Eddie and the Hot Rods - Teenage Depression

This is another album I found out about from a friend's older sister. My friend Dave and I were caddies for a couple of summers, and lemme tell ya, that was some seriously good money! On days when we only felt like carrying 18, we'd generally head back to his house and listen to records and smoke. We liked bands like Angel and Bachman Turner Overdrive but in 1976 we were 14 and starting to branch out a bit. Dave's sister had some cool records, and Eddie and the Hot Rods were two of her coolest. She had the first ep, Live at the Marquee, which had a killer version of Bob Seger's Get Out of Denver on it. We listened to that a lot, and then shortly after finding that one, she had this new album, Teenage Depression. Teenage Depression was different because it had more songs, and they weren't all live. I think we found a fanzine with a review of the album, and like with damned near every band in the 70's they'd say, "it's good, but you need to see them live." Well, when you were 14 and lived in the suburbs in Ohio that wasn't gonna happen. Those little bands played in bars, and you had to be 18 to get in most bars. Some of them you had to be 21. So the records are what we had.

So I didn't actually own this one until Captain Oi! rereleased it in 2000. Ya know what was cool about that cd? It had that live ep included, so I got Teenage Depression and I got Get Out of Denver, and that was really great. I loved the sound of the guitars and I especially liked the broken glass on the title track (a trick that generally hooks me to this day). I had no idea what Pub Rock was, and I certainly didn't know what Punk was, but the appeal of tight, fast songs like Get Across to You and the killer hook in Double Checkin' Woman just stuck in my head for decades. I could have ordered the record, but I just don't do that very often. I like to find the records I buy, so sometimes I do without. I really shouldn't have done without on this one. I still love it to death, and it's not just nostalgia. I hate when the only thing a record has going for it for me is nostalgia. This one has a little nostalgia, but mostly I just think it's a killer album.

The one thing that bums me out about the British Punk scene is how quickly the kids disposed of great bands like Eddie and the Hot Rods and Dr. Feelgood. These are great songs. They're tight, they're fun and they're raucous. What more would you want from your Rock N' Roll?

Slammin' Watusis

OK, so in 1988 I was 26, married with a second kid on the way and working on the night shift in a printing factory. I ran big machines that put magazines together. Actually, I ran any of the machines that did that, but I was still pretty early on in that phase of things so I was the third shift guy that put the covers on the books. In doing this, I worked pretty much hand in hand with the guy that did the mailing end, and he ran the stuff that put labels on the books. We talked about music all night. I'm not kidding. Music. All night. Last night, the night before, tonight and tomorrow night. George and I would grab Hit Parader's and cut out pictures of metal bands and hang them all over out machine. It was actually pretty cool looking. I liked Metal in the 80's, but not like my first love, garagey punk, lo fi noise. Which brings me to Slammin' Watusis.

We used to either get lunch at 3:30 AM or we'd get off work at 11:30 PM, depending on how things were going. We'd go listen to cassettes or college radio, and WCSB played all sorts of odd stuff at night. I can remember there was a guy that would play Some Sex now and then and I loved the plodding bass and drums, the loud assed guitars and saxophone that was all over the place. I suppose it's mostly early hardcore punk, but that sax just adds a texture of weird to it that I find really appealing. We'd be out there drinking beer by the little cluster of pine trees with the trunk lid up on one of our cars and the stereo blasting (I locked my keys in the car once, with the stereo blasting, and had to call the cops to open it for me), with a huge cloud of smoke hanging in the trees. George and I pretty much called the shots on music, so no one else would give me any crap for cranking up Slammin' Watusis when they came on, but I'm pretty sure no one liked them.

I never could find any of their albums, but last year I found the first one, with Some Sex on it and I bought it instantly. I think it's a solid blast of noise, but my wife and the cat hate it (she says the cat hates it, I'm not so sure). I can't recommend this to everyone, but if you thought Roxy Music should have played ten times louder and faster and got a singer that could yell you might find this enjoyable. I'm really glad I found it.

Peter Case - Wig!

I really like Peter Case. I know his time in The Plimsouls is what he's best known for, but his solo stuff is always a treat. The guy has consistently made great music for decades now, and The Plimsouls are really just a brief period in his career. This album came out in 2010 on nice 180 gram vinyl with some extra songs to download as mp3's. The recording itself is kind of a lo fi affair, but if you ask me, that's usually the best way to go. I think I actually hear real life in a kind of lo fi way, so a recording like this sounds like I'm in the same room as the band. That's what it's all about, right?
I've always liked the fact that Case seems to be able to put a whole album's worth of decent songs on his records. He never has a "one side and done" record, and Wig! is more than decent. It's entirely fun to listen to the whole way through, with serious subjects like health care and shelter for the poor and relationships and a revisit to Old Blue Car and Case just kills every song. I think this was easily my favorite album in 2010, and if I ever own a radio station, I'll make all my DJ's play Peter Case songs. One day, when Peter is 75 they're gonna finally trot him out for a Grammy and the 20 somethings of that era will fully embrace him. That's bullshit because he deserves some support right now. If you like lo fi bluesy goodness, you'll love this.

Did you ever read This is Not Pitchfork?

Well, that up above is not a Pitchfork. It's a strange Russian tractor. But This is Not Pitchfork is a pretty fun page where a woman with far better writing skills than me goes through her record collection. Unfortunately, she stopped and went to Tumblr in 2009 or so, so there isn't much new stuff. But she's exactly my age, from the US and from the north. Granted, she's from a big city and I'm here in Cleveland (or close enough), but I like the way she reviews her records. You may not get any idea what the record is all about, and I like that. I mean, if I decide to review Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, I may hardly mention the music at all. Why should I? They still play every song on it on oldies radio all the time. Everyone is familiar with it. But it's interesting to get a different take on it, like what was happening when it was popular. It's interesting to me, anyway.

So if you get time (and really, if you're reading my blog you've apparently got plenty of time), check it out. I'm mildly inspired by it. Hell, someone should take its place, and I'm someone.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Solar Fire

In 1973 I had no idea what Progressive Rock was, and quite frankly, I didn't care. All I knew was when my friend Chris' sister Marcy got this album I couldn't hear it enough. I'm the oldest of the kids in my family, so I kind of glommed on to the older siblings of my friends to get some kind of direction when it came to music. Marcy (probably unknowingly) had a record collection I envied very much when I was 11, and this was the album I envied most of all.

I bought my own. Several times. I've worn this record out at least five times. The last copy I got before I found it on CD was one my brother got me for Christmas. I told him to get me that album, my reason being that mine was trashed, yet again, and it was apparently out of print. I don't know where he found it, but he did, and I still have it. I've got the CD too, but the record is better.

I love the whole album, but Saturn, Lord of the Ring/Mercury The Winged Messenger is easily my favorite. I'm not a big instrumental music kind of person, but Mick Rogers' guitar solo on that one made him my very first guitar god. I can actually just listen to it in my head any time I want because I've played it so many times. I'm pretty sure this one is just ground into my psyche and nothing can change it. I think that based on my love of this album, I can actually listen to some of their later, considerably crappier and way more boring attempts at hitting the Top 40 with songs by Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan. In the great Progressive Rock Pantheon I doubt this album scores all that highly, but on my list of records I can't live without, this is probably in my top ten.

Yeah. Really.

The Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols

You can say what you want about this album, or The Sex Pistols. I don't care if you think it belongs in the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame, or in a garbage can. It changed the whole damn show for me. It changed my whole outlook on music, and it's a big part of why I listen to what I listen to today.

I got it for my birthday in 1978. Denise and BJ (still dear friends to this day), gave me a present in school at lunch. I opened the package, knowing it was a record, but just wondering what in the hell these two girls would get me. This was it. All pink and green and so foreign looking. No wizard on the cover, no pretty girl, no dude with a guitar and a guitargasm face. Just a statement that I figured meant what it means, but I was 16 and had never heard anyone use the term bollocks before. I had talked about The Sex Pistols, and I had heard Anarchy in the UK on college radio. I knew it would be different, just because of all the looks I got in school carrying it around (I was 16, I had a record that most people had never heard of, and I carried it around in the hall until I cut out and went home and listened to it). I played side 2 first so I could hear the song I knew.

Man, I loved it! It was short and got right to the point. The music was biting and harsh. The lyrics seemed like the kind of political stuff that could get you disappeared (hey, I was 16). I loved every minute of it, and I was sure all my friends would, too. The next day in school I thanked Denise and BJ profusely, probably with a doob out in the smoking lounge (yeah, we could smoke in school), and I told everyone I saw it was the coolest record in years. Most people asked me why WMMS didn't play it, if it was so cool, and I had no answer. So I took it to a party that Friday night.

The party was at a guy's house that I didn't know very well, and whom I think moved shortly thereafter, because we really liked a lot of the same music, except Led Zeppelin. After we were a lot of beers in, I asked if I could play my new record, and he said, "Hell, yeah!" The console stereo in the living room was cranked and out comes the screaming, political without really saying anything, Holidays in the Sun. This guy Mark and I just started stomping around doing some adolescent boogaloo that required lots of yelling and pushing each other around, and three songs into it, we notice the entire fucking party has gone out to the kitchen, and even the patio outside, in the snow. No one stayed in the room, and I was kind of dejected and figured he'd take the record off, put on J. Geils and get his party back inside.

He didn't. He pushed me, we did shots of his dad's booze and stomped around the living room until the whole record played through. I was hot, I was sweaty and I knew that I didn't give a fuck what anyone else thought of The Sex Pistols, I fucking loved them and I knew I was gonna dig this new Punk Rock that was just starting to catch on. When the second side finished I went and puked over the front railing of his porch, ingratiating myself forever to some girl who was a senior and her boyfriend who looked like he wanted to beat me up.

Mark and I talked about music a lot for a few months after that, then I just never saw him again. Maybe summer came, I don't know. Maybe his parents blamed me for a drunken party. Whatever. I quit caring what most other people thought about what I listened to after that. I started to understand that most of my favorite music was going to be a journey I had to take on my own for the most part, and I was excited to be RIGHT THERE when Punk came out. I didn't get to see any shows really, but I found some of the records and met some older people that would turn me on to other bands, all because I loved that Sex Pistols album. It changed everything.

Yes - Yessongs

I remember the day I bought this 3 record monstrosity the very first time (this copy is my second, and it's a little noisy but good enough). I was at an old record store called Daisy Music Company. I had saved my allowance for what seemed like a thousand years so that I could buy this Yes album with every damned song I knew by them on it. It was 1973, I was 11 and I just knew this would make me the coolest kid on the planet. Hey, I had no idea how completely uncool progressive rock was, and to this day I still think Yes was a great band that had a lot going on for them. I never said I was cool, just that I thought I could be when I was 11.

I remember once when I was at a party some time when I was older than 11 year old me, and there were actual college guys there, and they had commandeered the stereo. The stereo was always my favorite place to hang out at a party because I could talk about music all night (still can, ask my wife, who gets easily bored with that!). I was pretty obsessive about Yes for awhile, and they were my first favorite band in the whole wide world. But back to the party with actual adults that could buy their own booze, and didn't mind my being around. So I'm hanging out at the stereo, mostly listening to these guys talk about bands I had only read about and playing some of those albums, and I'm getting a little plowed and someone finds Fragile and decides to play that. These guys get to geeking out on how incredible the musicians in Yes are, and I'm totally into this, and the subject goes to Yessongs. These guys are talking about how awesome Bill Bruford is on it and one of them says, "He's just so amazing on Close to the Edge, with all the time changes and stuff." Everyone agrees to his brilliance and I'm thinking, "He only plays on three songs on that album, and that's not one of them." So I work up a little nerve and spit out probably close to verbatim on the back album cover, "Alan White plays drums on all tracks except for Perpetual Change, Long Distance Runaround and The Fish." I get a look from our drumming expert that's like, "Shut up, dick;" and I'm wishing I had kept my mouth shut until one of the other guys that seemed to really know his shit and was apparently the Geek Squad Leader, says. "I think the kid is right. Bruford left for King Crimson shortly after Fragile came out."

"Yeah!" I'm thinking. "I had something to offer that these guys that know everything didn't know" (it would be years before I noticed everyone didn't read every word on the album covers every time they listened to an album). The Leader even let me pick an album to put on. I think I played it safe and grabbed Free's Fire and Water album, because everyone seemed to like that and it was one of my friend's older sister's albums. I was nervous that they wouldn't even let me play it, but one of the other guys seemed pretty happy that we were rocking a little harder, and the rest of the party was really party music of the late 70's, which kind of meant hard rock of the early 70's here in Ohio.

And that has next to nothing to do with Yessongs. Which is a really great yes album. You certainly don't need it, but they play the songs superbly and you get the entire Close to the Edge album, and a lot of Fragile and The Yes Album, too I thought it was a great buy, lemme tell ya! I had those albums by the time I got around to buying this copy, but like I said, Yes was my first favorite band, and I played their albums constantly. This one went through my horrid GE plastic record player, my slightly less horrid BSR changer, and then my first Dual, a 1019 which had seen better days! I got another Dual, a 1229, that was better, and that's probably when I bought this copy. I listened to this album a lot, and I remember when I figured out that during Rick Wakeman's solo that the chorus singing was actually a keyboard! Wow, that blew my mind back then. But there's just so much I love about this album, even though I played it to utter death.

Which reminds me, I was saying I remember getting it at Daisy Music Company. When I bought it, the guy hanging out at the record store (whom I figured must have been beyond cool to know the owner well enough to just stop in and talk) says, "Here's someone who just saw the movie last weekend." I had no idea there was a movie. I just wanted this giant collection of music. I'm halfway through it right now, and I think I'm gonna play the rest of it and read the book that comes with it, which is really just pictures if I recall correctly.