Tag Archives: beach boys

PIGSHIT: “MACH SCHAU, PEEDLES!”

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Every Sixties recording artist seemed to have ‘em:  There were the Beach Boys’ Hite Morgan tapes, the Stones’ IBC demos, the Byrds’ notorious Jet Set sessions, and even the Velvet Underground’s attempts at becoming East Coast studio stringers for Gary Lewis and the Playboys (…just kidding about that last one) (I think).

As a brand new collection called The Beatles with Tony Sheridan: First Recordings, 50th Anniversary Edition more than proves, even the almighty Fab Four were not immune to this pre-fame plague of skeletons-in-the-audio-closet. For you see, when not binging on Chuck Berry, Preludins and Schnaps in Hamburg’s red-light district throughout their, um, formative years, our heroes also served as in-studio back-up band to one of Britain’s then very biggest rock stars.  Continue reading →

PIGSHIT: They Ain’t Heavy…

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Never as naughty as the Rolling Stones, nor as pin-up perfect as Herman’s Hermits; seldom as musically adventurous as the Yardbirds, nitty-gritty as the Animals, or full-on bombastic as The Who. Of course, as truly no-one was, they just weren’t as precociously talented as those Beatles either.

In fact, throughout the entire artistic marathon which was 1960′s pop, perhaps their only true competition – in the vocal department at least – would be the all-American Beach Boys. And, like them, it seems the only true “crime” The Hollies ever committed during their illustrious decades-long career was that they solely concentrated on, well, just making good records.  Continue reading →

PIGSHIT: Much more of The Monkees

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Can it really be true that Rolling Stone publisher/magnate Jann S. Wenner has personally conducted a decades-long campaign to bar The Monkees from induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Far-from-dummy Monkee Peter Tork certainly thinks so.

“He doesn’t care what the rules are and just operates how he sees fit,” Tork told the New York Post in 2007. “It is an abuse of power. I don’t know whether The Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it’s pretty clear that we’re not in there because of a personal whim.”  Continue reading →

‘I just wanted to distill and distill until there was almost nothing left’: Ra Ra Riot’s Mathieu Santos on his solo LP

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Mathieu Santos’s new album, Massachusetts 2010, is a ten-song debut LP for the Brooklyn-based composer. One of the founding members and bass player in the chamber pop quintet Ra Ra Riot, he takes a step away from this style to explore more stripped down, sonorous landscapes in an album written, composed and played almost solely by himself.

Here, Mathieu gets candid and offers some interesting insight into the creative process that shaped his album, how the songs originated and why “the treatment of just one distilled idea” is so important for his songwriting style. Continue reading →

16-year-old soul, forty-five years later

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Most of us first met this latest in a long line of Fifth Beatles on or soon after April 11, 1969 with the release of a self-described little “song to roller-coast by” called “Get Back.” Never before, you see, had the Fab Four shared sacred label credit with anyone other than themselves. But there it was, printed right atop that bright green revolving Granny Smith: “The Beatles… with Billy Preston.”

However, much prior to his musical roller-coasting, William Everett Preston already enjoyed a proud and prodigious career, launched from his mother’s lap where, at age three, he began playing the family piano. Soon he was performing with James Cleveland, Andraé Crouch and Mahalia Jackson, and in 1958 portrayed W.C. Handy (alongside Nat “King” Cole) in the film St. Louis Blues. Barely into his teens, Billy was on the road with Little Richard (first running into the Beatles in Hamburg, Germany) and Ray Charles when he was hired in 1963 to perform on the Sam Cooke album Night Beat. His organ work throughout those sessions – on the version of “Little Red Rooster” therein especially – lead to his immediately being signed, on the spot, to Cooke’s fledgling SAR label. Continue reading →

CD Review: Caddy “Electric Hero”

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From out of Norway comes Tomas Dahl, the one-man “band” dubbed Caddy. Having played in powerpop bands including The Yum Yums and Wonderfools, Dahl describes the music of Caddy as “Paul Stanley and Bryan Adams writing songs together…in Brian Wilson’s house”. Caddy boasts “brilliant pop sense, beautiful harmonies, and choruses as catchy as Chlamydia”. So I slipped on a condom and started listening.

Dahl takes the label “one man band” quite literally – he wrote all the songs, played all the instruments, produced the album, and even did all of the harmonies himself. So either he’s an overachieving control freak or simply has no friends – whatever the case may be, it doesn’t alter the fact that Caddy’s debut contains some of the best powerpop and rock I’ve heard of late. These fourteen tracks radiate pop rock goodness and were written as if each one were going to be a single, and Dahl gets to take all of the credit.

Continue reading →

PIGSHIT: Endless Winter

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With the Brian Wilson: Songwriter DVD still lodged firmly within the ol’ Pig Player, I pause to conduct a virtual poll in order to ascertain, on behalf of R n’ R Reporters everywhere, that traditional Yule-rock question… “WHY WOULD YOU REALLY RATHER BE LISTENING TO THE BEACH BOYS THIS DECEMBER 25th?”

“Because I live in Syracuse, and it’s gonna fucking snow until July. I’d rather be surfing!”
(Carl Cafarelli, This Is Rock n Roll Radio)

“Because two of my favorite bands, The Dukes of Stratosphear and The Pretty Things, have absorbed Beach Boy influences into their music.”
(Tina Max, Noise Magazine)

“Because KISS didn’t use any sleigh bells on their new release.”
(Pat Meusel, Sony Music Nashville) Continue reading →

Ten reasons why “Brian Wilson: Songwriter, 1962-1969” should be the last Beach Boys documentary you need ever watch

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1.  Veteran SoCal socio-musical historian Domenic Priore, sitting alongside a tiki totem beneath a strategically placed orange branch, more than ably launches our story over a wealth of Eastmancolor’d freeway and beach footage, drawing, as only he can, that all-important connection from Gidget to Dick Dale all the way to teenage Brian’s Hawthorne, California music room. Continue reading →

Tommy James and Shondells’ reissues on Collector’s Choice prove 60′s band more than just bubble gum act

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Tommy James
- Travelin’
- My Head, My Bed, My Red Guitar
- I Think We’re Alone Now
- Gettin’ Together

Hand it to the folks at Collector’s Choice Records for once again finding some obscure musical treasures and bringing them back into the light in such a way as to not only generate notice for a forgotten artist, but also to probably lead rock historians to use the releases as the basis for meaningful re-evaluation of an artists’ career. In this case, rocker Tommy James and his band The Shondells get the reissue treatment as Collector’s Choice has recently reissued a handful of the band’s albums and a James solo album as well. While most modern music listeners probably do not recognize the name, it is safe to say James (and his band) were one of the most successful hit machines ever to grace the latter half of the ’60′s. The band scored first with the garage rocker Hanky Panky, moved on to such oft-covered hits such as I Think We’re Alone Now, Mony Mony, and Crimson and Clover, among many other songs which hit the charts during the end of the decade. The band split up in the beginning of the ’70′s and James went on to have a succesful solo career, scoring several hit singles throughout the rest of the decade. Continue reading →

Some great new Choices from Collector’s Choice!!

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One of my fave reissue labels, Collector’s Choice, has recently gotten their music-loving mitts on the whole Cameo-Parkway vault and plans to re-release a bunch of long-forgotten albums by the bands and artists who made the label the success it was in the ’60′s. This batch comprises the first wave of releases from the Cameo-Parkway vaults and those who were into music around that time will no doubt feel the wonderful wave of nostalgia as these albums get put on CD for the first time ever and those new to the music will have a chance to experience some of the finest pop from the early ’60′s.

Continue reading →