V05-T04a "...It's smooth sailing..."

.....

.....Tito Larriva of the Plugz (see the previous post) played the character Ramon in David Byrne's movie "True Stories". Ramon claims to receive radio waves and refers to himself as Radiohead (and yes, that's where the band got their name). While the guitar-heavy "I'M A CADILLAC" naturally leads into "HOMBRE SECRETO", and that song's British mid-60's origins as a cover of "SECRET AGENT MAN" seem like the reasonable relations to this next track, I think that knowing about Larriva's contributions to both "Repo Man" and "True Stories" may have prompted my choice of this interstitial and the song that follows it.

Volume 5: DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL (YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT'S BEEN), track 4a

• 00:18 [excerpt from "ODORONO"]
• performed (nominally) by The Wh♂
• original source: LP THE WHO SELL OUT Track Records 612 002[mono] or 613 002[stereo] (UK) 12/15/67
• and my source: CD THE WHO SELL OUT MCA MCAD-31332 (US) 10/88

.....The actual vocal used is obviously not one of the Who; it's a woman's voice over a string section singing, "It's smooth sailing with the highly successful sound of Wonderful Radio London", one of the more succinct and to the point Radio London jingles of the many on the album. Radio London had American financial backers who would supply them with custom jingles recorded by a professional service called Production Advertising Merchandising Service, better known by the acronym on its packaging, PAMS. The female vocalists on staff as of 1965 included Judy Parma, Camilla Duncan, Jean Oliver and Tinker Rautenberg, although I doubt that there are any surviving records specifying who was used on this particular recording. The station broadcast from a ship anchored off the coast of England to provide a commercial model to compete with the government owned BBC. It only existed from shortly before Christmas 1964 to mid August 1967, just two months before most of the recording was done for the Who's album. Actual Radio London jingles were edited onto the beginnings and endings of songs and faux ads recorded by the Who. Things like jingles, commercial sponsorship, programming to meet public demand and DJ's as well known as the records they played were all foreign concepts in UK radio prior to that. It was all as much an American import as Andy Warhol's ideas about pop art, something central to the Who's identity at the time.

.....From my notes in 1994:"The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album is widely touted as rock's first concept album. The concept at work there is that the album is supposed to simulate, in your living room, the experience of attending a concert by Billy Shears and various other performers. You can see what they're getting at on the first two tracks, "FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR. KITE" and again on the title track's reprise, but most of that album doesn't give that impression at all. And what's with the barking dogs in the trail off groove? Is that a 'concert experience'?

....."Let's not kid ourselves. The first side of LP THE WHO SELL OUT leaves absolutely no question as to what you're listening to: a radio station that plays nothing but the Who, even in its advertisements for Odorono deodorant, Medac pimple cream and Heinz Baked Beans. Unfortunately for the band they hadn't accounted for the fact that in American slang to 'sell out' means betraying your ideals for commercial reasons, while they meant to say that they had greater popular support than the 'safer' performers. They lost sales due to negative criticism of the title, but worse, they lost the recognition they deserved as innovators of the format."

.....The American sales actually weren't that badly impacted. They were experiencing a meteoric rise in the U.S. following what was their only top ten hit at the time, "I CAN SEE FOR MILES" and a literally explosive appearance on the Smothers Brothers' television show. It could be that American audiences correctly read the title as self-deprecating humor. In England, however, it became the band's lowest charting studio album, not counting soundtracks. In the U.S. it charted higher (at 48) than their previous album (at 67). Their first album didn't chart in the U.S. at all. Their next album, a shabby compilation deceptively packaged as a live album without the band's knowledge or consent, made it to 39, lending credence to my suspicion that an original album riding a hit should have made a greater impact. By comparison, most of their albums, including many of their compilations, were in the top ten in England since the beginning as they would be in the U.S. starting with 2LP TOMMY in 1969. As for what was the earliest concept album, that depends on how strictly you define a concept album. Operas predate rock operas, of course, and themed albums predate even the LP format, since the word album refers to bound sets of 78's. In the rock idiom, the first might be the Beach Boys LP PET SOUNDS, followed closely by the Kinks' LP FACE TO FACE in 1966. After that it was kind of a free for all, with the first high concept rock album probably being the Moody Blues' LP DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED, released between Sgt. Pepper and Sell Out.

.....This interstitial introduces the next track, which was roughly contemporary to the Who album.

V05-T03 Hombre Secreto

.

.....I first saw the movie "Repo Man" in the theater and fell in love immediately. It's one more reason the human race has to thank Mike Nesmith. He's credited as an executive producer, which usually translates to financing a project rather than any hands-on participation, but though the punk music dominating the soundtrack and nihilism dominating the characters are both outside of his usual modus operandi his trademark dry humor is all over the dialogue.

Volume 5: DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL (YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT'S BEEN), track 3

• 01:48 "HOMBRE SECRETO" (P.F. Sloan, Steve Barri; Spanish translation by Tito Larriva)
• performed by The Plugz
• original source: VALP MUSIC FROM THE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK "REPO MAN" San Andreas Records/MCA SAR 39019 (US) 1984
• and my source: the same

.....Sloan's co-writer, Steve Barri, was actually credited on the label as "S.B. Lipkin", his real name. I used his professional name because it's more widely recognized (and to be fair, Sloan's name is a pseudonym, too). Below are my notes from 1994.

....."What? No Japanese? Well, these compilations wouldn't be complete without a foreign language number in there somewhere. Of course, you may know this in English as the Johnny Rivers song 'SECRET AGENT MAN'. Being a long time fan of the TV show 'The Prisoner' (and its antecedent 'Secret Agent', with which Americans associate the song), those opening chords always catch my ear. I think there's a Lou Miami recording of this out there. In English, I mean.

....."The Plugz are a fine example of L.A. punk's dirtiest little secret-- i.e., that it isn't any more homegrown than the rest of the rock in L.A. Just like in the big commercial rock world, the best 'L.A.' punk bands weren't from Los Angeles; they were from San Francisco or Mexico. At first the only clubs to play in were in L.A. and the minute clubs opened elsewhere bands stopped making the haul to L.A. to perform. When the mass media types no longer saw punk bands in Los Angeles they assumed that there couldn't be anything going on in the 'lesser' towns and declared that punk was dead. Michael Nesmith, on the other hand, decided to look beyond the end of his nose and decided that it was not. He backed the production of 'Repo Man' (for which Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton will be forever grateful), whose soundtrack album was probably the first mass-marketed example of the fourth phase of punk (hardcore). The CD finally came out nearly ten years after the movie."

.....Shortly after the movie was released The Plugz renamed themselves the Cruzados and signed to Arista. They had previously released their own records. The new identity didn't last very long and the Cruzados also ended their existence with a movie, 1989's 'Road House'. They actually appeared on screen for that one, part of Tito Larriva's extensive list of film credits. The line-up for this particular track was:

• Tito Larriva- vocals
• Steven Hufsteter- lead guitar
• Chalo 'Charlie' Quintana- drums
• Tony Marsico- bass

.....None of the selections give individual producer credits, although the project was produced by Peter McCarthy and Jonathan Wacks. I'm not sure if they had any direct involvement with the recording since there are two other Plugz tracks on the soundtrack with different personnel and were likely recorded earlier than "HOMBRE SECRETO". Actually, the whole album is killer, as is the movie, and both are heartily recommended in their entirety.