The Inmates - First Offence

From 79 - the Inmates were a total retro outfit back then (who wasn't, really) and did it without a hint of cheekiness. Sounding like early Stones or Kinks, they ripped through covers and originals with gusto and honesty, and an appropriately dirty and loose sound.

I remember when the record was released the band, in an effort to promote their single cover of the Standells' Dirty Water, recorded different versions of the song to go out to individual markets - for Boston they changed the river to the Charles with the chorus, "Ahh Boston you're my home." For Denver, where I lived, it became "by the banks of the river Platte" (hardly much of a "river" most of the year.) It got them a lot of airplay, though.

amg:

In 1979, various punk and new wave bands were engaging in 1960s worship — everyone from the Ramones to Blondie to the B-52s was putting their own spin on 1960s music, whether it was British Invasion rock, surf rock or the girl-group sound. But while those artists were combining something old with something new, the Inmates were retro all the way. New wavers and punks might have appreciated the rawness of First Offense, the Inmates' debut album of 1979, but this LP is neither punk nor new wave. Usually sounding like it could have been recorded around 1964-66 instead of in 1979, First Offense is an unapologetic throwback to the British Invasion rock of the early Rolling Stones (we're talking Brian Jones-era Stones!), the Kinks and the Who. The British band doesn't get into psychedelic rock at all, and its preference is for the more bluesy and R&B-influenced recordings that those rockers made in the 1960s. From covers of the Standells' "Dirty Water" and the Pretty Things' "Midnight to Six Man" to remakes of Arthur Conley's "Love Got Me" and Don Covay's "Three Time Loser," First Offense is about as derivative as it gets. But it's also rockin' and highly infectious — even when you're thinking about how ultra-derivative the music is, you'll find yourself patting your foot and singing along. First Offense is retro in the good sense.

Hear

Various - Mass. Ave. - The Boston Scene (1975-83)

Rhino put together some great compilations about 20 years ago of scenes in the UK and US. The 9 discs were part of the DIY project and the last one covered Boston. Although uneven (some songs are just weak), this last disc in the group adds a dimension that goes beyond the usual suspects of NY, LA and the UK, and that alone makes it worthwhile.

Real Kids, the Lyres, the Del Fuegos, Nervous Eaters mix nicely with the Mission of Burma classic and a choice early demo of the Cars. A scene that's often overlooked, but which really influenced a lot of what came out of the same locale in the late 80s and early 90s.

The whole DIY series is out of print and pretty hard to find, so enjoy this one.

01. Mass. Ave. - Willie Alexander
02. Do The Boob - Real Kids
03. Loretta - Nervous Eaters
04. They Saved Hitlers Brain - Unnatural Axe
05. Better Off Dead - La Peste
06. You're All I've Got Tonight (Demo) - The Cars
07. No Place Like Home - The Neighborhoods
08. Jackie Onassis - Human Sexual Response
09. I'm Talking To You - The Maps
10. That's When I Reach For My Revolver - Mission Of Burma
11. 1+1<2 - Classic Ruins
12. I Want To Help You Ann - The Lyres
13. 6 - Neats
14. Hey! (Not Another Face In The Crowd) - Thrills
15. When Things Go Wrong - Robin Lane & The Chartbusters
16. Lonelyhearts - The Atlantics
17. Alpha Romeo - Dangerous Birds
18. I Always Call Her Back - Del Fuegos
19. Knock Me Down - The Outlets

Hear

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Lovelyville

Nice and weird and warm. Like a glass of milk in the sun.


Allmusic.com: The group's first album for Matador is also one of their more accessible ones, with the group's penchant for willful eccentricity colliding with some hummable melodies. However, this release also contains plenty of what TFUL #282 fans lovingly call "Feller-filler" (i.e., noise-pieces that have no real beginning, or ending, or point, for that matter).

HEAR


password: p-l-m.blogspot.com

Dead Boys - Young, Loud and Snotty

Stiv was such a tremendous frontman and this is such a tremendous record that had a real violence to it not heard much in the firstgen American punk rock bands. These guys were truly punks in every sense of the word.

__________________

Allmusic.com: Fellow Cleveland types Pere Ubu may have won the artistic kudos for their adventurous, surprising work, but if the goal was just to rock and rock again, the Dead Boys had them totally trumped. As both title phrase and capsule description, Young, Loud & Snotty accurately defines the predominating aesthetic so well that one could just leave it at that, but there's a lot more going on here than on the face of it. With perhaps surprising great production from demi-famous '70s rocket Genya Ravan, the five-some found something sonically smack in-between the US garage/punk heritage of the past and the more modern thrashings from overseas. Bators sneers, gobs, gasps, and whines with the best of them, but he knows his rock history, as does his bandmates. Zero and Chrome aren't guitar virtuosos, but they do know what makes a song great and aren't afraid to concentrate on that, while the Magnum/Blitz rhythm section keeps things moving as it does. In some ways songs like "All This and More" and "I Need Lunch" simply emerge from an alternate '50s, with admittedly much more feedback and stereo sound. Stone cold rock classic "Sonic Reducer" starts things off -- amusingly -- with all sorts of phased drums and other fripperies that later generations wouldn't consider punk at all. That said, it's still blunt, brilliantly sung by Bators and kicks out the jams with messy energy. Other all-time greats include the perfect bored-and-needing-kicks anthem "Ain't Nothin' to Do" and the thoroughly wrong "Caught With the Meat In Your Mouth." There's even a rock oldie -- a cover of "Hey Little Girl" live onstage at spiritual home CBGB's. And why not? With great punk rock and great rock, Young, Loud and Snotty still packs a punch.

HEAR

CSNY - Ohio

Don't do a lot of politics here even though most of the contributers are political animals in the extreme.

40 years ago today 4 students were shot to death on the campus of Kent State. I remember it even though I was not yet nine years old. In the span of four days I went from a child who found Nixon's address to the nation about bombing Cambodia annoying because it pre-empted my TV viewing to an acutely aware (and genuinely frightened) boy. It stands out as the very first moment in my life when I sensed things in the world were mighty fucked up. It didn't help that the now iconic image of the event featured the dead body of Jeffrey Miller and a wailing Mary Ann Vechio, who at age 14 was a mere five years older than I at the time.

CSNY released the single within weeks of the incident, capitalizing on and profiting from the tragedy. Regardless of their motives, they created an anthem that stands as testament to that moment.

Later that same year the writer Harlan Ellison dedicated a book to the victims. A couple of years later he wrote another book, appropriately titled "Approaching Oblivion", which included this forward...

In Alone Against Tomorrow, I had included as a dedication for a book of stories about alienation, these words:

This book is dedicated to
the memory of
EVELYN DEL REY,
a dear friend, for laughter
and for caring . . .

And to the memories of:
ALLISON KRAUSE
JEFFREY GLEN MILLER
WILLIAM K. SCHROEDER
SANDRA LEE SHEUER

four Kent State University
students senselessly murdered
in their society's final act of
alienation.

The list is incomplete. There are
many others. There will be more.


And among the letters I received on that book, was this one, reproduced exactly as I received it:


June 10, 1971

Dear Mr. Ellison,

For your dedication of Alone Against Tomorrow, you mention the "four Kent State University students senselessly murdered . . ." Please be informed that these hooligans were Communist-led radical revolutionaries and anarchists, and deserved to be shot, whether by a firing squad or by the National Guard.

Your remarks ruined an otherwise good book. Nevertheless, I am happy for the opportunity to correct your thinking.

Sincerely yours,

-------------

I receive a lot of mail these days. Time prevents my answering very much of it—if I did, I'd have no time for writing the stories that prompt the mail in the first place. Some of the mail is pure, hardcore nutso. I roundfile it and forget it. More of it is reasoned, entertaining, supportive or chiding in a rational tone, and I read it and consider what's been said and usually reply with a form letter I've had to devise simply as a matter of survival.

Occasionally I get a letter that gives me pause. Mr. Chambers's letter was one of those. If I didn't know purely on instinct that he was running off jingo phrases that he'd swallowed whole, if I didn't know he was wrong purely on gut instinct or by my association with student movements for ten and more years, the reopening of the Kent State Massacre case by the Attorney General would convince me. So it's too easy merely to disregard a letter like that, and say, "What an asshole." But consider the letter. It isn't illiterate, it isn't rancorous, it isn't redneck or written on toilet paper. It is a simple, polite, straightforward attempt to straighten out what the correspondent takes to be incorrect thinking on my part. One cannot dismiss this kind of letter. It is from an ordinary human being, speaking about extraordinary events, and genuinely believing what he writes. Chambers really does believe those poor, innocent kids were Communist tools who deserved to die.

Now that scares the piss out of me.

Things haven't changed much in four decades.



as a side note:
Devo members Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh were Kent State students at the time. Casale witnessed the shootings and two of the dead were his friends. According to one report, it was at the moment he saw the M1 exit wounds in Allison Krause's body that Casale decided his previously tongue-in-cheek de-evolution idea was very serious indeed.
Devo covered "Ohio" in 2002.

Caribou - Tour CD 2010

We all need a little magik.

HEAR

Donny Hathaway - Everything is Everything

The last couple of months I have just been riding a soul/R&B wave. Seems like nothing satisfies of late like a groove and some serious meat behind it.

Hathaway's debut from 1970 hits the spot. The guy changed soul music with this single record. It was a long term project of on and off recording sessions with no intention of making a "hit". He made some good ones after (though the songs would follow a more traditional structure than these), but he'd never make anything like this again. If you have any doubts, The Ghetto will make a believer of you.

The record always makes me think of early 70's FM radio and its wicked combos of long, rocking jams and extended soul tracks that the underpaid, overnight DJ would play so he could take a piss, catch some ZZZs, or smoke a bowl.

Suffering from serious bouts of depression throughout the 70's, this tortured genius finally lost to his demons in 1979 and leaped to his death from the 15th floor of The Essex House in NYC. He was 33.

amg:

Already a respected arranger and pianist who'd contributed to dozens of records (by artists ranging from the Impressions to Carla Thomas to Woody Herman), with this debut LP Donny Hathaway revealed yet another facet of his genius -- his smoky, pleading voice, one of the best to ever grace a soul record. Everything Is Everything sounded like nothing before it, based in smooth uptown soul but boasting a set of excellent, open-ended arrangements gained from Hathaway's background in classical and gospel music. (Before going to Howard University in 1964, his knowledge of popular music was practically non-existent.) After gaining a contract with Atco through King Curtis, Hathaway wrote and recorded during 1969 and 1970 with friends including drummer Ric Powell and guitarist Phil Upchurch, both of whom lent a grooving feel to the album that Hathaway may not have been able to summon on his own (check out Upchurch's unforgettable bassline on the opener, "Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything)"). All of the musical brilliance on display, though, is merely the framework for Hathaway's rich, emotive voice, testifying to the power of love and religion with few, if any, concessions to pop music. Like none other, he gets to the raw, churchy emotion underlying Ray Charles' "I Believe to My Soul" and Nina Simone's "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," the former with a call-and-response horn chart and his own glorious vocal, the latter with his own organ lines. "Thank You Master (For My Soul)" brings the Stax horns onto sanctified ground, while Hathaway praises God and sneaks in an excellent piano solo. Everything Is Everything was one of the first soul records to comment directly on an unstable period; "Tryin' Times" speaks to the importance of peace and community with an earthy groove, while the most familiar track here, a swinging jam known as "The Ghetto," places listeners right in the middle of urban America. Donny Hathaway's debut introduced a brilliant talent into the world of soul, one who promised to take R&B farther than it had been taken since Ray Charles debuted on Atlantic.

Hear