is going to be stewed together in what will hopefully be new and interesting ways, with both music and information together, which in the words of Abraham Simpson, is the “style of the time”.

Right now, the Iron Leg blog will be home base for the radio show until I find somewhere else to host it as well, which is fine by me with the MP3s as good at my link as someone else’s.

That of course may never happen, since the internet and podcasts (and MP3 playback devices) have really replaced radio. My ipod (and I’m sure a lot of other people use theirs the same way) is a de facto radio, delivering everything my radio used to do, more efficiently and with much more personal entertainment value than the old wireless set, wherever, whenever, and for however long I want it to.

This is not to say that the old formats of radio are, or should be extinct. In fact podcasting has freed these formats from illogical (at least in what’s left of a free-thinking, adult-level world) constraints having to do with advertising, time limits, freedom of speech issues etc.

It bears mentioning that radio-style programming via podcasting is in many ways (all positive) returning broadcasts to an expansiveness, whether with musical choice or conversation (much of what I listen to in the car, on the ipod, are spoken word podcasts on a variety of topics) that they once had, even if only on the fringes.

We’re in a boom period now where (as it was with blogging) everyone and their crazy uncle has a podcast of some kind, but these things tend to shake out in the end, with the truly fringy stuff finding its small audience, more popular stuff finding a bigger audience, and those things with no audience at all eventually disappearing as their creators become bored or move on to something else (thus the vast floating islands of abandoned web sites and blogs out there in the wilds of the interwebs).

Where the iron Leg Radio Show ends up on that spectrum remains to be seen. If a healthy percentage of the existing audience for this blog, and those from Funky16Corners whose tastes cross over like mine do take a listen and dig what they hear, that’ll be enough for me.

It’s fun creating these shows and I hope that comes through in the podcasts.

I hope you dig it, and I’d like to hear what you think, so drop me a line if you have the time to give it a listen.

Enjoy, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

It Was (roughly) 25 Years Ago Today…

25 years is just a drop in the never-ending vastness of the interwebs…

 

Me and all surviving members of the Phantom Five/ Boss Hoss posse from back in the day (last summer)
(L-R)Me, my brother CJ, Johnny ‘Bluesman’ Rahmer, Bill ‘Modfather’ Luther, my brother Vince

Greetings all.

I was sitting in front of the computer the other day, under a ceiling fan, in the shade with a cool drink at my side (on account of it’s been around 100 degrees for a few days now) and I spotted a Facebook post by my old friend Andy Peters about his alma mater, Stevens Tech, in Hoboken, NJ.
What has this to do with me??
You see, it was 25 years ago (give or take a month here or there) that I took my first, tentative steps into the world of what I’ll call ‘zine’ culture, and Andy and his college had a big part in getting things going.
I don’t recall exactly what gave me the idea to do a fanzine. I don’t think I’d ever seen one when I started mine, and in all likelihood it was something I read about in the local rock rag (the Aquarian Weekly) or via Creem or Trouser Press. The idea of a self-published magazine seemed like just what the doctor ordered.
I had just started a job in the composing room of a newspaper, so I had the basic cut and paste skills, and the rest was a matter of DIY motivation, i.e. finding a source for, if not free, discounted copying, collating and stapling the zines and then (this was the part I thought was going to be difficult) finding somewhere to sell them.
It wasn’t long before I got hip to the concept of consignment, and since I was already haunting all the area record stores, they were generally agreeable to sticking a few copies in their magazine racks and sending me on my way.
The first issues of my zine Incognito (I think I picked the name at random because it sounded cool) were typed on an IBM electric typewriter, the headlines and logos hand-lettered and the picture Xeroxed and pasted in with rubber cement. I think I did two or three issues before Andy suggested an alternative means of production.
When he entered his first year at Stevens, all freshmen were required to purchase a personal computer as part of their coursework. Andy suggested typesetting the issues and printing the text out in column wide strips on his computer and printer.
This was major.
First-off, almost nobody had their own computer back then. I realize that relating this info to some of the younger readers here makes me sound like a Neanderthal man, but that’s just how it was. To put things in perspective, the major daily newspaper I worked at was barely more advanced than my two-bit, home-based operation.
At this point I had never used a PC before and wasn’t sure what to expect. As it turns out, since I was basically using it as a glorified typewriter anyway, it didn’t take much in the way of adaptation.
Every few months I’d take a ride up to Andy’s dorm room in Hoboken (usually with one or both of my brothers riding shotgun) and sit down at the computer for a lengthy writing session, interrupted only for trips to Benny Tudino’s for giant slices of pizza.
It wasn’t long before Andy started coming with us to shows in NYC, which is where he made his second major contribution to Incognito, that being his photographs.

Andy Peters (top, center) clicking the shutter at Maxwells (yes, that’s Soundgarden)
Thanks to Ken Salerno for letting me reprint his very cool pic…

Andy was (and is) an accomplished photographer (as well as a soundman, and his day job as an engineer) and over the course of the next three years he took scores of photographs of the bands and scenemakers on the NY/NJ garage/mod scene, as well as any number of other bands that came through Maxwells in Hoboken (where he worked behind the soundboard for years). Many of these pictures appeared in Incognito, as well as my next zine Evil Eye, and even here on Iron Leg (some can be seen here).
Without Andy, the whole Grogan blogging empire might never have become the monolithic cultural force of the interwebs that it is.
So thanks Andy!

Incognito (circa 1985)

Over those first few years I became an avid consumer of zines, especially locally produced titles like the legendary Billy Miller and Miriam Linna’s Kicks (a BIG influence), Jim Testa’s Jersey Beat (still going in its third decade), Bill Luther’s Smashed Blocked, the late Rudie Rosinski’s (with Bill) Stranger Than Fiction, Mick London’s Making Tyme, Mike Stark’s Trash Beat and countless others from around the US and the rest of the world (mostly procured through the influence of Ron Rimsite at Venus Records on 8th Street in NYC).
There were also minor detours into the ‘legitimate’ press in the late 80s/early 90s, with a number of freelance articles written for the paper I worked for, and for about a year my own music column in a smaller local paper.

Evil Eye (circa 1994) If anyone has a copy of this issue, please let me know…

By the late 80s I’d gotten my hands on my own computer (a tiny Apple Performa 200 with a weird little hand-held scanner), followed a few years later by a Performa 600, the last Apple product I purchased before my first iPod) and I got into the desktop publishing thing with my next zine, Evil Eye (roughly 1991-1996, I don’t really remember exactly) which covered a lot of the same ground, except the focus moved away from the garage/mod revival onto all kinds of alternative (when that word still meant something) stuff, from garagey sounds to trance ambient stuff like The Orb and FSOL.
A few years further down the line, post-Evil Eye I did two print issues of a jazz/Beat zine called Gone (1997/98) which was where I eventually made the leap to the interwebs in 2000 (the traces can be found here) , right before the Funky16Corners web zine.

Gone (circa 1997)

I really do consider what I do here in 2010 a direct extension of those early, primitive days of X-Acto knives, rubber cement and copy machines.
When I transitioned to the Funky16Corners web zine the format was still zine-like with feature articles, discographies, and the addition of small sound files (in the all but useless RealAudio format).
Once again, I do not recall when I first saw an audioblog, but I do remember that I made the decision to switch from the web-zine format to the blogs you see today right after my wife and I had our first son. Time was suddenly at a premium and I needed a format that would allow me to continue the vibe of the web-zine in much smaller increments, that being one song at a time.
The Funky16Corners blog got up and running in 2004 (at Blogger, then WordPress), and I started Iron Leg in 2007 so that I’d have somewhere to muse about 60s pop, psychedelic and the like.
And here we all are today, a quarter of a century later with my own personal zine story having moved along pretty much uninterrupted for the whole time. There were probably a few small lulls here and there, but I can assure you any down time was devoted to figuring out what I was going to do next.
I suppose it would be fair to say that I’ve been involved in these pursuits for this long because I enjoy what I do. It allows me to stay creative, and intersects nicely with my record collection.
There’s also something to be said for the mainstreaming of the DIY culture.
Back in the day, if you wanted to self publish your ramblings it involved a fair amount of work, putting it all together, getting it reproduced and above all, getting it distributed (which involved snail mail and the old sneaker net, same with self-released indie records, which I did too, see Phantom Five, above).
We used to pile into my old station wagon and hit all the local stores, then move on to the city, dropping the zine off at Venus, Midnight and wherever else I could. The whole process had to be repeated when I wanted to collect on any sales, and then to distribute new issues.
Those New York stores, and their mail order operations – as well as reviews in other zines – ended up getting my zines to people in foreign countries, years before e-mail was common. Back then it was a huge gas whenever I got a piece of zine mail from a foreign country. Now international communication is instantaneous in a way Marshal McLuhan never imagined. The mother-blog, Funky16Corners gets regular visitors from a few dozen countries, and occasional stop-ins from all kinds of crazy places. If you’d told me 25 years ago that anyone would be able to do that I’d’a thunk you were crazy go nuts.
These days, anyone with an internet connection and the know-how can get a blog up and running (and then shut down) in no time, or record something in their home studio and have it up on YouTube the same day.
There’s been a lot of crap heaved up onto the interwebs under the guise of blogging, but there’s also been a lot of very creative, interesting and rewarding stuff as well (see blogroll).
Though I’m not 100% sure that’s what folks were thinking of back in the 80s when they used DIY to help democratize the process and the market (it was after all a radically different set of tools at our disposal), it is certainly better than what the mainstream print and music industries hath wrought (which is by and large their own destruction).
With Funky16Corners in its 6th year and Iron Leg in its 4th, there‘s not really an end in sight (unless I get hit by a bus). The way things move along these days, you never know when the next big format change may come along (and Twitter ain’t it…), but I suspect that no matter what happens, both of my blogs will probably always be recognizable (at least I hope so) as part of this 25 year continuum.
I hope you all stick around for the ride.
See you on Monday.

 

 

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a slice of funny funk